11403	----	* * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and archaic spelling in the | | original document has been preserved. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [Illustration: COVENTRY, THE THREE SPIRES.] THE CHURCHES OF COVENTRY A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CITY & ITS MEDIEVAL REMAINS BY FREDERIC W. WOODHOUSE WITH XL ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: ARMS OF COVENTRY] LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1909 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOK COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. PREFACE The principal authorities for the history of Coventry and its churches have been Dugdale's "Antiquities of Warwickshire" and the "Illustrated Papers and the History and Antiquities of the City of Coventry," by Thomas Sharp, edited by W.G. Fretton (1871). Besides these the many papers by Mr. Fretton in the Transactions of the Birmingham and Midland Institute and other Societies, and the "History and Antiquities of Coventry" by Benjamin Poole (1870) have been the main sources of historical information. The Author is, however, responsible for the architectural opinions and descriptions, which are mainly the outcome of a lifelong acquaintance with the city and its buildings, fortified by several weeks of study and investigation recently undertaken. He desires to acknowledge his deep obligations to the Vicars of the several churches for leave to examine, measure and photograph the buildings in their charge; to Mr. J. Oldrid Scott for the loan of drawings of St. Michael's; to Mr. A. Brown, Librarian of the Coventry Public Library for advice and help in making use of the store of topographical material under his care; to Mr. Owen, Verger of St. Michael's and Mr. Chapman, Verger of Holy Trinity, for help in various directions, and to Mr. Wilfred Sims for his energy and care in taking most of the photographs required for illustration. The other illustrations are reproduced from drawings made by the author. CONTENTS MONASTERY AND CITY 3 THE RUINS OF THE PRIORY AND CATHEDRAL CHURCH 16 ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH: CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 21 II. THE EXTERIOR 29 III. THE INTERIOR 41 HOLY TRINITY CHURCH: CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 61 II. THE EXTERIOR 65 III. THE INTERIOR 69 ST. JOHN BAPTIST'S CHURCH 79 THE GREY FRIARS' CONVENT (CHRIST CHURCH) 91 THE WHITE FRIARS 94 ST. MARY HALL 96 THE CARTHUSIAN MONASTERY 99 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COVENTRY, THE THREE SPIRES _Frontispiece_ ARMS OF THE TOWN _Title-page_ VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BISHOP STREET 2 COOK STREET GATE 7 SEAL OF THE PRIORY 15 WEST END OF THE PRIORY CHURCH 16 REMAINS OF THE NORTH-WEST TOWER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 17 ST. MICHAEL'S FROM THE NORTH 20 ST. MICHAEL'S FROM THE NORTH-WEST 28 INTERIOR OF THE TOWER FROM BELOW 31 THE WEST PORCH 33 SOUTH PORCH FROM ST. MARY HALL 34 SOUTH-WEST DOORWAY 35 INTERIOR OF ST. MICHAEL'S FROM THE WEST 40 TOWER ARCH 42 BAY OF NAVE, NORTH SIDE 43 INTERIOR FROM THE SOUTH DOOR 45 THE CHOIR FROM ST. LAWRENCE'S CHAPEL 46 POPPY HEAD, LADY CHAPEL 48 MISERERE, LADY CHAPEL 48 CHEST IN NORTH AISLE 50 THE NETHERMYL TOMB 51 THE SWILLINGTON TOMB 54 ALMS-BOX 56 HOLY TRINITY FROM THE NORTH (ABOUT 1850) 60 PLAN OF TRINITY CHURCH 66 INTERIOR OF HOLY TRINITY, FROM THE WEST 68 NORTH SIDE OF NAVE--EASTERN BAYS 71 PULPIT 73 ARCHWAY BETWEEN THE NORTH PORCH AND ST. THOMAS'S CHAPEL 74 ALMS-BOX 77 CHURCH OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST 80 PLAN 85 INTERIOR 87 CLEARSTORY WINDOWS 88 THE SPIRE OF CHRIST CHURCH 92 GREY FRIARS' CHURCH (PLAN OF CROSSING) 93 ST. MARY HALL 96 PLAN 98 PLAN OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH _At End_ [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BISHOP STREET.] CHURCHES OF COVENTRY MONASTERY AND CITY The opening words of Sir William Dugdale's account of Coventry assert that it is a city "remarkable for antiquity, charters, rights and privileges, and favours shown by monarchs." Though this handbook is primarily concerned with a feature of the city he does not here mention--its magnificent buildings--the history of these is bound up with that of the city. The connection of its great parish churches with the everyday life of the people, though commonly on a narrower stage, is more intimate than is that of a cathedral or an abbey church, but it is to be remembered that without its Monastery Coventry might never have been more than a village or small market town. We cannot expect the records of a parish church to be as full and complete as those of a cathedral, always in touch through its bishops with the political life of the country and enjoying the services of numerous officials; or as those of a monastery, with its leisured chroniclers ever patiently recording the annals of their house, the doings of its abbots, the dealings of their house with mother church and the outside world, and all its internal life and affairs. In the case of Coventry, the unusual fulness of its city archives, the accounts and records of its guilds and companies, and the close connection of these with the church supplies us with a larger body of information than is often at the disposal of the historian of a parish church. As therefore, in narrating the story of a cathedral some account of the Diocese and its Bishops has been given, so, before describing the churches of Coventry, we shall give in outline the history of the city which for 700 years gave its name to a bishop and of the great monastery whose church was for 400 years his seat. Though Dugdale says that it is remarkable for antiquity, Coventry as a city has no early history comparable with that of such places as York, Canterbury, Exeter, or Colchester, while its modern history is mainly a record of fluctuating trade and the rise and decline of new industries. But through all its Mediæval period, from the eleventh century down to the Reformation, with an expiring flicker of energy in the seventeenth, there is no lack of life and colour, and its story touches every side of the national life, political, religious, and domestic. The only evidence of extreme antiquity produced by Dugdale is the suffix of its name, for "_tre_ is British, and signifieth the same that _villa_ in Latin doth;" while the first part may be derived from the convent or from a supposed ancient name, Cune, for the Sherborne brook. The first date we have is 1016, when Canute invaded Mercia, burning and laying waste its towns and settlements, including a house of nuns at Coventry founded by the Virgin St. Osburg in 670, and ruled over by her.[1] But there is no sure starting-point until the foundation of the monastery by Earl Leofric and the Countess Godiva, the church being dedicated by Edsi, Archbishop of Canterbury, in honour of God, the Virgin Mary, St. Peter, St. Osburg, and All Saints on 4th October, 1043. Leofwin, who was first abbot with twenty-four monks under his rule, ten years after became Bishop of Lichfield. The original endowment by Leofric, consisted of a half of Coventry[2] with fifteen lordships in Warwickshire and nine in other counties, making it (says Roger de Hoveden) the wealthiest monastery of the period. Besides this the pious Godiva gave all the gold and silver which she had to make crosses, images, and other adornments for the church and its services. The well-known legend of her ride through Coventry first appears in the pages of Matthew of Westminster in the early fourteenth century. The Charter of Exemption from Tolls is not in existence, and the story of Peeping Tom is the embroidery of the prurient age (1678), in which the pageant was instituted. In a window of Trinity Church figures of Leofric and Godiva were set up about the time of Richard II, the Earl holding in his right hand a Charter with these words written thereon: I Luriche for the Love of thee Doe make Coventre Toll-free. Abbot Leofwin was succeeded in 1053 by Leofric, nephew of the great earl; and he by a second Leofwin, who died in 1095. The first Norman bishop of Lichfield had, in compliance with the decision of a Synod (1075) in London fixing bishops' seats in large towns, removed his to St. John's, Chester. But his successor, Robert de Lymesey--whose greed appears to have been notable in a greedy age--having the king's permission to farm the monastic revenues until the appointment of a new abbot, held it for seven years, and then, in 1102, removed his stool to Coventry. Five of his successors were bishops of Coventry only, then the style changed to Coventry and Lichfield, and so remained till 1661, when (in consequence of the disloyalty of Coventry and the sufferings of Lichfield in the royal cause) the order was reversed! In 1836 the archdeaconry of Coventry was annexed to Worcester and its name disappeared from the title, and now it is probable that Coventry will soon again give her name to a See without dividing the honour. For the joint episcopal history the reader must be referred to the handbook in this series on Lichfield Cathedral. In this place will only be given that of the Monastery as such, and specially in connection with its "appropriated" parish churches and the City in which it stood. That history is not essentially different from that of other monasteries. Though its connection with the See and the rival claims and antagonisms of the respective Chapters produced a plentiful crop of serious quarrels, its relations with the townsfolk were free from such violent episodes as occurred at Bury St. Edmunds or St. Albans. The Chapter of Lichfield consisted of secular priests (Lymesey and his next successor were married men), while the Monastery, though freed by pope and king from any episcopal or justiciary power and with the right of electing its own abbot, was, like all monastic bodies, always jealous of the encroachments of bishops, and regarded secular priests as inferior in every respect. The opinion of the laity who saw both sides may be gathered from Chaucer's picture of a "poore Persoun of a toun." He knew well enough how the revenue, which should have gone to the parish, its parson and its poor, went to fill the coffers of rich abbeys, to build enormous churches and furnish them sumptuously, to provide retinues of lazy knights for the train of abbot or bishop, and to prosecute lawsuits in the papal courts. But when bishop and abbot were one and the same, the monks still claimed the right of election, and so for generations the history of the diocese is a tale of strife and bickering, and how it was that pope, king or archbishop did not perceive that it was a case of hopeless incompatibility of temper, or, perceiving it, did not dissolve the union or get it dissolved is difficult to see. Probably the injury done to religion weighed but lightly against vested interests and the power of the purse. The Monastery was, however, as Dugdale says, "the chief occasion of all the succeeding wealth and honour that accrued to Coventry"; for though the original Nunnery may have been planted in an existing settlement, or have attracted one about it, the greater wealth of the Abbey, its right to hold markets, and all its own varied requirements would quickly increase and bring prosperity to such a township, as it did at Bury St. Edmunds, Burton-on-Trent and many another. In the thirteenth century the priory was in financial straits, through being fined by Henry III for disobedience. Later, however, he granted further privileges to the monks, among them that of embodying the merchants in a Gild. In 1340 Edward III granted this privilege to the City. From an early period the manufacture of cloth and caps and bonnets was the principal trade of Coventry, and though Leland says, "the town rose by making of cloth and caps, which now decaying, the glory of the City also decayeth," it was only destroyed by the French wars of the seventeenth century. But in 1377, when only eighteen towns in the kingdom had more than 3,000 inhabitants, and York, the second city, had only 11,000, Coventry was fourth with 7,000. Just one hundred years later 3,000 died here of the plague, one of many visitations of that terrible scourge. At the Suppression it had risen to 15,000, and soon after fell to 3,000, through loss of trade for "want of such concourse of people that numerously resorted thither before that fatal Dissolution." But if the town grew apace so did the Monastery. Thus, when in 1244 Earl Hugh died childless his sisters divided his estates and Coventry fell to Cecily, wife of Roger de Montalt. Six years later the Monastery lent him a large sum to take him to the Holy Land, and received from him the lordship of Coventry (excepting the Manor House and Park of Cheylesmore) and the advowson of St. Michael's and its dependent chapels, thus becoming the landlords of nearly the whole of Coventry. [Illustration: COOK STREET GATE.] Civic powers grew with the growth of trade. Before 1218 a fair of eight days had been granted to the Priory, and later another of six days, to be held in the earl's half of the town about the Feast of Holy Trinity. In 1285 a patent from the king is addressed to the burgesses and true men to levy tolls for paving the town; one in 1328 for tolls for inclosing the city with walls and gates, while in 1344 the city was given a corporation, with mayor, bailiffs, a common seal, and a prison. As the municipal importance and the dignity of the city increased, the desire for their visible signs strengthened, and so, in 1355, work was begun on the walls, Newgate (on the London Road) being the first gate to be built. Such undertakings proceeded slowly, and nine years later the royal permission was obtained to levy a tax for their construction, "the lands and goods of all ecclesiastical persons excepted." Twice afterwards we hear of licence being granted by Richard II to dig stone in Cheylesmore Park, first for Grey Friars Gate, and later for Spon Gate, "near his Chapel of Babelake." The walls so built were of imposing extent and dimensions, being three yards in breadth, two and a quarter miles in circumference, and having thirty-two towers and twelve gates.[3] Nehemiah Wharton, a Parliamentary officer in 1642, reports of the city that it is: Environed with a wall co-equal, if not exceedinge, that of London, for breadth and height; and with gates and battlements, magnificent churches and stately streets and abundant fountains of water; altogether a place very sweetly situate and where there is no stint of venison. To return to the monastic history. We have seen how, in the mid-thirteenth century the Monastery had become the landlord of the city; shortly before this it had been so impoverished with ceaseless quarrels with the King and the Lichfield Chapter, involving costly appeals to Rome, that the Prior was reduced to asking the hospitality of the monks of Derley for some of the brethren. A period of prosperity followed and many benefactions flowed in, including the gift of various churches by the king. It was after twenty-six years of quarrelling that the Pope, in 1224, had appointed to the bishopric Walter de Stavenby, an able and learned man. During his episcopacy the friars made their appearance in England, and by him the Franciscans were introduced at Lichfield, while at Coventry Ranulph, Earl of Chester, gave them land in Cheylesmore on which to build their oratory and house. They were not generally welcomed by the monks. A Benedictine laments their first appearance thus "Oh shame! oh worse than shame! oh barbarous pestilence! the Minor Brethren are come into England!" and at Bury they were obliged to build outside a mile radius from the Abbey. The parish priests also soon found out that they were undersold in the exercise of their spiritual offices and although no doubt many badly needed awakening they were not, on that account, the more likely to welcome the intruders. Another innovation, affecting the fortunes of the parish priest, had its beginning under the rule of Bishop Stavenby though its greatest development occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This was the foundation of Chantries designed primarily for the maintenance of a priest or priests to say mass daily or otherwise for the soul's health of the founder, his family and forbears. The earliest we hear of are one at Lincoln, and one at Hatherton in Coventry Archdeaconry while the Bishop himself endowed one in Lichfield Cathedral. Many were perpetual endowments (£5 per annum being the average stipend), others were temporary, according to the means of those who paid for the masses--for a term of years or for a fixed number of masses. Although chantry priests were often required to give regular help in the church services or taught such scholars as came to them or served outlying chapelries, the system permitted a great number to live on occasional engagements and was doubtless productive of abuses. Chaucer tells us that his poor parson was not such an one as ... left his sheep encumbered in the mire, And ran unto London, unto Saint Poul's, To seekë him a chantery for souls. The number of chantries in the different cathedrals varied very greatly, Lichfield had eighty-seven, St. Paul's thirty-seven, York only three. Monks' churches had few or none while in town churches they were numerous, London having one hundred and eighty, York forty-two, Coventry at least fifteen besides the twelve gild priests of the chapel of Babelake. Most were founded in connection with an existing altar, some had a special altar, at Winchester, Tewkesbury and elsewhere they were enclosed in screens between the pillars of the nave, or a special chapel was added to the church. It was in the thirteenth century also (1267) that the monastery obtained the grant of a Merchants' Gild; with all the privileges thereto belonging, the earliest of those which contributed so much to the renown of Coventry. These were Benefit Societies, insuring help to the "Brethren and sistren" in old age, sickness or poverty, securing to them the services of the church after death and in all cases established on a strictly religious basis and placed under the protection of a Saint, or of the Holy Trinity. The regulation and protection of trade interests, generally aiming at monopoly and the exclusion of outsiders, were later developments. But without doubt they were public-spirited bodies according to their lights, maintaining schools (as at Stratford-on-Avon) hospitals and almshouses, and giving freely on all occasions of public importance. By pageants too, they contributed to the happiness and amusement of the people as well as by the presentation of Mysteries and Moralities, to their instruction and edification. But in the eyes of the Reformers, or of grasping courtiers, all this went for nothing when weighed against the heinous offence of supporting chaplains to pray for deceased members and so (6 Edward VI) they were suppressed along with the chantries, and their property confiscated, "the very meanest and most inexcusable of the plunderings which threw discredit on the Reformation." Here, the city bought back everything which had belonged to the Trinity and Corpus Christi Gilds, with various almshouses and the possessions of the majority of the Chantries; while previously at the Dissolution it had bought the abbey-orchard, and mill, and the house and church of the Grey Friars. In 1340 Edward III granted Licence to the Coventry men to form a Merchants' Gild with leave "to make chantries, bestow alms, do other works of piety and constitute ordinances touching the same." This was St. Mary's Gild. Two years later that of St. John Baptist was formed and a year later that of St. Katherine, the three being united into the Trinity Gild before 1359. Of the chapel (now St. John's church) begun in 1344 by the St. John's Gild and the "fair and stately structure for their feasts and meetings called St Mary Hall" built in 1394 by the united Gilds more will be said later (p. 81 and p. 97). The end of the fourteenth century and the fifteenth brought to Coventry a full share in the events and movements of the time. In 1396 the duel between Hereford and Norfolk was to have taken place on Gosford Green (adjoining the city) and Richard II made the fatal mistake of banishing both combatants. At the Priory in 1404 Henry IV held his Parliament known, from the fact that no lawyers were summoned to it, as the "Parliamentum Indoctorum." Setting itself in opposition to ecclesiastics, it proposed to supply the King's needs by taxing church-property. As in the matter of the city walls, the church contrived to avoid bearing its share of the public burdens and the chronicler ends thus: "Much ado there was; but to conclude, the worthy Archbishop (viz. Tho. Arundell) standing stoutly for the good of the Church, preserved it at that time from the storm impending." One branch of his argument is noteworthy, that as the confiscation of the alien priories had not enriched the King by half a mark (courtiers having extorted or begged them out of his hands), so it would be were he to confiscate the temporalities of the monasteries. Henry VIII had reason to acknowledge the fulfilment of the prophecy. Soon after this, in 1423, Coventry showed its sympathy for Lollardry when John Grace an anchorite friar came out of his cell and preached for five days in the "lyttell parke." He was opposed by the prior of St. Mary's and by a Grey Friar who however were attacked and nearly killed by the mob. The royal visits which earned for Coventry the title which it still bears as its motto 'Camera principis' were frequent in this century. In 1436 we hear of Henry VI being there, and in 1450 he was the guest of the monastery and after hearing mass at St. Michael's Church presented to it for an altar-hanging the robe of gold tissue he was wearing. The record in the Corporation Leet book is interesting enough to quote: The King, then abydeng stille in the seide Priory, upon Mich'as even sent the clerke of his closet to the Churche of Sent Michel to make redy ther hys clossette, seying that the Kynge on Mich'as day wolde go on p'cession and also her ther hygh masse. The Meyre and his counsell, remembreng him in this mater, specially avysed hem to pray the Byshoppe of Wynchester to say hygh masse afore the Kynge. The Byshoppe so to do agreed withe alle hys herte; and, agayne the Kynges comeng to Sent Michel Churche, the Meyre and his Peres, cladde in skarlet gowns, wenton unto the Kynges Chambar durre, ther abydeng the Kynges comeng. The Meyre then and his peres, doeng to the Kyng due obeysaunse ... toke his mase and bere it afore the Kynge all his said bredurn goeng afore the Meyre til he com to Sent Michels and brought the Kynge to his closette. Then the seyde Byshoppe, in his pontificals arayde, with all the prestes and clerkes of the seyde Churche and of Bablake, withe copes apareld, wenton in p'cession abowte the churchyarde; the Kynge devowtely, with many odur lordes, followed the seyd p'cession bare-hedded, cladde in a gowne of gold tissu, furred with a furre of marturn sabull; the Meyre bereng the mase afore the Kynge as he didde afore, tille he com agayne to his closette. Att the whyche masse when the Kyng had offered and his lordes also, he sende the lorde Bemond, his chamburlen, to the Meyre, seying to him, "hit is the Kynges wille that ye and your bredurn com and offer;" and so they didde; and when masse was don, the Meyre and his peres brought on the Kynge to his chambur in lyke wyse as they fet hym, save only that the Meyre with his mase went afore the Kynge till he com withe in his chambur, his seyd bredurn abydeng atte the chambur durre till the Meyre cam ageyne. And at evensong tyme the same day, the Kyng, ... sende the seyde gowne and furre that he were when he went in p'cession, and gaf hit frely to God and to Sent Michell, insomuch that non of the that broughte the gowne wolde take no reward in no wyse. In 1451 he made the city with the villages and hamlets within its liberties into a county "distinct and altogether separate from the county of Warwick for ever," and in 1453 the King and Queen again visited the Priory. Perhaps out of gratitude for all this royal favour, Coventry adhered to the Lancastrian cause and in 1459 was chosen as the meeting place for the "Parliamentum Diabolicum," so called from the number of attainders passed against the Yorkists. The year 1467 however saw Edward IV and his Queen keeping their Christmas here, while less than two years later her father and brother were beheaded on Gosford Green (Aug. 1469). After the king's landing at Holderness in 1471 the king-maker, declining a contest, occupied the town for the Lancastrians, and Edward passing on to London soon after turned and defeated the earl at Barnet. After Tewkesbury Edward paid the city another visit, and in return for its disloyalty seized its liberties and franchises, and only restored them for a fine of 500 marks. Royal visits still continued. Richard III came in 1483 to see the plays at the Feast of Corpus Christi; in 1485 Henry VII stayed at the mayor's house after his victory at Bosworth Field; and in 1487 kept St. George's Day at the Monastery, when the Prior at the service cursed, by "bell, book, and candle," all who should question the king's right to the throne. The importance of the Gilds is shown by the king and queen being made a brother and sister of the Trinity Gild; and the part that pageantry played in the lives of all men is seen in the many occasions on which kings and princes came hither to be entertained, not only with the plays "acted by the Grey Friars" but those in which the "hard-handed men" of, for instance, the Gild of the Sheremen and Tailors, "toil'd their unbreathed memories" in setting forth such subjects as the Birth of Christ and the Murder of the Innocents. But although Henry VIII himself was received in 1511 with pageantry and stayed at the Priory, royal favours and monastic hospitality availed neither men nor buildings when the Dissolution came. On 15th January, 1539, Thomas Camswell, the last Prior of St. Mary's, surrendered. "The Prior," reported Dr. London, the king's commissioner, "is a sad, honest priest as his neighbours do report him, and is a Bachelor of Divinity. He gave his house unto the king's grace willingly and so in like manner did all his brethren." The Doctor asks for good pensions for the dispossessed, not on the plea of justice but so that "others perceiving that these men be liberally handled will with better will not only surrender their houses, but also leave the same in the better state to the King's use." The yearly revenue had been certified in the valuation at _£731 19s. 5d._ Deducting a Fee-Ferme rent to the Crown, reserved by Roger de Montalt, and other annual payments, the clear remainder was _£499 7s. 4d._ Bishop Rowland Lee, writing to "my singular good Lord Cromwell," implies that he had a promise from him to spare the church. "My good Lord," he says, "help me and the City both in this and that the church may stand, whereby I may keep my name, and the City have commodity and ease to their desire, which shall follow if by your goodness it might be brought to a collegiate church, as Lichfield, and so that fair City shall have a perpetual comfort of the same, as knoweth the Holy Trinity, who preserve your Lordship in honour to your heart's comfort." But his entreaties, and those of the mayor and corporation, were all in vain, the church and monastic buildings were dismantled and destroyed piecemeal, and like so many other magnificent structures became a mere quarry for mean buildings and the mending of roads. The site having been granted by Henry VIII to two gentlemen named Combes and Stansfield, passed soon into the hands of John Hales, the founder of the Free School, and in Elizabeth's reign was purchased by the Corporation. The changes in religious opinion of the successive sovereigns were felt here by many poor victims. Seven persons were burnt in 1519 for having in their possession the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Creed in English, and for refusing to obey the Pope or his agents, opinions and acts that would have been counted meritorious twenty years later. In 1555 Queen Mary burnt three Protestants in the old quarry in Little Park--Laurence Saunders, a well-known preacher, Robert Glover, M.A., and Cornelius Bongey. Ten years after this Queen Elizabeth's visit was the occasion of much pageantry and performing of plays by the Tanners', Drapers', Smiths', and Weavers' Companies, and in 1575 the men of Coventry gave their play of "Hock Tuesday" before her at Kenilworth Castle. In 1566 Queen Mary of Scots was in ward here, in the mayoress' parlour, and in 1569 at the Bull Inn. Coming down to the opening of the Civil War we find that a few days before the raising of his standard at Nottingham Charles summoned the city to admit him with three hundred cavaliers, and received for answer that it was quite ready to receive his Majesty with no more than two hundred. Whereupon he retired in displeasure, and reappeared some days later with the threat to lay the city in ruins if it should persist in its disloyalty. The townsfolk being in no mind to receive a garrison, the King planted cannon against Newgate and broke down the gates but was met with a fierce musquetry fire from the walls, followed up by a vigorous sally, in which the citizens did much execution and took two cannon. To prevent the like happening again, the walls were in 1662 breached in many places and made incapable of defence. Just one hundred years later New-gate was taken down, and others followed from time to time, until now there are left only the remains of two of the lesser ones--Cook Street Gate, a crumbling shell (p. 7), and the adjacent Swanswell or Priory Gate, blocked up and used as a dwelling. In 1771 was finally destroyed the famous Cross which had been built, 1541-3, by Sir William Hollis, once Lord Mayor of London, who came of a Coventry family. It was described by Dugdale as "one of the chief things wherein this City most glories, which for workmanship and beauty is inferior to none in England." A few relics of it exist in St. Mary Hall, a statue of Henry VI, and, in the oriel, two smaller figures. So too does the very interesting contract for its building, which shows how much was left to the craftsman's pride in his work and how little he was trammelled by conditions, save that the work was to be "finished in all points, as well in imagery work, pictures, and finials, according to the due form and proportion of the Cross at Abingdon." Another building, which was destroyed in 1820, was the Pilgrims' Rest, a fine timbered house of three storeys, "supposed," as the inscription upon it records, "to have been the hostel or inn for the maintenance and entertainment of the palmers and other visitors to the Priory." Some pieces of carved work were patched together in the windows of the inn built on its site and there remain. The modern history of Coventry, consisting of the ordinary events and vicissitudes of civic life and the changes and fluctuations in its trades, apart from that of its parish churches which is elsewhere given, does not come within the scope of this handbook. [Illustration: SEAL OF THE PRIORY.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: St. Osburg's name is not found in the Calendar. As at the Dissolution the Cathedral possessed relics of St. Osborne, including his head in copper and gilt, these saints may be identical.] [Footnote 2: Earl Street and Bishop Street are still principal streets in either half of the town.] [Footnote 3: The walls of London were about three and a quarter miles long (including the river front), with ten or eleven gates; those of York three miles, of Chester hardly two.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE WEST END OF THE PRIORY CHURCH.] THE RUINS OF THE PRIORY AND CATHEDRAL CHURCH The Priory buildings and grounds covered a large area to the North of the two parish churches on the gentle slope descending to the little river Sherbourne, Priory Row forming its southern boundary. The church occupied the South-West portion of this site, extending about 400 feet from the excavated west end to a point a little beyond the narrow lane called Hill Top. The excavation shows that the church stood on a sloping site, the floor level being some ten feet lower than that of Trinity Church. It was cruciform, with two western towers and a central one, and is believed to have had three spires similar to those of Lichfield but probably earlier in point of date. On the substructure of the North-West Tower now stands the house of the _mistress_ of the Girls' Blue Coat School. The interior of the West end to a height of 5 to 8 feet, with the responds of the nave arcades and of the tower arches, is visible and in good condition. The beginning of the turret stair in the South-West tower is exposed, but the basement of the house unfortunately occupies the lower part of the northern one. The exterior of this is however easily accessible from an enclosure known as the Wood Yard, the much decayed spreading plinth and a few feet of walling above it not having been destroyed. Above this, grievous damage has been perpetrated by the casing and complete obliteration of the mouldings and arcading which remained. The towers were placed outside the line of the aisles as at Wells, the total width of the West front, 145 feet, being nearly the same in both cases. There are still indications of the position of the great west door, but the height of the inner plinth shows that there was always a descent of several steps into the church. At the south transept where was "the Minster durra that openeth to the Trinite Churchyarde," the descent must have been considerable. The remains show that the nave dated from the first half of the thirteenth century, while fragments of wall near the site of the transept with indications of lancet window openings are probably a little earlier than the west end. [Illustration: REMAINS OF THE N.W. TOWER (IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY).] Whether the church of Leofric and Godiva, dedicated in 1043, had survived wholly or in part until this time cannot be known, but, judging from the history of most other great monastic churches and from the known wealth of the monastery, it may almost be taken for granted that the Norman bishops and priors rebuilt much if not all. Some relics of Norman work have been found but the covering of the site with roads, graves and houses precludes the systematic exploration and survey which alone could solve this question and make clear the outlines of the plan of the whole establishment. The entrance to some wine-cellars in Priory Row gives access to the old pavement level of part of the choir and transept. From the fact that a brick vault forms the roof the cellars have often been looked upon as the crypt of the church but this is erroneous; the vault is a later insertion and if any crypt exists it lies below this level. To the east of the cathedral was the Bishop's Palace, the gardens of it extending over the detached burial ground of St. Michael's to the east of Priory Street. The grandeur of this assemblage of buildings grouping, with the spires of the churches behind and rising so magnificently above the houses of the city can best be realized by going to the top of Bishop Street whence may be obtained the finest view of the two spires that remain (see p. 2). ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S FROM THE NORTH.] ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CHURCH The early history of St. Michael's Church is very obscure. The fact that Domesday mentions no parish churches proves nothing. There can be little doubt that one at least existed. Though we have an earlier record of St. Michael's it is commonly held that Trinity is the elder foundation. Of St. Michael's the first notice we have is when Ranulph, Earl of Chester, in the days of Stephen, about 1150, granted the "Chapel" of St. Michael to Laurence, Prior, and the Convent of St. Mary, "being satisfied by the testimony of divers persons, as well Clergy as Laity, that it was their right." Fourteen dependent chapels in the neighbourhood or within a few miles went with it and the number of these dependencies is held to show that it was "a primitive Saxon parish and of considerable importance." In 1192 Ranulph Blundeville, grandson of the former Ranulph, gave tithe of his lands and rents in Coventry and bound his officers under pain of a grievous curse to make due payment. In the early thirteenth century a dispute arose between Bishop Geoffrey de Muschamp and the Priory as to the right of presentation, the Bishop claiming on the ground of being Abbot as well as Bishop. This was settled in 1241 by the Priory renouncing its claim in consideration of receiving a share of the income but in 1248 an exchange was effected, the Priory giving the advowsons of Ryton and Bubbenhall[4] (not far from Coventry) for St. Michael and its chapels and engaging to provide proper secular priests with competent support. In 1260 the church was appropriated to the monastery together with Holy Trinity and its chapels and although in the arrangement of 1248 twenty-four marks (£16) had been assigned to the vicarage, in 1291 we find the priory receiving fifty marks and paying the vicar eight and a half. Since 1537 the patronage has with that of Trinity, been exercised by the Crown. The internal evidence of the date of the building is given in the description of the fabric. Of external evidence in the shape of records or deeds we have very little. Tradition says that there was once a brass tablet in the church bearing the following lines: William and Adam built the Tower, Ann and Mary built the Spire; William and Adam built the Church, Ann and Mary built the Choir. Now we know that William and Adam Botoner, who were each Mayor thrice between 1358 and 1385, built the tower, spending upon it £100 a year for twenty-two years, but what foundation there is for the other statements cannot now be determined. The tower was in building from 1373 to 1394, and the choir is contemporary with it, the nave was in building from 1432 to 1450, and the spire was begun in 1430. As William was Mayor in 1358 it can hardly have been less than one hundred years after his birth that both nave and spire were begun. It is however, likely that other members of the family (if not he, by bequest) contributed largely to the general building fund. Much of the history of a parish church is concerned with its internal economy but even the records of this are not quite trivial for they enlighten us on many points wherein we are rightly curious. We are, for instance, constantly reminded, as Dr. Gasquet points out in "Mediaeval Parish Life," that "religious life permeated society in the Middle Ages, particularly in the fifteenth century, through the minor confraternities" or gilds. Thus the Drapers' Gild made itself responsible not only for the upkeep of the Lady Chapel but also for the lights always burning on the Rood-loft, every Master paying four pence for each "prentys" and every "Jurneman" four pence. The cost of lights formed a serious item in church expenditure, needing the rent of houses and lands for their maintenance. Guy de Tyllbrooke, vicar in the late thirteenth century, gave all his lands and buildings on the south side of the church to maintain a light before the high altar, day and night, for ever, "and all persons who shall convert this gift to any other use directly or indirectly shall incur the malediction of Almighty God, the Blessed Virgin, St. Michael and All Saints." Royal visits to the church have been noticed in the history of the priory and city, especially that in 1450 which was apparently intended to mark the completion of the church. Reference has also been made to the plays and pageants with which such visitors were entertained. The site for the performance of the cycle of Corpus Christi plays was the churchyard on the north of St. Michael's. Queen Margaret, whose visits were so frequent that the city acquired the fanciful title of "the Queen's Bower" came over from Kenilworth on the Eve of the Feast in 1456, "at which time she would not be met, but privily to see the play there on the morrow and she saw then all the pageants played save Doomsday, which might not be played for lack of day and she was lodged at Richard Wood's the Grocer." There is evident reference to the dedication of the church in the pageant of the "Nine Orders of Angels" shown before Henry VIII and Queen Catherine in 1510 (p. 47). The history of the church since the Reformation has been not unlike that of a vast number of others. Fanatic destruction, followed by tasteless and incongruous innovations, and these again by "restorations" sometimes as destructive, sometimes as tasteless, and nearly always feeble; such is their common history. In 1569 even the Register books were destroyed because they contained marks of popery, while from 1576 onward a want of repair is plainly suggested by frequent items of expenditure for catching the stares (starlings) in the church, at one time for a net, at another for "a bowe and bolts and lyme." In 1611 James I addressed a strongly worded letter to the Mayor and Corporation and the Vicar requiring them to reform the practice of receiving the Holy Sacrament standing or sitting instead of kneeling, "As we our Self in our person do carefully perform it." Whereupon the Bishop wrote that he "felt persuaded that there were not above seven of any note who did not conform themselves" to the church ordinances; while the Vicar said he "did not know of _half seven_ of any note but do the like." A Puritanical writer in 1635 thus mentions the changed position of the Communion Table, which had formerly stood away from the east wall: "The Communion Table was altered which cost a great deal of money; and that which is worst of all, three stepps made to go to the Comm'n Table altar fashion--God grant it continueth not long." Even the font, given by John Cross, mayor, in 1394, had to give place in 1645 to something less offensive to Puritan feeling, and in the same year the brass eagle, given in 1359 by William Botoner, was "sold by order of vestry for _5d._ the lb., _8l. 13s. 4d._" The rehanging of the bells in 1674 led to the destruction of the beautiful groined vault within the tower, and the year 1764 saw the completion of a series of galleries all round the church. Throughout all this destruction and desecration the citizens happily retained their pride in the great steeple, and by constant attention and rebuildings contrived to preserve it when negligence might have caused its ruin. The scrupulous care given to such work is well shown by items in an account for repairs, of date 1580: Payed to George Aster for poyntynge ye steple £ 7 2 8 Payed for 3 quarter and a halfe of lyme 13 4 Payed for egges 8 4 Payed for glovers pecis, woode & tallowe, abowte the lyme 5 6 Payed for a load sand 7½ Payed for 4 stryke of mawlte and gryndyng 7 8½ Payd for 6 gallons of worte more 2 0 Payd for gatherynge of slates & oyster shelles 3¼ Payd to Cookson for the cradle and 3 other pullesses 5 8 The glovers' snippings were for making size, which, with the eggs, malt and wort were used in place of water for tempering the mortar. Lightning seriously damaged the spire in 1655 and 1694, in the former case causing much injury to the nave roof by falling stone. In 1793 Wyatt, the architect responsible for so much destruction of Mediæval work in various cathedrals, advised that a timber framework to carry the bells should be built up within the tower from the ground and that the tower arch should be bricked up. All this has been changed since 1885, the bells now hang (but are not pealed) in the octagon, the chimes and clock are in the chamber below, the arch is opened and the groining restored. All galleries had been taken down in 1849 and the present seats, giving room for near 2,500 persons, introduced, while the incongruous wall-arcading in the apse was soon after added. At the same period many important sepulchral monuments, probably stigmatized as "excrescences," were taken down and removed to other parts of the church. Five years after this the exterior of the aisle walls was recased with the same friable sandstone. In 1860 the reredos was erected, the subjects of the panels being the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, Melchisedec, and Abraham, and the Last Supper. To the latest restoration, which included entire recasing of tower and spire, clearstories and chancel, the new sacristy at the south east, and other work, Mr. George Woodcock, a Coventry citizen, gave £10,500, and the sum of £39,500 was raised and expended, the re-opening taking place on 22nd April, 1890. In 1850 a dispute of considerable public interest with regard to the levying of the church rate between the vicar and the wardens and overseers was decided in the Court of Queen's Bench. An Act of Parliament of 1780 had empowered the wardens to levy a rate in lieu of tithe for the stipend of the vicar, to produce not less than £280 nor more than £300. The wardens having ever since allowed their powers to remain in abeyance, the vicar claimed the right to make the rate as his predecessors had done. Lord Campbell and three other judges were however unanimous in giving judgement against him. The latest event in the history of the church is probably the most important. It has now been constituted a pro-cathedral for the proposed Diocese of Warwickshire, and a Capitular body has been formed. The statutes were promulgated by the Bishop of Worcester on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 1908. The Chapter now consists of twenty-four members:--the Bishop, the Vicar of St. Michael's (Rev. Prof. J.H.B. Masterman), the Archdeacon of Coventry, the Chancellor of the Diocese, ten priest canons and ten lay canons, with provision for the admission of a future second archdeacon. There are resemblances here to the constitution of the Southwark Chapter, consisting of four clerical and four lay canons, but at Coventry some of the lay canons are elective and for fixed periods. Doubtless the immense increase of population in the county, especially in this part (Birmingham is already a separate diocese), demands further oversight and much strenuous church work, and doubtless, too, the same religious enthusiasm which brought into existence the beautiful structures of Coventry's golden age will be able to meet the demand and cope with the new problems and aspirations of the present day. But the archaeologist trembles to think what may be done should the attempt be made to transform a building planned on the simplest parish-church lines into the semblance of a cathedral. It cannot be successful, and the original character of the church is but too likely to be sacrificed in the attempt. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: These have ever since remained prebends of Lichfield.] [Illustration ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH.] CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR OF THE CHURCH The church is built on a site descending towards the east, so that the chancel floor is more than twelve feet above the present street level. The narrow street on the south, Bayley Lane, gives us a succession of picturesque partial views but no general one, while on the north the rather formal avenue dividing the churchyard obscures much of the structure. On the whole, the most comprehensive prospect is to be had from the north-east, at the lower end of Priory Row. But no general point of view is needed, external or internal, to enable us to understand the plan or arrangement, which is almost as simple in form as a village church. The typical English church plan consists of a nave with aisles, a long unaisled chancel with square east end, porches or doors on north and south, and a western tower, and this, save for its apsidal east end, but amplified by accretions in the form of chapels belonging to the many Gilds of the city, is the plan of St. Michael's. In no part, however, do we find the chapels so set as to produce a pseudo-cruciform plan. Before the latest restoration the walls were entirely of the local red sandstone, very similar in quality and appearance to that of which Chester Cathedral was built, and the extent of its decay, especially on the tower, was as grievous. Hardly a piece of external moulding or carving preserved its original profile or form, and some of the tower buttresses had lost so large a proportion of their substance not far above ground that they appeared to hang to the walls rather than support them. All save the aisles, which were refaced in the sixties, have now been cased with Runcorn Stone nearly the same in colour and much harder in texture. The special glory of the church is its =steeple=. No doubt intentionally its height of 300 feet is practically equal to the length of the church. Only one other parish church, Louth in Lincolnshire, has a steeple as high as this, and those of only two English cathedrals, Salisbury and Norwich, exceed it. There is, however, an essential difference to be noted in the position of these spires, those of the cathedrals at the centre, the crowning point in the composition, those of the parish churches at the west end, springing sheer from the ground. While the former have a more intimate relation to the building the latter have an almost independent existence in keeping with the theory which regards them more as symbols of municipal pride and power than as expressions of spiritual aspiration. But however mixed the motives for their erection, religious forms and symbolism governed the design. Thus we have here three principal divisions--tower, octagon, spire, and nine stories or stages in all, six belonging to the tower and octagon, and three to the spire. Then in its dimensions we find that the total height is 300 feet,[5] the plan (exclusive of buttresses) is 30 feet square, while in its proportions the number 30 is interwoven, so to speak, with a simple arithmetical progression of heights in each story. Thus it is 30 feet from the ground to the spring of the lowest five-light windows, 30 feet again to the spring of the single-light windows, 27 feet more to the spring of the grouped windows above, and another 30 to the spring of the belfry windows. Thence it is 15 feet to the cornice below the battlements. The remainder is divided into a series of 20 feet heights, two twenties from cornice to top of parapet of octagon, 20 in each of the two decorated stages of the spire, 20 to centre of the upper spire-lights, three twenties to the finial. If we look at the stories as marked by the string-courses below the windows we find 50 feet given to the door and great window and then 20, 30, and 40 feet stages, reaching to the top of the parapet. The reader will have noticed the interposition of a 27 feet space among the thirties, and the reason for this is worth explaining. It is now known that the tower could not be built in line with the centre of the proposed new nave because of the existence of a filled-in pit or quarry at its north-west angle. But the builder was rash enough to build the north-west buttresses beyond the edge of the old excavation and resting on the looser material. The consequences might have been foreseen. By the time the building had reached the grouped windows the settlement or sinking was considerable and an effort was made to remedy it, first by reducing the height of this (the weakest story), by one yard and next by starting the courses level once more. Five hundred years later and we find that whereas the sinking is 7½ inches near the ground level it is only 4 inches at the windows, plainly showing that it had sunk 3½ inches before the remedy was applied and four inches since. The writer is informed by the architect (Mr. J. Oldrid Scott) that all this angle was so full of rents and cracks that (coupled with the decay of the stone, especially in the buttresses) it was surprising that the whole had not fallen. A curious disregard of what we look on as a natural sentiment is to be noted in this connection, for the builders used a quantity of fine sepulchral slabs from the churchyard as filling for the foundations. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE TOWER FROM BELOW.] In magnificence of design the tower exceeds that of any other parish church in England, the uppermost story being the richest in detail. The variety of treatment and gradual increase in elaboration of the upper stories is admirable, the larger expanses of wall in the lower giving the necessary effect of stability to the whole. The =west door= is very insignificant, and might perhaps, with advantage to the composition, have been left out. It has the only four-centred arch in the whole. On each side of the great windows are niches with (restored) figures of saints and benefactors, twelve in all, including Earl Leofric and his famous wife, the Botoners and several kings. Sculpture appears again on the belfry stage. On the west and north sides the niches are in three tiers of three on either hand of the tall louvred windows, but on the south and east sides one tier is absorbed by the stair turret. All these have been renewed, but the remains of some of those which were taken down can now be seen in the crypt, and the one which is best preserved, by a happy coincidence the patron saint, is now placed within the church. The octagon, which connects so finely the tower and spire, has four two-light windows on the cardinal sides, the other sides having blank panelling of similar design. Its parapet has square pinnacles, intended to carry seated figures. From each of the great tower pinnacles two ogee-shaped flying buttresses spring to the near angles of the octagon. A recent writer criticizes these as too flimsy in effect, but the fact that they are in pairs obviates this defect from most points of view. The walls of the octagon are 2½ feet thick at the base, but, as the inner slope of the spire begins at the level of the window transoms, the thickness at its parapet is more than 3 feet. The greater weight in this part corrects any tendency in the spire to push outwards the upright walls of the octagon; so well has it done this that no artificial helps, such as iron stays or bands, have been found necessary to add to its stability. Though so slender in appearance, its stonework is thicker than that of many later spires, for whereas Kettering is 14 inches thick for the first 10 feet and only 6 inches above, while Louth decreases from 10 to 5, St. Michael's diminishes from 17 to 11. The inclination from the upright of its sides is very slight, less than that of most others; Chichester having an angle of 7½°, Kettering 6°, Louth 5°, St. Michael's 4½°. [Illustration: THE WEST PORCH.] The decoration of the spire is admirably designed in relation to the slenderness of the tower, and its own height above the eye. The first stage is panelled so as not to present too great a contrast to the octagon, and the next is also panelled and has narrow canopied slits on alternate sides, with four thin buttress-like projections on each face. These provide the slight entasis to the outline which is found in so many spires, as it is in classic columns, and is designed to correct the appearance of hollowness which would occur in so long a straight line. The upper two-thirds of the spire has triple angle rolls, and, just halfway in the total height, are eight canopied panels of which four are pierced. The beauty of the steeple and its pre-eminence among those belonging to parish churches (even if such a reservation be necessary) sufficiently justifies the length of this description. [Illustration: SOUTH PORCH, FROM ST. MARY HALL.] The oldest existing part of the church is the large =south porch=, almost facing the entrance to St. Mary Hall. The date of this is not later than 1300. Each jamb of the outside arch has four external and two internal attached shafts; the pointed arch is deeply moulded, while the arch rising from the fourth shaft is of round-headed trefoil form. The ceiling is vaulted with diagonal and intermediate ribs, and has the appearance of having been added rather later. A doorway on its east side led to the Cappers' Chapel and there is a chamber over the porch for centuries appropriated to the meetings of the Cappers' Company. The present chapel and chamber are contemporary with the nave. [Illustration: SOUTH-WEST DOORWAY.] The external wall of the Dyers' Chapel (now the Baptistery) is canted so as not to block the Lane, St. Mary Hall having been already built. Passing east, the road dips gradually and gives this end of the church a more imposing elevation. After the Cappers' Chapel, there is only a single aisle forming the Mercers' Chapel and extending as far as the Presbytery. A door here, made in 1750, is opposite to the Drapers' Hall. The apse is now encircled with a series of sacristies divided into five chambers and spanned by flying buttresses. The first two bays on the south were built at the last restoration the vestry then removed not being part of the original design. Beneath them on the ground level is the engine-room pertaining to the organ. Though sometimes spoken of as an Ambulatory its position on a lower level, its original want of connection with the south side and above all the need for sacristies in so large a church dispose of the idea. Some have thought that the apsidal Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral built about fifty years earlier suggested an apsidal termination in the design of Coventry, but a certain difficulty in the way of the designer may have led him to adopt this solution. The normal Perpendicular east end had one large window, but owing to the great width of this chancel the proportions of such a one would have been nearly square, and the spring of the arch have been very low. A few years later and the depressed four-centred arch might have been adopted but, fortunately, its time was not yet. The plans of the apses of Lichfield and Coventry differ in the angle at which the sides are inclined to the chord of the apse, the former having the usual angle of 45°, the latter one of more than 60°. Externally this is not so pleasant as the more "commonplace" form, the great dissimilarity of the several angles being unsatisfactory and the third side too quickly lost to view, but within the church these points are not noticed. So little time elapsed between the building of the choir and nave that we find no marked difference of style as we proceed westward along either flank of the church. The =Lady Chapel=, known as the Drapers' Chapel, from its use and maintenance by that Gild, occupies the three bays of the North chancel aisle. From its elevation above the ground it was often spoken of as the "Chapel on the Mount," Capella Beatæ Mariæ de Monte. All the four windows are of seven lights, the three northern having a somewhat unusual transom band of fourteen quatrefoils, at the spring of the arch. The two windows of St. Lawrence's Chapel have a transom across the lights and a band of seven quatrefoils at the spring. The buttresses of the Lady Chapel are rather richer in design than those of St. Lawrence's Chapel. The lower level of its parapet indicates some difference of date. The plan of this part of the church presents problems which bear on those connected with the rest of the church (p. 44). Beneath St. Lawrence's Chapel and extending under the north aisle westward are two crypts, entrance to them being by two doors from the churchyard, their position is shown on the general plan. It will be seen that the western one is of two aisles, each of three bays, while the eastern is only one bay in length. The entrance to the western was at first in the middle bay but this was blocked when the Girdlers' Chapel was built. That the eastern crypt was added later, and the present Lady Chapel later still is shown by the presence of windows in the east wall of both parts and other indications. But while the history of the church shows that the original Lady Chapel and crypt or charnel-house, were built soon after 1300, the present superstructures belong to a time about one hundred years later. Now as the western crypt may be safely assigned to the earlier date the Lady Chapel doubtless stood over it and flanked the old chancel of the church, in its normal position in fact as the existing one is now. But a point which remains to be explained is that the walls of the crypt are parallel to the line of the new chancel and not to the line of the old or new naves. It seems certain therefore that the inclination of the new chancel is a simple perpetuation of the old arrangement, and if not, the position of the crypt is hard to account for. It is generally supposed that these crypts were used as Mortuary Chapels and the eastern one has in fact a piscina and aumbry, showing that there was once an altar. But for some centuries they served as a charnel-house, and are so called in a papal grant of Indulgences. In 1640 there is an entry in the church accounts of five shillings for "cleansinge the charnel-house and laying the bones and sculles in order." They now contain fragments that have been removed or discovered in the course of various restorations. A small Norman scalloped capital, another of Early English workmanship and a voussoir showing the Norman zig-zag or chevron are interesting relics of structures earlier than anything now existing, while a number of the decayed statues from the tower find here a dark and damp repose very different from the airy outlook enjoyed by them for five centuries. It will be seen that they are near life size and are executed in a gray sandstone which has stood the weather much better than the red. The outer north aisle containing the Girdlers' Chapel on the east and the Smiths' or St. Andrew's Chapel on the west of the porch, is plainly of later date. The windows have depressed, distinctly four-centred arches, and in 1730 their five lights had simply cusped heads, the mullions running up to the architrave. The =north porch= has only a slight projection. Above the four-centred arch are two two-light canopied windows opening into the church. The soffit of the doorway is panelled. On the west side where is now a canopied niche was formerly an external pulpit reached from within by the staircase which leads to the roof. It is shown in the 1730 view. On the east side are two odd little flying buttresses, intended apparently to repeat the inclined surface of the other side. The two north aisles are fortunately not carried westward so far as the nave, which projects a half bay beyond them and so prevents the otherwise unrelieved flatness of this part. The most effective of the porches is that on the west front, just north of the tower. It appears to have been built after the nave was finished, and may have been added expressly to provide a more dignified entrance to the church when Henry VI came in state in 1451, for it faces directly up the nave. The groining with cusped panels and numerous bosses has escaped restoration. The five niches above the porch are statueless, and so are those on the porch front. May they long continue so! The doors are largely original and are finely panelled and carved. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: At the last restoration the height was reduced to 298 feet.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. MICHAEL'S FROM THE WEST.] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH From within the door by which the church is usually entered, that near the south-west angle, we obtain an overpowering impression of the special characteristic of the interior, its spaciousness, for it is here more than 100 feet wide and the east window is nearly 240 feet distant. The =nave=, which is 37 feet 6 inches wide in the clear, is wider than that of many cathedrals, and much exceeds that of most parish churches, the widest (Worstead) given in Brandon's "Parish Churches" being 29 feet. Boston alone exceeds it by about 3 feet. While the ordinary aisle width ranges from 10 to 14 feet, the north aisle here is 23 feet, the outer north and the south being each 17 feet. The total internal length is 265 feet, exclusive of the sacristy; Boston, the only larger one, being 284 feet, while very few exceed 200 feet, and most are far smaller. The greatest internal width is 120 feet; Manchester, a double-aisled collegiate church, is about the same, and York Minster is 106 feet. Finally, the area is about 22,800 square feet, probably greater than that of any other English parish church, indeed, St. Nicholas, Yarmouth, is the only one which pretends to rivalry in this respect. Size is, of course, only one element in the impressiveness of a building, and may even be neutralized by the treatment (as, for instance, in the Duomo of Florence and St. Peter's, Rome, by increasing the size of its parts rather than multiplying them), but these few comparisons will help the visitor to judge how far this element colours his appreciation of the whole. As an illustration of mediæval methods of church building, it is interesting to trace the growth of the structure with the help of the few historical notices already given and the evidence of the building itself. The subject is full of difficulties, and the writer does not hope to solve them conclusively, but to put before the reader the main points which have to be considered before forming a judgement. [Illustration: TOWER ARCH.] Both historic and structural evidence agree that there was an existing smaller church when the tower was built in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, that the choir and apse were either contemporary, or begun a few years earlier, and that the nave was built between 1434 and 1450. The south porch and the west crypt (beneath the original Lady Chapel) are almost contemporary (p. 34), belonging to the beginning of the fourteenth century. Now the axis of the tower is parallel to the axis and walls of the nave, while the centre line of the choir is deflected towards the north about 7°. Notwithstanding this, however, owing to the tower not being central with the nave, the axis of the choir, if prolonged, runs directly to the centre of the tower arch, as may easily be seen by anyone who stands there and looks along the ridge of the choir roof. (_See_ dotted line on Plan.) [Illustration: BAY OF NAVE, NORTH SIDE.] Next we see above the =tower arch= the mark of the old nave roof and the old north wall of the nave. These show that the south wall stood where the present one does, and the low-pitched fourteenth century roof-line suggests incidentally this alternative: _either_ a clearstory had been added to the nave before the building of the new chancel or tower was in contemplation, _or_, when the huge tower was built it was felt necessary to raise the nave roof so as to lessen the disproportion. But, if we adopt the latter alternative we must accept too the improbability that this expense should have been incurred when the inadequacy of the old narrow nave of 15½ feet compared with a chancel of 33 feet must have been so obvious. This is one of the difficult questions. Then it is held by some that the axis of the old nave and chancel was in line with that of the present choir; but the south porch, built more than one hundred years before the new nave, is at right angles with it which would hardly have been the case had the two naves not been on the same lines. Needless to say the old east end could scarcely have extended beyond the present nave, so that the new chancel was probably built without disturbing the old church. The position of the older Lady Chapel supports this view, while its bearing towards the north, as already pointed out, indicates that the deflection of the new chancel is simply copied from the older one. The position of the south porch proves also that the south aisle was as wide as the present one, while the fact that it was wider than the nave shows that it was almost certainly not designed at the same time. The nave is of six bays and is 54 feet high at the centre, while each arch is 20 feet wide in the clear. The piers are slender, but, owing to the depth of the panelling above the arches and the large size of the windows, the weight upon them is reduced to a minimum. Shafts carried up from the ground support the roof brackets, and there are intermediate ones over the centre of each arch. The clearstory windows of four lights each are in pairs, and the mullions are carried down to form panelling and finish on the backs of the arches, which recede in two sloping faces and form a somewhat unusual feature in the treatment of the wall surface. The detail of the piers and arches is rather weak, even for Perpendicular work. [Illustration: INTERIOR FROM THE SOUTH DOOR.] The =chancel= is about 93 feet long, and in height and width is 4 or 5 feet less than the corresponding nave measurements. Its width further diminishes by about 3½ feet in the length of the three bays. The omission of a chancel arch is a step towards the ideal simplicity of the late Perpendicular churches (_e.g._, St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich), running from east to west without break, but the large rood piers and reduced width and height of chancel make the pause demanded in so long a church. The step at this point is of oak, and is probably the original sill of the rood screen. The large figures of SS. Peter and Paul were placed on the piers in 1861. Of the three arches which open on either hand the centre one is widest, having four-light windows, instead of three-light, over it. The panelling beneath the clearstory is richer than that in the nave. The five four-light windows of the apse are lofty and divided by two transoms, but the design is somewhat commonplace. The glass of the middle three is a memorial to Queen Adelaide, dated 1853. The other two are filled with fragments of the ancient stained glass of the church (p. 56). [Illustration: THE CHOIR FROM ST. LAWRENCE'S CHAPEL.] The roof is very similar to that of the nave. Both are of very low pitch, with tie-beams supported by curved brackets. There are two longitudinal beams (purlins) on each side, and each division of the roof made by these main timbers is sub-divided by mouldings into panels, all the intersections and angles being decorated by carved bosses or pateræ, with angels upon the tie-beams. Where the roofs of nave and chancel join there is a cove to connect the two levels; and on the tie-beam above this was found a Latin inscription, giving the attributes and powers of the nine choirs of angels forming the hierarchy of Heaven. Translated it is as follows: SERAPHIMS burn in love of God. CHERUBIMS possess all knowledge. THRONES, of them is judgement. DOMINIONS preside over angelic spirits. VIRTUES effect miracles. POWERS have rule over demons. PRINCIPALITIES protect good men. ARCHANGELS are set over states. ANGELS are the messengers of the Lord. Bare and shorn as it is of its ancient magnificence, St. Michael's is in its structure a monument of the importance and wealth of the Gilds. Many of them built or maintained chapels and altars, adding largely to the already spacious proportions given to the main structure by the munificence of a few rich citizens. That in 1491 there were eleven altars we know from the will of Thomas Bradmedow, directing that eleven torches, price _2s. 4d._, be given every Good Friday, one to every altar. Besides the High Altar there were those of Our Lady, Jesus, Holy Trinity, St. John, St. Anne, St. Katherine, St. Thomas, St. Andrew, St. Lawrence, All Saints. The application to the =Lady Chapel= of the present name, the "Drapers' Chapel," is probably subsequent to 1518, when John Haddon, a draper, provided by will for the support of a priest, "to singe in the Chapell of our Ladye in the Church of Saint Mychell." But long ere this, by an instrument dated from St. John Lateran, A.D. 1300, eighth year of Pope Boniface, Indulgences for forty days were granted for all persons coming to confess before her altar in St. Michael's Church on the Nativity, Conception, Annunciation and Assumption of the glorious Virgin Mary. Also 700 Indulgences for 720 days were granted for building "the Chapple and Charnell house of St. Michaell, Coventry." The Drapers' Company was responsible for other things than the priest's stipend as this extract from their Rules shows: "1534. Ev'y mastur shall pay toward ye makyng clene of oure Lady Chapell in saynt Mychell's churche and strawyng ye setus [seats] wt rusches in somer and pease strawe in wyntur, everyone yerely _2d._" [Illustration: POPPY HEAD, LADY CHAPEL.] The piers at the chancel entrance contain the staircases leading to the roofs and formerly to the rood loft. The screen on the west side of the chapel was put together from fragments brought together from various parts of the church. Against it, and on the south side, are fifteen of the ancient stalls. Several admirable ends and elbows remain, and some of the twelve ancient Misereres are of special interest. Three represent scenes from the popular mediæval allegory of "the Dance of Death." The centre groups are: (1) a death bed, (2) a kneeling man being deprived of his shirt and a cripple waiting to receive it (?), and (3) a very well-expressed burial scene. The side groups in each show Death leading by the hand personages of various ranks, including a pope. Of the others, Satan in chains, the General Resurrection, and a delicately executed Tree of Jesse are the best. [Illustration: A MISERERE, LADY CHAPEL.] Several monuments formerly in this chapel are now elsewhere in the church. A memorial to the Hon. F.W. Hood, killed in battle in 1814, is by Chantrey. On the north wall is a brass plate bearing the following inscription: Here lyeth Mr Thomas Bond, Draper, sometime Mayor of this Cittie and founder of the Hospitall of Bablake, who gave divers lands and tenements for the maintenance of ten poore men so long as the world shall endure and a woman to looke to them with many other good guifts; and died the XVIII day of March in the yeare of our Lord God MDVI. The =Communion Table= is a fine example of early seventeenth century work, and outside the screen is a very beautiful oak chest, believed to date from the time of Henry VII. From the Lady Chapel we pass into that of St. Laurence. Its two windows are filled with glass to the memory of past mayors. The dates, 1860 and 1862, sufficiently suggest their artistic merit. Several old monuments are upon the north wall, one of 1648 with an extravagant inscription to Thomas Purefoy, a boy of nine; another to Mrs. Bathona Frodsham, a daughter of the John Hales who bought so much monastic property, and founded the Grammar School. The tomb of his first wife, Frideswede, near which he was buried, may be seen in the Dugdale view near the north porch. The outer north aisle contained the Girdlers' Chapel. The arcade which divides the aisles shows the consummation of the process which converted columns into piers by the omission of capitals and bases and the continuation of the mouldings from pier into arch. The altar was below the eastern window, the piscina (restored) stands on the south side. The Company has been long extinct and no documents exist. We know, however, that Haye's Chantry was founded by a Girdler in 1390, for a Mass to be sung daily at All Saints' altar, and may therefore conclude that it was in this chapel. In the two western bays of the same aisle was St. Andrew's Chapel, supported and probably founded by the Smiths' Company. The first notice of its existence occurs in 1449, but as this part was not built until 1500 it was perhaps originally in the adjoining aisle. The window tracery is modern. The panelling within the internal arches and between the windows should be noted. The floor near the wall is partly paved with much worn ancient tiles. Several large monuments have been brought hither from the Drapers' Chapel. An altar tomb of black marble is to the memory of Sir Thomas Berkeley, only son of Henry, Lord Berkeley, who died in 1611; another of 1640, to William Stanley, Master of the Merchant Taylors' Company of London and a benefactor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and of his native city, Coventry. While these are ponderous and unlovely that of Julian Nethermyl, at the west end of the principal north aisle, is a work of interest and much beauty. It is an altar tomb with a sculptured panel on one end and one side, the other end and side having been next to walls. It is of interest as an early example of the Italian style then finding its way into England, and an example so free from Gothic influence that there can be little doubt that a foreign craftsman was employed upon it. On the centre of the long panel is a mutilated crucifix, and a brief inscription with a shield of arms beneath. On either hand kneel Julian Nethermyl and his wife, with five sons behind him and five daughters behind her. A cherub at each end pushes aside a curtain. The group of sons is well treated, the variations in pose and dress show the hand of one who was accustomed to study composition, and the result is very different from the formal repetition of equal or lessening figures usual on mediæval brasses and Elizabethan tombs. The Latin inscription is partly illegible, translated it runs: Here lies Julian Nethermyl, Draper, formerly Mayor of this City, who died the 11th day of the month of April in the year of our Lord 1539 and also Joan his wife, to whose souls God be propitious. Amen. [Illustration: CHEST IN NORTH AISLE.] A small brass on the wall to the memory of Mary Hinton, wife of a vicar, who died in 1594, represents her kneeling at a faldstool, and facing a row of four swaddled infants laid upon the floor. Near by is the old Purbeck marble font, said to have been given by John Cross, Mayor, in 1394. As, however, the form, material, and shallow decoration are all quite consistent with a thirteenth-century date there can be little doubt that this one is the predecessor of that given by John Cross, which was condemned and removed by the Puritans as superstitious. A small brass, bearing a shield with four crosses, the ancient merchant mark, is fixed upon it. [Illustration: THE NETHERMYL TOMB.] Beyond the west door is the north-east buttress of the tower, strengthened by a mass of masonry, part of which formed part of the old nave wall. The tower arch is high and very narrow, owing to the narrowness of the old nave. The interior of the tower is very effective, both from the height, which is almost 100 feet to the crown of the vault, and the beautiful lighting of the upper stages. Each of the large windows of the ground story is set in a recessed arch, and between the two lantern stages is a range of panelling. The vertical lines of the various stages are not continuous, a want of regularity, which would probably not have occurred had it been built a century later. Upon the floor of the tower are two small brasses, which mark respectively the centre of the tower and the point below the apex of the spire, showing that the spire has an inclination of 3 feet 6 inches towards the north-west. On the walls of the tower two very large brasses record the names of the Vicars of the church since 1242, and of the Bishops in whose Dioceses Coventry has been included from the earliest times. Of the latter, four were Bishops of Mercia, twenty-seven of Lichfield, six of Coventry, thirty-three of Coventry and Lichfield, thirteen of Lichfield and Coventry, four of Worcester, and two Bishops-Suffragan of Coventry. The south aisle is 6 feet narrower than the north at the west end, but its want of parallelism adds 7 feet to its width at its far eastern end. The south-west doorway has its original doors, though these have been subjected to restoration. The first chapel on the south side belonged to the Dyers' Company. When the principal trade of Coventry was the manufacture of woollen and worsted stuffs and the production of a special blue thread, so excellent that it gave rise to a proverbial expression, "he is true Coventry Blue", the Dyers were an important Company.[6] A chantry known as Tale's was probably attached to this chapel, as the salary of the priest, _£5 6s. 8d._, was paid by the Dyers' Company of London. An upper chamber for the priest existed as late as 1607; the floor corbels still remain. A large marble monument (removed hither from the chancel) has medallion portraits of two ladies--Dame Mary Bridgeman and Mrs. Eliza Samwell. The former with her husband, Sir Orlando (Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Charles II), both died in 1701. The latter, dying in 1724, "ordered this monument to be erected as a remembrance of their great and loving friendship." The Chapel is now the =Baptistery=. A large eighteenth-century marble font was removed to the Lady Chapel and a new Gothic one put in its place, so that there are now three in the church. The south porch (1300) is the earliest part of the existing church. The inner doors appear to be of the early sixteenth century, the outer, though old, are of much later date and are not part of the original scheme. On the wall on each side of the inner doors are brasses of some interest. That on the right hand has a curious epitaph which runs thus: Here lies the body of Captn Gervase Scrope, of the family of Scropes, of Bolton in the County of York, who departed this life the 26 of August, Anno Dni 1705, aged 66. An Epitaph, written by himself, in the agony and dolorous paines of the gout and dyed soon after. Here lyes an old toss'd Tennis Ball Was racketted, from spring to fall, With so much heat and so much hast, Time's arm for shame grew tyred at last. Four kings in camps he truly served. And from his loyalty ne'er swerved, Father ruin'd and son slighted, And from the Crown ne'er requited. Loss of estate, relations, blood, Was too well known, but did no good; With long Campaigns and paines oth' gout He cou'd no longer hold it out. Always a restless life he led, Never at quiet till quite dead. He marry'd in his later days, One who exceeds the common praise But wanting breath still to make known Her true affection and his own, Death kindly came, all wants supplied By giving rest--which life deny'd. The other brass, of 1609, has a portrait of Ann Sewell in Jacobean costume, kneeling, with an epitaph in which she is described as "a worthy stirrer up of others to all holy virtues." A doorway leads to a priest's chamber over the porch, sometimes incorrectly spoken of as the Cappers' Chapel. It is still used for the annual meeting of the Company, but is inaccessible to the public. The next chapel eastwards is St. Thomas', belonging until 1629 to the Cappers' and Feltmakers' Company. In 1531 they were associated in its maintenance with the Woollen Cardmakers who had founded it in 1467 and had after declined in importance. Leland, as we have seen records also the decay of the Cappers' industry. A large eighteenth-century monument conceals the original doorway from the porch. The eastern part of the south aisle as far as the screen formed another chapel as the dilapidated piscina in the south wall shows. The organ is now placed in the first bay of the chancel aisle, the whole aisle having once formed the Mercers' Chapel. [Illustration: THE SWILLINGTON TOMB.] Where the altar once stood are now steps descending to the sacristies. On the right of the window is the statue of St. Michael brought hither from the tower (p. 32). The finely carved corbel on which it stands was discovered among rubbish in the recess below. Three altar tombs now stand against the south wall. The eastern has the recumbent effigies of Elizabeth Swillington and her two husbands. The inscription (translated) runs: "Pray for the soul of Elizabeth Swillington, widow, late the wife of Ralph Swillington, Attorney General of our Lord King Henry VIII, Recorder of the city of Coventry, formerly the wife of Thomas Essex Esq: which said Elizabeth died A.D. 15..." She died after 1543. The side and ends have arcaded panelling containing shields of arms. At the west end is a realistic representation of the Five Wounds. The effigy of Thomas Essex is in armour, that of the Recorder in official robe and chain. The head of each rests on a helmet, and the lady wears the "pedimental" headdress of Tudor fashion. The arcading is purely Renaissance in detail though the general treatment is mediæval. The figures are in dignified repose, wholly free from the later affectations of the Elizabethan school yet evidently individual portraits. The second tomb dates from 1640. The top is far too heavy for the little Ionic pilasters below. The third, traditionally called Wade's tomb, probably belongs to John Wayd, a Mercer, who lived in Coventry in 1557, but no inscription remains. There are seven shields of arms on the side, nearly all defaced, a motto "Ryen saunce travayle," and nine images in low relief which present quaint studies of early sixteenth-century costume. The matrices of brasses are still visible in several parts of the church. Sir James Harrington, writing in the reign of James I, tells a curious story of their loss: The pavement of Coventry church is almost all tombstones, and some very ancient, but there came in a zealous fellow with a counterfeit commission, that for avoiding superstition, hath not left one pennyworth nor penny breadth of brass upon all the tombs, of all the inscriptions, which had been many and costly. The last monument that need be mentioned is upon the wall over "Wade's tomb." Twenty-six verses of eulogy follow these opening lines: An Elegicall epitaph, made upon the death of that mirror of women Ann Newdigate; Lady Skeffington, wife of that true moaneing turtle Sir Richard Skeffington, Kt., and consecrated to her eternal memorie by the unfeigned lover of her vertues, Willm. Bulstrode, Knight. (She died in 1637, aged 29). The present organ was built by Henry Willis and erected in 1887. It is a four-manual and pedal instrument and has fifty-three stops. The old organ on which Handel played more than once, stood on a raised platform at the west end. It was the work of Thomas Swarbrick of Warwick, a German by birth, in 1733. He also built those of Trinity Church, St. Mary, Warwick, Lichfield, St. Saviour Southwark, Stratford-on-Avon, and Amsterdam. The best of the ancient glass now remaining has been collected into two windows, one on either side of the apse. Much was brought from the clearstory where six windows on the south and all save one on the north side still have panels made up of a mosaic of fragments with portions here and there of which the subject is intelligible. From what remains in the tracery we may gather that there was a row of eight angel figures filling the spaces immediately over the lights. Some of these or similar ones, are now in the apse. They are represented as covered with feathers and standing on wheels and each holds a scroll over the head with inscriptions in very contracted Latin. A few less fragmentary pieces may be found, _e.g._, in the north window, Judas giving the traitor's kiss, in the north clearstory the arms of Trenton and Stafford, mentioned and figured by Dugdale, in the south, the figure of a man in a red gown kneeling with a scroll inscribed "deo gracias" and over his head "groc(er) de london"--doubtless a donor. Of modern glass there is a great amount but little worth mentioning save on account of the persons commemorated. One window in the Lady Chapel is a memorial of the Prince Consort and one in the Mercers' Chapel is of interest as a deserved memorial to Thomas Sharp the Antiquary to whose labours all later historians of the city are so deeply indebted. He died in 1841. [Illustration: ALMS-BOX.] The pulpit is of brass and wrought iron, the work of Frank Skidmore a native of Coventry who made also the choir screen of Hereford Cathedral and the metal work of the Albert Memorial at Kensington. It was placed here in 1869. The bells, ten in number, now hang in the octagon. They were cast in 1774 and weigh nearly seven tons. The first peal was hung in 1429 and a clock existed in 1467. In 1496 an Order of Leet ordained that "all manner of persons that will have the bells to ring after the decease of any of their friends, shall pay for a peal ringing with all the bells, _2s._ and with four bells, _16d._, and three bells _4d._" The six bells were cast into eight in 1674 and the present tenth has the same inscription as the heaviest of the old peal: I am and have been call'd the common bell To ring, when fire breaks out, to tell. The chimes, which existed as early as 1465, were restored in 1895, after a silence of ten years, in memory of Lieut.-Col. Francis William Newdigate. Electric lighting has been introduced throughout the church. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 6: _See_ Fuller's "Worthies of England." In 1428 an Act of Leet ordered that no person should dye any wool or cloth with "a deceitful colour called Masters or Medleys brought into Coventry by a Frenchman."] [Illustration: HOLY TRINITY FROM THE NORTH. _From a lithograph--about 1850_.] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CHURCH Although the first mention of this church which the indefatigable Dugdale could find was its appropriation to the priory in 1259-1260, it is tolerably certain that its foundation was much earlier. As before said, it is reputed to be older than St. Michael's and its position close to the monastery suggests that it had been built, as often happened, for the parishioners by the monks who disliked their intrusion within the priory church. The appropriation at this time may have been rather of the nature of a confirmation of the rights of the priory than the institution of a new condition of things. As, in 1391, the chancel had to be rebuilt being "ruinated and decayed" we may conclude that it was probably older than the present north porch which is certainly not later than 1259. It was at the same time lengthened by twenty-four feet, the convent giving one hundred shillings per annum for eight years and six trees, the parishioners finding all other material and workmanship. The convent and parish also agreed to support and keep it in repair at their joint charges. From 1298, when Henry de Harenhale was appointed, the list of vicars is complete, but in a cartulary of the priory mention is made of Ralph de Sowe, vicar of Trinity, as giving a tenement in Well Street, for the celebration of his anniversary. There are but few landmarks in its history, and dates affecting the structure can generally be assigned by internal evidence alone. The nave arcades had already been rebuilt before the chancel was touched, and a piece of work of the same period is to be seen in the five-light Decorated window, in the Consistory Court which now opens into the large chamber over the porch. We have no record of the building of the clearstory and roof of the nave. The resemblances between this clearstory, and that of St. John's chancel, raise the question of priority. The fuller development at St. John's of the peculiar treatment of the angles points to its being a little later but probably both fall within the second and third quarters of the fifteenth century. For a church of this size the chapels, altars and chantries were very numerous, there being probably fifteen altars in all. In 1522 the establishment of clergy consisted of a vicar, eleven parochial priests and two chantry priests. Dugdale enumerates six chantries so that it is evident that here as often elsewhere some of the parochial priests derived the whole or a part of their support from their performance of the duties of chantry priests. Many chantry priests on the other hand had other duties and took part in other services than the daily mass for which the chantry was founded. So much that is of interest in the religious life of the period is connected with the chantries that it is worth while recording some of the scattered notices that have come down to us. To begin with the Chapel of Our Lady, the earliest mention we have of it is in 1364 while in 1392 the Corpus Christi Gild endowed a priest there to sing mass for the good estate of Richard II, Anne his queen, and the whole realm of England, to be called St. Mary's priest. The indenture sets forth that "he is to be at Divine service on Sundays and double Feasts in the chancel and at Matins, Hours, Masses, Evensong, Compline and other offices used in the said church and also daily at _Salve_ in our Lady's Chapel unless hindered by reasonable cause." The records of the Dissolution of the Chantries show how much town property must have been held by them, while from these and other sources we learn the extent of their belongings in tenements, messuages, rent charges and the like. Thus in 1454 Emot Dowte gave several tenements to this altar and in 1492 Richard Clyff "late parson of St. George in London," left a house in Well St. to the church "to the intent that the mass of Our Lady may be observed the better." In 1558 (the year of Elizabeth's accession) William Hyndeman, alderman and butcher, directs that his body be buried in the Lady Chapel "as aldermen are wont to be buried, towards the charges whereof I give twenty nobles to be levied of my quick cattle and if it be too little then I will that Sybil my wife shall lay down _20s._ more." He also orders an obit to be kept after the death of his wife "yearly for ever;" a form of words that must surely have sounded unreal after the changes of the last two reigns. Perceye's chantry again, which Dugdale considered the oldest (though he does not give the date) was endowed in 1350 with six messuages, one shop, six acres of land and 40s. rent, all lying in Coventry, to which in 1407 William Botoner and others, added a messuage and twenty-four acres of land in the city for another priest. Then the chantry of the Holy Cross (1357) founded for two priests to sing daily a mass for the good estate before death and for the souls after of the royal family, and for the founders and the members of the Fraternity of the Holy Cross, was endowed with seven messuages, fourteen shops and sixteen acres of land in the city. Dugdale enumerates also four others, Cellet's, Corpus Christi, Lodynton's and Allesley's, to which should probably be added Marler's, assigned by him to St. Michael's. The first two are doubtless the same foundation, for in 1329 land and tenements were granted to the priest of Corpus Christi Chapel for the health of the soul of William Celet and others. It was almost certainly situated in the south transept, on the upper level over the vaulted passage. The position of Lodynton's chantry (1393) is not known; Allesley's, founded in the reign of Edward I, was sung at St. Thomas's altar. Richard Marler stipulates in his will that his priest is to have the "stypend or wagis of nyne marks by yere so long as he shall be of good and prestly conversacyon and demeanor, wt' a p'vyso that yf the seyde prest be ffounde otherwyse, after monyc'on and reasonable warnyng to hym geven, he to be removed." Much of the later history of the church relates to the destruction of its fittings and furniture or to restorations almost as grievous. In 1560 _2s. 6d._ was paid for taking down the carving about the high altar, while the Mayor bought the panelling of the altar for _33s. 4d._, the vail for _5s._, the "thing that the sacrament was in over the altar _1s._," the "peyre [pair of candlesticks?] that was upon the altar _5d._" Perhaps he thought that all these things would be wanted again ere long. In 1547 a quantity of costly vestments and banners had been sold and we find in the accounts a number of such items as these: "Sold the 6 day of Jennery 5 copps of red teyssew to Mr. Roghers, now mayre (and 4 other persons) pryce of the sayd copps, _10l._ To Bawden Desseld one cope of red velvet, _5l._ Mr. Schewyll a grene velvet cope, _30s._" But before Mary's death we have a lengthy inventory of copes, vestments, albs, banners and the like, some of which may have come back to the church from the buyers at the sale eleven years before. The church must have looked like a builder's yard in 1643 when the Committee and Council of War pulled down divers houses outside Bishop's and Spon Gates and stacked the materials here, while the changes of government are indicated by the payment in 1647 of _3s. 6d._ "to Hopes for defacing the King's Arms" and in 1660 of _6s._ to "Hope for the King's Arms." Five years after this the spire, which had caused much anxiety and expense for many years, was blown down in a gale, falling across the chancel and causing much destruction. All was restored and the spire rebuilt in three years. Reference has been made to the existence of a vaulted passage through the south transept. This was made necessary by the position of an ancient building known as Jesus Hall which adjoined the transept and thus blocked the way from "the Butchery" in this direction. The Hall had probably been long used as the residence of the priests attached to the church but nothing is known of its origin. It was destroyed in 1742. Only in 1834, when the exterior of the church was recased was the passage blocked and the floor of the upper chapel removed. The Register records the marriage of Sarah Kemble with William Siddons on 25th November, 1773. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR OF THE CHURCH The church of Holy Trinity loses much, in popular estimation at least, by its nearness to St. Michael's. It invites comparison of the most obvious sort. It is not nearly so large and its spire is not so high, these facts alone are sufficient to account for the popular view. Fuller, in his "Worthies" says of the two churches, "How clearly would they have shined if set at competent distance! Whereas now, such their Vicinity, that the Archangel eclipseth the Trinity." The plan is quite unlike that of its neighbour, being cruciform, with a central tower, a short nave, and a chancel distinctly longer than the nave. On the south both nave and chancel have a single aisle, the transept projecting beyond it and there is a vestry at the east end. On the north there is a similar aisle with a Lady Chapel at the east corresponding to the Vestry, but a large porch and several chapels fill up the spaces so that the transept does not in plan project. Looking at the exterior as a whole it may be said that the more moderate length (194 feet), the central spire, 230 feet high, and the transepts unite in forming a more satisfactory composition than the long body and immense western steeple of St. Michael's. There however, the superiority ceases for the frequent "recasings" and restorations have left hardly a stone of the exterior that has not been renewed again and again, and the dates of these operations, 1786, 1826, 1843, sufficiently suggest the degree of knowledge and feeling likely to be manifested in the work. Probably most of the structure was first built of the same friable red sandstone as its greater neighbour. Much of the recasing has been executed in a rather harder gray sandstone, but the tower and spire are still red. The tower above the roofs, is of two stages, the upper, or bell chamber, and the lower or lantern opening into the church. Below this are small windows with the lines of the old high-pitched roof visible above the present transept roofs, but in the nave and chancel the lines of the old roofs are now within the church, the clearstory having since been added. Each face of the tower is divided, apart from the narrow angle buttresses, into six vertical divisions separated by thin projections of buttress form. On the south and west the stair turret absorbs one of the outer divisions. Each division is curved in plan in a curious way, which may be the perpetuation of a feature of the original design, but was more probably introduced or modified by the person who recased the tower in 1826. That there was sculpture we know, for in 1709 ten shillings was paid for taking the images down from the steeple. The smallness of the sum indicates that they were few in number, and if they occupied similar positions to those on the belfry stage of St. Michael's, and the structure was as decayed as was the tower of that church it is probable that the cutting away of the niches may have suggested the curving of the surfaces especially as the tower would be thereby lightened. As it is we cannot be certain of much else than that there were vertical divisions serving to emphasize the impression of height and that the openings were in the same positions as now. [Illustration: PLAN OF TRINITY CHURCH] The spire blown down in 1665 had been in the previous ninety years five times repaired and repointed. We cannot now say whether the original design was at all closely followed in the rebuilding, but its present likeness to St. Michael's suggests doubts. The lowest stage which takes the place of the octagon and may be an intentional imitation of it, has almost upright sides with two-light windows on the cardinal faces and panelled ones on the oblique sides, while the remaining stages correspond in number and partly in design with those of St. Michael's. In 1855 it was considered that the bells endangered the safety of the tower, and after recasting by Mears of London they were rehung in a timber campanile in the north churchyard. Even now they cannot be pealed. The deplorable refacings have left few features of interest on the outside. Were Gothic architecture still a living and not merely imitative and academic art, one would welcome a complete renewal of all outside work--not an imagined harking back to the work of the fifteenth century but showing the lapse of the centuries from the fifteenth to the twentieth as clearly as does the north porch the change from the thirteenth to the fifteenth. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF HOLY TRINITY, FROM THE WEST.] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR It is with a feeling of expectation followed by one of relief that we pass within the church, for restoration has there rarely the same excuse for its devastations as the action of wind and weather on the exterior too generously gives it, and this church is no exception to the general rule. The clearing away of galleries, the provision of new seating and the renewal of much window tracery have been the principal changes, the greatest loss being the destruction of the Corpus Christi Chapel. The nave is of moderate width and consists of only four bays, the eastern arches being narrower and made to abut against the tower after the manner of flying buttresses. The columns are clusters of four large filleted shafts separated by small ones while the bases are high and evidently meant to be seen above the benches. The caps are shallow and very simple, while the shafts of each pier reappear as part of the arch moulding. The arcade as a whole is remarkably strong and dignified, it would perhaps have gained by the addition of a bay in length. In the absence of precise records it may be assigned to the second quarter of the fourteenth century or a little later. Above the tower arch can still be seen, beneath the painting and plaster, the marks of the older steep roof. The nave of Stratford-on-Avon Church has points of resemblance to this. There too we have a fourteenth-century arcade (but much simpler) with a fifteenth-century panelled wall and clearstory above, and the panelling comes down on to the backs of the arches in a similar though somewhat simpler manner. Owing to the inequality of the eastern arches there is, in the position of the windows and roof principals a curious disregard of the lines of the piers and the centres of arches. There are eight equal bays in the roof and each corresponds to two two-light windows. It is interesting to compare the design of this clearstory with that of St. Michael's. It has more solidity to accord with the more vigorous arcade though the treatment of the panelling is similar. The height from the arch to the roof is much less in proportion, but the sills of the windows are kept lower and the heads are square. The form of the windows is perhaps determined in part by the desire for more space for stained glass, but it is also the logical outcome of the space afforded by the level lines of a wooden roof just as the use of the pointed window follows from the use of pointed vaulting. The treatment of the angles after the manner of the thirteenth century "shouldered" lintel in order to take off the harshness of the rectangular form and to give a better bearing for the lintels is noteworthy and should be compared with the more developed forms at St. John's Church. Above the tower arch is a painting of the Last Judgement, discovered in 1831. It is now so much darkened that very little can be made out. The following is a description of its appearance before 1860: In the centre is the Saviour clothed in crimson and seated on a rainbow. Below are the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist with the twelve Apostles arranged on each hand. Two angels sound the summons to Judgement, and on the right of our Saviour, steps lead to a portico over which three angels look down on the scene and others welcome a pope who has just passed St. Peter. On the Saviour's left are doomed spirits being conveyed by devils in various ways and in ludicrous attitudes to the place of torment, represented in the usual manner by the gaping mouth of a monster, vomiting flames of fire. A large painting of a crucifix, with a priest kneeling beside it and angels flying above, was discovered at the same time on the north side of the Chancel but was too much mutilated to be thought worthy of preservation. The =roofs= throughout are of low pitch, and almost all resemble one another in design. Those of the nave, chancel, archdeacon's chapel (on the west of the north porch) and transepts are divided by their principal timbers into large panels, which are again subdivided by mouldings upon the boarded ceiling. At all angles and intersections there are carved leaves, and stars in relief adorn each panel. All these roofs are painted in accordance, it is said, with existing indications of the original colouring. The ground is blue, the mouldings red and white, the stars and carving are gilt. The nave roof spandrels, above the tie-beams, have large painted figures of angels, supporting between them shields emblazoned with the instruments of the Passion. These are also said to be reproductions, but it appears likely that time had left much to the imagination of their restorer. [Illustration: NORTH SIDE OF NAVE, EASTERN BAYS.] Nevertheless, the whole effect of the roofs is harmonious, a result apparently obtained by the use of a blue far removed from the ultramarine tint too often employed. Since the removal of the ringing floor, in 1855, the lantern stage of the tower has been once more visible from the church. A wooden vaulted ceiling was at the same time inserted where a stone one had originally been built or intended. The =chancel= is dark owing to the small clearstory windows, the low outer north aisle, and the concealment of a south window by the organ. At the first pier east of the tower came the rood-screen, and on the south side (in the aisle) the door to it may be seen at a height above the floor. Access must have been by steep steps against the wall, or from the top of another screen across the aisle. The church accounts of the year 1560 tell us what it cost to remove: Payd for taking down ye rode and Marie and John _4s. 4d._ Payd to ye carpenter for pullyng down ye rode lofft _4s. 8d._ On the east side of the tower wall can be seen the line of the original roof, showing the height before the rebuilding in 1391. Although there is space for larger windows the aisle roof prevented their sills being brought lower. The west arch of the south arcade has been forced out of shape by the pressure of the tower piers and arches; certainly the piers, which are little more than 4 feet square, seem slender enough for the support of so lofty a steeple. Attached to this south-east tower pier is the stone pulpit, one of the two special glories of the church, the other being the brass eagle. The pulpit is either contemporary with the pier or nearly so. There is apparently some difference in the texture and colour of the stone, but as it is probable that a finer-grained stone would be chosen for work of this character, this need not imply a difference of date. It was, however, probably added at the same time as the nave clearstory. The authors of "English Church Furniture" assign it to 1470.[7] Before 1833 (when restored by Rickman) it had been hidden from sight by wood-work and a clerk's desk at a lower level. The lower part is boldly corbelled out and the junction of the octagon with the pier shafts is well managed, but the upper open-panelled part is rather too definitely cut off from the lower by the battlemented cornice. Very few examples of this class of pulpit exist in England, and none equal in importance. The eagle =lectern= is a magnificent example of brass casting. It is generally attributed to the late fifteenth century. This eagle narrowly escaped being sold by the Puritans for old brass, as happened to that of St. Michael's. It closely resembles one belonging to St. Nicholas' Chapel, Lynn, save that the latter is not equal in refinement of detail and proportion, and the bird is less vigorous in pose and modelling. In 1560 there was "paid for skowring ye Egle and candell styckes, _10d._," and "for mending of ye Egle's tayle, _16d._" [Illustration: PULPIT.] At least nine chapels and fifteen altars are known to have existed in the church. The present choir vestry on the north side was the Lady Chapel. A simple piscina on the south side, about a foot above the present floor, shows that the old floor level was much lower. The =north aisle= is lofty and has a clearstory of three windows over the arcade. In the outer aisle was located Marler's, or the Mercers', Chapel, founded in 1537, and beneath it is a crypt or charnel house, now closed save for small ventilating openings. [Illustration: ARCHWAY BETWEEN THE NORTH PORCH AND ST. THOMAS'S CHAPEL.] The black oak roof of low pitch has the panels of the western bay only richly carved with vine leaves and grapes. Its date is, perhaps, as late as the foundation of the chantry. The piscina is in the north wall. West of the north transept is =St. Thomas's Chapel=. Dugdale says that Allesley's chantry was founded in the time of Edward I, at the altar of St. Thomas the Martyr, "in a chapel near adjoining to the church porch." The chapel is certainly older, for the beautiful double doorway from the porch is not later than mid-thirteenth century. The outer doorway of the porch was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The inner one, with a finely moulded arch with angle shafts and the vault with simple diagonal ribs carried on shafts, is of the early thirteenth century. It is to be regretted that this fine porch is not better seen. Signs of the puzzling reconstructions that have occurred in this part are visible in the aisle wall. Two lancet windows high up are of the same date as the porch, and are blocked by the chamber since constructed above St. Thomas's Chapel, and parts of other window jambs are seen at different levels. The Archdeacon's Chapel or consistory court, to the west of the porch, is now one of the most interesting parts of the church. It is divided from the north aisle by two lofty arches with an octagonal column. The original dedication is not known, but in 1588 it was already used as an Ecclesiastical Court, and the next year a bishop's seat was made for use in it. In the south-west angle is a tall, narrow recess, once closed by a door. Lockers of this description were constructed for the safe keeping of the shaft of the processional cross, and for the staves of banners. On the east side the roof now cuts across the head of a window of reticulated tracery of the early fourteenth century. Most of the monuments have been brought hither from various parts of the church; only two or three are of general interest. A late Perpendicular canopied tomb, rudely carved and badly fitted together, stands against the north wall, but there is nothing to show whom it commemorates. On the east wall is the monument of Dr. Philemon Holland, with a long Latin epitaph. Fuller says of him: "he was the translator general in his age, so that those books alone of his turning into English will make a country gentleman a competent library for historians." Born at Chelmsford in 1551 he settled at Coventry in 1595, was usher and then master of St. John's Free School for twenty-eight years, and died in 1636 in his eighty-fifth year. During his usher-ship Dugdale was a pupil of the school. An engraved brass to John Whithead, who died in 1597, is interesting for the sake of the costumes of himself and his two wives. Three stone coffins have also been deposited here, and two sheets of lead from the roof recording, in fine bold lettering, the repairs executed in 1660 and 1728. In the middle window on the north side are the only remaining fragments of ancient glass. As late as 1779 there were "portraits" of Earl Leofric and the Countess, and also, it is said, a smaller figure of the lady in a yellow dress on a white horse. Part of a small figure holding a spray of leaves and part of a galloping horse are pointed out as the remains of this. To the writer the figure appears to be clearly that of a man, and the horse and rider's leg not to have belonged to it. The modern stained glass is very unequal in character, and some is very poor indeed. The windows at the west, especially one in memory of Mr. Wm. Chater, a late organist, may be regarded as exceptions. There are still, fortunately, many which are not filled with pious memorials. The =font= is the original pre-Reformation one of the fifteenth century, which was removed by the Puritans in 1645 (though devoid of sculpture) and brought back after the Restoration. It stands on three steps, is panelled on bowl and stem, and rather brilliantly adorned with gold and colour. The south aisle was no doubt divided into two chapels, that on the west belonging to the Barkers' or Tanners' Gild. A small piscina against the south wall indicates the position of its altar. The wall below the windows is recessed so as to form a seat the whole length of the aisle. The =south transept=, containing the Corpus Christi and Cellet's chantries, has lost its original character completely. The piscina, high up on the south wall, shows that the floor level was some 9 feet above that of the church. The reason for this has been already explained. The organ chamber is quite modern. The best authorities place the chapel of the Butchers' Gild in the south aisle of the chancel, but do not say to whom the eastern chapel in the nave aisle belonged. It is known that there was a Jesus Chapel, and, in view of the proximity of Jesus Hall, it is believed by some that this was its position. The present clergy vestry is a fine room, having an excellent dark oak roof with heavy beams and well carved bosses at the intersections of the timbers. The Royal Arms over the fireplace were painted there in 1632. Although usual, the placing of the king's arms in churches was not compulsory until the Restoration; few earlier now remain, and this placing of them in the vestry rather than the body of the church is suggestive of a compromise between opposing factions. A portrait of Walter Farquhar Hook, Vicar from 1828-37 and afterwards Dean of Chichester is hung here. It seems probable that this was a chapel, perhaps that of the Holy Trinity, to whom an altar was dedicated. The history, as traced in the church accounts, of the various organs used in the church gives some idea of the fluctuations of opinion as to the propriety of their use. In 1526 John Howe and John Climmowe, citizens and organ makers of London, contracted to provide, for £30, "a peir of Organs wt vij stopps, ov'r and besides the two Towers of cases, of the pitche of doble Eff, and wt xxvij pleyn keyes, xix musiks, xlvj cases of Tynn and xiiij cases of wood, wt two Starrs and the image of the Trinite on the topp of the sayed orgayns." In 1570 the "payer of balowes" were sold, and in 1583 the pipes, "wayeng eleven score and thirteen pounds, went for fourpence half-farthing the pound." In 1632 a new one was obtained but its life was short, for in 1641 the Puritan party caused it to be sold "for the best advantage." [Illustration: ALMS-BOX.] Once more, in 1684, another was purchased from Mr. Robert Hay wood of the City of Bath for £100; then, in 1732, Thomas Swarbrick of Warwick built one for £600, for which a gallery was erected across the nave. In 1855 this gave place to a new one by Foster and Andrews of Hull, costing £800; and this was rebuilt by Messrs. Hill and Son in 1900. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: "English Church Furniture." (Antiquary series.) J.C. Cox and A. Harvey.] [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST, FROM BOND'S HOSPITAL.] ST. JOHN BAPTIST'S CHURCH The church of St. John Baptist has a history quite different from that of the other parish churches and is specially interesting as a building belonging to a very limited class, namely, Collegiate Churches owned by a Gild. Though Dugdale says that the "first and most antient of the Gilds here was founded in the 14th Ed. III (1340)" it is probable that, as in other places, religious gilds had for long existed here and that the royal license or Charter of this date was like that of Stratford-on-Avon in 1332, really a reconstitution or confirmation of the Gild's rights, privileges and possessions. This earliest one was known as the Merchant or St. Mary's Gild and its first ordinances provided that "the brethren and sisteren of the gild shall find as many chaplains as the means of the gild can well afford." Then in 1342 that of St. John Baptist and in 1343 that of St. Katharine was founded. The former at once founded a chantry of six priests to sing mass daily in the churches of St. Michael and the Trinity for "the souls of the King's progenitors and for the good estate of the King, Queen Isabella his mother, Queen Philippa his Consort and their children" and others, besides the members of the Gild. In 1344 this Gild, desiring to have a building for its exclusive use, received from Queen Isabella a small piece of land called Babbelak on which to build a chapel in honour of God and St. John, two priests being required to sing masses daily for the souls "of her dear lord Edward," John, Earl of Cornwall and others. Did she seek to satisfy her conscience thus for the woes she had brought upon her _dear lord_? The site thus given measured 117 feet from north to south and about 40 feet from east to west giving room for the chancel only of the present church, this being dedicated in 1350. But in 1357 William Walsheman, valet to the Queen and now her sub-bailiff in Coventry gave further land, added a new aisle and increased the number of priests while the Black Prince in 1359 gave a small plot on which, perhaps, the tower and transept now stand. Within the next ten years Walsheman and Christiana his wife gave to the Gild certain tenements, called the "Drapery," in the city to build a chapel in honour of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary, St. John, and St. Katharine "within the Chapel of Bablake." William Wolfe, mayor in 1375, is mentioned as a "great helper" in the work at the church, the original nave and aisles being probably built at this time, and some reconstruction of the choir. Records are wanting of the subsequent alterations which gave it its present form. The north clearstory of the nave shows the original design while that of the choir and the south side of the nave belong to the fifteenth century as do the tower and the cruciform arrangement of the building. Leland's "Itinerary" gives the following description: "There is also a Collegiate Church at Bablake, hard within the West Gate (Spon Gate) alias Bablake Gate, dedicated to St. John.... It is of the foundation of the Burgesses and there is a great Privilege, Gild or Fraternity. In this College is now a Master and eight ministers and lately twelve ministers." Stowe adds that there were twelve singing men and extant deeds mention "Babbelake Hall" in which the warden and priests lived. Many interesting entries of expenditure are to be found in the gild accounts showing how the Eve of St. John (Midsummer Eve) and other festivals were celebrated before the suppression of the gilds by Edward VI. In 1541 we have the following (the spelling is somewhat modernized): Expenses on Midsummer Even and on the day,--Item, 2 doz. & a half cakes, _2s. 6d._; spice cakes, _12d._; a cest' ale and 4 gals. _4s._; 2 gals, claret wine _16d._; 2 gals. malmsey, _2s. 8d._; 2 gals. muskedell _2s. 8d._; to Mr. Mayor _3s. 4d._; the Mayor to offer, _8d._; to priests, clerks and children, _2s. 4d._; the waits, _6s. 8d._; to poor people _6s. 8d._; to the cross-bearers and torch-bearers, _8d._; the bellman, _4d._; the hire of pots, _4d._; boughs, rushes and sweeping, _8d._; a woman 2 days to cleanse the house, _4d._; half a hundred _3d._ nails, _1½d._; half a pound of sugar, _4½d._; to the crossbearer and torchbearer for St. George Day, Holy Rood Day, Shire Thursday and Whit Sunday, _12d._; to 2 children for the same days, _6d._ Summa (total) _38s. 2d._ That these anniversaries and wakes led to much unseemly revelling we have evidence that cannot be gainsaid. The Trinity Gild decided in 1542 that no obite, drynkyng or com'en assemblie, from henceforth shall be had or used at Babalake, except onelie on Trinitie even and on the day, which shall be used as it hath been in tymes past. And that also the P'sts of Babelack shall say _dirige_ on midsum' even and likewise masse of _requiem_ on the morrowe, as they have used to doo. And that the Meire shall not come down thether to _dirige_ ov(er) night for dyv's considerac'ons and other great busynes they used. And on the morowe thei to go thether to masse and brekefast, as thei have used to doo. Dugdale quotes from an old MS. an interesting passage bearing on this question: "And ye shall understond and know how the Evyns were furst found in old tyme. In the beginning of holi Chirche, it was so that the pepull cam to the Chirche with candellys brennyng and wold _Wake_ and come with light toward nyght to the Chirch to their devocions; and afterwards they fell to lecherie and songs, daunces, harping, piping and also to glotony and sinne and so turned the holinesse to cursaydnesse; wherefore holi faders ordeined the pepull to leve that _waking_ and to fast the Evyn. But it is called _Vigilia_, that is _Waking_ in English and it is called the Evyn, for at Evyn they were wont to come to Chirche." In 1362 Queen Isabella helped to procure from the bishop a licence for one Robert de Worthin, priest, to become an anchorite and to inhabit a hermitage attached to the north aisle of the chancel. Traces of the foundations of this have been found on the site of the modern vestry. When the college was suppressed in 1548 the King granted to the mayor, bailiffs and corporation, on their petition, the church and its appurtenances in Free Burgage for ever on payment of _1d._, per annum and gave them "all the rents, revenues and profits of the said church." But these gifts were not sufficient to support the church and its services, so that the latter were irregular and repairs were neglected. In 1608 Mayor Hancox procured the delivery of a Saturday lecture "for the better fitting of the people for the Sabbath." In 1641 Simon Norton, alderman, left property to his son Thomas, on trust, the condition being that if at any time St. John's should become a parish church, he or his heirs should pay _£13 6s. 8d._ to the minister out of rents of lands in Coundon, and also the tithes of lands in Clifton. Prisoners from the Scottish army being quartered on the city in 1647, many were confined in this church and wrought much damage and desecration. From this time services were only occasionally held, until 1734, when an Act of Parliament was obtained making it a Parish Church, appointing a district to it and enabling the Master and Usher of the Free Grammar School to be Rector and Lecturer of the church. The mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty were made patrons, but in 1835, these arrangements having failed to work satisfactorily, the patronage was transferred to trustees who acted as managers of the school and in 1864 the lectureship was abolished, the rectory was severed from the office of Head Master and the Trustees of the school were charged with a payment of £200 per annum towards the stipend of the Rector. In 1874 the advowson was sold to a private person. A great deal of restoration, justifiable and otherwise, has taken place, the decay of the local sandstone having made large repairs necessary. In 1861 much renewal of the external stone work was carried out. Unfortunately shortsighted ideas of economy led to the use of the same poor stone and much has recently had to be done over again, this time with the harder Runcorn stone used also at St. Michael's. The interior was restored in 1875, galleries erected in 1735 and 1838, and high pews were removed, the floor, which had been raised three feet, lowered, the lantern stage of the tower opened up by removing a ringing floor and a light iron gallery above the tower arches provided for the ringers. The original groined ceiling has thus been made visible from below. THE EXTERIOR Although small in area compared with the other churches, both exterior and interior give an impression of size and dignity which does not belong to many much larger buildings. In the exterior this is no doubt due to the pseudo-cruciform arrangement, the bold central tower and the height of the main roof, which would have appeared even greater had the roadways not been so much raised. The =tower= is in two stages, a lofty lantern story having two transomed two-light windows on each face and a shorter upper one having smaller windows without transoms and a battlemented parapet. Large skeleton clock-dials disfigure the windows of this story. Narrow buttress strips on either side and between the windows run through and serve to connect the stories. The north-east angle has an octagonal stair turret carried up above the parapet. The other angles have narrow buttresses running up to circular bartizans boldly corbelled out from the battlements. This is an extremely unusual feature in ecclesiastical architecture but is common on fortified structures. Of the City gates, Gosford Gate had machicolated ones but not Spon Gate adjacent to the church. [Illustration: ST. JOHN BAPTIST.] The spacing of the windows and buttresses of the south aisle and the position of the large transept window show how the later changes were effected. The three windows and the buttresses with niches and canopies almost certainly belong to the part built by Walsheman after 1357. The two in the chancel aisle are recent insertions. The doorway at the south-west corner occupies the position where indications showed that an original door had existed. There is also a small priest's doorway of which the jambs are ancient. The clearstory was restored in 1861 "from sufficiently clear indications" in the remains of the original windows. The whole of this part is worthy of careful study and should be compared with the corresponding parts of Trinity Church. Everywhere we see signs of individual thought and design mainly directed to softening the rigidity of the horizontal lines of the square-headed and transomed "Perpendicular" windows. The method of cusping the drop-arch and the varied treatment of these in nave, choir and transepts are noteworthy while the little quatrefoil at the intersection of mullion and transom is a really happy innovation. The flying buttress over the south aisle restores a feature of the old building which had disappeared. Of the variously panelled and battlemented parapets, of nave, chancel and aisles a view of 1864 gives no visible hint. As the report of Sir (then Mr.) G.G. Scott in 1856 specifies as desirable the "renewing all the parapets according to the portions of the original which remain," we can only hope (but with no sense of certainty) that these parts are faithfully reproduced. The limited site on which the chancel was built (only 40 feet deep) caused the builders to omit any buttresses or other projections at the east end. The east window was renewed in 1861 but the proportions are not good and it is said that one light was suppressed although the old sill remained intact. The west end has a large six-light window with two transoms. It was restored in 1841 and is said to be a precise reproduction of the original design. On the gable above it is a large niched pinnacle which appears to be an "unauthorized" addition. While the north aisle is later than the south, the clearstory, as has been said is earlier, being of late Decorated date with large three-light windows of reticulated tracery. The north transept is more consistent in style than the south. The large four-light window is peculiar in design. It has one transom and the tracery is brought down much below the spring of the arch. The centre mullion is very solid, coming forward almost to the wall face both inside and out and running up to the apex of the arch. The clearstory windows in both transepts are similar in general design to those of the south clearstory of the nave but with variations suggesting a rather later date. A very effective view of the north side can be had from the quadrangle of Bond's Hospital, though here too it loses on account of the depressed site in which it lies. THE INTERIOR The interior is not less impressive for its size than the exterior, Sir G.G. Scott even saying that he knew of no interior more beautiful than St. John's. [Illustration: INTERIOR, ST. JOHN BAPTIST.] [Illustration: CLEARSTORY WINDOWS.] All at least will agree that there is something about it striking and dignified which is obviously not concerned with mere size, is largely independent of elaboration of detail and may therefore be safely attributed to its satisfactory proportions and broad effects of light and shade. Its plan is quite simple consisting of a nave and choir with north and south aisles, a transept not projecting beyond the aisles at either end and a central tower. Yet, although it is more or less oblong as a whole, there is hardly a right angle or two parallel walls throughout the church. In most cases these discrepancies are not apparent, nor do they appear likely to have been intended to produce a studied effect. Thus a diminution in width towards the east (as at Manchester) may be expected to add to the apparent length, but here the south aisles of both nave and chancel expand instead of contracting. By standing within either transept and looking up at the roof the want of parallelism of the walls and other irregularities are plainly seen. The nave has only three bays, the arches being rather lofty and the arch mouldings of the characteristic shallowness of the period. The south-west pier had to be rebuilt on account of settlement and there are signs of it in the south-east arch next the tower. The name Bablake is said to have been derived from a pond or conduit near by and the site may have been swampy, thus affecting the foundations. The district is even now liable to flooding from the Sherborne (or Shireburn) stream and as late as January 1900 the waters rose over five feet within the church as a brass plate at the west end testifies. The graceful treatment of the windows of the nave and choir clearstories is shown in the illustration. Comparing these with the clearstory of Trinity nave (p. 71) questions of priority arise. If not designed by the same mind the influence of one on the other is easily seen. On the whole the greater rigidity of treatment and the anxiety to increase the area of glass in the Trinity windows suggest that the date is rather later and that the designs did not spring from the same brain. The roof is very simple, the curved brackets springing from the shafts which run down to the arches below. The wall is deeply recessed beneath the windows. The north windows, however, are continued down in plain panels, but this only makes more apparent the fact that they are not placed centrally over the arches. The north aisle has a doorway and two north windows. The windows are of good Perpendicular design, and the mullions are continued down the wall below, forming panels. The lowered sill and recess probably formed a convenient retable to an altar against the wall. The west window preserves some fragments of glass dated 1532. There is an obliterated inscription and small etched figures--among them an acolyte carrying a cross, one of those whose services are mentioned in the accounts after this wise: "to the crosebeirer and torchebeirer, for Seynt George day, hollieroode day, shire thuresday and Whit Sunday, _12d._; to 2 childern for the same dayes _6d._" The south aisle of the nave, including the lower part of the transept, is doubtless the aisle erected for the Gild by William Walsheman in 1357. The two windows are not central with the nave arches, and the third is not in the centre of the transept. Their tracery is somewhat peculiar in design and refined in detail, and has the transitional character one would expect from its date. There are signs on the face of each western tower pier of the altars which once stood there, probably those of the Trinity and St. Katharine, which are known to have existed. The eastern piers of the tower are later than the western, and very unlike them in plan. A bold and ingenious treatment of the vaulting shaft of the tower groining is used on these piers; on the western ones the shafts stop upon the ends of the hood moulding. The choir is now closed by a screen carrying a large rood carved in oak. Like St. Michael's, but to a smaller extent, the axis of the choir inclines to the north. Whether symbolic, or only a part of what may be described as the studied irregularity of the whole building it is hard to say. The column on each side of the choir is later than the east respond and also later than the west tower pier, but corresponds with the east tower pier. The deep panelling beneath the windows must have been carried out when the clearstories were constructed in the fifteenth century. The south aisle of the choir, the original chapel of the patron saint, is now fitted up and used as a morning chapel. The piscina still remains in the south wall, and there is a trace of the old altar visible on the wall. The east end of the north aisle is now the organ chamber, and was originally the Lady Chapel. The base of the altar still exists, and so does the piscina in the south wall. In connection with these or other altars we hear of a payment of _22d._, in 1474, for painting a cloth for the image of St. John Baptist, and in 1462 sums of _40s._ and _7s._ were paid to a sculptor of Burton-on-Trent for an alabaster statue of the Virgin and a base for it. At the foot of the south-west tower-pier are some decayed but interesting ancient tiles. The new ones have been copied from them. The vicissitudes in the church's fortunes have left little for us to see that is not part and parcel of the structure. That there were "orgaynes" as early as 1461 we know from entries in the city records giving the cost at different times of wire, glue, nails, thread, etc., for the reparation of them, while a payment of _2d._ for "a string" suggests that they were a combination of wind and string stops, similar to the 1733 organ of St. Michael's as built by Thomas Swarbrick. In 1519 the Prior bought the "metell of ye old orgayns in bablake" for _9s. 10d._, but doubtless the new one disappeared in the troublous times that followed. A new one has recently been set up. The pulpit is of stone and quite new, and the font, erected in 1843, is a copy of that of St. Edward's, Cambridge. There are five bells, the inscriptions on them being as follows: 1st. Henrycus Bagley. M.C. Fecit 1676. 2nd. Pack & Chapman. London 1778. Richard Eaton, Church-warden. 3rd. Henric Dodenhale, Fecit. M.C.E.I.C.R.I. 4th. (Illegible.) Probably of the end of fifteenth century. 5th. I ring at six to let men know When to and from their work to go. Neglect and decay it has been seen had provided only too plausible excuses for restoration. In 1858 the church had a narrow escape from a worse fate, for it was proposed to extend it in some direction, and the architect suggested the lengthening of the north transept and the addition of a new north aisle. Probably lack of funds alone prevented the carrying out of a proposal which would have completely spoilt the proportions of this beautiful interior. THE GREY FRIARS' CONVENT CHRIST CHURCH The third of the "three tall spires," albeit nothing else remains of the church to which it belonged, deserves that some notice should be given of it and of the men who reared it. In 1234, eleven years after their first coming into England, the Franciscan Friars are heard of at Coventry, Ranulph, Earl of Chester, having granted them land for their oratory, and the Sheriff of Warwickshire, on behalf of the King, giving them shingles from the woods of Kenilworth wherewith to cover it. In 1359 the Black Prince, then owner of the Manor and Park of Cheylesmore, just outside the walls of the city and adjacent to their convent, granted them so much stone from his quarry there, "as they should have occasion to use about their buildings and walls," and probably at this time the church, of which Christ Church spire is a remnant, was built. At the same time he gave them "liberty to have a postern into the Park to carry out any of their convent that should be diseased." The house was surrendered to the King in 1539, the warden and ten brethren being compelled to sign a humiliating document, in which they professed to "profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian living doth not consist in dumb ceremonies, wearing of a grey coat, disguising ourself after strange fashions, ducking, nodding and becking, in girding our selves with a girdle full of knots and other like Papisticall ceremonies." [Illustration: THE SPIRE OF CHRIST CHURCH.] It is certain at least that they had no accumulated wealth. Whatever they had received had been distributed for the advantage of the Church or the poor. At their suppression they had neither lands, tenements, nor other possessions, save their church and house and the land these stood on. The site was granted to the city and the buildings thrown down, only the spire with its supporting walls and arches being allowed to stand until 1829, when it was incorporated with the new nave of Christ Church from the designs of Rickman, to whom we are indebted for the first comprehensive and systematic account of English Mediæval architecture. The work shows how imperfectly in those days even a genuine admirer of Mediæval Art understood its spirit. Unfortunately the tower and spire were recased with new stone, and the original character of the work largely disappeared. The total height is 204 feet, exclusive of the vane. The plan of the old church was interesting, especially in the arrangement of the crossing. The short transepts had little real relation to choir or nave, which were almost completely separated from one another, the nave being intended for the use of the public. The narrowing of the tower from east to west, and the insertion of secondary north and south arches to carry the slender octagonal tower is unusual and ingenious. The whole length was 250 feet, and the transepts were 96 feet from north to south. The nave and choir differed little in length. [Illustration: GREY FRIARS' CHURCH (CROSSING).] The connection of the Franciscans with the production of the Mysteries, or sacred plays, should not pass unnoticed. Dugdale, who had spoken with eye witnesses, thus alludes to the subject: Before the suppression of the Monasteries this City was very famous for the Pageants that were played therein upon Corpus Christi-day; which occasioning very great confluence of people thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which Pageants being acted with mighty State and Reverence by the Friars of this House, had Theatres for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels and drawn to all the eminent parts of the City for the better advantage of spectators; and contained the story of the Old and New Testament, composed in the old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. intituled, _Ludus Corporis Christi_, or _Ludus Coventriæ_. Along with a number that were performed by the city companies they are still to be seen in the British Museum. We know that the Friars presented them as late as 1492, when Henry VII was present with his Queen to see the plays "acted by the Grey Friars." No remains exist of the domestic buildings of the Friary. The well-known Ford's Hospital hard by is often called Grey Friars' Hospital, but this arises merely from the situation. It was founded in 1529 by Mr. William Ford of Coventry, Merchant of the Staple, for five men and one woman, but is now inhabited by women only. It is an exceptionally beautiful example of Tudor timber construction in perfect condition. THE WHITE FRIARS The Carmelite or White Friars were, says Dugdale, fixed in Coventry in 1343 by Sir John Poultney who had been four times Lord Mayor of London. Although their buildings were ornate and extensive, their revenue apart from oblations amounted to only _£3 6s. 8d._ per annum and the whole came to less than £8. At the Dissolution the house and its revenues came eventually to John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper to Henry VIII. Having amassed a great estate in monastery and chantry lands, Hales founded the Free School in Coventry, the Church of the White Friars being at first used for the purpose. Later, he made of the Friary a dwelling and removed the school to St. John's Hospital, granted to him by the king in 1545. Part of the church of the Hospital still exists at the foot of Bishop Street, but the school has been removed to new buildings in the Warwick Road. Of the buildings of the White Friars there are considerable remains incorporated with the Union Workhouse at the top of Much Park Street. The east walk of the cloister, 150 feet in length, has a fine groined roof of the fifteenth century. A range of vaulted apartments runs alongside the cloister on the east side, divided midway by the vestibule to the Chapter House now destroyed. The upper story above the cloister and the range of rooms was, we may assume, the friars' Dormitory. A huge fireplace and a bay window are part of John Hales' reconstruction. The gateway to the south-west corner of the cloister remains, and the outer gate of the precincts may still be seen in Much Park Street. [Illustration: ST. MARY HALL.] ST. MARY HALL The Gilds were so important a part of the religious and social life of the city that it is imperative that some notice of their hall, which stands in suggestive proximity to the churches, should be given. St. Mary Hall, opposite the south side of St. Michael's is one of the most complete and beautiful examples of a fifteenth-century town dwelling now remaining in England. It originally belonged to the Gilds of Holy Trinity and Our Lady to which were united at a later time those of St. Katharine and St. John Baptist, the oldest to be founded. By the fine groined gateway we enter the courtyard, on the south side of which is the kitchen, probably the hall of an older structure of the first half of the fourteenth century, the present hall and its undercroft on the west side having been built between 1394 and 1414. On the east side is the entrance to the staircase leading to a gallery from which the hall is entered. At this end is the Minstrels' Gallery and beneath it are three doorways, the centre one leading to the kitchens below, that on the right to the old Council Chamber, that on the left to a smaller room known as the Princes' Chamber. From the Council Chamber is reached the stone-groined Treasury, now used for the safe keeping of muniments and records. It forms the first floor of a low tower. The hall, 70 feet by 30 feet, is of five bays, with the usual dais and oriel window at the far end from the entrance. [Illustration: ST. MARY HALL.] The nine-light window over the dais has its original glass, made, it is believed, by the John Thornton of Coventry who is known as the maker of the east window of York Minster. The upper part has numerous coats of arms of kings, cities, and princes, while the nine lights are filled with "portraitures of several kings in their surcotes," William I, Richard I, Henry III, IV, V, VI, King Arthur, the Emperor Constantine, and another unnamed. The windows on either side of the hall have suffered grievously. Those on the west (left) were deprived of their heraldry and portraits in 1785. In those on the east new glass with poor imitations of the ancient series of figures and coats-of-arms was placed in 1824. At the same time the wainscotting painted in 1580 with inscriptions and heraldry was cleared away and replaced with cement. The inscriptions were copied with care, but "the ornamentation was followed without any very fastidious copying of the uncouth ancient style"![8] The timber roof is of low pitch, with traceried spandrels above the tie-beams. Angels playing on a variety of instruments are placed at the centre of each tie-beam and there is much good carving of foliage and animals at the intersections of the timbers. The most famous adornment of the hall is the tapestry behind the dais. The following views as to its origin and subject are those of George Scharf the antiquary. It is of Flemish design but probably of English manufacture, is woven, not embroidered, and was made in the early sixteenth century for the place it occupies, its compartments corresponding with those of the window. It is in six compartments in two rows. The upper central has a figure of Justice, an insertion probably in the place of Christ, angels with the instruments of the Passion being on either side. The lower central represents the Assumption of the Virgin in presence of the apostles. The upper left in order from the centre has eleven saints, SS. John Baptist, Matthias (?), Paul, Adrian, Peter, George, Andrew, No. 8(?), Bartholomew, Simon, Thaddeus. The corresponding female saints on the right are SS. Katherine, Barbara, Dorothy, Mary Magdalen, No. 5 (?), Margaret, Agnes, Gertrude of Nivelle, Anne, Apollonia. The lower left has a king kneeling at a prie-dieu on which is his crown and an open book. A cardinal kneels behind him but there is no other ecclesiastic among the seventeen courtiers standing behind. In the opposite compartment is a queen kneeling with a number of ladies, among whom are two in monastic dress. Although the work belongs to the reign of Henry VII, the king and queen are almost certainly Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. On the walls are portraits of later sovereigns from William III to George IV, that of George III being by Lawrence. The Mayoress' Parlour opening from the dais has been drastically restored. It contains portraits of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, and four benefactors to the city, John Hales, founder of the Free School, Sir Thomas White, Thomas Jesson and Christopher Davenport. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 8: "Coventry: its History and Antiquities," B. Poole, 1870.] THE CARTHUSIAN MONASTERY Little remains of this monastery which stood on the south side and not far from the city. The Order settled in Coventry in 1381 only ten years after the foundation of the London Charter-house. At the Dissolution the Prior and brethren, ten in all, did not emulate the heroism of the London monks and were fortunate enough to obtain pensions instead of martyrdom. Some trifling remains exist incorporated in a modern mansion, and a wall of the garden shows the position of doors which led to the isolated cells of the monks. The Botoners had given freely to the building of the church and cloisters of which Richard II laid the first stone in 1385 and afterwards largely endowed "on condition that they should find and maintain within the precinct of their house, twelve poor scholars from seven years old till they accomplished the age of seventeen years, there to pray for the good estate of him the said King and of his Consort, during this life, and for the health of their souls after death." INDEX Abbots of Coventry, 4. Alms-boxes, 56, 77. Apse, 36. Bells, 56, 91. Benefactors of Coventry, 99. Botoner, William and Adam, 22. Carthusian Monastery, 99. Chantries, Foundation of, 9. Christ Church, 91. City, History of, 1-15. Cross, 15. Dissolution of Monasteries, 13. Duel, Hereford and Norfolk, 11. Evens or Wakes, 83. Fonts, 51, 76. Ford's Hospital, 94. Friars, Coming of, 8. Grey Friars Convent (Christ Church): History, 94. Plan of Crossing, 93. Suppression, 92. Gilds, 6, 10. Glass, Ancient, 56, 75, 89. Godiva and Leofric, 4, 75. Hales, John, 14, 94. Hermitage. 83. Hospital, Ford's, 94. Hospital, St. John's, 94. Lollards, 11. Martyrs, 14. Midsummer Eve, 82. Misereres, 48. Monastery, History, 1-15. Monastery Ruins, 16-18. Orders of Angels, 47. Organ, 55, 77, 90. Pageants and Plays, 13, 14, 93. Parliamentum Indoctorum, 11. Parliamentum Diabolicum, 12. Persecution, 14. Pilgrims' Rest or Guest House, 15. Priory, Ruins, 16-18. Royal visits: Henry VI, 11, 12. Margaret, 23. Edward IV, 12. Richard III, 13. Henry VII, 13. Henry VIII, 13. Elizabeth, 14. Mary Queen of Scots, 14. Charles I, 14. St. John Baptist Church: History, 81. Exterior, 84. Interior, 86. Bells, 91. Clearstory windows, 85. Collegiate foundation, 81. Glass, ancient, 89. Organ, 90. St. Mary Hall: Glass, ancient, 97. Plan, 98. Portraits, 99. Tapestry, 98. St. Michael's Church: History, 21-26. Exterior, 29. Interior, 41. Apse, 36. Bells, 56. Brasses, 51, 55. Chapels: Cappers', 53. Drapers' or Lady, 36, 47. Dyers', 52. Mercers, 54. Chapter, Constitution of, 25. Chest, 50. Crypt, 36. Font, 51. Glass, ancient, 56. Old church, position of, 42. Organ, 55. Porch, south, 34. Proportions of Steeple, 30. Pulpit, 56. Spire, 32. Tombs: Berkeley, 49. Bond, 49. Nethermyl, 50. Skeffington, 55. Swillington, 54. Wade's, 55. Trinity Church: History, 61. Exterior, 65. Interior, 69. Chapels: Archdeacon's, 75. Butchers', 76. Corpus Christi, 76. Marler's, 73. St. Thomas's, 74. Clearstory, 69. Font, 76. Glass, ancient, 75. Lectern, Eagle, 73. Organ, 77. Plan, 66. Pulpit, 72. Spire, 66. Tombs: Philemon Holland, 75. Whithead (Brass), 75. White Friars' Convent, 94. [Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH] [Illustration] CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. Bell's Cathedral Series ILLUSTRATED MONOGRAPHS ON THE GREAT ENGLISH CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES _Crown 8vo. 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12625	----	Proofreading Team ARCHITECTURE AND DEMOCRACY BY CLAUDE BRAGDON F.A.I.A. 1918 [Illustration: PLATE I. THE WOOLWORTH BUILDING, NEW YORK] PREFACE This book can lay no claim to unity of theme, since its subjects range from skyscrapers to symbols and soul states; but the author claims for it nevertheless a unity of point of view, and one (correct or not) so comprehensive as to include in one synthesis every subject dealt with. For according to that point of view, a skyscraper is only a symbol--and of what? A condition of consciousness, that is, a state of the soul. Democracy even, we are beginning to discover, is a condition of consciousness too. Our only hope of understanding the welter of life in which we are immersed, as in a swift and muddy river, is in ascending as near to its pure source as we can. That source is in consciousness and consciousness is in ourselves. This is the point of view from which each problem dealt with has been attacked; but lest the author be at once set down as an impracticable dreamer, dwelling aloof in an ivory tower, the reader should know that his book has been written in the scant intervals afforded by the practice of the profession of architecture, so broadened as to include the study of abstract form, the creation of ornament, experiments with color and light, and such occasional educational activities as from time to time he has been called upon to perform at one or another architectural school. The three essays included under the general heading of "Democracy and Architecture" were prepared at the request of the editor of _The Architectural Record_, and were published in that journal. The two following, on "Ornament from Mathematics," represent a recasting and a rewriting of articles which have appeared in _The Architectural Review, The Architectural Forum_, and _The American Architect_. "Harnessing the Rainbow" is an address delivered before the Ad. Club of Cleveland, and the Rochester Rotary Club, and afterwards made into an essay and published in _The American Architect_ under a different title. The appreciation of Louis Sullivan as a writer appears here for the first time, the author having previously paid his respects to Mr. Sullivan's strictly architectural genius in an essay in _House and Garden_. "Color and Ceramics" was delivered on the occasion of the dedication of the Ceramic Building of the University of Illinois, and afterwards published in _The Architectural Forum_. "Symbols and Sacraments" was printed in the English Quarterly _Orpheus_. "Self Education" was delivered before the Boston Architectural Club, and afterwards published in a number of architectural journals. Acknowledgment is hereby tendered by the author to the editors of these various magazines for their consent to republication, together with thanks, however belated, for their unfailing hospitality to the children of his brain. CLAUDE BRAGDON. _August 1, 1918_. CONTENTS ARCHITECTURE AND DEMOCRACY I. Before the War II. During the War III. After the War ORNAMENT FROM MATHEMATICS I. The World Order II. The Fourth Dimension HARNESSING THE RAINBOW LOUIS SULLIVAN, PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY COLOR AND CERAMICS SYMBOLS AND SACRAMENTS SELF-EDUCATION LIST OF FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS Plate I. The Woolworth Building, New York Plate II. The New York Public Library Plate III. The Prudential Building, Buffalo, N.Y. Plate IV. The Erie County Savings Bank, Buffalo, N.Y. Plate V. The New York Central Terminal Plate VI. Plan of the Red Cross Community Club House, Camp Sherman, Ohio Plate VII. Interior View of the Camp Sherman Community House Plate VIII. Imaginative Sketch by Henry P. Kirby Plate IX. Architectural Sketch by Otto Rieth Plate X. 200 West 57th Street, New York Plate XI. Imaginary Composition: The Portal Plate XII. Imaginary Composition: The Balcony Plate XIII. Imaginary Composition: The Audience Chamber Plate XIV. Song and Light: An Approach toward "Color Music" Plate XV. Symbol of Resurrection Every form of government, every social institution, every undertaking, however great, however small, every symbol of enlightenment or degradation, each and all have sprung and are still springing from the life of the people, and have ever formed and are now as surely forming images of their thought. Slowly by centuries, generations, years, days, hours, the thought of the people has changed; so with precision have their acts responsively changed; thus thoughts and acts have flowed and are flowing ever onward, unceasingly onward, involved within the impelling power of Life. Throughout this stream of human life, and thought, and activity, men have ever felt the need to build; and from the need arose the power to build. So, as they thought, they built; for, strange as it may seem, they could build in no other way. As they built, they made, used, and left behind them records of their thinking. Then, as through the years new men came with changed thoughts, so arose new buildings in consonance with the change of thought--the building always the expression of the thinking. Whatever the character of the thinking, just so was the character of the building. What is Architecture? A Study in the American People of Today, by LOUIS SULLIVAN. Architecture and Democracy I BEFORE THE WAR The world war represents not the triumph, but the birth of democracy. The true ideal of democracy--the rule of a people by the _demos_, or group soul--is a thing unrealized. How then is it possible to consider or discuss an architecture of democracy--the shadow of a shade? It is not possible to do so with any degree of finality, but by an intention of consciousness upon this juxtaposition of ideas--architecture and democracy--signs of the times may yield new meanings, relations may emerge between things apparently unrelated, and the future, always existent in every present moment, may be evoked by that strange magic which resides in the human mind. Architecture, at its worst as at its best, reflects always a true image of the thing that produced it; a building is revealing even though it is false, just as the face of a liar tells the thing his words endeavor to conceal. This being so, let us make such architecture as is ours declare to us our true estate. The architecture of the United States, from the period of the Civil War, up to the beginning of the present crisis, everywhere reflects a struggle to be free of a vicious and depraved form of feudalism, grown strong under the very ægis of democracy. The qualities that made feudalism endeared and enduring; qualities written in beauty on the cathedral cities of mediaeval Europe--faith, worship, loyalty, magnanimity--were either vanished or banished from this pseudo-democratic, aridly scientific feudalism, leaving an inheritance of strife and tyranny--a strife grown mean, a tyranny grown prudent, but full of sinister power the weight of which we have by no means ceased to feel. Power, strangely mingled with timidity; ingenuity, frequently misdirected; ugliness, the result of a false ideal of beauty--these in general characterize the architecture of our immediate past; an architecture "without ancestry or hope of posterity," an architecture devoid of coherence or conviction; willing to lie, willing to steal. What impression such a city as Chicago or Pittsburgh might have made upon some denizen of those cathedral-crowned feudal cities of the past we do not know. He would certainly have been amazed at its giant energy, and probably revolted at its grimy dreariness. We are wont to pity the mediaeval man for the dirt he lived in, even while smoke greys our sky and dirt permeates the very air we breathe: we think of castles as grim and cathedrals as dim, but they were beautiful and gay with color compared with the grim, dim canyons of our city streets. Lafcadio Hearn, in _A Conservative_, has sketched for us, with a sympathy truly clairvoyant, the impression made by the cities of the West upon the consciousness of a young Japanese samurai educated under a feudalism not unlike that of the Middle Ages, wherein was worship, reverence, poetry, loyalty--however strangely compounded with the more sinister products of the feudal state. Larger than all anticipation the West appeared to him,--a world of giants; and that which depresses even the boldest Occidental who finds himself, without means or friends, alone in a great city, must often have depressed the Oriental exile: that vague uneasiness aroused by the sense of being invisible to hurrying millions; by the ceaseless roar of traffic drowning voices; by monstrosities of architecture without a soul; by the dynamic display of wealth forcing mind and hand, as mere cheap machinery, to the uttermost limits of the possible. Perhaps he saw such cities as Doré saw London: sullen majesty of arched glooms, and granite deeps opening into granite deeps beyond range of vision, and mountains of masonry with seas of labor in turmoil at their base, and monumental spaces displaying the grimness of ordered power slow-gathering through centuries. Of beauty there was nothing to make appeal to him between those endless cliffs of stone which walled out the sunrise and the sunset, the sky and the wind. The view of our pre-war architecture thus sketchily presented is sure to be sharply challenged in certain quarters, but unfortunately for us all this is no mere matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. The buildings are there, open to observation; rooted to the spot, they cannot run away. Like criminals "caught with the goods" they stand, self-convicted, dirty with the soot of a thousand chimneys, heavy with the spoils of vanished civilizations; graft and greed stare at us out of their glazed windows--eyes behind which no soul can be discerned. There are doubtless extenuating circumstances; they want to be clean, they want to be honest, these "monsters of the mere market," but they are nevertheless the unconscious victims of evils inherent in our transitional social state. Let us examine these strange creatures, doomed, it is hoped, to extinction in favor of more intelligent and gracious forms of life. They are big, powerful, "necessitous," and have therefore an impressiveness, even an æsthetic appeal, not to be denied. So subtle and sensitive an old-world consciousness as that of M. Paul Bourget was set vibrating by them like a violin to the concussion of a trip-hammer, and to the following tune: The portals of the basements, usually arched as if crushed beneath the weight of the mountains which they support, look like dens of a primitive race, continually receiving and pouring forth a stream of people. You lift your eyes, and you feel that up there behind the perpendicular wall, with its innumerable windows, is a multitude coming and going,--crowding the offices that perforate these cliffs of brick and iron, dizzied with the speed of the elevators. You divine, you feel the hot breath of speculation quivering behind these windows. This it is which has fecundated these thousands of square feet of earth, in order that from them may spring up this appalling growth of business palaces, that hide the sun from you and almost shut out the light of day. "The simple power of necessity is to a certain degree a principle of beauty," says M. Bourget, and to these structures this order of beauty cannot be denied, but even this is vitiated by a failure to press the advantage home: the ornate façades are notably less impressive than those whose grim and stark geometry is unmitigated by the grave-clothes of dead styles. Instances there are of strivings toward a beauty that is fresh and living, but they are so unsuccessful and infrequent as to be negligible. However impressive these buildings may be by reason of their ordered geometry, their weight and magnitude, and as a manifestation of irrepressible power, they have the unloveliness of things ignoble being the product neither of praise, nor joy, nor worship, but enclosures for the transaction of sharp bargains--gold bringing jinn of our modern Aladdins, who love them not but only use them. That is the reason they are ugly; no one has loved them for themselves alone. For beauty is ever the very face of love. From the architecture of a true democracy, founded on love and mutual service, beauty would inevitably shine forth; its absence convicts us of a maladjustment in our social and economic life. A skyscraper shouldering itself aloft at the expense of its more humble neighbors, stealing their air and their sunlight, is a symbol, written large against the sky, of the will-to-power of a man or a group of men--of that ruthless and tireless aggression on the part of the cunning and the strong so characteristic of the period which produced the skyscraper. One of our streets made up of buildings of diverse styles and shapes and sizes--like a jaw with some teeth whole, some broken, some rotten, and some gone--is a symbol of our unkempt individualism, now happily becoming curbed and chastened by a common danger, a common devotion. Some people hold the view that our insensitiveness to formal beauty is no disgrace. Such argue that our accomplishments and our interests are in other fields, where we more than match the accomplishments of older civilizations. They forget that every achievement not registered in terms of beauty has failed of its final and enduring transmutation. It is because the achievements of older civilizations attained to their apotheoses in art that they interest us, and unless we are able to effect a corresponding transmutation we are destined to perish unhonoured on our rubbish heap. That we shall effect it, through knowledge and suffering, is certain, but before attempting the more genial and rewarding task of tracing, in our life and in our architecture, those forces and powers which make for righteousness, for beauty, let us look our failures squarely in the face, and discover if we can why they are failures. Confining this examination to the particular matter under discussion, the neo-feudal architecture of our city streets, we find it to lack unity, and the reason for this lack of unity dwells in a _divided consciousness_. The tall office building is the product of many forces, or perhaps we should say one force, that of necessity; but its concrete embodiment is the result of two different orders of talent, that of the structural engineer and of the architectural designer. These are usually incarnate in two different individuals, working more or less at cross purposes. It is the business of the engineer to preoccupy himself solely with ideas of efficiency and economy, and over his efficient and economical structure the designer smears a frosting of beauty in the form of architectural style, in the archæological sense. This is a foolish practice, and cannot but result in failure. In the case of a Greek temple or a mediaeval cathedral structure and style were not twain, but one; the structure determined the style, the style expressed the structure; but with us so divorced have the two things become that in a case known to the author, the structural framework of a great office building was determined and fabricated and then architects were invited to "submit designs" for the exterior. This is of course an extreme example and does not represent the usual practice, but it brings sharply to consciousness the well known fact that for these buildings we have substantially one method of construction--that of the vertical strut, and the horizontal "fill"--while in style they appear as Grecian, Roman, Renaissance, Gothic, Modern French and what not, according to the whim of the designer. [Illustration: PLATE II. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY] With the modern tendency toward specialization, the natural outgrowth of necessity, there is no inherent reason why the bones of a building should not be devised by one man and its fleshly clothing by another, so long as they understand one another, and are in ideal agreement, but there is in general all too little understanding, and a confusion of ideas and aims. To the average structural engineer the architectural designer is a mere milliner in stone, informed in those prevailing architectural fashions of which he himself knows little and cares less. Preoccupied as he is with the building's strength, safety, economy; solving new and staggeringly difficult problems with address and daring, he has scant sympathy with such inconsequent matters as the stylistic purity of a façade, or the profile of a moulding. To the designer, on the other hand, the engineer appears in the light of a subordinate to be used for the promotion of his own ends, or an evil to be endured as an interference with those ends. As a result of this lack of sympathy and co-ordination, success crowns only those efforts in which, on the one hand, the stylist has been completely subordinated to engineering necessity, as in the case of the East River bridges, where the architect was called upon only to add a final grace to the strictly structural towers; or on the other hand, in which the structure is of the old-fashioned masonry sort, and faced with a familiar problem the architect has found it easy to be frank; as in the case of the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, on 42nd Street, New York, or in the Bryant Park façade on the New York Library. The Woolworth building is a notable example of the complete co-ordination between the structural framework and its envelope, and falls short of ideal success only in the employment of an archaic and alien ornamental language, used, however, let it be said, with a fine understanding of the function of ornament. For the most part though, there is a difference of intention between the engineer and the designer; they look two ways, and the result of their collaboration is a flat and confused image of the thing that should be, not such as is produced by truly binocular vision. This difference of aim is largely the result of a difference of education. Engineering science of the sort which the use of steel has required is a thing unprecedented; the engineer cannot hark back to the past for help, even if he would. The case is different with the architectural designer; he is taught that all of the best songs have been sung, all of the true words spoken. The Glory that was Greece, and the Grandeur that was Rome, the romantic exuberance of Gothic, and the ordered restraint of Renaissance are so drummed into him during his years of training, and exercise so tyrannical a spell over his imagination that he loses the power of clear and logical thought, and never becomes truly creative. Free of this incubus the engineer has succeeded in being straightforward and sensible, to say the least; subject to it the man with a so-called architectural education is too often tortuous and absurd. The architect without any training in the essentials of design produces horrors as a matter of course, for the reason that sin is the result of ignorance; the architect trained in the false manner of the current schools becomes a reconstructive archæologist, handicapped by conditions with which he can deal only imperfectly, and imperfectly control. Once in a blue moon a man arises who, with all the advantages inherent in education, pierces through the past to the present, and is able to use his brain as the architects of the past used theirs--to deal simply and directly with his immediate problem. Such a man is Louis Sullivan, though it must be admitted that not always has he achieved success. That success was so marked, however, in his treatment of the problem of the tall building, and exercised subconsciously such a spell upon the minds even of his critics and detractors, that it resulted in the emancipation of this type of building from an absurd and impossible convention--the practice, common before his time, of piling order upon order, like a house of cards, or by a succession of strongly marked string courses emphasizing the horizontal dimension of a vertical edifice, thus vitiating the finest effect of which such a building is capable. The problem of the tall building, with which his predecessors dealt always with trepidation and equivocation, Mr. Sullivan approached with confidence and joy. "What," he asked himself, "is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It must be tall. The force of altitude must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a dissenting line." The Prudential (Guaranty) building in Buffalo represents the finest concrete embodiment of his idea achieved by Mr. Sullivan. It marks his emancipation from what he calls his "masonry" period, during which he tried, like so many other architects before and since, to make a steel-framed structure look as though it were nothing but a masonry wall perforated with openings--openings too many and too great not to endanger its stability. The keen blade of Mr. Sullivan's mind cut through this contradiction, and in the Prudential building he carried out the idea of a _protective casing_ so successfully that Montgomery Schuyler said of it, "I know of no steel framed building in which the metallic construction is more palpably felt through the envelope of baked clay." [Illustration: PLATE III. THE PRUDENTIAL BUILDING, BUFFALO N.Y.] The present author can speak with all humbleness of the general failure, on the part of the architectural profession, to appreciate the importance of this achievement, for he pleads guilty of day after day having passed the Prudential building, then fresh in the majesty of its soaring lines, and in the wonder of its fire-wrought casing, with eyes and admiration only for the false romanticism of the Erie County Savings Bank, and the empty bombast of the gigantic Ellicott Square. He had not at that period of his life succeeded in living down his architectural training, and as a result the most ignorant layman was in a better position to appraise the relative merits of these three so different incarnations of the building impulse than was he. Since the Prudential building there have been other tall office buildings, by other hands, truthful in the main, less rigid, less monotonous, more superficially pleasing, yet they somehow fail to impart the feeling of utter sincerity and fresh originality inspired by this building. One feels that here democracy has at last found utterance in beauty; the American spirit speaks, the spirit of the Long Denied. This rude, rectangular bulk is uncompromisingly practical and utilitarian; these rows on rows of windows, regularly spaced, and all of the same size, suggest the equality and monotony of obscure, laborious lives; the upspringing shafts of the vertical piers stand for their hopes and aspirations, and the unobtrusive, delicate ornament which covers the whole with a garment of fresh beauty is like the very texture of their dreams. The building is able to speak thus powerfully to the imagination because its creator is a poet and prophet of democracy. In his own chosen language he declares, as Whitman did in verse, his faith in the people of "these states"--"A Nation announcing itself." Others will doubtless follow who will make a richer music, commensurate with the future's richer life, but such democracy as is ours stands here proclaimed, just as such feudalism as is still ours stands proclaimed in the Erie County Bank just across the way. The massive rough stone walls of this building, its pointed towers and many dormered chateau-like roof unconsciously symbolize the attempt to impose upon the living present a moribund and alien order. Democracy is thus afflicted, and the fact must needs find architectural expression. In the field of domestic architecture these dramatic contrasts are less evident, less sharply marked. Domestic life varies little from age to age; a cottage is a cottage the world over, and some manorial mansion on the James River, built in Colonial days, remains a fitting habitation (assuming the addition of electric lights and sanitary plumbing) for one of our Captains of Industry, however little an ancient tobacco warehouse would serve him as a place of business. This fact is so well recognized that the finest type of modern country house follows, in general, this or some other equally admirable model, though it is amusing to note the millionaire's preference for a feudal castle, a French chateau, or an Italian villa of the decadence. The "man of moderate means," so called, provides himself with no difficulty with a comfortable house, undistinguished but unpretentious, which fits him like a glove. There is a piazza towards the street, a bay-window in the living room, a sleeping-porch for the children, and a box of a garage for the flivver in the bit of a back yard. For the wage earner the housing problem is not so easily nor so successfully solved. He is usually between the devil of the speculative builder and the deep sea of the predatory landlord, each intent upon taking from him the limit that the law allows and giving him as little as possible for his money. Going down the scale of indigence we find an itinerancy amounting almost to homelessness, or houses so abject that they are an insult to the very name of home. [Illustration: PLATE IV: THE ERIE COUNTY SAVINGS BANK, BUFFALO, N.Y.] It is an eloquent commentary upon our national attitude toward a most vital matter that in this feverish hustle to produce ships, airplanes, clothing and munitions on a vast scale, the housing of the workers was either overlooked entirely, or received eleventh-hour consideration, and only now, after a year of participation in the war, is it beginning to be adequately and officially dealt with--how efficiently and intelligently remains to be seen. The housing of the soldiers was another matter: that necessity was plain and urgent, and the miracle has been accomplished, but except by indirection it has contributed nothing to the permanent housing problem. Other aspects of our life which have found architectural expression fall neither in the commercial nor in the domestic category--the great hotels, for example, which partake of the nature of both, and our passenger railway terminals, which partake of the nature of neither. These latter deserve especial consideration in this connection, by reason of their important function. The railway is of the very essence of the modern, even though (with what sublime unreason) Imperial Rome is written large over New York's most magnificent portal. Think not that in an age of unfaith mankind gives up the building of temples. Temples inevitably arise where the tide of life flows strongest; for there God manifests, in however strange a guise. That tide is nowhere stronger than in the railroad, which is the arterial system of our civilization. All arteries lead to and from the heart, and thus the railroad terminus becomes the beating heart at the center of modern life. It is a true instinct therefore which prompts to the making of the terminal building a very temple, a monument to the conquest of space through the harnessing of the giant horses of electricity and steam. This conquest must be celebrated on a scale commensurate with its importance, and in obedience to this necessity the Pennsylvania station raised its proud head amid the push-cart architecture of that portion of New York in which it stands. It is not therefore open to the criticism often passed upon it, that it is too grand, but it is the wrong kind of grandeur. If there be truth in the contention that the living needs of today cannot be grafted upon the dead stump of any ancient grandeur, the futility of every attempt to accomplish this impossible will somehow, somewhere, reveal itself to the discerning eye. Let us seek out, in this building, the place of this betrayal. It is not necessarily in the main façade, though this is not a face, but a mask--and a mask can, after its kind, always be made beautiful; it is not in the nobly vaulted corridor, lined with shops--for all we know the arcades of Imperial Rome were similarly lined; nor is it in the splendid vestibule, leading into the magnificent waiting room, in which a subject of the Cæsars would have felt more perfectly at home, perhaps, than do we. But beyond this passenger concourse, where the elevators and stairways descend to the tracks, necessity demanded the construction of a great enclosure, supported only on slender columns and far-flung trusses roofed with glass. Now latticed columns, steel trusses, and wire glass are inventions of the modern world too useful to be dispensed with. Rome could not help the architect here. The mode to which he was inexorably self-committed in the rest of the building demanded massive masonry, cornices, mouldings; a tribute to Cæsar which could be paid everywhere but in this place. The architect's problem then became to reconcile two diametrically different systems. But between the west wall of the ancient Roman baths and the modern skeleton construction of the roof of the human greenhouse there is no attempt at fusion. The slender latticed columns cut unpleasantly through the granite cornices and mouldings; the first century A.D. and the twentieth are here in incongruous juxtaposition--a little thing, easily overlooked, yet how revealing! How reassuring of the fact "God is not mocked!" The New York Central terminal speaks to the eye in a modern tongue, with however French an accent. Its façade suggests a portal, reminding the beholder that a railway station is in a very literal sense a city gate placed just as appropriately in the center of the municipality as in ancient times it was placed in the circuit of the outer walls. Neither edifice will stand the acid test of Mr. Sullivan's formula, that a building is an organism and should follow the law of organisms, which decrees that the form must everywhere follow and express the function, the function determining and creating its appropriate form. Here are two eminent examples of "arranged" architecture. Before organic architecture can come into being our inchoate national life must itself become organic. Arranged architecture, of the sort we see everywhere, despite its falsity, is a true expression of the conditions which gave it birth. [Illustration: PLATE V. THE NEW YORK CENTRAL TERMINAL] The grandeur of Rome, the splendour of Paris--what just and adequate expression do they give of modern American life? Then shall we find in our great hotels, say, such expression? Truly they represent, in the phrase of Henry James, "a realized ideal" and a study of them should reveal that ideal. From such a study we can only conclude that it is life without effort or responsibility, with every physical need luxuriously gratified. But these hotels nevertheless represent democracy, it may be urged, for the reason that every one may there buy board and lodging and mercenary service if he has the price. The exceeding greatness of that price, however, makes of it a badge of nobility which converts these democratic hostelries into feudal castles, more inaccessible to the Long Denied than as though entered by a drawbridge and surrounded by a moat. We need not even glance at the churches, for the tides of our spiritual life flow no longer in full volume through their portals; neither may the colleges long detain us, for architecturally considered they give forth a confusion of tongues which has its analogue in the confusion of ideas in the collective academic head. Is our search for some sign of democracy ended, and is it vain? No, democracy exists in the secret heart of the people, all the people, but it is a thing so new, so strange, so secret and sacred--the ideal of brotherhood--that it is unmanifest yet in time and space. It is a thing born not with the Declaration of Independence, but only yesterday, with the call to a new crusade. The National Army is its cradle, and it is nurtured wherever communities unite to serve the sacred cause. Although menaced by the bloody sword of Imperialism in Europe, it perhaps stands in no less danger from the secret poison of graft and greed and treachery here at home. But it is a spiritual birth, and therefore it cannot perish, but will live to write itself on space in terms of beauty such as the world has never known. II DURING THE WAR The best thing that can be said about our immediate architectural past is that it is past, for it has contributed little of value to an architecture of democracy. During that neo-feudal period the architect prospered, having his place at the baronial table; but now poor Tom's a-cold on a war-swept heath, with food only for reflection. This is but natural; the architect, in so far as he is an artist, is a purveyor of beauty; and the abnormal conditions inevitable to a state of war are devastating to so feminine and tender a thing, even though war be the very soil from which new beauty springs. With Mars in mid-heaven how afflicted is the horoscope of all artists! The skilled hand of the musician is put to coarser uses; the eye that learned its lessons from the sunset must learn the trick of making invisible warships and great guns. Let the architect serve the war-god likewise, in any capacity that offers, confident that this troubling of the waters will bring about a new precipitation; that once the war is over, men will turn from those "old, unhappy, far-off things" to pastures beautiful and new. In whatever way the war may complicate the architect's personal problem, it should simplify and clarify his attitude toward his art. With no matter what seriousness and sincerity he may have undertaken his personal search for truth and beauty, he will come to question, as never before, both its direction and its results. He is bound to perceive, if he does not perceive already, that the war's arrestment of architecture (in all but its most utilitarian and ephemeral phases) is no great loss to the world for the reason that our architecture was uninspired, unoriginal, done without joy, without reverence, without conviction: a thing which any wind of a new spirit was bound to make appear foolish to a generation with sight rendered clairvoyant through its dedication to great and regenerative ends. He will come to perceive that between the Civil War and the crusade that is now upon us, we were under the evil spell of materialism. Now materialism is the very negation of democracy, which is a government by the _demos_, or over-soul; it is equally the negation of joy, the negation of reverence, and it is without conviction because it cannot believe even in itself. Reflecting thus, he can scarcely fail to realize that materialism, everywhere entrenched, was entrenched strongest in the camps of the rich---not the idle rich, for materialism is so terrible a taskmaster that it makes its votaries its slaves. These slaves, in turn, made a slave of the artist, a minister to their pride and pretence. His art thus lacked that "sad sincerity" which alone might have saved it in a crisis. When the storm broke militant democracy turned to the engineer, who produced buildings at record speed, by the mile, with only such architectural assistance as could be first and easiest fished up from the dragnet of the draft. In one direction only does there appear to be open water. Toward the general housing problem the architectural profession has been spurred into activity by reason of the war, and to its credit be it said, it is now thoroughly aroused. The American Institute of Architects sent a commissioner to England to study housing in its latest manifestations, and some of the ablest and most influential members of that organization have placed their services at the disposal of the government. Moreover, there is a manifest disposition, on the part of architects everywhere, to help in this matter all they can. The danger dwells in the possibility that their advice will not be heeded, their services not be fully utilized, but through chicanery, ignorance, or inanition, we will relapse into the tentative, "expensively provisional" methods which have governed the housing of workers hitherto. Even so, architects will doubtless recapture, and more than recapture, their imperiled prestige, but under what changed conditions, and with what an altered attitude toward their art and their craft! They will find that they must unlearn certain things the schools had taught them: preoccupation with the relative merits of Gothic and Classic--tweedledum and tweedledee. Furthermore, they must learn certain neglected lessons from the engineer, lessons that they will be able immeasurably to better, for although the engineer is a very monster of competence and efficiency within his limits, these are sharply marked, and to any detailed knowledge of that "beautiful necessity" which determines spatial rhythm and counterpoint he is a stranger. The ideal relation between architect and engineer is that of a happily wedded pair--strength married to beauty; in the period just passed or passing they have been as disgruntled divorcés. [Illustration: PLATE VI. PLAN OF THE RED CROSS COMMUNITY CLUB HOUSE, CAMP SHERMAN, OHIO] The author has in mind one child of such a happy union brought about by the war; the building is the Red Cross Community Club House at Camp Sherman, which, in the pursuit of his destiny, and for the furtherance of his education, he inhabited for two memorable weeks. He learned there more lessons than a few, and encountered more tangled skeins of destiny than he is ever likely to unravel. The matter has so direct a bearing, both on the subject of architecture and of democracy, that it is worth discussing at some length. This club house stands, surrounded by its tributary dormitories, on a government reservation, immediately adjacent to the camp itself, the whole constituting what is known as the Community Center. By the payment of a dollar any soldier is free to entertain his relatives and friends there, and it is open to all the soldiers at all times. Because the iron discipline of the army is relaxed as soon as the limits of the camp are overpassed, the atmosphere is favourable to social life. The building occupies its acre of ground invitingly, though exteriorly of no particular distinction. It is the interior that entitles it to consideration as a contribution to an architecture of that new-born democracy of which our army camps have been the cradle. The plan of this interior is cruciform, two hundred feet in each dimension. Built by the Red Cross of the state of Ohio, and dedicated to the larger uses of that organization, the symbolic appropriateness of this particular geometrical figure should not pass unremarked. The cross is divided into side aisles, nave, and crossing, with galleries and mezzanines so arranged as to shorten the arms of the cross in its upper stages, leaving the clear-story surrounding the crossing unimpeded and well defined. The light comes for the most part from high windows, filtering down, in tempered brightness to the floor. The bones of the structure are everywhere in evidence, and an element of its beauty, by reason of the admirably direct and logical arrangement of posts and trusses. The vertical walls are covered with plaster-board of a light buff color, converted into good sized panels by means of wooden strips finished with a thin grey stain. The structural wood work is stained in similar fashion, the iron rods, straps, and bolts being painted black. This color scheme is completed and a little enlivened by red stripes and crosses placed at appropriate intervals in the general design. The building attained its final synthesis through the collaboration of a Cleveland architect and a National Army captain of engineers. It is so single in its appeal that one does not care to inquire too closely into the part of each in the performance; both are in evidence, for an architect seldom succeeds in being so direct and simple, while an engineer seldom succeeds in being so gracious and altogether suave. Entirely aside from its æsthetic interest--based as this is on beauty of organism almost alone--the building is notable for the success with which it fulfils and co-ordinates its manifold functions: those of a dormitory, a restaurant, a ballroom, a theatre, and a lounge. The arm of the cross containing the principal entrance accommodates the office, coat room, telephones, news and cigar stand, while leaving the central nave unimpeded, so that from the door one gets the unusual effect of an interior vista two hundred feet long. The restaurant occupies the entire left transept, with a great brick fireplace at the far end. There is another fireplace in the centre of the side of the arm beyond the crossing; that part which would correspond in a cathedral to the choir and apse being given over to the uses of a reading and writing room. The right transept forms a theatre, on occasion, terminating as it does with a stage. The central floor spaces are kept everywhere free except in the restaurant, the sides and angles being filled in with leather-covered sofas, wicker and wooden chairs and tables, arranged in groups favourable to comfort and conversation. Two stairways, at the right and left of the restaurant, give access to the ample balcony and to the bedrooms, which occupy three of the four ends of the arms of the cross at this level. The appearance and atmosphere of this great interior is inspiring; particularly of an evening, when it is thronged with soldiers, and civilian guests. The strains of music, the hum of many voices, the rhythmic shuffle on the waxed floor of the feet of the dancers--these eminently social sounds mingle and lose themselves in the spaces of the roof, like the voice of many waters. Tobacco smoke ascends like incense, blue above the prevailing green-brown of the crowd, shot here and there with brighter colors from the women's hats and dresses, in the kaleidoscopic shifting of the dance. Long parallel rows of orange lights, grouped low down on the lofty pillars, reflect themselves on the polished floor, and like the patina of time on painted canvas impart to the entire animated picture an incomparable tone. For the lighting, either by accident or by inspiration, is an achievement of the happiest, an example of the friendliness of fate to him who attempts a free solution of his problem. The brackets consist merely of a cruciform arrangement of planed pine boards about each column, with the end grain painted red. On the under side of each arm of the cross is a single electric bulb enclosed within an orange-coloured shade to kill the glare. The light makes the bare wood of the fixture appear incandescent, defining its geometry in rose colour with the most beautiful effect. The club house is the centre of the social and ceremonial life of the camp, for balls, dinners, receptions, conferences, concerts without number; and it has been the scene of a military wedding--the daughter of a major-general to the grandson of an ex-president. To these events the unassuming, but pervasive beauty of the place lends a dignity new to our social life. In our army camps social life is truly democratic, as any one who has experienced it does not need to be told. Not alone have the conditions of conscription conspired to make it so, but there is a manifest _will-to-democracy_--the growing of a new flower of the spirit, sown in a community of sacrifice, to reach its maturity, perhaps, only in a community of suffering. The author may seem to have over-praised this Community Club House; with the whole country to draw from for examples it may well appear fatuous to concentrate the reader's attention, for so long, on a building in a remote part of the Middle West: cheap, temporary, and requiring only twenty-one days for its erection. But of the transvaluation of values brought about by the war, this building is an eminent example: it stands in symbolic relation to the times; it represents what may be called the architecture of Service; it is among the first of the new temples of the new democracy, dedicated to the uses of simple, rational social life. Notwithstanding that it fills a felt need, common to every community, there is nothing like it in any of our towns and cities; there are only such poor and partial substitutes as the hotel, the saloon, the dance hall, the lodge room and the club. It is scarcely conceivable that the men and women who have experienced its benefits and its beauty should not demand and have similar buildings in their own home towns. [Illustration: PLATE VII. INTERIOR OF THE CAMP SHERMAN COMMUNITY HOUSE] Beyond the oasis of the Community Club House at Camp Sherman stretch the cantonments--a Euclidian nightmare of bare boards, black roofs and ditches, making grim vistas of straight lines. This is the architecture of Need in contradistinction to the architecture of Greed, symbolized in the shop-window prettiness of those sanitary suburbs of our cities created by the real estate agent and the speculative builder. Neither contain any enduring element of beauty. But the love of beauty in one form or another exists in every human heart, and if too long or too rigorously denied it finds its own channels of fulfilment. This desire for self-expression through beauty is an important, though little remarked phenomenon of these mid-war times. At the camps it shows itself in the efforts of men of specialized tastes and talents to get together and form dramatic organizations, glee clubs, and orchestras; and more generally by the disposition of the soldiers to sing together at work and play and on the march. The renascence of poetry can be interpreted as a revulsion against the prevailing prosiness; the amateur theatre is equally a protest against the inanity and conventionality of the commercial stage; while the Community Chorus movement is an evidence of a desire to escape a narrow professionalism in music. A similar situation has arisen in the field of domestic architecture, in the form of an unorganized, but wide-spread reaction against the cheap and ugly commercialism which has dominated house construction and decoration of the more unpretentious class. This became articulate a few years ago in the large number of books and magazines devoted to house-planning, construction, decoration, furnishing, and garden-craft. The success which has attended these publications, and their marked influence, give some measure of the magnitude of this revolt. But now attention must be called to a significant, and somewhat sinister fact. The professional in these various fields of æsthetic endeavour, has shown either indifference or active hostility toward all manner of amateur efforts at self-expression. Free verse aroused the ridicule of the professors of metrics; the Little Theatre movement was solemnly banned by such pundits as Belasco and Mrs. Fiske; the Community Chorus movement has invariably met with opposition and misunderstanding from professional musicians; and with few exceptions the more influential architects have remained aloof from the effort to give skilled architectural assistance to those who cannot afford to pay them ten per cent. Thus everywhere do we discover a deadening hand laid upon the self-expression of the democratic spirit through beauty. Its enemies are of its own household; those who by nature and training should be its helpers hinder it instead. Why do they do this? Because their fastidious, æsthetic natures are outraged by a crudeness which they themselves could easily refine away if they chose; because also they recoil at a lack of conformity to existing conventions--conventions so hampering to the inner spirit of the Newness, that in order to incarnate at all it must of necessity sweep them aside. But in every field of æsthetic endeavour appears here and there a man or a woman with unclouded vision, who is able to see in the flounderings of untrained amateurs the stirrings of _demos_ from his age-long sleep. These, often forsaking paths more profitable, lend their skilled assistance, not seeking to impose the ancient outworn forms upon the Newness, but by a transfusion of consciousness permitting it to create forms of its own. Such a one, in architecture, Louis Sullivan has proved himself; in music Harry Barnhart, who evokes the very spirit of song from any random crowd. The _demos_ found voice first in the poetry of Walt Whitman who has a successor in Vachel Lindsay, the man who walked through Kansas, trading poetry for food and lodging, teaching the farmers' sons and daughters to intone his stirring odes to Pocahontas, General Booth, and Old John Brown. Isadora Duncan, Gordon Craig, Maeterlinck, Scriabine are perhaps too remote from the spirit of democracy, too tinged with old-world æstheticism, to be included in this particular category, but all are image-breakers, liberators, and have played their part in the preparation of the field for an art of democracy. To the architect falls the task, in the new dispensation, of providing the appropriate material environment for its new life. If he holds the old ideas and cherishes the old convictions current before the war he can do nothing but reproduce their forms and fashions; for architecture, in the last analysis, is only the handwriting of consciousness on space, and materialism has written there already all that it has to tell of its failure to satisfy the mind and heart of man. However beautiful old forms may seem to him they will declare their inadequacy to generations free of that mist of familiarity which now makes life obscure. If, on the other hand, submitting himself to the inspiration of the _demos_ he experiences a change of consciousness, he will become truly and newly creative. His problem, in other words, is not to interpret democracy in terms of existing idioms, be they classic or romantic, but to experience democracy in his heart and let it create and determine its new forms through him. It is not for him to _impose_, it is for him to be _imposed upon_. "The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned" says Emerson in _The Problem_, a poem, which seems particularly addressed to architects, and which every one of them would do well to learn by heart. If he is at a loss to know where to go and what to do in order to be played upon by these great forces let him direct his attention to the army and the army camps. Here the spirit of democracy is already incarnate. These soldiers, violently shaken free from their environment, stripped of all but the elemental necessities of life; facing a sinister destiny beyond a human-shark-infested ocean, are today the fortunate of earth by reason of their realization of brotherhood, not as a beautiful theory, but as a blessed fact of experience. They will come back with ideas that they cannot utter, with memories that they cannot describe; they will have dreamed dreams and seen visions, and their hearts will stir to potencies for which materialism has not even a name. The future of the country will be in their young hands. Will they re-create, from its ruins, the faithless and loveless feudalism from which the war set them free? No, they will seek only for self-expression, the expression of that aroused and indwelling spirit which shall create the new, the true democracy. And because it is a spiritual thing it will come clothed in beauty; that is, it will find its supreme expression through the forms of art. The architect who assists in the emprise of weaving this garment will be supremely blessed, but only he who has kept the vigil with prayer and fasting will be supremely qualified. III AFTER THE WAR "When the old world is sterile And the ages are effete, He will from wrecks and sediment The fairer world complete." _The World Soul_. Emerson. He whom the World Soul "forbids to despair" cannot but hope; and he who hopes tries ever to imagine that "fairer world" yearning for birth beyond this interval of blood and tears. Prophecy, to all but the anointed, is dangerous and uncertain, but even so, the author cannot forbear attempting to prevision the architecture likely to arise from the wrecks and sediment left by the war. As a basis for this forecast it is necessary first of all briefly to classify the expression of the building impulse from what may be called the psychological point of view. Broadly speaking, there are not five orders of architecture--nor fifty--but only two: _Arranged_ and _Organic_. These correspond to the two terms of that "inevitable duality" which bisects life. Talent and genius, reason and intuition, bromide and sulphite are some of the names we know them by. Arranged architecture is reasoned and artificial; produced by talent, governed by taste. Organic architecture, on the other hand, is the product of some obscure inner necessity for self-expression which is sub-conscious. It is as though Nature herself, through some human organ of her activity, had addressed herself to the service of the sons and daughters of men. Arranged architecture in its finest manifestations is the product of a pride, a knowledge, a competence, a confidence staggering to behold. It seems to say of the works of Nature, "I'll show you a trick worth two of that." For the subtlety of Nature's geometry, and for her infinite variety and unexpectedness, Arranged architecture substitutes a Euclidian system of straight lines and (for the most part) circular curves, assembled and arranged according to a definite logic of its own. It is created but not creative; it is imagined but not imaginative. Organic architecture is both creative and imaginative. It is non-Euclidian in the sense that it is higher-dimensional--that is, it suggests extension in directions and into regions where the spirit finds itself at home, but of which the senses give no report to the brain. [Illustration: PLATE VIII. IMAGINATIVE SKETCH BY HENRY P. KIRBY] To make the whole thing clearer it may be said that Arranged and Organic architecture bear much the same relation to one another that a piano bears to a violin. A piano is an instrument that does not give forth discords if one follows the rules. A violin requires absolutely an ear--an inner rectitude. It has a way of betraying the man of talent and glorifying the genius, becoming one with his body and his soul. Of course it stands to reason that there is not always a hard and fast differentiation between these two orders of architecture, but there is one sure way by which each may be recognized and known. If the function appears to have created the form, and if everywhere the form follows the function, changing as that changes, the building is Organic; if on the contrary, "the house confines the spirit," if the building presents not a face but however beautiful a mask, it is an example of Arranged architecture. The Gothic cathedrals of the "Heart of Europe"--now the place of Armageddon--represent the most perfect and powerful incarnation of the Organic spirit in architecture. After the decadence of mediaeval feudalism--synchronous with that of monasticism--the Arranged architecture of the Renaissance acquired the ascendant; this was coincident with the rise of humanism, when life became increasingly secular. During the post-Renaissance, or scientific period, of which the war probably marks the close, there has been a confusion of tongues; architecture has spoken only alien or dead languages, learned by rote. But in so far as it is anything at all, æsthetically, our architecture is Arranged, so if only by the operation of the law of opposites, or alternation, we might reasonably expect the next manifestation to be Organic. There are other and better reasons, however, for such expectancy. Organic architecture is ever a flower of the religious spirit. When the soul draws near to the surface of life, as it did in the two mystic centuries of the Middle Ages, it _organizes_ life; and architecture, along, with the other arts becomes truly creative. The informing force comes not so much _from_ man as _through_ him. After the war that spirit of brotherhood, born in the camps--as Christ was born in a manger--and bred on the battlefields and in the trenches of Europe, is likely to take on all the attributes of a new religion of humanity, prompting men to such heroisms and renunciations, exciting in them such psychic sublimations, as have characterized the great religious renewals of time past. If this happens it is bound to write itself on space in an architecture beautiful and new; one which "takes its shape and sun-color" not from the niggardly mind, but from the opulent heart. This architecture will of necessity be organic, the product not of self-assertive personalities, but the work of the "Patient Daemon" organizing the nation into a spiritual democracy. The author is aware that in this point of view there is little of the "scientific spirit"; but science fails to reckon with the soul. Science advances facing backward, so what prevision can it have of a miraculous and divinely inspired future--or for the matter of that, of any future at all? The old methods and categories will no longer answer; the orderly course of evolution has been violently interrupted by the earthquake of the war; igneous action has superseded aqueous action. The casements of the human mind look out no longer upon familiar hills and valleys, but on a stark, strange, devastated landscape, the ploughed land of some future harvest of the years. It is the end of the Age, the _Kali Yuga_--the completion of a major cycle; but all cycles follow the same sequence: after winter, Spring; and after the Iron Age, the Golden. The specific features of this organic, divinely inspired architecture of the Golden Age cannot of course be discerned by any one, any more than the manner in which the Great Mystery will present itself anew to consciousness. The most imaginative artist can imagine only in terms of the already-existent; he can speak only the language he has learned. If that language has been derived from mediaevalism, he will let his fancy soar after the manner of Henry Kirby, in his _Imaginative Sketches_; if on the contrary he has learned to think in terms of the classic vernacular, Otto Rieth's _Architectur-Skizzen_ will suggest the sort of thing that he is likely to produce. Both results will be as remote as possible from future reality, for the reason that they are so near to present reality. And yet some germs of the future must be enfolded even in the present moment. The course of wisdom is to seek them neither in the old romance nor in the new rationalism, but in the subtle and ever-changing spirit of the times. [Illustration: PLATE IX. ARCHITECTURAL SKETCH BY OTTO RIETH] The most modern note yet sounded in business, in diplomacy, in social life, is expressed by the phrase, "Live openly!" From every quarter, in regard to every manner of human activity, has come the cry, "Let in the light!" By a physical correspondence not the result of coincidence, but of the operation of an occult law, we have, in a very real sense, let in the light. In buildings of the latest type devoted to large uses, there has been a general abandonment of that "cellular system" of many partitions which produced the pepper-box exterior, in favour of great rooms serving diverse functions lit by vast areas of glass. Although an increase of efficiency has dictated and determined these changes, this breaking down of barriers between human beings and their common sharing of the light of day in fuller measure, is a symbol of the growth of brotherhood, and the search, by the soul, for spiritual light. Now if this fellowship and this quest gain volume and intensity, its physical symbols are bound to multiply and find ever more perfect forms of manifestation. So both as a practical necessity and as a symbol the most pregnant and profound, we are likely to witness in architecture the development of the House of Light, particularly as human ingenuity has made this increasingly practicable. Glass is a product still undergoing development, as are also those devices of metal for holding it in position and making the joints weather tight. The accident and fire hazard has been largely overcome by protecting the structural parts, by the use of wire glass, and by other ingenious devices. The author has been informed on good authority that shortly before the outbreak of the war a glass had been invented abroad, and made commercially practicable, which shut out the heat rays, but admitted the light. The use of this glass would overcome the last difficulty--the equalization of temperatures--and might easily result in buildings of an entirely novel type, the approach to which is seen in the "pier and grill" style of exterior. This is being adopted not only for commercial buildings, but for others of widely different function, on account of its manifest advantages. Cass Gilbert's admirable studio apartment at 200 West Fifty-Seventh Street, New York, is a building of this type. In this seeking for sunlight in our cities, we will come to live on the roofs more and more--in summer in the free air, in winter under variformed shelters of glass. This tendency is already manifesting itself in those newest hotels whose roofs are gardens, convertible into skating ponds, with glazed belvideres for eating in all weathers. Nothing but ignorance and inanition stand in the way of utilization of waste roof spaces. People have lived on the roofs in the past, often enough, and will again. [Illustration: PLATE X. RODIN STUDIOS, 200 WEST 57TH STREET, NEW YORK] By shouldering ever upward for air and light, we have too often made of the "downtown" districts cliff-bound canyons--"granite deeps opening into granite deeps." This has been the result of no inherent necessity, but of that competitive greed whose nemesis is ever to miss the very thing it seeks. By intelligent co-operation, backed by legislation, the roads and sidewalks might be made to share the sunlight with the roofs. This could be achieved in two ways: by stepping back the façades in successive stages--giving top lighting, terraces, and wonderful incidental effects of light and shade--or by adjusting the height of the buildings to the width of their interspaces, making rows of tall buildings alternate with rows of low ones, with occasional fully isolated "skyscrapers" giving variety to the sky-line. These and similar problems of city planning have been worked out theoretically with much minuteness of detail, and are known to every student of the science of cities, but very little of it all has been realized in a practical way--certainly not on this side of the water, where individual rights are held so sacred that a property owner may commit any kind of an architectural nuisance so long as he confines it to his own front yard. The strength of IS, the weakness of _should be_, conflicting interests and legislative cowardice are responsible for the highly irrational manner in which our cities have grown great. The search for spiritual light in the midst of materialism finds unconscious symbolization in a way other than this seeking for the sun. It is in the amazing development of artificial illumination. From a purely utilitarian standpoint there is almost nothing that cannot now be accomplished with light, short of making the ether itself luminiferous. The æsthetic development of this field, however, can be said to have scarcely begun. The so recent San Francisco Exposition witnessed the first successful effort of any importance to enhance the effect of architecture by artificial illumination, and to use colored light with a view to its purely pictorial value. Though certain buildings have since been illuminated with excellent effect, it remains true that the corset, chewing-gum, beer and automobile sky signs of our Great White Ways indicate the height to which our imagination has risen in utilizing this Promethean gift in any but necessary ways. Interior lighting, except negatively, has not been dealt with from the standpoint of beauty, but of efficiency; the engineer has preempted this field to the exclusion of the artist. All this is the result of the atrophy of that faculty to worship and wonder which alone induces the mood from which the creation of beauty springs. Light we regard only as a convenience "to see things by" instead of as the power and glory that it inherently is. Its intense and potent vibrations and the rainbow glory of its colour beat at the door of consciousness in vain. When we awaken to these things we shall organize light into a language of spontaneous emotion, just as from sound music was organized. It is beside the purpose of this essay to attempt to trace the evolution of this new art form, made possible by modern invention, to indicate what phases it is likely to pass through on the way to what perfections, but that it is bound to add a new glory to architecture is sure. This will come about in two ways: directly, by giving color, quality, subtlety to outdoor and indoor lighting, and indirectly by educating the eye to color values, as the ear has been educated by music; thus creating a need for more color everywhere. As light is the visible symbol of an inner radiance, so is color the sign manual of happiness, of joy. Our cities are so dun and drab in their outward aspects, by reason of the weight of care that burdens us down. We decry the happy irresponsibility of the savage, and the patient contentment of the Oriental with his lot, but both are able to achieve marvels of color in their environment beyond the compass of civilized man. The glory of mediaeval cathedral windows is a still living confutation of the belief that in those far-off times the human heart was sad. Architecture is the index of the inner life of those who produced it, and whenever it is colorful that inner life contains an inner joy. In the coming Golden Age life will be joyous, and if it is joyous, colour will come into architecture again. Our psychological state even now, alone prevents it, for we are rich in materials and methods to make such polychromy possible. In an article in a recent number of _The Architectural Record_, Mr. Leon V. Solon, writing from an entirely different point of view, divines this tendency, and expresses the opinion that color is again renascent. This tendency is so marked, and this opinion is so shared that we may look with confidence toward a color-evolution in architectural art. The question of the character of what may be called the ornamental mode of the architecture of the New Age is of all questions the most obscure. Evolution along the lines of the already existent does not help us here, for we are utterly without any ornamental mode from which a new and better might conceivably evolve. Nothing so betrays the spiritual bankruptcy of the end of the Iron Age as this. The only light on this problem which we shall find, dwells in the realm of metaphysics rather than in the world of material reality. Ornament, more than any other element of architecture, is deeply psychological, it is an externalization of an inner life. This is so true that any time-worn fragment out of the past when art was a language can usually be assigned to its place and its period, so eloquent is it of a particular people and a particular time. Could we therefore detect and understand the obscure movement of consciousness in the modern world, we might gain some clue to the language it would later find. It is clear that consciousness is moving away from its absorption in materiality because it is losing faith in materialism. Clairvoyance, psychism, the recrudescence of mysticism, of occultism--these signs of the times are straws which show which way the wind now sets, and indicate that the modern mind is beginning to find itself at home in what is called _the fourth dimension_. The phrase is used here in a different sense from that in which the mathematician uses it, but oddly enough four-dimensional geometry provides the symbols by which some of these occult and mystical ideas may be realized by the rational mind. One of the most engaging and inspiring of these ideas is that the personal self is a _projection_ on the plane of materiality of a metaphysical self, or soul, to which the personal self is related as is the shadow of an object to the object itself. Now this coincides remarkably with the idea implicit in all higher-space speculation, that the figures of solid geometry are projections on a space of three dimensions, of corresponding four-dimensional forms. All ornament is in its last analysis geometrical--sometimes directly so, as in the system developed by the Moors. Will the psychology of the new dispensation find expression through some adaptation of four-dimensional geometry? The idea is far from absurd, by reason of the decorative quality inherent in many of the regular hypersolids of four-dimensional space when projected upon solid and plane space. If this suggestion seems too fanciful, there is still recourse to the law of analogy in finding the thing we seek. Every fresh religious impulse has always developed a symbology through which its truths are expressed and handed down. These symbols, woven into the very texture of the life of the people, are embodied by them in their ornamental mode. The sculpture of a Greek temple is a picture-book of Greek religion; the ornamentation of a Gothic cathedral is a veritable bible of the Christian faith. Almost all of the most beautiful and enduring ornaments have first been sacred symbols; the swastika, the "Eye of Buddha," the "Shield of David," the wheel, the lotus, and the cross. Now that "twilight of the world" following the war perhaps will witness an _Avatara_--the coming of a World-Teacher who will rebuild on the one broad and ancient foundation that temple of Truth which the folly and ignorance of man is ever tearing down. A material counterpart of that temple will in that case afterward arise. Thus will be born the architecture of the future; and the ornament of that architecture will tell, in a new set of symbols, the story of the rejuvenation of the world. In this previsioning of architecture after the war, the author must not be understood to mean that these things will be realized _directly_ after. Architecture, from its very nature, is the most sluggish of all the arts to respond to the natural magic of the quick-moving mind--it is Caliban, not Ariel. Following the war the nation will be for a time depleted of man-power, burdened with debt, prostrate, exhausted. But in that time of reckoning will come reflection, penitence. "And I'll be wise hereafter, And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass Was I, to take this drunkard for a god, And worship this dull fool." With some such epilogue the curtain will descend on the great drama now approaching a close. It will be for the younger generations, the reincarnate souls of those who fell in battle, to inaugurate the work of giving expression, in deathless forms of art, to the vision of that "fairer world" glimpsed now only as by lightning, in a dream. [Illustration] ESSAYS ORNAMENT FROM MATHEMATICS I THE WORLD ORDER No fact is better established than that we live in an _orderly_ universe. The truth of this the world-war may for the moment, and to the near and narrow view appear to contradict, but the sweep of human history, and the stars in their courses, show an orderliness which cannot be gainsaid. Now of that order, _number_--that is, mathematics--is the more than symbol, it is the very thing itself. Whence this weltering tide of life arose, and whither it flows, we know not; but that it is governed by mathematical law all of our knowledge in every field confirms. Were it not so, knowledge itself would be impossible. It is because man is a counting animal that he is master over all the beasts of the earth. Number is the tune to which all things move, and as it were make music; it is in the pulses of the blood no less than in the starred curtain of the sky. It is a necessary concomitant alike of the sharp bargain, the chemical experiment, and the fine frenzy of the poet. Music is number made audible; architecture is number made visible; nature geometrizes not alone in her crystals, but in her most intricate arabesques. If number be indeed the universal solvent of all forms, sounds, motions, may we not make of it the basis of a new æsthetic--a loom on which to weave patterns the like of which the world has never seen? To attempt such a thing--to base art on mathematics--argues (some one is sure to say) an entire misconception of the nature and function of art. "Art is a fountain of spontaneous emotion"--what, therefore, can it have in common with the proverbially driest, least spontaneous preoccupation of the human mind? But the above definition concludes with the assertion that this emotion reaches the soul "through various channels." The transit can be effected only through some sensuous element, some language (in the largest sense), and into this the element of number and form must inevitably enter--mathematics is "there" and cannot be thought or argued away. [Illustration: PLATE XI. IMAGINARY COMPOSITION: THE PORTAL] But to make mathematics, and not the emotion which it expresses, the important thing, is not this to fall into the time-worn heresy of art for art's sake, that is, art for form's sake--art for the sake of mathematics? To this objection there is an answer, and as this answer contains the crux of the whole matter, embraces the proposition by which this thesis must stand or fall, it must be full and clear. What is it, in the last analysis, that all art which is not purely personal and episodical strives to express? Is it not the _world-order_?--the very thing that religion, philosophy, science, strive according to their different natures and methods to express? The perception of the world-order by the artist arouses an emotion to which he can give vent only in terms of number; but number is itself the most abstract expression of the world order. The form and content of art are therefore not different, but the same. A deep sense of this probably inspired Pater's famous saying that all art aspires toward the condition of music; for music, from its very nature, is the world-order uttered in terms of number, in a sense and to a degree not attained by any other art. This is not mere verbal juggling. We have suffered so long from an art-phase which exalts the personal, as opposed to the cosmic, that we have lost sight of the fact that the great arts of antiquity, preceding the Renaissance, insisted on the cosmic, or impersonal aspect, and on this alone, just as does Oriental art, even today. The secret essence, the archetypal idea of the subject is the preoccupation of the Oriental artist, as it was of the Egyptian, and of the Greek. We of the West today seek as eagerly to fix the accidental and ephemeral aspect--the shadow of a particular cloud upon a particular landscape; the smile on the face of a specific person, in a recognizable room, at a particular moment of time. Of symbolic art, of universal emotion expressing itself in terms which are universal, we have very little to show. The reason for this is first, our love for, and understanding of, the concrete and personal: it is the _world-aspect_ and not the _world-order_ which interests us; and second, the inadequacies of current forms of art expression to render our sense of the eternal secret heart of things as it presents itself to our young eyes. Confronted with this difficulty, we have shirked it, and our ambition has shrunk to the portrayal of those aspects which shuffle our poverty out of sight. It is not a poverty of technique--we are dexterous enough; nor is it a poverty of invention--we are clever enough; it is the poverty of the spiritual bankrupt trying to divert attention by a prodigal display of the smallest of small change. Reference is made here only to the arts of space; the arts of time--music, poetry, and the (written) drama--employing vehicles more flexible, have been more fortunate, though they too suffer in some degree from worshipping, instead of the god of order, the god of chance. The corrective of this is a return to first principles: principles so fundamental that they suffer no change, however new and various their illustrations. These principles are embodied in number, and one might almost say nowhere else in such perfection. Mathematics is not the dry and deadly thing that our teaching of it and the uses we put it to have made it seem. Mathematics is the handwriting on the human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life itself. Others before Pythagoras discovered this, and it is the discovery which awaits us too. To indicate the way in which mathematics might be made to yield the elements of a new æsthetic is beyond the province of this essay, being beyond the compass of its author, but he makes bold to take a single phase: ornament, and to deal with it from this point of view. The ornament now in common use has been gathered from the dust-bin of the ages. What ornamental _motif_ of any universality, worth, or importance is less than a hundred years old? We continue to use the honeysuckle, the acanthus, the fret, the egg and dart, not because they are appropriate to any use we put them to, but because they are beautiful _per se_. Why are they beautiful? It is not because they are highly conventionalized representations of natural forms which are themselves beautiful, but because they express cosmic truths. The honeysuckle and the acanthus leaf, for example, express the idea of successive impulses, mounting, attaining a maximum, and descending--expanding from some focus of force in the manner universal throughout nature. Science recognizes in the spiral an archetypal form, whether found in a whirlpool or in a nebula. A fret is a series of highly conventionalized spirals: translate it from angular to curved and we have the wave-band; isolate it and we have the volute. Egg and dart are phallic emblems, female and male; or, if you prefer, as ellipse and straight line, they are symbols of finite existence contrasted with infinity. [Figure 1.] [Illustration: Figure 1.] Suppose that we determine to divest ourselves of these and other precious inheritances, not because they have lost their beauty and meaning, but rather on account of their manifold associations with a past which the war makes suddenly more remote than slow centuries have done; suppose that we determine to supplant these symbols with others no less charged with beauty and meaning, but more directly drawn from the inexhaustible well of mathematical truth--how shall we set to work? We need not _set_ to work, because we have done that already, we are always doing it, unknowingly, and without knowing the reason why. All ornamentalists are subjective mathematicians--an amazing statement, perhaps, but one susceptible of confirmation in countless amusing ways, of which two will be shown. [Illustration: Figure 2.] Consider first your calendar--your calendar whose commonplace face, having yielded you information as to pay day, due day, and holiday, you obliterate at the end of each month without a qualm, oblivious to the fact that were your interests less sordid and personal it would speak to you of that order which pervades the universe; would make you realize something of the music of the spheres. For on that familiar checkerboard of the days are numerical arrangements which are mysterious, "magical"; each separate number is as a spider at the center of an amazing mathematical web. That is to say, every number is discovered to be half of the sum of the pairs of numbers which surround it, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally: all of the pairs add to the same sum, and the central number divides this sum by two. A graphic indication of this fact on the calendar face by means of a system of intersecting lines yields that form of classic grille dear to the heart of every tyro draughtsman. [Figure 2.] Here is an evident relation between mathematical fact and ornamental mode, whether the result of accident, or by reason of some subconscious connection between the creative and the reasoning part of the mind. To show, by means of an example other than this acrostic of the days, how the pattern-making instinct follows unconsciously in the groove traced out for it by mathematics, the attention of the reader is directed to the design of the old Colonial bed-spread shown in Figure 3. Adjacent to this, in the upper right hand corner, is a magic square of four. That is, all of the columns of figures of which it is composed: vertical, horizontal and diagonal add to the same sum: 34. An analysis of this square reveals the fact that it is made up of the figures of two different orders of counting: the ordinary order, beginning at the left hand upper corner and reading across and down in the usual way, and the reverse-ordinary, beginning at the lower right hand corner and reading across and up. The figures in the four central cells and in the four outside corner cells are discovered to belong in the first category, and the remaining figures in the second. Now if the ordinary order cells be represented by white, and the reverse ordinary by black, just such a pattern has been created as forms the decorative motif of the quilt. It may be claimed that these two examples of a relation between ornament and mathematics are accidental and therefore prove nothing, but they at least furnish a clue which the artist would be foolish not to follow up. Let him attack his problem this time directly, and see if number may not be made to yield the thing he seeks: namely, space-rhythms which are beautiful and new. We know that there is a beauty inherent in _order_, that necessity of one sort or another is the parent of beauty. Beauty in architecture is largely the result of structural necessity; beauty in ornament may spring from a necessity which is numerical. It is clear that the arrangement of numbers in a magic square is necessitous--they must be placed in a certain way in order that the summation of every column shall be the same. The problem then becomes to make that necessity reveal itself to the eye. Now most magic squares contain a _magic path_, discovered by following the numbers from cell to cell in their natural order. Because this is a necessitous line it should not surprise us that it is frequently beautiful as well. [Illustration: Figure 3.] The left hand drawing in Figure 4 represents the smallest aggregation of numbers that is capable of magic square arrangement. Each vertical, horizontal, and corner diagonal column adds up to 15, and the sum of any two opposite numbers is 10, which is twice the center number. The magic path is the endless line developed by following, free hand, the numbers in their natural order, from 1 to 9 and back to 1 again. The drawing at the right of Figure 4 is this same line translated into ornament by making an interlace of it, and filling in the larger interstices with simple floral forms. This has been executed in white plaster and made to perform the function of a ventilating grille. Now the number of magic squares is practically limitless, and while all of them do not yield magic lines of the beauty of this one, some contain even richer decorative possibilities. But there are also other ways of deriving ornament from magic squares, already hinted at in the discussion of the Colonial quilt. [Illustration: Figure 4.] [Illustration: Figure 5.] Magic squares of an even number of cells are found sometimes to consist of numbers arranged not only in combinations of the ordinary and the reverse ordinary orders of counting, but involving two others as well: the reverse of the ordinary (beginning at the upper right hand, across, and down) and the reversed inverse, (beginning at the lower left hand, across, and up). If, in such a magic square, a simple graphic symbol be substituted for the numbers belonging to each order, pattern spontaneously springs to life. Figures 5 and 6 exemplify the method, and Figures 7 and 8 the translation of some of these squares into richer patterns by elaborating the symbols while respecting their arrangement. By only a slight stretch of the imagination the beautiful pierced stone screen from Ravenna shown in Figure 9 might be conceived of as having been developed according to this method, although of course it was not so in fact. Some of the arrangements shown in Figure 6 are closely paralleled in the acoustic figures made by means of musical tones with sand, on a sheet of metal or glass. [Illustration: Figure 6.] [Illustration: Figure 7.] The celebrated Franklin square of 16 cells can be made to yield a beautiful pattern by designating some of the lines which give the summation of 2056 by different symbols, as shown in Figure 10. A free translation of this design into pattern brickwork is indicated in Figure 11. If these processes seem unduly involved and elaborate for the achievement of a simple result--like burning the house down in order to get roast pig--there are other more simple ways of deriving ornament from mathematics, for the truths of number find direct and perfect expression in the figures of geometry. The squaring of a number--the raising of it to its second power--finds graphic expression in the plane figure of the square; and the cubing of a number--the raising of it to its third power--in the solid figure of the cube. Now squares and cubes have been recognized from time immemorial as useful ornamental motifs. Other elementary geometrical figures, making concrete to the eye the truths of abstract number, may be dealt with by the designer in such a manner as to produce ornament the most varied and profuse. Moorish ceilings, Gothic window tracery, Grolier bindings, all indicate the richness of the field. [Illustration: Figure 8.] [Illustration: PLATE XII. IMAGINARY COMPOSITION. THE BALCONY] [Illustration: Figure 9.] Suppose, for example, that we attempt to deal decoratively which such simple figures as the three lowest Platonic solids--the tetrahedron, the hexahedron, and the octahedron. [Figure 12.] Their projection on a plane yields a rhythmical division of space, because of their inherent symmetry. These projections would correspond to the network of lines seen in looking through a glass paperweight of the given shape, the lines being formed by the joining of the several faces. Figure 13 represents ornamental bands developed in this manner. The dodecahedron and icosahedron, having more faces, yield more intricate patterns, and there is no limit to the variety of interesting designs obtainable by these direct and simple means. [Illustration: Figure 10.] If the author has been successful thus far in his exposition, it should be sufficiently plain that from the inexhaustible well of mathematics fresh beauty may be drawn. But what of its significance? Ornament must _mean something_; it must have some relation to the dominant ideation of the day; it must express the psychological mood. What is the psychological mood? Ours is an age of transition; we live in a changing world. On the one hand we witness the breaking up of many an old thought crystal, on the other we feel the pressure of those forces which shall create the new. What is nature's first visible creative act? The formation of a geometrical crystal. The artist should take this hint, and organize geometry into a new ornamental mode; by so doing he will prove himself to be in relation to the _anima mundi_. It is only by the establishment of such a relation that new beauty comes to birth in the world. [Illustration: Figure 11.] Ornament in its primitive manifestations is geometrical rather than naturalistic. This is in a manner strange, that the abstract and metaphysical thing should precede the concrete and sensuous. It would be natural to suppose that man would first imitate the things which surround him, but the most cursory acquaintance with primitive art shows that he is much more apt to crudely geometrize. Now it is not necessary to assume that we are to revert to the conditions of savagery in order to believe that in this matter of a sound æsthetic we must begin where art has always begun--with number and geometry. Nevertheless there is a subtly ironic view which one is justified in holding in regard to quite obvious aspects of American life, in the light of which that life appears to have rather more in common with savagery than with culture. [Illustration: Figure 12.] [Illustration: Figure 13.] The submersion of scholarship by athletics in our colleges is a case in point, the contest of muscles exciting much more interest and enthusiasm than any contest of wits. We persist in the savage habit of devouring the corpses of slain animals long after the necessity for it is past, and some even murder innocent wild creatures, giving to their ferocity the name of sport. Our women bedeck themselves with furs and feathers, the fruit of mercenary and systematic slaughter; we perform orgiastic dances to the music of horns and drums and cymbals--in short, we have the savage psychology without its vital religious instinct and its sure decorative sense for color and form. But this is of course true only of the surface and sunlit shadows of the great democratic tide. Its depths conceal every kind of subtlety and sophistication, high endeavour, and a response to beauty and wisdom of a sort far removed from the amoeba stage of development above sketched. Of this latter stage the simple figures of Euclidian plane and solid geometry--figures which any child can understand--are the appropriate symbols, but for that other more developed state of consciousness--less apparent but more important--these will not do. Something more sophisticated and recondite must be sought for if we are to have an ornamental mode capable of expressing not only the simplicity but the complexity of present-day psychology. This need not be sought for outside the field of geometry, but within it, and by an extension of the methods already described. There is an altogether modern development of the science of mathematics: the geometry of four dimensions. This represents the emancipation of the mind from the tyranny of mere appearances; the turning of consciousness in a new direction. It has therefore a high symbolical significance as typifying that movement away from materialism which is so marked a phenomenon of the times. Of course to those whose notion of the fourth dimension is akin to that of a friend of the author who described it as "a wagon-load of bung-holes," the idea of getting from it any practical advantage cannot seem anything but absurd. There is something about this form of words "the fourth dimension" which seems to produce a sort of mental-phobia in certain minds, rendering them incapable of perception or reason. Such people, because they cannot stick their cane into it contend that the fourth dimension has no mathematical or philosophical validity. As ignorance on this subject is very general, the following essay will be devoted to a consideration of the fourth dimension and its relation to a new ornamental mode. [Illustration] II THE FOURTH DIMENSION The subject of the fourth dimension is not an easy one to understand. Fortunately the artist in design does not need to penetrate far into these fascinating halls of thought in order to reap the advantage which he seeks. Nevertheless an intention of mind upon this "fairy-tale of mathematics" cannot fail to enlarge his intellectual and spiritual horizons, and develop his imagination--that finest instrument in all his chest of tools. By way of introduction to the subject Prof. James Byrnie Shaw, in an article in the _Scientific Monthly_, has this to say: Up to the period of the Reformation algebraic equations of more than the third degree were frowned upon as having no real meaning, since there is no fourth power or dimension. But about one hundred years ago this chimera became an actual existence, and today it is furnishing a new world to physics, in which mechanics may become geometry, time be co-ordinated with space, and every geometric theorem in the world is a physical theorem in the experimental world in study in the laboratory. Startling indeed it is to the scientist to be told that an artificial dream-world of the mathematician is more real than that he sees with his galvanometers, ultra-microscopes, and spectroscopes. It matters little that he replies, "Your four-dimensional world is only an analytic explanation of my phenomena," for the fact remains a fact, that in the mathematician's four-dimensional space there is a space not derived in any sense of the term as a residue of experience, however powerful a distillation of sensations or perceptions be resorted to, for it is not contained at all in the fluid that experience furnishes. It is a product of the creative power of the mathematical mind, and its objects are real in exactly the same way that the cube, the square, the circle, the sphere or the straight line. We are enabled to see with the penetrating vision of the mathematical insight that no less real and no more real are these fantastic forms of the world of relativity than those supposed to be uncreatable or indestructible in the play of the forces of nature. These "fantastic forms" alone need concern the artist. If by some potent magic he can precipitate them into the world of sensuous images so that they make music to the eye, he need not even enter into the question of their reality, but in order to achieve this transmutation he should know something, at least, of the strange laws of their being, should lend ear to a fairy-tale in which each theorem is a paradox, and each paradox a mathematical fact. He must conceive of a space of four mutually independent directions; a space, that is, having a direction at right angles to every direction that we know. We cannot point to this, we cannot picture it, but we can reason about it with a precision that is all but absolute. In such a space it would of course be possible to establish four axial lines, all intersecting at a point, and all mutually at right angles with one another. Every hyper-solid of four-dimensional space has these four axes. The regular hyper-solids (analogous to the Platonic solids of three-dimensional space) are the "fantastic forms" which will prove useful to the artist. He should learn to lure them forth along them axis lines. That is, let him build up his figures, space by space, developing them from lower spaces to higher. But since he cannot enter the fourth dimension, and build them there, nor even the third--if he confines himself to a sheet of paper--he must seek out some form of _representation_ of the higher in the lower. This is a process with which he is already acquainted, for he employs it every time he makes a perspective drawing, which is the representation of a solid on a plane. All that is required is an extension of the method: a hyper-solid can be represented in a figure of three dimensions, and this in turn can be projected on a plane. The achieved result will constitute a perspective of a perspective--the representation of a representation. This may sound obscure to the uninitiated, and it is true that the plane projection of some of the regular hyper-solids are staggeringly intricate affairs, but the author is so sure that this matter lies so well within the compass of the average non-mathematical mind that he is willing to put his confidence to a practical test. It is proposed to develop a representation of the tesseract or hyper-cube on the paper of this page, that is, on a space of two dimensions. Let us start as far back as we can: with a point. This point, a, [Figure 14] is conceived to move in a direction w, developing the line a b. This line next moves in a direction at right angles to w, namely, x, a distance equal to its length, forming the square a b c d. Now for the square to develop into a cube by a movement into the third dimension it would have to move in a direction at right angles to both w and x, that is, out of the plane of the paper--away from it altogether, either up or down. This is not possible, of course, but the third direction can be _represented_ on the plane of the paper. [Illustration: Figure 14. TWO PROJECTIONS OF THE HYPERCUBE OR TESSERACT, AND THEIR TRANSLATION INTO ORNAMENT.] Let us represent it as diagonally downward toward the right, namely, y. In the y direction, then, and at a distance equal to the length of one of the sides of the square, another square is drawn, a'b'c'd', representing the original square at the end of its movement into the third dimension; and because in that movement the bounding points of the square have traced out lines (edges), it is necessary to connect the corresponding corners of the two squares by means of lines. This completes the figure and achieves the representation of a cube on a plane by a perfectly simple and familiar process. Its six faces are easily identified by the eye, though only two of them appear as squares owing to the exigencies of representation. Now for a leap into the abyss, which won't be so terrifying, since it involves no change of method. The cube must move into the fourth dimension, developing there a hyper-cube. This is impossible, for the reason the cube would have to move out of our space altogether--three-dimensional space will not contain a hyper-cube. But neither is the cube itself contained within the plane of the paper; it is only there _represented_. The y direction had to be imagined and then arbitrarily established; we can arbitrarily establish the fourth direction in the same way. As this is at right angles to y, its indication may be diagonally downward and to the left--the direction z. As y is known to be at right angles both to w and to x, z is at right angles to all three, and we have thus established the four mutually perpendicular axes necessary to complete the figure. The cube must now move in the z direction (the fourth dimension) a distance equal to the length of one of its sides. Just as we did previously in the case of the square, we draw the cube in its new position (ABB'D'C'C) and also as before we connect each apex of the first cube with the corresponding apex of the other, because each of these points generates a line (an edge), each line a plane, and each plane a solid. This is the tesseract or hyper-cube in plane projection. It has the 16 points, 32 lines, and 8 cubes known to compose the figure. These cubes occur in pairs, and may be readily identified.[1] The tesseract as portrayed in A, Figure 14, is shown according to the conventions of oblique, or two-point perspective; it can equally be represented in a manner correspondent to parallel perspective. The parallel perspective of a cube appears as a square inside another square, with lines connecting the four vertices of the one with those of the other. The third dimension (the one beyond the plane of the paper) is here conceived of as being not beyond the boundaries of the first square, but _within_ them. We may with equal propriety conceive of the fourth dimension as a "beyond which is within." In that case we would have a rendering of the tesseract as shown in B, Figure 14: a cube within a cube, the space between the two being occupied by six truncated pyramids, each representing a cube. The large outside cube represents the original generating cube at the beginning of its motion into the fourth dimension, and the small inside cube represents it at the end of that motion. [Illustration: PLATE XIII. IMAGINARY COMPOSITION: THE AUDIENCE CHAMBER] These two projections of the tesseract upon plane space are not the only ones possible, but they are typical. Some idea of the variety of aspects may be gained by imagining how a nest of inter-related cubes (made of wire, so as to interpenetrate), combined into a single symmetrical figure of three-dimensional space, would appear from several different directions. Each view would yield new space-subdivisions, and all would be rhythmical--susceptible, therefore, of translation into ornament. C and D represent such translations of A and B. In order to fix these unfamiliar ideas more firmly in the reader's mind, let him submit himself to one more exercise of the creative imagination, and construct, by a slightly different method, a representation of a hexadecahedroid, or 16-hedroid, on a plane. This regular solid of four-dimensional space consists of sixteen cells, each a regular tetrahedron, thirty-two triangular faces, twenty-four edges and eight vertices. It is the correlative of the octahedron of three-dimensional space. First it is necessary to establish our four axes, all mutually at right angles. If we draw three lines intersecting at a point, subtending angles of 60 degrees each, it is not difficult to conceive of these lines as being at right angles with one another in three-dimensional space. The fourth axis we will assume to pass vertically through the point of intersection of the three lines, so that we see it only in cross-section, that is, as a point. It is important to remember that all of the angles made by the four axes are right angles--a thing possible only in a space of four dimensions. Because the 16-hedroid is a symmetrical hyper-solid all of its eight apexes will be equidistant from the centre of a containing hyper-sphere, whose "surface" these will intersect at symmetrically disposed points. These apexes are established in our representation by describing a circle--the plane projection of the hyper-sphere--about the central point of intersection of the axes. (Figure 15, left.) Where each of these intersects the circle an apex of the 16-hedroid will be established. From each apex it is now necessary to draw straight lines to every other, each line representing one edge of the sixteen tetrahedral cells. But because the two ends of the fourth axis are directly opposite one another, and opposite the point of sight, all of these lines fail to appear in the left hand diagram. It therefore becomes necessary to _tilt_ the figure slightly, bringing into view the fourth axis, much foreshortened, and with it, all of the lines which make up the figure. The result is that projection of the 16-hedroid shown at the right of Figure 15.[2] Here is no fortuitous arrangement of lines and areas, but the "shadow" cast by an archetypal, figure of higher space upon the plane of our materiality. It is a wonder, a mystery, staggering to the imagination, contradictory to experience, but as well entitled to a place at the high court of reason as are any of the more familiar figures with which geometry deals. Translated into ornament it produces such an all-over pattern as is shown in Figure 16 and the design which adorns the curtains at right and left of pl. XIII. There are also other interesting projections of the 16-hedroid which need not be gone into here. [Illustration: Figure 15. DIRECT VIEW AXES SHOWN BY HEAVY LINES TILTED VIEW APEXES SHOWN BY CIRCLES THE 16-HEDROID IN PLANE PROJECTION] For if the author has been successful in his exposition up to this point, it should be sufficiently plain that the geometry of four-dimensions is capable of yielding fresh and interesting ornamental motifs. In carrying his demonstration farther, and in multiplying illustrations, he would only be going over ground already covered in his book _Projective Ornament_ and in his second Scammon lecture. Of course this elaborate mechanism for producing quite obvious and even ordinary decorative motifs may appear to some readers like Goldberg's nightmare mechanics, wherein the most absurd and intricate devices are made to accomplish the most simple ends. The author is undisturbed by such criticisms. If the designs dealt with in this chapter are "obvious and even ordinary" they are so for the reason that they were chosen less with an eye to their interest and beauty than as lending themselves to development and demonstration by an orderly process which should not put too great a tax upon the patience and intelligence of the reader. Four-dimensional geometry yields numberless other patterns whose beauty and interest could not possibly be impeached--patterns beyond the compass of the cleverest designer unacquainted with projective geometry. [Illustration: Figure 16.] The great need of the ornamentalist is this or some other solid foundation. Lacking it, he has been forced to build either on the shifting sands of his own fancy, or on the wrecks and sediment of the past. Geometry provides this sure foundation. We may have to work hard and dig deep, but the results will be worth the effort, for only on such a foundation can arise a temple which is beautiful and strong. In confirmation of his general contention that the basis of all effective decoration is geometry and number, the author, in closing, desires to direct the reader's attention to Figure 17 a slightly modified rendering of the famous zodiacal ceiling of the Temple of Denderah, in Egypt. A sun and its corona have been substituted for the zodiacal signs and symbols which fill the centre of the original, for except to an Egyptologist these are meaningless. In all essentials the drawing faithfully follows the original--was traced, indeed, from a measured drawing. [Illustration: Figure 17. CEILING DECORATION FROM THE TEMPLE OF DENDERAH] Here is one of the most magnificent decorative schemes in the whole world, arranged with a feeling for balance and rhythm exceeding the power of the modern artist, and executed with a mastery beyond the compass of a modern craftsman. The fact that first forces itself upon the beholder is that the thing is so obviously mathematical in its rhythms, that to reduce it to terms of geometry and number is a matter of small difficulty. Compare the frozen music of these rhymed and linked figures with the herded, confused, and cluttered compositions of even our best decorative artists, and argument becomes unnecessary--the fact stands forth that we have lost something precious and vital out of art of which the ancients possessed the secret. It is for the restoration of these ancient verities and the discovery of new spatial rhythms--made possible by the advance of mathematical science--that the author pleads. Artists, architects, designers, instead of chewing the cud of current fashion, come into these pastures new! [Illustration] [Footnote 1: The eight cubes in A, Figure 14, are as follows: abb'd'c'c; ABB'D'C'C; abdDCA; a'b'd'D'C'A'; abb'B'A'A; cdd'D'C'C; bb'd'D'DB; aa'c'C'CA.] [Footnote 2: The sixteen cells of the hexadehahedroid are as follows: ABCD: A'B'C'D': AB'C'D': A'BCD: AB'CD: A'BC'D: ABC'D: A'B'CD': ABCD': A'B'C'D: ABC'D': A'B'CD: A'BC'D: AB'CD': A'BCD': AB'C'D.] HARNESSING THE RAINBOW Reference was made in an antecedent essay to an art of light--of mobile color--an abstract language of thought and emotion which should speak to consciousness through the eye, as music speaks through the ear. This is an art unborn, though quickening in the womb of the future. The things that reflect light have been organized æsthetically into the arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture, but light itself has never been thus organized. And yet the scientific development and control of light has reached a stage which makes this new art possible. It awaits only the advent of the creative artist. The manipulation of light is now in the hands of the illuminating engineers and its exploitation (in other than necessary ways) in the hands of the advertisers. Some results of their collaboration are seen in the sky signs of upper Broadway, in New York, and of the lake front, in Chicago. A carnival of contending vulgarities, showing no artistry other than the most puerile, these displays nevertheless yield an effect of amazing beauty. This is on account of an occult property inherent in the nature of light--_it cannot be vulgarized_. If the manipulation of light were delivered into the hands of the artist, and dedicated to noble ends, it is impossible to overestimate the augmentation of beauty that would ensue. For light is a far more potent medium than sound. The sphere of sound is the earth-sphere; the little limits of our atmosphere mark the uttermost boundaries to which sound, even the most strident can possibly prevail. But the medium of light is the ether, which links us with the most distant stars. May not this serve as a symbol of the potency of light to usher the human spirit into realms of being at the doors of which music itself shall beat in vain? Or if we compare the universe accessible to sight with that accessible to sound--the plight of the blind in contrast to that of the deaf--there is the same discrepancy; the field of the eye is immensely richer, more various and more interesting than that of the ear. The difficulty appears to consist in the inferior impressionability of the eye to its particular order of beauty. To the average man color--as color--has nothing significant to say: to him grass is green, snow is white, the sky blue; and to have his attention drawn to the fact that sometimes grass is yellow, snow blue, and the sky green, is disconcerting rather than illuminating. It is only when his retina is assaulted by some splendid sunset or sky-encircling rainbow that he is able to disassociate the idea of color from that of form and substance. Even the artist is at a disadvantage in this respect, when compared with the musician. Nothing in color knowledge and analysis analogous to the established laws of musical harmony is part of the equipment of the average artist; he plays, as it were, by ear. The scientist, on the other hand, though he may know the spectrum from end to end, and its innumerable modifications, values this "rainbow promise of the Lord" not for its own beautiful sake but as a means to other ends than those of beauty. But just as the art of music has developed the ear into a fine and sensitive instrument of appreciation, so an analogous art of light would educate the eye to nuances of color to which it is now blind. [Illustration: PLATE XIV. SONG AND LIGHT: AN APPROACH TOWARD "COLOR MUSIC"] It is interesting to speculate as to the particular form in which this new art will manifest itself. The question is perhaps already answered in the "color organ," the earliest of which was Bambridge Bishop's, exhibited at the old Barnum's Museum--before the days of electric light--and the latest A.W. Rimington's. Both of these instruments were built upon a supposed correspondence between a given scale of colors, and the musical chromatic scale; they were played from a musical score upon an organ keyboard. This is sufficiently easy and sufficiently obvious, and has been done, with varying success in one way or another, time and again, but its very ease and obviousness should give us pause. It may well be questioned whether any arbitrary and literal translation, even though practicable, of a highly complex, intensely mobile art, unfolding in time, as does music, into a correspondent light and color expression, is the best approach to a new art of mobile color. There is a deep and abiding conviction, justified by the history of æsthetics, that each art-form must progress from its own beginnings and unfold in its own unique and characteristic way. Correspondences between the arts--such a correspondence, for example, as inspired the famous saying that architecture is frozen music--reveal themselves usually only after the sister arts have attained an independent maturity. They owe their origin to that underlying unity upon which our various modes of sensuous perception act as a refracting medium, and must therefore be taken for granted. Each art, like each individual, is unique and singular; in this singularity dwells its most thrilling appeal. We are likely to miss light's crowning glory, and the rainbow's most moving message to the soul if we preoccupy ourselves too exclusively with the identities existing between music and color; it is rather their points of difference which should first be dwelt upon. Let us accordingly consider the characteristic differences between the two sense-categories to which sound and light--music and color--respectively belong. This resolves itself into a comparison between time and space. The characteristic thing about time is succession--hence the very idea of music, which is in time, involves perpetual change. The characteristic of space, on the other hand, is simultaneousness--in space alone perpetual immobility would reign. That is why architecture, which is pre-eminently the art of space, is of all the arts the most static. Light and color are essentially of space, and therefore an art of mobile colour should never lack a certain serenity and repose. A "tune" played on a color organ is only distressing. If there is a workable correspondence between the musical art and an art of mobile color, it will be found in the domain of harmony which involves the idea of simultaneity, rather than in melody, which is pure succession. This fundamental difference between time and space cannot be over-emphasized. A musical note prolonged, becomes at last scarcely tolerable; while a beautiful color, like the blue of the sky, we can enjoy all day and every day. The changing hues of a sunset, are _andante_ if referred to a musical standard, but to the eye they are _allegretto_--we would have them pass less swiftly than they do. The winking, chasing, changing lights of illuminated sky-signs are only annoying, and for the same reason. The eye longs for repose in some serene radiance or stately sequence, while the ear delights in contrast and continual change. It may be that as the eye becomes more educated it will demand more movement and complexity, but a certain stillness and serenity are of the very nature of light, as movement and passion are of the very nature of sound. Music is a seeking--"love in search of a word"; light is a finding--a "divine covenant." With attention still focussed on the differences rather than the similarities between the musical art and a new art of mobile color, we come next to the consideration of the matter of form. Now form is essentially of space: we speak about the "form" of a musical composition, but it is in a more or less figurative and metaphysical sense, not as a thing concrete and palpable, like the forms of space. It would be foolish to forego the advantage of linking up form with colour, as there is opportunity to do. Here is another golden ball to juggle with, one which no art purely in time affords. Of course it is known that musical sounds weave invisible patterns in the air, and to render these patterns perceptible to the eye may be one of the more remote and recondite achievements of our uncreated art. Meantime, though we have the whole treasury of natural forms to draw from, of these we can only properly employ such as are _abstract_. The reason for this is clear to any one who conceives of an art of mobile color, not as a moving picture show--a thing of quick-passing concrete images, to shock, to startle, or to charm--but as a rich and various language in which light, proverbially the symbol of the spirit, is made to speak, through the senses, some healing message to the soul. For such a consummation, "devoutly to be wished," natural forms--forms abounding in every kind of association with that world of materiality from which we would escape--are out of place; recourse must be had rather to abstract forms, that is, geometrical figures. And because the more remote these are from the things of sense, from knowledge and experience, the projected figures of four-dimensional geometry would lend themselves to these uses with an especial grace. Color without form is as a soul without a body; yet the body of light must be without any taint of materiality. Four-dimensional forms are as immaterial as anything that could be imagined and they could be made to serve the useful purpose of separating colors one from another, as lead lines do in old cathedral windows, than which nothing more beautiful has ever been devised. Coming now to the consideration, not of differences, but similarities, it is clear that a correspondence can be established between the colors of the spectrum and the notes of a musical scale. That is, the spectrum, considered as the analogue of a musical octave can be subdivided into twelve colors which may be representative of the musical chromatic scale of twelve semi-tones: the very word, _chromatic_, being suggestive of such a correspondence between sound and light. The red end of the spectrum would naturally relate to the low notes of the musical scale, and the violet end to the high, by reason of the relative rapidity of vibration in each case; for the octave of a musical note sets the air vibrating twice as rapidly as does the note itself, and roughly speaking, the same is true of the end colors of the spectrum with relation to the ether. But assuming that a color scale can be established which would yield a color correlative to any musical note or chord, there still remains the matter of _values_ to be dealt with. In the musical scale there is a practical equality of values: one note is as potent as another. In a color scale, on the other hand, each note (taken at its greatest intensity) has a positive value of its own, and they are all different. These values have no musical correlatives, they belong to color _per se_. Every colorist knows that the whole secret of beauty and brilliance dwells in a proper understanding and adjustment of values, and music is powerless to help him here. Let us therefore defer the discussion of this musical parallel, which is full of pitfalls, until we have made some examination into such simple emotional reactions as color can be discovered to yield. The musical art began from the emotional response to certain simple tones and combinations, and the delight of the ear in their repetition and variation. On account of our undeveloped sensitivity, the emotional reactions to color are found to be largely personal and whimsical: one person "loves" pink, another purple, or green. Color therapeutics is too new a thing to be relied upon for data, for even though colors are susceptible of classification as sedative, recuperative and stimulating, no two classifications arrived at independently would be likely to correspond. Most people appear to prefer bright, pure colors when presented to them in small areas, red and blue being the favourites. Certain data have been accumulated regarding the physiological effect and psychological value of different colors, but this order of research is in its infancy, and we shall have recourse, therefore, to theory, in the absence of any safer guide. One of the theories which may be said to have justified itself in practice in a different field is that upon which is based Delsarte's famous art of expression. It has schooled some of the finest actors in the world, and raised others from mediocrity to distinction. The Delsarte system is founded upon the idea that man is a triplicity of physical, emotional, and intellectual qualities or attributes, and that the entire body and every part thereof conforms to, and expresses this triplicity. The generative and digestive region corresponds with the physical nature, the breast with the emotional, and the head with the intellectual; "below" represents the nadir of ignorance and dejection, "above" the zenith of wisdom and spiritual power. This seems a natural, and not an arbitrary classification, having interesting confirmations and correspondencies, both in the outer world of form, and in the inner world of consciousness. Moreover, it is in accord with that theosophic scheme derived from the ancient and august wisdom of the East, which longer and better than any other has withstood the obliterating action of slow time, and is even now renascent. Let us therefore attempt to classify the colors of the spectrum according to this theory, and discover if we can how nearly such a classification is conformable to reason and experience. The red end of the spectrum, being lowest in vibratory rate, would correspond to the physical nature, proverbially more sluggish than the emotional and mental. The phrase "like a red rag to a bull," suggests a relation between the color red and the animal consciousness established by observation. The "low-brow" is the dear lover of the red necktie; the "high-brow" is he who sees violet shadows on the snow. We "see red" when we are dominated by ignoble passion. Though the color green is associated with the idea of jealousy, it is associated also with the idea of sympathy, and jealousy in the last analysis is the fear of the loss of sympathy; it belongs, at all events to the mediant, or emotional group of colors; while blue and violet are proverbially intellectual and spiritual colors, and their place in the spectrum therefore conforms to the demands of our theoretical division. Here, then, is something reasonably certain, certainly reasonable, and may serve as an hypothesis to be confirmed or confuted by subsequent research. Coming now finally to the consideration of the musical parallel, let us divide a color scale of twelve steps or semi-tones into three groups; each group, graphically portrayed, subtending one-third of the arc of a circle. The first or red group will be related to the physical nature, and will consist of purple-red, red, red-orange, and orange. The second, or green group will be related to the emotional nature, and will consist of yellow, yellow-green, green, and green-blue. The third, or blue group will be related to the intellectual and spiritual nature, and will consist of blue, blue-violet, violet and purple. The merging of purple into purple-red will then correspond to the meeting place of the highest with the lowest, "spirit" and "matter." We conceive of this meeting-place symbolically as the "heart"--the vital centre. Now "sanguine" is the appropriate name associated with the color of the blood--a color between purple and purple-red. It is logical, therefore, to regard this point in our color-scale as its tonic--"middle C"--though each color, just as in music each note, is itself the tonic of a scale of its own. Mr. Louis Wilson--the author of the above "ophthalmic color scale" makes the same affiliation between sanguine, or blood color, and middle C, led thereto by scientific reasons entirely unassociated with symbolism. He has omitted orange-yellow and violet-purple; this makes the scale conform more exactly with the diatonic scale of two tetra-chords; it also gives a greater range of purples, a color indispensable to the artist. Moreover, in the scale as it stands, each color is exactly opposite its true spectral complementary. The color scale being thus established and broadly divided, the next step is to find how well it justifies itself in practice. The most direct way would be to translate the musical chords recognized and dealt with in the science of harmony into their corresponding color combinations. For the benefit of such readers as have no knowledge of musical harmony it should be said that the entire science of harmony is based upon the _triad_, or chord of three notes, and that there are various kinds of triads: the major, the minor, the augmented, the diminished, and the altered. The major triad consists of the first note of the diatonic scale, or tonic; its third, and its fifth. The minor triad differs from the major only in that the second member is lowered a semi-tone. The augmented triad differs from the major only in that the third member is raised a semi-tone. The diminished triad differs from the minor only in that the third member is lowered a semi-tone. The altered triad is a chord different by a semi-tone from any of the above. The major triad in color is formed by taking any one of the twelve color-centers of the ophthalmic color scale as the first member of the triad; and, reading up the scale, the fifth step (each step representing a semi-tone) determines the second member, while the third member is found in the eighth step. The minor triad in color is formed by lowering the second member of the major triad one step; the augmented triad by raising the third member of the major triad one step, and the diminished triad by lowering the third member of the minor triad one step. [Illustration: Figure 18. MAJOR TRIAD, MINOR TRIAD, AUGMENTED TRIAD, DIMINISHED TRIAD] These various triads are shown graphically in Figure 18 as triangles within a circle divided into twelve equal parts, each part representing a semi-tone of the chromatic scale. It is seen at a glance that in every case each triad has one of its notes (an apex) in or immediately adjacent to a different one of the grand divisions of the colour scale hereinbefore established and described, and that the same thing would be true in any "key": that is, by any variation of the point of departure. This certainly satisfies the mind in that it suggests variety in unity, balance, completeness, and in the actual portrayal, in color, of these chords in any "key" this judgment is confirmed by the eye, provided that the colors have been thrown into proper _harmonic suppression_. By this is meant such an adjustment of relative values, or such an establishment of relative proportions as will produce the maximum of beauty of which any given combination is capable. This matter imperatively demands an æsthetic sense the most sensitive. So this "musical parallel," interesting and reasonable as it is, will not carry the color harmonist very far, and if followed too literally it is even likely to hamper him in the higher reaches of his art, for some of the musical dissonances are of great beauty in color translation. All that can safely be said in regard to the musical parallel in its present stage of development is that it simplifies and systematizes color knowledge and experiment and to a beginner it is highly educational. If we are to have color symphonies, the best are not likely to be those based on a literal translation of some musical masterpiece into color according to this or any theory, but those created by persons who are emotionally reactive to this medium, able to imagine in color, and to treat it imaginatively. The most beautiful mobile color effects yet witnessed by the author were produced on a field only five inches square, by an eminent painter quite ignorant of music; while some of the most unimpressive have been the result of a rigid adherence to the musical parallel by persons intent on cutting, with this sword, this Gordian knot. Into the subject of means and methods it is not proposed to enter, nor to attempt to answer such questions as to whether the light shall be direct or projected; whether the spectator, wrapped in darkness, shall watch the music unfold at the end of some mysterious vista, or whether his whole organism shall be played upon by powerful waves of multi-coloured light. These coupled alternatives are not mutually exclusive, any more than the idea of an orchestra is exclusive of that of a single human voice. In imagining an art of mobile color unconditioned by considerations of mechanical difficulty or of expense, ideas multiply in truly bewildering profusion. Sunsets, solar coronas, star spectra, auroras such as were never seen on sea or land; rainbows, bubbles, rippling water; flaming volcanoes, lava streams of living light--these and a hundred other enthralling and perfectly realizable effects suggest themselves. What Israfil of the future will pour on mortals this new "music of the spheres"? LOUIS SULLIVAN PROPHET OF DEMOCRACY Due tribute has been paid to Mr. Louis Sullivan as an architect in the first essay of this volume. That aspect of his genius has been critically dealt with by many, but as an author he is scarcely known. Yet there are Sibylline leaves of his, still let us hope in circulation, which have wielded a potent influence on the minds of a generation of men now passing to maturity. It is in the hope that his message may not be lost to the youth of today and of tomorrow that the present author now undertakes to summarize and interpret that message to a public to which Mr. Sullivan is indeed a name, but not a voice. That he is not a voice can be attributed neither to his lack of eloquence--for he is eloquent--nor to the indifference of the younger generation of architects which has grown up since he has ceased, in any public way, to speak. It is due rather to a curious fatality whereby his memorabilia have been confined to sheets which the winds of time have scattered--pamphlets, ephemeral magazines, trade journals--never the bound volume which alone guards the sacred flame from the gusts of evil chance. And Mr. Sullivan's is a "sacred flame," because it was kindled solely with the idea of service--a beacon to keep young men from shipwreck traversing those straits made dangerous by the Scylla of Conventionality, and the Charybdis of License. The labour his writing cost him was enormous. "I shall never again make so great a sacrifice for the younger generation," he says in a letter, "I am amazed to note how insignificant, how almost nil is the effect produced, in comparison to the cost, in vitality to me. Or perhaps it is I who am in error. Perhaps one must have reached middle age, or the Indian Summer of life, must have seen much, heard much, felt and produced much and been much in solitude to receive in reading what I gave in writing 'with hands overfull.'" This was written with reference to _Kindergarten Chats. A sketch Analysis of Contemporaneous American Architecture_, which constitutes Mr. Sullivan's most extended and characteristic preachment to the young men of his day. It appeared in 1901, in fifty-two consecutive numbers of _The Interstate Architect and Builder_, a magazine now no longer published. In it the author, as mentor, leads an imaginary disciple up and down the land, pointing out to him the "bold, upholsterrific blunders" to be found in the architecture of the day, and commenting on them in a caustic, colloquial style--large, loose, discursive--a blend of Ruskin, Carlyle and Whitman, yet all Mr. Sullivan's own. He descends, at times, almost to ribaldry, at others he rises to poetic and prophetic heights. This is all a part of his method alternately to shame and inspire his pupil to some sort of creative activity. The syllabus of Mr. Sullivan's scheme, as it existed in his mind during the writing of _Kindergarten Chats_, and outlined by him in a letter to the author is such a torch of illumination that it is quoted here entire. A young man who has "finished his education" at the architectural schools comes to me for a post-graduate course--hence a free form of dialogue. I proceed with his education rather by indirection and suggestion than by direct precept. I subject him to certain experiences and allow the impressions they make on him to infiltrate, and, as I note the effect, I gradually use a guiding hand. I supply the yeast, so to speak, and allow the ferment to work in him. This is the gist of the whole scheme. It remains then to determine, carefully, the kind of experiences to which I shall subject the lad, and in what order, or logical (and especially psychological) sequence. I begin, then, with aspects that are literal, objective, more or less cynical, and brutal, and philistine. A little at a time I introduce the subjective, the refined, the altruistic; and, by a to-and-fro increasingly intense rhythm of these two opposing themes, worked so to speak in counterpoint, I reach a preliminary climax: of brutality tempered by a longing for nobler, purer things. Hence arise a purblind revulsion and yearning in the lad's soul; the psychological moment has arrived, and I take him at once into the _country_--(Summer: The Storm). This is the first of the four out-of-door scenes, and the lad's first real experience with nature. It impresses him crudely but violently; and in the tense excitement of the tempest he is inspired to temporary eloquence; and at the close is much softened. He feels in a way but does not know that he has been a participant in one of Nature's superb dramas. (Thus do I insidiously prepare the way for the notion that creative architecture is in essence a dramatic art, and an art of eloquence; of subtle rhythmic beauty, power, and tenderness). Left alone in the country the lad becomes maudlin--a callow lover of nature--and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning to the city he melts and unbosoms--the tender shaft of the unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart--Nature's subtle spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow discussions, more or less didactic, leading to the second out-of-door scene (Autumn Glory). Here the lad does most of the talking and shows a certain lucidity and calm of mind. The discussion of Responsibility, Democracy, Education, etc., has inevitably detached the lurking spirit of pessimism. It has to be:--Into the depths and darkness we descend, and the work reaches the tragic climax in the third out-of-door scene--Winter. Now that the forces have been gathered and marshalled the true, sane movement of the work is entered upon and pushed at high tension, and with swift, copious modulations to its foreordained climax and optimistic peroration in the fourth and last out-of-door scene as portrayed in the Spring Song. The _locale_ of this closing number is the beautiful spot in the woods, on the shore of Biloxi Bay:--where I am writing this. I would suggest in passing that a considerable part of the K.C. is in rhythmic prose--some of it declamatory. I have endeavoured throughout this work to represent, or reproduce to the mind and heart of the reader the spoken word and intonation--not written language. It really should be read aloud, especially the descriptive and exalted passages. There was a movement once on the part of Mr. Sullivan's admirers to issue _Kindergarten Chats_ in book form, but he was asked to tone it down and expurgate it, a thing which he very naturally refused to do. Mr. Sullivan has always been completely alive to our cowardice when it comes to hearing the truth about ourselves, and alive to the danger which this cowardice entails, for to his imaginary pupil he says, If you wish to read the current architecture of your country, you must go at it courageously, and not pick out merely the little bits that please you. I am going to soak you with it until you are absolutely nauseated, and your faculties turn in rebellion. I may be a hard taskmaster, but I strive to be a good one. When I am through with you, you will know architecture from the ground up. You will know its virtuous reality and you will know the fake and the fraud and the humbug. I will spare nothing--for your sake. I will stir up the cesspool to its utmost depths of stench, and also the pious, hypocritical virtues of our so-called architecture--the nice, good, mealy-mouthed, suave, dexterous, diplomatic architecture, I will show you also the kind of architecture our "cultured" people believe in. And why do they believe in it? Because they do not believe in themselves. _Kindergarten Chats_ is even more pertinent and pointed today than it was some twenty years ago, when it was written. Speech that is full of truth is timeless, and therefore prophetic. Mr. Sullivan forecast some of the very evils by which we have been overtaken. He was able to do this on account of the fundamental soundness of his point of view, which finds expression in the following words: "Once you learn to look upon architecture not merely as an art more or less well, or more or less badly done, but as a _social manifestation_, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant, and obscure, unnoted phenomena become illumined." Looking, from this point of view, at the office buildings that the then newly-realized possibilities of steel construction were sending skyward along lower Broadway, in New York, Mr. Sullivan reads in them a denial of democracy. To him they signify much more than they seem to, or mean to; they are more than the betrayal of architectural ignorance and mendacity, they are symptomatic of forces undermining American life. These buildings, as they increase in number, make this city poorer, morally and spiritually; they drag it down and down into the mire. This is not American civilization; it is the rottenness of Gomorrah. This is not Democracy--it is savagery. It shows the glutton hunt for the Dollar with no thought for aught else under the sun or over the earth. It is decadence of the spirit in its most revolting form; it is rottenness of the heart and corruption of the mind. So truly does this architecture reflect the causes which have brought it into being. Such structures are _profoundly anti-social_, and as such, they must be reckoned with. These buildings are not architecture, but outlawry, and their authors criminals in the true sense of the word. And such is the architecture of lower New York--hopeless, degraded, and putrid in its pessimistic denial of our art, and of our growing civilization--its cynical contempt for all those qualities that real humans value. We have always been very glib about democracy; we have assumed that this country was a democracy because we named it so. But now that we are called upon to die for the idea, we find that we have never realized it anywhere except perhaps in our secret hearts. In the life of Abraham Lincoln, in the poetry of Walt Whitman, in the architecture of Louis Sullivan, the spirit of democracy found utterance, and to the extent that we ourselves partake of that spirit, it will find utterance also in us. Mr. Sullivan is a "prophet of democracy" not alone in his buildings but in his writings, and the prophetic note is sounded even more clearly in his _What is Architecture? A Study in the American People of Today_, than in _Kindergarten Chats_. This essay was first printed in _The American Contractor_ of January 6, 1906, and afterwards issued in brochure form. The author starts by tracing architecture to its root in the human mind: this physical thing is the manifestation of a psychological state. As a man thinks, so he is; he acts according to his thought, and if that act takes the form of a building it is an emanation of his inmost life, and reveals it. Everything is there for us to read, to interpret; and this we may do at our leisure. The building has not means of locomotion, it cannot hide itself, it cannot get away. There it is, and there it will stay--telling more truths about him who made it, than he in his fatuity imagines; revealing his mind and his heart exactly for what they are worth, not a whit more, not a whit less; telling plainly the lies he thinks; telling with almost cruel truthfulness his bad faith, his feeble, wabbly mind, his impudence, his selfish egoism, his mental irresponsibility, his apathy, his disdain for real things--until at last the building says to us: "I am no more a real building than the thing that made me is a real man!" Language like this stings and burns, but it is just such as is needful to shame us out of our comfortable apathy, to arouse us to new responsibilities, new opportunities. Mr. Sullivan, awake among the sleepers, drenches us with bucketfuls of cold, tonic, energizing truth. The poppy and mandragora of the past, of Europe, poisons us, but in this, our hour of battle, we must not be permitted to dream on. He saw, from far back, that "we, as a people, not only have betrayed each other, but have failed in that trust which the world spirit of democracy placed in our hands, as we, a new people, emerged to fill a new and spacious land." It has taken a world war to make us see the situation as he saw it, and it is to us, a militant nation, and not to the slothful civilians a decade ago, that Mr. Sullivan's stirring message seems to be addressed. The following quotation is his first crack of the whip at the architectural schools. The problem of education is to him of all things the most vital; in this essay he returns to it again and again, while of _Kindergarten Chats_ it is the very _raison d'être_. I trust that a long disquisition is not necessary in order to show that the attempt at imitation, by us, of this day, of the by-gone forms of building, is a procedure unworthy of a free people; and that the dictum of the schools, that Architecture is finished and done, is a suggestion humiliating to every active brain, and therefore, in fact, a puerility and a falsehood when weighed in the scales of truly democratic thought. Such dictum gives the lie in arrogant fashion, to healthful human experience. It says, in a word: the American people are not fit for democracy. He finds the schools saturated with superstitions which are the survivals of the scholasticism of past centuries--feudal institutions, in effect, inimical to his idea of the true spirit of democratic education. This he conceives of as a searching-out, liberating, and developing the splendid but obscured powers of the average man, and particularly those of children. "It is disquieting to note," he says, "that the system of education on which we lavish funds with such generous, even prodigal, hand, falls short of fulfilling its true democratic function; and that particularly in the so-called higher branches its tendency appears daily more reactionary, more feudal. It is not an agreeable reflection that so many of our university graduates lack the trained ability to see clearly, and to think clearly, concisely, constructively; that there is perhaps more showing of cynicism than good faith, seemingly more distrust of men than confidence in them, and, withal, no consummate ability to interpret things." In contrast to the schoolman he sketches the psychology of the active-minded but "uneducated" man, with sympathy and understanding, the man who is courageously seeking a way with little to guide and help him. Is it not the part of wisdom to cheer, to encourage such a mind, rather than dishearten it with ridicule? To say to it: Learn that the mind works best when allowed to work naturally; learn to do what your problem suggests when you have reduced it to its simplest terms; you will thus find that all problems, however complex, take on a simplicity you had not dreamed of; accept this simplicity boldly, and with confidence, do not lose your nerve and run away from it, or you are lost, for you are here at the point men so heedlessly call genius--as though it were necessarily rare; for you are here at the point no living brain can surpass in essence, the point all truly great minds seek--the point of vital simplicity--the point of view which so illuminates the mind that the art of expression becomes spontaneous, powerful, and unerring, and achievement a certainty. So, if you seek and express the best that is in yourself, you must search out the best that is in your people; for they are your problem, and you are indissolubly a part of them. It is for you to affirm that which they really wish to affirm, namely, the best that is in them, and they as truly wish you to express the best that is in yourself. If the people seem to have but little faith it is because they have been tricked so long; they are weary of dishonesty, more weary than they know, much more weary than you know, and in their hearts they seek honest and fearless men, men simple and clear in mind, loyal to their own manhood and to the people. The American people are now in a stupor; be on hand at the awakening. Next he pays his respects to current architectural criticism--a straining at gnats and a swallowing of camels, by minds "benumbed by culture," and hearts made faint by the tyranny of precedent. He complains that they make no distinction between _was_ and _is_, too readily assuming that all that is left us moderns is the humble privilege to select, copy and adapt. The current mannerisms of Architectural criticism must often seem trivial. For of what avail is it to say that this is too small, that too large, this too thick, and that too thin, or to quote this, that, or the other precedent, when the real question may be: Is not the entire design a mean evasion? Why magnify this, that, or the other little thing, if the entire scheme of thinking that the building stands for is false, and puts a mask upon the people, who want true buildings, but do not know how to get them so long as Architects betray them with Architectural phrases? And so he goes on with his Jeremiad: a prophet of despair, do you say? No, he seeks to destroy only that falsity which would confine the living spirit. Earlier and more clearly than we, he discerned the menace to our civilization of the unrestricted play of the masculine forces--powerful, ruthless, disintegrating--the head dominating the heart. It has taken the surgery of war to open our eyes, and behold the spectacle of the entire German nation which by an intellectual process appears to have killed out compassion, enthroning _Schrecklichkeit_. In the heart alone dwells hope of salvation. "For he who knows even a genuinely little of Mankind knows this truth: the heart is greater than the head. For in the heart is Desire; and from it come forth Courage and Magnanimity." You have not thought deeply enough to know that the heart in you is the woman in man. You have derided your femininity, where you have suspected it; whereas, you should have known its power, cherished and utilized it, for it is the hidden well-spring of Intuition and Imagination. What can the brain accomplish without these two? They are the man's two inner eyes; without them he is stone blind. For the mind sets forth their powers both together. One carries the light, the other searches; and between them they find treasures. These they bring to the brain, which first elaborates them, then says to the will, "Do"--and Action follows. Poetically considered, as far as the huge, disordered resultant mass of your Architecture is concerned, Intuition and Imagination have not gone forth to illuminate and search the hearts of the people. Thus are its works stone blind. It is the absence of poetry and beauty which makes our architecture so depressing to the spirits. "Poetry as a living thing," says Mr. Sullivan, "stands for the most telling quality that a man can impart to his thoughts. Judged by this test your buildings are dreary, empty places." Artists in words, like Lafcadio Hearn and Henry James, are able to make articulate the sadness which our cities inspire, but it is a blight which lies heavy on us all. Theodore Dreiser says, in _Sister Carrie_--a book with so much bitter truth in it that it was suppressed by the original publishers: Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on the sombre garb of grey, wrapped in which it goes about its labors during the long winter. Its endless buildings look grey, its sky and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the general solemnity of color. There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men. The excuse that we are too young a people to have developed an architecture instinct with that natural poetry which so charms us in the art of other countries and other times, Mr. Sullivan disposes of in characteristic fashion. To the plea that "We are too young to consider these accomplishments. We have been so busy with our material development that we have not found time to consider them," he makes answer as follows: Know, then, to begin with, they are not accomplishments but necessaries. And, to end with, you are old enough, and have found the time to succeed in nearly making a fine art of--Betrayal, and a science of--Graft. Know that you are as old as the race. That each man among you had in him the accumulated power of the race, ready at hand for use, in the right way, when he shall conclude it better to think straight and hence act straight rather than, as now, to act crooked and pretend to be straight. Know that the test, plain, simple _honesty_ (and you all know, every man of you knows, exactly what that means) is always at your hand. Know that as all complex manifestations have a simple basis of origin, so the vast complexity of your national unrest, ill health, inability to think clearly and accurately concerning simple things, really vital things, is easily traceable to the single, actual, active cause--Dishonesty; and that this points with unescapable logic and in just measure to each individual man! The remedy;--_individual honesty_. To the objection that this is too simple a solution, Mr. Sullivan retorts that all great solutions are simple, that the basic things of the universe are those which the heart of a child might comprehend. "Honesty stands in the universe of Human Thought and Action, as its very Centre of Gravity, and is our human mask-word behind which abides all the power of Nature's Integrity, the profoundest _fact_ which modern thinking has persuaded Life to reveal." If, on the other hand, the reader complains, "All this is above our heads," Mr. Sullivan is equally ready with an answer: No, it is not. _It is close beside your hand!_ and therein lies its power. Again you say, "How can honesty be enforced?" It cannot be enforced! "Then how will the remedy go into effect?" It cannot _go_ into effect. It can only come into effect. "Then how can it come?" Ask Nature. "And what will Nature say?" Nature is always saying: "I centre at each man, woman and child. I knock at the door of each heart, and I wait. I wait in patience--ready to enter with my gifts." "And is that all that Nature says?" That is all. "Then how shall we receive Nature?" By opening wide your minds! For your greatest crime against yourselves is that you have locked the door and thrown away the key! Thus, by a long detour, Mr. Sullivan returns to his initial proposition, that the falsity of our architecture can be corrected only by integrity of thought. "Thought is the fine and powerful instrument. Therefore, _have thought for the integrity of your own thought_." Naturally, then, as your thoughts thus change, your growing architecture will change. Its falsity will depart; its reality will gradually appear. For the integrity of your thought as a People, will then have penetrated the minds of your architects. Then, too, _as your basic thought changes, will emerge a philosophy, a poetry, and an art of expression in all things; for you will have learned that a characteristic philosophy, poetry and art of expression are vital to the healthful growth and development of a democratic people_. Some readers may complain that these are after all only glittering generalities, of no practical use in solving the specific problems with which every architect is confronted. On the contrary they are fundamental verities of incalculable benefit to every sincere artist. Shallowness is the great vice of democracy; it is surface without depth, a welter of concrete detail in which the mind easily loses those great, underlying abstractions from which alone great art can spring. These, in this essay, Mr. Sullivan helps us to recapture, and inspires us to employ. He would win us from our insincerities, our trivialities, and awaken our enormous latent, unused power. He says: Awaken it. Use it. Use it for the common good. Begin now! For it is as true today as when one of your wise men said it:-- "The way to resume is to resume!" COLOR AND CERAMICS The production of ceramics--perhaps the oldest of all the useful arts practised by man; an art with a magnificent history--seems to be entering upon a new era of development. It is more alive today, more generally, more skilfully, though not more _artfully_ practised than ever before. It should therefore be of interest to all lovers of architecture, in view of the increasing importance of ceramics in building, to consider the ways in which these materials may best be used. Looking at the matter in the broadest possible way, it may be said that the building impulse throughout the ages has expressed itself in two fundamentally different types of structure: that in which the architecture--and even the ornament--is one with the engineering; and that in which the two elements are separable, not in thought alone, but in fact. For brevity let us name that manner of building in which the architecture is the construction, _Inherent_ architecture, and that manner in which the two are separable _Incrusted_ architecture. To the first class belong the architectures of Egypt, Greece, and Gothic architecture as practised in the north of Europe; to the second belong Roman architecture of the splendid period, Moorish architecture, and Italian Gothic, so called. In the first class the bones of the building were also its flesh; in the second bones and flesh were in a manner separable, as is proven by the fact that they were separately considered, separately fashioned. Ruined Karnak, the ruined Parthenon, wrecked Rheims, show ornament so integral a part of the fabric--etched so deep--that what has survived of the one has survived also of the other; while the ruined Baths of Caracalla the uncompleted church of S. Petronio in Bologna, and many a stark mosque on many a sandy desert show only bare skeletons of whose completed glory we can only guess. In them the fabric was a framework for the display of the lapidary or the ceramic art--a garment destroyed, rent, or tattered by time and chance, leaving the bones still strong, but bare. This classification of architecture into Inherent and Incrusted is not to be confused with the discrimination between architecture that is _Arranged_, and architecture that is _Organic_, a classification which is based on psychology--like the difference between the business man and the poet: talent and genius--whereas the classification which the reader is asked now to consider is based rather on the matter of expediency in the use of materials. Let us draw no invidious comparisons between Inherent and Incrusted architecture, but regard each as the adequate expression of an ideal type of beauty; the one masculine, since in the male figure the osseous framework is more easily discernible; the other feminine, because more concealed and overlaid with a cellular tissue of shining, precious materials, on which the disruptive forces in man and nature are more free to act. It is scarcely necessary to state that it is with Incrusted architecture that we are alone concerned in this discussion, for to this class almost all modern buildings perforce belong. This is by reason of a necessity dictated by the materials that we employ, and by our methods of construction. All modern buildings follow practically one method of construction: a bony framework of steel--or of concrete reinforced by steel--filled in and subdivided by concrete, brick, hollow fire-clay, or some of its substitutes. To a construction of this kind some sort of an outer encasement is not only æsthetically desirable, but practically necessary. It usually takes the form of stone, face-brick, terra-cotta, tile, stucco, or some combination of two or more of these materials. Of the two types of architecture the Incrusted type is therefore imposed by structural necessity. The enormous importance of ceramics in its relation to architecture thus becomes apparent. They minister to an architectural need instead of gratifying an architectural whim. Ours is a period of Incrusted architecture--one which demands the encasement, rather than the exposure of structure, and therefore logically admits of the enrichment of surfaces by means of "veneers" of materials more precious and beautiful than those employed in the structure, which becomes, as it were, the canvas of the picture, and not the picture itself. For these purposes there are no materials more apt, more adaptable, more enduring, richer in potentialities of beauty than the products of ceramic art. They are easily and inexpensively produced of any desired shape, color, texture; their hard, dense surface resists the action of the elements, is not easily soiled, and is readily cleaned; being fashioned by fire they are fire resistant. So much then for the practical demands, in modern architecture, met by the products of ceramic art. The æsthetic demand is not less admirably met--or rather _might_ be. When, in the sixteenth century, the Renaissance spread from south to north, color was practically eliminated from architecture. The Egyptians had had it, hot and bright as the sun on the desert; we know that the Greeks made their Parian marble glow in rainbow tints; Moorish architecture was nothing if not colorful, and the Venice Ruskin loved was fairly iridescent--a thing of fire-opal and pearl. In Italian Renaissance architecture up to its latest phase, the color element was always present; but it was snuffed out under the leaden colored northern skies. Paris is grey, London is brown, New York is white, and Chicago the color of cinders. We have only to compare them to yellow Rome, red Siena, and pearl-tinted Venice, to realize how much we have lost in the elimination of color from architecture. We are coming to realize it. Color played an important part in the Pan-American Exposition, and again in the San Francisco Exposition, where, wedded to light, it became the dominant note of the whole architectural concert. Now these great expositions in which the architects and artists are given a free hand, are in the nature of preliminary studies in which these functionaries sketch in transitory form the things they desire to do in more permanent form. They are forecasts of the future, a future which in certain quarters is already beginning to realize itself. It is therefore probable that architectural art will become increasingly colorful. The author remembers the day and the hour when this became his personal conviction--his personal desire. It happened years ago in the Albright Gallery in Buffalo--a building then newly completed, of a severely classic type. In the central hall was a single doorway, whose white marble architrave had been stained with different colored pigments by Francis Bacon; after the manner of the Greeks. The effect was so charming, and made the rest of the place seem by contrast so cold and dun, that the author came then and there to the conclusion that architecture without polychromy was architecture incomplete. Mr. Bacon spent three years in Asia Minor, and elsewhere, studying the remains of Greek architecture, and he found and brought home a fragment of an antefix from the temple of Assos, in which the applied color was still pure and strong. The Greeks were a joyous people. When joy comes back into life, color will come back into architecture. Ceramic products are ideal as a means to this end. The Greeks themselves recognized their value for they used them widely and wisely: it has been discovered that they even attached bands of colored terra-cotta to the marble mouldings of their temples. How different must have been such a temple's real appearance from that imagined by the Classical Revivalists, whose tradition of the inviolable cold Parian purity of Greek architecture has persisted, even against archæological evidence to the contrary, up to the present day. In one way we have an advantage over the Greek, if we only had the wit to profit by it. His palette, like his musical scale, was more limited than ours. Nearly the whole gamut of the spectrum is now available to the architect who wishes to employ ceramics. The colors do not change or fade, and possess a beautiful quality. Our craftsmen and manufacturers of face-brick, terra-cotta, and colored tile, after much costly experimentation, have succeeded in producing ceramics of a high order of excellence and intrinsic beauty; they can do practically anything demanded of them; but from that quarter where they should reap the greatest commercial advantage--the field of architecture--there is all too little demand. The architect who should lead, teach and dictate in this field, is often through ignorance obliged to learn and follow instead. This has led to an ignominious situation--ignominious, that is, to the architect. He has come to require of the manufacturer--when he requires anything at all--assistance in the very matter in which he should assist: the determination of color design. It is no wonder that the results are often bad, and therefore discouraging. The manufacturers of ceramics welcome co-operation and assistance on the part of the architect with an eagerness which is almost pathetic, on those rare occasions when assistance is offered. But the architect is not really to blame: the reason for his failure lies deep in his general predicament of having to know a little of everything, and do a great deal more than he can possibly do well. To cope with this, if his practice warrants the expenditure, he surrounds himself with specialists in various fields, and assigns various departments of his work to them. He cannot be expected to have on his staff a specialist in ceramics, nor can he, with all his manifold activities, be expected to become such a specialist himself. As a result, he is usually content to let color problems alone, for they are just another complication of his already too complicated life; or he refers them to some one whom he thinks ought to know--a manufacturer's designer--and approves almost anything submitted. Of course the ideal architect would have time for every problem, and solve it supremely well; but the real architect is all too human: there are depressions on his cranium where bumps ought to be; moreover, he wants a little time left to energize in other directions than in the practice of his craft. One of the functions of architecture is to reveal the inherent qualities and beauties of different materials, by their appropriate use and tasteful display. An onyx staircase on the one hand, and a portland cement high altar on the other, alike violate this function of architecture; they transgress that beautiful necessity which decrees that precious materials should serve precious uses and common materials should serve utilitarian ends. Now color is a precious thing, and its highest beauties can be brought out only by contrast with broad neutral tinted spaces. The interior walls of a mediaeval cathedral never competed with its windows, and by the same token, a riot of polychromy all over the side of a building is not as effective, even from a chromatic point of view, as though it were confined, say, to an entrance and a frieze. Gilbert's witty phrase is applicable here: "Where everybody's somebody, nobody's anybody." Let us build our walls, then, of stone, or brick, or stucco,--for their flat surfaces and neutral tints conduce to that repose so essential to good architectural effect: but let us not rest content with this, but grant to the eye the delight and contentment which it craves, by color and pattern placed at those points to which it is desirable to attract attention, for they serve the same æsthetic purpose as a tiara on the brow of beauty, or a ring on a delicate white hand. But just as jewelry is best when it is most individual, so the ornament of a building should be in keeping with its general character and complexion. A color scheme should not be chosen at random, but dictated by the prevailing tone and texture of the wall surfaces, with which it should harmonize as inevitably as the blossom of a bush with its prevailing tone of stems and foliage. In a building this prevailing tone will inevitably be either cold or warm, and the color scheme just as inevitably should be either cold or warm; that is, there should be a preponderance of cold colors over warm, or vice versa. Otherwise the eye will suffer just that order of uneasiness which comes from the contemplation of two equal masses, whereas it experiences satisfaction in proportionate unequals. Nothing will take the place of an instinctive colour-sense, but even that needs the training of experience, if the field be new, and a few general principles of all but universal application will not be amiss. First of all it should be remembered that the intensity of color should be carefully adjusted to its area. It is dangerous to try to use high, pure colors, unrelieved and uncontrasted, in large masses, but the brightest, strongest colors may be used with safety in units of sufficiently restricted size. For harmony, as well as for richness, the law of complementaries, in its most general application, is the safest of all guides, but it must be followed with fine discrimination. Complementary colors are like married pairs, if they find the right adjustment with one another they are happy--that is, there is an effect of beauty--but lacking such adjustment they are worse off together than apart. Every artist who experiments in color soon finds out for himself that instead of using two colors directly complementary, it is better to "split" one of them, that is, use instead of one of them two others, which combined will yield the color in question. For example, the color complementary to red is green-blue. Now green-blue is equidistant between yellow-green and blue-violet, so if for red and blue-green; red, yellow-green and blue-violet be substituted the combination loses its obviousness and a certain harshness without losing anything of its brilliance, or without departing from the optical law involved. Such a combination corresponds to a diminished triad in music. Another important consideration with regard to color as employed by the architect dwells in those optical changes effected by distance and position: the relative visibility of different colors and combinations of colors as the spectator recedes from them, and the environmental changes which colors undergo--in bright sunlight, in shadow, against the sky, and with relation to backgrounds of different sorts. The effect of distance is to make colors merge into one another, to lower the values, but not all equally. Yellow loses itself first, tending toward white. The effect of distance, in general, is to disintegrate and decompose, thus giving "vibration" as it is called. A knowledge of these and kindred facts will save the architect from many disappointments and enable him to obtain wonderful chromatic effects by simple means. Many architects unused to color problems design their ornament with very little thought about the colors which they propose to employ, making it an after-consideration; but the two things should be considered synchronously for the best final effect. There is a cryptic saying that "color is at right angles to form," that is, color is capable of making surfaces advance toward or recede from the eye, just as modelling does; and for this reason, if color is used, a great deal of modelling may be dispensed with. If a receding color is used on a recessed plane, it deepens that plane unduly; while on the other hand if a color which refuses to recede--like yellow for example--is used where depth is wanted, the receding plane and the approaching color neutralize one another, resulting in an effect of flatness not intended. The tyro should not complicate his problem by combining color with high relief modelling, bringing inevitably in the element of light and shade. He should leave that for older hands and concern himself rather with flat or nearly flat surfaces, using his modelling much as the worker in cloisonné uses his little rims of brass--to confine and define each color within its own allotted area. Then, as he gains experience, he may gradually enrich his pattern by the addition of the element of light and shade, should he so decide. Now as to certain general considerations in relation to the appropriate and logical use of ceramics in the construction and adornment of buildings, exterior and interior. In our northern latitudes care should be taken that ceramics are not used in places and in ways where the accumulation of snow and ice render the joints subject to alternate freezing and thawing, for in such case, unless the joints are protected with metal, the units will work loose in time. On vertical surfaces such protection is not necessary; the use of ceramics should therefore be confined for the most part to such surfaces: for friezes, panels, door and window architraves, and the like. When it is desirable for æsthetic reasons to tie a series of windows together vertically by means of some "fill" of a material different from that of the body of the wall, ceramics lend themselves admirably to the purpose--better than wood, which rots; than iron, which rusts; than bronze, which turns black; and than marble, which soon loses its color and texture in exposed situations of this sort. On the interior of buildings, the most universal use of ceramics is, of course, for floors, and with the non-slip devices of various sorts which have come into the market, they are no less good for stairs. There is nothing better for wainscoting, and in fact for any surface whatsoever subject to soil and wear. These materials combine permanent protection and permanent decoration. But fired by the zeal of the convert the use of ceramics may be overdone. One easily recalls entire rooms of this material, floors, walls, ceilings, which are less successful than as though a variety of materials had been employed. It is just such variety--each material treated in a characteristic, and therefore different way--that gives charm to so many foreign churches and cathedrals: walls of stone, floors of marble, choir-stalls of carved wood, and rood-screen of metal: it is the difference between an orchestra of various instruments and a mandolin orchestra or a saxaphone sextette. Ceramics should never invade the domain of the plasterer, the mural painter, the cabinet maker. Do not let us, in our zeal for ceramics, be like Bottom the weaver, eager to play every part. Ceramics have, as regards architecture, a distinct and honorable function. This function should be recognized, taken advantage of, but never overpassed. They offer opportunities large but not limitless. They constitute one instrument of the orchestra of which the architect is the conductor, an instrument beautiful in the hands of a master, and doubly beautiful in concert and contrast with those other materials whose harmonious ensemble makes that music in three dimensions: architectural art. SYMBOLS AND SACRAMENTS Architecture is the concrete presentment in space of the soul of a people. If that soul be petty and sordid--"stirred like a child by little things"--no great architecture is possible because great architecture can image only greatness. Before any worthy architecture can arise in the modern world the soul must be aroused. The cannons of Europe are bringing about this awakening. The world--the world of thought and emotion from whence flow acts and events--is no longer decrepit, but like Swedenborg's angels it is advancing toward the springtide of its youth: down the ringing grooves of change "we sweep into the younger day." After the war we are likely to witness an art evolution which will not be restricted to statues and pictures and insincere essays in dry-as-dust architectural styles, but one which will permeate the whole social fabric, and make it palpitate with the rhythm of a younger, a more abundant life. Beauty and mystery will again make their dwelling among men; the Voiceless will speak in music, and the Formless will spin rhythmic patterns on the loom of space. We shall seek and find a new language of symbols to express the joy of the soul, freed from the thrall of an iron age of materialism, and fronting the unimaginable splendors of the spiritual life. [Illustration: PLATE XV. SYMBOL OF RESURRECTION] For every æsthetic awakening is the result of a spiritual awakening of some sort. Every great religious movement found an art expression eloquent of it. When religion languished, such things as Versailles and the Paris Opera House were possible, but not such things as the Parthenon, or Notre Dame. The temples of Egypt were built for the celebration of the rites of the religion of Egypt; so also in the case of Greece. Roman architecture was more widely secular, but Rome's noblest monument, the Pantheon, was a religious edifice. The Moors, inflamed with religious ardor, swept across Europe, blazing their trail with mosques and palaces conceived seemingly in some ecstatic state of dream. The Renaissance, tainted though it was by worldliness, found still its inspiration in sacred themes, and recorded its beginning and its end in two mighty religious monuments: Brunelleschi's and Michael Angelo's domical churches, "wrought in a sad sincerity" by deeply religious men. Gothic art is a synonym for mediaeval Christianity; while in the Orient art is scarcely secular at all, but a symbolical language framed and employed for the expression of spiritual ideas. This law, that spirituality and not materialism distils the precious attar of great art, is permanently true and perennially applicable, for laws of this order do not change from age to age, however various their manifestation. The inference is plain: until we become a religious people great architecture is far from us. We are becoming religious in that broad sense in which churches and creeds, forms and ceremonies, play little part. Ours is the search of the heart for something greater than itself which is still itself; it is the religion of brotherhood, whose creed is love, whose ritual is service. This transformed and transforming religion of the West, the tardy fruit of the teachings of Christ, now secretly active in the hearts of men, will receive enrichment from many sources. Science will reveal the manner in which the spirit weaves its seven-fold veil of illusion; nature, freshly sensed, will yield new symbols which art will organize into a language; out of the experience of the soul will grow new rituals and observances. But one precious tincture of this new religion our civilization and our past cannot supply; it is the heritage of Asia, cherished in her brooding bosom for uncounted centuries, until, by the operation of the law of cycles, the time should come for the giving of it to the West. This secret is Yoga, the method of self-development whereby the seeker for union is enabled to perceive the shining of the Inward Light. This is achieved by daily discipline in stilling the mind and directing the consciousness inward instead of outward. The Self is within, and the mind, which is normally centrifugal, must first be arrested, controlled, and then turned back upon itself, and held with perfect steadiness. All this is naively expressed in the Upanishads in the passage, "The Self-existent pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn forward, not backward into himself. Some wise man, however, with eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the Self behind." This stilling of the mind, its subjugation and control whereby it may be concentrated on anything at will, is particularly hard for persons of our race and training, a race the natural direction of whose consciousness is strongly outward, a training in which the practice of introspective meditation finds no place. Yoga--that "union" which brings inward vision, the contribution of the East to the spiritual life of the West--will bring profound changes into the art of the West, since art springs from consciousness. The consciousness of the West now concerns itself with the visible world almost exclusively, and Western art is therefore characterized by an almost slavish fidelity to the ephemeral appearances of things--the record of particular moods and moments. The consciousness of the East on the other hand, is subjective, introspective. Its art accordingly concerns itself with eternal aspects, with a world of archetypal ideas in which things exist not for their own sake, but as symbols of supernal things. The Oriental artist avoids as far as possible trivial and individual rhythms, seeking always the fundamental rhythm of the larger, deeper life. Now this quality so earnestly sought and so highly prized in Oriental art, is the very thing which our art and our architecture most conspicuously lack. To the eye sensitive to rhythm, our essays in these fields appear awkward and unconvincing, lacking a certain _inevitability_. We must restore to art that first great canon of Chinese æsthetics, "_Rhythmic vitality,_ or the life movement of the spirit through the rhythm of things." It cannot be interjected from the outside, but must be inwardly realized by the "stilling" of the mind above described. Art cannot dispense with symbolism; as the letters on this page convey thoughts to the mind, so do the things of this world, organized into a language of symbols, speak to the soul through art. But in the building of our towers of Babel, again mankind is stricken with a confusion of tongues. Art has no _common language;_ its symbols are no longer valid, or are no longer understood. This is a condition for which materialism has no remedy, for the reason that materialism sees always the pattern but never that which the pattern represents. We must become _spiritually illumined_ before we can read nature truly, and re-create, from such a reading, fresh and universal symbols for art. This is a task beyond the power of our sad generation, enchained by negative thinking, overshadowed by war, but we can at least glimpse the nature of the reaction between the mystic consciousness and the things of this world which will produce a new language of symbols. The mystic consciousness looks upon nature as an arras embroidered over with symbols of the things it conceals from view. We are ourselves symbols, dwelling in a world of symbols--a world many times removed from that ultimate reality to which all things bear figurative witness; the commonest thing has yet some mystic meaning, and ugliness and vulgarity exist only in the unillumined mind. What mystic meaning, it may be asked, is contained in such things as a brick, a house, a hat, a pair of shoes? A brick is the ultimate atom of a building; a house is the larger body which man makes for his uses, just as the Self has built its habitation of flesh and bones; hat and shoes are felt and leather insulators with which we seek to cut ourselves off from the currents which flow through earth and air from God. It may be objected that these answers only substitute for the lesser symbol a greater, but this is inevitable: if for the greater symbol were named one still more abstract and inclusive, the ultimate verity would be as far from affirmation as before. There is nothing of which the human mind can conceive that is not a symbol of something greater and higher than itself. The dictionary defines a symbol as "something that stands for something else and serves to represent it, or to bring to mind one or more of its qualities." Now this world is a _reflection_ of a higher world, and that of a higher world still, and so on. Accordingly, everything is a symbol of something higher, since by reflecting, it "stands for, and serves to represent it," and the thing symbolized, being itself a reflection, is, by the same token, itself a symbol. By reiterated repetitions of this reflecting process throughout the numberless planes and sub-planes of nature, each thing becomes a symbol, not of one thing only, but of many things, all intimately correlated, and this gives rise to those underlying analogies, those "secret subterranean passages between matter and soul" which have ever been the especial preoccupation of the poet and the mystic, but which may one day become the subject of serious examination by scientific men. Let us briefly pass in review the various terms of such an ascending series of symbols: members of one family, they might be called, since they follow a single line of descent. Take gold: as a thing in itself, without any symbolical significance, it is a metallic element, having a characteristic yellow color, very heavy, very soft, the most ductile, malleable, and indestructible of metals. In its minted form it is the life force of the body economic, since on its abundance and free circulation the well-being of that body depends; it is that for which all men strive and contend, because without it they cannot comfortably live. This, then, is gold in its first and lowest symbolical aspect: a life principle, a motive force in human affairs. But it is not gold which has gained for man his lordship over nature; it is fire, the yellow gold, not of the earth, but of the air,--cities and civilizations, arts and industries, have ever followed the camp fire of the pioneer. Sunlight comes next in sequence--sunlight, which focussed in a burning glass, spontaneously produces flame. The world subsists on sunlight; all animate creation grows by it, and languishes without it, as the prosperity of cities waxes or wanes with the presence or absence of a supply of gold. The magnetic force of the sun, specialized as _prana_ (which is not the breath which goes up and the breath which goes down, but that other, in which the two repose), fulfils the same function in the human body as does gold in civilization, sunlight in nature: its abundance makes for health, its meagreness for enervation. Higher than _prana_ is the mind, that golden sceptre of man's dominion, the Promethean gift of fire with which he menaces the empire of the gods. Higher still, in the soul, love is the motive force, the conqueror: a "heart of gold" is one warmed and lighted by love. Still other is the desire of the spirit, which no human affection satisfies, but truth only, the Golden Person, the Light of the World, the very Godhead itself. Thus there is earthy, airy, etheric gold; gold as intellect, gold as love, gold as truth; from the curse of the world, the cause of a thousand crimes, there ascends a Jacob's Ladder of symbols to divinity itself, whereby men may learn that God works by sacrifice: that His universe is itself His broken body. As gold in the purse, fire on the forge, sunlight for the eyes, breath in the body, knowledge in the mind, love in the heart, and wisdom in the understanding, He draws all men unto Him, teaching them the wise use of wealth, the mastery over nature, the care of the body, the cultivation of the mind, the love of wife and child and neighbour, and, last lesson of all, He teaches them that in industry, in science, in art, in sympathy and understanding, He it is they are all the while knowing, loving, becoming; and that even when they flee Him, His are the wings-- "When me they fly, I am the wings." This attempt to define gold as a symbol ends with the indication of an ubiquitous and immanent divinity in everything. Thus it is always: in attempting to dislodge a single voussoir from the arch of truth, the temple itself is shaken, so cunningly are the stones fitted together. All roads lead to Rome, and every symbol is a key to the Great Mystery: for example, read in the light of these correspondences, the alchemist's transmutation of base metals into gold, is seen to be the sublimation of man's lower nature into "that highest golden sheath, which is Brahman." Keeping the first sequence clearly in mind, let us now attempt to trace another, parallel to it: the feminine of which the first may be considered the corresponding masculine. Silver is a white, ductile metallic element. In coinage it is the synonym for ready cash,--gold in the bank is silver in the pocket; hence, in a sense, silver is the _reflection_, or the second power of gold. Just as ruddy gold is correlated with fire, so is pale silver with water; and as fire is affiliated with the sun, so do the waters of the earth follow the moon in her courses. The golden sun, the silver moon: these commonly employed descriptive adjectives themselves supply the correlation we are seeking; another indication of its validity lies in the fact that one of the characteristics of water is its power of reflecting; that moonlight is reflected sunlight. If gold is the mind, silver is the body, in which the mind is imaged, objectified; if gold is flamelike love, silver is brooding affection; and in the highest regions of consciousness, beauty is the feminine or form side of truth--its silver mirror. There are two forces in the world, one of projection, the other of recall; two states, activity and rest. Nature, with tireless ingenuity, everywhere publishes this fact: in bursting bud and falling seed, in the updrawn waters and the descending rain; throw a stone into the air, and when the impulse is exhausted, gravity brings it to earth again. In civilized society these centrifugal and centripetal forces find expression in the anarchic and radical spirit which breaks down and re-forms existing institutions, and in the conservative spirit which preserves and upbuilds by gradual accretion; they are analogous to igneous and to aqueous action in the formation and upbuilding of the earth itself, and find their prototype again in man and woman: man, the warrior, who prevails by the active exercise of his powers, and woman, "the treasury of the continued race," who conquers by continual quietness. Man and woman symbolize forces centrifugal and centripetal not alone in their inner nature, and in the social and economic functions peculiar to each, but in their physical aspects and peculiarities as well, for man is small of flank and broad of shoulder, with relatively large extremities, _i.e., centrifugal_: while woman is formed with broad hips, narrow shoulders, and small feet and hands, _i.e., centripetal_. Woman's instinctive and unconscious gestures are _towards_ herself, man's are _away from_ himself. The physiologist might hold that the anatomical differences between the sexes result from their difference in function in the reproduction and conservation of the race, and this is a true view, but the lesser truth need not necessarily exclude the greater. As Chesterton says, "Something in the evil spirit of our time forces people always to pretend to have found some material and mechanical explanation." Such would have us believe, with Schopenhauer and Bernard Shaw, that the lover's delight in the beauty of his mistress dwells solely in his instinctive perception of her fitness to be the mother of his child. This is undoubtedly a factor in the glamour woman casts on man, but there are other factors too, higher as well as lower, corresponding to different departments of our manifold nature. First of all, there is mere physical attraction: to the man physical, woman is a cup of delight; next, there is emotional love, whereby woman appeals through her need of protection, her power of tenderness; on the mental plane she is man's intellectual companion, his masculine reason would supplement itself with her feminine intuition; he recognizes in her an objectification, in some sort, of his own soul, his spirit's bride, predestined throughout the ages; while the god within him perceives her to be that portion of himself which he put forth before the world was, to be the mother, not alone of human children, but of all those myriad forms, within which entering, "as in a sheath, a knife," he becomes the Enjoyer, and realizes, vividly and concretely, his bliss, his wisdom, and his power. Adam and Eve, and the tree in the midst of the garden! After man and woman, a tree is perhaps the most significant symbol in the world: every tree is the Tree of Life in the sense that it is a representation of universal becoming. To say that all things have for their mother _prakriti_, undifferentiated substance, and for their father _purusha_, the creative fire, is vague and metaphysical, and conveys little meaning to our image-bred, image-fed minds; on the physical plane we can only learn these transcendental truths by means of symbols, and so to each of us is given a human father and a human mother from whose relation to one another and to oneself may be learned our relation to nature, the universal mother, and to that immortal spirit which is the father of us all. We are given, moreover, the symbol of the tree, which, rooted in the earth, its mother, and nourished by her juices, strives ever upward towards its father, the sun. The mathematician may be able to demonstrate, as a result of a lifetime of hard thinking, that unity and infinity are but two aspects of one thing; this is not clear to ordinary minds, but made concrete in the tree--unity in the trunk, infinity in the foliage--any one is able to understand it. We perceive that all things grow as a tree grows, from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity and strength to beauty and fineness. The generation of the line from the point, the plane from the line, and from the plane, the solid, is a matter, again, which chiefly interests the geometrician, but the inevitable sequence stands revealed in seed, stem, leaf, and fruit: a point, a line, a surface, and a sphere. There is another order of truths, also, which a tree teaches: the renewal of its life each year is a symbol of the reincarnation of the soul, teaching that life is never-ending climax, and that what appears to be cessation is merely a change of state. A tree grows great by being firmly rooted; we too, though children of the air, need the earth, and grow by good deeds, hidden, like the roots of the tree, out of sight; for the tree, rain and sunshine: for the soul, tears and laughter thrill the imprisoned spirit into conscious life. We love and understand the trees because we have ourselves passed through their evolution, and they survive in us still, for the arterial and nervous systems are trees, the roots of one in the heart, of the other in the brain. Has not our body its trunk, bearing aloft the head, like a flower: a cup to hold the precious juices of the brain? Has not that trunk its tapering limbs which ramify into hands and feet, and these into fingers and toes, after the manner of the twigs and branches of a tree? Closely related to symbolism is sacramentalism; the man who sees nature as a book of symbols is likely to regard life as a sacrament. Because this is a point of view vitalizing to art let us glance at the sacramental life, divorced from the forms and observances of any specific religion. This life consists in the habitual perception of an ulterior meaning, a hidden beauty and significance in the objects, acts, and events of every day. Though binding us to a sensuous existence, these nevertheless contain within themselves the power of emancipating us from it: over and above their immediate use, their pleasure or their profit, they have a hidden meaning which contains some healing message for the soul. A classic example of a sacrament, not alone in the ordinary meaning of the term, but in the special sense above defined, is the Holy Communion of the Christian Church. Its origin is a matter of common knowledge. On the evening of the night in which He was betrayed, Jesus and His disciples were gathered together for the feast of the Passover. Aware of His impending betrayal, and desirous of impressing powerfully upon His chosen followers the nature and purpose of His sacrifice, Jesus ordained a sacrament out of the simple materials of the repast. He took bread and broke it, and gave to each a piece as the symbol of His broken body; and to each He passed a cup of wine, as a symbol of His poured-out blood. In this act, as in the washing of the disciples' feet on the same occasion, He made His ministrations to the needs of men's bodies an allegory of His greater ministration to the needs of their souls. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is of such beauty and power that it has persisted even to the present day. It lacks, however, the element of universality--at least by other than Christians its universality would be denied. Let us seek, therefore some all-embracing symbol to illustrate the sacramental view of life. Perhaps marriage is such a symbol. The public avowal of love between a man and woman, their mutual assumption of the attendant privileges, duties and responsibilities are matters so pregnant with consequences to them and to the race that by all right-thinking people marriage is regarded as a high and holy thing; its sacramental character is felt and acknowledged even by those who would be puzzled to tell the reason why. The reason is involved in the answer to the question, "Of what is marriage a symbol?" The most obvious answer, and doubtless the best one, is found in the well known and much abused doctrine, common to every religion, of the spiritual marriage between God and the soul. What Christians call _the Mystic Way,_ and Buddhists _the Path_ comprises those changes in consciousness through which every soul passes on its way to perfection. When the personal life is conceived of as an allegory of this inner, intense, super-mundane life, it assumes a sacramental character. With strange unanimity, followers of the Mystic Way have given the name of marriage to that memorable experience in "the flight of the Alone to the Alone," when the soul, after trials and purgations, enters into indissoluble union with the spirit, that divine, creative principle whereby it is made fruitful for this world. Marriage, then, however dear and close the union, is the symbol of a union dearer and closer, for it is the fair prophecy that on some higher arc of the evolutionary spiral, the soul will meet its immortal lover and be initiated into divine mysteries. As an example of the power of symbols to induce those changes of consciousness whereby the soul is prepared for this union, it is recorded that an eminent scientist was moved to alter his entire mode of life on reflecting, while in his bath one morning, that though each day he was at such pains to make clean his body, he made no similar purgation of his mind and heart. The idea appealed to him so profoundly that he began to practise the higher cleanliness from that day forth. If it be true, as has been said, that ordinary life in the world is a training school for a life more real and more sublime, then everything pertaining to life in the world must possess a sacramental character, and possess it inherently, and not merely by imputation. Let us discover, then, if we can, some of the larger meanings latent in little things. When at the end of a cloudy day the sun bursts forth in splendor and sets red in the west, it is a sign to the weather-wise that the next day will be fair. To the devotee of the sacramental life it holds a richer promise. To him the sun is a symbol of the love of God; the clouds, those worldly preoccupations of his own which hide its face from him. This purely physical phenomenon, therefore, which brings to most men a scarcely noticed augmentation of heat and light, and an indication of fair weather on the morrow, induces in the mystic an ineffable sense of divine immanence and beneficence, and an assurance of their continuance beyond the dark night of the death of the body. When the sacramentalist goes swimming in the sea he enjoys to the full the attendant physical exhilaration, but a greater joy flows from the thought that he is back with his great Sea-Mother--that feminine principle of which the sea is the perfect symbol, since water brings all things to birth and nurtures them. When at the end of a day he lays aside his clothes--that two-dimensional sheath of the three-dimensional body--it is in full assurance that his body in turn will be abandoned by the inwardly retreating consciousness, and that he will range wherever he wills during the hours of sleep, clothed in his subtle four-dimensional body, related to the physical body as that is related to the clothes it wears. To every sincere seeker nature reveals her secrets, but since men differ in their curiosities she reveals different things to different men. All are rewarded for their devotion in accordance with their interests and desires, but woman-like, nature reveals herself most fully to him who worships not the fair form of her, but her soul. This favored lover is the mystic; for ever seeking instruction in things spiritual, he perceives in nature an allegory of the soul, and interprets her symbols in terms of the sacramental life. The brook, pursuing its tortuous and stony pathway in untiring effort to reach its gravitational centre, is a symbol of the Pilgrim's progress, impelled by love to seek God within his heart. The modest daisy by the roadside, and the wanton sunflower in the garden alike seek to image the sun, the god of their worship, a core of seeds and fringe of petals representing their best effort to mimic the flaming disc and far-flung corona of the sun. Man seeks less ardently, and so more ineffectively in his will and imagination to image God. In the reverent study of insect and animal life we gain some hint of what we have been and what we may become--something corresponding to the grub, a burrowing thing; to the caterpillar, a crawling thing; and finally to the butterfly, a radiant winged creature. After this fashion then does he who has embraced the sacramental life come to perceive in the "sensuous manifold" of nature, that one divine Reality which ever seeks to instruct him in supermundane wisdom, and to woo him to superhuman blessedness and peace. In time, this reading of earth in terms of heaven, becomes a settled habit. Then, in Emerson's phrase, he has hitched his wagon to a star, and changed his grocer's cart into a chariot of the sun. The reader may perhaps fail to perceive the bearing of this long discussion of symbols and sacraments upon the subject of art and architecture, but in the mind of the author the correlation is plain. There can be no great art without religion: religion begins in consciousness as a mystic experience, it flows thence into symbols and sacraments, and these in turn are precipitated by the artist into ponderable forms of beauty. Unless the artist himself participates in this mystic experience, life's deeper meanings will escape him, and the work of his hands will have no special significance. Until it can be said of every artist "Himself from God he could not free," there will be no art worthy of the name. SELF-EDUCATION[1] I take great pleasure in availing myself of this opportunity to speak to you on certain aspects of the art which we practise. I cannot forget, and I hope that you sufficiently remember, that the architectural future of this country lies in the hands of just such men as you. Let me dwell then for a moment on your unique opportunity. Perhaps some of you have taken up architecture as you might have gone into trade, or manufacturing, or any of the useful professions; in that case you have probably already learned discrimination, and now realize that in the cutting of the cake of human occupations you have drawn the piece which contains the ring of gold. The cake is the business and utilitarian side of life, the ring of gold is the æsthetic, the creative side: treasure it, for it is a precious and enduring thing. Think what your work is: to reassemble materials in such fashion that they become instinct with a beauty and eloquent with a meaning which may carry inspiration and delight to generations still unborn. Immortality haunts your threshold, even though your hand may not be strong enough to open to the heavenly visitor. Though the profession of architecture is a noble one in any country and in any age, it is particularly rich in inspiration and in opportunity here and now, for who can doubt that we are about to enter upon a great building period? We have what Mr. Sullivan calls "the need and the power to build," the spirit of great art alone is lacking, and that is already stirring in the secret hearts of men, and will sooner or later find expression in objective and ponderable forms of new beauty. These it is your privilege to create. May the opportunity find you ready! There is a saying, "To be young, to be in love, to be in Italy!" I would paraphrase it thus: To be young, to be in architecture, to be in America. It is my purpose tonight to outline a scheme of self-education, which if consistently followed out I am sure will help you, though I am aware that to a certain order of mind it will seem highly mystical and impractical. If it commends itself to your favor I shall be glad. Many of you will have had the advantage of a thorough technical training in your chosen profession: be grateful for it. Others, like Topsy, "just growed"--or have just failed to grow. For the solace of all such, without wishing to be understood to disparage architectural schooling, I would say that there is a kind of education which is worse than none, for by filling his mind with ready-made ideas it prevents a man from ever learning to think for himself; and there is another kind which teaches him to think, indeed, but according to some arbitrary method, so that his mind becomes a canal instead of a river, flowing in a predetermined and artificial channel, and unreplenished by the hidden springs of the spirit. The best education can do no more than to bring into manifestation that which is inherent; it does this by means of some stimulus from without--from books and masters--but the stimulus may equally come from within: each can develop his own mind, and in the following manner. The alternation between a state of activity and a state of passivity, which is a law of our physical being, as it is a law of all nature, is characteristic of the action of the mind as well: observation and meditation are the two poles of thought. The tendency of modern life and of our active American temperament is towards a too exclusive functioning of the mind in its outgoing state, and this results in a great cleverness and a great shallowness. It is only in moments of quiet meditation that the great synthetic, fundamental truths reveal themselves. Observe ceaselessly, weigh, judge, criticize--this order of intellectual activity is important and valuable--but the mind must be steadied and strengthened by another and a different process. The power of attention, the ability to concentrate, is the measure of mental efficiency; and this power may be developed by a training exactly analogous to that by which a muscle is developed, for mind and muscle are alike the instruments of the Silent Thinker who sits behind. The mind an instrument of something higher than the mind: here is a truth so fertile that in the language of Oriental imagery, "If you were to tell this to a dry stick, branches would grow, and leaves sprout from it." There is nothing original in the method of mental development here indicated; it has been known and practised for centuries in the East, where life is less strenuous than it is with us. The method consists in silent meditation every day at stated periods, during which the attempt is made to hold the mind to the contemplation of a single image or idea, bringing the attention back whenever it wanders, killing each irrelevant thought as it arises, as one might kill a rat coming out of a hole. This turning of the mind back on itself is difficult, but I know of nothing that "pays" so well, and I have never found any one who conscientiously practised it who did not confirm this view. The point is, that if a man acquires the ability to concentrate on one thing, he can concentrate on anything; he increases his competence on the mental plane in the same manner that pulling chest-weights increases his competence on the physical. The practice of meditation has moreover an ulterior as well as an immediate advantage, and that is the reason it is practised by the Yogis of India. They believe that by stilling the mind, which is like a lake reflecting the sky, the Higher Self communicates a knowledge of Itself to the lower consciousness. Without the working of this Oversoul in and through us we can never hope to produce an architecture which shall rank with the great architectures of the past, for in Egypt, in Greece, in mediaeval France, as in India, China, and Japan, mysticism made for itself a language more eloquent than any in which the purely rational consciousness of man has ever spoken. We are apt to overestimate the importance of books and book learning. Think how small a part books have played in the development of architecture; indeed, Palladio and Vignola, with their hard and fast formulæ have done the art more harm than good. It is a fallacy that reading strengthens the mind--it enervates it; reading sometimes stimulates the mind to original thinking, and _this_ develops it, but reading itself is a passive exercise, because the thought of the reader is for the time being in abeyance in order that the thought of the writer may enter. Much reading impairs the power to think originally and consecutively. Few of the great creators of the world have had use for books, and if you aspire to be in their class you will avoid the "spawn of the press." The best plan is to read only great books, and having read for five minutes, think about what you have read for ten. These exercises, faithfully followed out, will make your mind a fit vehicle for the expression of your idea, but the advice I have given is as pertinent to any one who uses his mind as it is to the architect. To what, specifically, should the architectural student devote his attention in order to improve the quality of his work? My own answer would be that he should devote himself to the study of music, of the human figure, and to the study of Nature--"first, last, midst, and without end." The correlation between music and architecture is no new thought; it is implied in the famous saying that architecture is frozen music. Vitruvius considered a knowledge of music to be a qualification of the architect of his day, and if it was desirable then it is no less so now. There is both a metaphysical reason and a practical one why this is so. Walter Pater, in a famous phrase, declared that all art constantly aspires to the condition of music, by which he meant to imply that there is a certain rhythm and harmony at the root of every art, of which music is the perfect and pure expression; that in music the means and the end are one and the same. This coincides with Schopenhauer's theory about music, that it is the most perfect and unconditioned sensuous presentment known to us of that undying _will-to-live_ which constitutes life and the world. Metaphysics aside, the architect ought to hear as much good music as he can, and learn the rudiments of harmony, at least to the extent of knowing the simple numerical ratios which govern the principal consonant intervals within the octave, so that, translating these ratios into intervals of space expressed in terms of length and breadth, height, and width, his work will "aspire to the condition of music." There is a metaphysical reason, too, as well as a practical one, why an architect should know the human figure. Carlyle says, "There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man." If the body is, as he declares, a temple, it is no less true that a temple, or any work of architectural art is in the nature of an ampler body which man has created for his uses, and which he inhabits, just as the individual consciousness builds and inhabits its fleshly stronghold. This may seem a highly mystical idea, but the correlation between the house and its inhabitant, and the body and its consciousness is everywhere close, and is susceptible of infinite elaboration. Architectural beauty, like human beauty, depends upon a proper subordination of parts to the whole, a harmonious interrelation between these parts, the expressiveness of each of its functions, and when these are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another. This being so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing the sources of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable to the architectural designer. Pursued intelligently, such study will stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple yet subtle laws according to which nature everywhere works, and it will educate the eye in the finest known school of proportion, training it to distinguish minute differences, in the same way that the hearing of good music cultivates the ear. It is neither necessary nor desirable to make elaborate and carefully shaded drawings from a posed model; an equal number of hours spent in copying and analyzing the plates of a good art anatomy, supplemented with a certain amount of life drawing, done merely with a view to catch the pose, will be found to be a more profitable exercise, for it will make you familiar with the principal and subsidiary proportions of the bodily temple, and give you sufficient data to enable you to indicate a figure in any position with fair accuracy. I recommend the study of Nature because I believe that such study will assist you to recover that direct and instant perception of beauty, our natural birthright, of which over-sophistication has so bereft us that we no longer know it to be ours by right of inheritance--inheritance from that cosmic matter endowed with motion out of which we are fashioned, proceeding ever rationally and rhythmically to its appointed ends. We are all of us participators in a world of concrete music, geometry and number--a world, that is, so mathematically constituted and co-ordinated that our pigmy bodies, equally with the farthest star, throb to the music of the spheres. The blood flows rhythmically, the heart its metronome; the moving limbs weave patterns; the voice stirs into radiating sound-waves that pool of silence which we call the air. "Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." The whole of animate creation labours under the beautiful necessity of being beautiful. Everywhere it exhibits a perfect utility subservient to harmonious laws. Nature is the workshop in which are built _beautiful organisms_. This is exactly the aim of the architect--to fashion beautiful organisms; what better school, therefore, could he have in which to learn his trade? To study Nature it is not necessary to go out into the fields and botanize, nor to attempt to make water colours of picturesque scenery. These things are very well, but not so profitable to your particular purpose as observation directed toward the discovery of the laws which underlie and determine form and structure, such as the tracing of the spiral line, not alone where it is obvious, as in the snail's shell and in the ram's horn, but where it appears obscurely, as in the disposition of leaves or twigs upon a parent stem. Such laws of nature are equally laws of art, for art _is_ nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably, and according to the same laws, as does the frost on the window pane. Art, in one of its aspects, is the weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to lines, forms, colors, sounds. All very poetical, and possibly true, you may be saying to yourselves, but what has it to do with architecture, which nowadays, at least, is pre-eminently a practical and utilitarian art whose highest mission is to fulfil definite conditions in an economical and admirable way; whose supreme excellence is fitness, appropriateness, the perfect adaptation of means to ends, and the apt expression of both means and ends? Yes, architecture is all of this, but this is not all of architecture; else the most efficient engineer would be the most admirable architect, which does not happen to be the case. Along with the expression of the concrete and individual must go the expression of the abstract and universal; the two can be combined in a single building in the same way that in every human countenance are combined a racial or temperamental _type_, which is universal, and a _character_, which is individual. The expression of any sort of cosmic truth, of universal harmony and rhythm, is the quality which our architecture most conspicuously lacks. Failing to find the cosmic truth within ourselves, failing to vibrate to the universal harmony and rhythm, our architecture is--well, what it is, for only that which is native to our living spirit can we show forth in the work of our hands. Your work will be, in the last analysis, what you yourselves are. Let no sophistry blind you to the truth of that. There are rhythms in the world of space which we find only in the architecture of the past, and enamoured of their beauty we repeat them over and over (off the key for the most part), on the principle that all the songs have been sung; or we just make a noise, on the principle that noise is all there is to architecture anyway. It is not so. Those systems of spatial rhythms which we call Egyptian, Classic, Gothic, Renaissance architecture and the rest, are records all of the living human spirit energizing in the stubborn matter of the physical plane with joy, with conviction, with mastery. When that undying spirit awakes again in you, stirred into consciousness by meditation, which is its prayer; by music, which is its praise; by the contemplation of that fair form which is its temple; and by communion with nature, which is its looking-glass; you will experience again that ancient joy, hold again that firm conviction, and exercise again that mastery to transfuse the granite and iron heart of the hills into patterns unlike any that the hand of man has made before. [Footnote 1: An address delivered before the Boston Architectural Club in April, 1909.] 
15270	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 15270-h.htm or 15270-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/2/7/15270/15270-h/15270-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/2/7/15270/15270-h.zip) THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. JULY, 1895. No. 7. ITALIAN WROUGHT IRON. The wrought iron of the middle ages, and of the time of the Renaissance, and even down to the last century, in Italy, France, and Germany showed, in the crudest examples, the principal virtues of all true decorative art. The reason is not far to seek. The difficulties in the way of working the material with ease imposed certain limitations in design and execution which could not well be disregarded. The lack of machinery (which is responsible for much of the uninteresting character of our modern work) necessarily compelled the use of comparatively simple and straightforward methods. It was difficult to avoid the tell-tale marks of the smith's work, and there were limits beyond which his skill could not carry it. Furthermore the designer, taking these limitations into account, learned to make the most of his possibilities, and to adapt his design to the material--to design in the material. How different from the methods generally in use now! Designs made to imitate something done in another material, turned out by the hundred from a machine which leaves no indication of its work, with all interest of craftsmanship lacking, except in places where it may be vulgarly thrown in your face to make it look as if it had been "hand-made." Clever imitations of old work are produced, and indeed some of the examples shown in our plates are reproductions and not originals; and if we cannot have new designs of equal excellence this is the next most desirable thing. And so far as the illustrations are concerned the difference between the original and the reproduction could never be distinguished. The subjects chosen for the illustrations of this number are lanterns and torch-bearers. The lanterns were in reality torch-bearers, as they were made for holding masses of combustible material which were held in place by the central spike. The curious lanterns that decorate the Strozzi Palace at Florence, and of which similar specimens are still attached to the angles of the Riccardi Palace, once the famous residence of the Medici, in the same city, are among, the best examples of their kind still remaining. We are informed by Vasari that these "_lumière miravigliosi_" were the work of one Nicolo Grosso Caparra, a celebrated artificer of the time, by whom it is not unlikely that many of the beautiful rings and cressets which still decorate the old palaces of Siena may have been executed. On the centre spike was fixed a little iron barrel, containing tow and pitch, while on each of the other spikes a torch was fastened. In some of the old engravings of the festivities given at night by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the representations of the effect of this mode of illumination may be seen. It is said that the privilege of affixing such cressets to a residence was one conferred by the State only on the most distinguished citizens, as a peculiar honor, in acknowledgment of services performed. [Illustration: XLIX. Wrought Iron Lantern on the Strozzi Palace, Florence.] XLIX, WROUGHT IRON LANTERN ON THE STROZZI PALACE, FLORENCE. This is one of the finest examples of Italian wrought iron work still existing, and has frequently served as a model for lanterns in recent times. [Illustration: L. Wrought Iron Lantern on the Palazzo Guadagni, Florence.] L. WROUGHT IRON LANTERN ON THE PALAZZO GUADAGNI, FLORENCE. [Illustration: LI. Wrought Iron Lantern on the Palazzo Bocella, Lucca.] LI. WROUGHT IRON LANTERN ON THE PALAZZO BROCELLA, LUCCA. [Illustration: LII. Wrought Iron Lantern on the Palazzo Baroni nel Fillungo, Lucca.] LII. WROUGHT IRON LANTERN ON THE PALAZZO BARONI NEL FILLUNGO, LUCCA. [Illustration: LIII. Wrought Iron Torch Holder, Public Square, Siena.] LIII. WROUGHT IRON TORCH-BEARER, SIENA. This is attached to a column which bears the group representing Romulus and Remus, and which is situated in the public square near the cathedral. [Illustration: LIV. Wrought Iron Torch Holder, Siena.] [Illustration: LV. Wrought Iron Torch Holder, Siena.] LIV and LV. WROUGHT IRON TORCH-BEARERS, SIENA. These two plates represent the same torch-holder, viewed from front and side. [Illustration: LVI. Wrought Iron Torch Holder, Siena.] LVI. WROUGHT IRON TORCH-BEARER, SIENA. This together with the preceding example are reproductions of old work. Reproduction of Architects' Drawings. The development of photographic processes for the reproduction of drawings which has taken place within the past few years has led to a remarkable increase in the publication of architects' designs, both in the technical journals and in the popular magazines and daily press. Undoubtedly the recent progress of architectural design in America is largely due to the opportunity for comparison thus placed within the reach of architects and draughtsmen who could not otherwise place their productions beside those of their fellows. So important has this become that an architectural paper is now usually judged almost entirely upon the quality of its illustrations, the text matter being not only secondary, but in some cases serving only as a vehicle for the plates. In fact, some of the most valuable and most highly esteemed architectural publications are entirely devoid of text. It naturally happens that many of the drawings made in the ordinary course of an architect's work sooner or later fall into the hands of the publishers of some of the architectural papers or are required for publication in other directions. When such drawings have been made without a proper knowledge of the requirements of the reproductive processes the result is frequently very unsatisfactory, and in many cases gives an entirely unfair impression of the design, while this difficulty might have been easily avoided by a little forethought, and without any additional labor. A few fundamental points which can always be kept in mind will enable draughtsmen to make sure that their work will reproduce well, that is to say, will give a fairly truthful reproduction of the original drawing. There are at present in use a large number of printing processes depending upon photography as a basis, by which drawings may be duplicated, but they can be roughly divided into two main classes according to the character of the original drawings. In general, line drawings may be treated by one process, while those in which there is a gradation of tones or tints, no matter in what way produced (except by distinct lines), require another and entirely different process. Line reproductions may be made in several different ways, but the requirements in the original drawing are the same in each. The first requisite is that a drawing shall be made in absolutely black ink on white paper, and with clear, firm lines. With a little care it is just as easy to make a drawing in this way as any other, and a satisfactory reproduction can be assured when it is kept in mind that nothing but black will give the best results. In the early days of process work it was customary to use India ink ground by the draughtsman, but excellent liquid inks, such, for instance, as that made by Charles M. Higgins & Co., have taken the place of this, at a great saving of labor and trouble. It is only necessary to take care that the ink is new and not too watery, and that a sufficient amount is carried in the pen to insure a black line. Gray lines, although full and continuous, are very apt to be ragged and broken in the reproduction. Aside from this first condition there are few others which are really mandatory. A drawing made with vigorous, well-defined lines and rather open in treatment will, as a rule, make the most satisfactory reproduction. There is never difficulty in getting a good reproduction from such work as that by which Mr. H.P. Kirby or Mr. D.A. Gregg is known. For this purpose their style could hardly be improved upon. A drawing can be made with fine and delicate lines and still reproduce well if there is not too much difference in size between the original and the reproduction required. In general, the best results can be obtained by making the plate about two thirds the size of the original. Drawings in colored inks on tinted paper are difficult to reproduce satisfactorily, and of all combinations a bluish ink upon a yellowish paper is to be avoided. In general, it can be said that everything, even including line drawings in pen and ink, _can_ be reproduced by the half-tone processes, the quality of the plate depending upon the character of the original. Water-colors, monochrome drawings in wash, pencil drawings and any combinations of these, are reproducible, but with varying success. The same conditions which apply to line work also hold good to a considerable extent in the present case. A combination of vigorous black ink lines and lighter more delicate work put in with thinned or gray ink will in all probability be very unsatisfactory, as the chances of holding the relation between the two, or in fact of preserving the lighter lines at all, without over-emphasizing the darker portions, will not be very great. Delicate drawings can seldom be reproduced without giving a background tint all over, and this usually destroys the life and snap of the original. This is especially true of drawings upon reddish or yellowish paper, which on this account should be avoided if possible. It should be borne in mind that yellow and red photograph dark; and blue, light. This often makes a great difference of effect in the reproduction and sometimes makes it impossible to get satisfactory results at all, especially in delicate drawings. Pencil drawings made with light lines will not reproduce well, as there is too little contrast in color between the lines and the paper; but sketches made with a soft pencil and strong contrasts frequently give surprisingly good results. When drawings are to be made, especially for reproduction, the question of expense is often of importance. Plates made from pen drawings now cost about ten cents a square inch, while half-tone plates made of metal for printing on an ordinary printing press with type matter cost about twenty-five cents a square inch. By using specially prepared process papers, which, if not sold by a local dealer in artists' materials, can be had of Messrs. Wadsworth, Rowland & Co., or Frost & Adams, drawings can be made in pencil or black crayon which can be reproduced by the cheaper process, and will give excellent results. Considering the ease with which this work can be done and the satisfactory results obtained, it is surprising that it has not been more generally adopted. The only drawback to working upon this paper is the fact that no erasures or changes can be made without ruining the surface of the paper. In connection with what has already been considered in relation to the reproduction of drawings, it may be well to refer to the making of plates from photographs. The selection of a good photograph is of the first importance. It should be brilliant, and with all the contrast of light and shade and as much detail as possible, for something is always lost in both these respects in the process of reproduction. A good plate can be made from a good photograph, but cannot from a bad one. The process is the same as that referred to above for the reproduction of wash drawings, etc., and the cost the same, about twenty-five cents a square inch. The half-tone plates in THE BROCHURE SERIES, made by The Blanchard & Watts Engraving Company, Boston, are good examples of first-class work of this description. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. * * * * * Subscription Rates per year--50 cents, in advance Special Club Rates for five subscriptions--$2.00 * * * * * Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * No subject at present occupies so important a place in the thoughts of American architects as that of architectural education, if the space given to it in recent publications is an indication of its importance. The proceedings of the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects, held last autumn in New York, have just been published, and no less than five papers are included which deal with one or another phase of this subject. The later numbers of the professional journals also contain several noteworthy contributions to the discussion. Mr. Barr Ferree's criticism in _The Architectural Review,_ of the methods of training pursued in the School of Fine Arts in Paris, have led to several papers by adherents of the French system and to a well-considered editorial in the same paper. But the most important contribution to the question is that of Mr. Henry Rutgers Marshall in the last number of _The Architectural Record,_ which also contains a descriptive article upon the Royal Polytechnicum at Berlin and its course of study. There is very little in any of these articles which adds to the existing knowledge on this largely discussed subject; it is what might be considered a rethreshing of old straw, and the main value of all of the articles is in the presentation, which may appeal to readers who have not before thought of the matter in all of its bearings. The papers read before the convention begin with the report of the committee on education, by Mr. Henry Van Brunt. In this Mr. Van Brunt advocates the careful and systematic study of architectural history; and it was the purpose of the report to bring out discussion which might lead to valuable suggestions to the architectural schools upon the study of this subject. Mr. Geo. B. Post, of New York, Professor Ware, of Columbia College, and several others took part in the discussion which resulted in merely recommitting the question to the committee on education, as it was not considered advisable to take any definite action which would bind the Institute to a settled policy on this question. Mr. Louis H. Sullivan, of Chicago, in a thoughtful paper complained that education stifles and kills the spirit of modern architectural work, and that the natural and spontaneous love for beauty found in all human beings gives place, under our modern systems of instruction, to the dry formalities of reproducing old and dead styles. * * * * * Mr. Frank Miles Day and Mr. R.W. Gibson, each in his own way, described the advantages of foreign travel and the best methods to pursue, as well as the most important ends to be attained. Mr. Russell Sturgis, in a scholarly paper upon the subject of Greek architecture applied to modern buildings, gave a number of precepts for the proper use of Greek forms and methods of building as applied to our modern conditions. He closed his article with a lot of receipts much in the style of an architectural cook book, for the application of his theories concerning Greek architecture. These articles, as will be seen from the above indications, dealt in most cases with one phase only of architectural education. They are all of course important in their way, as contributing to the general discussion of the subject, but each in turn gives only a partial view. * * * * * Mr. Marshall, however, starts with the intention of making a full and fair statement of existing conditions and logically draws his inferences as to the best methods of meeting them. He has the valuable qualification of being able to consider his subject judicially and of writing excellent and readable English, as has already been pointed out in these columns, in the review of his recently published book, "Æsthetic Principles." He divides the subject for convenience into three main headings: first, the use of tools, including in his classification the executive function of handling men as well as tools in the narrower and legitimate sense; second, the nature of materials employed; and third, the general principles of beauty. Under the first heading Mr. Marshall makes one important suggestion, which is at variance with common practice among architects. After pointing out the importance of studying design in the solid, that is, constantly keeping in mind that the forms which are to be designed have three dimensions, and that a geometrical projection, such as a plan or elevation, only partially represents its appearance, he advocates the more general use of perspective drawing in designing. By this is not meant the making of pretty sketches after the design is all determined, to mislead impressionable clients, but the serious study of a design to determine its appearance from different points of view. In fact his suggestion is that the usual order of proceeding shall be reversed, and that the design shall be made in perspective and then translated into accurate terms of such geometrical projections as are needed to guide the practical workman in carrying out the work. In treating of materials Mr. Marshall takes up separately the materials of construction and the materials of design, meaning by the latter the vocabulary in which the architect expresses his ideas, or the accumulation of architectural forms making up the various historic styles, so-called. He emphasizes the importance--in which point he agrees with all the other writers above referred to--of a wide and catholic knowledge of architectural history and a careful study of all styles. In summing up in the portion of the article devoted to the general principles of beauty as applied to architecture he gives a clear and concise statement of the reasons why beauty is in itself a necessary and desirable element in architecture, and roughly analyzes the conditions under which it exists. * * * * * Brochure Series Competition, No. I. The judges in the BROCHURE SERIES COMPETITION No. I, for a Piano Case have awarded the three prizes as follows:--First Prize, $25.00, to Mr. A.B. Le Boutillier of Boston; Second Prize, $15.00, to Mr. Edward F. Maher of Boston; Third Prize, $10.00 to Mr. James C. Green of Brooklyn, N.Y. The report of the judges with reproductions of the prize designs will be given in the next issue of the BROCHURE SERIES. The drawings have been retained by the H.F. Miller Piano Co. for exhibition at their warerooms and will be returned by them at the close of the exhibition. * * * * * Clark Medal Competition. The seventh annual competition for the Robert Clark Testimonial, under the auspices of the Chicago Architectural Club, is herewith presented. CONDITIONS.--The competition is open to architectural draughtsmen under thirty years of age, residents of the United States, and not practicing architects. The author of each design must execute all drawings without assistance, and non-adherence to these conditions will cause the rejection of the design or designs in question. The awards will be made by the adjudicating committee on the "Robert Clark Testimonial Competition," and are: First prize, gold medal; second prize, silver medal; third prize, bronze medal. The two designs receiving honorable mention will receive special bronze medals. The three prize drawings shall become the property of the Chicago Architectural Club. AN ART SCHOOL.--A gentleman wishing to share his large and valuable collection of paintings, statuary and architectural fragments with his townsmen, has decided to place them in a building which he proposes to erect for the study of architecture, painting and sculpture. The building is to face the town square, and is to be not more than one hundred and fifty feet in its greatest dimensions. It shall consist of one story and a high basement. The first story shall contain the following rooms: 1st. A large entrance gallery for the placing and hanging of statuary and paintings. This hall should be the main feature of the plan, and should be carefully arranged for convenient and advantageous display, without destroying the architectural effect. It may be one continuous hall or divided into parts, at the discretion of the architect. It may be lighted from above. 2d. A large glass-covered court to contain architectural fragments. 3d. An amphitheatre, to seat about two hundred, for lectures on art subjects. A library and an assembly hall. 4th. Four class rooms. These rooms should be well-lighted and of easy access to the court and gallery. 5th. A janitor's room and an office for the custodian. These rooms may be small, but should be conveniently placed either at the entrance to the building or to the grounds. As the number of the students is limited, the size of the rooms is of less importance than the circulation, convenience and artistic beauty of the whole. The building, being the home of the arts, should be pure in style and classical in feeling, though not necessarily archæological. Drawings required, viz.: One plan and one section at the scale of one-sixteenth of an inch to one foot, and the front elevation at the scale of one-eighth of an inch to one foot. Drawings to be rendered at will; to be mounted on strainers 28x40, without frames or glass. A sealed envelope containing the name and full address of the author, with place and date of birth, must be securely fastened to each drawing; the drawings and envelopes themselves must not be marked by a device of any kind. Drawings must be delivered to John Robert Dillon, secretary, Chicago Architectural Club, at the club house, 274 Michigan Avenue, Chicago, on or before Friday, November 15, 1895, charges to be prepaid. All drawings not receiving prizes will be returned at the expense of the contributor. L.J. MILLET, Chairman; R.C. SPENCER, JR. IRVING K. POND, The Adjudicating Committee on the Robert Clark Testimonial. * * * * * Personal. The death of Richard Morris Hunt, at Newport, R.I., on July 31, deprives the architectural profession in this country of the man who, since the death of Mr. Richardson, has been its most distinguished representative. His influence upon American architecture is possibly less directly traceable than that of Richardson, and was more of a personal nature through association with his brother architects, while Richardson's example was his most important legacy to the profession. Mr. W.S. Hebbard will, on September 1, occupy new offices in the Grant Building, San Diego, Cal., which he is just completing for U.S. Grant, Jr., Esq. Among the recent additions to the working force of Mr. Aiken, Supervising Architect of the Treasury, are Mr. F.B. Wheaton, formerly with Messrs. Longfellow, Alden, & Harlow, and Mr. Rice, formerly with Wheelwright & Haven. Mr. Geo. H. Ingraham, who has recently opened an office at 6 Beacon Street, Boston, is now absent on a short European trip. Mr. George E. Barton, for several years with Cram, Wentworth, & Goodhue, of Boston, has just started for a tour of England and France, with the special purpose of studying the domestic and church architecture of the smaller cities and towns. Mr. C.H. Alden, who has lately returned from six months' travel, mostly in Italy, has made a careful study of the brick and terra-cotta architecture of Northern Italy. He has just entered the office of Messrs. Wyatt and Nölting, Baltimore. Each year since the University of Pennsylvania Traveling Scholarship was founded, a prominent member of the T Square Club has been the winner; and that Mr. Percy Ash, ex-president of this club, should carry off the prize this year is particularly gratifying. Mr. Ash has twice before competed, and each time came out a close second; but his old luck did not entirely forsake him, for in his venture for the Roman Scholarship Prize he was very near to the front, winning honorable mention. H.L. Duhring, Jr., was a close second for the U. of P. Scholarship. At the last regular T Square Club meeting, but two sets of drawings were submitted. The program called for a "Garden for a Palatial Country House," and required a plan of the house and terrace at 1/8" scale, and a plan and section of the entire garden at a scale of 1/32 of an inch. The problem was modeled after the _projet_ given at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and required so vast an amount of graded wash work in color, as to intimidate many of the regular competitors. A.C. Muñoz, who won first mention, submitted three drawings, two of them nearly three by four feet, while Albert Kelsey was disqualified for not having fulfilled the requirements by omiting the 1/8" scale plan. Some discussion advocating the postponement of the competition took place, but Kelsey seemed to prefer being disqualified rather than further exert himself; and possibly the knowledge that three draughtsmen in Day's office and two in Cope & Stewardson's office had two unfinished designs to complete, may have influenced him. In spite of the result of this competition the eleven points previously won by Mr. Kelsey give him the highest average for the past year's work. * * * * * Notes. Of the many minor or industrial arts which enter into a complete architectural production, that of the smith is one of the most fascinating, and strangely enough, it is one which at the present time has the fewest workers who can be worthily compared with those of the past. In the estimation of many of the most prominent and exacting architects of the country there is but one maker of ornamental wrought iron in America who can be trusted to intelligently carry out the spirit of a fine design. Why this should be so it is hard to say, but the fact remains that most of the best iron work done in this country in recent years has come from the shop of John Williams of New York; and architects, it may be said, instinctively turn to him for work of this class. The characteristics which distinctively belong to the art of the smith, the limitations of material and the purpose for which the finished work is intended are all taken into account and each element given its due importance. To Mr. H.B. Stillman, associated with Mr. Williams, who has for a number of years taken personal charge of this branch of the business, is largely due the success which has attended the efforts of his house. [Illustration] The suburban house architecture of the towns about Boston is of exceptional interest and its quality is generally considered to be equal, if not superior, to that of any other locality in the country. The reason for its superiority in design and consequent interest is largely traceable to the influence of such architects as Peabody & Stearns, Winslow & Wetherell, Andrews, Jaques & Rantoul, Hartwell & Richardson and a number of others who have given especial attention to residence work. One of the most attractive collections of houses of this class which we have seen is contained in a finely printed little booklet issued by Dexter Bros., of Boston. It contains photographic illustrations of eleven houses designed by the architects named above, and others. The houses themselves are hardly more attractive than the excellently chosen and finely reproduced photographic views. Messrs. Dexter Bros., upon application, will send this booklet to any architect or draughtsman. For fastening any sort of work to stone or brick the clever expansion bolt, patented and manufactured by Isaac Church, of Toledo, is, on every count, the best device to specify. Patterns for every special use imaginable are made by him and fully described in his catalogue. 
15322	----	THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS. VOL. XXVII. Copyright, 1890, by Ticknor & Company, Boston, Mass. No 733. Entered at the Post-Office at Boston as second-class matter. JANUARY 11, 1890. [Illustration: CONTENTS] SUMMARY:-- Our International Edition and the Support it would receive Abroad and should receive Here.--The Influence of Architectural Journals on the Reputations of Architects.--Probable Irregularity in Publication.--Death of Mr. Charles Keely, Architect.--The Movement to abolish the Tariff on Works of Art.--The Borrowing of Fire Engines as it affects Insurance.--The Duke of Brunswick's Monument at Geneva.--An Opening for Architects in Spanish America. 17 CIVIL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.--I. 19 LETTER FROM PARIS. 21 LOSS OF POWER BY RADIATION OF HEAT. 22 THE COST OF A SMALL MUSEUM. 23 SANITARY ENTOMBMENT: THE IDEAL DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD. 24 THE VERPLANCK HOMESTEAD, FISHKILL, N.Y. 26 ELECTRICITY'S VICTIMS IN EUROPE. 27 ILLUSTRATIONS:-- House of G.M. Smith, Esq., Providence, R.I.--The Cathedral of St. Machar, Aberdeen.--Monument in the South Transept of the Cathedral, Aberdeen, Scotland.--The Hotel de Soto, Savannah, Ga.--Memorial Church of the Angels, Los Angeles, Cal.--St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church Buildings, Brooklyn, N.Y.--Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France: Façade on the Cour d'Honneur.--An Interior in the Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France.--Two Views of the House of Mrs. Consino, Santiago, Chili.--Design for Church of the Good Shepherd, Gospel Oak, London, N.W., Eng.--Butler's Wood, Chislehurst, Eng.--House at Pennsylvania, Exeter, Eng.--Design for Board Schools. 27 METHODS OF REDUCING THE FIRE LOSS. 28 SOCIETIES. 30 COMMUNICATIONS.-- Agreement between Architect and Client.--Inspection of Buildings in New York.--A seeming Attempt to defraud an Architect.--Ventilating Wooden Columns.--Books on Water-color Painting. 30 NOTES AND CLIPPINGS. 31 TRADE SURVEYS. 32 * * * * * We wonder whether every one who receives these first issues of the International Edition of the _American Architect_ comprehends the significance of the step which we, with the kind support and appreciation of our subscribers, have ventured to take. How many of those who turn over our pages realize that this is by far the most ambitious and costly architectural periodical in the world, and that it has been reserved for America to try to present every week, with a due proportion of the more valuable models from the past, an adequate view of all the best architecture which modern civilization can show? Strangely enough, in carrying out our plan of representing contemporary architecture as it should be represented, it is to Americans that we must most earnestly and urgently appeal for cooperation. We know where we can get drawings, plans, photographs, descriptions and details of all the best current work in North and South Germany, Italy, France and England, and even in Russia, but to secure anything like a decent representation of modern American architecture has hitherto been, according to our experience, absolutely impossible. Not long ago a discussion took place in England about architectural periodicals, and one or two of the American journals were mentioned with commendation, on account of the beautiful drawing and process-work in their illustrations, as well as the value of their text. Not long afterwards, a disparaging commentary on this discussion was made in one of the English professional papers, to the effect that it was a great mistake to value so highly the illustrations in the American journals, for the reason that, although charmingly executed and fascinating, they rarely represented architectural work of any importance. Our readers, especially those faithful friends who have stood by us for years, will understand that this was a sharp thrust, but it is, and not through our fault, altogether too well deserved. While in all other countries where architecture is practised, every important competition is regularly illustrated from the competitive drawings themselves, which are, as a matter of course, placed at the disposal of the professional journals; and plans, elevations, sections and perspectives of all new buildings of interest, and often photographs from the models for the sculptured detail, and illustrations of the schemes for heating and ventilation are gladly furnished by the architects, who understand perfectly that their professional reputation depends in great part on the publicity which is given to their work through the medium of the technical press: in this country, on the contrary, the attitude toward technical journals of a great many architects, and among them some who are constantly engaged upon very important work, is one, apparently, of grave suspicion. The most earnest appeals by letter on the part of the editors for permission to publish plans or elevations of a successful building by one of them meet with no response. Then the editor takes two or three days from his abundant leisure, and calls personally upon the professional magnate. The latter seems pleased to see him, shows him the drawings of the building in question, appears to be gratified at his praises, and readily agrees to allow the publication of the plan and perspective. The editor lays these drawings aside, and proposes to take them with him, but the architect politely insists that he cannot allow him to burden himself, and promises that he will send them immediately by express. The editor returns to his desk, and arranges space for the expected drawings in the next issue, but they do not arrive. Two or three weeks go by, and he then writes to the distinguished architect, to remind him of his promise. The letter brings neither the drawings nor any other response, and, after a final entreaty, as unsuccessful as the rest, he abandons his efforts, to begin them again with a fresh subject, who proves as slippery as the other. * * * * * After a good many years of such struggles, we should be inclined to say that we would trouble ourselves no further, and that American architects who are capable of carrying out important work successfully, and do not want other people to know it, may please themselves in the matter, were it not that, in a journal which now intends to show what is done all over the world, we most earnestly wish to have American, architecture properly represented. We are sure that the best of it is equal to the best anywhere, and we want to be able to prove it. The treatment of our modern mercantile and business structures, particularly those ten or twelve stories in height, is more successful than any other work of the kind in the world; the planning of our office-buildings is unrivalled anywhere, and some of our apartment-houses will bear comparison with the best in Paris--which are the best anywhere--and are more interesting, on account of the more complex character of the services which we must provide for. Besides this, many details of American construction, such as the encased iron framing-and isolated pier foundations of the Chicago architects, and the heating and ventilating systems in use everywhere here, are far in advance of foreign practice, and we want our foreign readers to see this with their own eyes, and to give their American brethren their proper rank in the profession. To do this we must have the material, and we appeal once more to American architects who have it to furnish it, and to those who do not have it themselves, but who know where it is to be found, to get it for us, or to put us in the way of getting it. Plans, elevations, perspectives, sketches, photographs, negatives, descriptions, whatever is good, we want to show, for the benefit and reputation of the profession in America far more than for our own, for we know better than the profession how very valuable publicity of the kind is to architects. The late Mr. Richardson, even to a comparatively late period in his professional career, was afflicted with the usual bashfulness about having his work published. We well remember the solicitations, the refusals, the renewed appeals, and, finally, the reluctant and conditional assent to have a single gelatine print from one of his perspectives published. This was the drawing, we think, of the Woburn Library, and was accompanied by a plan. Finding that he had suffered no severe injury from this exposure of his design to the gaze of the cold world, Mr. Richardson soon became one of our kindest friends, and if reputation and employment are things to be desired by an architect, we may say with all due modesty that what he did for us was repaid to him a hundred-fold, for, great as was his talent, it must, without the publicity given to his work through means like ours, have had for years only a local influence. As it was, however, every issue of ours with one of his designs was studied in a thousand offices and imitated in hundreds; his name was in the mouths of all architects throughout the Union; our plates were reproduced abroad; the illustrated magazines, finding his reputation already made in the profession, hastened to spread it among the public; and at his lamented death, a few years later, he was the central figure of American architecture. Now, although we do not say that all the architects who send us their drawings will attain the fame of a Richardson, we do say that Richardson would never have attained a fraction of his reputation if he had not allowed his designs to be published, and we need hardly say further that if any architect has done a good piece of work, and has it published, more people will know about it than if he kept it to himself; and the more people know about his good work, the more will come to him to get some like it, the better will be his standing in the profession here, and the more credit he will do his country abroad. * * * * * It may be as well to disarm criticism and complaint by stating that there will be throughout the year more or less of irregularity in the appearance of the additional illustrations in the International Edition, owing partly to steamer delays, and partly, perhaps, to misunderstanding of our instructions on the part of our correspondents. It will not be proper, therefore, to compare one issue with another, and assert that we are falling short of our promises. When the end of the year is reached, the subscribers to that edition will find, on review, that our promises have been fully kept, and that the edition has been what it professed to be. Naturally, defects and deficiencies will be more apparent at the outset, when the complicated details of supply have not been definitely adjusted. * * * * * The profession in Brooklyn, N.Y., has to mourn the loss of Mr. Charles Keely, son of Mr. Peter C. Keely, the architect of so many Catholic churches all over the country, and associated with his father in business. The practice of the office is enormous, fifty churches, it is said, being sometimes in process of execution from the designs of the father and son, and of the excellent work done there, no doubt much was due to the younger man's talent. Mr. Keely was about thirty-five years of age, active and popular. He died of pneumonia in Hartford, at the house of the bishop, whom he was visiting on business. * * * * * A deputation was presented to the Ways and Means Committee of Congress the other day from the Free Art League, which urged the abolition of the present duty on foreign works of art. The deputation consisted of Mr. Carroll Beckwith and Mr. Kenyon Cox, with Mr. William A. Coffin, who, after mentioning some of the obvious reasons for abolishing the tax, stated that, in response to a circular sent out by the League, fourteen hundred and thirty-five communications were received from artists, teachers of art and others whose opinion would be of value. Of these, thirteen hundred and forty-five desired the immediate abolition of the duty, eighty-three favored a moderate duty, ten per cent being mentioned by twenty-eight out of the number and seven wished the present impost retained. The Ways and Means Committee, according to the newspapers, listened politely to the artists for a time, and then turned their attention to the duty on carbonate of soda. Whether, in the presence of practical matters like carbonate of soda, they will ever, think again of the tax on mere works of art, remains to be seen. * * * * * _Fire and Water_ says, referring to some remarks of ours about the policy of transferring the fire-extinguishing apparatus of small towns to any neighboring large one in which a serious conflagration happens to break out, that we were mistaken in "supposing" that the insurance companies might refuse to pay losses in suburban towns occurring during the temporary absence of the regular protective apparatus, and that as the contract of insurance does not mention anything of the kind, the companies would be compelled to pay losses, whatever happened to the engines, so long as their policies remained uncancelled. Now, in the first place, we did not "suppose" or "assert," as another paper says we did, anything about the matter. We simply said we had been told that the companies would not pay in such cases, which was true. We were told that, and by an insurance agent, who ought to know something about it. Moreover, this was not the first time we have heard the same thing. Not long ago, in a discussion in the city government of a town near Boston, one of the members protested against allowing the town engines to leave the limits of the municipality, for the same reason, that the insurance companies would not pay losses occurring while the engines were absent. As to the contract in the policy, we have often seen clauses requiring the insured to notify the company of any circumstances affecting the risk, of which the absence of the town engines might be considered one, so, in our ignorance, we, and, we imagine, a good many others, would be glad to have an authoritative statement from the companies themselves on the subject. * * * * * According to the _Wiener Bauindustrie Zeitung_, the splendid Brunswick monument at Geneva is on the point of falling down. Every one remembers the history of this structure, which was erected in 1879, at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars, to the memory of Charles the Second of Brunswick, the "Diamond Duke," as he was called by the Germans, who, after his expulsion from his principality by his subjects, on account of his extravagance and general worthlessness, took up his residence in Geneva, and, on his death, in 1873, bequeathed all his property, about four million dollars, to the city. The municipality was grateful enough to carry out in a very sumptuous manner the last wishes of its benefactor, who desired to be commemorated by a monument in the style of the later Scaliger tomb at Verona, and from the designs of Frauel was erected the hexagonal Gothic pavilion, surmounted by an equestrian statue of the Duke, which is so well known to architects. The Veronese prototype of the monument is a tolerably insecure affair, but the modern imitation is still larger and heavier, and two years after its completion the substructure began to come to pieces. It was then clamped with metal, but water got into the joints, and further repairs were soon necessary. In 1883, the Carrara marble of which it was built had so far decayed that the rebuilding of the whole with more durable stone was seriously proposed; and now, examination, having shown that the whole affair is likely to collapse at any moment, the city authorities have asked for authority to raise eight thousand dollars, by loan, to put it in secure condition. To tell the truth, it would not be an irreparable loss to the world to have the structure go to ruin. An imitation of an existing monument is not likely to be a very inspiring work of art, and this was not extremely successful, even as an imitation; while the historical fact which it immortalized, that the last representative of one of the six great German princely families, whose ancestors had been reigning sovereigns for a thousand years, had been obliged to set up the images of his haughty forefathers in a community of Republicans, because his own people despised and hated him so much that they could endure him no longer, was not of a character to arouse noble thoughts in the mind of the beholder. * * * * * We have before called attention to the great and rapidly increasing importance of the South American Republics, and, while there seems to be no prospect that our proximity to them will be of any commercial advantage to us, some of our young architects and skilled mechanics, who speak Spanish, might perhaps find profitable employment there. At present, the most prosperous city is Buenos Ayres, which, from one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants in 1870, increased to four hundred and sixty thousand in 1888, and has gained very rapidly within the last year. We must confess that our own ideas of Buenos Ayres still retain a reminiscence of gauchos and lassoes and buffalo, but this grows fainter as we find illustrations in the foreign papers of the newer buildings going up in the city. The last we have seen is of an enormous dry-goods store, after the model of the "Bon Marché" or the "Printemps" in Paris, which is known as the "Bon Marché Argentin," and covers at present ninety thousand square feet of land, while thirty-five thousand feet adjoining have been secured, and are to be used for the enlargement of the present building which will soon become necessary. There are said to be a good many architects already in Buenos Ayres, but first-rate mechanics are, or were not long ago, so scarce that the municipality imported plumbers under contract from London to do work on public buildings. CIVIL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.--I.[1] The term Civil and Domestic Architecture includes all public and private edifices, that is to say: honorary monuments, such as triumphal arches and tombs; buildings for the instruction of the public, such as museums, libraries and schools; houses for public amusements, as theatres, amphitheatres and circuses; structures for public service, as city-halls, court-houses, prisons, hospitals, thermæ, markets, warehouses, slaughter-houses, railway-stations, light-houses, bridges and aqueducts; finally, private dwellings, as palaces, mansions, city and country residences, châteaux and villas. [Illustration: Memorial to the Heroes of the Franco Prussian War, Berlin.] The first care of all social organizations, at their inception, must have been to provide shelter against inclement weather. In primitive times society was composed of shepherds, or agriculturists, or hunters, and it is presumable that each of these groups adopted a shelter suited to its nomadic or sedentary tastes. For this reason to shepherds is attributed the invention of the tent, a portable habitation which they could take with them from valley to valley, wherever they led their flocks to pasture; agriculturists fixed to the soil which they tilled, dwelling in the plains and along the river banks, must have found the hut better adapted to their wants, while the hunters, stealing through the forests, ambushed in the mountains, or stationed on the seashore, naturally took safety in caves, or dug holes for themselves in the earth, or hollowed out grottos in the rocks. An imitation of the tent is found later on in the form of the Chinese and Japanese structures; the principle of the cave appears developed in the subterranean dwellings of the people of India and Nubia; while the hut is the point of departure for all Greek and Roman architecture. As soon as man had contrived a shelter for himself, before considering improvements that might be made in it, he turned his thoughts toward the divine being of his worship, and the first steps in art were taken in the monuments which he raised to his gods. Then, confounding kings with deities, he reared palaces like unto temples. But civil architecture, properly so called, came into existence only with an already advanced state of civilization, when cities were forming and peoples were organizing. After having satisfied the demands of the moral nature, after having erected temples to their gods and palaces to their kings, the people began to group together and surround themselves with fortifications. Next the material needs of society made themselves felt; aqueducts were constructed to supply water; bridges established communication between the opposite banks of streams; dikes confined the rivers within certain bounds; streets were laid out along which houses were built in orderly fashion, public squares were marked off where the products of industry could be exchanged, where justice was dispensed and where the great affairs of State were treated; then came mental and physical demands, a felt need for the training of body and mind, and out of this want grew theatres, stadia, gymnasia and thermæ. In time we find the history of a single people developing; and with this development a necessity arising for lasting monuments to commemorate its various stages; public services rendered by certain illustrious men called for some enduring memorial; and relatives and friends, with whom one had lived and whom the dread enemy had snatched away could not be left without sepulture. Is there nothing after death? And so honorary monuments, triumphal columns, statues and tombs sprang into being. Again, with the growth of a people, wealth increases, and every new victory assuring an added degree of ease introduces at the same time extravagant tastes; a people after enduring suffering cries out for its portion of pleasure; it was to satisfy this demand that circuses were built, and amphitheatres where the eyes could feast on imposing spectacles; private houses became more comfortable, they were improved in arrangement, they were enlarged and embellished; at length an extraordinary display of sumptuousness began to appear in the dwellings of the great,--that luxury of decadence which marks the close of ancient civilization. With the advent of Christ came new ideas which caused new departures, not only in religious and monastic architecture, but in civil architecture, as well. Christianity, in proclaiming a new virtue, love, created retreats for the unfortunate, asylums for their reception and hospitals for their care. Monkish orders, in their efforts to prevent the destruction of old manuscripts, spread knowledge around them, and following the example set by them in their monasteries, outside colleges were founded. With the dissemination of knowledge, cities roused out of their long sleep; their independent spirit began to shake off the yoke of their oppressors; they formed themselves into communes and various privileges were granted them. Under certain conditions, and in consideration of the discharge of certain obligations, the commune is seen at length assuming the administration of its own affairs. From this moment an assembling-place is needed where communal interests can be discussed and where questions can be put to vote. The town-hall, with its belfry from which could be proclaimed afar all immunities won, supplied the want. Around this centre markets sprang up, and exchanges where merchants could negotiate and transact business. Finally, the less exclusive modern spirit made itself felt, and, soaring beyond the city bounds, it projected works of a genuinely public nature, not for the benefit of this or that city, but for the entire country. Political centralization, governmental unity, later on, made it possible to run canals through different provinces, to establish barracks for troops over broad stretches of territory, to build court-houses and prisons, to reconstruct hospitals on new plans, and to open more extensive exchanges, markets, warehouses and slaughter-houses. Public instruction also had its imperious demands, and States were forced to sprinkle their lands with school-houses of every grade, from the simplest asylums and primary and secondary schools to special government institutions; libraries and museums were founded to satisfy still other claims of education. Then with the ever-increasing wants of a civilization, eager for progress, in the presence of the important discoveries of science, before the invasions of finance and the extension of governmental machinery, architectural designs are indefinitely multiplied to supply suitable departmental buildings, banking-houses, houses of commerce, quarters for public officers and public boards, railway-stations, inns, custom-houses and toll-houses; to say nothing of private residences and play-houses, bathing establishments, casinos and villas, whose designs change from time to time with the manners and customs of the period or people. Civil architecture, in the proper sense of the term, originated with the Greeks and was extended in a surprising degree among the Romans. All the other peoples of antiquity devoted themselves to the rearing of religious and sepulchral monuments, and to the construction of palaces for their sovereigns. Their political organization did not lend itself to development in other directions. So long as a people is not considered as an individual there can be no thought of erecting for its comfort or education structures of any considerable importance; so long as it has no existence as a civil body there can be no call for the building of edifices wherein to discuss its own affairs or the affairs of State. Nevertheless, aside from temples and palaces, there are certain works of public utility which are forced upon all civilizations, and among all organized peoples a domestic architecture exists which answers to their needs and which we cannot pass over in silence. The sacred books of the Hindoos give us the plans on which their cities were built. There were forty different kinds of cities, distinguished one from the other by their extent and form. The streets crossed at right angles. The centre of the city was reserved for sacred uses and was inhabited by the Brahmins; around them dwelt the people, and the angles were occupied by the exchanges, markets, colleges and other public structures. The city was always walled, with a gate on each of the four sides and one at each corner. Private dwellings varied in height according to the rank of the owners. Those of the inferior classes could have only one story above the ground-floor, and in most cases they were limited to the ground-floor itself. The door was never placed in the centre of the façade. Its position, as well as its height and breadth, was fixed by rule; the same was true of the windows. The streets were supplied with running water, and adorned with avenues of trees; they were bordered by rich shops and houses set close together, with no intervening spaces. The palaces, which were composed of separate buildings, approached by porches, were usually erected around small courts, and these courts were almost always planted with trees. The roofs were flat, and the narrow, rude staircases were made in the thickness of the walls. The Hindoos also constructed huge reservoirs, and reared columns and square triumphal arches in honor of their heroic victors; they are also known to have built bridges, the piles of which, formed of enormous blocks, were connected by stones of a single piece. Passing into China we encounter a civilization whose antiquity rivals that of India. However, there are no very ancient remains there. But there is documentary evidence that the Chinese, several centuries before the Christian era, built from the same designs that they use to-day. Architecture being the expression of the needs, instincts, character and traditions of a people, and the Chinese having in no way modified their manner of living or their traditions, we can easily understand why their architecture has undergone no modifications. The Great Wall, running along the north of China proper, with a length of fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred miles, is the only Chinese work that can boast of its antiquity. It is attributed to the emperor Tsin Hoang Ti [Che Hoang-te], who reigned in the third century before our era, and who is said to have employed in its construction five or six million men. The foundations are of hewn stone, the rest is of brick faced with smoothly-joined stones. The wall is battlemented, flanked with towers, and is provided at certain intervals with fortified gates. It is broad enough for six horsemen to ride abreast on it. Among the great works of the Chinese, mention is also made of the bridge of Loyau at Sueno chou Fou; it is built over the point of an arm of the sea and comprises two hundred and fifty piles made of material of enormous bulk. The roadway is formed with single blocks of granite, and is guarded on each side by a balustrade. There are other bridges raised on vaulted arches. Others, still, are decorated with triumphal arches, such as that of the Province of Kiang-Nan; and again there are others built of wood, like the bridge of King-Chou-Fou, with the flooring supported by iron chains fastened to rocks. The cities are generally laid out on a square plan with the angles directed as far as possible toward the four cardinal points, and the predominance of a single architectural type imparts a certain monotony to the streets. The enclosing walls are flanked with towers and their gates are surmounted by lofty structures which include an arsenal and a guard-room. Besides the temples and commemorative monuments erected on the same plan as the temples, at the entrance to certain streets and before certain edifices monuments in the form of gates are to be seen. These structures, called _pai léou_, are nothing else than triumphal arches raised to the memory of emperors, generals, mandarins and all those who have rendered important services to the country. The bases of these arches are of stone, the rest is made of wood; they have a single bay, or one principal bay with two smaller ones, and the top is in the form of a Chinese roof. The palaces present a succession of spacious courts surrounded by buildings and are entered through gates in the form of triumphal arches. Each separate portion of the structure is destined to a special use. The women and children are usually relegated to the rear court. The houses have one or two stories; their dimensions are regulated by law, according to the rank and condition of the owner, and, as in all Oriental dwellings, there are but few openings on the street. While the Hindoos built with enduring materials, the Chinese generally used brick and wood. The explanation of this fact is to be sought not so much in their fear of the earthquakes with which they are constantly threatened as in their narrow-mindedness and lack of ambition; they saw no reason why an edifice should outlast the generation for which it was constructed. Judging from the ruins of Persepolis, the Medes and Persians must have attained to a high degree of civilization in the time of Cyrus, but we have no authentic records concerning their civil architecture. Their art is derived from the Babylonians and Assyrians, from whom they must have largely borrowed their customs. The Assyrian palaces consisted of three wholly distinct groups of buildings, three divisions which we find exactly reproduced to-day in the seigneurial and princely dwellings of Persia, India and Turkey. First, there was the seraglio, or the palace properly so-called, which comprised the reception-halls and the men's apartments, and which is known now throughout the East under the name of _selamlik_; then came the harem containing the private rooms where the master saw his wives and children with their guards of eunuchs and their throngs of attendants; and lastly, there was the _khan_, a cluster of dependent structures including servants' quarters and out-buildings. In princely palaces each of these divisions included several courts, and the whole was disposed around a principal court, the court of honor. The entire assemblage of edifices was nothing more than one vast ground-floor. "The design followed in the arrangement of these composite dwellings," it has been said, is almost naive in its simplicity: the plan is merely divided into as many right parallelograms as there are services to be provided for, and these rectangles are so disposed as to touch along one side or at one of the angles, but they never interfere with or command one another; they are contiguous or adjacent but always independent. Thus each of the three divisions (seraglio, harem and khan) presents a rectangular figure, and each borders one side of the principal court, which is neutral ground,--the common centre around which all are grouped. The same principle of arrangement is applied to the subdivisions of the great quarters; the latter are composed of smaller rectangles distributed about an uncovered space, on which each apartment opens, with no direct communication between adjoining rooms through partition-walls. In this way all the sections of an edifice were clustered together and at the same time isolated; and each of these sections had its special use and its pre-assigned occupants.[2] Drains were contrived under the palaces, and certain square rooms were covered with dome-shaped vaults. The houses, built of brick, were of two different types; some were covered with hemispherical or parabolical calottes, others had flat roofs with a tower in the fashion of a belvedere. They were generally quite low, except in large cities like Babylon, where they were sometimes three or four stories high. The towns were regularly laid out; the streets ran at right-angles to each other; quays were built along the streams, and bridges established communication between their banks. The large cities were protected by a fortified wall. The gates were arched and flanked each by two towers which were separated by only the width of the entrance. Some of the gates were ornamented, others were plain, but each one was in itself an edifice of quite complicated structure. The city gate played then, as it still does all through the East, an important rôle in the life of the urban populations. It was an agora for the Greeks, a forum for the Romans. The people gathered there to chat, and learn the news, and there the old men acted as arbitrators in case of quarrels. In the same way it was at the palace-gates, which were always constructed on the model of the city-gates, that the court attendants assembled, and that petitioners stood in waiting. The Phoenician cities also were surrounded by fortified walls, and dwellings were burrowed into the very body of the ramparts. In order not to extend the limits of the city too much, the houses in the central portions were built very high. In the chief quarters of Carthage some of them had as many as six stories; they were covered with flat roofs, and, as is the case of all warm countries, the streets were narrow. The residences of the rich merchants were of a marked character and were easily distinguished; they were all provided with cisterns; they had inner courts adorned with porches, and with open galleries along the upper stories. The streets, squares and courts were paved with broad flags, probably for the purpose of saving every drop of water that fell. There were also public cisterns, and ports for shipping. As their country abounded in stone that could be easily cut, the Phoenicians used no artificial building material: they are not known to have built of brick before the Roman period. In Judea, while enormous, rough blocks were used in huge structures, the houses were made of unburned brick, with ceilings of palm or sycamore beams covered with a layer of hard earth. In order that the variations in temperature should not be felt in the interior, the outer walls and the roof had to be quite thick. All the dwellings were covered with flat roofs surrounded by a parapet, and here people passed the night in certain seasons. Most houses had only a ground-floor; but the residences of the wealthy sometimes boasted of an upper story, and certain windows, doubtless those lighting the women's apartments, were provided with lattices similar to the _moucharabiehs_ of the Arab houses of the present day. The villages were generally built on the hill-tops, and the more important of them were surrounded with fortifications. Jerusalem was the seat of royalty. It was there that David reared his palace, to which Solomon added numerous edifices that occupied thirteen years in construction. Other great works were undertaken by the Hebrews, with the view of carrying to a distance the precious water of the springs; and they were compelled to supplement their scant supply of water by digging wells and making cisterns. In Egypt, the attention of archæologists was so long riveted on the temples and tombs that it is only recently that a study has been made of private dwellings. To-day, however, something is known of these. The streets of Egyptian cities were usually laid out regularly, but they were so narrow that, except in the principal ones, two chariots could scarcely pass. This narrowness of the streets, which is frequently observed in the ancient Arab cities, and which has been so long maintained in all hot countries, had the advantage of securing shade at all times on one side of the street. The buildings along the street were ordinarily separated from each other by alleys; they were rarely more than two stories high, except in such large cities as Thebes, where they sometimes reached four and even five stories. The houses were so arranged as to meet the demands of the climate. A court often preceded the apartments which were disposed along both sides of a long corridor. In other cases the rooms occupied three sides of the court; or oftener still the court was surrounded on all sides by the different structures. The ground-floor was reserved for the stables; it was used also for storing the corn, and it contained the kitchen and the cellar. The family occupied the upper stories. Above the whole was a terrace where they could enjoy the cool air and even pass the night, when the heat was excessive. Sometimes the terrace was protected by a light roof supported by slender wooden columns. There were but few windows, so as to keep the sun out as far as possible, and such as there were were placed nearly at the top of the rooms. The houses were built of unburned brick, made from a heavy clay, mixed with a little sand and chopped straw; this was shaped into oblong slabs which were dried in the sun. Bricks of ordinary size measured 8-2/3 in. x 4-1/3 in. x 5-1/2 in., the large ones were 15 in. x 7 in. x 5-1/2 in. There were special marks to indicate where they were manufactured; some came from the royal works, some from private shops. The foundations of the buildings were not deep; the walls were whitewashed, or painted in bright colors; the floors were of brick or flagging, or simply of hardened earth; the roof was flat, with a framework of palm branches covered with a coating of earth sufficiently thick to prevent the infiltration of the rain. The dwellings of the wealthy lords were usually erected in the centre of a garden, or of a cultivated court, and occupied a considerable space. The entrance was announced by a colonaded porch or a pylon, and the interior was like a small city,--the dwelling in the background, with the granaries, stables, servants' quarters and out-buildings disposed here and there about the enclosure. In the more important palaces, the dwelling of the master stood in the centre of a rectangular court, the sides of which, on the right and left, were occupied by the storehouses. Like all other peoples of antiquity, the Egyptians were obliged to protect their towns from the incursions of enemies. The greater part of their cities, and even the principal villages, were therefore walled. Man will never cease to fortify his cities until these fortifications have been proved unavailing before the power of new engines of destruction. In this rapid review of the civil architecture of the ancient peoples of Asia and Egypt, we have discovered no traces of structures whose destination indicated any care for the development of the lower classes of society, no remains which implied their participation in any municipal life whatever, no edifice erected for the purpose of national education. Such institutions had no place under a theocractic government which absorbed into itself the entire nation. When it had made provision for the defence of its cities, erected temples to its gods, reared palaces for the earthly abode of its monarchs and tombs for their future life, when it had satisfied the simple material needs of the people, what more could be asked? [To be continued.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: From the French of G. Guicestre, in "_Encyclopédie de l'Architecture et de la Construction_."] [Footnote 2: Perrot and Chipiez. "_Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité_."] * * * * * [Illustration: PARIS] THE PAVILIONS OF THE CITY OF PARIS.--DOMESTIC AND URBAN SANITATION.--VIEWS OF OLD PARIS.--PALACES OF THE LIBERAL ARTS AND THE FINE ARTS.--RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION OF LABOR. The City of Paris desired to have in the Champ de Mars a serious and useful exhibition, so it began by paying no sort of attention to the decorative and architectural side of its two pavilions, placed in the centre of the upper garden between the monumental fountain and the central dome. It was not afraid, in spite of its surroundings, to shelter itself within the simplest of buildings in plaster, with a decoration meagre and accentuated by the needs of construction. In fact, the large entrance doors, all of wood, were made afterwards and applied to the plaster, and the same may be said of all the visible woodwork; but this lack of ingenuousness in the construction is not to be too severely blamed, since it is a question of pavilions which are to disappear after an existence of six months. Economical reasons are always worthy of respect, and the modesty of the Municipal Council on this occasion ought to be praised. But what one has a right to criticise is the unhappy idea which placed these pavilions in such a manner as to completely obstruct the view of the exterior porticos of the palaces and industrial sections when one stands before the central dome in the centre of the garden. This criticism once made, there only remains to give expression to praise of the exhibit made by the city of Paris. Very well arranged inside, very well considered, it possesses enormous interest principally from the point-of-view of hygiene and the sanitation of the city. This is a question much studied for a long time back, and is one which marches towards a solution which promises to be perfectly satisfactory in view of the progress already made. Wide streets have replaced narrow alleys, air circulates freely everywhere, trees and enormous gardens have been planted on every side, and the salubrity of the house is assured by a severe inspection, one which will become yet more severe, it is to be hoped, in the case of those owners who are inclined to despise regulations. It would be so simple in place of continuing the ancient ways, whose inconveniences are so well demonstrated in the large model of an unhealthy house exhibited in the pavilion of the city of Paris, to adopt all the new systems of sanitation which, on their part, are shown in application in the model of a sanitarily perfect house which has been placed opposite to it. To establish this comparison two very simple models of construction have been selected, proving that healthfulness is not merely an attribute of luxury, but that the most modest houses can present all possible guaranties from this point of view. The healthfulness of houses, and consequently of cities, depends amongst other multiple but relatively simple causes on two preeminent conditions,--that of the removal of excrement, and the purity of the water-supply. In a large degree the first condition is subordinated to the second. "Everything to the sewer" is recognized by the most competent hygienists as the best system, but only on the condition that water shall be abundant and that no stagnation of the material shall be allowed. These problems, which were for a long time studied by M. Durand-Claye, and to which he devoted himself until his premature death unfortunately took him from us, have received the attention of his devoted successors, who have already brought to fruition interesting solutions which prompt us to hope for a completely satisfactory system in the near future. Three glass reservoirs, containing water from the Seine, from the Ourcq and the Vanne, allow us to perceive the difference of quality which exists between these three sources of supply, the first of which, with its yellow color, is anything but appetizing, and the second is not much less doubtful, while the third, alone, presents the limpidity and transparency which one has a right to demand in potable water. Nevertheless, one should not believe, as many persons do, that the water that we see in this reservoir, and which has been taken within the limits of Paris, is the same that is distributed from time to time through each quarter. The water there used is taken up-stream and before it has been soiled by its passage through the suburbs and city. In the same pavilion the Administration has exhibited the plans and the comparative views of the city taken at different epochs since 1789 up to the last months of 1889. We here see the march of progress in this immense city, expanding without cessation like a drop of oil, and as it enlarges crossed by great arteries which establish across its mass conduits for aeration, and at the same time suppress the agglomerations of former days. For artists and archæologists and lovers of old Paris, whom these new transformations displease and who regret the picturesque past, the authorities have had the forethought to paint or photograph before demolition the quarters which to-day have disappeared, or are on the point of disappearing; and as a consolation such persons have very pretty pictures by M. Pansyer, representing St. Julien le Pauvre, the Rue Galande, the Place Maubert, the ruins of the Opéra Comique, the flower-covered relics of the Cour de Comptes; and there has even been evoked for them the manor-houses of Clichy and Monceau such as they were in 1789, and also the quarter of the Bastile, which can thus be compared with their present aspect. Not far from these antiquities the City of Paris has exhibited some decorative paintings executed for its various _mairies_, the "Abreuvoir" and the "Lavoir" of M. D. A. Baudoin, and for the _Mairie_ d' Arcueil-cachan "L' Automne et l'Ete," by M. A. Séon; "The Marriage," by M. Glaize, and a fine painting, "The Defense of Paris in 1814," by M. Schommer. Other compositions are signed by Cormon, Gervex and Boulanger. Finally, to make an end of the important works which she has caused to be executed, the City of Paris exhibits models, at a reduced scale, of the new Sorbonne, of the Ecole de Medicine, and of the Ecole Pratique, at present in course of construction, also plans and photographs of buildings erected during the last ten years, such as schools, _maries_, etc. The department of sidewalks and plantations is represented by a reduced model of the Crematory at Père Lachaise, plans and views of the new cemeteries at Pantin and Bagneux, as well as the future square of Montmartre. The second pavilion of the City of Paris is more especially consecrated to instruction. After attending to the healthfulness of matter, attention must be given to the healthfulness of the mind and moral culture. By the side of the models of the school-rooms, where children find school-furniture studied with painstaking care and proportioned to their stature, have been placed the works executed by the school-children themselves of every kind, primary, maternal and professional. These works, in a general way, prove an average aptitude for the industrial arts, and indicate a real taste for beautiful forms. A hall is wholly set apart for the pupils of the special schools. Finally, around the two pavilions are arranged the numerous statues, purchased, or ordered by the City of Paris, archers, halberdiers, officers of the watch of the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and we recognize, as we pass, the "Sauveteur" of M. Mombur, the "Science" of M. Blanchard, the "Art" of M. Marqueste, and especially the proud "Porte-falot" of Fremiet, which decorates the lower part of the staircase of the new Hôtel de Ville. PALACES OF THE LIBERAL AND FINE ARTS. The two Palaces of the Fine Arts and the Liberal Arts are of equal dimensions and similar aspect. They cover an area of 21,000 square metres. They are composed of a large central nave, measuring 209.31 metres in length by a width of fifty-three metres and one-half. The nave is surrounded with galleries on the lower floor and first story. On the garden under the porticos are restaurants. Each of these palaces is connected with the Industrial section of the foreign countries by a large vestibule thirty metres wide by 115 in length, one of which, that of the Fine Arts, contains the exhibition of sculpture, and the other contains a large part of the musical instruments. These two palaces are entirely of iron, terra-cotta and ceramic work. The entrance is executed by a large porch of three arches, and the wings on either side are pierced by wide bays. Each is crowned with a dome fifty-five metres high and thirty-two in width. These two palaces are striking examples of the richness which can be introduced in a moment by the artistic employment of terra-cotta and ceramic work, especially when the ceramic artists bear such names as Müller, Loebnitz and Parvillée, to say nothing of MM. Bréult, Boulanger and Mortreux, whose work we met in the ceramic division, or which we shall meet in our walks through the foreign pavilions. With M. Müller, who has given his name to a kind of brick covered with enamel on one of its faces, ceramic work becomes a portion of the very fabric itself as well as of its ornamentation. This principle applied with rare talent to the covering of the two domes of the palaces has given a very curious and interesting result. This covering is composed of enamelled tiles of more than 600 varieties which are not superposed one upon another, but butt together side by side, and form a mosaic rather than a covering of tiles. Each dome contains about 50,000 pieces arranged in ninety rows and twelve divisions. The general tone is blue. The principal ornamental motive consists of a cartouche which bears in the centre two large letters "R.F." in gold. The cartouche stands out on a background of cream-white, bordered with a meander. The effect is very brilliant and chatoyant. At the base of each dome twenty-four vases in pottery, three metres high, are arranged on the consoles of the attic which supports the roof, and in which are pierced bull's-eyes decorated in tones of blue and natural terra-cotta. The domes of the pavilions at the angle of the palace on the side of the Seine are in the same way covered with enamelled porcelain tiles. This is a new product invented by M. Parvillée and has a great decorative richness. Above each bay of the two palaces is repeated a terra-cotta frieze two metres high, which bears children holding cartouches and standing out from a golden background. Pillars between the bays are encased in terra-cotta fluted panels with interlacements of laurel and oak leaves. The ironwork of these pillars is exposed and encloses the terra-cotta work like a Spanish net, with very original effect and very interesting constructive frankness. Finally, the balustrade crowning each palace is also of terra-cotta, and is formed of small pilasters and between them is repeated a _motif_ of bucklers bearing lions' heads. The balustrade is composed of 7,500 pieces and weighs 450,000 kilogrammes, and covers a space of 2,000 square metres. Independently of the exhibit indicated by its name and character, the Palace of the Liberal Arts encloses one of the great curiosities of the Exhibition of '89; that is the "retrospective history of labor and anthropologic science." "The aim of this exhibit," said M. Jules Simon, in a report which he made as the president of the Superior Commission, June 15, 1888, "is to instruct the public in the history of the processes of manual and mechanical labor, which in the passage of centuries have resulted in the modern industrial utensils used in the arts and trades." This exhibit has a particularly historical and technical character. It is far from excluding objects of art, for in several ages the utensils, those especially which were used in the liberal arts, were veritable jewels, either from their elegance of form, or from the richness of their material, or the grace of their details. We find chefs-d'oeuvre, for instance on a geographical map, on the handle of a chisel, on the barrel of a musket. Our ancestors were not possessed with the same passion for speed and cheapness that possesses us. Industry lost, perhaps, but the arts were the gainers. The aim of the retrospective exhibition is well defined. It is to retrace with broad strokes by means of the reproductions of diagrams and authentic monuments the stages of human genius. To achieve this result it was necessary to associate with the retrospective exhibition of labor that of anthropologic science, in order to show in the outset what man was when he left the hands of nature in the different physical forms of different races. The exhibit of anthropological science and history of labor comprises then five grand divisions--first, anthropologic and ethnographic science; second, the liberal arts; third, arts and trades; fourth, means of transportation; fifth, military arts. The central nave of the Palace of the Liberal Arts is wholly occupied by this exhibit. Grand porticos and galleries of woodwork with platforms in the lower story, form four grand divisions with interior courts that approach by monumental staircases opening under the dome upon each side of the rotunda, which occupies the centre and shelters the theatrical exhibit. All around the porticos and galleries full panels were reserved upon which M. Charles Touché placed decorative compositions broadly treated in aquarelle illustrating, so to say, the history of labor. * * * * * AN INGENIOUS PLAN FOR STRAIGHTENING WALLS.--Yankees, as a rule, are equal to any emergency; what the average Yankee mechanic fails to conjure up at a time when his wits are most needed, leaves very little room for foreign genius to think and work in. Yet it remained for M. Molard, a French architect, to contrive an original and ingenious plan for straightening the walls of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, which threatened an absolute collapse owing to the extreme weight of the roof. A series of strong iron bars were carried across the building from wall to wall, passing through holes in the walls, and were secured by nuts on the outside. In this state they would have been sufficient to have prevented the further separation of the walls by the weight of the roof, but it was desirable to restore the walls to their original state by drawing them together. This was effected in the following manner: Alternate bars were heated by lamps fixed beneath them. They expanded, and consequently the nuts, which were previously in contact with the walls, were no longer so. The nuts were then screwed up so as to be again in close contact with the walls. The lamps were withdrawn and the bars allowed to cool. In cooling they gradually contracted and resumed their former dimensions; consequently the nuts, pressing against the walls, drew them together through a space equal to that through which they had been screwed up. Meanwhile the intermediate bars were heated and expanded, and the nuts screwed up as before. The lamps being again withdrawn, they contracted in cooling, and the walls were further drawn together. This process was continually repeated, until at length the walls were restored to their perpendicular position. The gallery may still be seen with the bars extending across it, and binding together its walls.--_Philadelphia Record and Guide_. LOSS OF POWER BY RADIATION OF HEAT.[3] [Illustration: The Martyrs Column, Naples, Italy.] To him who holds the purse and pays for the coal consumed, it is of importance that between the energy of the burning fuel and the power developed by the engine there should be the least possible loss. Every unit of heat radiated by boiler-pipe, cylinder or heater is absolute loss, and must come out of that purse. In an electrical plant this matter is of great importance. There is less opportunity to have results obscured. There is, proportionally, a large possible loss between the coal on the grate and the far end of the cylinder, and this loss should be reduced to the minimum. Is it not always the best economy to throw away as little as possible, to save from waste _all_ that can be saved? Is not the very _reason far being_, of the architect, the mechanical engineer, in fact of every man who is paid for his advice and direction, just this: that he shall bring to bear upon the subject, and impart to his client honest knowledge concerning the various matters about which he is consulted? That he shall keep abreast of the tide of discovery and improvement, and that upon these subjects he shall _know_, not trusting to mere hearsay or to unintelligent prejudice for his impressions. Some little time since a gentleman from a neighboring city called upon me for information upon the subject of coverings in general and their comparative values. Being an intelligent man he said frankly at the outset that he knew very little on the subject. He had, however, in common with all of us, heard the word "asbestos" used as a shibboleth for years, but he desired definite knowledge, and after he had digested the information he should act on his judgment. I devoted sufficient time to him to put him in possession of the salient points of the subject. His understanding was acute. He left me to seek elsewhere further light upon this matter. After some few days he returned and directed that the magnesia covering be applied to his work. In the course of conversation he remarked that he had received great diversity of advice from those to whom he had gone. One man, who had been years in the business of selling steam plants, told him that the best thing for him to use was hair-felt, even though the steam-pressure might run up to 125 pounds to the inch. Now, as a matter-of-fact, the man who gave that advice simply showed himself an unsafe guide; and from his inability to keep abreast with modern knowledge, that he had no conception of the fire-hazard which his advice was to thrust upon the innocent inquirer, and that his advice was little short of being morally criminal. The subject of the fire-hazard of organic coverings has been pretty thoroughly investigated and can be pretty well-known, when there is any inclination to get out of ruts which long years of travelling in has deepened. How many fires (cause unknown?) have really originated from the slow carbonizing of organic material on steam-pipes? It is but recently that the hair-felt covering on the steam end of a Worthington pumping-engine, within ten miles of us, not only burnt itself but destroyed some thousands of dollars worth of walnut lagging. Cases of the combustion of these organic coverings are numerous and are well-known. Few appreciate the great loss of heat from uncovered or imperfectly covered pipes. Many have an indistinct impression that there may possibly be some slight loss. But there is in many cases an absence of knowledge upon this subject where it should be complete. The most correct data available show that the radiation from uncovered two-inch steam-pipe, with 60 pounds steam-pressure, is 391.83 kilo. centigrade heat-units one foot one hour, or 21,739.78 kilos. of coal for 100 feet per year of 300 days of 10 hours each; one kilo. equals 2,205 pounds. Properly combining these figures we see that there are 23.97 tons of coal lost by radiation from that uncovered pipe. If the coal costs $4 per ton, the radiation from this 100 feet of pipe will amount to $95.87. From the same pipe covered with Wm. Berkefield's fossil meal composition, 32/100-inch thick, the most powerful inorganic non-heat conductor used as a covering at the time these investigations were made, there was radiated 24,109 kilo. cent. heat-units one foot one hour, or 1,337.63 kilos. of coal for the year. This would be 1-474/1000 tons of coal at $4 per ton, amounting to $5.89. Then $95.87 less $5.89 equals $89.98, the saving effected by covering this pipe with William Berkefield's fossil-meal composition 92/106 of an inch thick. Or, in other words, the saving effected was over 93 per cent of the total possible radiation, using a thickness of one inch this loss would be reduced to $5.50. From the same data we find (page 44) it stated that while the radiation through 25 m.m. of Wm. Berkefield's fossil meal was 7.7 heat-units, through 25 m.m. of carb. magnesia it was 6.7 heat-units, therefore the proportions 7.7: 6.7 = $5.50: $4.80 gives us the coal value of heat lost by radiation through the magnesia covering. To put this in another form: From the running-foot of two-inch pipe uncovered the loss is 96 cents, while, from the same pipe covered with the magnesia, the loss is less than five cents; or a saving of over 91 cents per year. To accomplish this saving the cost of the covering should be taken into account. This was 27 cents. Therefore, the investment in the magnesia covering is paid back in less than four months. The data which we have used were obtained by the use of a calorimeter measuring the quantity of heat passing through covering. The other possible method of arriving at this knowledge would be to accurately measure the condensation of the steam. In these experiments, owing to several reasons, it was not deemed advisable to rely upon the second method. Recently, however, I have seen in the _American Engineer_ of June 12, a report of the proceedings of the Michigan Engineering Society containing a paper by Professor Cooley, of Ann Arbor, Mich., in which he says: "The benefits of covering steam-pipes to prevent radiation are strikingly illustrated by the following example: The Thomson-Houston electric-light plant in Ann Arbor has about 60 feet of seven-inch pipe connecting the boilers with the engines and two large steam-drums above the boilers: in March, 1887, the steam at the far end of this pipe was tested to determine the amount of entrained water, the pipes and drums at the time being uncovered. An average of nine experiments gave 31.01 per cent moisture. In June of the same year, after the pipes were covered with magnesia sectional-coverings, the quality of the steam was again tested, the average of five experiments giving 3.61 per cent moisture; the tests were made by the same men from the same connections, and in the same manner. The pipes and steam-drums in March were subjected to a draught, which, of course, aided the condensation. Enough water passed into the cylinders to retard the engines, producing a disagreeable noise. In June the weather was warmer and the pipes and steam-drums were well protected. The quality of steam at the boilers was tested in June, and showed about three per cent moisture. Assuming that 100 incandescent horse-power were being developed at the time, and that each horse-power required 30 pounds of steam; if the steam is assumed to have 25 per cent entrained water due to condensation in the pipes and connections, then 4,000 pounds steam will need be produced in the boilers, or 1,000 pounds more than necessary. To produce this steam will require about 125 pounds of good coal per hour, or 1,000 pounds per day of eight hours. One-half ton per day at $3 per ton for 300 days, $450. The actual cost of the covering put on complete probably did not exceed $150." An interesting verification of the remarkable non-heat condensing quality of the magnesia covering occurred at Lynn, Mass. In the heart of the district in that city, recently the scene of the disastrous conflagration, there was located the machine-shop of Messrs. Rollins & Glozier. A two-inch steam-pipe there was covered with this material. The heat of the fire at this place has been curiously determined to have been between the minimum extreme of 2,756° Fah. and the maximum extreme of 2,950° Fah., in this way: Cast-iron melts at 2,756° Fah.; wrought-iron at 2,950° Fah. A portion of the cast-iron bed of a lathe was fused into an irregular mass, and on it, partly imbedded, was a wrought-iron nut not melted. The steam-pipe spoken of fell a distance of 20 feet, and some of the magnesia covering was broken by the fall, but so effective was its heat-resisting and non-heat-conducting power that the pipe was found to be uninjured, and it is being used again in the building which is being erected to take the place of the one burned. That the magnesia should have endured the ordeal successfully was not unexpected, for we know that it is used by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company as a lining to the shells of its coil boilers, and it is there subjected to a very intense heat resulting from the forced draught used in this type of boiler. Instances could be multiplied indefinitely, but I refrain from occupying further time with them, citing, however, one recent pertinent case. The trial trip of the new cruiser "_Baltimore_" took place in the middle of September. It is reported to have been in many ways eminently satisfactory. The report goes on to state: "Another noteworthy fact was the comfortable condition of the fire and engine rooms. A duplicate crew had been provided with the expectation of relieving the firemen in two-hour turns; but after the first two hours of the run the first watch refused to quit work and insisted in running the ship throughout the entire four hours' trial." Boilers and all steam-surfaces were covered with the magnesia covering. So it appears that not alone is the man who pays for the coal interested in this question of most perfect insulation, but also the men who operate the plant as well. In time, those architects, those mechanical engineers, those engine-builders and those other advisers, who are paid to advise soundly and correctly, and who are represented by our figure with the re-entering angles, will, of necessity, change their form and begin to assimilate these new facts, or ossification will so spread throughout the whole figure that they will be relegated to the shelf for curiosities as showing what strange geometrical forms the intellectual life of man may take. * * * * * THE COST OF A SMALL MUSEUM. [Illustration: Mr. A.A. Carey's Cambridge, Mass. _Sturgis & Brigham Archts._] More than once we have endeavored to impress upon our readers the importance of collections of casts and other art reproductions as factors in popular education. It is only through these that the body of our people can ever hope to become familiar with the great masterpieces of European galleries, which have had so much effect upon the taste of the people among whom they exist, and might do a similar good work in this country were they only brought within reach. Doubtless there are many who join us in the wish that not only every large, but every small city might have its gallery of reproductions as well as its public library--a gallery in which children could grow up familiar with the noblest productions of Greece and Italy, in which the laborer could pass some of his holiday hours, and in which the mechanic could find the stimulus to make his own work beautiful as well as good. But the principal reason why such collections are not more numerous is probably that people have an exaggerated idea of their cost, and, among those who might best afford this, there are doubts as to whether an undertaking of the kind would be appreciated in any but the large cities. Thanks to the liberality of Mr. W.A. Slater, the experiment has been tried in Norwich, Conn., and the results of the first year of the Slater Memorial Museum in attracting and holding popular interest have far exceeded the anticipations of its founder and his advisers. As it has been Mr. Slater's desire that the museum established by him should serve not only to educate his townsmen, but also to stimulate others who had the means to follow his example in other parts of the country, he has given us permission to make public the cost of his collections, which, we doubt not, will be a revelation to many. In August of last year we gave a long description of the Slater Memorial Museum, not then quite completed, from which it was evident that within the lines laid down by Mr. Slater, by which it was determined that the collection should contain only reproductions, and no original works, there were no restrictions as to expense. The works selected were to be the best of their kind, and were to be set up and arranged in the most effective manner possible. The number of objects was to be limited only by the size of the building. The useful little catalogue of the casts in the Museum, prepared by Mr. H.W. Kent, the curator, to whom we are indebted for the figures which we shall quote, shows 124 numbers in the Greek and Roman section, and 103 in that of the Renaissance. Among these are some of the largest casts made, such as the selection from the Pergamon reliefs, the Nike of Samothrace and the Font of Siena. They were all made expressly for the Museum, and imported from London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Florence, Rome, Naples and Athens. In addition to these, there is a complete collection of the British Museum electrotypes of Greek coins, handsomely mounted, and the nucleus of a collection of photographs, about 600, including the best plates of Braun, Naya, Brogi and other celebrated photographers. Most of the statues are mounted on revolving pedestals; two hundred and fifty of the photographs are exhibited in individual frames, the backs of which are movable, that the exhibition may be varied as often as desired; and, owing to the lack of wall-space, draperies have been hung extensively throughout the hall, the material of which is heavy raw silk. We mention these facts only to show that economy was not a consideration in the execution of the Museum, and believe that our readers will be the more surprised to learn that its _gross_ cost to Mr. Slater--excluding, of course, the building itself--was exactly $27,112.97. Is there any city or college in the Union in which this sum could not be raised for a similar purpose? The cost of the building we do not give, because it would be useful as showing how much, rather than how little, could be put into such an edifice. It contains, besides the museum proper, the floor-space of which amounts to about 10,000 square feet, a lecture-hall with a seating-capacity of about 1,200, a library and four large class-rooms, which, if the intentions of the founder are fully carried out, will be used for practical instruction in the fine arts. Desirable as all these rooms are in a building of the kind, the only one which seems to us absolutely necessary is the lecture-hall. To open a gallery like this to the public, and then leave people to float about in it aimlessly, without a notion of its meaning or its purposes, is to do but half the work. Either regular courses of instruction or occasional lectures upon topics connected with the theory or history of art are necessary in order to make the Museum anything more than a collection of curiosities to the uninitiated, and such lectures are given during the winter at the Slater Museum. Of the amount just quoted, the principal item was naturally for casts. The cost of these, including packing and transportation, but not setting-up in the Museum, was $13,968.68, making an average of a trifle less than $62 for each number in the catalogue. We ought to say here, however, that an average is a dangerous guide in a matter of this kind, owing to the enormous difference in the size and price of casts, as well as in the distance from which they come. Obviously, too, the cost of packing and importing a few casts would be proportionately much greater than in a large order. The casts once received, they must be put together, sometimes repaired and finally set up. Pedestals must be built for the statues, wall-spaces prepared for the reliefs. Therefore, a small force of skilled plaster-workers and carpenters is necessary. In Norwich most of the plaster-work was done by two men, a third being added occasionally, and the aggregate of this item in the expenses was $1,626.75. With regard to the carpentry, more work of this kind than would usually be necessary was required by the fact that a number of changes had to be made in order to adapt the hall to its use as a museum of art, its destination not having been determined when the building itself was completed. Consequently, some of the $4,690 paid for material and labor in this department would form a part of the building expenses in a structure designed especially for the purpose. These were the principal expenses in the preparation of the Slater Museum. On photographs about $800 have been spent thus far, the electrotype coins cost something less than $750, and the balance of the total quoted was made up by such incidentals as the draperies and upholstering, photograph frames, the designer's commission and petty expenses. Turning now for a moment to the other side of the balance-sheet, we shall try to answer the question, "Does it pay" to undertake a work of this kind, except in our large and central cities? If to the founder or founders of such an institution it be sufficient recompense for their liberality to see their gift used, appreciated and enjoyed by people of all classes, the brief experience of the Slater Memorial Museum answers the question with a strong affirmative. The Museum was dedicated on November 22 of last year. Since then it has been open regularly ten hours a week, divided among three days, and at other times to students and visitors from a distance. It is always free. There being no automatic machine for registering the admissions, Mr. Kent has requested visitors to write their names in a book provided for the purpose. The number who do so is naturally considerably less than the total number of visitors, particularly when the Museum is crowded, yet up to date the books show more than 10,000 names. The average attendance per week thus recorded, from the time of opening to July 1, was 283, the best month being December, in which 2,163 names were entered, the poorest June, with a total of 483. Especially gratifying has been the attendance on holidays, which shows that the interest in the Museum is by no means confined to those who have plenty of leisure. On Thanksgiving Day 800 names were registered, Christmas 932, New Year's 732, Decoration Day 850. For the benefit of the mill-operatives and other laborers who form the largest portion of the population of Norwich and the adjoining towns, to whom the Museum might do a world of good, we sincerely hope the day is not far distant when the building may be open at least a couple of hours each Sunday. The experience of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Sunday opening has been an unqualified success, and we wish that Norwich, as well as our own city, might profit by it. In Boston, we are told, the average number of admissions during the Sunday hours has reached as high as 1,000 per hour, and of these probably four-fifths are common workmen with their families. These facts and figures regarding the Slater Memorial Museum are valuable only so far as they go. They show that the first problem of a museum--to interest the public at large--has there been solved successfully. More than that is not to be looked for yet. The ultimate good which the institution will accomplish can be but imperfectly manifested in one generation. It is from the children now growing up, from their children and their children's children, that the deeper results are to be expected. As the beginning has been made, we can afford to wait for the rest, which will come in good time. The lesson to be learned from it now is, that such collections are needed, that they are appreciated not by a few but by many, and that, so far as the cost is concerned, they are within the reach of every well-settled community.--_New York Evening Post._ * * * * * SANITARY ENTOMBMENT: THE IDEAL DISPOSITION OF THE DEAD.[4] [Illustration] In this country, partly because there were few places of large population, and partly because it was an early and general tendency to use cemeteries rather than churches, and the grounds adjacent to them, the evils of earth-burial did not manifest themselves so soon or in so marked a manner as in the Old World. But there were instances enough to convince the most incredulous that a radical change must be made. Dr. Ackerly, writing in 1822, thus describes the condition of the burial-ground connected with Trinity Church, New York, forty years before: "During the Revolutionary War this ground emitted pestilential vapors, the recollection of which is not obliterated from the memory of a number of living witnesses." In the same year, the _Commercial Advertiser_ published an article in reference to the present evils of earth-burial at the same place, in which it was said: "It will be remembered that the graveyard, being above the streets on the west, and encompassed by a massive stone wall, and the east side being on a level with Broadway, it results that this body of earth, the surface of which has no declivity to carry off the rain, thus becomes a great reservoir of contaminating fluids suspended above the adjacent streets. In proof of this, it is stated that, in a house in Thames Street, springs of water pouring in from that ground occasioned the removal of the tenants on account of their exceeding fetidness." At a later date, Dr. Elisha Harris brought this telling indictment against the same place of interment: "Trinity churchyard has been the centre of a very fatal prevalence of cholera whenever the disease has occurred as an endemic near or within a quarter of a mile of it. Trinity Place, west of it, Rector Street, on its border, the streets west of Rector and the occupants of the neighboring offices and commercial houses have suffered severely at each visitation of the pest from 1832 to 1854." It seems hardly necessary to add that the foregoing statements are not intended to make the impression that there was a worse condition at the churchyard named than at any other.... It may now be said: "Yes, this is all true, but we have changed all that! We no longer inter our dead in churchyards or burial-grounds within the limits of cities. We have provided cemeteries at great distances from our cities and large centres of population, and there the dead can do no harm." To this the reply is easy and convincing: "that, if the dead endanger the living when the population is dense, they certainly also endanger them when the population is sparse. The danger is only diluted. It still exists, and it ought to alarm us just as truly when a few are imperilled as when many are." ... Not to attempt to tell all that has been ascertained, it will be sufficiently convincing to quote from Sir Henry Thompson's utterance in the _Nineteenth Century_ in 1880: "I state, as a fact of the highest importance, that, by burial in earth, we effectively provide--whatever sanitary precautions are taken by ventilation and drainage, whatever disinfection is applied after contagion has occurred--that the pestilential germs, which have destroyed the body in question, are thus so treasured and protected as to propagate and multiply, ready to reappear and work like ruin hereafter for others.... Beside anthrax or splenic fever, spores from which are notoriously brought to the surface from buried animals below, and become fatal to the herds feeding there, it is now almost certain that malarial diseases, notably Roman fever and even tetanus, are due to bacteria which flourish in the soil itself. The poisons of scarlet fever, enteric fever (typhoid), small-pox, diphtheria and malignant cholera are undoubtedly transmissible through earth from the buried body." That the burial of a body that contains the seeds of zymotic disease is simply storing them for future reproduction and destruction is amply proved by the researches of Darwin and Pasteur, of whom the former has shown that the mould, or fertile upper layer of superficial soil, has largely acquired its character by its passage through the digestive tract of earth-worms; and the latter that this mould, when brought by this agency to the surface from subjacent soil that has been used as a grave, contains the specific germ of the disease that has destroyed its tenant. It may now be asked: "Granting that these evils are inseparable from the burial of the dead in the earth or in tombs, what is the remedy? What else can be done?" To this question not many answers can be given, because the modes of disposing of the dead have always been and must always be few. Plainly, no such novel mode as casting the dead into the sea will be generally adopted. Plainly, also, the mode of the Parsees, grounded as it is in ancient, if not original use--to give the dead to beasts and birds--will not become universal. And, plainly also, cremation will not be welcome to the many, free as it is from objection on the score of public health, if a method equally sanitary, and at the same time satisfactory to a reverent and tender sentiment, can be devised. The inquiry, then, has reached its limit; for, apart from the modes that have just been named, there are no others but earth-burial and entombment, and earth-burial, as we have seen, cannot be made sanitary under common conditions. Therefore, if the demands of affection and sanitation are both to be met, entombment is to do it, or it cannot be done. Happily, better than any other method of disposing of the dead that has ever been devised, entombment has met the demand of affection. Never has any other mode so commended itself to men as this. There may have been at times a general adoption of cremation, and there may have been a general prevalence of earth-burial, but the one has not long satisfied the sorrowing survivors, and the other has owed its beginning and continuance to the apparent absence of alternative. Wherever the living have been able, and the dead have been dearly loved or highly esteemed, the tendency to entomb and not to bury has been constantly manifested. To call attention to this tendency is enough to prove it, so easily accessible is the evidence and so familiar is its operation in the human heart. The most natural reference will be, first, to the mausoleum, the tomb of Mausolus, that was erected by his sorrowing Queen, Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, upon the Ægean's eastern shore, and that became at once one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld the mortal part of Mausolus, and no human hand disturbed its rest. At a far earlier time, Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, while he illustrated this tendency to entomb the dead, also offered an influential example to all who would do him reverence, as, in the hour of his great sorrow, he sought the seclusion and the security of Machpelah's cave for the last earthly resting-place of his beloved wife. There he buried Sarah; there he and his son and his son's son and their wives were all laid to rest, and the place of their repose hath not been violated even at this distant day. To this constant tendency constant testimony is borne by the massive and magnificent tombs in which India abounds, the tombs and pyramids that make marvellous the land of the Nile, the tombs that stood thick upon the Appian Way, and that rose superb upon the Tiber's shore, the modern use to which the Pantheon is put, the Panthéon at Paris and the Crypt of the Invalides, the Abbey of Westminster, matchless in memorials, the sepulchres within the hills that gird Jerusalem, and the sepulchre in which the Nazarene was gently laid when His agony was ended. It remains to be considered whether entombment can be made sanitary. If it can be the problem is solved, for entombment has ever been the best that the living could do for their dead, and, with the added advantage of promoting, or ceasing to be prejudicial to, the public health entombment will be the choice of all whom cost or caprice does not deter. That entombment can be made sanitary is evident from the fact that in countless instances, in many lands and through long periods of time, it has been made sanitary by the ingenuity of man or by unassisted nature; and it is also evident from the fact that decomposition and disease germs are the dangers to be guarded against, and that against these both ancient and modern science have been able to guard. Not to enumerate all the modes that have been chanced upon or that have been devised by men, there are two that have been notable and are available for modern use--embalming and desiccation. It is a delusion to imagine that embalming is a lost art; that, like some other marvels of the ancient time, this is a secret process that perished with the people who employed it. Did we desire it, we could embalm our princes and our priests, and retain their shrunken similitudes for distant coming times to gaze and gape upon, as skilfully as they who practised this art in Egypt's palmiest days. Nay, it is doubtless far within the truth to claim that better than they did we could do; and we are actually apprised of better methods and results than they employed or could attain, and it is not unlikely that we shall hear of better methods still. But Egypt's method, or its modern counterpart, will hardly now be popular. It involves too much mutilation and too much transformation. When it has done its work little is left but bone and muscular tissue, and these are so transfused with foreign substances that a form moulded from plastic matter or sculptured from stone could almost as truly be considered that of the lamented dead as this. Moreover, indefinite preservation of the dead is not desirable, and is not desired. The uses to which the Egyptian Pharaohs and their humbler subjects have been put in these days of indelicacy and unscrupulousness in the pursuit of science or sordid gain are not such as to make many eager to be preserved for a similar disposition when the present shall have become a similarly distant past. Desiccation, in striking contrast with embalming, is the process of nature rather than of art, and involves no mutilation and no substitution of foreign substances for human flesh, and does not by unnatural means preserve the semblance of the human form so long that a susceptible sentiment is shocked and a due return of material humanity to the elements that gave it birth prevented. Desiccation is so far a natural process that it seems not to have been thought of until nature had done the work and shown the product, and through many centuries, and upon an extensive scale, nature had employed the process before it occurred to man to copy her and adopt her method for the disposition of his dead. Wherever the air that enwrapped the lifeless form of man or beast was dry, desiccation anticipated and prevented decomposition. In deserts, upon elevated plains, upon the slopes of lofty mountain ranges, to which the winds that passed their summits bore no moisture, the dead have not decayed, but have dried undecomposed. In the morgue attached to the Hospice of St. Bernard, the dead, lifted too late from their shroud of snow, and borne thither to await the recognition of their friends, dry, and do not decay. In the "Catacombs" of the monastery of the Capuchins at Palermo, and in the "Bleikeller" at Bremen, the same phenomenon has appeared. Even Egypt is a confirmation of these statements, for it is probable that, had much less care been taken to preserve the dead, they would not there have yielded to decay as in other lands; and that moisture is so far absent from the atmosphere that the dead would have been preserved from decay by desiccation had not embalming been resorted to. Upon the elevated Western plains of this continent, the bodies of beasts and men by thousands have been preserved from decomposition by desiccation. To take one instance out of many that might be cited: A cave was not long ago discovered high up among the Sierra Madre Mountains, within which were found, where they had rested undisturbed for many years, the lifeless figures of a little aboriginal household, dried and undecayed. Father, mother, son and daughter, one by one, as death had overtaken them, had been brought thither, bound so as to keep in death the attitude that had marked them when at their rest in life, and there they bore their silent but impressive witness to the beneficent action of the unmoist air that had stayed decay and kept them innocuous to the living that survived them. In Peru, instances of this simple, wholesome process abound on almost every side; upon the elevated plains and heights, as also beside the sea, the dead of Inca lineage, with the lowliest of their subjects, are found in uncounted numbers, testifying that in their death they did not injure the living, because desiccation saved them from decomposition; and a recent traveller has vividly described the scene that a battlefield of the late war presents, and that illustrates the same process, where, though years have passed since the last harsh sound of strife was heard, the fierce and bitter combatants still seem eager to rush to conflict or to sink reluctant into the embrace of death. And all these instances furnish conclusive proof that decomposition can be controlled, and that its loathsome and unwholesome transformations can be prevented, if only the simple conditions are secured that have already so extensively effected this result. That these conditions can be secured no one can doubt, for, every-day, in almost every clime, by processes familiar and available to man, the atmosphere has moisture added to it or taken from it; and the extraction of the moisture from a portion of the atmosphere is all that is required to introduce the process of Peruvian desiccation into the sepulchres of Chicago or New York. It will naturally be further asked: "Is this all that has been done to demonstrate the efficiency and availability of desiccation for the dead?" To this the answer would be sufficient that the evidence that has been adduced is ample, and that, at once, in perfect confidence as to the result, mausoleums might be erected, with provision for the withdrawal of the moisture from the atmosphere, and for the passage of the desiccated air through the sepulchres in which the dead should rest. So little is involved, and so much has been accomplished without the application of any human skill, that it seems inevitable that, as soon as the resources of modern architecture and sanitary science are drawn upon, the desired result will be at once attained. But, to make assurance doubly sure, several carefully-conducted experiments have been made, under the supervision of the directors of the New Mausoleum movement, that prove that the conditions of desiccation can be controlled and that decomposition can be prevented, that where it has begun it can be stayed, and that prolonged preservation, with a fair approximation to the appearance in life, can be made sure for the recognition of absent friends, for transportation or the furtherance of the ends of justice. When, now, it is added that desiccation has been ascertained to be an efficient agent in the destruction of disease germs, as proved by the experiments of Dr. Sternberg, of the Hoagland Laboratory, and by the investigations of other experts, enough seems to have been said to establish the truth of the assertion that entombment can be made sanitary, and that, therefore, entombment offers the satisfactory solution of the problem how to dispose of the dead so as to do no violence to a reverent and tender sentiment, and at the same time not to imperil the public health. The proposition, then, soon to be submitted for public approval is this: to erect in the suburbs of our large towns and cities, perhaps even in their most thickly-populated parts, extensive and handsome edifices that will provide sanitary Sepulchres for the dead. To be comparatively inexpensive, they will have to be comparatively plain, and it seems not too much to hope that our cities will soon adopt this mode of disposing of the dead that depend upon the public care for burial, and that the horrors of a "Potter's Field," of which it cannot be divested, even in a fair and sea-girt isle, may be forevermore unknown of men.... Within there would be, as the unit of construction, each sepulchre so constructed that anhydrous air could enter, or could be made to enter and withdraw, laden with moisture and morbific matter, which it would convey to a separate structure, where a furnace would complete the sanitary work that the anhydrous air had begun, and return to the external atmosphere nothing that would be noxious. Each sepulchre, in itself and its surroundings, would appear to provide a place of repose, and would have electrical appliances attached to it for the instant indication of the return of consciousness to any who had been prematurely entombed, and would promise and provide the most perfect and permanent protection against intrusion or theft that can be found on earth. In arrangement these sepulchres would have to conform to the price paid and the taste of the purchaser. Many would be like the single graves that thickly ridge portions of our cemeteries; many more would be grouped together after the semblance of a family-tomb; but in the general impression, in the surroundings and suggestions, the resemblance to the provisions of a cemetery would go no farther. For here there could be no burning sun, no chilling cold, no inclement storm; for the living, as they should pay the last sad honor to the dead, or in any subsequent tribute of affection, there could be no exposure, and for the dead there would be only the constant semblance of the comfort and the quiet of the best-ordered and most tranquil home. Thus, in providing the utmost that exacting affection and sanitary science can require, and in taxing to the utmost the resources of art, in architecture, in sculpture and in the use of subdued and according hues and forms for appropriate decoration, these "Campo Santos," or "Mausoleums," or "Mansions of the Dead," will seem to have realized the ideal disposition of the mortal remains of those who depart this life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: Extracts from a paper read before the Boston Electric Club, December 23, 1889, by F.C. Child.] [Footnote 4: Extracts from an address by Rev. Charles R. Treat before the American Public Health Association at Brooklyn, N.Y., October 23, 1889.] * * * * * THE VEKPLANCK HOMESTEAD, FISHKILL, N.Y. [Illustration: The Old Verplanck Homestead at Fishkill, Hudson River, in which the Society of the Cincinnati originated.] The Verplanck homestead stands on the lands granted by the Wappinger Indians, in 1683, to Gulian Verplanck and Francis Rombout, under a license given by Governor Thomas Dongan Commander-in-Chief of the Province of New York, and confirmed, in 1685, by letters patent from King-James the II. The purchase included "all that Tract or Parcell of land Scituate on the East side of Hudson's river, beginning from the South side of a Creek called the fresh Kill and by the Indians Matteawan, and from thence Northward along said Hudson's river five hundred Rodd beyond the Great Wappin's Kill, and from thence into the woods fouer Houres goeing"; or, in our speech, easterly sixteen English miles. There were eighty-five thousand acres in this grant, and the "Schedull or Perticuler" of money and goods given to the natives, in exchange, by ffrancis Rumbout and Gulyne Ver Planke sounds oddly to-day: One hundred Royalls, One hundred Pound Powder, Two hundred fathom of white Wampum, One hundred Barrs of lead, One hundred fathom of black Wampum, Thirty tobacco boxes, ten holl adzes, Thirty Gunns, twenty Blankets, Forty fathom of Duffils, Twenty fathom of stroudwater Cloth, Thirty Kittles, forty Hatchets, Forty Hornes, forty Shirts, Forty pair stockins, Twelve coates of B.C., Ten drawing Knives, Forty earthen Juggs, Forty Bottles, Fouer ankers Rum, Forty Knives, ten halfe Vatts Beere, Two hundred tobacco pipes, Eighty pound tobacco. The purchasers were also to pay Governor Dongan six bushels of good and merchantable winter wheat every year. The deed is recorded at Albany in Vol. 5 of the Book of Patents. Before 1685 Gulian Verplanck died, leaving minor children, and settlements on his portion of the land were thus postponed. Divisions of the estate were made in 1708, in 1722, and again in 1740. It is not accurately known when the Homestead, the present low Dutch farm-house was built, but we know that it stood where it now stands, before the Revolutionary War, and the date commonly assigned to the building is a little before 1740. The house stands on a bluff overlooking the Hudson, about a mile and one-half north of Fishkill Landing. It is one-story and one-half high, of stone, plastered. The gambrel roof is shingled, descends low and has dormer windows. The house has always been occupied and is in excellent preservation. Baron Steuben chose it for his headquarters, no doubt for its nearness to Washington's headquarters across the river, and for the beauty and charm of the situation. It is made still further famous by the fact that under its roof was organized in 1783 the Society of the Cincinnati. The room then used is on the right of the hall, and is carefully preserved. In fancy we can picture the assembly of officers grouped about Washington, in that west room overlooking the river, pledging themselves to preserve the memories of the years during which they had struggled for their country's being. The whole neighborhood, especially the village of Fishkill which was the principal settlement in the county at that date, has many revolutionary associations. The interior army route to Boston passed through the village; this was a depot of army stores, and workshops and hospitals were established. Here was forged the sword of Washington, now in the keeping of the United States Government, and exhibited in the late Centennial collection. It is marked with the maker's name, J. Bailey, Fishkill. The New York Legislature, retiring before the approach of the British, after the evacuation of the city, came at last to Fishkill, and here the constitution of the State was printed, in 1777, on the press of Samuel Loundon, the first book, Lossing says, ever printed in the State. Some years after peace was restored, the Verplanck family appear to have occupied the Homestead from time to time. Philip Verplanck, a grandson of Gulian the original grantee, was a native of the patent, but his public life was spent elsewhere. He was an engineer and surveyor, and an able man. Verplanck's Point in Westchester County, where Fort Lafayette stood during the Revolution, was named for him, and he represented that Manor in the Colonial Assembly from 1734 to 1768. Finally, Daniel Crommelin Verplanck with his large family--one of his sons being the well-known Gulian C. Verplanck, born here in 1786--came to live in the old home permanently. He had led an active life in New York, served in Congress and on the bench, and now retired to the quiet of the country. It was he who planted the fine old trees which now shade the lawn; among them the coffee-tree so much admired. About 1810 the north end, built of wood, was added to the old house. Architects were not numerous, apparently, in those days, so the Dutch type was lost in making this large addition, though the interior is quaint, dignified and interesting. It was from under its roof that Daniel C. Verplanck was carried to his last resting-place as his father before him, and generations after him lived and still live in the old Homestead. For the above description, prepared with no little painstaking, of an interesting house and demesne, as well as for the loan of the photograph from which I made my pen-and-ink sketch of it, I am wholly indebted to a member of the Verplanck family and a mutual friend. A.J. BLOOR. * * * * * ROCK UPHEAVAL CAUSED BY HYDRAULIC PRESSURE.--There was a remarkable occurrence at the mills of the Combined Locks Paper Company at Combined Locks, Wis., on Saturday. From some unknown cause there was an upheaval of rock upon which the mills are located, throwing the mill walls out of place, cracking a great wall of stone and cement twenty feet thick and making a saddle-back several hundred feet long and six inches high in the bed rock beneath the mill. An artesian well two hundred feet away on the bluff has dried up. The damage to the mill and machinery will probably amount to several thousand dollars. The upheaval is supposed to have resulted from some hydraulic pressure between the seams of rock beneath. A panic occurred among the mill operatives at the time of the shake-up, but nobody was hurt in the stampede from the mill.--_Boston Transcript_, _September_ 10. ELECTRICITY'S VICTIMS IN EUROPE. [Illustration: Monument to Minine and Pojarsky, Russia.] Although the greatest number of deaths from electricity have occurred in this country--more than one hundred--of which twenty-two occurred in this city, yet other countries have not been without such "accidents," as has been erroneously stated by experts in the employ of the companies interested in the deadly high-voltage currents, and as the subjoined list, compiled by C.F. Heinrichs, the electrical expert, shows. The list is by no means exhaustive. Many European newspapers contain articles advising stringent measures to stop the causes of those accidents and the use of currents of electricity above six hundred volts. Following is a list of victims of electricity in Europe: In February, 1880, Mr. Bruno, the euphonium player at the Holte Theatre in Ashton, near Birmingham, touched the conductors of a two-light electric plant and received a shock which rendered him insensible, and he died within forty minutes. In October, 1880, the stoker of the yacht Livadia, which was lying in the Thames, near London, was ordered to adjust one of the Jablochkoff candles. He accidently touched the terminals of the lamp, and instantly fell down dead. The difference of potential at the lamp terminals was only fifty volts, but it was admitted at the time that the wires must have been in contact with the iron plate upon which the stoker stood, and that alternating currents of higher voltages from the main source caused the death, because with fifty volts an electrical energy of only .05 Watts would have been expended on the resistances of the skin and the vital organs of the victim. In 1880, a workman touched a wire of a Brush installation at the Hatfield House, the residence of the Marquis of Salisbury, and fell down dead. The current was under eight hundred volts. In July, 1882, on the occasion of a fire in Brighton, England, a fireman took hold of a fire-escape which was in contact with the wire of a Brush machine. He received a shock which doubled him up and disabled him for a long time. August, 1883, an official of the Hungarian railway in Pesth was killed on touching a wire of a "Ganz" alternating-current generator. August, 1884, Emile Martin and Joseph Kenarec were killed in Paris on attempting to climb over the fence of the garden of the Tuileries. Both victims came in contact with the wires of a Siemen twelve-light alternating-current generator. The difference of potential between the place of the accident and the ground was 250 volts. The current which would pass that way caused the deaths, and burns upon the hands, cheek and ear of the victims. September, 1884, Henry Pink, an attendant at the Health exhibition in London, was killed on touching a Hochhausen dynamo of 1,000-volt capacity. At that time all electricians agreed that no currents over 600 volts should be allowed. November, 1884, an engine-driver, William Moore, was instantly killed on touching the wire of an arc-light plant, at Messrs. Bolcknow, Vaughan & Co.'s, works, at Middleborough, England. The fatality was admitted to be due to the high-voltage current and bad insulation. January, 1887, Richard Grove noted that his employer's store, in Regent Street, London, was set on fire by electric-light wires. He rushed up on the roof of the building to cut the wires. He received a shock and fell off the roof, dead. Secondary currents of Goulard & Gibb's converters (Westinghouse system) were held responsible for the fatality by electricians. December, 1887, James Williams was killed by an electric-light shock at the Pontyminister tin-plate works at Bisca, in Wales. June, 1888, in Terri, Italy, a tinner was killed on the roof of a building on touching an alternating-current circuit. October. 1888, in Spain, at the Valladolid electric-light station a carpenter took hold of a wire of an alternating-current generator and could not let go. An attendant tried to pull the man off the wire and both were killed by the currents. November, 1888, E.A. Richardson, employed at the Consett iron works, in the county of Durnham, England, received a shock from an arc-light plant, from the effects of which he died two hours later. December, 1888, in Turin, Italy, an employé of an electric-light company was killed by alternating currents. June, 1889, John Connelly, an employé of the Siemens Electric-Light Company, near London, was killed by an alternating current of 1,000 volts. Speaking of recent cases here, Mr. Heinrichs said: "It is to be regretted that some of our electrical experts of so-called standing, not only assist in keeping the facts from the public, but tell when under oath only half the truth, as was said a short time ago in a conservative electrical publication in London. One of these experts had to admit in the Kemmler investigations that all of his knowledge as to the harmless nature of the Westinghouse current was obtained by him from observations made upon himself and friends receiving alternating currents from an electro-medical apparatus. And the various susceptibilities of the different living organisms to electric influences he judged from the manner in which some of his friends dropped the metal handles. Had this expert made any calculations of the electrical energy expended in these trivial experiments he would have found that the whole electrical energy expended upon the living organism of any of his friends was below one-fifty thousandth of an electrical horse-power per second, and the difference of susceptibilities of any of his friends was infinitesimal, and the difference of the electrical energy between the minimum and maximum charges less than one-two hundred thousandths of an electrical horse-power. It is a well-established fact that alternating currents of an electrical energy of one-four-thousandth part of an electrical horse-power per second, if expended upon the vital organs, the nerves and muscles, of any human being, will cause instantaneous death in every case."--_New York Commercial Advertiser_. * * * * * [Illustration: THE ILLUSTRATIONS] [_Contributors are requested to send with their drawings full and adequate descriptions of the buildings, including a statement of cost_.] HOUSE OF G.M. SMITH, ESQ., PROVIDENCE, R.I. MESSRS. STOKE, CARPENTER & WILLSON, ARCHITECTS, PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Gelatine Print issued only with the Imperial and International Editions.] THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. MACHAR, ABERDEEN.[5] "In the bustling manufacturing town which has lately become, and is likely for some time to remain, the extreme northern point of our great system of railway communication, a venerable cathedral, surrounded by tree, with a pleasant river sweeping past it, is scarcely an expected sight. But the two divisions of Aberdeen the old and the new town--are as unlike each other as Canterbury and Manchester. The old town, or 'Alton,' as it is locally termed, is not the most ancient part of a city of different periods, around which its modern streets and squares have ramified. It is a distinct hamlet or village, at some distance from the city, and edged away in privacy apart from the great thoroughfares connecting the manufacturing centre with other districts of the country. Its houses are venerable, standing generally in ancient gardens; and save that the beauty and tranquillity of the spot have led to the erection of a few pleasant modern villas, dotting it here and there, whoever treads the one echoing street of the Alton for the first time, feels that two centuries must have brought very little external change to the objects by which he is surrounded. In this pristine place, the short-spiked steeples, and the broad-slated roof of the old cathedral of St. Machar may be seen rising over a cluster of fine old trees which top the sloping bank of the winding Don, from the opposite shore of which the whole scene--comprehending the river, the sloping banks, the trees, and the gray old church--makes a very perfect landscape, rather English than Scottish in its aspect. "A near approach develops something very peculiar in the character of this edifice. It bears throughout unmistakable marks of age, but none of decay. It is gray with the weather-wearing of centuries, but it displays none of the mouldering vestiges of Time's decaying fingers; nor yet has it that prim air of good keeping which shows, in treasured antiquities, that careful hands have sedulously restored each feature that age may have injured. It is clear that the completeness of detail--the clean outlines, the hard, unworn surfaces--are characteristics of innate strength, and connect themselves with the causes of a certain northern sternness and rigidity in the general architectural designs. "The secret of all these peculiarities is to be found in the nature of the material, which is granite--the same that has handed down to us, through thousands of years, the cold, stony eyes of the sphynx, precisely as the chisel last touched them--and retains, to the wonder of the Londoners, the glittering lustre of the polished cheeks of Rameses. The stern nature of the primitive rock--obdurate alike to the chisel and to time--has entirely governed the character of the architecture; and, while it has precluded lightness and decoration, has given opportunities for a certain gloomy dignity. About the porch, one or two niches and other small details, have been decorated; but as if the artist had abandoned the task of chiselling his obdurate materials as a vain one, ornament goes no farther, and all the architectural effects are the fruit of bold design. Such, for instance, is the great west window--not mullioned, but divided by long massive stone shafts into seven arched compartments; such, too, is the low-browed doorway beneath, with its heavy semicircular arch. The upper tier of windows--here called _storm_ windows, perhaps as a corruption of _dormer_--are the plain, unmoulded arch, such as one sometimes sees it in unadorned buildings of the earlier Norman period. Indeed, though the building dates from the second age of the Pointed style, it associates itself in some of its features, very closely with the relics of the Norman age, especially in the short, massive round pillars which support the clerestory. The roof, with its carving, gilding, and bright heraldic colors, is in thorough contrast with the rest of the architecture, and the eye gratefully relieves itself from the gloom below, by wandering over its quaint devices and gaudy hues. It is divided into three longitudinal departments, panelled with richly-carved oak; and at each intersection of the divisions of the compartments with the cross-beams, there is emblazoned a shield armorial, with an inscription. "It is an uncommon thing to find, as in this instance we do, the nave only of a church remaining, for the chancel was generally the part first erected, and sometimes the only part. The remains of the central and eastern portions of St. Machar's tell how the western compartment braved the causes of destruction which to them had been fatal: they were built of freestone. Incrusted, as it were, in the eastern wall, are the clustered freestone pillars, with richly-flowered capitals, which of old supported the central square tower; and on either side are the vestiges of the transept, with the remains of the richly-sculptured tombs, represented in the accompanying plate, embedded in the wall. In Slezer's, and some other representations of this building in the seventeenth century, the tower--a simple square mass, with a roof--appears to have been still standing, but the choir had disappeared." MONUMENT IN THE SOUTH TRANSEPT OF THE CATHEDRAL, ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND. THE HOTEL DE SOTO, SAVANNAH, GA. MR. WM. GIBBONS PRESTON, ARCHITECT, BOSTON, MASS. This hotel, which has just been completed, occupies a whole square in the heart of the city, and has a frontage of 300 feet on Liberty Street and 200 feet on Bull Street. It forms two sides of the square, the two-story kitchen and servants' wing forming the third side. The climate renders it desirable to have it freely open and exposed to the cool southeast winds which blow refreshingly up from the bay, and, as a winter resort, a southeast exposure of nearly half the rooms makes them sunny and dry. The building is four, five and six stories in height, and a flat roof, 50 x 70 on the highest portion, gives a fine view down the bay. A "solarium" is erected on this roof, to contain a tropical garden or to be used for dancing. The "parade" or garden, upon which all the southeast windows look, has been beautifully laid out, and there is not a dark room or a "back room" in the building. A "rotunda" with glass roof at the rear of hall, first story, is intended as a lounging-room for ladies and gentlemen, and a veranda 35 feet in width in front opens upon Bull Street. Many of the rooms open upon covered verandas on the second, third and fourth stories. The dining-room is 50 x 120 feet, open to the air on three sides. The materials are local brick for the lower portions, and buff Perth Amboy brick and terra-cotta above. It contains about 300 rooms, and will cost, completed, about half a million. It is, except the Ponce de Leon, the largest hotel in the South. Special arrangements have been made for introducing large volumes of warmed or cooled air into the halls and corridors. The contractors are Mr. T. Lewman & Co. The Whittier Machine Co. did the elevator, heating and laundry work. The Brush system of electric lighting has been introduced throughout. L. Haberstroh & Son have decorated the walls and ceilings, making a special feature of the dining-room. Ground was broken just a year ago, and the house was opened for guests on New Year's day. MEMORIAL CHURCH OF THE ANGELS, LOS ANGELES, CAL. MR. ERNEST A. COXHEAD, ARCHITECT, LOS ANGELES, CAL. This church which has lately been finished has cost about $25,000. The inside walls are finished in brick and stone. ST. AUGUSTINE'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH BUILDINGS, BROOKLYN, N.Y. MESSRS. PARFITT BROS., ARCHITECTS, BROOKLYN, N.Y. * * * * * [Additional Illustrations in the International Edition.] CHATEAU DE JOSSELIN, MORBIHAN, FRANCE.--FACADE ON THE COUR D'HONNEUR. [Gelatine Plate.] AN INTERIOR IN THE CHATEAU DE JOSSELIN, MORBIHAN, FRANCE. [Gelatine Plate.] TWO VIEWS OF THE HOUSE OF MRS. CONSINO, SANTIAGO, CHILI. DESIGN FOR CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, GOSPEL OAK, LONDON, N.W., ENG. MR. F. PHILLIPS FIGGIS, ARCHITECT. BUTLER'S WOOD, CHISLEHURST, ENG. MR. ERNEST NEWTON, ARCHITECT. HOUSE AT PENNSYLVANIA, EXETER, ENG. MR. JAMES CROCKER, F.R.I.B.A., ARCHITECT, EXETER, ENG. This house has recently been completed for Mr. E.C. Philp, and stands in one of the best suburbs of the city. The materials employed are Wellington red brick for the facings above plinth, with Broseley tiles for the roofs, the few stone dressings being of Ham Hill. The walling up to the plinth level is of Westleigh limestone, as are also the piers surrounding the site, with wrought-iron railing between same. The principal chimney-pieces in the house have been made to special design, and are chiefly executed in American walnut and pitch-pine. The dining-room is panelled the full height up to a richly-modelled frieze in plaster, all to design, and the ceiling of this apartment is also panelled. DESIGN FOR BOARD SCHOOLS. MR. GEORGE W. WEBB, A.R.I.B.A., ARCHITECT, READING, ENG. This design was prepared in competition for schools near London, but, owing to a mistake in the date for sending in designs, it was too late for the competition. The plan is on the central hall system for boys and girls, the hall being 110 feet by 54 feet, and top-lighted. Fourteen class-rooms, each 30 feet by 20 feet, are provided, each divided from the central hall by movable glass screens. The infants' school, lodge, etc., form detached buildings. The total cost was estimated at £16,000. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: It should always be kept in mind that these illustrations from the "_Baronial and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Scotland_," by R.W. Billings, are republished very largely for the sake of giving instruction in one manner of the rendering of architectural drawings.] * * * * * METHODS OF REDUCING THE FIRE LOSS.[6] [Illustration: OLD DOORWAY AT NEWPORT R.I.] The liability to injury by fire is a hazard inherent to all buildings, and this danger is a constant menace whose threatening destruction of values imposes upon the owner a persistent consideration, which endures as long as the building stands. As every method of construction, the various mechanical processes and the stock in each stage of manufacture bears some relation to the fire-hazard as a supporter or possible originator of combustion, the engineer whose duties pertain to these matters must necessarily also consider the question of the fire-hazard in the important phase of prevention, as well as the direct application of those engineering problems required in the design and installation of fire apparatus. The fire-loss is a most oppressive tax, much of which can be abated by the application of well-established means of prevention. In a practical sense, certain fires are to be considered as unpreventable, being caused by exposure to fires in other burning buildings, but there are very few fires whose destructive results might not have been prevented by the exercise of precautions entirely feasible in their nature. These several topics will be considered in reference to the reduction of the fire-loss on isolated manufacturing property, because the exercise of every possible precaution may not avail anything if the property is liable to be imperilled by fires originating in adjacent buildings. SUPERVISION. The prevention of fires must in greater measure proceed from the efficiency of the supervision exercised over the property in the order of the buildings, heed to probable causes of fire, and attention to the fire-apparatus. In a manufactory there is a wide distinction to be made between to-day's dirt and yesterday's dirt; valuable results may be obtained by an inspection of the whole property made on Saturday afternoon by two men, such as foremen or overseers of rooms, who may be appointed to serve four weeks, their assignment terminating on alternate fortnights. The report should be made on a sheet of paper, divided so as to include all features of order and fire-apparatus in every room. As property should be watched during the day Sunday, as well as at night, it is under the care of watchmen about five-eighths of the time, and the measure of this responsibility should be clearly understood. The patrol should be recorded on a watchman's clock, not merely to show that he was not unfaithful, but also to prove that he was faithful. Especially in districts liable to disorder and lawlessness, it is desirable to have a district-messenger signal-box in the works, visited once an hour, with the understanding that if the call is not made within fifteen minutes of the appointed time, it will be assumed that there is trouble and help sent at once. Safety requires that the lanterns should be securely guarded; that the handle and sustaining parts of the lantern be connected together by rivets or by locking the metals together without relying on soldered joints; and thirdly, that the lamp should be put in from above, and never from the bottom. CONSTRUCTION. In its design, a mill for any standard line of manufacture is not a building whose arrangements and proportions are fixed upon at the whim of the owner, but it must conform to certain conditions of dimensions, stability, light and application of power to satisfy the requirements essential for furnishing every advantage necessary for producing the desired results at the lowest cost. The destructive consequences attending fire in such buildings, whose iron and masonry construction is called fireproof, show that some other form of construction is necessary to obtain the desired results of minimizing the annual cost of the maintenance of the invested capital, as represented by insurance, depreciation, interest and taxation. There is little incentive for entering into unusual expenses in the construction of a manufacturing building for the purpose of increasing its resistance to fire, unless the additional interest on such increase in the investment is to be met by a corresponding reduction in the annual cost of the fire-hazard. In addition to these questions, involving the annual maintenance of the plant, the increase in the expense of the building above a certain point may prove poor management, by locking up capital for too long a time, and may tend to prevent the improvements in arrangement and construction which are necessary for the most advantageous manufacturing. The method of mill building known as slow-burning construction combines the advantages of low initial cost and great resistance to destruction by fire, the final result being that the manufacturing is housed at the minimum annual cost. The fundamental principle of such construction is to mass the material in such a way that there shall not be any concealed spaces about the structure, and that the number of projections of timbers, which are more easily ignited than the flat surfaces, shall be reduced as far as possible; that iron portions of the structure shall not be exposed to the heat of any fire in the contents of the building, and furthermore, that the isolation of the various portions, both in respect to that of one building to another and of the various rooms and stories of the same building, shall be as complete as is feasible. The most important feature is that of the mill floors, which should be laid on beams, generally of Southern pine, 12 x 14 inches, or two inches larger when required by unusual loads or longer span than twenty-two feet. These beams are placed from eight to ten feet apart between centres. At the columns, beams rest on cast-iron caps. The support from one column to the next should be made by cast-iron pintles, preferably those whose section is in the form of a Greek cross, as that presents advantages in the way of securely joining them to the timber beams. At the top of the pintle, a cast-iron plate should support the base of the column above. Timber columns are preferred to those of iron, unless the load is greater than can be sustained by timber. The floor planks for this type of floor are generally made of spruce plank from three to four inches in thickness, grooved on both edges and joined together by hardwood splines. These floor-planks should be two bays in length, breaking joints at least every four feet. Above this the top floor, of 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 inch hardwood, is laid, and in some instances the resistance of the floor to fire is greatly increased by laying a coat of plaster on the floor-plank before the top flooring is built. But the general method of increasing the resistance of the floor to fire is by covering the floor and beams on the under side with plaster laid on wire-lathing. Such a mill floor and columns, while possessing in a very high degree features which offer resistance to the fire, being weakened by the temperature only to a slight extent as they are slowly burned away under the exposure to a very severe fire, also possess the merit of great economy, both as regards the low price of construction, and in that the floor is thinner in comparison with joisted floors of equal strength, saving in this respect, for every floor in a building, about ten inches in height of wall, stairs, belting, steam-pipes, and all vertical connections reaching from floor to floor, a saving which amounts to considerable in the total cost of a building. The division of mills into various portions by means of fire-walls is frequently not so efficient as assumed, by reason of the lack of fire-doors to satisfactorily fulfil the purpose of resisting fire. The best form of fire-door is that made of two thicknesses of matched boards, placed at right angles to each other and nailed together, being covered on the outside with tin, securely locked together and held to the door by numerous hanging-strips. The door should be secured to the hangers by means of bolts, and not screws, and the rail upon which it runs strongly bolted to the wall. When closed, such a door should fit into a jamb and be securely held in this manner against the wall. Such doors are frequently hung upon an inclined track, and, by some application of highly fusible solder at the catch, are so arranged that they will be closed by the heat of a fire, if not closed by hand. In this treatment of the arrangement of buildings to resist fire, consideration has not been given to the cost of land, which is, of itself, an important factor in determining what arrangement will be the most expedient for an establishment. Where land is expensive, or there are limitations in the space suitable for building, it is frequently necessary to build mills and shops higher than would be warranted by good judgment under other conditions; but where circumstances will permit it, the one-story mill has been very successful, not merely in immunity from fire, and very low cost per square foot of floor, but also in the advantages of manufacturing, particularly in regard to cost of supervision and movement of the stock in process of manufacture. These are questions which must be determined, not merely in regard to the various processes of manufacture, but the individual needs of each concern; the position of the fire-risk in the matter being that the hazard of a building increases very rapidly with its height, and to some extent with its area. The extension of one-story buildings over too large an area will not be commended, and certainly, as regards the question of fire, it has a tendency to place too large a property in direct exposure to a very wide hazard. Some textile mills have been built in the form of the block letter U, this form having been decided upon as giving the conditions of lowest resultant cost. One wing, two stories in height, contains weaving; the other wing, three stories in height, contains carding and spinning, while the engine is placed in the connecting building. The pickers and the boilers are in outside buildings, so placed that they will not interfere with future extensions of the building into the form of the block letter H. FIRE APPARATUS. All methods for the prevention of fires fall so far short of the ideal of immunity that there is a necessity for fire-apparatus. The principle of the defence of a manufactory against fire is that of self-protection, by making the installation and management of the fire-apparatus equal to the progress of any fire which can possibly occur. Fire-apparatus should be kept in service as well as in order. It is no exception to any other machinery, in that practice is essential to obtain any efficient results. The practical results of private fire-organizations, where fire has occurred, have been very marked; and systematic and skilful work has been the rule, in place of the needless confusion and liability to breakage of the apparatus, which almost inevitably occurs in the lack of such organization. The details differ with the arrangements and administration of every mill; but the general policy of definitely assigning persons to the positions for which they are best adapted, and where it is presumed they could be most useful, and to practice them in such work, is a rule which is common to all. A great deal of fire-apparatus is destroyed by freezing water during the winter months, and therefore a special inspection of all such apparatus should be made late in the autumn, when the water should be drained from all portions of the system where there is liability of freezing, and all hydrants and valves should be well oiled, preferably with mineral oil. The hazard from a hydrant or other portion of the apparatus broken by frost, does not lie so much in the probability that disadvantage may result from the disuse of one element of the plant, as in the liability that such a breakage may interfere with the whole system and render it inoperative. Buckets of water are the most effective fire-apparatus. They should be kept full, and distributed in liberal profusion in the various rooms of a mill, being placed on shelves or hung on hooks, as circumstances may require. In order to assist in keeping them for fire purposes only, they should be unlike other pails used about the premises, and in some instances each pail and the wall or column behind its position bears the same number. Automatic-sprinklers have proved to be a most valuable form of fire-apparatus in operating with great efficiency at fires where their action was unaided by other fire-apparatus, particularly at night. In mill fires the average loss for an experience of twelve years shows that in those fires where automatic-sprinklers formed a part of the apparatus operating upon the fire, the average loss amounted to only one-nineteenth of the average of all other losses. If the difference between these two averages represents the amount saved by the operation of automatic-sprinklers, then the total damage from the number of fires to which automatic-sprinklers are accredited, as forming a portion of the apparatus, has been reduced six and a quarter million dollars by the operation of this valuable device. Although there have been numerous patents granted to inventors of automatic-sprinklers since the early part of the present century, yet their practical use and introduction has been subsequent to the invention of the sealed automatic-sprinkler by Henry S. Parmelee of New Haven, Ct., about twelve years ago. This device being the first, and for many years the only automatic-sprinkler manufactured and sold, and actually performing service over accidental fires, to him belongs the distinction of being the pioneer, and practically the originator, of the vast work done by automatic-sprinklers in reducing destruction of property by fire. Although nearly or quite 200,000 Parmelee automatic-sprinklers have been installed, their manufacture has been supplanted by other forms; and the total number of automatic-sprinklers in position at the present time must be about 2,000,000. When automatic-sprinklers were first introduced there were many apprehensions that leakage, and also excessive water discharged upon small fires, would be sources of damage. In England this opinion found expression in increased insurance rates in buildings where automatic-sprinklers were installed. The logic of figures shows that this liability to damage is merely nominal in the case of well-constructed sprinklers. An association of underwriters who have given careful attention to the subject obtained the facts that from the automatic-sprinklers installed in some $500,000,000 worth of property insured by them, the average damage from all causes, except fire, was $2.56 per plant per annum. Although automatic-sprinklers have proved to be so reliable and effective, yet, in order to provide for all possible contingencies, their introduction should not displace other forms of fire-apparatus, particularly stand-pipes in the stairway towers, with hydrants at each story. The hose at these hydrants should be festooned on a row of pins, or doubled on some of the reels made especially for such purposes. Stand-pipes are not recommended to be placed in rooms or on fire-escapes; and inside hydrants should not be attached to the vertical pipes supplying automatic-sprinklers. Fire-pumps are generally too small for the work required of them, 500 gallons per minute being the minimum capacity recommended. For a five-story mill there should be an allowance of 250 gallons per minute for an effective stream through a 1-1/8-inch nozzle, and for lower buildings the estimate should rarely be less than 200 gallons for each stream. Contrary to the general assumption, a ring nozzle is not so efficient as a smooth nozzle, the relative amount of discharge of ring and smooth nozzles of the same diameter being as three is to four. For stand-pipes 7/8-inch nozzles are recommended, but for yard hydrant service the diameter should never be less than one inch, and 1-1/8 inches generally fulfils the conditions of best service. The yard hydrants should be placed at a distance of fifty feet from buildings, and covered with a house which should also contain hose, axes, bars, nozzles and spanners. Water-mains about a mill-yard should be of ample capacity not to cause an excessive loss by friction, their diameter being based upon a limit of velocity of ten feet per second for the maximum delivery. RESULTS. These methods of supervision, building and equipment do not refer to any ideality, but to measures which have been widely carried into effect for the purpose of reducing the fire-loss; the result of such action being to diminish the cost of insuring industrial property engaged in such normally hazardous processes as textile manufacture and other industries, down to a yearly cost of less than one-fifth of one per cent. This has been accomplished by the consideration of sources of danger and their abatement, and by a course which has been in line with sound engineering principles, and also practical methods of manufacture; and it has thus been proved that it is cheaper to prevent a fire than to sustain a loss. There has been no attempt made to credit individuals with their share in these features of mill development. They have been the outgrowth of a continual profiting by experience, adopting some features and modifying others. The concurrent action of the large number of minds engaged on the same problem has led to duplication of methods; but the whole progress has been a matter of slow, steady growth, advancing by hairs' breadths, as the result of persistent efforts to adapt means to ends in the endeavor to reduce the cost of manufacture. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 6: Abstract of a paper by Mr. C.J.H. Woodbury, read before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.] * * * * * [Illustration: SOCIETIES] THE NEWARK ARCHITECTURAL SKETCH-CLUB. After a preliminary meeting held for permanent organization December 14, 1889, a constitution and by-laws were adopted, and the following officers elected: _President_, W. Frank Bowers; _Vice-President_, J.C. Swinnerton; _Secretary_, H.A. Hickok; _Treasurer_, W.C. Hudson. _The Executive Committee_ consists of F.S. Sutton, A.E. Hudson, W.G. Smith, L.A. Virtue and E.K. Taylor, together with the officers. It is intended, in addition to the usual monthly competitions, to make a special feature of regular class-work throughout the year, this will consist of courses in constructional work, free-hand drawing, water-color work, plumbing, architectural history, etc. The courses will be under the direction of specialists in the various branches who are club-members. Applications for membership will be received by the Secretary, whose address is 762 Broad Street, Newark. The Club expect to have permanent quarters soon, which will be open every evening to members. * * * * * [Illustration: COMMUNICATIONS] [_The editors cannot pay attention to demands of correspondents who forget to give their names and addresses as guaranty of good faith; nor do they hold themselves responsible for opinions expressed by their correspondents_.] AGREEMENT BETWEEN ARCHITECT AND CLIENT. ALBANY, N.Y., December 26, 1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT: _Dear Sirs_,--As the services which an architect is supposed to render his client and the compensation for same have been the subject of considerable loss to us through misunderstanding, we have prepared for use the enclosed proposition, which covers most cases in our general practice. In work of such a nature as can't be covered by this proposition, we prepare one specially suited to the occasion, but in all cases insist on a written agreement which we consider is fair to both parties. Should you see in this proposition anything of benefit to the profession, you are at liberty to use same. Yours truly, FULLER & WHEELER. OFFICE OF FULLER & WHEELER, ARCHITECTS, No. 86 STATE STREET, ALBANY, N.Y., ---- 189 . PROPOSITION. Mr.---- We will prepare for you the Preliminary Sketches, General Drawings, Details and Specifications for proposed---- to be erected at---- for 3-1/2 per cent on the actual cost of same, which is to be determined by the amount of Mason, Carpenter, Roofer, Plumber, Stone-cutting, Heating, Ventilating, Iron-workers, Mantel and Elevator Contracts, including all extras and deductions. In connection with Heating, Ventilating and Elevator, we will either select the apparatus and approve the specifications as submitted by the dealers, or prepare plans and specifications for contractors to estimate on, according to the character of the work in contemplation, and as in our judgment will secure the best advantage to you. The cost of hardware, mantel facings, hearths, back linings, metal bands, electric work and decorations are also to be included in the total cost of said building, but we are not required to perform more than our customary work in connection with the last mentioned items, which is either to select them from manufacturers' stock or have submitted to us samples, sketches and specifications from which a selection is made. Any other work, not mentioned above, that we may be called upon to perform will be charged for at the same rates. SUPERVISION. We agree to professionally supervise work constructed from our plans, for an additional 1-1/2 per cent, or 5 per cent in all, where the work is in the city, and inspect work out of city at the same rate per cent, visits not to exceed 2 per month. In any case where a Clerk-of-Works is required, either on account of the magnitude of the job, or the inefficiency or carelessness of the contractors, the cost of same is to be paid by you in addition to our compensation for supervision or inspection, and said Clerk is to be approved by us. We do not agree to be responsible for the acts of the Clerk-of-Works, or for the negligence or violations of contracts by the contractors any further than we can reasonably detect at the time of our visits of supervision or inspection; but such negligence or violations of contracts, as we detect, we will have corrected, so far as the power vested in us will permit and as speedily as possible. You are at all times to consult with us about desired changes or additions to the work; to order all such changes through us; and to notify us in regard to any work done or material used that you consider is a violation of the contract. No allowance from our percentage will be made for drawings contracted for and not furnished, except upon a refusal by us to furnish such as may be necessary. The supervision and inspection contemplated by this agreement, is such as is calculated to and ordinarily will secure the furnishing of materials of the kind and quality required by the contract, and the performance of the work in accordance with the plans and specifications, and in a good, workmanlike and substantial manner. CERTIFICATES. Where the work is under our supervision, or inspection, we will issue certificates of indebtedness to the contractors, as per terms of contract. The final certificate being an adjustment of the contract and extras, and also an expression of judgment on our part that the work has been carried out according to the general drawings and specifications and contracts by the contractors, but is not to form a legal obligation on our part. If the building is not erected from said plans, the charges, instead of being based on the actual cost, will be based on the approximate cost, which is hereby estimated at $----, although the last-mentioned sum is not guaranteed to be the actual cost of said building. Should the actual cost exceed the approximate cost, we will make the necessary changes in the plans, so as to reduce the cost, should you so desire, without extra charge. Changes made in plans from other causes, charged for according to time consumed. Travelling expenses and other necessary disbursements in addition to fee for services. PAYMENTS. Payments shall be made as follows: Upon completion of the preliminary sketches, 1 per cent of estimated cost; upon completion of the general drawings and specifications, an additional 1-1/2 per cent of estimated cost; upon completion of details an additional 1 per cent of estimated cost; and upon completion of the work, the charge for supervision or inspection. At that time, also, any differences between the percentage upon the estimated and actual cost is to be settled, and any deficiency is to be paid or excess credited. Travelling expenses and other necessary disbursements are payable when incurred. In case contracts are not entered into for the work within six months after the drawings are ready for contractors to estimate, payment shall be made for the work done at the rates herein before specified, computed upon the estimated cost. Provided, however, that if at any subsequent time the plans and specifications prepared by us, are used and the actual cost exceeds the estimated cost, compensation upon such excesses, shall be made at the rates aforesaid. REMARKS. Respectfully yours, Accepted, ---- 189 * * * * * INSPECTION OF BUILDINGS IN NEW YORK. NEW YORK, N.Y., December 22, 1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:-- _Dear Sirs_,--In your issue of the 21st. I note an editorial setting forth how the New York City Health Department trapped an ingenious builder, who piped his sewerage into his back-yard, and I, and, I think I can safely say, many other architects of New York, would ask why you omit, when publishing such facts, to mention that such work was so put in and is continually put in, in as bad or in a very unworkmanlike and insanitary manner, under the supervision of the same department, and thus shows how the paid officials and inspectors whose business it is to pass upon and approve the plans and specifications and to give continual inspection--to see, examine and test every length of pipe and every joint; who have the might of the law to strike down the offender who shall make bold to violate their mandates, fail to give protection to the innocent owners and purchasers of property, or curb the avaricious hands of unscrupulous builders and careless workmen. I should like further, to ask you to publish to the New York City public, the fact that the "Department", the "Health Department", with its Bureau of Plumbing and Light and Ventilation, and the Building Bureau of the Fire Department, are unable to protect property owners and purchasers from errors in sanitation and construction as they are supposed by too many to do. Owners frequently think that unless they want "fancy" drawings and fronts, an architect is superfluous. The "speculator" finds it no advantage, but rather the opposite, to have an impartial judge between owner and Contractor, or a close inspection over his subs; as he gains little by the fact of his having employed a thorough architect, when he comes to fell, and loses by the bill for services and the legitimate price he pays for honest work. The bulk of speculative work done in New York is after the most trivial plans made by some mere draughtsman or carpenter, and the "superintendence" is under the "keen" eye of the builder and owner--who is usually one and the same individual and who has made a definite failure at all the branches of the trade and frequently many others, and now holds position as owner of the property by virtue of his having paid, entirely in mortgage, for the same. In the large majority of cases that have been under my observation, they are entirely incapable of passing an intelligent opinion on any of the materials and work that make up a building, or at least on very little, and the gross impositions practiced upon them by their sub-contractors is startling. Their work is covered-in and is so left, I doubt not, in the majority of cases, as the inspection furnished by the "Department" is entirely inadequate for proper protection. The confidence of the public is continually bolstered up by such descriptions as the editorial above mentioned. A NEW YORK ARCHITECT. * * * * * A SEEMING ATTEMPT TO DEFRAUD AN ARCHITECT. PITTSBURGH, PA., December 30, 1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT: _Dear Sirs_,--Please answer through the columns of your valuable journal the following: I will designate A as the party for whom I drew plans, etc., B as the owner of property adjoining, and C as the contractor for A. I drew up plans and specifications for a 60' 0" front by 60' 0" deep building for A, including party-wall for A and B who has 35' 0" front by 60' 0" deep lot. I was employed to render full services, such as to draw up plans, specifications, details and superintend the construction of said building for A. A wrote to me asking me whether I would allow B to use my plans and specifications to be copied. I answered, emphatically, that not under any circumstances would I allow it without compensation, as the plans, etc., were my property, and were only designed for A. A let the contract for erection and completion of the building to C, I having made the articles of agreement for same. In the meantime I was notified that B and C were taking sub-bids for the erection of the 35' 0" building, all with my plans and specifications. They were taking the sub-bids from the same parties that were to do the work for C on the building for A. B let C build the 35' 0" building. I notified B and C that I will collect my commission on the construction and completion of their building, to which notices I have no reply. The 35' 0" building was commenced at the same time as the building for A; my plans, specifications and details were used for the building by the same sub-contractors, etc. The buildings are now nearly complete, and the building for B or the 85' 0" building is a portion of the building designed for A with slight variations made by C. I think the above to be very explicit; and now, gentlemen, I would like to ask you for your opinion as to my compensation, and to what extent I am entitled to it. Yours very respectfully, F.C. SAUER. [We think that you are entitled to the full commission of five per cent on the cost of the 35-foot building, and believe that you can collect it.--EDS. AMERICAN ARCHITECT.] * * * * * VENTILATING WOODEN COLUMNS. ZANESVILLE, O., December 23,1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT: _Dear Sirs_,--We notice that in buildings in the East for factory purposes, all wood columns have a hole bored through the centre for ventilation. What size should the hole be for 12" x 12", 10" x 10" and 8" x 8" posts. Also size of cross holes for the purpose of communicating with vertical hole, and how far from ends. Respectfully yours, A.E. PILING CO., LTD. [We have referred this to Mr. C.J.H. Woodbury who replies that the method followed by the best mill-builders is to bore a hole along the axis one and three-fourth to two inches in diameter. The method formerly used was to bore the hole in half-way from each end after the column was finished, but as the auger would follow the grain of the wood, the holes would not always meet, and running out nearer the side of the column would produce structural weakness which has been revealed in tests of columns whenever destructive tests of such columns have been made. The better way is to arrange a lathe with a hollow headstock and a guide which will carry a pod-auger boring in from one end. This will define the axis of the column whether it is to be turned or left square. Near each end, say five inches, a couple of transverse holes generally five-eighth of an inch in diameter are bored. This arrangement is to reduce and in some cases prevent checking in the same way as has been used, time immemorial, for getting out hubs for wagon wheels.--EDS. AMERICAN ARCHITECT.] * * * * * BOOKS IN WATER-COLOR PAINTING. SPOKANE FALLS, WASH., December 11, 1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT: _Dear Sirs_,--Will you kindly advise, through the columns of your paper, what is the best self-instructing work on architectural water-coloring, and oblige. INQUIRER. [The best drill for the eye and hand that we know of can be obtained in the shortest time by getting Buskin's "_Elements of Drawing_," and doing faithfully and exactly all the exercises which he prescribes, including both those in black-and-white and color. Many people, however, do not care for this drill, but prefer to make a few bad imitations of simple chromos, and consider that equipment enough for architectural work. For those, Penley's large work, the "_System of Water-Color Painting_" is the best for copying from; or the aspirant may get some of the little Winsor and Newton "_Handbooks on Sketching in Water-Colors_," to show him how to choose and mix his pigments, and use as models to copy from some of the colored prints of architectural subjects which are to be picked up in the stores. There is a good deal of choice among these. We have ourselves published one or two, from originals by Mr. Botch, which will answer as well as anything we know, being admirable in color and architectural feeling, and just sketchy enough. Pains should generally be taken _not_ to make an elaborate picture of an architectural sketch, and the processes preliminary to making a highly-finished water-color painting, such as laying a ground-color of neutral orange, and sponging it partly out, cutting out foreground lights with a knife, and so on, are best dispensed with. Chinese white, also, should be used very sparingly, and only where the scale is so small that it appears in the form of dots. A good lesson on the importance of keeping color subdued, for the sake of heightening architectural effect, can be derived from any of Front's works, which, by the way, might with great advantage be used to copy from. These will show the value of what most students consider beneath their notice--work in two tints and give the best models possible of artistic distribution of light and shade.--EDS. AMERICAN ARCHITECT.] * * * * * [Illustration: NOTES AND CLIPPINGS] THE DUTY ON GLASS AS IT AFFECTS CONSUMERS.--In a letter to the _New York Times_, Mr. J.S. Moore writes: As I am on the subject of glass, and as the members of the Pan-American Congress are inspecting our magnificent metropolis, I wish to call their attention to two subjects. First, our dirty streets, and second, our splendid windows. Dickens has immortalized the "Golden Dustman." In this city we have the "Dirty Ringman," or we may say "Ringmen." There have been millions in New York's dirty streets. The most honest and persevering Mayors and other high officials have got stuck in New York street mud and were never heard of again. Our aristocratic home mud has flourished without any protection, and the pauper mud of Europe or any other mud could never beat our home product. Here our amiable and friendly Commissioners of the Pan-American Congress can see it demonstrated that our mud industry can flourish without protection. I will now call the attention of our Pan-American friends to the windows in New York houses. They are invariably of plate-glass, and there is not a city in the world that can beat New York in handsome windows. Now, then, it is an actual fact that the tax or duty on plate-glass is as follows: Plate-glass, 10 by 15 inches, 3 cents per foot, or 13.60 per cent; plate-glass, 16 by 24 inches, 5 cents per foot, or 19.78 per cent; plate-glass, 24 by 30 inches, 8 cents per foot, or 27.46 per cent. Now, we must admit that this is a moderate tax. The above glass goes into the houses of the rich. Of course, it will not do to tax influential and rich citizens. But now let me show how we tax that class of people who build three-hundred-dollar houses, or the hundreds of thousands of farmers who live in the far West. Those houses are glazed by what is known as common green window glass. Let me show to what extent we have taxed that class of people in 1888: IMPORTS OF COMMON WINDOW GLASS IN 1888. Duty Collected, Per Value. Ad valorem. Cent. Sizes not exceeding 10x15 $288,927 $190,815 66 Sizes 16 x 24 265,919 305,357 114.83 Sizes 24 x 30 346,486 440,685 127.15 All above that 477,132 626,740 131.35 ---------- Total $1,563,497 We have squeezed out of the neediest, most hard-working of our population $1,563,000 taxes on their "daylight" or window tax, which has gone into the Treasury; but we have squeezed at least $5,000,000 more and put it into the pockets of people who made similar glass. Our Pan-American guests may reflect on the above statistics and come to the conclusion that having flourishing window-glass industries may, after all, not be the highest blessing. I beg to assure Mr. Carnegie that I am "not" a grumbler, as I don't want to run the risk of having the door of heaven shut in my face when he succeeds St. Peter in office. * * * * * THE NATURAL-GAS SUPPLY.--At the recent meeting in New York of the American Geological Society, Prof. Edward Orton, State Geologist of Ohio, and a professor in the State University, in his paper answered those who claim that the great natural gas fields of the country are practically inexhaustible, and that nature is manufacturing the gas by chemical combination in the subterranean cavities as rapidly as it is consumed by man at the surface. He claimed that the supply of natural gas in those States was not only limited, but was being exhausted very rapidly and would be drained in less than nine years. The gas, he said, is now being used as the basis of a varied line of manufactures, the annual products of which aggregate many millions of dollars, and it is driving, besides the iron and steel mills of Pittsburgh, potteries and brick works, over forty glass furnaces and a long list of factories in which cheap power is a desideratum. The gas is the product of ages, which has been accumulated in the porous limestone of Ohio and Indiana. It has been produced so slowly that when once exhausted it will take many thousands of years for it to again accumulate in sufficient quantities to be used, even if the elements necessary for its production were preserved, which he thought was not at all probable. The pressure which forces the gas out with such tremendous power that it sometimes reaches 1,000 pounds pressure per square inch, is not due to the pressure of the gas itself, but to the hydrostatic pressure brought to bear by the column of salt water that enters the porous stratum of rock containing the gas at the sea-level, and which by its weight tends to force the gas out. To the explanation and elucidation of this phenomenon, Professor Orton's paper was more especially devoted. The men who are engaged in the practical development of gas and oil fields, said he, made great account of rock-pressure. It is the first fact they inquire after in a new gas-field. They appreciate its importance, knowing that the distance of the markets they care to reach and the size of the pipes they can employ are entirely dependent upon this element. He defined the term "rock-pressure", and showed the decrease of its rate westward. He said four hundred thousand people in Northwestern Ohio and Central Indiana alone depended upon natural-gas for fuel and illumination. * * * * * STATUE GIVING A DOUBLE IMAGE.--At the Italian exhibition in the Champ de Mars there was a statue that attracted much attention from the visitors. It represented Goethe's Marguerite standing before a mirror. This latter gave by reflection the image of Faust. The artifice was well concealed by the sculptor. In reality, it was not a double statue, but the figure of Faust was skilfully obtained by means of the folds of Marguerite's robe. Marguerite holds her arms in front of her, and these same arms form those of Faust, who holds them crossed behind his back. Faust's face is carved in Marguerite's back hair, and the man's figure is obtained, as before stated, by means of the folds of the woman's robe. This curious object might inspire some of our sculptors with an analogous idea. We do not know the name of the author of the statue, but we can say that it was exhibited by Mr. Francesco Toso, a Venetian manufacturer of mirrors. The statue was of wood, and of nearly life-size.--_La Nature_. * * * * * SITE FOE THE KAISER'S MONUMENT.--Three or four Berlin banks have secured the preemption of all the buildings in Schlossfreiheitstrasse, with a view to pulling them down and fulfilling the Emperor's wish to have his grandfather's monument erected there. Only a few days ago three of the most eminent Berlin architects declared that the place was absolutely unsuited for that purpose. The banks are said to have agreed to pay 5,000,000 marks for the houses, and an equal amount as compensation, and intend to form a lottery of 40,000,000 marks, with prizes to the amount of 30,000,000.--_The London Standard_. * * * * * [Illustration: TRADE SURVEYS] The salient features of the business situation this week afford every encouragement to the promoters of new schemes and the pioneers in industry. Among the additional factors which will stimulate trade and business during 1890 are the following: The construction of fifty per cent more railway mileage than was built last year; a very great increase in lake tonnage; a large increase in inland water-way tonnage; a very great increase in rolling-stock; a greater increase in locomotive capacity than has been made during any one year in our history; greater activity in house-building, and greater activity in the building of shops and factories. Several other interesting features also deserve mention, among them the very strong probability of the establishment of a larger number of banks daring 1890 than were established during 1889 or any previous year; the more rapid expansion of the building and loan association system, particularly in the newer States; the increase in the output of the gold and silver mines of the West and Southwest; the opening-up of valuable coal-beds in many localities, which will tend to the establishment of little industries; a great increase in the area of land devoted to agriculture. Speaking generally, the agricultural interests will be stimulated. Speaking prophetically, it is very probable that prices will continue to advance, but by infinitesimal degrees. Speaking conservatively and in the light of recent experience, it is safe to assume and assert that production will be evenly gauged to consumptive requirements. Those who have kept a close eye upon the operations of manufacturers in all the leading channels recognize one very gratifying feature, and that is, that they are protecting themselves against unwarranted and unexpected advances in the cost of their raw material by making purchases for future requirements, ranging from three to six months. Users of cotton and wool are largely doing this; so are users of iron ore and iron and steel, as well as users of lumber, stone, cement and building material generally. This general policy of providing for legitimate future requirements is one of those instincts which safely guide the commercial world out of danger into safety. One fruitful source of panics in former periods of activity was the failure of consuming interests to supply themselves with raw material to complete their contracts. The business world has learned wisdom from its experience, and is now quietly turning a corner and wheeling into line safely early in 1890. The tanning interests of the United States have pursued this course in their limited field. The boot and shoe manufacturers, if they have not bought largely of raw material, have, at least, taken such steps as will guarantee them against a sudden advance. The clothing manufacturers have wisely purchased for their future wants; in fact, in almost every avenue of activity this policy has been pursued. The users of Lake ore have already bought five and one-half millions of the seven or eight million tons of ore they will want this year. The users of steel blooms and billets have bought so far ahead that manufacturers are now declining to make further contracts, excepting for very strong reasons. The Southern pig-iron makers are debating with themselves whether they will accept orders for pig-iron to be delivered next summer or wait a few months. Scores of illustrations of this sort could be enumerated. In many quarters this policy is believed to be an unwise one. Experience has shown it to be a safe one. The iron industry, as a whole, is on a very permanent foundation. Manufacturers are hurrying to complete new works; lumber manufacturers, especially throughout the South, are stimulated to the greatest exertion by two new causes: First, a strong demand throughout the North for the superior lumber-mill products of the South; and second, a wonderful expansion of local demand in the South arising from the new industries there. The makers of nearly all kinds of machinery are busy with new work, fully one-half of which is for delivery in the new Southern or Western States. The manufacturers of steam-pumps, the manufacturers of appliances for new fuel-gas processes, the builders of heavy machinery for steam and electrical purposes, the manufacturers of hoisting-machinery and of machinery for mining purposes, as well as of machinery for general shop-use, have been booking more business since the 1st of October than their present shop-capacity will allow them to execute. Consequently, a general system of enlargement is in progress. Contracts have been lately given out for the construction of machinery to make machines of larger than usual dimensions. Our industries are being reorganized, and instead of engines of five, ten or fifty horse-power, engines of fifty to five hundred horse-power are now common. Agricultural operations are conducted by the aid of machinery upon a larger scale, and within the past six months a score or more of establishments for the manufacture of agricultural implements have been equipped with machinery, and facilities in the Western States, that indicate more clearly than anything else can do the magnitude and scope of our agricultural interests. Last year the rolling stock of the railroads was increased by some 54,000 freight cars, but it is probable that the additional orders this year will reach 100,000. The managers of several of the Western railroad systems have decided to erect repair-shops along their various systems, by which repair work and new work can be more expeditiously and economically done. The springing up of so many little industries along these new lines is creating local markets for farm-products. Last year the opening of coal mines, to the number of about sixty, promises a sufficient supply of coal to these new communities at a low cost. These encouragements are stimulating the outflow of population from the older States, and it is this outflow, coupled with the better conditions for living in the West through the development of industries, that is equalizing in such a healthy and natural way the great manufacturing and agricultural forces. By this growth of little industries, mechanical, mining and railroad, the decline in the value of farm-products is checked, or possibly altogether prevented; or, at least, the demand arising from this cause enables the farmer to obtain the very best possible price for what he has to sell. It is not out of place, at the opening of the year, to briefly direct attention to these forces acting beneath the surface. The manufacturer and merchant have nothing to fear from hidden destructive agencies. During the past two or three years several threatening commercial evils have arisen only to disappear by a self-correcting agency which seems to develop itself at the right time. The merchants and manufacturers of the New England and Middle States will find, this year, a much more valuable market west of the Mississippi than last year. The increasing demand for all kinds of raw material there during the past few months is a sure indication of the growth of a great market for the shop-products. * * * * * S.J. PARKHILL. & CO., Printers, Boston. * * * * * 
13618	----	[Illustration: Peterborough Cathedral, From The South-east.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF PETERBOROUGH A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY THE REV. W.D. SWEETING, M.A. WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1926 First Published, February 1898 Second Edition, Revised, 1899. Reprinted, 1906, 1911, 1922, 1926. PREFACE. The chief authorities consulted in the preparation of this book are named in the text. Besides the well-known works of reference on the English Cathedrals, and the "Monastic Chronicles," there are several that deal with Peterborough alone, of which the most important and valuable are "Gunton's History" with Dean Patrick's Supplement, "Craddock's History," the monographs by Professor Paley and Mr Poole, and the Guide of Canon Davys. If I have ventured to differ from some of these writers on various points, I must appeal, in justification, to a careful and painstaking study of the Cathedral and its history, during a residence at Peterborough of more than twenty years. My best thanks are due to Mr Caster of Peterborough, for permission to incorporate with this account the substance of a Guide, which I prepared for him, published in 1893; and to Mr Robert Davison of London, for his description of the Mosaic Pavement, executed by him for the Choir. I desire also to express my thanks for the drawings supplied by Mr W.H. Lord, Mr H.P. Clifford, and Mr O.R. Allbrow; and to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Photochrom Company, Ld., and to Messrs S.B. Bolas & Co., for their excellent photographs. W.D. SWEETING. In this new edition the corrections are limited almost entirely to alterations necessitated by lapse of time. In connexion with which I have to thank Mr H. Plowman of Minster Precincts, Peterborough. E. BELL. _June 1922._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.--History of the Cathedral Church of S. Peter 3 CHAPTER II.--The Cathedral--Exterior 36 The West Front 39 The Towers 44 The Porch and Parvise 45 The Bell-Tower 48 The Dean's Door 50 The Lantern-Tower 51 The North Transept 52 The New Building 55 The South Transept 55 CHAPTER III.--The Cathedral--Interior 57 The Choir 60 The Choir Stalls 67 The Pulpit and Throne 70 The Organ, Baldachino, and Pavement 72 The Screens 74 The Lectern 74 The New Building 76 The Transepts 77 The Saxon Church 80 The Nave 81 The Nave Ceiling 84 The West Transept 87 Altars 87 Stained Glass 88 The Parvise 90 Monuments and Inscriptions 91 CHAPTER IV.--The Minster Precincts and City 99 The Chapel of S. Thomas of Canterbury 100 The Knights' Chamber 101 The Deanery Gateway 102 The Infirmary and Cloisters 103 The Palace 106 The City and Guild Hall 108 The Tithe Barn 111 CHAPTER V.--History of the Monastery 112 CHAPTER VI.--History of the Diocese 127 ILLUSTRATIONS. The Cathedral, from the South-East _Frontispiece_ Arms of the Diocese _Title_ The Cathedral and Palace 2 The Cathedral; from the North, c. 1730 7 Remains of Saxon Church 10 Map, 1610 23 The West Front in the Seventeenth Century 25 Iron Railings, 1721 27 Finial of the Central Gable of the West Front 34 The West Front 37 Plan of Central Portion of the West Front 41 West Porch and Parvise 43 Gates to West Porch 44 South-West Spire and Bell-Tower 47 The West Front, restored according to Gunton, 1780 49 The Dean's Door 51 Apse and New Building, from the South-East 53 Plan of Monastery Buildings 58 The Choir 61 View from the Triforium South of Choir 63 North Transept and Morning Chapel 65 The Pulpit 71 Apse and Canopied Reredos 73 The New Building--Interior 78 The Transepts, looking North 79 Evangelistic Symbols, from Lantern Tower Roof 80, 81 Boss from Lantern Tower Roof 82 The Nave, looking East 83 The Choir and Nave, looking West 85 Head of S. Peter in Ancient Stained Glass 89 Part of the Monks' Stone 92 Saxon Coffin Lids in North Transept 93 Portions of Abbots' Tombs 94, 95, 96 South Aisles of Choir and Nave 97 South Side of the Close, 1801 99 Cathedral Gateway, 1791 101 Door to Palace Grounds from the Cloisters, 1797 104 Door way to Cathedral from the Cloisters 105 Archway from Cloisters, North-West 107 Church of S. John the Baptist and Guildhall 109 Rose Windows and Details of West Front 117 Tomb of an Abbot, possibly Abbot Andrew, 1201 120 Iron Railings, 1721 123 Details of Chasuble on Abbot's Tomb 129 Details of Albs on Abbots' Tombs 133 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL. 135 [Illustration: The Cathedral And Palace, From The South-west.] PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF S. PETER. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Peterborough remained one of the most unchanged examples in the kingdom of the monastic borough. The place was called into existence by the monastery and was entirely dependent on it. The Abbot was supreme lord, and had his own gaol. He possessed great power over the whole hundred. And even after the See of Peterborough was constituted, and the Abbey Church became a cathedral, many of the ancient privileges were retained by the newly formed Dean and Chapter. They still retained the proclamation and control of the fairs; their officer, the high bailiff, was the returning officer at elections for parliament; they regulated the markets; they appointed the coroner. Professor Freeman contrasts an Abbot's town with a Bishop's town, when speaking about the city of Wells.[1] "An Abbot's borough might arise anywhere; no better instance can be found than the borough of S. Peter itself, that Golden Borough which often came to be called distinctively the Borough without further epithet." And again, "the settlement which arose around the great fenland monastery of S. Peter, the holy house of Medeshampstead, grew by degrees into a borough, and by later ecclesiastical arrangements, into a city, a city and borough to which the changes of our own day have given a growth such as it never knew before." Situated on the edge of the Fens, some miles to the east of the great north road, without any special trade, and without any neighbouring territorial magnates, it is hardly surprising that the place seemed incapable of progress, and remained long eminently respectable and stagnant. In one of his caustic epigrams Dean Duport does indeed speak of the wool-combers as if there were a recognised calling that employed some numbers of men; but he is not complimentary to those employed, for he says that the men that comb the wool, and the sheep that bear it, are on a par as regards intelligence: "At vos simplicitate pares et moribus estis, Lanificique homines, lanigerique greges." In another epigram he derides the city itself, calling it contemptuously "Urbicula"; and he suggests, with a humour that to modern ideas savours of irreverence, that this little city of S. Peter's, "Petropolis," unless S. Peter had the keys, would run away through its own gates. The great development of the last half of the nineteenth century is due to the railway works at New England, and to the Great Northern Line making Peterborough an important railway centre. In 1807 the entire population of the city and hamlets was under 3,500. In 1843 it was just over 5,500, and when the railway was laid it was not much more than 6,000. It has since gone up by leaps and bounds. In 1861 the population exceeded 11,000. By 1911 it had grown by steady increments to 33,578. The private diary of a resident of about 1850 would read like an old world record. The watchman in the Minster Precincts still went his rounds at night and called out the time and the weather; sedan-chairs were in use; the corn-market of the neighbourhood was held in the open street; turnpikes took toll at every road out of the town; a weekly paper had only just been started on a humble scale, being at first little more than a railway time-table with a few items of local news at the back; a couple of rooms more than sufficed for the business of the post office. In 1874 a charter of incorporation was granted, not without some opposition; it had been, up to that time, the only city in England without a mayor, except Ely and Westminster. An account of the church which is now the cathedral church of a diocese that was only constituted in 1541, must of necessity trace its history for some centuries before it attained its present dignity, and when it was simply the church of an abbey. Three centuries and a half of cathedral dignity have not made its old name of Minster obsolete; it is indeed the term usually employed.[2] The village was first known by the name of Medeshamstede, the homestead in the meadows. There is no evidence that any houses were built at all before the foundation of the monastery. There was probably not a single habitation on the spot before the rising walls of the religious house made dwelling-places for the workmen a necessity. As time went on the requirements of the inmates brought together a population, which for centuries had no interests unconnected with the abbey. The establishment of the monastery is due to the conversion of the royal family to Christianity. It was in the middle of the seventh century when Penda was King of the Mercians, and his children, three sons, Peada, Wulfere, and Ethelred, and two daughters, Kyneburga, and Kyneswitha, became converted to the Christian faith. On succeeding to the throne, Peada the eldest son, founded this monastery of Medeshamstede. The first Abbot, Saxulf, had been in a high position at court; he is described as an earl (_comes_); and most likely had the practical duty of building and organising the monastery, as he is called by Bede the builder of the place as well as first Abbot (_Constructor et abbas_). This was in the year 654 or 655 (for the date is given differently by different authorities), and Peada only lived two or three years afterwards. His brothers in turn came to the throne, and both helped to enrich the rising foundation. The elder of the two, however, had lapsed from Christianity, and killed his own two sons in his rage at finding they had become Christians; but afterwards stung with remorse he confessed his offence to S. Chad, who had brought the princes to the knowledge of Christ, and offered to expiate it in any way he was directed. He was bidden to restore the Christian Religion, to repair the ruined churches, and to found new ones. The whole story is told with great particularity by the chronicler, and it was represented in stained glass in the cloisters of the abbey, as described hereafter. The church thus built must have been of considerable substance, if, as recorded, Peada in the foundation of it "laid such stones as that eight yoke of oxen could scarce draw one of them."[1] It has nevertheless, utterly perished. We read of the continued support bestowed by a succession of princes and nobles, of the increasing dignity of the house, and of the privileges it acquired; but there is nowhere a single line descriptive of the buildings themselves. Gunton does indeed speak of a goodly house for the Abbot constructed by King Peada; but he must have been capable of strange credulity if he imagined, as his words seem to imply, that this very house was in existence in the time of Henry VIII. He writes thus:[3] "The Royal Founder ... built also an house for the Abbot, which upon the dissolution by Henry the Eighth, became the Bishop's Palace. A building very large and stately, as the present age can testifie; all the rooms of common habitation being built above stairs, and underneath are very fair vaults and goodly cellars for several uses. The great Hall, a magnificent room, had, at the upper end, in the Wall, very high above the ground, three stately Thrones, wherein were placed sitting, the three Royal Founders carved curiously of Wood, painted and guilt, which in the year 1644 were pulled down and broken to pieces." [Illustration: The Cathedral; from the North, c. 1730] There is no doubt that this first monastery was utterly destroyed by the Danes about the year 870. The very circumstantial account given in the chronicle of Abbot John, derived from Ingulf, is well known; but as it is entirely without corroboration in any of the historians who mention the destruction of the monastery, recent criticism has not hesitated to pronounce the whole account a mere invention. It is unnecessary, therefore, to give it here. The account "may have some foundation in fact," Professor Freeman admits, "but if so, it is strange to find no mention of it in Orderic."[4] But the discredit thrown upon the minutely graphic story of Ingulf, does not of course apply to the actual fact, of which there is ample evidence, that the monastery was burnt by the Danes. Matthew of Westminster says:[5]--"And so the wicked leaders, passing through the district of York, burned the churches, cities, and villages ... and thence advancing they destroyed all the monasteries (_coenobia_) of monks and nuns situated in the fens, and slew the inmates. The names of these monasteries are, Crowland, Thorney, Ramsey, Hamstede, now called Burgh S. Peter, with the Isle of Ely, and that once very famous house of nuns, wherein the holy Virgin and Queen Etheldreda laudably discharged the office of abbess for many years." The re-edification of the monastery, henceforth known as Burgh, is due to Bishop Ethelwold, of Winchester, with the approval and support of King Edgar. This was accomplished in 972. We have now reached a point where all can take a practical interest in the subject, because portions of this church are to be seen to this day. The exact site of the Saxon church had always been a matter of conjecture until the excavations made in the course of the works incidental to the rebuilding of the lantern tower (1883-1893) finally settled the question. Many students of the fabric supposed that the existing church practically followed the main outlines of the former one, possibly with increased length and breadth, but at any rate on the old site. It is now ascertained that the east end of the Saxon church was nearly under the east wall of the present south transept and the south walls of the south transepts of both buildings were but a very few feet apart. The dimensions of the former church both its length and breadth, were as nearly as possible half of those of the existing one. A description of the present appearance of the remains will be found in a later chapter (see page 80). The Church of Bishop Ethelwold was not without its vicissitudes. Nothing was more promising than its origin, and the circumstances of its building. King Edgar and Dunstan, whom he had made Archbishop of Canterbury, were very enthusiastic in extending the growth of monastic influence in the country. No less than forty Benedictine convents are said to have been either founded or restored by Edgar. Bishop Ethelwold was entirely of one mind with the King and Archbishop, in the ecclesiastical reforms of the day. Mr Poole well describes the commencement of the work. "At Medeshamstede the ruins were made to their hands, and they at once commenced the grateful task of their restoration and appropriation. As usual, we find certain supernatural interferences assigned as indications of the divine approval of the work. It is related how Ethelwold was directed by God, in a dream, to go to the monastery of S. Peter, among the Mid-English; how he halted first at Oundle, supposing that to be the monastery intended; but being warned in a dream to continue his eastward course, at length discovered the ashes of the desolated Medeshamstede. It needs but little ingenuity to collect from this that Ethelwold, having received some vague intelligence of the present condition both of Oundle and Medeshamstede, started from Winchester, determined on reaching either or both; and that being less pleased with what he saw at Oundle than he expected, he extended his progress to Medeshamstede."[6] The Queen is said to have overheard the Bishop's fervent prayers for the success of his object, and to have used her influence with the King; but he probably required very little persuasion to undertake what was so much to his taste. It may be mentioned that if we accept the date 972 for the completion of the re-building (the Chronicle gives 970 for its commencement), the very same year witnessed that well-known scene on the River Dee, when King Edgar held the helm of a royal barge as it was being rowed by eight vassal kings. [Illustration: Remains of Saxon Church] The King came to visit the monastery thus rebuilt under his direction. The Archbishops, Dunstan and Oswald, with a large company of the nobility and clergy attended at the same time. The King is said to have inspected some old deeds which had been saved from the general destruction a century before, and to have wept for joy at reading the privileges belonging to the place. He therefore granted a new charter, confirming all the old privileges and possessions. Since in this charter no allusion is made to the triple dedication of the church, but S. Peter alone seems named as the Patron Saint, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the first church of Burgh monastery was dedicated to S. Peter only, and that the dedication of the original minster to SS. Peter, Paul, and Andrew, was not repeated. Edgar says that he renews the ancient privileges "_pro gratia Sancti Petri_"; and that certain immunities shall continue as long as the Abbot and the inmates of the house remain in the peace of God, and the Patron Saint continues his protection, "_ipso Abbate cum subjecta Christi familia in pace Dei, et superni Janitoris Petro patrocinio illud (sc. coenobium) regente._" This charter is noteworthy for the title the King gives himself, "_Ego Edgar totius Albionis Basileus._" For some time this establishment continued to flourish. But the troublous times that followed the Norman conquest did not leave Burgh undamaged. It plays a considerable part in the story of Hereward, the Saxon patriot. Situated on the direct line between Bourne, his paternal inheritance, and the Camp of Refuge near Ely, it was exposed to the attacks of both the contending parties. Brando (1066-1069) had made Hereward, who was his nephew, a knight; and the patriot might be credited with a regard for the holy place where he had been girt at a solemn service with the sword and belt of knighthood; but upon Brando's death the abbacy had been granted to a Norman, doubtless with the intention of making the place available as a military centre. Hereward joined the Danes, who had again begun to infest the district, in an attack upon the abbey. The accounts vary as to the time at which this attack was made. One says that it was before Turold, the Norman Abbot, had entered upon possession: another says that Turold had in person joined Ivo Taillebois in an attempt to surprise Hereward and his men in the woods near Bourne, but had been taken prisoner and only released after paying a large ransom. When dismissed there seems to have been something in the nature of an undertaking that the Abbot would not again fight against Hereward; but as soon as he was free he organised fresh attacks, obliging all the tenants of the abbey to supply assistance. In revenge for this Hereward went with his men to Burgh, and laid waste the whole town with fire, plundered all the treasure of the church, and destroyed all the buildings of the abbey except the church itself. Though Hereward spared the church and went away, yet very soon afterwards the monks, possibly sympathising more with Hereward than with their Norman Abbot (who had left them for a time), allowed themselves to indulge in a drunken revel; and while carousing, a fire seized upon the church and other remaining buildings, from which Gunton says they rescued only a few relics, and little else. But, as Mr Poole has well observed[7], "we must receive such accounts with some allowance; and, in fact, neither was the abbey so despoiled, nor the church so destroyed, but that there was wealth enough to tempt robbers in the next abbacy, and fuel enough for another conflagration." The robbers in question were foreigners who got into the church by a ladder over the altar of SS. Philip and James, one of them standing with a drawn sword over the sleeping sacrist. The plunder they carried off was valuable, but it was recovered when the thieves were overtaken. The King, though he may have punished the robbers, retained the goods so that they were never restored to the abbey. That Ernulf (1107-1114) should not have done anything towards improving the church is a fact that speaks as plainly as possible of its being already in good condition. Had there been anything like the desolation that some accounts pretend, Ernulf would have spared no exertions in his endeavours to put things right. He came from Canterbury, where he was Prior, and where he had already distinguished himself as a zealous builder; but all that is recorded as due to him at Burgh is the completion of some unfinished buildings, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house. We may feel confident therefore that the Saxon Church built by Ethelwold remained substantially as first erected until the time of Ernulf's successor; and that the remains to be seen to this day were in their present position when Edgar and Dunstan visited the place. These newly erected buildings were all that escaped a terrible conflagration that occurred in the time of John of Sais (1114-1125). Hugo Candidus, the chronicler, was an eye-witness of this fire, and has left us an account of it. On the second day of the nones of August, being the vigil of Saint Oswald, King and Martyr (4th Aug. 1116), through neglect, the whole monastery was burnt down, except the chapter-house, dormitory, refectory, and a few outside offices. The refectory had only been in use for three days, having been apparently opened (as we should say in these days) by an entertainment given to the poor. The whole town shared the fate of the monastery. The Abbot was a very passionate man, and being in a great rage, when he was disturbed at a meal by some of the brethren who had come into the refectory to clear the tables, cursed the house, incautiously commended it to the enemy of mankind, and went off immediately to attend to some law-business at Castor. Then one of the servants, who had tried unsuccessfully to light a fire, lost his temper, and (following the evil example of his superior) cried out, "_Veni, Diabole, et insuffla ignem_." Forthwith the flames rose, and reached to the roof, and spread through all the offices to the town. The whole church was consumed, and the town as well, all the statues (or perhaps _signa_ may mean the bells) were broken, and the fire continued burning in the tower for nine days. On the ninth night a mighty wind arose and scattered the fire and burning fragments _(carbones vivos)_ from the tower over the Abbot's house, so that there was a fear that nothing would escape the devouring element. The very next year John of Sais commenced the building of a new minster. He laid the foundation on the 8th of March 1118. Much work was probably necessary before a foundation stone could be laid; and Abbot John's Chronicle, wherein it is said that the foundation of the new church at Burgh was laid, on the 12th of March, 1117, may be speaking of the actual commencement of the operations; and Candidus, who gives the later date, and who was present, may refer to a ceremonial laying of a stone, after the ground had been cleared and new designs prepared. The church then begun is the minster we now see. The works commenced, as we find almost universally the case, at the east end. The choir is here terminated by an apse; and before the eastern addition was built in the fifteenth century, this apse, with the two lesser ones at the ends of the choir aisles, must have presented an appearance of much grandeur. The Abbot who began the church did not live to see much progress made, as he died in 1125. He is said to have worked hard at it, but how much was finished we do not know. The next Abbot, after an interval of two years, was Henry of Anjou, a kinsman of King Henry I. He appears to have been a scandalous pluralist, restless and greedy, continually seeking and obtaining additional preferment, and as often being forced to resign. He was not the man to prosecute such a work as was to be done at Burgh; "he lived even as a drone in a hive; as the drone eateth and draggeth forward to himself all that is brought near, even so did he."[8] It is likely that for eight years after the death of John de Sais nothing was done to advance the building. But the Prior of S. Neots, Martin de Bee, who was appointed to succeed Henry, was continually employed in building about the monastery; and in particular he completed the presbytery of the church, and brought back the sacred relics, and the monks, on Saint Peter's day into the new church, with great joy. Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was present; but there was no service of consecration. According to the Saxon Chronicle this took place in 1140; Abbot John says in 1143. Before proceeding further with the architectural history of the cathedral (as distinguished from the description of it, which will be given in due course), it may be well to say a few words upon the principles which have guided the writer in his treatment of the subject. These cannot be better expressed than in a very pithy sentence uttered by Professor Willis at the meeting of the Archaeological Institute at this very place in 1861. "In all investigations of this nature, I am of opinion that it is requisite to ascertain first whether there exist any contemporary documents which may throw light upon the history of the fabric, and then to let the stones tell their own tale." Now there is an abundance of documentary evidence for our purpose; but recent criticism has shewn that not all is to be relied upon as authentic. And the Latin expressions for different portions of the building can, in many instances, not be interpreted with certainty; while the absence of all reference to some works of importance (the West Front, for example), is very mysterious. Most of these documents had been studied in manuscript by Gunton and Patrick, and the result of their studies was published in 1686. The work is entitled "The History of the church of Peterburgh ... By Symon Gunton, late Prebendary of that church.... And set forth by Symon Patrick, D.D., now Dean of the same." Gunton was Prebendary from 1646 to his death in 1676; Patrick was Dean from 1679 till his consecration as Bishop of Chichester in 1689. Most of the documents in question have since been printed. Two writers in the last half century have published monographs on the cathedral, both of great value, both treating the subject after Professor Willis's method. These are G.A. Poole, formerly Vicar of Welford, whose paper on the Abbey Church of Peterborough was published among the Transactions of the Architectural Society of the Archdeaconry of Northampton in 1855, and the late Professor F.A. Paley, a second edition of whose pamphlet, "Remarks on the Architecture of Peterborough Cathedral," was issued in 1859. It by no means detracts from the value of the method employed that the results of the investigations of these two careful students of the fabric do not accord with one another. Much must always be left to inference or conjecture. Since they wrote many discoveries have been made which have shewn some of their conclusions to have been inaccurate. But the rule is a sound one, and indeed it is only by studying the documents and the fabric together that one can hope to learn the history of any great building. Thus, when the chronicle records that Abbot Martin completed the presbytery, and that then the monks entered into the new church, we should naturally understand that he built no more than the existing choir and its aisles. But there can be little doubt that his work included the eastern bays and aisles of both transepts. The style of the architecture speaks for itself, "the stones tell their own tale," and the most careful study, and the most painstaking investigations, have failed to detect the slightest break in the continuity or character of the work. This applies to the whole of the eastern part of the transepts, excepting of course the alterations that were made in later times. As Martin remained abbot till 1155, it is probable that he went on with his building after the choir had been opened, and that this work in the transepts was done in the latter part of his abbacy, but there is no record of it. Of Abbot William of Waterville (1155-1175) we are told that in his time were erected the transepts (_ambæ cruces_) and three stages of the central tower (_tres ystoriæ magistræ turris_). This does not contradict what has been said above as to the eastern part of the transepts being built in Abbot Martin's time. For the walls and aisles to the east only would be in position; and his successor might well be credited with the erection of the transepts, if he built the ends and western walls, and roofed in the whole. It is tolerably clear also that this same abbot must have built the two bays of the nave adjoining the central tower. A tower of three stages, presumably of the massive character that marks all large Norman towers, must have had some western supports. Two bays of the nave would act as buttresses; and it is easy to see the difference between these two bays and the rest of the nave. Apart from many minute points of difference which only an expert architectural student could fully appreciate, there is one conspicuous variation which all can see. This is in the tympanum of the triforium arches; in all four instances we notice rugged ornamentation here which occurs nowhere else in the nave. Exclusive of the western transept we may assign eighty years as the period during which the Norman Minster was being erected. And it is one of the most noteworthy points in connection with its architectural history, and one that has produced the happiest result in the grandeur of the whole effect of the building upon the spectator, that each successive architect carried on faithfully the ideas of his predecessors. The whole work has been continued, as it were, in the spirit of one design; and the differences in details, while quite observable when once pointed out, are yet so unobtrusive that they seldom attract notice. To mention one such instance, Mr Paley calls attention to the different ornamentation on the windows of the south transept when compared with those in the north transept, as well as to the fact that on the south those windows have straight sides to the inner surface of the wall, while those on the north have the sides splayed. He justly argues, from these and other considerations, that the south transept was built first. To Abbot William of Waterville succeeded Benedict (1177-1193). Of him we are told that he built the whole nave in stone and wood-work, from the tower of the choir to the front, and also erected a rood-loft. He built also the great gate-way at the west of the precincts, with the chapel of S. Nicolas above it, the chapel of S. Thomas of Canterbury and the hospital attached to it, the great hall with the buildings connected; and he also commenced that wonderful work (_illud mirificum opus_) near the brewery, but his death occurred before it could be completed. What this last named great work was we do not know. It is at least possible that the reference is to the western transept. Considerable controversy has arisen as to the work in the church thus attributed to Benedict. Both chronicles give him credit for building the whole nave from the tower of the choir to the front. The wording, however, of the two is so similar as to cause some doubt as to their being independent authorities. Granting that some small portion of the nave to the east, as before described, must have been built as a support to Waterville's tower, the question remains, what is the front to which this record alludes? There is of course no doubt that the words speak of the nave only, exclusive of the front. But was this the present west front, as now remaining, or was there previously a Norman front to the church? There is much to be said on both sides. Mr Paley believes the latter; Mr Poole, the former. And possibly the true solution may be found in a combination of both theories, though at first sight that seems impossible. That a west front in Norman times was designed, and in part built, Mr Paley has shewn most conclusively. He indeed thinks it was finished, but that is open to considerable doubt. The evidence on which he proves that two western towers were at least designed is quite conclusive; and the whole passage in which he discusses the matter may be quoted.[9] "Proceeding towards the west end of the nave, we observe a very singular feature. The third pillar from the west end on each side is considerably larger and wider than the others; and it also projects further into the aisles. The arch also, springing from it westward, is of a much greater span. The opposite vaulting shafts, in the aisle walls, are brought forward, beyond the line of the rest, to meet the pillars in question; so that the arch across the aisles is, in this part, very much contracted, and, instead of being a mere groin rib, like the rest, is a strong moulded arch of considerable depth in the soffit. What appears at first sight, still more strange, the wall of the aisles opposite to the wider nave-arch just mentioned, is brought forward at least a foot internally, but again retires to the old level at the last bay; so that in this particular part the whole thickness of the aisle-wall is considerably greater. Not less remarkable is the circumstance, that the half-pillars on each side of this wider arch resume the complex[10] form already described at the eastern end of the nave, though they do not accurately agree either in plan or details.... Now it seems highly probable that it was at this very spot that it [_i.e._, a Norman west front] stood, with two flanking Norman towers at the end of the aisles. The wider nave-arch, with its massive and complex pillars, was the entrance into the tower from each side of the nave. The thicker aisle-wall opposite to it was, in fact, _the tower wall_. The larger and heavier group of vaulting-shafts against the aisle-wall, and the strong arch spanning the aisle across this point in place of the groin-rib, were all parts of the tower.... The transformation of the base of these two immense towers into a compartment of the aisle, so similar to all the rest that its real nature has never been hitherto suspected, is highly ingenious. It is only when once detected that the anomalies above mentioned are at all intelligible." These arguments prove to demonstration that the intention was to make the Norman church end at the spot where now stand the third pillars of the nave; and that the two western towers had begun to be built. As an after thought another bay was added to the nave, with western transept, and last of all the grand west front was another after thought. But they do not establish the fact that the towers were ever finished, or the Norman west front actually erected. The considerations adduced are perfectly consistent with the theory that the additional length of the nave was decided upon while the towers were still unfinished, and the lower part of the towers transformed as Mr Paley has described. Thus we combine the rival theories. For Mr Poole[11] maintains that the point, up to which Benedict's work was carried, must mean the front we now see. One argument he advances appears unanswerable.[12] Of the two chroniclers, Swapham takes his history down to 1246; Abbot John ruled from 1249 to 1262. Both these writers therefore, beyond all question, were alive when the present front was finished. "Here are two people writing after the present west front was erected, and for persons before whose eyes the present west front appeared every day, and speaking of the tower and of the west front as well-known limits to a certain work. Surely they not only meant, but _must have meant_, the front that _then_ was, in other words, the west front as it is _now_." The conclusion of the controversy may perhaps not yet have been reached. But all the difficulties appear to be explained by understanding that Benedict's work extended to the west end of the present nave, and that he carried the whole building further west than was originally intended, and managed to do this without destroying the lower part of the towers which had actually been raised. When, therefore, the Norman nave, as originally designed, was approaching completion, the designers determined upon an extension of the nave, and a much grander western finish to the church than had before been contemplated. This idea included a dignified western transept, the dimensions of which, from north to south, should exceed the entire width of the nave and aisles. This would of necessity involve the lengthening of the nave, because the monastic buildings came close to the south aisle of the nave, at the point where the original termination of the church was to have been, as may be seen by the old western wall of the cloister, which is still standing. The two next abbots were Andrew (1193-1200), and Acharius (1200-1210). To one or both of these may be assigned the western transept. By their time the Norman style was giving place to the lighter and more elegant architecture of the Early English period, the round arch was beginning to be superseded by the pointed arch, and the massive ornamentation which marks the earlier style was displaced by the conventional foliage that soon came to be very generally employed. Most wisely, however, the Peterborough builders made their work at the west end of the nave intentionally uniform with what was already built. Very numerous indications of this can be seen by careful observers. The bases of the western pillars, the change in the depth of the mouldings, characteristic changes in the capitals in the triforium range, and especially the grand arches below the transept towers, which are pointed, but enriched with ornamentation of pronounced Norman character, all point to the later date of this western transept. At the west wall of the church all trace of Norman work disappears. The arcade near the ground, the large round arch above the door, the great west window and its adjacent arches (not, of course, including the late tracery), are all of distinct Early English character. The whole of this wall may be held to be an integral part of the west front, and not of the transept which it bounds. When we come to the most distinctive feature of the cathedral, the glorious west front, we find we have no help whatever from the chronicles. Nowhere is there the smallest reference to its building. Other works raised by the Abbots of the period are named, but the noble western portico is never once mentioned. Perhaps the rapid succession of abbots after Acharius may account for this. The building must have taken some years, and the credit of the whole cannot be given to one. There were four Abbots after Acharius before the church was dedicated. They were Robert of Lindsey (1214-1222), Alexander (1222-1226), Martin of Ramsey (1226-1233), and Walter of S. Edmunds (1233-1245). During the abbacy of this last the church was dedicated on the 4th of October 1237, (according to the _Chronicon Angliæ Petriburgense_), or on the 28th of September 1238, according to Matthew Paris. The Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grostête, took the chief part in the ceremony, assisted by William Brewer, Bishop of Exeter. The other chronicle calls the second bishop suffragan of the Bishop of Lincoln, which may mean no more than that he assisted on the occasion. The dedication took place in accordance with the provisions of certain constitutions which had been drawn up at a council held in London. No doubt the building had before this been completed. This date agrees well with the period which all architectural experts accept as the probable date of the erection of the west front. It may have been, and probably was, finished some few years before the dedication. The very fine gables at the north and south ends of the western transept are of the same date as the west front. Considerable changes in the fabric, as well as additional buildings, belong to the latter part of the thirteenth century. The documents mention two of these. In the time of Richard of London (1274-1295), but before his election to the abbacy, while he was still sacrist, the bell-tower was erected, in which were hung the great bells which were called Les Londreis, because he was himself a Londoner, and had caused them to be brought from London. A previous abbot, John of Calais (1249-1262), had contributed a great bell to the monastery, which he had dedicated to S. Oswald. On it was inscribed the rhyming hexameter _Jon de Caux abbas Oswaldo consecrat hoc vas_. The other great work of this period was a magnificent Lady Chapel, since destroyed, begun in 1272 by William Parys, then Prior, who laid the first stone with his own hand, and placed beneath it some writings from the gospels. He lived to see it completed, and at last his body was interred within it. Its altar was consecrated in 1290, as is recorded in the register of Bishop Oliver Sutton. It is described as having been built of stone and wood, with a leaden roof, and with glass windows. There was a statue of the Virgin, and round the walls, or perhaps in the stained glass in the windows, there were figures of those named in the genealogy, with a compendium of their lives beneath each. The Prior contributed five pounds of silver and upwards of his annual revenues towards the decoration of this chapel. From an engraving in Gunton's History, which may be taken as fairly representing its appearance, for it was standing in his time, although the drawing is manifestly inaccurate and must have been sketched from memory, we gather that the windows were of the same character as four which are still to be seen, three of them in the eastern chapels of the south transept, and the fourth on the north side, near the site of the Lady Chapel. These are all of excellent geometric work, and precisely of the date given. This chapel was built, as at Ely, to the east of the north transept. The position of the roof can be traced on the east wall of the transept; and it can be there seen how the Norman triforium windows were originally arranged. These being covered by the Lady Chapel, had not been altered like those in other parts of the church. Other works of this century, not mentioned in the annals, are the entire removal of the lower stage of Norman windows in the aisles, these were replaced by wide windows of five lights each; the addition of a parapet to the apse; the erection of piscinas and other accompaniments to side altars, at the east ends of the choir aisles. For the rest of the architectural history we have no chronicles to guide us, and are left to the stones themselves. But there is very little difficulty in fixing at least approximate dates for all the later work. The most important alteration in the fourteenth century was the removal of the stages above the four great arches of the central tower, and the substitution of a lighter lantern. When this was done, the great round arches east and west of the tower were changed into pointed arches, but those north and south were left unaltered. There is every probability that some signs of insecurity had made themselves evident. We have seen that three stages of the Norman tower were erected by Abbot William of Waterville. Though not so stated we infer from this that at least one more stage was afterwards added. In any case the tower must have been a very massive structure, considerably higher than the present one. In the early part of this century, in 1321, the great tower of Ely had fallen; and its fate may have warned the monks of Peterborough to see that the disaster was not repeated here. This alteration must have been made, judging by the details of the architecture, in the second quarter of the century. Above the lantern was a wooden octagon. The views that are given of this hardly warrant the admiration that has been sometimes expressed, or the regrets that have been uttered at its removal. It may have been designed to carry a wooden spire, such as was afterwards erected on the bell-tower. But most will agree with the criticism that it was "a low and unsightly structure." It hardly rose more than eight or ten feet above the top of the lantern, and the whole height of the central tower, including the octagon, was less than the height of the south-western spire of the front. To this century belongs the transformation of the triforium windows all through the nave and choir. Parapets were at the same time added above the Norman corbel tables. The change effected in the apse was the most noticeable; not only were the two upper tiers of Norman windows replaced by Decorated ones of larger size, but the three lowest ones in the centre were altogether removed, and their place taken by lofty archways, when the new building was built. But we can judge of their appearance from the two side windows which still remain; these, being not now external, have had all the glass removed; but the mullions and tracery are perfect, and even the iron-bars across are still there. At the inner surface of the wall the five lower windows have very good hanging tracery, of different designs. The south-western spire of the west front is also of this period, probably a little earlier in date than the lantern. This is of very remarkable beauty, and very much more elegant than the corresponding spire to the north. The triangular section of the pinnacles at the base of the spire, the crockets with which they are enriched, and the open canopies around, combine to produce a most graceful feature. To the latter years of this century may be assigned the central porch, with room above, inserted between the two middle piers of the west front. Some regard this as a blemish; others as a distinct improvement. One party maintains[13] that it is "an unsightly encumbrance, in its present position, seeing that it violates the uniformity of design displayed in the west front"; the other party contends[14] that it is "an extremely judicious insertion, and that it really does, just as if it was intended for that purpose only, restore its proper dignity to the central arch of the facade." It was most likely built as a matter of structural necessity, to secure the stability of the front. From a settlement of the foundations, or from a failure of the two central piers, or from the great weight of masonry above, for there are no western buttresses, the whole must have been in danger of falling. Mr Paley points out that the "construction of this elegant little edifice is extremely scientific, especially in the manner in which the thrust is distributed through the medium of the side turrets so as to fall upon the buttresses in front. These turrets being erected against one side of the triangular columns, on the right and the left hand, support them in two directions at once, viz., from collapsing towards each other, and from falling forward. The latter pressure is thrown wholly upon the buttresses in front, which project seven feet beyond the base of the great pillars." The room above is called by Browne Willis the Consistory Court. It is now used for the Minster Library. [Illustration: Map, 1610.] The alterations and additions during the Perpendicular period can be detected at a glance. All the Norman windows which had remained unaltered were now filled with tracery, not of particularly good design; the great west window and the others in the west wall were similarly treated; the conical tops to the transeptal corner turrets were altered into battlements; the screens in the transepts were made, and, probably, the groined wooden ceiling in the choir. The most important addition was the New Building at the east end of the choir. This is often erroneously called the Lady Chapel; but when this edifice was erected the Lady Chapel to the east of the north transept, and for more than 150 years afterwards, was still standing. The new building was begun by Abbot Ashton (1438-1471), and finished by Abbot Kirton (1496-1528). The rebus of each of these abbots can be seen in its decorations: an ash growing out of a tun or barrel, and a church or kirk with a tun. [Illustration: The West Front in the Seventeenth Century.] In 1540 the reign of the abbots came to an end, and in 1541 the church became a cathedral. For a hundred years the church itself, as well as all the buildings attached to it, appear to have remained in their full glory. There is no reason to discredit the account given of the preservation of this church, when so many others were dismantled or sold at the suppression of the monasteries. It was suggested to King Henry VIII, after the interment here of Queen Katharine of Aragon, that it would become his greatness to erect a suitable monument of her in the place where she was buried; and in reply the King said he would leave her one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom, meaning that he would spare the church for her sake. We conclude, however, from what we know of the state of the fabric in the reign of Charles I, that although no buildings may have been demolished, yet the church itself was falling into disrepair. No doubt the diminished resources of the establishment, as well as the numerous demands upon the stipends (never large) of the members of the chapter, most of whom had duties and claims elsewhere besides having families to support, materially reduced the amount that could be annually devoted to the sustentation of the fabric. In the time of the civil war much wanton destruction took place. Nearly everything in the nature of ornamentation or embellishment was destroyed. A full account of the mischief wrought has been preserved. Without particularly naming such things as books, documents, vestments, and the movable ornaments, we find the damage done to the fabric itself was terrible indeed. The organs, "of which there were two pair," were broken down. All the stalls of the choir, the altar rails, and the great brass chandelier, were knocked to pieces. The altar of course did not escape. Of the reredos, or altar-piece, and its destruction, Patrick writes as follows: "Now behind the Communion Table, there stood a curious piece of stone-work, admired much by strangers and travellers; a stately skreen it was, well wrought, painted and gilt, which rose up as high almost as the roof of the church in a row of three lofty spires, with other lesser spires, growing out of each of them, as it is represented in the annexed draught.[15] This had now no Imagery-work upon it, or anything else that might justly give offence, and yet because it bore the name of the High Altar, was pulled all down with ropes, lay'd low and level with the ground." All the tombs were mutilated or hacked down. The hearse over the tomb of Queen Katherine was demolished, as well as the arms and escutcheons which still remained above the spot where Mary Queen of Scots had been buried. All the other chief monuments were defaced in like manner. One in particular is worth mentioning. It was a monument in the new building erected to himself by Sir Humfrey Orme in his lifetime. Two words on the inscription, "Altar" and "Sacrifice," are said to have excited the fury of the rabble, and it was broken down with axes, pole-axes, and hammers. So this good old knight "outlived his own monument, and lived to see himself carried in effigie on a Souldiers back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, a Crew of Souldiers going before in procession, some with surplices, some with organ pipes, to make up the solemnity." This monument, as it was left after this profanity, is still to be seen exactly as it remained when the soldiers had done their work. The brasses in the floor, the bells in the steeple, were regarded as lawful plunder. The same would not be said of the stained glass, of which there was a great quantity. This was especially the case with the windows in the cloisters, which were "most famed of all, for their great art and pleasing variety." All the glass was broken to pieces. Much that escaped the violence of these irresponsible zealots fell before the more regular proceedings of commissioners. By their orders many of the buildings belonging to the cathedral were pulled down and the materials sold. This was the case with the cloisters, the chapter-house, the Bishop's hall and chapel. The merchant that bought the lead from the palace roofs did not make a very prosperous bargain, for he lost it all (as Dean Patrick says, within his own knowledge) and the ship which carried it, on the voyage to Holland. [Illustration: Iron Railings, 1721.] For some time nothing was done to repair the damage. At length the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Oliver St. John, obtained a grant of the ruined Minster, which he gave to the town for use as a parish church, their own parish church having also gone to decay. This gentleman was doubly allied to the Cromwell family, his first wife being great-grand-daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchinbrooke, and his second wife daughter of Henry Cromwell, of Upwood. He had been sent upon a distasteful embassy to Holland, where he experienced many indignities; and on his return, according to Mark Noble,[16] "he protested, that all the favour which he received in reward for this embassy, was, that he obtained the cathedral of Peterborough, which was propounded to be sold and demolished, to be granted to the citizens of that place." The interest that he took in Peterborough arose from the fact that he resided at Longthorpe Hall, about two miles off. The burden of restoring the church to a decent condition being too great for the inhabitants, they agreed to pull down the Lady Chapel, and sell the materials. This was done, except that some portion of the woodwork was utilised in repairs. The painted boards from the roof were made into backs for the seats in the choir. An engraving of the choir as it appeared in the eighteenth century shews these boards. They are mostly adorned with the letter M surmounted by a crown, and the three lions of England, in alternate lozenges. Until the Restoration the church was served by a school-master of the Charterhouse, Samuel Wilson, appointed by the London Committee. When the cathedral body was restored, further repairs were gradually effected, and when Dean Patrick wrote, he says that the church was "recovering her ancient beauty and lustre again." But the same causes which operated to prevent very much being done for years after the dissolution of monasteries, the absence of any special fabric fund, and the inadequacy of the revenues, again produced the same results. Browne Willis published his survey of this cathedral in 1742. He says that considering the pillaging of the church by King Henry VIII., and the subsequent despoiling by King Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth, "we may less wonder that so large a fabrick has not had more care taken of it as it ought; for I cannot but say, that it is ill kept in repair, and lies very slovenly in the inside, and several of the windows are stopped up with bricks, and the glazing in others sadly broken; and the boards in the roof of the middle Isle or Nave, which with the Cross Isle is not archt with stone (but wainscotted with painted boards, as at S. Albans) are several of them damaged and broken, as is also the pavement; insomuch that scarce any cathedral in England is more neglected." He proceeds to say that the Dean and Chapter had recently set apart £700 for repairs, and intended to apply more money to the same purpose when certain leases were expired. While Willis was collecting information for his book, Francis Lockier was Dean. In his time new seats were erected in the choir which were "very plain and tasteless." They remained until 1827. A new organ was also obtained. £1500 was spent on these alterations. The record of other changes, until the time of Dean Monk, is meagre. Dean Tarrant (1764-1791) collected the fragments of stained glass and had them all inserted in the windows of the apse. He also repaved the church, but most unfortunately without carefully preserving the ancient inscribed monumental stones. An altar screen and organ screen, from designs by Carter, were erected; but neither seems to have possessed much merit. Dean Kipling (1798-1822) is chiefly remembered from his alterations to the lantern tower. He erected unsightly turrets at the four corners and removed the octagon. These turrets, commonly spoken of with derision as "Dean Kipling's chimneys" were of unsuitable height, and poor detail; they were terminated with battlements. They were happily removed when the tower was rebuilt. Dean Monk (1822-1830) inaugurated and carried out an extensive scheme of reparation. The appeal to the public for subscriptions is dated 31st July 1827. It states that the altar screen, choir screen, and all the woodwork in the choir are unworthy of the structure to which they belong: that the Dean and Chapter had substantially repaired the exterior of the church at their own expense; that they had procured plans from Mr Blore, and an estimate of upwards of £5000 for the projected work. The members of the chapter in their corporate capacity had given £1000, and had further individually subscribed £1050. The result of this appeal was that by June 1828 a sum of £5021 11s. had been collected. The improvements effected before this appeal to the public was made are enumerated by Britton. As has been intimated, the cost was defrayed by Dean Monk and the Chapter from their own resources. The chief repairs and restorations were these:--new roofs were put to the transepts and bell-tower; columns, mouldings, and ornaments in various parts of the church were renewed; several windows, till then blocked up with rubble, were opened and glazed, and in some cases the stonework made good; the pinnacles, spires, and shafts of the west front were carefully restored; two Norman doorways, which had been obscured for ages, were exposed to view. The work in the choir included new stalls and seats, pulpit, and throne; an altar screen of clunch, filling up the lower part of the apse; and an organ screen, also of clunch, with an open parapet, and enriched with much diaper-work and many canopies, and adorned on the west face with large shields of arms,[17] very brightly coloured, charged with the heraldic bearings of the principal subscribers. At first there were only four stalls on each side of the entrance to the choir; others were added, in front of the ladies' pews, when Honorary Canons were created in 1844. This organ-loft did not occupy the place of the former screen, which was where the monastic choir had always terminated, at the second bay west of the tower, but was placed under the eastern arch of the lantern tower. The former screen was called by Rickman "a barbarous piece of painted wood-work." It was either sold, or taken by the contractors as a perquisite; it ultimately found its way into a little garden at Woodston, just across the river, where it was transformed into a summer-house, or arbour.[18] Great admiration was universally expressed at the conclusion of this work. It was esteemed a marvel of beauty. Harriet Martineau, in her "History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace," thought the re-opening of the choir a matter of sufficient national importance to be recorded in her book. She writes thus: "A new choir of great beauty, was erected in Peterborough Cathedral during this period, and the church was made once more what it was before it was devastated by the Puritans." All must admire the enthusiasm and devotion which brought this restoration to a successful issue, although to the taste of the present day it would all appear cumbrous and heavy. In the time of Dean Saunders (1853-1878) the choir roof was painted anew, and much valuable and important work was done towards securing the stability of the fabric, by underpinning some of the walls, and in other ways; but all the expense was defrayed out of the resources of the Dean and Chapter, and no public appeal was made for assistance. Indications of the insecurity of the lantern tower had begun to appear, one or more fragments of the masonry having fallen from a great height; and for some years before the tower was condemned as unsafe, a wooden stage had been erected, above the four great arches, as a protection in case more stones should fall. The great pier to the south cast had been, time out of memory, bound all round with strong iron bands. As far back as 1593, there is an entry among the cathedral accounts, which mentions that £47 4s. 9d. had been spent on "the great column near the choir repaired with iron and timber." In 1882 the evidences of failure in the lantern stage were found to be increasing, and its condition was pronounced dangerous. Large gaps made their appearance towards the end of the year, and in January 1883, the greater part of the tower was said to be in a "state of movement." It was very soon realised that nothing short of rebuilding the tower from the foundation would meet the case. The first stone was taken down on April 5th, and the tower and two eastern piers were removed by August. The western piers were soon afterwards condemned, and taken down the following year. The chief corner stone of the new tower at the north-eastern pier, was laid with full masonic ceremonial on May 7th 1884, by the Earl of Carnarvon, acting for the Prince of Wales. All the stones, as taken down, were numbered, and every one that could be used again was replaced in its original position. During this year there commenced a controversy as to the correct way of finishing the building of the tower. When the Decorated lantern was first built, the great arches, east and west, to the choir and nave, were altered from the round to the pointed shape. A few of the stones of the original Norman arches having been brought to light during the work, some persons wished round arches to be built as at first. Some stones of the Norman tower were also found; and it was proposed to heighten the central tower by one stage of work in the Norman style, using original stones where possible, and placing the Decorated stage above it. Others again, wanted a lofty central spire to be added. The matter was referred to Archbishop Benson for his decision. In the result the whole was rebuilt exactly as before, with the exception that the four corner turrets, erected by Dean Kipling, were not replaced. In 1886 the tower was finished. The transept ceilings were repaired in this and the next year. All unsound wood was removed and replaced by good oak. The diamond shapes are still to be seen, but the black, white, and brown patterns have been improved away. The discovery of the site of the Saxon church, which will be described hereafter, was made in 1883. Steady progress continued to be made in securing the safety of various parts of the church; and on July 11th, 1889, a temporary choir having been fitted up, divine service was again held in the ancient ritual choir, which extended two bays into the nave. During the next two years many contributors to the general fund for the restoration, and some others, made gifts of special objects for the embellishment of the choir. By the end of May, 1892, the mosaic pavement was almost completed, and the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the litany desk, and eighteen stalls had been erected. These gifts were solemnly dedicated at a stately service held on June 2nd, when, after the litany and an anthem, the special service was taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the altar, and after that _Te Deum_ was sung. A sermon was preached by the Bishop of Durham, formerly Canon. The Archbishop and Bishops wore their convocation robes. Two years later the fitting up of the choir was very nearly complete, four stalls only remaining to be supplied. At a second dedication of gifts on May 10th, 1894, these additional gifts were in position; new organ and case, canopied reredos, retable, iron screens inclosing the four eastern bays of the choir, pillars and choir gates (part of a design for an elaborate screen), eight stalls, extension of mosaic pavement, fourteen sub-stalls and seats for lay-clerks and choristers, altar-rails, and credence table. Up to this date, since the commencement of the restoration in 1883, upwards of £32,400 had been expended upon the fabric, besides more than £17,800 upon the internal fittings of the choir. All the woodwork of the choir is now quite complete. In speaking of the repairs carried out on the west front at the end of the nineteenth century we touch on a matter which gave rise to no little controversy. The insecure state of the west front had been known for years. In the early part of 1896, a scaffold was raised in order to enable Mr Pearson, the architect of the cathedral, to make a complete examination of the front, special causes for alarm having lately been detected. At first it was believed that underpinning the central piers would secure the stability of the whole. This was done, as well as the shoring and strutting to the gables of the two outer arches. The clearing away of the dirt and rubbish, and the cleaning of the groining, disclosed greater danger than had been expected, and the architect recommended the rebuilding of parts of the gables. Before acting on this advice the Restoration Committee took the opinion of Sir A.W. Blomfield, and his report not only confirmed the opinion expressed by Mr Pearson, but said further that much of the superstructure was so disintegrated, that it was impossible to render substantial and lasting repair as it stood, "and that the inner parts of the walls were such as would not permit of the superstructure being preserved or successfully dealt with by any of the well-known expedients frequently recommended and sometimes employed with success." When it became generally known that the Dean and Chapter intended to act upon the advice given in these two reports, the knowledge created the greatest possible excitement. Other plans were suggested; the mere removal of a single stone to make it more secure was declared quite unnecessary; the taking down a gable to rebuild it was denounced as Vandalism. Much strong language and many hard words were used which had better be forgotten. It certainly seems difficult to explain how the objectors to the course that had been decided upon could write of the west front that it was "superficially, in a fair state of preservation," or that it was "literally without a patch or blemish." The present writer was for twenty years a member of the cathedral foundation, and lived just opposite the west front. He made a special study of the history and fabric of the cathedral. Hardly a year passed without something falling down; sometimes a piece of a pinnacle, sometimes a crocket or other ornament, sometimes a shaft. Old engravings of the spires show the pinnacles broken. Many of the shafts are wanting. Some have been replaced in wood. Many wholly new ones were put up by Dean Monk. And concerning the north arch, which was notoriously the most dangerous, Dean Patrick has recorded that Bishop Laney gave £100 toward the repairing one of the great arches of the church porch "which was faln down in the late times." Dean Monk also, in a memoir of his predecessor Dean Duport,[19] speaks of the efforts of the cathedral body to repair the devastation caused by the civil war, and says "in particular one of the three large arches of the West Front, the beauty of which is acknowledged to be without rival, having fallen down, it was restored in all its original magnificence." In an account of the cathedral published by the writer thirty years ago, he says of this arch: "Its present state looks dangerous from below. The stones in the arch have some sad gaps. It is tied up by iron bands, and further protected within by a great number of wooden pegs, not of recent construction. When last observed it leant forward 14½ inches." In 1893 he wrote: "there is no doubt that the security of the whole front is a most serious question that before long must demand energetic action." [Illustration: Finial of the Central Gable of the West Front.] A very great preponderance of local opinion was in favour of the action of the Dean and Chapter. When it came to moving the stones, after all the rubbish was removed, it was found that the mortar had crumbled into mere dust, and could be swept away; and that the stones themselves could be lifted from their positions, without the use of any tool. What has actually been done is this: the north gable has been taken down with the outer orders of the archivolt for a depth of some feet, and rebuilt; the innermost order has not been moved. Relieving arches have been put in at the back. The gable is now believed to be perfectly secure. The cross on the summit was replaced in its position on July 2nd, 1897. The south gable was afterwards taken down and rebuilt, a very few new stones being used to bond the masonry where a fracture had been found on the left side of the great arch below. This is what has been called "the destruction" of the west front. CHAPTER II. THE CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR. Nearly every cathedral and large abbey church has some one conspicuous feature by which it is remembered, and with which it is specially associated in the minds of most persons. Nearly every one also claims for itself to have the best example of some one architectural feature, or the largest, or the oldest, or in some other way the most remarkable. Occasionally the claim is indisputable, because the boasted object is unique in the country; as is the case with the octagon at Ely, the three spires at Lichfield, the situation and western Galilee of Durham, and the almost perfect unity of design at Salisbury. Sometimes, if not unique, there is no question as to the justice of the claim for superiority; whether it be for a thing of beauty, like the cloisters at Gloucester, or the Norman tower at Norwich, or the east window of Carlisle, or the angel-choir at Lincoln; or for size or extent, when the question narrows itself to a mere matter of measurement. But it is not always by any means the fact that this prominent feature, though it is the pride of the inhabitants and a source of admiration to visitors, is really the most noteworthy thing belonging to the church. This seems specially the case at Peterborough. Probably nobody speaks or thinks of Peterborough cathedral without immediately associating it with its glorious west front. Many believe that there is little else in the building that is worthy of any particular attention. And yet nowhere in the kingdom is there to be found a finer and more complete Norman church. Arches, windows, mouldings, more elaborate and more grand may no doubt be found elsewhere; but where else can we find, as here, choir, transepts, and nave, with all the original Norman, from ground to roof, with two insignificant exceptions, remaining unaltered? It is natural to compare the three great East Anglian Cathedrals, as all have superb work of the Norman period. But at Norwich the lower arches in the choir have been rebuilt in the Perpendicular style, while the vaulted roof of the nave, raised in the fifteenth century, is less in keeping with the sturdy architecture beneath it than the wooden ceiling at Peterborough. At Ely, beautiful as is the work in the octagon and choir, there is no Norman work east of the transepts. Of course we are referring to the main arches and pillars of the building, and not to the tracery of the windows, or to alterations to the walls. The two exceptions mentioned above are the pointed arches, east and west of the central tower, and the removal of the three lowest windows in the apse. [Illustration: The West Front.] The greatest attraction to the world at large is undoubtedly =the West Front=, which is seen in its full beauty on entering the close. The following lines, from Morris's "Earthly Paradise," may fitly introduce the subject. "For other tales they told, and one of these Not all the washing of the troublous seas, Nor all the changeful days whereof ye know, Have swept from out my memory: even so Small things far off will be remembered clear When matters both more mighty and more near, Are waxing dim to us. I, who have seen So many lands, and midst such marvels been, Clearer than these abodes of outland men, Can see above the green and unburnt fen The little houses of an English town, Cross-timbered, thatched with fen-reeds coarse and brown, And high o'er these, three gables, great and fair, That slender rods of columns do upbear Over the minster doors, and imagery Of kings, and flowers no summer field doth see, Wrought in these gables.--Yea I heard withal, In the fresh morning air, the trowels fall Upon the stone, a thin noise far away; For high up wrought the masons on that day, Since to the monks that house seemed scarcely well Till they had set a spire or pinnacle Each side the great porch. In that burgh I heard This tale, and late have set down every word That I remembered, when the thoughts would come Of what we did in our deserted home, And of the days, long past, when we were young, Nor knew the cloudy days that o'er us hung. And howsoever I am now grown old, Yet is it still the tale I then heard told Within the guest house of that Minster Close, Whose walls, like cliffs new made, before us rose." It is rather a porch, or piazza, than a front; for it consists of a paved walk of some extent outside the wall of the cathedral covered at a great height by a vaulted roof which is supported by the wall and by the three great arches. Mr Fergusson, in his "Handbook of Architecture,"[20] pronounces that "as a portico, using the term in its classical sense, the west front of Peterborough is the grandest and finest in Europe": and there are few that will not agree with him. Professor Freeman says:[21]--"The portico of Peterborough is unique; the noblest conception of the old Greek translated into the speech of Christendom and of England has no fellow before it or after it." Exclusive of the spires, and the central porch and parvise, the dates of which have been given previously, the whole is of the best and purest Early English style. The effect is certainly improved by the middle arch being narrower than the others. But if the gables above had been of unequal angles, the result would have been far less satisfactory. Wisely, therefore, these angles have been made equal, and all of the same height: and the device of the architect to secure this, by making the central gable rise from points somewhat higher than the others, is admirable. It is to be observed also that the turrets, or large pinnacles, that are placed between the gables, are not placed exactly above the central line of the great piers beneath them, but are in each case a little further towards the outer arches; and it will be seen, immediately that this is pointed out, how much the upper part of the facade is thereby improved. The two great piers may be roughly taken as having for section an isosceles right-angled triangle, the right angle being towards the west. The mouldings of the arches are supported by a series of banded shafts, six on each side of each arch. In the spaces between the shafts of the middle arch, but not of the others, are crockets for the whole height, and the innermost cavetto is entirely filled with dog-tooth ornament. All the shafts have floriated capitals; and the great arches have similar mouldings. Four sets of ornaments run round each arch; a continuous chevron, a richly floriated roll, a roll with bands, and a series of billets. Between the arches there rises a clustered shaft which reaches to the level of the highest points of the arches: here these shafts combine with an ornamented stringcourse which runs in a straight line along the entire front. In each of the six spandrels are a deeply recessed quatrefoil, two trefoiled arches (like the upper part of a niche), a pair of lancet-shaped niches containing figures, and a beautifully designed hexagonal ornament, with wavy edges, the cusps uniting in a central boss. The pinnacles on each side of the middle gable are at first square, then there are two octagonal stages, the uppermost pierced, and finally a short spire. The lowest stage has a double lancet with floriated capitals; the second has a lancet, also with floriated capitals, filling up each face of the octagon; the last stage has round-headed lancets, without capitals, entirely surrounded by zigzags. [Illustration: Plan of Central Portion of the West Front.] The gables are richly ornamented. At the head of each is a massive cross of very fine workmanship. Along the edges of the gables are two rows of billets and the wavy ornament. Just below the crosses are three large statues, in niches of which the gable mouldings form the heads. That in the centre is S. Peter, with a mitre, the right hand uplifted in blessing, and two keys in the left hand; the other two are S. John and S. Andrew. Below plain, straight stringcourses, at the foot of these statues, are three rose windows of exceptional grace and beauty. The central one has eight spokes radiating from a flat medallion enriched with conventional foliage; these support trefoil-headed arches which have their outer mouldings thickly covered with dog-tooth; the whole is bounded by two circular bands, the inner one ornamented. The two other rose windows have six spokes instead of eight, the trefoiled arches have foliage, and the inner moulding of the bounding circles is continuously waving. The spokes in all three windows have the dog-tooth on each side. On each side of the lower part of these windows is a trefoil-headed niche containing a figure. Below these, and resting upon the long stringcourse that runs above the great arches, are sets of seven trefoil-headed niches, with a half-niche at each end. Four of these niches are pierced for windows, which have trefoils with pointed heads, though the trefoil heads of the niches themselves are round at the top. The three intervening niches contain figures. All these nine figures have a nimbus; and as these, with the three under the crosses, make up twelve, it is assumed that they represent the Apostles. The six smaller statues, just above, are said to be kings; the twelve below, benefactors. There are thus thirty statues in all, and most were no doubt carved at the time of the erection of the front; but two or three appear to be of earlier date, and may possibly have formed part of the embellishments of the Saxon church. [Illustration: Gates to West Porch.] =The Towers north and south=, up to the height of the parapets, are of the same date as the portion already described. They are ornamented with blank arcading in six stages, of different dimensions and character; all is in perfect harmony with the rest of the composition. The loftiest of the stages of this arcading has a sub-division with round arches; and the stage above the great stringcourse has round-headed trefoils so as to be in keeping with the row of similar arches in the gables; but with these two exceptions all the arches on the arcades of the tower are pointed and without cusps. Of the spires which surmount these towers that on the south is by far the more elegant. It has pinnacles at the corners of square section, and then another set of triangular pinnacles, resting on open arches connecting the corner pinnacles with the spire. These triangular pinnacles are double the height of those at the corners. All the pinnacles and canopies over the arches have crockets. This spire is some few feet loftier than that to the north, though most measurements of the cathedral have hitherto given them as being of the same height. The inner wall of the portico, forming the west wall of the cathedral, is covered with elaborate arcading, and so also are the ends, north and south. The designs are nearly a continuation of the arcading on the two towers. There are five lofty windows, now filled with tracery inserted in the Perpendicular period, the great west window having been enlarged at the same time. The two side doorways are exceedingly good, and should be carefully examined. The central doorway must have been of still greater beauty; but the whole of the upper part of it is hidden by the porch and parvise inserted beneath the central arch. This doorway is divided by a fine pillar rising from a well-carved base, with a very curious scene depicted on it. "It represents," writes Canon Davys,[22] "a Benedictine tortured by demons, and was doubtless intended as a significant hint to the monks that a sacred calling demands a consistent life." The portico retains its original Early English vaulting. [Illustration: West Porch and Parvise.] The =Porch= and =Parvise= beneath the middle arch was inserted, as has been previously stated, as a support to the two great piers. It is vaulted in two bays, the first being of the same dimensions as the inner width of the portico; the western bay (of the same size) thus reaches beyond the two great piers, and the corner turrets and buttresses in all project about seven feet. This gives a very substantial support to the piers. The whole composition is very fine, and quite worthy of the great portico to which it is an adjunct. It must be left to each spectator to decide for himself if it improves or diminishes the effect of the whole. It is of late Decorated date, highly enriched with profuse carving. The staircase turrets, as well as the great window are embattled. Possibly there may have been pinnacles now lost. The spaces north and south, and within the portico, have tracery on the walls similar to the window. The groining is very fine. One of the central bosses has a representation of the Trinity. The Father is represented as the Ancient of Days, with a Dove for the Holy Spirit above the shoulder, and the figure of the Saviour on the Cross in front. Freemasons are recommended to look for a special symbol which they alone can understand and appreciate. The floor of the portico is paved with gravestones, some apparently in their original position. This place was at one time appropriated as a burial place for the Minor Canons.[23] Some of the stones, however, are of mediaeval date, and it can be seen where the brasses have been wrenched from them: some of these have been used again for later inscriptions. One stone bears an incised cross originally filled with some coloured composition. Some of the marble wall-shafts had fallen, and their places had been filled by stone substitutes. Others had been cheaply replaced by wood. The stone shafts still remain, but the wooden imitations have all been replaced by new marble which was specially quarried for this reconstruction. Wood had also been used for the repair of the battlements on the gable of the porch under the centre arch of the west front. These have, of course, been reconstructed in stone. All the criticisms that have been passed by amateur architects upon the front, as a termination to the building, cannot be discussed here. It is clear, however, that the existence of the portico does away with any objection that could be made (as has been done with regard to the west fronts at Lincoln, Wells, and elsewhere), that the front might be considered to hide rather than to bring out the construction of the nave and aisles. It is true that the side gables are not the gables of the aisles, and indeed the roofs that are built against the gables are built only for them; but they are a legitimate finish to the great arches, and to the vaulted roof of the portico. Possibly the inequality of the great arches may be explained when we reflect that the central gable is the honest termination of the nave roof; the two central piers were therefore bound to be built so as to give support to the existing nave roof, and to fit it. The position of these piers being fixed, the outer ones might be as distant as was desired, for the front must of course extend to the entire length of the western transept. It has been commonly supposed that the three great arches of the Lincoln front suggested the idea to the Peterborough builders. If so, they improved upon their model. The central arch at Lincoln even before the round arch was altered, must have been half as high again as the side arches; and as they all are integral parts of the wall, and therefore not open, they have somewhat the appearance of magnified doorways that have been blocked up. At Snettisham, in Norfolk, is a western doorway protected by a porch with three open arches; and this has sometimes been mentioned when Peterborough west front is a subject of discussion; not, of course, as a fitting comparison, but as an illustration of the architectural method employed. At Snettisham, however, the porch is a small erection even for the church to which it gives entrance, and does not nearly extend to the entire width of the building. [Illustration: South-West Spire and Bell-Tower.] The following is the quaint description given in "Magna Britannia," published 1724:--"The western Front is very Noble and Majestick of Columel Work, and supported by three such tall Arches, as England can scarcely shew the like, which are adorned with a great Variety of curious Imagery. The Form of Arches is by the modern Architects called, The Bull's Eye, not Semicircular. The whole is one of the noblest pieces of Gothick Building in England." =The Bell-tower=, which rises from the western transept, immediately behind the north gable of the front (p. 37), is a little later than the front itself. It is of good workmanship, and quite in keeping with the older part. There are rows of lancets in the belfry stage, and the four corner pinnacles are very similar to the large pinnacles that are placed between the gables of the front, but all the lancets are pointed, and there are little gables above each. This tower was once surmounted by a wooden spire. When this was erected does not seem to be known. It was not of particularly graceful design, judging from views of the cathedral taken when it was standing. It was removed in the early part of the last century (see page 25). [Illustration: The West Front, restored according to Gunton, 1780.] Passing round to the north side of the cathedral we are at once struck with the beauty of the termination of the western transept. The arcading on the north side of the tower of the front is identical with that on the west side; but to the east there is only arcading in the three upper stages. Mr. Paley's remarks upon the great windows of the western transept may be quoted. He says[24] they "deserve particular examination, not only because they are very early and fine specimens of cusped and traceried windows--indeed, among the best in the kingdom--but for a remarkable peculiarity in the jambs; whereof one side is Norman, with the square capitals to the jamb-shafts both within and without, and the other Early English, as are the arch-mouldings and hoods round the whole arches, which were probably semicircular at first, for at present the point cuts through a stringcourse inside. The frames of the entire windows are later work, having no attachment or bonding to the jambs, as is clearly manifested to the eye." These windows rise as high as the top of those of the triforium. Above is a round-headed window with a slightly smaller arch on each side, with cushion capitals. The gable itself is designedly made to resemble one of the gables of the west front. It is surmounted by a cross, and bordered by the wavy ornament; it has a rose window; and beneath is an arcade of five round-headed trefoiled arches supported by shafts, having at the inner wall three lancet windows. The circular window is without tracery; it has twelve cusps. At each side of the gable is a pinnacle, almost a copy of those on the front, except that the lowest stage is here octagonal instead of square. On the north side of the nave is a single door, now called =the Dean's door=, of good Norman work. On each side are three shafts with cushion capitals slightly ornamented; and in the round arches above are different mouldings of the style. The windows to the aisle, ten in number, are very broad, of five lights each, under depressed arches. The tracery and mouldings indicate that these were substituted for the original windows towards the close of the thirteenth century. At the same time it would seem that the walls above, in the triforium range, were heightened, because the parapet at the top is of Early English work, although the three-light windows beneath it are Decorated, and were not inserted until the next century. At the foot of the triforium range is the original Norman arcade of round-headed arches: below the existing Decorated windows is now a blank space of wall, where at first was the Norman window, rising somewhat higher than the arcade. What the original arrangement was can be seen on the east side of the north transept. The Norman clerestory range has been altered only by having Perpendicular tracery put in the windows, and by the addition of a Decorated parapet. The original corbel-table was allowed to remain. [Illustration: The Dean's Door.] =The Lantern-tower= has on each face two large windows with transoms, of three lights. The tracery is that known as net-tracery. Between these windows is a blank window, if the term may be allowed; the tracery exists, but there never was a window; it is in four divisions; while between the windows and the corner turrets are similar traceries of two parts. The whole is surmounted by a parapet above a plain arcade. The corner turrets are octangular. As at present finished at the top there is undoubtedly an appearance of their being incomplete. The west side of the =North Transept= is a very excellent specimen of Norman work; and we find less change here than in any other part of the cathedral that belongs to the same period. The tracery of the windows is Perpendicular, but the windows themselves are otherwise unaltered: at the top of all is a Decorated parapet, which is here composed of a series of quatrefoils; and the parapet to the corner turrets is not Norman. As there is no aisle on the west side of this transept, there has been no alteration in the wall, as was the case with the nave aisles. The north end of the transept is similar; but the shallow buttresses between the windows rise to a greater height, and there is another arcade above the upper tier of windows, and a blank arch in the gable. The gable has crockets, and a cross at the apex. The lower Norman window in the aisle here is unlike any others on this side of the church, but there are four others like it on the south. The upper aisle window here is of three lights, with a large pointed trefoil above them instead of tracery. The east wall of this transept is specially worthy of note. We can trace the lines of the roof of the Lady Chapel which formerly stood to the east of the wall; and beneath this are two bays of the original triforium range, showing two of the simple Norman windows. Between these and the roof are six Early English lancets. Below are the upper parts of the two great arches which were constructed as an entrance to the Lady Chapel. When the Lady Chapel was pulled down in the seventeenth century these were converted into windows filled with late tracery in imitation of Perpendicular work, and the lower part was walled up, except that a doorway was constructed. This was afterwards blocked up for many years, and only reopened during the recent restoration works. The same alteration has been effected in the western part of the choir aisle, the arches towards the Lady Chapel having been in like manner made into windows. The lower window nearest the tower is a very graceful geometric window of three lights, exactly like the three in the south transept; the window above is of the same period as all the other Decorated windows of the triforium range. Between the Lady Chapel and the north aisle of the choir was a passage (to which the two great arches were open), and at the eastern end of it was a small vaulted chapel, the remains of which are clearly to be seen, including the broken piscina. Above this were chambers, concerning which Gunton[25] has preserved a tradition that they were "the habitation of a devout Lady, called Agnes, or Dame Agnes, out of whose Lodging-Chamber there was a hole made askew in the window walled up, having its prospect just upon the altar of the Ladies Chappel, and no more. It seems she was devout in her generation, that she chose this place for her retirement, and was desirous that her eyes, as well as ears, might wait upon her publick Devotions." He says also that little is known of her except that she was a benefactress to the church, and that a wood she bestowed upon it is still called by her name. [Illustration: Apse and New Building, from the South-East.] At the extreme east is the =New Building=. Its side walls are built in continuation of the walls of the choir aisles, and it has a square end. It is lit by thirteen large windows, all of the same design, of which the five at the east end, and the two most western of the sides, are of four lights each, the remaining four having three lights each. Between each pair of the latter there is no buttress; there are thus in all twelve buttresses, six being at the east end. These are massive, having to support the heavy fan-tracery within. Each buttress has a seated figure at the top, commonly believed to represent an Apostle; but the outlines are much worn, and it is not possible to distinguish them by any symbols they may bear. There is a very handsome open parapet, adorned with ornaments and shields bearing letters or monograms. The parapet of quatrefoils, which runs round the sides of the transepts and choir, is not continued in the apse; an Early English parapet, with five circular medallions cusped, having been erected previously. The Decorated windows of the apse are particularly fine. The arcade beneath the upper tier, unlike the arcade in similar positions in other parts of the church, is here intersecting. The three beautiful geometric windows in the east wall of the =South Transept=, which have three circles in the heads with five cusps, are most likely of exactly the same design as the windows in the demolished Lady Chapel. At the south end of this transept is a Norman door, and outside are the remains of a short covered passage which communicated with the cloisters. These will be described hereafter. The south side of the nave differs only from the north side in its having two doorways from the cloisters, in the superior elegance of the south-west spire, and in the unfinished state of the south-west tower. The portion of this tower above the roof Mr Paley pronounces, from the details of the windows on the east side, to be of much later date than the other tower; and he adds that it is hard to see how the roof of the transept was terminated before this stage was built to abut it. Both towers are longer from east to west than from north to south. Of the two doorways from the cloister to the cathedral, that at the east end of the north walk, which is called the Canons' door, is a fine specimen of Norman work. The arch is of four orders supported by nook-shafts with plain cushion-capitals. The innermost order has a very uncommon moulding--large chevrons with a fleur-de-lis in the angles. The outermost order has a double zigzag moulding, and a double-billet hood moulding surrounds the whole arch. The other archway at the west end, called the Bishop's door, is an insertion of the thirteenth century, with bold tooth-ornament on each side. CHAPTER II. THE CATHEDRAL--INTERIOR. The plan of the =Monastery= given on page 58 has been taken from one prepared by the late Precentor Walcott of Chichester, and communicated to "The Building News," in 1878. In this plan the choir is represented as it was arranged in olden times, and not as it appeared after it was shortened by the erection of the organ-screen under the eastern arch of the tower in Dean Monk's time. The position of the ancient buildings is also indicated, though some of them, as the Lady Chapel, Dormitory, Chapter-house and Infirmary Chapel, have long been destroyed. The various portions will be understood by the following references. (1) New Building. (2) Reredos, or Altar-screen. (3) Screens. Recent discoveries have proved that the choir aisles originally ended, or at least were designed to end, in apses. (4) High Altar. (5) Entry to passage to Lady Chapel; a small chapel to the east. (6) Lady Chapel. (7) Door to it from north transept aisle. (8) Chapel of S. John. (9) Chapel of S. James. (10) Chapel of S. Oswald, the Holy Trinity Chapel above it. (11) Chapel of S. Benedict. (12) Chapel of SS. Kyneburga and Kyneswitha, sisters of Peada and Wulfere, the original founders of the monastery. (13) Choir. (14) Sacristy. (15) Choir-screen. (16) Front of rood-loft. (17) Nave. (18) Gate to grave-yard. (19) Gate to Prior's lodging. (20) Minster close. (21) Gatehouse to Abbot's lodging, with the Knights' chamber above. (22) Chancel of the chapel of S. Thomas of Canterbury. (23) Great gateway of the close. (24, 25) Doorways from the cloisters. (26) Slype. (27) Parlour. (28)Chapter-house. (29) Porch. (30) Dormitory. (31) Cloisters. (32) Lavatory. (33) Refectory. (34) Dark entry. (35) Gong. (36) Kitchen. (37) Abbot's lodging. (38) Prior's lodging. (39) Infirmarer's hall. (40) Chapel to Infirmary, dedicated to S. Laurence. (41) The chancel, and (42) the nave of this chapel. (43) Hall of Infirmary, the inmates occupying the aisles. (44) Door to Infirmary. (45) Precinct wall and stables. The building close to the south side of the Infirmary, not numbered in this plan, is an ancient residence now used as a dwelling for one of the canons in residence. The small building south-west of the front is an old vaulted room, now used as a clerk's office, originally believed to have been the Penitentiary. The old abbey gaol has escaped notice, though it in part remains. Its door is immediately to the right upon entering the close through the great gateway. [Illustration: Plan of Monastery Buildings.] =The Interior=.--With few exceptions, to be noticed in due course, the whole of the interior of the cathedral is in the Norman style, and many judge it to be the most perfect specimen in England. The plan consists of a nave of ten bays, with aisles, and a western transept; transepts of four bays with eastern chapels, the south transept having also a groined chamber to the west, extending for its whole length; a choir of four bays, terminating in an apse, nearly semicircular, with aisles; and beyond the apse a large square-ended addition for more chapels, having a groined stone roof of fan tracery, now known as the New Building. The ritual choir, as distinguished from the architectural choir, extends two bays into the nave. This arrangement is a return to the ancient one used by the Benedictines, the choir in Dean Monk's alterations having been limited to the portion east of the central tower. As we enter at the west door we see at a glance the entire length, and the whole beauty of the admirable proportion of the several parts. While many may wish that the great arches of the tower which can be seen from the west end had never been altered from the round form of the Norman builders, few will regret that the Decorated arches which took their place were retained when the tower was rebuilt, instead of having new arches in the Norman style substituted. The want of colour which is so marked a defect in many English cathedrals is not so conspicuous here, because of the painted ceiling. The Norman work being in the main so complete, it will be best to begin the description where the building itself was begun, at the apse. At the west door we stand where the work was finished. We know when the building commenced, in 1117, but we do not know exactly when the whole was finished to the western wall; but, speaking roughly, though not very far from the truth, we may say that the minster took eighty years to complete. This may be slightly more than was actually taken. During that time the work was not continuous: there were some Abbots who appear to have done little or nothing towards extending the works, and sometimes accordingly there was an entire cessation from active operations. Including the west front, we should have to assign nearly 120 years to the completion of the building. =The Choir=.--Up to the commencement of the apse the choir is of four bays. The pillars are alternately round and with eight or twelve sides; all have cushioned capitals, indented to agree with the mouldings above; all had a shaft on the inner side rising to the roof, to support the wooden groining, but the lower parts of some of these shafts were cut away to make room for the woodwork of Dean Monk's choir. The ornamentation throughout is plentiful, but we see nothing but the billet, the chevron, and the hatchet moulding, all indicative of early work. The triforium has two recessed arches, beneath the principal arch, divided by a plain shaft. It is specially to be noticed that all the tympana in the triforium range are differently ornamented. In each bay of the clerestory range are three arches, one large and two small ones; the capitals to the shafts have the plain cushion (as in the triforium) and from these shafts a narrower arch connects them with the outer wall. There is a passage here all round the choir. Below the triforium a stringcourse of chevrons runs all along. [Illustration: The Choir.] Between the choir bays and the apse is solid wall, rather longer than the distance between the central lines of adjoining piers. Here are two massive half-pillars, reaching to the roof, undoubtedly meant to be crowned with a round arch like those to the transepts; and this seems to shew that the intention was to vault the apse with stone. The apse is by far the best large Norman apse remaining in this country. At Norwich, where is the only possible rival, the lower part only is semicircular and original, the whole of the upper part being of Decorated date, and pentagonal. This apse is in five divisions, separated by clustered shafts which rise to the roof. Originally there were three tiers of round-headed Norman windows; the nine windows in the centre were enlarged and filled with very good tracery in the Decorated period, and the lower windows also on the other two sides. When, in the Perpendicular age, the new building was added, the three lowest windows were removed altogether and the wall beneath them, leaving three open arches. The inner wall surface of the five lowest windows has been filled with elegant hanging tracery of fourteenth century date, the designs being all different. In some cases this tracery is placed just below the Norman stringcourse, but in others the stringcourse has been removed to make room for it. There was no necessity to convert the two lowest side windows into arches; and they accordingly remain there to this day; but being no longer exposed to the outer air all the glass is gone, though the notches that held it, and the strong bars that protected it, have been suffered to stay. There was never any ambulatory round the apse outside; we can still see, from the new building, portions of a stringcourse which was external, as well as other evidences that the apse was the end of the church. It is also known that there was a highway at the east end of the church, almost touching it. In the stage corresponding to the triforium are to be seen on the walls the remains of painted coats of arms, the shape of the shield suggesting that they are as early as the thirteenth century; some also have been cut in half by the later Decorated alterations. [Illustration: View from the Triforium South of Choir.] The choir roof is vaulted in wood. In the time of Dean Saunders it was repainted with gold and colours. From the character of the bosses, and the capitals where the wood is joined to the tall shafts rising from the pillars in the choir, and from the general ornamentation, it is manifest that this was constructed towards the end of the fifteenth century. It was at one time painted all over yellow and white. The carving of the different bosses is well worth attention. There has not been discovered any mark or initials that might help us to assign a positive date. We can see, among other designs, the cross keys of the patron Saint; the Saviour on the Cross accompanied by S. Mary and S. John (this is in the central line, near the tower); three lilies; three fishes with intersecting tails. The roof over the apse is flat. It has been decorated from a design by Sir G.G. Scott, with an emblematical representation of Christ as a Vine, the Disciples being half-figures in medallions among the foliage. An inscription bearing upon the subject forms the border. The general effect will be like, though not identical with, the original painting in this place. This was one of the decorations of the church that excited the fury of the soldiers and others who dismantled the minster in the civil war in the seventeenth century. "This is the Idol they worship and adore" was the cry of some of the party; upon which muskets were discharged, and the picture wholly defaced. The description of the design is given in these words:[26] "Over this place" (that is, the altar-screen) "in the Roof of the Church, in a large Oval yet to be seen, was the Picture of our Saviour seated on a Throne, one hand erected, and holding a Globe in the other: attended with the four Evangelists and Saints on each side, with Crowns in their hands; intended, I suppose, for a Representation of our Saviour's coming to judgment." [Illustration: North Transept and Morning Chapel.] The flat roof of the apse being lower than the roof of the choir, the space between the levels is filled with twelve painted figures. The whole of the internal fittings of the choir (speaking now of the ritual choir) are new, and are part of the recent restoration. The new woodwork began to be placed in position in 1890. There is indeed a little old work, which was in the old choir before it was altered in the early part of this century. When removed, some of the front desks had been placed in the morning chapel, though much of the projecting tracery work was taken off. It was realised, when the existing stall-work was being designed, that these would be very suitable for use in their old position. Accordingly, all that could be so used have been placed again in the choir, with their traceried panels restored; and the new work is made of the same character. The =New Stalls= are of the finest oak, with miserere seats; the backs have rich tracery, with raised shields, moulded groined ceilings, and carved bosses at the intersection of the ribs. They are surmounted by octagonal canopies, in three stages, the uppermost containing a niche for a carved figure to each stall, while other figures, of much smaller size, are to be seen below. A few have at the back the armorial bearings of the donor, or some other symbol, such as the masonic emblems in those given by the Freemasons of England. The names of the cathedral officers and others to whom the different stalls are assigned, have been inscribed on the label at the head of each; the donor's name is recorded on the seats. With the exception of the first figure, the whole of the larger figures at the top of the canopies have some special connection with the monastery or the cathedral. Beginning at the Dean's stall, and proceeding eastwards, the statues on the south side represent the following:-- Two at the summit of the Dean's stall, SS. Paul and Andrew. 1. S. Peter, the Patron Saint. 2. Saxulf (656), the first Abbot. 3. Adulf (971), Abbot, afterwards Archbishop of York. 4. Kenulf (992), Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. 5. Leofric (1057), Abbot. 6. Turold (1069), Abbot, appointed by William the Conqueror. 7. Ernulf (1107), Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. 8. Martin de Bee (1133), Abbot when the choir was dedicated. 9. Benedict (1175), Abbot. He built the greater part, if not all, of the nave. 10. Martin of Ramsey (1226), Abbot. 11. John of Calais (1249), Abbot. He built the infirmary, probably the refectory, and part of the cloisters. 12. Richard of London (1274), Abbot. He built the north-western tower. 13. Adam of Boothby (1321), Abbot. 14. William Genge (1396), first mitred Abbot. 15. Richard Ashton (1438), Abbot. He began the new building. 16. Robert Kirton (1496), Abbot. He finished the new building, and built the Deanery gateway. 17. John Towers (1638), Bishop. Previously Dean (1630). 18. Thomas White (1685), Bishop. Nonjuror. 19. William Connor Magee (1868), Bishop, afterwards Archbishop of York. 20. Simon Patrick (1679), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, and finally of Ely. 21. Augustus Page Saunders (1853), Dean. 22. John James Stewart Perowne (1878), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Worcester. The upper figures on the north side are these:-- Two at the summit of the Vice-Dean's stall, Kings Wolfere and Ethelred.[27] 1. Peada, King of Mercia, founder of the monastery. 2. Cuthbald (675), second Abbot. 3. Edgar, King of Mercia and Wessex, restorer of the monastery. 4. Ethelfleda, his queen. 5. Brando (1066), Abbot. 6. Hereward, the Saxon patriot (1070), nephew of Abbot Brando, and knighted by him. 7. John deSais (1114), Abbot. He commenced the building of the existing choir. 8. Hedda (died 870), Abbot, murdered by the Danes. 9. Robert of Lindsey (1214), Abbot. He holds a model of the west front, probably built or begun in his time. 10. Godfrey of Crowland (1299), Abbot. He bears a model of the gateway to the palace grounds. 11. William Ramsey (1471), Abbot. He was one of the donors of the brass eagle lectern still in use. 12. William Parys (died 1286), Prior. He built the Lady Chapel. 13. S. Giles, the famous Benedictine Abbot, with his tame hind beside him. 14. Hugo Candidus, the chronicler. 15. Henry of Overton (1361), Abbot. 16. Queen Katherine of Arragon. 17. John Cosin (1640), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Durham. 18. Simon Gunton (1646), Prebendary, the historian of the church. 19. Herbert Marsh (1819), Bishop. 20. George Davys (1839), Bishop. 21. James Henry Monk (1822), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 22. Marsham Argles (1891), Dean. Previously Canon (1849). The dates in the above lists, unless stated otherwise, are the dates of appointment. With the single exception of Henry of Overton, of whom very little indeed is known except that he was abbot for nearly thirty years, the selection that has been made appears to be very good. In some way or other all the persons represented are eminent. The authorities are to be congratulated upon their including in the series several dignitaries of the last century. The smaller figures on the south side are all characters from the New Testament; those on the north side are taken from the Old Testament. The carving on the sides of the two westernmost stalls is of great interest. The panels on the south represent the miraculous preservation of the arm of S. Oswald. This arm was one of the greatest treasures of the house, and was reputed to be the cause of many cures. The legend is given hereafter in the notice of Abbot Elsinus, the great collector of relics. In the corresponding position on the north side is represented the story of S. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. On the back of the stalls in the south aisle are two pieces of tapestry, picturing the release of S. Peter and the healing of the lame man at the Gate Beautiful. The carving on the =Pulpit= and =Throne= will repay careful study. In the niches at the base of the pulpit are four abbots, chiefly connected with the erection of the building. They are John de Sais, who holds a model of the apse, Martin de Bec, William of Waterville, and Walter of S. Edmunds. Round the main body of the pulpit are four saints in niches, SS. Peter, Paul, John and James, each easily identified by what is held in the hand. Between these niches are wide panels carved with subjects associated with preaching. Abbot Saxulf preaching to the Mercians; Christ sending forth the Apostles; S. Peter preaching after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The throne is raised on three steps. Above the canopy is a lofty spire. On the sides of the seat are SS. Peter and Paul. On the book board are symbolical representations of the virtues of Temperance, Wisdom, Fortitude, and Justice. In the lower tier on the canopy are six figures: Saxulf, first Abbot; Cuthwin, first Bishop of Leicester; John de Sais; Benedict; S. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, his hand resting on the head of his tame swan; and John Chambers, last Abbot and first Bishop of Peterborough. In the upper tier are four Bishops: Bishop Dove, the theologian; Bishop Cumberland, the philosopher; Bishop Kennett, the antiquary; and Archbishop Magee, the orator. One of the statues over the stalls, that representing S. Giles, has also a figure of a hind; in the representation of S. Hugh of Lincoln on the throne we see a swan. The hind was really a type of solitude and purity of life, and as such is found in many ancient carvings and paintings accompanying various Saints. There is also a legend specially connecting this creature with S. Giles. In a retreat in a forest in the diocese of Nismes, the recluse, with one companion, is said to have lived on the fruits of the earth and the milk of a hind. Some dogs that were out hunting pursued this hind, and she took refuge in the dwelling of the Saint. The sportsman, Flavius Wamba, King of the Goths, treated him with every mark of respect, and gave him land wherewith to endow a monastery. Of S. Hugh's swan a long account is given in the "Vita S. Hugonis Lincolniensis" published in the Rolls Series. A swan never before seen at the place flew to the Bishop at his manor at Stowe directly after he had been enthroned at Lincoln. He became passionately attached to the bishop, but exhibited no liking for anyone else, he considered himself bound to protect his master, driving other people away from him, "As I myself," writes Giraldus Cambrensis, "have often with wonder seen," with his wings and beak. [Illustration: The Pulpit.] =The Organ= was rebuilt in 1894 by Hill and Son at a cost, including the case, of £4,400, and at the expense of the late Mr. W.H. Foster of Witley, Surrey, though his name, at his own wish, remained undisclosed during his lifetime. The action is now controlled by electricity. The Great, Swell, Solo, and Pedal Organ (except the two stops Bourdon and Bass Flute of the last) are placed in four bays of the north triforium of the nave; the choir organ and the two Pedal stops are in the first bay of the north aisle, and the Console in the second bay behind the stalls. There are 68 speaking stops and 4,453 pipes as follows: Great Organ (Compass CC to C in Alt.) 17 stops 1,342 pipes. Choir " 11 " 671 " Swell " 17 " 1,330 " Solo " 11 " 720 " Pedal " (Compass CCCC to F) 12 " 390 " [Illustration: Apse and Canopied Reredos.] =The Canopied Reredos= or =Baldachino= was given by the eight surviving children of Dean Saunders as a memorial of their parents. The retable was given by the Old Boys of the King's School. The reredos is a magnificent erection, and renders the east end of this cathedral one of the most dignified in the kingdom. The daïs on which it stands is thirteen feet square, and the summit reaches to the height of thirty-five feet. Four large marble columns stand at the corners, from the capitals of which spring cusped arches, the spandrels being enriched with mosaic; while at the angles, above the columns, are figures of the Evangelists in niches. The large central panel in front has the figure of Our Lord; at the back is S. Peter. The material is Derbyshire alabaster; the work was executed by Mr Robert Davison, of London. =The Mosaic Pavement=, also the work of Mr Davison, was the gift of the late Dean and Miss Argles. The following description of it is from the pen of Mr Davison. "Passing into the choir from the west, the pavement between the stalls is of tesselated Roman mosaic, in an effective geometrical pattern of squares, and oblongs of red, green and white marbles. The first bay of the chancel is also in Roman mosaic, but of more elaborate design, the central portion being a framework of interlacing cream bands, forming diamond shaped panels alternating with circles, the centres of these panels being varied reds and greens; the framework surrounds four large panels of Pavonazzo d'Italie, each in six slabs. This is a beautiful marble of feathery purple grey veinings on a creamy white ground. This central part is flanked on each side by a broad band of the same Pavonazzo, which separates it from the large side panels of a bold design of squares of red, green and cream placed diagonally, interlaced by white bands; upon these panels stand the pulpit on the north side, and the bishop's throne on the south. This bay is approached from the choir by the first marble step which is in Frosterley, a marble with beautiful madrepores of light colour on a dark ground. The next bay is of similar design to the first, but is approached by two steps of Levanto marble of reddish brown tint with small veinings of white. The third and fourth bays are in a marble mosaic called _Opus Alexandrinum_, composed of various rich marbles of brilliant reds, greens, greys, yellows, and creams, divided into the main design by bands of Pavonazzo. The design of the third bay is divided into three equal panels, in the centre of which are four large slabs of Cipolino, a charming marble of a light green tint in broad wavy lines on a lighter ground, which are framed in by a combination of small panels of mosaic of varied rich patterns of triangles and squares, which are again enclosed by a broad border of mosaic of white squares on a ground of light green Vert de Suède. The step up to this bay, and also the step to the next and to the altar pace, all of which stretch the full length of the chancel, as well as the three steps to the altar daïs, are in carefully selected Pavonazzo. The design of the fourth bay is a system of interlacing bands, forming alternately large and small octagons, between which are squares and oblongs. The small octagons are rich plaques of marble, while the large ones are divided radially into eight panels. All these parts are filled with mosaic of varying patterns and colours. At each end of this bay is a long panel of overlapping circles, filled in with rich mosaic. The panel on the altar pace and the three panels on the altar daïs are in the same mosaic, each of a different design; the long plaques of marble in the upper panel are red and green of rich dark marbles. The two panels at the side of the daïs are in opus sectile, a design of hexagons of Pavonazzo, with diamonds of Vert des Alpes between them. The broad band of red, the whole length of the chancel on the outsides of the pavement, is of Levanto marble, forming a finish to the work." =The Screens=, enclosing the four eastern bays of the choir, were given as a public memorial to Dean Argles. They are of very admirable wrought-iron. The same may be said of the choir gates. The former are the work of White & Son, of London; the latter of Singer & Son, of Frome. The short pillars that support the choir gates, and the unrelieved backs of the returned stalls, have at present the unsatisfactory appearance of all unfinished work. A drawing of the complete design is exhibited in a frame on an adjacent pillar. The single ancient object among the fittings in the choir is the brass eagle Lectern. This was given to the monastery by William Ramsey, Abbot, and John Malden, Prior; it is consequently of late fifteenth century date. An inscription recording the names of the donors, in two Latin lines, was engraved round a projection in the middle of the stem. Centuries of hard scouring have obliterated this; but the upper and lower ends of most of the letters can just be traced. An expert can satisfy himself that the inscription as preserved by Gunton is practically correct. It seems to have been this, though it is not possible to vouch for every letter. _Hæc tibi lectrina dant Petre metallica bina Iohes Malden prior et Wills de Ramiseya_. Besides the donors already named, the following became contributors for special objects, many of them having in addition given substantial assistance in money to the restoration fund. The choir pulpit, Bishop's throne, and the cost of cleaning the whitewash from the nave were given by Dean Argles. Enlargement of foot-pace, and extension of mosaic pavement, by Mrs Argles. Decoration of ceiling of lantern tower, and new frames for the bells, by Mr H.P. Gates, Chapter Clerk. Litany desk, by Mrs Rigg. Altar ornaments, by Canon Alderson. The 44 stalls were given by Archbishop Magee, Lady Elizabeth Villiers (7), Lady Louisa Wells, Mr H.P. Gates, Friends of Canon Clayton, Family of Canon Pratt, Hon. Canon Willes, Hon. Canon Twells, an ex-chorister of the cathedral, Mr James Bristow, Mr. W.U. Heygate, Mr S.G. Stopford-Sackville, Mrs Yard, Mr J.D. Goodman, Miss Pears, Mrs Perry Herrick, Mrs W.L. Collins and Mrs H.L. Hansel, Mr Albert Pell, Mrs Dawson Rowley, The Mayor and Corporation, Mr F. James, the Freemasons of England (3), Friends of Lady Isham and Miss Perowne (2), Rev. W.R.P. Waudby, Mr G.L. Watson, Major-General Sotheby, Mrs Hunt, Rev. A. Redifer, Mr J.G. Dearden, Mrs Percival, the Misses Broughton, Rev. S.A.T. Yates (in memory of Mr Charles Davys Argles), Rev. W.H. Cooper, Mr T.A. Argles, Mrs Argles. The choir aisles are vaulted; the section of the vaulting ribs is much heavier than in the aisles of the nave, and shews an earlier date. It has recently been discovered that these aisles, contrary to what was usually believed, were terminated with apses and were not square-ended. In the south aisle is traced on the floor the position of the old semicircular ending. The windows here were altered at the same time as those in the nave aisles: but in the north choir aisle the windows were taken out and arches formed leading to the passage between this aisle and the Lady Chapel, the most western arch being Perpendicular: in the seventeenth century, when the Lady Chapel was pulled down, these arches were again filled up with masonry and windows. The third window in this aisle has escaped alteration in form; but Perpendicular tracery has been inserted. The eastern ends of both aisles were altered in Early English times. They have now a groined roof of one bay of that period, and very handsome double piscinas. The aumbry on the north side in the south choir aisle has been glazed, and is utilised as a cupboard to hold some curiosities. In the north choir aisle there is an approach to the morning chapel through a screen; but in the south choir aisle the corresponding space is filled by a Norman monumental arch. =The New Building= built beyond the apse is a very noble specimen of late Perpendicular work. It was begun by Abbot Richard Ashton (1438-1471), and completed by Abbot Robert Kirton (1496-1528): the works seem to have been suspended between these periods. The roof has the beautiful fan tracery, very similar on a smaller scale to that at King's College Chapel at Cambridge. The building is of the width of the choir and aisles together. It contained three altars at the date of the suppression of monasteries, "upon each altar a Table of the Passion of Christ, Gilt." The central bay has been recently fitted up for early celebrations of the Holy Communion. The junction of this addition with the original Norman apse is admirable, and should be specially noticed. Parts of the original external stringcourse of the apse can be seen. The ornamentation on the bosses of the roof, and in the cavetto below the windows, and round the great arches from the choir aisles, is very varied. It must be sufficient here to indicate some of the designs. Most need little explanation, but a few are hard to understand. On the roof may be seen the three lions of England, a cross between four martlets, three crowns each pierced by an arrow, and another design. The smaller designs include four-leaved flowers, Tudor roses, fleurs-de-lys, the portcullis, some undescribable creatures, crossed keys, crossed swords, crossed crosiers, crosses, crowns, crowns pierced with arrows, crowned female heads, an eagle, the head of the Baptist in a charger, an angel, mitres, three feathers rising from a crown, S. Andrew's cross, and perhaps others. There are also some rebuses, and some lettering. On the north wall, in six several squares, are the letters of the name Ashton interwoven with scrolls; the letters AR before a church, and a bird on a tun occur more than once. This certainly refers to Abbot Robert Kirton; but what the bird means is not clear. In the moulding over the large arch to the south choir aisle are four sets of letters. They form the last verse of the psalter. The words are contracted: they stand for _Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum_. =The Transepts=, including the arch to the aisles, are of four bays, and, as has before been pointed out, are of precisely the same character as the work in the choir. The central piers here are octagonal. All round the Norman portion of the church, below the windows, is an arcade of round arches with simple round mouldings and plain cushion capitals: in the transepts these have not intersecting heads, as in the choir and nave. The western sides of the transepts have no proper triforium, but a passage runs along in front of the windows in the triforium range. The chapels to the east have Perpendicular screens. In the north transept those three chapels were made into one which was used for early service, and called the morning chapel. We read in the chapter records of a minor canon being appointed to read the prayers at 6 o'clock, and once at least the hour is named as 5 o'clock, in the morning. This chapel was fitted up with some of the desks from the choir; and, judging from a number of names and initials that had been cut upon the desks, it has been conjectured that it was at one time used for the chapel of the King's School. At the north end is a desk for the reader or readers made out of two Early English stalls; there are three double shafts with admirably carved wooden foliage in the capitals. A very fine little Norman door leads to the staircase to the triforium. It should be mentioned that in the triforium is arranged an excellent series of stones, fragments, mouldings, and various ornaments, found in different places during the recent restoration. [Illustration: The New Building--Interior.] The series of basins of Alwalton marble was found, during the recent underpinning of the west front, in use as foundation stones; they appear to be of late Norman date. One window in the north transept aisle and all three in the south have fine geometrical tracery. The three chapels in the south transept were used as vestries until a few years ago, when the space beneath the bell-tower and part of the north aisle of the nave was converted into a large vestry for both clergy and choir. In the chapel here nearest the choir there remains the lower part of the newel staircase which led to an upper chapel. On the west side of the south transept has been erected a building which has in its time served many different purposes. It can hardly be called an aisle, as there is only access to the transept by a single ogee-headed doorway, which is a Decorated insertion. This building is of late, almost transition, Norman date; and is not very many years later than the transept itself. It can be seen from the cloister court that it had originally three gables. The roof is vaulted. In an inventory of goods made in 1539, printed in Gunton, there is one chapel described as the "Ostrie Chapel," which is believed to refer to this building. In a plan drawn in Bishop Kennett's time and dedicated to him, the south part is called "The Hostry Chapel, now the Chapter-House," and the north part is called the "Chapel of St. Sprite or the Holy Ghost." In some plans it is called the vestry. It has also been employed as a muniment room, as a Chapter-house, and (as now) as a practising room for the choir. [Illustration: The Transepts, looking North.] Near the south-western pier of the central tower access can be obtained to what remains of the =Saxon Church=. It was when the foundations of this pier were reached, in 1883, that the first indications of an earlier building were brought to light. First a solid piece of wall was discovered, and soon after a substantial piece of plaster attached to the wall, running north and south, which has since proved to be the eastern wall of the north transept of the Saxon Church. The workmen also came upon a plaster floor, on which were remains of burnt wood, reddened stone, and other evidences of a conflagration. As the work of excavation proceeded at intervals, fresh discoveries were made. The walls of the north transept, choir, and part of the south transept, can be traced. Just outside the eastern wall can be seen portions of two Saxon tombs which were originally in the grave-yard. The width of both choir and transepts is about 23 feet. The choir was not apsidal. The south wall of the south transept was just beyond the wall of the existing building; the extreme east end was almost exactly underneath the pillars in the present transept; the west wall of the south transept of the Saxon church was under the practising room; the nave extended into the cloister court. Near the south end of the excavations was discovered a portion of a Saxon altar _in situ_. No remains have been found of the nave (see plan, p. 9). [Illustration: Evangelistic Symbols, from Lantern Tower Roof.] The roofs of both transepts are flat, and, except where rotten boards have been replaced, original. They are now uncoloured, but formerly were painted in black and white diamond patterns. All the windows at the north and south ends are Norman, with Perpendicular tracery. [Illustration: Evangelistic Symbols, from Lantern Tower Roof.] The lantern tower has a fine groined roof, carefully restored and well painted. In the centre is a representation of the Saviour; eight coloured shields have the emblems of the Passion; four have the evangelistic symbols. [Illustration: Boss from Lantern Tower Roof.] =The Nave=, notwithstanding the years it took to build, the change of architecture that was coming into use as it was being finished, and the alteration in plan that was decided upon towards the end, is a very complete and almost uniform structure. There are ten bays, all having round arches; in the triforium each large arch has two smaller ones beneath it; and in each bay of the clerestory is one high arch and two smaller ones. The triforium arches in the two easternmost bays, on both sides, have the hatchet ornamentation in the tympanum; this may either mark the limits of the old Benedictine choir, or may simply suggest earlier work. Almost the only indication of distinct later work, as we proceed towards the west, is in the different forms of the bases of the piers. The arcading of the aisles curiously changes towards the west in both aisles, but not at corresponding points; the change consists in the reversing the interlacing of the arches. The third pillars from the west end on either side are not really, strictly speaking, pillars at all. They were built as supports to two western towers which it was intended certainly to erect at this point, even if they were not at least in part built. There are many other little details in the neighbourhood of these piers, all confirming Mr Paley's discovery with respect to these contemplated towers, one at any rate of which he thinks was actually erected. The pillars are cylindrical with numerous attached shafts. In addition to the changed form of the bases, careful observers can detect proofs of later work in the capitals of the shafts in the triforium. In front of each pier a shaft rises to the roof; and on these the original ceiling rested. On some of the piers in the south aisle, near the west end, may be seen several very curious masons' marks. In the nave is a very massive pulpit given in 1873 by the family of Dr James, for forty years Canon, bearing an inscription to his memory. It is from the design of Mr Edward Barry, and was meant to be in keeping with the Norman architecture of the nave. The central shaft is of Devonshire marble, the main body of the pulpit of red Dumfries stone, and some of the smaller pillars are of green Greek marble. At the angles are four large figures of the Evangelists. There is a wooden eagle lectern, carved by the late Rev. R.S. Baker, behind the choir-stalls on the south side. [Illustration: The Nave, looking East.] =The Nave Ceiling= is very curious and remarkable. If originally flat, and supported on the tall shafts last mentioned, it would be just above the great arch of the central tower before that was altered from the round form. It is supposed that this was the case; and that when the pointed arch was substituted the central compartment of the ceiling was raised, and the two outer ones made to slope as we see it now. But if the Norman roof was flat, its outer compartments would manifestly not be broad enough to fill the space now occupied by the sloping sides. And yet there is no alteration in the style of ornamentation: nor are the diamonds, which are divided by the line where the slope joins the horizontal portion, unduly elongated, as would seem to be necessary in the part nearest the wall. Some change was clearly made when the Decorated arches were built; for above the Norman cornice on which the roof was originally laid, there is now a length of painted wood containing coats of arms obviously of later date than the ceiling. It is not possible to pronounce with certainty on the question. But considering (1), that the whole ceiling was certainly raised in consequence of the superior height of the tower arch (2), that no difference can be detected between the centre compartments and those at the side in the patterns, and (3), that additional height has been secured by the Decorated boarding above mentioned, the most probable solution seems to be that the whole is the original Norman work, practically unaltered, and that it was never flat, but had always sloping sides as at present. All agree that the style of the painting is perfectly characteristic of the period. The divisions are of the lozenge shape; in each lozenge of the central line is a figure, and in each alternate one of the sides. The middle set has more elongated lozenges than the others. The borders are black and white, with some coloured lines, in odd zigzag patterns. The figures, which are mostly seated, are very quaint and strange. Some are sacred, some grotesque. We can see S. Peter with the keys, kings, queens, and minstrels; we find also a head with two faces, a monkey riding backwards on a goat, a human figure with head and hoofs of an ass, a donkey playing a harp, a winged dragon, a dancing lion, an eagle, and other curious devices. [Illustration: The Choir and Nave, looking West.] =The Font= stands between the first and second piers on the north side of the nave; the basin is of a local marble of thirteenth century date, but the lower part is modern. For many years it was used as a flower pot in one of the prebendal gardens, whence it was rescued by Dean Monk and ultimately restored to its original use in the south end of the western transept. It was placed where it is in 1920. Another font had been erected in 1615, as appears by an entry in the cathedral register of that date, when the son of one of the prebendaries was baptized "in the new font in the bodye of the Cathedral Church here." =The West Transept= extends beyond the aisles. The huge pointed arches covered with Norman mouldings are very remarkable. The arcading which goes round the lower part of the aisle walls was continued round the east sides and the ends of this transept, but it has all been hacked away, and the walls now are flat. The position of the arcade is very plainly to be seen. The south end in 1921 was again restored to its former use as a chapel by the Dean of Winchester, Dr. Hutton. The north end of this transept is used as a vestry. It is screened off, with the adjacent bays of the north aisle, by some of the woodwork that has been removed from Dean Monk's choir. From these specimens the general character of the whole can be easily gathered. The west wall has no trace of Norman work. The arcade by the ground consists of pointed arches, though the great doorway has a round arch; all have Early English mouldings. The great doors themselves are of the same date, as shown by the carved capital at the top. The west window, with its Perpendicular tracery, is set inside an Early English arch, which has two lofty lancets by the side; and in looking at it from the east it can hardly be detected that this arch is not the very framework of the window. The very lofty lancets on the east of the projecting parts of this transept, as well as the decoration of the arches in the triforium above the aisles, should be noticed. The number of =Altars= in the church was considerable. They were of course all served by members of the foundation. but they had not separate endowments like chantries in a parish church. Nor does any one appear to have been associated with any company or guild. There were, besides the High Altar and that in the Lady Chapel, three in the new building, one in the little chapel between the choir and Lady Chapel, one in each choir aisle, two (SS. John and James) in the north transept, four (SS. Oswald, Benedict, and Kyneburga, and the Holy Trinity) in the south transept, two (the Ostrie Chapel and that of the Holy Spirit) in the building west of the south transept, one in the rood-loft, most likely four against pillars in the nave (a bracket on a pillar on the north side marks the position of one), and apparently one in the south part of the west transept. If this enumeration is correct there were not less than twenty-two. There seems also to have been an altar in the hearse over Queen Katherine's tomb; and, though no mention of them occurs, we should suppose there must have been one on each side of the entrance beneath the rood-loft. Two altar-stones only have been found. One is marked on a plan made about 180 years ago as being laid down in the choir a little to the east of where the eagle lectern now stands. It was subsequently taken up, sawn into three pieces, and placed beneath the arch leading from the western transept to the south aisle. Some twenty-five years ago it was again removed from the pavement and is preserved elsewhere. The five crosses are large and deeply cut, and are in the form of cross-crosslets. The other has been taken up from the pavement in the eastern chapel. It is a very curious example, and one that might well escape notice. The stone is of the usual size, and uninscribed. It is much worn by constant treadings, and the five crosses are nearly obliterated, though quite distinctly to be seen. But instead of there being, as usual, one in each corner of the stone, or nearly so, all the five are towards the centre of the stone, within a space of about two square feet. There is also an extra cross on the front edge. This stone is now used for the altar in S. Oswald's Chapel, in the south transept, refitted in 1900. Of =Stained Glass= the only ancient examples are some fragments that have been collected from different parts of the church, mostly as it seems from the cloister, and put together in two central windows in the apse. These are well worth observing with care. No scenes of course can be made out, but the faces, when examined closely, are found to be singularly good. Most of the pieces formed portions of a window or series of windows representing incidents in the life of S. Peter. This is apparent from the few words that can still be made out on the labels, which are all fragments of texts referring to that Saint. The large west window is in memory of soldiers of Northamptonshire who fell during the South African War, 1899-1902; the window has five lights in two tiers; in the upper are representations of King Peada, S. Paul, S. Peter, S. Andrew, and Bishop Ethelwold; in the lower, S. George, Joshua, S. Michael, Gideon, and S. Alban. Brass plates below give the roll of honour. [Illustration: Head of S. Peter in Ancient Stained Glass.] Five windows of the eastern chapel have now been refilled with-stained glass, one facing north to the late Dean Barlow, 1908; another behind the altar was given by Canon Argles (afterwards Dean) in memory of his father-in-law, Bishop Davys. In the south-east corner the east window is to the memory of Dean Butler, 1861, and the south one to Canon Alderson; the churches pictured are S. Mary's, Lutterworth, All Saints', Holdenby, and a view of the south-east of this cathedral. The next window is in memory of Canon Twells, author of several hymns, including "At even ere the sun was set." In S. Oswald's Chapel is a very beautiful window given in 1900. In the north choir aisle is a memorial window to Thomas Mills, Hon. Canon, 1856. In the south transept some in memory of Payne Edwards, LL.B., 1861; Sir Chapman Marshall, Kt., Alderman of London, whose son was Precentor here; and James Cattel, cathedral librarian, 1877. In the north transept are several given by Mr G.W. Johnson, two in memory of his father and mother, one to the Prince Consort, and some unconnected with any names; there are also two in memory of George John Gates, 1860, and John Hewitt Paley "juvenis desideratissimi," 1857. The architecture of =The Parvise=, over the western porch, has been already described. It now contains the library, removed to this place from the new building by Dean Tarrant. The collection was begun by Dean Duport, who presented books himself, and obtained more from the Prebendaries and other persons; it was afterwards enriched with the whole of the valuable library of Bishop Kennett, and part of Dean Lockier's, and has since had many considerable additions. The manuscripts are not numerous, the chief being the very important book known as Swapham. The greater part of this has been printed by Sparkes. His publication includes Abbot John's Chronicle, The History of Burgh by Hugo Candidus with its continuation by Swapham, the Chronicle of Walter of Whittlesey, and two other works. There are also kept here some of the fabric rolls of the monastery. Bishop Kennett's library contained a most valuable collection of tracts and pamphlets published in the latter part of the seventeenth century. There are also some books of much earlier date, a few of great rarity. A memorandum written in the Book of Swapham above mentioned tells us that the Precentor, Humphrey Austin, had hidden it in 1642 in anticipation of coming troubles. But Cromwell's soldiers found it, and would probably have destroyed it; the Precentor, however, under pretence of enquiring after an old Latin bible, found out where it was, and redeemed it for the sum of ten shillings. =Monuments and Inscriptions=.--We proceed to speak of these, treated as a single subject, instead of describing them at the various parts of the building where they are to be found. At first sight it is thought that this cathedral is singularly deficient in monuments of interest. To a certain extent this is the case. There are no memorial chantries, such as add to the beauty of many of our noblest churches; no effigies of warriors or statesmen; no series of ancient tablets or inscriptions that illustrate the history of the neighbourhood; not a single brass. With few exceptions all the monuments and inscriptions that remain commemorate abbots or other members of the monastery, or, after the Reformation, bishops, and members of the cathedral foundation and their families. While of famous persons known to have been buried within the walls, such as Katherine of Arragon, Mary Queen of Scots, the Archbishops Elfricus and Kinsius of York, Sir Geoffrey de la Mare, Sir Robert de Thorpe, and others, no memorials worthy of their fame and importance are in existence. The wanton destruction during the civil war in great part explains this; but it is sad to remember that numbers of mediaeval inscriptions in the floor were hidden or destroyed during some well-meaning but ill-judged alterations in the eighteenth century. First in interest and importance is that known as the Monks' Stone, now preserved in the new building. It is generally thought that this was constructed in commemoration of the massacre of Abbot Hedda and his monks in 870, by the Danes. It was not till nearly a century later that any attempt was made to rebuild the monastery. But Mr Bloxam read a paper at Peterborough in 1861 in which he disputed the authenticity of this monument, which had been previously regarded as one of the most ancient monumental stones extant. He pronounced it to be Norman, and not Saxon work, and some centuries later in date than the massacre of the monks. He considered the figures did not represent the slain monks and their abbot, but Christ and eleven disciples. It has been further conjectured by Bishop Westcott that it may have been part of the shrine erected over the relics of S. Kyneburga, when they were removed from Castor to Peterborough in the former half of the eleventh century. A fragment of sculpture in the same style is built into the west wall of the south transept. Even if the latter years of the ninth century are deemed too early a date for the stone, at any rate the style of the sculpture and ornamentation seems much earlier than anything we can now see in position in the building itself. May it not have been erected when the minster was reconstructed at the end of the tenth century? It was formerly in the churchyard; sometimes testators (like Dr Pocklington) desired in their wills that they might be interred near it. It has been usually stated that the stone was erected by Abbot Godric of Crowland, who died in 941. Unvarying tradition has associated it with the Danish massacre; its dimensions almost exactly agree with the earliest records of the stone said to have been so erected. The cruciform nimbus round the head of one figure leaves no doubt that it was designed for the Saviour; but this had been recognised many years before Mr Bloxam wrote. [Illustration: Part of the Monks' Stone.] In the north transept, below the level of the floor, and protected by wooden doors, are several richly ornamented slabs or coffin lids, of undoubted Saxon date; and they form a series which may be considered one of the very best in England. They are in their original position, the spot on which they lie being outside the Saxon church and they were then in the grave-yard. They were discovered in 1888. The interlacing work, and other carvings, are deeply cut and in excellent preservation. [Illustration: Saxon Coffin Lids in North Transept.] The six recumbent effigies of abbots are the very best series of Benedictine memorials in the country. Attempts have been made to identify them from the character of the carvings. But as four are certainly of thirteenth century date, and one late in the twelfth century, and as thirteen abbots ruled during that period, it may be pronounced impossible to name each one. One only, manifestly the latest in date, and also in poorest preservation (being carved in clunch), has the mitre; this is now temporarily placed in the New Building; there is little doubt that it represents John Chambers, the last Abbot and first Bishop. All the other five abbots are represented in alb and chasuble, holding a book (signifying, it is said, the statutes of the Benedictine order), in the left hand; while in the right hand is a crosier. In one instance this is not very clear. Four have their feet resting on fanciful creatures, which, in three cases, hold the lower ends of the crosiers in their mouths. Two of these crosiers, at least, are turned outwards: this is contrary to the commonly received opinion that the turning inward symbolised the domestic rule over a monastic house. The head of one abbot rests on a square cushion. Four of these effigies are in the south choir aisle; one of them being beneath the Norman sepulchral arch raised to commemorate three abbots, John de Sais, who died in 1125, Martin of Bee, in 1155, and Andrew, in 1199. It seems unlikely that the one placed beneath the arch should represent one of those three, although usually assigned to the latest, Andrew. The next two in the aisle were found in the ruins of the old chapter-house, and brought into the church.[28] The date of the easternmost is known. It is more richly ornamented than the rest, and the entire coffin is above ground, with handsome quatrefoils and other carving. This commemorates Alexander of Holderness, 1226. It was found under the woodwork of the old choir which was removed in 1830, beneath the second arch, on the north of the choir. The coffin contained the body, in a large coarse garment, with boots on, and a crosier in the left hand. The boots were what are called "rights and lefts," and in fair preservation. The head was gone. A piece of lead was found inscribed "Abbas: Alexandr:" The remains were gathered together and re-interred beneath the present position of the coffin. At the same time in all likelihood the effigy that was already on the spot (one of those that had been found in the ruins of the chapter-house) was removed to one of the chapels in the south transept; from which place it was afterwards moved to the New Building immediately behind the apse, where now is the monument to Bishop Chambers; and now it has been put on a stone plinth on the spot where the coffin of Abbot Alexander was found, under the mistaken impression that it was the figure found there in 1830. [Illustration: Portion of Abbot's Tomb.] The other prae-Reformation memorials are very few. Two have lately been found concealed by the paving, Abbot Godfrey, 1321, moved from the choir to the north aisle, and sub-prior Fraunceys, at the east end of the south nave aisle. In the morning chapel is an early stone with inscription in capitals, and three stone coffin lids; other fragmentary inscriptions remain in S. Oswald's chapel, in the north choir aisle, and under the bell-tower. In the floor on the north side of the choir, near the altar rails, is a stone with modern inscription recording the burial places of Elfrieus and Kinsius, both Archbishops of York: the former died in 1051, the latter in 1060. An old guide-book says that "on the north side, in two hollow places of wall, were found two chests about three feet long, in each of which were the bones of a man: and of whom appeared by a plate of lead in each chest, whereon the name of the person was engraved," these names being those given above. The chronicle expressly records of Kinsius, "_jacet tumulatus in scrinio juxta magnum altare in parte boreali_." [Illustration: Portion of Abbot's Tomb.] Queen Katherine of Arragon was buried in the north choir aisle, just outside the most eastern arch, in 1535. A hearse was placed near, probably between the two piers. Four years later this is described as "the inclosed place where the Lady Katherine lieth," and there seems to have been a small altar within it. Some banners that adorned it remained in the cathedral till 1586. About the same time some persons were imprisoned for defacing the "monument," and required to "reform the same." The only monument, strictly so called, of which there is any record, was a low table monument, raised on two shallow steps, with simple quatrefoils, carved in squares set diamond-wise. Engravings of this shew it to have been an insignificant and mean erection. A few slabs of it were lately found buried beneath the floor, and they are now placed against the wall of the aisle. One of the prebendaries repaired this monument at his own cost, about 1725, and supplied a tiny brass plate with name and date, part of which remains in the floor. This monument was removed in 1792. A handsome marble stone has quite recently been laid down to the Queen's memory above her grave, with incised inscription and coats of arms. A tablet has been erected in the south choir aisle to record the fact that Mary Queen of Scots had been buried near the spot. Recent explorations have proved that the exact spot was just within the choir. The funeral took place on the first of August, 1587. Remains of the hearse between the pillars were to be seen so lately as 1800. On Oct. 11, 1612, the body was removed to Westminster Abbey, by order of King James I., the Queen's son. A photograph of the letter ordering the removal, the original of which is still in possession of the Dean and Chapter, is framed and hung on an adjacent pillar. [Illustration: Portion of Abbot's Tomb.] In the south choir aisle is a fine monument with a life-size effigy of Archbishop Magee in his robes. It is carved in pure white marble. On the side are impaled coats of arms and an inscription. The likeness is excellent. [Illustration: Portion of Abbot's Tomb.] The other tablets and inscriptions hardly require detailed descriptions. In the New Building is the mutilated monument to Sir Humfrey Orme: no names or dates remain; at the top are the words _Sanguis Iesu Christi purgat nos ab omnibus Peccatis nostris_. Near this is an elaborate erection to Thomas Deacon, 1721, a great benefactor to the town. On a stone to John Brimble, organist of S. John's College, Cambridge, 1670, we read that he was _Musis et musicæ devotissimus, ad coelestem evectus Academiam_. Among many inscriptions some interesting items will be found. John Benson, 1827, was the "oldest Committee Clerk at the House of Commons." Humfrey Orme, 1670, was _A supremo Ang'iæ senatu ad superiorem sanctorum conventum evocatus._ On the memorial to Bishop Madan, 1813, are the lines:-- In sacred sleep the pious Bishop lies, Say not in death--A good Man never dies. [Illustration: South Aisles of Choir and Nave.] On the tablet to Bishop Cumberland, 1718, are four Latin lines from Dean Duport's epigram upon the Bishop's confutation of Hobbes. In the south choir aisle, on the tablet to Dean Lockier, 1740, is the only instance of the arms of the Deanery impaling another shield, on a monument. Near this is a wooden tablet executed in good taste, recording the fact that the iron screens are a memorial to Dean Argles, whose munificent gifts to the cathedral are well known. The Norman arch at the west end of this aisle has a modern painted inscription, believed to be an exact copy of the original:-- _Hos tres Abbates, Quibus est Prior Abba Johannes Alter Martinus, Andreas Ultimus, unus Hic claudit Tumulus; pro Clausis ergo rogemus_. Near this is a tablet to Roger Pemberton, 1695, with a line from Homer in Greek, "The race of men is as the race of leaves." In the north choir aisle John Workman, Prebendary, 1685, is described as _Proto-Canonicus_, probably meaning that he held the first stall. The tablet to Frances Cosin (d. 1642), wife of the Dean, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was not erected till after the Bishop's death in 1672. He prescribed in his will the words of the inscription. On the large tablet above the piscina is a punning motto, _Temperantia te Temperatrice_, the person commemorated being Richard Tryce, 1767. Two tablets of interest in connexion with the Great War are to be seen in the south aisle of the nave, one in marble to Nurse Cavell, and the other in bronze to the "lonely Anzac," Thomas Hunter, an Australian who died in Peterborough from wounds received in France. Last of all we must speak of the one memorial which is usually looked at first, the famous picture of Old Scarlett, on the wall of the western transept. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle; at his feet is a skull. At the top of the picture are the arms of the cathedral. Beneath the portrait are these lines:-- YOV SEE OLD SCARLEITS PICTVRE STAND ON HIE BVT AT YOVR FEETE THERE DOTH HIS BODY LYE HIS GRAVESTONE DOTH HIS AGE AND DEATH TIME SHOW HIS OFFICE BY THEIS TOKENS YOV MAY KNOW SECOND TO NONE FOR STRENGTH AND STVRDYE LIMM A SCARBABE MIGHTY VOICE WITH VISAGE GRIM HEE HAD INTER'D TWO QVEENES WITHIN THIS PLACE AND THIS TOWNES HOVSEHOLDERS IN HIS LIVES SPACE TWICE OVER: BVT AT LENGTH HIS ONE TVRNE CAME WHAT HEE FOR OTHERS DID FOR HIM THE SAME WAS DONE: NO DOVBT HIS SOVL DOTH LIVE FOR AYE IN HEAVEN: THOVGH HERE HIS BODY CLAD IN CLAY. On the floor is a stone inscribed: "Ivly 2 1594 R S aetatis 98." This painting is not a contemporary portrait, but a copy made in 1747. In 1866 it was sent on loan to the South Kensington Museum. [Illustration: South Side of the Close, 1801.] CHAPTER IV. THE MINSTER PRECINCTS AND CITY. There are many objects of great interest to be seen in the Minster Yard. This name is not unfrequently given to the whole of the territory belonging to the Dean and Chapter surrounding the church. The correct title is, however, as given above, the Minster Precincts; and it is by this name that the parish is described, for the Abbey Church, like a few others, is a parish church, as well as the Cathedral of the diocese. Although without churchwardens, this parish still appoints its own overseers of the poor. Old residents distinguish the Close from the Precincts, limiting the use of the former expression to the area west of the Cathedral. Contrary to what all would expect, the great gateway to the west is not the boundary of the Precincts, for they extend a little further west, and include one or two houses beyond the gateway. This ancient entrance to the monastic grounds naturally first arrests the attention. It was built by Abbot Benedict in the last quarter of the twelfth century. Though it has been much altered, a considerable part of the original structure remains. As we see it from the Marketplace we observe a fifteenth century look about it: on closer inspection we see that a late Decorated arch has been built in front of the Norman arch, and that a facing of the same date has been carried above. Here is an arcade, with the alternate panels pierced for windows. On each side of the gateway are also good Norman arcades; the doorway in the arcade to the north opens into a residence, that on the south gives access to the room above. This was originally the Chapel of S. Nicolas. On the eastern side of the room is a three-light window, manifestly a late insertion, and adapted from some other building. It is said to be part of a shrine which formerly was in the Cathedral, a portion of which still remains in the new building. This statement has been repeated over and over again; but it is difficult to see any resemblance between the two. The chapel over the gateway has been put to various uses since the dissolution of monasteries. In 1617 it was assigned to the porter as part of his residence. At a later period it was let. It has served the purposes of a muniment room, a Masonic lodge room, a tailor's workshop, a practising room for the choristers, a class-room for the Grammar School. In the flourishing days of the Gentlemen's Society, when members met and read papers, and kept up a considerable literary correspondence with learned men in various parts of the kingdom, its meetings were held here; and it is now used as a Record Room for the Diocese of Peterborough. On the left hand, as we pass through the gate, is all that remains of the =Chapel of S. Thomas of Canterbury=. It is the chancel of a much larger building. Originally the chapel was begun by Waterville and finished by Benedict: it was therefore of Norman date. The present chancel was built in the latter part of the fourteenth century. While the east window, with its graceful net tracery and very elegant cross above, might suggest an earlier date, yet a glance at the side windows, which are distinctly of transitional character, tells us that 1360 or 1370 may be assigned as the period of erection. About 1404 the abbey gave the materials of the nave of this chapel to the town, to assist in rebuilding the parish church on the present site; but the chancel had been too recently built to be removed. Since the establishment of the Cathedral the chancel seems always to have been used as the Cathedral Grammar School, until the year 1885, when the School was removed to new buildings in the Park Road. It was next used as a museum by the Natural History and Archaeological Society, until their collection outgrew the room and they removed to larger premises in Queen Street (see p. 111). For a time it was a Needlework School of Art, and now it is a Rovers Den in connexion with the Scout movement. All the other ancient buildings on the west, the Plumber's Office, the Sister House, the Treasurer's Office, have long disappeared. The Minster Almshouses, adjoining the wall of the Deanery garden, are the only buildings on the north side. They have no ancient features. [Illustration: Cathedral Gateway, 1791.] The door immediately to the right of the great gateway as we enter the close leads to a vaulted chamber which was once the gaol. A few steps bring us to a very magnificent gateway, leading to the Palace grounds, over which is a chamber, called the =Knights' Chamber=. This is of Early English date, with a fine groined roof. The gates and postern are placed at some distance from the outer archway, adding greatly to the dignity and effect of the whole composition. The delicate arcading of the sides, and the excellent clustered shafts, are good examples of the period: unfortunately the bases of the shafts are now hidden by accumulation of earth. On the north and south faces are long niches with figures: three on the north are said to be King Edward II., and the Abbot and Prior of the period; those on the south are Apostles. The chamber above is used for meetings, etc. Much of the line of buildings to the east of this gateway is modern, but it harmonizes excellently with the ancient work. Near the Cathedral is some mediaeval work, and the office at the end, on the ground floor, has a good stone groined roof. This is believed to have been the Penitentiary. The _Deanery Gateway_, at the north-eastern corner of the close is a fine specimen of architecture. In the spandrels above the great four-centred arch are two coats of arms, one with the keys and crosslets, the other with swords and crosses. These are now the arms of the See and the Cathedral respectively: but it is difficult to say what was their special significance when this gate was erected. Are we to suppose that the Abbot and Prior used different armorial bearings before the Reformation? Above the smaller door is a boldly carved rebus of the Abbot in whose time the gate was erected, a church on a tun, Robert Kirton (Kirkton). His initials in stone are also carved beneath the parapet. Several of the details are well worthy of attention. We find the Tudor rose and portcullis: the arms of S. Edward and of S. Edmund, the Martyr King; an early instance in stone of the Prince of Wales' feathers; and the triangular symbol of the Holy Trinity. The date is about 1520. Through an open archway to the east we enter the burial ground. Until 1804 this was the only place of burial for the whole city. On the left is the Deanery, but nothing of antiquity is to be seen from the exterior. In the hall are some good fragments of old glass, some of it probably part of the original embellishments of the house, though some may have been brought from the Cathedral, and some is again quite modern. Some panels of early date, brought from another room, have also lately been put up in the hall. The churchyard has been planted with trees and shrubs, and is well kept. It has, however, become much more publicly used than was the case in the last century, owing to a thoroughfare for foot-passengers which has been opened at the north-western end of the close; and the usual results of such publicity have followed in the treading down of the turf and in the damage inflicted on the shrubs. One of the most striking views of the Cathedral is seen from the north-eastern corner of the precincts, near the house known as "The Vineyard." This was the house occupied by the officers who came down to superintend the spoliation of the building in 1643. This view takes in the whole of the great length of the Cathedral, the bell-tower and the north-western spire forming a very effective group. Passing round the east end and proceeding to the south we come to the ruins of the =Infirmary=. Here we may see some very excellent Early English work, most elegant and graceful. It was erected about 1260. The plan was similar to a large church with aisles. The nave was used as the hall, the aisles were the quarters of the inmates, and the chancel was the chapel of the institution. Many of the main arches remain, and the details of the ornamentation and mouldings will repay careful study. At the west end is a very perfect piece of arcading. The large arch, seen above a low wall to the east, was the arch leading to the chapel; in exactly the same position as the chancel arch in a church. At each side of this arch is a lancet never pierced. The main arch is now blocked up, forming a wall to one of the prebendal houses. The dining room of this same house was the Infirmarer's house, and has much very interesting Early English work. To the south of the Infirmary is another ancient house, though much modernised. Before entering the Cloister court we pass through the old slype, once a simple vaulted passage, but now open to the sky. It was the means of communication between the Refectory, which was situated to the west, and the Chapter House, which was on the east side of the Cloister. Quite recently some of the arches on the west side have been opened to view, and interesting tracery brought to light. The =Cloister Court= is always called the Laurel Court. The origin of this name is not known. The northern part of the area covers the site of the nave of the Saxon church; but though search was made, during the recent works, for remains of the old foundations, nothing was discovered. On the south and west sides are to be seen remains of the arches and groining, but the appearance of the south wall of the cathedral suggests that there could not have been any covered alley to the north, so completely have all evidences of such an erection been removed. But it is known that there did exist an alley there, when the Cloisters were complete; for Gunton, describing it, says "The Cloyster about four square, in length 168 yards, in breadth 6 yards." The windows, contrary to the usual practice, were all glazed, and they contained a very fine series of painted glass, all destroyed in 1643. Gunton gives the subjects:--"The windows were all compleat and fair, adorned with glass of excellent painting: In the South Cloyster was the History of the Old Testament: In the East Cloyster of the New: In the North Cloyster, the Figures of the successive Kings from King Peada: In the West Cloyster, was the History from the foundation of the Monastery of King Peada, to the restoring of it by King Edgar." Each light had two lines of verse at the foot, explaining the subject matter of the glass above. All the verses in the windows of the west alley are given; and from this we gather that there were nine windows there of four lights each. Although Gunton only gives the verses belonging to the west cloister, yet as he said previously that "every window had at the bottom the explanation of the history thus in verse," it is supposed that similar legends appeared in all the other alleys of the cloister. The verses are very quaint. [Illustration: Door to Palace Grounds from the Cloisters, 1797.] [Illustration: Door way to Cathedral from the Cloisters.] The archway at the south-eastern corner is very elegant, the open quatrefoil above the round arch and below the pointed arch being especially good. The south wall indicates that there were two sets of cloisters here, as the remains of early English arcading are to be clearly seen. Towards the west was the lavatory, the remains indicating work of late fourteenth century date. It is on record that Robert of Lindsey (1214-1222) erected a lavatory in the south cloister: this would be contemporary with the Early English work remaining in this wall, and with the archway to the slype; but it must have been removed when the cloisters were enlarged, and another lavatory, of which we see the remains under three arches, built in its stead. The Refectory was immediately to the south of this wall: some beautiful carving is to be seen in the Bishop's garden. The south-western doorway gives access to the Bishop's grounds. The depth of the hollows behind the carved foliage above the door is remarkable. In the west wall are remains of a Norman cloister; there are three arches and a door. From the architectural character it seems almost certain that these are older than any part of the present Cathedral. William of Waterville (1155-1175) "built the Cloister and covered it with lead." Canon Davys conjectures that this Abbot in reality repaired and made sound the old cloisters that had been built by Ernulf (1107-1115), "whose recent additions to the buildings of the monastery, we learn, alone escaped the fire, which consumed the other parts of the Abbey in the time of John de Sais." One of these arches has the cheese moulding; and on each jamb is a small incised cross, a very few inches long. If these are consecration crosses they are the only ones that have been noticed in any part of the Abbey. On the wall of the building west of the south transept are some stone brackets. These shew that after the destruction of the ancient cloister a covered way of some kind was erected here. Marks can also be seen, in the masonry, which indicate that the building once had three gables. Two of the Norman buttresses of the south nave aisle have very curious terminations, which might well puzzle any observer. They are fireplaces for the use of plumbers. Passing through the Norman doorway at the north-western corner of the Laurel Court, we come into a narrow passage leading to the Minster Close. [Illustration: Archway from Cloisters, North-West.] In the =Bishop's Palace=, besides the remains of the Refectory, which, though so scanty, shew what a beautiful building it once was, there is very little worthy of note. The hall is a vaulted chamber, of no great height, with piers to support the roof; most of it is part of the Abbot's dwelling, and of thirteenth century date. The Heaven's Gate Chamber, previously noticed, built by Abbot Kirton (1496-1528), lies to the south-east of the hall. The chapel was erected by Bishop Magee soon after he came to the diocese. =The City.=--The mother church of S. John the Baptist is the only parish church in the city of mediaeval date. Until 1856 it was the only parish church in the place. Originally the church stood east of the Minster. But, following what seems to be almost a universal law, the main population spread westward as the number of inhabitants increased, and the earlier buildings were left to the occupation of the poorer class. An insignificant little house in the old town is traditionally said to have been the Vicar's residence. It has some evidence of antiquity about it. The present church was built early in the fifteenth century. It was opened in 1407 with much solemnity by Abbot Genge. It is a spacious and dignified building, having a nave of seven bays; and there are two bays to the chancel, besides the sanctuary. The west tower is good, but hardly of sufficient dignity for such a church. The interior was reseated, and new roofs were added in 1883; they were designed by the late Mr. Pearson. In 1891 the south porch was restored in memory of Dr. James, a former vicar. The arches under the tower which had been bricked up for many years were underpinned and repaired; and in 1909 were again opened to the church. By 1919 the fittings were almost complete, several rich stained glass windows and beautiful oak screens had been given as memorials. A carved reredos, oak panelling and seats, and a marble pavement have been fitted in the Sanctuary. The organ was rebuilt and enlarged by Messrs. Harrison of Durham. Towards the west end of the church in the north aisle is a tablet to William Squire by Flaxman; close by is a large picture of King Charles I and two curious specimens of early embroidery are also to be seen; they were once portions of altar-cloths, or of copes. In each case the work is in the form of a cross, about two feet long. Each has the figure of the Saviour on the Cross; but the details are not identical. [Illustration: Church of S. John the Baptist and Guildhall.] =The Guild Hall=, in the Market Place, is an effective little building, dated 1671. The lower part is open, and is used for the butter market. While sufficient for the transaction of borough business 100 years ago, it is altogether inadequate now to the requirements of a corporation. Until a very few years ago there was a mediaeval building at Peterborough of the greatest interest. This was the old =Tithe Barn= of the Abbey, situated in the Manor of Boroughbury, on the Lincoln Road. It was much the finest in the kingdom. Unhappily the "enterprising builder" has obtained possession of it, and it has been pulled down, the materials, all Barnack stone, having been employed in building houses. It was of good thirteenth century work, and in perfect condition. On the east side were two large porches, by which a waggon fully laden could enter the barn. The roof was supported by very massive timbers rising from the ground, the whole arrangement resembling a wooden church with aisles. =The Museum= in Queen Street is noted for its collection of Roman and Saxon antiquities from the city and district; amongst the former are the noted coffin tile stamped LEG IX. HISP.; the vase showing a coursing match with the hare and hounds in relief, coins, pottery, brooches, and other jewellery. The Saxon specimens consist of pottery, jewellery, and weapons chiefly exhumed at Woodston, about one mile south-west of the river bridge. The interesting collection of bone, wood, horn, and straw marquetry work made at Norman Cross (5 miles) by the French prisoners during the years 1797 to 1814, is unique. MSS. of the Northamptonshire poet, John Clare, are preserved in this institution, together with a large number of other local works. CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY. The inhabitants of the Fen country, when first distinguished by a special name, were known as the Gyrvii. Their district included the south part of Lincolnshire, the north part of Northamptonshire, and the greater part of Cambridgeshire. The southern Gyrvii were a province of East Anglia; the Gyrvii of the north appear to have been allied to the East Anglians, and perhaps inclined to become united with them; but they were ultimately absorbed in the great Midland Kingdom of Mercia. Bishop Stubbs,[29] speaking of the early Fasti of Peterborough, says: "Mercia, late in its formation as a kingdom, sprang at once into a great state under Penda; late in its adoption of Christianity, it seems from the period of its conversion to have taken a prominent place at once among the Christian powers. The Chronicle places the conversion in 655, and a very few years saw it the best governed and best organised province of the Church. In less than thirty years it was divided into five dioceses, amongst which the place of the Fen country is more clearly definable. The bishopric of Lindsey occupied the north of Lincolnshire, reaching to the Witham: a line drawn from the south point of Nottinghamshire to the Cam would probably represent the western border of the Gyrvii; the border of Cambridgeshire was the boundary of the dioceses of Elmham and Dunwich. The Fen country thus falls into the eastern portion of the great Lichfield diocese, which for a few years after 680 had its own bishop at Leicester, but was not finally separated from the mother see until 737." The date given above for the conversion of Mercia, 655, is the date of the laying of the foundation of the monastery of Medeshamstede. Penda had been succeeded on the throne of Mercia by his eldest son, Peada; and he, in conjunction with Oswy, brother of King Oswald, determined to "rear a minster to the glory of Christ and honour of Saint Peter." =Saxulf= (656-675), was the first Abbot. In Bede no mention is made of royal patronage, and the whole credit of founding the abbey is given to Saxulf. Another account represents him as having been a thane of great wealth and renown, and that this abbey was dedicated by him "as the first fruits of the Mercian church." He was made Bishop of Lichfield in 675, but continued to take an active part in the affairs of the abbey. He died in 691. =Cuthbald= (675), is named in the Chronicle as having been second Abbot. One of this name, possibly the same, was ruling the monastery at Oundle in 709, when S. Wilfrid died there. Nothing further is known of him; and nothing at all of =Egbald=, who appears in the usual lists as his successor. The chroniclers give for the fourth Abbot one Pusa. But Bishop Stubbs has proved that =Bothwin= was Abbot from 758 to 789; and concludes that the introduction of Pusa into the list is a mistake, if not a mere invention. Abbot =Beonna= came next, probably in 789 or very soon afterwards. "Possibly this Beonna is the same who was made Bishop of Hereford in 823, and died in 830." =Ceolred= succeeded, and in the year 852 signs a grant of land as Abbot. Patrick conjectures that he became a bishop, but does not name his diocese. There is no certainty about the dates at which these early abbots entered upon their office; and possibly some names have been altogether lost. But all accounts agree that the last Abbot of Medeshamstede was =Hedda=; and that he perished when the monastery was destroyed and its inmates killed by the Danes in 870. A graphic account of the circumstances attending this attack is given by Ingulf; but as authentic historians like Orderic and Malmesbury have no reference whatever to the occurrences described by Ingulf, Bishop Stubbs unwillingly is obliged to consider his version to be a pure romance. But of the fact itself, the utter destruction of the monastery, there is no question; nor of the fact that all the inmates, or nearly all, perished. We read that at Crowland some monks escaped the general slaughter, and met again, after the departure of the Danes, and elected a fresh abbot. They then came to Medeshamstede, and buried the bodies of those that had been murdered, in one vast tomb. It has been commonly supposed that the Monks' Stone, before described, was the stone erected at the time in commemoration of the disaster. The arguments against this supposition have been already given. The Fen monasteries remained desolate for 100 years. During that period the lands were constantly being seized by different intruders. It was not till the time of Alfred the Great, who came to the throne in 871, that the invasions of the Danes were finally checked, and tranquillity restored to the kingdom. Security being assured, the people began again to improve their public buildings and the religious houses. Crowland was the first in the neighbourhood to be restored. This restoration was effected by Thurketyl. Instigated probably by his example, Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, encouraged and supported by King Edgar, rebuilt the monastery of Medeshamstede after the old model. The rebuilding was completed in 972; and the name of Burgh was given to the place, and the old name went altogether out of use. The first Abbot, after the re-establishment of the monastery, was =Aldulf= (971-992), formerly Chancellor to the King. He is said to have accidentally caused the death of his only son, and feeling that he could no longer live happily in the midst of earthly vanities, he endowed this monastery with all his possessions, and was appointed to govern it. Gunton declares that the prosperous and wealthy condition of the abbey under the rule of Aldulf caused its name to be improved into Gildenburgh, the Golden Borough. At this time most of the neighbouring woods were cut down and the land brought into cultivation. Aldulf became Bishop of Worcester after remaining twenty years at Burgh; and in 995 was made Archbishop of York. He died in May 1002, and is buried at Worcester. He held indeed the See of Worcester with that of York till his death. He was succeeded at Burgh by =Kenulf= (992-1005). He is described as famous for his wisdom and learning, and as having governed his abbey "most admirably and sweetly." In 1005 he was made Bishop of Winchester, not without suspicion of a corrupt purchase (_episcopatum nummis nundinatus fuerat_), and died the following year. The next Abbot, =Elsinus= (1006-1055), was remarkable chiefly for the number of relics he collected, designing thereby to increase the fame and wealth of the monastery. Dean Patrick thinks that before Elsinus there was an abbot named KINSINUS, whose name he found in one record; but he adds that if he were really abbot it could at most have been for a few days or months. The list of relics gathered together by Elsinus is extensive. At least eighty are enumerated. It speaks volumes for the credulity of the age when we find in this list such things as the following:--A portion of Aaron's rod that budded; a portion of one of the five loaves that fed the five thousand; a shoulder-blade of one of the Holy Innocents; two pieces of the Virgin Mary's veil; part of the stone paten of the Evangelist S. John. The great relic of the house was the arm of S. Oswald. The date when this was acquired is not certainly known, some thinking that this period is too early a date to assign to its acquisition. Bede relates[30] "that this Oswald, King of Northumberland, was very free and liberal in giving of alms to the poor; and one day whilst he sate at meat, one of his servants told him of a great number of poor people come to his gate for relief; whereupon King Oswald sent them meat from his own table, and there not being enough to serve them all, he caused one of his silver dishes to be cut in pieces, and to be distributed amongst the rest; which Aydanus, a Bishop (who came out of Scotland to convert, and instruct those Northern parts of England), beholding, took the King by the right hand, saying, _nunquam inveterascat haec manus_, let this hand never wax old, or be corrupted; which came to pass. This arm was first deposited at Bamburgh, a religious place in Yorkshire.[31] Walter of Whittlesey writing the story thereof, tells that it was brought to the monastery of Burgh by Winegotus of Bebeberch, but saith not when, therefore I cannot conjecture better than that it was by the procurement of this Abbot Elsinus. It is said that this arm wrought many cures upon several diseased folk; and that it was of such fame in the days of King Stephen, as that he himself came to Peterburgh purposely to see it; and offered his ring to S. Oswald, and also remitted to the monastery the sum of forty marks wherein it was indebted unto him." It is specially recorded in the Chronicle that this abbot took advantage of the poverty of an abbey in Normandy, the district having been afflicted with a grievous famine, and purchased from it the body of S. Florentinus, with the exception of the head, for one hundred pounds of silver. He was succeeded by =Arwinus= (1055-1057), a monk of the house, but he resigned the government in two years. Next came =Leofric= (1057-1066), a very eminent man, said to have been of royal descent. He was nephew to Leofric, Earl of Coventry. In the time of this abbot, William of Normandy invaded England, and Leofric was for some time with the English army. But in consequence of ill health he was obliged to leave it and return to his monastery, where he died the same year. He is highly praised in the Chronicle as "_pulcherrimus Monachorum, flos et decus Abbatum_." =Brando= (1066-1069), succeeded, and greatly offended King William by applying to Edgar Atheling for confirmation of his appointment. He was uncle to Hereward, the Saxon patriot, and created him knight. At his death a Norman was appointed, =Turold=, of Fescamp (1069-1098); but "he neither loved his monastery, nor his convent him." During the interval between Brando's death and Turold's arrival, a partial destruction of the monastery took place. This has been already described. Some account for Hereward's share in the attack and in the carrying off of the treasures by supposing that he meant to restore them when the rule of the Norman Abbot came to an end. When Turold arrived at Peterborough he brought with him a force of 160 well-armed Normans. Joining the forces of Ivo Taillebois he attacked the Camp of Refuge near Ely. The attacking party was repulsed by Hereward, and Turold taken prisoner, and only liberated upon paying a heavy ransom. Soon afterwards the Abbot is said to have received into the monastery two monks from beyond sea, "who secretly stole away, and carried many of the Church Goods with them." At length he was made Bishop in France, and the monastery trusted they had seen the last of him. But he was ignominiously expelled in four days, and was permitted, upon paying a large sum of money to the king, to resume his abbacy. [Illustration: Rose Windows and Details of West Front.] Another uncle of Hereward's, =Godric= (1099-1103), brother of Brando, became the next abbot. The monks had purchased from the king the right to elect their own abbot; and Godric, being considered by this transaction to have committed simony, was (with the neighbouring abbots of Ely and Ramsey) deposed by a council held under the presidency of Archbishop Anselm. =Matthias= (1103-1105), was brother of Geoffrey, the Chief Justice, who was drowned at the foundering of The White Ship, when Prince William, the King's son, was lost. After the death of Matthias there was a vacancy of three years, until =Ernulf= (1107-1114), Prior of Canterbury came. He became Bishop of Rochester, and died in 1124. =John de Sais= (1114-1125), probably came from Seès, in Normandy; though he is sometimes called John of Salisbury. In 1116 nearly the whole town was consumed by a fire that lasted nine days. It began in the bakehouse of the monastery and completely destroyed the church and most of the abbey buildings, the Chapter House, Refectory and Dormitory alone escaping. In March 1118 (or, as then written, 1117), the commencement was made of the building that now exists. Abbot John died in 1125; and again the King kept the abbey in his own hands for more than two years. =Henry of Anjou= (1128-1133), where he was Abbot, was a kinsman of the King. He had numerous preferments abroad; and after five years here was forced to resign and to betake himself to Anjou. =Martin de Vecti= (1133-1155), had been Prior of S. Neots. Gunton considers he came originally from the Isle of Wight, Vectis; Dean Patrick thinks he derived his name from Bec, in Normandy. He was a great builder, and was very industrious in repairing the abbey, and especially the church. =William of Waterville= (1155-1175), was chaplain to King Henry II. He devoted himself to the building of the church, and the portion attributed to him has been indicated in a previous chapter. He was also very attentive to the management of the estates of the monastery, and to acquiring new ones; but his business capacity seems to have brought him into some disrepute and to have raised some enemies, who accused him to the King; and by the King's order he was deposed in the Chapter-house, as Dean Patrick relates[32] "before a multitude of abbots and monks; being neither convicted of any crime, nor confessing any, but privily accused to the Archbishop by some monks." It is recorded that he appealed to the Pope against the sentence of deprivation, but without success. =Benedict= (1177-1193), was Prior of Canterbury; and, towards the end of his life, Keeper of the Great Seal. He had a heavy task at the beginning of his rule in restoring discipline, which had become lax, and in reforming many evil customs that had crept into the house. He was an author, and produced a work on the career of S. Thomas of Canterbury, whose murder had taken place only seven years before Benedict came to Peterborough. He gave many ornaments and vestments to the church, and brought several relics; and in particular some of Thomas à Becket (and those we can certainly believe were more authentic than most relics), among which are mentioned his shirt and surplice, a great quantity of his blood in two crystal vessels, and two altars of the stone on which he fell when he was murdered. He was, as might be expected, very zealous in completing the chapel at the monastery gate which his predecessor had begun to raise in honour of the martyred Archbishop. Dean Stanley[33] speaks of Benedict's acquisition of the relics as "one of two memorable acts of plunder ... curiously illustrative of the prevalent passion for such objects." He says Benedict was probably the most distinguished monk of Christ Church, and after his appointment to Peterborough, "finding that great establishment almost entirely destitute of relics, he returned to his own cathedral, and carried off with him the flagstones immediately surrounding the sacred spot, with which he formed two altars in the conventual church of his new appointment, besides two vases of blood and part of Becket's clothing." Benedict, though a member of the house and probably within the precincts, was not actually present at the Archbishop's murder. Besides his building operations (he built nearly all the nave of the church) he was very attentive to the landed property of the house, successfully recovering some estates which had been alienated. =Andrew= (1193-1201) had been Prior. He was "very mild and peaceable, and made it his endeavour to plant and establish peace and tranquillity in his flock." Several fresh acquisitions of land were made in his time, and the monastery was very flourishing. =Acharius= (1201-1214) came here from S. Albans, where he was Prior. He devoted himself entirely to the administration of his office, managing the affairs of the monastery with the greatest care and judgement. He left behind him a reputation for "order, honesty, kindness and bounty, that from him posterity might learn how to behave themselves both in the cloister and in the world." [Illustration: Tomb of an Abbot, possibly Abbot Andrew, 1201.] =Robert of Lindsey= (1214-1222) succeeded. This was four years after the death of his predecessor, during which period King John had kept the monastery in his own hands. This expression, which is of frequent occurrence, must be understood to mean that the king took possession of all the revenues belonging to the Abbot, and probably much more from the property of the monastery, the expenses of which would be materially lessened by the mere fact of there being no Abbot. Robert had been Sacrist here, and when he was advanced to the highest office he effected many improvements in the furniture and ornaments of the church, and in the buildings, not only of the monastery itself, but also of the manors and farms belonging to it. One alteration he effected is worth special mention; many of the windows of the church previously stuffed with reeds and straw, were glazed. The civil wars in this reign brought desolation to many religious houses: but we do not read that Peterborough suffered. Robert is said to have written a history of the monastery. He died in 1222. He had attended the fourth Lateran Council at Rome, in 1215; and had fought in person for King Henry III. at Rockingham. =Alexander of Holderness= (1222-1226), the Prior, was next appointed. Dean Patrick gives, from Swapham, an account of a noteworthy agreement that was made for mutual benefit between this Abbot and the Abbot of S. Edmunds Bury. The convents "by this league were tied in a bond of special affection, for mutual counsel and assistance for ever. They were so linkt together, as to account themselves one and the same convent: so that if one of the abbots died, the survivor being desired was immediately to go to his convent; and there before him they were to make a canonical election; or if already made, they were to declare it in his presence. If the friars of either place were by any necessity driven from their monastery, the other was to receive them, and afford them a familiar refuge and aid: with a place in their Quire Chapterhouse and Refectory, _secundum conversionis suae tempus_." This abbot is said to have been much beloved by the monks. He died in 1226. =Martin of Ramsey= (1226-1233), one of the monks, was chosen to succeed Alexander. He remained only six years. After his death another monk, =Walter of S. Edmunds= (1233-1245), was elected. He was a great builder. It was during his time that the minster was solemnly re-dedicated. This abbot made no less than three visits to Rome. On the third occasion he was summoned in consequence of some irregularity in an appointment to the living of Castor; but he seems to have managed his case very adroitly, and to have escaped all censure by assigning an annuity of £10 a year to the Pope's nephew. Another account, however, represents the abbot as being so distressed at the indignities he suffered at the Papal Court, that, being unwell before he went there and his infirmities being increased by his journey, he died very soon after his return to England. "He left the abbey abounding in all good things; stored with horses, oxen, sheep and all cattle in great multitudes, and corn in some places for three years." He died in 1245. =William de Hotot= (1246-1249), another monk of the house, succeeded Walter. He held the office only three years, when he resigned and was assigned a residence at the manor of Cottingham, afterwards exchanged for one at Oxney, a few miles only from Peterborough. It is said that his resignation was caused by complaints being made of his enriching his own kinsfolk, "whereof he had great multitudes swarming about him," at the expense of the monastery. But the injury he did could not have been very considerable, for his body was brought to Peterborough to be buried, and he had an honourable commemoration in the Church's calendar. =John de Caleto= (1249-1262), that is, of Calais, came here from Winchester, where he was prior. He was related to the queen. As one of the Chief Justices he went on circuit. But he seems to have taken the side of the Barons in the civil war, and is said to have held the office of treasurer to them for the last two years of his life. He was seldom in residence at Peterborough, but appointed a very efficient deputy, who afterwards succeeded him as abbot. =Robert of Button= (1262-1274) fought in the battle of Northampton against the king. The king, coming to assault the town, "espied amongst his enemies' ensigns on the wall the ensign of the Abbey of Peterburgh, whereat he was so angry that he vowed to destroy the nest of such ill birds. But the town of Northampton being reduced, Abbot Robert, by mediation of friends to the king, saved both himself and church, but was forced to pay for his delinquency, to the king 300 marks, to the queen £20, to Prince Edward £60, to the Lord Souch £6, 13s. 4d." When the fortune of war changed and the Barons were victorious at Lewes, "then did the other side fleece the Abbot of Peterburgh for his contribution to the king." After Evesham again the king repeated his exactions, and the unfortunate abbot had to pay enormously. The total amount that he paid on these several occasions is put down at a sum which seems almost impossible, being upwards of £4320. This abbot attended the Council of Lyons in 1273, and died abroad as he was returning to England. He was buried abroad; his heart, being brought to Peterborough, was interred before the altar in one of the chapels in the south transept. =Richard of London= (1274-1295) is said to have been born in the parish of S. Pancras. He was a monk of the house, and while sacrist had erected the Bell-tower and given two bells. A great deal of litigation was carried on in his time, and he and the abbey were fortunate in having in one of the monks, William of Woodford, a man of great skill and judgement, to conduct the different cases before the courts. So uniformly successful was he and so wisely did he act as coadjutor of Richard when he became very old and infirm, that he was elected to the abbacy on the death of Richard of London in 1295. =William of Woodford= (1295-1299) only lived four years after he became abbot. After him came =Godfrey of Crowland= (1299-1321), the celerarius of the monastery. He is very highly praised in the chronicles for the various services he rendered to the abbey. More than once he was at the heavy charge of entertaining the king and his court, and he contributed largely to the expenses of the war with Scotland. [Illustration: Iron Railings, 1721.] =Adam of Boothby= (1321-1338), one of the monks, was a man of great "innocence and simplicity" His revenues were much employed in contributions to the king's expenses and in royal entertainments; and his energies devoted to divers legal difficulties connected with manors, wardships, repairs of bridges, rights of hunting, and the like. Of the last eleven abbots, whose rule extended over a period of 124 years, all but one had been monks of the place. =Henry of Morcot= (1338-1353) in all probability was also one of the monks, but this is not so recorded. And the same may be said of all the remaining abbots, but the historians do not say so until the time of William in 1471. At the same time it is never said that any of them came from elsewhere. =Robert of Ramsey= (1353-1361) ruled for eight years, and nothing else is known about him. =Henry of Overton= (1361-1391) was abbot during the commotions in King Richard II.'s reign. The tenants with others rose up against the abbey, intending to destroy it. The Bishop of Norwich "coming to the assistance of the monastery with a strong power, forced the villains to desist from their enterprise: nay, dispersed them, and took some of them, and killed others; the rest, taking the church for sanctuary, which they intended to have destroyed, were there run through with lances and swords; some of them hard by the altar, others by the walls of the church, both within and without." =Nicholas= (1391-1396), =William Genge= (1396-1408) the first mitred abbot, =John Deeping= (1408-1438) in turn succeeded. Nothing remarkable is told of them. The name of the last and the names of the next two are really the names of places; but the prefix "de" seems now to have been discontinued, and the place-name to have become a surname. Abbot John resigned his office the year before he died. =Richard Ashton= (1438-1471) took great pains about the regulation of the services in the church, and drew up a customary out of the ancient usages of the place. =William Ramsey= (1471-1496) appears to have devoted his time to the management of the estates and to upholding the territorial privileges of the house. If the epitaph formerly to be seen on a brass on his tomb is to be believed, he was a man prudent, just, pious, esteemed by all, chaste, kind, and adorned with every virtue. =Robert Kirton= (1496-1528) has left several proofs of his energy in building, signing, as it were, the stones with his autograph. His rebus, a kirk on a ton, sometimes accompanied by the initial of his Christian name, is to be seen in the New Building, which he completed, on the Deanery gateway, and on the graceful oriel window in the Bishop's Palace. The chamber to which this window gives light still retains the name originally given of "Heaven's Gate Chamber." Much other work done by him towards the beautifying of the church and buildings has perished. The last abbot was =John Chambers= (1528-1540). One incident of considerable interest is related as having taken place in his first year. "Cardinal Wolsey came to Peterburgh, where he kept his Easter. Upon Palm Sunday he carried his palm, going with the monks in procession, and the Thursday following he kept his Maundy, washing and kissing the feet of fifty-nine poor people, and having dried them, he gave to every one of them 12d. and three ells of canvas for a shirt; he gave also to each of them a pair of shoes and a portion of red herrings. On Easter day he went in procession in his cardinal's vestments, and sang the High-Mass himself after a solemn manner, which he concluded with his benediction and remission upon all the hearers." This abbot was a native of Peterborough, and was sometimes known as John Burgh; and on the brass placed on his tomb he was called "Johannes Burgh, Burgo natus." A monumental effigy was also erected to him, "made of white chalkstone"; and this is almost certainly the figure now placed (temporarily) at the back of the apse. This abbot was B.D. of Cambridge and one of the king's chaplains. It was during his time that Queen Katherine of Arragon was interred in the minster. The well-known story that the building was spared by the king out of regard to the memory of his first wife is told by Dean Patrick in these words:--[34]"There is this traditional story goes concerning the preservation of this church at the dissolution of abbeys: that a little after Queen Katherine's interment here (which Mr G. mentions), some courtiers suggesting to the king how well it would become his greatness to erect a fair monument for her, he answered, 'Yes, he would leave her one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom,' meaning this church, for he had then in his thoughts the demolishing of abbeys, which shortly after followed." Abbot Chambers surrendered the monastery to the king in 1540, and was appointed guardian of the temporalities, with a pension of £266, 13s. 4d. and 100 loads of wood. The king divided the whole property of the abbey into three parts, retaining one-third for himself, and assigning the other parts upon the foundation of the see to the Bishop and Chapter respectively. If the annual value of the portion he reserved for his own use may be taken to be exactly one-third of the possessions of the abbey, the entire property must have been worth as nearly as possible £2200 per annum. The last abbot became the first bishop. It is remarkable that of the two queens buried at Peterborough, the body of one has been removed to Westminster by the orders of her son, and that a similar removal had been previously designed for the body of the other. Queen Katherine's daughter, Queen Mary, left directions in her will that "the body of the virtuous Lady and my most dere and well-beloved mother of happy memory, Queen Kateryn, which lyeth now buried at Peterborowh," should be removed and laid near the place of her own sepulture, and that honourable monuments should be made for both. It would have been a singular coincidence if this intention had been carried out. CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE. The Abbey Church was converted into the Cathedral of the newly-founded diocese of Peterborough by deed bearing date September 4, 1541. The counties of Northampton and Rutland were the limits of the new see. The king's original plan for the establishment of bishoprics out of the confiscated estates of monastic establishments was too generous to be put into practice. He designed the foundation of no less than twenty-one new sees. In this scheme Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire were assigned to the diocese of Peterborough; and, considering the situation of the new cathedral, this would have been a more satisfactory arrangement than the one which was ultimately carried out. The only change that has been made in the limits of the diocese is that, in the year 1839, the county of Leicester was detached from the see of Lincoln and joined to Peterborough. As has been said above, the first bishop was =John Chambers= (1541-1556). He was consecrated[35] in the minster on the 23rd of October 1541, by Thomas (Thirlby), Bishop of Ely, Robert (Blyth), Bishop of Down, last Abbot of Thorney, Suffragan of Ely, and Thomas (Hallam or Swillington), Bishop of Philadelphia, Suffragan of Lincoln. Strype has an account of his costly funeral. The two memorials to him in the church had been erected by himself in his lifetime. =David Pole= (1556-1559) is generally held to have been a relative (some say a nephew) of Cardinal Reginald Pole. He was Dean of the Arches. He was not consecrated till August 1557, and so held the bishopric less than two years, being deprived by Queen Elizabeth in June 1559. He lived quietly in London till his death in 1568. =Edmund Scambler= (1560-1584) in the Roman index of books prohibited is called Pseudo-Episcopus, no doubt because there was another Bishop of Peterborough, Pole, still living. He alienated many of the lands and manors of his bishopric to the queen and to her courtiers; and as a reward he was translated to Norwich, where he died ten years later. =Richard Howland= (1584-1600) was Master of Magdalene, and afterwards of S. John's, Cambridge. He was present at the funeral of Mary Queen of Scots. He was buried at the upper end of the choir, but no stone or monument exists to his memory. =Thomas Dove= (1600-1630) was Dean of Norwich. He was[36] "a lover of hospitality, keeping a very free house, and having always a numerous family, yet was so careful of posterity that he left a fair estate to his heirs." He was buried in the north transept. "Over his body was erected a very comely monument of long quadrangular form, having four corner pilasters supporting a fair table of black marble, and, within, the pourtraiture of the bishop lying in his Episcopal habit." This was destroyed in 1643. There was a long Latin inscription in prose and verse, and among the verses these occur:-- "Hoc addam: Hie illa est senio argentata Columba Davidis, coelos hinc petit ille suos." This monument was erected by the bishop's eldest son, Sir William Dove, Kt., of Upton. =William Peirse= (1630-1632) was promoted from the Deanery. He only remained here as bishop two years, when he was translated to Bath and Wells. "A man of excellent parts, both in divinity and knowledge of the laws: very vigilant and active he was for the good both of the ecclesiastical and civil state." He was silenced during the civil war, but restored in 1660. On his tombstone, at Walthamstow, it is said "_Templum Cathedrale Wellense reparavit, Episcopale Palatium exædificavit, coelis maturus terris valedixit an. æt._ 94 _salut_. 1670." =Augustine Lindsell= (1632-1634) was Dean of Lichfield. He was translated to Hereford after being bishop here two years, but died within a few months. =Francis Dee= (1634-1638) was Dean of Chichester. "He was a man of very pious life and affable behaviour." He founded scholarships and fellowships at S. John's College, Cambridge, of which he had been Fellow, for boys from the King's School, Peterborough, of his name or kindred. In 1637 Archbishop Laud reported to the King that "My Lord of Peterborough hath taken a great deal of pains and brought his diocese into very good order." He left by will £100 to the repairs of the Cathedral, and the same amount to the repairs of S. Paul's. He was buried in the choir, near the throne. =John Towers= (1638-1649) was one of the King's chaplains. He was promoted from the Deanery. He protested, with eleven other bishops, against the opposition that was made by the Parliamentary party to their taking their seats in the House of Lords, in which protest it was declared that all laws, orders, votes, or resolutions, were in themselves null and of none effect, which in their absence from Dec. 27th 1641, had been passed, or should afterwards be passed, during the time of their enforced absence. For this they were committed to the Tower, and kept there four or five months. Being set free he was allowed to return to Peterborough, but his revenues were taken away. Living here in a state of continual alarm, he betook himself to the king's forces at Oxford, where he remained until the surrender of the place. Coming back here in 1646 his health failed, and he died about three weeks before the king was beheaded. He was buried in the choir. [Illustration: Details of Chasuble on Abbot's Tomb.] No successor was appointed until the Restoration. =Benjamin Laney= (1660-1663) was then made Bishop. He was Dean of Rochester, and had been Master of Pembroke, Cambridge. He was translated to Lincoln in 1663, and to Ely in 1667. He died in 1675, and is buried at Lambeth. =Joseph Henshaw= (1663-1679) was Dean of Chichester. He died suddenly on March 9, 1679, on his return from attending service at Westminster Abbey. He was buried at East Lavant in Sussex, where he had been rector. =William Lloyd= (1679-1685) was translated from Llandaff, and was further translated to Norwich in 1685. He was deprived of his see as a Nonjuror in 1691. He lived at Hammersmith till his death in 1710. He was the last survivor of the seven deprived bishops. It is singular that his namesake, William Lloyd, bishop of S. Asaph, should have been one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower by King James II. in 1688; but he had no scruples about taking the oaths to the new sovereigns, and became afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, and ultimately of Worcester. =Thomas White= (1685-1691) was one of the seven committed to the Tower, and also one of the seven deprived in 1691 as Nonjurors. He attended Sir John Fenwick on the scaffold. This bishop, with his predecessor, Bishop Lloyd, the deprived Bishop of Norwich, were two of the consecrators of the Nonjuring Bishops, Hickes and Wagstaffe. There were really ten bishops (including Archbishop Sancroft) who refused the oaths to William and Mary; but the Bishops of Worcester, Chichester, and Chester died before the time fixed for the deprivation. Bishop White lived in retirement after he left his diocese. He died in 1698, and his funeral is mentioned in Evelyn's _Diary_, under date June 5th: "Dr White, late Bishop of Peterborough, who had been deprived for not complying with Government, was buried in St Gregory's churchyard or vault, at St Paul's. His hearse was accompanied by two Nonjuror bishops, Dr. Turner of Ely, and Dr. Lloyd, with forty Nonjuror clergymen, who could not stay the office of the burial, because the Dean of St Paul's had appointed a conforming minister to read the office, at which all much wondered, there being nothing in that office which mentioned the present king." Lathbury remarks on this retirement from the grave, that it was a singular circumstance, and contrary to the practice of the Nonjurors in many other cases. =Richard Cumberland= (1691-1718) had a reputation as a philosophical writer. The only memoir of him is to be found in the preface to _Sanchoniathon's History_,[37] a posthumous work, in which his chaplain (and son-in-law) thus describes his appointment:--"The king was told that Dr Cumberland was the fittest man he could nominate to the bishopric of Peterborough. Thus a private country clergyman, without posting to Court--a place he had rarely seen--without suing to great men, without taking the least step towards soliciting for it, was pitched upon to fill a great trust, only because he was fittest for it. He walked after his usual manner on a post-day to the coffee-house, and read in the newspaper that one Dr Cumberland of Stamford was named to the bishopric of Peterborough, a greater surprise to himself than to anybody else." His chaplain speaks of the bishop's character, zeal, and learning in terms of unqualified praise. One of the bishop's sons, Richard, was Archdeacon of Northampton, and father of Denison Cumberland, Bishop of Clonfert and of Kilmore. This last named married a daughter of Dr Bentley, the famous Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and one of their sons was Richard Cumberland, the dramatist. Bishop Richard Cumberland is buried in the Cathedral, and a tablet to his memory remains in the New Building. =White Kennett= (1718-1728) had been Dean. He was a most industrious writer, many of his works, which are upwards of fifty in number, being most laborious. His manuscript collections in the British Museum are also of great value. He is best known from his antiquarian tastes and studies, and for having directed the attention of his clergy to the value of parish registers. It would seem that before his time no transcripts of parish registers were ever sent to the Bishop's Registry at Peterborough. The earliest transcripts now to be found date only from the beginning of his episcopate, except that, in a few instances, some incumbents appear to have sent the entries for six or eight years previously. Notwithstanding the efficiency of his predecessor he "found the irregularities of the diocese great and many." The Cathedral service was negligently conducted, many clergy were non-resident, some small benefices had been left unfilled. Many other abuses were discovered from time to time. Bishop Kennett was most active and conscientious in administering his office, and thoroughly re-organised the diocese; but his strong political partisanship made for him a great number of enemies. The enmity he raised came to a culminating point while he was still dean. An altar-piece representing the Last Supper had been painted for Whitechapel Church.[38] In this Judas was painted turning round to the spectator, and was intended to represent Kennett. We do not know whether the likeness in itself was sufficiently good to be recognised, but the intention was sufficiently indicated by a black patch in the centre of the forehead, just under the wig. Kennett always wore such a patch, to hide a scar which had remained after being trepanned in early manhood. Judas is, moreover, represented as clean-shaven, being the only figure so drawn except the Evangelist S. John. Great scandal and excitement were caused by this picture, and it was removed. It ultimately found a home at S. Albans Abbey, where it may still be seen (patch and all), but no longer in the position it once occupied over the high altar. Bishop Kennett died in 1728, and is buried in the New Building. =Robert Clavering= (1728-1747) was consecrated Bishop of Llandaff in 1725, and translated to Peterborough in 1728. He is buried here, but no memorial exists. =John Thomas= (1747-1757) was Canon of S. Paul's. He was translated to Sarum in 1757, and to Winchester in 1761. He was preceptor to Prince George, afterwards King George III., who used to visit him at Farnham Castle. In the early part of his episcopate he had a namesake on the bench, John Thomas, formerly Dean of Peterborough, who was made Bishop of Lincoln in 1744, and of Sarum in 1761; and during the latter part another namesake, John Thomas, Bishop of Rochester from 1775 to 1793. Bishop Thomas of Winchester died in 1781, in his 85th year, and is buried in his cathedral. =Richard Terrick= (1757-1764) was Canon of S. Paul's. He was translated to London in 1764, and died in 1777. =Robert Lamb= (1764-1769) had been Dean. He is buried at Hatfield, where he had been rector. =John Hinchcliffe= (1769-1794) is an instance of a man, rising from an inferior station to positions of the greatest eminence. His father was a stable-master in London. Proceeding from Westminster School to Trinity College, Cambridge, he obtained a Fellowship there. He afterwards, through a gentleman of wealth to whom he was tutor, secured some very influential friends, and became Head Master of Westminster School, Chaplain to the King, and Master of Trinity. This last appointment he continued to hold with his bishopric until 1789, when he was made Dean of Durham. A memoir published at the time of his death describes him as learned, assiduous in his duties, obliging in his manners, and honest and sincere in his religious and political principles. He died in 1794, and is buried in the cathedral. =Spencer Madan= (1794-1813) was a prebendary and king's chaplain, and first cousin to the poet Cowper. He came back to Peterborough from Bristol, to which see he was consecrated in 1792. He is buried in the New Building. [Illustration: Details of Albs on Abbots' Tombs.] =John Parsons= (1813-1819) was Master of Balliol and Dean of Bristol. He was a man of great mark and influence at Oxford, where he died and was buried. There is a monument to him in the chapel of Balliol. =Herbert Marsh= (1819-1839) was the author of many controversial works. He was translated to this see from Llandaff, where he had been bishop since 1816. He was buried in the New Building--the last bishop interred in the cathedral. =George Davys= (1839-1864) was Dean of Chester, and had been preceptor to Queen Victoria. He was buried in the Cathedral Yard; the Queen sent one of her carriages with servants in state liveries to attend the funeral as a mark of her affection and esteem. =Francis Jeune= (1864-1868) had been Dean of Jersey, Master of Pembroke, Oxford, and Dean of Lincoln. His eldest son was the well-known judge. Bishop Jeune is buried in the Cathedral Yard. =William Connor Magee= (1868-1891) was Dean of Cork. He was translated to the Archbishopric of York, but died within a very few months, May 5th, 1891. He is buried in the Cathedral Yard, where a massive cross of Irish marble has been erected over his grave. In the south choir aisle of the cathedral there is also a recumbent effigy, the likeness to the deceased prelate being most remarkably good. His career is so recent and his eminence so well known that it is unnecessary to speak of them. =Mandell Creighton= (1891-1897) had been Canon of Windsor, and previously of Worcester. He was translated to London when Bishop Temple became Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1901, and is buried in the crypt of S. Paul's; an inlaid marble slab copied from the one over his grave is in the south choir aisle of the cathedral. =Hon. Edward Carr Glyn= (1897-1916), Vicar of Kensington, Chaplain to the Queen; resigned 1916. =Frank Theodore Woods= (1916), Vicar of Bradford, Yorks, 1912-1916, is the present bishop. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL.] PRINCIPAL DIMENSIONS. Interior length, 426 feet. Interior height, 78 " Nave length, 228 " Nave width, 35 " Nave and Aisles, 79 " Transept length, 185 " Transept width, 58 " Area, 41,090 sq feet DEANS OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. 1541 Francis Abree, B.D. 1543 Gerard Carleton, B.D., Canon of Westminster. 1549 James Curthop, M.A., Canon of Christ Church. 1557 James Boxall, LL.D., Archdeacon of Ely, Warden of Winchester, Dean of Norwich, Dean of Windsor. 1560 William Latimer, D.D., Archdeacon of Westminster. 1585 Richard Fletcher, D.D., Bishop of Bristol, of Worcester, and finally of London. 1590 Thomas Nevill, D.D., Master of Magdalene, and afterwards of Trinity, Cambridge, Canon of Ely, Dean of Canterbury. 1597 John Palmer, D.D., Prebendary of Lichfield, Master of Magdalene, Cambridge. 1607 Richard Clayton, D.D., Archdeacon of Ely, Master of Magdalene, and afterwards of S. John's, Cambridge. 1612 George Meriton, D.D., Dean of Bucking, Dean of York. 1616 Henry Beaumont, D.D., Dean of Windsor. 1622 William Peirse, D.D., Prebendary of S. Paul's, Canon of Christ Church, Bishop of Peterborough, and afterwards of Bath and Wells. 1630 John Towers, D.D., Bishop of Peterborough. 1638 Thomas Jackson, D.D., Prebendary of Winchester, President of Corpus, Oxford. 1640 John Cosin, D.D., Prebendary of Durham, Archdeacon of Cleveland, Master of Peterhouse, Dean of Durham. 1660 Edward Rainbow, D.D., Master of Magdalene, Cambridge, Bishop of Carlisle. 1664 James Duport, D.D., Master of Magdalene, Cambridge, Professor of Greek, Prebendary of Lincoln. 1679 Simon Patrick, D.D., Canon of Westminster, Bishop of Chichester, and afterwards of Ely. 1689 Richard Kidder, D.D., Prebendary of Norwich, Bishop of Bath and Wells. 1601 Samuel Freeman D.D. 1707 White Kermett, D.D., Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Prebendary of Lincoln and of Sarum, Bishop of Peterborough. 1718 Richard Reynolds, LL.D., Prebendary and Chancellor of Peterborough, Bishop of Bangor, and afterwards of Lincoln. 1721 William Gee, D.D., Canon of Westminster, Prebendary and Dean of Lincoln. 1722 John Mandeville, D.D., Archdeacon and Chancellor of Lincoln, Canon of Windsor. 1725 Francis Lockier, D.D. 1740 John Thomas, D.D., Canon of Westminster and of S. Paul's, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards of Salisbury. 1744 Robert Lamb, D.D., Bishop of Peterborough. 1764 Charles Tarrant, D.D., Canon of Bristol, Dean of Carlisle, Prebendary of Rochester, Prebendary of Sarum. 1791 Charles Manners Sutton, D.D., Bishop of Norwich, Dean of Windsor, Archbishop of Canterbury. 1792 Peter Peckard, D.D., Prebendary of Southwell, Master of Magdalene, Cambridge. 1798 Thomas Kipling, D.D. 1822 James Henry Monk, D.D., Professor of Greek, Cambridge, Canon of Westminster, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 1830 Thomas Turton, D.D., Professor of Mathematics, Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, Prebendary of Lincoln, Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Ely. 1842 George Butler, D.D., Headmaster of Harrow. 1853 Augustus Page Saunders, D.D., Headmaster of Charterhouse. 1878 John James Stewart Perowne, D.D., Prebendary of S. David's, Canon of Llandaff, Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, Bishop of Worcester. 1891 Marsham Argles, D.D., Canon of Peterborough. 1893 William Clavell Ingram, D.D., Hon. Canon of Peterborough. 1901 William Hagger Barlow, D.D., Prebendary of S. Paul's Cathedral. 1908 Arnold Henry Page, M.A. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "English Towns and Districts," 1883, pp. 103, 130.] [Footnote 2: A few other cathedrals which were originally churches of monasteries are still called Minsters, as York (nearly always), Canterbury (occasionally), Ripon, Southwell, and perhaps more. Lincoln Cathedral though often called a Minster was a Cathedral from the first, and was never attached to a monastery.] [Footnote 3: Gunton, p. 4.] [Footnote 4: "Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis." By W.G. Searle, M.A., Camb. Antiq. Soc., 8vo. xxvii. p. 65.] [Footnote 5: Searle: Ingulf, p. 63.] [Footnote 6: "On the Abbey Church of Peterborough." By G.A. Poole, M.A. Arch. Soc. Archdeac. Northampton, 1855, p. 190.] [Footnote 7: Poole, p. 193.] [Footnote 8: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 1128.] [Footnote 9: "Remarks on the Architecture of Peterborough Cathedral." By F.A. Paley, M.A. 2nd Ed., 1859, p. 21.] [Footnote 10: The two eastern pillars of the nave are circular; and the third pillar from the tower, on both sides, is "composed of nook-shafts set in rectangular recesses against the body of the pier."] [Footnote 11: Some of Mr Poole's reasoning, as to the different parts of the nave to be attributed to different abbots, depends upon an assumption that the Saxon church was on the site of the present one, and that some part of the nave was still existing in a ruinous condition while the present choir and tower were being built. Recent discoveries have proved that this assumption is groundless, for the nave of the Saxon church was beyond the south aisle of the existing nave.] [Footnote 12: Poole, p. 204.] [Footnote 13: Paley, p. 54.] [Footnote 14: Poole, p. 216.] [Footnote 15: The engraving that accompanies this description represents a dignified altar-piece, but seems taken from a rough drawing, or possibly from memory. On the altar were two tapers burning, an alms dish, and two books. The Abbot's chair, of stone, is to the south, facing west.] [Footnote 16: "Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell," ii, 18.] [Footnote 17: These shields, which were of metal, are now arranged on the walls of the library.] [Footnote 18: Where the author has often seen it. It was at last destroyed in a fire.] [Footnote 19: Museum Criticum, viii, 672.] [Footnote 20: "Handbook of Architecture," 2nd ed., 1859, p. 869.] [Footnote 21: "English Towns and Districts," 1883, p. 29.] [Footnote 22: Guide, p. 48.] [Footnote 23: Sir William Feeld, Peticanon, in his will dated 1558, desires that his body may be buried in the Gallery before the church door, where all his fellows are buried. "Gallery" here is probably a corruption of "Galilee."] [Footnote 24: Paley, p. 30.] [Footnote 25: Gunton, p. 91.] [Footnote 26: Patrick's Supplement to Gunton, p. 334.] [Footnote 27: King Ethelred resigned his crown and became Abbot of Bardney. He is here figured with a mitre.] [Footnote 28: As well as one other, probably the one now under one of the arches on the north of the choir.] [Footnote 29: Archaeological Journal, 1861, p. 196.] [Footnote 30: Gunton, p. 12.] [Footnote 31: Properly Northumberland. See Bede's Eccl. Hist. iii. 6.] [Footnote 32: Patrick, p. 284.] [Footnote 33: Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 184.] [Footnote 35: Patrick, p. 330.] [Footnote 35: Stubbs' _Episcopal Succession_, p. 79.] [Footnote 36: Gunton, p. 82.] [Footnote 37: P. 12; quoted in the account of Bishop Cumberland in the _Penny Cyclopeia_, viii. 229.] [Footnote 38: A full account of this famous picture with an engraving is given in _Northamptonshire Notes and Queries_, iv. 209.] INDEX Abbots, account of, 112-126. Altars, 87. Apse, 22. Bell-tower, 48. Benedict, Abbot, 16. Bishops, account of, 127-134. Canons' door, 56. Ceiling of nave, 84; of choir, 64. Chapel of St. Thomas, 100. Choir, 60-76. Church of S. John Baptist, 108. City, 108. Cloister Court, 103. Danes, ravages of, 6, 8, 11. Deanery, 102. Deans, 136. Dean's door, 50. Diocese, history of, 127. Edgar, King, 8-10. Ernulf, Abbot, 12. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, 8. Fire of 1116, 12. Gateway of Monastery, 99. of Deanery, 102. Glass, stained, 88. Guildhall, 108. Gunton, Prebendary, historian, 6, 14. Hereward, 11. Infirmary, 103. John of Sais, Abbot, 12-13. Katharine of Aragon, Queen, 24, 26, 95. Knights' Chamber, 101. Lady Chapel (destroyed), 20, 52. Laurel Court, 103. Lectern, 74. Magee, Archbishop, monument, 96. Martin, Abbot, 15. Mary Queen of Scots, burial, 95. Monastery, foundation of, 5. Monastery, history of, 112. Monastery, plan of, 51, 52. Monuments, 91. Museum, 111. Nave, 81. New building, 24, 55, 76. Norman church built, 13, 15 Organ, 72. Palace, Bishop's, 106. Patrick, Dean, 14. Parvise, 45, 90. Pavement of choir, 72-74 Porch, western, 22, 45, 90. Pulpit, 70. Puritanical destruction, 26. Reredos, 72. Reredos, destroyed, 26. Restoration, first, 28; recent, 31-35. Saxon church, 8-10, 18, 80. Saxulf, Abbot, 5. Scarlett's monument, 98. Screens of choir, 74. Spire of south-west tower, 22. Stalls, 67-69. Throne, 70. Transept, north, 52; south, 55; interior, 77. Transept, western, 87. Tower, central, 21, 29-32, 51. Towers, western, 17, 44. West front, 19, 33, 39-44. William of Waterville, Abbot, 15. 
13331	----	[Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CHICHESTER A SHORT HISTORY & DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIOCESE AND SEE HUBERT C. CORLETTE A.R.I.B.A. WITH XLV ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1901 PREFACE. All the facts of the following history were supplied to me by many authorities. To a number of these, references are given in the text. But I wish to acknowledge how much I owe to the very careful and original research provided by Professor Willis, in his "Architectural History of the Cathedral"; by Precentor Walcott, in his "Early Statutes" of Chichester; and Dean Stephen, in his "Diocesan History." The footnotes, which refer to the latter work, indicate the pages in the smaller edition. But the volume could never have been completed without the great help given to me on many occassions by Prebendary Bennett. His deep and intimate knowledge of the cathedral structure and its history was always at my disposal. It is to him, as well as to Dr. Codrington and Mr. Gordon P.G. Hills, I am still further indebted for much help in correcting the proofs and for many valuable suggestions. H.C.C. C O N T E N T S. CHAP. PAGE I. HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL............... 3 II. THE EXTERIOR.......................... 51 III. THE INTERIOR.......................... 81 IV. THE DIOCESE AND SEE: OTHER BUILDINGS IN THE CITY ... 101 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Chichester Cathedral from the South.... _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See........................ _Title_ Longitudinal Section, about 1815........................ 2 Chichester Cathedral from the East...................... 3 The West Front, about 1836.............................. 7 View through the South Triforium of the Nave............ 9 The Clerestory Passage, Nave, South Side............... 11 Historical Section from Willis......................... 13 The Clerestory, North Side of Nave..................... 14 Pier-Capitals in the Retro-Choir....................... 16 Transverse Sections from Willis........................ 18 The Cathedral from the South-East, about 1836.......... 25 The South Transept, about 1836......................... 27 The Bell Tower as seen from West Street................ 31 Decoration formerly on the Choir Vault................. 33 Chichester Cathedral, about 1650....................... 39 The Nave, about 1836................................... 44 The Retro-Choir and Reredos, about 1836................ 45 The Cathedral from the South-West...................... 50 The North-East Angle of the South-West Tower........... 52 Wall Arcade in the West Porch.......................... 54 The South Doorway...................................... 60 The Cloister from the South-East....................... 61 The East walk of the Cloister.......................... 63 The Choir and Central Tower from the South-East........ 67 Windows of the Lady-Chapel, South Side................. 70 The Cathedral from the North-East...................... 74 The Detached Bell-Tower................................ 77 The Nave, looking West................................. 80 The Nave, looking East................................. 82 The South Aisle, from the Nave......................... 84 The Sacristy........................................... 87 The Altar and Reredos.................................. 89 The Triforium in the Choir............................. 91 Decoration on the Vault of the Lady-Chapel............. 92 The Presbytery, or Retro-Choir, looking North-East..... 93 The Lady-Chapel........................................ 95 The North Choir-Aisle.................................. 97 The Library............................................ 98 The Town Cross......................................... 100 Sculptured Panels in the South Choir-Aisle............. 105 Tomb Assigned to Bishop Richard of Wych................ 113 S. Clement's Chapel, and Tomb of Bishop Durnford....... 121 Painted Decoration formerly on the Choir Vault......... 125 PLAN of the Cathedral......................... _At End_ [Illustration: LONGITUDINAL SECTION ABOUT 1815, SHOWING THE ARUNDEL SCREEN AND THE POSITION OF THE REREDOS. From Dallaway's "West Sussex." (Scale 75 feet to 1 in.)] [Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE EAST. _Photochrome Co., Ltd., Photo.] CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL. Any attempt to write the history of a cathedral requires that the subject shall be approached with two leading ideas in view. One of these has reference to the history of a Church; the other to the story of a building. The two aspects are clearly to be distinguished, but their mutual relation may be better appreciated when we realise how intimately they are bound together. Ecclesiastical history, or "ecclesiology," and architectural history, or "archaeology," do not exist apart; for the needs of Christian liturgy indicated what arrangement was required in those buildings that were peculiarly dedicated to the use of the Church; hence we have, in the mere building itself, to consider the condition of ecclesiastical and architectural growth displayed by its character during each stage of its development, and this development, this character, is to be discovered as well in the plan and structure of the fabric, with its decorative details, as in the record that documents and traditions have preserved. But we need to remember that one see, one building, represents a link in one long continuing chain, and in doing this we naturally look back as well as forward to observe the relation of either to the past and to the present. Such an attitude as this requires that we refer to that period when the subject of this chapter was not yet part of the native soil of Sussex, and in doing this we find that so early as the eighth century the town of Chichester was even then a known centre of civil, though apparently not ecclesiastical, activity; for it is not until about the middle of the tenth century that some uncertain documentary evidence refers to "Bishop Brethelm and the brethren dwelling at Chichester." [1] It may be that Brethelm was a bishop in, though not of, Chichester, who dwelt and worked among the south Saxons living in and about the city, for the history of the diocese and see will show that probably there was no episcopate established under that name until a little more than one hundred years later. [1] Walcott, "Early Statutes," p. 12. Ceadwalla's foundation of the see at Selsea dated from about the end of the seventh century; but we know nothing about any cathedral church at that place during the following three hundred and fifty years. If, however, there was a bishop in charge of the missionary priests, deacons, and laymen who lived there together, there must necessarily have been a "cathedra" in the church they used. When Stigand came from Selsea to establish his see in Chichester he found the city already furnished with a minster dedicated to S. Peter. He had effected this transfer because the Council of London had decided in 1075 that all the then village sees should be removed to towns; and as there is no evidence of any attempt to provide a new cathedral until about the year 1088, the existing minster must have been appropriated for the see. It has been supposed that Stigand may have devised some scheme for building a new church, and even that he saw it carried out so far as to provide the foundations on which to execute this idea. But there appears to be no authority which warrants the assumption that he did even so much as this, for history says nothing about such an early beginning of the new operations, tradition asserts no more, and speculation suggests probabilities merely. We are obliged, therefore, to be satisfied with the fact that the work begun about 1088 was consecrated by Bishop Ralph de Luffa, in 1108, and it is possible even now to see the stone which commemorates that ceremony embedded in the walling of the present church. Unfortunately no more than about six years had passed since this, the first, dedication, when a fire occurred which burnt part of the fabric. Ralph was still living, and began at once to repair the damage that had been done; and the king (Henry I.) gave him much help by encouraging his endeavour. What, then, had been accomplished during the twenty years between 1088 and 1108? In 1075 Stigand transferred the see. About thirteen years later the new cathedral building appears to have been begun under Ralph, and in another twenty years so much had been finished as would allow him to see it dedicated. It is probable that before this ceremony was performed a considerable portion of the eastern section of the work was finished; for in accordance with a general custom with the mediæval church builders, this part would have been that first begun. But how much of it was ready for use? The sanctuary and presbytery, or choir, with its necessary structural appendages, no doubt first appeared. It may be that no more than this was ready when the dedication took place. But it is not possible to say with any authority what actually was finished. Nevertheless, the character of the building itself explains the course in which the structure was developed. After the first fire, in 1114, the work steadily continued, and it is possible that before that mishap occurred, certain other parts had been begun, if not finished. The remains of the original nave still present distinct evidence to show that it was, with the aisles, built in two sections; and these, although they appear at first to be alike, prove upon closer examination that the four bays towards the west are of a later date than those other four eastward. Now it is not essential that we should know exactly how much of the building was finished by a certain year, or what stage towards completion had been reached at any particular time; it is sufficient at present that we should be able to indicate the general trend of the operations,--and this would suggest the conclusion that, having prepared so much as was necessary about the chancel, the builders went on busily, after the dedication, to deal with the transept and the nave. Then followed those four early bays of the nave which are nearest to the east. It is quite safe to assume upon various grounds that the work had been carried on successfully up to this stage early in the twelfth century; but neither the documentary evidence available, nor the condition of the fabric, enables us to venture more than this surmise concerning its condition at that time. Between 1114 and the time of the second and serious fire in 1187, the remainder of the whole scheme planned a hundred years before was apparently finished. The first fire had excited some public interest in the great enterprise at Chichester, and from this an impetus was derived which helped towards its execution, after the small damage caused by the fire had been quickly repaired, for by about the year 1150 the four western bays of the nave, with its aisles, must have been complete. It should be understood that the fire in 1114 did not lead to any change in the character of the church such as was occasioned by that other fire which shall be considered presently; but the work had quietly continued, so that the aisles of the nave were vaulted by about 1170-1180, the lady-chapel was completed, and in 1184 all was ready for the second ceremony of consecration which then took place. It has been assumed that this act implies that the whole of the original scheme had been executed. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that again there are but few authentic records to show in what manner the work had been carried on, nor are there many indications of the way in which the necessary materials and money were provided to help it forward. But it is interesting to notice that in 1147 William, Earl of Arundel, gave to the see that quarter of the city in which stood the palace of the bishops, the residences of the canons, and the cathedral church. This grant of land confirmed the see in its possession of all that part of the city now within the bounds of the close. [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT, ABOUT 1836. _from Winkles's Cathedrals_.] What, then, was the plan of that church which was designed to suit the requirements set down by Bishop Ralph Luffa? The ground-plan at the end of the volume shows the building as it now remains, after many alterations have been made in the original scheme; but the arrangement is still, in its main features, much the same as was at first devised. The usual plan was adopted, and this was the provision of a nave and chancel having a transept between them so as to make the form of a cross. The nave had aisles along its whole length. These were extended on both sides eastward of the transept, and continued as an ambulatory round a semicircular apse. The transept also had a small apsidal chapel on the east side of both its north and south arms. At the point of intersection between the transept and the nave the supports of the central tower rose. Between this and the west end there were eight arches in each of the arcades opening north and south from the nave into the aisles. Beyond the crossing towards the east there were three similar arches in the arcades which connected the apse with the large piers of the central tower. These three bays, together with the apse, enclosed the chancel; and this comprised the sanctuary, which was that part within the apse itself, and also the presbytery, or choir of the priests, which occupied the remaining space between the apse and the arch into the transept beneath the tower. At a later date the accommodation of the choir was increased by making it occupy part of the space farther to the west. Possibly it projected into the nave. At the west end of each of the aisles of the nave a tower was placed, and between these two towers was the chief public entrance to the church. From the subsequent history of the structure it would appear that the two western towers had been built up and finished, so far, at least, as was necessary to allow of the completion of the nave with its aisles and roofs. The same may be concluded of the central tower. This latter probably rose only just above the ridge of the roofs. To carry it up so far would have been dictated to the builders by structural reasons; for such a height would be required to help the stability of the piers and arches below, since they had to resist a variety of opposed thrusts. But even this tower, low as it no doubt was, like others of the same date, did not survive the dedication more than about twenty-six years. The whole building was covered with a high-pitched wooden roof over the nave, transept, and chancel; and beneath the outer roof there was a flat inner ceiling of wood formed between the tie beams, similar to those now to be seen at Peterborough and S. Albans. The north and south aisles of the nave were protected by roofs which sloped up from their eaves against the wall that rose above the nave arcades. Internally the ceiling to these was a simple groined vault supported by transverse arches. Immediately above the vault of the aisles was the gallery of the triforium. This was lighted throughout by small external round-headed windows, some of which may still be seen embedded in the walls. The aisles and ambulatory of the chancel were treated by the same methods. In the triforium gallery, above the transverse arches of the aisles, were other semicircular arches. These served a double purpose: they acted as supports to the timber framework of the aisle roofs, and also as a means of buttressing the upper part of the nave walling in which the clerestory windows were placed. Such other buttresses as there had been were broad and flat, with but little projection from the surface of the wall. The windows throughout the building up to about the end of the twelfth century were small in comparison with some of those which were inserted at various times afterwards. [Illustration: VIEW THROUGH THE SOUTH TRIFORIUM OF THE NAVE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST TOWER. _From a photograph by Mr. F. Bund_.] It has been remarked that the termination of the early chancel towards the east was an apse, and that round this was carried the north and south choir aisles in the form of a continuous ambulatory. From this enclosing aisle--a semi-circle itself in form--three chapels were projected, each with a semicircular apsidal termination. The central one of the three was the lady-chapel. This consisted then of the three western bays only of the present chapel. The lady-chapel was added about eighty years after the early part of the nave had been built, and has since been much altered. The presence of this grouping of features is indicative of that influence which Continental architecture had exercised upon English art, and now that Norman government had been established that influence became more directly French. But though so strongly affected by this means, Anglo-Saxon character was always evident in work which was a native expression of the thought and personality of those by whom it was executed. Thus we see that the plan which Ralph approved for the new church that was to be built for him at Chichester was devised according to accepted traditional arrangement. He adopted no new idea when he decided what general form the cathedral should follow. The disposition of the several parts differed in no wise from that which had been followed during centuries before. The requirements of ritual had decided long since what were those essential features of planning to be insisted upon, for the pattern in germ was shown in the arrangement of the Mosaic Tabernacle. In the earliest plans the same distribution of parts was observed, though at a later date the transept was introduced--an idea which no doubt had its origin in some practical necessity, and was afterwards retained as being representative of an ecclesiastical symbol. Of the practical and artistic character of the architectural details we shall see more in examining the exterior and the interior of the church. These will lead us, of necessity, to deal more with archaeology in its relation to the history of architecture rather than of this particular church as a building used for ecclesiastical purposes. After the ceremony of 1184 building operations were continued, but the records available do not tell about anything of much interest for the next two or three years. Then in 1186-1187 a catastrophe occurred--the cathedral was again burnt. But this time the effects of the fire were much more disastrous than had been the case in 1114. So extensive was the destruction that the entire roofing, as well as the internal flat ceiling, was gone; and though we can glean no certain knowledge from documentary evidence, it appears probable that the eastern section of the building suffered more than any other, for whatever other causes may have aided in the wreck of this part--a weakness in the masonry, an insufficiency in the supports or abutments--the fall of such heavy timbers as those which must have formed the outer roof and inner ceiling of the chancel would in itself be sufficient to wreck the remainder. Whether the change in plan that now followed was really necessary because of the damage that had been done, or whether the fire provided a welcome opportunity by which new features might be introduced, we are not able to discover. It is sufficient that the chance was not lost, for in the eastern ambulatory of the cathedral church at Chichester is to be seen, as a result, one of the most truly beautiful examples of mediæval design that English architecture now possesses. [Illustration: THE CLERESTORY PASSAGE, NAVE, SOUTH SIDE. _From a photograph by Mr. F. Bond_.] In the nave some parts of the old limestone walls had been injured by the fall of the roofs; they were also seriously damaged by the beams that had been laid upon them, for these, after their fall, would continue to burn as they rested against those portions of walling which remained standing. It was no doubt by some such cause as this that the early clerestory was disfigured and partly destroyed. In either case, the old clerestory arcade of the twelfth century no longer remained as it was before; and though there were already stone vaults to the aisles of the nave before the fire occurred, yet they also disappeared and made way for newer ones. The outer roof over the triforium evidently shared the fate of the other coverings; and the arched abutment in the triforium, which acted as a support to this roof and the walling below the clerestory, now disappeared. It may be that this arching was not completely destroyed by the fire alone; no doubt some that remained was intentionally removed to prepare the way for the new work. The same bishop who had witnessed the completion of the earlier operations began with much enterprise to see about the reconstruction, but not the restoration, of what had been destroyed. Some portions were repaired, others rebuilt; but the greater part of the work now undertaken involved an entire change in the character of some of the principal features of the earlier scheme. In fact, this incident in the history of our subject gave "occasion to one of the most curious and interesting examples of the methods employed by the mediæval architects in the repairs of their buildings." [2] [2] Willis, "Chichester Cathedral," p. 6. Having decided that they would, if possible, avoid all future risk of a similar catastrophe, a system of vaulting was adopted as the best solution of the problem,--this involved necessarily a remodelling of the interior; and so, neglecting the Isle of Wight limestone and the Sussex sandstone, which at first had been the material used for the walling, the masons were directed to use stone of finer texture and smaller grain. It has been thought by some that this material was brought from Caen in Normandy. The same stone was used to re-face parts of the nave piers. And in addition Purbeck marble was selected instead of that which was to be found in Sussex. It is interesting to remember that the new choir of Canterbury had only been finished about three years before the fire occurred at Chichester. This work had been begun by William of Sens and finished by William the Englishman; and though it was so large an undertaking, it appears to have been commenced and completed between the years 1174 and 1184. This would very naturally exert some influence upon the building projects of a neighbouring see. Whether any of the actual craftsmen from Canterbury worked again at Chichester or not we cannot tell, but it is evident that the Kentish experience was of great help to Sussex in the new venture. When it had been decided how they should operate, it was natural that the covering of the building must be the first provision. This involved the repair of the shattered clerestory, and then they were free to proceed in other directions. Further than this we have no means of learning what method was followed in carrying on the new work; but it continued, so that in about twelve years the building was dedicated again. There is nothing now to indicate that the provision of a vault had been intended by the original builders of these walls. This deficiency was met by the insertion of vaulting shafts and the addition of external buttressing; for as the pressure of the flat wooden roof was exerted for the most part vertically upon its supports, that of the vault would be a strong lateral thrust as well as vertical pressure, and these were to be provided for. We shall see presently that all the real beauties of this most interesting work were the outcome both of the needs of practical structure and the requirements of ritual and a ceremonial expression of the liturgy. [Illustration: HISTORICAL SECTION FROM WILLIS'S ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY. Original Elevation. Present Elevation. Two Bays of Retro-choir. (Scale 29'2 feet to 1 in.)] [Illustration: THE CLERESTORY, NORTH SIDE OF NAVE. _From a photograph by Mr. Francis Bond_. ] It is not possible for us to discover exactly when the several parts of the work undertaken after the fire of 1186-1187 were begun, nor when they were finished. Of dates we have little knowledge, except that of the dedication in 1199, the fall of two towers in 1210, and the various indications of architectural activity at certain periods given by the several dates mentioned in connection with donations, bequests, and royal sanctions in the episcopal statutes and other documents. These nearly all show that the time of greatest activity was after 1186 and before 1250. If such a feat as has been mentioned was performed at Canterbury between 1174 and 1184, was it not possible also at Chichester? Then it becomes necessary to assume that the structural alterations were continuing during the whole of the period suggested; and this was so. Enough work had been done by 1199 to allow of another dedication of the building. Seffrid II. had been bishop from 1180-1204, and the register of Bishop William Rede, written one hundred and sixty years later, explicitly states that Seffrid "re-edified the Church of Chichester." This is a comprehensive statement, but it might easily include at least the greater part of the vaulting with some form of external roof. Such a change as this involved the alteration of the nave and aisle piers, so that the slight vaulting shafts of finer stone might be inserted in the older masonry. The lower part of each of the piers of the nave arcade on the side towards the centre of the church was re-faced with the same material, and smaller shafts of Purbeck marble were introduced upon the piers, replacing probably the heavy ones of an earlier date. These shafts formed the support to a more delicate moulded member, which was now substituted for the original and very simple outer order of the original arch. A string-course of Purbeck marble was inserted as a line of separation between the nave arcade and the triforium, and also between the triforium and clerestory. The triforium itself remained as it had been before 1186; but the clerestory was dressed again, so that it obtained quite a new character. It was re-faced with the fine-grained stone, and the slight shafts which supported the clerestory arcades were provided with Purbeck capitals and bases. This arcading itself was also changed from its earlier type. The central arch was still made round in form, but those on either side of it were each pointed, and all were more finely moulded than before. Above this point rises the new stone vault, which is carried upon a framework of strong transverse and diagonal ribs. Between these the shell, or filling, which formed the surface of the vault, is of chalk, roughly cut and irregularly laid; above this was placed a thick coat of concrete. Some flying-buttresses were built now in order to meet the thrust exerted by the new arched vault of the nave. These were constructed in two series, one being concealed under the sloping roof over the triforium and acting in place of the earlier round-arched abutment. Its supports were provided at the points where the transverse and diagonal arches of the nave vault began to spring away from the vertical plane of the walls. The other series was the immediate counter-poise to any direct thrust exerted by the arching of the vault against the upper section of the same walls. There was, in fact, a large buttress added to support these nave walls at that point from which each set of vault-carrying ribs began to rise. This buttress, though apparently sub-divided, was one thing, but of composite structure. It was pierced first by the aisle, next by the triforium, and then again above the roof of the triforium. It will be seen that most of these alterations were the direct result of the introduction of a stone vault. But the almost entire renewal of the eastern part of the cathedral was made possible by the destruction and total removal of the apsidal terminations of the earlier work. It has been suggested that the fire may have so badly damaged this portion as to allow no alternative but rebuilding. What may have been the actual cause of its removal it is impossible for us now to know; but the substitute is quite a perfect piece of work of its kind. This ambulatory, or presbytery, as it is commonly misnamed, was nearly all newly built from the foundations during the first half of the thirteenth century. The continuation of the arcade, the triforium, the clerestory, and the vault, the vaulting of the aisles and the chapels forming their terminations eastwards,--all this, with the new arch at the entrance to the earlier lady-chapel, was work of the same date. [Illustration: PIER-CAPITALS IN THE RETRO-CHOIR. _From a photograph by S.B. Bolas & Co_.] Some new buttressing had been added to the south-west tower when the upper part of the tower itself was rebuilt; but the larger works were the addition of a vaulted sacristy in the corner between the west side of the south end of the transept and the nave. On the opposite side of the same part of the transept a square-ended chapel with a vestry attached was added in place of the original shallow apsidal chapel. The original chapel on the east side of the north end of the transept was also removed to make way for another and much larger one. This is now used as the cathedral library. The scheme planned after the second fire having been completed by about the middle of the thirteenth century, little further work was undertaken in comparison with that then finished; but before 1250 the wall of the south aisle of the nave was pierced in four bays, and two more chapels were added. Then, on the north of the nave, the outer wall of the aisle was cut through in the second bay, going west from the transept, and a small chapel was built. The other chapels west of this one were added during the latter half of the century. In each case the deeply projecting buttresses which had been introduced against the earlier walls after the second fire were used, where they were available, to form parts of the masonry of these new chapels, and were therefore not disturbed unnecessarily. The old walls having been altered, and the earlier buttresses being changed in their nature, it became necessary to carry the original thrust from the nave still farther out from its source in order to find for it some satisfactory abutment, and in doing this there was that new force, introduced by the vaulting of these added chapels, to be reckoned with in addition. Consequently, to the earlier buttressing more was added. The exact nature and the approximate date of this work are shown by Professor Willis in the sections and plan given in his monograph on the cathedral. The addition to each buttress amounted to an elongation of it as a pierced wing wall which provided lateral support. Upon the end of it a greater mass of masonry was introduced to serve as a weight for steadying the structural device; and this necessary structural idea was the means of introducing another architectural feature--the pinnacle. Between the pinnacles of these buttresses rose the gabled ends of each of the chapels. Professor Willis suggests that a great part of the work done after the fire of 1186-1187 was completed by the time of the dedication ceremony in 1199, and he is no doubt a safe authority to follow. But the nature of many architectural features tends very strongly to confirm the idea that much of the work in the ambulatory eastward of the sanctuary had been delayed. It may have been that the activity which prevailed during the early half of the thirteenth century was caused by the desire to see this portion of the church completed; and the energy with which the plea for new interest and further funds was urged at this time would no doubt be indicative of a supervening lethargy following on the great effort necessary for the completion of so much in these few years. But it should be remembered that these great works of mediæval art were none of them built in a day; they represented the accumulation of even centuries of developing thought and continually improving skill. Therefore must we realise that after this fire had occurred in 1186-1187 not more than eleven or twelve years elapsed before the building was again in use after the consecration in 1199. _Note_.--For remarks on Chichester Cathedral, see _Archaeologia_, xvii., pp. 22-28: "Observations on the Origin of Gothic Architecture." By G. Saunders, 1814. [Illustration: TRANSVERSE SECTIONS FROM WILLIS'S ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY. North Aisle, original. (Scale 27 ½ feet to 1 in.) South Aisle, as now existing.] This process of reconstruction shows that the mediæval builders did not restore in duplication of what had been lost. Where their work was destroyed they built anew and improved upon what had gone. We need not suppose that this repair, renewal, and addition had all been completed when in 1199 Bishop Seffrid II. and six other bishops again consecrated the church. Doubtless only so much had been done as was necessary to enable the priests to officiate at an altar provided for the purpose and the congregation to assemble within the walls; for the work of building continued with a somewhat persistent manifestation of energy throughout the whole of the thirteenth century. Of this activity and enterprise there are many evidences in proof, both documentary and structural. The documentary evidence indicating the activity which prevailed after this date is sufficient to show at least that much was being done; but it does not often indicate in precise terms what is that particular portion of the building to which it primarily refers. Early in the thirteenth century (1207) the king gave Bishop Simon de Welles (1204-1207) his written permission to bring marble from Purbeck for the repair of his church at Chichester. He attached to this act of favour certain conditions which were to prevent any disposal of the material for other purposes. John had also two years before given Bakechild Church to the "newly-dedicated" cathedral. Then Bishop Neville, or Ralph II. (1224-1244), at his death in 1244, "Dedit cxxx. marcas ad fabricam Ecclesiae et capellam suam integram cum multis ornamentis." Walcott adds that "his executors, besides releasing a debt of £60 due to him and spent on the bell tower, gave £140 to the fabric of the Church, receiving some benefit in return." This cannot be interpreted as referring to the isolated tower standing apart to the north of the west front; for, as we shall see, this was not erected until at least one hundred and fifty years later. In 1232 "the dean and chapter gave of their substance. During five years they devoted to the glory and beauty of the House of the Lord a twentieth part of the income of every dignity and prebend"; [3] and then, again, ten years after the period covered by this act of the chapter the bishops of some other sees granted indulgences on behalf of the fabric of the church at Chichester. Bishop Richard of Wych (1245-1253) "Dedit ad opus Ecclesiae Circestrensis ecclesias de Stoghton et Alceston, et jus patronatûs ecclesiae de Mundlesham, et pensionem xl. s. in eadem." [4] To this he added a bequest of £40. He had revived in 1249 a statute of his predecessor, Simon de Welles, and extended "the capitular contribution to half the revenues of every prebend, whilst one moiety of a prebend vacant by death went to the fabric and the rest to the use of the canons." Other means were used to provide funds to continue the work. [3] Walcott, "Early Statutes," p. 15. [4] Walcott, p. 15. But apart from these many indications of activity, the fabric as it stands to-day speaks very clearly of the amount of building that went on between 1200 and 1300. But it was not till 1288-1305 that Bishop Gilbert de S. Leophardo had added the two new bays of the lady-chapel eastward. The fire was the direct cause of most of the work that was done. There was another, however; for eleven years after the re-dedication, two of the towers fell. It has been supposed by some that these must have been the early towers of the west front, both of which still preserve indications of having been begun during the twelfth century as part of the original building scheme. It is probable, for reasons that will appear later, that the two towers of the west front did not collapse at the time of the second fire, although it would seem from the Chronicle of Dunstable that their stability may have been impaired in some measure, since the sole cause for this fall of towers is given in the words "impetu venti ceciderunt duae turres Cicestriae." [5] But if these towers had been affected, what of the original central tower? Its risk of receiving serious damage would be far greater. That no more than the upper story of one of these can have fallen is evident from the fact that the south-western tower presents for examination to this day its original base, and the nature of the upper part of this same tower shows that it was rebuilt anew daring the first half of the thirteenth century. It was necessary that the two towers at the west as well as the central tower should be finished up to a certain level, for, placed as they were upon the plan, they became essential parts of the structure, whose absence would diminish the strength of the whole; hence any desire to maintain the fabric satisfactorily would require that those of them which fell should receive the immediate attention of the builders. In the case of the south-west tower we have already seen what was done, and obviously it was one of the two towers that had fallen. But what of the other of these? What suggestions remain to show which it was? It is well known that a central tower had been erected as part of the original plan, and also that a new upper part was being added to this same tower about the middle of the thirteenth century. This new portion eventually rose above the roofs to the level of the top of the square parapet, about the base of the octagonal spire, the spire being a still later addition. Now the heightening of this tower--perhaps with already the idea of a future spire in view--would raise many questions. Experience would already have taught the builders that the early central towers of many other churches were incapable of carrying their own weight. This being so, much less would it do to suppose that it could bear the addition of new weight upon the old piers; for though to all appearance sound, the cores were of rough rubble work, not solidly bedded and not properly bonded with the ashlar casing. So the question arises, did they remove the whole or part of the old central tower and piers, or were they saved this trouble by the structure having shared the fate of many others like itself, which fell, and so made way for new work? Another tower had fallen besides the one to which attention has already been drawn; and as there appears to be nothing to show that this other was the north-west tower, we must see what evidence there is concerning the central tower. That it was added to we already know. But documentary as well as structural evidence comes to our aid. The first is supplied by the records of Bishop Neville's episcopate; the next by the researches of modern archaeology. Professor Willis has shown in his remarks upon the structure of the piers at the time of the collapse of the mediæval tower and spire in 1861, that these had not been rebuilt at a date later than the twelfth century. But Mr. Sharpe [6], writing to Professor Willis seven years before the occurrence, indicates his discovery--from a close examination of the structure then existing--that before the upper part of the central tower was rebuilt in the thirteenth century the earlier arches at the crossing which were to support it had been taken down, and probably a large part of the piers carrying them. And that, though the twelfth-century voussoirs were re-used others of a fine grained stone were inserted among them to strengthen the arches, or as a substitute for some of the rougher sandstones that could not be used again. By this means, then, the original form and detail of the twelfth-century arches was preserved, so that the drawings representing the measured studies of the building, which were Sir Gilbert Scott's principal authority upon which to base his restoration of this portion of the tower, were made from work which had already been once rebuilt. But why was this part of the church rebuilt, and by whom? Two alternative suggestions for the reason have been offered. [5] Walcott, p. 15. [6] Author of "Architectural Parallels." Evidently, if the upper part of the tower did not fall, it is apparently certain that it was reconstructed, in order to carry the additional weight of the larger tower. But in examining the documentary evidence offered us, we find some further help. The teaching of archaeology shows that the portion of this tower above the main supporting arches and up to the bottom of the parapet was executed between 1225 and 1325--that is, it was finished not very long after the new part of the south-west tower was completed. The cathedral statutes show that between the years 1244-1247 Bishop Ralph Neville was much concerned about a "stone tower" which he wished to see completed. They tell us, too, that the same bishop had himself expended one hundred and thirty marks upon the fabric, [7] and that his executors, besides releasing a debt of £60 due to him and spent on the bell-tower, gave £140 to the fabric of the church. Ralph died in 1244, so it is concluded that the work in which he was so interested was none other than the central or bell-tower of the cathedral, and that the earlier tower, with its supporting arches, must have fallen, else it is not likely that the work would have been rebuilt from below the spring of these arches before the new superstructure could be added; for we are obliged to take the customs of mediæval builders into consideration in any attempt to sift the evidence concerning their work--and they were before all things practical. The claims of structure, the motives of common-sense, rather than abstract and aesthetic ideals of beauty, were the prime causes at work in the evolution of their great art. Here they found themselves faced by a practical need--the rebuilding of a fallen tower. Its reconstruction was necessary to the completeness and stability of the building; so they put it up, applying new and increasing knowledge and skill in the execution of the work. They did their best, and the result was something not only strong and structural, but beautiful. But, as time has shown, it would have been better had they been less respectful of the valueless legacy bequeathed to them in the piers, though in defence of their sagacity it must be admitted that what they deemed sufficient for the purpose then in view was able to carry their own tower for five hundred years in safety, and not only this, but, in addition, a spire, the erection of which they may not have thought of when the restoration was begun. [7] Walcott, p. 15. There is another interesting fact which may be mentioned before quitting this part of our inquiry. Professor Willis found that there still existed in 1861 one of the old wooden trusses of the roof over the west bay of the chancel. It was a specimen of mediæval carpentry six hundred and fifty years old, and it had not, as he showed, been unframed since the fire of 1186-1187. The timbers composing it had been slightly charred by the flames, and some of the lead which covered the burning roof had run in its melted condition into the mortices of the framing. [8] [8] See Willis, p. x.: Introduction. In the admirable plan and sections which Professor Willis prepared to illustrate his work upon the history of the fabric it is possible to see at once what work had been done during the different stages of development. The work finished by the end of the thirteenth century changed the earlier church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in its essential arrangements into the church we see to-day. We have now briefly to review the changes produced in the plan of the cathedral. There were those effected as an immediate consequence of the fire, and others which were more the result of the continued energy of the thirteenth-century builders. The most remarkable one was that which converted the French chevet, or group of apses, into the more familiar square, and characteristically English, eastern termination. The apsidal chapels on the east side of each arm of the transept had disappeared to make room for others of a different shape and size. The other chapels at the east remained the same in number; but towards the close of the thirteenth century the lady-chapel had been lengthened, and the aisles of the choir, being continued eastward, ended in small chapels to the north and south of the central one. The other changes were those caused by the addition of chapels off the south and north aisles of the nave. The addition of the south and north porches, and the sacristy next to the south arm of the transept, were the only other alterations, if we except the addition of buttresses, which had been made in the original arrangement up to the beginning of the fourteenth century. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST, ABOUT 1836. _From Winkles's Cathedral Churches_.] Though the quest may not be followed here, it would be interesting to try and trace the cause of this desire to add chapels to mediæval buildings. It had during the thirteenth century already become a clear indication of that gradual movement affecting the arrangement of churches which originated in the introduction of new doctrinal ideas. The particular set of ideas which caused such additions as these had now become a part of the common property of popular thought, imagination, and reverent superstition. The earlier designers and builders had not been taught to consider these features essential to the complete equipment of a church planned in accordance with primitive usages; they were a simple example of the influence which doctrine exercised upon the history of art and the scope of archaeological inquiry. The course of history that has been followed has led us through the maze of some events which served to produce the cathedral that stands among us now. The later centuries will not require as much attention, since they afford but little material, comparatively, with which we need delay; for the industry expended upon the fabric since this time has produced little change in the general appearance of the building. With the approach of the fourteenth century we meet a period when the peculiarities of the work of the thirteenth century had become merged in transitional forms, and from this application of ever-developing ideas to accepted working principles came the well-known character which English architecture displayed during that time. It was native by parentage and birth; it represented the life which prevailed in the ideas which were then the common currency. By it the ideals of thought and imagination were expressed, until, later, they were represented in other forms of art. At Chichester an early indication of the changed treatment of older methods that was being developed experimentally is shown by the portion which was added to the lady-chapel during the episcopate of Gilbert de Sancto Leophardo. The architects and master-builders devised for him the two new eastern bays complete, together with the larger windows that were inserted in the walls of that part of the chapel already built. Here again, as in the work set in motion by his successor, the designers and builders made no attempt to add these new portions in imitation of earlier ones. Then it was Bishop Langton who, between 1305 and 1337, spent £340 "on a certain wall and windows on the south side, which he constructed from the ground upwards." [9] This work is principally to be seen in the great south window of the transept, under which he provided for himself a "founder's" tomb. In the gable above a rose window was inserted, following the example of that earlier one in the east end of the presbytery. The chapter-house above the treasury, or sacristy, was also added when the new windows were inserted in the lower walls. About the same time the doorway to the nave within the western porch was constructed. [9] Bishop Reade's Register. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT, ABOUT 1836. _From Winkle's Cathedral Churches_.] Walcott shows by his study of the early statutes of the cathedral that "in 1359 the first fruits of the prebendal stalls were granted to the fabric; and in 1391, one-twentieth of all their rents was allotted by the dean and chapter to the works, which embraced works round the high altar, for, in 1402, materials 'ad opus summi altaris,' were stored in S. Faith's Chapel. A 'novum opus,' a term applied to some special building, was also in progress." [10] These remarks are of interest, since about the end of the fourteenth century a beautiful wooden reredos was built across the east end of the sanctuary. It was placed just west of the feretory of S. Richard. In many old prints its character is represented, and Dallaway gives some dimensions of it in the long section he shows of the church as it was before the reredos was removed (see page 2). The feretory no doubt had a reredos at this point, but what the type of this earlier arrangement may have been it is impossible exactly to tell. But the work which took its place was evidently beautiful, as the many remains still in existence prove to those who may examine them. Walcott [11] gives some interesting details concerning this work. From the representations, descriptions, and remains of it, it may be gathered that the whole was much carved, niched, and canopied, and decorated in colour; and there is a note extant showing that Lambert Bernardi in the sixteenth century repaired "the painted cloth of the crucifix over the high altar." [12] This reredos had a gallery across the top of it, from which the candles on a beam over the altar could be lighted and a watch kept over the precious jewels in S. Richard's shrine. The whole screen was made of oak, and those old sketches and drawings, or prints, of it still preserved, help dimly to show what had been its character. An old letter in the British Museum refers to it as having the finest "glory" above the high altar "we have ever seen." But this so-called "glory" was an eighteenth-century production. Much of the reredos is still hidden away unused in the chamber over the present library of the church, and since its first removal it has travelled as far as London in search of a friendly purchaser. In the chapter on Chichester in Winkles's "Cathedrals" a view in the "presbytery," dated 1836, [13] shows the reredos still in its place where it remained till after the fall of the spire. There are in existence two drawings of considerable interest. [14] One of these shows the east end and the other the west end of the choir as it was about the beginning of the last century (c. 1818); the other indicates what were the changes made after 1829, when the altar was set back six feet farther eastward. The latter was taken from a water-colour drawing supposed to have been made by Carter, an architect of Winchester. [10] Walcott, p. 16. [11] "Early Statutes." [12] Walcott, p. 23, note _a_. [13] See page 45. [14] See drawings in vestry of cathedral. Other minor works were added during the fourteenth century, but to few of these can any exact dates be assigned. The parapets to the north and south wall of the nave, the choir, and lady-chapel, and the painted oak choir-stalls were some of those additions. In the fourteenth century we meet many changes in the treatment of the windows. They became larger; they were themselves very treasuries of design, and this not only for the stonework of their tracery, but also for the very beautiful glass with which they had been filled. Their outer arches are more varied in shape, more rich in moulded detail, and the entire character of the curves of the moulded forms had been developed and made more delicate than the stronger and deeper-cut types from which they were derived. Two causes had apparently urged the builders to exert their capacities and apply their increasing technical skill to compass the aims proposed to them. The small windows, the use of which had so long prevailed, did not admit sufficient light. In the more southern countries there was not the same reason for the change; but where light was less strong, less clear, less penetrating, it might not be spared. So though with their glass they were beautiful in themselves, many of these windows gave place to larger ones. But if the admission of more light was one reason for the change, there was another powerful inducement offered by the larger field that might be provided for the use of decorative colour, and they accepted the opportunity with alacrity--not as a mere chance for display only, but because, rather, they would be enabled to teach by the use of it. But what was that _novum opus_, that special building that was already in progress in 1402? What was the reason for granting in 1359 the first-fruits of the prebendal stalls to the fabric? And in 1391 why did the dean and chapter give one-twentieth of all their rents to the works? And these works were not alone about the high altar, for the new work proceeding in 1402 had no doubt some relation to that which was in progress in 1391, and it can have been no mere small undertaking. Can these words be applied to the central tower and the spire that rose above it, or to the detached bell-tower of Ventnor stone northward of the church? It seems they must refer to the former, for to no other work can they be applied, since the angle turrets to the transept, the parapet of the central tower, and the windows inserted during the fifteenth century were not in existence at either of these times. And, further, the action taken in 1359 in order to provide funds for work that was proceeding could have no reference to the detached bell-tower, for its character shows that it was certainly not even begun before quite the end of the fourteenth century, probably not before some time during the first quarter of the fifteenth. So, since there was nothing else proceeding about the structure that could claim such sacrifice, the suggestion occurs that the spire was already in course of construction not long after the middle of the fourteenth century. The late Gordon M. Hills, Esq., in reporting to the chapter in 1892 his opinion concerning the condition of the fabric, said that, "Under Bishop William Rede (1369-1385) was begun a series of works: the completion of the central spire, the conversion of the north end of the north transept into a perpendicular work, the construction of a new library, the construction of the present cloisters, and finally the erection of the great detached belfry, called 'Raymond's, or Redemond's, or Riman's Tower,' was in progress in 1411, 1428, and 1436. All this work was carried on partly by the influence at Chichester of churchmen of the school of William of Wykeham, whose followers were strong at Chichester at this era." [15] [15] See the Wykeham motto on the lady-chapel vault decoration, page 92. [Illustration: THE BELL TOWER AND SPIRE AS SEEN FROM WEST STREET. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo._ ] He also said "that the spire itself was commenced before the death of Bishop Neville. The moulding in the angles cannot, I think, have originated later"; and "that the early work extended to about forty feet above the tower; all the pinnacles and canopies at the base of the spire and the upper part of the spire, were insertions and rebuilding of one hundred years later. At the base the work of the earlier period had had its face cut away to bond in the later work, and the masonry of the two periods did not agree in coursing." The mere fact that the detached tower was built suggests many questions which are not easily solved. Why was it at all necessary? Perhaps the cathedral bells hung in the south-west tower, and those of the sub-deanery church in the other, or _vice-versa._ At all events, we know that in the fifteenth century the sub-deanery church was removed from the nave to the north arm of the transept. The great window of the north end of the transept is also early fifteenth century in date, and the detached tower likewise. Angle turrets were placed upon the four angles of the transept during the same century; and if Daniel King's drawing of 1656 is any guide, the tops of the central and western towers had battlemented parapets added during the same period. In any case, it appears that it took much longer to complete the repair of the central tower than that at the south-west. In fact, it is doubtful whether the former was finished until about the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, for its fall apparently wrecked much of the vaulting of the transept; and this, from the character of its moulded and carved vaulting ribs in the south arm of the transept, is of the same date as the rose window in the east gable of the presbytery, the rose windows in the east gables of the lady-chapel and the chapels at the east end of the north and south aisles of the choir. This argues that at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, during Bishop Leophardo's episcopate, these works were completed. About the middle of the fifteenth century a stone rood screen was built up between the western piers of the central tower. It thus separated the choir under the crossing from the nave; but through the middle of this screen there was an open archway with iron gates. On either side, as parts of the screen, to the north and south was a chapel, each with its altar. This new work had been known as the Arundel screen, and its erection is often attributed to the bishop of that name, and at the altar in the south side of it Bishop Arundel founded a chantry for himself. Except that the cloister was added and some details of the building altered during the fifteenth century, no other architectural work of any size appears to have been done for many years. [Illustration: DECORATION FORMERLY ON THE CHOIR VAULT. _From an engraving by T. King_, 1814, _lent by the Rev. Prebendary Bennett_. (Scale 7 feet 10-½ in. to 1 in.) (See pp. 42-3.)] The next work of importance was begun by Sherburne. He invited Lambert Bernardi and his sons to decorate the whole of the vaulting of the cathedral. This they did by covering it with beautifully painted designs. But unfortunately, excepting the small remnant now on the vault in the lady-chapel (see page 92), their work was entirely destroyed early in the nineteenth century. Some idea of its original beauty may be formed by an examination of similar work by other hands that may yet be seen in S. Anastasia at Verona, in two churches at Liege, and at S. Albans Abbey. An engraving by T. King, of about 1814, shows some details of the design that was painted on the vault of the choir in the bay next but one to the central tower. The cathedral was at this time an open book, with its walls covered with painted stories. The reredos, the stalls of the canons, as well as the walls, were rich with colour. Now all has gone except a meagre, faded scrap under the arch from the present library into the transept, and one or two other slight remnants. Sherburne also had some large pictures painted by the Bernardis. They represented the kings of England and the bishops of Chichester, and used to hang upon the west and east walls of the south transept. From Sherburne's death until the seventeenth century little but a tale of destruction is to be recorded; for this period witnessed the dissolution of the monasteries, the beginning of a wholesale system of spoliation urged by self-interest and hypocrisy, and the establishment of "Reformation" methods of procedure in Church and State. By each of these both the fabric and the diocese suffered, even though by some they gained. But especially did vandalism help to destroy, unnecessarily, many things which, legitimately used, might still have been allowed to remain as evidences of the artistic influence of the Church in England. For though some of them were dedicated to uses which the reformation necessarily condemned the wholesale destruction of much beautiful workmanship must be regretted by any who are interested in such treasures. In 1538 it was ordered that all shrines should be abolished. This seriously affected Chichester, as the fate of the feretory of S. Richard was involved by the mandate. Two commissioners were named, whose duty was to see that his shrine was removed. The instructions issued served a double purpose, since in this case, as in others, "reformation" helped to satisfy the claims of avarice. Henry told the commissioners that "We, wylyng such superstitious abuses and idolatries to be taken away, command you with all convenient diligence to repayre unto the said cathedral church of Chichester and there to take down that shrine and bones of that bishop called S. Richard within the same, with all the sylver, gold, juells, and ornamentes aforesaid, to be safely and surely conveighed and brought unto our Tower of London, there to be bestowed as we shall further determine at your arrival. And also that ye shall see bothe the place where the same shryne standyth to be raysed and defaced even to the very ground, and all such other images of the church as any notable superstition hath been used to be taken and conveyed away." [16] [16] Walcott, p. 34. Then in 1550 "there were letters sent to every bishop to pluck down the altars, in lieu of them to set up a table in some convenient place of the chancel within every church or chapel to serve for the ministration of the Blessed Communion." Bishop Daye replied that "he could not conform his conscience to do what he was by the said letter commanded." In explanation of his attitude towards this order he wrote that "he stycked not att the form, situation, or matter [_as stone or wood_] whereof the altar was made, but I then toke, as I now take, those things to be indifferent.... But the commandment which was given to me to take downe all altars within my diocese, and in lieu of them 'to sett up a table' implying in itselffe [_as I take it_] a playne abolyshment of the altare [_both the name and the things_] from the use and ministration of the Holy Communion, I could not with my conscience then execute." The churches were so ransacked and destroyed in this way that Bishop Harsnett [17] said he found the cathedral and the buildings about the close had been criminally neglected for years, so that they were in a decayed and almost ruinous condition. Such was the deliberate opinion which he expressed early in the seventeenth century. [17] "Records." During the first half of the sixteenth century a stone parapet, or screen wall (taken away in 1829), was built up in front of the triforium arcade. It rose to a height of about four feet six inches, and was continued throughout the whole length of the church. It has been supposed that it was intended to render this gallery available as a place from which some of the congregation might observe the great ceremonials. So we see that after the close of the fifteenth century little but decline is to be recorded. Since Sherburne's day no care had been taken of the fabric; and except that an organ was introduced above the Arundel screen, no new schemes were devised, no new building done. It should be remembered, however, that the Reformation did not at once destroy all the beauties of mediæval art that the cathedral contained. Certain things, such as shrines, altars, chantries, and chapels, were removed, dismantled, or totally wrecked. It was with the coming of the Parliamentary army to the city that wholesale pillage and destruction began. The removal of the altar and other derangements of the building had been effected during the preceding century; but now the vestments, plate, and ornaments were stolen. The decorative and other paintings on the walls, and all parts that could easily be reached, were scratched, scraped, and hacked about until they were mere wretched, disfiguring excrescences; and in this mutilated condition they waited for the whitewash that came later, to cover up these vulgar excesses with a cheap but clean decency. Such criminal procedure culminated in the wilful wreckage of all the beautiful glass. The store of three centuries of labour and consummate skill was destroyed till it lay all strewn in broken fragments, mere rubbish, about the floors. But the decorations on the vaults were saved, because they could not be reached without expensive scaffolding. They were thus preserved to be dealt with by the wisdom and taste of a later century. Let me quote the remarks of one who lived when these things were done. He says they "plundered the Cathedral, seized upon the vestments and ornaments of the Church, together with the consecrated plate serving for the altar; they left not so much as a cushion for the pulpit, nor a chalice for the Blessed Sacraments; the common soldiers brake down the organs, and dashing the pipes with their pole-axes, scoffingly said, 'hark how the organs go!' They brake the rail, which was done with that fury that the Table itself escaped not their madness. They forced open all the locks, whether of doors or desks, wherein the singing men laid up their common prayer books, their singing books, their gowns and surplices; they rent the books in pieces, and scattered the torn leaves all over the church even to the covering of the pavement, the gowns and surplices they reserved to secular uses. In the south cross ile the history of the church's foundation, the picture of the Kings of England, and the picture of the bishops of Selsey and Chichester, begun by Robert Sherborn the 37th Bishop of that see, they defaced and mangled with their hands and swords as high as they could reach. On the Tuesday following, after the sermon, possessed and transported by a bacchanalian fury, they ran up and down the church with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead, hacking and hewing the seats and stalls, and scraping the painted walls. Sir William Waller and the rest of the commanders standby as spectators and approvers of these barbarous impieties." [18] [18] "Mercurius Rusticus" (1642). Quoted by Walcott. This is a history in little of what took place in nearly every cathedral and other church in the kingdom, and this after the Reformation and its best work had been a fact for a century. The most important disaster to the fabric during the seventeenth century was that which so seriously affected the structure at the west end. It is difficult to decide exactly when and how north-west tower fell or was removed. Professor Willis [19] is content to say: "Mr. Butler informs me that there is evidence to show that the north tower was taken down by the advice of Sir Christopher Wren, on account of its ruinous condition." [19] "Archaeological History," Chichester, p. 6, note _c_. But Præcentor Ede, in a paper written about 1684 A.D. and quoted by Præcentor Walcott, [20] gives "an account of Dr. Christopher Wren's opinion concerning the rebuilding of one of the great towers at the west end of the Cathedral Church of Chichester, one third part of which, from top to bottom, fell down above fifty years since, which he gave after he had for about two hours viewed it both without and within, and above and below, and had also observed the great want of repairs, especially in the inside of the other great west tower, and having well surveyed the whole of the west end of the said Church, which was in substance as followeth; that there could be no secure building to the remaining part of the tower now standing; that, if there could and it were so built, there would be little uniformity between that and the other, they never having been alike nor were they both built together or with the Church, and when they were standing the west end could never look very handsome. And therefore considering the vast charge of rebuilding the fallen tower and repairing the other, he thought the best way was to pull down both together, with the west arch of the nave of the church between them; and to lengthen the two northern isles to answer exactly to the two southern; and then to close all with a well designed and fair built west end and porch; which would make the west end of the church look much handsome than ever it did, and would be done with half the charge." [21] [20] "Early Statutes," p. 21. [21] Walcott, "Early Statutes" p. 21 Such was Dr. Wren's opinion of the west front. It is fortunate that his advice was not followed, for have we not the same west front still in existence? However, Wren spoke of "the remaining part of the tower now standing," and King's print, publishing 1656, shows the portion to which he referred. Fuller [22] remarked in 1662 that the church "now is torn, having lately a great part thereof fallen to the ground." He no doubt refers to the same ruin, for it is not to be conjectured that any other part fell then. [22] "Worthies," II, 385 Sir Christopher Wren says the towers never were alike in design, nor were they "both built together." The edition of Dugdale's "Monasticon," published in 1673, gives a view of the north façade of the church. Ede, writing in 1684, said that "above fifty years" before one-third part of the north-west tower had fallen from top to bottom; yet this illustration shows that same tower complete. This affords an opportunity of comparing portions of the two towers. The upper part of each is shown to finish on top with a battlement parapet. It is evidence in itself that during the fifteenth century certain alterations had been effected in them both at this part. But this print must have been made from an original which had been executed quite twenty years earlier--for King's drawing, issued in 1656, shows the north-west tower already partly destroyed; so it is necessary to conclude that the drawing for the "Monasticon" was done before 1656, but after 1610, when Speed's map, or bird's-eye view, of the city was brought out. Præcentor Walcott has supposed that the two towers in Chichester referred to in the "Annals of Dunstable" as having fallen during the year 1210 were the two at the west end. [Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL, ABOUT 1650.] But taking Sir Christopher Wren's report with the discovery made by Mr. Sharpe in 1853, quoted by Professor Willis, it would seem rather that those two towers were the original central tower and that at the south-west angle of the west front. Wren in writing of the tower at the north-west, which had fallen about 1630-1640, said that it had not been built at the same date nor in the same manner as the other then remaining to the south of the same front. The upper part of the central tower itself had been built perhaps during the second quarter of the fourteenth century or even earlier. Consequently it seems probable that the two towers which fell in 1210 were the original twelfth-century central tower and that of the same date to the south of the west front. In Speed's map of 1610 both the western towers are represented as having small spires. Hollar's print in the "Monasticon" shows what appear to be some fifteenth-century buttresses to the north-west tower; but in excavating for the foundations of the new north-west tower, now completed, no traces of any projecting buttresses were discovered, so it may be that it was the original twelfth-century tower which fell about 1630, and the peculiar character of its masonry suggested the remark to Wren when he said it so distinctly differed from its companion. Towards the close of the seventeenth century the central spire was in an unstable condition, and Elmes, in his "Life," says of Wren that he "took down and rebuilt the upper part of the spire of the cathedral, and fixed therein a pendulum stage to counteract the effects of the south and the south-westerly gales of wind, which act with some considerable power against it, and had forced it from its perpendicularity." It is interesting to have this record, for the spire during the following century was still a cause of trouble. Spershott's memoirs show that about 1725 "a new chamber organ was added to the choir of the cathedral, the tubes of which were at first bright like silver, but are now like old tarnished brass." Whether this organ contained any parts of that which was destroyed in the previous century is not known; but many old prints and drawings show that the case of the one that was now built on the top of the Arundel screen was quite as beautifully designed as the one in Exeter Cathedral, or King's College Chapel at Cambridge. About 1749 the Duke of Richmond's vault was "diged and made" [23] in the lady-chapel, and ten years later "the kings and bishops in the cathedral" were "new painted." The floor of the lady-chapel was raised to give height to the vault beneath, and a fireplace and chimney built up in front of the east window. Portions of the other windows were plastered up, and so left only partly filled with glass. These served to provide light in what was now to be the library, since, apparently, the originally well-lighted library, above the chamber now used for the purpose, had lost its proper roof and been otherwise made useless. [23] Spershott. There is little else to be said concerning the history of the building during eighteenth century; but it is stated by a careful observer, [24] writing in 1803, that "in the interior of this cathedral few innovations have been effected." He says that the east window of the lady-chapel is plastered up, and that "we find that the great window in the west front of the cathedral has a short time back had its mullions and other works knocked out, and your common masoned 'muntings' (mullions) and transoms stuck up in their room, without any tracery sweeps or turns, of the second and third degrees; which work may before long be construed by some shallow dabblers in architectural matters into the classical and chaste productions of our old workmen. On the north and south sides of the church are buttresses, with rare and uncommon octangular-columned terminations; but they have likewise, to save a trifling expense in reparation, been deprived of their principal embellishments, and are now capped with vulgar house-coping.... "It may be well to speak of the west porch as an excellent performance; and the statue over the double entrance is remarkably so." [24] _Gentleman's Magazine_, Part I., 1803, pp. 22-25. Proceeding, the same writer relates that: "Against the east and west walls of the said transept are affixed historic paintings; those on the west side (the figures as large as life) relate to the founding of the church and its re-edification in Henry viii.'s time. Among the various portraits is that of Henry viii. himself. Here are also in separate circular compartments, the quarter portraits of our kings, from William the Conqueror to Hen. viii. (and since his day, in continuation to George i.) On the east side is the entire collection of the ancient bishops of the see (quarter lengths, and in circular compartments). A short time back the faces of the several portraits were touched upon by some unskilful hand; however we have before us most curious specimens of the costume of Henry's day, when the whole of these paintings were done (excepting those of subsequent dates), in dresses, warlike habiliments, buildings, etc.... "Looking towards the north, on the outside of the choir, is the monumental chapel and tomb of St. Richard. The groins above are embellished with paintings of foliage, arms, etc., conveying the eye over the choir; thence into the north transept, intercepted in the way by the galleries over the side-aisles, when the general combination of objects is terminated by the north transept window, which, though inferior to the southern window, still has its own peculiar attractions." At the time these words were written the north porch was in a wrecked condition. Both gables of the transept were in ruins, and the high-pitched roofs of the old library, the lady-chapel, and the south arm of the transept were absent altogether. But soon the authorities began to take some interest in the condition of the building. James Elmes had been called in to deal with the spire in 1813-1814, and under his direction the "useful piece of machinery" which had been put there by Wren was "taken down and reinstated." In his "Life of Wren" an illustration is given of the device, which he had carefully examined and measured. He describes it thus: "To the finial is fastened a strong metal ring, and to that is suspended a large piece of yellow fir-timber eighty feet long and thirteen inches square; the masonry at the apex of the spire, being from nine to six inches thick, diminishing as it rises. The pendulum is loaded with iron, adding all its weight to the finial, and has two stout solid oak floors, the lower one smaller by about three, and the upper one by about two and a quarter inches, than the octagonal masonry which surrounds it. The effect in a storm is surprising and satisfactory. While the wind blows high against the vane and spire, the pendulum floor touches on the lee side, and its aperture is double on the windward: at the cessation, it oscillates slightly, and terminates in a perpendicular. The rest of the spire is quite clear of scaffolding. This contrivance is doubtless one of the most ingenious and appropriate of its great inventor's applications." About 1814 T. King made a plan of the whole building and several drawings of the church as it then appeared. One of these [25] shows some carefully copied specimens of the decorations on the vaults. The engraving was published in 1831, and on it is the statement, "Painted 1520. Erased 1817." Another drawing showed the interior of the choir looking west. In this was represented in careful detail the design of the eastern elevation of the organ-case and the "return" stalls against the Arundel screen. It also shows the original iron gates in the archway, which pierced the screen in the centre below the organ, and formed the entrance to the choir. These gates were evidently copied in design from the thirteenth-century iron screen that protected the sanctuary, part of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the distance the decoration on the nave vaulting is lightly indicated. There is also an original drawing by T. King in the possession of the Chapter, which gives a view looking eastwards. Another drawing [26] which was made some time after 1829 shows the choir looking east towards the reredos. It is a careful study, and is of peculiar interest, since it is a record of many features now entirely removed. The early reredos appears still in its place, but the upper portion of it is gone. This was a gallery which was accessible from either triforium, across which boys early in the century used to run races by starting up the staircase in one aisle and down that in the other. The absence of the gallery in the drawing shows that it was made after 1829, the year in which the gallery was removed. The "glory" which was added to the reredos during the eighteenth century appears just above the altar. On the south side of the choir are some spectators in the gallery above the stalls. There were also at this time other galleries on the north and south of the sanctuary, and above the arch on the east side of the north arm of the transept was a gallery too. To this last there was access from the staircase that led to the chamber above the east chapel of the transept close by. These drawings show what the interior of the church was like up to the time when that extraordinary revival of activity in matters ecclesiastical began in the nineteenth century. [25] See illustrations, pp. 33 and 125. [26] Supposed to be by Carter, an architect of Winchester. Like other churches, that at Chichester felt the sting of controversy in unnecessary vandalism. But it may be admitted that destruction, like a storm, carried at least some virtue in its clouds. In attempting to sweep away the accumulated refuse heaped within the building, some precious things fell before the broom of zealous furnishers, and were lost for ever in the dust raised by this new cleansing dream. [Illustration: THE NAVE, ABOUT 1836. _From Winkles's Cathedral Churches_.] The removal of the gallery above the old fifteenth-century reredos in 1829 was the beginning of a serious attempt to repair, restore, and reanimate the fabric. This revival of faith began to try to do good works--but not always with discretion, not always with knowledge, wisdom, and taste. Here was rash ardour, often without the hesitation of true reverence. [Illustration: THE RETRO-CHOIR AND REREDOS, ABOUT 1836. _From Winkles's Cathedral Churches_.] It is certain the building was not all it should have been when these works were begun; it is not what it might have been had some of them been deferred. Consequently any illustrations which show its condition before the middle of the nineteenth century are of interest and value to those who would know what changes have been made. In Winkles's essay on Chichester, in his "Cathedrals of England," published between 1830 and 1840, are many beautiful drawings of the fabric. There is one which shows the Arundel screen still in its original position with the organ above it; and in another the complete design of the back of the reredos appears. These careful studies of the building, which were made before it became so changed by the removal of its best remaining treasures, help to convey some idea of what the place was before it was so radically "restored." None of the drawings, however, show any of the beautiful decorations of the vaults, for all this had been smeared over with a dirty yellow wash about 1815, which earned for the church the name of "the leather breeches cathedral." And when, later, the plaster on the stone-filling between the ribs was removed, the paintings were utterly obliterated for ever, excepting only the small portion remaining in the lady-chapel bearing the Wykeham motto upon a scroll. But this recital is but a prelude to the changes that were to follow. The energy of revival found expression in many ways, and English architecture suffered sorely at the hands of ardent ignorance. But the very desire to deal well with the fabrics of our churches that were to be repaired taught men to study closely the facts of archaeology. The studies had a practical end, and at Chichester they found their opportunity in the cathedral. But first a new church of S. Peter was built in West Street in 1853, so that the north arm of the transept should no longer be used as it had been for about four hundred years. Then not long afterwards Dean Chandler, at his death, left a large sum to be used for the purpose of decorating the cathedral. To this sum other funds were added. The need that more space should be provided for the congregation arose, and to satisfy this it was decided that the choir should be opened out to the nave. Consequently, in 1859 the work of decoration was begun by the removal of the Arundel screen with the eighteenth-century organ above it--one of the most beautiful remnants of the art of earlier days that remained in the cathedral. The object of this act was most admirable, but it involved in addition the destruction of the fourteenth-century "return" stalls which were on the eastern face of the doomed screen. In taking down the screen, or shrine, all the stones composing it had been carefully numbered, with the intention that it should be rebuilt in a new position. But although these materials are still wantonly distributed about the cathedral and precincts, no attempt has been made to use them again, either as a screen or as an evidence to show by contrast that the result has justified the change. Its removal was the beginning of a series of alterations, both by accident and design. The old reredos, that quiet and beautiful witness of things so sacred and some so profane, was torn away. The whole of the choir was to be rearranged. But when the piers of the central tower were exposed by the removal of the screen, it was discovered that they were in a precariously rotten condition at the core. Other indications of weakness, which had been overlooked before, were now observed. Large and deep cracks and various earlier signs of apprehended weakness both in arches and piers were remarked. That the work now begun had given impetus to the fall has been denied on excellent authority, and to discuss such a question at this time is useless. The serious trouble now was that the whole tower with the spire was rapidly settling on its base. Every method that could be used was tried in order to save the piers. They were propped up with shores, and the arches held up with centres, while new masonry was bonded into the older work. But the labour availed nothing, for towards the end of the year 1860 matters had developed seriously. "Old fissures extended themselves into the fresh masonry, and new ones made their appearance.... But in the next place, the walling began to bulge towards the end of January 1861, first in the north-west pier, and afterwards in the south. Cracks and fissures, some opening and others closing, and the gradual deformation of the arches in the transept walls and elsewhere, indicated that fearful movements were taking place throughout the parts of the wall connected with the western piers." On Sunday, February 17th, "the afternoon service was performed in the nave of the cathedral, as usual, but ... was interrupted by the urgent necessity for shoring up a part of the facing of the south-west pier.... On Wednesday, crushed mortar began to pour from the old fissures, flakes of the facing stone fell, and the braces began to bend. Yet the workmen continued to add shoring until three hours and a half past midnight." Next day the effort was resumed before daybreak; but by noon "the continual failing of the shores showed, too plainly, that the fall was inevitable." Just before half-past one "the spire was seen to incline slightly to the south-west, and then to descend perpendicularly into the church, as one telescope tube slides into another, the mass of the tower crumbling beneath it. The fall was an affair of a few seconds, and was complete at half-past one." Such, briefly, is the record of the fall, which so admirably has been related by Professor Willis, from whose work these extracts have been taken. Sir Gilbert Scott, [27] after the central tower had collapsed, was consulted concerning its reconstruction. He examined the remains; and by the great care his son Gilbert exercised in labelling and registering all the moulded and carved stone that was discovered in the debris, the new tower and spire was designed upon the pattern of the old one. Old prints and photographs were used to help in this work of building a copy of what had been lost. But this task could not have been done had it not been that Mr. Joseph Butler, a former resident architect and Surveyor to the Chapter, had made measured drawings of the whole, which supplied actual dimensions that otherwise could not have been recovered. These drawings had come into the possession of Mr. Slater, the architect associated with Sir. G. Scott in the rebuilding of the tower, and they enabled him "to put together upon paper all the fragments with certainty of correctness: so one thing with another, the whole design was absolutely and indisputably recovered. The only deviation from the design of the old steeple was this. The four arms of the cross had been (probably in the fourteenth century) raised some five or six feet in height, and thus had buried a part of what had originally been the clear height of the tower, and with it an ornamental arcading running round it. I lifted out the tower from this encroachment by adding five or six feet to its height; so that it now rises above the surrounding roofs as much as it originally did. I also omitted the partial walling up of the belfry windows, which may be seen in old views." [28] [27] See "Recollections," p. 309. Edited by his son, 1861. [28] _Ibid._, p. 310. These statements have been taken from Sir Gilbert Scott's own account of the work. He further assures us that many portions of the original moulded and carved work were re-fixed in the new tower. As we have now in existence so careful an imitation of the former tower, all praise is due to Sir Gilbert Scott, Mr. George Gilbert Scott, and Mr. Slater, for the admirable way in which they co-operated, so that their care has given to posterity this admirable instance in which a lost specimen of architectural art has been reproduced by successful copying. But the satisfactory nature of the work is chiefly due to the preservation of those careful studies of the original which were made by Mr. Joseph Butler. In 1867 the wall enclosing the library in the lady-chapel was removed, and three years later, with the consent of the Duke of Richmond, the floor was lowered to its original level and the chapel restored in memory of Bishop Gilbert. Soon afterwards the windows were provided with new stained glass. During the last half of the nineteenth century several small portions of the building were repaired, restored, or rebuilt. The cloister was carefully restored by the late Mr. Gordon M. Hills. More recently the roof of the lady-chapel, the two eastern pinnacles of the choir as well as those two lower ones to the chapels of S.M. Magdalen, and S. Catherine, have been restored by his son Mr. Gordon P.G. Hills, A.R.I.B.A., with much care and consideration for the fabric of which he is the surveyor. The latest act affecting the history of the building has been the addition of a new north-western tower to take the place of the unsightly rents and wreckage that have disfigured and helped to destroy the structure at that part during the last two hundred years. It was designed by the late Mr. J.L. Pearson, R.A. [Illustration: SOUTH WEST VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE GARDEN OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., Photo_. ] CHAPTER II. THE EXTERIOR. As a design, the west front offers four important parts for observation; these are the two towers, the west wall of the nave proper, with the gable and the windows which compose it, and then the porch. The #Towers# are now similar. The upper stage of that on the north is an imitation, as far as possible, of the same section of the other tower which was built in the thirteenth century. In its third stage some differences are introduced. The masonry of the new work is executed so as to carry on the courses of the old stonework that attach it to the rest of the front. The new work has followed the custom of the older and better traditions of the stonemasons, in that it has been left strictly as it was finished by the tool upon the "banker." The natural and simple texture imparted by the action of chiselling leaves a character upon the stonework similar to that of the earlier work. The upper portion of the new north-west tower [29] being copied from that part of the old one to the south, it will be enough to describe the original. But first it is necessary to notice the lower stage of the southern tower. The buttressing on the south angle is of a later date than the rest of this section of the tower. It has a low weathered base. The central part of it has its projection at the base reduced when it reaches its summit by means of three steep sloping weatherings. There are also openings in the buttress for the staircase windows. The two lower windows of the west front in this tower are not placed in the same vertical line. This peculiarity has been followed in the new tower. The upper of these two windows is pointed, and has no label-mould. But the angle shafts that carry the arch have carved capitals and square-moulded abaci. Above the head of the pointed window the tower changes in character. The buttresses run up to the top as broad, flat surfaces, except that the northern one is slightly weathered twice. The coupled windows are more deeply recessed, having three orders of moulded arch-stones instead of the two, as in the lower window of a similar date; and the arch is carried by three shafts attached as parts of the jamb-stones. The windows have label-moulds over them, and the abaci of the capitals are carried across the buttresses on either side as a string-course. By this means the lines of the composition are continued horizontally, notwithstanding the interruption by the openings in the walling. These are now glazed as windows; but they were originally open, as some bells once hung in the tower at this level. [29] By the late J.L. Pearson, R.A., and completed by his son. [Illustration: THE NORTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE SOUTH-WEST TOWER. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The west end of the nave has six windows grouped in it above the porch. The two upper ones are small and close up under the gable coping. This latter is simply chamfered and capped with a modern cross. The windows are arched in two orders. The inner order has a plain, straight chamfered moulding; and the outer, a hollow chamfered one. The label-mould and the capitals of the attached shafts in the jambs are a little later in design than the windows themselves. A moulded string-course separates the point of the large west window from those above it; and from the level of this string-course up to the coping of the gable the whole surface of the wall is covered with a diagonal pattern of incised diapers. The West Window is entirely modern, but copied from fourteenth-century examples with some success. It has five divisions between the jambs and mullions. The central one is larger than those on either side. The upper part is filled with geometrical tracery. Below the west window are three other windows grouped together. They are at the triforium level, where they were probably inserted before the middle of the thirteenth century; but they have been restored at various times since then. The #West Porch# is a comparatively simple structure. It rises from the ground with a deep weathered base. At the top of the walls is a plain weathered coping, which overhangs about one inch. The simple, but extremely well designed, buttresses at the north and south angles add much interest to it as a composition artistically and as a study in structure. The small, straight buttresses on the west are only weathered once, and this at the top; but those on the north and south sides are different. There is a broad central buttress weathered twice from the base to its top, and in the angle on either side of it are what appear to be two lower, smaller buttresses, with one weathering slope. The probability is that there was only a small buttress here at first, and that the larger one on either side was added by being built over the shallower, broader, and shorter one. [Illustration: WALL-ARCADE IN THE WEST PORCH. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] These buttresses have been placed here in order to counteract the thrust of the large, deeply-set covering arch over the entrance to the porch. This arch is of interest, as it has but a slight label; and then the outside angle of the soffit only is moulded, the rest being recessed both at the jambs and in the arch for about two feet, with no mouldings at all. Then comes a delicately moulded arch in two orders, immediately beneath which are the coupled arches which give entrance to the interior, vaulted apartment. These two arches, the central and side shafts on which they rest, as well as the tympanum between them, are restorations. The vault over the interior of the porch is carried on moulded diagonal ribs. On the north, south, and west are wall ribs as well, to carry the chalk filling between them. The insertion of two later monuments, now much dilapidated, involved the destruction of much of the beautiful wall arcades. These were of three complete divisions on each wall, and have cusped heads. The upper part, below the finishing horizontal string-course, is composed of two full and two half quatrefoils. The work in each arcade is recessed quite seven inches from the face of the general walling above; and the multiplied detail in the mouldings is finely studied. Opposite the entrance is the west doorway into the nave. The deep arch over this is seriously cracked in several places, though it has already been much restored. It has an outer label, which indicates that when it was built in there was then no porch to protect it. The three orders, or main groups, of mouldings do not run down on to the capitals, but finish by dying on to a plain piece of stonework of circular form set immediately upon the capitals. The Purbeck marble capitals themselves are rather large and heavily moulded, and the shafts under them are sandstone restorations of recent date. The west door and the woodwork about it is a poor specimen of modern ingenuity. The #South Side# of the church introduces many interesting varieties of work. These may well be followed in the course of this description from the west to the east end. The lowest part of the south-west tower presents a treatment different from that on the west side. There is here a doorway, and an additional window. Both are round-arched. The doorway is one of the most notable pieces of beautiful design on all the exterior of the building. It is treated solely with variations of the well-known chevron ornament. The cut work upon it is in no case at all deep, but the total effect is truly delightful. There is none of the dead, formal regularity invariable in modern attempts to imitate this type of work. The voussoirs of the arch are not all of equal size in each order, and on one member the chevrons are reversed on opposite sides of the centre stone except for one accidental intermission. The abacus, nearly six inches deep, has a flat upper part on which a continuous diaper of Greek crosses has been cut. The lower part is a plain, hollowed chamfer moulding. Though the small columns in the jambs are new, and also parts of the inner reveal of the jamb, yet the old carved capitals are still in position and also the bases. These capitals bear distinct traces of Byzantine feeling in the design of them. Above the doorway is a billet-moulded string-course, which stops against the circular shafts by the buttresses, and forms the sill of the window. The design of this opening is like that of the one over it in the next stage, which is similar to that in the same position on the west face of the tower. But the abaci of its capitals run from the jambs across to the buttresses, as is the case with those of the doorway. The billet-moulded sill evidently passed round the tower completely, before the addition of the angle buttresses, since it appears again on the north buttress of the west front of the same tower; and the obvious inference is that there was once a window also on the west in this same stage at the same level. The window immediately below the upper division of the tower is of the same date and character exactly as the one on the west in the like place; and it should be noticed that the sills of the upper windows run on as string-courses, which are continued round the circular angle-shafts of the buttresses. Passing eastward from the tower, the external #Roof# of the nave becomes visible. The irregularly waved line of the ridge where the lead rolls meet, as it were, against the sky, is a pretty indication of the presence of the aged timbers underneath that support it above the walls. The oldest part of the building to be seen from this point is the strip of walling at the clerestory level. The twelfth-century round-arched windows are there almost complete. In detail they are like those of the tower. Two of them, those in the fourth and fifth bays from the tower, have had later work inserted in the same openings. The crest of the wall between the west and the central tower was renewed in the fourteenth century. It consists of a parapet with a weathered coping for the top course of stonework, so that the water might not rest upon it and percolate through the walls. Three courses below this is a simply moulded string-course, and immediately beneath is the cusped arcade supported on the course of detached moulded and shaped corbels. For five feet below the bottom of the corbels the newer part of the wall is continued. It will be interesting later to notice the way in which the parapet on the north side of the nave has been dealt with. The reason for the presence of so much new walling at this level is no doubt to be found in the fact that the roof timbers at the time of the second fire were carried down over the walls. The water from the gutter behind the parapet is carried out on to the backs of the flying-buttresses by means of holes cut through the stonework. Into these pipes are passed which convey the water through to the open gutter channels of the buttresses. The backs of the raking buttresses, though they are sharply weathered to throw the water from them quickly, are also covered with lead as a further protection. These buttresses have carried the thrust of the vaults down-wards with safety for about six hundred years. But the presence of two distinct arches under each of them indicates that they have been altered a little since first they were put up. This was done when it became necessary to carry their thrust farther out because of the new chapels that were added long after the vaults were built over the nave. At the foot of each raking slope is a horizontal piece which runs out until it comes in contact with the octagon pinnacles of the vertical exterior buttresses. It should be noted that where the flying-buttresses meet the vertical wall of the clerestory there is in some cases a portion of the flat buttressing of the twelfth century visible. Between the buttresses of the chapels are four two-light windows, The outer arch of each of these windows is a beautiful example of late thirteenth-century moulded detail. The main line of the arch curve is excellent, and the whole opening between the head, jambs, and sill is beautifully proportioned. Some fifteenth century tracery remained in these windows until it was replaced by the present modern work. The outer arch is in two orders, which are carried by slight attached shafts, some of which are renewals. The capitals to these are carved, and have square abaci, rounded at the angle, as they pass over the capitals. These abaci, which are finely moulded, are not more than about two and a half inches in depth. The bases of the jamb-shafts are characteristic of the period during which this work was done. There are two small rounded mouldings, and one larger one. These rest on the square, lower part, of the base. Immediately below the sill is a string-course; and this, as well as the projecting base to the whole wall, is continued from the side of the tower buttress eastward. Each is returned round the four buttresses till it stops against the outer wall of the south walk of the cloisters. The vertical buttresses here were originally completed with a weathering at a point about half-way up their present height; and upon this old weathering the upper and later part of the buttress has been added. This was probably done during the fourteenth century, about the time that the adjoining parapet of the aisles, the parapet of the nave, and the re-working of the upper part of the flying-buttresses was undertaken. This change in the design involved the removal of the range of pointed gables, by which the roof over each bay of the aisle was completed southward. Traces of the earlier gable copings are still bedded in their original places in the walling. Upon three of these buttresses are remains of the old gargoyles by which the water from the roofs was carried off. The use of these is now superseded by the cheap and mean-looking rain-water heads and pipes. Close by the parapet of the aisle the square angles of each buttress are cut off so as to form a base for the octagonal pinnacle above. These, when in their complete state, were undoubtedly very beautiful; for besides what can be now seen, it is known that they were once completed each with a spirelet. Now they have the substitutes suggested by parsimony to cover their incompleteness. As they are, in their ruined condition, it may be seen that they were not all finished in identically the same way. The three sides on the north of the octagon of each one are left plain and flat. The other five sides are treated as narrow, recessed panels, formed by the six groups of small shafts at either angle. Every group has its capital and moulded base. The capitals in some cases are carved, in others moulded only. Above each capital is a small carved boss. This, doubtless, was the stop to some member on the angles of the spirelets. Springing from the capitals are moulded and cusped arches, which form on either side the heads of the panelled divisions. The horizontal part of the weathering of the flying-buttresses is stopped behind the octagons of the pinnacles. The parapet has a plain weathered coping, close under which is a string-course which helps to throw the water clear from the top of the wall; and two coupes below this one is another moulded string. Each is about six inches in depth. If is not possible to state more concerning these parts in detail, since they have been much repaired at various times. The stove-pipes which run up the north and south sides of the nave as smoke-flues for the heating-apparatus do not add to the beauty of the exterior. In the fifth bay, eastward from the south-west tower, is the #South Porch#, which opens directly into the west walk of the cloister. Early in the nineteenth century it was in a ruinous condition; but restoration has again given it stability, if not all its old beauty. The idea of the design, as it is seen from the cloister, is identical with that of the exterior of the west porch. But in the detail of its mouldings and other features it is different entirely. The restored abaci of the capitals, like the originals, are some of them square, others irregular octagons. The interior is vaulted, and has diagonal and wall ribs. On the west and east sides are stone benches. But the west side has in addition a small arcade of four arches forming recessed sedilia. The mouldings to the arches of this small arcade are of about the same date as those in the two outer orders of the enclosing arch on the south front of this porch. The two smaller arches under it appear to be later work, if we judge from their present character. But the arch-mould of the #Doorway# within the porch is work of approximately the same date as the outer moulded member of the enclosing arch on the west front of the west porch. The enclosing arch of the south porch is later work than these. But the two inner moulded orders of the enclosing arch of the west porch are even later still in character. [Illustration: THE SOUTH DOORWAY IN THE WEST WALK OF THE CLOISTER. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The east side of this south porch forms the west wall of the present choir singing school--the old sacristy. But this room projects farther southward than the porch. The limit of its projection is indicated by a portion of a buttress in the cloister. Between this buttress and the porch are two small windows--one of them is now blocked up. The upper one is the same in design as those others on the south side of the same apartment. These we shall consider presently. Above the central pier at the entrance to this porch is a miserable figure in stone, intended to represent a saint. [Illustration: THE WEST WALK OF THE CLOISTER FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The #Cloister#, which was added in the fifteenth century, is of a peculiarly irregular shape, and encloses the south transept within the paradise. It has been much restored at different times. The present roof is of tiles, and is carried on common rafters. Each has a cross-tie, and the struts are shaped so as to give a pointed, arched form to each one. The old fifteenth-century wooden cornice still remains in some sections. The walling was once all plastered. The tracery is divided into four compartments by mullions, and each head is filled with cusped work. Round the cloister are placed the old houses of the Treasurer, the Royal Chaplains, and Wiccamical Prebendaries. Above the door leading to the house of the Royal Chaplains is an interesting monument of the Tudor period. It is a panel divided into two compartments by a moulded stone framework. Leading out of the south walk is a doorway, through which the deanery may be seen beyond the end of a long walled passage known as S. Richard's Walk. Looking back northwards, there is a fine view of the spire and transept from the end of this walk. The chamber over the present singing school between the south arm of the transept and the west walk of the cloister shows the effect produced by some changes made during the fifteenth century. The masonry was more carefully finished than that of the adjoining transept--a specimen of twelfth-century work. The joints in the later work are thinner, and the average size of the stones is in this case smaller. On the south side of the wall of this chamber are two buttresses. Close under the shallow moulded coping at the top of the wall are two fifteenth-century windows. They are not placed centrally over the others below. In design they are each divided into three lights by mullions. On the east side of the middle buttress is an old rain-water head of (eighteenth-century?) leadwork. Part of the lead piping still remains, having the old ears to fasten it to the walls. The west side of this chamber has one buttress on the south angle and a window in the centre of the wall. Above it is the low slope of a gable. The window is similar to those on the south side, but the head is a pointed and four-centred arch. The mullions have been restored. Below the part just described is the earlier work of the thirteenth century. It rises as far up as to the string-course formed by the continuation of the abaci of the capitals in the two small single-light windows. These narrow and sharp-pointed windows are peculiar. The arch-moulds are different from the other work of the same date in the church. There is no sign of tracery in their design, and the jambs have a simple attached shaft in the outer reveal. The bases to these shafts are earlier than those of the shafts to the south aisle chapel windows, and the edge of the inner member of the window arch is merely cut off with a straight chamber. There is one window, the same as these, hidden in the west walk of the cloister. Beneath the windows just described there are two small single-light openings in each portion of walling on either side of the central buttress. These six windows serve to light the vaulted (sacristy) choir school within. [Illustration: THE EAST WALK OF THE CLOISTER. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] It has been supposed by some that a chapter-house once existed within the paradise close by the west angle of the transept. The south end of the transept rises on the north side of the cloister garth. At the south-west angle a great part of the twelfth-century masonry in the broad flat buttresses remains. The south-east angle and buttresses are quite different. They are perhaps part of the work done during the thirteenth century, though it is possible that they were introduced when Langton inserted the large south window of the transept. This window has been very much restored since the seventeenth century, when it was almost knocked in pieces. Wooden props served instead of mullions for many years to hold up the tracery above. The repair that has been effected retains the old design. Above each angle of the transept is a turret, octagonal in form. Neither of them is complete. They were only required in the fifteenth century as a means of access to the roofs at the parapet level from the staircases in the angle buttresses. The gable of the transept rises above the parapet just described, but it is not in the same vertical plane as the face of the wall below. The top of this gable was for many years in a very wrecked condition. The design of the tracery in the rose window is in two orders, based upon equilateral triangles filled in with cusps. Close to the ground on the south-west corner buttress are two string-courses. The lower of these is a billet-moulded course cut, like those to be seen on the south-west tower. Its presence here, and at this level, shows that this was the original level of the sills of all the old Norman windows on the outside walls until about the close of the twelfth century. On the east side of this part of the transept, at the clerestory level, are two round-headed windows. Both originally were all of twelfth-century workmanship. But now the southern one has abaci, capitals, angle-shafts, and base, which are thirteenth-century work, and the early label-mould has been changed. The other window shows partly what was once probably the character of both of them. But the greater part of this window was restored when the central tower and spire were rebuilt after 1861. Between the windows is a buttress that was introduced when the vault was added. The south-east angle on this side retains part of the twelfth-century flat buttressing. There are on this wall and the turret different types of masonry, which represent five distinct periods of building, from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. But the junction between the work of two of these periods, being a weak part, shows by the crack down the wall from the parapet that some movement has taken place here. Projecting eastwards from the transept is the square chapel (now a vestry), which took the place of the early apsidal one. Neither of its three windows has any tracery. The window on the south side is pointed. The arch-mould is the same as that to the round-headed window on the east; but there is a label-mould over this south one and not on the other. The abaci are new, and the angle-shafts and bases as well, but the capitals are old, though decayed. The parapet on the south is of the same character and date as that over the wall of the choir, but earlier than that above the south window of the transept, which is of the same date as that on the south wall of the nave. The roof of this chapel appears, from the raking channel on the transept wall, to have once been higher, with a sharper pitch. The finish to the present gable point has disappeared. On the east wall and on the south-west buttress of the transept there are two interesting old lead rain-water heads. The east wall of the chapel runs on northwards till it becomes a part of the buttress of the choir. The wall between the north buttress of the chapel and the buttress of the choir aisle close by is pierced with two small cusped windows of fifteenth-century date. Below these is a larger and sharply pointed arched head. It has no mouldings. But the square-headed small light under it has splayed jambs. This opening was probably once a round-headed twelfth-century window, as the old abacus is still in position. The #South Side of the Choir# is externally divided into five bays. There are five flying-buttresses to carry down the vault thrusts, with a pinnacle above the buttress at the south-east angle. The first, second, and third bays from the east side of the transept have still the round-arched windows of the twelfth century set in the walling of the same date. But it should be noted that part of the window in the first bay was rebuilt after 1861. The fourth and fifth bays have pointed windows, carved capitals, and angle-shafts. These, though now entirely renewed, were built when the whole of this part of the choir was added. Part of the walling for a few feet below the parapet was renewed at the same time. The flying-buttresses are thirteenth-century additions of the same date as the vaults within; and those three nearest the transept abut on parts of the twelfth-century flat buttresses. The flat projection was continued up to the parapet at a later date, probably when the parapet itself was built on. But the fourth buttress also abuts upon a slightly projecting flat strip of buttressing. In this case, however, but not in the others, the flat strip and the flying-buttress are of the same width and built as one piece of structure. The third and fourth flying-buttresses have a secondary, and apparently later, arch of fine grained white stone beneath their larger arches. The copings on the backs of these buttresses are not weathered like those of the nave, and, except the one next the transept, each is covered with lead. There are no pinnacles to them above the aisle wall. The fourteenth-century builders had not touched them, as they did those south of the nave. There are, too, no gutters along their backs. It is curious that this method of carrying the water away from the upper roofs over the lower ones should not have been adopted when the parapets were put up. [Illustration: THE CHOIR AND CENTRAL TOWER FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The outer wall of the choir aisle is one of the most interesting portions of the building, from an archaeological as well as an architectural standpoint. It shows three of the arched heads of small twelfth-century windows that used to light the earlier triforium gallery. One of these has now a fifteenth-century insertion beneath it. This is in the second bay from the transept. It is a small window with a cusped head and a square label-mould above it. In the same area of walling there are shown the levels of the cut string-course that ran along under the sills of the twelfth-century aisle windows. It is the same string and at the same level as it appears upon the south-west angle of the transept and the south-west tower of the west front. It shows, too, in the second bay, the level of the old abaci which ran across from each capital in the window jambs and stopped against the sides of the buttresses. There is also the continuous chamfer course that ran along the walls above the heads of these aisle windows. In proof of these things there is even now one of these same old windows in almost its original state within the little chamber known as the priest-vicars' vestry. This window is in the bay of aisle walling immediately against the transept wall. The string-courses of the old windows were continued round the later buttresses. In the fourth bay, above the point of the window arch, the curve of the original apse of the ambulatory is just traceable; but beyond this point eastwards the twelfth-century walling has disappeared until we meet it again in the lady-chapel. There is a small buttress in the fourth bay marking the junction between the two periods of masonry. In the second and third bays part of the twelfth-century top to the aisle walls remains. The roof may have had eaves originally, but now there is a parapet of about the same date as the present buttresses; and the projection of this parapet is carried upon the corbels that were carved and built in before the second fire occurred. The space between each corbel is bridged over by small single stones cut out to the shape of a semicircular arch. The windows in the second, third, and fourth bays differ in size and shape from each other; that in the second bay has a pointed arch and no tracery, square abaci and the remains of carved capitals. The angle shafts and bases are gone. They were all inserted at about the same time; but that in the third bay has had some poor modern tracery without cusps added to it, and that in the fourth bay is a more recent, insertion than the one next to it. In the third and fourth bays just above the low chamfered base of the wall are three semicircular markings cut on the wall, but there is nothing to explain their existence. In the fourth bay close beneath the sill of the window is a stone built into the wall, upon which a dedication cross is cut. At the fifth bay the east walk of the cloisters joins the wall of the aisle; its roof partly hides a window, above which is a square panel of the fifteenth century. This panel indicates the position of a window, for the jambs and mullions of its tracery may be seen within the church. They are rebated for shutters, the old hooks for which also remain. The south-east angle turret of the presbytery has lately been rebuilt; so also has that on the north-east angle. They are each of them octagonal in form, but differ in detail, in imitation of those they replace. The large rose window in the gable of the #East End# is of about the same date as the vaulting over the south transept, since they possess kindred details. In design it is a simple circle, with seven others within it of equal diameter. Portions of the coping of an earlier and lower pointed gable are bedded in the wall. Under the string beneath the rose window are three windows grouped as a triplet, with no label moulding. The centre light is higher than the others. Though each has been much repaired, the early thirteenth-century detail has been retained. The abaci of the capitals are square. The windows have no tracery, and are probably quite fifty years earlier in date than the large rose above them. The exterior of the small chapel to the south has a square weathered angle buttress. On its south side is a window of the same date as the rest of the chapel, and like the triplet in the gable of the presbytery in character and date. Its east end has been altered since the chapel was finished. First a small rose window, recently renewed, of the same date and type as that in the presbytery gable, was inserted under the earlier narrow window close to the gable point; then the original east window was removed, and a larger one was put in, having three lights and a traceried head with cusped work of late fourteenth-or early fifteenth-century work. The sill of the old window was lowered to give more length. Most of the window now to be seen is the result of recent restoration. Parts of the old string-courses remain in the walling. The south side of the #Lady-Chapel# beyond the chapel just described has four bays. In each of these is a large three-light window. The western and smallest one was probably first inserted. Then the two eastern ones were put in when the two east bays were added to the older lady-chapel. The other window appears the latest of the four; or else may it not be that before deciding to lengthen the lady-chapel, the builders first began only with the idea of inserting some new windows in the older walls? But before this scheme had been executed they concluded that they would add bodily to the chapel; and in order to allow the chapel to continue in use while this was being done, they built the extension first outside, then built up the connection with the original walls, and inserted their latest window. Two of the buttresses on this wall are flat. In this they are like those of the twelfth century; but their upper parts were rebuilt when the parapet was made. The others are later, and have more projection. On the north and south of the lady-chapel the wall is finished by a parapet. It is the same in detail and design as that on the south wall of the presbytery. So it is probable that Bishop Gilbert de S. Leophardo, when he lengthened the lady-chapel, caused other work to be done at the same time. [Illustration: WINDOWS OF THE LADY-CHAPEL, SOUTH SIDE. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The lady-chapel has been much restored in many ways, but the old parapet remains in part on the north side. The tracery of the windows is interesting, as it shows early examples of cusped forms. The east end of the lady-chapel has a five-light window, which has been much repaired. It has been in a measure imitated from the others in the chapel. The description of the south side of the chapel applies generally to the north side. But the windows in two cases have been much more restored. The chapel north of the lady-chapel has an angle turret like that on the south. Its east and north windows are fifteenth-century insertions. And it has a little rose window in the gable not yet restored, though soon, by decay, it will have disappeared. The smaller window above it is blocked up. On its north side there is neither a gutter nor a parapet; but perhaps this is better than the foolish cornice, with rosettes in it, which has been placed on the wall of the south chapel to carry a gutter. The details of the north wall of the presbytery are similar to those described on the south. But there are no sub-arches to any of the flying buttresses, and the slopes of each are protected by lead coverings. And in the exterior of the north aisle the same elements of structure and design may be discovered, even to the presence of twelfth-century remains, the curve of the old encircling apse, and the position of the first sills, abaci, and string-courses. But it should be noticed that in the eastern bay of this aisle externally, where on the south there is a fifteenth-century solid square panel, on the north there is a small round-headed window. But this little window is of no earlier date than the walls in which it is set. The second and third windows from the east buttress of the presbytery aisle are insertions of fifteenth-century type; but they have been so much renewed and restored that only in the third one does there appear to be any portion of the original tracery remaining. On the north side of the choir and presbytery are four very fine old lead rain-water heads and square lead pipes. The east end of the present #Library# has in it five windows. Two of the upper ones are built up, the central and higher one only being glazed. In detail they are all of the same date as the walls they are in. None has any tracery, and by this they show that this piece of work was done at the same time as the chapel--now a vestry--on the east side of the south end of the transept. The gable is a low slope like the present roof, but the slope of the old gable and roof may be seen upon the east wall of the transept. There is one buttress only on the east side of the library. The north side is divided into two parts in its length by a buttress. The parapet has a corbel course similar to that on the two eastern bays of the presbytery aisle. The two small pointed windows below it are built up, as now the apartment they once lighted is a lumber-room, where the remnants of the old reredos are stored. The larger windows below are of the same date, nearly, as those two fifteenth-century ones in the north wall of the presbytery aisle. The east one has three and the west four lights, with cusped tracery in the heads. The east wall of the north arm of the #Transept# has a buttress, as is the case with the south arm. But early thirteenth-century pointed windows take the place of the round-headed ones. There are, however, three string-courses on this wall of the north arm which do not appear on the south. One is the old twelfth-century string which evidently once ran along above the old round-headed windows. The next is a continuation of the abaci of the capitals. The other passes under the sills of the windows. A comparison of this wall with that corresponding to it in the south of the transept shows that for some reason the windows here were totally changed and the others only partially. This may suggest that at the time of the fire this part was more damaged than the other. The parapet on this wall is unlike that at the top of the presbytery and choir walls. It has no corbelling and no arched and cusped work; it is merely a plain piece of walling, slightly overhung with a weathered coping at the top and a moulded string beneath. The general features in the design of the north end of this transept are similar to those of the south. The gable sets back from the face of the lower wall as before, and in it is a rose window, also based on the hexagon principle in design. It is later in character than either of the other large rose windows in the south of the transept and the east of the presbytery. Like the others, it has been much repaired. The two irregular octagon turrets on each angle are of the same date as those on the south, and, like them, have weathered and battlemented parapets to the top of their side walls. The parapet of the north wall between them is of the same design, detail, and date as that on the north and south walls of the clerestory to the nave. On the north-east angle are two buttresses; and on the north-west angle there is a group of buttresses of a later type. On the west there remains the old twelfth-century flat buttress, like those on the south-west angle of the transept. Westward of this, and standing clear of the wall, is a fine fourteenth-century flying-buttress. Projecting northwards, but attached to the north-west angle, is a vertical buttress of the same date as the flying one close to it. On the west side, this part of the transept almost repeats what is to be observed on the east; but the parapet here is the same as that on the north end, and near the ground is one of the twelfth-century windows. The arch-mould of its rounded head is the same in detail as those in the priest-vicars' vestry and in the chamber above the present library. It seems to be an example of that later work of the twelfth century of which other specimens no doubt remained in the walls of the lady-chapel before Bishop Gilbert transformed it into its present state. Close to this window, and rising up just above the sill of the clerestory windows, is a narrow, flat buttress, which is probably of the same date as the window. Its upper half has an attached shaft on each angle, with moulded bases and carved capitals of the same period; but the weathering on its top appears to have been changed in the thirteenth century. Close by is the only part now remaining of the twelfth-century outer wall of the nave aisle. The original corbel course of the parapet remains, but not the upper part of the parapet. And it may be seen here that the small windows that lighted the triforium gallery had round arched heads in two orders, with a string-course at their sill. Below this string is a thirteenth-century pointed window, with a billet-moulded label cut in a twelfth-century manner of design. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-EAST. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo_.] The north side of the nave retains the seven twelfth-century clerestory windows, the one next to the transept having been rebuilt after the fall of the central tower and spire in 1861. There are no remains of later insertions, as on the south side. The parapet is later in design than those to the choir and lady-chapel; but it is of the same date as that on the south wall of the nave. In the five eastern bays it is of two tiers. The upper projects beyond the lower, and so widens the span between the north and south clerestory walls. It has been suggested that this was done in order to straighten the north wall, which in the twelfth century had been built so that it bent inwards towards the south. The weathered and channelled backs of five of the buttresses are the same date as those south of the nave; but the easternmost one has a flat raking back like those to the north and south of the choir and presbytery. The four western buttresses had pinnacles with spirelets--now destroyed. The western one was square, the other three octagonal. All these are earlier in date than the fifth one from the west, this last one being probably the same in date, as it is in detail, as those on the south side. The sixth one finishes plainly with a square top. It may once have had a pinnacle, but none now remains. The parapet to the aisle chapels in the four western bays is plain, with a weathered coping and string-course in which is some carved work of late fourteenth-century date. The gables between the buttresses are gone, as is the case on the south side; but traces of their old copings remain. The four large three-light windows are the same in design and detail, and were no doubt executed when the chapels themselves were built. They have traceried heads with early types of cusping of about the same date as, or a little later than, the rose window in the east gable; but they are certainly thirty or forty years earlier than those of the lady-chapel. The north window of the chapel in the fifth bay is a modern insertion of the same character as in the south aisle chapels of the nave. It probably, like them, contained a fifteenth-century window, which was removed to satisfy the taste which thought the present substitute the better thing. The detail of the two orders of its outer arch is earlier than that of the windows west of it. Above the point of this window is a small circular one, with a cusped treatment of perhaps the same date as the ones in the east end of the chapels at the end of the aisles of the presbytery. The #North Porch# has a pointed outer arch in two orders. The abaci to the capitals are square; but now there are no shafts or bases in the jambs. The sub-arches appear to be about the same date as the transept vaulting, as they have the dogtooth ornament in their mouldings. On the west face of the buttress, close by, is a double niche in very bad repair; but as a specimen of work it is well worth studying. The parvise chamber above this porch is not lighted except by the small cuttings in the form of a cross which pierce the wall. The new north-west tower, or its north front, has imitations of twelfth-century work throughout, except in the case of the coupled openings in the top stage, which are like the thirteenth-century work at the same level in the south-west tower. The lower part of the north-east buttress incorporates the remains of the original twelfth-century flat buttressing. The #Central Tower# and #Spire#, although they were rebuilt again after the disaster in 1861, are as nearly as possible an exact reproduction of the originals. The tower rises out of the substructure where the roofs of the nave and transept intersect. It is not square in plan, but has an axis from east to west, longer than that from north to south. Below the string-course, under the weathered sills of the arcaded openings in the belfry stage, are, on the north, south, and west, small wall arcades. At each angle there is a turret. Three of these are octagonal, but that at the south-west is circular till it reaches the string course below the parapet; and excepting those on the north-west and south-west they are used as staircases. Each of the four sides is pierced by two groups of coupled openings under superior arches, the several moulded members of which rise in four receding orders from the square abaci of the capitals of the angle shafts. The space between the pointed heads of the sub-arches on the east and west faces is pierced by quatrefoils; those on the west are different in design from those on the east. The parapet of the tower has features in its design which indicate that the original one W been added to the earlier tower during the fifteenth century. The octagonal terminations to the four turrets were of the same character and date as the parapet. [Illustration: _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo._ THE DETACHED BELL-TOWER.] The spire rises out of the supporting walls of the tower within the parapet. It is a regular octagon in shape. Four octagonal pinnacles are placed at its base next to each of the turrets of the tower; and between these, on the other four faces of the spire, are tall stone dormers, with carved crockets and finials on the copings of the high-pitched gables. Above this group the spire is divided into three sections by two bands of diaper-work cut out of the stone surfaces as cusped quatrefoils; and from the base of the spire to its capstone there is a projecting rib on each angle between the several faces of the octagon. The #Bell Tower#, which stands alone to the north of the cathedral, is now the only one of its kind in England; and it is curious that in two cases where these towers were found, as at Salisbury and at Norwich, spires had been added to the central towers. The cathedral bells have been hung in this tower since the fifteenth century. The structure itself, with its massive walls, is square in plan at the base, but at the top story it becomes an octagon, and the buttresses on each angle terminate as pinnacles between the angles of the square and four sides of the octagon. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo.] CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR. The #Nave# of Chichester, compared with that of other cathedrals, possesses several peculiar characteristics. It has a beauty apart from others in the quiet simplicity with which it has been designed. There is an evident restraint, almost severity, to be felt in studying the exquisite proportions of its parts. It does not exhibit the massive force and strength of Durham; but the rigid power in the square piers of the arcades is stern compared with the more subtle variations of light and shade produced by the curved surfaces of the circular piers either at Ely or Peterborough. During the Reformation period the divisions between the several chapels to the north and south of the nave were removed; and so since that date Chichester has been the only cathedral in England which has what may be called five aisles, and it is wider than any other, excepting York, being ninety-one feet across. The central space, or nave proper, is divided into eight bays throughout its length. The vertical lines which mark these divisions are the triple attached vaulting shafts. They support the transverse ribs of the stone vault; and from their carved Purbeck marble capitals spring also the wall and diagonal ribs. A Purbeck string-course in each case separates the triforium gallery from the arcade below and from the clerestory above. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo_.] The nave arcades have round arches. The fine stone facing of the piers toward the nave, the small columns in the jambs, the vaulting shafts, and the moulded outer member of the arches are all additions to the twelfth-century structure. In the triforium, the round arch again occurs with two smaller sub-arches of similar shape. In the nave these were not altered after the second fire; but the clerestory above was much changed in character. The central arch of the three remained semicircular, but the side ones became pointed in place of the early round arches. The detached columns, the jamb shafts, and the moulding of the arches were all altered in detail; and the stone used was of finer texture, like that with which the piers of the arcade below were faced. In the #South Aisle# there is a good view, which extends beyond the transept into the small chapel of S. Mary Magdalen at the east end, in which is the only really fine stained-glass window in the church. The chapel aisle to the south of this, again, is interesting, in that it still retains some signs of what purposes it served in former days. The two western bays were originally the #chapel of S. George#. Those to the east were dedicated as the #chapel of S. Clement#. In each of these the old piscina and aumbry remain near where the altar had been placed. The latter chapel has now been restored in memory of Bishop Durnford (see page 121). Mr. G.F. Bodley, A.R.A., and Mr. T. Garner were the architects who designed the new work. The old wall arcade is now again used as part of the reredos. The figures under the arches are--in the centre S. Clement, on the south S. Anselm, and on the north S. Alphege. In the quatrefoils above are figures of two angels bearing in their hands shields, on which are represented the symbols of the Passion. Behind the altar, which is of oak, is a white marble re-table. The deeply moulded arch which separates the two vaulted bays of each of these chapels is carried by some very beautiful carved capitals. Above them may be seen the square abaci which are so much used in all the later work in the cathedral. They are peculiarly a French characteristic, and serve to indicate the relationship there was between the English and Continental schools of mediæval architecture. Beyond this chapel is the doorway from the south porch, which gives access to the west walk of the cloister. The doorway on the right in the south aisle next to the entrance to the south arm of the transept leads to the #Bishop's Consistory Court# (or Langton's Chapter House), which is now a muniment-room. The small chamber above the south porch is supposed to have been a secret #Treasury#. It is approached through the muniment-room, and has been popularly known as the "Lollard's Prison." [Illustration: THE SOUTH AISLE FROM THE NAVE. _S.B. Bolas & Co. photo_.] The #North Aisle# is similar to that on the south side. Towards its western end is the entrance door from the north porch. The north chapel aisle was originally used as three separate chapels until the divisions between them were removed. The two bays at the west were the #chapel of S. Anne#; the two next east of this formed the chapel of the Four Virgins, and the last bay was the small chapel of SS. Thomas and Edmund. In the first named of these there may still be seen, in the jambs, the capitals, and the arch-moulds of the north-western window, some of the colour decoration of which so much remained until the nineteenth century. The space in the north wall shows where the aumbry used to be. The small remnants of the division wall at the east are some slight indication of what the design of the arcading on this wall was before it was destroyed. In the next chapel, that of the #Four Virgins#, there is nothing to show where the aumbry or the piscina was. But on the north 'the position of the arcading on the east dividing wall remains. The #chapel of SS. Thomas and Edmund# has an arcade on the east wall similar to that in the chapel of S. Clement. The aumbry is on the north and the piscina on the south side of the position which the altar used to occupy. The #Rood-Screen# at the entrance to the choir from the nave was erected in 1889, and is a memorial of Archdeacon Walker. It was designed by Mr. T. Garner. At the point where the arms of the cross meet is a figure representing the "Agnus Dei," and at the extremities of the cross are carvings of the four-winged figures of the cherubim. The #Pulpit# was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and is a memorial of Dean Hook. It is very elaborately carved, and is made of Caen stone and Purbeck marble. The four figures are intended to represent Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The #Lectern# of brass was presented to the church as a memorial of Richard Owen, of Chichester, by his daughter. The #Font# under the south-western tower is a copy of an old one in the church at Shoreham. It was the gift of Bishop Durnford, as a memorial of his wife. The #Monuments in the Nave# have in many cases suffered from bad usage, and in most instances they do not now occupy their original places in the building. The canopied memorial to Bishop Durnford (1), [30] under which is a recumbent effigy, forms part of the screen between S. Clement's chapel and the south aisle of the nave. It was designed by Mr. Garner. There are several tablets in the nave and aisles by Flaxman. The best are those to the memory of Captain Cromwell's wife and daughter (2), in S. Clement's chapel, and one on the north side of the nave, in the chapel of the Four Virgins, as a memorial of Collins (3), the poet, who was a native of Chichester. The two recumbent figures under the arch leading into this same chapel are said to be those of Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, and his wife (4). It was restored by Richardson. Fitz-Alan was beheaded in 1397. Some say that these two figures were removed from the chapel of the monastery of the Grey Friars at the time of the Reformation, and were placed in their present position in 1843, having been found embedded in the stonework of the chapel wall close by. The base upon which the figures rest is modern. The earl is represented in full armour. At his feet is a lion, and at his head, under the helmet, is a coronet and a lion's head. At the countess's feet is a dog, and her head rests upon two pillows. [30] The figures in parenthesis refer to the numbers on the plan at the end. The most beautiful monument now remaining in the church is that which is said to represent Maud, Countess of Arundel (1270) (5). The modelling of the whole figure and the long flowing lines of her robes are worthy of careful study. The whole pose and the disposition of the two angels at the head arranging the pillows, with the two dogs upon which her feet rest, have been finely conceived and well executed. The hands are clasped over the breast, with the forearms bent upwards slightly towards the face. On each of the long sides of the base supporting the figure are six elongated quatrefoil panels, containing in all six female figures and six shields. Between the quatrefoils are winged heads of ten angelic figures. The blazoning of the shields is entirely gone, and the brilliant colouring that once covered the entire monument is only to be traced in a few places. The outer robe still shows some signs of the rich blue with which it used to be covered. The face of the figure appears to be badly mutilated, but the damage to the features has been done principally by an endeavour to preserve them. A thick coat of plaster had been placed over the face to protect it from injury, perhaps in the seventeenth century or earlier, and this was never completely removed. It had become gradually polished like the material of the figure itself, and so it remains, with a cut across it to represent a mouth. The remains of the real face are still hidden beneath. [Illustration: THE SACRISTY (SEE P. 90). _S.B. Bolas & Co. photo_.] Close to this effigy, but in the aisle farther to the east, and on the north wall, are two admirable memorial tablets which were designed in the eighteenth century. One is in memory of Dean Hayley and his wife (6), and the other in memory of Henry Baker and his wife and their only child (7), who, by comparison with the other tablet, appears to have been a second wife of the same Thomas Hayley. Close to the porch in the south aisle is the only complete old brass in the building (8). It is dated 1592, and records the fact that "Mr. William Bradbridge" was "thrice Maior of this Cittie," and "had vi sonnes & viii daughters." The other monuments in the nave are those of Matthew Quantock, Dean Cloos, Bishop Arundel, and William Huskisson, sometime member of Parliament for Chichester. One on the south side of the west porch is Bishop Stephen de Berghstead's, and the other opposite on the north is a work of the fifteenth century. The #Choir and Sanctuary#--These are very different in appearance now from what they were, as will be seen by reference to the chapter on the history of the fabric. The #Reredos# was designed by Messrs. Slater & Carpenter, and has never been completed. It is generally considered that it is not at all in keeping with the character of the building, and there is some hope that it may be one day removed. The subject of the figure-work in the panel is "The Ascension." The #Altar# was presented by the late Mr. J.F. France, and is made of oak. Some of the frontals are very elaborate examples of modern embroidery. The #Pavements# are composed of many specimens of various coloured marbles. The #Stalls# are those which have been in use since the fourteenth century. All the furniture of the choir had been removed for safety before the fall of the tower and spire: but the bishop's throne (9) and the stalls for the dean and precentor have been added since that time. The #Candelabrum# which hangs from the vault was presented by Lady Featherstonhaugh and two other ladies, in the eighteenth century. The #Iron Grilles# which screen the eastern part of the choir from the aisles are good examples of simple modern ironwork copied from old examples; they were made in Chichester by Halsted & Sons. [Illustration: THE MODERN ALTAR AND REREDOS.] The #Organ# was placed on the north side of the choir after it had been removed from its earlier position on the Arundel screen; and in 1888, when it was largely remodelled, a new oak case was designed for it. It was made originally by Harris in 1678, and had then only one manual and no pedals; but between this date and the last alteration, it had already been enlarged no less than at six different times. As the choir stalls are immediately under the crossing, above which rises the new central tower and spire, they are a convenient place from which to examine the work of restoration. The new work represents as nearly as possible all that was there before the collapse of the old piers and arches. In the #South Transept# the most important feature is the beautifully designed stonework of the tracery in the south window; but this may be seen better from the cloisters, as the crude vulgarity of the bad painted glass makes it difficult to examine it from within the building. The #Sacristy# (10), now used as a choir school and vestry, is a large vaulted chamber, lighted on the south side by six small windows (see page 87). The #Chapel of S. Pantaleon# (11), on the east side of the transept, still retains the old piscina in the south wall; but it is used now as the vestry for the dean and canons. The vaulting ribs in the part of the transept between this chapel and the sacristy are carved like those in the last bay of the presbytery next to the lady-chapel, and are of the same date. They appear to be part of the work done during Bishop Gilbert Leophardo's episcopate. The #Pictures# by Bernardi on the back of the choir stalls (see illustration, p. 113) represent Ceadwalla and Henry VIII. granting and confirming privileges to the bishops of their day. The portraits of the bishops of the see from Wilfrid to Sherborne are in the north transept. The #South Aisle of the Choir# is entered from the south transept under a deeply moulded arch. On the south is the priest-vicars' vestry (12), and at the east end the #chapel of S. Mary Magdalen#. This chapel was restored by Messrs. G.F. Bodley, A.R.A., and T. Garner, architects, in memory of the Rev. T.F. Crosse, who was precentor and canon of the cathedral. The aumbry in the north wall was the receptacle in which S. Richard's head was preserved in a case of silver. This is mentioned in William de Tenne's will. On the other side is the old piscina. The paintings in the panels by Miss Lowndes represent, on the north side (i) S. Richard celebrating the Eucharist in S. Edmund's Chapel, (ii) the same bishop preaching, and (iii) his death; on the south, (i) Mary anoints our Lord's Feet, (ii) The Crucifixion, (iii) After the Resurrection. The carved and painted reredos is of stone. Close to this chapel is the doorway into the church from the east walk of the cloisters; in the spandrels of the arches, both inside and outside, are the arms of William of Wykeham. Above it is a window, the glass in which was given by Cardinal Manning (when Archdeacon of Chichester) in memory of his wife. [Illustration: THE TRIFORIUM IN THE CHOIR. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] [Illustration. DECORATION ON THE VAULT OF THE LADY-CHAPEL, BY TH. BERNARDI, 1519 (SEE P. 34). (Scale about 4 feet 10 ins. to 1 in). _H.C. Corletle, delin_.] The #Presbytery#, Ambulatory, or retro-choir, is the space between the back of the reredos and the entrance to the lady-chapel. The design in detail of these two bays is very different in character from the three in the choir, which are like those in the nave. The two piers of Purbeck marble are circular, and about them are grouped four detached shafts of the same material. They are united only at the base and by the abacus above the capitals, which are beautifully carved (see page 16). The main arches in the two bays are not pointed, but round, like those in the nave and choir; but, unlike the latter, they have deeply cut mouldings in three orders. The triforium arcade above, on the north and south sides, has moulded and carved details of a similar character. Some of the beautifully carved figure-work still remains in the spandrels between the subsidiary pointed arches. But the most beautiful piece of design in all this work is in the arches of the triforium passage across the east wall, above the entrance to the lady-chapel. [Illustration: THE PRESBYTERY OR RETRO-CHOIR, LOOKING NORTH-EAST.] It should be noticed that the sub-arches in the triforium here are pointed, not round, as in the case of those in the same position westward of this portion. And the support to these arches in the centre, is a group of shafts instead of only one column. The clerestory, however, offers a greater contrast to the earlier work in that the central arch, as well as the side ones, is lifted up much higher, the detached columns being lengthened to obtain the alteration. Each arch also, at this level, is now pointed. S. Richard's shrine occupied the bay in the presbytery immediately behind the High Altar. It stood upon a platform which was approached on its eastern side by steps, and was enclosed by iron grilles. The platform was removed at the time of the general restoration in 1861-1867, and upon it used to stand also the tombs of Bishop Day and Bishop Christopherson or Curteys. The #Lady-Chapel#, as its walls and vaulting clearly show, was once completely decorated with designs in colour. The windows now are the only parts that indicate an attempt to renew this portion of its earlier condition. The new reredos is of alabaster, and was designed by Messrs Carpenter & Ingelow. The #North Choir Aisle# contains some monuments which are referred to separately. The now unused chapel at its eastern end was dedicated to S. Catharine. The #Library# is approached through a doorway in this aisle. There is a chamber above in which was the library of pre-Reformation days. The present library formed the chapel of S. John the Baptist and S. Edmund the King (13) until it became the chancel of the parish church of S. Peter the Great, the north transept being used as its nave. Part of the vaulting in it is unlike any other in the building, having the chevron or zigzag ornament cut on the side of the mouldings of the ribs (see page 98). [Illustration: THE LADY-CHAPEL.] The library collection contains many relics of various kinds: among them are Oslac's grant of land to the church at Selsea, A.D. 780; a manuscript of the twelfth century; Cranmer's copy of the "Consultatio" of Herman of Cologne; an old Sarum missal; the sealed book of Charles II.; fragments of ecclesiastical vessels; and a leaden "Absolution" of Bishop Godfrey dating from the eleventh century. The #North Transept# has on its west side two of the old twelfth-century round-arched windows, and opposite are the two large round-arched openings into the library and the chamber above it. The vaulting of this transept is not the same in detail as that to the south of the choir, and is rather earlier in the type of its mouldings. Close by the south springing of the arch leading to the library is one of the few pieces of figure-carving in the church. It is a head full of vigour and character. The #Monuments in the Transepts and Choir# have been injured and restored or removed at various times. The large one (14) under the south window is Langton's tomb and effigy (d. 1336). The new one nearest to the singing school is a memorial and effigy of Mr. John Abel Smith, of Dale Park, who represented Chichester in the House of Commons. On the east wall is another tomb of Tudor date (15), with niches for sculpture. The tomb next to the back of the choir-stalls (16) is that of Bishop Richard de la Wych. The two panels in relief (17), in the south aisle of the choir are works of about the twelfth century (see page 105). It is supposed that originally they were brought to Chichester from Selsea. They were discovered in 1829 hidden in the wall behind the woodwork of the stalls in the choir, and were subsequently placed in their present position. The subject of the one nearest to the transept is the "Raising of Lazarus," and of the other, "Our Lord with Mary and Martha at Bethany." These are two of the most interesting relics of earlier days that remain in the cathedral. Historically and artistically, they are of much value, but at present no more than has been stated is known about them. Bishop Sherborne's monument (18) was built during his lifetime, and at his death he provided for its care by New College, of which he had been a fellow. It is still well cared for; but with its original decorations it must have been a very beautiful object. [Illustration: THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE, LOOKING WEST. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] Dean Hook, who died in 1875, is commemorated by a monument (19) opposite Sherborne's. It was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and, like the pavements of the choir, it has in its composition many specimens of coloured marbles. Much of the detail is executed in mosaic. Under the arch of the presbytery arcade nearest to the reredos, on the south side, is Bishop Day's tomb (20). On the south side of the lady-chapel, close to the entrance, are the memorial slabs of two early bishops, perhaps Hilary and John de Greneford, beneath the arch where Bishop Gilbert's effigy was placed. On the opposite side is a space under an arch in which may be traced the lines of some decoration which once ornamented some memorial. Upon the floor below is the memorial of Bishop Ralph (21), the builder of the first portions of the cathedral. Close by is a large wall tablet in memory of Bishop Thomas Bickley. It is a design of the seventeenth-century period, and is interesting of its kind. Under the arch on the north side of the presbytery, opposite Day's tomb, is that of Bishop Christopherson or Curteys (22), and against the wall of the aisle near the chapel of S. Catharine is a curious marble slab with some carving upon it. It represents two hands, with parts of the arms, supporting a heart, and the full inscription, now almost gone, was "ICY GIST LE COEUR DE MAUDDE" ("Here lies the heart of Maud"). It is evidently work of an early date, but nothing is accurately known of its history, though it has been assumed that it was made in the twelfth or thirteenth century (23). To the west of this is a bust of Bishop Otter (24). In an arched recess in the wall nearer to the library is the tomb and effigy of Bishop Storey (25). Close to this are two memorials of the sixteenth century. On the west side of the north transept are the monuments of Bishops Henry King, Carleton, and Grove. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY. _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] The #Stained Glass# in the cathedral is all modern, and most of it is of the worst possible kind. It is bad in design and crude in colour, and much of it is not really stained glass at all, but a painted substitute. The only really good window in the building is that at the east end of the south choir aisle in S. Mary Magdalen's chapel. It was designed by Mr. C.E. Kempe. The glass in the lady-chapel windows is better than most of the rest, and it is admitted that the worst glass that was ever placed in any cathedral church by a generous munificence is that which is now in the large window of the south transept. [Illustration: THE TOWN CROSS. Built by Bishop Storey, _c_. 1500. _Photochrom Co., Ltd., photo_.] CHAPTER IV. THE DIOCESE AND SEE. To trace the history of the establishment of the city of Chichester we need go back to the time when the Romans had occupied the same site under the ancient name of Regnum. They had fortified themselves in this position, and evidence of their occupation is to be found to-day in the subdivision of the city into four parts by those streets which meet at the Market Cross. But as the centre of the Imperial fabric became weaker the dependencies were abandoned, and the Roman legions recalled early in the fifth century. So when in 477 A.D. "came Aelle to Britain, and his three sons, Cymen, Wlencing, and Cissa, with three ships," and landed at "the place which is named Cymenesora, and there slew many Welsh, and drove some into the forest which is named Andredslea," there were no Roman soldiers to oppose them. In this brief sentence, quoted from the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, there is a reference to several interesting matters which concern the later history of the South Saxons, their acceptance of Christianity, and the foundation of that Church--first at Selsea, then at Chichester--which was to be the future local centre to support and foster the faith they for so long rejected. The Jute leaders, Hengest and Horsa, had established themselves on British soil in 449 A.D. This was twenty-eight years before Aelle arrived, and with his followers "slew many Welsh"; that is, the British natives, the Wealas, or strangers, whom he found in possession of the land. The place "named Cymenesora," at which Aelle had landed, was close to Wittering, at the mouth of Chichester harbour. And the chronicle, relating what had occurred thirteen years later, records how "in this year (490-1) Aelle and Cissa besieged Andredes ceaster, and slew all that dwelt therein, so that not even one Briton was left." This fortress of Anderida, which had been a Roman _castrum_, occupied the spot now called Pevensey, the landing-place of a later conqueror, the Norman William, in 1066. It guarded on the east the strip of land between the South Downs and the sea; and when it fell before them, the Saxons became masters of the region to the north known then as Andredeslea, or Andredeswold, the forest or weald of Anderida. To the west was Regnum, Cissa's Ceaster, or Chichester, another of those fortresses which the provident and energetic Romans had established along the South Coast. One of Aelle's followers, named Boso, or Bosa, settled at the head of a branch of Chichester harbour, and, as in the case of his superior, Cymen, the place was named after him, as Bosenham, or Bosham. This was in the fifth century. Augustine began his work in Kent late in the sixth century, and Birinus, who was sent independently direct from Rome, had undertaken the conversion of the West Saxons fifteen years before the middle of the succeeding century. But neither by these missionaries nor their brethren was the territory of the South Saxons affected. The West Saxons, by conquest, extended their rule westward and northward, and missionary enterprise followed the course of military success and subsequent civil protection. The original British occupiers of the land withdrew to Wales, or else became subject to the conquerors. Similar had been the course of events which followed the taking of Kent by the Jutes. So when Augustine arrived he was welcomed by Aethelberht, whose wife Bertha, a Frankish princess, was already a Christian. Augustine having founded the see of Canterbury, was soon enabled, by the help of political and social influence, to effect the establishment of other sees. Rochester, London, and York were soon centres of activity; but these neighbour principalities had not, ecclesiastically, affected the territories that were close to their respective domains; for the kingdom of the South Saxons remained, nearly two centuries after Aelle's conquest, in the same heathen condition as prevailed in his day. Bede relates that at Bosham, Dicul had founded a monastery where, "surrounded by woods and water, lived five or six brethren, serving the Lord in humility and poverty." But "no one cared to emulate their life, or listen to their teaching." Dicul came from Ireland, and it is supposed that he had been educated in the monastic centre of missionary life which in the sixth century had been founded there. It is not, however, known how these few men found their way to the South Saxon shores, and their presence there had no influence upon the minds of those invaders who had possessed themselves of the adjacent lands. A quarrel in the Northumbrian kingdom was the cause which sent a missionary to Sussex in 680 A.D. Ecgfrith and his witan had banished #Wilfrith#, Archbishop of York, from his see. The unfortunate exile wandered some time in search of welcome. Eventually he found his way to Sussex, where Aethelwealh and his Christian wife offered him a new field for his energies. Twenty years earlier he had been in the same kingdom. On that occasion, having been consecrated by the Bishop of Paris, he was returning from Gaul when the vessel in which he travelled was driven upon the coast and stranded. While in this helpless condition they were discovered and attacked by the South Saxons, who were three times beaten off, but whilst they were continuing their preparations for another assault, the vessel rose with the tide and escaped. Under other circumstances he was now among these people again. The famine which prevailed at the time of his arrival gave him the necessary opportunity to gain their affections by first satisfying their material needs. He showed the starving folk how to catch fish with nets which he and his companions had made, and then was able to teach them other things. He preached with success for some time, and baptized many who heard him. Bede has left a record characteristic of his day, in which he relates that immediately they had accepted the faith which he taught, "the rain, so long withheld, revisited the thirsty land." Aethelwealh, grateful for Wilfrith's aid, granted him lands at Selsea. The bishop at once gave freedom to those families and their slaves who occupied the district, and baptized them, giving them release, as Bede has told, from spiritual and temporal bond's at the same time. Selsea thus became another see from which Christian principle and practice might be taught in the midst of the surrounding tribes. In this spot, near the residence of the king, a church was built, in which the bishop's cathedra was placed. The structure was dedicated to S. Peter, and was the first cathedral church in Sussex. It is not now known what the architectural character of this building was. Perhaps there was some attempt in its design to take advantage of such suggestions as the Romans left behind them at Regnum, for we find in early instances of English architecture that such examples had exercised some influence upon the elementary efforts of those days. But it is more likely that his first church was nothing but a small and simple barn, for men were not then burdened with the idea that a cathedral must be a big church, provided it served as a centre from which the bishop could use his pastoral responsibility. During Wilfrith's stay at Selsea many changes took place. Then Ceadwalla, who had defeated Aedilwalch, or Aethelwealh, confirmed the grants to the Church made by his predecessor, in return for the kindness he had received from Wilfrith some time before. Under their new head the missionaries at Selsea undertook, with the king's sanction, to convert those who inhabited the neighbouring island of Wight and also parts of the mainland which now were subject to the new ruler. But after five years in the south Wilfrith returned to his old diocese of York. Sussex, to a large extent, had accepted the faith he endeavoured to teach, and many churches were established and organised before his departure. [Illustrations: OUR LORD WITH MARTHA AND MARY. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. SCULPTURED PANELS IN THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN BROUGHT FROM THE CATHEDRAL AT SELSEA (SEE P. 96).] For some years after Wilfrith had returned to York there was no bishop in charge of the newly founded diocese in Sussex. The community of workers he had brought together at Selsea still continued to exist; but Sussex in ecclesiastical affairs was subject to Winchester during this interval. Ceadwalla, when Kentwine, King of Wessex, died in 685, had begun "to strive for the kingdom," so the chronicle has recorded, and having established himself upon the throne, he succeeded also in conquering the ruler of Sussex, and so brought both kingdoms under his sway. Wilfrith had converted him to the Christian faith; but when this prelate was recalled to his former diocese, no one had been appointed to carry on the work he had begun. For twenty years this vacancy continued. Then, after the death of Ceadwalla, Ine, his successor, divided the large diocese, which was subject to the Bishop of Winchester, by making, with the consent of his witan, a new see at Sherburne and reviving that of Selsea. Of this latter, #Eadberht# was appointed the first bishop in the year 709. The community in Selsea over which Eadberht had presided before his consecration was a secular foundation. Whatever was the principle upon which it had been founded, there seems no doubt that during the interim which elapsed before a bishop was placed in charge some elementary form of government was carried on by a succession of elected presidents. This body was either composed of secular clergy, who were distributed throughout the diocese, living as priests in charge of parishes _in sæculo_, or it was a foundation supported by those who lived according to a _regula_. The regulars were those who lived together, having vowed obedience to some particular form of rule. These were unmarried men, who used one building, property, refectory, and dormitory of the institution in common. Not all of these were ordained, as there were among them lay brothers as well as those who were priests. But the seculars--those in the world--were not subject to rules and conditions such as these. Many, as priests living in their parishes, were married men. After the consecration of Eadberht and his installation as Bishop of Selsea, the cathedra, or episcopal chair, was occupied successively by twenty prelates. The period during which these held office, including the few intervals when for a time the see remained vacant, extended over about three hundred and seventy years. Little is known of these bishops further than that their signatures are to be found attached to various charters. These were all called Bishops of the South Saxons. #Aethelgar# was Bishop of Selsea in 980. He had been a member of the monastic colony at Glastonbury, near Wells. After occupying the see for about eight years, he succeeded Dunstan as Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishops #Ordberht# and #Aelmer# were bishops after Aethelgar; and then the next prelate of importance was #Aethelric#, who was a Benedictine of Christ Church, Canterbury. He was learned in the ancient laws and customs of his country, and when a very old man acted as one of the arbitrators appointed to settle the differences which had arisen between Lanfranc and Odo, Earl of Kent. Aethelric had been consecrated by Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was removed from the Primacy by William the Conqueror to make room for Lanfranc, his own nominee. The see of Selsea was governed by three other bishops till William appointed one of his chaplains to the office. This was #Stigand# (1070-1087), but not that Stigand (the Primate) who at the same royal bidding had to make room for Lanfranc. It was while he was still an occupant of the see that the transfer to Chichester was effected. He earned the displeasure of the king by refusing to consecrate Gausbert to the Abbey of Battle unless the monk would come to Chichester for the ceremony. He had some trouble, too, with his metropolitan, Lanfranc, on account of a dispute concerning the limits of his jurisdiction. Certain parishes within the territory of his diocese were claimed as subject to the more eastern see. The Primate established his right to these "peculiars," and the right obtained until the last century, when all such holdings were abolished by law. #Godfrey# (1087-1088) evidently incurred the displeasure of his papal superior, as the only known record of his very brief episcopate is represented by a discovery which was made in 1830 when an absolution from the Pope, inscribed upon a leaden cross, was dug up in the paradise close to the south choir aisle. It was not till three years had elapsed since Godfrey's death that #Ralph de Luffa# (1091-1123) was consecrated to the vacancy by Thomas, Archbishop of York. Meanwhile the king enjoyed the temporalities of the see. In his person we meet a figure of much importance to the history of the fabric and see, for to his energy and initiative we owe the greater part of the cathedral building that remains to-day. Ralph's activity was not wholly absorbed by his interest in the architectural idea which he hoped to realise. He spent much time and care attending to the needs of the churches of which he was the overseer. He visited them regularly three times in the year for the purpose of effecting reforms when they were necessary, for teaching, and for developing the organisation of the diocese as it was affected by the condition of each parochial unit. Thus by his office and oversight he was endeavouring to maintain the necessary relations between the particular churches and their cathedral centre. In defence of these same members of the local and general ecclesiastical body he was obliged to resent the attempted interference of two kings of the realm. Henry I. wished to fill his pockets by imposing fines upon the clergy. To oppose this the bishop closed all the churches in the diocese and blocked up the entrances with thorns; and so, except in the monasteries, the offering of public worship ceased. The restriction was in time removed, and the king acknowledged the bishop's plea that he should endeavour to replenish the coffers of his poor see, so that the injured cathedral might be repaired, rather than reduce it to poverty by extortion. Ralph is credited with having established the office of "dean" [31] at Chichester--the first of the four cathedral dignitaries, of which the others are the præcentor, the chancellor, and the treasurer. [31] Stephens, p. 49. #Seffrid Pelochin#, or #d'Escures# (1125-1147), ceded to the king's aggression the rights and privileges Ralph had gained. He was obliged to vacate the see in 1145, [an]d returned to Glastonbury, where he had been abbot before he was made bishop. His name figures in the list which Roger of Hoveden gives in his chronicle, as one among the bishops who were at the Council of London in 1129. #Hilary# (1147-1169) was a bishop who was before all things an ecclesiastic. To Ralph Luffa's foundation of the dean's office he added those of the chancellor and treasurer, if not also, as is supposed, that of the præcentor. With Hilary began the traditional post of confessor to the queen of the realm. Stephen had given him this office, and at the same time added to the privilege a perpetual chaplaincy in connection with the castle at Pevensey. The letters from Popes Eugenius and Alexander III., which confirmed the possessions held by the see and guaranteed a papal protection of the church in Chichester, are among the collection in the cathedral library. The properties these deeds acknowledge include that portion of the city--one fourth--in which the close was situated; and within this area were comprised the church itself, the episcopal palace, and the residences of the canons. The original grant of this land was made by William, Earl of Arundel, in 1147, who bestowed it among other things as compensation "for the damages which I once did to the same church." Hilary was Bishop of Chichester during that historic period when Becket opposed Henry II. He attempted, like the rest of the bishops, to heal the breach; and Tennyson, in "Becket," adopting a phrase he used, makes him say to his Primate, "Hath not thine ambition set the Church this day between the hammer and the anvil ... fealty to the King, obedience to thyself?" He went to Sens, to plead as an advocate on the king's behalf before Pope Alexander III. and the French king. The result of this meeting was that England was placed under the ban of excommunication. But Henry replied by declaring that the property of all who acted upon it should be confiscated and themselves banished. The bishop was involved also in a local contest with the Abbot of Battle, who refused to consider himself subject to his episcopal jurisdiction. After Hilary's death in 1169 the revenues of the see were for four years appropriated to his own uses by the king, who late in the year 1173 appointed #John Greenford# (1174-1180), who was Dean of Chichester, to the vacancy. The bishop-elect was not consecrated until, in 1174, he, with three more nominated about the same time, had done penance before Becket's tomb at Canterbury. Little is known of him except that he attended some ecclesiastical councils. The episcopate of #Seffrid II.# (1180-1204) introduces an important period of activity, during which great alterations were made in the fabric of the cathedral. #Simon Fitz Robert#, or #Simon of Wells# (1204-1207), was a bishop whose favour with the king (John) enabled him to do much for the see. He had held a post in the Royal Exchequer, and had been guardian of the Fleet Prison as well as Provost of Beverley and Archdeacon of Wells. The benefactions he obtained were various. A charter was granted by which the see should hold its property free from impost, under the protection of the king. The bishop, with his dean and chapter, were practically exempted from the jurisdiction of the local civil courts and from the payment of customs and tolls within the same sphere. Within the bounds of the property owned by the see they were to rule without restraint, and in the presence of a royal official "the view of Frank Pledge was to be held in the bishop's court." In the patent rolls of King John there are two entries, dated 1205 A.D. and 1206 A.D., by which the bishop was granted permission to take Purbeck marble for the repair of his church without hindrance, from the coast of Dorset to Chichester. [32] But precautions were taken to prevent any of the material thus obtained from being used elsewhere. A further grant, the evidence of which is now removed, allowed the chapter to build premises beyond the precincts northward, which encroached twelve feet into the roadway now known as West Street. A row of lime-trees now stands where these houses remained till the middle of the last century. For six years after Simon's death John kept the see vacant, and during the interim enjoyed the temporalities. [32] See Walcott, p. 15, note _c_, May 24th, 1207. #Richard Poore# was then consecrated bishop in 1215. He had been Dean of Old Sarum. But after occupying the see for no more than two years, he was translated to Salisbury. #Ranulf of Warham# (1217-1224) bequeathed some property to the see [33]; but otherwise he did little, except as a fortunate collector of cattle, for the support of which his successor provided pasturage. [33] Stephens, p. 57. #Ralph Neville# (1224-1244) was a bishop of more than local celebrity. Like Langton, the archbishop, he withstood the demands which the papacy and Henry III. made in their endeavours to impoverish the Church in England. For this opposition the king removed him temporarily from the post of Chancellor of the Realm, a position he held from 1226 to 1240. His "fame rests more upon his repute as a statesman faithful in many perils, and a singular pillar of truth in the affairs of the kingdom." [34] He succeeded in procuring the payment to the Church of tithe from some royal properties which had been withheld, and left provision for the supply of twelve quarters of wheat annually to the poor in Chichester. Some, notes preserved in the cathedral records lead to the supposition that the portion of the old central tower above the roof and up to the parapet at the foot of the spire was built, or at least begun, during Ralph's tenure of the see. One of these memoranda shows that he released from twenty days' penance those who should visit the cathedral and contribute to the maintenance of the fabric. The others state that he expended one hundred and thirty marks upon repairs, and his executors paid over one hundred and forty marks to the dean and chapter for the purpose of finishing a stone tower which it had been found necessary to repair. [35] Three years after his death it was nearly completed. Bishop Neville died at his house by Chancellor's Lane, now Chancery Lane. His property later passed into the hands of the Earl of Lincoln, and was known then as the inn, or hospital, of Lincoln. The estate is now covered by the buildings of Lincoln's Inn, [36] and that portion which is still the property of the see is known as "The Chichester Rents." [34] Matt. Paris. [35] See Walcott, p. 15, note _c_. [36] See Stephens, p. 61, cf. Murray's "Chichester." Ralph's successor was Richard of Wych (1245-1253), generally called St. Richard. He had studied under Edmund and Grosseteste at Oxford, and also in Paris and Bologna. Returning from Europe, he became Chancellor of the University of Oxford, then of the diocese of Canterbury. Having withdrawn again to France, he was ordained priest at Orleans, and then worked as vicar at Deal, from which post he was called upon to occupy again his earlier office at Canterbury. Then came his appointment to Chichester. The canons had elected Robert Passelew, but the archbishop objected. Henry III., having supported the first nominee, disputed Richard's election. Meanwhile the king appropriated the temporalities for two years. Richard appealed to Innocent IV., who confirmed the appointment and consecrated Richard at Lyons in 1245. This did not end the difference, for on the new bishop's return he was obliged to accept the hospitality of his clergy, the king being still hostile. But he did not allow these difficulties to interfere with his attention to episcopal duty, for he walked throughout the diocese, organising and teaching as he went. In his leisure he followed the pursuits of his youth, and spent his spare time in farming and gardening. He was an excellent man, whose peculiar sanctity rests largely upon his having succeeded in doing the duties some of his predecessors had disregarded, and for a generosity which outran his income. Accepting that law which the papacy had added to those of Christianity, he treated the married clergy with the severity his sense of duty and obedience urged, for he deprived them of their benefices, and their wives were denied the offices of the Church both before and after death. Any bequests to them by their husbands, he declared, should be confiscated, and the funds derived by this means devoted to the needs of the cathedral building Rather inconsistently he taught the beneficed clergy that they should use hospitality and charity; but like another Malachi, he reminded men that to withhold the tithe of their increase from the Church made them robbers not of the clergy, but of their Creator. He instituted the fund afterwards known as "S. Richard's Pence." It was a system by which regular offerings should be made for the completion and maintenance of the cathedral fabric. And, characteristically, he obtained the support of the archbishop and seven other prelates in their approval of his wish that they should "recommend visits and offerings to Chichester, for the repair and completion of the cathedral." This is another evidence of the great extent of those building operations that were in progress throughout the thirteenth century. Just before his death he began to preach a crusade, but died at Dover. In his will he still remembered the cathedral by leaving a legacy of forty pounds for the needs of the fabric. #John of Clymping# (1253-1262) succeeded Richard. His episcopate appears chiefly remarkable for the growth of stories about the miraculous powers and saintly life of his predecessor. #Stephen of Berghsted# (1262-1288) now occupied the see. During his episcopate Richard was canonised, a deputation, sent at great cost to Rome, having succeeded in persuading Urban IV. that his merits and fame deserved an honour which should bring wealth and celebrity to the see in whose cathedral his body was laid; so in 1276 the remains of his body were removed from their tomb and placed at the back of the high altar in a shrine, or feretory, dedicated to him. [Illustration: TOMB ASSIGNED TO BISHOP RICHARD OF WYCH, AND PICTURES ORIGINALLY BY BERNARDI. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., photo_.] #Gilbert de Sancto Leophardo# (1288-1305) was a bishop who, like S. Richard, devoted himself to his diocesan duties with a singleminded purpose which was not a common virtue with all mediæval prelates. He endeavoured to regulate the habits of those clergy who accepted their privileges but were inclined to neglect the duties and responsibilities these involved. His interest in the fabric of the cathedral was expressed principally by the additions that were made to the lady-chapel during his episcopate. #John Langton# (1305-1337) took a conspicuous part in the suppression of the knights templars during the reign of Edward II. in obedience to the papal order regarding them. He was Chancellor of the Realm before his elevation to the episcopate, and showed his energy as a statesman locally by commanding the restoration of rights to some vicars of the cathedral who had been suspended in accordance with the provisions of certain statutes which the dean and chapter made without his consent. Like Bishop Gilbert, he was an instrument by whose sanction more changes were made in the building. #Robert of Stratford# (1337-1362), another statesman bishop, succeeded Langton. He had also been chancellor, and asserted his episcopal authority as sternly as his predecessor. Of #William of Lynn# (1362-1368) and his episcopacy little record remains; but #William Rede# (1369-1385) earned some repute as a scholar, and was the founder of Merton College Library in Oxford, and it is to him that the diocese is indebted for the preservation of the early records relating to the see. Nothing of importance is known of the next three bishops: #Thomas Rushoke# (1385-1389). #Richard Metford# (1389-1395). #Robert Waldby# (1395-1396). #Robert Rede# (1397-1415), whose register is the earliest among those that remain, occupied the see during the reign of Henry IV. This record contains many interesting details concerning the part its compiler took in the endeavour to suppress the doctrines of Wycliffe and the Lollards; and it also shows that much disorder prevailed among the canons and vicars of the cathedral. One of the canons, besides stealing money from the treasury, appropriated for his private use some materials which had been intended for the repair of the church. Rectors of parishes allowed their cures to fall into a state of destitution, and left them to the care of poorly paid vicars while they themselves resided elsewhere. The see was not filled for two years after the death of Rede. Then followed in succession: #Stephen Patryngton# (1417). #Henry Ware# (1418). #John Kemp# (1421). #Thomas Poldon# (1421). #John Rickingale# (1426). #Simon Sydenham# (1429). No registers remain relating to the affairs of the episcopate during the twenty years covered by their occupation of the see. In the register left by #Richard Praty# (1438-1446) there is evidence that many of the negligences censured by Bishop Rede were still without correction. The discipline of the monastic houses in Sussex is represented as having become very lax. #Adam Moleyns#, or #Molyneux# (1446-1450), was instrumental in arranging the marriage of Henry VI. with Margaret of Anjou. Many concessions were granted to him by the king for the benefit of himself and the diocese, but having become unpopular he was murdered by some sailors in Portsmouth early in 1450 when on his way to France. #Reginald Pecock# (1450-1459), "being convicted of heresy, he resigned his bishopric," so say the records of the cathedral. #John Arundel# (1459-1478). The record of his episcopal administration has been lost; but it is known that he built the screen named after him. He appears, however, to have been much less restless than his predecessor. #Edward Storey# (1478-1503) has left in his register full accounts of his deeds and the condition of the diocese. It shows the latter had again become very disordered. Both the regular and secular bodies are charged with abusing the trust committed to them. Bishop Storey tried to correct this state of things. He proved his usefulness, otherwise, by the foundation of the Prebendal, or Free Grammar-School, in Chichester, and also by giving the Market Cross to the city for the benefit of the poor. Of #Richard Fitz-James# (1503-1508) and his administration there is but little information. With #Robert Sherburne# (1508-1536) we come to the close of a long period of ecclesiastical history--one during which the distinctly Christian, as opposed to the pagan, principles and forms of art had been developed. As bishop at Chichester he represented the Church and those principles which then in the west were taught in her name. Accordingly he protested against "the King's most dreadful commandment concerning (with other things) the uniting of the Supreme head of the Church of [? in] England with the Imperial Crown of this realm; and also the abolishing and secluding out of this realm the enormities and abuses of the Bishop of Rome's authority, usurped within the same." He wrote thus in 1534 to Cromwell. And obeying this command from the civil authority, he caused these orders to be published throughout the diocese. As a subject he obeyed his king; but, being honest, he could not as a bishop and a man disregard his principles when he found such obedience involved their denial. Consequently he resigned the see in 1536. #Richard Sampson# (1536-1543) took part in the Reformation movement. Although he had defended the principle that the king was to be considered "high governor under God, and Supreme head of the Church of England," his principles appear to have been easily affected by the political weather that prevailed. His attitude in favour of every principle involved in the acceptance of the papacy appears in the support he gave to doctrines which had been rejected by the party of reform. He no doubt feared the results that might follow upon another attempt to adapt the Church's constitution to changed conditions. In the time of #George Daye# (1543-1552) the pendulum moved again across the face of the political and ecclesiastical clock. He was a man whose convictions led him to support those same six articles which had been upheld by Bishop Sampson; and he attempted to prevent the introduction of the first prayer-book of Edward VI. in 1549, as well as the destruction of the earlier service-books in the following year. He was a man to be respected, for in the face of general opposition he proved that his convictions on important affairs were not ready to change at the sudden bidding of a new authority which he was unable to recognise. As he was not to be persuaded that his position was wrong, he was removed from the see towards the end of the year 1551. But we meet him again presently, for Bishop #John Scory# (1552-1554), who took his place, retired soon after Mary's accession. Bishop Daye came back to favour, preached at the coronation, reoccupied the see, and was now "a mighty busy man." [37] He caused some recent orders to be reversed by reviving the use of the earlier forms of liturgy, restoring the older ceremonial, and again setting up those altars in the churches which should never have been broken down. In his own words Daye "styeked" not at things trivial; but he would not assent to the abolition of essentials, however much they had been misused or become offensive in the eyes of untutored civil dignitaries and their party followers. Daye on his restoration had attempted to remove reformers and their opinions from the diocese by the aid of faggots and flames. But #John Christopherson# (1557-1559) was more energetic in upholding his authority and ideas by this same means; for Mary, though she would revive the papal supremacy, yet retained in her own hands the ecclesiastical position which the Throne in England had already assumed. [37] Strype, quoted by Dean Stephens, p. 190. At the close of Mary's reign Bishop Christopherson died, and in his place Elizabeth put #William Barlow# (1559-1568), who had been removed from the see of Bath and Wells by her predecessor. He made some attempt to remove a variety of irregularities which had been introduced since the death of Sherburne, for the services of the Church had become much disordered in consequence of the many changes of attitude which had been favoured by the rulers, both civil and ecclesiastical, during nearly thirty years. Barlow's endeavour to bring this chaos to a new order was in accord with the methods of those who sought reform. He tried to carry out the injunction of Parker, the Primate, whose aim was to "reduce all to a Godly uniformitie." But any desire for unity in diversity was not likely to be satisfied unless it was sought for with at least some unanimity of hope and aim. After his death the see remained vacant for two years. #Richard Curteys# (1570-1583) found the revenues of his see so reduced that he was unable properly to fulfil the ordinary obligations of his position. He did not spare himself in his endeavour to do the duties he had undertaken. With the assistance of others he methodically instructed the diocese under his charge, an well was this done that a contemporary said "the people with ardent zeale, wonderful rejoicinge, and in great number, take farre and long journeys to be partakers of his good and godly lessons." [38]This excellent man, however, owing to the political spoliation of the church, died impoverished in 1583. [38] Kennett's Notes: see Stephens' "Diocesan History of Chichester," p. 197. From 1583 till 1585 no bishop was appointed, but in the latter year #Thomas Bickley# (1585-1596) was selected. #Antony Watson# (1596-1605) was Bishop of Chichester when James became king. He was occupied much in furthering Whitgift's endeavour to improve the condition of the Church in England by urging conformity to the newly ordered methods of ecclesiastical government and procedure. #Launcelot Andrews# (1605-1609) then ruled the diocese until he was transferred to Ely. He was followed by #Samuel Harsnett# (1609-1619), who was an opponent of the Calvinistic attitude of thought. The records of his visitations ask some pertinent questions, which show how the Cathedral Church itself was being served. He inquires, "Have not many of the vicars and lay vicars been absent for months together? Is the choir sufficiently furnished, and are the boys properly instructed? What has become of the copes and vestments? Who is responsible for the custody of them and of the books? Are there not ale-houses in the close? Why are all these things not amended since the last visitation?" This was the state of affairs in the cathedral church of the diocese at the beginning of the seventeenth century; and during the two hundred years that followed there is but little improvement to remark. Certainly in #George Carleton#'s (1619-1628) and in #Richard Montagu#'s day (1628-1638) there was not much change, for the latter asks in every parish "whether communicants 'meekly kneel,' or whether they stand or sit at the time of reception: Whether the Holy Table is profaned at any time by persons sitting upon it, casting hats or cloaks upon it, writing or casting up accounts or any other indecent usuage." [39] And in consequence the archbishop desired to restore some sense of order and decency to the minds of both the clergy and laity by replacing the altars in their proper positions again. He asks, therefore, Bishop #Brian Duppa# (1638-1641), in the questions put during the first visitation of parish churches, "Is your communion-table, or altar, strong, fair and decent? Is it set according to the practice of the ancient Church,--upon an ascent at the east end of the chancel, with the ends of it north and south? Is it compassed in with a handsome rail to keep it from profanation according to an order made in the metropolical visitation?" [40] [39] Stephens' "Diocesan History," p. 216. [40] Quoted by Stephens, "Diocesan History," p. 216. During the episcopate of #Henry King# (1642-1670) the diocese was a theatre of rebellion and civil war. Chichester was taken on December 29th, 1642, by Waller and the Parliamentary soldiers after a siege of eight days. Bishop King repaired, after the Restoration, the wrecked cathedral and the episcopal palace, but this appears to be all that is known of him. #Peter Gunning# (1670-1675) was the first Bishop of Chichester appointed after the Restoration. He had suffered for the tenacity with which he clung to his principles during the period of the Rebellion. Having been ejected from a fellowship at Cambridge, he came to London, and there, with no little audacity, he ministered and taught as a loyalist and Churchman. But #Ralph Brideoake# (1675-1678) watched the political and ecclesiastical weathercocks, and feathered his nest. He had been "Chaplain to Speaker Lenthall, who gave him the rich living of Witney, near Oxford, where we are told he 'preached twice every Lord's Day, and in the evening catechised the youth in his own house; outvying in labour and vigilancy any of the godly brethren in those parts.' In 1659 he was made one of the 'triers,' yet immediately after the Restoration he was rapidly promoted to a canonry at Windsor, to the Deanery of Salisbury, and finally to the Bishopric of Chichester."[41] Though Bishop Henry King had endeavoured to restore the cathedral and the buildings of the precincts, these still were in a state of extreme dilapidation, for Bishop Brideoake's record of his visitation shows that the towers, windows, and cloisters had not yet been repaired. [41] Stephens' "Diocesan History," p. 233. #Guy Carleton# (1678-1685) was a Royalist bishop of a most consistent type. On two occasions he had been turned out of a cure by the Parliamentary "triers" for his opinions; but in his eighty-second year he came from the see of Bristol to Chichester. Another Royalist, who as a soldier had supported the cause of Charles I., occupied the see after Carleton. This was #John Lake# (1685-1689). He was one of those seven bishops who protested against James's Declaration of Indulgence. #Simon Patrick# (1689), #Robert Grove# (1691), #John Williams# (1696), #Thomas Manningham# (1709), #Thomas Bowers# (1722), and #Edward Waddington# (1724) served in the episcopate successively. #Francis Hare# (1731-1740) then filled the vacancy. He wasted some of his time in useless controversy, and, as the Duke of Marlborough's chaplain, made his office cheap, though perhaps popular, by occasionally dilating in his sermons upon the genius and military skill of his patron. He was a man of some capacity, who advised conformity to the meagre and starved ideals of the then accepted orthodoxy. Apparently he deemed this course a safe one, where there could, it appears, be little other guidance for those who still had any faith, except in the conventionalities of what had become ecclesiastical custom. He saw that the interpretation which individual opinion in its practical rejection of Christian ordinances would read into faith was likely to be no more than a new expression of early and mediæval heresies. #Mathias Mawson# (1740-1754) was bishop after Hare; and then Sir #William Ashburnham# (1754-1799) came to the diocese and occupied the see for forty-five years, "the longest episcopate since the foundation of the see." [42] [42] Stephens, p, 245. Before the close of the eighteenth century #John Buckner# (1799-1824) succeeded Ashburnham. In 1824 #Robert James Carr#, and in 1831 #Edward Maltby#, were appointed to the see. [Illustration: S. CLEMENT'S CHAPEL, AND TOMB OF BISHOP DURNFORD (SEE p. 83). _S.B. Bolas & Co., photo_.] #William Otter# succeeded (1836-1840). During his episcopate the Diocesan Association was founded in 1838 to help the clergy and laity of the diocese to provide themselves with better schools, to increase the means of instruction and ministration, to restore or enlarge their churches and schools, and to provide new ones when they had the opportunity afforded by sufficient means. Bishop Otter and Dean Chandler succeeded in establishing a theological college in the city. #Philip N. Shuttleworth# (1840-1842), #Ashurst Turner Gilbert# (1842-1870), and #Richard Durnford# (1870-1895) were succeeded by #Ernest Roland Wilberforce#, the present bishop, who was translated to the see from Newcastle in 1895. DEANS or CHICHESTER. Odo, 1115. Richard, 1115. Matthew, 1125. Richard, 1144. John de Greneford, 1150. Jordan de Meleburn, 1176. Seffride, 1178. Matthew de Chichester, 1180. Nicholas de Aquila, 1190. Seffride, 1197. Simon de Perigord, 1220. Walter, 1230. Thomas de Lichfield, 1232. Geoffrey, 1250. Walter de Glocestrin, 1256. William de Brakelsham, 1276. Thomas de Berghstede, 1296. William de Grenefeld, 1302. John de St. Leophardo, 1307. Henry de Garland, 1332. Walter de Segrave, 1342. William de Lenne, 1356. Roger de Freton, 1369. Richard le Scrope, 1383. William de Lullyngton, 1389-1390. John de Maydenhith, 1400. John Haselee, 1407. Henry Lovel, 1410. Richard Talbot, 1415. William Milton, 1420. John Patten, or Waynflete, 1425. John Crutchere, 1429. John Waynfleet, 1478. John Gloos, 1481. John Prychard, 1501. Geoffrey Symson, 1504. John Young (Bishop), S.T.P. 1508. William Fleshmonger, 1526. Richard Camden, 1541. Giles Eyre, S.T.D, 1549. Bartholomew Traheron, S.T.P., 1551-1552. Thomas Sampson, S.T.P., 1552-1553. William Pye, 1553. Hugh Turnbull, 1558. Richard Curteis, 1566. Anthony Rushe, 1570. Martin Culpepper, M.D, 1577. William Thome, 1601. Francis Dee, 1630. Richard Steward, 1634-1635. Bruno Ryves, 1646. Joseph Henshaw, 1660. Joseph Gulston, S.T.P., 1663. Nathaniel, Lord Crew, LL.D., 1669. Thomas Lambrook, 1671. George Stradling, S.T.P., 1672. Francis Hawkins, S.T.P.,1688. William Hayley, S.T.P., 1699. Thomas Sherlock, 1715. John Newey, 1727. Thomas Hayley, D.D., 1735-1736. James Hargraves, D.D., 1739. William Ashburnham, Bart., 1741. Thomas Ball, A.M., 1754. Charles Harward, 1770. Combe Miller, 1790. Christopher Bethell, 1814. Samuel Slade, 1824. George Chandler, D.C.L., 1830. Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D., 1859. John William Burgon, D.D., 1875. Francis Pigou, D.D., 1887. Richard William Randall, D.D., 1892. BISHOPS OF SELSEA AFTER EADBERT. Eolla, 714. Sigga, or Sigfrid, 733. Aluberht, 739. Osa, or Bosa, 765-770. Gislehere, 780. Totta, 785. Wiohtun, or Peletun, 789-805. Aethelwulf, 811-816. Cenred, 824-838. Gutheard, 860-862. Bernege, or Beornegus, 909-922. Aelfred, 931-940. Aethelgar, 944-953. Ordbright, 963-979. Ealmar, 944-953. Aethelric I., 1032-1038. Hecca, 1047-1057. Aethelric II, 1058-1070. Stigand, 1070. ANCIENT BUILDINGS IN THE CITY. Amongst other interesting architectural monuments, closely connected with the cathedral or the bishops, the following may be particularly noticed: The #Bishop's Palace# has an interesting chapel, in which a small fresco of the "Virgin and Child" of an early date is still preserved. The dining-room has a panelled wooden ceiling. The painting on it was originally executed in Sherborne's day, but it has suffered by decay and attempts at restoration since the sixteenth century. The #Vicars' Hall# is to the south-east of the cathedral. The #Canon Gate# is the archway in South Street, which leads to the palace, the deanery, and other buildings connected with the cathedral. The #Market Cross# was built by Bishop Storey about the year 1500 (see illustration, p. 100). #S. Mary's Hospital# was founded about the middle of the twelfth century; but the existing building dates from the end of the thirteenth century. It maintains five aged women by a weekly allowance to each, with fuel and medical attendance free. [Illustration: PAINTED DECORATION FORMERLY ON THE CHOIR VAULT, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY T. KING 1814 (SEE PAGES 42-43). _(Lent by the Reverend Prebendary Bennett.) (Scale about 7 feet 10½ inches to 1 inch.)] INDEX. Aethelgar, Bishop, 106 Aethelric, Bishop, 106 Apsidal termination, 8, 9, 17, 24 Arundel, Bishop, 32 ---- Earl of, William, 6; Countess of, 86 ---- monuments, 86 ---- screen, 32, 46 Barlow, Bishop, 117 Bell tower, 30 Bernardi, paintings by, 34 Brideoake, Bishop, 120 Buttresses, nave, 58 CHAPELS added to nave, 24 Chapel of S. Catharine, 94 ---- of S. Clement, 86 ---- of Four Virgins, 85 ---- of S. Mary Magdalen, 90, 98 ---- of S. Pantaleon, 90 ---- of SS. Thomas and Edmund, 85 Chapter House, 27 Choir (exterior), 65-71; interior, 88 Cloister, 62 Consecration, 6, 19 Consistory Court, 83 Curteys, Bishop, 118 Daye, Bishop, 35, 116 Durnford, Bishop, 85 Fire of 1114, 5; of 1187, 6, 10 Flying buttresses, 15, 57, 66 Font, 85 Gunning, Bishop, 119 Hare, Bishop, 120 Harsnett, Bishop, 35, 118 Hilary, Bishop, 108 Hook, Dean, his monument, 97 Lady-chapel, 9, 26; exterior, 69; interior, 94 Langton, Bishop, 26, 114 Leophardo (Gilbert de S.), Bishop, 20, 26, 70, 112 Library, exterior, 71; interior, 94 Luffa (Ralph de), Bishop, 5, 8, 107 Manning, Cardinal, 92 "Maudde," inscribed monument to, 98 Moleyns, Bishop, 115 Monuments in nave, 85; in transepts and choir, 96 Nave, exterior, 53, 73; interior, 81 Neville, Bishop, 20, 23, 110 Organ, 40, 88 Otter, Bishop, 121 Paintings on the walls, 41; on the vaults, 46; Bernardi's, 34, 90; Miss Lowndes', 91 Porch, west, 53; south, 59; north, 76 Presbytery constructed, 17 ---- interior, 92 Pulpit, 85 Rede (William), Bishop, 30, 114; Robert, 114 Reformation, 34, 36 Reredos, ancient, 28, 43, 47; modern, 88 Rood-screen, 85 Roof, 56 Sacristy, 61, 90 Sampson, Bishop, 116 Sculptures, romanesque, 96 See, transfer of, 4, 5, 8; foundation of, 101 Seffrid d'Escures, Bishop, 108 ---- II., Bishop, 19 Selsea, carved panels from, 96; church at, 103; bishops of, 123 Sherburne, Bishop, 34, 116 Spire, 30, 40, 42, 76; fall of, 48 Stigand, Bishop, 4, 107 Storey, Bishop, 115 Tower, central, 32, 47, 76 Towers, fall of, 14, 21, 37-40 ---- western, 51, 55 Transept, south, 64, 90; north, 92, 96 Treasury, 83 Triforium, 36, 94 Vault constructed, 12 Watson, Bishop, 118 Welles (Simon de), Bishop, 20, 109 Wilfrith, Archbishop, 103 Window, west, 53; east, 69 Windows, nave, 57, 73, 75; transept, 90; stained glass in, 98 Wren, Sir C., 37, 42 Wych (S. Richard of), Bishop, 20; shrine of, 28, 35, 94, 111-112; tomb, 96 * * * * * CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTTNGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. * * * * * DIMENSIONS. Length (extreme). . _internal_ . 393 feet. " of nave. . " . 155 feet. Width of nave (extreme) . " . 90 feet. Length of choir. . " . 115 feet. " " transept . " . 131 feet. Width of transept . " . 33 feet. Height of vault. . " . 61 feet. " " spire. . " . 277 feet. Area . . . . . 28,000 sq. feet. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY CHICHESTER: 1901: FROM A PLAN MADE BY THE LATE JOSEPH BUTLER ARCHITECT TO THE CATHEDRAL] 
15020	----	[Illustration: LXXXI. Ferme la Vallauine, Normandy.] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. NOVEMBER, 1895. No. 11. THE COUNTRY HOUSES OF NORMANDY. The houses chosen for illustration in this number are of different types, of different dates, built for men of different stations in life, and are constructed of different materials. They are, however, all in the province of Normandy, in northern France, and they are all situated outside the towns; further than this it may not be well to go in attempting to classify them under one head. Like the subjects chosen for our last issue, they contain many suggestive ideas for treatment of similar problems in our own country, and for this reason they deserve special attention. The tendency among the French has always been strong to build their houses in compact groups, and detached buildings with free space on all sides are the exception even in the country. Mr. Louis H. Gibson, whose book "Beautiful Houses" we have noticed in another column, says of the French domestic architecture:-- "Excepting the châteaux, the structures of which we have the completest record are almost entirely buildings fronting directly on the street or road. In France it is rare indeed that one sees an isolated building with a free passage around it, as is common in our American towns and cities. It is not at all uncommon for a farm building to be constructed within a wall; again, the farmer's house may be almost flush with the road. Little farm communities, with the buildings abutting on one another, are very common, because of the companionship which such association brings. This was not alone true in the early history of France, but obtains in the construction of to-day. The small towns, as well as the cities, are almost universally built very compactly. Thus we may expect to see very few examples of isolated structures in France." In this respect it will be seen the taste of the French house builder differs from ours where open space about a dwelling-house is considered one of its important attractions. Consequently the examples here shown should not be considered as typical of French domestic architecture. The town house is, if anything, the type. Most of the examples which we have chosen belong to the sixteenth century or thereabouts. The Manoir d'Ango, of which we gave four views in last month's issue and of which three more are now shown, was built about the middle of the sixteenth century, and the _manoir_ at Archelles was also built about the same time. It was also during this century that the best and most interesting of the French half-timber work was done, and although we have no data at hand for determining the matter, we judge that the two examples here illustrated date from about this time. The construction in these buildings is doubtless the same as that commonly used in others of this character--a strong framework of timber filled in with brick masonry and then plastered. Many of the town houses built in this way were very elaborate and were adorned with exquisite carved wood ornament. In Verdier and Cattois' "Architecture Civile et Domestique" may be found numerous examples, and in a future number of THE BROCHURE SERIES we shall give place to some of the most attractive. [Illustration: LXXXII. Manoir at Archelles, Normandy.] One consideration has influenced the selection of some of the subjects included in the illustrations of this number which has not before been mentioned, and it is not necessary to dwell upon it now. It has been our experience that architectural students are constantly looking about for appropriate subjects for sketching, and some are so fastidious that they find very few satisfactory ones. We commend the views here given, and also those in the last issue, as excellent and appropriate subjects for treatment either in water-color, pen-and-ink, or pencil. Next to working directly from nature, it would be hard to find better practice than can be had by translating these photographic views into drawings. LXXXI. FERME LA VALLAUINE, NORMANDY. With the resources at our command we are unable to further identify this house than the above title indicates. In fact, it tells its own story. Judging by analogy, it probably dates from the sixteenth century. Nothing could well be more picturesque. LXXXII and LXXXIII. MANOIR AT ARCHELLES, NORMANDY. Archelles is a small village near Arques, and its principal attraction is this beautiful _manoir_ with a garden at its back, and surrounded by fine trees. It dates from the sixteenth century and is built of brick decorated in a sort of mosaic inlaid with a light colored stone. The old walls overgrown with vines are especially attractive. LXXXIV. PORCH OF CHURCH AT BEUVREIL, NORMANDY. The form and proportions of this old porch are so good that in spite of the rough and meagre detail it has an irresistible charm. LXXXV. MANOIR DE VITANVAL, STE. ANDRESSE, NORMANDY. Ste. Andresse is a small community on the coast of Normandy a few miles north-west of Havre. LXXXVI to LXXXVIII. MANOIR D'ANGO, NORMANDY. This _manoir_ has already been referred to in the preceding number, where four other views are given. Architectural Schools. COLUMBIA COLLEGE. In the series of articles in which we have undertaken to give an idea of the scope of the courses of architectural study offered by the various schools of the country, we can hardly do better, in referring to Columbia College, than quote from a paper in which Professor William R. Ware describes the methods used for the teaching of the history of architecture at Columbia. Our extracts are made from a portion of the paper printed in _The American Architect_ for November 30, 1895. These four exercises, the Lectures on History and Ornament, with the study of English, French, and German text-books, the Historical Research, the Historical Drawing, and the Historical Design, occupy a chief part of the student's time during the first three years of the course. At the end of the third year the stated instruction by recitations and the lectures is virtually finished, the fourth year being, by an arrangement which is perhaps a novelty in places of learning, quite free from lectures or recitations. The men give their whole time by day to problems in design, to what may be called "_atelier_ work," without interruption. Their evenings, throughout the whole year, are devoted to historical study. As the college library, including the Avery library, as well as the books and photographs belonging to the Department of Architecture, is accessible every evening until eleven o'clock, and the Metropolitan Museum is open twice a week until ten, every facility is afforded for the prosecution of this work. In order to make the most of these appliances, every student of the Fourth-year class and all the special students (who are of similar grade, being received only in advanced standing) prepares once a month, under the name of Advanced Architectural History, an original paper. This he illustrates by drawings and reads to the class. All this affords an almost unexampled opportunity for serious work. We exhibit to the students the architecture of the past as a series of problems just as it appeared to the builders of its own day, and we hope thus not only to give them a clearer insight into the real spirit and character of the masterpieces that have come down to us, by bringing to view the ideas and considerations which really influenced their designers, but at the same time to exercise our own young men in the practical application of those same ideas. We hope thus to develop in them the same good sense and good taste, the same readiness of invention and happy ingenuity, to which these masterpieces are due. [Illustration: LXXXIII. Manoir at Archelles, Normandy.] The exercises themselves may be described as a species of design by description or by dictation. The attempt is made, by indicating the conditions under which a given piece of work was executed, to present to the student the same problem that the workman of old was called upon to solve. The student can then compare his own solution of it with the one that has come down to him, thus receiving correction and guidance in his work from the hand of the master. It is plain that the special excellencies of the original monument are likely to reveal themselves with fresh distinctness, and to find special sympathy and appreciation in the mind of one who has striven, however unsuccessfully, to solve the same problem. An example or two taken from widely different fields will suffice to illustrate this. In studying vaulting, we once got so far as to understand how oblong vaults were thrown across a nave, while square vaults covered the aisles. A class of fifteen or twenty students were then asked to find out how a semi-circular or polygonal apse could be added to a choir roofed on this system. In the course of a couple of hours' figuring I found that they had worked out among them all the five solutions of this problem, which in the Middle Ages it took one or two hundred years to develop. This was very encouraging. At another time they were given a somewhat minute description of four pilaster capitals from Blois or Chambord, and they made thumb-nail sketches on the spot, according to their interpretation of the description. The next day photographs and drawings of a dozen or twenty other such capitals were given them, so that they might understand the fashion of the time, and they were told to draw out their sketches on a larger scale. The result was fifteen or twenty sets of capitals, all showing the same four motives, but differing in a most interesting way, according to the personal differences of taste and skill on the part of the designers. On another occasion the First-year class, after their studies in Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, made a dozen or twenty restorations of Solomon's Temple, according to the description in the Book of Kings. The drawings they produced showed considerable fertility of invention, especially in the designs for Jachin and Boaz, and the whole series together seemed to be quite as creditable and as reasonable as most of those which have from time to time been put forth by the learned. This practice in historical design we believe to be founded on sound theoretical principles. To regard a work of art as far as possible from the point-of-view of the artist is, indeed, the first principle of fair and intelligent criticism. To foster the individuality and personal initiative of a pupil by bringing authority to bear upon him in a way of correction at the end of his task, and guidance and suggestion at the beginning, rather than control during the course of the work, is the first principle of intelligent teaching. Moreover, the results, so far as we have gone, have justified the method. We have, indeed, employed it hitherto mainly as a matter of experiment when favorable circumstances have suggested it. But every year we use it to a greater and greater extent, and it is gradually acquiring a recognized place as an integral portion of our work. (_To be continued_.) Personal. Of the many fortunate ones who have come back to a winter of work after a summer abroad are Messrs. Claude F. Bragdon, Charles M. Sutton, and Howard Hatton, of Rochester. Messrs. Sutton and Hatton are now with J. Foster Warner. Mr. Bragdon has temporarily opened an office at 60 Trust Building, but will have offices in the new Cutler Building when completed. Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., of Philadelphia, has just finished designing a second formal garden, which is said to be delightfully un-American; and Mr. Frank Miles Day's Horticultural Hall is nearly ready to receive the mural coloring and allegorical painting which Mr. Joseph Lindon Smith is to execute. The latter will be a conspicuous departure from ordinarily accepted models. [Illustration: LXXXIV. Porch of Church at Beuvreil, Normandy.] The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. * * * * * Subscription Rates per year ... 50 cents, in advance. Special Club Rates for five subscriptions ... $2.00. * * * * * Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. SPECIAL NOTICE. Back numbers of THE BROCHURE SERIES _are not_ kept in stock. All subscriptions will be dated from the time received and subscribers who wish for the current numbers must place their subscriptions at once. A hundred photographs are published in twelve issues of THE BROCHURE SERIES. You may get some duplicates, but the new ones will be well worth a subscription at fifty cents. _This is addressed to non-subscribers._ * * * * * We have repeatedly called attention in this column to the question of perennial importance to us--that of subscriptions. We have no apology to offer for this insistence upon the publisher's business, for it concerns every one who has any interest in the undertaking, in so far as the support received in this quarter will make it either possible or impossible, as the case maybe, to add to the attractions of the magazine as conducted at present. We have every reason to feel satisfied with the support thus far accorded us, for our subscription list is now much larger than we expected it would be at this time, but this is only a beginning. In the advertising pages of this number will be found an announcement which, we trust, will appeal to a large number of our present subscribers who already know our work. In most cases it is only necessary to show the magazine and state the price to at once secure a subscriber. Try it and see; enter the prize competition, and help yourself by helping us. In the September issue we took occasion to notice the mural decoration and color treatment of the staircase hall of the new Public Library Building in Boston. Those who would judge for themselves of the merits of our conclusions must see the building; but it is not necessary to go to Boston in order to realize that here we have a remarkably beautiful structure, and many of its features can be fully enjoyed and appreciated in photographic views. In another column will be found a notice of a very attractive and unusually satisfactory handbook of the library, with numerous illustrations from the photographs of Mr. E.E. Soderholtz. Further than this, we wish to call particular attention to the set of photographs which is advertised on the front cover of this number. As a photographer of architectural subjects Mr. Soderholtz certainly has no superior in this country, and in this collection the subjects and manner of presentation are equally worthy of the highest praise. Wanted Draughtsmen's Addresses. We intend issuing, the coming year, a number of interestingly illustrated announcements of new architectural publications and importations. We want to send these to every architectural student and draughtsman in the United States and Canada. If you are not on our subscription list, send us your _residence_ address for our circular mailing list. Address a postal card as below, putting simply your address on the back. If you are in an office, have the other fellows put their residence addresses on the same card. We prefer to address mail matter to your residence, as there is less danger of miscarriage. Do not get the idea that by sending your address you are ordering something you will be asked to pay for. All the expense, except the postal card, is on our side. If we can't get out announcements interesting enough to attract your attention and occasionally secure an order, it will be our loss. Address:-- Bates & Guild, 6 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. _For Circular List_. [Illustration: LXXXV. Manoir de Vitanval, Ste. Andresse, Normandy.] Brochure Series Competition No. 2. The first lot of drawings in the competition for a design for the advertising page of The Boynton Furnace Co., in THE BROCHURE SERIES, was due on December 10, and eleven designs were received. The judges have awarded the prize to Mr. Edwin R. Clark of Lowell, Mass., and his design appears in this issue as the advertisement of the Boynton Furnace Co., on page xi. The reasons for the award may be a guide to others engaged in similar work, and consequently we reproduce several of the other designs for comparison with Mr. Clark's. It must be remembered that the first consideration in this problem is the effectiveness as advertising matter of the design submitted--its artistic merits, although important, are distinctly secondary to this quality. The medium in which it is to be used and the clientage to which it is intended to appeal must also be constantly borne in mind. [Illustration: Design by Edwin R. Clark.] Mr. Clark submitted three drawings, a second one of which is given herewith. The first is superior in giving a more positive effect to the page and in being a more unusual treatment than the second. Although both are drawn with skill and are admirable in technique, the type of design and ornament used in the second have come into such common use that if for no other reason than this the first would be preferable. [Illustration: Design by W.B. Olmsted.] As decorative treatment Mr. Olmsted's design is in many respects the most masterly of the lot, and if the personal choice of the judges had been the only consideration upon which the award was to be made, this would have been placed first, for it is remarkable for careful and intelligent arrangement, subtle balancing and proportion of parts, and especially for what may be called the decorative sense by which just the right relation of black to white is preserved. It is seldom that any but the most accomplished designers succeed in obtaining this just proportion, which gives a sparkle to the design such as is seen in the best of the Japanese stencil patterns used on printed stuffs. The clever use of motives connected with the business advertised and the idea of presenting the Boynton apparatus in attractive form and other heaters thrown about in confusion is commendable. The only reason for passing over this design in the award is the advertising value of the attractive appearance of some of the more ornate designs. [Illustration: LXXXVI. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] One other drawing, that of Mr. Brown, deserves particular notice for its intrinsic excellence. It is especially praiseworthy for its grace of line and general arrangement. The figure is well placed and, although faulty in drawing, is particularly effective in treatment. It is essentially a poster design, but none the less appropriate for the present purpose on this account. It lacks only in those qualities of draughtsmanship which come with practice and experience. [Illustration: Design by F. Chouteau Brown.] The remaining drawing which we illustrate is a very interesting although not especially forcible treatment of the class of ornament adopted by Mr. Louis H. Sullivan, and in his hands having a wonderful charm, but seldom used with entire success by others. The result in this first series of designs is especially satisfactory in the intelligence shown in grasping the essentials of the problem. All of the remaining six drawings have points of excellence to commend them, and if we had space to reproduce them would prove instructive in showing the diversity of treatment possible while fully meeting the conditions imposed. Reviews. _Beautiful Houses_. A study in house building. By Louis H. Gibson. Illustrated. Boston T.Y. Crowell & Co. 1895. pp. 346. $3. This book is in many respects very attractive, and will be found useful to architectural readers as well as to the general public. It is divided into two parts, the first under the heading "The World's Houses" and the second, "Some House Plans" and "Materials and Details." The first part is that which will be of most value to the architectural reader. In it are described the principal types of domestic architecture, giving most prominence to the work of France. The illustrations of this portion of the work are well chosen and very well printed. In fact, to the architect they form the most valuable part of the book. The second part is devoted mainly to Mr. Gibson's own designs. These are mostly good, straightforward work, although we can hardly agree with all of his opinions. His use of language is not always discriminating and is sometimes misleading. [Illustration: Design by Chas. F. Hogeboom, Jr.] To the general reader there will be much of interest in all portions of the book, especially if he contemplates building a house. And in this case we sincerely trust that its perusal will result in another commission for some fortunate architect. [Illustration: LXXXVII. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] _Handbook of the New Public Library in Boston._ Compiled by Herbert Small. Fully illustrated. Boston, 1895. Curtis & Co. 78 pp. 16c. The unusual interest which has been aroused in architectural circles by the new building for the Boston Public Library is the reason for devoting special attention to this little book in these columns. Although intended for general readers, it has a very instructive article by Mr. C. Howard Walker considering the building architecturally, which will interest architectural readers. The illustrations, made from photographs by E.E. Soderholtz, are excellent and numerous, and the cover, printed in green and black, from the design of B.G. Goodhue, is an additional attraction. On the whole, even after so much in the way of illustration of this building has been already published, it is worth the while of any architect or draughtsman to send for this little pamphlet. Club Notes. The Chicago Architectural Club is keeping its members guessing to know what scheme of work or entertainment will come next on its programme. The annual meeting for election of officers was held October 7. Several of the regular monthly competitions and an informal exhibition have already come and gone, and a "Bohemian Night" with all its accompaniments comes every fortnight. The following classes have been arranged for some time ago: Water Color, under Hugh M.G. Garden; Architecture, under George R. Dean; Pen and Ink, under Charles E. Birge; Modeling, under Richard W. Bock. A talk on "The Impecunious Draughtsman Abroad" was given by Mr. Myron H. Hunt, and Mr. George R. Dean has given a lantern-slide exhibition, illustrating the Château de Blois. The club also held a joint meeting with the Chicago Society of Artists, when Mr. N.S. Patton discussed the question of "The Architectural and Artistic Possibilities of the Lake Front." The annual banquet and meeting of the Cleveland Architectural Club was held at the Hollenden Hotel Thursday evening, November 14, with about forty present. Dinner was served at six o'clock, followed by toasts from Messrs. John L. Culley, F.A. Coburn, and Charles W. Hopkinson, with President Hubbell as toastmaster. After the speaking the annual meeting was held, with an address by the president, reports by the secretary, treasurer, librarian, chairman of the Current Work Committee, and the chairman of the Entertainment and House Committee. The club has grown from a charter membership one year ago of fourteen to a total membership of forty-five. The newly elected officers are: President, Benjamin S. Hubbell; Vice-President, Frederick Baird; Secretary, Herbert B. Briggs; Treasurer, Albert E. Skeel; Librarian, G.B. Bohm; Directors, M. James Bowman and C.S. Schneider. A joint exhibition of the Cleveland Architectural Club and the Cleveland Art Association will be held in the Garfield Building, from January 20 to February 5, 1896. Works will be received until Monday, January 6. The exhibition will include: Architectural sketches, perspectives, and elevations in all renderings; photographs of executed work; landscape architecture; interior architecture and decoration; interior furnishings (samples and sketches); architectural and decorative metal work (wrought iron, bronze, and brass); sculpture (architectural and ornamental). An illustrated catalogue will be issued. All drawings must be framed or mounted. A Good Endorsement. The following letter from the office of Richard M. Hunt is of interest to all users of shingle stains:-- Dexter Bros., Boston: _Gentlemen_,--The shingle stains we have used on some of the buildings of Biltmore Village, N.C., furnished by you, have given absolute satisfaction as to quality and color. We consider your stains the best we have used so far. Yours respectfully, (Signed) R.H. HUNT. [Illustration: LXXXVII. Manoir d'Ango. Normandy.] 
12648	----	Proofreading Team THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture by CLAUDE BRAGDON, F.A.I.A. MCMXXII "Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity" --EMERSON By the Same Author: Episodes From An Unwritten History The Golden Person In The Heart Architecture And Democracy A Primer Of Higher Space Four Dimensional Vistas Projective Ornament Oracle CONTENTS I THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE II UNITY AND POLARITY III CHANGELESS CHANGE IV THE BODILY TEMPLE V LATENT GEOMETRY VI THE ARITHMETIC OF BEAUTY VII FROZEN MUSIC CONCLUSION PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION _The Beautiful Necessity_ was first published in 1910. Save for a slim volume of privately printed verse it was my first book. I worked hard on it. Fifteen years elapsed between its beginning and completion; it was twice published serially--written, rewritten and tre-written--before it reached its ultimate incarnation in book form. Confronted now with the opportunity to revise the text again, I find myself in the position of a surgeon who feels that the operation he is called upon to perform may perhaps harm more than it can help. Prudence therefore prevails over my passion for dissection: warned by eminent examples, I fear that any injection of my more mature and less cocksure consciousness into this book might impair its unity--that I "never could recapture the first fine careless rapture." The text stands therefore as originally published save for a few verbal changes, and whatever reservations I have about it shall be stated in this preface. These are not many nor important: _The Beautiful Necessity_ contains nothing that I need repudiate or care to contradict. Its thesis, briefly stated, is that art in all its manifestations is an expression of the cosmic life, and that its symbols constitute a language by means of which this life is published and represented. Art is at all times subject to the _Beautiful Necessity_ of proclaiming the _world order_. In attempting to develop this thesis it was not necessary (nor as I now think, desirable) to link it up in so definite a manner with theosophy. The individual consciousness is colored by the particular medium through which it receives truth, and for me that medium was theosophy. Though the book might gain a more unprejudiced hearing, and from a larger audience, by the removal of the theosophic "color-screen," it shall remain, for its removal now might seem to imply a loss of faith in the fundamental tenets of theosophy, and such an implication would not be true. The ideas in regard to time and space are those commonly current in the world until the advent of the Theory of Relativity. To a generation brought up on Einstein and Ouspensky they are bound to appear "lower dimensional." Merely to state this fact is to deal with it to the extent it needs to be dealt with. The integrity of my argument is not impaired by these new views. The one important influence that has operated to modify my opinions concerning the mathematical basis of the arts of space has been the discoveries of Mr. Jay Hambidge with regard to the practice of the Greeks in these matters, as exemplified in their temples and their ceramics, and named by him _Dynamic Symmetry_. In tracing everything back to the logarithmic spiral (which embodies the principle of extreme and mean ratios) I consider that Mr. Hambidge has made one of those generalizations which reorganizes the old knowledge and organizes the new. It would be only natural if in his immersion in his idea he overworks it, but Mr. Hambidge is a man of such intellectual integrity and thoroughness of method that he may be trusted not to warp the facts to fit his theories. The truth of the matter is that the entire field of research into the mathematics of Beauty is of such richness that wherever a man plants his metaphysical spade he is sure to come upon "pay dirt." _The_ _Beautiful Necessity_ represents the result of my own prospecting; _Dynamic Symmetry_ represents the result of his. If at any point our findings appear to conflict, it is less likely that one or the other of us is mistaken than that each is right from his own point of view. Be that as it may, I should be the last man in the world to differ from Mr. Hambidge, for if he convicted me of every conceivable error his work would still remain the greatest justification and confirmation of my fundamental contention--that art is an expression of the _world order_ and is therefore orderly, organic; subject to mathematical law, and susceptible of mathematical analysis. CLAUDE BRAGDON Rochester, N.Y. April, 1922 I THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE One of the advantages of a thorough assimilation of what may be called the theosophic idea is that it can be applied with advantage to every department of knowledge and of human activity: like the key to a cryptogram it renders clear and simple that which before seemed intricate and obscure. Let us apply this key to the subject of art, and to the art of architecture in particular, and see if by so doing we may not learn more of art than we knew before, and more of theosophy too. The theosophic idea is that everything is an expression of the Self--or whatever other name one may choose to give to that immanent unknown reality which forever hides behind all phenomenal life--but because, immersed as we are in materiality, our chief avenue of knowledge is sense perception, a more exact expression of the theosophic idea would be: Everything is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Art, accordingly, is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Now though the Self is _one_, sense is not one, but manifold: and therefore there are _arts_, each addressed to some particular faculty or group of faculties, and each expressing some particular quality or group of qualities of the Self. The white light of Truth is thus broken up into a rainbow-tinted spectrum of Beauty, in which the various arts are colors, each distinct, yet merging one into another--poetry into music; painting into decoration; decoration becoming sculpture; sculpture--architecture, and so on. In such a spectrum of the arts each one occupies a definite place, and all together form a series of which music and architecture are the two extremes. That such is their relative position may be demonstrated in various ways. The theosophic explanation involving the familiar idea of the "pairs of opposites" would be something as follows. According to the Hindu-Aryan theory, Brahma, that the world might be born, fell asunder into man and wife--became in other words _name and form_[A] The two universal aspects of name and form are what philosophers call the two "modes of consciousness," one of time, and the other of space. These are the two gates through which ideas enter phenomenal life; the two boxes, as it were, that contain all the toys with which we play. Everything, were we only keen enough to perceive it, bears the mark of one or the other of them, and may be classified accordingly. In such a classification music is seen to be allied to time, and architecture to space, because music is successive in its mode of manifestation, and in time alone everything would occur successively, one thing following another; while architecture, on the other hand, impresses itself upon the beholder all at once, and in space alone all things would exist simultaneously. Music, which is in time alone, without any relation to space; and architecture, which is in space alone, without any relation to time, are thus seen to stand at opposite ends of the art spectrum, and to be, in a sense, the only "pure" arts, because in all the others the elements of both time and space enter in varying proportion, either actually or by implication. Poetry and the drama are allied to music inasmuch as the ideas and images of which they are made up are presented successively, yet these images are for the most part forms of space. Sculpture on the other hand is clearly allied to architecture, and so to space, but the element of _action_, suspended though it be, affiliates it with the opposite or time pole. Painting occupies a middle position, since in it space instead of being actual has become ideal--three dimensions being expressed through the mediumship of two--and time enters into it more largely than into sculpture by reason of the greater ease with which complicated action can be indicated: a picture being nearly always time arrested in midcourse as it were--a moment transfixed. In order to form a just conception of the relation between music and architecture it is necessary that the two should be conceived of not as standing at opposite ends of a series represented by a straight line, but rather in juxtaposition, as in the ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth, the head in this case corresponding to music, and the tail to architecture; in other words, though in one sense they are the most-widely separated of the arts, in another they are the most closely related. Music being purely in time and architecture being purely in space, each is, in a manner and to a degree not possible with any of the other arts, convertible into the other, by reason of the correspondence subsisting between intervals of time and intervals of space. A perception of this may have inspired the famous saying that architecture is _frozen music_, a poetical statement of a philosophical truth, since that which in music is expressed by means of harmonious intervals of time and pitch, successively, after the manner of time, may be translated into corresponding intervals of architectural void and solid, height and width. In another sense music and architecture are allied. They alone of all the arts are purely creative, since in them is presented, not a likeness of some known idea, but _a thing-in-itself_ brought to a distinct and complete expression of its nature. Neither a musical composition nor a work of architecture depends for its effectiveness upon resemblances to natural sounds in the one case, or to natural forms in the other. Of none of the other arts is this to such a degree true: they are not so much creative as re-creative, for in them all the artist takes his subject ready made from nature and presents it anew according to the dictates of his genius. The characteristic differences between music and architecture are the same as those which subsist between time and space. Now time and space are such abstract ideas that they can be dealt with best through their corresponding correlatives in the natural world, for it is a fundamental theosophic tenet that nature everywhere abounds in such correspondences; that nature, in its myriad forms, is indeed the concrete presentment of abstract unities. The energy which everywhere animates form is a type of time within space; the mind working in and through the body is another expression of the same thing. Correspondingly, music is dynamic, subjective, mental, of one dimension; while architecture is static, objective, physical, of three dimensions; sustaining the same relation to music and the other arts as does the human body to the various organs which compose, and consciousnesses which animate it (it being the reservatory of these organs and the vehicle of these consciousnesses); and a work of architecture in like manner may and sometimes does include all of the other arts within itself. Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like the very spirit of life tingling through the body's fibres. Such being the relation between them, the difference in the nature of the ideas bodied forth in music and in architecture becomes apparent. Music is interior, abstract, subjective, speaking directly to the soul in a simple and universal language whose meaning is made personal and particular in the breast of each listener: "Music alone of all the arts," says Balzac, "has power to make us live within ourselves." A work of architecture is the exact opposite of this: existing principally and primarily for the uses of the body, it is like the body a concrete organism, attaining to esthetic expression only in the reconciliation and fulfilment of many conflicting practical requirements. Music is pure beauty, the voice of the unfettered and perpetually vanishing soul of things; architecture is that soul imprisoned in a form, become subject to the law of causality, beaten upon by the elements, at war with gravity, the slave of man. One is the Ariel of the arts; the other, Caliban. Coming now to the consideration of architecture in its historical rather than its philosophical aspect, it will be shown how certain theosophical concepts are applicable here. Of these none is more familiar and none more fundamental than the idea of reincarnation. By reincarnation more than mere physical re-birth is meant, for physical re-birth is but a single manifestation of that universal law of alternation of state, of animation of vehicles, and progression through related planes, in accordance with which all things move, and as it were make music--each cycle complete, yet part of a larger cycle, the incarnate monad passing through correlated changes, carrying along and bringing into manifestation in each successive arc of the spiral the experience accumulated in all preceding states, and at the same time unfolding that power of the Self peculiar to the plane in which it is momentarily manifesting. This law finds exemplification in the history of architecture in the orderly flow of the building impulse from one nation and one country to a different nation and a different country: its new vehicle of manifestation; also in the continuity and increasing complexity of the development of that impulse in manifestation; each "incarnation" summarizing all those which have gone before, and adding some new factor peculiar to itself alone; each being a growth, a life, with periods corresponding to childhood, youth, maturity and decadence; each also typifying in its entirety some single one of these life-periods, and revealing some special aspect or power of the Self. For the sake of clearness and brevity the consideration of only one of several architectural evolutions will be attempted: that which, arising in the north of Africa, spread to southern Europe, thence to the northwest of Europe and to England--the architecture, in short, of the so-called civilized world. This architecture, anterior to the Christian era, may be broadly divided into three great periods, during which it was successively practiced by three peoples: the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. Then intervened the Dark Ages, and a new art arose, the Gothic, which was a flowering out in stone of the spirit of Christianity. This was in turn succeeded by the Renaissance, the impulse of which remains to-day unexhausted. In each of these architectures the peculiar genius of a people and of a period attained to a beautiful, complete and coherent utterance, and notwithstanding the considerable intervals of time which sometimes separated them they succeeded one another logically and inevitably, and each was related to the one which preceded and which followed it in a particular and intimate manner. The power and wisdom of ancient Egypt was vested in its priesthood, which was composed of individuals exceptionally qualified by birth and training for their high office, tried by the severest ordeals and bound by the most solemn oaths. The priests were honored and privileged above all other men, and spent their lives dwelling apart from the multitude in vast and magnificent temples, dedicating themselves to the study and practice of religion, philosophy, science and art--subjects then intimately related, not widely separated as they are now. These men were the architects of ancient Egypt: theirs the minds which directed the hands that built those time-defying monuments. The rites that the priests practiced centered about what are known as the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. These consisted of representations by means of symbol and allegory, under conditions and amid surroundings the most awe-inspiring, of those great truths concerning man's nature, origin and destiny of which the priests--in reality a brotherhood of initiates and their pupils--were the custodians. These ceremonies were made the occasion for the initiation of neophytes into the order, and the advancement of the already initiated into its successive degrees. For the practice of such rites, and others designed to impress not the elect but the multitude, the great temples of Egypt were constructed. Everything about them was calculated to induce a deep seriousness of mind, and to inspire feelings of awe, dread and even terror, so as to test the candidate's fortitude of soul to the utmost. The avenue of approach to an Egyptian temple was flanked on both sides, sometimes for a mile or more, with great stone sphinxes--that emblem of man's dual nature, the god emerging from the beast. The entrance was through a single high doorway between two towering pylons, presenting a vast surface sculptured and painted over with many strange and enigmatic figures, and flanked by aspiring obelisks and seated colossi with faces austere and calm. The large court thus entered was surrounded by high walls and colonnades, but was open to the sky. Opposite the first doorway was another, admitting to a somewhat smaller enclosure, a forest of enormous carved and painted columns supporting a roof through the apertures of which sunshine gleamed or dim light filtered down. Beyond this in turn were other courts and apartments culminating in some inmost sacred sanctuary. Not alone in their temples, but in their tombs and pyramids and all the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians, there is the same insistence upon the sublimity, mystery and awefulness of life, which they seem to have felt so profoundly. But more than this, the conscious thought of the masters who conceived them, the buildings of Egypt give utterance also to the toil and suffering of the thousands of slaves and captives which hewed the stones out of the heart of the rock, dragged them long distances and placed them one upon another, so that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law. In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope. Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilical cord to nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those gigantic colossi flanking the entrance to some rock-cut temple, which though entire are yet part of the living cliff out of which they were fashioned. In the architecture of Greece the note of dread and mystery yields to one of pure joyousness and freedom. The terrors of childhood have been outgrown, and man revels in the indulgence of his unjaded appetites and in the exercise of his awakened reasoning faculties. In Greek art is preserved that evanescent beauty of youth which, coming but once and continuing but for a short interval in every human life, is yet that for which all antecedent states seem a preparation, and of which all subsequent ones are in some sort an effect. Greece typifies adolescence, the love age, and so throughout the centuries humanity has turned to the contemplation of her, just as a man all his life long secretly cherishes the memory of his first love. An impassioned sense of beauty and an enlightened reason characterize the productions of Greek architecture during its best period. The perfection then attained was possible only in a nation whereof the citizens were themselves critics and amateurs of art, one wherein the artist was honored and his work appreciated in all its beauty and subtlety. The Greek architect was less bound by tradition and precedent than was the Egyptian, and he worked unhampered by any restrictions save such as, like the laws of harmony in music, helped rather than hindered his genius to express itself--restrictions founded on sound reason, the value of which had been proved by experience. The Doric order was employed for all large temples, since it possessed in fullest measure the qualities of simplicity and dignity, the attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order, the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman it was more supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these, infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was used sometimes for small monuments and temples, such as the Tower of the Winds, and the monument of Lysicrates at Athens. [Illustration 1] Because the Greek architect was at liberty to improve upon the work of his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other, and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation to its position and function, but in regard to its intrinsic beauty as well, so that the merest fragment, detached from the building of which it formed a part, is found worthy of being treasured in our museums for its own sake. Just as every detail of a Greek temple was adjusted to its position and expressed its office, so the building itself was made to fit its site and to show forth its purpose, forming with the surrounding buildings a unit of a larger whole. The Athenian Acropolis is an illustration of this: it is an irregular fortified hill, bearing diverse monuments in various styles, at unequal levels and at different angles with one another, yet the whole arrangement seems as organic and inevitable as the disposition of the features of a face. The Acropolis is an example of the ideal architectural republic wherein each individual contributes to the welfare of all, and at the same time enjoys the utmost personal liberty (Illustration 1). Very different is the spirit bodied forth in the architecture of Imperial Rome. The iron hand of its sovereignty encased within the silken glove of its luxury finds its prototype in buildings which were stupendous crude brute masses of brick and concrete, hidden within a covering of rich marbles and mosaics, wrought in beautiful but often meaningless forms by clever degenerate Greeks. The genius of Rome finds its most characteristic expression, not in temples to the high gods, but rather in those vast and complicated structures--basilicas, amphitheatres, baths--built for the amusement and purely temporal needs of the people. If Egypt typifies the childhood of the race and Greece its beautiful youth, Republican Rome represents its strong manhood--a soldier filled with the lust of war and the love of glory--and Imperial Rome its degeneracy: that soldier become conqueror, decked out in plundered finery and sunk in sensuality, tolerant of all who minister to his pleasures but terrible to all who interfere with them. The fall of Rome marked the end of the ancient Pagan world. Above its ruin Christian civilization in the course of time arose. Gothic architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man's spiritual nature, awakening in a body worn and weakened by debaucheries, longs ardently and tries vainly to escape. Of some such mood a Gothic cathedral is the expression: its vaulting, marvelously supported upon slender shafts by reason of a nicely adjusted equilibrium of forces; its restless, upward-reaching pinnacles and spires; its ornament, intricate and enigmatic--all these suggest the over-strained organism of an ascetic; while its vast shadowy interior lit by marvelously traceried and jeweled windows, which hold the eyes in a hypnotic thrall, is like his soul: filled with world sadness, dead to the bright brief joys of sense, seeing only heavenly visions, knowing none but mystic raptures. Thus it is that the history of architecture illustrates and enforces the theosophical teaching that everything of man's creating is made in his own image. Architecture mirrors the life of the individual and of the race, which is the life of the individual written large in time and space. The terrors of childhood; the keen interests and appetites of youth; the strong stern joy of conflict which comes with manhood; the lust, the greed, the cruelty of a materialized old age--all these serve but as a preparation for the life of the spirit, in which the man becomes again as a little child, going over the whole round, but on a higher arc of the spiral. The final, or fourth state being only in some sort a repetition of the first, it would be reasonable to look for a certain correspondence between Egyptian and Gothic architecture, and such a correspondence there is, though it is more easily divined than demonstrated. In both there is the same deeply religious spirit; both convey, in some obscure yet potent manner, a sense of the soul being near the surface of life. There is the same love of mystery and of symbolism; and in both may be observed the tendency to create strange composite figures to typify transcendental ideas, the sphinx seeming a blood-brother to the gargoyle. The conditions under which each architecture flourished were not dissimilar, for each was formulated and controlled by small well-organized bodies of sincerely religious and highly enlightened men--the priesthood in the one case, the masonic guilds in the other--working together toward the consummation of great undertakings amid a populace for the most part oblivious of the profound and subtle meanings of which their work was full. In Mediæval Europe, as in ancient Egypt, fragments of the Ancient Wisdom--transmitted in the symbols and secrets of the cathedral builders--determined much of Gothic architecture. The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive Classical antiquity. Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a Classical style, sculptors modeling Pagan deities, and architects building according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods succeeded in producing works like, yet different from the originals they followed--different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the ancients, they embodied a new ideal. In all the productions of the early Renaissance, "that first transcendent springtide of the modern world," there is the evanescent grace and beauty of youth which was seen to have pervaded Greek art, but it is a grace and beauty of a different sort. The Greek artist sought to attain to a certain abstract perfection of type; to build a temple which should combine all the excellencies of every similar temple, to carve a figure, impersonal in the highest sense, which should embody every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul--a sense of which was Christianity's gift to Christendom--he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed out, is the history of a few eminent individuals, each one moulding and modifying the style in a manner peculiar to himself alone. In the hands of Brunelleschi it was stern and powerful; Bramante made it chaste, elegant and graceful; Palladio made it formal, cold, symmetrical; while with Sansovino and Sammichele it became sumptuous and bombastic. As the Renaissance ripened to decay its architecture assumed more and more the characteristics which distinguished that of Rome during the decadence. In both there is the same lack of simplicity and sincerity, the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by surface decoration. The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still in the future. It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods, and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world, without violating ancient verities. In studying these crucial periods in the history of European architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal descendant from a Roman basilica. [Illustration 2] [Illustration 3] The Egyptians in their constructions did little more than to place enormous stones on end, and pile one huge block upon another. They used many columns placed close together: the spaces which they spanned were inconsiderable. The upright or supporting member may be said to have been in Egyptian architecture the predominant one. A vertical line therefore may be taken as the simplest and most abstract symbol of Egyptian architecture (Illustration 2). It remained for the Greeks fully to develop the lintel. In their architecture the vertical member, or column, existed solely for the sake of the horizontal member, or lintel; it rarely stood alone as in the case of an Egyptian obelisk. The columns of the Greek temples were reduced to those proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples. It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line (Illustration 3). The Romans, while retaining the column and lintel of the Greeks, deprived them of their structural significance and subordinated them to the semicircular arch and the semi-cylindrical and hemispherical vault, the truly characteristic and determining forms of Roman architecture. Our symbol grows therefore by the addition of the arc of a circle (Illustration 4). In Gothic architecture column, lintel, arch and vault are all retained in changed form, but that which more than anything else differentiates Gothic architecture from any style which preceded it is the introduction of the principle of an equilibrium of forces, of a state of balance rather than a state of rest, arrived at by the opposition of one thrust with another contrary to it. This fact can be indicated graphically by two opposing inclined lines, and these united to the preceding symbol yield an accurate abstract of the elements of Gothic architecture (Illustration 5). [Illustration 4] [Illustration 5] All this is but an unusual application of a familiar theosophic teaching, namely, that it is the method of nature on every plane and in every department not to omit anything that has gone before, but to store it up and carry it along and bring it into manifestation later. Nature everywhere proceeds like the jingle of _The House that Jack Built_: she repeats each time all she has learned, and adds another line for subsequent repetition. [Footnote A: The quaint Oriental imagery here employed should not blind the reader to the precise scientific accuracy of the idea of which this imagery is the vehicle. Schopenhauer says: "Polarity, or the sundering of a force into two quantitively different and opposed activities striving after re-union,... is a fundamental type of almost all the phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal to man himself."] II UNITY AND POLARITY Theosophy, both as a philosophy, or system of thought, which discovers correlations between things apparently unrelated, and as a life, or system of training whereby it is possible to gain the power to perceive and use these correlations for worthy ends, is of great value to the creative artist, whose success depends on the extent to which he works organically, conforming to the cosmic pattern, proceeding rationally and rhythmically to some predetermined end. It is of value no less to the layman, the critic, the art amateur--to anyone in fact who would come to an accurate and intimate understanding and appreciation of every variety of esthetic endeavor. For the benefit of such I shall try to trace some of those correlations which theosophy affirms, and indicate their bearing upon art, and upon the art of architecture in particular. One of the things which theosophy teaches is that those transcendent glimpses of a divine order and harmony throughout the universe vouchsafed the poet and the mystic in their moments of vision are not the paradoxes--the paronomasia as it were--of an intoxicated state of consciousness, but glimpses of reality. We are all of us participators in a world of concrete music, geometry and number--a world of sounds, odors, forms, motions, colors, so mathematically related and coordinated that our pigmy bodies, equally with the farthest star, vibrate to the music of the spheres. There is a _Beautiful Necessity_ which rules the world, which is a law of nature and equally a law of art, for art is idealized creation: nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably as does the frost on a window pane. Art therefore in one of its aspects is the weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to the material or medium employed. Although no masterpiece was ever created by the conscious following to set rules, for the true artist works unconsciously, instinctively, as the bird sings or as the bee builds its honey-cell, yet an analysis of any masterpiece reveals the fact that its author (like the bird and the bee) has "followed the rules without knowing them." Helmholtz says, "No doubt is now entertained that beauty is subject to laws and rules dependent on the nature of human intelligence. The difficulty consists in the fact that these laws and rules, on whose fulfilment beauty depends, are not consciously present in the mind of the artist who creates the work, or of the observer who contemplates it." Nevertheless they are discoverable, and can be formulated, after a fashion. We have only to read aright the lessons everywhere portrayed in the vast picture-books of nature and of art. The first truth therein published is the law of _Unity_--oneness; for there is one Self, one Life, which, myriad in manifestation, is yet in essence ever _one_. Atom and universe, man and the world--each is a unit, an organic and coherent whole. The application of this law to art is so obvious as to be almost unnecessary of elucidation, for to say that a work of art must possess unity, must seem to proceed from a single impulse and be the embodiment of one dominant idea, is to state a truism. In a work of architecture the coördination of its various parts with one another is almost the measure of its success. We remember any masterpiece--the cathedral of Paris no less than the pyramids of Egypt--by the singleness of its appeal; complex it may be, but it is a coordinated complexity; variety it may possess, but it is a variety in an all-embracing unity. The second law, not contradicting but supplementing the first is the law of _Polarity_, i.e., duality. All things have sex, are either masculine or feminine. This too is the reflection on a lower plane of one of those transcendental truths taught by the Ancient Wisdom, namely that the Logos, in his voluntarily circumscribing his infinite life in order that he may manifest, encloses himself within his limiting veil, _maya_, and that his life appears as spirit (male), and his _maya_ as matter (female), the two being never disjoined during manifestation. The two terms of this polarity are endlessly repeated throughout nature: in sun and moon, day and night, fire and water, man and woman--and so on. A close inter-relation is always seen to subsist between corresponding members of such pairs of opposites: sun, day, fire, man express and embody the primal and active aspect of the manifesting deity; moon, night, water, woman, its secondary and passive aspect. Moreover, each implies or brings to mind the others of its class: man, like the sun, is lord of day; he is like fire, a devastating force; woman is subject to the lunar rhythm; like water, she is soft, sinuous, fecund. The part which this polarity plays in the arts is important, and the constant and characteristic distinction between the two terms is a thing far beyond mere contrast. In music they are the major and minor modes: the typical, or representative chords of the dominant seventh, and of the tonic (the two chords into which Schopenhauer says all music can be resolved): a partial dissonance, and a consonance: a chord of suspense, and a chord of satisfaction. In speech the two are vowel, and consonant sounds: the type of the first being _a_, a sound of suspense, made with the mouth open; and of the second _m_, a sound of satisfaction, made by closing the mouth; their combination forms the sacred syllable Om (_Aum_). In painting they are warm colors, and cold: the pole of the first being in red, the color of fire, which excites; and of the second in blue, the color of water, which calms; in the Arts of design they are lines straight (like fire), and flowing (like water); masses light (like the day), and dark (like night). In architecture they are the column, or vertical member, which resists the force of gravity; and the lintel, or horizontal member, which succumbs to it; they are vertical lines, which are aspiring, effortful; and horizontal lines, which are restful to the eye and mind. It is desirable to have an instant and keen realization of this sex quality, and to make this easier some sort of classification and analysis must be attempted. Those things which are allied to and partake of the nature of _time_ are masculine, and those which are allied to and partake of the nature of _space_ are feminine: as motion, and matter; mind, and body; etc. The English words "masculine" and "feminine" are too intimately associated with the idea of physical sex properly to designate the terms of this polarity. In Japanese philosophy and art (derived from the Chinese) the two are called _In_ and _Yo_ (In, feminine; Yo, masculine); and these little words, being free from the limitations of their English correlatives, will be found convenient, Yo to designate that which is simple, direct, primary, active, positive; and In, that which is complex, indirect, derivative, passive, negative. Things hard, straight, fixed, vertical, are Yo; things soft, curved, horizontal, fluctuating, are In--and so on. [Illustration 6: WILD CHERRY; MAPLE LEAF] [Illustration 7: CALLAS IN YO] In passing it may be said that the superiority of the line, mass, and color composition of Japanese prints and kakemonos to that exhibited in the vastly more pretentious easel pictures of modern Occidental artists--a superiority now generally acknowledged by connoisseurs--is largely due to the conscious following, on the part of the Japanese, of this principle of sex-complementaries. Nowhere are In and Yo more simply and adequately imaged than in the vegetable kingdom. The trunk of a tree is Yo, its foliage, In; and in each stem and leaf the two are repeated. A calla, consisting of a single straight and rigid spadix embraced by a soft and tenderly curved spathe, affords an almost perfect expression of the characteristic differences between Yo and In and their reciprocal relation to each other. The two are not often combined in such simplicity and perfection in a single form. The straight, vertical reeds which so often grow in still, shallow water, find their complement in the curved lily-pads which lie horizontally on its surface. Trees such as pine and hemlock, which are excurrent--those in which the branches start successively (i.e., after the manner of time) from a straight and vertical central stem--are Yo; trees such as the elm and willow, which are deliquescent--those in which the trunk dissolves as it were simultaneously (after the manner of space) into its branches--are In. All tree forms lie in or between these two extremes, and leaves are susceptible of a similar classification. It will be seen to be a classification according to time and space, for the characteristic of time is _succession_, and of space, _simultaneousness_: the first is expressed symbolically by elements arranged with relation to axial lines; the second, by elements arranged with relation to focal points (Illustrations 6,7). The student should train himself to recognize In and Yo in all their Protean presentments throughout nature--in the cloud upon the mountain, the wave against the cliff, in the tracery of trees against the sky--that he may the more readily recognize them in his chosen art, whatever that art may be. If it happens to be painting, he will endeavor to discern this law of duality in the composition of every masterpiece, recognizing an instinctive obedience to it in that favorite device of the great Renaissance masters of making an architectural setting for their groups of figures, and he will delight to trace the law in all its ramifications of contrast between complementaries in line, color, and mass (Illustration 8). [Illustration 8: THE LAW OF POLARITY CLEOPATRA MELTING THE PEARL. BY TIEPOLO] With reference to architecture, it is true, generally speaking, that architectural forms have been developed through necessity, the function seeking and finding its appropriate form. For example, the buttress of a Gothic cathedral was developed by the necessity of resisting the thrust of the interior vaulting without encroaching upon the nave; the main lines of a buttress conform to the direction of the thrust, and the pinnacle with which it terminates is a logical shape for the masonry necessary to hold the top in position (Illustration 9). Research along these lines is interesting and fruitful of result, but there remains a certain number of architectural forms whose origin cannot be explained in any such manner. The secret of their undying charm lies in the fact that in them In and Yo stand symbolized and contrasted. They no longer obey a law of utility, but an abstract law of beauty, for in becoming sexually expressive as it were, the construction itself is sometimes weakened or falsified. The familiar classic console or modillion is an example: although in general contour it is well adapted to its function as a supporting bracket, embedded in, and projecting from a wall, yet the scroll-like ornament with which its sides are embellished gives it the appearance of not entering the wall at all, but of being stuck against it in some miraculous manner. This defect in functional expressiveness is more than compensated for by the perfection with which feminine and masculine characteristics are expressed and contrasted in the exquisite double spiral, opposed to the straight lines of the moulding which it subtends (Illustration 10). Again, by fluting the shaft of a column its area of cross-section is diminished but the appearance of strength is enhanced because its masculine character--as a supporting member resisting the force of gravity--is emphasized. [Illustration 9: CROSS SECTION OF BUTTRESS.] The importance of the so-called "orders" lies in the fact that they are architecture epitomized as it were. A building consists of a wall upholding a roof: support and weight. The type of the first is the column, which may be conceived of as a condensed section of wall; and of the second, the lintel, which may be conceived of as a condensed section of roof. The column, being vertical, is Yo; the lintel, being horizontal, is In. To mark an entablature with horizontal lines in the form of mouldings, and the columns with vertical lines in the form of flutes, as is done in all the "classic orders," is a gain in functional and sex expressiveness, and consequently in art (Illustration 11). [Illustration 10: CORINTHIAN MODILLION; CLASSIC CONSOLE; IONIC CAP] The column is again divided into the shaft, which is Yo; and the capital, which is In. The capital is itself twofold, consisting of a curved member and an angular member. These two appear in their utmost simplicity in the _echinus_ (In) and the _abacus_ (Yo) of a Greek Doric cap. The former was adorned with painted leaf forms, characteristically feminine, and the latter with the angular fret and meander (Illustration 12). The Ionic capital, belonging to a more feminine style, exhibits the abacus subordinated to that beautiful cushion-shaped member with its two spirally marked volutes. This, though a less rational and expressive form for its particular office than is the echinus of the Doric cap, is a far more perfect symbol of the feminine element in nature. There is an essential identity between the Ionic cap and the classic console before referred to--although superficially the two do not resemble each other--for a straight line and a double spiral are elements common to both (Illustration 10). The Corinthian capital consists of an ordered mass of delicately sculptured leaf and scroll forms sustaining an abacus which though relatively masculine is yet more curved and feminine than that of any other style. In the caulicole of a Corinthian cap In and Yo are again contrasted. In the unique and exquisite capital from the Tower of the Winds at Athens, the two are well suggested in the simple, erect, and pointed leaf forms of the upper part, contrasted with the complex, deliquescent, rounded ones from which they spring. The essential identity of principle subsisting between this cap and the Renaissance baluster by San Gallo is easily seen (Illustration 13). [Illustration 11] [Illustration 12] This law of sex-expressiveness is of such universality that it can be made the basis of an analysis of the architectural ornament of any style or period. It is more than mere opposition and contrast. The egg and tongue motif, which has persisted throughout so many centuries and survived so many styles, exhibits an alternation of forms resembling phallic emblems. Yo and In are well suggested in the channeled triglyphs and the sculptured metopes of a Doric frieze, in the straight and vertical mullions and the flowing tracery of Gothic windows, in the banded torus, the bead and reel, and other familiar ornamented mouldings (Illustrations 14, 15, 16). There are indications that at some time during the development of Gothic architecture in France, this sex-distinction became a recognized principle, moulding and modifying the design of a cathedral in much the same way that sex modifies bodily structure. The masonic guilds of the Middle Ages were custodians of the esoteric--which is the theosophic--side of the Christian faith, and every student of esotericism knows how fundamental and how far-reaching is this idea of sex. [Illustration 13: CAPITAL FROM THE TOWER OF THE WINDS, ATHENS; CORINTHIAN CAP FROM HADRIAN BUILDINGS, ATHENS; ROSETTE FROM TEMPLE OF MARS, ROME; CAULICULUS OF CORINTHIAN CAP; BULUSTER BY SAN GALLO] [Illustration 14: EGG AND TONGUE; BEAD AND REEL; BANDED TORUS] The entire cathedral symbolized the crucified body of Christ; its two towers, man and woman--that Adam and that Eve for whose redemption according to current teaching Christ suffered and was crucified. The north or right-hand tower ("the man's side") was called the sacred male pillar, Jachin; and the south, or left-hand tower ("the woman's side"), the sacred female pillar, Boaz, from the two columns flanking the gate to Solomon's Temple--itself an allegory to the bodily temple. In only a few of the French cathedrals is this distinction clearly and consistently maintained, and of these Tours forms perhaps the most remarkable example, for in its flamboyant façade, over and above the difference in actual breadth and apparent sturdiness of the two towers (the south being the more slender and delicate), there is a clearly marked distinction in the character of the ornamentation, that of the north tower being more salient, angular, radial--more masculine in point of fact (Illustration 17). In Notre Dame, the cathedral of Paris, as in the cathedral of Tours, the north tower is perceptibly broader than the south. The only other important difference appears to be in the angular label-mould above the north entrance: whatever may have been its original function or significance, it serves to define the tower sexually, so to speak, as effectively as does the beard on a man's face. In Amiens the north tower is taller than the south, and more massive in its upper stages. The only traceable indication of sex in the ornamentation occurs in the spandrels at the sides of the entrance arches: those of the north tower containing single circles, and those of the south tower containing two in one. This difference, small as it may seem, is significant, for in Europe during the Middle Ages, just as anciently in Egypt and again in Greece--in fact wherever and whenever the Secret Doctrine was known--sex was attributed to numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine, and even, as feminine. Two, the first feminine number, thus became a symbol of femininity, accepted as such so universally at the time the cathedrals were built, that two strokes of a bell announced the death of a woman, three, the death of a man. [Illustration 15: FRIEZE OF THE FARNESE PALACE; ROMAN CONSOLE. VATICAN MUSEUM; FRIEZE IN THE EMPIRE STYLE BY PERCIER AND FONTAINE. FRIEZE FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. (ROMAN); ROMAN DORIC FRIEZE--VIGNOLE] [Illustration 16] [Illustration 17] The vital, organic quality so conspicuous in the best Gothic architecture has been attributed to the fact that necessity determined its characteristic forms. Professor Goodyear has demonstrated that it may be due also in part to certain subtle vertical leans and horizontal bends; and to nicely calculated variations from strict uniformity, which find their analogue in nature, where structure is seldom rigidly geometrical. The author hazards the theory that still another reason why a Gothic cathedral seems so living a thing is because it abounds in contrasts between what, for lack of more descriptive adjectives, he is forced to call masculine and feminine forms. [Illustration 18] [Illustration 19] Ruskin says, in _Stones of Venice_, "All good Gothic is nothing more than the development, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above, and from the huge, gray, shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath, to the crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. The modes of support and of decoration are infinitely various, but the real character of the building, in all good Gothic, depends on the single lines of the gable over the pointed arch endlessly rearranged and repeated." These two, an angular and a curved form, like the everywhere recurring column and lintel of classic architecture, are but presentments of Yo and In (Illustration 18). Every Gothic traceried window, with straight and vertical mullions in the rectangle, losing themselves in the intricate foliations of the arch, celebrates the marriage of this ever diverse pair. The circle and the triangle are the In and Yo of Gothic tracery, its Eve and Adam, as it were, for from their union springs that progeny of trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, of shapes flowing like water, and shapes darting like flame, which makes such visible music to the entranced ear. [Illustration 20: SAN GIMIGNANO S. JACOPO.] By seeking to discover In and Yo in their myriad manifestations, by learning to discriminate between them, and by attempting to express their characteristic qualities in new forms of beauty--from the disposition of a façade to the shaping of a moulding--the architectural designer will charge his work with that esoteric significance, that excess of beauty, by which architecture rises to the dignity of a "fine" art (Illustrations 19, 20). In so doing, however, he should never forget, and the layman also should ever remember, that the supreme architectural excellence is fitness, appropriateness, the perfect adaptation of means to ends, and the adequate expression of both means and ends. These two aims, the one abstract and universal, the other concrete and individual, can always be combined, just as in every human countenance are combined a type, which is universal, and a character, which is individual. III CHANGELESS CHANGE TRINITY, CONSONANCE, DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY, BALANCE, RHYTHMIC CHANGE, RADIATION The preceding essay was devoted for the most part to that "inevitable duality" which finds concrete expression in countless pairs of opposites, such as day and night, fire and water, man and woman; in the art of music by two chords, one of suspense and the other of fulfilment; in speech by vowel and consonant sounds, epitomized in _a_ and in _m_; in painting by warm colors and cold, epitomized in red and blue; in architecture by the vertical column and the horizontal lintel, by void and solid--and so on. TRINITY This concept should now be modified by another, namely, that in every duality a third is latent; that two implies three, for each sex so to speak is in process of becoming the other, and this alternation engenders and is accomplished by means of a third term or neuter, which is like neither of the original two but partakes of the nature of them both, just as a child may resemble both its parents. Twilight comes between day and night; earth is the child of fire and water; in music, besides the chord of longing and striving, and the chord of rest and satisfaction (the dominant seventh and the tonic), there is a third or resolving chord in which the two are reconciled. In the sacred syllable Om (_Aum_), which epitomizes all speech, the _u_ sound effects a transition between the _a_ sound and the _m_; among the so-called primary colors yellow comes between red and blue; and in architecture the arch, which is both weight and support, which is neither vertical nor horizontal, may be considered the neuter of the group of which the column and the lintel are respectively masculine and feminine. "These are the three," says Mr. Louis Sullivan, "the only three letters from which has been expanded the architectural art, as a great and superb language wherewith man has expressed, through the generations, the changing drift of his thoughts." [Illustration 21: THE LAW OF TRINITY. A ROMAN IONIC ARCADE, BY VIGNOLE.--THE COLUMN, THE ENTABLATURE, AND THE ARCH CORRESPOND TO LINES VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL AND CURVED.] It would be supererogatory to dwell at any length on this "trinity of manifestation" as the concrete expression of that unmanifest and mystical trinity, that _three-in-one_ which under various names occurs in every world-religion, where, defying definition, it was wont to find expression symbolically in some combination of vertical, horizontal and curved lines. The anstated cross of the Egyptians is such a symbol, the Buddhist wheel, and the fylfot or swastika inscribed within a circle, also those numerous Christian symbols combining the circle and the cross. Such ideographs have spelled profound meaning to the thinkers of past ages. We of to-day are not given to discovering anything wonderful in three strokes of a pen, but every artist in the weaving of his pattern must needs employ these mystic symbols in one form or another, and if he employs them with a full sense of their hidden meaning his work will be apt to gain in originality and beauty--for originality is a new and personal perception of beauty, and beauty is the name we give to truth we cannot understand. In architecture, this trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved lines finds admirable illustration in the application of columns and entablature to an arch and impost construction, so common in Roman and Renaissance work. This is a redundancy, and finds no justification in reason, because the weight is sustained by the arch, and the "order" is an appendage merely; yet the combination, illogical as it is, satisfies the sense of beauty because the arch effects a transition between the columns and the entablature, and completes the trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved lines (Illustration 21). In the entrances to many of the Gothic cathedrals and churches the same elements are better because more logically disposed. Here the horizontal lintel and its vertical supports are not decorative merely, but really perform their proper functions, while the arch, too, has a raison d'être in that it serves to relieve the lintel of the superincumbent weight of masonry. The same arrangement sometimes occurs in classic architecture also, as when an opening spanned by a single arch is subdivided by means of an order (Illustration 22). Three is pre-eminently the number of architecture, because it is the number of space, which for us is three-dimensional, and of all the arts architecture is most concerned with the expression of spatial relations. The division of a composition into three related parts is so universal that it would seem to be the result of an instinctive action of the human mind. The twin pylons of an Egyptian temple with its entrance between, for a third division, has its correspondence in the two towers of a Gothic cathedral and the intervening screen wall of the nave. In the palaces of the Renaissance a threefold division--vertically by means of quoins or pilasters, and horizontally by means of cornices or string courses--was common, as was also the division into a principal and two subordinate masses (Illustration 23). [Illustration 22: THE LAW OF TRINITY. THE TRINITY OF HORIZONTAL VERTICAL AND CURVED LINES.] The architectural "orders" are divided threefold into pedestal or stylobate, column and entablature; and each of these is again divided threefold: the first into plinth, die and cornice; the second into base, shaft and capital; the third into architrave, frieze and cornice. In many cases these again lend themselves to a threefold subdivision. A more detailed analysis of the capitals already shown to be twofold reveals a third member: in the Greek Doric this consists of the annulets immediately below the abacus; in the other orders, the necking which divides the shaft from the cap. CONSONANCE "As is the small, so is the great" is a perpetually recurring phrase in the literature of theosophy, and naturally so, for it is a succinct statement of a fundamental and far-reaching truth. The scientist recognizes it now and then and here and there, but the occultist trusts it always and utterly. To him the microcosm and the macrocosm are one and the same in essence, and the forth-going impulse which calls a universe into being and the indrawing impulse which extinguishes it again, each lasting millions of years, are echoed and repeated in the inflow and outflow of the breath through the nostrils, in nutrition and excretion, in daily activity and nightly rest, in that longer day which we name a lifetime, and that longer rest in _Devachan_--and so on until time itself is transcended. [Illustration 23] In the same way, in nature, a thing is echoed and repeated throughout its parts. Each leaf on a tree is itself a tree in miniature, each blossom a modified leaf; every vertebrate animal is a complicated system of spines; the ripple is the wave of a larger wave, and that larger wave is a part of the ebbing and flowing tide. In music this law is illustrated in the return of the tonic to itself in the octave, and its partial return in the dominant; also in a more extended sense in the repetition of a major theme in the minor, or in the treble and again in the bass, with modifications perhaps of time and key. In the art of painting the law is exemplified in the repetition with variation of certain colors and combinations of lines in different parts of the same picture, so disposed as to lead the eye to some focal point. Every painter knows that any important color in his picture must be echoed, as it were, in different places, for harmony of the whole. [Illustration 24] In the drama the repetition of a speech or of an entire scene, but under circumstances which give it a different meaning, is often most effective, as when Gratiano, in the trial scene of _The Merchant of Venice_ taunts Shylock with his own words, "A Daniel come to judgment!" or, as when in one of the later scenes of _As You Like It_ an earlier scene is repeated, but with Rosalind speaking in her proper person and no longer as the boy Ganymede. These recurrences, these inner consonances, these repetitions with variations are common in architecture also. The channeled triglyphs of a Greek Doric frieze echo the fluted columns below (Illustration 24). The balustrade which crowns a colonnade is a repetition, in some sort, of the colonnade itself. The modillions of a Corinthian cornice are but elaborated and embellished dentils. Each pinnacle of a Gothic cathedral is a little tower with its spire. As Ruskin has pointed out, the great vault of the cathedral nave, together with the pointed roof above it, is repeated in the entrance arch with its gable, and the same two elements appear in every statue-enshrining niche of the doorway. In classic architecture, as has been shown, instead of the arch and gable, the column and entablature everywhere recur under different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Château Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire façade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere (Illustration 26). [Illustration 25] [Illustration 26] [Illustration 27] This law of Consonance is operative in architecture more obscurely in the form of recurring numerical ratios, identical geometrical determining figures, parallel diagonals and the like, which will be discussed in a subsequent essay. It has also to do with style and scale, the adherence to substantially one method of construction and manner of ornament, just as in music the key, or chosen series of notes, may not be departed from except through proper modulations, or in a specific manner. Thus it is seen that in a work of art, as in a piece of tapestry, the same thread runs through the web, but goes to make up different figures. The idea is deeply theosophic: one life, many manifestations; hence, inevitably, echoes, resemblances--_Consonance_. DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY Another principle of natural beauty, closely allied to the foregoing, its complement as it were, is that of _Diversity in Monotony_--not identity, but difference. It shows itself for the most part as a perceptible and piquant variation between individual units belonging to the same class, type, or species. No two trees put forth their branches in just the same manner, and no two leaves from the same tree exactly correspond; no two persons look alike, though they have similiar members and features; even the markings on the skin of the thumb are different in every human hand. Browning says, "As like as a hand to another hand! Whoever said that foolish thing, Could not have studied to understand--" Now every principle of natural beauty is but the presentment of some occult law, some theosophical truth; and this law of Diversity in Monotony is the presentment of the truth that identity does not exclude difference. The law is binding, yet the will is free: all men are brothers united by the ties of brotherhood, yet each is unique, a free agent, and never so free as when most bound by the Good Law. This truth nature beautifully proclaims, and art also. In architecture it is admirably exemplified in the metopes of the Parthenon frieze: seen at a distance these must have presented a scarcely distinguishable texture of sunlit marble and cool shadow, yet in reality each is a separate work of art. So with the capitals of the columns of the wonderful sea-arcade of the Venetian Ducal palace: alike in general contour they differ widely in detail, and unfold a Bible story. In Gothic cathedrals, in Romanesque monastery cloisters, a teeming variety of invention is hidden beneath apparent uniformity. The gargoyles of Notre Dame make similiar silhouettes against the sky, but seen near at hand what a menagerie of monsters! The same spirit of controlled individuality, of liberty subservient to the law of all, is exemplified in the bases of the columns of the temple of Apollo near Miletus--each one a separate masterpiece of various ornamentation adorning an established architectural form (Illustration 28). [Illustration 28] [Illustration 29] The builders of the early Italian churches, instinctively obeying this law of Diversity in Monotony, varied the size of the arches in the same arcade (Illustration 29), and that this was an effect of art and not of accident or carelessness Ruskin long ago discovered, and the Brooklyn Institute surveys have amply confirmed his view. Although by these means the builders of that day produced effects of deceptive perspective, of subtle concord and contrast, their sheer hatred of monotony and meaningless repetition may have led them to diversify their arcades in the manner described, for a rigidly equal and regular division lacks interest and vitality. BALANCE If one were to establish an axial plane vertically through the center of a tree, in most cases it would be found that the masses of foliage, however irregularly shaped on either side of such an axis, just about balanced each other. Similarly, in all our bodily movements, for every change of equilibrium there occurs an opposition and adjustment of members of such a nature that an axial plane through the center of gravity would divide the body into two substantially equal masses, as in the case of the tree. This physical plane law of Balance shows itself for the most part on the human plane as the law of Compensation, whereby, to the vision of the occultist, all accounts are "squared," so to speak. It is in effect the law of Justice, aptly symbolized by the scales. The law of Balance finds abundant illustration in art: in music by the opposition, the answering, of one phrase by another of the same elements and the same length, but involving a different sequence of intervals; in painting by the disposition of masses in such a way that they about equalize one another, so that there is no sense of "strain" in the composition. In architecture the common and obvious recognition of the law of Balance is in the symmetrical disposition of the elements, whether of plan or of elevation, on either side of axial lines. A far more subtle and vital illustration of the law occurs when the opposed elements do not exactly match, but differ from each other, as in the case of the two towers of Amiens, for example. This sort of balance may be said to be characteristic of Gothic, as symmetry is characteristic of Classic, architecture. RHYTHMIC CHANGE There is in nature a universal tendency toward refinement and compactness of form in space, or contrariwise, toward increment and diffusion; and this manifests itself in time as acceleration or retardation. It is governed, in either case, by an exact mathematical law, like the law of falling bodies. It shows itself in the widening circles which appear when one drops a stone into still water, in the convolutions of shells, in the branching of trees and the veining of leaves; the diminution in the size of the pipes of an organ illustrates it, and the spacing of the frets of a guitar. More and more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the spiral vortex, which so beautifully illustrates this law, both in its time and its space aspects is the universal archetype, the pattern of all that is, has been, or will be, since it is the form assumed by the ultimate physical atom, and the ultimate physical atom is the physical cosmos in miniature. This Rhythmic Diminution is everywhere: it is in the eye itself, for any series of mathematically equal units, such for example as the columns and intercolumnations of a colonnade, become when seen in perspective rhythmically unequal, diminishing according to the universal law. The entasis of a Classic column is determined by this law, the spirals of the Ionic volute, the annulets of the Parthenon cap, obey it (Illustration 30). In recognition of the same principle of Rhythmic Diminution a building is often made to grow, or appear to grow lighter, more intricate, finer, from the ground upward, an end attained by various devices, one of the most common being the employment of the more attenuated and highly ornamented orders above the simpler and sturdier, as in the Roman Colosseum, or in the Palazzo Uguccioni, in Florence--to mention only two examples out of a great number. In the Riccardi Palace an effect of increasing refinement is obtained by diminishing the boldness of the rustication of the ashlar in successive stories; in the Farnese, by the gradual reduction of the size of the angle quoins (Illustration 30). In an Egyptian pylon it is achieved most simply by battering the wall; in a Gothic cathedral most elaborately by a kind of segregation, or breaking up, analogous to that which a tree undergoes--the strong, relatively unbroken base corresponding to the trunk, the diminishing buttresses to the tapering limbs, and the multitude of delicate pinnacles and crockets, to the outermost branches and twigs, seen against the sky. RADIATION The final principle of natural beauty to which the author would call attention is the law of _Radiation_, which is in a manner a return to the first, the law of _Unity_. The various parts of any organism radiate from, or otherwise refer back to common centers, or foci, and these to centers of their own. The law is represented in its simplicity in the star-fish, in its complexity in the body of man; a tree springs from a seed, the solar system centers in the sun. The idea here expressed by the term "radiation" is a familiar one to all students of theosophy. The Logos radiates his life and light throughout his universe, bringing into activity a host of entities which become themselves radial centers; these generate still others, and so on endlessly. This principle, like every other, patiently publishes itself to us, unheeding, everywhere in nature, and in all great art as well; it is a law of optics, for example, that all straight lines having a common direction if sufficiently prolonged appear to meet in a point, i.e., radiate from it (Illustration 31). Leonardo da Vinci employed this principle of perspective in his Last Supper to draw the spectator's eye to the picture's central figure, the point of sight toward which the lines of the walls and ceiling converge centering in the head of Christ. Puvis de Chavannes, in his Boston Library decoration, leads the eye by a system of triangulation to the small figure of the Genius of Enlightenment above the central door (Illustration 32); and Ruskin, in his _Elements of Drawing_, has shown how artfully Turner arranged some of his compositions to attract attention to a focal point. This law of Radiation enters largely into architecture. The Colosseum, based upon the ellipse, a figure generated from two points or foci, and the Pantheon, based upon the circle, a figure generated from a central point, are familiar examples. The distinctive characteristic of Gothic construction, the concentration or focalization of the weight of the vaults and arches at certain points, is another illustration of the same principle applied to architecture, beautifully exemplified in the semicircular apse of a cathedral, where the lines of the plan converge to a common center, and the ribs of the vaulting meet upon the capitals of the piers and columns, seeming to radiate thence to still other centers in the loftier vaults which finally meet in a center common to all. [Illustration 30] [Illustration 31] [Illustration 32] The tracery of the great roses, high up in the façades of the cathedrals of Paris and of Amiens, illustrate Radiation, in the one case masculine: straight, angular, direct; in the feminine: curved, flowing, sinuous. The same _Beautiful Necessity_ determined the characteristics of much of the ornament of widely separated styles and periods: the Egyptian lotus, the Greek honeysuckle, the Roman acanthus, Gothic leaf work--to snatch at random four blossoms from the sheaf of time. The radial principle still inherent in the debased ornament of the late Renaissance gives that ornament a unity, a coherence, and a kind of beauty all its own (Illustration 35). [Illustration 33] [Illustration 34] Such are a few of the more obvious laws of natural beauty and their application to the art of architecture. The list is by no means exhausted, but it is not the multiplicity and diversity of these laws which is important to keep in mind, so much as their relatedness and coördination, for they are but different aspects of the One Law, that whereby the Logos manifests in time and space. A brief recapitulation will serve to make this correlation plain, and at the same time fix what has been written more firmly in the reader's mind. [Illustration 35] [Illustration 36] First comes the law of _Unity_; then, since every unit is in its essence twofold, there is the law of _Polarity_; but this duality is not static but dynamic, the two parts acting and reacting upon one another to produce a third--hence the law of _Trinity_. Given this third term, and the innumerable combinations made possible by its relations to and reactions upon the original pair, the law of _Multiplicity in Unity_ naturally follows, as does the law of _Consonance_, or repetition, since the primal process of differentiation tends to repeat itself, and the original combinations to reappear--but to reappear in changed form, hence the law of _Diversity in Monotony_. The law of _Balance_ is seen to be but a modification of the law of Polarity, and since all things are waxing and waning, there is the law whereby they wax and wane, that of _Rhythmic Change_. _Radiation_ rediscovers and reaffirms, even in the utmost complexity, that essential and fundamental unity from which complexity was wrought. Everything, beautiful or ugly, obeys and illustrates one or another of these laws, so universal are they, so inseparably attendant upon every kind of manifestation in time and space. It is the number of them which finds illustration within small compass, and the aptness and completeness of such illustration, which makes for beauty, because beauty is the fine flower of a sort of sublime ingenuity. A work of art is nothing if not _artful_: like an acrostic, the more different ways it can be read--up, down, across, from right to left and from left to right--the better it is, other things being equal. This statement, of course, may be construed in such a way as to appear absurd; what is meant is simply that the more a work of art is freighted and fraught with meaning beyond meaning, the more secure its immortality, the more powerful its appeal. For enjoyment, it is not necessary that all these meanings should be fathomed, it is only necessary that they should be felt. Consider for a moment the manner in which Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, an acknowledged masterpiece, conforms to everyone of the laws of beauty enumerated above (Illustration 32). It illustrates the law of Unity in that it movingly portrays a single significant episode in the life of Christ. The eye is led to dwell upon the central personage of this drama by many artful expedients: the visible part of the figure of Christ conforms to the lines of an equilateral triangle placed exactly in the center of the picture; the figure is separated by a considerable space from the groups of the disciples on either hand, and stands relieved against the largest parallelogram of light, and the vanishing point of the perspective is in the head of Christ, at the apex, therefore, of the triangle. The law of Polarity finds fulfilment in the complex and flowing lines of the draped figures contrasted with the simple parallelogram of the cloth-covered table, and the severe architecture of the room. The law of Trinity is exemplified in the three windows, and in the subdivision of the twelve figures of the disciples into four groups of three figures each. The law of Consonance appears in the repetition of the horizontal lines of the table in the ceiling above; and in the central triangle before referred to, continued and echoed, as it were, in the triangular supports of the table visible underneath the cloth. The law of Diversity in Monotony is illustrated in the varying disposition of the heads of the figures in the four groups of three; the law of Balance in the essential symmetry of the entire composition; the law of Rhythmic Change in the diminishing of the wall and ceiling spaces; and the law of Radiation in the convergence of all the perspective lines to a single significant point. To illustrate further the universality of these laws, consider now their application to a single work of architecture: the Taj Mahal, one of the most beautiful buildings of the world (Illustration 36). It is a unit, but twofold, for it consists of a curved part and an angular part, roughly figured as an inverted cup upon a cube; each of these (seen in parallel perspective, at the end of the principal vista) is threefold, for there are two sides and a central parallelogram, and two lesser domes flank the great dome. The composition is rich in consonances, for the side arches echo the central one, the subordinate domes the great dome, and the lanterns of the outstanding minarets repeat the principal motif. Diversity in Monotony appears abundantly in the ornament, which is intricate and infinitely various; the law of Balance is everywhere operative in the symmetry of the entire design. Rhythmic Change appears in the tapering of the minarets, the outlines of the domes and their mass relations to one another; and finally, the whole effect is of radiation from a central point, of elements disposed on radial lines. It would be fatuous to contend that the prime object of a work of architecture is to obey and illustrate these laws. The prime object of a work of architecture is to fulfill certain definite conditions in a practical, economical, and admirable way, and in fulfilling to express as far as possible these conditions, making the form express the function. The architect who is also an artist however will do this and something beyond: working for the most part unconsciously, harmoniously, joyously, his building will obey and illustrate natural laws--these laws of beauty--and to the extent it does so it will be a work of art; for art is the method of nature carried into those higher regions of thought and feeling which man alone inhabits: regions which it is one of the purposes of theosophy to explore. IV THE BODILY TEMPLE Carlyle says: "There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man." If the body is, as he declares, a temple, it is not less true that a temple or any work of architectural art is a larger body which man has created for his uses, just as the individual self is housed within its stronghold of flesh and bones. Architectural beauty like human beauty depends upon the proper subordination of parts to the whole, the harmonious interrelation between these parts, the expressiveness of each of its function or functions, and when these are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another. This being so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing the sources of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable. Pursued intelligently, such a study will stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple yet subtle laws according to which nature everywhere works, and it will educate the eye in the finest known school of proportion, training it to distinguish minute differences, in the same way that the hearing of good music cultivates the ear. Those principles of natural beauty which formed the subject of the two preceding essays are all exemplified in the ideally perfect human figure. Though essentially a unit, there is a well marked division into right and left--"Hands to hands, and feet to feet, in one body grooms and brides." There are two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes, and two lids to each eye; the nose has two nostrils, the mouth has two lips. Moreover, the terms of such pairs are masculine and feminine with respect to each other, one being active and the other passive. Owing to the great size and one-sided position of the liver, the right half of the body is heavier than the left; the right arm is usually longer and more muscular than the left; the right eye is slightly higher than its fellow. In speaking and eating the lower jaw and under lip are active and mobile with relation to the upper; in winking it is the upper eyelid which is the more active. That "inevitable duality" which is exhibited in the form of the body characterizes its motions also. In the act of walking for example, a forward movement is attained by means of a forward and a backward movement of the thighs on the axis of the hips; this leg movement becomes twofold again below the knee, and the feet move up and down independently on the axis of the ankle. A similar progression is followed in raising the arm and hand: motion is communicated first to the larger parts, through them to the smaller and thence to the extremities, becoming more rapid and complex as it progresses, so that all free and natural movements of the limbs describe invisible lines of beauty in the air. Coexistent with this pervasive duality there is a threefold division of the figure into trunk, head and limbs: a superior trinity of head and arms, and an inferior trinity of trunk and legs. The limbs are divided threefold into upper-arm, forearm and hand; thigh, leg and foot. The hand flowers out into fingers and the foot into toes, each with a threefold articulation; and in this way is effected that transition from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, which appears to be so universal throughout nature, and of which a tree is the perfect symbol. [Illustration 37: THE LAW OF RHYTHMIC DIMINUTION ILLUSTRATED IN THE TAPERING BODY, LIMBS, FINGERS & TOES.] [Illustration 38] [Illustration 39] The body is rich in veiled repetitions, echoes, _consonances_. The head and arms are in a sense a refinement upon the trunk and legs, there being a clearly traceable correspondence between their various parts. The hand is the body in little--_"Your soft hand is a woman of itself"_--the palm, the trunk; the four fingers, the four limbs; and the thumb, the head;-each finger is a little arm, each finger tip a little palm. The lips are the lids of the mouth, the lids are the lips of the eyes--and so on. The law of _Rhythmic Diminution_ is illustrated in the tapering of the entire body and of the limbs, in the graduated sizes and lengths of the palm and the toes, and in the successively decreasing length of the palm and the joints of the fingers, so that in closing the hand the fingers describe natural spirals (Illustrations 37, 38). Finally, the limbs radiate as it were from the trunk, the fingers from a point in the wrist, the toes from a point in the ankle. The ribs radiate from the spinal column like the veins of a leaf from its midrib (Illustration 39). [Illustration 40] The relation of these laws of beauty to the art of architecture has been shown already. They are reiterated here only to show that man is indeed the microcosm--a little world fashioned from the same elements and in accordance with the same _Beautiful Necessity_ as is the greater world in which he dwells. When he builds a house or temple he builds it not literally in his own image, but according to the laws of his own being, and there are correspondences not altogether fanciful between the animate body of flesh and the inanimate body of stone. Do we not all of us, consciously or unconsciously, recognize the fact of character and physiognomy in buildings? Are they not, to our imagination, masculine or feminine, winning or forbidding--_human_, in point of fact--to a greater degree than anything else of man's creating? They are this certainly to a true lover and student of architecture. Seen from a distance the great French cathedrals appear like crouching monsters, half beast, half human: the two towers stand like a man and a woman, mysterious and gigantic, looking out over city and plain. The campaniles of Italy rise above the churches and houses like the sentinels of a sleeping camp--nor is their strangely human aspect wholly imaginary: these giants of mountain and campagna have eyes and brazen tongues; rising four square, story above story, with a belfry or lookout, like a head, atop, their likeness to a man is not infrequently enhanced by a certain identity of proportion--of ratio, that is, of height to width: Giotto's beautiful tower is an example. The caryatid is a supporting member in the form of a woman; in the Ionic column we discern her stiffened, like Lot's wife, into a pillar, with nothing to show her feminine but the spirals of her beautiful hair. The columns which uphold the pediment of the Parthenon are unmistakably masculine: the ratio of their breadth to their height is the ratio of the breadth to the height of a man (Illustration 40). [Illustration 41: THE BODY THE ARCHETYPE OF SACRED EDIFICES.] [Illustration 42: THE VESICA PISCIS AND THE PLAN OF CHARTRES.] At certain periods of the world's history, periods of mystical enlightenment, men have been wont to use the human figure, the soul's temple, as a sort of archetype for sacred edifices (Illustration 41). The colossi, with calm inscrutable faces, which flank the entrance to Egyptian temples; the great bronze Buddha of Japan, with its dreaming eyes; the little known colossal figures of India and China--all these belong scarcely less to the domain of architecture than of sculpture. The relation above referred to however is a matter more subtle and occult than mere obvious imitation on a large scale, being based upon some correspondence of parts, or similarity of proportions, or both. The correspondence between the innermost sanctuary or shrine of a temple and the heart of a man, and between the gates of that temple and the organs of sense is sufficiently obvious, and a relation once established, the idea is susceptible of almost infinite development. That the ancients proportioned their temples from the human figure is no new idea, nor is it at all surprising. The sculpture of the Egyptians and the Greeks reveals the fact that they studied the body abstractly, in its exterior presentment. It is clear that the rules of its proportions must have been established for sculpture, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that they became canonical in architecture also. Vitruvius and Alberti both lay stress on the fact that all sacred buildings should be founded on the proportions of the human body. [Illustration 43: A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL THE SYMBOL OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST] [Illustration 44: THE SYMBOLISM OF A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL FROM THE ROSICRUCIANS: HARGRAVE JENNINGS] In France, during the Middle Ages, a Gothic cathedral became, at the hands of the secret masonic guilds, a glorified symbol of the body of Christ. To practical-minded students of architectural history, familiar with the slow and halting evolution of a Gothic cathedral from a Roman basilica, such an idea may seem to be only the maunderings of a mystical imagination, a theory evolved from the inner consciousness, entitled to no more consideration than the familiar fallacy that vaulted nave of a Gothic church was an attempt to imitate the green aisles of a forest. It should be remembered however that the habit of the thought of that time was mystical, as that of our own age is utilitarian and scientific; and the chosen language of mysticism is always an elaborate and involved symbolism. What could be more natural than that a building devoted to the worship of a crucified Savior should be made a symbol, not of the cross only, but of the body crucified? [Illustration 45: THE GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE] [Illustration 46] The _vesica piscis_ (a figure formed by the developing arcs of two equilateral triangles having a common side) which in so many cases seems to have determined the main proportion of a cathedral plan--the interior length and width across the transepts--appears as an aureole around the figure of Christ in early representations, a fact which certainly points to a relation between the two (Illustrations 42, 43). A curious little book, _The Rosicrucians_, by Hargrave Jennings, contains an interesting diagram which well illustrates this conception of the symbolism of a cathedral. A copy of it is here given. The apse is seen to correspond to the head of Christ, the north transept to his right hand, the south transept to the left hand, the nave to the body, and the north and south towers to the right and left feet respectively (Illustration 44). [Illustration 47] The cathedral builders excelled all others in the artfulness with which they established and maintained a relation between their architecture and the stature of a man. This is perhaps one reason why the French and English cathedrals, even those of moderate dimensions are more truly impressive than even the largest of the great Renaissance structures, such as St. Peter's in Rome. A gigantic order furnishes no true measure for the eye: its vastness is revealed only by the accident of some human presence which forms a basis of comparison. That architecture is not necessarily the most awe-inspiring which gives the impression of having been built by giants for the abode of pigmies; like the other arts, architecture is highest when it is most human. The mediæval builders, true to this dictum, employed stones of a size proportionate to the strength of a man working without unusual mechanical aids; the great piers and columns, built up of many such stones, were commonly subdivided into clusters, and the circumference of each shaft of such a cluster approximated the girth of a man; by this device the moulding of the base and the foliation of the caps were easily kept in scale. Wherever a balustrade occurred it was proportioned not with relation to the height of the wall or the column below, as in classic architecture, but with relation to a man's stature. [Illustration 48: FIGURE DIVIDED ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIAN CANON] It may be stated as a general rule that every work of architecture, of whatever style, should have somewhere about it something fixed and enduring to relate it to the human figure, if it be only a flight of steps in which each one is the measure of a stride. In the Farnese, the Riccardi, the Strozzi, and many another Italian palace, the stone seat about the base gives scale to the building because the beholder knows instinctively that the height of such a seat must have some relation to the length of a man's leg. In the Pitti palace the balustrade which crowns each story answers a similar purpose: it stands in no intimate relation to the gigantic arches below, but is of a height convenient for lounging elbows. The door to Giotto's campanile reveals the true size of the tower as nothing else could, because it is so evidently related to the human figure and not to the great windows higher up in the shaft. [Illustration 49: THE MEDI�VAL METHOD OF DRAWING THE FIGURE] The geometrical plane figures which play the most important part in architectural proportion are the square, the circle and the triangle; and the human figure is intimately related to these elementary forms. If a man stand with heels together, and arms outstretched horizontally in opposite directions, he will be inscribed, as it were, within a square; and his arms will mark, with fair accuracy, the base of an inverted equilateral triangle, the apex of which will touch the ground at his feet. If the arms be extended upward at an angle, and the legs correspondingly separated, the extremities will touch the circumferences of a circle having its center in the navel (Illustrations 45, 46). [Illustration 50] The figure has been variously analyzed with a view to establishing numerical ratios between its parts (Illustrations 47, 48, 49). Some of these are so simple and easily remembered that they have obtained a certain popular currency; such as that the length of the hand equals the length of the face; that the span of the horizontally extended arms equals the height; and the well known rule that twice around the wrist is once around the neck, and twice around the neck is once around the waist. The Roman architect Vitruvius, writing in the age of Augustus Cæsar, formulated the important proportions of the statues of classical antiquity, and except that he makes the head smaller than the normal (as it should be in heroic statuary), the ratios which he gives are those to which the ideally perfect male figure should conform. Among the ancients the foot was probably the standard of all large measurements, being a more determinate length than that of the head or face, and the height was six lengths of the foot. If the head be taken as a unit, the ratio becomes 1:8, and if the face--1:10. Doctor Rimmer, in his _Art Anatomy_, divides the figure into four parts, three of which are equal, and correspond to the lengths of the leg, the thigh and the trunk; while the fourth part, which is two-thirds of one of these thirds, extends from the sternum to the crown of the head. One excellence of such a division aside from its simplicity, consists in the fact that it may be applied to the face as well. The lowest of the three major divisions extends from the tip of the chin to the base of the nose, the next coincides with the height of the nose (its top being level with the eyebrows), and the last with the height of the forehead, while the remaining two-thirds of one of these thirds represents the horizontal projection from the beginning of the hair on the forehead to the crown of the head. The middle of the three larger divisions locates the ears, which are the same height as the nose (Illustrations 45, 47). Such analyses of the figure, however conducted, reveals an all-pervasive harmony of parts, between which definite numerical relations are traceable, and an apprehension of these should assist the architectural designer to arrive at beauty of proportion by methods of his own, not perhaps in the shape of rigid formulæ, but present in the consciousness as a restraining influence, acting and reacting upon the mind with a conscious intention toward rhythm and harmony. By means of such exercises, he will approach nearer to an understanding of that great mystery, the beauty and significance of numbers, of which mystery music, architecture, and the human figure are equally presentments--considered, that is, from the standpoint of the occultist. V LATENT GEOMETRY [Illustration 51: THE HEXAGRAM AND EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN NATURE] It is a well known fact that in the microscopically minute of nature, units everywhere tend to arrange themselves with relation to certain simple geometrical solids, among which are the tetrahedron, the cube, and the sphere. This process gives rise to harmony, which may be defined as the relation between parts and unity, the simplicity latent in the infinitely complex, the potential complexity of that which is simple. Proceeding to things visible and tangible, this indwelling harmony, rhythm, proportion, which has its basis in geometry and number, is seen to exist in crystals, flower forms, leaf groups, and the like, where it is obvious; and in the more highly organized world of the animal kingdom also; though here the geometry is latent rather than patent, eluding though not quite defying analysis, and thus augmenting beauty, which like a woman is alluring in proportion as she eludes (Illustrations 51, 52, 53). [Illustration 52: PROPORTIONS OF THE HORSE] [Illustration 53] By the true artist, in the crystal mirror of whose mind the universal harmony is focused and reflected, this secret of the cause and source of rhythm--that it dwells in a correlation of parts based on an ultimate simplicity--is instinctively apprehended. A knowledge of it formed part of the equipment of the painters who made glorious the golden noon of pictorial art in Italy during the Renaissance. The problem which preoccupied them was, as Symonds says of Leonardo, "to submit the freest play of form to simple figures of geometry in grouping." Alberti held that the painter should above all things have mastered geometry, and it is known that the study of perspective and kindred subjects was widespread and popular. [Illustration 54] The first painter who deliberately rather than instinctively based his compositions on geometrical principles seems to have been Fra Bartolommeo, in his Last Judgment, in the church of St. Maria Nuova, in Florence. Symonds says of this picture, "Simple figures--the pyramid and triangle, upright, inverted, and interwoven like the rhymes of a sonnet--form the basis of the composition. This system was adhered to by the Fratre in all his subsequent works" (Illustration 54). Raphael, with that power of assimilation which distinguishes him among men of genius, learned from Fra Bartolommeo this method of disposing figures and combining them in masses with almost mathematical precision. It would have been indeed surprising if Leonardo da Vinci, in whom the artist and the man of science were so wonderfully united, had not been greatly preoccupied with the mathematics of the art of painting. His Madonna of the Rocks, and Virgin on the Lap of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, exhibit the very perfection of pyramidal composition. It is however in his masterpiece, The Last Supper, that he combines geometrical symmetry and precision with perfect naturalness and freedom in the grouping of individually interesting and dramatic figures. Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, and the great Venetians, in whose work the art of painting may be said to have culminated, recognized and obeyed those mathematical laws of composition known to their immediate predecessors, and the decadence of the art in the ensuing period may be traced not alone to the false sentiment and affectation of the times, but also in the abandonment by the artists of those obscurely geometrical arrangements and groupings which in the works of the greatest masters so satisfy the eye and haunt the memory of the beholder (Illustrations 55, 56). [Illustration 55: THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN RENAISSANCE PAINTING] [Illustration 56: GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE SISTINE CEILING PAINTINGS] [Illustration 57: ASSYRIAN; GREEK] [Illustration 58: THE GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE PLAN IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN] [Illustration 59] Sculpture, even more than painting, is based on geometry. The colossi of Egypt, the bas-reliefs of Assyria, the figured pediments and metopes of the temples of Greece, the carved tombs of Revenna, the Della Robbia lunettes, the sculptured tympani of Gothic church portals, all alike lend themselves in greater or less degree to a geometrical synopsis (Illustration 57). Whenever sculpture suffered divorce from architecture the geometrical element became less prominent, doubtless because of all the arts architecture is the most clearly and closely related to geometry. Indeed, it may be said that architecture is geometry made visible, in the same sense that music is number made audible. A building is an aggregation of the commonest geometrical forms: parallelograms, prisms, pyramids and cones--the cylinder appearing in the column, and the hemisphere in the dome. The plans likewise of the world's famous buildings reduced to their simplest expression are discovered to resolve themselves into a few simple geometrical figures. (Illustration 58). This is the "bed rock" of all excellent design. [Illustration 60: EGYPTIAN; GREEK; ROMAN; MEDI�VAL] [Illustration 61: JEFFERSON'S PEN SKETCH FOR THE ROTUNDA OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA] [Illustration 62: APPLICATION OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE TO THE ERECHTHEUM AT ATHENS] [Illustration 63] [Illustration 64: THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN ROMAN ARCHITECTURE] But architecture is geometrical in another and a higher sense than this. Emerson says: "The pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye is that an order and a method has been communicated to stones, so that they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with expression." All truly great and beautiful works of architecture from the Egyptian pyramids to the cathedrals of Ile-de-France--are harmoniously proportioned, their principal and subsidiary masses being related, sometimes obviously, more often obscurely, to certain symmetrical figures of geometry, which though invisible to the sight and not consciously present in the mind of the beholder, yet perform the important function of coördinating the entire fabric into one easily remembered whole. Upon some such principle is surely founded what Symonds calls "that severe and lofty art of composition which seeks the highest beauty of design in architectural harmony supreme, above the melodies of gracefulness of detail." [Illustration 65: THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE] [Illustration 66: THE HEXAGRAM IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE] There is abundant evidence in support of the theory that the builders of antiquity, the masonic guilds of the Middle Ages, and the architects of the Italian Renaissance, knew and followed certain rules, but though this theory be denied or even disproved--if after all these men obtained their results unconsciously--their creations so lend themselves to a geometrical analysis that the claim for the existence of certain canons of proportion, based on geometry, remains unimpeached. [Illustration 67] [Illustration 68] The plane figures principally employed in determining architectural proportion are the circle, the equilateral triangle, and the square--which also yields the right angled isosceles triangle. It will be noted that these are the two dimensional correlatives of the sphere, the tetrahedron and the cube, mentioned as being among the determining forms in molecular structure. The question naturally arises, why the circle, the equilateral triangle and the square? Because, aside from the fact that they are of all plane figures the most elementary, they are intimately related to the body of man, as has been shown (Illustration 45), and the body of man is as it were the architectural archetype. But this simply removes the inquiry to a different field, it is not an answer. Why is the body of man so constructed and related? This leads us, as does every question, to the threshold of a mystery upon which theosophy alone is able to throw light. Any extended elucidation would be out of place here: it is sufficient to remind the reader that the circle is the symbol of the universe; the equilateral triangle, of the higher trinity (_atma, buddhi, manas_); and the square, of the lower quaternary of man's sevenfold nature. [Illustration 69] [Illustration 70] The square is principally used in preliminary plotting: it is the determining figure in many of the palaces of the Italian Renaissance; the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris is a modern example of its use (Illustrations 59, 60). The circle is often employed in conjunction with the square and the triangle. In Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda for the University of Virginia, a single great circle was the determining figure, as his original pen sketch of the building shows (Illustration 61). Some of the best Roman triumphal arches submit themselves to a circular synopsis, and a system of double intersecting circles has been applied, with interesting results, to façades as widely different as those of the Parthenon and the Farnese Palace in Rome, though it would be fatuous to claim that these figures determined the proportions of the façades. By far the most important figure in architectural proportion, considered from the standpoint of geometry, is the equilateral triangle. It would seem that the eye has an especial fondness for this figure, just as the ear has for certain related sounds. Indeed it might not be too fanciful to assert that the common chord of any key (the tonic with its third and fifth) is the musical equivalent of the equilateral triangle. It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the properties and unique perfection of this figure. Of all regular polygons it is the simplest: its three equal sides subtend equal angles, each of 60 degrees; it trisects the circumference of a circle; it is the graphic symbol of the number three, and hence of every threefold thing; doubled, its generating arcs form the _vesica piscis_, of so frequent occurrence in early Christian art; two symmetrically intersecting equilateral triangles yield the figure known as "Solomon's Seal," or the "Shield of David," to which mystic properties have always been ascribed. It may be stated as a general rule that whenever three important points in any architectural composition coincide (approximately or exactly) with the three extremities of an equilateral triangle, it makes for beauty of proportion. An ancient and notable example occurs in the pyramids of Egypt, the sides of which, in their original condition, are believed to have been equilateral triangles. It is a demonstrable fact that certain geometrical intersections yield the important proportions of Greek architecture. The perfect little Erechtheum would seem to have been proportioned by means of the equilateral triangle and the angle of 60 degrees, both in general and in detail (Illustration 62). The same angle, erected from the central axis of a column at the point where it intersects the architrave, determines both the projection of the cornice and the height of the architrave in many of the finest Greek and Roman temples (Illustrations 67-70). The equilateral triangle used in conjunction with the circle and the square was employed by the Romans in determining the proportions of triumphal arches, basilicas and baths. That the same figure was a factor in the designing of Gothic cathedrals is sufficiently indicated in the accompanying facsimile reproductions of an illustration from the Como Vitruvius, published in Milan in 1521, which shows a vertical section of the Milan cathedral and the system of equilateral triangles which determined its various parts (Illustration 71). The _vesica piscis_ was often used to establish the two main internal dimensions of the cathedral plan: the greatest diameter of the figure corresponding with the width across the transepts, the upper apex marking the limit of the apse, and the lower, the termination of the nave. Such a proportion is seen to be both subtle and simple, and possesses the advantage of being easily laid out. The architects of the Italian Renaissance doubtless inherited certain of the Roman canons of architectural proportion, for they seem very generally to have recognized them as an essential principle of design. [Illustration 71] Nevertheless, when all is said, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of this matter of geometrical proportion. The designer who seeks the ultimate secret of architectural harmony in mathematics rather than in the trained eye, is following the wrong road to success. A happy inspiration is worth all the formulæ in the world--if it be really happy, the artist will probably find that he has "followed the rules without knowing them." Even while formulating concepts of art, the author must reiterate Schopenhauer's dictum that the _concept_ is unfruitful in art. The mathematical analysis of spatial beauty is an interesting study, and a useful one to the artist; but it can never take the place of the creative faculty, it can only supplement, restrain, direct it. The study of proportion is to the architect what the study of harmony is to a musician--it helps his genius adequately to express itself. VI THE ARITHMETIC OF BEAUTY Although architecture is based primarily upon geometry, it is possible to express all spatial relations numerically: for arithmetic, not geometry, is the universal science of quantity. The relation of masses one to another--of voids to solids, and of heights and lengths to widths--forms ratios; and when such ratios are simple and harmonious, architecture may be said, in Walter Pater's famous phrase, to "aspire towards the condition of music." The trained eye, and not an arithmetical formula, determines what is, and what is not, beautiful proportion. Nevertheless the fact that the eye instinctively rejects certain proportions as unpleasing, and accepts others as satisfactory, is an indication of the existence of laws of space, based upon number, not unlike those which govern musical harmony. The secret of the deep reasonableness of such selection by the senses lies hidden in the very nature of number itself, for number is the invisible thread on which the worlds are strung--the universe abstractly symbolized. Number is the within of all things--the "first form of Brahman." It is the measure of time and space; it lurks in the heart-beat and is blazoned upon the starred canopy of night. Substance, in a state of vibration, in other words conditioned by number, ceaselessly undergoes the myriad transmutations which produce phenomenal life. Elements separate and combine chemically according to numerical ratios: "Moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and number." By the Pythagoreans and by the ancient Egyptians sex was attributed to numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine or generating, and even numbers as feminine or parturitive, on account of their infinite divisibility. Harmonious combinations were those involving the marriage of a masculine and a feminine--an odd and an even--number. [Illustration 72: A GRAPHIC SYSTEM OF NOTATION] Numbers progress from unity to infinity, and return again to unity as the soul, defined by Pythagoras as a self-moving number, goes forth from, and returns to God. These two acts, one of projection and the other of recall; these two forces, centrifugal and centripetal, are symbolized in the operations of addition and subtraction. Within them is embraced the whole of computation; but because every number, every aggregation of units, is also a new unit capable of being added or subtracted, there are also the operations of multiplication and division, which consists in one case of the addition of several equal numbers together, and in the other, of the subtraction of several equal numbers from a greater until that is exhausted. In order to think correctly it is necessary to consider the whole of numeration, computation, and all mathematical processes whatsoever as _the division of the unit_ into its component parts and the establishment of relations between these parts. [Illustration 73] [Illustration 74] The progression and retrogression of numbers in groups expressed by the multiplication table gives rise to what may be termed "numerical conjunctions." These are analogous to astronomical conjunctions: the planets, revolving around the sun at different rates of speed, and in widely separated orbits, at certain times come into line with one another and with the sun. They are then said to be in conjunction. Similarly, numbers, advancing toward infinity singly and in groups (expressed by the multiplication table), at certain stages of their progression come into relation with one another. For example, an important conjunction occurs in 12, for of a series of twos it is the sixth, of threes the fourth, of fours the third, and of sixes the second. It stands to 8 in the ratio of 3:2, and to 9, of 4:3. It is related to 7 through being the product of 3 and 4, of which numbers 7 is the sum. The numbers 11 and 13 are not conjunctive; 14 is so in the series of twos, and sevens; 15 is so in the series of fives and threes. The next conjunction after 12, of 3 and 4 and their first multiples, is in 24, and the next following is in 36, which numbers are respectively the two and three of a series of twelves, each end being but a new beginning. [Illustration 75] It will be seen that this discovery of numerical conjunctions consists merely of resolving numbers into their prime factors, and that a conjunctive number is a common multiple; but by naming it so, to dismiss the entire subject as known and exhausted, is to miss a sense of the wonder, beauty and rhythm of it all: a mental impression analogous to that made upon the eye by the swift-glancing balls of a juggler, the evolutions of drilling troops, or the intricate figures of a dance; for these things are number concrete and animate in time and space. [Illustration 76] The truths of number are of all truths the most interior, abstract and difficult of apprehension, and since knowledge becomes clear and definite to the extent that it can be made to enter the mind through the channels of physical sense, it is well to accustom oneself to conceiving of number graphically, by means of geometrical symbols (Illustration 72), rather than in terms of the familiar arabic notation which though admirable for purposes of computation, is of too condensed and arbitrary a character to reveal the properties of individual numbers. To state, for example, that 4 is the first square, and 8 the first cube, conveys but a vague idea to most persons, but if 4 be represented as a square enclosing four smaller squares, and 8 as a cube containing eight smaller cubes, the idea is apprehended immediately and without effort. The number 3 is of course the triangle; the irregular and vital beauty of the number 5 appears clearly in the heptalpha, or five-pointed star; the faultless symmetry of 6, its relation to 3 and 2, and its regular division of the circle, are portrayed in the familiar hexagram known as the Shield of David. Seven, when represented as a compact group of circles reveals itself as a number of singular beauty and perfection, worthy of the important place accorded to it in all mystical philosophy (Illustration 73). It is a curious fact that when asked to think of any number less than 10, most persons will choose 7. [Illustration 77] Every form of art, though primarily a vehicle for the expression and transmission of particular ideas and emotions, has subsidiary offices, just as a musical tone has harmonics which render it more sweet. Painting reveals the nature of color; music, of sound--in wood, in brass, and in stretched strings; architecture shows forth the qualities of light, and the strength and beauty of materials. All of the arts, and particularly music and architecture, portray in different manners and degrees the truths of number. Architecture does this in two ways: esoterically as it were in the form of harmonic proportions; and exoterically in the form of symbols which represent numbers and groups of numbers. The fact that a series of threes and a series of fours mutually conjoin in 12, finds an architectural expression in the Tuscan, the Doric, and the Ionic orders according to Vignole, for in them all the stylobate is four parts, the entablature 3, and the intermediate column 12 (Illustration 74). The affinity between 4 and 7, revealed in the fact that they express (very nearly) the ratio between the base and the altitude of the right-angled triangle which forms half of an equilateral, and the musical interval of the diminished seventh, is architecturally suggested in the Palazzo Giraud, which is four stories in height with seven openings in each story (Illustration 75). [Illustration 78] [Illustration 79] [Illustration 80] [Illustration 81] Every building is a symbol of some number or group of numbers, and other things being equal the more perfect the numbers involved the more beautiful will be the building (Illustrations 76-82). The numbers 5 and 7--those which occur oftenest--are the most satisfactory because being of small quantity, they are easily grasped by the eye, and being odd, they yield a center or axis, so necessary in every architectural composition. Next in value are the lowest multiples of these numbers and the least common multiples of any two of them, because the eye, with a little assistance, is able to resolve them into their constituent factors. It is part of the art of architecture to render such assistance, for the eye counts always, consciously or unconsciously, and when it is confronted with a number of units greater than it can readily resolve, it is refreshed and rested if these units are so grouped and arranged that they reveal themselves as factors of some higher quantity. [Illustration 82] [Illustration 83: A NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF GOTHIC TRACERY] There is a raison d'être for string courses other than to mark the position of a floor on the interior of a building, and for quoins and pilasters other than to indicate the presence of a transverse wall. These sometimes serve the useful purpose of so subdividing a façade that the eye estimates the number of its openings without conscious effort and consequent fatigue (Illustration 82). The tracery of Gothic windows forms perhaps the highest and finest architectural expression of number (Illustration 83). Just as thirst makes water more sweet, so does Gothic tracery confuse the eye with its complexity only the more greatly to gratify the sight by revealing the inherent simplicity in which this complexity has its root. Sometimes, as in the case of the Venetian Ducal Palace, the numbers involved are too great for counting, but other and different arithmetical truths are portrayed; for example, the multiplication of the first arcade by 2 in the second, and this by 3 in the cusped arches, and by 4 in the quatrefoils immediately above. [Illustration 84: NUMERATION IN GROUPS EXPRESSED ARCHITECTURALLY] [Illustration 85: ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT CONSIDERED AS THE OBJECTIFICATION OF NUMBER. MULTIPLICATION IN GROUPS OF FIVE; TWO; THREE; ALTERNATION OF THREE AND SEVEN] [Illustration 86] Seven is proverbially the perfect number. It is of a quantity sufficiently complex to stimulate the eye to resolve it, and yet so simple that it can be analyzed at a glance; as a center with two equal sides, it is possessed of symmetry, and as the sum of an odd and even number (3 and 4) it has vitality and variety. All these properties a work of architecture can variously reveal (Illustration 77). Fifteen, also, is a number of great perfection. It is possible to arrange the first 9 numbers in the form of a "magic" square so that the sum of each line, read vertically, horizontally or diagonally, will be 15. Thus: 4 9 2 = 15 3 5 7 = 15 8 1 6 = 15 -- -- -- 15 15 15 Its beauty is portrayed geometrically in the accompanying figure which expresses it, being 15 triangles in three groups of 5 (Illustration 86). Few arrangements of openings in a façade better satisfy the eye than three superimposed groups of five (Illustrations 76-80). May not one source of this satisfaction dwell in the intrinsic beauty of the number 15? In conclusion, it is perhaps well that the reader be again reminded that these are the by-ways, and not the highways of architecture: that the highest beauty comes always, not from beautiful numbers, nor from likenesses to Nature's eternal patterns of the world, but from utility, fitness, economy, and the perfect adaptation of means to ends. But along with this truth there goes another: that in every excellent work of architecture, in addition to its obvious and individual beauty, there dwells an esoteric and universal beauty, following as it does the archetypal pattern laid down by the Great Architect for the building of that temple which is the world wherein we dwell. VII FROZEN MUSIC In the series of essays of which this is the final one, the author has undertaken to enforce the truth that evolution on any plane and on any scale proceeds according to certain laws which are in reality only ramifications of one ubiquitous and ever operative law; that this law registers itself in the thing evolved, leaving stamped thereon as it were fossil footprints by means of which it may be known. In the arts the creative spirit of man is at its freest and finest, and nowhere among the arts is it so free and so fine as in music. In music accordingly the universal law of becoming finds instant, direct and perfect self-expression; music voices the inner nature of the _will-to-live_ in all its moods and moments; in it form, content, means and end are perfectly fused. It is this fact which gives validity to the before quoted saying that all of the arts "aspire toward the condition of music." All aspire to express the law, but music, being least encumbered by the leaden burden of materiality, expresses it most easily and adequately. This being so there is nothing unreasonable in attempting to apply the known facts of musical harmony and rhythm to any other art, and since these essays concern themselves primarily with architecture, the final aspect in which that art will be presented here is as "frozen music"--ponderable form governed by musical law. Music depends primarily upon the equal and regular division of time into beats, and of these beats into measures. Over this soundless and invisible warp is woven an infinitely various melodic pattern, made up of tones of different pitch and duration arithmetically related and combined according to the laws of harmony. Architecture, correspondingly, implies the rhythmical division of space, and obedience to laws numerical and geometrical. A certain identity therefore exists between simple harmony in music, and simple proportion in architecture. By translating the consonant tone-intervals into number, the common denominator, as it were, of both arts, it is possible to give these intervals a spatial, and hence an architectural, expression. Such expression, considered as proportion only and divorced from ornament, will prove pleasing to the eye in the same way that its correlative is pleasing to the ear, because in either case it is not alone the special organ of sense which is gratified, but the inner Self, in which all senses are one. Containing within itself the mystery of number, it thrills responsive to every audible or visible presentment of that mystery. [Illustration 87] If a vibrating string yielding a certain musical note be stopped in its center, that is, divided by half, it will then sound the octave of that note. The numerical ratio which expresses the interval of the octave is therefore 1:2. If one-third instead of one-half of the string be stopped, and the remaining two-thirds struck, it will yield the musical fifth of the original note, which thus corresponds to the ratio 2:3. The length represented by 3:4 yields the fourth; 4:5 the major third; and 5:6 the minor third. These comprise the principal consonant intervals within the range of one octave. The ratios of inverted intervals, so called, are found by doubling the smaller number of the original interval as given above: 2:3, the fifth, gives 3:4, the fourth; 4:5, the major third, gives 5:8, the minor sixth; 5:6, the minor third, gives 6:10, or 3:5, the major sixth. [Illustration 88: ARCHITECTURE AS HARMONY] Of these various consonant intervals the octave, fifth, and major third are the most important, in the sense of being the most perfect, and they are expressed by numbers of the smallest quantity, an odd number and an even. It will be noted that all the intervals above given are expressed by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, except the minor sixth (5:8), and this is the most imperfect of all consonant intervals. The sub-minor seventh, expressed by the ratio 4:7 though included among the dissonances, forms, according to Helmholtz, a more perfect consonance with the tonic than does the minor sixth. A natural deduction from these facts is that relations of architectural length and breadth, height and width, to be "musical" should be capable of being expressed by ratios of quantitively small numbers, preferably an odd number and an even. Although generally speaking the simpler the numerical ratio the more perfect the consonance, yet the intervals of the fifth and major third (2:3 and 4:5), are considered to be more pleasing than the octave (1:2), which is too obviously a repetition of the original note. From this it is reasonable to assume (and the assumption is borne out by experience), that proportions, the numerical ratios of which the eye resolves too readily, become at last wearisome. The relation should be felt rather than fathomed. There should be a perception of identity, and also of difference. As in music, where dissonances are introduced to give value to consonances which follow them, so in architecture simple ratios should be employed in connection with those more complex. [Illustration 89] Harmonics are those tones which sound with, and reinforce any musical note when it is sounded. The distinguishable harmonics of the tonic yield the ratios 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, and 4:7. A note and its harmonics form a natural chord. They may be compared to the widening circles which appear in still water when a stone is dropped into it, for when a musical sound disturbs the quietude of that pool of silence which we call the air, it ripples into overtones, which becoming fainter and fainter, die away into silence. It would seem reasonable to assume that the combination of numbers which express these overtones, if translated into terms of space, would yield proportions agreeable to the eye, and such is the fact, as the accompanying examples sufficiently indicate (Illustrations 87-90). The interval of the sub-minor seventh (4:7), used in this way, in connection with the simpler intervals of the octave (1:2), and the fifth (2:3), is particularly pleasing because it is neither too obvious nor too subtle. This ratio of 4:7 is important for the reason that it expresses the angle of sixty degrees, that is, the numbers 4 and 7 represent (very nearly) the ratio between one-half the base and the altitude of an equilateral triangle: also because they form part of the numerical series 1, 4, 7, 10, etc. Both are "mystic" numbers, and in Gothic architecture particularly, proportions were frequently determined by numbers to which a mystic meaning was attached. According to Gwilt, the Gothic chapels of Windsor and Oxford are divided longitudinally by four, and transversely by seven equal parts. The arcade above the roses in the façade of the cathedral of Tours shows seven principal units across the front of the nave, and four in each of the towers. A distinguishing characteristic of the series of ratios which represent the consonant intervals within the compass of an octave is that it advances by the addition of 1 to both terms: 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, and 5:6. Such a series always approaches unity, just as, represented graphically by means of parallelograms, it tends toward a square. Alberti in his book presents a design for a tower showing his idea for its general proportions. It consists of six stories, in a sequence of orders. The lowest story is a perfect cube and each of the other stories is 11-12ths of the story below, diminishing practically in the proportion of 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, allowing in each case for the amount hidden by the projection of the cornice below; each order being accurate as regards column, entablature, etc. It is of interest to compare this with Ruskin's idea in his _Seven Lamps_, where he takes the case of a plant called Alisma Plantago, in which the various branches diminish in the proportion of 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, respectively, and so carry out the same idea; on which Ruskin observes that diminution in a building should be after the manner of Nature. [Illustration 90: ARCADE OF THE CANCELLERIA] It would be a profitless task to formulate exact rules of architectural proportion based upon the laws of musical harmony. The two arts are too different from each other for that, and moreover the last appeal must always be to the eye, and not to a mathematical formula, just as in music the last appeal is to the ear. Laws there are, but they discover themselves to the artist as he proceeds, and are for the most part incommunicable. Rules and formulæ are useful and valuable not as a substitute for inspiration, but as a guide: not as wings, but as a tail. In this connection perhaps all that is necessary for the architectural designer to bear in mind is that important ratios of length and breadth, height and width, to be "musical" should be expressed by quantitively small numbers, and that if possible they should obey some simple law of numerical progression. From this basic simplicity complexity will follow, but it will be an ordered and harmonious complexity, like that of a tree, or of a symphony. [Illustration 91: THE PALAZZO VERZI AT VERONA (LOWER PORTION ONLY). A COMPOSITION FOUNDED ON THE EQUAL AND REGULAR DIVISION OF SPACE, AS MUSIC IS FOUNDED ON THE EQUAL AND REGULAR DIVISION OF TIME.] [Illustration 92: ARCHITECTURE AS RHYTHM. A DIVISION OF SPACE CORRESPONDING TO 3/4 AND 4/4 TIME.] In the same way that a musical composition implies the division of time into equal and regular beats, so a work of architecture should have for its basis some unit of space. This unit should be nowhere too obvious and may be varied within certain limits, just as musical time is retarded or accelerated. The underlying rhythm and symmetry will thus give value and distinction to such variation. Vasari tells how Brunelleschi. Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci used to work on paper ruled in squares, describing it as a "truly ingenious thing, and of great utility in the work of design." By this means they developed proportions according to a definite scheme. They set to work with a division of space analogous to the musician's division of time. The examples given herewith indicate how close a parallel may exist between music and architecture in this matter of rhythm (Illustrations 91-93). [Illustration 93] It is a demonstrable fact that musical sounds weave invisible patterns in the air. Architecture, correspondingly, in one of its aspects, is geometric pattern made fixed and enduring. What could be more essentially musical for example than the sea arcade of the Venetian Ducal Palace? The sand forms traced by sound-waves on a musically vibrating steel plate might easily suggest architectural ornament did not the differences of scale and of material tend to confuse the mind. The architect should occupy himself with identities, not differences. If he will but bear in mind that architecture is pattern in space, just as music is pattern in time, he will come to perceive the essential identity between, say, a Greek rosette and a Gothic rose-window; an arcade and an egg and dart moulding (Illustration 94). All architectural forms and arrangements which give enduring pleasure are in their essence musical. Every well composed façade makes harmony in three dimensions; every good roof-line sings a melody against the sky. [Illustration 94: ARCHITECTURE AS PATTERN] CONCLUSION In taking leave of the reader at the end of this excursion together among the by-ways of a beautiful art, the author must needs add a final word or two touching upon the purpose and scope of these essays. Architecture (like everything else) has two aspects: it may be viewed from the standpoint of utility, that is, as construction; or from the standpoint of expressiveness, that is, as decoration. No attempt has been made here to deal with its first aspect, and of the second (which is again twofold), only the universal, not the particular expressiveness has been sought. The literature of architecture is rich in works dealing with the utilitarian and constructive side of the art: indeed, it may be said that to this side that literature is almost exclusively devoted. This being so, it has seemed worth while to attempt to show the reverse of the medal, even though it be "tails" instead of "heads." It will be noted that the inductive method has not, in these pages, been honored by a due observance. It would have been easy to have treated the subject inductively, amassing facts and drawing conclusions, but to have done so the author would have been false to the very principle about which the work came into being. With the acceptance of the Ancient Wisdom, the inductive method becomes no longer necessary. Facts are not useful in order to establish a hypothesis, they are used rather to elucidate a known and accepted truth. When theosophical ideas shall have permeated the thought of mankind, this work, if it survives at all, will be chiefly--perhaps solely--remarkable by reason of the fact that it was among the first in which the attempt was made again to unify science, art and religion, as they were unified in those ancient times and among those ancient peoples when the Wisdom swayed the hearts and minds of men. 
15091	----	[Illustration: IX. The Principal Doorway to the Cathedral at Trani, Italy.] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. FEBRUARY, 1895. No. 2. * * * * * BYZANTINE-ROMANESQUE DOORWAYS IN SOUTHERN ITALY. The illustrations chosen for this issue are all from the Byzantine Romanesque work in the province of Apulia, that portion of Southern Italy familiar in school-boy memory as the heel of the boot. Writers upon architecture have found it difficult to strictly classify the buildings of this neighborhood, as in fact is the case with most of the medieval architecture of Italy, although the influences which have brought about the conditions here seen are in the main plainly evident. The traditions and surroundings, of Roman origin, were modified by trade and association with the Levant through the commerce of Venice and Pisa, resulting in a style embodying many of the characteristics of both the Romans and the builders of Byzantium. Oftentimes these characteristics are so blended and modified by one another as to be entirely indistinguishable, while at other times features unquestionably belonging to the Romanesque or the Byzantine will be found side by side. An illustration of the latter condition may be seen in the two views of the doorway to the cathedral of Trani. (Plates IX. and X.) On account of the intimate relations maintained during the Middle Ages between this province and Magna Grecia, and it may be partly on account of the comparative remoteness from the principal cities of the north, the Byzantine influence is here more strongly marked than in the cities of Central and Northern Italy. According to the classification adopted by Fergusson, the church of San Miniato at Florence is one of the oldest examples and a good type of this rather mixed style. It was built about the year 1013. It is rectangular in plan, nearly three times as long as wide, with a semicircular apse. Internally it is divided longitudinally into aisles, and transversely into three nearly square compartments by clustered piers, supporting two great arches which run up to the roof. The whole of the inner compartment is occupied by a crypt or under church open to the nave, above which is the choir and altar niche, approached by flights of steps in the aisles. This general arrangement is followed more or less closely in the churches at Bittonto, Bari, Altamura, Ruvo, Galatina, Brindisi, and Barletta. The scale of the southern churches is, however, much smaller than those of the north, the width of the nave of the cathedral at Trani being only 50 feet, and the length 167 feet, while the corresponding dimensions of the cathedral at Pisa, which is referred to by Fergusson as the most notable example of this style in the north, are 106 x 310 feet. In these smaller churches, as far as external treatment is concerned, the main attention is devoted to the principal façade, and here most of the ornament is usually covered with a rich hood supported by pillars resting on monsters, following the custom prevalent throughout Italy during this period. Above this is either a gallery or one or two windows, and the whole generally terminates in a circular rose window filled with tracery. [Illustration: X. The Principal Doorway to the Catherdral at Trani, Italy.] Fergusson's final summing up of the architecture of this neighborhood can scarcely be considered too enthusiastic in the light of the eight illustrations here given. He says: "No one who takes the pains to familiarize himself with the architecture of these Southern Italian churches can well fail to be impressed with their beauty. That beauty will be found, however, to arise not so much from the dimensions or arrangement of their plans, or the form of their outline, as from the grace and elegance of their details. Every feature displays the feeling of an elegant and refined people, who demanded decoration as a necessity, though they were incapable of rising to any great architectural conception. They excelled as ornamentists, though at best only indifferent architects." The examples of doorways chosen for illustrating this number unquestionably show the work of men who labored for the enjoyment and satisfaction to be got from their work. This is sufficiently evident in the results before us. Its logical and constructive bearing can of course be called in question, as in fact is the case with all but the merest fraction of the architectural efforts of the world. As decoration we can but admire the masterly way in which the ornament is distributed, the refined sense of scale and proportion, and the skilful and subtle treatment of light and shade, even if the detail of the ornament itself is crude and archaic. In making the choice of these subjects this point was kept in mind, and they are not offered as material which can be cut out in portions of the size and shape desired and transferred bodily by the designer to embellish a modern masterpiece, in the manner in which the Gothic architects of Venice used their patterns of window tracery. These plates show certain qualities in decorative design in their fullest and best development, and are on this account invaluable as suggestions to designers of the present day. For "cribbing material" they do not stand for much; but this should not be counted as against their usefulness, for the draughtsman who has not advanced beyond the "cribbing" stage has much still to learn before he can do the best and most satisfactory work. IX. and X. PRINCIPAL DOORWAY TO THE CATHEDRAL AT TRANI, ITALY. The cathedral at Trani dates from about the middle of the twelfth century. Its main features have been indicated above in describing the general characteristics of the class of churches to which it belongs. The bronze doors shown in the illustration were made in 1160, and are exceptionally fine examples of the work of this period. XI. PRINCIPAL DOORWAY TO THE CATHEDRAL AT CONVERSANO, ITALY. Doorways of this general design are so familiar in the so-called Romanesque architecture of our American cities that it seems almost like an old friend; but we regret to say that most of our American designs would hardly show to advantage if compared side by side with this. XII. PORTION OF THE FACADE OF THE BASILICA AT ALTAMURA, ITALY. The remarkable sense of spotting and distribution of ornament shown in the designing of this facade can hardly be too much commended. The strong light and long slanting shadows of the photograph are well calculated to emphasize this quality in the design, and we can readily find justification here for the estimate of Fergusson quoted above. XIII. and XIV. PRINCIPAL DOORWAY TO THE BASILICA AT ALTAMURA, ITALY, AND DETAIL OF THE SAME. XV. DOOR OF MADONNA DI LORETO, TRANI, ITALY. XVI. ENTRANCE TO THE CHURCH OF THE ROSARY, TERLIZZI, ITALY. [Illustration: XI. The Principal Doorway to the Cathedral at Conversano, Italy.] #Advice to Young Architects.# Prof. Aitchison's Royal Academy Lectures upon Architecture should be read by all students who can obtain access to them, and this is not really very difficult to accomplish, as they are always reported at length in the English architectural periodicals, and then usually reprinted without credit by one or more of the American papers. The latest one, reported in the _Builder_ of Feb. 16, is that delivered on Feb. 4, under the general title "The Advancement of Architecture." It deals in a common-sense fashion with the aesthetics of architecture, and contains many valuable suggestions upon the study and practice of architecture as an art. The three following quotations are well worth attentive reading:-- "Swift, in his 'Letters to a Young Clergyman,' says: 'I cannot forbear warning you in the most earnest manner against endeavoring at wit in your sermons, because, by the strictest computation, it is very near a million to one that you have none.' Perhaps that would be good advice to all who consciously seek for what is called originality, which is mostly attained by exaggeration, disproportion, and oddness of arrangement; real originality only comes from original minds, and will in that case show itself properly and naturally, just as wit shows itself spontaneously in the witty; for surely those original architects, who have only been able to raise in us emotions of contempt or disgust, would have been judicious had they abstained from the attempt. I think that most architectural students, if they will only study the best buildings, will make their plans to accurately answer the purposes wanted, including the efficient lighting of the rooms, will study the Vitruvian symmetry until their eye revolts from disproportion, will try and make their profiles tell the story they want told, and will try and bring such parts that, from the exigencies of the case, obtrude themselves in odd places into harmony with the whole, that they will produce an effect which will raise their buildings to the dignity of humanity, and out of the range of the dog-kennel and rabbit-hutch type, and will not exhibit ugliness, disproportion, or vulgarity. We see plenty of examples where the designs have sunk much below this level; no building of dead walls, with holes in it for doors and windows, could cause us such disgust. Let me here say, by way of a parenthesis, that if you candidly consider that your design is more offensive than a dead wall, do not waste money and materials in making the wall more repulsive, but let it alone." "Any one can be original if he be only impudent enough; any one can be graceful if he is servile enough to copy: but to be both original and graceful requires deep study, much striving, and natural talent." "I have also to remind you that architecture cannot be brought into vigorous life again, so long as architects insist on using old forms for beauty that are inseparable from a construction that has been abandoned; so long as this practice persists, so long will architecture be a kind of potted art; to be vigorous it must learn how to take the materials, and construction that would be ordinarily used in buildings for purely practical purposes, and give to these materials and this construction forms that will excite the proper emotions. You must not suppose that I mean that if you have a vast hall, or what not, that because you can put an iron trussed roof over it from wall to wall, that this will make it into a hall that will raise emotions. You will only get a rail-way platform or a coal shed. You have got to set your wits to work to see how it can be properly brought within the pale of aesthetics, and not only as to the shapes and proportions of the parts, but the dividing of the whole by supports. It is probable that if you were obliged to vault a cathedral in stone, with no more money than was necessary, and to have a clearstory to it, that you could not do it cheaper, and perhaps not better, than the Gothic architects did it; but to vault such a building in stone when you could do it much cheaper and better with iron ribs and concrete is, in my opinion, _dilettante_ art. Groins are not beautiful things, but, on the contrary, are ugly, and we should wish to obviate their ugliness if we could; but when they were merely unavoidable methods of cheap construction, we admire them for the invention and skill of their architects, and we have to some extent got to love even their ugliness from old association; though perhaps the ribs at Westminster Abbey, as seen from the west end, are not offensive." [Illustration: XII. A Portion of the Façade of the Basilica at Altamura, Italy.] The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. * * * * * Subscription Rates per year . 50 cents, in advance Special Club Rate for five subscriptions . . $2.00. * * * * * All who wish for a complete file of THE BROCHURE SERIES should send in their subscriptions at once, as owing to the necessity of limiting the edition of the first numbers and the impossibity of reprinting when this edition is exhausted, subscriptions will have to date from the current number at the time the order is received. Until the present stock gives out, all subscriptions will be dated from the January number, but no copies will be reserved for this purpose after April 1. * * * * * Response to the call for subscriptions to THE BROCHURE SERIES has been gratifyingly prompt and generous. The first subscriber was Mr. George B. Howe, 13 Walnut Street, Boston, the architect of the New Hampshire State Building at the World's Fair. The first club came from the office of Longfellow, Alden & Harlow, and was made up as follows: F.B. Wheaton, R.T. Walker, H.W. Gardner, H.M. Seaver, and J.H. Buttimer. This was closely followed by a club of eight from the office of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, and another of five from the office of Edwin J. Lewis. The first response from out of town was a club of five from the office of Martin & Hall of Providence, R.I. Others "too numerous to mention" came along in quick succession, and the new magazine may now be considered well launched on its trial trip. * * * * * As the plan of THE BROCHURE SERIES is unique in architectural journalism, much of the work to be done during its first year will necessarily be, to a certain extent, experimental. Although the publishers have for a number of years tried to keep as closely as possible in touch with the profession throughout the country, the diversity of tastes to which the new magazine is intended to appeal, and the practical requirements which it is intended to meet, make even the simple matter of selecting proper material for publication a difficult task. Consequently suggestions or criticisms which may lead to its improvement in any particular will be welcome. * * * * * The design used for the cover of THE BROCHURE SERIES is the result of a competition in which twenty-three drawings were submitted, and is the work of Charles Edward Hooper of 250 West 14th Street, New York. The other competitors, whose designs were all of a high order of excellence, were: J. Mills Platt, Charles S. King, Francis S. Swales, Edwin S. Gordon, Fred A. Miller, J.F. Strobel, Jr., George E. Roberts, of Rochester, N.Y.; G.H. Ingraham, E.P. Dana, F.H. Hutchins, C.E. Patch, of Boston; J.W. Cinder, W.B. Papin, H.G. Helmerichs, of St. Louis; Louis E. La Baume, H.H. Braun, of New York City; and Stephen W. Dodge, of Brooklyn. * * * * * Following out the general plan adopted in the first two issues, which, contrary to the expectation of the publishers, has proved even so soon an important feature of the magazine, the illustrations in the next two numbers will be made up of related subjects. The March number will have a collection of capitals (Byzantine and Romanesque) from Ravenna and Palermo, and the April number eight windows from Apulia, of the same general character as the doorways in the present number. #Hints to Draughtsmen.# Architectural students and draughtsmen will find the series of papers begun in the Feb. 16 number of the _American Architect_, entitled "Hints to Art Students on Travelling Abroad," filled with valuable suggestions. The writer of these papers is Mr. J.W. Case, the latest of the Rotch scholars returned. In the first paper Mr. Case points out the desirability of preparatory training in academic design, drawing, modelling, etc., and a knowledge of architectural history and of the French language in order that the student may make the best use of the opportunities open to him. He continues with a number of useful hints upon the best methods to pursue in gaining this preparatory training. [Illustration: XIII. The Principal Doorway to the Basilica at Altamura, Italy.] The second paper is devoted to practical suggestions of such immediate value that it is worth while to quote a portion of them in full:-- "To get the most good out of a trip, one should be prepared to work in all sorts of ways,--to make measured drawings, sketches, color notes, squeezes, rubbings, sections with the lead; to study from plates and make T-square sketches, scratch-book notes, photographic notes, and memory sketches. "Travelling students are apt to place too much value on perspective sketches. Good ones make a nice showing on returning home, but they are of little value to any one but the maker. It is usually possible to find photographs of the things over which one spends so many hours making pretty sketches. But sketches do have a certain value in teaching rendering, and encourage the habit of observing closely the effect of light and shade. "Beautiful pencil sketches may be made on English metallic paper by simply drawing the shadows on carving in full sunshine: colored papers are very useful to gain quick effects with the use of Chinese white. A pad of Whatman water-color paper, imperial size, is much better to work on than a small cramped little book; and it may be used as a drawing-board, thus diminishing the number of articles to carry. The T-square will run along the edge of the block well enough for sketches, but it is better to carry a straight-edge to clamp on the edge of the block with thumb-screws for the square to work on. Have a canvas bag made with a flap in which to carry the block. It will keep out the dirt and dust of travel and be of great service. "Sometimes valuable color notes are to be had in crowded buildings where it is not convenient to sit down and make a large study. For such cases a small pocket water-color block will be very useful. There is a small vest-pocket water-color box carrying six colors, which may be set over the thumb, a water-bottle attached, and with it one can stand unobserved in a corner and get color notes which otherwise must be passed by. In studying fresco painting, tempera is very useful. It is mixed up with water and applied to paper, but may be worked over in the manner of oils,--a great advantage in making studies. "The _chambre éclaire_ is invaluable as an aid to drawing, in blocking out water-colors. It will enable one to make a drawing in an hour which otherwise would require all day. It is an instrument little known outside of Paris, but is much in use there among architects. It consists of a prism mounted on a telescoping leg which may be fastened to the drawing-board. The eye looks through the prism and sees the building reflected on the paper; all that remains to do is to trace this outline. It does not teach one to draw, but it does save time, and produces better drawings than can be made without it. The best place to buy them is of Cevalier, on the Seine, near the Pont Netif, Paris. Only those with the best prisms are of any use: such a one, with two adjustments only, can be had for sixty-five francs. The table which is necessary for its use costs fifteen francs additional; that is, a total cost of sixteen dollars. In buying a table, be sure and get one with sliding legs which can be taken off the head and packed flat. "One of the very best ways to study, and one which has very direct tangible results, is by the aid of printed plates. Take such a book as Letarouilly's _Edifices de Rome Moderne_. Go to the buildings themselves and compare the drawing with the building; see what drawings on paper really mean when executed; mark up the plate; note the proportion of masses, the size of ornament, the relative proportion of openings, and wall spaces, the effect of color and texture, and the use of material. Make suggestions for better ornament, proportion, etc., and then go home and make a new design with all the improvements you have noted. "The reverse of this method is, to sit down in front of the building with T-square and triangle and translate the perspective building back on to paper in elevation. [Illustration: XIV. Detail of the Principal Doorway to the Basilica at Altamura, Italy.] "These two methods will aid one to tell from a drawing how the building will actually look when executed. It will give an idea of the scale of ornament, if a cornice looks just the right size on a certain building, the plate will tell you just how high that is. The T-square sketch is very valuable in cultivating the sense of proportion. Draw to scale such parts of the sketch as can be easily measured, and put in the remainder in proportion, and make these sketches at the scale at which you are used to working in the office. They will be of immense advantage in giving you a sense of absolute scale. "There is such a thing as 'absolute scale,' and scale is not simply proportion. A drawing might be made in good proportion, and the building look well if executed a thousand feet long, and yet lose all its effectiveness if executed but one hundred feet in length, the relative proportions of the parts remaining the same. It is a fact that certain designs, which look well on paper, will not look well in execution, except at a large scale. Therefore it is valuable in making a sketch to put on it some of the measurements; and freehand sketches with measurements marked on them have a value in giving absolute scale. "The back of a photograph is a very convenient place on which to make notes of the building itself, in regard to color, material, suggested changes, etc., and will be very useful in recalling the building to memory. "Measuring buildings and drawing them out to scale is solid architectural work, and nothing else can take its place. It gives a realization of the actual size and appearance of things, and brings to notice the stone-jointing, sections of mouldings, vaulting, roofing, and construction in general. Measured work must be done very accurately, or else the results have no more value than approximate measures on sketches. "The drawing should be made exactly as the building exists, without any change or improvement, or else the drawing will lose a great deal of its value as a basis for study. Many of Letarouilly's are nearly valueless as data for study because he has improved on the original, and thus his drawing does not represent the building as it actually exists. "A good method of measuring buildings is to measure first the general dimensions and block out the building on paper at a small scale, then measure up windows, columns, etc., and set off full-size sections of all the mouldings with a strip of thin lead, such as may be had at any whole-sale lead store: only the thinnest sheet-lead will work, as the thicker leads are too stiff to bend. The large final drawings can then be made away from the building. It is important to draw out the building completely at a small scale, however, as it is very annoying when making the final drawing far away from the building to find that some important dimension has been forgotten. "The ordinary tape stretches so much in long dimensions that it is inaccurate. It is best to get a tape with a metallic strip in it, and it should be at least fifty feet long in order to take dimensions over all, which is much more accurate than measuring with a short tape from point to point. "The metric system is very convenient, but it is better for American students to use the English measure that they will have to use in practice, and take the tape over with them, for it is difficult to find them on the Continent. A sliding measuring-rod is nearly indispensable, and it will be most convenient to carry if it folds up to the length of the imperial drawing pad. Two large triangles are very useful in getting the projection of mouldings, as they can be held together to form a right angle." [Illustration: XV. Door of the Madonna di Loreto, Triani, Italy.] #Books.# _Verona and Other Lectures_. By John Ruskin, D.C.L., LL.D. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1894. 8vo, pp. 204, plates xii. $2.50. The art of Northern Italy has furnished the text for a very considerable part of the writings of Mr. Ruskin, and there is no one writer among those who have ventured to investigate and write upon this extremely engrossing subject whose work has so great an interest for the architect, or in fact is of so much value to him. It is not necessary to agree with all of Mr. Ruskin's elaborate theories or to unqualifiedly admire his drawings in order to find much of real value in his books. No student of architecture can afford _not_ to read "The Stones of Venice," and there are few books which should take precedence over it in the formation of an architect's library. Apropos of the illustrations in the last number of THE BROCHURE SERIES, in the descriptive notices of which we had occasion to refer to Mr. Ruskin, his latest published work will be found interesting. The title, "_Verona and other Lectures_," does not convey a very complete idea of the contents of the book. None of the five lectures included is strictly architectural in subject matter, and but one, the first, "Verona and its Rivers," has any direct bearing upon architecture, and this only from the historical side. The illustrations, with a single exception from drawings by the author, although lacking in most of the qualities of good draughtsmanship, are well worth examination and study. Plates II. and V., "A Fountain at Verona," and "The Castelbarco Tomb, Sta. Anastasia, Verona," the first made in 1841 and the second in 1835, are from the point of view of the architect the most interesting. They are both pencil sketches, the first accented with a few touches of wash in the shadows and darker portions of the drawing. Plate IX. represents the angle of the Ducal Palace, Venice, the same given as the frontispiece in the last issue of THE BROCHURE SERIES. It would hardly be possible to come nearer the same point of view if the coincidence were intentional. In the comparison which this forces upon Mr. Ruskin very naturally suffers, as might be expected, from the fact that his training in drawing was not the most thorough. His proportions are somewhat faulty and the detail is only vaguely suggested, in fact this is more or less true of all his drawings. Nevertheless the book will be welcome to many architects for the valuable suggestions it contains both in text and illustrations; and the author's wonderful and fascinating literary style is here as unmistakably in evidence as in any of his older works. This alone is sufficient inducement to tempt the reader to take it up. #Club Notes.# At the suggestion of several subscribers, the addresses are given below of the secretaries of the principal architectural clubs as far as they are known to us, but there are several omissions and possibly some mistakes. In order that these associations may be of as great mutual assistance to each other as possible, through correspondence, the exchange of notices of competitions, etc., it is requested that any not included in the following list will communicate the desired information to the editor of THE BROCHURE SERIES. Corrections or additions will be made in later issues, and the various secretaries will confer a favor by keeping the editor informed of any changes of address or organization. LIST OF CLUBS. Sketch Club of New York, club rooms 1473 Broadway; recording secretary, Alfred F. Evans; corresponding secretary, Hobart A. Walker. Boston Architectural Club, rooms 5 Tremont Place; secretary, F. Manton Wakefield. The T-Square Club, Philadelphia, rooms Broad and Pine Streets; secretary, A.C. Munoz, 212 South Third Street. Chicago Architectural Club, rooms 274 Michigan Avenue; secretary, John Robert Dillon. St. Louis Sketch Club; secretary, E.G. Garden, Telephone Building. Art League, Milwaukee, Wis.; secretary, Elmer Grey, 904 Winchester Street. St. Paul Architectural Sketch Club, rooms 239-241 Endicott Building; secretary, John Rachac, Jr. Cleveland Architectural Club, rooms 1002 Garfield Building; secretary, Herbert B. Briggs. Denver Architectural Sketch Club; president, William Cowe, 706 Cooper Building. Rochester Sketch Club, secretary, G.F. Crump, Wilder Building. The Architectural League of New York, American Fine Arts Society Building; secretary, Charles I. Berg, 10 West 23d Street. The Society of Beaux Arts Architects. New York City. [Illustration: XVI. Entrance to the Church of the Rosary, Terlizzi, Italy.] 
18852	----	its dome, a method of construction entirely novel in Roman architecture, doubtless excited the admiration of the Emperor and led to the adoption of a similar plan for S. Vitale. S. Vitale 18 by no means a copy of Sta. Sophia, but unquestionably was strongly influenced by it. It was founded in 540, and consecrated in 547. It is octagonal in plan, with an inner structure of eight large piers, arranged in a circle, connected by arches which support a pendentive dome. Following the custom then in vogue, its interior is incrusted throughout with elaborate mosaics in a wealth of color. The most elaborate design and richest color is used in the apse, which was the centre of display in all Byzantine churches. [Illustration: XXI. Capital from the Apse of the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.] XXI. CAPITAL FROM THE APSE OF THE CHURCH OF S. VITALE, RAVENNA, ITALY. This is one of the most beautiful and most characteristic capitals of the Byzantine style. Its form and decoration are both typical of the style. The flat treatment of the interlace of the vine motive is very generally used, and can be seen in great variety in S. Vitale and elsewhere. The ornament is here enriched with gold and color. In the double capitals of Ravenna the upper member, or cushion, is usually ornamented with symbolic designs drawn from various sources, both Pagan and Christian. [Illustration: XXII. Capital from the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.] XXII. CAPITAL FROM THE CHURCH OF S. VITALE, RAVENNA, ITALY. Here again is the rhomboidal double capital of a much more severe design than that of the preceding plate, but with a remarkable delicacy and refinement of treatment. [Illustration: XXIII. Capital from the Church of S. Vitale, Ravenna, Italy.] XXIII. CAPITAL FROM THE CHURCH OF S. VITALE, RAVENNA, ITALY. This is a mean between the two extreme types shown in Plates XXI. and XXII. In all these examples the treatment of the angles should be noted. Strong confining lines, with a distinct upward tendency of the ornament, contrasted with the flat sides, contribute much to the good effect of these capitals as constructive members. [Illustration: XXIV. Capital in the Museum of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Ravenna, Italy.] XXIV. CAPITAL IN THE MUSEUM OF THE ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI, RAVENNA, ITALY. Whether this capital was originally intended for S. Vitale or some of the other churches of Ravenna we cannot state, but at all events it is a fitting companion for the others illustrated in this number. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year 50 cents, in advance. Special Club Rate for five subscriptions $2.00. Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * An illustrated catalogue has come to be one of the important features of exhibitions of architectural drawings, and these catalogues are now exceedingly valuable records of recent progress in architecture. The contributions of the present year to this department of an architect's library are especially notable. Of the catalogues which have come to our notice, that of the architectural exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia is in point of illustration the most complete, and shows the most judicious selection of material. In this there was a marked endeavor to give as large a number of geometrical drawings as possible, and it is unquestionably a move in the right direction. The desire for the picturesque, which has been until recently the ruling motive with American architects, has had its day, and trained and conservative designers have gradually taken the place of the pyrotechnic draughtsman of the past. The change has been working gradually to be sure, but scale and detail drawings both in the exhibitions, which of necessity are intended to appeal to a more or less popular taste, and in the professional journals are from year to year growing more prominent. In their recognition of this tendency, the Philadelphia catalogue committee are to be highly commended. The same trend may be observed in a little less marked degree in the Architectural League catalogue. The exhibitions of the League have for years been the models by which minor exhibitions have been ruled, and its catalogue has been a guide to all others. As usual there is a great deal of valuable and interesting material presented in its illustrations. The Catalogue Committee of the St. Louis exhibition have made a departure from the general rule, and increased the size of their pages, allowing the use of much larger plates. In some of the drawings this is a distinct advantage, and their catalogue gains in consequence. The Boston Society of Architects and the Boston Architectural Club will hold a joint exhibition in April, and their catalogue now promises to be a very creditable publication. * * * * * In the recent draughtsmen's competitions, Boston has been more than ordinarily fortunate. The medal in both the competitions of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects has come to Mr. F. M. Mann, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a number of the first and second mentions have also come to Boston. In fact, nearly if not quite all the designs sent from Boston have received some recognition at the hands of the jury. A complimentary dinner has been arranged for by the M. I. T. Architectural Society in honor of the winners of the last competition. The annual competition for the Architectural League gold medal, which was awarded to Mr. A. H. Wright, also resulted in adding another victory to the credit of Boston draughtsmen. Interest in these contests is not purely local, however, for Philadelphia, Rochester, and several other cities have furnished contributors and shared the honors. Mr. H. L. Duhring, Jr., of Philadelphia, was awarded the Architectural League silver medal. * * * * * Fulfilling the bequest of the late Arthur Rotch leaving $5,000 to the Boston Architectural Club, this sum has been paid to the treasurer of the club by the executors of Mr. Rotch's estate. The income only is to be expended in the purchase of books to form an architectural library. This is only one of many indications that the architectural clubs of the country are recognized as permanent and established institutions. With the spread of this feeling their influence will grow in importance, and as the working foundation of the profession they deserve all the encouragement that can be given them. The Cleveland Architectural Club. There are none of the now numerous architectural associations of the country which can more deservingly congratulate themselves upon the early success of their first few months of existence than the Cleveland Architectural Club, which was organized on the 22d of last November, and is now only four months old. Its original members, fifteen in number, met in the office of Messrs. Coburn & Barnum, and here the meetings for the few succeeding weeks were also held. It soon became evident that a wide field of usefulness was open to the new organization, and a permanent location of its own would become necessary. Such a location in the heart of the city, with all necessary conveniences, was found in the Garfield Building, and the new rooms have been properly fitted up for the use of the club. With the purpose of making the influence of its work as far-reaching as possible, the restriction which has commonly been applied in other similar clubs, limiting the membership to architects and draughtsmen, or at least limiting the number of non professional members, has been entirely done away with, and any one who may have an interest in architecture or the "allied arts" is eligible for membership. What will be the effect of this arrangement it remains for the future to decide. In some of the older clubs it has been found by experience that the professional membership was overbalanced and its work impeded by a too large non-professional element, and the professional lines have been closely drawn in consequence. The work thus far entered upon is modest but of an important character, and if pursued with the earnest purpose which has marked the first few months will lead to a fruitful future. Of the monthly competitions in design the one for March, the subject of which is a scheme for the public buildings of Cleveland, has attracted considerable attention, and the public exhibition of the designs will doubtless lead to profitable discussion outside the club. A plan which we believe has not been adopted here, but which has been the means of awakening considerable interest in the study of design in the clubs of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, might possibly be followed to advantage. In the January number of THE BROCHURE SERIES the competitions instituted by the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects were outlined. Of course with all the numberless calls upon his time, the average draughtsman does not have the leisure to properly study and render the drawings required in these competitions; but by the joining of forces four or five, or even more, men can easily work out such a problem, and in some respects the advantages to be gained are greater than is the case when an individual works alone. Several large tables can be provided in the club-rooms, and the problem worked up as a club design. This plan has been followed in the Boston Architectural Club with great success. The study of academic design is of the utmost importance to the young architect, and unfortunately the opportunities for such study in the usual routine of office practice are not very extensive. The working out each season of two or three such designs as those required by the Beaux-Arts Society will be of material benefit to the older men who are already familiar with the academic methods of design, and of much more benefit to the younger men whose opportunities have been more limited. The criticism and suggestion of the older men in the profession is easily obtained while the work is in progress. Nothing could be better calculated to foster a certain _esprit de corps_, which is certainly a desirable quality in any club. The personnel of the Cleveland Club is as follows: Benj. S. Hubbell, president; Harry S. Nelson, vice-president; Herbert B. Briggs, secretary; Perley H. Griffin, librarian; E. E. Noble, treasurer; W. D. Benes and Wilbur M. Hall, members of the executive board. The officers and Robert Allen, Frederick Baird, J. W. Russell, G. B. Bohm, Williard Hirsh, Ray Rice, Albert E. Skeel, and C. S. Schneider constitute the charter membership. Books. _Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople_: A Study of Byzantine Building. By W. R. Lethaby and Harold Swainson. Macmillan & Co. 1894. 307 pages with illustrations. $6.50. It seems especially fitting that a notice of Mr. Lethaby's work on the church of Sta. Sophia, or as he calls it Sancta Sophia, should appear in the same issue with the beautiful Byzantine capitals from Ravenna, which we publish this month. In the description of this work from Ravenna, on another page, the connection is pointed out between Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire in the East, and Ravenna, then the Western capital. The work before us is an important and exhaustive study, both architecturally and historically, of this beautiful building, which Mr. Van Brunt has called "the central building of the world." Nothing has ever been done in enriching interiors which approaches in splendor the best work of the Byzantine builders, and Sta. Sophia, by general consent, is the most beautiful of the Byzantine churches; but its exterior is by no means without faults, and its claim for distinction would fall if supported only by this. The book takes up in order the history of Sta. Sophia, with citations of various authorities for statements concerning its early history; accounts of the various vicissitudes through which it has passed; its construction, lighting, details, mosaics, etc., all carefully and conscientiously described, the descriptive portion based on a painstaking study of the building itself. The illustrations which accompany the text are numerous and excellent; there is no attempt to furnish illustrations at large scale, which are already accessible in Salzenberg. The monumental work of Salzenberg, which has been the architect's reference book for Sta. Sophia, is referred to and largely quoted from. The two articles by Mr. Henry Van Brunt and Prof. A. D. F. Hamlin, published in _The Architectural Review_, Vol. II., No. 5, and Vol. III., No. 2, will be found of considerable interest in connection with Mr. Lethaby's book. Club Notes. When in our January issue it was announced that we should devote a certain amount of space and attention to the architectural clubs of the country, we had no idea of the extent to which these organizations had developed within the last year or two. The work of a few of the older clubs was familiar to us, but it is a surprise to find that nearly every city of importance in the United States has an active and flourishing society of draughtsmen and young architects. It may be well to suggest right here that any city which has not such an organization should look to its laurels. Among the newer accessions to the ranks is the Baltimore Architectural Club. It is fortunate in being able to start with a strong, if limited membership. It is holding weekly meetings, and has already instituted a series of monthly competitions in design, for which a small cash prize is offered. The list of officers is the best evidence of its seriousness of purpose and ability to accomplish an unlimited amount of good work. The officers are: president, J. E. Sperry; vice-president, J. B. N. Wyatt; secretary, Louis E. Simon; and E. F. Baldwin, George Worthington, J. W. Case, and W. G. Keimig, together with the officers, constitute the Board of Control. * * * * * The Sketch Club of New York is following the lead of the Chicago Architectural Club in delegating to one or two of its members the office of Entertainment Committee for one evening, when these members act as hosts and provide for the entertainment of the club. This plan has resulted in an increased attendance at the meetings, and is giving general satisfaction. * * * * * An outgrowth of the Boston Architectural Club which has shown a great deal of vitality and in many ways justified its claim to a separate existence is the little club of twelve members known as the "P. D's." Without organization and with only the mutual desire for a sort of Bohemian companionship, these congenial spirits have worked together and amused each other for the last two years. They are all members of the Architectural Club and among its most zealous supporters. The mystic monogram of the club, the initials P and D contained in a circle, which was placed on their designs submitted in the two Beaux-Arts competitions, has probably set more than one interested person guessing its significance. Its primary meaning is said to be "Poor Draughtsmen." * * * * * Preceding the last regular meeting of the Philadelphia T Square Club an informal supper was held at "Bohemia," a charming rathsheller recently designed by Wilson Eyre, Jr., a member of the executive committee of the club. The president, Walter Cope, presided, while the fifty-four members present lubricated their supper with 158 steins of old musty ale. The meeting which followed was of unusual interest, as the double programme brought forth a great many designs. In the competition for a chapel located on the terrace of a wealthy gentleman's country house, Albert Kelsey, who submitted two sets of drawings, was fortunate enough to win both first and second mentions, while E. S. Powers was voted third place. The competition for a pedestal for a monument was well contested, but the winner of the first place failed to claim his design. Mr. A. C. Munoz, a former winner of the McKim Travelling Scholarship, won second place; and Chas. Z. Klauder, third. * * * * * To the list of Architectural Clubs contained in our February issue should be added the following:-- Baltimore Architectural Club; secretary, Louis E. Simon, Builders' Exchange Building. Cincinnati Architectural Club; secretary, John E. Zettel, 227 Main St. Society of Beaux-Arts Architects. The Committee on Education proposes as the subject for its third competition. A LARGE CITY CHURCH for an Episcopal parish. The wealth of the congregation has been lavished upon this building to give it a special character of devotion and beauty, to which the richness of material and the sedate spirit of its classic architecture alike contribute. In addition to the vast body of the church, which is to be so arranged as to give an impression of amplitude and splendor, provision should be made for vestry, sacristy, and choir-room, conveniently situated for the service of the sanctuary. Two small chapels for the celebration of minor services will be situated so as to be accessible both from the exterior and from the interior of the church proper. The plot of ground secured for the building is rectangular, and measures two hundred feet by four hundred feet, open to streets on all sides. Sketches of plan, elevation, and section, at a scale of one thirty-second inch to the foot, will be required of all students wishing to compete; these sketches should be made on opaque drawing paper, not tracing paper, and forwarded not later than 22d April, 1895, to Mr. John E. Howe, 140 West 34th Street, New York City. For the finished drawings the plan will be rendered at a scale of one sixteenth inch to the foot, the elevation and section at twice that scale, and a detail at a quarter of the size of execution. The finished drawings should in every case be mounted on stretchers. The address to which they are to be forwarded will be announced later. All drawings must be sent on or before 24th June, 1895. (Signed) ERNEST FLAGG, _Chairman_, JOHN M. CARRERE, JOHN G. HOWARD, THOMAS HASTINGS, WHITNEY WARREN, JOHN E. HOWE, _Secretary, Committee on Education_. This competition is open to all students of architecture. Conditions of judgment and jury to be arranged by the committee. 1st April, 1895. 
14987	----	[Illustration: LXXIII. Ferme de Turpe, Normandy.] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. OCTOBER, 1895. No. 10 FRENCH FARMHOUSES. As it is the purpose of THE BROCHURE SERIES to cover as wide a field as possible in choice of subject matter for its illustrations, and at the same time hold rigidly to the idea of furnishing only what will be useful to its subscribers, it has seemed desirable to present something a little nearer our everyday life than the Italian work which has thus far formed the greater part of the plate matter. The domestic architecture of France and England has naturally served as a model for a great deal of our American work, and especially is this noticeable during the present generation in the close relation between the French châteaux and the more pretentious American residences, as witness the recent productions of the late Mr. Hunt, which have just been published since his death. We are, to be sure, looking in all directions for suggestions, and it cannot help appearing wonderful to a thoughtful observer how many and varied these suggestions are. Our wealthy citizens are building châteaux in the style of Francis I or of somebody else, Venetian or Florentine palaces, Roman villas, Flemish guild-halls, Elizabethan half-timber houses. All, if tastefully and skilfully designed and placed, have their special points of beauty and excellence, and all may in the hands of an architect of ability be made to harmonize with our modern ways of living and the surroundings in which they must take a part. None of these models, however, are more adaptable to our ways than the country houses of France. This, of course, should not be understood as meaning that any of these buildings can be transplanted bodily to American soil and still be satisfactory. Architectural borrowing of this class is never satisfactory; but no architecture of which we have any knowledge is independent of precedent, and it only behooves us to adopt from the experience of others those features or ideas which are most suited to our needs. The plans and the original uses of the rooms of these French _manoirs_ may not prove directly adaptable to our ways of living, but the general massing of the design and the rambling arrangement of plan, as well as the picturesqueness of it all, are characteristics which can well be embodied in our country houses. In their way, no better models can be found than the two _manoirs_ from Normandy which we illustrate in this number. They have both suffered from the ravages of time and hard usage, and both are at present, and for a long time have been, used as farmhouses. The Manoir d'Ango is the finer and more important of the two, and is better preserved in some of its more interesting features. [Illustration: LXXIV. Ferme de Turpe, Normandy.] It is one of the main beauties of the charming village of Varengeville-sur-Mer, on the north coast of Normandy. It is now converted into a farmhouse, but in it once a celebrated privateersman of Dieppe received the ambassadors of the King of Portugual. There are still many evidences of the former dignity and grandeur in its present degradation. Ango was strictly a _manoir_ in the French sense, that is, a residence of the second class--not a château, such as Chambord or Blois. The principal part of the building consists of but one story with an open gallery beneath, supported by an arcade with columns bearing finely carved caps ornamented with female heads, angels, etc. In the interior as well as on the exterior may be seen fragments of sculpture which show much refinement. In one of the rooms of the tower a monumental mantel carved in stone bears in its centre the bust of an old man having in his hand a globe surmounted by a cross, the imperial emblem. This may be the portrait of one of the founders of the Ango family. LXXIII to LXXVI. FERME DE TURPE, NORMANDY. The Ferme de Turpe is situated near the town of Neuchatel-en-Bray, famous for its cheese. It has fewer interesting details than the Manoir d'Ango and is in even poorer repair, but in massing and general picturesque effect it offers many suggestions which can be utilized to advantage in our country houses. Of these four views very little need be said. The charming picturesqueness of the two general views is sufficient excuse for presenting them, but they contain much more to the student of architecture who cares to look for it. The two detailed views give an excellent idea of the simple, straightforward methods of the builders. LXXVII to LXXX. MANOIR D'ANGO. NORMANDY. This building was erected between the years 1530 and 1542. Its general design and especially its detail are of the François I type, and very beautifully executed, as will be seen from the larger scale details. The materials as indicated are stone and brick. In Benoist's La Normandie Illustrie a remarkably interesting circular brick dove-cote is shown in the courtyard of this _manoir_, but it does not appear in any of our views, and may have been demolished since M. Benoist's sketches were made in 1852. Its walls were decorated with colored brick, laid in bands and diaper patterns. Club Notes. The Baltimore Architectural Club commenced its active work for the season on the first of October. It has its rooms in the Wilson Building, Saratoga and Charles Streets, which are always open for the use of its members, and there will be regular meetings every Thursday evening during the winter and spring. At these meetings various subjects of interest will occupy the attention of the members, both of a practical and æsthetic character. At one meeting of each month there will be an informal talk or lecture on some of the mechanical, constructive or sanitary questions connected with architecture. On one evening there will be sketching from the cast, and on another an impromptu sketch projet, to be completed in an hour. In addition to these there will be competed for three of the larger and more important regular projets, such as were made last season by the Club, and for which two prizes are offered to those obtaining the first and second place in point of general merit. The present officers and Board of Control of the Baltimore Architectural Club are J.B. Noel Wyatt, W. Emmart, Wm. G. Nölting, Geo. Worthington, W.M. Ellicott, W.G. Keimig, and Charles Anderson. * * * * * The last meeting of the T Square Club of Philadelphia, was one of unusual activity. The annual election of officers and the competition of summer sketches as called for by the Club syllabus was found to be too much for one evening, and consequently the judging of the sketches was postponed a week. The following officers were elected: President, Albert Kelsey; Vice-President, Edgar V. Seeler; Secretary, A.B. Lacey; Treasurer, David K. Boyd; Executive Committee, Walter Cope, Louis C. Hickman, William L. Price. The summer sketches, which were judged at one of the Club's Bohemian Nights, were of unusual quality and quantity. Walter Cope, who won first mention, had a large collection of pencil drawings representing the fruits of his labor in Spain. Walter Price (who won third place) and John Bissegger had one end of the room covered with sketches in color and line made during a recent trip through England, and Wilson Eyre, Jr., the winner of the second mention, had a variety of subjects beautifully rendered on quaint paper, and in his well-known and ever novel way. [Illustration: LXXV. Ferme de Turpe, Normandy.] Music and beer were plentiful, and had a cheering effect upon Titus, Dull, Kelsey, and Klauder, whose summer work failed to score a mention. The syllabus of the Club's work for the coming year has just been issued and contains some features of special interest. The problems in design are chosen with much care and the programmes are more explicit than is usual, and will doubtless contribute to the usefulness of the work to be done. The T Square Club appears to be more fortunate than some of the other architectural clubs in having interested and succeeded in holding the interest of a number of the stronger of the older men among the local architects. It now numbers about one hundred and twenty members, and its work is necessarily having considerable influence in outside circles. Its example is a good one to hold up before other and less influential clubs. * * * * * Among the architectural clubs thus far noticed in this column no account has been taken of the clubs connected with the architectural schools. Of these there are at present several which are doing good and effective work, but the only one of which we have data for a description is that connected with Lehigh University. The school of architecture, as it is called, is not a school of architecture at all, but of engineering (which is a very different thing), but its work is none the less dignified or important on this account, and the opportunity open to the students' club is in consequence a wider and more serious one than usual if they choose to concern themselves with artistic considerations. Two years ago the first class in architecture graduated from the Lehigh University, and since that time the classes have continually increased, until now the course is a distinct one in the curriculum of studies of the University. The objects of the department are to provide a thorough training in architectural engineering, with such additional studies in history, design, and drawing as must necessarily accompany all architectural problems. The first year is of a preparatory nature in which no distinctively architectural subject is taken up, and in the second year the subjects are those closely related to civil engineering, including a very complete course in higher mathematics. It is in the third year that architectural subjects are brought in, and with studies and lectures on the architectural styles, smaller problems in design, sanitary engineering, and theory of roofs and bridges, the full course is opened for the fourth year, of steel construction in office buildings (design and computations), specifications by lectures, thorough study of ventilation, designs for roof trusses and girders, and hydraulics, finally ending with a thesis design. To supplement this prescribed work the students have organized the Architectural Club of the University. The objects of this society are to distribute blue prints to members from a growing collection of negatives owned by the Club; to collect specimens and models of building material; to aid in securing a students' library, and to hold monthly competitions in pen-and-ink rendering, besides managing any of the affairs of the architectural course in which the students as a body desire to act. It is an organization for mutual benefits and already has made itself felt, although only two years old. * * * * * After a summer of more or less inactivity, during which, in June, its quarters were moved to 77 City Hall, where it is much more conveniently located, the Cleveland Architectural Club has taken up its work with characteristic enthusiasm, and already a vigorous winter's work has been planned, beginning on November 14, with the annual banquet at the Hollenden Hotel, followed by the yearly meeting for the reports of officers and the election of new officers. On the evening of January 9, 1896, the first annual exhibition of the Club will be inaugurated, to continue during the balance of the week. This will be the first distinctively architectural exhibition ever held in Cleveland. In the last competition, "An Entrance to Lake View Cemetery," the mentions were as follows: W.D. Benes, first; Chas. S. Schneider, second; Wilbur M. Hall, third; Geo. W. Andrews, fourth; L.R. Rice, fifth. The membership of the Club is rapidly increasing, a majority of the members of the local chapter of the A.I.A. having already become associate members. [Illustration: LXXVI. Ferme de Turpe, Normandy.] The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. * * * * * Subscription Rates per year ... 50 cents, in advance Special Club Rates for five subscriptions ... $2.00 * * * * * Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * SPECIAL NOTICE. Back numbers of THE BROCHURE SERIES _are not_ kept in stock. All subscriptions will be dated from the time received and subscribers who wish for the current numbers must place their subscriptions at once. If not a subscriber, you are respectfully asked to carefully examine this number of THE BROCHURE SERIES, and consider whether it is not worth fifty cents a year to you. A subscription blank is enclosed. * * * * * It has been suggested by a correspondent prominently connected with one of the principal architectural clubs of the country that a very desirable and instructive exhibition could be made up of the year's work of the various clubs. If collected by some concerted plan, to include the premiated or mentioned designs in the club competitions, and all sent to some one city or club, they could be exhibited and then passed on to the next club in the circuit. Exchange of ideas and comparison of methods among the architectural clubs is much to be desired and could not help resulting in benefit. No more direct or easier way of opening relations of mutual helpfulness could be found than this, and we trust that some one will take it upon himself to take the initiative. Our correspondent intimates that this might be the first step towards a national federation of architectural clubs. It is rather unsafe to speculate upon what might take place in such an event. Reviews. _Suggestions in Brickwork_ with illustrations from the Architecture of Italy, together with a Catalogue of Bricks, made by the Hydraulic-Press Brick Companies, Eastern Hydraulic-Press Brick Co., Philadelphia, 1895. $3.00. To the architect who desires to use iron or steel in construction and to figure out his own drawings for the purpose, nothing can take the place of the handbooks furnished by the great iron and steel companies to aid in this work; and the convenience of having all tables, formulas, etc., together with a reliable catalogue of commercial and practical possibilities, all in one little handbook is not to be over-estimated. What has in the past been done for the users of constructional iron and steel work has now been attempted in a very different field for architects who may wish to design in brick, both plain, moulded and ornamental. That this attempt is well considered and most thoroughly carried out would be perfectly certain if for no other reason than for the name of the compiler, Mr. Frank Miles Day, of Philadelphia. There have been similar attempts made in the past, but they are crude in comparison with the handsome volume now before us. It does not matter that this beautifully printed and illustrated book is a perfectly frank advertisement, put forward for purely business reasons. It has a most important bearing upon the progress and development of the best American architecture. The suggestions in designs are very largely taken from the buildings in the north of Italy, adapted, of course, to the requirements of modern bricks. They show at all times a most discriminating and delicate taste and familiarity with the best architecture. The ostensible purpose of the book is to remedy the difficulty which all who have attempted to use bricks in designing have experienced to a greater or less extent, of finding forms suitable for a given space. The book is divided into two distinct parts, the first made up of twenty-eight plates of designs with accompanying descriptive matter, for arcades, loggias, doorways, windows, moulded bands, cornices, brick mosaics, fireplaces, balconies, piers and columns, and gate posts, all carefully drawn to scale and with the numbers of patterns used in each case referring to the catalogue, which occupies the second portion of the book. In the catalogue each pattern is shown in isometric view, with shadows indicated where it will add to the cleanness of the cut, and upon the opposite page the profile of the brick is shown at half full size. This portion of the catalogue is rendered much more useful than it would otherwise be, by the classification which has been adopted. By this means it is easy to find most any shape desired. The choice of the patterns themselves deserves the highest commendation. [Illustration: LXXVII. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] [Illustration: SKETCH BY WILSON EYRE, JR. See The Architectural Review, Vol. IV, No. 1.] The forthcoming number of _The Architectural Review_ (Vol. IV, No. 1) will include several noteworthy features. The plates are of the same class of subjects which has given the paper its present high standing. The four gelatine plates are devoted to illustrating Messrs. Cram, Wentworth & Goodhue's design for the Public Library to be erected in Fall River, Mass. The two remaining line plates are devoted to the Bowery Bank building in New York by Messrs. McKim, Mead & White. The principal article in the text portion of the number is a sketch of a trip across England from Liverpool to London by Wilson Eyre, Jr. The delicate and, in the main, truthful reproductions of Mr. Eyre's incomparable sketches give the article a more than common interest. Of all American architects who have been attracted by the picturesque features of English and French domestic work, no one has shown a closer sympathy or been able in his sketches to render more of its charm than Mr. Eyre. [Illustration: SKETCH BY WILSON EYRE, JR. See The Architectural Review, Vol. IV, No. 1.] [Illustration: LXXVIII. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] The "P.D's." (_Continued from page 123_.) [Transcriber's Note: issue 8] And speaking of costumes reminds me of some very successful ones, and particularly that of a Highlander, the whole of which was made on the spot from the club's "props" and was complete even to a practical bagpipe, which was composed of three tin horns, a penny whistle, a piece of burlap, and a rubber tobacco pouch. Both in tone and looks it was an exceedingly good imitation of the genuine article. One of the things that has afforded the P.D.'s a great deal of amusement is a supposititious newspaper, wherein the members are interviewed on any and all occasions and many interesting things brought to light. In one of them, for instance, Ictinus confides to the reporter that he was born in the shadow of the Parthenon. This mixing up of one's peculiarities, habits, and nationality with those of the illustrious individual whose name he bears, is capable of being given many laughable twists and has been taken advantage of in many amusing skits. Besides the interviews there are fashion notes, society and sporting notes, architectural news, and receipts. Among the latter is a receipt for making Welsh rare-bits that should be in the possession of every one addicted to them. [Illustration: THE "P.D.'S" PREPARED FOR WORK.] The club has been regaled at various times with comic opera (with scenery painted for the occasion), readings and recitations; and at one of the annual dinners an illustrated history of the club and its members was given on an ingeniously contrived miniature stage. Every dinner, every voyage of discovery, every reception, and in short anything happening that would be of interest to the absent members, is written up by some one for their edification. The P.D.'s out-Wegg Mr. Wegg in the matter of dropping into poetry, and although its quality cannot be presumed to approach that selected by that famous individual for the delectation of Mr. Boffin, it being, not to mention the matter of theme, very often afflicted with a deplorable weakness or strength in its feet, yet it can be said of it, as in the case of Mercutio's wound, that it serves. [Illustration: CORNER IN THE "P.D.'S" ROOMS.] Most of these literary efforts eventually find a place in the scrapbook, and their perusal reminds us of many a joyous evening. "We seem to see, to taste, to hear, Joys that have passed; who say too fleet The rush of time? Things passed are dear." This, then, is a slight account of the P.D.'s, and if their doings be branded as folly, it is to them at least a very innocent and delicious sort of folly, and just the thing to free them from the perplexing problems of the day and fit them to grapple with a freshened and renewed energy those of the morrow. Notes. The new office building of the Chicago Varnish Company, now in the course of erection at the corner of Dearborn Avenue and Kinzie Street, Chicago, from the designs of Mr. Henry Ives Cobb, covers a plat of ground 45 x 90 feet. It is in the style of the brick architecture of Holland, which has been recently adopted in several instances in New York and Philadelphia, notably by Mr. Frank Miles Day and Mr. R.W. Gibson. It is to be built of St. Louis red pressed brick with Bedford stone trimmings, and will be a noticeable building even in Chicago, where there is so much of architectural interest. The interior will be handsomely finished in natural woods. The company will occupy a considerable part of the building, but a portion of it will be rented for other office purposes. [Illustration: LXXIX. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] [Illustration: BUILDING OF CHICAGO VARNISH CO., CHICAGO.] Many a new building that is approaching its first winter will be found lacking if its architect forgot the specification of the Folsom Snow Guard. A great many buildings do not need this device, but where one does, it needs it badly. It is so cheap, so simple and so perfectly effective that it should be used where there is the least chance of danger or inconvenience from snow sliding off the roof. The development of the kitchen range has been along certain well defined lines, the ornament changed, new parts nickeled, dimensions varied, etc., but it has remained the same old stove. The Walker & Pratt Mfg. Co., of Boston, have made a move towards an entirely different style, in their "Culinet," which is illustrated on this page. It presents many good points. The cooking surface is at the same height as an ordinary table. The oven is about the height of the elbow, making it convenient of access, and greatly lessening the danger of burning the arms in using it. The fire, broiler door, clinker door, and ash-pan door are all in front. All holes are hot, and the oven is heated on six sides, making it not only an even baker, but a sure baker on the bottom. One damper does the whole regulating business. A guard rail to keep the clothes from contact with the heated surface and convenient towel driers are also provided. There is no nickel finish, but solid bronze instead. These are features which should recommend it to architects; besides which it is compact, and occupies little floor space, durable, and made with the same care in every detail that has characterized the Walker & Pratt goods for forty years. It is a kitchen ornament, as well as a kitchen help. [Illustration] [Transcriber's Note: Lady using "Culinet."] "The Making of a Range" is a cleverly prepared little pamphlet, fully illustrated, that was issued primarily for distribution from the Mechanics' Fair (Boston) exhibit of the Walker & Pratt Mfg. Co. It is well worth sending for, if one is interested in details of manufacture. The "Culinet" was the only stove which was awarded a Gold Medal at the Mechanics' Fair. [Illustration: LXXX. Manoir d'Ango, Normandy.] 
13489	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION 1895 VOLUME I BOSTON BATES & GUILD PUBLISHERS Index to Volume I. 1895. LIST OF PLATES. Venetian Palaces. i. Southwest Angle of the Ducal Palace. ii. Palazzo Contarini Fasan. iii. Palazzo Cavalli. iv. Window Tracery in the Palazzo Cavalli. v. Window Tracery in the Palazzo Cicogna. vi. Portion of the Façade of the Ca D'Oro. vii. Portion of the Façade of the Ca D'Oro. viii. Palazzo Pisani. Byzantine-Romanesque Doorways, Apulia. ix. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Trani. x. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Trani. xi. Principal Doorway to Cathedral, Conversano. xii. Portion of Façade, Basilica at Altamura. xiii. Principal Doorway, Basilica at Altamura. xiv. Detail of Doorway, Basilica at Altamura. xv. Doorway of Madonna di Loreto, Trani. xvi. Entrance to Church of the Rosary, Terlizzi. Cloister at Monreale, Sicily. xvii. Double Capital. xviii. Double Capital. xix. Double Capital. xx. One Side of Cloister. Byzantine Capitals from Ravenna. xxi. Capital from the Apse of S. Vitale. xxii. Capital from S. Vitale. xxiii. Capital from S. Vitale. xxiv. Capital in the Museum of the Academy. Byzantine-Romanesque Windows, Apulia. xxv. Window in S. Teresia, Trani. xxvi. Window in S. Teresia, Trani. xxvii. Window in the Basilica, Altamura. xxviii. Windows in S. Gregorio, Bari. xxvix. Triforiurn Window in S. Gregorio, Ban. xxx. Window in Apse of the Cathedral, Bari. xxxi. Window in Bittonto. xxxii. Window in Apse of the Cathedral, Bittonto. Two Florentine Pavements. xxxiii. Portion of Pavement in the Baptistery. xxxiv. Portion of Pavement in the Baptistery. xxxv. Portion of Pavement in the Baptistery. xxxvi. Portion of Pavement in the Baptistery. xxxvii. Portion of Pavement in the Baptistery. xxxviii. Portion of Pavement in S. Miniato al Monte. xxxix. Portion of Pavement in S. Miniato al Monte. xl. Portion of Pavement in S. Miniato al Monte. Renaissance Panels from Perugia. xli. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xlii. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xliii. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xliv. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xlv. Panel From Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xlvi. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xlvii. Panel from Choir Stalls, S. Pietro. xiviii. Panel from the Chamber of Commerce. Italian Wrought Iron. xlix. Lantern on Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. Italian Wrought Iron. l. Lantern on Palazzo Guadagni, Florence. li. Lantern on Palazzo Brocella, Lucca. lii. Lantern on Palazzo Baroni nel Fillungo, Lucca. liii. Torch-Bearer from Siena. liv. Torch-Bearer from Siena. liv. Torch-Bearer from Siena. lvi. Torch-Bearer from Siena. Fragments of Greek Detail. lvii. Capital from the Parthenon, Athens. lviii. Capital from the Erechtheion, Athens. lix. Base from the Erechtheion, Athens, lx. Cap of Anta from the Erechtheion, Athens. lxi. Fragment found on the Acropolis, Athens. lxii. Capital from the Propylam, Athens. lxiii. Cyma from the Tholos, Epidauros. lxiv. Capital from the Tholos, Epidauros. Pulpits of Southern Italy. lxv. Ambo in the Capella Palatina, Palermo. lxvi. Ambo in the Cathedral, Salerno. lxvii. Pulpit in the Cathedral, Salerno. lxviii. Pulpit in the Cathedral, Ravello. lxix. Ambo in the Cathedral, Ravello. lxx. Pulpit in S. Giovanni, Ravello. lxxi. Ambo in S. Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, Rome. lxxii. Pulpit in the Cathedral, Messina. French Farmhouses, Normandy. lxxiii. Ferme de Turpe. lxxiv. Ferme de Turpe. lxxv. Ferme de Turpe. lxxvi. Ferme de Turpe. lxxvii. Manoir d' Ango. lxxviii. Manoir d' Ango. lxxix. Manoir d' Ango. lxxx. Manoir d' Ango. Country Houses of Normandy. lxxxi. Ferme la Vallauine. lxxxii. Manoir al Archelles. lxxxiii. Manoir at Archelles. lxxxiv. Porch of Church at Beuvreil. lxxxv. Manoir de Vitanval, Ste. Andresse. lxxxvi. Manoir d' Ango. lxxxvii. Manoir d' Ango. lxxxix. Manoir d' Ango. English Country Houses. lxxxix. Old Houses, Hanover. xc. Middle House, Mayfield, Sussex xci. Old Hall, Worsley. xcii. Speke Hall. xciii. Speke Hall. xciv. Smithells. xcv. Saintesbury Hall. xcvi. Old Manor House, Lythe Hill. xcvii. Old Manor House, Lythe Hill. xcviii. Old Manor House, Lythe Hill. xcix. Old Farm House, Lythe Hill. c. Gate House, Stokesay Castle. INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Advice to Young Architects Aitchison, Prof., Advice to Young Architects Altamura, Basilica at, Ango, Manoir d' Apulia, Doorways from " Windows from Architectural Education Architectural Schools Columbia College Harvard University Mass. Inst. of Technology Ateliers in New York City Athens, Erechtheion, Cap and Base from " Parthenon, Cap from " Propylæa " Bari, Cathedral of, Window in " S. Gregorio, Window in Beaux-Arts Architects, Society of Bittonto, Cathedral, Window in " Window in Boston Public Library, Decoration of Building Exhibit Byzantine-Romanesque Doorways Byzantine-Romanesque Windows Capitals, Monreale " Ravenna Case, John W., Hints to Draughtsmen Catalogues of Exhibitions Clark Medal Competition Cleveland Architectural Club Cloister of Monreale Club Notes Architectural Club of Lehigh University Architectural Club of San Francisco Architectural League of New York Art League, Milwaukee Baltimore Architectural Club Boston Architectural Club Buffalo Chapter A.I.A. Chicago Architectural Club Cincinnati Architectural Club Cleveland Architectural Sketch Club Denver Architectural Sketch Club Detroit Architectural Sketch Club "P.D.'s" Rochester Sketch Club Sketch Club of New York Society of Beaux-Arts Architects St. Louis Architectural Club St. Paul Architectural Sketch Club T Square Club, Philadelphia Columbia College Competition for Advertising Design Competitions, Awards in Competitions, Brochure Series " " " No. 1, " " " No. 2, " " " No. 3, Conversano, Doorway of Cathedral Cosmaiti Work Country Houses of Normandy Country Houses, English Doorways, Byzantine-Romanesque Ecole des Beaux-Arts, diplomas England. Hanover, Old Houses Lythe Hill Mayfield, Sussex, Middle House Saintesbury Hall Smithells Speke Hall Stokesay Castle Worsley, Old Hall English Country Houses Epidauros, Tholos, Cap and Fragment from Farmhouses, French Florence, Baptistery, Pavement from " Palazzo Guadagni, Lantern from " S. Miniato, Pavement from " Strozzi Palace, Lantern from Florentine Pavements Gothic Palaces of Venice Greek Detail, Fragments of Harvard University Hints to Draughtsmen Italian Wrought Iron Lanterns, Wrought Iron Lucca, Palazzo Brocella, Lantern from " " Baroni " " Mass. Institute of Technology Messina, Cathedral, Pulpit Monreale, The Cloister of Mosaic Floors, Modern Mosaic Work Normandy, Ferme de Turpe " Ferme la Vallanine " Manoir at Archelles " Manoir d' Ango " Manoir de Vitanval " Porch of Church at Beuvreil Pavements, Two Florentine Palermo, Capella Palatina, Pulpit in "P.D.'s" The Perugia, Chamber of Commerce, Panel from " Renaissance Panels from " S. Pietro, Panels from Personals Piano Case, Competition for Pulpits of Southern Italy Ravello, Cathedral, Pulpit and Ambo in " S. Giovanni, Pulpit in Ravenna Museum of Acad. Bel. Arti, Cap from S. Vitale, Caps from Ravenna Capitals Reproduction of Architect's Drawings Roman Scholarship Rome, American School of Architecture at Rome, S. Lorenzo Fuori, Ambo in Rotch, Arthur, Bequest of Rotch Scholars, C.H. Blackall Rotch Travelling Scholarship Salerno, Cathedral, Ambo and Pulpit in Siena, Wrought Iron Torch Bearers from Terlizzi, Entrance to Church of the Rosary Torch Bearers, Wrought Iron Trade Notes Trani, Doorway of Cathedral " " Madonna di Loreto Turpe, Ferme de Venetian Palaces Venice Ca D'oro Ducal Palace Palazzo Cavalli " " Window-tracery in Palazzo Cicogna, Window-tracery in Palazzo Contarini Fasan Palazzo Pisani Windows, Byzantine-Romanesque Wood Floors Wrought Iron, Italian [Illustration: I. The Southwest Angle of the Ducal Palace, Venice.] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. JANUARY, 1895. No. I. THE GOTHIC PALACES OF VENICE. The location of Venice upon a group of islands, sufficiently removed from the mainland to make it impossible to effectually attack it from this side, and naturally defended on the side towards the sea by a long chain of low islands, separated by shallow inlets and winding channels, making it difficult to approach, has rendered the city peculiarly free from the disturbing influences which were constantly at work in the neighboring cities of Italy during the Middle Ages. While her neighbors were building strong encircling walls, each individual house a fortress in itself, Venice rested secure in her natural defences and built her palaces open down to the water's edge, with no attempt at fortification. Her hardy and adventurous inhabitants rapidly extended their trade to all quarters of the world and accumulated vast wealth, which was freely lavished on public and private buildings. The magnificence of the former was only equalled in the days of ancient Rome, and it is doubtful if the latter have ever been surpassed in sumptuousness and splendor. The palaces of Venice form an architectural group of great interest, in many respects quite distinct from the contemporary buildings on the mainland. They were carefully planned to satisfy the demands for comfort and convenience as well as display. Most of them have the same arrangement of plan, and were commonly built of two lofty and two low stories. On the ground floor, or water level, is a hall running back from the gate to a bit of garden at the other side of the palace, and on either side of this hall, which was hung with the family trophies of the chase and war, are the porter's lodge and gondoliers' rooms. On the first and second stories are the family apartments, opening on either side from great halls, of the same extent as that below, but with loftier roofs, of heavy rafters gilded or painted. The fourth floor is of the same arrangement, but has a lower roof, and was devoted to the better class of servants. Of the two stories used by the family, the third is the loftier and airier, and was occupied in summer; the second was the winter apartment. On either hand the rooms open in suites. The courtyard at the rear usually had a well in its centre with an ornamental curb; and access to the upper floors of the house was gained by an exterior staircase in the court, which was often elaborately enriched with carved ornament. The materials used in construction are mostly red and white marbles, used with a fine color sense, and the desire for abundance of color was frequently further gratified by painting the exterior walls with elaborate pictorial decorations. [Illustration: II. The Palazzo Contarini Fasan, Venice.] The earliest palaces are Byzantine, but with the growth of the Gothic movement these were gradually superseded, although the Gothic influence worked more slowly here than on the mainland. The richest and most elaborate work was built at this period. Finally the Renaissance took the place of Gothic; and the later palaces, built in this style, show strongly the debased condition into which the art of Venice fell in the Dark Ages. We have selected for the illustrations of this number of the BROCHURE SERIES some of the most widely known examples of the fifteenth-century Gothic palaces, built at the time when Venice was at the zenith of prosperity as the principal commercial power of the world. I. SOUTHWEST ANGLE OF THE DUCAL PALACE, VENICE. Although the Ducal Palace is much larger than the other palaces of Venice, and intended for general civic uses as well as a residence for the Duke or Doge, it follows closely the type already described. It has undergone so many changes since its first foundation in about the year 800 (813 according to Ruskin), having been destroyed five times, and as often re-erected in grander style, besides having been added to and the dilapidated portions restored, that it is impossible to assign a comprehensive date to cover the building of the present structure. In fact, the earliest portion was gradually added to, carrying it further and further around the quadrangle until it reached the point of beginning, when this process was repeated, partially replacing the older Byzantine work with Gothic and then with Renaissance, the present building still having examples of all three styles. The portion shown in our illustration is said to have been erected between the years 1424 and 1442, by Giovanni Buon and his sons Pantaleone and Bartolommeo Buon the elder; although Mr. Ruskin states that in 1423 the Grand Council sat in the Great Council Chamber for the first time, and in that year the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. This angle, which faces the Piazetta and the Riva, is called by Mr. Ruskin the "Fig-Tree Angle," because of the group of sculpture representing the fall of man. The figure above the angle capital of the upper arcade is that of Gabriel. The richly decorated capitals of the lower arcade represent personifications of the Virtues and Vices, the favorite subjects of decorative art, at this period, in all the cities of Italy. The capitals of the upper arcade, no two of which are alike, are also richly wrought with figure sculpture, the one on the angle containing representations of the four winds. The arrangement of the tracery above the upper arcade is worthy of note as the placing of the quatrefoils between the arches, which is characteristic of earlier examples, is more reasonable, from a constructive point of view, than the later practice of placing them above the centres of the arches. The use of the rope moulding as a decorative finish for the angle of a building is also characteristic of the palace architecture of Venice, and may here be seen most effectively applied. II. THE PALAZZO CONTARINI FASAN, VENICE. This is one of the most notable examples of domestic Gothic architecture in Venice, and dates from the fifteenth century. Ruskin refers to it as follows: "In one respect, however, it deserves to be regarded with attention, as showing how much beauty and dignity may be bestowed on a very small and unimportant dwelling-house by Gothic sculpture. Foolish criticisms upon it have appeared in English accounts of foreign buildings, objecting to it on the ground of its being 'ill proportioned'; the simple fact being that there was no room in this part of the canal for a wider house, and that its builder made its rooms as comfortable as he could, and its windows and balconies of a convenient size for those who were to see through them and stand on them, and left the 'proportions' outside to take care of themselves, which, indeed, they have very sufficiently done; for though the house thus honestly confesses its diminutiveness, it is nevertheless one of the principal ornaments of the very noblest reach of the Grand Canal, and would be nearly as great a loss if it were destroyed, as the church of La Salute itself." This building is popularly known as "Desdemona's House." III. THE PALAZZO CAVALLI, VENICE. This palace, situated opposite the Academy of Arts on the Grand Canal, also dates from the fifteenth century. Its balconies and tracery are of the later Gothic period, showing marked tendencies towards the Renaissance. It has been recently restored by its present owner, Baron Franchetti, and is frequently spoken of as the Palazzo Franchetti. IV. WINDOW TRACERY IN THE PALAZZO CAVALLI. In Venetian tracery it will always be found that a certain arrangement of quatrefoils and other figures has been planned as if it were to extend indefinitely into miles of arcade, and out of this colossal piece of marble lace a portion in the shape of a window is cut mercilessly and fearlessly: what fragments and odd shapes of interstice, remnants of this or that figure of the divided foliation, may occur at the edge of the window, it matters not; all are cut across and shut in by the great outer archivolt. This is of course open to serious criticism as construction, but its beauty and effectiveness, as used here, cannot be gainsaid. V. WINDOW TRACERY IN THE PALAZZO CICOGNA, VENICE. This is an example of early Gothic work in Venice and is quite unlike later examples. Ruskin speaks of it as the only instance of good _complicated_ tracery to be found in Venice. The fact that it is moulded only on the face is considered evidence of its early date. In this view, as, in fact, in all of the examples which we have selected, the moulding formed of alternating blocks or dentils, projecting first on one side and then the other, which is peculiar to Venice, can be seen. It was commonly used as a frame about a window or group of windows, and is very effective, especially when used, as it frequently was, relieved against a flat wall surface. VI. and VII. TWO PORTIONS OF THE FACADE OF THE CA D'ORO, VENICE. This, next to the Ducal Palace, is the most elaborate and it might be said the most beautiful of the Gothic Venetian palaces. It has been considerably changed in the various restorations to which it has been subjected, but still has enough of its original features to remain a wonderfully beautiful building. It is an extreme example of the characteristic disregard of the ordinary principles of building construction to be found throughout the work we have been considering. Fergusson's remarks upon this failing of the Venetian architects is pointed and well considered. He says: "Most of the faults that strike us in the buildings of Venice arise from the defective knowledge which they betray of constructive principles. The Venetian architects had not been brought up in the hard school of practical experience, nor thoroughly grounded in construction, as the northern architects were by the necessities of the large buildings which they erected. On the contrary, they merely adopted details because they were pretty, and used them so as to be picturesque in domestic edifices where convenience was everything, and construction but a secondary consideration." The Cà D'oro was probably built about the middle of the fourteenth century. Evidences of the use of color in this façade can be plainly seen in the photographic views, and the contrast of the deep shadows and flat wall surfaces is strikingly beautiful. VIII. THE PALAZZO PISANI. This palace is of the late Gothic period, nearly approaching the Renaissance. It is situated on the lower reach of the Grand Canal. In all of the examples here selected a marked predominance of horizontal treatment will be observed. The roofs are flat, and arcades and balconies all help to emphasize the horizontal direction in the design. This, it will be observed, is distinctly different from the contemporary Gothic of the rest of Europe. * * * * * Notable examples of American buildings modelled after or in the style of the Venetian palaces are the Chicago Athletic Club, the Montauk Club, Brooklyn, and the new building adjoining the Hoffman House, Madison Square, New York. [Illustration: IV. Window Tracery in the Palazz, Cavalli, Venice.] The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year 50 cents, in advance. Special Club Rate for five subscriptions $2.00. * * * * * A well-selected collection of foreign photographs has come to be as necessary and invariable a feature in a well-equipped architect's office as good drawing instruments or as Vignola's treatise on the Roman Orders. But unfortunately a really satisfactory collection of photographs is seldom within the reach of more than a small proportion of the architects who could use them to advantage. This is partly on account of the expense of a good collection, as photographs can hardly be bought for less than twenty-five cents each, and partly on account of the difficulty of finding a desirable stock from which to make selections on this side of the Atlantic. Nearly all of the most valuable collections have been gathered together abroad by the owners and are the result of gradual accumulation, probably extending over years of travel, and representing no small investment of money. Such a collection, it is needless to say, is not within the grasp of the young and struggling draughtsman, but he, of all others, would profit most by possession and use of such a treasure if it could be placed in his hands. It would help to form and direct his tastes, making him familiar with the masterpieces of the past, and would furnish a basis for comparison of the current work about him. Of course a draughtsman in any of the larger offices will have certain opportunities to study and work from the collection in the office library. This is a valuable privilege, but it is only open to a few out of the many draughtsmen in the country, and is not to be compared in its resulting benefits to the actual possession of even a very much smaller collection. * * * * * It is the purpose of the BROCHURE SERIES to place in the hands of draughtsmen a most carefully selected series of photographic reproductions, chosen both for their educational value and their usefulness as practical reference material for everyday work. This can be done at one fiftieth the cost of ordinary photographs, and thus be easily within the reach of any draughtsman. No attempt will be made to follow any systematic arrangement of the subjects presented, although it will be frequently found advisable, as in the present issue, to group a number of subjects of more or less related character. The main result to be sought for is the presentation of the greatest amount of the most valuable material in the most available shape, and at the least cost. The possibility of realizing this ambitious purpose remains to be demonstrated. It need only be said that this initial number is put forward as an earnest of the work to follow. * * * * * A most important feature in recent educational work as applied to architecture is to be found in the formation of a number of classes, or _ateliers_ as they are called, modelled in the main after those in Paris. They are all formed with the purpose of furnishing instruction in those elements of academic design which are unattainable in the routine experience of office practice. The details of arrangement for accomplishing this purpose vary somewhat in the different _ateliers_. We believe the first to be started was the one connected with the office of Messrs. Carrère & Hastings in New York. Here a limited number of students, both young men and young women, are received, and as a return for the instruction given them are expected to render such assistance in the regular work of the draughting-room as they can. This service is exactly similar to the "niggering," as it is called, required by long-established custom of the younger men at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Paris, which is one of the most valuable features of the school work. In Paris by this method the younger students have an opportunity to come in personal and intimate contact with those more advanced, and have the benefit of working on larger and more important work than they are capable of undertaking unaided. In the new _atelier_ a problem in design is given to the class, thus more than ordinarily equipped for the work before him. [Illustration: VII. Portion of the Façade of the Ca D'oro, Venice.] His work while abroad was systematic, well directed, and untiring, and no one of the succeeding scholars has labored to better advantage or accomplished more than he, although each in turn has had the example and experience of his predecessors as a guide and stimulus to increased endeavor. Mr. Blackall's time was devoted largely to travel, together with the sketching and measuring of important work. Since his return he has built up a successful and varied practice. As an active member of the Boston Society of Architects and the first president of the Boston Architectural Club, he has done much to advance the best interests of the profession, both within its ranks and in its relations to the public. To nothing so much as to his faithful labors can the success of the Architectural Club be laid. He has made it the largest and most effective organization of its kind in the country, and the draughtsmen of Boston have every reason to be thankful to him for his unselfish devotion to their interests. He has, for several years, been the permanent chairman of the Committee of the Boston Society of Architects, appointed to administer the Rotch Scholarship, and through his earnest work the opportunities open to its holders are being constantly increased. (_To be continued_.) * * * * * Club Notes. The youngest of the architectural societies of the country is the Cleveland Architectural Club. It was organized in November last with a membership of fifteen, which number has been rapidly growing and bids fair to grow much further. In this instance, as has been the case in all the other large cities where similar clubs have been formed, it is the better class of draughtsmen who have felt the need of an organization that would bring them together socially, and give an opportunity for organized study and mutual improvement; and it is a most encouraging symptom of the generally diseased condition of the public mind in relation to architecture that these clubs have become so numerous in the last few years. Aside from the direct influence upon its own membership, the manifestation of a progressive and aggressive spirit cannot help provoking curiosity and discussion outside, if it accomplishes nothing further. It is somewhat surprising that with the unusually active interest which Cleveland has always evinced in matters relating to art, such a movement has not been started before. We shall have occasion before long to refer more in detail to this new and flourishing society. * * * * * The Illinois Chapter of the American Institute of Architects announces the second annual competition for a gold medal, to be open to members of the Chicago Architectural Club who are not practicising architects of over two years' standing. The problem is the design for a memorial building for the study of botany, zoology, and mineralogy, and is to be finished on April 29. * * * * * The Chicago Architectural Club mingles work and play in a thoroughly Bohemian fashion. A recent invitation card bid its members to attend a "Rip-Snorter at the Club House," stating that "provisions and provisos would be provided and Frou Frous be on tap." The exact significance of this cabalistic description is known only to the members and their guests. The same card announced that the new Constitution and By-Laws would be finally voted upon at the same meeting, and further announced the conditions of a forthcoming sketch competition. Things move rapidly in Chicago. * * * * * The Chicago Architectural Club will hold its eighth annual exhibition of works of architecture and the allied arts at the Art Institute for two weeks beginning May 23. For further particulars, address John Robert Dillon, secretary, 274 Michigan Avenue, Chicago. * * * * * The Buffalo Chapter of the A.I.A. will hold its second annual exhibition in the Art Gallery, Library Building, in connection with the exhibition of the Buffalo Society of Artists, from March 18 to 30. For further particulars, address J.H. Marling, 15 Morgan Building, Buffalo. [Illustration: VIII. The Palazzo Pisani, Venice.] 
14189	----	[Illustration: STREETS IN TIMGAD. From a photograph.] ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING By F. HAVERFIELD Oxford at The Clarendon Press 1913 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS London::Edinburgh::Glasgow::New York Toronto::Melbourne::Bombay HUMPHREY MILFORD Publisher to the University PREFACE The following pages are an enlargement of a paper read to the University of London as the Creighton Lecture for 1910, and also submitted in part to the London Conference on Town-planning in the same year. The original lecture was written as a scholar's contribution to a modern movement. It looked on town-planning as one of those new methods of social reform, which stand in somewhat sharp contrast with the usual aims of political parties and parliaments. The latter concern mainly the outward and public life of men as fellow-citizens in a state; they involve such problems as Home Rule, Disestablishment, Protection. The newer ideals centre round the daily life of human beings in their domestic environment. Men and women--or rather, women and men--have begun to demand that the health and housing and food and comfort of mankind, and much else that not long ago seemed to lie outside the scope of legislation, should be treated with as close attention and logic and intelligence as any of the older and more conventional problems of politicians. They will not leave even the tubes of babies' feeding-bottles to an off-hand opportunism. Among these newer efforts town-planning is one of the better known. Most of us now admit that if some scores of dwellings have to be run up for working-men or city-clerks--or even for University teachers in North Oxford--they can and should be planned with regard to the health and convenience and occupations of their probable tenants. Town-planning has taken rank as an art; it is sometimes styled a science and University professorships are named after it; in the London Conference of 1910 it got its _deductio in forum_ or at least its first dance. But it is still young and its possibilities undefined. Its name is apt to be applied to all sorts of building-schemes, and little attempt is made to assign it any specific sense. It is only slowly making its way towards the recognized method and the recognized principles which even an art requires. Here, it seemed, a student of ancient history might proffer parallels from antiquity, and especially from the Hellenistic and Roman ages, which somewhat resemble the present day in their care for the well-being of the individual. In enlarging the lecture I have tried not only to preserve this point of view, but also to treat the subject in a manner useful to classical scholars and historians. The details of Greek and Roman town-planning are probably little known to many who study Greek and Roman life, and though they have often been incidentally discussed,[1] they have never been collected. The material, however, is plentiful, and it illuminates vividly the character and meaning of that city-life which, in its different forms, was a vital element in both the Greek and the Roman world. Even our little towns of Silchester and Caerwent in Roman Britain become more intelligible by its aid. The Roman student gains perhaps more than the Hellenist from this inquiry, since the ancient Roman builder planned more regularly and the modern Roman archaeologist has dug more widely. But admirable German excavations at Priene, Miletus, and elsewhere declare that much may be learnt about Greek towns and in Greek lands. [1] For example, by Beloch in his volume on the cities of Campania, by Schulten in various essays, by Barthel in a recent inquiry into Roman Africa, and by others, to be cited below. Dr. J. Stübben in his _Städtebau_ (Darmstadt, ed. 2, 1907) and Mr. Raymond Unwin in his _Town planning in practice_ (London, 1909) have given interesting notices and illustrations of the subject for modern builders. The task of collecting and examining these details is not easy. It needs much local knowledge and many local books, all of which are hard to come by. Here, as in most branches of Roman history, we want a series of special inquiries into the fortunes of individual Roman towns in Italy and the provinces, carried out by men who combine two things which seldom go together, scientific and parochial knowledge. But a body of evidence already waits to be used, and though its discussion may lead--as it has led me--into topographical minutiae, where completeness and certainty are too often unattainable and errors are fatally easy, my results may nevertheless contain some new suggestions and may help some future workers. I have avoided technical terms as far as I could, and that not merely in the interests of the general reader. Such terms are too often both ugly and unnecessary. When a foreign scholar writes of a Roman town as 'scamnirt' or 'strigirt', it is hard to avoid the feeling that this is neither pleasant nor needful. Perhaps it is not even accurate, as I shall point out below. I have accordingly tried to make my text as plain as possible and to confine technicalities to the footnotes. F.H. CONTENTS LIST OF PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS TABLE OF MEASURES 1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON ANCIENT TOWN-PLANNING 2. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS: BABYLON 3. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. FIRST EFFORTS 4. GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE MACEDONIAN AGE 5. ITALY. THE ORIGINS 6. ITALY. THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE 7. ITALIAN TOWNS 8. ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS. I 9. ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWNS. II 10. ROMAN BUILDING LAWS 11. THE SEQUEL APPENDIX. TOWN-PLANNING IN CHINA INDEX LIST OF PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS (For precise references to sources see the various footnotes.) STREETS IN TIMGAD. From a photograph 1. BABYLON. After Koldewey and others 2. PIRAEUS. After Milchõfer 3. SELINUS. After Cavallari and Hulot and Fougères 4. CYRENE. After Smith and Porcher, 1864 5. SOLUNTUM. After Cavallari, 1875 6. PRIENE, GENERAL OUTLINE. After Zippelius 7. PRIENE, DETAILS OF A PART OF THE EXCAVATED AREA. After the large plan by Wiegand and Schrader, 1904 8. PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN. As restored by Zippelius 9. MILETUS. After Wiegand, 1911 10. GERASA. After Schumacher 11. TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO. After T.E. Peet 12. MARZABOTTO. After Brizio and Levi 13. POMPEII. After Mau, 1910 14. MODENA. From the plan of Zuccagni-Orlandini, 1844 15. TURIN. Reduced from a plan published by the Society for the diffusion of Useful Knowledge (_Maps_, London, 1844, vol. ii) after Zuccagni-Orlandini, 1844 16. AOSTA. From Promis and others 17. FLORENCE. (A) Modern Florence. (B) After L. Bardi (1795?) and Zuccagni-Orlandini 18. LUCCA. From Sinibaldi, 1843 19. HERCULANEUM. After Ruggiero and Beloch 20. NAPLES. From the Neapolitan Government map of 1865 21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres_, 1904 22. TIMGAD. After R. Cagnat and the large plan by A. Ballu (_Ruines de Timgad, Sept années de découvertes_ (Paris, 1911)) 23. DETAILS OF INSULAE IN TIMGAD. After R. Cagnat, _Timgad_, p. 337 24. A PART OF CARTHAGE. Plan based on the _Carte archéologique des ruines de Carthage_, by Gauckler and Delattre 25. A PART OF LAIBACH. From a plan by Dr. W. Schmid (_VI. Bericht der römisch-germanischen Kommission_, 1910-1911) 26. LINCOLN, OUTLINE OF ROMAN WALLS 27. LINCOLN, BASES OF THE COLONNADE UNDER BAILGATE. From a photograph 28. LINCOLN, SEWER UNDER BAILGATE. From a photograph 29. AUTUN. After H. de Fontenay (_Autun et ses Monuments_, Autun, 1889) 30. TRIER. Plan reduced from plan (1:10,000) by the late Dr. Hans Gräven, _Die Denkmalpflege_, 14 Dec. 1904 31. SILCHESTER, GENERAL PLAN. Reduced from the large plan by W.H. St. John Hope (1:1800), _Archaeologia_ lxi, plate 85 32. SILCHESTER, DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM AND CHRISTIAN CHURCH. From _Archaeologia_ 33. CAERWENT, GENERAL PLAN. Reduced from plan by F. King (1:900), _Archaeologia_ lxii, plate 64 34. BOSTRA. From a plan in Baedeker's _Guide to Palestine_ 35. SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE, A BASTIDE OF A.D. 1281. From plan by Dr. A.E. Brinckmann 36. RUINS OF KHARA-KHOTO, A CHINESE TOWN OF ABOUT A.D. 1100. _Geographical Journal_, Sept. 1910 For the loan of blocks I am indebted to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (fig. 21), to the German Imperial Archaeological Institute (fig. 9), to the Royal Geographical Society (fig. 36), and to the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Editors of the _Transactions of the Town-Planning Conference_, 1911 (figs. 7, 8, 17, 30, 32, 35). Fig. 11 is from Mr. T.E. Peet's _Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_. The other 26 blocks have been prepared for this volume. TABLE OF MEASURES The following figures may be found convenient by readers who wish to take special account of the dimensions cited in the following pages, and may also help them to correct any errors which I have unwittingly admitted. 1 Roman foot = 0.296 metres = 0.97 English feet. For practical purposes 100 Roman feet = 97 English feet. 1 Iugerum = 120 x 240 Roman feet = 116.4 x 233.8 English feet. For practical purposes a _Iugerum_ may be taken to be rather over 2/3 of an acre and rather over 1/4 of a hectare, and more exactly 2523.3 sq. metres. 1 Metre = 1.09 English yards, a trifle less than 40 ins. 402.5 metres equal a quarter of a mile. 1 Hectare (10000 sq. metres) = 2.47 acres (11955 sq. yds.). 1 Acre = nearly 69-1/2 x 69-1/2 yds. (208.7 ft. square) = 4840 sq. yds. CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY REMARKS Town-planning--the art of laying out towns with due care for the health and comfort of inhabitants, for industrial and commercial efficiency, and for reasonable beauty of buildings--is an art of intermittent activity. It belongs to special ages and circumstances. For its full unfolding two conditions are needed. The age must be one in which, whether through growth, or through movements of population, towns are being freely founded or freely enlarged, and almost as a matter of course attention is drawn to methods of arranging and laying out such towns. And secondly, the builders of these towns must have wit enough to care for the well-being of common men and the due arrangement of ordinary dwellings. That has not always happened. In many lands and centuries--in ages where civilization has been tinged by an under-current of barbarism--one or both of these conditions have been absent. In Asia during much of its history, in early Greece, in Europe during the first half of the Middle Ages, towns have consisted of one or two dominant buildings, temple or church or castle, of one or two processional avenues for worshippers at sacred festivals, and a little adjacent chaos of tortuous lanes and squalid houses. Architects have devised beautiful buildings in such towns. But they have not touched the chaos or treated the whole inhabited area as one unit. Town-planning has been here unknown.[2] [2] Compare Brinckmann's remarks on mediaeval towns: 'Der Nachdruck liegt auf den einzelnen Gebäuden, der Kathedrale, dem Palazzo publico, den festen Palästen des Adels, nicht auf ibrer einheitlichen Verbindung. Ebenso erscheint die ganze Stadt nur eine Ansammlung einzelner Bauten. Strassen und Plätze sind unbebaute Reste.' In other periods towns have been founded in large numbers and full-grown or nearly full-grown, to furnish homes for multitudes of common men, and their founders have built them on some plan or system. One such period is, of course, our own. Within the last half-century towns have arisen all over Europe and America. They are many in number. They are large in area. Most of them have been born almost full-grown; some have been established complete; others have developed abruptly out of small villages; elsewhere, additions huge enough to form separate cities have sprung up beside towns already great. Throughout this development we can trace a tendency to plan, beginning with the unconscious mechanical arrangements of industrial cities or suburbs and ending in the conscious efforts of to-day. If we consider their size and their number together, these new European and American towns surpass anything that the world has yet seen. But, save in respect of size, the process of founding or enlarging towns is no new thing. In the old world, alike in the Greek lands round the eastern Mediterranean and in the wide empire of Rome, urban life increased rapidly at certain periods through the establishment of towns almost full-grown. The earliest towns of Greece and Italy were, through sheer necessity, small. They could not grow beyond the steep hill-tops which kept them safe, or house more inhabitants than their scanty fields could feed.[3] But the world was then large; new lands lay open to those who had no room at home, and bodies of willing exiles, keeping still their custom of civil life, planted new towns throughout the Mediterranean lands. The process was extended by state aid. Republics or monarchs founded colonies to extend their power or to house their veterans, and the results were equally towns springing up full-grown in southern Europe and, western Asia and even northern Africa. So too in remoter regions. Obscure evidence from China suggests that there also in early times towns were planted and military colonies were sent to outlying regions on somewhat the same methods as were used by the Greeks and Romans. [3] For the connexion between such towns and their local food-supply, note the story of Alexander the Great and the architect Dinocrates told by Vitruvius (II. i). Dinocrates had planned a new town; Alexander asked if there were lands round it to supply it with corn, and on hearing there were none, at once ruled out the proposed site. Even under less kindly conditions, the art has not been wholly dormant. Special circumstances or special men have called it into brief activity. The 'bastides' and the 'villes neuves' of thirteenth-century France were founded at a particular period and under special circumstances, and, brief as the period was and governed by military urgencies, they were laid out on a more or less definite plan (p. 143). The streets designed by Wood at Bath about 1735, by Craig at Edinburgh about 1770, by Grainger at Newcastle about 1835, show what individual genius could do at favourable moments. But such instances, however interesting in themselves, are obviously less important than the larger manifestations of town-planning in Greece and Rome. In almost all cases, the frequent establishment of towns has been accompanied by the adoption of a definite principle of town-planning, and throughout the principle has been essentially the same. It has been based on the straight line and the right angle. These, indeed, are the marks which sunder even the simplest civilization from barbarism. The savage, inconsistent in his moral life, is equally inconsistent, equally unable to 'keep straight', in his house-building and his road-making. Compare, for example, a British and a Roman road. The Roman road ran proverbially direct; even its few curves were not seldom formed by straight lines joined together. The British road was quite different. It curled as fancy dictated, wandered along the foot or the scarp of a range of hills, followed the ridge of winding downs, and only by chance stumbled briefly into straightness. Whenever ancient remains show a long straight line or several correctly drawn right angles, we may be sure that they date from a civilized age. In general, ancient town-planning used not merely the straight line and the right angle but the two together. It tried very few experiments involving other angles. Once or twice, as at Rhodes (pp. 31, 81), we hear of streets radiating fan-fashion from a common centre, like the gangways of an ancient theatre or the thoroughfares of modern Karlsruhe, or that Palma Nuova, founded by Venice in 1593 to defend its north-eastern boundaries, which was shaped almost like a starfish. But, as a rule, the streets ran parallel or at right angles to each other and the blocks of houses which they enclosed were either square or oblong. Much variety is noticeable, however, in details. Sometimes the outline of the ancient town was square or almost square, the house-blocks were of the same shape, and the plan of the town was indistinguishable from a chess-board. Or, instead of squares, oblong house-blocks formed a pattern not strictly that of a chess-board but geometrical and rectangular. Often the outline of the town was irregular and merely convenient, but the streets still kept, so far as they could, to a rectangular plan. Sometimes, lastly, the rectangular planning was limited to a few broad thoroughfares, while the smaller side-streets, were utterly irregular. Other variations may be seen in the prominence granted or refused to public and especially to sacred buildings. In some towns full provision was made for these; ample streets with stately vistas led up to them, and open spaces were left from which they could be seen with advantage. In others there were neither vistas nor open spaces nor even splendid buildings. A measure of historical continuity can be traced in the occurrence of these variations. The towns of the earlier Greeks were stately enough in their public buildings and principal thoroughfares, but they revealed a half-barbaric spirit in their mean side-streets and unlovely dwellings. In the middle of the fifth century men rose above this ideal. They began to recognize private houses and to attempt an adequate grouping of their cities as units capable of a single plan. But they did not carry this conception very far. The decorative still dominated the useful. Broad straight streets were still few and were laid out mainly as avenues for processions and as ample spaces for great facades.[4] Private houses were still of small account. The notion that the City was the State, helpful and progressive as it was, did something also to paralyse in certain ways the development of cities. [4] Pindar mentions 'the paved road cut straight to be smitten by horse-hoofs in processions of men that besought Apollo's care' at Cyrene (_Pyth._ v. 90). An inscription from the Piraeus, of 320 B.C., orders the Agoranomi (p. 37) to take care 'of the broad roads by which the processions move to the temple of Zeus the Saviour'. A change came with the new philosophy and the new politics of the Macedonian era. The older Greek City-states had been large, wealthy, and independent; magnificent buildings and sumptuous festivals were as natural to them as to the greater autonomous municipalities in all ages. But in the Macedonian period the individual cities sank to be parts of a larger whole, items in a dominant state, subjects of military monarchies. The use of public buildings, the splendour of public festivals in individual cities, declined. Instead, the claims of the individual citizen, neglected too much by the City-states but noted by the newer philosophy, found consideration even in town-planning. A more definite, more symmetrical, often more rigidly 'chess-board' pattern was introduced for the towns which now began to be founded in many countries round and east of the Aegean. Ornamental edifices and broad streets were still indeed included, but in the house-blocks round them due space and place were left for the dwellings of common men. For a while the Greeks turned their minds to those details of daily life which in their greater age they had somewhat ignored. Lastly, the town-planning of the Macedonian era combined, as I believe, with other and Italian elements and formed the town system of the later Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. As in art and architecture, so also in city-planning, the civilization of Greece and of Italy merged almost inextricably into a result which, with all its Greek affinities, is in the end Roman. The student now meets a rigidity of street-plan and a conception of public buildings which are neither Greek nor Oriental. The Roman town was usually a rectangle broken up into four more or less equal and rectangular parts by two main streets which crossed at right angles at or near its centre. To these two streets all the other streets ran parallel or at right angles, and there resulted a definite 'chess-board' pattern of rectangular house-blocks (_insulae_), square or oblong in shape, more or less uniform in size. The streets themselves were moderate in width; even the main thoroughfares were little wider than the rest, and the public buildings within the walls were now merged in the general mass of houses. The chief structure, the Forum, was an enclosed court, decorated indeed by statues and girt with colonnades, but devoid of facades which could dominate a town. The town councils of the Roman world were no more free than those of Greece or modern England from the municipal vice of over-building. But they had not the same openings for error. On the other hand, there was in most of them a good municipal supply of water, and sewers were laid beneath their streets. The reason for all this is plain. These Roman towns, even more than the Greek cities of the Macedonian world, were parts of a greater whole. They were items in the Roman Empire; their citizens were citizens of Rome. They had neither the wealth nor the wish to build vast temples or public halls or palaces, such as the Greeks constructed. Their greatest edifices, the theatre and the amphitheatre, witness to the prosperity and population not so much of single towns as of whole neighbourhoods which flocked in to periodic performances.[5] But these towns had unity. Their various parts were, in some sense, harmonized, none being neglected and none grievously over-indulged, and the whole was treated as one organism. Despite limitations which are obvious, the Roman world made a more real sober and consistent attempt to plan towns than any previous age had witnessed. [5] Compare the crowd of Nucerians who made a riot in the amphitheatre at Pompeii in A.D. 59 (Tac. _Ann_. xiv. 17). The common idea that the population of a town can be calculated by the number of seats in its theatre or amphitheatre is quite amiss. CHAPTER II GREEK TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS, BABYLON The beginnings of ideas and institutions are seldom well known or well recorded. They are necessarily insignificant and they win scant notice from contemporaries. Town-planning has fared like the rest. Early forms of it appear in Greece during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.; the origin of these forms is obscure. The oldest settlement of man in town fashion which has yet been explored in any land near Greece is that of Kahun, in Egypt, dating from about 2500 B.C. Here Professor Flinders Petrie unearthed many four-roomed cottages packed close in parallel oblong blocks and a few larger rectangular houses: they are (it seems) the dwellings of the workmen and managers busy with the neighbouring Illahun pyramid.[6] But the settlement is very small, covering less than 20 acres; it is not in itself a real town and its plan has not the scheme or symmetry of a town-plan. For that we must turn to western Asia, to Babylonia and Assyria. [6] W.F. Petrie, _Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob_ (London, 1891), ch. ii, plate xiv. The plan is reproduced in Breasted's _History of Egypt_, p. 87, R. Unwin's _Town planning_, fig. 11 (with wrong scale), &c. Here we find clearer evidence. The great cities of the Mesopotamian plains show faint traces of town-planning datable to the eighth and following centuries, of which the Greeks seem to have heard and which they may have copied. Our knowledge of these cities is, of course, still very fragmentary, and though it has been much widened by the latest German excavations, it does not yet carry us to definite conclusions. The evidence is twofold, in part literary, drawn from Greek writers and above all Herodotus, and in part archaeological, yielded by Assyrian and Babylonian ruins. The description of Babylon given by Herodotus is, of course, famous.[7] Even in his own day, it was well enough known to be parodied by contemporary comedians in the Athenian theatre. Probably it rests in part on first-hand knowledge. Herodotus gives us to understand that he visited Babylon in the course of his many wanderings and we have no cause to distrust him; we may even date his visit to somewhere about 450 B.C. He was not indeed the only Greek of his day, nor the first, to get so far afield. But his account nevertheless neither is nor professes to be purely that of an eyewitness. Like other writers in various ages,[8] he drew no sharp division between details which he saw and details which he learnt from others. For the sake (it may be) of vividness, he sets them all on one plane, and they must be judged, not as first-hand evidence but on their own merits. [7] Hdt. i. 178 foil. The accounts of Ctesias and other ancient writers seem to throw no light on the town-planning and streets of Babylon, however useful they may otherwise be. [8] The Elizabethan description of Britain by William Harrison is an example from a modern time. Babylon, says Herodotus, was planted in an open plain and formed an exact square of great size, 120 stades (that is, nearly 14 miles) each way; the whole circuit was 480 stades, about 55 miles. It was girt with immense brick walls, 340 ft. high and nearly 90 ft. thick, and a broad deep moat full of water, and was entered through 100 gates; presumably we are intended to think of these gates as arranged symmetrically, 25 in each side. From corner to corner the city was cut diagonally by the Euphrates, which thus halved it into two roughly equal triangles, and the river banks were fortified by brick defences--less formidable than the main outer walls--which ran along them from end to end of the city. There was, too, an inner wall on the landward side. The streets were also remarkable: 'The city itself (he says) is full of houses, three or four storeys high, and has been laid out with its streets straight, notably those which run at right angles, that is, those which lead to the river. Each road runs to a small gate in the brick river-wall: there are as many gates as lanes.'[9] [9] Hdt. i. 180 [Greek: To de astu auto, eon plêres ohikieôn triôrhofôn te kai tetrôrofôn, katatetmêtai tas hodous itheas, tas te aggas kai tas epikarsias, tas epi ton potamon echousas]. Apparently [Greek: epikarsias] means, as Stein says, those at right angles to the general course of the river, but this nearly = at right angles to the other roads. The course of the river appears to have been straighter then than it is now. In each part of the city (that is, on either bank of the Euphrates) were specially large buildings, in one part the royal palaces, in the other the temple of Zeus Belos, bronze-gated, square in outline, 400 yards in breadth and length. So far, in brief, Herodotus. Clearly his words suggest town-planning. The streets that ran straight and the others that ran at right angles are significant enough, even though we may doubt exactly what is meant by these other streets and what they met or cut at right angles. But his account cannot be accepted as it stands. Whatever he saw and whatever his accuracy of observation and memory, not all of his story can be true. His Babylon covers nearly 200 square miles; its walls are over 50 miles long and 30 yds. thick and all but 120 yds. high; its gates are a mile and a half apart. The area of London to-day is no more than 130 square miles, and the topmost point of St. Paul's is barely 130 yds. high. Nanking is the largest city-site in China and its walls are the work of an Empire greater than Babylon; but they measure less than 24 miles in circuit, and they are or were little more than 30 ft. thick and 70 ft. high.[10] Moreover, Herodotus's account of the walls has to be set beside a statement which he makes elsewhere, that they had been razed by Darius sixty or seventy years before his visit.[11] The destruction can hardly have been complete. But in any case Herodotus can only have seen fragments, easily misinterpreted, easily explained by local _ciceroni_ as relics of something quite unlike the facts. [10] L. Gaillard, _Variétés sinologiques_, xvi (plan) and xxiii. pp. 8, 235 (Chang-hai, 1898, 1903). Others give the figures a little differently, but not so as to affect the argument. [11] Hdt. iii. 159. The theory that there were originally two parallel outer walls, that Darius razed one and Herodotus saw the other (Baumstark in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ ii. 2696), is meaningless. There could be no use in razing one and leaving the other, which was almost as strong (Hdt. i. 181). It is, however, not quite certain that Herodotus (i. 181) meant that there were two outer parallel walls. Turn now to the actual remains of Babylon, as known from surveys and excavations. We find a large district extending to both banks of the Euphrates, which is covered rather irregularly by the mounds of many ruined buildings. Two sites in it are especially notable. At its southern end is Birs Nimrud and some adjacent mounds, anciently Borsippa; here stood a huge temple of the god Nebo. Near its north end, ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa, round Babil and Kasr, is a larger wilderness of ruin, three miles long and nearly as broad in extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered. Other signs of inhabitation can be traced elsewhere in this district, as yet unexplored. Not unnaturally, some scholars have thought that this whole region represents the ancient Babylon and that the vast walls of Herodotus enclosed it all.[12] This view, however, cannot be accepted. Quite apart from the considerations urged above, the region in question is not square but rather triangular, and traces of wall and ditch surrounding it are altogether wanting, though city-walls have survived elsewhere in this neighbourhood and though nothing can wholly delete an ancient ditch. We have, in short, no good reason to believe that Babylon, in any form or sense whatever, covered at any time this large area. [12] So Baumstark, art. Babylon in Pauly-Wissowa, ii. 2696. On the other hand, the special ruins of Babil and Kasr and adjacent mounds seem to preserve both the name and the actual remains of Babylon (fig. 1). Here, on the left bank of the Euphrates, are vast city-walls, once five or six miles long.[13] They may be described roughly as enclosing half of a square bisected diagonally by the river, much as Herodotus writes; there is good reason to think that they had some smaller counterpart on the right bank, as yet scantily explored. Within these walls were the palaces of the Babylonian kings, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar (625-561 B.C.), the temples of the national god Marduk or Merodach and other Babylonian deities, a broad straight road, Aiburschabu, running north and south from palaces to temples, a stately portal spanning this road at the Istar Gate, many private houses in the Merkes quarter, and an inner town-wall perhaps of earlier date. Street and gate were built or rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar. He, as he declares in various inscriptions, 'paved the causeway with limestone flags for the procession of the Great Lord Marduk.' He made the Istar Gate 'with glazed brick and placed on its threshold colossal bronze bulls and ferocious serpent dragons'. Along the street thus built the statue of Marduk was borne in solemn march on the Babylonian New Year's Day, when the king paid yearly worship to the god of his country.[14] [13] F.H. Weissbach, _Stadtbild von Babylon_ (_Der alte Orient_, fasc. 5); R. Koldewey, _Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa_, plates i, ii; S. Langdon, _Expositor_, 1909, pp. 82, 142; Hommel, _Geogr. des alten Orients_, pp. 290, 331; E. Meyer, _Sitzungsber. preuss. Akad_. 1912, p. 1102. I am indebted to Dr. Langdon for references to some of the treatises cited here and below. I cannot share the unfavourable view which is taken by Messrs. How and Wells, the latest good editors of Herodotus, of the views of these writers. [14] Koldewey, _Pflastersteine von Aiburschabu_ (Leipzig, 1901). Some of the streets of Babylon are much older than 600 B.C., but this point needs to be worked out further. [Illustration: FIG I. BABYLON] Such are the remains of the city of Babylon, so far as they are known at present. They do not fit ill with the words of Herodotus. We can detect in them the semblance not indeed of one square but of two unequal half-squares, divided by the river; we can trace at least one great street parallel to the river and others which run at right angles to it towards the river. If the brick defences along the water-side have vanished, that may be due to their less substantial character and to the many changes of the river itself. To the student of Babylonian topography, the account of Herodotus is of very little worth. But it is as good as most modern travellers could compile, if they were let loose in a vast area of buildings, without plans, without instruments, and without any notion that a scientific description was expected of them. The remains show also--and this is more to our purpose--the idea of the sacred processional avenue which recurs in fifth-century Greece--and is indeed beloved of architects in the most modern times. Here is a germ of town-planning. But whether this laying out of streets extended beyond the main highways, is less clear. The Merkes excavations occasionally show streets meeting at right angles and at least one roughly rectangular _insula_, of 150 x 333 ft. But the adjoining house-blocks agree neither in size nor shape, and no hint seems to have yet come to light of a true chess-board pattern.[15] [15] _Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft_ 42, Dec. 1909, pp. 7, 19; 44, Dec. 1910, p. 26. A little further evidence can be drawn from other Mesopotamian sites. The city of Asshur had a long, broad avenue like the sacred road of Babylon, but the one _insula_ of its private houses which has yet been excavated, planned and published, shows no sign of rectangular planning.[16] There is also literary evidence that Sanherib (765-681 B.C.) laid out a 'Kingsway' 100 ft. wide to promote easy movement through his city of Nineveh, and Delitzsch has even credited the Sargonid dynasty generally (722-625 B.C.) with a care for the dwellings of common men as well as of gods and of kings.[17] [16] _Mitt, deutsch. Orient-Gesell._ 28, Sept. 1905; 31, May 1906. [17] F. Delitzsch, _Asurbanipal und die assyr. Kultur seiner Zeit_ (_Der alte Orient_, Leipzig, 1909), p. 25. In conclusion, the mounds of Babil and Kasr and others near them seem to represent the Babylon alike of fact and of Herodotus. It was a smaller city than the Greek historian avers; its length and breadth were nearer four than fourteen miles. But it had at least one straight, ample, and far-stretching highway which gave space for the ceremonies and the processions, if not for the business or the domestic comforts, of life. In a sense at least, it was laid out with its streets straight. Nor was it the only city of such a kind in the Mesopotamian region. Asshur and Nineveh, both of them somewhat earlier in date than Babylon, possessed similar features. These towns, or at least Babylon, seem to have been known to Greek travellers, and probably suggested to them the adornment of their Hellenic homes with similar streets. The germ of Greek town-planning came from the east. CHAPTER III GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: FIRST EFFORTS Greek town-planning began in the great age of Greece, the fifth century B.C. But that age had scant sympathy for such a movement, and its beginnings were crude and narrow. Before the middle of the century the use of the processional highway had established itself in Greece. Rather later, a real system of town-planning, based on streets that crossed at right angles, became known and practised. Later still, in the early fourth century, the growing care for town-life produced town by-laws and special magistrates to execute them. In some form or other, town-planning had now taken root in the Greek world. The two chief cities of Greece failed, indeed, to welcome the new movement. Both Athens, the city which by itself means Greece to most of us, and Sparta, the rival of Athens, remained wholly untouched by it. Alike in the days of Themistocles and Pericles and in all its later history, Athens was an almost Oriental mixture of splendid public buildings with mean and ill-grouped houses. An often-quoted saying of Demosthenes puts the matter in its most favourable light: 'The great men of old built splendid edifices for the use of the State, and set up noble works of art which later ages can never match. But in private life they were severe and simple, and the dwelling of an Aristides or a Miltiades was no more sumptuous than that of any ordinary Athenian citizen' (Third Olynthiac Oration, 25). This is that 'desire for beauty and economy' which Pericles (or Thucydides) praised in the Funeral Oration. It has a less lovely side. Not a few passages in Greek literature speak, more or less clearly, of the streets of Athens as narrow and tortuous, unpaved, unlighted, and more like a chaos of mud and sewage than even the usual Greek road. Sparta was worse. There neither public nor private buildings were admirable, and the historian Thucydides turned aside to note the meanness of the town. Nevertheless, the art of town-planning in Greece probably began in Athens. The architect to whom ancient writers ascribe the first step, Hippodamus of Miletus,--born about or before 480 B.C.,--seems to have worked in Athens and in connexion with Athenian cities, under the auspices of Pericles. The exact nature of his theories has not been recorded by any of the Greek writers who name him. Aristotle, however, states that he introduced the principle of straight wide streets, and that he, first of all architects, made provision for the proper grouping of dwelling-houses and also paid special heed to the combination of the different parts of a town in a harmonious whole, centred round the market-place. But there seems to be no evidence for the statement sometimes made, that he had any particular liking for either a circular or a semicircular, fan-shaped town-plan. _Piraeus_ (fig. 2). Three cities are named as laid out by Hippodamus. Aristotle tells us that he planned the Piraeus, the port of Athens, with broad straight streets. He does not add the precise relation of these streets to one another. If, however, the results of recent German inquiries and conjectures are correct, and if they show us his work and not--as is unfortunately very possible--the work of some later man, his design included streets running parallel or at right angles to one another and rectangular blocks of houses; the longer and presumably the more important streets ran parallel to the shore, while shorter streets ran at right angles to them down to the quays. Here is a rectangular scheme of streets, though the outline of the whole town is necessarily not rectangular (fig. 2). [Illustration: FIG. 2. PLAN OF PIRAEUS] _Thurii_. Another town ascribed to Hippodamus is the colony which the Athenians and others planted in 443 B.C. at Thurii in southern Italy, of which Herodotus himself is said to have been one of the original colonists. Its site has never been excavated, and indeed one might doubt whether excavation would show the street plan of 443 B.C. or that of a later and possibly even of a Roman age, when the town was recolonized on the Roman system. But the historian Diodorus, writing in the first century B.C. and no doubt embodying much older matter, records a pertinent detail. The town, he says, was divided lengthways by four streets and crossways by three. Plainly, therefore, it had a definite and rectangular street-planning, though the brevity of the historian does not enable us to decide how many house-blocks it had and how far the lesser streets were symmetrical with these seven principal thoroughfares. In most of the cases which we shall meet in the following sections of this treatise, the number of streets running-straight or at right angles is very much greater than the number assigned to Thurii. I may refer for example to the plans of Priene, Miletus, and Timgad. _Rhodes_. A third city assigned to Hippodamus is Rhodes. This, according to Strabo, was laid out by 'the architect of the Piraeus'; according to others, it was built round its harbour like the seats of an ancient theatre round the orchestra, that is, fan-fashion like Karlsruhe. However, this case is doubtful. Rhodes was laid out in 408 B.C., thirty-five years after the planting of Thurii and seventy years after the approximate date of the birth of Hippodamus. It is conceivable but not altogether probable that Hippodamus was still planning towns in his extreme old age, nor is it, on political grounds, very likely that he would be planning in Rhodes. As, however, we do not know the real date of his birth, and as Strabo does not specifically mention his name, certainty is unattainable.[18] [18] On Hippodamus see K.F. Hermann, _de Hippodamo Milesio_ (Marburg, 1841) and Erdmann, _Philologus_ xlii. 193-227, and _Programm Protestant. Gymnasium zu Strassburg_, 1883. As will be seen, I do not accept all Erdmann's conclusions. For the Piraeus see Aristotle, _Politics_, II. 8 = p. 1267 and IV. 11 = p. 1330. For Thurii see Diodorus XII. 10. For Rhodes see Strabo 654 = XIV. ii. 9: E. Meyer, _Gesch. des Alt._ iv. pp. 60, 199 rejects the tale. For plans of the Piraeus see Wachsmuth, _Stadt Athen im Alterthum_, ii. 134, and Curtius and Kaupert, _Karten von Attika_ (1881), plan II_a_ by Milchhöfer. Foucart has adduced epigraphic reasons for dating the work of Hippodamus here to 480-470 B.C. (_Journal des Savants_, 1907, pp. 178-82); they are not conclusive, but, if he be right, the difficulty of assigning the Piraeus and Rhodes to the same architect becomes even greater. The town-plan of Piraeus given by Gustav Hirschfeld (_Berichte der sãchs. Ges. der Wissenschaften_, 1878, xxx. I) is not convincing, nor do I feel very sure even about Milchhöfer's results. If we cannot tell exactly how Hippodamus planned cities or exactly which he planned, still less do we know how far town-planning on his or on any theory came into general use in his lifetime or indeed before the middle of the fourth century. Few Greek cities have been systematically uncovered, even in part. Fewer still have revealed street-planning which can be dated previous to that time. It does not follow, when we find streets in the ruins of an ancient city, that they must belong to its earliest period. That is not true of towns in any age, modern or mediaeval, Roman or Greek. Some Greek cities were founded in early times, were rebuilt in the Macedonian period, and again rebuilt in the Roman period. Without minute excavation it may be impossible to assign the town-plan of such a place to its proper place among these three periods. We have, however, at Selinus in Sicily and Cyrene on the north coast of Africa, two cases which may belong to the age of Hippodamus. They are worth describing, since they illustrate both the difficulty of reaching quite certain conclusions and also the system which probably did obtain in the later fifth and the early fourth century. _Selinus_ (fig. 3). At Selinus the Italian archaeologists discovered some years ago, in the so-called Acropolis, a town of irregular, rudely pear-shaped outline with a distinct though not yet fully excavated town-plan. Two main thoroughfares ran straight from end to end and crossed at right angles (fig. 3), the longer of these thoroughfares being just a quarter of a mile long and 30 ft. wide. From these two main streets other narrower streets (12-18 ft. wide) ran off at right angles; the result, though not chess-board pattern, is a rectangular town-plan. Unfortunately, it cannot be dated. Selinus was founded in 648 B.C., was destroyed in 409, then reoccupied and rebuilt, and finally destroyed for ever in 249. Its town-planning, therefore, might be as early as the seventh century B.C. Or (and this is the most probable conclusion) it may date from the days of Selinuntine prosperity just before 409, when the city was growing and the great Temple of Zeus or Apollo was rising on its eastern hill. Or again, though less probably, it may have been introduced after 400. We may conclude that we have here a clear case of town-planning and we may best refer it to the later part of the fifth century.[19] [Illustration: FIG. 3. PLAN OF SELINUS] [19] Koldewey and Puchstein, _Die griech. Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien_, p. 90, plan 29, from Cavallari; Hulot and Fougères, _Sélinonte_, Paris, 1910, pp. 121, 168, 196. The latter writers assign the rebuilding to Hermocrates, 408-407 B.C. But our accounts of Hermocrates do not suggest that he rebuilt anything at Selinus of any sort, except defences. _Cyrene_ (fig. 4). [Illustration: FIG. 4. PLAN OF CYRENE] At Cyrene the researches of two English archaeologists about 1860 disclosed a town-plan based, like that of Selinus, on two main streets which crossed at right angles (fig. 4). Here, however, the other streets do not seem to have been planned uniformly at right angles to the two main thoroughfares, and the rectangular scheme is therefore less complete and definite than at Selinus. Cyrene, unfortunately, resembles Selinus in another respect, that we have no proper knowledge of the date when its main streets were laid out. It was founded somewhere in the seventh century B.C. and Pindar, in an ode written about 466 B.C., mentions a great processional highway there. Whether this was one of the two roads above mentioned is not clear. But it is not probable, since Pindar's road seems hardly to have been inside the city at all.[20] [20] Smith and Porcher, _Discoveries at Cyrene_ (1864), plate 40; hence Studnickza, _Kyrene_ (1890, p. 167, fig. 35), and Malten, _Kyrene_ (Berlin, 1911). For Pindar's reference see Pyth. v. 90 and p. 16 above. In these two cases and in one or two others which might be noted from the same or later times, the town-scheme includes rectangular elements without any strict resemblance to the chess-board pattern. The dominant feature is the long straight street, of great width and splendour, which served less as the main artery of a town than as a frontage for great buildings and a route for solemn processions. Here, almost as in Babylon, we have the spectacular element which architects love, but which is, in itself, insufficient for the proper disposition of a town. Long and ample streets, such as those in question, might easily be combined, as indeed they are combined in some modern towns of southern Europe and Asia, with squalid and ill-grouped dwelling-houses. Hippodamus himself aimed at something much better, as Aristotle tells us. But it was not till after 350 B.C. or some approximate date, that dwelling-houses were actually arranged and grouped on a definite system.[21] [21] Soluntum, near Palermo, on the north coast of Sicily, was found by Cavallari in 1875 to exhibit a rectangular street-plan; one main street ran north and south along level ground and several lesser streets lay at right angles to it mounting a hillside by means of steps (as at Priene, p. 42). See the _Bullettino delta Commissione di Antichità e Belle Arti in Sicilia_, viii. Palermo, August 1875. Cavallari himself assigned this plan to the date when Soluntum was founded--which is unfortunately uncertain--but only on the general ground that 'in una città, una volta tracciate le strade e disposte le arterie dicommunicazione, non è facile cambiarne la disposizione generale'. I attach less weight than he does to this reason. Soluntum was in the main and by origin a Phoenician town, with a Greek colouring; in 307 B.C. it was refounded for the discharged soldiers of Agathocles; later still, in Roman times, it had the rank of 'municipium'; most of its ruins are generally considered to be of Roman date and small objects found in it are also mostly Roman, and its street-plan may also be Roman. As the 'Bullettino' is somewhat rare, I add a reduced plan (fig. 5). [Illustration: FIG. 5. SOLUNTUM] It was probably, however, in the first half of the fourth century that the Greek cities began to pass by-laws relating to the police, the scavenging and the general public order of their markets and streets, and to establish Agoranomi to control the markets and Astynomi to control the streets. These officials first appear in inscriptions after 350, but are mentioned in literature somewhat earlier. An account of the Athenian constitution, ascribed formerly to Xenophon and written (as is now generally agreed) about 430-424 B.C., mentions briefly the prosecution of those who built on to the public land, that is (apparently), who encroached upon the streets. But it is silent as to specific officers, Astynomi or other. Plato, however, in his 'Laws', which must date a little earlier than his death in 347, alludes on several occasions to such officers. They were to look after the private houses 'in order that they may all be built according to laws', and to police and clean the roads and water-channels, both inside and outside of the city. A prohibition of balconies leaning over the public streets, and of verandas projecting into them, is also mentioned in two or three writers of the fourth century and is said to go back to a much earlier date, though its antiquity was probably exaggerated.[22] [22] Plato, _Laws_ 763 c, 779 c, &c.; Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 50; Arist., _Oec._ ii. 5, p. 134; Xenophon, _Ath. Pol._ iii. 4; Schol. to Aeschines, iii. 24. The fact that the word 'Astynomos' occurs in Aeschylus does not justify the writer of an article in Pauly-Wissowa (_Real-Encycl._ ii. 1870) in stating that magistrates of this title were already at work in the earlier part of the fifth century; the poet uses the noun in a general sense from which it was afterwards specialized. Some of the regulations recur at Rome (p. 137). The municipal by-laws which these passages suggest clearly came into use before, though perhaps not long before, the middle of the fourth century. They do not directly concern town-planning; they involve building regulations only as one among many subjects, and those regulations are such as might be, and in many cases have been, adopted where town-planning was unknown. But they are natural forerunners of an interest in town-planning. As in modern England, so in fourth-century Greece, their appearance suggests the growth of a care for well-ordered town life and for municipal well-being which leads directly to a more elaborate and methodical oversight of the town as an organized combination of houses and groups of houses. As we part from this early Greek town-planning, we must admit that altogether we know little of it. There was such a thing: among its main features was a care for stately avenues: its chief architect was Hippodamus. Thus much is clear. But save in so far as Milchhöfer's plans reproduce the Piraeus of B.C. 450 or 400, we cannot discern either the shape or the size of the house-blocks, or the grouping adopted for any of the ordinary buildings, or the scheme of the ordinary roads. We may even wonder whether such things were of much account in the town-planning of that period. CHAPTER IV GREEK TOWN-PLANNING: THE MACEDONIAN AGE, 330-130 B.C. The Macedonian age brought with it, if not a new, at least a more systematic, method of town-planning. That was the age when Alexander and his Macedonian army conquered the East and his successors for several generations ruled over western Asia, when Macedonians and Greeks alike flocked into the newly-opened world and Graeco-Macedonian cities were planted in bewildering numbers throughout its length and breadth. Most of these cities sprang up full-grown; not seldom their first citizens were the discharged Macedonian soldiery of the armies of Alexander and his successors. The map of Turkey in Asia is full of them. They are easily recognized by their names, which were often taken from those of Alexander and his generals and successors, their wives, daughters, and relatives. Thus, one of Alexander's youngest generals, afterwards Seleucus I, sometimes styled Nicator, founded several towns called Seleucia, at least three called Apamea, and others named Laodicea and Antiochia, thereby recording himself, his Iranian wife Apama, his mother Laodice and his father Antiochus, and his successors seem to have added other towns bearing the same name. Indeed, two-thirds of the town-names which are prominent in the later history of Asia Minor and Syria, date from the age of Alexander and his Macedonians. Many discoveries show that these towns were laid out with a regular 'chess-board' street-plan. That method of town-planning now made definite entry into the European world. No architect or statesman is recorded to have invented or systematically encouraged it. Alexander himself and his architect, one Dinocrates of Rhodes or perhaps of Macedonia, seem to have employed it at Alexandria in Egypt, and this may have set the fashion. Seven years after Alexander's death it recurs at Nicaea in Bithynia, which was refounded by one of Alexander's successors in 323 B.C. and was laid out on this fashion. But no ancient writer credits either the founder or the architect of Alexandria or the founder of Nicaea with any particular theory on the subject. If the chess-board fashion becomes now, with seeming suddenness, the common--although not the universal--rule, that is probably the outcome of the developments sketched in the last chapter. Approximations to chess-board planning had been here and there employed in the century before Alexander. When his conquests and their complicated sequel led, amongst other results, to the foundation of many new towns, it was natural that the most definite form of planning should be chosen for general use. We might, however, wonder whether its adoption was helped by the military character of the generals who founded, and the discharged soldiers who formed the first inhabitants of so many among these towns. Military men are seldom averse to rigidity. It is worth noting, in this connexion, that when chess-board planning came into common use in the Roman Empire, many--perhaps most--of the towns to which it was applied were 'coloniae' manned by time-expired soldiers. So, too, in the Middle Ages and even in comparatively modern times, the towns laid out with rectangular street-plans in northern Italy, in Provence, in the Rhine Valley, are for the most part due in some way or other to military needs.[23] In our own days rectangular planning is a dominant feature of the largest and newest industrial towns. They are adapting a military device to the purposes of an industrial age. [23] Since the invention of artillery, the rectangular street-plan has been regarded by soldiers as useful in defending the streets of a town. Aristotle, however, expressly observes in the _Politics_ that, in street warfare, tortuous lanes were far better than straight avenues for the defence, and he recommends that the rectangular pattern should be adopted only 'in parts and in places', though he does not explain how this would work out (_Politics,_ iv. 11, p. 1330). [Illustration: FIG. 6. GENERAL OUTLINE OF PRIENE. A, B, C. Gates. D, E, F, H, M, P. Temples (see fig. 7). G. Agora, Market. I. Council House, K. Prytaneion. L, Q. Gymnasium. N. Theatre, O. Water-reservoir, R. Race-course.] [Illustration: FIG. 7. PART OF PRIENE AS EXCAVATED 1895-8. (From the large plan by Wiegand and Schrader.)] [Illustration: FIG. 8. PRIENE, PANORAMA OF THE TOWN. (As restored by Zippelius.)] _Priene_ (figs. 6-8). The best instance of the new system is not perhaps the most famous. Priene was a little town on the east coast of the Aegean. The high ridge of Mycale towered above it; Miletus faced it across an estuary; Samos stood out seawards to the west. In its first dim days it had been perched on a crag that juts out from the overhanging mountain; there its life began, we hardly know when, in the dawn of Greek history. But it had been worn down in the fifth century between the upper and the nether millstone of the rival powers of Samos and Miletus. Early in the Macedonian age it was refounded. The old Acropolis was given up. Instead, a broad sloping terrace, or more exactly a series of terraces, nearer the foot of the hill, was laid out with public buildings--Agora, Theatre, Stoa, Gymnasium, Temples, and so forth--and with private houses. The whole covered an area of about 750 yds. in length and 500 yds. in width. Priene was, therefore, about half the size of Pompeii (p. 63). It had, as its excavators calculate, about 400 individual dwelling-houses and a population possibly to be reckoned at 4,000. In the centre was the Agora or market-place, with a temple and other large buildings facing on to it; round them were other public buildings and some eighty blocks of private houses, each block measuring on an average 40 x 50 yds. and containing four or five houses. The broader streets, rarely more than 23 ft. wide, ran level along the terraces and parallel to one another. Other narrower streets, generally about 10 ft. wide, ran at right angles up the slopes, with steps like those of the older Scarborough or of Assisi.[24] The whole area has not yet been explored and we do not know whether the houses were smaller or larger, richer or poorer, in one quarter than in another, but the regularity of the street-plan certainly extended over the whole site. [24] Compare Soluntum, p. 36, n. 2. Despite this reasoned and systematic arrangement, no striking artistic effects appear to have been attempted. No streets give vistas of stately buildings. No squares, save that of the Agora--120 by 230 ft. within an encircling colonnade--provide open spaces where larger buildings might be grouped and properly seen. Open spaces, indeed, such as we meet, in mediaeval and Renaissance Italy or in modern English towns of eighteenth century construction, were very rare in Priene. Gardens, too, must have been almost entirely absent. In the area as yet uncovered, scarcely a single dwelling-house possessed any garden ground or yard.[25] [25] Wiegand and Schrader, _Priene, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung in den Jahren 1895-8_ (Berlin, 1904). Professor P. Gardner gave a good account to the Town-Planning Conference (_Proceedings_, pp. 112-122). I am indebted to him for two of my illustrations. _Miletus_ (fig. 9). The skill of German archaeologists has revealed what town-planning meant in a small town rebuilt in the Alexandrine period. No other even approximately complete example has been as yet uncovered on any other site. But spade-work at the neighbouring and more famous city of Miletus has uncovered similar street-planning there. In one quarter, the only one yet fully excavated, the streets crossed at right angles and enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measuring 32 x 60 yds. (according to the excavators) but sub-divided into blocks of about 32 yds. square (fig. 9). These blocks differ somewhat in shape from those of Priene, which are more nearly square; whether they differ in date is more doubtful. They are certainly not earlier than the Macedonian era, and one German archaeologist places the building or rebuilding of this quarter of Miletus after that of Priene and in a 'late Hellenistic' and apparently Roman period. There is unquestionably much Roman work in Miletus; there seems, however, no sufficient reason for ascribing the house-blocks shown on fig. 7 to any date but some part of the Macedonian period. Though differently shaped, they do not differ very greatly in actual area from those of Priene. They are somewhat smaller, but only by about 60 sq. yds. in each average-sized plot.[26] [26] Wiegand, _Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie_, 1911, Anhang; _Archäol. Anzeiger_, 1911, 420 foll. [Illustration: FIG. 9. MILETUS, AS EXCAVATED BY WIEGAND. (_Archãologischer Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 421.)] _Alexandria_. A yet more famous town, founded by Alexander himself, is definitely recorded by ancient writers to have been laid out in the same quasi-chess-board fashion, with one long highway, the Canopic Street, running through it from end to end for something like four miles.[27] Unfortunately the details of the plan are not known with any certainty. Excavations were conducted at the instigation of Napoleon III in 1866 by an Arab archaeologist, Mahmud Bey el Fallaki, and, according to him, showed a regular and rectangular scheme in which seven streets ran east and west while thirteen ran north and south at right angles to them. The house-blocks divided by these streets were thought to vary somewhat in size but to measure in general about 300 x 330 metres.[28] More recent research, however, has not confirmed Mahmud's plans. The excavations of Mr. Hogarth and M. Botti suggest that many of his lines are wrong and that even his Canopic Street is incorrectly laid down. Mr. Hogarth, indeed, concludes that 'it is hopeless now to sift his work; those who would treat the site of Alexandria scientifically must ignore him and start _de novo_'. More recent excavation, carried out by Dr. Noack in 1898-9, seemed to show that the ancient streets which can now be traced beneath Alexandria belong to a Roman age, though they may of course follow older lines, and that, if some items in Mahmud's plans are possibly right, the errors and omissions are serious. We may accept as certain the statement that Alexandria was laid out with a rectangular town-plan; we cannot safely assume that Mahmud has given a faithful picture of it.[29] [27] Strabo, xvii. 793. [28] Mahmud Bey, _Mémoire sur l'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Copenhagen, 1872); Néroutsos Bey, _L'ancienne Alexandrie_ (Paris, 1888). [29] D.G. Hogarth, _Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund_, 1894-5, p. 28, and _Hellenic Journal_, xix. 326; F. Noack, _Athen. Mitteil._ xxv. (1900), pp. 232, 237. Dr. Noack thought that his results confirmed Mahmud; to me, as to some others, they seem rather to yield the conclusions indicated in the text. _Nicaea_. Priene, Miletus, and Alexandria supply more or less well-known instances of Macedonian town-planning. They can be reinforced by a crowd of less famous examples, attested by literature or by actual remains. One of the most characteristic is known to us from literature, Nicaea in Bithynia, founded by one of the Macedonians in 316 B.C. and renamed by another some years later in honour of his wife Nicaea. Strabo, writing about A.D. 15, describes it and his description no doubt refers to arrangements older than the Romans. It formed, he says, a perfect square in which each side measured four stades, a little over 800 yds. In each side--apparently in the middle of each side--there was one gate, and the streets within the walls were laid out at right angles to one another. A man who stood at a certain spot in the middle of the Gymnasium could see straight to all the four gates.[30] Here is the chess-board pattern in definite form, though the central portion of the city may have been laid out under the influence of spectacular effect rather than of geometry. [30] Strabo, 565, 566. _Sicyon, Thebes, &c._ Another Macedonian town-plan may be found at Sicyon, a little west of Corinth. This old Greek city was rebuilt by Demetrius Poliorcetes about 300 B.C., and is described by a Greek writer of the first century B.C. as possessing a regular plan and roads crossing at right angles. The actual remains of the site, explored in part by English and French archaeologists early in the nineteenth century, show some streets which run with mathematical straightness from north-east to south-west and others which run from north-west to south-east.[31] These streets might, indeed, date from the period when Sicyon was the chief town of the Roman province of Achaia, the period (that is) between the overthrow of Corinth in 146 B.C. and its restoration just a century later. But that was not an epoch when such rebuilding is likely to have been carried through. Friendly as the Republican government of Rome showed itself in other ways to Hellas, there is no reason to think that it spent money on town-planning in Hellenic cities. It is far more probable that the town-plan of Sicyon dates from the Macedonians. [31] Diodorus Sic. xx. 102; _Expédition scientifique de Morée, archit. et sculpture_, iii (1838), plate LXXXI. To the same Macedonian epoch we may perhaps ascribe the building or rather the rebuilding of Boeotian Thebes, which one who passes for a contemporary writer under the name of Dicaearchus, describes as 'recently divided up into straight streets'.[32] To the same period Strabo definitely assigns the newer town of Smyrna, lying in the plain close to the harbour. It was due, he says, to the labours of the Macedonians, Antigonus, and Lysimachus.[33] We may perhaps assign to the same period the town-planning of Mitylene in Lesbos, which Vitruvius mentions as so splendid and so unhealthy, were it not that his explanation of its unhealthiness suggests rather a fan-shaped outline than a square. It was, he says, intolerable, whatever wind might blow. With a south wind, the wind of damp and rain, every one was ill. With a north-west wind, every one coughed. With a north wind, no one could stand out of doors for the chilliness of its blasts.[34] Streets that lay open to the north and the north-west and the south, equally and alike, could only be found in a town-plan fashioned like a fan. But perhaps Vitruvius only selected three of the plagues of Lesbos. [32] Dicaearchus, p. 143. [33] Strabo, 646. [34] Vitruvius, i. 6. In other cases the same planning was probably adopted, although the evidence as yet known shows only a rectangular plan of main streets, such as we have met in Pre-Macedonian Greece. In Macedonia itself, Thessalonika, laid out perhaps about 315 B.C., had at least one main street running southwards to the sea and two more running east and west at right angles to that.[35] In Asia two Syrian towns, which occupy sites closed to Hellenic culture before Alexander, may serve as examples. Apamea on the Orontes was built by the Macedonians, rose forthwith to importance, and retained its vigorous prosperity through the Roman Empire; in A.D. 6 it was 'numbered' by Sulpicius Quirinius, then the governor of Syria, and the census showed as many as 117,000 citizens settled in the city and its adjacent 'territory'. Its ruins seem to be mainly earlier than the Romans, and its streets may well date from its Macedonian founders. In outline it is an irregular oblong, nearly an English mile in length and varying in width from half to two-thirds of a mile. A broad and straight street, lined throughout with colonnades, runs from end to end of its length and passes at least five great buildings, which seem to be the temples and palaces of the Seleucid kings. Two other streets cross this main street at right angles. Whether the smaller thoroughfares took the same lines can be determined only by excavation. It would be a gentle guess to think so.[36] [35] Tafrali, _Topographie de Thess._ pp. 121 foll. and plan. [36] E. Sachau, _Reise in Syrien_ (1883), p. 76; Mommsen, _Ephemeris epigr_. iv, p. 514, and _Mon. Ancyr._ (ed. 2), p. 540. Further south, on the edge of the Haurân, stood the town of Gerasa. This too, like Apamea, was built by the Macedonians and flourished not only in their days but during the following Roman age. Its general outline was ovoid, its greatest diameter three quarters of a mile, its area some 235 acres--nearly the same with Roman Cologne and Roman Cirencester. Its streets resembled those of Apamea. A colonnaded highway ran straight through from north to south; two other streets crossed at right angles, and its chief public buildings, the Temple of the Sun and three other temples, two theatres and two public baths, stood near these three streets (fig. 10). Again the evidence proves rectangular town-planning in broad outline; excavation alone can tell the rest.[37] [37] _Zeitschrift des deutschen Palãstina-Vereins_, xxv (1902), plate 6; Bãdeker, _Palestine and Syria_ (1906), p. 140. For the neighbouring Bostra, see p. 136. [Illustration: FIG. 10. GERASA] In the towns just described a distinctive feature is the 'chess-board' pattern of streets and rectangular house-blocks. That, of course, is the feature which most concerns us here. It may not have looked so predominant to their builders and inhabitants. The towns which the Macedonians founded were not seldom rich and large; several were the capitals of powerful and despotic rulers. In such towns we expect great public buildings, temples, palaces. It is not surprising if sometimes those who reared them cared solely for the spectacular grouping of magnificent structures and forgot the private houses and the general plan of the town. _Pergamum_. One such instance from the Macedonian age, perhaps the most instructive which we could ever hope to get,[38] is Pergamum, in the north-west of Asia Minor. This has been thoroughly explored by German science; its remains are superb; its chief buildings date from an age when town-planning had grown familiar to the Greek world. About 300 B.C. it was a hill-town where a Macedonian chief could bestow a war-chest. It grew both populous and splendid in the third and second centuries B.C. under the Attalid kings; later builders, Augustus or Trajan or other, added little either to its general design or to its architectural glory. The dominant idea was that of a semi-circle of great edifices, crowning the crest and inner slopes of a high crescent-shaped ridge. Near the northern and highest end of this ridge stood the palace of the Attalid princes, afterwards buried beneath a temple in honour of Trajan. Next, to the south, was the Library--with stores of papyri worth more perhaps to the world than all the architecture of Pergamon. The middle of the crescent held the shrine of Athena, goddess of Pergamon, and beside it the Altar of Zeus the Saviour, gigantic in size, splendid with sculpture, itself the equal of an Acropolis. Lastly, the southern or lower end of the ridge bore a temple of Dionysus and an Agora for Assemblies. [38] Ephesus, refounded by Lysimachus about 281 B.C., might perhaps be another. But the repeated excavations there, though they have taught us much about the temples and other large edifices of the great city, seem to have left the streets comparatively unexplored. These buildings ringed the hill-top in stately semi-circle; below them, a theatre was hewn out of the slopes and a terrace 250 yds. long was held up by buttresses against precipitous cliffs. Lower yet, beneath the Agora, the town of common men covered the lower hill-side in such order or disorder as its steepness allowed. Here was no conventional town-planning. Only a yet lower and later city, built in Roman days on more or less level spaces beside the stream Selinus, seems perhaps to have been laid out in chess-board fashion.[39] The Attalid kings, the founders of Pergamon, cared only for splendid buildings splendidly adorned. If their abrupt hill-side forbade the straight and broad processional avenues of some other Greek cities, they crowned their summits instead with a crescent of temples and palaces which had not its like on the shores of the Aegean. [39] P. Schatzmann, _Athen. Mitteil_. xxxv. (1910) 385; _Archãol. Anzeiger_ (1910), p. 541. This lowest city is covered by a swarm of modern houses and hovels, and has not been very fully explored. Yet even Pergamon had its building-laws and by-laws for the protection of common life. A Pergamene inscription contains part of a 'Royal Law' which apparently dates from one of the Attalid rulers. It is imperfect. But we can recognize some of the items for which it provided. Houses which fell or threatened to fall on to the public street, or which otherwise became ruinous, could be dealt with by the Astynomi; if their owners failed to repair them, these magistrates were to make good the defects themselves and to recover the cost, and a fine over and above it, from the owners; if the Astynomi neglected their duty, the higher magistrates, the Strategi, were to take up the matter. Streets were to be cleaned and scavenged by the same Astynomi. Brick-fields were expressly forbidden within the city. The widths of roads outside the town were fixed and owners of adjacent land were held liable for their repair, and there was possibly some similar rule, not preserved on the inscription, for roads inside the walls; at Priene, it seems, these latter were in the care of the municipality. There were provisions, too, for the repair of common walls which divided houses belonging to two owners, and also for the prevention of damp where two houses stood side by side on a slope and the wall of the lower house stood against the soil beneath the upper house.[40] [40] Kolbe, _Athen. Mitteil_. xxvii. 47 and xxix. 75; Hitzig, _Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, roman. Abteilung_ xxvi. 433. These rules are very like those which were coming into use before 330 B.C. (p. 37). Only, they are more elaborate, and it is significant that the inscriptions begin in Macedonian and later days to give more and fuller details as to the character of these laws and as to the existence in many cities of officials to execute them. It is not surprising to find that Roman legislation of the time of Caesar and the early Empire applies these or very similar rules to the local government of the Roman municipalities of the Empire (p. 137). So common in the Macedonian world was the town-planning which has been described above, that the literature of the period, even in its casual phrases and incidental similes, speaks of towns as being normally planned in this fashion. Two examples from two very different authors will suffice as illustration. Polybius, writing somewhere about B.C. 150, described in well-known chapters the scheme of the Roman camp, and he concludes much as follows: 'This being so, the whole outline of the camp may be summed up as right-angled and four-sided and equal-sided, while the details of its street-planning and its general arrangement are precisely parallel to those of a city' (VI. 31, 10). He was comparing the Greek town, as he knew it in his own country, with the encampment of the Roman army; he found in the town the aptest and simplest parallel which he could put before his readers. A much later writer, living in a very different environment and concerned with a very different subject, fell nevertheless under the influence of the same ideas. Despite his 'sombre scorn' for things Greek and Roman, St. John, when he wished to figure the Holy City Jerusalem, centre of the New Heaven and New Earth, pictured it as a city lying foursquare, the length as large as the breadth, and entered by twelve gates, 'on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.'[41] [41] Revelation xxi. 13, 16. Some of the details are, no doubt, drawn from the later chapters of Ezekiel, but the difference between the two writers is plain. The instances and items cited in the preceding paragraphs lie within the limits of the Greek world and of the Roman Empire. We might perhaps wish to pursue our speculations and ask whether this vigorous system influenced foreign lands, and whether the Macedonian army carried the town-plan of their age, in more or less perfect form, as far as their conquests reached. Alexander settled many soldiers in lands which were to form his eastern and north-eastern frontiers, as if against the central-asiatic nomads. Merv and Herat, Khokand and Kandahar,[42] have been thought--and, it seems, thought with some reason--to date from the Macedonian age and in their first period to have borne the name Alexandria. But no Aurel Stein has as yet uncovered their ruins, and speculation about them is mere speculation. [42] See p. 145 below. CHAPTER V ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING. THE ORIGINS If Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairly well known, the Roman Empire offers a yet larger mass of certain facts, both in Italy and in the provinces. The beginnings, naturally, are veiled in obscurity. We can trace the system in full work at the outset of the Empire; we cannot trace the steps by which it grew. Evidences of something that resembles town-planning on a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or three corners of early Italian history--first in the prehistoric Bronze Age, then in a very much later Etruscan town, and thirdly on one or two sites of middle Italy connected with the third or fourth century B.C. These evidences are scanty and in part uncertain, and their bearing on our problem is not always clear, but they claim a place in an account of Italian town-planning. To them must be added, fourthly, the important evidence which points to the use of a system closely akin to town-planning in early Rome itself. _The Terremare_ (fig. 11). (i) We begin in the Bronze Age, somewhere between 1400 and 800 B.C., amidst the so-called Terremare. More than a hundred of these strange settlements have been examined by Pigorini, Chierici, and other competent Italians. Most of them occur in a well-defined district between the Po and the Apennines, with Piacenza at its west end and Bologna at its east end. Some have also been noted on the north bank of the Po near Mantua, both east and west of the Mincio, and two or three elsewhere in Italy. Archaeologically, they all belong to the Bronze Age; they seem, further, to be the work of a race distinct from any previous dwellers in North Italy, which had probably just moved south from the Danubian plains. At some time or other this race had dwelt in lake-villages. They were now settled on dry ground and far away from lakes--one of their hamlets is high in the Apennines, nearly 1,900 ft. above the sea. But they still kept in the Terremare the lacustrine fashion of their former homes. The nature of these strange villages can best be explained by an account of the best-known and the largest example of them (fig. 11). At Castellazzo di Fontanellato, a little west of Parma, are the vestiges of a settlement which, with its defences, covered an area of about forty-three acres. In outline it was four-sided; its east and west sides were parallel to one another, and the whole resembled a rectangle which had been pulled a trifle askew. Round it ran a solid earthen rampart, 50 ft. broad at the base and strengthened with woodwork (plan, B). In front of the rampart was a wet ditch (A), 100 ft. wide, fed with fresh water from a neighbouring brook by an inlet at the south-western corner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the east (D). One wooden bridge gave access to this artificial island at its southern end (E). The area within the rampart, a little less than thirty acres in extent, was divided into four parts by two main streets, which would have intersected at right angles had the place been strictly rectangular; other narrower streets ran parallel to these main thoroughfares. On the east side (F) was a small 'citadel'--_arx_ or _templum_--with ditch, rampart and bridge of its own (G, H); in this were a trench and some pits (K) which seemed by their contents to be connected with ritual and religion. Outside the whole (L, M) were two cemeteries, platforms of urns set curiously like the village itself, and also a little burning _ghat_.[43] The population of the village is necessarily doubtful. A German writer, Nissen, has reckoned it at four or five thousand, men, women and children together, crowded into small huts. But this estimate may be too high. In any case, many of the Terremare are much smaller. [43] The literature of the Terremare is very large. The results obtained up to 1894 were summarized by F. von Duhn in the _Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher_, iv. 144; the best recent accounts are by T.E. Peet, _Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy_ (Oxford, 1909), chaps. 14 and 17, from which fig. 11 is taken, and R. Munro, _Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements_ (Edin., 1912), pp. 291-487 and plates xxxiii foll. A good brief sketch is given by Mr. H.S. Jones, _Companion to Roman History_, pp. 4-6. One point in the arrangement seems not quite clear. It is generally stated that the trapezoidal outline was adopted in order to allow the water to enter the ditch from a running stream and to part easily into two channels (fig. 11). That is quite intelligible. But, if so, one would expect the outlet to be at the opposite end, and not (as it actually is) in the middle of one side, where it would 'short-circuit' the current. (Mr. H.S. Jones seems to have confused inlet and outlet.) [Illustration: FIG. 11. TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO] These Terremare bear a strong likeness to the later Italian town-planning, and they are usually taken to be the oldest discoverable traces of that system. This means that the Italian town-planning was derived from other sources besides Greece or the East, since the Terremare are far older than Hippodamus or even Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib (pp. 23, 29). It must be added that our present knowledge does not allow us to follow the actual development of the Terremare into historic times, and to link them closely with the later civilization of Central Italy. When some modern scholars call the men of the Terremare by the name 'Italici', they express a hope rather than a proven fact. It may be safer, for the moment, to avoid that name and to refrain from theories as to the exact relation between prehistoric and historic. But we shall see below that the existence of a relation between the two is highly probable. _Marzabotto_ (fig. 12). [Illlustration: FIG. 12. MARZABOTTO. (AB, FG, CD, main streets. The shading represents excavated houses.)] (ii) A greater puzzle, dating probably from the fifth century B.C., meets us in the ruins of a nameless little Etruscan town which stood outside of Etruria proper, on the north slopes of the Apennines. Its site is fifteen miles south of Bologna, close to the modern Marzabotto, on the left bank of the little river Reno. Only a tiny part has been uncovered. But the excavators have not hesitated to complete their results conjecturally into a rectangular town-plan, with streets crossing at right angles and oblong blocks of houses measuring from 158 to 176 yds. in length and 37 or 44 or 71 yds. in width (fig. 12). The whole must have been laid out at once, and the smaller remains seem to show that this was done by Etruscans. In the fourth century the place was sacked by the Gauls, and though there was later occupation,[44] its extent is doubtful.[45] Further excavation is, however, needed to confirm this generally accepted interpretation of the place. Nothing has been noted elsewhere in Etruria or its confines to connect the Etruscans with any rectangular form of town-plan. At Veii, for example, most of the Etruscan city has lain desolate and unoccupied ever since the Romans destroyed it, but the site shows no vestige of streets crossing at right angles or of oblong blocks of houses. At Vetulonia the excavated fragment of an Etruscan city shows only curving and irregular streets.[46] Nor is there real reason to believe that the 'Etruscan teaching' learnt by Rome included an art of town-planning (p. 71) or that, as a recent French writer has conjectured, the Etruscans brought any such art with them from the East and communicated it to the West. We must conclude that at Marzabotto we have a piece of evidence which we cannot set into its proper historical framework. We might perhaps call it an early blend of Greek and Italian methods and compare it with Naples (p. 100). It is odd that four out of seven house-blocks should measure just under 120 Roman ft. in width and thus approximate to a figure which we meet often elsewhere in the Roman world (p. 79). But it would be well to learn more of the plan by further excavation. [44] _Archaeological Journal_, 1903, p. 237. [45] Brizio, _Monumenti Antichi_, i. 252, superseding Gozzadini's _Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto_ (Bologna, 1865-70); Grenier, _Bologne villanovienne_ &c. (Paris, 1912) p. 98. Compare _Authority and Archaeology_, pp. 305, 306. [46] _Notizie degli Scavi_ 1895, p. 272; Durm, _Baukunst der Etr_. p. 39. _Pompeii_ (fig. 13). (iii) A third piece of evidence can be found on a site which historians and novelists alike connect mainly with the Roman Empire, but which dates back to the days of the early or middle Republic. Pompeii began in or before the sixth century B.C. as an Oscan city. For a while, we hardly know when, it was ruled by Etruscans. Later, about 420 B.C., it was occupied by Samnites. Finally, it became Roman; it was refounded in 80 B.C. as a 'colonia' and repeopled by soldiers discharged from the armies of Sulla. In A.D. 79 it reached its end in the disaster to which it owes its fame. Its life, therefore, was long and full of destruction, re-building, enlargement. Its architectural history is naturally hard to follow. Many of its buildings, however, can be dated more or less roughly by the style of their ornament or the character of their material, and the lines of its streets suggest some conjectures as to its growth which deserve to be stated even though they may conflict with the received opinions about Pompeii. It will be understood, of course, that these conjectures, like all speculations on Pompeii, are limited by the fact that barely half of its area has been as yet uncovered, and that very little search has been made beneath the floors and pavements of its latest period.[47] [47] For recent plans of Pompeii the reader may consult the second edition (1908) of August Mau's _Pompeii_, or the fifth edition (1910) of his _Führer durch Pompeii_, re-edited by W. Barthel. A plan on a large scale is given in the last part of _CIL_. iv (1909); there are also occasional plans in the _Notizie degli Scavi_. See also C. Weichardt, _Pompeji vor der Zerstorung_ (Leipzig, 1897). [Illustration: FIG. 13. POMPEII. (T = Temple. The area of the supposed original settlement is outlined in black.)] As we know it at present, Pompeii is an irregular oval area of about 160 acres, planted on a small natural hill and girt with a stone wall nearly two miles in circumference (fig. 13). On the west there was originally access to the sea, and on this side the walls have disappeared or have not been yet uncovered. Near this end of the town is the Forum, with the principal temples and public buildings round it. At the east end of the town, nearly 1200 yds. from the western extremity, is the amphitheatre, and the town-walls appear to have been drawn so as to include it. Two main streets, now called the Strada di Nola and the Strada dell' Abbondanza, cross the town from SW. to NE. The main streets from NW. to SE. are less distinct, but the Strada Stabiana certainly ran from wall to wall. While there is some appearance of symmetry in the streets generally, it does not go very far; there is hardly a right angle, or any close approach to a right angle, at any street corner. It is generally held, as Mau has argued, that the whole town was laid out at once, perhaps during the Etruscan period, on one plan of streets crossing at right angles. Two principal streets, those now styled the Strada di Mercurio and the Strada di Nola, are considered to be the main streets of this earliest town-plan, and to give it its general direction. A third main street, the Strada Stabiana, which cuts obliquely across from the Vesuvian to the Stabian Gate and mars the supposed symmetry of this town-plan, is ascribed to the influence of a small natural depression along which it runs, while a small area east of the Forum, which also breaks loose from the general scheme, is thought to have been laid out abnormally in order to remedy the effect of this obliquity.[48] This theory is open to objections. In the first place the streets (even apart from those just east of the Forum) do not really form one symmetrical plan. Region VI fits very ill with Regions I and III. Both indicate systematic planning. But Region VI is laid out in oblong blocks 110 ft. wide and either 310 ft. or 480 ft. long, while Regions I and III are made up of approximately square blocks about 200 ft. each way. Moreover, the orientation of the blocks is different. Those in Region VI follow the lines of the Strada di Mercurio; those of Regions I and II, and perhaps also of Region V, are dominated by the Strada Stabiana. Yet there is no obvious reason why this difference should not have been avoided; it results, indeed, in awkward corners and inconvenient spaces. Nor, again, can we accept as in any degree adequate the cause assigned by Mau for the odd orientation of the streets next to the east side of the Forum. [48] Mau, _Führer_ (1910), p. 5, 'um die Schiefwinkeligkeit zu vermindern.' Truly, a very inadequate reason. These streets which lie round and east of the Forum suggest a different development. Pompeii may have begun with a little Oscan town planted in what became its south-western corner, near the Water-Gate and the Forum, within the area of Regions II and IV. Here is a little network of streets, about 300 by 400 yds. across (25 acres), which harmonizes ill with the streets in the rest of the town, which lies close to the river-haven on the Sarno, which includes the Forum and Basilica--probably the oldest public sites, though not the oldest surviving structures, in Pompeii--and which is large enough to have formed the greater part or even the whole of a prehistoric city. The earliest building as yet excavated at Pompeii, the Doric Temple, with its precinct now known as the Forum Triangulare, stood on the edge of this area looking out from its high cliff over the plain of the Sarno. Originally this Temple may have stood just within the first town-wall, or perhaps just without it, sheltered by the precipice which it crowns. This area has all the appearance of an 'Altstadt'. No doubt it has been much altered by later changes. In particular, Forum and Basilica have grown far beyond their first proportions, and the buildings which surround them have been added, altered, enlarged out of all resemblance to the original plan. Nevertheless, this theory seems to account better than any other for this curious little corner of streets that are hardly regular even in their relations to one another and are wholly irreconcilable to the rest of the town. Round this primitive city grew up the greater Pompeii. The growth must have been rather by two or three distinct accretions than a gradual and continuous development. At present we cannot trace these stages. To do that we must wait till the excavations can be carried deeper down, and till the other half of the city has been uncovered, or at least till the lines of its streets and the shapes of its house-blocks have been determined, like those of Priene (p. 42), by special inquiry. All that is as yet certain is that Regions I, III, V, and VI were laid out, and their houses were (in part at least) in existence before--perhaps long before--80 B.C., when the Sullan colony was planted,[49] and we see also that Region VI is planned differently from I and III. [49] Region VI contains an ancient column of the sixth century B.C. (Mau, _Führer_, p. 113), but this may not be _in situ_. Another fact claims notice. The town-planning of Pompeii is in the main trapezoidal, not rectangular. Neither its oblongs, nor its squares, nor its street-crossings exhibit true right angles, though many of the rooms and peristyles in the private houses are regular enough. In this feature Pompeii resembles the trapezoidal outlines of the Terremare (fig. 11). It resembles also much Roman military work, both of Republican and of Imperial date, which disregards the strict right angle and accepts squares and oblongs which are, so to say, askew. The motive of the Terremare is supposed to have been, as I have said above, that of providing an easy flow for the water in the encircling moat. The motive of various military camps may perhaps be found rather in a wish to secure the same area as that of an orthodox rectangle, even though the ground forbade the strict execution of the orthodox figure. Whatever the reason, the trapezoidal house-blocks of Pompeii exhibit a feature which is not alien to the earlier town-planning of Italy, though it is strange to the cities of Greece. _Norba_. Not only do we need to know more of Pompeii itself. We need evidence also from other Italian towns of similar age. Here our ignorance is deep. Only one site which can help has been even tentatively explored. Norba, which once crowned a spur of the Monti Lepini above the Pontine marshes, was founded as a Roman town, according to the orthodox chronology, in 492 B.C.[50] But the received chronology of the earlier Republic, minute as it looks, probably deserves no more credence than the equally minute but mainly fictitious dates assigned by the Saxon Chronicle to the beginnings of English History. Actual remains found at Norba suggest rather that it was founded (not necessarily by Rome) about, or a little before, 300 B.C.; it is therefore later than the Terremare and Marzabotto, and later also than the Oscan age of Pompeii. On the other hand, it came to an end in the Sullan period (82 B.C.). Its excavation has little more than begun, but it already indicates a scheme of streets somewhat resembling that of Pompeii,[51] and it is a useful adjunct to our better knowledge of the more famous town. The two together furnish examples of the town-planning of middle Italy of about 400-300 B.C., in days that are only half historic, and thus help to fill the gap between the Terremare and the fully developed system of the Roman Imperial period. [50] Livy ii. 34, contradicted, however, by xxvii. 10 and by Dionysius Halic. vii. 13 _ad fin_. [51] _Notizie degli Scavi_, 191, p. 558, 1903, p. 261; Frothingham, _Roman Cities_, plate ix. I am indebted to Dr. T. Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome, for information as to the site. Excavations made in 1823 at the Roman Falerii (founded 241 B.C.) show streets crossing at right angles, but the piece unearthed was small and the date uncertain (Canina, _Etruria Maritima_ i, plate ix). It may be permitted in this context to add a plan of a north Italian city, in which some of the modern streets recall one quarter of Pompeii (fig. 14). Modena, the Roman Mutina, was founded as a 'colonia' with 2,000 male settlers in 183 B.C., and despite various misfortunes became one of the chief towns in the Lombard plain. One part of this town shows a row of long narrow blocks measuring about 20 x 160 metres (fig. 14, plan A), with a second row of shorter blocks of the same width and about half the length (plan B). These blocks have been much marred and curtailed by the inevitable changes of town life, but their symmetry cannot be accidental, and if they date back, as is quite possible, to Roman days, they may be put beside the Sixth Region of Pompeii which contains two rows of similar blocks.[52] [52] Fig. 14 is taken from Zuccagni-Orlandini (1844). Kornemann suggests that Mutina was refounded about 40-20 B.C., but there seems to be no evidence of this break in its continuity. [Illustration: FIG. 14. MODENA. See p. 69.] (iv) There remains, fourthly, evidence relating to early Rome itself, and to customs and observances which obtained there. These customs belong to the three fields of religion, agrarian land-settlement and war. All three exhibit the same principle, the division of a definite space by two straight lines crossing at right angles at its centre, and (if need be) the further division of such space by other lines parallel to the two main lines. The Roman augur who asked the will of Heaven marked off a square piece of sky or earth--his _templum_--into four quarters; in them he sought for his signs. The Roman general who encamped his troops, laid out their tents on a rectangular pattern governed by the same idea. The commissioners who assigned farming-plots on the public domains to emigrant citizens of Rome, planned these plots on the same rectangular scheme--as the map of rural Italy is witness to this day. These Roman customs are very ancient. Later Romans deemed them as ancient as Rome itself, and, though such patriotic traditions belong rather to politics than to history, we find the actual customs well established when our knowledge first becomes full, about 200 B.C.[53] The Roman camp, for example, had reached its complex form long before the middle of the second century, when Polybius described it in words. Here, one can hardly doubt, are things older even than Rome. Scholars have talked, indeed, of a Greek origin or of an Etruscan origin, and the technical term for the Roman surveying instrument, _groma_, has been explained as the Greek word 'gnomon', borrowed through an Etruscan medium. But the name of a single instrument would not carry with it the origin of a whole art, even if this etymology were more certain than it actually is. Save for the riddle of Marzabotto (p. 61), we have no reason to connect the Etruscans with town-planning or with the Roman system of surveying. When the Roman antiquary Varro alleged that 'the Romans founded towns with Etruscan ritual', he set the fashion for many later assertions by Roman and modern writers.[54] But he did not prove his allegation, and it is not so clear as is generally assumed, that he meant 'Etruscan ritual' to include architectural town-planning as well as religious ceremonial. [53] The prologue to the Poenulus of Plautus (verse 49) which mentions 'limites' and a 'finitor', may well be as old as Plautus himself. But the 'centuriation' still visible in north Italy around colonies planted about 180 B.C. is no full proof of rectangular surveying at that date. These towns were re-founded at a much later date, and their lands, and even their streets, _may_ have been laid out anew. [54] Varro _ling. lat_. 5. 143 _oppida condebant Etrusco ritu, id est, iunctis bobus_, cf. Frontinus _de limit_. (grom. i. p. 27). These are Italian customs, far older than the beginnings of Greek influence on Rome, older than the systematic town-planning of the Greek lands, and older also than the Etruscans. They should be treated as an ancestral heritage of the Italian tribes kindred with Rome, and should be connected with the plan of Pompeii and with the far older Terremare. Many generations in the family tree have no doubt been lost. The genealogy can only be taken as conjectural. But it is a reasonable conjecture. In their original character these customs were probably secular rather than religious. They took their rise as methods proved by primitive practice to be good methods for laying out land for farming or for encamping armies. But in early communities all customs that touched the State were quasi-religious; to ensure their due performance, they were carried out by religious officials. At Rome, therefore, more especially in early times, the augurs were concerned with the delimitation alike of farm-plots and of soldiers' tents. They testified that the settlement, whether rural or military, was duly made according to the ancestral customs sanctioned by the gods. After-ages secularized once more, and as they secularized, they also introduced science. It was, perhaps, Greek influence which brought in a stricter use of the rectangle and a greater care for regular planning. It may be asked how all this applies to the planning of towns. We possess certainly no such clear evidence with respect to towns as with respect to divisions agrarian or military. But the town-plans which we shall meet in the following chapters show very much the same outlines as those of the camp or of the farm plots. They are based on the same essential element of two straight lines crossing at right angles in the centre of a (usually) square or oblong plot. This is an element which does not occur, at least in quite the same form, at Priene or in other Greek towns of which we know the plans, and it may well be called Italian. We need not hesitate to put town and camp side by side, and to accept the statement that the Roman camp was a city in arms. Nor need we hesitate to conjecture further that in the planning of the town, as in that of the camp, Greek influence may have added a more rigid use of rectangular 'insulae'. When that occurred, will be discussed in Chapter VI. Whether the nomenclature of the augur, the soldier and the land-commissioner was adopted in the towns, is a more difficult, but fortunately a less important question. Modern writers speak of the _cardo_ and the _decumanus_ of Roman towns, and even apply to them more highly technical terms such as _striga_ and _scamnum_. For the use of _cardo_ in relation to towns there is some evidence (p. 107). But it is very slight, and for the use of the other terms there is next to no evidence at all.[55] The silence alike of literature and of inscriptions shows that they were, at the best, theoretical expressions, confined to the surveyor's office.[56] [55] Whether the _possessores ex vico Lucretio scamno primo_ of Cologne (Corpus XIII. 8254) had their property inside the 'colonia' of that place or in the country outside, may be doubted (Schulten, _Bonner Jahrb._ ciii. 28). [56] The phrase Roma Quadrata ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in this chapter. It does not seem, however, to be demonstrably older than the Ciceronian age. The line _et qui sextus erat Romae regnare quadratae_, once attributed to Ennius (ed. Vablen, 1854, 158), is clearly of much later date. As a piece of historical evidence, the phrase merely sums up some archaeologist's theory (very likely a correct theory, but still a theory) that the earliest Rome on the Palatine had a more or less rectangular outline. CHAPTER VI ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING: THE LATE REPUBLIC AND EARLY EMPIRE During the later Republic and the earlier Empire many Italian towns were founded or re-founded. To this result several causes contributed. Like the Greeks before them, the Romans of the Republic sent out from time to time compact bodies of emigrants whenever the home population had grown too large for its narrow space. These bodies were each large enough to form a small town, and thus each migration meant--or might mean--the foundation of a new town full-grown from its birth. The Greeks generally established new and politically independent towns. The Romans followed another method. Their colonists remained subject to Rome and constituted new centres of Roman rule, small quasi-fortresses of Roman dominion in outlying lands. Often the military need for such a stronghold had more to do with the foundation of a 'colonia' than the presence of too many mouths in the city. Cicero, speaking of a 'colonia' planted at Narbo (now Narbonne) in southern Gaul about 118 B.C., and planted perhaps with some regard to an actual overflow of population in contemporary Rome, calls it nevertheless 'a colonia of Roman citizens, a watch-tower of the Roman people, a bulwark against the wild tribes of Gaul'. Those words state very clearly the main object of many such foundations under Republic and Empire alike. Another reason for the establishment of 'coloniae' may be found in the history of the dying Republic and nascent Empire. During the civil wars of Sulla, of Caesar and of Octavian, huge armies were brought into the field by the rival military chiefs. As each conflict ended, huge masses of soldiery had to be discharged almost at once. For the sake of future peace it was imperative that these men should be quickly settled in some form of civic life in which they would abide. The form chosen was the familiar form of the 'colonia'. The time-expired soldiers were treated--not altogether unreasonably--as surplus population, and they were planted out in large bodies, sometimes in existing towns which needed population or at least a loyal population, sometimes in new towns established full-grown for the purpose. This method of dealing with discharged soldiers was continued during the early Empire, though it was then employed somewhat intermittently and the 'coloniae' were oftener planted in the provinces than in Italy itself; indeed the establishment of Italian 'coloniae', as distinct from grants of colonial rank by way of honour, almost ceased after A.D. 68. It is not easy to determine the number of such new foundations of towns in Italy. Some seventy or eighty are recorded from the early and middle periods of the Republic--previous to about 120 B.C.; Sulla added a dozen or so; Octavian (Augustus) in his earlier years established or helped to establish about thirty.[57] But these figures can hardly represent the whole facts. The one certainty is that, through the causes just detailed, a very large number of the Italian towns were either founded full-grown or re-founded under new conditions during the later Roman Republic and the earlier Empire. Few towns in Italy developed as Rome herself developed, expanding from small beginnings in a slow continuous growth which was governed by convenience and opportunism and untouched by any new birth or systematic reconstruction. [57] See Mommsen, _Gesamm. Schriften_ v. 203; Nissen, _Ital. Landeskunde_ ii. 27; Kornemann in Pauly-Wissowa, _Encycl._ iv. 520 foll. Coincident with these processes of urban expansion, we find, in many towns which can be connected with the later Republic or the Empire, examples of a definite type of town-planning. This type has obvious analogies with earlier Italy and with the town-planning of the Greek world, but is also in certain respects distinct from either. The town areas with which we have now to deal are small squares or oblongs; they are divided by two main streets into four parts and by other and parallel streets into square or oblong house-blocks ('insulae'), and the rectangular scheme is carried through with some geometrical precision. The 'insulae', whatever their shape--square or oblong--are fairly uniform throughout. Only, those which line the north side of the E. and W. street are often larger than the rest (pp. 88, 125).[58] The two main streets appear to follow some method of orientation connected with augural science. As a rule, one of them runs north and south, the other east and west, and now and again the latter street seems to point to the spot where the sun rises above the horizon on the dawn of some day important in the history of the town.[59] [58] Modern plans seem sometimes to imply that the 'insulae' which abutted on the walls were also abnormally large. That is because the corresponding modern blocks often include, with the original 'insula', the space between it and the wall, and also the wall itself which has been disused and built over. [59] See on this point some remarks by W. Barthel, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, cxx. 101-108. The public buildings of these towns are in general somewhat small and arranged with little attempt at processional or architectural splendour; they seldom dominate or even cross the scheme of streets. Open spaces are rare; the Forum, which corresponds to the Greek Agora, contains, like that, a paved open court, but this court is almost as much enclosed as the cloister of a mediaeval church or the quadrangle of a mediaeval college. Theatre and amphitheatre[60] might, no doubt, reach huge dimensions, but externally they were more often massive than ornamental and the amphitheatre often stood outside the city walls. Here and there a triumphal arch spanned a road where it approached a town, and provided the only architectural vista to be seen in most of these Roman towns. [60] In western Europe the provincial Roman amphitheatre averaged 45 x 70 yds. for its arena. Dimensions, of course, varied. There was no normal size for an infant town. Some, when first established, covered little more than 30 acres, the area of mediaeval Warwick. Others were four or five times as spacious; they were twice or nearly twice as large as mediaeval Oxford, no mean city in thirteenth-century England. Most of them, doubtless, grew beyond their first limits; a few spread as far as a square mile, twice the extent of mediaeval London. Similarly the 'insulae' varied from town to town. In one, Timgad, they were only 70 to 80 ft. square. Often they measured 75 to 80 yds. square, rather more than an acre, as at Florence, Turin, Pavia, Piacenza.[61] Occasionally they were larger, but they seldom exceeded three acres, and their average fell below the prevalent practice of modern chess-board planning. [61] For Florence and Turin see below; for Piacenza, the plans on the scale of 1:1000 and 1:5000 in L. Buroni's _Acque potabili di Piacenza_ (1895). In most towns, though not in all, the dimensions of the 'insulae' show a common element. In length or in breadth or in both, they usually approximate to 120 ft. or some multiple of that. The figure is significant. The unit of Roman land-surveying, the 'iugerum', was a rectangular space of 120 by 240 Roman feet--in English feet a tiny trifle less--and it seems to follow that 'insulae' were often laid out with definite reference to the 'iugerum'. The divisions may not have always been mathematically correct; our available plans are seldom good enough to let us judge of that,[62] and we do not know whether we ought to count the surface of the streets with the measurement of the 'insulae'. But the general practice seems clear, and it extended even to Britain (p. 129), and though blocks forming exactly a 'iugerum' or a half 'iugerum' are rare, the Italian land-measure certainly affected the civilization of the provincial towns. [62] Silchester and Timgad are the only two sites which have been planned well enough to provide accurate measurements. The large modern town-plans (e.g. of Turin, p. 86) are useful, but inadequate to our purpose; for one thing, they often exaggerate the width of the streets. One really needs actual measurements made on the spot. In this system perhaps the most peculiar feature is the intermixture of square and oblong 'insulae'. It is not merely the variation which can be traced in Priene (fig. 5), where some blocks are rather more square or oblong than others, but where all approach the same norm. The Roman towns which we are now considering show two varieties of house-blocks. Sometimes the blocks are square; sometimes, perhaps more often, they are oblong approximating to a square, like the blocks of Priene. But in a few cases, as at Naples among the more ancient, and at Carthage among the later foundations, they are oblong and the oblongs are very long and narrow. It is hard to detect any principle underlying the use of these various forms. No doubt differences of historical origin are ultimately the causes of the mixture. But our present knowledge does not reveal these origins. The evidence is, indeed, contradictory at every point. If the Graeco-Macedonian fashion be quoted as precedent for square or squarish 'insulae', the Terremare show the same. If the theoretical scheme of the earlier Roman camp seemed based on the long narrow oblong, the actual remains of legionary encampments of the second century B.C. at Numantia include many squares. If one part of Pompeii exhibits oblongs, another part is made up of squares. If Piacenza, first founded in north Italy about 183 B.C., and founded again a hundred and fifty years later, is laid out in squares, its coeval neighbour Modena prefers the oblong. If the old Greek city of Naples embodies an extreme type of oblong, so does the later Augustan Carthage (pp. 100, 113). In the historic period, it would seem, no sharp line was drawn, or felt to exist, between the various types of 'insulae'. In the main, the square or squarish-oblong was preferred. Local accidents, such as the convenience of the site at Carthage, led to occasional adoption of the narrower oblong. The Roman land-surveyors, it is true, distinguished the square and the oblong in a very definite way. The square, they alleged, was proper to the Italian land or to such provincial soil as enjoyed the privilege of being taxed--or freed from taxation--on the Italian scale. The oblong they connected with the ordinary tax-paying soil of the provinces. This distinction, however, was not carried out even in the agrarian surveys with which these writers were especially concerned,[63] and it applies still less to the towns. No doubt it is a fiction of the office. It would be only human nature if the surveyors, finding both forms in use, should invent a theory to account for them. [63] Schulten, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, ciii. 23, and references given there. The system sketched in the preceding paragraphs seems, as has been said (p. 73), to have sprung from a fusion of Greek or Graeco-Macedonian with Italian customs. Roman town-planning, like Roman art, was recast under Hellenistic influence and thus gained mathematical precision and symmetry. When this happened is doubtful. Foreign scholars often ascribe it to Augustus and find a special connexion between the first emperor and the chess-board town-plan. But the architect Vitruvius, who dedicated his book to Augustus and who gives some brief notice to town-planning, urges strongly that towns should not be laid out on the chess-board pattern, but rather on an eight-sided or (as we might call it) star-shaped plan.[64] He would hardly have denounced a scheme which had been specially taken up by his patron, nor indeed does his criticism of the chess-board system sound as if he were denouncing a novelty in Italian building. [64] i. 5 (21), 6 (28, 29). On the other hand there seems no great difficulty in the idea that the regularization of the old Italian town-plan by Greek influence took place spontaneously in the late Republic. We cannot, indeed, date the change. It must remain doubtful whether it came by degrees or all at once,[65] and whether the right-angled plans of towns like Aquileia[66] or Piacenza belonged to their first foundation, i.e. to about 180 B.C., or to later rearrangements. But it seems reasonable to believe that a Graeco-Italian rectangular fashion of town-planning did supersede an earlier, irregular, Italian style, and had become supreme before the end of the Republic. [65] Perhaps about 180 B.C., Mommsen, _Roman Hist._ iii. 206. [66] Aquileia was set up in 181 B.C. to guard the north-east gate of Italy, and was reinforced in 169. Its remains, so far as excavated, show a rectangular plan of oblong 'insulae'--some of 1-1/2 acres (74 by 94 yards), some larger--while, till its downfall, about A.D. 450, we hear no word of refoundation or wholesale rebuilding. But if its original area be the space of 70 acres which is usually assigned, that is not rectangular but a square somewhat askew, which fits very badly with the rectangular street-plan, and one would incline to ascribe the latter to a later date. See Maionica, _Fundkarte von Aquileia_. CHAPTER VII INSTANCES OF ITALIAN TOWN-PLANS The preceding chapters have dealt with the origins and general character of the Italian town-plan. We pass now to the remains which it has left in its own home, in Italy. These are many. In one city indeed, the greatest of all, no town-planning can be detected. Like Athens and Sparta, Rome shows that conservatism which marks so many capital cities. No part of it, so far as we know, was laid out on a rectangular or indeed on any plan.[67] It grew as it could. Its builders, above all its imperial builders, cared much for spectacular effects and architectural pomp. Even in late Republican times the gloomy mass of the Tabularium and the temples of the Capitol must have towered above the Forum in no mere accidental stateliness, and imperial Rome contained many buildings in many quarters to show that it was the capital of an Empire. But for town-planning we must go elsewhere. [67] The traces of prehistoric planning detected by some writers in Rome are very dubious. The sources of our knowledge are twofold. In a few cases archaeological excavation has laid bare the paving of Roman streets or the foundation of Roman house-blocks. More often mediaeval and modern streets seem to follow ancient lines and the ancient town-plan, or a part of it, survives in use to-day. Such survivals are especially common in the north of Italy. It is not, indeed, possible to gather a full list of them. He who would do that needs a longer series of good town-maps and good local histories than exist at present; he needs, too, a wider knowledge of mediaeval Italian history and a closer personal acquaintance with modern Italian towns, than a classical scholar can attempt. But much can be learnt even from our limited material.[68] [68] See the seventeenth century Atlases of Blaeu, Janssons, and others, the modern maps prepared by Grassellini and others about 1840-50 (some on the scale 1:4,000), and in particular the _Atlante geografico_ of Attilio Zuccagni-Orlandini (Firenze, 1844), and the recent town-maps of various Italian cities (mostly about 1:10,500). Different maps of the same town sometimes differ much in their detail. The Italian Government maps of the largest scale (1:25,000) are small for our present purpose and have been issued mainly for northern Italy. The evidence of the streets needs, however, to be checked in every case. It would be rash to assume a Roman origin for an Italian town simply because its streets are old and their plan rectangular. There are many rectangular towns of mediaeval or modern origin. Such is Terra Nova, near the ancient Gela in Sicily, built by Frederick Stupor Mundi early in the thirteenth century. Such, too, Livorno, built by the Medici in the sixteenth century. Such, too, the many little military colonies of the Italian Republics, dotted over parts of northern and middle Italy. Often it is easy to prove that, despite their chess-board plans, these towns do not stand on Roman sites. Often the inquiry leads into regions remote from the study of ancient history. Fortunately, enough examples can be identified as Roman to serve our purpose. Some of these occur in the Lombardy plain where, both under the Republic and at the outset of the Empire, many 'coloniae' were planted full-grown and where town-life on the Roman model was otherwise developed. Not all these towns survive to-day; not all of the survivors retain clear traces of their Roman town-plan; in nine cases, at least, the streets seem unmistakably to follow Roman lines. Four of the nine date from early days; in the late third and the early second centuries (218-183 B.C.), Piacenza, Bologna, Parma, and Modena, were built as new towns with the rank of 'colonia'. The first three of these were later refounded, about 40-20 B.C.--whether their streets were then laid out afresh is an open question--and Turin and Brescia were added. In addition, Verona, Pavia, and Como won municipal status in or before this later date, though when or how they came to be laid out symmetrically is not certain.[69] And there are other less certain examples. [69] Milan (Mediolanium), once the chief Roman town of north Italy, is usually stated to preserve to-day no trace of Roman street-planning. But the line of the Via Manzoni, Via Margherita, and Via Nerino (cutting the Ambrosian Library) seems really to represent one of its main streets, and the line of the Fulcorino and Corso di Porta Romana the other, while one or two traces of 'insulae' can be detected near the Ambrosian Library. The town was destroyed in A.D. 539 and again in 1162, and more survivals cannot be expected. Other instances, but not so many, may be quoted from south of the Apennines. At Florence, for example, and at Lucca 'coloniae' were planted full-grown and the street-plans still record the fact. At Naples, at Herculaneum, perhaps at Sorrento,[70] proofs survive of similar planning. But the towns of central Italy were in great part more ancient than the era of precise town-planning, and many of them were perched in true Italian fashion on lofty crags--_praeruptis oppida saxis_--which gave no room for square or oblong house-blocks. In the period of the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewer 'coloniae' were planted here than in the north, while in much of southern Italy towns have in all ages been comparatively rare. [70] Beloch, _Campanien_, p. 252. In the towns just noted we can trace many, though not all, of the original house-blocks. Usually the blocks are square or nearly so, as at Turin, Verona, Pavia, Piacenza, Florence, Lucca. Less often they are long and even narrow rectangles, as at Modena, and Sorrento, and above all Naples, and as usual it is not easy to understand the reason for the difference (p. 80). _Turin_ (fig. 15). Of all the examples of Roman town-planning known to us in Italy, Turin is by far the most famous.[71] Here the streets have survived almost intact, and excavations have confirmed the truth of the survival by revealing both the ancient road-metalling and the ancient town-walls and gates. Turin, Augusta Taurinorum, began about 28 B.C. as a 'colonia' planted by Augustus. Its walls enclosed an oblong of about 745 x 695 metres (127 acres).[72] The sides are represented (1) on the north by the Via Giulio, in the western part of which the southern edge of the street actually coincides with the line of the Roman town-wall, while further east the Porta Palatina enshrines an ancient gate; (2) on the west by the Via della Consolata, and the Via Siccardi, the east side of which latter street seems to stand upon the Roman town-wall; and (3) on the south by the Via della Cernaia and Via Teresa, the north side of which stands over the Roman southern town-wall. (4) The east wall agrees with no existing street but may be represented by a line drawn through the Carignano Theatre and the western front of the Palazzo Madama, which contains the actual towers of the Roman east gate.[73] The north-west corner, uncovered in 1884, is a sharp right angle. This feature recurs at Aosta and at Laibach (pp. 90, 116), both founded, like Turin, in the Augustan age, and seems to belong to that period; later, it gave place to the rounded angle visible at Timgad (p. 109) and in many Roman forts of the middle Empire. [71] Carlo Promis, _Storia dell' antico Torino_ (Torino, 1869); Alfredo d'Andrade, _Relazione dell' ufficio regionale per la conservazione dei monumenti del Piemonte_, 1883-91 (Torino, 1899); Schultze, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, cxviii. 339; Barthel, _ibid_. cxx. 105; Pianta di Torino (1-10,000), by G.B. Paravia. [72] I take these figures from the plan of Paravia, which is said to be the most correct plan of Turin at present available. Promis gives smaller dimensions, 720 x 670 m., and he measured from what is now known to be a point too far to the east (the Via Accademia delle Scienze) instead of from the west front of the Palazzo Madama; he has, however, been usually followed. Other maps give other dimensions, Orlandini (1844), 758 x 780 m.; Vallardi (1869), 680 x 740 m.; Maggi (1876), 730 x 800 m.; Ashby (Art. 'Turin' in _Encycl. Britannica_) gives 2,526 x 2,330 ft. which must be too large. I reproduce here (fig. 15) the plan of Orlandini, since it shows well the extent of street-survivals in Turin before the great modern rebuildings or expansions. [73] d'Andrade, _Relazione_, pp. 8-20; _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1885, pp. 173, 271, and 1902, p. 277. Of the interior buildings of the town little is known. The Forum perhaps stood near the present Palazzo di Città, and the Theatre was traced in 1899 in the north-east corner of the town, occupying apparently, a complete insula;[74] of the private houses nothing definite seems to be recorded. [74] _Notizie_, 1903, p. 3. But the street-plan has survived intact, except in two outlying corners. The town was divided up into square or nearly square blocks, of which there were nine counting from east to west and eight from north to south. Most of these 'insulae' measured about 80 yds. square.[75] A few were larger, 80 x 120 yds.; these were ranged along the north side of the street now called Via Garibaldi (formerly Dora Grossa), which represents the Roman main street between the east and west gates--in the language of the Roman land-surveyors, the _decumanus maximus_. This street cut the town into two equal halves. The other divisions of the town were no less symmetrical. But, as there were nine 'insulae' from east to west, the main north and south street could not bisect the town. Indeed, the south gate seems to have had five house-blocks west of it and four east of it, while the Porta Palatina stands further west, with six blocks on the west side of it. The north and south gates, therefore, are not opposite.[76] Whether this was the original plan is not clear, nor is the age of the surviving walls and gates quite certain; the bonding courses in some of the masonry of the walls does not seem Augustan. But the street plan may unhesitatingly be assigned to the first establishment of the town, about 28 B.C. Since, it has been extended far beyond the Roman walls. Nearly all modern Turin has been laid out, bit by bit, in imitation and continuation of the original Roman lines. [75] An insula is mentioned in _Notizie_, 1901, p. 391, which measured 74 x 80 metres. It is likely that there were small unevennesses in the ancient as there are in the modern house-blocks. The 'insulae' which abutted on the town-walls are represented to-day by unduly large blocks, oblong rather than square, but these latter contain not only the areas of the Roman 'insulae' in question, but also the space between them and the town-walls and the lines of the wall themselves (p. 77). [76] This failure in symmetry recurs in one or two other Roman towns as probably at Timgad (p. 109) and at Cologne (E. and W. gates), at Silchester and Caerwent, but it may sometimes be the result of alteration. Occasionally it appears in military sites (Ritterling, _Lager bei Hofheim_, p. 29 _note_). It is presumably a mere matter of convenience; no superstition attaches to it such as that which led the Chinese not to put their gates opposite each other (p. 148). [Illustration: FIG. 15. TURIN. FROM A PLAN OF 1844] _Aosta_ (fig. 16). Another example of an Italian town-plan, from the same date and district as Turin, is supplied by Augusta Praetoria, now Aosta, some fifty miles north of Turin in the Dora Baltea Valley, not far from the foot of Mont Blanc.[77] Aosta was founded by Augustus in 25 B.C. on a hitherto empty spot, to provide homes for time-expired soldiers and to serve as a quasi-fortress in an important Alpine valley. Its first inhabitants were 3,000 men discharged from the Praetorian Guard, with their wives and children; its population may have numbered at the outset some 15,000 free persons, besides slaves. The town, as it is known to us from excavation and observation, formed a rectangle 620 yds. long and 780 yds. wide, and covered an area of about 100 acres (fig. 16). The walls formed sharp right angles at the corners, as at Turin. Within the walls were an amphitheatre, a theatre, public baths, a structure covering nearly 2 acres and interpreted as a granary or (perhaps more correctly) as a cistern,[78] and private houses as yet unexplored. Beneath the chief streets were sewers, by which indeed these streets were mainly traced. [77] C. Promis, _Antichità di Aosta_ (Torino, 1862), with plan, plate 3, dating from 1838; _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1899, p. 108, with a later plan, but lacking a scale; Nissen, _Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 171. [78] Durm _Baukunst der Römer_, p. 458. [Illustration: FIG. 16. AOSTA] The whole was divided by a regular network of streets into rectangular blocks. According to the latest plan of the site, there were sixteen blocks, nearly identical in shape and averaging 145 x 180 yds. (5-1/2 acres). That, however, is an incredible area for single house-blocks, and it is to be noted that Promis shows two further roads (A, A in fig. 16). If these are survivals of other such roads, Aosta may have contained thirty-two oblong 'insulae', each nearly 220 x 540 ft., or even sixty-four smaller and squarer 'insulae', measuring half that size.[79] Four gates gave entrance; those in the two longer sides which face north-west and south-east, are curiously far from the centre and indeed close to the south-western end of the town. It is, of course, impossible to determine, without spade-work, which of the recognizable buildings of Aosta date from the foundation of the place in 25 B.C. But the general internal scheme and the symmetrical and practically 'chess-board' pattern of streets must date from the first foundation.[80] [79] Promis, p. 140; his plan has no proper scale. There seems no decisive evidence and the modern streets of Aosta do not help us. [80] The town of Concordia in north-east Italy, where Augustus planted a 'colonia', doubtless of discharged soldiers, is said to have possessed a ground-plan of oblong blocks very like that of Augusta Praetoria. But this plan rests mainly on the authority of a workman who apparently did not know how to read or write (he is described as 'analfabeta') and I therefore omit it here. See _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1880, p. 412, and Plate XII (the text gives no dimensions and the plan lacks a scale), and compare 1882, p. 426, and 1894, p. 399. _Florence_ (fig. 17). A yet more interesting instance of a Roman town-plan preserved in many streets may be found in Florence.[81] In Roman times Florence was a 'colonia'. When this 'colonia' was planted is very doubtful. Perhaps the age of Sulla (90-80 B.C.) is the likeliest date; all that is actually certain is that the foundation was made before the end of the first century A.D. This 'colonia', like others, was laid out in chess-board fashion, and vestiges of its streets survive in the Centro which forms the heart of the present town. The Centro of Florence, as we see it to-day, is very modern. It was, indeed, laid out a generation ago by Italian architects who designed the broad streets crossing at right angles which form its characteristic. But this 'Haussmannization' revived, consciously or unconsciously, an old arrangement. The plan of Florence in 1427 shows a group of twenty unmistakable 'insulae', each of them about 1-1/8 acre in area, that is, very similar in size to the 'insulae' of Turin. This group is bounded by the modern streets Tornabuoni on the west, Porta Rossa on the south, Calzaioli on the east, Teatina on the north; it covers a rectangle of some 305 x 327 yds., not quite 21 acres. [81] On Roman and early mediaeval Florence see Villani, _Cronica_ (written about 1345, published 1845), i. 61, 89, 120; R. Davidsohn, _Geschichte von Florenz_ and _Forschungen_ (Berlin, 1886); L.A. Milani, _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1887, p. 129; plan of the Centro in 1427 by Comm. Guido Carocci, _Studi storici sul Centro di Firenze_ (Florence, 1889); _Monumenti antichi_, vi. 15. Nissen _(Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 296) fixes its area at 400 x 600 m., about 58 acres. [Illustration: FIG. 17A. FLORENCE, SINCE THE REBUILDING OF THE CENTRAL PORTION (Centro shaded).] [Illustration: FIG. 17B. FLORENCE ABOUT 1795, FROM L. BARDI. The chief streets which seem to have preserved Roman lines are marked in black.] The original Roman town presumably extended beyond these narrow limits. But it is not easy to fix its area, nor are unmistakable 'insulae' to be detected outside them. On the west the Via Tornabuoni seems to have marked the Roman limit, as it does to-day. On the north, a probable line is given by the gateway, Por Episcopi, which once spanned the passage--now an open space--on the east side of the Archbishop's Palace (plan 17 B). That gateway stood between the Via Teatina and the next street to the north, the Via dei Cerretani, and the Roman north wall and ditch apparently ran along the intervals between these two modern streets--as indeed the lines of certain mediaeval lanes suggest. On the east the 'colonia' is supposed to have stretched to the Via del Proconsolo and the old Por S. Piero, probably the original east gate. Here the traces of 'insulae' are ill preserved; the space in question would contain, and the mediaeval streets would admit of, twelve blocks in addition to the twenty noted above. The southern limit of Roman Florence towards the Arno is altogether doubtful. There are, or were, traces of Roman baths in the Via delle Terme, and it has been thought that the town stretched riverwards as far as the old gate Por S. Maria and the Piazza S. Trinità. The gate, however, is ill-placed and the line of wall implied by this theory is irregular. The mediaeval streets point rather to a south wall near the Via Porta Rossa. The baths might perhaps be due to a later Roman extension, such as we shall meet at Timgad (p. 113). The Por S. Maria may even be due to one of the reconstructions of Florence in the Middle Ages. At the end we must admit that without further evidence the limits of Roman Florence cannot be fixed for certain. But the limits indicated above give the not unsuitable dimensions of 46 acres (380 x 590 yds.), while the history of the twenty indubitable insulae of the Centro remains full of interest. We see here, as clearly as anywhere in the Roman world, how the regular Roman plan has gradually been distorted by encroachments and how, even in its irregularity, it has had power to drive modern builders towards its ancient fashion. Of the interior of the Roman town little is known. The streets now called Strozzi and Speziali plainly preserve the Roman main street from east to west, while the Via Calimara overlies that which ran from north to south. Where these crossed was the mediaeval Mercato Vecchio, now enlarged into a patriotic Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele; here we may put the Roman forum, and here too, by the former church of S. Maria in Campidoglio, was the temple of Capitoline Juppiter. There were also theatres, a shrine of Isis, and, outside the Roman limit, an amphitheatre still discernible in the curves of certain streets (plan 17 B). However small Florentia was, it possessed the true elements of the Roman town. _Lucca_ (fig. 18). A good parallel to Florence may be found at Lucca, the ancient Luca, where again the streets preserve a rectangular pattern without showing clearly what was its full extent. Luca is said to have been founded as a 'colonia' in 177 B.C., but the statement is of doubtful truth. Certainly it was a 'municipium' in Cicero's days, and a little later, in the period 40-20 B.C., it received the rank of 'colonia' and many colonists, taken (as an inscription says) from discharged soldiers of Legions VII and XXVI. Whether the surviving traces of town-planning date from this latter event or from some earlier age is not easy to say. But of the street-plan there can be no doubt, though its original size is uncertain. A rectangular area about 700 yds. from east to west and 360 yds. from north to south is divided into fifteen square or squarish 'insulae' arranged in three rows. Each insula is about 3 acres, but those of the middle row are larger than the rest (150 x 150 yds.). The Via S. Croce which runs along the south side of this row was perhaps the main east and west thoroughfare of the town, the 'decumanus maximus', so that the larger 'insulae' correspond to those which appear in the same position at Turin and elsewhere (p. 88). [Illustration: FIG. 18. LUCCA. (The streets which preserve Roman lines are marked in black.)] Whether there were other 'insulae' besides the fifteen is doubtful. On the east there were certainly none: the two narrow parallel streets at the east end of the area just described are obviously due to a growth of houses along the line of the original east wall. The other limits are more obscure. Probably the north and west walls stood a little outside of the Via Galli Tassi (once S. Pellegrino) and the Via S. Giorgio, but there may well have been a row of insulae, now obliterated, south of the Via del Battistero. One or two interior buildings are known. The Forum appears to have stood where is now the Piazza S. Michele in Foro; close by was a temple; in the north-eastern quarter, at the Piazza del Carmine, was probably the theatre; near it but outside the walls was the amphitheatre, its outlines still visible in the Piazza del Mercato (110 x 80 yds. in greatest dimensions).[82] [82] Plan by P. Sinibaldi, 1843, 1:4,000. _Notizie degli Scavi_, 1906, p. 117, &c. Nissen (_Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 288) gives the area as 800 x 1,200 metres, which seems much too large. _Herculaneum_ (fig. 19). To these examples from north Italy may be added two from the south, Herculaneum and Naples. Herculaneum had much the same early history as its more important neighbour Pompeii. First an Oscan settlement, then Etruscan, then Samnite, it passed later under Roman rule. After the Social Wars (89 B.C.) it appears as a 'municipium'; of its history from that date till its destruction (A.D. 79) we know next to nothing. But excavations, commenced in the eighteenth century and now long suspended, have thrown light on its ground-plan.[83] This was a rectangular pattern of oblong house-blocks, measuring 54 x 89 yds., or in some cases a little more, and divided by streets varying from 15 to 30 ft. in width which ran at right angles or parallel to one another. Only a part of the town has been as yet unearthed. In that a broad colonnaded main street ran from north-west to south-east; on the north-east side of this street stood a row of house-blocks with a structure taken to be a Basilica, and on the south-west of it were ten house-blocks, one of which includes some public baths. At the north end of this area are a theatre and temple, at the south end two large structures which have been called temples but are more like large private houses; on the east (according to the eighteenth-century searchers) are graves. [83] M. Ruggiero, _Scavi di Ercolano_ (Naples, 1885), plates ii and xii; Beloch. _Campanien_, pp. 215 foll.; Nissen, _Ital. Landeskunde_, ii. 759; Waldstein and Shoobridge, _Herculaneum_ (London, 1908), pp. 60 foil.; E.R. Barker, _Buried Herculaneum_ (1908); Gall in Pauly-Wissowa, viii. (1912) 532-48. [Illustration: FIG. 19. HERCULANEUM] How much of the town has been uncovered, how much still lies hidden beneath the lava which overflowed it in A.D. 79, is disputed. Of its town-walls and gates no trace has yet been found. But nearly all its public buildings seem to be known; the graves on the east side, if correctly mapped by their discoverers and if coeval with the streets and houses, leave no room for further 'insulae' in that direction, while the great country-house called the 'Casa dei Papiri' plainly stood outside the town on the north-west. From these facts one modern writer has calculated that Herculaneum was less than a quarter of a mile long, less than 350 yds. broad, and less than 26 acres in extent--in short, not a sixth part of Pompeii. These measures are probably too small. The 'Basilica' on the north side of the main street cannot have stood on the extreme edge of the town. There must have been not three but four rows of house-blocks from south-west to north-east; the graves once noted in this quarter must be older than our Herculaneum or otherwise unconnected with it. The whole town must have been 40 or 45 rather than 25 acres in area. Even so it is a little town. The unenthusiastic references to it in ancient literature are, after all, truthful. Apart from the great villa outside it--possibly an imperial residence--it hardly deserved, or to-day deserves, to be excavated at the extraordinary cost which its excavation would involve. The date of its planning is as doubtful as the extent of its area. One recent writer, Nissen, has suggested that it was reconstructed after an earthquake in A.D. 63 and was hardly completed before the eruption of 79. The earthquake is well attested. But it cannot possibly have wrecked the town so utterly as to cause wholesale rebuilding on new lines, and an inscription points rather to the time of Augustus. One Marcus Nonius Balbus (the text runs) built 'a basilica, gates and a wall at his own cost', and this builder Balbus was probably a contemporary of Augustus.[84] Others have preferred to think that the town-planning reveals Greek influences; they point to the Greek city of Naples, 7 miles west of Herculaneum, and the Doric temple at Pompeii, much the same distance east of it. However, neither the town-planning of Naples, to be discussed in the next paragraphs, nor that of Pompeii (p. 68), seems to be necessarily Greek, and Herculaneum itself contains nothing which cannot be explained as Italian. It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that it received a settlement of discharged soldiers somewhere about 30 B.C. and was then laid out afresh. But here, as throughout this inquiry, more light is needed if the inquirer is to pass from guesswork to proven fact. [84] _CIL_. x. 1425; compare Dessau, 896. It is, no doubt, possible that this Nonius Balbus is the M. Nonius ... who built something in honour of Titus in A.D. 72, but the identification is not likely. _Naples_ (fig. 20). One more example, from the neighbourhood of Herculaneum, may complete the list of Italian street-plans. Naples, the Greek and Roman Neapolis, was a Greek city, the most prosperous of the Greek towns in Campania.[85] After 90 B.C. it appears to have become a Roman 'municipium'. But it retained much of its Greek civilization. A writer of the early first century after Christ, Strabo, states that abundant traces of Greek life survived there, 'gymnasia, and athletic schools, and tribal divisions, and Greek names even for Roman things.' Even later Tacitus calls it a 'Greek city', and Greek was still used for official inscriptions there in the third century. [85] Beloch, _Campanien_ (Berlin, 1879), p. 26; Capasso, _Napoli Greco-Romana_ (Napoli, 1905). The Forum, Market, and some other buildings marked by Capasso seem to me (and even to him or his editors) very dubious (p. 63). Two theatres (p. 82) and a Temple of the Dioscuri are better established. For plans see _Piante topogr. dei quartieri di Napoli_ 1861-5 (1:3,888) and _Pianta della città di N._ (Off. della Guerra, 1865), from which latter fig. 20 is adapted. [Illustration: FIG. 20. NAPLES. ADAPTED FROM A PLAN OF 1865. (TH = Theatre, T = Temple.)] This Neapolis town had, as certain existing streets declare, a peculiar form of town-planning. The area covered by these streets is an irregular space of 250 acres in the heart of the modern city, about 850 yds. from north to south and 1,000 yds. from east to west.[86] In Roman days three straight streets ran parallel from east to west and a large number of smaller streets, twenty or so, ran at right angles to them from north to south. The house-blocks enclosed by these streets were all of similar size and shape, a thin oblong of 35 x 180 metres (39 x 198 yds.). Some of the public buildings naturally trespassed on to more than one 'insula'; a theatre appears indeed to have stretched over parts of three. In general, the oblongs seem to have been laid out with great regularity and the angles are right angles, though the 'insulae' in the northern and southern rows of house-blocks cannot have been fully rectangular and symmetrical. [86] The limits are the Castel Capuano on the east, the Strada dell' Orticello on the north, the church of S. Pietro a Majella on the west, and on the south the churches of S. Marcellino and S. Severino. This town-plan of Naples differs from any of those noted above. Its blocks are narrower than those in any Italian town, unless in Modena, and while they resemble the 'insulae' of the sixth region of Pompeii (fig. 13), are far more regular than those. Almost the only close parallel is that of Roman Carthage (fig. 24). As Naples was by origin and character a Greek city, these narrow oblongs have been supposed to represent a Greek arrangement. They do not, however, correspond to anything that is known in the Greek lands, either of the Macedonian or of any earlier period. The conclusion is difficult to avoid that this Greek city of Naples adopted an Italian street-scheme, but laid it out with more scientific regularity than the early Italians themselves. When this occurred and why, is wholly unknown. That the result is not an unpractical form of building is shown by the fact that similar long and narrow house-blocks are a characteristic feature of modern Liverpool, though they seldom occur in other English towns, unless intermixed with square and other blocks. CHAPTER VIII ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. I The provinces, and above all the western provinces of the Roman Empire, tell us even more than Italy about Roman town-planning. But they tell it in another way. They contain many towns which were founded full-grown, or re-founded and at the same time rebuilt, and which were in either case laid out on the Roman plan. But the modern successors of these towns have rarely kept the network of their ancient streets in recognizable detail. Though walls, gates, temples, baths, palaces, amphitheatres still stand stubbornly erect amidst a flood of modern dwellings, they are but the islands which mark a submerged area. The paths and passages by which men once moved across that area have vanished beneath the waves and cannot be recovered from any survey of these visible fragments. There is hardly one modern town in all the European and African provinces of the Roman Empire which still uses any considerable part of its ancient street-plan. In our own country there is no single case. In Gaul and Germany, two or three streets in Cologne and one or two in Trier are the sole survivals.[87] In Illyricum there is no example unless possibly at Belgrade. In the Spanish peninsula the town of Braga in northern Portugal seems to stand alone. In Roman Africa--Tunis, Algiers and Morocco--no instance has survived the Arab conquest.[88] [87] For Orange see p. 107. Nîmes may possibly retain one or two streets of the Roman Nemausus, but it is very doubtful; see Menard's map of 1752. See further in general p. 142. [88] Though, curiously enough, the chess-board pattern of field divisions has survived in the neighbourhood of Carthage. If, however, survivals of ancient streets are as rare in the provinces as they are common in Italy, the provinces yield other evidence unknown to Italy. In these lands, and above all in Africa, the sites of many Roman towns have lain desolate and untouched since Roman days, waiting for the excavator to recover the unspoilt pattern of their streets. If the Roman Empire brought to certain provinces, as it unquestionably did to Africa, the happiest period in their history till almost the present day, that only makes their remains the more noteworthy and instructive. Here the new art of excavation has already achieved many and varied successes. In the western Empire one town, Silchester in Britain, has been wholly uncovered within the circuit of its walls. Others, like Caerwent in Britain or Timgad and Carthage in Africa, have been methodically examined, though the inquiries have not yet touched or perhaps can never touch their whole areas. In others again, some of which lie in the east, occasional search or even chance discoveries have shed welcome light. Our knowledge is more than enough already for the purposes of this chapter. We can already see that the town-plan described in the foregoing pages was widely used in the provinces of the Empire. We find it in Africa, in Central and Western Europe, and indeed wherever Rorrran remains have been carefully excavated; we find it even in remote Britain amidst conditions which make its use seem premature. Where excavation has as yet yielded no proofs, other evidence fills the gap. In southern Gaul, as it happens, archaeological remains are unhelpful. But just there an inscription has come to light, the only one of its kind in the Roman world, which proves that one at least of the 'coloniae' of Gallia Narbonensis was laid out in rectangular oblong plots. It is clear enough that this town-plan was one of the forms through which the Italian civilization diffused itself over the western provinces. The exact measure of its popularity is, however, hard to determine. In the east it found little entrance. There, the very similar Macedonian and Greek methods of town-planning were rooted firmly, long before Rome conquered Greece or Asia Minor or Syria or Egypt. The few town-plans which have been noted in these lands, and which may be assigned more or less conjecturally to the Roman era, seem to be Hellenic or Hellenistic rather than Italian. They show broad stately streets, colonnades, vistas, which belong to the east and not to Italy. Even in the west, the rule of the chess-board was sometimes broken. Aquincum, near Budapest, became a 'municipium' under Hadrian; its ruins, so far as hitherto planned, exhibit no true street-planning. But that may be due to its history, for it seems not to have been founded full-grown, but to have slowly developed as best it could, and to have won municipal status at the end. Roman Africa is here, as so often, our best source of knowledge. At Timgad (p. 109), a town laid out in Roman fashion with a rigid 'chess-board' of streets was subsequently enlarged on irregular and almost chaotic lines. At Gigthi, in the south-east of Tunis, the streets around the Forum, itself rectangular enough, do not run parallel or at right angles to it or to one another.[89] At Thibilis, on the border of Tunis and Algeria, the streets, so far as they have yet been uncovered, diverge widely from the chess-board pattern.[90] One French archaeologist has even declared that most of the towns in Roman Africa lacked this pattern.[91] Our evidence is perhaps still too slight to prove or disprove that conclusion. Few African towns have been sufficiently uncovered to show the street-plan.[92] But town-life was well developed in Roman Africa. It is hardly credible that the Africans learnt all the rest of Roman city civilization and city government, and left out the planning. The individual cases of such planning which will be quoted in the following pages tell their own tale--that, while the strict rule was often broken, it was the rule. [89] _Archives nouvelles des Missions scientifiques_, xv. 1907, fasc. 4. [90] Plan by Joly, _Arch. Anzeiger_, 1911, p. 270, fig. 17. The plan has been thought to imply 'insulae' twice as large as those of Timgad. To me it suggests nothing so regular. [91] Toutain, _Cités romaines de la Tunisie_, p. 79 note: 'Ce qui toutefois est incontestable, c'est que cette disposition d'une régularité artificielle, autour de deux grandes voies exactement orientées et se coupant a angle droit, est très rare dans l'Afrique romaine. Les villes de ce pays n'out pas été toutes construites sur le mème plan: chacune d'elles a, pour ainsi dire, épousé la forme de son emplacement.' [92] There are many in which it could be traced with some ease, apparently. Thelepte, Cillium, Ammaedara, Sufetula, _Archives des Missions_, 1887, pp. 68, 121, 161-171, Simitthu, _Mémoires présentés par divers savants_, ser. I. x. 462, and Thuccabor, Tissot, _Géogr. d'Afrique_, ii. 292, seem to have visible streets, but no one has recorded them exactly. The plan of Utica, given by Tissot (_Atlas_, by Reinach, plate vi) on the authority of Daux, is open to doubt. [Illustration: FIG. 21. INSCRIPTION OF ORANGE. (From the _Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions_.) Plot (_meris_) I (_lost_) ... Plot II ... perpetual lessee (_manceps_) C. Naevius Rusticus: surety for him C. Vesidius Quadratus. Fronting the Kardo. (5) Plot III, frontage of 34-1/2 feet and Plot IV, frontage of 35 feet; ground rent (?), 69-1/2 denarii (_in margin_). Yearly rent II ... (?). Lessee and surety, as above. Fronting the Kardo. (10) Plot V, frontage 55-1/2 feet, and Plot VI, next to the Ludus (gladiators' school), frontage 75 feet ...] _Orange_ (fig. 21). The case which deserves the first place stands by itself. It is the one piece of written evidence (as distinct from structural remains) which has survived from Roman town-planning. Curiously enough, it was found not in Italy but in a province, and a province which, for all its wealth of Roman buildings, has not yet revealed the smallest structural proof of Roman town-planning. In April 1904 a scrap of inscribed marble, little more than 18 in. broad and high, was dug up at Orange, in southern France, right in the centre of the town. It is a waif from a lengthy document. But it chances to be intelligible. It enumerates six plots of land--'merides' it calls them, from a Greek word meaning 'share' or 'division'--which seem to have formed one parcel: each plot is numbered, and the length of its frontage on the public way (_in fronte_), the name of its lessee or _manceps_ and that of his surety (_fideiussor_) are added. The frontages of four plots make up 200 ft. (those of the other two are lost), and it has been suggested that the six together made up 240 ft. The depth--which is not stated on the surviving fragment, but was doubtless uniform for all the plots--may then have been 120 ft., and the whole parcel may have covered 120 x 240 ft., that is, a Roman 'iugerum'. It was plainly a piece of town property. The largest 'meris', Plot v, measured only 25 by 40 yds. and no one would care for such a field or farm. Besides, this plot at one end adjoined a 'ludus' or gladiatorial school, and it fronted AD K, _ad kardinem_, on to the street called in surveying language the 'cardo'. The whole land apparently belonged to one lessee who held it from the municipality on something like a perpetual lease.[93] [93] For the inscription see Esperandieu, _Acad. des Inscriptions, Comptes rendus_, 1904, p. 497; Cagnat, _Année Épigr._, 1905, 12; and especially Schulten, _Hermes_, 1906, 1; a convenient English account is given by H.S. Jones, _Companion to Roman Hist._, p. 22. It has been suggested by Schulten that the blocks were at first divided into plots of 35 ft. frontage, and that the boundaries had become changed in the ordinary course of things before the survey was made. But this seems to carry conjecture rather far. Here, in short, is the record of an oblong 'insula' in the Roman town of Orange. It is doubtless part of a longer record, a register of house-property in the whole town. Orange, Colonia Iulia Secundanorum Arausio, was a 'colonia' founded about 45 B.C. with discharged soldiers of Caesar's Second Legion. Possibly the register was drawn up at this date; more probably it is rather later and may be connected with a _census_ of Gaul begun about 27 B.C. Certainly it was preserved with much care, as if one of the 'muniments' of the citizens. The spot where it was dug up is in the heart of the ancient as well as of the modern town, close to the probable site of the Forum, and the inscription may have been fastened up in all its length on the walls of some public building. If, as is likely, the town owned the soil of the town, the connexion of the inscription with the Forum becomes even clearer. In any case, the town was plainly laid out in a rectangular street-plan. To-day its lanes are as tortuous as those of any other Provencal town.[94] A strange chance reveals what it and many other of these towns must once have been. [94] It has been said to show marks of streets laid out rectangularly, but neither the look of the town itself nor the plans of it seem to me to confirm this idea; compare Lentheric, _Le Rhone_, ii. 110. [Illustration: FIG. 22. AFTER CAGNAT AND BALLU (1911). (The six 'insulae' marked A are shown in detail in fig. 23. Unshaded 'insulae' are as yet unexcavated.)] _Timgad_ (figs. 22, 23). From this piece of half-literary evidence we pass to purely archaeological remains, and first to the province of Numidia in Roman Africa and to the town of Timgad. The town of Thamugadi, now Timgad, lay on the northern skirts of Mount Aurès, halfway between Constantine and Biskra and about a hundred miles from the Mediterranean coast. Here the emperor Trajan founded in A.D. 100 a 'colonia' on ground then wholly uninhabited, and peopled it with time-expired soldiers from the Third Legion which garrisoned the neighbouring fortress of Lambaesis. The town grew. Soon after the middle of the second century it was more than half a mile in width from east to west, and its extent from north to south, though not definitely known, cannot have been much less. The first settlement was smaller. So far as it has been uncovered by French archaeologists--sufficiently for our purpose, though not completely--the 'colonia' of Trajan appears to have been some 29 or 30 acres in extent within the walls and almost square in outline (360 x 390 yds.). It was entered by four principal gates, three of which can still be traced quite clearly, and which stood in the middle of their respective sides; the position of the south gate is doubtful. According to Dr. Barthel, the street which joins the east and west gates was laid out to point to the sunrise of September 18, the birthday of Trajan. [Illustration: FIG. 23. SIX 'INSULAE' IN S.W. TIMGAD (after Prof. Cagnat). Nos. 91, 92, 99, one house each; 108, 109, 3 houses; 100, Baths.] The interior of the town was divided by streets into a chess-board pattern of small square house-blocks; from north to south there were twelve such blocks and from east to west eleven--not twelve, as is often stated. The possible total of 132 'insulae' was, however, diminished by the space needed for public buildings, though it is not easy to tell how great this space was in the original town. Ultimately, as the excavations show, eight 'insulae' were taken up by the Forum, four by the Theatre, three by the various Baths, one by a Market, one by a Public Library, and one by a Christian church. But some of these edifices were certainly not established till long after A.D. 100 and the others, which must have existed from the first, were soon extended and enlarged. A competent writer on the subject, Dr. Barthel, allows seven blocks for public purposes in the original town, but this seems too little. The blocks themselves measured on the average a square of 70 Roman feet (23 x 23 yards), and may have contained one, two, three, or even four houses apiece, but they have undergone so many changes that their original arrangements are not at all clear. The streets which divided these blocks were 15 to 16 ft. wide; the two main streets, which ran to the principal gates, were further widened by colonnades and paved with superior flagging. All the streets had well-built sewers beneath them. Trajan's Timgad was plainly small. On any estimate of the number of houses, the original draft of veterans sent there in A.D. 100 can hardly have exceeded 400, and the first population, apart from slaves, must have been under 2,000. This agrees with the figures of Aosta (p. 89). There, 100 acres took 3,000 veterans and their families; here the area is about one-third of 100 acres and the ground available for dwellings may perhaps have been one-sixth. In neither case was space wasted. There was not probably at Aosta, there certainly was not at Timgad, any provision of open squares, of handsome facades, of temples seen down the vista of stately avenues; there were not even private gardens. The one large unroofed space in Timgad was the half-acre shut within the Forum cloister. This economy of room is no doubt due to the fact that the 'colonia' was not only a home for time-expired soldiers, but, as Prof. Cagnat has justly observed, a quasi-fortress watching the slopes of Mount Aurès south of it, just as Aosta watched its Alpine valley. As Machiavelli thought it worth while to observe, the shorter the line of a town's defence, the fewer the men who can hold it. The town-planning of Timgad was designed on other than purely architectural or municipal principles. For this reason, too, we should probably seek in vain any marked distinction between richer and poorer quarters and larger or smaller houses.[95] The centurions and other officers may have formed the first municipal aristocracy of Timgad, as retired officers did in many Roman towns, but there can have been no definite element of poor among the common soldiers. [95] Ballu detects a 'quartier industriel' in the outer town, but the evidence does not seem to warrant so grand a term. Such was Trajan's Timgad, as revealed by excavations now about two-thirds complete. The town soon burst its narrow bounds. A Capitol, Baths, a large Meat-market, and much else sprang up outside the walls. Soon the walls themselves, like those of many mediaeval towns--for example, the north and west town-walls of Oxford--were built over and hidden by later structures. The town grew from one of 360 to a breadth of over 800 yds. And as it expanded, it broke loose from the chess-board pattern. The builders of later Timgad did not resemble those of later Turin. Even the _decumanus_, the main 'east and west' street, wandered away north-west in an uncertain curve, and all that has been discovered of streets outside the walls of Trajan is irregular and complicated. A town-plan, it seems, was binding on the first builders of the 'colonia'. It lost its power within a very few years.[96] [96] Boeswillwald, Cagnat and Ballu, _Timgad_ (Paris, 1891-1905); see especially Appendix, pp. 339-349; Ballu, _Ruines de Timgad_ (Paris, 1897-1911); Barthel, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, cxx. 101. _Carthage_ (fig. 24). It remains to note another example of town-planning in a Roman municipality of the western Empire, which is as important as it is abnormal. Carthage, first founded--though only in an abortive fashion--as a Roman 'colonia' in 123 B.C. and re-established with the same rank by Julius Caesar or Augustus, shows a rectangular town-plan in a city which speedily became one among the three or four largest and wealthiest cities in the Empire. The regularity of its planning was noted in ancient times by a topographical writer.[97] But the plan, though rectangular, is not normal. According to the French archaeologists who have worked it out, it comprised a large number of streets--perhaps as many as forty--running parallel to the coast, a smaller number running at right angles to these down the hillside towards the shore, and many oblong 'insulae', measuring each about 130 x 500 ft., roughly two Roman _iugera_. The whole town stretched for some two miles parallel to the shore and for about a mile inland, and covered perhaps 1,200 acres. Its street-plan can hardly be older than Caesar or Augustus, but the shape of its 'insulae' appears to be without parallel in that age. It comes closest to the oblong blocks of Pompeii and of Naples (pp. 63, 100), and its two theatres also recall those towns. One reason for its plan may no doubt be found in the physical character of the site. The ground slopes down from hills towards the shore, and encourages the use of streets which run level along the slopes, parallel to the shore, and not more or less steeply towards it.[98] [97] _Totius orbis descriptio_, 61 (Müller, _geogr. graeci min._ ii. 527); dispositione gloriosissima constat ... in directione vicorum et platearum aequalibus lineis currens' (written probably about A.D. 350). [98] _Carte archéologique et topogr. des Ruines de Carthage_, by Gauckler and Delattre (1:5,000); Schulten, _Archäol. Anzeiger_, 1905, p. 77; 1909, p. 190; 1911, p. 246; Audollent, _Carthage romaine_ (Paris, 1901), pp. 309, 846. The older accounts of Daux and Tissot seem less trustworthy. [Illustration: FIG. 24. A PART OF CARTHAGE. Plan based on the _Carte archéologique des ruines de Carthage_, by Gauckler and Delattre.] _Laibach_ (fig. 25), _Numantia, Lincoln_ (fig. 26). Three or four more ordinary examples chosen at random from provincial municipalities may show the diffusion of town-planning in the western Roman world. One example, from the borders of Italy, may be found just outside the pleasant town of Laibach in southern Austria. Here Augustus in 34 B.C. planted a 'Colonia Iulia Augusta Emona', and recent work of Dr. W. Schmid has thrown much light on its character. The colony was in outline a rectangle of nearly 55 acres (480 x 560 yds.), and was divided up into forty-eight blocks by five streets which ran north and south and seven which crossed them at right angles; of these forty-eight blocks some must, of course, have been taken up by public buildings. They varied in size: the largest as yet planned (II in fig. 25) measured 170 x 195 ft., or 3/4 acre; two others measured 163 x 170 ft.; while one block, which contained one large house not unlike the Silchester 'inn', was 112 x 168 ft. (Plan, II), and the block next it was a trifle smaller. None of the dimensions show any trace of the normal 120 or 240 ft. (p. 79). The streets were very broad (37-40 ft.); one, which may be the 'cardo maximus', measured as much as 47 ft. across. Beneath the main streets were sewers, in the usual fashion. Round the whole town stood strong walls, reinforced at regular intervals by square projecting towers; the four corners were not rounded but rectangular, after the fashion of Aosta and Turin (pp. 87, 90).[99] [99] _Correspondenzblatt des Gesamtvereins der deutschen Geschichts und Altertumsvereine_, April 1912; _Bericht vi der römisch-germanischen Kommission_ 1910-11, p. 96. Müllner's _Emona_ (Laibach, 1879), p. 19, plate 2, is wholly inadequate. [Illustration: FIG. 25. A PART OF LAIBACH. (From W. Schmid.)] [Illustration: FIG. 26. LINCOLN, OUTLINE OF ROMAN WALLS. (See p. 118.)] [Illustration: FIG. 27. LINCOLN, BASES OF COLONNADE UNDER BAILGATE. (p. 118).] For a second example turn to a remote corner of central Spain. The town of Numantia was famous in early days for its long struggle with the armies of the Roman Republic. Under Roman rule it was wholly insignificant. Over the débris of Numantine liberty a little Roman town grew up. But it is hardly mentioned save in one or two road-books. Yet it enjoyed some form of municipal status and its streets and houses show to the excavator traces of Roman town-planning. The streets ran parallel or at right angles to one another; the house-blocks measured some 50 yds. square.[100] [100] Schulten, _Abhandlungen der k. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl._, viii. (1905), p. 61, plan 2; the evidence seems adequate though not wholly decisive. The Roman town Emporiae, now Ampurias, in the extreme north-east of Spain, seems to have had a rectangular street-plan, though its Greek predecessor was irregular, _Institut d'estudis catalans, anuari 1908_, p. 185. A third example may be drawn from our own country. Lincoln, the Roman Lindum, was established as a 'colonia' about A.D. 75, and the lines of its original area, its 'Altstadt'--for it was perhaps enlarged in Roman times,--can still be traced 'Above Hill' round the Castle and Cathedral (fig. 26). It formed a rectangle just over 41 acres in extent (400 x 500 yds.). Four gates, one of which still keeps its Roman arch, gave access to the two main streets which divided the town into four symmetrical quarters and crossed at right angles in the centre. Along one of these streets, which agrees, if only roughly, with the modern Bailgate, ran a stately colonnade (fig. 27), though whether this belonged to some special building or adorned the whole extent of street is not quite certain. Beneath the same street ran, as at Timgad and Laibach and elsewhere, the town sewer (fig. 28). Of the other main street and of side streets nothing is known, but we can hardly doubt that they carried out the chess-board pattern.[101] [101] _Archaeologia_, liii. 236 and lvi. 371. The plan given by Mr. Fox in liii. 236 represents his own theory, which may be open to doubt. Probably the other four municipalities in Britain were planned similarly, though the evidence is too slender to prove it. At Verulamium (for example) near St. Albans, a local archaeologist long ago claimed to detect a scheme of symmetrical house-blocks, resembling squares very slightly askew. Subsequent inquiry has shown that this scheme was merely or mostly imagination.[102] [102] J.W. Grover, _Brit. Archaeol. Assoc. Journal_, xxvi. (1870), p. 45, plate 1. The theories of the late Mr. Bellows about the streets of Roman and modern Gloucester were equally astray, though in other ways. [Illustration: FIG. 28. LINCOLN. SEWER UNDER BAILGATE] CHAPTER IX ROMAN PROVINCIAL TOWN-PLANS. II In the preceding chapters Roman town-planning has been treated in connexion with towns of definite municipal rank, which bore the titles 'colonia' or 'municipium'. The system is, of course, closely akin to such foundation or refoundation as the establishment of a 'colonia' implied in the early Empire, while the no less Roman character of the 'municipium' made town-planning appropriate to this class of town also. It was, however, not limited to these towns. It appears not seldom in provincial towns of lower legal status, such as were not uncommon in Britain, in Gaul, and in some other districts. Four instances may be quoted from the two provinces just named. In the first, Autun, the town-planning is explained by the establishment of the town full-grown under Roman official influence. Unfortunately, however, little is known of the buildings, and it is difficult to judge of the actual character of the place. In the second case, Trier, we may conjecture a similar official origin. At Silchester, official influence seems also to have been at work, and it is not impossible that the fourth case, Caerwent, may be explained by the same cause. In these two latter, however, it is more important to observe the nature of the towns, which is better known than that of any others in western Europe. For they embody a type of urban life which is distinct from any that occurs in Italy or in the better civilized districts of the Empire, and which illustrates strikingly one stratum of provincial culture. _Autun_ (fig. 29). Caesar won northern and central Gaul for the Roman Empire; it fell to Augustus to organize the conquered but as yet unromanized lands. Among many steps to that end, he seems to have planted new native towns which should take the places of old native tribal capitals and should drive out local Celtic traditions by new Roman municipal interests. These new towns did not, as a rule, enjoy the full Roman municipal status; northern Gaul was not quite ripe for that. But they were plainly devised to help Romanization forward, and their object is declared by their half-Roman, half-Celtic names--Augustodunum (now Autun), Caesaromagus (Beauvais), Augusta Suessionum (Soissons), Augusta Treverorum (Trier), and the like.[103] Of two of these, Autun and Trier, we chance to know the town-plans. The reader will notice a certain similarity between them. [103] Hirschfeld, _Haeduer und Arverner_ (_Sitzungsber. der preuss. Akademie_, 1897, p. 1102). Similar hybrid names have been created by the English in India, mostly on the North-west Frontier, where alone they have planted new inhabited sites--Lyallpur, Abbotabad, Edwardesabad, Robertsganj, and the like. But these are almost all small places or forts, and their names represent no policy of Anglicization. [Illustration: FIG. 29. AUTUN. After H. de Fontenay, 1889.] Autun stands on the site and contains the stately ruins of the Roman Augustodunum, built by Augustus about 12 B.C. He, as it seems, brought down the Gaulish dwellers in the old native hill-fortress of Bibracte, on Mont-Beuvray, and planted them twelve miles away on an unoccupied site beside the river Arroux. The new town covered an area of something like 490 acres--that is, if the now traceable walls and gates are, as is generally thought, the work of Augustus. The town within the walls must have been laid out all at once. Quite a large part of it, perhaps has much as three-quarters, have revealed to the careful inquiries of French archaeologists a regular system of quadrangular street-planning, which may very likely have extended even through the unexplored quarter. The Roman street which ran through the town from south to north, from the Porte de Rome to the Porte d'Arroux, was fronted by at least thirteen 'insulae', and one of the streets which crossed it at right angles was fronted by eleven such blocks. They vary somewhat in size. The larger 'insulae', which lie west of the main north and south street, are oblong and measure about 150 x 100 yds. (say, 3 acres); many smaller ones are more nearly square (98 x 98 or 109 yds., about 2 acres). But the regularity of the plan is plainly the work of civilized man. When the Celts were brought to live in a Roman city, care was taken that it should be really Roman.[104] Only we may perhaps wonder whether the plan may not have been drawn by Augustus with an eye more to the future than to the present and may have included more 'insulae' than there were actually inhabitants to occupy at once. That was the case certainly in the mediaeval English town of Winchelsea, where the rectangular building-plots laid out by Edward I have in great measure lain empty and untenanted to the present day. [104] H. de Fontenay, _Autun et ses monuments_ (Autun, 1889), pp. 49 foll. and map (1:6,250). The existence of a town-plan was first noticed by J. de Fontenay, _Bulletin monumental_, 1852, p. 365, but his map appears to be incorrect and his views generally are based too much on _a priori_ assumptions. _Trier_ (fig. 30). We may take another example from a northern city, Trier on the Mosel, in north-eastern Gaul (Augusta Treverorum). It was in its later days a large city, perhaps the largest Roman city in western Europe. When its walls were built and its famous north gate, the Porta Nigra, was erected, probably towards the end of the third century, they included a space of 704 acres, twenty-five times as much as the original Timgad, though, it must be added, this area may not have been wholly covered with houses. But it was then an old city. Its earliest remains date from the earliest days of the Roman Empire (A.D. 2), when it was founded, like Autun, on a spot which had (as it seems) never been inhabited before.[105] Of this first beginning we possess vestiges which concern us here. Eight or nine years ago, when the modern town was provided with drainage, the engineers of the work and the Trier archaeologists, headed by the late Dr. Graven, combined to note the points where the drainage trenches cut through pieces of Roman roadway.[106] [105] Ademeit, _Siedelungsgeographie des Moselgebiets_, pp. 367, 431. [106] H. Gräven, _Stadtplan des römischen Triers_ in _Die Denkmalpflege_, 14 Dec. 1904 (1:10,000); the plan has been often copied, as by Cramer, _Das röm. Trier_ (Gütersloh, 1911), and Von Behr, _Trierer Jahresberichte_, i. 1908. Compare Barthel, _Bonner Jahrbücher_, cxx. 106. Trier at some time or other became a 'colonia'. When this occurred, is hotly disputed; the evidence seems to me to suggest that it was founded without colonial status and became a 'colonia latina' in the course of the first century (see Domaszewski, _Abhandlungen_, p. 153). I have therefore inserted Trier in this chapter with Autun and not in Chapter VIII with Orange and Timgad. These points yielded a regular plan of streets crossing at right angles, which in many of its features much resembles that of Autun. Thirteen streets were traced running east and west, and eight (Dr. Graven says seven but his plan shows eight) running north and south. The east and west streets, with two exceptions, lay some 320 ft. from one another. The north and south streets varied, some observing that distance, others being no more than 260 ft. apart. As a result, the rectangular house-blocks varied also in size. The largest seem to be those which fronted a street that crossed the town from east to west, from the Imperial Palace to the Baths and the West Gate, and corresponds roughly with the present Kaiserstrasse. This may well have been the _decumanus_, the main east and west street of the 'colonia', and hence the house-blocks fronting it may have been unusually large (p. 77). One of them, near the Neumarkt, reached the awkward size of nearly 3-1/2 acres (320 x 460 ft.). Others elsewhere were smaller, many measuring 320 x 320 ft., and others again 320 x 245 ft., rather less than 2 acres. In general, the 'insulae' on the east and west sides of the town were larger than those in the centre. The whole has a resemblance to Autun, and is more irregular than writers on Trier are ready to allow.[107] [107] Gräven estimated that, except in the central street, all the 'insulae' measured 300 Roman ft. (290 English ft., 88 metres), but his plan suggests rather 100 metres. We need in reality that larger plan which he did not live to complete. How many houses may have occupied either a large or a small 'insula' is uncertain; indeed, we know next to nothing of the private houses of Roman Trier. Nor can we fix the number of the 'insulae'. On the west, and still more on the east and south-east of the town, much of the area was not touched by the drainage works and therefore went unexplored. We have proof only of streets and buildings for a mile in length and half a mile in breadth. [Illustration: FIG. 30. TRIER. From plan by the late Dr. Gräven.] Nevertheless we may make some guess at the original area. The streetage itself plainly dates from the original foundation of the Romano-Gaulish town by Augustus. There is, indeed, no other epoch in its history, so far as we know it, when a complete laying out could have been carried through. On the other hand, it is not probable that the first town was a mile long and half a mile wide. Possibly, as an acute German archaeologist has suggested, the small 'insulae' in the south of the town may indicate the line of an original wall and ditch which, like the first walls of Timgad, were overrun later by an expanding town. Certainly, early graves found hereabouts show that this space lay once outside the inhabited area, and similar evidence has been noted both on the north of the town in the Simeonstrasse, and on the west near the Mosel Bridge. If this be so, Augusta Treverorum may have at first covered only 120 or 130 acres; then, as the place spread beyond its original limits, its builders followed more or less closely the lines of the first streets, and, save near the Porta Nigra, continued the chess-board pattern as it was continued at Turin. _Silchester_ (figs. 31, 32). Silchester, Calleva Atrebatum (fig. 31), shows a different picture, which is the more interesting because the excavations carried out in 1890-1909 have given us a fuller knowledge of the town than of any other Roman site in the western provinces.[108] It was, apparently, the old tribal capital of the Atrebates and the county-town of its district in Roman days; though not possessing the full municipal status, it was probably the seat of local government for a considerable neighbourhood. In outline it was an irregular eight-sided area of 100 acres, defended by a strong stone wall, which was added long after the original foundation. Internally it was divided up by streets which, except near the east gate, run parallel or at right angles to one another. Its buildings are: a Forum and Basilica, a suite of public baths, four small temples, a small Christian church, a hotel, and a large number of private houses. Its area is by no means filled with buildings. Garden ground must have been common and cheap, and the buildings themselves do not form continuous streets; they do not even front the roadway in the manner of houses in Italian towns. In these respects Silchester differs widely from any of the examples which we have already considered, so far as their internal buildings are known to us. I will not call it a 'garden city', for a garden city represents an attempt to add some of the features of the country to a town. Silchester, I fancy, represents the exact opposite. It is an attempt to insert urban features into a country-side. [108] For accounts of the Silchester excavations, see _Archaeologia_, vols. lii-lxii, and _Victoria Hist. of Hampshire_, i. 271, 350; large plan by W.H. St. John Hope (1:1,800) in _Archaeol._ lxi. [Illustration: FIG. 31. SILCHESTER. (For detail see fig. 32.)] Most of it must have been laid out at once. At any rate, the area of which the 'insulae' numbered X, XXI, XXXV, and XIX form the corners, and the Forum the centre, must have been planned complete from the first. This covers just 40 acres, and is divided into rectangular plots of which the smallest covers a little less than an acre and a half, while the largest fall little short of 3-1/2 acres.[109] Outside this area, the division of the town into 'insulae' is less completely carried through, although most of the streets run straight on as far as the walls, and one or two details may tempt us to think that the division into 'insulae' was at some time extended beyond the line ultimately taken by the walls. [109] The plots are of three sizes, two being 3-4 acres (128 x 130 yds.), six about 2.4 acres (128 x 89 yds.), and six about 1.4 acres (89 x 80 yds.). In the third size the dimension of 240 Roman feet (p. 79) can perhaps be recognized. [Illustration: FIG. 32. DETAILS OF FOUR INSULAE, THE FORUM AND THE CHURCH AT SILCHESTER. (From _Archaeologia_.)] But whatever the exact amount of Roman building and Roman street-plan given to Silchester when it was first laid out, the place is not in effect a real town. It is not merely that, as I have said, the houses do not form continuous streets. A glance at the houses will show that they could not possibly be fitted into streets. The types of house here visible are not town houses. They are the types which appear among the 'villas', that is, the landlords' or the farmers' dwellings, up and down the rural districts of Roman Britain and northern Gaul, and the town which they constitute is a conglomeration of country houses. The reverse has taken place of that which we often see to-day in England. Our modern builders and architects had--until perhaps quite recently--only one idea of a small house, the house, namely, which to-day characterizes the monotonous streets in the poorer quarters of our new towns, with its front door and bow window on one side, its offices behind, and its two other sides left blank for other houses to stand against. This is a town house. Yet our modern builders use it, all by itself, in the most desolate country districts. I came across one such not long ago, when driving over a lonely valley in Exmoor. There it stood, with no other house near it, yet with its two sides blankly waiting for the street that ought to form itself to the right and left. The opposite of this has occurred at Calleva; here the rural house has been used, with scarcely a change, to form a town. We see the Roman street-plan introduced in surroundings which are not properly urban. The outward expression of the civilised municipal system jostles against a provincial and rural life. Here was a premature attempt to municipalize the Briton, which outstripped the readiness of the Briton to be municipalized. Silchester was probably a tribal centre before the Roman came; for awhile it may have remained much the same under Roman rule. But forty years after the Roman Conquest, in the reign of Vespasian (about A.D. 70-85), the Romanization of the whole province appears to have rapidly advanced. It was, indeed, encouraged by the Home Government. Various details suggest that the laying out of Silchester belonged to this very date. But to this the Callevan failed to rise. He learnt much from Rome; he learnt even town-life; he did not learn town-life in its highest form. When his town had been 'haussmannized' and fitted with Roman streets, and equipped with Roman Forum and Basilica, and the rest, he yet continued to live--perhaps more happily than the true townsman--in his irregularly grouped houses and cottages amid an expanse of gardens. The area of Silchester differed little from that of Aosta; its population, if we may judge by the number of dwelling-houses, was hardly as large as that of Timgad. _Caerwent_ (fig. 33). I turn lastly to another Romano-British town, Caerwent (Venta Silurum), between Chepstow and Newport in Monmouthshire. It is a smaller town than Silchester. Both towns perhaps began with the same area, 40 or 45 acres. But Caerwent never expanded; it remained not much more than 45 acres within the walls. Land was probably valuable within it; certainly its houses are packed closer, and its garden ground is smaller than at Silchester. Its general type is, however, the same. It has a very similar Forum and Basilica, Temples, an Amphitheatre, and a large number of private houses which resemble closely those of Silchester. It has, moreover, at least in the parts that have been so far excavated, distinct traces of a rectangular street pattern, which, if it was carried through the whole town, would provide (including the Forum) twenty 'insulae'. The size of these blocks cannot be determined with any precision. Indeed, in some cases the houses seem to have encroached on and distorted the street-plan. Probably it would be true to say that the average block covered an acre and a half or an acre and two-thirds.[110] We do not know enough of the history of Caerwent to do more than guess how this street-plan came to it. Very likely the same process of establishing a Roman-looking town for a local capital was adopted here as at Silchester. Very likely the step was taken in the same period as at Silchester, that is, in the last thirty years of the first century. Its occurrence is significant. Caerwent lay remote in the far west, with nothing but garrisons beyond it. It was the outpost of Roman city life towards the Atlantic. It was the only town of Roman municipal plan in Britain which was swept by Atlantic breezes.[111] [110] The three best defined examples measure about 260 x 260, 260 x 280, 275 x 275 ft. (1.55, 1.61, and 1.73 acres respectively). The unit of 240 Roman feet (p. 79) does not appear at Caerwent. [111] Accounts of the Caerwent Excavations, 1899-1910, will be found in _Archaeologia_, vols. lvii-lxii. A good plan of the whole town, from which fig. 33 is taken, was issued in vol. lxii, plate 64, by Mr. F. King, architect to the excavations (scale, 1:900). [Illustration: FIG. 33. CAERWENT. (Reduced from plan by F. King.)] Silchester and Caerwent did not stand alone in Britain. At Wroxeter, the ancient Viroconium, tribal centre of the Cornovii and a Romano-British country-town much like Silchester, though somewhat larger, oblong 'insulae' have recently been detected by Mr. J.P. Bushe-Fox which measure 103 x 126 yds. (2-2/3 acres). At Cirencester, the Romano-British centre for the canton of the Dobuni and a still larger town than Wroxeter, the 'insulae' near the Basilica seem to have measured as much as 120 yards in length, though full details have not yet been obtained. Both these towns may be ascribed to the later years of the first century and to the same civilizing process as Silchester and Caerwent. As further Romano-British towns are uncovered, we may therefore hope for more examples. However imperfectly the inner meaning of town-planning was understood, it was plainly common in the south of Roman Britain. NOTE. THE EASTERN PROVINCES. To complete the survey of Roman provincial town-planning, we must glance briefly at the East. Here towns of Roman origin were few, and of those few scarcely any are well known. But they do not lack interest. For example, take Antinoê, built by Hadrian in memory of his favourite Antinous, on the banks of the Nile. It was a parallelogram more than 3 miles round, which covered an area of 360 acres. Two main streets, each colonnaded, crossed at right angles and cut it into four parts. Of the other streets, nothing certain seems to be known. But references to the town in papyri denote four quarters of it by various letters, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and distinguish its house-blocks by the term Plintheion with a numeral attached. Thus, a house is described as lying 'in the letter Delta and the Plintheion 7'. Our documents show that there were in Antinoê at least eleven of these Plintheia.[112] It is fairly plain that they are rectangular 'insulae', of either Roman or Hellenic type, while the general fashion of the town and of its monuments suggest a Greek rather than an Italian city. [112] _Exploration des ruines d' Antinoe_, by A.C. Gayet (Annales du Musée Guimet, xxvi, Paris, 1897); _Grundzüge der Papyruskunde,_ Wilcken, i, pp. 49, 50. Professor A.S. Hunt refers me to the following papyri:--Reinach, 49. 11; Oxyrhynchus, 1110. 9-10 and note there; Brit. Mus. 1164 (c) 12. The numeration of the divisions of the town by letters was borrowed from Alexandria, where the five parts of the city were known as A, B, C, D, E. For plans see the Napoleonic _Description d'Égypte_ iv (Paris, 1817), plate 53, and E. Jomard, _Antiquités d'Égypte_ (1818), chap. xv. [Illustration: FIG. 34. BOSTRA. (After Baedeker.)] Another instance may be found still further east, in the land beyond Jordan, at the capital of the Haurân, Bosrâ, anciently Bostra. Little has been achieved in the way of exploration of this site beyond studies of the stately ruins of theatres, palaces, temples, triumphal arches, aqueducts. Little can therefore be said as to the date of its ground-plan. But it was rectangular in outline, or nearly so; and its streets crossed at right angles and enclosed rectangular insulae.[113] The place owes all its greatness to Rome. During the second century it was the fortress of the Legio III Cyrenaica, which guarded this part of the eastern Roman frontier. About A.D. 225 it became a 'colonia,' and perhaps we should date from this the town-plan just described (fig. 34). [113] Baedeker, _Palestine and Syria_ (1906), p. 162. This rectangular planning remained long in use in the Eastern Empire. When in A.D. 705 (as it seems) the town of Chersonnesus in the Crimea was rebuilt after a total destruction, it was rebuilt on a symmetrical plan of oblong 'insulae' (25-30 by 60-70 yds. area). Its streets were mean and narrow. But their plan at least was apparently more regular than that of their predecessors.[114] [114] Minns, _Greeks and Scythians_, pp. 493, 508, and references there given. CHAPTER X ROMAN BUILDING-LAWS Archaeology tells us that the western half of the Roman Empire and many districts in its eastern half used a definite town-plan which may be named, for brevity, the chess-board pattern. It remains to ask whether literature, or at least legal literature, provides any basis of theory or any ratification of the actual system which archaeology reveals. Of augural lore we have indeed enough and to spare. We know that the _decumanus_ and the _cardo_, the two main lines of the Roman land-survey and probably also the two main streets of the Roman town-plan,[115] were laid out under definite augural and semi-religious provision. We should expect to find more. A system of town-planning that is so distinctive and so widely used might reasonably have created a series of building-laws sanctioning or modifying it. This did not occur. Neither the lawyers nor even the land-surveyors, the so-called Gromatici, tell us of any legal rules relative to town-planning as distinct from surveying in general. The surveyors, in particular, are much more concerned with the soil of the province and its 'limitation' and 'centuriation', than with the arrangements of any individual town, and, whatever their value for extramural boundaries,[116] throw no light on streets and 'insulae'. [115] See p. 73. [116] Schulten, _Hermes_, 1898, p. 534. The nearest approach to building-laws which occurs is a clause which seems to be a standing provision in many municipal charters and similar documents from the age of Cicero onwards, to the effect that no man might destroy, unroof, or dismantle an urban building unless he was ready to replace it by a building at least as good or had received special permission from his local town council. The earliest example of this provision occurs in the charter of the municipality of Tarentum, which was drawn up in the time of Cicero.[117] It is repeated in practically the same words in the charter of the 'colonia Genetiva' in southern Spain, which was founded in 44 B.C.; it recurs in the charter granted to the municipality of Malaga, also in southern Spain, about A.D. 82.[118] Somewhat similar prohibitions of the removal of even old and worthless houses without special leave are implied in decrees of the Roman Senate passed in A.D. 44 and A.D. 56, though these seem really to relate to rural rather than to urban buildings and were perhaps more agrarian than municipal in their object.[119] Hadrian, in a dispatch written in A.D. 127 to an eastern town which had lately obtained something like municipal status, includes a provision that a house in the town belonging to one Claudius Socrates must either be repaired by him or handed over to some other citizen.[120] Similar legislation occurs in A.D. 224 and in the time of Diocletian and later.[121] [117] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ ix, p. 9; Dessau, _Inscr. sel._ 6086; 'nei quis in oppido quod eius municipi erit aedificium detegito neive demolito neive disturbato nisei quod non deterius restiturus erit nisei de senatus sententia. sei quis adversus ea faxit, quanti id aedificium fuerit, tantam pequniam municipio dare damnas esto eiusque pequniae quei volet petitio est.' (English translation in E.G. Hardy's _Roman Laws and Charters_, p. 101.) [118] Dessau, 6087, 6089; Hardy, _Roman Laws_, part 2, pp. 34, 108. [119] For these decrees, which are practically equivalent at this date to laws, see _CIL_. x. 1401 = Dessau 6043, and de Pachtère in _Mélanges Cagnat_, p. 169. [120] For the letter of Hadrian see _Bulletin de Corresp. Hell._ x. 111; it is quoted by Bruns, _Fontes_, 1909, p. 200. Compare the _Historia Augusta_, Life of Hadrian, ch. 18. [121] Mommsen, _Eph. Epigr._ iii, p. 111 and _Ges. Schiften_, i. 158, 263, 371; Liebenam, _Städteverwaltung_, 393. Rules were also laid down occasionally to forbid balconies and similar structures which might impede the light and air in narrow streets, and it was a common rule that cemeteries and brickyards must lie outside the area of inhabitation. At Rome too, efforts were made by various emperors to limit the height of the large tenement houses which there formed the 'insulae'. These limits were, however, fixed haphazard without due reference to the width of the streets; they do not seem to occur outside of Rome, and even in Rome they were very scantily observed. But in general no definite laws were framed. Probably the municipalities were somewhat closely tied in the administration of municipal property and had to refer schemes for the employment even of the smallest bit of vacant space to the 'patron' or the _curator_ of the town. But, apart from the provisions mentioned above, they had no specific rights, that are recorded, against private owners or builders. It was only once, after Rome itself had been burnt out, that an imperial order condemned landowners who 'held up' their ground instead of using it, to forfeit their ownership in favour of any one who offered to build at once. CHAPTER XI THE SEQUEL What was the sequel to this long work of town-planning? Two facts stand out distinct. First, the Roman planning helped the towns of the Empire to take definite form, but when the Empire fell, it too met its end. Only here and there its vestiges lingered on in the streets of scattered cities like things of a former age. But, secondly, from this death it rose again, first in the thirteenth century, with ever-growing power to set the model for the city life of the modern world. I. The value of town-planning to Roman civilization was twofold. It increased the comfort of the common man; it made the towns stronger and more coherent units to resist the barbarian invasions. When, after 250 years of conflict, the barbarians triumphed, its work was done. In the next age of ceaseless orderless warfare it was less fit, with its straight broad streets, for defence and for fighting than the chaos of narrow tortuous lanes out of which it had grown and to which it now returned. The cases are few in which survivals of Roman streets have conditioned the external form of mediaeval or modern towns. We in England tend perhaps to overrate the likelihood of such survivals. Our classical education has, until very lately, taught most of us more of ancient than of mediaeval history, and when our antiquaries find towns rectangular in outline and streets that cross in a Carfax, they give them a Roman origin. Such a tendency is wrong. Plentiful evidence shows that even in Italy and even in towns where men have dwelt without a break since Roman days, the Roman streets, and with them the Roman town-plans, have far oftener vanished than endured. Rome herself, the Eternal City, uses hardly one street to-day which was used in the Roman Empire. Some few Italian towns, described in detail above, have a better claim to be called 'eternal'; half a dozen in northern Italy retain their ancient streets in singular perfection. Yet even there cities like Padua and Mantua, Genoa and Pisa, have lost the signs of their older fashion. So, too, in the provinces. In the Danubian lands only one town can even be supposed to preserve a few of its Roman streets. In all the once great cities of that region, Sirmium and Siscia, Poetovio and Celeia and Emona, they have wholly gone; you may walk across the sites to-day and seek them in vain in modern street or hedgerow or lane. In Gaul there were many Roman municipalities in the south; there were many towns of lesser rank but equal wealth in the centre and west and north. But we owe our knowledge of their town-plans to an inscription from Orange and to some excavations at Autun and Trier. Cologne and Trier alone, or almost alone, keep Roman streets in modern use, and they are significant. Both became Roman towns in the first century; both held colonial rank; both have lived on continuously ever since and hardly changed their names. Yet both bear to-day the stamp of the Middle Ages, and the Roman streets which they use are small and nearly unrecognizable fragments. There is, indeed, no law of survivals. Chance--that convenient ancient word to denote the interaction of many imponderable forces--has ruled one way in one place and otherwise in another. Sometimes monuments have alone survived, sometimes only streets, and we can seldom give reasons for this contrast of fates. At Pola, gates, temples, and amphitheatre still tell of the Roman past and the modern town-square keeps so plainly the tradition of the Forum that you cannot walk across it without a sense of what it was. Yet not a single street agrees with those of the Roman 'colonia'. In the Lombard and Tuscan plains, at Turin and Pavia and Piacenza, at Florence and Lucca, the Roman streets are still in use, just as the old Roman field-ways still divide up the fertile plains outside those towns. But, save in Turin, hardly one Roman stone has been left upon another. In the no less fertile plain of the lower Rhone, at Nîmes and Arles and Orange, the stately ruins wake the admiration of the busiest and least learned traveller; of the Roman streets there is no sign. Britain has enjoyed less continuity of civilization than any other western province; in Britain the survivals are even fewer. In London, within the limits of the Roman city, no street to-day follows the course of any Roman street, though Roman roads that lead up to the gates are still in use. At Colchester the Roman walls still stand; the places of the Roman gates are known; the masonry of the west gate is still visible as the masonry of a gateway. But the modern and ancient streets do not coincide, and the west gate, which has so well withstood the blows of time, can hardly be reached by road from within the city. At York the defences of the legionary fortress have still their place in the sun, but the 'colonia' on the other bank of the Ouse has vanished wholly from the surface, walls and streets together, and the houses of the citizens of Eburacum are known solely by finds of mosaic floors. At Lincoln the Roman walls and gates can easily be traced and one gate rears its arch intact, but the Bailgate alone follows, and that erratically, the line of a Roman street. The road from the Humber, thirty miles north of Lincoln, runs to-day, as it has run for eighteen centuries, under the Newport arch and through the modern town and passes on southwards. That long straight road has given a feature to Lincoln, but it is a feature due to the Roman highway outside the town, not to the streets within it. Lincoln itself is as English as Cologne and Trier are German. II. But if Roman streets have seldom survived continuously to modern days, if Roman town-planning perished with the western Empire, it has none the less profoundly influenced the towns of mediaeval and modern Europe and America. Early in the thirteenth century men began to revive, with certain modifications, the rectangular planning which Rome had used. Perhaps copying Roman originals seen in northern Italy, Frederic Stupor Mundi now built on a chess-board pattern the Terra Nova which he founded in Sicily. Now, in 1231, Barcelonette was built with twenty square 'insulae' in south-eastern France. Now, too, the 'Bastides' and 'Villes Neuves' of southern France and towns like Aigues-Mortes (1240) were built on similar plans.[122] [122] For the Bastides and Villes Neuves see Dr. A.E. Brinckmann, _Deutsche Bauzeitung_, Jan.-Feb., 1910, and, for an example, fig. 35. Many of them may be earlier than 1200 (A. Giry, _Bibl. de l'École des Chartes_, xlii. 451), but those with more or less chess-board plans seem later. [Illustration: FIG. 35. PLAN OF A BASTIDE TOWN, SAUVETERRE-DE-GUYENNE NEAR BORDEAUX (A.D. 1281). (By Dr. A.E. Brinckmann.)] Soon after, the chess-board pattern came to England and was used in Edwardian towns like Flint[123] and Winchelsea; then, too, it was adopted at the other end of the civilized world by German soldiers in Polish lands. Cracow, for example, owes to German settlers in the mid-thirteenth century that curious chess-board pattern of its innermost and oldest streets which so much puzzles the modern visitor.[124] It is unnecessary here to follow further the renaissance of town-planning. By intervals and revivals it continued to spread. In 1652 it reached Java, when the Dutch built Batavia. In 1682 it reached America, when Penn founded Philadelphia. In 1753, when Kandahar was refounded as a new town on a new site, its Afghan builders laid out a roughly rectangular city, divided into four quarters meeting at a central Carfax and divided further into many strangely rectangular blocks of houses.[125] [123] Compare E.A. Lewis, _Medieval Boroughs of Snowdonia_, pp. 30, 61 foll. [124] So, too, Lemberg. Compare R.F. Kaindl, _Die Deutschen in den Karpathenländern_, i. 178, 293; ii. 304; he does not, however, deal with the actual plans. [125] I have to thank the late Sir Alfred Lyall for a sight of a survey made by English engineers in 1839. But in growing, the old town-planning has passed into a new stage. The Romans dealt with small areas, seldom more than three hundred acres and often very much less. The town-plans of the Middle Ages and even of modern times affected areas that were little larger. Only the last days have brought development. Till the enormous changes of the nineteenth century--changes which have transferred the termination of ancient history from A.D. 476 to near A.D. 1800--the older fashions remained, in town-life as in most other forms of civilized society. Towns were still, with few exceptions, small and their difficulties, if real, were simple. Save in half a dozen abnormal capitals, they had, even in relatively modern days, no vast populations to be fed and made into human and orderly citizens. They had no chemical industries, no chimneys defiling the air, or drains defiling the water. Now, builders have to face the many square miles of Chicago or Buenos Ayres, to provide lungs for their cities, to fight with polluted streams and smoke. Their problems are quite unlike those of the ancients. When Cobbett, about 1800, called London the Great Wen, he contrasted in two monosyllables the ancient ideal of a city with the ugly modern facts. It is not, therefore, likely that modern architects or legislators will learn many hints from plans of Timgad or of Silchester. There are lessons perhaps in the growth of Turin from its little ancient chess-board to its modern enlargement, but such developments are rare. The great benefit to modern workers of such a survey as I have attempted is that it shows the slow and painful steps by which mankind became at last able to plan towns as units, yet inhabited by individual men and women, and that it emphasizes the need for definite rules and principles. Nor is it perhaps quite superfluous to-day to point out how closely, even after the great upheaval of the nineteenth century, the forms of modern life depend on the Roman world. 
14248	----	Team. [Illustration: On A Side Hill] HOMES, _AND HOW TO MAKE THEM._ E.C. GARDNER. Illustrated. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 1875. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. PREFACE. These letters between the architect and his friends are composed of hints and suggestions relating to the building of homes. Their aim is to give practical information to those about to build, and to strengthen the growing demand for better and truer work. Even those who are not yet ready to build for themselves are seldom without an instinctive longing to do so at some future time, and a lively concern in the present achievements of their friends and neighbors, in this direction. Such will, I trust, find something interesting and instructive in these pages, and be moved thereby to a more cordial hatred of whatever is false and useless, and love for the simple and true. E.C.G. SPRINGFIELD, March, 1874. CONTENTS. LETTER I. EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE A HOME II. A GRATEFUL CLIENT III. THE BEAUTY OF TRUTH AND UTILITY IV. PROFESSIONAL FOLLY V. BUILDING-SITES AND FOUNDATION-WALLS VI. GRAVEL-BANKS AND QUAGMIRES VII. NATURE'S BRICKS ARE BETTER THAN OURS VIII. THERE IS A SOFT SIDE EVEN TO A STONE WALL IX. A BROAD HOUSE IS BETTER THAN A HIGH ONE X. TROUT BROOKS ARE BETTER THAN STREET SEWERS XI. THE STRENGTH AND DURABILITY OF BRICK XII. THE WEAKNESS AND SHAM OF BRICKWORK XIII. SKILL DIGNIFIES THE MOST HUMBLE MATERIAL XIV. EVERY MAN TO HIS TRADE XV. THE COMING HOUSE WILL BE FAIR TO SEE AND MADE OF BRICK XVI. DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE XVII. GOOD TASTE IS NOT A FOE BUT A FRIEND TO ECONOMY XVIII. OUR PICTURESQUE ANCESTORS XIX. THE USE AND THE ABUSE OF WOOD XX. A SURRENDER AND CHANGE OF BASE XXI. HOSPITALITY AND SUNLIGHT XXII. UNPROFESSIONAL SAGACITY XXIII. STAIRWAYS AND OUTLOOKS XXIV. IN A MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS IS SAFETY XXV. DOORS AND SLIDING-DOORS, WINDOWS AND BAY-WINDOWS XXVI. EXPERIENCE KEEPS A DEAR SCHOOL XXVII. FASHION AND ORNAMENT, HARD WOOD AND PAINT XXVIII. THOUGHT PROVOKES INQUIRY XXIX. CONSISTENCY, COMFORT, AND CARPETS XXX. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS XXXI. DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM XXXII. GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER XXXIII. BASEMENTS AND BALCONIES XXXIV. FOUR ROOMS ENOUGH XXXV. CONVENIENCES AND CONJECTURES XXXVI. THE LESSON OF THE ICE-HOUSE XXXVII. SHINGLES, SUNSHINE, AND FRESH AIR XXXVIII. WHERE THE DOCTORS DIFFER XXXIX. HOW TO DO IT XL. THE BREATH OF LIFE XLI. ETERNAL VIGILANCE LII. SAVED BY CONSCIENCE XLIII. FINAL AND PERSONAL BY WAY OF APPENDIX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. MR. ARCHITECT MR. AND MRS. JOHN ROUGH STRENGTH AND SMOOTH-FACED WEAKNESS ON A SIDEHILL ONLY ONE CORNER STONE BODY WITH BRICK MEMBERS BREADTH AND HEIGHT SECOND STORY OF WOOD COTTAGE CORNICES SQUARE HEADS WITH BRICK CAPS FRAGMENTS OF BRICKWORK BRICKS THAT ARE NOT SQUARE "PICTURESQUE AMERICA" A WISE GENERAL "THE GROVES WERE GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES" OUTER FINISH OF WOOD "THE OLD HOUSE AT HOME" FORTY-TWO FEET SQUARE "LOOK OUT, NOT IN" DUST TO DUST WOOL AND WOOD WOODWORK ON PLASTERED WALLS "SISTER JANE, SPINSTER" SISTER JANE'S KITCHEN WHAT THE BASEMENT ADDS OUTLOOK FROM THE ROOF THE OLD, OLD STORY SHINGLING GOOD OLD TIMES BRICK FIREPLACE HOMES, AND HOW TO MAKE THEM, OR _HINTS ON LOCATING AND BUILDING A HOUSE_. IN LETTERS BETWEEN AN ARCHITECT AND A FAMILY MAN SEEKING A HOME. [Illustration: Only One Corner] LETTER I. From the Architect. EVERY MAN SHOULD HAVE A HOME. My Dear John: [Illustration: Mr. Architect] Now that your "ship" is at last approaching the harbor, I am confident your first demonstration in honor of its arrival will be building yourself a house; exchanging your charmingly good-for-nothing air-castle for an actual flesh-and-blood, matter-of-fact dwelling-house, two-storied and French-roofed it may be, with all the modern improvements. In many respects, you will find the real house far less satisfactory and more perplexing than the creation of your fancy. Air-castles have some splendid qualities. There are no masons' and carpenters' contracts to be made, no plumbers' bills to be vexed over, the furnaces never smoke, and the water-pipes never freeze; they need no insurance, and you have no vain regrets over mistakes in your plans, for you may have alterations and additions whenever you please without making a small pandemonium and eating dust and ashes while they are in process. Nevertheless, I have no doubt you will plunge at once into the mysteries and miseries of building, and, knowing your inexperience, I cannot at such a juncture leave you wholly to your own devices. It is a solemn thing to build even the outside of a house. You not only influence your fellow-men, but reveal your own character; for houses have a facial expression as marked as that of human beings, often strangely like their owners, and, in most cases, far more lasting. Some destroy your faith in human nature, and give you an ague chill when you pass them; others look impudently defiant, while many make you cry out, "Vanity of vanities!" If you are disposed to investigate the matter, you will find that the history of nations may be clearly traced in the visible moral expression of the homes of the people;--in the portable home-tents of the Arabs; the homely solidity of the houses in Germany and Holland; the cheerful, wide-spreading hospitality of Switzerland; the superficial elegance and extravagance of France; the thoroughness and self-assertion of the English; and in the heterogeneous conglomerations of America, made up of importations from every land and nation under the sun,--a constant striving and changing,--a mass of problems yet unsolved. A friend once said to me while we were passing an incurably ugly house, "The man who built that must have had a very good excuse for it!" It was a profound remark, but if that particular building were the only one needing apology for its ugliness, or if there were no common faults of construction and interior arrangement, I should not think you in special need of warning or counsel from me. There are, however, so many ill-looking and badly contrived houses, so few really tasteful ones, while year after year it costs more and more to provide the comfortable and convenient home which every man wants and needs for himself and family, that I am sure you will be grateful for any help I may be able to give you. We are told that all men, women, and children ought to be healthy, handsome, and happy. I have strong convictions that every man should also have a home, healthful, happy, and beautiful; that it is a right, a duty, and therefore a possibility. Small and humble it may be, cheap as to cost, but secure, refined, full of conveniences, and the dearest spot on earth, a home of his own. In the hope of making the way to this joyful consummation easier and plainer for you, I propose to give you a variety of hints, information, and illustrations relating to your undertaking, and will try to make my practical suggestions so well worth your attention that you shall not overlook what I may say upon general principles. There is a right and a wrong way of doing almost everything. I am yours, for the right way. LETTER II. From John. A GRATEFUL CLIENT. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: How did you know my ship was coming in? Queer, isn't it, that when a man does get a few stamps, his friends all find it out, and can tell him just what he ought to do with them. But you're right. I've lived in an air-castle long enough. It's altogether too airy for cold weather, and a house of my own I'm bound to have. Your information and advice will be exactly in order; for it is a fact, that, until a man has built at least one house for himself, he is as ignorant as the babe unborn, not only of how to do it, but, what is ten times worse, ignorant of what he wants to do. So go ahead by all means; make a missionary of yourself for my benefit. Don't get on your high heels too soon, and undertake to tell me what won't be of the slightest use unless I have a fortune to expend. [Illustration: MR. AND MRS. JOHN.] Give me something commonplace and practical, something that I can apply to a "villa" of two rooms if my ship happens to be empty. I suppose it's all true that an ugly-looking house is a sign of want of wit rather than want of money, but there are lots of people who haven't either, precious few that have both. At all events, the man who has only one thousand dollars to spend is just as anxious to spend it to the best advantage as he who has five thousand or fifty. Mrs. John is delighted. She is bent on the new house, but knows I shall get everything wrong end first from cellar to attic. I always supposed a good kitchen was a desirable part of a family establishment, but the chief end of her plans is bay-windows and folding doors. However, if you tell us to put the front door at the back side of the house, or do any other absurd thing, it will be all right. As to your preachment on general principles, I'll do the best I can with it; but don't give me too much at once. Yours, JOHN. LETTER III. From the Architect. THE BEAUTY OF TRUTH AND UTILITY. Dear John: I am glad my efforts in your behalf are likely to be appreciated, especially if you share this common opinion of architects, that their mission is accomplished when they have made a pretty picture, and that they are an expensive luxury, which the man who would build himself a house must forego if he would be able to finish. Greater durability, comfort, and convenience are not expected on account of their assistance, only that the house shall be more surprisingly beautiful. Doubtless there is some ground for this poor opinion, but the architects are not alone in their folly, or wholly responsible; they attempt to supply an unreasonable demand, and are driven to employ unworthy means. The first grand lesson for you to learn (you must have patience with a little more "preachment") is that the beauty of your building cannot be thrust upon it, but must be born with it, must be an inseparable part of it, the result and evidence of its real worth. We must forget our great anxiety as to how our houses shall be clothed, aiming first to make them strong and durable, comfortable and convenient, being morally certain that they will not then be disagreeable to look upon. Professing a great contempt for a man who tries to seem something better and wiser than he is, let us be equally severe in condemning every building that puts on airs and boldly bids us admire what is only fit to be despised. The pendulum seems to have swung away from the plain, utilitarian mode of building that was forced upon our ancestors by a stern necessity,--possibly chosen from a sense of duty,--to the other extreme; giving us, instead of the old-time simplicity, many a fantastic design that claims admiration for its originality or its modern style. The notion that there can be a mere architectural fashion, having any rights that intelligent people are bound to respect, is quite absurd. Improved modes of construction and new helps to comfort and convenience are constantly invented, but one might as well talk of the latest fashions for the lilies of the fields or the stars in the heavens, as of a fashionable style in architecture or any other enduring work of art. Whatever building is nobly and enduringly useful, thoroughly adapted to its uses, cannot be uncomely. Its outward beauty may be increased by well-contrived disposition of materials, or even added details not strictly essential to its structure; but, if rightly built, it will not be ugly without these additions, and beware of using them carelessly. What might have been a very gem of homely and picturesque grace, if left in modest plainness, may be so overburdened with worthless trash that its original expression is lost and its simple beauty becomes obtrusive deformity. Even conspicuous cheapness is not necessarily unpleasant to see, but don't try to conceal it by forcing the materials to seem something better than they are. Let wood stand for wood, brick for brick, and never ask us to imagine a brown-stone value to painted sheet-iron. There is, too, a deeper honesty than mere truth-telling in material; a conscientiousness of purpose, an artistic spiritual sense of the eternal fitness, without which there can be no worthy achievement, no lasting beauty. Accepting this doctrine, which cannot be too often or too strongly urged, although it is not new,--indeed, it is old as the universe,--you will, I think, be puzzled to find an excuse for yourself if you disfigure a charming landscape or a village street by an uncouth building. Build plainly if you will, cheaply if you must, but, by all that is fair to look upon or pleasant to the thought, be honest. It will require some study and much courage, but verily you will have your reward, and I for one shall be proud to write myself your admiring friend. LETTER IV. From John. PROFESSIONAL FOLLY. My Dear Architect: I've been trying to learn my "first grand lesson," as laid down in your second epistle to yours truly. About all I can make of it is: Firstly, that my house is for myself to live in,--wife and babies included,--not for my neighbors to look at; and, secondly, that however much I may try to humbug my fellow-sinners in other ways, I'm not to build a lie into my house, where it is sure to be found out, after I'm dead and gone, if not before. You wonder what my opinion is of architects. Well, without being personal, I'm free to maintain that as a rule I'm afraid of 'em. The truth is, they don't care what a fellow's house costs him, whatever they may say in the beginning; and I never knew a man to build from an architect's plans that his bills didn't come in just about double what he laid out for. They want to get up a grand display, if it's a possible thing, so everybody that comes along will stop and say, "What a charming house! Who made the plans?" while from beginning to end it may be all for show and nothing for use, and mortgaged to the very chimney-tops. That's my opinion, and I'm not alone in it, either. There was my neighbor down the road,--he wanted a commonish kind of a house. Nothing would do but his wife must have it planned by a "professional" man. Result was, she had to put her best bedstead square in the middle of the room, and there was no possible place for the sitting-room lounge but to stand it on end behind a door in the corner. Another acquaintance of mine had $5,000. Didn't want to spend a cent more than that. Called on an architect,--may have been you, for all I know; architect made sketches, added here a little and there a good deal, made one or two rooms a few feet bigger, poked the roof up several feet higher, and piled the agony on to the outside, until, when the thing was done, it cost him $11,000! Of course it ran him into debt, and most likely will be sold at auction. He'll never get what it cost him, unless he can sell it as we boys used to swap wallets,--without looking at the inside. But everybody says it's "lovely," and wants to know who was his architect. That, I expect, is just where the shoe pinches. If an architect can only make a fine show with another man's money, he gets a reputation in no time; but if he has a little conscience, and tries to plan a house that can be built for a given sum, every one says it looks cheap, no kind of taste, and very likely the owner himself is grouty about it, and next time goes for another man. I don't envy you a bit. But don't be discouraged. Yours, JOHN. LETTER V. From the Architect. BUILDING-SITES AND FOUNDATION-WALLS. DEAR JOHN: You seem to have made as much of my last letter as could reasonably be expected. I might reply to your unfortunate experience with architects, by describing the cost and annoyance of the subsequent alterations, almost inevitable whenever a house is built without carefully studied plans; and I do assure you that when the cost of a house exceeds the owner's estimates, it is simply because he does not know his own mind beforehand, or stupidly fails to have his plans and contracts completed before he begins to build. It's no more the fault of the architect than of the man in the moon. By and by you shall have a chapter on the whole duty of architects, as I understand it, but not until I have given you something more practical to think of and possibly to work upon. Nothing astonishes me more than the absurdly chosen sites of many rural and suburban dwellings, unless it is the dwellings themselves. Notwithstanding our great resources in this respect, all considerations, not only of good taste and landscape effect, but even of comfort and convenience, are often wholly ignored. For the most trivial reasons, houses are erected in such locations and of such shapes as to be forever in discord with their surroundings,--a perpetual annoyance to beholders and discomfort to their occupants. I will not at present pursue the subject, but shall assume that the ground whereon your house will stand is at least firm and dry; if it isn't, no matter how soon it falls, it won't be fit to live in. Any preparation for the foundation in the way of puddling or under-draining will then be quite superfluous. Unless you are obliged to economize to the uttermost, let your cellar extend under the whole house, and make it of good depth, not less than 7-1/2 feet,--8-1/2 is better. When this is ready, I suppose you will start for the nearest ledge, and bring the largest rocks that can be loosened by powder or dragged by oxen, and set them in solemn array around the cellar, their most smiling faces turned inward. If you can find huge flat stones of one or two yards area, and six to twelve inches thick, you will feel especially fortunate. In either case you will survey these with admiration, and rejoice in thinking that, though the rains may fall, and the floods and the winds beat upon it, your house will rest on its massive support in absolute security, never showing the ugly cracks and other signs of weakness that spring from imperfect foundations. Perhaps not, but it will be far more likely to do so than if the first course of stones in the bed of gravel or hard pan are no larger than you can easily lift. You cannot give these huge bowlders such firm resting-place as they have found for themselves in the ages since they were dropped by the dissolving glaciers. However you handle them, there will be cavities underneath, where the stone does not bear upon the solid ground. The smaller ones you may rub or pound down till every inch of the motherly bosom shall feel their pressure. Upon this first course of--pebbles, if you please, lay larger ones that shall overlap and bind them together, using mortar if you wish entire solidity. As the wall rises, introduce enough of large size to bind the whole thoroughly. Above the footing the imperfect bearings of the larger stones are of less consequence, since there is little danger of their crushing one another. [Illustration: ROUGH STRENGTH AND SMOOTH-FACED WEAKNESS.] I say you will probably set their smooth faces inward, where they can be seen, which is quite natural and well enough, provided this is not their only merit. If behind there is a lame and impotent conclusion, a tapering point on which it is impossible to build without depending upon the bank of earth, it will be better to have less beauty and more strength. I don't like a foundation wall that is "backed up"; it should be solid quite through; if any difference, let it be in favor of the back or outside. You will find plenty of walls bulging into the cellar, not one crowding outward. If the footing of a foundation is made as it should be, the upper part may be much thinner, since there is no danger of crushing it by any probable weight of building. It may be crowded inward by the pressure of surrounding earth, especially if the building is of wood. To guard against this, interior buttresses of brick, or partition walls in the cellar, will perhaps cost less than a thicker main wall. The buttresses you may utilize by making them receive shelves, support the sides of the coal-bin, etc., while the partitions will take the place of piers, and, if well laid, need be in smaller houses but four inches thick. Should your cellar happen to be in a gravelly knoll,--you are thrice and four times blessed if it is,--and if there is a stony pasture near it or a quarry from which you can get the chips, you may try a concrete wall of small stones, gravel, and cement. It will be strong and durable; with a wheelbarrow you can make it yourself if you choose, and the rats will despise it. Whether your house is one story or ten, built of pine or granite, you can have no better foundation than good hard brick laid in cement mortar; cellular above the footing, as brick walls should usually be made. Between this and stone it will be then a question of economy to be determined by local circumstances. The details and accessories of cellars, their floors, ventilation, and various conveniences, belong to the interior equipments. There is, however, one point that even precedes the foundation,--the altitude. As the question commonly runs, "How high shall the top of the underpinning be?" Of course this can only be given on an actual site. It is unfortunate to plant a house so low in the ground that its cellar forms a sort of cesspool for the surrounding basin; most absurd to set it up on a stilted underpinning until it looks like a Western gatepost, lifted every year a few inches out of the ground by the frost, till it finally topples over and has to be set anew. Two things you will notice in locating your house,--as soon as the walls and roof are raised, the distance to the street in front will seem to be diminished, and the ground on which the building stands will appear lower than before, lower than you expected or desired. There is so much said and sung about houses being set too low, that it is quite common to find them pushed out of the ground, cellar and all, as though this would atone for a want of elevation in the land itself. There is little danger that you will place your house too high, great danger that you will not raise the earth around it high enough. Be sure that after grading there shall be an ample slope away from the walls; but whether you will have a "high stoop," or pass from the dooryard walk to the porch and thence to the front hall by a single step, will depend upon the character of the house and its surroundings. To express a generous hospitality the main entrance should be so convenient and inviting that it seems easier to enter than to pass the door. This effect, especially in large rambling houses, is most easily obtained by keeping the first floor near the ground. That hospitality and good cheer will always be found beneath your roof is my earnest wish. LETTER VI. From John. GRAVEL-BANKS AND QUAGMIRES. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I'm all right on the gravel question. You don't catch me building in anybody's quagmire. There's plenty of rheumatism and fever 'n' ague lying around loose without digging for 'em, and then building a house over the hole to keep 'em in. I don't want to say anything against any man's building-lots, but how in the light of common-sense a man can, with his eyes open, build his shanty on some of the streets in your enterprising city, is too much for my understanding. If they would first put in good big sewers, running slick and clean to the river, and underdrain the whole premises, 't wouldn't be quite so bad. But I don't want them, anyway; give me the high land and the dry land. I'm not particular about founding on a rock, either; that was well enough in old times when they didn't want cellars, but let me have a good bed of sand or gravel. Cellar may not be quite so cool, but all we need is to go down a little deeper, while, as for health, I'd rather be ten feet under ground in such a spot than occupy the "second-story front," in some places I could mention. Your foundation is all right in theory, and if I was going to put up a steam chimney, a government building, or anything else that must be done in the best way, regardless of expense, I should go for it. For cheap, common work, 't isn't worth while to be over-nice or over-wise. I tell you, there is danger of knowing too much about some things. According to your notion, a man couldn't do better than to stick the ground full of tenpenny nails to start with, and I should think a thousand-legged worm would be about the most substantial animal that treads the globe. As to planting my house, when I've bought the lot, I'll ask you to take a look at it. I have a fancy for some sort of a sidehill, so I can get into my house, from one side at least, without going up stairs out of doors, and still have the first floor airy and dry. Yours, JOHN. LETTER VII. From the Architect. NATURE'S BRICKS ARE BETTER THAN OURS. DEAR JOHN: Where to build your house may be, in truth, a question quite as important as how to build it. I regret my inability to give you the advice you need. Dr. Bowditch has, I think, intimated that there is an elysian field not far from here of such rare sanitary virtue that if its locality were known there would scarcely be standing-room within its borders for those who would flock thither, or something to that effect. I trust we shall some time have a scientific practical investigation of the whole matter, and such definite information as will enable us at least to qualify, by artificial means, evils that cannot, in thickly settled regions, be wholly avoided. Meantime stick to your text, keep high and dry. If you are bound to have a sidehill, and can find none to suit, you can doubtless make one of the earth thrown from the cellar wherever you locate. Have you decided what materials to use, whether wood, brick, or stone? You will hardly use any other. Glass houses are not popular, although for their sunlight they ought to be; paper ones are not yet introduced among us,--I'm expecting them every year; and iron, important and useful as it is, and destined to become more so, is not adapted to such buildings as yours. Wood, brick, or stone, then,--which of the three? To spare you all possible confusion, we will take them separately and in order, beginning with the hardest. For rural dwellings in New England stone is rarely used, except for foundations below ground, being, according to the common notion, better for that purpose than brick, but not as worthy to be seen, unless hammered and chiselled into straight lines and smooth surfaces. Errors both. Well-burned brick laid in cement mortar are nearly always as good as a stone foundation, while nothing can be more effective in appearance than a well-laid wall of native, undressed stone. We have too long neglected one of the most available of our resources in not making use of the small loose stones that abound in many localities. They are cheaper and better than bricks, and, rightly used, so thoroughly in harmony with the nature around them that we should find them in common use if men were half as wise in accepting the means of grace provided for them as they are prone to seek out many inventions. The earlier farmers with enormous industry built them into fences, and then added a second story of wood to keep the sheep from walking over them, or piled them up in conical heaps, watch-towers for the woodchucks. The later farmers, with less patience but possibly more enterprise, are running away from them to the smoother fields and richer mould of the Western prairies. We can do better than either; for, wherever found, they may be used most favorably, not only for foundation walls that are deeply hidden from mortal view, but for the main walls of the entire building,--favorably, not only in point of economy and strength, but with most admirable result as to external appearance. And here you touch your fundamental principle, that the best outward effect can only be obtained by a judicious use of the materials with which you build. You must not make the walls without any reference to their composition or proportions, and then try to conceal the poverty and awkwardness of the structure by pinning up preposterous window-caps, hanging horrible brackets under the eaves that must always be in doubt whether they support the cornice or are supported by it, fixing fantastic verge-boards to the gables, and covering the roof with wooden knick-knacks that mock consistency and defy description. Look rather to the materials at your command, and, whatever they may be, try to dispose them in such way that, while each part performs a legitimate, necessary service, you shall still have variety and harmony. Because I have suggested building your main walls of natural undressed stone, you must not attempt to construct them of that alone. The main corners, the door and window jambs, the caps and sills, cannot well be made of these rough hard heads and cobbles that are scattered over the fields, or from quarry chips. And here will arise the question of cost. It would seem decidedly grand to use for the corners substantial blocks of hewn stone,--sandstone, granite, marble, or porphyry,--channelled and chamfered, rock-faced, tooled, rubbed, or decorated; key-stones and voussoirs embellished with your monogram or enriched by any other charming device you choose to invent; bands of encaustic tile, brilliant in color and pattern, belts of sculptured stone, and historic tablets,--if you fancy and can afford them. Unless your ship is heavily freighted with Australian gold or African diamonds, by all means dispense with the cut stone, and use brick for the corners, caps, and jambs, and some good flag-stones broken into strips of suitable width and thickness for the sills and belt-courses. This will give you a contrast in color (unless you have the reddest of red sandstone for the walls), the utmost economy and durability of construction, and a whole effect very likely better than that of the stone. These brick dressings may be light, especially the jambs; but the corners, at least, should be laid in such fashion as to bind well into the stone walls, and if of considerable height, should be strengthened by belts of stone, or iron anchors running through the brick and extending into the main wall several feet each way. Any large blank surface may be relieved by a little ingenuity in the selection of the stones for the main walls, introducing, perhaps, some of regular shapes and size, the raised mortar, which may be colored dark or red, marking the joints, or inserting a belt of different color. Horizontal bands of brick laid in fancy pattern may be convenient and effective. Of course you will not adopt this style of wall unless there is a crop of suitable stones within easy distance. It is more probable that you will be afraid to use what you have than that there are none to use. Whatever can be made into a stone fence will make the walls of a house, if you are not too ambitious of height, and do not attempt to make them too thin. Other things being equal, the thicker the walls, within certain limits, the better. You don't care to build a Bastile, but deep window-jambs without and within add wonderful richness and dignity. If the walls cost little or no more, as is often the case, it is a pity to refuse the additional ground required for their extra thickness. Such walls should not be monopolized by hundred-thousand-dollar churches and fancy summer residences. They are quite suitable for the simplest, most unpretending country homes. [Illustration: STONE BODY WITH BRICK MEMBERS.] You will understand the general idea thus far by the accompanying sketches, with which I must close this letter, without concluding the subject. LETTER VIII. From John. THERE IS A SOFT SIDE EVEN TO A STONE WALL. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I'm slowly digesting your last production; not being an ostrich, it goes rather hard. For all that, it may be worth thinking of. Perhaps I shall be converted by the time the subject is fully shown up. I suppose we've always looked upon these loose rocks and stones sprinkled about the country as a part of the original curse, and have never thought of turning them to any sensible use, though good old Dr. Hopkins seemed to have faith that their soft side would some time be discovered. Funny, isn't it, that we should burn so much fuel and spend so much labor making bricks and other artificial building-blocks, when there are piles of them ready made, that would only cost the hauling? Not always on the square, to be sure, although in some places the ground is full and running over with flat stones that can be laid up as easily as shingles. They would hardly need any mortar, and the brick trimmings you describe would be a nuisance, except for looks. Miles and miles of stone-walls you will see, up and down hillsides and across pastures that don't look worth their taxes. Once in a while the lower half of a cider-mill, the back side of a barn-yard shed, or something of that sort, is made of them; but the people in these parts seem to think it would be folly to use them for anything more dignified. I suppose, because they are too simple and natural,--just as the Almighty made them. These square-cornered, flat-sided fellows are not the commonest kind, however; and I'm free to maintain that I don't want to build my house more than seventy-five feet high of the smooth cobbles that will scarcely hang together in a respectable stone-heap. I should expect the whole thing would come tumbling down some rainy night. Mrs. John don't take to the notion of a stone house--not yet. Says they're wofully old-fashioned and poky,--look like Canadians and poor folks. I just keep still and let her talk,--it's the best way. Won't such walls be cold and damp? How am I to know whether the stones that I can find are fit to use? Send you a boxful by express? Yours, JOHN. LETTER IX. From the Architect. A BROAD HOUSE IS BETTER THAN A HIGH ONE. MY DEAR JOHN: It will not be necessary for you to send me a stone-heap or a section of pasture-wall for inspection. I would rather venture an opinion from your description. Of course, these walls alone, if solid, as they doubtless must be, will be cold and damp; they must be furred off within to prevent moisture from condensing on the walls of the rooms. This furring should be done with light studs, secured to the floor timbers above and below, having no connection with the stone walls, the inside of which may be left quite rough, whatever the "builders in the elder days of art" might say to such negligence. For greater permanence and security against fire, instead of wood furrings you may build a lining of brick, leaving an air space of several inches between it and the stone, very much in the same way as if the whole were of brick. You say you would prefer not to build walls as high as a church tower of smooth cobblestones. Don't; it wouldn't be wise. Still I have seen them, of more humble dimensions, laid in good cement, as such walls always should be laid, that seem as firm as unbroken granite. But you will remember I only advise this mode of building on the condition that you are not ambitious of height. If you are, by all means curb your aspirations, or else buy a city house six or seven stories in the air, where you can gratify your passion for going up and down stairs. There is the best reason in the world why a tall house in the country should look grim, gaunt, and awkward; it is thoroughly inconvenient and out of place. The area of arable land covered by human habitations does not yet interfere with agricultural products. So let us spread ourselves freely. When we have learned the beauty and the strength of co-operation for mutual helpfulness, we shall see the prevailing mode of constructing houses in cities very much modified. Now they stand as books are placed on their shelves,--vertically and edgewise. They would hold just as many people, and be far more convenient, if they could be laid horizontally, one above the other. [Illustration: BREADTH AND HEIGHT.] True, this would involve floors impervious to sound, and fire-proof,--by no means a fatal objection. Since we can neither "fly nor go" in the air, like birds and angels, it is well for us, having found our appropriate level, to abide thereon as far as may be. There is no doubt that where dwellings must be built compactly in "blocks," as we call them, the "flat" arrangement, each tenement being complete on one floor, is the cheapest and best. Even the fourth story in such a building is preferable to a house of eight or ten rooms, two on each floor. But this does not concern you, unless you have a few thousands to invest in tenement-houses. In the right place I like an old-fashioned one-story house, but most people have a prejudice against anything so unpretending. One other fact besides the worth of co-operation I hope the dwellers in cities will learn to recognize practically. When there were no swift and screaming locomotives, no cosey and comfortable horse-cars, no red and yellow omnibuses even, there was good reason why men must forego the boon of country air; must forget the color of the ground, the smell of the green things growing, and the shape of the heavens above them. But the reason no longer exists. Doubtless the business of a city should be as compact as possible; but for its dwellings, every consideration of comfort and happiness, of physical and moral well-being, demands that the inhabitants shall make the most of their migratory resources and--scatter; find room to build, not tenements or residences, but _homes_ for themselves and their children. In the old time safety was found by crowding together within mural walls. Now the case is reversed. Where the population is densest, temptations and dangers do most abound. We've outgrown the walls, let us overcome the evils that were bred within them. There may be a prejudice against another quality of these stone walls. They are rough. Roughness means want of culture and labor; that implies want of money, and that is--unpardonable. But roughness does not mean any such thing. What are mouldings and frets and carvings but a roughening of otherwise smooth surfaces? Artists of all kinds seek to remove even the appearance of an unbroken plane, and nature abhors a flat exterior, never allows one, even in the most plastic material, if it can be broken. See the waves of the ocean, the mimic billows on a snow-covered plain, the rugged grandeur of the everlasting hills. Fancy a pine, an oak, or an elm tree with trunk and limbs smoothly polished! What if the outside of your walls are somewhat uneven? Let them be so. The shadows will be all the richer, the vines will cling more closely, and maybe the birds will hang their nests in some sunny corner. Do not, then, try to improve the natural faces of the stones with pick and hammer; you will find it hard work, and, very likely, worse than thrown away. I think you will like, both in exterior effect and in practical result, the plan of building the walls of the first story of stone with brick dressings, as described in my last letter, making the remainder of the house of wood, be the same more or less. If the sketches I send you do not make you in love with this style, or if you do not like to risk the experiment, examine something already built before deciding against it. But first explore the country around you and see if the stony prospect is good. [Illustration: SECOND STORY OF WOOD.] Mr. Donald G. Mitchell not only writes in favor of this mode of building, but proves his faith by his work; his new house at Edgewood being an admirable specimen of it. You will find, too, some noteworthy examples at Newport, for which, with much else in the way of applying a refined taste to rural affairs, we are indebted, directly or indirectly, to the same well-known writer. If, after the pictures, Mrs. John is still doubtful of the result, the examples above mentioned will certainly allay her misgivings. You must not think I would recommend this as a universal fashion, even where the materials are abundant, but give it place according to its merit. I hope you will be spared the folly of building your house of dressed stone of uniform size and color, lest it be mistaken for a large tomb or a small jail. That you may not at present be compelled to take up your abode in either, is my sincere wish. LETTER X. From John. TROUT BROOKS ARE BETTER THAN STREET SEWERS. My dear architect: We read, we saw, and--were conquered. The pictures, the arguments, and especially the illustrious examples, brought down the house, or rather brought it up. Mrs. John is not only fully reconciled to stone walls, but she is decidedly unreconciled to any other,--that is, for the first story; the second story is to be of wood, the walls shingled or slated instead of being covered with clapboards, in the orthodox fashion. She is delighted with the notion that her "Baltimore belles" and the like can clamber against the house without being torn away every two or three years for paint. On the strength of this notion, she has already ordered a big lot of all sorts of herbs and creeping things, from grape-vines and English ivy to sweet-peas and passion-flowers. That's only one thing. Every time we go out to ride she gathers up from the wayside such a load of small rocks as makes the buggy-springs ache. We found a smooth round stone, yesterday, that looks so much like my head she declares it must be a fossil, and is bound to have it set over the front door instead of a monogram. We follow your lead in another direction; if we can't rise in the world without going up stairs for it, we'll try to cultivate the meek and lowly style. Your best point, according to my thinking, is on the migration question. I read that paragraph over twice, and stuck a pin at the end of it. It doesn't concern me, to be sure; but I have the utmost pity for a man who is content to live all his life shut in between brick walls. To undertake to bring up a family of boys and girls where all the blessed freedom of out-door life is denied them, is worse than pitiful,--it's heathenish. Not that every boy ought to live on a farm and work in a barn-yard,--hoe corn all summer and chop wood all winter,--but I don't believe a child can grow up strong, healthy, and natural, body-wise and soul-wise, unless he has a chance to scrape an acquaintance with Mother Nature with his own hands. When I stake out John City it will be a city of magnificent distances, in the form of a Greek cross,--two wide streets crossing each other at right angles in the middle; all the business at the "four corners," where there will be plenty of short cross streets; the dwellings stretching away for miles on the two broad avenues; house-lots one to ten acres; Union Pacific Railroad will cut through the centre corner-wise; and the Metropolitan Transportation Company, or something else with a big name, will run elegant cars like shuttles through the two main streets, and Mrs. A at the West End can call on Mrs. B at the North, South, or East End, ten miles away, with less trouble than you in your city can go from Salem to Howard Street. Similarly, Springfield ought to stretch from Longmeadow to Chicopee Street, from Indian Orchard to Agawam. At all events, if your folks will make the most of their opportunities, it will some day be one of the most charming inland cities on the continent. Whether there is good sense, public spirit, and patriotism enough to make it so remains to be seen. Yours, JOHN. LETTER XI. From the Architect. THE STRENGTH AND DURABILITY OF BRICK. My dear John: It is encouraging to know that my suggestions find some favor in your sight. Pray don't go too fast. It isn't well to make up our minds fully until we have heard all sides, lest we have them to unmake, which is always more or less painful. Notwithstanding the peculiar merits of the stone walls, the coming house,--the house that is to embody all the comforts and amenities of civilized life,--the house of safe and economic construction, well warmed, well ventilated, defiant alike of flood, frosty and fire,--the millennial house, if you please, will doubtless be a brick one. Don't be alarmed. I know just what vision rises before your mind's eye as you read this. A huge square edifice; windows very high from the ground, not very large, square tops, frame and sash painted white; expressionless roof; flat, helpless chimneys perched upon the outer walls, the course of their flues showing in a crooked stain; at the back side a most humiliated-looking wooden attachment, somewhat unhinged as to its doors and out at the elbows as to its windows, evidently hiding behind the pile of brick and mortar that tries to look dignified and grand, but only succeeds in making a great red blot on the landscape; all the while you know the only homelike portion of the establishment is in the wooden rear part. The front rooms are dark and gloomy, the paper hangings are mouldy, the closets musty and damp; there is a combined smell of creosote and whitewash pervading the chambers, and the ceilings hang low. I don't wonder you object to a brick house in the country. Yet, if you propose to build a model, honest and permanent, a house that shall be worth what it costs and look as good as it is, I shall still recommend brick. The growing scarcity of wood, the usual costliness of stone, the abundance of clay, the rapidity with which brick can be made and used,--one season being sufficient to develop the most awkward hod-carrier into a four-dollars-a-day journeyman bricklayer,--the demand for more permanence in our domestic dwellings, and the known worth of brick in point of durability and safety,--all these reasons will, I think, cause a steady increase in their use. Hence it behooves us to study the matter carefully, and see whether any good thing can be done with them. Since the time, long ago, when the aspiring sons of Noah said to one another, "Go to; let us make brick and burn them thoroughly," to the latest kiln in Hampden brick-yard, there seems to have been little variety in the making or using of them, except that among different nations they have assumed different forms. They are found as huge blocks a foot and a half square, and in little flinty cakes no bigger than a snuff-box. The Romans made the best ones, some of their buildings having defied the elements for seventeen centuries, and their mantle, as to brickmaking, has fallen upon the Dutch. They were found among the ancient Peruvians, and the Chinese made beautiful the outside of the temple by giving a porcelain finish to the brick. Still I fancy they have always been more famous for their use than for their beauty; but their utility is beyond all question. If our modern experience doesn't prove it, read this inscription from an ancient brick pyramid of Howara:-- "Do not undervalue me by comparing me with pyramids of stone; for I am better than they as Jove exceeds the other deities. I am made of bricks from clay, brought up from the bottom of the lake adhering to poles." Notwithstanding these claims to veneration, there is but little poetry about them, and therefore, I suppose, but little progress. Compared with other materials, they have undergone slight changes with us, in color, shape, or modes of use. A block of wood or stone contains, in the eye of the artistic workman, every possible grace of form and moulding; but a brick is a square, red, uninteresting fact, and the laying of them the most prosaic of all work. By common consent we expect no improvement in their use, but rather sigh for the good old times when work was honestly done and the size of the brick prescribed by law. We associate them with factories, boarding-houses, steam-chimneys, pavements, sewers,--whatever is practical, commonplace, and undignified. Yet there are charming, even delicate, effects possible with these unpromising rectangular blocks. [Illustration: COTTAGE CORNICES.] In your efforts to unite beauty and brickwork it will be well to begin modestly, merely aiming to avoid positive ugliness. Do not feel bound to enclose your house by four straight unbroken walls,--brick are no more difficult to build in irregular shape than anything else,--and do not, on any account, make square-topped openings, as the builders of the old-fashioned brick houses were wont to do. Doubtless you have read Mr. Ruskin's vigorous protest against this particular architectural sin; if you have not, by all means do so, only he proves too much, and would fain make us believe that our doors and windows must not only be crowned by arches, but they must be Gothic arches,--doctrine to be received with some grains of allowance. A pointed Gothic arch may be, often is, very beautiful; but, applying our test of utility, it is most obviously out of place, and therefore inartistic, where close economy, convenience, and abundance of light are required. For the sake of strength, if for no other reason, let the top of the openings be arched, but a low arch of one arc or two is often preferable to a high one. If, for economy's sake, you wish to make the top of the sash square, do so, curving the upper portion of the frame as a sort of centre on which the masonry may rest; but do not attempt this if the openings are wide, and in any case relieve the wood segment by ornamental cutting or some other device, otherwise you will have a weak and poverty-stricken effect. Or you may use a straight lintel of stone, taking care to build a conspicuous, relieving arch above it of stone or colored brick. You will get the idea from the sketches, and see that there is room for endless variety of expression and ornament without violating any of the first principles, which you will do if you try to cover a square-headed opening with a "straight arch" of brick, or leave a light, horizontal stone cap without a protecting arch above it. [Illustration: SQUARE HEADS WITH BRICK CAPS.] LETTER XII. From John. THE WEAKNESS AND SHAM OF BRICKWORK. My Dear Architect: You must have had a brick in your hat when you launched your last letter. I suppose there's no doubt that brick walls will stand thunder and lightning in the shape of Chicago fire and Boston gunpowder better than anything else. In fact, I've always had a notion that if there are any houses in a certain place where they don't need them to keep out the cold, they must be made of brick, Milton's gorgeous testimony to the contrary notwithstanding. But when you undertake to show up the softness and beauty of brickwork, you soar a little too high for me. If our masons would only make walls that are able to bear their own weight; not use more than half as much mortar as brick, and that made of sand instead of dirt; if they would build chimney-flues that will carry the smoke to the top of the building, instead of leaving it to ooze out around the window-frames a dozen feet away, as I once saw it in a costly building belonging to one of our ex-governors, and remember that a wooden joist running square across a chimney-flue is pretty sure to get up a bigger draught than most of us care for; if they wouldn't fill up the inside of the wall with bricks that it isn't safe to drop for fear they can never be picked up again; in short, if they'd do the work that can't be seen half as well as what is in plain sight, I'd never say a word about beauty, I wouldn't even ask for those elegant caps the masons are so fond of poking out over windows. You can find at least ten thousand such in Springfield. Some folks paint them, sprinkle sand into the paint, and then go on their wicked way rejoicing in the notion that they have told such a cunning lie as "no feller can find out." Now and then the corner of a brick building is cobbled up into blocks and polished off in the same style. If these are some of the beauties of brickwork, I pray you have me excused. If you have anything better to offer, go ahead, I'm open to conviction; would rather be knocked down by an argument than a brickbat any time. Mrs. John says she doesn't care a straw about bricks, and hopes you won't spend much time talking about them. She's bound to have a stone house, whether or no, and wants you to give us your notions about inside fixings, especially the kitchen. (Between you and me, she wouldn't have said a word about the kitchen, if I hadn't accused her of caring for nothing but bay-windows and folding-doors.) Her sister Jane has been over to see her, and they've had a host of projects to talk over; part of 'em I get hold of and part of 'em I don't. Jane isn't married, but she's got some capital notions about housekeeping. Great on having things nice and handy inside, especially for doing the work, but she don't care much for the outside looks. So she hopes you will get out of the brick-yard as soon as possible. Of course, I shall read what you have to say whether they do or not, but don't run wild on the subject. Yours, JOHN. LETTER XIII. From the Architect. SKILL DIGNIFIES THE MOST HUMBLE MATERIAL. Dear John: Please tell Mrs. John and Sister Jane that I am as anxious to get into the kitchen as they are to have me; and if I can succeed in giving suggestions that shall make the domestic work, on which our comfort and happiness so largely depend, easier and pleasanter,--restoring the wellnigh lost art of housekeeping to its native dignity,--it will be a grander achievement than designing the most beautiful exterior that ever adorned a landscape. I'm perfectly aware that the outside appearance of the house is to the interior comfort thereof as the body to the soul,--no comparison possible between the two. Still, they must possess their souls in patience and allow me to work according to my own plan. Moreover, they must not neglect a careful study of the brick question. A decided opinion is a good thing, provided it is grounded on the truth; otherwise it is a stumbling-block. For yourself, I assure you my head is level; would that all brickwork were equally so. Beauty and bricks are not incompatible; but remember, there is one beauty of brick, another beauty of stone, and another beauty of wood. Do not confound them or expect that what pleases in one can be imitated in the other. As you were admonished, some time ago, "be honest; let brick stand for brick," then make the most of them. Your criticism on a very common form of "brick-dressing" is quite to the point. Aside from the stupid folly of painting them to imitate stone, not only these window-caps, but all horizontal belts having any considerable projection are essentially unfit for brickwork. The mortar is almost sure to fail at the upper side, giving the whole a look of premature decay, even if well done at first. A level course of long stone, running through a wall of small stones or brick, gives greater strength by binding the whole together. This has not always a good excuse for extending beyond the wall-face. But a projecting belt of brick adds nothing either in appearance or in reality. If horizontal lines are required to diminish the apparent height of the building or affect its proportions, make them of brick of different color from those of the main wall or laid in different position. Remember this; fanciful brick decorations are quite sure to look better on paper than when executed. As a rule, the more complex the design the greater the discount. Such work is apt to have an unsafe appearance, as though the whole was at the mercy of the bottom brick. [Illustration: FRAGMENTS OF BRICKWORK.] Your own sense of fitness must decide what shall be the general character of your house, whether light, open, airy, or sober, solid, and dignified. If the latter, let the strength of the walls be evident. Set the window-frames as far back from the wall-face as possible, in spite of any obstacles the builders may raise; make the arches above the openings massive, and the recessed portions of the cornice or any other ornamental work deep and narrow. There are not the same objections to a recess as to a projection; it is better protected, any imperfection is less apparent, and the desired effect of shadow is more complete. Much variety in color will not increase the appearance of strength, but the expression will be emphasized by pilasters and buttresses; also by the low segment arches and wide piers. On the other hand, for a lighter effect, make the windows wider and crown them with semi-circles or pointed Gothic arches. Leave out the corners of the piers in building them up; introduce belts of brick laid in various positions and of different colors, if you can get them, as I trust you may. Indeed, this very season, a brickmaker has reported himself prepared to furnish black bricks and buff, red bricks and gray, all of good and regular standing. You may be sure I gave him my blessing, and invited him to press on. I do not know whether he will prove to be the coming man in this department, but whoever brings a greater variety of brick in form and color within reasonably easy reach will do a good work that shall surely have its reward; for brick houses we must have, ugly ones we won't have, and rich decorations of stone we cannot afford for common use. Meantime, if you can do no better, do not hesitate to use brick that have been treated to a bath of hot tar. They may look old-fashioned, by and by. No matter; an old fashion, if it is a good one, is more to be admired for its age than despised. It is only by reason of its falseness and inconvenience that it becomes absurd. In the same category with colored bricks (indeed, they are a sort of spiritualized bricks) are the brilliant-hued encaustic tile that are finding their way hither across the Atlantic. Let us hope that the greatest country in the world will not long send three thousand miles for its building materials. A variety of forms and sizes of bricks we may easily have when we demand it in earnest. Beyond question there is room for almost unlimited exercise of fancy in this direction. We only need the taste to design appropriate shapes and to use them aright. Mr. Ruskin mentions certain brick mouldings as being among the richest in Italy. The matter of size relates rather to construction than ornament, but it is very important here. I think it will some time seem as unreasonable to make brick of but one size and pattern as it would now be to have all timber sawn of uniform dimensions. [Illustration: BRICKS THAT ARE NOT SQUARE.] You are more liable to attempt too much in the way of decoration than too little. Don't make your house look as though it was intended for a brickmaker's show-case. You will find the simplest designs the best. I have seen a really good effect on the side of a large building from the mere holes left in the wall by the masons' stagings. One thing more: Do not become possessed with the idea that a brick house must be a large or an expensive one. It may be small and cheap, but withal so cosey and domestic, so thoroughly tasteful and picturesque, that you will have an unquestioning faith in the possibility and the desirableness of love in a cottage, the moment you behold it. On the other hand, by making the best of your resources, it is possible to build a large, plain, square house, a perfect cube if you please, that shall not only be homelike in appearance, but truly impressive and elegant. How? I've been trying to illustrate and explain. By being honest; by despising and rejecting all fashions that have nothing but custom to recommend them; by using colored and moulded brick if you can use them well; by _not_ laying the outside work in white mortar, and by exercising your common-sense and independence, both of which qualities I am sure you possess. I must beg Mrs. John and Sister Jane (by the way, I'm flattered to know that a notable housekeeper finds anything promising in what I have thus far written you) not to give up the ship. One more broadside for the brick-yard, and we will pass on to loftier themes. LETTER XIV. From John. EVERY MAN TO HIS TRADE. My dear Architect: There is one point you might as well square up before you go any further. I understood that I was to build my house for myself to live in, not for my neighbors to look at. But I appeal to any white man, if you haven't had a deal more to say about the outside of the platter than the contents thereof. To be sure, it's what I might have expected. It's a way you architects have. You can no more help thinking how a house is going to look, than a woman can help hoping her first baby will be a beauty. I allow it would be a first-rate thing if we could have some streaks of originality, just a trifle more of variety, and a few glimpses of really good taste, along with the crumbs of comfort; and I'm willing to admit that your moves in that direction, as far as I can follow them, are all right. Still, it's a downright fact, that, unless a man is a great simpleton or a small Croesus, he is more anxious to make his house cosey and convenient, than he is to outshine his neighbors or beautify the landscape. Sister Jane wants to know whether, in case one wishes to begin housekeeping on a small scale, it would be as easy to make additions to a brick house for future need, as to a wooden one. She doesn't ask on her own account, but for a friend of hers who is talking of building. I expect you'll inquire pretty soon who's running these letters,--you or I; but if we don't sometimes show our ignorance by asking questions and making comments, how are you going to know what sort of information to shed? Yours, JOHN. LETTER XV. From the Architect. THE COMING HOUSE WILL BE FAIR TO SEE AND MADE OF BRICK. Dear John: Once for all, your questions and those of Sister Jane or any of her friends and relatives are always in order. The more the better. I will do my best to answer them, if not exactly by return mail, yet as soon as may be. Other things being equal, a house built of brick may be as easily increased to suit a growing family as one built of wood. There is necessarily a loss attending any change in a finished building, yet it is often well to arrange one's plans with reference to future additions. Will it be in order for me to express to Sister Jane my approval of any young man who is willing to begin life on a small scale, undertaking no more than he can do honestly and well, yet with ambitious forethought providing for future increase? You seem to be slightly in error upon this point. I have not said you must build your house without any regard to the exterior, or intimated that it would even be right to do so. I only protest against building for the sake of the exterior,--against sacrificing thoroughness and interior comfort to outside display,--against using labor and material in such fashion that they are worse than thrown away, their whole result being false and tasteless,--against every kind of ostentation and humbug. The truth is, we have all gone astray, literally, like sheep. We follow, for no earthly reason than because some one, not a whit wiser than we, happens to have rushed blindly in a certain direction. "Of domestic architecture what need is there to speak! How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty meanness, is our best! How beneath the mark of attack and the level of contempt, that which is common with us!" Thus Mr. Ruskin on the domestic architecture of England. What would that merciless critic say, or rather what profundity of silence would he employ to express his opinion, of ours? It will be well for him and for us if he holds to his resolve never to visit America. This servile spirit of imitation, blind following of blind guides, is by no means confined to the outsides of our houses; it not only penetrates the interiors, but more or less influences all our affairs. Charge me with a professional interest if you will, I assure you no man can, in justice to himself or the community, build a house for his own use just like any other. He must attempt something better adapted to his needs and tastes than that can be which precisely suits some one else. If he can give no better reason for building as he builds, for furnishing as he furnishes, for living and thinking as he lives and thinks, than that another has done so before him, he may serve for the shadow of a man, but will never make the substance. Eastlake, another English authority, refers to continental cities and villages "the first glimpse of which is associated with a sense of eye-pleasure which is utterly absent in our provincial towns." And then, to drain the dregs of our humiliation, we are asked by his American editor to believe that, nevertheless, certain towns of the British Isles are miracles of picturesqueness "as compared with American towns, which have nothing but a succession of tame, monotonously ugly, and utterly uninteresting streets and squares to offer to the wearied eye." Yes, I am anxious about the outside of the house, but do not for a moment forget that it should always be subordinate to the weightier matters, the higher and holier uses of "home buildings." [Illustration: "PICTURESQUE AMERICA."] Have I squared up your point? Let us return to the trowel. The somewhat vexed question of mortar you shall answer according to your taste, so far as to choose between dark gray--"black" it is commonly called--and some shade of red, resembling the brick used. Between these two there seems to me to be one of those questions of taste, concerning which we are not permitted to dispute. With the dark mortar the joints will be visible, modifying the color of the wall, in some cases, perhaps, improving it; while the red will give a more uniform tint, on which not only colored brick or stone will appear to the best advantage, but the lines of the openings and other essential details are brought out in clearer relief. You would perhaps expect coloring the mortar the same shade as the brick to give precisely the effect of painting the entire wall. But it is not so. As in wood or stone, though in less degree, there is a kind of natural grain, even in the unnatural material, strengthened by oiling, but softer and richer than any painted surface. There seems to be no evidence that the mortar is injured by proper coloring-material,--mineral paints, or even lampblack, if you like it; I don't. Whether you like it or not, you are _not_ to use _white_ mortar for the outside work. Unless, indeed, you propose to build of pressed brick, in which case you will need it to show your neighbors how fearfully and wonderfully nice you are. If you are so devoted to worldly vanity as to build in that fashion in the country, I don't believe it will be possible for me to help you. Chimneys deserve a chapter to themselves, they are so essential and so often abused. Let them start from the cellar-bottom and run straight and smooth to the very outlet. If you wish to be exceptionally careful and correct, use round pipe, cement or earthen, enclosed by brick. When it is so well known how often destructive fires are caused by defective flues, it is surprising that more care is not taken in building chimneys. They should be intrusted to none but workmen who are conscientious as well as skilful, otherwise every brick must be watched and every trowel full of mortar; for one defect ruins the whole, and five minutes after the fault is committed it can never be detected till revealed by the catastrophe. If the spaces between the bricks were always filled with good mortar, it would be better not to plaster the inside of the flues, as the mortar is liable to cleave from the brick, and, hanging by one edge, form lodging-places for soot. As commonly built it is safer to plaster them within and without, especially without, for that can be inspected. The style of the visible part must depend upon the building. One thing lay up in the recesses of your lofty mind: A chimney is most useful and honorable, and you are on no account to be ashamed of it. Don't try to crowd it into some out-of-the-way corner, or lean it off to one side to clear a cupola,--better burn up the cupola,--or perch it daintily on a slender ridge like a brick marten-box; let it go up strong, straight, and solid, asserting its right to be, wherever it is needed, comely and dignified, and finished with an honest stone cap. Ruins are charming in the right place, but a tattered chimney-top on an otherwise well-preserved house is vastly more shabby than picturesque. A common objection to brick houses is their redness; but there is no law against painting them, if their natural color is really inharmonious. Paint will improve the walls, will last longer on good brickwork than on wood, and there is no deception about it, unless you try to imitate stone. Still, it is not necessary, oil being just as good; and there is a sort of solid comfort in knowing that your house will look just as well fifty years hence as it does now, that it will mellow and ripen with age, and not need constant petting and nursing to preserve its tidiness. The model house to which I alluded in beginning this subject will be, in brief, somewhat as follows: The outer walls will be vaulted, thoroughly non-conducting both of heat and of moisture. All the partitions will be of brick, precisely adapted in size to their use,--I am not sure but they will be hollow. The body of the floors will be of brick, supported, if need be, by iron ties or girders, all exactly fitted to the dimensions of the rooms, so that not a pound of material or an hour of labor shall be wasted on guess-work or in experiments. From turret to foundation-stone, the house will be a living, breathing, organic thing. If the weather prophet will declare what the average temperature of the winter is to be, we can tell to a hodful how much coal will maintain a summer heat throughout the establishment. You may be sure it will not be more than you now use in keeping two rooms uncomfortably hot and in baking the family pies. There will be no lathing, except occasionally on the ceilings; even this will not be necessary. You may make a holocaust of the contents of any room in the house, and, if the doors, finish, etc., happen to be of iron, as they may be, no one in the house will suspect your bonfire, until the heap of charcoal and ashes is found. Dampness and decay, unsavory odors and impure air, chilly bedrooms and cold floors, will be unknown. The ears in the walls will be stopped, there will be no settlement from shrinking timbers, no jelly-like trembling of the whole fabric when the master puts his foot down. Finally, the dear old house will be just as sound and just as lovely when the future John brings home his bride as when his grandsire built it. And it won't cost a cent more than the weak, unstable things we're raising by the thousand. The coming house will surely be a brick one, but before it comes there will be plenty of work for the carpenters, and I shall not be at all surprised if you finally decide to build of wood. LETTER XVI. From Mrs. John. DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE. MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--Yesterday afternoon Sister Jane and I went out after May-flowers. We didn't find any, but on our way home met the schoolmaster, a friend of Jane's, who knew where they grew and offered himself as a guide. I was too tired to walk any farther, so they went off without me. Coming into the house, I was taken all aback by the sight of John lying on my best lounge, his muddy boots on his feet, his hat on the floor, and your last letter crumpled savagely in his hand. I was vexed, thankful, and--frightened. I've taught the baby, who is only twenty-nine months old, to hang up his little cap, and not to climb into the chairs with his shoes on, but I can't make a model husband of John. He is as good as gold, but will leave his hat on the floor, his coat on the nearest chair, and never keeps himself or any of his things in order in the house. He says it's born with him; comes from a long line of ancestors (he's been reading Darwin lately) who lived in houses without any cupboards or drawers or closets, and he could no more put away his hat and coat when he comes in than a blue-jay could build a hang-bird's nest. Yes; I was vexed, but thankful, too, that Jane was out of sight. Of all people in the world; she has the least mercy for anything like domestic untidiness. I only hope she will some time have a house and a husband of her own; if one doesn't shine and the other shake, her practice will fall a long way behind her preaching. Let me warn you now, not to attempt making any plans for her. It will be worry and vexation of spirit from first to last. Every knot will be examined, every shingle ironed flat before it is laid, every nail counted and driven by rule. When I tell her it would wear me out, body and mind, to feel obliged to keep things always in order, she gravely reminds me that Mrs. Keep-clean lived ten years longer than Mrs. Clean-up, besides having an easier time, a tidy house, and an enviable reputation all her life. Yes; I was thankful she had gone philandering off after May-flowers, and hoped she would stay till I had had time to brush up the room and get John into presentable shape. But as soon as I went to rouse him I was thoroughly frightened. His face was flushed, his hair was ruffled, and he looked up in such a dazed kind of way, I really thought he was going to have something dreadful. He held out your letter and told me to read the last sentence, which I did. Even then I didn't understand what was the trouble until he went on to say that your final charge was too much for him. He was totally discouraged. You began, he said, by urging him to build a stone house, which neither of us liked, though we finally came around to it,--even went so far as to commence hauling stones. All at once you went into ecstasies over brickwork, and argued for it as though our hope of salvation lay in our living in a brick house. Now, as he was beginning to feel that he must change his mind again (he would almost as soon change his head) and cultivate an admiration for brickwork, you must needs switch off upon another track and coolly advise him to build of wood! He declared he was further from a new house to-day than three months ago. At that rate we should live in the old one till it tumbled down over our heads, which I don't propose to do. [Illustration: A WISE GENERAL.] The baby was asleep, so I sat down on the lounge, took John's head in my lap, and tried to explain what you meant. I told him I had heard enough about brick, and didn't care what you said about wood. We should hold to our original plan and have a stone house; but you didn't know where it was to be, and wished us to be thoroughly posted, then use our common-sense and decide for ourselves what it should be. In some places it would be most absurd to build of wood; in others equally so to build of anything else. The matter of cost, too, might affect our choice, and that you knew nothing about. In my efforts to restore his equanimity, I had forgotten my broom and dust-pan, lying in the middle of the floor; forgotten John's big boots, not only on the lounge, but directly on one of Jane's most exquisite tidies; forgotten--actually forgotten--the baby, and was treating my disturbed husband in genuine ante-matrimonial style, when, of all things to happen at this very crisis, in marched Sister Jane and her cavalier! Simultaneously the baby awoke with a resounding scream. Now there are three things that my notable sister holds in especial abhorrence,--untidy housekeeping, sentimental demonstrations between married people, and crying babies; and here they all were in an avalanche, overwhelming, not only herself, but a most prepossessing young man, who, for all I knew, was viewing me with a critic's eye, as a possible sister-in-law, and wondering how far certain traits are universal in families. You will think I stand in great awe of Sister Jane; and so I do, for though she is two years younger than I, unmarried, and, candidly, not a bit wiser, she is one of those oracular persons who, unlike Mr. Toots, not only fancy that what they say and do is of the utmost consequence, but contrive to make other people think so, too. It is one of my husband's notions that nothing in the house is too good to be used every day by those he loves best, meaning baby and I. So I have no parlor--no best room always ready for exhibition--into which I could send them, but my inspiration came just at the right moment. "Don't, Jane, don't, for pity's sake, bring all that rubbish into the sitting-room!" She had her hands full of moss and flowers. "Please take it out on the piazza. John will carry you some chairs." And Jane was positively too much astonished to say a single word, but turned and walked out the way she came in, driving her dutiful escort before her. Fortunately, our piazza is eight or nine feet wide. I wouldn't have one less than that. So John took out the chairs, and was properly presented to the young gentleman. Half an hour later, when order once more prevailed, I went out to find Jane finishing a lovely moss basket, and the gentlemen amiably building air-castles. John had been reading your last letter aloud, omitting your reply to Jane's question, and was advocating brick in a most edifying fashion. As I sat down, the young man inquired very seriously if there would be any difficulty in making additions to a brick house, in case one wished to begin in a small way. John gave one of his queer looks, and guessed not; I, for a wonder, kept still; and Jane blushed brilliantly, remembering that she had already asked the same question on her friend's account. I am, truly, anxious about the kitchen and closets, whatever nonsense my husband may write, but should be sorry to have the house look just like any other, and, of course, wish to have it look well. Why may not our stone house be built in the manner of your model brick one, at least basement and first story, thoroughly warmed and ventilated, brick partitions, fire-proof, and so on,--that is, if we can afford it? And that brings me to the question that I intended to ask in the beginning, Are these suggestions intended to apply to common kind of buildings or only to those that are usually described as "first class"? Architectural rules and the principles of good taste are not thought to concern those who, in building, know no law but necessity,--with whom the problem is to get the greatest amount of use for the least possible outlay. John is industrious and serene, this morning. He thinks my letter isn't very practical, and hopes you won't forget that the subject in hand is house-building, not family history. Yours truly, MRS. JOHN. LETTER XVII. From the Architect. GOOD TASTE IS NOT A FOE BUT A FRIEND TO ECONOMY. MRS. JOHN: Dear Madam,--For your wise and tender treatment of John you have my heartiest thanks and admiration. It is not strictly an architectural suggestion, but could you not found a sort of training-school for wives who have not learned to manage their refractory husbands? I'm sure you would have plenty of pupils. Your query as to applying these hints I am glad to answer. Instead of preventing its indulgence, close economy demands the exercise of the most refined taste. The very houses that must pay strict regard to the first principles of art are those upon which not one dollar can be wasted. But these fundamental rules are identical, whether the building costs five hundred dollars or fifty thousand. When the newspapers describe "first-class" houses, those above a certain size or cost are meant. Let us henceforth have a truer standard, placing only those in the front rank whose design and construction are throughout in wise accord with the material of which they are built and the uses for which they are intended. Notwithstanding your want of interest in the wood question, I must give your husband one chapter on that subject, and promise him it shall be thoroughly practical, free from all romance and family allusions. LETTER XVIII. From John. OUR PICTURESQUE ANCESTORS. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've no doubt it would be vastly agreeable to you to have Mrs. John keep up this end of the correspondence. Very gratifying, too, to another party,--the paper-makers. It would be a big thing for them. But I don't want to hire a housekeeper, even in so good a cause, not till I have a house. In spite of Mrs. John's devotion to her first love (I mean the stone walls), it is, as you say, quite possible that our family mansion will be wood; and Barkis is willin' to hear what you have to say about it. One topic in your reply to my wife's historical report I hope you will work up more fully. Just explain, if you can, why the cheap buildings we have nowadays are so much less satisfactory to look at than those built fifty or a hundred years ago. Do you suppose the bravest artist that ever swung a brush would dare put an ordinary two-story house of modern style on the front seat in a New England landscape? It would ruin his reputation if he did,--even without the French roof. Can you tell why? There's no such objection to the homesteads of a generation or two ago. Don't tell me age is venerable, and moralize about the sacred associations and old-time memories that lend a halo of poetry and romance and what-'s-his-name to these relics of the past. That's all very well in its place, but if our grandchildren can discover anything artistic or even picturesque in our common houses of to-day, they'll be a progeny of enormous imaginations,--regular Don Quixotes; windmills will be nothing to them. Yours, JOHN. LETTER XIX. From the Architect. THE USE AND THE ABUSE OF WOOD. DEAR JOHN: One reason, among many, why the old-time houses are more grateful to the eye than those of similar cost but modern style, is that they were built of wood honestly and legitimately used, when wood was on all accounts the most suitable material for building. It is so still, and will be for a long time in many places, for its economy and convenience. Given a fair chance, it may be made very durable, and is even rendered practically fire-proof without great cost, by kyanizing and various other methods that are adopted for the same purpose. You will find one mode described in the June number of Harper's Magazine for 1870. Wood is effective, too, in appearance, when rightly used, which, more's the pity, does not often happen; for of all the materials that minister to human comfort and needs, this seems to me the most abused. Iron, like the old-time saints, betrays not its solid worth till it has been tried by fire,--is all the better for being hammered and beaten; stone is as much improved as an unruly boy by a good dressing; while bricks, like ghosts, come forth from their purgatory for the express purpose of being laid. All of these, by appropriate treatment, are invested with graces and glories that by nature they never owned. But a tree, graceful, noble, and grand beyond all human imitation, is ignominiously hewn down, every natural beauty disguised or annihilated, and its helpless form compelled to assume most uncouth shapes and grimmest colors. [Illustration: THE GROVES WERE GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES.] Of late our injustice is greater and more disastrous; for we are destroying the very sources of supply without providing for the future, using wood in large quantities where other materials would be better and cheaper. Yet we think ourselves very economical. Once it was common to enclose wood buildings of all grades by walls at least ten or twelve inches thick, sometimes much more, and solid at that. They were called log-houses. Now it is the fashion to use two by four inch studs standing in rows at such distances that the whole substance of the frame in a single sheet would be about half an inch thick. These are suggestively called balloon frames. The former would be huge and inconvenient, the latter are often fair and frail. That the frame of the outer wall of a wooden building should be mainly vertical is evident, the outer studs, if possible, extending from the sill to the plates, and as many of the inner ones as may be reaching through both stories, especially those by the staircase, where the shrinking of the second-floor timbers will reveal ugly cracks and crooks. That the greatest strength and economy of material are secured by sawing logs into thin, wide scantling is also beyond question, but don't try to save too closely on a bill of timber. A thousand feet added to the width of the studs and the depth of the joist will make the difference between a stiff, unterrified frame, and a weak, trembling one. Neither be sparing of the number of these light sticks. Sixteen inches between centres is far enough for studs or joists; twelve is better, though particulars will depend on circumstances. We have no use for the old-fashioned huge square posts, horizontal girts, and braces midway the walls of a two-story building, having found that studs two inches by five will carry all that is required of them as well as if ten times as large. Let us generously give the light frame the stanch support of a sound, well-matched, and bountifully nailed covering of inch boards. There's great virtue in tenpenny nails. Let the building be well peppered with them. Even after boarding, your walls will have less than two inches of solid wood. If you wish to make an example of yourself, lay this boarding diagonally; and, to cap the climax of scientific thoroughness, having given it a good nailing and a layer of sheathing-felt, cover the whole with another wooden garment of the same style as the first, and crossing it at right angles. All of this before the final overcoat of clapboards, or whatever it may be. A house built in this way would laugh at earthquakes and tornadoes. It couldn't fall down, but would blow over and roll down hill without doing any damage except disarranging the furniture, and, possibly, shaking off the chimney-tops! It would hardly need any studs except as furrings for lath and plastering, and would be very warm. You know my mind about floors. If you can't afford joists stiff enough to hold you without jarring, even when you chance to cut a caper with the baby, defer building till you are a little richer. Floors need the well-nailed linings, too, especially those of the upper stories, almost as much as the outer walls, and should be deafened with mortar if you can stand the cost; if not, with felt. The upper floors we will talk over by and by. Some people have a fancy for filling in between studs with soft brick, but I don't believe in it. It is seldom well done, it injures the frame, and costs more than back plastering, without being much if any better. Rather build a brick house outright. It is well, however, to lay a course or two of brick in mortar against each floor, filling the space between the inner base board and the outer covering entirely full and solid, leaving never the faintest hint of the beginning of a chance for mice. Then when you hear the dear little creatures galloping over the ceiling, driving hickory-nuts before them and making noise enough for a whole battalion of wharf rats, there will be a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to keep them out, and these brick courses will make the house warmer by preventing currents of air. Here is one advantage in wood not easily obtained in brick or stone,--the overhanging of the whole, or a part of the second story, which may be made picturesque in effect and will add much to the charm of the interior. It may be simply an oriel window swinging forward to catch the sun or a distant view, an entire gable pushing the guest-chamber hospitably forth, or the whole upper story may extend beyond the lower walls, giving large chambers, abundant closets, and cosey window-seats. Of course, such projections must be well sustained. Let their support be apparent, in the shape of massive brackets or the actual timbers of the house. Speaking of brackets, if we could learn to think of them, wherever they occur, simply as braces, we might have better success in their treatment. Our abominable achievements in this line spring from an attempt to hide the use of the thing in its abstract beauty. The straight three by four inch braces found under any barn-shed roof are positively more agreeable to look at than the majority of the distorted, turned, and becarved blocks of strange device that hang in gorgeous array upon thousands of "ornamental" houses. Besides these there are a host of pet performances of builders and would-be architects that deserve only to be abolished and exterminated; put up, as they are, with an enormous waste of pine and painful toil of the flesh, to become a lasting weariness to the spirit. Far more satisfying and truly ornamental is it, to let the essential structure of the building be its own interpreter. Very much can be done by a skilful arrangement of the outer covering alone. Don't try to clothe the house with a smooth coat of boards laid horizontally with no visible joints or corner finish. Such a covering is costly, defective, and contrary to first principles. Clapboards are good. Hardly anything is better, but don't feel restricted to one mode. I send you some sketches suggesting what may be done in this department by a careful design in the use of wide boards and narrow boards, clapboards and battens; boards horizontal, vertical, and cornerwise,--any and all are legitimate, and it may be well to use them all on one building. [Illustration: OUTER FINISH OF WOOD.] Many points relating to the use of wood and appertaining equally to buildings whose walls are of brick or stone, we may find farther on. In closing, let me adjure you by all your hope of a comfortable, safe, and satisfying house,--by all the common-sense in your possession and all the capital at your command,--resolve that you will never--no, never--build your house of unseasoned timber. LETTER XX. From John. A SURRENDER AND CHANGE OF BASE. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: It was very well for Noah and the other antediluvians, who had any little building to do, to wait for their timber to season. When a man has a thousand years or so to live, he can afford to take things easy. It's different in this great and glorious nineteenth century, when the chief aim is to make the shortest time on record. You know our Western farmers have a brisk way of going out into their thousand-acre wheatfields before breakfast, reaping, threshing, and grinding the grain, which their thrifty wives make into biscuit for the morning meal; and you've heard of the young man who caught a sheep in the morning, sheared it, carded, spun, and wove the wool, cut the cloth and made the coat to wear at his own wedding in the evening. Young America don't understand why a pine or an oak tree can't be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of grain. Besides, you talk like an old fogy. When a man says he has decided to build a house, he means he is ready to begin,--right off; and if our lumber-dealers won't keep dry stuff (which of course they won't unless obliged to), then he must use green. I'm surprised you don't admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with. By the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to be two alike, any more than you'd have two busts or two pictures alike in one room. Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest specimens, and hang them, like Lord Dundreary's shirts, "all in a wo," on somebody's villa. Wouldn't they be lovely? I'd like to pursue the subject, but have other fish to fry. Mrs. John is right, as usual; our house will be a stone one, and will not be built until next year. Meantime, the timber will have a chance to season, and we shall have time to study up our plan and sort of get the hang of it. Now I want you to transfer your interest to another case. Who should drop down upon us, last week, but our old friend Fred? Been out West for the last dozen years or more; enterprising and prosperous, you'll be glad to hear. Come home to stay, bringing a wife who is sure to make Mrs. John jealous, a triplet of boys (the oldest half as big as his dad), and plenty of stamps. He has bought the Captain Adams place, and is going to move off the old gambrel-roofed house (has a dozen or two men at work already) and build a brick one in place of it. I've given him the benefit of your advice in my behalf, and now he invites me, in Western fashion, to stand aside and give him a chance,--which I'm very willing to do, for he's a tiptop fellow and so is Mrs. Fred. Eastern people Westernized,--if you can find a better sort of neighbors I'd like an introduction! Yours, JOHN. LETTER XXI. From the Architect. HOSPITALITY AND SUNLIGHT. DEAR JOHN: Our old friend shall not be neglected. He has only to present his case and make known his wishes. Meantime, in arranging your own plans, be generous if you can; not lavish or extravagant in expenditure, but generous in feeling and expression. Let your doors and windows be wide, and your roof be high. A wide door is far more convenient than a narrow one, usually much better in appearance; and for the windows,--when shall we learn the unspeakable worth of the bountiful light of heaven? Does Mrs. John complain that the sunlight will fade her carpets? Let them fade, and know of a truth that all the colors of all the carpets of all the looms that ever throbbed are not worth to the civilized mortals who tread the dust-containing fabrics one single hour of unobstructed sunshine. Is it that our deeds are evil, that we seem to love darkness rather than light; or is it through our ignorant exclusion of this glorious gift, "offspring of heaven first born," that we are left to wander in so many darksome ways? Be generous, did I say? rather try to be just to yourself. Practically, the larger opening is scarcely more expensive than the small one. The work of construction is no greater, and the material for the door or window costs but little more than the thicker wall of wood, brick, or stone. [Illustration: "THE OLD HOUSE AT HOME."] I remember an old farm-house on the side of one of our rocky New England hills, a type of a fashion almost extinct, broad and brooding, low in the walls, small windows and far between, high roof, wide gables, pierced by windows of various sizes, and queerly located, as if the huge garret were inhabited by a mixed company of dwarfs and giants, each with his own particular window suited to his height; in the centre a massive chimney like the base of a tower, out of which the smoke rolled in lazy curves. At the east side of the house, under the narrow eaves, and opening, I think, into the long kitchen, was one huge window, as high as the others, and as wide as it was high. How it found a place there I never knew, but nothing could be more benign in effect than its generous breadth. The panes were small and green and warped, after the manner of glass known to former times; but through it the sun poured a flood of warm light every morning, and on winter evenings the glow of the firelight within made a grand illumination far across the snowy hillsides; yet I don't think the old window was ever truly appreciated. The others seemed to despise it, and try to keep at a distance in their narrowness and regularity. The little square loopholes in the gables lifted their diminutive eyebrows in contempt; even the green door looked blank and scowling, as though at a possible rival. I fancy the housekeeper fretted at the larger curtain covering this wide, unwinking eye, and the extra labor required on cleaning-days. But this one great square window was the sole redeeming feature beneath the roof of the ancient farm-house. Beneath the roof, I say. The roof itself was, and is, and ever shall be the great charm of those antiquated houses,--not of the old alone, but if any new house shall ever rise, if you succeed in building your own so that it shall seem to be the abiding-place of the incarnate genius of domestic happiness, the roof of your earthly paradise will be bold and high. Pierced by windows it may be, and broken by gables, but steep enough to shed rain and snow, and high enough to be plainly visible to the coming guest, promising safety and welcome beneath its tranquil shade. Practically, the steep roof is better than any other, because a flat one cannot be as permanently covered with any known material at so little cost, the multitudes of cheap and durable patent roofings to the contrary notwithstanding. By steep roofs I mean any that have sufficient pitch to allow the use of slate or shingle. Such need not be intricate or difficult of construction to look well, but must be honest and useful. They can be neither unless visible, and here we see the holy alliance of use and beauty; for the character and expression of a building depend almost wholly upon the roof. You will lose, too, under the flat roof, the roomy garret of the old high-roofed houses. These have for me a wonderful fascination. Whether the rain upon the shingles, the mingled fragrance of seeds and drying herbs, the surprising bigness of the chimney, the mysteries hidden in the worm-eaten chests, the almost saintly charm of the long-unused spinning-wheels, crumbling mementos of the patient industry of former generations, or the shine of the stars through the chinks in the shrunken boards, the old garret and all its associations are among the "long, long thoughts." I sometimes doubt whether the modern conveniences we are so fond of proclaiming are really an equivalent to the rising generation for this happiest of playrooms, this storehouse of heirlooms, this silent but potent tie, that binds us to the life, the labor, and the love of the past. [Illustration: FORTY-TWO FEET SQUARE.] Let there be light, too, in this upper story. Spinning spiders and stinging wasps are not half so terrible to the children who will make a half-way paradise of the garret as the darkness that is covered by an unlighted roof. If you have been living in cottage-chambers,--rooms in which a full-sized man can hardly stand erect in the centre, and a well-grown baby scarcely creep at the sides, unventilated, heated beyond endurance during the hot summer days, and retaining their heat through the long, wakeful nights,--rooms in which the furniture must stand at various distances from the walls as if marshalled for the house-cleaning battle, but in which even the making of beds is a work of supreme difficulty,--if you've been living in such rooms as these, I don't wonder, whatever architects or other men may say, that Mrs. John objects, and insists on good, square chambers. But good, square chambers no more require flat roofs than good, square common-sense requires a flat head. I don't believe you will contrive a house, of whatever form or size, that may not be covered more cheaply, more securely, and more tastefully by a steep roof than by a flat one. Of course, I'm supposing your house to be isolated. Buildings in crowded streets or in blocks require, on all accounts, entirely different treatment. By all means, then, have wide doors, generous windows, and high roofs; and if you must build with strict economy you may be morally certain that your house, though not perhaps as altogether lovely as you might wish, will still be cheerful and homelike. Allow me to add, that, while faithfully striving to build a house that shall be honest and cheerful, you will surely find yourself growing in the same direction. LETTER XXII. From Fred. UNPROFESSIONAL SAGACITY. DEAR ARCHITECT: Our mutual friend John recommends me to ask your advice in regard to plans for my new house. Possibly you may help me, although the floor plans sent herewith are about right; rooms enough and of the right size, the principal ones adapted to the usual widths of carpeting. I am willing to expend something for the outside appearance,--in fact, intend to have the best looking house in town,--but think it would be foolish to build more rooms or larger than I want, much more so to dispense with needed room in order to get a certain proportion of parts. I merely mention this because, with all due respect, I am doubtless the best judge of my own wants, and don't care to have the dimensions of the building changed. The relative location of the different apartments is also satisfactory, except perhaps some slight deficiencies in the rear portion, which I left incomplete for want of time. As to exterior, would like a French roof and tower, with fashionable style of finish throughout. Shall commence laying foundation next week, and you will please consider yourself invited to eat turkey with us in the new house next Thanksgiving. Truly, FRED. LETTER XXIII. From the Architect. STAIRWAYS AND OUTLOOKS. Dear Fred: Your plans are before me, also your letter; also the proverbs of Solomon, from which I read, in order to fortify myself for the work before me, sundry suggestions concerning the duty of faithful friends,--the undaunted, disagreeable sort who cry aloud and spare not. It's quite right for you to try to show what you would like, quite true that you ought to know your own needs and tastes better than any one else, and though I cannot agree with you, I'm glad you have a mind of your own; those who have not are of all men most miserable to deal with, most difficult to suit. Indeed, when a man feels clearly a lack in his own home-life which nothing but a new house will supply, he is sure to have some decided notions as to what that house shall be. But when you assure me in good set terms that this plan is your beau-ideal, I must ask, also with profound respect, if you know what you are talking about. Put in your foundation, by all means, but remember how much easier it is to change a few lines on paper than to remove a stone wall. It is not a pleasant job to cut a door into a finished and furnished room, or even to change the hanging of it. This house, if I understand aright, you intend for a permanent home. How immeasurably better to spend six months, if need be, in perfecting the plans, than by and by to be tormented with defects that can only be removed by great expense and trouble! It's a grand thing to go ahead, provided you are right; the more "go," the worse, if you happen to be on the wrong track. Candidly, your plan hardly deserves to be called a beginning. The arrangement of the rear part, which you chiefly omit, is, in fact, the most difficult and important of the whole. But I've promised Sister Jane a chapter on kitchens, of which, when the time comes, you can have the benefit. Meanwhile, complete the unfinished part of your plan,--it only requires you to spend a few brief moments,--and I will venture some suggestions on this which lies before me. The front stairs as laid down would reach just half-way to the second floor,--a peculiarity of amateur sketches so universal that we will say nothing more about it. But what principle of good taste or hospitality requires you to blockade the main entrance to your house with this same staircase? Do you send all your visitors, of whatever name or nation, direct to the upper regions the moment they enter? Why, then, make the northwest passage thither the most conspicuous route from the door? Do you intend to restrict the family to the back stairs, which by your showing are, like the famous _descensus Averno_, wonderfully easy to go down, but mighty hard to get up again? Yet you place these front stairs at the very farthest remove from the rooms most constantly used in both stories. Perhaps you propose to announce "apartments to let" on the second and third floors. No? What reason, then, for imitating hotels, lodging-houses, double-barrelled tenements, and other public and semi-public buildings from which a short cut to the street is essential? Don't tell me you wish them to be ornamental as well as useful. I know that; but remember the stairs are built for the house, not the house for the stairs. You had better lose them wholly as an ornamental feature, than destroy the charm of what should be the most prepossessing portion of the interior. Moreover, they can have no pleasure-giving beauty if manifestly out of place,--a safe rule for general application. Build them where they will be most useful, that is, as near the centre of the house as possible; make them grand and gorgeous as the steps to an Oriental palace,--so broad and easy of ascent that the upward and onward way will be as tempting as were the Alps to Mr. Longfellow's aspiring youth. But keep them away from the front door,--out of the principal hall, which should be open, airy, and free, suggesting something besides an everlasting getting up stairs. If the staircase hall cannot be arranged at right angles to the main hall, an arch or ornamental screen may be introduced, partially separating the two and giving character to both. Have you been living in a city of late? It must be, else why so complacent with a narrow hall, steep, obtrusive stairs, and, O, why, tell me why, do you not fix the location of your windows with some regard to views, not only out of the house but through it. I remember one country dwelling built by a retired civilian in the inevitable city style; windows at the end giving a narrow view of the road in front, while the entire side walls were absolutely blank and bare, never so much as a knot-hole through which the occupants could get a glimpse of the field and forest that stretched broadly away at either side. I've no doubt the owner hung oil-paintings on his parlor walls, and thought them more lovely than all out-doors,--especially when he remembered their cost. The old Roman who declared his soldiers made a bigger racket with their arms than Jupiter with his thunderbolts, was modest beyond comparison with such a man. Your arrangement is not quite so bad as that of the aforesaid civilian, but, like hosts of others, you fail to make the most of your opportunities. Suppose you were able to secure for a small sum a landscape painted by one of the masters and esteemed of great value. You would think it folly to let the chance pass unimproved. By simply cutting a hole in the wall you may have a picture infinitely grander than human artist ever painted; grander in its teaching, in its actual beauty, its variety, and its permanency; grander in everything except its market value. I am not sure but your children's children will find some one window in the old homestead that commands a view of the everlasting hills, an heirloom even of greater pecuniary value than the rarest work of art. Do not forget, either, the views _through_ the house. If your windows can be placed so that throwing open the doors from room to room or across the hall will reveal a charming prospect in opposite directions, there's a sense of being in the midst of an all-surrounding beauty, hardly possible when you seem to look upon it from one side only. You have surely been abiding in a city. The interior of your house is all that concerns you or your family. The outside--French roof and fashionable finish, forsooth!--is for the public to admire. They are not to have any intimation what sort of a home is sheltered by your monstrous Mansard; and it never occurs to you that there can be anything out of doors worth building your house to see. [Illustration: "LOOK OUT, NOT IN."] Here is another unhappy result of evil examples,--the sliding-doors between the two parlors, as you call them,--an arrangement convenient enough, sometimes indispensable in houses built on crowded streets, houses that only breathe the dusty air and catch the struggling sunbeams at their narrow and remote extremities,--air and sunlight at nobody knows how many hundred dollars the front foot. They are worse than useless in such a house as yours. I say your plan is scarcely a beginning; the same of this letter. But it's enough for once. LETTER XXIV. From Fred. IN A MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS IS SAFETY. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: Your criticisms are not wholly without reason. I can only plead haste and inexperience. Have been studying arrangement of rear part, and seem to get farther and farther from a satisfactory result. The kitchen and dining-room must be convenient to each other, but not adjacent; the pantries and larder easy to get at; back stairs accessible from all parts of the house, and side entrance worked in somehow; washbowl and water-closet not far off, but out of sight, and the whole department quite isolated from front hall. My wife can't think of pantry and store-rooms at the south side, nor do we want kitchen or outer door at the north. John's sister-in-law, Miss Jane, who appears to have some sensible notions, thinks a kitchen should always have windows on opposite sides for light and ventilation. John says I should have a kitchen large enough for wash-trays and a set kettle, but one of my neighbors, who has just built a house, advises a laundry in the cellar. Altogether it's a troublesome problem, and, frankly, I give it up. Do you really expect us to dispense with sliding-doors between the parlors? I'm sure that won't pass. We would almost as soon give up the bay-windows,--everybody has them nowadays. Truly, Fred. LETTER XXV. From the Architect. DOORS AND SLIDING-DOORS, WINDOWS AND BAY-WINDOWS. DEAR FRED: "Everybody has them!" What a monstrous load of iniquity and nonsense that scape-goat has to carry! Everybody wears tight boots and bustles and chignons and stove-pipe hats. Everybody smokes and brags, and cheats in trade, not to mention a host of other abominations that can give only this excuse for their being: they are common to a few millions of people who have not learned to declare a reason for the faith that is in them or the works that grow out of them. Let us take time to consider this sliding-door question,--folding-doors they used to be, and, truly, I'm not sure that the rollers are any improvement on the hinges,--there is something dreadfully barny about sliding-doors. Why do you want either? You have one room which you call the parlor, supposed to be the best in the house, as to its location, its finish, its furniture, and its use. Three of its walls are handsomely frescoed, curtained, and decorated with pictures or other ornaments; the fourth is one huge barricade of panel-work. When the two parts are closed you have a constant fancy of rheumatic currents stealing through the cracks, and an ever-present fear lest they should suddenly fly open with "impetuous recoil, grating harsh thunder" on their wheels, and not exactly letting Satan in, but everything in the room fall out; an idle fear, for they can only be shoved asunder by dint of much pushing and pulling, especially if they are warped by having one side exposed to more heat than the other, as usually happens. Being at last opened by hook or crook, another room is revealed, commonly smaller, more shabby in appearance, a sort of poor-relation attachment, spoiling the completeness and artistic unity of the larger one. By care you may avoid something of this; if you follow the fashion, you will have the most of it. When the two rooms are twins, alike in every respect, they are really one large room, fitted up, for economical reasons, with a movable screen in the centre, by means of which you may warm (excepting rheumatic currents as above) and use one half at a time. But call things by their right names. Don't talk grandly about your two parlors when you mean two halves of one. Have wide doors, by all means, not only between rooms but into main hall,--four, six, or eight feet, if the rooms are so wide and high that they shall not be disproportionately large. Then, if you must have the whole broadside of sliding or folding doors, let the two rooms thus connected be of different styles but equal richness,--different, that they shall not seem one room cut in two,--peers, that one shall not shame and cheapen the other. Doors are a great bother, at best. I wish they could be abolished. They are always slamming, punching holes in the plastering with their knobs, creaking on their hinges, bruising the piano, pinching babies' fingers, and making old folks see stars when they get up in the night to look for burglars. Heavy curtains are infinitely more graceful, equally warm, and not half so stubbornly unmanageable. Then think of entering a room. By her steps the goddess is revealed; but who can walk like a goddess while forcing an entrance between two sliding-doors, maybe wedging fast half-way through? How different from passing in quiet dignity beneath the rich folds of overhanging drapery! But I suppose we must leave all that to the Orientals, at present. "You would almost as soon give up the bay-windows!" Well, you might e'en do worse than that. Now let your indignation boil. Bay-windows are very charming things sometimes; sometimes they are nuisances. Some have been so appropriate and altogether lovely that any pepper box contrivance thrusting itself out from the main walls and looking three ways for Sunday is supposed to be a bower of beauty, a perfect pharos of observation, an abundant recompense for unmitigated ugliness and inconvenience in the rest of the building. Truly, a well-ordered bay-window will often change a gloomy, graceless room into a cheerful and artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be chosen than too much bay. In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and repaying the cost far more abundantly. While on the subject let us finish it. If you indulge in a regular bay-window, make it large enough to be of real use; don't feel constrained to build it with more than fifteen sides; remember that two stories will not cost twice as much as one, while the second is pretty certain to be the pleasanter; don't carry the ceiling of the main room level and unbroken into the bay, or, because a certain one you may have seen looks well in its place, resolve to have another just like it, regardless of its surroundings. I sometimes fancy there must be a factory where bay-windows are made for the wholesale trade, all of one style, strictly orthodox, five-sided, bracketed, blinded, painted with striped paint, and ready to barnacle on wherever required. In the stereotyped pattern the blinds are apt to be troublesome. If outside, they clash against each other and refuse to be fastened open; while inside they are a mighty maze of folds, flaps, brass buts, and rolling slats. In the first case, wide piers between the sash are necessary; in the second, boxings for the blinds. Both require ample room, which, fortunately, you have. Sixthly, and in conclusion, there is no one feature which may be more charming, combining so much of comfort and beauty, as windows of this class, from the simple opening, pushed forward a few inches beyond the wall face, to the broad extension of the entire room; but there be bays and bays. Speaking of blinds,--what shall be done with the other windows? You will protest against concealing your elegant, single panes of plate-glass by outside blinds,--it won't answer to hide your light under a bushel in that way,--and yet while there is no complete finish without well-arranged inside shutters, they alone are sadly inefficient in rooms with a southern exposure, where light and air are needed. They may be fitted with boxings, into which they are folded, or arranged to slide into the wall. I like the old-fashioned boxing, window-seat and all, also the ancient close-panelled shutters. True they make a room pitch-dark when closed, and it is doubtless wisest to have some of their central folds made with movable slats, but they give a charming sense of security and seclusion when the wintry blasts roar around our castle. On the other hand, the light outside blinds, that shake and rattle and bang when the stormy winds "do blow, do blow," are a fair substitute for the cooling shade of forest-trees. You may have learned that life is a succession of compromises. Building in New England certainly is. No sooner do we get nicely fortified with furnaces, storm-porches, double windows, and forty tons of anthracite, than June bursts upon us with ninety degrees in the shade. Then how we despise our contrivances for keeping warm, and bless the ice-man! We wish the house was all piazza, and if it were not for burglars and mosquitoes, would abjure walls and roof and live in the open air. Just here is our dilemma. We go "from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strands" and back again every twelve months, whether we will or no, and are obliged to live in the same house through it all. It's really a desperate matter. I've been to the ant and the beasts and the birds. They recommend hibernating or migration, but our wings are too short for the one, our fur too thin for the other! Seriously, you must not forget to prepare for extremes of climate. Fortunately the walls that most thoroughly resist the cold are effective against the heat. The doors and windows--the living, breathing, seeing, working part of the house--demand the twofold provision. You must have double windows in winter, to be taken off (laid away and more or less smashed up) in summer; outside blinds to ward off the summer sun, which may, in their turn, be removed when we are only too glad to welcome all the sunshine there is. The vestibules--portable storm-porches are not to be tolerated--must also be skilful doorkeepers, proof against hostile storms, but freely admitting the wandering zephyrs. Piazzas are not so easily managed. We like them broad and endless in July and August, but the shadows they cast we would fain remove when the very trees fold away their sunshades. Often a platform, terrace, balcony,--whatever you please to call it, practically a piazza without a roof,--is the best thing to have, for this will not keep the sun from the windows, when comfort requires it may be shaded by a movable awning, and by its sunny cheerfulness it will lengthen our out-door enjoyment two or three months in the year. You are still floundering helplessly in the kitchen. I've no doubt Sister Jane has excellent ideas on the subject,--probably knows ten times as much about it as you do. Why not ask her to arrange matters for you? LETTER XXVI. From Fred. EXPERIENCE KEEPS A DEAR SCHOOL. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: We will let the sliding-doors slide, but hold on to the bay-windows. I've acted upon your suggestion, and called on Miss Jane to help me through the kitchen. She is studying the matter and will report to you soon. Meantime, will you give directions about other inside work? I want it to be ornamental and modern in style. Shall finish mostly in hard wood,--oak, walnut, or chestnut, perhaps mahogany and maple. Please give me your opinion on that point. What do you think of graining where hard wood is not used? Shall probably carpet throughout, and hope you will not change dimensions of rooms to spoil the fit of them. What about wainscoting halls or any of the rooms? Suppose common floors will answer, and common plastering for the walls, if I paper; but shall I,--or do you recommend frescoing; and what do you say to cornices and other stucco-work? I've no time to go over all the points in your last. Some of them seem well put, others a little wild. But I give them a fair hearing and suppose you won't insist upon my adopting them. Am beginning to think I've a good deal to learn, and ought, I suppose, to be well satisfied to learn, in some other school than that of experience. Truly, FRED. LETTER XXVII. From the Architect. FASHION AND ORNAMENT, HARD WOOD AND PAINT. DEAR FRED: The tone of your last, just received, is hopeful. Conviction of ignorance is the only foundation on which Wisdom, or any other man, ever builded a house. But it must be a genuine agony, as I'm sure it is in your case; so you are forgiven for asking more questions in half a dozen lines than I can answer fully in a score of pages. Instead of taking them up separately, I might give you a chapter of first principles, hoping you would then need no special directions; but I find the value of most general observations lies, like Bunsby's, in the application of 'em. It's not enough to say, "Be honest and upright." Each particular falsehood and folly must be summoned, tried, and condemned. You ask for a style of finish that must be ornamental and modern. But I don't understand your meaning; shall need more definite instruction. Is your house intended for ornamental purposes, as summer-houses, dove-cots, bird-cages, and the like, often are? Is it to be a museum, art-gallery, or memorial hall? Diamonds and pearls are commonly thought ornamental to those who can afford them; from pink plaster images and china vases to bronze dragons and Florentine mosaics, there is an endless variety of ornaments for domestic apartments. I've heard of a woman who was an ornament to her husband, and of a man who ornamented a whole town; but when you ask me to furnish you an ornamental style of finishing your house, I'm obliged to ask for particulars. You may have curious carvings in the woodwork about the doors and windows and on the base-boards; paint pictures, or set bright-colored tile, grotesque and classic, on the flat surfaces; cut a row of "scallops and points" around the edge of the casings in imitation of clam-shells, as I have sometimes seen; or you may build over your doors and windows enormous Grecian cornices supported by huge carved consoles,--regular shelves, too high for any earthly use except to remind you, by their vast store of dust, of your mortal origin and destiny. I hold it to be the duty of the amiable architect to carry out the wishes of his employer as far as consistent with his own peace of mind; and if you insist on having a row of brass buttons around all your casings, and setting your own tin-type, life-size, at every corner, I shall acquiesce; but my sober advice is that the interior work be simple and unobtrusive. The most perfect style in dress or manner is that which attracts the least attention; so the essential finish should not, by its elaborate design, challenge notice and thus detract from the furnishing and true ornamentation of the room. Avoid fine, unintelligible mouldings, needless crooks and quirks, and be not afraid of a flat surface terminating in a plain bead or quarter round. Stairways and mantels are not strictly a part of the essential structure, and may be treated more liberally. The doors, too, should be of richer design than the frames in which they are hung; while on the sideboard, bookcase, or other stationary furniture you may, figuratively speaking, spread yourself, always provided you do not make, in the operation, a greater display of ignorance than of sense. Rich woodwork throughout, carved panels upon the walls, inlaid floors, and elaborate ceilings, each separate detail a work of art, intrinsically beautiful apart from its constructive use, would require a corresponding treatment in the setting of the doors and windows; but the most of what is commonly considered ornamental work, in such cases, is wholly incongruous with walls and ceilings of lath and plaster and floors of cheap boards. I know you will paste mouldy paper to the walls and spread dirty carpets on the floors (beg your pardon, I mean the paper will be mouldy before you know it, and if you ever saw a wool carpet that had been used a month without being, like Phoebe's blackberries, "all mixed with sand and dirt," your observation has been different from mine); perhaps "run" stucco cornices around the top of walls, and "criss-cross" the ceilings into a perfect flower-garden of parallelograms with round corners. But the inharmony remains all the same. Any great outlay of labor or material on the casings of doors and windows or the bases, when there is no other woodwork in the room, is surely out of place. These are my sentiments, in general, upon the ornamental; of the merely fashionable you already know my opinion. Not that this most fitful dame has no rights that deserve respect, but her feeble light is a black spot in the radiance of real fine art. When you can give no other reason for liking what you like than that Mistress Fashion approves, beware! beware!--trust her not. The time will come when you will wish even the modest handmaiden Economy had blessed it. And if a thing is really beautiful, what difference whether it was introduced by Mrs. Shoddy last spring, or by Mrs. Noah, before her husband launched his fairy boat? Nor is fine art unattainable, even in the door-casings. It does not imply fine work. The size, shape, and position of the doors and windows, and the relative proportions of the work about them, is the first thing to be studied. Then have a care that such mouldings as may be needed are graceful, and you cannot go far wrong. You propose to finish with "hard" wood, and ask my opinion. It depends: if it's the hardness you want, should recommend lignum-vitae and ebony; if the wood, economy would suggest that white-pine, and certain other softer sorts, be not overlooked. To answer according to the spirit of your inquiry, I should say, by all means (if you do not mind the cost) use wood instead of putty. With all respect for white paint and striped paint and all other kinds of paint, there is nothing more enduringly satisfying than the natural tint and grain of the different kinds of wood suitable for building, of which we have such great variety in style and color, from the overestimated black walnut, to the rarely used white-pine,--rarely used without having its natural beauty extinguished by three coats of paint. What I wish to say is, that finishing your woodwork without paint does not, necessarily, require the said wood to be of the kinds commonly called "hard." Any wood that is not specially disposed to warp, and that can be smoothly wrought, may be used. Those you mention are all good; so are half a dozen more,--the different kinds of ash, yellow-pine, butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even hemlock and spruce in some situations. There are several important points to be religiously observed if you leave the wood, whatever the variety, in its unadorned beauty. It must be the best of its kind; it must be seasoned to its inmost fibre; it must be wrought skilfully, tenderly cared for, and, finally, filled and rubbed till it wears a surface that is not liable to soil, is easily cleaned, resists the action of moisture, and will grow richer with age. Hence, I say, by all means finish with unpainted wood, if you are not afraid of the expense, and yet paint and varnish are good, and putty, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Nothing protects wood better than oil and lead, and by means of them you have unlimited choice of colors, in the selection and arrangement of which there is room and need for genuine artistic taste. Yes; good honest paint is worthy the utmost respect. When it tries to improve upon nature's divine methods and calls itself "graining," it becomes unmitigated nonsense,--yes, and worse. It is one of the sure evidences of man's innate perversity that he persists in trying to copy certain beautiful lines and shadings in wood, not as an art study, but for actual use, when he may just as well have the perfect original as his own faulty imitation. What conceit, what blindness, what impudence, this reveals! What downright falsehood! Not in the painter,--O, no, skill is commendable even when unworthily employed,--but in him who orders it. You may buy a pine door, which is very well; pine doors are good; you tell every man that comes into your house it's black-walnut or oak or mahogany. If that isn't greeting him with lying lips and a deceitful heart, the moral law isn't as clear as it ought to be. You may think it's of no consequence, certainly not worth making a fuss about, but I tell you this spirit of sham that pervades our whole social structure, that more and more obtrudes itself in every department of life, comes from the bottomless pit, and will carry us all thither, unless we resist it, even in these milder manifestations, as we would resist the Father of Lies himself. Truth and falsehood are getting so hopelessly confused that we can scarcely distinguish one from the other. One other suggestion in this connection. Without either painting or graining you may get a most satisfactory effect, both in looks and utility, by staining the less costly kinds of woods; using a transparent stain that will not conceal but strengthen the natural shading, and at the same time change its tint according to your fancy. This is an honest and economical expedient. It only requires that your lumber shall be sound, tolerably clear,--a good hard knot isn't alarming,--seasoned, and put up with care. The cost is less than common painting, and the effect as much better than graining as nature's work is more perfect than ours. Don't ask me any more questions till I've disposed of these already on hand. LETTER XXVIII. From Fred. THOUGHT PROVOKES INQUIRY. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: In spite of your prohibition, I must pursue one or two of the inquiries already raised, in order to understand the answers given. What is the objection to cheap floors, if they are always covered with carpets? Am I to understand that you do not approve of lath and plaster for walls and ceilings of first-class dwellings? If so, what would you substitute? It seems much easier to say what to avoid than what to accept; but that, I believe, is the privilege of critics and reformers. Why do you despise the modern fashions so heartily? Are the old any better? Yours, FRED. LETTER XXIX. From the Architect. CONSISTENCY, COMFORT, AND CARPETS. MY DEAR FRED: I don't despise the new fashions. I admire them--when they are good. Will you please try to understand that a thing of beauty is a joy _forever_? Whatever is born of truth, whether in art or religion, belongs to eternity; it never goes out of fashion. Will you also remember that modern styles, modes, fashions, inventions,--call them what you will,--are the mere average product of human thought and labor during a few years; the old that abides is drawn from the superlatively good of former countless generations, culled over and over again till that alone remains which has stood the test of your critics and reformers all along down from Adam, or up from the last monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and morally accountable. Certainly it is easier to say what to avoid than what to accept, for there's more of it. Broad is the road of error, and the faults and follies, vices and sins, that wrangle and riot therein, are thicker than crickets on a sandy road in October,--thicker and blacker. You may catch them all day and there'll be just as many left. But the devoted followers of truth you may count on your fingers and carry them home in your bosom. Besides, the right thing to do cannot be told in detail for another, since every man must manifest his own individuality as he must work out his own salvation. In the millennium I expect we shall find no two houses built or furnished alike. No; you are not to understand that lath and plaster are unfit for first-class dwellings, but there is no sense in trimming a gingham suit with point lace. A general uniformity of value in the material of which your castle is built is as essential as uniformity of style. Yes; there is an objection to cheap floors, carpets or not; and now I've gone through your last lot of interrogation-points backward, which brings me where I left off in the former letter. You propose to carpet the floors and ask to have them made to fit the carpets. Would you also like the walls to fit the paper-hangings, and the windows the curtains? Do you know what kind of carpets you will use in each room; just how long and how wide they will be to half an inch; the width of the borders; how much they will stretch in putting down; how much "take up" in the making (you see I can use interrogation-points)? Do you really know anything about them with certainty? I ask for information, as the same request is often made as to building the house to fit the carpets, and any attempt to comply with it seems to me a great waste of mathematics. Concerning, the floors themselves,--leaving the yardstick out of the question,--even if they are covered by carpets six inches thick, it will not pay to lay poor ones. They should be double for solidity and warmth, well nailed for stiffness, seasoned for economy, and of good lumber for conscience' sake. Seasoned for economy, I say, since nothing is more destructive to carpets, especially to oil-cloth, than cracks in the floor underneath them. Yes,--one thing; the warped edges of the boards, that sometimes raise themselves,--that are almost sure to do so in spruce, which is never fit for floors, though often used. It's my conviction that spruce floor-boards, two inches thick and one and a half wide, would contrive to curl up at the edges. If you have good floors, furthermore, you will not feel obliged to cover them at all times and at all hazards. I remarked that the houses built when the good time coming comes will not be all alike. I can tell you another thing about them, though you may not believe it; there will be no wool carpets on the floors,--no, nor rag ones either. The people will walk upon planks of fir and boards of cedar, sycamore from the plains and algum-trees, gopher wood and Georgia pine, inlaid in forms of wondrous grace. There will be no moth or _dust_ to corrupt and strangle, neither creaks nor cracks to annoy. It's a question among theologians whether the millennium will come "all at once and all o'er," or gradually. I think the millennial floors must be introduced gradually,--say around the edges,--for I do not suppose you or any one else in New England will give up the warm-feeling carpets altogether. And yet one who has seen a carpet of any sort taken and well shaken, after a six months' service, will hardly expect added health or comfort from its ministration. If your observation of this semiannual performance isn't sufficient, and you are curious to know how much noisome dirt and dust, how much woolly fibre and microscopic animal life, you respire,--how these poisonous particles fill your lungs with tubercles, your head with catarrh, and prepare your whole body for an untimely grave,--you can study medical books at your leisure. They will all tell the same story, and will justify my supposition that you will cover the floors with _dirty_ carpets. Doubtless they will be shaken and "whipped" (they deserve it) two or three times a year, and swept, maybe, every day. The shaking is very well, but though it seems neater to sweep them, yet for actual cleanliness of the whole room, carpet and all, I suppose it would be better at the end of six months if they were swept--not once! For whatever can be removed from a carpet by ordinary sweeping is comparatively clean and harmless,--that which sinks out of sight and remains is unclean and poisonous. [Illustration: DUST TO DUST.] There are two ways of lessening the evil without exterminating the cause. One is to shut the room, never using or opening it, except for the spring and fall cleaning; the other is to lay the carpet in such way that it may be taken up and relaid without demoralizing the entire household. Talk about the carpets fitting the rooms; there should be a margin of two feet--a few inches, more or less, is unimportant--at each side. Then if you have a handsome floor, the carpet becomes a large rug--no matter how elegant--that may be removed, cleansed, and put back again every morning if you like. You may fancy a border of wood either plain or ornamental, the surface of which shall be level with the top of the carpet. This is easily made, either by using thicker boards around the edges or by laying wood carpeting over the regular floor. One caution concerning fancy floors; don't make them too fanciful. We don't like to feel that we're treading under foot a rare work of art, and I've seen certain zigzag patterns which merely to look at fairly makes one stagger. Thresholds are on the floor, but not of them, nor of anything else, for that matter, and though somewhat useful in poetry, are often provoking stumbling-blocks in practice. Necessary at times, doubtless, but we have far too many and too much of them. Even where rooms are carpeted differently they are not needed. If you must have them, let them lie low and keep dark. [Illustration: WOOL AND WOOD.] If you paint or paper the walls, as you will if they are plastered, keep this in mind: the trowel finishes them as far as use is concerned. Whatever is added is purely in the nature of ornament, and must be tried by the laws of decoration. If you enjoy seeing "a parrot, a poppy, and a shepherdess," bunches of blue roses, and impossible landscapes, spotted, at regular intervals, over the inner walls of the rooms, you will choose some large-figured paper. Perhaps, if the pattern is sufficiently distinct and gorgeous, you will think you need no other pictures; and the pictures themselves will be glad to be left out if they have any self-respect. I'm sure you don't enjoy any such thing. Some of the fancy paper-hangings are artistic and beautiful in design; for that very reason they ought not to be repeated. I would as soon hang up a few dozens of religious-newspaper prize-chromos. The general effect is the point to be considered. Why not have both? Because you can't. When you have a picture so pretty and complete as to attract your attention and fix itself in your memory, the general effect is lost if you discover the same thing staring at you whichever way you turn. 'T is the easiest thing in the world to have too much of a good thing. Sometimes the better the thing the worse the repetition. This general effect which we must have is well secured by a small, inconspicuous figure, or by those vine-like patterns, so delicate and wandering that you don't attempt to follow them. Better than either are the plain tints, which give you, in fact, all you require; a modification of the cold white wall, and the most effective background for pictures and other furnishing. As much ornament as you please in the border at the top, and at the bottom, too, if the rooms are high enough. All horizontal lines and subdivisions reduce the apparent height of the room. Indeed, you may use trimming without limit, either of paper or paint, wood and gilt moldings, provided they are well used. Color, after all, is the main thing. If there is any good reason for putting this upon paper and then sticking the paper to the wall, I've not learned it. It is cheaper, cleaner, and better to apply it directly to the plastering, either in oil or water-colors. Oil is the best; water the cheapest. In any case, the best quality of plastering is none too good. For the papering it may be left smooth, but for painting, especially with distemper, the rough coarse-grained surface is very much the best. The chief objection to stucco arises from its being a cheap material, easily wrought. It is so often introduced as if quantity would compensate for quality,--a common error in other things than stucco. Though often desirable and appropriate, as a general rule the more the worse. No amount of gilding will give it anything but a frail, often tawdry appearance, that does not improve, but deteriorates, with age. [Illustration: WOODWORK ON PLASTERED WALLS] Wainscoting is always in order; it is a question of harmony, when and where to use it. What you have in mind is really an extended and ornamented base. Of course, it enriches the room, but it begins a work to which there is no limit. It should be supplemented by a corresponding wood cornice at the top of the room, and between the two as much decorative woodwork as you can afford; until "the walls of the house within, the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceilings" are carved with "cherubims and palm-trees and open flowers." A costly wainscot at the base of the walls, with paper and stucco above, seems to me a great lack of harmony. I would spread my richness more evenly. In using different kinds of wood, the raised portions, being more exposed, may be of hard varieties, the sunken portions of softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly a limit in the way of variety. Some of your questions have led me a little way from the building toward the furnishing, but I've tried to dispose of them categorically, and am now ready for another lot. LETTER XXX. From Miss Jane. AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS. MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--After so long an indirect acquaintance through our mutual friends, it is quite time we were formally introduced. Allow me to present myself: Sister Jane, spinster; native of New England, born to idleness, bred to school-teaching; age not reported, temperament hopeful, abilities average; possessor of a moderate competence, partly acquired, mainly inherited; greatly overestimated by a friendly few, somewhat abused as peculiar (in American idiom "funny") by strangers; especially interested in the building of homes, and quite willing to help Mr. Fred carry out his ambitions in that direction by any suggestions I am able to make. [Illustration: "SISTER JANE, SPINSTER."] I've taught school, and I've taught music; sold goods in a store and worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was while keeping house. In school I was required to teach things I knew little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places, losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental discipline. My experience in a factory was limited to three months. From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becoming like them, with no more rights to be respected, no more moral responsibility, and left without even serving my notice. Clerking I tried "just for fun." If all people who came to trade were like some, it would be the pleasantest, easiest work imaginable; if all were like others, the veriest torment. It was an excellent place to study human nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and--if it only could--kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,--of learning something, not only of the land we live in, but of its people and homes. If I had gone from house to house and with malice aforethought begged an outright gift of a sum equal to my commission on each book, I should have felt more self-approval than in asking people to buy what I had not the slightest reason to suppose they wanted. Now I'm sure you are beginning to think me one of the disagreeably strong-minded, who think the whole world has gone astray when it's only themselves who are out of tune, but, truly, I'm not; only I don't like to be or to feel idle and useless, nor yet to be constantly striving to do from a sense of duty what is positively distasteful. Like many other important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was found out by accident. Our next neighbor happened to be thrown, without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in regard to help, to which even the best regulated households are liable. My services, charitably volunteered as temporary relief, were gladly accepted, and the result on my part was two years of pleasant and profitable labor. All I earned was clear profit, and I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the family many times over what was paid me. I'm converted beyond the possibility of backsliding to this truth: that there is no work so fit and pleasant, so profitable and improving, to the mass of womankind,--rich or poor, wise or unlearned, strong or weak,--yes, proud or meek,--as the care and control of a home; none so worthy of thorough study, none so full of opportunity for exercising all the better bodily and mental powers, from mere mechanical and muscular skill, up through philosophy and science, mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art. From potato-washing to architectural design the distance is great, yet there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the other. I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their manners. The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to architecture yet attained. A long way off, you will say; but I insist it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold. It is not for Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen. If Mrs. Fred can't help him, more's the pity. I give my notions of general principles; the application of them I leave to you. My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet the assembly and business room of the entire household, as in the olden time. It is the housekeeper's head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are brought to be ground,--ground but not consumed. I should never learn to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten with the baking-pans at my elbow. Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand the smell of boiling cabbage? Yes; the kitchen must be separated from the dining-room, and the more perfect its appointments, the easier is this separation. The library and the sitting-room are completely divided by a mere curtain, because each is quiet and well disposed, not inclined to assert its own rights or invade those of others; but the ordinary kitchen, like ill-bred people, is constantly doing both. Thomas Beecher proposes to locate his at the top of the church steeple. That is unnecessary; we have only to elevate it morally and intellectually, make it orderly, scientific, philosophical, and the front parlor itself cannot ask a more amiable and interesting neighbor. As the chief workshop of the house, the kitchen should be fitted up and furnished precisely as an intelligent manufacturer would fit up his factory. Every possible convenience for doing what must be done; a machine for each kind of work and a place for every machine. Provision for the removal and utilizing of all waste, for economizing to the utmost all labor and material. Then if our housekeepers will go to school in earnest,--will learn their most complicated and responsible profession half as thoroughly as a mechanic learns a single and comparatively simple trade,--we shall have a domestic reformation that will bring back something of the Eden we have lost. Respectfully yours, SISTER JANE. * * * * * P.S.--Surreptitiously enclosed by Mrs. John. DEAR MR. ARCHITECT: Jane has just read her letter to you aloud for John's and my benefit. John listened to the end without moving a muscle. When she wound up with the garden of Eden, he got up, took off his hat (he will keep it on in the house), made a fearfully low bow and said, "Perfectly magnificent, Jane! I begin to feel like old Adam, already." Then he burst out laughing and took himself out of the room, leaving the door wide open, of course, and kicking up the corner of the door-mat. You see he's one of those men who think home isn't home-like unless it's sort of free and easy. He'd be perfectly willing to eat and sleep and live in the kitchen,--if I had the work to do; and though he likes pretty things, and would feel dreadfully if I didn't look about so, has a perfect horror of smart housekeepers, and thinks women who care for nothing else the most disagreeable people in the world. The trouble with Jane's letter is that she doesn't go into particulars enough, and that's why I want to add a postscript. I wish I could describe the kitchen in the house where she has been living. The people had so much confidence in her judgment, that they just allowed her to fix things as she chose, and it's really quite a study. It mightn't suit anybody else, but it shows what may be done. She began by taking one of the pleasantest rooms in the house, although 'twas in the basement, and had windows cut to bring them on the south and east sides. Then she had an outside door at the south with a wide piazza over it, which made the room actually just so much larger. Across one side of the room is a wide stationary table,--I suppose men would call it a work-bench,--with a fall-leaf, in front of one of the windows, especially for an ironing-table. Of course it can be used for anything else. One part of it is about eight inches lower than the common height, where ever so many kinds of table-work can be done sitting. Underneath the higher part are drawers and places for all the things that are useful about the laundry-work. Her sink is in the midst of a perfect cabinet of conveniences. There's a hook or a shelf for every identical rag, stick, dish, or spoon that can be used or thought of; shelves at each side, and drawers that never by any possibility will hold what doesn't belong in them. One thing she won't have; and that's a cupboard under the sink for pots and kettles. She says it's impossible to keep such a place clean and sweet. Things are shoved into it sooty and steaming to get them out of the way, and it soon gets damp and crocky beyond all hope of purification. Hot and cold water run to the boilers and kettles, and there's a funny contrivance for sprinkling clothes. The washing almost does itself. The tubs are of soapstone, at the opposite side of the room from the ironing-table. Over the entire stove--she might have had a range, but didn't want one--there's a sort of movable cover with a flue running into the chimney that carries off every breath of steam and smoke from the cooking. One would never guess at the dinner by any stray odors. It is made of tin; the kettles boil quicker under it, and it makes the room a great deal cooler in summer by carrying the extra heat off up the chimney. She has a place for the bread to rise, and a cupboard close by for all the ironmongery belonging to the stove, zinc-cloth and blacking-brush included. [Illustration: SISTER JANE'S KITCHEN.] Her pantry I won't undertake to describe. It adjoins both dining-room and kitchen. John says she never does anything in getting dinner but just sit down in an easy-chair and turn a crank. That's one of John's stories, but she certainly will prepare a meal the quickest and with the fewest steps of any person I ever knew. The funniest thing about it is, that I've known eight people at work in the room all at once without being in each other's way one bit. But that's no closer than men work in their shops. Jane intends to stay with us this winter, and I expect we shall have jolly times, for we're going to board the schoolmaster. If he calls to see you, as I think he will, I want you should read Jane's letter to him. She would take my head off if she knew I mentioned it, but I think he ought to know what's before him. Respectfully, MRS. JOHN. P.S. No. 2.--Unnecessarily appended by John. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: If we've got to go through the whole establishment on transcendental principles, I shall send in my resignation straight. Sister Jane's a regular trump; Penelope and queen of Sheba rolled into one. But when the women-folks begin to preach, I always find it best to keep still and consider my sins. I haven't had a chance to say much lately, but I've kept up a tremendous thinking, and when I do get the floor look out for me. How do you happen to know so much about the millennium? Yours patiently, JOHN. LETTER XXXI. From the Architect. DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM. Dear Miss Jane: Your very kind letter was received and gratefully appreciated. As the world grows less ignorant and wicked, we should naturally expect missionaries and reformers to find their occupation going, if not quite gone; that modern reforms would be mere play compared with the stern and mighty movements that in former times have blessed mankind and balked the Evil One. But somehow the need for missionary work seems greater every year. We are not even permitted to go to the heathen. They come to us without waiting for an invitation; if not as pupils in the lessons of civilization, they come as teachers. Sometimes they are aliens, sometimes our own kith and kin. To keep what we have won and gain the next height requires new zeal, and ever greater efforts,--requires the very work you are doing; for a well-ordered home, though it consist of but two members, is a tremendous missionary society. The light streaming from its windows is an ever-burning beacon of safety to our most cherished social institutions. First and chiefly, this essential home work needs to be taken from the hands of indifferent, careless servants and confided to those who realize the nobleness of the responsibility, and will strive to meet it faithfully. Ultimately, the ignorant, careless ones must be taught, but that will never be till culture is a manifest necessity and finds a fit reward. When a man undertakes the charge of a new business, he learns, not only its general principles, but as far as possible, its minutest details, otherwise he fails inevitably, and the place is given to his well-qualified competitor. If our prospective housekeepers were amenable to similar rules, the competent mistresses of this most useful art would find plenty of apprentices glad to serve them long and well for their tuition, and if those who have now the care of households will patiently instruct their help, they will find abundant recompense in a more faithful and efficient service. Doubtless we must wait a little longer for our lost Eden to be restored by the angels of the household; but, in the hastening of that good time, such examples, permit me to say, as your own will be worth far more than any multiplying of conveniences and labor-saving machines for the benefit of those who do not know or care to learn how to use them,--examples of the nobleness, the gentility if you please, of all useful labor. Until that everlasting truth is understood and applied, there will be more need of your teaching than of my plans. If you will teach your neighbors what a fully equipped home building should contain, I will try to show them how their wants can be supplied. Teach them, at the same time, what it need not contain. As certain folks do not understand how heaven can be enjoyable without a Tartarean attachment to which all disagreeable people and performances are consigned, so a common notion of home, that earthly epitome of heaven, appears to be that it should also contain an abridgment of the same direful institution; that there must be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise and operatic melodies in the upper stories. That the genius of the kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too stupendous for the average understanding. This, too, I hope you will insist upon. Every man who would build himself a house shall first sit down and--not count the cost, that comes into my department, but--ask himself solemnly what the house is for. To live in, of course. But living is a complex affair; it is constant growth or gradual death; there can be no standing still. Is the house to be an end, or a means; a help to make the life-work larger and better, or an added burden? Shall it lift, or crush him? When this solemn questioning is honestly done, we shall have a new order of domestic architecture. It may not be classic, neither Grecian nor Roman, Gothic nor French, but the best of all that has gone before and the last best thing thrown in. We shall have more cheap houses, more small ones, I think; more comfort and less show, more content and fewer mortgages. LETTER XXXII. From Fred. GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've been hearing a variety of suggestions from Miss Jane, the substance of which she has already forwarded you in a letter. Her ideas are excellent. They ought to be adopted in every household. I wish to have them carried out as far as possible in mine, when the time comes. She favors a basement kitchen, which I had always thought objectionable. If adopted it would change my arrangement considerably. What do you think of it? How high shall I have the different stories, and will you give me some hints for exterior? I intended to have a tower or a cupola, but after so much change I hardly know where I am coming out. There is something very imposing about a tower, and a cupola seems to finish the house handsomely, besides affording fine views. I feel decidedly partial to French roofs, but have seen some very awkward ones that I should be sorry to imitate. They give excellent chambers and have a modern look. The latter point I suppose you will not think important. Truly, FRED. LETTER XXXIII. From the Architect. BASEMENTS AND BALCONIES. Dear Fred: Of course Miss Jane's ideas are good. When a woman honestly tries to understand her work and do it well, she is sure to succeed, especially in this matter of the equipments of home. The basement arrangement depends mainly on the location. When this is favorable it is undoubtedly economical, nor is it necessarily inconvenient or unpleasant in any way, but quite the reverse. You are fortunate if your site will allow it, for it adds enormously to the capacity of the establishment. At least two sides of this lower story, "basement" you call it, should be above ground to insure dryness and plenty of light. Then all the heavier work of the house, including the eating and drinking, can be done on this floor, leaving the upper stories intact for loftier purposes. The old-fashioned cellar as a storehouse for a half-year's stock of provisions--bins, and barrels by the dozen, of potatoes, apples and cider, corned beef, pork, vegetables, vinegar, and apple-sauce--is extinct. Hence the space once thus occupied is almost a clear gain if made into finished apartments,--an economy that will commonly allow a family room on the next floor, whereby the going up and down stairs is no more serious than if both are one story higher. The sketch is an illustration of what the basement adds. The capacity of the little house is more than doubled by it, while in point of style the augmentation is even greater than in room. [Illustration: WHAT THE BASEMENT ADDS.] As to height of stories, you are quite as liable to make them too high as too low. For rooms within the common limits of size, ten to eleven feet in the clear is enough. Even nine is by no means dangerous. If too high for their area, they seem like large closets, giving a feeling of being walled in, hardly less unpleasant than the low-hanging ceilings of the last century. I know the argument of better ventilation. But that depends. The old, seven-foot rooms, with their huge fireplaces, big enough to hold a load of wood, ox-team and all, undoubtedly held purer air than is found in the hermetically sealed apartments of the present time, whose ceilings are out of sight. As you say, a tower is often very imposing. It is not always certain who feels the imposition most heavily, the man who pays for it or the man who looks at it. They are not only imposing, but they contain six or seven stories, one above another, of eight-foot square rooms, deducting a Jacob's-ladder stairway at one side, whereon people climb to the topmost room for the sake of looking out in the wrong direction through a round dormer-window, scratching their heads in the mean time on the nails that come through the roof! Cupolas too are lovely,--especially on a barn,--and top off a house in the daintiest fashion possible; just as, to set forth great things by small, the "knob" on the sugar-bowl cover finishes the sugar-bowl. Many houses do appear unfinished without a cupola, and I'm sorry for them, because when the cupola is built it looks so much like the handle on a big cover that I half expect some giant to come along and lift it off to take a peep at the curious animals underneath. For, truly, they are curious animals, and build some curious nests. I like, as well as you, to get up above my neighbors now and then, and look down upon them. I never see a tall chimney or church spire without wishing there was a spiral staircase around the outside of it, from which to view the landscape o'er. In fact, to be candid, if I had happened to live a few thousand years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel enterprise, not really expecting to leave this terrestrial ball in that way, but just to see how high we could go. The audacious tower of the Centennial I shall certainly patronize. But on domestic buildings, unless for better adaptation to the site, or for some special use, there are other things more to be desired than these lofty appendages. An open balcony, hanging from the highest point of the main roof, just below the scuttle, or the flat, if there is one, on the top of the whole, surrounded by a protecting balustrade, affords a better place for observation and costs less than those laborious affairs whose use and beauty often neutralize each other. [Illustration: OUTLOOK FROM THE ROOF.] How dare you think anything claiming to be a French roof ugly to look at? People who are fond of that style admire them from a sense of duty, because they are French roofs. Perhaps if I was a Frenchman I should like French roofs, too; being an American, I like American roofs better. You do, however, give one reason for your preference,--the complete chambers,--which is merely another way of saying you like three stories better than two,--a good argument, by the way, for the basement, which is surely more convenient than an attic. I enclose a sketch, intimating an outline and style that will suit your location. The roof, which is not French, either in form or _costliness_, will contain all the dormitories and store-rooms you can use, unless you propose keeping a three-story boarding-house. LETTER XXXIV. From the Schoolmaster. FOUR ROOMS ENOUGH. MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,--Once, in conversation with you, I made some inquiries as to the feasibility of building houses, especially of brick, with reference to future enlargement. My present ambition is bounded by a house of four rooms. One in which all the household work shall be done, including the eating. It shall contain the cooking-stove, the dining-table, laundry conveniences, etc., and may be called kitchen, dining-room, laboratory, or simply work-room. An apartment to be used solely on account of its facilities for doing house-work. It should be of good size, and a pleasant outlook is desirable, but not necessary. A second room for ordinary and extraordinary use; to sit in, to talk in, to read and write and visit in; the books are kept in it, and the sewing-machine, the piano and the flower-stand, the birdcage and the pictures; a large, pleasant room, where the sunlight loves to shine in upon us and we love to look out upon the sunshine. It is parlor, library, drawing-room, living room; in fact, it is the house itself, to which everything else is accessory. A family sleeping-room, sunny, simple, and airy, and a guest-room of similar character, complete the establishment. More than these four principal rooms would be a burden, less would hardly suffice for comfortable living. The problem is to arrange a plan that shall be convenient and complete before it begins to grow, and to which future additions may be made without serious loss. I also want counsel concerning ventilation, both on general principles and with reference to the unfortunate box in which I am daily compelled to breathe my own breath over and over, variously flavored with the commingled exhalations of sixty pupils, with whom I grow cross, restless, or stupid, according to the state of the school-room atmosphere. I believe it is just as wicked to allow children to breathe impure air in their school-rooms or their bedrooms as it would be to put poison in their dinner-pails and require them to swallow it. My friend, Mrs. John, takes a kindly interest in my quadruple plan, and assures me it will be quite sufficient for a sensible housekeeper. Do you suppose such a one can be found? If convenient, I will call upon you in a few days. Truly yours, SCHOOLMASTER. LETTER XXXV. From Mrs. John. CONVENIENCES AND CONJECTURES. Dear Mr. Architect: The building-fever seems to be contagious in our neighborhood. The teacher who boards with us is the latest subject. He pretends it's all for fun, but has been studying plans for weeks, and now, after getting the advice of the entire household, is going to throw it all away and apply to you, as he should have done in the first place. I overheard him explaining to Jane how the cooking-stove is to be in a sort of recess by the chimney, with tin-lined doors to shut it out of sight; the wash-boiler at the opposite side, enclosed in the same way, and having a contrivance overhead to carry off the steam; how there are to be cupboards at each side of the wide window, making it a sort of bay, with a wood-box window-seat; how the sink is to be converted into an elegant sideboard by an ornamental cover, and everything else in the room contrived so it can be shut up or folded up out of sight when not in use. Of course Jane assists, and the combined wisdom of the two is something appalling to ordinary mortals. I should certainly think the affair was getting serious if anything of the kind ever did turn out as other folks think it ought. They are wonderfully harmonious now, but I don't believe Jane will ever be satisfied without a separate dining-room. [Illustration: THE OLD, OLD STORY.] John wishes me to ask what he shall do about warming his house. Says he has not decided whether to have fireplaces or stoves, grates or a hot-air furnace, steam, hot water, solar heat, or depend on a scolding wife to keep things warm. Yours truly, MRS. JOHN. LETTER XXXVI. From the Architect. THE LESSON OF THE ICE-HOUSE. MRS. JOHN: Dear Madam,--Without doubt the affair is getting serious, but do not give yourself any uneasiness as to the issue. The Divinity that shapes our matrimonial ends is, happily, a wiser power than that which designs our houses, however it may appear to outsiders. Your friend talks like a gentleman and a scholar. I admonished him discreetly, promised to study his interesting problem and give him a chapter on ventilation; which, by the way, is so intimately connected with warming, that I may be obliged to make a sort of company letter in answering your husband's inquiry on that subject. Tell him, in brief, to use fireplaces if he has a hundred acres of wood-land to clear up; stoves, if he can live without air; grates, if he doesn't mind the trouble and the ashes; furnace, if he can set it directly under each room and can find one that won't strangle him some windy night with poison gases; and steam or hot water, if he can run a machine-shop and keep a competent engineer. Solar heat may be more available than he thinks, but his doubt as to the last-named mode proves that he has no experimental knowledge of it. Neither have I. Tell him also to protect his family as carefully as he protects his ice, and the house-warming will be a simple matter. The conditions are identical, only turned inside out. In one case the heat is to be kept from penetrating, in the other from escaping, and both require the same treatment; not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with sawdust,--confined air is just as good,--but the walls and the floors, the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of heat. He may think I underrate his scientific attainments, but it will do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse, porous blanket would keep him comfortable. Double windows are not to keep cold air out, but to keep the heat in. India-rubber weather-strips have, doubtless, caused ten times as many influenzas as they have prevented. More heat will radiate through a window of single glass than would be carried out by the air through a crack, half an inch wide, at the side of it. These suggestions are "just to set him a thinking." LETTER XXXVII. From John. SHINGLES, SUNSHINE, AND FRESH AIR. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: When I stepped into the background, I didn't propose to be left entirely out in the cold. I've followed Fred through the most of his gropings after grandeur, and listened patiently to one of Jane's dignified essays on the sublimity of housekeeping; but when my wife begins romancing, and the schoolmaster is allowed to run wild, as though his moonshine was brighter than that of other folks, I think it's time to call the meeting to order. While you have been gossiping I have been at work, and now our house is almost done,--that is to say, it's well begun. The stone walls of the first story are finished, the frame is raised and covered. I've done one thing without asking anybody's advice; covered the roof with the best cedar shingles I could find. I hired an honest man to lay them, who would throw out all that were dubious and lay the cross-grained ones right side up, and painted the tin valleys both sides before the shingles were laid. Then I took the difference in cost between this and a good slate roof and put it in the savings-bank. At the end of twenty years, if my roof lasts as long, my deposit will put on the best kind of a slate roof and leave three hundred dollars to go to the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art in General and Rural Architecture in Particular. I know the shingled roof may burn me up, if the chimney should happen to take fire some windy night, but 't won't cost so much for repairs as slate if they should blow over, either all at once, or one brick at a time. My neighbors may not like the looks, especially while it's new; but if we have nothing uglier than a mellow gray-shingled roof, I don't think anybody'll be hurt. I wish we had something like the tile roofs I've seen in foreign pictures. They'd go first-rate with my stone walls. The eave-spouts bother me. I don't need to save the water from the roof, and have concluded to let it pour where it pleases. The porches protect the doorsteps, and I think it will be easier to take care of it after it falls than to hang gutters all around emptying at the corners and angles. They are troublesome things anyway. The leaves clog them, the ice dams them, the snow comes down in an avalanche and smashes them, they fall to leaking and spoil the cornice, and after they are all done there's no certainty that the water won't run the wrong way. I can put them up afterwards if necessary, but don't believe it will be. The last counsel you gave me was to open the eyes of my house for the daylight to shine through without let or hindrance. I'm beyond advice on that subject. Carpets and curtains shall fade rather than wife and babies. My windows yawn like barn-doors. There isn't a room in the house that won't have the sun a part of the day, and he looks into the sitting-room from the moment his cloudy bedclothes are thrown off in the morning, till he hides his face behind Mount Tom at night. My glass bill will count up, but I'd rather pay for glass in windows than for iron in the shape of tonics. Now, if you will settle the question of warming and ventilating you shall be honorably discharged. Don't try to show off your science by telling me how carbon, the wicked, poison stuff, is heavy, and we must leave a hole near the floor where it can run out and be coaxed up to the ridgepole after it gets cold, and then make pictures covered with arrow-heads to show how well-educated air ought to go! Talk as many gases as you please to other folks. I know two or three things for certain. Coal costs ten dollars a ton; that's one. I want just as large a house in winter as in summer; that's another. I mean the whole house must be comfortable, in shape to use when needed. I know a man will be cut off suddenly by his own breath if he has nothing else for his lungs. Mixing fresh air with it will prolong his career more or less, but it's only a question of time when he shall give up the ghost if he attempts to subsist on anything less simple and pure in the way of respiration than the out-door atmosphere. That's bad enough in some places. What I don't know and want you to tell me, is how to keep cool in summer, warm in winter, and at the same time have all the fresh air we can possibly consume. I know how to keep warm: build a tight room, keep it shut up, set a box stove in the middle of it, and blaze away. A ton of anthracite or a cord of hickory will keep you warm all winter, especially if you die before spring, as you probably will. I know how to have fresh air too: open the windows and let it blow; but unless a man lives down in a coalmine he can't well afford to keep warm under such circumstances. I believe this question is the chief concern of builders here below, and whoever invents an economical solution of it will not only make a fortune, but he'll deserve one. Why don't you go for it? Yours, JOHN LETTER XXXVIII. From the Architect. WHEN THE DOCTORS DIFFER. DEAR JOHN: Your economical reasons for using shingles would justify cheap jewelry and rag carpets. Try to be consistent. I should object to slate on a log-barn or shingles on a stone-house. I hope you furnished your honest carpenter with a stout jack-knife, and required him not only to lay the shingles right side up, but to lay the upper ends close together, leaving them apart at the butt. Gutters are troublesome truly, but often indispensable; there is no resource but to have them thoroughly made. Poor ones are worse than none. Those that hang independently of the cornice are safest for cheaper buildings, but should be treated as an essential feature; that is, you should not complete the cornice without a gutter and afterwards disfigure it by a sloping spout having no apparent kinship to the rest of the finish. The problem of warming and ventilating is easily solved for those who desire its solution sufficiently to make the necessary appropriations. One quarter of what is commonly spent for vanity and deceit will be ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn us quickly of the latter; the prompting of knowledge is needed to guard us against the former,--of a practical knowledge unfortunately rare. Men, women, and children are dying daily through ignorance and indifference on this subject. There is hardly a school-house to be found in which the murder of the innocents is not continually rehearsed, hardly a church in which the spiritual elevation resulting from attendance therein is not counterbalanced by an equal physical depression, and rarely a hall or lecture-room wherein an audience can even listen to a physiological discourse on the fatal effects of impure air without experimentally knowing that they are listening to solemn truth; while as to the dwelling-houses, the homes of the dear people, it requires no bloodhound's scent to distinguish them one from another! The moment the front door is opened to me, I am assailed by the odor peculiar to the establishment. It may be tuberoses or garlic, mould or varnish, whitewash, gas, lamp-smoke, or new carpets, a definite and describable or an indefinite and indescribable fragrance, but it is sure to be something besides pure fresh air. [Illustration: SHINGLING.] Let me give you first a suggestion for summer ventilation. Did you ever shingle the south side of a barn on a calm, hot, sunny day in July, thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade? Did you ever lay your hand on a black slate or tin roof exposed to the direct rays of a midsummer sun? Have you ever, at the close of some hot, labor-spent day in August, sat out of doors until the evening air became deliciously cool, and then climbed to your attic dormitory, there to spend a sleepless night in perspiration and despair, anathematizing the man who built and the fate which compelled you to occupy such a chamber of torment? Now, there is no good reason why the rooms immediately under the roof of a house should be any more uncomfortable on account of heat than those of the first story. Nay, more, by the simplest application of common-sense, these upper rooms may be so coolly ventilated that the hotter the sun pours his rays upon the roof the more salubrious shall be your palace in the sky. And this I call a triumph of genius, making the seemingly destructive wrath of the elements to serve and save us. M. Figuier tells us with just how many hundred thousand horse-power the sun, by the caloric of its beams, operates upon the surface of the earth. I cannot tell precisely how much force is spent upon the roofs of the houses that cover so much of the good mother's bosom in certain localities, but I know that it is wonderfully great, and that rightly controlled it will make the space immediately under these roofs cool instead of hot. And this is the way to cause the heat of a burning sun to cool the attic chamber: Make the space between the rafters on the sunny sides of your building as smooth and unobstructed as possible. Arrange openings into the outer air at the lower end of each, simple or complex, according to your taste and ability. Provide also means for closing the same in cold weather. Be sure that these spaces, or flues, are enclosed either by lath and plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the top or not,--and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising currents of air. Mind this, too; it is by no means the same thing to let these flues open into a loft over the attic rooms, with windows in gables or other outlet. Now, do you not see that as soon as the sun has warmed the flues, there will be a stiff breeze blowing, not over the roof, but really between the roof and the house, and the hotter the sun the stiffer the breeze; in the words of one who has tried it,--"a perfect hurricane." That is, the lath and plaster, or sheathing, which forms the inner roof, is shaded by a canopy of slate, shingles, or tin, and fanned by a constant breeze as cool at least as the outer air. But we can do vastly better than that. Instead of opening the lower ends of these flues to the outer air, they may be extended wherever the needs of the house require, or its construction will allow. Let me remind you, under the head of general principles, that there is no such thing as "suction." Of course, you know it when you stop to think, but bear it in mind, and wherever the motive-power seems to be applied on which you rely to lift the column of air, remember that if raised at all it must be raised from the bottom. Maybe you will discover room for a moral here. This summer ventilation is simple enough, and relates rather to comfort than to health. The great question in building, for New England and similar climates, is, indeed, how to keep our houses warm, and, without great expenditure of fuel, have a constant change of air. As you suggest, we have learned that wood costs eight or ten dollars a cord instead of the mere labor of cutting and hauling; hence we have shut the mouths of the old-time fireplaces, mouths that it would cost a fortune to feed. We find the value of building-timber increasing every year; so we make thinner walls, lined outside and inside with paper, and have cold houses, no fresh air, anthracite coal, and disease. Our grandfathers carried foot-stoves to church, where they sat and shivered, sometimes with the cold, sometimes at the doctrines. We have warm air and stale. Let us hope our children will have warmth and freshness for body and soul. They, in their homes, had big fireplaces, loose doors, rattling windows, cracks in the walls, and as they lay in bed looked at the stars through the chinks in the roof, or felt the snow blow on their cheeks which were ruddy with health and vigor. We have cylinder stoves, double windows, tight walls plastered and papered, and pale faces. [Illustration: GOOD OLD TIMES.] Yet we build and furnish more wisely than our ancestors. They ventilated because they couldn't help it, couldn't afford to build as we do, and could afford to burn an acre of woodland every year. It is no light task you have set me preliminary to an honorable discharge. Next to theology and government finance there is no subject on which the doctors differ and dogmatize as in this matter of warming and ventilating, most of them preferring that the universe should suffocate rather than their pet theories and furnaces be found wanting. (I'm not speaking of the theologians.) Let me restate a few general principles, simple and obvious, yet so important that we must not risk forgetting them. Air runs away with heat fast enough if allowed to move. Confined it is a more effectual barrier than granite walls and plates of steel. Hence the spaces in the wall should not extend its whole height unless for local ventilation. Cut them off surely at each floor, and as much oftener as you please; also make the floors tight and warm. Deafen with mortar if you can afford it, and do not allow the open spaces between the floor-timbers to extend unbroken through the house, or fail to close them between the rafters when the ceiling of the highest story is above the plates. If you wish to warm the entire house, it will be good economy to lath and plaster along the under side of the rafters quite to the ridgepole. Finally put on your double windows, and you are ready for winter quarters. In theory, the house being once warmed, the temperature within should scarcely change, even if the fire goes out. Practically, the walls cannot hold this subtile caloric, however scientifically they are padded. There will be crevices, too, though the prince of joiners builds your house, through which the warm air will escape. But replenishing this inevitable loss would be a small matter, if the breath of life were a needless luxury. Unless, however, we are willing to suck poison into our veins with every breath we draw, slow but sure,--poison expired from our lungs and emanating from our bodies, poisonous gases liberated by the combustion of fuel, poison dust and decay from the waste of inorganic material,--we must have a never-ceasing supply of fresh air around us everywhere and always. Now this incoming fluid, cold as ice, eats fuel like a hungry giant, yet we must receive it with open arms, and, as soon as fairly warmed, send it off through the ventilating flue, bearing whatever noxious elements may chance to be afloat, and, of course, much of the warmth we love and buy so dearly. We have then to supply these three sources of loss. Obviously for economy the two former must be prevented to the utmost, the latter rigidly controlled. Thus far, except the old fogies who don't believe in ventilation, we can all travel together harmoniously. Now our way divides, the doctors begin to differ, and the patients begin to die. The first fork is at the two modes of warming, direct and indirect. The former includes stoves of all sorts,--sheet or cast iron, porcelain, soapstone, brick or pottery, box or cylinder, for wood or coal, air-tight, Franklin, "cannon," or base-burner, parlor cook or kitchen cook, charcoal basin, warming-pan or foot-stove,--anything in which you can build a fire. It includes open grates and fireplaces, ancient or modern, large or small; it includes steam-pipes, hot-water pipes, and stove-pipes; and last, but not least, steam-radiators, than which it has never entered into the heart of man to conceive anything more surprising and unaccountable,--flat, pin-cushiony things, big as a bedquilt, dangerous-looking hedgehoggy affairs, some huge and bungling, others frail and leaky, but radiators still. In brief, the heating apparatus, whatever it may be, stands in the room to be warmed. By the indirect mode it is enclosed in a chamber more or less remote, commonly called a furnace, and made of brick, sheet-iron, or wood lined with tin. Into this chamber cold air is admitted from some source, and escapes by its own levity, usually through tin pipes, to the rooms where the heat is needed. Sometimes it is driven out by mechanical means. The advocates of the latter indirect mode claim for it many advantages. It is apparently clean. There are no ashes to be taken up, no hearths to sweep, no andirons to polish, no stoves to black. One fire will warm the entire house if well arranged, and, for a trump card, there may be a supply of fresh air straight from the north pole, but agreeably warmed, constantly entering the room. The objections are less numerous but more weighty. The liability to imperfect construction and careless management often makes a furnace, especially a cast-iron one, a savor of death unto death rather than of health and comfort; also, when we are warmed by air thrown into a room at a high temperature, and dry at that, a greater degree of heat is necessary for comfort than if our bodies and clothing absorb heat from a radiating surface. The furnace, in short, compels us to breathe an atmosphere highly rarefied. We have the most careful and competent authority for believing this to be gravely injurious. Direct radiation from stoves, or other heating apparatus, except open fireplaces, is, moreover, economical of fuel, but, on the other hand, unless abundant ventilation is provided, the atmosphere in rooms thus warmed soon becomes unfit for respiration. Now you may stop and think. Next time you shall have the conclusion of the whole matter. LETTER XXXIX. From John. HOW TO DO IT. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I'm in a hurry. Let me ask you a few square questions. Give me square answers if you can; if not, say so. What kind of a furnace shall I get? I've interviewed about a dozen; each one is warranted to give more heat, burn less coal, leak less gas, give less trouble and more satisfaction, than all the others put together. I suppose you object to cast-iron, because it's liable to be heated red-hot and burn the air. Is wrought-iron any better? Shall I put the registers in the floors or in the partitions? What do you say to steam? How shall I ventilate? Will it answer to have the ventilating flues in the outer walls? There seems to be no doubt that the foul air should be drawn from the bottom of a room; but if it's cold, how am I to get it to the ventilator on the top of the house? If a room is as tight as a fruit-can, a chimney might draw like a yoke of oxen without doing any good, and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace wouldn't drive air into it unless, in both cases, the inlets and outlets were about equal! When I go to sleep in such a room I want to be sure the dampers won't get accidentally shut. Give me your opinion on these points, but don't make a long story or a tough one. If a house is to be kept warm from turret to foundation-stone, I don't see that shutting up the spaces between the timbers would amount to much, except to stop sounds from echoing through them; but when the attic is as cold as out-doors, it's plain that the cold air will be always crawling down next the inside plastering of every room in the house if it finds a chance. Yours, JOHN. LETTER XL. From the Architect. THE BREATH OF LIFE. DEAR JOHN: No man ever built himself a house without getting out of patience before it was finished. Among all the furnaces you have examined, a certain one is doubtless better for you than any other; when I find out which one, you shall be informed. Reliable testimony on the subject can only be given by some one who has tried different kinds in the same house under similar circumstances for a considerable time. As we never have two seasons alike, and do have about three new first-class furnaces every year, it is difficult to find this valuable witness. Printed testimonials are worth three or four cents per pound. I do not know that cast-iron furnaces are more liable to be overheated than others, and you cannot "burn the air" with them if they are, unless you burn the furnace too. You may fill a room with air, every mouthful of which has been passed between red-hot iron plates, not over half an inch apart, and I do not suppose the essential properties of the air will be perceptibly changed, or hurt for breathing when properly cooled. The danger from cast-iron is in its weakness, not in its strength. You speak of poison carbon. Carbonic acid is not poison. It is harmless as water,--just. It will choke you to death if you are immersed in it. Trying to breathe it in large quantities will strangle you. But we drink it with safety and pleasure, and may breathe a little of it, even as much as thirty per cent, for a short time, without serious harm. But carbonic oxide, which is also liberated from burning anthracite, is an active poison, and one per cent of it in the air we breathe may prove instantly fatal. Now it is fully proven that these gases laugh at cast-iron and pass through it freely whenever they choose. Wrought-iron plates are supposed to be more impervious. The popular notion that foul air must be drawn from the bottom of a room is based, I think, upon a superficial knowledge of the weight of carbonic acid, an ignorance of the law of the diffusion of gases,--upon a realizing sense of the cost of coal, and an insensibility to the worth of fresh air. Even such unreliable witnesses as our senses assure us that the air at the top of a high room--say the upper gallery of an unventilated theatre--is far less salubrious, though not overheated, than that below. We know, too, how quickly the sulphurous gas that sometimes escapes from those warranted furnaces not only ascends through the tin pipes, but rises in the open stairway if it has a chance. The hurtful carbonaceous gases doubtless go with it, and are then diffused through the room. The most forcible objection to allowing the air to escape through the ceiling is that it is a wanton waste, not only of heat, but of the fresh air that has just come from the north pole by way of the furnace and cold-air box, and which, by virtue of its warmth, goes in all its purity straight to the ceiling. Accordingly the heavy cold air lying near the floor and laden with poison must be drawn out through the ventilating flue, till the upper warmth and freshness fall gently on our heads, like heavenly blessings. Let me digress here to answer another question. No, don't put your ventilating flues in the outer walls if you expect the air to rise through them in cold weather; for it will not, if they reach the moon, unless it is warmer than that lying at their base. You may as well expect water to rise from the cistern to the tank in the attic because the pipe runs there, as that air will rise simply because there is a passage for it. Sometimes holes are made into the chimney-flues, but this is robbing the stoves or the fireplaces. It is better to build an independent flue so close that it shall always feel the heat from the black warm heart of the chimney, for warmed by some means it must be. Yet warm air does not choose to rise. It falls like lead unless lifted by something heavier than itself. To return to the former point. When you can warm within a ventilating flue all the air passing through it more economically than you can warm the same quantity in the room from which it is taken, then you may admit the air to feed this same flue near the bottom and perhaps save fuel; but I doubt whether the remaining air will be any purer than if an equal amount had been allowed to escape near the ceiling. The answers to your square questions necessarily dovetail. The hot-air registers should always be in the partitions if possible. It saves sweeping dust into the pipes; it saves cutting the carpets; it lessens the risk of a debilitating warm bath to people addicted to standing over them; it diffuses the heat more evenly through the room; and, owing to this better diffusion, there is less waste through the ventilating outlet at the top of the room, if it should be there. The foregoing refers to rooms heated on the furnace principle, where all that seems needful for complete ventilation is a sufficient outgoing of the air to cause a constant change. In theory, too, the warm air must cross the room to make its exit. Indeed, the plan of admitting it at the top and drawing the cold air from the base has been strongly urged by one of the most earnest and thoughtful advocates of thorough ventilation. In practice, this fresh air is apt to come from the region of the coal-bin and potato-barrels, especially in very cold weather, and I doubt whether it will find the door of escape sooner at one side than another, unless immediately over the entrance. As to your next inquiry, I do not think our winter quarters can be warmed so safely and healthfully in any other way as by steam or hot-water radiators; but the first cost of the modes now in use puts them beyond the reach of common people, the very ones who need them most. Whether it's the tariff on pig-iron, the patent royalties, the skilled labor, the artistic designs, the steam joints and high pressure, or all combined, that make the cost, I cannot say, but I have faith that some one of the noble army of inventors will, erelong, give us a system more economical in manufacture and simple in use than any at present known. It will hardly bring him a fortune, however. The real benefit to humanity will be too great for a temporal reward. Not only will this coming system be available for cheap and isolated houses, but when they stand compactly, one boiler will send its portable caloric to the dwellers on one entire square, as gas and water are now distributed. If stoves or other local radiators are used, you must of course provide for the entrance of pure air as well as the exit of the impure. With two openings in the ceiling, the air will commonly ascend one and descend the other. Open fireplaces, whether for wood or coal, are in favor with those who have learned to love fresh air, besides being, for their cheerfulness, an unfailing antidote to melancholy, and other selfish, spiritual ills. The truth in regard to their healthfulness is simply that they compel us to sacrifice a large amount of fuel to the goddess of ventilation, far more than would be needed to give us a better state of the atmosphere, if applied in some other way; for the fire itself is hungry for oxygen, fireplaces for wood are mightily prone to smoke, and anthracite coal releases its poisonous gases at times so rapidly that none but the most voracious chimney will carry them safely away. To answer your questions directly: with a good stove in the hall and in each of the rooms not commonly used, you would probably afford one or two open fires for those constantly occupied, and keep comfortable with less outlay for fuel than with a furnace. But you would need an accommodating fool to make your fires, and an industrious philosopher to keep them burning. In this matter of warming and ventilating the more you know the more you will wish to learn. My hope is to set you thinking and studying. Read Dr. George Derby's little book on Anthracite and Health, from which I have drawn already for your benefit; read the statistics of the increase of pulmonary diseases; get the physiological importance of fresh air so clearly before your mind's eye that your dinner seems a secondary consideration, and don't be deceived by any bigoted commentators, or forget to use your own common-sense. While warming our backs we may dispose of some adjacent matters. You can make a very pretty fireplace for wood of the common buff-colored fire-bricks, either alone or variegated with good common red bricks; a hearth of encaustic tile, pressed bricks, or even Portland cement. Let the hearth be a generous one, two and a half feet wide, and at least two feet longer than the width of the fireplace, if you mean it for actual use. You must not suppose I object to cheap things because they are cheap and therefore common. The more so the better if they have real merit; but the marbleized slate mantels so abundant have not enough intrinsic beauty to justify them in supplanting the more honest and unpretending ones of wood. Real marble ought to be too expensive for such houses as yours. [Illustration: BRICK FIREPLACE.] With a furnace your house becomes a lumber-kiln, and any wood that has not been tried as by fire will, under its influence, warp and crack and shrink; in carpenters' phrase, "it tears the finish all to pieces." The rapid shrinking of the joists and studs near the hot-air pipes is also apt to cause cracks in the plastering that would never appear if the whole frame could shrink evenly, for shrink it will more or less. The application of these remarks would be, putting in the furnace as soon as possible, and keeping it steadily at work drying sap from the wood and water from the plastering till it enters upon its legitimate mission of warming the house. When you have read all this about heating and ventilating two or three times over, these conclusions will begin to crystallize in your mind:-- Open fires give the surest ventilation and the best cheer. If stoves are used for economy, fresh air must be systematically admitted. Furnaces are immensely useful to warm the bones of the house and as a sort of reserve force; but the heat they give is somewhat like a succession of January thaws. If you begin to investigate you will discover a fearful amount of ignorance and indifference where you should find positive information, and the most discouraging obscurity or conflicting statements among those who profess to be wise in such matters. LETTER XLI. From John. ETERNAL VIGILANCE. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: You did well to send the key to your puzzles, else I might have frozen to death before finding out how to keep warm. But you've earned your discharge, which I forward herewith. Now I'm going to send you some grains of wisdom, gathered during my experience in building, which you may distribute at your discretion among your clients. When a man--I don't care if it's Solomon himself--undertakes to build a house, tell him from me, to wind up all other earthly affairs before beginning; wind them up so tight they'll run for a year or two without any of his help. Then turn over a new leaf,--learn to get through breakfast before seven A.M., in order to be on the ground every moment, from the time the first spadeful of dirt is thrown out till the last touch of paint is put on. You may make full-sized drawings for him of every stick and stone, write specifications by the yard, and draw up a contract that half a dozen lawyers can't expound, there'll still be a thousand little things that won't be done as he wants them. The openings in the basement wall somehow get out of place, an inch or two too high or too low, or at one side, then the windows over them will look askew. The air-spaces in the wall will be filled up where they ought not to be, or left out where they ought to be filled; then the frost will go through one and the rats the other. If he uses colored mortar, it will be too dark or too light, or too something,--then he'll be obliged to paint the whole wall. The drains won't be put in the right place, or they'll pitch the wrong way; then he'll have to dig out new ones. The receivers for the stove-pipes will be forgotten or set in the ventilating-flues; then he might as well have no chimney. The masons will drop bricks and mortar and trowels down the flues; then he'll have to climb upon the roof with a brick tied to a rope and try to churn them out. Just at the place where the flues ought to be plastered outside and in, against the floor and roof timbers, the masons can't reach, and like as not they'll turn a brick up edgewise if a joist happens to crowd; then his house will burn up and never give him any more trouble. The war with the masons is short and sharp; that with the carpenters long and tedious. There are ten thousand ways you don't want a thing done, only one that suits you. Setting partitions looks like easy work; I don't believe a house was ever built in which all of them and the doors through them were in just the right places. I know they 're not in mine. I'd give three times the cost of the door if one of them could be moved, two inches, and as much more if another could be made six inches wider. I tried to have one of the mantels set in the middle of one side of the room, but somehow it got fixed just enough away from the centre to look everlastingly awkward. The rough work gets covered up pretty quickly, but it pays to keep watch and see that the spikes are put in where they belong; that the back plastering reaches quite up to the plate and down to the sill; that timbers are not left without visible means of support, or hung by "toe-nails" when they ought to be well framed and pinned. It's hard to make a carpenter believe that plastering cracks because his joists and furrings and studs won't hang together, but it's true a good many times. You like, also, to have something more than a good man's assurance, that the furnace pipes are "all right," and will sleep better on windy nights if you have seen all exposed corners guarded by a double lining. The gas-man had his work to do over because some of the drop-lights were not in the centre of the ceilings. I tremble to think of what might have been if I had left the painter to his own devices. It seems very clear to say you'll have the outside painted a sort of a kind of subdued gray, with trimmings a little darker, bordering on a brown; but unless you stand over the paint-tub with a loaded revolver, you'll get anything but what you expect. It may be a great deal better, but it won't be what you wanted. By the way, there's a great responsibility resting on the painters,--I don't mean the old masters, nor the young ones either, who seem to have forgotten that outside decoration was once considered quite worthy the tallest genius,--but the more modest artisans, who call themselves house and sign painters. Their broad brush often makes the beauty or the ugliness of a whole village. I'm ready for any suggestions on the subject. Hanging the doors is another point that needs watching. They'll be sure to open the wrong way. I've had three changed already, and I'll never hang another door with less than three butts, whatever its size. I suppose they always settle more or less. Why don't the workmen make allowance for it in fixing the catches? I tremble when I think of the painters, but I rejoice at my watchfulness when I reflect on the plumbing. The chances for leaking and freezing and bursting; the hidden pipes and secret crooks that were possible and only avoided by constant oversight! Now I can put my hand on every foot of pipe in the house, know where it goes to, what it's for, and that it won't burst or spring a leak with fair usage. I don't call it just the thing to drive a tenpenny nail square through a lead pipe, pull it out, and say nothing about it. You want to be on hand, too, when the trimmings are put on, and see that they are not too high or low, or fixed so you will bruise your knuckles every time you pull out the drawers or open the cupboard doors. Speaking of cupboards, there's no end to the bother if you don't just camp down in the pantry and stay there till the top shelf is up and the bottom drawer slides in its groove. In spite of our efforts, Mrs. John says there's no place for her tallest covered dish except the top shelf, which she can't reach without a step-ladder. You'll never know whether you are specially bright or the joiners extra stupid, but it's certain your way won't be their way, whichever is right. I say the man who pays his money should take his choice. But I haven't time to tell the whole story. It's the same thing from first to last. The only sure way of having a thing done well is to do it yourself; the next best is to tell some one else precisely how to do it and then watch them till it's done. The worst of these little blunders is, that they won't improve with age. They stare at you every time you see them, and they'll rise up before your great-great-grandchildren, monuments of your carelessness and ignorance. I told you my house was half done when it was well begun; now that it is almost done it seems to me only fairly begun. Yours, JOHN. LETTER XLII. From the Architect. SAVED BY CONSCIENCE. Dear John: We are just beginning to learn the importance of color. I don't allude to the wonderful revelations of the spectroscope almost passing belief, but the new departure in the useful art of house-painting. The old weather-stained, unpainted walls were not unpleasant to see; even the unmitigated red, that sometimes made a bright spot in the landscape, like a single scarlet geranium in the midst of a lawn, had a kind of amiable warmth, not to be despised; but there is no accounting for the deluge of white houses and green blinds that prevailed a few years ago. If nature had neglected our education in this respect we might be excused for our want of invention. With infinitely varied and ever-changing colors smiling upon us at all times and in all places, it is blind wilfulness not to see and strive to imitate them. We need not look to the sky nor even to the woods in their summer brightness or autumn glory. The very ground we tread glows and gleams with the richest, softest tints of every hue and shade. Look through a hole in a piece of white paper and try to match on the margin the color you find. Turn in a dozen different directions, avoid the trees and the sky, and you will have, in summer or winter, a dozen different colors. Look in the same places to-morrow, and they will all be changed, an endless variety. Some one of these soft and neutral tints should clothe the body of your house. Enliven it, if you choose, with dashes of crimson, green, or even blue and gold, but use these bright colors carefully. Aim to make your house (in this as in all other respects) in harmony with its surroundings, not defiant of them. Your proffered advice shall be duly applied, for it's true that a man may easily occupy all his leisure time, be it more or less, in watching the building of his home, however carefully the work may be laid out before he begins. No two builders will interpret and execute the same set of plans exactly alike. There are different habits of training and tricks of trade. What seems finished elegance to one is coarse awkwardness to another; and when you enter upon the more artistic part of the work, there are fine shadings impossible, even with the best intent, to any save the cultured hand and eye. The inability to perceive and therefore to bring out these delicate expressions in the execution of the work must be borne patiently. We can pardon failure when it follows an humble, honest effort. The unpardonable sin of builders is their wilful attempt to improve the architect's design by making alterations in cold blood, through sheer ignorance and conceit. They will reduce the size of the doors and windows; substitute some other moulding for that on the drawing; or tell you they have made a bracket, or a bay-window, or a cupola, for Mr. Rusticus that looked first-rate, and advise you to have the same thing. No thought of harmony or fitness, no fine sense of a distinctive idea, pervading the whole, and giving it unity and character, ever enters their heads. Argument and persuasion are alike useless. Your only safety lies in finding some young builder, who is not yet incurably wise in his own conceit, or an old one, who has learned that, while architects are not infallible, the taste and opinions of a man who studies faithfully a special department, are entitled to more respect than even his own. As you say, these defects are commonly incurable. Neither is there any redress. The builders will either tell you they "couldn't help it," "did the best they knew how," "thought the lumber was seasoned," "understood the plans that way," or else insist that it's better so,--and maybe ask you to pay extra for what you do not like. As to your own right to spoil the house by any alterations that strike your fancy or accommodate your purse, that is unquestioned. Architects who insist upon your having what you don't want or choose to pay for, exceed their prerogatives, and bring disfavor upon us considerate fellows. _We_ never try to dissuade a man from carrying out his own ideas. We only beg him to be certain that he has a realizing sense of what he is undertaking, then help him to execute it as well as we can. The more he leaves to our discretion the more hopefully do we work. All this is too late for you, but you may pass it along to Fred, the schoolmaster, Miss Jane, and any other friends or neighbors who may be in an inquiring mood. Tell them, too, there is no safety, even with the utmost vigilance, unless every workman carries with him that old-fashioned instrument, a conscience. Give me credit here for great self-control. This is the place for some preaching of the most powerful kind, but I refrain, knowing you are too much engrossed with the finishing of your house to heed it. Do you remember how it is recorded in terse Scripture phrase that "Solomon builded a house and finished it"? Evidently the finishing was then quite as important and onerous a matter as the building. I think it is a great deal more so. The carpenters and masons, to whom you pay a certain sum of money, build it. Before they come and after they go you exercise upon it your noblest, manliest faculties. Yet it will never be done. The walls may not grow any larger or the roof any higher, but every year will add some new charm, some new grace and harmony without and within. More and more the ground around it, the trees, the walks, and the grateful soil will assimilate themselves to its spirit. More and more each article of furniture will grow to be an essential part of the home, dear for its comfort, and beautiful in its fitness and simplicity. More and more you will learn the worthlessness of boastful fashion, and the exceeding loveliness of truth. LETTER XLIII. From John. FINAL AND PERSONAL. MY DEAR ARCHITECT: We've moved in. The house wasn't done but the plastering was dry, and the paint too, what there is of it, and enough rooms were finished to hold us comfortably. Mrs. John thought we should somehow feel better acquainted if we took possession while things were in a chaotic state, before the house had a chance to put on airs, and make us feel like intruders; that it would fit us better if it wasn't entirely hardened before we crawled into it. I told her 't would be a great deal easier to wait till everything was cleared up and we could take a fresh start, but she couldn't see it in that light. Said she'd known lots of folks to be completely overpowered by a new house, and she proposed to take it while it was sort of helpless, and would be under obligation to her. It's better, too, according to her notions, to get familiar with the rooms before furnishing them, and--I've forgotten what other reasons, all good enough but not exactly correct, as I've since found out. I'd noticed some unusual and rather suggestive performances of late, but wasn't quite prepared for a request to rent the old house the very day we moved. Matters seemed to culminate one night after the schoolmaster had received your sketches and estimates for his brick beginnings. I can't say as to their merits architecturally, but they cleared one of the rough places in a certain course that never runs quite smooth. The dining-room and kitchen arrangements are all right, and the establishment is already begun. It will take all summer to finish it, and, meantime, Sister Jane will have an opportunity to reduce some of her fine theories to practice in our old cottage. Whether they will all stand the test remains to be seen. I only hope these two wise people won't pin their sole chance of domestic happiness to scientific housekeeping, and if common-sense and dutiful intentions fail, as they sometimes will, that love will come to the rescue. Fred will build next year. He's concluded it's better to have his work well done than done too quickly. Yours, JOHN. BY WAY OF APPENDIX. A CHAPTER FROM ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. "Now you can stay just as long as you please, and I wouldn't have you feel hurried, on any account; but if you're really going to go pretty soon, I'd like to know when it's to be, so I can lay my plans accordingly." Thus our good landlady, when we said our new house was beginning to look nearly ready for us. A most reasonable request, and we, always cheerfully responsive to such, replied, "By all means; certainly; quite right: we'll see the workmen to-day and find out just when the new domicile will be ready for us." In pursuance of this object, straightway then we flew to the carpenter. "Tell us, O worthy master!" we cried, "when shall the new house be done?" "Wal, let me see." And he scratched his head with the scratch-awl. "It's a'most done now. Ther ain't much more to do. We've pretty much finished up. Ther's the doors to hang and trim, 'n' the closet shelves 'n' things to fix up; the stairs ain't quite done, n'r the front steps. I d'nno; ther's a number o'little jobs 'round,--don't amount to much,--coal-bin, thresholds, and one or two things you want to change; take three or four days, I guess, if the plumbers and furnace folks get out of the way; week, mebbe." "You think, then, by a week from next Saturday--to-day is Thursday morning--you will have everything cleared up?" "O yes, easy!" Alas! ingratitude is not confined to republics. We thought it a most kind and judicious thing to grant nine days, when but three or four--six at the most--had been asked. Worldly wisdom would have said, "No, sir; three days you can't have; it must all be done to-morrow night." But we are not worldly-wise; innocent, confiding, and rejoicing, we went our way,--went our way to the plumber. "O good plumber!" quoth we, "how long will it take you to complete the work you have begun so well?" "How long? 'Twon't take no time. Just as soon as the copper comes for the tank, I shall finish it all up. There ain't much of it, anyhow; it's all done but that." "And when is the aforesaid copper coming?" "When is't a coming? Any time. Shouldn't be surprised if 'twas here now." "You can finish it then surely within a week." "Within a week? I sh'd think likely,"--the last remark backed up by such a smile as made further question impossible. Once more we pursued our investigating tour, saying to the prompt proprietor of the centrifugal-stove store, "Is that new furnace that is to make June of January, that never does what it ought not to do or leaves undone what ought to be done, that asks a mere handful of coal every twenty-four hours and runs itself, ready for its trial trip?" "It is, sir." "Registers all set and--" "Well, no; the registers can't be set till everything else is out of the way." "Ah, yes, of course; but 't won't take long to do that?" "They shall all be set in the twinkling of an eye, at a moment's notice." And now it only remained to hie away to the painter. So we hied and hailed him. "Tell us, O man of many hues! how much time will you need to paint and stain and grizzle and grain and tint and stripe and fill and shellac and oil and rub and scrub and cut and draw and putty and sand-paper and size and distemper and border and otherwise exalt and glorify the walls and woodwork of our house, after the other workmen are through, making allowance for what you have already done and will be able to do while they are still at work?" "I tell you what it is, Mr. Architect, it shall be done just as soon as possible. The fact is, we've got the heft of it done now. We shall follow the carpenters up sharp, and get through almost as soon as they do." Outwardly serene, but smiling triumphantly within, we went to our daily roast-beef, and in the sweet simplicity of a blissful ignorance and a clear conscience assured our patient hostess that the dog-days and her unworthy guests should go out together. Yet we never told a lie or wilfully deceived any man, much less a woman. But we anticipate. At the close of the third day we essayed to examine progress at the new house. As we approached, a dim and doubtful but wondrous pleasant anticipation took possession of our fancy. What if it should, indeed, be finished! The carpenter had suggested three or four days,--three had already passed. The painter was to get through _almost_ as soon, the plumber would surely be out of the way, and there would be only the furnace registers. It was, perhaps, too good to be true, and we lingered to give the notion time to grow. Opening the door at last, we received something the same shock the traveller feels when he encounters a guide-post telling him the next town is half a mile farther on than it was three miles back. But we've not lived forty years without learning to bury our "might-have-beens" with outward composure, whatever the internal commotion. We remembered there was still a week, and resolved to keep a sharp lookout that no time was wasted; an idle resolution, for the workmen were as anxious to get through as we were to have them. Faithful industry and attention we may demand, haste we have no right to ask. But our men actually hurried. We were instant in season and out of season, and can testify, with both hands in our empty pockets, that there was not an hour wasted. Yet our full-blown hopes fell, as the roses fall, leaf by leaf; drop by drop our patience ebbed, till, ere the close of the week, we sank slowly down on a pile of black-walnut shavings in the calmness of despair. To make a long story short, we gave up, beaten, trespassed a week on our long-suffering hostess, then went to visit our rich relations. They were glad to see us when we came, and wondered how long we were going to stay. We thought best to let them wonder, which they did for the space of a few weeks, when we folded our nightgowns and silently stole--not the spoons, but ourselves--away. We mentioned the calmness of despair. From that depth it is often but a single step to the serenity of faith, on which sublime height not the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds hath power to vex or make afraid, much less a few pine shavings and the want of a little paint. Despair is never endless; it's a short-lived emotion at the worst, a selfish one at the best. Moralizing thus, it was by some means revealed to us that people are happy in paying twenty-five dollars a week at Martha's Vineyard and Mount Desert for the blessed privilege of living in unfinished and unfurnished rooms,--breathing plenty of fresh air, typhoid malaria thrown in,--and eating such food as the uncertain winds and waves may waft thither. If at Mount Desert why not at Rock Rimmon, especially as the cost is somewhat less, the fresh air equally abundant, with nothing more malarious than the pungent perfume of the pines, and all the products of the civilized world within easy reach? Moreover, our third, fourth, and fifth stories--the floor of the latter just above the ridge pole, its ceiling just beyond the stars--were, for all purposes of use and comfort, ready for occupation. So we entered, hung up our hats, and told the busy builders we had come to stay. Which we have done; and now it's the first of October. The leaves are falling, the rooks are calling, the crickets are crawling, and the katydids are--well, squalling. There's a work-bench bigger than Noah's ark in the drawing-room, another in the library, next size larger, five tool-chests in as many different rooms, a thousand feet of lumber in the front hall, and nine hundred and thirty-seven different colored paint-pots in the guest-room,--more or less. We pry into cupboards and drawers with our finger-nails, we keep next the wall going up stairs, draw water through a straw, and to open doors we thrust a square stick through a round hole and twist and turn till the stick breaks or the door opens. Generally the stick breaks. But we are no longer desperate. The sound of the builder's axe and hammer mingles harmoniously with the rattling of dishes and the drumming of the piano. A profound peace possesses our souls, for Nature's own infinite glory is around us, and we go from our castle in Spain to our cottage by the sea, from our house of active industry to our restful home in the New Jerusalem, with the opening and the closing of a door. We are not anxious or impatient, being well assured that steadfast industry will finally conquer and our house be finished as far as mortal house should be. Which leads us to remark just here, that a man ought never to think his house is quite complete; he will not, if he is wise, and grows as long as he lives. Our present point is the inevitable delay in the outward finishing to which home building is especially subject,--a difficulty familiar to all who have tried it, but which people cannot always get out of by jumping squarely into it as we have done. There are various reasons for it. A superficial view of building is one. The masons are scarcely noticed before the foundation-walls are laid; the walls shoot up in a single day; the roof spreads its saving shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and especially all women, "Wal, I do declare! That air house goes up in a hurry, don't it? Guess there hain't much but green lumber gone into that. Folks'll be movin' in 'n a few days. Ketch me goin' into a house like that! I'd a good deal druther live in an old house than die in a new one." But, for some reason, the folks don't move in. Week after week passes without visible change till we hear no more of haste, but owner and neighbors grow impatient, and can't for their lives see why that house wa'n't done weeks and weeks ago! In point of fact, when it appeared almost wholly built, it was hardly begun. The work thus far had been of the sort that can be quickly executed, much of it done by machinery. Even after the plastering is dry, the floors laid, the windows in, and perhaps the greater part of the interior woodwork in place, the actual labor of finishing is but fairly begun. Changes always cause delay more or less serious. Whoever makes alterations in his house builds four houses. There is the first doing it, which is one; then there is the "cussing and discussing," the hesitating and final deciding to make the change, equivalent, at least in time and nervous wear and tear, to the original work, which is two; the undoing is three; and the final adjusting it to your mind is four. Woe to him by whom the change cometh, but come it will. It can be wholly avoided only by having things done as you do not want them and will never be satisfied to leave them. Of course, the want of plans is a fruitful source of alterations. We are too modest and too sensible to say all plans should be drawn by an architect, but carefully prepared they must be, and, what is commonly more difficult, thoroughly understood by the party most interested, that is, the owner. Another reason why the lengthened sweetness of finishing is so long drawn out comes from the constant increase of "modern improvements,"--accessories deemed essential to the completeness of home comfort and convenience. Nowhere is the fertility of inventive genius more apparent than in these household appliances, to all of which the apostolic injunction applies, "Prove and hold fast the good." Hold fast and be grateful, for they are the world's best benefactors whose work makes happier homes. THE END. Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
17804	----	IF YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY [Illustration: A RIVERSIDE HOME RECONSTRUCTED FROM THE RUINS OF AN OLD MILL _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_ _Robertson Ward, architect_] IF YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY BY THOMAS H. ORMSBEE AND RICHMOND HUNTLEY [Illustration] DECORATIONS BY FRANK LIEBERMAN [Illustration] THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. To CARROLL and THERESE NICHOLS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS No book that covers so many phases of human relationships could be compiled without taking advice from those who are specialists. When we have wanted to know facts, we have freely turned to others whose detailed knowledge represented long experience. For this assistance we are particularly indebted to: M. Shaler Allen, Bruce Millar, Mrs. Herbert Q. Brown, and George S. Platts; also, to _House & Garden_, in which parts of this book appeared serially; and to Miss Eleanor V. Searing for many hours spent reading manuscript. New Canaan, Conn. April 1937 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xi CHAPTER I. WHY LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 3 II. SELECTING THE LOCATION 19 III. SHOPPING FOR PROPERTY 35 IV. CALL IN AN ARCHITECT 57 V. BUILDING VERSUS REMODELING 73 VI. LOOKING AN OLD HOUSE IN THE MOUTH 91 VII. NEW SITES FOR OLD HOUSES 105 VIII. THE SMOKE GOES UP THE CHIMNEY 121 IX. THE QUESTION OF WATER SUPPLY 139 X. SEWAGE SAFETY 153 XI. DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS 165 XII. THE FACTORY PART OF THE HOUSE 179 XIII. PETS AND LIVESTOCK 191 XIV. TIGHTENING FOR WINTER 203 XV. KEEPING HOME FIRES IN THEIR PLACE 215 XVI. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG 227 XVII. WORKING WITH NATURE 243 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A riverside home reconstructed from the ruins of an old mill _Frontispiece_ _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by Gottscho_ FACING PAGE The Ogden house, Fairfield, Conn. Built before 1705, it has been restored to preserve the original details 12 _Miss Mary Allis_ An old farmhouse in the rough 36 _Photo by John Runyon_ A really Early American interior. The great fireplace of the Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Mass. 60 _Henry Ford_ Once half a house and a hen roost 76 _Photo by Whitney_ What can be done with a barn 76 _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by Gottscho_ As they built a chimney in the 18th Century 118 _Photo by John Runyon_ A place for summer and week-ends 148 _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by La Roche_ True 18th Century simplicity. Now the authors' dining room 170 _Photo by John Runyon_ Entirely new, but with all the charm of an old house 184 _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by Gottscho_ Snow has dignity, but is the house snug and warm? 206 _Photo by Gottscho_ An imposing country home of classic dignity 220 _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by Gottscho_ Skillful planting of trees, shrubs, and flowers make the setting 244 _Robertson Ward, architect. Photo by Gottscho_ [Illustration] INTRODUCTION There is a beginning with everything. So far as this book is concerned, annual driving trips through Central Vermont are responsible. They were great events, planned months in advance. With a three-seated carriage and a stocky span good for thirty miles a day and only spirited if they met one of those new contraptions aglitter with polished brass gadgets, that fed on gasoline instead of honest cracked corn and oats, we took to the road. A newspaper man, vacation-free from Broadway first nights and operas sung by Melba, Sembrich, and the Brothers de Reszke, was showing his city-bred children his native hills and introducing them to the beauties of a world alien to asphalt pavements and brownstone fronts. It was leisurely travel. When the road was unusually steep, to spare the horses, we walked. If Mother's eagle eye spotted a four-leaf clover, we stopped and picked it. If a bend in the road brought a pleasing prospect into view, the horses could be certain of ten minutes for cropping roadside grass. Most of all, no farmhouse nestling beneath wide-spread maples or elms went without careful consideration of Father's constant daydream, a home in the country. These driving trips often included overnight stops with relatives living in villages undisturbed by the screech and thunder of freight and way trains, or with others living on picturesque old farms. Afterward there was always lively conversation concerning the possibilities of Cousin This or That's home as a country place. This reached fever heat after visits to Great Aunt Laura who lived in a roomy old house painted white with green blinds in a town bordering on Lake Champlain. A pair of horse-chestnut trees flanked the walk to the front door,--a portal unopened save for weddings, funerals, and the minister's yearly call. From here could be seen the sweep of the main range of the Green Mountains. The kitchen doorway afforded a view of Mount Marcy and the Adirondacks never to be forgotten. It was the ancestral home with all the proper attributes, horse barn, woodshed, tool houses, and a large hay barn. Father's dream for forty years was to recapture it and settle down to the cultivation of rustic essays instead of its unyielding clay soil. However, he was first and last a newspaper man and his practical side told him that Shoreham was too far from Broadway. So it remained a dream. His city-born and bred son inherited the insidious idea. Four years in a country college augmented it and, as time went on, the rumble of trucks and blare of neighboring radios turned a formerly quiet street on Brooklyn Heights into a bedlam and brought matters to a head. Great Aunt Laura's place was still too far away but explorers returning from ventures into the far reaches of Westchester County, and western Connecticut, had brought back tales of pleasantly isolated farmhouses with rolling acres well dotted with trees and stone fences. Here, thanks to the automobile and commuting trains, was the solution. A country place near enough to the city, so that the owner could have his cake and eat it, too. After some months of searching and several wild goose chases, a modest little place was found. The original plan was to live there just a few weeks in the summer, possibly from June into September, but the period stretched a bit each year. Now it is the year around. We are but one of many families that have traded the noise and congestion of city life for the quiet and isolation of the open country. Nor do all such cling to the commuting fringe of the larger cities. A good proportion have their country homes some hours' distant, and the city is only visited at infrequent intervals. Wherever his country place is located, however, there are certain problems confronting the city dweller who takes to rural life. They are the more baffling because they are not problems at all to his country-bred neighbors. The latter assume that any adult with a grain of common sense must know all about such trifles as rotten sills, damp cellars, hornets that nest in the attic, frozen pipes in winter, and wells that fail in dry seasons. Of course, no one treatise can hope to serve as a guide for every problem that comes with life in the open country. This book is no compendium. It concerns itself only with the most obvious pitfalls that lie ahead of one inured to well-serviced city life. WHY LIVE IN THE COUNTRY? [Illustration] _CHAPTER I_ WHY LIVE IN THE COUNTRY? The urge to live in the country besets most of us sooner or later. Spring with grass vividly green, buds bursting and every pond a bedlam of the shrill, rhythmic whistle of frogs, is the most dangerous season. Some take a walk in the park. Others write for Strout's farm catalogues, read them hungrily and are well. But there are the incurables. Their fever is fed for months and years by the discomforts and amenities of city life. Eventually they escape and contentedly become box numbers along rural postal routes. Why do city-bred people betake themselves to the country? The surface reasons are as many as why they are Republicans or Democrats, but the basic one is escape from congestion and confusion. For themselves or their children their goal is the open country beyond the suburban fringe. Here the children, like young colts, can be turned out to run and race, kick up their heels and enjoy life, free of warnings to be quiet lest they annoy the elderly couple in the apartment below or the nervous wreck the other side of that suburban privet hedge. The day and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to get away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned by a city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in some skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such a family can select its country home hours away from the city. Ideal! But few are so fortunate. Most of us consider ourselves lucky to have that city job. It is to be treated with respect and for us the answer lies in locating just beyond those indefinite boundaries that limit the urban zone. With the larger cities, this may be as much as fifty miles from the business center; with smaller ones the gap can be bridged speedily by automobile. Going to live in the country, viewed dispassionately as an accountant's balance sheet, has attributes that can be recorded in black ink as well as those that require a robust crimson. If you really want a place where you need not be constantly rubbing elbows with the rest of the world; where you can cultivate something more ambitious than window boxes or an eight by ten pocket-handkerchief garden; where subways and street clatter can be forgotten; your black column will be far longer than the one in red. But if nothing feels so good to your foot as smooth unyielding pavements; if the multicolored electric sign of a moving picture palace is more entrancing than a vivid sunset; you are at heart a city bird, intended by temperament to nest behind walls of brick and steel. There is nothing you can do about it either. In the country the nights are so black; the birds at dawn too noisy; and Nature when she storms and scolds, is a fish-wife. Possibly you can learn to endure it all but will the game be worth the candle? Without true fondness for outdoors and an inner urge for a measure of seclusion, life in the country is drear. Don't attempt it. But for those who care for the cool damp of evening dew; the first robin of spring hopping pertly across the grass; or a quiet winter evening with a good book or a radio program of their own choosing rather than that of the people living across the hall; country life is worth every cent of its costs and these bear lightly. Along Fifth avenue, New York, not far from the Metropolitan Museum, is a typical town house. A man of means maintains it for social and business reasons. But he does not live there. His intimates know that only a few minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads replace the constant whir of buses and taxicabs. Most of us cannot be so extravagant. We are fortunate to have one home, either in the city or the country. Renting or buying it entails sacrifices, and maintaining it has its unexpected expenses that always come at the wrong time. What do those who live beyond the limits of cities and sophisticated villages gain by hanging their crane with the rabbits and woodchucks? First, country living is the answer to congestion. Even the most modest country cottage is more spacious than the average city apartment. Life in such a house may be simple but not cramped. There is light and air on all sides. This may seem unimportant but did you ever occupy an apartment where the windows opened on a court or were but a few feet from the brick wall of another warren for humans? If the sun reached your windows an hour or two a day, you were lucky. In a country house there is sunlight somewhere on pleasant days from morning to night. That difference can only be understood by those who have known both ways of living. In town, light and air cost money; along the rural postal routes it is as much a part of the scheme of things as summer insects or winter snows. And it may have a very definite bearing on the well being of all members of the family. Some suffer more than they realize from lack of sunlight. Frequently it is the children and, with many families, decision to move countryward is on their account. In fact, there be some, where father and mother, if they consulted their own preferences, would stay in a city apartment convenient to theatres and shops, with friends and acquaintances close at hand. But their small children lack robustness. The parents try everything, careful diet, adequate hours of sleep and all the other recommendations of scientific child rearing. Still the little arms and legs continue to be spindling. Tonics and cod liver oil fail to get rid of that pinched look, the concomitant of too little sunlight and too many hours indoors. In desperation such a family betakes itself to the country. The children weather tan. They respond to the more placid life and gradually gain the much sought after hardiness. Nature has been the physician without monthly bills for house or office treatments. The children are not the only ones who gain. Healthy adults renew their energy and crave activity. Here opportunity lies close at hand. It may be swinging a golf club or going fishing. It may be such unorganized methods of stretching muscles and increasing breathing as pushing a lawn mower, raking leaves or weeding the delphinium border. All these sports and homely out-of-door duties and pleasures are nearby, many of them just the other side of the front door. Those classed as sports may require a country club membership but even this is on a more modest scale. In fact, all potent are the economies made possible by leaving city or closely built suburb. House and land, either bought or rented, comes cheaper and is more ample. Along with this basic saving there are a number of others that help to leave something from the family income at the end of the year. Clothes last longer in the country and wardrobe requirements are simpler. Similarly, there is a distinct decrease in the money spent for amusements. When the nearest moving picture house is five miles away it is easy to stay at home. Going to the movies is not a matter of just running around the corner and so done automatically once or twice a week. Then there are such things as doctor's bills. While sickness, like taxes, visits every family no matter where it lives, we have found that we actually have less need of medical care living in the sticks than we did in town. Also the charges for competent care by both doctors and dentists are lower. For the family inclined to delve in the soil, a definite saving can be accomplished by tending a vegetable garden, raising small fruits and berries, and even maintaining a hen roost. Some people (I would I could honestly include myself) have a gift for making things grow and getting crops that are worth the work that has gone into them. Likewise there is such a thing as possessing a knack with that unresponsive and perverse creature, the hen. Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination. So, I have reduced agricultural activities sharply, but I do know families where each fall finds cellar shelves groaning under cans of fruits and vegetables, products of the garden, and foretelling distinct economies in purchases of canned goods or fresh vegetables. One of the largest single savings that country life makes possible is elimination of private school tuition. Theoretically city public schools are good enough for anybody's children. Actually most good neighborhoods have an undesirable slum just around the corner and the public school is for the children of both. So, many city-dwelling families, not from snobbishness but because they do not want their young hopefuls to acquire slum manners and traits, dig deep into their bank accounts and send their children to private schools. Seldom is this necessary in the country, especially if the educational system is investigated beforehand. Instead, the children start in a good consolidated graded school, proceed through the local high school, and are prepared for college with all the cost of tuition included in the tax bill that must be paid anyway. The children are none the worse for this less guarded education. They are, in fact, benefited for they have a democratic background that makes later life easier. Besides these creature comforts and financial gains, there are the intangibles. Chief of these is that indescribable something, country peace. All the family responds to it. It is impossible to maintain the highly-keyed, nervous tension that characterizes city life when the domestic scene is surrounded by open fields or an occasional bit of woodland. The placid calm soothes frayed nerves and works wonders in restoring balance and perspective toward family and business problems. The harassed come to realize the inner truth of "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." Along with this, the family transplanted from the city gradually comes to know the genuine joys of much simpler pleasures. Separated from the professional recreations that beckon so engagingly in cities and the larger towns, adults and children alike develop resources within themselves. They learn that they can be just as contented with homely enjoyments as they ever were when they sat passively and were amused by some one who made it his profession. A tramp through the woods in the fall when there is a tang of frost in the air; the satisfaction of a long-planned flower bed in full bloom; a winter evening with a log fire blazing on the living-room hearth; are simple but as genuine as any of the pleasures known to city folk. Better yet, they are not exhausting. "Few people are strong enough to enjoy their pleasures," a friend once wisely observed. In the main, however, those of the country are less taxing and leave one refreshed which, after all, is the true purpose of recreation. Against these gains of country living the costs must also be reckoned. These, as stated earlier, will hardly be felt if the individual really likes the country in its smiling moods as well as its frowning ones. One which the family recently separated from city ways may find hardest to accept is a demand for self-reliance. If the furnace will not burn, a water pipe springs a leak, a mid-winter blizzard deposits a snowdrift that all but blocks the front door, father or some one else must rise to the situation. The country home has no janitor. The nearest plumber is two or five miles away. No gang of snow shovelers knocks at the door with offers to attack the mislocated snow at a price, albeit the highest they think the traffic will bear. Pioneer-like, some or all of the family must turn to and cope with such situations. Doing so, whether temporary like closing a pipe valve to stop the cascading water until the plumber arrives, or permanent like mastering the idiosyncrasies of the furnace, has its reward. From oldest to youngest, after a year or so there comes a sense of ability to cope with the unforeseen rather than to stand meekly by waiting for George to do it. Again, it is not always smiling June with gentle breezes. There are also January, February and March, the months winter really settles to his task and delivers, as he will, snow storms, or spells of abnormally cold weather that make the house hard to heat and may freeze pipes. There are also rainy spells of two or three days' duration that come any time, spring, summer or fall. It is fun to be in the country when the sun shines. There are so many things to do and see out-of-doors. It is totally different when it rains and rains and still keeps on until everything outside is dripping and sodden. Then comes the testing time. Child or grown-up must accept such bad weather and make light of its restrictions, or country living is hard indeed. But did you ever put on boots and oilskins and go for a long walk in the rain just for the pure joy of it? Try it some time. You will see fields and bushes with different eyes and hear that most musical of all country sounds, the rush of tiny brooks in full flood. Even the birds have their rainy day manners and ways. [Illustration: THE OGDEN HOUSE, FAIRFIELD, CONN. BUILT BEFORE 1705, IT HAS BEEN RESTORED TO PRESERVE THE ORIGINAL DETAILS _Miss Mary Allis_] The most ardent country advocate, however, cannot deny that in some respects such a life has certain expenses not entered in the budget of families living in town. First and foremost, if father has his city job there is the monthly commutation book as well as the occasional railroad fares when other members of the family go to the city. There is no argument about it. These are added expenses but they are more than offset by reductions in the fixed charges. Also by selecting where you will live, transportation costs can be controlled. Expenditures incident to entertaining are another matter. One of the pleasantest things about living out-of-town is the week-end. From Friday night or Saturday noon until Monday morning the city is forgotten. Of course, part of the time, you will want to share these days with friends still cooped in apartments. Week-end guests vary the picture and are worth both the effort and money entertaining them involves. But don't think that will be all. No country-living family is safe from either friends or casual acquaintances in these days of motor cars. They will appear most unexpectedly and assume that you are as delighted to see them as they are to have you as an objective for a Sunday afternoon motor trip. At first it is flattering to have people come so far just to see you. Then the novelty of it wears a little thin and you begin to realize that frequently Monday morning finds the refrigerator swept bare. In time it will dawn on you that part of the up-keep of a country home revolves around feeding your self-invited guests. It would not be so bad if they would telephone ahead so that you could be prepared, but that is not one of the rules of the game. Instead, it is taken for granted that living in the country, you have a never-failing pantry. The solution lies in preparedness. From early spring until about Thanksgiving time, have in reserve some simple supplies for an acceptable afternoon tea or Sunday night supper. One household of my acquaintance always has large pitchers of milk, a supply of crackers, two or three kinds of cheese, a platter of sandwiches, home-made cake and a hot drink. As many as wish are welcome to come at the last moment for this standard Sunday night supper. Its simplicity has earned this repast a wide reputation and it is considered a great lark to go there. Incidentally, this truly rural supper is so inexpensive that it matters little how many are on hand Sunday evenings. Also the chore of washing dishes after the last guests have gone is reduced to lowest terms, likewise an item not to be overlooked. This trend toward country living, now so far flung as to be a characteristic of American life, is not just a fad. It has been a slow steady growth and has behind it a tradition of a century and more. When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far too congested. It was incomprehensible to them that a family should exist without land enough for such prime requisites as a cow, a hen-yard, and a vegetable garden. No family that really lived and properly enjoyed the pleasures of the table could be without them. Besides, epidemics of yellow fever came with summer as naturally as sleighing with winter. So for health and good living they began to move far into the country,--that is, three or four miles out of town,--and stage coach routes were established to transport the heads of such families to and from business either the year around or for the summer months. These stages or the private carriages of the more ostentatious were, of course, horse-drawn which limited the distance which could be traveled. The next step was the railroads. Hardly were they practical means of transportation that could be relied on day in and day out, before commutation tickets were offered for those hardy enough to endure daily trips of a dozen miles or more between home and office. Gradually the peaceful farming villages surrounding cities were transformed into something new to the American scene, the suburban town, but it remained impractical for most people to live farther from the station than a convenient walk. When electric car lines were added, the distance was extended materially and the farm lands just outside these suburban towns took on new value. Near car lines, they could be sold to those not primarily concerned with agriculture. The interurban electric roads also made many so-called abandoned farms in various parts of the country practical for families who wished to live farther from commercial centers either throughout the year or for the summer months, since they provided that great essential, a quick means of getting to shopping towns. Still great sections of back country, too far from railroads and electric car lines, remained strictly rural. Finally the automobile, made inexpensive enough for families of average income and provided with that great innovation, the self-starter, changed it all. This was not so very long ago. Approximately with the World War came the moderate-priced car that need not be cranked by hand. Driving it was no longer a sporting male occupation too often marred by broken arms and sprained wrists, the painful outcome of hand-cranking when the motor "back-fired." With the self-starter car driving went feminine. Mother, as well as father, could and did drive. It was now practical for automobile owning families to live farther from railroad stations and villages. Unnoticed at the time, a new sort of pioneering began. City-dwelling people turned hungry eyes toward the cheap country farmhouses located beyond limits of horse and carriage travel. By 1920, this trend was in full swing and greatly expedited by the program of highway improvement and rebuilding that spread across the country. With a quick and easy means of travel, good roads, telephone and electric service, farmhouses which but a few years before had been as isolated as when Horace Greeley was thundering, "Go West, young man, go West," were isolated no more. Prices rose but not beyond the purchasing power of those who sought escape from city congestion or the restrictions of fifty-foot suburban lots. The gasoline age had done it. It had married rural peace to rapid transportation. If you had to earn your living in the city, it was no longer required that you and your family live in its midst. A tranquil country home was yours if you would reach for it. SELECTING THE LOCATION [Illustration] _CHAPTER II_ SELECTING THE LOCATION It is to be questioned whether any city dwelling family suddenly determines to move to the country. Such changes in one's way of life are not decided as casually as trading in the old car for a model of the current year. Usually the decision to pioneer backward is reached so gradually that those who take the step can hardly tell in retrospect just when the die was cast. A vacation or summer in the country may have put it in mind. Then a period of vague indecision follows when city and country appear about equally attractive. Suddenly some chance happening turns the scale. A week-end invitation for cider making in the Hoosatonic Valley in early November would seem harmless enough, but from it dated our own determination to cease to be city dwellers. It must be admitted that the stage-setting was perfect. A twenty-mile ride on the evening of our arrival through the sharp clear air with a full harvest moon hanging high in the heavens, while along the way lights twinkled hospitably from the farmhouses that dotted the countryside. A bright crisp morning and a breakfast of sausages, griddle cakes and syrup. This would have been viewed with lack-luster eye in our overheated city apartment but was somehow just right in this fireplace heated country room with a tang of chill in the far corners. Later we were to find that plenty of November nights could be raw and stormy; that fireplaces could sulk and give out such grudging heat as to make the room wholly chill. But none of this appeared on that memorable week-end. It waxed warm enough at midday for all of the outdoor pleasures that the country affords. We were in congenial company and evening found us with a sense of peace and well-being that more than balanced the loss of a theatre or dinner party in town. We were guilty of the usual platitudes about "God's country and the normal way to live" and knew they were that but didn't care. However, there was no rushing around to get a place right across the way. A whole winter went by, pleasantly spent doing the usual things. Then came spring, a season that not even the city can wholly neutralize. There were a number of seemingly aimless Sunday trips beyond the urban fringe. There was considerable casual comment on various houses in attractive settings. One charming old place ideally located on a back road proved to be part of a water-shed reservation. Another equally charming plaster house was "too far out." As we admitted that, we realized that we had joined that not inconsiderable group who "want to have their cake and eat it too." That is, we really wanted a place in the country but we wanted it near enough so that the desk of the very necessary and important job could be reached without too much effort. Also the idea of an occasional evening in town was not to be dismissed lightly. Such humdrum items as railroad time tables were consulted. Having decided that the ideal location would be one in which the time required for train trip and motoring from house to station would come within an hour, we limited our search to that section just beyond the suburban fringe in Connecticut and Westchester County, New York. We had no clear idea of the type of house we wanted, save that it be old and of good lines. We looked with and without the aid of real estate dealers. We deluged our friends already living in the country with queries. We found a disheartening number of fine old houses, located just wrong. There was a splendid, two-story brick house with hall running through the middle. But it stood in the commercial section of a village, its door steps flush with the sidewalk, and was hemmed in on one side by a gas station. There was a neat little story-and-a-half stone house with picket fence, old-fashioned rose bushes, and beautiful shade trees. It had once been the parsonage of the neighboring church. Unhappily the old churchyard lay between. Now, we are not people who whistle determinedly when passing a marble orchard at midnight nor do we see white luminous shapes flitting among the tombstones. But daily gazing upon one's final resting place, we felt might, in time, prove depressing. Besides, we were by no means certain that our friends had developed the callous indifference of a young couple we heard of years later. Curiously free of inhibitions, these two people bought an attractive old farmhouse with a family burying lot located a fair distance from the house. The little plot with its eight or ten simple headstones was unobtrusive and rather gave an air of family roots deep in the soil, a quality all too rare in America. These young vandals could not let well enough alone. They uprooted the headstones and laid them end to end for a walk to their front door! They were considering the plot itself as a possible tennis court when outraged public opinion forced them to put the stones back. In fact, the general hostility was so marked that they finally abandoned the place and it was later sold at a distinct loss. But back to the little gray parsonage; its location and the fact that train service in its vicinity was poor, were the two deciding votes against it. Another attractive house in a good location was ruled out because our car got stuck in a spring hole practically in sight of it. A mile or so of dirt road to the station is no drawback, provided it is passable at all times of the year. This one was obviously poor, even in summer. Finally a real estate broker showed us a picture of a modest 18th century farm cottage. We visited the place one dreary sunless day in late March, investigated the neighborhood, determined the time required to drive to the nearest railroad station, and bought it, all in one week. In general, we are not sure that such haste is advisable. There were certain disadvantages that we did not observe; there were others where we turned a blind eye because we were infatuated with the place and determined to have it. Fortunately time has taken care of practically all of these. In short, we have come to believe that a place in the country is, like marriage, just what you make it. In both cases, though, one's emotions should be under control, so here are a few salient points for the searcher after a suitable location. First and foremost, decide on the sort of life you wish to lead. Then pick your location to fit it. If you are not chained to a city desk five days a week but at best make only one or two weekly trips there, a railroad journey of two or three hours is endurable especially when a highly attractive place lies at the end. For such a person, the radius in which to look for likely places is much extended and the farther out, the more advantageous the prices. But for one individual so fortunately situated, there are more than a hundred who must choose a place near enough for daily trips to the city. For the latter the ideal situation is, as stated before, an hour from house to office. That is the ideal but, in all honesty, we must admit that few attain it. The average country commuter is a born optimist on this point and will unblushingly distort facts in a manner to put the most ardent fisherman to shame. But figures don't lie. If the time table, say between Stamford, Connecticut, and the Grand Central, New York, gives its fastest running time as fifty minutes, it means exactly that. You may plan to hurtle through the air at sixty miles an hour to the station but traffic and road conditions will not always let you. Besides, what is the hurry? Allow twenty or thirty minutes instead of fifteen for a normal run of twelve miles and have peace of mind. That gives you an hour and ten or fifteen minutes between your house and the city. Add the time needed to get from the train to your office and you know what is before you. We mention this station trip of twelve miles as about the maximum for the hardy commuter although there are a few who take more punishment than that. Of course if the perfect place can be found only four to six miles from the station that is all the better. Transportation is an all important consideration both as regards time and expense. There are beautiful countrysides fairly near large centers that are so hampered by poor train service as to be almost out of the question for the everyday commuter. Of course, there may be an adequate service or it may be practical to drive to and from business. The latter is not at all uncommon with the country areas near the smaller industrial centers. Here the fortunate commuter is free from exacting train schedules; a five or ten minutes' drive sees him outside the city limits, and another twenty or thirty may find him rolling into his own driveway. Smooth sailing between office and home depend only on a reliable car and good roads. One should make sure the latter are passable in the winter at all times. For instance, are the Town Fathers liberal with the snow plow? Can its cheery hum be heard even at midnight if a heavy fall of snow makes it necessary? Does it come down the little dirt road where your modest acres are located? These are questions all commuters should ask whether their journey cityward is made entirely by automobile or partly by train. Further, whatever means of transportation are used, the monthly cost should be reckoned carefully. It is one of the largest single items involved in this scheme of living in the country and working in the city. There is also the question of food and other household supplies. Granted one no longer expects to run around the corner for a loaf of bread or a dozen eggs that may have been left off the morning shopping lists, just how far away is the nearest grocer? Is he at all receptive to the idea of making an occasional delivery in the outlying districts? How about the rubbish collector, if any; the milkman; the purveyors of ice, coal and wood? Are there a lighting system in the vicinity, telephone facilities, and so forth? These last need not be deciding factors, all other things being equal. They are simply matters to investigate. It is then for the family to decide whether to do without any or all of them if necessary. Besides in a wisely chosen location, these, though lacking at first, are soon added as the demand grows. When we began our own experiment in country living, it was with difficulty that we got even a telephone installed. Instead of electricity, our evenings were lighted by candles or kerosene lamps and our meals were cooked on an oil stove. Grocers and other tradesmen didn't even know how to get to the little area. Yet within three years enough other people like us had moved into the vicinity to warrant extension of electric service through the neighborhood, and a milk route, rubbish service, deliveries of laundry, food, ice, and other household needs were soon added. The Fuller brush man has for years known the way to our door and now even our Sunday newspapers are delivered, although we are six miles from the nearest news stand. This brings us to the question of neighborhood, which is important. Beware of a place too near a small factory settlement. The latter is apt to grow and destroy the peace you have come so far to get. Besides, your property value will decline in direct ratio. We once knew a charming place set high on a hill with neat hedges, shrubs, and arbors reminiscent of England, birthplace of the man who built and developed it. The family that bought the property forgot to look down at the foot of the hill. If they had, they would have seen a large and efficient looking factory and could have read the signs accordingly. The disadvantages of a country home located close to a hamlet inhabited by old native stock families that have degenerated should be weighed carefully. Such people resent what they consider unwarranted intrusion by newcomers and have many underhanded ways of expressing their antagonism. Of course, if these settlers are merely tenants and the region shows distinct signs that a number of city pioneers are about to buy property there, it may be a gamble worth taking, since one can always buy property cheaper before a boom than after it has set in. Also, these settlements are frequently located in the most beautiful sections of the country. Some of the houses are quaint farm cottages that only need a thorough cleaning and a little intelligent restoration to make them attractive homes for any one. Again, some of the most picturesque and desirable locations are off on by-roads. They are much to be preferred to property directly on the main highway since they are well away from the roar of traffic; and if there are children or pets, one need not be constantly on the alert to keep them from straying off the premises. However, half a mile off the main highway answers the purpose as well as a longer distance and one must be sure that half mile is passable at all times of the year. We have in mind one young couple who bought a place in Vermont. It stands well up on a hill and the view is worth going many miles to see. A picturesque dirt road winds a crooked mile up to it. Very attractive for summer but these two live there the year around. The snow drifts deep in winter, and early spring and late fall find the mud so deep that the average car bogs down hopelessly. Thus, they are virtual prisoners during these seasons. Of course that is an extreme case and even here the road can be made passable but only at heavy expense which must be borne principally by the householder. Lastly, in selecting the locality for your experiment in country living, if there are children consideration of schools is essential. The ratings and relative standings of graded and high schools in various localities, may be easily obtained through state educational authorities, college entrance boards, and similar organizations. But even where the rating report is good, personal investigation is advisable. Certain social elements enter in, despite the sound and democratic principles underlying the American public school system. For example, a would-be country dweller leased a house, with option to buy, in a very good neighborhood. House, location, and surroundings exactly pleased and it was a scant ten minutes from the station on a good road. The school system was well rated but the graded school for this section drew a majority of its pupils from a textile mill settlement two or three miles away. The children of the English spinners and weavers were decent, well-behaved youngsters but their speech was distinctly along cockney lines. Within a few months the three small sons of the new country dweller had developed habits of speech native to the English textile towns. Stern correction at home availed little and their parents abandoned the idea of buying in that locality. Instead, another was selected after personal inspection of the school to which the three boys would go. The new home is not, in some respects, as attractive as the other nor is it as convenient for commuting, but one cannot have everything. They are content and the small boys are once more expressing themselves with a New England accent. In inspecting both the graded and high schools of a neighborhood that pleases you, the obvious things are the buildings, school bus service, play space, provisions for school lunches and so forth. These are tangible and can be readily observed. Much more important are the intangibles. These include the scholastic standing of the particular school; the pedagogical ability and personality of the individual teachers; and, finally, whether those who manage village, borough, or town governments, provide adequate school appropriations. Schools that really educate children can be operated on starvation budgets but, more often than not, the quality of teaching suffers. Likewise the schools of a town reflect the capacity and ability of those in charge. To judge this, make it a point to meet the local school superintendent. If there is a parent-teachers association, a frank discussion with its leader is an excellent idea. From talks like these you can sometimes gather cogent information that neither superintendent nor member of the school association would or could put in writing. If possible observe the school while it is in session. The attitude of teachers and children should enable you to form an estimate of it as a whole. In determining the scholastic standing of a high school, its rating by college entrance boards, the success in college of recent graduates, and kindred data can be readily obtained and will tell a complete story. However, under present conditions, there are some excellent high schools which pay little or no attention to college preparation because relatively few pupils intend to enter college. If this condition prevails at the high school your children would normally attend and your plans for them include college or technical school, recognition of it is important. A year or two in a good private school that makes a specialty of college preparation is probably the answer. But don't wait until a son or daughter is nearly through the local high school to discover this lack of specific preparation. If, on the other hand, you do not intend to send your children to the schools where tuition is included in the tax bill, be just as careful in judging the private school. The term private means just what it says, it is open to children whose parents make private or separate payment for their education. This condition, however, is no guarantee that the quality of teaching will excel or even equal that of the free or public institution. The private ventures are not under as rigid supervision as those supported by tax revenues and we have known of instances where the former were distinctly below standard. With a private day school having relatively few pupils and a tuition revenue only slightly above the cost of operation, it requires considerable strength of character for its owner not to gloss over a pupil's shortcomings. If dealt with impartially, these might mean that darling Willie would be withdrawn and sent elsewhere. Loss of tuition is the nightmare of the head of such a school. Hence, fear of financial loss, dread of disagreeable interviews with parents, or misguided leniency can have a very bad effect on the education and training of the pupils. Yet there are small day schools and larger institutions with both day and resident pupils that give superior training. It is largely a matter of the attitude and capacity of the principal or head. If he or she is a real teacher and has good assistants, the children will be well taught, regardless of the physical plant. So, in choosing a private school, make sure the education it affords is worth the tuition father pays. Putting the children in a private school necessitates one thing more. That is transportation. Sometimes a private bus takes care of this matter. If not, mother must be tied to a daily schedule of driving the youngsters to and from school. This usually entails a second car. Here, as with other matters, the initial cost is by no means all; there is the up-keep. This should not be overlooked, for in the twelve years between the first grade and the last high school year, it becomes an increasing burden as school hours lengthen and athletic activities become, to the children at least, supremely important. SHOPPING FOR PROPERTY [Illustration] _CHAPTER III_ SHOPPING FOR PROPERTY The early American pioneer pushed into the wilderness looking for a likely spot to settle. When he had either found it or had traveled as far as he could, he staked out land and built a rude shelter for his family until such time as he could afford better. Today's pioneer decides whether he will have a house and five or more acres in commuting distance of the city, a farm several hours away from it, or a sporting estate. Then, still seated in an easy chair, he reaches for real estate advertising as found in newspaper, magazine or folder. For the first, nothing is better than newspaper classified advertising, particularly that found in the Sunday paper. If he would have a farm far from the madding crowd, there are the farm catalogues issued by a variety of real estate organizations. These can be most helpful if intelligently read. And the prospective buyer of a fancy farm or sporting estate will do best to turn to the advertising columns of those magazines where the editorial scope deals with that type of country life. [Illustration: AN OLD FARMHOUSE IN THE ROUGH _Photo by John Runyon_] Consulting such advertising for whatever kind of country home is wanted will give the prospective buyer some definite impressions. Of course he won't know what any of the places actually look like, though reading between the lines may give him some idea; but he will at least have gleaned a little information as to prices in a given locality and have the names of brokers with offerings that might be of interest. A decade ago, if one really wanted a country place one began looking at actual pieces of property at this point, either with or without a broker. During the past two or three years, however, a novel source of information regarding such property has come into being. It is somewhat of a cross between a news reel moving picture theatre and a real estate broker's office. There is a projection room, a small moving picture machine, and an extensive file of films of various properties that are on the market. Here the prospective buyer is shown shorts of all those listed with that particular clearing house. After the showing, if one or more places appeal sufficiently so that the prospect wants to visit them, he is given the broker's name and address. This saves much time and hours of travel for all concerned. In an hour or two spent so shopping, you can get first impressions of more places than you could possibly visit in a month of week-ends. Thus you can limit your selection of places to be visited. The cost of this novel method of showing property is met by an arrangement whereby seller and broker reward the picture house if the sale is consummated. When you actually begin to look at property, a few don'ts are in order if you would steer a fair course to the country home you have in mind. Don't expect any place to have all the requirements included in your mental picture. Don't buy a place that does not appeal to you. Each year you will like it less. Don't buy a bargain without finding out why it is below the prevailing price. Only too often it proves extremely expensive. Don't disparage a piece of property with the naive idea that by so doing the price will be lowered. You only arouse resentment on the part of the owner. Don't make a pest of yourself by too frequent visits to a place that attracts you. Don't try to eliminate the real estate broker. If he really knows his territory, his services are worth far more than his fee which is paid by the seller anyway. Don't lose your temper during the negotiations that must precede the terms of sale. You may lose the place that just suits you. Don't expect to buy property with wooden money. That custom went out shortly after 1929. If you can subscribe to these points, you are one of those who really want a country home and will eventually find one. Those who only think they do will stumble over some detail and then settle back with a plaintive, "We would love to move to the country if we could only find a place like yours." Castles in the air have everything, for imagination builds them; but those planted four square upon the earth always have certain "outs," even though you buy a perfect building site and put the house you have dreamed of thereon. Personally, we have always wanted a little gray house mellowed by the summers and winters of at least a century. What we bought was a small story-and-a-half farm cottage with outer walls of weathered shingles, painted red. It is old. During the Revolution, a British soldier was slain in the very doorway as he came out with loot from the upper rooms. It would undoubtedly be a haunted house in England but here our eyes are holden and we have never seen him, nor have any of our guests. We still admire gray stone houses of which there are plenty down in the Pennsylvania Dutch country but we are honestly suited with what we have. Its general outline is akin to the house we envisioned and the mellow tone of its red-shingled exterior has a charm of its own. True, the grounds are lacking in those little irregularities that enable one to develop secluded spots and charming rock gardens. No brook runs through them and there is no high point of land where one looks off to a brilliant summer sunset or hills blue with haze. It is just a pleasing peaceful spot and we like it. In short, have all the preconceived notions you want but keep an open mind as well as an open eye. We know of two or three families that are absolutely satisfied with their country homes, yet are perfectly frank in admitting that they are in no way the type of house or setting indicated by their preliminary specifications. They saw them in the course of their search and, despite the divergence, recognized that they met their demands. One of our friends had steadfastly insisted that his country house must sit on a hilltop where he could have a view, see the sun rise and set, and be cooled by a fine breeze on the most torrid day. He bought an entire farm just to get an upland pasture with the required hilltop. Luckily he called in an architect and was mercifully prevented from getting what he wanted. His house was finally built on a sightly but sheltered spot about halfway below the high point of his land. He has since learned that during the winter months the prevailing westerly winds so sweep that hilltop that heating a house placed there would be expensive and difficult. Also, these same winds would be apt to work havoc with his shrubbery and flower garden. On the contrary, don't let yourself be stampeded into buying something that definitely does not appeal, just because you are a little tired of looking but are bound to live in the country anyway. Real estate dealers and would-be helpful friends may have rallied around and, after showing you a score or more parcels of land, begin hinting that you are hard to please. Possibly, but just remember that your money purchases the place and that you, not they, will have to live there. Two people once spent years looking for a place within easy commuting distance of Philadelphia. Friends and brokers became exhausted and fell by the way. Word was passed around among the latter that these people were "just lookers and there was no use bothering with them." One day a broker, hoping to be rid of them, showed a piece of property so unsightly and generally run down that he thought no one could possibly want it. To his amazement, they liked it, saw its possibilities and, after proper investigation, bought for cash with never a quibble over the price. They showed rare intelligence in restoring both house and grounds and are living contentedly there today. Most of us, though, who really want a country home are of no mind to spend years looking for one. It may be that the lease on the city apartment is due to expire in a few months and one must decide whether it is to be renewed or not. There may be children in the family who are in urgent need of the fresh air and outdoor life of the country. Under such circumstances, it is often a real advantage to rent a place for a year with option to buy. One learns both the good and bad qualities of a house in that time at probably no greater cost than continued rental for a city establishment. Further, if you decide to buy it at the end of the year, the rental paid may apply on the purchase price. You can thus have plenty of time to look over other property in the vicinity. Perhaps it may be impossible to find a house that really pleases, but you do discover an ideal site. It may be a fine old orchard. It may be a tree-shaded spot with an old cellar marking the place where a house once stood. It may be an undeveloped hillside. In such an event, you have the advantage of either building a house to your liking, or finding an old one and moving it there. Be very sceptical about "bargains" in your search. Relatively few people underestimate the value of their possessions. Perhaps they are really willing to sell at a sacrifice "because father can't stand the cold winters any more" or "because we like to feel the place is in good hands." But it would seem more reasonable that father's declining years in Florida or California would be sweetened in direct ratio to the amount realized on his property. So look well for the real reason. The house may be unduly expensive to maintain. It may be so badly built that bigger and better repairs become a constant drain on the family purse. There may be something so wrong with the adjoining property that one must either buy that, too, or give up any idea of living on the spot with any comfort or pleasure. Back in 1928, a man bought a comparatively new house and eight acres of land for a sum far below the prevailing prices in the vicinity. The grounds were attractive and the lawn well shaded with fine old maples. He acquired this "bargain" in the late fall without benefit of real estate dealer. In fact, he boasted of his acumen to a broker who had originally shown him several other pieces of property in the section. "I told you there were cheaper places," he chortled, "and the owner gave me the advantage of the broker's commission, too. Come out next spring and see what a bargain I found." In late May there came a wail for help from the cocksure buyer. A few days of unseasonably warm weather and a strong east wind had revealed the reason for the bargain. Back of a wooded area to the rear of his holding, was a combination hog farm and refuse dump. The owner of it got little or no rental from the tenant farmer who carried on his noisome business but he was well aware of its nuisance value to his new neighbor. Here indeed was a situation requiring the services of that middle man, the real estate broker. The latter was a good business man and by using all his guile, he eventually acquired the hog farm for his client at a fair price. But even at that, the man now had ten additional acres that he didn't want and couldn't use. When the cost of the added land and clearing it of refuse had been met, his place was not the bargain it had seemed originally. This does not mean that there are never any country places to be had at real bargains. It is a case of being keen enough or lucky enough to locate one. There can be a number of legitimate reasons why a piece of property is on the market at a price below its general worth. There may be urgent financial reasons why the owner must sell. In this unhappy situation he cannot be too firm as to price and will usually accept a sum actually below the market value in order to salvage a fair proportion of what he may have invested. Another type of bargain is that of property that has only recently become available for country homes through the construction of a new motor highway or some other major development. For example, the electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a concrete automobile road from Trenton, New Jersey, into Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have brought old farms in and around Doylestown, Pennsylvania, within an hour and a half of New York City. This condition has not existed long and Bucks County farms on an acreage basis may still be bought distinctly cheaper than in practically any other section equi-distant in travel time from New York. Again, some particular place may be owned by an estate with a number of heirs who want their money. None of them feels inclined to take over the property and pay off the others. All are in a hurry to get their share of what Uncle Henry left. Eventually the property goes at a partition sale which is the bargain basement of real estate. Partition sales and heirs hungry for ready money are keenly watched by those who buy purely for investment and with the expectation of resale to some one wanting a country home. Hence the ultimate consumer rarely benefits. But occasionally the regular investor finds the matter of resale neither as simple nor as rapid as he had expected. For some years we watched a charming little place that a real estate investor had acquired at such a partition sale. It was first offered "in the rough." Then the abandoned household gear and accumulated trash were removed. With growing nervousness the investor applied a coat of paint to the house and hung neat painted shutters at the windows. He tore down dilapidated outbuildings and converted the barn into a garage. The place still hung unplucked on his commercial tree. After three dismal years he parted with it at a price but little above that paid at the partition sale. It was a desirable property but the investor had been over greedy and had put his original asking price far too high. By the time he was chastened enough to listen to reasonable offers, most of the prospective buyers had crossed that place off their list. The ultimate purchaser acquired a real bargain by happening along at the psychological moment when the investor was sick of his deal and ready to part with it at little or no profit. This was, of course, very much a matter of luck. It is also a matter of luck when buyer and seller deal directly with each other to mutual advantage. For that reason it is poor economy to try dispensing with the services of a real estate broker. A reliable one is an invaluable guide, mentor, and friend to the lamb fresh from the city. Let him know what you want and what you are willing to pay and he will do his best to find it. If a place interests you, look it over well but don't insist on so many showings that you wear out the patience of its occupants. Never, never belittle any property in the hearing of its owner. There are all too many people, cocksure but ignorant of human nature, who believe this helps to get a bargain. It works just the opposite. One would not expect to please a man by telling him that his son was wall-eyed and therefore no asset. The same man is no better pleased at hearing that his house is ugly or that the interior is something to shudder at. The prospective buyer who admits he covets the house but cannot quite meet the purchase price is much more apt to get the benefit of easier terms. Real estate buying is still a dicker business. Get your own idea of values and then make an offer--to the broker. It is part of his job to negotiate this difference between asking and actual purchasing price. Theoretically buyer and seller should be able to meet and discuss the little matter of price in sensible and friendly fashion. Actually, there is usually as much need of a diplomat here as between two nations. One very successful broker recently admitted that he tries to keep buyer and seller apart as much as possible when negotiating the details of price, terms, concessions and the like. He stated that it is amazing how ordinarily sensible people, in the heat of a dicker over a piece of property, can get at a practical deadlock over the disposal of a cord of wood or whether a cupboard, worth possibly five dollars, is to be left with the house or removed. So keep your temper, especially when it is a question of property you really want. We have known people who were turned aside from an ideal place for which they had hunted months, because the seller failed to fall in with some totally unimportant detail or because they didn't like something his lawyer said or the way he said it. Sellers may be cantankerous and their lawyers exasperating, but remember, you do not inherit them along with the property. Once the latter has been acquired, which is your real objective, they pass out of the picture along with your irritation at them. In buying any property, however, make sure that the title is clear. The author of the old hymn, "When I can read my title clear to mansions in the skies," must have been familiar with the complications attendant on acquiring earthly domiciles. In other words, if the place on which you have set your heart is suffering from that obscure complaint known as a "cloudy title," it is something to be let alone unless the seller can clear it. By this term is meant that somewhere in the chain of ownership from the original land grant, some seller could not give a clear, warranted title. There are many contributing causes for such a condition, particularly with country property in the older sections where wills and deeds were not always drawn with clarity and skill. Old second or third mortgages, presumably paid, for which satisfactions were never recorded; tax liens that have not been cleared; or possible interests of minority heirs under a will dating back a generation or more; are some of the most common causes for imperfect titles. But if one is patient and the seller is willing to cooperate, such clouds can usually be removed. Sometimes one discovers a desirable piece of property with a cloudy title due to a family feud or the stubbornness of the present owner. Here it may be to the buyer's advantage to obtain an option on it and engage a local lawyer experienced in real estate matters to perfect the title. For example, two spinster sisters lived in their father's old farmhouse. They were not at all averse to selling, but under the terms of their father's will, a niece in a state institution for the feeble minded held a life interest in the place. Her aunts grimly refused to sell and hand over the sum representing her interest to her guardian. "Alice has cost us plenty and never been anything but a source of worry. Not a dollar more of our money goes to her as long as we live. She is in an institution where she belongs. Besides, her father was a rascal." They were willing to sell at a price several thousand dollars less than like places in the neighborhood were bringing. So a prospective buyer negotiated an arrangement whereby he acquired an option to buy the property at this low price, provided he could make a settlement for the niece's contingent interest at his own expense. It took about six months but at last a settlement was reached through the courts. For about five hundred dollars paid to the guardian of the incompetent woman and an equal amount in court and lawyer's fees, he obtained a quit claim deed of her interest that satisfied the requirements of the corporation that was to insure the validity of the title. The day after the purchase was consummated, the new owner was offered a price for the property that would have given him a substantial profit above his investment and expenses, had he cared to sell. Under such circumstances, however, the buyer should be sure the property is a good enough investment to be worth so much time and trouble and he should never embark on such an undertaking without the best possible legal advice. Most important of all, his contract to buy should be so drawn that ample time is allowed for the work of perfecting the title. There should also be a provision allowing him to withdraw from the contract and to regain his option money, if clearing the title proves impossible or there is too great expense. Another detail that should be taken into account, especially with land once used for farming, is the possibility of old, half forgotten rights of way. In the legal argot, a right of way is a permission to cross property that has road frontage to reach fields, pasturage, wood lots, or the like which are otherwise without means of access. To be binding, of course, such agreements must have been recorded. Where they date back half a century and have been forgotten and unused for many years, lawyers are sometimes careless in their title search and overlook them. This is a serious omission since they can suddenly be revived to the discomfort of a totally innocent buyer. Some years ago a man bought a simple farmhouse as a summer home. One spring he discovered that a neighbor had acquired a cow and, night and morning, was driving it across his lawn and flower garden. At his indignant protests, the neighbor sarcastically pointed out an old gateway in the stone wall dividing their property and cited an agreement almost a century old that provided for a right of way for cattle across what was now lawn and flower garden. Of course reviving this right was a case of pure spite and eventually there was a law suit. The man with the cow came to terms, his own of course, and for a cash consideration relinquished his cow driving rights. Meanwhile the owner of the property had been put to some expense and plenty of annoyance. With the final decision to buy a piece of property financial details come to the fore. An "all cash basis" is not uncommon these days and often brings a sizable reduction in the asking price. Where a mortgage is desired, fifty per cent of the purchase price must be cash for house and land, or the entire amount on unimproved land. With the latter, the mortgage lender will expect you to provide at least half of the total cost of the land and the proposed house. Gone are the days when country homes could be bought with first and second mortgages and very little cash. This type of financing was tried and found wanting during the late depression, since it led many people to commit themselves to payments they could not continue if reverses were experienced. There are various kinds of first mortgages now being used to assist in financing the purchase of a country home. One of the oldest is the purchase money type. This is given the seller as part of the total price paid by the buyer. Formerly such mortgages were for a short term, three or five years, and payable in full at the end of that period. Now some of them are for longer periods and provide for monthly amortization charges by which the mortgage is paid in full by the end of the time specified. The Federal Housing Administration mortgages, which are a recent New Deal endeavor to make funds for home buying or building safe and stable, are issued by local banks with the payment of interest and principle guaranteed to the bank through the operation of this government controlled agency. These mortgages are amortized over periods of ten, fifteen, and twenty years and the borrower must make specified monthly payments that include taxes, interest charges, and amortization. They are not available in all sections because some local banks hold that they conflict in details with other banking regulations. So far as the borrower is concerned, these mortgages are no different from any other similar method of financing. If payments are not made regularly and promptly, foreclosure proceedings will be started. Large insurance companies or savings and loan associations also issue fifteen to twenty year first mortgages, amortized over the period by monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual payments. The interest rate varies from five to five and a half per cent. If such a mortgage is arranged for a new house, architect's plans and specifications must be submitted with the application for loan. The site must be free and clear of all mortgages or other obligations. Your own financial rating is looked up by the lender and, if satisfactory, the company issues a commitment that you can take to your local bank where definite amounts are paid as the work progresses; so much when exterior walls are complete; such a proportion when rough piping for plumbing has been installed; another amount when all lath and plaster has been finished; and so on until the final payment when the house is finished. Then the formal mortgage is executed and recorded. There are brokers who specialize in negotiating such mortgages. Their fee is about two per cent. So much for the usual channels of financing. In addition, the buyer can still make his own mortgage arrangements with some investor who has money to loan if he knows such a person. Further, although second mortgages should be avoided if possible, they are sometimes issued where a buyer is considered a good risk but lacks sufficient capital to meet the fifty per cent cash requirement that prevails today. Such loans are not usually made for over twenty per cent of the appraised value and generally call for a higher rate of interest, six per cent. They are also apt to be for a short term, two or three years, when they must be paid in full. With both first and second mortgages, the lenders will inquire carefully into the financial responsibility of the would-be borrower. They will want to know exactly how much of his own ready money he plans to use in the transaction. This is to be sure that he has a substantial equity in the property and will not be struggling under too great a financial burden. Having perfected the method for financing your purchase, now comes the formal contract to buy. This is an agreement whereby you undertake to consummate the purchase at a future date, generally thirty to sixty days, at the agreed price. On executing such a contract, _which should be reviewed by your lawyer before you, as buyer, sign it_, expect to pay the seller through the broker ten per cent of the total purchase price. This is done on signing the contract. The time between signing this contract and the date set for the title closing is employed for title search and insurance, land survey and similar details. If the title proves imperfect so that you cannot complete the purchase, your check is returned to you. As for the cost of title insurance, the corporations issuing such policies have an established scale of prices. These vary slightly in different parts of the country. Title policies have generally replaced the old independent title search by lawyers that had no elements of insurance. Where a company has already searched and insured the title, reissue of the policy is made to you at about half the original fee. The cost of surveying property is based on the amount of work involved. For surveying five acres of what was formerly farm land and that has never had its borders so measured and defined, the average charge today is from one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Special conditions may raise or lower this. An established surveyor who knows the locality is, of course, the best person to undertake such work. His previous surveys of other adjacent properties can often enable him to locate and identify old boundary marks that some one not conversant with the locality might find baffling. Much country property is very vaguely described by old deeds. "Fifty acres more or less bounded on the east by the highway, northerly by land owned by Jones, westerly to that of or recently owned by Smith, and southerly by that of Brown," illustrates roughly an old title description. You may get forty-five or fifty-five acres, and it is up to you to establish just what fences and so forth are your actual boundaries. A surveyor reduces all this to exact measurements and puts definite markers at the corners and wherever else the party lines change direction. When finished, he provides you with a certified copy of his survey in map form, giving distances and indicating location of his monuments. These are usually either iron stakes driven two or three feet into the ground or concrete posts about two inches square set in the ground and plainly visible. It is illegal to move such marks. With title clear and the survey completed, everything is ready for the title closing, as lawyers call the time when title to the property passes from seller to buyer. The latter's lawyer should have investigated and passed on all steps prior to this and adjusted any minor details with the seller's lawyer. The buyer and his lawyer and the seller and his lawyer should all be present at a title closing. The paid tax bills for the current year are first presented and any minor adjustments made. Then the buyer presents a certified check or actual cash for the amount he has agreed to pay. He also has a small amount of money on hand to meet any adjustments such as taxes, insurance, and the like. Lastly, the deed, which has been carefully reviewed by the buyer's lawyer, is signed by the seller and, for better or worse, you have become a country property owner. CALL IN AN ARCHITECT [Illustration] _CHAPTER IV_ CALL IN AN ARCHITECT The prospective country dweller is now owner of a piece of property and his ideas are probably fairly definite as to how his home is going to look when his family is actually living there. But seldom is it a simple matter of gathering the household goods into a moving van, having them set down in the new place, and then going out on the terrace to watch the sunset while deft workers within set things to rights. There may be no house at all on his new holding, much less a terrace. At the time of purchase, an old mill, barn or other combination of walls and roof may stand in place of his imaginary home. Even a house in good condition usually needs a little renovation. During the negotiations for purchase, his lawyer kept him from legal pitfalls. Just as important now in bridging the gap between what he has and what he wants is an architect. If he has been consulted before purchase, so much the better. If not, it is high time to seek him out unless one happens to be a genius like Thomas Jefferson who could draft a Declaration of Independence with one hand and design a serpentine wall with the other. Such a person has no need of this book anyway and will long since have cast it aside. Most of us are just average citizens with some ideas which we want to put into concrete form but find difficult because we are either inarticulate or untrained. That is what various specialists are for, and it is a wise man who realizes his own limitations. A sugar broker may have ideas about a portrait but he won't try to paint it himself. He will commission a portrait painter, in whom he has confidence, to make a likeness of his wife or child as the case may be. Even more necessary are the services of an architect when building or remodeling a house. Trying to be your own architect is as foolish as drawing a sketch of little Jerry on canvas and then calling in a house painter to smear on a daub of blue for his coat, a bit of yellow for his hair, white for his collar, and just anything for the background. At worst, though, this futuristic result can be taken to the attic, turned face to the wall and forgotten; but a botched house won't let you forget. You have to live in it along with your mistakes, day after day and, possibly, year after year. When and if you finally call in an architect and have them remedied or obviated, the cost will be considerably in excess of what his total fee would have been in the beginning. So, find the best man practicing in the vicinity where your future home is to be located and cast your burdens on his drafting board. Give him ample information as to what suits your fancy and conforms to your family needs. Then he can proceed with the preliminary sketches. From these eventually will come the plan of action to be followed by the various artisans who will do the work. But house plans, whether for new construction, remodeling or renovating, do not spring from the drafting board complete and final overnight. They are based on more preliminary effort than most people without building experience realize. This is particularly true of the country home. In cities and suburbs, building plots are more or less standardized units in a checker-board with two controlling factors, so many feet of street frontage and such and such depth. Local building ordinances sharply limit the type and size of structure. The country offers much greater latitude. Such matters as topography, location of existing trees, and points of the compass with relation to the main rooms of the house play important roles. We well remember a dismal example of what can happen when these controlling factors are ignored. The owner was an opinionated man with a passion for economy. House building was to him no mystery. It was just foundations, side walls, roof, stairways, interior partitions and, of course, plumbing, heating and so forth. His house was "going to cost just so much and people who paid architects' fees for plans had more money than brains." Besides, he had seen a sketch and floor plans of a house in a magazine that were good enough for him. He knew a builder who could follow them and what more did one need? [Illustration: A REALLY EARLY AMERICAN INTERIOR. THE GREAT FIREPLACE OF THE WAYSIDE INN, SUDBURY, MASS. _Henry Ford_] The little matter of relating the structure to the site concerned him not at all, nor did it enter his head that a house could face anywhere except towards the road. As for the contractor, it was not for him to reason why, but to build. So they went to work and a house entirely made up of good things done in the wrong way was the result. An outcropping of rock meant expensive blasting, so the magazine-pictured house was set firmly down almost on the roots of a fine row of old pine trees by the roadside. Through these the wind howled mournfully at night and by day their shade made the main rooms of the ground floor distinctly gloomy. It was an ambitious house and the leaded glass windows of the living room faced north. So keeping its temperature at a comfortable point in winter was an added difficulty. The sunny southwestern exposure, being at the back, was given over to kitchen and servants' quarters. Lastly, the one pleasing prospect, a friendly little valley with a meandering brook, could only be seen to advantage from the garage. The architect's fee had been saved but when, a little later, the owner wanted to sell, it took several years to find a buyer and then only at a price of half the money invested. The new owner consulted an architect with a gift for rearranging and so succeeded in mitigating the worst features and in taking advantage of the cheerful aspects inherent with the site. Like a good doctor or lawyer, an able architect can usually get you out of trouble; but the ancient slogan, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," fits admirably here. Do not, however, engage an architect as lightly as you would select a cravat. To him you are intrusting the task of putting your chaotic and half-expressed thoughts and desires into a set of plans that will guide and control masons, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and painters in their work. As your professional adviser, it will be his job to bridge the gap between the date of purchase and the happy occasion when your household goods are deposited in a home embodying your ideas and wishes. Obviously he must be in sympathy with those ideas. If you are building a new house on old lines or remodeling an existing structure with a century or more to its credit, don't select a man to advise you who can see nothing but the newest and most modernistic types of architecture. Don't be afraid to ask for evidences of past performances. Since no architect discards his plans and renderings, he will be glad to show you a few of them. Also in this initial conference, names of clients for whom he has executed commissions within the fairly recent past may be mentioned. It is sensible to consult two or three of these. If he has pleased them, he is probably fitted to undertake your problems. For solving them and knowing how to get desired results, you will pay him a fee that ranges from six to ten per cent of the total cost of the work undertaken. For special cases that involve unusual work, it may be slightly higher. The amount of the fee, as well as the dates at which portions of it become payable, will be settled in your initial interview. There are occasional men, however, calling themselves architects who are not qualified. They have no degree from a recognized school; cannot qualify for registration in states where architects, like doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professional people, must have a state license to practice. Like other charlatans, such men are glib talkers but it takes real ability and thorough training to prepare practical plans and specifications. Here is where the dabster betrays himself. A little independent investigation may prevent you from putting your building problems into the hands of such an incompetent man. The need of an architect where a new house is to be built or an old one completely remodeled is obvious. We are convinced that the same holds true where only minor changes, replacements and the introduction of modern conveniences are the program. Our own little country home is an example. The necessary alterations were so simple that it seemed ridiculous to ask architectural advice. There was nothing to the job but to install plumbing, move one partition, patch the plastering, and close chimney and other pipe openings cut in the days when stoves, rather than fireplaces, furnished heat. We engaged a good local man who, with his crew of four or five helpers, was accustomed to doing everything from carpentry to plumbing. His labor charges were on a per diem basis and considerably under the union scale that then prevailed. Nothing was left indefinite. We understood exactly how the work was to be done and what materials we were to supply. In due time it was finished and we moved in. Two or three years later, we discovered some serious shortcomings. For instance, the kitchen sink was hung in the wrong place and, because it was easier, all of the water pipes were placed on outside walls. This made no difference when the house was occupied only during the summer months but during the first winter we became experts in thawing pipes that "caught" whenever the temperature dropped to zero. There was another economy that proved quite the opposite even before the work was finished. We had agreed that wherever the old lath and plaster were in bad condition, they were to be removed and replaced with a paper wall board then being widely advertised as an inexpensive substitute. But we had reckoned without the idiosyncrasies of an 18th century house. When the old lath and plaster had been cleared away, our handyman contractor discovered that the old beams and uprights were spaced at eighteen-inch intervals, while our new wall board came in widths conforming to the sixteen-inch spacing that has been standard with American house construction for a century. It was too late to return the wall board so new nailing strips, sixteen inches apart, had to be installed. This took time and when the so-called inexpensive substitute was finally in place, the total cost actually exceeded that of the more satisfactory lath and plaster. Further, because nobody was at hand to prevent it, we lost a good partition of feather-edge boarding. It was between two of the bedrooms, concealed beneath several layers of wallpaper. When stripped, two or three cracks were found through which one could look from one room to the other. These could have been filled with wooden shims but the workmen did not stop to think of that. They ripped it out and put in a tight and modest partition of that ultra-modern wall board. It was well done mechanically and is still in place, but we mourn that original paneling of native white wood and continually keep an eye out for some like it. Eventually, when all the mistakes of ignorance and lack of supervision have been corrected, we will have spent several times the total of the architect's fee. So we are out of pocket and, except for relocating the water piping, we are still looking at and repenting most of the results of our false economy. Thus, an architect is all-important with a house problem whether it involves a minor or major undertaking and it is logical to ask exactly what he does for his fee. Consider, for instance, his functions and services when a new house is to be built. As a beginning, owner and architect meet, inspect the site, while the architect, like any good diagnostician, asks questions. These deal with the type of house the owner thinks he wants, the number of rooms, baths, and so forth and, finally, the amount of money he is prepared to spend. He offers few opinions of his own at this interview but rather tries to read his client's mind so that preliminary sketches and plans will approximate that mental picture. A few days later, tentative sketches of a house designed to suit the location are submitted. Out of them grow the revised ones. It is highly improbable that his initial suggestions will suit you in every detail. It takes time and interchange of ideas before this can be accomplished. When they reach the stage where they represent the house you want, the architect prepares a complete set of working drawings, including floor plans and side wall elevations. These are drawn on a scale of one quarter of an inch to the foot. As soon as the drawings are finished, he drafts the specifications or bill of particulars as to materials to be used in the construction of the house. These with the plans form the basis on which contractors may submit bids for the work. First, however, owner and architect should go over this material together. Making changes after the contracts are let and the work begun is both expensive and foolish. If you find it difficult to visualize an actual house from the drawings, a model made from wall board or similar material is a wise precaution. Fashioned on the same scale of one quarter of an inch to the foot, it is your proposed house in the little, and on seeing it no doubts are left. Windows and doors are all in their proper places. The exterior is painted to match the color and simulate the material that is to be used. Finally, the model can be taken apart so that you can study the interior of bedroom and living room floors. Such models, of course, are not included in the architect's fee but the cost of one for an average house is under $100. If you can visualize your proposed home thoroughly by it, the expense is well warranted. The architect can be of great service in the matter of contractor's bids. He knows the past performances of those operating in the vicinity where you propose building and can suggest the men or firms whose work is most satisfactory. From four to eight general contractors, that is, individuals or firms competent to undertake the complete building operation, ought to be invited to submit sealed bids. Each is supplied with a complete set of plans and specifications by the architect and given from ten days to two weeks in which to submit their bids. In addition to the total price for the work, these bids, by common custom, give the names of the chief sub-contractors such as plumber, electrician and the like, with the amount of money allocated for the work of each. On a set day, usually a Saturday afternoon, owner and architect meet, open the bids, and compare the offers made by the various contractors. Most of them include alternate provisions on condition that they be allowed to substitute materials or methods of construction not according to the specifications. The contractor who submits the lowest bid would logically be the one selected but here again the architect's judgment is valuable. First, he can rapidly determine whether the provisional saving suggested by substitution of unspecified materials is a wise change. Second, he knows whether the bidder under consideration is dependable or inclined to skimp in hidden but essential points. There is, also, the possible chance that none of the bids submitted come within the sum the owner is prepared to spend. Then comes the task of revising plans and specifications and eliminating non-essentials to bring costs within the set figure. From practical experience, however, architects have found that, if the proposed house is just what the owner wants, he will somehow find the additional money rather than have plans or details changed. After a contractor whose bid and quality of work are satisfactory has been selected, the architect, acting for the owner, lets the contract to him. This includes provisions for partial payments at stated periods as the work progresses; so much when the masonry is completed; another amount when the exterior walls are finished; and so on, including plumbing, heating, plastering and electrical wiring. With each payment, fifteen per cent of the total is held back and does not become due until the entire work has been finished. This is a standard practice and is intended to insure completion of the contract to the satisfaction of both owner and architect. Under this provision, the architect certifies to the owner each month that certain work has been done and that the contractor is entitled to so much money for it. From the day that construction starts, the architect begins his work of supervision. At least twice a week he goes to the site and observes the progress of the work and how it is being done. Special conditions may arise where the contractor or his foreman call hurriedly for the architect, such as uncovering a large boulder at one corner of the excavation for the cellar. There may be a fine point to be decided regarding the location of piping or some detailed instruction concerning the installation of the interior woodwork. On these occasions it saves time for everybody if the architect or one of his associates is readily available. Watching the cellar excavation for unexpected subsurface water is also an item that no experienced architect neglects. He sees to it that concrete for foundations is mixed properly and has the specified percentage of cement. The installation of piping for plumbing and heating is supervised carefully, as is the work of plastering. As the house nears completion, his supervision increases in direct ratio. In fact, during the last two or three weeks, the architect is not infrequently there most of the time. The last details of the interior trim are being completed, decorating is under way, and lighting fixtures are being installed. All of these require direct supervision and the architect expects to be on hand. These final details can make or mar the general effect more than is realized. When your house is finished to the architect's satisfaction, he gives his final approval and thirty days thereafter the final bill of the contractor is payable. This period is to allow for minor adjustments, such as windows that stick, doors that will not latch and the like, the small things that always need to be done with any new house and are generally attended to after the owner and his family have taken possession. Just as the general contractor is paid in installments, the architect's fee is likewise liquidated. There is a standard schedule which provides that one-fifth of the estimated fee shall be paid on completion of satisfactory preliminary sketches; two-fifths when the plans and specifications are finished or on letting the contract for actual building. The balance is paid monthly in proportion to the amounts paid the contractor. When a house is to be remodeled, the architect proceeds in much the same way. He presents suggested sketches of the ways in which the desired changes can be accomplished. When these are satisfactory, working drawings are prepared that show what is to be removed and what new construction undertaken. The working drawings are, of course, accompanied by a set of specifications, and contractors are invited to submit bids for doing the work. On letting the contract, work proceeds about as with that of building a new house. There are, however, more opportunities for unforeseen contingencies and so the architect often has to devote more of his time to supervision. Sometimes, if the particular remodeling project is one requiring unusual care, the percentage of his fee is a little higher by special arrangement. Where a house requires minor changes that qualify merely as renovation, the architect's work is, of course, much simpler. Extensive preliminary sketches are unnecessary, and complete floor and elevation plans not required. But architectural investigation, planning and supervision, as stated before, are highly desirable if not essential. His fee is usually the same ten per cent as applies for new construction. There is less actual plan drafting but the amount of supervision is so much in excess of that required for new construction that such a charge is by no means unreasonable. Besides, the owner has the assurance that all changes and new installations will be done properly with no glaring errors of judgment to mock him as he settles down to life in his country home. BUILDING VERSUS REMODELING [Illustration] _CHAPTER V_ BUILDING VERSUS REMODELING "Shall I build or remodel?" is a question with so many facets that it would be foolhardy to try to answer it categorically. Circumstances alter cases in all phases of life and particularly so when one is endeavoring to decide whether the country home is to be a new structure, or an old one remodeled to make the best use of its desirable features and suit the requirements of its new owner. One of our acquaintances was hung on the horns of this dilemma for several months while he and his wife spent most of their waking hours arguing it pro and con. They had selected the vicinity in which they wanted to live, had the requisite cash in the bank to finance either undertaking, and there were two properties that pleased them. The latter constituted the snag. On the one hand, there was a sightly piece of land with some nice old shade trees but no existing structure; about a mile farther along the same road, lay another holding of about the same size with a house in fair condition. The price for this was naturally higher than for the undeveloped land, on the theory that it would not cost half as much to remodel the house as to build. "I don't know what to do," this perplexed man remarked. "On one side I hear and read that new building is much the best investment. That it costs so much less to maintain a new house and if you want to sell, you can find a purchaser quicker and at a better price. But no sooner do I begin to believe that building is the only wise course, than I run smack into an article on remodeling or meet some one I know whose experience in remodeling shows by actual figures a big saving compared with a new house of the same kind and size. In my own case, though, the more I study what estimates I can get, the more I am convinced that in the end I'll spend just about as much whether I build or remodel." These two people finally built a new house. There were good reasons for their decision. First, they could buy the land for so much money, and a general contractor of excellent reputation was ready to build just the house they wanted for so much more. The two figures, plus the architect's fee, added up to a definite amount. Having an accounting mind, the knowledge that there would be no unforeseen contingencies and that, ready for occupancy, the cost of the house would be so much, was the deciding factor. In addition, he and his wife both inclined towards something new. A house that had not been lived in by other people, had no scars and marks of age and use, that embodied all the newest materials and construction methods, was really what they wanted. Had remodeling offered them an assured saving of several thousand dollars, this couple would probably have suppressed their subconscious leanings to be builders, proceeded to remodel, and been only moderately pleased with the result. The answer to the age-old question of whether to build or to remodel is found in the preference of the individual. Some people are temperamentally builders. They are happiest living in a home that was constructed for them. In their eyes it possesses far greater charm than anything that has been mellowed by years of use. There are others to whom nothing is more satisfying than to take an existing structure and alter it to their liking and needs. An elderly acquaintance, now a widow and living in a sleepy New England village, is taking keen pleasure in an old house of almost doll-like proportions. "All my life," she said, "I've wanted to live in a really old house but until now it has always been one new house or city apartment after another and I never got my roots down." Granted that building or remodeling, like cheese, is a matter of personal preference, it is not improper at this point to set forth some of the merits of both. With a fine old building, there is that elusive something called charm. Time has mellowed it and the countless feet that have crossed its threshold have worn its floors. The blackened bricks or stones of its fireplaces bespeak the generations that basked in the heat of the huge logs that once glowed there. All these things have given it character. [Illustration: ONCE HALF A HOUSE AND A HEN ROOST _Photo by Whitney_] [Illustration: WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH A BARN _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_. _Robertson Ward, architect_] Don't expect a new house, the day it is turned over to you by the contractor, to look as if it had been a family home for several generations. It can't. It has just been built. Everything is fresh and shiny; edges are sharp and even the bricks of the fireplace are untainted by flame and smoke. But if you have been even moderately articulate, the architect has been able to interpret your wishes and you have a house built as near as possible to your plans. You also have the satisfaction of knowing that, in the building, the workmanship has been honest and thorough, and that in materials used every advantage has been taken of the newest developments. For instance, behind the plaster is the modern metal lath so superior to the old wooden variety. The exterior walls are as thoroughly insulated against heat and cold as any one of several highly efficient materials can make them; windows and doors are products of large wood-fabricating factories noted for superior work. All these are points of advantage with tangible merit, but time and your own efforts are the only means by which your new home can acquire personality and charm. This new structure is yours, made to your desires; and what you make of it is your own problem. The house that you buy and remodel starts with certain attributes given by age, as already stated. Here we must offer one caution. It concerns houses built during the last quarter of the 19th century. The majority were badly designed and the quality of workmanship was none too good. Such houses are apt to be perched on high foundations, have exterior walls that offer the minimum resistance to winter winds, while architecturally, lines and proportions reflect an age when taste was either bad or lacking. We know of several attempts to remodel country homes of such vintage and are convinced that better results could have been achieved for less money if the operation had started with wrecking the structure and building anew. On the contrary, except where decayed beyond salvage, we have yet to see a country home of the 18th or first half of the 19th century that did not respond admirably to remodeling. But it is well to be practical and compare its cost with that of a new building. Among architects, it is generally recognized that, save for a house with unusually expensive details or added equipment, definite figures per cubic foot of size may be computed that will cover the entire cost of construction. To get the cubical contents of a house, the architect takes the area in square feet of the ground floor and multiplies it by the height from the cellar floor to the eaves, plus half the distance from that point to the ridge of the roof. For example, if the proposed house is thirty feet wide by twenty feet deep, its floor plan area is 600 square feet. Then, if the elevation dimensions are seven feet from cellar floor to living room floor; eight feet from living room floor to that of the bedroom floor; and seven feet from bedroom floor to the level of the eaves, which in turn measure eight feet below the ridge of the roof; the cubical contents would result from multiplying 600 square feet by the sum of seven, eight, seven, and four, or 15,600 cubic feet. With this figure established, it is simple to approximate costs as follows: Wooden construction $0.45 per cubic foot Brick veneer construction 0.55 " " " Solid brick construction 0.65 " " " Field stone construction 0.60 " " " Cut stone construction $0.75 to 1.50 " " " This tabulation, an average for the United States as a whole, is as accurate as any generalization can be and a safe one for forming a preliminary estimate, but local conditions may increase or decrease costs. The architect can readily determine which. This table, of course, does not include cost of land, construction of driveway, landscaping, or expenses incident to bringing electric service or telephone wires to the house. From these calculations, it is an easy matter to take the outside dimensions of a house you are considering remodeling and compute its cubical content. Then you can ask your architect whether it can be remodeled as you wish for a price competitive with building a new house of like design and equal size. In order for this to mean anything, you should determine what proportion of the price paid for the property represents land value and what reflects the existence of the structure itself. As a simple example, we will concede that land in the neighborhood is held at $500 an acre and you can buy a five-acre tract with a house on it for $3,750. Here $2,500 represents land value, and $1,250 house value. The question resolves itself into comparing remodeling costs plus house value with those for a new house of like size and kind. If so much must be replaced or rearranged that the figures for house and remodeling are in excess of those for a new structure, the wise course would be to abandon the idea and build instead. But the old house may have certain details that make you willing to bear the added expense. If so, you at least know the comparative costs and have definite standards by which to shape your course. From personal observation, we believe that there are many instances where the total cost of house and rejuvenation is considerably below that of a new structure. Since confession stories are just as fascinating in home building as in the lurid fiction of the woodpulp magazines, we cite the experience of a family that bought a home nearly two years ago within the New York commuting zone. They were a larger family than the average and the house, of desired size, had once been a stagecoach halfway tavern. It contained twenty-two rooms and was in better than average condition. The exterior had been given two coats of white paint less than six months before. The price for this old place, including twenty-two acres of land and a barn usable for garage and chicken house, was $8,200. According to actual record, only $2,798 was spent on remodeling. There were almost no structural changes required. Two minor partitions were removed and five new windows cut. Otherwise, this expenditure was largely devoted to the introduction of plumbing, heating, and lighting. By type of work, the costs for this remodeling were as follows: Two bathrooms, each complete with shower; a kitchen sink and laundry tub $590.00 Heating system, including steam boiler, piping and 25 radiators, totaling 630 feet of radiation 889.00 Water system, cleaning well, installing pump and 500 gallon storage tank 218.00 Electric wiring entirely of armored cable and lighting fixtures 306.00 Sewage system complete with septic tank and disposal fields 230.00 All carpentry, including necessary work for plumber, electrician, etc. 160.00 Masonry, including repairs to fireplaces and chimneys 105.00 Decorations, paint, and paper for twelve rooms 150.00 Architectural supervision, plans where needed and preliminary inspection of several houses 150.00 Total $2,798.00 These are the actual figures for a livable and attractive country home. There are, of course, some things that await a future time for their accomplishment, but what place would be really enjoyable if there were not certain corrections and additions over which the owners could daydream and plan. We admit the figures just quoted are so low as to seem hardly credible, but they demonstrate what could be accomplished within fifty miles of New York during the summer of 1935. The contributing causes for this happy result were that these people knew what they wanted, hunted in a section that had not been too thoroughly combed by others like themselves and, lastly, happened to be ready to buy at just the right moment when the man who owned the property was anxious to sell. But old country residences, including structures built as taverns, private schools and the like, are not the only type of buildings that may be remodeled into acceptable homes. We have seen old barns or stables, disused sawmills, general stores, old stone buildings that once housed small industrial enterprises, and even a church of the Neo-Classic period remodeled with distinct success. Again, in Massachusetts there is a former textile hamlet. The mill itself is now a community club and the workmen's cottages, built about 1815-20, are homes for a dozen or more families where, daily, the head of the house motors to his office in an industrial city about a half-hour away. These story-and-a-half cottages, executed along simple Federal lines, are owned by the families who occupy them. They look out on a street lined with fine old elms and at the end is the stone mill with its belfry where still hangs the bell that once ruled the lives of spinners and weavers with its clanking iron tongue, morning, noon and night. For picturesqueness, if the unconventional has a greater appeal than the more standardized type of home, remodeling an old barn into a country home has its advantages. This is particularly so if one can find either a capacious one of roughly laid ledge stone, once popular in parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and more rarely built in other sections, or a large hay barn with hand-hewn framework and side walls of weathered boarding. It takes only a little imagination to visualize such a building remodeled into a country home with a generous stone chimney and fireplace occupying one of the end walls of a former haymow. Invariably such remodeling includes construction of one or more wings to house dining room, kitchen, and servants' quarters as well as additional bedrooms and baths. The actual barn structure seldom lends itself to more than a living room and possibly two bedrooms. In summer this type of country home has much to offer. It is light, airy, and spacious; but when fall begins to indicate its arrival, unless the structure has been made nearer weather tight than is the nature of barns, life in the haymow is chill and sour. For use the year around, the old barn must be completely rebuilt with a cellar beneath for a heating plant and side walls and undersides of roof well covered with insulating material to prevent cold from entering or heat escaping. One of the most successful methods of treating the front, where once the old barn doors swung wide to admit a fully loaded haywagon, is to substitute a many-paned window of almost cathedral proportions. This lets in adequate light for what might otherwise be a dark interior. In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and mosquitoes. Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces south or west, pours that most valuable attribute of country living, bright sunlight. An old water-power sawmill makes an unusually attractive country home. We know of at least one so adapted. Here the space once given over to sawing logs into boards has been completely enclosed and is now the living room. On one side is a noble fireplace flanked by large casement windows that look out on the old mill pond. Bedrooms and service quarters are located in the end sections where lumber used to be seasoned and other special work done. This unique bit of remodeling, combined with the pond as a main feature of landscape development, is both rare and enviable. Yet there are a surprising number of old commercial structures that lend themselves to remodeling into present day homes and by their very unconventionality take on added charm. In New England there is a substantial stone building of no architectural pretensions except that width, depth, and height are distinctly related to each other. It is now a country home but it began as a small textile mill in the early days of the 19th century when the industrial revolution was just getting under way. Later, when the factory era became thoroughly established, this lone little mill was left high and dry by the tide that swept toward the larger centers and it stood untenanted for years. Finally it was retrieved by some one with vision enough to see that, with proper partitions, both ground and second floors could be divided into satisfactory rooms. Here the new owner, or his architect, had the discretion to preserve as much as possible of the past. The old mill owner's counting room, on the lower floor, is now the library and, in almost untouched condition, is complete even to the cast-iron stove that once warmed it. Converting buildings originally designed for other uses may take a still different course. A house, too small in itself for present day use, can form the nucleus of a country home. A most attractive place in Maine was so assembled. There were two or three other buildings on the property which were shifted from their original locations by jacks and rollers and skillfully joined to the little house to form wings. By clever rearrangement of rooms and shifting or removal of partitions, the assembled group became large enough for the new owner's uses. Even a modern structure, designed originally for some branch of agriculture, can be converted into an excellent house if an architect is inclined to undertake the necessary contriving of plans and builders can be found who will follow his directions. Several years ago, a man was bitten with the urge to raise chickens according to the latest scientific methods of artificial lighting and forced feeding. For this he built a substantial structure with steam heat, electric lights, and other elaborate provisions. Being nurse maid to thousands of chicks ranging from a week old to the proper size for broiling was a strenuous job. Further, the creatures developed all sorts of maladies not provided for in the book and the mortality was so high that the project was finally abandoned. The building stood vacant for some months until it came to the notice of a resourceful young architect. He measured, sketched, and drew plans. Now, what was once a factory for the raw material of broiled chicken is an attractive and compact Cape Cod cottage. Because of site and accessibility, the original building had to be dismembered and moved about two hundred feet. When re-erected according to the plans provided, the result bore little resemblance to the original box-like structure except that the floor space was the same. Some country homes begin as week-end retreats. Then the habit of being in the country two or three days grows on the family until they see no reason for living in the city except for an occasional overnight ordeal with a stuffy hotel room. To make the average week-end shack a permanent home calls for material expansion. Double-deck bunks have been installed to provide adequate sleeping quarters; and for a limited time they find it fun to cook, eat, and live in one large room. But, when the house is used seven days a week, such condensation is anything but practical. So the establishment must be enlarged. This can be done with ease, especially if the original plans were drawn with such a change in mind. That is, the original structure now becomes the living room, while new wings and additions provide the much needed space for service quarters and conventional bedrooms and baths. But the week-end place is not always built particularly for the purpose. Many times it is a very small farmhouse acquired cheaply and made usable at a minimum of time and money. When the decision is reached to convert it into a home of larger proportions, whether one realizes it or not, the plan of campaign follows the plan of no less a person than George Washington. Mount Vernon was not always a mansion but was the result of consistent enlargement. When Washington inherited it from his half-brother, Lawrence, it was a story-and-a-half hunting lodge of eight rooms. Then he married Martha Custis, richest widow in the Virginia colony; and, to have a home suitable for her, he had the roof raised and the house made full two stories. Shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolution, he planned two wings. The first was that at the south end with library on the ground floor and master bedroom for Colonel and Mrs. Washington on the second. As the revolt against the British crown progressed, the construction of the north wing lagged somewhat but was worked on intermittently. This, the banquet hall, when finished became one of the noblest private residence rooms in America. Washington, however, did not leave these steps in the enlargement and renovation of his erstwhile hunting lodge entirely to professionals. Whether away fighting in the French and Indian Wars or directing the course of action of the Continental Army, he never forgot what was happening at his country seat. His correspondence is full of minute directions regarding the finishing of certain rooms or of such injunctions as, "I beg of you to hasten Lamphire about the addition to the north end of the house; otherwise you will have it open, I fear, in the cold and wet weather." When the Revolution was fought and won, the Washingtons returned, not to a Mount Vernon that was a stranger to them, but to the country home they had so carefully planned. This specific planning by the owner, now as then, has definite bearing on whether the house will be yours or just a beautiful structure, perfect in all its appointments but totally lacking the impress of the owner or his family. Several years ago, a man and his wife acquired one of the early Dutch farmhouses of the New Jersey back country. They had long wanted just such a place and having taken possession, they summoned an architect, an interior decorator, and a landscape architect. A few days were spent with them inspecting house and grounds. Then the new owners left on a winter cruise around the world. Their final injunctions were to the effect that next May they would return and would expect everything done. They did and everything was complete. The old house was perfect. Its furnishings were all genuine antiques of the period. The grounds had been graded, trimmed, and polished. Gardens, shrubbery, and hedges were just right, but the final effect was as impersonal as a demonstration model. In a year or two, this property was sold to a golf club and its former owner bought another place and moved right in. Nearly two years were spent consulting and working with an architect and workmen, supervising a garden or two, and in buying antiques, a piece at a time. His second attempt at country living was not as sophisticated nor did it approach the museum standards of the former; but, when completed, it had that prime essential of any home, it reflected the character and personality of its owners. LOOKING AN OLD HOUSE IN THE MOUTH [Illustration] _CHAPTER VI_ LOOKING AN OLD HOUSE IN THE MOUTH Buying an old house is a good deal like selecting a horse. Having found an animal of the desired type and breed, the question arises, "Is it sound of wind and limb?" Houses nearing or past the century mark also have their spavins and these should be recognized by the prospective buyer. He can thus form some estimate of how extensive replacements are needed, even on first inspection. This is of prime importance since it has direct bearing on the worth of the house. Whether built of stone, brick, or wood, such structures may have rafters, sills, and main beams so decayed that new ones must be added. The foundation may need rebuilding and door and window frames may be so weathered that they also must be replaced. Beware of a house where floors slope and side walls are out of plumb. This means extensive shoring which is slow and expensive. For a truly pessimistic report on the health of an old place turn to a trusted carpenter or contractor. He congenitally dislikes old buildings and will point out all defects with ominous head shakings and subtle suggestions for new building. In this way the prospective buyer will know the worst, painted at its blackest. Somewhere between it and the rosy view of the real estate agent will lie the truth. Therefore, it is well to do some inspecting independently. Knowledge of what are the weak spots in old houses and where to look for them will save much time and effort in the initial stages of house hunting. The skeleton of an old house is akin to that of a modern steel structure. Hand-hewn timbers, morticed and pinned together, take the place of riveted steel beams. Since a timber frame is subject to rot, either dry or damp, one of the first places to look for unsoundness is the sills (the beams which rest on the foundation and into which are set floor joists, corner posts, and other main uprights). It is a simple matter to give them the jack-knife test at intervals of two or three feet. Stick the blade in as far as possible. Then try to turn it around. With a sound beam this cannot be done. If there is dry rot, the beam will often crumble under a slight pressure of the fingers. Go over the sills on the north side of the building first. Here there is less sunlight and snow remains longer. Consequently decay from excessive moisture is not unusual. Roof rafters and plate beams (the long timbers on which the lower ends of the rafters rest) should also be knife-tested since long neglected leaking roofs eventually result in their decay. Unsound corner posts and other uprights connecting sills and plate beams are harder to detect since they are concealed between the outside boarding and interior plaster. Note the walls themselves and the corner boards extending vertically from foundation to eaves. If a corner of the house is enough out of plumb to be visible to the eye, or if the corner boards are loose, examine further as it may indicate decay beneath. With brick or stone houses, the walls themselves carry the weight of the roof and so have no vertical timbers. If the walls are out of plumb it means that the foundations are either gone or are in need of major repair. Whether a house is of brick, stone or wood, there is one further place for knife testing--the ground floor joists. Cellar dampness may have taken its toll. The fact that a sill, joist or other timber is unsound does not mean that the house is beyond repair. Many old houses with all their sills gone and some other principal beams no longer serviceable have been restored, but the necessity of such steps ought to be realized in advance and the cost taken into consideration. It is far from pleasant to discover that one has unwittingly bought the bill of expense this type of replacement means. "Let the buyer beware" generally rules in the selling of old places, and the purchase of a knife and an hour or two of poking its point into the principal timbers may save time and money later. "The next time I buy an old house to put a new frame into, you'll know it," was the heartfelt declaration of a man who left his knife at home when he went house hunting. "The owner and the agent knew the sills and beams were rotten but didn't think it necessary to mention the fact. What I didn't see wouldn't hurt me until after I had bought the place and begun repairs. Then I learned plenty about decayed timbers and the cost of replacing them." After the timber frame, consider the exterior. The foundation will probably need some "pointing-up," that is, replacement of mortar in the joints or cracks. The question is, how much? Will it have to be a complete job? Has frost worked such havoc that some sections must be re-laid? If the cellar indicates standing water during heavy rains, drainage must be provided. Notice whether any cellar windows have been closed. Countrymen are prone to do this as a cheap and easy method when the framework gets beyond repair. Replacing stoned-up windows is not expensive or difficult but just one more thing which must be done. Notice the extent of the cellar. Old builders sometimes did only a partial job of excavation because of economy. Such a cellar was ample for storing root crops, preserves, and hard cider in the days before furnaces. It may be wise to complete the work of excavating. Do not expect to find cellars under wings and sheds. It was never the practice. If they are to be converted to uses for which excavation is desirable, this is another item for the adding machine. With the foundation and its needed repairs noted, begin appraising the condition of the walls and roof. Sometimes a shingle roof will be found in good order or at most have one or two minor leaks which can be repaired. More often an entire new roof is needed and, in extreme cases, new boarding beneath. As with sills, roofs sloping to the north and east are more apt to be out of repair and for the same reasons. If door and window frames are so loose that they can be lifted out of the side walls, the situation is serious. Putty and paint are of no avail. Rebuilding them is essential. It is extravagant business trying to heat a house with wind whistling in around doors and windows. If the fabric of the side walls is of shingle, clapboard, or other types of wood, is the material sound enough to warrant repainting or must it be renewed? The object of paint is to close the small cracks and preserve the wood. An old house that has gone many years without painting will absorb much more than a new one, but it is surprising what can be accomplished with two or three coats of paint on siding so weathered as to seem worthless. Besides, a new exterior robs an old house of some of its charm, so preserve the old if possible, architects, carpenters, and contractors to the contrary. Where walls are of stone or brick, the mortar of the joints has probably so disintegrated under wind and rain that repointing is indicated. Also, frosts may have heaved individual stones or disintegrated bricks so they must be reset. Expect this in places where down-spouts have leaked for years. If the walls have settled badly, lintels or sills of doors and window openings may be cracked and need renewing. Sometimes an old house has exterior walls of plaster. These are both picturesque and rare. Patch cracks and spots where it has come loose from the lath. Old plaster has a texture and patina that modern stucco cannot simulate, so preserve it if possible. Indoors, there are many things to be observed and appraised but fireplaces come first. A country home without facilities for open fires is as uninviting as one without trees and flowers. Expect to find the fireplaces disused and closed with fireboards or bricks. Sometimes the mantels have been removed and new flooring laid over the hearthstones. Some detective work around the logical locations will tell whether fireplaces have been torn out or just concealed. If mantels are missing, look for them in the attic or on the rafters of a shed. More than one fine old mantel has been rescued from such a hiding place. We know of one fireplace complete with crane and iron cooking utensils that reposed for fifty years or more behind an unsuspected opening covered with lath and plaster. Where original fireplaces have been torn out and chimneys intended only to serve stoves put in place, two courses are open. The more costly is rebuilding chimney and fireplaces according to indications of original dimensions. The alternative is a Franklin stove, a combination of stove and fireplace, which can be installed and connected to the existing chimney at a very moderate expense. Incidentally, the chimneys of an old house should be examined carefully. Built in the days before separate flues and flue tiles, their mortar may have lost its binding strength and so a smoke test is advisable. Close all fireplaces except one and start a lively fire in it. When it is well under way, toss on some scraps of roofing paper. Then cover the top of the chimney. If there are any fissures in the chimney, your eyes and nose will leave you in no doubt. You cannot mistake the pungent odor of burning tar and its bluish smoke is easy to see. Trace these to the points where they leak from the chimney and mark the spots. Complete examination will tell whether repointing will suffice or whether rebuilding is necessary. The condition of the plaster on walls and ceilings of rooms can be easily appraised. It is reasonable to expect cracks and that some of it will be so loose as to need replacing. Removing it all and starting afresh, however, is only advisable where a house has reached about the last stages of disrepair. Partitions of even the simplest feather-board paneling should be preserved as well as interior trim, doors, and flooring. The same applies to old hardware, as a house with all original wrought-iron hinges, latches, and locks is both rare and valuable. Notice whether the floors are of old wide boards laid random width and held in place by wrought-iron nails. In houses antedating 1800, the floors in certain localities were of hardwood. Sometimes several varieties were used indiscriminately. With all their irregularities, they become a very pleasing feature when well scrubbed and oiled or waxed. Like fireplaces, they are sometimes concealed but it is an easy matter to remove the new flooring. The soundness and safety of stairways can only be determined by direct inspection. If treads move beneath the feet, additional nailing is needed and possibly new supports. Step easily on those leading to the cellar. They are often somewhat rotten and may collapse. If window glass is of the old, wavy, off-color sort, full of the bubbles, sand pits, and creases that characterized its production in early days, make sure that such panes are not discarded. Workmen view them with complete scorn and will cast them aside if not put under stern injunctions. "I never found that it kept out the cold any better than a good new piece," snorted one disgustedly when we suggested that he putty a fine "bull's eye" pane with a slight crack. Sometimes part of the interior trim will have been replaced by modern substitutes, but a good carpenter working under an architect can match that still remaining. Likewise, later additions not in keeping with the original, such as porches, sheds, wings, and illogical partitions, can be readily removed with little damage to the house itself. As one goes about an old house it is well to be on the look out for signs of vermin, both animal and insect. With the former, traps and prepared bait will suffice. The latter require the services of an exterminator or some one skilled in the use of hydrocyanic acid gas. Such insects go deep into the cracks of woodwork and beams. Ordinary fumigating will not eradicate them. A single session with this deadly gas, however, will rid the house both of these pests and their eggs. The things that may be the matter with an old house, as enumerated here, may sound very forbidding but circumstances alter cases. It is doubtful if any one structure will be afflicted with all these ills of decay and neglect. In our own house hunting we saw many that were sound enough so that, with the addition of modern conveniences and a good cleaning, they were livable. In fact, there is nothing equal to getting thoroughly acquainted with a house before radical changes are made. Live in the place six months or a year and then you will know better just what alterations or additions are wise. In northern New England there is a delightful country home that has been renovated with great skill and charm. The reason behind it is that the owners went for many years with as few repairs as possible. Then came a large and unexpected inheritance. There was money enough to rebuild completely but relatively few major changes were made. "Most of the expenditure was for restorations," the owner stated. "Once we day-dreamed of all kinds of changes but when the time came we knew most of them were impractical and would add neither to our comfort nor our convenience." The most important thing about any house is, does it please you architecturally and is its general plan suited to your needs? If it seems to be well enough preserved so that renovation appears to be practical, turn to an architect with the understanding that, if you buy, he will be retained. He will then be willing to give the house an expert inspection and even submit tentative sketches of advantageous changes. His report, if the venture is to be financially good, should indicate that structurally the house is about one-half sound and usable. Of course if you have found a house dating from the 17th or 18th century, you have something fairly rare and it is worth reclaiming even though very extensive replacements are needed. In Fairfield, Connecticut, for example, there is the Ogden House, built before 1710. Its present owner paid $4,000 for it in what seemed to be ruinous condition. Its renovation cost fully $12,000; but finished, this old salt box house is so unusual that more than one buyer is ready and waiting to pay double the amount spent. Arrangement of the rooms of an old house, and how they will fit the requirements of the prospective purchaser, should be given more than passing thought. Most people when they begin looking at places have large ideas about moving partitions, cutting new windows, and changing the location of doorways. These can be done but they are relatively expensive and if carried to excess rob the place of all character. Even the simplest of old houses has definite balance in its design and arrangement of rooms. So think well before tearing out partitions indiscriminately or moving doorways and cutting windows. In fact, if some old house seems to you to call for drastic reconstruction, you would do better to let it alone and look for one that more nearly fits your mental picture. Buying a house you do not really like is as foolish as marrying with the same reservation. Some hardy people go through life so mated but more get a divorce. So it will be with the house. After a season of dislike, divorce by sale will be the end. If it pleases you from the start, however, you and it will develop a mutual affection as the years go by and it will become the old home in more ways than one. NEW SITES FOR OLD HOUSES [Illustration] _CHAPTER VII_ NEW SITES FOR OLD HOUSES Substantial houses built by old craftsmen who knew how to achieve beauty by restraint lined the straggling single street of a forgotten farming town. Despite weatherbeaten clapboards and sagging roofs, the fine ornamental detail of doorways and window frames assured similar niceties within. "What good are they," snorted practical grandfather. "If they were where people had adequate incomes it would be different. But here! Once this was a prosperous town. Men made money breeding merino sheep. Now the town's dead and its houses falling apart. Better tear them down to save taxes." Twenty-five years ago many substantial old houses were doomed to die with their towns. Today, people who want an old house but cannot find it where they wish to live have learned that it is practical, financially and otherwise, to transplant an old structure to a new location. Once this was the sport of eccentric millionaires or of amply endowed museums. Now it is done for people of average incomes. The expense will about equal that of building a new house of the same cubical content and architectural detail. Sometimes it can be accomplished at a slight saving. But whether the cost is equal, a little higher, or somewhat less, the great advantages of a transplanted house are a certain mellowness of age and that charm of individuality which only old structures possess. For those who want an old house on a site of their own choosing, there are now men who deal in old buildings ready for removal. Just as pickers comb the back-country for antiques, a related group search for untenanted old houses. These men are a cross between practical builders and antique dealers. They know Early American domestic architecture and experience has taught them the point beyond which salvage is impossible. Also they are experts in dismembering such houses so they can be re-erected. Tearing down an old house is easy enough, but to do it so that it can be rebuilt is a trade in itself. From removing paneling and interior trim to taking apart the hewn timber frame requires care and understanding. Too much brute strength will split boards that should be saved. Similarly, it is disastrous if mortice and tenon joints are sawed apart. Such are the short cuts of ignorance to be expected of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart without predetermined marking and numbering. Having learned this by bitter experience, these experts have evolved marking systems that prevent confusion and follow them rigidly. Likewise, since old house lumber when taken apart and stored warps and splits so badly that it can only be used again with difficulty, they leave their houses standing wherever possible until sold. They are far from impressive in this state and it takes both imagination and enthusiasm to inspect the assortment offered. Usually the roof and possibly one or two of the sides will be covered with prosaic roofing paper. The doors and windows will be securely boarded with coarse lumber. The depredations of nature lovers who uproot shrubbery and rend such flowering trees as dogwood are as nothing when an amateur antiquarian finds an early 18th century house unoccupied. Such enthusiasts steal and wreck like Huns. Nothing is safe from them. Door knockers, H and L hinges, fireplace cranes, wavy old window glass, whole sections of paneling and even hearthstones are wrenched from place with light-hearted abandon. What they don't make away with, they generally ruin. One visit from such a relic hunter may leave an old house a shambles. How otherwise upright people with a modicum of interest in antiques will glory in looting old houses is truly remarkable. We knew one whose pride was a collection of fireplace cranes so filched. Knowing this, the old house dealer, immediately he has bought a structure, makes it as weather-tight and marauder-proof as possible. Sagging floors and weak stairways are braced, as are fireplaces injured by dampness and frosts. Paneled partitions are stripped of layers of disguising wall paper. Any efforts to modernize that hide original conditions are torn out and the house cleared of the rubbish left by its last tenant. Even then such a house is not overly attractive to particular housekeepers. To offset this, the old house dealer first shows one or more albums of pictures of the houses he has for sale. These contain complete snap-shots inside and out, together with plans and dimensions. If he is wise, he also has simple typed statements, giving all the data he has been able to gather concerning each house, approximately when it was built, its connection with local historical events, and, if possible, the names of prominent personages who dwelt in it or were guests there. Knowing that buyers are much impressed by such facts, he often makes a careful search of recorded deeds and books of local history for those few interesting facts that he may use advantageously. For instance, to be able to say that Lafayette, on his extensive old-age visit to the United States, was entertained in a house may be just the right romantic touch that will close the deal. With such an old house, the dealer generally quotes a price for it dismembered and ready to be moved to its new site. Since the cost of transportation varies with the distance, the trucking charge is customarily given as a separate item. In general, the dealer will undertake delivery at a lower figure than any one else. Also, such a dealer or an associated contractor will set a sum at which he will re-erect the structure on the new site. Since he is accustomed to working with old materials and knows just what problems he faces, his price will be lower than the combination of the cost of the old house and the price set for its rebuilding by a contractor unfamiliar with such work. The latter, to protect himself from unforeseen contingencies, must naturally add a proportionately large sum to his estimated cost. The exact cost of an old house re-erected on a new site cannot be given offhand. There are too many elements to be considered. How extensive are the changes, how many baths, what type of heating system, are only a few. All are important factors that must be determined before the final figure can be set. So, the prospective buyer must have patience and understanding. Also, he should have his architect prepare plans for the work with just as much thoroughness as if it were a new building. To the layman it may all seem very complicated but to an architect who knows his old houses, it is no more difficult than new work. He begins by making a careful set of measured drawings of the old house as it stands. He examines the fabric to determine what sills, beams and other parts are unsound and must be replaced. He takes as many photographs of details of the construction, both inside and out, as seem expedient and labels the prints explicitly so that they relate directly to his plans. Later, when rebuilding is under way these snap-shots will refresh his memory and make it easier to explain some special feature or unique construction to workmen who never saw the house before. Dismembering houses for re-erection is accomplished by two methods. The more common is taking them apart board by board and timber by timber, marking each piece by a system of numbers and colors so that it can be returned to its proper place. The other is called "flaking." Here roof, side walls, and partitions are cut into large panels and numbered and marked in colors. At the new site they are put in place much as a portable bungalow is assembled. With either method, plans prepared by the architect are of prime importance. One set of his blue prints is thoroughly annotated with numbers and colored marks. This becomes the working key, the solution to the rebuilding puzzle. Also, the plans serve as the basis for rearrangement of rooms, shifting of partitions, and the introduction of plumbing, heating, and electricity. Invariably an old house has one or more tucked-up rooms that under present-day conditions can wisely be eliminated and the space added to adjoining ones. A favorite arrangement with old New England farmhouses was the parlor bedroom, located, as the name indicates, on the ground floor and connected by a doorway with that room of ceremony and funerals. Although it was often little larger than a double bed, it was the master bedroom of the period. Our ideas have changed and such a room can wisely be eliminated. Again, there is the problem of space for baths and closets. The former were, of course, unknown and the latter woefully few when the house was young. Thus, with the bedroom floor, architect and owner have before them a problem demanding skillful contriving to devise locations for these two essentials. When dismembering starts, the man doing it and the building contractor, unless by a happy circumstance he is one and the same person, must work together closely. The first thing is to remove doors, window sash, and as much of the interior trim as possible, along with all the hardware. Numbered and marked, these are stored in some dry shed or barn. If feasible, they can best be left at the old site until the reconstruction has progressed far enough so that they may be put in place when delivered. All fireplaces are now examined carefully to determine the exact angles of sides and backs. The individual stones must also be numbered and keyed. Paint is applied, that will not rub off as the stones are removed. Now everything is ready for the dramatic tearing apart. With flaking, the roof and walls are marked off in great squares related to the timber framework beneath. Then it is only a matter of sharp saws, muscle, and patience before the house has been reduced to panels, loaded on trucks, and started toward the new location. The task is not as simple with dismembering but it, too, starts at the ridge pole and gradually works to the foundation. While one crew is clearing away the roofing, another is taking off the exterior siding. If this happens to be the original wide clapboards, great care is exercised so they may be used again. This may or may not be true of the boarding underneath. Even old builders were wont to use second-hand lumber where it wouldn't show. On the other hand, where the exterior is shingled the side walls underneath are often of wide soft wood plank which take the place of both weather boarding and supporting studs. They are, of course, numbered and removed to be used again. Shingles, whether roof or side wall, cannot be saved as they are invariably too weatherbeaten. Lath and plaster are likewise destroyed in the dismembering but they are small loss as they are usually in bad order. If the studding is in good condition, it is used again but if it is badly warped or of oak, it is left behind. Century-old oak is as hard as concrete and must actually be drilled for nails. When the studding is taken out, all window frames and doorways are removed and stored. Now comes removal of stairways, feather-board partitioning, flooring and paneling in the order mentioned. Offhand one would schedule the latter as one of the first things to be taken out but the building ways of the old workmen dictate otherwise. As a means of stopping drafts, they put all paneling in from joist to joist, that is, from below the upper surface of the flooring to above the lower surface of the ceiling. After floors and ceilings are out, it is a simple matter to loosen all paneling and remove it in large units. Wherever possible whole room-ends go intact. The stairway is also taken out as a unit, especially the more elaborate one in the front hall. Prying loose the old wide flooring is a difficult operation. The original hand-wrought nails have rusted fast and if too much leverage is used, the boards split. Men used to such work salvage the old flooring with little damage, however. At the same time that the paneling makes its exit, the large hearthstones are pried from position and moved to a waiting truck. All that now remain are the chimney and timber frame. By this time each joint of the latter has been numbered and given its color code. With a simple derrick and ropes and pulleys, dismembering the frame commences. The pins that make the joints tight are removed by driving or boring. Roof rafters and purlins come first; then the yard arms that brace plate and summer beams, followed by these timbers themselves. Second floor joists come after them, followed by the corner posts. Each must be removed with caution and ingenuity. There must be no sawing apart or proper re-erection will be impossible. Since first floor rafters and sills are usually badly decayed, the general practice is to use new material. So the old ones are left behind. While this is in progress, two men pry lintels, cheeks, and other large stones from the fireplaces, as well as stones at the openings of brick ovens. As many old bricks from the chimney are salvaged as possible. Large stone door steps are also removed but generally no attempt is made to take along the dressed stone of the foundations. The cost of hauling to the new site is out of proportion to the advantage gained. Native stones uncovered in digging the new cellar are made reasonably square and used instead. Old houses antedating 1800 are not usually over twelve or sixteen inches above the level of the ground and so little new stone is needed. The chimney of the reconstructed house must outwardly resemble the original. Where it comes through the roof it is of ample proportions and built of old brick, but except for old fireplaces and ovens, it is otherwise modern. With flue tile, cement, mortar and hard brick, safety of construction is accomplished in much less space. What is saved frequently becomes closets or the well for plumbing pipes. Finding space for baths is a nice game of ingenuity. Perhaps there is a small bedroom that can be divided and provide baths for two main bedrooms. Again, shifting a partition a few feet may do it. In one old house, once a tavern, the dance hall on the second floor was reduced nearly ten feet and the space became a combination bath and dressing room. Thus, the rural ball room was translated into a large master bedroom with all present-day appurtenances. In another house a storage space six by eight feet became an excellent bath by having a window cut in the exterior wall. In the all-important question of kitchen and servants' quarters be modern from start to finish. The old farmhouse kitchen was both living room and workroom. It was large and cheerful. Accordingly the reconstructed house continues it as a living room. The new kitchen can best be located in an extension either original or new but designed to be in keeping. Here the noises and odors of cooking will not permeate the main structure and with mouse-proof new partitions, kitchen, pantry, and servants' quarters can be arranged so they will be logical and convenient. Wherever possible the garage ought to be a part of the service wing for ease of access and heating in winter. Because of the individuality of old houses, returning doors and windows to the original location is not entirely mandatory. One here and there can be moved a little without destroying resemblance to the original. With the plans for re-erection complete, everything is ready for a second raising of the frame. New sills cut to the same dimensions as the old are put in place. Then corner posts, summer and plate beams, and other principal timbers are hoisted to their proper places. By virtue of numbering and marking with colors--red for the ground floor, blue for the second, and black for the attic is one reconstructor's code--each mortice and tenon joint is put back just as it was originally and the whole frame made plumb. Now hardwood pins driven home at its joints make the skeleton firm and solid. Then comes the new roof of whatever type of shingles selected. Along with it starts the work of enclosing the side walls. These steps, of course, apply to a structure taken apart piecemeal. With a "flaked" house, roofs and walls are returned to position as panels. Making saw-cut cracks tight is the only remaining step. If possible, the old studding and weather boarding are used, although, as neither will show, new material can be substituted if desired. Similarly a rough flooring of cheap lumber is laid as a foundation for the old. Such features as the main stairway and paneling, cleaned and repaired, are now brought in through large openings in the side walls and put in place before enclosing the frame is completed. There are two points of view about using old window frames. One favors using them despite lack of mechanical means for raising or lowering the sash. The other, reasoning that many of the frames are bound to be badly weathered and not too sound, recommends new ones complete with weights and cords. With the latter, the old effect is preserved by reproducing the exterior molding exactly and by using the original interior trim. After enclosing is completed and the interior partitions are in place, the house is ready for lath and plaster. Wood or metal lath or any one of the various plaster boards can be used as foundation. Now comes a fine point. Present-day plasterers produce a much finer finish than was the rule a century ago, but if they understand the effect desired they will restrain themselves and possibly omit the final skim coat. The next details are the window sash, interior trim, and the final exterior siding. The latter can be either the original clapboards, new ones of the same width, or the long riven shingles. Whatever is used, for protection against winter winds, the boarding ought to be sheathed either with building paper or a quilting. Likewise, the tops of all door and window frames must be properly flashed. This prevents rain leaks which are bound to stain the plaster. Before the original flooring is re-laid it should be thoroughly scrubbed with a mild lye solution to rid it of old paint, stains, and dirt; as many of the old nails removed as possible, and injured sections discarded. Since there is bound to be an appreciable loss, the attic flooring can be used to take the place of that discarded or an additional amount bought from some wrecker specializing in materials salvaged from old structures. Along with cleaning the old flooring, it is frequently wise to have the edges re-planed so they will be straight and true. It obviates wide cracks that gather dust and lint. In taking the old house apart, a bit of siding may give a clue to the original color outside. Under the various coats of paint and paper of the interior the owner may get glimpses of the scheme of decoration used when the house was young. We may not realize it but Colonial Americans were partial to color in the home and used a number of very effective off-shades now largely forgotten. If these can be discovered and samples preserved for matching, the results will be authentic and at the same time give the house an individuality and atmosphere that will not be met with elsewhere. [Illustration: AS THEY BUILT A CHIMNEY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY _Photo by John Runyon_] A house that can be purchased for removal will not often be completely equipped with its original wrought-iron hinges, door latches and locks. But the chances are that enough will remain to indicate what they were and replacements that match and fit can be bought from an antique dealer specializing in old hardware. Since electricity is entirely a modern convenience, selecting fixtures must depend entirely on the owner's taste. One of the most satisfactory restored houses we have seen has very few fixtures and many portable lamps chiefly made from old jugs and converted astral oil lamps. In bathrooms, kitchen, cellar and garage, no attempt was made to affect the antique. Being strictly utilitarian rooms, simple fixtures that would provide the maximum of light were employed. So "if only" has become an actuality. The old house is now comfortably settled on its new site and like most transplanted things will thrive better if some faint flavor of its old surroundings is present, such as an apple orchard or one or two fine old trees that look as if they and the house had grown old together. THE SMOKE GOES UP THE CHIMNEY [Illustration] _CHAPTER VIII_ THE SMOKE GOES UP THE CHIMNEY "Remember that the new chimneys are not to smoke," wrote General Washington from New York in 1776 to his kinsman and overseer, Lund Washington, regarding the remodeling of Mount Vernon. That admonition is just as necessary today as then. A chimney is still an essential part of a house. Also, despite the newest and most effective heating systems, family life, in the country at least, still centers around the hearth. Old, new, or merely middle-aged, no country home is considered properly equipped without at least one fireplace. There is no use in pretending that they are needed for heat, but the leaping flames and brisk crackling of burning twigs are a cheery sight and sound. "Harriet _will_ have her fireplace fire even though she has to open all the doors and windows," chuckled one householder. This ceases to be a pleasantry if doors and windows have to be thrown wide to let out smoke instead of excess heat. Then this center of family cheer becomes as exasperating as any other inanimate thing that doesn't work. If, by purchase of an existing structure, a householder has become heir to such a problem, simple things, like fireplace hoods, capping the chimney, or increasing its height, can be tried. If these fail, architectural counsel is the next step. Such trouble is more frequent in houses dating after the stove era than before. The old masons built fireplaces for practical use rather than for occasional indulgence. They had never heard of aerodynamics but they knew how to construct fireplaces that would give out real heat as well as chimneys that carried the smoke where it belonged, up and out. Of course some unwise features are to be found in the old work but, for the most part, design and proportions cannot be improved. The angles of sides and back, size of opening and throat, location of smoke shelf, size and proportions of smoke chamber, all were determined through years of rule of thumb experiment where only the best results survived. Therefore, the owner of an antique country home with chimney and fireplaces intact should think twice before he gives orders to demolish them. Similarly, he who is building a new house can well plan to reproduce the old fireplaces in size and shape. Building proper chimneys and hearths was slowly evolved through the centuries. In the late 18th century, an American codified this masonic lore and established the scientific basis for a proper fireplace so cogently that even today his principles form the backbone of fireplace building. He was born Benjamin Thompson, March 26, 1753, at Woburn, Massachusetts, but is better known as Count von Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire. "The plague of a smoking fireplace is proverbial," began Rumford in his treatise on the subject, written during his years in the service of the Elector of Bavaria. Stripped of the involved terminology characteristic of the natural philosopher of that day, his specifications for a smokeless, heat-radiating fireplace are very simple and depend on three fundamentals. First, the size of flue must be in proportion to the fireplace opening. Second, the angles of back and jambs must be such that they will reflect heat into the room. Third, throat and smoke chamber of proper size and shape are essential because the former improves the draft while the latter prevents smoke from being blown out into the room by a down draft within the chimney flue. From this it is clear that the New England-reared count of the Holy Roman Empire was really describing the type and design of fireplace in general use at home in his boyhood and explaining the scientific reasons for its superiority over European rectangular ones, built throatless and without a smoke chamber. As stated before, technical men today generally go back to Rumford's work and the American tradition behind it, but in one particular they make a wise departure. Instead of a single common flue, they advocate separate ones for each fireplace. These modern specifications, based on several centuries of good practice, are as follows: The fireplace should be at least 18 inches deep and have a hearth 20 inches wide. The size of opening must of course be in proportion to the dimensions of the room, but one with lintel less that 26 inches above the hearth is not practical because of difficulty in tending the fire. A good maximum height is 42 inches. The width should be in accord and exceed it so that the opening is a well-proportioned rectangle with its greater dimension horizontal. In our country home, built about 1765, there are three fireplaces, each of different size and proportions. The largest, where the cooking was done, is 50 inches wide by 37 inches high and 18 inches deep. The one in the old parlor has a width of 38-1/2 inches, a height of 28-1/2 inches, and a depth of 13-1/2 inches. The smallest has an opening just off the square which is 27 inches wide by 25-1/2 inches high with a depth of only 11 inches. All three are non-smokers under all conditions of wind and weather. With proper size of wood they are easy to tend and good sources of warmth except in real winter weather. Each is individualistic in hearth dimensions, the largest of course being that of the old kitchen with a hearthstone over seven feet long by two feet wide. Whether heat radiates into the room, or goes up the chimney along with the smoke, depends on the angles of fireplace sides and back. The former should be set at an angle of about 60 degrees so that they flare outward from the back wall. There are two schools of thought regarding the back. One would have the forward pitch begin one third of the distance from floor to lintel; the other favors the slope starting at the bottom and continuing upward in an unbroken plane. In the former, the pitch should be about 23 degrees from the vertical; with the latter, 18 degrees will suffice. From this point the consideration of dimensions goes up the chimney. In its standard ordinance for chimney construction, the National Board of Fire Underwriters calls for fireplace flues with a draft area of one-twelfth of that of the fireplace opening and determines this area as a circle or ellipse that will fit within the tile used to line the flue. As it is difficult to obtain flue linings of exactly the desired area, it is better to select a size slightly larger, rather than one smaller, and so make sure of sufficient capacity under all weather conditions. Between the lintel of the fireplace and the point where the flue commences come the three structural features so stressed by Count Rumford. They are the throat, smoke shelf, and smoke chamber. As its name implies, the throat is the opening through which smoke, hot gases, and some flames pass on their way upward. Experts hold that its correct construction contributes more to the efficiency of a fireplace than any other feature, save proper flue design. The area of the throat opening should not be less than that of the flue and its length must be equal to the width of the fireplace. It should be located eight inches above the lintel. Under present practice, a cast-iron throat with a damper which can be opened and closed to regulate the up-chimney flow is standard. Also, when the fireplace is not in use, this damper can be closed and so prevent loss of other heat. The smoke shelf comes immediately above the throat and is formed by recessing the brickwork of the back the full width of the chimney for at least four inches. With very large fireplaces, it may be as much as twelve inches. The object of this feature is to stop any accidental draft within the flue from going farther and blowing smoke out into the room. The area in between this and the flue itself is called the smoke chamber. Here the walls are drawn in with a gradual upward taper to the point where the flue lining begins. The chamber so formed can and does hold accumulated smoke temporarily when a gust of wind across the chimney top cuts off the draft for a moment. In building chimneys, the old masons varied their structural ways and materials according to the part of the country in which they worked. New England workmen were partial to a central chimney, the core around which the house was built, and their usual material was stone. Occasionally brick was used but this material was more in favor with old houses of the middle states and the South. Here, instead of the central stack, a chimney was built in each of the two end walls. The climate was milder and the style of architecture, with central hall and stairway, made such practice desirable. The mark of an old chimney is its massive construction. In those of the central type, it is not uncommon to find a foundation pier of ten by twelve feet in the cellar. This was laid dry and just below the level of the first floor, large transverse beams were put in place to support the hearthstones of the fireplaces above. Here dry work stopped and, from there to the chimney top, all stones were laid in a mortar made of lime and sand. At a point above the smoke chambers of the various fireplaces and the brick-oven flue (always a part of the kitchen fireplace) all came together in a common flue. Here the chimney gradually tapered to the top and was usually about three or four feet square where it came through the roof. Originally such chimneys were entirely of stone. Comparatively few are found in original condition today. Time and weather usually made repair or repointing of the portion above the roof line necessary and, in the course of it, brick was often used instead of stone. By ample proportions the old masons achieved fire safety. This can now be accomplished with a distinct saving in space if one is building a new chimney. There are certain fundamental provisions as stated in the standard chimney ordinance cited above. These are tedious and complicated reading for the layman, but to architects, builders and masons, they simply mean standard workmanship and materials that have been used for years to insure correctly functioning chimneys. Possibly a brief resumé of these fundamentals is not out of place in order that the prospective country house owner may not demand the impossible in his schemes for convenient closets, cupboards, or even a stairway. The chimney may be built of brick, stone, reinforced concrete, concrete blocks, or hollow tile of clay or concrete. All chimneys should rest on an adequate foundation located below the frost line and both chimney and flues should adhere strictly to the perpendicular. If an angle is necessary, it ought not to be greater than 45 degrees. No offset should be over three-eighths of the total width of the chimney. In laying brick or other material, care should be taken that all joints are tight and completely filled with mortar. Unlined chimneys are not prohibited but the best arrangement is one in which all flues are lined with fire clay tile, joints well set in mortar, and each flue separated by a partition of brick. Only sound, uncracked tile should be put in place. Fireplace walls must be of ample proportions to support the chimney and at least eight inches thick. It is further suggested that they be lined with fire brick. The woodwork around fireplaces must not be closer than four inches to the back wall of a chimney and floor beams must be two inches away from a chimney wall. The space between should be filled with loose crushed cinders or other porous incombustible material to form a fire stop. Plaster for exterior walls of a chimney should be applied direct or on metal lath. No wood furring or lath. The hearth, which may be of brick, stone, tile, or concrete, must be supported by a masonry trimmer arch or similar fire-resisting construction. Both hearth and arch should be at least twenty inches wide and not less than two feet longer than the width of the fireplace opening. If the mantel is of wood, it must not be placed within eight inches of the jambs, or twelve of the lintel. The minimum height of chimneys above the roof line is two feet for hip, gable, or mansard roofs, and three for flat ones. Chimney caps must not reduce the effective draft area of flues. In connecting the smoke pipe of a heating plant, incinerator, or water heater to its flue in the chimney, the opening must be built with a fire clay tile collar and the smoke pipe should not protrude into the flue beyond the collar. Otherwise, the efficiency of the draft is materially impaired. In addition, home owners may have other features installed that will do much to increase heat production of fireplaces and convenience in the use of them. One is the steel fireplace form, built into the chimney. This takes the place of jambs, back, throat, smoke shelf, and smoke chamber and is so designed that behind sides and back there is an air space opening into the room through intake and outlet vents on either side of the fireplace. The cold air of the room is drawn into this space, heated by radiation and returned. It acts on the order of a hot air furnace and can be used to advantage in new fireplaces or in old ones too much out of repair to be used without rebuilding. There is also the sheet-steel smoke chamber which comes complete with throat damper and smoke shelf and is put in place above the lintel where it extends to the point where the flue commences. A common device for easy disposal of the ashes is the ash dump, a small cast-iron vault located in the fireplace floor and connected with an ash vault built in the chimney foundation. The vault is equipped with an iron door so that the ashes may be removed once or twice a year. So much for chimneys and fireplaces. For actual and even heating of all parts of the house, some type of heating plant is necessary both for comfort and economy. It is true that our forefathers lived, many of them to a ripe old age, with only fireplaces to heat their drafty homes and with no heat at all in their public buildings. They did, however, fortify themselves well with a daily draft of rum and they wore a quantity of clothing that would be intolerable today. Further, plenty of wood for fuel grew at their very door; it was part of the normal farm work to cut it down and prepare it for the cavernous fireplaces. But then, as now, a fireplace could only heat a comparatively small area. Further, under modern conditions, it is the most expensive heat that can be generated. Even though your holding includes a good sized wood-lot, the cost of labor for getting fuel cut, drawn, and piled in your cellar may run to more than the same amount purchased from the local coal yard. If you have purchased an old house with no heating plant or are building a new house, the type of heating used will largely depend on what your architect considers practical and what you can pay for. The chief systems, viewed in descending order of expense, are hot water, steam, piped hot air, and the pipeless furnace. All of these can be fitted to burn either coal or oil. Provided one can meet the initial expense of purchase and installation, the ideal system is probably the oil burning, electrically run, hot water heating system. Barring the final perfection of the robot, it is as near to a mechanical servant as one is likely to get even in this age of invention. There is no shoveling or sifting of ashes. There is no furnace shaking or stoking, no puzzling over dampers. Periodically and for a price, a man comes and fills the oil tank. A thermostat regulates the heat. You have only to set it for the desired temperature and forget it. There is just one flaw with this perfect system. It is dependent on electricity. Let that fail and there is trouble. The fine copper radiators, so efficient when all goes well, spring leaks if the water in them freezes. A few years ago an unusually severe blizzard in the North Atlantic states worked havoc with all of the modern devices. Roads were blocked, telephone and electric service lines were down, and even train service was impaired. One of our neighbors had built a new house two or three years before and equipped it with practically every appliance known to modern comfort, including an oil burner. In a few short hours this blizzard had set him back more than a century. Electricity, of course, failed and the heat in his fine furnace dwindled and died. It grew colder and colder, ultimately reaching twenty degrees below zero. Added to the discomfort of the family was the disquieting knowledge that the freezing point would mean cracked radiators. Luckily he had three fireplaces that really worked. He had plenty of wood. So for three days and nights, he and two other members of his family worked in relays to keep roaring fires going in all three fireplaces. In this way they maintained a temperature of at least 40 degrees and so saved pipes and radiators. One may argue that, if water freezing in radiators and pipes is all, why not drain them in such an emergency. This is a job for a plumber, as it must be done with a thoroughness that leaves no moisture behind. The average layman has neither the skill nor the tools for it. Therefore, if there comes a winter when snow, ice, high winds, and low temperatures cause you to wonder if living in the country the year around is quite sound and you decide that a few weeks in a nice city apartment would be a good idea, close your house, if it seems more expedient than leaving a caretaker behind, but don't try to save the plumber's fee. Remember pipes, radiators, and valves cannot be mended. They have to be replaced and that is expensive. However, blizzards that seriously interrupt electric service are so rare that one need not forego the decided comfort that an oil burner gives, just because some such chance may arise. Also, if the question of expense must be considered, steam can be used instead of hot water and will cost from one-quarter to one-third less. The initial expenditure for both hot water and steam heating is considerably less, too, if coal rather than oil is to be the fuel. This calls for quite a little more supervision on the part of the householder. He can cut down some of the drudgery of stoking by installing a gravity feed type of boiler. This is equipped with a hopper and needs filling only once a day. Or he can use the old fashioned hand-fired type, with or without the services of a man of all work. There will be dust and dirt as well as the morning and evening rituals of stoking, adjusting dampers, shaking, and cleaning out the ash pit. There will be the periodic chore of sifting ashes and carrying them out for either carting away or for filling in hollow places in the driveway. But his fire will burn, no matter what happens to the current of the local light and power company. However, as already stated, electricity is a faithful servant most of the time and there are devices that not only take away some of the drudgery of furnace tending but, in the long run, actually save money in coal bills. One of these is the mechanical stoker which is electrically driven and burns the finest size of coal. Another way of reducing the coal bill is to install an electric blower. This, as its name implies, is a forced draft controlled by a thermostat, and with it the cheaper grades of coal can be used. Incidentally, any coal-burning furnace that gets to sulking can be made to respond by placing an ordinary electric fan before the open ash pit. We have done this with a pipeless furnace and have been able to burn the cheaper buckwheat coal almost entirely as a result. There appears to be no mechanical device for removing the ashes out of the cellar. So, if the householder puts in a coal burning steam or hot water plant as a matter of economy, and then in a few years covets an oil burner, it is perfectly practical and possible to have one installed in his furnace. Whatever the fuel, make sure enough radiation is provided with steam or hot water plants to heat the house evenly and adequately in the coldest weather according to your ideas rather than the plumber's. He is usually a hardy individual who considers 68 degrees warm enough for any one. Theoretically it may be. Actually most people are more comfortable at a room temperature of from two to four degrees higher. Cheapest of all to install and operate is the pipeless furnace. This is hardly more than a large stove set in the cellar. An ample register in the floor directly above it is connected to a galvanized iron casing that surrounds the fire pot. It is divided so that cool air from the house itself is drawn downward, heated, and then forced upward again. This system will not work well in a house equipped with wings or additions so placed that the air from the central register cannot penetrate. It is particularly effective in a house with a central hall. In the 18th century compact house with central chimney, the pipeless furnace register can be set in the small front entrance and another register cut in the ceiling directly above it. This carries part of the heat to the second floor and so makes for better distribution of the warm air. As already stated, such a furnace is quite inexpensive and so easy to install that the average handy man will not find it too complicated. We put one in our country home some eight years ago merely as a means of keeping the house warm during the early spring and late fall. We have since found that it can and does heat the entire house even at sub-zero temperatures. In all honesty, however, one must admit that it has certain disadvantages. First, it is like the old-fashioned stove in that an even heat is hard to maintain. Second, with coal or wood as the usual fuel, there is a discouraging amount of dust generated. Third, the doors to all rooms must be left open so that the currents of hot air can circulate. One chooses between frosty seclusion and balmy gregariousness. Yet, in spite of these very definite "outs," it is far better than no furnace at all. It is, in fact, an excellent stop gap for the country house owner who is not prepared to invest in the more expensive heating plants at the moment. The more effete system can always be added later and the faithful old pipeless junked, moved to some other building, or left in place for an emergency, such as a public-utility-crippling blizzard or flood. THE QUESTION OF WATER SUPPLY [Illustration] _CHAPTER IX_ THE QUESTION OF WATER SUPPLY Whether one lives in the country or the city, geology and geography govern the source of the water that flows from the tap. Cities go miles for an adequate, pure water supply and have been doing so since the days of the Caesars. Such systems involve thousands of acres and millions of dollars for water sheds, reservoirs, dams, pipe lines, and purifying plants. The country place is a miniature municipality with its own water system. The latter need not be elaborate or expensive but it must be adequate. Nothing disrupts a family so quickly and completely as water shortage. Personally, we would far rather see our family hungry and in rags than again curtail its baths and showers. "We can be careful and only use what is necessary," sounds easy but before long everybody is against father. He is mean and unreasonable. Save the water, indeed! It is all his fault. He should have known the supply would fail when he bought the place. A moron could see it was not large enough. A six weeks' drought? Well, what of it! Meanwhile water diviners, well diggers and drillers add gall and wormwood to the situation. "Oh yes, that well always did go dry about this time of year. Saving the water wouldn't make any difference. Better not bother with it but dig or drill a new one." Expense? Why quibble about that when the peace of one's family is at stake. There is, of course, only one outcome. A broken and chastened man soon makes the best terms he can with one of his tormentors. If he is wise it will be with the advocate of the driven well. That solves for all time any question of water supply. Before deciding on a source, however, consider what the daily needs will be. From long observation, it has been found that the average country place requires fifty gallons of water a day for each member of the family, servants included. Then allow for two extra people so that the occasional guest, whose knowledge of water systems begins and ends with the turning of a faucet, will not unduly deplete the supply. For example, a family of seven should have a daily water supply of from 400 to 500 gallons depending on how much entertaining is done and how extensive are the outdoor uses. This allowance will be ample for toilets, baths, kitchen and laundry, as well as for moderate watering of the garden and lawn. Of course, if cars are to be washed regularly, fifty gallons should be added to the daily demand. If there is a swimming pool, its capacity should be figured by cubical content multiplied by seven and one-half (the number of gallons to the cubic foot) and allowance made for from fifteen to twenty-five per cent fresh water daily. The daily production of a spring or drilled well can be easily gauged. A flow of one gallon a minute produces 1,440 gallons in twenty-four hours. In other words, a flow of ten gallons a minute means 14,400 gallons a day which, at fifteen gallons a bath or shower, is enough water to wash a regiment from the colonel to the newest recruit. Estimating the daily production of a shallow, dug well is more difficult. The number of gallons standing in it can be obtained by using the mathematical formula for the contents of a cylinder, but only observation will tell how quickly the well replenishes itself when pumped dry. By long experience, however, country plumbers have found that if such a well contains five feet of water in extremely dry weather, it can be relied upon for the needed fifty gallons a day each for a family of seven with enough over for safety. In fact, with all water sources except an artesian or driven well, the question always is, will it last during an abnormally rainless season? Never-failing springs and wells that never go dry are institutions in any countryside. So consult some of the oldest inhabitants. They know and if they give your well or spring a good character, the chances are that even the most exacting of families will find such a water supply adequate. Whether it is pure or not is another matter but one that can easily be determined by sending a sample to your state health department or a bacteriological laboratory. That this should be done before such water is used for drinking purposes goes without saying. The driven or artesian well has two points that makes it worth the cost. There is no question of purity or of quantity. It taps subterranean water which is unaffected by local causes of contamination or by drought. The kind of water system, like the supply, is governed by geography and geology. If there happens to be a spring on a nearby hillside somewhat higher than the house, nature has provided the cheapest and simplest system. A pipe line and storage tank are all that are needed. Gravity does the rest. On the other hand, if the spring is on the same level or lower than the house, a pump must be added to the equipment to force the water into the pressure tank and out of the faucets. If the spring has a large flow and adequate drainage, a water ram is advisable. With this hydraulic machine, three-quarters of the water that flows into it is used to force the balance into the storage tank. The expense of operation is nothing and as water rams and pumps cost about the same, such an installation has much to recommend it. When the search for water goes below ground, one must reckon with geology. What lies below the turf is the deciding factor. If it is sand and gravel with a high water table (the level of subterranean water), an excellent well can be had cheaply. The practice is either to bore through to the water table with a man-operated auger and then insert the pipe, or to drive the latter down with a heavy sledge hammer. In either case, water is but a few feet below ground and a shallow-well pump, which can raise water twenty-two feet by suction, will be adequate. There are two types of well to be considered with less favorable subsoil formations--the shallow and the artesian. With the former (known to country people as a dug well) a shaft from six to ten feet across is dug with pick and shovel until adequate water is reached. Then the shaft is lined with stone laid without cement or mortar up to a few feet from the top. This allows water from the surrounding area to seep into the well where it is retained until it is drawn upward by the pump. It is obvious that a well of this type cannot be built through ledge or solid rock. In fact, unusually large boulders sometimes force diggers to abandon a shaft and start afresh. An old house with two or three of these shallow wells on the premises serves notice on the prospective buyer that repeated and probably unsuccessful attempts have been made to find a well that does not go dry. Dug wells are seldom deeper than fifty feet; the majority are but little beyond twenty-two feet, the suction limit for a shallow-well pump. As is obvious from their construction, they depend on the water in the upper layers of the subsoil and so are more readily affected by dry weather. Although not drought-proof like the artesian, a dug well, which costs much less, can be an excellent water source and supply amazingly large quantities of water. We have lived for ten years in a house served by a shallow well credited with being never failing and it has faithfully lived up to its reputation, even through the driest of seasons. Once, however, it made real trouble. Over it stood a picturesque latticed well house. On one of the beams a pair of robins nested annually. In the middle of the third summer the water developed a queer flavor. It steadily grew stronger until one night the steam arising from a hot bath caused the pajama-clad head of the house to seize a flashlight and move hastily to the well house. One beam of light disclosed the horrid truth. Floating in the water far below were two very dead fledglings. The next day a well cleaner collected twenty-five dollars for removing the birds and pumping out the well. He also gave some excellent advice which was followed promptly. The well house, picturesque though it was, gave way to a substantial masonry curbing equipped with a stout wire cover. The peace of mind so gained has more than offset the trifling expense. No longer need one peer fearfully down a twenty-five foot shaft when a pet cat fails to show up for a meal, or shoo away from the spot the over-inquisitive offspring of visiting friends. The drilled well, against which there is no possible argument save that of cost, is made by boring a hole in the ground with a powerful apparatus until sufficient subterranean water is reached. There are two methods, the chop and the core drill. With the former, a cutting tool exactly like the drill used to drive holes in rocks for blasting, only larger, cuts a circular hole downward. The boom of the drilling rig as it raises and drops the drill provides the necessary impact. With the core method, as its name implies, a hollow boring drill cuts its way aided by steel shot and a flow of water forced through the pipe that rotates the cutting tool. With either method the results are the same. Sooner or later the drill will reach an underground water course of sufficient size to give an ample flow. As such drilling is done on a charge of three to five dollars a foot, the owner, of course, hopes for sooner. Except where there is an underlying stratum of sand or gravel beneath hard pan, the drill has to go through rock. How far depends on the kind. Sandstone is the best water producer; limestone yields very hard water. Again, drilling through till (a heterogeneous mixture of clay, gravel, and boulders) may or may not locate water readily depending on how densely it is packed. The rocks known as gneiss and schist are readily bored and are considered fair water bearers. Granite is bad news. It means slow work and a deep and expensive well. It is one of the hardest rocks with little water content. The only hope is that the drill will strike a vein flowing through a fissure. Whether it will be at fifty or 500 feet is a pure matter of luck. A dry well at 100 feet may become a gusher at 105 delivering twenty gallons to the minute, or it may stay dry for another two to five hundred feet. Tales of well drilling are many and varied. Good pure water has been found at fifteen feet. In New Hampshire there is a well 900 feet deep that gushes so powerfully that it is capped and still flows at forty pounds pressure. It supplies an elaborate country place and a large stock farm. It is performances like these that indicate the water is there if one will just keep on drilling and paying until it is reached. Where to locate a well is very much a matter of guess. Even in the Sahara Desert there is water. How far down is the question. For generations much faith was placed in diviners. They were supposedly endowed with some occult talent that enabled them to pick a sure spot for water. They were known for miles around and were summoned when a new homestead was under consideration. With a forked hazel wand held in both hands, such an one would pace solemnly around until the stick gave a convulsive twist downward. This indicated that water was directly beneath. The spot would be reverently marked; the diviner would depart and the well diggers who had followed his performance with proper awe would begin work. As the ceremony failed to stipulate just how far down the precious liquid was, a successful well was presumably the result. The prowess of the well diviner is acclaimed even today by some people, although scientific investigation has proved that his services are worth just about as much as those of a witch doctor. After the country home owner has attended to the little matter of a well, be it old or new, dug or drilled, the next step is installing a pump. If the water level is less than twenty feet below ground, a shallow-well pump will be perfectly adequate and as it is much less expensive than the more elaborate deep-well pump, we recommend its use if possible. Most plumbers invariably advise the deep-well pump, especially for driven wells. They do this in all honesty and with no ulterior motive. There is always a bare chance that the water level may drop below the suction limit of the shallow pump under abnormal pressure. If it does, an irate customer can descend on the luckless installer of the less expensive pump and cause general unpleasantness if not loss of custom. The difference between these two kinds of pump, aside from price, is that with a shallow-well one, suction is produced in the cylinder of the pump itself, while the deep-well pump has its plunger and cylinder at the bottom of the well. Water is forced up the pipe by the up and down movement of the plunger within the cylinder. This plunger is connected to a geared wheel by the well-rod that extends downward from well-head to cylinder in the center of the same pipe through which the water is forced upward. Because of its design, a deep-well pump must always be located directly above the well itself. With a suction pump, on the other hand, the pipe from well to pump may bend and turn to suit conditions. These should be as few as possible since each right-angle bend of the pipe reduces the pump's suction power one foot. [Illustration: A PLACE FOR SUMMER AND WEEK-ENDS _Robertson Ward, architect_. _Photo by La Roche_] As for motive power, electricity has distinct advantages over all other means. The switch operated by pressure starts the pump when the supply of water in the storage tank drops below a certain level, and also stops it when the proper volume has been reached. (Ten pounds to start the pump and forty or fifty to stop it are the usual adjustments.) A nice little refinement here is the installation of a third faucet at either kitchen or pantry sink, piped direct to the pump. Turn this and fresh water flows from the well itself, thus consoling any sentimentalist with visions of a dripping moss-covered bucket. Also water so drawn seldom needs to be iced. In summer if there are signs of a thunder storm it is wise to open this same faucet. It starts the pump and that automatically continues until the storage tank is full. Then, if electric service is cut off by the storm, the household will have ample water until the damage has been repaired. If the country home owner happens to live beyond reach of an electric light system, he can put in his own plant, use a gasoline engine for motive power or even a hand pump. A gasoline engine should, of course, be located in an outbuilding and the exhaust pipe must extend into open air because of the deadly fumes of carbon monoxide gas. The hand pump is, of course, the simplest and there are several excellent ones to be had. They are not as practical as they sound, however. When we first bought our own country place we installed a very good one as there was then no electricity in the locality. It worked excellently--when any one could be found to man it. Handy men hired for odd jobs around the grounds took it on for a set sum per time. The labor turnover was unprecedented. One by one they either resigned within a week or somehow managed to "forget all about that pumping job." Members of the family pressed into service straightway became ardent water savers, and guests who volunteered gallantly somehow never, never came again. Yet it was not an exhausting or complicated task. It was simply so monotonous that it wore down the most phlegmatic nature. So the rural householder will do well to remember that, after all, this is a machine age and govern himself accordingly. As for the storage tank, the modern practice is to place it under ground or in the cellar. The old custom of putting it in the attic had distinct disadvantages when an overflow or a leak occurred and either stained the ceilings or sent them crashing down on furniture and possibly occupants of the rooms below. The best water system, however, cannot cope with faucets thoughtlessly left running. Even the largest tank will eventually become empty and then there will be water for no one until the pump has replenished the supply. "Waste not, want not" is an excellent motto for dwellers in the country, especially where water is concerned. SEWAGE SAFETY [Illustration] _CHAPTER X_ SEWAGE SAFETY Among the problems which his miniature municipality brings to the country house owner is the unromantic but necessary one of sewage disposal. In a suburban area it is merely a matter of connecting the house to the street main and paying higher taxes. With the country house, each owner must cope with the question for himself. He cannot leave it to chance or delude himself that any old system will serve. Some hot August day when his house is filled with guests, the makeshift disposal system will suddenly cease to function and an otherwise tactful guest will ask whether that queer smell is just part of the regular country air or what. Of course, nobody thinks of disposing of household waste by piping it to a brook or letting it flow down a sandy side hill some distance from the house. Those were the methods of the ignorant and unscientific past. The means of disposal recommended by sanitary experts are those in which the wastes undergo a bacterial fermentation which finally renders the sewage odorless and harmless. It can be accomplished by a septic tank or a tight cesspool. The latter with its two chambers is really a variety of the septic tank itself. The first vault is built of stone or brick laid in mortar and covered with a coat of waterproof cement. With both supply and overflow pipes below the normal level of the liquids, beneficial fermentation takes place in this compartment before the liquids pass over into the second chamber from which they gradually seep into the ground. Such an installation calls for more excavation and construction than a septic tank and, since it accomplishes nothing that cannot be done with the latter, is only used where there is not enough ground area for the disposal fields of a septic tank. The latter is an air-tight cylindrical or oblong container placed below ground, in which raw sewage purifies itself by the inherent bacteria. The first stage takes place within the tank and the second in the porous pipes that constitute the disposal fields. From the moment household wastes enter the tank, fermentation begins its work of reducing them from noisome sewage to harmless water. Both intake and outlet pipes extend below the level of the contents, with a baffle plate across the center which prevents direct outward flow. The heavy solids sink to the bottom and anaerobic bacteria, which develop only where there is no oxygen, breed rapidly and break these up so that they rise to the top and provide the ever present scum which excludes all air and stimulates fermentation of the entire content. Meanwhile, liquid from the tank is flowing into the disposal fields, which are porous land tile laid in shallow trenches and covered with earth and sod. Here some air is present and aerobic bacteria (those which thrive where there is oxygen) develop and complete the process of transforming the wastes into clear water. Installing such a system is neither expensive nor complicated. The tank itself should be large enough to hold the sewage of a household for twenty-four hours. It can be bought ready to install, or built of brick or concrete. Ready-made tanks are to be had of steel, concrete, or vitrified tile. We installed one of steel (which is the cheapest) some ten years ago and have found it most satisfactory. When it was delivered, two husky truck-men placed it at the edge of the pit prepared for it by the waiting plumber. They exhibited some curiosity and the plumber explained briefly about the bacteria and its action. "You mean one of these here bugs is into it already?" asked one of them as he applied an awe-struck eye to the aperture in the top. He apparently expected to find an insect akin to a full-size cockroach running around inside, and either decided the light was poor or that the plumber was a first-class liar, for he went off shaking his head doubtfully. The size of tank and length of disposal field is entirely a matter of size of household. On an average, the daily volume can be reckoned on the basis of fifty gallons per person and, for every fifty gallons of tank capacity, there should be thirty feet of disposal field. Thus, for a family of eight, a tank of five hundred gallons' capacity connected with a disposal field of three hundred feet will be ample, allowing for guests as well. In installing this system, the tank itself can be as near the house as ten or fifteen feet but the piping connecting it with the soil line of the plumbing should be water tight. The best way is to use four-inch cast iron pipe, calking all joints with oakum and lead. At a convenient point between house and tank, this line of pipe should have a "clean-out" fitting so that rags, solidified grease, or other substances that might block it can be removed. Sometimes vitrified tile with cemented joints is used instead of cast-iron pipe; but it has the distinct disadvantage that, if the rootlets of trees or large shrubs, attracted by the water, find so much as a pin hole in the cement, they will grow through and finally clog the pipe. From the tank to the disposal field, the first three or four lengths of pipe should be glazed tile with tight cement joints. From these on, three or four inch porous land tile laid in shallow trenches is used. For proper action, the trenches of the field should be not over eighteen inches deep so that the warmth and evaporation of the sun may be effective. Also in digging these trenches, there should be a slight grade away from the outlet of the tank. An inch to every ten feet is adequate. The bottom of the trenches is covered with a two-inch layer of medium-sized crushed stone or clean gravel. On this rest the land tile, and the joints are covered with roofing paper to prevent bits of stone or gravel from lodging within the pipe. The latter is covered two inches deep with more stone or gravel and over all go lengths of roofing paper cut slightly wider than the trench so that, when in place, the paper arches and fits tightly to the sides. The purpose of the stone or gravel is to facilitate water seepage from tile to ground while the roofing paper cover prevents silt from reducing the seepage. At the terminus of each trench is a leaching pool, built by digging a hole about three feet across and five feet deep. It is filled with crushed stone or small rocks to the level of the trench piping. Over it, before replacing the dirt, goes another piece of roofing paper. Into these pools drain what water has not seeped away in flowing from the tank. As can be seen from the foregoing description, the fermentation and bacterial action that takes place in a properly built septic tank system is automatic and needs no attention, although every second or third year it is advisable to remove the mud-like sediment from the tank. Otherwise, the latter's capacity gradually diminishes. The steps involved in building such a system are so simple that, while the services of a plumber are advisable, it is possible for an intelligent handy man to do the work. Be sure, however, that he realizes that each step is important and necessary. We knew of one otherwise capable workman who calmly omitted the crushed stone and gravel in the tile trenches. The system worked well for about four years. Then, one warm and sticky day in July, it ceased to function. A plumber demonstrated that the tiles were clogged with silt because the bed of crushed stone had been forgotten. For a week the house was sewerless while the careless short cut was remedied. The household had but two alternatives, take a vacation or go primitive. However, if a properly installed system fails to work, the cause lies in what it has to digest. Too much grease or too strong antiseptic solutions will reduce or prevent proper fermentation. Waste grease should therefore go into the garbage can. Also, strong doses of germ-killing solutions poured daily down sink-drains and toilets can put the hardiest septic tank out of action. The remedy for such misguided sanitary efforts is simple. Turn on all the faucets in the house and so flush the tank thoroughly. Then pour down a toilet one or two pails of warm water in which a dozen cakes of yeast have been thoroughly dissolved. The bacteria of the yeast will re-establish fermentation in the tank and all will be well if no further doses of disinfectants come along to interfere. When one stops to consider, the septic tank is a remarkably simple and effective means of being rid of household wastes odorlessly and without contamination. Of course, such a system should be placed as far as possible from a water source and the disposal fields should not be located in a low, damp ground. The drier the soil, the better. Incidentally, a lawn which turns brown during the dry weather of summer can frequently be kept green if watered by such a method. The lines of the disposal pipes can be laid in practically any pattern desired. Fan-shaped or with parallel laterals is a favorite one. Here the branches should be so spaced that they are six feet apart. This will give plenty of surrounding earth to absorb the moisture. In using this system, there are two things to bear in mind. The action that goes on within a septic tank will only dissolve paper of tissue grade. Therefore, old bandages, pieces of absorbent cotton, and the like should go into the incinerator. Otherwise, they will clog the system and a thorough cleaning will be imperative. Secondly, the leaders which care for the water from the eaves cannot be connected to it, as entirely too much water would flow into the tank during storms. However, there are several ways of taking care of the water shed by roofs during heavy or protracted rains. In some localities where the supply of water is excessively hard or is so meager that it is not sufficient for all household purposes, pipes from the eaves are connected with an underground cistern, thus conserving the prized rain water. Otherwise, the common practice is simply to equip leaders or down-spouts with "quarter-bend" sections at the lower ends to keep water away from the foundation. This is a cheap and easy way; but if the land does not slope away from the house enough so that this water drains rapidly, pools and mud puddles are the result. Worse still, water may filter through foundation walls and leave a small lake in the cellar after every heavy rain. The disadvantages of the latter are obvious. The remedy is a dry well for each down-spout. They are simple and inexpensive, being small pits dug six to ten feet away from foundation walls and reaching below the frost line. They are filled to a depth of about two feet with broken stone, fragments of brick, or like material and connected with the down-spouts by glazed tile pipes. A cover of roofing paper is added and the earth then replaced. The rain water is thus absorbed below ground, instead of being left to wear small gullies into an otherwise well-kept lawn. Sometimes the contour of land about the house is such that it resembles a relief map of the Finger Lake country after each heavy rain or spring freshet. Subsurface drainage is the answer. In other words, a line of land tile like the fields of the septic tank. Through it this mislocated water may drain into a dry well, open ditch, or the gutter along the highway. Several years ago, highway improvement presented us with such a problem. The road gang put in a culvert through which flowed the drainage from a hill on the opposite side of the road. There was no redress from the Town Fathers. Technically ours was farm land and the established custom was that highway water could wander as it would and drain as natural slope dictated. It was be flooded or do something. A subsurface drain, some fifty feet long and connected with the gutter of an intersecting road, took care of the lawn. For the rest of the water to which we were made heir by the same fit of highway betterment, two local odd-job specialists dug an open trench across a little-used field. It terminated at an old subsurface drainage line constructed years ago when some one, who had the gift, brought forth fine crops of corn, potatoes, and beans there. There is another drainage problem that concerns mosquitoes, most exasperating of all summer pests. These insects fly but short distances. Marshy land and stagnant pools are their breeding places. If the latter cannot be drained, oil spraying is the alternative and that is work for a professional. Again an old rubbish heap, replete with tin cans and other discards that will hold water, offers more encouragement to mosquitoes than is generally realized. Cart all such rubbish away or bury it; then you can drink your after-dinner coffee in peace on terrace or lawn, or enjoy the coolness of evening dew after a blistering hot day in the city. DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS [Illustration] _CHAPTER XI_ DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS The decorations and furnishings of a house depend largely on its style of architecture and the owner's taste. Further, if in any doubt, it is better to do too little than too much. Under such circumstances, too, an interior decorator is helpful; but don't dump your problem in her lap and take a trip somewhere. When you return, a beautifully decorated and furnished house, correct in every detail, may greet you. There may even be a few pieces of the furniture you brought from the city home scattered about, but it won't be your house because you will have done nothing except foot the bill. Homes evolve. They are not pulled, rabbit-like, out of a hat. When you build a house, the architect makes it yours by getting a word picture of your ideas and pulling them down to earth in a series of business-like blueprints. If your ideas regarding decoration are nebulous, a good interior decorator can help to make them concrete. Do not depend on her completely, however, because you are anxious that this country home should be just right and you are afraid of making mistakes. There is nothing final about them and it is better to make a few and have a place that seems like your own home, rather than attain perfection and find your family wandering around the rooms with that impersonal, slightly bored look worn by the average visitor to a "perfect home" display in a department store. The early American was not afraid of color in his home. His fondness for it is evidenced by 17th and 18th century rooms on display in various museums throughout the country and in the growing number of house museums that have been restored to original condition. Looking at a few of these will help to crystallize your own ideas. You will notice that their furnishings are by no means limited to the year in which they were built or even the century. A good example of this is to be found in a late 17th century house museum, known as Marlpit Hall, located on Kings Highway, Middletown, New Jersey. Here two nationalities actually mingle, since the exterior with its details of roof and gable windows and two-part doors show the Dutch influence, while the woodwork within is English in feeling. It is not a very large house but every room has a different color scheme. The restorers discovered the original colors and reproduced them; now the old blue-green, light pink, apple green, yellow, tones of red, and the like form a perfect background for the furnishings which date from late in the 17th century until well into the 18th. For instance, in the dining room a gate-leg table of the Puritan years has settled down comfortably with a set of Windsor chairs that are probably a hundred years younger. Other rooms are furnished with William and Mary and Queen Anne pieces so arranged as to appear to be waiting for the owners of Marlpit Hall, in its heyday, to come back. Upstairs are bedrooms with four-post beds of varying ages mingled with other furnishings that are in harmony, though not necessarily of the same period. This is a very fair example of an Early American home where two or more generations were born, lived, and died. In those days the average citizen did not discard his home furnishings just because they went out of style. He moved them to less important rooms and bought as he could afford of new pieces made "in the neatest and latest fashion." The home owner today can well plan to use what he has, making a few additions as he and his house become better acquainted. If he has a number of Oriental rugs and some member of his family has a fixed idea that those of the hooked variety are the only kind suitable for a country home, let him buy one or two good hooked rugs, in the interests of peace, and lay them down with his Orientals. Both will be found in harmony because both have the same basic idea, skillful weaving of colors into a distinct but variegated pattern. Besides, the American colonists, industrious as they were, did not depend solely on the work of their hands for floor coverings and other accessories. Oriental rugs or Turkey carpets, as they were then called, were used here in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. They were popular in England, also, as is shown by Hogarth's drawings. In fact, most house furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just right on the corner of the living room mantel in your country home. The old spode platter that reposed almost forgotten on the top shelf of a closet may come into its own on the Welsh dresser of your dining room. The same holds with pictures, mirrors, and clocks. As for furniture, don't discard a comfortable piece that you like just because it doesn't seem to fit into the scheme of decoration. A chair or a sofa that appears to quarrel violently with all other pieces in a room can often be made to conform by a change in upholstery, or in cases of extreme ugliness, with a slip cover of heavy chintz, denim, or rep. "You see that chair," said one country house owner, a few months after settling in his new home. "Sallie has thrown out every stick of furniture we had when we first went to housekeeping except that. She keeps moving it around from one spot to another but so far has kept it because I like a comfortable chair to drop down in when I come home at night. If I find it gone some day I shall know it is time for me to move on also." [Illustration: TRUE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SIMPLICITY. NOW THE AUTHOR'S DINING ROOM _Photo by John Runyon_] The piece was an average example of the overstuffed, leather-upholstered era. It is still part of the family furnishings but it has merged quietly and inoffensively with its better born companions. Plain muslin has taken the place of the leather and over it has been fitted a heavy slip cover of sage green rep. No one exclaims over its beauty but everybody sits in it, even the most ardent admirer of the delicate Hepplewhite side chair standing nearby. This brings us to the question of whether the additions in furniture should be antiques, reproductions, or modern pieces. Again, this depends on the type of house and the taste of those who occupy it. The person who buys or builds the salt box or similar type of cottage will naturally want the furnishings in keeping. Consciously or unconsciously, he will lean towards antiques. Further, those that look best in the 18th or early 19th century farm cottage are not necessarily expensive. Simple pine pieces, made by the village cabinet-maker or, sometimes, by an ingenious farmer in his leisure hours; Windsor and slat-back chairs; low four-post beds; trestle or tuckaway tables; even an occasional Victorian piece; all, if on simple lines, fit into such a house as though made for it. One of the many advantages of furnishing with antiques is that there is nothing final about them. If you buy a piece at a proper price and after due time do not like it or it fails to fit into your decorative scheme, you can sell for as much as you paid for it and often a little more. On the other hand, new furniture or reproductions become merely second-hand pieces as soon as you have bought and put them to use. Only at distinct financial loss can you change them in six months or a year for others. That is a good commercial reason for the growing tendency to furnish with antiques. We believe, however, that the real reason is the effect of individuality gained by the use of pieces made by old craftsmen a century or more ago when things were built to last and mass production and obsolescence were unknown terms. Several years ago, a family bought a house of the type prevalent in the region of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, "as a summer shack for three or four months in the year." The floors with their wide boards were simply scrubbed, waxed, and left in the natural tone taken on by old wood in the course of a hundred and fifty years. All trim and paneling were painted a soft apple green, and walls and ceilings throughout were calcimined a deep cream color. Curtains of unbleached muslin were hung at the small, many-paned windows. The furnishings came out of the attic of their Boston home where the contents of a great-grandfather's New Hampshire farmhouse had been stored. These were the average accumulation of family possessions from the turn of the 19th century down through the Civil War period. There was a pine tavern table, 17th century in feeling but made nearly two hundred years later. It had been used in the summer kitchen and bore the scars of harsh treatment. A skillful cabinet-maker restored it to a condition suitable for a dining table. At this point, the antiquarian of the family spoke wistfully of "some nice little rod-back Windsors that Cousin Julie made off with" when the old homestead was broken up some twenty years and how they would be "just right for dining room chairs here." But all were agreed that the attic contents were to furnish forth the Cape Cod cottage with no unnecessary additions. Here were eight cane-seated chairs of the late Empire years. Four had been painted a dirty brown to simulate black walnut; four represented the white enamel blight which, in turn, had chipped enough to display the "grained" painting of the golden oak years beneath. A scraper applied to a leg revealed the mellow tone of honey-colored maple. Patience and paint remover did the rest. Brought up in the natural finish, they blended beautifully with the old pine table and have been much admired. Yet they were only near-antiques, made by early factory methods about 1850. So it went. Old pine bureaus, an under-eaves bed, one or two four-posters, late but with simple urn-shaped finials and still covered with the old New England red filler, two or three cherry light stands, and several slat-back chairs went far towards furnishing the bedrooms. The living room, in spite of two or three good tables and ladder-back and Windsor armchairs, appeared to be threatened with a warring element in the shape of a red plush Victorian sofa and matching armchair. Both were ugly but comfortable. Chintz slip covers changed them from blatant monstrosities to background blending items of hominess. Skillful grouping, plenty of color, and simplicity produced a highly pleasing whole that caused more than one guest to exclaim, "These things look as though they grew in the house." Yet there was not a piece of museum quality in the lot. Many of them could not even be classed as antiques. They were simply the kind of things that the original owner of the house and his descendants would have been apt to accumulate and use through the years. But it is those plus the associations, real or imaginary, that make the difference between a home and a house. The original owner could, of course, have owned finer pieces such as a butterfly table, a maple or cherry highboy, a high-post bed with hangings of crewel-work, a small curly maple and mahogany sideboard, various chests of drawers and light stands made of cherry and neatly ornamented with inlay. Country cabinet-makers were as fine artists as those who catered to the urban taste but their public was satisfied with simple pieces and they wrought accordingly. Calcimined walls and near-antique furnishings are, naturally, not the only means of producing a homey effect. Their chief merit lies in the fact that they are effective, inexpensive, and easily changed. No matter how pleasing the tone, plain calcimined walls will probably pall after a while, but by that time the home owner will know whether paper or paint is the better treatment. With an old house, either is historically correct. The earliest were, of course, primitive affairs with walls of rough plaster or feather-board paneling in natural wood color. By the 18th century, paint was already being used for decorating both. Here the wall treatment was not limited to a plain color but was varied by stencil designs. A geometric pattern was usual. Then came wall papers of geometric or scenic design. Thus, it is for the householder to decide just what manner of decoration he wishes to live with. For instance, a paneled room may be finished in the natural wood or painted. The latter was customary in colonial days as life became easier and money more plentiful. Personally we consider painted paneling, trim, and other woodwork pleasanter and less monotonous to live with day in and day out but that is a matter of individual taste. In the last analysis it is not what his neighbor likes, it is what the home owner himself wants to live with that really matters. In choosing wall paper, one is limited by the type and size of room to be so decorated. You may have a weakness for the old French scenic papers depicting, in large squares, historic or sporting events. These are most effective in the large central halls of the more formal country home but produce a distinctly odd appearance in the tiny, low-ceilinged rooms of the story-and-a-half farmhouse. Here small patterns and designs that tend to make the rooms look larger must rule. Over-fussy curtains and draperies at the windows should also be avoided. We well remember an otherwise charming little place where the use of color and type of furnishings was most skillful. One experienced a curious sense of gloom and stuffiness, though, even at midday. A glance at the windows explained it. They were of the 18th century farmhouse type and into their 42 by 28 inch dimensions had been crowded the modern roller shade, fussy ruffled dimity curtains and heavily lined chintz draperies surmounted by a six-inch valance! With all these, the aperture left for light and air was limited indeed. An able interior decorator could have controlled the over-zealous drapery buyer or she could have found out for herself by a little independent study of proper window treatment for a house of that type. In other words, whatever the kind of house, remember that windows are intended to let in light and air. Both constitute excellent reasons for living in the country. Proper curtains and draperies lend a softening and pleasing effect but, as in a stage setting, they are only props and must not be allowed to dominate the scene. Further, in furnishing or decorating any house it is an excellent idea to try and visualize the type of furnishings two or three generations living there would normally have accumulated. We have already alluded at some length to the farm cottage type because, like the common people, they are more numerous. But in the old country neighborhoods there was nearly always the man of affairs who knew how to make money and was prone to build a house "as handsome as his purse could afford." He was the squire of his vicinity and his house surpassed all others in size and ornamental detail. If you have acquired such a house, its furnishings must be in accord. Handsome antiques and ambitious reproductions go well in such a setting. Or it may be that your fancy runs to an ultra modern structure with interior decorations and furnishings in keeping. Your house is then its own ancestor and only time will determine whether such a scheme wears well. Whatever you choose, take the furnishings best suited, arrange them as pleases you, and proceed to live with them. If you like the general effect and are one of those people who like things to stay put, probably one can enter your living room fifteen years hence and find the wing chair from the Maritime Provinces still standing in the northeast corner with a small tavern table on the right; the hooked rug with geometric center still in front of the fireplace; the Sheraton table with mirror over it at its accustomed place between the two south windows; and so forth. On the other hand, if you are of the restless type, instead of throwing everything out and beginning over again, you will have periodic attacks of rearranging, realigning certain accessories, adding something new, or discarding some item bought in an emergency for something more in keeping with your changing ideas or manner of living. We confess that this is one of our pleasantest pastimes. It takes very little to start us off. An old Pennsylvania Dutch cupboard, stripped down to the original blue and inducted into an apple-green dining room, obviously calls for a fine orgy with paint and whitewash; a gilded Sheraton mirror or another oil painting involves general commotion and often complete rearrangement of the living room. All this is very painful for those who don't like change; but, for us, it helps to answer the question so often propounded by innocent city visitors, "What do you do with yourselves in such a quiet spot?" THE FACTORY PART OF THE HOUSE [Illustration] _CHAPTER XII_ THE FACTORY PART OF THE HOUSE The Early American kitchen was the most important room in the house. Here the family spent most of its waking hours. Here the food was cooked, served, and eaten; the spinning and weaving done; the candles for lighting the house poured into molds. It was the warmest room in winter and around its hearth the family gathered both for work and recreation. Cheerful and pleasant it undoubtedly was, but there was little idea of making work easy or saving steps. Today we may furnish our living rooms in the 18th century manner, put 17th century dressers in our dining rooms, and hang Betty lamps and other quaint devices around the fireplace; but when it comes to the kitchen, we step forward into the 20th century and are well content. We have heard of enthusiasts who occasionally cook an entire meal in a fireplace and insist that it is far superior to any done by modern methods; but even these devotees of old ways pale at the thought of three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, so prepared. Today's kitchen, stripped of accessories and talking points, is essentially a laboratory where semi-prepared food stuffs are processed for consumption. The automobile industry has demonstrated to the nation what remarkable things can be done by having labor conditions and proper tools on a logical train of production. With no waste of human effort, no running back and forth, work starts at one end of the assembly chain, and off the other, in about two hours, comes a new car. In the same way, a properly planned kitchen eliminates waste steps and, with plenty of light and air, becomes a pleasant place to work. In this domestic laboratory, one expects, of course, to find a cook stove of some sort, a sink, a refrigerator, a kitchen cabinet or compounding bench, a table, and plenty of storage space. With the assembly idea in mind, have these so planned that the work of cooking three meals a day progresses logically from the service or delivery entrance to the doorway of the dining room. Be sure, too, that added working space is available in the event of dinner parties or larger forms of entertainment. The saving on tempers, fine china, and glass will be well worth it. In other words, have this most important working room compact but not too small. As an example we cite another of our own errors in judgment. Having been brought up in a house with a large old-fashioned kitchen where the luckless cook walked miles in performing her culinary duties, we went to the other extreme. The room originally designed for the kitchen with its large old fireplace and sunny southern exposure was immediately chosen for the dining room. Directly back of it was the old pantry which, without benefit of architectural advice, we decided to fit up as a kitchen. It was a good idea except for the fact that the room was really too small, especially for the type of hospitality that rules in the country. To be sure, by moving a partition a little and by remodeling a small lean-to that adjoined it, sufficient storage and working space was added to make conditions tolerable; but it is at best a makeshift and the answer is, eventually, a properly designed service wing, architecturally in keeping with the 18th century but mechanically modern. Even under these makeshift conditions, however, the assembly idea has been followed and this somewhat mitigates the drawback of contracted space. The most important tool in a kitchen is obviously the cooking range. Here the country dweller has a choice of bottled gas, electricity, or oil as fuels. What he decides to use may depend on personal preference, availability, or cost of installing and operating. Where service is dependable and a reasonable cooking rate prevails, there is no better method of cooking than by electricity. Clean, odorless and easily regulated, its advantages are obvious. But no electric light and power company can afford to run its cables underground in the country. The service lines are on poles and extend over a large area. Nature has no regard for the convenience of either the company or its patrons. A thunderbolt may knock out a transformer, or a tree may be blown down and carry nearby electric lines with it. Repair men are continually on the job with a well-run company and work speedily and faithfully but they cannot be everywhere at once. Service may be interrupted for ten minutes or for several hours. In such emergencies, it is well to have a stop gap, such as an inexpensive two-burner oil stove. It may not be used more than twice a year but it is there when needed. The devotees of the tank gas method of cooking are many. It works the same as gas from city mains except that your supply is piped in from an individual tank which is installed outside the house and replenished monthly by the company supplying such fuel. The initial cost plus installation and operation about equals that of electricity but no cataclysm of nature will cause it to fail. Cheapest of all is the kerosene oil stove. These range all the way from the modest two-burner table stove to the pretentious six-burner type with insulated oven and porcelain finish. Gasoline burning ranges are also to be had on this order. The initial cost of even the most elaborate oil or gasoline stove is considerably less than for one designed for either electricity or bottled gas and the expense of operation is also less. But they have certain disadvantages. With the best of management there is a slight odor. If out of adjustment they smoke or go out and they are unpleasant to clean. Further, although we struggled with one for seven years, we never found any satisfactory means of broiling meat with oil as a fuel. No family relishes the idea of having porterhouse or sirloin steaks taken right out of their lives, so some other device is necessary, such as a charcoal broiler or the old-fashioned, long-handled broiler held over the fireplace coals or, in winter, those of the furnace. One may argue brightly that meat cooked by these primitive methods has a superior flavor, but it is definitely veering away from the assembly idea and most certainly does not make for harmony in the kitchen. If a charcoal broiler is employed, somehow it never reaches the proper state of incandescence at the right time. If the fireplace is the scene of operation, it is invariably a roaring inferno at the time the steak should be cooked. One waits for the desired bed of coals, of course, while ominous head shakings and rumblings from the kitchen proclaim that the rest of the dinner is done, is dried up, is ruined. Twenty years ago coal or wood burning stoves were usual in country homes. They were disagreeable to tend and in summer made an uncomfortably hot kitchen. But that same heat was most acceptable in winter weather. For a kitchen not too well heated by the main house system, there are ranges that combine coal and electricity. Thus, in winter they serve the double purpose of a cooking tool and heat producing unit and also help reduce the electric light bill at the season of the year when it tends to be heaviest. [Illustration: ENTIRELY NEW, BUT WITH ALL THE CHARM OF AN OLD HOUSE _Robertson Ward, architect_. _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_] Where electricity is available, the problem of refrigeration is simple. Of course, the initial cost of a good electric refrigerator may easily be more than double that of the ordinary icebox, but the cost of operation is very small and food losses are materially cut down. The old method of refrigeration calls for only a moderate outlay for a box, but delivering ice three or four times a week to the average country home involves heavy overhead for the local ice dealer and he must therefore charge accordingly. If one must depend on ice, however, there is an improved box now on the market so constructed that it needs to be filled but once a week. It operates on much the same principle as the mechanical box as far as keeping an even temperature is concerned. With the various storage cupboards, closets, and cabinets that make up the furnishings of this culinary assembly plant, there are sundry built-in units, widely pictured, written about, and advertised. What type you will have is a matter of personal taste. The main thing is to be sure they are well built and conveniently located. The kitchen sink may also be of any type you prefer but let there be light where it is hung. A window directly over it will make for cleaner dishes as well as less breakage. Another ounce of prevention for the latter is considered by many to be the sink lined with monel metal. It is fairly soft and yielding so that a cup or plate is not readily shattered if accidentally dropped in it. With porcelain sinks, one may use a rubber mat designed for the purpose or one can be careful. If the service wing plans do not include a laundry, a set tub with cover forming one of the drain boards is practical for the occasional small pieces washed at home. Along with the sink may be installed an electric dishwasher, depending, of course, on whether the family considers its benefits equal to the expense involved. If mother is to do the work, it may be warranted; but where her efforts are limited to one or two sketchy meals on Thursdays and Sunday evenings, one might well interview the person who is monitor of the service wing the bulk of the time. Dishwashers, cake mixers, complicated fruit juice extractors, and similar gadgets are all excellent but they are not essential. Many servants do not even want them. A few years ago we tried to introduce an orange squeezer designed to hang on the wall and operate somewhat on the principle of a pencil sharpener. We showed it to our houseman who regarded it glumly. "I'll try to use it if you insist," he finally said, "but I can work faster with that glass one from the ten cent store." These little playthings are all right but you can seldom get the help to use them. A kitchen should be well equipped with standard implements and cooking utensils, but before putting in expensive labor-saving devices one should be sure that they really save work and that the proposed operator will appreciate them enough to make their purchase advisable. The essentials of a kitchen are plenty of light and air; enough space for working under all conditions; well arranged and adequate equipment; pleasing, easily cleaned wall surfaces and floor; and plenty of hot water. There are several methods of obtaining an adequate supply of the latter. It is automatically taken care of where the house is heated by an oil burning system. With a coal burning steam or hot water plant, there is now a cylinder that can be attached to the boiler below the water level. In it there is a coil of copper pipe through which circulates the domestic hot water supply. This works admirably. There is always a sufficient supply but it is never so overheated as to scald the heedless person who plunges a hand under a boiling stream of water. During the warm months, however, a supplementary means of heating water must be at hand. Electric water heating, again, involves the least supervision and is to be recommended if one can get a low enough rate. The initial expense is a sizable item, though; and if operated at the usual rate per kilowatt hour, the monthly charge can easily be double that of other fuels. But many companies make a special rate for such devices and under such circumstances the operating costs compare favorably with those of coal and oil. Another excellent device is the little coal stove built especially for the purpose. It requires only a small amount of fuel daily but, of course, must be faithfully tended. This type of stove may also be adapted for burning range oil. Here the drudgery of shoveling in coal and taking out ashes is replaced by that of daily filling the two-gallon oil tank that feeds it, periodic cleaning of wicks and burners, and consistent adjusting of burner and draft to meet changing weather conditions. There are also the kerosene oil heaters having a copper coil through which the water circulates in heating. These may or may not be equipped with an automatic attachment. They likewise require daily filling and occasional cleaning of both wick and copper coil. They are easier to adjust than the other variety but the action of the blue flame on the copper coil causes a slight disintegration which over a long period of time may cause a leak. When that happens no mending is possible, not even of a temporary nature. The family goes without hot water until a new coil is put in or a complete new heater substituted. Obsolescence is a term high in favor with American industry; and only too often when one goes seeking a new part for a machine with a decade of good service to its credit, one is met with, "Oh, we don't make that model any more. We might be able to locate a stray coil but it would take about two or three weeks." The disgusted home owner naturally goes out and buys another kind of heater, one without a copper coil. Whether or not a laundry is part of the service wing depends, of course, on how much of that type of work is to be done at home. There are two points of view here. Some households prefer to scoop the family linen into a bag, make a list, and hand it over to a commercial laundry. Others find a dependable laundress nearby or provide facilities for doing the work at home. The clear air of the country and easy drying conditions influence many towards the latter course. Like the kitchen, the room set aside for this purpose should have good light and air as well as easily cleaned wall and floor surfaces. There should be at least two tubs as well as a washing machine and a small ironing machine. There should also be space provided for indoor drying of clothes since, even in the country, a week of stormy weather is not unheard of. Some kind of a stove is also necessary for any needed boiling of clothes, making starch, or the like. Servants' quarters should be cheerful, light, airy in summer and comfortably warm in winter. They may be part of the service wing; they may be on a separate floor of the main section of the house; or, if the garage is part of the house, located over that. For best results they should not be in too close proximity to the rest of the family. In the country, servants are more confined to the scene of their labors than in the city. Consequently they need and like a certain amount of privacy as well as a place to relax and see their friends. In addition to bedrooms and bath, a sitting room of some kind is most practical. It need not be large or expensively furnished. A few comfortable chairs, a table or two, possibly a desk and a good reading lamp will suffice. A small radio also adds to the general contentment. In summer if the service wing boasts a screened porch so much the better. If not, some shady nook or arbor nearby where they may rest or read during their spare time may mark the difference between sullen service, frequent change of personnel, and the perfect servant who remains year after year. PETS AND LIVESTOCK [Illustration] _CHAPTER XIII_ PETS AND LIVESTOCK Few country households are content with a bowl of goldfish. Something a little more responsive is demanded where the peace and quiet of nature press so close. A cat to drowse on the hearth or catch an occasional mouse; a dog to accompany one on walks and greet the head of the house ecstatically each evening; these, of course, are the most obvious and popular pets. Both can be and are kept in city apartments and suburban homes but their natural habitat is the open country. Whether one or both become part of your household is, of course, a matter of personal inclination. There are those who have an intense aversion for cats. There are fanatical bird lovers who argue that because they once knew a cat which killed a bird, the entire feline family should be wiped out. However, from the number of sleek specimens seen dozing on porch or terrace through the countryside, it is safe to assume that the average household harbors at least one cat. There is no room here for a treatise on why people keep cats. Besides, we do not know. We only know that cats were always about the place when we were young and that some sixteen years ago we rescued a half starved Maltese kitten from a city pavement and kept her until she died of old age about a year ago. She had beautiful green eyes and a very short temper. She also upset several preconceived theories. One is that a cat is attached to a place rather than people and that it is difficult if not impossible to take it along when moving to an old place. Our cat was approaching middle age when we acquired our country home. Yet after a few inquiring meows and a minute inspection of the new place, she settled down contentedly. Further, during the years that followed, she made at least two trips a year to the city for sojourns of varying lengths. Inquiry among other cat owners has revealed that this is not at all extraordinary. In fact, this type of animal can become just as attached to its owner as the more flattering and responsive dog. Nor do all cats kill birds. The average house cat is too indolent to hunt anything. Our own imperfect but individualistic animal was a mighty hunter of field mice but showed little or no interest in the birds flying about above her. They have built their nests for years in arbor and summer house unmolested. But a real killer of birds is hard to dissuade. One can of course remove the bird from its jaws and administer a sound whipping but it is by no means certain that anything much is accomplished by so doing. One cannot argue with a cat. He is the one animal man has not been able to subdue. Possibly therein lies his fascination. Also, barring a few bad habits, he is little trouble and is a distinct ornament. The dog can be a faithful companion or the worst pest on earth. Which he is, depends on his environment and training. He may be had in many breeds and sizes from the most expensive and delicate specimens down to the mongrel with a League of Nations ancestry. Incidentally, the most benign and intelligent of dogs is often some middle-aged hound of doubtful lineage who can tell your blue ribbon winner how to get about in the canine circles of the countryside. Pick the breed you prefer but have it in scale with your place. You may have had a secret longing for a St. Bernard or a Great Dane but if you have settled your family in a little saltbox house, it is going to be a little crowded when something only slightly smaller than a Shetland pony starts padding restlessly up and down stairs or flings his weary length down in the middle of the living room rug where you must walk around or over him to turn on the radio or answer the telephone. One member of our family has always wanted a cheetah or hunting leopard. This desire is likely to go unfulfilled. These beasts are easily domesticated and are gentle and affectionate. They appear to have the best characteristics of both cat and dog. They are no more expensive than many a thoroughbred dog. Yet we shall not have one. Not only is the climate of Westchester County, New York, too unlike that of their native India for them to thrive, but consider the task of soothing terrified tradesmen and casual visitors. One may explain that although appearances are against him he is not really a leopard but just an overgrown cat. They will not believe it. They will not even hear because they will be a mile down the road. Other people must be considered even in the country. So pick your dog and train him up in the way he should go. You may prefer one of the terrier breeds. They are bright and lively and make good pets but must be taught not to dig holes in the carefully groomed lawn. It is as natural for them to delve for underground animals as for a setter or spaniel to flush birds. Retrievers are usually gentle, well disposed animals and not only make good pets but are excellent in a family where hunting is a diversion. Very popular just now in this class are the spaniels, especially the cockers. They have beauty, an affectionate disposition, are most intelligent and are excellent watch dogs. They fit into nearly any household large or small. With the larger dogs there is, of course, the collie as well as his ancestor the old-fashioned shepherd. Here we would say a good word for a much-maligned dog, the police or German shepherd. Only recently since the Seeing Eye has demonstrated their keen intelligence and sense of responsibility in guiding their blind owners, have they begun to come into their own again. Even now there is an impression abroad in the land that they, like the timber wolf they so much resemble but are _not_ descended from, are sly treacherous brutes with a particular delight in taking a piece out of the unwary stranger. It is true that when first brought to this country they had no little trouble in adapting themselves to conditions here. In their native Germany they were what their name implies and as working dogs covered miles daily. They ate coarse food and slept in the open either on the ground itself or a small heap of straw. Obviously such a dog cannot be shut up in cramped quarters and given almost no exercise without his disposition being somewhat affected. They are highly intelligent animals and for the country dweller with two or more acres, make affectionate and satisfactory pets. They have a keen sense of guardianship, are fine watch dogs and show but little tendency to roam. The latter is an excellent trait for if you wish to remain on moderately pleasant terms with your neighbors, train your dog or dogs to stay home. Worrying the cat of the man who lives just at the bend in the road to the south, or killing the chickens of the neighbor to the north, will not aid in establishing friendly relations. Barking at passing cars is not commendable nor is the tipping over of a neighbor's garbage can and scattering the contents about. These are bad habits and should be corrected if your pet is to be any real comfort to you. Patient and intelligent training will mark the difference between a friendly well-mannered dog and a spoiled brute that even your most humane friends yearn to cuff. When it comes to the matter of other livestock in this venture of farming-in-the-little, the new owner is either treading unknown or forgotten ground. Dogs and cats, even canaries and white rats, were familiar enough in the city. He has read books on their care and training. He has consulted veterinarians and fanciers but until now the sources of his daily bottle of milk or his carton of graded eggs have been matters of indifference. The venture with livestock may begin with chickens and end with saddle horses, but it is nothing for the uninitiate to enter into lightly or unadvisedly. Personally, we prefer to let the farmer down at the end of the lane wrestle with the recalcitrant hen and temperamental cow. He has summered and wintered with them for years and knows the best and the worst of them. If there is a way to make them worth their keep, he knows it. If his cow generously gives twelve quarts of milk and we can use but two, it is no concern of ours what becomes of the other ten. For the country dweller, who feels that life is not complete without livestock of some sort and follows that by acquiring a barnyard menagerie, we would recommend that he enter upon his course cautiously. This is assuming that he knows little or nothing of farming either by theory or practice. If, on the other hand, he has been reared on a farm, he understands perfectly how to care for the various animals and the labor entailed in doing so. He is in no need of any admonition from us, and who are we to offer it? But for the average person who is just beginning his experiment in country living, a few chickens are suggested for the initial attempt. There are two ways to embark on this. With either, it is well to subscribe to a good farm journal. Consult that or the farmer down the road as to breed. As rank outsiders we suggest a well established and hardy kind. Then, the easiest way for the novice would probably be to buy full-grown chickens that are just beginning to lay. They are old enough to know their way about and any dry, well ventilated shelter that is proof against thieving skunks, weasels and similar wild life, will be adequate for them along with a chicken run with a high enough fence to keep them within bounds. For this type of fowl is no respecter of property. Not only does it take delight in working havoc with its owner's flower beds and borders but those of his neighbor as well. They also eat incessantly. The optimistic friend who has never kept chickens, but thinks it a marvelous idea, will tell you that scraps from the table will take care of all that and even save you the garbage collector's fee. Such a person is still living back in the 1890's when food was cheap and seven course dinners and hearty suppers were the rule. Today's orange skins and banana peels are no diet even for a chicken. So, one must buy feed for them. This should be offset in a measure by the eggs normally laid by well-fed and tended pullets. Also as time goes on and setting hens hatch chickens, which in turn become eventually broilers or fresh producers of eggs, according to results you will decide whether or not you want to continue in the chicken business. Another method widely advocated is to buy week-old chicks from a mail order house or other firm dealing in such stock and bring them up without aid of a mother hen to gather them under her wings. Here a brooder is necessary since the chicks are of tender age and must be kept warm. These brooders are of varying sizes and prices and may be had from the same mail order houses that are glad to sell the chicks as well. This is more complicated than the other old-fashioned method but a little guidance from some one understanding the procedure along with consistent care on your part will probably bring a majority of your brood to broiler size. Taking on a cow to support is a much more serious thing. Not only does a well-bred, tuberculin-tested animal cost a fair sum to acquire, but she must be comfortably housed in a clean, comfortable cow barn. Bulletins from the Department of Agriculture will give the requirements not only for her shelter but for her proper care. She needs at least two acres of pasturage and this can't be all stones and bushes. She must be milked morning and evening without fail and at regular hours by some one who knows how. She must be groomed. Her stable must be cleaned regularly. When the yearly calf is born one must sit up nights with her. All this, if she is to remain in good condition. In gratitude for it she will give milk, three or four times as much as a small household can consume. Possibly a market can be found for this excess or one can turn to butter making and add a pig to the barnyard family. Even this accommodating scavenger cannot live by skim milk alone but must have it augmented by corn or prepared feed. He must also have proper shelter and a run. Thus does one thing lead to another, once one gets beyond the chicken stage of farming. It is obviously nothing for the daily commuter to attempt unless he is prepared to pay for the services of a competent hired man. Farming even on the smallest scale is a full-time job in itself. The tired business man will find it a toil or a pleasure. The daily chores involved are relentless and unending. A business appointment in town is no excuse for their non-fulfillment. They must be done at a regular time, if not by you by some one else. Of course, with a family where there are three or more small children, keeping a cow can be both practical and economical. With the normal table and cooking uses the milk given can be consumed without difficulty. Further, the expense of maintaining would probably fall much below the monthly milk bill under such circumstances. For this purpose, select one of the Jersey or Guernsey breed which gives rich milk rather than quantity. For the family that can afford and enjoy saddle horses, it is pleasant to have them, but with their advent the country home becomes still more complicated. There must be a stable with somebody to tend and groom the horses. They must be exercised too, which means systematic riding rather than an occasional canter on just the ideal day. Also with even one horse, if a need for economy arises it is not always easy to dispense with him. He is flesh and blood and, humanely, you cannot just sell him to the first buyer who presents himself. You must be assured that your mount will be well-treated and not abused. We have known of several instances where a number of excellent saddle horses were given away by owners, who felt that they could no longer afford to buy their oats and hay, but wanted to be sure the animals would be well cared for. So, before acquiring horses, contemplate the up-keep and make sure you are prepared to maintain them whether business is good, bad, or indifferent. For the first year or two a much wiser course is to turn to the neighborhood riding stable and rent. These have become standard institutions in many vicinities and they frequently afford not only excellent mounts but sound teaching for those who know little or nothing about the finer points of riding. TIGHTENING FOR WINTER [Illustration] _CHAPTER XIV_ TIGHTENING FOR WINTER The wolf of winter was the arresting phrase originated several years ago by no less a practitioner of the art of advertising than Bruce Barton, to drive home the merits of adequate domestic heating. But no matter how efficient your heating system may be, unless the country home has been made ready for the cold months, insufficient heat and excessive fuel bills result. Against this, there are a number of simple things the home owner may do himself or have done. Nobody begrudges money spent for fuel that keeps the house at a comfortable, even temperature. In the days when six dollars bought a ton of the best anthracite coal and the pea and buckwheat sizes were sold as waste products, it may have been a matter of small importance that certain spots in a house leaked heat and let in cold. Besides, in an era when windows closed tightly with the first cold blasts of fall and remained so until spring, such ventilation was probably a life saver. But at the present high prices for either coal or fuel oil, these points about the house where heat is lost and winter cold crashes the gate should be taken seriously. With a new house, of course, everything possible in the nature of built-in metal weatherstripping and thoroughly insulated exterior walls were included by the architect when he prepared plans and specifications. But even he may have ignored one of the most practical means of conserving warmth. This is a set of storm windows and doors carefully fitted so they open and shut at will, yet are snug enough so that little cold penetrates. These are remarkable conservers of heat. Measured scientifically, the amount that escapes by radiation through ordinary window glass is amazing. The storm window reduces this to a minor percentage because the dead-air space between the two thicknesses of glass acts as an efficient means of insulation. Storm doors and windows are now made in stock dimensions that fit practically any frame. Quantity production has made their price so moderate that the saving on fuel for a single winter can exceed their initial cost and the labor of fitting and putting them in place. Such windows and doors should be properly marked, like the screens that replace them in summer, with numbering tacks so that, each fall, they may be put in proper place without confusion. The system is simplicity itself. A duplicate tack bears the same number on the sill of each window and on the upright of each door. This is a real saver of time, for so small a variation as half an inch in width or height can make the difference between doors and windows that really fit and those that leak air. Such proportions vary even with a new house. The only requisite for such a complement of double doors and windows is a proper place to store them during the summer months. Being largely of glass, if they are not put away carefully, the breakage can be both annoying and needlessly expensive. So it is well to provide a special compartment, located in the garage or other convenient place, where these may be placed when not in use. Similarly, the same section may be used in the winter for door and window screens as well as garden furniture. Except for the new country house or one that has been completely remodeled or renovated, each succeeding fall brings minor repairs. These ought to be undertaken during those cool crisp days of fall that precede freezing weather and penetrating winter winds. They will vary with age and state of repair but they begin with the cellar and progress upward to the attic. Unless your house is unusually ailing, probably not all of these will be necessary but at least there should be a careful examination and diagnosis. Here is the list. [Illustration: SNOW HAS DIGNITY, BUT IS THE HOUSE SNUG AND WARM? _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_] Repoint the foundations, inside and out, with a rich cement mortar to seal any cracks through which the wind might penetrate. A late October or early November day when there is a high wind is ideal for this work. As one goes over the inside of the foundation, the searching cold blasts will reveal the crevices that need attention. Mark each one with a wooden splinter as fast as they are found. When all four walls have been thoroughly inspected, the work of closing these cracks can be done as a single operation. Except for a solid brick or stone house, inspect the point at which the sills rest on the foundation walls. The fillet of mortar may have come loose or cracked in places. Any such breaks should be repaired. Before leaving the cellar notice the windows. Does cold air leak through joints of sash and frame? If so, make them tight with batten strips or, if very loose, calk them with oakum. The window through which coal is delivered, of course, cannot be sealed so thoroughly as it may have to be opened now and then for additional fuel. Weatherstripping it as well as the hatchway door is advisable. Some houses built on side-hill sites have at least one cellar wall more exposed than the rest. Where this condition exists, it is a real economy to cover the inside of it with insulating material. Either special plastering or fiber-insulating board can be used, as individual conditions warrant. At the same time any water pipe that is close to an outside wall should either be re-located or insulated, lest it freeze some day when it is abnormally cold or a high wind is blowing. Freezing cold air blowing through a fine crack in an exterior wall acts about as does the flame of a welder's torch, only in the reverse. The flame cuts by melting; the cold air solidifies the water in a pipe and sometimes does it so thoroughly that a cracked pipe is the result. From the cellar one now goes to the attic. Are windows in place here and weather tight? How about end walls and the under sides of roof? If not insulated, your house can lose a quantity of heat at these points. Remember, heat rises and, after a storm, if the snow on the roof of your house melts quicker than on those of your neighbors, it is a clear demonstration that you are wasting heat by letting it ooze through certain minute apertures. Another way to combat this upward radiation is to pour a loose, featherlike insulating material into the space between the attic flooring and the plaster of the bedroom ceilings. As it comes in bags prepared especially for this purpose and is very light, sometimes it is only necessary to raise a small proportion of the attic floor boards and the insulating material can be spread evenly through these openings. There remains still a major escape for heat, the fireplaces. If each is equipped, as is customary with all built during the last half century, with a cast-iron damper that closes the throat when not in use, make sure it is in working order. Sometimes such dampers get clogged with soot and fail to close tightly. For older fireplaces the problem varies. Some can have a throat damper installed; others are of such size or shape that it is not practical. With the latter, if the throat is not too large, it is possible to stuff it with tightly packed newspaper, first crumpling the sheets to make them bulky. The large fireplace, once the scene of all family cooking, generally has an opening into the chimney so large that there seems to be but one practical way to treat it. This is the use of the time-tried fire board which fits tightly into the opening of mantel and shuts off the fireplace completely. This causes much lamentation each winter in our own household, as the picturesque effect of the fine old fireplace with swinging crane is blotted out by a none too ornamental expanse of board. But it is so fitted that it can be readily removed any time a fireplace fire is desired. When not in use such a cavernous avenue for escaping heat must, of course, be closed. No heating system can compete with it. Stand beside such a fireplace for a moment and the cold breeze swirling out from it will convince you. Nothing is more uncomfortable in winter than cold and drafty floors. Much of this can easily be corrected by closing the cracks, usually found in older houses, between flooring and walls at the baseboards. Generally quarter-round molding, carefully fitted and securely nailed is sufficient but occasionally wide, uneven cracks have to be closed with oakum, putty, or crack filler before the molding is put in place. Again, if the cellar has no plaster ceiling, a drafty floor can be remedied by lining the under side of the flooring with felt paper or like material. Lastly, inspect the heating plant. Has it been cleaned and put in order since last season? If not, it should be done without fail, for no soot-clogged furnace or encrusted boiler can work properly. You are simply wasting fuel and effort if you neglect them. Out of doors, there are several minor things that can make or mar a winter in the country. Be sure the faucets used for the garden hose are disconnected and drained. There is probably a drain valve in the cellar for this. If your water supply is a shallow well, notice the location of the supply pipe. If it extends to within four or five feet of the top, some sort of covering must be placed over the latter to prevent cold winter winds searching it out. A cover of wall board with a small opening for ventilation is easily fitted to it and will avert later trouble. It is far from amusing to awake some zero morning and find the house without water because the well pipe has frozen. It can be thawed with a blow pipe but that means calling a plumber or a handy man who happens to have a tool of this sort. One such experience will keep you from forgetting or neglecting to provide a well cover. Similarly, if you are in doubt whether the pipes from water source to house are below the frost line, a carpet of leaves about two inches thick on top of the ground along the course of the water pipe, will obviate any such unhappy event. Thawing a frozen pipe plainly visible in the well is child's play compared to the task of arguing with any underground. Once, such pipes had to wait for nature. Today, they can be thawed very skillfully with special electrical equipment, but not cheaply. The standard charge ranges from $20 up, mostly the latter. The family living in the country will also find that cold weather puts a great strain on the automobile. A car that has worked perfectly all summer simply refuses to start, and the storage battery that operates the self-starter is exhausted and powerless. The sensible course is to have the car put in condition for winter before the first cold snap congeals the crank-case oil. Replace the latter with one of lighter grade; have the radiator filled with a good anti-freeze in sufficient quantity so that you will be safe on the coldest days against the hazard of a frozen radiator; have the ignition system thoroughly overhauled and new spark points put in the distributor. Most important of all, get a new storage battery if the one you have is more than a few months old. This course of action saves annoyance, is better for the automobile, and less expensive than calling for garage help some abnormally cold morning when many others are also in trouble and you must wait your turn. Don't take just anybody's advice when changing to lighter and more freely flowing motor oil. Go to the service station handling the make of car you drive and have it done there. They will know which is the right grade. We once almost ruined a car by following a layman's advice. With our own hands we refilled the crank case with oil that was rated as S.A.E. 10 and was perfect for the light car of our well-intentioned adviser. Unhappily the lightest suitable for our make and model was S.A.E. 20, practically twice as heavy. Fortunately we burned no bearings before our error was discovered and so learned a valuable lesson more cheaply than we deserved. Keeping the radiator protected against freezing is not complicated. Nearly any filling station has the necessary hydrometer. To be sure the anti-freeze liquid has not evaporated unduly, have the radiator contents tested about once in two weeks, particularly after several days of abnormally warm weather. For real safety, it is wise to have any automobile radiator filled with enough of the compound so that its freezing point is fully ten degrees colder than the lowest temperature expected. There are two reasons for this margin. It allows for a slight percentage of evaporation and for a certain peculiarity of country highways. There are sometimes points on the road where, for some reason, the actual temperature is a full five degrees colder than elsewhere. We have seen many cars steaming and boiling in such places. We have once or twice been in the same unhappy situation and know that thawing a radiator so frozen is slow work, requiring blankets and plenty of patience. A word as to the clothing especially designed for the cold of the country. Wool-lined mittens may seem to hark back to sleighbells and buffalo robes, but driving a spirited span hitched to a cutter was a summer occupation compared to steering an unheated automobile ten miles on a below zero morning with ordinary gloves. Mittens are not graceful but in them the fingers are not confined and therefore do not chill as quickly. Further, do not scorn the good old-fashioned arctics. Get the high four-buckle kind. They afford real protection against cold and snow and a pair lasts for several years, particularly in the sections of the country where snow and abnormally cold weather are intermittent. Sweaters and woolen mufflers should also be part of the added equipment, for nothing makes for such misery as getting thoroughly chilled for lack of adequate outside clothing. A walk or a drive becomes then just an endurance test. We have one last warning. The mitten and overshoe theory may seem to you but a sad sign of approaching age and debility--and so none of them for you. Granted they are not needed except for abnormal weather, some bitter cold evening you may arrive home with fingers, or ears, or toes frostbitten. Don't under such circumstances go into a warm room before you have thawed them with snow and vigorous massage. When you do go into the warm atmosphere continue to treat the bite with cloths wrung out in ice water. Otherwise, this simple winter casualty may be as serious and painful as a bad burn. KEEPING HOME FIRES IN THEIR PLACE [Illustration] _CHAPTER XV_ KEEPING HOME FIRES IN THEIR PLACE In the good old days before the United States had a record of one fire every minute of the twenty-four hours, grandfather and his father before him considered that a good citizen paid his poll tax, served on juries, and patrolled his home for fire. Going to bed without banking fires in stoves and fireplaces was unthinkable. The rest of the household also had a proper respect for lighted candles and other possible fire breeders. Of course, under this simpler mode of living, light and heat were generated within view and what is seen cannot be readily ignored. Then came the development of modern household conveniences. Furnaces and steam plants took heating below stairs; electricity replaced candles, lamps, and gas fixtures; and the old cook stove gave way to modern ranges of various sorts. The safer and easier the devices, the more human vigilance relaxed. Today, of our half billion dollar fire loss annually, one-fifth of it occurs in the country, and over sixty per cent of residential fires start in the cellar. Of course, every home has certain fire hazards but they can be reduced to the minimum by a few elemental improvements and precautions. Some call for slight additions to the house equipment; others are simply the old-fashioned art of self-fire policing. This program of little things starts in the cellar and ends in the attic. Here is the list. Don't let piles of rubbish and papers accumulate in cellar, attic, closets, and like places. Provide a metal container with hinged cover for storing inflammable polishes, cleaning fluids, chemically treated dust cloths, mops, oily cloths, and the like. Make sure they are put there when not in use, instead of being tossed into some convenient "glory hole." Use metal containers also for hot ashes and the daily accumulation of papers and trash. Be certain that electric wiring fuses are in good order. Pennies behind burned-out fuses are a misuse of good money in more ways than one. Inspect the cords of all electrical appliances and portable lamps. If they are frayed or broken, replace them. Speaking of appliances, the simple flat-iron in the hands of a careless or absent-minded person probably causes more fires than all the other more complicated work-savers combined. For stage-struck Seventeen, then, moodily pressing her pink organdy while mentally sweeping a triumphant course through a crowded ballroom in a sophisticated black model from Paris; or for dark-hued Martha who thumps out on a luckless shirt the damage she plans to inflict on a certain Pullman porter when he shows up at her back door again, provide an iron that cannot over-heat. With a thermostat that turns current on and off, it and the ironing board can remain forgotten for hours. The electric light company may benefit but no fire will result. Equip fireplaces with screens that fit. If the hearth has begun to disintegrate from many fires, it is time to renew it as well as loose mortar. Mount stoves or Franklin fireplaces on metal-covered, asbestos-lined bases. Don't put a rug over the register of the pipeless furnace. It will cause dangerous over-heating and the effect will be disastrous rather than decorative. Be sure no draperies are near open flames such as candles and portable heaters. If you have gas or keep any quantity of kerosene or gasoline, don't examine containers by match or candlelight. Use an electric flashlight and turn it on _before_ going near such explosives. These dangers may seem obvious but it is astonishing how many times that faulty mechanism known as the genus homo has been guilty of just such follies. If rubbish is burned on the grounds, use an incinerator. It keeps loose papers from blowing around and starting an incipient blaze in some cherished shrubbery or in the grass itself. I once lost a fine row of small pine trees in such a manner. They would have provided an ample screen from the main highway, had I exercised a little care with my miniature bonfire. Install portable fire extinguishers. They are inexpensive. One to each floor with an extra one for kitchen and cellar is good fire insurance. Be sure every member of the family knows how to use them. Nearly all fires start in a small way and a shot or two of liquid from one of these machines usually extinguishes any but the most stubborn blaze. Sometimes, however, outside help is needed. So post the number of the nearest fire department prominently near the telephone. Make sure every one knows where to call, what to say, and how to give clear and distinct road directions. These are little things. Yet houses have gone up in smoke for want of their application. I know of one instance where a competent but city-bred house man was sent to open a country house for the summer. In the course of the day an oil stove in the kitchen was lighted. The man went to get some drinking water. He returned less than five minutes later to find a corner of the room was in flames. There was no extinguisher at hand and his bucket of water was as nothing. There was a telephone in the house and a fire department equipped with a high-powered chemical machine was less than six miles away. Unhappily the man neither knew of its existence nor how to direct it to the place. By the time he had found help and the department had finally been summoned, it was too late. Neighbors and firemen alike could only look on at a magnificent bonfire, piously lamenting the loss, of course, but getting a vicarious pleasure out of the spectacle. As an example of foolhardiness on the part of the owner it is perhaps beyond comment. Against it I know of another family that goes to the other extreme. In addition to taking the fire precautions suggested here, they have tacked a small typewritten notice on the back of the front door. It reads: "STOP Is the furnace checked Is the water heater out Is the range turned off Is the oil heater upstairs out" This little evidence of fire-policing has amused many of their guests, but their house is still standing and the fire insurance inspector performs his annual duties in a perfunctory manner after reading it. Unless there are glaring defects in chimney construction, electric wiring, or furnace flues, these simple details and a reasonable amount of old-fashioned caution will practically keep home fires in their place. For those who wish to cut the fire hazard still further there are more elaborate precautions that involve some rebuilding and renovation. Whether any or all of them are advisable is a matter for the owner and his architect to decide. [Illustration: AN IMPOSING COUNTRY HOME OF CLASSIC DIGNITY _Robertson Ward, architect_. _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_] If a fireproof cellar is wanted, cover the ceiling with metal lath and a good cement plaster. This should extend up the stairway, and the cellar door should be of fire resisting construction. Firestopping all exterior walls and interior partitions not only cuts down fire risk but adds greatly to insulation from both heat and cold. Fires that originate in the cellar frequently travel upward in the dead-air spaces behind lath plaster. For houses already built, the best means is to pack the walls with pulverized asbestos. There are contractors who specialize in this work and have equipment for doing the job quickly with minimum cutting and inconvenience. An electric fire detector in the cellar acts much like a burglar alarm. There are several now on the market. The principle on which they work is thermostatic. Sensitive to increased heat, an alarm bell sounds the moment fire develops. The White House has one of the most elaborate systems of this sort, which was installed shortly after the executive office fire of a few years ago. Checking chimneys comes next after leaving the cellar. All chimneys should rest on a solid foundation in the ground. Those carried on wooden beams are never safe. The normal settling will produce dangerous cracks in the joints of the brickwork. Likewise, unused stove-pipe holes should be closed with bricks and mortar cement. Chimneys connected with open fireplaces ought to be equipped with spark arresters. These are simply bronze or brass wire of sufficiently fine mesh to catch any sparks. Placed at the top, they also serve to discourage chimney swallows from nesting in the throat of an old-fashioned chimney, to the doubtful pleasure of the occupants of the house. For the roof there are slate and non-burnable shingles as well as a system by which weather boarding under wooden shingles can be replaced with panels of fireproof plaster sheathing. If there is any doubt regarding the condition of electric wiring it will be real economy to have a licensed electrician inspect it and replace any which is obsolete or not in accord with insurance regulations. Also, if steam or hot water pipes go through flooring or are close to the wooden trim, there should be at least three-quarters of an inch clearance. Otherwise, the heat dries and carbonizes the wood. Then slight additional heat may produce spontaneous combustion. Then there are more elaborate rebuilding projects such as installing a fire sprinkler system in the cellar. A built-in incinerator located in the cellar with chute opening in the kitchen is excellent for the immediate disposal of trash and rubbish. Two stairways connecting living and bedroom floors are always better than one. Either stairway should be accessible to any bedroom. An emergency doorway will make this possible. If the garage is attached to the house it should be lined with a fire resisting material. Metal lath and plaster or a good grade of plaster wall board is preferred. The door between house and garage should, of course, be fire resisting and self closing. There is one other refinement which the country house owner may take into consideration, especially if he happens to own an historic old house. That is the installation of a system of perforated pipes in the dead air spaces behind all walls connected with storage tanks of carbon dioxide under pressure. If a fire breaks out, turning on this system will flood the house with a gas that will smother all flame. Mount Vernon is a notable example of a house so equipped. So much for the more or less man-produced fire hazards. There is, however, the occasional fire that comes down from heaven. The National Board of Fire Underwriters has proved by careful investigation that a properly installed and maintained system of lightning rods will give a house ninety-eight per cent protection. It does not prevent the building from being struck, but it does provide an easy and direct path to earth for the lightning discharge, thus preventing damage and destruction. This has nothing to do with the old school of lightning rod salesmen trained in medicine show methods. Proper equipment and competent men working under inspection by the Underwriters Laboratories are now available. Incidentally, radio antennae should be properly grounded and have an approved lightning arrester. There is one more possibility of disaster from lightning. Ordinary wire fencing mounted on wooden posts can become so highly charged with electricity during a thunder storm that no living thing is safe within thirty feet of it. Proper grounding is again the remedy and is relatively simple. At every fifth post an iron stake should be driven deep enough to reach permanent moisture. Connect this to the fencing by a wire tightly wrapped around the stake and each strand of the fencing. This causes the electricity generated during a storm to escape harmlessly into the ground, just as it does through the cables of a properly installed set of lightning rods. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG [Illustration] _CHAPTER XVI_ WHEN THINGS GO WRONG With life in the country, there are times when the innate perverseness of the inanimate asserts itself. For one accustomed to city conditions this is almost a paralyzing experience. There is no apartment house superintendent to call on, no repairman just around the corner. In itself it may be very simple; but what to do, how to do it and with what tools, unless you have gone through the mill, is soul-searing. So, almost as soon as you have established your sources of food and fuel, address yourself to the problem of discovering the neighborhood handy man. Not all men of the usual mechanical trades can qualify. Such a jewel must have native ingenuity, really enjoy coping with sudden emergencies and, like the old-fashioned country doctor, be possessed of a temperament that accepts sudden calls for help as part of the day's work. He may have planned to take his family to the village moving picture show; but if your plumbing has sprung a leak, your pump has suddenly ceased to function, or any one of a dozen other contingencies has arisen, nothing is so comforting as his assurance that "he'll be right over." You know that within a reasonable time this physician to things mechanical will arrive in his somewhat battered automobile with an assortment of tools and supplies adequate for the majority of minor domestic crises. Sometimes he can repair the damage permanently then and there. Sometimes his service is of a temporary nature to tide your household over until the proper correction can be accomplished either by him or some other artisan whose specialty it is. At the moment this makes little difference. Several summers ago, our water supply failed most inconsiderately just at dinner time. There was plenty of water in the well and the electric pump was functioning but the storage tank was bone dry. What was wrong was beyond our understanding. Worst of all, our village plumber could not be reached even by a fairly resourceful country telephone central. We called our handy man and were greeted by a cheery if long suffering, "What's the matter _now_?" We told him and most assuringly he replied, "Sounds like foot valve trouble. I'll be right over soon as I finish supper." And he was as good as his word. Half an hour later he was listening to a pump that could not lure water from well to tank. Then he went down the well and, without aid, came up with the supply pipe. "Here's your trouble. Leather of the foot valve's gone. I'll just cut another." He dived into the rear seat of his car and returned with a square of sole leather. Using the old leather as a pattern he cut a new one with a sharp jack knife and before dark the supply pipe was back in place and the artificial drought was broken. Thanks to the skill and willingness of this all-essential neighborhood personage, there was once more water for dishwashing and family needs. This is but one instance of how he has come to our rescue and through the years taught us many things that we can now do for ourselves. Although not over-skillful with tools and things mechanical, we have learned that doing them is sometimes the quickest and easiest way out of our difficulties. Some, of course, were beyond the limits of our simple abilities but we hereby enumerate some twenty of the more common difficulties that may arise inopportunely with country living, and what to do about them. A sudden break in electric service leaves your house dark. The answer to this is a supply of candles and one or two kerosene lamps filled and ready for use, as well as at least one electric flashlight, in working order and hung in its appointed place. Often before the various lamps are assembled and lighted, electricity will again be available; but if service is interrupted for several hours, as occasionally happens with a serious break in the line or real trouble at the power house, you will have cause to bless the auxiliary lighting. Having it to depend on just once will well repay the trouble of making it available. Be sure, also, that you have at least one complete set of extra fuses to repair the damage of a short circuit caused by defective appliances or lamp cords. Never, never put a penny into a fuse socket. Next to light, the most important creature comfort is water and plenty of it. The most common causes of failure lie with the pump itself. If one of the deep well type gets out of adjustment, repairing it is a professional job and unless you are unusually expert, don't attempt it. Telephone for a plumber or handy man. But with the shallow well pump, you can, in a pinch, replace the leathers that make the valves exert the proper suction. In any case, it is good sense to have an extra set of the leathers always on hand. Near our own pump there is a glass preserving jar half full of neat's-foot oil and, pickling in it, a spare set of pump leathers just waiting for something to happen. We also have a box of assorted faucet washers. It is over a year since we have had to replace one; but when a faucet suddenly refuses to close, we know where the proper valve is located so that we can shut off the water long enough to replace the troublesome washer, usually the work of a few minutes. Then there is the heating system. Here the most common demonstration of temperament is sulkiness on a heavy damp day. In any event, provided the fire is free from clinkers, we have a standard remedy. An average-sized electric fan is placed before the open ash pit door. Set in motion, its breeze provides a forced draft and, in from fifteen minutes to half an hour, our furnace fire is once more glowing and throwing out heat. Also, the country house owner, who discovers that furnace or fireplace flues which have heretofore functioned properly are smoking, should investigate the circumstances without delay. The troublesome flue may only need cleaning, or a dislodged brick or other obstacle may have blocked it. Whatever the cause, the chimney should have immediate attention, for excess soot is the common cause of chimney fires. If an excess odor of coal gas indicates that the fumes are filling the cellar instead of going up the chimney, open the hatchway and as many windows as possible. Then check the furnace completely. Investigate the cause of the trouble and you will find that the smoke pipe connecting the furnace and chimney is out of place. Don't try to replace the dislocated pipe until the cellar is thoroughly aired, for furnace fumes can be almost as deadly as those exhausted by an automobile, for the same reason, the presence of carbon monoxide gas. So when working on the pipe be careful to retreat out of doors on the slightest feeling of faintness or other disturbing symptom. The safest way is not to attempt to replace the smoke pipe until the furnace fire is out. There are one or two other things down cellar that can go awry when least expected. One of the most common is flooding caused by abnormally heavy rains and leaks in foundation walls. Look first for these where the pipes from the eaves, known as down-spouts, reach the ground. Provide dry wells, troughs, or other means to carry this rain water away from the foundation. After your cellar flood has either evaporated or been pumped out and the foundation walls are dry inside and out, repair the cracks through which this water trickled, as well as others that might have contributed to the trouble. Use a rich cement to which has been added the proper amount of water-proofing chemical. One cannot be over-zealous in this, for a flooded or even damp cellar is always a hazard. Under no circumstances attempt to turn on electric lights if you are standing where it is wet or damp. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred all that can happen is a mild electric shock but there is always the one chance in thousands that by so doing you may be your own electrocutioner. It is safest to have all cellar lights controlled by one or more switches at the head of the cellar stairs; but if there is a light that must be turned on in the cellar itself, leave it alone under conditions of standing water and be sure the fault is rectified before the next heavy rain can cause a repetition. Just as storms can make trouble below stairs, roof and eaves may develop faults. Where the roof is of wooden shingles, one of the usual causes of leaks is a cracked shingle. When this chances to be directly above a slight space left in laying the roof for expansion between the shingles of the next course, rain, instead of flowing off the roof, runs through this crack and wet plaster results. This does not mean that the roof must be re-laid if otherwise tight and sound. Get a sheet of roofing tin or copper, locate the troublesome crack, and gently insert a piece of the sheet metal, trimmed to the right size, beneath the cracked shingle. Properly done, you should not find it necessary to nail the piece of sheet metal because the shingles themselves will hold it in place. While making this repair, be careful not to walk on the roof more than is absolutely necessary. Your weight and the pressure of your feet may crack other shingles. It is better to work from a ladder. This should have a large iron hook that will catch on the ridgeboard and keep it from slipping. It also distributes the weight of the man making the repair. Sometimes eaves, instead of providing drainage and conducting rain from the roof to ground, work in the reverse. The dampened plaster of the interior side walls soon betrays this. When these spots appear it is probable that the opening where the down-spout joins the eaves-trough is clogged with leaves and small twigs. Remove this plug that has gradually accumulated round the strainer and once more rain water will flow merrily and noisily down the spout. Also, in winters of unusually heavy snowfalls and cold weather, if the eaves-troughs are hung too close to the edge of the roof or have not sufficient slope for rapid drainage, the snow on the roof melts, drips to the eaves-trough, and freezes before it can flow away. Eventually some of this moisture creeps beneath the shingles and makes ugly damp patches on the plaster beneath. Immediate relief can be had by mounting a ladder, clearing the trough of the ice, and thawing the frozen down-spout with salt and kettles of hot water. Later, the permanent remedy is to have a practical roofer rehang and adjust the eaves-troughs. Because of the very nature of winter weather, there are other distressing things that may happen to make life in the country just a little bit less enjoyable. The first of these is the possibility of an old-fashioned blizzard that may block roads and cut off the country dweller from the usual source of supplies. Before the days of the automobile, one could travel roads several feet deep in snow with horse and sleigh. An automobile has its limits and is more or less impotent in more than two feet of snow on a road unbroken by a powerful plow. So, if the oldest inhabitants can remember the winter of 18-- "when we had snow to the top of the fence posts," it is a wise precaution to have an emergency supply of canned foods on hand. In February, 1934, we were snowbound for three days but lived in comfort, thanks to a minimum reserve supply and, by a happy coincidence, liberal marketing done the morning the storm began. Several neighbors took to snowshoes and skis and so made their way to the nearest store to replenish essentials like milk, meat, eggs and the like. Winter sports are a great institution, but trudging two miles for a quart of milk across a countryside waist deep in newly fallen snow is too great a mixture of business and pleasure. Similarly, a medicine cabinet stocked with the primary remedies, and a physician whom you know sufficiently so that you consult him by telephone, are wise precautions against sudden crises of weather or health. Of course, if a member of your family is seriously ill, your doctor will come with all haste when summoned. But he is a busy man who often works from before breakfast until nearly midnight covering unbelievable distances in his automobile. So, if you can report illness clearly, give exact symptoms, and have a stock of the simple medicines that you can administer as he directs, both the sick person and the physician gain. Present-day country doctors show their appreciation for such cooperation by the speed with which they reach patients whose symptoms indicate more than a minor ailment. But all the emergencies of country life are not serious even though they call for action. There are scores of little things that the house owner can do for himself. Take rats and mice. They will get into the most carefully built and best run house. When this happens it is a matter of either traps or the new scientific poison baits that domestic pets will not eat. There is also the old farm method of mixing equal parts of plaster of Paris and corn meal, an entree harmless in itself but with fatal results for the invading rodent. In summer there is the possibility of a plague of ants. For this there is now a cheap and scientific liquid bait that works rapidly. In summer, also, come those occasional nights of abnormal heat when no breeze stirs. Bedrooms stay hot and sleep is difficult. For this, set an electric fan on the floor of each room, pointed toward the ceiling, with a chair before it to serve as a barricade. The current of air so produced dislodges the hot air in the room that is above the level of the window openings and also provides a mild breeze that does not blow directly on a sleeper. By actual tests with an accurate thermometer, the temperature of a bedroom can be lowered a full five degrees. It is this difference between 80 and 85 degrees that can make an otherwise stifling night bearable enough for refreshing sleep. Also at the time you want it most, usually with the house full of week-end guests, the hot water supply turns tepid. The means of heating the water is functioning properly but the storage tank is cold. When this happens, unless all water piping is of copper or brass, the chances are better than even that your tank is clogged with rusty sediment. This does not mean a new tank. It is just a matter of draining and flushing until most, if not all, of the sediment is washed out. Turn off the pipe that supplies heater and tank. Then with garden hose attached to the faucet at the base of the tank, drain out all the water that will come. For a thorough job unscrew this faucet and the piece of pipe connecting it to the tank. Then turn on the water supply quickly for two or three minutes at a time so that a sudden flow of clean water disturbs the sediment. At first it may be almost as thick as a heavy soup but gradually the water will become clearer. When it is normal you can replace pipe and faucet, relight the water heater, and forget your hot water supply for at least a year. Of course, it is better to undertake this chore when you are without company, but one must have hot water and, at that, the operation should not take over an hour. Perhaps some of the guests will be big hearted and offer to help. A plaster ceiling appears to fall without warning. Actually, if you are observant, weak spots can be detected before they reach the falling stage. A slight bulge that gives if you press it upward gently with the fingers is an unfailing indication that the plaster has begun to loosen and that possibly the laths beneath are also loose. The best method of correcting this is, of course, to engage a plasterer. He will remove what is loose and probably much more. Then, having replaced the defective or old lath, he will re-plaster and a properly finished job will result. There is, however, another course of action. It is neither permanent nor as good but it will bridge a gap when the family exchequer can ill afford the luxury of a plasterer and his helper. This is an old farm method of economical stop-gap repair. Take some new coarse muslin. Make a strong solution of glue sizing; wash the calcimine or whitewash from the ceiling where it is weak; paint with a coat of the size; and when it is almost dry, spread the muslin on like ceiling paper having first dipped it in the size. When the cloth is dry, re-calcimine the ceiling. Such work is not according to the best standards of journeyman work but we have known a ceiling so strengthened to remain in place for some years. This unorthodox trick was taught us by the neighborhood handy man whose praises we sang earlier. Another was the practice of binding a water pipe, that had developed a tiny pin-hole leak, with the black sticky fabric known as friction tape used by electricians. It held for half a year until it was more convenient, financially and otherwise, to have our plumber replace the leaking pipe. Incidentally, knowing how to thaw a water pipe that has, as countrymen say, "just caught," on some abnormally cold night is also an accomplishment of ingenuity. Too much heat applied too rapidly can crack a pipe. So such work should be done in moderation. Be sure the faucet of the stopped pipe is open. Then, locate the spot by sense of feel. It will be much colder than the rest of the pipe. First try wrapping it in cloths wrung out in hot water. If this does not produce results, gently pour steaming but not boiling water on the pipe from a teakettle. Stop after a minute or two to let the applied heat become effective. If necessary, repeat several times. For stubborn cases, an electric heater directed at the frozen spot can be used effectively. When hunting for the seat of trouble look at the spot where the pipe comes through the floor. A crack between flooring and baseboard may be the air leak that has caused the trouble. Next examine the pipe along an exterior wall or in the direct range of a window. Frozen pipes concealed in partition walls, unless they are accessible through a panel of removable woodwork, are not for the amateur. They are for a plumber who will know how to reach the trouble without doing other damage. Many are the expedients that life in the country and friendly chats with your own handy man can teach you. Some of them you will discover for yourself, for necessity, the mother of invention and country living, often presents minor emergencies that the house owner must meet and conquer for himself. That is part of the fun of living in the country. You have escaped the stereotyped city where such things are the concern of apartment house superintendents. In the country it is each man for himself. WORKING WITH NATURE [Illustration] _CHAPTER XVII_ WORKING WITH NATURE In the home owner's dream of country life, green lawns, rose gardens, and shady terraces have loomed large; but in the actual fulfillment, his house has of necessity come first. Beyond a sketchy clearing up of the most obvious debris, he may well come to the end of his first summer with practically nothing done to the grounds themselves. This is not entirely a disadvantage. It has been shown how too much may be done to a house in the first fervor of remodeling or restoration. It is the same with the land surrounding it. The old adage, "Begin as you can hold out," is an excellent rule to follow. One of the advantages gained by living in an area just beyond the suburban fringe is that one's two, five, or ten acres may be developed as much or as little as one desires or can pay for. This holds whether you have built a new house in the middle of a former pasture or have restored an old one with grounds well developed but long neglected. [Illustration: SKILLFUL PLANTING OF TREES, SHRUBS, AND FLOWERS MAKE THE SETTING _Photo by Samuel H. Gottscho_. _Robertson Ward, architect_] Of course, you will not lack for advice from friends and acquaintances, most of the people who have never grown anything more extensive than a window box. They will tell you that the old lawn that has withstood the tread of feet for more than a century is uneven and must be plowed under, re-graded, and a special kind of lawn-grass sown. The driveway is all wrong, too. Turn it back into lawn and build a new one winding through the field to the left where the family cow was once pastured. They are also kind enough to suggest that a plowing, grading, and seeding of this additional acre or so will give you a piece of greensward worth having. A lily pool and sun dial garden would go nicely over there to the east, and how about that hollow place over in the south corner for a swimming pool? All this and much more can be suggested but it is surprising how little of it is practical. Even long neglected grounds seldom require as thorough a job of face lifting. A lawn free of hollows is difficult to achieve and almost impossible to maintain. Nature does not do things that way, so work with her rather than against her. It is surprising how old and seemingly worn-out grounds respond to kind treatment. Study them first before doing anything. Take stock of existing trees, shrubs and the like. Notice the contour of the land. Then make a simple landscaping plan. This, well thought out, will give direction to the eventual development of the plot of ground you have in mind. Work gradually. If you are reclaiming an old place, remember the original owner did not achieve everything in a week or a year. Nature cannot be hurried. It is true that, if one desires shade trees and cannot wait for them to grow, experts can bring full-grown ones from their nurseries and plant them in the positions you designate. Such practices run into money, however, and would hardly come within the average family budget. Let us suppose that the home owner finds himself in possession of a house of uncertain age and between ten and twenty acres of land. Unless he is prepared to maintain a miniature conservation corps, he will not attempt to keep over two acres in active cultivation. Even with those he will not push back the wilderness in one season. The first step is a careful inspection of the grounds around the house. If they have been neglected for years, he may find practically anything except grass growing. If the average tenant farmer has lived there any length of time, the area at the back lying at easy tossing distance from the back door may contain a wealth of tin cans, bottles, broken dishes, and other debris. These, of course, must all be picked up and either carried away by the rubbish collector or otherwise disposed of. We have read of clever people who managed to persuade members of their family and any visiting friends that such an undertaking could be made into a sort of treasure hunt and one's grounds cleaned painlessly and without added expense. It did not work with our family. A cache of twenty-five fine rusty cans nestling under the lilacs elicited nothing beyond a mild query as to the likelihood of lily of the valley thriving in the spot. So we hired the man whose family had spent ten long years accumulating the debris, to clean the half acre surrounding the house and he made a very neat workmanlike job of it. Afterward he commented on the improved appearance, especially of the back yard. "Yes, it looks considerable better," he said, "but of course I couldn't keep it that way. I'm a poor man and my time is worth sixty cents an hour. I can't afford to spend any of it picking up after myself." His philosophy is apparently not uncommon and one may expect to find anything on the land from rusty scythe blades to broken down farm wagons and automobiles. After these have been removed the place will look decidedly improved even though a mossy growth under the maples denotes sour soil, and burdocks and milkweed in the back indicate good soil gone wrong. Along with ridding the grounds of rubbish comes the question of what to do with the various outbuildings. Those that can be put to practical use should be repaired and their foundations pointed up. Any others should be torn down as a dilapidated structure of any sort is not only unsightly but a breeding place for rats. As this ordinary cleaning and furbishing progresses, the new owner begins to get really acquainted with his place and discover what exists in the line of shrubs, trees, and vines. There may even be a few flowers that have survived years of neglect. If he is wise, he will prune and preserve all these as a nucleus. Around them he can build his general landscaping plan. Preserve old trees wherever possible. Even those that appear so stricken by age and neglect as to be ready for firewood often take on a new lease of life after a good tree surgeon has ministered to them. A long neglected lawn, or even a field that has been allowed to run to tall grass, can be reclaimed quite simply. Go over it early in the spring with a heavy roller to get rid of minor hollows and general unevenness. Thin, worn spots, where it is obvious that no grass has grown for years, should be fortified with a load or two of good top soil, rolled and planted to grass seed. Other spots, usually under shade trees where there is the mossy growth of sour soil, should be sprinkled liberally with lime. Repeated treatments will soon correct this condition and grass can again be made to grow there. As soon as the grass is of proper length begin to cut it with the lawn mower. Also, continued applications of the weighted iron roller throughout the spring will gradually improve the general contour and make for smoothness and ease in lawn mowing. This is strenuous work both for the lawn mower and the person operating it. The former will probably be nearly worn out by the end of the summer, so in choosing this tool get a good but not too elaborate one. Later, when the grounds are in good condition will be time enough to indulge in the better grades of hand or even power driven lawn mowers. Likewise, we do not recommend the task of either rolling or breaking in a lawn to a man who has led a sedentary life for years. It will be cheaper in the long run to engage a muscular individual in the locality who understands and is accustomed to such work. Whether such an one is engaged by the hour, day, week or year, we would add a word of warning based on our own blundering experiences. Beyond being sober, honest, and willing, make sure he is strong enough for such heavy work, that he is reasonably intelligent and, most important of all, that he is not "working to accommodate." The latter is frequently voiced by members of decadent native families who resent the curse of Adam and like to assume that any gesture toward the hated thing, called work, is purely voluntary rather than necessary. If these words fall from the lips of a man you are considering for odd jobs and tilling of the soil, leave him severely alone and look for a good energetic individual who knows he was made to work and is glad of it. Otherwise, the "accommodating" one will condescendingly show up for work an hour late, regard you with a pitying smile as you outline the job, and then allow that of course you are the boss but you are going at it all wrong. When, after lengthy discussion of how an intelligent country-born person would arrange matters, he senses that the evil moment of going to work can no longer be put off, he directs his lagging steps to the spot where the tools are waiting. These he regards with blackest pessimism. His attitude is that only a city moron would provide such poor things but, of course, he will do the best he can with them. In the course of the day he gets a little work done but in such sketchy fashion that most of it must be done over. Nor does he improve as the days go by. When you decide to part with him, probably soon after your first inspection of his work, you will get a fresh shock at the size of his bill. Such people have an exaggerated idea of the value of their services. It is difficult to get them to name a price at the beginning; and in the rare cases where a set sum is agreed upon, the final reckoning will invariably include certain extras or a plaint that "the job was different than you claimed and I don't do heavy work like that for nobody without I get extra pay and I was just working to accommodate--" and so forth. Usually you end by paying him and charging it off to experience. This does not mean that there is no good local labor. It is just a matter of determining which man is actually "a good worker" and which would rather lean on a hoe and tell how the country ought to be run. You can avoid much labor turnover and unsatisfactory work if you first ask a few questions of substantial members of the countryside who are in the habit of employing such men and therefore know their good and bad points. One man may be strong and willing but so stupid and clumsy that he destroys more than he earns; another may be deft, ingenious, have an uncanny way with flowers and vegetables, but yet have such an utter lack of responsibility that one cannot depend on him for any length of time. Assuming then that a good, dependable man has been found who understands and has a liking for the soil, the task of helping nature to bring out the best in your grounds progresses to those parts afflicted by such rank weeds as burdocks, thistles, milkweed, poison ivy and the like. Weeds with the long tap root like burdock and yellow dock can be eliminated best with a mattock. With one sharp blow, cut the root two or three inches below the surface. Then pull up the top and toss it aside where it will wither in the sun. What is left in the ground also dies and will not sprout. A Canadian thistle is really a handsome sight especially in full bloom but it is a thoroughly unpleasant weed and must be eradicated. Dig up each plant with a spading fork or sharp shovel and leave it to wither in the July sun, its roots shaken free of earth. Milkweed is persistent but will finally yield if the stalks are consistently pulled up as soon as they are three or four inches tall. For poison ivy there is one preliminary. Be sure you are not one of the people readily susceptible to its poison. If you are, leave this luxuriant parasite alone and let some one else struggle with it. Its poison is most virulent in the spring when the leaves are just unfolding. Later in the summer it is not so treacherous. Tearing it up by the roots, burning over old stone fences infected with it, keep it from overrunning a place; but the most satisfactory method of eradicating is to sprinkle the vines with sodium arsenite. This, by tests at various agricultural stations, has lately been found a sure means of killing this most unpleasant of all vegetable pests that infect the countryside. Along with getting a reasonable expanse of green grass, the simple landscaping plan already referred to should be kept in mind. If you have but a vague idea concerning this and, as time goes on, tend to become more confused and undecided as to what kind of flowers, shrubs, and vines would be most suitable or how they should be arranged, consult the best nurseryman in your vicinity, if he has not already visited you. All of the larger nurseries now have on their staffs experienced landscape architects. Many of them are recent graduates of the recognized schools in this field and, for the asking, you can have a simple landscape plan for your grounds. Such nurseries do this, of course, in expectation that if the plan is accepted the needed small trees, shrubs, and hardy perennials will be bought of them. In fact, when the plan is submitted, it will probably be accompanied by a tentative list of the needed plants. These you can buy either delivered ready for planting, or a somewhat higher price will include this service by men from the nursery. In the latter case, the nursery usually guarantees that everything supplied will live for a year or be replaced without charge. Personally, we have found that the nearer home we bought nursery stock, the better were its chances of living and thriving. There is no adjustment to different climatic conditions and such plants and shrubs are only a very short time out of the soil before they are planted in your grounds either by you or the man sent from the nursery. Nearly always they put their roots down and continue growing with little or no interruption. The matters of gardens, flower beds, and borders again depend on the contour of the land and how it can best be related to the house. Further, unless you are well versed in gardening, it is best to get advice as to the flowers and plants that thrive best in a given spot. It is discouraging to lay out a rose garden or a modest border of hardy climbers and find you have picked just the wrong place for them to thrive. It is the same with certain perennials. Rock gardens are most picturesque and lend themselves to a large variety of hardy and interesting plants. The most successful are those where nature supplies the framework. One of the loveliest we ever saw had originally been a pigsty. Halfway up a hillside two large boulders jutted out and below them a rocky formation descended in shelf-like steps to a level surface. Ingenious planting and patient care transformed this into a mass of color and bloom that has been admired for miles. Its owner has gradually expanded it and has even added rocks dug from a neighboring field. The farmer who supplied them shook his head resignedly. "Well, I've lived in these parts a long time and seen plenty of queer things. I can understand paying a man to dig out rocks but this is the first time I was ever asked to dump them on good land." The formal garden is usually part of the development of the very ambitious country estate. Such grounds are the result of plans prepared by a practicing landscape architect, engaged on a fee basis as with other architects. According to the arrangements he will prepare the plans or he will also supervise their execution. While there are some remarkable formal gardens in America, beautifully designed and kept in perfect condition by skillful gardeners engaged by the year, most homes do not have such sophisticated settings. Popular indeed is an area of well-kept lawn surrounded by naturalistic plantings of trees, shrubs, and hedges that give privacy and frame the whole. Add to this borders of flowering plants, annuals and perennials, and from spring to late fall such a spot becomes an outdoor living room. Here the family spends most of its time. Real enthusiasts eat many of their meals here. As for the vegetable garden, keep it small. The new country dweller's first garden is usually three times the size needed or that he can take care of. Vegetables have a way of either producing nothing or bearing in such abundance that the average family is swamped in plenty. Whether or not the excess is canned, depends on the time and energy of the housewife or her cook. With green vegetables now available the year around, there are two schools of thought as to the real economy of home canning. There is even plenty of controversy over the question of a family vegetable garden. Some hold that after the normal charges for fertilizer, seeds and labor are met, any vegetables that may result actually cost far more than if bought in the retail market. To this the pro-gardenites retort that the charges for seeds and fertilizer are small and that a certain amount of struggle with spade and hoe is good for a man who has spent all day in a stuffy office. Let him do his own spading, cultivating, and planting. A half hour or so every evening will keep the garden free of weeds and, in due time, vegetables fresh from the garden will result. They will be superior in flavor and will actually have cost less than even the largest chain stores can afford to sell them for. Out of ten years' experience, we can only state that both are right in a measure. Whether or not a vegetable garden pays, breaks even, or goes into the red, depends to a large degree on the owner himself. If he has a flair for making things grow and has a definite amount of time to devote to them, his garden will not only thrive but pay dividends. But if a business trip is imperative just at the time the garden should be planted, or some pressing engagement causes him to defer transplanting his cabbages and his tomato plants beyond the proper time, he must either get some one to take care of his garden or do without one. There is a lure, however, to having your own vegetables, so most of us close our eyes to any distressing figures on the household ledger and go ahead and have a garden anyway. One busy man compromises by having his garden prepared for planting by a local man of all work who also keeps his grass cut and his borders trimmed. Then he plants a few easily grown and tended vegetables, such as lettuce, parsley, string beans, carrots, spinach, crookneck squash, tomatoes, and corn. Around these, like a border, he plants showy annuals like zinnias, cosmos, calendula, marigolds and so forth. His garden is a colorful, attractive spot. He has vegetables for the table and plenty of flowers for cutting. The latter preclude any argument over whether his garden pays since, oddly enough, the subject of a flower garden never seems to take a mercenary turn. Distinct additions to the kitchen garden are an herb bed, a few rhubarb plants, and an asparagus bed. The latter, because it takes time to become established, seems difficult but laying out a proper bed is not so hard. Also, in two to three years the plants will have reached the stage where the larger stalks may be cut for consumption. At first this should be done judiciously in order not to kill the plants but after another year or two the bed will yield consistently. After it is well established, it provides the first home-grown vegetables of spring and bears for about six weeks. Afterwards all it requires is an occasional weeding and fall mulching with fertilizer and leaves. As for the tools that keep gardens and grounds in condition, a special shed is advisable. Don't try to keep them in a tool house or section given over to saws, planes, chisels and bits. They get in a hopeless jumble. Nothing is more discouraging than to go out to what should be a tidy little spot to do a bit of mending or minor job of carpentry and find earth encrusted garden trowels, weeders, and such gear scattered all over the work bench. The grit so adhering is fatal to sharp-edged tools, while sprays, dusting powders, and fertilizers give off fumes that rust them. We would also add a few kind words for the various berries and small fruits. Except for strawberries, which must be kept weeded and replanted periodically, berries are our ideal of easily cared for fruits. Raspberries, for instance, never become really cheap in the market because of their perishable nature. Yet with the very minimum of care, cutting out old canes after the bearing season is over and keeping weeds down with a mulch of hay, a comparatively small patch of red raspberries, within three years of planting, will produce all the fruit an average family can eat or be willing to pick. The other variety, known as "black caps," are no more trouble and equally prolific. These are at their best in pie and, for the pleasures of a succession of fresh black raspberry pies each summer, we heartily recommend planting a dozen canes at the same time that the red raspberry patch is started. Blackberry canes grow so rankly and bear such brutal thorns that the annual crop seems hardly worth the torn clothing and bad scratches that gathering them entails, especially as they are to be had at such reasonable prices in the average market. Blueberries are another matter. Three or four good bushes of the kind offered by most nurseries will keep the family in blueberry pie with little effort on the part of the person who gathers them. Currants and gooseberries are easily grown but have one serious fault. These bushes harbor plant pests that work havoc with evergreens and a number of the ornamental shrubs. For that reason we long ago eradicated any growing on our place. Then there are the various fruit trees, cherry, peach, pear, and apple. All of these, for a successful yield, require consistent care and pruning. They must be sprayed at certain seasons for scale and pest or the crop will be meager and poor. With dwarf trees now grown by all nurseries, proper care can be given with simple equipment and there is no doubt that home-grown fruits that are tree-ripened are sweeter and of fuller flavor than those that come from the market. So a few of these trees may well be an addition to your country place, but plant them knowing the care required. A grape arbor is a most attractive feature and since pruning can be done any pleasant winter day, the work of tending a few vines is so small as to be hardly worth considering. In September it is a real pleasure to stray past the arbor and pluck a bunch of Niagara, Catawba, or Concord grapes and eat them on the spot. So for decoration and fruit borne, a few grape vines are more than worth the slight attention they require. By working thus intelligently with Nature, you will enjoy her bounties--and this, after all, is the supreme reward offered by a country home. [Illustration] 
15678	----	generously provided by the Hearth Library, Cornell University (http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/). THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT, AFTER JACK'S HAD PROVED A FAILURE. A BOOK ON HOME ARCHITECTURE, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, BY E.C. GARDNER, _Author of "Homes and How to Make Them." "Home Interiors," "Common Sense in Church Building," etc._ SPRINGFIELD, MASS.: W.F. ADAMS COMPANY, 1896. 1882, BY OUR CONTINENT PUBLISHING Co. _All rights reserved._ E.C. GARDNER, 1895. Printed and Bound by CLARK W. BRYAN COMPANY, Springfield, Mass. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. A WISE FATHER AND A GLAD SON-IN-LAW 7 CHAPTER II. MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES 20 CHAPTER III. A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE 32 CHAPTER IV. MANY FIRES MAKE SMALL DIVIDENDS 48 CHAPTER V. WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND 63 CHAPTER VI. THE WISDOM OF JILL IN THE KITCHEN 78 CHAPTER VII BE HONEST AND KEEP WARM 90 CHAPTER VIII TRUTH, POETRY AND ROOFS 103 CHAPTER IX. PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE--BLINDS AND BESSIE 115 CHAPTER X. MORE QUESTIONS OF FIRE AND WATER 128 CHAPTER XI. WHAT SHALL WE STAND UPON? 140 CHAPTER XII. FROM MATHEMATICS TO ANCIENT BRIC-A-BRAC 151 CHAPTER XIII. ECONOMY, CLEANLINESS, AND HEALTH 166 CHAPTER XIV. SAFE FLUES AND MORE LIGHT 177 CHAPTER XV. A DANGEROUS RIVAL 189 CHAPTER XVI. A NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS AND A NEW MISSIONARY FIELD 203 CHAPTER XVII. THE RIGHT SIDE OF PAINT, A PROTEST AND A PROMISE 221 CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE FINISHED AND THE HOME BEGUN 233 CHAPTER XIX. TEN YEARS AFTER 250 CHAPTER XX. A DOUBLE CONCLUSION 258 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. _From Drawings by the Author_. PAGE 1. "COUSIN GEORGE'S EXTERIOR" 11 2. COUSIN GEORGE'S FIRST FLOOR 14 3. COUSIN GEORGE'S SECOND FLOOR 15 4. "WARMTH IS BEAUTY" 21 5. A HIDDEN FOE 23 6. A BURIED GRIDIRON 24 7. THE PROTECTING "CUT-OFF" 25 8. A "CROSS-SECTION" PROPHECY 28 9. HEAT FROM ALL SIDES 30 10. AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 33 11. NO PLACE FOR THE BED 36 12. ENLARGED BY DESTRUCTION 37 13. A SLIGHT ADDITION 39 14. GROUND FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 42 15. FIRST FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION 43 16. A SECURE OUTLOOK 49 17. MINED AND COUNTERMINED 52 18. A DORMER OF BURNED CLAY 55 19. THE TOPMOST PEAK 59 20. WILL'S MASTERPIECE 65 21. THE FIRST FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE 73 22. THE SECOND FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE 75 23. THE OUTSIDE OF TED'S HOUSE 79 24. JILL'S KITCHEN IN BLACK AND WHITE 83 25. THE FIRST FLOOR OF TED'S HOUSE 88 26. THE POOR BUT MODEST ATTORNEY'S COTTAGE 91 27. A DOUBLE TEAM 94 28. WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW 96 29. STEAM PIPES BESIDE THE FIREPLACE 97 30. THE ATTORNEY'S FLOOR PLAN 101 31. NO CONCEALMENT OR DISGUISE 105 32. WITH A MULLION AND WITHOUT 110 33. JACK'S ARCHITECTURAL PHRENOLOGY 112 34. THE HAT MAKES THE MAN 113 35. THE CONTRIBUTION OF BESSIE'S FATHER 117 36. THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE CONTRIBUTION 123 37. A GARGOYLE 130 38. A CHOICE OF GUTTERS 131 39. A SIMPLE RECESS 133 40. IN THE MIDDLE RANK 135 41. THE WORTH OF A COSY COTTAGE 137 42. A PROMISE OF SOCIAL SUCCESS 141 43. A REASONABLE HOPE 143 44. FLOORS AS THEY ARE: FLOORS AS THEY MIGHT BE 145 45. BRICKS AND BOULDERS ON GRANITE UNDERPINNING 149 46. NOT BRILLIANT, BUT IMPRESSIVE 153 47. WOODEN RICHNESS 155 48. NO WASTE OF WOOD 156 49. FIRST FLOOR OF THE PROMISE 158 50. SECOND FLOOR OF THE PROMISE 159 51. NO PLACE FOR SECRET FOES 167 52. SAFE AND SAVING FLUES 179-80 53. A PICTURE IN GLASS OVER THE FIREPLACE 181 54. GLASS OF MANY COLORS, SHAPES AND SIZES 183 55. SHELVES IN THE MIDDLE, CUPBOARDS ABOVE AND BELOW 185 56. "THE OAKS" 191 57. OUTSIDE BARRIERS 195 58. INSIDE BARRIERS 196 59. COMMON UGLINESS--SIMPLE GRACE 197 60. FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF "THE OAKS" 201 61. LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET 205 62. NEAR THE TURNING-POINT 207 63. A CHOICE OF BALUSTERS 209 64. THE BIG FIREPLACE IN THE KEEPING-ROOM 211 65. ONE WAY TO BEGIN 213 66. A BROADSIDE OF AN EASY ASCENT 215 67. A DIVIDING SCREEN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 219 68. BITS OF CORNICES 223 69. MOULDINGS FAIR TO SEE, BUT HARD TO KEEP CLEAN 225 70. FRAGMENTS OF ARCHITRAVES 227 71. A CHOICE OF WAINSCOTS 229 72. WOOD PANELS FOR WALLS AND CEILINGS, WITH IRREGULARITIES IN LEATHER, PAINT AND PAPER 231 73. THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 235 74. THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 239 75. THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT 241 76. THE EAST END OF JILL'S DINING-ROOM 243 77. A CASTLE IN SPAIN 263 _Also Initials, Tail-Pieces, etc._ INDEX OF SUBJECTS. PAGE BUILDING SITES 16 BRICKS 46, 53, 58 BLINDS 116 CHIMNEYS 179 CONTRACT WORK 233 COMPETITIVE PLANS 237 DOORS 194 FIREPROOF CONSTRUCTION 54 FALSE CHIMNEY-PIECE 98 FIREPLACES 134 FLOORS 140 FASHION 224 GUTTERS 129 HEATING 97, 132 HEIGHT OF ROOMS 138 HARD WOOD 197 INTERIOR FINISH 221 KITCHEN ARRANGEMENTS 81, 125 PLUMBING 166, 177 PANTRIES 186, 189 PAINT 223 ROOFS 69, 113 STAIRS 38, 214 STAINED GLASS 38, 183 TERRA COTTA 61 UNDER-DRAINING 24 VENTILATING FLUES 178 WINDOWS 110, 183 WOODEN BUILDINGS 51 PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION. On a recent visit to the young woman whose experiences and observations are contained in this book, I was greatly pleased to find her zeal and interest in domestic architecture unabated. She sees that there have been changes and improvements in the art of house building, but declares that while some of her opinions and suggestions of ten years ago have been approved and accepted, it is still true that by far the greater number of those who plan and build houses are guided by transient fashion, thoughtless conservatism and a silly seeking for sensational results, rather than by truth, simplicity and common sense. She has no doubt that her daughter, Bessie, will study and practice domestic architecture, and naturally expects the houses of the future to contain charms and comforts of which we have as yet only the faintest conception. E.C. GARDNER. _Springfield, Mass., November, 1895._ INTRODUCTION "MR. E.C. Gardner, architect, has consented to write us a series of articles upon house-building," said one of his associates to the editor of OUR CONTINENT a few months since. "What do you think of it?" "We have no sort of use for such a thing," replied the editor. "There are treatises enough professing to instruct people how to build houses. You can't make every man his own carpenter any more than you can make him his own lawyer. More's the pity." "But I thought you said you wanted some one who had sense enough to put a thoroughly capable and accomplished housewife's notions of what a house should be into readable prose?" "So I did," responded the editor, "and I still want it, and am likely to want it for a long time. I do not wish articles on _House_-building but on _Home_-building, and you will never get such from an architect." "Don't be too sure of that," said the other, who had had a taste of the writer's quality before. "Suppose he should wish to try it?" "Well,--let him," was the grumbled assent. The editor did not believe in architects. He had built one or two houses that did well enough on paper, but were simply appalling in their unfitness when he came to try to adapt the occupants to the earthly tabernacles which had been erected for their use and enjoyment. He had read house-building books, examined plans and discoursed with architects until he verily believed that the whole business was a snare and a delusion. After this experience he had settled down to the serious belief that the best way to build a house was to erect first a square building containing but one room, and then add on rooms as the occupants learned their needs or the family increased in numbers. In this way, he stoutly maintained, had been erected all those old houses, whose irregularity of outline and frequent surprises in interior arrangement never cease to charm. He asserted boldly that a man's house ought to grow around him like an oyster's-shell, and should fit him just as perfectly; in fact, that it should be created, not built. From architects and their works he prayed devoutly to be delivered, and having theretofore illustrated that part of the proverb which avers that "fools build houses," he declared himself determined thenceforth only to illustrate the latter-part of the proverb:--"and wise men live in them." Having, however, became sponsor in some sort for what Mr. Gardner might write, he was bound to give attention to it. Very much to his surprise, he found it instead of a thankless task, a most agreeable entertainment. Seldom, indeed, have wit and wisdom been so happily blended as in these pages. The narrative that runs through the whole constitutes a silver thread of merriment on which the pearls of sense are strung with lavish freedom. Every page is sure to contain the subject-matter for a hearty laugh close-linked with a lesson that may well be conned by the most serious-minded. The philosophy of home-building and home-improving is expounded with a subtlety of humor and an aptness of illustration as rare as they are relishable. There are three classes of people to whom this little volume with its quaint descriptions and wise suggestions will be peculiarly welcome. _First_--Those who contemplate, at some time, the building of a home. It matters not whether it is to be humble or palatial, "The House that Jill Built" will be found to contain not only the most valuable suggestions, but a humorous gaiety that will be sure to add pleasure to this duty. _Second_--Those who desire at any time to enlarge, modify or improve the homes in which they live; for they will find very forcibly illustrated in its pages the principles which should govern such modification. _Third_--Those who, like the writer hereof, have suffered in purse and comfort from the lack of such a pleasant and philosophical treatise, and who will be glad to see how their blunders might have been avoided. "The House that Jill Built" is founded on the rock of common sense. It does not profess to tell the prospective builder how to be his own architect and carpenter; it does not fit him out with a plan ready made and tested--by somebody else: but deftly and easily it leads him to think about the essential elements of the home he desires until, almost unconsciously, he finds himself prepared to give such directions to an honest architect as will secure for his home, convenience, safety and that peculiar fitness which is the chief element of beauty in domestic architecture. It is not so much for what is taught as for what is suggested that the book is valuable. What the author has written is perhaps not more remarkable than the peculiar art with which he compels the reader to think for himself. "The House that Jill Built" may fairly be said to take the first place among the many works that are designed to make our domestic architecture what it ought to be--the art by which the house-builder may erect a home adapted to his needs, commensurate with his means, in harmony with its surroundings and conducive to the health and comfort of its occupants. What the author's pen has so well described his pencil has illustrated with equal happiness. In penance for the lack of faith displayed at the outset and in hearty approval of the pages that follow, the Editor has written these words. A.W. TOURGÉE. PHILADELPHIA, Oct., 1882. THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT. CHAPTER I. A WISE FATHER AND A GLAD SON-IN-LAW. Among the wedding-presents was a small white envelope containing two smaller slips of paper. On one of these, which was folded around the other, was written, "A NEW HOUSE, FROM FATHER." The enclosed slip was a bank-check, duly stamped and endorsed. Did any old wizard's magic-box ever hold greater promise in smaller compass! Certainly not more than the bride saw in imagination as she read the figures upon the crisp bit of tissue. Walls, roof and stately chimneys arose in pleasant pictures before her mental vision. There were broad windows taking in floods of sunshine; fireplaces that glowed with living flames and never smoked; lazy lounging places and cosy corners for busy work or quiet study; sleepy bed-rooms; a kitchen that made housework the finest art and the surest science, and oh, such closets, such stairways, such comforts! such defiance of the elements, such security against cold and heat, against fire, flood and tempest! such economy! such immunity from all the ills that domestic life is heir to, from intractable servants to sewer-gas! If some ardent esthete had arrested her flight of fancy by asking whether she found room for soul-satisfying beauty, she would have dropped from her air-castle, landing squarely upon her feet, and replied that if her house was comfortable and told no lies it would be beautiful enough for her--which was saying a great deal, however interpreted, for she loved beauty, as all well-balanced mortals ought, and she would have been conspicuously out of place in a house that was not beautiful. Perhaps I ought to explain that the house that Jack built, intending to establish Jill as its mistress when it should be completed, had proved most unsatisfactory to that extremely practical young woman. In consequence, she had obstinately refused to name the happy day till the poor, patient fellow had kept bachelor's hall nearly a year. At last, in consideration of an unqualified permission to "make the house over" to any extent, the rough place that threatened to upset them was made smooth. Her father's present, wisely withheld till peace was declared, left nothing to be desired, and they started on their wedding journey as happy as if they owned the universe. This excursion, however, came near being a failure from the sentimental standpoint, because, wherever Jill discovered a house that gave any outward sign of inward grace, it must be visited and examined as to its internal arrangements. Naturally this struck Jack as an unromantic diversion, but he soon caught the spirit, and after much practice gave his salutatory address with apparent eagerness: "My wife and I happen to be passing through town and have been struck by the appearance of your house. Will you kindly allow us to have a glimpse of the interior?" The request was invariably granted, for nothing is more gratifying than the fame of having the "finest house in town." Unhappily the interiors were never satisfactory to Jill, and her valedictory to the owners of the striking houses seldom went beyond thanks for their courtesy. "We visited several houses on our trip," she observed to her father-- "Several hundred," said Jack-- "But were disappointed in them all. Many of them must have cost more than ours will cost, but the money seemed to us foolishly spent." "Yes," said her husband, "we concluded that the chief plank in the platform of the architects and builders was 'Millions for display--not one cent for comfort.'" "Well, Jack, we have learned one thing on our travels--where _not_ to look for the plans of our house." A box of letters from her dear five hundred friends awaited Jill's return, and a whole afternoon was devoted to them. Each letter contained some allusion to the new house. At least ten conveyed underscored advice of the most vital importance, which, if not followed, would demoralize the servants, distress her husband and ultimately destroy her domestic peace. Taken at a single dose, the counsel was confusing, to say the least; but Jill read it faithfully, laid it away for future reference, and gave the summary to her husband somewhat as follows: "It appears, Jack, my dear, to be absolutely indispensable to our future happiness that the house shall front north, south, east and west." "Let's build it on a pivot." "We must not have large halls to keep warm in cold weather, and we _must_ have large halls 'for style.' The stories must not be less than eleven nor more than nine feet high. It must be carpeted throughout and all the floors must be bare. It must be warmed by steam and hot water and furnaces and fireplaces and base-burners and coal grates." "We shan't have to go away from home to get into purgatory, shall we?" "Hush! The walls of the rooms must be calcimined, painted, frescoed and papered; they must be dyed in the mortar, finished with leather, with tiles, with tapestry and with solid wood panels. There must be blinds--outside blinds, awnings, inside shutters, rolling blinds, Venetian shades and no blinds at all. There must be wide, low-roofed piazzas all around the house, so that we can live out of doors in the summer, and on no account must the sun be excluded from the windows of the first story by piazza roofs. At least eight patent sanitary plumbing articles, and as many cooking ranges, are each the only one safe and fit to be used. The house must be high and low--" "I'm Jack and you shall be game--" [Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S EXTERIOR.] "It must be of bricks, wood and stone, separately and in combination; it must be Queen Anne, Gothic, French, Japanesque and classic American, and it must be painted all the colors of an autumn landscape." "Well, there's one comfort," said Jack; "you haven't paid for this advice, so you won't be obliged to take it in order to save it." "I should think not, indeed, but that isn't the trouble. These letters are from my special friends, wise, practical people, who know everything about building and housekeeping, and they speak from solemn conviction based on personal experience." "Moral: When the doctors differ, do as you please." Three of the letters, reserved for the last on account of their unusual bulk, contained actual plans. One was from an old school friend who had married an architect and couldn't afford to send a wedding present, but offered the plans as a sort of apology, privately feeling that they would be the most valuable of all the gifts; the second was from a married brother in Kansas who had just built himself a new house, and thought his sister could not do better than use the same plans, which he had "borrowed" from his architect; and the third was from Aunt Melville, who was supposed (by herself) to hold the family destiny in the hollow of her hand. "For once," she wrote, "your father has done a most sensible thing. Every girl ought to have a present of a new house on her wedding-day. You were very silly to make such a fuss about the house that Jack built, for it is a very stylish-looking house, even if it isn't quite so convenient inside; but of course you can improve upon it, and fortunately I can contribute just what you need--the plans of the house that your Uncle Melville built for George last year. It isn't as large as it ought to be, but it will suit you and Jack admirably. You must tell me how much you have to spend. This house can be very prettily built for eight or ten thousand dollars, and if you haven't as much as that you must ask for more. The hall is decidedly stylish, and, with the library at one side and drawing-room at the other, you will have just room enough for your little social parties. The room behind the drawing-room Jack needs for his private use, his study, office, smoking-room or whatever he calls it--a place to keep his gun, his top-boots, his fishing-rod and his horrid pipes; where he can revel to his heart's content in the hideous disorder of a 'man's room,' pile as much rubbish as he likes on the table, lock the doors and defy the rest of the household on house-cleaning days. The dining-room is good and the kitchen arrangements are perfect. George's wife has changed servants but three times since they began housekeeping, nearly a year ago, which certainly proves that there is every possible convenience for doing work easily. The outside of the house is not wholly satisfactory. There should be a tower, and you must put one on somewhere." [Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S FIRST FLOOR.] [Illustration: COUSIN GEORGE'S SECOND FLOOR.] Then followed several pages of advice about furnishings and a postscript announced that Colonel Livingston was charmed with the house and would probably build one like it for Clara. The charm of Aunt Melville's advice lay in its abundant variety. It was new every morning and fresh every evening. The latest thing was always the best. The plans of to-morrow were certain to be better than those of yesterday. Jill therefore made a careful study of the first installment, not doubting that others of superior merit would be forthcoming. She found many things to approve. The hall promised comfort and good cheer, whether stylish or not. The vista across through the parlor bay and the wide library window would give a pleasant freedom and breadth. The stairs were well placed, the second landing with its window of stained glass being especially attractive, whether as a point of observation or as a cosy retreat, itself partly visible from the hall below. Every chamber had a closet of its own, not to mention several extra ones, and there was a place for every bed. "As for your sanctum, Jack, I don't at all approve. It will be hard enough, I've no doubt, to keep you from lapsing into barbarism, and I shall never allow you to set up a den, a regular Bluebeard's room, all by yourself. I promise never to put your table in order, but I wouldn't trust the best of men with the care of a closet or a bureau-drawer for a single week, much less of an entire room with two closets, a case of drawers, a cupboard and a chimney-piece. But the chief fault of the plan is that it doesn't happen to suit our lot. The entrances are not right, the outlooks are not right, the chimneys are not right." "Turn it around." "And spoil it? No; I learned a second lesson on our journey, and it was well worth what it cost. We shall never find a plan made for somebody else that will suit us." "Not good enough?" "It isn't a question of goodness--it's a question of fitness. Neither Cousin George's, nor any other house I ever saw, is precisely what we need." "Moral: Draw your own plans." "We must, and we'll begin to-morrow." "Why not this evening?" "We couldn't see." "Light the gas." "Oh, but we must make the plans out of doors on the lot. We shall then know where every room will be, every door and especially every window. We must fix the centre of the sitting-room in the most commanding situation, and be certain that the dining-room windows do not look straight into somebody's wood-shed. Then, if there are any views of blue hills and forests far away over the river, I shall be uncomfortable if we do not get the full benefit of them." "Don't you expect to have anything interesting inside the house?" "Except my husband? Oh yes! but it would be a wicked waste of opportunities not to accept the blessings provided for us without money and without price, which only require us to stand in the right places and open our hearts and windows to receive them." Jill's second lesson was indeed worth learning, even if it cost a wedding journey. Every house must suit its own ground and fit its own household, otherwise it can neither be comfortable nor beautiful. The next morning, armed with a bundle of laths, sharpened at one end, and equipped with paper, pencil and tape-line, the prospective house-builders proceeded to lay out, not the house but the plan. They planted doors, windows, fireplaces and closets, stoves, lounges, easy-chairs and bedsteads, as if they were so many seeds that would grow up beside the laths on which their respective names were written and bear fruit each according to its kind. Later in the day a high step-ladder was introduced, from the top of which Jill scanned the surrounding country, while Jack stood ready to catch her if she fell. The neighbors were intensely interested, and their curiosity was mixed with indignation when, toward night, a man was discovered cutting down two of the rock-maple trees that Jill's grandfather planted more than fifty years before, and which stood entirely beyond any possible location of the new house. "This evening, Jack, you must write for the architect to come." "I thought you were going to make your own plans." "I have made them, or rather I have laid them out on the ground and in the air. I know what I want and how I want it. Now we must have every particular set down in black and white." Jack wrote accordingly. The architect was too busy to respond at once in person, but sent a letter referring to certain principles that reach somewhat below the lowest foundation-stones and above the tops of the tallest chimneys. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. MORAL SUASION FOR MALARIAL MARSHES. "You are quite right," the architect wrote, "to fix the plan of your house on the lot before it is made on paper, provided first the lot is a good one. Nothing shows the innate perversity of mankind more forcibly than the average character of the sites chosen for human habitations in cities, in villages and in the open country. Or does it rather indicate the instinctive struggle for supremacy over nature? The 'dear old nurse' is most peaceably inclined toward us, yet we shall never be satisfied till all the valleys are exalted and the hills laid low. Not because we object to hills and valleys--quite the contrary; but we must show our strength and daring. Nobody wants the North Pole, but we are furious to have a breach made in the wall that surrounds it. If we discover a mighty primeval forest we straightway grind our axes to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. When we find ourselves in an unclean, malarious bog, instead of taking the short cut out, shaking the mud from our feet and keeping clear of it forever after, we plunge in deeper still and swear by all the bones of our ancestors that we will not only walk through it dry-shod, but will build our homes in the midst of it and keep them clean and sweet and dry. The good mother beckons to us with her sunshine and whispers with her fragrant breezes that on the other side of the river or across the bay the land is high and dry, that just beyond the bluffs are the sunny slopes where she expected us to build our houses, and, like saucy children as we are, we say that is the very reason we prefer to go somewhere else. [Illustration: WARMTH IS BEAUTY.] [Illustration: A HIDDEN FOE.] "Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the temple of your home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a bit before you commence digging. If it is low, wet and difficult of drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent lands have no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to stand so near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine and gives you the odors of his dinner and the conversation of his cook in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks; if it is shaded by trees owned by somebody who will not be persuaded to cut them down for love nor money--by all means turn it into a fish-pond, a sheep-pasture or a public park. You can never build upon it a satisfactory home. Perhaps it is within five minutes' walk of the post-office and on the same street with Mrs. Adoniram Brown, and these considerations outweigh all others. In that case there is no help for you. You must make the best of it as it is. [Illustration: A BURIED GRIDIRON.] "If you have a suspicion that the ground is naturally wet, that it contains hidden springs or conceals an impervious basin, making in effect a pool of standing water underground, the first necessity is a clean outlet--not a sewer--low enough to underdrain the lot at least a foot and a-half below the bottom of the cellar. Having found the clean outlet, lay small drain tiles, two or three inches in diameter, under the entire house and for several feet all around it, like a big gridiron. When this is buried under one or two feet of clean gravel or sand you will have a permanently dry plot of ground to build upon. The same treatment will be effective if the ground is "springy." But there must be a "cut-off" encircling the house. This you can make by digging a trench a foot wide, reaching down to the drain tiles, and filling it nearly to the top with loose stones or coarse gravel, the surface of the ground being graded to slope sharply toward the trench. The surface water between it and the house, and any moisture creeping toward the house from without, will then be caught in this porous trap and fall to the gridiron. [Illustration: THE PROTECTING "CUT-OFF."] "It is possible, theoretically, to build an underground cellar so tight that it may be lifted up on posts and used for a water-tank, or set afloat like a compartment-built iron steamer. Such walls may be necessary under certain circumstances. They may be necessary for cellars that are founded in swamps, in salt marshes below the level of the sea, and in old river-beds, where the original iniquity of the standing water is made still more iniquitous by the inevitable foulness of the washing from streets and the unclean refuse from sinks and back doors. But for buildings that have four independent walls, with room enough for a man to ride around his own house in a wheelbarrow without trespassing on his neighbors, and which are not hopelessly depressed below all their surroundings, it is better to use a little moral suasion on the land itself than to spend one's resources in a defiant water-proof construction. Instead of drain tiles, small stones covered with a thin layer of hay or straw before being buried in the sand may be used if more economical. "If you cannot find the clean outlet for these buried drains or tiles below the level of the cellar bottom, then raise the cellar, house and all. No matter if you are accused of having a 'stuck up' house--better be stuck up than stuck in the mud. Raise it till the entire cellar is well above the level of thorough drainage. If this happens to carry it above the surface of the ground, set the house on posts and hang the cellar under the floor like a work-bag under a table or the basket to a balloon. "The foundation walls must indeed touch solid bottom and extend below the action of frost; but if the wall above the gridiron and below the paving of the cellar is of hard stones, or very hard bricks laid in cement, there will be little risk from rising moisture. "After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from clean surface water or an occasional rising of the floods, but from the unclean wastes that in our present half-civilized state are constantly going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth and air around them." "Half-civilized indeed!" said Jack, interrupting the reading of the letter. "Besides, he is premature as well as impertinent. He doesn't know but the house will stand on a granite boulder." "I suppose he intends to warn us, and I am not certain that our lot is as dry as it ought to be. At all events we will have some holes dug in different places and see if any water comes into them." "Of course it will. Haven't we just had the 'equinoctial'? The ground is full of water everywhere." "If it is full this spring it will be full every spring. We may as well order the drain tiles." "It shall be done," said Jack. "Now let us have the second proviso. I hope it will be shorter than the first." "And, secondly," Jill continued reading, "provided you know what your house is for. It is my conviction that of all the people who carefully plan and laboriously build themselves houses, scarcely one in ten could give a radical, intelligent reason for building them. To live in, of course; but how to live is the question, and why. As they have been in the habit of living? As their neighbors live? As they would like to live? As they ought to live? Is domestic comfort and well-being the chief motive? It is not, usually; hence, there are in the world a great many more houses than homes." "Oh, bother the preaching! It's all true, but we don't happen to need it. When is he coming?" "Next week, and he hopes we shall have 'some general idea of what we want.' How very condescending! We know precisely what we want, as I can easily show him." [Illustration: A "CROSS-SECTION" PROPHECY.] Jill accordingly produced a fresh sheet of "cross-section" paper, on whose double plaid lines the most helpless tyro in drawing can make a plan with mathematical accuracy provided he can count ten, and on this began to draw the plan of the first floor, expounding as she drew. "If we call the side of the house which is next the street the front, the main entrance must be at the east side, because we need the whole of the south side for our living rooms. You know the view toward the southwest is the finest we shall have, especially from the chambers." "How do I know? I didn't climb the step-ladder." "And we must have a large bay window directly on that corner. The hall must run through the house crosswise, with the stairs on the west side of the house. As there is nothing to be seen in this direction except the white walls and green blinds of the parsonage, the windows on the stair-landing shall have stained glass. The dining-room will be at the north side of the hall, with plenty of eastern windows, and behind that the kitchen with windows at opposite sides. But you wouldn't understand the beauty of my kitchen arrangements now. By-and-by, when you are wiser, I will explain them. Do you like a fireplace in the hall, Jack?" "I don't know as I do. Do you?" "Of course! certainly." "I shall be of all men most miserable without one. Can't we have two?" "Perhaps so; but first let me read you Cousin Bessie's letter: MY DEAREST JILL: I'm perfectly delighted to hear about the new house. It will be an immense success. I _know_ it will--you are so wise and so _practical_. How I _shall_ enjoy visiting you! It is delightful to build houses now. Everybody thinks so much more of the beautiful than they used to. Some of my friends have the _loveliest_ rooms. The tones are _so_ harmonious, the decorations so _exquisite_! Such sympathetic feeling and spiritual unity! I _wish_ you could see Kitty Kane's hall. It isn't bigger than a bandbox, but there's the _cunningest_ little fireplace in one corner, with real antique andirons and the quaintest old Dutch tiles. They never make a fire in it; couldn't if they wanted to--it smokes so. But it is _so_ lovely and gives the hall such a sweet expression. You _will_ forgive me, won't you, Jill, dear? but you know you are _so_ practical, and I _do_ hope you won't forget the esthetic needs of home life. Your loving cousin, BET." "Let's give up the hall fireplace," said Jack. [Illustration: HEAT FROM ALL SIDES.] "By no means; our hall is large and needs a fireplace--one that will not smoke and will warm not only the hall in very cold weather, but the whole house when it isn't quite cold enough for steam. The sides and back will be of iron with an air-chamber behind them, into which fresh air will be brought from out of doors and come out well warmed at the sides." (Jill's idea was something like the above figure for the plan.) "It will be a capital ventilator, too, for the centre of the house. There will be a damper in the hearth to let the ashes down into the ash-pit. I suppose a stove would answer, but this will be better because it won't have to be blacked, and it will last as long as the house." "How will it look standing out there all alone by itself?" "Haven't I told you, my dear, that whatever _is_ well looks well?" "Yes, but it takes a mighty faith to believe it, and I'm not even a mustard-seed. What is the little room in the southwest corner for?" "That is the library, and for an ordinary family it is large enough. It is twelve feet by fourteen. It will hold three or four thousand books, a table, a writing-desk, a lounge and three or four easy chairs. More room would spoil the privacy which belongs to a library and make it a sort of common sitting-room. Moreover, by drawing aside the portières and opening the doors we can make it a part of the large room when we wish to; and, on the other hand, when they are closed and the bay window curtains drawn, instead of one large room we shall have three separate apartments for three solitary misanthropes, for three _tête-a-têtes_, or for three incompatible groups, not counting the hall--no, nor the stair-landing, which will be a capital place for a quiet--" "Flirtation." At this point they were interrupted by a telegram from Aunt Melville, begging them not to begin on George's plan, as she had found something much more satisfactory. CHAPTER III. A FIRST VISIT AND SAGE ADVICE. They didn't begin to build, from Cousin George's nor from any other plan, for many weeks. Until the new house should be completed, Jill had agreed to commence housekeeping in the house that Jack built, without making any alterations in it, only reserving the privilege of finding all the fault she pleased to Jack privately, in order, as she said, to convince him that it would be impossible for them to be permanently happy in such a house. "I supposed," said Jack, with a groan, "that my company would make you blissfully happy in a cave or a dug-out." "So it would, if we were bears--both of us. As we are sufficiently civilized, taken together, to prefer artificial dwellings, it will be much better for us to find out what we really need in a home by actual experiment for a year or two. You know everybody who builds one house for himself always wishes he could build another to correct the mistakes of the first." "Yes, and when he has done it probably finds worse blunders in the second. Still, I'm open to conviction, and after our late architectural tour perhaps my house won't seem in comparison so totally depraved." [Illustration: AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.] When they visited it, preparatory to setting up their household gods--Jack's bachelor arrangements being quite inadequate to the new order of things--Jack, with a flourish, threw the highly ornamental front door wide open. Jill walked solemnly in, and, looking neither to the right nor the left, went straight up stairs. "Hello!" Jack called after her, "what are you going up stairs for?" "I supposed you expected everybody to go to the second floor," said Jill, looking over the bannister, "or you wouldn't have set the stairs directly across the front entrance." "I do, of course," Jack responded, following three steps at a time. "And now will you please signify your royal pleasure as to apartments?" "Oh, yes! The first requisite is a room with at least one south window." "Here it is. A southerly window and a cloudy sky--two windows, in fact. And look here: see what a glorious closet. It goes clear up to the ceiling." "It isn't a closet at all; only a little cupboard. It wouldn't hold one-half of your clothes nor a tenth part of mine. And there's no fireplace in the room--not even a hole for a stovepipe." "Furnace, my dear. We shall be warmed from the regions below. There's the register." "I see. But where shall the bed stand? On these two sides it would come directly in front of a window; on this side there isn't room between the two doors; on that, there's the 'set bowl'--I hate 'set bowls'--and the furnace register in the floor." [Illustration: NO PLACE FOR THE BED.] "That's so. I never had any bed in this room. Try the dining-room chamber; that has a south window. The bed can stand on the north side and the dressing table over in the other corner." "Yes, in the dark, with a window behind my back. Oh! Jack, why didn't you get a wife before you planned your house?" "I did try." "You did! You never mentioned it to me before. What is this little room for?" "Why, nothing in particular. It came so, I suppose--part of the hall, you know; but it wouldn't be of any use in the hall, so I made a room of it. It will hold a cot bed if we should happen to have a house full of company." "It will never be needed for that with three other guest rooms; but I see what can be done. You know I promised not to make any alterations; but destruction isn't alteration, and as this little room is beside the front chamber, with only the little cupboards between, a part of the partition between the rooms can be destroyed. There will be no need of a door; a portière will be better, and I can use the small room for a dressing-room and closet. So _that_ is nicely arranged; and while you are marking where the partition is to be cut away I will explore the first story." [Illustration: ENLARGED BY DESTRUCTION.] Now, the stairs were built in a very common fashion, having a sharp turn at the top, which made the steps near the balustrade exceedingly steep and narrow. Jill's foot slipped on the top step and down she went, feet foremost, never stopping till she reached the hall floor below. Jack, hearing the commotion, ran to the rescue, caught his foot in the carpet and came tumbling after, with twice as much noise and not half as much grace. Happily the staircase was well padded under the carpet, and finding Jill unhurt as well as himself, Jack helped her to rise and coolly remarked: "You certainly can't find any fault with the stairs, Jill, dear. If there had been one of those square landings midway it would have taken twice as long to come down. I--I had them made so on purpose. Will you walk into my parlor?" They went in and sat down in easy-chairs. "I suppose," said Jill, "that our native land contains about a million houses with stairs like these and just such halls--if people will persist in calling them 'halls,' when they are only little narrow, dark, uncomfortable entries. If we were going to make any alterations in this house--which we are not, only destructions--- I should take these out, cut them in two in the middle, double them up, straighten the crook at the top and shove them outside the house, letting the main roof drop down to cover them. Then I would make a large landing at the turn, large enough for a wide seat, a few book shelves and a pretty window. This could be of stained glass, unless the view outside is more interesting than the window itself. The merit of a stained-glass window," Jill observed, very wisely, "is that the sunlight makes a beautiful picture of it inside the house during the day, and the same thing, still more beautiful, is thrown out into the world by the evening lamps, and the darker the night the brighter the picture. After the stairs were moved out, the little hall, if joined by a wide doorway, to the room we are now in would become of some value. There is no grate in this room, and a chimney might be built in the outer wall, with a fireplace opposite the wide doorway. Then, taken all together, we should have a very pretty sitting-room. I shouldn't call that an alteration--should you, Jack?--only an addition." [Illustration: A SLIGHT ADDITION.] "Certainly not. Tearing down partitions, taking out plumbing, building a few chimneys, moving stairways, and such little things, can't be called 'alterations'--oh, no." "And the house will be worth so much more when you come to sell it." "Of course. But why do you call this a 'sitting-room?' It wouldn't be possible to sell a house that has no parlor; besides this is marked 'parlor' on the plan." "I prefer the spirit of the plan to the letter of it. This is the pleasantest room--almost the only pleasant room on this floor. It is sunny and convenient, it looks out upon the street and across the lawn, and whatever it is labeled it will _be_ our common every-day sitting-room. For similar reasons we will take the chamber over it for our own room." "What becomes of our hospitality if we keep the best for ourselves?" "What becomes of our common sense if we make ourselves uncomfortable the year round in order to make a guest a little less uncomfortable over night. I try to love my neighbor as myself; I can't love him three hundred and sixty-five times as well. Now, if you are rested, we will go and see if the architect has come." He had not arrived, but they found a ponderous package of plans from Aunt Melville, with an explanatory note, a letter from Cousin Bessie admonishing Jill that her new home ought to be "a perfect poem, pervaded and perfumed by a rare feeling of tender longing and homely aspiration," and another from her father's oldest sister. [Illustration: GROUND FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.] [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF AUNT MELVILLE'S AMBITION.] "For fifty years," Aunt Jerusha wrote, "I have lived in what would now be called an old-fashioned house, though it was new enough when I came to it, and I always think of the Scripture saying when I hear about the many inventions that men have sought out and are putting into houses now-a-days. The danger is not so much from the inventions themselves as from what they lead to. They promise great things, but I've learned to be suspicious of anything or anybody that makes large promises. I've learned, too, that realities sometimes go by contraries as well as dreams. The poorest folks are often the richest, and the greatest saving often turns out to be the greatest waste. Air-tight stoves saved the wood-pile, but they gave us colds and headaches. So your uncle put them away and we went back to the fireplaces. Then came the hot-air furnaces, which seemed so much less trouble than open fires, but taking care of the open fires wasn't half so troublesome as taking care of sick folks; and the same thing we learned to our bitter cost of the plumbing pipes that creep around like venomous serpents and promise to save so many steps. Perhaps they do, but it seems to me that much of our vaunted labor-saving is at best only a transfer. We work all the harder at something else or compel others to work for us. When I began housekeeping I had no difficulty in taking care of my large house without any help, nor in caring for my family while it was small. Yet I hadn't a single modern invention or labor-saving machine, I have had a great many since and have tried a great many more. When I find one that helps in the work that _must_ be done I am glad to keep it. If it merely does something new--something I had never done before--I keep the old way. Multiplying wants may be a means of grace to the half-civilized, but our danger lies in the other direction: we have too many wants already. And this is what I sat down to say to you, my dear child: Don't make housekeeping such a complex affair that you must give to it all your time and strength, leaving no place for the 'better part.' Don't fill your house with furniture too fine to be used, and don't try to have everything in the latest fashion. I see many beautiful things and read of many more, but nothing is half so beautiful to me as the things that were new fifty years ago and are still in daily use. Of planning houses I know but little. For one thing, I should say, have the kitchen and working departments as close at hand as possible. This will save many weary steps, whether you do your own work or leave it with servants, the best of whom need constant watching and encouragement, or they will not make life any easier or better worth living." "Isn't this rather a solemn letter?" Jack inquired. "Yes; it's a solemn subject." "_Shall_ you 'do your own work'?" "Of course I shall. How can I help it? 'Each hath a work that no other can do;' but just precisely what my own work will be I am not at present prepared to say." "Is Aunt Melville as solemn as Aunt Jerusha?" "Aunt Melville assures her dear niece that 'the last plans are absolutely beyond criticism: the rooms are large and elegant, the modern conveniences perfect, the kitchen and servants' quarters isolated from the rest of the house'--" "That won't suit the other aunty." "The porte cochère and side entrance most convenient and the front entrance sufficiently distinguished by the tower. I particularly like the porte cochère at the side. If none of your callers came on foot there would be no objection to having it at the front entrance, but it isn't pleasant to be compelled to walk up the carriage-way. As you see, this is a brick house, and I am persuaded you ought to build of bricks. It will cost ten or fifteen per cent. more--possibly twenty--but in building a permanent home you ought not to consider the cost for a moment.'" "That's a comfortable doctrine, if everybody would live up to it," said Jack. "Yes; and like a good many other comfortable doctrines, it contains too much truth to be rejected--not enough to be accepted. We _must_ count the cost, but if we limit ourselves to a certain outlay, and positively refuse to go beyond that, we shall regret it as long as we live. We may leave some things unfinished, but whatever is done past alteration, either in size or quality, must be right, whatever it costs." And herein Jill displayed her good sense. It is, indeed, a mistake to build a house beyond the possibility of paying for it, or of maintaining it without a constant struggle, but in building a permanent home there is more likely to be lasting regret through too close economy in the first outlay, than through extravagance--regret that can only be cured by an outlay far exceeding what the original cost would have been. The architect came as the sun went down, and, after being duly warmed, fed and cheered, was informed by Jill that all she expected from him that evening was an explanation of the respective merits of wood and brick houses. Jack begged the privilege of taking notes, to keep himself awake, Jill begged the architect to be as brief as possible, and the architect begged for a small blackboard and a piece of chalk, that he might, in conveying his ideas, use the only one, true, natural and universal language which requires no grammar, dictionary or interpreter. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. MANY FIRES MAKE SMALL DIVIDENDS. There are two things belonging to modern civilization," the architect began, "that fill me with amazement. This morning, at the usual hour, I sat at my own breakfast table. During the day I have been reading and writing, eating, drinking and making merry with pleasant acquaintances, old and new. I have observed the architecture of a dozen cities and a hundred villages and have seen landscapes without number. I have been occupying an elegantly finished and furnished drawing-room all the time, with every possible comfort and convenience at hand, and now am sitting at your fireside, two hundred and fifty miles from home. I have just assured the girl I left behind me of my safe arrival, and have listened to her grateful reply. With my ten thousand companions going in the same direction I have met ten thousand others crossing and recrossing our path, every one of whom was as safe and comfortable as ourselves, every one of whom knew the hour and the minute at which he would reach his destination. To an observer above the clouds our pathways would appear more frail than the finest gossamer; and the most daring engineer that ever lived, seeing for the first time our mode of travel, would stake his reputation that we were rushing to inevitable destruction. Yet every foot of our way has been so guarded that not one of these swiftly-moving palaces has swerved from its track or been hindered on its course. This annihilation of space, with the human skill, vigilance and fidelity incidental to it, are more wonderful to me than any tales of magic, stranger than any fiction. I believe because I see; nevertheless it is incredible. My second amazement is that fire insurance companies should continue to live and thrive against such apparently fearful odds, for I see whole villages and cities composed of buildings that seem expressly designed to invite speedy combustion, and at the same time to resist all attempts to extinguish a fire once started in their complex interiors. Indeed, the most effective modes of treatment yet discovered for a burning building are drowning it with all its contents in a deluge of water or blowing it up with gunpowder. It is an open question which of the two methods is to be preferred. [Illustration: A SECURE OUTLOOK.] "Let me show you how a wooden house is built. The sills and joists of the first floor are comparatively safe, because they are not boxed in with dry boards, and even with furnace and ash-pits in the cellar there would be little danger from a fire down below if it were not for the careful provision made for carrying it into the upper part of the structure. This provision, however, is most effectively made by means of the upright studs and furrings that stand all around the outside of the building and reach across it wherever a partition is needed. Accordingly, every wooden house has from one hundred to one thousand wooden flues of a highly inflammable character arranged expressly to carry fire from the bottom to the top, valiantly consuming themselves in the operation. Furthermore, they are frequently charged with shavings and splinters of wood, which, becoming dry as tinder, will respond at once to a spark from a crack in the chimney, an overheated stove or furnace-pipe, or a match in the hands of an inquisitive mouse. They are, likewise, so arranged that no water can be poured inside them till they fall apart and the house collapses, for they reach to the roof, whose sole duty is to keep out water, whether it comes from the clouds or from a hose-pipe, but which, for economical reasons, is made sufficiently open to allow the air to pass through it freely, thus insuring a good draught when the fire begins to burn. To complete the system and prevent the possibility of finding where the fire began, the spaces between the joists of the upper floors communicate with the vertical flues, and these highways and byways for rats and mice, for fire and smoke, for odors from the kitchen, noises from the nursery and dust from the furnace and coal-bin, are also strewn with builders' rubbish, which carries flame like stubble on a harvest-field. [Illustration: MINED AND COUNTERMINED.] "Brick houses, as usually built, are not much better, but that is not the fault of the bricks--_they_ are tougher than good intentions; they have been burned once and fire agrees with them. In fact, there is no building material so thoroughly reliable, through thick and thin, in prosperity and in adversity, as good, honest, well-burned bricks. But the ordinary brick house is double--a house within a house--a wooden frame in a brick shell. Like logs in a coal-pit, the inner house is well protected from outside attacks, but the flames, once kindled within, will run about as freely as in a wooden building, and laugh at cold water, which, however abundantly it is poured out, can never reach the heart of the fire till its destructive work is accomplished. Thrown upon the outer walls, it runs down the bricks or clapboards; poured over the roof, it is carried promptly to the ground, as it ought to be; shot in through the windows, it runs down the plastering, washes off the paper, soaks the carpets, ruins the merchandise and spoils everything that water can spoil, while the fire itself roars behind the wainscot, climbs to the rafters and rages among the old papers, cobwebs and heirlooms in the attic till the roof falls in, the floors go down with a crash and an upward shower of sparks, and only the tottering walls, with their eyeless window sockets, or the ragged, blackened chimney's, remain." "One road leads to fire and the other to combustion; that's plain enough," said Jack; "but where do the merits come in? I thought we were to learn the relative merits of bricks and wood." "Wood has one conspicuous merit, a virtue that covers a multitude of sins--it is cheap; but let me first arrange the fire-escapes." "By all means. Otherwise we shall be cremated before morning." "If you understand my sketch you will see that but one thing is needful to retard the progress of hidden fire, even in a wooden building, long enough at least for one to go up the hill and fetch a pail of water. This remedy consists simply in choking the flues and stopping the draught, which can easily be done by filling in with bricks and mortar between all the studs of both outer walls and inner partitions at or near the level of each floor. A cut-off half way up is an additional safeguard. The horizontal passages between the floor-joists should also be closed in a similar manner, otherwise the smoke and sparks from a burning lath next the kitchen stove-pipe will come up through the cracks in the floor of the parlor, chamber, or around some remote fireplace, where the insurance agent will be assured 'there hadn't been a fire kindled for six months.' These occasional dampers are a partial remedy, and if carefully fitted in the right places will save many tons of coal and greatly diminish the chances of total destruction in case of fire. The complete remedy is to leave no spaces that can possibly be filled. [Illustration: A DORMER OF BURNED CLAY.] "I supposed air spaces were necessary for warmth and dryness," said Jill. "So they are. But there are air spaces in a woolen blanket, in a brickbat and in common mortar, as well as in sawdust, ashes and powdered charcoal, quite enough to serve as non-conductors of heat and of moisture too, if properly protected. One of the best and most available materials at present known for this purpose is 'mineral wool,' a product of iron 'slag.' If the open spaces between the studs and rafters of a wooden building (or in a brick building between the furrings) are filled with this substance, or anything else equally good, if there is anything else--of course sawdust or other inflammable material would not answer except for an ice-house or a water-tank--'fire-bugs' would find it difficult to follow their profession with any success, and the insurance companies would build more elegant offices and declare larger dividends than ever before. Houses might be burned possibly, but the inmates would have ample time to fold their nightgowns, pack their trunks, take up the carpets and count the spoons before vacating the premises." "How much will that sort of stuffing cost?" "For a wooden dwelling house of medium size a few hundred dollars would cover the first outlay, and the saving in worry would be worth twice as much every year." "Now to consider the relative merits of brick and wood, for I see Jack is going to sleep again: The chief excellence of wood has already been mentioned. It is cheap, so cheap that any man who can earn a dollar a day and live on fifty cents, may at the end of a year, have a house of his own in which he can live and begin to bring up a family in comfort and safety. He that builds of bricks may rejoice in the durability and strength of his house, in its security against fire and sudden changes of temperature, in economy of fuel in cold weather, of ice in warm weather, and of paint in all weathers; in the possibility of the highest degree of external beauty, and in the blessed consciousness that his real estate will not deteriorate on his hands or be a worn-out and worthless legacy to his children." "You must wear peculiar spectacles if you can discover beauty in a square brick house!" [Illustration: THE TOPMOST PEAK.] "Rectitude, of which a brick is the accepted type, certainly has a beauty of its own. But if a brick house is not beautiful--here again the fault is not, dear Jack, in the bricks; but in ourselves, our prejudices and our architects--other things being equal, it should be more beautiful than a wooden house, because the material employed is more appropriate for its use. (I should like to deliver an oration at this point, for upon this Golden Rule of utility hang all the law and the prophets of architectural beauty, but will defer it to a more fitting occasion.) There is, in truth, no limit to the grace of form, color and decoration possible with burned clay. As a marble statue is to a wooden image, so, for the outer walls of a building, is clay that has been moulded and baked, to the products of the saw-mill, the planing-mill, lathe and fret-saw." "Oh, you mean terra cotta?" "I mean clay that has been wrought into forms of use and beauty, and prepared by fire to endure almost to the end of time. It is most commonly found in plain rectangular blocks, but in accordance with the artistic spirit of the age, brains are now mixed with the sordid earth, and lasting beauty glows upon the rich, warm face of the strong brick walls."-- "Yea, verily, amen and amen! Beauty, eloquence and true poetry, bright gleams of prophetic fire, patriotism, piety and the music of the spheres. I can see them all in my mind's eye and hear them in my mind's ear. Jill, my dear, our house shall be bricks--excuse me, I mean _brains_--and mortar, from turret to foundation stone. Consider that settled, and if the meeting is unanimous we will now adjourn till to-morrow morning." "One moment, if you please. Filling the spaces behind the lathing in a brick house with some fireproof and non-conducting material is a concession to usual modes of building. A more satisfactory construction still would be to build the wails of hollow bricks and with air spaces so disposed that neither wood furrings nor laths would be necessary. There is, moreover, no good reason why the inner surfaces of the main walls of a brick house and both sides of the partitions should not form the final finish of the rooms. Glazed bricks or tiles built into the walls, or secured to them after they are built, are vastly more satisfactory than a fragile and incongruous patchwork of wood, leather, metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short lives in collecting. I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should lie awake all night in a fever of futile protest." "Pray don't run any risks. I move we now adjourn." "Yes; but first let me ask one question," said Jill. "Would not the difference of cost between a house built in the ordinary combustible style and the same made fire-proof, or even 'slow-burning,' pay the cost of insurance at the usual rates many times over and leave a large margin besides?" "Undoubtedly it would." "Then, as an investment, what object is there in attempting to make buildings fireproof or even approximately so?" "Excuse me. I thought you were going to ask only one question." CHAPTER V. WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND. After the architect had retired to his room it occurred to him that he might have answered Jill's conundrum as to the profit of building fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night, in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to restore, and that protection against fire means also security against many other ills to which the dwellers in houses are liable, not to refer to the larger fact that there is no real wealth without permanence, while the destruction of anything useful in the world, wherever the loss may seem to fall, impoverishes the whole. Having settled this point to his own satisfaction, he sought his pillow in a comfortable frame of mind. Comfortable, but not wholly at rest, for no sooner did he close his eyes than the "fever of futile protest" asserted itself in turbulent visions of paper, paint and plastering. Dados danced around in carnival dress; wall decorations went waltzing up and down, changing in shape, size and color like the figures in a kaleidoscope; Chinese pagodas on painted paper dissolved into brazen sconces, and candelabra sat where no light would ever shine; glazed plaques turned into Panama hats and cotton umbrellas, the classic figures in the frieze began to chase the peacocks furiously across the ceilings, the storks hopped wildly around on their one available leg, draperies of every conceivable hue and texture, from spider webs to sole leather, shaking the dust from their folds, slipped uneasily about on their glittering rings, and showers of Japanese fans floated down like falling apple blossoms in the month of May. He seemed to see the Old Curiosity Shop, the uncanny room of Mr. Venus, a dozen foreign departments of the Centennial, ancient garrets and modern household art stores, all tumbled together in hopeless confusion, and over all an emerald, golden halo that grew more and more concentrated till it burst into gloom as one gigantic sunflower, which, suddenly changing into the full moon just rising above the top of a neighboring roof, put an end to his chaotic dreams. Not willing to be moonstruck, even on the back of his head, he arose and went to the window to draw the curtain. There was a sort of curtainette at the top, opaque and immovable, serving simply to reduce the height of the window. At the sides there were gauzy draperies, too fancifully arranged to be rashly moved and too thin to serve the purpose of a curtain even against moonlight. He tried to close the inside shutters, but they clung to their boxes, refusing to stir without an order from the carpenter. At the risk of catching a cold or a fall, he opened the window and endeavored to bring the outside blinds together. One fold hung fast to the wall, the other he contrived to unloose, but the hook to hold it closed was wanting, and when he tried to fasten it open again the catch refused to catch, so he was compelled to shut the window and leave the swinging blind at the mercy of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon--or should I say alarm the angel?--of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the just, undisturbed by esthetic visions. [Illustration: WILL'S MASTERPIECE.] After a time he became dimly conscious of a sense of alarm. At first, scarcely roused to understand the fear or its cause, he soon recognized a noise that filled his soul with terror--the stealthy sound of a midnight assassin; a faint rasping, intermittent and cautious, a sawing or filing the bolt of his door. He made a motion to spring up, upset a glass of water by his bedside and--frightened the rats from the particular hole they were trying to gnaw. In their sudden fright they dropped all pretense of secresy. They called each other aloud by name and scattered acorns, matches, butternuts and ears of corn in every direction, which rolled along the ceiling, fell down the partitions, knocked the mortar off the back of the laths and raised such a noisy commotion as ought to have roused the whole neighborhood. No one stirred, and the architect once more addressed himself to blessed sleep, feeling that morning must soon put an end to his tribulations. How long he slept he had no means of knowing. It was still dark when he awoke: dark but not still. A distant footfall tinkled on the matted floor, followed by another and another in rapid, measured succession. Could there be a cat or a dog in the room? He could see nothing. The moon was gone and the room was dark as Egypt. Possibly some animal escaped from a traveling menagerie had hidden in the chamber. He lay still and listened while the step--step--step--kept on without break or change. Presently he thought of ghosts, and as ghosts were the one thing he was not afraid of he turned over and went to sleep for good just as the village clock struck eleven. In the morning when he awoke, it rained. The ghostly footfalls continued; in fact, they had considerably increased, but they were no longer ghostly. A dark spot on the ceiling directly over the portfolio of plans he had laid on the floor betrayed their source. Portfolio and contents were as well soaked as if the fire companies had been at them--all from a leak in the roof. After breakfast, when Jill proposed to spend the time till it cleared off in looking over the plans he had brought, the architect was obliged to explain the disaster. "It is just as well," said he. "I brought them because you asked me to bring them, not because I supposed there would be one among them that would suit you. But they are not wasted. These poor, dumb, dripping plans preach a most eloquent sermon, the practical application of which is only too evident." "But how _can_ you make a tight roof? There has always been a leak here when it rains with the wind in a certain quarter. We keep a pan under it all the time, but somebody forgot to empty it; so it ran over last night." "You ought to see the house that I built," said Jack. "The wind may blow where it listeth and never a drop comes through the roof." "Oh, Jack, what a story! Only yesterday you showed me where the ceiling was stained and the paper just ready to come off." "That wasn't from rain water. It was from snow and ice water, which is a very different affair. We had peculiar weather last winter. I know a man who lost three thousand dollars' worth of frescoes in one night." "It is indeed a different matter as regards the construction of the roof, but the water is wet all the same, and a roof is inexcusable that fails to keep all beneath it dry, however peculiar the weather may be. No, it is not difficult to make a tight roof with the aid of common sense and common faithfulness. The most vulnerable spots during a rain storm are beside the dormers and the chimneys, over the bay-window roofs and in the valleys, that is, wherever the plane surface and the uniform slope of the roof is broken. In guarding these it is not safe to assume that water never runs up hill; a strong wind will drive it up the slope of a roof under slates, shingles or flashings as easily as it drives up the high tide of Lincolnshire. It will cause the water pouring down the side of a chimney, a dormer window, or any other vertical wall, to run off in an oblique direction and into cracks that never thought of being exposed to falling rain. 'Valleys' fail to carry their own rivers when they are punctured by nails carelessly driven too far within their borders; when the rust that corrupts the metal of which they are commonly composed has eaten their substance from the under side perhaps, their weakness undiscovered till the torrent breaks through; when they become choked with leaves and dust and overflow their banks; when they are torn asunder by their efforts to accommodate themselves to changes of temperature, and when ice cakes come down from the steep roofs and break holes through them. "The other danger is peculiar to cold climates, where the roof must protect not only from driving rain but from snow and ice in all their moods and tenses. When the higher peaks feel the warmth of the sun or the internal heat of the building, the lower slopes and valleys being without such influence, it sometimes happens that the rills will be set to running by the warmth of the upper portions, while the colder climate below will stop them in their course, building around the slate, shingles or tiles an impervious ice dam, from which the descending streams can find no outlet except by 'setting back' under the slates and running down inside. Eave spouts and conductors are especially liable to this climatic influence, for nothing is more common than to find them freezing in the shade while the roofs above are basking in the sun. As Jack observes, admitting water above an ice dam is a different kind of sin in a roof from that which caused the ruin of my plans last night, but it is no less unpardonable. The same treatment that will make a roof non-conducting of fire will, to some extent, overcome this danger, or a double boarding may be laid upon the rafters, with an air space between. This or the mineral wool packing will prevent the premature melting of snow from the internal heat. The only sure salvation for gutters is to take them down and lay them away in a cool, dry place. Thorough work, ample outlets and abundant room for an overflow on the outward side will make them reasonably safe. In general it is better to let the water fall to the ground, as directly as possible, and let the snow slide where it will, provided there is nothing below to be injured by an avalanche. A hundred-weight of warm snow or a five-pound icicle falling ten feet upon a slated roof or a conservatory skylight is sure to make a lasting impression." "Isn't this discourse a little out of season?" said Jack. "We don't buy furs in July nor refrigerators in January. If you expect advice to be followed, you mustn't offer it too long beforehand. Now, as your plans haven't yet recovered from their bath, let us see if Jill's air-castles can be brought down to the region of human possibilities." "I am not quite ready for that," said Jill. "First, let me show you the plans my old friend has sent me, and read you her description of them. Here are the plans and here is the letter: "'Of all the plans Will has ever made'--her 'Will' is an architect, you know--'these seem to me most likely to suit you and Jack, although they are by no means, adapted to conventional, commonplace housekeepers. In the centre of the first floor the large hall, opening freely to the outside world, is a sort of common ground, hospitable and cheerful, where the stranger guest and the old friend meet; where the children play, where the entire household are free to come and go without formality. The furniture it contains is for use and comfort. It is never out of order, because it is subject to no formal rules. At the left of the hall is the real family home, more secluded and more significant of your own taste and feeling. Instead of many separate apartments for general family use, here are drawing-room, sitting-room, library and parlor, all in one. This is the domestic sanctuary, the essential family home into which outsiders come only by special invitation. From the central hall runs the staircase that leads to the still more personal and private apartments above, one of which belongs to each member of the family. At the right of the hall is the dining-room, near enough to make its contribution to physical comfort and enjoyment at the proper time, but easily excluded when its inferior service is not required.' "I don't understand that," said Jill. "I do," said Jack. "It means that the meat that perisheth ought not to be set above the feast of reason and flow of soul; that the dining-room ought to be convenient but subordinate, not the most conspicuously elegant part of the establishment, unless we keep a boarding-house and reckon eating the chief end of man. Where do you say the library is?" "Included in the drawing-room. Probably the corner marked 'Boudoir' contains a writing desk with more or less books and other literary appliances. It has a fireplace of its own and portières would give it complete seclusion." [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE.] "Where is the smoking-room?" "I don't know. She didn't send the plans for the stable." "How savage! Please go on with the letter." Jill continued: "'The floors of the dining-room and hall are on the same level, but that of the drawing-room is one or two feet higher--' "I don't like that at all. Should stumble forty times a day." "'--which is typical of its higher social plane, makes a charming raised seat on the platform at the foot of the stairs, and gives a more picturesque effect than would be possible if all the rooms were on a par.' "Can't help that. I shouldn't like it. I'd rather be a commonplace housekeeper." "'The higher broad landing in the staircase, running quite across the hall, makes a sort of gallery with room for a few book-shelves, a lounging-seat in the window, a band of musicians on festival occasions, with perhaps a pretty view from the window.' "If the landscape happens to fit the plan." "'Under the lower portion, of the stairs there is a toilet room, and at the same end of the hall wide doors lead to the piazza. A long window also gives access to the same piazza from the drawing-room. In the second story the chambers have plenty of closets and dressing-rooms, and yet but few doors. Indeed, many of these may be omitted by using portières between each chamber and its dressing-room. You will notice, too, that by locking one door on each story the servants' quarters can be entirely detached from the rest of the house.' "Yes," said Jill, laying down the letter; "and that suggests another question: What do you think of a plan like this which provides no passage from the kitchen to the front part of the house except across the dining-room?" [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR OF WILL'S MASTERPIECE.] "I should refer the question back to the housekeepers themselves; it is domestic rather than architectural. If the kitchen servant attends to the door bell, and is constantly sailing back and forth between the cooking-stove and the front door like a Fulton Ferry boat, the amount of travel would justify a special highway--even a suspension bridge. Likewise, when the side entrance for the boys and other careless members of the family is behind the dining-room, that apartment will become a noisy thoroughfare, unless there is a corridor passing around it. This is a common dilemma in planning the average house, and while a direct communication between the front and rear portions is always desirable, crossing one of the principal rooms is often the least of two evils. It seems to be so in this plan." "Go on, Jill." "There is but one more sentence about the plan: 'The outside of the house is severely plain, but you can easily make it more ornamental.'" "That's true. Nothing is easier than to make things ornamental. The hard thing is to make them simply useful. Now if you want my candid opinion of this plan," Jack continued, "I should say it is first-rate if the front door looks toward the east: if there is a grand view of rivers and mountains toward the southwest; if the family live on the west piazza all the forenoon; if they board a moderate family of servants in the north end (which I notice is a few steps lower than the dining-room--for social reasons, I suppose)--if they keep up rather a 'tony' style of living in the south end; are not above condescending to men of low estate to the extent of receiving common people in the big hall, but holding themselves about two steps above the average human; and, finally, if and provided the butler's pantry is made as large again for a smoking-room, and the kitchen pantry made large enough to hold the butler. With these few remarks, I think we may lay this set of plans on the table." [Illustration] CHAPTER VI. THE WISDOM OF JILL IN THE KITCHEN. "Perhaps Jack will remember," said Jill, as she prepared to explain her plans, "that we examined not long ago a large number of somewhat pretentious houses, but did not find one that was satisfactory, the defects being usually in what I should call the working department of the house. The large front rooms were often exceedingly charming, elegantly furnished and well arranged." "For which reason," said Jack, "the family seemed to be religiously kept out of them unless they had on their company manners and their Sunday clothes, or wished to make themselves particularly miserable by having a wedding, a sewing society or an evening party." "The rear boundary of the dining-room seemed like Mason and Dixon's line in the old times; once beyond it, we entered a region 'without law or ornament or order,' a realm of architectural incompetence, confusion and evil work--if it is fair to call the arrangements of the domestic part of a house an architectural matter." "Certainly it is," Jack affirmed, "and it's my opinion that no architect ought to receive his diploma until he has served one year in a first-class family as cook, butler and maid-of-all-work." [Illustration: THE OUTSIDE OF TED'S HOUSE.] "One would almost be inclined to think that such an experience, with another year at bridge building, had been with certain 'practical architects and builders' the entire course of study." "It was plain enough," Jill continued, "that these houses were planned by _men_, who were not only ignorant of the details of housework but who held them in low esteem, as of no special importance. They evidently exhausted their room and their resources on what they are pleased to call the 'main' part of the house, leaving the kitchen and all its accessories to be fashioned out of the chips and fragments that remained. It would be a similar thing if a man should build a factory, fill it with machinery, furnish and equip the offices, warerooms and shipping docks, but leave no room for the engine that is to drive the whole or for the fuel that feeds the engine. When 'we women' practice domestic architecture, as we surely ought and shall,--" "When it's fashionable." "--we shall change all that. If there can be but two good rooms in a house it is better to have a kitchen and sitting-room than a dining-room and parlor. I propose to begin at the other end of the problem in planning our house. It may not suit anybody else, but if it suits Jack and I it will be a model home." "That sentiment is a solid foundation to build upon," said the architect. "I wish it was more popular. Build to suit yourselves, not your neighbors." "And now if you will walk into my kitchen, which is _not_ up nor down a winding stair? but on the same level with the dining-room, you shall judge whether it can be made a stern reality or must always remain the ghostly wing of a castle in the air. The approach from outside is through the little entry at the farther corner, where 'the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker,' the grocer, the fish-man, the milk-man and the ice-man bring their offerings. The other entrance is by way of the lobby adjoining the main staircase hall. This lobby or 'garden entrance' is a sort of Mugby Junction, where we can take the cars for the cellar, for the second floor by the back stairs route, for the dining-room or for out of doors, and where we find refreshment in the way of a wash-basin and minor toilet conveniences. Under the main staircase there is also a large closet opening into this same lobby. My kitchen you see has windows at opposite sides, not only to admit plenty of light, for cleanliness is a child of light--" "That's true," said Jack. "In a dark room it's hard to tell a dried blueberry from a dried--currant." "Not only for light, but that the summer breezes may sweep through it when the windows are open, and, as far as possible, keep a river of fresh air rollings between the cooking range and the dining-room. It is long and narrow, that it may have ample wall space and yet keep the distance between the engine and machine shop, that is, the range with its appurtenances, and the packing-room--I mean the butler's pantry--as short as possible." "I'm glad there's going to be a 'butler's pantry,' it sounds so stylish. I notice that among people who have accommodations for a 'butler' in their house plans, about one in a hundred keeps the genuine article. All the rest keep a waitress or a 'second girl.' Sometimes the cook, waitress, butler, chambermaid, valet and housekeeper are all combined in one tough and versatile handmaiden." [Illustration: JILL'S KITCHEN IN BLACK AND WHITE.] "Well, call it china closet, though it is really something more than that, or serving-room, or dining-room pantry--whatever you please. We shall keep two servants in the house, one of whom will wait on the table; consequently I do not want a door from this room-of-many-names to the kitchen. It is much easier to maintain the dignity and order that belong to our precious pottery, our blue and crackled ware, our fair and frail cut glass, if they are not exposed to frequent attacks from the kitchen side. There is, however, an ample sliding door or window in the partition, and a wide serving table before it, on which the cook will deposit the dinner as she takes it from the range. A part of the top of this table is of slate, and may be kept hot by steam or hot water from the range. With but one servant it would of course be necessary to make the route from the kitchen range to the dining-room table more direct." "What if you had none?" "If I had none, my kitchen, dining-room, store-room, china-closet, butler's pantry and all the blessed facilities for cooking, serving and removing the meals should be within a radius of ten feet. How any mortal woman with a soul above dress trimmings can be content to spend three hours in preparing meals to be eaten in thirty minutes passes my comprehension. When I 'do my own work,' as Aunt Jerusha says, there will be no extra steps, no extra dishes, no French cooking, no multiplying of 'courses.'" "No cards, no cake, no style." "Yes, indeed! The most distinguished and elegant style. Such style as is not possible except where all the household service is performed by the most devoted, the most thoughtful, the most intelligent, if I may say so--" "Certainly the most intelligent, amiable, accomplished and altogether lovely member of the family. I agree to that." "There will be no _pretense_ of style--if that is what you mean, no vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler, waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician, abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as may be most congenial. It would be a delightful way of living, and I should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I _had_ a soul above dress trimmings. I am not willing to be a household drudge, overwhelmed by the 'work that is never done;' therefore, to be on the safe side, we will keep two servants. "The cooking range, whether of the portable or 'set' kind, will have a brick wall behind it and at each side, which, carried above, will form a sort of canopy to conduct into the chimney the superfluous heat in warm weather and the steam and smoke from cooking at all times. I suppose some housekeepers would object to separating the two pantries, but they have no common interests requiring close proximity. The kitchen pantry is a store-room and a kind of private laboratory, where the mysterious experiments are made that develop our taste for esthetic cooking and give us an experimental knowledge of dyspepsia. Its operations precede the work of the range to which it is a near neighbor, as it ought to be. It has also the merit of being in the cool northwest corner of the house, with small windows on two adjacent sides, which are better than a single window, for the air of a store-room or pantry cannot be changed too freely in warm weather. "Do you see the closets at the end of this pantry? One is for ice, which is shoved in through a little door just above the sink where it is brought by the ice-man; the other is for a cold closet and is built in such a way as to get the full benefit of its cold-blooded neighbor. Don't forget, in making the plan, that the door through which the ice slides must be large enough to take in the largest cakes, and must be so arranged that after being washed at the sink they will slide easily without lifting or _banging_ into their proper places inside." "And let me suggest," said the architect, "that the waste-pipe that carries off the melted ice be allowed to run straight out of doors, without making the acquaintance of the sewer or any other drain-pipe." "Please remember that then, as well as the door. The kitchen sink is at the west end of the room, between and under two windows, which must be at least three feet from the floor. It is near to the pantry door, to accommodate the dishes used in cooking; yet not so near that one cannot stand beside it without danger of being roasted or broiled; near to the cellar door, from whence come the Murphys and other vegetables to have their faces washed and their eyes put out. Of course there is a china sink in the china closet, to insure tender treatment for all the table ware, and I should like a sort of window or slide behind the sideboard opening through it. Sometimes it will be convenient for the waitress to arrange the articles to be used on the table within reach from the dining-room side, and save a special journey whenever a dish, or a spoon is changed." "It strikes me," said Jack, "that when it comes to spoons you're drawing it pretty fine. I suppose these are modern improvements, but how much better will the dinners be than the dinners cooked in my kitchen? Two servants will do all the work for the same wages." "Real labor-saving is a religious duty, like all other economy; and if we don't have better domestic service with better facilities for doing work the fault is our own." "But I don't see that this kitchen is any better than mine." "Of course you don't; you're a man; but for one thing, your china closet hasn't even a window of its own. How do you expect glasses to be made clean and silver bright in such a place? Now observe my plan: Not only is the kitchen light, but the entry where the ice comes in, the pantry where the food is prepared, the butler's pantry, the stairs to the cellar and to the second floor, and Mugby Junction, are all light. There isn't a dark corner on the premises, and consequently no excuse for uncleanness or accidents." "Just think of the flies." "Windows are easily darkened. But I am not quite ready to talk over these minor matters. The general plan is the first thing, and I think you will agree with me that it is well begun." "According to Poor Richard, then, it is half done. So it's time for recess." "Very well; way of change let us look at the plans of brother Ted's house in Kansas. Its situation is different from ours, as it stands on a high bluff in a bend of the Missouri, and the parlor looks over the water in three different directions, up and down and across the river. The piazza seems to be arranged to make the most of this situation, and Ted thinks it impossible to contrive a more charming arrangement for hall, parlor and dining-room. They use the parlor as a common sitting-room, and the hall still more commonly, especially in warm weather. Ted doesn't realize that half the charm of the house lies in its adaptation to the site." [Illustration: THE FIRST FLOOR OF TED'S HOUSE.] "That ought to be the case with every country or suburban house." "It certainly will not fit our lot, and it seems to me best suited for a summer home or for a warm climate." Here Jack was called to his office, and Jill withdrew to attend to some household duties, first requesting the architect to redraw the plans so as to show accurately the construction and details. "That is to say," said Jack, "while Jill makes a pudding for dinner and I write a business letter of three lines, you are to lay out in complete shape the plans for a house containing all the modern abominations and improvements, that will cost ten thousand dollars, occupy two years in building and last forever. That's a modest request." "Not extravagant compared with the demands often made upon domestic architects, for it involves no downright contradictions. I am not asked to show how a house worth ten thousand dollars can be built for five, or to break the Golden Rule, or to change the multiplication table and the cardinal points of the compass." CHAPTER VII. BE HONEST AND KEEP WARM. The architect went home to translate the instructions he had received into the language that builders understand. Jack and Jill established themselves in the house that Jack built. The proposed amendments were indefinitely postponed; Jill having consented to take the house temporarily as she had taken Jack permanently--for better or worse--only claiming her reserved right, in the case of the house, of privately finding all the fault she pleased. Even the staircase, so favorable to a swift descent, remained unchanged, and in their own room the bed stood squarely in the middle of the floor. Jack averred that this was intended when the house was planned, because the air is so much better in the centre of a room, and there is not so much danger of being struck by lightning. One day there came a cold, gloomy rain on the wings of a raw east wind, and after Jack had gone to his office it occurred to Jill that a fire on the hearth in the parlor, which they used as a common sitting-room, would be exceedingly comfortable, but on removing a highly ornamental screen that served as a "fireboard," she found neither grate nor fireplace, only a blank wall plastered and papered. Her righteous wrath was kindled, not because she was compelled to get warm in some other way, but by the fraudulent character of the chimney-piece. "I can imagine nothing more absurdly impertinent," she declared to Jack when he came home, "than that huge marble mantel standing stupidly against the wall where there isn't even a chimney for a background. As a piece of furniture it is superfluous; as a wall decoration it is hideous; as a shelf it is preposterous; as a fireplace it is a downright lie. If our architect suggests anything of the kind he will be dismissed on the instant." [Illustration: THE POOR BUT MODEST ATTORNEY'S COTTAGE] "Don't you think the room would look rather bare without a mantel? You know it's the most common thing in the world to have them like this. I can show you a hundred without going out of town." "Common! It's worse than common; it is vulgar, it is atrocious, it is the sum of all villainies!" said Jill, her indignation rising with each succeeding epithet. "A fireplace is a sacred thing. To pretend to have one when you have not is like pretending to be pious when you know you are wicked; it is stealing the livery of a warm, gracious, kindly hospitality to serve you in making a cold, heartless _pretense_ of welcome." "I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Jack protested with exceeding meekness. "Such mantels were all the fashion when this house was built, and fashions in marble can't be changed as easily as fashions in paper flowers." "There ought not to be 'fashions' in marble, but of course it was fashion. Nothing else than the blindest of all blind guides could have led people into anything so hopelessly silly and unprincipled. I shall never enjoy this room again," she continued, "knowing, as well I know, that yonder stately piece of sculpture is a whited sepulchre, a delusion and a snare. I shall feel that I ought to unmask it the moment a visitor comes in, lest I should be asked to make a fire on the hearth and be obliged to confess the depravity in our own household." [Illustration: A DOUBLE TEAM.] "Now, really, my dear, don't you think you are coming it rather strong, if I may be allowed the expression? Isn't it possible that your present views may be slightly tinged by the color of the east wind, so to speak?" "Not in the least. You know perfectly well, Jack, that insincerity is the bane of domestic and social life; that hypocrisy is a child of the Evil One, and that vain and false pretensions are the fatal lures that lead us on to destruction. How can we respect ourselves or expect our friends to respect us if the most conspicuous thing in the house is a palpable fraud?" "Very well, dear, I'll bring up a can of nitro-glycerine to-morrow and blow the whole establishment into the middle of futurity. Meanwhile, let us see if anything can be done to make it endurable a few hours longer." Dropping on his knees in front of the fictitious fireplace, Jack pulled the paper from the wall, disclosing a sheet-iron stove-pipe receiver, set there for a time of need, and communicating in some mysterious way with a sooty smoke flue. Having found this, he telephoned to the stove store for a portable grate--that is to say, a Franklin stove with ornamental tiles in the face of it--and in less than an hour the room was radiant with the blaze of a hickory fire, while a hitherto unknown warmth came to the lifeless marble from its new neighbor. By sitting directly in front of it Jill discovered that in appearance the general effect was nearly as good as that of a genuine fireplace, the warmth diffused being decidedly greater. "I'm sorry I lost my temper," said she, after they had sat a while in silence enjoying the ameliorating influence of the blaze, "but I _do_ hate a humbug. We will let this stove stand here all summer to remind you that neither your house nor your wife is perfect, and to keep me warm when the east wind blows." [Illustration: WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW.] Jack's response to this magnanimous remark must be omitted, as it had no direct bearing upon house-building. "When I went into the kitchen this morning to get warm," Jill observed later in the evening, "I found Bridget ironing; the stove was red-hot, the bath boiler was bubbling and shaking with the imprisoned steam, and the outside door was wide open. It struck me that there was heat enough going out of doors, not to mention the superheated air of the kitchen itself, to have made the whole house comfortable such days as this, if it could only be saved. Don't you think it would be possible to attach a pipe to some part of the cooking-range that would carry steam or hot water to the front of the house. We shouldn't want it when the furnace was running, nor in very warm weather, and at such times it could be turned off." Jack thought it could be done, and expressed a willingness to be a roasted martyr occasionally if he could by that means make some use of the perennial fire in the kitchen, a fire that seemed to be the hottest when there was no demand for it. [Illustration: STEAM PIPES BESIDE THE FIREPLACE.] "It's my conviction," said he, "that if the heat actually evolved from the fuel consumed by the average cook could be conserved on strictly scientific principles, it would warm the house comfortably the year round without any damage to the cooking, and with a saving of all the bother of stoves, fireplaces and furnaces." And his conviction was well founded, provided the house is not too large and the weather is not too cold. "Shall we try it in the new house?" "No, not unless somebody invents a new patent low-pressure, automatic-cooking-range-warming-attachment before we are ready for it. We shall have fireplaces in every room--real ones--and steam radiators beside." "What! in every room, those ugly, black, bronzy, oily, noisy, leaking, sizzling, snapping steam radiators that are always in the way and keep the air in the room so dry that everybody has catarrh, the doors won't latch, and the furniture falls to pieces? You know how the old heirloom mahogany chair collapsed under Madam Abigail at Mrs. Hunter's party--went to pieces in a twinkling like the one-horse shay--and all on account of the steam heat." "Yes, I remember; it was a comical tragedy; and before we run any such risks let us look over our advisory letters. Here's one from Uncle Harry, who, as you know, is never without a hobby of some sort. Just at present he is devoted to sanitary questions. To be well warmed, ventilated and plumbed is the chief end of man. He begins by saying that 'sun's heat is the only external warmth that is natural or beneficial to human beings. When men have risen above the dark clouds of sin and ignorance they will discover how to preserve the extra warmth of the torrid zone and of the hot summers in our own latitudes to be evenly diffused through colder climes and seasons. Next to sun's heat is that which comes from visible combustion--the burning of wood and coal. Such spontaneous, radiant, living warmth differs essentially from that which we receive by contact with artificially-warmed substances, somewhat as fruit that has been long gathered differs from that taken directly from the vine.'" "Isn't this getting sort of misty, what you might call 'transcendental like'?" "Possibly, and this is still more so: 'Warmth is the vital atmosphere of life, and a living flame imparts to us some of nature's own mysterious vitality. Hence, the sun's rays and the blaze of burning fuel give not only a material but a spiritual comfort and cheer, which mere warm air is powerless to impart. Here is another reason why direct radiation, even from a black iron pipe, is preferable to a current of warm air brought from a distance: in a room warmed by such a current nothing is ever quite so warm as the air itself unless so situated as to obstruct its flow, but every solid substance near a hot stove or radiator absorbs the radiated heat and is satisfied, while the air for respiration remains at a comparatively low temperature.'" "There may be a little sense in that," said Jack, "but the rest is several fathoms too deep for me. Has he any practical advice to give?" "That depends upon what you call practical. 'I have little patience,' he says, 'with the common objection to direct radiation, that it brings no fresh air. Fresh air can be had for the asking under a small stove or radiator standing in a room as well as under a large stove or boiler standing in the cellar; neither does the dampness or dryness of the atmosphere depend primarily upon the mode of warming it, while, as for the appearance of steam pipes, if they are not beautiful as usually seen, it only proves that art is not wisely applied to iron work, and that architects have not learned the essential lesson that whatever gives added comfort to a house will, if rightly treated, enhance its beauty. Steam-pipes or radiators may stand under windows, behind an open screen or grill of polished brass, or they may be incorporated with the chimney piece, and need not, in either case, be unsightly or liable to work mischief upon the carpets or ceilings under them. Wherever placed, a flue to bring in fresh air should be provided and fitted with a damper to control the currents.'" "I like the notion of putting them beside the fireplace," said Jack. "When they are both running, it would be like hitching a pair of horses before an ox-team or a steam engine attachment to an overshot water-wheel. It means business. Uncle Harry improves. What next?" "He expounds his theories of light and shade, of plumbing, sewer-gas and malaria, and casually remarks that 'the variation of the north magnetic pole and the points of compass are not yet fully understood in their relation to human welfare.'" "I should hope not! He must be writing under the influence of a full moon. Let us try a fresh correspondent." "Very well. Here is Aunt Melville's latest, with a new set of plans. There will be neither trancendentalism nor vain repetitions here: "'MY DEAR NIECE: Since writing you last I have had a most interesting experience, and hasten to give you the benefit of it. You remember Mr. Melville's niece married a young attorney in Tumbledonville; very talented and of good family, but poor, _desperately_ poor. He hadn't over two or three thousand dollars in the world, but he has built a marvelous little house, of which I send you the plans. You enter a lovely hall, positively larger than, mine, an actual room in fact, with a staircase running up at one side and a charming fireplace at the right, built, if you will believe it, of common red bricks that cost only five dollars a thousand. It couldn't have taken over two hundred and fifty to build it.--' [Illustration: THE ATTORNEY'S FLOOR PLAN.] "Just think of that! A charming fireplace for a dollar and a quarter!--" "Communicating with the hall by a wide door beautifully draped with some astonishingly cheap material is the parlor, fully equal in every respect to my library, and adjoining that the dining-room, nearly as large. On the same side is a green-house between two bay windows, the whole arrangement having a wonderful air of gentility and culture. I am convinced that you ought to invest three-fourths of your father's wedding present in some safe business, and with the remainder build a house like this, buying a small lot for it, and defer the larger house for a few years. Keeping house alone with Jack and perhaps one maid-of-all-work will be perfectly respectable and dignified; the experience will do you good, and I have no doubt you will enjoy it. It will not only be a great economy in a pecuniary way, but society is very exacting, and a large house entails heavy social burdens which you will escape while living in a cottage. This will give you plenty of time to improve your taste in art, which is indispensable at present. There will be great economy, too, in the matter of furniture. A large house _must_ be furnished according to prevailing fashions, but in a small one you may indulge any unconventional, artistic fancy you please.'" "If Aunt Melville's advice and plans could be applied where they are needed they would be extremely valuable. Suppose we found a society and present them to it for gratuitous distribution." "We can't spare them yet; we shall not use them, but it is well to hear all sides of a question." CHAPTER VII. TRUTH, POETRY AND ROOFS. "How the wind does blow!" said Jill, as she laid aside Aunt Melville's latest, and Jack laid another log into the open stove. "It is a genuine 'gale from the northeast.'" "So it is, and that reminds me," Jack exclaimed, jumping up, "that a driving rain from the northeast always gets the better of the attic window over the guest-room. There's something mysterious about that window," he explained. "It opens like a door; I believe they call it a 'casement' window, and in such a storm as this I have to keep sopping up the water that blows in. I had a carpenter look at it, but he said it couldn't be fixed without making a new one or fastening it up so it couldn't be opened at all. We don't have a northeast rain-storm very often, and that's the only window that ever leaks--except the skylight and the round one in the west gable which is hung at the top to swing inward and couldn't be expected to hold water." Jill found some towels, and they hurried to the attic to "sop up" the rain that was driving under the sash and had already made its mark on the ceiling below. Then they examined the skylight and the round window, and just as they were about to descend perceived a smell of burning wood. Jack rushed down to the sitting-room, telling Jill to fly for a pail of water, found the wall beside the stove-pipe very hot, ran for an axe, and, smashing a hole through the lath and plastering, discovered a bit of wood furring to which the laths had been nailed resting directly against the sheet iron pipe. Catching the pail of water which Jill was about to pour into the stove, he cooled the hot pipe and extinguished the wood about to burst into flame, the smoke of which, rising beside the chimney to the attic, had warned them of the danger below. He then cut away around the pipe till the solid brick chimney was exposed, gathered up the rubbish, piling the chips upon the fire in the stove, and lay back in his chair, evidently enjoying the situation. "How can you be so reckless, Jack, as to keep a fire in such a chimney?" "The chimneys are all right, my dear. I took special pains with them when the house was built. The only danger there ever was lay in that little piece of inch board that happened to be too near the pipe." "And how are we to know what other little pieces of board may be too near? I think it's a very dangerous house to live in. If we hadn't gone up to the attic when we did it would have been all in flames." "And we shouldn't have gone to the attic at all if my windows had been proof against the east wind." "No, nor would you have known we were having a gale from the northeast if I hadn't quoted the 'Wreck of the Hesperus.'" [Illustration: NO CONCEALMENT OR DISGUISE.] "Consequently we owe our preservation to the well-beloved poet." "Moral: Study the poets." "Moral number two: Build leaky casements." "Number three: When the wood around a chimney takes fire it doesn't prove a 'defective flue.'" "Number four: A small fault hidden is more dangerous than a large one in sight." "Very true; and if modern builders had kept to the poet's standard, and, like those in the elder days of art, 'wrought with greatest care, Each minute and hidden part,' we should not be trembling before a black and ragged chasm in the wall, afraid to go to bed lest the fire should break out anew and burn us in our sleep." "There's not the least danger. We are as safe as a barrel of gunpowder in a mill pond. There is nothing to set us on fire. That bit of dry wood was the key to the whole situation. We have captured that and can make our own terms. Still, if you feel nervous we will sit up and 'talk house' till the fire goes out." Jill acceded to this proposal and began to discourse, taking moral number four for a text. "I wish it were possible," said she, "to build a house with everything in plain sight, the chimneys, the hot-air pipes from the furnace, if there are any, the steam pipes, the ventilators, the gas pipes, the water pipes, the speaking tubes, the cranks and wires for the bells--whatever really belongs to the building. They might all be decorated if that would make them more interesting, but even if they were quite unadorned they ought not to be ugly. If we could see them we shouldn't feel that we are surrounded by hidden mysteries liable at any time to explode or break loose upon us unawares. Those things that get out of order easily ought surely to be accessible. I don't believe there would have been half the trouble with plumbing, either in the way of danger to health or from dishonest and ignorant work, if it had not been the custom to keep it as much as possible out of sight. There is a great satisfaction, too, in knowing that everything is genuine." "We might build a log house. The logs are solid, and the chimney, if there happens to be one, won't pretend to be of the same material as the walls of the building." "I like better the notion of letting the material of which brick walls and partitions are composed form the actual finish inside as well as outside. The floors, too, should be bare, and the beams that support them ought to be visible, and in case of a wooden house, the posts, braces and other timbers should be left in sight when the building is finished. It is a sad pity that modern modes of building, like modern manners and fashions, conceal actual construction and character, making a mask that may hide great excellence or absolute worthlessness." "Won't all these pipes, wooden beams, bell ropes and things be fearfully dusty and cumber the housekeeper with too much serving? I supposed you would vote for smooth, flat, hard wood and painted walls, they are so much easier to keep clean." "Perhaps I shall; but we must remember the gnat and the camel and try to be consistent. A single portière, especially if it be of the rag-carpet style, has a greater dust-collecting capacity than a whole houseful of wooden floors, ceilings and wainscots, even when they are moulded and ornamentally wrought. Surely they will not be troublesome if they are plain and simple, and only think how much more interesting than flat square walls and ceilings, which we feel compelled to cover with some sort of decoration to make them endurable. I suppose architects have outgrown the sheet-iron and stucco style of building, and do not generally approve of 'graining' honest pine in imitation of coarse-grained chestnut. But these are not the only concealments and disguises that ought to be reformed. If we cannot make our house a model in any other respect, I hope it will be free from hypocrisy and silly affectations." "By all means; but you mustn't forget that reformers risk martyrdom. However, you can't be too honest for me; I am ready to sign any pledge you offer, even though it prohibit paint, putty and all other cloaks for poverty, ignorance and dishonesty." "There's a time and place for paint and putty, lath, plaster and paper, but we ought not to be helplessly dependent upon them." "Have you any idea how the house will look outside," asked Jack, giving the fire a poke, "or is that to be left to take care of itself?" "No, indeed! not left to take care of itself. In that part of the undertaking we are bound to believe that the architect is wiser than we, and must accept in all humility what he decrees. Still I think the law of domestic architecture at least should be 'from within out.' For the sake of the external appearance it ought not to be necessary to make the rooms higher or lower than we want them for use, neither larger nor more irregular in shape. It ought not to be necessary to build crooked chimneys for the sake of a dignified standing on the roof, or to make a pretense of a window where none is needed. The windows are for you and me to look out from and to let in the sunlight, not for the benefit of outside observers, and should be treated accordingly. We will not have big posts--mullions, do you call them?--in the middle of them, as there are in these. When I try to look down the street to see if you are coming home I can scarcely see obliquely to the corner of the lot, and we don't get half as much sunshine as we should if the windows were all in one." [Illustration: WITH A MULLION AND WITHOUT.] "Why not, if there's the same amount of glass?" "Because the sun can't shine around a corner; and Jack, why did you set them so near the floor? There's no chance for a seat under them, and they do not give as much light or ventilation as they would if they ran nearly up to the ceiling." "What is the use of making them long at the top? They are always half covered up with lambrequins or some fanciful contrivance." "Indeed, they will not be; our windows will be arranged to be wholly uncovered whenever we need the light. Too many windows are not so unmanageable as too many doors, and I should like one room with a whole broadside of glass; but for most rooms the fewer windows the better, provided they are broad and high. I despise a room in which you can't sit down without being in front of a window or walk around without running against a door, that has no large wall spaces for pictures and no room for a piano, a book-case, a cabinet or a large lounge. A small room, that has doors or windows on all sides does not seem like a room intended for permanent occupation, but rather as a sort of outer court or vestibule belonging to something farther on." "I suppose the architect will claim the porches, balconies, and things of that sort, as belonging to the exterior, and design them as he pleases; but I think we have a right to insist that they shall add to our comfort. They must be large enough to be used, they must be put where we can use them conveniently, and they must not interfere with the interior arrangements; beyond that we shall accept what the architect sets before us." "'Asking no questions for conscience sake.' How about the roof--is that also a matter of evolution?" "No; because the inside of the roof is of but little consequence. It must keep out the rain and wind, snow and ice; it must be strong and economically built and have a reasonable amount of light. The rest we shall leave to the architect. As Uncle Harry observes, 'the material part of the house rests upon the foundation stones; its spiritual character is displayed chiefly in the roof, which may change to an unlimited extent the expression of the building it covers.'" [Illustration: JACK'S ARCHITECTURAL PHRENOLOGY.] "That's so. Let me make the roofs for a people and I care not who builds the houses. The roof on the house is like the hat on the man, as I can show you," said Jack, taking a piece of charcoal from the stove and drawing on the back of the fireboard some astonishing illustrations of his theory. "Here is the president of a big corporation who must be dignified whether he has a soul or not. He represents the 'renaissance.' No nonsense about him, no sentiment, no sympathy, no anything but--himself and his own magnificence." "This fellow is a brakeman--prompt, efficient, laconic. Same head, you see, but different hat. He stands for the hipped roof which has one duty to do and does it." [Illustration: THE HAT MAKES THE MAN.] "Give the dignified president a smashing blow on the head and you see what he may become after an unsuccessful defalcation--an unfortunate tramp, who has 'seen better days.' He is a capital illustration of the roofs called 'French,' that were so imposing a few years ago, and are about as agreeable in the way of landscape decoration as the tramp himself, but not half so picturesque. "Pull the string again and we have a benevolent 'broad-brim,' stiff, symmetrical and proper to the last degree, like an Italian villa; and, once more changing the straight lines to crooked ones, the conventional formalist becomes the unconventional, free-and-easy South-westerner, who may stand for Swiss or any other go-as-you-please style." "It is midnight and the fire is out; let's adjourn." [Illustration.] CHAPTER IX. PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE--BLINDS AND BESSIE. The next demonstration from the architect was a pencil drawing of the floor plans, submitted for inspection and criticism. Concerning these he wrote to Jill's entire satisfaction. "From many of my clients I should expect the first question would be, 'Will a house built in this shape look well outside?' It is not necessary to remind you that at this stage of the proceedings such an inquiry is wholly irrelevant. The interior arrangements should be made without a thought of the exterior effect, precisely as if the house were to wear the ring of Gyges and be forever invisible to outsiders. There are several points, however, on which I await further instructions----" "What's the use of having an architect," Jack inquired, "if you've got to keep instructing him all the time?" ----"provided you wish to give instructions," Jill continued reading. "There is often a misunderstanding between architect and client, and I wish to avoid it in the present case by saying at the outset that while there are many things which, in my opinion, should be referred to you, I am ready to decide them for you if you wish me to do so; but even in such cases I prefer to set before you the arguments pro and con, after which, if you still desire it, I shall accept the arbitration. This is not a rule that works both ways or applies universally, for while referring to you matters relating to use and expenditure, and at the same time standing ready to decide them for you, I cannot promise to accept your advice in matters of construction and design. I trust I have not yet reached the fossiliferous state of mind that prevents my listening with sincere respect to candid suggestions, even from those who are not fairly competent to give advice; but on these points you must not expect me to follow your taste and judgment in opposition to my own, even if you do pay the bills. When your physician prescribes arsenic and you inform him that you shall give it to your poodle and take strychnine instead, he will doubtless infer that his services are no longer desired; he will know that while he might be able to kill you, he could not hope to cure you. Patients have rights that physicians are bound to respect, but the right to commit suicide and ruin the physician's reputation is not among them. The relations of client and architect are similar. "This is one of the questions which I refer to you, but will answer for you if you send it back: How shall the eyes of the house be closed? Shall the eyelids be outside blinds, inside folding shutters, 'Queen Anne' rolling blinds, sliding blinds or Venetian shades? There are good reasons for and against each kind; either, if adopted, compels some compromise. Whichever road you take you will wish you had taken the other. [Illustration: THE CONTRIBUTION OF BESSIE'S FATHER.] "For instance, in hot weather outside blinds that shield the glass from the direct rays of the sun keep the rooms cooler than any form of inside shutters; they allow a gradation of light and a free circulation of air. You can even leave the window open during a summer shower without danger of being drenched. Last but not least they are inexpensive. The wrong side of the outside blinds appears when you wish to make wide windows, or mullioned windows, or windows that cannot command at each side an unobstructed wall space equal to at least half their own width for the blinds to rest against when open. Under such circumstances, which are by no means rare, outside blinds are stubbornly unmanageable. "Inside blinds that fold back and swing away from the windows must have wide recessed jambs to hold them when they are not in use. If the windows are broad these 'pockets' will require a thick wall and thus increase the actual size of the house. A little space may be saved by allowing them to stand out obliquely when open, or turn around upon the inside face of the wall, but either mode increases the cost of finishing the rooms. If these blinds are made of open slats, many housekeepers despise them as being no better than small cabinets maliciously contrived to accumulate dust; if of solid panels, they make a room perfectly dark, or when opened ever so slightly admit unbroken rays of sunlight. On the other hand, inside blinds are accessible; they can be opened and closed without leaning half one's length out of the window; they do not hide the glory of plate glass; they graciously permit windows to stand where they please and to be as large as they please; and they never quarrel with piazza roofs, awnings, hoods or other outside accessories. "Shutters that coil up into a box over the window or down into a box below it have the modest excellence of being always out of the way when they are not wanted, of staying where they are put when partially open, of occupying but little space and never standing in the way of the window curtains. They are, in fact, wooden shades similar to the old-fashioned green slat curtains, that were rolled up by drawing a cord, but are far more substantial. The single slats of which they are composed do not revolve, and consequently it is not easy to 'peep through the blind just to hear the band play.' "Venetian shades, with their multiplicity of bright-colored straps, cords, hooks and trimmings, are picturesque and graceful. They are somewhat subject to dust and repairs, and when the window is open are not proof against tornadoes and thunder showers. "Inside blinds are sometimes contrived to slide sideways, like barn doors, into cavities formed to receive them. If built with extreme care and handled with the utmost tenderness they are a degree less obtrusive than when wholly dependent on hinges. Likewise, outside blinds may be contrived to swing horizontally as well as vertically, standing out from the top of the window like a small shed roof. They are not quite wide enough to serve as awnings, and are liable to catch more wind than they can hold." "It strikes me that the whole thing is a 'blind.' What is he driving at?" "The conclusion of the matter seems to be given in this sentence: 'You will perceive, therefore, that a decision in regard to blinds should be made even before the house is staked out, since the size of the foundation itself may be affected by it, as well as the minor details.'" "I'm ready for the question; are you?" "Yes. In the bay windows and for the long windows that give access to the balconies and piazzas we will have blinds that roll up out of the way. A few of the windows on the sunny side will have for summer use outside blinds, a few more will have cloth awnings. The most of the windows will have no blinds at all, only such shades and curtains as we choose to furnish. I don't think the eyes of a house ought to be closed much of the time. It is certainty absurd to hang blinds at all the windows when we only need them at a few." "Oh, but won't the neighbors rage and imagine vain things when they see a house with here and there a blind and here and there an awning?" "The wise ones will approve; the foolish ones will demonstrate their folly by criticising what they don't understand." "Very well, that point is settled. Unless the next is sharp and short you must decide it without my help. It is high time I was at the office." "We will defer them all. It is time for me to be at my household duties. You know Cousin Bessie comes this afternoon, and I've noticed that extremely intellectual people are sometimes extremely fond of a good dinner." "If Bessie is coming I must anoint my beard with oil of sunflowers and trot out my old gold slippers. Shall I send up some pale lilies for dessert? And that reminds me--Jim came home last night and I asked the old fellow to come up to dinner. How do you suppose Bess found it out?" "Don't be spiteful, Jack. She didn't find it out at all. I invited her a week ago. Now go to the office, please, while I put the house in order." During this important process Jill entertained herself by philosophical reflection upon the style of living that requires a house to be constantly "put in order." She recalled certain of Uncle Harry's observations to the effect that in a truly civilized state housekeeping would be so conducted and houses would be so contrived that instead of causing care and labor proverbially endless, housekeepers would no more be burdened by their domestic duties than are the fowls of the air. Jill had too much of the rare good sense, incorrectly called "common," to attempt to reduce Uncle Harry's theories to practice all at once. She knew that though we may not reach the summit of our ambition, it is well to advance toward it even by a single step, or failing in that, to help prepare a way for some one else. She understood the wisdom of striving to increase the fraction of life by dividing the denominator, and at the same time cherished the broader hope that her life and her home might be filled with whatever is of most enduring worth. Moralizing thus, but always with an architectural or house-building background, she continued her work, noticing the sharp grooves and projecting mouldings that caught the dust, the high, ugly thresholds, the doors that swung the wrong way, compelling half a dozen extra steps in passing through them; shelves that were too high or too narrow; drawers that refused to "draw" or dropped helplessly on the floor as soon as they were drawn out far enough to display the spoons and spices they contained; window stools that came down behind tables and shelves, forming a sort of receptacle for lost articles belonging to the kitchen or pantry--all of which she resolved should not be repeated. When Bessie arrived the house was in that most perfect order which gives no sign of unusual preparation. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF THE CONTRIBUTION.] "This is too perfectly lovely for anything," exclaimed Bessie. "I just _dote_ on domestic duties. You can't help being overpoweringly happy, Jill, with such a home and _such_ a husband. Then only to think of the new house drives me completely frantic. What _will_ it be like? Are the plans made? Oh! I do hope not, for I have a _million_ of things to tell you about that are totally _unspeakable_." "Then you are just in time. We had a long letter from the architect this morning asking for instructions on various matters." "How perfectly fascinating! Let's sit down this minute and begin upon them." But Jill preferred waiting till Jack came home, bringing with him his younger brother, just home for summer vacation. "It isn't necessary to announce dinner," said she. "The preliminary odors have already advertised it through the entire house." "I thought these observations were to be strictly confidential," observed Jack. "That wasn't 'finding fault.' It was a mere casual remark. Some people may think it pleasanter to be summoned by the odor of broiling fish than by the noise of a dinner-bell." "Indeed I do," said Bessie, taking Jack's proffered arm. "Odors are too delicious for anything. They are so refined and spiritual I'm sure I could live on them. I would far prefer the fragrance of a dish of strawberries to the fruit itself." "We shall get along capitally then. You can smell of the berries and I'll eat them afterwards. You see now, Jill, the advantage of having a house built like this. Cousin Bessie proposes that we live on the fragrance of the food. It won't be necessary even to come to the dining-room. We can all stay in the parlor or in our chambers and absorb sustenance from the circumambient air, as the sprightly goldfish gathers honey from the inside of a glass ball." "Please don't make fun of me, Cousin Jack, for I do truly _revel_ in fragrance, and I'm sure your house is _beautifully_ planned. Don't you think so, Mr. James?" "I realty don't know much about such things. I never did like to know what I was going to have for dinner long beforehand--it makes me so awfully hungry." "Precisely so, Jim; it gives you am appetite. I had the house planned in this way for that very purpose." "Now that you have introduced the subject," said Jill, "I will tell you how _I_ should have planned it. There should have been a 'cut-off' somewhere--a little lobby between the kitchen and the rest of the house, with a ventilating flue so large that neither smoke nor steam nor perfumed air could pass it without being caught up and carried to the sky. Of course these odors ought not to get away from the ventilator above the range, but the best contrivances are not proof against the carelessness of the cook when she is in a hurry--as she always is just before dinner." When they returned to the sitting-room Bessie brought down a set of plans her father had sent for Jack and Jill to examine, thinking they would suit their lot and taste. They did suit the lot fairly, but Jill's mind was too fully made up to accept any change from her own plan. The exterior she approved cordially, but to Bessie's despair would not promise to imitate it, preferring to leave the outside to her architect without reserve. While they were spoiling their eyes in the twilight Jack pressed the electric "button" that lighted the gas instantaneously all over the house, causing Bessie to cry out in protest against such a sudden transition. "It is so violent, so unlike the slow, sweet processes of nature. I never shall learn to like gas, and the electric light is absolutely _horrid_. Don't you love tapers, Mr. James?" "Tapirs? I don't think I'm a judge; I never had one. I should rather have a tame zebra." "Oh, I mean tapers for light!" "Excuse me--certainly: yes, that is, I think I do. We don't use them very often. Do you mean tallow or wax?" "Wax, of course! They have such elegant decorations on them. I had a most exquisite sconce Christmas, with two of the loveliest tapers completely covered with Moorish arabesques in crimson and old gold." "What becomes of the decorations when the tapers burn up?" "Well, we don't burn them much. Indeed, I don't think we ought to use artificial light at all. The mysterious light of the moon and stars is so much more enchanting. Don't you love to muse and dream in the fading twilight?" "No, not very well. The trouble is if I get to sleep before I go to bed I don't sleep as well afterward." "Oh, I don't mean actual dreams, but vague, dreamy musings, esthetic aspirations and longings. Do you never long for abstract beauty?" "Well, no, not long. If I can't get what I want pretty quick I generally go for something else." This irrelevant conversation was vastly entertaining to Jack, who, knowing how unlike were the dispositions of his brother and his wife's cousin, had contrived their meeting with special reference to his own amusement. When the clock told the hour for retiring he brought Bessie a tin candlestick, in which a tallow candle smoked and spluttered in a feeble way, but filled the soul of the young lady with admiration, it was so "full of feeling." "Life is so much richer when our environment is illuminated and glorified--" "By tapers," said Jack as he bade her an affectionate good-night. CHAPTER X. MORE QUESTIONS OF FIRE AND WATER. "We must devote this evening exclusively to the new house," said Jill, as Jack started for his office. "The architect is waiting for instructions, and every day we lose now will give us another day of vexation and impatience when we are waiting for the house to be finished." "That's true, and it's a chronological fact that house-builders often forget. Very well, I'll come home early. Will Bessie be here?" "Certainly. She has come for a long visit." "Then I shall bring up Jim again. One-half Bess says he can't understand, and he doesn't approve of the other half; but we couldn't keep him away if we tried. So we'll invite him to come. It's great fun to hear Bessie's comments and witness Jim's helplessness." "If you are going to devote yourself to Jim and Bessie," said Jill severely, "I may as well answer these questions without consulting you at all." "Oh, pray don't do that. Give me a chance to express my opinions. Some of them are strikingly bold and original. Besides, you will need me to conduct the meeting." It happened, accidentally of course, that Bessie's evening dress was of a color that looked well by gaslight, and no objection was made to the unnatural illumination. Jill took up the architect's letter, where she had left it, at the conclusion of the blind question. "Another point that was mentioned when I was at your father's house must be decided soon: Shall there be gutters to catch the water from the roof, with pipes of some sort to convey it to the ground, or shall it be left to take care of itself? If there are none, the ground around the house should pitch sharply away from the walls and a slight depression should be formed, into which the water would fall. This shallow ditch should be perhaps two feet wide, as the drops will not always come down in straight lines. It may be paved with small stones or bricks, between which the grass will grow, or it maybe more carefully lined with asphalt paving. If it is desired to conduct the water to a certain point, this drain can descend slightly toward it, and, if the lawn will not be injured by an occasional inundation, even the shallow ditch may be omitted, making merely a one-sided slope, hardened to prevent the water from wearing a ragged, unsightly channel around the house. The advantages of disposing of the water in this way, dispensing with the gutters, are its economy and its permanence. Whatever the material may be of which they are made, gutters attached to the eaves or roof cause more or less trouble and expense from the time they are put in place till the house is given up to the owls and the bats. They are liable to be corroded by rust, to be clogged with leaves and dust, to be choked with ice, or to become loosened from their fastenings. If used at all, they should be frankly acknowledged. This is not, however, a point on which I am in need of instructions, but would remind you that one of the interesting illustrations of the happy skill of the old masters in making a virtue of necessity is found in the effective treatment of the waterspouts and conductors. They made them bold, quaint and picturesque in appearance, far removed from the tin contrivances that we hang in frail awkwardness to our roofs." [Illustration: A GARGOYLE] "How perfectly delightful!" exclaimed Bessie. "Those horribly grotesque old gargoyles are just glorious. Don't you delight in the antique, Mr. James, when it isn't too horrible?" "Yes, they are awfully jolly. We had a great time with them last 'Fourth.' I got myself up as a pirate king--black flag, skull and cross-bones, you know. It was awfully jolly." "I never saw any of that kind, but you _will_ have some gargoyles, won't you, Jill?" "Possibly, for the architect says' whether you have gutters entirely around the house or not; it will doubtless be necessary to catch the water that would fall upon the steps or balconies in short eave-troughs, and as they are certain to be conspicuous they should be respectfully treated. As they add to the comfort of the house they should also add to its beauty.' Now what shall be said on this subject? His opinion appears to be that if we do not need to save the water for use, and if it will do no harm upon the ground around the house, it will be best to omit them except where protection is needed for something below. He sends some sketches and says 'they represent a few of the methods by which the water may be caught and carried to the ground. Number two and number three will prevent the sliding of the snow from the roof, which is sometimes desirable, but not always. Gutters made in this form should be so near the eaves that in case of accidental injury the water could not find its way inside the main walls. Number five has the advantage of leaving the house uninjured whatever happens to the gutter itself. It may leak through its entire length or run over on both sides without doing other harm than wasting the water.' I don't see," said Jill, laying down the letter, "how we can give instructions without dictating in matters of 'construction and design,' concerning which the architect distinctly objects to advice." [Illustration: A CHOICE OF GUTTERS.] "Tell him we don't care what becomes of the water and the lawn will take care of itself. Then 'instruct' him to exercise his own discretion. That's what he is for. What next?" "He would like to know our wishes in regard to fireplaces." "I thought the heating question had been decided once according to Uncle Harry's doctrines." "Not fully. We shall have both steam and open fires; the architect understands that, but he doesn't know how many fireplaces nor what kind. We can tell him how many easily enough: one in each room of the first story except the kitchen, but including the hall, and one in each of the bed-rooms." [Illustration: "A SIMPLE RECESS."] "Including the guest chambers?" "By all means. There is nothing that makes one feel so thoroughly welcome, so delightfully at home as a room with an open fire. Mahogany four-posters, velvet carpets and sumptuous fare are trivial compliments in comparison. Concerning the style and cost he says: 'Of designs there is an endless variety, and there is a wide range in cost, from the simple recess in the side of a plain brick chimney'--" "One of the kind that Aunt Melville builds for a dollar and a quarter." "'--to the elaborate affairs that cost as much as a comfortable cottage. It would be idle for me to attempt to give you a full description of them all--my letter would appear like a manufacturer's catalogue. Indeed, you can find whole books on the subject, large books too, which it will be interesting and profitable for you to study; but first it is necessary to lay out the chimneys to accommodate the sizes and styles to be chosen. You will easily understand that a grate for burning coal alone, especially hard coal, may be much smaller than a fireplace to hold hickory logs that it takes two men to carry; but the heat of anthracite coal would soon destroy the lining of a fireplace adapted to an ordinary fire of wood. It cannot be necessary to remind you that the best open fireplaces, whether for wood or coal, are those which, instead of sending three-fourths of the heat up the chimney flue, give it out from all sides, to be saved either directly or by being conveyed to an adjoining or upper room. It is also possible to make a fireplace that will accommodate either wood or coal, but like all compromises this is attended with certain disadvantages. If large enough for wood it is too large for hard coal. The smoke flue for a coal fire may also be smaller, the hotter fire causing the stronger draught. Coal ashes, too, ought to be dropped through the hearth into ash pits below, even from the fires of the upper rooms. To "take up the ashes" of a wood fire is not so troublesome. These are some of the reasons why it is necessary to determine the kind and number of your fireplaces before the plans of the chimneys are drawn.'" [Illustration: IN THE MIDDLE RANK.] "Why not make an appropriation of fifty dollars apiece for each grate, mantel and hearth, and have him do the best he can with it?" "We can fix that as an average price, but shall want some better than others, and must mark in each room whether we wish to provide for wood, for coal, or for both. That is, whether we want 'set' grates or open fireplaces with andirons or something of that kind." "Oh, do have andirons. _Please_ have andirons," said Bessie. "You know you can go out into the country and buy them for old brass of the farmers who haven't the remotest idea of their value. They keep them up in those dear old musty garrets covered with dust and spider webs." "Certainly, we will have a few andirons and several spinning-wheels and moony clocks and solid old carved oak chests that for generations have been full of moths and food for worms. I never happened to come across one of those old bonanza garrets, but I suppose there are plenty of them lying around and just running over with these antique treasures. Jim, can't I hire you to go out among the unesthetic heathens and buy up a few loads of heirlooms and other relics of former greatness? We shall want some old associations in the new house, and if we haven't any of our own we must buy some." "I don't think I know much about such things. Why don't you go to a furniture store and get what you want first-hand? Second-hand furniture always looks shabby and out of date. However, if Miss Bessie could go with me to pick out things, I wouldn't mind taking a drive into the country to see what we could find." [Illustration: THE WORTH OF A COSY COTTAGE.] "Now, really, wouldn't you mind it? How enchanting! It will be delightful to be associated with the new house. I know we shall find some _lovely_ things." "All right. You shall have Bob and the express wagon to-morrow. What next, Jill?" "'I should be glad to know your feeling in regard to height of rooms, but shall not promise fully to agree with you. My purpose is to make the principal rooms of the first story ten and a-half or eleven feet high.'" "Oh, how dreadful! I don't know how high eleven feet is, but I'm sure they ought not to be more than seven feet." "I thought you were going to say not less than fourteen," said Jim. "Oh, no, indeed! Low rooms are so deliciously quaint and cosy." "But I should be all the time expecting to hit my head." "You wouldn't think of that for a moment if you could only feel the influence of Kitty Kane's library. It is a copy of an old English bar-room, or something of that sort, I don't exactly remember what, but it is in the Queen Anne style, and it's too lovely for anything. Please have low rooms, Jill." Jill continued reading: "For rooms of ordinary sizes and devoted to ordinary domestic purposes, that is high enough for use, for comfort and for any reasonable amount of decoration, either upon the walls themselves or in the shape of pictures or other ornaments. You will certainly think it enough when you are climbing the stairs to the rooms of the second story. It may be practicable to reduce the height of some of the smaller apartments, but it is usually much more convenient to keep the ceilings of the main rooms of uniform height, even if this does upset the 'correct proportion' which critics attempt in vain to establish. To make ceilings very low seems an affectation of humility or of antiquity not justified by common sense. In the polar regions, where the sun never reaches an altitude above twenty-three degrees, low rooms and short windows would be entirely satisfactory. In the torrid zone, where it is not safe to build more than one story for fear of earthquakes and tornadoes, where chambers would be useless, and where the grand question is not how to keep warm but how to keep cool, the higher the better. For houses in the temperate zones the medium height is the safest, the best--and the most _artistic_. If any one dares to say it is not, ask him to tell you the reason why." "How perfectly _exasperating_," said Bessie in a tragic aside to Jim. "No one ought to try to give reasons in art, in religion or in politics. Intuitions are so much more satisfactory. Don't you _always_ rely on your intuitions, Mr. James?" "Perhaps I should if I had them, but somehow I--I never seem to have any." "The meeting appears to be divided," said Jack. "Bessie says seven, Jim says fourteen. Suppose we split the difference and call it ten and a half." "That is, we advise the architect to do as he pleases, then he will be sure to follow our advice." CHAPTER XI. WHAT SHALL WE STAND UPON? "Splitting the difference" is a convenient compromise, but it is not always creditable to both parties, and Jill thought it would not be safe with such advisers to assume that Wisdom's house is always built between two extremes. She felt, too, that the architect's discussion of details must be tiresome to her guests, and therefore resolved to take up but one more of his queries, spending the remainder of the evening in looking over plans and letters, of which she had an ample store still unexplored, or in listening to Bessie's ardent description of the treasures she hoped to find in the lofty recesses of the old garrets. "I fear the next topic will not be deeply interesting, but it is the last one to-night, and Jack _must_ give me his undivided attention if he wishes to know what we are to stand upon in the new house." "Is it about floors?" Bessie asked. "Do please have waxed floors. I dote on waxed floors, don't you, Mr. James?" "Not especially; but I'm pretty apt to slip on them. _Is_ it about floors, Jill?" "Yes, but chiefly about the best way to build them--their construction." [Illustration: A PROMISE OF SOCIAL SUCCESS.] "I thought the architect was to settle questions of construction to suit himself." "He is, and this topic he writes 'concerns construction, cost, use and design, and is, therefore, one on which we may properly take counsel together.'" "How condescending!" [Illustration: A REASONABLE HOPE.] "I suppose you would object to iron girders with brick arches between them on account of their cost, but I hope to see rolled iron beams for brick dwelling-houses so cheaply made that they will be commonly used instead of wood. Such iron ribs, with the brick arches or other masonry between them, might well form the finish of the ceilings, and if we were accustomed to see them, our frail lath and plaster would seem stale, flat and combustible in comparison. The usual mode of making floors of thin joists set edgewise, from one to two feet apart, with one or two thicknesses of inch boards on the top to walk upon, and lathing underneath to hold the plastering, is perhaps the most economical use of materials. A more satisfactory construction would be to use larger beams two or three times as far apart, laying thicker planks upon them and dispensing with plastering altogether, or perhaps applying it between the timbers directly to the under-side of the planks, leaving the beams themselves in sight. If the floor is double the planks or boards lying directly upon the joists may be of common, coarse stock, hemlock or spruce, upon which must be laid another thickness of finished boards. It is for you to say whether the finished upper floor shall be of common, cheap stock, to be always covered by carpets, or of some harder wood carefully polished and not concealed at all, except by occasional rugs.'" "Oh, I do _hope_ she will have rugs!" Bessie's remarks were semi-asides addressed chiefly to Jim. "There's nothing so lovely as these oriental rugs. Kitty Kane had an _exquisite_ one among her wedding presents, and when her house was built the parlor was made to fit the rug. It makes it rather long and narrow, but the rug is _too_ lovely." "'It is also for you to say whether the finished floor, if you have no carpets, shall consist simply of plain narrow boards or be more expensively laid in parquetry designs. In the latter case I shall claim the privilege of choosing the pattern.'" "Why should he trouble himself about the pattern of the wood floors any more than he would about the style of the carpets?" "He would probably say, because the floors are a part of the house for which he is making the plans and will last as long as the house itself, while the carpets are subject to changing fashions and will soon return to their original dust. But he may attempt to dictate in regard to carpets if we give him a chance." [Illustration: FLOORS AS THEY ARE.] [Illustration: FLOORS AS THEY MIGHT BE.] "Undoubtedly--to the extent of pitching them out of the window." "In laying double floors one simple matter must not be neglected. The under, or lining boards, which are usually wide and imperfectly seasoned, should be laid _diagonally_ upon the joists; otherwise in their shrinking and swelling they will move the narrow finished boards resting upon them and cause ugly cracks to appear, even though the upper floor is most carefully laid and thoroughly seasoned. The liberal use of nails is another obvious but often neglected duty of floor-makers, who seem, at times to act upon the supposition that as a floor has nothing to do but lie still and be trodden upon, it only needs to be laid in place and let alone. This may be true of stone flagging; it is far from being true of inch boards, that have an incurable tendency to warp, twist, spring and shake. Lining floors, especially, whatever their thickness, should be nailed--spiked is a more forcible term--to every possible bearing and with generous frequency; to be specific, say every three inches. The finished hoards must also be secured by nails driven squarely through them. If you object to the appearance of nail heads the boards may be secured by nails driven through the edges in such way that they will be out of sight when the floor is finished; but this should never be done except by skillful and conscientious workmen. There is no excuse for this "blind" nailing in floors that are to be covered by carpets, and it is seldom desirable under any circumstances. All thorough nailing adds greatly to the strength, and will alone prevent the creaking of the boards, so annoying in a sick room and so discouraging to burglars.'" "Whatever else we do we must make it all right for the burglars. Tell him we will have floors that can be used either way, with rugs or without, with matting, with carpets, or with nothing at all but their own unadorned loveliness. Those in the chambers, where there is not much wear and tear, may be of common clear pine, and we can paint or stain a border around the edges. The others ought to be of harder wood, and, as they will last as long as we shall need floors, we can afford to have them cost rather more than a good carpet, perhaps thirty or forty cents a square foot." "I don't see the necessity for that," said Jill, who had a frugal mind--at times. "I know they will outlast a great many carpets, but it is considerable work to keep a bare floor in order--or rather to put it in order--which must be taken into account; and, as for saving the expense of carpets, we shall be likely to spend twice as much for rugs as the carpets would cost. However, extravagance in rugs is not the fault of the hard-wood floors and ought not to be charged against them. We might have a few parquetry floors, but for most of the rooms plain narrow strips, with a pretty border, will be good enough. What do you think about it, Jim?" While Jim was preparing to say that he didn't think he knew much about such things, there came a crash on the floor above, followed by loud and incoherent observations by the chambermaid. The chandelier began to shake, as that substantial domestic fairy flew through the passage that led to the back stairs, at the head of which she was distinctly heard to exhort the cook in good set terms to "hurry up with the mop, for the water-jug was upset and the mistress would be raving if the water came through the ceiling." The quartette below listened with conflicting emotions. Jill was indignant, Bessie horrified--apparently, Jim greatly amused, and Jack sublimely indifferent. "If there's anything I _despise_," said Jill, "it is a house that makes a human being seem like an elephant, and where I can't say my prayers or move a chair in my own room without rousing the entire household." "There's one good thing about it," said Jim pleasantly. "You can't help knowing what is going on in your own house." "Spoken like a man and a brother, James. You always go to the root of a matter. I like to keep posted. No skeletons and gunpowder plots for me. I had this house made so on purpose." Whereat they all laughed and again took up the floor question, while the sound of hurrying feet and the rattling of domestic implements went on overhead, and the chandelier trembled with the jarring floors. "I suppose forty dollars' worth of timber originally added to these floors would have made them so firm that we might drive a caravan across them without shaking the building. We will, at least, have solid floors in the new house; but the architect informs us that 'effectual deafening of the floors and partitions necessarily adds considerably to their cost, since the walls and ceilings must be virtually double or filled with some light porous material. The construction I have described for making the house fireproof, or nearly so, would also make it comparatively sound-proof. It would prevent the passage of any reasonable in-door noises, though it might not withstand the stamping of heavy steel-shod feet. Indeed, the question of bare, hard-wood floors is, in one of its aspects, rather a question of boots. It is most unreasonable to say the floors are noisy and slippery when the fault lies rather in the hard, stiff, awkward receptacles in which our feet are imprisoned. If we are ever clad from head to foot in the robes of a perfect civilization, we shall doubtless find smooth bare floors for general use more satisfactory than any kind of rugs, mats or carpets.' "And now," said Jill, "we will leave the rest of this interminable letter for a more convenient season and see what our indefatigable aunt has sent as the latest and best thing in domestic architecture. If you will take the plans and follow the description, I will read the letter straight through, though it will doubtless contain more or less advice not strictly pertinent to house-building. Here it is: "MY DEAR JILL: On further reflection I have concluded that the little cottage plans which I sent last will not answer. I doubt whether you and Jack have sufficient independence and originality to make a success of living; even temporarily, in a small, unpretending cottage. It requires unusual strength of character'-- "Listen, Jack. --to establish and maintain a high social standing with no adventitious aids. You cannot at present afford a large establishment, but you must have one that is striking and elegant. I was first attracted to this house by its external appearance--not especially the form, but the material, as we often see a lady of inferior _physique_ whose rich and tasteful attire makes her the observed of all observers." [Illustration: BRICKS AND BOULDERS ON GRANITE UNDERPINNING.] "Aunt Melville is inclined to be dumpy, and is immensely proud of her taste in dress. "'The walls near the ground--the underpinning, I suppose--is of solid granite blocks, irregular in size, rough and rugged in appearance. Indeed, the impression is of exceeding solidity and strength, perhaps because the walls slope backward as they rise. The first story is also of stones, but such peculiar stones as I never expected to see in a dwelling house, precisely like those used in the country for fences.'" "How exquisite!" exclaimed Bessie, clapping her hands in ecstacy. "'Some of them seemed to be covered with the gray lichens that are found growing on rocks,--' "How delicious!" "'--but I very much fear these will be destroyed by the action of the lime in the mortar. The stones vary in color, and at a little distance the effect is like a rich mosaic. The corners of the house and the sides of the windows are made of peculiarly dark, rough-looking bricks that harmonize well with the general tone of the stone walls. The second story is of wood, covered with shingles that have not been painted, but simply oiled, and they have turned a dark reddish-brown. I found on inquiry that they are California red wood. The roof is of red tiles, and the chromatic effect of the entire building is very charming and aristocratic.'" "That would suit _us_ perfectly," said Jack, "but I think our aristocratic aunt is more tiresome than the architect. Jim is asleep and Bessie is on the verge of slumber." But just at that moment Bessie gave a piercing scream and bounded from the sofa in uncontrollable affright, while an army of reckless June bugs came dashing in through the open, unscreened windows. CHAPTER XII. FROM MATHEMATICS TO ANCIENT BRIC-A-BRAC. Taking advantage of the incursion of the June bugs, Jim withdrew in good order, and Bessie shortly after retired with her tin candlestick. "Do you seriously intend to allow that pair of incompatibles to go off to-morrow looking for old furniture and antiquated household implements?" asked Jill. "Most certainly I do. It will he the greatest fun in the world. I only wish we could go as invisible spectators; but, on the whole, we shall best enjoy imagining what they will say or do if left to their own devices, knowing, as we should, that our presence would prevent some of their wildest absurdities. I'm awfully sorry they are not going to build and furnish a house somewhere in this vicinity, according to their combined notions." "And I am extremely sorry you cannot take your thoughts from Bessie long enough at least to hear the conclusion of Aunt Melville's letter." "My dear, like John Gilpin, 'of womankind I do admire but one.' I shall listen with undivided attention to whatever you lay before my ears. Pray go on." "'I was fortunate enough to get a drawing of the interior of the reception hall, which, while it is simple and inexpensive, is also dignified and impressive. Houses often resemble people, and you will easily recall among your friends certain ones who, without being either wealthy or brilliant, are still very impressive. The other rooms which we visited are ample for your needs, as you will find it far more advantageous to entertain but few people at a time, and those of the best society, than to have larger and more indiscriminate gatherings. The amount of room in the house is surprising; but that, of course, is because it is so nearly square.'" "That is feminine logic. A man would have said that the size of a house determines the amount of room it contains." "Undoubtedly he would; but it does not," said Jill, decidedly. "I can show you houses that look large and _are_ large, that make great pretensions in point of style, that cost a great deal of money, and yet have no room in them. They have no place for the beds to stand, no room for the doors to swing, no room for a piano, no room for a generous sofa, no room for the book-cases, no room for easy stairs, no room for fireplaces, no room for convenient attendance at the dining-table, no room for wholesome cooking, no room for sick people, no room for fresh air, no room for sunlight, no room for an unexpected guest. They have plenty of rooms, apartments, cells--but no real, generous, comfortable house room." "I suppose Aunt Melville refers to the mathematical fact that a house forty feet square contains more cubic feet than the same length of walls would hold in a more elongated or irregular shape." "By the same rule an octagon or circle would be better still, which is absurd. No; her feminine logic is no worse than yours, and no better. The amount of room a house contains depends neither upon its size nor its shape. Her analogy, too, is at fault when she implies that the outside of a house bears the same relation to the interior that clothing bears to the person who wears it. The art of the tailor and dressmaker has at present no other test of merit than fashion and costliness, elements to which real art, architectural or otherwise, is always and absolutely indifferent. The external aspect of the house should be the natural spontaneous outgrowth of its legitimate use and proper construction, as face, form and carriage express the character of each individual." [Illustration: NOT BRILLIANT BUT IMPRESSIVE.] [Illustration: WOODEN RICHNESS.] Jill spoke with unwonted seriousness and a wisdom beyond her years. Even Jack was impressed for the moment, and expressed a wish to tear down some of the ornamental appendages from his own house. "The piazzas are well enough--that is, they would be if they were twice as wide--but the observatory is good for nothing, because nobody can get into it to observe, unless he crawls along the ridge-pole, and I never did know what all that mess of wooden stuff under the eaves and about the windows was for. I suppose it was intended to give the house a richer look." [Illustration: NO WASTE OF WOOD.] "Yes, it enriches it just as countless rows of puffs, ruffles and flounces, made of coarse cotton cloth with a sewing machine and piled on without regard to grace or comfort, would 'enrich' a lady's dress." "I thought you objected to the dress anology?" "I do, positively, but it appears to have been the theory accepted by modern architects almost universally. I don't see. Jack, that your house is any worse than others in this respect, and I have no doubt it will 'sell' all the better for the superfluous lumber attached to the outside walls." "Thank you, my dear! That is the first good word you have spoken for it. Well, there is one comfort; I am convinced that you didn't commit the reprehensible folly of marrying me for my house." "No, indeed, Jack. It was pure devotion; a desperate case of elective affinity." "And yet we are happily married! _We_ shall never do for the hero and heroine of a modern romance. There isn't a magazine editor or a book publisher that would look at us for a moment." "Let us be thankful--and finish our letter. "'I am anxious, as you know, my dear niece, that you should, begin life in a manner creditable to the family, and I trust you will allow no romantic or utilitarian notions to prevent your conforming to the requirements of good society. This house, in all such respects, will be perfectly satisfactory. I have bought the plans for you from the owner, and I hope you will accept them with my best wishes.' "And that is all, this time. Aunt Melville's notion of a house seems to be a place for entertaining the 'best society.' Her zeal is certainly getting the better of her conscience and judgment. She cannot honestly buy the plans from the owner of the house, because he never owned them; they belong to the architect, and she ought to know better than to advise the use of material that would have to be brought at great expense from a long distance. If cobble-stones and boulders were indigenous in this region, and old stone fences could be had for the asking, I should like to use them, but they are not. It is also evident that she did not penetrate far into the interior of the house or she would have discovered an unpardonable defect--the absence of 'back' stairs. I do not think it very serious in such a plan, where the one flight is near the centre of the house and is not very conspicuous, but Aunt Melville would lie awake nights if she knew there were no back stairs for the servants." [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR OF THE PROMISE.] The next morning Jim appeared with the express wagon, and Bessie climbed upon the high seat beside him under the big brown umbrella, her Gainsborough hat encircled with a garland of white daisies, huge bunches of the same blossoms being attached somewhat indiscriminately to her dress by way of imparting a rural air, and together they drove off in search of old and forgotten household gods. Jill had suggested sending them out to investigate, reporting what they found, and purchasing afterward if thought best, but Jack urged that it would be wiser to secure their treasures at once, lest the thrifty farmers, finding their old heir-looms in demand, should mark up the prices while they were deliberating--a view with which Bessie fully concurred. [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR OF THE PROMISE.] Beguiling the way with the duet that is always so delightful to the performers, whatever the audience may think of it, they followed the pleasant country roads for many miles without finding a castle that seemed to promise desirable plunder. A worn-out horseshoe lying in the road was their first prize. It presaged good luck, and was to be gilded and hung above the library door. At length they came to a typical old farm-house, gray and weather-beaten, but still dignified and well cared for. The big barns stood modestly back from the highway, and the yard about the front door, enclosed by a once white picket fence, was filled with the fragrance of cinnamon roses and syringas. As they drove up at the side of the house across the open lawn, the close cropping of which showed that the cows were wont to take their final bite upon it as they came to the yard at night, they encountered an elderly man carrying a large jug in one hand and apparently just starting for the fields with some refreshing drink for the workmen. "Good morning, sir," said Jim, touching his hat. Bessie smiled and asked, "Are you the farmer?" "Wal, yes ma'am; I suppose I am. Leastways I own the farm and get my living off from it as well as I can--same as my fathers did afore me." "How lovely! Have you got any old--I mean, can you give us a drink of water? We--we happen to be passing and we're very thirsty." "Just as well as not. The well is right behind the house. You can jump down and help yourselves." "You don't mean jump down the well," said Jim, laughing. "Not exactly. Will your horse stand?" "Oh, yes." When Bessie saw the old well-sweep, which for some unaccountable reason had not been swept away by a modern pump, she exclaimed in a stage whisper: "Wouldn't it be glorious if we could carry it home?" Jim found the cool water most refreshing and thought he would rather carry home the well. "What an enormous wood pile," Bessie continued aloud, in a desperate endeavor to lead up to andirons by an unsuspicious route. "Do you burn wood?" "Not so much as we used to. The women folks think they must have it to cook with, but we use coal a good deal in the winter." "Don't you have fireplaces?" was the next innocent question. "Plenty of 'em in the house, but they're mostly bricked up. It takes too big a wood pile to keep 'em going." "So you use stoves instead; I suppose it is less trouble. Oh, and that reminds me, have you any old andirons, anywhere around?" "Shouldn't be surprised if there was. Yes, there's one now, hangin' on the gate right behind you." Bessie, as she afterwards declared, was almost ready to faint at this announcement, but on turning to look she saw indeed, hanging by a chain to keep the gate closed, a dumpy, rusty, cast-iron andiron. "Should you be willing to sell it for old brass? Isn't there a mate to it somewhere? They generally go in pairs, don't they?" "No, I shouldn't want to sell it for old brass, because you see it's iron. Most likely there was a pair of 'em once, but there's no tellin' where t'other one is now. Maybe in the suller and maybe in the garret." "Please could we go up in the garret and look for it? We will be very careful." The worthy man, considerably puzzled to know what sort of angels he was entertaining unawares, obtained permission from the "women folks," sent a boy off with the jug of drink and showed his callers to the topmost floor of the house. "Oh, oh! If there isn't a real spinning-wheel. This passes my wildest anticipations," murmured Bessie to Jim; then, restraining her enthusiasm for fear of spoiling a bargain, she inquired aloud: "Do any of your family spin?" "No, no; not now-a-days. My old mother vised to get the wheel out now and then, when I was a youngster, but it's broke now and part of it is lost." "Would you sell it?" "If it isn't all here--" Jim began, but Bessie checked him and eagerly accepted the old wheel, which had lost its head and two or three spokes, for the moderate sum of one dollar. Rummaging among old barrels, Jim found the missing half of the pair of andirons. One broken leg seemed to add to its value in Bessie's eyes and she quickly closed a bargain for them at fifteen cents, which their owner, after "hefting" them, "guessed" would be about their value for old iron. One old chair, minus a back and extremely shaky as to its legs, and another that had lost a rocker and never had any arms, were secured for a nominal price, and Bessie's attention was then attracted to a tall wooden vessel hooped like a barrel, but more slender, "big at the bottom and small at the top," which proved to be an old churn. Jim objected to this until his companion explained how it could be transformed by a judicious application of old gold and crimson into a most artistic umbrella stand, while the "dasher" would make a striking ornament for the hall chimney-piece. As they were about to depart with their treasures, the honest farmer invited them to look at a ponderous machine five or six feet high and nearly as broad--a horrid monster, misshapen and huge, that stood in the back chamber over the wood-shed. It was a cheese-press. "How magnificent!" whispered Bessie, and then, turning to their host, inquired--"Do you use it every day?" "Oh, law, no! Hain't used it this twenty years. Make all the cheese at the factory. It's kind of a queer old thing and I thought maybe you would like to see it. 'Tain't likely you will ever see another just like it." "_Would_ you be willing to sell it?" "Of course, I'd be willing enough, only it don't seem just right to sell a thing that ain't good for anything but firewood. However, if you really want it you may have it for a dollar and a-half, and I'll have the hired men load it up for you." "Now, really, Miss Bessie," said Jim, when the farmer had gone to call the men, "don't you think it's rather a clumsy affair? We can hardly get it into the express wagon, and I don't see where they can put it if we carry it home." "Clumsy! no, indeed, it's _massive_, it's _grand_! There will be plenty of room in the new house. They will have one entire room for bric-a-brac." "But what can they _do_ with it? They won't make cheese." "Can't you see what a _delicious_ cabinet it will make? These posts and things can all be carved and decorated, and it will be perfectly _unique_. There isn't such a cabinet in the whole city of New York. Oh, I think our trip has been an _immense_ success already. I shall always believe in horseshoes after this; but _isn't_ it a pity we can't carry home the well-sweep?" The huge machine had to be taken from the shed chamber in sections, but was properly put together again in the wagon by the hired men, and made the turnout look like a small traveling juggernaut. Just before starting: Bessie espied, leaning against the fence, a hen-coop from which the feathered family had departed, and explaining to Jim that if the sides were painted red and the bars gilded it would be a charming ornament for the front porch, persuaded him to add that to their already imposing load. Then they departed, leaving the farmer and his men in doubt whether to advertise a pair of escaped lunatics or accept their visitors as "highly cultured" members of modern society. When they reached home Jack had just come in from the office. He looked out of the window as they drove up, felt his strength suddenly give way, and rolled on the floor in convulsions. "Less than five dollars for the whole lot, did you say, Jim? I wouldn't have missed _seeing_ that load for fifty." The next day was Sunday. Monday afternoon Bessie went home. CHAPTER XIII. ECONOMY, CLEANLINESS AND HEALTH. "Dirt is matter out of place," quoted Uncle Harry, in one of his erratic epistles which Jack and Jill always read with interest if not profit. "When you find anything that seems unclean or offensive in any part of your house, remember this: the fault is not in the thing itself, but in your ignorant or thoughtless management. There isn't a material thing in the universe, whatever its name or characteristic qualities maybe; not a flaunting weed nor an unseen miasmatic vapor, which is not created for some good and wise purpose. It is for us to learn those purposes. The grand secret of safe and comfortable living lies in keeping yourself and everything about you in the right place. I hear much of the dangers and annoyances that arise from modern plumbing. I am not surprised by them; on the contrary, I wonder they are not more numerous and fatal, since nothing is more inconsistent with the first principles of comfort and health than our relations to these 'modern conveniences.' Instead of disposing of what are incorrectly called waste materials according to nature's modes, we persist in defying her examples and her laws, even after we fully understand them, and, in the vain hope of adding to our own case, bring upon ourselves untold calamities. 'Earth to earth' is a mandate that cannot be disregarded with impunity. The infinite laboratories of nature welcome to their crucibles all the strange and awful elements which we fail to comprehend and against which we wage a futile warfare. If all these miscalled 'wastes' that we find so hurtful and offensive when out of place in and around our homes could be consigned to the bosom of mother earth the moment they seem to us worthless, they would be at once changed to life-giving forces, out of which forms of freshness and beauty would arise to fill us with delight. They are willing to serve us whenever we give them an opportunity. The one direct and infallible mode of doing that is to put them in the ground before they have a chance to work us injury. If we bury them, or, rather, plant them, they will bring forth, some thirty, some sixty, some an hundredfold. [Illustration: NO PLACE FOR SECRET FOES.] "It is my impression that sewers were originally invented by the Evil one. He couldn't drag men down to his dominions fast enough, so he moved a portion of his estate to this planet, and lest its true character should be discovered, buried it under paved streets and flowery parks. We might easily and quietly put these crude materials into convenient receptacles, to be carried where they will bless the world by making two ears of corn grow where one grew before. This we could do, each one for ourselves, or more advantageously by cooperating with one another. We are too wasteful, too indolent, too ignorant. Tempted by the invisible sewers we imprison these misplaced and inharmonious elements for a time in lead or iron pipes, while they grow more hostile, occasionally escaping by violence or stealth into our chambers, and then with many nice contrivances and much perishable machinery we try to wash them away with a bucket of water. Not to carry them where they will do any good, not to put them out of existence, but simply to hide them: to send them out of our immediate sight, and very likely into some greater mischief. The system is radically wrong, and while many of its existing evils may be averted, they cannot all be removed till we make our attacks from a different base. Improving sewers, like strengthening prison walls, is a good thing if the institutions remain; to prevent the need of maintaining them would be better still. Three-fourths of the solid wastes that proceed from human dwellings--scraps of food, waste paper, worthless vegetables, worn-out utensils, bones, weeds, old boots and shoes, whatever unmanageable and unnamable rubbish appears--ought to be at once consumed by fire, for which purpose a small cremating furnace should be found in every house. A similar trial by fire would reduce a large part of the liquids and semi-liquids to solid form to be also consumed, and the rest, absorbed by dry earth or ashes, could easily be transported to the barren fields that await the intelligence and power of man to transform them into blooming gardens. "Of the usual modes of bringing water to our houses to wash away these things I know but little, because there is but little to be known. Complications and mysteries are not to my taste. I find no satisfaction in overthrowing a man of straw, and am comparatively indifferent to the rival claims of patentees and manufacturers, except as they promise good material, faithful workmanship and moderate prices. "The one thing needful, if we adopt the hydraulic method of carrying away these waste substances, is a smooth cast-iron pipe running from the ground outside the house in through the lower part and up and out through the roof. It should be open at both ends, and so free from obstruction that a cat, a chimney-swallow or a summer breeze could pass through it without difficulty. I would, however, put screens over the open ends to keep out the cats and the swallows. The purifying breezes should blow through in summer and winter without let or hindrance, and to promote their circulation I would, if possible, place the pipe beside a warm chimney. Yet if the air it contains should sometimes move downward it will do no special harm; anything is better than stagnation. Into this open pipe, which should be not only water-tight but air-tight through its entire length, all waste-pipes from the house should empty as turbid mountain torrents pour into the larger stream that flows through the valley. (Fig. 1.) Now, unless the upward draught through this large pipe is constant and strong, you will see at once that the air contained in it (which we must treat as though it were always poisonous) would be liable to come up through these branches into the rooms, where they stand with open mouths ready to swallow whatever is poured into them. It is necessary, therefore, to build dams across them that will allow water to go down but prevent air from going up. These dams are called 'traps.' They are intended to catch only hurtful elements that might seek to intrude. It often happens that those who set them get caught, for they are not infallible. Whatever the form or patent assumed by these water-dams, they amount to a bend in the pipe rilled with water. (Fig. 2.) Sometimes a ball or other form of valve is used, but the water is the mainstay. [Illustration: Fig. 1.] [Illustration: Fig. 2.] "Theoretically, this is the whole machinery of safe, 'sanitary' plumbing: A large open pipe kept as clean and free as possible, into which the smaller drains empty, these smaller drains or waste-pipes having their mouths always full, and being able, so to speak, to swallow in but one direction. Everything can go down; nothing can come up. That all these pipes shall be of sound material, not liable to corrosion; that the different pieces of which they are composed shall be tightly joined; that they shall be so firmly supported that they will not bend or break by their own weight, or through the changes of temperature to which they are subject, and that they shall be, if not always in plain sight, at most only hidden by some covering easily removed, are points which the commonest kind of common sense would not fail to observe. "Practically, there are weak spots in the system, even if plumbers were always as honest as George Washington---before he became a man, and as wise as Solomon--before he became discouraged. A water barricade, unless it is as wide as the English Channel, is not a safeguard against dangerous invasion. A slight pressure of air, as every boy blowing soap bubbles can show you, will force a way through a basin full, and the same thing would happen if there should chance to be a backward current of air through these pipes, with this difference, that while the soap bubbles are harmless beauties, these may be filled with the germs of direful diseases. Still another danger to which this light water-seal is exposed is that a downward rush of water may cause a vacuum in the small pipes, somewhat as the exhaust steam operates the air-brakes, and empty the trap, leaving merely an open crooked pipe. Both these weak points may be strengthened by a breathing hole in the highest part of the small pipe below the trap. This must, of course, have a ventilating pipe of its own, which, to be always effectual, should be as large as the waste-pipe itself. (Fig. 3.) [Illustration: Fig 3.] [Illustration: Fig 4] "Now, if the water that fills these traps and stops the open mouths of the drains were always clean, there would be no further trouble from this source. Unfortunately it is not; and although constant watchfulness might keep it so, the safety that only comes from eternal vigilance is an uncomfortable sort of safety--if we have too much of it life becomes a burden. This particular ill might be remedied by some contrivance whereby the upper ends of the waste-pipes should be effectually corked--not simply covered, but _corked_ as tightly as a bottle of beer--at all times except when in actual use. This would doubtless be more troublesome, but indolence is at the bottom of most of our woes: our labor-saving contrivances bring upon us our worst calamities. Even this thorough closing of the outlet of washbasins and bath-tubs, as they are usually made, would be of little avail, for they are furnished with an 'overflow' (Fig. 4), through which exhalations from the trap would rise, however tightly the outlet might be sealed. It is also customary and doubtless wise, considering our habit of doing things so imperfectly the first time that we have no confidence in their stability, to place large basins of sheet-lead under all plumbing articles, lest from some cause they should 'spring a leak' and damage the floors or ceilings below them. One strong safeguard being better than two weak ones, I would dispense with the 'overflow' and arrange so that when anything ran over accidentally the lead basin or 'safe' should catch the water and carry it through an ample waste-pipe of its own to some inoffensive outlet. This would perhaps involve setting the plumbing articles in the most simple and open fashion--which ought always to be done. 'Cabinets,' cupboards, casings and wood finish, no matter how full of conveniences, or how elegantly made, are worse than useless in connection with plumbing fixtures, which, for all reasons, should stand forth in absolute nakedness. They must be so strongly and simply made that no concealment will be necessary. "One more danger closes the list, so far as the system is concerned. Even if the water in the traps is clean and inoffensive it will evaporate quickly in warm weather, and then the prison door is open again. This adds another vigil which we can never lay aside if we must have plumbing and water traps. The burden may be somewhat lightened--since we are prone to forgetfulness as stones to fall downward--by using traps made of glass and leaving them in plain sight. [Illustration: Fig. 5.] "I conclusion, I wish to remind you that the lower end of the main drain must be protected from the iniquity of the sewer or cesspool to which it runs by another trap, or dam, just below the open pipe that admits fresh air from outside the house (Fig. 5), and also, as I have before remarked, that the system is wrong. The rising tide of civilization will some time wash it all away." "Uncle Harry's notion of reform," said Jack, after the long letter had been read, "seems to be to blow the universe to pieces and then put it together again on a new and improved plan. It strikes me we had better fight it out on this line and try to straighten the evils we know something about rather than invent new ones. If we had begun on that track and tried to utilize the waste materials on strictly economical principles, perhaps by this time our methods and machinery would have been so far perfected that the real or imaginary evils of modern plumbing would not have existed. It seems a pity to throw away all we have accomplished and begin again." "That is a part of the price paid for progress," said Jill. "Stage coaches are useless when steam appears, and locomotives must go to the junk shop when electricity is ready to be harnessed. But I'm afraid we cannot afford to be pioneers, and I'm sure the neighbors are not ready to co-operate. We must still 'go by water,' and the important question is where to send the lower end of the main drain. There is no sewer in the street, and a cesspool is an atrocity worthy of the darkest ages. The only safe thing appears to be the sub-surface irrigation plan, for which, fortunately, there is plenty of room on our lot. This comes very near to Uncle Harry's notion of 'earth to earth' in the quickest time possible. If we do it and accept the architect's suggestion in the plan of the house we shall be reasonably safe from that most mysterious of all modern foes--sewer-gas." "I've forgotten the architect's suggestions; in fact, I don't believe my head is quite equal to housebuilding with all the latest notions. When _my_ house was built I just told the carpenter to get up something stylish and good, about like Judge Gainsboro's. He showed me the plans, I signed the contract, and that was the whole of it. I supposed a house was a house. Now, before the new house is begun, I'm like Dick Whittington in the days of his poverty--I've no peace by day or night." "Poor fellow!" "I shudder to think what it will he when the house is fairly under way. I can see five hundred different things at once, but when each one has five hundred sides and we get up into the hundred thousands, I begin to feel dizzy. Uncle Harry has settled the plumbing question to his own satisfaction, so far as first principles are concerned; but who will tell us what kind of pipes and trimmings and bowls and basins and traps and plugs and stops and pedals and pulls and cranks and pistons and plungers and hooks and staples and couplings and brakes and chains and pans and basins and tanks and floats and buoys and strainers and safes and bibbs and tuckers we are to adopt? If I should consume midnight oil during a full four years' course at a college for plumbers I should still find myself just upon the threshold of the temple of knowledge." CHAPTER XIV. SAFE FLUES AND MORE LIGHT. By a tender but vigorous application of the remedies usual in such cases, Jack was speedily restored to his wonted equanimity, and Jill, laying Uncle Harry aside, took up the architect's suggestions concerning the plumbing, which referred rather to its relations to the plan of the house than to the details of the work itself. "A bath-room, with all the plumbing articles it usually contains, must possess at least three special characteristics. It must be easily warmed in cold weather, otherwise the annual bill for repairs will be greater than the cost of coal for the whole house; its walls, floors and ceilings must be impervious to sound. The music of murmuring brooks is delightful to our ears, so is the patter of the soft rain on the roof; but the splashing of water in a, bath-tub and the gurgling of unseen water-pipes are not pleasant accompaniments to a dinner-table conversation. Thirdly, it must be perfectly ventilated--not the drainpipes merely,--but the room itself in summer and in winter. Two of the above conditions can best be secured by arranging to have this important room placed in a detached or semi-detached wing; and here begin the compromises between convenience, cost and safety. It is convenient to have a bath-room attached to every chamber, and there is no doubt that this may be done with entire safety, provided you do not regard the cost. In your plan I have adopted the middle course. There is one bath-room for all the chambers of the second floor, not too remote but somewhat retired, and having no communication with any other room. It is ventilated by a large open flue carried up directly through the roof; it has also an outside window and inlets for fresh air near the floor. All the walls and partitions around it will be double and filled with mineral wool, and the floors will be deafened. The 'house side' of the water-closet traps will have three-inch iron pipes running to the ventilating flue beside the kitchen-chimney, a flue that will always be warm, and therefore certain to give a strong upward draught at all times, which cannot be said of any other flue in the house, not even of the main drain, or soil-pipe, which passes up through the roof. It would be easy to keep other flues warmed in cold weather by steam-pipes, but in summer you will have no steam for heating purposes. A 'circulation-pipe' might be attached to a boiler on the kitchen range for this purpose, but in the present case such a contrivance would cost more than the iron pipe carried from the bath-room to the flue that is warmed by the kitchen fire. A good way to build this ventilating flue is to inclose the smoke-pipe from the range, which may be of iron or glazed earthen pipe, in a larger brick flue or chamber (Fig. 1), keeping it in place by bars of iron laid into the masonry. The rising current of warm air around the heated smoke-pipe will be as constant and reliable as the trade winds. It will be well, indeed, if all your chimneys are made in a similar manner; that is, by enclosing hard-burned glazed pipe in a thin wall of bricks. Such chimneys will not only draw better than those made in the usual way, but there will be less danger from 'defective flues.' A four-inch wall of bricks between us and destruction by fire is a frail barrier, especially if the work is carelessly done or the mortar has crumbled from the joints. To build the chimneys with double or eight-inch walls makes them very large, more expensive, and still not as good as when they contain the smooth round flues. To leave an air-chamber beside or between them for ventilating (Fig. 2), is better than to open directly into the smoke-flue, because it will not impair the draught for the fire, and there will be no danger of a sooty odor in the room when the circulation happens to be downward, as it will be occasionally. The outside chimney, if there is one, should have an extra air-chamber between the very outer wall and the back of the fireplace to save heat (Fig. 3), a precaution that removes to a great extent the common objection to such chimneys. Whatever else you do, let these 'windpipes of good hospitalitie' have all the room they need. I shall not willingly carry them off by any devious way to be hidden in an obscure corner or dark closet, nor yet to give them a more respectable and well-balanced position on the roof. Like the wild forest trees they shall grow straight up toward heaven from the spot where they are first planted. If we happen to want a window where the chimney stands in an outer wall we will make one between the flues, as one might build a hut in the huge branches of a mighty oak. It isn't the best place for the window or the hut, but circumstances may justify it; as, for instance, when we must have the outlook in a certain direction, but cannot spare the wall-space for a window beside the chimney. The jambs beside a window so situated will be very wide, and you may, if you please, extend the view of the landscape indefinitely by setting two mirrors _vis-à-vis_ in the opening at either side. This will also send the sunshine into the room after the sun has passed by the other windows on the same side of the house. It is rather a pretty fancy, too, when the outside view does not require a clear window, to set a picture in colored glass above the mantel, and the same thins: may be arranged in the sideboard, if it happens to stand against the outer wall. These are _fancies_, however, which lose their beauty and fitness unless they seem to have been spontaneously produced. There should be no apparent striving for effect." [Illustration: SAFE AND SAVING FLUES.] [Illustration: SAFE AND SAVING FLUES.] [Illustration: A PICTURE IN GLASS OVER THE FIREPLACE.] "I like the idea of setting mirrors in the deep window-jambs, whether they are in the chimney or out of it," said Jill. "If I was obliged to live in a room where the sun never shone of its own accord, I would set a trap for it baited with large mirrors fixed on some sort of a windlass in a way to send the sunshine straight into my windows." "Capital! You could do that easily, and if you wanted a green-house on the north side it would only be necessary to set up a few looking-glasses to pour a blazing sun upon it all day long. You might need a little clockwork to keep them adjusted at the right angles, but Yankee invention ought to be equal to that. I have no doubt we shall see patent sunshine-distributors in the market very shortly if your idea gets abroad; in fact, I shouldn't be surprised to hear that a company proposed to set up mammoth reflectors to keep the sun from setting at all until he drops into the Pacific Ocean." [Illustration: GLASS OF MANY COLORS, SHAPES AND SIZES.] "Well, you may laugh at my invention; I shall surely try it when I am obliged to live in a house that does not get sunlight in the regular way. As for the stained glass picture over the chimney-piece, I should like it for the bright color and because the lamps would make it so charming from the street outside. I shall also want colored glass in the upper part of the bay windows. The architect says we can have it and still keep the lower panes clear and large. He sends some sketches by way of suggestion, and thinks we may use it in the lower part of some of the windows to conceal a window-seat or other furniture. I should prefer screens of some other kind in such places, keeping the stained glass up where it would show against the sky. He says this colored glass is not necessarily expensive; that it may be set in common wood-sash or in lead-sash, as we please, and that it will not affect the usual opening and closing of the windows. He advises plate-glass for the larger lights, if we can afford it, not because it gives the house a more elegant appearance, though that is not a wholly unworthy motive, but because a beautiful landscape is so much more beautiful when it can be plainly seen. The instinct that prompts us to throw the window wide open in order to get a more satisfactory view is an unanswerable argument in favor of large, clear lights of glass for windows intended for outlooks." "And here is an illustration right before us," said Jack. "I am impelled by a powerful impulse to open the window and see if I can recognize the lady driving up the street. It wouldn't be good manners, but I wish the window was plate-glass." To Jack's astonishment, however, Jill threw open the window and waved her handkerchief in cordial salutation as Aunt Jerusha drove slowly up to the house. "Doing her own work" for half a century had not rendered her incapable of taking and enjoying a carriage ride of fifteen miles alone to visit her niece. Like all wise people who are able to give advice, Aunt Jerusha offered none until it was asked, and then gave only in small doses. She had never seen the house that Jack built, but had heard much of it from the friends and relatives who had never underrated Jill's obstinacy in refusing to accept it as a permanent home. "I almost wonder at you, Jill, for being so set against it. I'm sure it's a fine house and cost a good deal of money. There must be some drawback that doesn't show. I hope It isn't haunted." "That's it, Aunt Jerusha; it's haunted. Several uncomfortable demons have taken possession of it and Jill isn't able to exorcise them. It was a great grief to me at first, and I made a bargain with Jill to keep still about them, but it is an open secret now and she may tell you everything." [Illustration: SHELVES IN THE MIDDLE, CUPBOARDS ABOVE AND BELOW.] "Very well. I can easily explain the mystery. The mischief began with the evil spirits of Ignorance and Incompetence. The carpenter who planned the house knew nothing about our tastes or needs, and the builder was unable to make a comfortable flight of stairs, safe chimneys, smooth floors or tight windows. After these two came another pair, worse than the first--Ostentation and Avarice. They tried to make a grand display and at the same time a large profit on the job. How can I exorcise such demons as these except by tearing down the house?" "Couldn't you sell it, dear? What seem demons to you might appear like angels of light to some one else," said Aunt Jerusha. "You are an angel of light to me, Aunt Jerusha," said Jack. "But I might have known you would stand up for my house." "Aunt Jerusha, there isn't a closet in the whole establishment," said Jill, solemnly, knowing that defect to be an architectural sin which even her aunt's broad charity would fail to cover. "Oh, Jill! where have you laid your conscience? I can't stay to hear my house abused. Please show Aunt Jerusha the pantry and the china-closet and I will flee to the office." "Why, yes, to be sure you have a very nice buttery and china-cupboard." "I meant good, generous closets for the chambers. Of course there's a pantry, but I don't think the arrangement of shelves, drawers and cupboards is very convenient." "It seems very liberal." "Yes, but would you advise me to have the pantry in the new house like it?" "Well, no, dear; since you asked me, I wouldn't. It is possible to have too many conveniences even in a pantry. It is a good plan to have a few cupboards to keep some things from the dust and others from the light, but most of our raw materials now-a-days come in tight boxes or cans, and I find them more handy standing on the shelves than shut up in drawers. I don't suppose it would be so in your case, dear, but a drawer sometimes hides very slovenly habits. It is so easy to drop an untidy thing into a drawer and shove it out of sight. These large wooden boxes, all built in with their covers and handles, look nice and handy, but it's hard to clean them out. I would rather have good wide shelves and light movable tin boxes like those used in the groceries. You could buy them, I suppose, but I had mine made at the tin-shop to fit the shelves. I can take them out and wash them any time, and they never get musty, as wooden boxes will, even with the best of care. But you mustn't be biased by my old-fashioned notions." "I think they are very good notions if they are old-fashioned. If we have cupboards inside the pantry, drawers inside the cupboards, and boxes and cases inside the drawers, finding the spices is like opening a nest of. Chinese puzzles. A mechanic would never hide the tools in his workshop in that way." "How do you reach the upper shelves?" "I never reach them, and all that room is wasted. It is worse than wasted. It is a reservoir for dust and cobwebs." "Wouldn't it be well, dear, if all the upper part was made into cupboards for things seldom used?" "Indeed it would. I think I will have the new pantry made something like this: low cupboards next to the floor, for things that; need to be shut up and yet must be handy; on the top of these, which will be not quite three feet high, a very wide shelf; over this several open shelves, as high as I can easily reach; and above the shelves, filling the space to the ceiling, short cupboards entirely around the room for cracked dishes that are too good to throw away, but are never used: for ice-cream freezers in the winter, and a great many more things that belong to the same category--a sort of hospital for disabled or retired culinary utensils. Now we will look at the china closet, but we shall need the gas in order to see it in all its glory, and you can tell Jack it is lovely with a clear conscience." "I never speak without a clear conscience," said Aunt Jerusha mildly. CHAPTER XV. A DANGEROUS RIVAL. "Dear me," said Aunt Jerusha, as Jill, after displaying the kitchen pantry, showed her the windowless china closet, elegant with varnished walnut, plate-glass and silver-plated plumbing, "dear me, this is as fine as a parlor. It seems a real pity to keep it all out of sight." "The pity is that it was made so fine. I should not object to polished walnut in a light room, although cherry, birch or some other fine-grained, hard, light-colored wood is preferable; but all this ornamental work, these mouldings, cornices and carved handles are worse than useless--they are ugly and troublesome. If I can have my own way--I'm glad Jack isn't here to make comments--I shall have every part of the new pantries as plain and smooth as a marble slab, with not a groove or a moulding to hold dust, and never a crack nor a crevice in which the tiniest spider can hide. The shelves will be thin, light and strong; some wide and some narrow; a wineglass doesn't need as much room as a soup tureen; the cupboard doors shall be as plain as doors can be made, and shall _not_ be hung like these, to swing out against each other at the constant risk of breaking the glass and of pushing something from the narrow shelf in front of them. They ought to slide, one before another, and the front shelf should be wide enough to hold _lots_ of things when they are handed down from the upper part of the cupboards." "I'm sure the little sink must be handy," said Aunt Jerusha, amiably looking for merits where Jill saw only defects. "It might be if there was room enough at each side for drainers and for dishes to stand before and after washing. I don't wonder that Jack's china is 'nicked' till the edges look like saw teeth; glass and fine crockery can't be piled up into pyramids even by the most experienced builders without serious damage to the edges. There ought to be four times as much space at each side." "I suppose there wasn't quite room enough." "There was _always_ room enough. There's enough now outside, and would have been inside, if the house had been well planned," said Jill rather sharply. "These are proper, nice, large drawers." "They are too nice and too large. Even when they are but half full I have to tumble their contents all over to find any particular thing, unless it lies on top. Some drawers ought to be large and some small, but I don't believe there ever was a man," said Jill vehemently, "who knew enough to arrange the small comforts and conveniences for housekeeping. Every day I am exasperated by something which Jack never so much as noticed. When I explain it he laughs and says it is fortunate we have so good an opportunity for learning what to avoid, and all the time I am certain he thinks there will be a great many more faults in the new house. If there are I shall be sorry it is fire-proof." [Illustration: "THE OAKS."] "Why, Jill, my dear, don't be rash! That doesn't sound like you. You mustn't set your heart on having things exactly to suit you in this world. I've lived a great many years, and a good many times I find it easier to bring my mind to things as they are than it is to make everything come just to my mind. I've seen plenty of women wear themselves out for want of things to do with, and I've seen other women break down from having too many; trying to keep up with all the modern fashions and conveniences, and to manage their houses with the same kind of regularity--'system' they call it--that men use in carrying on a manufacturing business." "Well, why shouldn't they, Aunt 'Rusha?" "I'll tell you why, my dear. A business man has a certain, single, definite thing to do or to make. Every day's work is very much like that of the day before. He may try to improve gradually, but, in the main, it is the same thing over and over again. Our home life ought not to be like that. A man ought not to be merely an engine or a cash-book; a woman ought to be something more than a dummy or a fashion-plate; our children should not be like so many spools of thread or suits of clothes, turned in the same lathe, spun to the same yarn, and cut according to the same pattern and rule. I'm sure I could never have done my work and brought up six children without some sort of a system, or if your uncle had been a bad provider. But I never could have got on as well as I have if I had given all my mind to keeping things in order and learning how to use new-fashioned labor-saving contrivances. There's nothing more honorable for womankind," said Aunt Jerusha, as she rolled up her knitting and prepared to set out on her homeward ride, "than housework, but it ain't the chief end of woman, and unless your house is something more than a workshop or a showcase, it will always be a good deal less than a home." Jill hardly needed this parting admonition, but listened to it and to much more good advice with the respect due to one who, for nearly half a century, had looked well to the ways of her household, whose helping hands were always outstretched to the poor and needy, whose children rose up and called her blessed, and whose husband had never ceased to praise her. After her departure her niece indulged in a short season of solemn reflection, striving faithfully to attain to that wisdom which always knows when to protest against existing circumstances and when to accept them with equanimity. Ultimately she reached the conclusion that, while the house that Jack built might indeed be a thoroughly comfortable home to one who had a contented mind, it was really her duty in her probationary housekeeping to be as critical as possible. Among other things the doors came in for a share of her usually amiable denunciation. She declared they were huge and heavy enough in appearance for prison cells, yet so loosely put together that their prolonged existence seemed to be a question of glue. They were swollen in the damp, warm weather till they refused to _be_ shut, and would doubtless shrink so much under the influence of furnace heat in the winter that they would refuse to _stay_ shut. The closet doors swung against the windows, excluding instead of admitting the light. The doors of the chambers opened squarely upon the beds, and there seemed to have been no thought of convenient wall spaces for pictures and furniture. [Illustration: OUTSIDE BARRIERS.] The architect's theory of doors, as expounded in one of his letters, was simple enough: "Outside doors are barricades; they should be solid and strong in fact and in appearance. Inner doors, from room to room, require no special strength; they should turn whichever way gives the freest passage and throws them most out of the way when they are open. Seclusion for the inmates is the chief service of chamber doors, and they should be placed and hung so as _not_ to give a direct glimpse across the bed or into the room the moment they are set even slightly ajar. Closet doors are screens simply, and ought to hide the interior of the closet when they are partially open, as well as when they are closed. They may be as light as it is possible to make them. In many houses one-half the doors might wisely be sent to the auction-room and the proceeds invested in portières, which are often far more suitable and convenient than solid doors, especially for chamber closets, for dressing-rooms, or other apartments communicating in suites, and not infrequently a heavy curtain is an ample barrier between the principal rooms. It may be well to supplement them, with light sliding doors, to be used in an emergency, but which being rarely seen, may be exceedingly simple and inexpensive, having no resemblance to the rest of the finish in the room. For that matter such conformity is not required of any of the doors, though it is reckoned by builders as one of the cardinal points in hard-wood finish that veneered doors must 'match' the finish of the rooms in which they show. This is absurd. Doors are under no such obligations. They may be of any sort of wood, metal or fabric. They may be veneered, carved, gilded, ebonized, painted, stained or 'decorated.' To finish and furnish a room entirely with one kind of wood, making the wainscot, architraves, cornices, doors and mantels, the chairs, tables, piano, bookcase, or sideboard, all of mahogany, oak, or whatever may be chosen--the floors, too, perhaps, and the picture frames--is strictly orthodox and eminently respectable; but like the invariable use of 'low tones' in decorating walls and ceilings, it betrays a sort of helplessness and lack of courage. Discords in sound, color and form are, indeed, always hateful, and they are sure to be produced when ignorance or accident strikes the keys. Yet, on the other hand, neutrality and monotone are desperately tedious, and it is better to strive and fail than to be hopelessly commonplace." [Illustration: INSIDE BARRIERS.] [Illustration: COMMON UGLINESS.] [Illustration: SIMPLE GRACE.] This advice concerned not the doors alone, but referred to other queries that had been raised as to the interior finish generally. One evening Jack came home and found Jill "in the dumps," or as near as she ever came to that unhappy state of mind, the consequence, as it appeared, of Aunt Melville's zeal in her behalf. "Why should these plans worry you?" said Jack. "I thought common sense was your armor and decision your shield against Aunt Melville's erratic arrows of advice." "My armor is intact, but, for a moment, I have lowered my shield and it has cost me an effort to raise it again, I supposed my mind was fixed beyond the possibility of change, but this is a wonderfully taking plan. At first I felt that if our lot had not been bought and the foundation actually begun we would certainly begin anew and have a house something like these plans. Then it occurred to me that in building a house that is to be our home as long as we live, perhaps, it would be the height of absurdity to tie ourselves down to one little spot on the broad face of this great, beautiful world and live in a house that will never be satisfactory, just because we happen to have this bit of land in our possession and have spent upon it a few hundred dollars." "Sensible, as usual. What next?" "Well, this last and best discovery of Aunt Melville's was undoubtedly made like our own plan to fit a particular site, and it seems beginning at the wrong end to arrange the house first and then try to find a lot to suit it." "I don't see it in that light," said Jack. "I know the architect has been preaching the importance of adapting the plan to the lot, but if two thousand dollars are going into the land and eight thousand into the house, I should say the house is entitled to the first choice." "Certainly, if it was a city lot, with no character of its own, a mere rectangular piece of land shut in upon three sides and open at one. But ours has certain strong points not to be found in any other unoccupied lot in town. Besides, there are other reasons why it would not answer for us; but _if_ our lot was right for it, and _if_ we wanted so large a house, _how_ I should enjoy building it!" "I don't see anything so very remarkable about the plan," said Jack, taking up the drawings. "My dear, short-sighted husband," said Jill with the utmost impressiveness of tone and manner, "it is a _one-story house_. 'There shall be no more stairs' sounds almost as delightful as the scriptural promise of no more sea. And look at the plan itself: The great square vestibule, or reception-room, with the office at one side--wouldn't you enjoy that, Jack?--then a few steps higher the big keeping-room, with a huge fireplace confronting you, and room enough for--anything. For games, for dancing, for a billiard table, for a grand piano, for a hammock--or--" "Say a sewing machine, a spinning-wheel or something useful." "Anything you like, a studio or a picture gallery, for it is twice as high as the other rooms, and lighted from the roof. At the right of this, and with such a great wide door between them that they seem like two parts of the same room, is the sitting-room, with another great fireplace in the corner, bay window and a conservatory fronting the wide entrance to the dining-room, at the farther end of which there is still another grand fireplace, with a stained-glass window above it. These three rooms--four, if we count the conservatory--are just as near perfection as possible. Then see the long line of chambers, closets and dressing-rooms running around the south and east sides, every one with a southern window, and all communicating with the corridor that leads from the keeping-room, yet sufficiently united to form a complete family suite. The first floor--I mean the _one_ floor--is five or six feet from the ground, so there can be no dampness in the rooms--and just think what a cellar! Altogether too much for us." "Indeed, there isn't. I'd have a bowling alley, a skating rink, a machine shop, a tennis court, and--a rifle range. Yes, it _is_ a taking plan, but there are two things that I don't understand. How can you cover such a big box, and where is the cooking to be done?" [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF "THE OAKS."] "The old rule of two negatives applies. Even a one-story house must have a roof, and the breadth of this makes a roof large enough to hold not only the kitchen but the servants' room on the same upper level." "A kitchen up stairs!" exclaimed Jack, for once startled into solemnity. "Aunt Melville considers this the crowning glory of the plan. Owing to this elevation of the cooking range there is no back door, no back yard, no chance for an uncouth or an unsightly precinct at either side of the house." "That would be something worth living for. I think, Jill, we had better examine these plans a little farther." [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI. A NEW WAY OF GETTING UP STAIRS AND A NEW MISSIONARY FIELD. "The question of getting up stairs," said Jack, as they continued the study of the one-story plan, "is at least an interesting one. It seems to be accepted as a foregone conclusion that modern dwelling houses, even in the country, where the cost of the land actually covered by the house is of no consequence, must be two stories at least above the basement; but I doubt whether this principle in the evolution of domestic habitations is well established. Between the aboriginal wigwam, whose first and only floor is the bare earth itself, and the 'high-basement-four-story-and-French-roof' style, there is somewhere the happy medium which our blessed posterity--blessed in having had such wise ancestors--will universally adopt as the fittest survivor of our uncounted fashions. I fancy it will be much nearer to this one-story house, with the high basement and big attic, than to the seven-story mansard with sub-cellar for fuel and furnace. Still the tendency during the last fifty years has been upward. Our grandfathers preferred to sleep on the ground floor; _we_ should expect to be carried off by burglars or malaria if we ventured to close our eyes within ten feet of the ground. Our city cousins like to be two or three times as high. Under these circumstances building a one-story house would be likely to prove a flying-not in the face of Providence, but, what is reckoned more dangerous and discreditable--flying in the face of custom. Humility isn't popular in the matter of house-building." "I am not afraid of custom, and have no objection to a reasonable humility," said Jill, "but I never once thought of burglars. If a house has but one floor I think it should be so for from the ground as to be practically a 'second' floor. The main point is to have all the family rooms on one level." "That is, a 'flat.'" "Yes, one flat; not a pile of flats one above another, as they are built in cities, but one large flat raised high enough to be entirely removed from the moisture of the ground, to give a pleasant sense of security from outside intrusion and to afford convenient outlooks from the windows. One or two guest rooms, that are not often used, might be on a second floor, under the roof, if there was space enough." "But this plan has the servants' chambers, the kitchen and the store closets all in the roof. Isn't that rather overdoing the matter?" "Better in the attic than in the basement. It is light, dry and 'airy.' There is no danger that the odors of cooking will come down, and as for the extra trouble, a well-arranged elevator will take supplies from the basement up twenty feet to the level of the kitchen, store-rooms and pantries as easily as they could be taken the usual distances horizontally. In brief, a kitchen above the dining-room is at worst no more 'inconvenient' than below it. Of course, there must be stairs even in a one-story house, but they would not be in constant use. Instead of living edgewise, so to speak, we should be spread out flatwise. We could climb when we chose, but should not of necessity be forever climbing. Yes, I like this plan exceedingly, not alone for its one principal floor, but I have always had a fancy for the 'rotunda' arrangement--one large central apartment for any and all purposes, out of which the rooms for more special and private uses should open. Indeed, I don't see how a very large house can be built in any other way without leaving a considerable part of the interior as useless for domestic as Central Africa is for political purposes. With _this_ arrangement the central keeping-room, lighted from above, may be as large as a circus tent, and all the surrounding cells will be amply supplied with light and air from the outside walls. [Illustration: LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET.] [Illustration: NEAR THE TURNING-POINT.] "According to Aunt Melville's enthusiastic account, the construction of the house is but little less than marvelous. 'The high walls of the basement are built of those native, weather-stained and lichen-covered boulders, the walls above being of a material hitherto unknown to builders. You will scarcely believe it when I tell you they are nothing else than the waste rubbish from brickyards, the rejected accumulations of years--not by any means the unburned, but the overburned, the hard, flinty, molten, misshapen and highly-colored masses of burned clay which indeed refused to be consumed, but have been twisted into shapeless blocks by the fervent heat. Of course, with such unconventional materials for the main walls it would be a silly affectation to embellish the exterior of the house with elaborate mouldings or ornamental wood-work, and the visible details are therefore plain to the verge of poverty. But as men of great genius can disregard the trifling formalities of society, so there are no architectural rules which this house is obliged to respect.'" [Illustration: A CHOICE OF BALUSTERS.] "That suits me perfectly," said Jack; "but I am amazed at Aunt Melville. Never before did she make such a concession even to great genius. Never before have I felt inclined to agree with her; but the conviction has grown upon me of late that the new house is in danger of being too much like other houses. If a fellow is really going in for reform, I like to have him go the whole figure. What do you say to beginning anew and building such a house as no mortal ever built before--something to make everybody wonder what manner of people they are who live in such a habitation--something to convince our neighbors that we are no weak-minded time-servers, but are able to be an architectural as well as domestic law unto ourselves--something to make them stop and stare--a sort of local Greenwich from which the community will reckon their longitude--'so many miles from the house that Jill built'?" "My dear, did it ever occur to you that you cannot be too thankful for a wife who is not blown about by every wind of new doctrine? I _do_ like the plan of 'The Oaks' exceedingly, not only for itself, but for the spirit of it, for its breadth and freedom. It seems to me a charming illustration of the true gospel of home architecture. There is no thoughtless imitation of something else that suits another place and another family. Neither does it appear that the owner tried to make a vain display for the sake of 'astonishing the natives.' He knew what he wanted, and built the house to suit his wants, using the simplest, the cheapest and the most durable materials at hand in the most direct and unaffected manner. Did you notice in the sketch of the keeping-room fireplace the little gallery passing across the end of the room above the entrance to the sitting-room? Probably you thought that was built for purely ornamental purposes, but it isn't. It is simply the walk from the kitchen to another part of the attic, which can be most conveniently reached by this interior bridge. Of course it adds to the interest and beauty of the room, but it was not made for that purpose, and, as I understand the matter, it is all the more beautiful because it was first made to be useful. There is another thing in this house--the elevator--which, queerly enough, we do not often find in houses of more aspiring habit, where it would he of even greater value. It is amazing to me that housekeepers will go on tugging trunks, coal-hods and heavy merchandise of all kinds up stairways, day after day and year after year, when a simple mechanical contrivance, moved by water, or weights and pulleys, would save us from all these heavy burdens. Think of the bruised knuckles, the trembling limbs that stagger along with the upper end of a Saratoga 'cottage,' the broken plastering at the sides, the paper patched with bright new pieces that look 'almost worse' than the uncovered rents, and the ugly marks of perspiring fingers." [Illustration: THE BIG FIREPLACE IN THE KEEPING ROOM.] [Illustration: ONE WAY TO BEGIN.] "All of which I have seen and a part of which I have been," said Jack. "I intended to have a lift in this house, but somehow it was left out." "Our architect." Jill continued, "must be instructed to arrange not only an easy staircase, but there must be a paneled wainscot at the side. We will dispense with elegance in any other quarter, if need be, in order to have the stairs ample, strong and well protected. I am not over-anxious to have them ornate, although handsome stairs are very charming if well placed; like many other beautiful things, they become incurably ugly when too obtrusive. The architect has sent several designs of balustrades from which we are to choose, and gives this advice about the dimensions: 'As you have plenty of room, the staircase should be four or four and a-half feet wide, so that two people can easily walk over it abreast, I have arranged to make the steps twelve inches wide, besides the projection that forms the finish--the "nosing"--and six inches high; that is, six inches "rise" and twelve inches "run." Some climbers think this too flat, and perhaps it is in certain situations; but for homes, for easy, leisurely ascent by children and old folks. I think it better than a steeper pitch. All large dwelling-houses, and some small ones, ought to be supplied with "passenger elevators," at least from the first to the second story. Those who take the rooms still higher are usually able to make the ascent in the common way. Such an elevator can undoubtedly be made that will be safe and economical, especially where there is an ample water supply.'" [Illustration: A BROADSIDE OF AN EASY ASCENT.] "The safety is the most troublesome part of the problem," said Jack; "and I can think of no way to overcome the danger of walking off the precipice, when the platform happens to be at the bottom, but by having the car run up an inclined plane. There would be no more danger of falling down this than down a common stairway, and the car might be fixed so it couldn't move up or down faster than a walk or a slow trot." "Would you like to experiment in the new house? You may do so--at your own expense--if you will promise not to spoil the plan. Among the designs for the stairs there is one that will be of no service to us--the screen at the foot of the stairs; our 'reception' hall will be separated from the staircase hall by the chimney and the curtains at the sides." "I have an idea," exclaimed Jack, "a truly philanthropic one. You know we are accumulating a large stock of plans, to say nothing of general information on architectural subjects, which we cannot possibly use ourselves, but which ought not to be wasted. Now you know Bessie is pining for a mission.". "Bessie has gone home." "I know, but she will come back if we send for her and tell her that she and Jim are to be sent out in the express wagon on a benevolent expedition to the heathens--the uncultured domestic heathens. We can have some of the architect's letters printed in tract form for them to distribute, and they can take along these superfluous plans to be applied where they will be most effective. Take, for instance, this hall screen, or whatever it may be, with the square staircase behind it. This would be just the thing for one of those old-fashioned square houses with the hall running through the middle and the long staircase splitting the hall in two lengthwise. If Bessie could persuade the owner of a single one of these old houses to take out the straight and narrow stairs, move them back, and, by introducing this semblance of a separation, make a reception hall of the front part, she would feel that she had not lived in vain. If she could at the same time cause cashmere shawls and rag carpets to be hung as portières in place of doors to the front rooms she would be ready for translation." Jill laughed. "I'm not sure," said she, "but this is a good field for people of missionary proclivities. Some of these old-fashioned houses have far more real, artistic excellence than those of the later, transition periods, and need but slight alterations to be most satisfactory types of architectural beauty as well as models of comfort and convenience. Broad, easy stairs, wide doorways and generous windows, with ample porches and piazzas outside, would transform them and make them not merely as good as new, but vastly better. Reopening fireplaces that have been ignominiously bricked up would be another promising field." "Oh! I tell you my idea is a capital one. I'll send for Bess this very day. They shall have Bob and the express wagon a week if they want it. They shall dispense an esthetic gospel and accumulate ancient bric-a-brac to their hearts' content. Bessie will be in ecstacies, and Jim will be in a helpless state of amazement and admiration." [Illustration: A DIVIDING SCREEN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.] "How perfectly absurd, Jack! I wouldn't allow those children to go off on such an excursion for all the old houses in America. One would think you were determined to have an esthetic sister-in-law at all hazards." "Never thought of such a thing! But now that you suggest it--" "I haven't suggested it," said Jill indignantly. "Well, you put it into my head at all events, and really now it wouldn't be such a bad idea. Jim is behind the times, artistically speaking, and needs to be waked up; and as for Bess, she would very soon learn to be careful how she expressed a longing for the unattainable, for Jim is a practical fellow, and whatever she wanted he would go for in a twinkling. Honestly, Jill, it strikes me as a first-class notion, and I'm glad you suggested it." "I _didn't_ suggest it, and I think it would be a _dreadful_ thing--I mean to send them off on another excursion. I am not sure, however, but we might found an A.B.C.A.M. with the materials and implements in our possession." CHAPTER XVII. THE RIGHT SIDE OF PAINT; A PROTEST AND A PROMISE. Jack's benevolent ambition to distribute their superfluous plans among those in need of such aids was strengthened by the receipt of another roll of drawings, showing designs for the interior work, wainscots, cornices, architraves, paneled ceilings and such wood finishings as are commonly found in houses that are built in conventional fashion, with lathed and plastered walls, trimmed at all corners and openings with wood more or less elaborately wrought. Of course, it was a large condescension in the architect to offer such a variety, and contrary to his avowed determination to decide without appeal all questions of construction and design, but he appreciated his clients and knew when to break his own rules and when to insist upon their observance. If Jill, had required an assortment he would doubtless have suggested that certain "practical" builders could furnish a full line of ready-made "artistic" patterns for little more than the cost of the paper on which they were printed; from these he would have advised her to select her own designs, as she might have chosen from a medicine chest sweet-smelling drops or sugar-coated pills of varying hue and form--the result would doubtless he as satisfactory in one case as in the other. Since she had not demanded it as an inalienable right he gave her an opportunity to criticise and select, which she accepted by no means unwillingly. As a rule, the designs were, in her opinion, too elaborate and obtrusive. There were too many mouldings, there was too much carving, and too evident a purpose to provide a finish that should challenge attention by its extent or elegance. It would require too much labor to keep it in order, and--it would cost too much. If she could not have work that was truly artistic, and therefore enduringly beautiful, whatever changes of fashion might occur, it was her wish to keep all the essential part of the building and finish modestly in the background, not attempting to make it ornamental, but relying upon the furniture for whatever conspicuous ornament or decoration might be desired. Nothing annoyed her more than an elegantly-finished house scantily provided with shabby, incongruous and misapplied furniture. The amiable concession of the architect came near causing a fatal quarrel, as amiable concessions are apt to do, for he found it almost impossible to satisfy Jill's taste in the direction of simplicity; he seemed to feel that he was neglecting his duty if he gave her plain, narrow bands of wood absolutely devoid of all design beyond a designation of their width and thickness. Any carpenter's boy could make such plans. "It would be worse," he wrote, "than prescribing bread pills and 'herb drink' for a sick man." To which Jill replied in substance that the needs of the patient are more important than professional rules. [Illustration: BITS OF CORNICES.] Over the first great question, regarding the visible wood work of the interior, Jack and Jill had held many protracted discussions: should any of it be painted, or should all the wood be left to show its natural graining and color? To the argument that unpainted wood is not only "natural" but strictly genuine and more interesting than paint, Jack replied that "natural" things are not always beautiful; that paint, which makes no pretense of being anything but paint, is as genuine as shellac or varnish, and that if the object is to be interesting, the bark, the knots, the worm-holes, and, if possible, the worms themselves should be displayed. "Besides," said he, "if we decide on hard wood, who shall choose the kinds? There's beech, birch and maple; cherry, whitewood and ebony; ash and brown ash and white ash and black ash; ditto oak, drawn and quartered; there's rosewood, redwood, gopherwood and wormwood; mahogany, laurel, holly and mistletoe; cedar of Lebanon and pine of Georgia, not to mention chestnut, walnut, butternut, cocoanut and peanut, all of which are popular and available woods for finishing modern dwellings. If we choose from this list, which may be indefinitely extended, the few kinds for which we can find room in our house, we shall be tormented with regret as long as we both do live because we didn't choose something else. Now if we paint, behold how simple a thing it is! We buy a lot of white pine boards, put them up where they belong and paint them in whatever unnamable hues the prevailing fashion may chance to dictate. Our boards need not even be of the best quality; an occasional piece of sound sap, a few hard knots, or now and then a 'snoodledog'--as they say in Nantucket--would do no harm. A prudent application of shellac and putty before painting will make everything right. Then if the fashions change, or if we should be refined beyond our present tastes and wish to go up higher, all we should need to lift the house to the same elevated plane is--another coat of paint. On the other hand, if we had a room finished in old English oak, growing blacker and blacker every year; in mahogany or in cheap and mournful black walnut, what could we do if the imperious mistress of the world should decree light colors? With rare, pale, faded tints on the walls our strong, bold, heavy hard-wood finish would be painful in the extreme. We couldn't change the wood and we couldn't change the fashion." "If you were not my own husband, Jack, I should say you were dreadfully obtuse. Concerning _fashions_ in house-building and furnishing I feel very much as Martin Luther felt about certain, formal religious dogmas. If we are asked to respect them as a matter of amiable compliance, if we find them convenient, agreeable and at the same time harmless, then let us quietly accept them; but, if we are commanded to obey them as vital, if they are set before us as solemn obligations to be reverenced as we reverence the everlasting truth, then, for Heaven's sake, let us tear them in pieces and trample them under our feet, lest we lose our power to distinguish the substance from the shadow. The moment any particular style of building, finishing or furnishing becomes a recognized fashion, that moment I feel inclined to turn against it with all my might." "If you were not my own idolized wife, I should say that was 'pure cussedness.'" [Illustration: MOULDINGS FAIR TO SEE, BUT HARD TO KEEP CLEAN.] "On the contrary, it is high moral principle; that is, moral principle applied to art. It is a simple, outright impossibility for human beings to have any true perception of art while a shadow of a thought of fashion remains. It is, indeed, possible that fashion may, for a moment, follow the straight and narrow road that leads to artistic excellence, as the fitful breath of a cyclone may, at a certain point in its giddy whirl, run parallel with the ceaseless sweep of the mighty trade-winds, but whoever tries to keep constantly in its track is sure to be hopelessly astray." "My dear, indignant, despiser of fashion, you know you wouldn't wear a two-year-old bonnet to church, on a pleasant Sunday morning, for the price of a pew in the broad aisle." "Certainly not; that would be both mercenary and irreverent; moreover, my bonnet has nothing to do with artistic rules. It is not a work of art or of science, of nature or of grace. It is a conventional signal by which I announce a friendly disposition toward the follies of my fellow-creatures--a sort of flag of truce, a badge of my conformity in little things. I wear it voluntarily and could lay it aside if I chose." "Undoubtedly, _if_ you chose. Now, let us resume the original discussion. I had given one powerful argument in favor of paint when I was rashly interrupted: here is another--it is much cheaper." "That would depend," said Jill. "Ash, butternut, cherry and various other woods cost little, if any more, than the best pine, and the pine itself is very pretty for chambers." "Ah, but you forget the labor question. It is one thing to join two pieces of wood so closely as to leave no visible crack between them, and quite another to bring them into the same neighborhood, fill the chasm with putty and hide the whole under a coat of paint. The difference between these two kinds of joints is the difference between one stroke and two, between one day's work and five days, between one thousand dollars and five thousand. My third argument you will surely appreciate. Paint is more artistic." Here Jack paused to give his words effect; then proceeded like one walking on stilts. "Pure tones symphoniously gradated from contralto shadows to the tender brightness of the upper registers and harmoniously blended with the prevailing quality--" [Illustration: FRAGMENTS OF ARCHITRAVES.] "Oh, Jack! _Don't_ go any farther, you are already beyond your depth. When you attempt to quote Bessie's sentiments you should have her letter before you. Perhaps I have a dim perception of the principle that underlies your thirdly. If so, this room is a pertinent illustration of it. Instead of all this white paint, if the wood work had been colored to match the predominant tint in the background of the paper, or a trifle darker, this being also the general 'tone' of the carpet, it is easy to see how the coloring of the room would have been simple and pleasing, instead of glaring and ugly. Yes, your plea for paint is not without value. I think, however, it would be entirely possible to stain the unpainted wood to produce any desired symphony, fugue or discord. It might be unnatural, especially if we wished to look blue, but it would not conceal the marking and shading of the grain of the wood which is so much prettier than any moulding or carving, and vastly easier to keep in order. Your economical arguments are always worth considering. I think the happy compromise for us will be to use hard wood in the first story and painted pine in the chambers, with various combinations and exceptions. The bath-rooms, halls and dressing-rooms of the second story should of course be without paint, and we may relieve the solid monotony of the hardwood finish with occasional fillets or bands of color, painted panels or any other irregularities we choose to invent. But this is invading the mighty and troublous realm of 'interior decoration,' from which I had resolved to keep at a respectful distance until the house is at least definitely planned in all its details." [Illustration: A CHOICE OF WAINSCOTS.] A wise decision, for although what we call in a general way "interior decoration" is closely allied to essential construction--not infrequently seems to be a part of it--there is still a sharp though often unseen line between them that cannot be crossed with impunity. Artistic construction is at best only second cousin to decoration, and while we may in building arrange to accommodate a certain style of furniture or ornament, as Bessie's friend built her parlor to suit the rug, the result of such contriving is apt to be discouraging if not disastrous. "Two things we must surely have," said Jill, "which the architect has not sent; one, an old fashion, the other, a new one. We must have 'chair rails,' in every room down stairs that has not a solid wainscot, if I have to make the plans and put them up myself. We must also have another band of wood higher up entirely around every room in both stories, to which the pictures can be hung." "Perhaps the architect will object to this as interfering with his plans." "He cannot, for they belong to our side of the house; they are matters of use, not of design. He may put them where he pleases, within reasonable limits, and make them of any pattern, with due regard to cost. He may treat one as part of the dado, the other as a member of the cornice, if he chooses, but we _must_ have them--they are indispensable." "They are also dangerous, because they are fashionable." "Yes, an illustration of the temporary agreement of fashion and common sense. But things of real worth do not go out of fashion; fashion goes out of them; henceforth they live by their own merit and no one questions their right to be." "Have you written to Bessie?" "Written to Bessie? What for?" "Why, to come and get ready to start on her mission." "No, indeed; I supposed you had forgotten that absurd notion." "Not at all absurd. I mentioned it to Jim, and he was delighted. Offered to go up and escort her down. He said they could go out in a different direction every day and do a great deal of good in the course of a week." "Jack, I am ashamed of you! Don't mention the subject to me again." "What shall I say to Jim?" [Illustration: WOOD PANELS FOR WALLS AND CEILINGS, WITH IRREGULARITIES IN LEATHER, PAINT AND PAPER.] "You needn't say anything to Jim. Tell him I am going to invite Bessie to visit us in the new house, and if he is in this part of the world I will send for him at the same time." "And that will be a full year, for the house is hardly begun." "Yes, a full year." [Illustration] CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE FINISHED AND THE HOME BEGUN. It was indeed a full year for Jill before Bessie received the promised invitation. Not merely full as to its complement of days, but full of new cares, interests and activities. It is needless to say it was also a happy year. Building a house for a home is a healthful experience, a liberal education to one who can give personal attention to it; who has some knowledge of plans with enough imagination to have a fair conception of what they will be when executed; who is content to receive a reasonable return for a given outlay, not anxious to get the best end of every bargain, nor over-fearful of being cheated; who cares more for home comfort than for a fine display, and whose soul is never vexed by the comments of Mrs. Grundy, nor tormented by the decrees of fashion. The question was raised, whether the house should be built by contract or by "day's work." The worldly-wise friends advised the former. Otherwise they affirmed the cost of the house would exceed the appropriation by fifty, if not a hundred, per cent., since it would be for the interest of both architect and builders to make the house as costly and the job as long as possible. And, while it was doubtless true that "day work" is likely to be better than "job work," still, if the plans and specifications were clearly drawn and the contract made as strong as the pains and penalties of the law could make it, the contractor might be compelled to keep his agreement and furnish "first-class" work. Jill's father settled this point at once. "It is true," said he, "that the plans and specifications should be clearly drawn, that you may see the end from the beginning, and it will be well to carefully estimate the cost, lest, having begun to build, you should be unable to finish. But I am neither willing to hold any man to an agreement, however legal it may be, that requires him to give me more than I have paid for, nor, on the other hand, do I wish to pay him more than a fair value for his work and material. You cannot avoid doing one of these two things in contracting such work as your house, for it is impossible to estimate its cost with perfect accuracy, and no specifications, however binding, can draw a well-defined line between 'first' and 'second'-class work. A general contract may be the least of a choice of evils in some cases; it is not so in yours. If you know just what you want, the right mode of securing it is to hire honest, competent workmen and pay them righteous wages. If, before the work is completed, you find the cost has been underestimated, stop when your money is spent. It may be mortifying and inconvenient to live in an unfinished house; it is far more so to be burdened with debt or an uneasy conscience. There is another thing to be remembered: We hear loud lamentations over the dearth of skillful, trusty laborers. There is no way of promoting intelligent, productive industry--which is the basis of all prosperity--but by employing artisans in such a way that the personal skill and fidelity of each one shall have their legitimate reward. The contract system, as usually practiced, acts in precisely an opposite direction. Your house must be built 'by the day' Jill, or I shall recall my gift." _That_ question was settled. The good and wise man had previously decided as peremptorily an early query relating to the plans. When it was known that a new house was to be built, several architects, with more conceit than self-respect, proposed to offer plans "in open competition"--not to be paid for unless accepted--concerning which Jill had asked her father's advice. [Illustration: THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.] "What should you think of a physician," said he, "who, on hearing that you were ill, should hasten to present himself with a prescription and a bottle of medicine, begging you to read the one, test the other, and, if they made a favorable impression, give him the job of curing you? There are such who call themselves physicians; other people call them quacks, and there is one place for their gratuitous offerings--the fire. I shall burn any plans that are presented in this way. Choose your architect at the outset, and give him all possible aid in carrying out your wishes, but do not employ one of those who must charge a double price for their actual work in order to work for nothing half the time. In any other business such a practice would be condemned at once." "Isn't it the same thing as offering samples of goods?" "No, it is offering the goods themselves--the top of the barrel at that." Of course this did not apply to the contributions that were prompted by personal friendship, of which Jill, as we have seen, received her full share, none of them, excepting the one-story plan, proving in the least tempting. As the race of competent, industrious mechanics is not yet extinct, whatever the croakers may say such were found to build the house, which was well closed in before winter. The walls and roof were completed and the plastering dried while the windows could be left open without danger of freezing, a most important thing, because although mortar may be kept from freezing by artificial heat, the moisture it contains, unless expelled from the house, will greatly retard the "seasoning" of the frame and the walls of the building. After it has all been blown out of the windows, if the house is kept warm and dry the fine wood-finishing will "keep its place" best if put up in winter rather than in summer. For the most carefully seasoned and kiln-dried lumber will absorb moisture so rapidly in the hot, steaming days of June and in the damp dog-day weather that no joiner's skill can prevent cracks from appearing when the dry furnace heat has drawn the moisture from its pores. One year is a reasonable length of time for building a common dwelling-house. Twelve months from the day the workmen appeared to dig the foundation trenches the last pile of builder's rubbish was taken away and the new, clean, bright, naked, empty house stood ready for the first load of furniture. If the social and domestic tastes of Jack and Jill have been even slightly indicated, it is unnecessary to say that this first load did not consist of the brightest and best products of the most fashionable manufacturers. Aunt Melville had sent a few ornaments and two or three elegant trifles in the way of furniture, a chair or two in which no one could sit without danger of mutual broken limbs, and a table that, like many another frail beauty, might enjoy being supported but could never bear any heavier burden than a card-basket, and was liable to be upset by the vigorous use of dust-brush or broom. "They will help to furnish your rooms," said the generous aunt, "and will give a certain style that cannot be attained with furniture that is simply useful." [Illustration: THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.] The ornaments that were ornamental and nothing more Jill accepted gratefully. The furniture that must be protected to preserve its beauty, and generally avoided lest it should be broken, she returned, begging her aunt to give it to some one having a larger house. On one of those perfect days that are so rare, even in June, Bessie appeared in all the glory of the lilies. To Jill's surprise, her first remark after the customary effusive greeting was, "How _lovely_ it is to have a home of your own. I shouldn't care if it was made of slabs and shaped like a wigwam. Of course, _this_ house is exquisite. I knew it would be, but it is ten times as large as I should want. It will be _so_ much work to take care of it." "I don't expect to take care of it alone." "I know you don't, but I should want to take care of my own house, if I had one, every bit of it. Oh, you needn't look so amazed. I know what I am saying. I have learned to cook, and dust, and sweep, and kindle fires, and polish, silver, and--and black stoves!" No wonder Jill was dumb while Bessie went on at a breathless rate. "And do you know, Jill dear, I wouldn't take this house if you would give it to me. There! I would a thousand times rather have a little bit of a cottage, just large enough for--for two people, and everything in it just as cosy and simple as it could be. Then we--then I could learn to paint and decorate--I've learned a little already--and embroider and such things, and slowly, very slowly, you know, I would fill the house with pretty things that would belong to it and be a part of it, and a part of me, too, because I made them." "Wouldn't it be much cheaper and better to hire some skillful artist to do these things?" said Jill, taking refuge in matter-of-fact. [Illustration: THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE HOUSE THAT JILL BUILT.] "If I hired any one of course it would be an artist, but our homes are not dear to us because they are beautiful, it is because they are _ours_, because we have worked for them and in them until they are a part of ourselves. I love artistic things as well as I ever did, but there are some things that are ten thousand times lovelier." Before Jill had recovered from her astonishment at Bessie's transformed sentiments or imagined their cause, who should drive up but Aunt Jerusha. She and Bessie had never met before, but the mysterious laws of affinity, that pay no regard to outward circumstances or expectations, brought them at once into the warmest sympathy. Jill had provided extremely pretty china for her table, and for Bessie's sake had brought out certain rare pieces not intended for every-day use. It was contrary to her rule to make any difference between "every-day" and "company days." "Nothing is too good for Jack," was the basis of her argument. The one exception was china. But Bessie was absolutely indifferent to the frail and costly pottery. She was intent on learning domestic wisdom from Aunt Jerusha, and insisted upon writing in her note-book the recipes for everything she ate and recording the rules for carrying on whatever household matters chanced to be mentioned, from waxing floors to canning tomatoes. Jack strove to enliven the conversation by throwing in elaborate remarks upon the true sphere of women, the uncertainty of matrimonial ventures and the deceitfulness of mankind in general. Jill meanwhile preserved her equanimity upon all points relating to her house. She admitted the force of Aunt Jerusha's suggestion that a portion of the long serving-table in the kitchen should be movable and a door made from kitchen to china-closet, to be kept locked, as a rule, but available in an emergency, when one or both servants were sick or discharged; she appreciated her advice to form the habit of washing the silver and fine glasses with her own hands before leaving the table; she was able to repeat her favorite recipes correctly; she carved gracefully, as a lady ought, and gave due attention to her guests. Beyond these duties she was in a state of bewilderment. What had happened to Bessie, and what new mischief Jack was incubating were puzzles she could neither solve nor dismiss. [Illustration: THE EAST END OF JILL'S DINING-ROOM.] By one of those coincidences, not half as rare as they seem, at four o'clock the same day Aunt and Uncle Melville appeared upon the scene. They were spending a short time at a summer hotel in the vicinity, and Jill persuaded them to stay for tea, sending their carriage back for Cousin George and his wife, who were at the same place. She also invited her father and mother to improve the opportunity to make a small family gathering. "I suppose you know Jim is coming over this evening," said Jack. "Don't you think he had better bring Uncle Harry along?" "I _didn't_ know Jim was coming, but he is always welcome, and Uncle Harry too. Your father and mother, of course, if they are able to come out this evening." "Oh, _they_ are coming, anyway," Jack began and stopped suddenly. "That is, I mean, certainly they will be delighted, if you send for them." Jill was more puzzled than ever, but they all came. "Now, you will please consider yourselves a 'board of visitors,'" said she, as they sat at the table after tea, "authorized to inspect this institution and report your impressions." "Remembering that Jill is the warden and I am the prisoner," said Jack. "But you must conduct us to the cells," said her father, rising, "and tell us what to admire." Jill accordingly began at the beginning. She showed them the light vestibule, with a closet at one side for umbrellas and overshoes, and a seat at the other; the central hall that would be used as a common reception-room, and on such occasions as the present, would become a part of one large apartment--the entire first floor of the main house; the staircase with the stained-glass windows climbing the side; the toilet-room from the garden entrance and the elevator reaching from the basement to the attic. She showed them the family suite of rooms; her own in the southeast corner, with the dressing-room and adjoining chamber toward the west, and Jack's room over the front hall, with the large guest-room above the dining-room. She urged them to count the closets and notice their ample size; referred with pride to the servants' rooms, and explained how there was space in the roof for two chambers and a billiard-room, if they should ever want them. With true housekeeper's pride she declared the beauties and wonders of the kitchen arrangements, a theme that had been often rehearsed, and from the kitchen they descended to the basement, which contained the well-lighted laundry, the servants' bath-room and store-rooms without name or number; some warm and sunny, others cool and dark, but all dry and well ventilated. Then they returned to the drawing-room to make their reports. "It's too large," said Bessie. "It isn't small enough," said Jim. "The third floor is not the proper place for a billiard-table," remarked Uncle Melville, sententiously. "It is too remote for such a social pastime; too difficult of access; too--too--er--" "The house looks smaller than it is," said Aunt Melville, "which I consider a serious defect. It ought to look larger; it should have a tower, and the front door should be toward the street." "Your chambers are excellent," said Uncle Harry. "The personality of human beings should be respected. The chief object of home is to give to each individual a chance for unfettered development. Every soul is a genius at times and feels the necessity of isolation. Especially do we need to be alone in sleep, and to this end every person in a house is entitled to a separate apartment. I commend the family suite." "A nobby house," said Cousin George. "I like our own better," said his wife, _sotto voce_, which was a worthy sentiment and should have been openly expressed. Fondness for our own is the chief of domestic virtues. "Is it paid for?" inquired Jack's father. To which Jack replied: "It is: and the house that I built is sold to the most stylish people you ever saw. They paid me more than this cost, but I wouldn't swap with them for a thousand dollars to boot." "No; neither would they change with us for two thousand." Just as the clock struck nine the door-bell rang and the rector and his wife were announced. Before Jill could realize what was taking place she found herself an amazed and helpless spectator in her own house, for Jim and Bessie stood side by side under the curtains leading to the library, and the rector was reading the solemn marriage service. By way of calming her excitement Jack found a chance to whisper to Jill, "They have been engaged six months." "You unnatural husband! Why didn't you tell me?" "Didn't know it myself till this afternoon." There was no time for further explanations, for the good rector was saying: "I am sure you will agree with me that building and cherishing a consecrated home is the noblest work we can do on earth. From such homes spring all public and private excellence, all patriotic virtues, all noble charities and philanthropies, all worthy service of God and man. Whether high or low, rich or poor, in all times and in all places, domestic life, in its purity and strength, is the safeguard of individuals and the bulwark of nations. And when, in after years, other solemn sacraments shall be performed beneath this roof, may it still be found a sacred temple of peace and love!" Bessie and Jim kept house in two chambers until a cottage of four rooms, with an attic and wood-shed, was finished, which happened before cold weather. Her wedding present from Jack was an express wagon full of obsolete household utensils. She had learned to make the fire in the kitchen, and nothing was more acceptable than such a load of dry kindling wood. The house that Jill built cost ten thousand dollars. Jim's cost less than one thousand. Bessie declares that the smaller the house the greater the happiness it contains. She may be right, but Jill denies it, and it is never safe to draw general conclusions from special cases. CHAPTER XIX. TEN YEARS AFTER. Jack, Jr., and his sister Bessie, were building block houses on the piazza. Jack was pretending to read the evening paper, in reality watching the builders; and Jill was making no pretense of doing anything else. "Really Jack, I think Bessie shows more skill in building than her brother. Her houses look like realities, and they have more grace and dignity than his." "Of course. Haven't I always said that women would make the best architects if they had a fair chance? Didn't you make the plans of this house? Hasn't it been all our fancy painted and a great deal more? There isn't a stick nor a stone, a brick nor a shingle that I would have changed if we were to build it again." "And haven't I always said that men were more conservative than women? _I_ would be glad to change everything there is in the house to build it all over again, and build it differently." "Oh the inconstancy of women! Even the moon is more constant, for her changes are only superficial and temporary." "When I say; 'I have changed my mind,' it is only another way of saying, 'I am wiser to-day than I was yesterday.'" "I understand; what a Jacob's ladder of wisdom you must be! All right; change your mind every day, grow wiser and wiser; I will try to keep the hem of your garments in sight." "Have you selected a lot?" "What for?" "For a new house." "Bless you, my dear husband, I wouldn't build another house, still less live in it, for all the wealth of the treasury vaults. Isn't this our own? Hasn't it always been perfectly suited to our wants? What upon earth are you thinking of?" "Oh, nothing in particular. I never think if I can help it. I have heard that a man ought always to build two houses, one to learn how, the second to correct the mistakes of the first. I thought perhaps it was the same way with women." "This house was exactly right when it was built, it could not have been improved, but that was ten years ago, and a great many things have happened in the last ten years; but, then, a great many more will happen in the next ten, and ten years hence there will be just as many things to change in the houses that are built this year as there are now in those that are of the same age as ours." "But how would you change this house if it could be done by a magic wand or by the exercise of faith, and without raising a speck of dust or upsetting the housekeeping affairs for a single minute?" "I would make it larger for one thing. Our rooms are too small. The number of rooms a house contains should depend on the number of people there are to live in it, including all the children, the guests and the servants, with a certain allowance for contingencies." "Depending on the hospitality of the family." "Yes; and whatever the number of rooms, they should be large enough, not merely to hold the occupants when the doors are shut, but for comfortable living and moving about. There is nothing in which all men and women are more conservative than in the planning of their houses; there seems to be something hereditary about it, as difficult to change as a tendency to bald heads and awkward locomotion. Americans are special sufferers in this respect. The primitive Anglo-American home was only a step removed from the wigwams of the aboriginal savages, in size, shape and general accommodations. Even our English ancestors, from whom we derived some of our domestic notions, were not accustomed to anything magnificent in the way of dwellings. The climate was against them, and they were not sufficiently luxurious in their tastes. Their houses were primarily places for shelter and refuge. In summer they lived out of doors, and in winter they crept into close quarters and waited for warm weather. With plenty of land and building materials to be had for the taking, our colonial grandfathers should have had the most generous homes in the world." "Yes; and to judge by some of the old colonial mansions which have escaped the 'making-over' vandals we have been going backwards in that respect during the last fifty or a hundred years." "Yes; and we ought to have been going the other way, for the size of rooms should increase as the cost of furniture diminishes. Take for instance, a parlor or sitting room fifteen feet square, which is, I believe, about the orthodox size for a modern house. Give such a room a dozen straight-backed and straight-legged chairs ranged along the sides, a table in the center of the room with a green cover and four books on it, two or three unhappy-looking family portraits on the walls, a pair of brass candlesticks on the high, wooden mantel, a pair of bellows, a shovel and tongs, with, perhaps, in the way of luxury, a haircloth sofa. Now compare the room furnished in that way, which was by no means uncommon in the days of our grandfathers with a room of the same size, in which are stored half a dozen chairs, no two alike, and some of them as large as small lounges, a center table piled with books and magazines and photographs, till like a heap of jack straws, it is impossible to remove one without disturbing the whole pile; a lounge with a back, a divan or something without a back, an upright piano, two or three bookcases, several small stools and piles of Turkish cushions to catch the unwary, huge Japanese vases beside the fireplace, a leopard skin with a solid head in front of the table, and a sprinkling of Persian rugs spilt over the floor; a cabinet of bric-a-brac in the northeast corner, a 'whatnot' with a big jardiniere bearing a three-foot palm on the top story in the northwest, a carved bracket with a sheaf of Florida grasses in the southeast, and a tall wooden clock that won't go in the southwest; a brass tea kettle hanging from a wrought iron frame beside a fragile stand that carries a half dozen of still more fragile 'hand-painted' teacups and saucers; lambrequins and heavy curtains at all the windows and most of the doors, a big combination gas and electric chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling, bedangled with jumping jacks, Christmas cards, straw ornaments and other artistic 'curious'; one or two small tables scattered 'promiscous like' about the room; a music stand and a banjo; with photographs, chromos, oil paintings, water colors and etchings, from one to three feet square, in gilt, enameled and wooden frames of all styles and degrees of fitness on the walls of the room,--take a room furnished in this way or a great deal more so, and compare it with another of the same actual dimensions furnished in the old-fashioned way and see which is the larger. The modern furnishing may be 'cozy,' oppressively cozy when there are half a dozen people trying to move gracefully around and between it without upsetting or destroying anything, but what sort of hospitality can we offer our guests if they must be always afraid of breaking something valuable if they stir?" "Why not have a bonfire and liquidate some of this superfluous stock?" "It is not superfluous; all these things, if they are good add to the enjoyment of living, if we have room for them and are able to take good care of them without neglecting weightier matters. Our own rooms are not large enough. However, if we cannot enlarge them we can build new ones for special purposes. For one, we must have a children's workroom. If Jack is going to be an artist, and you know he shows decided talent, and Bessie an architect, there's no doubt of her having real genius in that direction, they should have one room immediately, and two by and by, for their own exclusive use. A room where they could keep all their books, and tools and toys, and where they could work in their own spontaneous, untrammeled way." "You mean a nursery." "No, I do _not_ mean a nursery, but a workshop, study, gymnasium, call it anything you please. The floor should be smooth and hard, and the walls should be wainscoted with smooth, hard wood. There should be blackboards and shelves at the sides, and the children should be allowed to drive nails wherever they please. I am not sure but I would have a sink and a water faucet." "Not unless the room is in the cellar or has a floor tight enough for a swimming tank. Well, what next?" "We must have a hospital." "For inebriates or the insane?" "A room similar to the private wards in a hospital. You know our own and the children's sleeping rooms are very simply furnished, but a sick room should be still more severe. The children have both had the measles, thank goodness, and I hope they never will have smallpox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria, but if they should it would be necessary to send them away from home or run the risk of their exposing one another." "You might as well include every other ill that flesh is heir to. If we have got to fight germs day and night in order to live, the cleaner and more open we can keep the battle ground the better. It strikes me that it might be a good thing to have the whole house sort of clean and wholesome." "Of course. But none of us would like to have the living rooms as absolutely bare of all superfluous furnishing as a hospital ward. We should not be willing to give up our rugs, take down the curtains, throw away the cushions and sit in hard wooden chairs." "No, and I wouldn't like to burn my books, although there is nothing quite so 'germy' as my musty old books that were made in Italy in plague times and smell like the 16th century every time they are opened. So I suppose we must have a hospital for the children to be sick in, a workshop for them to work in, and what would you say to a small chapel and penitentiary, with a dungeon or two? While we are about it, let's have a market and cold storage annex." "Precisely what I was going to suggest. It would be the easiest thing in the world to attach a small room to the cellar or the kitchen, where a low temperature can be kept at all times, either by ice or by the artificial refrigeration that will soon be distributed and sold in the same way that gas, water, steam, electric light and power are now furnished in many cities." "I never thought of it before, but why shouldn't milk and beer and other medicinal drinks be distributed in the same way as water and gas?" "Please don't interrupt me. These are really serious considerations. Why, Jack, we haven't begun to guess at the wonderful changes that are to be made in all our housekeeping affairs, as well as in everything else by electricity. In a few years we shall find our present cooking arrangements as much out of date as the old turnspit and tin ovens and the great wood fires on the hearth. And light! Our houses will be as light as day all the time, unless we choose darkness in order to sleep more comfortably." "Or because our deeds be evil, or for the better accommodation of burglars. No self-respecting burglar would think of 'burgling' without a dark lantern." "And heat; do you remember how something more than twenty-five years ago a French scientist proposed to supply all the heat needed for human comfort in cold climates directly from the sun's rays?" "I can't say that I do remember that particular philosopher, but I have a notion that the sun was considered a fair sort of furnace a good many years before the first Frenchman was born." "Yes, yes; but he was going to gather the sun's heat into such shape that it would warm our houses in winter, do all the cooking, take the place of all the steam boilers and furnaces. I never heard that his theories were reduced to practice, but we have found another source of light and heat that is already under our control. There is no more doubt that all the warmth, illumination and mechanical power that we can use are within our reach, when we have learned how to take possession of them, than there is of gravitation. It is all waiting at the door, we have only to clap our hands and the potent spirit is ready to do our bidding." "Without money and without price?" "No, not quite that, there are too many incorporated monopolies in the way. But it is coming nearer and nearer, and with the unlimited power of wind and waves and waterfalls, all these things will soon be as cheap as anything really worth having ought to be." "Say, Jill, do you suppose we shall live to see all our necessities supplied, gratis, and have nothing to work for except the luxuries?" "We have lived long enough to find that for most people in our day and generation, even for those who think they have to work very hard 'just to get a living,' their most serious toil is to provide, what might be called, not the 'bare' necessities of life, but the well-dressed necessities. But it is time for those children to be in bed." CHAPTER XX. A DOUBLE CONCLUSION. "Now Jill," this was half an hour later, the children were asleep and the gas was lighted, "let us by way of amusement draw plans of a castle in Spain. Let us forget all the houses that ever were built and fancy ourselves, not Adam and Eve, with the responsibility of setting the housekeeping pace for the rest of the human family nor Robinson Crusoe, whose domestic arrangements were somewhat handicapped, but a wise pair of semi-Bourbons, at the end of the 19th century, who forget nothing old but are willing to learn and adopt anything new, provided it is good." "All right; go ahead." "In the first place our castle will not be destructible by fire or water. All the walls will be of masonry and the floor beams will be of steel. There will be nothing to invite moth or rust." "Nor burglars; not so much as a silver spoon or a candlestick." "I have always been sorry that the roof of this house was not fireproof, but I suppose it would have cost too much, though the architect said it might have been made like the floors if we would consent to have it flat." "Moral: if you want a roof of the mountainous variety you must either pay for it or run the risk of being burned out on top. But what do castles in Spain care for the cost? We can have fireproof roofs in miniature copy of Alpine peaks or we can use them for billiard tables and croquet grounds." "Really," Jill continued, "there is no good reason for steep roofs. Snow is more troublesome on the ground around the house than on top of it, if it will stay there, and a very slight slope will carry off the rain. I fancy steep roofs must have been invented when builders used such clumsy materials for covering that they were obliged to lay them on a steep pitch in order to keep out the water. Shingles of course last longer the steeper the roof." "If that's the case they ought to last forever on the second story walls of our house, where they are straight up and down. When you come to think of it, high roofs must be built now-a-days mainly for show, incidentally they cover the house. First beautiful, then useful. How large will it be?" "What, the roof?" "No, the whole thing; how many rooms will it have?" "That will depend on the size of the family. Not less than ten nor more than forty. Ten rooms will answer for two people, and more than forty complicates the housekeeping." "Do you count closets?" "Oh, no. Closets and dressing rooms, storerooms, bath rooms, cupboards and things of that sort, are mere adjuncts. They are to the real rooms what the pockets are to a suit of clothes." "Excellent. I'm glad we haven't got to count the closet or the expense. Probably ten rooms are not too many for two young people, but a pair of childless octogenarians ought to get along with eight or nine; the other way you are all right, only I would say four hundred. While we are about it, let's have a comfortable, good sized, 'roomy' house. But how do you propose to put even forty rooms with their various pockets under one roof and give them all plenty of sunlight and fresh air? Will you pile them up one above another or set them in a row on the ground? In either case it would need a trolly car and a telephone to connect the two ends of the line." "It mustn't be more than two stories high, and I'm not sure but one would be better." "That means twenty rooms on each floor. The rooms will average twenty feet long, and that will make the entire length of our castle four or five hundred feet. Won't it look like an institution or a row of tenements if it is strung out in a line?" "It will not be." "Cut up into wings and things?" "No, it will be in the form of a hollow square. There may be a wing or two on one side or another, and wherever a projecting bay or oriel will add to the comfort or charm of the interior we shall have one, but its general form will be a great square with an open court in the center." "Oh, I see. An imitation Pompeian, or Florentine palace." "No, nothing of the kind. Not an imitation of anything. It will be a simple, straightforward, common-sense, American home, with room for a good-sized family, several rooms for extra occasions, and some that will not be finished at all but held in reserve for future contingencies. It sometimes costs no more to enclose a certain space in building than to leave it outside, and there is the same satisfaction in knowing we have space to spare inside the house that there is in owning the land that joins us even when we don't expect to sell or use it." "What shall we do with the big hole in the center? It will be too small for golf or tennis, and too big for a conservatory. We might keep hens." "It will not be too large for a garden, with fountains for hot weather and flowers for cold. It will be its own excuse for being, for it will give light and air to all the rooms, and if it has a glass roof the problem of comfortable living in cold weather will be solved. There will always be the temperate zone at one side of the house,--that is inside the court,--however high the drifts may be piled outside. Of course the entire building will be warmed in winter and cooled in summer by spicy breezes driven by electric fans, and we shall only have to decide what temperature we prefer on different days of the week, set the gauge, and there will be no more watching of the thermometer, the registers, the weather reports or the wood pile." "But I thought it was wrong to live in a river of warm air. Uncle John compares that to taking a perpetual warm bath." "It is wrong; but, my dear Jack, life is a succession of compromises, especially domestic life, and considering the practical difficulties in the way of open hickory fires in all the forty or more rooms, we must be content with the artificially warmed air for every day use and consider radiated heat from wood fires, coal grates, or sunshine, as luxuries." "Certainly; it would be a pity to make all luxuries impossible just because we happen to own a castle in Spain. Aren't you afraid our court will be dreadfully hot in summer, shut in by four brick walls?" "By no means; it will be particularly cool. If we like we can have a great awning to draw over it in the hottest weather, and wide halls will allow a perfect circulation of air throughout the whole structure. In addition to this, on the highest part of the roof there will be a space fitted for an outdoor sitting room, sheltered when necessary by awnings and screens, but most delightful on hot summer evenings." "Oh, yes, I see. A sort of copy of the old Egyptian houses." "No, not a sort of a copy of anything, but a simple application of common sense. In the evening when there is a breeze from any direction, the highest part of the house will be the coolest." "I thought it was to be a two-story house. How can one part be higher than the rest?" "I didn't say it was to be all of the same height. Some rooms will be much higher than others because they will be larger. If a room is to be of agreeable proportions, the height must be determined by the size. It may be best to make the north side three stories high and the south only one; that would give more sunlight on the north wall of the court and make the average two stories." "Nothing like keeping up the average. But aren't forty rooms with all the closets and storerooms, and stairways and halls, and bays and oriels and dungeons going to make a large house for one family? Can't we work the same idea on a smaller scale?" "Of course, but that is not too large for a comfortable home for a family of moderate size. Count your fingers and try it. To begin at that end of the establishment, we want a scullery, a kitchen, and a servants' dining room; we want a breakfast room, and a large dining room for the family, and the dining room, by the way, should be one of the largest rooms in the house, say twenty-one or two feet by thirty six or forty; we want a parlor, a drawing room, a library, a billiard room and a picture gallery; a music room and ball room, these being, of course, in one, but as large as two ordinary rooms; then we want a nursery, a workroom for the children, a sick room and a sewing room, an office and a smoking room, and one or two extra sitting or reception rooms. Each member of the family should have a private sitting room and bedroom, with dressing room and bath for each suite. That, you see, would just about suit a family of ten people without counting the servants." [Illustration: A CASTLE IN SPAIN.] "Have you made any calculation Jill, dear, as to how many people there are at present in the United States who could manage to scrape along with thirty-nine rooms instead of forty?" "Why should I? This is a castle in Spain. We have plenty of money, plenty of room, plenty of time. Our only anxiety is lest there should be a lack of brains to make good use of our room and time and money." "And what shall we build it of, jasper, sapphire and chalcedony?" "No, burned clay and granite, steel, copper and glass. It shall be defiant of fire and flood; it shall neither burn up nor rot down." "One thing more, Jill, when we come to make our wills to which one of the children shall we bequeath the castle?" Before Jill could answer the door was hurriedly opened and Bessie appeared upon the threshold. "I've just run away from Jim," she began rapidly. "We haven't had a family quarrel exactly, but we've argued it over and over, and we come out just as far apart as ever. Finally I told him I would leave it to you." "I haven't any idea what it is all about, but did Jim agree to that?" "I didn't give him a chance to differ. He always agrees to everything Jill says about building houses But don't interrupt me. The baby may wake up at any minute and then Jim will be helpless. The truth is he is dissatisfied with our home." "Jim, dissatisfied; impossible!" "Yes, he thinks it's too small." "He wants more servants, I suppose; several additional children, a lot more poor relations, and all the various items that go to make up a well-ordered household." "No, no; it is the house that is too small." "Excuse me, you said the home. The house is a very different affair." "You remember," Bessie continued, "that when it was built ten years ago Jim thought it was not large enough. Now he is determined to sell it and build a new one. There are five good rooms besides the closets, and as there is nobody but Jim and me and the four children and one servant, we have all the room we need. We have always been perfectly comfortable, and I can't bear the thought of selling our home." Here Bessie began to show symptoms of dissolution, but swallowing her emotion she continued, "If we could build on a room or two as we need them I wouldn't mind it. But if you advise us to sell this house for the sake of having another, I'll"-- "We shan't advise any such thing," said Jack, "but it's perfectly natural for Jim to think you ought to have a larger, more modern house." "But I don't want a more modern house," Bessie protested, "if there is any created thing that I despise it is a 'modern' house, made up of bay windows and crooked turrets, and shingled balconies, and peaked roofs, and grotesque little fandangoes of wood and copper and terra cotta, that have no more dignity or repose, or beauty or homelike appearance, than a crazy quilt or a Chinese puzzle. They are simply outrageous, abominable. I would sooner have the children brought up in a reform school or a house of correction." "How would you like a colonial house?" Bessie's indignation had spent itself, and she resumed her ordinary, but sometimes misleading manner. "Isn't it a pity we were not all born a hundred years ago, then we might have had colonial houses. But why should I want to live in an uncomfortable old curiosity shop when I like my house just as it is? Our trouble is that Jim wants the house twice as large as it is now and I want only one more room." "Bessie," said Jack, in his most fatherly manner, "I am surprised that two sensible people like you and Jim should fall into such a distressing controversy over nothing, absolutely nothing. You are already in perfect accord. Jim says the house is only half large enough. You say you want one more room. The house is now just thirty-three feet long and thirty-three feet wide; add a new room thirty-three feet square; you will have the one extra room, and Jim will have the house doubled in size. Isn't that right?" "Yes," said Jill; "It is exactly what I should have suggested if you had given me a chance. Do you remember the charming room in the old Florentine palace, where we spent the winter, and how we enjoyed it, and finally measured it for the benefit of some other Americans who intended to build a new house as soon as they got home? That was just thirty-three feet square and eighteen feet high. There was a grand piano in one corner, in another a group of chairs with bookcases, in another sofas and chairs and tables scattered about, so that in effect it was equal to several small rooms. Indeed one of our party described it in a home letter as a magnificent apartment one hundred feet each way. It would accommodate several callers, with their different groups of friends, and it was of course a capital place for music and dancing. In your new room you will have one corner for the children and another for yourselves. The Dorcas society can meet at one side while your little Jack and his friends are playing games at the other. It won't be many years before Bessie will claim a large section, including one of the bay windows, for her own use." "I think I hear the baby crying. Thank you, I'll talk it over with Jim. Good night." "Do you think they will do it?" Jack inquired. "Of course they will; it is by far the most sensible thing. As a family they are always together and always will be, and one large room will suit them better than several small ones. Perhaps it will be the best thing for us, until we can build our castle in Spain. It certainly will not cost as much as making over and enlarging the rooms we have." "That is true, and it is my impression that the wisest way to enlarge an old house is to nail up the windows, seal up the doors and go ahead with the additions without taking out the nails or breaking the seals till it is all done; that would save time, money and patience." "Yes, and more than that," said Jill, "it would preserve the charm of the old house which grows stronger every year until the loss of the familiar rooms and their hallowed associations seems like parting with a dear old friend." 
17774	----	THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME I POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE [Illustration: J. Ruskin] Library Edition THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE SEVEN LAMPS MODERN PAINTERS VOLUME I NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NEW YORK, CHICAGO THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE; OR, THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE NATIONS OF EUROPE CONSIDERED IN ITS ASSOCIATION WITH NATURAL SCENERY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 _PART I._--THE COTTAGE. I. THE LOWLAND COTTAGE--ENGLAND AND FRANCE 7 II. THE LOWLAND COTTAGE--ITALY 15 III. THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--SWITZERLAND 25 IV. THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--WESTMORELAND 35 V. A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS 45 VI. THE COTTAGE--CONCLUDING REMARKS 57 _PART II._--THE VILLA. I. THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO 67 II. THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO (CONTINUED) 80 III. THE ITALIAN VILLA (CONCLUDED) 94 IV. THE LOWLAND VILLA--ENGLAND 104 V. THE ENGLISH VILLA--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION 113 VI. THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. (THE CULTIVATED, OR BLUE COUNTRY, AND THE WOODED, OR GREEN COUNTRY) 126 VII. THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. (THE HILL, OR BROWN COUNTRY) 145 LIST OF PLATES. Facing Page Fig. 1. Old Windows; from an early sketch by the Author 13 " 2. Italian Cottage Gallery, 1846 20 Cottage near la Cité, Val d'Aosta, 1838 21 " 3. Swiss Cottage, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) 28 " 4. Cottage near Altorf, 1835 29 " 5. Swiss Châlet Balcony, 1842 32 " 6. The Highest House in England, at Malham 42 " 7. Chimneys. (Eighteen sketches redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) 48 " 8. Coniston Hall, from the Lake near Brantwood, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) 50 " 9. Chimney at Neuchatel; Dent du Midi and Mont Blanc in the distance 20 " 10. Petrarch's Villa, Arquà, 1837. (Redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) 98 " 11. Broken Curves. (Three diagrams, redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) 101 " 12. Old English Mansion, 1837. (Reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) 116 " 13. Windows. (Three designs, reproduced from the Architectural Magazine) 122 " 14. Leading Lines of Villa-Composition. (Diagram redrawn from the Architectural Magazine) 164 PREFATORY NOTES. Of this work Mr. RUSKIN says in his Autobiography:--"The idea had come into my head in the summer of '37, and, I imagine, rose immediately out of my sense of the contrast between the cottages of Westmoreland and those of Italy. Anyhow, the November number of Loudon's _Architectural Magazine_ for 1837 opens with 'Introduction to the Poetry of Architecture; or the Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and National Character,' by Kata Phusin. I could not have put in fewer, or more inclusive words, the definition of what half my future life was to be spent in discoursing of; while the _nom-de-plume_ I chose, 'ACCORDING TO NATURE,' was equally expressive of the temper in which I was to discourse alike on that, and every other subject. The adoption of a _nom-de-plume_ at all implied (as also the concealment of name on the first publication of 'Modern Painters') a sense of a power of judgment in myself, which it would not have been becoming in a youth of eighteen to claim...." "As it is, these youthful essays, though deformed by assumption, and shallow in contents, are curiously right up to the points they reach; and already distinguished above most of the literature of the time, for the skill of language, which the public at once felt for a pleasant gift in me." (_Præterita_, vol. I. chap. 12.) In a paper on "My First Editor," written in 1878, Mr. Ruskin says of these essays that they "contain sentences nearly as well put together as any I have done since." The Conductor of the _Architectural Magazine_ in reviewing the year's work said (December, 1838):--"One series of papers, commenced in the last volume and concluded in the present one, we consider to be of particular value to the young architect. We allude to the 'Essays on the Poetry of Architecture,' by Kata Phusin. These essays will afford little pleasure to the mere builder, or to the architect who has no principle of guidance but precedent; but for such readers they were never intended. They are addressed to the young and unprejudiced artist; and their great object is to induce him to think and to exercise his reason.... There are some, we trust, of the rising generation, who are able to free themselves from the trammels and architectural bigotry of Vitruvius and his followers; and it is to such alone that we look forward for any real improvement in architecture as an art of design and taste." The essays are in two parts: the first describing the cottages of England, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and giving hints and directions for picturesque cottage-building. The second part treats of the villas of Italy and England--with special reference to Como and Windermere; and concludes with a discussion of the laws of artistic composition, and practical suggestions of interest to the builders of country-houses. It was the Author's original intention to have proceeded from the cottage and the villa to the higher forms of Architecture; but the Magazine to which he contributed was brought to a close shortly after the completion of his chapters on the villa, and his promise of farther studies was not redeemed until ten years later, by the publication of _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and still more completely in _The Stones of Venice_. Other papers contributed by Mr. Ruskin to the same Magazine, on Perspective, and on the proposed monument to Sir Walter Scott at Edinburgh, are not included in this volume, as they do not form any part of the series on the Poetry of Architecture. The text is carefully reprinted from the _Architectural Magazine_. A few additional notes are distinguished by square brackets. A few of the old cuts, necessary to the text, are reproduced, and some are replaced by engravings from sketches by the Author. Possessors of the _Architectural Magazine_, vol. V., will be interested in comparing the wood-cut of the cottage in Val d'Aosta (p. 104 of that volume) with the photogravure from the original pencil drawing, which faces p. 21 of this work. It is much to be regretted that the original of the Coniston Hall (fig. 8; p. 50 of this work) has disappeared, and that the Author's youthful record of a scene so familiar to him in later years should be represented only by the harsh lines of Mr. Loudon's engraver. THE EDITOR. INTRODUCTION. 1. The Science of Architecture, followed out to its full extent, is one of the noblest of those which have reference only to the creations of human minds. It is not merely a science of the rule and compass, it does not consist only in the observation of just rule, or of fair proportion: it is, or ought to be, a science of feeling more than of rule, a ministry to the mind, more than to the eye. If we consider how much less the beauty and majesty of a building depend upon its pleasing certain prejudices of the eye, than upon its rousing certain trains of meditation in the mind, it will show in a moment how many intricate questions of feeling are involved in the raising of an edifice; it will convince us of the truth of a proposition, which might at first have appeared startling, that no man can be an architect, who is not a metaphysician. 2. To the illustration of the department of this noble science which may be designated the Poetry of Architecture, this and some future articles will be dedicated. It is this peculiarity of the art which constitutes its nationality; and it will be found as interesting as it is useful, to trace in the distinctive characters of the architecture of nations, not only its adaptation to the situation and climate in which it has arisen, but its strong similarity to, and connection with, the prevailing turn of mind by which the nation who first employed it is distinguished. 3. I consider the task I have imposed upon myself the more necessary, because this department of the science, perhaps regarded by some who have no ideas beyond stone and mortar as chimerical, and by others who think nothing necessary but truth and proportion as useless, is at a miserably low ebb in England. And what is the consequence? We have Corinthian columns placed beside pilasters of no order at all, surmounted by monstrosified pepper-boxes, Gothic in form and Grecian in detail, in a building nominally and peculiarly "National"; we have Swiss cottages, falsely and calumniously so entitled, dropped in the brick-fields round the metropolis; and we have staring square-windowed, flat-roofed gentlemen's seats, of the lath and plaster, mock-magnificent, Regent's Park description, rising on the woody promontories of Derwentwater. 4. How deeply is it to be regretted, how much is it to be wondered at, that, in a country whose school of painting, though degraded by its system of meretricious coloring, and disgraced by hosts of would-be imitators of inimitable individuals, is yet raised by the distinguished talent of those individuals to a place of well-deserved honor; and the studios of whose sculptors are filled with designs of the most pure simplicity, and most perfect animation; the school of architecture should be so miserably debased! 5. There are, however, many reasons for a fact so lamentable. In the first place, the patrons of architecture (I am speaking of all classes of buildings, from the lowest to the highest), are a more numerous and less capable class than those of painting. The general public, and I say it with sorrow, because I know it from observation, have little to do with the encouragement of the school of painting, beyond the power which they unquestionably possess, and unmercifully use, of compelling our artists to substitute glare for beauty. Observe the direction of public taste at any of our exhibitions. We see visitors at that of the Society of Painters in Water Colors, passing Tayler with anathemas and Lewis with indifference, to remain in reverence and admiration before certain amiable white lambs and water-lilies, whose artists shall be nameless. We see them, in the Royal Academy, passing by Wilkie, Turner and Callcott, with shrugs of doubt or of scorn, to fix in gazing and enthusiastic crowds upon kettles-full of witches, and His Majesty's ships so and so lying to in a gale, etc., etc. But these pictures attain no celebrity because the public admire them, for it is not to the public that the judgment is intrusted. It is by the chosen few, by our nobility and men of taste and talent, that the decision is made, the fame bestowed, and the artist encouraged. 6. Not so in architecture. There, the power is generally diffused. Every citizen may box himself up in as barbarous a tenement as suits his taste or inclination; the architect is his vassal, and must permit him not only to criticise, but to perpetrate. The palace or the nobleman's seat may be raised in good taste, and become the admiration of a nation; but the influence of their owner is terminated by the boundary of his estate: he has no command over the adjacent scenery, and the possessor of every thirty acres around him has him at his mercy. The streets of our cities are examples of the effects of this clashing of different tastes; and they are either remarkable for the utter absence of all attempt at embellishment, or disgraced by every variety of abomination. 7. Again, in a climate like ours, those few who have knowledge and feeling to distinguish what is beautiful, are frequently prevented by various circumstances from erecting it. John Bull's comfort perpetually interferes with his good taste, and I should be the first to lament his losing so much of his nationality, as to permit the latter to prevail. He cannot put his windows into a recess, without darkening his rooms; he cannot raise a narrow gable above his walls, without knocking his head against the rafters; and, worst of all, he cannot do either, without being stigmatized by the awful, inevitable epithet, of "a very odd man." But, though much of the degradation of our present school of architecture is owing to the want or the unfitness of patrons, surely it is yet more attributable to a lamentable deficiency of taste and talent among our architects themselves. It is true, that in a country affording so little encouragement, and presenting so many causes for its absence, it cannot be expected that we should have any Michael Angelo Buonarottis. The energy of our architects is expended in raising "neat" poor-houses, and "pretty" charity schools; and, if they ever enter upon a work of higher rank, economy is the order of the day: plaster and stucco are substituted for granite and marble; rods of splashed iron for columns of verd-antique; and in the wild struggle after novelty, the fantastic is mistaken for the graceful, the complicated for the imposing, superfluity of ornament for beauty, and its total absence for simplicity. 8. But all these disadvantages might in some degree be counteracted, all these abuses in some degree prevented, were it not for the slight attention paid by our architects to that branch of the art which I have above designated as the Poetry of Architecture. All unity of feeling (which is the first principle of good taste) is neglected; we see nothing but incongruous combination: we have pinnacles without height, windows without light, columns with nothing to sustain, and buttresses with nothing to support. We have parish paupers smoking their pipes and drinking their beer under Gothic arches and sculptured niches; and quiet old English gentlemen reclining on crocodile stools, and peeping out of the windows of Swiss châlets. 9. I shall attempt, therefore, to endeavor to illustrate the principle from the neglect of which these abuses have arisen; that of unity of feeling, the basis of all grace, the essence of all beauty. We shall consider the architecture of nations as it is influenced by their feelings and manners, as it is connected with the scenery in which it is found, and with the skies under which it was erected; we shall be led as much to the street and the cottage as to the temple and the tower; and shall be more interested in buildings raised by feeling, than in those corrected by rule. We shall commence with the lower class of edifices, proceeding from the roadside to the village, and from the village to the city; and, if we succeed in directing the attention of a single individual more directly to this most interesting department of the science of architecture, we shall not have written in vain. _PART I._ The Cottage. THE LOWLAND COTTAGE:--ENGLAND, FRANCE, ITALY: THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE:--SWITZERLAND AND WESTMORELAND: A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS: AND CONCLUDING REMARKS ON COTTAGE-BUILDING. THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE. I. THE LOWLAND COTTAGE--ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 10. Of all embellishments by which the efforts of man can enhance the beauty of natural scenery, those are the most effective which can give animation to the scene, while the spirit which they bestow is in unison with its general character. It is generally desirable to indicate the presence of animated existence in a scene of natural beauty; but only of such existence as shall be imbued with the spirit, and shall partake of the essence, of the beauty, which, without it, would be dead. If our object, therefore, is to embellish a scene the character of which is peaceful and unpretending, we must not erect a building fit for the abode of wealth or pride. However beautiful or imposing in itself, such an object immediately indicates the presence of a kind of existence unsuited to the scenery which it inhabits; and of a mind which, when it sought retirement, was unacquainted with its own ruling feelings, and which consequently excites no sympathy in ours: but, if we erect a dwelling which may appear adapted to the wants, and sufficient for the comfort, of a gentle heart and lowly mind, we have instantly attained our object: we have bestowed animation, but we have not disturbed repose. 11. It is for this reason that the cottage is one of the embellishments of natural scenery which deserve attentive consideration. It is beautiful always, and everywhere. Whether looking out of the woody dingle with its eye-like window, and sending up the motion of azure smoke between the silver trunks of aged trees; or grouped among the bright cornfields of the fruitful plain; or forming gray clusters along the slope of the mountain side, the cottage always gives the idea of a thing to be beloved: a quiet life-giving voice, that is as peaceful as silence itself. 12. With these feelings, we shall devote some time to the consideration of the prevailing character, and national peculiarities, of European cottages. The principal thing worthy of observation in the lowland cottage of England is its finished neatness. The thatch is firmly pegged down, and mathematically leveled at the edges; and, though the martin is permitted to attach his humble domicile, in undisturbed security, to the eaves, he may be considered as enhancing the effect of the cottage, by increasing its usefulness, and making it contribute to the comfort of more beings than one. The whitewash is stainless, and its rough surface catches a side light as brightly as a front one: the luxuriant rose is trained gracefully over the window; and the gleaming lattice, divided not into heavy squares, but into small pointed diamonds, is thrown half open, as is just discovered by its glance among the green leaves of the sweetbrier, to admit the breeze, that, as it passes over the flowers, becomes full of their fragrance. The light wooden porch breaks the flat of the cottage face by its projection; and a branch or two of wandering honeysuckle spread over the low hatch. A few square feet of garden and a latched wicket, persuading the weary and dusty pedestrian, with expressive eloquence, to lean upon it for an instant and request a drink of water or milk, complete a picture, which, if it be far enough from London to be unspoiled by town sophistications, is a very perfect thing in its way.[1] The ideas it awakens are agreeable, and the architecture is all that we want in such a situation. It is pretty and appropriate; and if it boasted of any other perfection, it would be at the expense of its propriety. [Footnote 1: Compare _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, I. § 16.] 13. Let us now cross the Channel, and endeavor to find a country cottage on the other side, if we can; for it is a difficult matter. There are many villages; but such a thing as an isolated cottage is extremely rare. Let us try one or two of the green valleys among the chalk eminences which sweep from Abbeville to Rouen. Here is a cottage at last, and a picturesque one, which is more than we could say for the English domicile. What then is the difference? There is a general air of _nonchalance_ about the French peasant's habitation, which is aided by a perfect want of everything like neatness; and rendered more conspicuous by some points about the building which have a look of neglected beauty, and obliterated ornament. Half of the whitewash is worn off, and the other half colored by various mosses and wandering lichens, which have been permitted to vegetate upon it, and which, though beautiful, constitute a kind of beauty from which the ideas of age and decay are inseparable. The tall roof of the garret window stands fantastically out; and underneath it, where, in England, we had a plain double lattice, is a deep recess, flatly arched at the top, built of solid masses of gray stone, fluted on the edge; while the brightness of the glass within (if there be any) is lost in shade, causing the recess to appear to the observer like a dark eye. The door has the same character: it is also of stone, which is so much broken and disguised as to prevent it from giving any idea of strength or stability. The entrance is always open; no roses, or anything else, are wreathed about it; several outhouses, built in the same style, give the building extent; and the group (in all probability, the dependency of some large old château in the distance) does not peep out of copse, or thicket, or a group of tall and beautiful trees, but stands comfortlessly between two individuals of the columns of long-trunked facsimile elms, which keep guard along the length of the public road. 14. Now, let it be observed how perfectly, how singularly, the distinctive characters of these two cottages agree with those of the countries in which they are built; and of the people for whose use they are constructed. England is a country whose every scene is in miniature.[2] Its green valleys are not wide; its dewy hills are not high; its forests are of no extent, or, rather, it has nothing that can pretend to a more sounding title than that of "wood." Its champaigns are minutely checkered into fields; we can never see far at a time; and there is a sense of something inexpressible, except by the truly English word "snug," in every quiet nook and sheltered lane. The English cottage, therefore, is equally small, equally sheltered, equally invisible at a distance. [Footnote 2: Compare with this chapter, _Modern Painters_, vol. iv. chap. 1.] 15. But France is a country on a large scale. Low, but long, hills sweep away for miles into vast uninterrupted champaigns; immense forests shadow the country for hundreds of square miles, without once letting through the light of day; its pastures and arable land are divided on the same scale; there are no fences; we can hardly place ourselves in any spot where we shall not see for leagues around; and there is a kind of comfortless sublimity in the size of every scene. The French cottage, therefore, is on the same scale, equally large and desolate looking; but we shall see, presently, that it can arouse feelings which, though they cannot be said to give it sublimity, yet are of a higher order than any which can be awakened at the sight of the English cottage. 16. Again, every bit of cultivated ground in England has a finished neatness; the fields are all divided by hedges or fences; the fruit trees are neatly pruned; the roads beautifully made, etc. Everything is the reverse in France: the fields are distinguished by the nature of the crops they bear; the fruit trees are overgrown with moss and mistletoe; and the roads immeasurably wide, and miserably made. 17. So much for the character of the two cottages, as they assimilate with the countries in which they are found. Let us now see how they assimilate with the character of the people by whom they are built. England is a country of perpetually increasing prosperity and active enterprise; but, for that very reason, nothing is allowed to remain till it gets old. Large old trees are cut down for timber; old houses are pulled down for the materials; and old furniture is laughed at and neglected. Everything is perpetually altered and renewed by the activity of invention and improvement. The cottage, consequently, has no dilapidated look about it; it is never suffered to get old; it is used as long as it is comfortable, and then taken down and rebuilt; for it was originally raised in a style incapable of resisting the ravages of time. But, in France, there prevail two opposite feelings, both in the extreme; that of the old pedigreed population, which preserves unlimitedly; and that of the modern revolutionists, which destroys unmercifully. Every object has partly the appearance of having been preserved with infinite care from an indefinite age, and partly exhibits the evidence of recent ill-treatment and disfiguration. Primeval forests rear their vast trunks over those of many younger generations growing up beside them; the château or the palace, showing, by its style of architecture, its venerable age, bears the marks of the cannon-ball, and, from neglect, is withering into desolation. Little is renewed: there is little spirit of improvement; and the customs which prevailed centuries ago are still taught by the patriarchs of the families to their grandchildren. The French cottage, therefore, is just such as we should have expected from the disposition of its inhabitants; its massive windows, its broken ornaments, its whole air and appearance, all tell the same tale of venerable age, respected and preserved, till at last its dilapidation wears an appearance of neglect. 18. Again, the Englishman will sacrifice everything to comfort, and will not only take great pains to secure it, but he has generally also the power of doing so: for the English peasant is, on the average, wealthier than the French. The French peasant has no idea of comfort, and therefore makes no effort to secure it. The difference in the character of their inhabitants is, as we have seen, written on the fronts of their respective cottages. The Englishman is, also, fond of display; but the ornaments, exterior and interior, with which he adorns his dwelling, however small it may be, are either to show the extent of his possessions, or to contribute to some personal profit or gratification: they never seem designed for the sake of ornament alone. Thus, his wife's love of display is shown by the rows of useless crockery in her cupboard; and his own by the rose tree at the front door, from which he may obtain an early bud to stick in the buttonhole of his best blue coat on Sundays: the honeysuckle is cultivated for its smell, the garden for its cabbages. Not so in France. There, the meanest peasant, with an equal or greater love of display, embellishes his dwelling as much as lies in his power, solely for the gratification of his feeling of what is agreeable to the eye. The gable of his roof is prettily shaped; the niche at its corner is richly carved; the wooden beams, if there be any, are fashioned into grotesque figures; and even the "air négligé" and general dilapidation of the building tell a thousand times more agreeably to an eye accustomed to the picturesque, than the spruce preservation of the English cottage. 19. No building which we feel to excite a sentiment of mere complacency can be said to be in good taste. On the contrary, when the building is of such a class, that it can neither astonish by its beauty, nor impress by its sublimity, and when it is likewise placed in a situation so uninteresting as to render something more than mere fitness or propriety necessary, and to compel the eye to expect something from the building itself, a gentle contrast of feeling in that building is exceedingly desirable; and if possible, a sense that something has passed away, the presence of which would have bestowed a deeper interest on the whole scene. The fancy will immediately try to recover this, and, in the endeavor, will obtain the desired effect from an indefinite cause. [Illustration: FIG. 1. Old Windows: from an early sketch by the Author.] 20. Now, the French cottage cannot please by its propriety, for it can only be adapted to the ugliness around; and, as it ought to be, and cannot but be, adapted to this, it is still less able to please by its beauty. How, then, can it please? There is no pretense to gayety in its appearance, no green flower-pots in ornamental lattices; but the substantial style of any ornaments it may possess, the recessed windows, the stone carvings, and the general size of the whole, unite to produce an impression of the building having once been fit for the residence of prouder inhabitants; of its having once possessed strength, which is now withered, and beauty, which is now faded. This sense of something lost, something which has been, and is not, is precisely what is wanted. The imagination is set actively to work in an instant; and we are made aware of the presence of a beauty, the more pleasing because visionary; and, while the eye is pitying the actual humility of the present building, the mind is admiring the imagined pride of the past. Every mark of dilapidation increases this feeling; while these very marks (the fractures of the stone, the lichens of the moldering walls, and the graceful lines of the sinking roof) are all delightful in themselves. 21. Thus, we have shown that, while the English cottage is pretty from its propriety, the French cottage, having the same connection with its climate, country, and people, produces such a contrast of feeling as bestows on it a beauty addressing itself to the mind, and is therefore in perfectly good taste. If we are asked why, in this instance, good taste produces only what every traveler feels to be not in the least striking, we reply that, where the surrounding circumstances are unfavorable, the very adaptation to them which we have declared to be necessary renders the building uninteresting; and that, in the next paper, we shall see a very different result from the operations of equally good taste in adapting a cottage to its situation, in one of the noblest districts of Europe. Our subject will be, the Lowland Cottage of North Italy. OXFORD, _Sept., 1837._ II. THE LOWLAND COTTAGE--ITALY. "Most musical, most melancholy." 22. Let it not be thought that we are unnecessarily detaining our readers from the proposed subject, if we premise a few remarks on the character of the landscape of the country we have now entered. It will always be necessary to obtain some definite knowledge of the distinctive features of a country, before we can form a just estimate of the beauties or the errors of its architecture. We wish our readers to imbue themselves as far as may be with the spirit of the clime which we are now entering; to cast away all general ideas; to look only for unison of feeling, and to pronounce everything wrong which is contrary to the _humors_ of nature. We must make them feel where they are; we must throw a peculiar light and color over their imaginations; then we will bring their judgment into play, for then it will be capable of just operation. 23. We have passed, it must be observed (in leaving England and France for Italy), from comfort to desolation; from excitement, to sadness: we have left one country prosperous in its prime, and another frivolous in its age, for one glorious in its death. Now, we have prefixed the hackneyed line of Il Penseroso to our paper, because it is a definition of the essence of the beautiful. What is most musical, will always be found most melancholy; and no real beauty can be obtained without a touch of sadness. Whenever the beautiful loses its melancholy, it degenerates into prettiness. We appeal to the memories of all our observing readers, whether they have treasured up any scene, pretending to be more than pretty, which has not about it either a tinge of melancholy or a sense of danger; the one constitutes the beautiful, the other the sublime. 24. This postulate being granted, as we are sure it will by most (and we beg to assure those who are refractory or argumentative, that, were this a treatise on the sublime and beautiful, we could convince and quell their incredulity to their entire satisfaction by innumerable instances), we proceed to remark here, once for all, that the principal glory of the Italian landscape is its extreme melancholy. It is fitting that it should be so: the dead are the nations of Italy; her name and her strength are dwelling with the pale nations underneath the earth; the chief and chosen boast of her utmost pride is the _hic jacet_; she is but one wide sepulcher, and all her present life is like a shadow or a memory. And therefore, or, rather, by a most beautiful coincidence, her national tree is the cypress; and whoever has marked the peculiar character which these noble shadowy spires can give to her landscape, lifting their majestic troops of waving darkness from beside the fallen column, or out of the midst of the silence of the shadowed temple and worshipless shrine, seen far and wide over the blue of the faint plain, without loving the dark trees for their sympathy with the sadness of Italy's sweet cemetery shore, is one who profanes her soil with his footsteps. 25. Every part of the landscape is in unison; the same glory of mourning is thrown over the whole; the deep blue of the heavens is mingled with that of the everlasting hills, or melted away into the silence of the sapphire sea; the pale cities, temple and tower, lie gleaming along the champaign; but how calmly! no hum of men; no motion of multitude in the midst of them: they are voiceless as the city of ashes. The transparent air is gentle among the blossoms of the orange and the dim leaves of the olive; and the small fountains, which, in any other land, would spring merrily along, sparkling and singing among tinkling pebbles, here flow calmly and silently into some pale font of marble, all beautiful with life; worked by some unknown hand, long ago nerveless, and fall and pass on among wan flowers, and scented copse, through cool leaf-lighted caves or gray Egerian grottoes, to join the Tiber or Eridanus, to swell the waves of Nemi, or the Larian Lake. The most minute objects (leaf, flower, and stone), while they add to the beauty, seem to share in the sadness, of the whole. 26. But, if one principal character of Italian landscape is melancholy, another is elevation. We have no simple rusticity of scene, no cowslip and buttercup humility of seclusion. Tall mulberry trees, with festoons of the luxuriant vine, purple with ponderous clusters, trailed and trellised between and over them, shade the wide fields of stately Indian corn; luxuriance of lofty vegetation (catalpa, and aloe, and olive), ranging itself in lines of massy light along the wan champaign, guides the eye away to the unfailing wall of mountain, Alp or Apennine; no cold long range of shivery gray, but dazzling light of snow, or undulating breadth of blue, fainter and darker, in infinite variety; peak, precipice, and promontory passing away into the wooded hills, each with its tower or white village sloping into the plain; castellated battlements cresting their undulations; some wide majestic river gliding along the champaign, the bridge on its breast, and the city on its shore; the whole canopied with cloudless azure, basking in mistless sunshine, breathing the silence of odoriferous air. 27. Now comes the question. In a country of this pomp of natural glory, tempered with melancholy memory of departed pride, what are we to wish for, what are we naturally to expect in the character of her most humble edifices; those which are most connected with present life--least with the past? what are we to consider fitting or beautiful in her cottage? We do not expect it to be comfortable, when everything around it betokens decay and desolation in the works of man. We do not wish it to be neat, where nature is most beautiful, because neglected. But we naturally look for an elevation of character, a richness of design or form, which, while the building is kept a cottage, may yet give it a peculiar air of cottage aristocracy; a beauty (no matter how dilapidated) which may appear to have been once fitted for the surrounding splendor of scene and climate. Now, let us fancy an Italian cottage before us. The reader who has traveled in Italy will find little difficulty in recalling one to his memory, with its broad lines of light and shadow, and its strange, but not unpleasing mixture of grandeur and desolation. Let us examine its details, enumerate its architectural peculiarities, and see how far it agrees with our preconceived idea of what the cottage ought to be? 28. The first remarkable point of the building is the roof. It generally consists of tiles of very deep curvature, which rib it into distinct vertical lines, giving it a far more agreeable surface than that of our flatter tiling. The _form_ of the roof, however, is always excessively flat, so as never to let it intrude upon the eye; and the consequence is, that, while an English village, seen at a distance, appears all red roof, the Italian is all white wall; and therefore, though always bright, is never gaudy. We have in these roofs an excellent example of what should always be kept in mind, that everything will be found beautiful, which climate or situation render useful. The strong and constant heat of the Italian sun would be intolerable if admitted at the windows; and, therefore, the edges of the roof project far over the walls, and throw long shadows downwards, so as to keep the upper windows constantly cool. These long oblique shadows on the white surface are always delightful, and are alone sufficient to give the building character. They are peculiar to the buildings of Spain and Italy; for owing to the general darker color of those of more northerly climates, the shadows of their roofs, however far thrown, do not tell distinctly, and render them, not varied, but gloomy. Another ornamental use of these shadows is, that they break the line of junction of the wall with the roof: a point always desirable, and in every kind of building, whether we have to do with lead, slate, tile, or thatch, one of extreme difficulty. This object is farther forwarded in the Italian cottage, by putting two or three windows up under the very eaves themselves, which is also done for coolness, so that their tops are formed by the roof; and the wall has the appearance of having been terminated by large battlements and roofed over. And, finally, the eaves are seldom kept long on the same level: double or treble rows of tiling are introduced; long sticks and irregular wood-work are occasionally attached to them, to assist the festoons of the vine; and the graceful irregularity and marked character of the whole must be dwelt on with equal delight by the eye of the poet, the artist, or the unprejudiced architect. All, however, is exceedingly humble; we have not yet met with the elevation of character we expected. We shall find it however as we proceed. 29. The next point of interest is the window. The modern Italian is completely owl-like in his habits. All the daytime he lies idle and inert; but during the night he is all activity, but it is mere activity of inoccupation. Idleness, partly induced by the temperature of the climate, and partly consequent on the decaying prosperity of the nation, leaves indications of its influence on all his undertakings. He prefers patching up a ruin to building a house; he raises shops and hovels, the abodes of inactive, vegetating, brutish poverty, under the protection of aged and ruined, yet stalwart, arches of the Roman amphitheater; and the habitations of the lower orders frequently present traces of ornament and stability of material evidently belonging to the remains of a prouder edifice. This is the case sometimes to such a degree as, in another country, would be disagreeable from its impropriety; but, in Italy, it corresponds with the general prominence of the features of a past age, and is always beautiful. Thus, the eye rests with delight on the broken moldings of the windows, and the sculptured capitals of the corner columns, contrasted, as they are, the one with the glassless blackness within, the other with the ragged and dirty confusion of drapery around. The Italian window, in general, is a mere hole in the thick wall, always well proportioned; occasionally arched at the top, sometimes with the addition of a little rich ornament: seldom, if ever, having any casement or glass, but filled up with any bit of striped or colored cloth, which may have the slightest chance of deceiving the distant observer into the belief that it is a legitimate blind. This keeps off the sun, and allows a free circulation of air, which is the great object. When it is absent, the window becomes a mere black hole, having much the same relation to a glazed window that the hollow of a skull has to a bright eye; not unexpressive, but frowning and ghastly, and giving a disagreeable impression of utter emptiness and desolation within. Yet there is character in them: the black dots tell agreeably on the walls at a distance, and have no disagreeable sparkle to disturb the repose of surrounding scenery. Besides, the temperature renders everything agreeable to the eye, which gives it an idea of ventilation. A few roughly constructed balconies, projecting from detached windows, usually break the uniformity of the wall. In some Italian cottages there are wooden galleries, resembling those so frequently seen in Switzerland; but this is not a very general character, except in the mountain valleys of North Italy, although sometimes a passage is effected from one projecting portion of a house to another by means of an exterior gallery. These are very delightful objects; and when shaded by luxuriant vines, which is frequently the case, impart a gracefulness to the building otherwise unattainable. 30. The next striking point is the arcade at the base of the building. This is general in cities; and, although frequently wanting to the cottage, is present often enough to render it an important feature. In fact, the Italian cottage is usually found in groups. Isolated buildings are rare; and the arcade affords an agreeable, if not necessary, shade, in passing from one building to another. It is a still more unfailing feature of the Swiss city, where it is useful in deep snow. But the supports of the arches in Switzerland are generally square masses of wall, varying in size, separating the arches by irregular intervals, and sustained by broad and massy buttresses; while in Italy, the arches generally rest on legitimate columns, varying in height from one and a half to four diameters, with huge capitals, not unfrequently rich in detail. These give great gracefulness to the buildings in groups: they will be spoken of more at large when we are treating of arrangement and situation. [Illustration: Italian Cottage Gallery, 1846. Chimney at Neuchatel; Dent du Midi and Mont Blanc in the distance.] [Illustration: Cottage near la Cité, Val d'Aosta, 1838.] 31. The square tower, rising over the roof of the farther cottage, will not escape observation. It has been allowed to remain, not because such elevated buildings ever belong to mere cottages, but, first, that the truth of the scene might not be destroyed;[3] and, secondly, because it is impossible, or nearly so, to obtain a group of buildings of any sort, in Italy, without one or more such objects rising behind them, beautifully contributing to destroy the monotony, and contrast with the horizontal lines of the flat roofs and square walls. We think it right, therefore, to give the cottage the relief and contrast which, in reality, it possessed, even though we are at present speaking of it in the abstract. [Footnote 3: The annexed illustration will, perhaps, make the remarks advanced more intelligible. The building, which is close to the city of Aosta, unites in itself all the peculiarities for which the Italian cottage is remarkable: the dark arcade, the sculptured capital, the vine-covered gallery, the flat and confused roof; and clearly exhibits the points to which we wish particularly to direct attention; namely, brightness of effect, simplicity of form, and elevation of character. Let it not be supposed, however, that such a combination of attributes is rare; on the contrary, it is common to the greater part of the cottages of Italy. This building has not been selected as a rare example, but it is given as a good one. [These remarks refer to a cut in the magazine text, represented in the illustrated edition by a photogravure from the original sketch.]] 32. Having now reviewed the distinctive parts of the Italian cottage in detail, we shall proceed to direct our attention to points of general character. I. Simplicity of form. The roof, being flat, allows of no projecting garret windows, no fantastic gable ends: the walls themselves are equally flat; no bow-windows or sculptured oriels, such as we meet with perpetually in Germany, France, or the Netherlands, vary their white fronts. Now, this simplicity is, perhaps, the principal attribute by which the Italian cottage attains the elevation of character we desired and expected. All that is fantastic in form, or frivolous in detail, annihilates the aristocratic air of a building: it at once destroys its sublimity and size, besides awakening, as is almost always the case, associations of a mean and low character. The moment we see a gable roof, we think of cock-lofts; the instant we observe a projecting window, of attics and tent-bedsteads. Now, the Italian cottage assumes, with the simplicity, _l'air noble_ of buildings of a higher order; and, though it avoids all ridiculous miniature mimicry of the palace, it discards the humbler attributes of the cottage. The ornament it assumes is dignified; no grinning faces, or unmeaning notched planks, but well-proportioned arches, or tastefully sculptured columns. While there is nothing about it unsuited to the humility of its inhabitant, there is a general dignity in its air, which harmonizes beautifully with the nobility of the neighboring edifices, or the glory of the surrounding scenery. 33. II. Brightness of effect. There are no weather stains on the walls: there is no dampness in air or earth, by which they could be induced; the heat of the sun scorches away all lichens, and mosses and moldy vegetation. No thatch or stone crop on the roof unites the building with surrounding vegetation; all is clear, and warm, and sharp on the eye; the more distant the building, the more generally bright it becomes, till the distant village sparkles out of the orange copse, or the cypress grove, with so much distinctness as might be thought in some degree objectionable. But it must be remembered that the prevailing color of the Italian landscape is blue; sky, hills, water, are equally azure: the olive, which forms a great proportion of the vegetation, is not green, but gray; the cypress and its varieties, dark and neutral, and the laurel and myrtle far from bright. Now, white, which is intolerable with green, is agreeably contrasted with blue; and to this cause it must be ascribed that the white of the Italian building is not found startling and disagreeable in the landscape. That it is not, we believe, will be generally allowed. 34. III. Elegance of feeling. We never can prevent ourselves from imagining that we perceive in the graceful negligence of the Italian cottage, the evidence of a taste among the lower orders refined by the glory of their land, and the beauty of its remains. We have always had strong faith in the influence of climate on the mind, and feel strongly tempted to discuss the subject at length; but our paper has already exceeded its proposed limits, and we must content ourselves with remarking what will not, we think, be disputed, that the eye, by constantly resting either on natural scenery of noble tone and character, or on the architectural remains of classical beauty, must contract a habit of feeling correctly and tastefully; the influence of which, we think, is seen in the style of edifices the most modern and the most humble. 35. Lastly, Dilapidation. We have just used the term "graceful negligence": whether it be graceful, or not, is a matter of taste; but the uncomfortable and ruinous disorder and dilapidation of the Italian cottage is one of observation. The splendor of the climate requires nothing more than shade from the sun, and occasionally shelter from a violent storm: the outer arcade affords them both; it becomes the nightly lounge and daily dormitory of its inhabitant, and the interior is abandoned to filth and decay. Indolence watches the tooth of Time with careless eye and nerveless hand. Religion, or its abuse, reduces every individual of the population to utter inactivity three days out of the seven; and the habits formed in the three regulate the four. Abject poverty takes away the power, while brutish sloth weakens the will; and the filthy habits of the Italian prevent him from suffering from the state to which he is reduced. The shattered roofs, the dark, confused, ragged windows, the obscure chambers, the tattered and dirty draperies, altogether present a picture which, seen too near, is sometimes revolting to the eye, always melancholy to the mind. Yet even this many would not wish to be otherwise. The prosperity of nations, as of individuals, is cold and hard-hearted, and forgetful. The dead die, indeed, trampled down by the crowd of the living; the place thereof shall know them no more, for that place is not in the hearts of the survivors for whose interests they have made way. But adversity and ruin point to the sepulcher, and it is not trodden on; to the chronicle, and it doth not decay. Who would substitute the rush of a new nation, the struggle of an awakening power, for the dreamy sleep of Italy's desolation, for her sweet silence of melancholy thought, her twilight time of everlasting memories? 36. Such, we think, are the principal distinctive attributes of the Italian cottage. Let it not be thought that we are wasting time in the contemplation of its beauties; even though they are of a kind which the architect can never imitate, because he has no command over time, and no choice of situation; and which he ought not to imitate, if he could, because they are only locally desirable or admirable. Our object, let it always be remembered, is not the attainment of architectural data, but the formation of taste. _Oct. 12, 1837_ III. THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--SWITZERLAND. 37. In the three instances of the lowland cottage which have been already considered, are included the chief peculiarities of style which are interesting or important. I have not, it is true, spoken of the carved oaken gable and shadowy roof of the Norman village; of the black crossed rafters and fantastic proportions which delight the eyes of the German; nor of the Moorish arches and confused galleries which mingle so magnificently with the inimitable fretwork of the gray temples of the Spaniard. But these are not peculiarities solely belonging to the cottage: they are found in buildings of a higher order, and seldom, unless where they are combined with other features. They are therefore rather to be considered, in future, as elements of street effect, than, now, as the peculiarities of independent buildings. My remarks on the Italian cottage might, indeed, be applied, were it not for the constant presence of Moorish feeling, to that of Spain. The architecture of the two nations is intimately connected: modified, in Italy, by the taste of the Roman; and, in Spain, by the fanciful creations of the Moor. When I am considering the fortress and the palace,[4] I shall be compelled to devote a very large share of my attention to Spain; but for characteristic examples of the cottage, I turn rather to Switzerland and England. Preparatory, therefore, to a few general remarks on modern ornamental cottages, it will be instructive to observe the peculiarities of two varieties of the mountain cottage, diametrically opposite to each other in most of their features; one always beautiful, and the other frequently so. [Footnote 4: That part, however, was not written, as the "Architectural Magazine" stopped running soon after the conclusion of Part II. "The Villa."] 38. First, for Helvetia. Well do I remember the thrilling and exquisite moment when first, first in my life (which had not been over long), I encountered, in a calm and shadowy dingle, darkened with the thick spreading of tall pines, and voiceful with the singing of a rock-encumbered stream, and passing up towards the flank of a smooth green mountain, whose swarded summit shone in the summer snow like an emerald set in silver; when, I say, I first encountered in this calm defile of the Jura, the unobtrusive, yet beautiful, front of the Swiss cottage. I thought it the loveliest piece of architecture I had ever had the felicity of contemplating; yet it was nothing in itself, nothing but a few mossy fir trunks, loosely nailed together, with one or two gray stones on the roof: but its power was the power of association; its beauty, that of fitness and humility. 39. How different is this from what modern architects erect, when they attempt to produce what is, by courtesy, called a Swiss cottage. The modern building known in Britain by that name has very long chimneys, covered with various exceedingly ingenious devices for the convenient reception and hospitable entertainment of soot, supposed by the innocent and deluded proprietor to be "meant for ornament." Its gable roof slopes at an acute angle, and terminates in an interesting and romantic manner, at each extremity, in a tooth-pick. Its walls are very precisely and prettily plastered; and it is rendered quite complete by the addition of two neat little bow windows, supported on neat little mahogany brackets, full of neat little squares of red and yellow glass. Its door is approached under a neat little veranda, "uncommon green," and is flanked on each side by a neat little round table, with all its legs of different lengths, and by a variety of neat little wooden chairs, all very peculiarly uncomfortable, and amazingly full of earwigs: the whole being surrounded by a garden full of flints, burnt bricks and cinders, with some water in the middle, and a fountain in the middle of it, which won't play; accompanied by some goldfish, which won't swim; and by two or three ducks, which will splash. Now, I am excessively sorry to inform the members of any respectable English family, who are making themselves uncomfortable in one of these ingenious conceptions, under the idea that they are living in a Swiss cottage, that they labor under a melancholy deception; and shall now proceed to investigate the peculiarities of the real building. 40. The life of a Swiss peasant is divided into two periods; that in which he is watching his cattle at their summer pasture on the high Alps,[5] and that in which he seeks shelter from the violence of the winter storms in the most retired parts of the low valleys. During the first period, he requires only occasional shelter from storms of excessive violence; during the latter, a sufficient protection from continued inclement weather. The Alpine or summer cottage, therefore, is a rude log hut, formed of unsquared pine trunks, notched into each other at the corners. The roof being excessively flat, so as to offer no surface to the wind, is covered with fragments of any stone that will split easily, held on by crossing logs; which are in their turn kept down by masses of stone; the whole being generally sheltered behind some protecting rock, or resting against the slope of the mountain, so that, from one side, you may step upon the roof. That is the _châlet_. When well grouped, running along a slope of mountain side, these huts produce a very pleasing effect, being never obtrusive (owing to the prevailing grayness of their tone), uniting well with surrounding objects, and bestowing at once animation and character. [Footnote 5: I use the word Alp here, and in future, in its proper sense, of a high mountain pasture; not in its secondary sense, of a snowy peak.] 41. But the winter residence, the Swiss cottage, properly so-called is a much more elaborate piece of workmanship. The principal requisite is, of course, strength: and this is always observable in the large size of the timbers, and the ingenious manner in which they are joined, so as to support and relieve each other, when any of them are severely tried. The roof is always very flat, generally meeting at an angle of 155°, and projecting from 5 ft. to 7 ft. over the cottage side, in order to prevent the windows from being thoroughly clogged up with snow. That this projection may not be crushed down by the enormous weight of snow which it must sometimes sustain, it is assisted by strong wooden supports (seen in Fig. 3), which sometimes extend half down the walls for the sake of strength, divide the side into regular compartments, and are rendered ornamental by grotesque carving. Every canton has its own window. That of Uri, with its diamond wood-work at the bottom, is, perhaps, one of the richest. (See Fig. 4.) The galleries are generally rendered ornamental by a great deal of labor bestowed upon their wood-work. This is best executed in the canton of Berne. The door is always six or seven feet from the ground, and occasionally much more, that it may be accessible in snow; and is reached by an oblique gallery, leading up to a horizontal one, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The base of the cottage is formed of stone, generally whitewashed. The chimneys must have a chapter to themselves; they are splendid examples of utility combined with ornament. [Illustration: FIG. 3. Swiss Cottage. 1837.] [Illustration: FIG. 4. Cottage near Altorf. 1835.] Such are the chief characteristics of the Swiss cottage, separately considered. I must now take notice of its effect in scenery. 42. When one has been wandering for a whole morning through a valley of perfect silence, where everything around, which is motionless, is colossal, and everything which has motion, resistless; where the strength and the glory of nature are principally developed in the very forces which feed upon her majesty; and where, in the midst of mightiness which seems imperishable, all that is indeed eternal is the influence of desolation; one is apt to be surprised, and by no means agreeably, to find, crouched behind some projecting rock, a piece of architecture which is neat in the extreme, though in the midst of wildness, weak in the midst of strength, contemptible in the midst of immensity. There is something offensive in its neatness: for the wood is almost always perfectly clean, and looks as if it had just been cut; it is consequently raw in its color, and destitute of all variety of tone. This is especially disagreeable, when the eye has been previously accustomed to, and finds, everywhere around, the exquisite mingling of color, and confused, though perpetually graceful, forms, by which the details of mountain scenery are peculiarly distinguished. Every fragment of rock is finished in its effect, tinted with thousands of pale lichens and fresh mosses; every pine tree is warm with the life of various vegetation; every grassy bank glowing with mellowed color, and waving with delicate leafage. How, then, can the contrast be otherwise than painful, between this perfect loveliness, and the dead, raw, lifeless surface of the deal boards of the cottage. Its weakness is pitiable; for, though there is always evidence of considerable strength on close examination, there is no _effect_ of strength: the real thickness of the logs is concealed by the cutting and carving of their exposed surfaces; and even what is seen is felt to be so utterly contemptible, when opposed to the destructive forces which are in operation around, that the feelings are irritated at the imagined audacity of the inanimate object, with the self-conceit of its impotence; and, finally, the eye is offended at its want of size. It does not, as might be at first supposed, enhance the sublimity of surrounding scenery by its littleness, for it provokes no comparison; and there must be proportion between objects, or they cannot be compared. If the Parthenon, or the Pyramid of Cheops, or St. Peter's, were placed in the same situation, the mind would first form a just estimate of the magnificence of the building, and then be trebly impressed with the size of the masses which overwhelmed it. The architecture would not lose, and the crags would gain, by the juxtaposition; but the cottage, which must be felt to be a thing which the weakest stream of the Alps could toss down before it like a foam-globe, is offensively contemptible: it is like a child's toy let fall accidentally on the hillside; it does not unite with the scene; it is not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility and peace; but it draws attention upon itself by its pretension to decoration, while its decorations themselves cannot bear examination, because they are useless, unmeaning and incongruous. 43. So much for its faults; and I have had no mercy upon them, the rather, because I am always afraid of being biased in its favor by my excessive love for its sweet nationality. Now for its beauties. Wherever it is found, it always suggests ideas of a gentle, pure, and pastoral life.[6] One feels that the peasants whose hands carved the planks so neatly, and adorned their cottage so industriously, and still preserve it so perfectly, and so neatly, can be no dull, drunken, lazy boors; one feels, also, that it requires both firm resolution, and determined industry, to maintain so successful a struggle against "the crush of thunder, and the warring winds." Sweet ideas float over the imagination of such passages of peasant life as the gentle Walton so loved; of the full milk-pail, and the mantling cream-bowl; of the evening dance and the matin song; of the herdsmen on the Alps, of the maidens by the fountain; of all that is peculiarly and indisputably Swiss. For the cottage is beautifully national; there is nothing to be found the least like it in any other country. The moment a glimpse is caught of its projecting galleries, one knows that it is the land of Tell and Winkelried; and the traveler feels, that, were he indeed Swiss-born and Alp-bred, a bit of that carved plank, meeting his eye in a foreign land, would be as effectual as a note of the _Ranz des Vaches_ upon the ear. [Footnote 6: Compare _Modern Painters_, vol. iv. chap. xi, and vol. v. chap. ix.] 44. Again, when a number of these cottages are grouped together, they break upon each other's formality, and form a mass of fantastic proportion, of carved window and overhanging roof, full of character and picturesque in the extreme. An excellent example of this is the Bernese village of Unterseen. Again, when the ornament is not very elaborate, yet enough to preserve the character, and the cottage is old, and not very well kept (suppose in a Catholic canton), and a little rotten, the effect is beautiful: the timber becomes weather-stained, and of a fine warm brown, harmonizing delightfully with the gray stones on the roof, and the dark green of surrounding pines. If it be fortunate enough to be situated in some quiet glen, out of sight of the gigantic features of the scene, and surrounded with cliffs to which it bears some proportion; and if it be partially concealed, not intruding on the eye, but well united with everything around, it becomes altogether perfect; humble, beautiful, and interesting. Perhaps no cottage can then be found to equal it; and none can be more finished in effect, graceful in detail, and characteristic as a whole. 45. The ornaments employed in the decoration of the Swiss cottage do not demand much attention; they are usually formed in a most simple manner, by thin laths, which are carved into any fanciful form, or in which rows of holes are cut, generally diamond shaped; and they are then nailed one above another to give the carving depth. Pinnacles are never raised on the roof, though carved spikes are occasionally suspended from it at the angles. No ornamental work is ever employed to disguise the beams of the projecting part of the roof, nor does any run along its edges. The galleries, in the canton of Uri, are occasionally supported on arched beams, as shown in Fig. 4, which have a very pleasing effect. [Illustration: Swiss Châlet Balcony, 1842.] 46. Of the adaptation of the building to climate and character, little can be said. When I called it "national," I meant only that it was quite _sui generis_, and, therefore, being only found in Switzerland, might be considered as a national building; though it has none of the mysterious connection with the mind of its inhabitants which is evident in all really fine edifices. But there is a reason for this; Switzerland has no climate, properly speaking, but an assemblage of every climate, from Italy to the Pole; the vine wild in its valleys, the ice eternal on its crags. The Swiss themselves are what we might have expected in persons dwelling in such a climate; they have no character. The sluggish nature of the air of the valleys has a malignant operation on the mind; and even the mountaineers, though generally shrewd and intellectual, have no perceptible nationality: they have no language, except a mixture of Italian and bad German; they have no peculiar turn of mind; they might be taken as easily for Germans as for Swiss. No correspondence, consequently, can exist between national architecture and national character, where the latter is not distinguishable. Generally speaking, then, the Swiss cottage cannot be said to be built in good taste; but it is occasionally picturesque, frequently pleasing, and, under a favorable concurrence of circumstances, beautiful. It is not, however, a thing to be imitated; it is always, when out of its own country, incongruous; it never harmonizes with anything around it, and can therefore be employed only in mimicry of what does not exist, not in improvement of what does. I mean, that any one who has on his estate a dingle shaded with larches or pines, with a rapid stream, may manufacture a bit of Switzerland as a toy; but such imitations are always contemptible, and he cannot use the Swiss cottage in any other way. A modified form of it, however, as will be hereafter shown, may be employed with advantage. I hope, in my next paper, to derive more satisfaction from the contemplation of the mountain cottage of Westmoreland, than I have been able to obtain from that of the Swiss. IV. THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE--WESTMORELAND. 47. When I devoted so much time to the consideration of the peculiarities of the Swiss cottage, I did not previously endeavor to ascertain what the mind, influenced by the feelings excited by the nature of its situation, would be induced to expect, or disposed to admire. I thus deviated from the general rule which I hope to be able to follow out; but I did so only because the subject for consideration was incapable of fulfilling the expectation when excited, or corresponding with the conception when formed. But now, in order to appreciate the beauty of the Westmoreland cottage, it will be necessary to fix upon a standard of excellence, with which it may be compared. One of the principal charms of mountain scenery is its solitude. Now, just as silence is never perfect or deep without motion, solitude is never perfect without some vestige of life. Even desolation is not felt to be utter, unless in some slight degree interrupted: unless the cricket is chirping on the lonely hearth, or the vulture soaring over the field of corpses, or the one mourner lamenting over the red ruins of the devastated village, that devastation is not felt to be complete. The anathema of the prophet does not wholly leave the curse of loneliness upon the mighty city, until he tells us that "the satyr shall dance there." And, if desolation, which is the destruction of life, cannot leave its impression perfect without some interruption, much less can solitude, which is only the absence of life, be felt without some contrast. Accordingly, it is, perhaps, never so perfect as when a populous and highly cultivated plain, immediately beneath, is visible through the rugged ravines, or over the cloudy summits of some tall, vast, and voiceless mountain. 48. When such a prospect is not attainable, one of the chief uses of the mountain cottage, paradoxical as the idea may appear, is to increase this sense of solitude. Now, as it will only do so when it is seen at a considerable distance, it is necessary that it should be visible, or, at least, that its presence should be indicated, over a considerable portion of surrounding space. It must not, therefore, be too much shaded by trees, or it will be useless; but if, on the contrary, it be too conspicuous on the open hillside, it will be liable to most of the objections which were advanced against the Swiss cottage, and to another, which was not then noticed. Anything which, to the eye, is split into parts, appears less as a whole than what is undivided. Now, a considerable mass, of whatever tone or color it may consist, is as easily divisible by dots as by lines; that is, a conspicuous point, on any part of its surface, will divide it into two portions, each of which will be individually measured by the eye, but which will never make the impression which they would have made, had their unity not been interrupted. A conspicuous cottage on a distant mountain side has this effect in a fatal degree, and is, therefore, always intolerable. 49. It should accordingly, in order to reconcile the attainment of the good, with the avoidance of the evil, be barely visible: it should not tell as a cottage on the eye, though it should on the mind; for be it observed that, if it is only by the closest investigation that we can ascertain it to be a human habitation, it will answer the purpose of increasing the solitude quite as well as if it were evidently so; because this impression is produced by its appeal to the thoughts, not by its effect on the eye. Its color, therefore, should be as nearly as possible that of the hill on which, or the crag beneath which, it is placed; its form, one that will incorporate well with the ground, and approach that of a large stone more than of anything else. The color will consequently, if this rule be followed, be subdued and grayish, but rather warm; and the form simple, graceful, and unpretending. The building should retain the same general character on a closer examination. Everything about it should be natural, and should appear as if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely unavailing. It cannot but be an alien child of the mountains; but it must show that it has been adopted and cherished by them. This effect is only attainable by great ease of outline and variety of color; peculiarities which, as will be presently seen, the Westmoreland cottage possesses in a supereminent degree. 50. Another feeling, with which one is impressed during a mountain ramble, is humility. I found fault with the insignificance of the Swiss cottage, because "it was not content to sink into a quiet corner, and personify humility." Now, had it not been seen to be pretending, it would not have been felt to be insignificant; for the feelings would have been gratified with its submission to, and retirement from, the majesty of the destructive influences which it rather seemed to rise up against in mockery. Such pretension is especially to be avoided in the mountain cottage: it can never lie too humbly in the pastures of the valley, nor shrink too submissively into the hollows of the hills; it should seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the mountain for protection: and should appear to owe to its weakness, rather than to its strength, that it is neither overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the other. 51. Such are the chief attributes, without which a mountain cottage cannot be said to be beautiful. It may possess others, which are desirable or objectionable, according to their situation, or other accidental circumstances. The nature of these will be best understood by examining an individual building. The material is, of course, what is most easily attainable and available without much labor. The Cumberland and Westmoreland hills are, in general, composed of clay-slate and gray-wacke, with occasional masses of chert[7] (like that which forms the summit of Scawfell), porphyritic greenstone, and syenite. The chert decomposes deeply, and assumes a rough brown granular surface, deeply worn and furrowed. The clay-slate or gray-wacke, as it is shattered by frost, and carried down by torrents, of course forms itself into irregular flattish masses. The splintery edges of these are in some degree worn off by the action of water; and, slight decomposition taking place on the surface of the clay-slate, furnishes an aluminous soil, which is immediately taken advantage of by innumerable lichens, which change the dark gray of the original substance into an infinite variety of pale and warm colors. These stones, thus shaped to his hand, are the most convenient building materials the peasant can obtain.[8] He lays his foundation and strengthens his angles with large masses, filling up the intervals with pieces of a more moderate size; and using here and there a little cement to bind the whole together, and to keep the wind from getting through the interstices; but never enough to fill them altogether up, or to render the face of the wall smooth. At intervals of from 4 ft. to 6 ft. a horizontal line of flat and broad fragments is introduced projecting about a foot from the wall. Whether this is supposed to give strength, I know not; but as it is invariably covered by luxuriant stonecrop, it is always a delightful object. [Footnote 7: That is to say, a _flinty_ volcanic ash.] [Footnote 8: Compare the treatment of a similar theme in _Modern Painters_, vol. iv., chaps. viii.-x.] 52. The door is flanked and roofed by three large oblong sheets of gray rock, whose form seems not to be considered of the slightest consequence. Those which form the cheeks of the windows are generally selected with more care from the débris of some rock, which is naturally smooth and polished, after being subjected to the weather, such as granite or syenite. The window itself is narrow and deep set; in the better sort of cottages, latticed, but with no affectation of sweetbrier or eglantine about it. It may be observed of the whole of the cottage, that, though all is beautiful, nothing is pretty. The roof is rather flat, and covered with heavy fragments of the stone of which the walls are built, originally very loose; but generally cemented by accumulated soil, and bound together by houseleek, moss, and stonecrop: brilliant in color, and singular in abundance. The form of the larger cottages, being frequently that of a cross, would hurt the eye by the sharp angles of the roof, were it not for the cushion-like vegetation with which they are rounded and concealed. Varieties of the fern sometimes relieve the massy forms of the stonecrop, with their light and delicate leafage. Windows in the roof are seldom met with. Of the chimney I shall speak hereafter. 53. Such are the prevailing peculiarities of the Westmoreland cottage. "Is this all?" some one will exclaim: "a hovel, built of what first comes to hand, and in the most simple and convenient form; not one thought of architectural beauty ever coming into the builder's head!" Even so; to this illustration of an excellent rule, I wished particularly to direct attention: that the material which Nature furnishes, in any given country, and the form which she suggests, will always render the building the most beautiful, because the most appropriate. Observe how perfectly this cottage fulfills the conditions which were before ascertained to be necessary to perfection. Its color is that of the ground on which it stands, always subdued and gray, but exquisitely rich, the color being disposed crumblingly, in groups of shadowy spots; a deep red brown, passing into black, being finely contrasted with the pale yellow of the _Lichen geographicus_, and the subdued white of another lichen, whose name I do not know; all mingling with each other as on a native rock, and with the same beautiful effect: the mass, consequently, at a distance, tells only as a large stone would, the simplicity of its form contributing still farther to render it inconspicuous. When placed on a mountain-side such a cottage will become a point of interest, which will relieve its monotony, but will never cut the hill in two, or take away from its size. In the valley, the color of these cottages agrees with everything: the green light, which trembles through the leafage of the taller trees, falls with exquisite effect on the rich gray of the ancient roofs: the deep pool of clear water is not startled from its peace by their reflection; the ivy, or the creepers to which the superior wealth of the peasant of the valley does now and then pretend, in opposition to the general custom, cling gracefully and easily to its innumerable crevices; and rock, lake, and meadow seem to hail it with a brotherly affection, as if Nature had taken as much pains with it as she has with them. 54. Again, observe its ease of outline. There is not a single straight line to be met with from foundation to roof; all is bending or broken. The form of every stone in its walls is a study; for, owing to the infinite delicacy of structure in all minerals, a piece of stone 3 in. in diameter, irregularly fractured, and a little worn by the weather, has precisely the same character of outline which we should find and admire in a mountain of the same material 6000 ft. high;[9] and, therefore, the eye, though not feeling the cause, rests on every cranny, and crack, and fissure with delight. It is true that we have no idea that every small projection, if of chert, has such an outline as Scawfell's; if of gray-wacke, as Skiddaw's; or if of slate, as Helvellyn's; but their combinations of form are, nevertheless, felt to be exquisite, and we dwell upon every bend of the rough roof and every hollow of the loose wall, feeling it to be a design which no architect on earth could ever equal, sculptured by a chisel of unimaginable delicacy, and finished to a degree of perfection, which is unnoticed only because it is everywhere. [Footnote 9: Compare _Modern Painters_, vol. iv. chap. 18, § 7.] 55. This ease and irregularity is peculiarly delightful where gracefulness and freedom of outline and detail are, as they always are in mountain countries, the chief characteristics of every scene. It is well that, where every plant is wild and every torrent free, every field irregular in its form, every knoll various in its outline, one is not startled by well built walls, or unyielding roofs, but is permitted to trace in the stones of the peasant's dwelling, as in the crags of the mountain side, no evidence of the line or the mallet, but the operation of eternal influences, the presence of an Almighty hand. Another perfection connected with its ease of outline is, its severity of character: there is no foppery about it; not the slightest effort at any kind of ornament, but what nature chooses to bestow; it wears all its decorations wildly, covering its nakedness, not with what the peasant may plant, but with what the winds may bring. There is no gay color or neatness about it; no green shutters or other abomination: all is calm and quiet, and severe, as the mind of a philosopher, and, withal, a little somber. It is evidently old, and has stood many trials in its day; and the snow, and the tempest, and the torrent have all spared it, and left it in its peace, with its gray head unbowed, and its early strength unbroken, even though the spirit of decay seems creeping, like the moss and the lichen, through the darkness of its crannies. This venerable and slightly melancholy character is the very soul of all its beauty. 56. There remains only one point to be noticed, its humility. This was before stated to be desirable, and it will here be found in perfection. The building draws as little attention upon itself as possible; since, with all the praise I have bestowed upon it, it possesses not one point of beauty in which it is not equaled or excelled by every stone at the side of the road. It is small in size, simple in form, subdued in tone, easily concealed or overshadowed; often actually so; and one is always delighted and surprised to find that what courts attention so little is capable of sustaining it so well. Yet it has no appearance of weakness: it is stoutly, though rudely, built; and one ceases to fear for its sake the violence of surrounding agencies, which, it may be seen, will be partly deprecated by its humility. 57. Such is the mountain cottage of Westmoreland; and such, with occasional varieties, are many of the mountain cottages of England and Wales. It is true that my memory rests with peculiar pleasure in a certain quiet valley near Kirkstone, little known to the general tourist, distant from any public track, and, therefore, free from all the horrors of improvement:[10] in which it seemed to me that the architecture of the cottage had attained a peculiar degree of perfection. But I think that this impression was rather produced by a few seemingly insignificant accompanying circumstances, than by any distinguished beauty of design in the cottages themselves. Their inhabitants were evidently poor, and apparently had not repaired their dwellings since their first erection; and, certainly, had never torn one tuft of moss or fern from roofs or walls, which were green with the rich vegetation of years. The valley was narrow, and quiet, and deep, and shaded by reverend trees, among whose trunks the gray cottages looked out, with a perfection of effect which I never remember to have seen equaled, though I believe that, in many of the mountain districts of Britain, the peasant's domicile is erected with equal good taste. [Footnote 10: Troutbeck, sixty years since?] 58. I have always rejoiced in the thought, that our native highland scenery, though, perhaps, wanting in sublimity, is distinguished by a delicate finish in its details, and by a unanimity and propriety of feeling in the works of its inhabitants, which are elsewhere looked for in vain; and the reason of this is evident. The mind of the inhabitant of the continent, in general, is capable of deeper and finer sensations than that of the islander. It is higher in its aspirations, purer in its passions, wilder in its dreams, and fiercer in its anger; but it is wanting in gentleness, and in its simplicity; naturally desirous of excitement, and incapable of experiencing, in equal degree, the calmer flow of human felicity, the stillness of domestic peace, and the pleasures of the humble hearth, consisting in everyday duties performed, and everyday mercies received; consequently, in the higher walks of architecture, where the mind is to be impressed or elevated, we never have equaled, and we never shall equal, them. It will be seen hereafter, when we leave the lowly valley for the torn ravine, and the grassy knoll for the ribbed precipice, that, if the continental architects cannot adorn the pasture with the humble roof, they can crest the crag with eternal battlements;[11] if they cannot minister to a landscape's peace, they can add to its terror; and it has been already seen, that, in the lowland cottages of France and Italy, where high and refined feelings were to be induced, where melancholy was to be excited, or majesty bestowed, the architect was successful, and his labor was perfect: but, now, nothing is required but humility and gentleness; and this, which he does not feel, he cannot give: it is contrary to the whole force of his character, nay, even to the spirit of his religion. It is unfelt even at the time when the soul is most chastened and subdued; for the epitaph on the grave is affected in its sentiment, and the tombstone gaudily gilded, or wreathed with vain flowers. [Footnote 11: This too refers to the unwritten sequel.] [Illustration: FIG. 6. The Highest House in England.] 59. We cannot, then, be surprised at the effort at ornament and other fancied architectural beauties, which injure the effect of the more peaceful mountain scenery abroad; but still less should we be surprised at the perfect propriety which prevails in the same kind of scenery at home; for the error which is there induced by one mental deficiency, is here prevented by another. The uncultivated mountaineer of Cumberland has no taste, and no idea of what architecture means; he never thinks of what is right, or what is beautiful, but he builds what is most adapted to his purposes, and most easily erected: by suiting the building to the uses of his own life, he gives it humility; and, by raising it with the nearest material, adapts it to its situation. This is all that is required, and he has no credit in fulfilling the requirement, since the moment he begins to think of effect, he commits a barbarism by whitewashing the whole. The cottages of Cumberland would suffer much by this piece of improvement, were it not for the salutary operation of mountain rains and mountain winds. 60. So much for the hill dwellings of our own country. I think the examination of the five examples of the cottage which I have given have furnished all the general principles which are important or worthy of consideration; and I shall therefore devote no more time to the contemplation of individual buildings. But, before I leave the cottage altogether, it will be necessary to notice a part of the building which I have in the separate instances purposely avoided mentioning, that I might have the advantage of immediate comparison; a part exceedingly important, and which seems to have been essential to the palace as well as to the cottage, ever since the time when Perdiccas received his significant gift of the sun from his Macedonian master, [Greek: perigrapsas ton hêlion, hos ên kata tên kapnodokên es ton oikon esechôn].[12] And then I shall conclude the subject by a few general remarks on modern ornamental cottages, illustrative of the principle so admirably developed in the beauty of the Westmoreland building; to which, it must be remembered, the palm was assigned, in preference to the Switzer's; not because it was more labored, but because it was more natural. OXFORD, _Jan., 1838._ [Footnote 12: Herodotus viii, 137, freely quoted from memory. The story was that three brothers took service with a kinglet in Macedonia. The queen, who cooked their food herself, for it was in the good old times, noticed that the portion of Perdiccas, the youngest, always "rose" three times as large as any other. The king judged this to be an omen of the lad's coming to fortune; and dismissed them. They demanded their wages. "When the king heard talk about wages--you must know _the sun was shining into the house, down the chimney_--he said (for God had hardened his heart) 'There's your wage; all you deserve and all you'll get:' and pointed to the sunshine. The elder brothers were dumfoundered when they heard that; but the lad, who happened to have his knife with him, said, 'We accept, King, the gift.' With his knife he _made a scratch around the sunstreak_ on the floor, took the shine of it three times into the fold of his kirtle"--his pocket, we should say nowadays--"and went his way." Eventually he became king of Macedonia, and ancestor of Alexander the Great.] V. A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS. 61. It appears from the passage in Herodotus, which we alluded to in the last paper, that there has been a time, even in the most civilized countries, when the king's palace was entirely unfurnished with anything having the slightest pretension to the dignity of chimney tops; and the savory vapors which were wont to rise from the hospitable hearth, at which the queen or princess prepared the feast with the whitest of hands, escaped with indecorous facility through a simple hole in the flat roof. The dignity of smoke, however, is now better understood, and it is dismissed through Gothic pinnacles, and (as at Burleigh House) through Tuscan columns, with a most praiseworthy regard to its comfort and convenience. Let us consider if it is worth the trouble. 62. We advanced a position in the last paper, that silence is never perfect without motion. That is, unless something which might possibly produce sound is evident to the eye, the absence of sound is not surprising to the ear, and, therefore, not impressive. Let it be observed, for instance, how much the stillness of a summer's evening is enhanced by the perception of the gliding and majestic motion of some calm river, strong but still; or of the high and purple clouds; or of the voiceless leaves, among the opening branches. To produce this impression, however, the motion must be uniform, though not necessarily slow. One of the chief peculiarities of the ocean thoroughfares of Venice, is the remarkable silence which rests upon them, enhanced as it is by the swift, but beautifully uniform motion of the gondola. Now, there is no motion more uniform, silent or beautiful than that of smoke; and, therefore, when we wish the peace or stillness of a scene to be impressive, it is highly useful to draw the attention to it. 63. In the cottage, therefore, a building peculiarly adapted for scenes of peace, the chimney, as conducting the eye to what is agreeable, may be considered as important, and, if well managed, a beautiful accompaniment. But in buildings of a higher class, smoke ceases to be interesting. Owing to their general greater elevation, it is relieved against the sky, instead of against a dark background, thereby losing the fine silvery blue,--which among trees, or rising out of a distant country, is so exquisitely beautiful,--and assuming a dingy yellowish black: its motion becomes useless; for the idea of stillness is no longer desirable, or, at least, no longer attainable, being interrupted by the nature of the building itself: and, finally, the associations it arouses are not dignified; we may think of a comfortable fireside, perhaps, but are quite as likely to dream of kitchens, and spits, and shoulders of mutton. None of these imaginations are in their place, if the character of the building be elevated; they are barely tolerable in the dwelling house and the street. Now, when smoke is objectionable, it is certainly improper to direct attention to the chimney; and, therefore, for two weighty reasons, _decorated_ chimneys, of any sort or size whatsoever, are inexcusable barbarisms; first, because, where smoke is beautiful, decoration is unsuited to the building; and secondly, because, where smoke is ugly, decoration directs attention _to its ugliness_. 64. It is unfortunately a prevailing idea with some of our architects, that what is a disagreeable object in itself may be relieved or concealed by lavish ornament; and there never was a greater mistake. It should be a general principle, that what is intrinsically ugly should be utterly destitute of ornament, that the eye may not be drawn to it. The pretended skulls of the three Magi at Cologne are set in gold, and have a diamond in each eye; and are a thousand times more ghastly than if their brown bones had been left in peace. Such an error as this ought never to be committed in architecture. If any part of the building has disagreeable associations connected with it, let it alone: do not ornament it. Keep it subdued, and simply adapted to its use; and the eye will not go to it, nor quarrel with it. It would have been well if this principle had been kept in view in the renewal of some of the public buildings in Oxford. In All Souls College, for instance, the architect has carried his chimneys half as high as all the rest of the building, and fretted them with Gothic. The eye is instantly caught by the plated candlestick-like columns, and runs with some complacency up the groining and fret-work, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney-top. He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf. We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an ornament for a chimney has not the slightest feeling, and never will have any, of its beauty or its use; he was never born to be an architect, and never will be one. 65. Now, if chimneys are not to be decorated (since their existence is necessary), it becomes an object of some importance to know what is to be done with them: and we enter into the inquiry before leaving the cottage, as in its most proper place; because, in the cottage, and only in the cottage, it is desirable to direct attention to smoke. Speculation, however, on the _beau idéal_ of a chimney can never be unshackled; because, though we may imagine what it ought to be, we can never tell, until the house is built, what it _must_ be; we may require it to be short, and find that it will smoke, unless it is long; or, we may desire it to be covered, and find it will not go unless it is open. We can fix, therefore, on no one model; but by looking over the chimneys of a few nations, we may deduce some general principles from their varieties, which may always be brought into play, by whatever circumstances our own imaginations may be confined. 66. Looking first to the mind of the people, we cannot expect to find good examples of the chimney, as we go to the south. The Italian or the Spaniard does not know the use of a chimney, properly speaking; they _have_ such things, and they light a fire, five days in the year, chiefly of wood, which does not give smoke enough to teach the chimney its business; but they have not the slightest idea of the meaning or the beauty of such things as hobs, and hearths, and Christmas blazes; and we should, therefore, expect, _à priori_, that there would be no soul in their chimneys; that they would have no practiced substantial air about them; that they would, in short, be as awkward and as much in the way, as individuals of the human race are, when they don't know what to do with themselves, or what they were created for. But in England, sweet carbonaceous England, we flatter ourselves we _do_ know something about fire, and smoke too, or our eyes have strangely deceived us; and, from the whole comfortable character and fireside disposition of the nation, we should conjecture that the architecture of the chimney would be understood, both as a matter of taste and as a matter of comfort, to the _ne plus ultra_ of perfection. Let us see how far our expectations are realized. 67. Fig. 7, _a_, _b_ and _c_ are English chimneys. They are distinguishable, we think, at a glance, from all the rest, by a downright serviceableness of appearance, a substantial, unaffected, decent, and chimney-like deportment, in the contemplation of which we experience infinite pleasure and edification, particularly as it seems to us to be strongly contrasted with an appearance, in all the other chimneys, of an indefinable something, only to be expressed by the interesting word "humbug." Fig. _7 a_ is a chimney of Cumberland, and the north of Lancashire. It is, as may be seen at a glance, only applicable at the extremity of the roof, and requires a bent flue. It is built of unhewn stones, in the same manner as the Westmoreland cottages; the flue itself being not one-third the width of the chimney, as is seen at the top, where four flat stones placed on their edges form the termination of the flue itself, and give lightness of appearance to the whole. Cover this with a piece of paper, and observe how heavy and square the rest becomes. A few projecting stones continue the line of the roof across the center of the chimney, and two large masses support the projection of the whole, and unite it agreeably with the wall. This is exclusively a cottage chimney; it cannot, and must not, be built of civilized materials; it must be rough, and mossy, and broken; but it is decidedly the best chimney of the whole set. It is simple and substantial, without being cumbrous; it gives great variety to the wall from which it projects, terminates the roof agreeably, and dismisses its smoke with infinite propriety. [Illustration: FIG. 7. Chimneys.] 68. Fig. _b_ is a chimney common over the whole of the north of England; being, as I think, one that will go well in almost any wind, and is applicable at any part of the roof. It is also roughly built, consisting of a roof of loose stones, sometimes one large flat slab, supported above the flue by four large supports, each of a single stone. It is rather light in its appearance, and breaks the ridge of a roof very agreeably. Separately considered, it is badly proportioned; but, as it just equals the height to which a long chimney at the extremity of the building would rise above the roof (as in a), it is quite right _in situ_, and would be ungainly if it were higher. The upper part is always dark, owing to the smoke, and tells agreeably against any background seen through the hollow. 69. Fig. _c_ is the chimney of the Westmoreland cottage which formed the subject of the last paper. The good taste which prevailed in the rest of the building is not so conspicuous here, because the architect has begun to consider effect instead of utility, and has put a diamond-shaped piece of ornament on the front (usually containing the date of the building), which was not necessary, and looks out of place. He has endeavored to build neatly too, and has bestowed a good deal of plaster on the outside, by all which circumstances the work is infinitely deteriorated. We have always disliked cylindrical chimneys, probably because they put us in mind of glasshouses and manufactories, for we are aware of no more definite reason; yet this example is endurable, and has a character about it which it would be a pity to lose. Sometimes when the square part is carried down the whole front of the cottage, it looks like the remains of some gray tower, and is not felt to be a chimney at all. Such deceptions are always very dangerous, though in this case sometimes attended with good effect, as in the old building called Coniston Hall, on the shores of Coniston Water, whose distant outline (Fig. 8) is rendered light and picturesque, by the size and shape of its chimneys, which are the same in character as Fig. _c_. [Illustration: FIG. 8. Coniston Hall, from the Lake near Brantwood (1837).] 70. Of English chimneys adapted for buildings of a more elevated character, we can adduce no good examples. The old red brick mass, which we see in some of our venerable manor-houses, has a great deal of English character about it, and is always agreeable, when the rest of the building is of brick. Fig. _p_ is a chimney of this kind: there is nothing remarkable in it; it is to be met with all over England; but we have placed it beside its neighbor _q_ to show how the same form and idea are modified by the mind of the nations who employ it. The design is the same in both, the proportions also; but the one is a chimney, the other a paltry model of a paltrier edifice. Fig. _q_ is Swiss, and is liable to all the objections advanced against the Swiss cottages; it is a despicable mimicry of a large building, like the tower in the engraving of the Italian cottage (§ 31), carved in stone, it is true, but not the less to be reprobated. Fig. _p_, on the contrary, is adapted to its use, and has no affectation about it. It would be spoiled, however, if built in stone; because the marked bricks tell us the size of the whole at once, and prevent the eye from suspecting any intention to deceive it with a mockery of arches and columns, the imitation of which would be too perfect in stone; and therefore, even in this case, we have failed in discovering a chimney adapted to the higher class of edifices. 71. Fig. _d_ is a Netherland chimney, _e_ and _f_ German. Fig. _d_ belongs to an old Gothic building in Malines, and is a good example of the application of the same lines to the chimney which occur in other parts of the edifice, without bestowing any false elevation of character. It is roughly carved in stone, projecting at its base grotesquely from the roof, and covered at the top. The pointed arch, by which its character is given, prevents it from breaking in upon the lines of the rest of the building, and, therefore, in reality renders it less conspicuous than it would otherwise have been. We should never have noticed its existence, had we not been looking out for chimneys. 72. Fig. _e_ is also carved in stone, and where there is much variety of architecture, or where the buildings are grotesque, would be a good chimney, for the very simple reason, that it resembles nothing but a chimney, and its lines are graceful. Fig. _f_, though ugly in the abstract, might be used with effect in situations where perfect simplicity would be too conspicuous; but both _e_ and _f_ are evidently the awkward efforts of a tasteless nation, to produce something original: they have lost the chastity which we admired in _a_, without obtaining the grace and spirit of _l_ and _o_. In fact, they are essentially German. 73. Figs. _h_ to _m_, inclusive, are Spanish, and have a peculiar character, which would render it quite impossible to employ them out of their own country. Yet they are not decorated chimneys. There is not one fragment of ornament on any of them. All is done by variety of form; and with such variety no fault can be found, because it is necessary to give them the character of the buildings, out of which they rise. For we may observe here, once for all, that character may be given either by form or by decoration, and that where the latter is improper, variety of form is allowable, because the humble associations which render ornament objectionable, also render simplicity of form unnecessary.[13] We need not then find fault with _fantastic_ chimneys, provided they are kept in unison with the rest of the building, and do not draw too much attention. [Footnote 13: Elevation of character, as was seen in the Italian cottage, depends upon simplicity of form.] 74. Fig. _h_, according to this rule, is a very good chimney. It is graceful without pretending, and its grotesqueness will suit the buildings round it--we wish we could give them: they are at Cordova. Figs. _k_ and _l_ ought to be seen, as they would be in reality, rising brightly up against the deep blue heaven of the south, the azure gleaming through their hollows; unless perchance a slight breath of refined, pure, pale vapor finds its way from time to time out of them into the light air; their tiled caps casting deep shadows on their white surfaces, and their _tout ensemble_ causing no interruption to the feelings excited by the Moresco arches and grotesque dwelling houses with which they would be surrounded; they are sadly spoiled by being cut off at their bases. 75. Figs. _g_, _n_, _o_ are Italian. Fig. _g_ has only been given, because it is constantly met with among the more modern buildings of Italy. Figs. _n_ and _o_ are almost the only two varieties of chimneys which are to be found on the old Venetian palaces (whose style is to be traced partly to the Turk, and partly to the Moor). The curved lines of _n_ harmonize admirably with those of the roof itself, and its diminutive size leaves the simplicity of form of the large building to which it belongs entirely uninterrupted and uninjured. Fig. _o_ is seen perpetually carrying the whiteness of the Venetian marble up into the sky; but it is too tall, and attracts by far too much attention, being conspicuous on the sides of all the canals. 76. Figs. _q_, _r_, _s_ are Swiss. Fig. _r_ is one specimen of an extensive class of decorated chimneys, met with in the northeastern cantons. It is never large, and consequently having no false elevation of character, and being always seen with eyes which have been prepared for it, by resting on the details of the Swiss cottage, is less disagreeable than might be imagined, but ought never to be imitated. The pyramidal form is generally preserved, but the design is the same in no two examples. Fig. _s_ is a chimney very common in the eastern cantons, the principle of which we never understood. The oblique part moves on a hinge, so as to be capable of covering the chimney like a hat; and the whole is covered with wooden scales, like those of a fish. This chimney sometimes comes in very well among the confused rafters of the mountain cottage, though it is rather too remarkable to be in good taste. 77. It seems then, that out of the eighteen chimneys, which we have noticed, though several possess character, and one or two elegance, only two are to be found fit for imitation; and, of these, one is exclusively a _cottage_ chimney. This is somewhat remarkable and may serve as a proof:-- First, of what we at first asserted, that chimneys which in any way attract notice (and if these had not, we should not have sketched them) were seldom to be imitated; that there are few buildings which require them to be singular, and none which can tolerate them if decorated; and that the architect should always remember that the size and height being by necessity fixed, the form which draws least attention is the best. 78. Secondly, that this inconspicuousness is to be obtained, not by adhering to any model of simplicity, but by taking especial care that the lines of the chimney are no interruption, and its color no contrast, to those of the building to which it belongs. Thus Figs. _h_ to _m_ would be far more actually remarkable in their natural situation, if they were more simple in their form; for they would interrupt the character of the rich architecture by which they are surrounded. Fig. _d_, rising as it does above an old Gothic window, would have attracted instant attention, had it not been for the occurrence of the same lines in it which prevail beneath it. The form of _n_ only assimilates it more closely with the roof on which it stands. But we must not _imitate_ chimneys of this kind, for their excellence consists only in their agreement with other details, separated from which they would be objectionable; we can only follow the principle of the design, which appears, from all that we have advanced, to be this: we require, in a good chimney, _the character of the building to which it belongs divested of all its elevation, and its prevailing lines, deprived of all their ornament_. 79. This it is, no doubt, excessively difficult to give; and, in consequence, there are very few cities or edifices in which the chimneys are not objectionable. We must not, therefore, omit to notice the fulfillment of our expectations, founded on English character. The only two chimneys fit for imitation, in the whole eighteen, are English; and we would not infer anything from this, tending to invalidate the position formerly advanced, that there was no taste in England; but we would adduce it as a farther illustration of the rule, that what is most adapted to its purpose is most beautiful. For that we have no taste, even in chimneys, is sufficiently proved by the roof effects, even of the most ancient, unaffected, and unplastered of our streets, in which the chimneys, instead of assisting in the composition of the groups of roofs, stand out in staring masses of scarlet and black, with foxes and cocks whisking about, like so many little black devils, in the smoke on the top of them, interrupting all repose, annihilating all dignity, and awaking every possible conception which would be picturesque, and every imagination which would be rapturous, to the mind of master-sweeps. 80. On the other hand, though they have not on the Continent the same knowledge of the use and beauty of chimneys in the abstract, they display their usual good taste in grouping, or concealing them; and, whether we find them mingling with the fantastic domiciles of the German, with the rich imaginations of the Spaniard, with the classical remains and creations of the Italian, they are never intrusive or disagreeable; and either assist the grouping, and relieve the horizontality of the lines of the roof, or remain entirely unnoticed and insignificant, smoking their pipes in peace. 81. It is utterly impossible to give rules for the attainment of these effects, since they are the result of a feeling of the proportion and relation of lines, which, if not natural to a person, cannot be acquired, but by long practice and close observation; and it presupposes a power rarely bestowed on an English architect, of setting regularity at defiance, and sometimes comfort out of the question. We could give some particular examples of this grouping; but, as this paper has already swelled to an unusual length, we shall defer them until we come to the consideration of street effects in general. Of the chimney in the abstract, we are afraid we have only said enough to illustrate, without removing, the difficulty of designing it; but we cannot but think that the general principles which have been deduced, if carefully followed out, would be found useful, if not for the attainment of excellence, at least for the prevention of barbarism. OXFORD, _Feb. 10, [1838]._ VI. THE COTTAGE--CONCLUDING REMARKS. "Nunquam aliud Natura, aliud Sapientia, dicit." _Juvenal_ xiv. 321. 82. It now only remains for us to conclude the subject of the cottage, by a few general remarks on the just application of modern buildings to adorn or vivify natural scenery. There are, we think, only three cases in which the cottage is considered as an element of architectural, or any other kind of beauty, since it is ordinarily raised by the peasant where he likes, and how he likes; and, therefore, as we have seen, frequently in good taste. 83. I. When a nobleman, or man of fortune, amuses himself with superintending the erection of the domiciles of his domestics. II. When ornamental summer-houses, or mimicries of wigwams, are to be erected as ornamental adjuncts to a prospect which the owner has done all he can to spoil, that it may be worthy of the honor of having him to look at it. III. When the landlord exercises a certain degree of influence over the cottages of his tenants, or the improvements of the neighboring village, so as to induce such a tone of feeling in the new erections as he may think suitable to the situation. 84. In the first of these cases, there is little to be said; for the habitation of the domestic is generally a dependent feature of his master's, and, therefore, to be considered as a part of it. Porters' lodges are also dependent upon, and to be regulated by, the style of the architecture to which they are attached; and they are generally well managed in England, properly united with the gate, and adding to the effect of the entrance. In the second case, as the act is in itself a barbarism, it would be useless to consider what would be the best mode of perpetrating it. In the third case, we think it will be useful to apply a few general principles, deduced from positions formerly advanced. 85. All buildings are, of course, to be considered in connection with the country in which they are to be raised. Now, all landscape must possess one out of four distinct characters. It must be either woody, the green country; cultivated, the blue country; wild, the gray country; or hilly, the brown country. I. The Woody, or green, Country. By this is to be understood the mixture of park, pasture, and variegated forest, which is only to be seen in temperate climates, and in those parts of a kingdom which have not often changed proprietors, but have remained in unproductive beauty (or at least, furnishing timber only), the garden of the wealthier population. It is to be seen in no other country, perhaps, so well as in England. In other districts, we find extensive masses of black forest, but not the mixture of sunny glade, and various foliage, and dewy sward, which we meet with in the richer park districts of England. This kind of country is always surgy, oceanic, and massy, in its outline: it never affords blue distances, unless seen from a height; and, even then, the nearer groups are large, and draw away the attention from the background. The under soil is kept cool by the shade, and its vegetation rich; so that the prevailing color, except for a few days at the fall of the leaf, is a fresh green. A good example of this kind of country is the view from Richmond Hill. 86. Now, first, let us consider what sort of feeling this green country excites; and, in order to do so, be it observed, that anything which is apparently enduring and unchangeable gives us an impression rather of future, than of past, duration of existence; but anything which being perishable, and from its nature subject to change, has yet existed to a great age, gives us an impression of antiquity, though, of course, none of stability. A mountain, for instance (not geologically speaking, for then the furrows on its brow give it age as visible as was ever wrinkled on human forehead, but considering it as it appears to ordinary eyes), appears to be beyond the influence of change: it does not put us in mind of its past existence, by showing us any of the effect of time upon itself; we do not feel that it is old, because it is not approaching any kind of death; it is a mass of unsentient undecaying matter, which, if we think about it, we discover must have existed for some time, but which does not tell this fact to our feelings, or, rather, which tells us of no time at which it came into existence; and therefore, gives us no standard by which to measure its age, which, unless measured, cannot be distinctly felt. But a very old forest tree is a thing subject to the same laws of nature as ourselves: it is an energetic being, liable to an approaching death; its age is written on every spray; and, because we see it is susceptible of life and annihilation, like our own, we imagine it must be capable of the same feelings, and possess the same faculties, and, above all others, memory: it is always telling us about the past, never pointing to the future; we appeal to it, as to a thing which has seen and felt during a life similar to our own, though of ten times its duration, and therefore receive from it a perpetual impression of antiquity. So again a ruined town gives us an impression of antiquity; the stones of which it is built, none; for their age is not written upon them. 87. This being the case, it is evident that the chief feeling induced by woody country is one of reverence for its antiquity. There is a quiet melancholy about the decay of the patriarchal trunks, which is enhanced by the green and elastic vigor of the young saplings; the noble form of the forest aisles, and the subdued light which penetrates their entangled boughs, combine to add to the impression; and the whole character of the scene is calculated to excite conservative feeling. The man who could remain a radical in a wood country is a disgrace to his species. 88. Now, this feeling of mixed melancholy and veneration is the one of all others which the modern cottage must not be allowed to violate. It may be fantastic or rich in detail; for the one character will make it look old-fashioned, and the other will assimilate with the intertwining of leaf and bough around it: but it must not be spruce, or natty, or very bright in color; and the older it looks the better. A little grotesqueness in form is the more allowable, because the imagination is naturally active in the obscure and indefinite daylight of wood scenery; conjures up innumerable beings, of every size and shape, to people its alleys and smile through its thickets; and is by no means displeased to find some of its inventions half-realized in a decorated panel or grinning extremity of a rafter. 89. These characters being kept in view, as objects to be attained, the remaining considerations are technical. For the form. Select any well-grown group of the tree which prevails most near the proposed site of the cottage. Its summit will be a rounded mass. Take the three principal points of its curve: namely, its apex and the two points where it unites itself with neighboring masses. Strike a circle through these three points; and the angle contained in the segment cut off by a line joining the two lower points is to be the angle of the cottage roof. (Of course we are not thinking of interior convenience: the architect must establish his mode of beauty first, and then approach it as nearly as he can.) This angle will generally be very obtuse; and this is one reason why the Swiss cottage is always beautiful when it is set among walnut or chestnut trees. Its obtuse roof is just about the true angle. With pines or larches, the angle should not be regulated by the form of the tree, but by the slope of the branches. The building itself should be low and long, so that, if possible, it may not be seen all at once, but may be partially concealed by trunks or leafage at various distances. 90. For the color, that of wood is always beautiful. If the wood of the near trees be used, so much the better; but the timbers should be rough-hewn, and allowed to get weather-stained. Cold colors will not suit with green; and, therefore, slated roofs are disagreeable, unless, as in the Westmoreland cottage, the gray roof is warmed with lichenous vegetation, when it will do well with anything; but thatch is better. If the building be not of wood, the walls may be built of anything which will give them a quiet and unobtruding warmth of tone. White, if in shade, is sometimes allowable; but, if visible at any point more than 200 yards off, it will spoil the whole landscape. In general, as we saw before, the building will bear some fantastic finishing, that is, if it be entangled in forest; but, if among massive groups of trees, separated by smooth sward, it must be kept simple. 91. II. The Cultivated, or blue, Country. This is the rich champaign land, in which large trees are more sparingly scattered, and which is chiefly devoted to the purposes of agriculture. In this we are perpetually getting blue distances from the slightest elevation, which are rendered more decidedly so by their contrast with warm corn or plowed fields in the foreground. Such is the greater part of England. The view from the hills of Malvern is a good example. In districts of this kind, all is change; one year's crop has no memory of its predecessor; all is activity, prosperity, and usefulness: nothing is left to the imagination; there is no obscurity, no poetry, no nonsense: the colors of the landscape are bright and varied; it is thickly populated, and glowing with animal life. Here, then, the character of the cottage must be cheerfulness; its colors may be vivid: white is always beautiful; even red tiles are allowable, and red bricks endurable. Neatness will not spoil it: the angle of its roof may be acute, its windows sparkling, and its roses red and abundant; but it must not be ornamented nor fantastic, it must be evidently built for the uses of common life, and have a matter-of-fact business-like air about it. Its outhouses and pigsties, and dunghills should therefore, be kept in sight: the latter may be made very pretty objects, by twisting them with the pitchfork, and plaiting them into braids, as the Swiss do. 92. III. The Wild, or gray, Country. "Wild" is not exactly a correct epithet; we mean wide, uninclosed, treeless undulations of land, whether cultivated or not. The greater part of northern France, though well brought under the plow, would come under the denomination of gray country. Occasional masses of monotonous forest do not destroy this character. Here, size is desirable, and massiness of form; but we must have no brightness of color in the cottage, otherwise it would draw the eye to it at three miles off, and the whole landscape would be covered with conspicuous dots. White is agreeable, if sobered down; slate allowable on the roof as well as thatch. For the rest, we need only refer to the remarks made on the propriety of the French cottage. 93. Lastly, Hill, or brown, Country. And here if we look to England alone, as peculiarly a cottage country, the remarks formerly advanced, in the consideration of the Westmoreland cottage, are sufficient; but if we go into mountain districts of more varied character, we shall find a difference existing between every range of hills, which will demand a corresponding difference in the style of their cottages. The principles, however, are the same in all situations, and it would be a hopeless task to endeavor to give more than general principles. In hill country, however, another question is introduced, whose investigation is peculiarly necessary in cases in which the ground has inequality of surface, that of position. And the difficulty here is, not so much to ascertain where the building ought to be, as to put it there, without suggesting any inquiry as to the mode in which it got there; to prevent its just application from appearing artificial. But we cannot enter into this inquiry, before laying down a number of principles of composition, which are applicable, not only to cottages, but generally; and which we cannot deduce until we come to the consideration of buildings in groups. 94. Such are the great divisions under which country and rural buildings may be comprehended; but there are intermediate conditions, in which modified forms of the cottage are applicable; and it frequently happens that country which, considered in the abstract, would fall under one of these classes, possesses, owing to its peculiar climate or associations, a very different character. Italy, for instance, is blue country; yet it has not the least resemblance to English blue country. We have paid particular attention to wood; first, because we had not, in any previous paper, considered what was beautiful in a forest cottage; and secondly, because in such districts there is generally much more influence exercised by proprietors over their tenantry, than in populous and cultivated districts; and our English park scenery, though exquisitely beautiful, is sometimes, we think, a little monotonous, from the want of this very feature. 95. And now, farewell to the cottage, and, with it, to the humility of natural scenery. We are sorry to leave it; not that we have any idea of living in a cottage, as a comfortable thing; not that we prefer mud to marble, or deal to mahogany; but that, with it, we leave much of what is most beautiful of earth, the low and bee-inhabited scenery, which is full of quiet and prideless emotion, of such calmness as we can imagine prevailing over our earth when it was new in heaven. We are going into higher walks of architecture, where we shall find a less close connection established between the building and the soil on which it stands, or the air with which it is surrounded, but a closer connection with the character of its inhabitant. We shall have less to do with natural feeling, and more with human passion; we are coming out of stillness into turbulence, out of seclusion into the multitude, out of the wilderness into the world. _PART II._ The Villa. THE MOUNTAIN VILLA: LAGO DI COMO: THE LOWLAND VILLA:--ENGLAND: THE BRITISH VILLA: PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. I. THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO. 96. In all arts or sciences, before we can determine what is just or beautiful in a group, we must ascertain what is desirable in the parts which compose it, separately considered; and therefore it will be most advantageous in the present case, to keep out of the village and the city, until we have searched hill and dale for examples of isolated buildings. This mode of considering the subject is also agreeable to the feelings, as the transition from the higher orders of solitary edifices, to groups of associated edifices, is not so sudden or startling, as that from nature's most humble peace, to man's most turbulent pride. We have contemplated the rural dwelling of the peasant; let us next consider the ruralized domicile of the gentleman: and here, as before, we shall first determine what is theoretically beautiful, and then observe how far our expectations are fulfilled in individual buildings. But a few preliminary observations are necessary. 97. Man, the peasant, is a being of more marked national character, than man, the educated and refined. For nationality is founded, in a great degree, on prejudices and feelings inculcated and aroused in youth, which grow inveterate in the mind as long as its views are confined to the place of its birth; its ideas molded by the customs of its country, and its conversation limited to a circle composed of individuals of habits and feelings like its own; but which are gradually softened down, and eradicated, when the mind is led into general views of things, when it is guided by reflection instead of habit, and has begun to lay aside opinions contracted under the influence of association and prepossession, substituting in their room philosophical deductions from the calm contemplation of the various tempers, and thoughts, and customs, of mankind. The love of its country will remain with undiminished strength in the cultivated mind, but the national modes of thinking will vanish from the disciplined intellect. 98. Now as it is only by these mannerisms of thought that architecture is affected, we shall find that, the more polished the mind of its designer, the less national will be the building; for its architect will be led away by a search after a model of ideal beauty, and will not be involuntarily guided by deep-rooted feelings, governing irresistibly his heart and hand. He will therefore be in perpetual danger of forgetting the necessary unison of scene and climate, and, following up the chase of the ideal, will neglect the beauty of the natural; an error which he could not commit, were he less general in his views, for then the prejudices to which he would be subject, would be as truly in unison with the objects which created them, as answering notes with the chords which awaken them. We must not, therefore, be surprised, if buildings bearing impress of the exercise of fine thought and high talent in their design, should yet offend us by perpetual discords with scene and climate; and if, therefore, we sometimes derive less instruction, and less pleasure from the columnar portico of the Palace, than from the latched door of the Cottage. 99. Again: man, in his hours of relaxation, when he is engaged in the pursuit of mere pleasure, is less national than when he is under the influence of any of the more violent feelings which agitate everyday life. The reason of this may at first appear somewhat obscure, but it will become evident, on a little reflection. Aristotle's definition of pleasure, perhaps the best ever given, is "an agitation, and settling of the spirit into its own proper nature;" similar, by the by, to the giving of liberty of motion to the molecules of a mineral, followed by their crystallization, into their own proper form. Now this "proper nature," [Greek: hyparchousan physin], is not the acquired national habit, but the common and universal constitution of the human soul. This constitution is kept under by the feelings which prompt to action, for those feelings depend upon parts of character, or of prejudice, which are peculiar to individuals or to nations; and the pleasure which all men seek is a kind of partial casting away of these more active feelings, to return to the calm and unchanging constitution of mind which is the same in all. 100. We shall, therefore, find that man, in the business of his life, in religion, war, or ambition, is national, but in relaxation he manifests a nature common to every individual of his race. A Turk, for instance, and an English farmer, smoking their evening pipes, differ only in so much as the one has a mouthpiece of amber, and the other one of sealing wax; the one has a turban on his head, and the other a night-cap; they are the same in feeling, and to all intents and purposes the same men. But a Turkish janissary and an English grenadier differ widely in all their modes of thinking, feeling, and acting; they are strictly national. So again, a Tyrolese evening dance, though the costume, and the step, and the music may be different, is the same in feeling as that of the Parisian guinguette; but follow the Tyrolese into their temples, and their deep devotion and beautiful though superstitious reverence will be found very different from any feeling exhibited during a mass in Notre-Dame. This being the case, it is a direct consequence, that we shall find much nationality in the Church or the Fortress, or in any building devoted to the purposes of active life, but very little in that which is dedicated exclusively to relaxation, the Villa. We shall be compelled to seek out nations of very strong feeling and imaginative disposition, or we shall find no correspondence whatever between their character, and that of their buildings devoted to pleasure. 101. In our own country, for instance, there is not the slightest. Beginning at the head of Windermere, and running down its border for about six miles, there are six important gentlemen's seats, villas they may be called; the first of which is a square white mass, decorated with pilasters of no order, set in a green avenue, sloping down to the water; the second is an imitation, we suppose, of something possessing theoretical existence in Switzerland, with sharp gable ends, and wooden flourishes turning the corners, set on a little dumpy mound with a slate wall running all round it, glittering with iron pyrites; the third is a blue dark-looking box, squeezed up into a group of straggly larches, with a bog in front of it; the fourth is a cream-colored domicile, in a large park, rather quiet and unaffected, the best of the four, though that is not saying much; the fifth is an old-fashioned thing, formal, and narrow-windowed, yet gray in its tone, and quiet, and not to be maligned; and the sixth is a nondescript, circular, putty-colored habitation, with a leaden dome on the top of it. 102. If, however, instead of taking Windermere, we trace the shore of the Lago di Como, we shall find some expression and nationality; and there, therefore, will we go, to return, however, to England, when we have obtained some data by which to judge of her more fortunate edifices. We notice the mountain villa first, for two reasons; because effect is always more considered in its erection, than when it is to be situated in a less interesting country, and because the effect desired is very rarely given, there being far greater difficulties to contend with. But one word more, before setting off for the south. Though, as we saw before, the gentleman has less _national_ character than the boor, his _individual_ character is more marked, especially in its finer features, which are clearly and perfectly developed by education; consequently, when the inhabitant of the villa has had anything to do with its erection, we might expect to find indications of individual and peculiar feelings, which it would be most interesting to follow out. But this is no part of our present task; at some future period we hope to give a series of essays on the habitations of the most distinguished men of Europe, showing how the alterations which they directed, and the expression which they bestowed, corresponded with the turn of their emotions, and leading intellectual faculties: but at present we have to deal only with generalities; we have to ascertain not what will be pleasing to a single mind, but what will afford gratification to every eye possessing a certain degree of experience, and every mind endowed with a certain degree of taste. 103. Without further preface, therefore, let us endeavor to ascertain what would be theoretically beautiful, on the shore, or among the scenery of the Larian Lake, preparatory to a sketch of the general features of those villas which exist there, in too great a multitude to admit, on our part, of much individual detail. For the general tone of the scenery, we may refer to the paper on the Italian cottage; for the shores of the Lake of Como have generally the character there described, with a little more cheerfulness, and a little less elevation,[14] but aided by great variety of form. They are not quite so rich in vegetation as the plains: both because the soil is scanty, there being, of course, no decomposition going on among the rocks of black marble which form the greater part of the shore; and because the mountains rise steeply from the water, leaving only a narrow zone at their bases in the climate of Italy. In that zone, however, the olive grows in great luxuriance, with the cypress, orange, aloe, myrtle, and vine, the latter always trellised. [Footnote 14: That Italian mountain scenery has less elevation of character than the plains may appear singular; but there are many simple reasons for a fact which, we doubt not, has been felt by every one (capable of feeling anything), who ever left the Alps to pass into Lombardy. The first is, that a mountain scene, as we saw in the last paper, bears no traces of decay, since it never possessed any of life. The desolation of the sterile peaks, never having been interrupted, is altogether free from the melancholy which is consequent on the passing away of interruption. They stood up in the time of Italy's glory, into the voiceless air, while all the life and light which she remembers now was working and moving at their feet, an animated cloud, which they did not feel, and do not miss. That region of life never reached up their flanks, and has left them no memorials of its being; they have no associations, no monuments, no memories; we look on them as we would on other hills; things of abstract and natural magnificence, which the presence of man could not increase, nor his departure sadden. They are, in consequence, destitute of all that renders the name of Ausonia thrilling, or her champaigns beautiful, beyond the mere splendor of climate; and even that splendor is unshared by the mountain; its cold atmosphere being undistinguished by any of that rich, purple, ethereal transparency which gives the air of the plains its _depth of feeling_,--we can find no better expression. Secondly. In all hill scenery, though there is increase of size, there is want of distance. We are not speaking of views from summits, but of the average aspect of valleys. Suppose the mountains be 10,000 feet high, their summit will not be more than six miles distant in a direct line: and there is a general sense of confinement, induced by their wall-like boundaries, which is painful, contrasted with the wide expatiation of spirit induced by a distant view over plains. In ordinary countries, however, where the plain is an uninteresting mass of cultivation, the sublimity of distance is not to be compared to that of size: but, where every yard of the cultivated country has its tale to tell; where it is perpetually intersected by rivers whose names are meaning music, and glancing with cities and villages every one of which has its own halo round its head; and where the eye is carried by the clearness of the air over the blue of the farthest horizon, without finding one wreath of mist, or one shadowy cloud, to check the distinctness of the impression; the mental emotions excited are richer, and deeper, and swifter than could be awakened by the noblest hills of the earth, unconnected with the deeds of men. Lastly. The plain country of Italy has not even to choose between the glory of distance and of size, for it has both. I do not think there is a spot, from Venice to Messina, where two ranges of mountain, at the least, are not in sight at the same time. In Lombardy, the Alps are on one side, the Apennines on the other; in the Venetian territory, the Alps, Apennines and Euganean hills; going southward, the Apennines always, their outworks running far towards the sea, and the coast itself frequently mountainous. Now, the aspect of a noble range of hills, at a considerable distance, is, in our opinion, far more imposing (considered in the abstract) than they are, seen near: their height is better told, their outlines softer and more melodious, their majesty more mysterious. But, in Italy, they gain more by distance than majesty: they gain life. They cease to be the cold forgetful things they were; they hold the noble plains in their lap, and become venerable, as having looked down upon them, and watched over them forever, unchanging; they become part of the picture of associations: we endow them with memory, and then feel them to be possessed of all that is glorious on earth. For these three reasons, then, the plains of Italy possess far more elevation of character than her hill scenery. To the northward, this contrast is felt very strikingly, as the distinction is well marked, the Alps rising sharply and suddenly. To the southward, the plain is more mingled with low projecting promontories, and unites almost every kind of beauty. However, even among her northern lakes, the richness of the low climate, and the magnificence of form and color presented by the distant Alps, raise the character of the scene immeasurably above that of most hill landscapes, even were those natural features entirely unassisted by associations which, though more sparingly scattered than in the south, are sufficient to give light to every leaf, and voice to every wave.] 104. Now, as to the situation of the cottage, we have already seen that great humility was necessary, both in the building and its site, to prevent it from offending us by an apparent struggle with forces, compared with which its strength was dust: but we cannot have this extreme humility in the villa, the dwelling of wealth and power, and yet we must not, any more, suggest the idea of its resisting natural influences under which the Pyramids could not abide. The only way of solving the difficulty is, to select such sites as shall seem to have been set aside by nature as places of rest, as points of calm and enduring beauty, ordained to sit and smile in their glory of quietness, while the avalanche brands the mountain top,[15] and the torrent desolates the valley; yet so preserved, not by shelter amidst violence, but by being placed wholly out of the influence of violence. For in this they must differ from the site of the cottage, that the peasant may seek for protection under some low rock or in some narrow dell, but the villa must have a domain to itself, at once conspicuous, beautiful, and calm. [Footnote 15: There are two kinds of winter avalanches; the one, sheets of frozen snow sliding on the surface of others. The swiftness of these, as the clavendier of the Convent of St. Bernard told me, he could compare to nothing but that of a cannon ball of equal size. The other is a rolling mass of snow, accumulating in its descent. This, grazing the bare hill-side, tears up its surface like dust, bringing away soil, rock, and vegetation, as a grazing ball tears flesh; and leaving its withered path distinct on the green hill-side, as if the mountain had been branded with red-hot iron. They generally keep to the same paths; but when the snow accumulates, and sends one down the wrong way, it has been known to cut down a pine forest, as a scythe mows grass. The tale of its work is well told by the seared and branded marks on the hill summits and sides.] 105. As regards the form of the cottage, we have seen how the Westmoreland cottage harmonized with the ease of outline so conspicuous in hill scenery, by the irregularity of its details; but, here, no such irregularity is allowable or consistent, and is not even desirable. For the cottage enhances the wildness of the surrounding scene, by sympathizing with it; the villa must do the same thing, by contrasting with it. The eye feels, in a far greater degree, the terror of the distant and desolate peaks, when it passes down their ravined sides to sloping and verdant hills, and is guided from these to the rich glow of vegetable life in the low zones, and through this glow to the tall front of some noble edifice, peaceful even in its pride. But this contrast must not be sudden, or it will be startling and harsh; and therefore, as we saw above, the villa must be placed where all the severe features of the scene, though not concealed, are distant, and where there is a graduation, so to speak, of impressions, from terror to loveliness, the one softened by distance, the other elevated in its style: and the form of the villa must not be fantastic or angular, but must be full of variety, so tempered by simplicity as to obtain ease of outline united with elevation of character; the first being necessary for reasons before advanced, and the second, that the whole may harmonize with the feelings induced by the lofty features of the accompanying scenery in any hill country, and yet more, on the Larian Lake, by the deep memories and everlasting associations which haunt the stillness of its shore. Of the color required by Italian landscape we have spoken before, and we shall see that, particularly in this case, white or pale tones are agreeable. 106. We shall now proceed to the situation and form of the villa. As regards situation; the villas of the Lago di Como are built, _par préférence_, either on jutting promontories of low crag covered with olives, or on those parts of the shore where some mountain stream has carried out a bank of alluvium into the lake. One object proposed in this choice of situation is, to catch the breeze as it comes up the main opening of the hills, and to avoid the reflection of the sun's rays from the rocks of the actual shore; and another is, to obtain a prospect up or down the lake, and of the hills on whose projection the villa is built: but the effect of this choice when the building is considered the object, is to carry it exactly into the place where it ought to be, far from the steep precipice and dark mountain, to the border of the winding bay and citron-scented cape, where it stands at once conspicuous and in peace. For instance, in the view of Villa Serbelloni[16] from across the lake, although the eye falls suddenly from the crags above to the promontory below, yet all the sublime and severe features of the scene are kept in the distance, and the villa itself is mingled with graceful lines, and embosomed in rich vegetation. The promontory separates the Lake of Lecco from that of Como, properly so-called, and is three miles from the opposite shore, which gives room enough for aërial perspective. [Footnote 16: [Villa Serbelloni, now the dépendence of the Hôtel Grande Bretagne at Bellaggio, and Villa Somma-Riva, now called Villa Carlotta, at Cadenabbia, and visited by every tourist for its collection of modern statuary, are both too well known to need illustration by the very poor wood-cuts which accompanied this chapter in the "Architectural Magazine." The original drawings are lost; judging from that of the cottage in Val d'Aosta we may safely believe that they were most inadequately represented by the old cuts.]] 107. We shall now consider the form of the villa. It is generally the apex of a series of artificial terraces, which conduct through its gardens to the water. These are formal in their design, but extensive, wide, and majestic in their slope, the steps being generally about 1/2 ft. high and 4-1/2 ft. wide (sometimes however much deeper). They are generally supported by white wall, strengthened by unfilled arches, the angles being turned by sculptured pedestals, surmounted by statues, or urns. Along the terraces are carried rows, sometimes of cypress, more frequently of orange or lemon trees, with myrtles, sweet bay, and aloes, intermingled, but always with dark and spiry cypresses occurring in groups; and attached to these terraces, or to the villa itself, are series of arched grottoes built (or sometimes cut in the rock) for coolness, frequently overhanging the water, kept dark and fresh, and altogether delicious to the feelings. A good instance of these united peculiarities is seen in Villa Somma-Riva, Lago di Como. The effect of these approaches is disputable. It is displeasing to many, from its formality; but we are persuaded that it is right, because it is a national style, and therefore has in all probability due connection with scene and character: and this connection we shall endeavor to prove. 108. The frequent occurrence of the arch is always delightful in distant effect, partly on account of its graceful line, partly because the shade it casts is varied in depth, becoming deeper and deeper as the grotto retires, and partly because it gives great apparent elevation to the walls which it supports. The grottoes themselves are agreeable objects seen near, because they give an impression of coolness to the eye; and they echo all sounds with great melody; small streams are often conducted through them, occasioning slight breezes by their motion. Then the statue and the urn are graceful in their outline, classical in their meaning, and correct in their position, for where could they be more appropriate than here; the one ministering to memory, and the other to mourning. The terraces themselves are dignified in their character (a necessary effect, as we saw above), and even the formal rows of trees are right in this climate, for a peculiar reason. Effect is always to be considered, in Italy, as if the sun were always to shine, for it does nine days out of ten. Now the shadows of foliage regularly disposed, fall with a grace which it is impossible to describe, running up and down across the marble steps, and casting alternate statues into darkness; and checkering the white walls with a "method in their madness," altogether unattainable by loose grouping of trees; and therefore, for the sake of this kind of shade, to which the eye, as well as the feeling, is attracted, the long row of cypresses or orange trees is allowable. 109. But there is a still more important reason for it, of a directly contrary nature to that which its formality would seem to require. In all beautiful designs of exterior descent, a certain regularity is necessary; the lines should be graceful, but they must balance each other, slope answering to slope, statue to statue. Now this mathematical regularity would hurt the eye excessively in the midst of scenes of natural grace, were it executed in bare stone; but, if we make part of the design itself foliage, and put in touches of regular shade, alternating with the stone, whose distances and darkness are as mathematically limited as the rest of the grouping, but whose nature is changeful and varied in individual forms, we have obtained a link between nature and art, a step of transition, leading the feelings gradually from the beauty of regularity to that of freedom. And this effect would not be obtained, as might at first appear, by intermingling trees of different kinds, at irregular distances, or wherever they chose to grow; for then the design and the foliage would be instantly separated by the eye, the symmetry of the one would be interrupted, the grace of the other lost; the nobility of the design would not be seen, but its formality would be felt; and the wildness of the trees would be injurious, because it would be felt to be out of place. On principles of composition, therefore, the regular disposition of decorative foliage is right, when such foliage is mixed with architecture; but it requires great taste, and long study, to design this disposition properly. Trees of dark leaf and little color should be invariably used, for they are to be considered, it must be remembered, rather as free touches of shade than as trees. 110. Take, for instance, the most simple bit of design, such as a hollow balustrade, and suppose that it is found to look cold or raw, when executed, and to want depth. Then put small pots, with any dark shrub, the darker the better, at fixed places behind them, at the same distance as the balustrades, or between every two or three, and keep them cut down to a certain height, and we have immediate depth and increased ease, with undiminished symmetry. But the great difficulty is to keep the thing within proper limits, since too much of it will lead to paltriness, as is the case in a slight degree in Isola Bella, on Lago Maggiore; and not to let it run into small details: for, be it remembered, that it is only in the majesty of art, in its large and general effects, that this regularity is allowable; nothing but variety should be studied in detail, and therefore there can be no barbarism greater than the lozenge borders and beds of the French garden. The scenery around must be naturally rich, that its variety of line may relieve the slight stiffness of the architecture itself: and the climate must always be considered; for, as we saw, the chief beauty of these flights of steps depends upon the presence of the sun; and, if they are to be in shade half the year, the dark trees will only make them gloomy, the grass will grow between the stones of the steps, black weeds will flicker from the pedestals, damp mosses discolor the statues and urns, and the whole will become one incongruous ruin, one ridiculous decay. Besides, the very dignity of its character, even could it be kept in proper order, would be out of place in any country but Italy. Busts of Virgil or Ariosto would look astonished in an English snowstorm; statues of Apollo and Diana would be no more divine, where the laurels of the one would be weak, and the crescent of the other would never gleam in pure moonlight. The whole glory of the design consists in its unison with the dignity of the landscape, and with the classical tone of the country. Take it away from its concomitant circumstances, and, instead of conducting the eye to it by a series of lofty and dreamy impressions, bring it through green lanes, or over copse-covered crags, as would be the case in England, and the whole system becomes utterly and absolutely absurd, ugly in outline, worse than useless in application, unmeaning in design, and incongruous in association. 111. It seems, then, that in the approach to the Italian villa, we have discovered great nationality and great beauty, which was more than we could have expected, but a beauty utterly untransferable from its own settled habitation. In our next paper we shall proceed to the building itself, which will not detain us long, as it is generally simple in its design, and take a general view of villa architecture over Italy. 112. We have bestowed considerable attention on this style of Garden Architecture, because it has been much abused by persons of high authority, and general good taste, who forgot, in their love of grace and ideal beauty, the connection with surrounding circumstances so manifest even in its formality. Eustace, we think, is one of these; and, although it is an error of a kind he is perpetually committing, he is so far right, that this mannerism is frequently carried into excess even in its own peculiar domain, then becoming disagreeable, and is always a dangerous style in inexperienced hands. We think, however, paradoxical as the opinion may appear, that every one who is a true lover of nature, and has been bred in her wild school, will be an admirer of this symmetrical designing, in its place; and will feel, as often as he contemplates it, that the united effect of the wide and noble steps, with the pure water dashing over them like heated crystal, the long shadows of the cypress groves, the golden leaves and glorious light of blossom of the glancing aloes, the pale statues gleaming along the heights in their everlasting death in life, their motionless brows looking down forever on the loveliness in which their beings once dwelt, marble forms of more than mortal grace lightening along the green arcades, amidst dark cool grottoes, full of the voice of dashing waters, and of the breath of myrtle blossoms, with the blue of the deep lake and the distant precipice mingling at every opening with the eternal snows glowing in their noontide silence, is one not unworthy of Italy's most noble remembrances. II. THE MOUNTAIN VILLA--LAGO DI COMO (Continued). 113. Having considered the propriety of the approach, it remains for us to investigate the nature of the feelings excited by the villas of the Lago di Como in particular, and of Italy in general. We mentioned that the bases of the mountains bordering the Lake of Como were chiefly composed of black marble; black, at least, when polished, and very dark gray in its general effect. This is very finely stratified in beds varying in thickness from an inch to two or three feet; and these beds, taken of a medium thickness, form flat slabs, easily broken into rectangular fragments, which, being excessively compact in their grain, are admirably adapted for a building material. There is a little pale limestone[17] among the hills to the south; but this marble, or primitive limestone (for it is not highly crystalline), is not only more easy of access, but a more durable stone. Of this, consequently, almost all the buildings on the lake shore are built; and, therefore, were their material unconcealed, would be of a dark monotonous and melancholy gray tint, equally uninteresting to the eye, and depressing to the mind. To prevent this result, they are covered with different compositions, sometimes white, more frequently cream-colored, and of varying depth; the moldings and pilasters being frequently of deeper tones than the walls. The insides of the grottoes, however, when not cut in the rock itself, are left uncovered, thus forming a strong contrast with the whiteness outside; giving great depth, and permitting weeds and flowers to root themselves on the roughnesses, and rock streams to distill through the fissures of the dark stones; while all parts of the building to which the eye is drawn, by their form or details (except the capitals of the pilasters), such as the urns, the statues, the steps, or balustrades, are executed in very fine white marble, generally from the quarries of Carrara, which supply quantities of fragments of the finest quality, which nevertheless, owing to their want of size, or to the presence of conspicuous veins, are unavailable for the higher purposes of sculpture. [Footnote 17: Pale limestone, with dolomite. A coarse dolomite forms the mass of mountains on the east of Lake Lecco, Monte Campione, etc., and part of the other side, as well as the Monte del Novo, above Cadenabbia; but the bases of the hills, along the _shore_ of the Lake of Lecco, and all the mountains on both sides of the lower limb of Como are black limestone. The whole northern half of the lake is bordered by gneiss or mica slate, with tertiary deposit where torrents enter it. So that the dolomite is only obtainable by ascending the hills, and incurring considerable expense of carriage; while the rocks of the shore split into blocks of their own accord, and are otherwise an excellent material.] 114. Now, the first question is, is this very pale color desirable? It is to be hoped so, or else the whole of Italy must be pronounced full of impropriety. The first circumstance in its favor is one which, though connected only with lake scenery, we shall notice at length, as it is a point of high importance in our own country. When a small piece of quiet water reposes in a valley, or lies embosomed among crags, its chief beauty is derived from our perception of crystalline depth, united with excessive slumber. In its limited surface we cannot get the sublimity of extent, but we may have the beauty of peace, and the majesty of depth. The object must therefore be, to get the eye off its surface, and to draw it down, to beguile it into that fairy land underneath, which is more beautiful than what it repeats, because it is all full of dreams unattainable, and illimitable. This can only be done by keeping its edge out of sight, and guiding the eye off the land into the reflection, as if it were passing into a mist, until it finds itself swimming into the blue sky, with a thrill of unfathomable falling. (If there be not a touch of sky at the bottom, the water will be disagreeably black, and the clearer the more fearful.) Now, one touch of _white_ reflection of an object at the edge will destroy the whole illusion, for it will come like the flash of light on armor, and will show the surface, not the depth: it will tell the eye whereabouts it is; will define the limit of the edge; and will turn the dream of limitless depth into a small, uninteresting, reposeless piece of water. In all small lakes or pools, therefore, steep borders of dark crag, or of thick foliage, are to be obtained, if possible; even a shingly shore will spoil them: and this was one reason, it will be remembered for our admiration of the color of the Westmoreland cottage, because it never broke the repose of water by its reflection. 115. But this principle applies only to small pieces of water, on which we look down, as much as along the surface. As soon as we get a sheet, even if only a mile across, we lose depth; first, because it is almost impossible to get the surface without a breeze on some part of it; and, again, because we look along it, and get a great deal of sky in the reflection, which, when occupying too much space, tells as mere flat light. But we may have the beauty of extent in a very high degree; and it is therefore desirable to know how far the water goes, that we may have a clear conception of its space. Now, its border, at a great distance, is always lost, unless it be defined by a very distinct line; and such a line is harsh, flat, and cutting on the eye. To avoid this, the border itself should be dark, as in the other case, so that there may be no continuous horizontal line of demarcation; but one or two bright white objects should be set here and there along or near the edge: their reflections will flash on the dark water, and will inform the eye in a moment of the whole distance and transparency of the surface it is traversing. When there is a slight swell on the water, they will come down in long, beautiful, perpendicular lines, mingling exquisitely with the streaky green of reflected foliage; when there is none, they become a distant image of the object they repeat, endowed with infinite repose. 116. These remarks, true of small lakes whose edges are green, apply with far greater force to sheets of water on which the eye passes over ten or twenty miles in one long glance, and the prevailing color of whose borders is, as we noticed when speaking of the Italian cottage, blue. The white reflections are here excessively valuable, giving space, brilliancy, and transparency; and furnish one very powerful apology, even did other objections render an apology necessary, for the pale tone of the color of the villas, whose reflections, owing to their size and conspicuous situations, always take a considerable part in the scene, and are therefore things to be attentively considered in the erection of such buildings, particularly in a climate whose calmness renders its lakes quiet for the greater part of the day. Nothing, in fact, can be more beautiful than the intermingling of these bright lines with the darkness of the reversed cypresses seen against the deep azure of the distant hills in the crystalline waters of the lake, of which some one aptly says, "Deep within its azure rest, white villages sleep silently;"[18] or than their columnar perspective, as village after village catches the light, and strikes the image to the very quietest recess of the narrow water, and the very farthest hollow of the folded hills. [Footnote 18: [A reminiscence of two lines from a poem on the "Lago di Como" written by the author in 1833.]] 117. From all this, it appears that the effect of the white villa in water is delightful. On land it is quite as important, but more doubtful. The first objection, which strikes us instantly when we _imagine_ such a building, is the want of repose, the startling glare of effect, induced by its unsubdued tint. But this objection does not strike us when we _see_ the building; a circumstance which was partly accounted for before, in speaking of the cottage, and which we shall presently see farther cause not to be surprised at. A more important objection is, that such whiteness destroys a great deal of venerable character, and harmonizes ill with the melancholy tones of surrounding landscape: and this requires detailed consideration. 118. Paleness of color destroys the majesty of a building; first, by hinting at a disguised and humble material; and, secondly, by taking away all appearance of age. We shall speak of the effect of the material presently; but the deprivation of apparent antiquity is dependent in a great degree on the color; and in Italy, where, as we saw before, everything ought to point to the past, is serious injury, though, for several reasons, not so fatal as might be imagined; for we do not require, in a building raised as a light summer-house, wherein to while away a few pleasure hours, the evidence of ancestral dignity, without which the château or palace can possess hardly any beauty. We know that it is originally built more as a plaything than as a monument; as the delight of an individual, not the possession of a race; and that the very lightness and carelessness of feeling with which such a domicile is entered and inhabited by its first builder would demand, to sympathize and keep in unison with them, not the kind of building adapted to excite the veneration of ages, but that which can most gayly minister to the amusement of hours. For all men desire to have memorials of their actions, but none of their recreations; inasmuch as we only wish that to be remembered which others will not, or cannot perform or experience; and we know that all men can enjoy recreation as much as ourselves. We wish succeeding generations to admire our energy, but not even to be aware of our lassitude; to know when we moved, but not when we rested; how we ruled, not how we condescended; and, therefore, in the case of the triumphal arch, or the hereditary palace, if we are the builders, we desire stability; if the beholders, we are offended with novelty: but in the case of the villa, the builder desires only a correspondence with his humor; the beholder, evidence of such correspondence; for he feels that the villa is most beautiful when it ministers most to pleasure; that it cannot minister to pleasure without perpetual change, so as to suit the varying ideas, and humors, and imaginations of its inhabitant, and that it cannot possess this light and variable habit with any appearance of antiquity. 119. And, for a yet more important reason, such appearance is not desirable. Melancholy, when it is productive of pleasure, is accompanied either by loveliness in the object exciting it, or by a feeling of pride in the mind experiencing it. Without one of these, it becomes absolute pain, which all men throw off as soon as they can, and suffer under as long as their minds are too weak for the effort. Now, when it is accompanied by loveliness in the object exciting it, it forms beauty; when by a feeling of pride, it constitutes the pleasure we experience in tragedy, when we have the pride of endurance, or in contemplating the ruin, or the monument, by which we are informed or reminded of the pride of the past. Hence, it appears that age is beautiful only when it is the decay of glory or of power, and memory only delightful when it reposes upon pride.[19] All remains therefore of what was merely devoted to pleasure; all evidence of lost enjoyment; all memorials of the recreation and rest of the departed; in a word, all desolation of delight is productive of mere pain, for there is no feeling of exultation connected with it. Thus, in any ancient habitation, we pass with reverence and pleasurable emotion through the ordered armory, where the lances lie, with none to wield; through the lofty hall, where the crested scutcheons glow with the honor of the dead: but we turn sickly away from the arbor which has no hand to tend it, and the boudoir which has no life to lighten it, and the smooth sward which has no light feet to dance on it. So it is in the villa: the more memory, the more sorrow; and, therefore, the less adaptation to its present purpose. But, though cheerful, it should be ethereal in its expression: "spiritual" is a good word, giving ideas of the very highest order of delight that can be obtained in the mere present. [Footnote 19: Observe, we are not speaking of emotions felt on remembering what we ourselves have enjoyed, for then the imagination is productive of pleasure by replacing us in enjoyment, but of the feelings excited in the _indifferent_ spectator, by the evident decay of power or desolation of enjoyment, of which the first ennobles, the other only harrows, the spirit.] 120. It seems, then, that for all these reasons an appearance of age is not desirable, far less necessary, in the villa; but its existing character must be in unison with its country; and it must appear to be inhabited by one brought up in that country, and imbued with its national feelings. In Italy, especially, though we can even here dispense with one component part of elevation of character,--age, we must have all the others: we must have high feeling, beauty of form, and depth of effect, or the thing will be a barbarism; the inhabitant must be an Italian, full of imagination and emotion: a villa inhabited by an Englishman, no matter how close its imitation of others, will always be preposterous. We find, therefore, that white is not to be blamed in the villa for destroying its antiquity; neither is it reprehensible, as harmonizing ill with the surrounding landscape: on the contrary, it adds to its brilliancy, without taking away from its depth of tone. We shall consider it as an element of landscape, more particularly, when we come to speak of grouping. 121. There remains only one accusation to be answered; viz., that it hints at a paltry and unsubstantial material: and this leads us to the second question. Is this material allowable? If it were distinctly felt by the eye to be stucco, there could be no question about the matter, it would be decidedly disagreeable; but all the parts to which the eye is attracted are executed in marble, and the stucco merely forms the dead flat of the building, not a single wreath of ornament being formed of it. Its surface is smooth and bright, and altogether avoids what a stone building, when not built of large masses, and uncharged with ornament, always forces upon the attention, the rectangular lines of the blocks, which, however nicely fitted they may be, are "horrible! most horrible!" There is also a great deal of ease and softness in the angular lines of the stucco, which are never sharp or harsh, like those of stone; and it receives shadows with great beauty, a point of infinite importance in this climate; giving them lightness and transparency, without any diminution of depth. It is also agreeable to the eye, to pass from the sharp carving of the marble decorations to the ease and smoothness of the stucco; while the utter want of interest in those parts which are executed in it prevents the humility of the material from being offensive: for this passage of the eye from the marble to the composition is managed with the dexterity of the artist, who, that the attention may be drawn to the single point of the picture which is his subject, leaves the rest so obscured and slightly painted, that the mind loses it altogether in its attention to the principal feature. 122. With all, however, that can be alleged in extenuation of its faults, it cannot be denied that the stucco _does_ take away so much of the dignity of the building, that, unless we find enough bestowed by its form and details to counterbalance, and a great deal more than counterbalance, the deterioration occasioned by tone and material, the whole edifice must be condemned, as incongruous with the spirit of the climate, and even with the character of its own gardens and approach. It remains, therefore, to notice the details themselves. Its form is simple to a degree; the roof generally quite flat, so as to leave the mass in the form of a parallelopiped, in general without wings or adjuncts of any sort. Villa Somma-Riva [Carlotta] is a good example of this general form and proportion, though it has an arched passage on each side, which takes away from its massiness. This excessive weight of effect would be injurious, if the building were set by itself; but, as it always forms the apex of a series of complicated terraces, it both relieves them and gains great dignity by its own unbroken simplicity of size. This general effect of form is not injured, when, as is often the case, an open passage is left in the center of the building, under tall and well-proportioned arches, supported by pilasters (never by columns). Villa Porro, Lago di Como, is a good example of this method. The arches hardly ever exceed three in number, and these are all of the same size, so that the crowns of the arches continue the horizontal lines of the rest of the building. Were the center one higher than the others, these lines would be interrupted, and a great deal of simplicity lost. The covered space under these arches is a delightful, shaded, and breezy retreat in the heat of the day; and the entrance doors usually open into it, so that a current of cool air is obtainable by throwing them open. 123. The building itself consists of three floors: we remember no instance of a greater number, and only one or two of fewer. It is, in general, crowned with a light balustrade, surmounted by statues at intervals. The windows of the uppermost floor are usually square, often without any architrave. Those of the principal floor are surrounded with broad architraves, but are frequently destitute of frieze or cornice. They have usually flat bands at the bottom, and their aperture is a double square. Their recess is very deep, so as not to let the sun fall far into the interior. The interval between them is very variable. In some of the villas of highest pretensions, such as those on the banks of the Brenta, that of Isola Bella, and others, which do not face the south, it is not much more than the breadth of the two architraves, so that the rooms within are filled with light. When this is the case, the windows have friezes and cornices. But, when the building fronts the south, the interval is often very great, as in the case of the Villa Porro. The ground-floor windows are frequently set in tall arches, supported on deeply engaged pilasters as in the Villa Somma-Riva. The door is not large, and never entered by high steps, as it generally opens on a terrace of considerable height, or on a wide landing-place at the head of a flight of fifty or sixty steps descending through the gardens. 124. Now, it will be observed, that, in these general forms, though there is no splendor, there is great dignity. The lines throughout are simple to a degree, entirely uninterrupted by decorations of any kind, so that the beauty of their proportions is left visible and evident. We shall see hereafter that ornament in Grecian architecture, while, when well managed, it always adds to its grace, invariably takes away from its majesty; and that these two attributes never can exist together in their highest degrees. By the utter absence of decoration, therefore, the Italian villa, possessing, as it usually does, great beauty of proportion, attains a degree of elevation of character, which impresses the mind in a manner which it finds difficult to account for by any consideration of its simple details or moderate size; while, at the same time, it lays so little claim to the attention, and is so subdued in its character, that it is enabled to occupy a conspicuous place in a landscape, without any appearance of intrusion. The glance of the beholder rises from the labyrinth of terrace and arbor beneath, almost weariedly; it meets, as it ascends, with a gradual increase of bright marble and simple light, and with a proportionate diminution of dark foliage and complicated shadow, till it rests finally on a piece of simple brilliancy, chaste and unpretending, yet singularly dignified; and does not find its color too harsh, because its form is so simple: for color of any kind is only injurious when the eye is too much attracted to it; and, when there is so much quietness of detail as to prevent this misfortune, the building will possess the cheerfulness, without losing the tranquillity, and will seem to have been erected, and to be inhabited, by a mind of that beautiful temperament wherein modesty tempers majesty, and gentleness mingles with rejoicing, which, above all others, is most suited to the essence, and most interwoven with the spirit, of the natural beauty whose peculiar power is invariably repose. 125. So much for its general character. Considered by principles of composition, it will also be found beautiful. Its prevailing lines are horizontal; and every artist knows that, where peaks of any kind are in sight, the lines above which they rise ought to be flat. It has not one acute angle in all its details, and very few intersections of verticals with horizontals; while all that do intersect seem useful as supporting the mass. The just application of the statues at the top is more doubtful, and is considered reprehensible by several high authorities, who, nevertheless, are inconsistent enough to let the balustrade pass uncalumniated, though it is objectionable on exactly the same grounds; for, if the statues suggest the inquiry of "What are they doing there?" the balustrade compels its beholder to ask, "whom it keeps from tumbling over?" 126. The truth is, that the balustrade and statues derive their origin from a period when there was easy access to the roof of either temple or villa; (that there was such access is proved by a passage in the _Iphigenia Taurica_, line 113, where Orestes speaks of getting up to the triglyphs of a Doric temple as an easy matter;) and when the flat roofs were used, not, perhaps, as an evening promenade, as in Palestine, but as a place of observation, and occasionally of defense. They were composed of large flat slabs of stone ([Greek: keramos,[20]]) peculiarly adapted for walking, one or two of which, when taken up, left an opening of easy access into the house, as in Luke v. 19, and were perpetually used in Greece as missile weapons, in the event of a hostile attack or sedition in the city, by parties of old men, women, and children, who used, as a matter of course, to retire to the roof as a place of convenient defense. By such attacks from the roof with the [Greek: keramos] the Thebans were thrown into confusion in Platæa (_Thucydides_ ii. 4.). So, also, we find the roof immediately resorted to in the case of the starving of Pausanias in the Temple of Minerva of the Brazen House, and in that of the massacre of the aristocratic party at Corcyra (_Thucydides_ iv. 48):--[Greek: Anabantes de epi to tegos tou oikêmatos, kai dielontes tên orophên, eballon tô keramô]. [Footnote 20: In the large buildings, that is: [Greek: keramos] also signifies earthen tiling, and sometimes earthenware in general, as in _Herodotus_ iii. 6 [where it is used of earthen jars of wine.] It appears that such tiling was frequently used in smaller edifices. The Greeks may have derived their flat roofs from Egypt. Herodotus mentions of the Labyrinth of the Twelve Kings, that [Greek: horophê de pantôn toutôn lithinê], but not as if the circumstance were in the least extraordinary [_Herodotus_ ii. 148.]] 127. Now, where the roof was thus a place of frequent resort, there could be no more useful decoration than a balustrade; nor one more appropriate or beautiful than occasional statues in attitudes of watchfulness, expectation, or observation: and even now, wherever the roof is flat, we have an idea of convenience and facility of access, which still renders the balustrade agreeable, and the statue beautiful, if well designed. It must not be a figure of perfect peace or repose; far less should it be in violent action: but it should be fixed in that quick, startled stillness, which is the result of intent observation or expectation, and which seems ready to start into motion every instant. Its height should be slightly colossal, as it is always to be seen against the sky; and its draperies should not be too heavy, as the eye will always expect them to be caught by the wind. We shall enter into this subject, however, more fully hereafter. We only wish at present to vindicate from the charge of impropriety one of the chief features of the Italian villa. Its white figures, always marble, remain entirely unsullied by the weather, and stand out with great majesty against the blue air behind them, taking away from the heaviness, without destroying the simplicity, of the general form. 128. It seems then that, by its form and details, the villa of the Lago di Como attains so high a degree of elevation of character, as not only brings it into harmony of its _locus_, without any assistance from appearance of antiquity, but may, we think, permit it to dispense even with solidity of material, and appear in light summer stucco, instead of raising itself in imperishable marble. And this conclusion, which is merely theoretical, is verified by fact: for we remember no instance, except in cases where poverty had overpowered pretension, or decay had turned rejoicing into silence, in which the lightness of the material was offensive to the feelings; in all cases, it is agreeable to the eye. Where it is allowed to get worn, and discolored, and broken, it induces a wretched mockery of the dignified form which it preserves; but, as long as it is renewed at proper periods, and watched over by the eye of its inhabitant, it is an excellent and easily managed medium of effect. 129. With all the praise, however, which we have bestowed upon it, we do not say that the villa of the Larian Lake is perfection; indeed we cannot say so, until we have compared it with a few other instances, chiefly to be found in Italy, on whose soil we delay, as being the native country of the villa, properly so-called, and as ever yet being almost the only spot of Europe where any good specimens of it are to be found; for we do not understand by the term "villa" a cubic erection, with one window on each side of a verdant door, and three on the second and uppermost story, such as the word suggests to the fertile imagination of ruralizing cheesemongers; neither do we understand the quiet and unpretending country house of a respectable gentleman; neither do we understand such a magnificent mass of hereditary stone as generally forms the autumn retreat of an English noble; but we understand the light but elaborate summer habitation, raised however and wherever it pleases his fancy, by some individual of great wealth and influence, who can enrich it with every attribute of beauty; furnish it with every appurtenance of pleasure; and repose in it with the dignity of a mind trained to exertion or authority. Such a building could not exist in Greece, where every district a mile and a quarter square was quarreling with all its neighbors. It could exist, and did exist, in Italy, where the Roman power secured tranquillity, and the Roman constitution distributed its authority among a great number of individuals, on whom, while it raised them to a position of great influence, and, in its later times, of wealth, it did not bestow the power of raising palaces or private fortresses. The villa was their peculiar habitation, their only resource, and a most agreeable one; because the multitudes of the kingdom being, for a long period, confined to a narrow territory, though ruling the world, rendered the population of the city so dense, as to drive out its higher ranks to the neighboring hamlets of Tibur and Tusculum. 130. In other districts of Europe the villa is not found, because in very perfect monarchies, as in Austria, the power is thrown chiefly into the hands of a few, who build themselves palaces, not villas; and in perfect republics, as in Switzerland, the power is so split among the multitude, that nobody can build himself anything. In general, in kingdoms of great extent, the country house becomes the permanent and hereditary habitation; and the villas are all crowded together, and form gingerbread rows in the environs of the capital; and, in France and Germany, the excessively disturbed state of affairs in the Middle Ages compelled every baron or noble to defend himself, and retaliate on his neighbors as he best could, till the villa was lost in the château and the fortress; and men now continue to build as their forefathers built (and long may they do so), surrounding the domicile of pleasure with a moat and a glacis, and guarding its garret windows with turrets and towers: while, in England, the nobles, comparatively few, and of great power, inhabit palaces, not villas; and the rest of the population is chiefly crowded into cities, in the activity of commerce, or dispersed over estates in that of agriculture; leaving only one grade of gentry, who have neither the taste to desire, nor the power to erect, the villa, properly so-called. 131. We must not, therefore, be surprised if, on leaving Italy, where the crowd of poverty-stricken nobility can still repose their pride in the true villa, we find no farther examples of it worthy of consideration; though we hope to have far greater pleasure in contemplating its substitutes, the château and the fortress. We must be excused, therefore, for devoting one paper more to the state of villa architecture in Italy; after which we shall endeavor to apply the principles we shall have deduced to the correction of some abuses in the erection of English country houses, in cases where scenery would demand beauty of design and wealth permit finish of decoration. III. THE ITALIAN VILLA (Concluded). 132. We do not think there is any truth in the aphorism, now so frequently advanced in England, that the adaptation of shelter to the corporal comfort of the human race is the original and true end of the art of architecture, properly so-called: for, were such the case, he would be the most distinguished architect who was best acquainted with the properties of cement, with the nature of stone, and the various durability of wood. That such knowledge is necessary to the perfect architect we do not deny; but it is no more the end and purpose of his application, than a knowledge of the alphabet is the object of the refined scholar, or of rhythm of the inspired poet. 133. For, supposing that we were for a moment to consider that we built a house _merely_ to be lived in, and that the whole bent of our invention, in raising the edifice, is to be directed to the provision of comfort for the life to be spent therein; supposing that we build it with the most perfect dryness and coolness of cellar, the most luxurious appurtenances of pantry; that we build our walls with the most compacted strength of material, the most studied economy of space; that we leave not a chink in the floor for a breath of wind to pass through, not a hinge in the door, which, by any possible exertion of its irritable muscles, could creak; that we elevate our chambers into exquisite coolness, furnish them with every attention to the maintenance of general health, as well as the prevention of present inconvenience: to do all this, we must be possessed of great knowledge and various skill; let this knowledge and skill be applied with the greatest energy, and what have they done? Exactly as much as brute animals can do by mere instinct; nothing more than bees and beavers, moles and magpies, ants and earwigs, do every day of their lives, without the slightest effort of reason; we have made ourselves superior as architects to the most degraded animation of the universe, only insomuch as we have lavished the highest efforts of intellect, to do what they have done with the most limited sensations that can constitute life. 134. The mere preparation of convenience, therefore, is not architecture in which man can take pride, or ought to take delight;[21] but the high and ennobling art of architecture is that of giving to buildings, whose parts are determined by necessity, such forms and colors as shall delight the mind, by preparing it for the operations to which it is to be subjected in the building: and thus, as it is altogether to the mind that the work of the architect is addressed, it is not as a part of his art, but as a limitation of its extent, that he must be acquainted with the minor principles of the economy of domestic erections. For this reason, though we shall notice every class of edifice, it does not come within our proposed plan, to enter into any detailed consideration of the inferior buildings of each class, which afford no scope for the play of the imagination by their nature or size; but we shall generally select the most perfect and beautiful examples, as those in which alone the architect has the power of fulfilling the high purposes of his art. In the villa, however, some exception must be made, inasmuch as it will be useful, and perhaps interesting, to arrive at some fixed conclusions respecting the modern buildings, improperly called villas, raised by moderate wealth, and of limited size, in which the architect is compelled to produce his effect without extent or decoration. The principles which we have hitherto arrived at, deduced as they are from edifices of the noblest character, will be but of little use to a country gentleman, about to insinuate himself and his habitation into a quiet corner of our lovely country; and, therefore, we must glance at the more humble homes of the Italian, preparatory to the consideration of what will best suit our own less elevated scenery. [Footnote 21: [Compare "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," chap. i. § 1.]] 135. First, then, we lose the terraced approach, or, at least, its size and splendor, as these require great wealth to erect them, and perpetual expense to preserve them. For the chain of terraces we find substituted a simple garden, somewhat formally laid out; but redeemed from the charge of meanness by the nobility and size attained by most of its trees; the line of immense cypresses which generally surrounds it in part, and the luxuriance of the vegetation of its flowering shrubs. It has frequently a large entrance gate, well designed, but carelessly executed; sometimes singularly adorned with fragments of ancient sculpture, regularly introduced, which the spectator partly laments, as preserved in a mode so incongruous with their ancient meaning, and partly rejoices over, as preserved at all. The grottoes of the superior garden are here replaced by light ranges of arched summerhouses, designed in stucco, and occasionally adorned in their interior with fresco paintings of considerable brightness and beauty. 136. All this, however, has very little effect in introducing the eye to the villa itself, owing to the general want of inequality of level in the ground, so that the main building becomes an independent feature, instead of forming the apex of a mass of various architecture. Consequently, the weight of form which in the former case it might, and even ought to, possess, would here be cumbrous, ugly, and improper; and accordingly we find it got rid of. This is done, first by the addition of the square tower, a feature which is not allowed to break in upon the symmetry of buildings of high architectural pretensions; but is immediately introduced, whenever less richness of detail, or variety of approach, demands or admits of irregularity of form. It is a constant and most important feature in Italian landscape; sometimes high and apparently detached, as when it belongs to sacred edifices; sometimes low and strong, united with the mass of the fortress, or varying the form of the villa. It is always simple in its design, flat-roofed, its corners being turned by very slightly projecting pilasters, which are carried up the whole height of the tower, whatever it may be, without any regard to proportion, terminating in two arches on each side, in the villa most frequently filled up, though their curve is still distinguished by darker tint and slight relief. Two black holes on each side, near the top, are very often the only entrances by which light or sun can penetrate. These are seldom actually large, always proportionably small, and destitute of ornament or relief. 137. The forms of the villas to which these towers are attached are straggling, and varied by many crossing masses; but the great principle of simplicity is always kept in view; everything is square, and terminated by parallel lines; no tall chimneys, no conical roofs, no fantastic ornaments are ever admitted: the arch alone is allowed to relieve the stiffness of the general effect. This is introduced frequently, but not in the windows, which are either squares or double squares, at great distances from each other, set deeply into the walls and only adorned with broad flat borders. Where more light is required they are set moderately close, and protected by an outer line of arches, deep enough to keep the noonday sun from entering the rooms. These lines of arches cast soft shadows along the bright fronts, and are otherwise of great value. Their effect is pretty well seen in fig. 10; a piece which, while it has no distinguished beauty is yet pleasing by its entire simplicity; and peculiarly so, when we know that simplicity to have been chosen (some say, built) for its last and lonely habitation, by a mind of softest passion as of purest thought; and to have sheltered its silent old age among the blue and quiet hills, till it passed away like a deep lost melody from the earth, leaving a light of peace about the gray tomb at which the steps of those who pass by always falter, and around this deserted, and decaying, and calm habitation of the thoughts of the departed; Petrarch's, at Arquà. A more familiar instance of the application of these arches is the Villa of Mecænas at Tivoli, though it is improperly styled a villa, being pretty well known to have been nothing but stables. 138. The buttress is the only remaining point worthy of notice. It prevails to a considerable extent among the villas of the south, being always broad and tall, and occasionally so frequent as to give the building, viewed laterally, a pyramidal and cumbrous effect. The most usual form is that of a simple sloped mass, terminating in the wall, without the slightest finishing, and rising at an angle of about 84°. Sometimes it is perpendicular, sloped at the top into the wall; but it never has steps of increasing projection as it goes down. By observing the occurrence of these buttresses, an architect, who knew nothing of geology, might accurately determine the points of most energetic volcanic action in Italy; for their use is to protect the building from the injuries of earthquakes, the Italian having far too much good taste to use them, except in cases of extreme necessity. Thus, they are never found in North Italy, even in the fortresses. They begin to occur among the Apennines, south of Florence; they become more and more frequent and massy towards Rome; in the neighborhood of Naples they are huge and multitudinous, even the walls themselves being sometimes sloped; and the same state of things continues as we go south, on the coast of Calabria and Sicily. 139. Now, these buttresses present one of the most extraordinary and striking instances of the beauty of adaptation of style to locality and peculiarity of circumstance, that can be met with in the whole range of architectural investigation. Taken in the abstract, they are utterly detestable, formal, clumsy, and apparently unnecessary. Their builder thinks so himself: he hates them as things to be looked at, though he erects them as things to be depended upon. He has no idea that there is any propriety in their presence, though he knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of necessity; and, therefore he builds them. Where? On rocks whose sides are one mass of buttresses, of precisely the same form; on rocks which are cut and cloven by basalt and lava dikes of every size, and which, being themselves secondary, wear away gradually by exposure to the atmosphere, leaving the intersecting dikes standing out in solid and vertical walls, from the faces of their precipices. The eye passes over heaps of scoriæ and sloping banks of ashes, over the huge ruins of more ancient masses, till it trembles for the fate of the crags still standing round; but it finds them ribbed with basalt like bones, buttressed with a thousand lava walls, propped upon pedestals and pyramids of iron, which the pant and the pulse of the earthquake itself can scarcely move, for they are its own work; it climbs up to their summits, and there it finds the work of man; but it is no puny domicile, no eggshell imagination, it is in a continuation of the mountain itself, inclined at the same slope, ribbed in the same manner, protected by the same means against the same danger; not, indeed, filling the eye with delight, but, which is of more importance, freeing it from fear, and beautifully corresponding with the prevalent lines around it, which a less massive form would have rendered, in some cases, particularly about Etna, even ghastly. Even in the long and luxuriant views from Capo di Monte, and the heights to the east of Naples, the spectator looks over a series of volcanic eminences, generally, indeed, covered with rich verdure, but starting out here and there in gray and worn walls, fixed at a regular slope, and breaking away into masses more and more rugged towards Vesuvius, till the eye gets thoroughly habituated to their fortress-like outlines. [Illustration: Fig. 10. Petrarch's Villa; Arquà.--1837.] 140. Throughout the whole of this broken country, and, on the summits of these volcanic cones, rise innumerable villas; but they do not offend us, as we should have expected, by their attestation of cheerfulness of life amidst the wrecks left by destructive operation, nor hurt the eye by non-assimilation with the immediate features of the landscape: but they seem to rise prepared and adapted for resistance to, and endurance of, the circumstances of their position; to be inhabited by beings of energy and force sufficient to decree and to carry on a steady struggle with opposing elements, and of taste and feeling sufficient to proportion the form of the walls of men to the clefts in the flanks of the volcano, and to prevent the exultation and the lightness of transitory life from startling, like a mockery, the eternal remains of disguised desolation. 141. We have always considered these circumstances as most remarkable proofs of the perfect dependence of architecture on its situation, and of the utter impossibility of judging of the beauty of any building in the abstract: and we would also lay much stress upon them, as showing with what boldness the designer may introduce into his building, undisguised, such parts as local circumstances render desirable; for there will invariably be something in the nature of that which causes their necessity, which will endow them with beauty. 142. These, then, are the principal features of the Italian villa, modifications of which, of course more or less dignified in size, material or decoration, in proportion to the power and possessions of their proprietor, may be considered as composing every building of that class in Italy. A few remarks on their general effect will enable us to conclude the subject. 143. We have been so long accustomed to see the horizontal lines and simple forms which, as we have observed, still prevail among the Ausonian villas, used with the greatest dexterity, and the noblest effect, in the compositions of Claude, Salvator, and Poussin--and so habituated to consider these compositions as perfect models of the beautiful, as well as the pure in taste--that it is difficult to divest ourselves of prejudice, in the contemplation of the sources from which those masters received their education, their feelings, and their subjects. We would hope, however, and we think it may be proved, that in this case principle assists and encourages prejudice. First, referring only to the gratification afforded to the eye, which we know to depend upon fixed mathematical principles, though those principles are not always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be most delightful to the eye. [Illustration: Fig. 11. Broken Curves.] 144. Let us take then the simple form _a b c d_, interrupting the curve _c e_ [fig. 11, A]. Now, the eye will always continue the principal lines of such an object for itself, until they cut the main curve; that is, it will carry on _a b_ to _e_, and the total effect of the interruption will be that of the form _c d e_. Had the line _b d_ been nearer to _a c_, the effect would have been just the same. Now, every curve may be considered as composed of an infinite number of lines at right angles to each other, as _m n_ is made up of _o p, p q_, etc., (fig. B), whose ratio to each other varies with the direction of the curve. Then, if the right lines which form the curve at _c_ (fig. A) be increased, we have the figure _c d e_, that is, the apparent interruption of the curve is an increased part of the curve itself. To the mathematical reader we can explain our meaning more clearly, by pointing out that, taking _c_ for our origin, we have _a c_, _a e_, for the co-ordinates of _e_, and that, therefore, their ratio is the equation to the curve. Whence it appears, that, when any curve is broken in upon by a building composed of simple vertical and horizontal lines, the eye is furnished, by the interruption, with the equation to that part of the curve which is interrupted. If, instead of square forms, we take obliquity, as _r s t_ (fig. C), we have one line, _s t_, an absolute break, and the other _r s_, in false proportion. If we take another curve, we have an infinite number of lines, only two of which are where they ought to be. And this is the true reason for the constant introduction of features which appear to be somewhat formal, into the most perfect imaginations of the old masters, and the true cause of the extreme beauty of the groups formed by Italian villages in general. 145. Thus much for the mere effect on the eye. Of correspondence with national character, we have shown that we must not be disappointed, if we find little in the villa. The unfrequency of windows in the body of the building is partly attributed to the climate; but the total exclusion of light from some parts, as the base of the central tower, carries our thoughts back to the ancient system of Italian life, when every man's home had its dark, secret places, the abodes of his worst passions; whose shadows were alone intrusted with the motion of his thoughts; whose walls became the whited sepulchers of crime; whose echoes were never stirred except by such words as they dared not repeat;[22] from which the rod of power, or the dagger of passion, came forth invisible; before whose stillness princes grew pale, as their fates were prophesied or fulfilled by the horoscope or the hemlock; and nations, as the whisper of anarchy or of heresy was avenged by the opening of the low doors, through which those who entered returned not. [Footnote 22: Shelley has caught the feeling finely:--"The house is penetrated to its corners by the peeping insolence of the day. When the time comes the crickets shall not see me."--_Cenci_ [Act II. scene I, quoted from memory.]] 146. The mind of the Italian, sweet and smiling in its operations, deep and silent in its emotions, was thus, in some degree, typified by those abodes into which he was wont to retire from the tumult and wrath of life, to cherish or to gratify the passions which its struggles had excited; abodes which now gleam brightly and purely among the azure mountains, and by the sapphire sea, but whose stones are dropped with blood; whose vaults are black with the memory of guilt and grief unpunished and unavenged, and by whose walls the traveler hastens fearfully, when the sun has set, lest he should hear, awakening again through the horror of their chambers, the faint wail of the children of Ugolino,[23] the ominous alarm of Bonatti, or the long low cry of her who perished at Coll' Alto. OXFORD, _July, 1838._ [Footnote 23: Ugolino; Dante, _Inferno_ xxxiii. Guido Bonatti, the astrologer of Forli, _Inferno_ xx., 118. The lady who perished at Coll' Alto, _i.e._ the higher part of Colle de Val d'Elsa, between Siena and Volterra--was Sapia; _Purgatorio_, xiii. 100-154.] IV. THE LOWLAND VILLA--ENGLAND. 147. Although, as we have frequently observed, our chief object in these papers is, to discover the connection existing between national architecture and character, and therefore is one leading us rather to the investigation of what is, than of what ought to be, we yet consider that the subject would be imperfectly treated, if we did not, at the conclusion of the consideration of each particular rank of building, endeavor to apply such principles as may have been demonstrated to the architecture of our country, and to discover the _beau idéal_ of English character, which should be preserved through all the decorations which the builder may desire, and through every variety which fancy may suggest. There never was, and never can be, a universal _beau idéal_ in architecture, and the arrival at all local models of beauty would be the task of ages; but we can always, in some degree, determine those of our own lovely country. We cannot, however, in the present case, pass from the contemplation of the villa of a totally different climate, to the investigation of what is beautiful here, without the slightest reference to styles now or formerly adopted for our own "villas," if such they are to be called; and therefore it will be necessary to devote a short time to the observance of the peculiarities of such styles, if we possess them; or, if not, of the causes of their absence. 148. We have therefore headed this paper "The Villa, England;" awakening, without doubt, a different idea in the mind of every one who reads the words. Some, accustomed to the appearance of metropolitan villas, will think of brick buildings, with infinite appurtenances of black nicked chimney-pots, and plastered fronts, agreeably varied with graceful cracks, and undulatory shades of pink, brown, and green, communicated to the cement by smoky showers. Others will imagine large, square, many-windowed masses of white, set with careful choice of situation exactly where they will spoil the landscape to such a conspicuous degree, as to compel the gentlemen traveling on the outside of the mail to inquire of the guard, with great eagerness, "whose place that is;" and to enable the guard to reply with great distinctness, that it belongs to Squire ----, to the infinite gratification of Squire ----, and the still more infinite edification of the gentlemen on the outside of the mail. Others will remember masses of very red brick, quoined with stone; with columnar porticoes, about one-third of the height of the building, and two niches, with remarkable looking heads and bag-wigs in them, on each side; and two teapots, with a pocket-handkerchief hanging over each (described to the astonished spectator as "Grecian urns") located upon the roof, just under the chimneys. Others will go back to the range of Elizabethan gables; but none will have any idea of a fixed character, stamped on a class of national edifices. This is very melancholy, and very discouraging; the more so, as it is not without cause. 149. In the first place, Britain unites in itself so many geological formations, each giving a peculiar character to the country which it composes, that there is hardly a district five miles broad, which preserves the same features of landscape through its whole width.[24] If, for example, six foreigners were to land severally at Glasgow, at Aberystwith, at Falmouth, at Brighton, at Yarmouth, and at Newcastle, and to confine their investigations to the country within twenty miles of them, what different impressions would they receive of British landscape! If, therefore, there be as many forms of edifice as there are peculiarities of situation, we can have no national style; and if we abandon the idea of a correspondence with situation, we lose the only criterion capable of forming a national style.[25] [Footnote 24: Length is another thing: we might divide England into strips of country, running southwest and northeast, which would be composed of the same rock, and therefore would present the same character throughout the whole of their length. Almost all our great roads cut these transversely, and therefore seldom remain for ten miles together on the same beds.] [Footnote 25: It is thus that we find the most perfect schools of architecture have arisen in districts whose character is unchanging. Looking to Egypt first, we find a climate inducing a perpetual state of heavy feverish excitement, fostered by great magnificence of natural phenomena, and increased by the general custom of exposing the head continually to the sun (Herodotus, bk. III. chap. 12); so that, as in a dreaming fever we imagine distorted creatures and countenances moving and living in the quiet objects of the chamber, the Egyptian endowed all existence with distorted animation; turned dogs into deities, and leeks into lightning-darters; then gradually invested the blank granite with sculptured mystery, designed in superstition, and adored in disease; and then such masses of architecture arose as, in delirium, we feel crushing down upon us with eternal weight, and see extending far into the blackness above; huge and shapeless columns of colossal life; immense and immeasurable avenues of mountain stone. This was a perfect--that is, a marked, enduring, and decided school of architecture, induced by an unchanging and peculiar character of climate. Then in the purer air, and among the more refined energies of Greece, architecture rose into a more studied beauty, equally perfect in its school, because fostered in a district not 50 miles square, and in its dependent isles and colonies, all of which were under the same air, and partook of the same features of landscape. In Rome, it became less perfect, because more imitative than indigenous, and corrupted by the traveling, and conquering, and stealing ambition of the Roman; yet still a school of architecture, because the whole of Italy presented the same peculiarities of scene. So with the Spanish and Moresco schools, and many others; passing over the Gothic, which, though we hope hereafter to show it to be no exception to the rule, involves too many complicated questions to be now brought forward as a proof of it. [The comparison of Egyptian architecture with delirious visions seems to be an allusion to De Quincey's passage in "The Pains of Opium"--the last paper in "the Confessions of an Opium-Eater"--where, after describing Piranesi's _Dreams_, he tells how he fancied he was "buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids," etc.]] 150. Another cause to be noticed is the peculiar independence of the Englishman's disposition; a feeling which prompts him to suit his own humor, rather than fall in with the prevailing cast of social sentiment, or of natural beauty and expression; and which, therefore,--there being much obstinate originality in his mind,--produces strange varieties of dwelling, frequently rendered still more preposterous by his love of display; a love universally felt in England, and often absurdly indulged. Wealth is worshiped in France as the means of purchasing pleasure; in Italy, as an instrument of power; in England, as the means "of showing off." It would be a very great sacrifice indeed, in an Englishman of the average stamp, to put his villa out of the way, where nobody would ever see it, or think of _him_; it is his ambition to hear every one exclaiming, "What a pretty place! whose can it be?" And he cares very little about the peace which he has disturbed, or the repose which he has interrupted; though, even while he thus pushes himself into the way, he keeps an air of sulky retirement, of hedgehog independence, about his house, which takes away any idea of sociability or good-humor, which might otherwise have been suggested by his choice of situation. 151. But, in spite of all these unfortunate circumstances, there are some distinctive features in our English country houses, which are well worth a little attention. First, in the approach, we have one component part of effect, which may be called peculiarly our own, and which requires much study before it can be managed well,--the avenue. It is true that we meet with noble lines of timber trees cresting some of the larger bastions of Continental fortified cities; we see interminable regiments of mistletoed apple trees flanking the carriage road; and occasionally we approach a turreted château[26] by a broad way, "edged with poplar pale." But, allowing all this, the legitimate glory of the perfect avenue is ours still, as will appear by a little consideration of the elements which constitute its beauty. [Footnote 26: Or a city. Any one who remembers entering Carlsruhe from the north by the two miles of poplar avenue, remembers entering the most soulless of all cities, by the most lifeless of all entrances.] 152. The original idea was given by the opening of the tangled glades in our most ancient forests. It is rather a curious circumstance that, in those woods whose decay has been most instrumental in forming the bog districts of Ireland, the trees have, in general, been planted in symmetrical rows, at distances of about twenty feet apart. If the arrangement of our later woods be not quite so formal, they at least present frequent openings, carpeted with green sward, and edged with various foliage, which the architect (for so may the designer of the avenue be entitled) should do little more than reduce to symmetry and place in position, preserving, as much as possible, the manner and the proportions of nature. The avenue, therefore, must not be too long. It is quite a mistake to suppose that there is sublimity in a monotonous length of line, unless indeed it be carried to an extent generally impossible, as in the case of the long walk at Windsor. From three to four hundred yards is a length which will display the elevation well, and will not become tiresome from continued monotony. The kind of tree must, of course, be regulated by circumstances; but the foliage must be unequally disposed, so as to let in passages of light across the path, and cause the motion of any object across it to change, like an undulating melody, from darkness to light. It should meet at the top, so as to cause twilight, but not obscurity; and the idea of a vaulted roof, without rigidity. The ground should be green, so that the sunlight may tell with force wherever it strikes. Now, this kind of rich and shadowy vista is found in its perfection only in England: it is an attribute of green country; it is associated with all our memories of forest freedom, of our wood-rangers, and yeomen with the "doublets of the Lincoln green;" with our pride of ancient archers, whose art was fostered in such long and breezeless glades; with our thoughts of the merry chases of our kingly companies, when the dewy antlers sparkled down the intertwined paths of the windless woods, at the morning echo of the hunter's horn; with all, in fact, that once contributed to give our land its ancient name of "merry" England; a name which, in this age of steam and iron, it will have some difficulty in keeping. 153. This, then, is the first feature we would direct attention to, as characteristic, in the English villa: and be it remembered, that we are not speaking of the immense lines of foliage which guide the eye to some of our English palaces, for those are rather the adjuncts of the park than the approach to the building; but of the more laconic avenue, with the two crested columns and the iron gate at its entrance, leading the eye, in the space of a hundred yards or so, to the gables of its gray mansion. A good instance of this approach may be found at Petersham, by following the right side of the Thames for about half a mile from Richmond Hill; though the house, which, in this case, is approached by a noble avenue, is much to be reprehended, as a bad mixture of imitation of the Italian with corrupt Elizabethan; though it is somewhat instructive, as showing the ridiculous effect of statues out of doors in a climate like ours. 154. And now that we have pointed out the kind of approach most peculiarly English, that approach will guide us to the only style of villa architecture which can be called English,--the Elizabethan, and its varieties,--a style fantastic in its details, and capable of being subjected to no rule, but, as we think, well adapted for the scenery in which it arose. We allude not only to the pure Elizabethan, but even to the strange mixtures of classical ornaments with Gothic forms, which we find prevailing in the sixteenth century. In the most simple form, we have a building extending round three sides of a court, and, in the larger halls, round several interior courts, terminating in sharply gabled fronts, with broad oriels, divided into very narrow lights by channeled mullions, without decoration of any kind; the roof relieved by projecting dormer windows, whose lights are generally divided into three, terminating in very flat arches without cusps, the intermediate edge of the roof being battlemented. Then we find wreaths of ornament introduced at the base of the oriels;[27] ranges of short columns, the base of one upon the capital of another, running up beside them; the bases being very tall, sometimes decorated with knots of flower-work; the columns usually fluted,--wreathed, in richer examples, with ornament. The entrance is frequently formed by double ranges of those short columns, with intermediate arches, with shell canopies, and rich crests above.[28] This portico is carried up to some height above the roof, which is charged with an infinite variety of decorated chimneys. [Footnote 27: As in a beautiful example in Brasenose College, Oxford.] [Footnote 28: The portico of the [old] Schools and the inner courts of Merton and St. John's Colleges, Oxford; an old house at Charlton, Kent; and Burleigh House, will probably occur to the mind of the architect, as good examples of the varieties of this mixed style.] 155. Now, all this is utterly barbarous as architecture; but, with the exception of the chimneys, it is not false in taste; for it was originally intended for retired and quiet habitations in our forest country, not for conspicuous palaces in the streets of the city; and we have shown, in speaking of green country, that the eye is gratified[29] with fantastic details; that it is prepared, by the mingled lights of the natural scenery, for rich and entangled ornament, and would not only endure, but demand, irregularity of system in the architecture of man, to correspond with the infinite variety of form in the wood architecture of nature. Few surprises can be imagined more delightful than the breaking out of one of these rich gables, with its decorated entrance, among the dark trunks and twinkling leaves of forest scenery. Such an effect is rudely given in fig. 12. We would direct the attention chiefly to the following points in the building:-- [Footnote 29: [_i.e._ when the spectator is surrounded by woodland scenery. _Vide ante_, § 88.]] 156. First, it is a humorist, an odd, twisted, independent being, with a great deal of mixed, obstinate, and occasionally absurd originality. It has one or two graceful lines about it, and several harsh and cutting ones; it is a whole, which would allow of no unison with any other architecture; it is gathered in itself, and would look very ugly indeed, if pieces in a purer style of building were added. All this corresponds with points of English character, with its humors, its independency, and its horror of being put out of its own way. 157. Again, it is a thoroughly domestic building, homely and cottage-like in its prevailing forms, awakening no elevated ideas, assuming no nobility of form. It has none of the pride, or the grace of beauty, none of the dignity of delight which we found in the villa of Italy; but it is a habitation of everyday life, a protection from momentary inconvenience, covered with stiff efforts at decoration, and exactly typical of the mind of its inhabitant: not noble in its taste, not haughty in its recreation, not pure in its perception of beauty; but domestic in its pleasures, fond of matter-of-fact rather than of imagination, yet sparkling occasionally with odd wit and grotesque association. The Italian obtains his beauty, as his recreation, with quietness, with few and noble lines, with great seriousness and depth of thought, with very rare interruptions to the simple train of feeling. But the Englishman's villa is full of effort: it is a business with him to be playful, an infinite labor to be ornamental: he forces his amusement with fits of contrasted thought, with mingling of minor touches of humor, with a good deal of sulkiness, but with no melancholy; and therefore, owing to this last adjunct,[30] the building, in its original state, cannot be called beautiful, and we ought not to consider the effect of its present antiquity, evidence of which is, as was before proved, generally objectionable in a building devoted to pleasure,[31] and is only agreeable here, because united with the memory of a departed pride. [Footnote 30: Namely the fact that there is no melancholy in the English play-impulse; _v. ante_, § 23.] [Footnote 31: See § 118 seq.] 158. Again, it is a lifelike building, sparkling in its casements, brisk in its air, letting much light in at the walls and roof, low and comfortable-looking in its door. The Italian's dwelling is much walled in, letting out no secrets from the inside, dreary and drowsy in its effect. Just such is the difference between the minds of the inhabitants; the one passing away in deep and dark reverie, the other quick and business-like, enjoying its everyday occupations, and active in its ordinary engagements. 159. Again, it is a regularly planned, mechanical, well-disciplined building; each of its parts answering to its opposite, each of its ornaments matched with similarity. The Italian (where it has no high pretense to architectural beauty) is a rambling and irregular edifice, varied with uncorresponding masses: and the mind of the Italian we find similarly irregular, a thing of various and ungovernable impulse, without fixed principle of action; the Englishman's, regular and uniform in its emotions, steady in its habits, and firm even in its most trivial determinations. 160. Lastly, the size of the whole is diminutive, compared with the villas of the south, in which the effect was always large and general. Here the eye is drawn into the investigation of particular points, and miniature details; just as, in comparing the English and Continental cottages, we found the one characterized by a minute finish, and the other by a massive effect, exactly correspondent with the scale of the features and scenery of their respective localities. 161. It appears, then, from a consideration of these several points, that, in our antiquated style of villa architecture, some national feeling may be discovered; but in any buildings now raised there is no character whatever: all is ridiculous imitation, and despicable affectation; and it is much to be lamented, that now, when a great deal of public attention has been directed to architecture on the part of the public, more efforts are not made to turn that attention from mimicking Swiss _châlets_, to erecting English houses. We need not devote more time to the investigation of _purely_ domestic English architecture, though we hope to derive much instruction and pleasure from the contemplation of buildings partly adapted for defense, and partly for residence. The introduction of the means of defense is, however, a distinction which we do not wish at present to pass over; and therefore, in our next paper, we hope to conclude the subject of the villa, by a few remarks on the style now best adapted for English scenery. V. THE ENGLISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. 162. It has lately become a custom, among the more enlightened and refined of metropolitan shopkeepers, to advocate the cause of propriety in architectural decoration, by ensconcing their shelves, counters, and clerks in classical edifices, agreeably ornamented with ingenious devices, typical of the class of articles to which the tradesman particularly desires to direct the public attention. We find our grocers enshrined in temples whose columns are of canisters, and whose pinnacles are of sugar-loaves. Our shoemakers shape their soles under Gothic portals, with pendants of shoes, and canopies of Wellingtons; and our cheesemongers will, we doubt not, soon follow the excellent example, by raising shops the varied diameters of whose jointed columns, in their address to the eye, shall awaken memories of Staffa, Pæstum, and Palmyra; and in their address to the tongue, shall arouse exquisite associations of remembered flavor, Dutch, Stilton, and Strachino. 163. Now, this fit of taste on the part of our tradesmen is only a coarse form of a disposition inherent in the human mind. Those objects to which the eye has been most frequently accustomed, and among which the intellect has formed its habits of action, and the soul its modes of emotion, become agreeable to the thoughts, from their correspondence with their prevailing cast, especially when the business of life has had any relation to those objects; for it is in the habitual and necessary occupation that the most painless hours of existence are passed: whatever be the nature of that occupation, the memories belonging to it will always be agreeable, and, therefore, the objects awakening such memories will invariably be found beautiful, whatever their character or form. 164. It is thus that taste is the child and the slave of memory; and beauty is tested, not by any fixed standard, but by the chances of association; so that in every domestic building evidence will be found of the kind of life through which its owner has passed, in the operation of the habits of mind which that life has induced. From the superannuated coxswain, who plants his old ship's figure-head in his six square feet of front garden at Bermondsey, to the retired noble, the proud portal of whose mansion is surmounted by the broad shield and the crested gryphon, we are all guided, in our purest conceptions, our most ideal pursuit, of the beautiful, by remembrances of active occupation; and by principles derived from industry regulate the fancies of our repose. 165. It would be excessively interesting to follow out the investigation of this subject more fully, and to show how the most refined pleasures, the most delicate perceptions, of the creature who has been appointed to eat bread by the sweat of his brow, are dependent upon, and intimately connected with, his hours of labor. This question, however, has no relation to our immediate object, and we only allude to it, that we may be able to distinguish between the two component parts of individual character; the one being the consequence of continuous habits of life acting upon natural temperament and disposition, the other being the _humor_ of character, consequent upon circumstances altogether accidental, taking stern effect upon feelings previously determined by the first part of the character; laying on, as it were, the finishing touches, and occasioning the innumerable prejudices, fancies, and eccentricities, which, modified in every individual to an infinite extent, form the visible veil of the human heart. 166. Now, we have defined the province of the architect to be, that of selecting such forms and colors as shall delight the mind, by preparing it for the operations to which it is to be subjected in the building. Now, no forms, in domestic architecture, can thus prepare it more distinctly than those which correspond closely with the first, that is, the fixed and fundamental, part of character, which is always so uniform in its action, as to induce great simplicity in whatever it designs. Nothing, on the contrary, can be more injurious than the slightest influence of the _humors_ upon the edifice; for the influence of what is fitful in its energy, and petty in its imagination, would destroy all the harmony of parts, all the majesty of the whole; would substitute singularity for beauty, amusement for delight, and surprise for veneration. We could name several instances of buildings erected by men of the highest talent, and the most perfect general taste, who yet, not having paid much attention to the first principles of architecture, permitted the humor of their disposition to prevail over the majesty of their intellect, and, instead of building from a fixed design, gratified freak after freak, and fancy after fancy, as they were caught by the dream or the desire; mixed mimicries of incongruous reality with incorporations of undisciplined ideal; awakened every variety of contending feeling and unconnected memory; consummated confusion of form by trickery of detail; and have left barbarism, where half the world will look for loveliness. 167. This is a species of error which it is very difficult for persons paying superficial and temporary attention to architecture to avoid: however just their taste may be in criticism, it will fail in creation. It is only in moments of ease and amusement that they will think of their villa: they make it a mere plaything, and regard it with a kind of petty exultation, which, from its very nature, will give liberty to the light fancy, rather than the deep feeling, of the mind. It is not thought necessary to bestow labor of thought, and periods of deliberation, on one of the toys of life; still less to undergo the vexation of thwarting wishes, and leaving favorite imaginations, relating to minor points, unfulfilled, for the sake of general effect. 168. This feeling, then, is the first to which we would direct attention, as the villa architect's chief enemy: he will find it perpetually and provokingly in his way. He is requested, perhaps, by a man of great wealth, nay, of established taste in some points, to make a design for a villa in a lovely situation. The future proprietor carries him upstairs to his study, to give him what he calls his "ideas and materials," and, in all probability, begins somewhat thus:--"This, sir, is a slight note: I made it on the spot: approach to Villa Reale, near Pozzuoli. Dancing nymphs, you perceive; cypresses, shell fountain. I think I should like something like this for the approach: classical, you perceive, sir; elegant, graceful. Then, sir, this is a sketch, made by an American friend of mine: Whee-whaw-Kantamaraw's wigwam, King of the--Cannibal Islands, I think he said, sir. Log, you observe; scalps, and boa-constrictor skins: curious. Something like this, sir, would look neat, I think, for the front door; don't you? Then, the lower windows, I've not quite decided upon; but what would you say to Egyptian, sir? I think I should like my windows Egyptian, with hieroglyphics, sir; storks and coffins, and appropriate moldings above: I brought some from Fountains Abbey the other day. Look here, sir; angels' heads putting their tongues out, rolled up in cabbage leaves, with a dragon on each side riding on a broomstick, and the devil looking on from the mouth of an alligator, sir.[32] Odd, I think; interesting. Then the corners may be turned by octagonal towers, like the center one in Kenilworth Castle; with Gothic doors, portcullis, and all, quite perfect; with cross slits for arrows, battlements for musketry, machicolations for boiling lead, and a room at the top for drying plums; and the conservatory at the bottom, sir, with Virginian creepers up the towers; door supported by sphinxes, holding scrapers in their fore paws, and having their tails prolonged into warm-water pipes, to keep the plants safe in winter, etc." The architect is, without doubt, a little astonished by these ideas and combinations; yet he sits calmly down to draw his elevations; as if he were a stone-mason, or his employer an architect; and the fabric rises to electrify its beholders, and confer immortality on its perpetrator. [Footnote 32: Actually carved on one of the groins of Roslin Chapel.] [Illustration: Fig. 12. Old English Mansion. 1837.] 169. This is no exaggeration: we have not only listened to speculations on the probable degree of the future majesty, but contemplated the actual illustrious existence, of several such buildings, with sufficient beauty in the management of some of their features to show that an architect had superintended them, and sufficient taste in their interior economy to prove that a refined intellect had projected them; and had projected a Vandalism, only because fancy had been followed instead of judgment; with as much _nonchalance_ as is evinced by a perfect poet, who is extemporizing doggerel for a baby; full of brilliant points, which he cannot help, and jumbled into confusion, for which he does not care. 170. Such are the first difficulties to be encountered in villa designs. They must always continue to occur in some degree, though they might be met with ease by a determination on the part of professional men to give no assistance whatever, beyond the mere superintendence of construction, unless they be permitted to take the whole exterior design into their own hands, merely receiving broad instructions respecting the style (and not attending to them unless they like). They should not make out the smallest detail, unless they were answerable for the whole. In this case, gentlemen architects would be thrown so utterly on their own resources, that, unless those resources were adequate, they would be obliged to surrender the task into more practiced hands; and, if they were adequate, if the amateur had paid so much attention to the art as to be capable of giving the design perfectly, it is probable he would not erect anything strikingly abominable. 171. Such a system (supposing that it could be carried fully into effect, and that there were no such animals as sentimental stone-masons to give technical assistance) might, at first, seem rather an encroachment on the liberty of the subject, inasmuch as it would prevent people from indulging their edificatorial fancies, unless they knew something about the matter, or, as the sufferers would probably complain, from doing what they liked with their own. But the mistake would evidently lie in their supposing, as people too frequently do, that the outside of their house _is_ their own, and that they have a perfect right therein to make fools of themselves in any manner, and to any extent, they may think proper. This is quite true in the case of interiors; every one has an indisputable right to hold himself up as a laughing-stock to the whole circle of his friends and acquaintances, and to consult his own private asinine comfort by every piece of absurdity which can in any degree contribute to the same; but no one has any right to exhibit his imbecilities at other people's expense, or to claim the public pity by inflicting public pain. In England, especially, where, as we saw before, the rage for attracting observation is universal, the outside of the villa is rendered, by the proprietor's own disposition, the property of those who daily pass by, and whom it hourly affects with pleasure or pain. For the pain which the eye feels from the violation of a law to which it has been accustomed, or the mind from the occurrence of anything jarring to its finest feelings, is as distinct as that occasioned by the interruption of the physical economy, differing only inasmuch as it is not permanent; and, therefore, an individual has as little right to fulfill his own conceptions by disgusting thousands, as, were his body as impenetrable to steel or poison, as his brain to the effect of the beautiful or true, he would have to decorate his carriage roads with caltrops, or to line his plantations with upas trees. 172. The violation of general feelings would thus be unjust, even were their consultation productive of continued vexation to the individual: but it is not. To no one is the architecture of the exterior of a dwelling-house of so little consequence as to its inhabitant. Its material may affect his comfort, and its condition may touch his pride; but, for its architecture, his eye gets accustomed to it in a week, and, after that, Hellenic, Barbaric, or Yankee, are all the same to the domestic feelings, are all lost in the one name of Home. Even the conceit of living in a châlet, or a wigwam, or a pagoda, cannot retain its influence for six months over the weak minds which alone can feel it; and the monotony of existence becomes to them exactly what it would have been had they never inflicted a pang upon the unfortunate spectators, whose unaccustomed eyes shrink daily from the impression to which they have not been rendered callous by custom, or lenient by false taste. 173. If these considerations are just when they allude only to buildings in the abstract, how much more when referring to them as materials of composition, materials of infinite power, to adorn or destroy the loveliness of the earth. The nobler scenery of that earth is the inheritance of all her inhabitants: it is not merely for the few to whom it temporarily belongs, to feed from like swine, or to stable upon like horses, but it has been appointed to be the school of the minds which are kingly among their fellows, to excite the highest energies of humanity, to furnish strength to the lordliest intellect, and food for the holiest emotions of the human soul. The presence of life is, indeed, necessary to its beauty, but of life congenial with its character; and that life is not congenial which thrusts presumptuously forward, amidst the calmness of the universe, the confusion of its own petty interests and groveling imaginations, and stands up with the insolence of a moment, amid the majesty of all time, to build baby fortifications upon the bones of the world, or to sweep the copse from the corrie, and the shadow from the shore, that fools may risk, and gamblers gather, the spoil of a thousand summers. 174. It should therefore be remembered by every proprietor of land in hill country, that his possessions are the means of a peculiar education, otherwise unattainable, to the artists, and in some degree to the literary men, of his country; that, even in this limited point of view, they are a national possession, but much more so when it is remembered how many thousands are perpetually receiving from them, not merely a transitory pleasure, but such thrilling perpetuity of pure emotion, such lofty subject for scientific speculation, and such deep lessons of natural religion, as only the work of a Deity can impress, and only the spirit of an immortal can feel: they should remember that the slightest deformity, the most contemptible excrescence, can injure the effect of the noblest natural scenery, as a note of discord can annihilate the expression of the purest harmony; that thus it is in the power of worms to conceal, to destroy, or to violate, what angels could not restore, create or consecrate; and that the right, which every man unquestionably possesses, to be an ass, is extended only, in public, to those who are innocent in idiotism, not to the more malicious clowns, who thrust their degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair colors of earth, and mix their incoherent cries with the melodies of eternity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over with the characters of idiocy the pages that have been written by the finger of God. 175. These feelings we would endeavor to impress upon all persons likely to have anything to do with embellishing, as it is called, fine natural scenery; as they might, in some degree, convince both the architect and his employer of the danger of giving free play to the imagination in cases involving intricate questions of feeling and composition, and might persuade the designer of the necessity of looking, not to his own acre of land, or to his own peculiar tastes, but to the whole mass of forms and combination of impressions with which he is surrounded. 176. Let us suppose, however, that the design is yielded entirely to the architect's discretion. Being a piece of domestic architecture, the chief object in its exterior design will be to arouse domestic feelings, which, as we saw before, it will do most distinctly by corresponding with the first part of character. Yet it is still more necessary that it should correspond with its situation; and hence arises another difficulty, the reconciliation of correspondence with contraries; for such, it is deeply to be regretted, are too often the individual's mind, and the dwelling-place it chooses. The polished courtier brings his refinement and duplicity with him to ape the Arcadian rustic in Devonshire; the romantic rhymer takes a plastered habitation, with one back window looking into the Green Park; the soft votary of luxury endeavors to rise at seven, in some Ultima Thule of frosts and storms; and the rich stock-jobber calculates his percentages among the soft dingles and woody shores of Westmoreland. When the architect finds this to be the case, he must, of course, content himself with suiting his design to such a mind as ought to be where the intruder's is; for the feelings which are so much at variance with themselves in the choice of situation, will not be found too critical of their domicile, however little suited to their temper. 177. If possible, however, he should aim at something more; he should draw his employer into general conversation; observe the bent of his disposition, and the habits of his mind; notice every manifestation of fixed opinions, and then transfer to his architecture as much of the feeling he has observed as is distinct in its operation. This he should do, not because the general spectator will be aware of the aptness of the building, which, knowing nothing of its inmate, he cannot be; nor to please the individual himself, which it is a chance if any simple design ever will, and who never will find out how well his character has been fitted; but because a portrait is always more spirited than a composed countenance; and because this study of human passions will bring a degree of energy, unity, and originality into every one of his designs (all of which will necessarily be different), so simple, so domestic, and so lifelike, as to strike every spectator with an interest and a sympathy, for which he will be utterly unable to account, and to impress on him a perception of something more ethereal than stone or carving, somewhat similar to that which some will remember having felt disagreeably in their childhood, on looking at any old house authentically haunted. The architect will forget in his study of life the formalities of science, and, while his practiced eye will prevent him from erring in technicalities, he will advance, with the ruling feeling, which, in masses of mind, is nationality, to the conception of something truly original, yet perfectly pure. 178. He will also find his advantage in having obtained a guide in the invention of decorations of which, as we shall show, we would have many more in English villas than economy at present allows. Candidus[33] complains, in his Note Book, that Elizabethan architecture is frequently adopted, because it is easy, with a pair of scissors, to derive a zigzag ornament from a doubled piece of paper. But we would fain hope that none of our professional architects have so far lost sight of the meaning of their art, as to believe that roughening stone mathematically is bestowing decoration, though we are too sternly convinced that they believe mankind to be more shortsighted by at least thirty yards than they are; for they think of nothing but general effect in their ornaments, and lay on their flower-work so carelessly, that a good substantial captain's biscuit, with the small holes left by the penetration of the baker's four fingers, encircling the large one which testifies of the forcible passage of his thumb, would form quite as elegant a rosette as hundreds now perpetuated in stone. [Footnote 33: [A contributor to the "Architectural Magazine."]] 179. Now, there is nothing which requires study so close, or experiment so frequent, as the proper designing of ornament. For its use and position some definite rules may be given; but, when the space and position have been determined, the lines of curvature, the breadth, depth, and sharpness of the shadows to be obtained, the junction of the parts of a group, and the general expression, will present questions for the solution of which the study of years will sometimes scarcely be sufficient;[34] for they depend upon the feeling of the eye and hand, and there is nothing like perfection in decoration, nothing which, in all probability, might not, by farther consideration, be improved. Now, in cases in which the outline and larger masses are determined by situation, the architect will frequently find it necessary to fall back upon his decorations, as the only means of obtaining character; and that which before was an unmeaning lump of jagged freestone, will become a part of expression, an accessory of beautiful design, varied in its form, and delicate in its effect. Then, instead of shrinking from his bits of ornament, as from things which will give him trouble to invent, and will answer no other purpose than that of occupying what would otherwise have looked blank, the designer will view them as an efficient _corps de reserve_, to be brought up when the eye comes to close quarters with the edifice, to maintain and deepen the impression it has previously received. Much more time will be spent in the conception, much more labor in the execution, of such meaning ornaments, but both will be well spent and well rewarded. [Footnote 34: For example, we would allow one of the modern builders of Gothic chapels a month of invention, and a botanic garden to work from, with perfect certainty that he would not, at the expiration of the time, be able to present us with one design of leafage equal in beauty to hundreds we could point out in the capitals and niches of Melrose and Roslin.] 180. Perhaps our meaning may be made more clear by Fig. 13 A, which is that of a window found in a domestic building of mixed and corrupt architecture, at Munich (which we give now, because we shall have occasion to allude to it hereafter). Its absurd breadth of molding, so disproportionate to its cornice, renders it excessively ugly, but capable of great variety of effect. It forms one of a range of four, turning an angle, whose moldings join each other, their double breadth being the whole separation of the apertures, which are something more than double squares. Now by alteration of the decoration, and depth of shadow, we have B and C. These three windows differ entirely in their feeling and manner, and are broad examples of such distinctions of style as might be adopted severally in the habitations of the man of imagination, the man of intellect and the man of feeling.[35] If our alterations have been properly made, there will be no difficulty in distinguishing between their expressions, which we shall therefore leave to conjecture. The character of A depends upon the softness with which the light is caught upon its ornaments, which should not have a single hard line in them; and on the gradual, unequal, but intense, depth of its shadows. B should have all its forms undefined, and passing into one another, the touches of the chisel light, a grotesque face or feature occurring in parts, the shadows pale, but broad[36]; and the boldest part of the carving kept in shadow rather than light. The third should be hard in its lines, strong in its shades, and quiet in its ornament. [Footnote 35: [Though not in this order. C is the intellectual window; B, the imaginative one.]] [Footnote 36: It is too much the custom to consider a design as composed of a certain number of hard lines, instead of a certain number of shadows of various depth and dimension. Though these shadows change their position in the course of the day, they are relatively always the same. They have most variety under a strong light without sun, most expression with the sun. A little observation of the infinite variety of shade which the sun is capable of casting, as it touches projections of different curve and character, will enable the designer to be certain of his effects. We shall have occasion to allude to this subject again. [See _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, III. 13, 23.]] [Illustration: Fig. 13. Windows.] 181. These hints will be sufficient to explain our meaning, and we have not space to do more, as the object of these papers is rather to observe than to advise. Besides, in questions of expression so intricate, it is almost impossible to advance fixed principles; every mind will have perceptions of its own, which will guide its speculations, every hand, and eye, and peculiar feeling, varying even from year to year. We have only started the subject of correspondence with individual character, because we think that imaginative minds might take up the idea with some success, as furnishing them with a guide in the variation of their designs, more certain than mere experiment on unmeaning forms, or than ringing indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty. To the reverie, rather than the investigation, to the dream, rather than the deliberation, of the architect, we recommend it, as a branch of art in which instinct will do more than precept, and inspiration than technicality. The correspondence of our villa architecture with our natural scenery may be determined with far greater accuracy, and will require careful investigation. We had hoped to have concluded the Villa in this paper; but the importance of domestic architecture at the present day, when people want houses more than fortresses, safes more than keeps, and sculleries more than dungeons, is sufficient apology for delay. OXFORD, _August, 1838._ VI. THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. _The Cultivated, or Blue Country and the Wooded, or Green Country._ 182. In the papers hitherto devoted to the investigation of villa architecture, we have contemplated the beauties of what may be considered as its model, in its original and natural territory; and we have noticed the difficulties to be encountered in the just erection of villas in England. It remains only to lay down the general principles of composition, which in such difficulties may, in some degree, serve as a guide. Into more than general principles it is not consistent with our plan to enter. One obstacle, which was more particularly noticed, was, as it may be remembered, the variety of the geological formations of the country. This will compel us to use the divisions of landscape formerly adopted in speaking of the cottage, and to investigate severally the kind of domestic architecture required by each. 183. First. Blue or cultivated country, which is to be considered as including those suburban districts, in the neighborhood of populous cities, which, though more frequently black than blue, possess the activity, industry, and life, which we before noticed as one of the characteristics of blue country. We shall not, however, allude to suburban villas at present; first, because they are in country possessing nothing which can be spoiled by anything; and, secondly, because their close association renders them subject to laws which, being altogether different from those by which we are to judge of the beauty of solitary villas, we shall have to develop in the consideration of street effects. 184. Passing over the suburb, then, we have to distinguish between the _simple_ blue country, which is composed only of rich cultivated champaign, relieved in parts by low undulations, monotonous and uninteresting as a whole, though cheerful in its character, and beautiful in details of lanes and meadow paths; and the _picturesque_ blue country, lying at the foot of high hill ranges, intersected by their outworks, broken here and there into bits of crag and dingle scenery; perpetually presenting prospects of exquisite distant beauty, and possessing in its valley and river scenery, fine detached specimens of the natural "green country." This distinction we did not make in speaking of the cottage; the effect of which, owing to its size, can extend only over a limited space; and this space, if in picturesque blue country, must be either part of its monotonous cultivation, when it is to be considered as belonging to the simple blue country, or part of its dingle scenery, when it becomes green country; and it would not be just, to suit a cottage, actually placed in one color, to the general effect of another color, with which it could have nothing to do. But the effect of the villa extends very often over a considerable space, and becomes part of the large features of the district; so that the whole character and expression of the visible landscape must be considered, and thus the distinction between the two kinds of blue country becomes absolutely necessary. Of the first, or simple, we have already adduced, as an example, the greater part of the South of England. Of the second, or picturesque, the cultivated parts of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, generally Shropshire, and the north of Lancashire, and Cumberland, beyond Caldbeck Fells, are good examples; perhaps better than all, the country for twelve miles north, and thirty south, east, and west, of Stirling. _A. The Simple Blue Country._ 185. Now, the matter-of-fact business-like activity of simple blue country has been already alluded to. This attribute renders in it a plain palpable brick dwelling-house allowable; though a thing which, in every country but the simple blue, compels every spectator of any feeling to send up aspirations, that builders who, like those of Babel, have brick for stone, may be put, like those of Babel, to confusion. Here, however, it is not only allowable, but even agreeable, for the following reasons:-- 186. Its cleanness and freshness of color, admitting of little dampness or staining, firm in its consistence, not moldering like stone, and therefore inducing no conviction of antiquity or decay, presents rather the appearance of such comfort as is contrived for the enjoyment of temporary wealth, than of such solidity as is raised for the inheritance of unfluctuating power. It is thus admirably suited for that country where all is change, and all activity; where the working and money-making members of the community are perpetually succeeding and overpowering each other; enjoying, each in his turn, the reward of his industry; yielding up the field, the pasture, and the mine, to his successor, and leaving no more memory behind him, no farther evidence of his individual existence, than is left by a working bee, in the honey for which we thank his class, forgetting the individual. The simple blue country may, in fact, be considered the dining-table of the nation; from which it provides for its immediate necessities, at which it feels only its present existence, and in which it requires, not a piece of furniture adapted only to remind it of past refection, but a polished, clean, and convenient minister to its immediate wishes. No habitation, therefore, in this country, should look old: it should give an impression of present prosperity, of swift motion and high energy of life; too rapid in its successive operation to attain greatness, or allow of decay, in its works. This is the first cause which, in this country, renders brick allowable. 187. Again, wherever the soil breaks out in simple blue country, whether in the river shore, or the broken roadside bank, or the plowed field, in nine cases out of ten it is excessively warm in its color, being either gravel or clay, the black vegetable soil never remaining free of vegetation. The warm tone of these beds of soil is an admirable relief to the blue of the distances, which we have taken as the distinctive feature of the country, tending to produce the perfect light without which no landscape can be complete. Therefore the red of the brick is prevented from glaring upon the eye, by its falling in with similar colors in the ground, and contrasting finely with the general tone of the distance. This is another instance of the material which nature most readily furnishes being the right one. In almost all blue country, we have only to turn out a few spadefuls of loose soil, and we come to the bed of clay, which is the best material for the building; whereas we should have to travel hundreds of miles, or to dig thousands of feet, to get the stone which nature does not want, and therefore has not given. 188. Another excellence in brick is its perfect air of English respectability. It is utterly impossible for an edifice altogether of brick to look affected or absurd: it may look rude, it may look vulgar, it may look disgusting, in a wrong place; but it cannot look foolish, for it is incapable of pretension. We may suppose its master a brute, or an ignoramus, but we can never suppose him a coxcomb: a bear he may be, a fop he cannot be; and, if we find him out of his place, we feel that it is owing to error, not to impudence; to self-ignorance, not to self-conceit; to the want, not the assumption of feeling. It is thus that brick is peculiarly English in its effect: for we are brutes in many things, and we are ignoramuses in many things, and we are destitute of feeling in many things, but we are _not_ coxcombs. It is only by the utmost effort, that some of our most highly gifted junior gentlemen can attain such distinction of title; and even then the honor sits ill upon them: they are but awkward coxcombs. Affectation[37] never was, and never will be, a part of English character; we have too much national pride, too much consciousness of our own dignity and power, too much established self-satisfaction, to allow us to become ridiculous by imitative efforts; and, as it is only by endeavoring to appear what he is not, that a man ever can become so, properly speaking, our true-witted Continental neighbors, who shrink from John Bull as a brute, never laugh at him as a fool. "Il est bête, il n'est pas pourtant sot." [Footnote 37: The nation, indeed, possesses one or two interesting individuals, whose affectation is, as we have seen, strikingly manifested in their lake villas: but every rule has its exceptions; and, even on these gifted personages, the affectation sits so very awkwardly, so like a velvet bonnet on a plowman's carroty hair, that it is evidently a late acquisition. Thus, one proprietor of land on Windermere, who has built unto himself a castellated mansion with round towers, and a Swiss cottage for a stable, has yet, with that admiration of the "neat but not gaudy," which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea-green, painted the rocks at the back of his house pink, that they may look clean. This is a little outcrop of English feeling in the midst of the assumed romance.] 189. The brick house admirably corresponds with this part of English character; for, unable as it is to be beautiful, or graceful, or dignified, it is equally unable to be absurd. There is a proud independence about it, which seems conscious of its entire and perfect applicability to those uses for which it was built, and full of a good-natured intention to render every one who seeks shelter within its walls excessively comfortable; it therefore feels awkward in no company; and, wherever it intrudes its good-humored red face, stares plaster and marble out of countenance with an insensible audacity, which we drive out of such refined company, as we would a clown from a drawing-room, but which we nevertheless seek in its own place, as we would seek the conversation of the clown in his own turnip-field, if he were sensible in the main. 190. Lastly. Brick is admirably adapted for the climate of England, and for the frequent manufacturing nuisances of English blue country: for the smoke, which makes marble look like charcoal, and stucco like mud, only renders brick less glaring in its color; and the inclement climate, which makes the composition front look as if its architect had been amusing himself by throwing buckets of green water down from the roof, and before which the granite base of Stirling Castle is moldering into sand as impotent as ever was ribbed by ripple, wreaks its rage in vain upon the bits of baked clay, leaving them strong, and dry, and stainless, warm and comfortable in their effect, even when neglect has permitted the moss and wall-flower to creep into their crannies, and mellow into something like beauty that which is always comfort. Damp, which fills many stones as it would a sponge, is defied by the brick; and the warmth of every gleam of sunshine is caught by it, and stored up for future expenditure; so that, both actually and in its effect, it is peculiarly suited for a climate whose changes are in general from bad to worse, and from worse to bad. 191. These then are the principal apologies which the brick dwelling-house has to offer for its ugliness. They will, however, only stand it in stead in the simple blue country; and, even there, only when the following points are observed. First. The brick should neither be of the white, nor the very dark red, kind. The white is worse than useless as a color: its cold, raw, sandy neutral has neither warmth enough to relieve, nor gray enough to harmonize with, any natural tones; it does not please the eye by warmth, in shade; it hurts it, by dry heat in sun; it has none of the advantages of effect which brick may have, to compensate for the vulgarity which it must have, and is altogether to be abhorred. The very bright red, again, is one of the ugliest warm colors that art ever stumbled upon: it is never mellowed by damps or anything else, and spoils everything near it by its intolerable and inevitable glare. The moderately dark brick, of a neutral red, is to be chosen, and this, after a year or two, will be farther softened in its color by atmospheric influence, and will possess all the advantages we have enumerated. It is almost unnecessary to point out its fitness for a damp situation, not only as the best material for securing the comfort of the inhabitant, but because it will the sooner contract a certain degree of softness of tone, occasioned by microscopic vegetation, which will leave no more brick-red than is agreeable to the feelings where the atmosphere is chill. 192. Secondly. Even this kind of red is a very powerful color; and as, in combination with the other primitive colors, very little of it will complete the light, so, very little will answer every purpose in landscape composition, and every addition, above that little, will be disagreeable. Brick, therefore, never should be used in large groups of buildings, where those groups are to form part of landscape scenery: two or three houses, partly shaded with trees, are all that can be admitted at once. There is no object more villainously destructive of natural beauty, than a large town, of very red brick, with very scarlet tiling, very tall chimneys, and very few trees; while there are few objects that harmonize more agreeably with the feeling of English ordinary landscape, than the large, old, solitary, brick manor house, with its group of dark cedars on the lawn in front, and the tall wrought-iron gates opening down the avenue of approach. 193. Thirdly. No stone quoining, or presence of any contrasting color, should be admitted. Quoins in general (though, by the by, they are prettily managed in the old Tolbooth of Glasgow, and some other antique buildings in Scotland), are only excusable as giving an appearance of strength; while their zigzag monotony, when rendered conspicuous by difference of color, is altogether detestable. White cornices, niches, and the other superfluous introductions in stone and plaster, which some architects seem to think ornamental, only mock what they cannot mend, take away the whole expression of the edifice, render the brick-red glaring and harsh, and become themselves ridiculous in isolation. Besides, as a general principle, contrasts of extensive color are to be avoided in all buildings, and especially in positive and unmanageable tints. It is difficult to imagine whence the custom of putting stone ornaments into brick buildings could have arisen; unless it be an imitation of the Italian custom of mixing marble with stucco, which affords it no sanction, as the marble is only distinguishable from the general material by the sharpness of the carved edges. The Dutch seem to have been the originators of the custom; and, by the by, if we remember right, in one of the very finest pieces of coloring now extant, a landscape by Rubens (in the gallery at Munich, we think), the artist seems to have sanctioned the barbarism, by introducing a brick edifice, with white stone quoining. But the truth is that he selected the subject, partly under the influence of domestic feelings, the place being, as it is thought, his own habitation, and partly as a piece of practice, presenting such excessive difficulties of color, as he, the lord of color, who alone could overcome them, would peculiarly delight in overcoming; and the harmony with which he has combined tints of the most daring force, and sharpest apparent contrast, in the edgy building, and opposed them to an uninteresting distance of excessive azure (simple blue country, observe), is one of the chief wonders of the painting: so that this masterpiece can no more furnish an apology for the continuance of a practice which, though it gives some liveliness of character to the warehouses of Amsterdam, is fit only for a place whose foundations are mud, and whose inhabitants are partially animated cheeses,--than Caravaggio's custom of painting blackguards should introduce an ambition among mankind in general of becoming fit subjects for his pencil. We shall have occasion again to allude to this subject, in speaking of Dutch street effects. 194. Fourthly. It will generally be found to agree best with the business-like air of the blue country, if the house be excessively simple, and apparently altogether the minister of utility; but, where it is to be extensive, or tall, a few decorations about the upper windows are desirable. These should be quiet and severe in their lines, and cut boldly in the brick itself. Some of the minor streets in the King of Sardinia's capital are altogether of brick, very richly charged with carving, with excellent effect, and furnish a very good model. Of course no delicate ornament can be obtained, and no classical lines can be allowed; for we should be horrified by seeing that in brick which we have been accustomed to see in marble. The architect must be left to his own taste for laying on, sparingly and carefully, a few dispositions of well proportioned line, which are all that can ever be required. 195. These broad principles are all that need be attended to in simple blue country: anything will look well in it which is not affected; and the architect, who keeps comfort and utility steadily in view, and runs off into no expatiations of fancy, need never be afraid here of falling into error. _B. The Picturesque Blue Country._ 196. But the case is different with the picturesque blue country.[38] Here, owing to the causes mentioned in the notes at p. 71, we have some of the most elevated bits of landscape character, which the country, whatever it may be, can afford. Its first and most distinctive peculiarity is its grace; it is all undulation and variety of line, one curve passing into another with the most exquisite softness, rolling away into faint and far outlines of various depth and decision, yet none hard or harsh; and in all probability, rounded off in the near ground into massy forms of partially wooded hill, shaded downwards into winding dingles or cliffy ravines, each form melting imperceptibly into the next, without an edge or angle. [Footnote 38: In leaving simple blue country, we hope it need hardly be said that we leave bricks at once and forever. Nothing can excuse them out of their proper territory.] 197. Its next character is mystery. It is a country peculiarly distinguished by its possessing features of great sublimity in the distance, without giving any hint in the foreground of their actual nature. A range of mountain, seen from a mountain peak, may have sublimity, but not the mystery with which it is invested, when seen rising over the farthest surge of misty blue, where everything near is soft and smiling, totally separated in nature from the consolidated clouds of the horizon. The picturesque blue country is sure, from the nature of the ground, to present some distance of this kind, so as never to be without a high and ethereal mystery. 198. The third and last distinctive attribute is sensuality. This is a startling word, and requires some explanation. In the first place, every line is voluptuous, floating, and wavy in its form; deep, rich, and exquisitely soft in its color; drowsy in its effect; like slow wild music; letting the eye repose on it, as on a wreath of cloud, without one feature of harshness to hurt, or of contrast to awaken. In the second place, the cultivation, which, in the simple blue country, has the forced formality of growth which evidently is to supply the necessities of man, here seems to leap into the spontaneous luxuriance of life, which is fitted to minister to his pleasures. The surface of the earth exults with animation, especially tending to the gratification of the senses; and, without the artificialness which reminds man of the necessity of his own labor, without the opposing influences which call for his resistance, without the vast energies that remind him of his impotence, without the sublimity that can call his noblest thoughts into action, yet, with every perfection that can tempt him to indolence of enjoyment, and with such abundant bestowal of natural gifts, as might seem to prevent that indolence from being its own punishment, the earth appears to have become a garden of delight, wherein the sweep of the bright hills, without chasm or crag, the flow of the bending rivers, without rock or rapid, and the fruitfulness of the fair earth, without care or labor on the part of its inhabitants, appeal to the most pleasant passions of eye and sense, calling for no effort of body, and impressing no fear on the mind. In hill country we have a struggle to maintain with the elements; in simple blue, we have not the luxuriance of delight: here, and here only, all nature combines to breathe over us a lulling slumber, through which life degenerates into sensation. 199. These considerations are sufficient to explain what we mean by the epithet "sensuality." Now, taking these three distinctive attributes, the mysterious, the graceful, and the voluptuous, what is the whole character? Very nearly--the Greek: for these attributes, common to all picturesque blue country, are modified in the degree of their presence by every climate. In England they are all low in their tone; but as we go southward, the voluptuousness becomes deeper in feeling as the colors of the earth and the heaven become purer and more passionate, and "the purple of ocean deepest of dye;" the mystery becomes mightier, for the greater and more universal energy of the beautiful permits its features to come nearer, and to rise into the sublime, without causing fear. It is thus that we get the essence of the Greek feeling, as it was embodied in their finest imaginations, as it showed itself in the works of their sculptors and their poets, in which sensation was made almost equal with thought, and deified by its nobility of association; at once voluptuous, refined, dreamily mysterious, infinitely beautiful. Hence, it appears that the spirit of this blue country is essentially Greek; though, in England and in other northern localities, that spirit is possessed by it in a diminished and degraded degree. It is also the natural dominion of the villa, possessing all the attributes which attracted the Romans, when, in their hours of idleness, they lifted the light arches along the echoing promontories of Tiber. It is especially suited to the expression of the edifice of pleasure; and, therefore, is most capable of being adorned by it. 200. The attention of every one about to raise himself a villa of any kind should, therefore, be directed to this kind of country; first, as that in which he will not be felt to be an intruder; secondly, as that which will, in all probability, afford him the greatest degree of continuous pleasure, when his eye has become accustomed to the features of the locality. To the human mind, as on the average constituted, the features of hill scenery will, by repetition, become tiresome, and of wood scenery, monotonous; while the simple blue can possess little interest of any kind. Powerful intellect will generally take perpetual delight in hill residence; but the general mind soon feels itself oppressed with a peculiar melancholy and weariness, which it is ashamed to own; and we hear our romantic gentlemen begin to call out about the want of society, while, if the animals were fit to live where they have forced themselves, they would never want more society than that of a gray stone, or of a clear pool of gushing water. On the other hand, there are few minds so degraded as not to feel greater pleasure in the picturesque blue than in any other country. Its distance has generally grandeur enough to meet their moods of aspiration; its near aspect is that of a more human interest than that of hill country, and harmonizes more truly with the domestic feelings which are common to all mankind; so that, on the whole, it will be found to maintain its freshness of beauty to the habituated eye, in a greater degree than any other scenery. 201. As it thus persuades us to inhabit it, it becomes a point of honor not to make the attractiveness of its beauty its destruction; especially as, being the natural dominion of the villa, it affords great opportunity for the architect to exhibit variety of design. Its spirit has been proved to be Greek; and therefore, though that spirit is slightly manifested in Britain, and though every good architect is shy of importation, villas on Greek and Roman models are admissible here. Still, as in all blue country there is much activity of life, the principle of utility should be kept in view, and the building should have as much simplicity as can be united with perfect gracefulness of line. It appears from the principles of composition alluded to in speaking of the Italian villa, that in undulating country the forms should be square and massy; and, where the segments of curves are small, the buildings should be low and flat, while they may be prevented from appearing cumbrous by some well-managed irregularity of design, which will be agreeable to the inhabitant as well as to the spectator; enabling him to change the aspect and size of his chamber, as temperature or employment may render such change desirable, without being foiled in his design, by finding the apartments of one wing matched, foot to foot, by those of the other. 202. For the color, it has been shown that white or pale tints are agreeable in all blue country: but there must be warmth in it, and a great deal too,--gray being comfortless and useless with a cold distance; but it must not be raw or glaring.[39] The roof and chimneys should be kept out of sight as much as possible; and therefore the one very flat, and the other very plain. We ought to revive the Greek custom of roofing with thin slabs of coarse marble, cut into the form of tiles. However, where the architect finds he has a very cool distance, and few trees about the building, and where it stands so high as to preclude the possibility of its being looked down upon, he will, if he be courageous, use a very flat roof of the dark Italian tile. The eaves, which are all that should be seen, will be peculiarly graceful; and the sharp contrast of color (for this tiling can only be admitted with white walls) may be altogether avoided, by letting them cast a strong shadow, and by running the walls up into a range of low garret windows, to break the horizontal line of the roof. He will thus obtain a bit of very strong color, which will impart a general glow of cheerfulness to the building, and which, if he manages it rightly, will not be glaring nor intrusive. It is to be observed, however, that he can only do this with villas of the most humble order, and that he will seldom find his employer possessed of so much common sense as to put up with a tile roof. When this is the case, the flat slabs of the upper limestone (ragstone) are usually better than slate. [Footnote 39: The epithet "raw," by the by, is vague, and needs definition. Every tint is raw which is perfectly opaque, and has not all the three primitive colors in its composition. Thus, black is always raw, because it has no color; white never, because it has all colors. No tint can be raw which is not opaque; and opacity may be taken away, either by actual depth and transparency, as in the sky; by luster and texture, as in the case of silk and velvet, or by variety of shade as in forest verdure. Two instances will be sufficient to prove the truth of this. Brick, when first fired, is always raw; but when it has been a little weathered, it acquires a slight blue tint, assisted by the gray of the mortar: incipient vegetation affords it the yellow. It thus obtains an admixture of the three colors, and is raw no longer. An old woman's red cloak, though glaring, is never raw; for it must of necessity have folded shades: those shades are of a rich gray; no gray can exist without yellow and blue. We have then three colors, and no rawness. It must be observed however, that when any one of the colors is given in so slight a degree that it can be overpowered by certain effects of light, the united color, when opaque, will be raw. Thus many flesh-colors are raw; because, though they must have a little blue in their composition, it is too little to be efficiently visible in a strong light.] 203. For the rest, it is always to be kept in view, that the prevailing character of the whole is to be that of graceful simplicity; distinguished from the simplicity of the Italian edifice, by being that of utility instead of that of pride.[40] Consequently the building must _not_ be Gothic or Elizabethan: it may be as commonplace as the proprietor likes, provided its proportions be good; but nothing can ever excuse one acute angle, or one decorated pinnacle,--both being direct interruption of the repose with which the eye is indulged by the undulations of the surrounding scenery. Tower and fortress outlines are indeed agreeable, for their fine grouping and roundness; but we do not allude to them, because nothing can be more absurd than the humor prevailing at the present day among many of our peaceable old gentlemen, who never smelt powder in their lives, to eat their morning muffin in a savage-looking round tower, and admit quiet old ladies to a tea-party under the range of twenty-six cannon, which--it is lucky for the china--are all wooden ones,--as they are, in all probability, accurately and awfully pointed into the drawing-room windows. [Footnote 40: There must always be a difficulty in building in picturesque blue country in England; for the English character is opposed to that of the country: it is neither graceful, nor mysterious, nor voluptuous; therefore, what we cede to the country, we take from the nationality, and _vice versâ_.] So much then for our British blue country, to which it was necessary to devote some time, as occupying a considerable portion of the island, and being peculiarly well adapted for villa residences. _C. The Woody or Green Country._ 204. The woody, or green country, which is next in order, was spoken of before, and was shown to be especially our own. The Elizabethan was pointed out as the style peculiarly belonging to it; and farther criticism of that style was deferred until we came to the consideration of domestic buildings provided with the means of defense. We have therefore at present only to offer a few remarks on the principles to be observed in the erection of Elizabethan villas at the present day. 205. First. The building must be either quite chaste, or excessively rich in decoration. Every inch of ornament short of a certain quantity will render the whole effect poor and ridiculous; while the pure perpendicular lines of this architecture will always look well if left entirely alone. The architect therefore, when limited as to expense, should content himself with making his oriels project boldly, channeling their mullions richly, and, in general, rendering his vertical lines delicate and beautiful in their workmanship; but, if his estimate be unlimited, he should lay on his ornament richly, taking care never to confuse the eye. Those parts to which, of necessity, observation is especially directed, must be finished so as to bear a close scrutiny, that the eye may rest on them with satisfaction: but their finish must not be of a character which would have attracted the eye by itself, without being placed in a conspicuous situation; for, if it were, the united attraction of form and detail would confine the contemplation altogether to the parts so distinguished, and render it impossible for the mind to receive any impression of general effect. Consequently, the parts that project, and are to bear a strong light, must be chiseled with infinite delicacy; so that the ornament, though it would have remained unobserved had the eye not been guided to it, when observed, may be of distinguished beauty and power; but those parts which are to be flat and in shade should be marked with great sharpness and boldness, that the impression may be equalized. When, for instance, we have to do with oriels, to which attention is immediately attracted by their projection, we may run wreaths of the finest flower-work up the mullions, charge the terminations with shields, and quarter them richly; but we must join the window to the wall, where its shadow falls, by means of more deep and decided decoration. 206. Secondly. In the choice and design of his ornaments, the architect should endeavor to be grotesque rather than graceful (though little bits of soft flower-work here and there will relieve the eye): but he must not imagine he can be grotesque by carving faces with holes for eyes and knobs for noses; on the contrary, whenever he mimics grotesque life, there should be wit and humor in every feature, fun and frolic in every attitude; every distortion should be anatomical, and every monster a studied combination. This is a question, however, relating more nearly to Gothic architecture and therefore we shall not enter into it at present.[41] [Footnote 41: [See _Stones of Venice_, vol. III. chap. iii.]] 207. Thirdly. The gables must on no account be jagged into a succession of right angles, as if people were to be perpetually engaged in trotting up one side and down the other. This custom, though sanctioned by authority, has very little apology to offer for itself, based on any principle of composition. In street effect indeed it is occasionally useful; and where the verticals below are unbroken by ornament, may be used even in the detached Elizabethan, but not when decoration has been permitted below. They should then be carried up in curved lines, alternating with two angles, or three at the most, without pinnacles or hipknobs. A hollow parapet is far better than a battlement, in the intermediate spaces; the latter indeed is never allowable, except when the building has some appearance of being intended for defense, and therefore is generally barbarous in the villa; while the parapet admits of great variety of effect. 208. Lastly. Though the grotesque of Elizabethan architecture is adapted for wood country, the grotesque of the clipped garden, which frequently accompanies it, is not. The custom of clipping trees into fantastic forms is always to be reprehended: first, because it never can produce the true grotesque, for the material is not passive, and, therefore, a perpetual sense of restraint is induced, while the great principle of the grotesque is action; again, because we have a distinct perception of two natures, the one neutralizing the other; for the vegetable organization is too palpable to let the animal form suggest its true idea; again, because the great beauty of all foliage is the energy of life and action, of which it loses the appearance by formal clipping; and again, because the hands of the gardener will never produce anything really spirited or graceful. Much, however, need not be said on this subject; for the taste of the public does not now prompt them to such fettering of fair freedom, and we should be as sorry to see the characteristic vestiges of it, which still remain in a few gardens, lost altogether, as to see the thing again becoming common. 209. The garden of the Elizabethan villa, then, should be laid out with a few simple terraces near the house, so as to unite it well with the ground; lines of balustrade along the edges, guided away into the foliage of the taller trees of the garden, with the shadows falling at intervals. The balusters should be square rather than round, with the angles outward; and if the balustrade looks unfinished at the corners, it may be surmounted by a grotesque bit of sculpture, of any kind; but it must be very strong and deep in its carved lines, and must not be large; and all graceful statues are to be avoided, for the reasons mentioned in speaking of the Italian villa: neither is the terraced part of the garden to extend to any distance from the house, nor to have deep flights of steps, for they are sure to get mossy and slippery, if not superintended with troublesome care; and the rest of the garden should have more trees than flowers in it. A flower-garden is an ugly thing, even when best managed: it is an assembly of unfortunate beings, pampered and bloated above their natural size, stewed and heated into diseased growth; corrupted by evil communication into speckled and inharmonious colors; torn from the soil which they loved, and of which they were the spirit and the glory, to glare away their term of tormented life among the mixed and incongruous essences of each other, in earth that they know not, and in air that is poison to them. 210. The florist may delight in this: the true lover of flowers never will. He who has taken lessons from nature, who has observed the real purpose and operation of flowers; how they flush forth from the brightness of the earth's being, as the melody rises up from among the moved strings of the instrument; how the wildness of their pale colors passes over her, like the evidence of a various emotion; how the quick fire of their life and their delight glows along the green banks, where the dew falls the thickest, and the mists of incense pass slowly through the twilight of the leaves, and the intertwined roots make the earth tremble with strange joy at the feeling of their motion; he who has watched this will never take away the beauty of their being to mix into meretricious glare, or feed into an existence of disease. And the flower-garden is as ugly in effect as it is unnatural in feeling: it never will harmonize with anything, and if people will have it, should be kept out of sight till they get into it. 211. But, in laying out the garden which is to assist the effect of the building, we must observe, and exclusively use, the natural combinations of flowers.[42] Now, as far as we are aware, bluish purple is the only flower color which Nature ever uses in masses of distant effect; this, however, she does in the case of most heathers, with the Rhododendron ferrugineum, and, less extensively, with the colder color of the wood hyacinth. Accordingly, the large rhododendron may be used to almost any extent, in masses; the pale varieties of the rose more sparingly; and, on the turf, the wild violet and pansy should be sown by chance, so that they may grow in undulations of color, and should be relieved by a few primroses. All dahlias, tulips, ranunculi, and, in general, what are called florist's flowers, should be avoided like garlic. [Footnote 42: Every one who is about to lay out a limited extent of garden, in which he wishes to introduce many flowers, should read and attentively study, first Shelley, and next Shakspeare. The latter indeed induces the most beautiful connections between thought and flower that can be found in the whole range of European literature; but he very often uses the symbolical effect of the flower, which it can only have on the educated mind, instead of the natural and true effect of the flower, which it must have, more or less, upon every mind. Thus, when Ophelia, presenting her wild flowers, says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts:" the infinite "beauty of the passage depends entirely upon the arbitrary meaning attached to the flowers. But, when Shelley speaks of "The lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, That the light of her tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilion of tender green," he is etherealizing an impression which the mind naturally receives from the flower. Consequently, as it is only by their natural influence that flowers can address the mind through the eye, we must read Shelley, to learn how to use flowers, and Shakspeare, to learn to love them. In both writers we find the wild flower possessing soul as well as life, and mingling its influence most intimately, like an untaught melody, with the deepest and most secret streams of human emotion.] 212. Perhaps we should apologize for introducing this in the _Architectural Magazine_; but it is not out of place: the garden is almost a necessary adjunct of the Elizabethan villa, and all garden architecture is utterly useless unless it be assisted by the botanical effect. These, then, are a few of the more important principles of architecture, which are to be kept in view in the blue and in the green country. The wild, or gray, country is never selected, in Britain, as the site of a villa; and, therefore, it only remains for us to offer a few remarks on a subject as difficult as it is interesting and important, the architecture of the villa in British hill, or brown, country. VII. THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. _D. Hill, or Brown Country._ "Vivite contenti casulis et collibus istis."--Juvenal [xiv. 179.] 213. In the Boulevard des Italiens, just at the turning into the Rue de la Paix (in Paris), there stand a few dusky and withered trees, beside a kind of dry ditch, paved at the bottom, into which a carriage can with some difficulty descend, and which affords access (not in an unusual manner) to the ground floor of a large and dreary-looking house, whose passages are dark and confined, whose rooms are limited in size, and whose windows command an interesting view of the dusky trees before mentioned. This is the town residence of one of the Italian noblemen, whose country house has already been figured as a beautiful example of the villas of the Lago di Como. That villa, however, though in one of the loveliest situations that hill, and wave, and heaven ever combined to adorn, and though itself one of the most delicious habitations that luxury ever projected or wealth procured, is very rarely honored by the presence of its master; while attractions of a very different nature retain him, winter after winter, in the dark chambers of the Boulevard des Italiens. 214. This appears singular to the casual traveler, who darts down from the dust and heat of the French capital to the light and glory of the Italian lakes, and finds the tall marble chambers and orange groves, in which he thinks, were he possessed of them, he could luxuriate forever, left desolate and neglected by their real owner; but, were he to try such a residence for a single twelvemonth, we believe his wonder would have greatly diminished at the end of the time. For the mind of the nobleman in question does not differ from that of the average of men; inasmuch as it is a well-known fact that a series of sublime impressions, continued indefinitely, gradually pall upon the imagination, deaden its fineness of feeling, and in the end induce a gloomy and morbid state of mind, a reaction of a peculiarly melancholy character, because consequent, not upon the absence of that which once caused excitement, but upon the failure of its power.[43] This is not the case with all men; but with those over whom the sublimity of an unchanging scene can retain its power forever, we have nothing to do; for they know better than any architect can, how to choose their scene, and how to add to its effect; we have only to impress upon them the propriety of thinking before they build, and of keeping their humors under the control of their judgment. [Footnote 43: [Compare _Modern Painters_. vol. III. chap. x. § 15.]] 215. It is not of them, but of the man of average intellect, that we are thinking throughout all these papers; and upon him it cannot be too strongly impressed, that there are very few points in a hill country at all adapted for a permanent residence. There is a kind of instinct, indeed, by which men become aware of this, and shrink from the sterner features of hill scenery into the parts possessing a human interest; and thus we find the north side of the Lake Leman, from Vevay to Geneva, which is about as monotonous a bit of vine-country as any in Europe, studded with villas; while the south side, which is as exquisite a piece of scenery as is to be found in all Switzerland, possesses, we think, two. The instinct in this case is true; but we frequently find it in error. Thus, the Lake of Como is the resort of half Italy, while the Lago Maggiore possesses scarcely one villa of importance, besides those on the Borromean Islands. Yet the Lago Maggiore is far better adapted for producing and sustaining a pleasurable impression, than that of Como. 216. The first thing, then, which the architect has to do in hill country is to bring his employer down from heroics to common sense; to teach him that, although it might be very well for a man like Pliny,[44] whose whole spirit and life was wrapt up in that of Nature, to set himself down under the splash of a cascade 400 feet high, such escapades are not becoming in English gentlemen; and that it is necessary, for his own satisfaction, as well as that of others, that he should keep in the most quiet and least pretending corners of the landscape which he has chosen. [Footnote 44: [This passage seems to suggest that the Villa Pliniana on Como was built by Pliny. It was, however, the work of an antiquarian nobleman of the Renaissance, and merely named after the great naturalist, who was born, perhaps, at Como, and mentions an ebbing spring on this site.]] 217. Having got his employer well under control, he has two points to consider. First, where he will spoil least; and, secondly, where he will gain most. Now he may spoil a landscape in two ways: either by destroying an association connected with it, or a beauty inherent in it. With the first barbarism we have nothing to do; for it is one which would not be permitted on a large scale; and even if it were, could not be perpetrated by any man of the slightest education. No one, having any pretensions to be called a human being, would build himself a house on the meadow of the Rütli, or by the farm of La Haye Sainte, or on the lonely isle on Loch Katrine. Of the injustice of the second barbarism we have spoken already; and it is the object of this paper to show how it may be avoided, as well as to develop the principles by which we may be guided in the second question; that of ascertaining how much permanent pleasure will be received from the contemplation of a given scene. 218. It is very fortunate that the result of these several investigations will generally be found the same. The residence which in the end is found altogether delightful, will be found to have been placed where it has committed no injury; and therefore the best way of consulting our own convenience in the end is, to consult the feelings of the spectator in the beginning.[45] Now, the first grand rule for the choice of situation is, never to build a villa where the ground is not richly productive. It is not enough that it should be capable of producing a crop of scanty oats or turnips in a fine season; it must be rich and luxuriant, and glowing with vegetative power of one kind or another.[46] For the very chiefest[47] part of the character of the edifice of pleasure is, and must be, its perfect ease, its appearance of felicitous repose. This it can never have where the nature and expression of the land near it reminds us of the necessity of labor, and where the earth is niggardly of all that constitutes its beauty and our pleasure; this it can only have where the presence of man seems the natural consequence of an ample provision for his enjoyment, not the continuous struggle of suffering existence with a rude heaven and rugged soil. There is nobility in such a struggle, but not when it is maintained by the inhabitant of the villa, in whom it is unnatural, and therefore injurious in its effect. The narrow cottage on the desolate moor, or the stalwart hospice on the crest of the Alps, each leaves an ennobling impression of energy and endurance; but the possessor of the villa should call, not upon our admiration, but upon our sympathy; and his function is to deepen the impression of the beauty and the fullness of creation, not to exhibit the majesty of man; to show, in the intercourse of earth and her children, not how her severity may be mocked by their heroism, but how her bounty may be honored in their enjoyment. [Footnote 45: For instance, one proprietor terrifies the landscape all round him, within a range of three miles, by the conspicuous position of his habitation; and is punished by finding that, from whatever quarter the wind may blow, it sends in some of his plate-glass. Another spoils a pretty bit of crag by building below it, and has two or three tons of stone dropped through his roof, the first frosty night. Another occupies the turfy slope of some soft lake promontory, and has his cook washed away by the first flood. We do not remember ever having seen a dwelling-house destroying the effect of a landscape, of which, considered merely as a habitation, we should wish to be the possessor.] [Footnote 46: We are not thinking of the effect upon the human frame of the air which is favorable to vegetation. Chemically considered, the bracing breeze of the more sterile soil is the most conducive to health, and is practically so, when the frame is not perpetually exposed to it; but the keenness which checks the growth of the plant is, in all probability, trying, to say the least, to the constitution of a resident.] [Footnote 47: We hope the English language may long retain this corrupt but energetic superlative.] 219. This position, being once granted, will save us a great deal of trouble; for it will put out of our way, as totally unfit for villa residence, nine-tenths of all mountain scenery; beginning with such bleak and stormy bits of hillside as that which was metamorphosed into something like a forest by the author of "Waverley;" laying an equal veto on all the severe landscapes of such districts of minor mountains as the Scotch Highlands and North Wales; and finishing by setting aside all the higher sublimity of Alp and Apennine. What, then, has it left us? The gentle slope of the lake shore, and the spreading parts of the quiet valley in almost all scenery; and the shores of the Cumberland lakes in our own, distinguished as they are by a richness of soil, which, though generally manifested only in an exquisite softness of pasture and roundness of undulation, is sufficiently evident to place them out of the sweeping range of this veto. 220. Now, as we have only to do with Britain at present, we shall direct particular attention to the Cumberland lakes, as they are the only mountain district which, taken generally, is adapted for the villa residence, and as every piece of scenery, which in other districts is so adapted, resembles them in character and tone. We noticed, in speaking of the Westmoreland cottage, the feeling of humility with which we are impressed during a mountain ramble. Now, it is nearly impossible for a villa of large size, however placed, not to disturb and interrupt this necessary and beautiful impression, particularly where the scenery is on a very small scale. This disadvantage may be obviated in some degree, as we shall see, by simplicity of architecture; but another, dependent on a question of proportion, is inevitable. 221. When an object, in which magnitude is a desirable attribute, leaves an impression, on a practiced eye, of less magnitude than it really possesses, we should place objects beside it, of whose magnitude we can satisfy ourselves, of larger size than that which we are accustomed to; for, by finding these large objects in precisely the proportion to the grand object, to which we _are_ accustomed, while we know their actual size to be one to which we are _not_ accustomed, we become aware of the true magnitude of the principal feature. But where the object leaves a true impression of its size on the practiced eye, we shall do harm by rendering minor objects either larger or smaller than they usually are. Where the object leaves an impression of greater magnitude than it really possesses, we must render the minor objects smaller than they usually are, to prevent our being undeceived. 222. Now, a mountain of 15,000 feet high always looks lower than it really is; therefore the larger the buildings near it are rendered, the better. Thus, in speaking of the Swiss cottage, it was observed that a building of the size of St. Peter's in its place, would exhibit the size of the mountains more truly and strikingly. A mountain 7000 feet high strikes its impression with great truth; we are deceived on neither side; therefore the building near it should be of the average size; and thus the villas of the Lago di Como, being among hills from 6000 to 8000 feet high, are well proportioned, being neither colossal nor diminutive: but a mountain 3000 feet high always looks higher than it really is;[48] therefore the buildings near it should be smaller than the average. And this is what is meant by the proportion of objects; namely, rendering them of such relative size as shall produce the greatest possible impression of those attributes which are most desirable in both. It is not the true, but the desirable impression which is to be conveyed; and it must not be in one, but in both: the building must not be overwhelmed by the mass of the mountain, nor the precipice mocked by the elevation of the cottage. (Proportion of color is a question of quite a different nature, dependent merely on admixture and combination). [Footnote 48: This position, as well as the two preceding, is important, and in need of confirmation. It has often been observed, that, when the eye is altogether unpracticed in estimating elevation, it believes every point to be lower than it really is; but this does not militate against the proposition, for it is also well known, that the higher the point, the greater the deception. But when the eye is thoroughly practiced in mountain measurement, although the judgment, arguing from technical knowledge, gives a true result, the impression on the feelings is always at variance with it, except in hills of the middle height. We are perpetually astonished, in our own country, by the sublime impression left by such hills as Skiddaw, or Cader Idris, or Ben Venue; perpetually vexed, in Switzerland, by finding that, setting aside circumstances of form and color, the abstract impression of elevation is (except in some moments of peculiar effect, worth a king's ransom) inferior to the truth. We were standing the other day on the slope of the Brevent, above the Prieuré of Chamouni, with a companion, well practiced in climbing Highland hills, but a stranger among the Alps. Pointing out a rock above the Glacier des Bossons, we requested an opinion of its height. "I should think," was the reply, "I could climb it in two steps; but I am too well used to hills to be taken in in that way; it is at least 40 feet." The real height was 470 feet. This deception is attributable to several causes (independently of the clearness of the medium through which the object is seen), which it would be out of place to discuss here, but the chief of which is the natural tendency of the feelings always to believe objects subtending the same angle to be of the same height. We say the feelings, not the eye; for the practiced eye never betrays its possessor, though the due and corresponding mental impression is not received.] 223. For these reasons, buildings of a very large size are decidedly destructive of effect among the English lakes: first, because apparent altitudes are much diminished by them; and, secondly, because, whatever position they may be placed in, instead of combining with scenery, they occupy and overwhelm it; for all scenery is divided into pieces, each of which has a near bit of beauty, a promontory of lichened crag, or a smooth swarded knoll, or something of the kind, to begin with. Wherever the large villa comes, it takes up one of these beginnings of landscape altogether; and the parts of crag or wood, which ought to combine with it, become subservient to it, and lost in its general effect; that is, ordinarily, in a general effect of ugliness. This should never be the case: however intrinsically beautiful the edifice may be, it should assist, but not supersede; join, but not eclipse; appear, but not intrude. 224. The general rule by which we are to determine the size is, to select the largest mass which will not overwhelm any object of fine form, within two hundred yards of it; and if it does not do this, we may be quite sure it is not too large for the distant features: for it is one of Nature's most beautiful adaptations, that she is never out of proportion with herself; that is, the minor details of scenery of the first class bear exactly the proportion to the same species of detail in scenery of the second class, that the large features of the first bear to the large features of the second. Every mineralogist knows that the quartz of the St. Gothard is as much larger in its crystal than the quartz of Snowdon, as the peak of the one mountain overtops the peak of the other; and that the crystals of the Andes are larger than either.[49] Every artist knows that the bowlders of an Alpine foreground, and the leaps of an Alpine stream, are as much larger than the bowlders, and as much bolder than the leaps, of a Cumberland foreground and torrent, as the Jungfrau is higher than Skiddaw. Therefore, if we take care of the near effect in any country, we need never be afraid of the distant. [Footnote 49: This is rather a bold assertion; and we should be sorry to maintain the fact as universal; but the crystals of _almost_ all the rarer minerals are larger in the larger mountain; and that altogether independently of the period of elevation, which, in the case of Mont Blanc, is later than that of our own Mendips.] 225. For these reasons, the cottage villa, rather than the mansion, is to be preferred among our hills: it has been preferred in many instances, and in too many, with an unfortunate result; for the cottage villa is precisely that which affords the greatest scope for practical absurdity. Symmetry, proportion, and some degree of simplicity, are usually kept in view in the large building; but, in the smaller, the architect considers himself licensed to try all sorts of experiments, and jumbles together pieces of imitation, taken at random from his note-book, as carelessly as a bad chemist mixing elements, from which he may by accident obtain something new, though the chances are ten to one that he obtains something useless. The chemist, however, is more innocent than the architect; for the one throws his trash out of the window, if the compound fail; while the other always thinks his conceit too good to be lost. The great one cause of all the errors in this branch of architecture is, the principle of imitation, at once the most baneful and the most unintellectual, yet perhaps the most natural, that the human mind can encourage or act upon.[50] Let it once be thoroughly rooted out, and the cottage villa will become a beautiful and interesting element of our landscape. [Footnote 50: In § 166 we noticed the kind of error most common in amateur designs, and we traced that error to its great first cause, the assumption of the humor, instead of the true character, for a guide; but we did not sufficiently specify the mode in which that first cause operated, by prompting to imitation. By imitation we do not mean accurate copying, neither do we mean working under the influence of the feelings by which we may suppose the originators of a given model to have been actuated; but we mean the intermediate step of endeavoring to combine old materials in a novel manner. True copying may be disdained by architects, but it should not be disdained by nations; for when the feelings of the time in which certain styles had their origin have passed away, any examples of the same style will invariably be failures, unless they be copies. It is utter absurdity to talk of building Greek edifices now; no man ever will, or ever can, who does not believe in the Greek mythology; and, precisely by so much as he diverges from the technicality of strict copyism, he will err. But we ought to have pieces of Greek architecture, as we have reprints of the most valuable records, and it is better to build a new Parthenon than to set up the old one. Let the dust and the desolation of the Acropolis be undisturbed forever; let them be left to be the school of our moral feelings, not of our mechanical perceptions; the line and rule of the prying carpenter should not come into the quiet and holy places of the earth. Elsewhere, we may build marble models for the education of the national mind and eye; but it is useless to think of adapting the architecture of the Greek to the purposes of the Frank; it never has been done, and never will be. We delight, indeed, in observing the rise of such a building as La Madeleine: beautiful, because accurately copied; useful, as teaching the eye of every passer-by. But we must not think of its purpose; it is wholly unadapted for Christian worship; and were it as bad Greek as our National Gallery, it would be equally unfit. The mistake of our architects in general is, that they fancy they are speaking good English by speaking bad Greek. We wish, therefore, that copying were more in vogue than it is. But imitation, the endeavor to be Gothic, or Tyrolese, or Venetian, without the slightest grain of Gothic or Venetian feeling; the futile effort to splash a building into age, or daub it into dignity, to zigzag it into sanctity, or slit it into ferocity, when its shell is neither ancient nor dignified, and its spirit neither priestly nor baronial,--this is the degrading vice of the age; fostered, as if man's reason were but a step between the brains of a kitten and a monkey, in the mixed love of despicable excitement and miserable mimicry. If the English have no imagination, they should not scorn to be commonplace; or rather they should remember that poverty cannot be disguised by beggarly borrowing, that it may be ennobled by calm independence. Our national architecture never will improve until our population are generally convinced that in this art, as in all others, they cannot seem what they cannot be. The scarlet coat or the turned-down collar, which the obsequious portrait-painter puts on the shoulders and off the necks of his savage or insane customers, never can make the 'prentice look military, or the idiot poetical; and the architectural appurtenances of Norman embrasure or Veronaic balcony must be equally ineffective, until they can turn shopkeepers into barons, and schoolgirls into Juliets. Let the national mind be elevated in its character, and it will naturally become pure in its conceptions; let it be simple in its desires, and it will be beautiful in its ideas; let it be modest in feeling, and it will not be insolent in stone. For architect and for employer, there can be but one rule; to be natural in all that they do, and to look for the beauty of the material creation as they would for that of the human form, not in the chanceful and changing disposition of artificial decoration, but in the manifestation of the pure and animating spirit which keeps it from the coldness of the grave. [With this remarkable foreshadowing of Mr. Ruskin's Art-teaching compare _Seven Lamps_ and _Lectures on Architecture and Painting_, throughout.]] 226. So much for size. The question of position need not detain us long, as the principles advanced in § 104 are true generally, with one exception. Beautiful and calm the situation must always be, but--in England--not conspicuous. In Italy, the dwelling of the descendants of those whose former life has bestowed on every scene the greater part of the majesty which it possesses, ought to have a dignity inherent in it, which would be shamed by shrinking back from the sight of men, and majesty enough to prevent such non-retirement from becoming intrusive; but the spirit of the English landscape is simple, and pastoral and mild, devoid, also, of high associations (for in the Highlands and Wales almost every spot which has the pride of memory is unfit for villa residence); and, therefore, all conspicuous appearance of its more wealthy inhabitants becomes ostentation, not dignity; impudence, not condescension. Their dwellings ought to be just evident, and no more, as forming part of the gentle animation and present prosperity which is the beauty of cultivated ground. And this partial concealment may be effected without any sacrifice of the prospect which the proprietor will insist upon commanding from his windows, and with great accession to his permanent enjoyment. 227. For, first, the only prospect which is really desirable or delightful, is that from the window of the breakfast-room. This is rather a bold position, but it will appear evident on a little consideration. It is pleasant enough to have a pretty little bit visible from the bedrooms; but, after all, it only makes gentlemen cut themselves in shaving, and ladies never think of anything beneath the sun when they are dressing. Then, in the dining-room, windows are absolutely useless, because dinner is always uncomfortable by daylight, and the weight of furniture effect which adapts the room for the gastronomic rites, renders it detestable as a sitting-room. In the library, people should have something else to do, than looking out of the windows; in the drawing-room, the uncomfortable stillness of the quarter of an hour before dinner, may, indeed, be alleviated by having something to converse about at the windows: but it is very shameful to spoil a prospect of any kind, by looking at it when we are not ourselves in a state of corporal comfort and mental good-humor, which nobody can be after the labor of the day, and before he has been fed. But the breakfast-room, where we meet the first light of the dewy day, the first breath of the morning air, the first glance of gentle eyes; to which we descend in the very spring and elasticity of mental renovation and bodily energy, in the gathering up of our spirit for the new day, in the flush of our awakening from the darkness and the mystery of faint and inactive dreaming, in the resurrection from our daily grave, in the first tremulous sensation of the beauty of our being, in the most glorious perception of the lightning of our life; there, indeed, our expatiation of spirit, when it meets the pulse of outward sound and joy, the voice of bird and breeze and billow, _does_ demand some power of liberty, some space for its going forth into the morning, some freedom of intercourse with the lovely and limitless energy of creature and creation. 228. The breakfast-room must have a prospect, and an extensive one; the hot roll and hyson are indiscussable except under such sweet circumstances. But he must be an awkward architect who cannot afford an opening to one window without throwing the whole mass of the building open to public view; particularly as, in the second place, the essence of a good window view is the breaking out of the distant features in little well-composed _morceaux_, not the general glare of a mass of one tone. Have we a line of lake? the silver water must glance out here and there among the trunks of near trees, just enough to show where it flows; then break into an open swell of water, just where it is widest, or where the shore is prettiest. Have we mountains? their peaks must appear over foliage or through it, the highest and boldest catching the eye conspicuously, yet not seen from base to summit, as if we wanted to measure them. Such a prospect as this is always compatible with as much concealment as we choose. In all these pieces of management, the architect's chief enemy is the vanity of his employer, who will always want to see more than he ought to see, and than he will have pleasure in seeing, without reflecting how the spectators pay for his peeping. 229. So much, then, for position. We have now only to settle the questions of form and color, and we shall then have closed the most tiresome investigation which we shall be called upon to enter into; inasmuch as the principles which we may arrive at in considering the architecture of defense,[51] though we hope they may be useful in the abstract, will demand no application to native landscape, in which, happily, no defense is now required; and those relating to sacred edifices will, we also hope, be susceptible of more interest than can possibly be excited by the most degraded branch of the whole art of architecture, one hardly worthy of being included under the name--that, namely, with which we have lately been occupied, whose ostensible object is the mere provision of shelter and comfort for the despicable shell within whose darkness and corruption that purity of perception to which all high art is addressed is, during its immaturity, confined. [Footnote 51: [Referring again to the intended sequel.]] 230. There are two modes in which any mental or material effect may be increased--by contrast, or by assimilation. Supposing that we have a certain number of features or existences under a given influence; then, by subjecting another feature to the same influence, we increase the universality, and therefore the effect, of that influence; but by introducing another feature, _not_ under the same influence, we render the subjection of the other features more palpable, and therefore more effective. For example, let the influence be one of shade, to which a certain number of objects are subjected. We add another feature, subjected to the same influence, and we increase the _general impression_ of shade; we add the same feature, _not_ subjected to this influence, and we have deepened the _effect_ of shade. Now, the principles by which we are to be guided in the selection of one or other of these means are of great importance, and must be developed before we can conclude the investigation of villa architecture. 231. The impression produced by a given effect or influence depends upon its degree and its duration. Degree always means the proportionate energy exerted. Duration is either into time, or into space, or into both. The duration of color is in space alone, forming what is commonly called extent. The duration of sound is in space and time; the space being in the size of the waves of air, which give depth to the tone. The duration of mental emotion is in time alone. Now in all influences, as is the degree, so is the impression; as is the duration, so is the effect of the impression; that is, its permanent operation upon the feelings, or the violence with which it takes possession of our own faculties and senses, as opposed to the abstract impression of its existence, without such operation on our own essence. For example, the natural tendency of darkness or shade is to induce fear or melancholy. Now, as the degree of the shade, so is the abstract impression of the existence of shade; but as the duration of shade, so is the fear or melancholy excited by it. Consequently, when we wish to increase the abstract impression of the power of any influence over objects with which we have no connection, we must increase degree; but, when we wish the impression to produce a permanent effect upon ourselves, we must increase duration. Now, degree is always increased by contrast, and duration by assimilation. A few instances of this will be sufficient. 232. Blue is called a cold color, because it induces a feeling of coolness to the eye, and is much used by nature in her cold effects. Supposing that we have painted a storm scene, in desolate country, with a single miserable cottage somewhere in front; that we have made the atmosphere and the distance cold and blue, and wish to heighten the comfortless impression. There is an old rag hanging out of the window: shall it be red or blue? If it be red, the piece of warm color will contrast strongly with the atmosphere; will render its blueness and chilliness immensely more apparent; will increase the _degree_ of both, and, therefore, the abstract impression of the existence of cold. But, if it be blue, it will bring the iciness of the distance up into the foreground; will fill the whole visible space with comfortless cold; will take away every relief from the desolation; will increase the _duration_ of the influence, and, consequently, will extend its operation into the mind and feelings of the spectator, who will shiver as he looks. Now, if we are making a _picture_, we shall not hesitate a moment: in goes the red; for the artist, while he wishes to render the actual impression of the presence of cold in the landscape as strong as possible, does not wish that chilliness to pass over into, or affect, the spectator, but endeavors to make the combination of color as delightful to his eye and feelings as possible.[52] But, if we are painting a _scene_ for theatrical representation, where deception is aimed at, we shall be as decided in our proceeding on the opposite principle: in goes the blue; for we wish the idea of cold to pass over into the spectator, and make him so uncomfortable as to permit his fancy to place him distinctly in the place we desire, in the actual scene. [Footnote 52: This difference of principle is one leading distinction between the artist, properly so called, and the scene, diorama, or panorama painter.] 233. Again, Shakspeare has been blamed by some few critical asses for the raillery of Mercutio, and the humor of the nurse, in "Romeo and Juliet;" for the fool in "Lear;" for the porter in "Macbeth;" the grave-diggers in "Hamlet," etc.; because, it is said, these bits interrupt the tragic feeling. No such thing; they enhance it to an incalculable extent; they deepen its _degree_, though they diminish its duration. And what is the result? that the impression of the agony of the individuals brought before us is far stronger than it could otherwise have been, and our sympathies are more forcibly awakened; while, had the contrast been wanting, the impression of pain would have come over into ourselves, our selfish feeling, instead of our sympathy, would have been awakened; the conception of the grief of others diminished; and the tragedy would have made us very uncomfortable, but never have melted us to tears or excited us to indignation. When he, whose merry and satirical laugh rung in our ears the moment before, faints before us, with "a plague o' both your houses, they have made worms' meat of me," the acuteness of our feeling is excessive: but, had we not heard the laugh before, there would have been a dull weight of melancholy impression, which would have been painful, not affecting. 234. Hence, we see the grand importance of the choice of our means of enhancing effect, and we derive the simple rule for that choice, namely, that, when we wish to increase abstract impression, or to call upon the sympathy of the spectator, we are to use contrast; but, when we wish to extend the operation of the impression, or to awaken the selfish feelings, we are to use assimilation. This rule, however, becomes complicated, where the feature of contrast is not altogether passive; that is, where we wish to give a conception of any qualities inherent in that feature, as well as in what it relieves; and, besides, it is not always easy to know whether it will be best to increase the abstract idea, or its operation. In most cases, energy, the degree of influence, is beauty; and, in many, the duration of influence is monotony. In others, duration is sublimity, and energy painful: in a few, energy and duration are attainable and delightful together. 235. It is impossible to give rules for judgment in every case; but the following points must always be observed:--First, when we use contrast, it must be natural and likely to occur. Thus the contrast in tragedy is the natural consequence of the character of human existence; it is what we see and feel every day of our lives. When a contrast is unnatural, it destroys the effect it should enhance. Canning called on a French refugee in 1794. The conversation naturally turned on the execution of the Queen, then a recent event. Overcome by his feelings, the Parisian threw himself upon the ground, exclaiming, in an agony of tears, "La bonne reine! la pauvre reine!" Presently he sprang up, exclaiming, "Cependant, Monsieur, il faut vous faire voir mon petit chien danser." This contrast, though natural in a Parisian, was unnatural in the nature of things, and therefore injurious. 236. Secondly, when the general influence, instead of being external, is an attribute or energy of the thing itself, so as to bestow on it a permanent character, the contrast which is obtained by the absence of that character is injurious, and becomes what is called an interruption of the unity. Thus, the raw and colorless tone of the Swiss cottage, noticed in § 42, is an injurious contrast to the richness of the landscape, which is an inherent and necessary energy in surrounding objects. So, the character of Italian landscape is curvilinear; therefore, the outline of the buildings entering into its composition must be arranged on curvilinear principles, as investigated in § 144. 237. Thirdly. But, if the pervading character can be obtained in the single object by different means, the contrast will be delightful. Thus, the elevation of character which the hill districts of Italy possess by the magnificence of their forms, is transmitted to the villa by its dignity of detail and simplicity of outline; and the rectangular interruption to the curve of picturesque blue country, partaking of the nature of that which it interrupts, is a contrast giving relief and interest, while any Elizabethan acute angles, on the contrary, would have been a contrast obtained by the absence of the pervading energy of the universal curvilinear character, and therefore improper. 238. Fourthly, when the general energy, instead of pervading simultaneously the multitude of objects, as with one spirit, is independently possessed and manifested by every individual object, the result is repetition, not unity; and contrast is not merely agreeable, but necessary. Thus, a number of objects, forming the line of beauty, is pervaded by one simple energy; but if that energy is separately manifested in each, the result is painful monotony. Parallel right lines, without grouping, are always liable to this objection; and, therefore, a distant view of a flat country is never beautiful unless its horizontals are lost in richness of vegetation, as in Lombardy, or broken with masses of forest, or with distant hills. If none of these interruptions take place, there is immediate monotony, and no introduction can be more delightful than such a tower in the distance as Strasburg, or, indeed, than any architectural combination of verticals. Peterborough is a beautiful instance of such an adaptation. It is always, then, to be remembered that repetition is not assimilation. 239. Fifthly, when any attribute is necessarily beautiful, that is, beautiful in every place and circumstance, we need hardly say that the contrast consisting in its absence is painful. It is only when beauty is local or accidental that opposition may be employed. Sixthly. The _edge_ of all contrasts, so to speak, should be as soft as is consistent with decisive effect. We mean, that a gradual change is better than instantaneous transfiguration; for, though always less effective, it is more agreeable. But this must be left very much to the judgment. Seventhly. We must be very careful in ascertaining whether any given contrast is obtained by freedom from external, or absence of internal, energy, for it is often a difficult point to decide. Thus, the peace of the Alpine valley might, at first, seem to be a contrast caused by the want of the character of strength and sublimity manifested in the hills; but it is really caused by the freedom from the general and external influence of violence and desolation. 240. These, then, are principles applicable to all arts, without a single exception, and of particular importance in painting and architecture.[53] It will sometimes be found that one rule comes in the way of another; in which case, the most important is, of course, to be obeyed; but, in general, they will afford us an easy means of arriving at certain results, when, before, our conjectures must have been vague and unsatisfactory. [Footnote 53: [For further discussion of which, see _Elements of Drawing_, Letter III.]] We may now proceed to determine the most proper _form_ for the mountain villa of England. 241. We must first observe the prevailing lines of the near hills: if they are vertical, there will most assuredly be monotony, for the vertical lines of crag are never grouped, and accordingly, by our fourth rule, the prevailing lines of our edifice must be horizontal. On the Lake of Thun the tendency of the hills is vertical; this tendency is repeated by the buildings,[54] and the composition becomes thoroughly bad; but on the Lake of Como we have the same vertical tendency in the hills, while the grand lines of the buildings are horizontal, and the composition is good. But, if the prevailing lines of the near hills be curved (and they will be either curved or vertical), we must not interrupt their character, for the energy is then pervading, not individual; and, therefore, our edifice must be rectangular. [Footnote 54: [In their turrets and pinnacles, as shown by a poor wood-cut in the magazine, not worth reproduction.]] In both cases, therefore, the grand outline of the villa is the same; but in one we have it set off by contrast, in the other by assimilation; and we must work out in the architecture of each edifice the principle on which we have begun. Commencing with that in which we are to work by contrast: the vertical crags must be the result of violence, and the influence of destruction, of distortion, of torture, to speak strongly, must be evident in their every line. We free the building from this influence, and give it repose, gracefulness, and ease; and we have a contrast of feeling as well as of line, by which the desirable attributes are rendered evident in both objects, while the _duration_ of neither energy being allowed, there can be no disagreeable effect upon the spectator, who will not shrink from the terror of the crags, nor feel a want of excitement in the gentleness of the building. 242. Secondly, Solitude is powerful and evident in its effect on the distant hills; therefore the effect of the villa should be joyous and life-like (not flippant, however, but serene); and, by rendering it so, we shall enhance the sublimity of the distance, as we showed in speaking of the Westmoreland cottage; and, therefore, we may introduce a number of windows with good effect, provided that they are kept in horizontal lines, and do not disturb the repose which we have shown to be necessary. These three points of contrast will be quite enough: there is no other external influence from which we can free the building, and the pervading energy must be communicated to it, or it will not harmonize with our feelings; therefore, before proceeding, we had better determine how this contrast is to be carried out in detail. 243. Our lines are to be horizontal; then the roof must be as flat as possible. We need not think of snow, because, however much we may slope the roof, it will not slip off from the material, which, here, is the only proper one; and the roof of the cottage is always very flat, which it would not be if there were any inconvenience attending such a form. But, for the sake of the second contrast, we are to have gracefulness and ease, as well as horizontality. Then we must break the line of the roof into different elevations, yet not making the difference great, or we shall have visible verticals. And this must not be done at random. [Illustration: Fig. 14. Leading lines of Villa-composition.] 244. Take a flat line of beauty, _a d_, fig. 14, for the length of the edifice. Strike _a b_ horizontally from _a_, _c d_ from _d_; let fall the verticals, make _c f_ equal _m n_, the maximum; and draw _h f_. The curve should be so far continued as that _h f_ shall be to _c d_ as _c d_ to _a b_. Then we are sure of a beautifully proportioned form. Much variety may be introduced by using different curves; joining parabolas with cycloids, etc.; but the use of curves is always the best mode of obtaining good forms.[55] [Footnote 55: [Compare _Modern Painters_, vol. IV. chap. xvii. § 49, and _Elements of Drawing_, Letter III.]] Further ease may be obtained by added combinations. For instance, strike another curve (_a q b_) through the flat line _a b_; bisect the maximum _v p_, draw the horizontal _r s_, (observing to make the largest maximum of this curve towards the smallest maximum of the great curve, to restore the balance), join _r q_, _s b_, and we have another modification of the same beautiful form. This may be done in either side of the building, but not in both. 245. Then, if the flat roof be still found monotonous, it may be interrupted by garret windows, which must not be gabled, but turned with the curve _a b_, whatever that may be. This will give instant humility to the building, and take away any vestiges of Italian character which might hang about it, and which would be wholly out of place. The windows may have tolerably broad architraves, but no cornices; an ornament both haughty and classical in its effect, and, on both accounts, improper here. They should be in level lines, but grouped at unequal distances, or they will have a formal and artificial air, unsuited to the irregularity and freedom around them. Some few of them may be arched, however, with the curve _a b_, the mingling of the curve and the square being very graceful. There should not be more than two tiers and the garrets, or the building will be too high. So much for the general outline of the villa, in which we are to work by contrast. Let us pass over to that in which we are to work by assimilation, before speaking of the material and color which should be common to both. 246. The grand outline must be designed on exactly the same principles; for the curvilinear proportions, which were opposition before, will now be assimilation. Of course, we do not mean to say that every villa in a hill country should have the form _a b c d_; we should be tired to death if they had: but we bring forward that form as an example of the agreeable result of the principles on which we should always work, but whose result should be the same in no two cases. A modification of that form, however, will frequently be found useful; for, under the depression _h f_, we may have a hall of entrance and of exercise, which is a requisite of extreme importance in hill districts, where it rains three hours out of four all the year round; and under _c d_ we may have the kitchen, servants' rooms, and coachhouse, leaving the large division quiet and comfortable. 247. Then, as in the curved country there is no such distortion as that before noticed, no such evidence of violent agency, we need not be so careful about the appearance of perfect peace; we may be a little more dignified and a little more classical. The windows may be symmetrically arranged; and, if there be a blue and undulating distance, the upper tier may even have cornices; narrower architraves are to be used; the garrets may be taken from the roof, and their inmates may be accommodated in the other side of the house; but we must take care, in doing this, not to become Greek. The material, as we shall see presently, will assist us in keeping unclassical; and not a vestige of column or capital must appear in any part of the edifice. All should be pure, but all should be English; and there should be here, as elsewhere, much of the utilitarian about the whole, suited to the cultivated country in which it is placed. 248. It will never do to be speculative or imaginative in our details, on the supposition that the tendency of fine scenery is to make everybody imaginative and enthusiastic. Enthusiasm has no business with Turkey carpets or easy-chairs; and the very preparation of comfort for the body, which the existence of the villa supposes, is inconsistent with the supposition of any excitement of mind: and this is another reason for keeping the domestic building in richly productive country. Nature has set aside her sublime bits for us to feel and think in; she has pointed out her productive bits for us to sleep and eat in; and, if we sleep and eat amongst the sublimity, we are brutal; if we poetize amongst the cultivation, we are absurd. There are the time and place for each state of existence, and we should not jumble that which Nature has separated. She has addressed herself, in one part, wholly to the mind; there is nothing for us to eat but bilberries, nothing to rest upon but rock, and we have no business to concoct picnics, and bring cheese, and ale, and sandwiches, in baskets, to gratify our beastly natures, where Nature never intended us to eat (if she had, we needn't have brought the baskets). In the other part, she has provided for our necessities; and we are very absurd, if we make ourselves fantastic, instead of comfortable. Therefore, all that we ought to do in the hill villa is, to adapt it for the habitation of a man of the highest faculties of perception and feeling; but only for the habitation of his hours of common sense, not of enthusiasm; it must be his dwelling as a man, not as a spirit; as a thing liable to decay, not as an eternal energy; as a perishable, not as an immortal. 249. Keeping, then, in view these distinctions of form between the two villas, the remaining considerations relate equally to both. We have several times alluded to the extreme richness and variety of hill foreground, as an internal energy to which there must be no contrast. Rawness of color is to be especially avoided, but so, also, is poverty of effect. It will, therefore, add much to the beauty of the building, if in any conspicuous and harsh angle, or shadowy molding, we introduce a wreath of carved leafwork,--in stone, of course. This sounds startling and expensive; but we are not thinking of expense: what ought to be, not what can be afforded, is the question. Besides, when all expense in shamming castles, building pinnacles, and all other fantasticisms has been shown to be injurious, that which otherwise would have been wasted in plaster battlements, to do harm, may surely be devoted to stone leafage, to do good. Now, if there be too much, or too conspicuous, ornament, it will destroy simplicity and humility, and everything which we have been endeavoring to get; therefore, the architect must be careful, and had better have immediate recourse to that natural beauty with which he is now endeavoring to assimilate. 250. When Nature determines on decorating a piece of projecting rock, she begins with the bold projecting surface, to which the eye is naturally drawn by its form, and (observe how closely she works by the principles which were before investigated) she finishes this with lichens and mingled colors, to a degree of delicacy, which makes us feel that we never can look close enough; but she puts in not a single mass of form to attract the eye, more than the grand outline renders necessary. But, where the rock joins the ground, where the shadow falls, and the eye is not attracted, she puts in bold forms of ornament, large leaves and grass, bunches of moss and heather, strong in their projection, and deep in their color. Therefore, the architect must act on precisely the same principle: his outward surfaces he may leave the wind and weather to finish in their own way; but he cannot allow Nature to put grass and weeds into the shadows; _ergo_, he must do it himself; and, whenever the eye loses itself in shade, wherever there is a dark and sharp corner, there, if he can, he should introduce a wreath of flower-work. The carving will be preserved from the weather by this very propriety of situation: it would have moldered away, had it been exposed to the full drift of the rain, but will remain safe in the crevices where it is required; and, also, it will not injure the general effect, but will lie concealed until we approach, and then rise up, as it were, out of the darkness, to its duty; bestowing on the dwellings that finish of effect which is manifested around them, and gratifying the natural requirements of the mind for the same richness in the execution of the designs of men, which it has found on a near approach lavished so abundantly, in a distant view subdued so beautifully into the large effect of the designs of Nature. 251. Of the ornament itself, it is to be observed that it is not to be what is properly called architectural _decoration_ (that which is "decorous," becoming, or suitable to), namely, the combination of minor forms, which repeat the lines, and partake of the essence of the grand design, and carry out its meaning and life into its every member; but it is to be true sculpture; the presenting of a pure ideality of form to the eye, which may give perfect conception, without the assistance of color: it is to be the stone image of vegetation, not botanically accurate, indeed, but sufficiently near to permit us to be sure of the intended flower or leaf. Not a single line of any other kind of ornament should be admitted, and there should be more leafage than flower-work, as it is the more easy in its flow and outline. Deep relief need not be attempted, but the edges of the leafage should be clearly and delicately defined. The cabbage, the vine, and the ivy are the best and most beautiful leaves: oak is a little too stiff, otherwise good. Particular attention ought to be paid to the ease of the stems and tendrils; such care will always be repaid. And it is to be especially observed, that the carving is not to be arranged in garlands or knots, or any other formalities, as in Gothic work; but the stalks are to rise out of the stone, as if they were rooted in it, and to fling themselves down where they are wanted, disappearing again in light sprays, as if they were still growing. 252. All this will require care in designing; but, as we have said before, we can always do without decoration; but, if we have it, it _must_ be well done. It is not of the slightest use to economize; every farthing improperly saved does a shilling's worth of damage; and that is getting a bargain the wrong way. When one branch or group balances another, they _must_ be different in composition. The same group may be introduced several times in different parts, but not when there is correspondence, or the effect will be unnatural; and it can hardly be too often repeated, that the _ornament_ must be kept out of the general effect, must be invisible to all but the near observer, and, even to him, must not become a necessary part of the design, but must be sparingly and cautiously applied, so as to appear to have been thrown in by chance here and there, as Nature would have thrown in a bunch of herbage, affording adornment without concealment, and relief without interruption. 253. So much for form. The question of color has already been discussed at some length, in speaking of the cottage; but it is to be noticed, that the villa, from the nature of its situation, gets the higher hills back into a distance which is three or four times more blue than any piece of scenery entering into combination with the cottage; so that more warmth of color is allowable in the building, as well as greater cheerfulness of effect. It should not look like stone, as the cottage should, but should tell as a building on the mind as well as the eye. White, therefore, is frequently allowable in small quantities, particularly on the border of a large and softly shored lake, like Windermere and the foot of Loch Lomond; but cream-color, and putty-color, and the other varieties of plaster-color are inexcusable. If more warmth is required by the situation than the sun will give on white, the building should be darkened at once. A warm rich gray is always beautiful in any place and under any circumstance; and, in fact, unless the proprietor likes to be kept damp like a traveling codfish, by trees about his house and close to it (which, if it be white, he must have, to prevent glare), such a gray is the only color which will be beautiful, or even innocent. The difficulty is to obtain it; and this naturally leads to the question of material. 254. If the color is to be white, we can have no ornament, for the shadows would make it far too conspicuous, and we should get only tawdriness. The simple forms may be executed in anything that will stand wet; and the roof, in all cases, should be of the coarse slate of the country, as rudely put on as possible. They must be kept clear of moss and conspicuous vegetation, or there will be an improper appearance of decay; but the more lichenous the better, and the rougher the slate the sooner it is colored. If the color is to be gray, we may use the gray primitive limestone, which is not ragged on the edges, without preparing the blocks too smoothly; or the more compact and pale-colored slate, which is frequently done in Westmoreland; and execute the ornaments in any very coarse dark marble. Greenstone is an excellent rock, and has a fine surface, but it is unmanageable. The grayer granites may often be used with good effect, as well as the coarse porphyries, when the gray is to be particularly warm. An outward surface of a loose block may be often turned to good account in turning an angle; as the colors which it has contracted by its natural exposure will remain on it without inducing damp. It is always to be remembered, that he who prefers neatness to beauty, and who would have sharp angles and clean surfaces, in preference to curved outlines and lichenous color, has no business to live among hills. 255. Such, then, are the principal points to be kept in view in the edifice itself. Of the mode of uniting it with the near features of foliage and ground, it would be utterly useless to speak: it is a question of infinite variety, and involving the whole theory of composition, so that it would take up volumes to develop principles sufficient to guide us to the result which the feeling of the practiced eye would arrive at in a moment. The inequalities of the ground, the character and color of those inequalities, the nature of the air, the exposure, and the consequent fall of the light, the quantity and form of near and distant foliage, all have their effect on the design, and should have their influence on the designer, inducing, as they do, a perfect change of circumstance in every locality. Only one general rule can be given, and that we repeat. The house must _not_ be a noun substantive, it must not stand by itself, it must be part and parcel of a proportioned whole: it must not even be seen all at once; and he who sees one end should feel that, from the given data, he can arrive at no conclusion respecting the other, yet be impressed with a feeling of a universal energy, pervading with its beauty of unanimity all life and all inanimation, all forms of stillness or motion, all presence of silence or of sound. 256. Thus, then, we have reviewed the most interesting examples of existing villa architecture, and we have applied the principles derived from those examples to the landscape of our own country. Throughout, we have endeavored to direct attention to the spirit, rather than to the letter, of all law, and to exhibit the beauty of that principle which is embodied in the line with which we have headed this concluding paper; of being satisfied with national and natural forms, and not endeavoring to introduce the imaginations, or imitate the customs, of foreign nations, or of former times. All imitation has its origin in vanity, and vanity is the bane of architecture. And, as we take leave of them, we would, once for all, remind our English sons of Sempronius "qui villas attollunt marmore novas," _novas_ in the full sense of the word,--and who are setting all English feeling and all natural principles at defiance, that it is only the _bourgeois gentilhomme_ who will wear his dressing-gown upside down, "parceque toutes les personnes de qualité portent les fleurs en en-bas." OXFORD, _October, 1838._ 
19262	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. APRIL, 1895. No. 4. BYZANTINE-ROMANESQUE WINDOWS IN SOUTHERN ITALY. The collection of photographs from which the plates in this and the February number were selected was only recently made under the direction of Signor Boni, an official of the Italian government, charged with the care and restoration of historic monuments. The province of Apulia has been so little invaded by the march of modern improvement, and its present inhabitants are, as a rule, so poor, that it is difficult to travel here except on the line of a few main thoroughfares, and strangers seldom visit more than one or two of the principal towns on the coast. Bari and Brindisi are known to tourists, as they are in the line of travel to and from Greece, but the inland towns are isolated in a barren priest-ridden country in which strangers are not welcome. The hardships which it is necessary to face deter all but the most adventurous even of the Italians, familiar with the language and manners of the people. Architects seldom visit this neighborhood, and little is known of its rich treasure of mediæval buildings, except through the few published works treating of it. Signor Boni expressed himself as surprised at the great amount of beautiful work scattered through this region, of which he previously had no knowledge. The opinion of Fergusson has already been quoted in the preceding article. The mixture in the work here illustrated of Byzantine and Romanesque elements has also been referred to in the preceding article, but the special characteristics of each style were not particularly pointed out. In the present consideration the peculiarities of detail and ornament are all that need be taken up, as the views given furnish no opportunity for the study of plan or general design. The derivation of the Byzantine style was indicated in the March number of THE BROCHURE SERIES in describing the Ravenna capitals there illustrated. Byzantine conventional ornament appears to be of two types,--the one usually used in mosaics, of thin scrolls, terminating in flowers or symbols, displayed upon a ground which is much greater in quantity than is the ornament; the other, usually confined to sculpture, an intricate interlace of ribbon lines with spaces filled with Byzantine acanthus, the ornament much greater in proportion than the ground, which only shows in small separate pieces. Apart from these are the borders, occasionally of overlapping leaves, often of small repeated units, such as Greek crosses and squares and diamonds, or else meanders or guilloches. The guilloche takes a new form in Byzantine design, and instead of being a continuous succession of small circles enclosed in an interlacing ribbon, it assumes the form of alternating small and large circles, or of small circles alternating with large squares, and often progressing in both directions at once, horizontally and perpendicularly, and thus forming an all-over pattern. The roses of ornament are often incorporated into this form of guilloche. Sculpture of the human form becomes more and more feeble and crude. The acanthus, however, went steadily through successive variation until it attained the virile form seen in the best Byzantine work. It is no longer the olive type of the Romans, or the heavy, stupid leaf of the earlier centuries of the Christian era, but has again turned towards the sharp-pointed, vigorous leaf of the Greeks. Its lobes are divided into three or five tines, each sharp at the tip; its centre lines, radiating from a central stem, bend like flames; its surfaces are concave, with deep V cutting, and it has one very marked peculiarity, that is, that as far as possible no tine is left displayed alone on the ground, but the tip of each is made to touch either the tip of a neighboring tine or the ribbon or moulding bounding the space in which the ornament occurs. The tines are of nearly equal size throughout, and the spaces of ground left by the ornament are also of comparatively equal size, and if possible symmetrically grouped. The one almost universal moulding is decorated with acanthus units, and the capitals have acanthus leaves around their bells. These caps are of two types. One, that is manifestly an adaptation of a classic cap, is a union of an Ionic and a Corinthian, or at other times of a Roman Doric and a Corinthian capital. The other is peculiar to Byzantine work, and is that shown in Plates XXI. to XXIV. in the last number. This cap, as at S. Vitale, is often supplemented by another plainer cap above. The lower cap has its faces decorated with scrolls, acanthus wreaths, etc., and usually the corners are strengthened with a decorative unit, leaf or other motive. The difference between the Byzantine and the Romanesque arises from the differences of the races and their environments. The art of seaport towns, when Commerce was most largely carried on by sea, much more nearly resembled the art of some great commercial centre on the seaboard than it did that of its own neighbors inland. The art of the seaboard cities in Europe was, then, for many years a borrowed art from the East, as their people were to great extent Eastern colonists. It was carried on with a full knowledge of constructive methods, and a facility in obtaining materials that the inland towns did not possess; and in consequence it is along the seaboard that is to be found the persistence of the Byzantine influence. On the other hand, the interior was peopled by descendants of Ostrogothic tribes mingling with numberless local peoples. Whatever they touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is their only motive, and applied inside between aisles and nave, and outside in successive stories rising one above another. As the masons begin better to understand their art, the span of the arch increases, though a large arch for some time does duty merely as a discharging arch, and has smaller arches beneath and within it. The capitals, at first crude imitations of classic prototypes, soon become the field for the grotesque imagination of the workmen, and each differs from the other and is a mass of light and shade shot with all sorts of uncouth fancies. Wherever, for some constructive reason, a column is omitted against a wall, the capital becomes a corbel, carrying the arches. In many cases the corbels alone are used, and an arcaded corbel course becomes the favorite termination of a wall in the place of a classic entablature. Finally the arches are omitted, and the corbels alone support the eaves. It will be noticed that while the Byzantine decorated the interior of the churches, the Romanesque builder merely constructed the interior and wrought out the most of his design upon the facade. As a large arch was to him for a long time a _tour de force_, he naturally beautified the necessarily large entrance, and the beginning of the development of the beautiful Gothic portals is seen in the early Romanesque churches. The Romanesque is an architecture of inertia, with arches heavily weighted by great masses of wall, and with broadly contrasting masses of light and shade. It does not depend for its effect upon intellectual quality beyond a rigorous sense of simplicity, or upon refinement of conception or detail, but rather upon size, picturesque mass, and staccato light and shade. The proportion of capital to column in quantity of surface was very slight. The proportion of voussoirs to arches naturally depended upon the size of the arch,--large voussoirs to large arches, small voussoirs to small arches. Columns were only grouped around piers and on either side of openings; and lastly, the natural development of the column in Romanesque work was toward attenuation,--the later and the better the work, the more slender became the columns, until at last they were merged into the Gothic multiple-columned piers. The carving upon the arch-mouldings is, to a great extent, geometric, consisting of numerous facets cut in the stone, lozenges, etc.; the so-called dogtooth moulding is a very favorite form of decoration. All these carved mouldings were picked out in color, usually in red and green. The acanthus in the Romanesque has lost much of its vigor, is flat, heavy-tipped, round-edged, and scratched with V-cuts, and the vine is the leaf preferred by designers. Frequently masses of wall are cut in geometric diaper patterns, also touched with color. Borders are not broad; and circular forms, except in the arches, are seldom used. Romanesque was a barbaric art at the best, and has the usual virtue of the barbarian,--a directness of attack at the problem in hand and a simplicity in treating it which is invigorating to see. [Illustration: XXV. Window in the Church of S. Teresia, Trani, Italy.] [Illustration: XXVI. Window in the Church of S. Teresia, Trani, Italy.] XXV. and XXVI. WINDOWS IN THE CHURCH OF S. TERESIA, TRANI, ITALY. These two windows have very little to suggest Byzantine influence in their design. The form and detail are essentially Romanesque, although there is a certain crispness and piquancy of treatment in the first (Plate XXV.) which belongs to the Byzantine work. [Illustration: XXVII. Window in the Façade of the Basilica at Altamura, Italy.] XXVII. WINDOW IN THE FACADE OF THE BASILICA AT ALTAMURA, ITALY. The employment of grotesque beasts supporting the columns at each side of this window is a very common device in the Italian Romanesque work. The use of a reversed capital in place of a base for the centre column is also a peculiar treatment frequently found in Romanesque work. [Illustration: XXVIII. Windows in the Façade of S. Gregorio, Bari, Italy.] XXVIII. WINDOWS IN THE FACADE OF S. GREGORIO, BARI, ITALY. [Illustration: XXIX. Triforium Window in the Church of S. Gregorio, Bari, Italy.] XXIX. TRIFORIUM WINDOW IN THE CHURCH OF S. GREGORIO, BARI, ITALY. The Byzantine architects used pierced stonework with great effect both in exterior and interior detail. The examples here shown are rather crude, but effective in the relative scale of parts. [Illustration: XXX. Window in the Apse of the Cathedral, Bari, Italy.] XXX. WINDOW IN THE APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL, BARI, ITALY. The ornament about this window, especially that in the long panel below it and upon the cyma of the soffit above, is Byzantine in character, while the columns, with the exception of the capital of the one at the left, are much more Romanesque. [Illustration: XXXI. A Window in Bittonto, Italy.] XXXI. A WINDOW IN BITTONTO, ITALY. This is not an especially beautiful example, but is an illustration of the direct and vigorous treatment of the early barbarian Romanesque builders. [Illustration: XXXII. Window in the Apse of the Cathedral, Bittonto, Italy.] XXXII. WINDOW IN THE APSE OF THE CATHEDRAL, BITTONTO, ITALY. In this case the beautiful and delicate Byzantine leafage can be seen on the mouldings of the arch above the window. As in several of the preceding examples, there is a curious mixture of the two styles. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year. 50 cents, in advance. Special Club Rate for five subscriptions.. $2.00. Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * Several weeks ago the stock of back numbers of THE BROCHURE SERIES held to fill subscription orders was exhausted, and in future all subscriptions will have to be dated from the number current at the time the subscription is placed. All who wish to have the remaining numbers of this year should subscribe at once, as no back numbers will be kept in stock. The edition has been increased to 7,000 copies, and if the present rate of growth in the subscription department holds will shortly have to be doubled. * * * * * The judges in the recent competition for the Rotch Travelling Scholarship, Messrs. Cass Gilbert, George B. Post, and Frank Miles Day, have awarded the scholarship to William S. Aldrich. Mr. Aldrich has taken the examinations this year for the first time, although several of his unsuccessful rivals for the honor have entered before in years past. He has been for some time in the office of Mr. C. H. Blackall, and has been engaged upon important work, such as the new Tremont Temple, which is now approaching completion. In 1884 he entered the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed the two years' special course in 1887, and then went to the office of Mr. John Calvin Stevens in Portland, Me. He afterwards worked in the Boston office of McKim, Mead & White, and in the office of Peabody & Stearns, where he was engaged upon the drawings for the buildings at the World's Fair. As will be seen, he has had a varied experience and is well equipped to make the best use of his opportunities for the next two years. It has been the custom in recent years with the winners of the scholarship to delay their departure until midsummer or early fall, but Mr. Aldrich proposes to start in June. His plan of work has not yet been entirely fixed, but he will probably spend a large part of his time in Italy, working in conjunction with the American atelier at Rome. * * * * * The three other scholarships in which the same problem in design was employed have also been awarded. For the McKim Fellowship of Columbia College ten designs were submitted. The award was made to Mr. John Russell Pope of New York, a graduate from the school in the class of 1894. The Roman Scholarship was also awarded to Mr. Pope. In the competition for the latter twenty-three designs were entered, and besides the first award honorable mention was given to Mr. Henry E. Emery of Nyack, N. Y., Mr. Fellows of Chicago, and Mr. Bossange and Mr. Ayres of New York, graduates of Columbia College, and to Mr. Percy Ash of Philadelphia. In the University of Pennsylvania Scholarship in Architecture there were six competitors, and the award was made to Mr. Percy Ash, a graduate of the University. Mr. Ash has also had several years' practical experience in the best offices of Philadelphia, such as those of Cope & Stewardson and Frank Miles Day & Bro. Mr. H. L. Duhring, Jr., of the Senior class in the University, was given second place. * * * * * The _American Architect_, in an interesting notice of the recent exhibition of the Boston Society of Architects and Boston Architectural Club, takes the occasion to comment unfavorably upon the disfigurement of the catalogue by advertisements, which it says are "most excellent things in their proper place, but wholly out of place in an exhibition catalogue." Why this is so it is hard to see, unless the _Architect_ believes that there is not advertising enough to go round, and that it should all be reserved for the trade and professional papers. At all events this is "kicking against the pricks," for it is well known that the expenses of such exhibitions cannot be met without some outside assistance, and the most feasible plan that has been found for making both ends meet is to interest the dealers in materials used in the buildings represented in the exhibitions. As these dealers are seldom named on the drawings exhibited, it seems proper that some return should be made for their most valuable assistance, without which the exhibition would not be possible. The _Architect_ further says: "The position taken by the St. Louis Chapter A. I. A. was the proper and dignified one, and it ought to be followed elsewhere. The catalogue of their recent exhibition, although a much more costly one than either the Boston or the League catalogue, contains not a line of advertising matter." This is certainly an amusing misstatement. Instead of "not a line," this catalogue has more space devoted to advertising than any of the others mentioned. What it would have been without its sixty-four pages of advertising, yielding an income of at least $50 a page, we leave others to figure out. Some of these pages we should prefer to see treated differently, as they do detract from the illustrations which they face, and they are sprinkled full of water-closets, radiators, bath-tubs, and various other building appliances not especially artistic in their suggestiveness. Still there is considerable taste and care evinced in the arrangement of many of the pages, and they are well printed on good paper. Possibly this accounts for the failure of the _Architect_ to recognize them as advertisements. The dignified course, it seems to us, is that followed by the committee of the Boston exhibition. In this case a certain number of pages was reserved in the catalogue to be devoted to advertising, and the houses to be represented were given to understand that all would be treated alike. No cuts would be used, and the pages would all be set in type of uniform style, thus insuring a desirable ensemble. We think that the advertising when well presented adds to, rather than detracts from, the interest of a catalogue. Our only desire is to see it done in good taste. The display of plumbing apparatus and all manner of building appliances we do not consider in good taste in this place. The secretaries of a number of the architectural clubs have very kindly responded to our request for notices and reports of their meetings and proceedings, and we are pleased to be able to give short reports of such occurrences as are of general interest. There are some clubs, however, from whom we have not yet heard, and we would suggest that it will be a help to all concerned if the secretaries of all the architectural clubs will furnish us with short accounts of their regular meetings and of any other occasions of importance. We shall be pleased also to publish any correspondence which will in any way further the interests of these organizations. We shall be glad to have THE BROCHURE SERIES considered as the organ of communication between the various clubs, and will place our services at their command. Books. _Examples of Colonial Architecture in Charleston, S. C., and Savannah, Ga._ Compiled, photographed, and published by Edward A. Crane and E. E. Soderholtz, Boston Architectural Club, Boston. 50 plates, 11 x 14. $12.50. How much the revival of the classic influence of the early colonial and the immediately succeeding period is going to prevail in the establishment of a distinctive American style of architecture it is now difficult or indeed impossible to determine; but at all events the reaction from the Queen Anne vagaries of ten years ago to the more severe mass and chaste detail of the recent so-called colonial houses is a step in the right direction, and we have much to be thankful for in the improvement which this tendency has wrought in our recent domestic architecture. Beautiful and admirable as some of the recent examples of this work are, very few show the subtle appreciation of design to be found in many of the older buildings which until the last year or two have been looked upon as merely the outgrown and cast-off work of an age much less refined than our own. With the very general adoption of this style there has been an increased interest in the few remaining fine old examples which are scattered over the Eastern and Middle States, and the best of these are now familiar to architects. Few, however, know anything of the development of this style in the Southern States, and the work now before us will be a revelation to those who have not visited the neighborhood of Charleston and Savannah. A large proportion of the plates is devoted to Charleston, which owes its wealth and in fact the greater part of its existence to the prosperous planters of former days, who made the city a winter resort. The most notable house illustrated in the work is the William Bull Pringle house, built by Miles Brewton in 1760. It has long been famous as one of the finest houses in the country. Josiah Quincy, who was entertained by its first owner, speaks in enthusiastic terms of its beauty and the charm of its surroundings. Fourteen plates are devoted to illustrating its various features. The two-story portico with a Doric order below and Ionic above, relieved against the brick front laid in Flemish bond, the simple but well-designed iron fence, flanked on either side by a wall with massive brick posts covered with plaster, and all overgrown with a tangle of foliage, make up a fascinating picture. The view of the side gateway and a group of darky boys is wonderfully picturesque, besides being very suggestive as an architectural fragment. The detail is delicate and refined, but as a rule lacks the force and vitality of the Northern work of the same period. The interior detail shows a marked French influence, especially in the ceilings, mantels, and stairway. The drawing-room, of which a double plate is given, is probably without doubt the finest colonial room in the country, and is certainly a fine piece of design all through. One feature in planning which seems to be peculiar to this region, as it is not found in the houses at the North, is the location of the drawing-room, which is here on the second floor, usually extending entirely across the front of the house. There is seldom, however, any indication of this in the facade by a distinctive treatment of the second story. But the effect is seen in the interior by the greater importance naturally given to the staircase hall. The Gibbs house, built in 1752, which is shown by several plates, is also very attractive. The two interior doorways shown on one plate are among the most refined that we can remember. The entrance and staircase hall of the Gov. Bennett house will bear comparison with anything of its class to be found, and the plates showing it will be of especial value for interior work. The Bull house is of a type apparently common in the older work of this region. It is square and covered with a hip roof. The front is divided into three bays, the centre and wider one crowned with a low gable or pediment. The main floor is high, leaving a basement below and no cellar; and the front door, an illustration of which we give herewith, is reached by a double flight of steps protected by an iron railing. Many of the houses are provided with high fences and massive gateposts. A number of the plates give fine examples of these and several very interesting pieces of iron work. [Illustration: Doorway to the Bull House, Charleston.] Of the churches, St. Michael's and St. Philip's in Charleston are selected. The former was built in 1760, and is attributed to the English architect, Gibbs, who is also credited with the old Archdale house, with how good authority we do not know. On the whole, the choice of material is excellent. There is a large number of plates of detail which for architects' use are always the most valuable, and the work of the photographer and printer has been done unusually well. * * * * * _Catalogue of the Joint Exhibition of the Boston Society of Architects and the Boston Architectural Club, April 15 to 21, 1895._ Boston: Published for the exhibition by Bates & Guild. 96 pp., 36 illustrations. 35 cents. A continuation of the general subject of exhibition catalogues touched upon in our last issue as far as it relates to the catalogue of the Boston Architectural Exhibition. The exhibition itself is quite small comparatively speaking, including only three hundred and twenty-five numbers, but, as the illustrations in the catalogue show, is widely representative and of a high grade of excellence. The contributions are very largely confined to members of the two societies under whose management the exhibition is held. This tends to give a somewhat local character to the exhibition as a whole. Still there is a sufficient number of important contributions from outside to make a quite respectable showing. The selection of illustrations, the only ground upon which there is excuse for reviewing the publication, is unquestionably good. There are thirty-six in all, covering a wide range of subjects treated in a variety of ways. The reproductions are unusually good, and the book is neatly and well printed on good paper. The cover, designed by Mr. George G. Will, is especially attractive and good in design. Club Notes. Recruits in the already very considerable list of architectural clubs are still coming to the front. The latest to be heard from is the Architectural Club of San Francisco, which was organized on Feb. 26 with fourteen members, some of whom were members of the old Sketch Club of San Francisco. It is growing in membership, and gives promise of a bright future. Rooms have been secured in the Menisini Building, 231 Post Street. Meetings are held on the first Monday of each month, and a paper is read and the designs submitted in the monthly competitions are criticised and the awards announced. The first club exhibition will be held April 26. Mr. Loring P. Rixford, Room 24, Menisini Building, 231 Post Street, San Francisco, is secretary. Brochure Series Competitions. From time to time, as opportunity offers, competitions in design will be conducted by THE BROCHURE SERIES. An upright or cabinet piano case, the subject of the first one, badly needs the attention of good designers. The Henry F. Miller & Sons Piano Company of Boston have, for several years, made steady advancement in the artistic qualities of their piano cases. They have equipped their factory with a view to special work, and have unusually good facilities for getting out pianos to order, carrying out, architects' sketches or those of their own designers to harmonize with different styles of interior decoration. It is their idea to encourage the special designing of piano cases, and to this end they have placed with the publishers fifty dollars to be divided into prizes for such designs. Only sketches will be required, their object being not to use the designs further than to publish the best, but to get designers to give a little attention to this particular problem, and so do a little towards creating an interest in the better design of piano cases. Full particulars, including a structural diagram and a statement of the technical requirements and limitations, will be announced in our next issue. Personal. As usual at this season, a number of architects and draughtsmen are planning to go abroad; some for only a few months, and others for a longer time. Among these are Messrs. H. T. Pratt, Matthew Sullivan, C. D. Maginnis, and H. C. Dunham, of Boston, and E. K. Taylor and H. L. Jones of New York. 
19364	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. MAY, 1895. No. 5. TWO FLORENTINE PAVEMENTS. The church of San Miniato al Monte, just outside the walls southeast of Florence, and the Baptistery, or church of San Giovanni Battista, in Florence, are among the finest examples of the Tuscan Romanesque style, and both probably date from about the same time--the early part of the twelfth century--although the date of San Miniato has until recently been referred several centuries further back. These two churches have many points of similarity, although entirely different in plan. San Miniato was referred to in the article upon the Byzantine-Romanesque doorways of Southern Italy in our February number, and Fergusson's classification of Byzantine-Romanesque was, for the time being, adopted for lack of better authority. Later writers have, however, generally agreed that there is little or no Byzantine influence in these two churches; that the delicate and refined treatment of classic forms here found is not the result of Byzantine or Greek influence, but is due entirely to the natural refinement of the Tuscan race. The same characteristic was again shown later in the treatment of Gothic detail, and is evident in the Renaissance work of this locality. The dimensions of San Miniato were given in the February number referred to above. The interior of this church is generally considered one of the most beautiful interiors of Italy on account of its effective basilican plan with a crypt opening from the nave, its beautiful and rich detail, and its fine mosaics and decorations. The pavement is not the least of its attractions. The Baptistery will be remembered for its famous bronze doors, the work of Ghiberti, which have given occasion for so much discussion, favorable and unfavorable. It is octagonal in plan, and 108 feet in diameter externally. It was erected originally for the cathedral of the city, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was so thoroughly remodeled that no recognizable features of the old building remain. The pavements, in point of design, appear quite independent of the other ornamental work in the two buildings we are considering. The motives of ornament are those commonly found in the stuffs, especially silks, of Sicily and the East, and their use here could easily be accounted for through connection with Sicily. It is known that the Hotel de Tiraz at Palermo, the great royal manufactory of stuffs, artistic metal work, mosaics, etc., established in the sixth century, and which continued until the sixteenth, supplied not only much of the finest textile products for all of Europe in that time, but also furnished workmen who carried with them the designs and methods of Sicilian textile manufacture to other countries. Such manufactories were established in several Italian cities, among them Lucca. The relationship seems clear, as the forms are perfectly similar. The beasts and birds set in balancing pairs facing each other and repeated in an all-over pattern, as in a woven fabric, strongly suggest the Sicilian silks. Eug. Muentz in his work, "La Tapisserie," speaks of this evident relationship. The internal evidence of the design itself would be quite sufficient if we had no other means of tracing it. These two pavements are practically unique, as far as we are able to learn. They are marble inlay, the pattern having been cut out in a slab of white marble and pieces of black marble carefully fitted in to form the figure. This is not true mosaic, and differs essentially in design from the mosaic work of the same period which was derived from the Roman mosaics made up of small pieces of marble or other material. Most of the floor mosaics in Italy have suffered from wear and tear, and have in many cases been very poorly restored; but these two pavements appear to be in nearly their original condition. The design does not have the merit of belonging distinctively to the material in all cases, and might just as well be applied to wood parquetry as stone. In fact, it might be even more effective in this material if the colors were judiciously chosen. [Illustration: XXXIII. Portion of the Pavement in the Baptistery, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XXXIV. Portion of the Pavement in the Baptistery, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XXXV. Portion of the Pavement in the Baptistery, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XXXVI. Portion of the Pavement in the Baptistery, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XXXVII. Portion of the Pavement in the Baptistery, Florence, Italy.] XXXIII to XXXVII. PORTIONS OF THE PAVEMENT IN THE BAPTISTERY, FLORENCE, ITALY. One exception should be made to the remarks above in relation to true mosaic. The lower left-hand portion of plate XXXVI is without doubt made up of small pieces put together after the manner of the old Roman mosaics, and it is possible that the portion shown in the upper left-hand corner of the same plate is made in the same way. There are several parts of the floor laid in this manner, but they are distinctly secondary in interest to the inlaid portions. The pavement is divided irregularly by squares and rectangles, the portion especially rich in ornament being that between the door and the altar. The rectangular patterns are irregularly cut into by special pavements, placed before several of the monumental tombs in the walls. [Illustration: XXXVIII. Portion of the Pavement in the Church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XXXIX. Portion of the Pavement in the Church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy.] [Illustration: XL. Portion of the Pavement in the Church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, Italy.] XXXVIII to XL. PORTIONS OF THE PAVEMENT IN THE CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO AL MONTE, FLORENCE, ITALY. In the first of these plates there is a suggestion of the mosaic treatment commonly seen in the pavements of Rome, Venice, and Siena. The sort of guilloche of interlacing circles was very generally used. Plate XL on the other hand is as plainly reminiscent of textile designs as it well might be; and in plate XXXIII from the Baptistery the same characteristic can be seen. Wood Floors. The addition which a fine hardwood floor makes to the attractiveness of a room is appreciated by some architects, but good floors are not by any means as common as they should be. The expense of hard wood is not so much more than that of a cheap floor as to stand in the way of its use when the final result is considered. It is generally admitted that a floor entirely covered with a carpet is in many ways undesirable, especially from a sanitary point of view; while a hardwood floor, wholly or partly covered with rugs, has every advantage. Furthermore, the fashion, which has a great deal to do with what shall be used, aside from any question of intrinsic merit, has set strongly in this direction, and in many cases old floors are replaced with new ones of hard wood for the sole purpose of giving a chance for the use of rugs in place of carpets. This is one, even if it be a rare instance of the agreement of fashion and good taste. In working over an old floor a plain or ornamental border can usually be laid at no great expense by using the thin wood carpet, manufactured by all the best makers of parquetry, and the centre can be laid with a pattern or with narrow strips such as the "roll goods" which are manufactured by S. C. Johnson of Racine, which are made up of strips usually one and three-eighths inches wide and five sixteenths of an inch thick, glued to a backing of canvas. Patterns of all descriptions made from all the best foreign and domestic woods can be obtained, as the designs of the best manufacturers include an almost unlimited choice, and there is no end to the combinations which can be made from the stock patterns. As an instance of this, the catalogue of J. W. Boughton of Philadelphia contains a remarkably fine selection of borders which can be combined and adapted to almost any requirement, while the designs for the field or centre of the floor are fully as varied and usable. These designs are made in such shape that they can be easily adapted to any shape of room and fitted to all sorts of irregular niches and jogs at slight extra expense. Owing to the economy of manufacturing floors made from pieces which can be put together on a system of squares, hexagons, or octagons, most of the patterns in common use are made up of these units, or of triangles or rectangles combining to form these figures. Curved forms cannot be used to good advantage in this way as it is difficult and expensive to cut or join them properly. Nevertheless, all the principal manufacturers will execute to order any design desired. When placed in a new house floors of 7/8 inch or 1-1/4 inch are usually to be preferred, and are made in sections of convenient size for shipment at the factory, and finished after they are in place. Most of the makers nail thin parquetry work through from the surface and fill the nail holes with putty, although in some cases blind nailing is used. Western manufacturers have in the last few years been making rapid progress in this industry. While J. W. Boughton, who is one of the oldest and best known makers of ornamental flooring, is still doing a large and increasing business, Western houses are catering to and obtaining a great deal of the best trade. The Interior Hardwood Company of Indianapolis, under the business management of its vice-president, Mr. Charles Hinman Comstock, has doubled its capacity in the last year and shows commendable energy in pushing its business. S. C. Johnson of Racine, Wis., is also in the front rank in first-class trade. The Wood-Mosaic Company of Rochester should also be considered as one of the leading and reliable houses. Its collection of designs is full and varied and its work of the best. Architects will find the catalogues of these firms most valuable reference books. The finishing of a good floor requires care and attention as well as special knowledge. Oil, varnish, shellac, and wax are the finishes ordinarily used, but wax is usually the most satisfactory. The floor should be carefully and thoroughly smoothed, so that no waves or plane-marks will be seen, and then filled if the wood is at all porous or open grained. This is done with preparations manufactured by any of the firms mentioned above, or with fillers specially made for the purpose such as those sold by Harrison Brothers & Company of Philadelphia, or the Chicago Wood Finishing Company of Chicago. The wood filler made by the latter firm is especially adapted for this purpose and will give excellent results. The finish is then applied in one or more coats as required, oil and shellac finishes usually requiring more than one application and an intermediate rubbing down with fine sandpaper. Shellac and ordinary varnish are usually unsatisfactory from their tendency to wear unevenly. The Chicago Varnish Company of Chicago supplies a varnish under the name of "Supremis," which has proved by years of use under trying conditions, such as those of asylums, hospitals, and public buildings, to be of exceptional merit. It is elastic, tough, and gives a fine waxy surface which can be rubbed and will preserve its finish. It has the additional merit of being easily applied. It dries quickly and is remarkably durable. Wax should be carefully applied and then polished to the required finish with a weighted brush. Of wax finishes one very largely used is that made by the Butcher Polish Company of Boston. It has all the best qualities of other wax finishes and has stood the test of time and experience. There are numerous variations in the products referred to above suited for different purposes. The Wood-Mosaic Company makes end-wood mosaic 7/8 inch thick made of small blocks joined by means of a lead tongue; wood carpet similar to that of S. C. Johnson; and thick and thin parquetry. S. C. Johnson also makes a flooring of 1/4 inch face glued to a backing of pine to make 7/8 inch, 1 inch, or 1-1/4 inch stock which is found to stand the changes of temperature in American houses remarkably well. The thicker floors of 7/8 inch and upwards are frequently made with tongued and grooved joints and blind nailed. These patterns when properly chosen are just as appropriate for stairs, walls, or even ceilings, as for floors, and are frequently used for these places. Modern Mosaic Floors. The use of mosaic floors, especially for corridors and entrances of public and business buildings and in some positions of private residences, is rapidly increasing, and every specimen of work gives this art impetus. The laying of a mosaic floor is not so simple a matter as it appears to many architects, and the fact that anyone cannot do it is proven by the bad work one constantly runs across. It is, therefore, advisable that work of this sort be entrusted to a concern that can be found after the job has been finished and paid for, and that has a reputation to maintain and a willingness to make good any imperfection that a few months' wear will bring to light. As this number of THE BROCHURE SERIES will often be referred to where ornamental floors are being designed, we take pleasure not particularly in recommending a house for executing such floors, but rather in calling attention to some of the work executed, inspection of which will be the strongest endorsement possible. We refer to the Murdock Parlor Grate Company of Boston, a house known by name at least to every architect and builder of New England. Organized over forty years ago, and with prospects of active existence for as many or more years to come, their contracts contain the element of responsibility that is the best guarantee an architect can have that his client's interests are in good hands. The mosaic and terrazzo flooring department of the Murdock Parlor Grate Company already has a list of over fifty public buildings in which important work has been done. The terrazzo floors so much admired in the new Public Library, covering a surface of 60,000 square feet, the mosaic floor of the Members' corridor in the Massachusetts State House, and especially the entrance to the Members' vestibule, a part of this floor, and the lobbies to the Bowdoin Square and Keith's Theatres, Boston, also mosaic, are examples easily inspected by Boston architects. Other public buildings in New England in which this company have done admirable mosaic work are the new McLean Asylum buildings, the Arlington (Mass.) Public Library, the Exchange Club, Boston, and a number of bank buildings. Throughout the Back Bay district there are numberless vestibule and hall floors in fine residences, many of which are gems in color and design. We have mentioned only a few examples, but almost every New England architect can, by writing to the Murdock Parlor Grate Company, be referred to examples of their work in his neighborhood, and we think he will find their estimates as low as it is safe to accept, and their responsibility is beyond all question. Books. _A Handbook of Architectural Styles_: Translated from the German of A. Rosengarten by W. Collett-Sandars. New edition, 639 illustrations. New York: C. Scribner's Sons. 1895. For sale by Bates & Guild, Boston. $2.50. A review of the contents of this work is scarcely necessary, as it is already recognized as a standard by all who are at all familiar with architectural literature. As compared with other books upon the history of architecture, the point of view from which the subject has been looked at furnishes the main distinction. This cannot be better stated than in the words of the editor of the present edition, Professor T. Roger Smith. He says: "It is essentially that of an academic and classical professor, and one brought up not only in familiarity with the best examples of ancient art, but with the habit of mind which recurs to classic and especially to Greek originals, both as a standard of taste and as models for treatment of modern works. This feeling, which held sway in England in the day of Chambers, of Soane, and of Cockerell, has now almost died out from our practice and our literature. The works of the contemporary English and French writers on architecture, which are now widely known and read, proceed avowedly and unmistakably on a different basis. Such writings as those of Street or Scott, Viollet-le-Duc, and Ruskin breathe a totally different inspiration; while even the valuable series of architectural writings which we owe to the pen of Mr. Fergusson are too cosmopolitan in range and too impartial in tone for such a peculiarity as is here traceable to be visible in them." The illustrations show some of the wear and tear of former editions, but are still of great value. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year 50 cents, in advance Special Club Rates for five subscriptions $2.00 Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * It has been called to our attention that some of our subscribers object to duplicating, or at least object to paying for duplicating plates or photographs which they already have in some other form. This is of course perfectly natural and was a point which we had fully in mind in formulating the plan of THE BROCHURE SERIES. And this was one of the main considerations which influenced us in making the subscription price so low. At the price of fifty cents a year, if only a dozen out of the hundred plates are worth buying to a subscriber his year's subscription is justified and is a good investment. Of necessity it will be found that we shall occasionally include subjects which some of our subscribers already have, but the importance of this duplication is liable to be exaggerated in the minds of those who might notice it when the number of other desirable plates is not kept in view. It should be remembered that the classification, which we are following, and the complete reference index which will be published at the end of each year, and the advantage of a compact and uniform collection which a set of the BROCHURES will give, render it much more usable than a collection of miscellaneous plates or photographs can possibly be. While it is not to be expected that we can choose subjects which are entirely new to all of our thousands of subscribers, it will be our aim to select those which will appeal to the greatest number, and when familiar subjects are given the best obtainable photographs will be used, and those which are least likely to be already found in American collections. It is now too late for those who have not already subscribed to obtain a complete set of THE BROCHURE SERIES as our supply of the first three numbers is exhausted, and no attempt will be made in future to carry in stock any back numbers. Only enough copies of each issue will be printed to supply immediate demands. On this account those who wish for the current numbers must subscribe at once in order to make sure of them. Less than one hundred copies of the April number are now in stock and these are fast disappearing. Subscriptions in future will only be taken to date from the next succeeding issue. We wish especially to call attention to the arrangement by which clubs of five subscriptions may be made up for $2, or 40 cents for each subscription. A very little inquiry among one's friends will bring to light four who are ready to combine at this price. * * * * * The large circulation of THE BROCHURE SERIES among the younger members of the profession furnishes an excellent opportunity for the interchange of ideas with men who are all working with the same end in view--the advancement of the profession of architecture. There may be a wide difference in their aims, influenced by personal considerations, the various differences of training and environment; but all are looking forward to increased opportunities and a wider field of usefulness. The experience of many young men will be found of value in shaping the course of those who have not yet won their spurs. It is the purpose of THE BROCHURE SERIES to furnish information as far as possible on everything relating to the profession which will help to make the course of such men an easy one. The articles upon the sketch clubs, scholarships, and other educational work, have all been intended to serve this purpose, and the cooperation of all who are working to this end is earnestly solicited. Our pages will always be open for the discussion of subjects of vital interest to young architects, and we shall hope to see the opportunity largely taken advantage of. American School of Architecture, Rome. A recent circular issued by the committee of the American School of Architecture at Rome contains a general description of the organization of the school and its work. On the twelfth of last June, at a meeting held in New York, it was decided to found such a school, and a committee of control was selected including the chiefs of the schools of architecture at the different American colleges where such exist. We give below some quotations from this circular which will be found of interest. The school is founded for the benefit of advanced students only, and is designed to further the more disciplinary work of other institutions by opening to young men, already well trained by them in drawing and design, certain special lines of study, which at present can be pursued only under great disadvantages. Beginners, accordingly, will not be received. Such work is not suitable to their condition, and it would be a mistake to encourage them to devote their time to it. But to the holders of traveling scholarships, to those who have acquitted themselves with distinction in the competitions for these scholarships, and to members of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of at least three years' standing, it offers opportunities for the completion of their professional training which students thus equipped will, it is believed, find of inestimable value. Other well-accredited students may be admitted to certain hospitalities of the school, at the discretion of the secretary. Hitherto the holders of traveling scholarships have followed very largely their own judgment as to their travel and study, and have produced, as required, a certain number of carefully measured drawings, which have borne testimony to the diligence of their authors, their facility with pen, pencil, and brush, and the evident seriousness of their intentions; but the work has necessarily shown no common purpose and little consistent prosecution along carefully chosen lines. This being their common experience, the past holders of traveling scholarships are general in their approval of the effort to direct foreign travel and study hereafter to more definite and specific courses. The school is one of observation and research rather than of design, aiming to form a correct taste and to impress upon the mind, by daily contact with great examples, those principles which are essential to the enduring quality in architecture, be the style what it may. To this end the founders of the school believe it to be of the utmost importance for an architect, before he begins his professional career, to study thoroughly and on the spot the monuments of ancient architecture and such works of the Italian Renaissance as are worthy of being considered their successors. The monuments best suited to this purpose are those of Greece and Italy, and the headquarters of the school are established at Rome rather than at Athens, because of the greater amount of material there at hand of use to the modern student not only in the art of architecture itself, but in that of mural painting and in the decorative arts, including architectural sculpture. The school was formally opened under the charge of Mr. Austin W. Lord, as secretary, on the first of November last, in temporary quarters in the upper story of the Palazzo Torlonia, on the southwest corner of the Via dei Condotti and the Via Bocca di Leone, between the Corso and the Piazza di Spagna; but a permanent home has now been secured in the building known as the Casino dell'Aurora, occupying a part of the grounds formerly belonging to the Villa Ludovisi. This building is situated upon an isolated plot of ground, raised fifteen or twenty feet above the surrounding streets, and comprising about eighty thousand square feet, which is the size of the enclosed space in Gramercy Park in the city of New York. It is on the Pincian Hill, not far from the French Academy in the Villa Medici. The building contains about thirty rooms; some of these are decorated with well-known frescoes, among which is the Aurora of Guercino. The grounds, which were laid out by Lenôtre, are well covered with trees and shrubs, and afford ample space for the erection of additional one story buildings, should such be required at any time for workrooms or studios. Personal. Mr. A. L. Nicholson, formerly with Davis & Von Storch, architects, Scranton, Pa., has accepted a position with De Lemos & Cordes, Fulton Building, Fulton and Nassau Streets, New York. Mr. Dwight H. Perkins, of the firm of Perkins & Selby, Marshall Field Building, Chicago, opened a new office on May 1 at 1107 Steinway Hall Building, Chicago. Mr. Myron H. Hunt, recently returned from an extended trip abroad, has gone into the office of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge in Chicago. Mr. F. N. Reed, who has distinguished himself in the Rotch Scholarship competition, having been given second place each time in the last three years, is now with Cabot, Everett & Mead of Boston. Brochure Series Competition No. 1. [Illustration] Program: The Henry F. Miller Piano Company of Boston, with the idea of turning the attention of designers to the problem of artistic piano cases, has placed in the hands of publishers of THE BROCHURE SERIES $50, to be awarded for sketches of piano cases. Three prizes of $25, $15, and $10 will be given for the three best designs submitted, the judges to be the officers, of the company, assisted by an architect who shall be appointed by the publishers. It is not the idea of the Henry F. Miller Piano Company to secure designs for actual use, as their work in special case design is almost entirely to order, carrying out designs for architects and decorators. Therefore, only sketches are required which may be executed in any medium the designer may choose, although due regard should be paid to the reproductive character of the drawing. A perspective sketch, showing the right end and front of the case, is required to be made on paper, not exceeding 8x12 in. in size. The diagram above gives the necessary dimensions. In designing the end the only thing to be borne in mind is the construction of the case, the front telescoping into the back or frame, as shown by the plan of the end. The quarter round finish of the back is not necessary, the treatment of the end being optional so long as dimensions and construction are regarded. The arm or end of the keyboard (_c_), the foot (_a_), the "truss" (_b_), which supports the keyboard, are all left entirely to the designer, the only dimensions to be regarded being the height of keyboard from the floor (2 ft. 1 in.), the top of the keys (4-1/2 in. higher), and the space (4 ft.) occupied by the keys. The arm projects 1 ft. 1 in. beyond the front. Drawings must be sent carriage paid so as to reach the editor of THE BROCHURE SERIES on or before July 15, 1895. The prize designs will become the property of the Henry F. Miller Piano Company. The other designs will be returned to their authors. It is to be understood, however, that any or all designs may be exhibited or published, and that they may be retained a reasonable time after judgment for these purposes. The details and management of the competition are left entirely to the publishers of THE BROCHURE SERIES, and it is hoped that this, the first of a number of competitions they will endeavor to arrange, will bring out the work of the best designers. If there is any portion of this program not clearly understood, the publishers will explain more in detail upon request. 
19420	----	[Illustration: York Minster, the West Front and Nave.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF YORK A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARCHI-EPISCOPAL SEE BY A. CLUTTON-BROCK [Illustration: The Arms of the See] WITH FORTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899 W. H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH * * * * * GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archaeology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archaeological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE. EDWARD F. STRANGE. * * * * * AUTHOR'S PREFACE I have usually followed Professor Willis in his account of the Minster, and my obligations to his excellent works are general and continuous. Professor Willis made careful and extensive observations of the Crypt and other parts of the Minster during the restoration, which gave him opportunities for investigation now impossible. He also brought to these observations a learning and sagacity probably greater than those of any other writer on English Gothic Architecture, and his little book remains the standard work on the history of the Minster. I regret that I have been unable to agree with several of the theories of that most enthusiastic and diligent writer, Mr John Browne, or even to discuss them as I should have liked; but his books must always be of great value to every one interested in the history of York. I am also indebted to Canon Raine's excellent works and compilations; to Mr Winston for his remarks on the glass in the Minster; and to Professor Freeman for his interesting criticisms of the fabric generally. A. C.-B. * * * * * CONTENTS CHAPTER I.--History of the See and City 3 CHAPTER II.--History of the Building 30 CHAPTER III.--Description of the Exterior 47 The West Front 48 The North Transept 56 The Chapter-House 60 The Choir 61 The South Transept 63 The Central Tower 67 CHAPTER IV.--Description of the Interior 68 The Nave 68 The Transepts 80 The Chapter-House 93 The Choir 98 The Crypt 120 The Record Room 123 Monuments 125 Stained Glass 133 CHAPTER V.--The Archbishops 140 ILLUSTRATIONS York Minster, the West Front and Nave _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title Page_ The Minster and Bootham Bar, from Exhibition Square 2 St Mary's Abbey 9 Bootham Bar 15 Walmgate Bar 19, 24 Micklegate Bar 25 The Shambles 29 The Minster (from an Old Print) 35 The West Front (1810) 39 The East End (from Britton) 43 The West Front--Main Entrance 49 The Exterior, from the South-East 53 The Exterior, from the North 57 Bay of Choir--Exterior 62 South Transept--Porch 65 Seal of St Mary's Abbey 67 The Nave 69 The Nave--South Aisle 77 South Transept, Triforium, and Clerestory 91 Chapter-House--Entrance and Sedilia 97 The Choir Screen 100 The Choir, looking East 101 Bay of Choir--Interior 103 The Choir, looking West 107 Compartment of Ancient Choir Stalls 110 Compartment of Altar Screen 111 The Choir in 1810 115 The Virgin and Child (a Carving behind the Altar) 119 The Crypt 121 Capitals in Crypt 122, 123 Effigy of Manley 125 Effigy of Archbishop de Grey 128 Monument of William of Hatfield 129 Monument of Archbishop Bowet 132 The East Window 138 Effigy of Archbishop Savage 151 Tomb of Archbishop Savage 152 PLAN OF MINSTER 157 * * * * * [Illustration: The Minster and Bootham Bar, from Exhibition Square] CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE SEE AND CITY At York the city did not grow up round the cathedral as at Ely or Lincoln, for York, like Rome or Athens, is an immemorial--a prehistoric--city; though like them it has legends of its foundation. Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose knowledge of Britain before the Roman occupation is not shared by our modern historians, gives the following account of its beginning:--"Ebraucus, son of Mempricius, the third king from Brute, did build a city north of Humber, which from his own name, he called Kaer Ebrauc--that is, the City of Ebraucus--about the time that David ruled in Judea." Thus, by tradition, as both Romulus and Ebraucus were descended from Priam, Rome and York are sister cities; and York is the older of the two. One can understand the eagerness of Drake, the historian of York, to believe the story. According to him the verity of Geoffrey's history has been excellently well vindicated, but in Drake's time romance was preferred to evidence almost as easily as in Geoffrey's, and he gives us no facts to support his belief, for the very good reason that he has none to give. Abandoning, therefore, the account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, we are reduced to these facts and surmises. Before the Roman invasion the valley of the Ouse was in the hands of a tribe called the Brigantes, who probably had a settlement on or near the site of the present city of York. Tools of flint and bronze and vessels of clay have been found in the neighbourhood. The Brigantes, no doubt, waged intermittent war upon the neighbouring tribes, and on the wolds surrounding the city are to be found barrows and traces of fortifications to which they retired from time to time for safety. The position of York would make it a favourable one for a settlement. It stands at the head of a fertile and pleasant valley and on the banks of a tidal river. Possibly there were tribal settlements on the eastern wolds in the neighbourhood in earlier and still more barbarous times, before the Brigantes found it safe to make a permanent home in the valley, but this is all conjecture. It is not until the Roman conquest of Britain that York enters into history. The Brigantes were subdued between the years 70 and 80 A.D. by Patilius Cerealis and Agricola. The Romans called the city by the name of Eburacum. The derivation is not known. It has been suggested that it was taken from the river Ure, a tributary of the Ouse, but variations of the word are common in the Roman Empire, as, for example, Eburobriga, Eburodunum, and the Eburovices. These are probably all derived from some common Celtic word. In process of time, perhaps in the reign of the Emperor Severus--that is to say, about the beginning of the third century A.D.--the name was changed to Eboracum: from this was derived the later British name Caer Eabhroig or Ebrauc. The Anglo-Saxon name was Eoferwic, corrupted by the Danes into Jorvik or Yorvik, which by an easy change was developed into the modern name of York. In the York Museum is preserved a monument to a standard-bearer of the 9th legion, which is probably of the period of Agricola, and it is likely that Eburacum became the headquarters of the Roman army in the north soon after the conquest. It became the chief military town in the island; for, whereas the southern tribes were soon subdued, those in the north were long rebellious, and it was natural that the chief centre for troops should be established in the more disturbed parts of Britain. Close to York was the town of Isurium (Aldborough), where remains of pavements have been discovered, and where it is probable that the wealthier citizens of York had their homes. Eburacum was fortified in or before the reign of Trajan, and was connected by a system of roads with other important Roman towns. The Roman Camp lay on the east side of the river, on or near the site of the present minster. One of its corner towers and fragments of the wall still remain, and parts of the city gates have been discovered. The camp at first covered about seventy acres of ground; it was afterwards enlarged on the south. The modern streets of Petergate and Stonegate represent the roads which passed through this camp, and Bootham Bar is on the site of one of the gates. Remains of Roman pavement have been discovered below Stonegate. The city itself spread westward over the river, and fragments of houses and tesselated pavements have been discovered. In 1841 remains of public baths were found; and there are many signs that there was a large population on this side of the river. In 1854 there was found near the southern gate of the camp a tablet dedicated to Trajan, and commemorating the conclusion of some work done by the 9th legion in the year 108-9. This work was perhaps the palace of the emperors. Near the south gate also was a Christian Church of St. Crux. The road to Tadcaster was lined with tombs, and remains of cemeteries have been discovered all round the city. As in London, there are few remains of Roman masonry above ground, and this is but natural, for the city has been burnt and destroyed, wholly or partially, many times; and there is no doubt that Roman buildings were used, as in Rome and other cities, as a quarry for later erections. York is historically connected with several of the emperors. Two of them, Severus and Constantius Chlorus, died there, and Constantine the Great, the son of the latter, was hailed emperor at York, if it was not the scene of his birth. At York also were the headquarters of two of the legions, the 9th and the 6th; and there is little doubt that in course of time it came to be regarded as the capital of the island. In fact, according to Professor Freeman (_Macmillan's Magazine_, Sept. 1876), "Eburacum holds a place which is unique in the history of Britain, which is shared by only one other city in the lands north of the Alps (Trier, Augusta Trevirorum)." We learn little of the history of York from Roman historians, and next to nothing of the early Christian Church. There is mention of York at rare intervals, when it became connected with the general history of the empire. For instance, in 208, Severus was in York, and it became for a time the headquarters of the court. The Emperor Constantius died at York in 306, and there is a tradition that hundreds of years afterwards his body was found under the Church of St. Helen-on-the-Walls, with a lamp still burning over it. Many churches in the neighbourhood of Eburacum were dedicated to his wife Helena, the legendary finder of the True Cross. It has been supposed that Constantine the Great was born at York, but this is probably untrue, though he was proclaimed emperor there. In the middle of the fourth century the Picts and Scots began to make inroads, and it is probable that they captured York about 367 A.D. They were shortly afterwards driven northwards by Theodosius the Elder. At the beginning of the fifth century there were further invasions repelled by Stilicho, but in 409 the Emperor Honorius withdrew the Roman troops from Britain, and the Roman period in the history of York came to an end. Of the early ecclesiastical history of York less even is known than of the civil. There are few relics of Roman Christianity in the city. A stone coffin, with an apparently Christian inscription, and several Roman ornaments bearing crosses have been found and placed in the York Museum, but this is all. There is no evidence, documentary or other, of the manner in which Christianity reached York. The Christian historians give us only the most meagre references to the history of the faith in Britain. Tertullian, for example, mentions that parts of the island as yet unvisited by the Romans had been evangelised by British missionaries, and, if this were so, it would seem to prove that the Church in Britain was early active and flourishing. It is not until 314 A.D. that we come upon a definite historical fact. This was the date of the Council of Arles, convened by Constantine, to consider the Donatist Heresy, and among the bishops there assembled were three from Britain--"Eborus, Episcopus de Civitate Eboracensi; Restitutus, Episcopus de Civitate Londinensi; Adelfius, Episcopus de Civitate Col. Londinensium" (perhaps Lincoln). These bishops are mentioned in the order of precedence, and it would appear that the See of York at that time was the most important, or perhaps the oldest, in Britain. Bishops of York were also present at the Councils of Nicaea, Sardica, and Arminium. With these facts our knowledge of the Roman see of Eburacum begins and ends. The Episcopal succession probably continued for some time after the Roman evacuation, and the legendary names of Sampson, Pyramus or Pyrannus, and Theodicus have been handed down as bishops of York during the struggle with the Anglo-Saxon invaders. For a long time after the Roman evacuation jewels and plate were discovered in the neighbourhood; and in the Pontificate of Egbert, an archbishop in the eighth century, there is a special form of prayer for hallowing vessels discovered on the sites of heathen temples and houses. The great Wilfrid also, in the seventh century, speaks of recovering the sacred places from which the British clergy had been forced to flee. It is unknown when or how York was finally captured, but in the seventh century it was certainly in the hands of the English; though there still remained an independent British kingdom of Elmete, only a few miles to the west of the city. Close to York has been discovered a large burying-place of heathen Angles, in which the ashes were deposited in urns; the date of this is probably the beginning of the sixth century, and at that time the invaders must have been settled in the country, and perhaps in the city itself. The conquest marks a change in the position of York. Under the Roman occupation it had been an important city for military purposes, and for that reason it was the seat of an important bishopric. After the second conversion of England it becomes important more and more for ecclesiastical reasons, and when it plays a part in the history of England it is because of the action of its bishops; from this time, therefore, it becomes necessary to say less about the city itself and more about the see. After the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the North of England the country between the Tweed and the Humber was divided into two kingdoms, Bernicia to the north of the Tees, and Deira to the south. In the reign of Ethelfrith these two kingdoms were united, under the name of Northumbria. Edwin, his successor, was the most powerful king in England, and every state except Kent acknowledged his supremacy. In the troubles after the Roman evacuation, it is probable that York lost some of its importance, which it regained under Edwin, and became again the capital of England. It is at this period that the authentic ecclesiastical history of the see, and indeed of England, really begins. In 601 Gregory the Great, in a letter to Augustine, gave him authority to appoint twelve bishops in England, and among them a bishop of York, who, if his mission was prosperous, was to ordain further bishops in the North of England, remaining himself the chief of them, and being invested with the pall, the mark of a metropolitan bishop. Provision was made that the first bishop of York should be subordinate to Augustine, but that subsequently the question of seniority was to be decided by priority of consecration. Thus early did the question of precedence between York and Canterbury arise. We may take it that the early Christian church had entirely died out in Northumbria, and that prior to the mission sent by Gregory there had been no effort in the southern part of the kingdom, at least, to reclaim the inhabitants from heathendom. York was chosen as the seat of the metropolitan bishop in the north, entirely because of its importance as a city. It is after this event that it becomes chiefly remarkable for its ecclesiastical importance. Augustine died before he had followed Gregory's instructions, and they were not carried out till 625. In that year, Justus, the fourth bishop of Canterbury, was led by unusually favourable circumstances to consecrate a bishop of York and to send him to Northumbria. Edwin the king was over-lord of England, and he wished to be allied with Kent, the only other independent kingdom in the country. He therefore proposed to marry Ethelburga, the daughter of the King of Kent. She and her father were Christians, and Edwin, though still a heathen, agreed that she should be allowed to take with her a Christian chaplain to Northumberland. Paulinus, perhaps a Briton by birth, was chosen for this office, and was consecrated Bishop of York before he set out. He has been identified with a certain Rum the son of Urien. This enterprise met with great and immediate success, in which political reasons probably played a considerable part; and on Easterday 627, the most important date in the ecclesiastical history of York, the king Edwin, his family, and many of his court were baptised there in a wooden chapel temporarily erected on the site of the present minster. Immediately afterwards Edwin begun to build a church of stone, dedicated to St. Peter, on the same site. The baptism of the king was followed by a wholesale conversion of thousands of his subjects, and it is stated that Paulinus was forced to stay over a month in one place to baptise the crowds who flocked to him. Paulinus was confirmed in his appointment to the see by the king, and immediately after received the pall, together with Honorius of Canterbury, which authorised him to assemble councils and to consecrate bishops. The pall was not given to any of his successors until Egbert (732 A.D.). In view of the subsequent struggles for precedence between the sees of Canterbury and York, the following passage in a letter from the Pope to Edwin is of interest:--"We have ordered," the Pope says, "two palls, one for each of the metropolitans, that is for Honorius and Paulinus, that in case one of them is called from this life, the other may, in virtue of this our authority, appoint a bishop in his place." (Bede, "Eccl. Hist.," Smith edit., book ii., cap. 17, p. 98.) [Illustration: St. Mary's Abbey.] This early prosperity of the northern Church did not last long. In 633 Edwin was defeated and killed at a battle near Hatfield, and a period of anarchy and persecution followed. Thereupon Paulinus, with Ethelburga, the queen, fled to Kent, leaving behind him only one evangelist, by name James the Deacon. It is probable that the greater part of Northumbria thereupon fell back into paganism, and by the flight of Paulinus the Catholic Church, or that part of it immediately under the influence and control of the bishops of Rome, lost its hold on the north, which it was not to regain without a struggle. The anarchy came to an end with the accession of Oswald, a Christian, who had been converted, not by Paulinus, but by the Celtic Church of Iona. It was this circumstance which led to the establishment of the influence of that Church in Northumbria. Oswald did not look to Rome or Canterbury for evangelists when he set to work to establish Christianity in his kingdom, but to Iona, whence, in 635 A.D., was dispatched a bishop, Aidan, who settled at Lindisfarne (Holy Island). From this time there were two influences at work among the Christians in Northumbria--that of the older and more national British Church which had survived the flood of heathen invasion; and that of the later Catholic Church, which originated with the mission of Augustine. The conflict between these two influences reached its height in the time of Alfred. Oswald completed the church began by Edwin: it remained under the rule of Aidan, as no evangelists were sent from the south to take the place of Paulinus, though it is said that James the Deacon continued his missionary work in the North Riding. In 642 Oswald was killed in battle, and Deira and Bernicia were again split up into two kingdoms. With this division came also religious difficulties between the Church of Iona and the Catholic Church of the south. These difficulties culminated in the Synod of Whitby, 664, at which the Catholic party, led by the great Wilfrid, perhaps the greatest of all bishops of York, defeated their opponents. After the council, Colman, then Bishop of Lindisfarne, resigned, and his successor, Tuda by name, was killed with many of his monks, by a pestilence at Lindisfarne. The ground therefore seemed to be cleared for Wilfrid. At this time Oswy was king of Bernicia, and Alchfrid his son governed Deira, probably as an independent province. Alchfrid induced Wilfrid to accept the see of York. Wilfrid at once set to work to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church and to destroy the influence of the Church of Iona in his diocese. He refused to be consecrated by a bishop of the Church of Iona, sent for that purpose to Gaul. He probably was determined not to acknowledge the supremacy of any other English see over his own. He was absent for three years, and Oswy, who favoured the Church of Iona, took advantage of his absence to appoint Ceadda (Chad) to the see of York. On his return, after being duly consecrated, Wilfrid retired without a struggle to his own monastery at Ripon. In 669, Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, intervened to make peace between the two factions, and at his instigation Ceadda resigned the see in favour of Wilfrid, who at once began his great period of activity in the diocese. Whatever may be our sentimental liking for the older and more national Church of Iona, there can be no doubt that the Catholic Church was the chief support of culture, learning, and civilisation in Europe, and Wilfrid was a worthy representative of it. During his episcopate the see of York probably played the most important part it has ever taken in the history of England. At that time, more than any other, the future of learning, civilisation, and humanity was in the hands of the priests, and the English _toto divisi ab orbe_ were kept in touch with the slowly reviving culture of Europe by the cosmopolitan Church of Rome. Wilfrid was undoubtedly the best representative of that culture in England. It was his object not only to Catholicise the north of England, but to educate it. He travelled continually through his vast diocese with a train of builders, artists, and teachers. His architectural activity in particular was very great. He repaired the minster at York, which had fallen almost into ruins, and built large churches at Hexham and Ripon. But he was not allowed to continue his work unopposed. Egfrith had become king of the whole of Northumbria, and a quarrel arose between him and Wilfrid. At last the king induced Theodore, who had formerly interfered in Wilfrid's favour, but who was now perhaps jealous of his great activity and fame, to assert his supremacy over the north and to divide the great diocese of Northumbria into four bishoprics, York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and Witherne. Theodore had received the pall; Wilfrid had not. It was therefore contended that Theodore had authority over him. Wilfrid retired to Rome to claim the support of the Pope. It was given to him, but when he returned to York, in 680, he was imprisoned and afterwards banished. Soon after Egfrith died, and Theodore, again intervening, obtained a reconciliation between Wilfrid and the new king Alchfrid. Wilfrid again became Bishop of York, but another quarrel caused him again to resign his see, and this time for good. During all this period there is no doubt that the Bishops of York were subordinate to those of Canterbury. The constant disorders to which the kingdom of Northumbria was subjected for a century, and the quarrels between bishop and king, lessened the power, both civil and ecclesiastical, of the kingdom. It was not till 734 that a bishop of York, Egbert, received the pall, which had been granted only to Paulinus, and from that time the northern archbishops seem to have been independent of Canterbury, especially after York fell into the hands of the Danes in 867. It is possible that Gregory, who directed that York and Canterbury should each appoint twelve suffragan bishops, intended to make the sees equal in every respect. The anarchy and divisions of the northern kingdom prevented this plan from being carried out. The kings of Northumbria themselves, from time to time, acknowledged the authority of Canterbury, and during the hundred years between Paulinus and Egbert that York was without a metropolitan archbishop, the Primate of Canterbury, without a rival, increased his power. With the advent of the Danes, however, Northumbria was naturally much isolated from the south, and the diocese of York, though smaller and poorer than that of Canterbury, was a rival power. In fact, until the year 1072 the archbishops of York either held themselves or appointed others to the diocese of Worcester. It was not until the Conquest that the independence of the northern bishops was seriously questioned. Under the Danish rule two of the archbishops were probably of that race--Wolfstan, appointed in 928, and Oskytel, his successor. The Danish supremacy was put an end to in 954, when Eadred incorporated Northumbria into the kingdom of England. From 867 to 1000, or after, York was ruled by an earl, either under the Danes or the kings of England. The city was important, not only as a strongly fortified place, but as a centre of commerce, and it had a large population. It had as many as 30,000 inhabitants in the tenth century. There are traces of the Danish supremacy in the language and faces of the people; in York itself Danish beads, glass, jet and amber, and carved horns have been found. At the time of the Conquest, Aeldred was archbishop of York. After Hastings he swore allegiance to William. For this act he was bitterly reproached. It is said that he exacted a promise from William that he would treat his English and his Norman subjects alike. He crowned William at Westminster. In 1068 Edwin and Morcar, Earls of Mercia and Yorkshire, broke into rebellion. They soon submitted, but the people of York had been roused, and remained in rebellion. On the approach of the Conqueror, however, they also submitted. William built a castle in York, at the junction of the Ouse and the Foss, and garrisoned it with Normans. He then returned southwards. So soon as his back was turned, the city revolted again and besieged the castle. But William was soon upon them. He took and plundered the city, and erected another fortress on Beacon Hill. In 1069 occurred the final rebellion. A Danish fleet sailed up the Humber under Edgar, Gospatric, and Waltheof. This last calamity is said to have killed Ealdred, the archbishop. He had endeavoured to make peace between conquerors and conquered, and he saw that now a desperate struggle was inevitable. The whole of Northumbria rose as the Danes made their way up the Ouse. The Norman garrisons in York set fire to the houses near them, and the whole city was burnt down. The minster was either wholly or partially destroyed. On the site of William's fort at Beacon Hill there have lately been discovered several deposits of silver pennies of the earliest coinage of William. These were probably hidden there by the Norman garrison. After a desperate sortie, these forts were taken. Thereupon the Danes sailed away with their plunder, and the revolt suddenly came to an end. But William swore an oath of vengeance. He caught and destroyed a number of the Danes in Lincolnshire. When he reached York he found it deserted. He repaired his castles, and then proceeded to make an example of the country round. His vengeance was so thorough that for nine years afterwards the land between York and Durham was untilled. He returned to York to keep Christmas. It is not too much to say that the north of England took centuries to recover from his vengeance. The famous library of York, which was destroyed in the fire, deserves a few words of mention. It was a fine example of the educational work of the Saxon Church. Under Egbert, and at the instigation of Bede, was founded the University of York, which soon grew to great importance. Alcuin was its chief ornament, and gave lessons there in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. The library was formed in connection with this university, and a list of the books in it, made by Alcuin himself, has come down to us. They consist chiefly of the Fathers and of the later Latin poets, with a few books on philosophy and grammar. [Illustration: Bootham Bar.] Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman archbishop, found everything at York in ruin and confusion. The minster and its outlying buildings, the library, and the university were destroyed, and only one of three canons remained in residence. He increased the number of these, and appointed a dean--there had not been one at York before--and otherwise changed the constitution of the minster. He further appointed a chancellor, or _magister scholarum_, in charge of all schools within ten miles of York. Among these was the Grammar School in the city, which still survives and flourishes, under the name of St. Peter's School. In the nave of the minster there is a window known as the Chancellor's Window, and containing a representation of Robert Riplingham, a chancellor of the fourteenth century, lecturing to his pupils. The library was never fully replaced. The books at the time of the Reformation were few, and were kept in a building close to the entrance to the south transept of the minster, and now used as the archbishop's registry. This building was erected in 1415. Most of these books are still preserved. In due course Thomas rebuilt the minster, or part of it, on a modest scale. In his episcopate the struggle for supremacy with Canterbury really began. Thomas refused to make submission to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury; but Lanfranc represented to the king that the supremacy of Canterbury was necessary as a bond of union between the south and the north. Thomas was at last compelled to submit to Lanfranc himself, though he made reservations with regard to his successors. In 1072 Worcester, and soon after Lindsey and Lincoln, were taken from the see of York. The abbeys of Selby and St. Oswald in Gloucester were given to the archbishop by way of some return. Meanwhile the archbishops of York also claimed supremacy over the northern bishops of the Isles and Scotland. They certainly visited and consecrated in these dioceses. After many quarrels, these pretensions were finally disposed of at Rome. In 1154 the sees of Man and Orkney were placed under the Archbishop of Drontheim, and in 1188 the whole Scottish Church was released from any subjection to York and placed under the direct control of the Pope. Only one Scottish prelate, the Bishop of Whithorn, remained a suffragan to York, but in the fourteenth century Whithorn also was lost to the archbishops, and became a part of the Scottish Church. The Bishop of Durham remained nominally in subjection to the see of York, but in reality he was often a greater man than his superior. In 1134 the Bishopric of Carlisle was founded and placed under the authority of the archbishops. Sodor and Man afterwards fell again under his jurisdiction, and in 1542 the diocese of Chester was founded. The archbishop has now authority over nine bishoprics. But to return to Thomas. In 1071 he went with Lanfranc to Rome to receive the pall. The question of precedence was there argued, and the Pope decided in favour of Canterbury. Afterwards, at a synod held by William, it was decided that the Archbishop of York should swear allegiance to Canterbury, and must be consecrated in Canterbury Cathedral, that the diocese of York from that time should not extend south of the Humber, and that the archbishop should lose his authority over the see of Worcester. On the death of Lanfranc, however, the dispute broke out again. For four years there was a vacancy to the see of Canterbury; Anselm, the new archbishop, was consecrated by Thomas, who took the opportunity to insist that Anselm should not be styled Primate of all England. The quarrel with Canterbury remained in abeyance until Thurstan was appointed Archbishop of York (1114 A.D.). He refused to make submission to Canterbury, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was determined not to consecrate him until he submitted. There was, therefore, a deadlock. Thurstan had the support of the Pope, but he was not consecrated until 1119, when the Pope Calixtus himself performed the ceremony at Rheims. Thurstan obtained a Bull from the Pope releasing him and his successors for ever from supremacy of Canterbury, and for a time York was triumphant. In the reign of Henry II. the quarrel again broke out. This time the Archbishop of York, Roger Pont L'Eveque, the builder of the Norman choir of the minster, had the support of the king, who was engaged in the struggle with Becket. Roger, indeed, has been bitterly reviled as an accessory to the murder of Becket. He carried on the quarrel with Richard of Canterbury, Becket's successor, and at the Council of Westminster (1176 A.D.) the rivalries of the two prelates came to a head in a ridiculous scene. The papal legate was present at the council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury seated himself at his right hand. Shortly afterwards entered the Archbishop of York, who, refusing to take a lower place, sat down in the lap of Canterbury. He was seized, beaten, and kicked for his pains. [Illustration: Walmgate Bar.] In 1190 the people of York, incited by the priests, rose and massacred the Jews, killing nearly 500. For this they were fined by the king. The minster contributed to the ransom of Richard I., pawning a golden cross which Roger had given. The cross was afterwards redeemed. Roger was succeeded, after an interval of ten years, by Geoffrey, the bastard son of Henry II. He quarrelled continually with John, who on one occasion fined the city of York £100 for omitting to meet him when he visited the city. In the war between Henry III. and the barons, the archbishops Gray and Gifford took the part of the king, and owing to their efforts their diocese was little affected by the struggle. In 1265 a quarrel broke out between the Abbey of St. Mary and the townspeople, owing to the abuse of the privilege of sanctuary possessed by the convent. Much blood was shed, and the suburb of Bootham was burnt down. In the reign of Edward I. York played a great part in the history of England, as the king made it his capital during the war with Scotland. He was present at the installation of St. William's relics in the choir, and in 1297 he held a great Parliament there. The archbishops and clergy contributed one-fifth of their income to the expenses of the war. The Courts of the Exchequer and King's Bench were also removed from London to York, and remained there for seven years. At this time York was a more important city than it has been at any period since the Roman occupation. It was both the civil and military capital of England, and its archbishops and prebendaries had great power. It was also, naturally, a period of great building activity. In a hundred and fifty years the whole fabric of the minster, as it now is, was erected. Edward II. also spent much of his time at York, and in 1318 another Parliament met there. After Bannockburn the Scots made continual inroads into Yorkshire. In 1319 an army of Scots, 15,000 in number, advanced to the very gates of York. Melton, the archbishop, hastily got together 10,000 men and fell in with the Scots at Myton, on the Swale, where he was utterly routed, and narrowly escaped with his life. This battle was known in derision as the Chapter of Myton. The quarrel between York and Canterbury was not finally settled until the time of John of Thoresby. He was one of the most remarkable of the archbishops of York. When he was made archbishop (1352) the diocese, owing to the Scottish inroads, the black death, and other causes, stood in great need of reform. Anarchy and brigandage were rife. The people were ignorant and poor, and the chief posts about the cathedral, including even the deanery, were held by Italian absentees appointed by the Pope. The ecclesiastical discipline was naturally very lax. Thoresby drew up his famous Catechism, which was translated into English verse, in 1357, and set to work to abolish the abuses caused by pluralism and immorality among the clergy. The question of precedence was settled by Innocent VI., who determined that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be styled Primate of All England, and the Archbishop of York Primate of England. "Thus," says the sardonic Fuller, "when two children cry for the same apple, the indulgent father divides it betwixt them; yet so that he giveth the bigger and better part to the child that is his darling." It was also settled that each archbishop should carry his cross erect in the diocese of the other, but that the Archbishop of York should send a golden image to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Edward III. had been married in York Minster, and there his little son, William of Hatfield, was buried. His is the only royal tomb in the minster. In 1392 the Court of the King's Bench again sat at York. Richard II. visited the city several times. The archbishops Neville and Arundel played a great part in politics at this period. After the deposition of Richard II. a prebendary, by name Mandelyn, who bore a great resemblance to the king, personated him and headed a revolt, but he was captured and put to death. The chapter in general were strongly in favour of Richard, and three other prebendaries were imprisoned. In 1405 occurred the rebellion, headed by Scrope, the archbishop. After he had been trapped and captured, the king had great difficulty in bringing him to trial, as the Chief Justice, Gascoyne, refused to try him. He was finally condemned in his own palace, at Bishopthorpe, and executed near to the walls of the city. Henry IV. withdrew also the liberties and privileges of the city, and the citizens had to beg for pardon on their knees with ropes round their necks. The archbishop was buried in the minster, and his tomb was much frequented by pilgrims in the north. In 1407 the rebellion broke out again, and the citizens of York were again severely punished. In the fifteenth century the importance of York began to decline, and from that time it owes the position it still holds chiefly to its ecclesiastical eminence. Richard III. visited York several times, and gave a great cross to the minster, standing on six steps, each of which was ornamented with the figure of an angel. The figures were all of silver, and the whole was decorated with precious stones. Richard also planned the establishment of a college of 100 chaplains, and in 1485 six altars were erected for their use. But the scheme came to an end on the death of the king. York had been greatly devoted to Richard, but it submitted to Henry VII. when he made a state entry into the city in 1486, and it remained loyal in the rebellion of Lambert Simnel, when the rebels besieged the city, but were repulsed. In the reign of Henry VIII. the importance of York was steadily declining. He only visited the city once. The whole of Yorkshire, which was no doubt poorer and more ignorant than most other counties, was much disturbed by the abolition of the monasteries and the spoiling of the churches, especially by the seizing of the head of St. William, the chief treasure of the minster. In 1536 the insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out, and the city willingly received the rebels. Aske, their leader, made a proclamation that all the "religions" should be reinstated in their old places: and the friars sang matins the same night. In 1557 Aske was hanged on a gallows set upon one of the bars of York. Henry entered York, and the citizens sued for pardon, which was not granted to them until 1560. Henry ordered the removal of such shrines as had not already been destroyed, and fragments of these have been found buried near the minster. Henry determined to establish his authority firmly in the north, and established the famous council which appointed the Duke of Norfolk their president. The council was held in the house of the Abbot of St. Mary's. It took away most of the powers of the Mayor and Corporation, but gave renewed importance to the city. The diocese was much neglected during the episcopacy of Wolsey and his successor Lee. Both were statesmen rather than ecclesiastics. Indeed, it is said that Wolsey never set foot in York itself, though he was arrested at Cawood, where was one of the bishop's palaces. Lee was employed continually on missions and embassies. He happened to be in York, however, at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and was seized by the rebels, carried to Pontefract, and compelled to swear support to the rebellion. The see was much impoverished in the time of Holgate, Lee's successor (1545-1554), who supported Henry in his quarrel with the Pope. Much of the property taken by Henry was restored by Mary to Heath, the next archbishop, who was the last appointed by a papal bull with the acknowledgment of the Government. Heath was deposed by Elizabeth in 1559. In 1569 occurred another rising in the north in favour of the old religion and of Mary Queen of Scots, under the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland. In Richmondshire and the Cleveland district the new prayer-books were destroyed, and the old service restored. York itself favoured the rebels, but before it could be entered a force arrived from the south and the rebellion sank to nothing. The queen's army exacted a loan of £500 from the citizens of York. Eleven persons also in the city were sentenced to death. The Earl of Northumberland also was afterwards executed and buried in York. After the rebellion the Roman Catholics in the diocese were much persecuted. They were forced to attend the reformed services and the Holy Communion, and their priests were hunted down. Attempts also were made to abolish the Christmas mummeries and the miracle plays. The archbishop of this period, Thomas Young, is accused of plundering the estates of the church in the interests of his own family. Charles I. had a great affection for the city and minster of York, and enriched the latter with many gifts. For instance, he gave £1000 to the chapter for the building of a new organ, and out of the same the chapter also bought some Communion plate, and a Bible and prayer-book richly bound in purple velvet and ornamented with silver-gilt plates. These latter are still preserved. He further removed certain houses and offices which had been built close to the west and south doors. He also destroyed a building which had been erected inside one of the transepts, and ordered certain seats in the choir, which hid the stalls and woodwork, to be taken away. Charles also wrote to the Corporation in 1639, ordering them not to bring the official sword and mace into the minster, and to receive the Holy Communion there on certain fixed occasions. The Mayor and Corporation evaded the order by entering the church with sword and mace "abased." They have never yet officially attended Holy Communion. They also had a quarrel with the dean and corporation owing to their practice of using the north aisle of the nave, known as the Lord Mayor's Walk, as a common promenade. The dean and chapter endeavoured to put a stop to this in 1632, but it continued until the end of the century. [Illustration: Walmgate Bar.] During the Civil War York suffered less than many cathedral cities. In 1644 it was besieged by the Parliamentary troops and the Scots under Fairfax and Leslie. During the siege the minster seems to have been spared as far as possible, mainly, perhaps, through the influence of Fairfax, but it did not escape entirely scatheless. Thomas Mace, the author of "Musick's Monument," was in the city during the siege, and he thus describes the way in which the minster suffered:--"The enemy was very near and fierce upon them, especially on that side the city where the church stood; and had planted their great guns mischievously against the church; with which constantly in prayer's time, they would not fail to make their hellish disturbance by shooting against and battering the church; insomuch that sometimes a cannon bullet has come in at the windows and bounced about from pillar to pillar (even like some furious fiend or evil spirit) backwards and forwards and all manner of sideways, as it has happened to meet with square or round opposition amongst the pillars." [Illustration: Micklegate Bar.] During the siege the citizens suffered much from the presence of the soldiery who were billeted upon them. Each citizen, in addition to giving free quarters to as many soldiers as possible, had to pay £2 a month for their support. The siege lasted for six weeks, and in the course of it the Marygate Tower, which was used as a record office for the whole of the north, was attacked and spoiled, all the records in it, an irreparable loss, being destroyed. The city was captured soon after Marston Moor, and the defenders obtained very good terms, marching out with all the honours of war. The citizens also were well treated. They were to enjoy all their old privileges and were to be preserved from plundering. All churches and public buildings were to be treated with respect. A Presbyterian service was at once held in the minster by the conquerors. The Corporation presented to Fairfax a butt of sack and a tun of French wine in gratitude for the good offices he had rendered them. There can be little doubt that the great amount of stained glass still remaining in the minster is owing to the control he exercised over the Parliamentarians. On October the 24th of the same year the Corporation ordered that the Solemn League and Covenant should be tendered to the aldermen and citizens. Then all the Royalist members of the Corporation were removed, and both the bishop, Williams, and the dean, Scott, were deprived of their offices. They left the country, and the dean died in a debtor's prison in 1646. Fairfax, however, who remained as governor of the city, maintained the minster in scrupulous repair, and paid all the salaries of the necessary officials. A short time before the Restoration a large sum of money was spent on the bells. It has been said, indeed, that the Puritans wished to pull down the chapter-house, but there is no authority for the statement. But the control of the minster was taken out of the hands of the chapter and given to the Corporation, and this transference was only effected by the interference of the troops. The organ given by Charles was also taken down, and silver candlesticks and other ornaments, including the brass about the shrine, perhaps, of St. William, and also the lectern in the choir, were sold for the repair of the fabric and bells. In 1646 the organ loft, the canopies over the altar in the side choir, and the font were removed. In 1647 a cushion was made of the dossal. The library was left untouched and thrown open to the public, and the keys of the minster placed in charge of the Mayor and Corporation. In place of the dean and chapter, the precentor, and chancellor--all removed--four city preachers were chosen by the Assembly of Divines, and paid out of the revenues of the minster. Meanwhile the churches in the city suffered far more than the minster itself. In 1646 all "superstitious pictures in glass" and images were ordered to be broken, and the fonts were removed. In 1648 twenty-four churches in the city were without incumbents. After the Restoration the Corporation did everything in their power to resist a return to the old order of things, and in 1663 there was a small rebellion, as a result of which twenty-one persons were executed at York. Discontent, however, continued, and in 1682 it became necessary to appoint Sir John Reresby governor of York, with a garrison of 500 men. The governor said that York was one of the most factious towns in the kingdom. About this time, also, the dean and chapter caused a riot by issuing a proclamation forbidding the nave to be used as a promenade. They succeeded, however, in finally putting an end to the practice. In 1686 Lady Strafford, daughter-in-law of the great Strafford, was buried in the minster. Party spirit still ran very high, and the mob rushed at the hearse and endeavoured to tear the coats of arms from it. The military was called out, and there was a sharp struggle in the minster itself. The Catholic designs of James II. were ill received in York. His proclamation for liberty of conscience was read in hardly any of the York churches, and an attempt to stock the Corporation with Roman Catholics was resisted. At last there came a crisis. The king appointed James Smith, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Callipolis, one of his four vicars-apostolic, and in August 1688 he appeared at York. The archbishopric had been vacant for two years, and it was rumoured that the king intended to appoint Smith to the see. York, therefore, was ripe for the revolution, and it broke out there on November 22. Lamplough of Exeter, a discreet and timely supporter of both James and William, was appointed archbishop, and Smith was attacked by the mob as he was passing through the streets in procession. His silver-gilt crozier, which had been given to him by Catharine of Braganza, was torn from him and sent to the vestry of the minster, where it still remains. It is seven feet in length. Smith fled to Wycliffe-on-Tees, where he spent the rest of his life. [Illustration: The Shambles.] Since the reign of James II., and the last serious attempt to establish the Roman Catholic religion in the country, the history of both the city and the see of York has been uneventful. The city itself has declined in importance, and is now hardly even one of the larger towns in Yorkshire. It is known and visited chiefly for its historic interest and its minster. The see has experienced only peaceful changes, and its archbishops are concerned more with questions of Church discipline than with politics. The minster has suffered two serious fires, and a restoration, carried out on the whole moderately and judiciously. CHAPTER II HISTORY OF THE BUILDING The architectural history of the minster is somewhat vague and uncertain, and has been the subject of several disputes. It will be as well, perhaps, before entering into details, to give a table of approximate dates, both of the different parts of the minster as it now stands and of the buildings which preceded it. These dates are mostly sanctioned by the authority of Professor Willis. Edwin's Wooden Chapel 627 A.D. Edwin's Minster begun (circ.) 628 " " finished by Oswald (circ.) 635 " " repaired by Wilfrid (circ.) 699 " " burnt down (?) 741 Albert rebuilds Minster (?) 767-780 Minster wholly or partially burnt 1069 Nave, Transepts, and perhaps Choir, built by Thomas (circ.) 1080 Choir and Crypt rebuilt by Roger 1154-1181 Present South Transept built 1230-1241 (circ.) " North Transept " 1241-1260 " Nave built 1291-1324 " Chapter-House built 1320 (?) " West Front of Nave built 1338 Vault of Nave built (circ.) 1354 Presbytery (or eastern part of Choir) built 1361-1370 (circ.) Choir (west of High Altar) built 1380-1400 (circ.) Central Tower built 1400-1423 (circ.) South-West Bell Tower built 1433-1447 North-West Bell Tower built 1470-1474 Choir injured by fire 1829 Choir repaired (circ.) 1832 Nave injured by fire 1840 Nave repaired 1841 South Transept restored 1875 It will be seen that it is doubtful whether the fire of 741 and the rebuilding of 767-780 mentioned by historians refer to the minster at all. The fact that a wooden chapel was erected for the baptism of Edwin in 627 seems to show that no Christian church had remained at York from Roman days, as at Canterbury; this chapel, therefore, is the first Christian building in York of which we have any definite record. The church of stone with which it was immediately replaced was finished by Oswald, after the death of Edwin in battle; whose head was carried thither and placed in the Chapel of St. Gregory. It has been supposed that there are remains of this original stone church in the crypt. In sixty years Edwin's church had fallen into great disrepair. It was restored by Archbishop Wilfrid about 669. The following account of the dilapidated condition of the building as he found it is taken from a versified life of Wilfrid, ascribed to Frithegode, a monk of the tenth century:-- Ecclesiae vero fundamina cassa vetustae, Culmina dissuto violabant trabe palambes, Humida contrito stillabant assere tecta; Livida nudato suggrundia pariete passa Imbricibus nullis, pluriae quacunque vagantur, Pendula discissis fluitant laquearia tignis, Fornice marcebant cataractae dilapidato. Wilfrid glazed the windows, repaired the holes, painted and decorated, and, strange to say, whitewashed the building. We now come to the first disputed point in the history of the minster. In the chronicle of Richard Hovenden it is stated that _Monasterium in Eboraca Civitate Succensum est nono Kalendas Maii Feria prima_--that is to say, that a church was burnt down in the city of York on Sunday the 23rd of April 741 A.D. It has been contended that the word _monasterium_ need not of necessity mean the minster, that the word _civitas_ may perhaps mean the diocese, the ecclesiastical state, and not the city of York, and that, therefore, the church mentioned may be not the minster, but some other large church in the city or diocese of York. Professor Willis is of opinion that this is probably the case. In the poem of Alcuin or Flaccus Albinus, there is a passage speaking of a church built by Albert (767-780), in the following terms:-- Ast nova Basilicae mirae structura diebus Praesulis hujus erat jam caepta, peracta, sacrata, Haec nimis alta domus solidis suffulta columnis Suppositae quae slant curvatis arcubus, intus Emicat egregiis laquearibus atque fenestris Pulchraque porticibus fulget circumdata multis, Plurima diversis retinens solaria tectis, Quae triginta tenet variis ornatibus aras. It is plain that this church, wherever it was, and the poem does not mention its locality, was a very important one. It was very lofty, and had many porches, or apses (_porticus_ may mean either), and thirty altars. Just before this passage in the poem there is an account of altars set up by the archbishop, probably in the cathedral. Professor Willis thinks that if the church referred to immediately after were the cathedral, an account of altars set up in it would not be given before an account of the building of the church itself. But, as Professor Freeman points out, it is most improbable that two writers, the chronicler and Flaccus Albinus, should allude to a church other than the minster without giving its name. It is, of course, just possible that Albert set up his altars before rebuilding the cathedral, in which case Professor Willis' contention would lose its force. It is curious that no other chronicler mentions either the fire or the rebuilding of the church, but this omission would be almost equally strange whether the building in question were the minster or some important church in the diocese. On the whole, therefore, it is perhaps most probable that the church referred to by Flaccus Albinus was the minster. If that is so, this church remained until it was ruined by the Danes in 1069. Then it was certainly either wholly or partially burnt down. Thomas, the first Norman archbishop, appointed in 1070, found the minster, the city, and the diocese, all waste and desolate. At first he was satisfied with roofing in what remained of the cathedral and otherwise restoring it as best he could. Afterwards, before 1080, he began to rebuild it. It is uncertain whether he rebuilt the whole church, or merely the nave and transepts. Stubbs on this point seems to give two different accounts. "Thomas," he states, "restored the canons of the church after he had rebuilt it as well as he could." Afterwards he says, "He built the church as it now is from its foundations." Probably, this first passage refers to the immediate repairs which Thomas found necessary in 1070, and the second to his ultimate rebuilding of the church. William of Malmesbury says that he began the church from its foundations and finished it. In the face of this positive testimony it is probable that Thomas built not only the nave but the choir. That he did so has been doubted, because the choir of his day was undoubtedly a very small one, and was afterwards demolished by Roger. It must, however, be remembered that Lanfranc rebuilt Anselm's Norman choir at Canterbury in the same way. It is very likely that Thomas was forced by necessity to plan his work on as modest a scale as possible, and that the pride of Roger would not allow the choir of his minster to remain one of the smallest in the cathedrals of England. The minster, as Thomas left it, was utterly unlike the present church. The nave was probably shorter than the present one, and was certainly twenty feet narrower. This was discovered after the fire of 1840, when remains of the side aisle walls of Thomas's nave were discovered. There are no data for the number of piers in this nave or for the position of the west front. The tower certainly stood on the site of the present tower, as Roman ashlaring has been discovered on the north-west side of the north-west tower pier, above the vault of the side aisle, and also portions of a shaft with a base, which probably belonged to the Norman clerestory. It will be seen that the present piers supporting the central tower contain cores of Norman work recased in Perpendicular times. The transepts of Thomas's church appear to have been without aisles. The remains in the crypt show that there were two eastern apses to these transepts close to the central tower, and Professor Willis deduces from the position of these apses that they left no room for eastern aisles. There is no instance in existence of a transept having western without eastern aisles. One may therefore conclude that aisles were entirely wanting. Professor Willis thinks it possible that an additional pair of apses may have existed on the east side of these transepts, to the north and south respectively of these already discovered. This was certainly the case in St. Mary's Abbey. As has been mentioned, considerable doubts still exist as to the size and character of the choir of Thomas's church. On the one hand we have positive testimony that Thomas rebuilt the whole church; on the other, the walls of the crypt, as they existed up to the time of Roger's choir, are a part of the Saxon church. Their masonry is Saxon, and they mark the lines of a chancel far too narrow to have been that of Thomas, even if we suppose that his choir was necessarily small, from the want of funds at his command, and the wasted condition of the diocese. This would seem to support the theory that Thomas left the Saxon choir as it was, and contented himself with rebuilding the ruined nave and transepts. In that case, of course, the Saxon choir remained until the time of Roger. The alternate theory is that Thomas rebuilt an enlarged, but still a small, choir, leaving the Saxon crypt as it remains to this day; and that even this choir proved too small for the magnificent ideas of Roger, who utterly demolished it to make room for his own great building, leaving no trace of it above ground. This is the more probable supposition, and it is supported by the fact that the inner wall of the crypt is composed of fragments of masonry, buildings, etc., of early Norman date, which might well be parts of Thomas's choir, if it was destroyed, as we suppose. Some of the stones are covered with white plaster, showing they are parts of the interior of a building, and they are of the same red sandstone as the remains of the transept apse, which was undoubtedly built by Thomas. As has been said, the choir of the minster remained unusually small for so important a church. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were periods of great activity in church building, and many of the Norman architects planned their works on a vast scale. With the examples of Durham, Winchester, and St. Albans before them, it was natural that the archbishops of the Metropolitan Church of York should be dissatisfied with the size of their own choir. It fell to the lot of Roger, the rival of Thomas à Becket, to rebuild it. The date of his nave is approximately 1154-1181. The remains of his work in the crypt show that it was in the latest style of Norman architecture and considerably influenced by Flambard's work at Durham, with channeled and fluted pillars. The detail appears to have been richer and later in character even than Flambard's. The outer wall of the crypt shows the dimensions of this choir. It was square at the end, and had flanking towers--two bays from the east--which served as transepts inside. The eastern transepts of the present choir still keep the position and tradition of these towers. The aisle probably ran round the east end as at Romsey and Byland. The two bays east of the tower were wider than the others. Roger, it should be said, had been Archdeacon of Canterbury, and he was therefore well acquainted with the "glorious Choir of Conrad" built by Anselm. There is much in the planning of his work to show that he was influenced by the example of Conrad's choir. [Illustration: The Minster (from an Old Print).] At the end of the twelfth century the minster was utterly unlike the present building. Except in the crypt, and in certain parts of the nave and tower not visible to the casual observer, there are no vestiges of the work of the earlier builders. There is now no Norman work to be seen in the minster itself, and in 1200, nave, choir, transepts, and towers were all Norman. Of these the transepts appear to have been the poorest part. They were probably short, and had no aisles. The nave also was of rude Early Norman character. The Early English architects having determined, probably, to rebuild the nave and transepts, made a beginning with the transepts about 1230. Roger's choir, only finished about fifty years before, no doubt seemed to them grand enough. The transepts were built on a totally different scale to the rest of the church as it then stood. They were both longer and broader, and they had aisles on each side of them. No doubt the object of this was to get a standard for the ultimate rebuilding of the nave. The greater width of these transepts made it difficult to join their aisles with those of the nave and choir, and were the cause of a curious and daring expedient, which will be described in the architectural account of the building. The south transept was the first to be rebuilt. It is the work of Walter de Gray, archbishop from 1216 to 1265, who was buried under an arch of his own building, in a tomb which still remains the most beautiful, perhaps, in the minster. The north transept seems to have been begun as soon as the south was finished; it is said to have been the work of John Romeyn, or the Roman, an Italian, and the treasurer of York. Walter de Gray probably also had a large part in the building of them. These transepts are the earliest part of the existing minster. John Romeyn also built an Early English central tower in place of Thomas's Early Norman tower. It remained for John Romeyn the younger, son of the treasurer, and archbishop from 1286 to 1296, to begin the rebuilding of the nave. It was planned on a far larger scale than the old nave, and was wider even than the Early English transepts. The old nave had been 83 feet wide, the transepts were 95, and the new nave 103. The difference in width between the transepts and the new nave is in the aisles. The plan of the transepts had no influence on the plan of the nave. The large triforium, small clerestory, and moderate-sized main arches give way to a large clerestory, large main arches, and practically non-existent triforium. These are unusual proportions in English Churches of that period. At Ely, Westminster, Beverley, and many other places, the proportions of Norman or Early English work influenced those of the later Decorated and Perpendicular. The records of the building of the nave are somewhat scanty. Stubbs tells us that the foundation stone was laid on April 6, 1291, and that it was begun on the south side towards the east. It has been supposed that the chief object of making the new nave so much wider and loftier than its predecessor, was that it might be built round the old work without interfering with its utility. But a petition, dated 1298, states that the old nave had long since fallen (_diu est corruita_). If this were so there was no object in refraining from disturbing the old work. It is uncertain whether the nave had been purposely destroyed, or had fallen of its own weight. It may be, though we have no record of the fact, that Thomas's Norman tower fell down, as did so many Norman central towers, destroying with it some part of the nave, and so made the rebuilding of that part of the church necessary. The nave is fully developed geometrical Decorated work. It is loftier than the transepts, and its roof is low pitched. The main part of the rebuilding seems to have been done between 1298 and 1320. The indenture for glazing the great west window is still extant, and is dated 1338. The nave must have been roofed before this. The vault was probably intended to be stone, but the great width of the building seems to have made the builders afraid, and they erected a vault of wood, but shaped and ribbed to look like stone. The outer walls of the clerestory, and the pinnacles of the south side of the nave show vestiges of flying buttresses. It is uncertain whether these were merely intended when a stone vault was projected, or whether they were actually erected, and afterwards, being unnecessary for the support of a wooden vault, were allowed to fall into disrepair. There are no flying buttresses on the north side, and the pinnacles are much smaller. The west front was undoubtedly the latest part of the work to be finished, except the vault. The lowest stages, though geometrical in style, are later in character than the nave itself. The great west window, and the upper stages are of florid curvilinear Gothic. The west front is said to have been finished, and the great west window glazed by Archbishop Melton, who gave 500 or 600 marks to the fabric in 1338. The church was vaulted in 1354; Archbishop Thoresby is said to have given the wood. Before the beginning of the nave, the relics of St. William had been carried into the choir, and installed there with great pomp. The offerings of the faithful at his shrine helped to defray the expense of the building. Further funds were gained by means of indulgences granted by successive archbishops. The houses of Vavasour and Percy gave wood and stone, and statues of their representatives were placed over the main porch of the west front. The date of the chapter-house, and the passage connecting it with the north transept is disputed. Browne thinks it was begun about 1280, and finished about 1340. He partly bases his contention on the fact that the Acts of the Chapter from 1223 to 1300 are given _in Capitulo Eborum_. After 1300 _in Capitulo Ecclesiae_, or _in loco Capitulari ipsius Ecclesiae_. After 1342 _in domo Capitulari_. From this he argues that up to 1342 the chapter-house was not in existence, or unfinished, but that it was in use from that date. The geometrical character of the tracery, and the Purbeck marble shafts used in the chapter-house might seem to support that view. Professor Willis, however, considers there is little significance in the difference in the phrases used. _In capitulo_ simply means "in chapter," and _in loco capitulari_ and _in domo capitulari_ are vague phrases which may either mean a chapter-house, or a place used for the sittings of the chapter. At any rate, he thinks the chapter-house was not begun until after 1320, and the passage leading to it is still later. If this is the case, however, there is no reason why the chapter-house should not have been finished in 1342, and that would account for the change of phrase in the Acts. Though, at first sight, the building appears to be Early Decorated in style, on a closer examination it will be seen that the slender mouldings, the character of the carvings, and the details, especially on the outside, all point to a later date. It is curious, however, that if the building was not begun until after 1320, the tracery was not curvilinear, as in the great west windows, and the middle windows of the towers built about the same time. Perhaps, however, the geometrical forms were found to give the greater support, necessary owing to the absence of a central pillar. On the whole, the evidence of details, particularly of the foliage in the beautiful arcading inside the chapter-house, seem to point to its not having been begun until 1320 or later. [Illustration: The West Front (1810).] In 1362 John of Thoresby became archbishop. The times were unpropitious for building. Yorkshire was suffering much from the black death, there was great poverty among the peasantry, and the diocese was in great need of discipline and reform. Thoresby gave himself up for nine years to this work, and in 1361 he thought the time had come for the rebuilding of the choir. We have already seen how at York, one great work led to another. The transepts were rebuilt that they might be in harmony with the grandeur of Roger's choir, the nave that it might not be eclipsed by the transepts; and now it was contended that the choir must not be inferior to the rest of the church. Therefore, on the 20th of July 1361, it was resolved by the archbishop and chapter that "It was right that every church whatsoever should agree in the fitting decoration of each particular part, and that the choir in particular, where the holy sacrifice of the mass took place, should be especially rich in ornament." Thereupon they decided to rebuild the choir. The foundation stone was laid on the 30th July 1361, and the work was begun at the extreme east end. There was a very good reason for this procedure. The design of the new choir, both as to size and the planning of the bays, was modelled on that of the nave. It was Thoresby's object to build the largest and most magnificent choir in England. It was therefore both wider, loftier, and longer than that of Roger's, and beginning at the east end it was possible to complete almost the whole of the portion east of the altar as it now stands--that is to say, the presbytery, without interfering with Roger's choir. While, therefore, the presbytery was being built, the service of the church was still carried on in Roger's choir, and only the aisles behind Roger's east end were destroyed. Even when the four bays of the presbytery were completed, say about 1370, it was possible to continue the aisles of the new choir proper without interfering with Roger's work, except to pull down the towers flanking it, so much wider was the new building than the old. Even Roger's transepts did not extend beyond the aisle walls of the new choir, and their place was taken by the present eastern transepts, which are each merely a bay of the aisle, raised to the same height as the vault of the choir itself, and open to the choir from top to bottom. There has been a dispute whether or no this presbytery was completed in Thoresby's lifetime. According to Stubbs, Thoresby provided tombs for six of his predecessors, and placed them in the choir in front of the lady chapel--that is to say, in the presbytery. He also says that _Idem Archiepiscopus ... Capellam ... Virginis Mariae Mirabili arte Sculpturae atque notabili pictura peregit_. The building must certainly have been roofed before it was decorated, and if Stubbs is accurate, and there is no reason to suppose that he is not, the work was completed by Thoresby. Thoresby died in 1373, and if he finished the presbytery, there was a gap of seven or eight years between its completion and the beginning of the choir. There is internal evidence to support this presumption. The presbytery, though Perpendicular in its main features, shows many traces of the transition from the curvilinear Decorated to the Perpendicular style, especially in the tracery of the great east window and the clerestory windows. In the choir proper these traces have vanished, and the work, though apparently of the same character as that in the presbytery, is altogether Perpendicular. A lapse of ten years in the continuity of the work would account for this change, and becomes still more probable when we consider that the circumstances of the time were not favourable for great expenditure on building. The presbytery had been completed unusually quickly. Indeed, we know that £627 were spent upon it in one year, and this was an unusual amount. The average expenditure, for instance, on the choir of Ely was £318. It was natural, therefore, that there should be a halt to collect further funds. The work of the choir itself proceeded much more slowly. There was a complaint in 1390 on the archbishop's visitation--_quod fabrica ecclesiae negligenter tardatur_--and it was not roofed in until 1400. The contract for the glazing of the great east window is December 10, 1405--that is to say, thirty years and more from the date of its construction. But there is nothing unusual in this. It was customary before filling windows with stained glass to cover them with linen cloth which admitted a sufficient amount of light, or to glaze them with plain glass; and it was only natural that a long time should elapse before stained glass could be supplied to the largest window in the world. Burying was begun at the east end soon after 1400, and Scrope was buried there in 1405. Bowet's monument also was erected there in 1415, while he was still alive. A new high altar was projected in 1418, and the new crypt was fitted with iron work and paved in the same year. The building of the choir had caused a subsidence in the crypt, so the work of Roger and others was broken into fragments and patched together, older capitals being placed on Roger's pillars, in the condition in which we now see it. Nothing is known of the history of the vaults of the choir and eastern transepts. Like those of the nave and transepts, they are of wood, though of the same shape and design as a stone vault. The great central tower was erected between 1400 and 1423. Hitherto there had been the Early English tower of the elder John Romeyn, supported by Norman piers which, perhaps, had received a partial casing of Early English stonework. These piers were afterwards recased, not simultaneously, but as the arches between them were erected, in the following manner:-- Taking the south-western pier for an example: when the present nave was begun, the western face of the pier was cased with masonry, so that three parts still remained Norman; when the Decorated arch[1] in the transept was erected south of it, it received a further Decorated casing on its south side; when the central tower was built, its northern and eastern faces were cased with Perpendicular masonry: so, in the case of the north and south-eastern piers, their eastern faces were completely cased when the choir was built, their western only when the tower was in course of erection. To this day it may be seen that there is no bond between the different periods of masonry, and that the courses are at different levels. [1] For the explanation of the erection of this Decorated arch, see the architectural account of the transepts. The piers were probably completely recased by 1409. [Illustration: THE EAST END. From Britton.] Nothing is known of the elder Romeyn's tower, or the manner in which the present one replaced it. A great part of the new work has been attributed to Walter Skirlawe, Bishop of Durham. It will be seen it is of the same character as the lower part of the central tower at Durham. It has never been finished, as the corners and the condition of the masonry at the top still show, but it is impossible to say whether it was intended to receive another storey, and if so, of what character that other storey was to be. At one time, as may be seen in old engravings, it had a turret in one corner, 24 feet high; this was probably destroyed in the last century. The south-west bell tower was built probably between 1433 and 1447, the north-west between 1470 and 1474. They are thus both Perpendicular in style. At the end of the fifteenth century, therefore, the minster as we now see it was fully built. Since that date it has suffered no changes of importance, and the record is only one of occasional damage from fires or fanaticism, and of necessary restorations. The minster suffered to a certain extent at the restoration, and in a less degree at the hands of the Puritans. In 1734 the nave was repaved. Several tombs were found when the old pavement was removed, and relics taken from them and deposited with the other treasures of the minster. On the 2nd February 1829, Jonathan Martin, a brother of the apocalyptic painter, John Martin, and a religious maniac, hid himself during evening service behind the tomb of Archbishop Greenfield in the north transept, and when the church was shut up for the night set fire to the choir. The flames were not extinguished until the stalls, the organ, and the vault had been entirely destroyed. The actual stonework and carving of the choir were considerably injured, and the glass of the great east window itself only just avoided destruction. Martin escaped through a window of the transept, but was quickly captured, and discovered to be insane. The restoration, carried on by Smirke, was begun in 1832, and on the whole was fairly done. At any rate, the authorities of the minster may console themselves with the knowledge that it was absolutely necessary. The stalls were a reproduction, as exact as possible, of the old woodwork, but the design of the throne and pulpit are original, and not successful. The cost of the restoration was £65,000, most of which was contributed by subscription. Timber, to the value of £5000, was given by the State, and Sir Edward Vavasour, following the example of his ancestor of the fourteenth century, supplied the stone. Another fire broke out on the 30th May 1840. It began in the south-west tower, and is said to have been caused by some workmen who were repairing the clock. The whole tower, excepting its shell, including the bells, was destroyed, and the fire was not extinguished until the wooden vault of the nave had been burnt. The restoration on this occasion cost £23,000, and was finished in a year, under the superintendence of Sydney Smirke, son of the former restorer. In 1871 the south transept was discovered to be in a dilapidated, and, indeed, a dangerous condition, and the advice of Street was asked on the question of restoring it. In his report he stated that the design of the clerestory, constructed as it was of two thin walls, was not strong enough for the weight it had to support, even though the vault was of wood. The whole wall of the transept had given way, and the clerestory, in particular, was in a very bad condition. It became necessary, therefore, to rebuild the side walls of the clerestory and the flying buttresses under the steep roofs of the aisles, to remove the heavy slates from the roof, and to renew the pinnacles. On investigation, it was discovered that the inside portion of the walls had been made up of stone chippings without cement. It is curious that builders in the thirteenth century, whose system of ornament was most profuse and thorough, often scamped the more important details of structure. At Peterborough, no less than at York, instances have been discovered of what would, in these days, be called jerry-building. The walls were rebuilt with solid masonry, held together by Portland cement, and strengthened by wrought-iron bars; the Purbeck marble shafts were in places renewed; the groining of the vault was stripped of the whitewash which concealed its material; the lath and plaster work of the vault between the groins was removed, and replaced by oak boarding; the bosses were gilded, and picked out with vermilion paint. The cost in all of this restoration was about £20,000. In the course of it it was discovered that there were many remains of tombs and coffins under the pavement, but they have not yet been thoroughly explored. The reredos, made of terra-cotta and wood, was designed by Street, the figures by Tinworth. Modern stained glass windows have from time to time been placed in the minster. In the last century a certain Pickett patched and rearranged much of the older glass. CHAPTER III THE EXTERIOR York Minster consists of a nave of eight bays and a choir of nine. It has a large central tower and two western towers. The main transepts project three bays from the nave and choir. There are also two eastern transepts four bays west of the east end, which do not project beyond the aisles of the choir. The chapter-house lies to the east of the northern transept, and is connected with it by a lofty passage projecting three bays from the transept. The east end of the cathedral is square, as in most English Gothic churches. The best views are to be obtained from the north, especially from the walls, which will be most conveniently ascended at Bootham Bar, or from the extreme northern corner of the close. From the walls the whole of the vast bulk of the minster may be seen, broken by the great central tower and the lofty cap of the chapter-house. Other English cathedrals are more finely placed, several are richer in ornament, one or two have a more delicately varied outline. None are so stately and so magnificent; and there is hardly a church in Europe that appears so vast as the minster viewed from the north. Compared with it the great French cathedrals, with their stilted roofs so often unbroken, except by a small flêche and with their outlines concealed in a crowd of flying buttresses, are apt to look short and huddled when seen from a distance. The low-pitched roof of the minster, the absence of flying buttresses, and the simple and tranquil front of the north transept, give the building an air of masculine and stately repose, and of perfect finish seldom to be found in foreign churches; while the apparent uniformity of style, though the architecture is of three different periods, frees it from the picturesque inconsequence of many English cathedrals. Yet neither inside nor outside does the minster appear to be the expression of the spiritual aspirations of a people. It represents rather the secular magnificence, the temporal power of a Church, that has played a great part in the history of the nation. The archbishops of York have been forced by circumstances to be militant prelates, contending with Canterbury for precedence, leading armies against the Scotch, sometimes even heading rebellions against the king; and in their cathedral they have expressed their ambition and their pride. #The West Front.#--The west front of York Minster is free from the two faults most common to the façades of most English cathedrals. It is not a mere undistinguished ending to the church, like those at Norwich and Winchester, and it is not a magnificent misrepresentation of the height or width of the building itself, like the west fronts at Peterborough and Lincoln. Most of the English cathedrals are not lofty or wide enough to give opportunities for an impressive façade, unless they are fronted with a mere screen of masonry; but this is not the case at York. No other Gothic church in England is so wide, and only Westminster Abbey is as lofty. The builder, therefore, was not tempted to any expedient to conceal the dimensions of his church, and so the front consists of the natural end of the nave, of which a great part is filled by the west window, with a gable above it representing the space between the vault and the roof, and with the porch below it. It is flanked by two towers built in front of the aisles, with two smaller porches at the base of each. The three divisions of the west front are marked by buttresses, prominent and richly ornamented, one on each side of the west window and two at the external corners of the towers. The buttresses, covered with niches and panelling, grow narrower and less prominent as they rise, until they are cut short with three cornered caps some feet below the battlements of the towers. The central window and the principal entrance are surrounded with niches, and there is an elaborate gable above each of them. The west front exhibits three different styles; the lowest part, containing the porches and the west windows of the aisle, being of the geometrical Decorated style; the middle portion, including the great west window, the gables above it, and the middle windows of the towers of the later or curvilinear Decorated; and the towers above the roof, Perpendicular of the fifteenth century. The central gable and the great west window are almost flamboyant in their decoration. A battlement immediately above the central window runs right across the front. The niches on the buttresses are in four storeys, and those on the central part of the front in six, of varying heights. There is also a row of niches on the towers immediately above the ornamental gable of the aisle windows, and the upper part of each tower is covered with niches. The greater part of these niches above the two lowest rows do not appear to have ever contained sculpture. The bases of the lowest row of niches are richly ornamented with foliage. The main entrance, though small, is extraordinarily beautiful. It consists of a single arch, divided into two smaller cusped arches by a central pillar with a circular opening above it, glazed and filled with six divisions of cusped tracery. Above the main arch is a gable, in which are five niches, the central one containing the figure of an archbishop. It is uncertain whether this is Archbishop John Romeyn, who began the nave, or Archbishop Melton, who finished the west front and glazed the central window. On either side of the gable are statues of the Percy and Vavasour, who gave the wood and stone necessary for the building of the nave. These statues, and the greater, part of the porch, have been restored. But even after restoration the fine proportions and delicate workmanship of the porch are evident. The slender shafts supporting the arches are well grouped and contrasted. The capitals, though characteristically small, are most delicate, and the mouldings are admirably varied with foliage, figures, canopies, and brackets for statues, formal decoration, and courses of plain stone. These mouldings contain the history of Adam and Eve. Even the porches at Sienna and Orvieto, though made of far more costly materials, can hardly be more beautiful than was this porch at the time of its completion. There is but little other statuary remaining on the west front. A few figures of saints remain in the upper niches of the buttresses, and there are fragments of sculpture on some of the lowest. The towers are 201 feet high, and are uniform in design. The front of each contains three large windows; the highest, Perpendicular in style, containing three lights; the middle, curvilinear Decorated, containing four; and the lowest, the west windows of the aisle, being geometrical Decorated, and containing three lights. The middle windows to the north and south are of very curious half geometrical, half curvilinear tracery. The highest and lowest windows of the towers have ornamented gables above them, the lowest being triangular, the upper ogee-shaped. The towers are topped with large battlements and pinnacles. [Illustration: The West Front--Main Entrance.] It will be seen, therefore, that this west front is planned on the most regular lines and the most ambitious scale. True, some French façades are loftier, as at Amiens for instance, but, as Professor Freeman has pointed out, the effect aimed at at York is one of breadth rather than of height, and it is an advantage that the front is not too high for the towers to rise some way above it. It is also richly decorated and well proportioned in the mass, and yet nearly every one, on first seeing it, must be struck by its curious ineffectiveness when its height and breadth, its regular outline, and profusion of ornament are considered. To tell the truth, the English architects have here endeavoured to rival the French on their own ground, and have not succeeded. The English cathedral, as has been said, was not usually planned on such lines as to make a sumptuous façade possible. Throughout the whole course of English Gothic architecture, the treatment of the west end is curiously hesitating and arbitrary. Sometimes it is altogether unambitious, as at Winchester and Norwich; sometimes boldly illogical, as at Lincoln or Peterborough; and at Salisbury, where everything else is beautiful, it is altogether unsatisfactory. In all these cases circumstances were against the architect, but at York there was every opportunity for a great architectural triumph. Yet the designer was not able to throw off his English timidity, to forget the small English features to which he was used, and to conceive his front as a gigantic whole. To begin with, he made his west window so large that every other important feature of the central division of the front had to be sacrificed to make room for it. In the great French façades the customary circular window leaves ample space for vast porches below it. These are pushed forward to a level with the great flanking buttresses, so that the actual wall of the church above it appears to be recessed. As the side porches fronting the aisles are on the same level with the main porch, the bottom part of the front is bound together, and the divisions of nave and aisle, emphasised above by the prominent buttresses, are minimised below. This arrangement gives at once unity and variety to the whole design. The towers do not appear to be external additions rising from the ground, but an integral part, the very crown and flower, in fact, of the whole design. At York the central window is so large that it leaves but little room below it for the porch. This porch, though exquisite in itself, is not pushed forward, but flat with the wall, and appears a mere hole cut in the surface. It has necessarily no connection with the entrances to the aisles; and the finest feature of the great French façades is wanting. But the size of the west window has other disastrous effects. It would have been difficult, almost impossible, to assimilate an opening so large, and of such an elaborate pattern, to the rest of the design, and hardly an effort even has been made to do so. It appears, therefore, like the porches, to have been cut bodily out of the front without regard for the rest of the plan, and its acute arch harmonises badly with the gable above it. No doubt the designer saw the fault; he placed an acute ornamental gable above the window, rising to the top of the front, and he covered the actual gable of the roof with flamboyant tracery of the same character as that on the window; but, by so doing, he merely weakened the contrast between tracery and bare spaces of masonry so necessary to every great design. The weakness of the central division is not made up for by any excellence in the towers. These, though fine on their lower storeys, are strangely feeble above. They are, in fact, the worst part of the minster, and have been condemned by all critics, from Mr Ruskin downwards. In most towers of this kind there are two windows above and a single one below. At York the three storeys of single windows give the design an air of monotony and weakness. Further, the highest window is not only far too large, but is placed too low. Like the great west window, it appears to have been cut out of the wall. It is also peculiarly unfortunate that the buttresses should die into the wall below the pinnacles. Where a tower is buttressed, it is a natural and logical device to make the pinnacles a continuation of the buttresses. Here both pinnacles and buttresses, unusually prominent and elaborate, do not seem to be an integral part of the design. They have been called a kind of architectural confectionery, and the criticism is just. The fact that the battlements and pinnacles project a few inches over the walls of the towers, only adds to the air of weakness and instability of the whole. Nowhere else surely has a Gothic architect approached so closely to the ideals of his "churchwarden" imitators of the beginning of this century. But these faults, though serious enough, do not include everything that can be said against the west front of the minster. Gothic churches have often been noble and triumphant works of art in spite of errors almost as grave. Unfortunately the west front suffers from a tendency first beginning to show itself in the middle of the fourteenth century, which afterwards became the most serious drawback of the whole Perpendicular style. It is not only because the porches do not project that it appears flat and thin. The west front of Notre Dame at Paris has no projecting porches, yet the alternations of bare spaces of wall and of rich and deep masses of carving, the strong horizontal lines, and the deep-set windows, give it a boldness and strength altogether wanting at York. Like all Norman and earlier Gothic work, it has this great merit, often most strongly felt by people who are quite unable to explain it, that the design seems to emphasise, and to be dictated by, the materials in which it is carried out. The Norman architect never forgot for a moment--he was not skilful enough to forget--that he was building with stone. So he did not conceive of his west front as a flat space to be ornamented, but as a wall to be built, and naturally his ornament followed and emphasised the main lines of his building. His single pillars, with their heavy capitals, bore witness that they were made of great stones piled one on the top of the other; his simple windows were merely openings in the wall to let in light. [Illustration: The Exterior, from the South-East.] But as masons grew more skilful, and designers more sophisticated, they found it pleasant to play with their material; to turn their single pillars into bundles of clustered shafts; to fill their windows with tracery, structural at first, but afterwards as free and fantastic as lacework. The result is often beautiful. The method gave the freest play to the artist's invention, but it had its dangers, and they are exemplified at York. There the designer has evidently regarded his west front as a large space of wall to be played with, to be decorated much as if it were a piece of embroidery, and, in his anxiety to decorate it richly, he has lost his sense of unity and proportion. He has forgotten to use his ornament merely to emphasise the main lines of the structure. Where this is done, where the ornament is massed on the porches, on the windows, and on the lines dividing the storeys, the rest of the façade may be left alone. The bare spaces of masonry only serve to give relief to the decoration. But at York the main lines are so neglected, they offer so little opportunity for decoration, that the designer was afraid to leave his walls plain, lest the whole should appear lean and cold. He has, therefore, spun his tracery and panelling over the whole surface. Nowhere can the eye rest on a plain piece of wall; everywhere it is fidgeted by monotonous rows of niches and mouldings. In fact, it may be compared to an etching so full of unnecessary details that composition, balance of mass, and beauty of line are all smothered in them. And yet there is much to be said on the other side. The mere size--the height and width--go far to make the front impressive; and the detail, even now when so much of it has been restored, is usually beautiful. If it is not great architecture, it is at least living architecture, and as such infinitely superior to the most scholarly works of the Gothic revival. It is only when we compare it to the magnificent west fronts of France that we are inclined to regret that it has not rivalled them. #The North Side# of the exterior of the nave differs from the south in several particulars. Thus, on the south the aisle buttresses are crowned by lofty pinnacles having at their bases niches, in some of which statues still remain. These pinnacles appear to have been originally connected with the wall of the nave by flying buttresses, traces of which still exist, both on the walls and the pinnacles. In Hollar's engraving, in a later print in Dugdale's "Monasticon" (1817), and in Willis's "Cathedrals" (1742), these buttresses are represented as existing, but the accuracy of the pictures in these books cannot be trusted. It is possible that a beginning only was made of these flying buttresses, and that when it was decided to place a wooden vault on the cathedral, they were discontinued as being unnecessary. At any rate, there are no pinnacles to the aisle buttresses on the north side, and, consequently, no flying buttresses. The plainer style of the north side was perhaps owing to the fact that a great part of it was concealed by the archbishop's palace, yet at the present day it is certainly more beautiful than the south. It closely resembles the exterior of the beautiful nave of Beverley Minster, and for simplicity and delicacy of design could hardly be surpassed. The bays are marked by plain aisle buttresses, terminating in three-cornered caps, with a battlement of cusped stonework ornamented with finials behind them. The buttresses of the nave are plain narrow bands of stone topped with small pinnacles. The roof is low pitched; the only other decoration is given by the uniform tracery of the windows and by a crocketed gable above each of the windows of the aisle. #North Transept.#--The walls of the north transept are lower than those of the nave, and its roof, covered with a particularly ugly coating of zinc, is much more highly pitched. Thus the ridges of the two roofs are practically level, while the battlement of the transept is only on a level with the point at which the arches of the clerestory in the nave spring. The union of the two and the contrast between the low-pitched roof of the nave and the stilted roofs of the transept are rather awkward. It should be said that the zinc roof of the north transept was a necessity, as the old roof of stone tiles proved to be too heavy. But for these inevitable differences the exterior of the north transept blends most successfully with that of the nave, though, of course, its details are altogether different. As an example of the great effect to be attained by the lancet windows, delicate proportions, and restrained ornament of the Early English style, it has never been surpassed. It extends three bays from the nave. The aisle buttresses end some little way below the battlements of the aisle. There are no buttresses against the main wall of the transept; but it is ornamented with a row of arches, some blank, and some pierced with the clerestory windows. These windows are in groups of three separated by two blank arches. The blank arches are wider than the windows. All the arches are decorated with dog-tooth mouldings. The absence of buttresses and the continuous row of arches cause a remarkable freedom from vertical lines in the exterior of the transepts, which is also characteristic of the interior. The battlements, both of the aisles and of the transept itself, are quite plain. The most admirable portion of this transept is its north front, which contains the famous group of lancet windows known as the "five sisters." These are five very narrow and long windows separated only by slender shafts. Below them is a blind arcade almost entirely without ornament, and above them another group of five lancet windows of different sizes, gradually diminishing from the central window to follow the outline of the gable. The details of these upper windows closely resemble those of the "five sisters," and they are flanked by two blind arches. The buttresses are also ornamented with blind arches, and appear never to have been finished, as they are truncated in an unusual way where one would expect pinnacles. The exterior of the western aisle of this transept is very curious in arrangement. There is an almost complete absence of division into bays. There are two lancet windows to each bay, and buttresses rise between them as well as between the bays. Thus there is nothing to mark the interior division of the main arches, clerestory, and triforium. All of these buttresses are cut short by caps a little way below the tops of the windows. Between the groups of aisle windows are blind arches narrower than the windows themselves. There is a blind arch of the same width at the southern extremity, and a wider one at the northern. The aisles, like the rest of the transept, are almost perfectly plain. [Illustration: The Exterior, from the North.] The #Chapter-house# is connected with the eastern aisle of the transept by a vestibule projecting three bays beyond the north front. This vestibule then turns eastward for two bays, at which point it joins the chapter-house. Both vestibule and chapter-house are magnificent examples of Decorated work. Their date is doubtful, and is discussed in the history of the building. They are certainly among the finest works of Gothic architecture in Europe. The chapter-house is octagonal in shape, and is crowned by a lofty pyramidal roof. Its chief, almost its only decoration, is provided by the buttresses and the beautiful tracery of the acutely-pointed windows. The buttresses are of very curious design. They are joined to the wall of the chapter-house for nearly half their height, and up to this point are quite plain. They are then narrowed into lofty pinnacles, and these pinnacles are connected with the wall by two small flying buttresses, the lower one plainly moulded and sloping upwards to the wall, the upper one being horizontal and richly decorated with arcading, two arcades to each side of every buttress. At the point at which the buttress narrows into the pinnacle there are cusped gables with gargoyles on the outer side of the buttresses. The pinnacles are decorated with slender shafts and richly ornamented gables. The windows of the chapter-house contain five lights. They will be further described in the account of the interior of the building. Above them is a plain battlement, with two rows of ornament below it, and three figures in each bay above it. There is a very curious buttress at the point of junction of the vestibule and the chapter-house. It is joined to the wall of the chapter-house up to the battlement, and consists of an irregular mass of masonry ornamented as far as possible in the same manner as the other buttresses with gables and panelling. The two bays of the vestibule nearest to the chapter-house have nothing unusual about them except their buttresses. One of these is set close to the wall up to the spire of the pinnacle. All the other buttresses of the vestibule, except the one built against the buttress of the transept end, have pinnacles joined to the wall by a pierced arch of curious and ingenious design. The vestibule is crowned by plain battlements like that of the chapter-house, with small square-headed windows of two lights each. The windows of the two bays nearest the transept end are of most unusual design, which will be explained in the account of the interior; these bays are narrower than the others, that nearest to the transept being the narrowest of all. #The Choir.#--The exterior of the north side of the choir is almost identical with that of the south; but there are some points of difference between the four earlier bays east of the transept and the four later ones west of it. In particular, in the four eastern bays the triforium passage runs outside instead of inside the building. The clerestory windows are recessed, and in front of them, running flush with the buttresses, is a screen of three divisions to each bay (see illustration, p. 62). The triforium passage, hidden by the roof of the aisle, runs below the screen and the windows, and between the two. The mullions dividing the screen run straight up to the battlement. The tops of the divisions are ornamented with cusped arches of open stonework. There is a transom crossing the mullions of the screen about one-third of the way up. It is difficult to say what was the object of this screen. It must have been included in the original design, and so cannot have been added afterwards to strengthen the walls. Whether it was a merely decorative experiment or an architectural device for the purpose of allowing the walls to be pierced with very large windows for the display of glass cannot now be decided. The effect from the outside is not good. The mullions break the surface into too many vertical lines, and, with the transom, take away from the dignity and purity of outline of the exterior. Inside, whether by a lucky chance or not, this screen, by darkening the clerestory windows, has greatly added to the effect of the wall of glass at the east end. There are also slight points of difference in the clerestory windows, showing the transitional character of those in the four eastern bays. The windows of the aisle are delicately moulded with capitals to their shafts, and are ornamented with a crocketed gable, ogee-shaped and topped with a prominent finial rising just above the battlements of the aisle. These battlements are pierced with cusped circles, below them is a cornice ornamented with foliage. The buttresses of the aisles are decorated with gargoyles and crowned with pinnacles of a considerable size with crocketed spires and finials. The front of these pinnacles is ornamented with characteristic Perpendicular panelling. The buttresses of the main wall are thin and plain, and, with the pinnacles, much resemble those of the nave. The battlements are of pierced stonework of a common Perpendicular pattern. The eastern transepts do not project beyond the aisles. Their fronts contain very long windows of five lights, each with three transoms. The southern one has strong buttresses ornamented with panelling, and gargoyles at the corners. The northern is much plainer. Their side windows are like those of the clerestory. Britton conjectures that the unfinished state of the stonework on the north side of the choir beneath the window shows that a cloister or other low building was intended in this part, which was never executed. The cornice, he says, under the battlements is more perfect towards the western part and shows beautiful foliage. The spouts are sculptured with bold projecting figures through which the water is conveyed from the roofs. [Illustration: Bay of Choir--Exterior.] The east end of the cathedral is square. The great east window of nine lights fills almost the whole of the central division. The buttresses separating it from the aisle are decorated with six storeys of niches, two to each storey, except the lowest, which contains only one. The east window has an ogee gable above it, topped by a curious pierced pinnacle at present in process of restoration. The ends, both of the aisles and of the choir itself, are square, and do not reveal the roof behind them. The arch of the great east window is surrounded with panelling, each panel curiously broken at different heights by cusped arches. The aisle windows have ogee gables above them with finials, and immediately above them a band of panelling running right across the exterior buttresses. These buttresses are large, and capped with lofty spires. The niches on them contained statues of Vavasour and Percy. Below the east window are the remains of sculpture representing Christ and His Apostles, Edward III. (on the north), and Archbishop Thoresby (on the south). These have suffered much in the frosts of recent winters. The square ends of both choir and aisles are decorated with arches with crocketed gables above them. Those of the south aisle differ from those of the north, being fewer in number and wider. All the niches on the east front except those mentioned have lost their statues. There was certainly not very much opportunity for a fine architectural design in this east end with its great wall of glass, but, allowing for all disadvantages, it cannot be considered successful. There is no justification for the square ends concealing the roof. They are misrepresentations, and they are not beautiful. The decoration, with its monotonous rows of panelling and niches, shows the poverty of invention often characteristic of Perpendicular architects, and is sometimes positively ugly. The whole east front must surprise most people by its apparent smallness. It seems merely the end of an overgrown parish church, and not of a great cathedral, and though that apparent smallness is partly owing to the enormous size of the windows, which prevent any structural division of parts, it is increased by the monotony and shallowness of the decoration. It is almost impossible, in fact, to believe that this is the east end of the loftiest and widest choir in England. The buildings on the south side of the choir are the vestry, the treasury, and the record room. #The South Transept# has a front entirely different from that of the north, though the sides are much the same. This front has three storeys of windows. Below, on each side of the porch, are two lancet windows. Above these are three more lancet windows, the central one of which, wider than the others, is divided by a mullion, probably a later insertion. These windows alternate with blind arches. On each side of the windows are slender shafts with capitals, and dog-tooth moulding runs round them and round the blank arches. Above these windows is a large rose window of "plate tracery"--tracery, that is to say, in its earlier form, in which the openings for the glass appear to have been cut out of the stone rather than the stone to have been added as a frame for the glass. This window is of a very elaborate design, and consists of three circles, the outer being the circumference of the window; the middle about equi-distant from the circumference and the centre, and connected with the circumference by pillars, twenty-four in all, and cusped arches; and the inner connected with the centre in the same way and ornamented with cusps. The spaces between the arches of the middle circle are pierced with trefoil holes, those between the outer arches are pierced and filled with glass. The outer circle is ornamented with three rows of dog-tooth moulding. Above this window, in the crown of the gable, is a small three-cornered window ornamented also with dog-tooth moulding. On either side of the rose window are small lancet windows with smaller blind arches on each side of them. Both windows and arches are surrounded also with dog-tooth moulding. An arcading with shafts and cusped arches runs along the base of the front, not quite reaching the exterior buttresses. In the centre is the porch by which entrance to the minster is generally obtained. It is reached by an ascent of two flights of steps. The porch is rather small, and not particularly remarkable architecturally. It consists of a single arch supported by an outer and inner group of clustered shafts. On each side of it is a small blind arch. All three of these arches are decorated with dog-tooth moulding. The interior of the porch is vaulted and decorated with blind arches. Above this porch are three blind arches surrounded with heavy gables, the middle and largest of which runs up to the lancet windows above it. It is difficult to believe that these arches and gables are not an addition later in date than the transept itself; they are so ugly and so meaningless, but they appear in the old prints of the minster, and the ancient clock, with two wooden statues in armour of the date of Henry VII., seems to have stood there from time immemorial. This clock was removed, with the statues, to make room for another at the beginning of this century, and it appears that the arches and gables were also altered, which may perhaps account for their present ugly appearance. The clock is now in the north transept. It should be stated that the whole of this front has been rather badly restored, and nearly all of its beauty of detail is gone. The aisle fronts have upper storeys ornamented with blind arches and an upper row of small lancet windows. These upper storeys do not correspond with the roof of the aisle behind them. The aisle windows are lancet, two to each aisle. The external buttresses are large, ornamented with gables and blind arches, and the other buttresses are of the same character. [Illustration: South Transept--Porch.] On the whole, the front of the north transept, though very rich in ornament, is distinctly inferior to the front of the south. The rose window is too large for its lofty position, and its elaborate tracery and rich mouldings make it seem heavy. The lancet windows below it, being too long and badly spaced, have rather a bald look, increased by the richness of the rose window above them, and the porch is altogether too insignificant and plain for its prominent position. But, as has been stated, the front has suffered much from restoration and later additions, and must not be too severely judged. When it was restored by Mr Street, pinnacles, which were late additions, were removed, and the present ones, more in keeping with the rest of the front, were put in their place. #The South Side Of The Nave# resembles the north in most respects, but the buttresses and pinnacles of the aisles are altogether different. The buttresses rise some way above the battlements of the aisles. They are plain to the level of these battlements, and above them are ornamented with niches containing figures, with blind arches above the niches. They are cut short by three gables, on the top of which are set lofty pinnacles. The niches vary in detail, some of them having more elaborate canopies than others. On these buttresses and on the wall of the nave are the marks of flying buttresses which have been removed, as has been stated in the account of the north side of the nave. Three gargoyles spring from each buttress at the level of the battlement of the aisle. This side of the nave is only less beautiful than the other. The pinnacles, if they add to the richness of its decoration, break the simplicity of outline so admirable in the northern exterior of the nave. The stonework of the pinnacles and buttresses is much decayed, and constantly requires renewal. #The Central Tower# rises a single storey above the ridge of the roof and is open inside to the top. But for small gables on the buttresses, it is quite plain up to the level of the roof ridge. Above this it contains two long and narrow Perpendicular windows on each side, of three lights each, with a transom. These windows are ornamented with ogee gables, and between them are three niches, one above the other, with canopies. The external buttresses are split up with vertical mouldings and ornamented with niches and panelling. The tower is crowned with a battlement. Horizontal string courses with gargoyles divide the buttresses at intervals. There are no pinnacles on these buttresses, and they appear never to have been finished. It is possible that it was intended to set another storey on the top of the present one, but this is merely conjecture. This tower, or rather its Perpendicular casing, for it was originally an Early English tower, is, with the western the latest part of the minster, but it is by no means the least beautiful. The English architects of the sixteenth century, if they were inferior to earlier builders in invention and vigour, were at any rate supreme in the management of towers. Their wonderful sense of proportion, their habitual use of vertical lines, and the character of their windows helped them to build what are perhaps the finest towers in Europe, and the central tower of York Minster is one of the finest of all. Even the absence of pinnacles, if it is an accident, seems to be a lucky accident, and gives this tower an unrivalled dignity and air of restraint suitable to the character of the whole cathedral. For whatever may be said against certain parts of the exterior, as a whole it is one of the most magnificent in the world. It shows best from certain points of view--from the north, for instance, or from the network of narrow streets to the south. It may be contended that the central tower is not quite lofty enough compared with the two western towers for perfect symmetry of outline; that, seen from certain aspects, it is rather square and box-like in appearance; that from no point of view are the western towers satisfactory. But the minster produces its great effect by its enormous bulk and dignity, its vast length, the variety and yet unity of its outlines, the severity and restraint of its form. [Illustration: Seal of St Mary's Abbey.] CHAPTER IV THE INTERIOR #The Nave.#--The most casual observer will have noticed that churches of the Gothic style are divided vertically into bays, and that in cathedrals and large churches these bays are usually further divided horizontally into three compartments, the lowest consisting of the main arch and piers, the highest of a window or windows, known as the clerestory, and the middle, called the triforium, consisting usually of an arcade, sometimes blind, sometimes pierced, and occasionally even glazed. This triforium fills up the space between the top of the main arches and the bottom of the clerestory window which is covered on the outside by the roof of the aisle. As a distinct division or architectural feature, the triforium arcade is not a necessary part of the structure. In smaller churches it seldom exists. But in most cathedrals, as at York, a passage runs behind it, and is generally lit by the holes in the arcading. As has been stated, however, the arcading is often blank, and in such cases there might be nothing but a bare space of wall in its place, for all the practical purpose it serves. Since, therefore, its form is not dictated by considerations of utility, there is far more variety in its treatment than in that of the other two divisions, the main lines of which are formed by structural necessities; and yet the success or failure of an interior often depend upon the arrangement and proportion of the triforium; and the arrangement of the triforium, its emphasis or subordination, was one of the chief problems with which the builders of Gothic churches had to deal. Since such a church is generally divided into three storeys, the main lines of the interior would naturally be expected to be horizontal, and in many interiors of the Norman and Early English periods they are so, as, for instance, in the nave of Wells Cathedral. But the stone vault, which played so important a part in the development of Gothic style naturally emphasised, with its ribs converging at regular intervals, the vertical division into bays as opposed to the horizontal division into storeys. The supports of the outside wall were gradually concentrated by the use of pinnacles and flying buttresses placed between the windows; the windows themselves grew in size with the introduction and development of tracery and the increasing taste for the decoration of stained glass; until the final organism of Gothic architecture was attained, and the typical Gothic Church, from being a building of three storeys, pierced by windows, became a structure made up of vertical supports, with the intervening spaces filled with glass. When this phase of development was reached, the building became as organic in all its parts as the human body. Structure was ornament, and ornament structure, and the two were fused as they have never been in any other style of architecture. Decoration and variety of outline were supplied by the mere disposition of the supporting masses, the arrangement of structural lines; to the exterior, by the flying buttresses, the pinnacles, and the window tracery; to the interior, by the banded shafts, the capitals, the groined ribs of the vaults, and the openings of the triforium. Outside the church became a framework of glorified stone scaffolding; inside, an avenue of columns rising from the ground to the vaults, with intermediate spaces of tracery and coloured glass. But before this stage was reached there were many compromises and passing phases, and every considerable church in England, until the end of the fourteenth century, may be classified and criticised, not only for its beauty, but as a link in the development of Gothic architecture. The builders were grappling with both tendencies, the vertical and the horizontal; they were not consciously working on a theory of complete vertical development; they made progress by structural experiment, and a sensitive eye for possibilities of beauty; and in the meantime their problem, both structural and artistic, was to make a happy compromise between vertical and horizontal lines. It was a problem which probably presented itself to them in the question how they were to treat the different storeys of the building. Structural difficulties would be continually at war with their aesthetic ambitions, and the heavy stone vault made structural difficulties a serious matter. There was a growing desire for space, for height and width, for light and colour. With every increase of height and width the burden of the vault became more oppressive; with every enlargement of windows its supports were weakened. As a rule, the English builders were far less ambitious in their treatment of these problems than the French. Amiens Cathedral, begun at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is structurally as daring as can be. Salisbury, but for its spire, a later addition, is comparatively modest and timid. The French builders quickly reached the limits of structural possibilities, and their type became fixed. The English, with less economy of support, and a lower organisation of structure, were better able to play with their forms. So their churches present a series of continual and often inconsequent experiments in the treatment and proportion of every storey, particularly of the triforium, and in compromise between vertical and horizontal tendencies. Thus at Beverley, Salisbury, and particularly in the nave of Wells, the horizontal tendency is predominant, and the triforium is both important and continuous, without regard for the vertical division of the bays. In the Early English transept of the minster itself the triforium is the most prominent feature of the design. These are all examples of Early English work, but in the nave of Lichfield, which is Decorated, the triforium is still far more prominent than the clerestory. In the same way a various and experimental use may be noticed of the shafts dropping from the point at which the ribs converge. At Wells and Salisbury these shafts reach only to the top of the triforium. They are so insignificant as hardly even to suggest a vertical division. At Beverley they cease a little way above the capitals of the main piers, and are still very slender. At Exeter they are much more prominent, and terminate in rich corbels reaching to the capitals of the main piers; while in the later naves of Canterbury and Winchester, not only do they reach to the ground, but they are forced so far forward, and rendered so prominent by continuous mouldings on each side of them, that they become the most significant part of the whole structure. They seem to be the columns on which the vault is supported; and we have at last the avenue of stone. [Illustration: The Nave.] The nave of York Minster was built at an intermediate stage, in which neither the vertical nor the horizontal tendency predominated. We might have expected, therefore, a design something like that in the naves of Exeter or Worcester; but the York builders were ambitious. They were determined to build a nave both lofty and wide, and with a great space for the display of stained glass. It seems likely, though we have no evidence to support the theory, that they were influenced by French example. There can be no doubt, as Professor Freeman has pointed out, that the design is more French than that of any other large English church, hitherto built, except Westminster Abbey. The most casual observer will be struck at once by the large space occupied by the glass. The clerestory is unusually large; the main arches unusually high, and thus far the greater part of each bay is filled with the clerestory and the aisle windows. With so much space given to the highest and lowest storeys, it naturally follows that the triforium is almost squeezed out of existence. Indeed, out of a total height of 99 feet, there are only about 13 between the top of the main arches and the bottom of the clerestory. It would have been almost impossible to give so narrow a triforium a separate and independent design; and, therefore, by a device often found in French cathedrals, the triforium is merely a continuation of the mullions of the clerestory windows. Behind these mullions is the customary triforium passage; but the design really consists only of two parts, the clerestory and the main arches. It is as if the lower part of the light of the clerestory windows were divided from the rest by a transom, and pierced, but not glazed, so as to let in light to the passage behind them. This is the first example of this treatment, which was so happily followed in the naves of Winchester and Canterbury, in an English cathedral. In earlier examples, even where the triforium was decisively divided into bays and had ceased to be a continuous arcading, it was absolutely independent of the clerestory, as in the transepts of the minster. There can be no doubt that the plan adopted in the nave was a convenient and logical one. It is impossible to have every advantage; and where the designer has set his heart on a wall of glass, he cannot combine it with a rich and prominent triforium. Unfortunately, the architect of the nave, though ambitious and logical up to a certain point, did not carry his pursuit of the vertical tendency far enough. He aimed at unity and coherence in the design of each bay, and for the sake of that unity and coherence he was forced to sacrifice the richness and fulness of pattern given by a prominent and independent triforium. The later builders at Winchester and Canterbury made up for this, as has been said, by the emphasis they gave to their vertical lines. But at York, while the insignificance of the triforium deprives the design of all horizontal continuity, there is little attempt at vertical emphasis. True, large shafts rise from the floor to the converging point of the ribs of the vault; but these shafts are not forced forwards as at Winchester, but lie flat against the wall. They are prominent enough when each individual bay is examined, but they do not catch the eye when the nave is looked at as a whole. In the naves of Salisbury or Beverley the eye is led on from west to east by the circling band of the rich triforium; in the naves of Winchester and Canterbury it is attracted from floor to roof by the upspringing clusters of shafts; at York it wanders from point to point without any prominent feature to catch it. The blank space in each bay between the windows of the clerestory and the vaulting shafts ought to be a welcome contrast to the curves of tracery, the clusters of pillars and mouldings in a strong and forcible design. At York it appears to be simply a piece of wall which requires decoration. Everywhere there is a lack of emphasis, not only in structure but in detail. The windows are not recessed, the capitals are small, the mouldings are delicate rather than forcible. The main piers are thin, their shafts are rather monotonously and tamely divided, the mouldings of the arches are narrow and shallow, the mullions of the clerestory and the shafts on each side of them are unusually slender; and this is peculiarly unfortunate in a nave, the width of which is greater both actually and proportionately, than that of any other English Gothic cathedral. To make a successful design of such proportions, there was need of strong vertical lines to give it the appearance of unusual strength: and not only the appearance but the reality. It is a significant fact that the builders were afraid to place a stone vault on their nave, and thus it is a Gothic building without that feature which gives its whole significance to the Gothic style, and by reason of which the design of this nave came to be what it was. It is a curious paradox, that the builders of York should have abandoned one of the most attractive features of earlier art in pursuit of a more logical design, and should then have been forced to abandon that very vault which gave their design all its logic. It is as if a dramatist strictly subordinated all his characters before the central figure of the hero, and then discovered that the exigencies of the plot would not allow of the introduction of the hero at all. The most casual observer, on first entering the nave of York Minster, must have a vague feeling of disappointment, a consciousness that something is wanting; he will see that his feeling is justified, when he learns that it is the first building in England of which the design is entirely dominated by the necessities of a stone vault, and yet that it is crowned by a wooden roof. But it must not be supposed that this nave is altogether to be condemned, as some critics have condemned it. Each bay, looked at by itself, is not only perfectly logical and coherent in design, but is filled with delicate and appropriate detail. The capitals, if small, are finely carved; the mouldings well contrasted and subordinated; and the window tracery is the finest possible. It is a work of the best age of architecture with all the characteristics in detail of that age; yet it is not the work of a builder of genius, but of a careful scholar, who has imperfectly assimilated the principles of his masters. In passing this judgment, it must be remembered that we are not rashly coming to a conclusion on insufficient data. This nave is not a mere beautiful scaffolding deprived of all its original decoration, like the nave of Salisbury. If that is somewhat cold and wanting in richness, it is the fault of later ages, which have deprived it of its stained glass. At York the greater part of the stained glass remains. The vault has been renewed, it is true, but it can never have been satisfactory; and we may assume that in essentials we see the nave now as its designers intended us to see it. To pass to a detailed description, the nave is divided into eight bays, of which the two nearest the lantern are narrower than the rest, no doubt with the purpose of giving increased support to the tower. It is about 263 feet long inside, and 48 feet wide, with the aisle 104 feet wide in all. Its height is about 99½ feet. Each bay is divided into two main divisions of almost equal height; the upper half, consisting of the triforium and clerestory, being only about 2 feet longer than the lower, which consists of the main arches. These two halves are divided by a slender horizontal moulding running immediately above the crown of the main arches. The piers of the main arches are octagonal in shape and unusually slender. They are made up of shafts of different sizes, the larger ones placed at the corners of the octagon, the smaller ones between them. The grouping of these shafts should be compared with that of the Early English piers in the transepts. There the central mass of masonry is surrounded with shafts of Purbeck marble almost detached. Here the different shafts are closely connected together and subordinated. The earlier pier is made up, so to speak, of a bundle of shafts; the later is a mass of masonry cut into different shapes. There can be no doubt that in this case the treatment of the earlier pier, if less logical, is more successful. The piers of the nave have capitals of beautiful design, and well executed, but rather small and shallow. The moulding of the arches is narrow, almost as narrow and small in detail as Perpendicular work, but, of course, much more diversified in outline. On each side of the main arches--that is to say, in their spandrels--is a series of shields with coats of arms, said to be those of benefactors of the minster. "Murray's Hand-book" gives the arms on the shields as follow, beginning at the north-east end of the nave:-- 1. Semé of fleur-de-lis--Old France. 2. Six lions rampant--Ulphus. 3. On a chevron, three lions passant guardant--Cobham. 4. Barry of ten, an orle of martlets--Valence. 5. A bend, cottised, between six lions rampant--Bohun. 6. A fess, between six cross crosslets--Beauchamp. 7. Quarterly, in the first quarter a mullet--Vere. 8. A cross moliné--Paganel. 9. Barry of ten, three chaplets--Greystock. 10. Billetté, a lion rampant--Bulmer. 11, 12, 13 and 14. Three water bougets--Roos. 15, 16. Five fusils in fess--Old Percy. Beginning again at the south-west end of the nave the arms are: 17, 18. Five fusils in fess--Old Percy. 19. Lion rampant--Mowbray. 20. Lion rampant--Percy. 21, 22. Blank shields. 23. Two bars, in chief, three roundels--Wake. 24. A fess, in chief, three roundels--Colville. 25. On a bend, three cross crosslets--Manley. 26, 27. A bend--Manley. 28. A fess dancette--Vavasour. 29. Three chevronelles--Clare. 30. A cross moliné--Paganel. 31. Three lions passant guardant, with a label of three points--Edward, Prince of Wales. 32. Three lions passant guardant--England. At the centre of each pier rise three shafts to the point at which the ribs of the vaulting spring: a large shaft in the middle, with a smaller one on each side of it. There are small carved figures at the point at which the smaller of these shafts touch the moulding of the arches. The capitals of these shafts, though small, are of a very delicate design. A few inches above the top of the main arch is a horizontal string course or moulding dividing each bay into two storeys. As has been said, the triforium is merely a prolongation of the lights of the clerestory window. These lights are five in number. The division between clerestory and triforium is marked by a band of stone ornamented with quatrefoils. Below this is a cusped arch in each light of the triforium with a crocketed gable ending in a finial above it. The centre lights of the triforium in each bay originally contained figures, said to have been the patron saints of European nations. Of these there only remains a figure in the fourth bay from the west on the south side. Near the triforium in the opposite bay to this there projects the head of a dragon carved in wood, from which the covering of the font used to hang. The clerestory windows are of uniform pattern of the style known as geometrical Decorated. This pattern is very fine in design. It consists of five lights, the two outer of which are grouped in a single arch, with a quatrefoil piercing in its head. Between these two arches and on the top of the arch of the central light is a circle fitting into the arch of the window, and ornamented with four quatrefoils, four trefoil piercings, and other smaller lights. There are capitals to the outside shafts of the windows, and to the main shafts of the two inner mullions. All these mullions are very delicately moulded. A separate account will be given of the glass in these windows and those of the aisles, together with the rest of the glass in the minster. There is a curious moulding running round the arches of the windows and springing from the capitals of the vaulting shafts, which bends towards those arches to a point a little way above the capitals from which they spring, and then runs parallel and close to their mouldings. The vault is of wood covered with plaster. The ribs are elaborate in design, but not very successful. The fact that the vaulting is not of stone deprives the mouldings and bosses of all sharpness and delicacy. From the capital of the vaulting shafts and for about 9½ feet above them these ribs are of stone: the division between wood and stone is marked by a curious and heavy moulding. The aisles of the nave are bolder in design and altogether more satisfactory than the nave itself. Like the nave they are unusually wide and lofty. In the two farthest bays to the west, above which are the western towers, the rough wooden roof, which has never been covered with a vault, may be seen. These bays are separated from the bays next to them by strong arches with thick shafts and mouldings, which were built for the support of the towers. The shafts supporting this arch on the outer side are five in number. The shafts corresponding to them in the other bays of the aisle, to which the ribs of the aisle vaults converge, are only three. All these shafts have finely-carved capitals of leafage. The vault of the aisles is of stone, with only structural ribs, finely moulded and with carved bosses. The aisle windows are, like those of the clerestory, of the geometrical Decorated style, but of an earlier and simpler, uniform, design. They each contain three lights, and there is no variation or subordination of mouldings in the mullions. Unlike the clerestory windows, they are somewhat deeply recessed. The mouldings of their arches are broad and bold, and are supported by five shafts with capitals. Above the three lights of the windows are three quatrefoils, pyramidally arranged. On each side of these windows, in the space between the windows and the vaulting shafts, is plain stone panelling terminating in an arch with a crocketed gable above it, ending in a finial which reaches to about the level of the spring of the window arch. On each side of this gable are grotesque carved figures. A small pinnacle is rather strangely inserted on each side of the arch at the point at which it springs. Below the windows there is a rich arcade, with buttresses between the divisions ending in pinnacles. Each division is filled with a geometrical pattern of two panels, each panel ending in a trefoil, with a circular trefoil in the head of each division, and a crocketed gable, terminating in a rich finial above it. All the mouldings of this arcade are very delicate. In the north aisle, and in the second bay from the west, is a doorway, which opened to a Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, now altogether destroyed. Above this doorway is a gable ornamented with foliage and a statue of the Virgin, which has lost its head, with statues of angels on either side of her, also much mutilated. [Illustration: The Nave--South Aisle.] #The Interior Of The West End Of The Nave# contains the famous window with tracery of the curvilinear or flowing Decorated style, and of a design only surpassed by the east window of Carlisle Cathedral. The glass in this window was given by Archbishop Melton, and is almost the finest in the cathedral. The tracery has been entirely and very carefully restored. The window contains eight lights. These lights are coupled in pairs by four arches with a quatrefoil in the head of each, and again formed in groups of four by an ogee arch above the other arches. The flowing curves of these ogee arches are most ingeniously and beautifully worked into the pattern of the upper part of the window, which contains five main divisions of stonework, each like the skeleton of a leaf in shape and in the delicacy of its pattern. Of these five divisions the top one is made by splitting up the central mullion; two diverge from it at the top of the lower lights; and two others curve inwards from the outside arch. The central mullion runs up almost to the top of the arch. The mullions are alike in moulding and size. Below the window is the west door, the head of which is filled with ancient stained glass. There is a gable above it, running up to the bottom of the window and containing three niches. There are kneeling figures on each side of the gable, so that the top of it may have held a figure of Christ. All that portion of the west end not occupied by the window and the porch is filled with storeys of niches and arcading. The lowest storey consists of a rich arcading, each division of which is ornamented with geometrical tracery closely resembling that of the arcading of the aisles. These divisions are marked by pinnacles. Above this is another row of arcading of much the same character, except that it is about half as high again as the lower storey. Each division of this arcading contains two niches for statues, and above the niches are gables. Above the gables the divisions are filled with tracery closely resembling that of the lower arcade. This second arcade reaches to the bottom of the great window, which is marked by a string course running across the whole part. On each side of the gable of the porch is an extra niche rather clumsily fitted in. Above the string course the arcading is not so rich as below. The third storey consists of long niches ornamented merely with arches, gables, and pinnacles between each niche. The fourth is of much the same character, but that the divisions are shorter and have no gable above them. The last storey consists of plain panelling ornamented at intervals by gables. The west windows of the aisle are shorter than the other aisle windows, but have tracery of the same character. The aisle doorways are plain, but over both are some sculptured figures. Those over the north door appear to represent a hunt. In the middle a woman is setting a dog on to two beasts, and behind them there is a man blowing a horn. At the sides are two quatrefoils, set in which are figures (1) of a man attacking another man drinking, and (2) one man driving another away. The sculpture over the south door was destroyed in the fire of 1840, but a careful restoration of it has been made. It consists of a man in the middle fighting with a dragon, with sword and shield, and at the sides in the quatrefoils (1) Delilah cutting the hair of Samson, and Samson and the lion; (2) a man and woman fighting. The ends of the aisles are also ornamented with arcading in three storeys, the lowest of which is like the lowest storey of the arcading at the west end of the nave; the second a smaller series of niches ornamented with gables and pinnacles; and the third a single arcade on each side of the window, filled with geometrical tracery and resembling those on the sides of the other aisle windows. It cannot be said that this mass of niches and arcading at the west end is either ingenious or successful. Arcading is a very beautiful decoration where it is employed, as in a triforium, in single storeys, to cover a definite even space. But where it is used to fill up an irregularly-shaped mass of wall which there is no need to decorate, it looks incoherent and confused. Had the wall been left bare it would have afforded an excellent contrast to the elaborate pattern of the central window. As it is, this decoration seems to be conceived in a spirit, of which there are further evidences in the decoration of the west front of the east end--the spirit of a builder determined to display the magnificence of his resources even at the expense of symmetry and refinement. This is a weakness that might be expected in the designer of a London hotel, but not in a great mediæval architect. The nave was fitted with benches, seats, and a very mean-looking organ, in 1863. It is lit by gas jets round the capitals of the piers. The tombs of the nave are described in a general account of the monuments of the church. The present pavement dates from 1731. It was laid down according to the design of William Kent, under the direction of Lord Burlington, the amateur architect of Burlington House. The stone was given by Sir Edward Gascoigne from Huddlestone. Some of the gravestones were also used for the work. The work cost £2500, which was collected by subscription. The pavement, though inoffensive, is not in keeping with the rest of the church. #The Transepts.#--The minster is generally entered by the door at the south end of the south transept, and this is perhaps an advantage, as it introduces the visitor at once to the finest view of the interior and one of the finest architectural views in the world. Mr Fergusson has called the "lantern" the weak point in the system of Gothic, or rather of English Gothic, architecture (for in French churches there is usually no lantern), and there is something to be said for his view. The climax of a domical church is obviously the dome. That is the centre and dominating feature of the whole design, and all the lines of the building should lead up to it. But in a Gothic interior the climax is at the east end. In the Middle Ages the high altar, blazing with jewels, plate, and costly embroidery, naturally drew all eyes to it. From the west end, therefore, the altar as a point of attraction was without a rival. But, as the visitor drew near to the transepts, the lantern, if it existed, suddenly discovered itself and distracted his attention from the altar. And when seen directly from below it had not the overpowering impressiveness of the dome. It was apt to be too narrow and dimly lit, too much disconnected from the system of the whole building to produce an overpowering and harmonious effect. But at York, when the minster is entered by the south transept, the east end is not seen at all, and the lantern, with all its height and vastness, is seen at once. Even as viewed from the west end, the choir is shut off from the rest of the church by a heavy screen, and the view eastward is broken and ineffective. But those very qualities of the interior which lessen the beauties of the nave increase the grandeur of the transept view. The great width of the church has enabled the lantern to be so large as almost to give it the effect of a dome. And the opening of the lantern is so lofty, 180 feet indeed from the floor to the vault, as to lessen the appearance of emptiness that might otherwise result from the great width of the transepts. The dimensions of this part of the church are all enormous, and only comparable to those of the dome and transepts of St. Paul's. The length of the transepts, each of them four bays long, is 223 feet from north to south, in itself the length of a large church; their width is 93 feet, the height to the summit of the roof, 99 feet, and to the top of the lantern, 180 feet. The transepts, therefore, are unusually prominent, even for an English cathedral, and they have many other unusual features. Taken in conjunction with the lantern, they produce an effect to be found in no other Gothic church in the world. In England there are none so wide and so lofty. In France there are interiors even loftier, but in France the transepts are seldom a prominent feature of the design. Often they do not project beyond the outer wall of the aisles of the nave, and oftener still there is no central tower large enough to allow of a lantern at all. It is a great piece of good fortune, also, that the five vast lancets of the north transept end, known as the five sisters, still keep their beautiful original glass. If we look at these windows and consider how utterly ineffective they would be if they were glazed with plain glass, we can understand how little remains of the original beauty of the interior of Salisbury. When these transepts were planned, the minster had a Norman nave and choir, far narrower and smaller in every way than the present nave and choir. There is no doubt that the transepts were begun with the intention of rebuilding the whole church. At that time it was not among the largest of English cathedrals, and the aspiring and ambitious archbishops naturally desired to have a cathedral worthy of their position in the church. They therefore planned their transepts without any regard for the then existing proportions of the rest of the building, but as it was impossible to rebuild the whole minster at once, they found it necessary to fit their new transepts on to the older and smaller nave and choir, and afterwards to fit their new and larger nave and choir to these transepts. This necessity accounts for and explains many of the peculiarities of the transepts. There is one peculiarity in particular, the arrangement of the bays nearest to the piers supporting the lantern, which must strike every observant visitor at once, and the explanation of which was only discovered by the patient and penetrating investigations of Professor Willis. For the purpose of explaining this peculiarity of arrangement, the two bays of the west side of the south transept nearest the south-west pier supporting the lantern may be taken as an example. It will be seen that their arrangement is most irregular--in fact, they can hardly be called bays at all. For instance, the main arch nearest to the pier is much wider than the main arch next to it, and this latter is filled with masonry. It will be noticed, also, that the pier between the two arches is Decorated in style, and not Early English, like the rest of the transept. Further, the triforium and clerestory do not accord in their division with the main arches. There is no triforium, but merely a blank space of wall with a small ornamental opening, next to the pier of the lantern; and this blank wall only covers a small part of the space over the arch below it. Near to the centre of that arch is a vaulting shaft, and south of it a full-sized division of the triforium, with a full-sized division of the clerestory above it, and the division fills the space above both the remaining half of the first arch and the whole of the smaller second arch. It is as if the _strata_ of the building had been broken by a violent change, and this is exactly what happened. As has been said, the old Norman nave and choir had much narrower aisles than the present nave and choir; consequently, the bays of the transept nearest to the piers of the lantern were narrower than the other bays, so that their main arches might be exactly of the same size as the arches of the Norman aisles which at that point joined on to them. But when the far wider aisles of the present nave and choir were built these narrower arches did not fit them, and their outside piers blocked up the centre of the new aisles. The builders of the nave therefore determined to remove these piers and to alter the whole scheme of the arches, so as to make them fit the new aisles. By an extraordinary and daring feat of engineering skill, they were able to do so without disturbing the triforium and clerestory above them. This was effected in the following manner:--The pier in the middle of the new aisle was removed, together with the whole of the narrow arch which it supported on the one side and the wider arch which it supported on the other. No doubt, in the meantime the upper storeys of the two bays were kept from falling by temporary props. A pier in the Decorated style was then placed so that the arch above it fitted the arch of the new aisles, and the two arches--the narrower one nearest the pier of the lantern, and the wider one beyond it--were made to change places bodily, so that the same space was occupied by the two together as before, and it did not become necessary to disturb the rest of the piers. This narrower arch was then walled up to give support to the lantern. Meanwhile, of course, with this new arrangement, the upper storeys of the bays did not correspond with the arches below them. The narrower upper division was now over the wider lower arch, and _vice versa_. It should be said that the triforium of the division next to the piers of the lantern was built blank, because, being so much narrower than the other bays, it would have been impossible to give it decoration of the same character, and also because a solid space of blank wall would give better support to the tower. An account has been given in the history of the building of the minster and the manner in which the piers of the lantern gradually received their casings. The daring shown in this alteration of the transepts and the disregard for continuity of design are very characteristic of the builders of the period. They lavished extraordinary labour on beautiful detail, but they cared very little how one part of that detail fitted in with another. The spirit of their art was entirely opposed to that of the renaissance architects, for the success of whose designs uniformity and continuity of plan and detail were absolutely necessary. It is curious, also, that these very builders who were so daring and so profuse of ornament, were often very careless in matters of structure, and at times were even guilty of something very like jerry-building, as the account of the restoration of the south transept will show. The vaulting of the transepts is also most unusual and well worthy of attention. It raises many problems which have been little noticed by most investigators of the history of the minster. Like the vault of the nave, it is of wood, and dates probably from the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the north transept it is covered with plaster; in the south this has been removed by Mr Street, and oak panelling inserted. It has been stated that the vault of the nave and choir, though wooden, resembles a stone vault in form and structure. Not so that of the transepts, which is a curious compromise between the form of the ordinary vault of stone and the simple barrel roof. It is an attempt, in fact, to combine the advantages of both. It is the merit of groined vaulting that it emphasises the division into bays, and is capable of great richness of structural decoration. On the other hand, it involves a great loss of height, for the ridge of the vault can be little higher than the top of the clerestory windows, and it cuts off the whole space covered by the roof above it from the building which it covers. The structure of the vault will be perhaps most easily understood if it is conceived as a flat roof of stone of the same height as the top of the clerestory, supported by fan-shaped brackets springing from a point between the clerestory windows, and rising and spreading out until they reach the central ridge of the vault. As the vault is, but for these brackets, in its essence flat, there must of necessity be a great sacrifice of space between it and the roof above it. This sacrifice of space is obviated by the barrel roof, which nearly approaches to the shape of the outside roof, and fits into it without the loss of space entailed by the vault. But the barrel roof does not readily submit to a structural division into bays, or a structural decoration by means of ribs and bosses such as ornament and emphasise the divisions of the intersecting vault. Wishing, as has been said, to combine the advantages of both forms, the designers of the transept roof have given it the shape of a barrel roof, and have covered it with a network of ribs, some of which converge between the bays of the building and meet at a point on a level with the bottom of the clerestory. The roof, therefore, has at first sight the appearance of a vault, but it remains a barrel roof divided by ribs all the same; and this will be evident so soon as it is remarked that the top of the roof is not on a level with the top of the clerestory, but some way above it. It is, therefore, not to be conceived as a flat roof supported by brackets, but as an almost circular roof ornamented and divided by structurally unnecessary ribs. Indeed, it would be altogether impossible to combine a vault with such a clerestory as is found in these transepts, for a vault is a roof designed to fit a pointed arch. Its spreading supports make it impossible to adapt it to any other than an arched clerestory; and the clerestory of these transepts, consisting as it does of a row of five lancet windows, is flat at the top. A barrel roof, on the contrary, will fit any kind of buildings, but, unfortunately, it is seldom successful, except in round-arched churches. To some of these--as, for example, in Auvergne--it has been applied with magnificent effect. It is very rare in England. It is always very difficult to decorate. The fifteenth century builders having for some reason or other decided on the form, and being but little accustomed to it, determined to treat it like a vault. They covered it with a network of ribs, and where these ribs met they placed bosses. They also caused these ribs, as far as possible, to take the same direction that the structure of a real vault would give to them. No doubt the ribs serve some useful purpose as a support to the roof, especially as that roof is slightly pointed and not circular, like the barrel roof proper; but the whole effect is unfortunate. The artistic merits of the real vault are evident. It is logical, capable of much structural decoration, and it determines and explains the whole plan of the bays both inside and out. The merits of the barrel roof are also evident. It also is logical, though in a less degree than the vault. It does not determine or explain the plan of the building below it, but it is easily adaptable, and it has a simplicity and a marked grandeur of its own. The roof at York has none of this simplicity. To the most casual visitor it is puzzling and complicated. To the eye which looks farther, which seeks for the logic of its construction, it is still more puzzling. It may deceive the careless observer with the idea that it is a vault, but it will not convince him that it is a good one. It is a work of great ingenuity, but not of great art. It is impossible to say what was there before it. If we knew, we might be able to understand why the builders of the fifteenth century hit upon such a form; and it may be that they were forced by structural necessities to do so. Some space may perhaps be allowed to a conjecture on the subject. It will be remembered that when the present transept was built no part of the present nave or choir was existing; and only the core of the piers supporting the present tower. The tower itself as we see it, the arches over the pier, and the casing of those piers, all date from a period later than the transepts. The Norman nave and choir, existing when these transepts were begun, were, of course, much less lofty than the present nave and choir. If, therefore, the roof of the transept was of its present height, it must also have been far higher than the roof of the then existing nave; and, consequently, of the four arches supporting the central tower, those to the north and south must have been very much higher than those to the east and west. If the transepts had had a vault originally, this arrangement would have been plainly impossible, as a vault would have covered up a great part of the east and west arches. But, though the shape of the clerestory makes it plain that a vault was never even intended, it seems very unlikely that the north and south arches were originally loftier than those east and west. If we suppose that they were all originally designed and built of the same height, we shall find a very plausible reason for the form which the present roof has taken. In such a case the transept must have had a flat wooden roof, the natural covering to a clerestory of such a design, and must have looked, with its great width, very squat and low. But when the new and far loftier nave was built, it, of course, became necessary to heighten the western of the four arches supporting the tower, and afterwards to go through the same process with regard to the eastern arch. At such a time, when the choir was completed, the two arches east and west would be much loftier than the two north and south. Before rebuilding the tower it would naturally occur to the builders to raise the north and south arches to a level with the others, and to do this it would be necessary to raise the roof. In such a case it would be quite natural for the builders to hit upon such a roof as at present exists. They would have before them already the example of a wooden vault in the nave, and for the sake of uniformity they would be inclined to make their new roof as much like that vault as possible. Having the size and height of their arch settled before they designed their roof, the roof would of necessity be shaped to fit the arch, and this would be the most convenient roof for the purpose under the circumstances. This theory will explain why a new roof was required in the fifteenth century, and it also helps to explain other difficulties. For example, it is hard to understand why the transepts, being so wide, are not loftier, and why their original design made a vault impossible. But if we remember that they were originally additions to a much lower nave and choir, we shall see that their architect, having determined on a plan of great width, was in a difficulty. If he made his transepts much higher than his nave, the effect, both inside and out, would be very irregular. If he made them of the same height, and vaulted them, they would be far too wide for their height. He therefore determined, we will suppose, to make a wooden roof which would sacrifice as little of the height of his transepts as possible, and yet allow them to fit on to his nave without any appearance of incongruity. He may also have expected that a loftier nave would soon be built, and set a temporary roof on his transepts which could be easily removed and adapted to new requirements. Be that as it may, the transepts are altogether a curious patchwork, yet when entered from the south end they seem almost entirely satisfactory, since the eye is so engrossed by the magnificence of the five great lancets of the north front, and the great height of the lantern, that it is unable to take note of any smaller and less satisfactory details. The two transepts are alike in the arrangement of their bays and in the general lines of their design, though they differ wholly in the arrangement of their fronts, and in many little points of detail. Their bays are planned on wholly different proportions to those of the nave and choir. There every bay is divided into two main divisions, and the main arch is nearly half of the whole. Here the divisions are three--a main arch, a very large triforium, and a smaller clerestory. The ornamental details are very rich and bold, but the design, taken as a whole, is not altogether excellent. Professor Freeman says bluntly that "the feeble clerestory and broad and sprawling triforium are unsatisfactory." This is true enough, but the whole effect is far better than might be expected. The great width of the transepts in proportion to their length, and the great size of the lantern, coupled with the fact that they are not vaulted, makes one apt to forget that they are divided into bays at all, and to regard the whole as a gigantic hall divided into three storeys and magnificently decorated. The plan of the bays, like that of the decorated part of the choir at Ely and the nave of Lichfield, is probably a reminiscence of Norman proportions. It is certainly better suited to the bold outlines and masses of the Norman period. Here, as in the nave, the main piers are rather thin. The triforium appears to be "sprawling," because it consists of a single great arch in each bay, sub-divided into four smaller ones. The clerestory is small rather than feeble. Its five lancets, though not large, are boldly decorated with shafts, carvings, and mouldings. The chief drawback to the design lies in the exceeding prominence of the triforium, owing to which the eye is drawn to the middle storey, rather than led up from the floor to the roof. And as this middle storey consists of a single bold arch in each bay, it has not the merit of horizontal continuity, found, for example, in the triforium at Beverley, and does not lead the eye, once directed to it, from bay to bay. Like the nave, therefore, though for very different reasons, the transept should be examined bay by bay if the beauties of plan and of detail are to be appreciated, and these beauties, at least those of detail, are abundant. There are some differences of detail between the east and west sides of the south transept, and also between the south and north transepts. The east and west sides of the north transept are practically identical, except for the fact that a Decorated pillar without Purbeck marble shafts has replaced an original Early English pillar on the west side of the north transept. This was probably made necessary by the height of the tower. The differences between the east and west sides of the south transept are as follow:-- The windows in the southern bay of the west aisle are blank. They are pierced on the eastern aisle. The vaulting ribs of the western aisle are plain. They are elaborately moulded in the eastern aisle. The arcade in the eastern aisle is shorter than in the western, and does not reach to the ground. There is a niche against the north-west pier of the tower, but none on the north-east. There is a leaf moulding above the clerestory on the eastern side. The same moulding on the west is plain. The eastern moulding of the main arches on the eastern side is dog-tooth. It is plain on the west. The other mouldings of the main arches are also differently arranged. The spandrels of the triforium are decorated with circles of carved foliage, five to each bay, on the west side. These are absent on the east. The north transept differs from the south in the following respects:-- The arches of the arcade at the north end of the north transept are trefoiled. They are plain at the south end of the south. The main piers of the north transept have a ridge running down their alternate stone shafts. This ridge is wanting in the south. Their capitals are richer, and, curiously enough, apparently later in detail. In the clerestory of the north transept there are large dog-tooth mouldings between the Purbeck marble shafts wanting in the south transept. There is also more dog-tooth in the arch mouldings of the clerestory of the north transept than of the south. In the north transept the moulding between the clerestory and triforium is dog-tooth. It is plain in the south transept. The arcades of the aisles are practically the same in both aisles, except for the differences noted between the east and west aisle of the south transepts. There are two rows of dog-tooth moulding round the windows in the aisles of the north transept, but only one in the south. The clerestory shafts in the aisle of the north transept are bolder than in the south, and the capitals, especially on the east side, are more elaborate and beautiful. The extra Decorated pillar on the west side of the north transept has already been noted. The ends of the transepts are, of course, entirely different in arrangement. Purbeck marble is used lavishly all over the transepts; as, for example, alternately with stone in the main piers, on the shafts of the aisles, and in the triforium and clerestory. The main vaulting shafts are altogether of Purbeck. The arcade at both ends of the transepts is entirely without Purbeck marble. In the south front the shafts of the lowest row of windows are alternately of Purbeck and stone. The arcading above the door is wholly Purbeck, with dog-tooth mouldings of stone. The shafts of the central windows are Purbeck with alternate dog-tooth mouldings, and there are Purbeck shafts at the side of the rose window. There are also Purbeck shafts on each side of the door, beginning above the arcade below. In the north front, the shafts of the five sisters and of the five lancets above them are alternately marble and stone. As has been said, the proportions of the bays in the transepts are very different to those of the nave. The triforium is much larger, and the clerestory much smaller. The main arches, slightly smaller in proportion than those of the nave, are extraordinarily rich and beautiful in detail. Their mouldings are very complex and deep, and are varied with dog-tooth and billet ornament. The piers are perhaps too thin, though beautiful enough in themselves. They are made up of alternate shafts of Purbeck marble and stone. Those of Purbeck are ringed half-way up. The Decorated piers are altogether of stone, and not ringed at all. The arrangement of the shafts is not quite so bold and various as in some other Early English work--the choirs of Ely and Worcester, for example. The capitals are finely carved, though small. Those in the north transept are rather richer than those in the south. [Illustration: South Transept, Triforium, and Clerestory.] The corbels of the vaulting shafts, which are placed just above the capitals of the piers, are very large and richly decorated with four rows of foliage. They support three shafts each, one large and two very slender, as in the nave. On each side of the larger shaft is a dog-tooth moulding. The main arches, especially on the east side of the south transept, are considerably out of plumb, owing to the great weight of the lantern, and perhaps to the inferior material used in the transepts. The triforium consists of a single great circular arch in each bay. It is divided by a thick central cluster of shafts into two smaller arches, and these in turn are divided by slenderer piers into two smaller arches still. In the head of the largest arch is a cinquefoil opening ornamented with cusps and dog-tooth moulding. In the heads of the smaller arches are quatrefoil openings decorated in the same way. The mouldings of the large arches are very bold, and ornamented with dog-tooth; those of the lesser arches are less bold and plainer. The shafts of the triforium run down on to a gabled sill which cuts into their bases. There is the same arrangement in the choir. The clerestory consists of an arcade of five divisions, the three middle being windows, the outer ones blind. The clusters of shafts dividing them are very rich and thick. The mouldings of the arches are broad and deep, the dog-tooth ornament being profusely used. Above the arches is a cornice decorated with foliage. The vaulting shafts terminate in the wooden ribs of the roof, without the division of a capital, about two feet above the string course. The aisles are vaulted, as in the rest of the minster, with stone. The shafts supporting the vault are very richly clustered and varied. The mouldings also are broad and deep; in fact, some of the finest work in the whole of the minster is to be found in these aisles. Below the aisle windows runs an arcade with trefoiled arches, which is very plain and simple in its details. The ends of the transepts, as has been said, are altogether different. The arrangement of the windows of the south front is described in the account of the interior. That arrangement is not particularly happy on the outside. It is even less so when seen from within. This is partly the result of the stained glass of different periods now in the windows, and partly of the scattered and confused spacing of the windows themselves. Inside, as well as outside, the great rose window appears much too large for its position, and the vaulting, raised to allow the whole of it to be seen, fits awkwardly round it. The north end of the transept, however, is one of the most triumphant successes in the whole minster. Its plan is magnificently simple. It is almost entirely filled by two rows of lancet windows, the five sisters, and five much smaller windows of graduated sizes above them. The five sisters are, no doubt, the largest lancet windows in England, and it was a bold idea to fill almost the whole of that great front with them, but the boldness was entirely justified by the result. It might perhaps have been expected that, like other gigantic openings, they would dwarf the frame surrounding them. But this is not the case. They are enormous, and they appear enormous. They have an effect of gigantic and aspiring simplicity and vigour both inside and outside. They fill a given space in so obvious and efficient a manner, that it might seem that no other way of filling it could have occurred to the architect: that he was forced by a lucky chance to place them there. That, of course, is the greatest triumph of genius. It is a piece of luck however that they still retain their ancient glass--Early English glass of the simplest design, and of a beautiful silvery greyish green tint. Without it, no doubt, their effect would be entirely different. The great size and height of the lantern has already been mentioned. The wooden vault is covered with ribs elaborately reticulated. There are two windows with simple Perpendicular tracery and transoms on each side. A single shaft runs between each window. Below the windows there is an arcade of ten ogee arches on each side of the lantern, with pinnacles between. Above this arcade is a row of quatrefoils. Below each division of the arcade are figures alternating with bosses of foliage. In the spandrels of the main arches are coats of arms with angels above them. #The Chapter-House# and #Vestibule.#--The vestibule leading to the chapter-house is entered at the north-east end of the north transept by a doorway of very curious design. It consists of two arched openings separated by a pier. Above the two arches is an acutely-pointed gable, within which, supported by the arches, is a circle with cinquefoil tracery. Above the gable is a further arch, the ribs of which join the gable at its exterior angles. This arch is further connected with the gable by a rib running horizontally through the crown of the gable, and below this rib, on each side of the gable, are circles quatrefoiled. From the finial at the top of the gable rise three ribs running to the top of the arch above. It is impossible to understand the intention of this strange design, unless we suppose that the architect was determined to cover a certain blank space of wall at any cost. It is certainly an original effort, but it cannot be called either beautiful or logical. The dates of the chapter-house and the vestibule are very doubtful. The question is discussed in the account of the building of the minster. It may be mentioned here, however, that the vestibule is later in date than the chapter-house itself. The vestibule is a lofty and narrow passage running three bays north from the end of the transept, and then turning at right angles and running two bays east until it reaches the chapter-house itself. Just inside the vestibule will be seen the point at which the Early English work of the transept is interrupted by the Decorated work of the vestibule. There is no attempt at continuity. The Early English arcading breaks off just below the first Decorated window; the Early English shafts above it run close to the Decorated shafts of that window; while the Early English vaulting rib is cut off near its crown. It would appear from this that a passage to the chapter-house was begun and discontinued before the building of the chapter-house itself. The present vestibule was certainly built after the chapter-house, and the exterior parapet mouldings of the chapter-house may be seen within the vestibule, showing that it was almost an afterthought. Over the doorway leading into the vestibule is a pattern of blind tracery. Here, and on many portions of the roof and walls of the vestibule, are traces of old paintings. The windows are still filled with their magnificent original glass. The three bays running north are of unequal size, that nearest to the transept being the smallest, and that farthest away the largest. The tracery of the two smaller windows is most curious and unusual. The smallest is also of a very odd shape, being almost as narrow as a lancet window, with, however, a rather obtuse arch. It is divided into two lights, which rise without further tracery to about three-quarters of the height of the whole window. Into the upper part are crowded five trefoils of different shapes, and piled one on the top of the other. The mouldings of the shafts have a slenderness and delicacy characteristic of the whole of the choir and the vestibule. The slenderness is one of the chief arguments for the later date assigned to them. All the shafts have rich capitals. The next window is filled with even more curious tracery. It is divided into four lights, rising only to almost half the height of the whole window. The central mullion is thicker than the other two. Above these lights are two gables, to the crown of which the two side mullions run, through an arch below them. Above the gables are two more arches with trefoils in their heads, and in the crown of the window a circle cinquefoiled. The unusual feature of the design is the gables with the lights running through them. They were probably inserted to strengthen the wall. The next three windows are of splendid design, resembling that of the clerestory of the nave, but richer. All the mouldings are of the same character. Under the windows runs an arcade of blind tracery, two lights to each division, with a cinquefoil ornamented with a sculptured boss above. These bosses contain alternately foliage and human heads wreathed in foliage. The capitals are also ornamented with leaves and curious animals. The vault is of richly-moulded ribs, and on each side of these is a pattern of white lozenges on a red ground. The vestibule, as a whole, is one of the most beautiful parts of the minster, not less for its fine proportions and detail than for its magnificent stained glass. #The Chapter-House# is entered by a doorway of most beautiful design, planned in the same manner as the western entrance of the cathedral, but plainer in decoration. It consists of a large arch divided into two smaller arches, each of which contains a door. In the head of the larger arch is a quatrefoil, at the bottom of which are two carved brackets for sculpture. Between the two smaller arches is a niche, with a canopy decorated with a double row of gables and finials. The niche contains a statue of the Virgin Mary and Infant Christ, so mutilated that little of their ancient beauty is left. Below this niche are four narrow shafts with capitals. On each side of the doors is a rich cluster of shafts, boldly cut and varied, with finely-carved capitals. The mouldings of the main arch and of the two subordinate arches are plain, but much thicker and bolder than those of the western doorway. On each side of the main arch are plain niches with small carved brackets. This doorway on the inner side is divided by a cluster of shafts, and above it is an oblong piece of masonry ornamented with arcading enclosed in an obtuse arch. Above the outer arches of the arcading, on each side, is a niche with sculpture. The chapter-house itself is octagonal in form, being divided into eight bays. Seven of these are filled with windows, the eighth, that over the entrance, being ornamented with blank tracery of the same design as that of the windows. These windows are very acutely arched, and their tracery is of the geometrical Decorated style. They contain five lights, each light terminating in a trefoiled arch. The central light has further a very acute arch above it, also filled with a trefoil. The two outer lights on each side are joined together by an arch above them, in which is a cinquefoiled circle. Above are three circles arranged pyramidally, each containing nine cusps. The mullions enclosing the central light are thicker than the others. All the mullions are broken up into very slender shafts with capitals. It may be safely said that for elegance, symmetry, and the ingenious filling of a given space, the tracery of these windows is not surpassed in Europe. Between the windows are clusters of shafts which support the ribs of the vault. These shafts have fine capitals, and are separated from the windows by blank spaces of wall set at an obtuse angle to the windows, so that the shafts are pushed forward. Below is an arcade, famous both for its richness and curiously beautiful design. It consists of a series of canopies, six to each bay, under each of which is a seat forming the half of an octagon. At each angle of these seats is a shaft of Purbeck marble. The seats, or niches, are divided from each other also by shafts of Purbeck marble. The use of Purbeck marble, both here and in the doorway of the chapter-house, is worthy of note. It is unusual after the Early English period, and might be advanced as an argument of the early date of the chapter-house. In the bay which contains the entrance, there is a seat on each side of the doorway. The capitals of the Purbeck marble shafts are carved with unusual richness; but it is the canopies which demand most attention. They are flat at the top, and each is divided into three bays in front, the central bay being divided from the other two by pendants richly carved with foliage of the same character as the capitals of the shafts. Between the shafts and the pendants are trefoil arches, one to each bay, and above the arches and pendants are gables crossing each other and ending in finials of carved oak leaves. Where the gables cross each other are carved heads and figures. The sculpture of the arcade as a whole is the finest in the cathedral, and some of the finest in England; but the art of the Gothic sculptor reaches its culmination in these heads. In grotesqueness, fertility of invention, and perfect fitness as decoration they could hardly be surpassed. The canopies are decorated at the top with a cornice of carved grapes and vine leaves. Above them is a passage running round the whole chapter-house and passing behind the vaulting shafts and through the masses of masonry between the windows. The vault is of wood, though ribbed and painted to give it the appearance of stone. This vault is arranged so that the ribs diverge from the vaulting shafts until they reach the central octagon of the roof. At this point they converge to the boss in the middle of the central octagon. This boss is modern. The roof was restored in 1845. Before this time it was painted with figures of kings and bishops, and the bosses were covered with silver. The modern decoration of the roof is dull and trivial in design and offensive in colour. During the same restoration many of the marble shafts were replaced and the floor was paved with tiles, with a most unfortunate effect. The east window has also been filled with very bad modern glass. In fact, restorers have done their worst to the chapter-house; but, luckily, their work is not irreparable. We may hope that some day the glass, the tiles, and the paint on the roof will all be removed. This chapter-house marks the farthest point reached in the development of such buildings. It differs from the chapter-houses at Lincoln, Salisbury, Westminster, and Wells in that it has no central pillar, and this absence of a central pillar is supposed to be its special glory. No doubt the pillar was an inconvenience when the chapter met, and the architect was given a fine opportunity for the display of his mechanical ingenuity when he decided to do without it. But there can be no doubt that a central pillar or cluster of shafts such as is found at Wells, would be more beautiful. And as the architect at York was afraid to vault his chapter-house with stone, his mechanical ingenuity was not put to so severe a test after all. And yet, though we may regret the beautiful central pillar as we find it at Wells or Lincoln, there are other respects in which this chapter-house surpasses all its rivals. In size, in richness of decoration, in boldness of outline, and in aerial lightness it is unequalled. Above all, it still contains six windows of magnificent stained glass. Even now it seems to justify its boastful inscription: Ut Rosa flos florum, sic est Domus ista Domorum. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Entrance and Sedilia.] #The Choir# is separated from the rest of the church by a very elaborate rood screen, which was built _circa_ 1475-1505, and is therefore the latest part of the original building. It is a fine example of Gothic work of the latest period, and though, the details are of course inferior to those of thirteenth century work, and the parts are small and rather crowded, the whole effect is one of great richness and magnificence. This screen consists of a central doorway into the choir, and of fifteen niches with rich canopies and bases, seven to the north, and eight to the south, of the central doorway. The niches are filled with statues of the Kings of England from William the Conqueror to Henry VI. The statue of Henry VI. alone is modern. It has been said that the original statue of this king was regarded with so much reverence as to have aroused the anger of the iconoclasts of the Reformation. At any rate, it was destroyed, and an image of James I. set in its place. This has been happily removed in the present century, and a statue of Henry VI., a fair work, by the hand of Michael Taylor, a local sculptor, has been inserted. The original statues are unusually good for their period, and it has been suggested that the details of their dress show some consideration for historical correctness. The same consideration was not given to the hair, for it has been pointed out that the Normans were clean-shaven and wore short hair, whereas the statues of the Norman kings have beards, moustaches, and long hair. The kings are dressed in robes of state. The legs of Stephen alone are exposed. The hands of the Conqueror are broken off. On the pedestals are the names of the kings, with the length of their reigns. They begin on the north side. The figures of angels above the canopies of the niches are made of plaster designed by Bernasconi, who also restored other parts of the screen. The central archway is unusually rich and delicate for the period in which it was built. It is somewhat obtuse in form, and is surmounted by an ogee pediment or outer moulding. On each side are four narrow shafts with carved capitals, an unusual enrichment in this period. Between those shafts are rosettes and rows of foliage. The bases, both of the shafts, the pedestals, and the buttresses, are very long, as is usual in late Perpendicular work. The arch itself has four divisions of ornamented mouldings, with plain mouldings between them. The ogee moulding is richly decorated with foliage, and terminates in a lofty finial reaching to the top of the screen. Below this finial is an empty niche with a kind of ball-flower ornament at the base. On each side of this niche is an angel with a censer, with rich foliage below. The interior of the screen under the central arch is vaulted with carved bosses. The niches are divided from each other by buttresses decorated at intervals with pinnacles. The pedestals are long, and richly ornamented with tabernacle work. The greater part of the ornament of the screen is massed in the canopies. These canopies are made up of three inner arches, cusped, immediately above the heads of the kings, and five outer arches, cusped and gabled, round them. Round these outer arches is a mass of pinnacles, with three larger, richly-ornamented pinnacles, and two smaller, above them. Above these are three small figures, apparently playing on musical instruments, with other figures of the same size, one on each side of the buttresses. These figures, in their turn, have above them canopies of much the same character as those below. Above these canopies is a row of panelling with the plaster angels of Bernasconi above it, at the beginning of the cornice. The rest of the cornice is made up of a row of sculptured ornament and a row of cusped arches terminating in the "Tudor flower" ornament, alternating with rows of plain moulding. [Illustration: The Choir Screen.] The chief fault of this screen is its heaviness, which the mass of ornament is not bold enough in its parts to lighten. The central entrance is not cleverly managed, and seems cut out of the screen, as if to make a way into the choir at all costs. This screen should be compared to the beautiful rood screen at Exeter, with its three bold arches and its simple yet delicate decoration. After the fire in 1829 it was proposed to remove it, and one is almost tempted to regret that it was not removed. The nave at York would be enormously improved by a closer connection with the choir. Under any circumstances the nave must be somewhat cold and ineffective; it would be far less so if the eye could pass with scarcely a break into the sumptuous choir. The naves of English cathedrals are too apt to look like splendid museums rather than places of worship, and this is peculiarly the case with the nave at York. Doctor Milner has stated, though apparently without authority, that this screen was taken from the Abbey Church of St. Mary, close to the cathedral. It is difficult to understand how it could have fitted so much narrower a building. [Illustration: The Choir, looking East.] [Illustration: Bay of Choir--Interior.] The choir itself, with the retro-choir or Lady Chapel, is divided into nine bays. It is considerably the largest and loftiest in England, being over 100 feet high and 99 wide. The altar is three bays from the east end, and one bay west of the altar are the eastern transepts. The choir was begun at the east end in 1361, and finished in 1405. There are differences between the earlier work east and the later work west of the transepts, which will be pointed out, though the plan of both is the same. The plan, allowing for differences in detail caused by the change of style, is very like that of the nave. It is, therefore, an interesting example of a Perpendicular building carried out on the lines of an earlier Decorated design. When the east end of the choir was begun (1361) the Gothic style was fast reaching its fullest development in England. The nave of Winchester, a contemporary building, is the finest example of that development. There, as has been pointed out, the vertical division made by the vaulting shafts and the mouldings on each side of them becomes the most important feature in the design. The window tracery is planned merely as a frame for glass, and not as a design interesting in itself. Decoration supplied in earlier work by carved foliage, deep and various mouldings, and elaborate tracery, gives way to a system of lines emphasising construction as completely as possible. The contrasts between masses of ornament and blank walls, which play so great a part in earlier Gothic, disappear; and the only contrast is between the orderly lines of the stone and the kaleidoscopic decoration of the windows. Architecture loses much of its fancy and its delicacy, but becomes more logical, more reasonable, and more organic. In the choir of the minster this change is only half carried out. There is a much greater emphasis of line than in the nave, and there is less delicacy of detail; but the vaulting shafts are no more important, and the window tracery still plays a considerable part in the design. Hence the choir lacks that air of decision, that extreme lucidity, to be found in the design of the nave at Winchester. If it were not for the choir furniture, the stalls, the throne and pulpit, and the altar, this want of decision in the design would be much more evident than it is. But the builders of this choir are not therefore to be blamed. They designed it as a choir, counting, no doubt, on the effect of the furniture, and as a choir it must be judged. It might have been expected, perhaps, that a building designed on the lines of the nave, but without the beauty of detail of an earlier age, would show all the faults of that nave and few of its beauties. But this is not the case. The architects were certainly most skilful; they had the immense advantage of seeing the design of the nave actually carried out, they understood its faults, and by a few dexterous alterations they produced a "fair copy" of it, avoiding most of those faults, and keeping all its structural merits. As in the nave, the triforium is merely the continuation of the clerestory, the proportions, of the western bays at least, are almost the same as those of the nave, and the whole is covered again with a wooden vault, plastered and ribbed to look like stone; and yet that air of leanness, flatness, and emptiness, the chief fault of the nave, is almost entirely avoided. A comparison of the differences in the two designs, and a demonstration of the small means by which the success of the later one is produced, must be both interesting and instructive, but, to be fully carried out, it would require more space than can be given in this book. We must confine ourselves, therefore, to pointing out some of the more obvious changes. The most curious and important, perhaps, is to be found in the treatment of the triforium. In the earlier bays east of the eastern transept this treatment is the same in essentials as on the nave. That is to say, the triforium is on the same plane as the clerestory, and the triforium passage runs outside the building. But when the choir proper was begun, after an interval of some years, the architects, seeing, no doubt, that the older design was flat and somewhat wanting in relief, were seized by a happy idea. They set the clerestory windows some inches back, so that they were no longer level with the interior wall and with the triforium, and placed the triforium passage in its customary place. The difference in the design may be easily observed both inside and outside the building. By this simple change, a greater relief and depth, a greater contrast of light and shade, was given to the whole design; and this without breaking its continuity or harmony in any degree. The following differences in plan and detail between nave and choir may also be remarked:-- Besides the transom dividing clerestory from triforium to be found in the nave, there is a second transom in the choir crossing the openings of the triforium. This gives a greater fulness and complexity to the design. In the eastern bays, below the openings of the triforium, the bases of the mullions are elongated to about two feet in length, and between them are cusped arches. These arches and the mullions themselves are set on a slanting ridge, like the mullions of the triforium in the transepts. The vaulting shafts also do not terminate altogether at the point at which the ribs of the vault converge, but the outer ones rise some ten feet higher than the central one, until they are cut short by the spreading ribs of the vault. This is a difference characteristic of the Perpendicular style, which tends to an interweaving of lines, and an abolition of capitals, where possible. The mouldings of the main arches also are broader than on the nave, and the clusters of the piers bolder. It must also be remembered that, as the floor of the choir rises gradually to the east, the proportions of the eastward bays are materially altered, and the main arches are smaller relatively to the clerestory than in the nave. There is no doubt that this change is a fortunate one. It is also lucky that it occurs in that part of the building which otherwise differs least from the design of the nave. Finally, it must be remembered, in accounting for the greater effectiveness of the later work, that a choir design is made for different conditions, and has different objects in view, from that of a nave. It has often been remarked that the nave of York, examined bay by bay, is logical and satisfactory enough. It is only when it is regarded as a whole, and judged as an avenue of stone, that its faults are evident. But the choir is not to be judged as an avenue of stone at all. It is cut in half by the altar. Its lower storey is concealed by the stalls, and its continuity broken by the eastern transepts. In the nave, the lowest storey is the weakest. The thin pillars and the broad arches make too little division between the nave and the aisle. The whole is seen at a glance, and there is little of the mystery and shadow generally to be found in a large Gothic interior. Also the actual design of the pillars is poor. They do not fit well on to the arches above them. They seem almost insecure. If these faults exist in the choir, they are concealed by the stalls, and east of the altar by the change in proportions. The choir itself is like an enormous college chapel. The aisles exist, but play no part in the design, which still culminates in the splendid blaze of glass from the eastern transepts and the great east window, and once culminated on the still more splendid blaze of the altar. [Illustration: The Choir, looking West.] The retro-choir, far too short and wide to be judged as an avenue of stone, is still more dependent for its effect on its glass. As most of that glass luckily remains, it is a miracle of airy splendour; one may see from it what were the objects, and how great the success of the much-maligned Perpendicular architects at their best. It is still the custom to regard Perpendicular architects as altogether inferior to their predecessors; an opinion partly arising, no doubt, from Mr Ruskin's eloquent exposition of the principle that beauty of detail is the most vital and important part of architecture; and partly from the general idea that older work is always better than later. But Perpendicular artists were not altogether retrogressive. In some respects they adapted their design more completely to their material than the older men. Their woodwork, for instance, completely shook off the forms of stone. Their glass, in spite of all that has been said, is better decoration of a given space than the patterns of the Decorated period. This is particularly evident in the nave and choir of the minster, for the original glass remains on many of the windows practically undisturbed. The earlier glass is more delicate, and purer in colour. Its designs are often more interesting pictorially. Look at the window simply as an isolated example of stained glass, and you will certainly prefer the earlier work. Look at it as a patch in a whole system of decoration, and you will be inclined to prefer the later. The wonderful success, as decoration of fragments of ancient stained glass pieced together almost at random, goes to prove, almost as clearly as the pictorial errors of modern designers, that a stained glass window should be conceived, not as a picture, hardly even as a pattern, but as a simple arrangement of broken patches of colour. This is what the designers of the windows in the choir have done, for they have seen that by that means, and not by the representation of architectural forms, they obtain the best contrast with the real architectural forms of the building. At their best, the windows of the choir remind one of patches of coloured sunlight on running water. It is true that these windows are really filled with pictures, but these pictures are only an excuse and a stimulus for the inventions in pure colour of the designer. Without them his work might seem merely kaleidoscopic. It is his great merit that he has never allowed his representation of actual things to interfere with his decorative purpose. [Illustration: Compartment of Ancient Choir Stalls.] To sum up, then, this choir has not the delicate and spiritual beauty of the choirs of Lincoln or Ely. That is never found even in the finest work of Perpendicular architects; but for stateliness and magnificence it has not a rival in England. These qualities may be best appreciated standing midway between the two transepts and in front of the altar. From that point glittering screens of glass and soaring shafts of stone are to be seen on all sides; the whole effect is one of triumphant light and space and colour, not to be surpassed by the splendours even of Moorish or Italian architecture. To pass to a more detailed description: the original stalls were irretrievably ruined by the fire of 1829. An illustration of one of these stalls from Britton is here given. They appear to have been magnificent examples of Perpendicular woodwork, and their destruction is an irreparable loss. There were twenty of them on each side of the choir and twelve at the west end. The modern stalls erected in the thirties are a simple imitation, better perhaps than original work of the period would have been--better, certainly, than might have been expected--but spirit-less in execution. The modern bishop's throne and pulpit are not even tolerable. They replaced a throne and pulpit erected in 1740, and, like the stalls, destroyed in the fire. [Illustration: Compartment of Altar Screen.] The fine Perpendicular altar screen was also destroyed by the fire. The present screen is a careful and very successful reproduction of it. It has been glazed with very good effect. The reredos, designed by Street, with reliefs by Tinworth, is made of terra-cotta and wood, and is not successful either in colour or pattern. The carvings represent the first hour of the Crucifixion. The clerestory windows are Perpendicular in style, and contain five lights. Though the design is not beautiful in itself, like that of the great east window, it makes an admirable frame for glass. There are certain differences in detail between the windows of the eastern bays and those of the western. The windows of the eastern bays are almost transitional. Certainly their Perpendicular character is not fully developed. Thus some of their upper compartments diverge to the left and right, whereas the windows in the choir itself are made up of parallel and vertical divisions. In the eastern windows, also, a transom runs through the upper lights of the windows, which is not found at the western. The tracery of the eastern window is even more filled with transitional characteristics. As a pattern of tracery, it is wanting in coherence and subordination, and these faults are painfully evident outside. But it is so vast, and filled with such magnificent glass, that the tracery seen from the inside seems hardly more important than the leads of the glass, and the whole is to be judged simply as a great wall of glass supported where necessary by stonework made as unobtrusive as possible. There are differences also in the eastern and western windows of the aisles, especially in the interweaving and subordination of the lines of the mouldings, but these differences are not so obvious as in the clerestory. The change in the placing of the clerestory window and of the triforium passage has been pointed out. Among other and minor differences the following may be remarked:--In the eastern bays the capitals of shafts in the triforium run round the shafts of the main arch of the window. In the western bays the arches between the mullions of the triforium are cinquefoiled (they are trefoiled in the eastern bays), and the bases are much shorter. All the mullions of the clerestory windows have capitals. The two central mullions, as in the nave, are thicker than the rest. They rise also to the head of the arch. The two outer lights are coupled by an arch above them. The upper lights are broken up into a number of divisions, vertical and parallel in the choir proper, slightly varied in direction in the retro-choir. The mouldings are as elaborate and as carefully subordinated as in the earlier work of the nave. Below the transom dividing triforium from clerestory is a row of panelling divided by the mullions of the triforium, which, as in the nave, are merely a continuation of the mullions of the clerestory. The arches of the triforium are not ornamented with a gable, as in the nave, but with a moulding decorated with crockets and ending in a rich finial. The capitals of the main vaulting shafts are very curious. They consist of an ordinary row of carved foliage with three pendants ending in small carved figures with cinquefoiled arches between them. The outer mouldings of the main arches are cut short by the small outer vaulting shafts. A little way below them are small heads, as in the nave. The capitals of the main arches are like those of the nave, but their foliage is more disconnected. On the north side of the choir are figures on the capitals. Mr Browne, the enthusiastic and laborious historian of the minster, has supposed these figures to represent scenes in the rebellion in which Scrope took part. If the ordinary date given to the choir be accepted, it was built before that rebellion. But Mr Browne has endeavoured to prove that the choir was built later than is usually supposed. It is impossible in this book to do more than mention the controversy started by him, and to say that, in the opinion of Professor Willis and others, he has not made out his case. In the four eastern bays brackets and canopies for statues are attached to the vaulting shafts below the capitals of the piers. Those east of the altar were badly altered and restored after the fire of 1829. It should be mentioned two eastern bays are narrower than the rest for the better support of the eastern wall of glass, and the western bays for that of the tower. In the spandrels of the main arches are coats of arms, mainly of benefactors. The following is a list of these, taken from Murray's handbook to the minster, and beginning at the north-east end of the choir:-- 1. Two keys in saltire--Chapter of York. 2. Six lions rampant--Ulphus. 3. Three lions passant guardant, a label of three points, each charged with three fleur-de-lis--Thomas, Duke of Lancaster. 4. Three lions passant guardant, a border--Edmund of Woodstock. 5. A bend between six lions rampant--Bohun. 6. Checky, a fess--Clifford. 7. A cross floré--Latimer. 8. Barry of ten, three chaplets--Greystock. 9. The instruments of the Passion. 10. Three estoiles of six points, a border--St. Wilfrid. 11. Two keys in saltire, a border engrailed--St. Peter. 12. Two swords in saltire, a border engrailed--St. Paul. 13. Seven lozenges conjoined, 3, 3, and 1--St. William. (Archbishop and Patron Saint.) 14. On a bend, a lion rampant--Musters. 15. A chief, three chevronelles interlaced in base--Fitz-Hugh. 16. On a saltire, a crescent--Neville. 17. 18. A fess dancette--Vavasour. Those on the south side, beginning at the west end, are as follows:-- 1. A cross--St. George. 2. A cross floré between five martlets--Edward the Confessor. 3. Three crowns, 2 and 1--King Edwin. 4. Barry of six, on a chief, two pallets between as many esquires based--Mortimer. 5. Six lions rampant, 3, 2, 1, with a horn on the west side of the shield (referring to the famous gift of lands)--Ulphus. 6. A lion rampant--Percy. 7. Quarterly, 1 and 4 a lion rampant for Percy, 2 and 3 three luces hauriant for Lucy--Percy. 8. A bend, a label--Scrope of Masham. 9. Six osier wands interlaced in cross--Bishop Skirlaw. 10. A bend, a border charged with mitres; over all a label--Archbishop Scrope. 11. Three water bougets--Roos. 12. A saltire--Neville. 13. On a cross five lions passant guardant--City of York. 14. Three fusils in fess--Montague. 15. A fess between six cross crosslets--Beauchamp. 16. A lion rampant--Percy. 17. France (ancient) and England (quarterly), with a label of three points--Edward, Prince of Wales. 18. France (ancient) and England (quarterly). The vault of the choir is of wood, like that of the nave; it is an imitation of the vault destroyed by the fire of 1829. It is covered with a network of ribs that obscure the main structural lines of the vaulting. The aisles of the choir are of much the same size, design, and proportion as those of the nave. Their vault is of stone. The windows are filled with tracery of an unusual transitional character, and altogether more beautiful and interesting than that of the clerestory. They are divided into three lights, each terminating in a very obtuse arch. Above these arches are three others, also obtuse and hardly pointed. Short mullions run from the points of the lower arches to the points of the upper. Above the upper arches are three irregular-shaped openings, arranged pyramidally, the two lower being quatrefoiled, the upper sexfoiled. The whole is a curious mixture of vertical and flowing lines. They represent a design, as it were, of which the tracery is arrested half-way in its process of stiffening from the curved lines of the Decorated style to the straight of the Perpendicular. Here, as in the clerestory, the mouldings are delicately varied. The central shafts alone of the mullions have capitals. On each side of every window are three shafts, all with capitals. [Illustration: The Choir in 1810.] Below the windows runs an arcade of very simple panelling, four divisions to each window, and two trefoiled arches in each division. There is also panelling of the same character on each side of the vaulting shafts between the windows. The windows of the eastern bays are more sharply pointed than the others. The vaulting shafts of the aisles have capitals of carved foliage and wings of leafage on a level with the top of the arcade below the windows. The windows next to the east end have only two lights. The eastern transepts stand between the four western and the four eastern bays. They mark the position of the eastern transepts and towers in Roger's Norman choir, and are of rather unusual design. They are of only one bay in width, and do not extend beyond the aisle walls. They therefore represent a bay of the choir, of which the clerestory and triforium are removed, and the aisle roof is raised to the height of the roof of the choir itself. Both outside and inside their effect is magnificent. Their north and south walls are filled with enormous windows, containing splendid glass. Of these windows, that on the north contains scenes from the life of St. William, and is known as the St. William window; that on the south, scenes from the life of St. Cuthbert, and is known as the St. Cuthbert window. Both have had their mullions recently restored. These windows are divided into five lights, and are crossed by three transoms. Below these transoms, in each light, are cinquefoiled arches. The upper lights closely resemble those of the clerestory in design, and are of the same size. The main arch in these transepts remains, and is of the same character as that of the other main arches. Above it in each case is a gallery with panelled openings. Above the main arch, on each side of the transept openings, are thick clusters of shafts. The lower part of the windows has double tracery, like the great east window, and the east windows in the Chapel of Nine Altars at Durham, the inner tracery consisting of open lights about a foot off the actual tracery, containing the glass, and of exactly the same design. On each side of the windows are five canopies and brackets. The arches east and west of the transepts and opening into the aisles are of the same character as those opening into the choir. Above them are windows of the same size and design as those of the clerestory. In the spandrels of the arches are coats of arms as follow:-- #North Transept--East Side.# 1. A chief, three chevronelles interlaced in base--Fitz-Hugh. 2. A bend, a label of three points--Scrope of Masham. #North Side.# 1. Three escallopes--Dacres. 2. A fess between six cross crosslets--Beauchamp. #West Side.# 1. On a saltire, a martlet--Neville. 2. A bend--Scrope of Masham. #South Side.# 1. Checky, a fess--Clifford. 2. A cross floré--Latimer. #South Transept--East Side.# 1. A lion rampant--Mowbray. 2. A lion rampant--Percy. #West Side.# 1. A fess dancette--Vavasour. 2. A blank shield. #North Side.# 1. A fess between three cross crosslets--Beauchamp. 2. Three escallopes--Dacres. The stone carving of the retro-choir, as the earlier work cast of the transepts is generally called, was greatly injured by the fire. After the fire five of the canopies on the piers were renewed by the mason of the minster, who treated them according to his own sweet will. The canopies on the piers next to the altar screen remain untouched. The eastern bays of the aisles are of the same character as the rest. The east end of the choir is chiefly filled by the great east window, which fits into its position better than the west window of the nave, but not entirely satisfactorily. The mouldings of its arch are decorated with niches containing figures, and following the curve of the arch. This curve does not run parallel to that of the vault, which is less acute. The window itself is set back a little way from the wall, and on each side of it are mouldings with occasional niches. The outside mouldings of the window run straight up through the outside mouldings of the arch, and are cut short by the ribs of the vault. This inter-penetration of mouldings is found also on the aisle side of the main piers of the choir, and is more characteristic of later German Gothic than of English. The wall between the outer mouldings of the window and the boundaries of the choir is filled with shallow niches, two rows to each side and four niches to each row. These perhaps were never meant to contain figures, and are more like panelling than niches. The upper outside niches on each side are cut into by the ribs of the vault. Below the east window is a row of quatrefoils, and below them nine divisions of panelling, in unequal portions, and of the same simple character as that in the aisles. The upper halves of the three central panels are filled with niches with rich canopies, each canopy being divided into three parts. The east end below the windows is now chiefly filled with uninteresting monuments of the later archbishops. There is no doubt that the aisles of the choir and the whole of the retro-choir could be better without the greater part of the monuments in them. The magnificent tomb of Archbishop Bowet is almost the only fine one to be found in the retro-choir. [Illustration: The Virgin and Child (a Carving behind the Altar).] There has been a considerable controversy about the position of the Lady Chapel founded by Archbishop Thoresby. This controversy, in which Mr Browne has endeavoured to prove that Thoresby's Lady Chapel was placed on the north side of the nave, is far too long and intricate a business to find a place in this book. It is enough to say that the other authorities seem unanimously to be of the opinion that the altar of the Lady Chapel was under the great east window, where an altar, used for Holy Communion, is now placed. Thither, it is said, Thoresby removed the bodies of certain of his predecessors. And the tombs of six of these were existing in the seventeenth century, when drawings were made of them by Torre, the antiquary. Brasses were placed over the burial-places of these archbishops, and were mostly destroyed in the Civil War. The great east window, like the windows of the transepts, has a double plane of tracery reaching to about half the height of the whole. Between the two planes a passage runs at the base of the window, between two doors which lead to staircases in the turrets on each side of the windows. These staircases, in their turn, lead to a gallery across the window on the top of the inner plane of tracery. The view from this gallery is very fine. The window itself contains nine lights, and these are divided by two mullions, thicker than the rest, into sub-divisions of three lights each, each sub-division terminating in an arch formed by the curving of the mullions. From the top of each of these arches rises another mullion, the two outer being soon cut short by the arch of the window, the central one curiously splitting into two thick branches to right and left in straight lines until they also are cut short by the window arch. The rest of the upper lights are filled with an infinite number of small divisions, in which the occasional presence of curved lines shows the transitional character of the design. The window is crossed by three transoms, the two lower at equal distances, the upper close to the one below it. The gallery across the window is formed by these two upper transoms. The glass in the choir, as in all the rest of the church, is described in a separate chapter. The entrance to the crypt is from the north aisle of the choir as it was in ancient days. There are still remains of the original vestibule to the crypt, and also the bases and one of the jambs of the Norman door leading to it. #The Crypt# itself is very interesting, not only for its own sake, but for the light it throws on the history of the building of the minster. The fire of 1829 gave Professor Willis and Mr Browne the opportunity to make elaborate and prolonged investigations, to which we owe much of the light which has been thrown upon problems connected with the choirs of Thomas and Roger. Before this fire, the only crypt whose existence was known of, was a small chamber under the platform of the high altar, no wider than the central aisle of the choir, and only equal to a bay and a half of that aisle in length. The greater part of this crypt was Norman in character. The vault was supported by six Norman pillars, and the ribs of the vault were apparently Norman. But the side piers were Perpendicular, and the transverse arches of the ribs four-centred, as in late Perpendicular work. There can be little doubt, Professor Willis says, that this crypt was a mere piece of patchwork put together, when the present choir was built, out of old materials which came readily to hand, with the object of giving support to the platform of the altar, and to provide chapels and altar room beneath it. [Illustration: The Crypt.] After the fire of 1829, the existence was discovered of a large crypt, stretching westward of the altar platform, and extending under the whole of the rest of the choir and its aisles. Of this crypt, only the pillars and the lower part of the walls remained. At the west end of this crypt a portion had been enclosed in walls and filled up with earth. The eastern part was vaulted, and had stout Norman pillars at the side, while in the middle were two rows of smaller single pillars. The earth has since been removed, and the building laid open, repaired, and vaulted. The thicker pillars are of elaborate late Norman work, diapered in a manner recalling the piers of the nave at Durham. The vault was ribbed. These pillars were, no doubt, erected by Roger Pont l'Evêque, and enable us to understand what the character of his choir must have been. The walls enclosing the western part of the crypt are of peculiar interest. They are made up of three partitions. The outer wall, 3 feet 6 inches thick, is, no doubt, the work of Roger. The middle wall, 4 feet 8 inches thick, is faced with herring-bone work, and this, and the coarseness of its workmanship, prove it to be of great antiquity. It is almost undoubtedly Saxon, and has been supposed, though on slender evidence, to be part of the original church begun by Edwin in the seventh century. A bit of this wall is now bare, and may be seen. [Illustration: Capitals in Crypt.] The third wall is only 2 feet thick. It probably was also erected by Roger, but it is composed of older materials of an early Norman character. It may be from Thomas's choir, if, as is probable, the earlier choir which Roger pulled down had been built by Thomas. The stone of this wall is of the same coarse sandstone as the remains of Thomas's apse under the north transept, and there are traces of plaster on the stones showing that they had been used for the interior of a building. No doubt the outer wall was erected by Roger as a support for his massive piers, for which purpose the middle wall alone would have been insufficient. Roger also probably added the thin inner wall, and filled the whole with earth, for the same purpose. Close to the remains of the Norman doorway before mentioned, is a low arch, and the portion of an apse, no doubt the work of Thomas, the apse being the eastern termination of his transept. [Illustration: Capitals in Crypt.] It was from his examination of the side walls of this crypt that Professor Willis was able to support his conjectures as to the dimensions and character of Roger's choir. Thus he traced it to the eastern transept of that choir, in the same place as the present eastern transepts, and deduced from the extra thickness of the wall in that part that those transepts had been capped by towers. Beyond this the crypt was filled up with graves, and there is now no access, but during the repairs he was able to trace so much of the walls as to make it plain that Roger's choir had a square ending, and also to mark the situation of the east end of that choir. #The Record Room.#--A chantry founded by Archbishop Zouch, but rebuilt in 1396, during the erection of the present choir, is now utilised as the record room, and contains the fabric rolls, and other documents concerning the building and constitution of the minster. The vestry and treasury date from the middle of the fourteenth century; like the record room they lie to the south of the choir. In the vestry is the famous horn of Alphus. It was given by Alph, or Alphus, son of Thorald, a little while before the Conquest. Alphus laid it on the altar of the minster, as a sign that he gave certain lands to the church. The horn is made out of an elephant's tusk. The wide end of the horn is ornamented with carvings of griffin dogs, a unicorn, and a lion eating a doe. This carving shows a strong Eastern or Byzantine influence, and may well have been of Byzantine workmanship. The horn was lost during the Civil War, but found by Lord Fairfax, who gave it back to the minster. The silver gilt chain now attached to it was added in 1675. The vestry also contains an oak chest finely carved with the stag of St. George, and dating from the early part of the fifteenth century, and the fine pastoral staff plundered from James Smyth, the Roman Bishop of Callipolis, in the streets of York at the time of the deposition of James II. Here also is the Mazer Bowl or Indulgence Cup of Archbishop Scrope. It is of wood, with a silver rim, and three cherubs' heads for feet. Round the rim is the following inscription:-- "Recharde, Arche Beschope Scrope grantis on to alle tho that drinkis of this cope x dayis to pardune, Robart Gubsone, Beschope Musm grantis in same forme aforesaide x dayis to pardune, Robart Strensalle." The cup was originally given to the Corpus Christi Guild, and afterwards passed to the Cordwainers Company. When the latter were dissolved (in 1808), the bowl was presented to the minster. The vestry also contains three silver chalices and patens taken from the tombs of archbishops; the rings of Archbishops Greenfield, Sewall, and Bowet, also taken from their tombs; and an ancient chain, probably dating from the fifteenth century. * * * * * The minster, for all its size, age, and importance, contains curiously few tombs of interest. Though most of the earlier bishops were buried within its walls, not more than three of their monuments are really remarkable. Only one member of the royal family, William of Hatfield, the infant son of Edward III., lies there, and very few persons of distinction. It is not proposed therefore to give a description of any tombs, except such as are notable for beauty or interest. #Monuments In The Nave.#--In the north aisle, three bays from the west end, is a monument of late Perpendicular work, said to be the tomb of Archbishop Roger, who died in 1181. It is possible that his bones were transferred here from the choir, though there is no record of such transference. This tomb was opened and restored in 1862, when some bones and remains of ecclesiastical vestments were found in it. The restoration appears to have been arbitrary and inaccurate. [Illustration: Effigy of Manley.] The tomb is recessed in the wall of the aisle, and consists of a lower storey for the coffin with a flat top, with a front of open stone work in eight divisions, each containing a quatrefoil. Above is a very obtuse arch with plain mouldings, with a row of "Tudor flower" ornaments on the top, and a figure of the Virgin in the middle. There are two birds holding scrolls in their beaks on either side of her. These have been changed by the ingenious restorers into eagles bearing ears of wheat. All other monuments of importance in the nave were destroyed by the Puritans, or at the Reformation. A word must be said, however, as to the tomb and shrine of St. William, the patron saint of the minster. William Fitzherbert was a great-grandson of the Conqueror, and an opponent of the monks. He was expelled from his episcopacy in 1147, but returned to it in 1153. He is stated to have performed a miracle immediately on his return, and died about immediately afterwards in 1154. He is said to have been poisoned, whilst celebrating mass, out of the holy chalice itself. It was perhaps the peculiar atrocity of his end which gave him so great a reputation for sanctity. During his life he does not seem to have been distinguished above other archbishops for learning, piety, or good deeds. He was not canonised until 1284. It is difficult to understand either why the minster had not obtained a patron saint before this time, or why the choice eventually fell upon St. William. No doubt the authorities felt the want of a shrine fit to be enriched by the visitations of pilgrims, and were encouraged by the example of the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury to obtain one as soon as possible. We can only suppose that they chose St. William for want of a more distinguished patron. At all events, his shrine never obtained the celebrity of that of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and in after years was probably regarded as inferior in sanctity and interest even to that of Archbishop Scrope in the minster. He had originally been buried in the nave, where, exactly, is not known, but it is said that even before his canonisation his tomb was visited by pilgrims, and was the occasion of miracles. When he was canonised, the 8th of June, the day of his death, was appointed for his festival. The visit of Edward I. to York in 1283-4 was chosen by Archbishop Wickwaine as the occasion for the translation of St. William's relics from his old tomb in the nave to his shrine in the choir. The ceremony was performed with great pomp in the presence of the King and of his wife Eleanor. William became one of the King's patron saints, and Edward gave various gifts of jewels to his shrine. In the Acta Sanctorum for June 8th, St. William's day, it is recorded that "Corpus ab imo in altum, a communi loco in chorum Venerabiliter est translatum." "His body was translated with all reverence from the lowest to the highest place, from a common position to the choir." The shrine was probably placed behind the high altar, and afterwards between the reredos and the eastern screen, as at Durham and St. Albans. The bones themselves were deposited in a portable _feretrum_, so that they might be easily carried in procession. As in the case of Thomas à Becket, the original place of William's burial still remained an object of veneration. It was at the eastern end of the nave, and was covered with a great superstructure, so large that processions, it is said, were obliged to divide and march to each side of it. The head appears to have been kept in a silver jewelled chest separate from the rest of the body. It was exhibited to worshippers who gave offerings to it. At the Reformation the head was seized by one Layton, afterwards Dean, and a follower of Thomas Cromwell; its seizure was one of the chief causes of the Pilgrimage of Grace. At this time, also, the shrine was demolished, and also the superstructure over the saint's original place of burial in the nave. It is said that no remembrance was left of the spot except a tradition that the saint had lain under a long marble slab in the nave of the church. In 1732, during the repairing of the nave of the minster, Drake, the historian of York, obtained leave to search under the said slab, and there found a coffin of stone, containing a leaden box, in which were bones wrapped in sarcenet. There was no inscription by which the remains could be identified, and they were again buried. Archbishop Melton was buried near the font, as it then stood, at the west end of the minster. In 1736, when the new pavement was laid, the stone covering his grave was taken up, and a lead coffin was discovered, containing the bones of the archbishop. On the top of the coffin was a chalice and paten of silver-gilt. Inside the coffin was the pastoral staff, but no ring or vestments. The archbishop was re-buried in the same place. #Monuments In The South Transept.#--In the eastern aisle is the tomb of Archbishop de Grey, who died in 1255. This, one of the two or three really fine monuments in the church, is Early English in style, and has been very little damaged. It consists of an effigy, with a canopy supported by nine pillars above it. The figure of the archbishop is clothed in full canonicals. In his left hand is a crozier, and his right is raised to bless. The feet trample on a dragon, into the mouth of which enters the butt end of the crozier. On each side of the figure is a shaft ornamented with bunches of leafage at regular intervals. Round the head of the archbishop is a gable cusped with censing angels on each side of it. The pillars supporting the canopy have fine capitals, and above them are cusped arches, with richly-carved scroll work in their spandrels. Above is a further tier of arches, supported by short shafts, also having beautiful capitals. Above these arches are gables covered with crockets, and on the gables are elaborate finials. These finials are an addition of the beginning of the century, and are of plaster. They are the work of an Italian sculptor, Bernasconi by name, and, considering the circumstances, are unusually good. Round the tomb is a railing, presented by Archbishop Markham, also of the beginning of the century, and of very poor design. [Illustration: Effigy of Archbishop de Grey.] To the south of this tomb is the large and elaborate modern monument to Archdeacon Duncombe, which has nothing, either in workmanship or design, to recommend. To the north is the tomb of Archbishop Sewall de Bovill, who succeeded Archbishop de Grey. His sepulchre, says Drake, was much frequented after his death by the common people, who reported many miracles to be done at it. The tomb consists of a plain slab of marble, with a cross upon it, supported by twelve low pillars, with plain capitals, and trefoiled arches. #Monuments In The North Transept.#--In the eastern aisle of the north transept is the beautiful tomb of Archbishop Greenfield, who died in 1315. This tomb belongs to the most fully-developed period of the Decorated style. It is ornamented with arcading in front, with gables, each partition divided by buttresses with pinnacles. Above it is a canopy with a richly-foliated arch, and a gable with crockets, terminating in an elaborately-carved finial, with a statue of the archbishop in the act of benediction on the top. On each side are buttresses, with elaborate pinnacles. The statue of the archbishop is a modern addition. On the tomb itself are the remains of a brass. In 1735 this tomb was opened, and a ring discovered in it. Close to the tomb was the altar of St. Nicholas; and the archbishop was buried in this position because he died on the festival-day of that saint. This tomb is also remarkable for the fact that the lunatic Martin hid himself behind it, in 1829, before setting the minster on fire. Near at hand, in the same aisle, is the tomb of Dr Beckwith (died 1843). In the west aisle is a monument to Archbishop Vernon Harcourt (died 1847). Behind the walled-up arch also in this aisle is a tomb, said to have been erected either to or by Thomas Huxey, who was treasurer of York from 1418 to 1424. Huxey himself, however, was buried to the south of the tomb. It consists of a slab, with the figure of a corpse below it inside a grating. [Illustration: Monument of William of Hatfield.] #Monuments In The Choir.#--We find here many monuments, but few of either beauty or interest. In the westernmost bay of the north aisle is the tomb of William of Hatfield, second son of Edward III., who died at the age of eight, in 1344. The effigy of the prince is fine, though much damaged. Canon Raine has pointed out that the canopy is ornamented with the Plantagenista. The head was formerly supported by two angels, which have been destroyed (Britton). The feet rest against a lion. Drake relates that the vergers in his time asserted that this was the son of the Emperor Severus, buried at Acombe Hills, and carried thence to the cathedral. The statue appears to have been removed from its proper place, and neglected for a long time. One bay east, and on the opposite side of the aisle, is the tomb of Archbishop Savage, who died in 1507. This is one of the latest of the Gothic works in the cathedral. It is a plain oblong, with four panels, containing coats of arms on each of the larger sides. It is surmounted by an effigy of the bishop, with mitre and crozier. Drake states that above it was a wooden chantry, of which there are now no traces. The name, _Thomas Dalby_, on the inscription on the tomb, is that of an archdeacon of Richmond, who is said to have erected the monument. Farther east, the outer wall of the aisle, as also of the southern aisle, is almost covered with pompous and ugly monuments, few of them remarkable either for their design or for the fame of the persons to whom they were erected. The best, perhaps, is that to Lionel Ingram, who died at the age of six. It is Jacobean in style, and has a pathetic Latin inscription setting forth the unusual virtues of the child. The tomb of Archbishop Sterne, at the east end of the aisle (1683), is an example of almost everything that a monument should not be. West of this is the tomb of the unfortunate Scrope, beheaded by Henry IV. It is of little interest in itself, and was restored after the fire of 1829; but in the Middle Ages thousands of pilgrims flocked to it, and it was for a time more popular than the shrine of St. William himself. Henry IV. forbade offerings to be made to it, and gave these orders to the clerk of the cathedral. "Y faces mettre sur la terre entre les pilers et par bonne espace de hors beilles fuystes et grosses piers de bonne hautesse et lacune iffint gils i soyent continuellement pour faire estoppoil a les faux foles que y beignont par couleur de devotion." The offerings were not, however, thus checked. Close by was the Chapel of St. Stephen, in which was the chantry of the _Scropes_, and so many offerings in memory of the archbishop were deposited there that it increased in riches up to the Reformation. Farther west, between the aisle and the retro-choir, is the cenotaph of Archbishop Markham (died 1807), who was buried in Westminster Abbey. To the north of the eastern altar is the tomb of Archbishop Rotherham, died 1500. It is a plain monument, Perpendicular in style. The top is a later addition; the whole was restored after the fire of 1829. The tomb was opened when a new pavement was laid in 1736, and a vault was discovered to run under it, in which were bones and a wooden head--"a piece of extraordinary sculpture for that age"--with a stick thrust into the neck to carry it on. Under the east window are the tombs of Archbishops Frewen (died 1664), and Sharpe (1714), the latter being, perhaps, the ugliest and most absurd in the minster. In a line with the monument to Rotherham is the effigy of Archbishop Matthew (died 1628). His tomb is on the south side of the retro-choir, and an unknown monument, with bases of pillars which once, no doubt, supported a canopy. This has been attributed to Sewall de Bovil, who, however, is buried in the south transept. Between the retro-choir and the south aisle is the beautiful tomb of Archbishop Bowet (died 1423). This is one of the finest Perpendicular monuments in the country, and far the finest in the minster. The stone which covered the grave was removed from it and used for the pavement in 1736, and the remains were laid bare, showing the archbishop's episcopal ring. The canopy consists of an arch of a curious elliptical shape, over which are three clusters of tabernacle work, with pinnacles between them. The curious manner in which these clusters are joined to the arch beneath them, with fan tracery projecting outside the arch, should be noticed. The whole has been much destroyed. At the east end of the south aisle of the choir stood the altar of All Saints, founded by Bowet. A bay west of this is the tomb of Archbishop Matthew (died 1628), and north of it is that of Archbishop Musgrave (died 1860). In the south aisle are the tombs of William Wentworth son of the great Earl of Stafford (died 1695); Archbishop Lamplugh (died 1691); and Archbishop Matthew Hutton, (died 1757). All of them, like most of the other tombs in the choir, remarkable only for ugliness. [Illustration: Monument of Archbishop Bowet.] #Stained Glass.#--Undoubtedly the chief glory of the minster is its glass. There are 25,531 square feet of ancient stained glass in the church--at least twice as much, that is to say, as in any other English cathedral, and perhaps more than in any other church in the world. And this glass is of all periods. There are fragments of Norman in the five sisters and in some of the windows of the nave; Early English in the five sisters; Decorated in the nave, and Perpendicular in the choir. Further, the glass is almost all of very high quality--far higher, for instance, than that in King's College Chapel, Cambridge--and of infinite variety of effect. It ranges from the simple, almost uniform scheme of the five sisters, to the strong contrasts, definite forms, and glittering colours of the great west window. It would require years of investigation and the writing of a large book to give an adequate description of this glass, and this has not yet been done. Facts, both as to its origin and subsequent history, are almost altogether wanting. As we see them to-day, the windows are in almost inextricable confusion. At some time or another, perhaps at the Reformation, or during the Civil Wars, the glass has been removed from its setting, and afterwards carelessly pieced together. It is now in the condition of a puzzle wrongly arranged. Outlines of figures have been filled with scraps of different colours, male heads fitted to female bodies, or inserted alone in incongruous surroundings, and glass of one period mixed with glass of another. Add to this that the glass was generally renewed and restored by one Peckett about 1780, who inserted patches and curious geometrical patterns of his own manufacture wherever possible, and an idea may be obtained of the difficulties which will beset anyone who tries to write an adequate book on the subject. It is only possible here to point out the main characteristics of the different windows and some of the chief points of interest about them. The glass in the nave is mostly Decorated, with occasional Norman, Early English, and later insertions. Except in the three west windows, it is very fragmentary, and includes many of Peckett's additions. The great west window is one of the most perfect in the church. It measures 56 feet by 25, and is almost entirely filled with its original glass, said to have been given by Archbishop Melton in 1338. This is remarkable not only for the purity and boldness of its scheme of colours, but for the admirable way in which the design of the glass fits the elaborate pattern of the tracery. It will be noticed that both the figures and the architectural ornaments are in bolder relief than in the earlier glass of the five sisters, or the later of the choir. Some of the faces of the figures have been restored by Peckett, but not so as to interfere with the decorative effect of the whole. The window contains three rows of figures, the lowest a row of eight archbishops, the next a row of eight saints, including St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, and St. Katharine, and above this a row of smaller figures unidentified. The window at the west end of the north aisle is also very fine. It contains a Virgin and child, and St. Katharine with her wheel. In one of the small lights above is a figure of St. Peter, crucified head downwards. The kneeling figure below is obviously a later insertion, as may be seen from the incongruous colour of the arch above it. The first window from the west in the north aisle of the nave is plain. The other windows are filled with fragments. In the third of these the top lights have been filled by Peckett, and contain the date of the insertion, 1779. The rest of these windows are free from Peckett's additions. The second of these windows from the east is particularly worthy of attention. It is said to have been given by a guild of bell-founders. It was probably the particular gift of the Richard Tunnoc who died in 1330, after holding the office of Lord Mayor of York. Perhaps he was the head of the guild. This window contains a most interesting representation of the casting of a bell, with an inscription, "Richard Tunnoc me fist," and also of Tunnoc kneeling and receiving the blessing of an archbishop, probably Melton. Above the figure of Tunnoc is the picture of a small window, and this certainly goes to prove that the window was given by Tunnoc himself. There are bells in the borders of the lights and other parts of the design. The west window in the south aisle is as fine as its fellow in the north aisle. It contains a representation of the Crucifixion, in which the head of Christ is a later insertion, perhaps of the eighteenth century. The figure below, as in the corresponding window in the north aisle, is also of later date. The first window from the west end is plain. The glass in the other windows is rather finer, and less fragmentary than in the north aisle. The second window appears to have been largely restored. The tabernacle work is very crude in colour. It contains figures of St. Laurence, St. Christopher, another saint, and three coats of arms below. The top lights are fine, and perhaps of Perpendicular date. The third window is one of the richest in colour in the minster, with its gorgeous arrangement of crimsons, greens, and blues. There are inscriptions by Peckett, with the date at the bottom, 1789. His deep blues on the top lights are particularly unfortunate. The sixth window is also very bright. It probably contains Norman fragments. All the windows except the fifth contain insertions by Peckett. The clerestory window contains fragments and coats of arms. In the westernmost light of the second window from the west, on the north side, are portions of an Early English Jesse window. The wheel of this window, and those of the next five, also contain fragments of Early English glass. And in the lower lights of the fifth and seventh windows from the west are remains of the same date. The wheels in the clerestory windows on the south side of the nave all contain Early English glass, except the third from the west. There is also some Early English glass in their lower lights. The transepts contain less of their original glass than any other part of the minster. In the south transept there are fragments of Perpendicular glass in the east aisle, including figures of Michael, Gabriel, and St. William, and also Perpendicular fragments in the west aisle. The lowest row of windows at the south end of the transept has been filled with painted figures by Peckett, only better than the worst efforts of the Gothic revival. The figures represent Abraham, Solomon, Moses, and St. Peter. The glass in the five sisters, as has been said, is Early English of the simplest and most beautiful design. The colour, an almost uniform scheme of greyish green, is a curious contrast to the vivid blues and yellows of the period which preceded it, and examples of which may be seen in the choir of Canterbury. The pattern is an elaborate but restrained arrangement of the foliage of the Planta Benedicta (herb benet). The plain border surrounding the Early English glass was inserted in 1715. At the foot of the central light is a panel of Norman glass, the subject of which is either the dream of Jacob, or Daniel in the lion's den. The glass in the west aisle of the north transept is modern, and of the worst character. A window by Mr Kempe in the east aisle is almost the only good example of modern glass in the minster. The glass in the lancets above the five sisters is modern. The glass in the choir is almost wholly Perpendicular. As in the nave, it is very fragmentary and disordered. The change in the character of the design will be easily noticed. The Perpendicular glass is not so clear and delicate in colour, and the architectural and other patterns are less pronounced. As has been said before, however, this glass, regarded simply as decorative, is perhaps superior even to that in the nave. Mr Winton, to whom throughout in this short notice of the windows we are much indebted, has pointed out that the earliest Perpendicular glass in the choir is contained in the third window from the east in the south aisle; in the third and fourth windows from the east in the north clerestory; and in the fourth clerestory window from the east on the opposite side. These windows date from the close of the fourteenth century. There is also an early Perpendicular Jesse in the third window from the west in the south aisle of the choir. The other windows of the choir aisles east of the small eastern transepts, as well as the glass in the lancet windows on the east side of the great western transepts appear, he says, to be of the time of Henry IV.; the rest of the glass in the choir is of the reigns of Henry V. and VI., chiefly of the latter. He notices, also, that the white glass in the windows is generally less green in tint than usual, and that he has learnt from Mr Browne that it is all of English manufacture. The great east window was glazed by John Thornton of Coventry. The terms of the contract for this work, dated 1405, are extant. They provide that Thornton shall "portray the said window with his own hand, and the histories, images, and other things to be painted on it." It was to be finished within three years. Glass, lead, and workmen were to be provided at the expense of the chapter, and Thornton was to receive 4s. a week, £5 a year, and £10 at completion, for his trouble. The window is 78 feet high and 32 feet wide, and contains nine lights. It is entirely filled with old glass, except for certain pitches of modern glass, rather crude in colour, and inserted, it is said, after the fire of 1829. It contains 200 panels of figures. The subjects in the upper part are from the Old Testament, reaching from the creation of the world to the death of Absalom. The lower part contains illustrations from the Book of Revelations. In the lowest row of all are representations of kings and archbishops. In the top lights are figures of prophets, saints and kings. At the apex of the window is a representation of the Saviour in Judgment. This window is probably the finest example of Perpendicular glass in England. The windows in the south aisle are rather fragmentary. In the first two from the west the top lights are empty. The second window is remarkable for the delicate modelling and drawing of the heads. The head of the Virgin reminds one of one of Lippo Lippi's Madonnas. That of an old man with a beard in the central light is German in character. If these are compared with the crude and simple design of the heads in the other windows, it will be obvious that they are of a different origin. Nothing, however, is known of their history. The third window has borders by Peckett. It contains the Jesse noted before. The fourth window is very fragmentary. It contains a beautiful figure of a saint in one of the top lights; the other top lights are by Peckett. In the central division, at the bottom, is the name of Archbishop Lamplugh, with a coat of arms. (Lamplugh's tomb is close to this window.) The last of those windows contain painted glass given by Lord Carlisle in 1804, and bought from a church at Rouen. It is a representation of the Visitation, Mr Winton says, taken from a picture by Baroccio, and dates from the end of the sixteenth century. The upper lights contain the original glass. The east window of this aisle is very fine in colouring, and fairly coherent in design. The subject is not clear. In the north aisle the east window is also very fine. It contains a representation of the Crucifixion, with St. John, St. James, and the Virgin. The first window from the east is very fragmentary. [Illustration: The East Window.] The next three are among the finest in the minster. Their beautiful and unusual arrangement of greys, browns, and blues, should be particularly noticed. Their top lights are empty. The other three windows contain paler, and less interesting glass; their top lights also are empty. The last of these was given by Archbishop Bowet. The two great windows in the small north and south transepts contain scenes from the lives of St. William and St. Cuthbert respectively. They are 73 feet long by 16 feet wide. They have both been restored, but their glass is mostly original. The St. Cuthbert window was probably given by the will of Longley, Bishop of Durham, who died in 1437. It contains, beside subjects from the life of St. Cuthbert, figures of members of the house of Lancaster. The glass in the clerestory is fragmentary, and contains restorations by Peckett. The glass in the chapter-house and vestibule is chiefly decorated. There are, however, fragments of Norman and Early English glass in the upper lights of the vestibule windows. The glass in the chapter-house itself dates from the time of Edward II. and Edward III. The design is chiefly made up of medallions and shields. There are some modern restorations in the glass; and one of the windows--there is no difficulty in distinguishing it--is wholly modern. All the glass, excepting the unfortunate modern example, is of the finest quality. CHAPTER V THE ARCHBISHOPS OF YORK #Paulinus# (627-633). The origin and even the nationality of Paulinus are unknown. It is said that he was sent from Italy by Gregory the Great to assist Augustine in Kent. Nennius states that Edwin of Northumbria was baptised by Rum, the son of Urien. It has been supposed that this Rum may have originally gone to Italy, and there taken the name of Paulinus, and that consequently Paulinus was a Briton; but this is mere conjecture. For over twenty years Paulinus remained with Augustine; but in 625 a marriage was arranged between Edwin, King of Northumbria and overlord of England, and Ethelberga, daughter of Ethelbert, the Christian King of Kent. Edwin, though still a Pagan, agreed that Ethelberga should be allowed the free exercise of her religion, and that she should bring a chaplain with her, who might preach the Christian faith when and where he chose. The office was given to Paulinus, and before setting out he was consecrated Bishop of the Northumbrians by Archbishop Justus. For some little time Edwin remained Pagan, but he allowed his daughter to be baptised so soon as she was born. Finally, a conference took place between Paulinus and the nobles of Northumbria, probably at Londesborough, as a result of which Edwin, two of his children, and many of his court were baptised at York on Easter Day, 627; while the heathen high priest Coifi took the chief part in destroying a great temple at Godmandham. But in 633 Edwin was killed in battle, and Paulinus fled with the Queen back to Kent. He was created Bishop of Rochester, where he remained until his death, 644. Afterwards he became the patron saint of Rochester. 633-664. After the flight of Paulinus the country relapsed into Paganism. When Oswald, a Christian, became King of Northumbria, he applied not to Canterbury but to Scotland for a missionary to his kingdom, and this was the beginning of the rivalry between the British and Roman churches in Northumbria. Aidan, a monk of Iona was sent, and became Bishop of Lindisfarne (635-657). He was succeeded by Finan (651-661); Colman (661-664); and Tuda (664-5). But these men cannot be accounted bishops of York. None of them received the pall, which, indeed, was given to no bishop of York between Paulinus and Egbert (735). #Ceadda# and #Wilfrid# (664-678). Wilfrid, who had been educated in Italy, became Bishop of York, with jurisdiction over the whole of Northumbria. He refused, however, to be consecrated by a British prelate, and went to Gaul for that purpose. He was away three years, and, in his absence, Oswi, the King, appointed Ceadda (St. Chad) to the see. Ceadda was of the British Church, and was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester. Wilfrid, when he returned, went to the monastery of Ripon, and lived there in retirement. In 669 Ceadda retired, and Wilfrid became Bishop of York. Ceadda was made Bishop of Mercia. Wilfrid did not obtain the pall, but exercised the powers of a Metropolitan. He restored the dilapidated cathedral, and built minsters at Hexham and Ripon. He quarrelled in course of time with Egfrith, King of Northumbrian who induced Theodore, in 678, to divide his diocese into four bishoprics--York, Lindisfarne, Hexham, and Witherne. Wilfrid went to Rome to appeal to the Pope. His appeal was successful, but when he returned in 680 he was imprisoned, and afterwards banished. But in 686 Theodore intervened again, and reconciled him to the king. He was first given the sees of Lindisfarne and Hexham, and afterwards York, but he soon quarrelled with the king again, and left Northumbria. It is uncertain whether Wilfrid died in the possession of the see or not. He died, 711, aged 75. He was buried at Ripon. In 940 his bones were removed to Canterbury by Odo. #Bosa# (678-705?) was educated under St. Hilda at Whitby. He retired in favour of Wilfrid in 686, but afterwards was reinstated. He was the first archbishop to be buried in the cathedral. #St. John# of Beverley (705-718) was also a pupil of St. Hilda and of Theodore of Canterbury, who made him Bishop of Hexham, 687. The venerable Bede was his pupil, and speaks of many miracles which he performed. He enlarged the church at Beverley, and founded a monastery there. He was famous for his piety and good works. In 718 he resigned his see, and retired to Beverley, where he lived privately for about four years in his own foundation. He was buried in the church there. He was canonised in 1037, and his relics were translated and placed in a golden shrine. #Wilfrid II.# (718-732) had been a pupil of St. John. He is said to have begun the dispute between York and Canterbury for precedence. Little else is known of him. #Egbert# (732-766) was brother to Edbert, King of Northumberland, and, it is said, "by his own wisdom and the authority of the King, greatly amended the state of the Church in these parts." Gregory III. gave him the pall in 735, and he was acknowledged Metropolitan Archbishop in the north. He founded the famous school at York, where Alcuin was educated, and also the library. #Albert# (766-782) had been a master at Egbert's school, and had greatly contributed to its renown. He also played a large part in the establishment of the library. He retired to the monastery at York, and died there, 782. He was succeeded by #Eanbald I.# (782-796), #Eanbald II.# (796-812), #Wulfsy# (812-831), #Wigmund# (837-854), #Wilfere# or #Wulfere# (854-890), #Ethelbald# (895), and #Redewald# or #Redward# (928). #Wulstan# (928-956) was raised to the see by Athelstan, who was now King of England. He was imprisoned by Edred in 952, at Jedburgh, but was released soon after, and restored to his bishopric at Dorchester. He died two years after his release at Oundle in Northamptonshire, and was buried there. He was followed by #Oskytel# (956-972), and #Ethelwold# (972). #Oswald# (972-992) had been made Bishop of Worcester in 961, and held that see, together with York. After his elevation to the sees of Worcester and York, he became a great reformer of monasteries, and founded that of Ramsey in the Isle of Ely. He was a strong opponent of married clergy. He died suddenly at Worcester, after washing the feet of beggars, as was his custom. He was buried at Worcester, and miracles occurred at his tomb. He was afterwards canonised. #Adulf# (992-1002) had been Abbot of Peterboro', and succeeded to both sees held by Oswald. #Wulstan# (1002-1023) was also Bishop both of York and Worcester, but in 1016 one Leofsi was appointed his suffragan at Worcester. He died at York, but was buried at Ely, where there is said to have been a picture of him under the lantern. #Alfric Puttoc# or #Pulta# (1023-1050) was Archbishop of York alone. He is said to have incited Hardicanute to set fire to the city of Worcester. He was a liberal benefactor of the church and college of Beverley, and built a magnificent shrine of the tomb of St. John. He died at Southwell, and was buried at Peterboro'. #Kinsi# (1050-1060) had been a monk at Peterboro', and chaplain to Edward the Confessor. #Ealdred# or #Aldred# (1060-1067). He was successively a monk at Winchester, Abbot of Tavistock, and Bishop of Worcester. He is said to have made his way by money and bribes to the see of York, with which he continued to hold Worcester. He had been much employed by Edward in diplomatic work. When created Archbishop of York, he went to Rome with the famous Tosti to obtain his pall. This the Pope refused, having heard, it is said, of his Simoniacal practices. But the Pope afterwards relented, on condition that he should resign the see of Worcester--this he did. Once established as archbishop, Ealdred showed great activity as a builder and benefactor, especially at Southwell and Beverley. He also built a new cathedral at Gloucester. He crowned Harold, and afterwards William. For this Drake calls him "a meer worldling and an odious time-server." He is said, however, to have exacted an oath from William that he would rule Normans and Saxons alike. Afterwards he excommunicated William for disregarding his oath, but William is said to have bought him off. Hearing of the Danish invasion in 1069, he is said to have sickened at the news and died of a broken heart. Thus he escaped witnessing the vengeance exacted by William upon the north. #Thomas# of Bayeux (1070-1100) was the chaplain of the Conqueror. He had assisted William with all his fortune in the invasion of England. In his time, the quarrel for precedence broke out with Canterbury. Thomas refused to make a profession of obedience to Lanfranc, and appealed to the Pope, and both went to Rome. The Pope, however, discreetly referred the matter back to the king, and at a synod held by William it was determined that Thomas should swear allegiance to Lanfranc, but not to his successors, and should be installed in Canterbury Cathedral; also that the Humber should be the southern boundary of his diocese, and that Worcester should be added to the see of Canterbury. Thomas found his diocese in a miserable condition, owing both to the Danish invasion and the barbarities of the Conqueror. He rebuilt the minster, called back the frightened canons and made a provision for them. He appointed a dean, treasurer, precentor, and chancellor. He died at Ripon, and was buried at York. #Gerard# (1101-1108) was translated from Hereford; he was a kinsman of the Conqueror. Like Thomas he refused to submit to Canterbury, and his consecration was delayed until he submitted at the command of the Pope. #Thomas# (1108-1114) was the nephew of Thomas of Bayeux, and chaplain to Henry I. He also refused to acknowledge the supremacy of Anselm, and in consequence his consecration was delayed. Anselm dying, forbade any bishop to consecrate him until he had made his submission. At length Thomas submitted, and was consecrated by the Bishop of London. He died at Beverley, and was buried in the minster. #Thurstan# (1114-1140) was the son of a prebendary of London, and chaplain to Henry I. Like his predecessors, but with more determination, he continued the quarrel with Canterbury. He refused to make his submission to Archbishop Ralph, who therefore refused to consecrate him. Thurstan was supported by three successive Popes, and was at length consecrated at Rheims by Calixtus II. Thus he alone succeeded in avoiding any submission to Canterbury. Henry I, taking the side of Ralph, deprived him of his lands, but the Pope issued a bull freeing him from all subjection to Canterbury, and threatened Henry with excommunication. In 1121 Thurstan returned triumphantly to York, and Henry submitted. The quarrel was revived by William de Corbeil, Ralph's successor, who was appointed papal legate as a compromise. Thurstan's victory over the Scots at the Battle of the Standard is perhaps his most famous achievement. #William Fitzherbert# (St. William, 1143; deprived 1147, restored 1153-1154). On the death of Thurstan the see was not filled without a contest. The chapter chose Henry of Selby, Abbot of Fécamp, but the Pope refused his consent unless he would give up his monastery at Fécamp, and thereupon the choice fell upon William, who was a great grandson of the Conqueror. His election was not popular, especially among the monks. Accusations were made against him in Rome, where his election was bitterly opposed by St. Bernard and others. The Pope, however, agreed to allow his consecration, if the Dean of York would swear that his election had not been corruptly procured by the king. William was consecrated in 1143, at Winchester, and the pall sent to him in 1145. Meanwhile, Eugenius III. had become Pope, and fresh accusations were made against William, who went to Rome to meet them, but was suspended by the Pope, who, on hearing that certain followers of the archbishop had plundered the monastery of Fountains, deprived him altogether. (1147.) Thereupon, #Henry Mordac# (1147-1153), the Abbot of Fountains, and like Thurstan, a friend of St. Bernard, was elected in his place. Stephen at first refused to receive him, but was induced to do so on the condition that the Pope would acknowledge Stephen's son heir to the throne of England. Mordac died at Beverley in 1153. Meanwhile William had remained at Winchester. On Mordac's death he was re-elected. On his return to York, after it is said, performing a miracle, he died almost immediately, and so suddenly as to cause a report that he was poisoned at mass. He was buried in the cathedral, and pilgrims began to visit his tomb almost immediately after his death. Before long many wonderful cures were reported there, but it was not until one hundred and fifty years after his death that he was canonised. William is said to have performed thirty-six miracles after his death, and a list of them was once hung up in the vestry. #Roger De Pont L'Evêque# (1154-1181) had been Archdeacon of Canterbury, and chaplain to Henry II. He was consecrated by Theobald of Canterbury, but without a profession of obedience. He is said to have instigated the murder of Becket. It was certainly after a conference with Roger that Henry uttered the words which led to the death of the archbishop. Roger also was the hero of the famous and ridiculous scene in 1176 at the Council of Westminster, when Robert of Canterbury having seated himself on the right of the papal legate, Roger, refusing to take an inferior seat, placed himself in Robert's lap. The unfortunate Roger was pulled off, beaten with sticks, and flung upon the ground. Roger, however, was a good administrator, and charitable. He rebuilt the palace, and the choir of the minster, and also began a new minster at Ripon. After his death the king seized on his personalty. He was buried in the cathedral, and his tomb, though of much later date, is in the nave. #Geoffry# (1191-1207), the illegitimate, and only faithful son of Henry II., was appointed only after ten years' interval, during which time the king took the revenues. He was early in life made Archdeacon, and then Bishop of Lincoln. He afterwards became Chancellor of England. He was only ordained priest when he obtained the archbishopric. He had sworn not to go to England while Richard was away on his crusade, but he returned immediately after his consecration at Rheims, and was clapped into prison at Dover. He was, however, soon released, and went at once to York. There he proved a better bishop than was expected, according to Stubbs, though Drake shrewdly remarks that "that author has made saints of every prelate he writes on." It is certain that he quarrelled always with John and Richard, or with the canons of York. At length he was suspended by the Pope, appealed, and was reinstated. Richard, on his return, seized all his goods, spiritual and temporal, but Geoffry obtained their return by payment of a sum of money. John also seized his goods, and Geoffry excommunicated all concerned in the seizure. He was from time to time reconciled with the king, but after a final rupture fled to Norway, where he died in 1212. #Walter De Grey# (1216-1255) was only appointed after the see had been vacant for nine years, during which time John of course kept the revenues. The dean and chapter elected Simon Langton, brother of Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury; but John would have none of him, and was supported by the Pope. Walter de Grey was therefore chosen at the desire of the king. He died just before the outbreak of the Barons' war. He conferred many benefits on his diocese, and built the south transept of the minster, where is his beautiful tomb. He is said to have built the west front of Ripon Minster. #Sewal De Bovill# (1256-1258) had been Dean of York. After the death of De Grey the see remained vacant for some time, the king saying that he had never held the archbishopric in his hands before, and was therefore in no hurry to let it slip out of them. He refused his consent to Sewal's election for some time, who, however, obtained a dispensation from Rome. He afterwards quarrelled with the Pope about the election to the deanery, and was excommunicated. This sentence lay heavy on the archbishop, and is said to have brought him to his grave. According to Stubbs, he began to "squeak" at last, and called for absolution on his death-bed. His tomb is in the south transept. #Geoffry Of Ludham# (1258-1265) had been that Dean of York over whom Sewal fell out with the Pope. When elected, he was still under the Pope's ban. He went to Rome, however, and by bribery and much trouble obtained his pall. Little is known of him except that in 1260 he laid the city of York under an interdict. #Walter Giffard# (1266-1279) had been Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Lord Chancellor of England. He was with others entrusted with the regency of the kingdom during the absence of Edward I. in 1275. #William Of Wickwaine# (1279-1286) had been Chancellor of York. He died at Pontigny, and was buried there. #John Le Romeyn# or #Romanes# (1286-1296) was the son of that treasurer of York, an Italian, who had built the north transept and central tower of the minster. He had been precentor at Lincoln. He began the nave of the cathedral as it now stands. He died suddenly, near Burton. #Henry Of Newark# (1298-1299) had been Dean of York. Owing to the wars in Europe, he did not go to Rome, and was consecrated in his own church. #Thomas Of Corbridge# (1300-1304) had been Chancellor of York. He was consecrated at Rome. He was said to be a great and learned divine. He was buried at Southwell. #William Greenfield# (1306-1315) was related to Giffard a past archbishop, and had been Dean of Chichester, Chancellor of Durham, and Chancellor of England. He died at Cawood. His beautiful tomb is in the north transept of the minster. #William De Melton# (1317-1340) was of lowly origin. He was elected in 1315, but not consecrated until two years after, owing to the interested delays of the Pope. He took a large part in civil affairs, especially in the war with the Scots, by whom he was defeated at Myton-on-Swale. His army was filled with clergy, and the battle was derisively known as the Chapter of Myton. In 1325 he became Lord Treasurer of England, and supported Edward in his troubles. He even intrigued against Edward III., it is said, in 1330, and was arrested for treason, but soon acquitted of the charge. He completed the nave of the minster, and glazed the great west window. He died at Cawood. His grave in the north aisle of the nave was opened when the present pavement was laid down in 1736, and a chalice and paten taken from it. #William La Zouche# (1342-1352) had been Dean of York. When Edward III. set out for the French wars he left Zouche warden of the northern parts of the kingdom, and as such he defeated the Scots at Neville's Cross, near Durham, 1364. He built, or began, a chantry on the south wall of the choir, which was destroyed by Thoresby. He died at Cawood, and was buried in the nave of the minster. #John Of Thoresby# (1352-1373) had been the King's Proctor at Rome, Master of the Rolls, Bishop of St. David's and Worcester, and Lord Chancellor of England. He drew up a famous catechism in Latin translated into English. In his time the controversy between York and Canterbury finally came to an end. The Archbishop of Canterbury was to be styled Primate of All England, the Archbishop of York, Primate of England. Each also was to be allowed to carry his cross erect in the province of the other. In 1361 he began the present choir of the minster, contributing £200 a year to it during his life. He died at Bishopthorpe. It has been said that Urban VI. made him a cardinal, but this is probably not true. He was buried in his own Lady Chapel. #Alexander Neville# (1374-1388) was a Canon of York, and high in the favour of Richard II. Consequently, on Richard's overthrow he was imprisoned in Rochester Castle, whence he escaped, and was translated to St. Andrews in 1386, but the Scots would have none of him, not acknowledging Urban as Pope. Thereupon, it is said, he fell to teaching a school at Louvain, where he died in 1392. #Thomas Fitzalan# of Arundel (1388-1396), son of the Earl of Arundel, was translated to York from Ely, and had been Lord Chancellor. He was a great benefactor to the church and manors of the see, and gave much plate for the service of the minster. He was in 1390 translated to Canterbury, the first Archbishop of York to be so advanced. #Robert Waldby# (1397-1398) had been an Augustinian friar and professor of theology at Toulouse. He was created Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Chichester before his translation to York. He died and was buried at Westminster. #Richard Scrope# (1398-1405) was the son of Lord Chancellor Scrope, and was himself Lord Chancellor of England and Bishop of Lichfield. He received his preferment from Richard II., of whom he was a firm supporter, though for a short time he submitted to Henry IV. The history of his famous rebellion with the Percys, and the trick by which he was captured, is well known. He was taken to his own palace at Bishopthorpe, and there Gascoign, the famous Chief Justice, greatly to the king's wrath, refused to try him. He was condemned to death by a creature of the king, not even a judge, and beheaded near to York. He was buried in the minster, and was long lamented and almost worshipped by the people. #Henry Bowet# (1407-1423). After Scrope's execution the see remained vacant for over two years. In the meantime, Thomas Longley, Dean of York, and Robert Halom or Hallam were nominated to the see, but, for different reasons, were not confirmed in the appointment. Bowet had been Bishop of Bath and Wells. He built a great hall to his castle at Cawood, where he died, and was buried in the east end of the cathedral, near the altar of All Saints, which he had built. His beautiful tomb may still be seen. #John Kemp# (1426-1452) had been Bishop of Rochester, Chichester, and London. He was the nominee of the king and the dean and chapter, as opposed to the Pope, who proposed Fleming, Bishop of London. The Pope, whose power was fast decaying in England, at length submitted. Kemp, who was, it is said, of humble birth, rose to be Cardinal, first of St. Balbria, and afterwards of St. Rupria. He was translated finally to Canterbury. In 1432 he went as ambassador to the Council of Bale. He built a gatehouse to the palace at Cawood. He died soon after his translation to Canterbury. #William Booth# or #Bothe# (1452-1464) had been a lawyer, and Bishop of Lichfield. He repaired the palaces at Southwell and York, and died at Southwell, where he was buried. #George Neville# (1464-1476), by the interest of his brother Warwick, the king-maker, became Bishop of Exeter at the age of twenty-three. He was not thirty when made archbishop. His installation was the most splendid ceremony of the kind hitherto seen, but his tenure of the see was marked by many troubles. When Edward IV. was captured by Warwick at Oundle he was given into the custody of the archbishop, who treated him with great courtesy and freedom, so that he soon escaped to London. Soon after Edward captured the archbishop and imprisoned him; but soon released him and restored him to his see. Again he was arrested for high treason and sent to Calais, the king having plundered all his plate and jewels. He was imprisoned for four years, and died soon after his release. His tomb was unknown, but Drake speaks of a grave found under the Dean's vestry about 1735, which, from its contents, must have been that of an archbishop, and perhaps of Neville. #Laurence Booth# or #Bothe# (1476-1480) had been Bishop of Durham and Lord High Chancellor; he died at Southwell, and was buried there. #Thomas Scott# or #De Rotheram# (1480-1500) had been Bishop of Rochester and Lincoln, and Lord High Chancellor. He was imprisoned in the Tower by Richard III., for delivering up the Great Seal to the Queen on the death of Edward IV., but was soon released. He completed Lincoln College, Oxford, and gave a "wonderful rich mitre" to the minster. He was buried in the Lady Chapel, where his tomb still remains. #Thomas Savage# (1501-1507) had been Bishop of Rochester and London. He was nominated by the king, confirmed by the Pope, and installed by deputy. He was buried on the north-west side of the choir, where his tomb remains. [Illustration: Effigy of Archbishop Savage.] #Christopher Baynbridge# (1508-1514) had been Dean of York, Dean of Windsor, Master of the Rolls, and Bishop of Durham. In 1511 he became Cardinal of St. Praxede. He was sent by Henry VIII. to the court of the Pope as King's Proctor. There he died, poisoned by a servant. He was buried at Rome, in the church of St. Thomas the Martyr. #Thomas Wolsey# (1514-1530). The facts of the life of this famous man are too well known to need repetition. He was at once Bishop of Durham and Archbishop of York, and afterwards Bishop of Winchester and Archbishop of York. In 1515 he was created Cardinal of St. Cecilia, and papal legate. It is said that Wolsey never was at York, though he was arrested at Cawood after his disgrace. #Edward Lee# (1531-1544). The king delayed a year before he appointed Edward Lee, his almoner, to the vacant see. In 1536, when the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out, he was seized by the rebels and carried to Pontefract Castle, where he was compelled to take an oath that he would support the rebel party. His tomb is in the choir. #Robert Holgate# (1545-1554) was translated from Landaff. He supported Henry in the Reformation. He was even married. When Mary came to the throne his wife and his riches were taken from him, and himself cast into the Tower. After a year and a half's imprisonment he was released, and died soon after at Hemsworth. [Illustration: Tomb of Archbishop Savage.] #Nicholas Heath# (1555-1559) had been Bishop of Landaff, Rochester, and Worcester, and, under Mary, Lord President of Wales and Lord Chancellor. The Bull of Pope Paul IV. appointing him to York is the last acknowledged in England. He obtained much of the property from the Queen which Henry VIII. had alienated from the see. On the accession of Elizabeth, Heath was deprived, though he had proclaimed her Queen. He retired to Cobham in Surrey. The queen appears to have punished him only for his opinions, since he remained a firm Papist. Elizabeth even visited him at Cobham. He died in 1579. #Thomas Young# (1561-1568) had been Bishop of St. David's, and was president of the Council of the North. It is said he provided for his family by settling the best estates of the prebends upon them. Late in life he married, and, it is said, pulled down the great hall in the palace at York that he might give the lead to his son. He died at Sheffield Manor. #Edward Grindal# (1570-1576) had been Bishop of London. He was a Puritan, and afterwards was translated to Canterbury. #Edwin Sandys# (1577-1588), when vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, supported the cause of Lady Jane Grey. For this he was thrown into prison, and afterwards fled to Germany. He returned on the accession of Elizabeth, and was made Bishop of Worcester, and afterwards of London. He died at Southwell, where he was buried. #John Piers# (1588-1594) had been Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, Bishop of Rochester, and Bishop of Salisbury. #Matthew Hutton# (1595-1606) was translated from Durham. His monument is in the south aisle of the choir. #Tobias Matthew# (1606-1628) was also translated from Durham. His monument is in the south aisle of the choir. #George Monteign# (1628) had been Bishop of Lincoln, London, and Durham. He died within a month of his enthronement. #Samuel Harsnett# (1628-1631) was translated from Norwich. He had been master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he was ejected for scandalous practices. He died unmarried, and on his tomb described himself as _Indignus Episcopus Cicestriensis, indignior Norvicencis, indignissimus Archiepiscopus Eboracensis_. #Richard Neile# (1632-1640) was Dean of Westminster in 1605. Lord Burghley was his patron, and he became Bishop of Rochester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Durham, and Winchester; more sees than any other English bishop has ruled over. He was a supporter of Laud, and a courtier. He died in 1640. #John Williams# (1641-1650) had been Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Chancellor. In the first year of Charles's reign he had the seals taken from him, and was sent to the Tower. When Episcopacy was abolished, he returned to Wales, his native country, where it is said he joined the Roundheads, and changed his lawn for buff. He was buried at Llandegai Church. #Accepted Frewen# (1660-1664) had been Bishop of Lichfield nominally since 1644. As his name shows, he was of Puritan family, but became chaplain to the king. His monument is in the choir. #Richard Sterne# (1664-1683) had been Bishop of Carlisle. He was expelled from the mastership of Jesus College, and imprisoned by the Puritans. He had been chaplain to Laud, and was present at his death. His monument, unusually hideous, is at the east end of the cathedral. #John Dolben# (1683-1686) was translated from Rochester. He died of the small-pox at Bishopthorpe. His tomb, also very ugly, is in the north side of the choir. #Thomas Lamplugh# (1688-1691). The see of York remained vacant until the landing of William III. Lamplugh, then Bishop of Exeter, posted to London to carry the news of the invasion to the king and to assure him of his loyalty. James thereupon appointed him Archbishop of York. He quickly, however, gave allegiance to William, and was confirmed in his see. He assisted at William's coronation. His monument is in the choir. #John Sharp# (1691-1714) had been Dean of Norwich and Canterbury. He wrote an account of the lives and acts of his predecessors, from Paulinus to Lamplugh. He was Anne's chief ecclesiastical adviser, a position he never abused. He died at Bath. #Sir William Dawes# (1713-1724). He had been chaplain in ordinary to William III., Prebendary of Worcester, and in 1707 Bishop of Chester. He is said to have lost the bishopric of Lincoln by a bold sermon which offended Anne. #Lancelot Blackburne# (1724-1743) was the subject of many slanderous stories, among others, that in his youth he had been chaplain on a pirate ship. He was certainly in the West Indies in his youth. He became Sub-dean of Exeter, and was forced to resign that office in 1702. In 1704 he was reinstated. He became Dean of Exeter in 1705, and Bishop in 1717. He is said to have been raised to the see of York for having married George I. to the Duchess of Munster. His manners were certainly free. Horace Walpole speaks of him as "the jolly old Archbishop of York, who had all the manners of a man of quality, though he had been a buccaneer, and was a clergyman. But he retained nothing of his first profession except his seraglio." He died in London, and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. #Thomas Herring# (1743-1747) was chaplain to the king. In 1732 he became Dean of Rochester, and in 1737 Bishop of Bangor. He was an ardent Whig, and when the '45 rebellion broke out raised £40,000 in defence of the Government, besides stirring up the people. For these good services he was translated to Canterbury. He died of dropsy in 1757. #Matthew Hutton# (1747-1757) was also translated from Bangor; and from York to Canterbury. He died in 1758. #John Gilbert# (1757-1761) became Dean of Exeter 1726, Bishop of Landaff 1740, and of Salisbury 1749. #Robert Hay Drummond# (1761-1776) was the second son of Viscount Dapplin, afterwards Earl of Kinnoull. He was chaplain to George II., Bishop of St. Asaph in 1748, and of Salisbury in 1761. #William Markham# (1777-1807) had been headmaster of Westminster School, Beatham. He became Dean of Rochester 1765, Dean of Christ Church 1767, and Bishop of Chester 1771. In the same year he became tutor to the Prince of Wales and Prince Frederick. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. #Edward Vernon Harcourt# (1808-1847) was the youngest son of Lord Vernon. He became Bishop of Carlisle in 1791. He was a member of the Queen's Council during George III.'s incapacity, and one of the first members of the Ecclesiastical Commission (1835). During his primacy there were two fires in the minster, and he gave largely to the restoration fund. In 1838 he declined the renewal of the Harcourt peerage. He died at Bishopthorpe. #Thomas Musgrave# (1847-1860) was the son of a Cambridge tailor. He was a Whig by politics, and in 1837 was appointed Dean of Bristol. In a few months he was preferred to the bishopric of Hereford. He is buried in Kensal Green cemetery. #Charles Thomas Longley# (1860-1862), became headmaster of Harrow School in 1829, first Bishop of Ripon in 1836, and Bishop of Durham in 1856. He was translated from York to Canterbury in 1862. He supported the Liberal party in Parliament. He died in 1868 at Aldington. 1863-1891--#William Thomson# (translated from Gloucester). 1891--#William Connor Magee# (translated from Peterboro'). 1891--#William Dalrymple Maclagan# (translated from Lichfield). [Illustration: Plan Of York Minster. DIMENSIONS. Feet. Length (Interior) 486 " Nave (to Choir Screen) 262 " Choir 224 " Transepts (north and south) 223 Breadth, Nave and Aisles 104 " Choir and Aisles 99 " Transept and Aisles 93 Height, Nave (interior) 99 " Choir( " ) 102 " Central Tower 198 " Western Towers 196 Area 63,800 sq. ft. ] W. H. WHITE AND CO. LIMITED RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH * * * * * BELL'S CATHEDRAL SERIES EDITED BY GLEESON WHITE AND E. F. STRANGE. _In specially designed cloth cover, crown 8vo, 1s. 6d. each_. _Now Ready._ CANTERBURY. By Hartley Withers. 2nd Edition, revised. 36 Illustrations. SALISBURY. By Gleeson White. 2nd Edition, revised. 50 Illustrations. CHESTER. By Charles Hiatt. 24 Illustrations. ROCHESTER. By G. H. Palmer, B.A. 38 Illustrations. OXFORD. By Rev. Percy Dearmer, M.A. 34 Illustrations. EXETER. By Percy Addleshaw, B.A. 35 Illustrations. WINCHESTER. By P. W. Sergeant. 50 Illustrations. LICHFIELD. By A. B. Clifton. 42 Illustrations. NORWICH. By C. H. B. Quennell. 38 Illustrations. PETERBOROUGH. By Rev. W. D. Sweeting. 51 Illustrations. HEREFORD. By A. Hugh Fisher, A.R.E. 34 Illustrations. LINCOLN. By A. F. Kendrick, B.A. 46 Illustrations. WELLS. By Rev. Percy Dearmer, M.A. 43 Illustrations. SOUTHWELL. By Rev. Arthur Dimock, M.A. 37 Illustrations. GLOUCESTER. By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A. 45 Illustrations. YORK. By A. Glutton-Brock, M.A. 41 Illustrations. _In the Press._ DURHAM. By J. E. Bygate. ST. DAVID'S. By Philip Robson. ELY. By T. D. Atkinson, A.R.I.B.A. WORCESTER. By E. F. Strange. ST. PAUL'S. By Rev. Arthur Dimock, M.A. BRISTOL. By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A. CHICHESTER. By H. C. Corlette, A.R.I.B.A. WESTMINSTER. By Charles Hiatt. ST. ALBANS. By Rev. W. D. Sweeting. CARLISLE. By C. K. Eley. RIPON. _Uniform with above Series, now Ready._ ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, CANTERBURY. By the Rev. Canon Routledge. BEVERLEY MINSTER. By Charles Hiatt. Opinions of the Press. "For the purpose at which they aim they are admirably done, and there are few visitants to any of our noble shrines who will not enjoy their visit the better for being furnished with one of these delightful books, which can be slipped into the pocket and carried with ease, and is yet distinct and legible.... A volume such as that on Canterbury is exactly what we want, and on our next visit we hope to have it with us. It is thoroughly helpful, and the views of the fair city and its noble cathedral are beautiful. Both volumes, moreover, will serve more than a temporary purpose, and are trustworthy as well as delightful."--_Notes and Queries_. "We have so frequently in these columns urged the want of cheap, well-illustrated, and well-written handbooks to our cathedrals, to take the place of the out-of-date publications of local booksellers, that we are glad to hear that they have been taken in hand by Messrs George Bell & Sons."--_St. James's Gazette_. "Visitors to the cathedral cities of England must often have felt the need of some work dealing with the history and antiquities of the city itself, and the architecture and associations of the cathedral, more portable than the elaborate monographs which have been devoted to some of them, more scholarly and satisfying than the average local guide-book, and more copious than the section devoted to them in the general guide-book of the city, a need the Cathedral Series now being issued by Messrs George Bell & Sons, under the editorship of Mr Gleeson White and Mr E. F. Strange, seems well calculated to supply. The volumes are handy in size, moderate in price, well illustrated, and written in a scholarly spirit. The history of cathedral and city is intelligently set forth and accompanied by a descriptive survey of the building in all its detail. The illustrations are copious and well selected, and the series bids fair to become an indispensable companion to the cathedral tourist in England."--_Times_. "They are nicely produced in good type, on good paper, and contain numerous illustrations, are well written, and very cheap. We should imagine architects and students of architecture will be sure to buy the series as they appear, for they contain in brief much valuable information." --_British Architect_. "Half the charm of this little book on Canterbury springs from the writer's recognition of the historical association of so majestic a building with the fortunes, destinies, and habits of the English people.... One admirable feature of the book is its artistic illustrations. They are both lavish and satisfactory--even when regarded with critical eyes."--_Speaker_. "There is likely to be a large demand for these attractive handbooks." --_Globe_. "Bell's 'Cathedral Series,' so admirably edited, is more than a description of the various English cathedrals. It will be a valuable historical record, and a work of much service also to the architect. The illustrations are well selected, and in many cases not mere bald architectural drawings but reproductions of exquisite stone fancies, touched in their treatment by fancy and guided by art."--_Star_. "Each of them contains exactly that amount of information which the intelligent visitor, who is not a specialist, will wish to have. The disposition of the various parts is judiciously proportioned, and the style is very readable. The illustrations supply a further important feature; they are both numerous and good. A series which cannot fail to be welcomed by all who are interested in the ecclesiastical buildings of England."--_Glasgow Herald_. "Those who, either for purposes of professional study or for a cultured recreation, find it expedient to 'do' the English cathedrals will welcome the beginning of Bell's 'Cathedral Series.' This set of books is an attempt to consult, more closely, and in greater detail than the usual guide-books do, the needs of visitors to the cathedral towns. The series cannot but prove markedly successful. In each book a business-like description is given of the fabric of the church to which the volume relates, and an interesting history of the relative diocese. The books are plentifully illustrated, and are thus made attractive as well as instructive. They cannot but prove welcome to all classes of readers interested either in English Church history or in ecclesiastical architecture."--_Scotsman_. "A set of little books which may be described as very useful, very pretty, and very cheap ... and alike in the letterpress, the illustrations, and the remarkably choice binding, they are ideal guides."--_Liverpool Daily Post_. "They have nothing in common with the almost invariably wretched local guides save portability, and their only competitors in the quality and quantity of their contents are very expensive and mostly rare works, each of a size that suggests a packing-case rather than a coat-pocket. The 'Cathedral Series' are important compilations concerning history, architecture, and biography, and quite popular enough for such as take any sincere interest in their subjects."--_Sketch_. * * * * * LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1) Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been capitalized. 2) Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3) Author's errata have been applied without note. 4) In the extract of the _Times_ review, a line was lost in scanning. The missing text has been replaced with "city, a need" to complete the affected sentence. 
19424	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 19424-h.htm or 19424-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/4/2/19424/19424-h/19424-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/4/2/19424/19424-h.zip) Transcriber's notes: 1) Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were in bold face have been surrounded by pound signs('#'). 2) Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF EXETER A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See by PERCY ADDLESHAW, B.A. (Oxon.) With XXXVII [Illustration] Illustrations [Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL--FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. The Photochrom. Co. Ld. Photo.] London G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1921 First Published, January 1898 Second Edition, Revised, 1899 Third Impression, 1907 Fourth Impression, 1912 New and Revised Edition, 1921. AUTHOR'S PREFACE Among various books consulted the author specially owes his acknowledgments to "The Fabric Rolls"; Leland's "Itinerary"; Holler's "History"; Izacke's "Antiquities of Exeter"; Britton's "History and Antiquities of Exeter"; "Transactions of Exeter Architectural Society"; Oliver's "Lives of the Bishops of Exeter"; Murray's "Handbook of Exeter"; Archdeacon Freeman's "Architectural History of Exeter Cathedral"; Professor Freeman's "Exeter" (Historic Towns Series); Prince's "Worthies of Devon"; Worth's "History of Devonshire"; Fuller's "Worthies of Devon"; Macaulay's "History of England"; and Green's "Short History of the English People." The author would also express his special thanks to the late Canon Hingeston-Randolph, the learned editor of the Episcopal Registers of the Diocese, for information which contributed largely to the improvement of the second edition of this book. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION In reissuing this handbook, which during the lapse of twenty-three years had become out of date in many ways, the editor has introduced considerable alterations in the arrangement of the matter, with a view to facilitating its use as a guide to the various parts of the Cathedral. For suggestions as to this, and for numerous improvements and corrections in detail he is particularly indebted to Miss Beatrix F. Cresswell, whose published works "Exeter Churches," "Notes on the Churches of the Deanery of Ken," and "Edwardian Inventories for the City and County of Exeter" have made her an authority on the ecclesiology of the Diocese. E.B. _June_, 1921. CONTENTS PAGE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY AND ST. PETER IN EXETER 1 THE FABRIC OF THE CATHEDRAL. EXTERIOR 19 The Towers 23 The Roof 24 The North Porch 24 The West Front 27 THE FABRIC OF THE CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR 31 The Nave 31 The Minstrels' Gallery 36 St. Radegunde's Chapel 36 St. Edmund's Chapel 39 Monuments in the Nave 39 The North Transept 43 Sylke Chantry 44 St. Paul's Chapel 44 The South Transept 44 Monuments in the South Transept 47 The Choir Screen 48 The Organ 52 The Choir 52 The Choir Stalls 55 The Reredos 56 The Bishop's Throne 56 The Sedilia 56 St. James' Chapel 59 St. Andrew's Chapel 61 The Ambulatory 61 Speke's Chantry 63 Bishop Oldham's Chantry 63 The Lady Chapel 65 Bronscombe's Tomb 66 Stafford's Tomb 66 Tomb of Sir John and Lady Doddridge 67 St. Gabriel's Chapel 69 Quivil's Tomb 69 St. Mary Magdalen Chapel 69 TOMBS IN THE CHOIR AND CHOIR AISLES 71 THE CHAPTER HOUSE AND CLOISTER 73 THE CLOSE AND CATHEDRAL LIBRARY 78 THE BISHOP'S PALACE 79 THE DIOCESE OF EXETER 83 ROUGEMONT CASTLE AND THE GUILDHALL 91 DIMENSIONS 96 INDEX 97 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Exeter Cathedral--from the South-west _Frontispiece_ Arms of the Diocese _Title_ View of the Cathedral from the South xii Interior--Chapter House 13 Exeter Cathedral, from an old print 21 The Cathedral--from the South-east 22 The Northern Tower 25 The West Front 26 Portals of the West Front 29 The Nave--from the South Transept 30 The Nave--looking West 33 Corbels and Bosses 34 The Minstrels' Gallery 35 Bays of Nave 37 The "Patteson" Pulpit 38 The Nave--looking East 41 The Transept--looking North 45 Interior in the last century 49 The Choir Screen 51 The Choir--looking West 53 The Choir before Restoration 54 The Choir--looking East 57 The Sedilia 58 Pulpit in the Choir 60 St. James' Chapel 61 St. George's Chapel 62 The Lady Chapel 64 Bishop Bronscombe's Monument 66 Screen of St. Gabriel's Chapel 68 Tomb of Bishop Stapledon 72 Monument of Bishop Marshall 73 The East Gate (pulled down in 1784) 77 The Bishop's Palace 81 Old Houses in Fore Street 90 Rougemont Castle 93 The Guildhall, Exeter 94 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL _at end_ [Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH.] EXETER CATHEDRAL. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY AND ST. PETER IN EXETER. The history of any ancient cathedral must always be interesting, and that of Exeter is no exception, though "it supplies less of architectural history than those churches whose whole character has been altered over and over again." A cathedral represents not only the spiritual, but the active, laborious, and artistic life of past generations. The bishop, too, was in many ways the head man of the province, and combined, not seldom, the varied qualities of priest, warrior, and statesman. The acts of such ecclesiastics were full of importance, not for their own city only, but often also for the whole nation. As men who had frequently travelled much and studied deeply, they summoned to their aid in the building and beautifying of their churches the most skilled artists end artificers of their time; so, with the story of the lives of the bishops of a diocese, the history of a cathedral's building is inextricably woven. To be elevated to a bishopric generally meant to be put into possession of great wealth--when Veysey became bishop the revenues of the see of Exeter have, by some authors, been computed at £100,000; Canon Hingeston-Randolph puts them, with more reason and authority, at the sum of £30,000--and a large portion of this money was spent on works connected with the chief church of the diocese. It is not wonderful, therefore, this generosity being joined to marvellous skill and taste, that our old cathedrals are at once the despair and envy of the modern architect. And it is with a feeling of reverence that one recalls the history of those who built in the heart of each populous city "grey cliffs of lonely stone into the midst of sailing birds and silent air." The story of Exeter has an unique interest, and its church, as we shall see, is in many respects without a rival. The fact that a building of such great beauty should adorn a city so situated is remarkable; for long after--as we read in Macaulay--weekly posts left London for various parts of England, Exeter was still, as it were, on the borders of territories scarcely explored, and was the furthest western point to which letters were conveyed from the metropolis. Fuller thus describes the county of Devonshire in his day (1646): "Devonshire hath the narrow seas on the South, the Severn on the North, Cornwall on the West, Dorset and Somersetshire on the East. A goodly province, the second in England for greatness, clear in view without measuring, as bearing a square of fifty miles. Some part thereof, as the South Hams, is so fruitful it needs no art; but generally (though not running of itself) it answers to the spur of industry. No shire showes more industrious, or so many Husbandmen, who by Marle (blew and white), Chalk, Lime, Seasand, Compost, Sopeashes, Rags and what not, make the ground both to take and keep a moderate fruitfulness; so that Virgil, if now alive, might make additions to his Georgicks, from the Plough-practice in this county. As for the natives thereof, generally they are dexterous in any employment, and Queen Elizabeth was wont to say of the gentry: _They were all born courtiers with a becomming confidence_." The city of Exeter is of great age. "Isca Damnoniorum, Caer Wise, Exanceaster, Exeter, keeping essentially the same name under all changes, stands distinguished as the one great city which has, in a more marked way than any other, kept its unbroken being and its unbroken position throughout all ages." But though Whitaker asserts that in the middle of the fifth century it was the seat of a bishop, Professor Freeman, with more authority, declares that the city did not become a bishop's see till the latter half of the eleventh century, at which period the bishopstools were removed from the small to the great towns. Until 703 A.D. Devonshire formed part of the vast diocese of Wessex. About the year 900 A.D. the diocese of Devon and Cornwall was divided into two--the former with its bishop's seat at Crediton--only to be reunited again a hundred and fifty years later when Leofric was appointed bishop. The first record of a church dedicated to SS. Mary and Peter in Exeter, is that of an abbey church founded by Athelstan. But Sweyn destroyed it seventy years later, and it seems frequently to have been attacked by invaders previous to its destruction. But in 1019 Canute endowed a new church and confirmed by charter their lands and privileges to the monks. This building must have been of some pretensions, for it was given to Leofric for his cathedral church in 1050. It occupied the site of the present Lady Chapel. When Warelwast and Marshall built their Norman church they placed it on the east of the old church, leaving an intervening space. Their nave occupied the site of the present nave, the transeptal towers were the same, but the choir was shorter and probably terminated in an apse flanked by smaller apses at the ends of the choir aisles. Traces of one of these have been found at the end of the third bay of the north choir aisle. Bronscombe and Quivil (see p. 5) began their reconstruction at this end, and by adding the ambulatory and Lady Chapel linked together the sites of the old and new churches. With the episcopate of Leofric, Exeter first assumes the rank of a cathedral city. The sees of Devon and Cornwall had been held together by Lyfing, the last bishop of Crediton. But Crediton, an unfortified "vill," was an easy prey to the Irish, Danes, and other pirates, who devastated the diocese from time to time. Leofric felt the urgent necessity for a change, and fixed on the walled town of Exeter to be his cathedral city. He sent a clerk to the pope asking him to write to the king recommending the change. The king readily consented, and the church of St. Mary and St. Peter was given to the bishop as his cathedral church. The event was clearly regarded as of considerable importance, for at his installation Edward the Confessor "supported his right arm and Queen Eadgytha his left." Archbishops, bishops, and nobles also assisted at the ceremony. Leofric proved a hard-working and wise prelate, and gave generously of lands and moneys to his church. He had found it but poorly furnished, the wardrobe only containing "one worthless priest's dress." He also remembered it in his will, and the great "Liber Exoniensis" was his gift. But if the history of the see has its birth with Leofric, the story of the cathedral begins with the appointment in 1107 of Warelwast as bishop. This noteworthy man was a nephew of the Conqueror and chaplain to both William II and Henry I. Inheriting to the full the Norman passion for building, he pulled down the Saxon edifice and began to erect a great Norman cathedral in its stead. The transeptal towers attest the magnificence of his scheme. There is nothing quite like them anywhere else, though at Barcelona and Chalons-sur-Marne may be seen something similar. But they suffice to stamp him as an architect of exceptional genius. He laboured zealously in other matters, founding at Plympton a wealthy Augustinian priory; he also represented the king at Rome in his famous quarrel with Anselm. It is said that he became blind and died, an old man, at his priory of Plympton. The next important date to notice is 1194, when Henry Marshall, brother of Walter Earl Marshall, was made bishop. For two years the episcopal throne had remained empty, the king being absent from England in the Holy Land. But with the appointment of Marshall a most important stage is reached. King John gave to the see the tithes of the tin in Devonshire and Cornwall. This must have largely increased the episcopal income, for Marshall quickly set about completing the work Warelwast had begun a hundred years before. To this end he granted the emoluments of St. Erth's Church, near Hayle, Cornwall, to be used towards defraying the cost of repairs. He also called upon each householder to show his interest in the work by subscribing, at Pentecost, an alms of "unum obolum ad minim." For the sufficient remuneration of the choral vicars he made over to them the church of St. Swithun in Woodbury, "with all its appurtenances." To Marshall we owe extensive additions to the nave, the north porch, and the cloister doorway. He completed the Norman church begun by Warelwast, but there is no evidence that he extended to the eastward, as is sometimes stated. The position of the tomb in the "founder's place" on the north side of the choir indicates that it terminated only a few yards farther to the east. Beyond there must have been an open space between the Norman and the old Saxon cathedrals. For nearly fifty years there are but scant records of work done to the building. Though Professor Freeman[1] speaks of its "not long-lived perfection," it is quite possible that Marshall's work was considered, by his own and the succeeding generation, to be final. Any interest there may be in the lives of two of the succeeding bishops, until the election of Bronscombe in 1257, is for the most part due to their labours in other matters. For example, under Simon de Apulia, the city of Exeter was divided into parishes; and by William Bruere the chapter house and stalls of the old choir were completed. He was one of the leaders of the English army at Acre in 1228. He also created the deanery of Exeter. [1] "Exeter" (Historic Towns Series), by Prof. E.A. Freeman (Longmans). But with the arrival of Walter Bronscombe a new career of architectural energy begins. Now dawns that wonderful transformation period, at the close of which the church stood pretty much as we now know it. Concerning Bronscombe's character there has been somewhat bitter dispute. It is certain that he was accused of craftiness and meanness. But William of Worcester, whose testimony is valuable, called him Walter le Good. Whatever may be the real truth of the matter, he seems to have made an admirable bishop, his election reflecting considerable credit on the acumen of those concerned in it. For he had not, surely, much to recommend him, at first sight, for so important a position. Though he was Archdeacon of Surrey at the time of his appointment, he was not a priest, and he was quite a young man. He was a vigorous supporter of learning throughout the diocese, probably because of his anxiety to give other men of humble origin a fair chance of making their way in the world. He restored the College of Crediton, and built one at Glaseney. Bronscombe may be credited with giving the first impetus to the reconstruction of the cathedral by his work in the Lady Chapel and the chapels on either side of it, viz., that of St. Mary Magdalen on the north, and St. Gabriel on the south, the latter being destined for his own tomb. To his Dean and Chapter he appropriated the church of St. Bruared in Cornwall, that the feast of his patron saint, Gabriel, might be worthily maintained. Peter Quivil, his successor in the see, was probably working with him, as he was a canon of the cathedral before being raised to the bishopric. He invented and designed the Decorated cathedral, and transformed the transepts. He must be classed with Warelwast as the chief of the building bishops. Admirably and sympathetically as his work was continued by those who followed him, their claim on our recognition and gratitude is less. His skill, too, seems to have been almost equalled by his generosity, for out of gratitude the Chapter promised to maintain his yearly obit. In the office of the mass, in the memento for the dead, his name was ordered to be spoken _primum et praecipium._ He seems to have given the Franciscans some cause for anger; it is suggested that his Dominican confessor urged him to treat the followers of St. Francis with severity. Anyhow, the aggrieved ones had their revenge, for the bishop's death, which happened on the eve of St. Francis, "after drinking of a certain sirrop," was popularly attributed to the direct intervention of the saint himself. He is buried in the Lady Chapel, which he had transformed and decorated with such tender care, and a slab in the centre of the pavement, bearing the legend "Petra tegit Petrum nihil officiat sibi tetrum," is dedicated to his memory. It has been ascertained by Canon Hingeston-Randolph that Bishop Quivil was the first to endow the office of chaunter with an adequate salary, and that the first to enjoy the benefit of it was Walter de Lecchelade or Lechlade, though he was by no means the first chaunter or precentor. A dispute that long agitated antiquaries has thus been settled. For it was contended by some that John the chaunter was the first to hold the office, by others that Quivil founded the office and that the bishop's name was really John Cauntor. But the explanation that the stipend was only increased by Quivil, and that it existed before his day, was entirely satisfactory, we may hope, to the supporters of the rival theories. The above-mentioned Walter Lechlade was murdered "about two in the morning" on his return from matins in the cathedral cloisters. The murderers escaped through the south gate of the city, which was left open. An extraordinary sensation was created, not in Exeter only but throughout England. The bishop invited Edward I. and his queen to keep their Christmas at the Palace. We are told "they were very industrious in finding out the murtherers." At last Alfred Dupont, an ex-mayor and porter of the south gate, was found guilty and executed accordingly. Perhaps, had the office of chaunter not been endowed, Walter Lechlade might have continued for many long years to chaunt in sonorous voice "matins, vespers, obits, and the like." At any rate the story is worth telling, being an interesting picture of manners in the middle ages. It will be found given, with many interesting details, in an appendix by Canon Hingeston-Randolph to his edition of the Register of Bishop Quivil (p. 438). Quivil's successor was Thomas De Bytton, Dean of Wells. Under his guidance the work of transformation planned by his predecessor was loyally continued, for he faithfully adhered to the original design. Though Bytton appears to have been less active outside his diocese than many of the Exeter bishops, his mode of life must have commended itself to a large circle. A grant of forty days' indulgence was the reward of all those who availed themselves of his spiritual ministrations, or offered prayers for his prosperity during his life and after death. Among the signatures appended to the document notifying this singular privilege are those of numerous archbishops and bishops, among them being those of the archbishops of Cosensa and Jerusalem, and Manfred, Bishop of St. Mark's, Venice. "The seal of Manfred," Dr. Oliver says, "is perfect; he stands robed, with a piece of embroidery on his alb. The crozier is simply curved. His legend is S. MANFREDI. DEI. GRA. EPISCOP. SCI. MARCHI." It was dated at Rome in the year 1300. Possibly Bytton's great learning, by which he had risen to be Professor of Canon Law at Oxford and Pope's Chaplain, was partly the reason of so notable a compliment. But the noble work he was doing in the cathedral church of his diocese, we may hope, had not a little to do with the honour. For to him we owe the entire transformation of the choir with its aisles. Bytton's labours were, indeed, very great. We hear of large quantities of stone procured from Barley, and of sandstone from Salcombe and Branscombe. He also put a good deal of stained glass into the windows; so that in the eleventh year of his episcopate the following item is recorded: "Master Walter le Verrouer for setting the glass of the upper gable and of eight upper windows, and of six windows in the aisles of the new work, in gross, £4 l0s." Bytton was succeeded, in 1308, by Walter de Stapledon, the most famous of all the bishops of Exeter. A younger son of Sir Richard Stapledon of Annery, his appointment was the first of a succession of aristocratic nominations. He, too, had been a professor of canon law at Oxford, was a chaplain to the Pope and precentor of the cathedral church of Exeter. The feast given after his enthronement was unusually splendid, the revenues for a whole year being spent on the festivities. It seems as though, conscious of his great talents, he determined to signalize his accession to the episcopal office by some event of unusual magnificence. It must be remembered that Exeter was at this time one of the largest and richest sees in England. As Professor Freeman has pointed out, "The Bishop of Exeter, like the Archbishop of York, was the spiritual head of a separate people." Stapledon set about expediting the work of transforming the cathedral into the Decorated style in vigorous fashion. The Fabric Rolls record that he himself gave the (then) enormous sum of £1,800 towards defraying the cost. His generosity encouraged others to subscribe liberally towards the building fund. One of his first duties was to complete the choir, a payment being made to William Canon of £35 2s. 8d. for "marble from Corfe for the columns." But the choir was really Bytton's, the new bishop had only to give to it "a few final, though not unimportant, touches." Still he found plenty of work to hand that might receive the impress of his sole initiative. He designed and completed the triforium arcade above the choir arches, and directed the colouring of the choir vault, the total expenses for oil and colour being estimated at £1 9s. 7¾d. By these "final touches" the transformation of the choir into the Decorated style was completed. But Stapledon determined to further enrich his already beautiful church with accessories of surpassing splendour. He erected a high altar of silver, also the beautiful sedilia, and though there has been a good deal of dispute about the matter, the more trustworthy authorities attribute to him the bishop's throne of carved wood. At any rate, in 1312, there is a charge of £6 12s. 8½d. for "timber for the bishop's seat." The altar, unfortunately, has disappeared, but it is reputed to have cost a sum equivalent to £7,000 of our money. Canon Freeman thus describes it: "Above, as it should seem (for the entries are very obscure), was a canopy of considerable extent, wrought with bosses internally. The whole seems to have been surmounted by a figure of our Lord." With Stapledon building seems to have been a favourite recreation; for though he gave most largely both of time and money to the cathedral work, he found opportunity to build and endow Harts Hall, Stapledon Inn--now Exeter College--Oxford, and the "very fair" Essex House in London. In 1320 he was created Lord High Treasurer by Edward II., and later in the same year received from his sovereign the power of holding pleas of "hue and cry" in the lands, tenements, and fees of the bishopric in the county of Cornwall. The neglected condition of many of the parish churches in his diocese distressed him, and almost his last public appearance in the west of England was at Lawhitton, where he spoke severely on this matter to his Dean and Chapter, and bade them see to it that in future there should be no good cause of complaint. In the autumn of 1324 he set out for France, accompanying the young Prince Edward, who was about to do homage to the French king for the duchies of Aquitaine and Poitou. But his "irreproachable integrity" made him unpopular, and his life was threatened. On his return to England he saw that a crisis was at hand, and almost immediately after his arrival Queen Eleanor landed on the coast of Suffolk. Edward II., in a brief moment of wisdom, assigned to the faithful bishop the government of London and retreated to Bristol. But it was too late to effect a reconciliation or prevent a catastrophe. With a firm hand Stapledon endeavoured to restore order and quiet, and promulgated a decree by which all rebels were excommunicated. But the citizens, wisely perhaps, sided with the conquerors, and the bishop died a martyr to duty. The story is well told in the French chronicles quoted by Dr. Oliver. "The Bishop of Exeter, riding towards his inn or hotel, in Eldeanes-lane for dinner, encountered the mob, and, hearing them shout Traitor, he rode rapidly to St. Paul's for sanctuary, but was unhorsed, taken to Cheapside, stripped and beheaded. About the hour of vespers, the same day, October 15th, the choir of St. Paul's took up the headless body of the prelate and conveyed it to St. Paul's, but, on being informed that he died under sentence, the body was brought to St. Clement's beyond the Temple, but was ejected; so that the naked corpse, with a rag given by the charity of a woman, was laid on the spot called 'Le Lawles Cherche,' and without any grave, lay there with those of his two esquires, without office of priest or clerk. His house was attacked, the gates burned, quantities of jewels and plate plundered." In another account of his death it is stated that his head was "fixed on a long pole by way of trophy, that it might be to all beholders a lasting memorial of his attempted crime." There was a personal reason why the bishop was unpopular among the citizens, for "he procured that the justices in eyre should sit in London; on which occasion, because the citizens had committed various offences, they were heavily punished by the loss of their liberties, by pecuniary mulcts, and by bodily chastisment, as they deserved." But the queen caused his body to be rescued from the "hepe of rubische," and it was removed to Exeter, where it lies on the north side of the choir. He left behind him large sums of money and plate, a valuable library and, unique item, ninety-one rings. He was certainly one of the greatest prelates in English history, and though he may have been, as his detractors asserted, "fumische and without pite," he was revered in his diocese, and left an example of courage and honesty to succeeding generations. His executors, animated by a wish to do what he would have desired, distributed £210 8s. 8d. in charities, and gave considerable sums to other worthy objects. And the Abbot of Hartland caused the 15th of October to be solemnly observed, out of gratitude for the late bishop's bounty, and decreed that on that day "for all future times 'XIII. pauperes in aulâ abbatis, pro ipsius anima, pascantur.'" To follow so redoubtable a prelate as Stapledon must have been an extremely difficult task. But Grandisson, who was appointed after Berkeley's short episcopate ended, has sometimes been called the most magnificent prelate who ever filled the see. He was nominated directly by the pope, and consecrated by his holiness at Avignon. His chief glory is that he allowed the splendour of the see in no wise to diminish, and he kept up the Stapledon traditions of princely hospitality and well-doing. His reputation of "grave, wise, and politick" seems to have been fairly earned. As a descendant of the great ducal house of Burgundy, he had lived much with princes and held the position of nuncio "at the courts of all the mightiest princes of Christendom." His election was carried out in direct opposition to the wishes of the canons of Exeter, but a wise choice had been made, and by his long episcopate of forty years he gained honour for himself and good fortune for his people. He had to face many difficulties at first that might well have appalled a weaker man. The tragic death of Stapledon had terrified all men, the great work of that giant intellect remained unfinished, and required some one of exceptional energy to complete it fitly. Added to these difficulties, the episcopal manors had been plundered and the accounts were terribly muddled. Grandisson, luckily, was a man who looked upon difficulties as things to be overcome. He applied to the members of his family for funds, and the negotiations are to his family and subsequently to the diocese at large for funds. The negotiations are interesting, for the borrower is the only person who maintained his dignity unimpaired. With courteous pertinacity and a fitting show of anger, he got the supplies he needed. With indomitable energy he managed to arrange in perfect order the confused affairs of his diocese. Turning eagerly to the task of completing the building of his church, he transformed the six west bays of the nave, vaulting, aisles, west window, and north cloister. In spiritual and temporal affairs he was equally busy. Twice at least he was the host of royalty, once the Black Prince visited his diocese with the captive king of France. The same illustrious warrior, shortly before his death, again enjoyed the bishop's hospitality. In 1343 Grandisson was sent as ambassador to Rome, and the sound sense he had shown at Exeter was equally apparent in the conduct of his mission, so that it was written of him that "he did his message with much wisdom and honour." Certainly, few bishops have had so exalted a view of the dignity and importance of the episcopal office, and none ever dared to fight more boldly for his imagined rights. When the Archbishop Mepham determined to make a personal visitation, Grandisson's anger was kindled. Gathering round him a body of armed retainers, he met the archbishop at the north-west gate of the close. There might have been a bloody conflict, for neither prelate was likely to give way. Fortunately, sober counsels prevailed, and the quarrel was referred to the pope. His holiness decided in Grandisson's favour, and "the dispute did half break Mepham's heart, and the Pope, siding with the Bishop of Exeter, did break the other half." So writes Fuller, and the quaint sentence does not lack authority, for the archbishop died shortly after the termination of the quarrel. Grandisson remembered his cathedral in his will. He bequeathed to his successors his crozier and mitre, and to the diocese 2,000 marks. At his funeral, in accordance with his instructions, a hundred poor persons were clothed and money was distributed among the prisoners and the sick. He remembered, too, the needs of the poorer clergy and the hospitals, while to Pope Urban and Edward III. he left splendid legacies. His funeral, as his life, was simple and economical. For his magnificent presents, his gorgeous works on the structure of his church, were made possible by his own simple, almost parsimonious manner of living. He was buried in the chapel of St. Radegunde, but the tomb was destroyed in Elizabeth's time, and his ashes lie "no man knows where." Brantyngham, the next bishop, completed the cloisters, the east window and west front. But, as Canon Freeman has said, "the rest of the works of this and the following century are little else than petty restorations; of course in a later and inferior style, and generally to the detriment of the building." But there is still much in the history of the church and the see that deserves a passing notice. Under Brantyngham, the old feud that Grandisson had finished so satisfactorily to himself, began again. But the victory this time was with the archbishop. At Topsham, a village not far from the city, the bishop's servants attacked savagely the archbishop's mandatory. Full of zeal for the honour, as they conceived it, of their own prelate, they made the wretched creature eat the archbishop's writ and seal. But the meal of parchment and wax did not by any means settle the dispute. The bishop's cause, indeed, was irretrievably damaged, the king was furious, an appeal to the pope was unsuccessful, and Brantyngham had to make full submission to the offended primate. Henceforth the archbishop's right of visitation was not opposed. Had another than Grandisson been bishop in Mepham's day the dispute would never, probably, have arisen; for the archbishop was undoubtedly only exercising his rights, such visitations being according to canon, and of ancient usage. The next bishop whose episcopate is important is Lacy, who glazed the nave windows and raised the chapter house. He has, too, an unique claim on our regard because of his saintly character. As yet no saint had made the cathedral venerable, and the sentimental affection and profit which saintly relics were wont to cause was still lacking. It is said that Iscanus had contrived to get some relics of Becket for his cathedral, but there was no local saint, and this want Lacy supplied. Yet the days of his episcopacy were by no means absolutely calm. At the very moment of his accession he involved himself in a dispute with the city corporation as to the liberties of his cathedral. Nor was he, though meek and holy, at all inclined to submit to any infringement of his prerogatives, even when the transgressor happened to wear a crown. Indeed, he most successfully protested against the conduct of Henry VI., who held a jail delivery in the bishop's hall. Two men were condemned to death, but the bishop remonstrated so forcibly against this exercise of temporal authority within the precincts of the sanctuary, that they were released. As an author Lacy gained a considerable reputation. His "Liber Pontificalis" is still preserved, his office in honour of Raphael the Archangel was admired and used in many cathedrals and churches. When he died miracles were performed at his tomb, and pilgrimages were constantly made to it by the common people. [Illustration: THE CHAPTER HOUSE (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER', 1826).] From this time onward the architectural history of the cathedral becomes less important. Its great periods may thus be summed up, 1107 to 1206 Warelwast and Marshall built the Norman church; 1257 to 1280 Bronscombe and Quivil began the Decorated work; 1292 to 1308 Bytton and Stapledon completed the eastern part; 1327 to 1369 Grandisson and Brantyngham completed the nave, west front, and cloister. The fifth and last change is the introduction of Perpendicular work, chiefly noticeable in the chapter house, the west screen, and the great east window. The day of the great builders was waning fast. The old faith that inspired them was dwindling, the attraction of national concerns was too great for local effort. Moreover, the desire to make intricately beautiful, right enough in itself, had vitiated, as it was bound to do, the taste of architect and builder. The old Norman cathedrals, however rugged, were imposing in their stern and simple strength. The desire for decoration affected various transformations, which at first left the building more beautiful and not less strong. But gradually the simplicity and strength disappear altogether. Luckily, as we shall see, the great church of St. Mary and St. Peter has suffered less than most buildings that have undergone so many changes. "As it is, the church of Exeter is a remarkable case of one general design being carried out through more than a hundred years." The church is Quivil's design, and the variations, though important, do not seriously detract from it. The events of the next five hundred years belong more to the history of the see, and even of England, than to the church. In the election of George Neville (1458) we notice the immense value put on noble birth. Only one other reason can be alleged as weighing with those responsible for the choice. And this reason is so ridiculous as to be almost incredible. None the less it had, doubtless, a good deal to do with Neville's election to the bishopric. He was not only a brother to the great Earl of Warwick, but he early showed his intention of keeping up the almost kingly traditions of his family. Here is an account of the festivities that took place at Oxford after he had performed "his exercises in the nave of St. Mary's Church, as the custom now is, and before was, for nobleman's sons." "Such entertainment was given for two days space that the memory of man being not now able to produce, I have thought it worth my pains to remember. On the first day therefore were 600 messes of meat, and on the second 300 for the entertainment only of scholars and certain of the Proceeders, relations and acquaintances." A later Oxford historian asserts that Neville was elected chancellor the very next year "by an appreciative university!" It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that this display of hospitality had something to do with his being chosen bishop, as a fitting successor to the office once filled by Grandisson. For four years after his election he was unable, owing to his youth, to be consecrated. But by one of those ecclesiastical scandals, which seem not to have annoyed or astonished his contemporaries, he was permitted to enjoy the temporalities of the see. At the age of twenty-seven he was fully ordained bishop, and a few years later was transferred to York. During the episcopate of his successor, Bothe, the city was besieged by Perkin Warbeck. In 1495 Oliver King, who was elected in 1492, was translated to the see of Bath and Wells, and to him is due the rebuilding of the abbey church of Bath which was then ruinous. From 1504 to 1519 Oldham, a Lancashire man, was bishop. He built the Oldham and Speke chapels. Veysey, who succeeded him, lived during the reign of Henry VIII. His courtly manners made him popular. In addition to his rich ecclesiastical office, he became Lord President of Wales and tutor to the Princess Mary. He founded the town of Sutton Coleshill, now Sutton Coldfield, and introduced there the making of kersies. On this enterprise he spent the larger part of his fortune. At the accession of Edward VI. he was left undisturbed, though suspected of favouring the old religion. But when a rising in favour of the unreformed church disturbed the western counties, he was accused of participation in the movement, and resigned his charge. But he retained the temporalities, and on Mary's accession was reinstated. But he was nearly 103 years old, and soon after died at his town of Sutton Coleshill in 1555. Miles Coverdale, the translator, with Tyndale, of the Bible, his successor, was bishop for only two years. He was unpopular, although his life was "most godly" and virtuous. But "the common people," says Hoker, "whose bottles would receive no new wine, could not brook or digest him, for no other cause but because he was a preacher of the Gospel, an enemy to Papistry, and a married man." This dislike is easily accounted for. Exeter was very far from London, the new ideas travelled slowly, and the west was staunchly conservative. As with many reformers, too, his zeal was spoilt by indiscretion; the sternness of the Puritan militated against his success, and people preferred the old errors more becomingly supported. His successor, Turberville, was a man quite after the heart of the people, and he won praise from Protestant and Catholic alike. He was succeeded by William Alleyn, and as a result of Veysey's extravagance and Henry's greed it may be noticed that, by royal charter, the number of canons was limited to nine. In 1627 the see was held by Joseph Hall, a man of great distinction. Though too conciliatory to care greatly for Laud's policy, he wrote a justly famous "Defence of the Church of England and her doctrines." After his translation to Norwich he underwent a good deal of persecution, which he himself has recorded, and was for six months a prisoner in the Tower. He is buried in Higham parish church, his monument a skeleton holding "in the right hand a bond to death sealed and signed, 'Debemus morti nos nostrique,' and in his left the same bond torn and cancelled, with the endorsement 'Persolvit et quietus est.'" Fuller says of the famous satirist that he was "not unhappy at controversies, more happy at comments, very good in his characters, better in his sermons, best of all in his meditations." John Gauden, who became bishop in 1660, was far more fortunate, though probably not more happy. He does not seem to have been over scrupulous, and his desire for "a good manger" is unpleasantly obvious. But as the author of the [Greek: EIKÔN BASILIKÊ] he is remembered. The authorship has been disputed, but Charles II. certainly recognized his claim, and Clarendon believed his assertions about it. He was clever enough to have written even a better book, and there is no sufficient ground for depriving him of this honour. It is certain that he owed his preferment to his reputed merit as its author; though, oddly enough, he had taken the covenant and preached a notorious sermon against "pictures, images, and other superstitions of popery." But he publicly recanted, later, and protested against the murder of the king, whose supposed last prayers and meditations he was skilfully inventing. After being in Exeter two years he was removed to Worcester. But he had looked to become bishop of Winchester, and it is said that his death was hastened by disappointment. Seth Ward, who followed him, had, as dean of Exeter, distinguished himself by his zeal and courage. He drove from the cathedral precincts the buyers and sellers who had encroached thereon, and the partition wall that divided the cathedral was taken down at his request. During the Commonwealth "the building which was now formally called 'the late cathedral church' was divided by a brick wall into two places of worship, known as East Peter's and West Peter's." The east portion was used by the Independents and the west by Presbyterians. Ward spent £20,000 on redeeming the cathedral from the degradation it had suffered, and bought an organ, "esteemed the best in England," which cost him £2,000. He was translated to Salisbury in 1667. He was a man of considerable ability and was a founder of the Royal Society. Sparrow succeeded to the see in 1667. During his episcopate the Grand Duke Cosmo visited Exeter and wondered at the worthy bishop, his wife, and his nine children. The Duke of Tuscany was spoken of in the local reports as the Duke of Tuskey, and he received from the corporation a gift of "£20, or thereabouts." Sparrow, on his translation to Norwich, was succeeded by Lamplugh, whose political acumen, at any rate, compels admiration, if not respect. He fervently bade his flock rally round the unfortunate James II, and then, posting to London, was rewarded by the grateful king with the archbishopric of York. He then without any compunction crowned William of Orange, King of England. But his smartness availed little, "for within three years continuance of that high throne of York he was summoned before an higher." Macaulay has finely described the entrance of the prince into the cathedral. "As he passed under the gorgeous screen, that renowned organ, scarcely surpassed by any of those which are the boast of his native Holland, gave out a peal of triumph. He mounted the bishop's seat, a stately throne, rich with the carving of the fifteenth century. Burnet stood below, and a crowd of warriors and nobles appeared on the right hand and on the left. The singers robed in white sang the 'Te Deum.' When the chaunt was over Burnet read the Prince's declaration; but as soon as the first words were uttered, prebendaries and singers crowded in all haste out of the choir. At the close, Burnet, in a loud voice, cried, 'God save the Prince of Orange,' and many fervent voices answered 'Amen.'" This is certainly the most remarkable, as it is also the last, of the great historical events that have happened under the shadow of the cathedral walls. There had been nothing to compare with it since the day when Grandisson with his armed retainers met Mepham at the close gate three hundred years before. Offspring Blackall is the last bishop we need mention. He was a famous preacher, and worked hard for the comfort and education of the indigent classes. To him Exeter owes her charity schools. Of the remaining bishops there is nothing of moment to record. It has seemed wiser in this brief sketch to devote a paragraph to each of those bishops who either architecturally or historically made their episcopates events of national importance. The early bishops, especially, busied themselves exceedingly in making beautiful their principal church. It is by knowing something of their lives and times that one can best appreciate their labours, and trace with intelligent interest the causes of the splendid result to be studied minutely in the remaining chapters of this book. Moreover, all lovers of the great in art, all who love what is beautiful, as all may with a little trouble, will not be sorry to have even a passing acquaintance with those who have wrought so nobly. And this short notice of the most famous of the bishops of Exeter proves that they were for the most part chosen, not for their lineage, however splendid, nor the favour they had gained as gracious courtiers, but for their excellent lives, their plain living and high thinking, their taste and learning, and for qualities which, if rarer now, were not common even hundreds of years ago. THE FABRIC OF THE CATHEDRAL. THE EXTERIOR. Before examining the various details, it may be well to recall the following facts, which have already been referred to. First, the cathedral was Saxon and remained so for nearly seventy years; then came a Norman bishop who pulled down the existing building and replaced it by the foundations and towers of a finer one. For ninety-nine years, sometimes languishingly, sometimes vigorously, the work continued: so that by the end of Marshall's episcopate (1206) Warelwast's noble ambition was realized. Between this date and 1280 the church was scarcely touched, but a chapter house was built by Bishop Bruere "to God and the Church of St. Mary and St. Peter, a sufficient area to make a Chapter House in our garden near the Tower of St. John." A third style, Early English, was then introduced, to be followed by the almost complete transformation of the entire building into the Decorated style. Following on this we get some examples of Perpendicular work. Now, this series of changes is noticeable in itself, and remarkable because it has not affected the building in a way that might have been expected. The first impression, indeed, that a view of the exterior gives one, is that it is the result of one design, which is largely the case. It is only on closer inspection that the remnants of the pre-decorated periods are visible. "The Church," as Professor Freeman neatly puts it, "grew up after one general pattern, but with a certain advance in detail as the work went westward." The second thing that strikes the visitor is that he has never seen a church quite like it. "It forms a class by itself, and can be compared with nothing save its own miniature at Ottery." Putting aside the Saxon cathedral of Leofric it is possible to trace four distinct styles in what has been wisely called "the noblest monument of religious zeal of our forefathers in the west of England." But in discovering these the feeling of wonder increases as the building is found to be not a mere jumble but a complete whole. Though it is possible to date the separate parts of the edifice, and recognize the varying forms of workmanship, the architects laboured with so clear an understanding of a beautiful result to be attained, that there is no appearance of patchwork. The best views of the building are those to be got from a distance. In some ways this is not without compensation; for the cathedral church was, and is, not only splendid as a building, but the centre of the spiritual life of the diocese. It is, therefore, appropriate that it should seem most beautiful to the dwellers in the villages and hamlets beyond the city, giving them, as it were, a kind of property in the building, which they might not have felt had it been less visible. Nearing Exeter by train, from the Plymouth side, the noble roof and towers are seen above the red houses of the city. The site, indeed, was well chosen. Below the hill on which the city stands are gardens gay with flowers and fair apple orchards. Above, there is a blue sky richer and deeper than is usual in England. On all sides but one stretches the beautiful Devonshire country, meadow, hedgerow, and wooded hill. On that side the Exe flows rapidly, broadening as it goes, towards the sea. Southward but a few miles, the blue channel waters creep up against the yellow sand dunes. No cathedral, not even Lincoln, boasts a more lovely and appropriate position. "In the minds of all early Christians," says Mr. Ruskin, "the church itself was most frequently symbolized under the image of a ship," There is no country so saturated with traditions of the sea as Cornwall and Devon. "Exe terra"--out of the earth--is sometimes declared to be the derivation of the name Exeter. Maybe this was only the grateful jest of some seaman who found himself, after the winter storms, gliding up the quiet river with the city walls rising up before him. Yet the remembrance of such western heroes as Raleigh and Drake, who bade their followers sit well in order, and strike-- "The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset and the baths Of all the Western stars until I die,"[2] makes one realize how fit it is that the towers of the cathedral should look across the country to the "deep waters," and be to the mariner as the masts of a vessel whereon was safety, however fierce the storm. [2] Tennyson's "Ulysses." [Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY DANIEL KING, c. 1650.] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL--FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] From many parts of the surrounding country fine views may be obtained, from Waddlesdown, Alphington Causeway, and many a canal and river bank. A closer view may seem at first disappointing. Every writer has echoed Dr. Oliver's regret that it should be surrounded "by dwelling-houses of such disparate character." But even a nearer survey is, with patience, rewarded. The towers, exquisitely traceried windows, sculptured doorways, and magnificent roof, easily persuade us to forget its mean surroundings. #The Towers.#--To many these will be the most interesting portion of the building. The exterior of no other cathedral boasts so unusual a feature. Their position is extraordinary and has given rise to endless controversies. It has been suggested that they were meant to stand as western towers, and that the building was to stand east of them, and that, as an afterthought, they were converted into transepts. But Canon Freeman, in his history,[3] dismisses this view as merely attractive. They would certainly be more elaborate, he thinks, if they had been built as western towers, but they have neither portal nor ornamental work. Indeed, up to more than half their height they have very much the appearance of fortresses. It may well be that they served as such in Stephen's time, for the northern one was severely battered. It differs somewhat in detail from that on the south side, there being an interlacing arcade half-way up, possibly being so rebuilt when the devastation caused by the siege was being repaired. There are six stages on each tower, but only the uppermost four are in any way ornamented. These have blind arcades and window openings of circular form; but the details differ slightly on each. The turrets at the angles of the summits, and the battlements were added in the fifteenth century, but the effect is not inharmonious, and the original details are well preserved. According to an old seventeenth-century print, the north tower formerly had an attic with a pyramidal roof. This was probably an addition when the great bell was first hung (see p. 74). The effect of these transeptal towers is so fine as to make us regret their rarity. A case in which they were obviously imitated is to be seen in the fine parish church of Ottery S. Mary, Devon. There are also most practical reasons in their favour, and a consideration of them tends to increase one's wonder that they should not be found more frequently. In the first place it is possible to get a continuous, uniform, stretch of vault, the roof being broken by no central tower. Also the plan is simplified, and nave and choir have more architectural continuity. Again, by building transeptal towers and discarding the usual central tower, the interior escapes a danger it is often hard to overcome, the difficulty of holding up the central tower. It is quite possible that Warelwast was far-seeing enough to anticipate this trouble. The histories of other cathedrals prove it to be a very real one. In 1107 the tower of Winchester fell in. At Salisbury the spire is still a constant source of anxiety, despite "a complex arrangement of iron bands and ties," which has been reinforced more than once. The tower of Chichester collapsed in 1861. There is a legend of the fall of a central tower at Christchurch Priory, and other warnings could be cited, such as Hereford, Selby, Peterborough, and Wells. [3] "Architectural History of Exeter Cathedral," by Philip Freeman, Archdeacon and Canon of Exeter (Bell), 1888. Originally these two towers were cut off, by two arches underneath, from the body of the church. But Quivil, wishing to enlarge the interior, did so by "throwing the Tower spaces into it." #The Roof# is one of the most striking features of the building, especially as it is seen from a distance. The long line of the ridge of nave and choir, unbroken by a central tower, give it a unique distinction amongst English cathedrals. The delicate cresting of fleurs-de-lis, and the pinnacles which crown the supporting buttresses obviate any impression of heaviness, and together with the long series of clerestory windows, alike in form yet differing in their admirable tracery, give a singular impression of beauty. #The North Porch.#--This was the northern entrance of the Norman church, and from the outside it is possible to trace the line where the fifteenth-century front was added to the old structure. It is decorated with seven canopied niches in the style of that period. These, however, remained vacant until 1920, when they were filled with statues, by Mr. H. Read of Exeter, representing the patron saints of England and the Allies: St. George, St. Denys, St. Joseph; SS. Cyril and Methodius; St. Vladimir, and St. Ambrose. The roof is vaulted, and on the central boss is a finely-carved Agnus Dei. Within a recess of the eastern wall are three headless figures, representing, in the centre, the Crucifixion, St. Mary and St. John standing on either side. Over the inside doorway is a niche that probably once held a figure of the Virgin. [Illustration: THE NORTHERN TOWER. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] [Illustration: EXETER CATHEDRAL--THE WEST FRONT. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] #The West Front# is one of the features which gives a peculiar character to this cathedral. In the wealth of imagery on the projecting screen which forms the lowest stage of the front it is second only to Wells amongst English cathedrals. The actual west wall of the church is the work of Bishop Grandisson, who formed on the south side of the central doorway the small chapel of St. Radegunde as a burial place for himself. The greater part of the end wall of the nave is filled by a large window with remarkably beautiful tracery in its head. The date must be about 1350. Above this is a battlemented parapet sloped at each end to follow the lines of the aisle-roofs. Above this parapet appears the gable of the main roof in which is inserted a triangular window, with elegant tracery, lighting the space between the vault and outer roof. At the apex of the gable is a niche containing a small statue of St. Peter. The screen, which forms the lowest stage of this front, must have been finished in Brantyngham's time, though it seems probable that it was designed if not begun by Grandisson. It contains eighty-eight figures, in three rows, representing angels, warriors, kings, and saints. Their costume and armour are characteristic of the fashions of Richard II.'s reign. The lowest row consists of angelic figures each sustaining a triple pilaster with capitals. On these capitals stand the statues of the second row, a long line of knights and kings, above which are the angels and apostles of the third row. Above the third row stand two figures, said to represent Athelstan and Edward the Confessor. The former once drove out the Britons from the city; the latter, as we know, founded the bishopric. This group of statues has been the subject of a monograph by Miss E.K. Prideaux, who shows that the intention was to symbolize the Heavenly Jerusalem, where angels, saints, and monarchs unite to honour the enthroned Saviour and His Blessed Mother, who, as representative of the Church Triumphant, is being crowned by her Son. The Coronation of the Virgin was depicted in the central group immediately over the great doorway, the figures being those of St. Peter, Our Lady, Our Lord, and St. Paul. At some unknown date the statue of the Virgin was destroyed, and a figure intended to represent Richard II was substituted in 1818. Two other figures, assigned to James the Less and King William I, are modern reproductions by Alfred Stevens; some new heads were also added. Many circumstances have combined with the action of time to injure these sculptures: but the general effect is rich if somewhat heavy. Above the screen is a platform, from which the bishop probably blessed the people, and the minstrels welcomed with song the approach of royal or illustrious visitors. The three doorways in the screen are worthy of notice, being richly decorated. That on the south side is the most beautiful, and contains two fine pieces of sculpture, one generally declared to be an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream, the other certainly recording the Adoration of the Shepherds. The central porch is decorated with sculptured foliage, and the Crucifixion is exhibited on the central boss of the groined roof tracery. [Illustration: PORTALS OF WEST FRONT. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] [Illustration: THE NAVE, FROM THE SOUTH TRANSEPT (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826).] THE FABRIC OF THE CATHEDRAL. THE INTERIOR. Fine as is the exterior, the interior of the building is quite as beautiful. Restoration of an unusually careful and discreet style has done much to revive the deteriorated splendours of the place. Sixty years ago the nave was filled with hideous and cumbersome pews, and such work as had been done towards keeping the place in repair was in the worst possible taste. But a change has been wrought of the happiest kind in recent years, so that no cathedral in the country can boast a more admirable interior. It has been the custom to deplore the lack of elevation, and its lowness has compelled comparisons with the cathedrals of France. But this objection is, surely, rather trivial. For though the long vaulted roof, uninterrupted the whole length of the building, might tend to take away from the appearance of height, the work on the roof itself, the delicate ornaments on capitals and windows, do much to atone for this effect. To the ordinary visitor, it may safely be asserted, lack of height will only be obvious when pointed out to him. #The Nave.#--Little of the Norman masonry is now to be seen, yet it is clear that when Marshall completed Warelwast's design he found the nave finished. To quote Canon Freeman, whose book, too technical for the general public, is of incalculable value to the student: "On the interior face of both north and south walls of the nave aisles, disturbances of masonry occurring at regular intervals indicate the position of a series of Norman pilasters, the base of one of them having recently been found _in situ_ beneath the stone seat. Outside, and corresponding to the position of each several pilaster, may be observed either flat buttresses of Norman form and masonry, or else traces of their removal. These remains, linking together the obviously Norman towers and the massive west wall, point to the conclusion that the Norman cathedral, as Marshall found it, included the entire nave." When the changes began, the Fabric Rolls, if they "do not entirely desert us," give us but meagre help, so that the exact date and cost of each detail is only to be guessed at. Stapledon probably intended, as early as 1325, to begin the work of recasting the nave. In that year he made purchases of "15 great poplar trees bought for scaffolds, and 100 alder trees." Further entries tell us of seven and eightpence worth of timber "bought by the Bishop at London," and "48 great trees from Langford." The work hitherto attempted by Stapledon did not demand an outlay of this kind; so, though Grandisson gets the honour of having finished the nave, something is due to Stapledon for having given the initiative. The large balances of the preceding nine years had left a great sum of money in the latter's hands, and a donation of Stapledon's further increased that balance by the substantial sum of £600. In January, 1333, is a record of William Canon's bill for marble he had been commissioned to furnish. He had agreed to supply the Purbeck pillars for the nave, receiving £10 16s. for eleven large columns, and 5s. a-piece for bases and capitals. This is one of the most interesting items we have of the building and cost of the cathedral, and occurs fortunately at a time when such information is unusually scanty. In addition to the above-mentioned Purbeck marble, stone from the quarries of Caen in Normandy, and other places nearer home, was procured in large quantities. In 1338 the bishop gave permission to the Dean and Chapter to obtain from his agents at Chudleigh "twelve suitable oaks from his wood there." About 1350 the building of the nave was completed. It was extensively restored in recent years under the guidance of Sir Gilbert Scott. The Purbeck columns had fallen into a most dilapidated state, and were carefully repaired, the material used being obtained from those spots which had supplied the original builders. The view of the nave as one enters the west door is most impressive. Its full height of seventy feet is not dwarfed by the unhindered stretch of roof. The groined and ribbed roof itself is of marvellous beauty and springs from slender vaulting shafts, of which the bosses are exquisitely carved with a strange mixture of religious and legendary figures, foliage and animals. The artists seem to have ransacked the whole universe for subjects, and to have interpreted their ideas with great cunning. The corbels that support the vaulting shafts are equally elaborately carved. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] [Illustration: CORBELS AND BOSSES (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826). (2) Virgin and Child. (3) Minstrel and tumbler. (4) Coronation of the Virgin. (5) Murder of S. Thomas (Becket), from Nave. (6) From Lady Chapel. (7) From Choir. (8) and (11) Heads popularly identified with Edward III and Q. Philippa. (10) The Virgin and her Coronation. (See Prideaux and Shafto, "Bosses and Corbels of Exeter Cathedral.")] They consist of figures and foliage, and the variety of subjects chosen is no less surprising than the skill the artists have shown in the realization of their ideas. Whether they are peculiar to Exeter or not, it may be safely said that one could not easily find their equals either in design or execution. The subjects treated are too numerous for detailed treatment in this place, but the carving of vines and acorns and oakleaves will be readily admired. [Illustration: THE MINSTRELS' GALLERY. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] The nave has seven bays, and the arcades are supported by clustered pillars of Purbeck marble, showing various tints of blue and grey. There are sixteen shafts in each pier corresponding with the eight subordinate mouldings in each pair of arches, and the diagonal position of each cluster adds much to its graceful appearance. In the retro-choir there are earlier examples of this kind of pier, showing how the builders experimented with the grouping of the shafts before they attained the perfect proportions of the pillars in the nave and choir. It seems that they utilized the Norman pillars as the central core round which to group the Purbeck shafts. The triforium, in groups of four arches, is unusually low, and rests on small clustered columns, broken in one place only on the north side to make way for the Minstrels' Gallery. #The Minstrels' Gallery.#--This is the most beautiful gallery of its kind to be found in England, its twelve decorated niches containing figures of musicians. The musical instruments represented include the cittern, bagpipe, hautboy, crowth, harp, trumpet, organ, guitar, tambour, and cymbals, with two others which are uncertain. The tinted figures of the angels, standing out against an orange-coloured background--each in a separate niche with an elaborately carved canopy--playing upon the various instruments, are admirably carved and most graceful in form and arrangement. The two niches on either side of the gallery contained figures of St. Mary and St. Peter; the niches are supported by corbelled heads of Edward III and Queen Philippa. Edward III created the Black Prince Duke of Cornwall in 1337, and made the city of Exeter part of the duchy. "The city," according to Izacke, "being held of the said duke, as parcel of the dutchy, by the fee farm rent of twenty pounds per ann." To this connexion has been traced the erection of the gallery, for such duchies "were territorial realities," and the prince would be received by minstrels chaunting in the gallery whenever he paid a visit to his feudal dependency. It is asserted that it was first used after the battle of Poictiers, when the Black Prince brought with him to England, visiting Exeter _en route_ for London, the captured French King. But Professor Freeman thinks the Duke did not pay a visit to Exeter at that time, and that local tradition refers really to a later date when "he came home as a sick man" not long before his death. The lofty character of the clerestory above the gallery, and set somewhat farther back, is remarkable. The tracery of all the windows is of the best type of the fourteenth century and is unrivalled by that of any other English cathedral of similar date. In their main features the opposite windows are alike, though they vary in detail. [Illustration: BAYS OF NAVE, WITH THE MINSTRELS' GALLERY (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826).] [Illustration: THE 'PATTESON' PULPIT. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] #St. Radegunde's Chapel.#--On the south side of the main entrance and within the thickness of the western wall is the chapel of St. Radegunde, one of the most interesting in the cathedral. As early as 1220 a deed belonging to the Chapter makes mention of this chapel "within St. Peter's cemetery," and is dated in the mayoralty of one Turbest and attested by the then bishop, Simon de Apuliâ. Grandisson, in accordance with the custom of his day, while completing the work of transforming the cathedral, looked out for a suitable place of burial for himself. He chose this chapel, and in 1350 the Fabric Rolls contain a reference to the glazing of the windows and the better securing of them with nine bars of iron. In accordance with a clause in his will, "Corpus vero meum volo quod sepeliatur extra ostium occidentale Ecclesiae Exon. ita celeriter sicut fieri poterit," his remains were placed under the low arch in the east of the chapel. Here they lay for many years, but in the later years of Elizabeth, apparently without creating any public indignation, his tomb was rifled and his ashes scattered to the "four winds." There seems to be no good reason why religious fanaticism should have caused the tomb of so great and good a man to be despoiled. Two interesting details are the carved figure of Christ on the roof and the holes in the stones from which the lamps were formerly hung. #St. Edmund's Chapel#, in the north-west corner of the nave, was part of the Norman church, and was incorporated in his new work by Bishop Grandisson. In it is a large font of modern Gothic style, presented in the nineteenth century by Archdeacon Bartholomew. #The Font.#--At the south-west side of the nave stands the chalice-shaped font of white marble, purposely made in 1644 for the baptism of Henrietta Anne, youngest child of Charles I, afterwards Duchess of Orleans, who was born in Exeter during the Parliamentary wars. The font is said to have been made in a fortnight, which may account for the inferior character of the sculpture. But if not of artistic merit, it is certainly of historic interest, and after being set aside for some years, was replaced in its present position in 1891, and is now always used for baptisms. #The Patteson Pulpit# was placed in the nave in 1877. It is of Mansfield stone, and is a beautiful example of modern sculpture. The panels represent the Martyrdom of St. Alban, the embarkation of St. Boniface and his companions for Germany, and the natives of Nukapu, Melanesia, placing the body of Bishop Patteson in a canoe. The Martyred Bishop is shown wrapped in a native mat, a relic still preserved in his family. MONUMENTS IN THE NAVE The great west window was filled with stained glass in 1904 in commemoration of Dr. Temple, Bishop of Exeter 1869, of London 1885, and in 1896 Archbishop of Canterbury. Figures in the lower lights represent the most notable Bishops of Exeter from Leofric to Frederick Temple. The monument under the west window commemorates services and losses of the 1st Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, which, as the 32nd Regiment, greatly distinguished itself during the Sepoy revolt in India in 1857-8. On the north-west is a mural tablet with medallion portrait commemorating Richard Blackmore, the author of _Lorna Doone_, 1825-1900. The three lights of the small window above are filled with stained glass in connexion with this memorial. The corresponding window on the south side was filled with stained glass by Dean Cowie. The largest monument in the north aisle is that to the memory of officers and men of the 9th Lancers who fell during long and distinguished service in India. Farther on is a large brass, of no particular merit, to the memory of the men of the 2nd Battalion of the North Devon Regiment who fell in the Afghan War of 1880-81. It is surmounted by two regimental flags. Above a mural tablet to Lieutenant G.A. Allen is a window of stained glass erected to the memory of the 11th Earl of Devon. The colour scheme is particularly good, and the design, representing Jacob's dream, is not unsuccessful. A plain tablet to the memory of Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the famous musician, is the only other monument in the aisle of general interest. In the same aisle have recently been placed the colours of those battalions of the Devons who served in the great European War, 1914-18. To complete the examination of the nave we must cross to the south aisle, in the first bay of which is the ancient doorway, probably built by Bishop Bruere, leading into the cloister. At the end of the aisle is the monument of Colonel John Macdonald, who died in 1831, a son of the celebrated Flora Macdonald. The most eastern window of the aisle is filled with stained glass representing four bishops of the Courtenay family. Peter Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter, will be recognized as he holds the great "Peter" bell, his gift to the cathedral, which hangs in the north tower. He is the bishop alluded to by Shakespeare (_Richard III._, Act iv, Sc. 4): "In Devonshire Sir Edward Courtenay, and the haughty Prelate, Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother, With many more confederates are in arms." After the accession of Henry VII., he was translated to Winchester. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] Formerly there was a Courtenay chantry in the last bay of this aisle, corresponding with Bishop Brantyngham's chantry on the north side. These became ruinous and were removed early in the nineteenth century. The Courtenay tomb in the south transept is entirely a restoration. The effigies represent Sir Hugh Courtenay, 2nd Earl of Devon, and Margaret de Bohun, his wife. The great brass of their son, Sir Peter Courtenay, also formerly in the chantry, is now in the south choir aisle: it has been sadly injured by being trodden under foot for many hundred years, and is now protected by matting. He was standard bearer to Edward III. and Richard II., and one of the first Knights of the Garter. The centre window of the south nave aisle is filled with stained glass in memory of those of the Devon Regiment who served in the South African War, 1899-1901. The tablets with their names are in St. Edmund's Chapel. Their flags hang on either side of the window. The large brass tablet, though, like too many of the memorials in the nave, unnecessarily large and far from meritorious in design, is not without interest. It is to the memory of Major-General Howard Elphinstone, V.C., who was drowned off Ushant in 1890. Above a tablet of brass to Hugh, 2nd Earl of Devon, and his wife, is a window erected by Sir Edwin Watkin to the memory of Thomas Latimer. The small window to the left, erected by Dean Cowie in memory of his wife, should be noticed. #North Transept.#--We have already seen that the two great towers of the cathedral were in their nature transeptal from the beginning. But they were quite separated from the body of the church, the arches connecting them being filled in with strongly built masonry, forming a complete wall. But Quivil, wishing to enlarge the interior of the building, took down these walls, and he set about altering the arches and converting them into the same Decorated style to match this work in the rest of the building. He also altered and transformed the Norman chapels that projected on the east side of each transept. In the north transept one window and two narrow doorways still betray their Norman origin. The open galleries in each transept are connected by a passage with the clerestory. This, too, is Quivil's work, and his windows in the two chapels of St. John and St. Paul, easily distinguishable by their wheel-shape, are interesting. Here is Chantry's fine statue of the Devonshire artist Northcote, and a tablet to the memory of the men and officers of the 20th (Devon) Regiment who fell in the Crimea. Visitors will notice with interest a fairly successful mural painting representing the resurrection, the soldiers in armour being drawn with considerable spirit. #Sylke Chantry# is in the north transept. Sylke was a person of considerable importance in his day, and one who deserved and obtained no little honour from his contemporaries. He administered the affairs of the diocese as vicar-general during the absence of Bishop Courtenay, and also during that of Bishop Fox. In 1499 he was made precentor, and held that office till his death. The priests, grateful for the efforts he had made to further their comfort, decided to keep his obit. The abbot and convent of St. Mary of Cleeve, in Somersetshire, willing to show their sense of obligation to him and Canon Moore, gave yearly to the Dean and Chapter the sum of £6 13s. 4d. to be spent in celebrating their anniversary. Sylke's tomb represents a very ghostly figure with the epitaph, "Sum quod eris, fueram quod es, pro me, precor, ora." The chantry is in the style of the later Gothic, and is one of those "final touches" to the cathedral Archdeacon Freeman esteems so happily imparted to it. The ancient works of the thirteenth-century clock, upon the north wall, have been placed in this chantry, the machinery being in motion though it does not now work any part of the actual clock. The various parts are of different dates; the oldest wheel has been working more or less regularly for about 700 years. The dial represents the sun and moon revolving round the earth in the centre, the varying phases of the moon being indicated. #St. Paul's Chapel# is on the east side of the north transept. Attributed to the time of Marshall or his immediate predecessors. On the tiles are the arms of Henry III.'s brother, Richard of Cornwall, who was elected King of the Romans. It is used as a vestry for the lay choral vicars. #South Transept.#--Opening from the east wall is the #Chapel of St. John the Baptist#. It corresponds with that of St. Paul in the north transept. Some of the glass in the windows was placed there at the restoration of 1870. The screen dividing it from the transept is Oldham's work. The chapel is now furnished for private meditation and prayer. [Illustration: THE TRANSEPT, NORTH, SHOWING THE ORGAN AND CLOCK. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] #Chapel of the Holy Ghost.#--This, one of the most ancient parts of the cathedral, lies between the south tower and chapter house. It occupies the place of the passage known as the slype in monastic churches. The plain stone barrel roof should be noted. It is now used as the choristers' vestry. The south transept contains a very interesting collection of monuments. #Monuments in South Transept.#--On the east wall a shallow recess, in which are set some fragments of sculpture, is traditionally described as the tomb of Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter. Hoker thus tells the story: "This Leofricus died an. 1073, and was buried in the cemetery or churchyard of his own church, under a simple or broken marble stone; which place, by the since enlarging of his church is now within the South Tower of the same, where of late, anno 1568, a new monument was erected to the memory of so good, worthy & noble a personage, by the industry of the writer hereof but at the charges of the Dean & Chapter." In the corner at the south-east is the grave of Bishop John the Chaunter, who died in 1191. He was for thirty years precentor of the cathedral, and was consecrated bishop by Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, "preacher and pilgrim of the Crusade," and a native of Exeter. Bishop John assisted at the coronation of Richard I. He held the see for six years. Sir Peter Carew, whose mural tablet is a conspicuous feature, was buried at Waterford in Ireland. He is one of the most distinguished members of an ancient western family. On the Whitsunday of 1549, the village of Samford Courtenay rose in revolt against the new prayer-book that Edward VI. had ordered to be used in the churches, and the whole diocese speedily followed the lead. The people swore that "they would keep the old and ancient religion as their forefathers before them had done." Sir Gawain Carew, Sir Peter Carew, and Sir Thomas Dennis, the sheriff, were busy in stemming the tide of rebellion. Efforts at compromise were useless. The people bitterly demanded the old religion, and called the new form of worship "a Christian game," while the Cornishmen declared that they, since "certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse the new English." Early in July the malcontents set siege to Exeter. The wealth of the civic dignitaries stimulated the besiegers, who summoned the city to surrender three times, vowing that "they would enter by force and take the spoil of it," were their demands refused. There was discontent and plotting within the walls, and food gave out. Many were eager to let in the rebels, and Hoker records that "but two days before the delivery of the city," the malcontents paraded the streets, crying out: "Come out these heretics and twopenny bookmen! Where be they! By God's wounds and blood we will not be pinned in to serve their turn: we will go out and have in our neighbours; they be honest good and godly men." But the principal citizens, though nurtured in the old faith, held out grimly for the king. The siege was raised by John, Lord Russell, whom Sir Peter had hastily summoned from Hinton St. George, in Somersetshire. Food was supplied to the city "by the special industry and travels of a thousand Welshmen under Sir William Herbert." Sir Peter, on his arrival in London, was threatened with hanging by the Lord Protector "as having caused the commotion by burning the barns at Crediton. He pleaded the king's letter under his hand and privy signet." But he escaped with difficulty, though he obtained from Lord Russell the lands of Winislacre as a reward. Later on he opposed Queen Mary's marriage with the King of Naples, and as Fuller puts it: "This active gentleman had much adoe to expedite himself, and save his life, being imprisoned for his compliance with Sir Thomas Wyate." He lived an active, reckless life to the last, closing his career by some "signal service" in Ireland. He was a brother of the Earl of Totnes. The handsome Elizabethan monument is to Sir John Gilbert, brother of the more famous Humphrey, and his wife, Elizabeth Chudleigh. He was one of the merchant adventurers and a half-brother of Raleigh. His relations with Exeter were very friendly, the merchants being keenly interested in maritime discoveries, for they hoped in far away Asia to get a new market for their cloth. Heroes of later days are not forgotten in this gallant company, and a tablet on the east wall commemorates the men of the 32nd Regiment (Cornwall Light Infantry) who fell in the Indian Mutiny. The colours of the regiment show the names of Waterloo and Lucknow. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE NAVE IN THE LAST CENTURY (FROM A PRINT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM).] #The Choir Screen.#--This is the work of Bishop Stapledon, and was probably completed about 1324. The Dean and Chapter anticipated the admiration which this screen would cause in after ages, and we read that they presented William Canon, the executor of the marble work, "£4, out of their courtesy." High above the screen, as we learn from the Fabric Rolls, the rood with Mary and John rested on an iron bar. [Illustration: CHOIR SCREEN, LOOKING N.E. (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826).] The paintings within the panels above the beautifully carved spandrils have little interest or merit, though it is thought that they date from the same period as the screen itself. It is difficult, however, to believe that they can be so old, or that such good and bad work could belong to the same period. James I. introduced into the foliage of the spandrils the rose and thistle; but this uncalled-for emendation was summarily removed in the year 1875. The side arches of the screen were at one period filled up with thick walls, and two strong doors barred the arch of entrance, but this was altered by the restorers in 1875. #The Organ# was originally built by John Loosemore about 1665. In its existing form it is an enlarged reconstruction by Messrs. Willis, the old instrument being incorporated in it as a choir-organ. The organ case, which was an elegant specimen of Renaissance woodwork, has also undergone alteration and renovation. #The Choir.#--If the chief glory with regard to the exterior of the cathedral remains undoubtedly with the designer and builder of the great towers, the choir, the work of Bytton and Stapledon, is no less certainly the supreme glory of the interior. The Norman choir reached no farther than the third bay, counting from the choir screen. Traces recently discovered seem to prove that it had an apsidal termination. Bishop Marshall, in completing Warelwast's work, added four bays and destroyed the triple apse. It is also possible that, as the transition period to Early English was in its birth, some of the vaulting was pointed. Bytton converted the choir as left by Marshall into the Decorated style, inspired to the work by the success which had attended Quivil's efforts in the easternmost bay of the nave. The whole work--the transformation of the choir with its aisles--took about fifteen years to complete, the speed and skill with which it was accomplished being due to the fact that the task was not entirely in the hands of one body of labourers. It seems to have been divided into two portions, at which the builders worked simultaneously. Admirable as Quivil's work in the nave had been, that of Bytton in the choir is an improvement. Doubtless he had learnt something from the difficulties his predecessor encountered, and knew how to avoid them. At any rate, he pushed forward the work with great vigour and boldness. He formed his pillars of horizontal sections of Purbeck marble from nine to fifteen inches thick: five boutelles on each side presenting "the appearance of twenty-five shafts bound in one." In the pavement of the choir more than ten thousand tiles were used. For the vaulting of the choir, also his work, though the honour due to him has till lately been denied, he procured quantities of Portland stone. Material for bases and capitals was imported also from Portland: the entry in the Fabric Rolls runs: "For the purchase of 18 great blocks of stone at Portland for the keys or bosses, together with 60 bases and capitals, including carriage by sea £4 16 8." The colouring of the keystones was due to Stapledon in the first year of his episcopate. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] [Illustration: THE CHOIR BEFORE RESTORATION (FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER CHARLES WILD).] Between 1870 and 1875 the choir underwent very extensive repairs. For the most part they were successful, and if in particular instances objection may be taken, it would be hyper-criticism to detract from their value. Wherever possible, the stone was taken from the quarries used by the first builders. The Purbeck marbles especially had severely suffered, and the mouldings and bases ruthlessly destroyed for the better accommodation of the wainscoting to the stalls; moreover, the differences in the nature of the stone were rendered null by a hideous yellow wash with which they had been lavishly besprinkled. During the restoration the corbels and roof-bosses were cleaned and carefully repaired. These, though of the same character as those in the nave, are both richer and more varied in design and more skilfully carved. #The Choir Stalls.#--The stalls are entirely modern, and the work of Sir Gilbert Scott. Originally, no doubt, they were similar in style to the bishop's throne, one of the most admirable of Stapledon's additions to the cathedral. They were probably surmounted with canopies, with an open arcade of stone behind them. The modern designer has so constructed his stalls as to bear out this idea, since as far as possible they are meant to replace the earlier ones. The misericords of Bishop Bruere have been placed beneath the seats. These misericords have not their equal in England. They are richly carved, representing foliage, wild beasts, an elephant, men fighting, others playing musical instruments, and legendary monsters. The introduction of an elephant proves that these misericords were not completed until after Bruere's death in 1244; the elephant having been first brought into England in 1255. There is also a representation of a knight in a swan-boat, showing that the legend of Lohengrin was known in England. #The Reredos.#--This, too, is modern work, and most successfully has Earp carried out the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott. It is of alabaster, inlaid with agate, carnelian, and jasper. In the centre of the three compartments into which it is divided is the Ascension, the other two groups representing the Descent of the Holy Ghost and the Transfiguration. As the work has met with considerable opposition, it is well to remember Archdeacon Freeman's words, he having the best of all rights to speak. "With its delicate canopies of alabaster, and sculptures wrought in bold relief, its inlay of choice marbles, its redundance of costly stones, and its attendant angel figures, it enshrines a multitude of ideas well harmonizing with its place and purpose." The ancient altar of Stapledon's has long since disappeared. This was mostly of silver, the mensa only being of marble. In the monument of Leofric, erected by Hoker, the historian, was found a large slab of marble marked with crosses. This possibly was a portion of Stapledon's altar destroyed by an Order in Council, 1550 (see below, p. 69). #The Bishop's Throne# was Stapledon's work, erected in 1316. It is notable for not having a single nail in it, being entirely fixed together with wooden pegs. This "magnificent sheaf of carved oak," as it has been called, rises to the height of fifty-seven feet. The carving shows foliage and finials of great beauty, and beneath the canopies are angel figures bearing the insignia of the Bishop's office. On one side the chalice and Host of blessing; on the other, the bell, book, and candle that conveyed the Bishop's curse. At the date of the 1870 restorations the throne was in a very defective state. It had been covered with brown paint, and the lower panels were not a little damaged. There are traces of ancient colouring still, but only the paintings at the base have been renovated, which commemorate the quartette of famous bishops, Warelwast, Quivil, Stapledon, and Grandisson, and were, no doubt, somewhat later than the throne itself. Originally the niches of the tabernacle work were filled with figures, but these have disappeared. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] [Illustration: SEDILIA IN THE CHOIR. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] #The Sedilia.#--It is natural after an examination of the throne in wood to turn to Stapledon's equally splendid achievement in stone. The sedilia were most carefully restored under Sir Gilbert Scott. There are three arches, each ten feet high, of openwork, above which is a rich display of tabernacle work. The niches once contained statues, for the sockets are visible. The carving, extraordinarily skilful and intricate, consists of leaves and animals' heads. Like much of the carving in the cathedral that is attributed to this date, it was the work of De Montacute, a French artist. The seats are divided by metal shafts, the terminal divisions being supported by lions. It has been contended that these lions are of considerably earlier date than the rest of the work; but there is no evidence to go upon except a fancied resemblance to Early English work. There seems no reason why Stapledon should not have chosen lions as a fitting decoration, and carved them in a style more or less traditional. Three small heads are carved on the back of the sedilia, the centre one being that of Leofric, and on either side the heads of Edward the Confessor and his wife Eadgytha. It will be remembered that they were present, with their whole court, at the installation of Leofric. The central seat is known as Leofric's stone, on which he is traditionally said to have sat, and there is an entry in the year 1418 recording that twenty pence was paid "for writing on the stone of my Lord Leofric." On the triforium arcading, just over the sedilia, the heads of Leofric, Edward, and Eadgytha are repeated. The decoration of the choir vault is by Messrs. Clayton and Bell. The attempt to give life to the roofing by gilding the bosses and painting the ribs red and blue and gold, while the ground colour is a dull white, is not without merit. #Pulpit in Choir# of Devon marbles and alabaster, erected in 1871. The beautifully carved panels represent our Lord blessing the children; the Sermon on the Mount; St. Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost; St. Paul at Athens; and St. Paul before Festus. #The East Window.#--Henry de Blakeborn, a canon of the cathedral, enlarged "this Gable window in the Perpendicular style." Although it was damaged a good deal in Cromwell's time, much of the old glass remains. The shields on the upper part of the window are modern, but those at the bottom are those of the first bishops and benefactors. The three centre figures in the lowest row were added in Brantyngham's day. [Illustration: PULPIT IN THE CHOIR. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] [Illustration: ST. JAMES' CHAPEL (DRAWN BY H.P. CLIFFORD).] #St. James' Chapel.#--In the aisle on the south of the choir. In the north aisle immediately opposite is the companion chapel of St. Andrew. It will be noticed how frequently one part balances another throughout the building. These chapels are partly Marshall's work. When the apsidal chapels were pulled down at the time the apse was destroyed, Marshall built the present chapels of St. James and St. Andrew. Bronscombe altered them considerably, and the first item in the Fabric Rolls is, "for 3 windows for St. James Chapel 8s. 9d.; for glass 16s." This is the last year of Bronscombe's episcopate, and proves he had, at any rate, almost finished the renovation of this chapel. The most noticeable features are the upper chamber, and the magnificent but half-destroyed monument popularly known as Leofric's tomb. The chapel contained two altars, one dedicated to St. James and the other probably to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Nearly opposite this chapel are the effigies of two knights, dating from the fourteenth century; their cross-legged attitude leading to the erroneous notion that they were Crusaders. They probably represent Humphrey de Bohun, father of Margaret, wife of Hugh Courtenay, 1332, and Sir Arthur Chichester of Raleigh, 1301. Old histories describe armorial bearings painted on their shields, but these have long since perished. #St. Andrew's Chapel.#--Opposite to, and corresponding with that of St. James'. It was Marshall's work originally, like its fellow chapel, being a substitute for one of the old apsidal chapels of the Norman choir. Stapledon completed the renovations so as to make it a parallel to Bronscombe's restored chapel of St. James. The detached shafts are clearly an imitation of the earlier bishop's work. The chapel contains an upper chamber, formerly used as a muniments room. The chapel originally contained altars to St. Andrew and St. Catherine. In 1305 is an order of Bytton's that chantry services should be held here for Andrew de Kilkenny, late dean, and others. Among the names we find that of Henry de Kilkenny, who was at the time of Bytton's order still living, and a canon of the cathedral. [Illustration: ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL (OR SPEKE'S CHANTRY). DRAWN BY H.P. CLIFFORD.] #The Ambulatory.#--Between the high altar and the Lady Chapel is the ambulatory. It is noticeable that the shafts differ from those in other parts of the building. The north and south windows are of the time of Bishop Bruere (thirteenth century). The architecture throughout the retrochoir is Early Decorated. Two old oak bible-boxes are attached, one to each pillar: though ugly and clumsy they are distinctly interesting. The windows are modern and excellent. Messrs. Clayton and Bell have seldom done anything better. The colours are quite admirable and well blended. Two monuments of Jacobean work are well worthy of attention. Concerning the subject of one, Jacob Railard, there is nothing to be learnt; but the other, John Bidgood, was "one of the most accomplished and beneficial physicians of his age," and was born in 1623. He was deprived of his fellowship at Exeter College in 1648 "for drinking of healths to the confusion of Reformers." Like many another good man he had to suffer for his loyalty. He obtained his doctor's degree at Padua and won a great reputation as a skilful and humane practitioner. With the Restoration he obtained his Oxford degree but continued to practise in his native city. He died in his sixty-eighth year. At the north end of the ambulatory is #Speke's Chantry#, also called St. George's Chapel. It is of late, and exceedingly rich, Perpendicular work. Oliver notices that in 1657 the east window and altar were destroyed to make a passage "into the great church of St. Peter's-in-the-East, partitioned from West Peter's by a brick wall erected, plastered, and whitened on both sides by Walter Deeble, at the expense of £150." The effigy of Sir John Speke rests in the chapel; the carving behind the figure is very elaborate. His home was at White Lackington in Somersetshire, and he was the owner of Brampford Speke near Exeter. To secure the observance of his and his wife's obit, he endowed the chapel with the "lands, tenements, and hereditaments in Langford, Frehead, and Ashill, in Somersetshire." The north window is to the memory of Archdeacon Bartholomew, and was placed here in 1865. [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL. The Photochrom. Co. Photo.] At the other end of the ambulatory is #Bishop Oldham's Chantry#, dedicated to our Saviour. It was richly restored by Bishop Oldham, who also restored the Speke--or St. George--Chantry immediately opposite. It is to this bishop we owe the "delicate and elegant screening which imparts distance and veiling to all nine chapels and to Prior Sylke's chantry in the north transept." The walls and vaulting are richly decorated, and the panelling and rebus at the north-east corner contain a rebus on the bishop's name (oul-dom), being decorated with owls. In accordance with his object in restoring the chapel, his body was buried there and his effigy lies in a niche of the south wall. Oldham was a part founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, by whose orders the chapel was restored some years ago. He settled the arms of the see--gules, a sword erect in pale argent, pommelled and hilted or, surmounted with two keys in saltire of the last. He was a native of Manchester, founded the grammar school there, and held the post of warden. He was a man of very methodical habits, according to Hoker. He dined regularly at eleven, and supped at five. "To ensure precision he had a house clock to strike the hours and a servant to look after it. Should his lordship be prevented by important business from coming to table at the appointed time, the servant would delay the clock's striking the hour until he knew that his master was ready. Sometimes, if asked what was the hour, he would humorously answer, 'As your lordship pleaseth,' at which the bishop would smile and go away." #The Lady Chapel.#--It has been suggested that this chapel occupies the site of the choir in the old cathedral of Leofric. The earliest mention of it is in a deed of Bishop Bruere's in 1237. It was remodelled by Bronscombe and Quivil. But the "two pointed arches with solid piers--totally different from any others in the Cathedral--dividing the Chapel from the side chapels," though their moulding has been altered very considerably in order to tally with a later style, show evidence of much earlier date. The shafts are of Purbeck marble, and the windows, arranged as in the nave, contain the last importation of glass from abroad, save that in the transeptal windows, used in the cathedral. The bosses in the eastern bay, with the evangelists' emblems and head of Christ, should be noticed. The elaborate fourteenth century reredos is the work of Grandisson. The central niche contained a figure of the Virgin, before which a lamp was suspended. The sedilia and double piscina on the south side are interesting. The Lady Chapel contains several monumental tombs of interest. Beneath the arches conducting to the side chapels are the effigies of Bishops Bronscombe and Stafford. Bronscombe died in 1280, Stafford in 1419; but with a regard to symmetry, which is conspicuous in the cathedral, the earlier effigy of Bronscombe was raised and provided with a new canopy to correspond with Stafford's tomb on the opposite side. Bronscombe lies on the south side, at the entrance to, or the north side of, his chapel of St. Gabriel. The colouring on the effigy must have been uncommonly splendid, and even the remnants of the patterns have not faded out of all beauty. [Illustration: BISHOP BRONSCOMBE'S MONUMENT (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826).] Stafford's tomb is on the north side at the entrance to the chapel of St. Mary Magdalen. It has had to contend with severer enemies than old age, but shockingly as the effigy has suffered, it still preserves something of its original beauty and stateliness. The attitude is simple; the gloved hands of the bishop are joined over his breast in an attitude of prayer. The face is thin and ascetic, its saintly austerity being rendered more noticeable owing to the rich mitre that crowns the head. The folds of the robe are managed with a consummate simplicity and skill. In Leland's "Itinerary" the bishop's epitaph is preserved: "Hic jacet Edmundus de Stafforde intumulatus, Quondam profundus legum doctor reputatus, Verbis facundus, Comitum de stirpe creatus, Felix et mundus Pater hujus Pontificatus." #Tomb of Sir John and Lady Doddridge.#--Sir John Doddridge came of an old Devonshire family, for in 1285 one Walter Doddridge and his wife surrendered to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter a right of entrance into the close from their house in High Street. Fuller says of him that it were "hard to say, whether he was better artist, divine, Cure, or Common Lawyer, though he fixed on the last for his publick Profession." He was second justice of the King's Bench, and gained great renown as a judge of stern integrity. Sir John was three times married, the lady whose effigy is here represented being his third wife, Dorothy, daughter of Sir Amias Bampfylde. She died in 1615. Sir John, who became a judge of the King's Bench, lived till 1628. He won the nickname of the "sleepy judge," for he always closed his eyes in court, the better to keep his attention fixed on the case. The monument is very elaborate, and if not beautiful is well worth attention on account of its technical qualities and the probable accuracy of its representation. The dress of Lady Dorothy Doddridge exhibits a good example of costume; the skirt embroidered with pansies and carnations; the ruff and cuffs showing old Devonshire "bone lace." It was no doubt copied from one of the lady's actual gowns. On the south side of the Lady Chapel are two most interesting monuments of early bishops. That towards the east has been assigned to Bartholomew Iscanus (1161-84), but in all probability it represents one of his far earlier predecessors. The sculpture is almost archaic in style, the mitre low, the face bearded, and the type extraordinarily Byzantine. The left hand holds the pastoral staff, the point of which impales a winged dragon, with a sphinx-like head, at his feet. In the angles of the archway at the tomb are the figures of two angels with censers. The other tomb is that of Simon de Apulia (d. 1223). It presents a great contrast to that just described. The great advance made in the art of sculpture is noticeable in the more human character of the face, which is clean shaven, and the more skilful management of the hands. The artist, too, seems to have courted difficulties, for the bishop's robe and mitre are richly jewelled, and the foliage and animal at his feet, though conventional, are most elaborately designed. [Illustration: SCREEN OF ST. GABRIEL'S CHAPEL.] #Bishop Peter Quivil# (1291).--This tombstone in the centre of the pavement was restored here in 1820 on the representation of Mr. John Jones of Franklyn; the cross and letters were re-cut under his directions. The epitaph is "Petra tegit Petrum, nihil officiat sibi tetrum," and Westcott in his "View of Devon" writes, "which verse was written in an ancient character, each letter distant from the other at least four inches; so that this short verse supplied the whole large circumference, and cost me some labour in finding out and reading it." Certainly this is one of the most interesting memorials in the cathedral; indeed, it may be well considered the most interesting, for it is dedicated to the man by whose genius the whole great design was begotten. Its simplicity is noteworthy. But Quivil required no elaborate sepulture; the cathedral itself is his mighty monument, since it was he who founded-- "A fane more noble than the vestal trod-- The Christian's temple, to the Christian's God."[4] [4] Richard Clarke Sewell, 1825, Magdalen College. #St. Gabriel's Chapel.#--This chapel was transformed by Bishop Bronscombe (1257-80). The vaulting has been recoloured in conformity with the ancient tints and patterns. The chapel contained several monuments, but these have been removed to other parts of the cathedral. Bronscombe transformed the chapel that it might be used for his burial place. St. Gabriel was his patron saint, and he caused the day of the archangel to be celebrated with honours similar to Easter Day and Christmas Day. There is some old glass in the windows. Note the kneeling figure of the bishop with the scroll: "O Sancte Gabriel Archangele, intercede pro gratia." The skilful restoration of the south window with pieces of old glass is one of the most happy results of later work in the cathedral. The altar slab marked with five crosses, appears to have been used in Leofric's monument, where it was found in the last century. It was placed here by Dean Cowie. #St. Mary Magdalen Chapel#, first mentioned in the Fabric Rolls for 1284. It was probably Marshall's work originally, Bronscombe further improved it, and Quivil entirely remodelled it. With the exception of the Perpendicular screen shutting it off from the north aisle, it is of the same date as the Lady Chapel. The north window is Bronscombe's work, and the still finer east window, containing a good deal of the early fifteenth-century glass, is Quivil's. The chapel originally contained an altar to St John the Evangelist and a figure of the Magdalene, for in Bishop Lacy's register are the words, "extra vestibulum coram ymagine Sanctae Marie Magdalene." On the floor of the chapel is a brass to Canon Langton, dated 1413. He was a cousin of Bishop Stafford. He is represented kneeling, clothed in a most rich cope and alb, on which is designed the Stafford knot. His hands are met in prayer. The epitaph only gives the date of his death, and refers to his relationship with the above-named bishop. In this chapel also is a magnificent monument to Sir Gawain Carew and his wife, and their nephew, Sir Peter. It is in two parts: on the upper lie the figures of Sir Gawain and his dame, on the lower that of the more famous nephew, with his legs crossed, an unusual position for a figure on so late a tomb. Sir Peter and his uncle took an active part in quashing the rebellion that disturbed the western counties in the reign of Edward VI. The former died at Waterford, in Ireland, 1575. Sir Peter Carew sat on the King's Commission of 1552, which summoned the Dean and Chapter to the bishop's palace, "then and there to answer all demands and questions concerning the jewells plate and other ornaments of your cathedrall churche." In 1857 the monument was admirably restored by the members of the Carew family, the whole being gilded and coloured. TOMBS IN THE CHOIR AND CHOIR AISLES. The first tomb to notice on the north side of the choir is that of the murdered bishop, Stapledon. The canopy was judiciously restored at the beginning of the century. From beneath it one observes a great image of Christ, the pierced hands raised to bless. The wounded feet stand upon a sphere, possibly to represent His dominion over the world, and an insignificant earthly king, in scarlet robes, seems to take refuge in the shadow of the Saviour. Beneath the canopy lies the figure of the bishop, grasping the crozier in his left hand and a book in his right. The keys upon his sleeve represent the arms of the see. Above the monument the arms of the bishop figure on the choir screen, and over the tombs of Lacy and Marshall the same plan has been observed. This screen was erected about the close of the fourteenth century. Below the sacrarium, on the north, are the tombs of the Elizabethan bishop, William Bradbridge, and that of Bishop Lacy (1420-55). His arms, "Three shovellers heads erased," may be seen on the screen work above it. The tomb is despoiled of the brass that once adorned it--said to have been taken out by the Reformation Dean, Simon Hayes (who also despoiled St. Radegunde's Chapel), because pilgrims resorted to Lacy's tomb, and regarded him as a saint. The next tomb, that of Marshall, is of peculiar interest, and it is unfortunate that a good view is not easily attainable. It has been pointed out by a specialist that the ornament on the chasuble is almost unique, reminding one of the foliage in Early English work. The medallions at the side are especially interesting. At the west, near the Speke Chantry, is the remarkable monument, generally supposed to be the tomb of Sir Richard de Stapledon, an elder brother of the great bishop whose tragic death we have already described in the first chapter of this book. He was a lawyer and one of his Majesty's judges. Prince's quaint description of his tomb is worth quoting in full: "In a niche in the wall is a monument erected to his Memory, representing his Figure lively cut in stone sitting on horseback; where is cut out also in the same, a cripple taking hold of the foreleg of his horse: which seems to confirm the Tradition, That a certain Cripple, as Sir Richard was riding into the City of London with his Brother, lying at the gate, laid hold on one of his Horse's Fore-legs, and by crossing of it threw Horse and Rider to the Ground; by which means he was soon slain; and that from this occasion the place obtain'd the name of Cripple-gate, which it retains to this day." It is a pity so quaint a story belongs to the realm of legend, for there is no substantial proof forthcoming of its truth. [Illustration: TOMB OF BISHOP STAPLEDON.] The next monument on this side is an emaciated figure, or _Memento Mori_, a gruesome style popular in the fifteenth century. It may have been intended for a cenotaph of Bishop Bothe, the legend, nearly erased, at the top, being the same as that on his brass in the church of East Horsley, Surrey, where he is buried. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF BISHOP MARSHALL (FROM BRITTON'S 'EXETER,' 1826).] The monument to Anthony Harvey of Colomb John is of no great interest, being poorly designed. Its date is 1564. Harvey was steward of the abbeys of Hartland, Buckland, and Newenham at the time when the religious houses were suppressed. He is said to have amassed very considerable wealth; for, in addition to the profits derived from the spoliation of the above monasteries, he received from Henry VIII considerable lands belonging to the abbey of Tewkesbury, which he sold, probably most advantageously, to a clothier of Crediton. Harvey was connected with the Carews through the marriage of his daughter, and heiress, with George Carew, Dean of Exeter, the notorious pluralist. Their son, Harvey's grandson, was created Earl of Totnes, but died without issue. At the west end of the south aisle is the monument of Bishop Gary (1621-26) and a mural tablet commemorating Robert Hall, eldest son of Bishop Hall, and treasurer of the cathedral. To him Exeter owes a perpetual debt of gratitude, for, when the city surrendered to Fairfax in 1646, he took down the Bishop's Throne and concealed it (buried it according to local tradition), and after the Restoration was able to re-erect in its proper place the most magnificent Bishop's throne in England. Neither the effigy of Bishop Cotton (1621) nor the angel resting on the sarcophagus of Bishop Weston--a typical Georgian monument--are of much intrinsic merit. Flaxman's statue to General Simcox, the hero of the Queen's Rangers in the American War, is the only other notable monumental achievement in the south choir aisle. The Peter, or Great Bell, of Exeter is said to have been a gift of Bishop Courtenay's. This opinion is very much disputed, as the Fabric Rolls show that there were bells here in the time of Edward II. As early as 1351 is an entry of 6s. for mending the Peter Bell. Again in 1453, twenty-five years before Courtenay was created bishop, mention is made of the spending of twenty pence "in una bauderick pro Maxima Campana in Campanili Boreali." Oliver, however, acutely points out that this last entry is dated the very year that Courtenay was appointed Archdeacon of Exeter, and suggests that "on that occasion he may have offered such valuable presents." On the 5th November, 1611, the bell was crazed, but was recast in 1676. Its reputed weight is 12,500 lb. If this is correct, it is the second largest bell in England. Great Tom of Christ Church, Oxford, is more than 5,000 lb. heavier, but it easily exceeds its other rivals, Tom of Lincoln and the Great Bell of St. Paul's, which weigh respectively 11,296 lb. and 8,400 lb. * * * * * #The Chapter House# lies at the south end of the transept beyond the Chapel of the Holy Ghost. The lower part of the room is the original building of the early thirteenth century, between 1224 and 1244, and the face of the wall is decorated with Early English arcades separated by delicate shafts. This building probably had a stone vaulted roof. Lacy heightened it, adding lofty Perpendicular windows; and the whole is completed by a rich tie-beam roof, partly the work of Bishop Bothe (1465-78), whose arms, with Lacy's, are painted on it (see p. 13). The east window, recently restored, contains many coats of arms in ancient glass. Among these is the Austrian eagle quartered with the lion of Bohemia, reminding us that Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, and lord of Rougemont Castle, Exeter, was about 1260 elected King of the Romans, thus associating Exeter with the highest secular honour then known to Europe. #The Cloister.#--Archdeacon Freeman thinks that originally the cloister "was confined to the east side, as a necessary communication between the chapter house and the great south door of the nave." During Stapledon's time a desire had been evinced to enlarge this cloister; and in 1323 there is a record to the effect that eight heads had been carved for vaulting the cloister. In the Fabric Rolls are entries that show the work of building proceeded with some activity and considerable cheapness. Here are a few extracts that are interesting: "Twenty-five horse-loads of sand for the cloister, 9d. A thousand lath nails and healing pins for do. S. Clifford sculpanti 18 capites 3/9: 10 do. 2/-." By 1342 the work was probably finished to the north, and forty years later the whole must have been completed. It has been said that the old cloister was inferior to those of Worcester and Gloucester. But they must have had considerable merit if Mr. Pearson's restoration really represents, and there is little doubt it does, the old structure. It is curious that the cloister, certainly the least offensive and not the most beautiful part of the cathedral, should have suffered so severely at the hands of the Puritans. For on the whole the cathedral proper escaped with but small damage. Professor Freeman, in discussing the alleged desecrations suffered by St. Mary and St. Peter, after the entrance of Fairfax and his army into the city, writes thus: "The account in Mercurius Rusticus, which has given vogue to the common story is wholly untrue." He further adds: "Some fanatic soldier may, indeed, according to the story, have broken off the head of Queen Elizabeth, mistaking her for our Lady. But no general mutilation or desecration took place at this time. And at Exeter, one form of mutilation, which specially affected the west front, was not the work of enemies but of devotees. For ages the country folk who came into the city loved to carry home a Peter stone for the healing of their ailments." It is only fair to add that Archdeacon Freeman refers in very different language to the result of the occupation by the Puritans, but though the decorative portions of the cloister may have suffered, we cannot account for the disappearance of the exterior walls without a better reason for their destruction. It should be noted, however, that in the fifteenth century the Dean and Chapter bitterly complained of the conduct of the Exeter boys, who played "unlawfull games as the toppe, queke, penny pryke & most atte tenys" in the cloister, whereby they were "defowled & the glas windows all to-brost." But at this time the cathedral and municipal authorities were far from friendly to each other. Dr. Oliver writes of the ruins in his day that they "have disappeared with the exception of part of a fluted column at the west corner of the carpenter's shop." With the debris small and mean houses were built. On the 30th of October, 1657, we are given a hint as to what may have been the meaning of this wanton destruction. Apparently the ground set apart for "the convenience of the studious and contemplative" was found to have valuable attributes as a market-place, for on the above day the "Friday cloth market for serges and other drapery" was ordered to be held in this place. Commerce did not triumph for long, though, as only three years later the buyers and sellers were bundled back into South Street. [Illustration: THE EAST GATE, PULLED DOWN IN 1784.] A large number of bosses and carvings of the original structure, discovered during the recent excavations, have been skilfully incorporated by Mr. Pearson in his restoration. Above the cloister is a library containing 8,000 volumes, many of them bequeathed by the late Chancellor Harrington. #The Close.#--This was an important adjunct to all cathedrals in the days following the Conquest. We have seen that on one occasion at least the cathedral church of Exeter was severely bombarded, with the result that the northern tower differs considerably from the southern in places. The church, then, we may presume, was intended to be used, when necessary, as a fortress: but as it was also something else very different, this necessity was rather shunned than courted. Therefore it was customary to separate the church from the world by walls and gates of proved strength. This space so secured formed an outer fortress, against which the attacks of an enemy must, perforce, have been directed first. It placed entirely in the hands of the clergy the defence of their own church, a task they were quite capable of performing with credit; for Matthew Paris tells us of one bishop of Exeter, Bruere, that he displayed activity both "spiritual and temporal" in the Holy Land. The defence of the city, that of the sacred building being thus provided for, was the business of the captains and men-at-arms. The walls and gates of the close have vanished, without leaving a trace of their existence. One privilege, however, yet haunts the place--the corporation have no jurisdiction over it. In the close at the north side of the cathedral has been placed a statue of Richard Hooker, the theologian (1553-1600), author of "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." The "Judicious Hooker" was born in Exeter, and was a nephew of John Vowel, alias Hoker, Chamberlain and Historian of the city. #The Cathedral Library# was founded by Leofric himself. One of his principal reasons for translating the see from Crediton to Exeter being his fear lest the valuable books he had collected should at any time be destroyed by raiders in an unfortified town. When, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir Thomas Bodley, himself a native of Exeter, founded the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Dean and Chapter of Exeter presented to it a large number of books and manuscripts, many of which had belonged to Leofric. Fortunately one volume remained in Exeter, overlooked by owners then unaware of its value, possibly of its very existence. This volume, "The Exeter Book," is the greatest treasure possessed by the Dean and Chapter, being an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, containing almost a third of all the Anglo-Saxon literature that is known. The contents include "Cynewulf's Christus," a poem on the life of our Lord; some legends of saints; and a quaint collection of riddles and jokes. The ink of its writing, nearly one thousand years old, is as fresh as if it had been inscribed but recently. As already mentioned, the muniments room was formerly above St. Andrew's Chapel. At a later date the library was placed in the Lady Chapel, and was thence removed to the chapter house. Towards the end of the last century Canon Cook and Chancellor Harrington left their valuable libraries to the Dean and Chapter, and in order to accommodate the books Dean Cowie restored the south side of the cloister, and built a new library over it. Here may be seen the Exeter Book, the Exeter Domesday, Grandisson's Ordinale, Lacy's Pontifical, and other beautiful examples of illumination. Also the original charter of Edward the Confessor appointing Leofric Bishop of Exeter, signed by the King and Queen, Earl Godwin, and a notable group of Saxon Thanes. Among the printed books are a First Folio of Shakespeare, and the sealed Prayer Book of King Charles II. The library is open to the public after Matins on Tuesdays and Fridays. #The Palace# is a building so closely associated with the cathedral as to demand a brief notice. In it is the chapel of St. Mary, which seems to have been frequently used in preference to the cathedral for the celebration of espiscopal functions. Ordination services were often held within its walls. It was originally built that services might be said there for the repose of the souls of dead bishops of Exeter. A document is quoted by Oliver, in which the parish of Alwyngton is called upon to pay the officiating chaplain a yearly sum of four marks and that of Harberton two. This chapel, now restored, is used for domestic purposes. But at one time it was clearly regarded as pertaining to the cathedral, for the Dean and Chapter, on the festival of St. Faith, presented to it a pair of wax candles. Brantyngham, in 1381, mentions the "fructus et proventus cantariae infra Palatium nostrum Exonie, pro animabus predecessorum nostorum ipsius fundatorum." The old entrance was under the great archway, and battlements, by gracious permission of royalty, surrounded the whole. In the great hall feasts were held for 100 poor people; but the palace now is shorn of a good deal of its grandeur. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1845 decided to rebuild and repair what remained. [Illustration: THE BISHOP'S PALACE. Alfred Pumphrey Photo.] THE DIOCESE OF EXETER. A chronological list of the bishops of the diocese, from the days of Leofric, when the seat of the bishopric was removed from Crediton, to our own day, when the diocese of Truro has been carved out from that of Exeter, is here given briefly, since the more notable holders of the see have been already mentioned in the first chapter. #Leofric# (1046-1072). In 1050 the see was removed from Crediton and the new See of Exeter founded. #Osbern# (1072-1103). No alterations were made to the building during this period. The bishop was admired for his "simplicity of English manners and habits," for although Norman by birth he had been educated in England. #William Warelwast# (1107-1136), a nephew of William the Conqueror, began to demolish the Saxon Church. To him may be attributed the towers, choir, apse, and nave of the Norman building. The story of his blindness, and of his being sent on an embassy to Rome, rests on somewhat slender authority. #Robert Chichester# (1138-1155) was promoted from the deanery of Salisbury at the Council of Northampton. He continued Warelwast's work. #Robert Warelwast# (1155-1160) was a nephew of the former bishop of that name. #Bartholomæus Iscanus# (1161-1184), a native of Exeter, was of humble birth. He is said to have been an enemy of Becket's and was called by Pope Alexander III. "the luminary of the English Church." #John the Chaunter# (1186-1191) continued the buildings which had been suspended during the last episcopate. #Henry Marshall# (1194-1206), brother to the Earl of Pembroke, Marshal of England, was promoted from York, of which cathedral he was dean. He completed the buildings as designed by the first Warelwast. To him we owe the Lady Chapel, the larger choir, the north porch, cloister doorway, and six chapels. He assisted at the coronation of King Richard at Winchester in 1194, and at that of John in 1199. #Simon de Apulia# (1214-1223). But little is recorded of this bishop. He assisted at Henry III.'s coronation at Gloucester when the king was a lad of ten. To him also is attributed the fixing of the boundaries of the city parishes. His tomb is in the Lady Chapel. #William Bruere# (1224-1244) served as Precentor of Exeter before he was made bishop. To him are due the chapter house and stalls in the old choir. For five years he was in the Holy Land, and Matthew Paris writes of his energy and untiring devotion in administering to the wants of his countrymen. #Richard Blondy# (1245-1257). According to Hoker this bishop was the son of Hilary Blondy, Mayor of Exeter in 1227. #Walter Bronescombe# (1257-1280), a native of Exeter, was only in deacon's orders when chosen bishop. He restored the chapels of St. Gabriel, St. Mary Magdalene and St. James. He also founded a college at Glasney and restored "the establishment of Crediton" to much of its former splendour. #Peter Quivil# (1280-1291) was born in Exeter, and a _protégé_ of Bronescombe's. His first preferment was as Archdeacon of St. David's, from whence he was promoted bishop of his native city. He it was who designed the Decorated cathedral and transformed transepts with chapels, eastern bay of the nave, and the Lady Chapel. #Thomas de Bytton# (1292-1307) continued Quivil's work, transforming the choir and its aisles. He was a native of Gloucestershire and had been Dean of Wells. An indulgence of forty days was granted by the Pope, Boniface VIII., three archbishops and five bishops, to all who should pray for his prosperity. The rules he made for the government of the collegiate church at Crediton won general approval. #Walter de Stapledon# (1308-1326) was Professor of Canon Law at Oxford and a chaplain to Pope Clement V. He was killed by a London mob. The transformed choir transepts are his work, and he erected the organ screen, bishop's throne, and sedilia. During his episcopate, also, the cloisters were begun. #James Berkeley# (1326-1327), Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and grandson of William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, died a few weeks after his consecration. #John Grandisson# (1327-1369) was born in Herefordshire, of good family. His long tenure of the see is one of the most memorable chapters in the history of Exeter. The fatal Black Death occurred during his episcopacy, 1348-1369. He inherited the transforming zeal of his predecessors and set his seal on the six western bays of the nave, the great west windows, and the vaulting and the aisles. He completed the north cloister. #Thomas Brantyngham# (1370-1394) was educated at the Court of Edward III., and was a canon of Exeter when chosen bishop. He was a constant adviser of the king, only being released from his privy council and parliamentary duties when his advanced age made them irksome to him. He was very busy in all the affairs of the diocese, but found time to complete the cloisters, east window, and west front. #Edmund Stafford# (1395-1419) came of a greatly distinguished family. He was a canon of York when Pope Boniface IX. advanced him to the See of Exeter. For a time he served the king as Lord High Chancellor. He has been abused by Campbell in his "Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England": but there seems little doubt that he deserved the reputation he certainly got of being learned, grave, and wise, and "very well accounted generally of all men." To him are attributed the canopies over the tombs in the Lady Chapel. #John Ketterick# or #Catterick# (1419) died at Florence a month after his appointment. #Edmund Lacy# (1420-1455), composer of an office in honour of the Archangel Raphael, left a saintly reputation, and pilgrimages were, for long, made to his tomb. According to Canon Freeman he raised the chapter house and glazed the nave windows. #George Neville# (1458-1465) was a son of the Earl of Salisbury. He was Chancellor of Oxford, and only twenty-four when made bishop. Though for several years Lord High Chancellor, and translated to York, he died in disgrace and comparative poverty. #John Bothe# (1465-1478) was the son of a Cheshire knight. He has often, but wrongly, been credited with being the donor of the throne. With more certainty the roof of the chapter house has been acknowledged as his work. #Peter Courtenay# (1478-1486), son of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham, had been Archdeacon of Exeter and Wiltshire, and Dean of Windsor and Exeter before he was appointed Bishop of Exeter. He assisted at the coronation of Richard III., but was none the less translated, for his services, by Henry to the diocese of Winchester. #Richard Fox# (1487-1491), the next bishop, was held in great esteem by Henry VII., whom he represented for a time as Ambassador at the Court of Scotland. He arranged the preliminaries of the marriage of Henry's daughter Margaret with James IV. He was translated to Bath and Wells, then to Durham, and finally to Winchester. He is said to have refused the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury, which his godson, Henry VIII., was anxious he should accept. #Oliver King# (1492-1495) was Bishop of Exeter for a short time only, being translated to Bath and Wells. He began building the Abbey Church at Bath, but did not live to see much of it completed. #Richard Redman# (1496-1501) was translated to Exeter from St. Asaph. He resigned the see on becoming Bishop of Ely. #John Arundell# (1502-1503) was translated from the See of Lichfield and Coventry. He was famous for his benevolence and hospitality. He died after barely two years' tenancy of the western bishopric. #Hugh Oldham# (1504-1519) came of an ancient Lancashire family. A large and flourishing manufacturing town in that county bears his name. He founded the grammar school in Manchester, and on his elevation became famous throughout the west of England for his learning and piety. #John Vesey (Harman)# (1519-1551). A lengthy account is given of this bishop in the first chapter. #Miles Coverdale# (1551-1553) was a famous reformer, and revised Tyndale's translation of the Bible. He was not popular in the diocese, and on Queen Mary's accession was deprived of his see, to the great satisfaction of his flock. #James Turberville# (1555-1559) was deprived of his see on his refusal to acknowledge the ecclesiastical supremacy of Elizabeth. He had been popular in the west of England, where the Reformation was at first heartily disliked. #William Alleyn# (1560-1570). Oliver writes the surname Alley. The diocese was now so poor that he was compelled to reduce the number of canons from twenty-four to nine. Only by accepting the rectorship of Honiton was the bishop himself able to support the dignity of his office. He was the author of several religious books that had considerable popularity in their day. #William Bradbridge# (1570-1578) is said to have speculated largely in agricultural land, and to have died a debtor for a large amount, including £1,400 owed to Queen Elizabeth. Beyond this little is recorded of him except that he lived at Newton Ferrers, of which he held the living _in commendam_, which must have put his clergy to great inconvenience. #John Wolton# (1579-1594). During Wolton's episcopate the revenues were restored to the chapter, the crown reserving to itself the sum of £145 yearly. The priest-vicars, also, received back from the queen the greater portion of their possessions. #Gervase Babington# (1595-1597) was translated from Llandaff. He remained at Exeter but a short time. He seems to have been a favourite with the queen, who took an early opportunity to promote him to the wealthy See of Worcester. #William Cotton# (1598-1621). #Valentine Carey# (1621-1626) had been Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, and Dean of St. Paul's. #Joseph Hall# (1627-1641) was Dean of Worcester when promoted to the See of Exeter. He was a famous theological writer, and was translated to Norwich in 1641. There he suffered a great deal of unmerited persecution, which he bore bravely, though the ill-treatment of his enemies killed him. #Ralph Brownrigg# (1642-1659), Master of St. Catharine's, Cambridge, was bishop in troublous times. He had to retire to a friend's house in Berkshire. He was elected Preacher of the Temple, and was buried at the cost of the Inn. #John Gauden# (1660-1662) was Master of the Temple. His title to fame is as the reputed author of the [Greek: EIKÔN BASILIKÊ]. Being the first bishop appointed after the Restoration, his arrival in Exeter was gladly welcomed by the loyal citizens. But he does not seem to have been a lovable man, and was over-eager for riches. He was translated to Worcester on his complaint of poverty reaching the king's ears. #Seth Ward# (1662-1667) was already popular as dean when he succeeded Gauden as bishop. He cleared the cathedral of the small traders who desecrated the precincts, and gave to his church the finest organ then known in England. He was translated to Salisbury, and became Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. He obtained an enviable reputation for his good sense, piety, learning, and generosity. #Anthony Sparrow# (1667-1676) was Master of King's College, Cambridge, when consecrated bishop. Cosmo III. visited Exeter during his tenancy of the see. #Thomas Lamplugh# (1676-1688) seems to have been a clever politician. By expressing his loyalty to James II., when William had landed at Torbay, he was created Archbishop of York; thereupon he actively supported the Prince of Orange. "My Lord, you are a genuine old Cavalier," was the king's greeting. One hopes the memory of those words troubled the archbishop during his three years' experience of an ill-deserved dignity. #Jonathan Trelawny# (1689-1707) came of a famous Cornish family. As Bishop of Bristol he was already famous, for he was one of the seven bishops whose trial and acquittal hastened the downfall of the last Stuart king. He was translated to Winchester. A popular refrain, wedded to verses by the celebrated parson Hawker, of Morwenstow, keeps his memory alive in the western counties. #Offspring Blackball# (1708-1716) was chiefly and honourably known as a promoter of charity schools. #Launcelot Blackburne# (1717-1724). Of this bishop there is little to record. He was translated to the Archbishopric of York in 1724. #Stephen Weston# (1724-1742). The episcopal registers were now kept for the first time in English. His long reign seems to have been quite uneventful, and probably was, therefore, entirely successful. #Nicholas Claggett# (1742-1746) was translated from St. David's. #George Lavington# (1747-1762). #Frederick Keppel# (1762-1777), a son of the Earl of Albemarle, was a canon of Windsor when appointed Bishop of Exeter. #John Ross# (1778-1792). #William Buller# (1792-1796), of an old west country family, was promoted from the deanery of Canterbury. #Henry Reginald Courtenay# (1797-1803), translated to this see from Bristol. #John Fisher# (1803-1807) was tutor to the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He was translated to Salisbury in 1807. #George Pelham# (1807-1820) was translated from Bristol. After, according to Oliver, "for thirteen years expecting higher preferment," he was promoted to Lincoln. #William Carey# (1820-1830), head master of Westminster School. When he had been ten years at Exeter he was translated to St. Asaph, a curious reversal of the usual proceeding. For although a Welsh bishopric often led to an English one, a change from Exeter to St. Asaph could hardly have been "preferment" in the ordinary sense. #Christopher Bethell# (1830-1831). Exeter, for this bishop also, was merely a stepping-stone between Gloucester and Bangor. #Henry Phillpotts# (1831-1868) was the most famous bishop who has held the see in this century. He restored the palace, which had fallen into a ruined condition. He was energetic about the affairs of his diocese, a born ruler of men, and a scholar of eminence. The story of his episcopate is a well-known chapter to students of the ecclesiastical history of the first half of the queen's reign. #Frederick Temple# (1869-1885), head master of Rugby, 1858-1869; Bishop of Exeter, 1869; translated to London, 1885, and to the Metropolitan See of Canterbury, 1896. #Edward Henry Bickersteth# (1885-1901) was Dean of Gloucester when appointed bishop. Resigned. #Herbert Edward Ryle# (1901-1903) translated to Winchester. On resigning the see of Winchester he became Dean of Westminster. #Archibald Robertson# (1903-1916). Resigned. #Rupert Ernest William Gascoyne Cecil# (1916- ). [Illustration: OLD HOUSES IN FORE STREET. A. Pumphrey Photo.] ROUGEMONT CASTLE AND THE GUILDHALL. It is related that when Gytha fled towards the river and William the Conqueror marched through the eastern gate of the city, claiming it as his prize, he promised the citizens their lives, goods, and limbs. But, although he adhered strictly to his promise, and took care that his victorious soldiers should not pillage or insult the inhabitants, he was well aware of the supreme value of his conquest. The taking of Exeter was practically the taking of all western England. So he determined to make his position impregnable, and to this end set about the building of a castle on the Red Mount. The task was not a hard one: the Norman engineers had little need to display their peculiar ingenuity. Nature had done much, and to her work Briton, Roman, and Englishman had made additions. As Professor Freeman puts it: "The hillside was ready scarped, the ditch was ready dug." Baldwin de Molles was appointed superintendent and commander, and so well did he carry out his trust that within a year the castle was built and the men of Cornwall and Devon had attacked its walls in vain. Perhaps because William had been a merciful conqueror, not despoiling or ill-using the citizens, perhaps because the citizens were afraid, knowing the just man was strong and his hand heavy in anger, the besiegers found no help within the city walls. Henceforth Exeter was for the king. A curious example of its loyalty was shown in the troubled days of King Stephen. Earl Baldwin, from all accounts a cruel and violent man, took arms against the king. Stephen demanded that the castle should be delivered up. For his answer the Earl laid in provisions, and at the head of his followers patrolled the streets of the city threatening vengeance on those who opposed his will. Stephen, speedily apprised by his faithful citizens of these riotous doings, sent two hundred knights to confront the rebel. Later he came himself, and the castle was closely besieged. After three months' heavy fighting the wells in the castle gave out. Deprived of water, Baldwin, who was brave enough, made shift with wine, using it both for cookery and extinguishing the fires. But at last the king was victorious and, not heeding the wise counsel of his brother Henry of Winchester, permitted the followers of Baldwin to "go forth with their goods and follow what lord they would." In 1483, Richard III., fearing that the west favoured the claims of Henry, Earl of Richmond, hastened to Exeter. He was civilly greeted by John Attwill, the mayor. But his coming was not very welcome, nor did his conduct contribute to the gaiety of the inhabitants. In his train was Lord Scrope, whose business it was to try the rebels. None could be found, however, save the king's brother-in-law, St. Leger, and his esquire, John Rame. Richard none the less determined to strike terror into the hearts of all who wavered in their allegiance. So both men were beheaded at the Carfax. This done, the king busied himself in studying the surrounding country, and made careful note of the city and castle. The military strength of Rougemont pleased him, though the name did not. A west country accent, some say, gave it a sound like Ridgemount, too close an echo of his rival's title. The incident is referred to by Shakespeare in these well-known lines: "Richmond! when I last was at Exeter, The mayor in courtesy showed me the castle, And called it Rougemont--at which name I started; Because a bard of Ireland told me once, I should not live long after I saw Richmond." The castle was considerably injured a few years later when Perkin Warbeck, at the head of his Cornishmen, attacked the city. The fight seems to have been a long and furious one. The North Gate was burned, and both there and at the East Gate the rebels were temporarily successful. But after the Earl of Devon and his retinue came to the help of the citizens the rebels were expelled and had to make their way to Taunton, unsuccessful. Henry soon afterwards arrived bringing Perkin Warbeck with him. By his clemency towards the rebels he created real enthusiasm, so that the prisoners "hurled away their halters and cried God Save the King." By the time Charles I. came to the throne the castle was already showing "gaping chinks and an aged countenance." Fairfax and his Roundheads completed the ruin. But it was not war only which left the building as we now see it. An ivy-covered gateway is all that remains. Yet from its summit one has a fine view of the surrounding country, and can readily understand of what strategical value its possession must have been in "battles long ago." [Illustration: ROUGEMONT CASTLE. Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo.] [Illustration: THE GUILDHALL, EXETER. The Photochrom Co. Photo.] The hand of the reformer proved stronger than that of the victorious captain. What war had failed to do enterprising citizens accomplished in times of peace. About the year 1770 the city fathers seem to have been animated by an unholy passion for destruction. Not only was the house of the Earls of Bedford, a house full of historic and majestic memories, pulled down, but the venerable fortress attracted attention. First a gateway, then the chapel, later the castellan's house disappeared. New assize courts, superlatively ugly, proudly rose in their stead. But even then the zeal of the reformers was not satiated. "Ten years later the Eastern Gate, with its two mighty flanking towers soaring over the picturesque house on each side with its wide and lofty Tudor arch spanning the road, its statue of Henry the Seventh, commemorating its rebuilding after the siege by Perkin Warbeck--the gate which was heir to that through which the conqueror made his way--all perished, to the great satisfaction of the Exeter of that day; for 'a beautiful Vista was opened from St. Sidwell's into the High Street, a very great and necessary improvement.'" It is easy to share Professor Freeman's indignation; less easy, unhappily, to persuade men of our own day to deal kindly by the ancient monuments that are still left to us. Another building that has played a notable part in the history of the city is the #Guildhall#, of which the portico makes so pleasing an ornament to the High Street. The building is a picturesque medley, "English windows and Italian pillars," and Professor Freeman wittily suggests that it serves to remind us of the jumble of tongues characterizing "much of the law business that has been done within it." The present building was built in 1464, replacing one of earlier date. There are many pictures of local interest in the hall, and also portraits by Sir Peter Lely of Princess Henrietta, Anne, Duchess of Orleans, and of General Monk. The Princess was born in Exeter, and the portrait was presented to the city by Charles II after the Restoration. General Monk belonged to a Devonshire family whose residence was near Torrington. There seems to have been at one time a guild or confraternity connected with the chapel of St. George, erected over the hall about the last year of Richard III. In the accounts are found entries such as this: "Principae and others for exequis and masses said in the chapel of Guildhall for the repose of the souls for the brothers and sisters of the fraternity of St. George." When Richard III was nearing the end of his reign, the roof was fortified by a gun placed in charge of John Croker and ten soldiers. It is a strange coincidence that the chapel should have been built at this time. Evidently the wise citizens were determined to protect their interests both here and hereafter. DIMENSIONS. Internal length 383 ft. Nave, length 140 ft. " breadth (with aisles) 72 ft. " height 66 ft. Choir, length 123 ft. Transept, length 140 ft. Area 29,600 sq. ft. INDEX Ambulatory, 61. Bell, great, 74. Bishops, list of, 83-89. Bishop's throne, 56. Blackall, Offspring, Bishop, 18. Brantyngham, Th., Bishop, 11. Bronscombe, Walter, Bishop, 4; his tomb, 66. Bruere, Wm., Bishop, 4, 8. Bytton, Thomas de, Bishop, 6, 78. Carew monument, 70. Chapels and Chantries: St. Andrew's, 61. St. Edmund's, 39. St. Gabriel's, 69. Holy Ghost, of the, 47. St. James', 59. St. John Baptist's, 44. Lady, 65. St. Mary Magdalen's, 69. Oldham's, 63. St. Paul's, 44. St. Radegunde's, 36. Speke's, 63. Sylke's, 44. Chapter House, 75. Choir, 52-61. Choir screen, 48. Choir stalls, 55. Clock, 44. Cloister, 75. Close, 78. Corbels and Bosses, 32, 35. Courtenay memorials, 40, 57. Dimensions, 96. Doddridge Tomb, 67. Font, 39. Gauden, John, Bishop, 16. Grandisson, John, Bishop, 10; his tomb, 38. Guildhall, 95. Hall, Joseph, Bishop, 16. Lacy, Edmund, Bishop, 12. Lady Chapel, 65. Lamplugh, Thomas, Bishop, 17. Lechlade, Walter de, Cantor, 6. Leofric, 1st Bishop, 3. Liber Exoniensis, 3. Library, Cathedral, 78. Marshall, Henry, Bishop, 4. Minstrels' gallery, 36. Misericords, 55. Monuments, nave, 39-43; transepts, 44, 47. Nave, interior, 31-43. Neville, George, Bishop, 14. Oldham, Hugh, Bishop, 15, 63. Organ, 52. Palace, 79. Porch, north, 24. Pulpits, 39, 59. Quivil, Peter, Bishop, 5; his tomb, 69. Radegunde, St., chapel of, 36. Reredos, 56. Richard III, at Exeter, 96. Roof, 24; interior, 32. Rougemont Castle, 91. Sedilia, 56-59. Simon de Apulia, Bishop, 4; his tomb, 67. Stafford, Edmund, Bishop, his tomb, 66. Stapledon, Walter de, Bishop, 7-10. Sylke, his chantry, 44. Tombs: Bradbridge, 71. Bronscombe, 66. Stafford, 66. Sir John and Lady Doddridge, 67. Iscanus. 67. Simon de Apulia, 67. Quivil, 69. Marshall, 71. Simcox, 74. Stapledon, 71. Towers, 23. Transept, North, 43; South, 44. Triforium, 35. Vault, 32. Vesey, John, Bishop, 15. Ward, Seth, Bishop, 17. Warelwast, Bishop, 3. West Front, 27-29. William III, at Exeter, 17. Window, East, 59. Windows of nave, 39-43; tracery, 36. * * * * * [Illustration: PLAN OF EXETER CATHEDRAL From Britton's 'Antiquities of Exeter.' #REFERENCES TO PLAN.# A. B. West Doors. C. The Nave. D. D. Nave Aisles. E. Chapel of St. Edmund. F. North Porch G. Transept North (St. Paul's Tower). H. Chapel of St. John the Baptist. I. Canon's Vestry. J. The Choir. K. K. Choir Aisles. L. Syke's Chantry. M. Chapel of St. James. N. Chapel of St. George (Speke's Chantry). O. Chapel of St. Saviour (Bishop Oldham's Chantry). P. Lady Chapel. Q. Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen. R. Chapel of St. Gabriel. T. Transept South (St. Peter's Tower). U. Chapel of the Holy Ghost. V. The Chapter House. Y. St. Paul's Chapel (North Transept). Z. St. Radegunde's Chapel.] * * * * * CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND GRIGGS (PRINTERS), LTD. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. * * * * * BELL'S CATHEDRAL SERIES BANGOR. By P.B. IRONSIDE-BAX. BRISTOL. By H.J.L.J. MASSÉ, M.A. 2nd Edition. CANTERBURY. By HARTLEY WITHERS. 9th Edition. CARLISLE. By C.K. ELEY. 2nd Edition. CHESTER. By CHARLES HIATT. 4th Edition. CHICHESTER. By H.C. CORLETTE, A.R.I.B.A. 3rd Edition. DURHAM. By J.E. BYGATE, A.R.C.A. 4th Edition. ELY. By Rev. W.D. SWEETING, M.A. 5th Edition. EXETER. By PERCY ADDLESHAW, B.A. 5th Edition, revised. 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19444	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. JUNE, 1895. No. 6. RENAISSANCE PANELS FROM PERUGIA. The carved walnut panels from the choir stalls of the Church of San Pietro de' Casinense in Perugia, designed by Stefano da Bergamo in 1535, which are given as illustrations in this number, are excellent examples of the ornament of the later period of the Italian Renaissance. This form of ornament was first used in flat painted panels upon pilasters, such as the well-known work of Raphael in the Loggia of the Vatican, suggested by the Roman work discovered in his time upon the Palatine. It was afterwards applied to all sorts of objects where rectangular spaces were to be decorated. Its characteristics can hardly be better described than in the following extract from Mr. C. Howard Walker's articles upon the Study of Decoration in _The Technology Architectural Review_:-- "The motives on the pilasters were of two kinds: the continuous scroll, starting from a strong base leaf and rising in equal volutes, with alternating direction to right and to left, and filling the panel. This motive needed always to be balanced by its opposite, and was consequently seldom used. It had its prototype in the magnificent scroll from the Forum of Trajan. The other motive was that usually used, and capable of infinite variety, that of a central axis, the ornament diverging from it symmetrically on either side. This motive was borrowed from colored decorations on the Roman walls. It is a most difficult class of ornament to handle, as so much depends upon relative distribution, proportion, and relief of modeling. The motive usually starts at the bottom and grows continuously to the top, with the base, whether a mass of leafage, a vase, or other unit of ornament, well defined and the crowning unit strong and rich. The central axis can be actual or merely evidenced by the symmetry of the sides, preferably actual. To prevent an effect of absolute perpendicular division or of stringiness, this axis, between its base and crown, is divided either by knots of ornament, concentrated masses, or horizontal motives. In making these divisions the rules of cadence need to be carefully observed; the divisions should be made equal in length, or alternate, or in sequence, and the same method should be observed in the units of ornament marking the divisions. In most cases there is more ground than ornament, which always demands that the lines of the ornament should be most carefully studied, and that the units used as terminals for these lines should be exactly disposed, in relation to the axis, to each other, and to the border of the panel. When one considers the number of factors which can enter into the composition of one of these panels, it can be readily conceived that their variety is wellnigh infinite; absolute symmetry on either side of a central axis on which are threaded units of ornament, and which starts from a mass of detail and terminates in a mass of detail; systems of radial lines diverging from the central axis and terminating in centres of ornaments of greater or less size, arranged in all sorts of groupings; garlands, pendants, and ribbons, vases, trophies, shields, birds, beasts, and nondescript combinations, foliage, conventional and natural, forms, human and superhuman, all in varying scales, all in surfaces undulating, now rising into sharp relief with clear-cut edges, now sinking and melting into the background; and the whole so carefully balanced, so exactly distributed, that no portion should be too strong for another, no detail but should be equally refined. It is not an easy matter to succeed in a design of such requirements." "It is well into the latter part of the fifteenth century before this pilaster treatment is prevalent. The Quattrocento work contains much less of it than the Cinquecento. The garlands and trophies, lions' and bulls' heads, dolphins and griffins, tridents and shells and rosettes, and numberless familiar forms appear in a new guise; the new forms being, for the most part, heraldic motives or town arms, such as the fleur-de-lis of Florence, the Biscione or viper of Milan, and lions which are rampant, a condition unknown to their classic prototypes. Shields, though used before, have a new form, and ribbons are developed into all sorts of knots and waving ends, the loops having the same cadences in relative size as other decorative compound motives." [Illustration: XLI. Panel from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLII. Panel from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLIII. Panel from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLIV. Panel from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLV. Panel from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLVI. Panels from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] [Illustration: XLVII. Panels from the Choir Stalls, Church of S. Pietro, Perugia, Italy.] XLI to XLVII. PANELS FROM THE CHOIR STALLS, CHURCH OF S. PIETRO, PERUGIA, ITALY. The principles governing the design of these panels so well explained in the foregoing quotation can all be seen exemplified in the plates. They are all built upon a central axis, and the proportion and distribution of the various motives most carefully studied and beautifully carried out. Although all are shorter than the usual pilaster, the design is exactly similar to that usually employed for this purpose. Even the horizontal panels in plates XLVI and XLVII follow precisely the same rules of design. [Illustration: XLVIII. Panel from the Chamber of Commerce, Perugia, Italy.] XLVIII. PANEL FROM THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, PERUGIA, ITALY. This panel, although from a different building, is so similar in treatment to the ones in the Church of S. Pietro that it can be classed with them, and all that has been said of them applies as well to this. Architectural Schools. It is not many years since there was but one school in America to which a young man could go with the expectation of getting instruction in architecture, or at least where a special course of training was laid out for this purpose. At present there are six well-equipped architectural schools connected with as many colleges, each with its own corps of instructors and each presenting special advantages to students. In addition to these principal institutions there are a number of others in which instruction in architecture is given, either independently or in connection with other courses. To a young man intending to take up the study of architecture this array of opportunities may not appear in exactly the light of an embarrassment of riches, but it furnishes a wide field from which to choose, and it may not be an easy matter to determine which under the special circumstances connected with each case presents the greatest advantages. For this reason a general statement of the main features and practical equipment of the principal schools may be of service in enabling intending students to choose intelligently among them. MASS. INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. The oldest, the most thoroughly appointed, and largest architectural school in the country is the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. It is in charge of Professor Francis W. Chandler, with a corps of ten professors, assistants, and special lecturers. The regular course consists of four years' study. Special students are admitted after satisfying the faculty by examination or otherwise that they are proficient in the preparatory studies required and are qualified to pursue to advantage the special work chosen. The instruction in this department comprises the study of construction and materials, the study of building processes, and of professional practice, as well as that of composition and design, and of the history of architecture. It is arranged to meet the wants both of those who commence their professional studies at the beginning, and to some extent of experienced draughtsmen who desire to make up deficiencies in their training, or to qualify themselves for undertaking the responsibilities of practice. The more strictly professional work begins with the study of the five orders and their applications, and of architectural history. During each year there is regular instruction in freehand drawing, the last year being from life. There is also a special class in pen-and-ink drawing under Mr. D. A. Gregg. Instruction is given in watercolor drawing by Mr. Ross Turner. The students are familiarized with the material elements of their future work by a course in practical construction, illustrated by lectures, problems, and by visits to buildings. The subject of specifications and contracts is discussed. Problems in construction of all kinds are given, to fix in the memory the principles already learned. For two and one-half years the students are continually engaged upon architectural design under the charge of Professor Despradelle and Mr. S. W. Mead. Each student's work is examined and criticized before the classes by a jury from the Boston Society of Architects. The Boston Society of Architects has established two prizes of the value of fifty dollars each in books for students who at the end of the year exhibit the best work. Several thousand photographs, prints, drawings, and casts were originally collected for the Department by means of a special fund raised for the purpose. To these collections large additions have been made, at first mostly by gifts, but later by regular appropriations. Models and illustrations of architectural detail and materials are arranged in the rooms of the department. The chief part of the collection of casts of architectural sculpture and detail belonging to the department has been deposited in the Museum of Fine Arts, together with the architectural collection belonging to the museum. The students of the Department have free access to the museum at all times; as the building is close at hand no inconvenience results from the change, and some of the advanced exercises in drawing are held there. The museum of sanitary and building appliances contains models of plumbing apparatus, specimens of metal work, tile work, glass work, and wood work, partly purchased, but mostly deposited with the Department by the manufacturers. The architectural library contains a large and carefully selected collection of technical works and the leading periodicals, both American and foreign. The resources of the Department have been much enlarged by the erection of a special building devoted entirely to its uses. In 1894 a summer school of architecture was held in Salem and Portsmouth for the study of colonial work. The courtesy of owners of houses built at this epoch allowed the students to measure and sketch the best work of this interesting locality, and in the future it is proposed to make an exhaustive study of colonial architecture. Both men and women are admitted to all departments of the Institute. Candidates for admission must be at least seventeen years of age, and must pass satisfactory examinations in algebra, plane geometry, either French or German, English, history, and either advanced algebra or solid geometry. A detailed account of these requirements and the general conditions of the entrance examinations, which are held the last of June and middle of September, can be found in the catalogue of the Institute, which will be sent upon application by the secretary. The tuition fee is $200.00 a year divided into two payments, $125.00 due in October and $75.00 due in January. During a number of years a special course of two years was maintained in the school, which attracted many students who did not find it possible to spend the time required for the full course of four years. This arrangement has now been discontinued and no special provision is at present made for other than regular students. The Institute has from the beginning modeled its instruction very largely upon that of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and has ranked until the last few years as the only American school in which a thorough academic training in architectural design was attempted. Its professors of design Professor E. Letang, who died in 1892, and Professor D. Despradelle, both Frenchmen, have devoted their whole time to this branch of instruction, and have maintained a standard which until recently other schools have not approached. Although the graduates from the full four years' course are comparatively few, no other school can count so many of its former students in prominent positions in the profession, and the Institute is deservedly proud of its record in this direction. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year 50 cents, in advance Special Club Rates for five subscriptions $2.00 Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * Until the present year no American student of architecture has ever been honored with the diploma of the Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts, but on June 14 the degree of the school was conferred on three Americans--Messrs. J. Van Pelt, J. H. Friedlander, and D. Hale. The first diplomas were awarded in 1869, before that date there being no official recognition of the completion of any required course in the school, except the awards in the various _concours_, all leading up to the Grand Prize of Rome. There are a number of Americans now in Paris who intend to present theses for the diploma, and doubtless other awards will follow those already made. Any present or former student of the school who has reached the required standard in his work is allowed to submit a thesis in competition for the diploma. At the entrance examination of the Ecole this year sixteen American students of architecture were received. Last year there were but eight, which up to that time was the largest number recorded. * * * * * The Chicago Architectural Club has given evidence this year of very great activity, and its work has been directed in many channels and with good effect. Its lectures, classes, competitions, smokers, Bohemian nights, receptions, ladies' nights, expeditions to places of interest, and finally its exhibition of last month have all been excellently chosen to instruct, interest, and amuse its members, and incidentally promote the general cause of architectural education. The long list of attractions has held the interest of its members without flagging. In the classwork it has had the services and advice of the best and most competent men connected with the profession; and in all directions it is to be congratulated upon the good work done. Books. _Æsthetic Principles_: By Henry Rutgers Marshall, M. A. Macmillan & Co. 1895. 201 pages. $1.25. Probably many readers of THE BROCHURE SERIES have struggled as has the writer (and possibly some are still in an unsettled state of mind in consequence) over the abstruseness of the current works upon the philosophy of art, trying to find some obscure foundation on which to build for themselves a theory of æsthetics. To such, and to all others who have any wish to reason connectedly on art matters, Mr. Marshall's little book will be interesting and instructive reading. It is remarkably clear and understandable even to a reader with no special training in metaphysical reasoning, and in point of literary style and carefully considered use of language it is a genuine treat. Its object is to explain, in as direct and simple language as possible, the nature and origin of our ideas of the beautiful, and the logical deduction to be made from the premises, which will guide us in the practice of the fine arts, or the production of beauty of some special type. As Mr. Marshall is an architect, many of his illustrative examples are drawn from architecture, and the book on this account is especially interesting to architects. * * * * * _Rational Building_: Being a translation of the article "Construction" in the _Dictionnaire Raisonnè de l'Architecture Française_ of M. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. By George Martin Huss, Architect. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1895. 367 pages. Illustrated. $3.00. This book, although confined entirely to the consideration of the French Gothic, will be found of great value to students. Many of our readers are of course familiar with it in its original form, while others may have followed the translation as it has appeared from time to time in the pages of the _American Architect_. It will be mainly useful from its historical and theoretical bearing, as all that is here included which is of practical value for application to modern uses can be found elsewhere in more available shape. The illustrations form a most important feature in the usefulness of the book. The remarkable diagrammatic drawings of Viollet-le-Duc are famous for their clearness and the amount of information which they convey. The table of contents includes the following headings: Discussion of General Conditions and Principles; Roman and Romanesque Vaults; Origin of the Pointed Arch; Development of Principles; Vaults; Materials; Thirteenth Century Developments; Civil and Military Construction. * * * * * _Catalogue of the Premiated Drawings of the Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1895._ Published by the Architectural Society. Forty-four illustrations. The work of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is without doubt the most fully developed students' work in architecture now done in this country, and the drawings shown in this catalogue, giving a selection of the best designs from the year's work just finished, do credit alike to the system followed at the school, the fidelity of the instructors, and the earnestness and talent of the students. The premiated designs in the competitions of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects made in the course of regular school work are reproduced in this catalogue, and also the first-mentioned designs in the regular monthly problems forming the drill in design of the school. The program for the latter is given in each case. These problems make up a graded series of considerable interest, and are worth careful study and comparison. Building Exhibit. The many recent developments in the building arts have rendered it practically impossible for those not directly connected with them to keep informed of the latest and most improved methods of construction, or, in fact, to easily obtain information when desired. To architects, whose business it is to be familiar with the best and most economical method of solving any building problem, it is often difficult to find the information desired, as the field is so wide and the inventions and improvements multiply so rapidly. To meet the requirements of intending builders, as well as architects, permanent exhibits of building materials have been established in several of the principal cities of the United States, where it is possible to see specimens of the actual materials, appliances, and latest inventions used in modern construction. There are such exhibits in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn; and all are proving indispensable in their special fields. The Chicago exhibit, known as the Institute of Building Arts, located at from 63 to 69 Washington Street, is owned and managed directly by the Illinois Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and has been controlled in this way for the past five years. It was established for the purpose of centralizing information relating to buildings, and collecting in a permanent exhibition all materials, appliances, or inventions of a practical or ornamental character. Its advantages are: First, educational, by placing before the interested public an aggregation of building intelligence in the form of exhibits of the actual materials, appliances, and inventions employed in modern construction. Second, that in the fact of such centralization of materials, a vast amount of time is saved to the public concerned in building interests. For those who desire to build, information is not only gained regarding a large variety of improvements, but obtained in a minimum quantity of time. The Institute of Building Arts is free to the visiting public, who are welcome to all its advantages of information and to the inspection of the numerous exhibits it contains. It furnishes gratuitously, to any one who may inquire, information relating to building improvements. It maintains a series of tests of materials, the results of which may be obtained by anyone asking for them. Courses of lectures given by skilful specialists instructive in the many sciences and arts of Architecture are given under its auspices. The management of the Institute is strictly impartial as to the merits of the exhibits, having no financial interest in any sale. The purchaser has perfect liberty to examine the exhibits and negotiate with any exhibitor. It is the duty of the management to protect each and every display from any impositions or trespasses on their several rights, and to explain to any inquirer the qualities and merits of the material or invention, as claimed by the exhibitor, but to give no individual expression of views for or against any exhibit. The examiners are to be left perfectly free to judge and accept from their own standpoint. The important work of the Institution has made of it a central point of great interest to all connected with or interested in architecture and its kindred arts, and those who are identified with the work will not fail to be amply repaid for their interest or their labor in its upbuilding. It became necessary a year ago to increase the floor space, and nearly one half as much more space was secured and the rooms are crowded with beautiful and instructive exhibits. The Illinois Chapter, A. I. A., has fitted up a fine library and meeting-room in the Institute, which it throws open to the interested public, who find the many pictures and books therein a great enjoyment and benefit. The other exhibits above referred to are strictly commercial in character, and conducted in the interests of the exhibitors, and consequently may not command the prestige possessed by the Chicago Institute. Nevertheless they are important educational factors in their special localities and are a great convenience to all connected with the building trades. Every large commercial centre should be thus supplied. The success of those already established will doubtless lead to the early establishment of others. Architects and manufacturers both need only to observe the workings of any of the exhibits which we have mentioned to be convinced of their great practical value, and each individual will be enhancing his own interest while contributing to the success of all the others concerned by lending whatever assistance he can to this most praiseworthy enterprise. Notes. An architect cannot work to the best advantage without the best and most convenient appliances. It is true that sometimes the cleverest and most skilful draughtsmen appear least concerned about their instruments and materials, and often produce work showing wonderful dexterity and mastery of technique with the most imperfect working materials. But this is exceptional. After years of study and practice one may be able to produce with the sharpened end of a match, or with a toothpick, drawings which it would tax the skill of an ordinary draughtsman to approach with the best brushes and colors, but it is easy to see that this is no argument why the latest and most improved methods should not be employed. [Illustration] Most architects still hold to the old-fashioned drawing boards supported upon trestles, and mostly from the simple inertia of custom. The improved Morse Universal Drawing Table, which is made in all sizes, with a single or double support, is conceded to be more convenient and ship-shape in all respects than the ordinary drawing board, and is only slightly more expensive in its first cost. The size which is shown in the accompanying illustration which has a board 30x36 inches, costs only $15 and is by far the cheapest and best device of its kind that we have seen. All of these tables are made to fold so as to occupy as little space as possible when not in use; will revolve or incline at any angle, and independently of the attachments below. They are built of the best materials (iron, brass, and wood) and are finely finished. The board can be made of either polished chestnut or unfinished pine if desired, and various additional attachments can be had for further convenience. Architects and draughtsmen will be surprised to find what a saving can be made in time and trouble by the use of this most essential article of furniture, as well as the remarkably low price at which it can be bought. Many other articles of furniture which are necessary for the proper equipment of an architect's office are also manufactured by the Morse Machine Company of Rochester, such as cabinets of various descriptions, desks, special drawing boards with a steel edge (a _sine qua non_ for the production of fine, accurate drawings), and special furniture of all descriptions. Architects will find it greatly to their profit, both in money and saving of trouble, to take advantage of the experience and facilities for manufacturing the best goods furnished by this company. There are very few manufacturers of sanitary goods that keep up with the Dalton-Ingersoll Company in genuine improvements and novelties. Scarcely a month passes without something in the way of improvement emanating from this house; and the remarkable thing is the care and attention bestowed upon the minutest details, nothing about a sanitary fixture being considered too insignificant to command their best inventive genius. Their monthly announcement preceding our frontispiece is worth watching. The palatial Jefferson Hotel at Richmond, Va., of which Carrère & Hastings are the architects, is built of a very fine _white clay_ brick manufactured by the Powhatan Clay Manufacturing Company of Richmond. The strong point of this particular brick is that it is made of a natural white clay, and is not subject to the discoloration of some bricks made by artificially whitening the clay. The great success of the "Giant" Metal Sash Chain made by the Smith & Egge Manufacturing Company, has of course led to imitation and infringement of their patented methods of manufacture. Nothing is saved by specifying "cheaper" goods, for there really are no cheaper goods than the best; and when heavy sashes are to be hung "Giant" metal chain is the proper specification. The expense of getting up a working model, bronze finish sash lock mounted on a base, for a paper weight, and sending this free to any architect who desires one would deter most manufacturers from taking this method of advertising. But the Ives Lock is such "a good thing" that it well repays "pushing." The model works so perfectly and is so simple and durable in construction that its introduction to architects throughout the country, occupying a prominent place on their desks, is securing the almost universal specification of the lock. Architects who haven't one of these paper weights will be well repaid for asking Hobart B. Ives & Co. of New Haven, Conn., to send them one. In this connection let us add that this lock secured the medal and highest award at the Columbian Exposition. Personal. Among the Americans who will return from abroad this summer are: Mr. Walter H. Kilham, the holder of the Rotch Scholarship, who has now been abroad two years; Mr. F. E. Perkins, who has been abroad three years; and Mr. W. Atherton,--all of Boston. Messrs. D. Hale, W. W. Knowles, G. O. Totten, Laflin, and Ramond, of New York, and Mr. A. D. Koch, of Milwaukee, also return this summer. Mr. J. Greenleaf Thorp announces his removal to the Constable Building, 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. In bringing the affairs of the Architect Department of the city of Boston to a final settlement pending its abolishment on July 1, Mr. Edw. H. Hoyt has been acting as City Architect Wheelwright's assistant, in place of Mr. Matthew Sullivan, now abroad, who has most acceptably filled that position during the whole of Mr. Wheelwright's term of office. In future the work of the city will be distributed among private architects. Mr. Frank E. Wallis has gone into partnership with Frank E. Freeman, and opened an office on West Twentieth Street, New York City. Mr. Harold Magonigle, the Rotch scholar who has now been abroad a year, has during the last few months been doing important work in the way of measuring and drawing Roman and Renaissance monuments in and near Rome. Some of his later drawings will presently be published in _The Architectural Review_. NOTICE TO ADVERTISERS The letter below was written after a three months' trial advertisement Rochester, N. Y., July 27, 1895. BATES & GUILD, 6 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. _Dear Sirs_: Yours of the 26th received. In reply will say that we desire our advertisement to continue in the Brochure Series, and will state that this advertisement has given us better returns than any other we are carrying. We think that a magazine similar to yours is very much better than a trade journal, because the Brochure Series will be preserved, and will therefore be permanent. We were tempted recently to put an advertisement in the Architectural Review on account of the good results received from the Brochure Series. Please send us the bill for our account for the first quarter, so that we can have it audited and send you a check. Very truly yours, Dic. W. F. M. MORSE MACHINE CO. The advertisement which brought these results _is on page XV_ It costs $72.00 a year 
19494	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 19494-h.htm or 19494-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/4/9/19494/19494-h/19494-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/4/9/19494/19494-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were in bold face have been surrounded by pound signs('#'). THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SAINT ALBANS With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey by the REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A. Rector of Turnworth, Dorset Author of "Rouen," "Amiens," "Wimborne and Christchurch," Etc., Etc. With Fifty Illustrations [Illustration: ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.] [Illustration: ARMS OF THE SEE] London: George Bell and Sons. 1903 PREFACE The Rev. W.D. Sweeting, who had originally undertaken to write this monograph on St. Albans, having been obliged, on account of ill-health, to abandon the work, the Publishers asked me to write it in his stead. My task was rendered much easier by Mr. Sweeting kindly sending me much material that he had collected, and many valuable notes that he had made, especially on the history of the Abbey. My best thanks are due to the Dean for kindly allowing me permission to examine every part of the Cathedral church, and to take the photographs with which this book is illustrated. A few illustrations only are from other sources, among them those on pages 9 and 11, for permission to use which I have to thank Mr. John Murray. I have also to acknowledge the courtesy of the vergers, Mr. Newell and Miss Davis from both of whom I obtained much information; Miss Davis's long connection with the church, and the interest she takes in every detail connected with it, rendered her help most valuable. I have consulted many books on the Abbey, among them Lord Grimthorpe's and Mr. Page's Guides, Mr. James Neale's "Architectural Notes on St. Albans Abbey," and papers read before the St. Albans Archaeological Society by the Rev. Henry Fowler. THOMAS PERKINS. TURNWORTH. _July, 1903._ LIST OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. HISTORY OF THE BUILDING 3 II. THE EXTERIOR 23 III. THE INTERIOR 35 IV. HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY AND SEE 81 V. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 106 INDEX 113 DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL 115 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH _frontispiece_ ARMS OF THE SEE _title-page_ VIEW FROM THE NORTH-EAST BEFORE RESTORATION 2 ST. ALBANS ABBEY BEFORE 1874 3 PLAN OF THE NORMAN CHURCH 9 THE SOUTH-WEST PORTAL BEFORE THE REBUILDING OF THE WEST FRONT 11 EXTERIOR OF THE LADY CHAPEL BEFORE 1874 15 INTERIOR OF THE LADY CHAPEL BEFORE 1874 16 THE ARCADE IN THE SLYPE BEFORE ITS REMOVAL 20 FLOOR TILE 21 THE ANGLE BETWEEN NAVE AND TRANSEPT 22 THE NEW WEST FRONT 23 THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AS REBUILT 27 THE LADY CHAPEL CHOIR AND TRANSEPT FROM THE SOUTH-EAST 28 VIEW FROM THE NORTH-EAST 30 THREE OLD FLOOR TILES 32 THE NAVE FROM THE WEST END 34 BASE OF INCOMPLETE PIER 37 PLAN OF PIER 37 ARCADE ON NORTH SIDE OF NAVE 38 EASTERN PART OF THE NORTH SIDE OF NAVE 39 NORTH NAVE ARCADE, WESTERN END 41 SOUTH NAVE ARCADE 43 SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE 45 HOLY WATER STOUP 46 NORTH AISLE OF NAVE 47 SAXON BALUSTER SHAFTS IN SOUTH TRANSEPT 50 DOORWAY IN SOUTH TRANSEPT 51 THE CROSSING LOOKING WESTWARD 54 THE CHOIR 55 THE WALLINGFORD SCREEN 58 KEY TO THE SCULPTURE 59 THE RAMRYGE CHANTRY 60 SOUTH AISLE OF PRESBYTERY 62 WOODEN FIGURE OF MENDICANT 63 RETRO-CHOIR 64 BASE OF THE SHRINE OF ST. AMPHIBALUS 65 BACK OF THE WATCHING LOFT 66 RAMRYGE'S CHANTRY FROM THE AISLE 67 ONE OF THE OLD WESTERN DOORS 68 LADY CHAPEL 69 PEDESTAL OF ST. ALBANS SHRINE 73 WATCHING LOFT 75 MONUMENT OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER 77 SOUTH CHOIR AISLE 80 JOHN OF WHEATHAMPSTEAD'S CHANTRY 100 OLD FLOOR TILE 105 THE GREAT GATE 106 MONUMENT OF LORD BACON 109 THE OLD ROUND HOUSE 111 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL 116 * * * * * [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE NORTH-EAST BEFORE RESTORATION.] [Illustration: ST. ALBANS ABBEY, BEFORE 1874.] ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE BUILDING. Long before any church stood on the site of the present cathedral, long before the time of Albanus, who is universally allowed to have been the first Christian martyr whose blood was shed in this island, events that have found a place in the early history of Britain occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of the city we call St. Albans. Here in all probability stood the _oppidum_ or stockaded stronghold of Cassivellaunus, who was chosen to lead the tribes of South-Eastern Britain when Julius Caesar in the year 54 B.C. made his second descent on the island. We all know the story, how the Britons gave Caesar so much trouble that, when at last Roman discipline had secured the victory, he, demanding tribute and receiving hostages as guarantees for its payment, left Britain and never cared to venture upon any fresh invasion. We know that the Trinobantes were the first to sue for peace, and, abandoning Cassivellaunus, left him to bear the brunt of Caesar's attack upon his stronghold, how this was destroyed by Caesar, and how Cassivellaunus also was obliged to make submission to the Romans. Nearly a century passed before any Roman legionary again set foot on the British shores; but when at last, in the days of Claudius, A.D. 42, the Romans invaded the island, they came to conquer and occupy all except the northern part of Britain. In the early days of their occupation a walled town, which was soon raised to the rank of a _municipium_, was built on the south-western side of the Ver, and from the name of the river was called Verulamium or Verlamium. It soon became a populous place, for when in A.D. 61 Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, stung by the insults and injuries she and her daughters had received at the hands of the Romans, raised her own and the neighbouring tribes to take vengeance on their oppressors and Ran the land with Roman slaughter, multitudinous agonies; Perish'd many a maid and matron, many a valorous legionary; Fell the colony, city, and citadel, London, Verulam, Camulodune. It is recorded that no less than seventy thousand fell in these three places and the villages around them. But her vengeance, sharp and sudden, was not allowed to pass unpunished by the Romans, and Suetonius Paulinus, hurrying from North Wales, though too late to save the three towns, utterly routed the forces of Boadicea somewhere between London and Colchester. After this Verulamium became once more a prosperous town, inhabited partly by Romans, partly by Britons, who under Roman influence embraced the civilization and adopted the customs of their conquerors. By whom Christianity was first introduced into Britain we do not know; probably it was brought from Gaul. In the reign of Diocletian a great persecution of the Christians arose throughout the Roman empire. The edict enjoining this persecution was promulgated in February, 303 A.D., and the persecution lasted until the Emperor abdicated in May, 305 A.D. It was carried out in Britain by Maximianus Herculius and Asclepiodotus, and it was during this persecution that St. Alban won the martyr's crown. Though the story is embellished with certain miraculous incidents which most of us will reject as accretions of later ages, yet there seems no reason to doubt the main facts. Albanus, or Alban, as we generally call him, was a young soldier and a heathen, but being a man of a pitiful heart, he gave shelter to a certain deacon named Amphibalus, who was in danger of death. Amphibalus returned his kindness by teaching him the outlines of the Christian religion, which Alban accepted. When at last the persecutors had discovered the hiding-place of Amphibalus, Alban, in order to aid his escape, changed garments with the deacon, and allowed himself to be taken in his stead, while Amphibalus made his way into Wales, where, however, he was ultimately captured and was brought back by the persecutors, who possibly intended to put him to death at Verulamium, but for some reason which we do not understand he was executed about four miles from the city at a spot where the village of Redbourn now stands, the parish church of which is dedicated to him. Meanwhile Alban was charged with aiding and abetting the escape of a blasphemer of the Roman gods, and then and there declared that he too was a Christian. He was ordered to offer incense on the altar of one of the Roman gods, but refused, and as a consequence was condemned to be beheaded. The place chosen for his execution was a grassy hill on the further side of the river Ver. Great was the excitement among the inhabitants of Verulamium, for as yet they had seen no Christian put to death, and Alban was, moreover, a man of some mark in the place. So great was the crowd that it blocked the only bridge across the stream; but Alban did not desire to delay his death, so walked down to the river-bank. At once the waters opened before him, and he, the executioner, and the guards passed dry-shod to the opposite bank. This wonder so struck the executioner, that he, throwing down his sword, declared he would not behead Alban and also professed himself a Christian. When the band reached the hill Alban craved water to quench his thirst, for it was a hot summer day, June 22,[1] and at once a spring burst forth at his feet. One of the soldiers struck off the martyr's head, but his own eyes fell on the ground together with it; the executioner who had refused to do his duty was beheaded at the same time. These miracles are said to have so much impressed the judge that he ordered the persecution to cease. The traditional site of the martyrdom is covered by the north arm of the transept of the present church, and this site is in accordance with Beda's account, which states that St. Alban was martyred about five hundred paces from the summit of the hill. When persecution had entirely ceased, a few years after Alban's death, a church was built over the spot hallowed by his blood. Beda, writing at the beginning of the eighth century, speaks of the original church as existing, and describes it as being a church of wonderful workmanship and worthy of the martrydom it commemorated. But in all probability the church standing in Beda's time was not the original one; this no doubt had been swept away during the time of the English invasion of Britain, when, as Matthew Paris tells us, the body of Alban was moved for safety from within the church to some other spot, whence it was afterwards brought back and replaced in the original grave. [1] It must be remembered that June 22 in the year 303 A.D. would be, as now, close to the longest day, as the alteration of the calendar known as the new style simply made the equinox occur on the same day of the month as in 325 A.D. That the spot was held in some reverence as early as the fifth century is proved by the conduct of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre. A synod was held at Verulamium in the year 429 A.D. to condemn the "Pelagian heresy" which had budded forth anew in the island, having had its origin in the teaching of the British monk Pelagius towards the end of the fourth century. Germanus and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, attended this Council and refuted the followers of Pelagius. It is said that Germanus opened the coffin of the martyr and deposited in it some precious relics, receiving in return for them some relics from the coffin, and a piece of turf cut from the site of the martyrdom. From this time we hear nothing for several centuries of the church or the neighbouring town of Verulamium, save that after the Teutonic conquest the town was known by the name of Werlamceaster, Watlingceaster, or Waetlingaceaster, the two latter names being derived from that of the Roman road, the Watling Street that runs through it. The site of the martyrdom also received a new name--Holmehurst or Derswold. The next event recorded in connection with our subject is the founding of a Benedictine monastery by Offa II., King of the Mercians, about the year 793 A.D. He searched for and found the coffin that contained the martyr's bones. This, as already stated, had been removed from the original church dedicated to his memory, in order to save it from destruction at the hands of the Teutonic invaders, and had remained concealed, its very position forgotten, until it was miraculously revealed. The coffin was then opened; the martyr's body and the relics given by Germanus were found therein, and thus the identity of the remains with those of Alban was established beyond doubt. Round the martyr's head Offa placed a golden circlet whereon were written the words: "Hoc est caput Sancti Albani." A reliquary richly decorated with precious stones was made to receive the body, and this was then deposited in the then existing church, which Offa repaired so that it might serve as a temporary resting-place until a grander church could be built. Offa had made a journey to Rome to get the Pope's consent to the foundation and endowment of the monastery.[2] At this time also Alban was canonized, so that henceforth he may be rightly spoken of as Saint Alban. [2] A payment known as Peter's Pence had first been levied by the King of the West Saxons in 727, and was a tax of one penny on each family that owned lands producing thirty pence per annum; its object was the support of a Saxon College at Rome. Offa now induced the Pope to allow the pence so collected from his kingdom to be paid to the Abbey of St. Alban instead of the Saxon College at Rome. The payment was called Peter's Pence because it was paid on August 1st (the day dedicated to _St. Peter ad Vincula_), the day on which the relics of St. Alban had been discovered. All that Offa seems to have been able to do besides repairing the church was to erect domestic buildings for his monks, who in course of time numbered a hundred. We have no record of any partial rebuilding, or enlargement even, of the church of Offa's day. From the fact that certain remains of it were incorporated in the present building, and that these were of the character generally called "Saxon," there is little doubt that the church of the monastery was not the little church erected in the fourth century over the martyr's grave, but one of later date, probably the one described by Beda as standing in his day, built in the latter part of the sixth or in the seventh century. We have no further record of this church, but we know that the ninth Abbot, Eadmer, began to collect materials for rebuilding the church; but the work was not begun until the time of the fourteenth Abbot, Paul of Caen, who was appointed by William I. So enthusiastically did he work, that in the short space of eleven years (1077-88) the church was rebuilt. The rapidity of the building was no doubt chiefly due to the fact that there was no need of hewing and squaring stone, for the Roman bricks from the ruins of the old city of Verulam were ready at hand, and the timber collected by Paul's five predecessors was well seasoned. It is said that the new church was not dedicated until the year 1115, but it is hard to believe that so long a space of time as twenty-seven years would be allowed to elapse between the completion of the building and the dedication. It is possible there may be some error in this date. We can form a good idea of this Norman church. It was like several of the other cathedral and abbey churches built at the same time, of vast size, far grander than their prototype in Normandy, St. Stephen's at Caen. The following table gives approximately the dimensions of some of these churches: Length of Number of Bays. Total Nave. Nave. Presbytery. Apse. Length. St. Stephen's, Caen 193 9 2 ... 290 Canterbury 185 9 10 5 290 Winchester 318 14 3 5 ... St. Albans 275 13 4 ... 460 Bury St. Edmund's 300 15 4 3 490 The church consisted of a nave with aisles; the arches of the main arcade were semicircular, the piers massive and rectangular; there were no mouldings, the orders of the arches, like the piers, having rectangular corners. There were possibly two western towers, which stood, like those of Rouen and Wells, outside the aisles on the north and south respectively, not at the western ends of the aisles (a far more common position), thus giving a much greater width and imposing appearance to the west front. The existence of western towers of Norman date has been doubted by some antiquaries; some indeed imagine that John de Cella's thirteenth-century west front was built several bays further to the west than the Norman façade, and that the foundations of the unfinished towers were laid of old material by him. It is impossible to be absolutely certain on this point, but the argument sometimes brought forward that the nave was inordinately long for one of Norman date may be answered by mention of the fact that the Norman naves at Bury and Winchester were even longer, and that generally the Norman builders delighted in long structural naves, the eastern bays of which, however, were, together with the space beneath the towers, used for the choir or seats for the monks, the eastern part of the church beyond the crossing being generally occupied by the presbytery and the sanctuary where the high altar stood. In after times, however, considerable eastward extensions were made, as at Canterbury, and the monks' seats were then in many cases moved eastward into the part of the church beyond the tower, the rood-screen being stretched across the church between the eastern piers that supported the tower.[3] [3] The chief argument against the belief that western towers existed at St. Albans is that no documentary record of them is found. On the other hand it may be said that, whether the towers were built or not at the same time as the rest of the church, it is far more likely that John de Cella and William of Trumpington would have lengthened the church eastward than westward, when we find so many instances of eastward extensions during the thirteenth century, and of some before the twelfth century closed. The plan given in the text, assuming the existence of Norman towers, is that adopted by Sir Gilbert Scott, who had the opportunity of examining the foundations when restoring the church; his opinion was that the foundations were of Norman date. Of one thing we may be certain, that if finished western towers ever existed, they were of Norman date. For none were carried to completion by William of Trumpington. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE NORMAN CHURCH. From Sir Gilbert Scott's Lectures. (By permission of Mr. John Murray.)] The transept had no aisles either on its eastern or western side; the eastern termination differed much from anything in existence now. Mr. Prior in his "History of Gothic Art in England" tells us that two types of east end were to be found in the Anglo-Norman churches, both brought from the Continent, one the chevet prevalent in Northern France, the other derived originally from fourth and fifth century churches of the East, passing to Lombardy in the ninth century, and then along the Rhine and even reaching Normandy. Such was the original eastern termination of St. Stephen's, Caen; such may still be seen in St. Nicholas', Caen. This east end consisted of a number of parallel aisles, each with its own apse at its eastern end. "Norman use had squared the aisle endings of the choir two bays beyond the cross, the apse projecting its half circle beyond this, as at St. Etienne's, Caen, and in this form Lanfranc's Canterbury had been built."[4] [4] Prior's "History of Gothic Art in England," p. 63. In St. Albans this plan was further developed; from each arm of the transept two apses projected eastward, the outer ones consisting only of a semicircular projection from the transept, the inner ones of a rectangular bay from which the semicircular part ran eastward. The choir aisles, as we should now call them, consisted of four bays, beyond which they ended in a projection semicircular within, but rectangular when seen from the outside, the walls being thickened at the corners. These aisles were divided from the presbytery not by open arcading but by solid walls. The presbytery itself terminated in a semicircle projecting beyond the ends of the aisles. This extended as far as the centre of the present retro-choir. Above the crossing rose the central tower, much as we see it to-day, save that it was probably crowned with a pyramidal cap rising from its outside walls. Probably also the tower as well as the rest of the church was covered with whitewashed plaster, thus hiding the material of which it was built--the Roman bricks of which mention has been already made. These bricks surpass in hardness and durability those of modern days, and are of different size and shape from those we are acquainted with. Those used in St. Albans are of two sizes, 17 � 8 � 2 and 11 � 5½ � 2. The joints are wide, the mortar between the courses being almost as thick as the bricks. The window jambs and the piers were built or faced with brick; even the staircases were of brick. What stone was used is clunch, from Tottenhoe in Bedfordshire, which, according to Lord Grimthorpe, is admirably suited for interior work, but absolutely worthless for exterior, as it decays very soon, and if it gets damp is shivered into powder by frost. [Illustration: THE SOUTH-WESTERN PORTAL, BEFORE THE REBUILDING OF THE WEST FRONT. From a drawing by W.S. Weatherley, in Sir G. Scott's "Lectures on Mediaeval Architecture." (By permission of Mr. John Murray.)] The Norman church, finished as we have seen in 1088, stood without change for rather more than a century. Then changes began. Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214) pulled down the west front and began to build a new one in its place. He laid the foundation of the whole front, but then went on with the north side first. The north porch was nearly finished in his time; the central porch was carried up as far as the spring of the arch; the southern porch was carried hardly any way up from the foundations.[5] The porches are described by those who saw them before Lord Grimthorpe swept away the whole west front as some of the choicest specimens of thirteenth-century work in England. The mouldings were of great delicacy, and were enriched with dog-tooth ornament. It is said that Abbot John was not a good man of business, and that he was sorely robbed and cheated by his builders, and so had not money enough to finish the work that he had planned. To his successor, William of Trumpington, it therefore fell to carry on the work. He was a man of a more practical character, though not equal to his predecessor in matters of taste. He finished the main part of the western front. Oddly enough no dog-tooth ornament was used in the central and southern porches, and the character of the carved foliage differs also from that of the north porch. In Abbot John's undoubted work the curling leaves overlap, and have strongly defined stems resembling the foliage of Lincoln choir, while that of Abbot William's time had the ordinary character of the Early English style. There is evidence to show that he intended to vault the church with a stone roof; this may be seen from the marble vaulting shafts on the north side of the nave between the arches of the main arcade, which, however, are not carried higher than the string-course below the triforium. The idea of a stone vault was, however, abandoned before the two eastern Early English bays on the south side were built, for no preparation for vaulting shafts exists there. [5] Sir Gilbert Scott was of the opinion that the south porch was also John de Cella's work. Abbot John de Cella had begun to build afresh the western towers, or, according to some authorities, to build the first western towers that the church ever had; we have no record of their completion, and it is said that Abbot William abandoned the idea. We have only the foundations by which we can determine their size. William of Trumpington transformed the windows of the aisles into Early English ones. He also added a wooden lantern to the tower, somewhat in the style of the wooden octagon on the central tower of Ely. At some time, but we do not know exactly when, the Church or Chapel of St. Andrew adjoining the north nave aisle of the monks' church, extending as far east as the sixth bay, was built for the use of the parishioners, who had no right to enter the monastic church. This Church of St. Andrew opened into the north aisle of the Abbey Church, being separated from it by an arcade of four arches. It had a nave with aisle and chancel. Its total length was about 140 feet, its width about 61 feet. It is conjectured that the north-western tower was converted into a kind of antechapel or entrance porch for the Church of St. Andrew. There was a door leading from the aisle of the Abbey Church into the chancel of St. Andrew's; this door, walled up, may still be seen in the fifth bay from the west end. In order to avoid the necessity of returning again to the history of this church, it may here be stated that it was rebuilt by John Wheathampstead after he had been re-elected to the office of Abbot in 1451; and that it was destroyed after the dissolution of the monastery, when there was no longer any need for it, as the parishioners bought the Abbey Church for parochial use. The place of the old arcading was then taken by a blank wall without any windows; this was pulled down and the present wall built by Lord Grimthorpe. In the latter half of the thirteenth century the reconstruction of the eastern end was begun by Abbot John of Hertford. Here, as in many other churches, the Norman choir was too short for thirteenth-century requirements. The walls of the presbytery were raised and its high-pitched roof converted into a flat one. The church was gradually extended eastward by Abbots Roger of Norton and John of Berkhampstead; first the Saint's Chapel was built, then the retro-choir, and finally the Lady Chapel, which was finished by Abbot Hugh of Eversden in 1326. Another change was necessitated by an event which took place on St. Paulinus' Day, October 10th, of the year 1323. For on that day a calamity such as had never before happened befell the church. The celebration of Mass at an altar of the Blessed Virgin was just over, a great multitude of people, men and women, still being in the church, when two of the Norman piers of the main arcade on the south side fell outwards one after the other with a great crash, and about the space of an hour afterwards the wooden roof of the nave which had been supported by these columns also fell; the piers themselves had crushed the south wall of the aisle and the cloisters, so that a complete wreck was made of the south-eastern part of the church westward of the tower. But this disaster was accompanied by a great marvel, for though many persons were standing close by, not one was injured; and a still more wonderful thing is recorded: the monk whose duty it was to guard the shrine of St. Amphibalus, which at that time stood in the nave, had been celebrating at the altar--he had finished even to the washing of the sacred vessels--when he saw the columns fall; he withdrew a little from the altar and received no harm. Some of the wreckage fell on the shrine of St. Amphibalus, and though the marble pillars supporting the canopy were broken, yet the chest which contained his relics suffered no harm. This wonderful preservation of life and limb and shrine was naturally attributed to the intervention of the blessed martyr St. Amphibalus. Abbot Hugh of Eversden began to rebuild this ruined part of the church, and this accounts for the five bays of the nave arcading westward of the rood-screen being in fourteenth-century style. He did not live to finish all this work, but it was carried on by his successor, Richard of Wallingford (1326-1335), and finished by the next Abbot, Michael of Mentmore, about 1345. The present rood-screen, which probably took the place of a previously existing one of Norman date, was built in 1360 by Thomas de la Mare. No further change of importance was made until the time of John of Wheathampstead, who was Abbot from 1420 to 1440, and again from 1451 to 1464. He left his marks in various parts of the Abbey, and for the most part his work was bad: he did almost as much to injure the Abbey as the nineteenth-century restorers who swept away much of his work have done. He rebuilt all the upper part of the west front, and inserted Perpendicular windows at each end of the transept; he turned the high-pitched roofs of nave and transepts into flat ones, and lowered the slope of the roofs of the aisles. His object in doing this was to be able to use the old beams again whose ends were decayed, and which were shortened by cutting off the unsound parts. The result of this was that the Norman triforium arches on the north side were thrown open to the sky; these he filled with Perpendicular tracery, converting them into windows. The tracery still remains, although the new roof has the same slope as the original one, and the triforium is now again inclosed beneath it. He also pulled down the wooden octagon on the central tower. His chantry on the south side of the high altar was probably erected soon after his death. Abbot William of Wallingford (1476-1484) built the high altar screen, carrying out a plan which John of Wheathampstead had not been able to accomplish. The only addition made after this to the Abbey is the chantry of Thomas Ramryge, who became Abbot in 1492. The exact date of its construction is not known, all records of the Abbey during Ramryge's rule having perished; but from its style it is generally supposed to have been built about the year 1520. During the reign of Henry VIII. all the monasteries were dissolved; first the smaller, then the more important ones, among them that of St. Albans. The fortieth and last Abbot of St. Albans, Richard Boreman of Stevenage, surrendered the Abbey on December 5th, 1539, he and the monks receiving pensions as compensation. [Illustration: EXTERIOR OF LADY CHAPEL WHEN USED AS THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BEFORE 1874. (From the Official Guide to the Great Northern Railway.)] In February of the following year the King granted to Sir Richard Lee all the monastic buildings, but not the Abbey Church or the adjoining Chapel of St. Andrew, with all the land lying round the Abbey Church. Lee promptly proceeded to destroy all the domestic buildings. The church remained in the possession of the Crown till 1553, when the town obtained a charter from Edward VI. This, among other provisions, empowered it to erect a grammar school within the church or in some other convenient place. The town authorities thereupon converted the Lady Chapel and the retro-choir into the grammar school. A passage was cut through the retro-choir, bounded by brick walls on either side; this was used as a public pathway until 1874, when it was closed, and again became part of the church. The part to the east of the passage served as the grammar school until 1870. The mayor and burgesses by the same charter received the Abbey Church, in return for £400, to be used as their parish church; and in May, 1553, the first rector, George Wetherall, took charge of the building. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE LADY CHAPEL BEFORE 1874. (From the Official Guide to the Great Northern Railway.)] The parishioners thus found themselves in possession of an enormous building which they had not sufficient money to keep in proper repair. In 1612, and again in 1681, briefs or letters patent were issued by royal authority, ordering collections to be made in all churches in England for the repair of St. Albans Church. In 1689 a grant was made by William and Mary. These sums were spent on various repairs, such as altering the belfry windows, "filling up" with earth "the hollow in the wing," that is, raising the level of the floor of the south arm of the transept. In 1695 similar work was done in the north aisle; in 1704 a new window, a wooden one, was inserted in the south end of the transept, in place of Wheathampstead's, which had been blown in by a gale during the previous year. There are records of £100 being spent in recasting some of the bells between 1705 and 1707. Money was again collected in 1721 by letters patent, and this was spent on repairing the ceilings. About the same time a legacy was spent in repaving the nave, and the west ends of the aisles were blocked by brick walls. Some slight repairs were done about 1764, when a fresh collection was made. More extensive repairs were made in 1832: the roof was releaded, such of the clerestory windows as had been closed were reglazed, and the south window of the transept was rebuilt in stone. The choir, after the repairs, was opened for service in 1833. The nave to the west of the rood-screen was more or less in a dilapidated condition, protected by the releaded roof, but not used. The presbytery had been fitted up in Georgian style as a chancel, the organ stood in the north arm of the transept, and high pews filled the choir westward as far as the rood-screen. This was the condition of the part of the church which was used up to 1870. In 1856 a scheme was started for getting the Abbey Church raised to cathedral rank, and also for restoring the fabric. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Gilbert Scott was appointed architect, and was empowered to do what he thought most pressing as far as funds would allow; the flat roof of the north aisle was renewed, drainage attended to, and foundations strengthened; the floor at the south end of the transept was lowered--it will be remembered that it had been raised in 1692--the vaults were filled with concrete, and the floor repaved. The presbytery was repaved with tiles copied from some old ones. The Georgian fittings were removed to the nave; fragments of the tabernacles, which we now see over the doors leading from the aisles into the presbytery, having been discovered, the tabernacles were reconstructed of the old with some new material. But more important work had to be undertaken in 1870. On Sunday, July 31st, the sound of cracking was heard in the tower, and Mr. J. Chapple, the clerk of the works, went up the next day to London to see Scott and asked him to come down at once to examine the tower; plaster was put over the crack to see if it was increasing or not. There were soon signs that the mischief was getting worse, and Scott ordered the tower to be shored up with timber, and temporary brick walls to be built below it. It seemed that the rubble of the eastern piers had been made of mortar which had turned into dust, and that a big hole had been cut in the south-eastern pier. This, according to Lord Grimthorpe, had apparently been done with the intention of demolishing the tower, probably soon after the time of the dissolution of the monastery, for the hole contained timber shores which were sufficient to support the tower while the workmen were enlarging the hole, but which were probably intended to be set on fire and burnt away, thus allowing the workmen to escape before the tower fell. This wood was found partially decayed, and probably to its state the settlement of the tower was partially due. The hole was, by Scott's direction, filled with bricks laid in cement, and cement was poured in to fill up all the interstices; some of the decayed rubble was cut out of the piers and brickwork put in to take its place: the walls were tied with Yorkshire flagstone and iron rods, and were grouted with liquid cement wherever possible. It was an anxious time for those in charge of the work; it was only after many days and nights of incessant labour, that they felt sure that the sinking of the tower was arrested and that the new work was holding up the weight. In 1875 it was discovered that the south-west clerestory was beginning to crumble away. Lord Grimthorpe had this shored up at his own expense. A new committee was soon after this appointed, and in March, 1877, a faculty was granted to this committee "to repair the church and fit it for cathedral and parochial services." The first Bishop, Dr. Claughton, who up to this time had been Bishop of Rochester, choosing the northern of the two parts into which his diocese was divided, was enthroned as Bishop of St. Albans on June 12th, 1877, and on the following day the restoration of the nave was begun. The church was in a very bad state: the weight of the roof and injudicious repairs had thrust the clerestory walls about forty inches out of the vertical plane. There was much controversy at the time as to what should be done, and in the middle of it Sir Gilbert Scott died, in March, 1878. In May, however, the roof having been lifted, the leaning walls were forced up into a vertical position by hydraulic pressure. Some of the restorers were in favour of retaining a flat roof; others advocated putting on a high-pitched one again, raising its ridge to the height of the original Norman roof, as indicated by the weather marks on the tower. Fortunately the latter course was adopted; fortunately because the church, seen from the outside, lacks height in proportion to its length, and the ridge of the roof now visible above the parapets has given it some of the extra height it so much needed. The subsequent raising of the transept and presbytery roofs on the other three sides of the tower was necessitated by the raising of the roof of the nave. Lord Grimthorpe drew up a list of "symptoms of ruin," twenty-two in number, which it would take too much space to reproduce here; but unless his account is exaggerated, it would seem that scarcely any part of the building save the tower could be looked on as secure. He applied for a new faculty which would give him unlimited power to "restore, repair, and refit the church." This faculty was granted, and he exercised his powers to the full; and as a result, though the church has been made sound and secure, probably for many centuries to come, yet many of its most interesting features have been destroyed, the most terrible damage having been done in the transept. The west front which he rebuilt, though not altogether satisfactory, yet is greatly superior in design to his subsequent work at the south and north ends of the transept. These originally had corner turrets, octagonal in plan; these turrets were pulled down and square ones, finished by pyramidal caps, put in their place. The entire south front of the transept was pulled down and rebuilt, and a new window consisting of five lancets occupying its whole width inserted. The central light rises high into the gable and above the level of the inner ceiling. The lancets on either side are intermediate in height between the central and side ones when they are seen from without, but when seen from within the tops of all are of the same height, as they could not be raised above the level of the ceiling. The parts of the three middle lancets seen from without above this level are backed up with black felt across the ceiling, and their upper parts light the space between the ceiling and the high roof. This window is a feeble imitation of the "Five Sisters" of York, and is utterly out of place in the narrow transept at St. Albans; but bad as this south window is, the one at the north end of the transept is worse. Here Lord Grimthorpe inserted a circular window, the design being such as a child might make who was given a sheet of cardboard with a large circle drawn on it, which he was requested to cover symmetrically with a number of half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences. Another piece of unnecessary alteration was the destruction of the slype at the south end and the re-erection of its disjointed members as curiosities in the new work, its western doorway, with an added order, having been let into the centre of the south wall of the transept, and the arcading placed in two different positions. [Illustration: THE ARCADE IN THE SLYPE BEFORE ITS REMOVAL.] More satisfactory is the work in the Lady Chapel and the space sometimes called the antechapel; here the old carving had been terribly mutilated by many generations of schoolboys, and the new work which has been put in is good of its kind, and distinctive in its treatment. Lord Grimthorpe vaulted the Lady Chapel in stone. Much other work was done by him in various parts of the building. He rebuilt the clerestory windows of the presbytery and some of those in the nave; introduced windows into the blank walls at the western part of the nave, both on the north and south, for which he deserves commendation, as the original reason for no windows having existed here was only that the monastic buildings, now destroyed, abutted against the south aisle of the nave, and the Church of St. Andrew stood on the north side; when this church was pulled down a plain wall was built, and the thrust of the roof had forced this and the original wall on the south side outwards, after the buildings which had acted as buttresses had been removed. One piece of modern restoration was not done by Lord Grimthorpe, namely that of the Wallingford screen behind the high altar. The statues on this having been destroyed and the screen itself damaged, Mr. H.H. Gibbs, now Lord Aldenham, offered to restore it, working under Lord Grimthorpe's faculty. After a time a dispute arose between them, chiefly over the introduction of a statue of Christ on the Cross in the centre of the screen, and the erection of an altar with a stone top below it. This led to a lawsuit, the final result of which was that Mr. Gibbs was allowed to finish the screen in his own way, but not to do anything to any other part of the church, a thing he wished to do. The altar is not yet in position; when this is placed where it is intended to stand, the work of restoration will be complete, and nave, choir and presbytery, and Lady Chapel will then alike be capable of being used for service, forming in reality three distinct and fully fitted churches under one roof, the retro-choir being intended for use as a chapter-house whenever a chapter shall be created. [Illustration: FLOOR TILE WITH ARMS OF BEAUCHAMP.] [Illustration: ANGLE BETWEEN NAVE AND TRANSEPT.] [Illustration: THE NEW WEST FRONT.] CHAPTER II. THE EXTERIOR. The visitor who wishes to obtain, at first sight, the most impressive view of the Cathedral Church of St. Alban, should alight at the London and North-Western Station, at which all the trains from Euston and many of those from King's Cross arrive. This station is about half a mile south of the city, and from it a road runs up Holywell Hill, which, passing eastwards of the church, leads to the centre of the city. But a road running off to the left before reaching the top of the hill leads past the south side to the entrance at the west front of the Cathedral. Seen from the south the church, though it does not actually stand quite on the summit, seems to crown with its enormous length the ridge of hill to the north. Most of those who visit St. Albans for the first time feel a sense of disappointment. The church has no far-projecting buttresses to give light and shade, no flying buttresses or pinnacles like those that lend such a charm to most French and many English churches. All is severely plain, partly on account of the very early time at which the greater part of the existing church was built, partly on account of the material used for its walls. Abbot Paul of Caen, who designed it, trusted entirely to mass and proportion for the effect he wished to produce. But we do not see it as he designed it, and possibly built it. When we remember that he came from Caen, and seems to have used St. Stephen's Church, at that time recently built by Duke William, as a model, though he planned his own church on a grander scale, he must have contemplated two western towers even if he did not erect them--though, as previously stated, there is a division of opinion on the part of authorities on this subject. These western towers, if they were built, as well as the central one, would be crowned by pyramidal caps; and such towers, finely proportioned, would give the church the height which it so much needs, and the lack of which we feel so acutely to-day. The raising of the roofs at the time of the restoration to their original pitch was an undoubted gain, for without it the building looked lower and longer even than it does now. The church as we see it has been sadly injured by Lord Grimthorpe's work at both ends of the transepts, and whatever may be said about the western front in itself, yet no one can deny that, had the church been flanked by two towers standing, as at Wells and Rouen, outside the line of the aisles, even though the front itself were as plain as that of St. Stephen's at Caen, it would have been far more impressive. There is another point in which the church as it exists differs from the church as it might have been seen soon after Abbot Paul had built it. Then its walls were covered without as well as within with plaster, within richly decorated with colour, and without whitewashed. How different it must have looked with its vast mass seen from a distance rising above the wooded slopes, white as a solid block of Carara marble gleaming in the sun, and the lead-covered roofs of nave, transept, choir, and towers shining with a silvery lustre. Many modern restoring architects strongly object to plaster, and many a rough wall both external and internal, which the builder never intended to be seen, has been scraped and pointed under the idea that plaster is a sham, which it is not, unless indented lines are drawn on it to make it appear like blocks of ashlar. The rich red of the Roman brick in St. Albans walls and towers is so delightful, that perhaps we may think Scott did well in abandoning his idea of replastering them; yet nothing could have so entirely altered the general appearance of the building as this scraping away of the plaster. Besides the general view from Holywell Hill, there are two other distant points of view which should not be missed: one from Verulam woods, to the south-west; and one from the fields in which the ruins of Sopwell Nunnery stand. From this latter point it looks best after sunset on a cloudless evening, when the tower stands up in majestic grandeur against the saffron sky, and looking at it one can well imagine how much grander it must have looked when the tower bore some fitting termination, either the Norman pyramid or the later octagon, or even possibly the wooden spire of the Hertfordshire spike order which succeeded it. #The West Front.# We will begin our examination of the existing exterior with the west front, and then proceed in order round the building along the south side, east end and north side, although in reality iron railings will prevent us from making a complete circuit, and necessitate our retracing our steps and making a fresh start at the west of the railings. Still there is no part of the exterior to which we cannot gain easy access. Lord Grimthorpe's west front is built of stone; the illustration, p. 23, will enable the reader to form a good idea of its appearance. It took the place of one of patchwork character: the porches and lower parts were of thirteenth-century date; the upper part above the central porch contained Abbot John of Wheathampstead's large Perpendicular window, repaired and patched at various times; and brick walls closed the west end of the aisles. Lord Grimthorpe's idea was to design a front in the style prevalent in the second half of the thirteenth century. The design has been much criticized, but its general appearance will not be distasteful to the ordinary visitor, and is as good as is most nineteenth-century work. In certain respects it is more pleasing than the rival design of Mr. John Scott, with its mixture of Perpendicular features with those of earlier styles, its battlemented octagonal turrets, two of which were to be surmounted by spikes. There are two features of the existing front, one not shown, the other easily overlooked in the photograph, which should be noted. First, the arched cill of the central window, and second, the manner in which the back of the gable over the central door has been chamfered off so that it should not come up close to the glass and make a dark triangle against the lower part of the window when seen from the inside. The doors are all new; the side doors had vanished, and the central ones were too short for the restored doorways. The western porches, which Sir Gilbert Scott spoke of as some of the most exquisite thirteenth-century work in existence, were almost entirely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. Fortunately some drawings were made for Sir Gilbert Scott, one of which, by the courtesy of Mr. Murray, we have been able to reproduce, p. 11. #The South Side.# The south clerestory has no less than twenty-three windows. The ten westernmost, partially restored by Scott, are connected by an arcading; the next ten, as well as the wall that contains them, are new--built by Lord Grimthorpe; the parapet, fortunately quite plain, was rebuilt at the time when the roof was raised; the three easternmost windows of the clerestory are formed of Roman brick in brick walls much restored, and are separated by brick buttresses. The south aisle roof is partly lead (Scott) and partly, at the eastern end, of red tiles (Lord Grimthorpe). Lord Grimthorpe cut four windows in the western bays of the aisle, in which no windows had originally existed, as domestic buildings abutted against the church here. The three eastern windows of Abbot William of Trumpington's time were rebuilt in the old style; the five bays to the west of these were refaced with brick and flint, as the original clunch stone had perished, owing to exposure to the weather. The arcading of the north walk of the cloister may still be seen. It will be noticed that this arcading did not follow the division into bays of the aisle walls above. The cloister walk acted as a kind of continuous buttress to the south aisle wall, and owing to its removal this part of the wall was gradually pushed outward. To strengthen it Lord Grimthorpe built buttresses, naturally following the division of the upper part of the walls, but thereby cutting across the arcading of the cloister walk in a most ugly fashion. By building flying buttresses instead, he might have preserved the whole of the arcading of the cloister walk unbroken, but he considered that this plan would have been ugly, and that the buttresses he did build were constructively better; possibly they may be, but most of us will be of the opinion that, as far as appearance goes, the plan adopted was the less satisfactory. The porch over the Abbot's door in the corner is entirely new. It probably is useful as a support for the wall, but that is all that can be said in its favour. Lord Grimthorpe thought that this would be used as an entrance to the church on this side, but it has not been so used. It is worthy of notice that this church is destitute of porches, either on the southern or northern side; probably because they were not needed in a purely monastic church. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT AS REBUILT.] #The South Transept.# The south arm of the transept was most ruthlessly dealt with by Lord Grimthorpe; no doubt it was in an unsafe condition, but his alterations here have been criticized severely, though not more severely than they deserve. The south front with the five enormous lancet windows--the lower parts of them lighting the church, the upper parts of the three central ones the space between the ceiling and the outer roof--was entirely rebuilt, together with the corner turrets. The slype or passage between the transept and the chapter-house, leading from the cloister to the cemetery of the monks, has been practically destroyed, some of the arcading having been removed and rebuilt into the interior face of the new south wall, some rebuilt into the south wall of the slype; the stones of the west doorway of the slype with modern additions were used up in making a doorway in the centre of the south transept wall into the slype, and a new doorway was built at the east end of the slype, thus forming a way into the transept which seems now chiefly used as a passage for carrying in coke for the stoves in the transept. [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL, CHOIR AND TRANSEPT FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] The architectural choir, containing the presbytery and the Saint's Chapel, consists of five bays. The clerestory windows are Decorated ones of three lights each, the tracery being different in the different windows. They are set in a brick wall which, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, had been raised so as to allow of higher windows being set in it. The tracery is all new, Lord Grimthorpe keeping only the old outlines and leading lines of the mullions. The ridge of the roof of this part of the church was raised by Lord Grimthorpe to its original height, the same as that of the other three roofs that abut against the tower. As the side walls from which this roof springs are higher than those of the nave and transept the pitch is lower, and the window in the gable designed by Lord Grimthorpe is triangular; below this, in the east wall, is a geometrical window with a small, one-light window on either side of it; all of these are rebuilt. The south aisle of the presbytery contains two small, round-headed windows, and further to the east two three-light, and then one two-light window; beneath two of these are doors. All this part of the church has been extensively restored, as has also been the retro-choir or antechapel, as it is sometimes called. Through this, after the dissolution, a public footway was cut, which was closed in 1870, and a great deal of reconstruction was needful. This part of the church has two bays, each bay with a window on each side, and one facing east on each side of the Lady Chapel. #The Lady Chapel# has three bays; the tracery seen on the outside is new, though it is old inside, for Scott cut the mullions down the middle so as to retain the statuettes that they bore on the inside. There is a low vestry built against the south-eastern bay of the Lady Chapel; the window above this is triangular; the windows of the vestry itself are shown in the illustration, p. 28, as also is the five-light window in the east wall of the Lady Chapel. The north side of the Lady Chapel resembles the southern. #The North Transept.# The character of the north presbytery aisle and the north arm of the transept may be seen by examination of the illustration, p. 30. It will be observed that the north front of this contains a large circular window measuring twenty-nine feet across the glass, filled by a number of circular apertures. This is Lord Grimthorpe's design, upon which much not undeserved ridicule has been showered. He informs us that this arm of the transept was in a somewhat better condition than the southern one, but that all the upper part and the turrets needed rebuilding. In the rebuilt walls of the transept he used the original material as far as it would go, supplementing it by some modern bricks made in imitation of the Roman ones. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] The illustration, p. 30, shows the iron railings which, unless a door in them be unlocked, prevent further progress westward, and necessitate a retracing of our steps right round the church till we again reach the north arm of the transept. In the north front of this may be seen a Norman door near the north-west corner, through which pilgrims passed who wished to visit the shrine of the martyr; they entered the precincts by the Waxhouse gate, buying their candles there, and went down the path which is now called "the Cloisters," from which the photograph on p. 30 was taken. In the west wall there is an upper row of three round-headed brick windows once recessed, and a lower one of two twice recessed. #The North Side.# The north clerestory of the nave has eight round-headed brick windows at the eastern part, followed by lancets similar to those on the south side. Flat buttresses of brick are built against the clerestory wall between the round-headed windows. The aisle windows, most of them rebuilt, are in Decorated style. A length of eighty feet of the wall towards the western end of the aisle, which had been built about 1553, when the Chapel of St. Andrew had been destroyed, was rebuilt and buttresses built against it to counteract the thrust of the clerestory, which leans outward. In this wall, as on the opposite side of the church, Lord Grimthorpe inserted windows; and placed a new sloping roof over the north aisle, covering the triforium arches which had been glazed as windows in the fifteenth century; this roof is covered with dark-coloured tiles. We may notice in the north aisle wall a brick door in the fourth bay from the east; this was cut by Lord Grimthorpe and leads into the vestry; also a walled-up door in the sixth bay, which led from the church into the graveyard, and another in the sixth bay, which formerly led from the north aisle into the chancel of St. Andrew's Church; this Lord Grimthorpe converted into a cupboard in the thickness of the wall. The only other thing noteworthy at this part of the exterior is a small piece of the north aisle wall of St. Andrew's Church near the footpath. #The Tower.# There yet remains the magnificent tower. It is 144 feet high and is not quite square in plan, measuring 47 feet from east to west, and two feet less from north to south. The walls are about seven feet thick; in the thickness, however, passages are cut. It has three stages above the ridges of the roof. The lower stage has plain windows in each face, lighting the church below; the next stage, or ringing room, has two pairs of double windows; and the upper or belfry stage, two double windows of large size, furnished with louvre boards. The parapet is battlemented, and of course of later work than the tower itself. The tower is flanked by pilaster buttresses, which merge into cylindrical turrets in the upper story. For simple dignity the tower stands unrivalled in this country. It must have been splendidly built to have stood as it has done so many centuries without accident. Winchester tower fell not long after its building, Peterborough tower has been rebuilt in modern days; but Paul of Caen did not scamp his work as the monks of Peterborough did, and no evil-living king was buried below the tower, as was the case at Winchester, thus, according to the beliefs of the time, leading to its downfall. Tewkesbury tower alone can vie with that of St. Albans, and the seventeenth-century pinnacles on that tower spoil the general effect, so that the foremost place among central Norman towers as we see them to-day may safely be claimed for that at St. Albans. Few more beautiful architectural objects can be seen than this tower of Roman brick, especially when the warmth of its colour is accentuated by the ruddy flush thrown over it by the rays of a setting sun. The view from the tower when the air is clear is magnificent, but unfortunately the privilege of ascending the tower once accorded to visitors has, on account of unseemly behaviour, been necessarily withdrawn, and only by a special relaxation of this rule, through the kindness of the Dean, was the writer enabled to inspect the upper parts of the church. [Illustration: THREE OLD PAVEMENT TILES.] [Illustration: THE NAVE FROM THE WEST END.] CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR. #The floor levels.#--The Church of St. Alban is built so that its axis points considerably to the south of east, a thing that would hardly have been expected, seeing that the sun rises as far to the north of east as it ever does on St. Alban's Day, June 22nd. The orientation of the church may have been due to the fact that no great attention was paid to it by the builders, or it may have been due to the natural slope of the ground, which would have made the building of the church difficult had the east end been swung round further to the north where the ground is higher, and the west end to the south-west where it is lower; even as the church was built the slope of the ground has had its effect on the floor levels. These have been modified from time to time; to describe all the changes would take too much space, but it may be interesting to state the differences of level that exist at the present day. On entering by the west door a peculiarity will at once be noticed. About fifteen feet from the inner side of the west wall there is a rise of five steps which stretch right across the church from north to south. The floor to the east of these steps slopes imperceptibly upwards for eight bays, when a rise of three more steps is met with. On this higher level stands the altar, which is backed up by the rood screen. There is another step to be ascended to the level of the choir, and another to reach the space below the tower. Five steps lead from this into the presbytery; there is another step at the high altar rails, and four more lead up to the platform on which the high altar will stand. From the space below the tower one step leads up into the north aisle and two more into the north arm of the transept. From the level of the south choir aisle and south transept two steps lead up into the south aisle of the presbytery; from this aisle there is a rise of four steps into the aisle south of the Saint's Chapel, and from this into the chapel itself a rise of four more. So that the floor of this chapel is, with the exception of the high altar platform, which is one step higher, the highest in the whole church, or nineteen steps above the floor just inside the west door. From the aisle of the Saint's Chapel one step leads into the retro-choir, and two more into the Lady Chapel; hence the floor of the Lady Chapel is one step lower than that of the Saint's Chapel. If we take seven inches as the average height of a step, it would appear that the floor of the Lady Chapel is about ten feet higher than the floor at the west end of the nave. As we stand just inside the west door of the church we are struck by the length of ritual nave, about 200 feet, the flatness of the roofs, and the massiveness of the arcading dividing the nave from the aisles; for, though the four western bays on the north side and five on the south are Early English in date, there is none of that lightness and grace that we are accustomed to associate with work of this period, no detached shafts of Purbeck marble such as we see at Salisbury, no exquisitely carved capitals such as we meet with at Wells. William of Trumpington seems to have aimed at making his work harmonize with the Norman work that he left untouched; and when the rest of the main arcade on the south side was rebuilt in the next century, it was made to differ but little in general appearance and dimensions from Abbot William's. The vertical proportions of the nave elevation are very fine. If the whole be divided into nine equal parts, four of these are occupied by the main arcade, two by the triforium, and three by the clerestory. The view eastward is often closed by a dark red curtain that hangs behind the organ, which stands in a gallery behind the rood screen. The screen divides the congregational nave from the three eastern bays of the architectural nave, which form the western part of the ritual choir. When the curtain is drawn aside we get a view of the tower arches and more of the length of the church is seen. It is to be hoped that no attempt to move the organ will now be made, as some, no doubt, would suggest, in order to get a more open vista; for the organ stands just where it can be used equally well for a service either in the nave or choir, and its sound can be heard with more effect than if it were stowed away on either side of the church. The longest view of the church which can be obtained is to be seen by standing at the extreme west end of the south aisle, from which, when a draught-excluding curtain that hangs across the aisle just to the east of the transept is drawn aside, the view extends as far as the east window of the retro-choir, distant about 440 feet from the western wall, that is, about one-twelfth of a mile. A better idea of the enormous length of the whole building is given by saying that it is about a tenth of a mile long, rather than by giving its length in feet. [Illustration: BASE OF INCOMPLETE PIER.] At the extreme west of the nave, on the north side, will be seen the base of what was intended for an Early English pillar, probably John de Cella's work, for provision is made for the slender detached columns of Purbeck marble, the intended use of which his successor abandoned. An inscription beneath the west window records the fact that when pestilence prevailed in London in the reign of Henry VIII., and again in that of Elizabeth, the courts of justice were held in the nave. This took place in the years 1543, 1589, and 1593. [Illustration: PLAN OF PIER.] On the second pier on the north side is an inscription to the memory of Sir John Mandeville, who was born at St. Albans early in the fourteenth century, and educated at the monastery school. He studied medicine and set out in 1322 for his famous travels, professing, in the account which he published in French in 1357 in Paris, to have visited not only every part of the south of Europe, but many parts of Asia, even China. It is not known where he was buried, whether in England or abroad, and the statement of the Latin inscription on this pillar that he was buried in this church cannot be regarded as more trustworthy than most of the statements in the book of travels. [Illustration: ARCADE ON NORTH SIDE OF NAVE.] [Illustration: EASTERN PART OF NORTH SIDE OF NAVE.] The first four bays on this side are thirteenth-century work. The junction of this with the earlier Norman work is of the most curious character: the Norman pier was cut off level, a short distance below the impost, and on the top of this three courses of the Early English pier were laid. Why the Early English pier was not carried down to the ground, in a way similar to that, in which the easternmost Early English pier on the south side is carried, we cannot tell. It has been conjectured that some special sanctity attached to the statue which stood on the bracket, which may still be seen on the western face of this pier. It will be noticed how plain is the plan of the Norman piers (see illustration, p. 37). They have no capital, only a projecting course of brickwork from which the arch springs. The two easternmost piers, however, were altered at some time (see illustration, p. 39), and a rough kind of capital formed by cutting away the pier below. The Norman piers were first covered with plaster, and then painted both on their western and southern faces, and when the white-wash with which they had been covered in post-Reformation days was removed in 1862, the frescoes were discovered in a more or less perfect condition. All those on the western faces with one exception, represent the same subject, the Crucifixion, with a second subject below. No doubt against these piers altars used to stand, and these frescoes served, as we should say, as painted reredoses or altarpieces. The subjects are as follows, beginning at the west of the Norman arcade: First pier, west face. Christ on the Cross, crowned; the Virgin on the north side, St. John on the south, holding a book. Beneath, Virgin (crowned and holding a sceptre) and Child; on each side an angel censing. Late twelfth or early thirteenth century. South face. St. Christopher. Fourteenth century. Second pier, west face. Christ on the Cross; the Virgin with clasped hands on south side, St. John on north. Beneath, Virgin and Child under a canopy. Early thirteenth century. South face. Archbishop Becket. Fourteenth century. Third pier, west face. Christ on the Cross; the Virgin on the south side, St. John on north, resting his head on his hand. Beneath, under a pointed arch, the Annunciation. This is in outline only. Fourteenth century. South face. A woman in a blue gown holding a rosary in her left hand, possibly St. Citha (Osyth). Fourteenth century. Fourth pier, west face. Christ on the Cross. Beneath, the Annunciation. A rude painting of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. South face. A pilgrim and slight traces of another figure. The subject is supposed to be either Edward the Confessor relieving St. John disguised as a pilgrim, or St. John giving a ring to a pilgrim. Fourteenth century. Fifth pier, west face. Christ on the Cross, much draped; the Virgin and St. John with red background. Beneath, the Coronation of the Virgin. Fourteenth century. South face. This was once painted, but not enough remains to allow the subject to be made out. Sixth pier, west face. Christ in his Glory; very slight traces only. [Illustration: NORTH NAVE ARCADE: WESTERN END.] Besides these figure subjects painted on the piers, the soffits of the arches were decorated with colour, some of which still remains. Although in the four western bays of the main arcade the Early English work is very plain, yet the triforium is ornate. The arcading consists of two pointed arches in each bay, each comprising two sub-arches; the supporting columns are slender and enriched with dog-tooth mouldings, with which also the string-course below the triforium is decorated. The shafts, which probably were intended to support a stone vault over the nave, should be noticed. This illustration also shows the character of the clerestory. The triforium over the Norman main arcade consists of large, wide-splayed, round-headed openings, in which the tracery and glazing introduced in the fifteenth century, when the aisle roof was lowered in pitch so as to expose the north side of the triforium to the sky, still remains. One of the triforium arches, namely, the third from the tower, was simply walled up at this time, and so retains its original form. The clerestory in this part of the church consists of plain, round-headed openings. Between each bay the outer southern face of each Norman pier is continued in the form of a flat pilaster buttress up to the roof. [Illustration: SOUTH NAVE ARCADE, SHOWING THE JUNCTION OF THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH-CENTURY WORK.] The rood screen behind the altar, which is sometimes erroneously called St. Cuthbert's screen, is of fourteenth-century work, but much restored, and is pierced by two[6] doorways, which were used when processions passed from the nave into the choir. The doors themselves are fourteenth-century work. Against this screen once stood three altars. The northern one was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Oswyn, King of Northumbria; the central one to the Holy Apostles, the confessors, and St. Benedict; and that on the south to St. Mary. These once stood against the western faces of the Norman piers of the south arcade of the nave, which fell in the fourteenth century. These piers doubtless corresponded with those we still see on the north side, and were probably similarly decorated with frescoes. The south arcade at its eastern end differs entirely from that on the north. This part of the church was rebuilt after the fall of part of the Norman arcade. The five Early English bays to the west are divided from the Decorated ones to the east by a massive pier, generally supposed to be Norman, but probably rebuilt. The northern face of this runs up as a pilaster buttress to the roof; the string round it in continuation of that below the triforium is carved with tooth ornament. West of this we have tooth ornament, to the east the characteristic ball flower. The junction of the two styles is shown in the illustration below, from which it will be noticed that, though there is a general resemblance in the bays on either side of the dividing pilaster, yet the details are different. To the east we see shields below the triforium string, and heads at the termination of the hood moulding. The head shown in this photograph is possibly that of Master Geoffrey, master mason to Abbot Hugh of Eversden; the others passing on to the east are probably those of Edward II., Queen Isabella, and Abbot Hugh. The shields, also counting from the west, are those of England, France, Mercia, England, Edward the Confessor, and England. The hood mouldings of the triforium and clerestory also terminate in heads, some of them grotesque. The Decorated piers were found by Lord Grimthorpe in a very unsound condition, not on account of any defect in the foundation, but on account of the bad mortar in which their rubble cores had been set. This had become dust, and tended to burst out the ashlar casing: this shell was indeed doing all the work of supporting the weight resting on the piers. Lord Grimthorpe shored up the arches, and in large measure rebuilt the piers of larger stones. He says: "It took no small trouble and scolding to get these worked as roughly as the old ones, so as to make the work homogeneous and bewilder antiquaries." This sentence shows the false principles on which Lord Grimthorpe sometimes worked; necessary repairs should never be executed with a view to make the work appear as old as that the place of which it takes. [6] This was the original Benedictine arrangement, which is said to remain in this church and Westminster Abbey only. The pulpit against the fourth pier on the north side, counting from the rood screen, is new, decorated with pentagonal diaper work--pentagons being apparently particularly attractive to Lord Grimthorpe. #The Organ.#--The present organ when first built in 1862 was placed in the north arm of the transept, where the previously used organ had stood; in 1877 it was moved to the north-east corner of the nave; and was again moved in 1882, being then placed where it now is. In 1885 it was enlarged by Lord Grimthorpe, and the key-board was placed at the south end, so that the organist might command a view of the choristers, whether they were singing in the nave or in the choir. It is considered a fine and powerful instrument, and no better position in the church could be found for it. [Illustration: SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE FROM EAST.] #The South Aisle.#--At the western end of the south wall of this aisle may be seen the remains of an arch which was intended to lead into the south-west tower. Above it, high up, is a single-light window. The next three windows, of two lights each, with Decorated tracery, were inserted by Lord Grimthorpe in the blank wall; the next window probably dates from the seventeenth century. The windows in the next five bays come down on the inside to a much lower level than those to the west (see illustration, p. 43), but the bottom of the glass was kept high so as to be above the roof of the north walk of the cloister, which rested against the wall of these bays. Two of these windows contain modern glass, one being inserted to the memory of the present Dean's father. There was once a door in the second bay from the west, which probably was used for processions, and in the seventh bay was a small door opening into the cloister, from which a passage in the thickness of the wall led up by a flight of steps into the Abbot's chapel. This opening has been converted into a muniment room, and is closed by an iron door leading from the aisle. The vaulting of the western part is of stone, and was erected by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1878. The vaulting of the eastern part is fourteenth-century work erected at the time of the reconstruction of this part of the church in Decorated style, and is only plaster. Against the south face of the large pier, at the junction of the Early English and Decorated bays, once stood an altar dedicated to our Lady of the Pillar, with a painting of the Adoration of the Magi above it. Iron railings inclosing the space between this pier and the next to the west formed a chapel set apart for the use of the Guild of St Alban. This guild was founded in the reign of Edward III., but dissolved at the time of Wat Tyler's rebellion. It was the duty of the brethren of this guild to follow the shrine containing the relics of St. Alban whenever it was carried outside the church. [Illustration: HOLY WATER STOUP.] #North Aisle.#--At the west end of this aisle the beautiful though much restored holy water stoup should be noticed. A semicircular arch crosses this aisle, springing from the pier where the Early English and Norman work join (see illustration, p. 47). The roof is of timber with only a slight slope, built in 1860. The first four windows from the west are new, inserted by Lord Grimthorpe in the new wall which he built here. The other windows have new tracery, but the internal parts remain as William of Trumpington left them. Some old glass (fifteenth century) is to be seen in the eighth, ninth, and tenth windows of the aisle. The font, a modern one, stands at the east end of this aisle. It took the place in 1853 of a marble one, now in the workhouse chapel. There was once a brazen one brought as spoil from Dunkeld in Scotland, together with the lectern now in St. Stephen's Church; but this font disappeared during the civil wars. The continuation of the screen across the north aisle is due to Lord Grimthorpe. His object was to form a vestry out of that part of the north aisle that lies along the north side of the choir as far as the transept. On the south side he merely erected a glazed wooden screen with a door, through which visitors pass to enter the eastern part of the church. [Illustration: NORTH AISLE OF NAVE.] It may be asked, of what use could the vast nave be to a monastery like that at St. Albans, which does not seem to have contemplated the admission of the laity to its services? The monks' services were chaunted in the choir: the people had the parish church of St. Andrew for their use, in which, however, the priests of the Abbey officiated. But we must remember that in mediaeval times, on Sundays and on other great festivals, grand processions formed part of the ritual. The monks, leaving the choir, perambulated the church. The general order of the procession was probably as follows: the north arm of the transept, the north aisle of the presbytery into the Saint's Chapel, thence back into the aisle round the ambulatory or retro-choir, through the south presbytery aisle into the south arm of the transept, through the Abbot's door into the cloister, along the east, south, and west alleys back into the church by the blocked-up door in the south wall, up the nave, and through the two doors of the rood screen into the choir. On special occasions it was customary for the shrines or feretories containing the relics of the saints--in this Abbey those of St. Alban and St. Amphibalus--to be removed from the pedestals on which they stood, and carried in solemn procession round the church and sometimes even outside it. For such ceremonials the naves were needed. It was also to allow for these processions passing round the church that the ambulatory was built leading round the back of the high altar. The idea of holding _ordinary_ services for the laity in the nave is an entirely new idea, and however desirable they may be, yet they have led in modern days to the introduction into the building in some places of benches or seats like those of parish churches, and in others to the introduction of chairs, either of which additions considerably detracts from the architectural effect of the building. But though in early times the laity had not in all churches regular access to the building, yet it appears that they were some times admitted even in those churches that as a rule excluded them. For we find it recorded that a great number both of men and women were in the nave of St. Albans for the purpose of hearing Mass and praying at the time when the Norman piers on the south side of the nave fell in 1323. #South Choir Aisle.#--Passing through the door mentioned above, we enter the aisle which, since it runs alongside of the ritual choir west of the crossing, is known as the south choir aisle. In this part of the church the Norman work of Abbot Paul remains. The aisle, however, was vaulted in stone by Lord Grimthorpe. In the south wall is a recessed tomb, where two celebrated hermits, Roger and Sigar, were buried, and which was at one time a popular place of pilgrimage. In the recess now stands a stone coffin, but who originally occupied it there is nothing to show. Many of these would be found if the monks' cemetery were excavated, as after the twentieth Abbot, Warin (1183-1195), had issued his new orders regulating burial, all the monks were buried in coffins of stone. Roger the Hermit was a monk of St. Albans, a deacon; but though as monk he rendered obedience to the Abbot, he did not live within the precincts, for on one occasion as he was returning from Jerusalem three holy angels met him, and led him to a spot between St. Albans and Dunstable, called Markyate, when it was intimated to him that he should live the life of a hermit. Many were the trials and temptations he endured, many the combats he fought with the arch enemy of mankind. Once the prince of darkness even set the hermit's hood on fire, but the holy man was not disturbed, nor did he cease his prayers. In course of time a holy virgin of Huntingdon, Christina, came and occupied a cell in the immediate neighbourhood, and received religious instruction from Roger; here she endured many privations and mortified her body, bearing patiently the diseases brought on by her austerities. In time Roger, at the summons of God, quitted the world and went the way of all flesh, and his body was buried in the arched recess made for its reception. Christina still lived on. One day the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to her in the form of an infant, and abode with her for the space of a whole day; from that time forward no more temptations assailed her, and she was filled with the spirit of prophecy and wrought many notable miracles. She took the Abbot Geoffrey under her special care, advising him in matters of difficulty and reproving him when he did amiss. She was the first Prioress of the Benedictine Cell of Markyate, 1145. Sigar lived about the same time in the wood of Northaw, south of Hatfield. He also was famous for mortifying his flesh and for his victories over evil spirits. It was his habit at times to come to matins at St. Albans, and then to return to his hermit's cell and pass the time in prayer and self-scourgings. Strange to say, though the devils could not disturb the holy man at his prayers, the nightingales of Northaw woods did distract him, and he therefore prayed that God would keep these little birds away, lest he should take too much delight in their sweet songs; whereupon no more nightingales sang in those woods, and it is recorded that long after his time no nightingale dared venture within a mile of the spot where the hermit had dwelt. All which things are written in the chronicles of the Abbey, of which the reader may believe as little or as much as he will. Sigar was buried by the side of Roger. The arch above their grave may be seen in the illustration (p. 80), which also shows the Abbot's door which led into the cloister. It was built by Abbot de la Mare in the latter half of the fourteenth century. [Illustration: SAXON BALUSTER SHAFTS IN SOUTH TRANSEPT.] #The Transept.#--From this aisle we pass into the transept. Its southern arm, notwithstanding the havoc wrought by Lord Grimthorpe, still retains many points of interest. On its eastern side the triforium, consisting of three bays, contains some baluster shafts of Saxon date; it is supposed that they were taken from the church which Abbot Paul demolished. It will be seen from the illustration that they are marked with rings, and close examination has shown that they were turned in a lathe, but not being quite long enough for their new position, extra bases and capitals were added; these were cut with an axe, as were also the cylindrical shafts of Norman date, which are set alternately with the older ones. From the excellent state of preservation of the Saxon balusters, it is evident that they did not come from the exterior of the early church. Similar shafts may be noticed in the east wall of the northern arm of the transept There are two arches in the eastern wall which once led into chapels, the southern dedicated to St. Stephen, the northern first to our Lady, afterwards to St. John; they were pulled down in the fourteenth century to make room for a treasury. One of the arches is now used as a cupboard, the other as a kind of museum of fragments of carved stonework. The south wall is entirely new. Lord Grimthorpe pulled down the front containing a Perpendicular window, originally fifteenth-century work, but rebuilt in 1832. Thus inserted his five tall lancets, beneath which built into the wall are ten of the arches with restored shafts of the arcade taken from the slype at the time of its destruction; the other six are to be seen in the south wall of the rebuilt slype, if slype it can now be called. Under this arcading in the transept is a doorway, built by Lord Grimthorpe, partly from fragments of the west doorway of the old slype, and partly from his own design. The rebuilt slype is no longer a passage as it formerly was, leading between the south end of the transept and the north wall of the rectangular chapter-house, but is closed at the west end by a wall with a window in it, and at the east end has a door. Fortunately, a photograph taken before the destruction was available for reproduction, so that the reader may see the original condition of the south wall of the slype (see p. 20). The west wall of the transept has entirely different shafts in its triforium from those on the opposite side. A little double-light window or grating may be seen in the west wall near the aisle; it once opened into a small watching chamber, which was walled up at the time of the restoration for the sake of giving additional strength to the walls at the angle. It will be noticed that the pilasters projecting from the west wall do not come down to the ground. Lord Grimthorpe considers that these were not cut away, as might be imagined but were originally built as we see them to give strength to the walls where they were thinner on account of the passages in their thickness. There is a recess in this wall which was once a doorway into the cloister; it now contains some old oak chests, in which are placed every week the loaves provided for the poor by Robert Skelton's charity, 1628. The wooden ceiling is due to Lord Grimthorpe. [Illustration: DOORWAY IN SOUTH TRANSEPT.] #The North Arm of the Transept.#--The upper part of the north wall, with its high circular window, was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. Above the triforium on the east and west walls are three Norman windows and below these on the west side again two other Norman ones. The Norman doorway by which pilgrims to St. Albans shrine entered the church, and two Norman windows, with glass representing the four Latin doctors, inserted to the memory of Archdeacon Grant, who died 1883, may be seen below the wheel window; in the east wall are two pairs of lancets due to Lord Grimthorpe. Here, as in the corresponding wall on the south side, there are two arches which once led into two chapels. After their destruction, altars dedicated to the Holy Trinity (north) and to St. Osyth (south) were placed in the recesses. Here may be seen two modern monuments: one the cenotaph of Dr. Claughton, first Bishop of St. Albans, 1877-1892;[7] this stands at equal distances from the east and west walls: the other, an altar tomb, was erected in memory of Alfred Blomfield, Suffragan Bishop of Colchester, who died 1884. The ceiling is by Lord Grimthorpe. A panel from the old ceiling, representing the death of St. Alban, may be seen in the south aisle of the presbytery. [7] Designed by Mr. J.O. Scott; carved by Mr. Forsyth, of Hampstead. If we stand under the central tower we get, looking westward, a view into the choir with its modern fittings, the stalls given by various donors, and the Bishop's throne which was brought hither from Rochester. From the way in which the piers are cut away on their faces looking into the choir, it is concluded that the backs of the original stalls reached to a considerable height. The piers, like those in the nave, were at one time painted, and on the west face of the second pier from the east of the north arcade are remains of a painting of the Holy Trinity. In 1875 Mr. Chappie discovered wall-paintings between the clerestory windows, three on the north and one on the south; the soffits of the arches are also coloured. The painted ceiling of the choir was accidentally discovered during the restoration. A workman was cleaning one of the panels, which was coarsely painted, and happened to rub off the surface paint, disclosing other work below. The upper paint was then cleared away from all the other panels. Two, in the centre, bore a Scripture subject. The others bore, alternately, coats of arms and the monogram IHS, with wreaths of vine-leaves. The arms belong almost entirely to those who were by blood or marriage connected with Edward III. The ceiling of the lantern, 102 feet from the pavement, is painted with the red and white roses of the houses of Lancaster and York, together with various coats of arms. The lofty arches beneath the tower (55 feet high) are of great grandeur, as will be seen from the illustration. The four inside faces of the lantern are alike, each containing windows above the three arches of the arcade, each of which comprises two subarches springing from a quadrilateral shaft. [Illustration: THE CROSSING, LOOKING WESTWARD.] [Illustration: THE CHOIR.] To the east is the #presbytery#, closed by the Wallingford or high altar #screen.# This screen was sorely dilapidated, and all its niches were stripped of their statues, no record remaining of whose statues originally filled them. Mr. H. Hucks Gibbs (now Lord Aldenham) undertook to restore this screen, making good the canopies and filling them again with statues. The screen is of clunch, a hard stone from the lower chalk formation quarried at Tottenhoe near Dunstable, a stone much used for interior work in the church, though it will not stand exposure to weather in exterior walls. The new statues are by Mr. Harry Hems of Exeter; the larger ones of magnesian limestone from Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and the smaller of alabaster. They are excellent examples of modern carved work. The general idea was to represent "the Passion of our Lord and of the testimony of the faith in that Passion given in the lives and deeds of men"[8] of English race. A careful comparison of the screen (see illustration, p. 58), with the key given (p. 59) will enable the reader to identify the persons represented. [8] Lord Aldenham's words in describing his scheme. The coloured altarpiece in high relief is by Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A., and is a work quite unique in character. It represents the resurrection. In the centre is the upper half of our Lord's figure; on one side is an angel holding a cross, emblem of faith; on the other, one holding a crystal globe, emblem of dominion; the wings of these angels are formed of mother-of-pearl, and before them are grills of brass scrollwork, intended to give an air of mystery to their appearance. The work does not appear to be fully finished, the grills being only roughly attached to the wall. The space before the altar is paved with slabs of marble. [Illustration: THE WALLINGFORD SCREEN.] [Illustration: KEY TO THE SCULPTURE ON THE WALLINGFORD SCREEN] In an arch south of the altar is Abbot John of Wheathampstead's chantry, containing a splendid brass of Flemish workmanship, which once covered the grave before the high altar in which Abbot Thomas de la Mare was buried. He is represented in full vestments carrying a pastoral staff and wearing a mitre, according to the Pope's grant, although he was not a bishop but only a mitred abbot, and therefore could not perform the rite of ordination, which could be administered only by the Bishop of Lincoln; the Abbey Church, though independent of him in all other matters, was for this purpose in his diocese. The rebus of Abbot John was three ears of wheat, and his motto "Valles habundabunt," an allusion to the fertile lowland of Wheathampstead, whence he came. This rebus may be found in various places where the work was due to him. Opposite to this chantry is the far more magnificent one of Abbot Thomas Ramryge. His rebus is a ram wearing a collar with the letters R.Y.G.E. inscribed on it. This chantry was at one time, after the dissolution, appropriated as a burial-place for the Ffaringdons, a Lancashire family, but the original slab with Abbot Thomas's figure and inscription has been restored to its place. Within the altar rails are four memorial stone tablets covering the graves of four fourteenth-century Abbots--Thomas de la Mare, Hugh of Eversden, Richard of Wallingford, and Michael of Mentmore. Four other Abbots are known to have been buried beneath the presbytery floor outside the altar rails--John de Marinis, John of Berkhampstead, Roger of Norton, and John Stokes--as well as other monks and laymen. It will be noticed that the presbytery is divided from the aisles by solid walls, pierced only for the two chantries above described, and for two doorways, one on each side, further west. Over each of these doorways is a tabernacle; that on the south was put together of fragments by Sir Gilbert Scott, and that on the north made to match it. The clerestory windows are Lord Grimthorpe's; the painted wooden vaulting which extends beyond the screen and over the Saints' Chapel is John of Wheathampstead's. It will be noticed that this springs from vaulting shafts, and it is by some considered that a stone roof was contemplated. The triforium here is an arcade without any passage. The pulpit, which stands close by the north pier of the eastern tower arch, was designed by Mr. J.O. Scott and given by the Freemasons of England, who regard St. Alban as their patron saint. [Illustration: RAMRYGE CHANTRY.] We will now turn to the south and pass eastward under the curtain which hangs beneath the western arch of the south aisle of the presbytery. On the south side we see, as we enter, a fourteenth-century holy water stoup, and further on, under a window, a wide round-headed archway which formerly led into a chapel now demolished, which once was dedicated to our Lady, before the larger chapel at the east end was built. In the next bay is a blocked Norman window from which the plaster has been scraped to show the character of the wall, built of Roman tiles; the quadripartite vaulting is of plaster with lines painted red to make it appear like stone. Opposite is a large oak money-chest, and above it on the wall is the figure of a mendicant (see p. 63), carved in wood by a verger in the eighteenth century, hat in hand, as if asking the passer-by to put a coin in the poor-box below. In the south wall is a doorway which led into the treasury. The next bay is largely rebuilt; on the south side is a door and opposite is the back of John of Wheathampstead's chantry. From this we pass into the south aisle of the Saint's Chapel. [Illustration: SOUTH AISLE OF PRESBYTERY.] First we see the doorway on the north side, under which are steps leading up into the chapel, and further on we come to a trellis-work of iron through which we can look across the space once occupied by the monument of "Good" Duke Humphrey of Gloucester into the Saint's Chapel. This grill is older (about 1275) than the rich canopy over the duke's grave, and was doubtless erected to allow of a view being obtained from this aisle of the martyr's shrine. There are a number of figures of kings in the canopied niches over the grave, but it is not possible to identify them. Opposite are some remains of a stone screen of the Perpendicular period; it probably divided the aisle from some external chapel. After the chapel perished the wall was built up; but during the restoration this arcading was discovered. Through an oak screen, Lord Grimthorpe's work, we pass into the #retro-choir.# This, as we have before seen, was sadly mutilated after the Reformation, when the public path was made through this part of the building and the Lady Chapel turned into a grammar school; hence we shall find more modern work here than in any other equal area of the church. The part east of the passage was for long used as a covered playground for the boys and suffered much in consequence. It was originally built at the end of the thirteenth century. The arcading round these walls is new, much of it carved under the direction of Lord Grimthorpe by Mr. John Baker. The carving is of a naturalistic character, the vegetable forms being copied direct from the plants and trees of the neighbourhood. The oak ceiling of the south side and the flat ceiling of the centre are by Lord Grimthorpe; that on the north side by Sir Gilbert Scott. The shrine of St. Amphibalus once stood in the centre, but the reconstructed shrine, or rather pedestal of the shrine, was removed to the north aisle of the Saint's Chapel by Lord Grimthorpe, so as to be out of the way; for his idea was to fit this part of the church for use as a chapter-house, should a chapter ever be created, and as a consistory court. He built the low wall between it and the Saint's Chapel with seats under the arcading to be occupied by members of the chapter, and paved the floor with polished marble (see illustration, p. 64). [Illustration: WOODEN FIGURE OF A MENDICANT.] [Illustration: RETRO-CHOIR] There were once several altars in this retro-choir; under the east window on the south side one to our Lady of the Four Tapers, with an aumbry and triple-arched piscina in the south wall. This has been restored; the upper part is entirely new. On the north side in a corresponding position was an altar dedicated to St. Michael; while altars dedicated to St. Edmund, King and Martyr, and to St. Peter stood to the west of the two pillars, respectively on the north and south sides; and another altar to St. Amphibalus stood to the west of his shrine in the centre. It may here be noted that the east wall of the original Norman apse extended as far as the centre of the retro-choir. [Illustration: BASE OF THE SHRINE OF ST. AMPHIBALUS.] [Illustration: BACK OF THE WATCHING LOFT.] [Illustration: RAMRYGE'S CHANTRY FROM THE AISLE.] The north aisle of the Saint's Chapel is divided from the retro-choir by a glazed oak screen with a door in it, frequently kept locked. Just to the west of this is the pedestal of the shrine of St. Amphibalus. This, like that of St. Alban's shrine, was broken up into many fragments after the dissolution of the monastery. The fragments were built into sundry walls, but many of them were discovered when the walls blocking up the arches at the east end of the Saint's Chapel were removed; they were put together as far as possible, but as the east and north sides are missing, the position the pedestal now occupies is not an unfitting one, as these sides are hidden (see illustration, p. 65). The letters R.W. may be seen on it. These are the initials of Ralph Whitechurch, sacrist, at whose cost the pedestal was built in the second half of the fourteenth century. Opposite this we see the back of the watching loft (see illustration, p. 66) erected for the monk who kept watch and ward over the martyr's shrine; further to the west is a doorway into the Saint's Chapel, and still further west the back of Ramryge's chantry. Beyond this is the north entrance into the presbytery, over which is a painting of the Lord's Supper, generally attributed to Sir James Thornhill and given to the church about two centuries ago; at one time it hung over the high altar. There is also a painting of Offa, probably fifteenth-century work, to be seen in this aisle. The two doors removed by Lord Grimthorpe from the central doorway of the west front have been set up against the west end of the walls of this aisle (see illustration). [Illustration: ONE OF THE OLD WESTERN DOORS.] #The Lady Chapel.#--This chapel in its original condition must have been exceedingly beautiful; and although we have had occasion to find much fault with the work of restoration or rather destruction and needless alteration, in other parts of the church, yet here little but praise can be bestowed. Some may regret that the old wooden vaulting was not retained and repaired, but the new stone vaulting is beautiful in itself and more durable. A better material than cast iron might, however, have been found for the altar rails. The new carving is excellent in quality and right in principle. It has been done, not as most modern work is, by imitating the carved work of some particular period of architecture as set out for the carver in the architect's drawings, but by returning to the old system of going to nature and carving from life models, so to say. It has been done in the same spirit as actuated the early work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is said that the carvers had sprays of leaves and clusters of fruit and flowers before them as they carved, and imitated them as closely as the material on which they worked allowed them to do. Work done in this manner, provided the carver has skill and taste, is sure to show character and life, and to differ entirely from the mechanical conventionalisms we generally see in modern stone-carving. [Illustration: LADY CHAPEL.] The chapel dates from the latter part of the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth centuries. The work was probably begun in the time of Abbot Roger Norton, whose body was buried before the high altar in the presbytery, but whose heart was laid in a small box, which was discovered during the restoration, before the altar of St. Mary of the Four Tapers. Possibly his successor, John of Berkhampstead, carried on the work; but at Abbot Hugh's accession in 1308 the walls of the Lady Chapel had only been carried up as high as the string-course below the windows. The work of building was not continuous, as change in style shows; moreover we read in the Chronicles that Abbot Hugh of Eversden "brought to a praiseworthy completion the Chapel of the Virgin in the eastern part of the church which had been begun many-years before." He is also recorded to have roofed the space to the west, that is, the retro-choir. It seems, then, that at the time when the alterations in the eastern part of the Norman church were begun, not only was the presbytery with its aisles laid out, but also the retro-choir as a group of chapels, and possibly the Lady Chapel as well; and that when Hugh was chosen Abbot he found the presbytery and Saint's Chapel finished, the walls of the retro-choir raised to their full height, and those of the Lady Chapel partly built. These he proceeded to finish. The side windows of the Lady Chapel are beautiful examples of the fully developed Decorated style; the jambs and mullions are ornamented with statuettes which, strange to say, escaped destruction. "The eastern window of five lights is a singular combination of tracery with tabernacle work, while the easternmost bay on the south side, which is partly obscured by the vestry, has an exquisite window above, consisting of a richly traceried arch placed within a curvilinear triangle, beneath which is a splendid range of niches, and, beneath them again, a gorgeous range of sedilia and piscinae."[9] The original wall arcading had cinque-foiled heads on the south side, and trefoiled heads on the north; but all these had been cut away before the restoration began, probably at the time when the walls were covered with panels to make the chapel more suitable for a schoolroom. [9] Sir Gilbert Scott's Report on the Lady Chapel, 1875. In this chapel, after its dedication, mass was sung daily, and an organ was provided to accompany the musical part of the service. The western end of the Lady Chapel was separated from the retro-choir by a screen, which of course perished after the dissolution. No modern screen has been put in its place, though one would be a great improvement. Projecting from the easternmost bay of the south side stands the Chapel of the Transfiguration, which was dedicated in 1430. This, rebuilt, is now used as a vestry. Beneath the floor of the Lady Chapel was buried the hated Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, grand-son of John of Gaunt; Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, son of the famous Hotspur; and Thomas, Lord Clifford: whose bodies were found lying dead in the streets of St. Albans, after the first battle in 1455, in which they fell fighting for the Red Rose party. They were buried by Abbot John of Wheathampstead, who at this time was an adherent of that party, though he became a Yorkist after Queen Margaret had allowed her troops to plunder the Abbey when, in the second battle of St. Albans, she was victorious over the Earl of Warwick. A considerable amount of work was necessary to refit this chapel for use. The restoration was begun by Scott and finished by Lord Grimthorpe. Scott cut the mullions of the windows down the middle, retaining all the part inside the glass so as to preserve the statues, but renewing the part outside for the sake of strength. All the painted glass is modern, the gift of various donors. Lord Grimthorpe, in place of the wooden vaulting which was, he says, in a very unsound state, threw a stone vault over the chapel, raising its ridge three feet higher than that of the previous roof. All the arches of the arcade had been cut away, with the exception of two at the east end, one on each side of the altar, differing from each other as already mentioned. Lord Grimthorpe took as a model the one with the cinque-foiled head, considering that the better of the two, and constructed the existing arcading all round the chapel. He rebuilt the Chapel of the Transfiguration, making its walls lower than before, so as not to obstruct the view of the window over it. The carving, chiefly the work of Mr. Baker, as already mentioned, represents various vegetable forms in a naturalistic manner, the plants chosen being for the most part such as grow in the neighbourhood--convolvulus, primrose, buttercup, poppy, gooseberry, blackberry, rose, maple, ivy, sycamore, pansy, polypody, and others. Lord Grimthorpe also repaved the floor with marble slabs of three colours--black, red, and white. During the time the chapel was used for a schoolroom the floor had been a common wooden one. Practically, then, it will be seen that this Lady Chapel, with the exception of its walls and the windows with the statuettes on them, is a modern church, surpassing, indeed, most nineteenth-century work in beauty, and much the same may be said of the retro-choir or chapter-house. #The Saint's Chapel.#--We must now return westward, through the south aisle of the ambulatory, past the back of Duke Humphrey's grave, and enter the Chapel of the Martyr by the door which opens into it from the aisle. The centre of the chapel is occupied by the reconstructed pedestal of the martyr's shrine. The ugly wooden railing that surrounds it is a great blot on the appearance of the chapel; no doubt it is necessary that the pedestal should be protected by some kind of barrier, but a light and elegant railing of brass would answer every purpose without marring the general effect, as the present cumbersome erection shown in all the accompanying illustrations of objects in this chapel does. It is to be hoped that either out of the general fabric fund, or by the generosity of some individual donor, this one blot on this fine chapel may be removed. [Illustration: PEDESTAL OF ST. ALBAN'S SHRINE.] The bones of St. Alban were of course counted as the chief treasure of the Abbey, in some respects the most valuable relics in the kingdom, since they were the bones of the first Christian martyr in the island. It was meet and fitting, then, that the most splendid resting-place should be chosen for them. The bones themselves were inclosed in an outer and an inner case; the inner was the work of the sixteenth Abbot, Geoffrey of Gorham (1119-1149), and the outer of the nineteenth Abbot, Symeon (1167-1183). These coffers were of special metal encrusted with rich gems. It is recorded that the reliquary was so heavy that it required four men to carry it, which they probably did by two poles, each passing through two rings on either side of the coffer. It is said to have been placed in a lofty position by Abbot Symeon; but the pedestal of which we see the reconstruction to-day was erected during the early part of the fourteenth century, in the time of the twenty-sixth Abbot, John de Marinis (1302-1308). This was built of Purbeck marble and consists of a basement 2 ft. 6 in. high, 8 ft. 6 in. long, and 3 ft. 2 in. wide, above which were four canopied niches at each side and one at each end; these were richly painted and probably contained other relics; in the spandrels were carved figures, at the corners angels censing. At the west end was a representation of St. Alban's martyrdom; on the south side in the centre was, and still is, a figure of King Offa holding the model of a church; in the next spandrel to the east the figure of another king; on the east side a representation of the scourging of St. Alban, and on the north other figures, of which the only one remaining is that of a bishop or mitred abbot. In the pediments or gables were carvings of foliage, and round the top of the pedestal ran a richly carved cornice; round the base stood fourteen detached shafts, on which perhaps the movable canopy rested, and outside three other shafts of twisted pattern on each side, which carried six huge candles, probably kept burning day and night, certainly during the night, to light the chamber holding the shrine. On this lofty pedestal, 8 ft. 3 in. high, the glorious shrine rested. It was rendered still more ornate than it was in Abbot Symeon's time by the addition of a silver-gilt turret, on the lower part of which was a representation of the Resurrection with two angels and four knights (suggested by the guard of Roman soldiers) keeping the tomb. A silver-gilt eagle of cunning craftsmanship stood on the shrine. All these additions were given by Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349-1396). A certain monk also gave two representations of the sun in solid gold, surrounded by rays of silver tipped with precious stones. Over all was a canopy which, like many modern font-covers, was probably suspended by a rope running over a pulley in the roof, by which it might be raised. There is a mark in the roof remaining, possibly caused by the fastening of the pulley. An altar, dedicated to St. Alban, stood at the west end of the pedestal. There are two quarry-shaped openings to be noticed on the north side of the pedestal near the floor level, one of which extends right through to the south side. Into these diseased arms or legs might be thrust for cure by virtue of the saint. At the time of the dissolution the shrine disappeared, and the marble pedestal was broken up into small fragments. In 1847 the rector, Dr. Nicholson, found a few of these, when opening the two northern of the blocked-up arches to the east of the chapel; and in 1872, when the wall that closed the end of the south aisle was removed and excavations were made to find the level of the aisle floor, many more fragments, numbering in all about two thousand, were found. These were carefully put together by Mr. Chapple, clerk of the works, some plain stone being used to take the part of missing portions, with the result that we see to-day, from which we can form some idea of the appearance of the shrine in the days of its glory, even to the colour decoration, for some of the fragments bear the original paint and gold. [Illustration: WATCHING LOFT.] Such a precious thing as this jewelled shrine and the still more precious bones within it could not be left for a moment unguarded and unwatched, for stealing relics, when a favourable opportunity arose, was a temptation too great to be resisted by any monks, however holy. So on the south side of the shrine was erected a watching loft; the one that remains was constructed probably during the reign of Richard II., as his badge appears on it, but, no doubt, from the first there was some such place provided for the purpose of keeping guard. A similar loft may be seen in the cathedral church of St. Frideswide at Oxford, and a watching loft of a different construction in the south triforium at Malmesbury. The chamber had two stories; the lower contained cupboards, in which vestments and relics were kept, these are now filled with various antiquarian curiosities, Roman pottery from Verulamium, architectural fragments, etc. An oaken staircase leads up into the chamber where the "custos feretri" sat watching the shrine day and night, guard of course being changed at intervals. It must have been trying work watching there during the night-time in frosty weather, but monks were accustomed to bear cold. The watching chamber (see illustrations, pp. 66, 72) was built of oak and was richly carved. On the south side of the cornice are angels, the hart--badge of Richard II., the martyrdom of St. Alban, Time the reaper, and the seasons; on the north the months of the year are represented. The west side of this chapel is closed by the back of Wallingford's screen, on which may be seen five statues representing St. Peter, St. John, St. Mary, St. Stephen, and St. Michael. The eastern side is closed by a low wall, erected by Lord Grimthorpe in place of the wall by which these arches were completely blocked up after the dissolution. It was here that some of the fragments of the pedestal were found. Into his new wall Lord Grimthorpe has built some old fragments of carved work found in different places of the church. The south side of this chapel is formed of the monument over the grave of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, surnamed "good" by an admiring people, though some modern historians hold that he had little real claim to this title. He was the son of Henry IV., and therefore brother of Henry V., and was uncle of Henry VI. and guardian to the young King in the early part of his reign. He who likes may read in any history of the part he played in the affairs of the country: how he incurred the hatred of the unscrupulous and vindictive Queen of Henry VI., Margaret of Anjou, "she-wolf of France"; how he was murdered by Suffolk, with, it is said, the connivance of the Queen and Cardinal Beaufort. It was at one time supposed that he was buried in London, but there is little doubt that he found a resting-place in a grave prepared for him in St. Alban's Abbey, on March 4, 1447. This would be during the time that John Stokes was Abbot, between the two abbacies of John of Wheathampstead. The body was discovered in its leaden coffin during the reign of Queen Anne, when another grave was being dug. The coffin was opened, and the duke's body was discovered to be in a good state of preservation in the coffin, which is described as being "full of pickle." It is said that at one time the vergers would, for a due consideration, allow visitors to carry away the smaller bones when, owing to the body having been removed from the preserving fluid, nothing but a skeleton was left. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.] The monument is a handsome one. It was probably erected by Wheathampstead, who had been on terms of intimacy with the duke, when he for the second time became Abbot. The canopy over the grave is richly carved; the antelopes we see on it were the badge of the duke. His epitaph speaks of him, among other things, as Fraudis ineptae Detector, dum ficta notat miracula caeci. This refers to the story told of him by Sir Thomas More, how he convicted an impostor who claimed to have been born blind, but to have received sight at St. Alban's shrine, by asking him the colour of the garments that the duke himself and others were wearing; all these questions were correctly answered by the beggar, who forgot for the moment that one born blind who had only just received his sight, would not have known the _names_ of the various colours, though he might distinguish one colour from another. The beggar was punished for his imposture by being set in the stocks. This story is introduced into the first scene of the second act; of the second part of "Henry VI.," a reproduction of a St. Albans legend in which some students of the play will find an argument for attributing the play to Francis Bacon, who lived close by and would be likely to know the stories current in the town. #The Tower and Bells.#--The ringing loft is reached by a staircase starting from the door near the north-west corner of the north arm of the transept. The steps were originally built of Roman bricks, but at the time of the restoration had fresh treads of stone laid on them, so that the ascent is an easy one; from this staircase one passes along the triforium gallery of the western side of the transept, and then up a staircase in the turret at the north-west angle of the tower to a room whose floor is above the flat ceiling of the lantern visible from the floor of the church. The bells are in the next story, and at no great height above the floor of the ringing loft. In the ringing loft may be seen boards on which are inscribed records of several memorable sets of changes that have been rung, with the dates, the number of changes, the time occupied, which was generally between three and four hours, and the names of the ringers and the number of the bell that each one pulled. The peal consists of eight bells; the tenor is in the key of E flat, and measures 4 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and is calculated to weigh about 28 cwt. The whole peal was originally cast in London by Philip Wightman in the year 1699; but the second, fifth, and sixth bells were recast in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the treble in 1845. On the tenor may be read the following legend: "Vivos ad coelum, moritu[r]os ad solum pulsata voco." The clock was in great measure reconstructed under Lord Grimthorpe's direction and fitted with his gravity escapement; it strikes the quarter chimes on the second, third, fourth, and seventh bells, and the hours on the tenor. The mechanism of the chimes, which play at three, six, nine, and twelve o'clock, was remade by Mr. Godman, of St. Stephen's parish; this mechanism may be described as a kind of gigantic musical box. A huge cylinder revolves, on which are projecting pegs of brass, which as the cylinder goes round catch against wooden levers which raise clappers that in their fall strike the bells. The same tune is played all through each day, but a different tune is played each day of the week; at the end of the week the barrel is automatically set so as to begin the series of tunes again. There is, moreover, another tune--the Trinity hymn--which can be set by hand, and this is used on the greater festivals. Besides the peal of eight the sacring bell which once hung near the high altar is now hung in the tower. It may be well to finish the description of the church with a few notes about the material used and the method of building, abbreviated from a paper by Mr. James Neale. He says that during the restoration many examples were found of lead dowels in the joints of detached shafts. Sinkings were cut in the upper surface of the lower stone and in the lower surface of the upper, so that when in place these sinkings would be opposite to each other; a small hole one-eighth inch in diameter was then bored in the upper stone, through which lead was poured into the sinkings. The mortar used between the outer stones of the fourteenth-century bays of the nave was mixed with oyster-shells, contained a large amount of lime, and was very hard. There is much clunch stone used in the interior and this is in a good state of preservation, but any that has been used externally has decayed. The abaci of the Early English capitals in the main arcade are of Barnack stone, which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the Perpendicular is finely scraped. [Illustration: SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY AND SEE. Although, as stated in Chapter I., Albanus suffered martyrdom in 303 A.D., and a small church was soon afterwards built over his grave, and another of larger size subsequently erected, it was not until the eighth century that the monastery was founded. The foundation was an act of atonement on the part of Offa II., King of the Mercians, in the year 793. In the previous year he had been at the court of Ethelbert, King of East Anglia, and was a suitor for the hand of his daughter. But he treacherously murdered his host and took possession of his kingdom. Either as a politic effort to remove the evil reputation of such deeds, or as a conscientious offering to regain the favour of Heaven by means of a great work for the Church, Offa resolved to found a monastery, in honour of the protomartyr of Britain, upon the site of the martyrdom. The first thing to do was to discover the actual remains of St. Alban. The story of the discovery would not be complete without a vision and a miracle. Accordingly a vision is said to have appeared to the King at Bath, and a miraculous light to have guided him to the spot where the coffin was found. This had been purposely removed from its first resting-place within the walls of the church, for fear of its being desecrated by the Saxons, who certainly did reduce the building almost to a ruin. The coffin was found to contain the body of the martyr, as well as the precious relics which had been placed within it by the Bishop of Auxerre. Their presence establishes the identity of the remains. The church was then repaired so as to be able to preserve safely the reliquary which contained the precious relics "until a more worthy edifice should be built." Permission to build and endow the monastery was obtained from Pope Adrian I., the King making a special journey to Rome in order to procure it. The martyr was canonized at the same time. At some later time a valuable concession was granted to the new monastery: the tribute known as Peter's Pence being assigned to it, while the lands belonging to the Abbey were exempted from the payment. This grant applied to the whole of Offa's kingdom. The payment of Peter's Pence had only been instituted sixty-six years previously, the object being to maintain a Saxon college at Rome. Offa lived to see the monastery established and partially endowed. He himself gave one of the royal manors to the endowment, but he did not live long enough even to make a beginning of the grand church he appears to have had in contemplation, for he died not long after his return from Rome, some authorities giving the year 794 as the date of his death, others 796. The monastery was of the Benedictine order. Though it became important, and at last the chief of the Benedictine houses in England, it was not one of the earliest. The Benedictine order had been introduced into England in 596, and forty-five monasteries had been founded before that of St. Alban's. Many of these were little more than cells, and many were afterwards absorbed into the larger establishments. Yet several very famous abbeys were founded at least a century before Offa founded St. Alban's. Many of the early Abbots of St. Albans were men of mark and of influence in the national councils, and some of them were closely related to the royal family. The Chronicles, however, tell us but little of them, except when the Abbey itself is concerned. Some notes on the Abbots will now be given. 1. #Willegod# (793-796). His rule, we are told, was short but prudent. His death is attributed to vexation at not being able to obtain the body of Offa for burial in the Abbey. He died two months after the King. The chronicler charitably hopes that Offa's name is written in the book of life, although his mortal remains are not honourably preserved. Offa's son and successor, Ecgfrid, confirmed his father's charter and gave another manor to the Abbey. 2. #Eadric.# He was elected in 796, according to the express wishes of the founder, from among the inmates of the monastery. He was of royal blood and had the King's support in some critical difficulties, and ruled with discretion. 3. #Wulsig.# This Abbot, like his predecessor, a monk and akin to the King, scandalized the house by hunting in lay attire; and by entertaining noble ladies within the precincts. He wasted the substance of the Abbey by bestowing it upon his relations. Most of the property that he had alienated was recovered after his death, and those whom he had fattened died miserably in poverty. It is said that he was much hated by the monks and died of poison. 4. #Wulnoth.# He began well, but after a few years gave himself up to sport habited as a layman. He is said to have ruled eleven years, and to have repented when affected by paralysis, and to have made a happy end. The chronicler adds with sly humour that his change to holiness was brought about "_faciendo de necessitate virtutem._" In his time the Danes plundered the Abbey of its treasures, vestments and sacred vessels, and carried off the bones of St. Alban to Owense (probably Odense in Funen). The sacrist Egwin was much distressed at the loss of this his greatest treasure, and prayed that he might see the body brought back. St. Alban appeared to him in a vision, and bade him go to Owense and there await instructions. After a year's stay at the monastery he was admitted into the brotherhood and became sacrist, never revealing the fact that he had come from St. Albans. Long did he wait for an opportunity of carrying away the sacred bones, until one winter's night he found means of removing them from the shrine wherein they were kept, and packing them in a chest, which he gave to an English merchant whom he knew, bidding him take it to St. Albans. He said that it contained books which the Abbot had lent him, and which he was now returning; he added that he would shortly bring the key himself, or, if he could not come himself, would send it by a messenger. Together with the chest, which in due course was delivered, a letter was sent detailing the circumstances of his pious fraud; this was read by the Abbot in chapter, to the great joy of the brethren. Egwin shortly after this obtained leave to make a journey to England, and when safely in the Abbey he wrote to the monks at Owense, telling them what he had done. Some of them denounced him as guilty of sacrilege, others justified his action. When he opened the chest in the chapter-house at St. Albans miraculous cures were wrought on many who were infirm, both in the Abbey and in the town. 5. #Eadfrith.# This Abbot was handsome in person, but despicable in his deeds. He never attended the services in the choir. During his time Wulfa, the prior, built an oratory in honour of Germanus on the spot where the rude dwelling he had occupied when visiting St. Albans lay in ruins. After Wulfa's death Eadfrith saw the error of his ways, resigned his office, became a hermit, and died a holy man. No new Abbot was appointed for a year, as the monks were divided into two parties in favour of rival candidates. 6. #Wulsin.# The bishop after a time intervened and put an end to the dissension, and the monks unanimously elected Wulsin, or Ulsinus. He helped the inhabitants of the town to build the three churches of St. Michael, St. Stephen, and St. Peter (see Appendix). He died holy and full of days. 7. #�lfric.# This Abbot purchased of King Eadgar a large fishpond which was too near the Abbey to be pleasant; he drained it, leaving only a small pool of water and a bed of reeds, converting the rest of it into gardens. He translated into Saxon some of the historical books of the Old Testament. His doctrine on the Lord's Supper, as expounded in a letter to Wulfstan, Bishop of Sherborne, which is preserved at Exeter, was identical with that of the twenty-eighth Article of Religion. He died "full of days, eminent for sanctity, after having achieved many praiseworthy actions." 8. #Ealdred.# He ruled but for a short time, but was a benefactor to the town. He cleared away much of the ruins of Verulamium, especially those caverns which had become the abode of robbers and outlaws. He also collected materials (chiefly from the Roman ruins)--tiles, stone, and timber--with a view to the rebuilding of the abbey church. 9. #Eadmer.# He was pious, courteous, learned, but he left the monastery much in debt, so that some possessions had to be sold and some timber to be cut down. 10. #�lfric# is described as of singular and conspicuous merit. He wrote a history of St. Alban, and arranged it for musical recitation. Being afraid of a Danish invasion, and thinking that the relics of the protomartyr, which had already been once carried away to Denmark, would not be safe in the shrine as it stood, he hid them under the altar of St. Nicholas, and at the same time pretended to send them to Ely for safe custody, giving the authorities at Ely to understand that the true relics were being committed to their charge; this, it is said, he did being a prudent and circumspect man, and fearing that the men at Ely would be blinded by covetousness, and refuse to return the true relics if they once got them into their possession. The Danish invasion was soon over, the King being drowned, and then �lfric demanded from the monks of Ely the relics he had intrusted to their care. The caution he had exercised was justified by the conduct of the Ely monks; for they, thinking that the bones they had were really those of St. Alban, at first refused to return them, but at last consented to do so. The bones, however, that they sent back were not those they had received. It is plain that these old monks were not always to be trusted to behave in an honourable manner when precious relics were concerned. The chronicler, however, who tells the story, considers the conduct of the monks of St. Albans in sending spurious relics was "pious," while the behaviour of the monks of Ely was "detestable and disgraceful"--but then the chronicler was a monk of St. Albans. �lfric bought the royal palace of Kingsbury and its land near the Abbey, demolishing the whole of the palace except one tower. �lfric in 995 was promoted to the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. 11. #Leofric.#[10] This Abbot was half brother to �lfric. During a great famine he spent large sums in the relief of the poor, devoting to this purpose even some of the treasures that had been got together for the rebuilding of the church, and many gold and silver vessels assigned to his own use in the Abbey. The monks, however, objected to this conversion of the property of the Abbey to uses for which it was not originally intended. [10] The "Gesta Abbatum" reverses the order of the two Abbots, �lfric and Leofric, but this is probably wrong. It is recorded that Leofric had the offer of the archbishopric, but declined, saying that his brother �lfric was far more fit for the post than he, and it is supposed that when �lfric became Archbishop in 995, Leofric succeeded him as Abbot. 12. #Leofstan.# This Abbot was confessor to King Edward (the Confessor) and his Queen Edith. He acquired much land for the Abbey, and cleared away the woods between London and St. Albans, to make the roads safer for travellers. To secure the good services of a knight as protector of the Abbey he assigned him a certain manor; the service was faithfully performed. The Normans, when they came, dispossessed the holder, and conferred the manor upon Roger, a Norman knight, who, strange to say, fulfilled the conditions on which his predecessor had held the land. At Leofstan's death the Abbey was in a state of the greatest prosperity. 13. #Frithric.# This Abbot was chosen in the reign of Harold as leader of the southerners against the Normans, just as Aldred, Archbishop of York, was chosen as the leader of the northcountrymen. William accordingly ravaged the possessions of the monastery. After the Conquest, when William was accepted as King, Frithric administered to him the oath that he would keep inviolate all the laws of the realm, which former kings, especially Edward, had established. Needless to say, William soon began to disregard this oath, and despoiled the Abbey of St. Alban's more and more, till Frithric in despair resigned his office as Abbot and retired to Ely, where he soon died. The monks of Ely pretended that he took with him to their monastery the precious relics of St. Alban the Martyr. 14. #Paul of Caen# (1077-1093). A great change now comes over the history of the monastery. The new Abbot was a Norman and a kinsman of Lanfranc, the first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury. Like Lanfranc, who had been Abbot of Caen, he resolved to rebuild his church, and, like Lanfranc, adopted in England the style he had been accustomed to at Caen; but his ideas on the matter of size were far grander than that of his former Abbot, for St. Alban's Abbey Church far surpassed in its dimensions the cathedral church which the new archbishop built at Canterbury. As we have already seen (Chap. I.), he used the Roman bricks from the ruined city of Verulamium as building material. Important as this work was, the account of it occupies but a few lines in the Chronicles. In these it is mentioned that Lanfranc contributed 1,000 marks towards the cost. Paul was an energetic man, as may be seen by the short time occupied in building this large church; but it was not only in providing a new church that he was active, for it is recorded that he reformed the lives and manners of the monks, secured the restoration of land that had been alienated, founded cells as occasion demanded, and persuaded lay donors to give largely to the Abbey--tithes, bells, plate, and books. Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, gave the Priory of Tynemouth, which he had founded, to the Abbey of St. Albans. Abbot Paul died on his way home from a visit to this new priory, and was buried magnificently in his own Abbey. The "Gesta Abbatum" begins at this point to sum up the good and evil deeds of the abbots. Among Paul's shortcomings the following are mentioned: he lost property through negligence; he destroyed the tombs of his English predecessors in the Abbey; he did not secure as he should have done the bones of Offa for his new church; he alienated the woods of Northame; he bestowed some of the property of the Abbey upon his illiterate kinsfolk. Yet, on the whole, his good deeds outweighed his evil ones. William II., after Paul's death, kept the Abbey in his own hands for four years, using, as was his wont, the revenues for his own advantage. His death in the New Forest was considered by the monks of the Abbey as a special punishment for the extortion he had practised on them. 15. #Richard d'Aubeny# or #d'Albini# (1097-1119). This Abbot, a Norman, was a man of much influence, and during his rule the Abbey was very prosperous. He presented many and valuable ornaments to the church: a shrine wrought in gold for the relics of the apostles, which Germanus had placed in St. Alban's coffin in the fifth century; another shrine of ivory and gilt, for the relics of martyrs and saints; a great number of vestments and many valuable books. During his time, 1104, the relics of St. Cuthbert were translated from the temporary shrine which Bishop Carileph had erected over them to the new Cathedral Church at Durham, and Abbot Richard, as head of Tynemouth Priory, was present on that occasion, and a miracle was worked upon him, for his withered arm was cured by being brought into contact with St. Cuthbert's body. In gratitude for this benefit, he built a chapel in honour of St. Cuthbert in his own Abbey. For some reason the Abbey, though no doubt used, had not hitherto been consecrated. This omission was made good on the festival of the Holy Innocents, 1115, by Geoffrey, Archbishop of Rouen, the Bishops of Lincoln, London, Durham and Salisbury assisting. Henry III., his Queen Matilda, the chief nobles and prelates of the kingdom, were present and stayed at the Abbey from December 27th until the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th). Wymondham Priory in Norfolk was founded by William, Count of Arundel, and conferred on St. Albans during Abbot Richard's rule. Like his predecessor, he enriched his relations at the expense of the Abbey, and is further blamed by the chronicler for having promised that the Abbey should be subject for the future not to the Archbishop but to the Bishop of Lincoln.[11] This change seems to have led to a stricter rule and so was displeasing to the monks, though it is admitted that the Archbishop had not treated the Abbey well. [11] The church remained in this diocese until 1845, when it was handed over to Rochester, although, as will be seen afterwards, the Abbey was made independent of the Bishop of Lincoln's jurisdiction. 16. #Geoffrey of Gorham# (1119-1146). This Abbot came from Maine, where he had been born. He had been invited to take charge of the monastery school, but did not arrive in time, so he opened a school at Dunstable. On one occasion, when a miracle play was being performed by his scholars, he borrowed some vestments of the Abbey; these were unfortunately destroyed in a fire; unable to pay for them, he offered himself as a sacrifice and became a monk. He was unanimously elected Abbot on the death of his predecessor, but at first was reluctant to accept the office, though finally his reluctance was overcome. He made a most energetic ruler. He increased the allowances to the kitchen, cellars, and almonry. He ordered that the revenues of certain rectories should be used for providing ornaments, for a fabric fund, and for the infirmary. He founded and endowed the leper hospital of St. Julian on the London Road, and established the nunnery of Sopwell (see Appendix) for thirteen sisters. He built the guest hall, the infirmary, and its chapel. He also began to construct a new shrine for the relics of the saint, but after spending £60 on it discontinued the work to give himself breathing time, and never went on with it again. He felt himself constrained to sell some of the materials he had collected for this purpose, to obtain money for the relief of the poor during a famine. A long description is preserved of the decoration of the shrine. Among other precious things worked into it was an eagle with outstretched wings, the gift of King Ethelred. Although it was not quite finished, it was sufficiently so as to be ready to receive the bones of the martyr. The remains were examined in the presence of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and sundry Abbots in 1129. The genuineness of the relics, so it is said, was established by appearances of the saint to divers persons as well as by miracles. One shoulder blade was missing; but this, as it afterwards appeared, had been given by a former Abbot, at the request of King Canute, to the reigning duke of some foreign land, who had founded a cathedral church on purpose to receive so precious a relic. A long list is given of the valuable gifts this Abbot made to the monastery and church. During his time lived the hermits Roger and Sigur, and the recluse Christina, whose story has been told in Chapter III. At this time also Henry I. granted to the Abbots the Liberty of St. Albans, which gave them the power of trying minor offences, which had hitherto been tried in the civil courts of the hundred and the shire. There are only two faults that are recorded of this Abbot: first, he gave some of the Abbey tithe to the support of the church that he had rebuilt; and, secondly, he was too easy in business dealings and allowed himself to be imposed upon. 17. #Randulf of Gobion# (1146-1151). This Abbot had previously been chaplain and treasurer to the Bishop of Lincoln. He erected the Abbot's chamber and other useful buildings, and freed the Abbey from debt. He deposed the Prior because he suspected that a seal he found not yet engraved had been prepared for a new Abbot, and that this indicated a desire on the part of the Prior and monks to depose him. He is said to have burnt a rich chasuble in order to obtain the gold with which it was embroidered, and to have removed the gold plates from the shrine to procure money to make a purchase of land--the rent of which, however, went to the Abbey, not himself--while keeping the gold plate used at his own table. He was allowed to nominate a successor, and then resigned, dying shortly afterwards. 18. #Robert of Gorham# (1151-1166). He was a nephew of Geoffrey of Gorham, sixteenth Abbot. He had been a monk abroad, but coming on a visit to his uncle he obtained permission to "migrate" to St. Albans. In time he became Prior. As Abbot he managed the affairs of the Abbey with prudence. He repaired and releaded the church, whitened it within and without, that is to say, renewed the plaster with which from the first it had probably been covered. Matthew Paris tells us that one Nicholas Breakspear, a clerk from Langley, applied to him for admission to the Abbey, but was refused, as he failed to pass his entrance examination. "Wait, my son," said the Abbot, "and go on with your schooling so as to become more fit." Nicholas is spoken of as a youth, but he must have been about fifty years of age when Robert became Abbot, and was certainly Bishop of Albano within a year or two of that date, and became Pope, under the name of Adrian IV., in 1154, the only Englishman that has ever sat in St. Peter's chair. If there is any truth in the story of his rejection at St. Albans, it must have happened earlier than the abbacy of Robert. King Stephen visited the Abbey, and Robert obtained his authority to level the remains of the camp, that is, the tower that �lfric, the tenth Abbot, had allowed to remain standing at Kingsbury, which had become a den of robbers. Soon after Breakspear had become Pope, Robert and three bishops from the foreign dominions of Henry II. went as envoys to him from the King; the Abbot hoped that the Pope's connection with St. Albans, for his father had become late in life a monk there, would induce him to enlarge its privileges. Knowing that the dignitaries at Rome and the members of the Pope's household were wellnigh insatiable, he distributed valuable gifts among them to secure their good offices with the Pope. Robert complained of the intolerable oppression of the Bishop of Lincoln, and the insolence of his agents, and obtained from Adrian complete exemption from episcopal supervision. The Abbey henceforth was to be subject to Rome alone. When the Pope's letter granting this exemption was exhibited at a council in London, the greatest indignation was expressed. An agreement was, however, at last signed between the Bishop of Lincoln and the Abbot, three bishops intervening in the interest of peace. Abbot Robert then sent two of his nephews, monks, to Rome with still more presents, and as a result of their mission further privileges and liberties were granted to the Abbot; he was, among other things, allowed to wear pontifical robes. The Bishop of Lincoln was exasperated, but did not dare to defy the Pope's authority. Adrian IV. was poisoned in 1158, and the next Pope granted a new and important privilege to St. Albans; what it was is not stated. The Bishop of Lincoln now thought it was time to assert himself. He declared his intention of visiting the Abbey as its Bishop, and ordered that suitable preparations should be made for his reception. The Abbot refused to receive him. He was, on a complaint made by the Bishop, cited before the King's Court and called on to justify his action. After a protracted investigation lasting for three or four years, the King assented to the Abbot's wearing a mitre, and recommended him to buy off further opposition on the part of the Bishop by a grant of certain lands, which were worth £10 a year. At Easter, 1163, Abbot Robert celebrated Mass wearing for the first time mitre, ring, gloves, and sandals. He also at the Council of Tours in the same year took the first seat among the English Abbots, the Abbot of St. Edmondsbury vainly attempting to take it from him. He gave costly gifts to the church, built the chapter-house and the Locutorium, the Chapel of St. Nicholas, part of the cloister, the long stable, granary, larder, and two solars. He was buried in the new chapter-house, leaving the monastery in debt, caused no doubt by his lavish expenditure in bribery at Rome. On his death in October, 1166, the King kept the abbacy vacant for several months, for at this time the great conflict between the King and the Archbishop, Becket, was raging, and the King wished visibly to assert his authority. 19. #Symeon# (1167-1183). Symeon had been Prior, and therefore had been acting head of the monastery since Robert's death. He was a literary man and an encourager of learning. Being an intimate friend of Thomas Becket, he went to Prince Henry, the King's son, to intercede for the Archbishop and bring about a reconciliation, if possible, with the King; but he was driven from the court with contumely. Symeon finished the shrine. The feretory made by Abbot Geoffrey still contained the bones of the martyr; this was now covered by the work of Abbot Symeon, which was made of large size so as to contain the other. The relics of Amphibalus were discovered about this time at Redbourn, where he had been put to death. The Bishop of Durham dedicated the Chapel of St. Cuthbert which had been built by Richard (fifteenth Abbot). Like several of the other Abbots, Symeon enriched his relations and left the Abbey in debt. 20. #Warren#, or #Warin, of Cambridge# (1183-1195). This Abbot was of low birth, but had risen to the position of Prior. The sacrist alone opposed his election on account of his birth and also because he squinted, and predicted all manner of evils to the monastery if he were elected Abbot. Henry II., soon after the new Abbot had been appointed, and the Bishop of Lincoln happening to be at St. Albans at the same time, the Bishop brought up the old grievance about the Abbey having been made independent of him, but the King silenced him with angry words. Warren founded a leper hospital for women as Geoffrey had founded one for men. This hospital was dissolved by Wolsey in 1526, its revenues going towards the endowment of Christ Church, Oxford. The bones of Amphibalus were removed from the locker in which they were kept, and placed in a new shrine adorned with gold and silver. This Abbot made numerous regulations concerning the domestic affairs of the monastery; one dealt with the dress, another made better provision for sick monks, another shortened the services, another allowed meat in the infirmary, yet another ordered that all dead monks should be buried in stone coffins, not merely laid in earth graves. This Abbot, in lieu of delivering up the chalice which Richard I. had demanded from all English abbeys wherewith to pay his ransom, sent 200 marks of silver. Shortly before his death he set aside 100 marks to be given to his successor for renewing the west front of the church. Among his faults it is noted that he was self-willed, that he banished to distant cells any of the brethren that offended him, and that he felled timber belonging to the Abbey and sent the proceeds as presents to the King and Queen. 21. #John de Cella# (1195-1214). This Abbot derived his name from the Cell of Wallingford, of which he had been Prior. He was learned, pious, and a good disciplinarian. He left the secular affairs of the Abbey to be managed by the Prior and Cellarer, and devoted himself to his religious duties, and to the fabric. He pulled down the Norman west front with the intention of rebuilding it; he dug foundations, but after he had spent Warren's legacy of 100 marks his walls had not risen above the ground level. His master of the works led him into needless expense, and as progress was so slow the Abbot became dispirited. He, however, got another master of the works and started afresh, assigning to the building fund one sheaf of wheat from every acre. This arrangement lasted during the whole of his rule and for many years afterwards, but progress was still slow. Gifts of gold and silver, considerable sums of money collected by a wandering preacher, who pretended to be Amphibalus, restored to life, were all consumed. At last in weariness of heart the Abbot gave himself to other work; he began to build a new refectory and dormitory, persuading the monks to give up wine for fifteen years, and contribute the money so saved to the cost of the new building. He had a great reputation for sanctity. At times, when he was saying mass, responses were sung, so it is said, by voices not of this world. He limited the number of monks to a hundred. King John ordered him to say mass during the interdict, but he refused, whereupon John seized the monastery and ejected the monks, and only on payment of 600 marks, and afterwards of 500 more, would he restore the Abbey to its rightful owners. 22. #William of Trumpington# (1214-1235). This Abbot was an entirely different style of man from his predecessor. He was much addicted to social enjoyment, was a good man of business, and looked into matters thoroughly for himself; he visited all the cells belonging to the Abbey, and carried on the work of building in an energetic manner. The dormitory was finished, the aisles were roofed with oak, an octagon built on the tower, and, chief of all, the long-delayed work at the west end was resumed and finished. The sacrist, Walter of Colchester, was an excellent carver and carved a handsome pulpit with a great cross thereon, and statues of St. John and the Virgin. The shrine of St. Amphibalus, which had stood to the south of that of St. Alban, was moved to the middle of the nave and inclosed within iron screenwork; much other carving was done in the church and many new altars dedicated. A fine bell was given for services in honour of our Lady; the Chapel of St. Cuthbert with a dormitory over it for seven monks was rebuilt; most of the walls were replastered; cloister walks were built, fitted with oak beams, ceiled and covered with oak shingles. This Abbot acquired much property for the Abbey, but during the civil wars large sums were extorted by either party. In 1235 the church was struck by lightning and set on fire, but fortunately a tank of rainwater was close at hand, and the fire was soon extinguished. As the Abbot died eight days afterwards, the accident was looked upon as a presage of his coming death. 23. #John of Hertford# (1235-1260). He had been sacristan and afterwards prior of the cell at Hertford. The Pope's bull confirming his election required him to present himself at Rome every three years. The church was again struck by lightning, notwithstanding the fact that the impression of the Pope's seal, bearing an image of the Lamb of God, had been duly placed on the top of the tower as a protection against lightning. Abbot John built the guest-house, and devoted the revenues of three rectories to the improvement of the quality of the ale, and for the providing of better entertainment for guests. He repaired many of the buildings belonging to the Abbey, the granary, water mills, houses in London, etc. At the coronation of Henry III. the Abbot of St. Albans took precedence of all the mitred abbots; and though afterwards the Abbot of Westminster obtained precedence, yet in 1536 the signature of Abbot Catton of St. Albans stands first, that of Abbot Benson of Westminster following, in the list of names attached to the "Articles of Faith" drawn up by Convocation. So it would appear that the Abbots of St. Albans had by this time recovered their rights of precedence. When the see of Lincoln was vacant, the Archbishop proposed to hold an ordination in St. Albans Abbey, but was refused permission. During this Abbot's rule the Pope demanded more than once large sums of money; the Abbot refused to pay, and in consequence of his refusal the church was put under an interdict. At this time lived the celebrated monk Matthew of Paris, to whom we owe much of the knowledge we possess of the history of the Abbey up to his own days. The Chronicles carry us nearly up to the end of Abbot John's rule, Matthew himself dying only a year before the Abbot. For the subsequent history, up to the abbacy of Thomas de la Mare, thirtieth Abbot, we are indebted to Thomas of Walsingham. Matthew was born about 1200, and though of English descent derived his surname from the French capital, either because it was his birthplace, or because he was a student at its university. He became a monk of St. Albans on January 21st, 1217. He went with Abbot John of Hertford to London to be present at the marriage of Henry III. to Eleanor of Provence, 1236; and again he went to Westminster Abbey for the celebration of the feast of the founder, on which occasion he was asked by the King to write an account of the proceedings. He was sent on a mission to the Benedictine monastery at Trondhjem in 1248, attended the royal court at Winchester in 1251, and was present at the marriage of Henry's daughter to the Scottish King, Alexander II. When Henry III. spent a week at St. Albans in 1257, he admitted Matthew to his table and treated him with great confidence, communicating many facts and details of his life to him. Matthew afterwards exerted his influence with the King in behalf of the University of Oxford, when its privileges were in danger from the encroachments of the Bishop of Lincoln. His great work was the "Historia Major." This professes to give the outlines of human history from the Creation up to 1259. The work up to 1189 seems to have been compiled by John de Cella, from 1189 to 1235 by Roger of Wendover. Matthew of Paris transcribed and edited the work of his two predecessors, and continued the history from 1235 to 1259. He shows himself in it a warm advocate of English rights and liberties, and an opponent of papal and regal tyranny. It is the best early history we have of our own country up to the beginning of the Barons' War, and is also an authority on Continental affairs. He wrote too an abridgement of this work, leaving out the parts dealing with foreign history; this he called "Historia Anglorum." He also wrote "The Lives of the two Offas" and the "Lives of Twenty-three Abbots of St. Albans," whence most of the details of the history of the Abbey given here have been derived. Thomas of Walsingham, who continued the history, lived in the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. Against Abbot John it is alleged that he had his commons sent to his private room, instead of taking his meals with the brethren in the refectory. When he died he was buried with great honour, "as became so great a father." 24. #Roger of Norton# (1260-1290). The new Abbot had been one of the monks; his appointment was confirmed by Pope Urban in 1263. During his rule the monastery flourished, notwithstanding the disturbed state of the country in the early years of it. He acquired many new possessions; the infirmary was rebuilt; the Abbot's lodgings were repaired; many ornaments, vestments, books, a silver thurible, and three new bells were procured. He made regulations for the preservation of the Abbey property, the management of the servants and tenants, and for the careful custody of the Abbey swans. Much litigation took place during his abbacy. Queen Eleanor claimed one of the manors, but was not able to make good her claim. A controversy about the appointment of the Prior of the cell at Wymondham arose between the Abbot and the Countess of Arundel, which was finally settled by an agreement that the Countess should nominate three persons, of whom the Abbot was to select one. Another dispute arose between the Abbot and the townspeople, about grinding corn and fulling cloth. The people claimed the right of having handmills in their houses, the Abbot insisted on his mills being used; the matter was referred to the law courts and decided in the Abbot's favour. Although through negligence some property was lost, yet this Abbot's character was highly commended: Hic quem dedit Dominus nobis in rectorem Prudenter sustinuit onus et honorem. He was strict in government, of good life and conversation, eminently religious, distinguished for his learning. He was paralyzed for three years before his death, and when he died his body was buried before the high altar, but his heart was placed in a small box of Eastern workmanship before one of the altars in the retro-choir. 25. #John of Berkhamstead# (1290-1301). This Abbot was installed on St. Alban's Day, 1291. The King, Edward I., visited the Abbey during the vacancy, and again after the appointment of the new Abbot. The conduct of the King's agent before the election had been very extortionate. The claim of the Warden of Hertford Castle to certain tolls within the Abbot's liberty was the subject of a long investigation; in the end the claim was disallowed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert of Winchelsea, sent a message that he wished for hospitality in the Abbey, but the Abbot refused to entertain him unless he would sign a paper undertaking that his visit should not in any way prejudice the privileges granted by the Pope, the Abbey being stated to belong "ad Romanam Ecclesiam, nullo medio." The Archbishop declined to sign this document, and so had to put up with lodgings outside the Abbey precincts. When he arrived the bells of St. Stephen's Church were not rung in his honour, whereupon the Archbishop put the church under an interdict; but the clergy paid no attention to this, and conducted the services as usual. During his rule the body of Queen Eleanor rested at St. Albans, and one of the Eleanor crosses was erected and remained here until 1702, when it was destroyed. A drinking fountain now occupies its site. In 1302 the Abbot obtained from Edward I. a confirmation of all the grants that had been made to the Abbey by former kings. This Abbot does not receive a very good character from the chronicler: he cut down and sold too much timber, granted too many pensions, and deprived several of the priors of the cells without sufficient cause. 26. #John de Marinis# (1302-1308). This Abbot had been Cellarer, and afterwards Prior, for fourteen years, before his election as Abbot. The full list of the fees and expenses connected with his confirmation at Rome is given. The sum was enormous: 2,500 marks and 400 shillings. He offended Edward II. by refusing to supply some carriages and horses which the King had demanded, and so when Edward came to St. Albans he refused to see the Abbot. The latter tried to appease the King by a present made through the notorious favourite Piers Gaveston, and also by a grant of the manor of Westwood, which was beyond his power to give, but all to no purpose. Most of the records of his rule relate to rights of property and regulations respecting the monks. As his end approached he made a statement of his liabilities. He owed £1,300 and had never paid the 1,000 marks due to the King at the last vacancy. We are told that he was constant, not given to much talk, honest in his life, religious, and circumspect. 27. #Hugh of Eversden# (1308-1326). This Abbot, who had been Cellarer for five years, is described as being tall and handsome, able to speak French and English well, but with little knowledge of Latin. On this account he wished to avoid going to Rome, and sent his proctors instead to obtain the Pope's confirmation of his election--but they, having incurred much expense, returned to say that the Pope insisted on the new Abbot appearing at Rome in person. By liberal presents he made a favourable impression at Rome, but the journey, beyond the payments of first-fruits, cost him more than £1,000. With the help of a legacy from Reginald of St. Albans he finished the Lady Chapel and the retro-choir, in which he placed the shrine of St. Amphibalus. King Edward II. paid a second visit to the Abbey, and on being told by the Abbot of the benefactions of Edward I. gave 100 marks and much timber towards the work then in progress. The Abbot was twice besieged in his Abbey by the townspeople; they desired to be answerable to the King and not the Abbot. They gained their point, though they were compelled to surrender to the next Abbot the privileges they had obtained of Abbot Hugh. It was during the rule of this Abbot that the piers in the main arcade of the nave gave way while mass was being said on St. Paulinus' Day, 1323, and he had to begin repairing this part of the church. 28. #Richard of Wallingford# (1326-1334). He was of humble birth; his father was a blacksmith. After taking his degree at Oxford he became a monk, and resided at St. Albans for three years, when he again went to Oxford and studied philosophy and theology there for nine years. He was on a visit to St. Albans at the time of the death of Abbot Hugh. He was elected Abbot, but the election was found to be informal, so he resigned his claim to the Pope, who thereupon appointed him Abbot. He wrote a Register of things done in his time, compiled a book of Decretals and Constitutions of Provincial Chapters, and sundry works on geometry and astronomy. He constructed a clock showing the courses of the sun and moon, the ebb and flow of the tides, etc., which Leland, Librarian to Henry VIII., speaks of as still going in his day. He also made an astronomical instrument to which he gave the name "Albion," and wrote a book describing the manner of using it. Edward III., visiting the Abbey and seeing the clock being constructed, while the damage done by the fall of the nave piers in his predecessor's time had not been fully repaired, remonstrated with the Abbot, who replied that anyone could repair the church, but few could construct a clock such as he was making. It is said that he suffered from leprosy and that his death was hastened by the shock caused by a terrible thunderstorm on St. Andrew's Eve, 1334, which set some of the domestic buildings on fire. The fire was put out before much damage was done, but the Abbot died. 29. #Michael of Mentmore# (1335-1349). He was a graduate of Oxford, a monk of St. Albans, and had been appointed Master of the Schools. He finished the repairs to the south arcading and south aisle begun by Abbot Hugh, built three altars, and vaulted the aisle. He baptized in 1341 Edmund of Langley, fifth son of Edward III., from whom the House of York was descended. Philippa, the Queen, went to the Abbey to be churched and gave the Abbey a cloth of gold. The Abbot, the Prior, the sub-prior and forty-seven monks fell victims to the terrible plague known as the Black Death, which was ravaging the country in 1349. He is described as being pious, patient, and meek like Moses. 30. #Thomas de la Mare# (1349-1396). He was a man of high birth, and was connected with many people of importance, among them probably Sir Peter de la Mare, the first Speaker of the House of Commons. He became a monk at St. Albans, and was sent to Wymondham, recalled to St. Albans, and afterwards became kitchener, cellarer, and then Prior at Tynemouth in Northumberland. When Abbot Michael died the Prior of Wymondham was elected, but declined the abbacy, whereupon Thomas de la Mare was elected. One of the proctors who started with him to Rome died on the way of the Black Death. The new Abbot himself, after his appointment had been confirmed, was taken seriously ill at Rome, but recovered with great suddenness. He was a great favourite with Edward III., and it is said that King John of France, who was taken prisoner at Poictiers in 1356, was for a time committed to his charge; he treated John with great moderation and respect, and King John afterwards showed his appreciation of his treatment by releasing some St. Albans men who were prisoners of war in France, bidding them tell the Abbot that they owed their release to him. The Abbot was strict in correcting faults, curbing excesses, cutting away abuses, and putting things right; he was revered by all, feared by many. He was appointed by the King as visitor to numerous monasteries, and in 1351 was President of a general chapter of Benedictines. Moreover his knowledge of painting was such that Edward III. appointed him master of the painters assigned for the works to be executed at the chapel of the Palace of Westminster, and the ornamental painting and glazing of St. Stephen's Chapel was carried on for several years under his supervision. After having been Abbot for some years he wished to resign, but Edward III. would not hear of it. In the time of Richard II. an attack was made by the followers of Wat Tyler on the Abbey. They succeeded in extorting certain charters from the Abbot, but after the collapse of the rebellion the King himself came to the Abbey and stayed there for eight days, summoning all the commons of the county to make oath to do suit and service to the Abbot and the convent in the customary manner. He rebuilt the Great Gate of the Abbey (see Appendix). He died on September 15th, 1396, having been Abbot for forty-seven years, a longer period than any of his predecessors or successors. He was buried before the high altar and a brass to his memory may now be seen in the Wheathampstead chantry. 31. #John de la Moots# (1396-1401). He had held several offices in the Abbey before his election as Abbot, and when Cellarer had been put in the pillory in Luton Market, "in hatred to the Abbot and utter contempt of religion." The conspiracy to dethrone Richard II. was first formed at the dinner table of this Abbot, when the Duke of Gloucester and the Prior of Westminster were dining with him. In 1399 the body of John of Gaunt rested in the Abbey on its way to London, his son, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln, being allowed to conduct a service in the Abbey; and in the same year Richard II. and Henry, Duke of Lancaster, lodged at St. Albans. On arrival in London Richard II. was dethroned, and the Bishop of Carlisle, who took his side, was seized by order of the Duke of Lancaster, soon to be known as Henry IV., and carried as a prisoner to St. Albans; he was, however, afterwards pardoned by Henry. A dispute for precedence between this Abbot and the Abbot of Westminster occurred. John died in 1401. 32. #William Heyworth# (1401-1420). This Abbot was promoted to the see of Lichfield in 1420, died in 1446 or 1447, and was buried in St. Alban's Abbey. [Illustration: JOHN OF WHEATHAMPSTEAD'S CHANTRY.] 33. #John of Wheathampstead# (1420-1440 and 1451-1464). The Abbot's surname was Bostock, and it is supposed, as on his mother's grave in Wheathampstead Church a shield bearing the Heyworth arms is found, that John was a kinsman of his predecessor. To increase the revenue he admitted many gentlemen and ladies of high rank to the confraternity; this admission was a mere honour, conferring indeed the right to vote in the chapter, but not imposing any duties or monastic restrictions on those thus admitted. Among the names of those admitted in 1423 we find those of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Jaqueline his wife, whom he subsequently divorced; in 1431 his new wife, Eleanor, was admitted. John procured by royal grant lands in various quarters, and also, in order that he might secure himself against any charges which might be made against him, a pardon for diverse offences, of none of which was he in all probability guilty--treason, murder, rape, rebellion, conspiracy, etc. A strange light is thrown by this upon monkish morals of the day; one would have thought no abbot would ever have been supposed possible of committing such offences. These were disturbed times, for the King, Henry VI., was imbecile and various nobles were intriguing against each other for power. The star of Humphrey of Gloucester, the Abbot's friend, was setting, and other troubles threatened the nation, so Abbot John resigned in 1440. 34. #John Stokes# (1440-1451). This Abbot ruled for eleven years, and then either died or resigned. During his rule Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, was tried for witchcraft, was imprisoned in the Tower, and did penance in the streets of London. Her husband died, or more probably was murdered, in 1447, and was buried in the Abbey on the south side of St. Alban's shrine. 33. In 1451 Abbot John of Wheathampstead, though over eighty years of age, was re-elected. Soon after his election he gave his church a "pair of organs," surpassing all others in England in size, tone, and workmanship. In 1455 the Wars of the Roses began with the first battle of St. Albans (May 23rd), fought to the east of the town. In this the White Rose party were victorious; the King was taken prisoner and lodged for the night in the Abbey. The victorious army plundered the town, but the Abbot by sending out plenty of wine and food saved his monastery. In 1459 King Henry was again at the Abbey and spent Easter there, ordering his best robe to be given to the Prior when he left. Another battle was fought, this time to the north of the town, on February 17th, 1461. Henry was at this time in the hands of the Yorkists and at St. Albans. The Queen, having defeated and slain the Duke of York at Wakefield, marched southward at the head of an undisciplined horde of 18,000 men--Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and English--to rescue her husband. The Earl of Warwick at first drove the Queen's troops out of St. Peter's Street to Barnard's Heath with great slaughter, but, owing to treachery on the part of one of the Yorkist leaders, the fortunes of the day changed, and Margaret drove Warwick before her towards the town. He, however, rallied his forces and retreated in good order to London, though he had to leave Henry behind him. The royal party went to the Abbey, where they were enthusiastically received by the monks, who chanted thanksgivings for the victory; they were led to the high altar and to the shrine of St. Alban. But the victorious troops, being little better than barbarians, flushed with unexpected victory, committed fearful excesses in the town, and even plundered the Abbey. Hitherto Abbot John had been a strong partisan of the Lancastrians, but the treatment he received turned him into a staunch Yorkist. Edward IV. when he came to the throne granted the Abbot the right to hear and try all causes, even treason, with full power of sentencing to death. The Abbots continued to exercise these powers till 1533. In 1462 the Abbot presented a petition to the King, setting forth the impoverished state of the Abbey; this led to further powers being granted to the Abbot. Wheathampstead had been ordained in 1382 and, according to canon law, must have been twenty-five years of age, so he must have been over a hundred and five when he died in 1463. He, as we have seen (Chap. I.), made many changes for the worse in the fabric of the church; the character of the work was partly due to the time in which he lived, for the age of great architecture was over, and partly to lack of funds. 35. #William Alban# (1464-1476). 36. #William of Wallingford# (1476-1484). This Abbot's name will be remembered because the high altar screen was his work, and is generally called Wallingford's screen. It is said that his management of the revenues of the Abbey was prudent, and that he was energetic in defending his rights; but it would seem that he was not equally energetic in repressing irregularities within its walls. During the interregnum that followed his tenure of office things went on from bad to worse, so that the Archbishop sent a monition to the Abbey reciting a bull which had been sent to him as legate. This bull directed the Archbishop to visit all the larger monasteries in which he had reason to suspect that evil practices prevailed, and the Archbishop threatens to visit St. Albans because he has heard of cases of simony, usury, lavish expenditure, and immorality. He says unless within sixty days things are reduced to order, not only in the monastery but also in the nunneries of Pré and Sopwell and other cells, he will visit personally or by commission to inquire into matters and set things in order. The Abbot died in 1484, but his successor was not appointed until 1492. 37. #Thomas Ramryge# (1492- ). No details of events during the rule of this Abbot exist, nor is the date of his death known. 38. #Thomas Wolsey# (1521-1529). This great cardinal was invested with the temporalities on December 7th, 1521, and held the Abbey "in commendam." There is no record of his ever having resided in the Abbey, but he probably put a stop to the printing which had been carried on in the Abbey from 1480 onwards. He also made a gift of plate to the Abbey. He held the office of Abbot until his disgrace in 1529. 39. #Robert Catton# (1530-1538). This Abbot was really appointed by Henry VIII., but was nominally elected by the chapter. He had been Prior of Norwich. The Abbey printing press was again in use in his time. He seems to have been deprived during his lifetime, for what reason we cannot say. 40. #Robert Boreman of Stevenage# (1538-1539). This Abbot was a nominee of the King, and was chosen by him because Henry knew that he would be willing to surrender the Abbey. This he did on December 5th, 1539. It was part of the policy of Henry VIII. to make it appear that the monasteries were _voluntarily_ surrendered by the abbot and chapter, and it was generally made worth their while to do so by a liberal pension. In some cases the abbots refused, among them the last Abbot of Glastonbury, who paid dearly for his refusal, as he was hanged on a hill commanding a view of the possessions of the Abbey, which not being his to part with he had refused to surrender, though, of course, the nominal charge against him was not the real one. Abbot Boreman, however, made no objection, and received a yearly pension of £266 13s. 4d., so was a rich man for the rest of his days. Pensions of varying amounts were given to his monks. Boreman and twenty of the monks were in receipt of them when Mary came to the throne. Mary wished to revive the Abbey and put Boreman over it, but did not live to carry out her intended plan. The monastic buildings very rapidly disappeared; the church became parochial, and has been served by the following sixteen rectors: George Wetherhall, appointed 1553. Archdeacon William East. Archdeacon James Dugdale, 1556. Edward Edgeworth, 1578. Roger Williams, 1582. John Brown. Archdeacon Edward Carter, 1662. Archdeacon John Cole, 1687. Archdeacon John Cole (II.), 1713. Benjamin Preedy, 1754. Joseph Spooner, 1779. John Payler Nicholson, 1796. Henry Small, 1817. Henry J.B. Nicholson, 1835. Sir John C. Hawkins, Bart., 1866. Archdeacon Walter John Lawrance,[12] 1868. [12] Dean since July, 1900. The Church of St. Albans was in the diocese of Lincoln until 1845, when it was handed over to Rochester. In 1877 Parliament passed a bill for the division of the populous diocese of Rochester into two parts; the northern to be called the see of St. Albans, the southern to retain the name of Rochester. The Right Rev. Dr. Claughton, then Bishop of Rochester, elected to take the northern division of his old diocese and became Bishop of St. Albans. He was succeeded in 1890 by John Wogan Festing, D.D., who died in 1903. Both of these bishops are buried in the churchyard on the north side of the nave. On Dr. Festing's death the Right Rev. Edgar Jacob, D.D., was translated to St. Albans from the diocese of Newcastle, and was enthroned in May, 1903. The Church of St. Albans, although legally a cathedral church, yet differs in certain particulars from most of the other churches of this rank in England. It is also used as a parish church, of which the Dean is rector. He has the same powers, responsibilities, and duties as the rector of any other parish. It is sometimes said that the nave is the parish, and the part eastward of the rood screen the cathedral church, but it is not so. The Dean as rector has power over the whole, and parishioners have right of access to every part of the building, just as in any other parish church; and the Dean as their rector can be called upon to baptize, marry, visit, and bury the people under his charge. Churchwardens are also appointed and have their statutory rights. There are some honorary canons, but as yet no "canons residentiary," nor are there "priests vicars" (or "minor canons"), lay vicars, or choristers on the foundation. The choir is a voluntary one, the clergy under the Dean are curates. The two parts of the church that are ordinarily in use are the Lady Chapel, where morning and evening prayer is said daily on week-days, and the nave, which is used for the Sunday services. There is at present no high altar in place under the great screen, but one will probably be placed there as soon as the final touches are put by Mr. Gilbert to the carved work of the reredos. The choir proper is not, however, capable of holding a large congregation. It was, of course, originally intended to hold the monks only. The part eastward of the stalls might on special occasions, such as the enthronement of a bishop, the installation of a dean, be temporarily fitted with chairs, but it is not likely that any permanent seats will be placed here, since as a matter of fact the nave and Lady Chapel answer all ordinary requirements. [Illustration: OLD FLOOR TILE.] [Illustration: THE GREAT GATE.] CHAPTER V. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. #The Great Gatehouse.#--In the days of its prosperity the Abbey was surrounded by a wall within which, as was usually the case, were placed all the buildings that were necessary for monastic life: cloister, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, chapter-house, infirmary, guest-house, stables, dovecote, granary, garden, orchard, vineyard, lodgings for the abbot, prior, cellarer, cook, and servants, fish-house, fish-ponds, as well as cemeteries for dead brethren. A number of gatehouses gave access to this inclosure: the Great Gate, which alone remains standing; the Waxhouse Gate, where the tapers used for burning before the shrines were made; the Water-gate, St. Germain's gate, and others. The chief of these was the Great Gate to the west of the Abbey Church. It was built in the time of Thomas de la Mare about 1365, on the site of a previously existing gatehouse which had been destroyed by a violent gale a few years earlier. It was not only a gateway, but a prison wherein offending monks, and also laymen of the town, over which the Abbot had civic jurisdiction, were imprisoned. The Gatehouse was stormed by rioters in the time of Wat Tyler's rebellion, the monks in their terror giving wine and beer to their assailants, but news arriving of Wat Tyler's death, the rioters dispersed; the ringleaders were tried and condemned to death, among them John Ball, who, with his seventeen condemned companions, passed the time between their trial and execution in the dungeons beneath the Gatehouse. In 1480 a printing press was set up in this gatehouse; after the dissolution it was used as the borough gaol. During the Napoleonic wars some French prisoners were confined within the walls. In 1868 the Gatehouse was found too small for use as a gaol, and a new prison was built near the Midland Station. The Gatehouse was bought by the governors of the grammar school, and in 1870 the school was removed from the Lady Chapel to the Gatehouse. There are dungeons beneath the level of the roadway; over the archway is the large room where the sessions used to be held, with other rooms on either side. In this building some old chimney-pieces may still be seen. Although the present foundation dates from the reign of Edward VI., yet a school had existed in St. Albans from very early time. Some think it was founded by Ulsinus. Be this as it may, it is certain that Geoffrey de Gorham, who was afterwards Abbot (1119-1146), first came to England during the time of Richard of Albini (the fifteenth Abbot), with a view of being master of the school. In 1195 we read that the school had more scholars than any other in England. The school in these early days stood to the north of the Great Gate on the other side of the street that runs down the hill on the north side of the triangular graveyard known as Romelands, where a Protestant martyr, one George Tankerfield, a cook, born in York, but living in London, was burnt on August 26th, 1555, during the reign of Mary I. #Sopwell Nunnery.#--There are a few remains of Sopwell Nunnery in a field near the river Ver, to the south-east of the city. They may be reached by taking the first turning to the right hand after crossing the bridge on the way from the city down Holywell Hill. This nunnery was founded by Geoffrey of Gorham, sixteenth Abbot, about the middle of the twelfth century. Two women, pious and ascetic, had taken up their abode on this spot in a hut which they built for themselves, and Geoffrey determined to build them a more permanent dwelling, and make them the nucleus of a religious house. They accepted the Benedictine Rule, and gradually the nunnery increased in size, and many ladies of high birth took the veil here. One of the abbesses wrote the "Boke of St. Albans," not, as might be imagined, an account of the saint or of the religious house, but a treatise on hawking, hunting, and fishing. It was printed in 1483 at the St. Albans printing press. When the nunnery was dissolved, Sir Richard Lee, to whom the Abbey lands were granted, turned it into a dwelling-house for himself. The ruins consist of ivy-clad walls of brick and flint, pierced by square-headed windows, but containing few interesting features. The name is said to have been derived from the fact that the two women mentioned above soaked or sopped their dry bread in water drawn from the Holy Well or some well in the immediate neighbourhood of their hut. #St. Peter's Church.#--This church, standing at no great distance from the cathedral, may be reached by taking the footway called the Cloisters, crossing High Street, passing between the Clock Tower and the picturesque and ancient inn, the Fleur de Lys, and through the quaint street of gabled houses known as French Row, into St. Peter's Street. The church was originally built about 948 A.D., by Ulsinus, the sixth Abbot of St. Albans, but none of his work remains. It seems to have been almost entirely rebuilt at the end of the fifteenth century, and most of it is Perpendicular in character. It has a central tower rebuilt about a hundred years ago, and until that time had a transept. There is a clerestory on either side of the nave. The chancel and the west end with its circular window show signs of Lord Grimthorpe's style of restoration. The tower contains a fine peal of ten bells. In the windows of the south aisle is some richly coloured modern Belgian glass by Capronnier; in the windows of the north aisle are some fragments of fourteenth or fifteenth century glass, including the arms of Edmund, the fifth son of Edward III., from whom in the male line Edward IV. was descended, though he also traced his descent and his claim to the throne from Lionel, the third son, through his daughter Philippa. In the churchyard, which is of considerable extent, many of those who fell in the two battles of St. Albans were buried. #St. Michael's Church.#--St. Michael's Church is further from the cathedral than St. Peter's. To reach it one must go westward from the Clock Tower, along High Street and its continuations, down the hill past Romelands, where, as we have seen, George Tankerfield, condemned by Bishop Bonner as a Protestant heretic, was burnt at the stake. At last a bridge over the Ver is reached, and, turning round to the left after crossing it, we see St. Michael's Church before us. It has within the last ten years lost its Saxon tower, a new one with no pretention to beauty, pierced by two pentagonal windows in the third stage, having been built on a slightly different foundation. It stands within the area once inclosed by the walls of Verulamium, and Sir Gilbert Scott conjectured that it was originally the Basilica of the Roman city altered for Christian worship; but probably, though it may stand on the same site, it is of more recent date, though still of great age. Like the cathedral, its walls are built of Roman brick and flint. The plan is irregular: there is a nave and chancel, a large south aisle, or rather chantry, the eastern gable of which is of half-timber construction, below which are two tall round-headed windows far apart, with a small circular opening between them; the western gable has an opening with louvre boards. The tower projects from the north aisle, its western wall being flush with the west end of the nave; on the outside in the south wall of the chancel is a canopied niche over a flat slab a few inches above the level of the ground. The south door, within a porch, has a pointed top beneath a wide, round-headed arch springing from imposts. The arcading of the nave was formed by cutting arches through what probably were at one time the outside walls of the church; two of these on the south side open into the chapel. The carved oak pulpit of early seventeenth-century work, with its sounding-board and iron frame for the hour-glass, demands attention; but the chief attraction of the church for many is the alabaster statue of Francis Bacon, which is placed in a niche in the north wall of the chancel. He wished to be buried in this church, as his mother was already buried there, and moreover it was the parish church of his house at Gorhambury, and the only Christian church within the walls of ancient Verulam, from which he took one of his titles. [Illustration: MONUMENT OF LORD BACON. "_Sic sedebat._"] #St. Stephen's Church.#--There are two ways of getting to this church: either by following the road that runs south from St. Michael's, and after reaching the top of the hill turning sharply to the left; or by going from the centre of the city down Holywell Hill and straight on, past the London and North-Western Railway Station, up St. Stephen's Hill. The church spire is a conspicuous landmark. The churchyard is exceedingly pretty, and the church most interesting. It was originally built in the tenth century by Abbot Ulsinus, rebuilt in the time of Henry I., restored in the fifteenth, and again by Sir Gilbert Scott in the nineteenth century. The south porch is of timber; under it is a square-headed doorway; to the east of it is a chapel once called "the Leper's Chapel," but probably a chantry, now used as a vestry. There is a small aisle on the south side. The spire is a broach and stands at the west end. On the north side of the nave is a wide, blocked-up, round-headed arch; through the blocking wall a pointed doorway was cut, but this is also now blocked up. There is a door of Perpendicular style, with a square-headed label terminated by heads much weathered, in the west wall of the tower. The walls of this church are of the usual materials, flint and Roman brick. The lectern is of brass, and bears round its foot the inscription "Georgius Creichtoun Episcopus Dunkeldensis." There were two Scotch bishops of this name; both lived in the sixteenth century. How the lectern reached St. Albans no one knows for certain, but it may possibly have been part of the plunder carried off by Sir Richard Lee from Scotland. It was hidden for safety in a grave at the time of the civil wars, but was found again in 1748 when the vault was opened. [Illustration: THE OLD ROUND HOUSE, "THE FIGHTING COCKS."] #The Clock Tower.#--This is a most conspicuous object in the city, standing near the market-place, almost due north of the Lady Chapel. It was built at the beginning of the fifteenth century in order that the curfew bell might be hung in it. This had been cast some seventy years before the building of the tower, and had hung in the central tower of the Abbey Church; it weighs about a ton. It bears the inscription: "Missi de coelis, habeo nomen Gabrielis." The tower was restored under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott in 1865, and in the process has lost most of the interest it possessed. #The Old Round House.#--This curious old house, also known as "The Fighting Cocks," stands near the river at the bottom of the roadway that leads down from the town through the Great Gate, and probably occupies the position of the Abbey gate that was known as St. Germain's Gate. There is little doubt that the foundations of this house date back to the time of the monastery, and may have been the foundations of the gateway. The cellars, it is said, appear to have an opening into some subterranean way. The name of "Fighting Cocks" no doubt indicates that after the dissolution of the monastery a cockpit existed here. It is said that it was at St. Germain's Gatehouse that the monks kept their fishing tackle, rods and nets. A claim is made for this building, that it is the oldest inhabited house in England, a claim that many other buildings may well dispute. * * * * * INDEX Abbots, chronological account of, 82-103. �lfric, Abbot, 84. �lfric II., Abbot, 4. Aisles of nave, interior, south, 44, north, 46; exterior, south, 26, north, 31; of choir (south), 48. Alban, St., 4; site of his martyrdom, 5, 6. Altarpiece, 57, (old) 68. Amphibalus, St., 5; shrine of, 13, 14, 63. Andrew's, St., Church, 12, 31, 48. Bacon, Lord, his monument, 110. Baluster shafts, Saxon, 50. Battles of St. Albans, 71, 101. Bells, 78. Berkhampstead, John of, Abbot, 96. Bishops of St. Albans, 104. Bishop's Throne, 53. Boreman, Robert, last Abbot, 15, 103. Bricks, Roman, 10, 24. Catton, Robert, Abbot, 103. Ceiling of choir and lantern, 53. Chapels (apsidal) of transept (now destroyed), 51, 53. Choir (exterior), 28; ritual, 53. Christina, Prioress of Markyate, 49. Church bought by the town, 16. Claughton, Bishop, 18. Clerestory, nave, 42. Clock Tower of the town, 111. Cloister, site of, 26. "Cloisters, The," 31. D'Aubeny, Richard, Abbot, 87. Dedication of church, 7. De la Mare, Thomas, Abbot, 98. De la Moote, John, Abbot, 99. De Marinis, John, Abbot, 96. Dimensions of the Cathedral, 115. Door, Abbot's, 26. Doors, from the western entrance, 68. Eadfrith, Abbot, 83. Eadmer, Abbot, 7, 84. Eadric, Abbot, 82. Ealdred, Abbot, 84. Eversden, Hugh of, Abbot, 97 (_v._ Hugh). Fall of piers in 1323, 13. Floor of the church, 35, 36. Font, 46. Frescoes in the nave, 40; in the choir, 53. Frithric, Abbot, 85. Gatehouse, The Great, 106. Geoffrey of Gorham, Abbot, 88,107. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, 6. Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 62, 76; his monument, 76. Gorham, Abbots, Geoffrey of, 88; Robert of, 89. Grammar School, 16, 107. Henry VI., King, 101. Hertford, John of, Abbot, 93. Heyworth, William, Abbot, 100. Hugh of Eversden, Abbot, 13, 14, 44, 70, 97. John de Cella, Abbot, 10, 12, 92. John de Marinis, Abbot, 96. John of Hertford, Abbot, 13, 43. John of Wheathampstead, Abbot, 14, 101. Lady Chapel, the, 20, 29, 68-72. Length of the building, 36, 37. Leofric, Abbot, 85. Leofstan, Abbot, 85. Mandeville, Sir John, 37. Markyate, Benedictine cell, 49. Mentmore, Michael of, Abbot, 14, 98. Monastery (Benedictine), founded, 6; history of, 81. Nave, interior, 36-48. Norton, John of, Abbot, 70, 95. Nunnery, Sopwell, 107. Organ, the, 44. Paul of Caen, Abbot, 7, 24, 32, 86. Plan of Norman church, 9. Porches (thirteenth century), of west front, 10-12. Presbytery, 54, 61. Pulpit in nave, 44; in choir, 61. Ramryge, Thomas, Abbot, 58-60, 103; his chantry, 14, 15, 60, 70. Randulf, Abbot, 89. Rectors of St. Albans, 104. Retro-choir, 63, 67. Richard of Wallingford, Abbot, 14, 97. Robert of Gorham, Abbot, 89. Roger the Hermit, 49. Rood-screen, 42. Roof restored, 18. Round House, 112. Saint's Chapel, the, 72. St. Andrew's Church, 12, 31, 48. St. Michael's Church, 108. St. Peter's Church, 108. St. Stephen's Church, 110. Shrine of St. Alban, 72-75. Sigar, hermit, 49, 50. Slype, the, 20, 52. Sopwell Nunnery, 107. Stokes, John, Abbot, 101. Stoup (north aisle of nave), 46; in south choir aisle, 61. Symeon, Abbot, 91. Transept (exterior), 27, 29; (interior), 50, 52. Triforium, nave, 41, 42. Tower, central, 10, 14, 17, 31, 79; interior, 53. Towers, western, 8, 9. Trumpington, William of, Abbot, 93. Verulamium, 4, 7; Synod held at, 6. Wallingford, Richard of, Abbot, 61, 97. Wallingford screen, 21, 57-59, 76. Wallingford, William of, Abbot, 102. Waring, Abbot, 49, 91. Watching Loft, 66, 68, 75. Wax-house, 29. Weatherall, G., first rector, 16. West front, 10, 19, 23. Wheathampstead, John of, Abbot, 71, 100, 101; his chantry, 57. William of Trumpington, Abbot, 12, 93. William of Wallingford, Abbot, 14, 102. Willigod, Abbot, 82. Windows in transept, 19. Wolsey, Thomas, Abbot, 103. Wulnoth, Abbot, 83. Wulsig, Abbot, 82. Wulsin, Abbot, 84. * * * * * DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL.[13] Total length, external 550 ft. " " internal 520 ft. Length of high roofs 425 ft. " of nave from west door to screen 205 ft. " of choir and presbytery 169 ft. " of Lady Chapel 57 ft. " of transept, interior 177 ft. Width of nave with aisles 75 ft. 4 in. " " without aisles, between piers 29 ft. 6 in. to 31 ft. 6 in. " of presbytery 75 ft. to 78 ft. " of west front, exterior 105 ft. " of transept, interior 32 ft. to 33 ft. 6 in. " " exterior 54 ft. 4 in. " of Lady Chapel, interior 24 ft. Diameter of tower piers, east and west 16 ft. Distance between tower piers each way 24 ft. Height of tower piers 43 ft. " " arches 55 ft. " of tower 144 ft. Width of tower, east and west, exterior 47 ft. " " north and south, exterior 45 ft. Height of nave ceiling (from floor) 66 ft. 4 in. " of ridge of high roofs 96 ft. " of Lady Chapel vault 33 ft. Total internal area (about) 39,240 sq. ft. Height of floor above mean sea-level 340 ft. [13] These are the dimensions given by Lord Grimthorpe; the altitudes, except when otherwise stated, are measured from the level of the floor at the west doorways. [Illustration: GROUND-PLAN OF ST. ALBANS CATHEDRAL.] 
19511	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 19511-h.htm or 19511-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/5/1/19511/19511-h/19511-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/5/1/19511/19511-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Lower case o-with-tilde accent is indicated by [~o]. Superscripted abbreviations are indicated by a preceeding caret. Bold characters are enclosed between # marks. WIMBORNE MINSTER AND CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY A Short History of Their Foundation and Description of Their Buildings by THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS M.A., F.R.A.S. Rector of Turnworth, Dorset With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author [Illustration] London George Bell & Sons 1902 First Edition 1899 Second Edition, Revised, 1902 AUTHOR'S PREFACE When writing the chapters of the present volume which treat of Wimborne Minster, the author consulted the last edition of Hutchins' "History of Dorset," which contains a considerable amount of somewhat ill-arranged information on the subject, verifying all the descriptions by actual examination of the building; similarly, when preparing the part of this volume dealing with Christchurch Priory, he made some use of "The Memorials of Christchurch Twynham," written originally by the Rev. Mackenzie Walcott, F.S.A., and revised after his death in 1880 by Mr B. Edmund Ferrey, F.S.A. He also consulted papers on the subject that have appeared from time to time in various periodicals and MSS. that were kindly placed at his disposal by the Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He desires to express his thanks to the Vicars of the two churches for permission to thoroughly examine every part of the buildings, and to photograph them without let or hindrance; he also wishes to bear testimony to the readiness shown by the clerks and vergers in imparting local information and in facilitating his photographic work. T. P. _October_ 1899. CONTENTS WIMBORNE MINSTER PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Building 3 Date of Foundation 5 The Norman Church 8, 9 Alterations in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries 10, 11 Alterations in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries 11, 12 Modern Restorations 14 CHAPTER II.--The Exterior 16 The Central Tower 16 The North Porch 22 The East Window 24 The Sundial 25 The South Porch 25 The Western Tower 26 CHAPTER III.--The Interior 29 The North Porch 29 The Aisles 29, 38 The Clerestory 33 The Central Tower 34 The Transepts 38 The East End, Choir and Presbytery 42 Sedilia and Piscina 44 The Beaufort and Courtenay Tombs and Brass of Aethelred 42, 47 The South Choir Aisle and Etricke Tomb 48 The North Choir Aisle and Uvedale Monument 50, 51 The Crypt, Vestry, and Library 52 Deans of Wimborne 59 CHAPTER IV.--St Margaret's Hospital 60 Dimensions of Wimborne Minster 64 CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY CHAPTER I.--History of the Building 67 Foundation 68 The Norman Church 70 Alterations in the Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries 71 Modern Alterations 72 CHAPTER II.--The Exterior 76 The Western Tower 76 The North Porch 80 The North Aisle 80 The North Transept 82 The Choir, Presbytery, and Lady Chapel 84 The South Transept 88 The Nave 88 The Porter's Lodge, and Sites of the Domestic Buildings 89 CHAPTER III.--The Interior 92 The Nave 92-98 The Aisles 98 The Transepts 100 The Rood Screen 105 The Choir 106 The Choir Stalls 108-110 The Reredos 112 The Salisbury Chantry 116 The Draper Chantry 118 The Lady Chapel, and the "Miraculous Beam" 120 St Michael's Loft 126 The Shelley Monument 126 CHAPTER IV.--Deans, Priors, and Vicars of Christchurch 128 Stratford's Injunctions 129 Archbishop Arundel's Injunctions 130 The Norman Castle 131 The Norman House 132 Dimensions of Christchurch Priory 134 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WIMBORNE MINSTER PAGE Arms of Wimborne and Christchurch _Title page_ Wimborne Minster from the North-East 2 Wimborne Minster in 1840 3 Wimborne Minster in 1707. (From a copperplate in the Library) 13 The Minster from the South-East before 1891 19 The North Transept before 1891 21 The East Window 23 The Western Tower 27 The Interior, looking East 30 Pier and Arch-Spring, South Arcade 31 Decorated Arch in the Nave 32 Clerestory Stage of the Central Tower 35 The Tower Arches 36 North Transept and Crossing 37 Thirteenth-Century Piscina, South Transept 39 Choir Stalls 40 West View from the Choir 41 The East Window 43 Sedilia 44 The Beaufort Tomb 45 Brass of Aethelred 46 The Etricke Tomb 49 Ancient Chest 50 The Uvedale Monument 51 Entrance to Crypt 53 The Library 54 The Crypt 55 The Font 56 The Clock in the West Tower 57 St Margaret's Hospital 61 CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY Christchurch Priory from the Bridge 66 Christchurch Priory from the North-East 77 Tower Door 78 The North Porch 79 The North Door 81 The North Transept in 1810 83 The North Transept 85 South Aisle of Nave 87 The Nave in 1834 93 The Nave 95 North Arcade of the Nave 96 From the North Triforium 97 Bay of the Triforium, South Side 98 South Aisle of the Nave 99 The Montacute Chantry 101 North Aisle of the Nave 103 The Crypt 105 The Rood Screen 107 Stall Seats (3) 108 Choir Stalls 109 Miserere on Stall Seat (_circa_ 1300) 110 The Choir 111 The Reredos 113 The Salisbury Chantry 115 Interior of the Salisbury Chantry 117 The Draper Chantry 119 Piscina in the Draper Chantry 120 The Sacristy 121 The Miraculous Beam 122 Tomb of Thomas, Lord West 123 The Lady Chapel 124 St Michael's Loft 125 The Shelley Monument 127 Remains of the Norman House 133 PLANS 136, 137 [Illustration: WIMBORNE MINSTER FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] [Illustration: _By Rev. J. L. Petit._ WIMBORNE MINSTER IN 1840.] WIMBORNE MINSTER CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE BUILDING Of the churches connected with the religious houses which once existed in the county of Dorset, three only remain to the present day. Of some of the rest we have ruins, others have entirely disappeared. But the town of Sherborne, once the bishop-stool of the sainted Aldhelm, who overlooked a vast diocese comprising a great portion of the West Saxon kingdom, has its Abbey now used as its Parish Church. The great Abbey of Milton, founded by Æthelstan, has handed down to us its choir and transepts--rebuilt in the fourteenth century, after the former church had been destroyed by fire--and this, though private property, is still used for occasional services; and the minster church at Wimborne has became the church of the parish of Wimborne Minster. The town has been by many supposed to stand on the site of the Roman Vindogladia, though this station has by others been identified with Gussage Cowdown, or the circular encampment of Badbury Rings, about three miles to the north-west of Wimborne Minster. Be this as it may, the district was occupied by the Roman conquerors of our island; and Roman pottery and other remains have been found in the neighbourhood, including a small portion of pavement beneath the floor of the minster church. The derivation of the name Wimborne, or Winborne as we find it sometimes written, has been much disputed; but as we find the same word appearing as the name of several other places which lie on the course of the same stream, now generally called the Allen, though sometimes the Wim, it is highly probable that the name is derived from that of the river. Compound names for villages are very common in Dorset--the first word being the name of the river on which the village stands, the second being added to distinguish one village from another. Thus we find along the Tarrant, villages known as Tarrant Gunville, Tarrant Hinton, Tarrant Launceston, Tarrant Monkton, etc.; and along the Winterborne we find Winterborne Houghton, Winterborne Stickland, Winterborne Clenstone, etc.; and in like manner we meet with Monkton up Wimborne, Wimborne Saint Giles, and Wimborne Minster along the course of the Allen. The characteristic name of Winterborne for a brook that is such in winter only, but is a dried-up bed in a hot summer is borne by two streams in Dorset, each giving its name to a string of villages. May not the word Wimborne or Winborne be a contraction for this same word Winterborne, the "burn" of the rainy winter months, applied to the little stream of the Allen, though it cannot now be said to be dry in summer? The small town of Wimborne Minster stands not far from the junction of the Allen with the slow-running Dorset Stour, in the midst of pleasant fertile meadow-land, from which here and there some low hills rise. Its chief glory has been, and probably always will be, its splendid church, with its central Norman and its Western Perpendicular towers, its Norman and Decorated nave, its Early English choir, and its numerous tombs and monuments of those whose names are recorded in the history of the country. The exact year of the foundation of the original religious house is differently given in various ancient documents: the dates vary from 705 A.D. to 723 A.D. At this time, Ine was king of the West Saxons; and one of his sisters, Cudburh--or Cuthberga, as her name appears in its Latinised form--was espoused or married to Egfred, or, as he is often called, Osric, the Northumbrian king, but the marriage was never consummated, and the lady as soon as possible separated from him and retired to the convent at Barking, and afterwards founded the convent at Wimborne. Some say that she objected to the intemperate habits of her espoused as soon as she met him; others, that having previously vowed herself to heaven, she persuaded him to release her from the engagement to him, which had been arranged without her wishes being consulted. Her sister Quinberga is stated to have been associated with her in the foundation of the religious house, and both were buried within its precincts, and both were afterwards canonised; Saint Cuthberga was commemorated on August 31st "as a virgin but not a martyr." A special service appointed for the day is to be found in a Missal kept in the Library of the Cathedral Church at Salisbury, in which the following prayer occurs:-- "Deus qui eximie castitatis privilegio famulam tuam Cuthbergam multipliciter decorasti, da nobis famulis tuis ejus promerente intercessione utriusque vitae prosperitatem. Ut sicut ejus festivitas nobiscum agitur in terris, ita per ejus interventum nostri memoria apud te semper habeatur in coelis, per Dominum etc." There is reason to believe that the earliest date given above for the foundation (705 A.D.) is the most probable one, as Regner in his tracts mentions a letter bearing this date written by Saint Aldhelm, and taken from the register of Malmesbury, in which he includes in a list of congregations to which he grants liberty of election the monastery at Wimborne, presided over by the sister of the king. There is also some evidence for the existence of a community of monks at Wimborne, as well as of nuns. But of these original religious houses not a trace remains: the very position of St Cuthberga's Church is uncertain; we cannot be sure that the present building occupies the same site; the last resting-places of the two royal foundresses are not even pointed out by tradition. Probably the buildings were destroyed, the nuns slain or driven out, when the raiding Danes overran Wessex in the ninth century. The next historical event that we meet with in connection with Wimborne is the burial of King Æthelred, the brother and immediate predecessor on the throne of the great West Saxon king Ælfred. As there is doubt about the year of the foundation by Cuthberga, so again there is a conflict of testimony as to the date, place, and manner of the death of Æthelred--the inscription on the brass (about which more will be said when we come to describe the interior of the minster) not agreeing with the usually accepted date for the accession of Ælfred, 871; but as the brass is itself many centuries later than the burial of the king whose likeness it professes to bear, its authority may well be questioned. Anyhow, Æthelred died either of wounds received in some battle with the Danes, in some spot which different archæologists have placed in Surrey, Oxford, Berkshire, or Wilts, or worn out by his long and arduous exertions while struggling with the heathen invaders; and his body--this alone is certain--was brought to Wimborne for burial. It has been conjectured that Ælfred, after he had defeated the Danes and established himself firmly on the throne of Wessex, would naturally rebuild the ruined abbey. He founded, as we know, an abbey at Shaftesbury; he is recorded to have built at Winchester and London; he had undoubtedly a taste for architecture, and he was a devout son of Mother Church, so that it is by no means improbable that he would erect a church over the grave of his brother: but no record of such building remains, and there is no trace of any pre-Norman work in the existing minster. The original church and conventual buildings having been swept away by the Danes, whether Ælfred restored it or not is uncertain, but it is certain that a house of secular canons was established at Wimborne by a king of the name of Eadward; but again there is some uncertainty as to whether this king was the one who is sometimes called the Eadward the Elder, sometimes Eadward the Unconquered, son and successor of Ælfred, or Eadward the Confessor. Anyhow, it became a collegiate church and a royal free chapel, and as such it is mentioned in Domesday Book, and it is noticed as a Deanery in the charters of Henry III. Leland, writing in the reign of Henry VIII., says, "It is but of late time that a dean and prebendaries were inducted into it." The deanery was in the gift of the Crown, and we have a full list of the deans from 1224 up to 1547, when it was dissolved. The ecclesiastical establishment consisted of a dean, four prebendaries, three vicars, four deacons, and five singing men. It will not be needful to give any detailed account of these, as most of them, though in many cases they held other more dignified posts,[1] either together with the deanery or after resigning it, are not men who have made their mark in English history. A few only will here be mentioned, who on account of some circumstances connected with the fabric, or for other reasons, are more noteworthy. [1] It is noteworthy that they all held some other preferment during the time that they held the office of dean. #Thomas de Bembre#, 1350-1361, founded a chantry and an altar in the north part of the north transept, which was added at this time. #Reginald Pole#, so well known in the history of the reigns of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary, was Dean of Wimborne from 1517 till 1537. It is remarkable that he was only seventeen years of age at the time of his appointment. He was succeeded by #Nicholas Wilson#, who held the office of dean until the dissolution of the deanery in 1547. To him a curious letter still existing was addressed in 1538 by certain leading men of the parish, though nothing appears to have been done in consequence of it. These worthy men complain of the dilapidated state of the church, the want of funds to carry out needed repairs, and suggest the taking from the church "seynt Cuthborow's hed," and "the sylv' y^t ys about the same hed," which they claim as belonging to the parish on the ground that it was made by the charity of the parishioners in times past. "Our chyrche," they say, "ys in gret ruyn and decay and our toure ys foundered and lyke to fall and ther ys no money left in [~o] chyrche box and by reason of great infyrmyty and deth ther hath byn thys yere in oure parysh no chyrche aele, the whych hath hyndred [~o] chyrch of xx^ti nobles and above, and well it is knowen y^t we have no land but onely the charity of good people, wherfor nyed constraynyth us to sell the sylv' y^t is about the same hed. Besechynge yo^r mastership to sertefy us by y^r tre wher we may sell the said sylv' to repayr [~o] chyrche."[2] [2] In an inventory made in the reign of Henry VIII. we find mentioned an image of St Cuthberga, with a ring of gold, and two little crosses of gold, with a book and staff in her hand. The head of the image of silver with a crown on it of silver and gilt. On her apron a St James shell with a buckle of silver and gilt. The names of many of the other ecclesiastics connected with the church are known: among these, we need only mention William Lorynge canon, who in the time of Richard II. caused the great bell called the Cuthborow bell to be made; and Simon Beneson, sacrist, who left land, which is called Bell Acre, towards the maintenance and repair of the bells. Among other benefactors of the church was Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., so well known at Cambridge under the name of Lady Margaret, the foundress of Christ's and St John's Colleges. She founded at Wimborne the original seminary connected with the minster, which afterwards became by a charter of Elizabeth the Grammar School of the town, and presented splendid vestments to the church. July 9th was until the Reformation kept at the minster as a festival to her memory, with a special office and High Mass. When the deanery was abolished, Wimborne Minster became a Royal Peculiar, under the administration of three priest-vicars elected by the Corporation. These served each for a week in turn. The Corporation had the power of appointing one of the three vicars--who was known as the "Official"--to hold courts and grant licences. The court was held in the western part of the north aisle, the Official presiding, seated at a desk, the two other vicars sitting one on each side of him, while at a long table sat the churchwardens, sidesmen, the vestry clerks, and the apparitors. The arrangement by which the vicars served the church each in turn continued in force until 1876. At that time one of the three vicars retired on a pension; another removed to the chapelry of Holt, three miles from Wimborne (which had previously been served in turn by the vicars of Wimborne), a parsonage having been built for his accommodation; and the third became sole vicar of the minster church and the parish attached to it. * * * * * For the history of the fabric we have to trust almost entirely to the architectural features of the church itself, as documentary evidence is unusually scanty. Nothing of earlier date than the twelfth century can be seen in Wimborne Minster, but we know pretty accurately, the extent and form of the Norman Church; for, during the course of restoration undertaken in the present century, the foundations of some parts of this church were discovered beneath the floor of the existing building, and other pieces of Norman work formerly concealed, and now again concealed beneath plaster, were laid bare. There is one interesting feature about the church worthy of notice--namely, that the builders who succeeded one another at the various periods of its history did not, as a rule, destroy the work of their predecessors to such an extent as we frequently find to have been the case with the builders of other churches: possibly this may have been due to the fact that at no time was Wimborne Minster a rich foundation. There was no saintly shrine, there were no wonder-working relics to attract pilgrims and gather the offerings of the faithful and enrich the church in the way in which the shrine of Saint Cuthbert enriched Durham, that of the murdered archbishop enriched Canterbury, and that of the murdered king enriched Gloucester. But, whatever the reason may have been, we can but be thankful that the mediæval builders destroyed so little at Wimborne; while we regret that modern restorers have not been as scrupulous in preserving the work which they found existing, but have in some instances endeavoured to put the church back again into the state in which they imagined the fourteenth-century builders left it. We may regard the arches and lower stages of the central tower as the oldest part now remaining in its original condition. No doubt the Norman choir was the first to be built, as we find that it was almost the universal custom to begin churches at the eastern end, and gradually to extend the building westward, as funds and time allowed. Here, however, as in many other cases, the small Norman choir eastward of the central tower in course of time was considered too small, and the eastern termination had to be demolished to admit of the desired extension to the east. Norman choirs, as a rule, had an apsidal termination to the east, and it was not till Early English times that square east ends, which were characteristic of the English church in pre-Norman times, prevailed again over the Norman custom; and it is worthy of notice that this rectangular termination towards the east end remains a marked characteristic of the thirteenth-century work in England, Continental church-builders having retained the apsidal termination till the Renaissance. The side walls of the Norman choir extended two bays to the east of the central tower, and the nave four bays westward of the same. The transepts were shorter than at present, and the side aisles of the nave narrower. There appear to have been two side chapels to the choir, extending as far as the first bay eastward; beyond this to the east were two Norman windows on each side: these windows, parts of which remain, cut off by the Early English arches, were round-headed, and richly ornamented with chevron mouldings. They were uncovered at the time of the restoration, but are now again hidden by plaster. At the south end of the south transept a low building seems to have existed: the walls of this were raised when the south transept was lengthened in the fourteenth century. The Norman masonry may be seen under the south window of the transept, and a Norman string course runs round the sides and ends of the present transept. The aisles of the nave were not only narrower, but were also lower, than those now existing. It is also probable that these aisles did not originally extend as far westward as the nave. The windows of the Norman clerestory, which may still be seen from the interior, though all similar in design, are not alike in workmanship. The one over the narrow eastern bay on either side differs from those over the three bays farther to the west. Moreover, a continuous foundation has been discovered underneath the three western arches of the Norman nave. Possibly there was at one time a solid wall in this position, intended, however, from the first only to be temporary, and this was removed when the aisles, still in Norman times, were lengthened. The tower itself was not all built at the same time; the upper stages are ornamented with an arcading of intersecting arches indicating a somewhat later date. In the thirteenth century the east end of the choir seems to have been removed and the presbytery added: its date is pretty clearly determined by the east window, in which we notice some signs of the approaching change from the Early English simple lancet into the plate tracery of the Decorated period. Rickman gives its approximate date as 1220. During the fourteenth century the nave aisles were widened and extended farther west, and at the same time two bays were added to the nave itself. The Norman chapels on either side of the choir were lengthened into aisles, not, however, extending as far to the east as the thirteenth-century presbytery; arches were cut in the Norman choir walls to give access to these new aisles. The transepts were lengthened, the south one by raising the walls of the Norman chapel mentioned above, which, it has been conjectured, was used as the Lady Chapel, the north transept by the addition of Bembre's chantry. During the fifteenth century the western tower was built 1448-1464, and probably at the same time the walls of the nave were raised; and the roofs of the nave aisles, which had been much lower than now, so as not to block up the Norman clerestory windows, were raised on the sides joining the nave walls above the heads of these windows, and a new clerestory was formed in the raised wall. This contains five windows on each side, each window being placed over one of the piers of the nave arcading. During the Early English period, probably by John de Berwick, who was dean from 1286-1312, a spire was added to the central tower. This was for long in an unsafe condition, and at length, in 1600, it fell. The following is the description given by Coker, a contemporary writer: "Having discoursed this longe of this church, I will not overpasse a strange accident which in our dayes happened unto it, viz. Anno Domini 1600 (the choire beeing then full of people at tenne of clock service, allsoe the streets by reason of the markett), a sudden mist ariseing, all the spire steeple, being of a very great height, was strangely cast downe, the stones battered all the lead and brake much timber of the roofe of the church, yet without anie hurt to the people; which ruin is sithence commendablie repaired with the church revenues, for sacriledge hath not yet swept awaye all, being assisted by Sir John Hannam, a neighbour gentleman, who if I mistake not enjoyeth revenues of the church, and hath done commendablie to convert part of it to its former use." Other accounts mention a tempest at the time of the fall. It is not unlikely that the tower was weakened by the alterations in the fourteenth century, when wider arches were cut in the west walls of the transepts, in consequence of the widening of the nave aisles. The fall of the spire, which fell towards the east, demolished the clerestory windows of the choir on the south side, and their place was supplied by a long, low Tudor window oblong in shape and quite plain. The windows, however, on both sides have been entirely altered, and those now existing in the clerestory are small lancets of modern date. The spire was not rebuilt, but the heavy looking battlement and solid pinnacles which still remain, and detract considerably from the beauty of the tower, were added as a finish to it in the year 1608. It is curious that the churchwardens' books, in which many entries occur detailing repairs and other work connected with the spire, make no mention of its fall. The western tower was also a source of trouble. It was built, as has been already mentioned, during the latter half of the fifteenth century, the glazing of the windows being completed in 1464; but as early as 1548 it was thought necessary to brick up the west doorway, and notices of unsoundness of the tower occur frequently in the church books. In 1664 we find the following entry made:--"Paid in beere to the Ringers for a peale to trye if the Tower shooke £0 1s 0d." As we read this entry, we cannot help wondering if the large amount of beer which a shilling would purchase in those days was given to the ringers so as to give them a fictitious courage and blind their eyes to the possible danger of bringing the tower down upon their heads. In 1739 the Perpendicular window in the western face of the tower was taken out and a smaller oval one put in its place, with a view to the strengthening of the wall by additional stonework. The modern restorer, however, has again put a window of Perpendicular character in place of the oval window inserted in the last century, using to aid him in his design, sundry fragments of the original tracery found embedded in the walls. [Illustration: WIMBORNE MINSTER IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. From an old Print.] Before the nineteenth-century restorations, the pulpit, probably late sixteenth-century work, stood in the nave against the middle pillar on the north side, and the nave and choir were separated by a screen of three arches on which stood the organ. The central arch had doors. On either side of the choir were a set of canopied stalls: these canopies were removed in 1855 to make the chancel aisles available for a congregation. As the canopies interfered with both sight and sound, the floor of the choir was lowered to only three steps above the nave, and the stalls reduced to four on each side, with a view to make room for restoring the Norman steps indicated by traces on the wall under the floor, which led up to the high altar of the Norman church. The arrangement of steps was then three from the nave to the choir, four from the choir to the next level to the east, and seven from this to the presbytery, and one more to the altar platform. In 1866 further changes were made: the stalls were increased to the present number to provide sufficient accommodation for the choir, the additions being made out of old woodwork. The level of the floors was also rearranged; five steps now lead up from the nave to the choir, seven to the presbytery and one more to the altar platform, the altar itself being raised yet another step. During the restoration carried on from 1855 to 1857, great changes besides those already mentioned were made in the interior: the whitewash and plaster were removed from the walls, a west gallery was taken down, the nave re-seated, the organ transferred from its position upon the screen to the south transept, and much mischief was done from an archæological standpoint, a thing which seems almost inseparable from any nineteenth-century restoration. An examination of the masonry shows clearly that all the exterior walls east of the transepts save the east wall of the presbytery, which is somewhat out of the vertical, the top hanging forward, have been if not entirely rebuilt at anyrate completely refaced, and this work was no doubt done at the restoration at the middle of the nineteenth century. The doorway in the middle of the north choir aisle is entirely modern; the doorway which formally occupied this place was provided with a small porch. How far this rebuilding and refacing were rendered necessary by the condition of the walls at that time it is now impossible to say. The fact that the walls of the nave aisles were not similarly treated may have been due to want of funds, or it may be that the architects employed found them in a better condition than the walls of the choir aisles, and so preserved them, though they considered the latter beyond the possibility of preservation without the extensive renewing that evidently took place. The room containing the chained library was at the same time refitted. New shelves and rods were provided, but the old chains were used again. The restoration of 1855-1857 did not extend to the transept; but these were taken in hand in 1891, with the usual result--namely, the destruction of some existing features, such as the seventeenth-century tracery of the north window,[3] to make room for a nineteenth-century window in Decorated style, which, however, differs altogether from any window in the minster; the walls were raised about two feet and a roof of higher pitch put upon them, which necessitated alterations in the gables. A sundial which stood at the summit of the south gable was taken down, and this in 1894 was erected on a pillar built in the churchyard, a short distance from the south wall of the western tower. The transept previous to the restoration with the sun-dial on its gable is shown in the illustration on p. 19. [3] This tracery is shown in the illustration on p. 21. The original foliation seems to have been cut away, and the intermediate mullions extended to the points of the two lights. This may have been done with a view to economy in reglazing the window. The modern window is shown on page 37. A small chamber to contain the hydraulic apparatus for the organ has recently been added to the east side of the south transept. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR Wimborne Minster does not occupy a commanding position--it stands on level ground, its two towers are not lofty, the western only reaching the height of 95 feet and the central 84 feet--but it has the advantage of having an extensive churchyard both on the south side and also on the north, so that from either side a good general view of the building may be obtained. A street running from the east end of the church towards the north gives the spectator the advantage of a still more distant standpoint, from which the towers, transepts, choir, and porch group themselves into one harmonious whole, the long line of iron railings bounding the churchyard being the only drawback. The first impression is that there is something wrong with the central tower; the plain heavy battlement, with its four enormous corner pinnacles, seems to overweight the tower, and as each side of the parapet is longer than the side of the tower below, the feeling of top-heaviness is increased. The central tower has no buttresses, but the western has an octagonal buttress at each corner, and these decrease in cross section at each of four string courses; so that this tower seems to taper, and by contrast makes the central tower seem to bulge out at the top more than it really does. But Wimborne Minster does not stand alone in giving at first sight a feeling that something is wanting to perfect beauty. In nearly every old building which has gradually grown up, been altered and enlarged by various generations, as need arose, each generation working in its own style, and often with little regard to what already existed, incongruities are sure to be discernible. But what is lost in unity of design increases the interest in the building, historically and architecturally regarded. And it is worthy of notice that at Wimborne, more than at many places, the enlargers of the church have contented themselves with adding to the building without removing the work of their predecessors more than was absolutely necessary. A very cursory glance at the exterior of the building as one walks round it is sufficient to show that the church as it stands offers to the student of architecture examples of every style that has prevailed in this country from the twelfth century onward, and he will especially rejoice at seeing so much fourteenth-century work. He will, as he passes along the narrow footway beneath the east end of the choir, regret that more space is not available here to get a good view of the most interesting Early English window. If a small tree were felled, and the wall of a garden or yard on the side of the footpath opposite to the church pulled down, so as to throw open the east end of the choir, it would be a great improvement. But this regret can be endured, as, though the window cannot be well seen, it is there, and by changing one's position a pretty accurate idea of its interesting features can be formed; but far keener is the regret that any lover of antiquity must feel when he notices, as he examines the church more closely, how busy the nineteenth-century restorer has been, how he has raised walls, altered the pitch of roofs, and inserted modern imitations of thirteenth and fourteenth century work, removing features which existed at the beginning of this century to make room for his own work; how he has banished much of the old woodwork in the interior, altered the position of still more, and generally been far less conservative of the work of former generations than the mediæval enlargers of the minster were. However, his work is now done--nave, towers, and choir were thoroughly restored about fifty years ago, and the transepts in 1891. No further work is contemplated at present. In fact, there seems nothing more that could well be done. [Illustration: THE MINSTER FROM THE SOUTH-EAST BEFORE 1891.] The church is built partly of a warm brown sandstone, partly of stone of a pale yellow or drab colour, the two kinds being in many places mixed so as to give the walls a chequered appearance. This may be noticed both outside and inside the building. In some of the walls the stones are used irregularly, in others they are carefully squared. The red stone is to be met with in the neighbourhood: some of that used for raising the transept walls in 1891 was obtained from a bridge in the town that was being rebuilt; and from marks on some of those stones it appeared that before being in the bridge they had been used in some ecclesiastical building, so that they have now returned to their original use. There is little ornament to be seen outside, save on the upper stage of the tower; in fact, the whole building excepting the arches of the nave and the tower may be described as severely plain in character. The college was never wealthy, hence probably it could not employ a number of carvers; then again it was not a monastic establishment, so that there were no monks to occupy their time in the embellishment of the building, carving, as monks often did, their quaint fancies on bosses and capitals. We miss the crockets and finials, the ball-flower, and other ornaments that we meet with in so many fourteenth-century buildings; but the very simplicity of the work gives the church a dignity that is often wanting in more highly ornamented structures. The small number of the buttresses in the body of the church is noteworthy; save at the angles there are only five--namely, two on each nave aisle, and one on the north choir aisle. At each of the eastern corners of the choir aisles the buttresses are set diagonally, as also are those on the northern corners of the north porch. There is a buttress on each of the side walls of the north porch, and two set at right angles to each other at each of the two corners of the north transept, and also at the south-west corner of the south transept; beneath the east window of the choir there is a small one. The buttresses at the corner of the choir project but slightly. The central tower has none, but the west tower has an octagonal buttress at each corner. The central tower attracts notice first. From the outside at the angles a small portion of the plain wall of the triforium stage may be seen, against which the roofs of the choir and transepts abut; the nave roof, however, hides all of this stage at the western face: above this face is a band of red-brown sandstone, and above this the clerestory stage. In each face are two round-headed windows with a pointed blank arch between them. There are six slender shafts to support the outer order of moulding over the two windows and the blank arch, and two of a similar character to support the inner ring of moulding over each window. At each corner of the tower up to the top of this stage runs a slender banded shaft. This stage is finished by a string course, above which the tower walls recede slightly, the walls of the upper or belfry storey being a little thinner than those below. This stage, perfectly plain within, is the most richly-ornamented part of the tower outside: it is the latest Norman work to be found in the minster, and probably may be dated late in the twelfth century. An arcading of intersecting round-headed arches runs all round this storey. Seven pointed arches are thus formed in each face; between these arches stand slender pillars with well carved capitals which show a great variety of design. Five of the seven arches on each face were originally open, save possibly for louvre-boards placed to keep out the rain; now all but the central one on each face are walled up, and the centre one is glazed. This filling up was not all done at the same time, as the varying character of the stone shows. The work was no doubt begun in order to strengthen the walls when the spire was added, and was continued from time to time as the necessity for further strengthening arose. Above the stage was a bold corbel table, and this is the upper limit of the Norman work. There can be little doubt that the Norman builder, here as elsewhere, finished his tower with a low pyramidal roof with overhanging eaves to shoot off the rain. This covering may have been of lead, but possibly of stone tiles or wooden shingles. About a century later this Norman roof was removed to make place for a loftier roof or spire. Of its character and material and height we know nothing--there is no description of it; and though the minster is represented on an old seal with one spire-crowned tower, yet the representation of the rest of the church is so conventional that it cannot be regarded as an authentic record of the actual appearance of the steeple. It is curious that, as it stood for about three hundred years and fell only in the later years of Elizabeth's reign, no drawing remains to show us what this spire was like. But it passed away, doing some damage to the building in its fall, and that is the only record it has left behind; but we can well picture to ourselves how much importance must have been added to the minster by this spire, which must have been a conspicuous object for many miles round. The present heavy, ugly battlemented parapet spoils the general effect of the tower; and though we are adverse to the sweeping away of any features of an old building, even when the features are inharmonious and even ugly--because this is, as it were, tearing a page of stone from the book of the history of the building--yet we must confess we could have regarded the loss of the seventeenth-century parapet and pinnacles with much less regret than other features which the restorer has tampered with. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT BEFORE 1891.] The #North Porch#, which was evidently always intended to be, as it is to this day, the chief entrance into the church, consists of two bays marked externally by buttresses on each side: the inner order of moulding to the arch giving access to this porch springs from two shafts of Purbeck marble; the outer orders are carried up from the base without any capitals or imposts. The height of the crown of the inner arch above the capitals from which it springs is somewhat less than half the width at the bottom, and the radius of the curvature of the arches is greater than the width. Over the arch is a square-headed two-light window, lighting the room over the entrance. The roof differs from all the other roofs of the church since it is covered with stone tiles, while the others are covered with lead. There are buttresses set diagonally at the two northern angles of the porch. Between the porch and the transept are three two-light Decorated windows. The tracery of all these is alike, but differs from that of the two windows to the west of the porch. The most picturesque feature of the north transept is the turret containing the staircase by which access is obtained to the tower. This, before the church was enlarged in the fourteenth century, formed the north-west angle of the Norman transept: projecting towards the north, its base is rectangular. This rectangular portion rises nearly to the level of the tops of the aisle windows, above this level the turret is circular, and rising above the transept roof is capped by a low conical roof of stone tiles. Two string courses run round it, one at the bottom of the circular part, and one a little higher up. This turret was once known as the "Ivy Tower," from the ivy that grew on it, but this was all removed at the time when the transept was altered in 1891. At that time the side walls were raised about two feet, and the roof was raised to the original pitch of the Norman transept, and at the same time the tracery of the north window, which was of a very plain and clumsy character, seventeenth-century work, was removed and the existing tracery inserted. Much picturesqueness has been sacrificed to make these changes. The portion of this transept to the north of the turret was added about the middle of the fourteenth century to form the chantry founded by Bembre, who was dean from 1350-1361. This part contains, besides the large window, two smaller two-light windows, which look out respectively to the east and west. The tracery in these is almost entirely modern. Beyond the transept is the wall of the north choir aisle. This stands farther to the north than the wall of the nave aisle; in fact, it is in a line with the original north end of the Norman transept. In this wall, close to the transept, is a small round-headed doorway. And, farther to the east, is another larger pointed doorway between the second and third windows of the choir aisle, counting from the transept eastward. This doorway is enclosed by a triangular moulding very plain in character, but none of it is original. The three windows are each of two lights. The tracery of these three is alike, but differs from that of the windows in the nave aisle. The east window of the north aisle is of five lights. The enclosing arch is not very pointed--much less so than in the narrower windows of the aisles--and each light runs up through the head of the window. These and the corresponding south choir aisle windows are late Decorated work. [Illustration: THE EAST WINDOW. (From Parker's "Introduction to Gothic Architecture.")] Unfortunately the churchyard does not extend to the east of the church. A narrow footway, bounded to the east by cottages and garden walls, renders it impossible to photograph the east window of the choir. This is a most interesting one; and has been figured in most books on architecture. It consists externally of three lancets enclosed in a peculiar way by weather moulding; this rises separately over the head of each lancet, and between the windows runs in a horizontal line and is continued to the square corner buttresses. Within this moulding, and over the heads of each lancet, there is an opening pierced: the central one is a quatrefoil, while the other two have six points. These openings are a very early example of plate tracery, which was fully developed in the Early Decorated style. This window belongs to the Early English period, and may be dated about 1220. There will be occasion to refer to this window again when speaking of the interior of the church. The south choir aisle has a five-light east window closely corresponding to the window of the north aisle, and on the south two three-light windows. In these, as in the east aisle windows, the lights are carried up through the heads. There is no doorway giving access to this aisle from the outside. The angle between the choir aisle and south transept is filled up with the vestry and the library above it. The south wall of this projects beyond the wall of the south transept. This vestry is of Decorated date, possibly rather later than the other Decorated work in the minster. The upper storey forms the library. Its walls are finished at the top by a plain parapet which conceals the flat roof. At the south-western angle is an octagonal turret staircase, capped by a pyramidal roof rising from within a battlemented parapet, and terminating in a carved finial. This is of Perpendicular character. From the sharpness of the stone at the coigns it would seem that very extensive restoration, if not absolute rebuilding, of the walls was carried on in this part of the church. The south transept is rather shorter than that on the north side; but, unlike it, all the walls up to the level of the window are of Norman date. The string courses on the western side are worthy of close attention. One which runs under the south window is continued round the Perpendicular buttresses at the south-west angle, and then again joins the original course on the western face and runs to within a few feet of the nave aisle, where it abruptly terminates. Above this for several feet the walls have the same character as below; then the character changes, and this change probably marks the junction of the Norman with the Decorated work, which was added when the Norman chapel, which occupied the lower part of what is now the south end of the transept, was incorporated in the transept. Vertically above the termination of the string course just mentioned, but at a considerably higher level, another string course abruptly begins and runs along the wall, until it passes within the roof of the nave aisle. The south end of this shows the length to which the original Norman transept extended before the walls of the chapel to the south were carried up in the fourteenth century to form the addition to the transept. In the southern wall of this new transept was placed a large five-light decorated window. In this, as in several of the other Decorated windows already described, the lights run up to the enclosing arch above. The tracery of this window, as it now exists, dates back only to the time when the church was restored in the middle of the nineteenth century. Up to 1891 the side walls were about two feet lower than at present, and the gable more obtuse. At the summit of the old gable stood a block of masonry carrying a sundial; this, when the transept was altered, was removed, the new gable being finished with a cross. A pillar was built in the churchyard to the south of the western tower in 1894, and on it the block from the transept bearing the sundial was placed. This sundial has two dates on it--1696 and 1752, marking, no doubt, the year of its original erection and of some subsequent repair. It is noteworthy that the figures used in these two dates differ in character,--the eighteenth-century carver who incised the later date not thinking it incumbent on him to make his figures match those of his predecessor. The three aisle windows between the south transept and the south porch are two-light Decorated windows with tracery, some of it original, corresponding to that of those on the opposite side in the north aisle. The #South Porch# is small, and the side walls do not project far from the aisle. Above the arch is a carving of a lamb much weathered, and on the gable stands a fragment of a cross. The gates beneath the outer arch are kept locked save on Sundays, as are frequently the gates in the railings surrounding the churchyard to the south of the minster, which is divided from the churchyard on the north side by the church itself and by railings at the east and west ends of it. To the west of the porch are two more two-light windows, corresponding in character with the windows opposite in the north aisle. The clerestory windows of the nave are of Perpendicular date, fifteenth-century work, and have not any beauty. Each has three foliated lights under a round-headed moulding. Above each of these three there are two lights, all enclosed within a rectangular label. The nave roof is higher than the choir roof. Its aisles have lean-to roofs, whereas the choir aisles are wider and have gable roofs: hence the clerestory windows of the choir, modern lancets, are not visible from the outside. The #Western Tower# is of four stages, with octagonal buttresses at each corner, decreasing in cross section at each course. Of these the north-eastern one contains the stairs leading to the top of the tower, the others are solid. These are crowned with sharp pyramidal turrets. In the lowest stage on the western face is a doorway which for some time was stopped up to strengthen the tower, but which was opened again at the general restoration. Above this is the west window of six lights, Perpendicular in character but of nineteenth-century date. The third stage--the ringing room within is lighted by four small windows: that in the west wall is a quatrefoil, those on the north and south have single lights foliated at the head; the original one in the east wall was covered when the nave roof was raised, and a plain opening was made in the wall farther to the south. Above this is the belfry, with two pairs of two-light windows on each face: these are divided by transoms, and the arches at the tops are four centred. These windows are, of course, not glazed, but are furnished with louvre-boards. The tower is finished with a battlemented parapet. Just outside the easternmost window on the north face, and below the transom, stands a figure now dressed in a coat of painted lead, representing a soldier in the uniform of the early part of the nineteenth century. He holds a hammer in each hand, with which he strikes the quarters on two bells beside him. He is known by the name of the "Jackman" or "Quarter Jack." There are no windows at the west ends of the nave aisles; but, as on the south side so on the north, there are between the tower and the porch two two-light Decorated windows in the wall of the aisle. [Illustration: THE WESTERN TOWER.] The level of the churchyards, as in the case with most old burying-grounds, is considerably above the level of the floor of the church. Hence steps have to be descended on entering the porches, and again in passing from the porches into the church. On the south side some levelling of the ground has been done, and the upright head-stones have been laid flat, but the altar tombs have been allowed to remain as they were. There are few trees in the churchyard to impede the view of the building; those there are, are as yet small, and serve only to pleasantly break the bareness of the ground without hiding the architectural features of the building. CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR The North Porch, which no doubt from the days of its erection in the fourteenth century has formed the chief entrance into the church, is opposite to the westernmost Norman bay of the nave arcading. The porch itself is vaulted in two bays, the vaulting springing from slender shafts of Purbeck marble which rest on the stone seats on either side of the porch. The bosses in which the ribs meet are carved with foliage. Over the porch is a small room to which no staircase now leads; one which formerly led to it was removed in the seventeenth century. This room is lighted by a small two-light Decorated window facing north. [Illustration: THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.] The two #Aisles# are of the same length as the nave, and are divided from it by an arcading on either side, each containing six pointed arches. The easternmost arches consist of two plain orders, and are much narrower than the rest. These arches spring on the east side from brackets on the western face of the tower piers: the bracket on the north side is plain, that on the south side is ornamented with a kind of scale carving. These bays were probably of the same date as the tower, and it is not unlikely that the arches were at first like those of the tower, of the usual round-headed form. If they were altered when the remainder of the nave was built, the wall above was not removed. The piers which support the western side of these arches consist each of a semi-cylindrical pillar set against a rectangular pier, on the other side of which another semi-cylindrical shaft is set to support the next arch; the next two pillars on each side are cylindrical, perfectly plain in the shafts with very simple bases and capitals. The latter may be seen in the illustrations, the former are concealed by the pews. It will be noticed as a peculiar feature that a little piece of the outer moulding, facing the nave, of the first large arch on the south side is differently carved from all the rest: first, counting from the bottom upwards, are three eight-leaved flowers--these are succeeded by three four-leaved flowers, all on a chamfered edge; above this the moulding is not chamfered, and the outer face is decorated with shallow zig-zag carving. The second member of the moulding consists of chevron work somewhat irregularly carved, the projecting tooth-like points not being all of the same size; in the centre is a roll moulding, from each side of which chevron ornamentation projects, the points directed outward perpendicular to the plane of the arch. These pillars and arches are noteworthy in that the piers are of considerable size, and above them are pointed arches. This would indicate a rather late date in the Norman period for this portion of the church; probably it was built at some time during the last quarter of the twelfth century. With the third wide bay the twelfth-century church terminated, the two arches to the west of these being characterised by ornamentation of the Decorated period. At this time, as has been already explained (p. 10), the aisles were widened and the inner edges of the roofs raised above the clerestory windows of the Norman church. Four such windows, round-headed, each placed over the point of an arch, may be seen on either side of the nave; but the eastern one on each side differs from the other three in being of heavier character and rougher workmanship. The external mouldings of these can be well seen from the aisles: towards the nave they are splayed and plain. The wall above the fourteenth-century arches does not contain any windows on the same level as those of the old Norman clerestory; but above them, stretching all along each side of the nave, may be seen the windows of the present clerestory. These are Perpendicular in style, and are five in number on each side, each window being placed over one of the piers of the nave arcading. These windows are square-headed, and have at the bottom three lights, each light being sub-divided into two at the top. It is believed that this clerestory was formed when the walls were raised, at the same time as the western tower was erected--namely, at the end of the fifteenth century. But to return to the Decorated arches at the west end of the nave. The pier at the eastern side of the easternmost of these consists of the semi-cylindrical respond of Norman date, a piece of masonry which was part of the west wall of the Norman church; and then on the western side of this an added semi-cylinder, on the capitals of which may be seen the ball-flower ornament. The pier on either side, between the two fourteenth-century arches, is octagonal, with a very plain capital (one of these is shown in the illustration on page 57); the arches themselves are also plain, consisting of two members with chamfered edges. The half pillars at the western side of the western arch have been imbedded in the octagonal buttresses of the west tower, which project into the church. [Illustration: PIER AND ARCH-SPRING IN THE SOUTH ARCADE.] [Illustration: DECORATED ARCH IN THE NAVE.] The height of the nave roof appears to have been altered on several occasions. There may be seen from the interior of the nave, on the west wall of the lantern tower, two lines running from the level of the tops of the Norman clerestory windows: these make an angle of about forty-five degrees with the horizontal, and, no doubt, are traces of the weather mouldings marking the position of the exterior of the roof of the nave in Norman times. Probably the roof visible from the interior was flat and formed of wood, and ran across in the line of the string course above the tower arch, at a level slightly above the heads of the clerestory windows. A round-headed opening above this string course probably gave admission to the space between the outer and inner roofs. At a somewhat higher level, we have a slight trace which probably marks the junction of the fifteenth-century roof with the tower. This roof was of oak and very plain--at the restoration the pitch of the roof was raised and carried up to such an extent as to cut off the bases of the clerestory windows of the lantern tower; the inner roof itself is of pitch-pine, with hammer-beams of the character which finds such favour with nineteenth-century architects. [Illustration: CLERESTORY STAGE OF THE CENTRAL TOWER.] The #Central Tower#, the oldest and probably most interesting part of the church, consists of four stages, of which the three lower ones are open to the church. The lowest of these was undoubtedly part of the original Norman church; the second or triforium was soon added. Above this comes the clerestory, the pointed arch between the round-headed windows indicating a somewhat later date; and above this there is a chamber perfectly plain within, and not open to the church below. The outside of this is decorated with an arcading of intersecting arches, which indicates a somewhat later date. These intersecting arches form seven pointed arches on each side--five of these were originally open to allow the sound of the bells, which were formerly hung in the tower, to pass out; but to add strength to the walls all but the middle ones on the east face were at various periods walled up. At one time the tower was surmounted by a spire, possibly of wood covered with lead; this is supposed to have been erected by John de Berwick, who was dean of the minster from 1286 to 1312. The squinches which supported this spire may still be seen in the upper stage just described. Descending from this stage by a spiral staircase in the north-west angle, we find ourselves in the clerestory already mentioned. In each face there are two round-headed windows widely splayed on the interior, with shafts in the jambs; between each pair of windows is a pointed arch, in each angle of the tower is a slender shaft encircled by three bands at about equidistant intervals: a passage cut in the thickness of the wall runs round this stage. Again descending, we reach the triforium level. Each of the walls of this stage has two pointed sustaining arches built into the wall to support the weight of the superincumbent masonry; each of these encloses four semi-circular headed arches with shafts of Purbeck marble. The capitals of these are rudely carved, and between the relieving pointed arches are carved heads, that on the north side being the most noteworthy. The passage behind the arches is very narrow, the total thickness of the walls being only 4 feet 6 inches. At the centre of each face are the openings which formerly led into the spaces between the roofs and ceilings of the nave, transepts, and choir of the Norman church. That on the north side now leads into a stone gallery, erected in 1891 in the place of a dilapidated wooden structure, which runs first westward to the angle between the tower and north transept, then along the west face of the transept until it reaches a door leading into the stair turret, which may be seen from the exterior. At the bottom of this is a door opening into the transept. This stair turret projects slightly into the transept. The lowest stage of the tower consists of four arches and four massive piers. The arches have two plain orders. The piers have double shafts supporting the central order, and single shafts supporting the outer orders. The four arches are not of the same width, those on the east and west being wider than those on the north and south. In order to get the arches to spring from the same level and also to reach the same height at their heads, the wider arches are of the shape known as "depressed," while the narrower ones are of the "horse-shoe" type. The choir being somewhat narrower than the nave, the walls on each side take the place of the shaft which would have supported the outer order of the eastern arch. The capitals and bases of these arches are very plain, in fact nowhere in this church can the elaborately-carved capitals so often met with in late Norman work be found. This central tower was undoubtedly gradually raised stage by stage, as the character of the architecture indicates: probably during each interval the part already finished was capped by a pyramidal roof. [Illustration: THE TOWER ARCHES.] [Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT AND CROSSING.] The #Nave Aisles# were widened in the fourteenth century, the Norman walls being removed and their roofs raised; a single stone of the weather moulding, which may be seen on the west face of the north transept, shows the height and slope of the roof of the Norman aisle. The windows of the aisles on either side are two-light Decorated windows; the three on either side to the east of the north and south porches are of the same character, while the two on each side to the west of the porches are also alike but differ in their tracery from those to the east. The south porch is much smaller than the north, and is very plain; it is composed of two solid walls projecting six feet from the wall of the aisle. The #Transepts#, as has been described in the preceding chapter, were lengthened in the fourteenth century--the southern one by the incorporation of some low Norman building, thought by some to have been the Lady Chapel, the walls of which were raised; the northern one by the addition of Bembre's chantry. This has caused the north transept to be somewhat longer than the south. The original Norman transepts seem to have been of the same length on either side. Bembre, who died in 1361, is supposed to have been buried here. A stone slab lay until 1857 in the centre of the pavement,--on it was a representation of a full-length figure of a man dressed in a robe like a surplice; but when the pavement was renewed this stone was allowed to remain exposed to sun and rain in the churchyard until the surface was weathered to such an extent that it is now impossible to make out with any certainty what is upon it. But the description given by Hutchins of the arms on the shields which were sculptured on it does not agree with the Bembre arms, so that it could hardly have been the tombstone of this Dean who founded the chantry. The window at the end of the north transept is modern restoration work. Before 1891 the tracery was of a very plain character, as may be seen from the illustration (page 21). It is supposed that damage was done to this window at the time when the tower fell, and that the plain tracery was inserted after that event. During the restoration in 1891, the old plaster was removed from the walls, and in doing this a Norman altar recess was discovered in the east wall of this transept; the southern end of this had been cut away when the choir aisle was widened in the fourteenth century. In this recess traces of fresco may be seen. A piscina stands to the north of this altar recess, and is of Decorated character. [Illustration: THIRTEENTH-CENTURY PISCINA IN SOUTH TRANSEPT.] The #South Transept# has a five-light Decorated window at its southern end, with modern tracery in imitation of the old, each light running up through the head of the window. A very fine Early English piscina, with the characteristic dog-tooth moulding, stands in the south wall. An altar occupying a position similar to the one in the north transept used to stand in this transept also, but the pointed arch over the recess shows that it was of later date. [Illustration: CHOIR STALLS.] The most elaborate part of the church is that which lies to the east of the central tower. The great height to which the altar is raised above the level of the nave gives it a very impressive appearance from the west end; and, again, the view looking westward from the altar level is much enhanced by the height from which it is seen. [Illustration: WEST VIEW FROM THE CHOIR.] The #East End# is purely English work, and this shows that in the thirteenth century the church was extended about 30 feet towards the east. The junction of the Early English with the Norman wall is marked by a cluster of slender shafts rising from the ground. The alterations which were made in the Norman walls at the time of this eastward extension have been already described (p. 11). It now only remains to describe the #Choir# and #Presbytery# as they stand at the present time. Immediately to the east of the tower on either side are two pointed arches of two plain orders rising on their western sides from plain brackets in the tower piers, and supported on the east by engaged shafts with roughly-carved Norman capitals. Next to these come the Early English inserted arches, pierced as already described through the Norman wall and cutting away the lower part of two previously existing Norman windows on each side. The arches are of three plain orders, with chamfered edges, resting on clustered shafts; beyond these the new thirteenth-century work begins. Beyond the clustered shafts mentioned above, which mark the commencement of the Early English work, is a lofty arch on either side opening into the choir aisles; over each of them is a pair of small lancet windows widely splayed inside. Between the piers of these arches a wall is carried, its top being about midway between their bases and capitals. On the southern wall stands the Beaufort tomb, on the northern the Courtenay tomb; and below this the walls are pierced with arches, beneath which are flights of nine steps leading on to the crypt beneath the presbytery. It is not improbable that after the eastern extension the altar stood at the east end of the Norman part of the choir, and that under these two Early English arches was the ambulatory or processional passage which is so often found to the east of the high altar. Beyond the ends of the choir aisles on either side of the presbytery is a lancet window. The east window is worthy of the closest observation. Its exterior appearance has been already described (p. 24). Within, it consists of three openings widely splayed; the thin stone over the central lancet, beneath the surrounding moulding, is pierced with a quatrefoil opening; over the two side lancets the corresponding openings have six foliations; between the three lights and outside the outer ones, flush with the wall, are clusters of shafts of Purbeck marble, from which spring mouldings enclosing the lights in a most peculiar fashion: these follow the curves of the tops of the lancets, but before meeting they are returned in the form of cusps, and then are carried round the upper foliated openings. The upper part of each of these mouldings forms about three-quarters of the circumference of a circle. The characteristic Early English dog-tooth ornament is carved round the moulding of the central light, those round the other lights are not thus decorated. The whole group is surrounded by a label following the curves of moulding, with carved heads at its terminations and points of junction. The six cusps of the moulding are ornamented by bosses of carved foliage. [Illustration: THE EAST WINDOW.] [Illustration: SEDILIA.] To the south side of the presbytery, between the south window and the Beaufort tomb, the triple #Sedilia# and the #Piscina# are situated: each of these is covered by a canopy of fourteenth-century work. These were extensively repaired at the time of the restoration. The Beaufort altar tomb is the finest monument in the church. On it are two recumbent figures carved in alabaster, and although there is no inscription it is certain that they represent John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife Margaret. John Beaufort was son of another John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, who was brother of the celebrated Cardinal Beaufort, and son of John of Gaunt by his mistress Catherine Swynford, a family afterwards legitimatised by Parliament. This second John Beaufort distinguished himself in the French wars of Henry IV., who in 1443 gave him a step in the peerage, creating him Duke of Somerset. His wife Margaret was, when he married her, widow of Oliver St John, and it is thought that after the death of her second husband in 1444 she married again. This John and Margaret, Duke and Duchess of Somerset, are famous on account of their daughter the Lady Margaret, so well-known for her educational endowments and for the fact that after her marriage with Edmund Tudor, the Earl of Richmond, she became the mother of that Henry Tudor who overthrew Richard III. at Bosworth, and was crowned King as Henry VII. Here on this altar tomb their effigies remain in a wonderful state of preservation, their right hands clasped together, angels at their heads, his feet resting on a dog, hers on an antelope. He is completely clad in armour, the face and right hand only bare--the gauntleted left hand holds the right hand gauntlet, which he has taken off that he may hold the lady's hand. She is clad in a long close-fitting garment. Each of the two wears around the neck a collar marked with the letters SS. At the apex of the arch above their tomb hangs his tourney helm. [Illustration: THE BEAUFORT TOMB.] Under the corresponding arch on the opposite side is a similar tomb, but without any effigy. The fragment of an inscription tells us that it is the tomb of one who was once the wife of Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, and mother of Edward Courtenay. She was Gertrude, daughter of William Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Her husband was beheaded in 1538, together with the aged Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, whose chantry may be seen in the Priory at Christchurch, though she was laid to rest in what Macaulay describes as the saddest burying-ground in England, the cemetery of St Peter's, in the Tower. Gertrude, Lady Courtenay, was herself attainted at the time of her husband's execution, but was afterwards pardoned and died in 1557. The tomb was opened in the last century from idle curiosity, and some one attempted to raise the body to a sitting posture, with the result that the skeleton fell to pieces. The tomb was also damaged by this foolish opening. [Illustration: BRASS OF ÆTHELRED.] Three small carved figures at the bottom of the hood moulding of the arches over these monuments deserve attention. The one on the west side of the southern arch represents Moses with the tables of the law. Probably there was another such figure at the eastern end of the same moulding, but this would have been cut away when the sedilia were inserted. The opposite arch has a figure on each side. Just at the east end of the Courtenay tomb is a slab of Purbeck marble, reputed to have once covered the grave of Æthelred. In it is inserted a fifteenth-century brass, with a rectangular plate of copper bearing an inscription, represented in the illustration (p. 46). A brass plate with a similar inscription, though the date on it is given as 872, was found in the library. Possibly the original brass and inscription were taken up in the time of the civil wars and hidden for safety, and the inscription having been lost, the copper plate now on the tomb was made when the brass was replaced, and the original plate was afterwards found and was placed for safety in what is now the library. _Copper_ nails were used to fasten the brass to the floor, which perhaps serves to show that the engraved _copper_ plate was made at the time when the brass was replaced on the slab. A little piece of the left-hand bottom corner has been broken off, and the top of the sceptre is missing. There are no rails before the altar, but their place is supplied by three oak benches covered with white linen cloths (these may be seen in the illustration on p. 43). The use of the "houseling linen" dates back to very early times. The word "housel" for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper has gone out of use, though most of us are familiar with the line "_Unhouseled_, unanointed, unanelled," in which the ghost of Hamlet's father describes the circumstances of his death. The word "unhouseled" in this means that he died without receiving the sacred elements before his death. The benches are a relic of Puritan times: there is an entry dated 1656 in the churchwardens' accounts respecting the payment of £1 "for making and setting up the benches about ye communion table in the quire." These were at first used as seats, on which the communicants sat to receive the bread and wine. In after times their use was modified. These benches, ten in number, were placed on the steps leading up to the altar, and it was customary for the clerk on "Sacrament Sundays" to go to the lectern after morning prayer, and, in a loud voice, give notice thus: "All ye who are prepared to receive the Holy Communion draw near." Those who wished to communicate then went into the chancel and sat on these benches or in the choir stalls, waiting their turns, and kneeling on mats until the clergy brought them the bread and wine. Up to 1852 there was a rail on the top step, at the entrance of the presbytery, on which the houseling linen hung. The rail, which was of no great antiquity, was removed at that date, and three of the oak benches were retained to supply its place; these are now used as an ordinary communion rail, but are always covered with the "fair white cloths." The #South Choir Aisle#, known as the Trinity Aisle, has at its east end a five-light window, each light of which runs up through the head; the south wall is pierced by two three-light windows of similar character. The wall opposite in the western bay, against which the organ now stands, is blank, as on the outside of this the vestry stands with the library above it. At the east end of this aisle was the chantry founded by the Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond, whose father and mother lie in the tomb already described beneath the nearest arch on the north side of this aisle. The altar of this chantry, as well as all the other altars in the church, numbering ten in all, have been swept away, no doubt at the time of the Reformation. But recently the east end of this aisle has been fitted up with a communion table for use at early services. In this aisle is to be seen, under the second window from the east, the marble or slate painted sarcophagus known as the Etricke tomb. Anthony Etricke of Holt Lodge, Recorder of Poole, was the magistrate who committed for trial the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, who, after his flight from Sedgemoor, was captured in the north of Dorset near Critchell. It is said that in his old age he became very eccentric, and desired to be buried neither in the church nor out of it, neither above ground nor under; and to carry out his wish he got permission to cut a niche in the church wall, partly below the level of the ground outside, and then firmly fixed in it the slate receptacle which is now to be seen. Into this he ordered that his coffin should be put when he died. Moreover, he had a presentiment that he should die in 1691, and so placed that date upon the side of the sarcophagus. He, however, lived twelve years longer than he expected, so that when his death really occurred the date had to be altered to 1703. The two dates, the later written over the earlier, are still to be seen. On the outside of the sarcophagus are painted the arms of his family. The whole is kept in good repair, for so determined was the good man that his memory should be kept alive, and his last resting-place well cared for, that he gave to the church in perpetuity the sum of 20s. per annum, to be expended in keeping the niche and coffin in good order. When the church was restored in 1857 the outer coffin was opened, and it was found that the inner one had decayed, but that the dust and bones were still to be seen, these were placed in a new chest and once more deposited in the outer coffin. [Illustration: THE ETRICKE TOMB.] In this aisle is also to be seen an ancient chest, not formed as chests usually are, of wooden planks or slabs fastened together, but hewn out of a solid trunk of oak. The chest is over 6 feet long, but the cavity inside is not more than 22 inches in length, 9 inches in width, and 6 inches in depth, hence it will be seen how thick and massive the walls are. Originally it may have contained some small relics, and probably is much older than the present minster itself. It was afterwards used as a safe for deeds. In 1735 some deeds were taken from it bearing the date 1200. Formerly, there stood on this aisle the tomb of John de Berwick, dean of the college, who died in 1312. At his tomb once a year the parishioners met to receive the accounts of the outgoing churchwardens and to elect new ones. The altar tomb was removed about 1790, the slab at the top of it being let into the floor. [Illustration: ANCIENT CHEST.] The #North Choir Aisle# is a foot narrower than the corresponding south aisle: it has three windows each with two lights instead of two of three lights. This is known as St George's aisle. In the east wall is a piscina of Perpendicular date. Two doors lead into this aisle--one at the corner, where the walls of the aisle and transept meet, and one between the two easternmost windows. The principal objects in this aisle are two bulky chests, one containing the title-deeds of some charity lands in the parish of Corfe Castle. This is fastened by six locks, each of different pattern,--each trustee of the charity has a key, of his own special lock,--so that the chest can only be opened by the consent of the whole body. The other chest contains the parochial accounts; this once had six locks, but now has only two. In the south-eastern corner of this aisle lies a mutilated effigy of a mail-clad knight with crossed legs. This is said to have been removed to the minster from another church when it was destroyed. Whom it represents is uncertain, but traditionally it is known as the Fitz Piers monument. [Illustration: UVEDALE MONUMENT.] In this aisle is the monument of Sir Edmund Uvedale, who died in 1606. The monument was erected by his widow in "dolefull duety." It is in the Renaissance style, and was carved by an Italian sculptor. The old knight is represented clad in a complete suit of plate armour, though without a helmet. He lies on his right side, his head is raised a little from his right hand, on which it has been resting, as though he were just awaking from his long sleep, his left hand holds his gauntlet. Above the tomb hangs an iron helmet, such as was worn in Elizabethan times, and which very probably was once worn by Sir Edmund himself. Between the eastern ends of the choir aisles, and beneath the eastern end of the presbytery, is the #Crypt#. This is a vaulted chamber, the vaulting being supported on two pairs of pillars, thus forming three aisles, as it were, running east and west, each containing three bays. The western bay is of somewhat later date than the central and eastern; the wall against which the westernmost of the pillars once stood was removed, but the piers were allowed to remain, backed up by a new piece of masonry built against them to support the new vaulting. The crypt is lighted by four windows, equal-sided spherical triangles in shape; two look out eastward, one northward beyond the chancel arch, one, correspondingly placed, to the southward. The centre of the east end is a blank wall. Against this the altar stood--a niche, probably a piscina, still may be seen. On each side of the place where the altar stood there are two openings into the choir aisles. The exteriors of these are of the same form and size as the crypt windows, but they are deeply splayed inside, and probably were used as hagioscopes or squints, to allow those kneeling in the choir aisles to see the priest celebrating mass at the crypt altar. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CRYPT.] [Illustration: THE LIBRARY.] The #Vestry# stands in the south-east angle between the transept and choir aisle; it is a vaulted building dating from the fourteenth century, and is lighted by two windows, one looking to the east, the other to the south. A small door at the south-west corner opens upon the staircase leading to the #Library#--a chamber situated above the vestry. The collection consists chiefly of books left to the minster by will of the Rev. William Stone, Principal of New Inn Hall, Oxford, a native of Wimborne. They were brought from Oxford in 1686, under the care of the Rev. Richard Lloyd, at that time Master of the Grammar School at Wimborne. The books are chiefly works on divinity; some additions were subsequently and at various times made to the original collection. The books were attached to the shelves for safety's sake by iron chains, the upper end carrying rings which slid on rods fastened to the shelf above, the other end to the edge of the binding of the books. Hence the volumes had to be placed on the shelves with their backs to the walls. The room in which the books were placed was formerly known as the Treasury; it was refitted in 1857, but the old chains are still used. It would occupy too much space were any attempt made to give a list of the books. The oldest volume is a manuscript of 1343, "Regimen Animarum," written on vellum, and containing a few illuminated initials. A "Breeches," Black-Letter Bible, dated 1595, is another book worth mentioning; also a volume of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World. A hole was burnt through 104 of its pages. It is said that Matthew Prior, the poet, was reading it by candle light and fell asleep, and when he woke was much distressed to find that the snuff from his candle had done the mischief. He did his best to repair the damage, by placing a tiny piece of paper over the hole in each page, and inserting the missing letters with pen and ink. The book has since been rebound, leaves taken from another copy having been bound in between the damaged pages. [Illustration: THE CRYPT.] [Illustration: THE FONT.] The lower part of the west tower is used as a baptistery; this is separated from the nave by a screen, formed of fragments of the old rood screen. In the centre stands the octagonal late Norman #Font#, supported by eight slender shafts of Purbeck marble, and a modern spirally-carved central pillar of white stone, through which runs the drain to carry off the water. [Illustration: THE CLOCK IN THE WEST TOWER.] In the inner southern wall of this tower, rather low down, is fixed a curious old #Clock# made by Peter Lightfoot, a Glastonbury monk, in the early part of the fourteenth century. The earth is represented by a globe in the centre, the sun by a disc which travels round it once in twenty-four hours, showing the time of day; the moon by a globe so fastened to a blue disc that it revolves once during a lunar month; half of this is painted black, the other half is gilt, and the age of the moon is indicated by the amount of the gilded portion visible--when the moon is full the whole of the gilt hemisphere is shown, when new the whole of the black. This clock still goes, the works being in a room in the tower above. It requires winding once a day. The same clock also causes the Jack outside the tower to strike the quarters. In the #Belfry# is a peal of eight bells. The tenor weighs about 36 cwts., the treble 7 cwts. The tenor bears this inscription: MR WILHEMUS LORINGE ME PRIMO FECIT, IN HONOREM STÆ CUTBERGÆ. RENOVABAR SUMPTU PAROCHALI PER AB, ANNO DOMINI 1629. The seventh bell is dated 1798. The sixth bell 1600, and is thus inscribed: "SOUND OUT THE BELLS, IN GOD REGOYCE." The fifth 1698, "PRAISE THE LORD." The fourth 1686, "PULSATA ROSAMUNDI MARIA VOCATA. SMV." The third was originally the smallest bell of the peal, and bears the Latin hexameter: "SUM MINIMA HIC CAMPANA, AT INEST, SUA GRATIA PARVIS," and the words, "THIS BELL WAS ADDED TO YE FIVE IN 1686, Samuel Knight." The two smaller bells are of recent date. The #Lectern# bears date 1623. The stone pulpit is modern (1868). The old wooden pulpit, whose place it has taken, has been removed to the church at Holt. The earliest mention of an #Organ# is in 1405, but the earliest authentic record is of one set up by John Vaucks, Organ Master, in 1533. A memorandum in the churchwardens' accounts speak of him setting up a pair of organs on the rood loft. In the year 1643, we have records of the sale of organ-pipes and old tin. After the Restoration in 1664, we have a record of the purchase of a new organ for £180. This was repaired, enlarged, and rebuilt at various times, and at the restoration, when the rood screen was unfortunately destroyed, the organ was placed in the south choir aisle. All the lower windows are now filled with painted glass; all of which, with the exception of a few fragments, is nineteenth-century work. DEANS OF WIMBORNE Martin Pattislee or Pattishull appointed 1224 Ralph Brito " 1229 John Mansell " 1247 John de Kirkby " 1265 John de Berwick " 1286 Stephen de Mawley " 1312 Richard de Clare " 1312 Richard de Swinnerton " 1334 Richard de Merimouth " 1338 Richard de Kingston " 1342 Thomas de Clopton " 1349 Reginald de Bryan " 1349 Thomas de Bembre (founder of the chantry) " 1350 Henry de Buckingham " 1361 Richard de Beverley " 1367 John de Carp " 1398 Roger Tortington " 1408 Peter de Altebello " 1412 Walter Medford " 1416 Gilbert Kymer " 1427 Walter Herte " 1467 Hugh Oldham " 1485 Thomas Rowthel " 1508 Henry Hornby " 1509 Reginald Pole " 1517 Nicholas Wilson " 1537 COLLEGE DISSOLVED " 1547 CHAPTER IV ST MARGARET'S HOSPITAL About a quarter of a mile to the north-west of Wimborne stands the chapel of #St Margaret's Hospital#. The date of the foundation of this hospital is uncertain; tradition has it that it was founded by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., but this is without doubt wrong, as documents--the character of which seem to indicate an early thirteenth-century date--have been found, from which it appears that this hospital existed at that time, and was set apart for the relief and support of poor persons afflicted with leprosy. This disease was at one time so common in England that a great number of lazar-houses were erected in the country, and many were well endowed; but when, after a time, the disease became less violent, many abuses crept in, persons not really suffering from the disease pretended to be lepers in order to get pecuniary benefits, and hence in many cases the leper hospitals were suppressed, or converted to other purposes. At the present day we find in many places, as here at Wimborne, that they are used as almshouses. [Illustration: ST MARGARET'S HOSPITAL.] This hospital, however, was not one of the well-endowed. It appears from a deed, dated in the sixteenth year of Henry VIII., that the hospital was chiefly maintained, not by endowments, but by the gifts of the charitable who were willing to contribute to its support; and to encourage the benevolent to give, the deed recites that "Pope Innocent IV, in the year 1245, by an indulgans or bulle did assoyl them of all syns forgotten, and offences done against fader and moder, and all swerynges neglygently made. This indulgans, grantyd of Petyr and Powle, and of the said pope, was to hold good for 51 yeres and 260 days, provided they repeated a certain specified number of Paternosters and Ave Marias daily." The date of this indulgence proves the antiquity of the hospital, as it shows that it was in existence before the middle of the thirteenth century. A chantry was also founded in the chapel here by John Redcoddes of one priest to say masses for his soul. To this chantry, according to a deed dated in the sixteenth year of Henry VI., many tenements in Wimborne belonged. In later times the Rev. William Stone, who has been mentioned before as the founder of the Minster Library, by his will left his lands and tenements in the parish of Wimborne Minster to be applied to the benefit of almsmen only who should live in St Margaret's Hospital. There is a further endowment, but how it came to this hospital has not been discovered. The advowson and tithes of the Rectory of Poole were, in the reign of James I., granted to the Mayor and Corporation of Poole for forty years, on the corporation undertaking to find a curate to discharge the duties lately discharged by the vicar, and to pay a rent to the crown of £12, 16s. per annum. In the reign of Charles I., the advowson and tithes were granted to two men, Thomas Ashton and Henry Harryman, and their heirs for ever, on the same conditions; but they are now again held by the Corporation, who pay out of the revenues--to St Margaret's hospital £9, 16s.; to the churchwardens of Wimborne Minster, for the maintenance of the Etricke tomb, £1; and to the fellows of Queen's College, Oxford, to be spent in wine and tobacco on November 5th, yearly £2. The Redcotte chantry possessed sundry vestments, the gift of Margaret Rempstone, in the thirty-fifth year of Henry VI., and plate, an inventory of which exists. This plate, on the dissolution of chantries, was given by the parishioners to the king, Edward VI. The hospital or almshouses stands on the high road from Wimborne to Blandford; the chapel joins one of the tenements occupied by the almsmen. These tenements are nine in number; three are inhabited by married couples, three by men, and three by women. Some of these cottages are of half timber, and thatched, others of modern brick. The chapel, at which there is now a service every Thursday afternoon, conducted by one of the minster clergy, is a plain building, which has been recently refitted, but remains, as far as windows and walls are concerned, in its original state. There are three doors in the north wall; the heads are pointed, and it is noteworthy that in the central door, that generally used for access to the chapel, the two sides of the arch are of different curvatures, so that the point of the arch is nearer to the right-hand side. The edge of the wall is chamfered round the doorways. The east window has a semicircular head, and plain wooden tracery dividing it into two lancet-headed lights with an opening above them. There is a window in both the south and north walls, near the east end, each of two lights; the south window is widely splayed inside; the head of each light has one cusp on each side. The head of each light of the north window has two cusps on each side. Farther to the west, on the south side, is a single narrow lancet, widely splayed, and still farther to the west is a semicircular opening with wooden tracery. The general character of the masonry would indicate that local workmen were employed in building this chapel, and that little was spent in ornamenting it at the time of the erection. There are, however, some traces of frescoes on the inside of the walls, both geometrical patterns and figures. The pointed doorways and the lancet window on the south side would indicate the thirteenth century as the date of the original building, and this agrees with the documentary evidence mentioned above for the foundation of the hospital. The roof is an open one of massive wooden rafters, with the beams running across at the level of the wall plates. DIMENSIONS OF WIMBORNE MINSTER Extreme length, exterior, E. to W. 198 feet Extreme width, exterior, N. to S. 102 " Length of Nave, interior 67 " Width of Nave, interior 23 " Height of Walls 40 " Length of Nave Aisles, interior 70 " Width of Nave Aisles, interior 13 " Length of North Transept, interior 42 " Width of North Transept, interior 18 " Height of Walls, interior 30 " Length of South Transept, interior 33 " Width of South Transept, interior 18 " Height of Walls 30 " Length of Choir, interior 32 " Width of Choir, interior 21 " Height of Choir Walls 28 " Length of Presbytery 30 " Width of Presbytery 21 " Length of North Choir Aisle 53 " Width of North Choir Aisle 21 " Length of South Choir Aisle 53 " Width of South Choir Aisle 20 " Length of Side of Central Tower (square), interior 31 " Height of Central Tower 84 " Length of Side of Western Tower (square), exterior 31 " Height of Western Tower 95 " Length of North Porch, N. and S., interior 15 " Width of North Porch, E. and W., interior 14 " Length of South Porch, N. and E., interior 6 " Width of South Porch, E. and W., interior 7 " Length of Vestry, N. and S., interior 15 " Width of Vestry, E. and W., interior 14 " Length of Baptistery, E. to W., interior 18 " Width of Baptistery, N. to S., interior 19 " AREA 10,725 sq. feet. CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY [Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, FROM THE BRIDGE.] CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE BUILDING On the promontory washed on the one side by the slow stream of the Dorset Stour, and on the other by the no less sluggish flow of the Wiltshire Avon, not far from the place where they mingle their waters before making their way amid mudflats and sandbanks into the English Channel, stands, and has stood for more than eight hundred years, the stately Priory Church which gives the name of Christchurch to a small town in the county of Hants. The massive walls of its Norman nave, its fifteenth-century tower, and its great length--for, from the east wall of its Lady Chapel to the west wall of its tower, it measures no less than 311 feet--make it a conspicuous object from the Channel, especially after sundown, when its form, rising above the low shore of Christchurch Bay, is silhouetted against the sky. It is one of the finest churches below cathedral rank that is to be found in England. It is a perfect mine of wealth to the student of architecture, containing examples of every style from its early, possibly Saxon, crypt to the Renaissance of its chantries. Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in the nave, with its massive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel. The crypts beneath the north transept and the presbytery may have belonged to the original church, but of that which is visible above ground the oldest part was due to Flambard, of whom more hereafter. When the first church was founded we cannot tell. Here, as in many other places, the origin is lost in the haze of antiquity and legend. Here, as at many other places, we find the original builders choosing one site, and the stones that they had laid during the day being removed by night by unseen, and therefore angelic, hands to another. It was on the heights of St Catharine, about a mile and a half away from the present site, that the human builders strove to raise their church. It may be that this hill, still marked by the ramparts of an ancient encampment, was not holy ground on account of its former occupation by heathens, though in after time, a chapel, built in the early part of the fourteenth century, existed there; but, anyhow, not on this hill, but on the flat lands of Saxon Tweoxneham, a name which passed into the forms of Thuinam and Twynham, that the great Priory Church was destined to stand. But not even when the human builders began to erect the church on the miraculously chosen ground did supernatural interposition cease. A stranger workman came and laboured at the building: never was he seen to eat as the other workmen did, never did he come with his fellows to receive his wages. Once, when a beam had been cut too short for the place it was to occupy, he lengthened it by drawing it out with his hand; and when the day for consecration came, and the other workmen gathered together to see their work hallowed by due ceremonial, this stranger workman was nowhere to be seen. The ecclesiastics came to the conclusion that this was none other than the carpenter's son of Nazareth, and the church which had in part been builded by the hands of the Christ Himself in later days became known as Christchurch. But, if we disregard these legends, we do not at once find ourselves on sure and certain ground. The foundation has been attributed to Æthelstan, but this is hardly likely, as, in a charter dated 939, he gives one of the weirs on the Avon at Twynham to the Abbey Church of Middleton, now Milton Abbey in North Dorset, which he would be hardly likely to do if he had founded, or were thinking of founding, a religious house at Twynham; and as he died in 940, not much time was left for any foundation after this grant. Again, we find King Eadred granting land and fishing near Twineham to Dunstan. However, in the time of the Confessor, mention is made of the canons of Holy Trinity possessing lands in Thuinam. It must be remembered that it had been intended, according to the legend, to dedicate the church to the Holy Trinity, and no doubt this was done, although it was afterwards identified especially with the second Person. In Domesday it is stated that the canons of the Church of the Holy Trinity hold lands in the village, and also in the Isle of Wight opposite. Certain it is that in the days of Eadward the Confessor there was a church at Twynham dedicated to the Holy Trinity, held by a collegiate society of secular canons. This church was swept away by Ranulf Flambard, the notorious justiciar and chaplain of William II., whose evil deeds, contrary to the oft-quoted passage from Mark Antony's speech in Julius Cæsar, are now generally forgotten; while the good deeds that he wrought,--the nave of this church, and the still grander nave of Durham Cathedral Church, Durham Castle, "Norham's castled steep," and Kepier Hospital, built while he held the most important diocese in the North of England,--live after him, and have shed a glory on his name. Evil he was in moral character without doubt, but a glorious builder nevertheless. Though he oppressed the clergy, though it was through his instrumentality and by his advice that sees were kept vacant for years, and when filled, only given to those who were able and willing to pay large sums to the king, yet it is rather as a great architect than as an ecclesiastic that we, who gaze with delight and admiration on his work that has come down to us, will regard him. It is said that, as his end drew nigh, he realised the amount of evil he had done, and strove to make his peace with heaven and restitution to some, at least, of those whom he had wronged. He died in 1128, and his body rests in the great Cathedral Church of St Cuthbert that he had done so much to raise. But it was in the earlier part of his career, before he received the bishopric of Durham in 1099, that he probably began the work at Christchurch with which we are at present concerned.[4] He was succeeded there by Godric, who is called Senior and Patron and afterwards Dean; but Flambard seems still to have exercised some authority over him, illegal probably, but none the less real. We find him granting to Godric, for the work of building, all the offerings made by strangers and pilgrims, and when a canon died his share of the revenues of the college was devoted to the same object, the vacancy not being filled up by the appointment of any new canon. [4] Sir Gilbert Scott, however, thought that the Norman nave of the Cathedral Church at Durham was commenced before Flambard became bishop, and that the new church at Christchurch was begun after that date, so that the work at Christchurch was copied by him from what he found already commenced at Durham when he went there. The length of Godric's tenure of office is uncertain. On his death Henry I. appointed Gilbert de Dousgunels dean, having appropriated to himself the accumulated fabric fund. Henry I. granted the patronage of the church to Richard de Redvers, Earl of Devon, who appointed his chaplain, Peter, a Norman of Caen, dean. This dean seems to have diverted the funds from the work of completing the church, but his successor, Randulphus, carried on the work again, so that in his time the church and the conventual buildings were roofed in. In the time of Hilary, in the year 1150, the secular college of canons was converted into a Priory of Augustinian Canons. This change was made with the consent of Baldwin de Redvers, in accordance with the wishes of Henry of Blois, brother of King Stephen, and at that time Bishop of Winchester, who is well known from the fact of his founding the Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Hilary, two years before this change was made, had been consecrated Bishop of Chichester, and subsequently became one of the episcopal opponents of Thomas Becket. Henceforth, until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII., the head of the religious community at Christchurch was a prior, who was, according to a charter granted by Richard de Redvers in 1160, elected by the canons. There were, in all, twenty-six priors, and their names have come down to us, but with only the most meagre notices of the architectural work which was carried on by each of them. Extensive, however, it must have been; and from what we see of the church itself, it would seem as if building operations must have been almost constantly in progress. In all probability there was, according to the usual plan of Norman churches, a tower at the junction of the nave and transepts, and beyond this an apsidal choir. But there is no documentary record of such a tower ever having been built or fallen, although its existence is rendered probable by a carving of a church with tower and spire on Draper's chantry, and by a similar representation on a seal, and in two other parts of the building. It is probable that the original choir extended westward beyond the transept, as at Westminster to the present day. As has been stated above, the Norman church was commenced by Flambard towards the end of the eleventh century; and of the work so begun, the earliest existing remains are the arcading of the nave, the triforium, and the transepts with the eastern apsidal chapel attached to the south transept. Next to this in order came the walls of the aisles of the nave, and the cloisters and chapter-house, which, however, have disappeared; cloisters would come to be considered a necessity as soon as the secular canons were superseded by regulars. The early English clerestory of the nave seems to have been built in the time of the third prior, Peter, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. To the end of same century may be approximately assigned the vaulting of the nave aisles, the north porch, and a chapel attached to the north transept. Alterations of an extensive nature seem to have been begun in the fourteenth century; for to this date belong the rood screen, placed farther to the east than the old division between the ritual choir of the canons and the western part of the nave, which was probably given up to the lay dwellers in the parish,--and the splendid reredos. The Lady Chapel also was completed certainly before 1406, probably eleven years earlier. The fifteenth century saw the western tower built and the choir commenced and a great part of it finished, though the vaulting seems not to have been completed until the early part of the sixteenth century, as W. E. the initials of William Eyre, who was prior from 1502 to 1520, are to be seen on the bosses and the arch of the south choir aisle. Somewhat later still is the chantry at the east end of the south choir aisle, built by the last prior and dated 1529, and the chantry built by the last of the Plantagenets, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, daughter of the Earl of Clarence and mother of Cardinal Pole, who at the age of seventy was executed by Henry VIII. in 1541. Shortly before the dissolution in 1536 Prior Draper addressed a petition to Henry VIII. which is still in existence in the Record Office, praying that he would spare the Priory church, basing his request upon the desolate character of the district, the poverty of the house, and the fact that the church was not only a place for poor religious men, but also a parish church to the town and hamlets round about, whose inhabitants numbered from fifteen to sixteen hundred, that there was no place where any honest man on horseback or on foot might have succour or repose for the space of eight or nine miles, "but only this poor place of Christchurch, to which both rich and poor doth repair and repose." He goes on to say how it was of late years a place of secular canons, until the king's antecessors made it a place of canons regular, that "the poor, not only of the parish and town, but also of the country, were daily relieved and sustained with bread and ale, purposely baked and brewed for them weekly to no small quantities according to their foundation, and a house ordained purposely for them, and officers according duly given attendance to serve them to their great comfort and relief." But all the pleading was in vain. Commissioners were appointed, who presented their report to Lord Cromwell December 2, 1539. They say that "we found the Prior a very honest and conformable person, and the house well furnished with jewels and plate, whereof some be meet for the king's majesty's use." Then follows a list of the treasures of the abbey, of the yearly value of the several endowments, and of the officers of the Priory, thirteen in number besides the Prior. Prior Draper retired on a pension, and the site of the domestic buildings was conveyed to Stephen and Margaret Kirton. The domestic buildings themselves gradually disappeared, but the whole of the church was handed over to the parish as a church, the grant to the churchwardens being made by letters patent 23 October 32 Henry VIII. It conveyed to them "the choir body, bell-tower with seven bells, stones, timber, lead of roofing and gutters of the church and the cemetery on the north side." Since then the church has been served by vicars, the patronage being in the hands of the dean and chapter of Winchester until the nineteenth century, when the advowson was purchased by Lord Malmesbury. The living is now in the gift of the Bishop of Winchester. During the present century much restoration has been done. The nave was vaulted in stucco in 1819; the west window was taken in hand in 1828; the pinnacles of the tower and the upper part of the turret containing the stairs were renewed in 1871; and constant repairs have been going on up to the present time; and the principle that has guided the restorer has been, when any stonework has been removed to put in its place as exact a copy of the old as possible,--a principle that cannot be approved of, as it will lead, when the newness of the modern work has been toned down by time, to confusion between the genuine old work and the modern imitation of it. It is far better, when there is no question of stability but only of appearance, to leave the old stonework, even though much decayed, as it is, unscraped, untouched by the chisel, and where strength is needed to put in frankly nineteenth-century work, which could never by any possibility be mistaken for part of the original building. One of the most glaring instances of injudicious restoration is to be met with in the apsidal chapel attached to the eastern side of the south transept. This work was carried out by the Hon. C. Harris, late Bishop of Gibraltar. The arcading is a nineteenth-century imitation of Norman work; the pavement is glaringly modern. Of what interest, it may well be asked, is such work? Who would care to visit Christchurch to see it? The nineteenth-century carver cannot possibly produce work similar to that of the carver who lived in the twelfth century,--the conditions of his life are altogether different, his training bears no resemblance to that of the old artist, his work is a forgery, and a most clumsy one too. In this chapel we see this reprehensible practice carried to its fullest extent, but there are many other parts of the building which have suffered. Most of the arcading on the exterior of the transept is modern imitation, and the tracery of the windows of the south choir aisle has been entirely renewed; no old stones, though many might have been used, have been reset in their original position. The arcading of the south aisle of the nave has been terribly tampered with. Possibly under the influence of time many of the shafts had partially crumbled, and the surface of the carved capitals had perished, so that the original design could not be made out; but that was no reason for cutting away the ornamental work to make way for modern decoration which may or may not bear some slight resemblance to what was there before. Some of the piers of the nave arcading have also been partially renewed. By an act of much-to-be-condemned vandalism the sub-arches of the two eastern bays of the south triforium of the nave were cut away to make room for faculty pews; recently a glaring white pillar has been introduced into the westernmost of these two bays, and two sub-arches built. If the same kind of work is carried out in the other, we shall see in all probability an attempt to copy the unique scale decoration which still exists on the tympanum under the corresponding principal arch on the north side, cut with modern tools with all the lifeless rigidity of modern work. Another mistake which has been made, is the scraping off of the plaster from the interior walls of the chamber known as St Michael's Loft, over the Lady Chapel, and the re-pointing of the stonework. Old builders invariably covered their rubble walls with plaster, but the modern restorer for some reason seems to hate plaster and prefers, to show the coarse stonework which the builder never intended should be seen, and to emphasise the roughness by filling up the joints with conspicuous pointing. This, however, is not so destructive as much of the work which has been condemned above, because at any time the walls could be recovered with a thin coat of smooth plaster laid on with a trowel, but not "floated,"--that is, not brought to a smooth surface by a long straightedge. A large and old building such as this Priory Church will need almost constant repairs to keep it sound and safe, and the income from visitors' fees is quite sufficient for this purpose. It is, however, much to be feared that restoration and reconstruction will form far too large a part of the work done in this building. Every new ornamental stone, to make room for which some original stone is displaced, detracts from the value of the building from an archæological point of view; and though there may be some, or even many, who prefer the trim and smug appearance of modern work to that of the old, instinct with life, full of the thoughts of the builders and workers in wood and stone, whose bones have mouldered into dust in the garth of the vanished cloisters, and whose very names have in many cases been forgotten, yet we hope that those who have this priceless treasure in their keeping may recognise ere it is too late, that the result of a continuance of the process of restoration commenced about the middle of the nineteenth century will be the gradual conversion of a splendid memorial of bygone ages into a modern sham, and they themselves will be regarded, when true love of art becomes general, with the same indignation as that which they themselves feel with regard to those who pulled down the roof of the south transept and cut out the columns and sub-arches of the triforium in days before the Gothic revival set in. And the modern restorer has less excuse than the destroyer of a hundred years ago. If, like the vandals of the Georgian period, they had been blind to the beauties of architectural art, they would have had no sin, yet since they profess to see, therefore their sin will remain and their names will be held in perpetual reproach and everlasting contempt. The foregoing historical sketch of the building has perforce been somewhat vague in dates, for, in the absence of documentary evidence, it is not easy to fix from architectural considerations alone the date of any particular piece of work within a limit of some twenty years or so. The out-of-the-way position of the Priory of Christchurch--for no great road ran through the town, and though it is near the sea there is no convenient harbour near it--has brought it to pass that it is scarcely mentioned in any mediæval chronicles. Its own fabric rolls and annals have been lost. Here and there, however, the date of a will or the inscription on a monument has enabled a more definite date to be arrived at. The dates also of the dedications of some of the many altars are known--viz. that of the Holy Saviour, used by the canons as their high altar, and that of St Stephen, dedicated by the Bishop of Ross in 1199; that of the altar of the Holy Trinity, which stood in the nave, and was the high altar of the parish; and those of the altars of SS. Peter and Paul, SS. Augustine and Gregory and all the Prophets, dedicated by Walter, Bishop of Whitherne, on November 7, 1214; that of the altar of St John the Baptist and St Edmund, dedicated on December 7, 1214, by the same bishop; and that of the altar of SS. Michael and Martin, dedicated by the Bishop of the Isles in 1221. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR The exterior of the church of Christchurch Priory may be well seen from several points of view. The churchyard lies to the north of the building, extending beyond it both to the east and west. On the south side, where all the domestic buildings of the Priory once stood, there is a modern house and private grounds. All that belongs to the church is a path running under the walls as far as the east corner of the transept, where a garden door stops farther progress. Several glimpses of the building, however, may be obtained on the way down to the Stour, and seen from the south side of this river, the church rises above its surroundings, and forms a conspicuous object. A good general view on the north-east may also be obtained from a bridge over the Avon. From this point of view the great length of the church is apparent; on the right-hand side may be seen the ruins of the Norman keep of the castle on its artificial mound, and nearer to the bridge the remains of a twelfth-century Norman house. From the churchyard, also, the whole north side of the church may be seen at once, and many striking features will be noticed. Among these, the circular staircase attached to the transept, with its rich diaper work; Norman arcading of interlacing arches running round the transept; the large windows of the choir clerestory, so wide and closely set together that the whole wall seems as though composed of glass--through which, and the windows of the opposite wall, the light of the sky can be seen; and lastly, the upper storey of the Lady Chapel with its row of windows of a domestic type. [Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] [Illustration: TOWER DOOR.] A systematic examination of the exterior may best be begun with the #Western Tower#. This is of fifteenth-century date, and is set partially within the church--that is to say, its builder did not add it to the west of the church, making an archway through the previously existing west front, but pulled down the whole west wall of the nave, leaving, however, the west walls of the aisles, and carried the north and south walls of the new tower as far back into the church as the space occupied by the western bay, thus leaving two spaces at the west end of the aisles, one now used as a vestry, the other as a kind of lumber-room. In the west face of the tower is a doorway under a rectangular label; in the spandrels are two shields, bearing the arms of the Priory, and of the Montacutes and Monthermers, Earls of Salisbury. The doors are modern. Immediately above the doorway is a large window with three tiers, each containing six lights. The head of the window above these is of an ordinary Perpendicular character. The tracery was restored in 1828. Above this window is a niche containing a figure of Christ. The upper stage, which contains the bells, has two two-light windows in each face, each light being divided by a transom. These windows are not glazed, but are furnished with louvre-boards. The tower is crowned with a pierced battlemented parapet having pinnacles at the corners and at the middles of each side; within this rises a low pyramidal roof. The stair turret runs up at the north-east angle of the tower; this is octagonal, and is crowned with a parapet and crocketed pinnacles; the upper part of this turret and the pinnacles were renewed in 1871. The tower is strengthened by two buttresses at right angles to each other at each of the two western angles. On either side of the tower, as already explained, may be seen the west end of the nave aisles; these have windows with Perpendicular tracery, and on the north wall of the north aisle is a plain, round-headed doorway cut through the wall in modern time, with a Perpendicular window over it. [Illustration: NORTH PORCH.] Next comes the #North Porch#, with a chamber above it--here, as in many other churches, the chief entrance into the building. Its great dimensions, both in length and height, however, are remarkable; it projects 40 feet beyond the aisle wall, and its own side walls rise nearly to the height of the clerestory of the church. Its south end does not extend beyond the wall of the aisle, so that there is a space between the upper part of the porch and the clerestory. The upper part above the porch proper contains, as mentioned above, a lofty chamber, probably originally the muniment-room. This is lighted by two pairs of narrow single-light windows on either side, and by a similar pair in the north face beneath the obtuse-angled gable. This room is, no doubt, a later addition. The entrance into the porch is a beautiful, deeply-recessed archway of thirteenth-century date, with numerous shafts of Purbeck marble on either side. Within the porch the side walls are divided into two compartments, each of which is composed of two pointed arches beneath another larger pointed arch, with a cinquefoil in the head. On the west side, near the outer archway, is a cinquefoiled recess, with shafts of Purbeck marble and foliated cusps. This is said originally to have contained a desk, at which the prior met the parishioners and signed deeds. A stone seat runs along each side of the porch walls. The double doorway which leads into the church is very beautiful and rich Early English work. From six Purbeck marble shafts on either side spring the orders of the enclosing archway; the heads of the double doorways themselves are cinquefoiled arches with foliated cusps. At the jambs, and dividing the two doors, are clusters of Purbeck marble shafts, with moulded capitals. In the tympanum is a quatrefoil, the upper part of which projects so as to form a canopy. This was, no doubt, intended to contain some carved subject, possibly the Doom. Very extensive restoration was carried out in the groining and porch generally, in 1862. [Illustration: THE NORTH DOOR.] The wall of the #North Aisle# between the porch and the transept is divided into six compartments by Early English buttresses with gabled heads. This wall was built in Norman times, as may be seen from the small round-headed windows which light the clerestory, but was in Early English times faced with fresh ashlar, which conceals the Norman arcading of intersecting arches which ran along this wall. The triforium windows on this side are not, though they are on the south side, regularly arranged; there are none in the two western divisions, while between the easternmost buttress and the transept there are two. Six late thirteenth-century windows were cut through this wall--these are all of similar design; they consist of two lights under a comprising arch, with a circle in the head. The clerestory windows are of plainer character. Each window consists of two simple lancets set under a recessed arch without any hood moulding; the tympana also above the lancet heads are not pierced or decorated in any way; in fact, the whole clerestory is remarkably plain. Between the windows are flat buttresses. The aisles are covered with lean-to roofs of lead, the nave itself with a tiled roof of medium pitch. The gable at the east end of the nave, and indications on the east face of the tower, show that the pitch of the roof was once higher, and that it must have been lowered at some time after the tower was built in the fifteenth century. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT IN 1810. (From Britton's "Architectural Antiquities.")] The #North Transept# is most interesting. Its west wall contains two round-headed windows with billet moulding, the northern one blocked up; and at the north-west corner is a cluster of cylindrical shafts running up to about the same height as the walls of the aisle. Why they terminated here it is hard to say; they may mark the termination of the original Norman wall. This wall may not have risen above this height, or the upper part may have been taken down and rebuilt when the large Perpendicular window was inserted in the north end of the transept. At the north-east corner of the transept stands a richly-ornamented turret of Norman date. Round the lower part of this the arcade of intersecting arches which runs round the whole transept is carried; above this, round the turret, runs an arcading of semicircular-headed arches springing from pairs of shafts; above this the wall is decorated with diaper work; and finally, another arcading, this time of round-headed arches rising from single shafts, encircles the turret. The turret is capped by a sloping roof of stone attached to the transept wall. This turret is worthy of close attention, because it shows how the Norman builders hated monotony; each stage has its own decoration unlike that of any other; and, moreover, there are variations in the shafts of the arcading--some are plain, some decorated in one way, some in another. The same love of variety may be seen here that lends so great a charm on a larger scale to Flambard's glorious nave at Durham. No doubt this north transept had attached to its east wall an apsidal Norman chapel similar to that which still exists on the eastern side of the south transept, but this had to make way for an addition of two chapels, which we may assign, from the character of their architecture, to the latter end of the thirteenth century. The northern chapel is lighted by a three-light window with three foliated circles in the head, which is rather sharp pointed, and the southern one by a two-light window with one foliated arch. These are beautiful examples of plate tracery. Above these chapels is a small chamber lighted by a window of similar character. This is supposed to have been the tracing room, where the various architectural designs for the building were drawn. To the east of the transept may be seen the #Choir# and #Presbytery#, with its four clerestory windows; the #Choir Aisle#, also with four windows; the #Lady Chapel#, with the octagonal turret-staircase leading into Saint Michael's Loft above it. It will be noticed that there is no window in the aisle under the western clerestory window of the choir, as the space where this would have been found is occupied by the two chapels to the east of the transept, and also that the aisle extends beyond the choir and flanks the western part of the Lady Chapel. The whole of this part of the church is of Perpendicular character. The windows of the choir aisles are low, the arches are depressed, and the curvature of each side of the arch is so slight that they appear almost straight lines. The body of these windows contains four lights; in the head, each of these is subdivided into two. Between the aisle windows are buttresses, which, with the exception of the one opposite the east wall of the choir, which terminates in a gable, have pinnacled cappings; and from each of these, save the gabled one, a flying buttress is carried over the roof of the aisle and rests against the choir wall. The aisle roof is flat, and at the top of the outer wall runs a plain parapet pierced with quatrefoil openings. The clerestory windows are of great size and are set close together. The choir roof is flat and is quite invisible from the exterior. There can be little doubt that a parapet at one time ran along the tops of the clerestory walls, but this has disappeared. The Lady Chapel has on either side three large Perpendicular windows; the arches of these as well as those of the clerestory have pointed heads. The western half of the central window of the Lady Chapel is blocked up by the later-built octagonal turret containing the staircase to Saint Michael's Loft. The staircase commences in an octagonal turret at the north-east corner of the choir aisle,--this rises above the aisle roof,--the stairs are then carried above the east wall of the choir aisle and then into the octagonal turret, which runs up the wall of the Lady Chapel and the loft above, and rises to some height above the parapet. There is a similar staircase on the south side, but the turret does not rise quite so high above the roof. There are five square-headed two-light windows on either side of St Michael's Loft, the lights being divided by transoms, the upper parts foliated. At the east end is a three-light window without any transom, with an obtuse arch under a dripstone. The loft has a parapet all round it pierced with quatrefoil openings. Some of this parapet, at any rate, is modern, as, in a photograph of the north side taken in 1884, the parapet is only shown to the east of the turret. As restoration work is constantly going on at the church, the money paid by visitors for viewing the interior (sixpence a head, which produces over £500 a year) being devoted to this object, the parapet will doubtless in course of time be extended along the walls of the choir, and will certainly add to the beauty of the church; and as nothing will be destroyed to make room for it, such an addition will not be open to the same objection as much of the work done by restoration committees. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT.] The buttresses at the east angles of the Lady Chapel are set diagonally, and rise in five stages; the upper stage of each is square, in section, with the faces parallel to the walls of the church, and reaches a higher level than the parapet, and is finished with a flat cap. The large east window is a Perpendicular one of five lights. From the base of the south-east buttress runs a wall dividing the burying-ground from the gardens of the house, to the south of the church, which stands on the site of the domestic buildings of the priory. The portion of the wall of the Lady Chapel beneath the eastern-most window on the north side is modern. Here Mr Ferrey, the architect, by whom much of the restoration was carried out, discovered traces of an external chantry and the marks of an arcading corresponding to that still remaining on the inside. [Illustration: THE SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE.] The object of the chamber above the Lady Chapel is uncertain,--in 1617 it is described as "St Michael's Loft," in 1666 the parishioners described it as "heretofore a chapter-house," when petitioning the bishop to allow it to be used as a school. But if it was ever used as a chapter-house, it could only have been for a short time, as there is evidence that there was a chapter-house to the south side of the choir in the twelfth century, and that this remained as late as 1498. The south side of the Lady Chapel and choir correspond very closely with the north side, but there are several differences to be noticed between the south and north transepts. On the eastern side of the #South Transept# the Norman apsidal chapel still remains. This has a semi-conical roof with chevron table moulding under it, and two windows--one of original Norman work, the other a three-light Early English window. A sacristy of Early English date stands to the east of the apsidal chapel, and occupies the space between the apse and the south choir wall. At the south-east corner of the transept there is a circular stair turret corresponding to some extent with the turret at the north-east angle of the north transept; this, in the second stage, becomes octagonal in section, and rises above the parapet of the transept. In the south face is a depressed segmental window, much smaller than the corresponding window on the north side, under a gabled parapet. The pitch of the roof of the south transept is much higher than that of the north transept, and the upper part of the transept does not abut against the walls of the church. Two tiers of corbel brackets on the south wall, and traces of two Norman windows seem to indicate that here, as elsewhere, a slype, with a room above it, intervened between the south end of the transept and the chapter-house. This slype was generally a passage connecting the cloister garth with the smaller garth to the south of the choir which was often used as a burying-place for the abbots or priors, as the case may be, and was the place where the monks or canons interviewed visitors and chapmen. The room above was often used as the library. The south of the #Nave# is decidedly inferior in interest to the north. The cloisters have entirely disappeared, but a series of round-headed arches, formed of stucco, may conceal a stone arcading similar to that hidden by the Early English facing of the north wall. The small round-headed windows giving light to the triforium are more regularly arranged than on the north side; there is one, and only one, in each division between the buttresses. There were, as usual, two doors in this wall: one for the canons, in the wall opposite to the west of the cloister, one close to the transept for the prior; both are now blocked up. The prior's door, in the injunction of Langton, 1498, is directed to be kept locked, save when on festivals a procession passed through it. This doorway is of early thirteenth-century work; it is round-headed, and is French in character. There is a legend that a party of French monks, terrified by a dragon which rose out of the sea, possibly an ancestor of the sea-serpent of more modern days, put in to Christchurch haven, and were entertained by the canons, with whom they abode for many years; possibly this door may be of their workmanship or design. In the south wall a large aumbry or cupboard, in the thickness of the walls, may be seen; in this possibly the canons kept the books that they had brought from the library for study. What the windows in this aisle were we cannot say--originally, no doubt, Norman, for the westernmost window is still of this style; but the others, which were widened either in Early English or Decorated times, are now all filled with nineteenth-century tracery of Decorated type. The buttresses between the windows, unlike those on the north side, are flat Norman ones. Towards the west end of the aisle a passage has in modern times been cut through the wall, and when this was done remains of a staircase which, no doubt, led to the dormitory, were discovered. The clerestory, on this side, is of the same plain character as on the north side. In a line with the south wall, but some little distance to the west, still stands a house which was once the porter's lodge, close to the site of the gatehouse. The porter's lodge was built by Prior Draper II. in the sixteenth century. The remains of the domestic buildings are very scanty--some old walls near the modern mill, occupying, no doubt, the site of the mill where the canons' corn was ground; some vestiges of the fish ponds; some few traces of walls and foundations, are all that have come down to modern days. From the similarity of arrangement in the buildings of religious houses, however, we can, with great certainty, assign the sites for the various parts--the dormitory over the cellarage, to the west of the cloister garth; the refectory to south of it; the calefactory, chapter-house, slype, to the east; and the prior's lodgings to the south of the choir, forming the lesser garth; the barns, bakery, and brew-house to the south-west of the church, near the porter's lodge and gatehouse. The prior had a country house at Heron Court, a grange at Somerford, and another at St Austin's, near Lymington. It must be understood that the choir was the church of the canons, and, as was common in churches served by Augustinian canons, the nave was used for the services which the laity of the district attended. It is noteworthy that whether owing to the purity of the air, so different from that which exists in the large cities where so many of the cathedral churches stand, or from the goodness of the stone, most of the Priory Church is in most excellent preservation. Carving which, we are assured, has never been retouched with a chisel since it was first cut, remains as sharp and clearly cut as though it were the work of the nineteenth century; possibly some of its excellence is due to the preservative effect of the whitewash with which it was once covered, and which has been cleaned off with water and a stiff bristled brush. The stone of which the north side of the nave is built came from Binstead; the limestone columns from Henden Hill; the Norman round turret and the choir is built of Portland stone; while Purbeck marble shafts are used in the north porch, and of the fine white stone from Caen in Normandy, the Salisbury and Draper chantries in the interior are constructed. These, though now about four hundred years old, are absolutely sharp in all the carving. There is a tombstone to the north of the porch which bears a curious inscription as follows:--"We were not slayne but raysd, raysd not to life but to be byried twice by men of strife. What rest could the living have when dead had none agree amongst you heere we ten are one. Hen. Rogers died Aprill 17 1641." This inscription has been variously explained. It is said by some that Cromwell, afterwards Protector, was at Christchurch, and dug up some lead coffins to make bullets for his soldiers, and flung the bodies out of ten such coffins into one grave; but this is manifestly incorrect. Oliver Cromwell was never at Christchurch, though Thomas Cromwell probably was, and here, as elsewhere, the two have been confounded. In many cases poor Oliver has had to bear the blame for destruction caused to churches by his less well-known namesake, the great destroyer of religious houses in the days of the eighth Henry. But neither of them had anything to do with this tomb, nor were the Parliamentary forces guilty of tampering with the coffins of the dead in the parish burying-ground at Christchurch. The very date precludes the idea, for the civil war did not begin till more than fifteen months after the date carved on this stone; and we may give the Roundheads credit for more sense than to be digging up coffins to make their bullets with, when there was abundance of lead to be had for the stripping on the roof of the Priory Church. A far more probable explanation is that which states that the ten bodies here interred were those of ten shipwrecked sailors, who were first buried on the cliffs near the spot where they were washed ashore; but the lord of the manor, when he heard thereof, waxed exceeding wroth, and a strife ensued between him and one Henry Rogers, Mayor of Christchurch, the former insisting on their removal to consecrated ground, the latter objecting to the removal, probably on the ground of expense; but in the end the lord of the manor had his way. But the mayor, to save the cost of ten separate graves, had them all buried in one, and placed this inscription over their remains as a protest against the conduct of the lord of the manor in moving their remains from their first resting-place. The graveyard at the present time is neatly kept and well cared for. The headstones have not, as they have been in many other places, tampered with; and though many of the alterations made in the restoration will not gain the approval of archæologists, yet some have been judiciously done, and some that are in contemplation will certainly have the result of rendering once more visible beautiful mediæval work, long concealed by ugly modern additions. CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR A rapid walk round the interior of the Priory Church shows that it practically consists of three main portions, almost entirely divided from each other--the #Nave#, the #Choir#, and the #Lady Chapel#. The solid rood screen, pierced by one narrow doorway, forms an effectual division between the nave and choir, while the stone reredos and the wall above it, running right up to the vaulting, entirely separates the latter from the Lady Chapel. In mediæval times the choir was reserved for the use of the canons; the nave was the parish church with its own high altar; the rood loft was an excellent point of vantage from which a preacher could address a large congregation. In those times pews had not been introduced; open benches may have existed. At present the nave is occupied by pews; these with their cast-iron poppies were erected in 1840, and were then higher than at present. Still, even in their present form, they hide the bases of the pillars, and might with much advantage be swept away, and their places taken by open benches or movable chairs. The pews in the transepts are of older date; these, together with the galleries above them--that in the south transept supporting the organ--are a sad disfigurement to the church, and it is to be hoped that they will be soon removed; they hide some splendid Norman work. The case of the north gallery is worse than the south, as a staircase leading to it disfigures the beautiful Early English chapel attached to the east side of the transept. This gallery, however, contains some faculty pews. All the owners of these, save one, consented to its removal; but one stood out against it, and, having the legal right to prevent any alteration, has up to the present time kept the gallery intact. But as he has recently died there can be little doubt that no long time will now elapse before this disfigurement to the church will be a thing of the past. There seems little need for the gallery, as there is ample accommodation on the floor of the church for any congregation that is likely to assemble within the walls. Many alterations, some of which are certainly improvements, have already been made. In an engraving, dated 1834, the organ is represented standing on the rood screen, probably the best place for it; and the four eastern bays of the nave are seen to be partitioned off by a wooden screen with a rod for curtains. On a level with the capitals of the pillars, to the west of this partition, stands the font. At this time also the triforium was boarded off in order to shut out draughts and cold; but this boarding has happily been swept away, the partition across the nave has been removed, and an oaken screen with glazed panels runs across the church, cutting off the western bay from the remainder of the nave. The font, a modern one, now stands under the tower; a modern pulpit on the south side, under the crossing, where also desks for the clergy and choir have been placed. It is now the custom on Sunday mornings to read the whole of the service up to the end of the Nicene Creed, in the nave; after the sermon is over, the communicants alone enter the choir to receive the sacrament. The choir is also used for week-day services. The Lady Chapel is not used. The nave is Early Norman work, and was chiefly built during the reign of William II.; the clerestory, however, was added at the beginning of the thirteenth century by Peter, who was prior from 1195 to 1225. The original nave was probably covered by a flat wooden ceiling, the Early Norman builders rarely venturing to span any wide space by a stone vaulting. The present vaulting is of stucco, and was added by Garbett in 1819. The roof was altered in Perpendicular times more than once, as indications of a higher pitched roof than the present one exists on the east face of the fifteenth-century tower. As springing stones for a vaulted roof exist, it is probable that a stone roof was at one time contemplated; but possibly the idea was abandoned on account of the fear that the walls, unsupported by any exterior flying buttress to resist the thrust, would not have borne the weight. It will be remembered that such buttresses are to be met with along the walls of the choir, which is covered with a stone vaulting. The nave consists of seven bays. The pillars of this arcading, unlike those of Flambard's nave at Durham, are not cylindrical, but consist of half columns set against piers rectangular in section. The capitals are of the early cushion shape; some of them seem to have been subsequently carved with ornamentation which bears some resemblance to classical forms. The wall spaces above the semicircular arches, and below the chevron string-course which runs beneath the triforium, are decorated with hatchet-work carving, as will be seen from the illustrations. The triforium on either side consists, in each bay, of two coupled arches supported by a central pillar, enclosed by a comprising arch with bold mouldings and double columns, separated by square members. The most beautiful bay is the easternmost, on the north side, where the wall surface above the smaller arches, and beneath the enclosing arch, is carved with a kind of scale-work. Possibly the opposite bay, on the south side, was as richly ornamented, but the lower arches and the central column no longer exist, as they were cut away to make room for a faculty pew in 1820. These two bays were included within the original Norman choir. The central shaft, on the north side, is twisted. Two of the central shafts, on the south side, are richly ornamented--one with twisted decoration, the other with a projecting reticulated pattern. The shaft and sub-arches of the second bay from the east on this side is a modern renewal, as here also the old work was destroyed in 1820 to make room for a pew. The north triforium can be reached by a staircase continued up into the tower, entered from the western part of the aisle; access to the south triforium can only be gained by the use of a ladder. The north triforium deserves examination. It will be found that pointed arches have been added at the back, and buttresses have been built against the back of the wall behind the arches; the floor is rendered uneven by humps necessitated by the Early English vaulting of the aisle below--probably the aisles were originally covered with a barrel roof. At the east end of the north triforium an arch may be seen, which once opened out into the transept; this is now walled up, and traces of painting may still be seen on it. There is a passage under the clerestory, to which access may be obtained by a passage across the transept; this was, no doubt, made in order that the shutters of the windows might be opened or closed, according to the state of the weather. From the staircase which leads up to the north triforium a passage leads into the chamber over the north porch. This is a large room, about 40 feet in length from north to south, and is now used as a practising room for the choir; it is fitted with benches and a grand piano, and has a modern wooden gallery running along its south end. [Illustration: THE NAVE IN 1834.] [Illustration: THE NAVE.] [Illustration: NORTH ARCADE OF NAVE.] [Illustration: FROM THE NORTH TRIFORIUM.] [Illustration: BAY OF THE TRIFORIUM, SOUTH SIDE.] The #South Aisle# is much more elaborately decorated than the north. Along the south wall runs a fine Norman arcade, the arches ornamented with billet and cable moulding. The window in the western bay is the original Norman one; the others were altered either in Early English or Decorated times, and are now filled with modern tracery in the Decorated style designed by Mr Ferrey. In the third bay is a holy water stoop, and in the fifth a large aumbry or recess, entered by a door; in this used to be kept the bier and lights used at funerals. Along the walls of each aisle runs a stone bench. There is no arcading on the wall of the north aisle. The vaulting of both aisles is Early English, dating from the time of Peter, the third prior, who, as previously stated, built the clerestory. The tracery of the north aisle windows is transitional in character between Early English and Decorated. [Illustration: THE SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE.] [Illustration: THE MONTACUTE CHANTRY.] The #Transepts# are much encumbered by modern pews and galleries, and it is only by careful examination that much of the beautiful work that they contain can be seen. The arch opening from the south aisle into the transept is Early English, and the skilful junction of Early English and Norman work at this point is deserving of attention. This transept was at one time covered by a stone vaulting, which was destroyed at the latter end of the eighteenth century and in the beginning of the nineteenth. Some of the bosses taken from this may be seen, piled up with the old font and other fragments, at the west end of the north choir aisle. The west wall of the transept contains a Norman window. A doorway into the slype remains in the wall, and communicates with a wall passage. At the eastern side of the transept an arch opens out into an apsidal chapel, but pews block up the entrance. This chapel has been so completely restored that it has a thoroughly neat and modern appearance, and has lost all its archæological value; round it runs a Norman arcade, and on the north side an aumbry may be seen. The north transept retains its Norman arcading, which, fortunately, has not been touched by the restorer's hand; how long it may escape is doubtful, as it is much mutilated. Still, as it is simply decorative, and not necessary for the stability of the wall, it would be well to leave it untouched, as genuine old work, even though it may have suffered at the hand of time or of former generations, is, from a decorative point of view, infinitely preferable to any modern reproduction. There are two small windows in the west wall to light the wall passage to the clerestory, which is reached by a gallery running across the base of the north window. In the north wall, behind the back of the pews, is a thirteenth-century recess. From this transept access is gained to the circular staircase leading downward to the crypt and upward to the small chamber above the eastern chapels. This is popularly known as Oliver Cromwell's harness room, and marks are shown on the wall supposed to have been holes for the insertion of pegs whereon he hung his harness; but as the Protector never came to Christchurch, all this is purely mythical. On one of the walls Mr Ferrey, the architect, found a design for a window; this he copied, and used when designing the tracery of the window he inserted over the prior's door at the east end of the south aisle of the nave. This tracing chamber is lighted by a two-light window with a quatrefoil in the head in the eastern wall. The two chapels below are beautiful examples of transition work from the Early English to the Decorated style; they were built by the De Redvers, Earls of Devon, the last of whom died in 1263. The eagles of the Montacute and Monthermer families appear in this chantry. There are two windows in the eastern wall. The larger, on the north, consists of three lights, with three circles in the head; the foliation of these outside the glass forms cinquefoil openings; the smaller window is of a similar character, but consists of two lights only, with a single foliated arch above them. An archway, widely splayed, on the western side, opens into the transept, and another archway opens into the choir aisle; this has a panelled pier, standing a little apart from the eastern side, designed to support the arch, which probably was found to be giving way. The shafts along the eastern wall, the capitals of one of which is carved with a number of heads said to represent the twelve apostles, should be noticed; the vaulting ribs are also interesting, especially the joggled ribs seen over the window. A stone altar stood in one of these chantries until 1780. These chapels are sadly disfigured by a mean staircase which leads into the transept gallery; it is devoutly to be hoped that before long this may be removed, and the exquisite beauty of the chapels seen without any inharmonious and irritating feature such as this staircase undoubtedly is. Below the transept is an Early Norman crypt; it is thought by some, from the rudeness of the work, that it may be of earlier date than the existing church, and that it belonged to the original church which Flambard destroyed to make room for his more splendid edifice. In it were discovered a number of human bones, which were reinterred in the churchyard. It has a plain barrel roof, divided by broad flat arches rising from pilasters. [Illustration: THE NORTH AISLE OF NAVE.] It has often been debated whether or not the church ever possessed a central tower. There is no documentary evidence bearing on the question. It may be said that if a tower existed and fell, or was pulled down for any reason, some record would have remained; but the records connected with the building are fragmentary, and it by no means follows that the absence of record proves the non-existence of such a tower. In the case of Wimborne Minster the churchwarden's accounts contain no record of the building or of the fall of the spire, yet we know from outside testimony that such a spire did fall in 1600, and that a representation of it occurs on a seal. So here at Christchurch a seal is in existence on which the church is represented with a central tower of two storeys, the lower plain, the upper lighted by two round-headed windows and capped by a low pyramidal spire or roof with a tall cross on the summit. This is exactly what one would expect to find: a central tower is almost always found in Norman churches, especially collegiate churches; and the pyramidal roof was almost certainly the usual form in which these early towers were finished. The battlemented parapets which we so often meet with in Norman towers are in all cases more recent additions. Moreover, the massive arches and piers at the corners indicate that a tower was contemplated, even if it were never built. In the east gable of the nave as it at present exists, two round-headed windows may be seen. It is highly probable that this gable once formed part of the east wall of the tower, and when the tower was removed this wall was converted into a gable. Everything to the east of the crossing being of late fourteenth or early fifteenth century date, indicates that extensive alterations were made at that time; and if a tower and spire had previously existed, it must have been removed before this date. In the centre of the carving over the doorway leading into the Draper chantry, dated 1529, there is a representation of a church with a central tower and spire. Of course, no such steeple existed at the time this chantry was built, but it may have been a copy of some then existing representation of the building as it had appeared in former times. There are also two other carvings of angels carrying a model of a church with a central tower--one near the Salisbury chantry, one on the choir roof. [Illustration: THE CRYPT.] The nave is divided from the choir by a splendid rood screen 16 feet 6 inches high, 33 feet long, and 9 feet thick. The western face of this projects beyond the line joining the east walls of the two transepts; its eastern face rests against the eastern piers intended to support the central tower. It was extensively restored by Mr Ferrey in 1848, who considered that it may have been removed from some conventual church after the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII. and re-erected here. But there does not seem to be any real grounds for supposing that it was not expressly built for this church. Its character indicates a date somewhat late in the fourteenth century. In the centre is a narrow doorway and a passage into the choir; from the north side of this passage a flight of steps leads to the top of the loft. The base of the screen is plain; above this is a row of thirteen panelled quatrefoils on each side of the doorway--each containing a plain shield, over these a string course, then two rows of canopied niches, the upper row consisting of twelve, the lower, owing to the doorway occupying the central space, of only ten. The lower niches have pedestals, each formed of four short columns with detached bases but with large capitals, which meet one another above; these capitals are richly carved with foliage. No doubt, on the level space thus formed statues at one time stood. Woodwork screens with glazed doors and panels, made from an oak screen which formerly was placed across the south transept, run across the western ends of the choir aisles, so that when the doors of these and of the rood screen are locked, the eastern arm of the cross is entirely shut off from the rest of the church. [Illustration: THE ROOD SCREEN.] [Illustration: STALL SEAT. South Side.] [Illustration: STALL SEAT. North Side.] [Illustration: STALL SEAT. North Side.] The #Choir# is entirely Perpendicular in character, and it seems to have been begun in the time of Henry VI. but not to have been completed until the time of Henry VII., and some of the carving of the stalls is of still later date. Leland says of it, "Baldwin, Earl of Devon, was the first founder, and his successors to the time of Isabella de Fortibus,[5] and at present the Earls of Salisbury are regarded as founders." Four large clerestory windows on either side light the choir. The wall beneath these is continued downwards to the floor, but under each window a low obtusely-pointed depressed archway is cut leading into the aisles. Between the bottom of each clerestory window and the heads of these arches the wall is panelled as with window mullions and tracery, so that the appearance from the inner side may be best understood by imagining that each window extended from floor to roof, but that the upper part alone is glazed, the lower cut away for the arch leading into the aisle, and the lower lights beneath the transom blocked up with masonry. These lower arches are more or less blocked up. The Salisbury chapel blocks up the north-eastern one completely; the sedilia, no doubt, occupied the opposite one, where now a modern altar tomb may be seen. The next on each side to the west is open, and flights of steps under them lead down to the aisles; the woodwork at the back of the choir stalls close the remaining two on the inside, and on the outside chantry chapels, opening one into the north one into the south aisle, stand under the second arch on each side counting from the rood screen. The upper stalls number in all thirty-six, fifteen on either side, and six with their backs to the rood screen. There is, also, a lower range of stalls on the north and south. The prior's and sub-prior's stalls on either side the doorway in the screen looking east are canopied, as also is the precentor's at the east end of the south side. The arms of the stalls are quaintly carved with various grotesque figures, as are also the misereres; the upper parts of the panels behind the upper stalls are also carved in low relief; above these is a projecting cornice decorated with pinnacles. The stalls are late Perpendicular work, the wainscoting behind the stalls being later still, as we can see from the subjects carved on the upper part of each panel. Some of the misereres are, however, very old--one dates back to about 1200, another to 1300, others are of later date, and most of them belong to the same period as the stalls. The older ones were found lying about in the lumber of the church, and have been placed in recent years in some of the stalls the seats of which had been lost or stolen. The older seats may have belonged to the original Norman choir. As the term "miserere" may not be understood by all our readers, it may be well to quote from Parker's "Glossary of Architecture" the following description:--"Miserere, Misericorde, Patience, or Pretella, is the projecting bracket on the under-side of the seats of stalls in churches: these, where perfect, are fixed with hinges so that they may be turned up, and when this is done the projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a seat, to afford very considerable rest to any one leaning upon it. They were allowed as a relief to the infirm during the long services that were required to be performed by ecclesiastics in a standing posture. They are always more or less ornamented with carvings of leaves, small figures, animals, etc., which are generally very boldly cut. Examples are to be found in almost all ancient churches which retain any of the ancient stalls--one of the oldest remaining specimens is in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; it is in the style of the thirteenth century." When Parker wrote the last sentence the still older miserere now to be seen at Christchurch had not been discovered. [5] She lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: CHOIR STALLS.] [Illustration: MISERERE ON STALL SEAT. (_Circa_ 1300.) NORTH SIDE.] It is curious to notice the absence of reverence on the part of the mediæval canons, according to our modern notions, that these quaint carvings indicate. One might have expected that inside the church the subjects would have always been of a sacred nature, rude perhaps, and grotesque from their rudeness. Such carvings are found in many places, but here at Christchurch we have satirical subjects, caricatures of contemporaries, some indeed of so objectionable a character that they have been removed of late years. A few examples of these carvings will be given. On the arm of one of the stalls a fox is represented preaching to a flock of geese, a cock acting as clerk. On one of the misereres we have a pair of devils somewhat resembling monkeys tempting an angel, a goose bringing an offering on a plate to a quaint figure, a man with a hatchet employed in carving, a man with a hole in the back of his garments fastened with a pin, besides various animals, fishes, mermaids, and monsters. On the wainscoting we have the heads of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Catharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Campeggio, the King of Scots, and the Duchess of Burgundy, who assisted Perkin Warbeck in his attempt to gain the crown of England, and two canons disputing over a cup, which is placed between their faces. This last carving probably has some reference to the granting of the cup to the laity in time of Henry VIII. [Illustration: THE CHOIR.] The vaulting of the choir is of a somewhat unusual character: the pendants are especially worthy of notice. It is difficult to describe the manner in which they are placed, but the illustration shows their character and position. The short connecting ribs of the vaulting form a stellated cross over the presbytery. Some colour may still be seen on the carved work of this portion of the church, and the initials of William Eyre, prior 1502-1520, appear on the bosses. [Illustration: THE REREDOS.] The east wall of the presbytery contains no window, but is occupied by a beautiful stone reredos carved with a representation of the tree of Jesse. It is divided into three tiers with five compartments in each, the central one wider than the two on either side; the space above it and beneath the vaulting is occupied by a wall, in which a doorway now blocked up may be seen. The outer compartments of the lowest tier contain doors leading to a platform behind the reredos; between them stands an oak altar, the gift of A. N. Welby Pugin in 1831. Above the altar in the central compartment Jesse lies asleep, on the left hand David plays upon his harp, on the right sits Solomon deeply meditating. Above Jesse we have in one carving an amalgamated representation of the birth of Christ and the visit of the Wise Men. On the left hand sits the Virgin Mary with her Child, fully clothed in a long garment, not wrapped in swaddling clothes, standing in her lap; behind her stands a man, probably Joseph; and before her kneels one of the Wise Men offering his gift of gold in the form of a plain tankard; on the right behind him stand his two fellows, one carrying a pot of myrrh, the other a boat-shaped vessel, probably intended for a censer containing frankincense. On a bracket above the head of the kneeling Wise Man, the shepherds kneel in adoration; nor are the flocks that they were tending forgotten, for several sheep may be seen on a hill-top above their heads. Thirty-two small figures may be counted in niches in the buttresses dividing the compartments; crockets, finials, and pinnacles decorate the various canopies over the carvings. This reredos is apparently of late Decorated date, and therefore earlier than the fifteenth-century choir. Possibly it was an addition to the Norman choir before this was removed to make room for the existing one. Mr Ferrey was of opinion that it may have once stood across the nave between the second piers from the east, thus forming a reredos for the western part of the nave, which was used as the church of the parish. Below the presbytery is a Norman crypt, now converted into a vault for the Malmesbury family. It has already been mentioned that there are doors on either side of the altar, leading to a kind of gallery or platform behind the reredos; these were designed to allow certain ceremonial compassings of the altar, and it is possible that steps led down from the platform to the ambulatory. On the east side of these doorways there are corbel heads under the arches, and the walls of the platform are panelled. Within the altar rails is a slab bearing the name of Baldwin IV., the seventh Earl of Devon. On the south side is the monument of Lady Fitzharris, who died in 1815; it is a statue by Flaxman representing the Lady teaching her two sons from the Bible. Farther to the east is the altar tomb of the Countess of Malmesbury, who died in 1877, occupying the place of the sedilia; and on the north the exquisite chantry of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last bearer of the royal name of Plantagenet, whose tragic fate and horrible execution is one of the foulest stains on the memory of Henry VIII. She was the daughter of "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence" and of the kingmaker's eldest daughter Isabella, and was mother of the celebrated Reginald Pole who, being ordained deacon at the age of sixteen, was appointed Dean of Wimborne a year later, and rose in time to the high rank of Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, and played an important part in history in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary. She erected this lovely chantry as her last resting-place, wishing to lie after her troublous life in this quiet spot, but it was not so to be. Her son, by the publication on the Continent of a violent attack on Henry VIII., incensed the king to such an extent that he laid his hands on all the kindred of the Poles he could find in England; some were tried and executed, others attainted without trial, among them the Countess of Salisbury, who was at the time over seventy years of age. She refused to lay her head upon the block, and the headsman hacked at her neck as she stood erect; her body was not allowed to be buried in the chantry which she had erected for herself,--so far did the spite of Henry go,--but she lies among the ambitious and unfortunate, the aspiring, and unsuccessful of many a sect and party in the cemetery of St Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Hers was an ill-starred race. Her grandfather was slain at Barnet, 1471; her father murdered by his brother Edward IV., 1478; her own brother, the Earl of Warwick, imprisoned by Henry VII., and subsequently beheaded on Tower Hill, 1499; her eldest son, Lord Montagu, was executed for high treason; and Margaret herself met a like fate on May 27, 1541. [Illustration: THE SALISBURY CHANTRY.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE SALISBURY CHANTRY.] Her chantry is built of Caen stone, and the decoration is of Renaissance character. It is conjectured to be the work of the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who died in the prison of the Inquisition in Spain in 1522. He was engaged on Henry VII.'s tomb in Westminster, and other works ordered by Henry VIII. at Westminster and Windsor, from 1509 till 1517; and if this chantry at Christchurch is his design the date must lie between these two years. Two four-light windows with battlemented transoms look out on either side; to the west of these two doorways lead, one to the presbytery the other to the north aisle; on the east wall are three canopied niches, beneath which an altar stood or was intended to stand; the ceiling is richly carved with fan traceries and bosses; the latter have been mutilated--by order, it is said, of Henry VIII. A letter from the King's Commissioner thus describes the work done:--"In thys churche we founde a chaple and a monumet curiosly made of cane stone p^rpared by the late mother of Raynolde Pole for herre buriall, which we have causyd to be defaced and all the Armis and Badgis to be delete." On the north side are twelve tabernacles. This chapel stands on a richly carved panelled basement, and all the walls are covered with minute carving; but here, as elsewhere, in late work we find the same forms repeated again and again, and we miss that wealth of fancy which gives each boss or capital carved by the earlier workers such a life and individuality. The side of this chapel that faces the north aisle is more elaborate than that facing the choir, and is necessarily more lofty, as its base rests on the floor of the aisle, which is lower than the floor of the presbytery. On the west face is one of several memorial tablets to members of the Rose family, who are buried in this aisle. In the north choir aisle, at the western end, may be seen a kind of small museum of fragments from various parts of the church, collected at the time of the restoration, among them some bosses from the vaulting of the south transept, destroyed about a hundred years ago, and fragments of a Norman font. The vaulting of this and the corresponding aisle on the south side is of the same character as that of the choir, but is somewhat plainer, and is not decorated with crosses or pendants. On the south side of this aisle is a late Perpendicular chantry, built in accordance with the will of Sir William Berkeley, dated 1486, to commemorate himself and his wife. Part of the inscription ... ARMIGERI MARGARETE QUE CONSOR ... can still be read on the frieze; on its flat ceiling are painted two large roses, one white, one red; it contains two brackets for cruets; over the entrance to it is placed an oval memorial tablet to one John Cook, who died in 1787. Eastward of this is the Salisbury chapel already described. On the north wall of the aisle is a monument, consisting of an altar-tomb with a front of carved quatrefoils and a purbeck slab, dating about 1550. The canopy over it is later, and the coat of arms beneath it is that of Robert White of Hadlow, Kent, who is commemorated on a board at the west end of the church as a benefactor who left £100 in land for the poor in 1619, thus fixing the date of this portion of the tomb. The scroll beneath the arms has the initials R. W., and the motto "Suffer in Tym." A chantry is formed at the eastern end of the aisle by the western end of the north wall of the Lady Chapel. It contains an altar tomb with the recumbent figures of Sir John Chidioke, a Dorset knight, slain in 1449 in the Wars of the Roses, and his wife. This monument has occupied its present position only from 1791,--it previously stood in the north transept. [Illustration: THE DRAPER CHANTRY.] The east end of the south choir aisle is occupied by the chantry chapel of John Draper II., the last of the priors and titular bishop of Neapolis in Palestine, near the ancient Shechem in Samaria; it is dated 1529, and is formed by a screen of Caen stone stretching across the aisle. There is a central doorway with a depressed arch at the top, and canopied niches over it, and on either side are two transomed four-light unglazed windows under arches of the same character as that over the doorway; along the top of the screen runs a battlemented parapet. Within the chantry, on the south wall, is a very beautiful piscina, the finest in the church. Just outside the screen is a square-headed doorway. Along the south wall of this aisle, as along the north wall of the corresponding north aisle, a stone bench-table runs. On the north side the panelled wall on which the Countess of Malmesbury's altar tomb stands is decorated with carvings of angels; the largest of these holds a shield with a death's-head. Farther to the west, beyond the steps leading down from the choir, is a Perpendicular chantry, known as the Harys chantry; it has open tracery above cusped panels, canopied niches, and a panelled bench table. Robert Harys was rector of Shrowston, and died in 1525; his rebus, a hare under the letter R, may be seen on the panels. On the opposite side of the aisle is the doorway leading into what is known as the #sacristy#. This is a thirteenth-century addition to the church, and is of irregular shape, as it is wedged in, as it were, between the apsidal chapel on the east side of the transept and the south wall of the choir aisle. In the south wall are triple sedilia with Purbeck shafts and foliated heads; in the north wall is a square opening or squint. [Illustration: PISCINA IN THE DRAPER CHANTRY.] [Illustration: THE SACRISTY.] Behind the reredos is an ambulatory or processional path; from this may be seen, over the archway leading into the south aisle, the end of the "miraculous beam," lengthened, according to the legend, by Christ, when He appeared as a workman and took part in the building of the original church. How this came to be preserved, and how it came to occupy a position amidst the latest work in the church, is not recorded. The Lady Chapel is very beautiful Perpendicular work; it had its own altar and reredos under the east window. The reredos is much mutilated, but besides the part that is still attached to the wall, there are many loose fragments now set up on the altar. This is a slab of Purbeck stone, 11 ft. in length and 3 ft. 10 ins in breadth. On the north and south sides of the altar are the tombs of Thomas, Lord West, and Lady Alice West, his mother. These tombs are of Purbeck marble and of a form by no means uncommon in the churches of Wessex. The ten shafts supporting the canopy of the tomb on the north still remain; from the other tomb such shafts as it had have disappeared. Thomas, Lord West, died in 1406, his mother in 1395: these dates fix within reasonable limits the date of the building of the Lady Chapel. Thomas West, in his will, directs that his body should be buried in the "_New_ Chapel of Our Lady in the Mynster of Christchurch." It is noteworthy to remark that the original arcading is cut away to make room for this monument, so that the chapel had been finished before he died. Both Sir Thomas West and his mother were benefactors to the church. Besides other bequests of money towards the building fund and for perpetual masses, each of them gave about £18 for the singing of 4500 masses within six months of the day of their deaths. On the south side of the chapel is the original doorway leading into the canons' burial-ground; a corresponding door is to be seen on the north side. The splays of the arches of the windows are elaborately ornamented with panelling. The arcading under the window, a series of ogee arches, is worthy of notice. The tattered colours of the "Loyal Christchurch Volunteers," one of the earliest regiments of volunteers, which was enrolled in 1793, hang at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. The vaulting is of the same character as that of the choir, with curious pendants in the form of church lanterns. [Illustration: THE MIRACULOUS BEAM.] [Illustration: THE TOMB OF THOMAS, LORD WEST.] [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL.] [Illustration: ST MICHAEL'S LOFT.] #St Michael's Loft# is reached by long flights of steps running up the turrets described in the last chapter. It is a plain, low room with a low-pitched tie-beam roof of oak. It was once a chapel, as the piscina in the east wall clearly shows. The site of the altar is now occupied by a disused desk of the character familiar to us in our own school days some half-a-century ago; it is a sort of pew with doors, within which the master sat enthroned and ramparted. This room was used as a public grammar school from 1662 till 1828, and subsequently as a private school, which was finally closed in 1869. The boys went to this school and returned from it by the staircase on the north side which has an entrance from the churchyard; the stairs on the south side were used when anyone had occasion to go into the church or to go from it to the room above. An upper chamber or chapel is an uncommon feature in England. Remains of staircases give rise to the conjecture that there was a similar chapel over the Lady Chapel at Chester, and somewhat similar erections are to be met with on the Continent; but Christchurch Priory is unique in possessing such a perfect specimen. The dedication of the upper storey to St Michael, the conductor of souls to Paradise, is appropriate. Churches built in elevated positions were frequently dedicated to him, and few if any mediæval churches dedicated to this archangel are to be met with on low-lying ground. Under the western tower stands a modern font. The fragments of a Norman font, with carvings representing various incidents in the life of Christ, may be seen, preserved in the north choir aisle. The fifteenth-century successor has been removed to Bransgore Church, four miles off. Against the north wall of the tower stands the monument of the poet Shelley, the work of the sculptor Weekes. Needless to say, it is but a cenotaph. The "heart of hearts," "Cor Cordium," and the ashes of the poet cremated on the Tuscan shore, lie far away, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius, in the grave where the loving hands of Trelawney laid them in 1823. Here we have an ideal representation of the finding of the drowned body--not a pleasing one, but less ghastly than the reality; and below the inscription which tells his name and the number of his years and the manner of his death, the following stanza from his own "Adonais" may be read:-- "He hath out-soared the shadow of our night: Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain, Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn." The choice of Christchurch Priory as the site for this monument was due to the fact that the poet's son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who erected it, lived at Boscombe Manor, between Christchurch and Bournemouth. The tower contains a peal of eight bells. These are all old; the fifth and sixth bells have fourteenth-century inscriptions round their crowns, the others appear to have been cast early in the fifteenth century. [Illustration: THE SHELLEY MONUMENT.] CHAPTER IV DEANS OF THE SECULAR COLLEGE 1. Ralf Flambard, afterwards Bishop of Durham. 2. Godric. 3. Gilbert de Dousgunels. 4. Peter de Oglander. 5. Randulphus. 6. Hilary, afterwards Bishop of Chichester. PRIORS OF THE AUGUSTINIAN COLLEGE 1. Reginald, 1150. 2. Ralph. 3. Peter, 1195. He built the clerestory and carried out other Early English work. 4. Roger, 1225. 5. Richard. 6. Nicholas de Wareham. 7. Nicholas de Sturminster. 8. John de Abingdon, 1272. 9. William de Netheravon, 1278. 10. Richard Maury, 1286. 11. William Quenton, 1302. 12. Walter Tholveshide, 1317. 13. Edmund de Ramsbury, 1323. During his time Bishop Stratford's Injunctions were issued, 1325. See page 129. 14. Richard de Queteshorne, 1337. 15. Robert de Leyghe, 1340. 16. William Tyrewache, 1345. 17. Henry Eyre, 1357. He became blind in 1367 and was allowed a coadjutor. 18. John Wodenham, 1376. 19. John Borard, 1398. During his time Archbishop Arundel issued Injunctions, 1404. See page 130. 20. Thomas Talbot, 1413. 21. John Wimborne, 1420. 22. William Norton. 23. John Dorchester. 24. John Draper I., 1477. Bishop Langton's Injunctions were issued during his tenure of the priory. 25. William Eyre, 1502. During his time the choir was completed. 26. John Draper II. He surrendered the priory to Henry VIII.'s commissioners, 1539, and was allowed to retain Somerford Grange for life, and received a pension of £133, 6s. 8d. He died in 1552, and was buried in the nave near the entrance to the choir. VICARS OF CHRISTCHURCH By the council of Arles 1261, religious orders that held parish churches were bound to supply vicars to officiate. These were appointed by the canons, and were taken from their own body. The names of many of these are known. The 13th was Robert Harys, whose chantry stands in the south choir aisle; he died in 1325. In the time of the 15th, William Trapnell, the church was granted by Henry VIII. to the parishioners, 32nd year of Henry VIII. In the time of the 17th, Robert Newman, an inventory of the property was made by order of Edward VI.'s commissioner. John Imber, the 21st vicar, was expelled by the Parliament from 1647-1660, but was restored to his preferment in the same year as Charles II. gained the throne. The present vicar is the 32nd. STRATFORD'S INJUNCTIONS, 1325 1. Every canon save the seneschal and cellarer must attend Matins, High Mass, and the Hours. The seneschal, if present in the priory for two nights together, must attend one Matins, and the cellarer must be present at service on alternate nights at least. 2. Six canons must be enrolled for celebrating Our Lady's Mass; the prior must celebrate on all great feasts at High Mass, and on Saturdays at Our Lady's Mass, and must wear a surplice not a rochet. 3. Canons in priests' orders must celebrate daily, those who are not must repeat eleven Psalms with a Litany or Psalter of Our Lady every day. 4. Four confessors must be appointed to hear the confessions of the canons. 5. Latin or French must be the languages spoken. 6. No one save the prior or officers, without special leave, must ride or leave the Priory. 7. Two-thirds of the canons must dine daily in the refectory; the door must be kept by a secular watchman whose duty it is to remove servants and idle people from the door during dinner; the almoner must prevent any canon carrying his commons to the laundry-people or people of the town. 8. All the canons must sleep in the dormitory, each in his own bed. 9. The infirmary must be visited daily by the prior or sub-prior. 10. Two canons must act as treasurers, and a yearly account must be presented. 11. The common seal must be kept under four locks, and documents sealed in full chapter, not as heretofore during Mass. 12. Canons must not play at chess or draughts, nor keep hounds or arms (save in the custody of the prior), nor have a servant (save when on a journey), nor write nor receive letters without leave. The prior may keep hounds outside the priory buildings. ARCHBISHOP ARUNDEL'S INJUNCTIONS, 1404 No. 1. Ordered the destruction of an old hall and an adjoining chamber known as the sub-prior's hall after the departure of Sir Thomas West its then occupier, as noblemen were in the habit of occupying it to the great disturbance of the order and the keeping open of gates which ought to be closed. No. 2. Enjoined the building of a house for the proecentor, and a new chamber for the sick. No. 3. Ordered the setting apart of a chamber for recreation apart from the infirmary (it may be supposed that the canons during recreation hours were noisy, thereby disturbing the sick). No. 4. Directed the provision of separate studies for the canons. It would appear that nobles, such as the Montacutes and Wests, put the priory to such great expense by taking up their abode, together with their retainers, in the domestic part of the buildings. THE NORMAN CASTLE Very little of the castle erected by Richard de Redvers, who died in 1137, remains; but on an artificial mound at no great distance to the north of the Priory Church stand fragments of the east and west walls of the square Norman keep, about 20 feet high and 10 feet thick. The castle belonged to the De Redvers, Earls of Devon, till they were alienated to the crown in the 9th year of Edward I. (1280), the last earl having died in 1263, though the last female descendant lived till 1293. In 1331, Edward III. granted the castle and land to William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; after the execution of John de Montacute in 1400 for the part he took in the plots against the new king, Henry IV., Sir Thomas West, who lies buried in the Lady Chapel, was appointed constable. He died in 1405, then Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, held the castle till 1428. After this it was held by various persons, and we find a constable of the Lordship of Christchurch as late as 1656. The manor held by the De Redvers, and then by the Montacutes, passed through various hands. Among the holders we may notice the Nevilles, hence the connection with the Priory of the ill-fated Margaret, the kingmaker's granddaughter, who was Countess of Salisbury in her own right, the Earl of Clarendon, Sir George Rose, and the present owner, the Earl of Malmesbury, who obtained it in 1862. In early days the bailiff of the de Redvers regulated all markets, fairs, tolls, and fines, and had the right of preemption and sat as judge in the tenants' court. Edward I. relieved the burgesses of Christchurch from all arbitrary exactions, and established a fixed fee-farm rent instead. The castle was taken for the Parliament by Sir William Waller with 300 men on April 7, 1644. A little to the north-east of the castle stand the remains of one of the few Norman houses that have come down to the present time. It is thus described in the first volume of "The Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages" by Turner and Parker, pp. 38, 39. This volume was published in 1851. "At Christchurch, in Hampshire, is the ruin of a Norman house, rather late in the style, with good windows of two lights and a round chimney shaft.[6] The plan, as before, is a simple oblong; the principal room appears to have been on the first floor. It is situated on the bank of the river near to the church, and still more close to the mound, which is said to have been the keep of the castle; being between that and the river, it could not well have been placed in a situation of greater security. Whether it formed part of another series of buildings or not, it was a perfect house in itself, and its character is strictly domestic. It is about seventy feet long, and twenty-four broad, its walls, like those of the keep, being exceedingly thick. On the ground floor are a number of loop-holes: the ascent to the upper storey was by a stone staircase, part of which remains; the ground floor was divided by a wall, but the upper storey seems to have been a long room, lighted by three double windows on each side; near the centre of the east wall, next the river, is a large fireplace, to which the round chimney before mentioned belongs. At the north end, there appears to have been a large and handsome window of which part of the arch and shafts remain, and there is a small circular window in the south gable. From what remains of the ornamental part of this building, it appears to have been elegantly finished and cased with squared stones, most of which are, however, now taken away. There is a small projecting tower, calculated for a flank, under which the water runs; it has loopholes both on the north and east fronts, these walls are extremely thick. By the ruins of several walls, there were some ancient buildings at right angles to this hall, stretching away towards the keep. This was probably part of the residence of Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, to whom the manor of Christchurch belonged about the middle of the twelfth century."[7] [6] Since rebuilt. [7] Grove's "Antiquities," vol. ii. p. 178. [Illustration: REMAINS OF THE NORMAN HOUSE.] This building is much overgrown with ivy, which by a comparison of the illustration given in the work just quoted with its present condition, as represented in the photograph here reproduced, has increased considerably during the last fifty years. It is due to the memory of the Rev. William Jackson, who was vicar of Christchurch from 1778 to 1802, that it should be recorded that he saved this valuable relic of Norman domestic architecture from destruction. He was evidently imbued with a spirit of love for antiquity by no means common a hundred years ago, and far too rare even at the present day. DIMENSIONS OF CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY Extreme length 311 feet. Length of Nave 118 " 9 inches. Width of Nave 58 " 5 " Height of Nave 58 " Length of Transept 101 " 2 " Width of Transept 24 " 4 " Length of Choir 70 " Width of Choir with Aisles 60 " 6 " Height of Choir 63 " Length of side of Tower, E. to W. 27 " 9 " " " " N. to S. 22 " 4 " Height of Tower 120 " Length of Lady Chapel 36 " 4 " Width of Lady Chapel 21 " 1 " Length of St Michael's Loft 58 " 3 " Width of St Michael's Loft 19 " 7 " AREA 18,300 sq. feet. PLANS [Illustration: PLAN OF WIMBORNE MINSTER] [Illustration: PLAN OF CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY] * * * * * Transcriber's note: Page 5: "commemerated" corrected to "commemorated." 
19715	----	[Illustration: Norwich Cathedral from the South-East.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NORWICH A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY C.H.B. QUENNELL [Illustration: Arms of Norwich] WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1898 W.H. WHITE AND CO. LIMITED RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH * * * * * GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE, EDWARD F. STRANGE, _Editors of the Series._ * * * * * AUTHOR'S PREFACE The task of writing a monograph, on such an essentially Norman Cathedral as Norwich, has been most pleasing to one who owns to an especial fondness for that sturdy architecture which was evolved in England during one of her stormiest epochs--from the end of the eleventh till the end of the twelfth century. I would here acknowledge indebtedness and thanks due to the Very Rev. the Dean and Mrs Sheepshanks for the personal interest they evinced, and for his material help; to Mr J.B. Spencer, the sub-sacrist, for that help which his intimate association with the cathedral enabled him to offer; and to Mr S.K. Greenslade for the loan of the drawings reproduced under his name; as well as to the Photochrom Co. Ltd., Messrs S.B. Bolas & Co., and Mr F.G.M. Beaumont for the use of their photographs. The views of the cathedral as it appeared in the early part of the nineteenth century are reproduced from Britton's "Norwich," and from a volume by Charles Wild. C.H.B.Q. * * * * * CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Fabric 3 CHAPTER II.--The Cathedral--Exterior 23 The Cathedral Precincts 23 The Erpingham Gate 23 St. Ethelbert's Gate and the Gate-House 25 Chapel of St. John the Evangelist 27 The West Front of the Cathedral 28 Exterior of Nave 31 The South Transept 32 The Diocesan Registry Offices and Slype 35 The Chapter-House 36 The Tower and Spire 36 The Eastern Arm of Cathedral or Presbytery 39 The Chapels of St. Mary-the-Less and Saint Luke 39, 40 The Jesus Chapel and Reliquary Chapel 40 The North Transept 40 The Bishop's Palace 43 CHAPTER III.--The Interior 45 The Nave 45 The Choir Screen 49 The Nave Vault 50 The West Window and West Door 55 The North and South Aisles of Nave 55, 56 Monuments in Nave and Aisles of Nave 57, 58 The Cloisters 58 The Walks--East, South, and West 62, 63 The Ante-choir and Choir 64 The Pelican Lectern 68 The Presbytery 68 Reliquary Chapel 72 Monuments in the Presbytery 74 The North Transept 76 The Tower and Triforium Walks 79 The Processional Path 79 The Jesus Chapel 83 St. Luke's Chapel 88 Treasury and Muniment Room 88 The Bauchon Chapel 88 The South Transept 88 Monuments 91 CHAPTER IV.--The Sees of the East Anglian Bishops 95 CHAPTER V.--The City 111 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Norwich Cathedral from the South-East _Frontispiece_ Arms of Norwich _Title_ The Cathedral from the South-West 2 The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century 9 West Front of the Cathedral in 1816 15 The Cathedral from the South-West Angle of Cloisters 22 The Erpingham Gate 24 St. Ethelbert's Gate 25 The Gate-House of the Bishop's Palace 25 West Front of the Cathedral 28 The Clerestory and Triforium of Choir (South Side) 32 The Tower in 1816 37 Exterior of the Chapel of St. Luke from the East 40 A Norman Capital 46 The Nave, looking East 47 The Choir Screen and Organ from the Nave 51 The North Aisle of Nave, looking West 56 The East Walk of the Cloisters 58 The Cloisters from the Garth 59 The Prior's Door 63 The Choir and Presbytery 65 A Stall in the Choir 67 The Choir and Presbytery in 1816 69 The Choir Stalls at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century 70 The Choir, looking West 72 Detail of the Presbytery Clerestory and Vaulting 74 The Choir Apse 77 Detail of the Clerestory, North Transept 80 The South Aisle of Presbytery, looking East 81 Norman Work in the Lantern of Tower 83 The Ante-Reliquary Bridge Chapel 84 Doorway and Screen between South Transept and Aisle of Presbytery 88 View across the Apse from the Chapel of St. Luke 89 The Resurrection: from the Painted Retable formerly in the Jesus Chapel 93 Norwich Castle 99 The Guildhall 103 Monument of Bishop Goldwell 107 The Pelican Lectern in the Choir 110 Pull's Ferry 112 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL 113 * * * * * [Illustration: The Cathedral from the South-West.] CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE FABRIC OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY OF NORWICH Norwich Cathedral stands on the site of no earlier church: it is to-day, in its plan and the general bulk of its detail, as characteristically Norman as when left finished by the hand of Eborard, the second bishop of Norwich. The church was founded by Herbert de Losinga, the first bishop, as the cathedral priory of the Benedictine monastery in Norwich (a sketch of its constitution at this period will be found in the Notes on the Diocese); the foundation-stone was laid in 1096 on a piece of land called Cowholme,--meaning a pasture surrounded by water,--and the church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. It may be of interest to the tourist and student to review briefly what sort and manner of man Herbert the founder was; what had been his environment prior to his appointment as the first bishop of Norwich; and what the causes were which had as their effect the building of the cathedral. The characteristics of the cathedral are--its long nave, which is typical of the Norman church; its glorious apsidal termination, encircled by a procession path, which recalls the plan of a French cathedral; and the form of this, with the remains of its old bishops' chair centrally placed, and with the westward position, of the throne at Torcello and other Italian churches, of the basilican type of plan. Herbert, surnamed de Losinga, transferred the see from Thetford to Norwich in 1094, and it is from this period that the history of the cathedral may be said to commence. Herbert was a prelate of a type that in the early days helped to build up the Church and give her stability. His nature must have been curiously complex; on the one hand, a man of action and with great capability of administration, often justifying his means by the end he had in view, and not being debarred from realising his schemes by any delicate scruples, he yet, on the other hand, presents in his letters a chastened spirituality that is not compatible with the methods he pursued when thinking only of the temporal advantages which might accrue on any certain line of action. But it may be said that his letters appear to date from the later period of his life, and after he had founded the cathedral as an expiation of that sin of simony he appears to have so deeply repented. Yet in the earlier period, which we shall note, he was emphatically the man of action, the typical administrator, who, mixing freely in the political life of the times, was strengthening the position of the Church, and gradually leading her up to that position, which she ultimately gained, of Arbitress of Kings and Empires. He had also a morbid belief in the power of money--he probably would have agreed that "every man has his price," and his simoniacal dealings with William Rufus, which procured his preferment to Norwich, afford evidence of this weak trait in his character. Herbert's birthplace is disputed, and, as Dean Goulburn remarked, this is but natural: a man so justly celebrated would not, or, rather, historians will not be content with one; so that though he cannot rival Homer in that seven cities desired to be accredited each as his birthplace, yet Herbert falls not far short, and this fact alone will perhaps give some idea of his popularity during his life, and the interest then aroused which has lasted down to our own times. From a small pamphlet issued by the dean and chapter in 1896, and containing extracts from the _Registrum Primum_, we learn that "In primis Ecclesiam prefatam fundavit piæ memoriæ Herbertus Episcopus, qui Normanniæ in pago Oximensi natus." First Herbert, the bishop, of pious memory, who was born in Normandy, in the district of Oximin (or Exmes). This seems very credible, and the old monkish chronicler who was responsible for the _Registrum Primum_ and its rugged Latin, may have had authentic proof of the truth of his assertion. The manuscript dates from the thirteenth century, and no considerable period, historically considered, had then passed since Herbert had been one of the prime movers of the religious and political life of the day. Blomefield, the antiquary, attributed to him a Suffolk extraction, and then again spoke of his Norman descent: thus agreeing in some measure with the _Registrum Primum_. And again, another idea is that he was born in the hundred of Hoxne, where he possessed property, and his father before him. Herbert had, we know, received his education in Normandy, and had taken his vows at, and ultimately had risen to be prior of, the Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy; and it was while vigorously administering this office that he received an invitation from William Rufus to come to England, being offered as an inducement the appointment of Abbot of Ramsey. And no doubt from this period the spiritual side of his duties must of necessity have been somewhat neglected. From the position of prior of Fécamp, his circle of power limited to the neighbourhood of his priory, and his duties rounded by the due observance of the rules of his order, he was given at once the administration of what was one of the richest abbeys in England, and attained at once the power of a great feudal lord. He was Sewer to William Rufus as well, an office endowed with fees and perquisites, and so to Herbert came the temptation of accumulating wealth for his own ambitious ends. It was not, however, the sin of a small man: he introduced no personal element into his greed, but rather thought of his party and his Church, although, of necessity, an environment so purely temporal told on the spiritual side of his character. It might be best to connect the links of the East Anglian bishoprics here, although in the notes on the diocese the matter is gone into at more length. Herbert de Losinga was the first bishop of Norwich, to which town the see was transferred in compliance with a decree of Lanfranc's Synod, held in 1075, that all sees should be fixed at the principal towns in their dioceses. Felix was the first bishop of East Anglia, and fixed his see at Dunwich in 630. The see was divided by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 669 into those of Elmham and Dunwich; and these again were united under Wildred in 870, and the see fixed at Elmham, and where it remained till 1070, when Herfast, a chaplain of William the Conqueror's, moved his see to Thetford. Now, about this time, when Herbert was abbot of Ramsey and Sewer to William Rufus, the see of Thetford was vacant, and Herbert gave the king to understand that if he was appointed to the vacant bishopric, and his father made Abbot of Winchester, he was willing and able to pay for such preferment a sum of £1900: a part of his accumulated savings, no doubt, and a very large amount for that time. William II. made these appointments, and the sum mentioned was paid into the royal treasury; but the bishop found that he had attained his end at a cost other than he had reckoned on; public opinion in those days was quite as powerful a force as it is now, though the channels along which its force could be felt and its strength find expression were limited. Indignation was rife, and monkish versifiers and chroniclers protested in lines more or less uncomplimentary, and more or less forcible, their loathing of such sin of simony. Now it is probable that, in expiation of this transgression, Herbert came to build Norwich Cathedral. It is certain that he almost at once repented. In after years, in his letters, he says, "I entered on mine office disgracefully, but by the help of God's grace I shall pass out of it with credit." In Dean Goulburn's admirable monograph on the cathedral many of Herbert's letters are given, and these alone would go to stamp him as a wonderful man. His conscience was awakened by the popular outcry against his sin of simony, he plunged into his new duties at Thetford with ardour in the vain hope of distraction, but failed to find that consolation he had hoped to; and so about 1093 he determined on a visit to Rome to tender his resignation and confess his sin to Pope Urban. He journeyed to Rome and was kindly received, and the absolution he desired readily granted. The Pope was glad to see an English bishop come to him for advice, and in granting him absolution he strengthened considerably his claim to be regarded as head of the English Church. This lengthy preamble may seem somewhat unjustifiable, but if we are to study any building aright, and if we are to interpret in any measure its meaning and symbolism, it cannot wholly be done on any line of abstract æstheticism or archæological instinct, however intuitive it may be: we must in some measure think of the builders of old times and of the influences which with them produced its inception and have left it to come down the ages to us. It is interesting to note that Herbert's early French training influenced him in the planning of the beautiful eastern termination to his cathedral, and the grand sweep of the procession path. Similar apsidal terminations, of slightly later date, once existed at Ely, and still remain in a modified form at Peterborough. The old tribunal arrangement of presbyters' seats with the central bishop's throne facing west, which was part of Herbert's first plan, no doubt may safely be accredited to the influence of his journey to Rome, and where he may have become familiar with what was the usual basilican arrangement. Herbert returned to England, penitent and forgiven for his sin, and it is probable that the Pope had laid on him, as a penance, an injunction to build churches and found religious houses, and that with the remainder of his wealth he determined to transfer the see from Thetford to Norwich and to build in the latter place his cathedral church. It would also have been in compliance with the decree of Lanfranc's Synod. The see was transferred on the 9th of April 1094, and Herbert was consecrated on the same day by Thomas, Archbishop of York. Norwich was then an important town; in the Middle Ages it ranked as the second city in the kingdom. Its prosperity was chiefly due to its large trade in wool. It is a moot point whether the town was ever a settlement of the Romans, no traces of such occupation having ever been discovered. The castle mound, no doubt, formed some part of the earthworks of an earlier stronghold. The word Norwich is probably of Norse origin, meaning the north village or the village on the North Creek ("_wic_"--_i.e._ a creek). The city stood on a tidal bay in 1004, in which year the Danes under Sweyn completely devastated and ruined the town in revenge for the massacre of their countrymen by Aethelred the Unready two years before. So that the history of the town of Norwich, as we now know it, may be said to have started directly after this. The foundation-stone of the cathedral was laid in 1096; and upon it, according to the _Registrum Primum_, the following inscription is said to have been placed:--"In nomine patris et filii et spiritus Sancti Amen Ego Herbertus Episcopus apposui istum lapidem." (In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen, I, Herbert the Bishop, have placed this stone.) It was the custom of the Norman builders to start building from the easternmost part of the church, as the more sacred part of the structure, and then build westwards; so that probably this foundation-stone, for which diligent search has been made in vain, was in the eastmost wall of the original Norman Lady Chapel--in fact, the _Registrum Primum_ describes how Herbert began the work "where is now the chapel of the Blessed Mary." This chapel was demolished to make way for the beautiful thirteenth-century Lady Chapel which Dean Gardiner destroyed. The thirteenth-century builders of the Lady Chapel may have used Herbert's foundation-stone in their walling; Dean Lefroy quite lately, while repairing parts of the tower and east end, came across pieces of stone with beautiful "dog-tooth" ornament upon them, which had been used to repair the masonry that, it was evident, at one time had formed part of the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel. This must be so, since in no other part of the building save the arches now remaining in the extreme eastern wall of the procession path, which at one time gave access to the Lady Chapel, does such ornament occur. It is probable, and the more generally accredited supposition, that Herbert built the presbytery with its encircling procession path and the original trefoil of Norman chapel radiating therefrom;--the choir and transepts with the two chapels projecting eastwards and the first two bays of the nave. Harrod advances a theory that he completely finished the whole of the cathedral church, as well as the offices for the housing of the sixty monks who were placed therein, in 1101. He also built the episcopal palace on the north side of the cathedral, of which some parts remain to this day incorporated with work of a later period; he seems to have founded and built other churches in Norwich and Yarmouth. He died on the 22nd of July 1119, in the twenty-ninth year of his episcopate, and was buried before the high altar in his own cathedral church. [Illustration: The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century.] Bishop Eborard, who succeeded in 1121, is credited with having finished the nave from the point where Herbert had left it. The evidence which goes to support this theory is taken from the _Registrum Primum_. "Moreover, the same Herbert completed the church of Norwich in his own time, as I have learned from the account of old people, but have not found in writing, as far as the altar of the Holy Cross, which is now called the altar of St. William. He also built all the episcopal dwelling-house, except the great hall." The altar referred to was on the north side of choir screen. Herbert also provided the base for the tower only, probably up to the roof level; the remainder, up to the parapet, was finished about the time of Henry I., but at that earlier period it was without the stone spire which now adds dignity to the cathedral from any point of view. The roofs at this time were generally of a flat wooden construction throughout (similar to that of Peterborough Cathedral), and probably decorated with lozenges, flowers, and symbolical devices. When recently, under Dean Lefroy, the whitewash and paint were cleaned off from the stonework, many indications have been found of a most beautiful scheme of colour decoration. Though we, in this part, are following up the history of the cathedral structure, yet it may be interesting to note that it was during the episcopate of Bishop Eborard that the boy saint, St. William of Norwich, was said to have been martyred. He was the son of country folk who gained a living by agriculture. During his life he worked many miracles, and by his death gave Norwich a share of his glory. It is related that he was tortured by the Jews, and on the spot where they were discovered secretly burying him, in Thorpe Wood, a chapel was erected called the Chapel of St. William in the Wood. Very little now remains of this structure, but the site can still be traced. The altar before referred to was set up to his memory in Norwich Cathedral, on the north side of the screen leading into the ante-choir. Bishop Eborard resigned the see, or was deposed in 1145, and retired to the abbey of Fontenay, Mont-Bard, Côte d'Or, in the South of France. He had re-enforced a mandate of Herbert's that the clergy of the diocese should contribute to the fund in aid of the fabric. During the episcopate of Eborard's successor, Bishop William de Turbe, the cathedral appears neither to have gained or suffered until, about 1169 or 1170, a fire broke out in the monastic buildings; the fire-extinguishing appliances in those days, if indeed there were any at all, could not prevent it spreading to the cathedral. It is generally believed that the original Norman Lady Chapel was also well destroyed. Bishop William de Turbe, although an old man at the time (he died in 1174), is said to have taken a vow that he would not go from within twelve leucas of the cathedral, unless compelled by the direst necessity, until the ravages of the flames had been repaired. He is reported to have seated himself at the door of the cathedral, and to have begged alms for this purpose from the worshippers. The work of reparation was carried on by his successor, John of Oxford, who may also be said to have completely finished Herbert's cathedral. He provided the furniture of the church, the vestments, books and ornaments, and, probably, entirely re-modelled the monastic buildings. He is also said to have built the Infirmary, of which now only three piers remain, to the south of the cloisters. In the years following, various works were doubtless carried on, but it is not until the time of Walter de Suffield, about 1250, that anything important in the way of structural alteration was effected. The fire of 1169 had in part or whole destroyed the original Norman Lady Chapel, and Bishop de Turbe had restored the same in some measure. But the _cultus_ of the Blessed Virgin in the interval had gathered strength wonderfully; chapels dedicated to her naturally became important, and Bishop Suffield determined to pull down the old Norman work and rebuild a chapel in the Early English style then prevalent. Dean Goulburn, in his work on the cathedral, estimated the size of the later chapel at 90 feet long by 30 feet wide, and these dimensions are shown plotted in dotted lines on the plan in this book. This is longer and narrower than the size given in previous conjectures, but Dean Goulburn had the opportunity of inspecting the foundations of the chapel, which, with those of the still earlier one, lie buried but a few feet below the surface in a garden to the east of the cathedral. In the same place, and over the entrance arches remaining, the height and lines of the later roof can be seen still plainly marked on the stonework. These entrance arches are beautifully moulded and decorated on the inside with the "dog-tooth" ornament--a decoration peculiar to the Early English style. The theological reaction which followed close on this movement led to the neglect of the chapel, and obviated the necessity of maintaining it as a place of worship. It had probably greatly decayed; that Dean Gardiner (1573-89), no longer needing it for services, was tempted to pull it down, as a cheaper expedient than keeping it in repair. In 1271 Norwich was visited by a terrific thunderstorm, when the tower was struck by lightning. The damage, however, was not great, as, fortunately, the excessive rains which followed quenched the fire that had been kindled. This incident, however, was the precursor of one of the stormiest periods in the history of the city and its cathedral church. Roger de Skerning occupied the episcopal chair, and the prior was one William de Brunham, a man of fierce and truculent disposition. An outbreak of hostilities between the citizens on the one hand and the monks on the other, was brought about by his arbitrary assumption of power; the bishop throughout, ostensibly preferring the safer game of a somewhat anomalous position of neutrality, is nevertheless believed to have covertly sanctioned his proceedings. A fair was held in Tombland--to the west of the precincts--annually on Trinity Sunday, and by right of ancient custom the priors reaped large revenues by the imposition of tolls on the sales. Tombland, derived from _Tomeland_, a vacant space, had originally formed part of the estate bequeathed by Herbert, the founder, to the monks; the boundaries in course of time had become matters of controversy, and it is probable that the citizens felt the imposition of these tolls and dues to be a real and serious grievance. A riot broke out and the monks were driven within their gates. Had the prior at this juncture chosen to act peacefully, it is probable that history would contain no record of the sacrilege that followed. He, however, decided to resist force by force, and carefully generaled his monks, disposing them at the various strategic points of his domain. At the same time he sent to Yarmouth for mercenaries--these arrived and the tables were turned; the prior's forces sallied forth from the gates and robbed and pillaged the town. The citizens, roused to a pitch of madness, drove them and the soldiers back again within the walls of the monastery; the bishop, instead of acting as peacemaker, appears to have preserved his position of neutrality and quietly stopped in his palace. There was a short interval of truce, but it only served as a breath to fan the flames; the citizens besieged the cathedral precincts, and by the means probably of slings succeeded in hurling combustible materials into the buildings, with a result that the whole of the monastery and the cathedral itself was soon in flames. It seems to be an established fact that the prior had placed men in the tower to shoot at the citizens, and it is conjectured that they, and not the citizens, were the cause of the outbreak here. The only part of the cathedral that escaped was the Lady Chapel; the rest was gutted, vestments and ornaments were carried off, and the monks for the most part slain. So ended the first part of this lamentable chapter in the history of Norwich. A sentence of excommunication was passed on the city, and King Henry hastened to Norwich to preside at the trial of the prisoners. The accounts which have come down to us are as varied as might be expected, the chroniclers of the one party, of course, blaming the other side; it seems, however, to have been proved "that, after all, the church was burnt by that accursed prior"; but many of the citizens were hung, drawn and quartered, and the city had to pay in all 3000 marks towards repairing the church and monastical buildings, and to provide a gold pyx, weighing ten pounds, of gold; the monks in their turn had to make new gates and entrances into the precincts. The St. Ethelbert's Gate-house was part of the work imposed on the monks; it is of early Decorated character and was erected probably early in the fourteenth century. Bishop Roger de Skerning had died in retirement on the 22nd of January 1277, and in the meantime the work of reparation had proceeded with such vigour that on Advent Sunday 1278 his successor, Bishop Middleton, was inaugurated with great state; Edward I. and his Queen with the Bishops of London, Hereford, and Waterford being present. He does not seem to have done much in the way of building, though the work of reparation was carried on; he died in 1287, and it was left to his successor, Bishop Ralph de Walpole, to begin the work of rebuilding the cloisters. The original Norman cloisters, which had endured until the time of the great fire in 1272, were probably of wood. It was determined to rebuild them in stone in the prevailing style. The cloisters are described in more detail in the notes on the interior of the cathedral, so that it will be sufficient to state here that their building spread over a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, and that they were finished during the episcopate of Bishop Alnwick. [Illustration: West Front of the Cathedral in 1816.] Bishop Walpole built the eastern walk of the cloisters, together with the chapter-house; he was translated to Ely about 1299, and the work carried on by his successor, Bishop Salmon, who built the south walk, also a chapel and hall attached to the bishop's palace. Of this nothing remains in the garden of the palace except a grand ruin, which is supposed to have formed the entrance or porch to the hall. He founded also the chapel dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, converted by Edward VI. into, and now used as, a grammar school; below it was a charnel-house. Continuing the history of the fabric, we can pass on to the episcopate of Bishop Percy, during which, about 1361, the wooden spire and parts of central tower of the cathedral were blown down by a violent gale of wind, and the presbytery was greatly damaged by the falling material. This bishop rebuilt the present clerestory, designed in the transitional style between Decorated and Perpendicular; the vault is later. It is also probable that he repaired the spire. During Bishop Wakering's time the Erpingham gate of the close was erected, and as well the cloister that formerly connected the palace on the north side with the cathedral. He also founded a chantry for one monk at his tomb. His successor, Alnwick, completed the cloisters. The gateway to the palace was built by him about 1430, and probably replaced an earlier structure. He also began the work of remodelling the central compartment of the west front. He left directions in his will to his executors to make a large west window, the cost to be charged to his estate. The doorway under this window, built over the old Norman one, and encroaching on the side arcading, was executed during his episcopate, the window being eventually added during the time of Bishop Lyhart to throw additional light on to the vault he erected, and its wonderful sculptures. In 1446, on February 27th, Walter Lyhart, or le Hart, was consecrated, and it is to him that Norwich Cathedral owes the superb _lierne_ vault that now spans the nave. Other important works were carried out by him; the spire which had been blown down in 1362 (and had probably been re-constructed by Bishop Percy--though there is no record of such work), was struck by lightning in 1463, and the burning mass fell through the presbytery roof, which up till this period was still in wood, completely destroying it, and making necessary the vault added by Lyhart's successor. During this episcopate the rood screen was erected, and a sumptuous monument placed over the grave of the founder. The stone spire must have been added about this time, replacing the former wooden construction. Bishop Lyhart left to his successor, Bishop Goldwell, in his will 2200 marks for repairing the dilapidations caused by the fire of 1463. During this bishop's episcopate we find that the cathedral was brought nearly to that state in which we have it now,--the tower was still further adorned with Perpendicular battlements, the presbytery was vaulted in with stone, and the flying-buttresses added around the eastern apse to take the consequent thrust of the new vault. Internally, also, the lower stages of the presbytery were Perpendicularised by the addition of the four centred arches that still remain, and in the second bay of which, eastward from the tower, on the south side, was erected Bishop Goldwell's altar tomb. His successor, Lane, occupied the see but a short while, 1499-1500, and in turn was succeeded by Bishop Nykke--he is more generally called _Nix_ (snow), sarcastically, as his character appears to have been of the blackest. During his episcopate, the cathedral was again visited by fire in 1509. The sacristy, with all the books and ornaments, was consumed, and the wooden roofs of both transepts totally destroyed. Bishop Nykke constructed the stone vaulting that, covering both arms of the church, completed the stone vaulting throughout the cathedral. His chantry, which is on the south side of the nave, and occupies two bays of the aisle, was arranged by him before his death, and its richness is inversely proportionate to the degradation of his character. The tracery in the Norman arch leading from the south aisle of the presbytery into the transept, is of late Perpendicular style, and was added by Robert of Calton, who was destined to be the last prior but one of Norwich: William Castleton was the last prior and the first dean. Bishop Nykke died in 1535-6, and was succeeded by William Rupgg or Repes, who was the last bishop elected by the chapter of the monks of the Benedictine monastery of Norwich. Monasticism was doomed; Wolsey had fallen, and his property had been confiscated in 1529. The smaller monasteries were dissolved in 1536, and in 1538 the greater shared the same fate, among them Norwich. Most interesting is the parallel which can be drawn between the history of the Church and of that architecture which she especially fostered. Gothic or Christian art was developed from the remains of a Roman civilisation, and so long as it had the healthy organic growth which was consequent on the evolution of a series of constructive problems fairly faced and in turn conquered, and again, stimulated by the growth of the Church, to which it was handmaiden, developed style after style in regular sequence, until the builders, finding they had conquered construction, took to imposing ornament. From that time, instead of ornamenting construction, they constructed ornament; and as the Reformation came to the Church in the sixteenth century so to architecture came degradation. And then the Renaissance of pagan types, from which the Gothic had derived its being by a rational development, was by the revivalists of those days hotch-potched into a more or less homogeneous mass, which even the genius of Wren could leave but coldly pedantic. The history of the architecture of the cathedral might safely stop with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538, since when it is a mere recapitulation of the doings and undoings of various sets of more or less deeply incriminated fanatics and restorers. So that we do not feel inclined to enter into more detail, in the few remaining notes on the history of the structure. Dean Gardiner, 1573-89, was a great reformer, and, as we have already noted, pulled down the thirteenth-century Lady Chapel, and as well the chapter-house. In 1643 the cathedral was taken possession of by Cromwell's soldiers, and the work of spoliation carried on. The organ was probably destroyed at this time, for Dean Crofts set up a new organ in 1660, the case of which was re-modelled in 1833, and still remains. It is also perhaps needless to state that the cathedral was repeatedly whitewashed during the eighteenth century. In June 1801 a fire broke out in the roof of the nave, but was extinguished before much damage had been done. The various works effected during this century are mentioned specifically elsewhere in these notes, under the headings of the parts of the building where they have occurred. [Illustration: The Cathedral from the South-West Angle of Cloisters.] CHAPTER II THE CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR Norwich Cathedral does not tell to great advantage from the outside: its chief charm is undoubtedly the interior. It stands in a hollow, on what is probably the lowest ground in the city. The best view of the cathedral is obtained from the low ground to the eastward near the river, and close to Pull's Ferry; here the extreme length of the nave, which Fergusson remarked justified the addition of western towers, is lost partly by foreshortening, and by the projection forward of the south transept, over which the old Norman tower, with its later battlements and spire, rises grandly above the sweep of the apse, with the still remaining circular chapels below. #The Cathedral Precincts#, or Close, running from Tombland eastward to the river, are entered by two gates to the precincts and one to the bishop's palace. #The Erpingham Gate#, opposite the west front of the cathedral, was built by Sir Thomas Erpingham, and as an architectural compilation "is original and unique." In elevation it consists of one lofty well-proportioned arch supported on either side by semi-hexagonal buttresses taken up as high as the apex of arch; above comes a plain gable, in which, centred over the arch below, is a canopied niche with the kneeling figure of Sir Thomas Erpingham. Built probably about 1420, and while yet some of the noble simplicity of the thirteenth had not passed into the over-wrought richness of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it presents a type of the best Perpendicular work we have in England. The form of the arch is lofty, and may have been suggested by the wish to preserve a view through of the cathedral. The arch moulding is enriched on the outer part with figures of fourteen female saints, and on the inner with twelve male saints; the semi-hexagonal panelled buttresses are covered with the shields of the families of Erpingham, Clopton, and Walton, and each has a seated figure of an ecclesiastic on the top. [Illustration: The Erpingham Gate.] The richness of this lower arch stage tells against the plain gable over, and is quite admirable in effect and defensible as a method of design; it is ornament decorating construction pure and simple, and not what later work generally was and is, constructed ornament, suggesting over-elaborate construction thereby made necessary. It will be noticed that labels with the word "Yenk" (think) sculptured thereon are placed between the shafts on either side of the archway; this has been construed "pend" by some writers, and from this the view was taken that Sir Thomas Erpingham was made to build the gate as a penance for favouring Lollardism, and that the figure of himself in the gable over the archway represents him as praying pardon for the offence. This interpretation, however, amusing as it is, is probably erroneous, and the gate, with its shields of allied families, stands to the memory of its founder. Sir Thomas Erpingham was at Agincourt in 1415, and Shakespeare, in Act iv. of Henry V., remarks of him that he was "a knight grown grey with age and honour." Sir Thomas Browne also (p. 9 of his "Repertorium") says: "He was a Knight of the Garter in the time of Henry IV. and some part of Henry V., and I find his name in the list of the Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports." Sir Thomas Erpingham had two wives, Joan Clopton and Joan Walton, whose arms appear on the gateway. [Illustration: St. Ethelbert's Gate.] #St. Ethelbert's Gate#, to the south, is an early "Decorated" structure. Its elevation is divided into three storeys, in the lowest of which is the gateway, with flat buttresses on each side carried up the height of two storeys, and enriched with pedimented niches in both stages. In the compartment over the arch are seven niches, four of which are pierced with windows. The upper stage is in flintwork. It was built by the citizens as part of the fine imposed on them for their share in the riots and fire of 1272 by the Court of King Henry III., though probably not until some years had elapsed, and when Edward the First had come to the throne. The upper part of the front was restored early in this century. The back elevation is interesting--the window over the arch being typical of the style. [Illustration: The Gate-House of the Bishop's Palace.] #The Gate-House# forming the entrance to the bishop's palace, on the north side of the cathedral, was built by Bishop Alnwyck about 1430, and probably replaced an earlier structure; it is an interesting piece of Perpendicular work, and consists, in the lower stage, of a gate and doorway under a deep horizontal band ornamented with plain shields and monograms of the Virgin. The gateway on the left side reaches up to the horizontal bands, and has spandrels on either side; the doorway is smaller. Above are two windows with a niche between, and over all is a parapet of modern work. Flat buttresses flank the entire composition on either side. The wooden gates were added by Bishop Lyhart (1446-72). Returning to the Erpingham gate, and entering the Close through it, immediately on our left we come to the #Chapel of St. John the Evangelist# (converted by Edward VI., and still used as a school), founded by Bishop Salmon (1299-1325). This building replaced an older structure, used as a charnel, and provision was made for this need in the new edifice; the vaults under the chapel were used for the same purpose. The porch is a later building added by Lyhart (1446-72). #The West Front of the Cathedral# has probably received worse treatment than any other portion of the building, and stands now as the most unsatisfactory part of the whole. The design consists in its width of three compartments, with two separating and two flanking turrets. The centre compartment is of the width of the nave, and those on either side the width of the aisles. In the centre comes the main doorway, flanked on either side with niches, and over these, filling the entire breadth, the great nine-light west window, with the Norman turrets carried up to the base of the gable. The compartments on either side are finished off by horizontal mouldings taken across somewhat below the level of the springing of the archivolt of the main window, and have flanking turrets covered with plain pinnacles. The large west window is disproportionate, and even the assurance cheerfully given by most authorities, that it resembles the window of Westminster Hall, fails to prove that it is of suitable size here. It may be as well to note in order the various changes which have affected the west front. Mr B.W. Spaull, in Dean Goulburn's work on the Cathedral, made reference to the discovery of an alteration to the main entrance which must have been prior to that now existing. It consisted of a small _parvise_ or room added above at some time subsequent to the original foundation. As the details are not now apparent, it is best to refer readers to the work named for fuller information. The addition, however, of later Perpendicular triforium windows to the nave superimposed over the original Norman lights, which were blocked up, may have affected the west front. This can best be seen by viewing, for instance, the south side of the nave. The Norman roofs sloped down to the original triforium windows, but after the later addition were made almost flat, and must have necessitated some mask wall in the west front. [Illustration: West Front of the Cathedral.] In Britton's "History of Norwich" is a drawing which is reproduced at p. 15. It will be seen that the turrets at each side of the west window are shown finished with stone cupolas, the tops of which were level with the apex of the gable. The two outside flanking turrets are shown finished by circular drums above the parapet, and covered with leaden cupolas; these, with the Perpendicular battlements, were probably added as the mask before referred to, and necessitated by the imposition of an additional storey at the triforium level. Certainly the west front, as shown then, was better far than now. However, in 1875, "_restoration_" set in, and these cupolas were removed, and stone "pepper-box" pinnacles imposed on the turrets in their stead. The gable was restored, and the character of the work wholly destroyed, crocketted where before plain, and the niche added in the place of the small light over the vault shown in Britton's plate. In the side compartments the Perpendicular battlementing was removed and the round cannon ball holes gratuitously inserted. The two pinnacles at the sides of the west window have since been removed. The earlier change in the central compartment of the front from Norman to Perpendicular was effected by the additions of the door and window still remaining. Bishop Alnwyck, who was translated to Lincoln in 1436, added the doorway during his episcopate, and it was probably built right over and covering the original Norman door and arcading. He also left provision in his will for the west window, and this was added by Bishop Lyhart (1446-72), to throw additional light on to the vaulting and sculptures of the nave; from the inside it will be seen that it completely fills the width of the nave, and follows the line of the vault up. The north side of the cathedral lies within the gardens of the bishop's palace, which can be entered from the interior of the cathedral, through a small door in the north aisle of the presbytery; the eastern end of the cathedral also lies within a private garden, but permission to enter it can usually be obtained. #Exterior of Nave.#--Those portions of the precincts near the western end of the cathedral are known as the Upper Close; and, walking round the exterior of the cloisters, we come to the Lower Close. The nave on the south side can be seen well either from the upper or lower Close, and can be better examined in detail from the interior of the cloisters. Its elevation consists of fourteen bays divided by flat Norman buttresses. In height it is composed of what, at first sight, appears a bewildering confusion of arches, arcades, and windows. Over the aisle windows, hidden by the north walk of cloisters, comes a Norman wall arcading; and over this the Norman triforium windows blocked up, and again, above the later Perpendicular triforium, superimposed on the old, and finished with a battlemented parapet. Behind this come the triforium roof, and then beyond the original Norman clerestory, each bay with a triple arch formation, the centre arch pierced for a window. And then above all, the lead roof over nave vault. The radical changes that have taken place since the nave was built by Bishop Eborard (1121-45) consist of the insertion in the aisles of later "Decorated" traceried windows in place of the original Norman ones, and of the superimposition, before referred to, at triforium level of a whole range of "Perpendicular" windows over the old Norman work, which were blocked up at this period. The pristine aspect, then, of this elevation of the nave would have shown a sloping roof over the aisles where now the later addition occurs. The battlementing, too, over the clerestory to the nave is later work, to correspond with battlementing over the triforium windows. It will be noticed that the two bays next the transept in the triforium are higher than the others, in order to throw additional light into the choir. Also on this same south side, in the seventh and eighth bays from the west end, two very late windows occur, inserted in the Norman arcading under the original triforium windows; these were inserted by Bishop Nykke to light the chapel he built in two bays of the south aisle of the nave. The curious raking of the lead rolls to the nave roof is noticeable; the mediæval builders did this with a view of counteracting the "crawl" of the lead. Lead, under the variations of temperature of the atmosphere, expands and contracts considerably; and from its own weight, and the steepness of the roofs, the contraction takes place in a downward direction, and starts the joints, letting in the weather. This raking of the vertical rolls was a device whereby the old builders in some measure got over their difficulty by inducing a fixed expansion and contraction. [Illustration: The Clerestory and Triforium of Choir (South Side).] #The South Transept# projects boldly forward from under the tower; without aisles, its ridge and parapet correspond in height to those of the nave; this narrowness, with the tower and spire showing over behind, gives it an appearance of height, as approached from the lower close. This effect of height is emphasised by the partition of the design in its width, by flat Norman buttresses, with shafts in the angles, and by the flat faces of the flanking turrets. The work, however, is without interest, from the fact that, though the _ensemble_ in some measure has been retained, the whole of the exterior face of the stonework was re-cased by Salvin, 1830-40, during which period various restorations were effected. Before these alterations, the Norman flanking turrets finished with a "Perpendicular" battlementing, enriched with shields and quatrefoils, and with crocketted pinnacles set at the four angles; this battlementing was removed, and the present uninteresting pepper-boxes took their place. No doubt they have it in their favour that they _may_ be more like the original Norman terminations than were those they replaced, which were, however, real "Perpendicular," and these are only sham Norman. Originally, from the eastward side of the south transept, projected a semi-circular chapel, shown on plan by dotted lines, and corresponding to that still remaining on the north side of the cathedral. It was part of the original plan, and though we believe no record exists of its destruction, it can safely be premised that its fate came about through the _cultus_ of the saint to whom it was dedicated declining, and consequent neglect and ruin following made its destruction cheaper than its reparation. It was replaced by a sacristy in the fifteenth century, the lines of roof to which can still be seen over on the stonework. This later sacristy was destroyed by the fire of 1509, that burned as well the wooden roofs of the transepts, and necessitated the stone vaults added by Bishop Nykke. #The Diocesan Registry Offices# now occupy the space on which once stood the Norman chapel, and later the Sacristy. The building projecting eastward, south of this space, and marked A on plan, was once a chapel, said by Blomefield to have been dedicated to St. Edmund. It is now used as the #Dean's Vestry# in the lower storey, and as the #Chapter Clerk's Office# in the upper. At the same time that the later restorations were effected to the south transept, the groined #Slype# and singing-school above it were destroyed, and the present door in the south transept from the lower close was opened. A pre-restoration view is published of the east end of the cathedral, showing the slype, in Britton's "Norwich." The visitor should also bear in mind that this space immediately in front of the south transept was originally occupied by the #Chapter-House#, situated as shown by dotted lines on plan, and separated from the cathedral by the slype. The entrance arches to the chapter-house from the east walk of the cloisters still remain and fix definitely its position; it projected eastward about eighty feet. #The Tower and Spire# mark the crossing of the choir and transepts, the tower only being Norman, and square on plan, with flat Norman buttresses, covered with vertical shafts on the face of each. These buttresses start from the level of the parapets to Nave, Transept, and Presbytery, and rise right up until, well over the parapet of the tower, they are finished by crocketted pinnacles. Between these buttresses are horizontal bands of design: the lowest, a Norman arcade of nine arches, three of which are pierced as windows; then, above this, a smaller wall arcade with interlaced arches; and then, above again, the principal feature, an arcading of nine arches, three pierced for windows, and the others filled with wall tracery of diamonds and circles; then, between this last and the battlemented parapet, occur five vertical panels, each comprising two circles, the upper pierced for a window. Above, soaring upward, rises the later crocketted spire. Herbert, the founder, provided the foundations of tower, and probably carried up the walls to the level of the nave roof; the rest of the tower was finished during the reign of Henry I., and is a beautiful specimen of the work of that time; but here again our sentiment and sympathy experience a shock when we learn that the stonework was almost entirely refaced in 1856. The tower was crowned by a wooden spire from 1297; this was blown down in 1361, and probably brought away in its fall some part of the Norman turrets of the tower. It fell eastward, damaging the presbytery so badly that the clerestory had to be rebuilt. The wooden spire was reconstructed probably at the same time, though no record exists of such work, and the present Early Perpendicular turrets were added. The spire, we know, was again overtaken by misfortune in 1463, when it was struck by lightning, and again falling eastward, went through the presbytery roof. The present spire was then constructed in stone by Bishop Lyhart (1446-72), and was finished by his successor, Bishop Goldwell (1472-99), who added the battlements. [Illustration: The Tower in 1816.] It will hardly be necessary to enlarge on the beauty of this spire of Norwich, as the dominant feature, seen from the south-east, rising above the curved sweep of the apse, and strongly buttressed by the south transept, it stands up, clearly defined against the western sky, and points upward, significant and symbolical at once of the ends and aspirations of the church below. #The Eastern Arm of Cathedral or Presbytery# takes its history from the tower. Here, as in the nave, there are the original triforium windows blocked up, and a range of Perpendicular work superimposed on the old. Above and beyond this, supported between each bay by flying buttresses, comes the transitional Decorated to Perpendicular clerestory, considerably higher than the original Norman clerestory remaining to the nave. At the base of each flying buttress are figures of saints. The roof and Norman clerestory were damaged by the falling tower in 1361, but were rebuilt by Bishop Percy, 1355-69. This work is transitional Decorated to Perpendicular. The presbytery was then re-roofed with a framed timber construction, which was consumed by the falling of the burning spire, struck by lightning in 1463. The present stone vault was added in its place by Bishop Goldwell, 1472-99. This necessitated the addition as well of flying buttresses to take the thrust of the vault. The battlementing to the presbytery also was added at the same time as the flying buttresses. It will also be noted that here, as in the nave, an addition was made in the way of a range of later "Perpendicular" windows superimposed over the original Norman triforium, which was blocked up. #The Chapel of St. Mary-the-Less#, marked B on plan, projects southward from the presbytery, and dates from the fourteenth century. Between this and the circular Norman chapel of St. Luke, was Bishop Wakeryng's chapel. It has long since disappeared, but the doorway of Perpendicular design remained until about 1841, when it was removed and the compartment Normanised--a piece of wanton vandalism and the destruction of an historical link. The circular Norman chapels, of which two remain, are very interesting. In the original plan of the founder there were three; but the easternmost was superseded by Early English structure, which in its turn was demolished. #The Chapel of Saint Luke#, marked C on plan, flanking the south side of the apse, was much restored in the sixties; in Britton's "Norwich," published in 1816, late "Decorated" windows are shown; these were replaced by _modern_ Norman. Its form is peculiar; on plan, that of two circles interpenetrating. On elevation, in the lower stage, are the modern Norman windows, with shafts in jambs, over which occur two tiers of arcading, in the higher of which window openings are pierced. The position of the Norman Lady Chapel is shown by dotted lines, as well as the rectangular shape of the Early English chapel built by Walter de Suffield (1245-57) about 1250. The line of the roof of the later chapel can still be seen plainly traced on the stonework over the arches which once gave entrance to it. This later chapel was destroyed by Dean Gardiner in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The foundations of both chapels have been laid open quite recently but a few feet under the level of the garden. [Illustration: Exterior of the Chapel of St. Luke from the East.] #The Jesus Chapel#, marked D on plan, on the north side of the apse, retains the early "Perpendicular" windows inserted in the Norman work; its other characteristics are as those described to St. Luke's Chapel in the south. On the north side of the presbytery, and to the west of the Jesus Chapel, were other chapels, shown on the plan by dotted lines; the positions of their roofs are clearly marked yet on the stonework. One must have been the #Reliquary Chapel#; the bridge chapel in the north aisle of presbytery formed its ante-chapel. #The North Transept#, and generally the north side of the cathedral, are more conveniently examined from the gardens of the bishop's palace, whence this portion of the exterior of the cathedral can best be seen. The details of the fabric on the north side are essentially the same as those described to the south side of cathedral; though here the work has been less restored, and consequently is of more interest to the student. The original Norman chapel, now used as a store-house, projects eastward from the north transept; a corresponding feature occurred in the south transept, but has long since vanished. #The Bishop's Palace# stands to the north of the cathedral, and was formerly connected with it by a vaulted passage, Herbert, the founder, built the first palace, of which portions are incorporated in the present building. Bishop Salmon (1299-1325) in 1318, according to the patent rolls of the twelfth year of the reign of Edward II., obtained licence to buy a piece of land 47 perches 4 feet in length, and 23 perches 12 feet in breadth, to enlarge and rebuild thereon the palace of Herbert. He also built a chapel, and the great hall, measuring 120 feet from north to south, and 60 feet wide, with kitchen, buttery, and offices at the west end. The grand ruin somewhat to the east of the palace now is supposed to have formed part of the entrance to this hall. It was, however, too large to keep up, and so was leased by Bishop Nykke, just before his death in 1535 to the mayor, sheriff, and citizens, so that the Guild of S. George might hold their annual feast there. Later on it became a meeting-house. The present private chapel of the bishop was built by Bishop Reynolds in 1662 across part of the south end. To the north of the nave of the cathedral, and on the west side of the palace, was an open area called the _green-yard,_ and in Sir Thomas Browne's "Works," vol. iv. p. 27 (London, 1835) is an account of the _combination sermons_ which were preached here in the summer prior to the Reformation. "Before the late times the combination sermons were preached, in the summer time, at the Cross in the Green Yard where there was a good accommodation for the auditors. The mayor, aldermen, with their wives and officers, had a well-contrived place built against the wall of the Bishop's palace, covered with lead, so that they were not offended by rain. Upon the north side of the church, places were built gallery wise, one above another, where the dean, prebends and their wives, gentlemen, and the better sort, very well heard the sermon: the rest either stood or sat in the green, upon long forms provided for them, paying a penny or half-penny a-piece, as they did at S. Paul's Cross in London. The Bishop and chancellor heard the sermons at the windows of the Bishop's palace: the pulpit had a large covering of lead over it, and a cross upon it; and there were eight or ten stairs of stone about it, upon which the hospital boys and others stood. The preacher had his face to the south, and there was a painted board of a foot and a half broad and about a yard and a half long hanging over his head, before, upon which were painted the names of the benefactors towards the Combination Sermon which he particularly commemorated in his prayer...." On the north side of the cathedral, in the seventh compartment of the aisle from the west end, the walled-up entrance to the _green-yard_ is to be noticed. There is no doubt that this space was originally the cemetery of the monks, and Harrod quotes from the _Chronicle_ of John de Whethamsted to that effect. A stone coffin lid found here in 1848 goes to confirm this. CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR Norwich Cathedral is justly celebrated for the beauty of its interior. Entering from the upper close by the north aisle door, and then taking a position immediately under the great west window, facing east, there is before one the long perspective of the Norman nave, the choir and presbytery, while overhead comes the later vault, telling richly by contrast with the severe plainness of the earlier work below. The extreme length of the cathedral is about 407 feet. The nave, always long in Norman churches, is here over 200 feet from the west door to the choir screen. Although some critics object to the position of the organ on this same screen, there can be no doubt that, not only is it a most admirable position for the instrument acoustically, but also that its presence here does not detract from the general effect of the interior. From the west end of the nave, as a dark silhouette against the eastern apsidal windows, or as an object in the middle distance, it helps the spectator to realise the length of the cathedral. A certain sense of mystery and something undiscerned adds to the charm of an interior, and the organ here helps, with the screen, to enshrine the eastern arm and most sacred portion of the building, and interrupts the vista for the sake of which disastrous sacrifices have been made in many of our cathedral churches. #The Nave# consists of seven double bays; in all, fourteen compartments from the west end to the tower crossing. It will be noticed that, in the plan (page 113), a square of the nave, occupying longitudinally the space of two bays of the aisles, is indicated by the dotted lines; also a main pier is marked as Y and a subsidiary pier as z. The main piers, as at Y, are large rectangular masses, having on the nave side a flat buttress-like piece added, with shafts in the angles, and bearing on the face the two vaulting shafts. On the aisle side are two shafts to each transverse arch; and on the two lateral faces are triple shafts to the arcade arches, with four angle shafts at each corner of the main pier, taking the outer rings to same. The plan is the same at the triforium level. The smaller or subsidiary piers (as at X) have single vaulting shafts on the nave face, double ones to the aisle, and under the arcade arches convex faces, with four angle shafts, as in main piers. The plan of these piers determines the elevation. The nave arcade arches, ornamented with the billet, and triforium with a _chevron_ or zig-zag, are almost equal in size, and over these lower stages comes the typical triple Norman clerestory with walk; the whole covered in by the fine lierne vault. [Illustration: A Norman Capital.] The vault has thirteen complete bays and two semi-bays, one at either end. The junctions between this later vault and the Norman work can be seen. The main piers had the original double shafts cut off at the level of the top of the triforium arches, the later single shaft being brought down and joined by a peculiar branch-like connection. The original shafts to the subsidiary piers, which it is probable took only a minor part in carrying the flat Norman wooden roof, were finished by a cap at the impost level of the triforium, and the later shaft was brought down and finished by the _rebus_ of Bishop Lyhart, the constructor of the vault. This _rebus_ should be noticed; it is a pun in stone, with its hart lying in water. It will also be noticed that the outer arches of the triforium are not concentric with the sub-arches. [Illustration: The Nave, looking East.] The bases of the shafts have been Perpendicularised, probably when the vault was added, and the Norman character of the lateral shafts spoilt by scraping. The building of the nave is usually attributed to Bishop Eborard (1121-45), but some eminent archæologists believe that the whole cathedral, nave and all, was built by Herbert, 1091-1119, the first bishop and founder. We believe there is no documentary evidence against this theory. The _Registrum Primum_ says: "Moreover, the same Herbert completed the church of Norwich in his own time, as I have learned from the account of old people, _but have not found in writing,_ as far as the altar of the holy cross, which is now called the altar of S. William." The billet enrichment on the main arches, and the chevron or zig-zag on those of the triforium, have been looked upon as indicating that this part of the building--the five western bays of nave--is later than the presbytery, the arches there lacking this ornament. But as these are quite the earliest forms of ornament used by the Norman builders, their occurrence here at Norwich cannot prove much. It is better perhaps to reserve judgment, and be content with merely stating the facts and the more generally accredited theories as to the age of the western part of the nave. The subsidiary circular columns in the fifth bay of the nave from the west end should be noticed. A small enriched shaft in the clerestory of the north transept is here illustrated. This very beautiful style of treatment was common to the Norman builder, with the Romanesque, and the Romans before them. #The Choir Screen# crosses the nave between the subsidiary piers to the sixth bay. Of the original work erected by Bishop Lyhart, 1446-72, the sub-structure of the present screen is the only portion remaining. Traces of two altars, one on either side of the doorway, can still be seen; these were originally dedicated to St. William of Norwich and St. Mary. These altars were enclosed in chapels formed by screens coming forward to the extent of half the bay, and stopped against the main nave piers on either side--the double vaulting shafts on the face of which are stopped by corbels, carved as heads, at about the height that the chapels would have reached. They were vaulted over, and above came the rood loft and organ. The rood loft was damaged by the Puritans, and probably removed after the Restoration. Dean Crofts, in 1660, set up a new organ. In Britton's "Norwich," 1816, the upper stage of the choir screen is shown divided into square panels, occurring vertically over the lower stage; the screens to the chapels before referred to having been destroyed. In 1833 Salvin remodelled the choir, and turned his attention to the choir screen: the organ was placed in its present position, and cased with the frame of that instrument which Dean Crofts had set up in 1660; and the overhanging vault to the screen was added. #The Nave Vault# (height 72 feet), which was added by Bishop Lyhart, 1446-72, took the place of the original Norman wooden roof destroyed by fire in 1463. This earlier Norman roof was most probably like that now existing at Peterborough, and was no doubt profusely decorated with colour. The vault is of Perpendicular design, and known as _lierne_; such vaults may be distinguished by the fact that between the main ribs, springing from the vaulting shafts, are placed cross ribs forming a pattern, as it were, and bracing the main ribs, but not in any great measure structural. This vault at Norwich may be taken as typical of the last legitimate development of the stone roof; it was the precursor of the later fan vaulting, such as we find in Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster, where legitimate construction was replaced by ostentatious ingenuity and the accumulation of needless ornament and detail. The carved bosses here at Norwich, occurring at the intersection of the ribs, are worth careful study. Those who care to go into the matter in the fullest detail should consult Dean Goulburn's book published in 1876, which not only gives an admirable history of the fabric and the See, but enters fully into the detail and symbolic meaning of each of the 328 bosses. In this list, compiled from that volume, mention is made only of those bosses on the main longitudinal rib of the vault; it is hoped that this method will enable the visitor to readily enter into the meaning of any group of bosses, by providing a keynote to the whole. The subjects are taken from Bible history, and each epoch is usually grouped around some central incident figured on the main longitudinal ribs. In each bay No. 4 is the large central boss. [Illustration: The Choir Screen and Organ from the Nave.] #The Easternmost Bay.--No. 1.# (1.) The Creation of Light. (2.) A Figure of the Almighty. (3.) A White Hart. (4.) The Temptation. (5.) A White Swan. (6.) The Death of Cain. #The Second Bay.--No. 2.# (1.) Cain driven out as a Fugitive. (2.) Noah building the Ark. (3.) Noah's Drunkenness. (4.) The Ark on the Waters. (5.) Meaning indefinite. (6.) Noah planting the Vine. #The Third Bay.--No. 3.# (1.) The Building of the Tower of Babel. (2.) The Tower of Babel shown as Feudal Fortress. (3.) Abraham entertaining an Angel. (4.) Abraham sacrificing Isaac. (5.) Jacob deceiving Isaac. (6.) Isaac blessing Esau. #The Fourth Bay.--No. 4.# (1.) Sarah at the Door of Abraham's House. (2.) Jacob going to Padan-Aram. (3.) Jacob wrestling with the Angel. (4.) Jacob pilling the Green Poplar Rods. (5.) Jacob's Ladder. (6.) Jacob making the Covenant with Laban. #The Fifth Bay.--No. 5.# (1.) Jacob sending Joseph to his Brethren. (2.) Joseph journeying to his Brethren. (3.) Joseph stripped of his Coat of Many Colours. (4.) Joseph cast into the Pit. (5.) Joseph sold to the Ishmaelite Merchants. (6.) Joseph set up over the Egyptians. #The Sixth Bay.--No. 6.# (1.) Joseph selling corn. (2.) Moses in the Ark of Bulrushes. (3.) The Angel appearing to Moses in the Burning Bush. (4.) The Overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. (5.) The Ark of the Covenant. (6.) Samson rending the Lion. #The Seventh Bay.--No. 7.# (1.) Samson taking the Gates of the City of Gaza. (2.) David smiting Goliath. (3.) David cutting off Goliath's Head. (4.) David crowned. (5.) David charging Solomon. (6.) Solomon enthroned. #The Eighth Bay.--No. 8.# (1.) Solomon enthroned. (2.) The Annunciation. (3.) The Presentation in the Temple. (4.) The Nativity. (5.) The Visitation. (6.) Herod decreeing the Massacre of the Innocents. #The Ninth Bay.--No. 9.# (1.) The Flight into Egypt. (2.) Christ in the midst of the Doctors. (3.) The Marriage in Cana of Galilee. (4.) The Baptism of Our Lord. (5.) The Raising of Lazarus. (6.) The Supper in Bethany. #The Tenth Bay.--No. 10.# (1.) Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. (2.) Circular Hole for Descent of Thurible. (3.) Our Lord sending forth the Disciples. (4.) The Last Supper. (5.) Disciples preparing for the Foot-washing. (6.) Our Lord washing Peter's Feet. #The Eleventh Bay.--No. 11.# (1.) Our Lord in Gethsemane. (2.) Christ crowned with Thorns. (3.) Christ led to Pilate. (4.) Christ before Pilate. (5.) Christ Blindfolded. (6.) Christ Betrayed. #The Twelfth Bay.--No. 12.# (1.) Christ taken to the House of the High Priest. (2.) Christ nailed to the Cross. (3.) The Soldiers casting Lots. (4.) The Crucifixion. (5.) The Entombment. (6.) Christ in Hades. #The Thirteenth Bay.--No. 13.# (1.) Soldiers watching the Holy Sepulchre. (2.) The Resurrection. (3.) Three Apostles. (4.) The Ascension. (5.) The Virgin praying. (6.) The Day of Pentecost. #The Fourteenth Bay.--No. 14.# (1.) A Miracle of Exorcism. (2.) The Jaws of Hell. (3.) The Drunkard's Doom. (4.) The Last Judgment. (5.) St. Peter. (6.) The Holy Trinity. (7.) Bishop Lyhart, the Builder of the Vault. To all those who take an interest in early stone cutting, this vault of Norwich is a store of inexhaustible treasure; the bosses, rudely cut as they are, tell their own tales with singular truth and directness. Their sculpture may not display the anatomical knowledge of the work of the Renaissance; yet it has a distinct decorative value that has been seldom equalled in the later decadent period. The fourteen large central bosses on the main longitudinal ribs present in themselves an epitome not only of Bible history, but of the connecting incidents forming the theme of Christian teaching. In the tenth bay, on the longitudinal rib, there is, in place of a boss, a circular hole through the vault. It is supposed to have been formed to allow a thurible to be suspended therefrom into the church below. Harrod, quoting from Lambard's "Topographical Dictionary," says: "I myself, being a child, once saw in Poule's Church at London, at a feast of Whitsontide, wheare the comyng down of the Holy Gost was set forth by a white pigeon that was let to fly _out of a hole that is yet to be seen in the mydst of the roof of the great ile_, and by a long censer which, descending out of the same place almost to the very ground, was swinged up and down at such a length that it reached at one swepe _almost to the west gate of the church, and with the other to the queer_ [_quire_] _stairs of the same_, breathing out over the whole church and companie a most pleasant perfume of such sweet things as burned therein." It is probable that the hole in the nave vault at Norwich was used for a similar purpose; and its position would seem to agree with such use, situated as it is about midway between the west end and where the front of the mediæval rood loft occurred. #The West Window#, added, as we have already noted by Bishop Lyhart, to light the vault, resembles that of Westminster Hall in the lines of its tracery; the glass by Hedgeland constitutes a memorial to Bishop Stanley (d. 1849). #West Door.#--The original Norman arch remains over the doorway on the inside. #The North Aisle of Nave#, the Norman windows of which were entirely replaced by Decorated ones, is covered by plain quadri-partite vaults. In the triforium over, as previously noted in description of exterior, the side walls were raised, the original Norman windows blocked up and Perpendicular ones placed over, the roof being at the same time raised on the outside to the necessary height, and made of a shallower pitch; this is clearly noticeable from the triforium walks. In the easternmost bays, two windows were raised still more to gain additional light for the choir. In the seventh bay from the west end occurs the door once leading to the _green yard_. [Illustration: The North Aisle of Nave, looking West.] #The South Aisle of Nave# corresponds with the north, and is covered with a plain quadri-partite vault, with the exception of the seventh and eighth bays from the west; these were converted by Bishop Nykke into a chapel enclosed by screens, and are marked on the plan as E.E. The Norman vaults were here removed and the late Perpendicular ones constructed in their stead; the windows appear to be of still later date, but are supposed to have been, and most probably were, inserted at this period. #Monuments in Nave.#--The nave suffered severely at the hands of the Puritans, who destroyed many of the early tombs and effigies. Especially noticeable is the lack of brasses; all these have disappeared, with the exception only of one in the Jesus Chapel. Another singularity is that the burial-place of most of the bishops who are known to have been interred in the cathedral is quite uncertain. The best of them seem to have been content with a plain slab and inscribed brass; only Nykke, of infamous memory, left so gorgeous a chapel behind to perpetuate it. Bishop Hall, in his "Hard Measure," gives a sketch of vivid historical interest of the sacrilege committed during the Puritan rebellion, and when, in 1643, the cathedral was in the possession of the fanatics. "Lord, what work was here, what clattering of glasses, what beating down of Walls, what tearing up of Monuments, what pulling down of Seates, what wresting out of Irons and Brass from the Windows and Graves. What defacing of Armes, what demolishing of curious stone work, that had not any representation in the World, but only of the cost of the Founder and skill of the Mason, what toting and piping upon the destroyed Organ pipes, and what a hideous triumph on the Market day before all the Countrey, when, in a kind of Sacrilegious and profane procession, all the Organ pipes, Vestments, both Copes and Surplices, together with the Leaden Crosse which had been newly sawne down from over the Green-Yard Pulpit, and the Service books and singing books that could be had, were carried to the fire in the publick Market place; A leud wretch walking before the Train, in his Cope trailing in the dirt, with a Service book in his hand, imitating in an impious scorne the tune, and usurping the words of the Letany; neer the Publick Crosse, all these monuments of Idolatry must be sacrificed to the fire, not without much Ostentation of a zealous joy." #Monuments in North Aisle of Nave.#--In the fifth bay of the nave arcade (marked I on plan) is the altar tomb of Sir Thomas Wyndham and his four wives. This was originally in the Lady Chapel, then, for a time, the Jesus Chapel, and about 1869 moved to its present position. Between the sixth and seventh bay is buried Dean Prideaux (d. 1724). The ninth bay of aisle is lighted by a memorial window to William Smith (d. 1849), Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. In the tenth bay (marked 2 on plan) is the altar tomb, with panelled sides, to Sir John Hobart (d. 1507), Attorney-General to Henry VII. #Monuments in South Aisle of Nave# from the west.--In the sixth bay is a memorial window by Wailes to members of the Hales family. In the seventh bay (marked 3 on plan) is the tomb of Chancellor Spencer; the rents of the dean and chapter were formerly paid here. The ninth bay (marked 4 on plan) contains the altar tomb of Bishop Parkhurst (1560-74). [Illustration: The East Walk of the Cloisters.] #The Cloisters# and destroyed monastic buildings.--The cloisters are on the south side of the cathedral, the interior garth being about 145 feet square. [Illustration: The Cloisters from the Garth.] The original Norman cloisters, which were probably of a wooden construction, were destroyed by the fire of 1272; and the work of building the present cloisters was commenced by Bishop Walpole (1289-99) about 1297, but they were not completely finished until 1430, in the time of Bishop Alnwyck (1426-36). They present an interesting, and, at the same time, complex study of the development of the styles during the one hundred and thirty-three years which passed during their erection; a paper by the Rev. D.J. Stewart (published in vol. 32 of the _Archæological Journal_) goes minutely into their construction, and the several parts the various bishops of Norwich played in their design. Those who wish to study this part of the cathedral thoroughly cannot do better than refer to this paper. It will be noticed that, despite the lengthy period occupied in the construction of the cloisters, the result is in no way inharmonious; it is only in the detail, and especially the open tracery to the bays, that the difference of style is very perceptible. Counting the angle severies as in each walk, it will be noticed that there are fourteen severies on the east side; and thirteen on the other three. Each is nearly square on plan, and vaulted over with horizontal longitudinal and transverse ribs, between which occur diagonals and _tiercerons_; with carved bosses at the intersections. The piers carrying the vaults consist of groups of separate cylindrical shafts of Purbeck marble. On the three sides--east, west, and south--there are separate storeys of apartments over the vaults, which were used for various purposes by the monks. In elevation--and of course this can best be seen from the Garth--each bay is divided by a projecting buttress with diagonal one in the angles; the arches are filled with open tracery carried by two mullions; it is this tracery which marks most clearly the various changes of style. The shape of the arch is similar throughout. This was a concession on the part of the later builders which ensured harmony in the whole; but on each side the tracery is varied. On the east side it is geometrical in character, the work being transitional between Early English and Decorated; on the south side the tracery is more flowing and has advanced to Decorated; on the west side again, we get the transitional style between Decorated and Perpendicular, with some _flamboyant_ or flame-like detail; while on the north and latest side it is frankly Perpendicular. #The East Walk# of cloisters is the earliest; access to which is gained from the south aisle of nave of cathedral, through the #Prior's Door#; of this fine specimen of early Decorated work we give an illustration. In the sixth bay, from, and counting the angle, may be seen the walled-up entrance to the Slype. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth bays remain the arches which once gave entrance to the chapter-house; these were walled up until about 1850. According to the itinerary of William of Worcester, the chapter-house, which was built by Bishop Walpole (1289-99), projected eastward about 80 feet, terminating with a polygonal apse, as shown by the dotted lines to our plan. The prolongation of this east walk southwards beyond the south walk of the cloisters, led formerly to the infirmary; of which now only remain the three piers in the lower close; the greater part having been pulled down in 1804. During some time in the eighteenth century the infirmary was used as a workhouse. The dormitories in all monasteries were connected with one of the transepts, usually the south, so that the monks could at all hours easily gain access to the cathedral for the performance of the offices of their order; it is probable, therefore, that the rooms over this east walk of the cloisters here at Norwich may have been used as dormitories, with a staircase on the western side of the south transept leading to them. The dormitories are supposed by some antiquarians to have been placed south of the destroyed chapter-house; the door in the twelfth bay of the east wall of the cloisters (marked 5 on plan) probably giving rise to the supposition. The sculptured vault-bosses in this walk are illustrative of incidents in Gospel story and of the legends of the four evangelists. #The South Walk#, the south wall of which was also the wall of the refectory. A door (marked 6 on plan) at the western end of this walk led to the refectory. To the west were probably the kitchen and offices. The sculptured bosses of the vault over this walk are illustrations of scenes from the Book of Revelation. [Illustration: The Prior's Door.] #The West Walk.#--In the first two bays (marked 7 on plan) are the lavatories of the monks; and in the fourth bay, a door (marked 8 on plan) that formerly led to the guest hall, pulled down by Dean Gardiner, 1573-89. The cellarer whose duty it was to look after the guests probably had apartments above. A door in the last bay leads to the #Choir School#; this was formerly the #Locutory#, where the monks indulged in their daily gossip. The western wall is in the Early Decorated style; the body of the room dating from Norman times. The door into the south aisle of the cathedral from this walk, known as the #Monks' Door#, is of an elaborate example of the Perpendicular style. Returning along the #North Walk#, the latest part of the cloisters, we come again to the prior's door, by entering which the rest of the interior may be inspected. #The Ante-choir# occupies one compartment of the nave, and is immediately under the organ loft. It was in mediæval times a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pity. The screens between this ante-choir and the aisles on north and south, were in part formed from the Perpendicular screen which originally divided off the Jesus Chapel from the north aisle of the presbytery. Here in the ante-choir they are certainly preferable, even as "mutilated Perpendicular," to any modern substitute; though it was lamentable vandalism to remove them from their original positions, where they are shown in Britton's "History." #The Choir.#--It may be as well here to give a brief sketch of the various re-modellings which have been effected in the arrangement of the choir and presbytery of the cathedral. Britton shows, in one of his plates published in 1816, the floor of the choir continued at its level until, immediately before the altar, in the apse, it rises by five steps to the level of the sanctuary (the presbytery, after the Reformation, had been cut off from the choir by a wooden screen, in front of which stood the communion table). Across both transepts, in the beginning of the century, there stood cumbrous two-storeyed structures containing pews not unlike boxes at a theatre, as shown in a drawing here reproduced. In 1837, when Salvin re-modelled the choir, these were removed, and on the south side replaced by a stone gallery, and this again has been taken down. In Dean Goulburn's time the floor of the presbytery was raised by two steps, which occurred one bay past the tower arch eastward. [Illustration: The Choir and Presbytery.] Quite recently, there have been further alterations carried out by Dean Lefroy. The eastern arm of the building was closed for two and a half years, and during this time the whole of the whitewash, etc., covering the stonework was flaked off, with much benefit to the appearance of this part of the interior. The level of the presbytery floor has been brought forward to the tower arch, and at the same time the floors of both transepts and choir were brought to one level, and various obstructions in the way of pews and raised floors removed. The choir was opened after this work by Archbishop Benson, 2nd May 1894. [Illustration: A Stall in the Choir.] #The Choir# extends one bay, or the space of two compartments, into the nave, as was usual in cathedral priories, and was originally occupied during the offices of the Benedictines by the prior, sub-prior, and the sixty monks. The bishop--who was the nominal abbot--with his presbyters, occupied the presbytery. The stalls, sixty in number, with an additional two for the prior and sub-prior, facing east, are fine specimens of fifteenth-century work, the detail varying though the main lines are preserved in each. Each of these stalls retains the _subsellium_ or _miserere_, which, hinged at the back, turns up and discloses a small ledge beneath supported by carving, which ledge is supposed to have been used by the aged monks to rest on during the first long office of the Benedictines, which lasted four hours. Did they, however, by any chance allow the seat to fall, they are said to have had to go through the whole of their prayers again as a penance. All these _misereres_ are worth studying, especially as the white and grey paint which had disfigured them has been cleaned off since 1806. The choir was re-arranged by Salvin in 1833, and the chancellor's stall, shown in early prints, against the north-east tower pier, was removed at this time. The presbytery was filled with stalls, which have been lately removed, and in part refixed in the nave. During the recent alterations the row of fifteenth-century stalls, each with its _miserere_, has been removed from its original position in front of the canopied stalls, and placed across the transepts, and their place taken by others, made up of various fragments of old seating. Also the older bishop's throne, erected by Dean Lloyd late in the eighteenth century, "in resemblance to ancient Gothic workmanship," was removed from the south-east pier of the tower and placed in the consistory court, and its place taken (1894) by the present erection, designed by Pearson also in the style of ancient Gothic workmanship, and made by Cornish and Gaymer. The new pulpit, taking the place of that put up after the demolition of the chancellor's stall, was designed by J.D. Seddon, and executed by H. Hems of Exeter. #The Pelican Lectern#, now in the choir (see illustration, p. 110), was formerly hidden away in the Jesus Chapel; it is late Decorated in character; the three small figures were added in 1845. There is enough metal in this piece of mediæval work to make a dozen modern replicas. #The Presbytery# consists of two double severies, or four compartments, terminated by a semi-circular apse of five compartments. The four compartments on either side have, in the lower stages of their design, rich four-centred arches of Perpendicular period, with niches between on the piers; the spandrels are filled in to a horizontal line, above which, at the level of the triforium floor, is an elaborate cusped cresting. The triforium is Norman, lofty in scale. Over this come four light transitional (Decorated to Perpendicular) clerestory windows, with niches canopied forward in the thickness of the wall over the clerestory path; the windows being on the outer face of wall. From the apex of the ogee arches of the niches spring the vaulting ribs of the later vault, without any intermediate shaft. The apse preserves its Norman characteristics in the lower stage as well as at the triforium level. Here the interest of the student must surely be concentrated; as this eastern arm of the cathedral is the earliest part of the building. Herbert, the founder, laid the foundation-stone at the extreme east, probably in the original Norman Lady Chapel, and built westwards, and here, in front of the high altar, was he buried. [Illustration: The Choir and Presbytery in 1816.] The remains of the first bishop's throne, with the westward position, are in the central bay of the apse. Behind it, in the screen wall, can be discerned an arch which looks like a door head; if there be a vault beneath the presbytery, it is probable that this is the walled-up entrance. On the east side of the tower over the arch can be seen the lines of the original Norman roof. The Norman clerestory was so badly damaged by part of the tower falling in 1362 that the present clerestory was built in its place by Bishop Percy (1355-69), the presbytery, at the same time being covered over with a framed timber roof. In 1463 this (together with the spire) was struck by lightning, and fell burning into the presbytery, where it burned itself away. Here and there in the aisles, and wherever the Norman stonework is visible, traces of an orange discoloration give evidence of the heat generated by the mass. The present lierne vault was added by Bishop Goldwell (1472-99), and his rebus, a gold well, can be seen cut on the bosses at the intersections of vaulting ribs. The curious junction of the later vault with the ogee-shaped arches of the clerestory should be noticed. While the original triforium yet remains, the character of the main arcade was altered by the insertion of the four-centred "Perpendicular" arches, the work of Bishop Goldwell, whose tomb is under one on the south side. These lower arches were filled with screens, removed in 1875. The lower apsidal arches, in the beginning of the century, were completely filled with imitation Norman work; this has been cleared away to the original height of the screen wall, with much improvement to the general effect. [Illustration: The Choir Stalls at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.] The present altar, designed by Sir A.W. Blomfield, occupies probably the position of the original altar. The question where the high altar stood has provoked much speculation. Professor Willis placed it more to the westward, thinking that a quatrefoiled opening or hagioscope in the screen wall of the last bay on the north side of the Presbytery (marked 9 on plan) was made to afford a view of it from the aisle. Harrod points out that there is a small hole in the vault above, from which probably hung down the light of the sacrament. The position of this hole, and the fact that such a light would necessarily be placed before the altar, and not over or behind it, is evidence that the altar was about where it is now. Blomfield, again, averred that the people stood in the aisle and confessed to the priest standing in the sanctuary, the "voice coming through a hole made in the wall for that purpose," the hole being the hagioscope referred to. But, as Harrod observes, to do this the priest must have assumed a recumbent position, which is neither convenient nor usual. The real use, no doubt, of this bay of the arcade, was for the Easter sepulchre; its usual position is on the north side of the sanctuary. It will be noticed also that in the aisle immediately behind is a raised gallery of Decorated character, access to which was gained from the sanctuary by steps on the left side of the bay of the arcade, in which occurs the hagioscope. This gallery formed the ante-chapel to the #Reliquary Chapel#, which projected northwards from the aisle of the cathedral; the roof line of this chapel can be seen plainly from the outside. From the reliquary chapel on Good Friday the crucifix and pyx were taken out and deposited in the Easter sepulchre below; and from the vault above, through the hole before referred to, was hung the great sepulchre light. More probably the hagioscope was intended to be used by the watcher at the sepulchre. [Illustration: The Choir, looking West.] The arrangement of the presbytery, as we have already noted when referring to the plates here reproduced from Britton, has undergone many changes; in the beginning of the century the level of the floor of the choir was continued until between the third and fourth bay from the tower in the presbytery, where it rose by five steps to the level of the sanctuary floor. Harrod speaks of two steps up at the third pier past the tower, and three at the fourth or point of the junction of the apse. In Dean Goulburn's time, the sanctuary space was enlarged by being brought forward one bay. The present floor, designed by Sir A.W. Blomfield in glass mosaic and porphyry, was executed by Powell Brothers. Then also was added the somewhat elaborate communicants' rail, executed in bronze and spars. In enlarging the sanctuary, Dean Goulburn moved the three steps from the fourth pier past the tower to the third, and at the same time the two steps at the third pier were moved forward to the first past the tower. And now again, during the recent works of reparation, the presbytery floor has been brought forward at one level to the tower arch, where it descends to the level of the choir floor by five steps: screens which filled the first bays on either side were removed, and similar flights of steps now descend from the presbytery and the north and south aisles. The cumbrous stalls were also removed, and in part refixed in the nave. The stained glass which fills the clerestory windows of the apse dates from 1846, and was made by Yarrington. The window in the triforium just above the altar contains modern stained-glass, dedicated to the memory of Canon Thurlow. #Monuments in the Presbytery.#--The monument of Herbert, the first bishop of Norwich, and the founder of the cathedral, was raised in the centre of presbytery, before the high altar. It was so much injured during the time of the Rebellion that a new one was erected in 1682; this again was levelled, and a slab placed in the floor at the same place now remains. In the second bay eastward from the tower (south side), marked 10 on plan--Bishop Goldwell's (1472-99) chantry, and the altar tomb, remarkable for the effigy in full pontificals (see illustration). Bloxam remarks that it is "the only instance of the monumental effigy of a bishop, prior to the Reformation, in which the _cappa pluvialis_, or processional cope, is represented as the outward vestment instead of the casula or chesible." The tomb is placed to the south of the recess; in the space east was an altar. In the third bay eastward was Bishop Wakering's (1416-25) tomb, the only part of which now remaining is visible from the south aisle, and consists of a series of panels with plain shields and figures two by two, with the several instruments of the Passion. There were formerly steps down into the south aisle from this bay. In the same place is a monument to Bishop Overall (d. 1619). [Illustration: Detail of the Presbytery Clerestory and Vaulting.] In the fourth bay (marked 11 on plan) the altar tomb of Sir William Boleyn of Blickling (d. 1505). Of the fourth bay eastward from tower on the south side (marked 9 on plan), Sir Thomas Browne says: "On the north of the choir--_the presbytery is meant_--between the two arches, next to Queen Elizabeth's seat, were buried Sir Thomas Erpingham and his wives, the Lady Joan, etc., whose pictures were in the painted glass windows next to this place, with the arms of the Erpinghams. The insides of both the pillars were painted in red colours, with divers figures and inscriptions from the top almost to the bottom, which are now washed out by the late whiting of the pillars.... There was a long brass inscription about the tombstone, which was torn away in the late times, the name of Erpingham only remaining." During the recent works, under this same spot was found a leaden coffin enclosing human bones, which were possibly the remains of Sir Thomas Erpingham. An amusing tale is told by Harrod of Roger Bigod's burial in the cathedral. He was the founder of Thetford Priory, and died in 1107, leaving directions that his body should be buried in his own monastery. The prior of Thetford was much perplexed to hear that Bishop Herbert had taken possession of the body, and had determined that it should be interred with all the due solemnities at Norwich. Herbert was anxious to secure for his own foundation so valuable a source of income as the offerings and celebrations at the tomb of a pious man like Bigod; and no doubt the prior was not actuated alone by love for his departed abbot. The bishop won, and Roger Bigod was buried in the cathedral, possibly in the same crypt which is supposed to contain the bones of Herbert himself. #The North Transept#, like the south, is without aisles or triforium, the wall space up to the clerestory level being decorated with wall arcading, varying considerably in position and detail in each compartment. The clerestory follows round from the nave, and overhead is the later lierne vault. It was, together with the eastern arm of the cathedral, closed for two and a half years, during which period the whole of the lime-white and paint encrusting the stonework was flaked off. The work, so far as we can understand, was really a restoration, inasmuch as the original stonework was restored to view. The level of the floor was made to correspond with that of the choir, and a raised wooden floor with the benches thereon removed. The transepts were built by Herbert, the first bishop and founder. Both originally had an apsidal chapel on the eastern wall, but only that on the north arm remains, and access to this now is not possible from the transept. Dedicated at one time to St. Anne, it is now used as a store-house. [Illustration: The Choir Apse.] The vault was added by Bishop Nykke, and was necessitated by a fire in 1509, which consumed the wooden roofs of both transepts. During the recent works the small arcading immediately under the line of the vault was discovered walled up, the builders of the later vault in all probability having done this, as in many cases the line of the vault cuts over the arcading. This was opened up, and is distinctively interesting in helping to reconstruct the original finish to the Norman work under the roof. #The Tower and Triforium Walks#, to which access is gained by a staircase in the east wall of north transept, are of much interest. In the triforium the imposition of the later work on the Norman is clearly noticeable, and the original Norman triple windows walled up with the wall shafts which once supported the semi-arches of the triforium roof. Some of the best views of the interior are to be gained from the triforium and clerestory paths. #Interior of Tower.#--A continuation of the same staircase leads to the clerestory, and from thence access is gained to the tower galleries. Above the arches of the crossing there is a vaulted passage in the thickness of the tower walls, with six arches pierced in the inner wall, so that the parts of the interior can be seen from this walk. Above occurs a smaller wall arcade, stopped before reaching the angle to admit of large circular holes being deeply recessed in the walls; and above this again another vaulted gallery, with three windows on either side, pierced through the tower. In the lower of these walks openings occur through the thickness of the walls into the presbytery, the nave, and transepts, just under the vaults, and interestingly quaint peeps can be gained through them. The #Processional Path#, or aisles to the presbytery, consists of four bays to the north and south, with quadri-partite vaulting, with a similar five following round the line of the apse. A door in the north aisle leads out into the gardens of the bishop's palace, and from thence the exterior of this part of the cathedral is best seen. Crossing the north aisle to the presbytery, at the fourth bay eastward past the tower, marked F on plan, there occurs a curious bridge chapel spanning the aisle, access thereto being gained by a newel staircase on the north side. In our notes on the Presbytery, we have referred to the uses assigned to this structure and its connection with the Easter sepulchre. It formed the ante-chapel to the reliquary chapel projecting northward from the outer wall of the cathedral; it probably was built as a bridge so that relics and symbols might be exhibited thereon to processions passing along underneath. It is decorated in character, and the vault is constructed of chalk. The chapel above is decorated with frescoes, the subjects of which are as follow:--In the western quarter of the four-part vault, The Blessed Virgin between SS. Margaret and Catherine; in the eastern, SS. Andrew, Peter, and Paul; in the northern, SS. Martin, Nicholas, Richard; in the southern, SS. Edmund, Lawrence, and a bishop; a figure of Christ occurs centrally. Copies of these frescoes have been made in facsimile, and hang in the aisle and consistory court. Passing through the small door in the north wall of the north aisle before mentioned to the outside, the lines of the reliquary chapel can be plainly seen, and also of another to the west; the position of both these chapels is shown by dotted lines on the plan. [Illustration: Detail of the Clerestory, North Transept.] A coped coffin lid of Purbeck marble, now in the aisle of presbytery, should be noticed; an inscribed brass once occupied the bevelled edge. [Illustration: The South Aisle of Presbytery, looking East.] #The Chapels.#--In the Norman cathedral, grouped round the east end of the presbytery, was a trefoil of chapels; the one on the north, the Jesus Chapel, yet remains, and as well its fellow on the south. The Lady Chapel, or easternmost of the three (shown on plan by dotted lines) was succeeded by an Early English building, which, in its turn, was destroyed; the entrance arches, of beautiful proportion, alone remaining. [Illustration: Norman Work in the Lantern of Tower.] #The Jesus Chapel# formerly belonged to the bishop. On plan its shape is that of segments of circles joined, the altar placed in the smaller part. A simple wall arcade runs round the lower half, the whole being covered by a plain quadri-partite vault. The windows are insertions of Perpendicular work, varied in character from the Norman work of the chapel itself. The mural colouring is a restoration; it may be something like the original, but the general effect is somewhat garish. [Illustration: The Ante-Reliquary Bridge Chapel.] The altar consists of a slab of grey Barnack-stone, with Purbeck inlaid, the whole being supported on shafts. The tomb of Sir Thomas Wyndham, now in the north of nave, at one time stood here, as also the pelican lectern now in the choir. In Britton, the chapel is shown divided off from the aisle by a stone screen of Perpendicular character; this was removed, and used to form in part the present screens dividing the ante-choir from the aisles. A room over the Jesus Chapel, once the plumbery, is now used as a museum. The Entrance which led to the Lady Chapel is immediately behind the apse, and takes the form of a double arch with clustered columns to the jambs and central pier; the archivolt is deeply moulded and enriched with the typical Early English "dog-tooth" ornament. In the spandrel over the pier, and between the archivolts, is a quatrefoiled opening fitting just under the line of the semi-circular Norman vault. The arches, walled-in up to the impost level, are now filled with glass, as well as the opening. The original circular Norman Lady Chapel was destroyed in part by the fire of 1169; it was repaired by Bishop De Turbe (1146-74), but it was not until the time of Walter de Suffield (1245-57) that it was decided to pull it down and rebuild a chapel in the style of the period--viz. Early English; it was this later building that Dean Gardiner (1573-89) destroyed. Dean Goulburn, in his work on the cathedral, points out that it was the _cultus_ of the Blessed Virgin, which gathered strength all over Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that led to the erection of such sumptuous chapels as this thirteenth-century Lady Chapel of Norwich must have been. When the theological reaction followed, they fell into disuse and neglect, and their final ruin followed when it was found cheaper to pull them down than keep them in repair. The beautiful proportion of the entrance arches still remaining, the archivolt enriched with the "dog-tooth" moulding--the only example of this particular ornament at Norwich--gives one an idea of what the chapel may have been like. During the recent works of reparation in the choir, pieces of stone were found with the "dog-tooth" built inwards: evidently the stone from the pulled down chapel had been used by the masons for the repair of the fabric. #St. Luke's Chapel#, on the south side of the apse corresponding with the Jesus Chapel on the north, was formerly the chapel of the prior. It is now used as the parish church of St. Mary in the Marsh. It has been much restored, and the Decorated windows shown in Britton's view of the east end of the cathedral were replaced early in the sixties, by what the restorer would no doubt have called Norman. The coloured glass was inserted to the east window in 1868, the south window in 1870, the west window in 1881. That in the east and south is by Hardman, in the west by Clayton & Bell. The glass in the south window forms a memorial to Adam Sedgwick, Professor of Geology at Cambridge, and canon of the cathedral for many years. The room over the St. Luke's Chapel is used as the #Treasury and Muniment Room#. #The Bauchon Chapel#--corrupted to Beauchamp--dedicated to St. Mary-the-Less, projects to the south of the third bay of the presbytery aisle past the tower, (marked B on plan). It was founded in the fourteenth century and the vault added in the fifteenth century. Its bosses represent the Life, Death, and Assumption of the Virgin. The chapel is now used as the consistory court. The bishop's throne, erected by Dean Lloyd late in the eighteenth century in the choir, has found a resting-place here. A chapel, founded by Bishop Wakering, and which is said to have been used as the chapter-house after the demolition of that structure, came between the Bauchon Chapel and the east wall of the south transept. Its exact position is, however, doubtful. Harrod, quoting Blomfield, speaks of another chapel that was dedicated to St. Osyth, and which was paved in 1398. [Illustration: Doorway and Screen between South Transept and Aisle of Presbytery.] #The South Transept.#--The screen and doorway filling the Norman arch between the south aisle of presbytery and the south transept should be noticed; it is an interesting piece of work of late Perpendicular design. There is a tradition that the Puritans disliked especially any tracery that took the form of this piece of screen work, calling windows in which it occurred "wicked windows." The intersection of the lines of the tracery made the monogram of the Blessed Virgin; and the fanatics destroyed such work wherever noticed. The tale is interesting, though we cannot vouch for its truth. [Illustration: View across the Apse from the Chapel of St. Luke.] At the time the whitewash and paint covering the south transept was cleaned off a range of small arcading was discovered immediately under the line of the vault, as in the north transept, walled-up evidently when the vault was added. The south transept had in Norman times a circular chapel projecting eastward similar to that remaining to the north transept. This was replaced by a later sacristy during the fifteenth century, and the line of this roof can be seen from the outside. Across the south end there was formerly a stone screen built by Bishop Lyhart (1446-72) communicating with the vestry on the east side, and on the west with the staircase to rooms above the east walk of cloisters. These rooms, as we have before noted, were in all probability the dormitories of the monks, placed that they might so conveniently gain access to the cathedral for the services. On the top of Lyhart's screen came a clock; there are records in the sacrists' rolls of materials used in the construction of an earlier clock that was made between 1322-25--of two hundred pieces of Caen stone and ten of "Gobetz" used to make a base, and that for making thirty images to represent the days of the month, no less than 47s. 4d. was paid. The vault was added by Bishop Nykke at the same time as that to the north transept; the carved bosses representing the early history of Christ--the Presentation, Baptism, etc. The painted glass window on the east side, the subject of which is the Ascension (after Raphael), was erected by the widow of Dean Lloyd about a century since. Speaking of its original position in the triforium of the presbytery, Britton says "it disfigures, rather than ornaments, its station"; it can safely be added that it fulfils the same purpose still. #Monuments.#--Chantrey's statue of Bishop Bathhurst (d. 1837), originally in the presbytery, has been placed here in the south transept. The west wall has a memorial to the men and officers of the 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment of Foot who fell in China and Japan. The east wall has a similar tablet to those of the same regiment who fell in Afghanistan, 1842. A monument, originally on the west wall, to Bishop Scambler (1585-95), has been removed to the south aisle of nave. The county of Norfolk is peculiarly rich in painted screens of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and it would have been strange indeed if no specimen of their work had been preserved in the cathedral. Fortunately, a superb #retable# in five panels, representing scenes in the Passion of our Lord was discovered by Professor Willis in 1847, and is now preserved in the aisle outside the Jesus Chapel. This was formerly an altar-piece to the Jesus Chapel, and was preserved by the happy accident of its admirable carpentry having saved it for the purposes of a table. It appears to have been the work of an Italian artist of about 1370 A.D., and is executed in a kind of _gesso_ work. The size is now 7 ft. 5½ ins. × 2 ft. 4 ins.; but it was formerly surrounded by an ornamented frame, of which portions remain on three sides. The subjects represented are--from the left--The Scourging, Bearing the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension.[1] [Footnote 1: Royal Arch. Institute: Norwich volume, p. 198.] Traces of other decorative painting have also been discovered in the Sacrist's Room, St. Luke's and the Jesus Chapels, the choir aisles, and other places. [Illustration: The Resurrection: from the Painted Retable formerly in the Jesus Chapel.] CHAPTER IV THE SEES OF THE EAST ANGLIAN BISHOPS Herbert, surnamed de Losinga, transferred the see from Thetford to Norwich in 1094, and it is from this period that the history of the cathedral may be said to commence; but, to understand rightly the history of the diocese, we must go back some four centuries and a half to that earlier period when Redwald, king of the East Angles, was first converted to Christianity while paying a visit to the court of Ethelbert in Kent. He, however, proved but a weak disciple, and on being urged by his wife to be true to the old gods, he tried to effect a compromise and worship Jehovah and Baal. He was succeeded by his son Eorpwald, who was converted by missionaries sent by Edwin king of Northumbria. His reign, however, was short, and at his death the people again relapsed into heathenism. Christianity was finally established among the East Angles by Sigeberht, Eorpwald's brother, and it was due to him and through his influence that Felix, a missionary from Burgundy, was enabled to fix his see at Dunwich, A.D. 630. #Felix# (630-47) must needs have been a man strong in his Faith; he christianised the whole of that district which now includes Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire. He died on the 8th of March, and was canonized after death. Felixstowe, where he is said to have founded schools, keeps his memory green in the East Country; but Dunwich, where he fixed his see, has long since been covered by the encroaching waves. Sigeberht resigned the crown to his kinsman Egric, and had entered a monastery to finish his days in peace. But the kingdom was invaded by the Mercians under Penda, and the peaceful old king was compelled to appear in the field to give heart and courage to the East Angles. He, however, declined to employ carnal weapons, and went out against his enemies armed with nothing more formidable than a wand. He was killed in the ensuing engagement, and his successor, Egric, shared the same fate. The administration of the two successors to Felix lasted twenty-two years, from A.D. 647-69. The East Anglian see was then divided by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, into two separate administrations, #Acci#, the fourth successor to Felix, taking Dunwich, while #Beadwin# was consecrated to the see of Elham. From this date there were two lines of East Anglian Bishops; ten diocesans followed after Acci at Dunwich, and nine after Beadwin at Elmham. #St. Humbert# (828-78) was the last of the Bishops of Elmham; he crowned St. Edmund king of the East Angles, and both were murdered by the Danes under Hinguar in 870. After Humbert's death the two sees were again united under #Wildred#, who at this time was Bishop of Dunwich; he, however, preferred Humbert's see at Elham, and removed there, and so the bishopric of Dunwich became extinct. During the next two hundred years (870-1070), there were thirteen bishops of Elmham, and then Elmham shared a similar fate to Dunwich, and the see was moved to Thetford by #Herfast#, a chaplain of William the Conqueror. William of Malmesbury records that Herfast had decided to go down to posterity as a man _who had done something_, and fixed on this removal as an easy solution of the difficulty. #William Galsagus# (1086-91) or de Beaufeu succeeded Herfast, and he in turn was succeeded by Herbert de Losinga, who became first Bishop of Norwich. The history of #Herbert's# episcopate (1091-1119) is the history of the causes which effected the building of Norwich Cathedral, and, although given previously in the history of the fabric, must needs be briefly recapitulated here. Herbert, if not of Norman birth, had received his education in Normandy and was Prior of Fécamp--where he had first taken his vows--when offered by William Rufus the appointment of Abbot of Ramsey. The see of Thetford fell vacant, and Herbert procured his own appointment from the Red King in consideration of a sum of £1900 which he paid into the royal treasury. The remorse which followed on this sin of simony compelled him to go to Rome and seek the consolation and forgiveness of Pope Urban. This was in 1094. He returned, and as expiation for his sin founded the Priory of Norwich, the first stone of which was laid in 1096, the see being removed from Thetford in accordance with the decree of Lanfranc's Synod, held in 1075, that all bishops should fix their sees in the principal town in their dioceses. In cathedral monasteries the bishop, who was elected by the monks, appears to have represented the abbot and took precedence of the prior. Before Herbert's time, the chapter was composed of secular canons and not monks. Herbert, in 1101, placed sixty monks at Norwich, and it may be of interest to quote from Taylor's "_Index Monasticus_" the establishment of the monastery from Herbert's time up to the dissolution in 1538-- The Bishop representing the Chaplains. Abbot. Precentor or chanter. The Lord Prior. Sub-chanter. The Sub-Prior. Infirmarer. 60 Monks. Choristers. Sacrist. Keeper of the Shrines. Sub-sacrist. Lay Officers. Cellarer or bursar. Butlers. Camerarius or chamberlain. Granarii. Almoner. Hostilarii. Refectorer. Carcerarius or gaoler. Pittancier. Archbishop Anselm had refused to acknowledge that the king had the right to exercise a suzerainty over the Church, and declined to consent to lay investitures. An embassy was sent to Rome, and Herbert, who went there a second time about 1116, represented the king. It, however, was in no way satisfactory; the Pope did not want to offend the king, and he wished to retain to himself the right of investiture, so, while congratulating the Archbishop's representatives, he sympathised also with those of the king. The exertion told on Herbert, and at Placentia, on the return journey, he fell sick, and stopped there until he became sufficiently convalescent to journey by short and easy stages to his own cathedral city. He lived to complete much important business, but his days of administration were drawing to a close. He had been Prior of Fécamp, Abbot of Ramsey, Sewer to William Rufus, had governed the East Anglian bishopric first from the episcopal see at Thetford, had transferred it to Norwich, and founded the Cathedral Priory, and if this were not sufficient, he founded and endowed many other churches and monasteries in the East Country. His repentance had been sincere, and in one of his letters he refers to "my past life, which, alas! is darkened by many foul sins." Dean Goulburn credits him with a third journey to Rome, and says that it was at Placentia, on the outward journey, that he contracted so grievous a sickness that he "lay ten successive days without taking food and without uttering a word"; in fact, never reaching Rome, but waiting for and rejoining his brother ambassadors on their return. This journey was undertaken with the view of adjusting the differences that had arisen between the new Primates, Ralph and Thurston. The embassy was not successful, the Pope declining to commit himself to any but the most general statements. One of the last public acts of Herbert's life was to attend the funeral of Queen Matilda on May-day, 1118. He died on the 22nd of July 1119 in the twenty-seventh year of his episcopate, and was buried before the high altar of his cathedral church. #Eborard# (1121-1145), who succeeded Herbert, a son by second marriage of Roger de Montgomery, first Earl of Arundel, was consecrated in 1121. During his episcopate Eborard had parted with the towns of Blickling and Cressingham, which pertained to his see, to two of the more powerful barons, in the hope of securing the rest of the episcopal property, and possibly with the idea of regaining possession of the same when the troubled times should have passed. He was deposed in 1145, and it may possibly be that he had favoured the cause of Maude in the civil wars of the period, and that it was Stephen who compelled him to relinquish his see and spend the rest of his life in exile. He had in 1139 laid the foundation of an abbey at Fontenay, in the south of France, and thither he repaired. He died in 1149. His successor, #William de Turbe# (1146-1174), was elected to the see, and in the year 1146 was consecrated at Canterbury by Archbishop Theobald. In 1168, Becket had written to De Turbe from Vezelay, a town on the borders of Burgundy and Nivernois, and ordered him, by the Pope's authority, to publicly excommunicate Hugh Bigot, Earl of Norfolk. He had robbed the Priory of Pentnay, in Norfolk, of some of its possessions. De Turbe obeyed, notwithstanding the fact that the king had sent officers to prohibit him from so doing. An absolution was obtained from the Pope, but the king was so far incensed that De Turbe considered it advisable to rest in sanctuary at Norwich until the following year, 1169, when he received the royal pardon. [Illustration: Norwich Castle.] Bishop William de Turbe died 17th January 1174, and was buried in the cathedral choir, on the left side of the founder. #John of Oxford# (1175-1200) was consecrated at Lambeth by Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, December 14, 1175; he was clerk or royal chaplain to the king. He had presided over the council of Clarendon, the constitutions of which defined the king's prerogatives in regard to the Church, and chiefly with regard to the question of trying clerks charged with crimes in the civil courts. He was despatched to Rome on an embassy to the Pope, Alexander III., and on its failure was sent by Henry to the Diet at Wurzburg; the king, not having been supported by Alexander, determined to uphold his opponent, and as well he, in direct opposition to the Pope, made John of Oxford Dean of Salisbury, with the result that the future Bishop of Norwich incurred the penalty of excommunication by Becket from Vezelay, "for having fallen into a damnable heresy in taking a sacrilegious oath to the emperor, for having communicated with the schismatic of Cologne, and for having usurped to himself the deanery of the church of Salisbury." The dispute was referred to the Pope at Sens, where John of Oxford, with his fellow-ambassador, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, repaired; John of Oxford was rebuked by the Pontiff for his misconduct, but diplomatically managed to effect his end and retain his deanery. Henry had met Becket at Chaumont, through the mediation of the Archbishop of Sens, and, the quarrel being patched up, John of Oxford was sent to escort him to England. He landed, December 1, at Sandwich, in the year 1170, and within the month was murdered at Canterbury. In 1175, the incursion of William of Scotland was checked, and the king himself taken prisoner by Ranulph de Glanville. John of Oxford and others were commissioned to settle terms of peace; and they executed the treaty of Falaice, afterwards ratified by King Henry at York, by which the Scottish king and his barons were under the necessity of doing homage for their possessions. John of Oxford, who had rendered good service to his sovereign, was rewarded by promotion to the vacant see of Norwich; and during his episcopate sent by the king on an embassy to William, King of Sicily, to convey his majesty's consent to the marriage of his daughter Joan with that monarch. An important step in the administration of justice was taken during this reign--the king divided the country into six circuits, to which certain prelates and nobles were to be sent at certain times to hear suits and save litigants the trouble of attending the king's court at Westminster. John of Oxford was one of a company of five to whom was given jurisdiction over a portion of the country, from Norwich down to Sussex, and from Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire eastward to the coast. On the 9th of July 1189, King Henry died, and was succeeded by his third son, Richard: John of Oxford assisting at the coronation. Richard had no sooner been crowned than he led the crusade to the Holy Land, which had been preparing in Henry's time, and John of Oxford was forced to proceed to the Pope to ask for his absolution of the oath he had taken to follow the Cross, on account of his old age and infirmity. This request being granted, for which he had to pay 10,000 marks, he returned to England. The last public act of John of Oxford--who was one of the most remarkable men who have held the see of Norwich--was most probably his attendance at the coronation of King John. He died June 2, 1200. #John de Grey# (1200-1214) was elected by the monks, and his election being confirmed by King John, he was consecrated by Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was during his episcopate, and through the quarrel between King John and the Pope, that the power of the latter was at length firmly established--a supremacy that was unquestioned until the sixteenth century. The metropolitan see of Canterbury fell vacant in 1205; the sub-prior, who was surreptitiously elected by the monks, and unknown to the king, travelled to Rome for the Pope's sanction of his appointment. When the king became aware of this he was enraged, and despatched an embassy upholding his nominee, John de Grey. The Pope pleased neither party, and named Stephen Langton as Hubert's successor. The Pope, Innocent, sent two legates, of whom Pandulph was one, in 1211 to England, and on John declining to recognise the Papal claims, he was deposed, and his crown offered to the French king Philip. The country had been placed under an interdict, and most of the bishops had left the country. John de Grey remained faithful to the king, and actually invaded France with a small force to attack the invading Philip, but soon was forced to retreat. In the end, John submitted, resigned his crown, which was restored to him, and was compelled to pay to the Church as damages 40,000 marks. John de Grey, who had been sent to Rome to arrange this, died on the return journey at S. Jean d'Angelo, near Poictiers, 18th October 1214. #Pandulph Masca# (1222-1226) was consecrated Bishop of Norwich by Honorius, 29th May 1222. He is supposed to have been a member of a noble Pisan family, and in 1211 had been sent by Pope Innocent to humble King John, which he successfully did. He was again employed as Papal Legate during the young King Henry II.'s minority, and died in Italy, 16th September 1226, having played a prominent part as politician and mediator. #Thomas de Blunville# (1226-1236), the nephew of Hubert de Burgh, Lord Chief-Justice of England, was consecrated in St. Catherine's Chapel at Westminster by Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1236, and was succeeded by #Ralph de Norwich#, of whom but little is known; and is even supposed to have died before his consecration. #William de Ralegh# was consecrated on the 25th September 1239 at St. Paul's by Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been a chaplain of King Henry, and having received the education of a lawyer, from 1224-35 he visited various parts of the kingdom as a justiciary. On the death of Peter de Rupibus he was elected to the see at Winchester by the monks, in direct defiance of the king. The Pope's intervention in the end secured him his see. He died at Tours in 1250. #Walter de Suffield# (1245-57) was elected bishop by the monks after Ralegh's translation. He chiefly busied himself in building and beautifying the cathedral, and there is no record that he took any prominent part in politics. He superintended a general inquisition (known as the Norwich taxation) into the value of the Church revenues throughout the whole of England. He died May 18, 1257, during a visit to Colchester. #Simon de Walton# (1258-66) was consecrated by Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, on March 10, 1258. He held (in 1246) the office of justice-itinerant. Of his administration little is known. He was past seventy when he assumed the charge of the diocese. The barons under De Montfort had beaten the king's army at Lewes, in 1264, and in 1266, from their encampment in the Isle of Ely, attacked and sacked the city. Simon de Walton died January 2, 1266. #Roger de Skerming# (1266-78) was elected by the monks, and was consecrated by Geoffrey Rages in St. Paul's Cathedral in April 1266. It was during his episcopate that the disturbance occurred between the monks and citizens over the annual fair held on Trinity Sunday, in Tombland. He died January 2, 1278. [Illustration: The Guildhall.] #William de Middleton# (1278-88) was consecrated at Lambeth by the Archbishop of Canterbury on May 29, 1278, and was enthroned, and the Cathedral re-dedicated after the sacrilege and fire, on Advent Sunday, 1278, when Edward I. and his queen were present. He was appointed a guardian of the realm, 1279, during the king's absence in France; Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1276; and also steward of Bordeaux. He died September 1, 1288, at Terling, in Essex, and his remains were carried in state to Norwich, and there buried in the Lady Chapel. #Ralph de Walpole# (1289-99) was of Norfolk extraction, and an archdeacon of Ely. He was consecrated to the see on Mid-lent Sunday, 1289, at Canterbury, by John Peckham archbishop. His election, however, was displeasing to the diocese. He was translated to Ely in 1299. #John Salmon# (1299-1325), prior of Ely, had been elected bishop by the monks, but was appointed to the see at Norwich at the same time that Walpole was translated to Ely. He was consecrated by Archbishop Winchelsey October 3, at Canterbury, and was one of the envoys sent to the Court of Philip the Fair King of France, to arrange the marriage of the young king Edward II. (1307). He was appointed chancellor of the realm in 1320. He also went to France again in 1325; and it was on his return that he died July 6, 1325. #William de Ayerminne# (1325-36) was elected to the see by papal bull in 1325, and this overruled the election by the monks of Robert de Baldock. Ayerminne was consecrated to the see September 15, 1325. He had held a prebendal stall at St. Paul's in 1313 and in the next year at Lincoln. In 1324 he was sent as ambassador to Robert Bruce to treat for peace. He died at Charing, March 27, 1336; and was buried in the cathedral before the high altar. He appears to have been cunning and crafty, and not above changing his political views when occasion demanded. #Anthony de Beck# (1337-43) was nominated by the Pope, the monks having chosen Thomas de Hemenhale, who however, went to Worcester. Both were consecrated to their respective dioceses by the Pope at Avignon March 30, 1337. He had been Dean of Lincoln. In 1342 he resisted the Archbishop Stratford's visitation; this must have been a foretaste to the monks of his imperious temper. In 1343 he was poisoned by his own servants. #William Bateman# (1344-54), of a Norwich family, had been archdeacon of Norwich, chaplain to the Pope, and dean of Lincoln. He was consecrated by the Pope at Avignon, 23rd May 1344. During his episcopate in (Edward III.'s reign) 1349, Norwich was visited by "Black Death"; over 51,000 are supposed to have fallen victims to the dread plague. He founded Trinity Hall at Cambridge, 1350; was sent to Rome on an embassy there. He died January 6, 1354. He was buried at the church of St. Mary of Avignon. #Thomas Percy# (1355-69), brother of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, against the wishes of the monks, was elected to the see. He was consecrated January 3, 1355, at Waverly, in Surrey, by the Bishops of Winchester, Sarum, and Chichester. The nobility at this time were securing church preferments for their families to keep pace with the formation of the professions and general advance of learning. He died August 8, 1369, and was buried in the cathedral, before the rood loft. #Henry le Dispencer# (1370-1406) was consecrated at Rome, 21st April 1370. He was hated by the monks, who had no share in his election. He was of martial feeling, and took a prominent part in quelling the local disturbance incident on Wat Tyler's rebellion, 1381. He was employed by Urban VI. against his rival, Pope Clement VII.; was arrested for treason in 1399, and pardoned by Henry IV. He died 1406. #Alexander de Totington# (1407-13), prior of Norwich, was elected by the monks in September 1406. This election found no favour at the Court, and he was imprisoned at Windsor for nearly a year. He was then released, and consecrated at Gloucester by the Archbishop October 23, 1407. He died April 28, 1413, and was buried in the Lady Chapel. #Richard Courtenay# (1412-15) was nominated by Henry V., and consecrated by the Archbishop at Windsor 17th September 1413. He was Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1407-11-13. He died at Harfleur in 1415, while on attendance to the king during the siege of that town. His body was brought to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey. #John Wakering# (1416-25), who was elected by the monks, had become keeper of the privy seal in 1415. He was consecrated at St. Paul's by the Archbishop May 31, 1416. He persecuted the Lollards strongly, and during his episcopate many were burned at the stake. Yet his character apparently was far from being harsh. He died at Thorpe in 1435, and was buried in the presbytery. #Alnwick# (1426-36) was confessor to Henry VI., and in 1420 archdeacon of Salisbury. He was appointed by a papal bull, and consecrated August 18, 1426. He was translated by papal bull in 1436 to Lincoln. #Thomas Browne's# (1436-45) appointment was contained in the same bull that translated Alnwick. He had been previously Dean of Salisbury in 1431, and Bishop of Rochester in 1435. During his episcopate the citizens again laid the priory under siege over a question of dues due to them, and the liberties of the city were, as a consequence, seized by the king. Browne died in 1445, and was buried in the nave, in the front and to the west side of rood. #Walter Lyhart# (1446-72) was nominated by the Pope, and consecrated February 1446, at Lambeth, by the Archbishop Stafford. He had been confessor to Henry VI.'s wife, Margaret of Anjou. He died May 17, 1472. #James Goldwell# (1472-99) had been ambassador of Edward IV. at Rome. He was nominated by the Pope, and consecrated at Rome, October 4, 1472. He died February 15, 1499. #Thomas Jane# (1499-1500) had been Canon of Windsor and Dean of Chapel Royal in 1497; was consecrated on October 20, 1499. He died in September 1500. #Richard Nykke# was consecrated in 1501. He was of infamous character, and no doubt stimulated the zeal of the reformers, who may well have contended that the Church which had such prelates surely needed reformation. He persecuted those opposed to him, and burned many at the stake. He was imprisoned in 1535, for appealing to Rome touching the king's prerogative. He died January 14, 1536. #William Rugg# (1536-50) was the last Bishop of Norwich before the dissolution of the monasteries. Wolsey's downfall had occurred in 1529, and in 1536 the smaller monasteries were dissolved, and in 1538 the larger ones shared the same fate, Norwich being among the number, the last prior, #William Castleton#, becoming dean. William Rugg resigned the see in 1550. [Illustration: Monument of Bishop Goldwell.] On the foundation of the cathedral after the Dissolution the establishment was as follows:-- One dean. Six poor men or bedesmen. Six prebendaries. One sacrist. Six minor canons. Two sub-sacrists. One deacon reader of the Gospel. One beadle of the poor men. One deacon reader of the Epistle. One high steward. Eight lay clerks to be expert in singing. And clerks, porters, One organist, eight choristers. auditors, and a coroner. One precentor. And such constitution, with but few changes, has held down to this day, the prebendaries have become resident canons, and the precentor is also a minor canon. #Thomas Thirley# (1550-54) owed his preferment to Norwich from Westminster to Edward VI. Queen Mary, in September 1554, promoted him to Ely. He was the first and only bishop Westminster has had. #John Hopton# (1554-58) was chaplain to Queen Mary, and aided in the persecution of the Protestants. #John Parkhurst# (1560-75) is credited with having "beautified and repaired" the bishop's palace. #Edmund Freke# (1575-78) was translated from Rochester, and again to Worcester in 1578. #Edmund Scambler# (1585-94) was translated to Norwich from Peterborough. #William Redman# (1594-1602). #John Jegon# (1602-1617) was master of Benedict College for twelve years. #John Overall# (1618-19) was translated from Lichfield and Coventry; he enjoyed the reputation of being the "best scholastic divine in the English nation." #Samuel Harsnet# (1619-28); translated to York in 1628. #Francis White# (1628-31); translated to Ely in 1631. #Richard Corbet# (1632) was translated from Oxford. Of him it was said "he was a distinguished wit in an age of wits, and a liberal man amongst a race of intolerant partisans." #Matthew Wren# (1635-38); translated to Ely in 1638. #Richard Montague# (1638-41); translated from Chichester. #Joseph Hall# (1641-56); translated from Exeter. We have quoted in the notes on nave from his "Hard Measure." #Edward Reynolds# (1661-76). #Antony Sparrow# (1676-85); translated from Exeter. He was the author of a "Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer," 1657. #William Lloyd #(1685-91); translated from Llandaff to Peterborough, and from thence to Norwich. He was deposed in 1690 for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William III. #John Moore# (1691-1707); translated to Ely in 1707. #Charles Trimmell# (1708-1721); translated to Winchester in 1721. #Thomas Green# (1721-23); translated to Ely 1723. #John Lang# (1723-27). #William Baker# (1727-32); translated from Bangor. #Robert Butts# (1733-38); translated to Ely 1738. #Sir Thomas Gooch, Bart.# (1738-48); translated from Bristol. #Samuel Lisle# (1748-49); translated from St. Asaph. #Thomas Hayter# (1749-61); translated to London in 1761. #Philip Yonge# (1761-83); translated from Bristol. #Lewis Bagot# (1783-90); translated from Bristol. #George Horne# (1791-92). #Charles Manners Sutton# (1792-1805); translated to Canterbury in 1805. #Henry Bathurst# (1805-37). #Edward Stanley# (1837-49), father of the late Dean of Westminster. #Samuel Hinds# (1849-57). #John Thomas Pelham# (1857-93). #J. Sheepshanks# (1893). [Illustration: The Pelican Lectern in the Choir.] CHAPTER V THE CITY The visitor to this ancient city will by no means wish to confine his attention to the Cathedral and its precincts; but the space at our disposal will not permit more than a list of other monuments which are worthy of attention. Among these the #Castle# naturally comes first. Occupying the site of a very ancient--probably British--stronghold, the first building was erected in early Norman times. For many years it was the principal fortress of the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, and under them experienced many vicissitudes of fortune at the hands of both Flemings and French. The last event of importance connected with it was the hanging of Kett in 1549. The keep is in dimensions 96 x 92 feet, its height being 72 feet (see p. 99). The #Guildhall# contains many interesting relics of the civil life of Norwich during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including those of the famous Guild of S. George, established in 1385 and dissolved in 1731 (see p. 103). #St. Andrew's Hall#, a fifteenth-century building, was formerly the nave of the Church of the Blackfriars. It contains some good pictures of the English School. Among the Churches, that of St. Peter, Mancroft (fifteenth century), is well worth a visit. Its tower, 98 feet in height, contains one of the most famous peals of bells in England, and has always been the headquarters of a notable band of change-ringers. Of the others, St. Gregory, Pottergate, has some interesting antiquities; St. Giles', St. Helen's, and St. John the Baptist are all of importance: the latter has some good mural painting and monumental brasses, which should also be examined. St. Michael's, Coslaney, is a well-known type of the Norfolk flint construction. At #Pull's Ferry# the water-gate to the precincts is still standing. It is an interesting piece of flint work. The ferry itself, of which a view is given here, is a favourite sketching place. [Illustration: Pull's Ferry.] THE END * * * * * [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL.] REFERENCES TO PLAN. A. Dean's Vestry. B. The Chapel of St. Mary-the-Less. C. The Chapel of St. Luke. D. The Jesus Chapel. E. Bishop Nykke's Chapel. F. The Ante-Reliquary Chapel. G. The High Altar. H. Site of destroyed Chapter-House. J. The Locutory, now used as the Choir School. Y. A Main Pier in Nave. Z. A Subsidiary Pier in Nave. * * * * * 1. Altar Tomb of Sir Thomas Wyndham. 2. " " Sir John Hobart. 3. Tomb of Chancellor Spencer. 4. Altar Tomb of Bishop Parkhurst (1560-74). 5. Door in the East Walk of Cloisters. 6. Door once leading to Refectory. 7. The Monks' Lavatories. 8. Door once leading to the Guest Hall. 9. The Easter Sepulchre and Burial-place of Sir Thomas Erpingham. 10. Bishop Goldwell's Chantry. 11. The Altar Tomb of Sir William Boleyn of Blickling (_d._ 1505). * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation and the spelling of proper names, dialect, and obsolete word spelling have been maintained as in the original. 
19769	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. VOL. I. AUGUST, 1895 No. 8. FRAGMENTS OF GREEK DETAIL. The Art of Greece during the fifth century, B.C., was developed in an amazingly short time from a condition of almost archaic rudeness to that of the greatest perfection which the world has ever seen. At the close of the Persian wars the Athenians, under Pericles, began rebuilding their city and perfecting themselves in all the arts of civilization, and their progress in the next half century will always be a subject for wonder. It is especially wonderful that works of art of the character produced at this time should have been the outcome of political maneuvering: for if Plutarch is to be credited the scheming of Pericles to obtain and hold possession of the government of Athens was the immediate cause of the erection of these marvellous monuments. In order to increase his influence with the common people Pericles devoted the treasure which had been contributed by the other Greek cities for defence against the barbarians to the beautifying of Athens, and to furnishing them with games and amusements, and especially to the erection of the group of temples upon the Acropolis, in this way distributing patronage and keeping his people employed much as a modern political "boss" does the same in our day. The Parthenon, which is esteemed the grandest of all monuments of Greek art, embodying as it does the highest achievement in sculpture and architecture, was built just after the middle of the fifth century, although the precise date at which it was begun and finished is uncertain. The Erechtheion and Propylæa were probably built a few years later, but their exact dates are also in doubt. The sculptor, Phidias, was the friend and adviser of Pericles and to him was given the general charge of all matters relating to art. Under him were grouped architects, sculptors, and artisans of all schools and trades--Ictinus and Calicrates as architects of the Parthenon, Mnesicles of the Propylæa, and many others--such an assemblage as only Greece in her most glorious epoch could bring together. The work of this period shows that happy union of technical perfection and the expression of only the loftiest ideas, in which, as Plutarch says, the architect made it his ambition to "surpass the magnificence of his design with the elegance of its execution." The skill and delicacy as well as the subtle appreciation of refinements of form and finish exhibited in the treatment of details such as those shown in our plates are almost beyond comprehension. The workmanship is so perfect that it is difficult to see how it could be improved upon. Stuart, in his account of the Parthenon, states that he found two stones, one merely laid upon the other in the stylobate of this building, which had been ground to so fine a joint that they had actually united and become one. The refinements in measurements are such that it has been asserted that a variation of one twentieth of an inch from the dimensions intended is all that need be allowed--the width of the two ends of the building agreeing to within this amount. The entasis of columns and curvature of what would ordinarily be straight lines is familiar to all students of architecture. Photographs of Greek architecture are by no means common or easy to obtain, and the subjects given as illustrations of the present issue of THE BROCHURE SERIES are presented, not as in the preceding numbers, either all from a single building, or of similar features from several buildings, but merely as fragments of detail, representing the period of Greek art when architecture and sculpture had reached their highest development. [Illustration: LVII. Capital from the Parthenon, Athens.] LVII. CAPITAL FROM THE PARTHENON, ATHENS. The Parthenon of Pericles was built on the site of an older temple as a treasury, and repository of the colossal statue of Athena, made by Phidias from gold and ivory. The Doric order, the capital of which is shown in our plate, needs no description here as probably no other single order is so generally known. After various transformations the building was blown up by the Venetians in 1687 and has since remained in ruins. [Illustration: LVIII. Capital from the Erechtheion, Athens.] [Illustration: LIX. Base from the Erechtheion, Athens.] [Illustration: LX. Capital of Anta, from the Erechtheion, Athens.] LVIII. CAPITAL FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. LIX. BASE FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. LX. CAP OF ANTA FROM THE ERECHTHEION, ATHENS. The Ionic order of the Erechtheion is the one which is best known and has been most frequently copied and adapted in modern work. It is at the same time the richest and most delicately refined of the Greek Ionic orders, and this is equivalent to saying of all orders whatsoever. This order of which the cap and base are given in our plates belongs to the north porch. There were two other fronts to the building which was, to all intents and purposes, three temples united in one. The famous caryatid porch faces the south, looking toward the Parthenon. [Illustration: LXI. Fragment from South Side of the Acropolis, Athens.] LXI. FRAGMENT FROM SOUTH SIDE OF ACROPOLIS, ATHENS. Although this fragment was found at some distance from the Erechtheion it is without much doubt a portion of that building. [Illustration: LXII. Capital from the Propylæa, Athens.] LXII. CAPITAL FROM THE PROPYLÆA, ATHENS. The Propylæa, or gate to the Acropolis, was built at about the same time as the Parthenon, between the years 436 and 431 B.C. It combines the Doric and Ionic orders, but both are most skilfully used with equal grace and nobleness of proportion. [Illustration: LXIII. Fragment of Cyma from the Tholos, Epidauros.] LXIII. FRAGMENT OF CYMA FROM THE THOLOS AT EPIDAUROS. The Tholos of Polykletos at Epidauros was a circular building 107 feet in diameter, situated within the sacred enclosure. It had two concentric rows of columns, the exterior order being Doric, and the interior Ionic, but with Corinthian caps of the design shown in plate LXIV. [Illustration: LXIV. Capital from the Tholos, Epidauros.] LXIV. CAP FROM THE THOLOS AT EPIDAUROS. The two fragments shown are the result of recent excavations and are among the most beautiful examples of Greek detail extant. Architectural Schools. HARVARD UNIVERSITY. The writer of "The Point of View" in _Scribner's Magazine_ recently called attention to the distinction between what he calls "cultivation" and "civilization." As he very aptly states it, "culture according to the common acceptance of it, is largely the cultivation of the mind; civilization would seem to be the cultivation of the sympathies, the tastes, and the capacity for giving and receiving sound pleasures. The most civilized man is the man with the most catholic appreciation, the man who can be the most things to the most people--the man, to put it briefly, who knows best how to live. The man who is civilized can use all the culture he can get, but he can get on and still be civilized with a very moderate outfit of it. But the man who has culture and has not civilization, is very badly handicapped." Probably no walk of life offers more opportunities for the advantageous application of what is meant in this quotation by civilization than that of the architect; and probably in no other profession does the "civilized" man have greater advantages over his less civilized fellows. The successful architect requires a broad and catholic culture, but in addition must be a man of the world in the best and most comprehensive sense. Opportunities for social improvement will often make the difference between success and failure in his professional life. On this account too much stress can hardly be put upon the importance to a young man of his social environment. The life in an old university set in the midst of a community where the traditions of generations of cultivated families have established a social atmosphere, it might be said, is one of the best and most powerful civilizing influences. Such an opportunity as this is offered at Harvard, and it is this which gives to the architectural course at Harvard its main advantage over that of other schools in this country. The department itself is comparatively young, having only just completed its second year. It is under the direction of the faculty of the Lawrence Scientific School, one of the principal schools of the University. Its special corps of instructors consists of Prof. H. Langford Warren assisted by Messrs. George F. Newton and John W. Bemis. In addition to this, lectures and instruction are given by members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes the faculty of the Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard College and the Graduate School, among whom are Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, Prof. White, Prof. Greenough, Prof. Moore, Prof. Hollis and others. Although students in this department do much of their work in rooms specially provided for them, in their general studies and lectures they are associated with the other students of the University and thus reap the advantages coming from such association. Throughout, it has been the purpose in this school, to treat architecture as a fine art and not merely as the science of construction, and to this end instruction in the general history of the Fine Arts and practice in design are made the central features about which the other studies are grouped. The course as laid out is intended to cover four years, and may be supplemented by post-graduate work; while on the other hand a large part of the general studies may be anticipated by students of the College who wish to take the professional studies after completing the usual course in the college proper. Especial stress is laid upon educating the taste and discrimination of the student, and association with cultivated men and familiarity with the best efforts of the past, are the two most important influences to this end. Personal. Mr. C. D. Maginnis, recently returned from abroad, and who has for several years been in the office of Mr. E. M. Wheelwright, city architect, has opened an office at 27 School Street, Boston. He is prepared to do all kinds of architectural drawing, in pen, pencil, or water color, and will work up competition drawings and sketches. Mr. W. H. Kilham, Mr. E. P. Dana, and several others have recently been added to the working force of Messrs. Winslow & Wetherell, whose office is now the largest in Boston. Mr. W. T. Partridge, who has for several years been with Messrs. Eames & Young, in St. Louis, has severed his connection with them and will probably return to the East. Club Notes. The summer work of the Sketch Club of New York has been laid out to include sketching trips in the outlying neighborhood of New York City. On alternate Saturdays members of the Club meet at one of the piers and take a small steam yacht to points along the East River and Long Island Sound, spending the Sunday in sketching. On the intermediate Sundays, rambles through West Chester occupy those who are disposed to join in the excursions. These trips are laid out to include the time from July 13 to September 28. The competition of the Chicago Architectural Club upon the subject "Picturesque Chicago," closes September 2, and the club begins its regular year's work on that date with an exhibition of the sketches submitted in this competition together with other work of the summer. The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY BATES & GUILD, 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. Subscription Rates per year 50 cents, in advance Special Club Rates for five subscriptions $2.00 Entered at the Boston Post Office as Second-class Matter. * * * * * SPECIAL NOTICE. Back numbers of THE BROCHURE SERIES _are not_ kept in stock. All subscriptions will be dated from the time received and subscribers who wish for the current numbers must place their subscriptions at once. * * * * * The illustration which we give on another page, of a gala night of the "P. D." club will appeal to the many friends of the P. D.'s who are distributed from end to end of the country. The descriptive article by one of the members which is begun in this number will also give an indication to those who are not already familiar with this organization, of its character and purpose. That a combination of serious work and relaxation can be reconciled without sacrificing the former, has been demonstrated in this case, for the P. D.'s are the mainstay of the Boston Architectural Club and have accomplished considerable in other directions, having done very notable work in several of the Beaux-Arts Society's competitions. Their motto and seal shown in the other illustration is a remarkable example of impromptu decoration. * * * * * The August 22 issue of the _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_ contains a description of the School of Architecture and Applied Arts of University College, Liverpool, and an address by Mr. T. G. Jackson, the well-known English architect and author, delivered at the inauguration of the school on May 10 last. Special provisions are made for courses in Architecture, Sculpture and Modelling, Decorative Painting, Wrought Iron Work, and Wood Carving, accompanying theoretical instruction with actual work in the studios and shops. Mr. Jackson's remarks are worthy careful attention and will be found as valuable to American students as to those to whom they were addressed. His opinions upon the study of architectural history are interesting in connection with the views of the American writers to which we referred last month. He says: "The reverence with which we have been taught to regard old work has misled us into a slavish worship of precedent, and an abject craving for authority by which to shape our own work. Close imitation of old work has been regarded as the only safe course, deceptive imitation of it the highest measure of success."... "Above all it should be the student's object to discover the principles of design by which the successive styles were governed, and in tracing their history he should trace the influence of circumstance and accident, which modify the current art of the day.... The history of architecture, and the development of style out of style, should never be taught without incessant reference to the constructional methods which were employed, and which played the principal part in the changes resulting from their employment." * * * * * Apropos of the perennial discussion of the question of professional ethics which from time to time comes into prominence in the meetings of the American Institute of Architects the following may be of interest. It is appended to the card of a certain architect which is published as an advertisement in a local paper and reads: "Any kind of architectural work promptly attended to and satisfaction guaranteed." In the resolutions recently adopted by the Boston Society of Architects concerning professional ethics it was maintained that architects should not advertise. The advertisement above may savor somewhat of its surroundings (above it a hair renewer is advertised and below it penny-royal pills) and suggest too much the "shoes tapped while you wait" order of advertising, but we fail to see why architects should be restrained from advertising if there are any benefits to be derived from it. And for our part we think that there are few architects whose business or practice might not be improved by judicious advertising. It is easy to lay down an arbitrary dictum and say that no professional man shall advertise, but what argument can apply to architects in this respect that does not equally apply to civil engineers and to landscape architects? And no one objects to the advertisements of the latter. The publication of architects' designs in the professional journals is in many cases advertising, pure and simple, but is not on this account to be condemned. The truth of the matter is that the exact point where advertising begins and ends is impossible to determine. One kind of advertising is considered allowable and dignified, another is not. In consequence there is opportunity for many differences of opinion. The "P. D.'s." If Chimmie Fadden were asked to translate the letters P. D., he would undoubtedly answer, "What 'ell?" and it must be acknowledged that this answer does credit to Chames's insight; but at the same time we feel sure that Chames would not be offended if he were informed that his favorite expression is not nearly such an appropriate definition of P. D. as it is of the play of Madame Sans Gêne, all rumors to the contrary notwithstanding And if Chames could be induced to give up for the while his everlasting search for a bull pup, we might proceed to inform him to the best of our ability what it really does mean. "The Lord gives good meat but the devil sends cooks," but Chames apparently lending a willing ear, we take his life in our hands, and firstly:-- And that is, that P. D. is not an abbreviation for Poor Debtors, as some would have it, but for Poor Draughtsmen; which is after all, perhaps, a distinction without a difference. Poor in this case has no reference to the quality of the draughtsmen's work, for, as our song truly says,-- "The P. D. is a man Who does the best he can, No matter what the problem it may be. He can draw a quarter scale, He can draw a full detail, And draw his pay upon a Saturdee." The club, for such it is, was at first overburdened with the name of The Poor Draughtsmen's Saturday Night Club, but the member who wrote the specification of the club, started in by writing the name and then proceeded as follows: "The name of the club shall be the above (it is too long to write again)." The hint was taken and it has since been known as the P. D.'s. The club resulted from the more or less accidental coming together of men of congenial spirit, and the desire to cultivate each other's acquaintance more intimately than was possible in the larger Architectural Club of which they are all members, and over which are their club rooms. [Illustration: SEAL OF THE P. D.'S.] The work of fitting up these rooms was done by the members themselves, and an added interest is given them by the constantly changing exhibitions on their walls. The bulletin board is also a never-ending source of delight. The club at present consists of thirteen members, all of whom on entering it, as a sort of architectural baptism, receive new names, and, ye gods, what names! What more is to be desired when one may, when he dines or designs, touch elbows with such choice spirits as Ictinus, Michael Angelo, Vitruvius, Vignola, Piranesi, San Gallo, Bramante, Christopher Wren, Inigo Jones, Charles Bulfinch, Viollet le Duc, Gamier Frères (N.B.--There is only one of him), and Brian Boru. [Illustration: A GALA NIGHT IN THE ROOMS OF THE "P. D.'S."] The one requirement for admission is good fellowship with the saving clause, that this good fellowship, like Faith, must be accompanied by good works. Its organization is of the simplest character, there being no constitution or rules of any kind, except the joke known as the specification be regarded as such. Much of the charm of the club is due to this absolute freedom from restraint. The officers are the president, treasurer, and secretary, who manage the affairs of the club during their term of office. Each member presides in turn, the term of office being one month, the succession being arranged by lot. A well-known writer deplores the lack of humor in the fiction of the day, and the tendency of those who should know better, to constantly preach us sermons upon our least admirable failings. Alas! it is not fiction alone that has taken to the pulpit, for Architecture has also its preachers, and our journals are loaded with their sermons, which fortunately for architecture, very few ever read. While acknowledging the fact that a little seriousness now and then may be relished by even a P. D., a good hearty laugh is the one thing in this dreary old world of ours that they most appreciate. No one realizes more thoroughly than they that,-- "Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt, And every grin so jolly draws one out." The principal object of the members, then, is to amuse themselves. The club is not intended as a workroom, but as our P. D. poet expresses it, a place where,-- "Freed from the fret of routine's slavish toil, They meet once more in freedom's jollity. No thought of care comes to them now to spoil The merry jest, the gay frivolity." Nevertheless they have found time for much serious work, but inasmuch as work is said to speak for itself, we will confine our attention to some of the things by means of which the members have passed many happy hours. Upon entering the club the member not only receives a new name, but his biography containing more or less of the truth about him is written and placed in the records. A song is also composed in his honor, and on festal occasions he is greeted with it upon his entrance. Perhaps the greatest event of the year is the annual dinner, or the "Centurial Dinner" as it is called, from the very general conviction that "Better one year with the P. D.'s than a cycle of Cathay." Every one is supposed to do something for this occasion, but he is given perfect liberty as to what he shall do, and he may answer, for instance, the toast of The Architecture of the Greeks with an essay on The Use and Abuse of the Cocktail, with the assurance that his consistency will not be doubted. The menu card is usually of sufficient interest to furnish amusement until the actual hostilities begin. Upon each guest at this dinner is conferred the honorary title of "Draughtsman." The installation of a new president, which occurs monthly, is also the occasion of much mirth, as are also the departures for or the arrivals from Europe of members. But no matter how closely these events follow each other, one can depend upon each of them being distinctly different; and after one has attended a score or so of them he begins to wonder when this versatility will end and they will begin to repeat themselves. Notwithstanding the unvaried success of these affairs, none of them have been attended with more than a slight expenditure of time or money. In decorating the rooms the same old articles have been made to do service any number of times, but always in such a manner as to obtain an entirely different effect. Many of the best things in this line have been done on the spur of the moment. The club seal, for instance, was thrown together in a few minutes, some one in the meantime looking up an appropriate motto, the occasion being an impromptu festival of Gambrinus, which occurred one Christmas eve. At another time a wonderful chandelier was constructed of a stretcher, a Chinese lantern, and twenty beer bottles, which were utilized to hold candles, and a placard on each told that they were manufactured by the P. D. Electric Co. and were each of one candle power; the whole being draped with some brilliantly dyed stuffs that had served as costumes at the Art Students' Festival. _(To be continued.)_ 
19881	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 19881-h.htm or 19881-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/8/8/19881/19881-h/19881-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/9/8/8/19881/19881-h.zip) Transcriber's notes: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation and the spelling of proper names, dialect and obsolete word spellings, have been maintained as in the original. 4. Scribal abbreviations in the original text which used a tilde above a letter have been transcribed as [~x], where x is the letter over which the tilde appears. 5. A single letter super- or subscript is transcribed as '^' (super) or '_' (sub) followed by the letter. If multiple letters are super- or subscripted, these are enclosed in braces {} after the '^' or '_'. THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CARLISLE A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See by C. KING ELEY With Twenty-Nine Illustrations [Illustration: CARLISLE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] [Illustration] London George Bell & Sons 1900 W. H. White and Co. Limited Riverside Press, Edinburgh GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr. John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for further detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE. EDWARD F. STRANGE. AUTHOR'S PREFACE Amongst the works consulted in compiling this handbook may be specially mentioned Nicolson and Burn's "History and Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland," Hutchinson's "History and Antiquities of the City of Carlisle," Jefferson's "History and Antiquities of Carlisle," Billings' "Architectural Illustrations, History and Description of Carlisle Cathedral," "Guide to the Cathedral, Carlisle," by R.H. and K.H. Much help has also been obtained from the late J.R. Green's historical works, as well as the various biographies in the "National Dictionary of Biography." I also wish to record my thanks to my friend, Mr. A. Tapley, who kindly read through part of the manuscript; and to Mr. A. Pumphrey for permission to reproduce the photographs used. C.K.E. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity 3 CHAPTER II.--The Cathedral, Exterior 12 The Nave 12 The North Transept 15 The Tower 15 The North Aisle of the Choir 16 The East End 19 The Choir 21 CHAPTER III.--The Cathedral, Interior 25 The Nave 25 The Font and Organ 26, 28 The North Transept 28 The Tower 30 The South Transept 30 St. Catherine's Chapel 32 Monuments in the Transepts 34 The Choir 39 The Triforium 42 The Clerestory 44 The Roof 44 The Hammer-beams 45 The East Window 46 The Salkeld Screen 52 The Bishop's Throne and Pulpit 53 The North Choir Aisle 54 Monuments in the North Choir Aisle 56 Legendary Paintings 58 The Retro-choir 66 Monuments in the South Choir Aisle 68 The Bells 70 The Monastic Buildings 73 The Fratry 73 The Deanery 74 CHAPTER IV.--History of the See 75 CHAPTER V.--The Castle 89 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Cathedral from the South-West _Frontispiece_ Arms of the Diocese _Title Page_ The Cathedral from the North-East 2 The Cathedral and Precincts (from an Old Plan) 7 The Exterior from the North 13 The North Door of Nave 15 The South Door 17 Elevation of East End 18 The East End 20 The Nave, South Side 24 Longitudinal Section 27 View across the Transepts in 1840 29 South Transept and St Catherine's Chapel 31 One Bay of the Nave 33 Screen, St Catherine's Chapel 35 The Choir, looking West 37 One Bay of the Choir 41 The Choir, looking East, in 1840 43 The Choir and East Window 49 Miserere in the Stalls 50 North Aisle of the Choir 55 East End of the Fratry and South Transept 63 The Crypt under the Fratry 65 The Fratry 71 The Abbey Gateway 77 Redness Hall 83 Old Plan of the Castle 90 The Castle 91 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL 93 [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-EAST. From an original Drawing by R.W. Billings.] CARLISLE CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF THE HOLY AND UNDIVIDED TRINITY The details of the founding of the cathedral of Carlisle are very precise and clear. When William Rufus returned southwards after re-establishing the city of Carlisle, he left as governor a rich Norman priest named Walter. He began at once to build a church to be dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was to have in connection with it a college of secular canons. Walter did not, however, live to see the building finished, and Henry I. took it upon himself to complete the good work. It is said that his wife on one hand, and his chaplain on the other, urged him to do this. By the beginning of the twelfth century (1123) he founded and endowed a priory of regular Augustinian canons, making his chaplain the first prior. Ten years afterwards--1133--Henry founded the see of Carlisle, and the priory church became the cathedral. At its endowment Henry laid on the altar the famous "cornu eburneum," now lost. This horn was given, instead of a written document, as proof of the grants of tithes. Its virtue was tried in 1290 when the prior claimed some tithes on land in the forest of Inglewood, but it was decided that the grant did not originally cover the tithes in dispute. "The ceremony of investiture with a horn is very ancient, and was in use before there were any written charters. We read of Ulf, a Danish prince, who gave all his lands to the church of York; and the form of endowment was this: he brought the horn out of which he usually drank, and before the high altar kneeling devoutly drank the wine, and by that ceremony enfeoffed the church with all his lands and revenues." (Jefferson, "History of Carlisle," 171_n._) Aldulf (or Æthelwulf) was made the first bishop, and he placed Augustinians in the monastery attached to the cathedral. These were called "black" canons, their cassocks, cloaks, and hoods being of that colour. A further difference between them and other monks was that they let their beards grow and covered their heads with caps. As a consequence of this order being introduced into the monastery the Episcopal chapter was Augustinian, other English cathedral chapters being generally Benedictine. On some high ground between the west wall of the city, and the road to the castle the cathedral was built. The site was nearly square in shape, about five acres in extent, and was the highest part in Carlisle after that on which the castle stood. This situation was very advantageous owing to the presence of water near the surface, its frontage to the city wall, and proximity to the river. A narrow piece of ground of about half-an-acre, extending along the walls, and upon which the monastic grounds abutted, was in after years given to the priory by its owner, Robert de Eglesfield, who was chaplain to Philippa, wife of Henry III. The church was set out, almost due east and west, diagonally across the north-west part of the site, the west end being about 100 feet from the boundary; and was finished about 1130. Its nave consisted of eight bays, and was about 140 feet long. There was a very fine west front with a handsome central doorway of four orders. The western wall was more than 7 feet in thickness, and had four flat pilaster buttresses nearly 7 feet broad, and 15 inches deep. The nave was provided with north and south aisles covered with high-pitched wooden roofs, while the north and south transepts were also roofed in a similar manner, and a small apsidal chapel projected from the eastern face of each. The archway of the south transept apse is now the entrance to St. Catherine's Chapel. With the exception of the present elaborate entrance to the south transept and the window above it, the transept is identical with that of the Norman minster. The choir was only 80 feet long, reaching to the end of the present stalls. Eastward it terminated in an apse. Its width can be judged from traces of the original roof, still perceptible in the west wall of the present choir. In accordance with a frequent arrangement, the ritual choir extended westward of the crossing, and included the two eastern bays of the nave. In the centre was a low square typical Norman tower, 35 feet square, of which the lower parts of the piers remain. To allow for the extension of the ritual choir the eastern and western arches of the crossing were carried on corbels. White or grey sandstone from quarries in the district was used in the construction of the minster, perhaps supplemented by stones from the Roman wall. Stucco was applied to the exterior, red lines marking the joints. There is no doubt that this stucco has materially helped to keep the Norman stone-work in a good state of preservation. It will be seen then that the original church was a Norman minster, of moderate size, consisting of a nave, with north and south aisles, a small choir, a low square tower, and north and south transepts. Thus it remained till about 1250, when, as usually happened, the clergy became dissatisfied with the smallness of their choir, and a new one was projected on a much larger scale. Its length was to be equal to the nave, while in height and breadth it was to be greater. The increased length allowed room for the ritual choir on the east side of the crossing. Any extension of the cathedral on the south was prevented by the presence of the conventual buildings: therefore the north choir-aisle was thrown into the choir, and a new one added northward of the former. One consequence of this alteration is seen by comparing the entrance to each aisle. That of the south choir aisle is the original Norman arch, while the entrance to the north aisle is a beautiful late thirteenth-century arch (Decorated). The corresponding Norman arch of the north aisle has been blocked up, but is still easily traced. Another consequence is, that the extension having taken place on one side only, the eastern arch of the tower fills but a part of the west end of the choir. The choir arch consequently is symmetrically placed with regard to the roof of the nave, but not with the choir roof; and the central line of the choir does not coincide with that of the nave; for, though the south wall of the choir is in a line with the south wall of the nave, the choir being 12 feet broader than the nave, the axis of the former is to the north of the axis of the nave. The view from the east end looking towards the nave is quite spoiled by this want of symmetry. Not very much remains to-day of this thirteenth-century Early English choir. In 1292, just as it had been roofed in, a terrible fire, the most disastrous the cathedral has ever experienced, destroyed everything except the outer walls of the aisles, the graceful lancet windows, and the beautiful cinque-foiled arcading beneath them. Belfry and bells, too, shared in the destruction. One hundred years passed away while a new choir was being built. Bishop Halton (1292-1325), a very energetic prelate, and a great favourite of Edward I., began the work, and laboured at it for quite thirty years, and was followed by Bishops Kirkby, Welton, and Appleby. It was arranged to rebuild the choir on a still larger scale, a bay being added, and the east end rebuilt from the foundation. The general plan of the earlier work of the aisles was followed in the new bay. The glory of the cathedral--the great east window, which marks a distinct transition in art--was also projected, but at this time only carried up as high as the top of the choir arches. The wall arcade and the lancet windows above were repaired, and later work of a more elaborate character added. The great arches, and the groin ribs of the aisle ceilings were underset with new pillars; so that we get Early English _arches_ of the thirteenth century on Decorated _pillars_ of the fourteenth century. After some years interval, building was resumed about 1350. The Decorated portions of the choir were now put in hand: the triforium, clerestory, and upper part of the east end, as well as the tracery and much of the mouldings of the east window and the roof. The carving, hitherto unfinished, was now completed; but, as the style had developed in the mean-time, we once more find examples of decidedly early work with much later work both above and below. The roof inside was finished with a very fine panelled ceiling. The building was finished 1375-1400, and in the roof were placed the arms of those who had helped in the rebuilding--the Lacys, the Nevilles, and the Percys. The material used for the new choir was red sandstone, both for the interior and the exterior, giving in some cases a curious patched appearance to the walls. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AND PRECINCTS. From an old Plan in Lyson's "_Magna Britannia_."] About 1380-1384 the east window was filled with glass. In 1392 the cathedral once again suffered from fire, and the damage was repaired by Bishop Strickland (1400-19). No efforts appear to have been made to bring the nave into correspondence with the extended choir, and the end of the thirteenth century marks the close of the cathedral's history in the direction of its enlargement and beautifying. On a review of the cathedral we find in the aisles thirteenth-century work, on a small scale, in its perfection. The south aisle shows development of window tracery, and the gradual steps taken towards uniting single lights under one arch. Tracery carried to its perfection can be seen in the east window. Early English carving is shown in St. Catherine's Chapel, especially in the corbels; and the more naturalistic carving which was developed at a later period, is exhibited in the corbels of the roof of the choir and the capitals of the piers. The latter afford the most complete representation of the seasons known to exist. On the south side (from east to west) are the first six months, and on the north side (west to east) the remainder. About 1401, William Strickland being Bishop of Carlisle, the tower was rebuilt on its original scale, probably because the foundations would not permit one to be erected proportioned to the size of the choir. It was capped by a short wooden spire covered with lead; this, however, was removed in the seventeenth century. The forty-six stalls in the choir, erected on a plinth of red sandstone, belong to this period (1401-19). The elaborate tabernacle work by Prior Haithwaite (1433) was originally gilded and coloured, and the niches were filled with images. Prior Gondibour (1484-1507) painted the backs of the stalls. The remains of some screens he added to the choir may still be seen in St. Catherine's Chapel. He had the roof painted in red, green, and gold, on a white ground; painted the choir pillars white, diapered with red roses nearly 12 inches in diameter, and with the letters I.H.C. and J.M. in gold; and no doubt finished whatever decorative work of the choir still had to be done. Laurence Salkeld, last prior, and first dean, erected the very fine Renaissance screen on the north side of the choir, near the pulpit. It bears his initials, followed by the letters D.K. (_Decanus Karliolensis_), of his new title. The priory was surrendered to the Crown in January 1540, and the last prior--Salkeld--was made dean of the chapter founded by Henry VIII. The revenue was at that time estimated at £ 481 per annum. Five years later, June 1545, the present foundation was settled, and the dedication changed to that of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. We get a glimpse of the cathedral in the first half of the seventeenth century, in the record left by some officers who visited the English cathedrals in 1634. Carlisle they curtly speak of as "more like a great wilde country church" than a fair and stately cathedral. After the capture of the city in 1645 the parliamentary troops pulled down part of the nave in order to repair the fortifications. It is very probable that the Norman church was partly built of stones taken from the Roman wall; and it is strange to find the western part of the same church being destroyed nearly six hundred years after in order to repair the city walls. George Fox, the intrepid founder of the Society of Friends, came to Carlisle in 1653 and preached in the cathedral. Some of the congregation being opposed to him, he was guarded while preaching, by certain soldiers and friends who had "heard him gladly." At length the "rude people of the city" rushed into the building, and made a tumult, so that the governor was forced to send musketeers to quell it. Fox thus describes the scene, in his "Journal": "From thence we came to Carlisle. "On the First-day following I went into the steeple-house: and after the priest had done, I preached the truth to the people, and declared the word of life amongst them. The priest got away, and the magistrates desired me to go out of the steeple-house. But I still declared the way of the Lord unto them, and told them, 'I came to speak the word of life and salvation from the Lord amongst them.' The power of the Lord was dreadful amongst them in the steeple-house, so that the people trembled and shook, and they thought the steeple-house shook: and some of them feared it would fall down on their heads. The magistrates' wives were in a rage and strove mightily to be at me: but the soldiers and friendly people stood thick about me. At length the rude people of the city rose, and came with staves and stones into the steeple-house crying, 'Down with these round-headed rogues'; and they threw stones. Whereupon the governor sent a file or two of musketeers into the steeple-house, to appease the tumult, and commanded all the other soldiers out. So those soldiers took me by the hand in a friendly manner, and said they would have me along with them. When we came forth into the street, the city was in an uproar, and the governor came down; and some of those soldiers were put in prison for standing by me, and for me, against the town's-people. "The next day the justices and magistrates of the town granted a warrant against me and sent for me to come before them. After a large examination they committed me to prison as a blasphemer, a heretic, and a seducer: though they could not justly charge any such thing against me." Fuller, about 1660, describes the building as "black but comely, still bearing the remaining signes of its former burning." Further mischief was also done to the building by the Jacobite prisoners who were lodged in it after the defeat of the Young Pretender. In the latter half of the eighteenth century some attempts were made at restoring the cathedral, but they for the most part consisted of hiding the beautiful choir roof with a stucco groined ceiling, and plentifully whitewashing the building. "The roof was 'elegantly' vaulted with wood. But this failing by length of time, together with the lead roof, the dean and chapter some few years ago new laid the roof, and the ceiling being totally ruined and destroyed they in the year 1764 contracted for a stucco groined ceiling, and for cleaning and whitening the whole church. And finding the new lead much torn and broken by wind for want of a ceiling underneath, the upper tire of that was done again, and a coping added to the rigging. And thus proceeding from one repair to another the whole expence hath amounted to upwards of £ 1300."[1] [1] Nicholson and Burn, page 249. Eastward of the stalls the choir was formerly separated from the aisles by screens of elaborate tracery work. When the cathedral was "repaired and beautified" as just described, they were removed to outbuildings, and by far the greater part lost or destroyed. The cathedral was restored 1853-7, in good taste, at a cost of about £ 15,000. Mr. Ewan Christian, the architect of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, undertook the work, and happily succeeded in counteracting the "repairing and beautifying" of 1764. Carlisle is not a large or notable cathedral, but its delightful Early English choir with its magnificent east window will ever redeem it from being insignificant or uninteresting. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR On examining the north side of the cathedral, it is apparent that more than one plan has been followed in the construction of the building as it stands. There are the remains of a Norman nave whose roof is lower than the choir roof. The choir is Early English with clerestory windows, and the easternmost bay (the retro-choir) Late Decorated; while the tower is Perpendicular. In the north window of the north transept we have a specimen of work of the nineteenth century. Thus the cathedral supplies examples of architecture from the Norman period down to the present time. The moderate height of the #Nave# (65 ft.), and the treatment of its details, are quite characteristic of the best work of the period when it was erected. The bays of the aisle are separated by flat buttresses about five and a half feet wide projecting nearly one foot beyond the wall, and the parapet wall in which they terminate is supported above the windows by a corbel table of shields and trefoil heads.[2] [2] These date from about 1400. Upon the string-course which runs along the wall unbroken by the buttresses there is in each bay a window with a circular head, flanked by single columns. A ring-like ornament is used as a decoration for one of the mouldings of the arch. These windows, except the one above the doorway, are restorations. The doorway itself, which leads into the nave, is modern, imitated from the Norman window. The Clerestory in each compartment has a window which differs from the aisle windows in having the billet as decoration of its outer moulding. The string-course at the spring of the round head runs without a break from one to the other. There is also an unbroken corbel table above the windows, of very expressive, life-like heads, no two of which are alike. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] #North Transept.#--The north window is Debased Gothic, the tracery of the previous window having been similar to that of the great east window, while the west window is early English. [Illustration: NORTH DOOR OF NAVE. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] The #Tower#, the latest part of the cathedral, was the work of Bishop Strickland early in the fifteenth century. He erected it upon the piers of the ancient Norman tower. Its height is not much over 100 feet, and is very disappointing, because in England "cathedral towers are apt to be good, and really make their mark" (Pater). In fact, it does not at all give the impression of being part of such an important building as a cathedral. This is caused by its having been rebuilt on the scale of the Norman nave, and not on that of the enlarged choir. It takes up only about two-thirds of the width of the choir, and to mask this defect a turret rising to the top of the third stage of the tower is introduced on the north side, and another turret is added at the north-east angle. The tower rises in four stages above the transepts. The second storey is pierced with loopholes. The third has two pointed windows lighting a room immediately below the belfry. Between these, in a niche with a canopy, is the figure of an angel holding a drawn sword. On his head is fixed a tablet to support another figure. There is only one window in the fourth storey, which gives light to the belfry, and is very large. Its labels are ornamented with very vigorously carved heads, and the cornice above is decorated very much like that of the clerestory. The tower terminates in an embattled parapet. All the windows have been thrown out of centre by the addition of the lower turret. Originally the tower was crowned by a leaden spire about fifteen feet in height, but this was removed at the end of the seventeenth century on account of its decayed condition. On the east side of the tower there is a single window in the third storey. In place of a second window there is an opening into the roof of the choir. This leads into a passage running from the tower to the east end. The bold attempts to veil the inadequate size of the tower by the addition of two turrets can be best studied from this side. The North Aisle of the #Choir# consists of eight bays, all Early English, except the easternmost one (the retro-choir), which is Late Decorated; while the western bay has a Perpendicular window. Sometime in the fifteenth century the third bay from the east, in each aisle, was altered and a large Perpendicular window inserted in order to admit more light to the sanctuary. During the restoration of the cathedral these later windows were removed, and replaced by careful copies of the other Early English windows. The basement is composed of bold mouldings with a plain wall equivalent in height to the internal wall arcade. Over this, a string-course runs uninterruptedly round the choir just below the windows. [Illustration: THE SOUTH DOOR. (See p. 21.) _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] Each compartment has an arcade of four lancet-shaped divisions, the external ones blank; while the internal divisions (which are wider than the others) form the window. The slender, banded, shafts are detached, which is rather unusual, and have moulded bases and capitals. The bands divide the shafts into unequal lengths, the lower portion being the shorter. The arch mouldings are good. Owing to the fact that the blank arches are more acutely pointed, their outer mouldings terminate higher than the mouldings of the internal arches. Towards the east end small heads, and bosses of foliage, ornament the junction of these mouldings. Above these the cornice and parapet rest upon blocks bearing the nail-head ornament. [Illustration: ELEVATION OF EAST END.] The second bay from the east is divided into three equal spaces, with a very narrow acute angle on the right. A series of fine gabled buttresses gives relief to the exterior of the choir on each side. The windows of the #Clerestory# have very rich mouldings, and also afford fine examples of flowing tracery. Each bay has an arch with three divisions, the central one higher and wider than the others. On this side only--the north--the base is ornamented with trefoils. There is a cornice above the windows extending from the tower to the east end. It is richly decorated with heads and the ball-flower ornament which is characteristic of fourteenth-century work. It is broken here and there by gargoyles projecting almost three feet from the wall. The parapet makes but a poor show in comparison with the rich windows and cornice. As the choir never had a groined ceiling there was no necessity for flying buttresses, and their absence gives the clerestory a very monotonous flat effect. This is further intensified by the window tracery being level with the wall, the architraves having no depth of moulding round them. Some years ago the aisles and clerestory were skilfully refaced, and consequently the exteriors have a very modern appearance. East of the retro-choir is the exterior of a staircase leading from the north choir aisle to the clerestory parapet. It terminates in a highly-finished octagonal turret whose parapet is enriched with a running trefoil ornament resembling that on the base of the clerestory windows. The north-eastern and the small east buttresses terminate just beneath, in gables richly ornamented with minute crockets. The panelling of the former is rather like the decoration of the central portion of the east end. #East End.#--An irregularity in designing the east end has been covered by placing the great buttresses so as to make the pediment appear irregular, and the cross at the apex seems, consequently, not to be in the centre of the choir; while, in fact, it is the great east window (with the gable window over it) that is out of position. The sill of the east window is unusually near the ground, and it is flanked by substantial buttresses finely pinnacled. Each buttress contains two niches with beautifully carved canopies: the base of the lower ones being a trifle higher than the springing of the arch. They display full-length statues of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. James, and St. John. A staircase crossing over the east window in the thickness of the wall receives light from the triangular window enclosing three trefoils which appears in the gable. Immediately beneath this Trinity window--as it is called--is a richly-canopied niche adorned with a statue of the Virgin Mary bearing in her arms the Holy Child. The summit of the gable is crowned by a large richly-floriated cross; and on each side are four smaller ones, with crockets of foliage between them. [Illustration: THE EAST END. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] In spite of the fact that the east end has been almost entirely rebuilt, it is a remarkably good example of Late Decorated work, and it would be difficult to find its equal in England. The wall of the north aisle is higher than the south aisle, because of a passage between the staircases. The buttresses do not rise above the parapet, and are finished off with richly-panelled gables, ornamented with crockets and finials. The end of the south aisle is decorated with corbels and parapet, like the choir, and with pinnacled buttresses. On the south side of the #Choir# the first three bays from the east end are practically the same as those on the north side. The remaining windows, including those of St. Catherine's Chapel on the east of the south transept, are Early English, but of later date and not so pleasing as the others. Instead of two lights they are furnished with three; some of these have small circular openings in the spandrels over the mullions filled with stained glass. The fifth compartment (against which a vestry was formerly built) shows traces of a door, and over that a passage, probably connected originally with some of the conventual buildings. The grotesque gargoyles, "these wild faces, these images of beasts and men carved upon spouts and gutters," are very vigorously executed. The windows on the south side of the clerestory are without the trefoil which ornaments the base of those on the north side. The blank window next to the tower is also wanting; in other respects the clerestory presents the same features as on the north. #South Transept.#--The chapter-house and cloisters formerly adjoined the south transept, and there was probably an entrance from the chapter-house leading down a flight of stairs into the transept. Billings says: "The modern casing at the base of the end of the transept (about 12 ft. high) shews the height of the #Cloisters#: and the doorway above, the level of the chapter-house floor. From this it would seem that the cathedral was entered at the south transept from the chapter-house by a flight of steps." The foundation of the south wall having been shaken by the removal of the remains of the conventual buildings, massive buttresses were added, and a very richly sculptured doorway inserted between them (1856). It was designed by Mr. Christian and is the principal entrance to the Cathedral. Its character is that of the late work of the choir, and is somewhat out of keeping with this distinctively Norman portion of the building. The window over the entrance is of the same date. The west side of the transept is lighted by two plain round-headed windows, not quite central. The outer moulding of the window arch of the south transept clerestory has billet ornament. Above this is a corbel table of heads and mouldings which interferes with the upper window mouldings. The transept compartments differ from those of the nave by the addition of a flat buttress between each, which consequently breaks the continuity of the corbel table. As the side of the nave was covered by the conventual buildings it was of plainer character than the north, and had no buttresses between the windows. The clerestory is exactly the same as on the north. The foundations of the old west wall are behind one of the prebendary's houses to the west of the nave. The west end, as it stands at present, was restored by Mr. Christian. A local sandstone was used in the construction of the building: grey, or white in the Norman portion, and red in the other parts. This red sandstone is not so good for exterior as for interior work, because it is liable to perish by the action of the weather. [Illustration: THE NAVE, SOUTH SIDE. _G.W. Wilson & Co., Photo._] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR The cathedral now consists of part of the original nave (the two eastern bays only) with aisles; and north and south transepts without aisles, but with a chapel on the east side of the south transept; the central tower; and the choir with north and south aisles and ambulatory or retro-choir. The #Nave.#--Entering by the modern doorway on the north, we are at once in the fragmentary nave, of Early Norman work. Its present length is about 38 feet and width about 60 feet. In 1645 the Scots destroyed about 100 feet of the nave, and it has never been rebuilt. This mutilation has had a serious effect upon the proportions of the building, and induces a feeling of want of balance. The open timber roof, raised to the original height, was substituted at the restoration for a flat ceiling which had been put up at a previous "embellishment" of the cathedral. Bishop Walkelin made use of similar roofs in Winchester Cathedral (1070-1097). The triforium (1140-50) has in each compartment a semi-circular arch entirely without ornament. The clerestory consists of three arches supported by columns with carved capitals; the centre arch, which is larger than the other, is lighted at the back by a round-headed window. We may say that the nave is "propped With pillars of prodigious girth." They are massive circular columns nearly six feet in diameter, and support semi-circular arches. The capitals of those on the south side are carved with leaf ornament; the rest are plain. Against the wall between each arch is a semi-circular engaged shaft reaching to the base of the triforium. The arches near the tower have been partly crushed owing to the shifting of the tower piers caused by faulty foundations. About 1870 the west end of the nave was restored by Mr. Christian. The window is filled with glass, in memory of the Rev. C. Vernon Harcourt, canon and prebendary of Carlisle (d. 1870). One of the south aisle windows--the "Soldiers'" window--is in memory of men and officers of the 34th (or Cumberland) Regiment, who fell in the Crimea, and in India during the mutiny. Three Old Testament warriors appear in stained glass--Joshua, Jerubbaal ("who is Gideon"), and Judas Maccabeus. The battle-torn fragmentary regimental colours hang from the arch opposite. Just beneath this window a doorway (now blocked up) formerly led from the cloisters into the nave. Up to the year 1870 the nave was used as a parish church. The cathedral from its beginning as the priory church, in accordance with a very common practice of the Augustinian body, contained two churches belonging to two separate bodies quite independent of each other. The choir and transepts formed the priory church, in the possession of the prior and canons until the dissolution of the monastery, when it passed to the dean and chapter. The nave formed the parish church of St. Mary, and belonged to the parishioners. After the civil wars it was cut off from the transepts by a stone wall, and furnished with galleries and a pulpit. A new church to accommodate the parishioners having been built in the abbey grounds in 1870, all these additions were removed, and the nave was restored to the cathedral, adding greatly to the general effect. An interesting event in the history of the parish church was the marriage of Sir Walter Scott to Miss Carpenter on the 24th December 1797. He had made the acquaintance of Miss Carpenter at Gilsland in July while touring in the Lake district. She had "a form that was fashioned as light as a fay's, a complexion of the clearest and lightest olive; eyes large, deep-set, and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown; and a profusion of silken tresses black as the raven's wing." Scott was strongly attracted to her, and within six months she became his wife. A tombstone under the west window shows the matrix of what was once a magnificent brass. The #Font#, standing on a fine marble flooring close to the west window, has bronze figures of St. John Baptist, the Virgin and Child, and St. Philip. It was designed by Sir A. Blomfield, and presented by Archdeacon Prescott 1891. [Illustration: LONGITUDINAL SECTION, NORTH.] The #Organ.#--The former organ built by Avery, London, has been given to Hexham Abbey Church. The present one extends from one side of the eastern tower arch to the other. It was built by Willis (1856), and the diaper work was executed by Hardman. About the year 1877 it was enlarged at a cost of nearly £ 1000. #North Transept.#--The transept is very lofty and very dark. It is about 22 feet wide, and its length from north to south is nearly 114 feet. Standing near the entrance to the north choir aisle, looking southwards and across the nave, a capital general view of the remains of the Norman portion of the cathedral can be obtained. This end of the transept was rebuilt after the fire of 1292. Having been greatly injured by another fire that broke out about a hundred years later, Bishop Strickland rebuilt it (1400-19.) During the restoration of the cathedral it was once again rebuilt. On the west side is a Norman arch, the entrance to the north aisle of the nave. The sinking of the tower piers has partly crushed it out of shape. The portion of an arch visible above, acts as a buttress to the tower arches. To the right is a late thirteenth-century window filled with glass in memory of the Rev. Walter Fletcher, Chancellor of Carlisle (died 1846). This window exhibits plate tracery--tracery cut, as it were, out of a flat plate of stone, without mouldings, not built up in sections. It is the transitional link between the lancet and tracery systems. The doorway in the corner communicates with the transept roof. The north window is very large, and is filled with stained glass in memory of five children of A.C. Tait, Dean of Carlisle, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. They all died of scarlet fever in the short space of five weeks, 6th March to 9th April 1858. This end of the transept was till quite recently railed off, and used as the consistory court of the Chancellor of Carlisle. Originally the transept had a chapel on the eastern side opening with a single arch, similar to St. Catherine's Chapel in the south transept. The opening to the north choir aisle is Decorated in style; above this is a portion of an arch for buttressing the tower-arches. [Illustration: VIEW ACROSS THE TRANSEPTS IN 1840. From Billings.] To the right is the blocked-up entrance of the old Norman choir aisle, an exact counterpart of the present south choir aisle entrance. The roof is now an open timber one of the original pitch. Near the north-east pier of the tower is a well, completely covered over. This, it is said, was done by a former dean, on the supposition that the well, or the water, in some occult fashion, affected the music in the cathedral. The #Tower# was rebuilt by Bishop Strickland (1400-19), who used the Norman piers, and placed upon them other columns of about the same length. The Early Norman piers have square-fluted capitals and are a little higher than the arches of the nave. The added columns have capitals carved with birds and foliage, and are carried up to the arches of the tower. This rebuilding was rendered necessary by the shifting of its foundations. The piers sank nearly one foot, and the arches near them have been to some extent distorted. Springs of water are said to run across the transept from north to south, and this may explain the sinking, which probably happened before the erection of the present choir. Clustered columns uphold the transept arches, but the western and eastern arches are supported on each side by a single column terminating in a bracket at about the level of the base of the triforium. This was arranged so as to increase the width of the passage between the piers from the choir to the nave. The decoration of the eastern arch capitals consists of the badges of the Percy family--the crescent and fetterlock. Hotspur was Governor of the town and Warden of the Marches under Henry IV., and it is probable that he aided in the work of the bishop. The western arch capitals have, as decoration, the rose and escallop shell alternately--badges of the Dacres and Nevilles, who also may have been benefactors to the cathedral. Across the north transept from the upper capitals is a depressed arch of stone with Perpendicular tracery. #South Transept.#--With the exception of the wall itself, the south arm of the transept is modern. The ancient wall, eight feet thick, is quite suitable for a fortress. A richly-decorated modern doorway has been made, and above it is a window by Powell, representing the "Days of Creation." [Illustration: PART OF SOUTH TRANSEPT AND ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL. From Billings.] The west wall is out of the perpendicular through the shifting of the tower piers, and the Norman arch, opening to the south aisle of the nave has also been distorted. To the left is a round-headed window, filled with glass in memory of the Rev. W. Vansittart, canon and prebendary of Carlisle 1824. The triforium has a plain rounded opening. The clerestory is very much like that of the nave, but is not so regular in construction, the architecture being merely massive and destitute of ornament, except in the case of the capitals, which are very sparingly decorated. On the east side of the transept, the second arch from the doorway, is the entrance to the south choir aisle. It is Norman, ornamented with a simply executed but very pleasing zigzag: the capitals of the piers are cushioned. On the whole, it is much the same as the arch immediately opposite, opening on the south aisle of the nave. All this side of the transept, with the exception of the small doorway (which was built a few years later), dates from about 1101. #St Catharine's Chapel.#--Between the choir aisle entrance and the modern doorway is another Norman arch, which is the entrance to St. Catherine's Chapel--a chantry of Early Decorated style erected on the walls of a former Norman building. Jefferson says: "In most large churches, altars, distinct from that in the chancel, were founded by wealthy and influential individuals, at which masses might be sung for the repose of the dead; the portion thus set apart, which was generally the east end of one of the aisles, was then denominated a chantry: in it the tomb of the founder was generally placed, and it was separated from the rest of the church by a screen. In the fourteenth century this custom greatly increased, and small additional side aisles and transepts were often annexed to churches and called mortuary chapels; these were used indeed as chantries, but they were more independent in their constitution, and in general more ample in their endowments. The dissolution of all these foundations followed soon after that of the monasteries. "In the year 1422 Bishop Whelpdale at his death left the sum of £ 200, for the purpose of founding and endowing a chantry for the performance of religious offices for the souls of Sir Thomas Skelton, knight, and Mr. John Glaston, two gentlemen with whom he had been on terms of intimate friendship, and who were buried in the cathedral. Nicholson thinks it probable this was the chantry of St. Roch; its revenues were valued at £ 2, 14s. per annum. [Illustration: ONE BAY OF THE NAVE.] "There was another chantry dedicated to St. Cross; but the period at which, and the person by whom it was founded are not known. It was granted by Edward VI. 'with all messuages, lands, tenements, profits, and hereditaments belonging thereto,' valued at £ 3, 19s. per annum, to Henry Tanner and Thomas Bucher. "The chapel of St. Catherine in the Cathedral of Carlisle was founded at an early period by John de Capella, a wealthy citizen, and endowed by him with certain rents, lands, and burgage houses. In the year 1366 a portion of its revenues being fraudulently detained, Bishop Appleby commanded the chaplains of St. Mary's and St. Cuthbert's to give public notice that the offenders were required to make restitution within ten days on pain of excommunication with bell, book, and candle. Its revenues, according to the rotuli, called the king's books, which were made up in the reign of Henry VIII., were valued at £ 3, 2s. 8d. per annum."[3] [3] "History of Carlisle," page 158. Some very fine foliated brackets can be seen in the arch between this chapel and the choir aisle. Dividing the chapel from the transept and aisle is some exquisite carved screen-work (Late Decorated) dating from the latter part of the fifteenth century, and attributed to Prior Gondibour. Its great beauty, and the skilful variations of the designs, will repay careful inspection. The chapel now serves as a vestry for the clergy: but it is to be regretted that it cannot add to the beauty of the cathedral by being utilised for its proper purpose. The pointed doorway on the left, originally opened on to a well which was closed in the course of the restoration of the building. The position of Carlisle on the border making it liable to sudden attacks in early times, it is probable that the inhabitants may have taken sanctuary in the cathedral many a time, when a well of water would be of great advantage to the refugees. #Monuments in the Transepts.#--North Transept. Near the entrance to the north choir aisle stands the altar-tomb of Prior Senhouse. It is covered with a slab of dark blue marble. An inscription runs thus: "The tomb of Simon Senhouse, Prior of Carlisle in the reign of Henry VII. The original inscription being lost, the present plate was substituted by the senior male branch of the Senhouse family, A.D. 1850. Motto, 'Lothe to offend.'" It was on this tomb that the tenants of the priory were accustomed to pay their rents. South Transept.--On a stone in the west wall (now covered with a pane of glass) is an inscription which was discovered in 1853. It is written in Norse runes, and is as follows:-- "Tolfihn yraita thasi rynr a thisi stain." "Tolfihn wrote these runes on this stone." The runes are Norse, not Anglo-Saxon. The latter are not often found, but the former are scarcer still. The runes, perhaps, date from the eleventh century. [Illustration: SCREEN--ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL. From Billings.] There is also a marble tablet containing a medallion likeness of George Moore. "A man of rare strength and simplicity of character, of active benevolence and wide influence. A yeoman's son he was not born to wealth but by ability and industry he gained it, and he ever used it as a steward of God and a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ for the furtherance of all good works." George Moore was born at Mealsgate, Cumberland, the 9th April 1806. He went to London in 1825. Two years later he was working for Fisher, Stroud & Robinson, lace merchants, as town traveller, and, soon after, as traveller in the north of England. He was so successful that he was nicknamed "The Napoleon of Watling Street." When he was twenty-three he accepted an offer from a firm of lace merchants, Groucock & Copestake, to become a partner. He gave up travelling for orders in 1841, but soon suffered in health. As a remedy he took to following the hounds, and later (in 1844) went on a three months' trip to America. On his return he started on his career of philanthropy which has made him famous. A few of the institutions for which he worked, and to which he contributed largely, may be mentioned; the Cumberland Benevolent Society, the Commercial Travellers' Schools, the British Home for Incurables, the Warehousemen and Clerks' Schools, the Royal Free Hospital, and the London City Mission. Various Cumberland charities found in him a generous supporter. He met with his death in Carlisle. Knocked down by a runaway horse, 20th November 1876, while on his way to attend a meeting of the Nurses' Institution, he died the next day from his injuries. The following was a favourite motto with him:-- "What I spent, I had, What I saved, I lost, What I gave, I have." [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] There is a memorial tablet to Robert Anderson, "the Cumberland Bard," 1770-1833. Born in Carlisle, he had but little schooling, and at ten years of age he was earning wages as assistant to a calico printer; later, he was bound apprentice to a pattern-drawer in his native city. He went to London to pursue his calling, and he seems to have been led to attempt to write poetry through hearing some imitation Scottish songs sung at Vauxhall. He published his first volume in 1798, and his Cumberland Ballads in 1805. His verses, not altogether destitute of real poetry, are valuable for the pictures they give of obsolete manners and customs of the district. The #Choir.#--A low doorway in the eastern arch of the tower gives entrance to the choir. Some of the woodwork of the stalls fills the lower part of this arch, and the entrance has been placed towards the north, so as to open exactly on the centre of the choir. In point of beauty the choir compares favourably with any we possess in England, and the eye can rest upon it again and again with renewed satisfaction and delight. Its superb main arcade, with the boldly-designed and finely-carved capitals representing the twelve months of the year--unrivalled in this country; its handsome clerestory windows; its great east window (the pride of the cathedral); and, overhead, its richly-coloured roof, unique in shape, afford a combination not easily to be surpassed. The choir is about 134 feet long, 34 feet 6 inches wide between the columns, and 72 feet 6 inches between the aisle walls. The nave is not so wide by about 12 feet, and as the columns of both nave and choir on the south side are on the same line, the extra width is all on the north. Looking westward, the view is marred by the tower arch not being in the centre of the west wall, in consequence of which there is an ugly space of blank wall between the arch and the north choir aisle. There are eight bays, averaging about 18 feet in width. Those at the end, however, east and west, are not so wide. At the east they probably suffer from the intrusion of the east wall, which is about six feet thick. The western bays may have lost the space taken for the choir entrance. They have very acute arches, and at the west end rest on responds or half-piers against the tower walls. Those at the east end rest on brackets, and their mouldings lose themselves in the wall on each side of the great window. The presbytery is reached by two steps from the choir, and the last bay but one (in which the altar stands) is raised three steps above the presbytery. The main arcade practically dates from after the terrible fire in 1292. The arches escaped, and are splendid specimens of Early English, "of the Pointed style in all the purity of its first period." They were underbuilt with Early Decorated piers, while the capitals were finished at the same time as the triforium and clerestory (Late Decorated) 1350-1400. The piers are not equal in diameter to those of the nave; they measure but five feet and a quarter. Each consists of eight clustered pillars of red sandstone. The four facing the cardinal points of the compass are larger than the intermediate ones, which are filleted. The base moulding is very deep and hollow. These piers support the Early English arches, with dog-tooth ornament large in the interior, small in the exterior. Altogether, these fine arches give a very pleasing impression of lightness and grace, and make us feel "the fascination of the Pointed style." At the junctions of the arches are small grotesque heads very well executed. On the north side, where the presbytery begins, is a queen's head, and on the opposite side a figure with a dog's head. There are altogether fourteen complete, and two half piers, the capitals of which are carved with foliage alone, or with the addition of winged monsters, birds, beasts, and human figures. Twelve of them represent the domestic and agricultural occupations of the months. The first capital on the south side (east end) shows a creature with a man's head, wings, and a tail terminating in the head of a serpent, which bites the monster on the temple. January is symbolised on the next one, and the series continues westward, then crosses over, and proceeds from west to east on the north side, finishing at the last pier but one. _January._--A figure in a loose-fitting tunic, sitting down. He has three faces--two in profile--and is drinking with the right and left mouths. At his feet is a third vessel. _February._--A man in a loose tunic, and head closely wrapped up. He appears to suffer from cold, for his face is woe-begone, and he is sitting over a fire, holding out one boot upside down as if to drain water from it, while he lifts up one foot to catch the heat. The fireplace is very skilfully carved. _March._--A man, hood on head, digging with a spade at the foot of a leafless tree. Other decorations are, a squirrel, a bear with hands, birds, and a beast's body with a mitred head. _April._--A bare-legged man with his head tied up, pruning a tree. On this capital are also two figures half-human, half-bestial, clasping each other round the neck. [Illustration: ONE BAY OF THE CHOIR.] _May._--A woman in a long gown holding in each hand a bunch of foliage, which she offers to a young man clad in a tunic, with his hood thrown back. In addition there are three winged beasts with human heads, one mitred. _June._--A horseman, bareheaded, holding on his right hand a hawk, and bearing a branch of roses in his left hand. There are also some half-human figures, and men playing musical instruments. This capital is more elaborately carved than any of the others. _July._--A man mowing. In addition there are owls carrying mice in their mouths. _August._--A man working in a wheat-field. He wears a conical hat, and grasps a crutch with one hand while he holds a pruning hook in the other. _September._--A man reaping with a sickle. _October._--A man whose head is tied with a handkerchief; he is engaged in cutting grapes. A fox carrying off a goose is also vigorously carved on this capital. _November._--A man sowing grain from a basket. There is a stag on his right and a horse on his left hand. _December._--A man wearing a loose tunic, who is about to fell an ox which another man holds by the horns. In addition there is a man tending swine. The last capital shows several heads, and a man sitting on a tree stump. In each bay of the #Triforium# there are three arches with curvilinear tracery. The principal mullions have octagonal bases. On account of their reduced width, the extreme eastern and western bays have only two arches. The courses of stone above the base of the triforium are not by any means so smooth and well-proportioned as those beneath. The workmen do not seem to have been actuated by the spirit of those builders "in the elder days of Art" who "... wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere." [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST, IN 1840. From Billings.] The #Clerestory# consists of two planes. Each compartment on the face of the choir wall has three high-pitched arches, the middle one being higher than those at the side, and more than twice as wide in the opening. The eastern bay has only the central arch, while the western bay is blank. The base is decorated with a low parapet pierced with quatrefoils, four in the centre, and two in each side opening. On the south, however, the quatrefoil decoration is slightly different. There are only three quatrefoils in the centre and two smaller ones on each side. This parapet is in great part a restoration, the original having been almost entirely removed, in the vain hope of admitting more light to the lower part of the choir. In the other plane the windows are in triplets, three lights in the central and single lights on either side, decorated with flamboyant tracery. The eastern bay has no side lights. Although the windows seem to be all different, there are but six varieties, distributed as follows: On the north side beginning at the east the design of the first window is not repeated. That of the next window occurs in the second window on the south side. The third and fifth are alike. The sixth and the last are like the fourth. The design of the seventh window does not occur again. On the south side one new pattern appears in three windows--the first, fourth, and sixth from the east. The second is like the window opposite, and the third, fifth, and seventh are like the third on the north side. Of all the windows the second from the east is the most beautiful. Before 1764 they were filled with stained glass of which some remains are still to be seen. The trefoil heads above the mullions have a brown border with the insertion in some cases of a yellow diamond ornament, and in others of a crown. The #Roof#--This unique specimen of a waggon-headed ceiling, semi-circular in all its parts, is of oak. Bishop Welton began its construction about 1350. A plaster ceiling, put up in the year 1764, hid this fine timber roof until its removal in 1856. It was then found that enough remained of the original to allow a faithful restoration to be made. But the scheme of colouring--red and green upon white--was not copied. In its stead Owen Jones suggested another--a background of blue plentifully ornamented with golden stars. The _Saturday Review_ is responsible for the statement--for the truth of which, however, it does not vouch--"that on the first occasion when Dean Close found himself beneath the roof, then glowing in all the brilliancy of modern painting and gilding, in semblance of 'the spangled firmament on high,' he solemnly ejaculated, 'Oh my stars!'" At the triforium base foliated brackets support vaulting shafts of three clustered columns. At the point of contact with the base of the quatrefoil parapet they are ornamented with rings, and their capitals are foliated, but not so naturally as the capitals below. Great semi-circular rafters spring from the capitals and cross the choir. Smaller rafters start from the cornice of the clerestory. These are intersected in the centre of the ceiling by a longitudinal beam. Small moulded ribs divide the space between each great rafter and the longitudinal beam into sixteen panels. The intersections are decorated with carved bosses. #Hammer-beams.#--From the foot of three of the principal ribs hammer-beams project. They seem to indicate an intention on the part of the builders to cover the choir with an open-timber roof like that of the Great Hall at Westminster. But having decided on the waggon-headed roof, they did not trouble to remove these beams. Wall pieces and curved struts now connect them with the vaulting shafts, and they have been decorated with "carvèd angels ever eager-eyed, with hair blown back and wings put cross-wise on their breasts." More than one hundred carved figures ornament the cornice, and the following texts in black-letter appear above them:-- NORTH SIDE.--Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of the Lord. (Eccles. v. 1.) Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord. (Ps. cxxxiv. 2.) Praise ye the name of the Lord. (Ps. cxxxv. 1.) Praise God in His sanctuary, (Ps. cl. 1.) Exalt ye the Lord our God and worship at His footstool. (Ps. xcix. 5.) SOUTH SIDE.--How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! (Ps. lxxxiv. 1.) My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation. (Ps. xxii. 25.) O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together. (Ps. xxxiv. 3.) Holiness becometh Thine house for ever. (Ps. xciii. 5.) The great #East Window# is the crowning ornament and special glory of the cathedral. It is unsurpassed by any other in the kingdom; perhaps there is not a window equal to it in the whole world. Rickman says: "It is one of the finest if not _the_ finest Decorated window in the kingdom. Its elegance of composition and the easy flow of its lines rank it even higher than the celebrated west window of York, which it also excels in the number of divisions. The window is by far the most free and brilliant example of Decorated tracery in the kingdom." Fergusson, in his "History of Architecture," also praises it: "Its upper part exhibits the most beautiful and perfect design for window tracery in the world. All the parts are in such just harmony the one to the other--the whole is so constructively appropriate and at the same time so artistically elegant--that it stands quite alone, even among windows of its own age." "The stone-work of all this part (the east window) is entirely new, although it reproduces most minutely the original design" (King, 202-3). "The whole of the _mouldings_, both of the mullions and tracery, _externally_ are nearly destroyed, owing to the perishable nature of the stone with which it is constructed" (Billing, p. 60 (1840)). This great window almost entirely fills the east end of the choir, being 51 feet high from the sill to the top of the tracery and about 26 feet wide in the clear. Immediately after the fire in 1292, the work was started, and the jambs with their slender shafts and foliated capitals were erected. Nothing more was done till about the middle of the fourteenth century, when the arch mullions were added; and the tracery dates from about the end of the same century. The mouldings were left unfinished until the restoration of the cathedral, 1856. The tracery (Decorated) is composed of eighty-six pieces struck from 263 centres. Some of the pieces forming the chief divisions are nearly five feet in length. Although the stone-work is modern, the design has been most faithfully copied from the original. In the lower part there are nine lights, no other Decorated window in existence having so many. The west window of Durham Cathedral (partly copied from, but inferior to, the west window of York) and the Rose window in the south transept at Lincoln are of the same character; but that of York ranks next in importance, and is the only window able to compete with the east window of Carlisle. The design consists of two complete compositions united under one head by interposing a third. The York window, on the contrary, is altogether one complete design, from which no part can be separated without breaking the integrity of the composition. The width of the opening is the same in both windows, but while the actual tracery of the York window is more than two feet higher, the Carlisle window is greatly superior in the beautiful arch mouldings above its tracery, and also in the side shafts and mouldings. Again some stiffness is imparted to the design of the York window by the central mullion which reaches from the basement to the top of the arch. The tracery branches outwards from this on each side, and depends upon the arch for support; while the tracery in the Carlisle window is not so dependent. Neither in skilful workmanship nor in variety of ornament is the York window equal to that at Carlisle. With the exception of four quatrefoils (placed above each alternate mullion) it is composed of trefoils. Carlisle, on the contrary, possesses nine quatrefoils, in addition to four placed like those at York. Nearly all the small spandrels formed by the various ornaments are perforated, and this imparts a remarkable air of lightness to the window. The beautiful stained glass in the tracery is all that remains of the ancient glass. It is of the time of Richard II., and was no doubt preserved because of the expense that reglazing its small intricate forms would have involved. The subject is a Doom--the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the New Jerusalem. "We have our Lord sitting in judgment; the Procession of the Blessed to the Palace of Heaven; the Place of punishment for the wicked; and the general Resurrection. "The figure of our Saviour is in the uppermost quatrefoil of the central compartment; His countenance will bear the closest inspection; it exhibits evident traces of suffering, but is calm, severe, and dignified. His head is surrounded by a cruciform nimbus. Below this are two quatrefoils, easily distinguished by their silvery appearance. These represent the Procession of the Redeemed to the heavenly Jerusalem, whose towers and pavilions are shown in the quatrefoil to the right. St. Peter stands in the gateway in an attitude of welcome; at his feet flows the River of Life, which some of the Redeemed have reached. The red glare of the Place of punishment makes it easy to be distinguished; the tortures represented are of the most realistic character, and the devils are very material beings, with tails, hoofs, and horns. "The rest of the picture is occupied with the representation of the general Resurrection:--the dead rising from their graves--ecclesiastics are vested, but laity rise naked, though kings wear their crowns: several bishops are among the crowd, and a pope wearing the triple tiara. Some of the ecclesiastics are bearded, and probably are intended for canons of the cathedral, who, being Austin or Black canons, would wear their beards. "In one of the quatrefoils, just above the mullions, is a figure surrounded by a heraldic border; this represents John of Gaunt, who was Governor of Carlisle from 1380 to 1384. It is said that he supported the prior, William de Dalston, who refused obedience to the bishop, and had been excommunicated; and that, out of gratitude, he was thus represented in the east window."[4] [4] "Guide to the Cathedral of Carlisle," by R.H. and K.H. [Illustration: THE CHOIR AND EAST WINDOW. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] A "Jesse," which originally filled the lower part of the window, was destroyed at the Reformation. The present glass was inserted in 1861, in memory of Bishop Percy (d. 1856). It represents events in the history of our Lord. Although the colours do not harmonise well with the old glass, they are in accord with the gorgeous colouring of the ceiling. Like most of the stained glass in the cathedral, this is by Hardman of Birmingham. [Illustration: MISERERE, SOUTH SIDE OF THE STALLS. From Billings.] Bishop Strickland (1399-1413) erected the #Stalls#, which are of black oak, and occupy the three western bays of the choir. Our English cathedrals are far ahead of foreign cathedrals in the beauty and richness of the tabernacle work of their stalls, which in many instances are "like a whole wood, say a thicket of old hawthorn, with its topmost branches spared, slowly transformed into stalls." These in Carlisle, if not among the finest specimens in England, certainly take very high rank. There are forty-six compartments, divided by fifty columns, upon which the tabernacle work rests. Each compartment consists of a large canopy decorated with quatrefoils, and battlemented. This is surmounted by three smaller canopies and pedestals which were originally occupied by small carved figures. A large pinnacle, richly decorated, like the others, with crockets and finials, finishes the compartment. Between each stall is a small buttress beginning at the capital and finishing somewhat beneath the top of the large pinnacle. These buttresses have, alternately, a pedestal with a canopy above; and a pedestal supporting a small flying-buttress terminating in a pinnacle enriched with small crockets. Prior Haithwaite is said to have added the tabernacle-work after the year 1430. The division between each stall shows either a well-executed foliated ornament, or an angel. In the north-west and south-west angles the elbows of the seats are carved with the head of a king supposed to represent Henry IV. The panels of the desks are elaborately worked, and the stone plinth which supports them is decorated with quatrefoils. The stalls at the west end of the choir are wider than the others, and are used by the higher dignitaries of the cathedral. The Dean's stall is on the left of the choir entrance, and the Bishop's on the right. This arrangement is said to have existed since the time of Æthelwulf. He was the first prior, and upon his elevation to the bishopric he still kept the prior's seat. The hinged seats, known as misereres or misericordes, were constructed to keep the monks from falling asleep while at prayers. The carvings beneath these seats are of different designs, generally grotesque. The following is a list of the subjects found carved thereon:-- NORTH SIDE A dragon swallowing a man. Bird and young. Dragon and lions. Three dragons, one with a human face. Winged figure with a tabour. Dragon devouring a bird. Coronation of the Virgin. Three griffins. Pelican in its act of piety. Dragon and lion fighting. Griffin and two young ones. Two dragons joined together. Two storks eating out of a sack. Figure with wings, claws, and human face. Angelic musician. Two eagles. Double-headed eagle. Fox and goose. Two dragon bodies with a human head. Angel playing an instrument. A man with two eagles plucking his beard. Dragon, and two lions with human faces. SOUTH SIDE Two angels. Dragon. Bird and beast fighting. Human head on two animal bodies. Winged dragon. Winged serpent. Two beasts with one head. Two men fighting. Griffin with human head. Dragon and foliage. Two eagles holding the head of a beast. Fox and goose. Human figure with four wings. Man and dragon fighting. Angel bearing a shield. Angel and dragons. Pelican in its act of piety. Boar killing a man. Man holding two dragons. Dragon killing a beast. Mermaid. Dragon and lion in combat. The #Salkeld Screen.#--On the north side of the choir, the westernmost bay of the presbytery is filled by a fine wooden screen of Renaissance work, erected about 1542 by Lancelot Salkeld, last prior and first dean of Carlisle. It is divided into three compartments; through the central one entrance could be gained to the choir formerly by an ascent of three steps from the north choir aisle. It is very elaborate, and some portions are very beautiful. The lower part is panelled, each panel having two heads carved in bas-relief. The upper part is of well-executed tracery work. Over each compartment is a pediment decorated in the centre with shields. The western one has been restored. The initials L.S. and D.K. (Lancelot Salkeld, Decanus Karliolensis) occur on the screen. The other bays were originally filled with screen-work similar to that in St. Catherine's Chapel. In 1764 these screens were removed and stored in the Fratry crypt as lumber. In the end they were used as firewood; only a few pieces preserved by the neighbouring gentry escaping destruction. A stone screen now surrounds the sacrarium on three sides. The reredos is higher than this screen. It is arcaded, and its compartments have triangular-headed canopies and some well-executed figures. The late Mr. Street designed it, and its cost was £ 1790. The #Bishop's Throne#, of English and foreign oak, was also designed by the late Mr. Street. The canopy of the throne is nearly thirty feet high. The #Pulpit# is a memorial of Archdeacon Paley, who is buried close at hand in the north choir aisle. It is of richly-carved Caen stone, on a plinth of black Manx marble, and ornamented with carvings in white alabaster, of scenes from the New Testament. In shape it is hexagonal, with shafts at the angles rising into an enriched cornice. The lectern--a brass eagle--was given in memory of the late G.C. Mounsey, sometime diocesan registrar. In the middle of the choir is a monument to Bishop Bell. On a blue slab under a triple canopy, the centre pediment of which has I.H.S., and its point the Deity and Christ, is a brass figure of a bishop _in pontificalibus_, mitre and gloves; his right hand holds on his breast an open book inscribed-- _Hec mea_ _Spes in sinu meo_ His left hand, over which hangs the maniple, has a rich crosier. On a semi-circular scroll over his head-- _Credo q^d redemptor meus vivit et noviss[~i]o die de terra surrect[~u]r s[~u] et in Carne mea videbo de[~u] salvatore me[~u]._ Under his feet-- _Hac marmor fossa Bell presulis en tenet ossa Duresme dud[~u] prior his post pontificat[~u] Gessit atq' renuit primum super o[~m]ia querit Dispiciens mud[~u] poscendo pramia fratr[~u]_ On the ledge round the slab-- _Hic jacet Reverendus Pater Ricardus Bell quondam Episcopus Karleolensis qui ab hac luce migravit videlicet vicesimo Quarto die ... Anno Domini.... Et omnium fidelium defunctorum. per misericordiam dei requiescant in perpetua pace_. Amen. The ancient high altar probably stood one bay nearer to the west than the present altar. There, in the presence of Bishop Halton, Robert Bruce took an oath of fidelity to Edward I. Ten years later he proved false to this oath, and the Papal Legate solemnly excommunicated him with bell, book, and candle. Very shortly after this, Edward I. dedicated the litter in which he had journeyed thus far, and mounting his horse at the cathedral door rode through the priory gateway bent on the conquest of Scotland. He never lived to reach that country, for he died in sight of the Scottish coast at Burgh-on-Sands. #North Choir Aisle.#--This aisle is entered by a handsome Decorated arch, a very good example of thirteenth-century work. The north wall, with the exquisite two-light lancet windows, is Early English, and dates from the period immediately after the demolition of the Norman choir about 1260. Each compartment of the cinquefoil #wall-arcade# is separated by triple columns, and the space divided into four parts by shafts, barely detached from the wall, supporting foliated arches. This is the general description for both north and south choir aisles. The eastern bay belongs to the retro-choir, and is of later date. Above the wall-arcade are the graceful two-light lancet windows, with their slender columns, deep mouldings, and rich dog-tooth decoration. In each bay there are four divisions; the two outer ones blank, and the two others forming the window. The shafts are detached from the wall; the central one is higher than the rest, and its capital is foliated. From the outer columns in the blank divisions, the shoulder, or hipped rib, after rising a short distance, sinks to the level of the capitals of the vaulting columns. At the side of the window columns two small circular mouldings, decorated with small dog-tooth ornament, continue without a break round the head of each window. A large blank quatrefoil is inserted in the space between the lights and the outer arch moulding. [Illustration: NORTH AISLE OF THE CHOIR. From Billings.] The corner column (north side of entrance) has been inserted by cutting away part of the east wall of the north transept. Like the aisle it dates from about the last half of the thirteenth century. On its capital there is the spring of a pointed arch, enriched with dog-tooth ornament similar to the entrance arch. Probably it was intended to pull the north transept down, and rebuild it with the addition of an eastern aisle. This column would then have been part of it. The existence of an offset on the north face of the aisle wall, with the return of the base-course and string-course upon it, seems to add weight to this theory. The nearest clustered column to it has also been altered, and consists of five shafts instead of three. A rib springs from the additional shafts to the centre of the corner column. There are also remains of groining like that of the aisle. The bay near the entrance has a window (Perpendicular) dating from after the Civil Wars. Beneath this there was formerly an entrance to the cathedral. This has now been walled up. The groined stone roof dates from after 1292, although, perhaps, it is composed of materials of an earlier date. On the south side of the entrance is a very beautiful foliated bracket; the foliated boss at its base was at one time ornamented with a very fine knot. #Monuments in North Choir Aisles.#--In the third bay from the east are two low-arched recesses. Being of the same date as the aisle, they may have been intended to receive the statues of the bishops who did their best to repair the ravages of the fire in 1292. The arches are almost flat, and decorated with a kind of chevron moulding very rarely met with. In Burpham Church, Sussex, there is another example of this moulding applied to the decoration of the south side of the south transept arch. A bishop's effigy is in the eastern recess. It is of Early English date; and before 1292 was situated within the choir. Afterwards a niche was cut in the fourth bay from the east for its reception. It was eventually placed in its present position at the time of the restoration of the cathedral, and the other niche filled up. It may possibly represent Bishop Silvester of Everdon. It has suffered damage during its migrations in the cathedral; and the feet are broken. This was probably done when it was removed from the choir to the aisle (1856). Jewels which originally enriched the mitre and the cross on the breast have disappeared. In the next bay to the east is a small mural brass plate finely engraved in memory of Bishop Robinson (1598-1616.) He was a native of Carlisle, and, entering Queen's College, Oxford, as a "poor serving child," eventually became provost, and proved a great benefactor to that foundation. "The bishop is represented _in pontificalibus_, kneeling, with one hand supporting a crosier; the other is sustaining a lighted candle, and holding a cord to which three dogs are attached, who appear guarding an equal number of sheepfolds from the attack of wolves. Below the candle is a group of figures bearing implements of agriculture and peaceful industry; near their feet is a wolf playing with a lamb; and various warlike instruments scattered and broken. Each part is illustrated with appropriate Greek and Latin sentences chiefly selected from the Scriptures. Behind the bishop is a quadrangular building, enclosing an open court, and apparently intended to represent the college which he had so much benefited. "Over the gateway is a shield charged with three spread eagles, being the arms of Robert Eglesfield, the founder of that college; on the college are the words, _Invenit destructum; reliquit extructum et instructum_ (he found it destroyed; he left it built and furnished). Above this building is the delineation of a cathedral; over the entrance is inscribed--_Intravit per ostium_ (he entered by the door); on a label across the entrance is _Permansit fidelis_ (he endured faithful to the end), and below, on the steps, under a group of figures, one of whom is kneeling and receiving a benediction, are the words, _Recessit beatus_ (he departed blessed). Near the top of the plate is the angel of the Lord bearing a label inscribed in Greek characters, _Tois Episcopois_ (Unto the Bishops). "Above are the words, _Erant pastores in eadem regione excubantes et agentes vigilias noctis super gregem suum_ (there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field and keeping watch over their flocks by night). At the bottom of the plate in the cathedral is a Latin inscription to this effect: 'To Henry Robinson of Carlisle, D.D., a most careful provost of Queen's College, Oxon, and afterwards a most watchful bishop of this church for eighteen years, who on the 13th Calend of July in the year from the delivery of the Virgin, 1616, and of his age 64, devoutly resigned his spirit unto the Lord. Bernard Robinson, his brother and heir, set up this memorial as a testimony of his love.'"[5] [5] Jefferson, "History of Carlisle," p. 180. About halfway up the aisle Archdeacon Paley lies buried between his two wives, Jane (d. 1791), and Catherine (d. 1819). On a brass plate in the centre of the stone is the following inscription:-- Here lie interred the remains of WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. who died May 25th 1805 Aged 62 years. Archdeacon Paley wrote both of his well-known works, "Horæ Paulinæ" and "Evidences of Christianity," at Carlisle. #Legendary Paintings.#--Between the bays east and west of the Salkeld screen there is a broad stone plinth panelled in front. The stalls stand on the plinth west of the screen, and the backs are painted with scenes from the monkish legends of St. Anthony the Hermit, St. Cuthbert, and, in the south choir aisle, St. Augustine. A rhymed couplet explains each picture; and the paintings, though rudely executed, give good examples of late fifteenth-century dress and ornament. Prior Gondibour caused the work to be done, and as Richard Bell was bishop at the time he may have suggested illustrating the life of St. Cuthbert, who was really the first bishop of Carlisle, and whose body was enshrined at Durham, where Bell had been prior before his elevation to the bishopric. The following is a detailed account of the _Legendary Paintings_, with short note of the principal persons therein represented:-- St. Cuthbert was born in the Lothians; at eight years he was living under the care of a widow in the village of Wrangholm. In 651 while keeping watch over his master's flocks near the Lauder, which flows into the Tweed, he had a vision of the soul of Bishop Aidan being carried up to heaven by angels. A few days after, he heard of the death of the good bishop, and straightway journeyed to the monastery of Melrose. Here he was accepted, and in a short time received the tonsure. The Northumbrian peasants at this time were, mostly, only Christians in name. Cuthbert wandered among them, choosing the most out-of-the-way villages, where other teachers would not go. "He needed no interpreter as he passed from village to village; the frugal long-headed Northumbrians listened willingly to one who was himself a peasant of the Lowlands and who had caught the rough Northumbrian burr. His patience, his humorous good sense, the sweetness of his look, told for him, and not less the vigorous frame which fitted the peasant-preacher for the hard life he had chosen. "Never did man die of hunger who served God faithfully," he would say, when nightfall found them supperless in the waste. "Look at the eagle overhead! God can feed us through him if he will"--and once at least he owed his meal to a fish that the scared bird let fall. In 664 he was made prior of Lindisfarne. "Gentle with others, he was severe with himself, and was unsparing in his acts of mortification and devotion." In 676 he retired, first to a cave near Howburn, and later to Fame Island, where he remained in strict seclusion for nine years. He was elected bishop of Hexham in 684, and with much difficulty was persuaded to undertake the duties. He soon exchanged Hexham for Lindisfarne. As bishop, Cuthbert was diligent in preaching, protected the poor from their oppressors, lived on very little, and fed and clothed the poor. Towards the end of 686 he gave up his bishopric and returned to his beloved Fame Island, where he died in March 687. ST. CUTHBERT 1. Her Cuthbert was forbid layks and plays As S. Bede i' hys story says. 2. Her the angel did hym eale And made hys grievous sore to hele. 3. Her saw he Aydan's sawl up go to hevyn bliss w^{th} angels two. 4. Her to hym and hys palfray God send hem fude in hys jornay. 5. Her on Melross for to converse W^{th} h[~y] Bosle and laws reherse. 6. The angel he did as gest refreshe With met and drynk and hys fete weshe 7. Her Basel told hy yt he must de And after yt bysshop should be 8. Her to hys breder and pepyl eke He preched godys word myld and mek 9. Her stude he naked in y^e see till all David psalms sayd had he. 10. He was gydyd by ye egle fre And fed w^{th} ye delfyne as ye see 11. Fresh water god sent owt of ye ston to hym in Farn and befor was noon 12. Consecrate byshop yai made h[~y] her off Lyndisfarne both far and nere. 13. Her by prayers fendys out Farne glad and w^{th} angel h[~a]ds hys hous made 14. To thys child god grace (here gave) he Thro hys prayers as ye may se. 15. Byshop two yerys when he had beyn In Farne he died both holy and clene 16. The crowys yt did his hous unthek This for full low fell at hys fete 17. xi yere after yt beryd was he Yai fan hym hole as red may ye. St. Anthony, one of the primitive hermits, and the founder of monasticism, was born at Coma, in Upper Egypt, in A.D. 251. Before he was twenty years old he lost his parents, and inherited great riches from them, but within a year he sold all that he had and gave the money to the poor. He then retired into solitude near Coma, passing his time in manual labour, prayer, and study. Later, he went farther into the wilderness, and lived in a cave. Satan is said to have tempted him by sending spirits to him, disguised as beautiful women. Finding this ineffectual, it is related that the Evil One made a violent attack on him, and beat him so severely that he left him for dead. At the age of ninety he heard of another hermit (St. Paul the Hermit), and made a journey to visit him. St. Paul died soon after this meeting, and St. Anthony, aided by two lions, buried him. In his 105th year he told some of his disciples that he was going to die; then, accompanied by a few monks, he retired deeper into the wilderness, where he died, having first obtained a promise that they would keep the place of his burial secret. (In the time of Innocent IV. all hermits who lived under no recognised discipline were incorporated and reduced under the rule of St. Augustine.) THE LEGEND OF ST. ANTHONY 1. Of Anton story who lyste to here In Egypt was he bornt as doyth aper. 2. Her is he babtyd, Anton they hym call Gret landes and renttes to hym doeth fawl. 3. As scoler to the kyrk here is he gayn To here the sermontt and aftyr itt he's tayn. 4. Here geyffith he to the kyrk boith land and rent To leve in povert is hys intent. 5. Here in Agello to oon oulde man he wentt To lerne perfeccion is hys intent. 6. Here makyth he breder as men of relig', And techyth them vertu to leve in perfecco. 7. Here to the wyldernes as armet geon he And thus temptyth hym covytice with oon gold dyshie. 8. The sprytt of fornycacon to h[~y] her doth apper And thus he chastith his body with thorne and brer. 9. The devill thus hat h[~y] wounded w_t lance and staf And levyth h[~y] for deyd lyying at his cayf 10. Here Crist haith hym helyd the devill he doth away And comfortyd his confessor deyd as he lay 11. Here comands he y^{is} bests and ffast away th_a flie Y^e bor h[~y] obbays and w^{th} h[~y] bydeds he. 12. Here makyth he a well and water hath uptayne And comforted hys breder thyrst was nere slayn. 13. Here commandith he best to make h[~y] a cayf And thus he berys Paulyn and lay h[~y] in graf 14. Thus walkèd he over the flode water doth h[~y] no der Theodor h[~y] se and dare nou c[~u] h[~y] nere 15. Here departith Anton, to hevyn his saul is gone Betwixt his two breder in wilder's th[~e] alone. 16. Here in wilderns they bery hym that no man shud him knaw For soo he comanded syne hom first tha draw. 17. Thus levyth he i wildern's xx^{ii} yere and more Without any company bot the wylde boore. St. Augustine, the first great saint of the Order, and patron of the canons of the cathedral. He was born at Tagaste, in Numidia, A.D. 354. His father, Patricius, was a Pagan, while his mother, Monica, was a Christian. Patricius, perceiving the ability of his son, "spared nothing to breed him up a scholar." When quite young he had a severe illness, and expressed a wish to be baptized, but on his recovery the wish vanished. Later, his morals grew corrupt, and he lived a profligate life until he became a convert of the Manicheans at the age of nineteen. After teaching grammar at Tagaste, and rhetoric at Carthage, he proceeded to Rome, against the wish of Monica. He next became professor of rhetoric at Milan. Ambrose was then archbishop, and through listening to his preaching, St. Augustine abandoned the Manichean doctrines, and was baptized at Easter the following year, A.D. 387. Monica, who had prayed unceasingly for his conversion, now visited him at Milan, and was greatly rejoiced at the answer to her prayers. His mother started to return to Africa with her son, but died at Ostia. At a villa outside Hippo, St. Augustine passed three years in the company of eleven pious men. "They had all things in common as in the early Church; and fasting and prayer, Scripture-reading and almsgiving, formed their regular occupations. Their mode of life was not formally monastic according to any special rule, but the experience of this time of seclusion was, no doubt, the basis of that monastic system which St. Augustine afterwards sketched, and which derived from him its name." He then entered the priesthood, A.D. 390, and five years afterward was made coadjutor in the bishopric of Hippo, and eventually became bishop. The rest of his life he devoted to defending the Christian religion, both by preaching and by writing. He died in Hippo, A.D. 430, while the Vandals were besieging it. St. Augustine is called "the greatest of the Fathers." His great work "De Civitate Dei," "the highest expression of his thought," engaged him for seventeen years. In his well-known "Confessions" is given an account of his spiritual progress, and of his state before he was converted. [Illustration: EAST END OF THE FRATRY AND SOUTH TRANSEPT. From Billings.] ST. AUGUSTINE 1. Her fader and mod^r of sanct Austyne Fyrst put hym her to lerne doctryne 2. Her taught he gramor and rethorike Emongys all doctors non was h[~y] lyke 3. Her promysed he w^{th} hys moder to abide Bot he left her wepyng and stal y^e tyde grace de diu (on the ship's sail) 4. There taught he at rome the sevyn science Y^t was gret prece tyll hys presence 5. Her prechyd Ambrose and oft tymys previd Qd lettera occid_t wych Austin mevid 6. Her Poinciane hym tald ye lyffe of Sanct Anton And to Elipius he stonyshed said thus anone Q^r patim^r surgut indocti et Coelu^m rapiu't Et nos c[~u] doctrinis [~i] infer_r demergimur 7. Her sore wepying for hys gret syn He went to morne a garth wythin 8. Her wepyng and walyng as he lay Sodenly a voice thus herd he say Tolle lege Tolle lege 9. No word for tothewarke here myght he say But wrote to the pepil for him to pray 10. Her of Sainct Ambrose chrysteyned was The gret doctor Austyne throgh Godes grace Te Deum laudamus Te Dom'm confitemur 11. Her deyd his moder called Monica As thai were returning in to Affrica 12. Her was he sacred prest and usyd Of Valery the Bishop thoffe he refusyt 13. Her after (Godes word mylde and mek taught he) Hys (men of) religion as ye may see 14. Her fortunate the heretyk concludit he Informyng the laws of Maneche 15. Consecrate Byshop was this doctour By all the cuntre with gret honour 16. As ys woman come to h[~y] for consolacion She saw hym wth the Trinite in meditacion 17. When he Complyn had said and come to luke He was full cleyn owt of y^s knafys buke (Penitet me tibi ostendisse librum) 18. They beried hys body wyth deligence her in hys aun kirk of Yponese. 19. Her Lied-brand the kyng of L[~u]berdy Hym translate fr[~o] Sardyne to Pavye 20. Thei shrynyd hys banes solemnly In sanct Peter kyrk thus at Pavye 21. Thys prior he bad soon do evynsang her And helyd hym that was sek thre yer 22. Her he apperyd unto these men thre And bad yam go to ... y^t hale [Illustration: THE CRYPT UNDER THE FRATRY. _G.W. Wilson & Co. Ltd., Photo._] Between the compartments devoted to the lives and deeds of St. Anthony and St. Cuthbert are pictures of the twelve Apostles with the words which, according to tradition, each one contributed to the Creed. APOSTLES AND CREED ST. PETER I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ST. ANDREW And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord ST. JAMES Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ST. JOHN He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried ST. THOMAS He descended into Hell: rose again the third day from the dead ST. JAMES And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty ST. PHILIP From whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. ST. BARTHOLOMEW I believe in the Holy Ghost ST. MATTHEW The Communion of Saints ST. SIMON The Forgiveness of Sins ST. THADDEUS The Resurrection of the Body ST. MATTHIAS And the Life Everlasting. At the time of the Reformation these paintings were all whitewashed. Dean Percy (1778) removed the whitewash from some of them, and they are now all restored to their original condition as far as possible. #Retro-choir.#--The extreme eastern bay of each aisle, and the passage behind the altar, form the retro-choir, which is Late Decorated. Its acutely-pointed windows are practically of identical pattern, the mullions and side-mouldings having richly floriated capitals. The last arch of the main arcade is supported by a bracket of foliage. A fragment of rib still remaining was for the cross-groining of the aisle; but as this would have interfered with the arch mouldings, the rib was terminated higher up the wall upon a bracket in the form of a crouching figure. The wall-arcade has three divisions, the capitals of the columns are foliated, and the point where the hood mouldings meet is ornamented with the carving of a human head. The low doorway forms the entrance to a staircase leading to the upper part of the cathedral, and the belfry. Beneath the great east window there is a plain tablet in memory of Archdeacon Paley, and another in memory of his two wives and infant son. Another tablet is in memory of Dean Cramer: "Apud Oxonienses Historiæ Profr. Regius," died 1848. Opposite is a monument to Bishop Law, the work of T. Banks, R.A. A figure of Religion leaning on a cross is above the tablet. This monument was originally fixed on the pillar behind the pulpit ("Columnæ hujus sepultus est ad pedem"). It was removed to the north aisle because of the weakening of the pillar through having been cut to receive the memorial; and in 1894 was again removed and fixed here, about as far away from the bishop's grave as it could possibly be placed. Under the great window, a little to the south, is a tombstone, similar to that of Bishop Bell in the choir, but the brass is missing. On the south side the last arch of the main arcade is supported by a bracket representing a human figure sustaining mouldings, resembling the one at the end of the north aisle. The small east window is in memory of John Heysham, M.D. (1753-1834). He graduated at Edinburgh in 1777, and settled in Carlisle where he practised till his death. He is famous for his statistical observations; a record of the annual births, marriages, diseases, and deaths in Carlisle (ten years to 1788); a census of the inhabitants in 1780 and 1788. The actuary of the Sun Life Assurance Office used these statistics as the basis of the well-known "Carlisle Table of Mortality." Aided by the dean and chapter he established the first dispensary for the poor at Carlisle. He died in 1834, and was buried in St. Mary's Church. One of the heads ornamenting the wall-arcade is said to represent Edward I. The #South Choir Aisle# is in most particulars the same as the corresponding aisle on the north. The windows of its two bays next to St. Catherine's Chapel are Early English of a later period than the others, but the effect they produce is not by any means so pleasing. The decorations of the capitals of the Early English columns are not so elaborate as those in the north choir aisle. In the third bay east of St. Catherine's Chapel, two arches of the wall-arcade have been thrown into one, forming a doorway. The arch is formed by seven segments, and its hood-moulding terminates in the cornice immediately above the arcade. #Monuments in South Choir Aisle.#--At the east end is an altar tomb with recumbent effigy in white marble, of Bishop Waldegrave, by H.H. Armstead, R.A. The words "væ mihi si non evangelizavero" (1 Cor. ix. 16) are on the edge of the upper part of the tomb. Below this is the following inscription:-- Samuel Waldegrave 57th Bishop of Carlisle Born Sept. 13, 1817; Consecrated, Nov. 12, 1860; Entered into rest Oct. 1, 1869. "To me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Phil. i. 21. A tribute of Affection, Admiration, and Respect. Raised by public subscription. A.D. 1872. A recess with low pointed arch beneath the third window from the east formerly contained a monument to Sir John Skelton, Knt. (1413-22). Outside St. Catherine's Chapel is an altar tomb with a damaged effigy in red sandstone of Bishop Barrow (1423-29). Originally it was painted and gilt, and, although greatly injured, the remains show that the statue was well executed. Opposite, under a carved oak canopy, is a bronze recumbent figure by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A., of Harvey Goodwin. The following is inscribed on a bronze tablet: In memory of Harvey Goodwin, Fifty-eighth Bishop of Carlisle. at Cambridge, and Ely, and in this diocese a proved leader of men. Learned, eloquent, wise, untiring, he used his rare gifts of mind and heart in the service of his master for the good of the English people, and of the Church of Christ at home and abroad. Born, Oct. 9, 1818; Consecrated, Nov. 30, 1869; Died, Nov. 25, 1891. Next to this, under a richly-carved canopy, is a recumbent figure in white marble, by H.H. Armstead, R.A., of Dean Close. The monument bears the following inscription:-- Francis Close, D.D., 25 years Dean of this cathedral, died 1882, aged 85. Erected by public subscription as a mark of affection and esteem (1884). The canopy, given by his son, bears the words following: "This canopy was erected by Admiral Close in memory of his father." Francis Close was born in 1797, and was educated at St. John's, Cambridge. From 1826 till 1856 he held the living of Cheltenham. He was a liberal subscriber to societies for various philanthropic purposes whether in connection with the Established Church or not. In 1856 he was nominated Dean of Carlisle. Although a very popular preacher his theological views were far from broad. He was, also, a strenuous opponent of betting, theatre-going, indulgence in alcoholic liquors, and smoking. The poor people of Carlisle lost a good friend when he passed away. His failing health obliged him to give up the deanery in 1881, and at the end of the following year he died at Penzance, where he was wintering. The fourth window is filled with glass in memory of members of the Mounsey family, and Captain John Oswald Lambert. The following subjects are represented:-- Our Lord The Transfiguration. Pilate writing rebuking the title the Sea. for the Cross. The Adoration The entry into Our Lord of the Magi. Jerusalem. before Pilate. St. Paul St. Paul before St. Paul before the King Agrippa. on board Chief Priests. ship. At the back of the bishop's throne are some shelves containing a few standard devotional books for the use of the congregation before and after divine service. It would be a good thing if this custom could be generally adopted, and every church in the land furnished with a small library of the works of such men as Thomas a Kempis, St. Augustine, Taylor, Law, and Keble. The low doorway in the north-eastern angle of the retro-choir opens on a staircase leading to the upper part of the cathedral, and the tower. If we ascend to the clerestory we may pass along the ambulatory, and obtain a nearer view of the great east window (especially the old glass in the tracery), the choir roof, and the clerestory windows. At the end of the ambulatory we come to the belfry. There are six #Bells#, one of which, bearing the date 1396, was furnished by Bishop Strickland. It is inscribed as follows:-- In: voce: sum: munda: maria; sonando: secunda. Another bell bears the following sentence:-- "Jesus be our speed." Date 1608. A third has on the rim--"This ringe was made six tuneable bells at the charge of the Lord Howard and other gentree of the country and citie, and officers of the garrisson, by the advice of Majer Jeremiah Tolhurst, governor of the garrisson 1658." This bell was cracked while ringing during the rejoicings held in honour of the peace after Waterloo. On a bell dated 1657 can be read, "I warne you how your time doth pass away, Serve God therefore while life doth last, and say Glorie in excelsis Deo." Of the remaining bells, one is dated 1659, and the other 1728. In war time the tower was useful as a watch-tower, especially when the enemy was approaching from Scotland. The small turret was used for fire signals. There is an interesting record in connection with the tower which is found in an account of the trial of the Governor of Carlisle in 1745. It is as follows:-- "I desired that two men might be posted upon the high Tower of the Cathedral with a very large spying glass I had brought with me, and to send me a report of what they observed in the country. The Chancellor proposed to the clergy to take this duty, which they readily did, and were very exact and vigilant, and when the Rebells came before Carlisle they took up arms as Volunteers most of whom served under me as aides-de-camp."[6] [6] "Guide to the Cathedral of Carlisle," by R.H. and K.H. [Illustration: THE FRATRY. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS The Monastic Buildings were erected on the land south of the cathedral. The cloisters, enclosing a large open court, stood west of the south transept, communicating with the two doors--one in the north-east angle, the other in the north-west. The dormitory, built upon an arcade, was joined to the south transept, and had a door opening into it above the present modern doorway. West of the dormitory, and parallel with the nave, was the fratry; adjoining the east end of which, and stretching to the south-east, were the domestic offices. West of the fratry was the prior's lodging (now the deanery). The chapter-house, which was built somewhere in the angle formed by the choir and the dormitory, has disappeared entirely. It was octagonal in shape, about 28 feet across, and had a conical roof. The great fire in 1292 caused great destruction to the priory buildings. They were put up again about 1350, and Prior Gondibur almost entirely rebuilt them towards the end of the fifteenth century. There is no reason for doubting that the various buildings were handed over in good order at the dissolution of the priory. The destruction which has left standing only the fratry, the prior's lodging, and the gate tower (1528), was the act of the Parliamentary troops and their Scottish allies in 1645, when, in addition to pulling down part of the nave, they destroyed most of the monastic buildings, in order to use the materials for the erection of guard-houses, and to strengthen the fortifications. Dr. Todd says: "The Abbey Clois^{rs}, part of ye Deanery, and Chapter-House.... they pulled down, and employed ye stone to build a maine guard, and a guard-house at every gate; to repair y^e walls, and other secular uses as they thought fit." The #Fratry# still remains. It was built about the middle of the fourteenth century, and rebuilt by Prior Gondibour (1484-1511) towards the close of the fifteenth century. It contains the canons' dining-hall, a fine hall, 79 feet by 27. At the upper end is a beautiful little reader's pulpit, and in the north wall there are two handsome canopied niches. The Perpendicular windows on the south side are very fine specimens; the tracery, however, is modern, but that of the west windows is very old. The late Mr. Street very carefully restored the fratry in 1880, and it is now used as a chapter-house, library, and choir-school. Beneath the fratry is a very fine Decorated crypt, with a groined roof. The boss of one of the pillars bears the initials of Prior Gondibour. Near the fratry, to the south-west, is the prior's lodging, which, having been enlarged, is now the #Deanery#. It has an embattled tower, and was a refuge for the abbey inmates when danger was near; in fact, to all intents and purposes it was a "peel tower." Formerly there was a covered passage leading from the first floor, over the cloisters, into the cathedral. There is a remarkable room in the deanery, the priors' dining-hall, with a very fine ceiling, put up by Prior Senhouse (1507-1520). It is of oak, richly carved and painted; and covered profusely with verses, armorial bearings, and devices. In every third compartment are two birds holding a scroll between them, on which, and on the cross beams, the following rude verses are written in old English characters:-- Remember man ye gret pre-emynence, Geven unto ye by God omnipotente; Between ye and angels is lytill difference, And all thinge erthly to the obediente. By the byrde and beist under ye fyrmament, Say what excuse mayste thou lay or finde; Thus you are made by God so excellente But that you aughteste again to hy' be kinde, Simon Sonus sette yis Roofe and Scalope here, To the intent wythin thys place they shall have prayers every day in the yere. Lofe God and thy prynce and you neydis not dreid thy enimys. The abbey gateway is to the north-west of the nave. It is a plain, round-headed archway, built by Prior Christopher Slee, and bears the following inscription:--"Ora te p^r anima Christofori Slee Prioris qui primus hoc opus fieri incipit A.D. MDXXVII." Formerly, it was provided with battlements, which have now been removed. Near the south transept, two arches of the vestibule of the chapter-house are still visible. CHAPTER IV HISTORY OF THE SEE Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, drove the Britons away from what is now the northern part of Lancashire, and the Lake district, 670-675. Some years later he granted Carlisle with a circuit of fifteen miles to St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne (685-687), and his successors. In 883 Chester-le-street was chosen as the seat of the bishopric on account of the Northmen's raids on Lindisfarne, and in 995 the see was finally removed to Durham. Carlisle thus formed part of the bishopric of Durham until the death of Flambard in 1128. This bishop had greatly displeased Henry I., and in order to curb the power of the bishops of Durham he reduced the size of the diocese. Carlisle, owing to its distance from Durham, and because of the laxity of ecclesiastical supervision in the surrounding district, was chosen as the seat of a new bishopric, and, with about half of the present counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, made independent of Durham. A further reason for the choice of Carlisle may have been the presence of the priory church begun by Walter, and finished by Henry I. William Rufus in his lifetime had definitely made the district of Carlisle part of the kingdom of England, and "Henry gave the special care of this last won possession of the English Crown to a prelate, whose name of Æthelwulf is sure proof of his English birth." Æthelwulf, the king's own confessor and prior of Carlisle, was accordingly consecrated bishop in 1133. More than 400 years later, at the Reformation, the priory was dissolved (1547) and the cathedral re-dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity. In 1856, on the death of Bishop Percy, a large part of Westmoreland was transferred to Carlisle, and the diocese now embraces all Cumberland (except the parish of Alston), Westmoreland, and Lancashire north of the Sands. #Aldulf# (or #Æthelwulf#) (1133-1155), Prior of St. Oswald's (Nostell); Prior of Carlisle; Confessor to Henry I. He was one of those who elected Henry Murdac, Abbot of Fountains Abbey, to the archbishopric of York, although the election displeased Stephen; and received him as his metropolitan when he came to Carlisle on a visit to David, king of Scotland, in 1148. He died in 1155. #Bernard# (1203), Archbishop of Ragusa. For more than thirty years there was no appointment made to the see, perhaps because "the bishop's revenues were so small that no able and loyal person would accept thereof." It is not known how long Bernard held the bishopric. #Hugh of Beaulieu# (1218-1223), Abbot of Beaulieu, Hampshire, was constituted Bishop of Carlisle by Gualo the Pope's legate. Henry III. had complained to Honorius III. that the canons had elected a bishop against his will and in opposition to the legate, and had sworn fealty to the king of Scotland, at that time the enemy alike of Henry and Honorius. So the canons were banished, and Hugh made bishop. He died at La Ferté, Burgundy, while returning from Rome. #Walter Mauclerk# (1223-1246). This bishop was a favourite of King John, and was employed by him on many missions; for instance, in 1215 he was sent to Rome to support the king against the barons; and in 1228 he went on an embassy to Germany to treat for the king's marriage with Leopold of Austria's daughter. He was made treasurer of England by charter in 1232. The following year he was deprived of the office by the machinations of the Bishop of Winchester, and fined £ 100. Mauclerk set out to appeal to the Pope, but was stopped at Dover by command of the king. The Bishop of London, happening to witness this ill-treatment, excommunicated all those who were hindering Mauclerk, and, proceeding to the king at Hereford, renewed the sentence, in which he was supported by all the bishops there present. This had the effect of gaining permission for the release of Mauclerk, and leave to go to Flanders. In 1234 the bishop was restored to favour. He resigned the bishopric in 1246, and became a Dominican friar at Oxford. When this order of friars first came into England he had stood their friend, presenting them with land and mills. He died in 1248. #Sylvester de Everdon# (1247-1255), Archdeacon of Chester; Lord High Chancellor. Sylvester was among the bishops who supported the Archbishop of Canterbury in his opposition to the king's encroachments upon the liberties of the Church, particularly in the matter of electing bishops. He was killed in 1255 by falling from his horse. #Thomas Vipont# (1255-1256). This bishop enjoyed the bishopric for less than a year. He died in October 1256. Two years elapsed before the next appointment. #Robert de Chause# (1258-1278), Archdeacon of Bath; Chaplain to Queen Eleanor. [Illustration: THE ABBEY GATEWAY. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] Again there was an interval of two years before the appointment of #Ralph Ireton# (1280-1292), Prior of Gisburne. He was elected by the prior and canons of Carlisle, in 1278, without royal licence; so the king (Edward I.) fined the chapter 500 marks, and refused his assent. Eventually Pope Nicholas III. quashed the appointment on the grounds that it had been technically wrong, and then nominated Ireton to the vacant see. Edward agreed to this, pardoned the prior on payment of £ 100, and restored the temporalities in 1280. Ireton was avaricious, and extorted money from the clergy. This he used for building a new roof to the cathedral. He died in 1292, and was buried in the cathedral; where, shortly after, his tomb and a great deal of his work was destroyed by the great fire which occurred in May that same year. #John of Halton# (1292-1324), Canon and Prior of Carlisle; Custos of Carlisle Castle. He defended the city against Wallace. The diocese suffered so often from the ravages of the Scots that more than once he had to obtain remission of the Papal taxation levied on the clergy. He was employed many times in various negotiations with Scotland, his last embassy being in 1320. He died four years later, and was buried in the cathedral. #John de Ros# (or #Rosse#) (1325-1332), Canon of Hereford. He was appointed by the Pope to Carlisle in 1325. During his episcopate he was frequently non-resident. He died in 1332. #John de Kirkby# (1332-1352), Prior of Carlisle, was bishop during very troubled times, and took part in many raids made on the Scots. He helped to raise the siege of Edinburgh in 1337. Five years later he took part in an expedition to raise the siege of Lochmaben Castle. In 1345 the Scots made a raid into Cumberland, and were defeated. The bishop, while fighting valorously against them, was unhorsed and nearly taken prisoner. The following year he was one of the English leaders at the battle of Neville's Cross. He died in 1352. #Gilbert Welton# (1353-1362). The chapter of Carlisle had, with the king's leave, elected John de Horncastle, but the Pope annulled the election, and made Gilbert Welton bishop. He was a very busy official of the king; amongst other matters he was one of the commissioners who treated for the ransom of David of Scotland, and was also a warden of the western marches. #Thomas Appleby# (1363-1395), Canon of Carlisle. More than once during his episcopate he was a warden of the western marches. In 1372 he was required by the king, in conjunction with the Bishop of Durham, and others, to be ready to repel any invasion by the Scots. He was also one of the commissioners, in 1384, to treat with the king of Scotland for a renewal of the truce, and, in 1392, to execute that part of a treaty with France which concerned Scottish affairs. He died in 1395. #Robert Reade# (1396-1397), a Dominican friar. In 1394 he was appointed by the Pope to the bishopric of Waterford and Lismore, and, in spite of the election of William Strickland by the canons, translated to Carlisle, whose temporalities he received in March 1396. In October, however, he was translated (by Papal bull) to Chichester, receiving the temporalities of that see May 1397. #Thomas Merke# (or #Merkes#) (1397-1400). Educated at Oxford. The Pope, at the king's request, compelled the chapter of Carlisle to elect him in 1397. He is said to have been a boon companion of Richard II., and remained faithful to that king. He was one of the eight whose safety Richard demanded when surrendering to Bolingbroke. He is said to have made a strong protest in Henry IV.'s first parliament (October 1399) against the treatment which Richard had received. The following January he was tried for high treason, and, after being deprived of his bishopric, was committed to the Abbey of Westminster (23d June 1400). Pope Boniface IX. intervened in his favour, and, by translating him to a titular eastern see _(ad ecclesiam Samastone_), prevented his being degraded and handed over to the secular arm. He died in 1409, having, after his deposition, held benefices at Sturminster, Marshall, and Todenham, his eastern see affording him no revenue. #William Strickland# (1400-1419), whose election (after the death of Bishop Appleby) had been annulled, was now made bishop. He rebuilt the tower of the cathedral, and provided the tabernacle work in the choir. He also furnished Penrith with water from the Petteril. He died in 1419, and was buried in the cathedral. #Roger Whelpdale# (1420-1422). Educated at, and Fellow of, Balliol College, Oxford; Provost of Queen's College. He founded and endowed a chantry in the cathedral, and made various bequests to his old colleges at Oxford, dying in London 1422. #William Barrow# (1423-1429), Chancellor of the University of Oxford; translated from Bangor. In 1429 he was one of the commissioners for the truce with Scotland which was concluded at Hawden Stank. He died in 1429, and was buried in the cathedral. #Marmaduke Lumley# (1430-1450). Educated at Cambridge; Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and Master of Trinity Hall. In 1447 he became Lord High Treasurer of England. Queen's College, Cambridge, was indebted to him for gifts of money towards its building, and books for its library. He was translated to Lincoln in 1450, and died in December of that same year. #Nicholas Close# (1450-1452), Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; Chancellor of the University; Archdeacon of Colchester. Translated to the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield 1452, and died two months after his translation. He was a great benefactor to King's College. #William Percy# (1452-1462), Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Died in 1462. #John Kingscott# (1462-1463), Archdeacon of Gloucester. #Richard Scroope# (1464-1468), Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. #Edward Story# (1468-77), Fellow of Pembroke Hall; Master of Michael House, Cambridge, and Chancellor of the University. He was translated to Chichester 1477. #Richard Bell# (1478-1495), Prior of Durham. He died in 1495, and was buried in the choir of the cathedral, where there is a fine brass to his memory. #William Senhouse# or #Sever# (1496-1502). Educated at Oxford; Abbot of York. He was one of the commissioners sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., with James IV. Translated to Durham 1502. #Roger Leyburn# (1503-1508), Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge; Archdeacon of Durham. Died 1508. #John Penny# (1509-1520). Educated at Lincoln College, Oxford; Abbot of St. Mary de Pratis, Leicester, 1496; Bishop of Bangor, 1504. Translated to Carlisle 1509. Died in 1520, at Leicester, and was buried there. #John Kite# (1521-1537), "a creature of Wolsey." Educated at Eton, and King's College, Cambridge. He was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, by provision of Pope Leo X. 1513, and in 1521 translated to Carlisle. In 1529 he approved the action of Henry VIII. in calling in question his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and in 1530 he signed the letter to the Pope which demanded Henry's divorce. Four years later he renounced the Pope's supremacy. His epitaph says that during his episcopate he kept "nobyl Houshold wyth grete Hospitality." He died in London 1537, and was buried in Stepney Church. #Robert Aldridge# (1537-1556). He was educated at Eton, and King's College, Cambridge. Friend of Erasmus; Registrar of the Order of the Garter; Provost of Eton; and Almoner to Queen Jane Seymour. Until the close of the year 1550 his opinion was much sought after on questions affecting the Sacrament and the mass, which at that period were much in dispute. #Owen Oglethorpe# (1557-1559), Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Living in the troublous times of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. he had, somewhat reluctantly, given his adhesion to the new order and form of service of the holy communion. He was raised to the bishopric of Carlisle by Mary in 1557. The following year she died, and the bishop being called upon to say mass before the new queen, elevated the Host, although she had expressly forbidden it. "A good-natur'd man, and when single by himself very plyable to please Queen Elizabeth," he crowned her queen when the rest of his order refused to perform the ceremony. But "when in conjunction with other Popish Bishops, such principles of stubbornness were distilled into him" that he refused to take the oath of supremacy, and was accordingly deprived of his bishopric the following May. His death, which occurred 31st December 1559, is said to have been hastened by his remorse at having crowned Elizabeth--an enemy of the "true Church"--queen of England. #John Best# (1560-1570). After the death of Oglethorpe, the bishopric was offered to "the excellent and pious" Bernard Gilpin, "the apostle of the north," but he refused it. John Best was then consecrated. He was educated at Oxford. At the beginning of Queen Mary's reign he had given up all his preferments and lived privately and obscurely. Four years after his consecration he had permission from the queen "to arm himself against the ill-doings of papists and other disaffected persons in his diocese." He died in 1570, and was buried in the cathedral. #Richard Barnes# (1570-1577), Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford; Suffragan-Bishop of Nottingham 1567; translated to Durham 1577. In a letter dated 1576 Barnes alludes to Carlisle as "this poore and bare living." #John Maye# (1577-1598), Master of Catherine Hall; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge. He died in February 1598 while the plague was ravaging Carlisle, and was buried in the cathedral. #Henry Robinson# (1598-1616). Educated at Queen's College, Oxford, of which college he became Provost 1581. He took part in the Hampton Court Conference 1603, and was a great benefactor to his college. He died of the plague in 1616, and was buried in the cathedral, where his brother placed a brass to his memory. #Robert Snowden# (1616-1621), Prebendary of Southwell. Died 1621. #Richard Milburn# (1621-1624), Dean of Rochester. Translated from St. David's. He died 1624. #Richard Senhouse# (1624-1626). Educated at Trinity College, and St. John's College, Cambridge. Dean of Gloucester. He preached at the coronation of Charles I. His death, which was caused by a fall from his horse, took place in 1626, and he was buried in the cathedral. #Francis White# (1626-1629), Dean of Carlisle; translated to Norwich 1629. He brought himself into notice by preaching against popery; by a book written in antagonism to Fisher, the Jesuit; and, further, by holding a disputation with the same man in the presence of James I. #Barnaby Potter# (1629-1642). Educated at, and Provost of Queen's College, Oxford; Chief Almoner of Charles I. Potter was one of the four bishops who advised Charles upon the attainder of Strafford. He died in London 1642. #James Usher# (1642-1656). Educated at Trinity College, Dublin; Bishop of Meath; Archbishop of Armagh. He visited England in 1640, and was consulted by the Earl of Strafford in preparing a defence against his impeachment. Charles I. also consulted him as to whether he should sanction the death of the Earl. Usher was present at the execution of Strafford, and ministered to him in his last moments. In 1641 Archbishop Usher suffered severe losses from a rebellion in Ireland; and this is no doubt the reason why he never returned to that country. About this time Charles I. gave him the bishopric of Carlisle _in commendam_, but the Archbishop does not seem to have obtained much revenue therefrom, as the district was greatly impoverished through the English and Scottish troops being alternately quartered there. A few years later Parliament seized on his lands and voted him an annual pension of £ 400, which, however, he probably did not receive more than twice. During the troubles of these times he resided at Oxford and Cardiff. He came to London in 1646, and the next year, through his friend's endeavours, he was allowed to preach. He visited Charles at Carisbrooke in 1648. He died in 1656, and was buried, by order of Cromwell, in Westminster Abbey. He wrote "On the Original State of the British Churches," "The Ancient History of the British Churches," and his great work on sacred chronology, "The Annals of the Old Testament." It is said that Baxter wrote his famous "Call to the Unconverted" at the Archbishop's suggestion. [Illustration: REDNESS HALL. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] #Richard Sterne# (1660-1664). Educated at Trinity College; Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. He sided with the king on the outbreak of civil war, and was arrested by Cromwell in 1642 for endeavouring to send the college plate to Charles, and imprisoned in the Tower till the January following. He was kept prisoner in various places until 1645. He regained his Mastership at the Restoration, and soon after was made Bishop of Carlisle. He was translated to the archbishopric of York, leaving his bishopric in a very impoverished state. Sterne the novelist was his great-grandson. #Edward Rainbow# (1664-1684). Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Magdalene College, Cambridge; he became Master of the latter in 1642-3. Dean of Peterborough 1661. He was very hospitable and liberal. He did not hesitate in years of scarcity (after he had exhausted his own stores of provisions) to buy corn which he gave away to the poor day by day. He died in 1684, and was buried at Dalston. #Thomas Smith# (1684-1702). Educated at Queen's College; Prebendary of Durham; Dean of Carlisle. He was a very generous benefactor to Queen's College, Oxford, the Carlisle Grammar School, the chapter library, and the cathedral treasury. He died in 1702. #William Nicolson# (1702-1718). A very learned antiquary. Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and Archdeacon of Carlisle. His most noted work is the "Historical Library" (1696-1699), which at one time "afforded a guide to the riches of the chronicle literature of the British empire." He was translated to the bishopric of Derry in 1718. #Samuel Bradford# (1718-1723). Educated at St. Paul's School, the Charterhouse, and Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He was elected Master of Corpus Christi College in 1716. Dean of Westminster. Translated to Rochester 1723. #John Waugh# (1723-1734). Educated at, and Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford; Dean of Gloucester. Died 1734. #Sir George Fleming#, Bart. (1735-1747). Educated at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford; Dean of Carlisle. During his episcopate the Young Pretender entered Carlisle (1745) and it is said that he installed one Thomas Coppock, or Cappoch, a Roman Catholic, as bishop. Coppock was captured, and executed at Carlisle the following year. Sir George Fleming died in 1747, and was buried in the cathedral. #Richard Osbaldeston# (1747-1762). Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge; Dean of York. He was chiefly a non-resident bishop, and, on his translation to London in 1762, his successor complained bitterly of the state of dilapidation and decay into which Rose Castle, the bishop's residence, had been allowed to fall. #Charles Lyttelton# (1762-1768). Educated at Eton, and University College, Oxford; Dean of Exeter. In 1765 he was president of the Society of Antiquaries. He wrote numerous articles, some of which are included in the first three volumes of the "Archæologia." He was very genial and hospitable, and had a remarkable knowledge of antiquities. He died in London 1768, and was buried at Hagley. #Edmund Law# (1769-1787). Educated at St. John's College, Cambridge; Fellow of Christ's College. He was an earnest student, and zealous for Christian truth and Christian liberty. He believed that the human race progresses in religion equally with its progress in all other knowledge. He is said to have been "a man of great softness of manners, and of the mildest and most tranquil disposition." He died in 1787, and was buried in the cathedral. #John Douglas# (1787-1791). Educated at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and Balliol; Dean of Windsor; translated to Salisbury 1791. He wrote many political pamphlets. #The Hon. Edward Venables Vernon# (1791-1808), Canon of Christ Church, Oxford; translated to York 1808. He assumed the name of Harcourt in 1831. #Samuel Goodenough# (1808-1827). Educated at Westminster, and Christ Church, Oxford; Canon of Windsor, and Dean of Rochester. In 1809 a sermon preached before the House of Lords gave rise to the following epigram:-- 'Tis well enough that Goodenough Before the Lords should preach; But, sure enough, full bad enough Are those he has to teach. He died in 1827, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. #Hugh Percy# (1827-1856). Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge; Bishop of Rochester, whence he was translated to Carlisle. During his episcopate he established a Clergy Aid Society (1838), and a Diocesan Education Society (1855). He died in 1856, and was buried at Dalston. #Henry Montague Villiers# (1856-1860). Translated to Durham 1860. #Samuel Waldegrave# (1860-1869). Educated at Oxford; Canon of Salisbury. Author of "New Testament Millenarianism" (the Bampton Lectures, 1854). Died 1869. #Harvey Goodwin# (1869-1891). Second Wrangler, Cambridge; Dean of Ely. A very politic bishop. In one of his sermons he used words to the effect that "he was as high as the church was high, as low as the church was low, and as broad as the church was broad." Died 1891. #J.W. Bardsley# (1892). Translated from Sodor and Man. LIST OF PRIORS AND DEANS PRIORS Æthelwulf (Aldulf) Walter John Bartholomew Ralph Robert Morville Adam de Felton Alan John Halton (Bishop, 1292) John Kendall Robert Adam Warthwic (resigned 1304) William Hautwyssel Robert Helperton Simon Hautwyssel (about 1325) William de Hastworth. 1325 John Kirby (Bishop, 1332) Galfrid John de Horncastle (resigned 1376) Thomas Hextildsham Richard de Rydale John de Penrith (resigned 1381) William de Dalston Robert de Edenhall. 1386 Thomas de Hoton Thomas Elye Thomas Barnaby. 1433 Thomas de Haythwaite Thomas Gondibour. 1484-1507 Simon Senhouse. 1507 Christopher Slee Lancelot Salkeld. 1532. (Last Prior and 1st Dean) DEANS Lancelot Salkeld. 1542 Sir Thomas Smyth, LL. D. 1547 Lancelot Salkeld. 1553. Sir Thomas Smyth, LL.D. 1559 Sir John Wooley, M.A. 1577 Christopher Perkins, LL.D. 1596 Francis White, S.T.P. 1622 William Patterson, S.T.P. 1626 Thomas Comber S.T.P 1630 (Vacant 18 years) Guy Carleton, D.D. 1660 Thomas Smith, D.D. 1671 Thomas Musgrave, D.D. 1684 William Graham, D.D. 1686 Francis Atterbury, D.D. 1704 George Smallridge, D.D. 1711 Thomas Gibbon, D.D. 1713 Thomas Tullie, LL.D. 1716 George Fleming, LL.D. 1727 Robert Bolton, LL.D. 1734 Charles Tarrent, D.D. 1764 Thomas Wilson, D.D. 1764 Thomas Percy, D.D. 1778 Jeffrey Ekins, D.D. 1782 Isaac Milner, D.D. 1792 Robert Hodgson, D.D. 1820 John Anthony Cramer, D.D. 1844 Samuel Hinds, D.D. 1848 Archibald Campbell Tait, D.D. 1849 Francis Close, D.D. 1856 J. Oakley, D.D. 1881 W.G. Henderson, D.D. 1884 CHAPTER V THE CASTLE The #Castle# is built on the highest ground in the city, a kind of cliff at the north-west angle rising abruptly about sixty feet above the river Eden. An area of nearly three acres has been enclosed with walls, the longest side from north-west to south-east being about 256 yards long, the west side 143 yards, and the south side 200 yards. Two sides are very steep, and the south side, which slopes gradually to the town, is defended outside the wall by a wide moat 10 feet deep. There are two divisions: the outer ward, and the inner ward. William Rufus erected the keep, which was at first the only building on the site, and this was enclosed by a wall on the north and east. A triangular ward was thus formed, having its entrance at the south-east. Carlisle was fortified in 1170, and the city walls were carried up to the castle. At this time the first entrance was blocked up and the present one made; the outer ward was also enclosed. The south wall, with its flat buttresses, is partly Norman, and partly thirteenth-century work; and this description generally applies to the north and west walls. About 50 yards from the south-west angle and on the city walls is King Richard's Tower, a building of two storeys, where Richard III. is said to have lived when at Carlisle. It is also called the Tile Tower because of the thin bricks with which it was built. A subterranean passage leading to the keep was discovered here early this century. Entrance to the castle is gained by a bridge crossing the moat; this has replaced the old drawbridge and leads to a gatehouse with battlements, a kind of barbican, of two storeys. The passage is vaulted, and has massive doors of oak studded with iron; formerly there was also a portcullis. This leads to the outer ward which is about four times as large as the inner ward. It is nearly square, and contains modern buildings for the use of the garrison. The two wards are divided by a strong stone wall 90 yards in length. A wide ditch (now filled up) once ran in front. In the centre of this wall is a building--the Captain's Tower--which gives access to the inner ward through its gateway secured at each end with a strong door. Some of the masonry of the Captain's Tower is Norman, but it is mostly Decorated. A half-moon battery of three guns once defended the Tower and commanded the outer ward, but it has now been removed. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CASTLE (TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH).] The inner ward contains the great square keep, 66 feet by 61, where the governor had his apartments, and which was the final resort of the garrison when the place was entered by an enemy. The walls are 15 feet in thickness, except on the east side, which is only 8 feet thick. The building consists of a basement and three upper floors; the highest floor is vaulted to sustain a platform for artillery. The present height is 68 feet. On a clear day a fine view can be had from the top, embracing the mountains in the Lake district, the heights of Northumberland, the Solway Firth, and the Scottish coast. Several cells have been contrived in the eastern wall, in one of which Major McDonald (Fergus McIvor) is said to have been lodged. Some of the cell walls have been carved at various times with figures of men, birds, and animals. These were, perhaps, executed with a nail. In the north wall is the shaft of a well, 78 feet deep. This is supposed to be the well which was shown to St. Cuthbert when he visited Carlisle. The dungeons are in the ground floor, and of course are distinguished by a plentiful lack of daylight and fresh air. [Illustration: THE CASTLE. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] Queen Mary's Tower, so called from having been the prison of Mary Queen of Scots, was in the south-east angle of the inner ward. It was pulled down in 1835, and a wall built round the angle. It was in part Norman work of the time of William Rufus, and partly Early English; and had a large rounded archway springing from capitals with zigzag decoration. There was also a portcullis for its defence. A passage used by Queen Mary to pass out to the Lady's Walk, which ran eastward from the gatehouse, has been walled up. The Long Hall, a fine structure about 100 feet by 40, in which the Parliament of 1306-7 met, was also situated in this ward, but was demolished with several other buildings, 1824-1835. At various times the castle has undergone extensive repairs, notably in the reigns of Richard III., Edward III., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth. During the siege in 1644-5 it suffered much damage, and was patched up by the Parliamentary troops. A hundred years later the Duke of Cumberland thought very little of its powers of defence, for he contemptuously called it "an old hen-coop." Among the governors, several well-known men figure; for instance, Andrew Harcla, the Duke of Gloucester (afterwards Richard III.), and Hotspur. Upon the death of Lieutenant-General Ramsay in 1837 the office of governor was abolished. The castle now furnishes barrack accommodation for troops, and serves as a depôt. DIMENSIONS OF CARLISLE CATHEDRAL Choir, Length 134 feet Choir, Breadth 72 feet Choir, Height 72 feet Nave, Length 39 feet Nave, Breadth 60 feet Nave, Height 65 feet Transepts, Length 124 feet Transepts, Breadth 28 feet Tower, Height 112 feet AREA 15,270 sq. ft. [Illustration: PLAN OF CARLISLE CATHEDRAL.] 
20191	----	[Illustration: Durham Cathedral, from the South-West.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF DURHAM A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY J.E. BYGATE, A.R.C.A. [Illustration: Arms of the See.] WITH FORTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1905 _First Published ... March 1899_ _Second Edition, Revised ... September 1900_ _Reprinted ... 1905_ _The Riverside Press Limited, Edinburgh_ * * * * * GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. * * * * * AUTHOR'S PREFACE As much as possible of this brief description of Durham is from the personal acquaintance of the writer with the building. Yet many authorities have, of necessity, been consulted in its preparation, notably a pamphlet by the Rev. Canon W. Greenwell, and the "County of Durham," by J.R. Boyle, F.S.A. Thanks are also due to the authorities of the Cathedral for having freely given permission to make drawings and measurements, and to the late Mr Weatherall, chief verger, for his kindly assistance and information. The illustrations are chiefly from sketches and drawings by the writer, and from photographs reproduced by the kindness of the Photochrom Company, Ltd., and Messrs S.B. Bolas & Co. J.E.B. * * * * * CONTENTS CHAPTER I.--The Building of the Church 3 CHAPTER II.--Description of the Exterior 21 The Towers 21 The East Front 22 The West Front 25 The North Door 25 The South Door 26 The West Door 28 The Cloister 29 The Chapter-House 32 The Dun Cow 35 CHAPTER III.--Description of the Interior 39 The Nave 39 The Choir 40 The Neville Screen 43 The Transepts 50 The Tower 53 The East End 54 The Chapel of the Nine Altars 61 The Tomb of S. Cuthbert 69 The Galilee or Lady Chapel 72 Monuments in the Nave and Transepts 79 The Font 81 CHAPTER IV.--History of the See 82 CHAPTER V.--The Castle and University 102 CHAPTER VI.--The City 111 ILLUSTRATIONS Durham Cathedral, from the South-West _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title Page_ The Exterior, from the College 2 The Dun Cow 9 The West End (from an Old Print) 17 The Exterior, from Palace Green 20 The Central Tower 23 Detail of Ironwork 26 The Sanctuary Knocker 26 Ironwork on Doors of Cloisters 27 Ornament on South Doorway 28 The Cloister 29 S. Cuthbert's Chest. 32 The Chapter-House 33 The Exterior, from the South-East 35 The Nave, looking West 38 One Bay of the Nave (Measured Drawing) 41 Triforium and Clerestory 45 The Choir, looking West 47 The Transepts, looking North 51 Corbels in Choir 54, 58 The Choir, looking East 55 Triforium of Nave and Choir 59 Plan of Norman East End 61 Sections of Hood and Arch Mouldings 61 Capitals in the Nine Altars Chapel 62 The Nine Altars Chapel 63 Capital in Galilee Chapel 66 The Galilee Chapel 67, 72 Paintings in the Galilee Chapel 73 Detail of the Galilee Chapel 75 The Font and Cover 80 The Crypt 85 Stone Coffin Lid 88 The Chapter Library 99 The Chapel or Crypt, Durham Castle 103 Staircase in the Castle 107 The Cathedral and Castle, from the North 113 PLAN AND DIMENSIONS 118 * * * * * [Illustration: The Exterior, from the College.] DURHAM CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I THE BUILDING OF THE CHURCH The traveller northward by the East Coast Route cannot fail to be struck by the beauty of the city of Durham, with its red-roofed houses nestling beneath the majestic site of the cathedral and castle. For splendid position the Cathedral of Durham stands unequalled in this country; on the Continent, perhaps that of Albi can alone be compared with it in this respect. The cathedral and Norman Castle are upon the summit of a lofty tongue of land which is almost surrounded by the River Wear. In parts the banks are rocky and steep, in others thickly wooded. The river itself is spanned here and there by fine and historic bridges. The early history of Durham is obscure. There are many vague legends in existence, a natural consequence, perhaps, when we remember the various and often speedy changes of ownership to which that part of the country was for centuries subjected. To lead up clearly to the founding of the Cathedral of Durham, it will be necessary to describe briefly the earliest introduction of Christianity into the north of England. That Christianity was known in this country during the time of the Romans there is sufficient evidence to prove. There is, however, little to show that it existed in the north to any appreciable extent. All or nearly all the carved stones, altars, etc., disinterred in that part of the country have been of undoubted Pagan origin. The ancient kingdom of Northumbria comprised the present counties of Durham, Northumberland, and Yorkshire, and a part of the south-east of Scotland as far north as the Firth of Forth. This kingdom was sub-divided into two portions. The Southern, or Deira, extended from the Tees to the Humber, and the Northern, or Bernicia, reached from the Tees to the Firth of Forth. The province of Bernicia was settled about A.D. 547 by Ida, a chief of the Angles, who made his headquarters on a steep rock on the sea-coast about sixteen miles south of Berwick. He was succeeded by his son Ethelric, who built himself a stronghold, which he named after his wife Bebbanburgh, a name still retained in a shortened form--Bamburgh. Ethelric was followed by Ella, whose son Edwin was driven into exile by his fierce brother-in-law, Ethelfrith, and took possession of Deira, the southern province of Northumbria. After attaining his majority, Edwin, assisted by Redwald, regained his kingdom, and eventually ruled over the whole of Northumbria; it is during his reign that we find the first authentic history of Christianity in the north. Edwin married Ethelburga, a daughter of Ethelbert, king of Kent, who had been converted to Christianity by the preaching of S. Augustine. He himself received baptism at the hands of Paulinus (625-633), the great Roman missionary, who was sent north with the Princess Ethelburga. Paulinus fixed his headquarters at York, where he built his church, the forerunner of the present cathedral. This attempt of the Romans to christianise Northumbria was, however, of short duration. Cadwalla and Penda rose against them, and Edwin fell in battle at Hatfield Moor in Yorkshire. Paulinus, despairing of the cause, returned to Kent with the queen-widow Ethelburga and her children; and under Cadwalla and Penda, the kingdom soon relapsed into Paganism. We must now direct our attention to a small, barren island on the west coast of Scotland, Iona. Here came a voluntary exile (A.D. 563), Columba, a monk, said to have been a descendant of the Irish kings. Here he lived and founded a great missionary monastery, which afterwards became the centre of Christian influence in Scotland and the north of England. He and his followers were active workers; they wrote Gospels and devotional books, preached, and built churches of wood. Columba died (A.D. 597), but his work was continued. In 634, Oswald, a son of Ethelfrith, became king of Northumbria. In his youth he, with his brothers, had been obliged to flee to Scotland, where, during his exile, Oswald was converted to Christianity by the teachers of Iona. On his return he defeated and killed Cadwalla at Hevenfeld, or Heavenfield, near Hexham, in 634, and became the means of finally introducing Christianity into his kingdom. Soon after he became king, Oswald sent to Iona for help, and in reply came a monk, who, for some reason, said by old writers to be his harshness, failed in his mission. He was replaced by another monk named Aidan (635-651), who was eminently successful. Beda speaks of him as "a man of great piety and zeal, combined with tender charity and gentleness." Aidan became intimately associated with King Oswald, the two working together, and he chose for his headquarters the small sandy island of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast, which we now know as "Holy Island." Lindisfarne thus resembled Iona, and it is probable that the similarity of position and surroundings influenced Aidan in his choice. However that may be, Aidan there founded his monastery and directed the work of his monks. Passing over a short period, we find at Lindisfarne a monk who is so intimately connected with this cathedral that he demands special attention--the great S. Cuthbert, sixth bishop of Lindisfarne, and the patron saint of Durham. Little is known of his birth and parentage. Some writers give him a Scotch origin, others Irish,[1] and others again say he was born of humble parents on the banks of the Tweed. The latter is most probable. Certain it is that at an early age he was left an orphan, and was employed as an under-shepherd near to Melrose. From his earliest youth he was thoughtful and pious, and watched and imitated in his mode of life the monks of Melrose. There are numerous legends and stories of S. Cuthbert's youth. He is said to have wrought many miracles, even to the extent of stilling a tempest. One of these may be told here on account of the share it played in his choice of monastic life:--On a certain night in A.D. 651, while tending his sheep, his companions being asleep, Cuthbert saw in the heavens a brilliant shaft of light, and angels descending. These very shortly re-ascended, bearing among them "a spirit of surpassing brightness." In the morning it was found that the good S. Aidan was dead. The vision had a marked and lasting effect on Cuthbert, and eventually resulted in his entering the monastery at Melrose. For ten years Cuthbert led a holy and studious life at Melrose, under Prior Boisil, when he was chosen among others to proceed to the newly-founded monastery at Ripon. His sojourn there was, however, short, as owing to doctrinal differences concerning the celebration of Easter, he and the other Scottish monks returned to Melrose. Some four years later, on the death of Boisil, Cuthbert was elected his successor, as prior of Melrose. In A.D. 664, we find him holding the same office at Lindisfarne, where he remained for twelve years. He then retired from his position, in order to attain a higher degree of Christian perfection by living a solitary life, first on a small island near Lindisfarne, and afterwards on the island of Farne, near Bamburgh. There are many stories told of his great piety at this time, so that even the wild sea-birds are said to have obeyed him. [1] Sanderson, in his edition of "Rites of Durham," 1767, says: "He is said to be descended from the Blood Royal of the Kings of Ireland, being son of one Muriardach and Sabina his wife, a King's daughter. He was educated in the Abbey of Mailrose." In the year A.D. 685 Cuthbert was, though against his own wishes, consecrated Bishop of Lindisfarne. His great activity and usefulness in this office was soon cut short, for in less than two years, on the 20th of March A.D. 687, he died. Obediently to his own request, his body was wrapped in a linen cloth, which had been given him by the Abbess Yerca; and, placed in a stone coffin, the gift of the Abbot Cudda, was interred in the church at Lindisfarne. He was not to rest, however. In A.D. 698 the monks disinterred his remains in order to place them in a specially-prepared wooden coffin. It is said they found the saint's body perfectly incorrupt. To quote the quaint Hegge: But whiles they opened his coffin, they start at a wonder, they look't for bones and found flesh, they expected a skeleton, and saw an entire bodie, with joynts flexible, his flesh so succulent, that there only wanted heate to make his bodie live without a soul, and his face so dissembling death, that elsewhere it is true that sleep is the image of death, but here death was the image of sleep. Nay, his very funerall weeds were so fresh, as if putrefaction had not dared to take him by the coat.[2] [2] "County of Durham," by J.K. Boyle, F.S.A. Whatever may be the truth of this, his body was placed in a wooden coffin, portions of which are still preserved in the chapter library at Durham. Over a century and a half after these events the coast of Northumbria was disturbed and troubled by the piratical invasions of the Danes. The number and violence of these incursions so increased that the whole country lay practically at their mercy. Becoming alarmed for their own safety and that of their holy relics, the monks of Lindisfarne fled, taking with them the body of their saint, and all their sacred vessels and books. This occurred in A.D. 875. Here commenced that long wandering which eventually ended in the founding of the Cathedral Church of Durham, where the bones of S. Cuthbert found their final resting-place. Bishop Eardulph and his monks, with their sacred charge, travelled for seven years, over a great portion of the north of England and part of the south of Scotland. Many churches dedicated to S. Cuthbert in the north are thought to mark their resting-places. From a list of these given by Prior Wessington the probable route of the wanderers can be approximately, made out as follows:--First to Elsdon and down the Rede to Haydon Bridge. Up the South Tyne to Beltinghame, and then following the route of the Roman Wall to Bewcastle. Turning south to Salkeld, and thence by Eden Hall and Plumbland into Lancashire, towards the river Derwent. Here they came to a determination to cross to Ireland, and took ship from the mouth of the Derwent. Very soon a violent storm arose, the vessel became unmanageable and was nearly filled with water, which, according to Symeon, immediately turned into blood. A return was inevitable. It was during this attempt that the famous copy of the Gospels, known as the Durham Book, was washed overboard into the sea. This book is, perhaps, the most beautiful example of Anglo-Saxon writing and illumination extant, and is surpassed only by the celebrated Irish MS., the Book of Kells. It was shortly afterwards found on the coast in a comparatively uninjured condition; and is now preserved in the British Museum. The wandering monks next turned northwards as far as Witherne, on the Galloway coast, and then returned to England, through Westmoreland and across Stainmoor into Teesdale, staying for a time at a village, which no doubt owes it present name Cotherstone to this circumstance. Leaving here and crossing the hills, through Marske, Forcett and Barton, they arrived at the abbey of Craike, near Easingwold, where they were kindly treated by the abbot, and remained about four months. On resuming their journey the monks removed the body of S. Cuthbert to Cuncachester, or, as we now know it, Chester-le-Street, a former Roman camp. Here the fraternity remained for a hundred and thirteen years; and here was the seat of the Bishopric of Bernicia until A.D. 995. Many are the legends clustering round these journeyings. How, when leaving Lindisfarne, the sea opened a passage for them, and how in more than one difficulty the dead saint himself gave them assistance. Notably, on one occasion when the bearers were worn out and weary he appeared and showed them where they would find a horse and car in which to carry their burden. This horse and car were afterwards used on their journeys. In the year 995, again for safety, they removed once more under Bishop Aldhun, first for a short time to Ripon, and then finally to Durham. It is of this last journey the following story is told:-- "Coming with him" (_v._ Sanderson), "on the _East_ Side of _Durham_, to a Place call'd _Wardenlawe,_ they could not with all their Force remove his body further, for it seemed fastened to the Ground; which strange and unforeseen Accident produced great Astonishment in the Hearts of the Bishop, the Monks, and their Associates; whereupon they fasted and prayed three Days with great Devotion, to know by Revelation from God, what to do with the holy Body, which was soon granted to them, it being revealed to _Eadmer_, a virtuous Man, that he should be carried to _Dunholme_, where he was to be received to a Place of Rest. They were again in great Distress, in not knowing where _Dunholme_ lay; but as they proceeded, a Woman wanting her Cow, called aloud to her Companion, to know if she had seen her? Who answered, She was in _Dunholme_. This was an happy and heavenly Sound to the distressed Monks, who thereby had Intelligence that their Journey's End was at Hand, and the Saint's Body near its Resting-place; thereupon with great Joy they arrived with his Body at _Dunholme_, in the Year 997." [Illustration: The Dun Cow.] Arrived at Dunholm they raised a "little Church of Wands and Branches" to protect the sacred relics until a building more worthy of such a charge could be erected. This was the beginning of the Cathedral and City of Durham. The condition of the place at this time must have been very wild, and it certainly was a natural stronghold. The only open spot seems to have been the plateau where the cathedral now stands. The site is curiously described in a Saxon poem, from which the following is a translation:-- The City is celebrated In the whole Empire of the Britons The road to it is steep It is surrounded with rocks And with curious plants The Wear flows round it A river of rapid waves And there live in it Fishes of various kinds Mingling with the floods. And there grow Great Forests, There live in the recesses Wild Animals of many sorts In the deep valleys Deer innumerable. As soon as possible a stone chapel was built, in which the body of S. Cuthbert was placed. Bishop Aldhun, not satisfied with this, determined to establish a great church. Work was immediately commenced and progressed so rapidly that the building, known as "the White Church," was consecrated in A.D. 999. Of this there would seem to be no authentic remains existing; although some authorities think portions of it are included in the present cathedral. Bishop Aldhun died in 1018. The next date of importance is the year 1081, when William of Saint Carileph was appointed Bishop by the Conqueror. He was a monk of the Benedictine order, and at once drove out and dispossessed the secular clergy at Durham, replacing them from the Benedictine Monasteries which were established at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. Bishop Carileph is the man to whom we owe the present Cathedral of Durham. In 1088 he was obliged to flee into exile in Normandy, where he remained three years, through his having taken part in the rebellion against William II. It was probably during this time of banishment that he conceived the idea that if he returned to Durham he would build a more worthy church, such as were already erected and in course of construction in Normandy. Soon after his return in 1091 he commenced to carry out his scheme; and we learn that on the 11th of August 1093, the foundation stone of the new church was laid, with great pomp. The work proceeded rapidly, commencing at the east end. By the time of Bishop Carileph's death, which occurred in 1096, the walls of the choir, the eastern walls of the transepts, the tower arches, and a portion of the first bay of the nave, were completed. It is also very probable that the lower portion of the walls of the whole church are of Carileph's time. After the death of Bishop Carileph the see of Durham remained vacant for three years. The monks, however, were not idle during this period, and they continued the work vigorously, completing the west walls of the transepts and the vaulting of the north transept. In 1099 Ralph Flambard was appointed bishop, and he held the office until 1128. He carried on the building as the funds at his disposal would allow, sometimes rapidly and at others more slowly. Before his death it would appear that he completed the nave as high as the wall plates and altogether finished and roofed the aisles. The western towers as far as the height of the roof of the nave are also the work of Flambard. In 1104 the work was so far advanced as to permit the removal of the body of S. Cuthbert, from the temporary shrine which Bishop Carileph had erected over it, into the new church. This ceremony was performed on August 29th, 1104, and the coffin was placed in a shrine behind the high altar. On Flambard's death in 1128 the see was again left vacant for five years, but we are told that the monks continued the work and completed the nave. The portion built by them at this time must of necessity have been the vaulting and roof, the architectural features of which are quite in accordance with the date, being late Norman. Flambard's successor was Galfrid Rufus, who was Bishop from 1133 to 1140. During his episcopate the chapter-house, which had been commenced by the monks, was completed. Rufus also replaced the then existing north and south doorways of the nave, by those standing to-day. The next bishop, William de St Barbara (1143 to 1152), does not appear to have added anything to the cathedral. During his time of office the see was usurped by William Cummin, and building operations were no doubt neglected through the troubles arising from the usurpation. His successor, Hugh Pudsey (1153 to 1195) was, however, a great builder; appointed to the see at a comparatively early age, and, living as he did, at a time when very great changes were taking place in architectural style, he was able to carry out a great deal of beautiful work. He began to build a Lady Chapel at the east end of the choir, but although he had made careful preparations, and engaged skilled architects and workmen, great cracks appeared in the walls before the work had proceeded far, and the building was stopped. Bishop Pudsey, taking this as a divine revelation that the work was not pleasing to God, and the patron S. Cuthbert, abandoned it and commenced another chapel at the west end of the church, using in its erection the Purbeck marble bases and columns which he had had prepared for his eastern chapel. This second attempt was successful and remains to us in that beautiful and unique specimen of Transitional work, the Galilee Chapel. Its date may be taken, says Canon Greenwell, "as about the year 1175." Besides this work Pudsey built the hall and solar now called (at the top) the "Norman Gallery" of Durham Castle. Little or nothing further seems to have been done until the translation of Bishop Poore from the see of Sarum to Durham in 1229. The name of Bishop Poore is inseparably connected with the building of the present Salisbury Cathedral, and after his removal to Durham he conceived the idea of, and made preparations for, commencing the eastern transept of the Cathedral, which is a special feature of Durham, now known as the Chapel of the Nine Altars. He was not, however, destined to live to see his idea carried out. The eastern termination of Carileph's choir had been apsidal; it was found to be in a very unsafe condition, cracks and fissures appearing in the walls. Various bishops and priors sent aid towards "the new work," but actual building did not commence until after the death of Bishop Poore in 1237. The erection was commenced by Prior Melsanby and, of course, necessitated the taking down of Carileph's apses. The revaulting of the choir was undertaken at this time, doubtless, for artistic reasons, to bring the new work into harmony with the old. The Chapel of the Nine Altars is a rare and valuable specimen of Early English Gothic architecture of remarkable and graceful design. Below each of its nine lancet windows was originally an altar, dedicated to different saints. Its great height was obtained by lowering the floor, so that the unity of the whole exterior should not be destroyed. Prior Melsanby is also said to have put a new roof on the church. Prior Hugh de Derlington, who was at the head of affairs from 1258 to 1272, and later from 1285 to 1289, added a belfry to the central tower. John Fossor, made prior of Durham in 1342, inserted the large window in the north transept and the west windows of the nave. Bishop Thomas de Hatfield (1346 to 1381) seems to have done no architectural work beyond the erection of his own throne and tomb (in which he was afterwards buried) on the south side of the choir. This is an elaborate and sumptuous piece of work, and shows remains of rich colouring and gilding. About this time, also, the beautiful altar screen known as the Neville screen was erected. Its cost was principally borne by Lord John Neville, though the Priors Fossor and Berrington and the subordinate cells of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth were also contributors. The screen is of stone--very light and graceful, and originally contained in the niches 107 figures, which have unfortunately been destroyed. Bishop Walter de Skirlaw, who occupied the episcopal throne from 1388 to 1405, was a great builder. To him mainly we owe the present cloisters, though they were completed by his successor, Cardinal Langley, in 1418. The monks' dormitory on the western side of the cloister is also of this time. On the southern side was the refectory. This portion was rebuilt by Dean Sudbury between 1661 and 1684 and converted into a library, and such it remains to-day. Near the refectory is the kitchen, built by Prior Fossor. It is octagonal in plan, and possesses a fine groined roof. It is now attached to the deanery, and known as the dean's kitchen. We must now turn our attention to the erection of the present central tower. The belfry added by Hugh de Derlington was in 1429 struck by lightning and set on fire. It must after this have been repaired in some way, but in 1456 it was in a very unsafe and dangerous condition, as the following letter written by the prior, William Ebchester, to Bishop Neville testifies:-- "The Belfry of your church, both in its masonry and timber, in consequence of winds and storms is so enfeebled and shaken, that doubts are entertained of its standing for any length of time. We have called in workmen in both capacities, and they have reported to us that three of its sides are out of perpendicular, that many of the Key and cornerstones of its windows have fallen out, that in other respects it is defective, and that besides, its woodwork is in a state of great decay so that it cannot be expected to stand for any length of time. Some are of opinion that the belfry should be totally removed as it cannot stand longer; others on the contrary, wish it to be perfectly restored; a thing which exceeds our means, unless we have the advantage of charitable aid. In this state of doubt and hesitation, we have recourse to you, as members to their head, presuming not to engage in any such great and stupendous alteration with reference to your church, without your advice. "If, which God forbid, the tower should fall, the solemn fabric of our choir, and the shrine of our most holy patron, would without doubt, be broken down and irrevocably laid flat on the ground, for that is the direction in which it leans. We confess that whenever winds and storms are high, and we are standing at our duty in that part of the church we tremble for our fate, having positive danger before our eyes." Shortly afterwards, the rebuilding of all the upper part of the central tower was commenced and continued for some years. It was not complete in 1474 when Richard Bell was prior, as in a letter written at the time he mentions the "reedificacion of our steeple, begun but nogt fynyshed, in defaulte of goods, as God knoweth." It is therefore most probable that the upper portion was not completed until towards the close of the fifteenth century. We have now reached a period when the glories of Gothic architecture were fading, during which many of our finest churches suffered considerably. Durham is no exception to the rule, and we find during the next two centuries a long record of destruction and so-called improvement. This, perhaps, reached its worst stage during the time of Wyatt, who in 1796 pulled down the magnificent Norman chapter-house. During the last decade, however, this has been completely rebuilt from as nearly as possible the original design. Wyatt also rebuilt the turrets on the eastern transept or Nine Altar Chapel from his own design, and removed the great Early English rose window in the east end and replaced it by the present one. The original stained glass was taken out of all the windows of the east end, and Raine, in his history, tells us that it "lay for a long time afterwards in baskets upon the floor, and when the greater part of it had been purloined, the remainder was locked up in the Galilee.... At a still later period, about fifteen years ago, portions of it were placed in the great round window, and the rest still remains unappropriated." This was written in 1833. It is also on record that Wyatt formed a scheme to re-open the great western doorway of the cathedral by the pulling down of the Galilee Chapel, from which he intended constructing a carriage-drive to the castle. This abomination was actually commenced when Dean Cornwallis arrived, and he, with the assistance of John Carter, and the Society of Antiquaries, was fortunately able to put a stop to it. Thus was this beautiful and unique specimen of Transitional Norman architecture preserved to us. Wyatt contemplated several other "improvements" of a similar character, one of which was the surmounting of the central tower by a spire, but fortunately he was not allowed to carry them out. During the present century many restorations have been made, of which we will mention only the most notable:--The central tower was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1859. During 1870 to 1876 extensive internal alterations were made. A new choir screen and pulpit were erected, the floor of the choir laid in marble mosaic, the choir stalls returned to their original positions, and the walls of the church scraped in order to clear them from the many coats of lime and distemper which lay on them. [Illustration: The West End (from an Old Print).] The Norman chapter-house has lately been restored and in great part rebuilt as a memorial to the late Bishop Lightfoot. [Illustration: The Exterior, From Palace Green.] CHAPTER II DESCRIPTION OF THE EXTERIOR Approaching the Cathedral Church of Durham from the north by the large open space between it and the Castle, known as the Palace Green, we obtain a complete elevation of the whole structure. There is little room to doubt, though the details naturally vary with the date of erection, that the original plan of Carileph's church has been carried out in its entirety, with two exceptions. These are the addition of the eastern transept or nine altar chapel at the east, and the Galilee or Lady Chapel at the west end. The entire length of the building, not including the Galilee chapel, is 431 feet, which is made up as follows:--Nine altar chapel 51 feet, the choir 120 feet, the transept 57 feet, and the nave 203 feet. The #Western Towers# are square and solid, and were evidently included in Carileph's own scheme, as the wall arcades on both the interior and exterior are carried round them. The Norman work is continued as far as the nave roof, and it is extremely probable that they were originally terminated at this height, in accordance with the Norman custom, with low pyramidal spires, probably of wood. Exactly at what date they were raised is not on record, but the style of architecture of the upper portion suggests the early part of the thirteenth century. The added portion, namely that above the clerestory, consists of four stages, and is beautifully varied by moulded arcading, with blind and open arches. The first and third stages have pointed arches, while those of the second and fourth are round. Above this again were tall wooden spires covered with lead. These were removed about the year 1657, and towards the close of the eighteenth century the present pinnacles and open parapets were added. At this time, also, much of the surface of the towers was renewed. The #Central Tower.#--The present central tower is noble in proportion, and forms a fitting and harmonious summit to the whole group. It must needs be of a very different character from the old Norman tower, of which no trace now remains; and was most probably of the usual type, low and square, and surmounted by a short pyramidal spire. The existing structure may be attributed to Bishop Booth and Prior Richard Bell, about 1474, when the letter previously quoted was written. Externally the tower is divided into two storeys. The lower portion contains, on each side, a pair of two-light windows, glazed, each divided by a transom, and their heads having an ogee label crocketed and finished with a tall finial also crocketed. Between and on either side of these windows are panelled pilasters and brackets carrying figures. The lower and upper stages are divided by a narrow external gallery running round the tower, and protected by a pierced, embattled parapet. This is known as the Bell Ringers' Gallery, and certainly adds greatly to the effect of the tower as a whole. The upper stage, which is much less lofty, has also two two-light windows on each face, surmounted by crocketed ogee label mouldings and finials. These lights are louvred. The whole is surmounted by a deep open-work parapet. On each angle of the tower are two buttresses, which are decorated with panelling and canopied and crocketed niches containing figures. The interior of the tower or lantern is remarkable for the gallery which runs round it, which is reached from the roofs of the nave and choir transepts by doors. It rests on corbels, each alternate one being carved with grotesque heads, and is protected by a parapet pierced in quatrefoils. The four doorways are ogee-headed, with crockets and finials. There is strong evidence in the construction of the present tower that it was the original intention to surmount it by some other erection, probably a spire. Each interior angle contains strong and massive squinches which are of no constructive use at present, and must have been originally inserted to carry some superstructure. The buttresses at the angles are also carried up to the parapet, which would seem to point to the same conclusion. Why this project was never carried out cannot be said, but probably it would not have added to the artistic effect of the tower. The belfry contains a peal of eight bells. [Illustration: The Central Tower.] The #East Front.#--The circumstances which led to the removal of Carileph's apses and the erection of the eastern transept have already been referred to. The present east end is divided into three bays by massive buttresses, each of which contains three lofty lancet windows separated by smaller buttresses. Over all, and in the gable, is the famous large rose window. The north and south ends of the transept are finished with the tall pyramidal pinnacles erected by Wyatt. The #West Front# of Durham has, curiously enough, also lost its original character. The western doorway of the cathedral is hidden on the exterior by the Galilee or Lady Chapel, which was added by Pudsey in 1175. Above the Galilee roof is the large window inserted about the year 1346, while John Fossor was prior. The pointed arch of this window has over it, on the exterior, the original great semi-circular arch. Above this again, and between the two flanking western towers, is a small gable. The west end of the cathedral, when seen from the opposite side of the river, is extremely picturesque. The projecting mass of the Galilee, the western towers, the foreshortened nave roof, and the majestic central tower behind and above, form a group of high and rare excellence. The #North Door# is now the principal entrance to the cathedral. Externally the present porch is the work of Wyatt. The first porch was Norman, of four orders depth, with detached shafts in the recesses. Above this was a high-pitched gable and roof, the front being ornamented with a semi-circular-headed wall arcading. The inner side of the doorway is of two orders only, and is probably the only remaining portion of the original. The outer shaft is left plain, while the inner one, in each case, is most elaborately carved. The capitals are all carved, and the arch moulds richly ornamented with chevrons, foliage, and lozenges, as well as many curious figure subjects. While examining this doorway, notice should be taken of the ironwork of the door itself, and particularly of the sanctuary knocker. In mediæval times all churches afforded sanctuary to wrong-doers, but at places where the shrines of saints existed the sanctuary privileges were much greater. Durham being one of these, there are many curious cases on record of persons claiming the privilege, and protection from the secular law. The earliest instance, of which any record has been kept, of sanctuary being claimed at the shrine of S. Cuthbert is during the episcopate of Cynewulf, who was bishop from 740 to 748, and the last recorded was in 1524. Criminals claiming sanctuary were admitted by two janitors, who occupied two small chambers over the doorway, traces of which may still be observed. The knocker itself, as may be seen from the illustration, is a great grotesque head, made of bronze, and hanging from its grinning mouth is a ring. Originally, there is no doubt, the eyes were filled with crystals or enamel, as small claw-like pieces of bronze remain by which the filling was attached. The age of this piece of work is probably the same as that of the doorway itself. [Illustration: Detail Of Ironwork.] [Illustration: The Sanctuary Knocker.] [Illustration: Ironwork On Doors of Cloisters.] The #South Doorways.#--There are two doorways into the south aisle, one, known as the Monks' Door, opening from the western portion of the cloisters and immediately opposite the north porch just described. On the cloister side this shows a Norman arch resting on double shafts, which are enriched with a lozenge pattern. On the inner or aisle side there are two orders, with shafts in the recesses, which are also decorated with the lozenge. The inner arch is carved with chevrons, and the outer with conventional foliage and medallions. The capitals are richly carved with foliage and grotesques. On the abacus and arch of this doorway occurs a leaf pattern strongly suggesting the Byzantine influence which at one time was found in Norman decoration. Here again, on the door itself, we have a fine specimen of very elaborate and characteristic Norman iron-work. The second, known as the Priors' Door, opens into the south aisle from the eastern alley of the cloister, is also Norman. The outer or cloister side is of the time of Bishop Pudsey, and has an arch of four orders, with three shafts in the recesses on either side. Its once elaborate sculpture is now much decayed, not enough remaining to suggest that in its original state this doorway must have been a noble specimen of the architectural design of its period. On the inner side it exhibits work of Carileph's time, with an early arch, cushion capitals, and shafts. [Illustration: Ornament On South Doorway.] The #Western Doorway.#--The exterior of this great doorway is now within the Galilee chapel. It was built by Flambard (1099-1128), and is comparatively plain. On the Galilee side it consists of an arch of four orders ornamented with chevrons. The inner face is very similar to the outer, but is shallower, having only two orders. The shafts and capitals are without decoration, and the arch ornamented with chevron and a leaf pattern with medallions carved with grotesque animals. In order to reopen this doorway and make a carriage road up to it, Wyatt proposed pulling down the Galilee chapel. [Illustration: The Cloister.] The #Cloister# occupies a large open space, bounded on the south, east, and west by the various monastic buildings, and on the north by the cathedral itself. The existing cloister was commenced during the time of Bishop Skirlaw (1388 to 1406), and was completed by Cardinal Langley (who held the see from 1406 till 1438), probably in the earlier part of his episcopate. The contracts (the first dated 1398) for building the cloister are still preserved in the treasury. We are indebted to Bishop Skirlaw for their very existence, as it is recorded that he contributed sums of money for this purpose, both during his life and by his will. The cloister, as seen to-day, has been very much altered and restored, and probably the only original feature remaining is the fine oaken ceiling. This is panelled, and moulded, and decorated with shields, upon which are painted and gilded various coats of arms. In the centre of the cloister garth are the remains of what was the monks' lavatory. It was erected in the years 1432 and 1433, and was of octagonal shape. Some of the stone for its construction was brought from Egglestone-on-Tees, on payment of rent to the abbot of that place to quarry it. It is said to have had twenty-four brass spouts, seven windows, and in its upper storey a dovecote, the roof of which was covered with lead. There is no doubt that there was a cloister attached to the monastery in its early days, but of this no trace remains. It is also probable that one was erected by Bishop Pudsey, though this also has entirely vanished, unless (as suggested by Canon Greenwell) some marks of a lean-to roof on the north and east walls may be traces of its presence. In the western alley of the cloister is the old treasury, rich in records, and the vestries for canons, king's scholars, and choristers. The alley opens at the end into what is now called the crypt (see p. 85). This was undoubtedly the common hall of the monks. It is a spacious stone-vaulted chamber. The columns are low and massive, with simple moulded caps, from which the chamfered vaulting ribs diverge. Over the hall or crypt is the dormitory, which for a long time formed part of a residence attached to one of the stalls. It is now, however, used as a library. It occupies the whole of the western side of the cloister, and is 194 feet long. It was originally subdivided, by wooden partitions, into separate sleeping-rooms for each monk. Its massive roof of oak is worthy of attention, the tree trunks being merely roughly squared with an axe (see p. 99). In the south alley was the refectory and the monks' common dining-hall. The original building is now entirely altered, though there remains beneath it a very early crypt, with plain, short square piers, and a simple quadripartite vault without ribs. Another portion is covered by a wagon-head vault. Whether the original refectory was of similar architectural character it is now impossible to say, as, whatever it may have been, it was removed early in the sixteenth century and rebuilt, and after the dissolution of the monastery was used by the Minor Canons of the church as a common hall. It seems to have fallen into a bad state of repair, and was again entirely reconstructed by Dean Sudbury (1661-1684), who was elected to that office immediately after the Restoration. He converted it into a library, to which use it is still put. The account of this building, given in the "Antiquities of Durham," is of sufficient interest to bear quotation. "In the _South_ Alley of the Cloysters," says our authority, "is a large Hall, called the Frater-house, finely wainscotted on the _North_ and _South_ sides; and in the _West_ and nether Part thereof, is a long Bench of Stone in Mason-work, from the Cellar Door to the Pantry or Cove Door: Above the Bench is Wainscot Work two Yards and a Half high, finely carved, and set with imboss'd Work in Wainscot, and gilded under the carved Work. Above the Wainscot was a large Picture of our Saviour Christ, the blessed Virgin _Mary_, and _S. John_, in fine gilt Work, and most excellent Colours; which Pictures having been washed over with Lime did long appear through it. This Wainscot had engraven on the Top of it, _Thomas Castell_, Prior, Anno Domini, 1518 Mensis Julij. Whence it is manifest that Prior _Castell_ wainscotted the Frater-house round about. "Within the Frater-house Door, on the Left Hand at entering, is a strong Almery in the Wall, wherein a great Mazer, called the Grace Cup, stood, which every day served the Monks after Grace, to drink out of round the Table; which cup was finely edged about with Silver, and double Gilt. In the same place were kept many large and great Mazers of the same sort.... Every Monk had his Mazer severally by himself to drink in, and had all other Things that served the whole Convent, and the Frater-house in their daily Service, at their Diet, and at their Table.... At these Times (at meals) the Master observed these wholesom and godly Orders, for the continual instruction of their Youth in Virtue and Learning; that is, one of the Novices appointed by the Master, read some Part of the Old and New Testament in Latin, during Dinner, having a convenient place at the _South_ End of the High Table, within a beautiful Glass Window, encompass'd with Iron, and certain Stone Steps, with Iron Rails to go up to an Iron Desk, whereon lay the Holy Bible.... "This Fabrick retained the Name of the Petty Canons' Hall till _Dr Sudbury_, Dean of the Cathedral, generously erected a beautiful Library in its Place; but he not living to finish it compleatly, did by (a clause) in his Last Will, bind his Heir, _Sir John Sudbury_, to the due Execution thereof." [Illustration: S. Cuthbert's Chest.] The contents of the library are both numerous and interesting. There are several thousands of volumes, many of them being rare and valuable. Numerous ancient illuminated MSS., among which is a copy of the Gospels of S. Mark, S. Luke, and S. John, written before the year 700; and several books given by Bishops Carileph and Pudsey. Among the latter is a Bible, in four volumes, in its original stamped leather binding. A collection of ancient copes belonging to the cathedral, and the remains of the robes of S. Cuthbert, and other relics taken from his coffin when it was exhumed, in 1827, may also be seen here. Numerous specimens of Roman altars, tablets, and sculptured stones, from various Roman stations in Durham and Northumberland, notably from Hexham, are preserved in this library, which is open to the public on Tuesday and Friday in each week from eleven to one. The room is finely proportioned, and has a magnificent open timber roof. [Illustration: The Chapter-House.] The #Chapter-House# opens upon the eastern alley of the cloister. The present building is a very recent restoration of the original, which is acknowledged to have been the finest existing Norman chapter-house remaining in England. It was erected, or more probably completed, during the time of Bishop Galfrid Rufus (1133-1140), and was in existence until 1796, during the episcopate of Bishop Barrington. At that time it was almost totally destroyed, on the advice of Wyatt, who reported to the chapter that it was in a ruinous state. The truth of this report is doubtful, but the partial demolition of the building was ordered in November 1795, and also the construction of a new room on the site. The work of destruction was begun by knocking out the keystones of the vaulting and allowing the roof to fall in. The eastern half of the building was then altogether removed, and the remaining portion enclosed by a wall. Its interior was faced with lath and plaster, a plaster ceiling and a boarded floor being added. Fortunately authentic records of its original appearance, both exterior and interior, are in existence. They are the drawings made for the Society of Antiquaries by John Carter in 1795. Its dimensions were 78 by 35 feet; the east end being apsidal and the roof a vault of one span. Round the wall of the interior ran a stone bench raised on two steps, which was surmounted, except at the west end, by a wall arcade, of round-headed intersecting arches, similar to that in the aisles of the cathedral, but with single instead of double shafts. Above the arcade was a string course carved with zig-zag ornament. The entrance was from the west end, and the east end was occupied by two seats, one for the bishop and one for the prior. In the apse were five three-light windows of the Decorated period, and above the western door a five-light Perpendicular window, which contained coloured glass, illustrating the "Root of Jesse." On either side of this was a window of two lights, divided by a shaft and enclosed under one arch, carved with chevron ornament. There was also a round-headed Norman window in each of the north and south walls. A doorway in the south wall led to three chambers, one larger, and two smaller, which are stated in the "Rites of Durham" to have been used as a prison for the monks. The chapter-house was used in early times as a burial-place for the bishops, and many of their graves with inscriptions were in existence previous to the demolition of 1796. During excavations in 1874, the graves of Bishops Flambard, Galfrid Rufus, S. Barbara, de Insula, and Kellaw were opened, when various rings and the head of a crozier were discovered and removed to the dean and chapter library. The chapter-house has now been entirely restored as a memorial to the late Bishop Lightfoot. The #Northern Alley# of the Cloister, running along the south wall of the church, contains little of interest, except the two doorways previously described. The effect of the cloister as a whole, in its original condition, with the windows glazed, many containing fine stained glass, the oak roof with its heraldry and colour, and the lavatory in the centre of the garth, must have been exceptionally fine. [Illustration: The Exterior, from the South-east.] A sculptured panel on the north-west turret of the Nine Altar Chapel is now known as the #Dun Cow#. The original sculpture was replaced in the last century by the existing panel, but the legend connected with it is interesting. After their flight from Chester-le-Street, the monks, bearing the body of S. Cuthbert, remained some time at Ripon. While trying to return to Chester-le-Street, at a place called Wardlaw, the coffin stuck fast, and remained absolutely fixed. A fast of three days was proclaimed and kept, when it was revealed to them that they were to carry their saint to Dunholme. Still they were in difficulties, not knowing where Dunholme was, but fortune, or Providence, again favoured them. A woman, who had lost a cow, passed, calling to a companion to inquire if she had seen the animal. The reply was that her cow was in Dunholme; and, to the relief of the monks, they and their precious charge soon safely arrived there. In grateful commemoration of the incident Flambard erected this monument of a milkmaid and her cow. (See p. 9.) The exterior of Durham Cathedral as a whole may at first sight be disappointing to the visitor. Seen from a near view there is a certain flatness of effect and want of light and shade which is, perhaps, slightly unpleasant. This is, however, largely attributable to the scaling and scraping process to which the building was subjected during the last century, when some inches of the outer surface of the stone, and with it much architectural detail, were removed. The result is the flatness previously alluded to, and a general newness of appearance pervades the structure. Seen, however, from a distance, where only the finely-grouped and proportioned masses of masonry, towers, and turrets stand against the sky, the result is magnificent, giving an impression of grandeur and dignity unsurpassed by any other English cathedral. [Illustration: The Nave, looking West.] CHAPTER III DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERIOR If the exterior of Durham is in any way disappointing, the interior more than compensates for its shortcomings. The general impression on entering the church is one of simple dignity and solemnity. The great massiveness of the structure and absence of elaborate ornament no doubt contribute to this feeling. The pious builders of old have certainly contrived to stamp on their work their own feeling of awe in the presence of the All-Powerful and Eternal God. Whatever has been lost through vandalism and the restorer, this remains unaltered. The general design of the church, exclusive of detail, which, of course, changed and developed with the progress of Gothic art, has undoubtedly been carried out on the plan intended by Bishop Carileph, the only important variation being the addition of the transept at the east end, known as the Nine Altars Chapel. The original plan consists of a nave and aisles, transepts with aisles on their eastern side, a choir also with aisles, and the three apses of the east end, with a central tower over the junction of transepts, nave, and choir, and towers flanking the west end. [Illustration: One Bay Of The Nave (Measured Drawing).] Each bay of the #Nave# is divided into two sub-bays. The main bays have massive piers with engaged shafts on the recessed faces. The bases of these are cruciform in plan, though the arms of the cross are very short. At the height of the springing of the arch the shafts are surmounted by plain cushion capitals. The division into sub-bays is effected by the introduction midway of a massive round column on a square base. These columns are ornamented in various ways, by channels cut on the face. Some take the form of a zig-zag, some a spiral, others a spiral in two directions, forming a trellis-like pattern, and others again are reeded vertically. Their capitals are octagonal cushions. The arches of the sub-bays are recessed square, with the usual Norman roll moulding, decorated with chevrons, and on the wall face a square billet. The chevron ornament is absent in the earlier work in the choir and transepts. The triforium is almost uniform throughout the whole church. In each sub-bay it consists of two small arches under one larger one, with the tympanum solid. Here also the capitals are cushions and perfectly plain. [Illustration: Triforium and Clerestory.] Above the triforium is the clerestory, which contains one light to each sub-bay, and surmounting all is the vaulting, which springs from the piers and from grotesquely carved corbels between the triforium arches. The vaulting ribs are ornamented with chevrons on either side of a bold semi-circular moulding. So much for the general arrangement of the bays. Some idea of the massiveness of the structures may be gathered when it is known that each group of the clustered pillars separating the bays covers an area of two hundred and twenty-five square feet at its base, while those of the cylindrical columns of the sub-bays are twelve feet square, and the columns themselves have a circumference of over twenty-three feet. There is little room to doubt that the effect obtained by the old builders of Durham was intentional. The masterly way in which great masses of solid masonry, greater than was constructively necessary, are handled, and the reticence and delicacy of the ornament combine to prove this. There is in the whole scheme a delightful union of great power and vigour in the masses, and of tenderness and loving care in the detail. The #Choir# is the earliest part of the church. Its two western bays show Carileph's work, but the eastern piers have been considerably altered owing to the addition at a later period of the eastern transept, when Carileph's apses were taken down. This bay contains some very rich and beautiful detail. The piers on either side of the choir are decorated with arcades, the lower stage having six arches, and the upper three, all richly carved with foliage in the caps and hood moulds, and with heads and half figures. There is also a square aumbry on each pier. Above the upper arcade, which breaks through the level of the triforium string course, which is also carried round it, there is on each pier a figure of an angel beneath a canopy. These are the only two figures remaining of many which formerly added to the beauty of the interior of the church. The vaulting of the choir is thirteenth-century work, quadripartite, the ribs decorated with dog-tooth ornament and square leaves, and has fine bosses at the intersections of the diagonal ribs. The choir of Durham is especially interesting to the student of architecture, showing as it does the Early Norman work of Carileph, combined with the Early English and Early Decorated work of the newer eastern portion. On the south side of the choir stands the monument of Bishop Hatfield, who directed the see of Durham from 1345 until 1381. This monument is beneath the Episcopal Throne, which was erected by Bishop Hatfield himself. It consists of an altar tomb surmounted by a recumbent effigy of the bishop, in richly-worked robes, beneath a canopy, richly groined, with foliated bosses at the intersections of the ribs. On the walls at the east and west ends may still be seen the remains of fresco painting, representing in each case two angels. Beneath the staircase leading up to the throne is a very fine decorated arcade, containing several shields bearing the bishop's and other arms. The whole structure was originally richly coloured and gilded, and remains of this work can still be made out. It is a noble specimen of the work of its date. Immediately opposite the tomb of Bishop Hatfield, on the north side of the choir, the visitor will notice the recently-erected memorial to the late Bishop Lightfoot. This is an altar tomb of black and coloured marble. The sides are ornamented with panels of Perpendicular tracery containing shields. Round the upper mouldings runs a Latin inscription in brass. The whole is surmounted by a recumbent figure of the bishop in white marble, his hands on his breast, and his feet resting against three books. Originally designed by Sir Edgar Boehm, R.A., at his death the monument was completed by Alfred Gilbert, R.A. The beautiful altar screen is usually known as the #Neville Screen,# and was erected about the year 1380, mainly from moneys supplied by John, Lord Neville of Raby. It spans the whole of the choir, and is continued along the sides of the sacrarium, forming sedilia of four seats on either side. It is pierced by two doors, which lead to the shrine of S. Cuthbert, immediately behind the screen. Though very light and graceful in appearance, the screen, as it is at present, can give the beholder little idea of what its appearance must have been when each of its canopied niches contained a figure aglow with gold and colour. There were originally 107 of these statues, the centre one representing Our Lady, supported on either side by S. Cuthbert and S. Oswald. Unfortunately none of the figures remain _in situ_. Immediately in front of the steps of the high altar will be seen the matrix of a large brass. It covers the grave of Ludovick de Bellomonte, Bishop of Durham from 1318 to 1333. The slab, which is in two pieces, measures fifteen feet ten inches by nine feet seven inches, and an examination will show the brass to have been an elaborate and sumptuous composition. Unfortunately all the metal work has disappeared. The #Stalls,# as they originally existed, were destroyed in 1650 by the Scottish prisoners, who were kept in the cathedral after the battle of Dunbar. The present stalls we owe to Bishop Cosin (1660 to 1672), and they are remarkable pieces of carving for that date. In general character they imitate Perpendicular work, though the details do not adhere altogether to that style. Before leaving this part of the church a note may be devoted to the alterations and additions made during the years 1870 to 1876. A new screen between the nave and choir was then erected; the choir floor relaid with marble mosaic; the stalls replaced in their old positions, and new portions made to replace those destroyed in 1846. A new organ, pulpit, and lectern were also added. The new #Choir Screen# is very much open to criticism. Though no doubt beautiful in detail, and of excellent workmanship, its effect, as a whole, is not pleasant, when seen from the west end silhouetted against the light of the choir. A screen previously existed in this position erected by Bishop Cosin. This was removed in 1846, with the idea of improving the appearance of the church from the west end by obtaining a "vista" through to the Neville screen and rose window of the eastern transept. The effect seems, however, to have been disappointing, hence the erection of the present screen, which may or may not have improved matters. In the two western piers of the choir holes may be seen cut in the stonework. These received the rood-beam from which, during Lent, the Lenten curtain was suspended. [Illustration: The Choir, looking West.] The #North Aisle of the Choir,# again, shows the joining and harmonising of the "new work" of the eastern transept with the earlier Norman work. Inside the church the most easterly bay appears to be altogether of Early English date; but on the exterior it will be seen that the Norman wall runs right up to the western wall of the eastern transept. The interior of the bay, however, is enriched with a wall arcade similar to that in the Nine Altars Chapel, and the arch and vault are decorated with foliage and dog-tooth ornament. Along the side wall of this aisle runs a stone bench bearing the arms of Bishop Walter de Skirlaw (1388 to 1405), near which he was buried, but his monument and brass, erected by himself, have disappeared. Slightly westward of the bench is a doorway which at one time opened into the Sacrist's Exchequer, erected by Prior Wessington, but it has long ago been destroyed. The piers of the west end of this aisle bear marks which were originally holes cut in the stone. These served to support a porch, having a rood and altar, which is thus described in the "Rites of Durham": "Right over the Entrance of this North Alleye, going to the Songe Scoole (the Exchequer mentioned above) there was a porch adjoyninge to the quire on the South, and S. Benedick's altar on the North, the porch having in it an altar, and the roode or picture of our Saviour, which altar and roode was much frequented in devotion by Docteur Swalwell, sometime monk of Durham, the said roode havinge marveilous sumptuous furniture for festivall dayes belonginge to it." The #South Aisle Of the Choir# is similar architecturally to the north aisle. Here may be seen a doorway, of late thirteenth-century work, which originally led to the revestry, now destroyed. Here again the eastern piers bear marks left by holes in the stonework, which originally earned the supports of a screen, in front of which the Black Rood of Scotland, which was taken from King David at the battle of Neville's Cross (1346), was placed. The rood is described as having been brought from Holyrood by David Bruce, and was made of silver, with effigies of our Saviour, S. John, and Our Lady, having crowns of gold on their heads. The Black Rood was restored to its original possessors at the close of the war. The windows of both the choir aisles originally contained very fine old stained glass, representing various saints, and scenes in the life of S. Cuthbert. The #Transepts.#--Leaving the choir by its western end the visitor at once enters the transepts. A large portion of these, including the great piers and arches which carry the central tower, are, without doubt, of the time of Carileph. The eastern side of both is certainly his work, while the western is probably the building which was carried on by the monks in the interval between Carileph's death, in 1096, and the appointment of Flambard to the see in 1099. The work on the eastern sides differs little from that of the choir, while that of the western sides, being plainer, has been thought by some to indicate a want of means on the part of the monks, while carrying on the work in the interval just alluded to. Each transept consists of two bays, with an aisle on the eastern side, access to which is gained by the ascent of three steps. Each of the three sub-bays nearest the north and south extremities originally contained an altar, those in the north transept being dedicated to S. Nicholas and S. Giles, S. Gregory and S. Benedict. Over the site of the latter may still be seen remains of fresco painting. The altars in the south transept were dedicated--one to S. Faith and S. Thomas the Apostle, one to our Lady of Bolton and the other to our Lady of Houghall. The north transept is closed by a large window, which is the work of Prior Fossor, probably about the year 1362. The window is of six lights, and the head contains late geometrical tracery. The architectural feature of this window, especially for its date, is the transom which crosses the mullions, and which is not visible from the exterior. Below the transom is a second inner set of mullions supporting a small gallery, by means of which access may be had to the triforium. In the year 1512 the window was repaired by Prior Castell, who filled it with stained glass containing large figures, among others of S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, S. Gregory, and S. Jerome. From this circumstance the window became known as the window of the Four Doctors of the Church. Prior Castell also contrived to introduce a figure of himself kneeling at the feet of the Virgin. The large window at the end of the south transept, also named from the glass it contained, the _Te Deum_ window, is in the Perpendicular style, and is of six lights. It may possibly have been the work of Prior Wessington, 1416 to 1446. Along the sill of this window also access may be had to the triforium. [Illustration: The Transepts, looking North.] Both the north-west and south-west corners of the transepts contain stairways, opening at their various levels on to the triforium, clerestory, and the space between the vaulting and the roof. That in the south transept also gives access to the central tower and belfry, an ascent of which, if the day be clear, will repay the visitor for his fatiguing climb of three hundred and forty steps by the magnificent view spread at his feet. The transepts were no doubt the earliest part of the building to be vaulted; that of the northern arm being plain is probably the earlier, while that of the south arm, though of similar character, has zig-zag ornaments. Several of the priors of Durham were buried in the transepts, the first, Prior Fossor, 1364, and the last, Robert Ebchester, who died in 1484. On the piers of the transepts projecting brackets may be noticed. These are of Perpendicular date, and originally carried statues. The crossing, or space between the four piers supporting the central tower, gives us a fine view of the interior of the lantern. The #Tower# is carried on four large clustered Norman piers with semi-circular arches. Over the arches, and seventy-seven feet above the floor of the church, is the lower stage of the lantern, round which is a gallery with an open pierced parapet. It rests on corbels, each alternate one being carved with a grotesque head. The walls are panelled up to the base of the great windows,--each panel having two cinquefoiled arches under a crocketed canopy and final; while between them are small buttresses, also panelled, and ending in a finial which reaches the same height as the canopy. Over the panelling is a string course ornamented with that characteristic ornament of the Perpendicular period, the Tudor flower, and above this on each face two tall windows near together. Each window has two lights, and is divided by a transom. The roof of the lantern is groined, with fine bosses at the intersections of the ribs. The whole seen from below has a very fine effect, and must be very different in appearance from the original Norman structure. The whole of the lantern was refaced, and the statues which had been removed from their niches were replaced, some thirty years ago, by the Dean and Chapter of Durham. [Illustration: Corbel in Choir.] The #Norman East End.#--The original form of the Norman east end has long been the subject of discussion and conjecture. It was practically safe to assume that the choir ended in an apse, though whether the aisles were also apsidal, or continued round a great apse as an ambulatory, was a debatable point. This question has now been finally settled. [Illustration: The Choir, looking East.] During some operations necessitating the opening of the floor, in January 1895, certain indications were found which led the diocesan architect, Mr C.H. Fowler, and Canon Greenwell to continue the excavation. The result was the discovery that Carileph's church certainly possessed three apses--a large one terminating the choir, and smaller ones the aisles. The apses of the aisles were square externally, and apsidal internally. The great apse consisted of five bays, one on either side next to the choir, forming an oblong between the choir and the springing line of the curve of the apse, over which would be the great sanctuary arch. The remainder, or apse proper, was divided into three bays by engaged clustered shafts, similar to those of the choir and nave. It was surrounded by a wall arcade of the same character as that of the rest of the church. The base of one of the shafts of the arcade was found in position. An extremely interesting point in this discovery is the fact that the levels are the same as those of the nave and choir. The foundations are on the rock at the same depth, and the aisle walls and apse walls are in the same line. The external square line of the aisle apses is in line with the springing of the choir apse. The foundations of the apse to the north aisle have been thoroughly excavated, and there is every reason to believe that that on the south side of the church entirely corresponds. The width of the north aisle apse from north to south is nine feet eight inches. There can be little doubt, judging from the remainder of Carileph's work, that all three apses were covered with stone vaults, though of precisely what character can only be a matter of conjecture. The cracking, previously spoken of, which led to this part of the church being taken down and the new eastern transept being erected, cannot have arisen from any subsidence of the foundations. It, in all probability, was the result of the thrust of the apse vaults on to walls which were insufficiently buttressed. The marks on some of the stones found during this excavation, and the shape of others, seem to point to the conclusion that here we have the earliest part of the church, and that Carileph used up in his foundations much of the stone of Aldhun's White Church. Of the two usual eastern endings to Norman churches--viz. those with three apses, and those having the aisle carried round as an ambulatory--the latter is far more common in England, and the former on the Continent. There are two other notable instances of the three apsidal arrangement in England: S. Albans, 1077, which is earlier than Durham; and Peterboro', 1117, which is later than, and was probably modelled on, Durham. There are many examples of ambulatories--the White Tower Church (London), Winchester, Gloucester, Worcester, and Norwich being among them. [Illustration: Corbel in Choir.] The apses of Durham are of considerable depth from east to west, the oblong bay previously mentioned, which is fourteen feet wide in that direction, adding greatly to this effect. The width of the foundations is fourteen feet, and the width of the wall has been seven feet. The diameter of the choir apse from north to south was about thirty-two feet. [Illustration: Plan of Norman East End.] These discoveries are specially interesting, completing as they do the whole chain, and leading us with very little imagination to see in its original condition what must have been, and may even now claim to be, the most noble example of Norman architecture in our country. [Illustration: Triforium of Nave and Choir.] [Illustration: Capital in the Nine Altars Chapel.] The #Nine Altars Chapel.#--Leaving the consideration of what once occupied the site of the east end of Durham, we will turn our attention to the beautiful erection which now stands there, the eastern transept, or, as it is named from the altars of the saints it once contained beneath its windows, the Chapel of the Nine Altars. It is approached from the aisles by steps, the floor level being lower than that of the church proper. It is altogether a remarkable and interesting structure. With its lightness and loftiness contrasting grandly with the massive Norman nave and choir, its clustered columns of polished marble alternating with stone, its fine bold sculpture, its splendid vaulted roof and rich arcading, it forms a perfect example of the Early English style. Though regular and symmetrical in general design, the detail shows great variety, and even irregularity, a quality so often present in old work, and so much to its advantage. In general character it may be compared with that at Fountains Abbey, which was built during the same time. [Illustration: Capital in the Nine Altars Chapel.] The circumstances leading to its erection have been already referred to. The Norman apses having been partly removed, owing to their dangerous condition, the "New Work," as it was always called, was commenced in the year 1242. The eastern wall, with its rose and nine lancet windows, is the earliest part of the chapel, the north and south walls being later. The joining and blending of the work with the Norman of Carileph's choir had evidently been accomplished when the chapel was almost completed. The eastern wall is of three bays, each bay having three lofty lancet windows. The bays are not of equal width, the centre one being regulated by the width of the nave of the church, and narrower than the north and south bays. [Illustration: Sections of Hood and Arch Mouldings.] A very beautiful arcade runs completely round the walls. It is of trefoil arches, deeply and richly moulded, supported on marble columns carved with foliage. Over the arches is a hood mould terminating with heads. In the spandrels are a series of deeply-sunk and moulded quatrefoils, two of which contain sculpture. The bases of the columns rest on a plinth. Surmounting this arcade is a moulded string, from the level of which rise the windows, and above the windows another string course and a second range of windows. In the centre bay, however, is the large rose window, which is over thirty feet in diameter. [Illustration: The Nine Altars Chapel.] The division of the chapel into three bays is effected by two main vaulting arches, which spring on the western side from the piers of the east end of the choir, and on the eastern side from responds of clustered shafts alternately of marble and stone, banded at intervals and having richly carved capitals. The arches themselves are deeply moulded and ornamented with dog-tooth ornament and foliage. The vault of the central bay has eight ribs--two springing from each of the clusters just described, and two from each of the choir piers. The vaulting of the remaining bays is quadripartite, but has peculiarities which are worthy of notice, arising from inequality of width. We must not omit to call attention to the exquisite sculpture of the vaulting. The centre has figures of the Four Evangelists, while in the north is a beautifully executed carving of vine and grapes, and in the south, figure subjects. Among the sculptured heads on the wall arcade at the south end, at the western side of the two bays into which the south wall is divided, are two which are portraits of the men to whom we owe the design and execution of the beautiful sculpture of this chapel. One is an elderly man, the other much younger, and both wear linen dust-caps over their heads. The nine lancet windows were originally filled with ancient stained glass, which, as the reader will remember, was removed, Below each window was an altar. They were dedicated a follows, beginning at the south end of the chapel:-- 1. S. Andrew and S. Mary Magdalene. \ 2. S. John the Baptist and S. Margaret. > South bay. 3. S. Thomas of Canterbury and S. Catherine. / 4. S. Oswald and S. Lawrence. \ 5. S. Cuthbert and S. Bede. > Middle bay. 6. S. Martin. / 7. S. Peter and S. Paul. \ 8. S. Aidan and S. Helen. > North bay. 9. S. Michael the Archangel. / The rose window over the lancets of the middle bay is Wyatt's "restoration" of the original one. It consists of an outer circle of twenty-four and an inner circle of twelve radiating lights, the mullions of which are received on a foliated circle in the centre. In the north wall of the chapel is a very fine window, known as the Joseph window, on account of the stained glass it originally contained, which illustrated the life-history of Joseph. It is a beautiful example of Early Decorated or geometrical Gothic, and is of six lights. There is an inner plane of tracery resting on clustered shafts, which is connected to the mullions of the window proper by through stones. The window occupies the complete width of the north end of the chapel. The painted glass which it once contained is thus described in the "Rites of Durham": "In the North Alley of the said Nine Altars, there is another goodly faire great glass window, called Joseph's Window, the which hath in it all the whole storye of Joseph, most artificially wrought in pictures in fine coloured glass, accordinge as it is sett forth in the Bible, verye good and godly to the beholders thereof." This window deserves the attention of the architectural student, as it is an exceedingly fine specimen of the tracery of its date. The south wall of the chapel contains two windows, each divided by a central mullion, and having an inner mullion connected by through stones. They are widely splayed inwards, and separated by a group of vaulting shafts. One or both of these windows contained stained glass, with the history of the life and miracles of S. Cuthbert. As seen at present, they contain tracery of the Perpendicular period, a restoration of that inserted by Prior Wessington. Each window is of two lights, crossed by a transom. Entry to the nine altars was provided for, as well as from the choir and aisles, by two doors on the western side of its north and south walls. The northern doorway is now walled up. They enter through the wall arcade. The writer of the "Rites of Durham" says the north door was made in order to bring in the body of Bishop Anthony Bek, who is buried in the chapel. The architectural features of the doorway would, however, seem to contradict this theory, and there is little room to doubt that both north and south doorways formed part of the original design of the structure. Before leaving this interesting portion of the building we must direct our attention to its most important contents, the #Tomb of S. Cuthbert#. This, as at present to be seen, is a great oblong platform, thirty-seven feet long by twenty-three feet wide, and its upper surface or floor six feet above the floor of the chapel. Beneath a slab in the centre the bones of the patron saint rest. The shrine of S. Cuthbert at one time stood upon this platform, but of that no vestige remains. The floor of the platform is reached by two doors through the Neville screen in the choir, and by a small stairway from the south aisle. The wanderings of the monks of Lindisfarne with the body of their saint, their many difficulties and trials, and their ultimate settlement at Dunholme or Durham, have already been described. The shrine was eventually set up in its present position by Bishop Carileph, in 1104, when he brought it from the cloister garth from the tomb he had there set up for its temporary reception, until his church was sufficiently advanced to permit of its removal thither. It was visited by large numbers of pilgrims, and many important personages were among them. Of these may be mentioned William the Conqueror, Henry III. (1255), Edward II. (1322), and Henry VI. (1448). The shrine was destroyed soon after the surrender of the monastery to the Crown, in 1540, when the body was buried beneath the place where its former receptacle had stood. There have since this time been traditions that the exact place of the burial was secret, and known only, according to one account, to three Benedictine monks, who each handed the secret down to a successor. The other tradition places the knowledge of the place of burial in the hands of the Roman Catholic bishops of the Northern Province. One of these traditions was made public in the year 1867, and gave the place of interment as being under the second and third steps leading to the tower from the south transept. This place was excavated and examined, but no trace of any burial could be found there. It is to these traditions that Scott refers, in _Marmion_, in the following lines:-- Chester-le-Street, and Ripon saw His holy corpse, ere Wardilaw Hailed him with joy and fear; And after many wanderings past, He chose his lordly seat at last, Where his cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear. There deep in Durham's Gothic shade His relics are in secret laid; But none may know the place, Save of his holiest servants three, Deep sworn to solemn secrecy, Who share that wondrous grace. In May 1827 the grave in the Nine Altars Chapel was opened in the presence of two of the church dignitaries and other persons. Dr Raine, who was also present, has left a careful account of the discoveries then made.[3] The outer coffin, that made in 1542, was first removed, revealing a second and much decayed coffin and many bones. After the removal of these relics the lid of a third oak coffin was revealed, in a very advanced state of decay. This innermost coffin was covered over its entire surface with carvings of human figures, the heads surrounded by a nimbus. When this coffin was removed the skeleton was exposed to view, wrapped in coverings, the outer of which had been of linen. The robes beneath were much decayed, and only portions of them could be preserved. On the breast of the body, among the robes, a comb was found, answering exactly to that described by Reginald in 1104. Among the most interesting of the finds were a stole and maniple. [3] Raine. S. Cuthbert. The stole is of very early date, and is of needlework in colours and gold. The centre design is a quatrefoil, inside which is a lamb with nimbus, and the letters AGNV DI. On either side are figures of Old Testament prophets, with their names. Near the ends the embroidery occurs on both sides of the stole, on the back of one of which among foliage is the inscription AELFFLAED FIERI PRECEPIT, which is continued on the back of the opposite end, thus--PIO EPISCOPO FRIDESTANO. The translation of this inscription is to the effect that Aelfled commanded the stole to be made for the pious Bishop Frithestan. The maniple is of a similar character, and also bears ornament, figures, and inscriptions.[4] Frithestan was made Bishop of Winchester in 905. Aelfled, who was Queen of Eadward, the son and successor of Alfred, died in 916. It was therefore during these ten years that she caused this stole and maniple to be made for the Bishop Frithestan. It is recorded that the son and successor of Eadward, by name Athelstan, when on a journey in the north visited Chester-le-Street and the shrine of S. Cuthbert, which was then at that place. Among other presents he left as offerings a stole and maniple, and a girdle and two bracelets of gold. It is a curious fact that a girdle and two gold bracelets were found along with the stole and maniple in the grave, in 1827, and leaves very little doubt that they are the ones mentioned above. The bones of the saint were quite intact, and none were missing. They were, with the other relics, placed in a new coffin, and the grave re-covered. Some portions of the inner coffin, with the stole, two maniples, the girdle and bracelets and fragments of the robes are now carefully preserved in the Dean and Chapter Library. A large gold cross found among the robes, decorated with garnets, and of workmanship of the time of S. Cuthbert is also preserved in the library. These discoveries seem to speak for themselves, and to leave very little room for doubt that the body exhumed and examined in 1827 was really that of the patron saint of the church. [4] Photographs, coloured by the late J.I. Williamson, are exhibited in the South Kensington Museum. There were also found in the grave bones of infants, supposed to be relics of the Holy Innocents, and a skull, most probably that of S. Oswald, which was known to have been placed in the coffin of S. Cuthbert. Two smooth grooves may be observed on the platform, which are _said_ to have been worn into the stone by the knees or feet of generations of pilgrims visiting the shrine. There are several other tombs and monuments in this chapel, chiefly wall tablets of not exceptional interest. At the north end, however, is a colossal statue of the last of the prince bishops, Bishop van Mildert, who died in 1836. The monument is of white marble, the figure seated on a throne and holding a book. It was erected by public subscription, the sculptor being John Gibson, R.A. Near this monument is a blue slab covering the remains of Bishop Anthony Bek, patriarch of Jerusalem, who died in 1310. It was to bring in the body of this bishop that some writers have thought the north doorway of the Nine Altars Chapel was constructed. This is, as we have seen already, extremely improbable. The student of architecture will find very much to interest him in this Chapel of the Nine Altars. The beautiful sculpture and variety in the capitals of the shafts of wall arcading, not to mention the rich carving of the vaulting bosses and capitals of the vaulting shafts, will well repay his earnest study. [Illustration: The Galilee Chapel.] [Illustration: The Galilee Chapel.] [Illustration: Capital in Galilee Chapel.] The #Galilee# or #Lady Chapel# is situated at the west end of the nave. It is well known that for some reason women were not allowed to enter any church where S. Cuthbert's shrine stood, nor even any church dedicated to him. At Lindisfarne a separate church was provided for them, and at Durham the Galilee Chapel was added for the same purpose. It was alleged that S. Cuthbert himself had made this rule, but there is no proof that he ever issued such a command. The Venerable Bede makes no mention of any special feeling of antipathy to women on the part of the saint. Bede was contemporary with, and survived S. Cuthbert forty-eight years. Whatever may have been the origin of the practice, it is certain that in later times women were jealously excluded from the churches of S. Cuthbert, and to this circumstance we owe, in the chapel under our consideration, the most beautiful and perfect example of Transitional Norman architecture existing in England. [Illustration: Paintings in the Galilee Chapel.] Let us recall briefly the circumstances attending its erection. Hugh Pudsey, who occupied the episcopal throne, 1153 to 1195, commenced to build a Lady Chapel at the east end of the church. The work had not gone far before accidents happened, and cracks and fissures appeared in the walls, which the builder thought "gave manifest indication that it was not acceptable to God and His servant S. Cuthbert."[5] The work was therefore abandoned, and another chapel was commenced at the west end of the church, "into which women might lawfully enter, so that they who had not bodily access to the secret things of the holy place, might have some solace from the contemplation of them" (Geoffrey de Coldingham). Pudsey caused to be moved here the marble shafts and bases he had previously brought from "beyond the sea," and intended to be used in the construction of his chapel at the east end. Entering the chapel by the steps leading from the Norman nave, the visitor is at once impressed with the lightness and delicacy of the work before him, as compared with the massive grandeur of the Norman cathedral behind. Here we have, in fact, one of the latest uses of the round arch influenced by the rapidly developing Early English Gothic. In plan the chapel consists of a nave with double aisles, which perhaps might be more properly called five aisles. These are divided by arcades, each of which is of four bays. These arches and the columns which support them are the chief beauty and characteristic of the chapel. The arches are semi-circular, of one order, with three lines of chevron, one on each face, and one on the soffit between two roll mouldings. The capitals are light and graceful and carved with a volute, and the columns clusters of marble and freestone shafts. The arches, however, rest on the marble columns, which are, no doubt, those previously alluded to. The whole seems to have been coloured in fresco, and remains of this are still to be seen. The stone shafts, which alternate with those of marble, do not carry any of the weight of the arch, and are, undoubtedly, an addition, probably in the time of Cardinal Langley, when they must have been added, with a view to improving the appearance. The dimensions of the chapel are forty-seven feet from east to west, and seventy-six feet from north to south. The existing roof and the three perpendicular windows on the west end are also additions by Cardinal Langley. On the walls above what were once the altars of the Virgin and Our Lady of Pity, remains of fresco painting may be noticed, all that remains of what has evidently been beautiful work. These were only brought to light by the removal of successive coats of whitewash with which they had been covered. [5] Geoffrey de Coldingham. [Illustration: Detail of the Galilee Chapel.] When the Galilee was erected, access from the church was by the great west door of the cathedral. This was, however, closed up by Cardinal Langley, who constructed the two doorways at the end of the aisles by which the chapel is now entered. Those portions of the Norman wall arcading, which had to be removed by reason of the breaking through of the new doorways, were used to fill up the lower part of the great west door. The latter was again removed in 1846, when the west doorway was re-opened. Langley's two doorways have four centred arches enclosed beneath a square label moulding, with shields bearing the Cardinal's coat-of-arms in each spandrel. To Langley also may be attributed the five massive buttresses on the exterior of the western wall of the chapel, which partly cover the arcading and panelling with which it was decorated. In adding the new roof Langley raised the walls above the arches to carry it, giving a somewhat peculiar effect to the interior. The original roof lines can still be made out on the west wall. Of the contents of the chapel remaining, perhaps the most interesting to the visitor is the grave and site of the shrine of the Venerable Bede. The shrine, like that of S. Cuthbert's, is gone, and all that remains is the stone slab on which it once stood, and which bears the inscription (placed there in 1831): Hac sunt in Fossa Bædæ Venerabilis Ossa This remarkable man was contemporary with S. Cuthbert, whom, as we have said, he survived forty-eight years. His holiness and piety, together with his great learning, earned for him the title Venerable, and after his death, in 735, his bones were enshrined. Of his parentage we know nothing, except that, from his own writings, he was born in the territory of the Abbey of Wearmouth. At the age of seven he was being educated in that monastery, and by the time he was ten years old he moved to the newly-founded Abbey on the Tyne, at Jarrow. He had able and learned teachers in Benedict Bishop and Ceolfrid, and appears to have turned his advantages to the best account. Deacon at nineteen, and priest at twenty-nine years of age, he led a holy and studious life. After his ordination he wrote his "Commentaries on the Scriptures," and writings on all the known sciences--geography, arithmetic, and astronomy. The greatest work of his life is, however, his "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation," to which we owe all our knowledge of the introduction of Christianity into Great Britain, and the early history of the English Church. It is dedicated to King Ceolwulf. His information was collected from various sources--by letter as to Canterbury, by communication with bishops and priors as to England generally, and from personal knowledge and very recent tradition as to Northumbria. He lived most of his long life between the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, and was buried at the latter. In the year 1022 his remains were secretly removed from Jarrow by Elfrid, who was the most unscrupulous relic-hunter of that time, who deposited a portion of them in the same coffin with those of S. Cuthbert. From here they were removed by Bishop Pudsey, and placed in the newly-erected Galilee Chapel, where he caused them to be enclosed in a magnificent shrine. "There, in a silver casket gilt with gold, hee laid the bones of Venerable Bede, and erected a costly and magnificent shrine over it."[6] When the shrine was destroyed at the suppression of the monastery, in 1542, the bones were interred beneath the place it occupied, where they remained undisturbed till the year 1831. In that year they were exhumed and examined, and, after being enclosed in a lead-lined coffin, were replaced in the tomb, with a parchment giving full details of the exhumation. Some coins and a ring which were found at this time are preserved in the Dean and Chapter Library. The inscription previously quoted was then cut on the upper slab of the tomb. [6] "Rites of Durham." In the Galilee Chapel is also the tomb of its restorer, Cardinal Langley, which was erected by himself in front of the principal altar. On its head may be seen three shields bearing the arms of the cardinal. Four of the western windows of the chapel originally contained beautiful stained glass, a most careful description of which may be found in the "Rites of Durham." Why this chapel has always been known as the "Galilee" Chapel has been the subject of much discussion and conjecture, and is still a matter of uncertainty. That it was erected for a Lady Chapel there can, however, be no doubt. In the nave of the church, between the piers immediately to the west of the north and south doorways, the visitor will notice a dark-coloured marble cross, beyond which no woman was allowed to pass eastward. #Monuments in the Nave and Transepts.#--The church of Durham is not rich in tombs and monuments to the dead. This is to be accounted for partly by the fact that for some centuries the Bishops of the diocese were interred in the chapter-house, and even most of these tombs have been lost or destroyed. Another reason for the scarcity of monuments is that no layman was allowed to be buried in the church until 1367, when Lord Ralph Neville obtained that distinction for himself and his wife, the Lady Alice de Neville, who was buried in 1374. This monument occupies the third sub-bay from the east, on the south side of the nave. It is an altar tomb, and though it has suffered severely from mutilation during the unsettled times of the Reformation, sufficient remains to enable us to see that it was once a well-designed and noble monument. Its mouldings are bold, and there are indications of the places where figures were once attached to the sides. The recumbent effigies of the noble lord and his wife, on the top of the tomb, are, however, hopelessly smashed. It is probable that Lord Ralph Neville obtained this honour for himself through his services and victory at the Battle of Neville's Cross, near Durham, in 1346. In the next bay westward is the tomb of Lord John Neville, who died in 1386. This is also an altar tomb, and has suffered severely, though it remains in a better state of preservation than the one just described. Its sides each have six niches, with elaborately ornamented canopies, and containing figures, while the ends have three similar niches with figures. The carving of the canopies is exceedingly beautiful. Between each of the niches are two square panels with trefoiled heads, each panel bearing a shield with the arms of Neville and Percy. Both above and below the niches much delicate carving may be noticed. Surmounting all are the broken effigies of Lord John and his wife, who was the daughter of Lord Henry Percy, the well-known Hotspur. All the figures on this tomb, including the recumbent figures, are headless, but sufficient remains to show that they were of great excellence. Remains of colouring and gilding can also be distinguished in places on the monument. Close to this is the slab and matrix of a brass to Robert Neville, who was bishop of the diocese from 1438 to 1457. The brass has all been removed, but the matrix shows a dignified figure of the bishop holding a crozier and a scroll, while an inscription formerly existed on a plate at his feet. Bishop Neville was known for his generous qualities, as well as for his high descent. In the western wall, on its south side, near to the entrance to the Galilee, is a mural tablet to a former Prebendary in the cathedral, and a well-known antiquary, Sir George Wheler, who died in the latter part of the seventeenth century. On the northern side is a slab to the memory of Captain R.M. Hunter, who was killed while charging a Sikh battery at Ferozeshah. Opposite to the monument of Ralph Neville is a modern altar tomb to a former headmaster of Durham Grammar School, the Rev. James Britton, D.D., erected by his pupils. It is surmounted by a reclining figure of Dr. Britton, in academic robes, reading a book. In the south transept is a fine monument, by Chantrey, to the memory of Bishop Barrington, who held the see from 1791 to 1826, dying at the advanced age of 92 years, beloved by all. He was a great prelate, and used his immense powers as Prince Palatine with great wisdom. The kneeling figure, with bowed head, the left hand resting on a book, in an attitude of deep reverence, is worthy of the name of its sculptor. On the west wall of the same transept is a tablet to the memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the Durham Light Infantry who were slain or died during the Crimean War. Near to this is a recently inserted brass to the memory of the officers and men of the 2nd Durham Regiment who died in Egypt and the Soudan. In the north transept we may give some attention to a monument to the Rev. John Carr, a former headmaster of Durham School. It was erected to his memory by his pupils. The monument was designed by Rickman, and is in the style known as Decorated Gothic. [Illustration: The Font and Cover.] The #Font# stands at the west end of the nave. It is a comparatively modern work, covered by a tall wooden canopy which was erected by Bishop Cosin in 1663. The original Norman font was destroyed by the Scottish prisoners in 1650, and was replaced by a large marble basin by Bishop Cosin. This font, in its turn, was removed to Pittington Church, where it is now in use, its place being filled by the present modern one. It is designed in the Norman style, and is square, supported on short columns. The sides are carved with medallions, copied from illuminated MSS., which represent scenes from the life of S. Cuthbert. The cover deserves attention as a specimen of the woodwork of the seventeenth century, exhibiting a curious and characteristic mixture of Classic and Gothic forms and details. CHAPTER IV HISTORY OF THE SEE The earlier history of the see of Durham has already been referred to in order to lead up to the founding of the cathedral. We have seen how the bishop and monks of Lindisfarne fled and wandered with the relics of their beloved S. Cuthbert, eventually settling at Chester-le-Street, until, in the year 990, Bishop Aldhun, in terror of the Danes, again fled southward to Ripon. The country at this time was ruled by that weak monarch, Ethelred the Unready, and the Danes, finding no determined opposition, continually made piratical incursions, and eventually, through the treachery of three chieftains, the Castle of Bamburgh fell into their hands. After an interval of three or four months peace was made with the invaders, and Aldhun and his monks ventured to return towards Chester-le-Street. It was during this journey, at a place called Wredelau, that the car carrying the saint stuck fast, and the incidents previously related occurred, which led to the founding of the Bishopric of Durham. #Aldhun# may therefore be called the first Bishop of Durham. He held the see for twenty-nine years, and died in 1018. Aldhun it was who built the first or White Church, now destroyed. It is extremely probable that some of the stones of this church were used in the foundations of Carileph's choir and apses. After Aldhun's death the see remained vacant for three years, when he was succeeded by #Edmund# (1020-1040). It is said that the monks could not agree as to who should succeed Aldhun, when one day Edmund, a presbyter, asked in a joke, "Why not appoint me?" Being a pious and a faithful man, they took him at his word, and, after much persuasion and fasting and prayer, he was consecrated. The choice was a good one. Edmund was an energetic and beloved prelate. He died at Gloucester in 1041. One of the most important events during his episcopate was the invasion of Northumbria by Duncan, King of the Scots. He besieged Durham, but was beaten off, with great slaughter, and the heads of many of his men were exposed in the market-place. #Egelric# (1042-1056) was the next bishop. He was an alien, and made himself obnoxious to the clergy and people. With the intention of rebuilding, he pulled down the wooden church at Chester-le-Street, which had been the seat of the bishopric for one hundred and thirteen years. A large quantity of treasure was found while digging foundations, and this Egelric appropriated and sent to his monastery at Peterborough, where he soon followed it. Before resigning the see of Durham, however, he secured the appointment of his brother to the bishopric. Some years later William the Conqueror called him to account for his behaviour in the matter of the treasure, and threw him into prison at Westminster, where he died in 1072. #Egelwin# (1056-1071) succeeded, through the influence of his brother. He took part in the rebellion of Eadwin and Morcar, and, like his predecessor, died in prison. He was the last of the Saxon bishops. #Walcher# (1071-1080). William I. found the Church in great disorder and made many changes. He filled most of the sees by the appointment of Norman bishops. To Durham he elected Walcher. The latter was a man of gentle disposition, but his chaplain, Leobwin, and Gilbert, a kinsman of his own, to whom he entrusted most of his affairs, were hated by the people, over whom they exercised great tyranny. At length a noble, named Lyulph, ventured to remonstrate with them, and in their rage they had him assassinated. The people were furious, and the bishop vainly denied any knowledge of the deed. He called a meeting at Gateshead. Here a tremendous tumult arose, the mob crying, "Good rede, short rede, slay ye the bishop," and eventually setting fire to the church. The bishop was eventually reduced to a choice of facing the mob or being burnt in the church. He chose the former, and, covering his face with his robe, went out. He was immediately slain on the threshold, and dreadfully mutilated. His body was removed by the monks to Jarrow, and afterwards to Durham, where he was buried. #William of S. Carileph# (1080-1096) was next appointed bishop. He was a man of great attainments. To him we owe the founding of the present cathedral. Carileph also made an important change, by the removal from Durham of the secular clergy, and their replacement by Benedictine monks drawn from Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. The foundations of the new church were laid on 29th July 1093, the Bishop and Prior Turgot being present. He did not live to see it very far advanced, being taken ill at Windsor. He died about Christmas 1096. #Ranulph Flambard# (1099-1128).--The see was kept vacant for three years by William Rufus, when he appointed Flambard, a great builder. He built the nave and aisles, the west doorway and lower part of the western towers, and vaulted the aisles. He also built Framwellgate Bridge over the Wear at Durham, erected and endowed S. Giles' Church, Durham, and was the founder of Norham Castle on the Tweed. #Galfrid Rufus# (1133-1140) was his successor. His episcopate was much disturbed by wars with the Scots. The chapter-house was finished during his time of office. #William de S. Barbara# (1143-1152) was next appointed. Extraordinary events marked his election. William Cumin, chancellor of the Scottish king, attempted to take the bishopric for himself, and succeeded so far as to capture the castle with the aid of the Scots. The rightful bishop was not able to gain possession for sixteen months after his election. Cumin submitted in 1144. [Illustration: The Crypt.] #Hugh Pudsey# (1153-1195) now succeeded to the bishopric at the age of twenty-five. He bought for life the earldom of Northumberland and the manor of Sadberg. In 1187 the news of the capture of Jerusalem by the Saracens spread consternation in the Church, and Pudsey prepared to accompany King Henry to the East. He fitted out ships and galleys in a most sumptuous manner, his own having a seat for himself of solid silver. Neither he nor King Henry embarked in the crusade, however. The king died, and Richard his son undertook the expedition, leaving Bishop Pudsey and Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, as justiciaries for the northern and southern portions of the kingdom respectively. These two quarrelled, and Pudsey was decoyed to London by Longchamp, and committed to the Tower. He soon obtained his release, but was compelled to resign the earldom of Northumberland. In 1195 he undertook a journey to London to see the king, and endeavour to obtain restitution of his honours and possessions, but was taken ill, and died on the way, at Howden. His work in the cathedral we have seen. He also built the great hall of the castle, most of the beautiful Church of S. Cuthbert at Darlington, and the Elvet Bridge over the Wear at Durham, and founded the hospital at Sherburn, near Durham. Darlington Church, which would well repay a visit, is a fine specimen of Early Pointed architecture, second only to the Galilee of Durham, the two showing in a wonderful manner the rapid development of the change which was taking place in architectural style during Pudsey's time. #Philip de Pictavia# (1197-1208), elected at the urgent request of the king. He was continually at loggerheads with his clergy. He supported King John against the Pope, and was for this excommunicated; died in 1208, and was buried in unconsecrated ground. This bishop is said to have had the permission of the king to coin money at Durham. #Richard de Marisco# (1217-1226) was elected after an interval of nearly ten years. The feud with the monks continued during his episcopate, and the bishop swore the Church of Durham should have no peace while he lived; threatened that if a monk should show himself beyond his cloister he should lose his head; and once, when his servants had beaten a monk, and the man complained, he replied that it was a pity they did not kill him. He died at Peterborough in 1226. #Richard le Poore# (1229-1237), who was the next bishop, elected after the see had been vacant two years and four months, was translated from Salisbury, where he had commenced building the new cathedral. He ended the dispute between the monks and the Bishop of Durham by an agreement known as "Le Convenit." #Nicholas de Farnham# (1241-1248) became bishop after a three years' dispute with the king. He resigned in 1248. #Walter de Kirkham# (1249-1260), Dean of York, was next elected. #Robert de Stitchill# (1261-1274), Prior of Finchale, succeeded him. Dissensions again arose between the bishop and the monks. He died on his return from France, where he had attended a council at Lyons. He was buried in a monastery in France, but his heart was brought to Durham, and buried in the chapter-house. #Robert de Insula# (1274-1283), a native of Holy Island, as his name suggests, was then elected bishop. His tenure of office was peaceful. [Illustration: Stone Coffin Lid.] #Anthony Bek# (1283-1310). The next bishop was of noble birth, the son of Walter Bek, Baron of Eresby, in Lincolnshire. He took part with Edward I. in his expedition to Scotland, and, being very wealthy, was of great assistance to the king. His following consisted of twenty-six standard bearers, one hundred and forty knights, and an army of five thousand foot and five hundred horse. He was employed by the king, with success, in many important State matters. In the year 1300 trouble again arose with the monks. Some of them being dissatisfied with the Prior Hotoun, the bishop proposed to hold a visitation. The prior refusing to admit him unless he came unattended, the bishop deposed and excommunicated him. The convent took sides, some with the bishop and some with the prior, and it was only on the interference of the king that a partial peace was restored. The quarrel soon reopened. Some men made a complaint against the bishop. He had compelled them to take arms under him in the Scottish war, and had imprisoned some who had returned without leave. The barons upheld the men, and it led to them taking sides with Prior Hotoun in his dispute. The bishop, calling the monks together, ordered them to elect a new prior, which they promptly refused to do. On this the bishop appointed Henry de Luceby of Holy Island to be prior of Durham, and brought men from Weardale and Tynedale to expel the old prior. They laid siege to the convent, and for three days Prior Hotoun and forty-six monks were shut up with only six loaves and sixteen herrings. They continued the services however. On the third day a Tynedale man was sent to pull the prior out of his stall, but was so awed by his venerable appearance that he dared not touch him. A monk on the bishop's side, however, did the work. Prior Luceby was installed, and Prior Richard seized and imprisoned. He soon escaped, however, and carried his complaint before Parliament, and afterwards to the Pope, Boniface VIII. The Pope decided in his favour, and Hotoun returned to Durham, and Luceby and his friends were obliged to go, though they tried, when doing so, to carry off some silver plate and other valuables. Bek continued in great splendour until his death in 1310. When he died he was king of the Isle of Man, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Bishop of Durham, and Prince Palatine. #Richard de Kellaw# (1311-1316), formerly a monk of Durham, succeeded Bek. He was a good and learned man, and lived in harmony with the monks. #Louis de Beaumont# (1318-1333) was next appointed bishop, after great competition and intrigue. He was chosen in opposition to the wishes of the chapter, who had elected Stamford, Prior of Finchale, to succeed Kellaw. On his way to Durham for consecration and enthronement, accompanied by two cardinals and a large retinue, he was waylaid at Rushyford by a band of ruffians under Gilbert Middleton. They plundered the cardinals, but carried the bishop a prisoner to Mitford Castle. His release was only secured on payment by the monastery of a heavy ransom. He was an ignorant man, and so innocent of Latin that he could not read his profession of obedience, being continually prompted. Later, at an ordination, he stumbled over the words "_in oenigmate_" and cried in French, "_Par Seynt Lewis, il ne fuit pas curtays qui cest parole ici escrit._" "By Saint Lewis he was no gentleman who wrote this word." #Richard de Bury# (1333-1345), who succeeded, was a great scholar, tutor to Edward III., and author of "Philobiblon," a book still extant. He was a good man, and very kind to the poor. #Thomas de Hatfield# (1345-1381) was, like Bishop Bek, a warrior ecclesiastic. Soon after his election he led eighty archers to the siege of Calais. His episcopate was notable for the wars with the Scots, and the great victory obtained over them, with the capture of King David and many nobles, at Neville's Cross, near Durham. Fifteen thousand Scots were slain. The victory was attributed to the presence of the sacred banner of S. Cuthbert, which Prior John Fossor took to a place near the battlefield, kneeling in prayer the while for success. A hymn of thanksgiving was appointed to be sung on the top of the cathedral tower on each anniversary of the battle. This custom is still carried out, though the day has been changed to the twenty-ninth of May. Hatfield was a liberal supporter of Durham College at Oxford. He erected his own tomb in the choir of the cathedral, in which he was afterwards buried. #John Fordham# (1381-1388), secretary to Richard II., and Canon of York, was next elected. Suspected of giving bad advice to the king, he was compelled to resign, but was given the inferior bishopric of Ely, where he lived to extreme old age, dying in 1425. #Walter de Skirlaw# (1388-1405), translated from Bath and Wells, was a munificent prelate. He built bridges at Shincliffe, Bishop Auckland, and Yarm; a refuge tower, a beautiful chapter-house (now in ruins) at Howden; and was a large contributor to the expense of building the central tower of York Cathedral. His work in the building of the cloisters of Durham has already been referred to. #Thomas Langley# (1406-1437) succeeded. He was Chancellor of England, Dean of York, and in 1411 was made a cardinal. He occupied the see during part of the reign of Henry IV., the whole of that of Henry V., and fifteen years of that of Henry VI. He founded two schools on the Palace Green at Durham, and in his will left collections of books to many colleges. #Robert Neville# (1437-1457), son of the Earl of Westmoreland and his wife Joan, who was a daughter of John of Gaunt. He was therefore uncle of the Earl of Warwick, the "king-maker" of Richard III. and of Edward IV. He had a peaceful episcopate of nineteen years, and was buried in the cathedral, in the south aisle near his ancestors. #Laurance Booth# (1457-1476), Canon of York and Lichfield, Archdeacon of Richmond, and Dean of S. Paul's, was the next bishop. He was a supporter of the House of Lancaster. He was translated to the archbishopric of York in 1476, the first of the bishops of Durham who was raised to that dignity. #William Dudley# (1476-1483), Dean of Windsor, succeeded him. #John Sherwood# (1483-1494), who was appointed next, was a learned man, and made a large collection of Greek manuscripts. He died in Rome in 1494. #Richard Fox# (1494-1501) was translated from Bath and Wells after the see had remained vacant for eleven months. Nothing of particular moment occurred during his episcopate. He was an early patron and helper of Wolsey, and lived to regret having assisted him. He made alterations in the castle at Durham. He was translated to the see of Winchester in 1501, and died in 1528. #William Sinews# or #Sever# (1502-1505), translated from Carlisle. He is said to have been the son of a sieve-maker at Shincliffe, near Durham. #Christopher Bainbridge# (1507-1508), Dean of York, was next elected, and after an episcopate of one year was translated to York. In 1511 he was sent to Rome as ambassador by Henry VIII., and while there was created cardinal. He died in Rome, poisoned by a servant whom he had struck in anger. #Thomas Ruthall# (1509-1522), Dean of Salisbury, was the next bishop. He was immensely wealthy, and his love of money brought him into disgrace. King Henry commanded him to draw up an account of the lands and revenues of the Crown. The bishop, in error, sent to the king the wrong book, in which was set forth an account of his own possessions. The king, though tampered with by Wolsey, made no use of the knowledge thus obtained. But the affair rankled in the mind of the bishop, and is said to have hastened his death. #Thomas Wolsey# (1522-1528) was appointed to succeed him. The famous cardinal held the see for six years, as well as that of York. During the whole of his episcopate he never visited Durham, and in 1528 he resigned it for the see of Winchester. #Cuthbert Tunstall# (1530-1559) was translated from London by a Papal Bull, the last used for this purpose. Tunstall was a remarkable man, and he occupied the see during an important period of Church history, the Reformation, all the stages of which he saw. During his episcopacy, the great privileges of the bishops of Durham as Princes Palatine were very much curtailed. In 1526, while Tunstall was Bishop of London, the English translation of the New Testament by Tyndall appeared, causing great alarm among the clergy. The part played by Tunstall in relation to this is well known. He opposed the supremacy of King Henry as head of the Church, but eventually gave up the struggle and preached in its favour. The monastery of Durham was suppressed in 1540, and a dean and twelve canons appointed. Soon after the accession of Edward VI., Bishop Tunstall was committed to the Tower and deprived of his see, on a charge of having encouraged rebellion in the north. On the accession of Mary to the throne he was released and restored, but there would seem to be no grounds for supposing that he took any part in the cruelties practised during her reign. When Elizabeth became queen, Tunstall refused to take the oath, and was again deprived of his see, and, being now an old man, was committed to the custody of his friend Archbishop Parker (Canterbury), with whom he lived till his death in 1559. He was a scholarly prelate, of a kindly nature, and was held in universal esteem. #James Pilkington# (1560-1575) left the buildings of the see in a ruinous condition. #Richard Barnes# (1575-1587), translated from Carlisle. He is said to have been removed to Durham in order to spy upon the correspondence and messengers of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. #Matthew Hutton# (1589-1594), Dean of York, was the next bishop. A man of great learning, and considered one of the best preachers of his day. He was translated to York in 1594. #Tobias Matthew# (1595-1606), Dean of Durham, was his successor. He was also a great preacher, and was celebrated for his wit. He was translated to York. #William James# (1606-1617), Dean of Durham, was next elected. #Richard Neile# (1617-1627) was translated from Lincoln. He was remarkable as being the only bishop who held six sees successively--viz. 1608, Rochester; 1610, Lichfield; 1613, Lincoln; 1617, Durham; 1627, Winchester; and 1631, Archbishop of York. He did much to help forward men of learning and ability by giving them preferment in his see, and reserving apartments for their use in Durham House, London, which became known as Durham College. He spent large sums of money on repairs to the buildings at Durham. #George Monteigne# (1628), Bishop of London, only held the see of Durham for three months, when he was translated to York. #John Howson# (1628-1631), Bishop of Oxford, held the see for two years, and died in 1631. #Thomas Morton# (1632-1659), translated from Lichfield. The North of England was much disturbed in 1640 by the invasion of the Scots, and Bishop Morton fled--first to Stockton, afterwards to York--and never returned to his diocese. The successful Scots levied heavy taxes on the district for the maintenance of their troops, as much as £850 a day being demanded. In 1646, Episcopacy was abolished, and the estates of the bishops ordered to be sold. Thus we find at Durham the castle sold to the Mayor of London for £1267 and Durham, Borough, and Framwellgate disposed of to the Corporation for £200. The bishop lived a life of suffering in London, cared for by his friends, till his death in 1659, at the age of ninety-four. During his episcopate, in 1656, Oliver Cromwell arranged for the founding of a college in Durham, but his death prevented him carrying out his scheme. His son, however, did so, and it flourished until the Restoration, which, by giving back property to its rightful owners, put an end to its existence. #John Cosin# (1660-1671), Canon of Durham, was the first bishop after the Restoration. He was a most munificent prelate, leaving many charitable bequests. He spent large sums in the restoration of the cathedral and castle and the palace at Bishop Auckland. He built a hospital for eight poor people, and erected a library on the palace green. #Nathaniel Crewe# (1642-1722), translated from Oxford. He was a strong supporter of King James II., but afterwards took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. He was noted for his charity and munificence, and left large sums to the poor, and in scholarships tenable by natives of Durham. #William Talbot# (1722-1730), translated from Salisbury. #Edward Chandler# (1730-1750), Bishop of Lichfield, was next elected. He gave £2000 to be laid out for the benefit of the widows of clergymen of his diocese. #Joseph Butler# (1750-1752) was translated from Bristol. He is best known as the author of "The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed." #Richard Trevor# (1752-1771), Bishop of S. David's, a learned, pious, and unostentatious man. He left £200 in his will to the poor of Durham and Auckland. #John Egerton# (1771-1787), Bishop of Lichfield, was next elected. He married the daughter of Henry, Duke of Kent, and his eldest son afterwards became Earl of Bridgewater. #Thomas Thurlow# (1787-1791) was translated to Durham from Lincoln. He was brother of the Lord Chancellor. #Shute Barrington# (1791-1826) was the next bishop, having previously held the sees of Llandaff and Salisbury. A most beneficent prelate; his charities, especially those for the founding of schools and augmentation of poor livings, were magnificent. During his episcopacy, external repairs to the cathedral having become absolutely necessary, James Wyatt, who had already done such mischief at Salisbury, was given charge of the work. Then it was that the paring process, spoken of previously, was completed, the chapter-house destroyed, and the Galilee Chapel only saved from destruction by the intervention of Dean Cornwallis. Wyatt's other wild schemes, to extend the choir eastwards, to the utter ruin of the Nine Altar Chapel, to remove the beautiful Neville screen, and surmount the central tower of the church by a spire, were happily checked in time, or there is no saying to what extent the building would have been mutilated. Bishop Barrington died in London, in his ninety-third year. #William Van Mildert# (1826-1836), Bishop of Llandaff, succeeded to the see. During his episcopate, many important changes were made. The Ecclesiastical Commission, appointed in 1833, to consider in what manner the funds of the Church might be made more available for the purposes for which they were intended, decided to give future bishops a fixed yearly payment, and to reduce the number of canons from twelve to six. On the appointment of a new bishop, the Palatinate was to be annexed by the State. Thus Van Mildert was the last Count Palatine. Before these changes came into force, however, the bishop and the dean and chapter founded and endowed the university out of the revenues of the see, for the use of which the bishop gave up the castle. Bishop Van Mildert was a man of great charity, and though his income was immense, he died comparatively poor. He died in February 1836, and was interred in the chapel of the Nine Altars. #Edward Maltby# (1836-1856), his successor, was translated from Chichester, and held the see for twenty years, when, owing to advanced age and increasing infirmity, he resigned in 1856. #Charles Thomas Longley# (1856-1860), first Bishop of Ripon, was next elected. He was a popular and much-beloved prelate. In 1860 he was created Archbishop of York, and two years later was translated to Canterbury. #Hon. Henry Montague Villiers# (1860-1861) was translated from Carlisle. A fine preacher, his episcopate was all too short. He died, after much suffering, in 1861. #Charles Baring# (1861-1878), Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, succeeded him. A man of unbounded charity and goodness, he won the affection of all who knew him personally. He was compelled, through illness, to resign the see in 1878, and did not long survive his retirement. #Joseph Barber Lightfoot# (1879-1889) was then elected to the see. A man of scholarly attainments, he is still too well known and remembered to need any detailed note. He came to Durham pledged to accomplish as soon as possible the division of the diocese, which promise he carried out by restoring the suppressed see of Hexham to Newcastle-on-Tyne. A fine tomb to the memory of Dr Lightfoot has been placed on the north side of the choir of the cathedral, and as a memorial of his episcopate the mutilated chapter-house has been restored. The present bishop is the #Right Rev. Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D.# * * * * * In this place may conveniently be given the rough draft of the settlement of the see by King Henry VIII. at the Reformation. Although departed from in many instances, it throws a curious light on the king's intentions to keep up some semblance of a conventual institution with an active educational purpose. DURESME. [Fol. 30.] Duresme \ cum Cellis. / First a provoste of the College cc li. Item xii prebendaryes and the moste parte of theym preachers vi of them 1 markes and vi of them xxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. by the yere ccclx li. Item a Reader of humanytie in greke by the yere xx li. Item a Reader of dyvynytie in hebrewe by the yere xx li. Item a Reader bothe of devynytie and humanytie by the yere xx li. Item a Reader of physyke xx li. Item lx scollers to be tawghte both gramer and logyke in hebrewe greke and lattyn every of them by the yere iii li. vi s. viii d. cc li. Item xx studyentes in dyvynytie to be founde x att Oxenford, and x att Cambryge every of them by the yere x li. cc li. Item a Scolmaster for the same Scollers xx li. Item an ussher x li. Item viii petycanons to synge and serve in the quere every of them x li. by the yere xxiiii li. Item x laye men to synge and serve also in the quyre every of them by yere vi li. xiii s. iiii d. lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item x Chorysters every of them by the yere fyve marks xxxiii li. vi s. viii d. Item a master of the Chylderne x li. Item a Gospeller vi li. Item a pysteller v li. Item ii sextens vi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item xii poore men beynge olde servynge men decayed by warres or in the Kyng's servyce every of them vi li. xiii s. iiii d. by yere lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. [Fol. 30. dors.] Item yearly to be distrybuted in almes to poore house-holders lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item for yearly reparacions lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item to be employed yerely in makynge and mendynge of hyghewayes lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item to a Steward of the Landes vi li. xiii s. iiii d. Item to an Audytor x li. Item to ii porters to kepe the gates and shave the Company x li. Item to one cheyf Butler for hys wages and dyete iiii li. xiiis. iiiid. Item to an under Butler for hys wages and dyete iii li. vis. viiid. Item one Cheyf Cooke for hys wages and dyete iiii li. xiiis. iiiid. Item oone Under Coke for hys wages and dyete iii li. vi s. viii d. Item for the provostes expences in receyvyng the Rentes and surveyeng the landes by yere x li. Item to a Cato^r to bye there dyetes for his wages and dyete and makynge hys bockes of reconyngs by the yere vi li. xiiis. iiiid. [Fol. 31.] xx Duresme M^lDCiiii viii^{li} xi^s viii^d. xx Porciones deductæ M^lDiiii xiii^{li} xiii^s iiii^d. Reman' lxxxxiiii^{li} xviii^s iii^d. [Fol. 32.] A proporcion for mayntenance of Hospitalite Lernynge Dyvine Service Almes and other necessarie Expences in the Cathedrall Churche of Duresme to be erectyd foundyd and establysshed by the King's Majesties goodnes. xx Sm^a M^lDCiiii viii^{li} xis. viii d. HOSPITALITE. The dean cclxiii li. x s.--Prebend' xxxii li. vi s. viii d. Corpus of the deane and prebendaries. Fyrste for the Deane for the corpus of his promotion which he shall certaynlye receyve and accordinge wherunto he shall paye the tenthes and fyrst frutes xl li. Item to twelve prebendaries iche of them for the corpus of his promotion viii^{li} which he shall receyve certaynly by yere and accordinge whereunto he shall paye the tenthes and fyrste xx fruytes iiii xvi li. Sm^a cxxxvi^{li} DISTRIBUTIONS. | DCxxx li. xiii s. i d. | +---------------------^--+ Item to the deane for every daie of his residence to be payd by waie | of Cotidiane distribucion out of the common possession xii s. v d. | to be paid out of the same common possession which amountyth | in the yere ccxxvi li. xii s. i d. | | Item to eche prebendarye for every daie of his residence to be payd | by waie of Cotidiane distribucion out of the common possession | xvi^d ob. over and besydes iiii s. ix d. ob. to be payd to every | of the prebendaries out of the same common possession which | in the hole yere amountith to the twelve said prebendaries to | the Summe ccciiii li.-^ [Fol. 32 dors.] LEARNINGE. | ccxxx li. vi s. viii d. | +-------------------------+ | cciii^{li} xiii iiii. | +--------------------^--+ Item a reader in divinite for his yerely stypende to be paid of | the common possession xxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. | Item to twelve scolers to be found at the Universite off Oxforde | every of them ix li. xi s. viii d. by yere cxv li. | Item to xviii scolers to be taught Gramer Greke and Latyn | every of them iiii li. by yere lxxii li. | Item to a scolemaster for the same scolars x li. | Item to an ussher for them vi li. xiii s. iiii d.-^ DYVINE SERVICE. | ccci^{li} | +--------^--+ Item to twelve petycanons eche of them x li. by yere for ther dyet | and wagys cxx li. | Item to tenne laymen syngars eche of them to have yerely for their | dyet and wagys vi li. xiii s. iiii d. lxvi li. xiii s. iiii d. | Item to tenne Choristers eche of them lxvi s. viii d. | xxiii li. vi. s. viii d. | Item for a master to the Children for his dyet and wagys x. li. | Item to a Gospeller and Epistoler eche of them vi li. xiiis. iiiid. | Item to twoo sextens xii li. | Item to a Cator vi li. xiii s. iiii d. | Item to twoo buttellers xii li. | Item to two Cookes xii li. | Item to thre other commen servaantes as portor and ryngars eche of | them v li. xv li.-^ [Fol. 33.] ALMES. Item to eyght poore men eche of them yerely vi li. xiii. s. iiii d. | liii li. vi s. viii d. | Item to be yerely distributed in almes to householders | xvi li. xiii s. iiii d. | Item to be yerely spente in mendynge of hyghways xx li.-^ EXPENCES NECESSARIE. xx | ciiii iiii li. xv s. x d. | +-------------------------^-+ Item for yerely reparacions by Estymation. cxxxi li. viii s. v d. | Item in exspences yerely in surveynge the landes and receyvinge | the Rentes xx li. | Item in expences for wyne and wax xiii li. vi s. viii d. | Item to a Stewarde of landes for his fee x li. | Item to an Auditor x li.-+ xx xx Sum of the common M^lCCCiiii vi li. xiii s. xd. M^lCCCCiiiixvi^{li} xv d. Sum totall of all thies percels M^lDxxii^{li} xiii^s x^d. Above which chargys the church indewyd with landes to susteyne the same muste pay yerely tenthes and a certayne summe by composition for the fyrste frutes deducted and abbayted. Cxxxvi li. payd by the deane and prebendaries severall. cxl li. to be allowyd by statute for almes. x li. for the stewarde allowyd by statute. x li. for the Auditors fee allowyd by statute. xx The hole sume of deductions CCiiii xvi li. And so remaynes chargeable with tenthes and fyrst frutes M^lCCxxvi li. xiii s. x d. [Illustration: The Chapter Library.] [Sidenote: ] [Fol. 33. dors.] | ccxvi li. ix s. vi d. | +---------------------^-+ Whereof to be payd for the tenthes of the commen possession | cxliiii li. vi s. iiii d. | Item a yerely Rent to be payd by composition for the fyrste frutes | lxxii li. xii s. iid.-^ And so the Cathedrale Churche for mayntenance of the said yerely charges and paymente touchinge hospitalite lernynge divine service almes necessarie exspences tenthes and fyrst frutes after the Rates before mentionyd must yf the said shall lyke the Kings majestic be indewyd with yerely Revenues of the summe of M^lDCCxxxix^{li} xiii s. iiii d. MDCCxii li. x s. CHAPTER V THE CASTLE AND UNIVERSITY No notice of Durham and its cathedral would seem complete without some mention being made of its fortress, the growth of which has been contemporary with, and, we might almost say, inseparable from that of the monastery itself. There can be little doubt that other than the miraculous considerations assigned to them by tradition influenced the monks and the congregation of S. Cuthbert in their final choice of a resting-place for the bones of their beloved saint. The almost impregnable position of the rocky promontory upon which both Cathedral and Castle stand suggests a careful selection on their part, with a view to the prevention of attack and consequent further disturbance of their sacred relics. What the first fortification was is a matter of doubt; most probably it was merely a wall or rampart of earth, with a large artificial mound at the weakest point. This seems to have been the usual practice at an early date at many other places in England, and in some cases their date is known and corresponds to the time at which Durham was probably first fortified. Whatever the earliest protections were, we know that in 1072 William the Conqueror, on his way from Scotland, passed through Durham. He quickly perceived the natural advantages and strength of the position, and gave orders for the erection of a castle. This was at once set about, during the episcopacy of Bishop Walcher, and continued under Carileph and Flambard. Of this building, which might be styled "The Conqueror's Castle," not much remains. The most important is the #Chapel# or Crypt, which belongs, no doubt, to the earlier part of the period named (1080 to 1096). In plan the chapel has a nave and two aisles. The roof is vaulted, the ribs being plain, semi-circular, and square recessed, and is supported by six circular columns. The capitals of these columns are a somewhat interesting feature, owing to their Lombardic character. The abaci are square and moulded, while the caps proper carry at their angles rudely carved volutes such as occur in the White Tower, London. Each capital is also carved differently with curious and rude devices. Of the three windows which terminated the nave and aisle at the east end, one has been destroyed to make way for a staircase and the other two are built up. The original windows of the chapel were very narrow and widely splayed. In the walls are an aumbrey and the remains of two altars. [Illustration: The Chapel or Crypt, Durham Castle.] Other remains of this date are somewhat scattered. Two windows in the undercroft of Bishop Bek's, or what is now known as #Bishop Hatfield's Hall#, are examples. They have converging jambs, the semi-circular heads being cut from one stone and the inside very widely splayed. The wall from the keep to the chapel, and that from the keep to the gateway are also Norman work, as are also portions of the gateway itself. The next important changes in the castle were made by Bishop Pudsey, 1153-1195, who not only repaired the existing work but built a hall, known as #Pudsey's Hall#. Although this hall has now almost entirely disappeared, through repairs and alterations, sufficient evidence as to its whereabouts and general plan is forthcoming. It was of two storeys, the lower and upper halls. Entrance to the lower hall was originally gained by a staircase which led from the courtyard to the splendid doorway now enclosed in Tunstall's Gallery. This magnificent entrance having been covered with lath and plaster, and for long completely forgotten, was unearthed by, and at the expense of Bishop Barrington, early in the present century. It is in good preservation and is a splendid specimen of rich Norman architecture. It consists of five orders, all richly carved and moulded. Three orders rest on carved capitals and shafts, and two are carried down the jambs of the doorway. The stairway has entirely disappeared, but there is little room to doubt that it would be of much the same character as that in the close at Canterbury; and to the protection afforded by the staircase roof, we are, no doubt, indebted for the good preservation of the arch mouldings of the doorway itself. What was originally Pudsey's Upper Hall is now styled the #Norman Gallery#. The greater portion of this gallery is at the present time divided into chambers of residence for the students of the university. It is reached by the Black Staircase and a doorway in the Early English Gothic style. The interior of the south and west walls are enriched by arcades in groups of three, the central bay of each of which is larger than those flanking it, and is pierced by a window. The arches of the arcade rest on shafts and cushion capitals, and are carved with chevron ornament. The whole arrangement hereabouts bears the impress of having been a portion of one great building, which an examination of the roof, lead, and general outline makes even more certain. On the western side of the courtyard stands the great #Bek's Hall#, built by the bishop of that name. It is above the Norman undercroft, previously mentioned. Much of its original character is now lost, owing to restorations, curtailments, and alterations. Bek's doorway is still in existence, though much hidden by the porch erected later by Bishop Cosin. It has a pointed arch of two orders, with detached shafts in the jambs. Another original relic, unrestored, is part of the window nearest the fireplace, which is valuable as evidence of the date of the erection of the hall. The tracery is geometrical, and the shafts in the angles of the splays are banded. About the year 1350 Bishop Hatfield enlarged and altered Bek's hall. At the west end he inserted two light windows, which are now blocked, though the tracery may be seen from students' rooms inside, and partly from the outside. The open oak roof, with the exception of some necessary later repairs, is of Bishop Hatfield's time. Hatfield repaired and altered Pudsey's upper hall by the addition of east and west windows, and probably a new roof. He also rebuilt the #Keep#, which time and war had greatly injured. The existing keep, which was erected in 1840, is similar to Hatfield's, and in many places stands upon the old foundations. It is now used entirely as apartments for students of University College. Bishop Fox (1494-1501) is responsible for the next important changes. He curtailed the great hall by a partition wall near its south end, which still exists. The wall bears his badge in two places--a pelican feeding her young with blood from her breast. He also adapted part of Pudsey's buildings, near the south-west corner of the castle, to the purposes of a kitchen, erected three fireplaces, and windows, and the oak buttery hatch which opens from the kitchen, and which again has carved upon it "the pelican in her piety." Bishop Tunstall (1530-1558) built #Tunstall's Gallery#, which extends from the great hall to the clock tower. It is entered by Cosin's staircase (erected later) and by an eastern stair built by Tunstall himself. A curious feature of this stairway is a port-hole which commands the main entrance to the courtyard. The present beautiful little chapel is also the work of Bishop Tunstall. It contains some notable carved oak stalls, of earlier date than the chapel itself, which were brought from the castle at Bishop Auckland. The carved devices of the miserere seats of these stalls are curious and worthy of attention. The doors in the gateway of the courtyard are the work of Tunstall's time. Bishop Cosin (1660-1672) found the castle in a dilapidated condition. During the Commonwealth it had been sold to the then Lord Mayor of London, who used it badly, to say nothing of the ruin caused by the Scots. He spent large sums in its restoration. He added the present porch or entrance from the courtyard to the great hall. The great staircase in the north-west corner of the courtyard is his and bears his arms. Within and leading to Tunstall's Gallery is the Black Staircase, also the work of Cosin. He enlarged the chapel, and constructed and fitted several apartments in the castle, besides several minor works. In his will, he says, he spent the greater part of his temporal estate in "rebuilding and repaireing the two episcopall Castles of Durham and Bishop Auckland." This, he states, cost him seventeen thousand pounds, including the furnishing and ornamenting of the chapels, which he did "for the use of my successors in those Chappells for ever." Many of the agreements between Bishop Cosin and his masons, plasterers, carpenters, and painters, from which the exact dates and prices paid for the work may be learned, are preserved. The latest important work at the castle was the rebuilding of the keep, in 1840, which was described at that time as "a picturesque ruin." It was entirely rebuilt on its original plan. The gateway to the courtyard was repaired and modernised by Bishop Barrington, with the existing inartistic result. Durham Castle owes its picturesque appearance to two causes--first, its magnificent and commanding position, on a rocky escarpment; and second, no doubt, to the many vicissitudes through which it has passed, the alterations and additions made necessary by time and constant war, and later, the entirely different uses to which the building is put. [Illustration: Staircase in the Castle.] It is now chiefly used as a hall of residence for university men and as lodging for the Judges of Assize. The most favourable time for the architectural student to visit the castle is during one of the university vacations, otherwise many interesting features would be denied him. Many portions (except students' chambers) are, however, open to the public every week day. #The University of Durham.#--From an early date, frequent mention is made in the history of the see of Durham, of a college at Oxford called the Durham College. Its origin is not exactly known, but by the liberality of several bishops and priors its original endowment increased, until provision was made for eight fellows and eight scholars. This was the case at the time of the suppression of the monasteries by King Henry VIII., when, owing to its connection with the monastery of Durham, the college was also dissolved. Its revenues, were, however, rescued, and in 1541 were handed over by the king to the newly created dean and chapter. Thus the matter stood till 1650, when a petition was presented to the Protector, showing the great disadvantages to the North of England arising from the long distance of Oxford and Cambridge, and praying that the houses of the dean and prebendaries might be converted into a college. Cromwell took a favourable view of the idea, and in a letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, in its support, he says:-- "Truly it seems to me a matter of great concernment and importance, as that which (by the blessing of God) may much conduce to the promotion of learning and piety in these poore, rude, and ignorant parts, there being also many concurring advantages to this place, as pleasantness, and aptness of situation, healthfull aire, and plenty of provisions, which seeme to favour and pleade for theire desires therein."[7] [7] Hutchinson, vol. i Various delays occurred, however, and it was not until 1657 that the Lord Protector issued his patent for the erection of the proposed college, in a document consisting of twenty-three heads. The college thus commenced made great progress, and would no doubt have continued to do so, but for the constant opposition of the two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Then followed the Restoration, and with it came a reaction against all measures established during the Protectorate. This feeling, combined with persistent petitions from the universities, soon accomplished the downfall of the College. Bishop Van Mildert, who was translated to Durham in 1826, during his short episcopate saw many changes, not the least of which was the successful revival of the scheme for a university. Powers were obtained in 1832 for the training of students in divinity and the conferring of degrees in other faculties. The new foundation was endowed out of the revenues of the cathedral, and the bishop gave up the Castle of Durham for the use of the college, besides financial assistance of £1000 for the first year and £2000 for the following years until his death in 1836. The first warden was Dr Charles Thorp, Archdeacon and Canon of Durham, but it was provided by an order, on the recommendation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that in future the office of warden should be permanently attached to the deanery, and that a canonry in the cathedral be annexed to each of the professorships of Divinity and Greek. The government of the university is in the hands of the dean and chapter, and the affairs administered by a warden, senate and convocation. A royal charter was obtained in 1837 making the university a corporate body with perpetual succession and a common seal. The university, besides its original schools of arts and divinity, has established schools of physical science and medicine, in connection with the Durham College of Science at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and has recently admitted women students to its courses and lectures. There are many foundation scholarships and exhibitions in arts, classics, mathematics, and theology, besides a long list of private foundations and fellowships. The university consists of one college and one hall. The former, University College, occupies the Castle, and the latter, Bishop Hatfield's Hall. It is well supplied with libraries. The university library founded at the opening, to which Bishop Van Mildert contributed a valuable collection. The library given in 1855 by the late Dr Martin Routh, president of Magdalen College, Oxford. The library presented by the late Bishop Maltby in 1856, which he endowed with £1000. A library was also bequeathed to the university in 1859 by the late T.M. Winterbottom, M.D., of Westoe, South Shields. A large collection of books was bequeathed by the late Bishop Lightfoot. Two other important libraries may here be mentioned, though they do not belong to the University--viz. the Chapter Library and Bishop Cosin's Library. CHAPTER VI THE CITY Besides the Cathedral and Castle, the City of Durham possesses several churches of decided interest to the student of architecture, which deserve a brief notice. The Parish Church of #S. Mary in the North Bailey.#--This small church is generally known as S. Mary le Bow, owing to the fact that in its original steeple was an arch, through which the roadway passed. This steeple fell in 1637, and the ancient structure was allowed to lapse into complete ruin. The present church was built in 1685, and its most noticeable feature is the open carved screen between the nave and chancel erected in 1707. The site of the church is the oldest in the city, and some writers have thought it probably identical with that of the White Church in which the body of S. Cuthbert was placed during the building of the cathedral. #S. Mary-the-Less# is a small but picturesque church situated in the South Bailey, and is of Norman date. Its original architectural character is, however, almost entirely lost, owing to extensive restorations which took place in 1846-7. The round-headed window now in the south wall of the chancel, but formerly in the west wall of the nave, is the only remaining original feature. The church is entered by a porch on the south side, and consists of a nave and chancel only. Some stones in the churchyard, which were removed from their position when the church was restored, are carved with chevron ornament, and would seem to show that the date of the original structure was the earlier part of the twelfth century. #S. Oswald.#--This church stands on high ground overlooking the river Wear, at the head of New Elvet; and is the parish church of the ancient borough of Elvet. The first church was erected by Bishop Carileph, though the earliest parts of the existing building are of the time of Bishop Pudsey, who also built the bridge across the river, known as the Elvet Bridge. To this date (about 1190) belongs the eastern part of the nave arcade, the arches of which are semi-circular and rest upon tall round piers. Early in the fourteenth century a new chancel was built, the aisles rebuilt and extended to the west end, and two new arches added to the west end of the nave arcades. In the early part of the fifteenth century a clerestory and open parapet were added, and a new oak roof placed over the nave. This was most probably a hammer-beam roof, and was coloured and gilded and decorated with angels holding shields. The only parts remaining at the present day are the grotesque carved corbels, and the angels. The tower was also constructed at this time. In 1834, owing to subsidence of the ground, it became necessary to rebuild the south aisle and a large part of the chancel, which caused the destruction of much architectural beauty. The open parapet was removed, the clerestory windows replaced by the present inferior ones, and the fine oak roof destroyed. The east end of the chancel was rebuilt in 1864. Special attention should be directed to the fine oak stall-work in the chancel, boldly carved in the style of the early part of the fifteenth century. The tower, which forms a beautiful and conspicuous landmark, is reached by a stone staircase of unusual character. It is placed in the thickness of the wall, and is covered in with twenty-four gravestones of thirteenth and fourteenth century date, on which may yet be seen portions of inscriptions and symbols. Built into the tower was part of a Saxon cross, which has now been removed for preservation to the dean and chapter library. This cross is interesting as evidence of the existence on the same site of a pre-Norman church. The tower was carefully restored in 1863. It contains a peal of six bells, which were re-cast in 1694, and bear the following inscriptions:-- 1. GLOVIA(?) IN ALTISSMISS(?) DEO PEX FORSTER A VIC CHRISTO HODSON ME FECIT 1694. 3. DEVM TIMETE PEX FORSTER AM VIC I EVANS C WARDEN CHRISTO HODSON ME FECIT. 4. REGEM HONORATE PEX FORSTER A M VIC 1694 CHRISTOPR HODSON MADE ME I EVANS I S H R. 5. IBIMUS IN DOMVM DOMINI PEX FORSTER A M VIC CHRISTOPER HODSON MADE ME 1694 IO EVANS CHV W. 6. OSVALDUS FLOREM MEREOR QVIA GESTO TENOREM PEX FORSTER AM VIC IO EVANS IS WH RW CW 94. The second bell was cast in 1885. #S. Margaret's# Parish Church is situated on the steep hill called Crossgate. It is opposite to and across the river from the Castle, and from its churchyard a fine western view of the cathedral is obtained. The church was built during the early part of the episcopate of Bishop Pudsey (1154) and was formerly a chapel under the church of S. Oswald. Here again alterations and restorations have obliterated much that originally existed. The church at present consists of a nave and aisles, a chancel with aisles, a western tower, and north and south porches. The existing portions of the original church are the chancel arch, and the south arcade of four bays, together with part of the clerestory and the north wall of the chancel. The arcade consists of low massive circular piers, with cushion capitals and plain chamfered abaci, which support semi-circular arches of one order also chamfered. The north arcade is also Norman, and very similar in character to that of S. Oswald. No doubt it is of the same date, and probably built by the same architect. The chancel arch has two orders, recessed square and chamfered, with a plain chamfered hood mould. On both north and south sides of the arch is a squint. With the exception of two which are Norman, the windows are nearly all of modern date. One is in the north wall of the chancel and is widely splayed. It is not seen on the outside owing to the vestry which now covers it. The other, a very interesting specimen, is situated over the western bay of the south arcade, and is a portion of the original clerestory and the earliest known clerestory window in the county. The roof of the nave is of oak, and a good specimen of Perpendicular work. The tower is of fifteenth-century date, and exceedingly plain externally, but vaulted in the interior. It opens on to the church by an arch which has been inserted in the west wall. There is an interesting font of Frosterley marble, which is apparently of the same date as the chancel. The vestry which is raised above the level of the church floor is of the fifteenth century, and has on its gable the original gable cross. [Illustration: The Cathedral and Castle, from the North.] The Parish Church of #S. Giles# occupies a very elevated position at the north-east end of the city, and commands one of the finest views of the cathedral, castle, and city, which it is possible to obtain. It was built by Bishop Flambard and finished as early as 1112; but the north wall of the nave, containing two small Norman windows, widely splayed inwards, and a walled-up doorway is all that remains of this early church. The chancel is of later Norman of the time of Pudsey. Both within and without a bold chamfered string course runs round the chancel. On the south side is a semi-circular headed window, with a carved dripstone and nook shafts, the capitals of which bear a similar character to those in the Galilee Chapel of the cathedral. In the north wall of the chancel is the priests' door, now walled up, and the corbels and springers of the original chancel arch built by Pudsey. The present arch was erected in 1876. In 1414 considerable alterations were made during the episcopate of Bishop Langley, when the walls of the nave were raised, the upper stage of the tower built, and the west window inserted. The font is a fine stone bowl resting on a shaft, and is undoubtedly of the time of Flambard. The chancel contains some monuments of the Tempest and Heath families, who were the ancestors of the Marchioness of Londonderry, patroness of the church and parish of S. Giles. The tower contains three bells, the first and second of which are pre-Reformation and the third bears the date 1646. On the north side of Gilesgate near to the North-Eastern goods station, are the ruins of the little #Chapel of S. Mary Magdalen#, of which only a small portion remains. At the west end of the north and south walls are two doorways, the latter walled up. Portions of the east window are still in position, but it would appear to have been of earlier date than the surrounding walls, and probably had been brought from some other building. In the interior are the remains of a Frosterley marble font, and a gable cross of thirteenth-century date is in the custody of the dean and chapter. The chapel was 43 feet by 16½ feet wide. It is supposed to have been founded by Sir John Fitz Alexander. In 1370 it was almost entirely rebuilt, and again in 1449, on a site near the original one. The reason for this was the moisture of the ground, which caused the foundations to become insecure. The government was in the hands of the almoner of the cathedral, who distributed doles to the poor. The chapel was used as a place of worship until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, when, owing to its ruinous condition, services were finally discontinued. * * * * * [Illustration: PLAN AND DIMENSIONS.] PRINCIPAL DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL Feet. Inches. Length of Nave 201 0 Width of Nave 39 0 Width of Nave Aisles 21 0 Length of North Transept 66 0 Length of South Transept 66 0 Width of Transepts 37 0 Length of Choir 132 6 Width of Choir 39 6 Width of Choir Aisles 19 0 Length of Nine Altars Chapel 131 0 Width of Nine Altars Chapel 38 6 Height of Vaulting of Nine Altars Chapel 77 0 Height of Vaulting of Choir 74 6 Height of Vaulting of Nave 72 0 Height of Vaulting of Lantern 155 0 Width of Lantern E. to W. 40 6 Width of Lantern N. to S. 39 0 Height of Tower Arches 68 6 Length of Galilee Chapel 77 0 Width of Galilee 49 0 Height of Western Towers 144 6 Height of Central Tower 218 0 Total length of Church (interior) 469 6 Thickness of Wall at West End 8 0 AREA 44,400 sq. ft. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names, and dialect or obsolete word spelling, has been maintained as in the original. 
20346	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the many original illustrations. See 20346-h.htm or 20346-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/3/4/20346/20346-h/20346-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/3/4/20346/20346-h.zip) Transcriber's note: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were in bold face have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names and dialect or obsolete word spellings have been left as they were in the original. THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WINCHESTER A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See by PHILIP W. SERGEANT Late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford [Illustration: WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM NORTH-WEST END OF CLOSE. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] [Illustration] With Fifty Illustrations London George Bell & Sons 1899 First Published, Jan. 1898 Second Edition, Revised 1899 W. H. White and Co. Limited Riverside Press, Edinburgh GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE, E.F. STRANGE, _Editors of the Series._ PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION It would be useless to attempt to record all the sources of information to which it has been necessary to have recourse in preparing this short account of Winchester Cathedral and its history; but I should like to acknowledge the main portion of the debt. "The Proceedings of the Archæological Institute of Great Britain in 1845" must, of course, take the first place, for to Willis's paper every one must go who wishes to know the cathedral well. Britton's "Cathedrals," Browne Willis's "Survey of the Cathedrals," and Woodward's "History of Hampshire," with the more recent Diocesan History of Winchester by Canon Benham, and the "Winchester Cathedral Records" of various dates, have been of great service. An article in the _Builder_ of October 1, 1892, and one on St Cross in _Architecture_ for November 1896, must also be mentioned. Above all, I am glad to be able to express my gratitude to one of the editors of this series, Mr Gleeson White, without whose assistance this account would never have been commenced. The engraving of the iron grill-work is reproduced from Mr Starkie Gardiner's "Iron-work," Vol. I., by permission of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. PHILIP WALSINGHAM SERGEANT. CONTENTS CHAPTER I.--History of the Cathedral 3 CHAPTER II.--The Cathedral Building and Close 16 The Exterior 19 The West Front 20 The North and South Sides 26 The Central Tower 27 The Transepts 27 The East End 28 CHAPTER III.--The Interior 33 The Nave 34 The Minstrels' Gallery 40 The Grill-work 43 The Norman Font 44 Wykeham's Chantry 46 Edingdon's Chantry 50 The Choir 50 The Tomb of "William Rufus" 52 The Reredos 55 The Transepts 61 North Transept 65 South Transept 65 The Library 71 The Feretory 72 The Holy Hole 72 Gardiner's and Fox's Chantries 74 The Mortuary Chests 76 The Retro-choir and its Chantries 79 The Lady Chapel 84 The Guardian Angels and Langton Chapels 90 The Crypts 93 The Stained Glass 94 CHAPTER IV.--History of the See 96 CHAPTER V.--The Bishops of Winchester 101 CHAPTER VI.--Other Institutions connected with the Cathedral 118 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Cathedral from the North-West _Frontispiece_ The Deanery 2 Old View of the North Side of the Cathedral 11 Monument to Bishop Ethelmar 15 The Cathedral from the Deanery Gardens 19 The West Front 21 North-West Bay--Exterior 25 East End--Exterior 29 Nave, showing Screen before Restoration 31 Transformation of the Nave 35 The Nave, looking East 37 The Nave, looking West 39 The Grill-work from S. Swithun's Shrine 41 The Norman Font 45 William of Wykeham's Chantry 47 The Choir, looking East 51 The Choir Stalls 53 The Altar and Reredos 57 The North Transept 59 View in North Transept 63 Door to Henry de Blois' Treasury 66 Bishop Wilberforce's Monument 67 South Aisle, from Transept 69 Back of Feretory, with Bishop Gardiner's Chantry 73 Bishop Fox's Chantry and Details 75, 76 South Aisle of Retro-choir 77 Cardinal Beaufort's Chantry 81 The Lady Chapel 85 Details of Lady Chapel 85 Bishop Langton's Chapel and Details 89, 90 Queen Mary's Chair 91 Mortuary Chest in Choir 95 Carving on Choir Stalls 111 Details of Font 117 Winchester College: "School" 119 Winchester College: The Outer Gateway 120 Winchester College: Chantry Chapel 121 Winchester College: Inscription and The Trusty Servant 122, 123 St Cross from the South 124 St Cross from the Quadrangle 125 St Cross: East End from Nave 126 County Hall with Round Table 127 The City Cross 129 Tombstone in Churchyard 131 The West Gate 132 PLANS OF THE CATHEDRAL AND CRYPTS 134, 135 [Illustration: THE DEANERY, WINCHESTER. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL Unlike many of our cathedral cities, "Royal" Winchester has a secular history of the greatest importance, which not only is almost inextricably interwoven with the ecclesiastical annals down to a comparatively recent date, but should at times occupy the foremost position in the records of the place. To attempt, however, to trace the story of the city as well as that of the cathedral would be to recapitulate the most important facts of the history of England during those centuries when Winchester was its capital town. Its civic importance, indeed, was not dependent upon the cathedral alone, for before the introduction of Christianity into the island Winchester was undoubtedly the principal place in the south of England. The Roman occupation, though it seems a mere incident in its record, lasted over three centuries, about as long as from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of Queen Victoria. Richard Warner (1795) sums up the various names of Winchester when he speaks of "the metropolis of the British Belgæ, called by Ptolemy and Antoninus Venta Belgarum; by the Welch or modern Britons, Caer Gwent; and by the old Saxons, Wintancester; by the Latin writers, Wintonia" ("Collections for the History of Hampshire"). Even, therefore, when we read the account of the legendary king of the Britons, Lucius, founding a great church at Winchester in A.D. 164, we do not touch the source of its fame, nor have we discovered the record of the first building devoted to religious worship on the site of the present cathedral. How far certain references to early pagan temples may be trusted does not here concern us; but at Christchurch Priory, some thirty-five miles to the south-west in the same diocese, bones "supposed to be those of sacrificial birds" have been exhumed on the site of its church. There was, however, a relapse into paganism after the first dedication of the Christian building, so that there can be no certainty about the date of such discoveries. On the authority of Vigilantius' "_De Basilica Petri_" (_i.e._ at Wynton or Winchester), quoted by Rudborne in "_Anglia Sacra_," John of Exeter, and other writers, we have it that a great church was rebuilt from its foundations at Caergwent by Lucius after his conversion in A.D. 164; and that he erected also smaller buildings with an oratory, refectory, and dormitory for the temporary abode of the monks until the monastery itself should be completed. Quotations from another lost author, Moracius, provide us with the dimensions of this edifice, the length being variously given as 209 and 200 _passus_, the breadth as 80 and 130, while the tower was 92 _passus_ in height. This church, it was said, was dedicated to S. Saviour in November 169, and endowed with property formerly held by the pagan priests. "The site of the monastery to the east of the church was 100 _passus_ in length toward the old temple of Concord and 40 in breadth to the new temple of Apollo. The north position was 160 in length and 98 in breadth. To the west of the church it was 90 in length and 100 in breadth, to the south 405 in length and 580 in breadth." Willis, from whom the above dimensions are quoted, does not attempt to reconcile the figures except in so far as he suggests _pedes_ for _passus_, substituting one foot for five. During the persecution of the Christians by Diocletian in A.D. 266 the buildings were destroyed; and the new church, dedicated to "S. Amphibalus," who was said to be one of the martyrs in that persecution, was not so large as its predecessor. In writers of the period we find occasional references to the "Vetus Coenobium" or old monastery at Winchester. The new building was not destined to remain long undisturbed in the service for which it was intended, for when Cerdic, King of the West Saxons, was crowned at Winchester and the pagans once more gained the ascendancy, the monks were slaughtered and the church, devoted to other rites, remained a temple of "Dagon" from 516 to 635. In the latter year S. Birinus, in pursuance of his mission from Honorius to "scatter the seeds of the holy faith in those farthest inland territories of the English which no teacher had yet visited," converted King Cynegils to Christianity. This king intended to erect a great new church, and, with that end in view, destroyed the desecrated building and granted the law for seven miles round to the monks whom he destined to take possession of the new building. He died, however, within six years of his conversion, and was buried before the altar of the partly-erected church. His son Cenwalh therefore completed the building, which S. Birinus dedicated to Christ in honour of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity. Birinus was followed by Aegelberht, afterwards Bishop of Paris, who resigned in 662; Wina, who died as Bishop of London, ejected in 666; and Eleutherius, who died in 676. So far the see was not at Winchester, but was temporarily placed at Dorchester in Oxfordshire. Under Hedda, the fourth successor of S. Birinus, the seat was at last moved to Winchester, in accordance with the intention of the royal founder, and at the same time the body of the saint, which had hitherto rested at Dorchester, was removed to the cathedral city. King Cenwalh himself also on his death was buried in the building which he had completed. Practically nothing is known of the actual Saxon building, and the very legends are scanty. We learn that the city was ravaged by the Danes two years after the death of S. Swithun, but the cathedral itself appears fortunately to have escaped damage. The bishopric of Athelwold, commencing with his consecration by Dunstan on November 29, A.D. 963, has more importance in the history of the cathedral than that of his immediate predecessors. He was chosen by King Edgar to undertake the work of a new monastery in which the king took such pleasure that he is said to have measured the foundations himself. This work carried out at Winchester by Athelwold is described at great length in a Latin poem by Wolstan. No doubt the florid eulogy of the poem is open to grave suspicion where it concerns the details of the building, but, even when we make full allowance for poetic exaggeration, the church appears certainly to have been a large and important one. The poem in its first form is reproduced in Mabillon's version of Wolstan's "Life of S. Athelwold," but in its entirety it consists of an epistle of over 300 lines to Bishop Elphege Athelwold's successor. Some passages deserve quotation. "He built," says Wolstan, "all these dwelling places with strong walls. He covered them with roofs and clothed them with beauty. He repaired the courts of the old temple with lofty walls and new roofs and strengthened it at the north and south sides with solid aisles and various arches. He added also many chapels, with sacred altars which distract attention from the threshold of the church, so that the stranger walking in the courts is at a loss where to turn, seeing on all sides doors open to him, without a certain path. He stands with wondering eyes until some experienced guide conducts him to the portals of the farthest vestibule. Here marvelling he crosses himself and knows not how to quit, so dazzling is the construction and so brilliant the variety of the fabric that sustains this ancient church, which that devout father himself strengthened, roofed, endowed, and dedicated." Later Wolstan speaks of Athelwold's addition of "secret crypts," of "such organs that the like were never seen," of a sparkling tower reflecting from heaven the sun's first rays, "with at its top a rod with golden balls and a mighty golden cock which as it turns boldly sets its face to every wind that blows." More might be quoted, but it is sufficient here to refer those interested in the matter either to the chronicle itself or to Willis in the "Proceedings of the Architectural Institute" for 1845. Though Wolstan thus describes Athelwold's undertaking at great length, it does not appear that the bishop actually did more than commence the restoration of the original buildings, for his successor is exhorted in the letter to carry out Athelwold's design. The chronicler Rudborne makes mention only of the dedication of a minster in honour of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in the presence of King Aethelred, Archbishop Dunstan and eight other bishops, on October 20, 980 A.D. John of Exeter ascribes to Athelwold the entire rebuilding of the cathedral, but the Winchester annalist does not mention Athelwold's great works. From Athelwold's death to the succession of Walkelin the history of the cathedral is little more than a record of its bishops; but with Walkelin we reach a very important epoch in its existence. In 1079, the Winchester Annals relate, this bishop began to rebuild the cathedral from its very foundations, as was commonly done by the Norman ecclesiastics of the time. According to this account, it was in 1086 that the king granted Walkelin, for the completion of his new building, as much wood from the forest of Hempage (three miles distant from the city on the Alresford road) as he could cut in four days and nights. Walkelin collected all the men he could, and within the given time removed the whole forest. The king, passing its site, cried: "Am I bewitched? or have I taken leave of my senses?" But the bishop, when he heard of his anger, pleaded to be allowed to resign the see if he might but keep the chaplaincy and the king's favour. At this William relented, saying: "I was as much too liberal in my grant as you were too greedy in availing yourself of it" (Willis). In 1093 the new church was formally consecrated, and on April 8, "in the presence of almost all the bishops and abbots of England, the monks came with the highest exultation and glory from the old minster to the new one: on the Feast of S. Swithun they went in procession from the new minster to the old one and brought thence S. Swithun's shrine and placed it with honour in the new buildings; and on the following day Bishop Walkelin's men first began to pull down the old minster, and before the end of the year they demolished the whole of it, with the exception of one apse and the high altar." When the old high altar was pulled down, we are told, "the relics of many saints were found." The cathedral, as Walkelin designed it, was for the most part so strong that its core and much of its actual work remains to this day; but the central tower lacked the stability of the rest, for on October 7, 1107, during the vacancy which occurred after Walkelin's death, it fell. The monkish chroniclers attributed the fall to the fact that William Rufus, "who all his life had been profane and sensual and had expired without the Christian viaticum" (Rudborne), was interred beneath it in 1100. William of Malmesbury, however, with a degree of incredulity rare in his days, says it may have been that it would have fallen in any case "through imperfect construction." He describes the burial thus:--"A few countrymen conveyed the body, placed on a cart, to the cathedral of Winchester, the blood dripping from it all the way. Here it was committed to the ground within the tower, attended by many of the nobility, but lamented by few. The next year the tower fell; though I forbear to mention the different opinions on this subject, lest I should seem to assent too readily to unsupported trifles." After Walkelin's death the history of the building is lost sight of for some time, owing to the continual disturbances which all England was undergoing. With De Lucy's accession, however, in 1189, considerable additions were made to the cathedral, in the form of the Early English retro-choir, of which the details are given later in this volume. De Lucy's work, it has been pointed out, was carried out in such a way as to leave the Norman building undisturbed as long as it was practicable to do so, the circular apse being left _in situ_ until the new external walls had been erected, while the presbytery itself was not touched until the Decorated Period set in. De Lucy would doubtless have made further alterations but for his death in 1204. As it was, two years before that event he instituted a confraternity to carry on his work for the space of five years, and to this body is due some of the work which is attributed loosely to him. It was during De Lucy's tenure of Winchester that Richard was re-crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury after his return from captivity. He passed the night before at S. Swithun's Priory, and was brought thence in the morning to the Cathedral "clothed in his royal robes, with the crown upon his head, holding in his right hand a royal sceptre which terminated in a cross, and in his left hand a golden wand with a figure of a dove at the top of it, ... being conducted on the right hand by his chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, and on the left by the Bishop of London" (Roger de Hoveden). The Bishop of Winchester himself does not seem to have been present, probably on account of a dispute with the king. Another period of disturbance follows the comparatively quiet rule of Bishop De Lucy, and it is not until we reach 1346 that we come to a fresh outburst of architectural zeal on the part of the incumbents of Winchester. But Edingdon, and still more his successor Wykeham, left very lasting monuments of their occupancy at Winchester. It must not be forgotten that, while to Wykeham is due the credit of most of the actual transformation of the building, Edingdon must have first conceived, however vaguely, the design. Edingdon's attachment to Winchester is well illustrated by his quaint reason for refusing the offer of Canterbury: "if Canterbury is the higher rack, Winchester is the better manger." He is, indeed, charged with having left a considerable debt on the building, since his successor seems to have recovered a large sum from his executors, who had also to compensate Wykeham for large numbers of cattle which had "disappeared from the various farms of the bishopric." Yet it appears from Edingdon's own will that he began rebuilding the nave and left money for the continuation of the work. Wykeham, as we shall see, had already a reputation for architectural skill when first introduced to Edward III., and this reputation stood him in good stead in the matter of preferment. When he was elected to Winchester he found the bishop's palaces of Farnham, Wolvesey, Waltham, and Southwark in a very dilapidated condition, and he set these in order before he turned his attention to anything else. New College, Oxford, and Winchester College practically occupied him up to 1393; whilst his work in the cathedral was really the last great undertaking of his life, inasmuch as it was not finished at the time of his death. The actual method of Wykeham's transformation of the interior is described more fully elsewhere, and we will not therefore do more than quote a few words from Willis on the work done. "The old Norman cathedral was cast nearly throughout its length and breadth into a new form; the double tier of arches in its peristyle was turned into one, by the removal of the lower arch, and clothed with Caen casings in the Perpendicular style. The old wooden ceilings were replaced with stone vaultings, enriched with elegant carvings and cognizances. Scarcely less than a total rebuilding is involved in this hazardous and expensive operation, carried on during ten years with a systematic order worthy of remark and imitation.... Judging from the provision of his will of the expenditure for the last year and a half, the cost of this great work to the bishop in present money cannot be estimated at less than £200,000." Wykeham's successor, Beaufort, was far less a bishop of Winchester than an English statesman. His contributions to the architecture of his see are very small. He did indeed so add to the hospital of St Cross as to make it almost a new foundation; but in the cathedral he only left one monument, though this Milner styles the "most elegant and finished chantry in the kingdom," lying on the south side of the retro-choir. Waynflete, who followed him, left another fine chantry in a corresponding position to the north. Under Bishops Peter Courtenay and Thomas Langton, the latter of whom has his chapel at the east end, next the Lady Chapel, considerable additions were made to the architecture of the cathedral, though most of the credit is due to the priors Hunton and Silkstede, who seem to have been chiefly responsible for the new work. This included a prolongation of De Lucy's Lady Chapel, carried out in all probability between the years 1470 and 1524; and the erection of the present side aisles of the presbytery, in place of the original Norman aisles. In the latter year (1524) the side screens of the presbytery were added by Bishop Fox, whose motto can be read on them. The work of Fox, whose chapel is behind the reredos to the south, began in 1510, and was carried out under early Renaissance influence. He found the choir and presbytery converted, to a great extent, to the Decorated style, though the Norman aisles remained. He completed the transformation, adding the above-mentioned screens, together with a wooden vaulting. He would probably have also replaced with his own work De Lucy's additions at the east end and the Norman transepts, had he but had the time. This, however, he did not live long enough to do, for he died in 1528. Roughly speaking, his work lies between the transepts and the Early English east end. The Reformation Period did not benefit much to the architectural features of Winchester Cathedral, while it most certainly did them harm. "The bones of S. Swithun," says Woodward, "were doubtless lost at the Reformation, when his costly shrine was taken from the feretory, where it stood so long, and destroyed." The period was now at hand when many seem to have considered it a religious duty to destroy monuments, or at least deface them; and Winchester, though it suffered less than many churches, by no means escaped damage. Under Stephen Gardiner, however, no great evil befell the building. Gardiner's own chantry behind the reredos commemorates his connection with the cathedral, and distinctly illustrates the inferior taste of his day, when compared with the earlier tombs about him; though it might easily have been far worse. The Puritans maltreated it on other grounds than those of taste, it is to be feared. It was during Bishop Gardiner's tenure of the see that Philip of Spain and Mary were married at Winchester. Contemporary records by a Spaniard in Philip's suite, and by an English observer of the same date, recently revealed to us by Mr Martin A.S. Hume, set forth the story of the marriage most vividly. The king arrived from Southampton in a storm of rain, and "donned a black velvet surcoat covered with gold bugles and a suit of white velvet trimmed in the same way, and thus he entered, passing the usual red-clothed kneeling aldermen with gold keys on cushions, and then to the grand cathedral, which impressed the Spaniards with wonder, and above all to find that 'Mass was as solemnly sung there as at Toledo.' A little crowd of mitred bishops stood at the great west door, crosses raised and censers swinging, and in solemn procession to the high altar, under a velvet canopy, they led the man whom they looked upon as God's chosen instrument to permanently restore their faith in England." Two days after the wedding took place. Great attention is paid to the clothes by both English and Spanish narrators, and the ceremony and dresses were very magnificent; the Queen's ladies "looked more like celestial angels than mortal creatures." The Queen, we are told, blazed with jewels to such an extent that the eye was blinded as it looked upon her; her dress was of black velvet flashing with gems, and a splendid mantle of cloth of gold fell from her shoulders; but through the Mass that followed the marriage service she never took her eyes off the crucifix upon which they were devoutly fixed. The marriage took place in the July of 1554, and the chair used by Queen Mary is now standing in Bishop Langton's chapel. [Illustration: OLD VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL (LOOKING SOUTHWARDS).] Some stormy years at the end of Gardiner's interrupted episcopacy and during the rule of his immediate successors did not much affect Winchester externally; but under Robert Horne the whole diocese suffered terribly through the "Puritanical" views of its bishop. The Norman chapter-house was pulled down, part of the lead on the cathedral roof was stripped off, and stained glass, architectural decorations, etc., throughout the neighbourhood were ruthlessly destroyed. However, after a short period of comparative peace, far worse had yet to come. Under James I. and during the early part of the reign of Charles I., little happened to the building beyond the institution of Curle's passage through the buttress at the southern end of the cathedral, with its quaint inscription on the western wall. The Great Rebellion, as was only to be expected, brought Winchester into the utmost peril. The important situation of the town in the south of England caused it to become the centre of much hard fighting. Sir William Waller, whom Winchester has no cause to remember with affection, came very near to destroying the interior of the cathedral entirely. His troops marched right up the nave in full war equipment, some even being mounted. Tombs were defaced, relics scattered, statues mutilated, stained glass smashed, and the more portable objects carried out into the streets. It is difficult to estimate with any exactitude what was the whole extent of the damage done; but we have sufficient testimony in the broken figures, empty niches, etc., to see that it was great. One highly creditable incident in the midst of the general disgrace has been recorded--namely, the preservation from insult of Wykeham's chantry. This was the work of a Colonel Fiennes, who had been educated at Wykeham's College at Winchester. The protests of the inhabitants seem to have finally induced Waller to call off his fanatical troops from their work of destruction and violation. What might have happened to the cathedral, had this not been done, it is quite impossible to imagine. "Of the brass torn from the violated monuments" in 1644 "might have been built a house as strong as the brazen towers of old romances" (Ryves's "_Mercurius Rusticus_" quoted by Milner). Here the architectural history of Winchester Cathedral practically ends. We find tombs and memorial brasses of all dates, but until the modern restorations nothing of importance affected the actual appearance of the church. Among the few examples of Jacobean work to be seen within, the nave pulpit can hardly be classed, since it was brought from New College Chapel at Oxford as late as 1884. The two statues of James I. and Charles I. by the west door are the work of Hubert le Sueur, who came to England in 1628. The urns which were supposed in the last century to decorate the reredos have long ago been removed, as has also the gilt Jacobean canopy which formerly disfigured the centre of this screen; but Benjamin West's "Raising of Lazarus" still remains above the altar. This century's work in the cathedral is not very formidable in its extent. All of it is mentioned elsewhere in this book, and it is sufficient here to say that the erection of Sir G. Scott's choir-screen and the restoration of the reredos are the most noticeable "modern" features, though the latter was carried out on the old lines as nearly as was thought advisable. Sir G. Scott's additions to Winchester have by no means given universal satisfaction, severe language having been applied to them by more than one expert. The most recent alterations have consisted chiefly of a very necessary, though costly, strengthening of the nave roof. This work is, of course, invisible from the ground level, but can be reached from the stair in the south transept. A repair of the organ has also been provided for, and new glass has been inserted in the large south window of the Lady Chapel, in memory of Bishop Thorold. [Illustration: MONUMENT TO BISHOP ETHELMAR. (From Carter's "Ancient Architecture of England.")] CHAPTER II THE CATHEDRAL BUILDING AND CLOSE Before any detailed consideration of the architecture of the cathedral, it is well to be clear as to the various dates of the chief parts. But it must here be remembered that practically in every instance the now existing portions replaced still earlier structures on the same site. Mention has been made already of the changes from the original building to the one commenced in the eleventh century. In 1079 Bishop Walkelin laid the foundations of a great Norman church, of which the transepts, the outer face of the south nave wall, the core of the nave itself, the crypts, and a portion of the base of the west front are still existing. Walkelin's work was completed in fourteen years, just before the end of 1093. The tower fell in 1107, but was rebuilt soon afterwards in the form which we now see it. Bishop de Lucy's work, which came next in date (1189-1204), includes the Chapel of the Guardian Angels, flanking the Lady Chapel, at the north-east end of the cathedral, and the corresponding chapel on the south-east, which afterwards became the chantry of Bishop Langton. The piers of the presbytery probably date from about 1320. The west front was rebuilt in Edingdon's time (1345-1366), and a small part of the reconstruction of the nave, the first two bays of the north aisle, and a bay of the south are generally attributed to him. The great re-modelling of the nave, the outer walls of the presbytery, and the continuation of the Lady Chapel range in date of completion from the end of the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. So much, however, of each period has been altered, and often modified almost beyond recognition by later additions, that it is impossible to make more than a rough guess at the age of the various portions. The work of Wykeham and his successors is so important that it must be left until we reach it in its proper place. The ground covered by the actual building is one and a half acres in extent. The close is fine and extensive, and is surrounded by a high and stout wall which marks the limits of the old Benedictine monastery. The houses within the close are of widely different dates, from the Early English period to recent years. They comprise the official residences of the dean and the canons, together with some private houses. The changes made from time to time in the distribution of the ground have involved the disappearance of the old priory buildings, and it is not possible to trace with certainty their original form. The laying out of the close has concealed the ground plan of the cloisters which once adjoined the cathedral. What is now called by the name is the passage between the south transept and the former chapter-house, which was pulled down in 1570 by the destructive Bishop Horne, in order, it is said, that the lead in the roof might be sold. Five extremely fine Early Norman arches which were once part of the chapter-house still remain, and may be seen in a line with the end of the slype, beyond the south transept. Some traces of small arches on what is now the extreme outer wall of the transept mark where arcading once ran along the inner wall of the chapter-house. No vestige of the roof remains. The "slype" is a passage which was cut through the southern buttress by Bishop Curle, to put a stop to the constant use of the nave and south aisle as a thoroughfare by the townspeople. The anagrams on the walls commemorate the purpose of the passage; the first, on the western arch, reading:-- ILL\ PREC\ \ \ >AC >ATOR / / H/ AMBULA VI/ and that over the eastern arch:-- /ACR\ S\ ILL\ CH\ / \ \ \ \ S< >A >IT >A >ORO[1] \ / / / / \ERV/ S/ IST/ F/ In the angle of an old extension of the chapter-house south wall are traces of the dormitory and infirmary which formerly stood there. The Early English doorway with Purbeck marble shafts seems to have led to this dormitory. To the south of this is the deanery or prior's hall, the acute external arches, which date from the reign of Henry III., forming a vestibule with a southern aspect, while above are some narrow lancet-windows. Although the original portion of this hall dates from the fifteenth century, it was considerably altered in the seventeenth, during the second Charles's reign. This king himself sometimes stayed at the deanery, where Philip of Spain lodged for one night before his marriage. Over a wooden building, which now serves as the dean's stables, is an ornamental timber roof of late thirteenth-century work, which was once part of the old pilgrims' or strangers' hall originally standing in this part of the close for the benefit of pilgrims to the shrine of S. Swithun. [1] _Illac precator, hac viator ambula_ (That way thou that prayest, this way thou that passest by, walk); _Sacra sit illa choro, serva sit ista foro_ (That way is sacred to the Choir, that for use to the market-place). In the south wall of the cathedral, close to the west front, there is a doorway which is reported to have led to the chapel and charnel-house mentioned by Leland. "S. Swithin, now called Trinity," he says, "stands on the south side of the town, and there is a chapelle with a carnarie at the west end of it." S. Swithin is, of course, the cathedral itself. Leland's other carnary, which must not be confused with this, was attached to a chapel "on the north side of S. Mary Abbey church at Winchester, in an area thereby, on which men entre by a certen steppes. One Inkepenne, a gentilman that berith in his shield a scheker sylver and sables, was founder of it. There be three tumbes of marble of prestes _custodes_ of the chapelle." Among the old houses which have vanished from the close is one in which Charles II. in vain requested Bishop Ken to allow Nell Gwynne to lodge; and one which was erected for her and not pulled down until this century. The cathedral precincts, however, still contain on the southern side several buildings well worthy of notice. A picturesque house yet standing is that which was known by the name of Cheyney Court. It now serves as a porter's lodge, and stands by the wooden-doored gateway which opens into Kingsgate Street. The doors are supposed to have come down to us from the thirteenth century. Previously this lodge was the courthouse of the Soke of Winchester, and the centre of the episcopal jurisdiction here. The old timbered front, with its barge-boards, was in 1886 concealed behind a rough-cast cement coating, but in that year this was fortunately stripped away, and the present charming aspect revealed to the eye. [Illustration: SOUTHERN SIDE OF CATHEDRAL, FROM DEANERY GARDEN. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] #The Exterior.#--It would be difficult to deny that the exterior of Winchester Cathedral is disappointing, and few are likely to echo the opinion of an over-zealous admirer of the building who said that the longer one looks at it the more one feels the low central tower to be the only kind that would suit the huge proportions of the building. On the contrary, it may be said that it is impossible to look at Winchester without a feeling of regret that the superb mass of the great fabric, the largest mediæval church in England since the destruction of old S. Paul's, is not crowned by a loftier central tower. There is a legend to the effect that there were seven towers in the original design--the central one, two at the west end, and one at each angle of the transepts; and this seems to be supported by the solid character of some of the piers in the transepts. Yet, despite the rather ungraceful outline of the whole building, when its mere size is realised, it gradually asserts its importance and incontrovertibly proves its right to be considered one of the very finest structures in England. It will not be out of place to quote a short criticism which sums up the external qualities of the cathedral in a concise way:--"With the exception of portions of the late work in the presbytery, the exterior of Winchester is severe in treatment, and plain wall-space plays an important part in the design. Plain parapets and simply treated pinnacles characterise the work of the nave. The Norman transepts are externally but little altered, except by the insertion of Decorated windows to give more light to the altars in their eastern aisles; and De Lucy's work eastwards is, compared with some work of its date, simple in the extreme. Rather more elaboration was bestowed on the design of the new eastern bay of the Lady Chapel by Prior Silkstede and Bishop Courtenay; but, taken as a whole, Winchester has one of the simplest exteriors for its size and importance in the country" ("Winchester Cathedral" in _The Builder_ for October 1892). The ground-plan of Winchester Cathedral is in the form of a plain Latin cross, hardly broken in its outline save by the Perpendicular prolongation of the Lady Chapel at the east end. But, simple as is the plan, "the great length of the church" (to use the words of Fergusson) "is pleasingly broken ... by the bold projection of its transepts, which here extend, as usual in England, three bays beyond the aisles, their section being the same width as that of the nave." The width of the nave with the aisles is 88 feet, while the transepts measure, from east to west, 81 feet. The total length has already been given as 556, and the width from north to south across the transepts is 230 feet. The altitude of the walls is 75 feet, which is a foot less than at Peterborough, though three more than at Ely. #The West Front#, the work of Bishop Edingdon, has been roughly handled by its critics, though Britton calls it a fine specimen of Perpendicular architecture. The original Norman work demolished by Edingdon was, as excavations have proved, forty feet in advance of the present _façade_. To judge by accounts of the destroyed portions, the west front in its earlier state must have been far more imposing than it is at present, for not only is it now commonplace in mass, but even the detail has no particular charm to atone for the change. The whole of this work appears so thoroughly Perpendicular in character that it has been questioned whether at such an early date as that to which it is assigned the style can have been so far developed. Woodward, indeed, though attributing to Edingdon the walls and the principal part of the west end, declares the tracery, the fronts of the porches, and much of the panelling to be later; but a comparison of Winchester with another church undoubtedly built by this bishop, at his native town of Edingdon, in Wiltshire, supports the tradition which credits him with its erection. Besides this evidence, we have additional proof in the fact that he left by his will certain property to be devoted to the completion of the nave. Late though his work may appear at first sight, yet when it is closely examined and compared with Wykeham's work the difference is very apparent. [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The whole western _façade_ with its three bays is wanting in greatness, and its effect may be said to be that of a large parish church rather than a cathedral. Not only do we miss the western towers which are so often the most striking feature of an English west front, but the screen which masks the lower storey lacks the richness which distinguishes a somewhat similar feature at Exeter. The curiously poor appearance, notwithstanding its huge size, of the great west window is perhaps chiefly responsible for the want of dignity in the whole; nor is there, to redeem this, any delicate fancy in the tracery. The "merest stone grating" Willis terms the window, and though from so warm a panegyrist of the church this seems a severe criticism, no one can traverse his opinion. By way of further proof that the west front was Edingdon's work, Willis points out that, while in Wykeham's panels the masonry itself is carefully finished, and the same stones used for the ground of the panel and its mouldings, in Edingdon's work the monials and tracery alone exhibit good masonry, the panels being filled with rough ashlar. By other tests, too technical to quote here, the same critic makes it clear that the west front, with two compartments of the nave on the north and one to the south, must be attributed to Edingdon, though he probably did not finish the gable and turrets, which seem to be the work of Wykeham. The present state shows a gable rising in the centre, flanked by octagonal pinnacle turrets. On the apex of this gable is a canopied finial containing a niche wherein now stands a figure of William of Wykeham, the original statue, which was supposed to represent S. Swithun, having been removed to the feretory when the west front was restored in 1860 at a cost of £3000. The triangle of the gable is filled with tracery, the lower part of the central panels in which serve as a smaller square-headed six-light window above the parapet which crosses at the head of the great nine-light window. Buttresses assist in supporting the two towers, and lesser ones project to hide the sides of the porch, which, pierced by three doorways and crowned by a parapet, extends along the whole lower storey, across the nave and both aisles. Above the screen the pitched roofs of aisles may be seen. The bays containing the side windows, of four lights each, accord in style with the large central one, having also wall tracery in panels over the comparatively small surface of unpierced wall. The screen itself has three deeply-recessed portals with pointed arches, and a large canopied empty niche on each side of the main entrance. The central doorway is divided by a clustered shaft, where from spring two cinquefoil arches. The recessed portal has a groined roof, with an arcade of cusped arches on the main west wall, broken by the doorways which give admission to the nave. A pierced balcony of simple design crowns the whole of the screen and forms a gallery which is said to have been used for bestowing episcopal benedictions to the people outside the cathedral on festival days. The excavations which brought to light the old foundations of the original west front showed "a wall of 128 feet from north to south, and 12 feet thick, with returns at each end of the same thickness 60 feet in length. At their eastern ends the walls again turn in at right angles and meet the present side aisles at 17 feet from each corner. Within the parallelogram thus partially traced two other walls run from east to west at a distance of 36 feet from each other." In a garden adjoining the west end of the cathedral at the time when these observations were made, part of the south-west angle of the walls still remained. Indications of the western towers were apparent; and Willis suggests that they were probably either unfinished, or in a threatening condition, so that Edingdon demolished them; even as at Gloucester the western towers of the cathedral were removed, and the _façade_ was replaced by a perpendicular west front at the beginning of the fifteenth century. [Illustration: EDINGDON'S WINDOWS IN NORTH-WEST BAYS. North West Bay. Winchester Cathedral. H.P. Clifford From a Drawing by H.P. Clifford.] The original west front may very probably have been similar to that of Lincoln Cathedral, "unornamental," says a writer in _Architecture_, "save for some interlacing arches and dwarf blind arcades, and with no windows to reflect the setting sun, or to light the cavernous interior." The two westernmost bays of the #North side# are due to Edingdon, and we get here well contrasted the work of Edingdon and of Wykeham. In Willis's plan the difference can be clearly seen. The two windows to the right are heavier, lower, and broader, and display much deeper exterior mouldings, with "a most cavernous and gloomy appearance," while the window on the left hand is much narrower and lighter. The left-hand buttress is like the others on the north side of the church, whereas the other three are different from it and from one another, that on the extreme right, together with its pinnacle, being apparently just as Edingdon left it. The pinnacles and upper set-off of the two centre buttresses in the figure were added by Wykeham to Edingdon's underwork. The mouldings of Wykeham's windows are more elaborate than those of Edingdon's, where the tracery is similar to that of the west window. Of the bays on the north side the nine next to Edingdon's two, together with the three beyond the northern transept, are Wykeham's work, as are the three bays beyond the transept on the southern side and the extension of the Lady Chapel. Edingdon claims, beside what has been already mentioned, one bay on the south, next the west front. De Lucy's work consists of the three easterly bays on either side, and part of the Lady Chapel exterior. The rest of the bays are Norman, and the prevailing note is simplicity, not to say rudeness. The #South side# of the nave is almost devoid of decoration, the bays being merely divided by flat buttresses which do not reach below the bottoms of the aisle windows. The eleven windows in the clerestory above are all alike, divided only by flat buttresses. Aisle and clerestory both show a plain parapet and corbels. The bold buttresses on the north side, with their panelled and crocketted pinnacles, save it from the monotony of the south side, which, however, was once greatly concealed by cloisters and convent buildings, and is even now far more enclosed than the northern side. The low #Central Tower#, the coping of which is only 35 feet above the ridge of the transept roof, is Norman, though, as explained before, of later date than the transepts. It is of a simple square form, 150 feet high by 50 wide, and is divided by a string course into two storeys, the lower of which is plain with small round-headed windows; the larger upper storey has on each side three narrow round-headed windows, which form a kind of arcade round the upper part of the tower, surmounted by a zig-zag string course. At the angles are engaged shafts. The massive manner in which the tower was rebuilt in the eleventh century can be better appreciated from within, when we come to the piers which support it. The building has been said to prove that the Normans of the period were "still bad masons and imperfectly acquainted with the principles of construction," the masses of masonry employed showing an enormous waste of both labour and materials. But the architects at any rate gained their end, since the tower has stood to the present day. The strength of the original Norman work, indeed, is so great that for all the 250 feet of nave no flying-buttresses were required to support the later vaulting. The gables of the #Transepts# are not so high as those of the nave, but the clerestory parapets are on the same level. The side aisles are much lower than those in the nave or the presbytery. The parapets are plain, over a series of small arches supported by corbels; except that in the eastern aisle of the south transept the parapet rests on plain corbels, and above the western clerestory of the other transept is a cornice with Perpendicular bosses. In this clerestory, again, the buttresses are Perpendicular, whereas otherwise throughout the transepts they are flat Norman. Over the eastern aisle of the north there is no cornice or corbel; "the parapet," says Woodward, "with no more than a water-table under it, is carried across the gable of the north transept, so as to form an _alura_ above the buttress, in front of the circular window there." The Perpendicular rose-window in the northern gable cannot now be seen from the interior, being hidden by the transept ceiling, but in the illustration from _Britton_, on page 59, it is visible. The corresponding gable on the south shows panelling with interlacing Norman arches, but there are only two narrow lights. Many symptoms show that square towers were to have been erected flanking the transept gables. There is an unfinished turret at the north-east corner of the north transept, while the springing of an arcade and the generally incomplete appearance prove that a side tower was intended. The other three extreme angles of the transepts also bear out this view. The width from east to west of the transepts is enormous as compared with the height of the central tower above. It rather looks from the presence (barely perceptible from outside) of the westernmost windows of the presbytery aisles as if those who carried on Wykeham's work had meant to reduce this great width, and give more importance to the presbytery and retro-choir externally. It is certain, at any rate, that the Norman transepts narrowly escaped a complete transformation. That on the north side of the cathedral shows very considerable alterations, in the majority of its windows, from the old Norman pattern. A built-up doorway may be noticed under the first window from the west of this transept. The exterior of the #Presbytery# has only three compartments on each side, but in each there are four lights in aisle and clerestory alike. The windows are of the Wykeham pattern, though probably a little later in date than his work. The buttresses, which rise above the aisle roof, culminate in square panelled pinnacles, surmounted by crocketted ogee canopies. From these buttresses spring graceful flying-buttresses, with pierced spandrels running to the clerestory walls. On the northern side the plain parapet has over it a pierced battlement. The #East End#, as it now stands, is some 110 feet beyond the original Norman termination, and presents a square face, projecting with a flat parapet beyond the high gable over the actual east window. The Norman apse was demolished about 1320 in all probability, and the present polygonal end substituted for it. It seems that originally the aisles of the Norman presbytery continued round this apse, which was flanked by two small towers. The eastern chapel may have been dedicated to the Holy Trinity as at Canterbury, and probably extended as far as the western arch of the present Lady Chapel. The central gable of the old termination, rather acute in form, is richly decorated with panels and crocketting, and is crowned by a tabernacle wherein Bishop Fox is represented leaning on the pelican. "Three of the panels in the centre are pierced and glazed, forming a small square-headed window; and under it is a door opening upon an _alura_, behind a crenelated, panelled, and pierced parapet, over a cornice with bosses, at the base of the gable, and just above the east window" (Woodward). The Perpendicular east window has seven lights, and resembles, in the form of its head, Wykeham's windows. A portrait bust of Fox has been discovered on the north corbel of the hood-mould of this window, and the flying-buttresses (which, as Willis pointed out, the jointing of the masonry proves to be later insertions into the clerestory walls) have the pelican carved on them. The whole gable is flanked by richly canopied octagonal turrets, on which the flying-buttresses abut. The lower part of the east window cannot be seen from below, being lost behind the roof of the chantry aisles. [Illustration: THE EAST END--EXTERIOR. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The whole of the eastern arm of the cathedral is curiously mixed in style, furnishing examples of Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular architecture. Beyond the main east gable just described projects a low Early English structure of three nearly equally high aisles, of which the central or Lady Chapel has received a further Perpendicular addition. There has been apparently a slight subsidence of the Early English walls, which has caused the irregular look of the arches in the interior of the southern retro-choir aisle (see page 69). Above the plain string-course of the retro-choir there is in each compartment, under a level parapet, an arcade of narrow pointed arches, four in number, the central couple of each set being pierced and glazed, so as to form pairs of lancet windows. The Langton and Guardian Angels' chapels, which project not quite half as far as the Lady Chapel from the old eastern limit of the church, show a triple series of arcades, diminishing in size as they mount. The central arcade is much cut into on the eastern face by the large three-light windows of the lateral chapels. There is no parapet above the arcades. At the angles between these chapels and the retro-choir aisles are staircases enclosed in small octagonal turrets rising slightly above the adjoining parts with merely a plain parapet at the top. The #Lady Chapel# has at the end and at each side a fine seven-light Perpendicular window, the heads of the lights below the transom being cinquefoiled, while above each window is a cornice supported by small arches resting on corbels; over all is a pierced battlement, which is also crenelated at the actual east end. Below the east window of the Lady Chapel, between the two great buttresses with mutilated canopies on the two lower of their three divisions, there is some blank panelling, consisting of four shallow-arched recesses with a pilaster down the centre, each arch uniting two minor ones with cinquefoil cusps at the head and crowned by a quatrefoil with a rosette in the middle. There were originally four heads at the ends of the corbels under these quatrefoils, but the southernmost is broken away. A similar arcade runs along the southern wall of the Lady Chapel, but there is none on the north side. The two main corbel-tables at the east end show the arms of England and France and the bishop's device of three "torteaux." Under these, at a short distance from the ground, are two smaller windows, which give light to the Lady Chapel crypt. The panelling dates from about 1490, and is due to Bishop Peter Courtenay. [Illustration: NAVE, SHOWING THE SCREEN BEFORE RESTORATION. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR The very first glimpse of the nave, as one enters by the west door, reveals the superb proportions of the interior. In spite of all statistics of its size, the outward appearance of the building hardly impresses the spectator with the fact that Winchester is the largest cathedral in Northern Europe, and it is not until one is within the walls that the great length of the cathedral begins to become real and its majesty is properly appreciated. The total span, from end to end, of 556 feet, compared with the 537 feet of Ely, the 525 of York, the 524 of Lincoln, and the 516 of Canterbury, would not alone produce the effect of almost infinite vastness, and is certainly not realised either in a distant prospect from the hills or in a nearer view from the cathedral precincts. But when once the nave is entered, owing partly to the open and comparatively low choir-screen, the magnificent vault of nearly 400 feet may easily be understood to have few rivals in the world. Certainly neither of the two buildings in England which are practically equal in size to Winchester Cathedral give the peculiarly overwhelming sense of length produced here. The old epithet of "Royal" may be said to apply as fitly to the cathedral as to the town, and it certainly is a worthy shelter for the bones of half-forgotten dynasties, and as fine a monument of an earlier England as Westminster is of later periods in the development of the country. Of course, as in all English cathedrals, a lack of colour and a sense of coldness and emptiness modifies any unqualified admiration which one might at first feel. But Winchester could well afford to admit far more than the most captious critic could utter against it, and yet claim to be the most stately nave that England can show. Despite the late recasting, the proportions are Norman, and the very core of the pillars is still the original Norman stonework. Notwithstanding the changes wrought by Edingdon and Wykeham, all the more petty detail of the Decorated period is lavished on a colossal structure planned with the simple magnificence of those that "builded better than they knew." Perhaps it is not quite fair to the later architects to attribute all the excellence of the work to the earlier builders, for the graceful columns of the nave's eleven bays which rise unbroken to where the roof-groining springs from their capitals are made by Wykeham to fulfil a new duty which entirely alters their whole aspect. The general effect has been said to be as if a Norman architect had expressed himself in the more refined idiom of the early fifteenth century. Yet the work of Edingdon and Wykeham was ruthless in its way. The original Norman nave of Walkelin consisted of the normal three storeys, of equal height in this case--the main arches, triforium, and clerestory. At the present day the main arches are fully half as high again as they were in the Norman cathedral, while the base of the clerestory has been brought down to meet them, so that the triforium appears to have vanished or rather to exist merely as a balcony over each arch. As a matter of fact, however, it was the old clerestory which was entirely removed and replaced by the present upper storey. On p. 35 we see on the one hand typical Norman work, of the character still existing at Romsey Abbey and Christchurch Priory--to mention only the two large churches nearest to Winchester. During the conversion of the nave the bases and capitals of the grouped shafts of the main arches were removed, together with all the masonry above them. This is not mere conjecture, for the Norman shafts and capitals which still remain on the north side of the nave, in the second bay from the crossing, where they were covered by the ancient rood-screen, show that the pier-arches of the nave sprang from the same height as those of the transepts; the Norman main arch of the triforium still exists in every compartment over the vault of the side aisles to prove that the triforium of the nave was practically on the same level as that of the transepts, and the tops of the Norman shafts yet remaining above the nave-vaulting are additional evidence that the nave was to all intents and purposes uniform with the transepts in its general arrangement. In the south aisle, moreover, there is to be seen the lower extremity of a Norman shaft, once covered by some votive altar or shrine which was removed during the destructive period of the Reformation. "It may be readily noted," says the writer of a recent article on Winchester Cathedral, "how the new ashlar was brought down to the level of this vanished altar, and how Wykeham's vaulting-shaft has been made to end in foliation where it once rose in receipt of prayers and wax-candles vowed in return for mercies vouchsafed." In the seven westerly piers of the south aisle, the Norman stonework has merely received new mouldings; while flat Norman buttresses can be seen outside between the clerestory windows, also on the south side. [Illustration: ELEVATION OF TWO BAYS OF THE NAVE, SHOWING ITS TRANSFORMATION. From Willis's "Architectural History of Winchester Cathedral," 1846.] On the division into two, in place of the usual three, storeys, it may, perhaps, be of interest to quote some remarks of Willis in the "Proceedings of the Archæological Institute." "The compartment of Wykeham's nave," he says, "is divided into two parts vertically instead of three; for although it has a triforium gallery, yet this is so completely subordinated to the clerestory window that it cannot be held as a separate division of the composition, as in the Norman work where the triforium compartment is of all importance and similar in decoration to the other two, although not exactly like them. In Wykeham's work, on the contrary, we find above the lofty pier-arch what at first sight appears to be a clerestory window divided at mid-height by a transom, and recessed under a deeply-pointed archway. But it is above the transom only that the real window is formed by glazing the spaces between the monials. Below the transom these spaces are filled with panels, and two narrow openings cut through the latter give access from the roof to a kind of balcony which projects over the pier-arches. In each compartment this balcony exists, but there is no free passage from one to the other. This mode of uniting the triforium and clerestory by the employment of a transom dividing the stone panels of the former from the glazed lights of the latter is common enough at the period of Wykeham's work and before it, but the balcony is unusual." It is needless to add any further explanation, since the diagram fully explains both the present state of the nave and the manner in which the transformation from the original Norman design was brought about; but it may be worth while to quote an architect's verdict on the general effect of Wykeham's work in the nave. "If we cannot admire all the details," says this writer, "we can but bear tribute to the conception of the whole. Its lofty arcades give no space for triforium, and the proportion between the clerestory and the arcade is somewhat unsatisfactory. If we except the vaulted roof, and the chantry of the great Wykeham himself, and his predecessor Edingdon, this portion of the church may, with reason, be considered simple in its character, and bears distinct evidence of having been grafted on earlier work. The Norman columns still remain in one or two places towards the east end of the nave arcade, but with the exception of these and of the Norman masonry existing in the piers on the south, and perhaps portions of the aisle walls, all is transformed to Perpendicular detail" (_The Builder_, October 1892). [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] Altogether there are, between the western doors and the piers supporting the tower, twelve arches on each side, one of each series being included in the choir. Hooks and brackets may be seen in the face of the piers at about three-quarters of their height; these were formerly used for the suspension of arras on occasions of great festivity. It has been practically established that the sculpture at least of the nave and its vault was not finished for nearly half-a-century after Wykeham's death. We find Cardinal Beaufort's arms and bust, and his device, a white hart chained, as well as Waynflete's lily, intermingled with the arms and bust of Wykeham. Under the triforium gallery is a cornice, in each compartment of which are to be found seven large sculptured bosses, representing a cardinal's hat, a lily, roses, etc. Of the compartments of the clerestory in the nave we have said that they have the appearance of a very fine Perpendicular window. All, however, except the upper part of the centre of these seeming windows is really panel-work. The old Norman main arch of the triforium may be seen behind this panelling, under the present clerestory windows. Until recently the mass above pressed very heavily on the nave-vaulting, but during the last and preceding years (1896-7) the strain has been relieved by the insertion of new supplementary timbers above the original Hempage Forest beams, which can still be seen by those who wish. The cost of this work of repairing the roof and vault has been about £9000, and so far has not at all exceeded the original estimate. In August 1897 a large amount still remained to be subscribed. As seen from below each division of the vault is "bounded by two vaulting-shafts, which rise to the level of the clerestory window-sill and send out from above the capital nine diverging ribs to the ridge-rib, by which the whole vault is divided into a series of bisected and interlacing lozenges, as the basis for all the groining" (Woodward). [Illustration: WEST WINDOW, FROM NAVE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The general effect of the nave can be gathered from the illustrations, which bring out well the appearance of height which is bound to impress the spectator standing near the central western door. In the nave aisles also a fine view may be obtained, the comparative narrowness counteracting the lessened height. As one looks down the church towards the west, it will be noticed that the western interior wall is practically entirely filled by the great window, for not only does this stretch across the whole width, but the mullions also are carried right down to the floor-level, a double series of panels occupying the space below the sill of the window. The glass in the window proper is, for the most part, very old, and, as is pointed out elsewhere (see p. 94), is arranged in patterns after the fashion of a kaleidoscope. This arises from the fact that the fragments of which it is composed are entirely disjointed, and probably incapable of being pieced together. The monuments and objects of interest in the nave are numerous, but chief perhaps are, on the north side, the Minstrels' Gallery, the old grill-work, and the font; and, on the south side, the chantries of Bishops Wykeham and Edingdon. But, first of all, though not on account of pre-eminent merit, should be mentioned the bronze statues of James I. and Charles I. to the north and south of the main west door, against the interior wall. They were executed by Le Sueur, the artist who executed the fine equestrian figure of Charles I. at Charing Cross. A note on the sculptor's payment for these bronzes may be seen in the "Record of Exchequer," from which it appears that he received £340 for the two, with a further £40 for "carrying and erecting them" at Winchester. In the north-west corner stands the #Minstrels' Gallery# or #Tribune#, the work of Edingdon. It is supported by two flattened arches springing from the pier shafts, and is panelled on its face and spandrels The panelling is decorated with flowered cusps, and the central bosses bear the arms of Wykeham. This gallery appears to have been intended for use on State occasions; now, however, it is merely used as a room in which the episcopal registers may be stored. In height it extends half-way up the neighbouring piers. [Illustration: IRON GRILL-WORK FROM S. SWITHUN'S SHRINE. _From Mr Starkie Gardiner's "Iron-work" Vol I., by permission of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington._] Near this, at the western end of the north aisle, is a door made up of four pieces of iron #Grill-work#, which originally stood at the top of the steps leading up from the south transepts to the retro-choir. The place where it used to be is still pointed out, and indeed marks are visible in the piers to which it was secured. A paper read to the Society of Arts by Mr J. Starkie Gardiner, describes the door as being, from its style, "the oldest piece of grill-work in England. The design is composed of sprays formed of two rolls of scrolls, welded to a central stem, like a much-curled ostrich feather, with lesser scrolls in the interstices and the major scrolls, each terminating in an open-work trefoil, or quinquefoil. The large scrolls are 5½ in. in diameter and rather stout, the grill possessing great resisting powers, though it would not be hard to climb.... There is, unfortunately, no means of fixing the date, since no other grill resembles it; but, from the position indicated in the cathedral, it may well have been made as long ago as the eleventh or twelfth century." It was originally intended to keep the miscellaneous crowd of pilgrims to the shrine of S. Swithun from penetrating farther into the church by way of the south transept. They were obliged to enter and depart by the Norman doorway in the north transept. It will not be necessary to record all the monuments and the brasses which so abundantly cover the walls, but those of the greatest interest will be alluded to. In the fifth bay of the north aisle are two memorials of very different dates, those of the "Two Brothers of Avington" (1662), and of the novelist, Jane Austen, the youngest daughter of the rector of Steventon in Hampshire. Her monumental brass is affixed to the wall below the other, which records how the two brothers were "both of Oxford, both of the Temple, both Officers to Queen Elizabeth and our noble King James. Both Justices of the Peace, both agree in arms, the one a Knight, the other a Captain." In the next bay, opposite the Norman Font, is an inscription relating to Mrs Montagu, the founder of the "Blue Stocking" Club. It is to this effect:--"Here lies the body of Elizabeth Montagu, daughter of Matthew Robinson, Esq., of West Layton, in the County of York, who, possessing the united advantages of beauty, wit, judgment, reputation, and riches, and employing her talents most uniformly for the benefit of mankind, might be justly deemed an ornament to her sex and country. She died on the 25th August, 1800, aged 81." The #Norman Font#, which Milner called _crux antiquariorum_, is situated on the north side of the nave between the fifth and sixth pillars from the west front. It is one of a group of seven found in England; of which four are in Hampshire, at East Meon, S. Michael's (Southampton), S. Mary Bourne, and Winchester; two in Lincolnshire, in the cathedral and at Thornton Curtis; and one at S. Peter's, Ipswich. Of four similar fonts on the Continent, that at Zedelghem, near Bruges, is most like the Winchester example, and also illustrates the same legend. The material of which these fonts are made is a bluish-black calcareous marble, such as is still worked at Tournai in Hainault. The font before us is a nearly square block of marble supported on a solid central column ornamented with horizontal mouldings, with four disengaged pillars of lesser diameter, with "cable" mouldings, at each corner. The spandrels of the top are decorated with carved symbolic subjects, leaves and flowers on two sides, and on the other two doves drinking from vases out of which issue crosses, typifying baptism, it is said. It is rather curious that the artist has disregarded the usual symmetry, and filled his spaces without reference to the corresponding ones. On the north and east faces of the font are three circular medallions with symbolic doves and salamanders. On the south and west are scenes from the life of S. Nicholas of Myra, as was fully demonstrated by Milner; the north side showing the saint dowering the three daughters of a poor nobleman, while on the west he restores to life a drowned person, probably the king's son in one of the stories of his life, and rescues from death by the axe three young men who are about to be slain either by the executioner or by a wicked innkeeper, for there are two versions. Some authorities would find four scenes represented on the west side; but on what grounds it is difficult to see. There only appear to be two figures of the saint, and the two scenes are divided by what looks like a short vertical bar indicating a difference of subject (see p. 117). The cult of S. Nicholas of Myra grew rapidly in the twelfth century, being popularised by the crusaders. In this century it is known that the carved work at Tournai, whence it is probable that the black marble came, was remarkable for its symbolism. The font has been thought to be older, on account of its archaic figures, but, as the Dean of Winchester pointed out in a paper read before the Archæological Association in 1893 (to which we are indebted for much of this account), the mitre which S. Nicholas is represented as wearing was not recognised as part of a bishop's official dress until the very end of the eleventh century; in fact, the particular form of mitre depicted appears to have been late twelfth century. The conclusion naturally arrived at is that the font is of Belgian origin, carved at Tournai between 1150-1200, and its presence at Winchester may well be due either to Henry of Blois or to Toclive. [Illustration: THE NORMAN FONT--SOUTH AND WEST SIDES. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] On the north side of the steps leading up to the choir is a brass tablet on a pillar, recording the merits of the "renowned martialist," Colonel Richard Boles, who fought on the king's side at Edgehill, and died bravely in a small action at Alton, Southampton, in 1641, his party of sixty being surprised by a large force of the rebels. "His gracious sovereign hearing of his Death gave him high Commendation, in that passionate expression,--Bring me a Moorning scarf, I have lost one of the best Commanders in the Kingdome." Between the ninth and tenth pillars on this side is the tomb of Bishop Morley, with an epitaph written by himself at eighty years of age. By the next pillar is the monument of Bishop Hoadley, with a good medallion-portrait of him on it. On the south side of the nave we find two remarkable tombs, of which the first is the #Chantry of William of Wykeham#, called by Timbs "one of the best remaining specimens of a fourteenth century monument." It stands, where Wykeham erected it, "in that part of the cross (formed by the church) which corresponds to the Saviour's pierced side," and occupies the space between the piers which enclose the fifth bay from the west end. The site is said to have been previously occupied by an altar dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, Wykeham's patroness. He left directions, moreover, that three monks should celebrate masses thrice daily in his chantry, receiving for this one penny a day, while the boys who were to sing there nightly were assigned 6s. 8d. a year. Needless to say, his wishes are not now carried out. The stone-screen which surrounds the chantry is of beautiful and elaborate workmanship, the effect of which has been compared to lace, while above graceful shafts support a canopy, of which the pinnacles rise to the level of the triforium gallery. At the east end are traces of an altar and credence table, and close by is a piscina. Above are two rows of canopied niches, which, however they were originally occupied, have for long been untenanted until quite recently. During the early part of 1897 the pedestals have been filled with ten statue of modern workmanship.[2] A row of five empty niches runs along the western wall. The vault of the chantry is richly groined with lierne work; it is tinted a vivid blue on the back-ground, and the bosses on the groins are gilt. The ironwork in this chantry is also noticeable. The tomb within has fortunately suffered but little from time, and, thanks to the courage of one of the pupils in Wykeham's foundation at Winchester, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, the Parliamentarians left both this monument and the college buildings untouched. On the tomb itself lies the figure of Wykeham with his hands folded across his breast, habited in Episcopal robes and mitre, his crozier on his shoulder. Three small figures of monks praying kneel at his feet, while his head is slightly raised up by supporting angels. A little arcade runs all round the tomb, with a series of shields in the spaces, containing his arms and motto "Manners Makyth Man" and the arms of the see of Winchester. His epitaph, on a slip of red enamelled brass in a chamfer round the edge of the tomb, has been thus translated:-- Here, overthrown by death, lies William, surnamed Wykeham. He was Bishop of this Church, which he repaired. He was unbounded in hospitality, as the rich and poor alike can prove. He was also an able politician, and a counsellor of the State. By the colleges which he founded his piety is made known; The first of which is at Oxford and the second at Winchester. You, who behold this tomb, cease not to pray That, for such great merits, he may enjoy everlasting life. [2] "One method of commemorating the Quincentenary of Winchester College (1893) was the insertion of statues into the niches of the Founder's Chantry in the Cathedral. The work was done by Mr Frampton, A.R.A., under the direction of Mr Micklethwaite. The subjects are the Virgin and Child, with Angels; William of Wykeham, presenting a scholar of Winchester; and a Warden of New College, presenting a scholar of that college (the artist worked with a photograph of the present Warden before him); the Pastor Bonus with SS. James and John; SS. Peter and Paul. The altar and fittings were presented by Colonel Shaw Hellier; the cross being inscribed with the chronogram;--nVnC gLorIa In eXCeLsIs Deo et In terra paX hoMInIbVS bonae VoLVntatIs" (_The Church Times_, Aug. 20, 1897). [Illustration: WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM'S CHANTRY. From Britton's "Winchester."] As one proceeds along the nave toward the east, the choir is reached by two flights of four steps each with a landing between, over which formerly there extended a rood-loft from pillar to pillar, bearing on it Stigand's great cross. To the south of these choir steps and adjoining the intermediate landing is the #Chantry of Bishop Edingdon#, the earliest in date of the chapel-tombs at Winchester. The chantry is very plain in comparison with the others in the cathedral, and apart from the tomb there is only a slightly raised platform at the east end, without an altar. A shaft of the large pillars runs down the centre of the east and west interior walls. On the tomb lies the figure of the Bishop _in pontificalibus_, his stole bearing the symbolic and much-disputed "Fylfot" cross, which has been interpreted as a sign of submission. Edingdon's curious Latin epitaph, given on page 107, is on a blue enamelled strip of brass on the edge of the tomb. Close to Edingdon's chantry is the #Nave Pulpit#, which is in itself a good piece of Jacobean work, though not happily situated in the nave of Winchester. It stood formerly in the chapel at New College, Oxford, and did not appear at Winchester until 1884, when it was presented by members of the Mayo family. If one stands facing east in the aisle to the right of this pulpit, one of the most picturesque views in the cathedral lies before one, through part of the south transept and up the southern ambulatory of the retro-choir to the bright colours of Langton's chapel window at the end. It will readily be noticed how out of the perpendicular are the piers of this ambulatory as one approaches the east end of the church. This seems to have arisen through a slight subsidence of the ground here. The original rood-screen exists no longer, and in its place we have but a modern copy, by Sir Gilbert Scott, of the work in the Decorated choir stall canopies. This oak #Choir Screen#, which is all that breaks the view between west porch and reredos, has not met with much approval, and the pallor of its wood does not contrast agreeably with the rich colour of the old choir stalls. This, however, cannot with justice be made a ground for complaint against the architect, who modelled his work as far as possible on the original. As one enters the #Choir#, which is raised above the level of the nave by the two sets of four steps, the stalls above-mentioned will be found to reach on either side from the eastern piers of the central tower to the first piers of the nave. They are of carved oak and are possibly the best existing examples of their date in England. The style is Early Decorated, and Willis points out the similarity between their canopies and gables and those of Edward Crouchback's chapel in Westminster Abbey. The details are varied and graceful, with the design of each pair coupled under a pointed arch with a cinquefoil in its head, which is again surmounted by a high crocketted gable. The oak has turned a superb hue with age, very different from the colour of the modern screen which is banked by the reveals of the old bishop's throne. The _misereres_ below are much earlier in date than the canopies, but do not go quite so far back as those at Exeter, which may be assigned to about 1230. The desks and stools of the upper tier show the date 1540 and bear also the initials of Henry VIII., Bishop Gardiner, and Dean Kingsmill. The pulpit on the north side of the choir was given by Prior Silkstede, whose name it bears, and is also of finely carved work. Above the choir stalls on the northern side is the organ, which was repaired this year. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. _H.W. Salmon, Photo._] Toward the east end of the choir stalls, in the centre of the pavement, lies the much-disputed #Tomb of William Rufus#. It is a plain coped tomb, constructed of Purbeck marble. Since it was known that William was buried originally beneath the tower, this tomb was assumed to be his, and in Cromwell's time it was violated, when, as Milner relates, there was found therein, "besides the dust, some pieces of cloth embroidered with gold, a large gold ring, and a small silver chalice." The very fact of these discoveries, however, tend to prove that the grave was not that of Rufus. It is now frequently held that it is that of Henry of Blois, who is known to have been buried "with much honour before the high altar"; Rudborne records that he was _sepultus in ecclesia sua coram summo altari_. Yet others suppose that he still lies in the space _before_ the altar. The ring found in Cromwell's time, set with a sapphire which denotes a bishop, may be seen in the cathedral library. When the contents of the tomb were last examined, on August 27, 1868, the remains, though much disturbed by the previous violation, indicated a man of about 5 feet 8 inches, and fragments of red cloth with gold embroidery were to be seen. It was also gathered that the body had been wrapped in lead, as Henry of Blois was said to have been. The vaulting of the presbytery, which is of timber carved to imitate stone, is remarkable for its very fine and brilliantly coloured bosses, forming a quite unique collection of designs. Milner mentions as the chief among these, "the arms and badges of the families of Lancaster and Tudor, the arms of Castile, of Cardinal Beaufort, and even of the very sees held successively by Bishop Fox. The part of the vaulting from the altar to the east window bears none but pious ornaments: the several instruments of the Saviour's Passion, including S. Peter's denial, and the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, the faces of Pilate and his wife, of the Jewish high priest, Judas kissing Jesus, Judas' money-bag, the Veronica"--this is immediately above the place of the cross on the reredos--"the Saviour's coat, with the Cross, crown of thorns, nails, hammer, pillar, scourges, reed, sponge, lance, sword with the ear of Malchus upon it, lanthorn, ladder, cock, dice, etc." Under the tower the vaulting is of wood, dating from 1634. Before this year the choir-lantern was visible from below, with its striking late Norman stonework divided into two tiers. It has been proposed to re-open the lantern, but this would necessitate the removal of the bells from the tower, a matter of considerable expense. It would also be a pity to take down the vaulting with its various devices, including the arms, etc., of Charles I., his queen, and the Prince of Wales, a medallion of the two former, the Scotch and Irish arms, and those of Archbishop Laud, Bishop Curie, and Dean Young. The central emblem is that of the Trinity, with a "chronogram" indicating the year 1634 thus:--sInt DoMUs hUjUs pII reges nUtrItII regInae nUtrICes pIae. The larger letters, picked out in red, serve as Roman figures which added together make up the required number. [Illustration: THE CHOIR STALLS. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] From the commencement of the choir to the high altar are eleven steps, making nineteen in all from the level of the nave. This elevation, of course, much enhances the imposing effect of the altar and reredos as seen from the lower plane. It is due to the existence of the Norman crypt beneath, and can be paralleled both at Canterbury and at Rochester. The raised platform includes the presbytery with its aisles and the retro-choir, and extends under the central tower to the second pillar beyond. The nave and transepts are thus on a lower level. Before the altar are rails which date from the reign of Charles I., while the Altar Books were presented to the cathedral by Charles II. The great #Reredos#, which separates the presbytery from the feretory and the eastern end of the church, is, to judge from its style, late fifteenth-century work. It has been attributed to Cardinal Beaufort, and to Bishop Fox and Prior Silkstede, but no inscription or armorial details can be discovered to confirm either of these suppositions. It is similar in character to the altar-screens of Christchurch Priory, Hants, and S. Mary Overy (S. Saviour's, Southwark); but, less fortunate than the former, it was despoiled of all the statues which once filled its niches, while it has not "the exquisite grace of detail which marks the choir of angels at Southwark." The reredos at S. Albans, in the same style, though not so large, was erected between 1476 and 1484; and, as at Winchester before 1899, shows a cross-shaped space where, according to legend, a huge silver crucifix was placed. Now once more, as in the sixteenth century, there is a figure on the great cross. It is curious to note an attempt, during the rage for pseudo-classic architecture in the last century, to beautify the reredos by placing sham funeral urns in its niches. These were fortunately removed in 1820, and in recent years they have been replaced by a series of statues intended to reproduce as far as possible the original effect. In the _Builder_ for October 10, 1892, a large reproduction was given of a very interesting drawing by the late Mr J.W. Sedding, showing the whole screen completely restored; but this scheme was unfortunately not used. A large oil-painting, "The Raising of Lazarus," by Benjamin West, purchased in 1782 by Dean Ogle, till 1899 hung immediately over the altar. Before 1818 a huge wooden canopy in Jacobean style, freely enriched with gold, covered all the central portion of the screen. This was due to Bishop Curie. The reredos is so large that it occupies the whole of the space between the choir piers, and, being constructed of a very white stone, is the prominent feature of the choir. The work is very elaborate, the whole screen being arranged in three tiers with canopied niches containing eighteen large statues, while smaller figures--kings, saints, angels, etc.--occupy the splays between. The pinnacles are pierced and crocketted, and there is a central projecting canopy over the place of the original crucifix. On either side of the high altar is a door leading to the feretory at the back of the reredos, and these have in their four spandrels interesting groups of fifteenth-century sculpture, representing various scenes in the life of the Virgin, the Annunciation, and the Visitation of S. Elizabeth, still showing traces of colour. The fact that these carvings have escaped destruction, just as the lower tier at Christchurch escaped, is only to be explained on the assumption that they were hidden behind some panelling since removed, for of all images which provoked iconoclastic fury those representing the Virgin were the most certain to be attacked. The whole is crowned by a triple frieze of leaves, Tudor roses, and quatrefoils, at a height little short of the corbels which support the arches of the roof. [Illustration: THE ALTAR AND REREDOS. _H.W. Salmon, Photo._] The eighteen larger statues were, and are now, since the restoration of the reredos, arranged in the following order. In the uppermost tier, to the left and right of the head of cross, were S. Peter and S. Paul, who were the patron saints of the church. Two on either side of these were the four Latin Doctors, SS. Augustine, Gregory, Jerome, and Ambrose. "Below these, on the middle tier, we had two great local bishops, S. Birinus, first occupant of the see, standing beside the figure of the Virgin, and on the other side S. Swithun, the benevolent bishop, patron-saint of the church: beyond them, over the two doors, were SS. Benedict and Giles,[3] the one founder of the Order to which the Priory belonged, the other the Hermit Saint, who always pitched his tabernacle just outside the walls of medieval cities; he is here set in honour to commemorate S. Giles' Hill, and especially S. Giles' Fair, from which the Convent reaped great benefit" (Dean Kitchin: "Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral"). Outermost on this tier stand the statues of the two deacons, SS. Stephen and Lawrence. In the lowest tier, on either side of the altar, stand SS. Hedda and Ethelwolf, two of the most famous Anglo-Saxon bishops of the see of Winchester. Next these saints there is the doorway on either side and beyond these doors are statues of King Edward the Confessor, and S. Edmund the King. Between the figures of SS. Swithun and Birinus, stand statues of the Virgin and S. John, while above the arms of the Cross are the four Archangels, Uriel, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. In all there are now fifty-six statues on the screen, the smaller figures including famous kings, bishops, women, and a representation of Izaak Walton. [3] The charter of William Rufus which gave permission for S. Giles' Fair still exists, and may be found, with a commentary by Dean Kitchin, in the "Winchester Cathedral Records." The Fair was granted for three days (August 31, September 1 and 2) on the "eastern hill," known as S. Giles' Hill. The object of the Fair "was evidently," says Dean Kitchin, "to help the Bishop in completing his great Norman Church.... Parts of the proceeds of the Fair were at a later time assigned to Hyde Abbey, to S. Swithun's Priory, and to the Hospital of S. Mary Magdalen." Above the altar it is said that there was once "a table of images of silver and gilt garnished with stones." These images are conjectured to have represented Christ and his disciples, possibly at the Last Supper; but no traces remain of them. From 1782 till 1899 West's picture, "The Raising of Lazarus," now in the South Transept, hung here. The place is now more happily occupied by a representation of the Incarnation. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT. From Britton's "Winchester."] The most recent feature of the screen is the great central figure of Christ Crucified, the gift of Canon Valpy and the work of Messrs Farmer and Brindley. The final restoration of the screen by the filling of the space left vacant for three centuries was commemorated by a solemn dedication service, held at the Cathedral on March 24, 1899. On the reredos as a whole, one authority has said that "no description could do justice to the beauty and effect of the whole work." But another has declared that "a huge screen of this uncompromising squareness of outline is a flagrantly artless device which in previous periods (to the latter half of the fifteenth century) would have been impossible." Milner again describes its "exquisite workmanship" as being "as magnificent as this or any other nation can exhibit." Doctors most certainly differ here. It will perhaps be most convenient to deal at this point with the #Transepts#, of which the western walls are almost level with the choir-screen. Having been but little injured by the fall of the tower in 1107, they still remain to a great extent what they were when originally built by Walkelin. We therefore get the massive and rugged early Norman walls still divided into the three nearly equal storeys which in the nave have given place to two. Where the fall of the central tower necessitated a partial rebuilding, the difference between the Early and the Late masonry is very evident. That of the transepts generally is coarse and very thick, as is the case with all Early Norman stonework. The new masonry, on the other hand, recalls what William of Malmesbury says of the Later Norman masonry at Salisbury, when he speaks of "the courses of stone so correctly laid that the joint deceives the eye, and leads it to imagine that the whole wall is composed of a single block." The juncture of the two works at Winchester can be easily traced. Of the general style of the transepts, Willis says: "The architecture is of the plainest description. The compartment of the triforium is very nearly of the same height as that of the pier-arches, and the clerestory is also nearly the same height.... Each pier-arch is formed of two orders or courses of voussoirs, the edges of which are left square, wholly undecorated by mouldings. This is the case with the pier-arches of Ely transept, but in the arches of the triforium at Ely, and in every other Norman part of that cathedral, the edges of the voussoirs are richly moulded. In Winchester transept, on the contrary, the arches of the triforium and clerestory are square-edged like those of the pier below and hence arises the peculiarly simple and massive effect of this part of the church." Between the tower-piers and the terminal walls of each transept there are three piers, making four compartments, the farther two of which from the nave and choir open into the terminal aisles. The arches were all originally plain, semi-circular, and square-edged, and are supported by shafts with the cushioned capitals so characteristic of the ruder Norman style, and the bases are simple with a chamfer and quarter-round, very different from the ornamental Late Norman bases, such as may be seen at S. Cross, Winchester, for example. Where the Later Norman work has taken the place of the original, we find stronger piers. The vault above is groined, but there are no ribs. Nothing, however, can now be seen of the vaulting above the level of the side-walls, since a flat wooden ceiling, painted in "Early Tudor" style was put up in 1818, by which, among other things, the rose-window in the gable of the north transept was hidden, though in Britton's view, which we give on page 59, we have the transept previous to the timbering. Each transept has an eastern and a western aisle, while at the extreme ends there are aisles rising to pier-arch level, consisting of two arches, which a triple bearing-shaft supports in the centre. A kind of gallery is formed at the terminations of the north and south transepts, over and beyond which may be seen the triforium and clerestory windows. This can best be appreciated by a reference to the illustration, Plate XV. Possibly this platform or gallery was not originally so bare as it appears at the present day, but there is no doubt that it was built in order that processions might pass round on the triforium level. It has been mentioned that when the tower was rebuilt the columns nearest it in the transepts were strengthened. They now, indeed, present a singularly massive outline to the eye, and contrast strongly even with the remaining Norman pillars in the transepts. The arches also are changed. All were once semi-circular, but the rebuilding necessitated a change of the first and second from the actual tower-pier into the stilted or "horse-shoe" form. They are doubly recessed (except those supporting the end platform, which have but one soffit), and present quite plain and unadorned square edges. [Illustration: VIEW IN NORTH TRANSEPT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] In each transept there is at the eastern angle a spiral staircase leading up to the roof. If we take first the #North Transept#, there will be found at the southern end, against the side wall of the choir, and between the two great tower-piers, the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, a small compartment which contains some interesting and still distinct mural paintings on the roof and walls, representing scenes of the Passion, etc. The most striking is a large head and bust of Christ on the easternmost division of the vaulting. One hand holds the Gospels, with the inscription _Salus Populi Ego Sum_. On the wall beneath are the Descent from the Cross and the Entombment. The Nativity and Annunciation also appear on the roof, while on the walls are the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, the Descent into Hell, and the Appearance to Mary Magdalene in the Garden. Two of the Norman piers on the eastern side of this transept have received very elaborate canopies of the Decorated period, under which it is probable that there were at one time altars. Some Early English work may be seen in the heads carved on some of the larger shafts and the caps of the subsidiary pillars, a noticeable figure being "a monk crouched in a caryatidal attitude and holding a chess-board." The modern entry to the crypts is in the south-east interior wall of this transept, the old means of entrance, through the "Holy Hole," having been blocked up. The large tomb in the north transept is that of Prebendary Iremonger. On the western wall, at the end of the transept, are very faint traces of mural paintings, representing S. Christopher carrying Christ, etc., and it is probable the transepts were once thus decorated throughout. The #South Transept# has received far more additions to its interior decorations than has the north. In the back of the choir-wall is recessed Sir Isaac Townsend's memorial, not a very noteworthy object. Just under it there now stands the old oak settle which was once used by the Norman monks. In the central space of the transept itself is a large monument to Bishop Wilberforce, showing beneath a canopy a life-sized figure, with mitre, cope, and staff, on a slab borne by six kneeling angels. A Latin inscription records his birth on 1st September 1805, and his death on 19th July 1873. The monument is the work of Sir Gilbert Scott, and has met with some severe attacks. It certainly is out of place in its Norman surroundings. The aisles of the south transept are divided up into six chambers, of which the larger of the two westernmost is used as a chapter-room, and does not betray its age by its present appearance; the one next the body of the church, Milner's "ancient sacristy," but now known as Henry of Blois' treasury, serves as a boys' vestry. The Norman work over the door must not be overlooked. The chamber to the extreme south is the entrance lobby to the south door, which leads into the "slype" or passage running between the church and the old chapter-house. Leading out of it is the ancient "calefactory," where the fire for the censers and thuribles was preserved. Panelled oak screens enclose this room on both sides. Next it comes Silkstede's chapel, the central of the three easterly divisions of the transept aisles. The prior's rebus, in the form of a skein of silk, is evident among the carvings, and his Christian name Thomas may be seen on the cornice with the MA, the monogram of the Virgin, standing out distinctly. The screen in this chapel is worthy of remark, and is divided into four compartments, the upper part of each being open-work and arched with pierced quatrefoils in the spandrels. In this chapel traces of painting were discovered in 1848, beneath the whitewash on the eastern wall, the subject apparently being Christ upon the water, calling to him S. Peter, who, in an attitude of hesitation, holds the prow of the boat. Fine canopy-work surmounts the whole. Originally there were eight canopies enclosing figures, but little except the canopies remain, the distemper-painting having almost vanished. On the floor of the chapel may be found a black marble slab, the tomb of Isaak Walton, with Bishop Ken's often-quoted inscription, which, however, it is perhaps pardonable to quote again:-- "Alas! Hee's gone before, Gone, to returne noe more; Our panting hearts aspire After their aged Sire, Whose well-spent life did last Full ninety years, and past. But now he hath begun That which will nere be done: Crown'd with eternal Blisse, We wish our souls with his." [Illustration: DOORWAY FROM THE CLOSE INTO THE RETRO-CHOIR. From a Drawing by H.P. Clifford.] [Illustration: BISHOP WILBERFORCE'S TOMB IN SOUTH TRANSEPT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] [Illustration: SOUTH AISLE, FROM TRANSEPT. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] Next to Prior Silkstede's chapel comes the "Venerable" chapel, which serves as a vestry for the minor canons of the cathedral. The screen of this fills the whole archway, the six canopies extending beyond the sweep of the arch. Down each side are untenanted niches, and the openings of the tracery show some beautiful and elaborate iron-work, dating from the Renaissance. A similar screen, though without canopies, divides the Venerable Chapel from Silkstede's. #The Library# is approached from an old wooden staircase in the south aisle of this transept. It is a "long, low room, with oaken presses curiously carved and ornamented with gilded knobs, after the fashion of the latter half of the seventeenth century." It contains three or four thousand books, most of which are the gift of Bishop Morley, and there are many fine MSS.; but its chief treasure is a Vulgate of the twelfth century, in three folio volumes on vellum. The gorgeously illuminated manuscript is the best work extant of the Winchester school, and the fact that it was never finished renders it only the more interesting, since thereby the whole process from the first outline to the final touch of colour is evident. A legend concerning Hugh of Avalon, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln (associated with this book), is worthy of mention. Henry II., who founded the Carthusian Monastery of Witham, in Somerset, had appointed Hugh prior in 1175 or 1176, and finding that his monks needed MSS. to copy, and in particular a complete copy of the Bible, promised to give them one. To avoid expense, he borrowed this superb Vulgate from Winchester and sent it to Witham. A chance visit long afterwards of a Winchester monk revealed what had happened, and on the matter becoming known to Hugh, he returned the volume without the king's knowledge.[4] Among other important MSS. in the Library are an eleventh century copy of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History"; a twelfth century "Life of Edward the Confessor," by S. Aelred, Cistercian Abbot of Riévaulx about 1160, containing a portrait of the king within one of its initial letters; a copy of the "_Promptorium Parvulorum_"; a charter of Æthelwulf, King of Wessex, dated 854 and bearing the signatures of the king, his young son Alfred, and S. Swithun. There are also the chapter-books for 1553-1600; the cathedral statutes, with the signatures of Charles I. and Bishop Laud; the original charter of Henry VIII. to the cathedral, on the dissolution of the priory; and many interesting documents and printed books, some with the original chains which were fastened to their covers. Here also are kept the great seal of Henry V., the pastoral staff from Bishop Fox's tomb, his ring, those of Bishops Gardiner and Woodlock, and the one, set with a sapphire, which comes from the tomb of "William Rufus"--probably, as we have said, belonging to Henry of Blois. The library was built in 1668 A.D. [4] It is now, however, on record that the book was bequeathed by Bishop Nicholas of Ely in 1282. We may now return to the body of the cathedral and pass to the surroundings of the choir. The #Feretory#, where the _feretra_ or shrines of the saints were placed, lies behind the high altar and reredos, and the two doors in the latter give access to it. At one time, before the erection of the reredos, the feretory must have been visible from the choir. Behind the doors is a raised platform, seven feet in breadth, extending right across. The upper surface of this is now only three feet above the ground level, but originally it must have been far higher. Four steps give access to it. Before it is a hollow space with stumps of piers, demonstrating the ancient presence of an arcade in front of the platform. The feretory is without internal decoration, but the exterior of the east wall is adorned with nine rich Decorated tabernacles, with the yet legible names of saints and king who once occupied the eighteen pedestals within them. This inscription is to be found here:-- _Corpora sanctorum sunt hic in pace sepulta, Ex meritis quorum fulgent miracula multa_. The floor beneath the platform is supported by a small vault, "the entrance to which (to quote Willis) is by a low arch in the eastern face of the wall under the range of tabernacles." This vault is that which was designated as the _Sanctum Sanctorum_ or #Holy Hole#. The feretory is used as a receptacle for the carved work found at various dates about the cathedral, including portions of statuary once belonging to the great screen. Here lies a really marvellous lid of a reliquary chest, presented in 1309 by Sir William de Lilburn, with events in the life of our Lord and various saints vividly portrayed in colours, and decorated with the donor's armorial bearings. The "Holy Hole" has been used as a receptacle for fragments of various kinds since the end of the fifteenth century, before which it was visible from the choir, for no reredos intercepted the view. Milner states that in 1789 the whole passage and vault was so choked with rubbish that the attempt to enter it had to be abandoned. A more recent observer records that there appears to be no space for a crypt or receptacle for relics within the "Holy Hole," the chest of bones, etc., being placed on the platform over the arcade. The fragments now in the feretory are often very fine, but are most of them sadly mutilated. [Illustration: BACK OF FERETORY, WITH BISHOP GARDINER'S CHANTRY _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The north and south sides of the feretory are flanked by the chantries of Bishops Gardiner and Fox, into which it opens. #Gardiner's Chantry#, in the Renaissance style, was much damaged by the Reformers, the head being knocked off the figure lying in a long niche on the outside of the chantry, and other indignities committed. Of the tomb nothing now remains, but there is an altar with figures at the back, after Italian models, representing, according to one tradition, Justice and Mercy, while others say the Law and the Gospel. At the east end is a small vestry used as a repository for fragments. The details and the mouldings of Gardiner's chantry are of the Renaissance style, and Britton has described the chapel as "bad Italian and bad English." This is true of the eastern end of the compartment, but there are redeeming features amid the curious mixture of styles. Below the floor-level of this chantry may be seen the base of one of the Norman apse piers, the sole remaining feature of the Norman east end except the crypt. #Bishop Fox's Chantry# is a far finer piece of work and is certainly the most elaborate chantry in the cathedral. It displays no fewer than fifty-five richly-groined niches, all different in pattern; only two of them are tenanted, and these by very recent figures, on either side of the door. There is a great amount of wonderful undercutting to be seen in the spandrels to the arches, and the upper part of the erection shows open tracery with niches and canopies, under a cornice of running foliage and Tudor flowers, surmounted by panelled pinnacles. Fox's "pelican in her piety" alternates on the pinnacles with small octagonal turrets. At one time, moreover, all the arches, etc., contained stained glass, but this has now vanished. Within there is no tomb, but, as in Gardiner's chantry, there is, in an arched recess at the side, the ghastly carved figure of a corpse so frequently introduced in monuments of the period. The altar is surmounted by a small reredos in a sunk panel, now unoccupied, crowned by a band of angels bearing emblems of the Passion. Over the altar is this inscription in Latin:-- _O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur._ There is here, as was the case with Gardiner's chantry, a small room at the eastern end. In this are chests in which relics were kept. [Illustration: BISHOP FOX'S CHANTRY.] The interior part of the choir aisles have received "Wykeham" windows, four on each side, though from the exterior only three can be seen. The westernmost on the north side has two lights partly looking into the open, while two are unglazed and the top of one looks into the northern transept. On the south side all are glazed, but only three get any light from outside. These can be seen from the close at the junction of transept and retro-choir. All these windows have blank panelling or arcading below. It looks as if Wykeham or his successors meant to reduce the width of the Norman transepts, so as to bring them into better proportion with the eastern arm of the church. [Illustration: DOOR OF FOX'S CHANTRY.] Between the presbytery and the side aisles, extending from pier to pier, are screens of pierced stonework, erected by Bishop Fox, whose motto frequently occurs on them, together with his initials and Cardinal Beaufort's. On the top of the screens are six painted chests (see p. 95), in which are collected the bones of saints and kings of the Saxon period; the original collection being made by Henry of Blois. These #Mortuary Chests# were desecrated by the Cromwellian ruffians when they broke into the cathedral, and the bones were hurled through the stained glass of the west and other windows. Afterwards they were collected once more and replaced in the chests where they now lie. Among the relics are the bones of Edred, Edmund, Canute, William Rufus, Emma, Bishops Wina, Alwyn, Egbert, Cenwulf or Kenulf, Cynegils, and Ethelwulf, and there are the old inscriptions to indicate whose remains were originally enclosed within the boxes, though there is now no warrant that the bones within correspond at all to the names without. [Illustration: DETAIL OF PULPIT.] Among those who have been buried in the presbytery aisles is Bishop de Pontissara, of whom Rudborne says that he was buried _ex aquilonari plaga majoris altaris_. Accordingly we find his monument on the north side. Close by him, and still nearer the altar, was laid Hardicanute, the last Danish king, who was brought hither from Lambeth for interment. His death was attributed to "excessive drinking." In the southern aisle are Richard, the Conqueror's younger son; Edward, eldest born of Alfred the Great; and Bishop Nicholas de Ely's heart. [Illustration: SOUTH AISLE OF RETRO-CHOIR, WITH BEAUFORT'S AND FOX'S CHANTRIES. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] Eastward of the feretory the building is known by the name of the #Retro-choir#, and presents a very old and pure example of Early English work from the hands of Bishop de Lucy. The aisles are said to have been used as a model in the building of Salisbury Cathedral. Similar processional aisles may be seen also at Hereford on a minor scale. This part of the cathedral is lower and consequently appears broader than the more westerly portion. There is a considerable amount of wall-space, only interrupted by the numerous imposing chantries erected on the floor. The lower part of the walls is remarkable for some fine, though simple, blank arcading, dating also from De Lucy's time; while light is given by pairs of lancet windows, the rear arches being borne on groups of detached shafts. Many of the original chased tiles of the pavement remain to this day, and, in fact, there has been little interference with De Lucy's work. Unfortunately, however, as has been remarked, much of it has settled considerably, throwing the south-eastern angle altogether out of the perpendicular, one vaulting-shaft having in this manner been bent back and cracked in half. The effects of the subsidence can easily be seen in the photograph of the south aisle of the retro-choir looking toward the east. As one passes beyond the feretory through the retro-choir, the #Chantry of William Waynflete# stands to the north of the central alley. The canopy is very elaborate and beautiful, and plentiful traces of the original colour still can be seen, especially on the groining. On each side are three flat-headed arches, those at the east end being closed, while on each side of the piers adjoining the west end there are narrow open arches. Corniced and battlemented screens fill these arches to mid-height. The figure on the tomb is a modern restoration, very elaborately clad in full pontificals, while the hands are clasped about a heart, representing the _sursum corda_, or lifting up of the heart. The chantry is kept in repair by Magdalen College, Oxford, which Waynflete founded. Its situation, like that of the companion tomb of Cardinal Beaufort, makes it very impressive. There is no altar now. At the east end is a blank wall surmounted by three empty canopied niches, while at the other are two open gratings. In the corresponding position to the south is the #Chantry of Cardinal Beaufort#, now kept in repair by the Dukes of Beaufort. In Britton's time, as he tells us, there had fallen a "horse-load of the pinnacles in the canopy of Cardinal Beaufort's chantry." Owing, however, to the extreme elaboration, the effect is hardly impaired by this loss. The plan of the tomb is two groups of four clustered piers at each end, supporting a mass of canopies, niches, and pinnacles, which "bewilder the sight and senses by their number and complexity," as Britton quaintly says. The screen at the west end is closed, that at the east end open. The vault displays some elaborate fan-tracery. The body of the cardinal is presented in his scarlet official robes and the tasselled and corded hat, and the serenity of his face suggests very little the traditional portrait of him, as represented, for example, in Shakespeare's "Henry V." His death-bed moments, it is well known, have been much misrepresented. The inscription originally on his tomb has been destroyed, but Godwin quotes one sentence of it thus:--_Tribularer si nescirem misericordias tuas_. Against the north wall, not far from Waynflete's chantry, is an unknown tomb with part of an effigy, to the east of which is the grave of one William Symonds, "Gentleman, of Winchester twice Maior and Alderman," as his epitaph of 1616 relates. The last four lines of the inscription run as follows:-- His Merrit doth Enherit Life and Fame, For whilst this City stands Symonds his name In alle men's harts shall never be forgotten, For poores prayers rise when flesh lyes rotten. Between the same chantry and the wall lies the tomb of Bishop de Rupibus, while in the space between the chantries of Beaufort and Waynflete lies the only ancient military effigy in the cathedral, a genuine relic of the fourteenth century. It is commonly known as William de Foix, and represents, in a slightly mutilated form, a knight in surcoat and complete ringed armour of the thirteenth century. His legs are crossed[5] and the feet rest on a crouching lion, while the head is supported on two cushions which were formerly held up by angels. The right hand grasps the sword hilt, and the pointed shield, one of the earliest examples of a quartered shield, bears "quarterly, in the first and fourth, the arms of Bearn, two cows passant, gorged with collars and bells; in the second and third, three garbs; over all a cross." On the front edge of the slab Mr F.J. Baigent discovered the name Petrus Gavston or Gauston twice encised, but to this "scribbling" Mr Weston S. Walford, who has a note on this tomb in the fifteenth volume of the _Archeological Journal_, does not attach much importance, for it may merely record the engraver's conjecture as to the person here buried. The body of Edward II.'s favourite, Piers, was moved from Oxford to King's Langley in Hertfordshire two years after his execution, and buried there on January 2, 1314, in the presence of the king. It is not known to have been moved since. It seems probable that the effigy here is that of the father of the Piers known to us, a Sir Arnold de Gavaston, a record of whose interment at Winchester in May 1302 we possess, with the additional fact that Edward I. sent money and two pieces of cloth of gold to the funeral. Such respect would naturally be paid to the father of Edward II.'s foster-brother. Mr Walford suggests that the garbs on the shield are a canting allusion to the name Gabaston or Gavaston, for the spelling varies very much--Gaveston, Gaverston, and Gaberston being also found. The date of the tomb Mr Walford places between the death of Arnold in 1302 and the murder of his son in 1312. The tomb itself is adorned with five Decorated arches with the Gavaston arms on the shield, together with those of England, of France, and of Castile and Leon. [5] "Such figures as lie crosslegged are those who were in the wars of the Holy Land, or vowed to go and were prevented" (Sir William Dugdale). [Illustration: CARDINAL BEAUFORT'S CHANTRY. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] West of this are the tombs of Bishop Sumner and Prior Silkstede. The latter's grave, according to Woodward, was found, when opened, to contain the complete remains of a body robed in black serge, with the "funeral boots" yet on the bones of the feet. The body seems to have been removed hither from Silkstede's chapel in the south transept. Next the western end of Beaufort's chantry is the tomb of William de Basynge, prior of this church (_quondam Prior istius ecclesiæ_), as his inscription states, promising 145 days' indulgence to whoever prays for his soul three years. He died in 1295. On the south wall facing the same chantry is a marble monument of the Royalist, Sir John Clobery; and near this is a large slab in the floor, in memory of Baptist Levinz, Bishop of Sodor and Man, and prebendary of Winchester, who died in 1692. On the end wall of the ambulatory, to the left of the entrance to the Chapel of the Guardian Angels, is a fine monument, somewhat mutilated, to Ethelmar or Aymer de Valence, half-brother of Henry III., who was so unpopular a bishop at Winchester. Only his heart is in the cathedral, having been conveyed hither from Paris, where his body was buried. The facts are commemorated by the following inscription on the presbytery wall:-- Corpus Ethelmari Cuius Cor Nunc Tenet Istud Saxum Parisiis Morte Datur Tumulo Obiit A.D. 1261. When Winchester was attacked by the so-called religious zeal of the Puritans, Ethelmar's heart was disturbed, as is recorded by a writer of the period, who says that "when the steps of the altar were levelling with the rest of the ground one of the workmen accidentally struck his mattock on this stone and broke it; underneath which was an urn wherein the heart of this Ethelmar was, being enclosed in a golden cup, which thing ... being conveyed to the ears of the committee-men they took the cup for their own use, and ordered him to bury the heart in the north isle, which he accordingly did." The heart, he goes on to say, was "so entire and uncorrupt" that it was "as fresh as if it had just been taken from the body, and issued forth fresh drops of blood upon his hand. This I had from the mouth of the workman himself, whom I believe." The slab which once covered the heart shows, within the symbolic vesica, "in a trefoil canopy the half-length figure of the Bishop, mitred and in his episcopal robes, his uplifted hands holding a heart, his pastoral staff represented as resting on his left arm." Below are his arms and the inscription in Lombardic letters, + _Ethelmarus. Tibi Cor Meum Dne._ [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] [Illustration: DETAIL OF LADY CHAPEL.] The #Lady Chapel#, due in part to De Lucy and in part to Priors Hunton and Silkstede, is of rectangular shape, the easternmost portions being added about 1524. It should be noticed that in De Lucy's work the central aisle is but little higher than the laterals, which still have their eastern walls, whereas the actual material of the Lady Chapel east wall was erected by Hunton. The north and south walls exhibit De Lucy's Early English arcades and lancets, while they become Perpendicular at the eastern end, and the east window is of the same period. This large seven-light window shows "transom and tracery of a peculiar kind of subordination, or rather inter-penetration of patterns, well worth a careful study" (Willis). The stone work of the interior is quite plain, but a large portion of the wall space is concealed by some richly-carved wooden panelling added by Bishop Fox. Seats, desks, and screen are also of fine workmanship. Where the walls are not hidden by wood-work are the very faint remains of some curious old mural paintings of the miracles of the Virgin, executed under the direction of Prior Silkstede in 1489. These frescoes are decidedly archaic, but they are extremely interesting. Starting from the south side the nineteen pictures represent:-- 1. Miracle of an image of the Virgin bending its finger to prevent a young man taking off a ring which he had placed on the image that it might not be lost or injured while he played at ball. By this the young man was won to monastic life. 2. Protection and honour conferred by the Virgin on an ignorant priest, who knew and could sing only one mass, which was in honour of her. 3. Prior Silkstede kneeling before Virgin, saying: "_Benedicta tu in mulieribus_." Beneath is the following:--"Prior Silkstede also caused these polished stones, O Mary, to be ornamented at his expense." 4. Jewish boy, after receiving the Eucharist, thrown into a furnace by his father, but delivered from the flames by the Virgin. 5. Famous portrait of the Virgin, carried in procession by Pope Gregory to allay a fearful pestilence. During the procession the destroying angel is seen sheathing his sword. 6. A widow receives back her son who had been kidnapped, and thereupon restores the silver image of the child Jesus, which she had taken from the image of the Virgin on losing her son. 7. Virgin assisting woman taken ill on pilgrimage. 8. Virgin enables boys, with ease, to raise that which strong men could not. 9. Nun brought to life to confess a sin not confessed before death. 10. Virgin saves a monk from drowning, and from two evil spirits, with instruments of torture, one who had lived an immoral life. 11. Two Brabançons seized by devils and killed for throwing stones at an image of the Virgin. 12. Deliverance at sea effected by the Virgin. 13. Mass of the Virgin celebrated by Christ himself, with saints and angels, on an occasion when the priest was unable to do so. 14. S. John's (of Damascus) arm restored; thereby establishing his innocence of having corresponded with unbelievers. 15. Virgin delivering from the gallows a thief who had always venerated her. 16. Virgin commanding the burial of a clerk of irreligious life in consecrated ground, because he had been her votary. 17. Virgin assisting a painter to paint the devil "as ugly as he knew him to be," in spite of all the devil could do to prevent him from completing it. 18. The Annunciation--over door, which formerly led to a particular sacristy. 19. How, by praying to the Virgin, a robber-knight was delivered from the clutches of the devil. The altar is flanked on the north by a memorial of Bishop Brownlow North, representing him kneeling in adoration. The vault above, though not so elaborate as that of Langton's chapel on the right hand, is a fine example of lierne work, and the shafts are noticeable for their capitals and bases. Among the devices are T and the syllable HUN, followed by the figure of a tun; and T and the syllable SILK, followed by the figure of a horse; signifying Thomas Hunton and Thomas Silkstede respectively. [Illustration: BISHOP LANGTON'S CHAPEL. _S.B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] [Illustration: DETAIL OF LANGTON'S CHAPEL.] The southern window of the Lady Chapel has recently been filled with a memorial window to the late Bishop Thorold, whose tomb lies in the cathedral precincts just below the new window. In pre-Reformation times this window, like those on the north and east, was glazed with fine painted glass, of which a few fragments still remain in the tracery. The remaining portions of the old work have been worked in with the new by Mr C.E. Kempe, the designer and executor. The memorial glass presents scenes in the life of Christ, while above appear S. Birinus, Pope Honorius, S. Swithun, S. Alphege, and other saints. The dedication ceremony took place on August 7, 1897, two years after the burial of Bishop Thorold at Winchester. Of the two chapels which flank the Lady Chapel, that to the north is the #Chapel of the Guardian Angels#, once the chantry of Bishop Adam de Orlton, of whom no memorial here exists, though he is buried in the chapel. This compartment is sometimes called the Portland chapel, owing to the fact that it contains on the south side the tomb of Richard Weston, Earl of Portland, who was treasurer to Charles I. A recumbent bronze statue by Le Sueur adorns the tomb, while in the wall above are four tabernacles, three of which contain mutilated busts, probably representing members of his family. A mural monument of Bishop Peter Mews, who is also interred here, is marked by a crozier and mitre. On the north side, too, there is in the wall an aumbry with a shelf, having a curious square head within a trefoil. The early vaulting of this chapel has, between the ribs, figures of seraphim, which are very fresh in colour. [Illustration: QUEEN MARY'S CHAIR. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The corresponding chapel to the south is #Bishop Langton's Chantry#, though the work is partly De Lucy's, including the walls and the early vaulting shafts. The defaced front-screen and the oak-panelling all round are very rich examples of late Gothic, and the stone vaulting has been compared in point of elaboration with that in the chapel of Henry VII. at Westminster. On the groining, at the junction of the ribs, is carved Bishop Langton's rebus, consisting of the musical sign for a "long" upon a tun, while his motto _Laus tibi Christe_ also occurs. It is supposed that the magnificent carved vine on the upper part of the oak-panelling which runs round the chapel originally formed the rebus of Langton's see, the tun from which it sprang being now lost. The woodwork, which is certainly one of the most striking things in the cathedral, is unfortunately mutilated, as is also part of the heraldic work on the entrance door. At the east end of the chapel above the former altar there is a row of seven tabernacles, under which is a cornice which was originally gilt and painted. The statues which once occupied the tabernacles are no longer extant. The central tomb here is that of Bishop Langton himself. Queen Mary's chair now stands in this chapel; it is in a wonderful state of preservation for its age, and the woodwork is still sound. The entrance to the #Crypts# is in the north transept, as was noted above. They are three in number, the main division stretching from the eastern tower-piers to the first piers of the retro-choir. It consists of a central room divided by a row of five columns in the middle, with an apsidal eastern termination, and is flanked by two aisles with square eastern ends. The well here is said to be considerably older than the building above it. From this opens out a narrower crypt, which also has five columns down the centre, while its apse reaches to the eastern end of the retro-choir. These crypts cannot, as some have supposed (and the tradition still survives), form part of the old Saxon church, since it has been fairly established that the site of this was not that of the present building. The plan of the chambers is in perfect accord, as Willis says, with that of Norman churches in general. The main crypt shows by its circular apse what was the form of the east end in the old Norman church. The actual work is strikingly like that of the transepts, the peculiar thin square abacus, combined with a round capital, being a noteworthy point in both these portions of the building. The third crypt, which is narrow like the second, is rectangular in shape, and its vaulting rests on columns. It is Early English in architecture, and is contemporary with De Lucy's work in the upper part of the church. In 1886 the crypts were to a great extent cleared out to their original level, a vast quantity of rubbish being removed. Many fragments of early work still remain, though in too mutilated a form to indicate where they originally stood. The #stained glass# at Winchester can, perhaps, best be treated separately from the windows which it occupies. Most of the information may be found summed up in a paper addressed to the Archæological Association in September 1845, by Mr C. Winston. Two circles of Early Decorated glass are to be seen in the west window, but they are merely composed of coloured pieces arranged in geometrical patterns. The general arrangement of the great window is, as has been already said, kaleidoscopic, the fragments which compose it being too scattered to admit of being put together again in their original form. The effect, however, is striking, particularly at some distance from the west end. There are remains of the original glass in the west windows of the aisles and in the first window from the west in the south aisle, but the Edingdon windows in the north aisle have lost their glass. The glass in the above windows consists of the heads of canopies, though in the west window some of the original figures are still to be seen. This is the earliest Perpendicular glass in the cathedral, and may date from Edingdon's time. Next in date is the glass in the other windows of the nave aisles and clerestory windows, a little later than that in the west window, and of the same character as that at New College, Oxford, in the north, south, and west windows. Of this glass, apparently four figures and part of their canopies have been removed to the first window from the east in the choir clerestory. The heads of the three westerly windows, to the north of the choir clerestory, showing canopy-work and cherubim, come next in date, with eight canopied figures in the upper tier of the two easterly windows on the south of this clerestory. The latter seem to have come originally from some other window, being too short for their present situation. Their date may be about the end of the reign of Henry VI. The east window of the choir may be a little earlier than 1525, and has introduced in it Bishop Fox's arms and motto, _Est deo gracia_. This window has been much disturbed, the top central light being filled with glass of Wykeham's period, while little of Fox's glass seems to be in its original position. To Fox also may be attributed part of the aisle windows north and south of the choir, and some canopies in the side windows of the choir clerestory. Some late glass, much mutilated, may be seen in the east window of the Lady Chapel. Warner says of the two large windows, that "the great east window is remarkable for the beauty of its painted glass, which contains the portraits of saints, and of some bishops of this see; it is whole and entire, the west window is magnificent, but much inferior to this." [Illustration: ONE OF THE MORTUARY CHESTS IN THE CHOIR SCREEN (see "Mortuary Chests" in Chapter III). (From a Drawing by Reginald Blomfield in his "History of Renaissance Architecture in England." Bell, 1897.)] CHAPTER IV HISTORY OF THE SEE The West Saxon kingdom, of which S. Birinus became the first bishop, included the counties of Surrey, Berkshire, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, and Somerset. When Birinus was consecrated by the Bishop of Milan, he was not assigned any exact territorial jurisdiction, as was only natural, seeing that he was a missionary to a little-known land. He met, however, with a rapid success, and in 635 performed the baptism of Cynegils, king of the West Saxons, on the day of his marriage to the daughter of the Northumbrian king. The town of Dorchester on the borders of Mercia was immediately assigned to Birinus as a bishop's seat. But when Aegelberht had succeeded him, the next king, Cenwalh, made a division of the kingdom into two distinct dioceses of Dorchester and Winchester, the new creation being assigned in 661 to Wina; who, however, succeeded to the whole of the original diocese, as Aegelberht appears to have left England in disgust. Eleutherius, Wina's successor, continued to hold the still united offices at Dorchester, and it was not until Hedda became bishop, about 679 A.D., that Winchester was really made the seat of a diocese. Even Hedda continued to rule all from Winchester, and not before his death was a permanent division of sees carried out. Winchester retained Surrey, Sussex, and the Southampton district; while the other counties were assigned to Sherborne--Dorchester, which belonged more properly to Mercia, having been taken away, as there was no longer the same need of an inland centre to the see, with four bishops now in Mercia. Sussex was also taken from the Winchester diocese during the episcopacy of Daniel, Hedda's successor, and by way of compensation he was only able to add the Isle of Wight, hitherto unattached to any see. When the West Saxon kingdom became, in the ninth century, practically the kingdom of England, Winchester, of course, assumed a very important position. S. Swithun, who was chosen as bishop in 852, had great influence with King Ethelwulf, and his cathedral correspondingly became an object of veneration. The see suffered, however, from the Danish raids which occurred during the next two reigns; but with Bishop Athelwold its prestige was quite restored. To him is due the establishment of a Benedictine monastery at Winchester, the previous convent having been one of secular (and non-celibate) canons. With the supremacy of the Danes, we find Cnut both elected king and subsequently buried at Winchester. Edward the Confessor, moreover, was crowned in the cathedral on Easter Day, 1043, so that Winchester maintained its position well up to this date. Further invasions of the Northmen then very much wasted the south coast, and gradually Winchester began to yield its pride of place to Westminster. However, the town remained a place of considerable importance, for, as Mr H. Hall says in his "Antiquities of the Exchequer," "although Westminster possessed an irresistible attraction to a pious sovereign through the vicinity of a favoured church, Norman kings, engrossed in the pleasure of the chase and constantly embroiled in Continental wars, found the ancient capital of Winchester better adapted for the pursuit of sport, as well as for the maintenance of their foreign communications through the proximity of the great mediæval seaport, Southampton." This traffic between London and the two Hampshire towns passed through Southwark, which always had a close connection with Winchester, remaining even to this day in a modified degree. The Norman bishops, if they found Winchester no longer the chief town of England, certainly added to the glory of the church by the erection and beautifying of a new cathedral. Immediately after the death of Walkelin, the first bishop of the conquering race, there was a vacancy in the see which lasted for nine years, owing to the vexed question of investiture. When Giffard was finally installed, he displayed considerable activity. Among his other works, he built the town residence of the bishops of Winchester at Southwark. Bishop's Waltham remained the principal residence until its destruction by Waller in 1644, after which Farnham Castle took its place. Rumour says that there was a suggestion made of raising the see of Winchester to the rank of an archbishopric during its tenure by that foremost of fighting churchmen, Henry de Blois, who certainly desired the elevation. At any rate, Fuller says of Henry that he "outshined Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury." The Pope's consent, however, was not secured. Henry paid considerable attention to the temporal affairs of his see, rebuilding the castles at Farnham and Wolvesey, and founding the Hospital of St Cross. He translated also the bodies of the old kings and bishops from the site of the Saxon crypt, the remains without inscriptions being placed in leaden sarcophagi, mixed in hopeless confusion. After Henry's death there occurred another vacancy in the see, ended at last by the admittance of Toclive in 1174 A.D. With De Lucy's accession in 1189 we reach another epoch of building activity, for not only was this bishop busy himself, but also under his guidance there was instituted in 1202, as the Winchester annalist records, a confraternity, to last for five years, for repairing the cathedral. De Lucy's work at the eastern end of the building is described elsewhere. We should not omit to notice, when considering the position of Winchester, that Richard, on his return from captivity in 1194, was re-crowned here on the octave of Easter Day. Bishop de Rupibus, De Lucy's successor, introduced preaching friars into England, and set up at Winchester in 1225 a Dominican establishment, while a few years later the Franciscans were also established here. Both institutions have since vanished. The middle of the thirteenth century was marked at Winchester by continual struggles between king, monks, and Pope, as to the right of electing the bishop of Winchester. Some record of these struggles will be found in the list of bishops of the see. The contest about the election of De Raleigh lasted five years, and the king only finally accepted the monks' choice after the Pope and the king of France had also lent their influence on his behalf. In 1264-7 the town rose up against the prior and convent, burning and murdering under pretext of assisting the king, the bishop being a partisan of De Montfort. After the battle of Evesham the cathedral was laid under an interdict by the Papal legate, Ottoboni, and this was not removed until August 1267. With Wykeham's importance in the story of Winchester we have dealt elsewhere. His successor, Beaufort, greatly enlarged the foundation of St Cross, adding to it his "Almshouse of Noble Poverty." It is a remarkable fact that these two bishops and Waynflete, the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford, between them occupied the see for no less than 120 years. The history of this period, as far as the cathedral is concerned, is mainly architectural and therefore uneventful in comparison with that of the earlier times. The intervals whose history is less stirring, however, fortunately leave far better marks on the actual buildings than do the more eventful epochs; and the fact that Cardinal Wolsey once was Bishop of Winchester could not be gathered from the cathedral itself. Indeed, he never visited the town at all during the course of his episcopate--a circumstance which is, perhaps, hardly to be regretted. In 1500 Pope Alexander issued a Bull separating the Channel Islands from their former see of Coutances, which was now no longer English territory, and attaching them to the see of Salisbury. "This was afterwards altered to Winchester," says Canon Benham, "but from some cause which does not appear, the transfer was never made until 1568, after the Reformed Liturgy has been established in the islands." The cathedral itself received architectural additions during this period from Bishops Courtenay and Langton, their priors, and Bishop Fox. When in Henry VIII.'s reign the former town of Southwark had either been conveyed to the city or had become the king's property (the latter being such parts as had previously been the holding of Canterbury), the "Clink," or the Bishop of Winchester's Liberty, was not interfered with. The result of this was that the Clink became the home of the early play-houses--the Globe, Hope, Rose, and Swan--since within the city bounds actors were not allowed to carry on their profession. In Mr T. Fairman Ordish's "Early London Theatres" the extent to which the first theatres flourished in the Winchester Liberty may be clearly seen. The early Reformation period at Winchester led to a great impoverishment of the see: so much so that the second William of Wickham (1594-5) ventured, in a sermon preached before the queen, to say that, should the see continue to suffer such rapine as it had already undergone in her reign, there would soon be no means to keep the roof on the cathedral building. We do not know that this remonstrance produced much effect, for the cathedral and its revenues underwent many losses after this. The ravages of the Parliamentarians, however, which were the most serious, have been alluded to elsewhere. It appears from "the old Valor printed 1685," which was quoted by Browne Willis in his "Survey of the Cathedrals" of 1742, that some dioceses about Calais used once to belong to Winchester. We learn also from Browne Willis that in his time the see of Winchester contained "the whole County of Southampton, with the Isle of Wight, and one parish in Wiltshire, viz. Wiltesbury: It has also all Surrey, except 11 churches in Croyden Deanry which are peculiars of the See of Canterbury. Here are two Archdeacons, viz. 1. Winchester, valued at 61l. 15s. 2d. for First-Fruits, which has all the Deanries in the County of Southampton and the Isle of Wight. 2. Surrey, which has all the Deanries in the County of Surrey, the corps of which is the Rectory of Farnham; and it is rated for First-Fruits at 91l. 3s. 6d." The subsequent history of the see is mainly bound up with political and theological questions which need not be touched on here. It may, however, be mentioned that the Ecclesiastical Commission of 1836-7 re-adjusted the boundaries of the diocese; while in 1846 there were transferred to London the following districts:--Battersea, Bermondsey, Camberwell, Clapham, Graveney, Lambeth, Merton, Rotherhithe, Southwark, Streatham, Tooting, and Wandsworth. This re-arrangement still left Winchester the largest rural diocese in England. CHAPTER V THE BISHOPS OF WINCHESTER Winchester boasts a very long list of bishops as compared with many of our English cathedrals, but the details about a great number of them are most scanty. The exact year from which the history of the diocese should be dated is not certain, but it is to be placed somewhere during the reign of Ine over the West Saxons. Under Bishop Eleutherius, to whom Hedda succeeded, the kingdom of Wessex was still but a single diocese. The removal of the see from Dorchester to Winchester was rendered necessary by the extension of the Mercian rule, which made the former town unsuitable for a West Saxon see. The date of the change, simultaneous with the moving of the bones of S. Birinus, is fixed by Rudborne at 683, but, according to recent authorities, it would appear to be earlier. #Hedda# (? 679-705) was, at any rate, the first bishop of Winchester, properly speaking; though he was the fourth successor to S. Birinus. As his most recent biographer says, Hedda "was a man of much personal holiness and was zealous in the discharge of his episcopal duties.... He is reckoned a saint, his day being 30 July. Many miracles were worked at his tomb." He figures on the reredos as restored in accordance with the original design. #Daniel# (705-744) had the misfortune to see his diocese considerably docked in order to form the see of Sherbourne. He resigned, by reason of loss of eyesight, in 744. According to some accounts, Ethelwulf, afterwards king of Wessex, and father of Alfred, succeeded him; but this story certainly lacks proof, though Ethelwulf seems to have been educated at Winchester. #Hunferth# or Humfredus (744-754), like most of the immediately succeeding bishops, has his place of interment at Winchester recorded by John of Exeter. #Cyneheard# became Bishop of Winchester in 754. His successors during the next century were #Aethelheard#, #Ecbald# (_circ._ 790); #Dudda# (793); #Cyneberht# (_circ._ 799); #Almund# or Ealhmund (_circ._ 803); #Wigthegen# (_circ._ 824); #Hereferth# (? 829-833); #Edmund# (833); and #Helmstan#. Of none of these do we know much, and their dates cannot be assigned with any certainty. With #S. Swithun# (852-862), who was first prior and afterwards bishop, we come upon one of the names especially connected with the history of the church. It is, however, to be feared that it is not so much because of his fame in church-building and his acts of humanity that he will be remembered as for the popular superstition which asserts that the weather for forty days after his feast-day on July 15 is dry or rainy according to its state on that day. The legend is said to be based on the fact that the removal of his body from "a vile and unworthy place where his grave might be trampled upon by every passenger and received the droppings from the eaves" to the golden shrine in the cathedral was delayed by a long continuance of wet weather. Similar legends to explain a wet summer are found elsewhere in Europe. "The saint was translated," says Rudborne, "in the 110th year of his rest. And for his glory, so great was the concourse of people and so numerous and frequent the miracles that the like was never witnessed in England." A figure representing S. Swithun seems once to have stood in a niche at the apex of the gable of the west front. He was succeeded by #Alhferth# or Ealhfrith (863-871), translated to Canterbury; #Tunbriht# or Dunbert, whose name was Latinised as Tunbertus (871-879); #Denewulf# (879-909), whom a singularly incredible legend asserts to have been the swineherd in whose cottage Alfred allowed his hostess's cakes to burn; #Frithstan# (909-931); #Byrnstan# (931-934); #Aelfheah# or Elphege (934-951); #Aelfsige# (951-958), who was nominated to Canterbury, but died in the snow while crossing the Alps on his way to Rome for his pall--the only fact which is really known about him; and #Brithelm# (958-963). Next came "the holy #Athelwold#, a great builder of churches and of various other works, both when he was abbot and after when he became bishop of Winchester" (Wolstan). He seems to have moved the bodies of Swithun and other saints to a more suitable resting-place than they had hitherto enjoyed. Of Athelwold's building operations at Winchester Wolstan's account is quoted on page 6. He held the see of Winchester for twenty-one years (963-984), and he was by birth a native of the town. It was said of him that he was "terrible as a lion" to the rebellious, but "gentler than a dove" to the meek. #Elphege# or Aelfheah (984-1005), his successor, to whom Wolstan's account of Athelwold is addressed, was martyred in 1012 by the Danes while Archbishop of Canterbury, where his tomb subsequently received great honours. Aelfheah's great work was spent in the conversion of the "Northmen," or Danish invaders of England. #Cenwulf# or Kenulf (1005-1006) is allowed three years by Rudborne, but apparently wrongly; another #Athelwold# or Ethelwold (1006-1015), and #Aelfsige# (1015-1032) are not of great importance. #Aelfwine# or Alwyn (1032-1037), called by Anglo-Saxon chroniclers "the king's priest," seems to have been a monk of S. Swithun's monastery and also chaplain to Cnut before he was elevated to Winchester. The legend which makes him the lover of Emma, widow of Aethelred and Cnut, and mother of Edward the Confessor, has been declared unhistorical; but, at any rate, the story of her ordeal, when she walked blindfold and barefoot over nine red-hot plough-shares, was once celebrated. It is a curious coincidence that the bones of queen and bishop were deposited by Bishop Fox in the same chest, Aelfwine's remains being exhumed from his grave to the south of the high altar to be placed in a leaden sarcophagus above the crypt-door. #Stigand# (1047-1069) was chiefly remarkable, it appears, for his avarice, especially shown in his retention of Winchester after his election to Canterbury. He received the pall in 1058 from the "anti-Pope" Benedict X., so that he was never regarded as the rightful possessor of the dignities he enjoyed, the Normans refusing to recognise him except as bishop of Winchester. His wealth attracted the attention of William the Conqueror, and by a Council held at Winchester after Easter 1070, Stigand was deposed. Some reports state that he was cast into prison, where he died of voluntary starvation; and that on his body was found a key of a casket containing the clue to great hidden treasures, which the king appropriated, giving from them, says Rudborne, a great silver cross with two images; but the cross is generally called Stigand's. He was buried in a leaden sarcophagus to the south of the high altar. #Walkelin# (1070-1098) was related by blood to the Conqueror, and was brother of Simeon, prior of Winchester and afterwards abbot of Ely. He was the first of the Norman bishops, and signalised his incumbency by rebuilding the cathedral from its very foundations, as the Norman ecclesiastics frequently did. He figures more largely in the architectural history of the cathedral than in its historical records, and his work has been described elsewhere. Walkelin was buried in the nave before the rood-loft, where stood the great silver cross. #William Giffard# (1100-1129) succeeded after an interregnum such as occurred in many sees during the reign of William Rufus. He founded S. Mary Overy, now S. Saviour's, Southwark, as well as the bishop's residence in the same district. Before his death he became a monk. #Henry de Blois# (1129-1171) was grandson of the Conqueror and younger brother of Stephen, afterwards King of England. Although an ecclesiastic from his youth, he was by no means a man of peace or a mere scholar and theologian; _Vir animosus et audax_, says Giraldus. During his prelacy he influenced greatly the secular history of his time. In the quarrel between Matilda and Stephen, Henry at first recognised Matilda, but subsequently, as the foremost power in the church and a strong partisan of his brother, he lent his weight against the Empress, and, with the aid of Roger of Salisbury and other bishops, gained the crown for Stephen. On Whitsunday 1162 Henry de Blois consecrated Thomas à Becket as archbishop, and it is said that when King Henry visited him just before his death he was reproved by the bishop for his murder of Becket. Henry de Blois was certainly a militant churchman; but in an age not conspicuous for such virtues, we are told, his private life was pure, and he laboured steadfastly for the good of his diocese. The Winchester annalist says of him, "Never was man more chaste and prudent, more compassionate, or more earnest in transacting ecclesiastical matters, or in beautifying churches." His great foundation was the still existing hospital of St Cross. #Richard Toclive# (1174-1188) was elected by the monks after the see had been vacant three years. He was strongly against Becket, having even been excommunicated by him; yet after the archbishop was murdered and canonised he dedicated to him several new churches at Portsmouth, Newport, and elsewhere. He founded a small hospital at Winchester dedicated to S. Mary Magdalene, which by the time of Charles II. had become a ruin, and was pulled down in 1788. Its Norman doorway may be seen in the Roman Catholic chapel in S. Peter's Street. #Godfrey de Lucy# (1189-1204) was son of Richard de Lucy, Grand Justiciary of England, and a great benefactor to the Priory of Lesnes in Kent, founded by his father. De Lucy's work at Winchester is a fine specimen of Early English architecture, and consists of what is known as the retro-choir, where he was buried in accordance with the practice of interring a founder amid his work. The large slab of grey marble without inscription which marks his grave was, Willis tells us, "by a slight confusion of tradition" pointed out by former vergers as the tomb of King Lucius. #Peter de la Roche# or de Rupibus (1204-1238) sprang from a knightly family in Poitou, and was consecrated bishop of Winton at Rome in 1205. He was a hot and unscrupulous partisan of King John, in spite of the latter's scornful treatment of the church, and in 1214, when John had submitted to Innocent III., Peter was made Grand Justiciary of England, much against the wish of the English nobles. He became guardian of the young Henry III., coming often into conflict with Henry de Burgh. Peter was in many ways a type of the Norman ecclesiastic so hated by the people, but, according to Matthew Paris, he fought bravely in the Holy Land, whither he led a body of Crusaders in 1226. He founded the Domus Dei at Portsmouth, some portions of which still exist in the "Garrison Chapel"; and also the monastery at Selborne, described by Gilbert White. He died at Farnham Castle in June 1238. #William de Raleigh# (1244-1249) came from the see of Norwich to that of Winchester. He was elected by the monks in 1238, but, as explained elsewhere, it was six years before he gained possession, though confirmed in his office by the Pope. He retired to France, then under the rule of Louis IX., until Henry at length gave way. Raleigh, however, did not live to enjoy his honours long, dying during a stay at Tours in 1249. #Ethelmar# or Aymer de Valence (1250-1261), who succeeded him, was half-brother of Henry III., being son of the Count of La Marche, who married John's widow. As a native of Poitou, his appointment was as unpopular as that of de Roches, and, moreover, he is said to have been only an acolyte when Henry forced the monks to accept him as their bishop. At first he was only styled "bishop-elect" of Winchester, and he was not consecrated until Ascension Day 1260. Even before his appointment we are told that his revenues exceeded those of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was permitted to retain them. His tyranny and greed provoked the Oxford Parliament in 1258 to expel him from the kingdom and he fled to France, dying three years later in Paris while on his return from Rome to England; for he had induced the Pope to espouse his cause and consecrate him. #John Of Exeter# or John Gervase (1265-1268) was appointed by the Pope on the death of Aymer, in preference to two rivals whose election was disputed. He is accused of having purchased his elevation. He assisted the barons in the Civil War, and after Simon de Montfort's failure was suspended and cited to appear at Rome, where he died. #Nicholas of Ely# (1268-1280) had been lord chancellor and high treasurer before he obtained Winchester. On his death he was buried at Waverley Abbey, but an inscription on the wall of the south choir aisle marks where his heart was interred in his cathedral. #John de Pontissara#, Pontoise, or Sawbridge (1282-1304), nominated by the Pope against the will of Edward I., at length made his peace by paying a fine of 2000 marks and giving his manor of Swainstone, Isle of Wight, to the king. He built a college of S. Elizabeth of Hungary at Winchester. He had been Chancellor of Oxford University, though at the time of his election he was Professor of Civil Law at Modena. #Henry Woodlock# (1305-1316), former prior of S. Swithun's monastery, who performed the coronation of Edward II.; #John Sandale# (1316-1319); #Reginald Asser# (1320-1323); #John Stratford# (1323-1333), whose election was opposed by the king, but who in the next reign was translated to Canterbury--are not particularly noticeable. #Adam Orleton# or de Orlton (1333-1345) was translated hither from Worcester by the Pope against the king's wishes. He has the most unenviable notoriety of having been the bishop of Hereford who instigated the brutal murder of Edward II. on September 21, 1327. He had been accused of high treason and deprived of Hereford, but was restored thereto by the barons. Edward III. apparently at length received him into favour; but Orleton went blind some years before his death. He is buried in the Chapel of the Guardian Angels. #William Edingdon# (1346-1366), though chiefly notable for his architectural work at Winchester, was treasurer of England in 1350 and chancellor seven years later. He might, had he wished it, have become Archbishop of Canterbury, but preferred Winchester. He began the great remodelling of the nave, and, dying before much of the work was done, left certain property, as appears from his will, for carrying on the work; though it is also said that a claim was made against his executors with regard to the dilapidations of the see. His general reputation was, as a biographer says, "that he loved the king's advantage more than that of the community." He founded a convent of "Bonhommes" at his native village of Edingdon, in Wiltshire, where the church building, or rather rebuilding, is due chiefly to him. He was buried in his own chantry in the cathedral. His "monkish epitaph," as Warner calls it, runs thus: Edyndon natus Wilhelmus hic est tumulatus Praesul praegratus, in Wintonia cathedratus. Qui pertransitis, ejus memorare velitis. Providus et mitis ausit cum mille peritis. Pervigil Anglorum fuit adjutor populorum. Dulcis egenorum pater et protector eorum. MC tribus junctum post L.X.V. sit I punctum Octava Sanctum notat hunc Octobris inunctum. #William of Wykeham# (1367-1404), whose name has become so identified with Winchester Cathedral and College, was probably a native of the village of Wykeham, near Litchfield. Born in 1324, after education at Winchester and Oxford he was in 1346 presented to the king, Edward III., at the age of twenty-three, "with no other advantages than his skill in architecture" and "the courtly attribute of a courtly person." In the course of the next twenty-one years he rose rapidly, filling various offices until he became Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor of England. His first recorded appointment is to the clerkship of all the king's works near Windsor, and in the same year he was surveyor of the new buildings there, including the round tower and the eastern ward of the Castle and a College to the west for the Order of the Garter, occupying the site of the ancient Domus Regis, close to the present S. George's Chapel. On one of the towers the inscription _This made Wykeham_ may or may not be meant to convey a double meaning, but it is certainly true that his architectural successes furthered his fortunes. In 1357 he received the tonsure, and in 1360 was made Dean of S. Martin's Le Grand, Archdeacon of Lincoln, Northampton, and Buckingham, and Provost of Wells. In 1361 he commenced Queenborough Castle on the island of Sheppey; this important edifice, covering over three acres of ground, was demolished about 1650. The castles of Winchester, Porchester, Wolvesey, Ledes, and Dover, with many others, are believed to have been either entirely rebuilt, or at least enlarged, by him. He was only ordained priest five years before his elevation to Winchester. In 1394 he undertook the great reformation of the cathedral which is dealt with in another part of this book. New College (Sainte Mary of Wynchestre), Oxford, opened by Wykeham on April 14, 1386, effected almost as great a revolution in university education as his famous college at Winchester did for the training of boys. As Dr Ingram has pointed out, the very title of "New" College which has clung to it shows how completely a new collegiate system was established by its foundation, which served as a model for future endowments. His well-known motto--chosen when his growing dignity made it necessary for him to possess armorial bearings--"Manners Makyth Man" has generally been taken to mean that virtue alone is true nobility; Lord Campbell, however, would have us rather interpret "manners" as the studied etiquette of courts and the polished courtesy which Lord Chesterfield held so important a factor in success. Willis styles it "a somewhat radical sentiment at the time." In his own day the secular arts Wykeham practised did not meet with universal approval, for Wiclif alludes to him when he observes, "They wullen not present a clerk able of God's word and holy ensample, but a kitchen clerk, or a penny clerk, or one wise in building castles and other worldly doings." But despite this objection, the whole of Wykeham's biographers, contemporary or posthumous, agree in praising him as highly as Fuller, who says that his "benefaction to learning is not to be paralleled by any English subject in all particulars," and his great innovation, whereby elementary education was taken from the hands of the monks and, as in his own college, established upon an entirely different plan, would alone stamp him as one whose foresight was far beyond his own times. He influenced the nation in a way not easy to over-estimate, inasmuch as he originated, or at least carried into execution, the idea of the great public school, as Englishmen understand it, and, by the building of Winchester College, founded the institution he had long meditated in a way worthy of his design. Previously to the actual construction of the college, he had maintained in temporary shelters numbers of poor students. On the death of the Black Prince, whose fortunes he had vigorously espoused, and the assumption of power by John of Gaunt, Wykeham was impeached on the charge of embezzling the royal revenues, accepting bribes, and the like; and the king laid hands on the temporalities of his see. But almost the last act of Edward III. was to restore what he had seized to the bishop, under certain conditions which show the great wealth of the latter. Milman, in his "Latin Christianity," does full justice to the "splendid, munificent prelate, blameless in character," who devoted his vast riches to the promotion of learning, and says that, though his endeavour to maintain the hierarchical power over humanity was bitterly opposed by Wiclif, "the religious of England may well be proud of both." Wykeham was eighty years of age when he died, and his body lies in the chantry erected by his orders on the south side of the nave. #Henry of Beaufort# (1405-1447), who followed Wykeham in the bishopric, was the second son of John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford, and uncle of Henry V. In 1398, at the early age of twenty-one, he was made bishop of Lincoln, and in 1404 was translated to Winchester. During the reign of Henry V. he thrice filled the office of chancellor. In 1417, when ostensibly on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he was present at the Council of Constance which was then considering the affairs of the church. At this time he was offered the cardinal's hat by Martin V. and appointed papal legate, but the bestowal of this dignity on him was resented by the English monarch, who commanded him to surrender his office at Winchester, which he declared was forfeited by his becoming a cardinal. The dispute, however, was arranged, and "the haughty cardinal, more like a soldier than a man of the church," formally received his hat at Calais in 1426. In the following year he led a crusade against the followers of Huss in Bohemia, where, during the retreat of the great army from Mies, he alone at the head of a band of English crusaders endeavoured, but in vain, to arrest the utter rout. The death of Henry V. brought about a fierce rivalry between the two great uncles, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the cardinal bishop of Winchester, lasting until the death of the former, which only occurred six weeks before that of Beaufort himself. During the half-century of his rule at Winchester he rebuilt St Cross and founded the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty." Shakespeare has made Beaufort a prominent figure in Parts I. and II. of "Henry VI.," but, for dramatic reasons, perhaps, he is painted very much blacker than he deserved. That he was a militant ecclesiastic, scheming and unscrupulous, is no doubt true; but he was a statesman and possessed firmness of purpose, fertility of resource, and confidence in those whom he selected to carry out his designs. His wealth was very great, for he was able to lend his nephew the king £20,000, besides spending an enormous amount in charities, including £400,000 devoted to the inmates of London prisons. #William of Waynfleete# (1447-1486), a student in Wykeham's colleges at Winchester and Oxford, was first master of Winchester College, then made provost of Eton in 1443, and in 1447 succeeded Beaufort in the bishopric of Winchester. From 1449 to 1459, like his predecessor, he held the chancellor's seal, and during the Wars of the Roses was a firm adherent of Henry VI. His death took place in 1486. He founded Magdalen College, Oxford, and possibly influenced Henry in his endowment of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton. Waynfleete appears to have been a man of great piety and learning, and, as Milman observes, his actions, in advancing non-monastic institutions, reveal a sagacious fore-knowledge of the coming changes in the temporal power of the church, and were planned to maintain its supremacy in ways better adapted to the new spirit which soon after his death caused the downfall of the religious houses. The effigy of this bishop, in his chantry in the retro-choir, has been restored. #Peter Courtenay# (1486-1492) was translated from Exeter to Winchester, but at neither see has he left any mark on the history, the architectural work of his period being due chiefly to his priors. #Thomas Langton# (1493-1500), translated hither from Salisbury, where he was active against the adherents of Wiclif, was chosen in 1500 to occupy the see of Canterbury, but he died of the plague before his translation, and was buried in his chantry to the south of the Lady Chapel. He seems to have been enthusiastic in the cause of education, since he is said to have himself superintended the teaching of boys in his town. #Richard Fox# (1500-1528) was bishop successively of Exeter, Bath and Wells, and Durham before he was appointed to Winchester. Great confidence was reposed in him by Henry VII., who chose him as godfather of the future Henry VIII. To Fox is attributed the introduction of Wolsey to the king. Yet this appears to have failed to win him the cardinal's gratitude, for, according to Fuller: "All thought Bishop Fox to die too soon, only one excepted who conceived him to live too long, Thomas Wolsey, who gaped for his bishopric." With Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, Fox was joint-founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the pelican in her piety, which appears on the college arms, being borne by the bishop. His fine chantry and the reconstruction of the choir aisles bear witness to his interest in the fabric of his cathedral, and he is otherwise noted for the assistance he gave to various foundations. [Illustration: CARVING ON CHOIR STALL IN LADY CHAPEL--BISHOP FOX'S WORK. (From a Drawing by H.P. Clifford.)] #Thomas Wolsey# (1529-1530) at length gained the coveted see, which he held _in commendam_ with the archbishopric of York, but only for one year. #Stephen Gardiner# (1531-1555), another of the more famous prelates who have held this see, is said to have been the illegitimate son of Bishop Lionel Woodville of Salisbury, brother-in-law of Edward IV. Fuller, in one of his favourite conceits, says that Gardiner retained in his wit and quick apprehension the sharpness of the air at his birthplace of Bury St Edmunds. In 1529 he became archdeacon of Norwich, and, owing to his services to Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII., was appointed to Winchester. On the whole, he managed to keep on good terms with the king; but his famous six articles in support of the Real Presence sent so many to the stake that the title of "the bloody statute" has clung to them. During the reign of Edward VI. he was kept prisoner in the Tower, and in 1550 was deprived of his bishopric, which was restored to him on the accession of Mary, whom he crowned at Westminster. He performed also the marriage service of Mary and Philip of Spain, mentioned on page 13. "His malice," says Fuller, "was like what is commonly said of white powder which surely discharged the bullet yet made no report, being secret in all his acts of cruelty. This made him often chide Bonner, calling him 'ass,' though not so much for killing poor people as for not doing it more cunningly." Cruel and vengeful as he was, it is yet possible that he has been rather unjustly accused of personal delight in his victims' sufferings; but, while the persecutions under Mary continue to be the worst chapter of English church history, the "hammer of heretics," as he was called, will always continue to be execrated. On his death-bed at Westminster in 1555 he is reported to have said: "I have sinned with Peter, but I have not wept with him." It has indeed been held that in his latter days he was half a Protestant at heart, though this is difficult to establish. There is preserved a rather amusing appeal of Gardiner to the Privy Council, dating from 1547. He had intended to hold in Southwark a solemn dirge and mass in memory of Henry VIII., and writes to complain that the players who flourished in the neighbourhood say that they will also have "a solemne playe to trye who shal have most resorte, they in game, or I in earnest." During Gardiner's imprisonment by Edward VI., #John Poynet#, once Cranmer's chaplain, held his see. As the author of "On Politique Power" (1558), where he pleads that "it is lawful to kill a tyrant," and uses some very immoderate language, Poynet may be remembered, but as an ecclesiastic he has left only a discreditable record in his short term of office. He died in 1556 in Germany, whither he had retired on the Roman Catholic revival. #John White# (1556-1559), who succeeded Gardiner, was deposed by Queen Elizabeth. He was born at Farnham, and educated at Winchester. Though personally he appears to have been pious, during his tenure of the see four burnings of religious opponents took place in the diocese. #Richard Horne# (1560-1580) was a very vigorous supporter of the reformed religion, and suffered consequently under Mary. He appears to have been very fanatical against the use of vestments, pictures, and ornaments of all kinds. He may have pulled down the monastic buildings at Winchester, less from a mistaken zeal than from motives of economy; but his reputation in this respect is very bad. #John Watson# (1580-1583), formerly a Doctor of Medicine, only held the see for three years. #Thomas Cooper# (1583-1594) was ordained on the accession of Elizabeth, his Protestancy hindering him from taking holy orders under Mary. His preaching abilities rapidly secured his promotion to the see of Lincoln in 1570, and Winchester thirteen years later. He was buried in the choir, but his monument has disappeared. He engaged in controversies both with the "recusants" and with the Puritans. #William Wickham# (1594-1595), who also came from Lincoln to Winchester, only held the see for ten weeks. #William Day# (1595-1596), brother-in-law of the preceding, was provost of Eton for no less than thirty-four years, but he died eight months after his elevation to Winchester. #Thomas Bilson# (1597-1616), though called by Anthony à Wood "as reverend and learned a prelate as England ever afforded," and the author of several theological works, has left little behind him at Winchester. #James Montagu# (1616-1618) may also be briefly dismissed. Bilson's "On the Perpetual Government of Christ's Church" and Montagu's Latin translation of the writings of James I. can hardly be said to have made them famous. Montagu's tomb is in Bath Abbey. #Lancelot Andrewes# (1619-1626) is the most celebrated of the post-Reformation bishops who have held the see. He was made Bishop of Chichester in 1605, Bishop of Ely in 1609, and moved to Winchester nine years later. As a pious and austere man, a powerful preacher (an "angel in the pulpit," he was called), a scholar versed in patristic literature, and a polemical writer, he is well known. Milton's elegy suffices to prove the great respect and admiration which he inspired in his contemporaries, and he held a considerable influence over James I.; but his "Manual of Devotion" is the only volume of all his writings that can fairly be said to have become a classic in any sense of the word. Andrewes died at Winchester House, Southwark, on September 11, 1626; and his tomb is at S. Saviour's, Southwark, in the Lady Chapel, whither it was moved on the destruction of the chapel to the east of the building, where it was originally placed. #Richard Neile# (1627-1631), son of a tallow-chandler, though of good descent, became Bishop of Rochester 1608, Lichfield and Coventry 1610, Durham 1617, Winchester 1627, and Archbishop of York 1631. He was censured by the House of Commons, together with Archbishop Laud, as "inclined to Arminianism and favouring Popish doctrines and ceremonies." #Walter Curle# (1632-1650), who came next, was deprived of his see during the Civil War. Like Neile, he was a follower of Laud. He is best remembered in the Winchester of to-day for his cutting of the passage known as the "slype." #Brian Duppa# (1660-1662), chaplain to Charles I. and tutor to his sons, was appointed to Chichester in 1638, having previously been dean at Oxford. In 1641 he was translated to Salisbury, but during the Commonwealth he retired to Richmond, where he lived in solitude until the Restoration, when he obtained the see of Winchester. An allusion to him during his first year here may be found in Pepys, who, in his diary for October 4, 1660, says: "I and Lieut. Lambert to Westminster, where we saw Dr Frewen translated to the Archbishoprick of York. Here I saw the Bishops of Winchester, Bangor, Rochester, Bath and Wells, and Salisbury, all in their habits, in King Henry VII.'s chapel. But, Lord! at their going out how people did most of them look upon them as strange creatures, and few with any kind of love or respect." Duppa was, however, we are informed, "a man of such exemplary piety, lively conversation, and excess of good nature, that when Charles I. was in prison at Carisbrooke Castle he thought himself happy in the company of so good a man." He died in 1662 at Richmond (where an almshouse, founded by him, bears over its gate the inscription: _I will pay my vow which I made to God in my trouble_) and was buried at Westminster Abbey in Abbot Islip's chapel, where a tablet records his adherence to his two kings. #George Morley# (1662-1684), a constant supporter of Charles I., was much favoured by him until his death on the scaffold. From this point he lived in exile until the Restoration, when he was created Bishop of Worcester in 1660, and was chosen to be one of the revisers of the liturgy. In 1662 he succeeded Duppa at Winchester. He restored Farnham Castle, the palace of the bishops, at a cost of £8000; obtained Winchester House, Chelsea, for the see; and founded the "College for Widows of the Clergy" near the close at Winchester. He died at Farnham Castle in 1684. Bishop Morley was an acquaintance of Isaak Walton the angler, whose guest he was after Parliament had expelled him from his see. The cathedral library owes its being to a bequest from Morley to "the dean and chapter and their successors." #Peter Mews# (1684-1706), bishop of Bath and Wells in 1672, took part personally in the Civil War, attaining the rank of captain, and followed Charles II. to Flanders in 1648. Even long after his ordination he retained his martial spirit, for as bishop of Winchester he personally took part in the battle of Sedgmoor against the followers of Monmouth and received a wound. He died in 1706, and was buried in the cathedral. #Jonathan Trelawney#, Baronet (1707-1721), was one of the famous seven bishops who underwent trial in the reign of James II. He was before his occupancy of the see of Winchester, bishop of Bristol and of Exeter. During his episcopacy, the cathedral received some questionable adornments, including the "Grecian" urns in the niches of the reredos, now fortunately removed. #Charles Trimnell# (1721-1723) was a very energetic Whig and a strong opponent of the once famous Sacheverell. He only spent two years at Winchester, his term being cut short by death. #Richard Willis# (1723-1734) was bishop successively of Gloucester, Salisbury, and Winchester, but he has left little by which he may be remembered. #Benjamin Hoadley# (1734-1761) was "a zealous partisan of religious liberty," and a strenuous Low Churchman. He occupied in turn the bishoprics of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester. During his tenure of the first-named see he started the famous Bangorian Controversy by the publication of a tract and a sermon in which he denied the existence of a _visible_ Church of Christ in which "any one more than another has authority either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or to impose a sense upon the old ones, or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another master in matters relating purely to conscience or salvation." As a result of the heated discussion of the matter in Convocation, that body was virtually suspended for a century and a half. Pope ridicules Hoadley for his verbose eloquence, speaking of "Hoadley with his periods of a mile." He was, however, a great favourite of George I., whose private chaplain he became on that king's accession; and it was under royal protection that he published the works which gave rise to the great controversy. #John Thomas# (1761-1781) was tutor to George III. He was called by his successor "a man of most amiable character and a polite scholar"; and it is difficult to say much more about him. #Hon. Brownlow North# (1781-1826) was half-brother of Lord North, to whom he owed a rapid preferment. In 1771, when he was thirty years of age, he was made bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; in 1774, bishop of Worcester. At Winchester he spent over £6000 on Farnham Castle, and during his time £40,000 was devoted to the restoration of the cathedral, but the result cannot be commended. #George Pretyman Tomline#, Baronet (1820-1827), had a distinguished university career and was the author of several theological works. #Charles Sumner# (1827-1869) came to Winchester after a year at Llandaff. He was a vigorous supporter of the Evangelical party. During his term of office the boundaries of his see were re-adjusted and contracted. #Samuel Wilberforce# (1869-1873), third son of the celebrated abolitionist, William Wilberforce, was translated to Winchester from Oxford, where for twenty-five years he was bishop. His record at Winchester is neither so long nor so important as at Oxford, where he successfully passed through the troubles of the Tractarian movement. His death was occasioned by a fall when he was out riding with Lord Granville. Since the death of Bishop Wilberforce the see has been occupied by three bishops whose names alone need be given here, for their records will be fresh in the memories of all:-- #Edward Harold Brown# (1873-1890), who came from Ely to Winchester; #Antony Wilson Thorold# (1890-1895), whose tomb lies outside the cathedral, close to the new memorial south window of the Lady Chapel; #Randall Thomas Davidson# (1895), the present occupant of the see. [Illustration: DETAILS OF THE FONT (also see THE NORMAN FONT in Chapter III).] CHAPTER VI OTHER INSTITUTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE CATHEDRAL It is hardly possible to conclude an account of Winchester Cathedral without briefly alluding to several places in the immediate neighbourhood which are more or less intimately connected with the church and its benefactors. Only four buildings, however, call for any detailed description--Wolvesey Castle, the College, Hyde Abbey, and St Cross. #Wolvesey#, which is said to mean Wolf's Island, is quite close to the east end of the cathedral. It contained at one time a regular residence of the bishops of Winchester, the greater part of which was erected by Henry de Blois. The remains of this castle are very ruinous, though the outer walls and the exterior of the keep are in good condition still. Woodward pointed out traces of a refectory with a Norman arch and window. The building more than once underwent attacks, the earliest being during the struggle between Stephen and Matilda, in which Henry de Blois took a vigorous part. Finally, in 1646, Cromwell practically destroyed it, after it had held out against him in the Royalist cause. It served as the residence of many well-known characters in history, and among its bishops Cardinal Beaufort died there. Mary slept at Wolvesey Castle in 1554, before her marriage at Winchester. Bishop Morley commenced building a modern house close by the old site, and subsequent bishops completed it. Only the middle portion of this, with the Tudor chapel, now remains, the southern end having been pulled down by Bishop Brownlow North. The ruins of the castle can be seen from the top of the cathedral tower. On Wykeham's charter for the incorporation of his new foundation, "Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre," is the date October 20, 1382; but it seems that long before this date and up to the actual completion of the #College# buildings, the bishop superintended the education of the boys for whom his institution was founded, housing them in temporary structures in the meantime--possibly in S. John's parish, on S. Giles' Hill, it has been suggested. Before Wykeham's time, and indeed before the Conquest, it appears that the monks of S. Swithun's institution had a school at Winchester, at which no less celebrated a pupil than Alfred the Great was brought up. We have already touched on the subject of Wykeham's ideas on education, and the change which he brought about by his colleges at Winchester and Oxford, and it is not necessary to go into the subject again. The College buildings lie beyond the southern limits of the cathedral close, on the south side of the narrow College Street, being entered by a gateway with an ancient statue of the Virgin in the niche over it. This door leads into the quadrangle, about which are ranged various parts of the college. A further arch under the tower in this court leads to a larger quadrangle, in which are the Chapel and the refectory or Hall, a room 63 feet by 30, with a groined oak roof and a dais at one end for the Warden and Fellows; while at the other is the audit room, which has some fifteenth-century tapestry and an iron-bound chest once belonging to William of Wykeham. Beneath the Hall is "Seventh Chamber," an early schoolroom. Beyond are cloisters and more buildings, and then the meadows which run down to the Itchen. The niches over the second gateway contain figures of the Virgin, the Angel Gabriel, and William of Wykeham; while the room below them is known as the election chamber, where the annual election of scholars took place. In the inner quadrangle the carvings over the windows should be noticed. "Over the hall and kitchen entrance are the psaltery and bagpipe; over kitchen window, Excess, a head vomiting; opposite a Bursar as Frugality, with his iron-bound money-chest; over the Masters' windows are the Pedagogue, the Listless Scholar, etc." In the Chapel, which is 93 feet long by 30 wide and 57 high, the Perpendicular windows should be noticed, and in particular, the large east window. The glass is declared by Mr Winston to be, with the exception of a few pieces, modern, dating from 1824, while the "Jesse" window is "a very good copy of the old design." In the vault Wykeham's wooden fan-tracery remains, but there has been much change in the fittings of the chapel. The old screen has gone, and the reredos is a restoration; the original stalls were removed as early as 1681. The tower had to be rebuilt in 1863, though the old stonework of 1470 was used where possible. At the north-east end are the sacristy and muniment room, in which the college charters, etc., are kept. Among the MSS., etc., kept here are certain Anglo-Saxon documents and charters of Privileges from Richard II. to Charles II.; a table of Wykeham's domestic expenses; a thirteenth century Vulgate in manuscript; a "Briefe description of the Newe Founde Lande of Virginia," by Sir Walter Raleigh; and a pedigree of Henry VI., tracing his descent from Adam. The chief relic of Wykeham is a gold ring with a large sapphire in it. The Cloisters are 132 feet in length on each side, and the stone roofing is supported by rafters of Irish oak. The ground enclosed by the Cloisters was once used for the burial of the Fellows. Among the names cut in the walls may be seen the name of "Thos. Ken, 1646." In the square formed by the cloisters is the Chantry Chapel, built in 1420, converted into the library after Edward VI. had forbidden its use as a chapel, and now used once more as a chapel for the junior scholars. A portrait of Wykeham (the oldest on record) is shown in the east window, the glass of which dates from 1470, and comes from Warden Thurbern's chantry in the larger chapel. Behind the hall is "School," a detached building erected in 1687 by the Warden, Nicholas. It is now used for glee-club concerts and like events. The western wall has on it the often-quoted inscription: _Aut Disce Aut Discede Manet Sors Tertia Cædi_. Modern additions to the college buildings include a library in memory of Bishop Moberly, formerly head-master; a gymnasium, fives courts and a racquet court, and a new infirmary. One of the most curious properties of the College is the old painting (probably sixteenth century) of the "Trusty Servant," the words being ascribed to Johnson, the head-master in 1560-1571. [Illustration: WINCHESTER COLLEGE "SCHOOL".] [Illustration: WINCHESTER COLLEGE: THE OUTER GATEWAY] [Illustration: WINCHESTER COLLEGE: CHANTRY CHAPEL.] [Illustration: INSCRIPTION ON WESTERN WALL OF "SCHOOL," WINCHESTER COLLEGE.] [Illustration: THE TRUSTY SERVANT. A trusty servant's portrait would you see, This emblematic figure well survey; The porker's snout--not nice in diet shows; The padlock shut--no secrets he'll disclose; Patient the ass--his master's wrath to bear; Swiftness in errand--the stag's feet declare; Loaded his left hand--apt to labour saith; The vest--his neatness; open hand--his faith; Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm-- Himself and master he'll protect from harm.] [Illustration: ST CROSS FROM THE SOUTH. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The remains of #Hyde Abbey# lie considerably to the north of the cathedral, outside the old North Gate of the city, where it was erected during the bishopric of William Giffard by Henry I. The buildings were occupied in 1110 A.D. by the monks who were forced to leave Alfred's "New Minster," pulled down because of its too close neighbourhood to the cathedral. Though the foundations of the abbey still exist, little is left of the upper part except an arched gateway with hood-mouldings and two royal corbel-heads. This gateway is in some walls that apparently were once part of the out-buildings of the abbey. The body of Alfred the Great was brought hither in 1110, and must still be here, though all traces of the tomb have now vanished utterly. The institution, which was a very wealthy one, was not always on good terms with the cathedral authorities, of whom it was, of course, independent. A record is kept of a dispute between Cardinal Beaufort and the Abbot of Hyde. In the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. it was impossible that the riches of Hyde Abbey could escape, and in 1538 pillage and violation overtook it. The Royal Commissioners wrote that they intended "to sweep away all the rotten bones that be called relices, which we may not omit, lest it should be thought that we came more for the treasure than for avoiding the abominations of idolatry." Probably Thomas Cromwell, to whom they wrote, understood how far the two motives influenced them and the king. The monastic buildings did not altogether disappear until close on the end of last century, when the materials were devoted to other purposes. [Illustration: ST CROSS FROM THE QUADRANGLE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The #Hospital of St Cross#, the oldest almshouse in England, lies one mile to the south of the town on the Southampton Road, and may be reached from Winchester across the fields for part of the way. Situated in the hamlet of Sparkford, it was founded originally by Bishop Henry de Blois in 1136, on the site of a small monastery destroyed by the Danes. The founder's wish was to give refuge to "thirteen poor men, feeble and so reduced in strength that they can hardly or with difficulty support themselves with another's aid"; while a meal was daily to be provided for another hundred poor men. The Knights Hospitallers, in the person of their Master, Raymund, were in 1151 A.D. put in charge of the foundation. They agreed so ill, however, with the bishops of the neighbouring cathedral that, about 1200, the Pope appointed a commission which transferred to the bishops the right of choosing the master. The new arrangement did not work well, for a little more than a century and a half afterwards the master was found to be robbing his charge to such an extent that the scandal was intolerable. William of Wykeham turning his attention to the matter, a Papal Bull was procured ordering the use of the revenues for the benefit of the poor. The next bishop, Cardinal Beaufort, added to the buildings by the foundation of the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty," for the maintenance of two priests, thirty-five brethren, and three sisters. The master of the hospital was to be at its head, otherwise the institutions were to be distinct; but by the middle of the sixteenth century the hospital had practically absorbed the almshouse. At the end of the next century, in 1696, the master and brethren of the hospital made a public repudiation of their duties, and commenced either to destroy the buildings or to convert them to other than their original uses; and shortly after the southern side of Beaufort's quadrangle was pulled down. The abuses were rectified in the middle of the present century, and now a body of trustees, under the control of the Charity Commissioners, has the management of the two institutions. All the endowments of the hospital are still intact. [Illustration: CHURCH OF ST CROSS: VIEW OF EAST END FROM NAVE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] [Illustration: COUNTY HALL, WITH ROUND TABLE. From an Old Print.] After one has passed through the remains of an outer court, the entrance to the buildings is by a gatehouse known by the name of the "Beaufort Tower." Over the groined vault of the doorway is the founder's chamber, surmounted by an octagonal turret. Three niches exist above the exterior or northern window, one of which has a kneeling figure of Beaufort, while the representation of the Holy Cross, formerly in the centre, and the figure of Henry de Blois have vanished. The niche on the inner side used to be occupied by a statue of the Virgin, which, after surviving the Civil War, fell about a hundred years ago. At the Porter's Lodge in the gateway the time-honoured "dole" of beer and bread is given to visitors. The square quadrangle on which the gate opens has the brethren's rooms on the west (the right hand as one enters), the ambulatory or cloister on the east, the church of St Cross at the south-east corner, and to the right of the church a view of meadows where the buildings were pulled down in 1789. In the centre of the grass is a sundial. Next the Beaufort Tower at the south side is the refectory, and beyond that the master's house. The refectory has three two-light Perpendicular windows, a high-pitched wooden roof, and a minstrels' gallery at the west end. It is now only used as a dining-hall on great occasions. The master's house is thought to be the old "Hundred Mennes Hall," but is now furnished with modern windows. The cloister on the east side is of sixteenth-century work, paved with large red tiles; "the roof is red-tiled," says a recent observer, "the long blank wall faced with rough-cast of a warm yellowish tinge, and supported on a range of broad and low timber arcading, which is, in its turn, supported by a dwarf wall some three feet in height." The main feature of the cloister is a red-brick oriel window; "reared upon two brick arches, supported midway by an octangular pillar of the same material, and flanked by splayed buttresses with stone quoins, the window-opening occupies a comparatively small space, and is filled with stone mullions and tracery of a Tudor character; the whole design proclaimed by a stone tablet, let into the brickwork, to be the work of Bishop Compton." Above the cloister is the infirmary, which opens into the church so as to allow the sick to hear the service. The church, though considered by many the finest existing example of Late and Transitional Norman, also exhibits architecture of all periods down to Late Decorated. Commenced by Bishop de Blois in 1171, it was not completed until the end of the thirteenth century. From east to west it measures 125 feet, its ordinary breadth is 54 feet, while at the transepts it is 115. Woodward thinks from the appearance of the exterior that the body of the church was widened at some period after its first erection. The windows are various in style. In the nave they are Transition Norman and Early English, and in the clerestory Decorated; in the choir aisles Late Norman. The western doorway is Early English with dogtooth ornament, while the large window above with its geometrical tracery is "fully developed Decorated." The most striking feature of the exterior, however, is at the south-east exterior angle of the south transept, a fine triple arch with chevron and billet moulding, which was probably once a doorway into a cloister no longer existing. Within the three-bay nave one is in the midst of Early English and Transition Norman work. The bases and caps of the Norman pillars are very rich, and, as has been pointed out, furnish a great contrast to such Norman work as is seen on the transept pillars at Winchester itself. The south walls are very plain, and were probably connected with De Blois' buildings originally. In the choir above the pier-arches is a triforium of intersecting arches (to which Milner attributed the origin of the Pointed style), and there is a second passage beneath the clerestory windows. The floor-brass of John de Camden (1382) lies in the choir. When the church was restored by Butterfield the choir was painted in imitation of the old colouring. It cannot be said that the effect is at all pleasing. The new floor tiles bear the letters Z.O. to commemorate the anonymous donor of the money for this restoration. The old encaustic tiles bear the motto "Have Mynde." In the chancel the Renaissance carving dates from about Henry VII., while the Henry VIII. stalls have been removed to the morning chapel in the south aisle. The transepts are a good example of the transition to Early English style. In the northern arm can be seen the window opening out of the infirmary, already mentioned above. [Illustration: THE CITY CROSS, WINCHESTER. From an Old Print.] [Illustration: TOMBSTONE IN THE CHURCHYARD. _A. Pumphrey, Photo._] Of other points of interest in or near Winchester it would be out of place to speak here at any length, but among the various objects that are worth seeing in the town itself mention may be made of the City Cross, erected by the Fraternity of the Holy Cross during the reign of Henry VI. The chief figures represent William of Wykeham, Florence de Anne, Mayor of Winchester, Alfred the Great, and S. Laurence, the latter being the only old figure. Britton, in 1807, said: "The present building is called the Butter Cross, because the retail dealers in that article usually assemble round it." He complained of the injury done to it by "boys and childish men." S. Laurence was the only figure in his day, and it was then "generally said to be an effigy of S. John the Evangelist." In the County Hall, which includes the remains of the ancient castle of William the Conqueror's days, is "King Arthur's Round Table." This is mentioned as being here by the chronicler John Harding (1378-1465), so that its antiquity is undoubted. Its present painted design, however, can not be earlier than the beginning of the sixteenth century, but since Henry VIII.'s time the same design has been adhered to. The illustration which appears here comes from an old print of the County Hall. Milner, in his "History and Survey of Winchester" in the last century, remarked that the Round Table "was evidently an eating table for the knights who used to meet here to perform feats of chivalry, which kind of meetings, from this circumstance, was anciently called _The Round Table_. These, however, were not so much as known in England, until the reign of King Stephen, 600 years after the reign of Arthur. There is great reason to believe that the said Stephen was the real author of the present table. The figures and characters now painted on it were certainly first executed in the reign of Henry VIII." [Illustration: THE WEST GATE, WINCHESTER. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The last illustration represents the oldest of the city gates at Winchester, parts of it being ascribed to the reign of Stephen. The town now, of course, extends considerably beyond its original bounds. DIMENSIONS Total length (external) 556 feet. Total length (internal) 526 " Length of Nave (internal) 262 " Width of Nave " 83 " Width of Choir " 88 " Length of Transept " 209 " Height of Vault 78 " TOTAL AREA 53,480 sq. feet. Altar Screen {43 ft. 9 in. high. {39 ft. 6 in. wide. [Illustration: PLAN OF WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL.] [Illustration: THE CRYPTS. From Britton's "Winchester" (1817).] 
20239	----	VITRUVIUS THE TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE TRANSLATED BY MORRIS HICKY MORGAN, PH.D., LL.D. LATE PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND ORIGINAL DESIGNS PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF HERBERT LANGFORD WARREN, A.M. NELSON ROBINSON JR. PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1914 COPYRIGHT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS * * * * * PREFACE During the last years of his life, Professor Morgan had devoted much time and energy to the preparation of a translation of Vitruvius, which he proposed to supplement with a revised text, illustrations, and notes. He had completed the translation, with the exception of the last four chapters of the tenth book, and had discussed, with Professor Warren, the illustrations intended for the first six books of the work; the notes had not been arranged or completed, though many of them were outlined in the manuscript, or the intention to insert them indicated. The several books of the translation, so far as it was completed, had been read to a little group of friends, consisting of Professors Sheldon and Kittredge, and myself, and had received our criticism, which had, at times, been utilized in the revision of the work. After the death of Professor Morgan, in spite of my obvious incompetency from a technical point of view, I undertook, at the request of his family, to complete the translation, and to see the book through the press. I must, therefore, assume entire responsibility for the translation of the tenth book, beginning with chapter thirteen, and further responsibility for necessary changes made by me in the earlier part of the translation, changes which, in no case, affect any theory held by Professor Morgan, but which involve mainly the adoption of simpler forms of statement, or the correction of obvious oversights. The text followed is that of Valentine Rose in his second edition (Leipzig, 1899), and the variations from this text are, with a few exceptions which are indicated in the footnotes, in the nature of a return to the consensus of the manuscript readings. The illustrations in the first six books are believed to be substantially in accord with the wishes of Professor Morgan. The suggestions for illustrations in the later books were incomplete, and did not indicate, in all cases, with sufficient definiteness to allow them to be executed, the changes from conventional plans and designs intended by the translator. It has, therefore, been decided to include in this part of the work only those illustrations which are known to have had the full approval of Professor Morgan. The one exception to this principle is the reproduction of a rough model of the Ram of Hegetor, constructed by me on the basis of the measurements given by Vitruvius and Athenaeus. It does not seem to me necessary or even advisable to enter into a long discussion as to the date of Vitruvius, which has been assigned to various periods from the time of Augustus to the early centuries of our era. Professor Morgan, in several articles in the _Harvard Studies in Classical Philology_, and in the _Proceedings of the American Academy_, all of which have been reprinted in a volume of _Addresses and Essays_ (New York, 1909), upheld the now generally accepted view that Vitruvius wrote in the time of Augustus, and furnished conclusive evidence that nothing in his language is inconsistent with this view. In revising the translation, I met with one bit of evidence for a date before the end of the reign of Nero which I have never seen adduced. In viii, 3, 21, the kingdom of Cottius is mentioned, the name depending, it is true, on an emendation, but one which has been universally accepted since it was first proposed in 1513. The kingdom of Cottius was made into a Roman province by Nero (cf. Suetonius, _Nero_, 18), and it is inconceivable that any Roman writer subsequently referred to it as a kingdom. It does seem necessary to add a few words about the literary merits of Vitruvius in this treatise, and about Professor Morgan's views as to the general principles to be followed in the translation. Vitruvius was not a great literary personage, ambitious as he was to appear in that character. As Professor Morgan has aptly said, "he has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task." In his hand the measuring-rod was a far mightier implement than the pen. His turgid and pompous rhetoric displays itself in the introductions to the different books, where his exaggerated effort to introduce some semblance of style into his commonplace lectures on the noble principles which should govern the conduct of the architect, or into the prosaic lists of architects and writers on architecture, is everywhere apparent. Even in the more technical portions of his work, a like conscious effort may be detected, and, at the same time, a lack of confidence in his ability to express himself in unmistakable language. He avoids periodic sentences, uses only the simpler subjunctive constructions, repeats the antecedent in relative clauses, and, not infrequently, adopts a formal language closely akin to that of specifications and contracts, the style with which he was, naturally, most familiar. He ends each book with a brief summary, almost a formula, somewhat like a sigh of relief, in which the reader unconsciously shares. At times his meaning is ambiguous, not because of grammatical faults, which are comparatively few and unimportant, but because, when he does attempt a periodic sentence, he becomes involved, and finds it difficult to extricate himself. Some of these peculiarities and crudities of expression Professor Morgan purposely imitated, because of his conviction that a translation should not merely reproduce the substance of a book, but should also give as clear a picture as possible of the original, of its author, and of the working of his mind. The translation is intended, then, to be faithful and exact, but it deliberately avoids any attempt to treat the language of Vitruvius as though it were Ciceronian, or to give a false impression of conspicuous literary merit in a work which is destitute of that quality. The translator had, however, the utmost confidence in the sincerity of Vitruvius and in the serious purpose of his treatise on architecture. To those who have liberally given their advice and suggestions in response to requests from Professor Morgan, it is impossible for me to make adequate acknowledgment. Their number is so great, and my knowledge of the indebtedness in individual cases is so small, that each must be content with the thought of the full and generous acknowledgment which he would have received had Professor Morgan himself written this preface. Personally I am under the greatest obligations to Professor H. L. Warren, who has freely given both assistance and criticism; to Professor G. L. Kittredge, who has read with me most of the proof; to the Syndics of the Harvard University Press, who have made possible the publication of the work; and to the members of the Visiting Committee of the Department of the Classics and the classmates of Professor Morgan, who have generously supplied the necessary funds for the illustrations. ALBERT A. HOWARD. CONTENTS BOOK I PREFACE 3 THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT 5 THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURE 13 THE DEPARTMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE 16 THE SITE OF A CITY 17 THE CITY WALLS 21 THE DIRECTIONS OF THE STREETS; WITH REMARKS ON THE WINDS 24 THE SITES FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 31 BOOK II INTRODUCTION 35 THE ORIGIN OF THE DWELLING HOUSE 38 ON THE PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE ACCORDING TO THE PHYSICISTS 42 BRICK 42 SAND 44 LIME 45 POZZOLANA 46 STONE 49 METHODS OF BUILDING WALLS 51 TIMBER 58 HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND FIR 64 BOOK III INTRODUCTION 69 ON SYMMETRY: IN TEMPLES AND IN THE HUMAN BODY 72 CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES 75 THE PROPORTIONS OF INTERCOLUMNIATIONS AND OF COLUMNS 78 THE FOUNDATIONS AND SUBSTRUCTURES OF TEMPLES 86 PROPORTIONS OF THE BASE, CAPITALS, AND ENTABLATURE IN THE IONIC ORDER 90 BOOK IV INTRODUCTION 101 THE ORIGINS OF THE THREE ORDERS, AND THE PROPORTIONS OF THE CORINTHIAN CAPITAL 102 THE ORNAMENTS OF THE ORDERS 107 PROPORTIONS OF DORIC TEMPLES 109 THE CELLA AND PRONAOS 114 HOW THE TEMPLE SHOULD FACE 116 THE DOORWAYS OF TEMPLES 117 TUSCAN TEMPLES 120 CIRCULAR TEMPLES AND OTHER VARIETIES 122 ALTARS 125 BOOK V INTRODUCTION 129 THE FORUM AND BASILICA 131 THE TREASURY, PRISON, AND SENATE HOUSE 137 THE THEATRE: ITS SITE, FOUNDATIONS, AND ACOUSTICS 137 HARMONICS 139 SOUNDING VESSELS IN THE THEATRE 143 PLAN OF THE THEATRE 146 GREEK THEATRES 151 ACOUSTICS OF THE SITE OF A THEATRE 153 COLONNADES AND WALKS 154 BATHS 157 THE PALAESTRA 159 HARBOURS, BREAKWATERS, AND SHIPYARDS 162 BOOK VI INTRODUCTION 167 ON CLIMATE AS DETERMINING THE STYLE OF THE HOUSE 170 SYMMETRY, AND MODIFICATIONS IN IT TO SUIT THE SITE 174 PROPORTIONS OF THE PRINCIPAL ROOMS 176 THE PROPER EXPOSURES OF THE DIFFERENT ROOMS 180 HOW THE ROOMS SHOULD BE SUITED TO THE STATION OF THE OWNER 181 THE FARMHOUSE 183 THE GREEK HOUSE 185 ON FOUNDATIONS AND SUBSTRUCTURES 189 BOOK VII INTRODUCTION 195 FLOORS 202 THE SLAKING OF LIME FOR STUCCO 204 VAULTINGS AND STUCCO WORK 205 ON STUCCO WORK IN DAMP PLACES, AND ON THE DECORATION OF DINING ROOMS 208 THE DECADENCE OF FRESCO PAINTING 210 MARBLE FOR USE IN STUCCO 213 NATURAL COLOURS 214 CINNABAR AND QUICKSILVER 215 CINNABAR (_continued_) 216 ARTIFICIAL COLOURS. BLACK 217 BLUE. BURNT OCHRE 218 WHITE LEAD, VERDIGRIS, AND ARTIFICIAL SANDARACH 219 PURPLE 219 SUBSTITUTES FOR PURPLE, YELLOW OCHRE, MALACHITE GREEN, AND INDIGO 220 BOOK VIII INTRODUCTION 225 HOW TO FIND WATER 227 RAINWATER 229 VARIOUS PROPERTIES OF DIFFERENT WATERS 232 TESTS OF GOOD WATER 242 LEVELLING AND LEVELLING INSTRUMENTS 242 AQUEDUCTS, WELLS, AND CISTERNS 244 BOOK IX INTRODUCTION 251 THE ZODIAC AND THE PLANETS 257 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 262 THE COURSE OF THE SUN THROUGH THE TWELVE SIGNS 264 THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS 265 THE SOUTHERN CONSTELLATIONS 267 ASTROLOGY AND WEATHER PROGNOSTICS 269 THE ANALEMMA AND ITS APPLICATIONS 270 SUNDIALS AND WATER CLOCKS 273 BOOK X INTRODUCTION 281 MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS 283 HOISTING MACHINES 285 THE ELEMENTS OF MOTION 290 ENGINES FOR RAISING WATER 293 WATER WHEELS AND WATER MILLS 294 THE WATER SCREW 295 THE PUMP OF CTESIBIUS 297 THE WATER ORGAN 299 THE HODOMETER 301 CATAPULTS OR SCORPIONES 303 BALLISTAE 305 THE STRINGING AND TUNING OF CATAPULTS 308 SIEGE MACHINES 309 THE TORTOISE 311 HEGETOR'S TORTOISE 312 MEASURES OF DEFENCE 315 NOTE ON SCAMILLI IMPARES 320 INDEX 321 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CARYATIDES FROM TREASURY OF CNIDIANS, DELPHI 6 CARYATIDES OF ERECHTHEUM, ATHENS 6 CARYATID IN VILLA ALBANI, ROME 6 CARYATIDES 7 PERSIANS 9 CONSTRUCTION OF CITY WALLS 23 TOWER OF THE WINDS, ATHENS 26 DIAGRAM OF THE WINDS 29 DIAGRAM OF DIRECTIONS OF STREETS 30 VITRUVIUS' BRICK-BOND 44 TRAVERTINE QUARRIES, ROMAN CAMPAGNA 49 EXAMPLE OF OPUS INCERTUM, CIRCULAR TEMPLE, TIVOLI 51 OPUS RETICULATUM, THERMAE OF HADRIAN'S VILLA, TIVOLI 52 EXAMPLE OF OPUS RETICULATUM, DOORWAY OF STOA POECILE, HADRIAN'S VILLA 52 MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS, RESTORED 54 CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES ACCORDING TO ARRANGEMENTS OF COLONNADES 76 HYPAETHRAL TEMPLE OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH PARTHENON AND TEMPLE OF APOLLO NEAR MILETUS 77 CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES ACCORDING TO INTERCOLUMNIATION 79 EUSTYLE TEMPLE OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH TEMPLE OF TEOS 81 VITRUVIUS' RULES FOR DIAMETER AND HEIGHT OF COLUMNS COMPARED WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES 83 DIMINUTION OF COLUMNS IN RELATION TO DIMENSIONS OF HEIGHT 85 ENTASIS OF COLUMNS 87 FRA GIOCONDO'S IDEA OF "SCAMILLI IMPARES" 89 IONIC ORDER ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH ORDER OF MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS 91 COMPARISON OF IONIC ORDER ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES AND WITH VIGNOLA'S ORDER 95 BASILICA AT POMPEII 104 CORINTHIAN CAPITAL OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH MONUMENTS 105 VITRUVIUS' DORIC ORDER COMPARED WITH TEMPLE AT CORI AND THEATRE OF MARCELLUS 111 VITRUVIUS' TEMPLE PLAN COMPARED WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES 115 VITRUVIUS' RULE FOR DOORWAYS COMPARED WITH TWO EXAMPLES 119 TUSCAN TEMPLE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS 121 CIRCULAR TEMPLE, TIVOLI 123 MAISON CARR�E, N�MES 123 PLAN OF TEMPLE, TIVOLI 123 PLAN OF TEMPLE OF VESTA, ROME 123 PLAN OF CIRCULAR TEMPLE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS 124 FORUM, TIMGAD 131 FORUM, POMPEII 133 PLAN OF BASILICA, POMPEII 134 VITRUVIUS' BASILICA, FANO 135 ROMAN THEATRE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS 147 THEATRE AT ASPENDUS 149 THEATRE PORTICO ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS 152 TEPIDARIUM OF STABIAN BATHS, POMPEII 157 APODYTERIUM FOR WOMEN, STABIAN BATHS, POMPEII 157 STABIAN BATHS, POMPEII 158 PALAESTRA, OLYMPIA, AND GREEK PALAESTRA ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS 161 PLANS OF HOUSES, POMPEII 176 PLAN OF HOUSE OF SILVER WEDDING, POMPEII 177 PLAN OF TYPICAL ROMAN HOUSE 178 PERISTYLE OF HOUSE OF THE VETTII, POMPEII 179 PLAN OF HOUSE OF THE VETTII, POMPEII 179 PLAN OF VILLA RUSTICA, NEAR POMPEII 183 PLAN OF VITRUVIUS' GREEK HOUSE 186 PLAN OF GREEK HOUSE, DELOS 187 PLAN OF GREEK HOUSE DISCOVERED AT PERGAMUM 188 RETAINING WALLS 191 CONSTRUCTION OF THE ANALEMMA 271 CONSTRUCTION OF WATER SCREW 295 WATER SCREW 296 HEGETOR'S RAM AND TORTOISE 312 1. From sixteenth century MS. 2. From model by A. A. Howard. * * * * * VITRUVIUS * * * * * BOOK I PREFACE 1. While your divine intelligence and will, Imperator Caesar, were engaged in acquiring the right to command the world, and while your fellow citizens, when all their enemies had been laid low by your invincible valour, were glorying in your triumph and victory,--while all foreign nations were in subjection awaiting your beck and call, and the Roman people and senate, released from their alarm, were beginning to be guided by your most noble conceptions and policies, I hardly dared, in view of your serious employments, to publish my writings and long considered ideas on architecture, for fear of subjecting myself to your displeasure by an unseasonable interruption. 2. But when I saw that you were giving your attention not only to the welfare of society in general and to the establishment of public order, but also to the providing of public buildings intended for utilitarian purposes, so that not only should the State have been enriched with provinces by your means, but that the greatness of its power might likewise be attended with distinguished authority in its public buildings, I thought that I ought to take the first opportunity to lay before you my writings on this theme. For in the first place it was this subject which made me known to your father, to whom I was devoted on account of his great qualities. After the council of heaven gave him a place in the dwellings of immortal life and transferred your father's power to your hands, my devotion continuing unchanged as I remembered him inclined me to support you. And so with Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius, and Gnaeus Cornelius, I was ready to supply and repair ballistae, scorpiones, and other artillery, and I have received rewards for good service with them. After your first bestowal of these upon me, you continued to renew them on the recommendation of your sister. 3. Owing to this favour I need have no fear of want to the end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I began to write this work for you, because I saw that you have built and are now building extensively, and that in future also you will take care that our public and private buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of your other splendid achievements. I have drawn up definite rules to enable you, by observing them, to have personal knowledge of the quality both of existing buildings and of those which are yet to be constructed. For in the following books I have disclosed all the principles of the art. CHAPTER I THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT 1. The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of dexterity on the principles of proportion. 2. It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of both, like men armed at all points, have the sooner attained their object and carried authority with them. 3. In all matters, but particularly in architecture, there are these two points:--the thing signified, and that which gives it its significance. That which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking; and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. It appears, then, that one who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be both naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. Let him be educated, skilful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens. 4. The reasons for all this are as follows. An architect ought to be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises. Secondly, he must have a knowledge of drawing so that he can readily make sketches to show the appearance of the work which he proposes. Geometry, also, is of much assistance in architecture, and in particular it teaches us the use of the rule and compasses, by which especially we acquire readiness in making plans for buildings in their grounds, and rightly apply the square, the level, and the plummet. By means of optics, again, the light in buildings can be drawn from fixed quarters of the sky. It is true that it is by arithmetic that the total cost of buildings is calculated and measurements are computed, but difficult questions involving symmetry are solved by means of geometrical theories and methods. 5. A wide knowledge of history is requisite because, among the ornamental parts of an architect's design for a work, there are many the underlying idea of whose employment he should be able to explain to inquirers. For instance, suppose him to set up the marble statues of women in long robes, called Caryatides, to take the place of columns, with the mutules and coronas placed directly above their heads, he will give the following explanation to his questioners. Caryae, a state in Peloponnesus, sided with the Persian enemies against Greece; later the Greeks, having gloriously won their freedom by victory in the war, made common cause and declared war against the people of Caryae. They took the town, killed the men, abandoned the State to desolation, and carried off their wives into slavery, without permitting them, however, to lay aside the long robes and other marks of their rank as married women, so that they might be obliged not only to march in the triumph but to appear forever after as a type of slavery, burdened with the weight of their shame and so making atonement for their State. Hence, the architects of the time designed for public buildings statues of these women, placed so as to carry a load, in order that the sin and the punishment of the people of Caryae might be known and handed down even to posterity. [Illustration: Photo. H. B. Warren CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEUM AT ATHENS] [Illustration: CARYATIDES FROM THE TREASURY OF THE CNIDIANS AT DELPHI] [Illustration: Photo. Anderson CARYATIDES NOW IN THE VILLA ALBANI AT ROME] [Illustration: CARYATIDES (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)] 6. Likewise the Lacedaemonians under the leadership of Pausanias, son of Agesipolis, after conquering the Persian armies, infinite in number, with a small force at the battle of Plataea, celebrated a glorious triumph with the spoils and booty, and with the money obtained from the sale thereof built the Persian Porch, to be a monument to the renown and valour of the people and a trophy of victory for posterity. And there they set effigies of the prisoners arrayed in barbarian costume and holding up the roof, their pride punished by this deserved affront, that enemies might tremble for fear of the effects of their courage, and that their own people, looking upon this ensample of their valour and encouraged by the glory of it, might be ready to defend their independence. So from that time on, many have put up statues of Persians supporting entablatures and their ornaments, and thus from that motive have greatly enriched the diversity of their works. There are other stories of the same kind which architects ought to know. 7. As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness. This is very important, for no work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility. Let him not be grasping nor have his mind preoccupied with the idea of receiving perquisites, but let him with dignity keep up his position by cherishing a good reputation. These are among the precepts of philosophy. Furthermore philosophy treats of physics (in Greek [Greek: physiologia]) where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous and of very different kinds; as, for example, in the case of the conducting of water. For at points of intake and at curves, and at places where it is raised to a level, currents of air naturally form in one way or another; and nobody who has not learned the fundamental principles of physics from philosophy will be able to provide against the damage which they do. So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers. 8. Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman. For the arms thrust through those stretched strings must, on being let go, strike their blow together at the same moment; but if they are not in unison, they will prevent the course of projectiles from being straight. [Illustration: PERSIANS (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)] 9. In theatres, likewise, there are the bronze vessels (in Greek [Greek: êcheia]) which are placed in niches under the seats in accordance with the musical intervals on mathematical principles. These vessels are arranged with a view to musical concords or harmony, and apportioned in the compass of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, and so on up to the double octave, in such a way that when the voice of an actor falls in unison with any of them its power is increased, and it reaches the ears of the audience with greater clearness and sweetness. Water organs, too, and the other instruments which resemble them cannot be made by one who is without the principles of music. 10. The architect should also have a knowledge of the study of medicine on account of the questions of climates (in Greek [Greek: klimata]), air, the healthiness and unhealthiness of sites, and the use of different waters. For without these considerations, the healthiness of a dwelling cannot be assured. And as for principles of law, he should know those which are necessary in the case of buildings having party walls, with regard to water dripping from the eaves, and also the laws about drains, windows, and water supply. And other things of this sort should be known to architects, so that, before they begin upon buildings, they may be careful not to leave disputed points for the householders to settle after the works are finished, and so that in drawing up contracts the interests of both employer and contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of the theory of sundials. 11. Consequently, since this study is so vast in extent, embellished and enriched as it is with many different kinds of learning, I think that men have no right to profess themselves architects hastily, without having climbed from boyhood the steps of these studies and thus, nursed by the knowledge of many arts and sciences, having reached the heights of the holy ground of architecture. 12. But perhaps to the inexperienced it will seem a marvel that human nature can comprehend such a great number of studies and keep them in the memory. Still, the observation that all studies have a common bond of union and intercourse with one another, will lead to the belief that this can easily be realized. For a liberal education forms, as it were, a single body made up of these members. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all. This is what led one of the ancient architects, Pytheos, the celebrated builder of the temple of Minerva at Priene, to say in his Commentaries that an architect ought to be able to accomplish much more in all the arts and sciences than the men who, by their own particular kinds of work and the practice of it, have brought each a single subject to the highest perfection. But this is in point of fact not realized. 13. For an architect ought not to be and cannot be such a philologian as was Aristarchus, although not illiterate; nor a musician like Aristoxenus, though not absolutely ignorant of music; nor a painter like Apelles, though not unskilful in drawing; nor a sculptor such as was Myron or Polyclitus, though not unacquainted with the plastic art; nor again a physician like Hippocrates, though not ignorant of medicine; nor in the other sciences need he excel in each, though he should not be unskilful in them. For, in the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them. 14. Still, it is not architects alone that cannot in all matters reach perfection, but even men who individually practise specialties in the arts do not all attain to the highest point of merit. Therefore, if among artists working each in a single field not all, but only a few in an entire generation acquire fame, and that with difficulty, how can an architect, who has to be skilful in many arts, accomplish not merely the feat--in itself a great marvel--of being deficient in none of them, but also that of surpassing all those artists who have devoted themselves with unremitting industry to single fields? 15. It appears, then, that Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other, the theory, is common to all scholars: for example, to physicians and musicians the rhythmical beat of the pulse and its metrical movement. But if there is a wound to be healed or a sick man to be saved from danger, the musician will not call, for the business will be appropriate to the physician. So in the case of a musical instrument, not the physician but the musician will be the man to tune it so that the ears may find their due pleasure in its strains. 16. Astronomers likewise have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision (in Greek [Greek: logos optikos]); and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art. It appears, therefore, that he has done enough and to spare who in each subject possesses a fairly good knowledge of those parts, with their principles, which are indispensable for architecture, so that if he is required to pass judgement and to express approval in the case of those things or arts, he may not be found wanting. As for men upon whom nature has bestowed so much ingenuity, acuteness, and memory that they are able to have a thorough knowledge of geometry, astronomy, music, and the other arts, they go beyond the functions of architects and become pure mathematicians. Hence they can readily take up positions against those arts because many are the artistic weapons with which they are armed. Such men, however, are rarely found, but there have been such at times; for example, Aristarchus of Samos, Philolaus and Archytas of Tarentum, Apollonius of Perga, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, and among Syracusans Archimedes and Scopinas, who through mathematics and natural philosophy discovered, expounded, and left to posterity many things in connexion with mechanics and with sundials. 17. Since, therefore, the possession of such talents due to natural capacity is not vouchsafed at random to entire nations, but only to a few great men; since, moreover, the function of the architect requires a training in all the departments of learning; and finally, since reason, on account of the wide extent of the subject, concedes that he may possess not the highest but not even necessarily a moderate knowledge of the subjects of study, I request, Caesar, both of you and of those who may read the said books, that if anything is set forth with too little regard for grammatical rule, it may be pardoned. For it is not as a very great philosopher, nor as an eloquent rhetorician, nor as a grammarian trained in the highest principles of his art, that I have striven to write this work, but as an architect who has had only a dip into those studies. Still, as regards the efficacy of the art and the theories of it, I promise and expect that in these volumes I shall undoubtedly show myself of very considerable importance not only to builders but also to all scholars. CHAPTER II THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURE 1. Architecture depends on Order (in Greek [Greek: taxis]), Arrangement (in Greek [Greek: diathesis]), Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety, and Economy (in Greek [Greek: oikonomia]). 2. Order gives due measure to the members of a work considered separately, and symmetrical agreement to the proportions of the whole. It is an adjustment according to quantity (in Greek [Greek: posotês]). By this I mean the selection of modules from the members of the work itself and, starting from these individual parts of members, constructing the whole work to correspond. Arrangement includes the putting of things in their proper places and the elegance of effect which is due to adjustments appropriate to the character of the work. Its forms of expression (Greek [Greek: ideai]) are these: groundplan, elevation, and perspective. A groundplan is made by the proper successive use of compasses and rule, through which we get outlines for the plane surfaces of buildings. An elevation is a picture of the front of a building, set upright and properly drawn in the proportions of the contemplated work. Perspective is the method of sketching a front with the sides withdrawing into the background, the lines all meeting in the centre of a circle. All three come of reflexion and invention. Reflexion is careful and laborious thought, and watchful attention directed to the agreeable effect of one's plan. Invention, on the other hand, is the solving of intricate problems and the discovery of new principles by means of brilliancy and versatility. These are the departments belonging under Arrangement. 3. Eurythmy is beauty and fitness in the adjustments of the members. This is found when the members of a work are of a height suited to their breadth, of a breadth suited to their length, and, in a word, when they all correspond symmetrically. 4. Symmetry is a proper agreement between the members of the work itself, and relation between the different parts and the whole general scheme, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard. Thus in the human body there is a kind of symmetrical harmony between forearm, foot, palm, finger, and other small parts; and so it is with perfect buildings. In the case of temples, symmetry may be calculated from the thickness of a column, from a triglyph, or even from a module; in the ballista, from the hole or from what the Greeks call the [Greek: peritrêtos]; in a ship, from the space between the tholepins [Greek: (diapêgma)]; and in other things, from various members. 5. Propriety is that perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription [Greek: (thematismô)], from usage, or from nature. From prescription, in the case of hypaethral edifices, open to the sky, in honour of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright. The temples of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, will be Doric, since the virile strength of these gods makes daintiness entirely inappropriate to their houses. In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance, because these are delicate divinities and so its rather slender outlines, its flowers, leaves, and ornamental volutes will lend propriety where it is due. The construction of temples of the Ionic order to Juno, Diana, Father Bacchus, and the other gods of that kind, will be in keeping with the middle position which they hold; for the building of such will be an appropriate combination of the severity of the Doric and the delicacy of the Corinthian. 6. Propriety arises from usage when buildings having magnificent interiors are provided with elegant entrance-courts to correspond; for there will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low, mean entrance. Or, if dentils be carved in the cornice of the Doric entablature or triglyphs represented in the Ionic entablature over the cushion-shaped capitals of the columns, the effect will be spoilt by the transfer of the peculiarities of the one order of building to the other, the usage in each class having been fixed long ago. 7. Finally, propriety will be due to natural causes if, for example, in the case of all sacred precincts we select very healthy neighbourhoods with suitable springs of water in the places where the fanes are to be built, particularly in the case of those to Aesculapius and to Health, gods by whose healing powers great numbers of the sick are apparently cured. For when their diseased bodies are transferred from an unhealthy to a healthy spot, and treated with waters from health-giving springs, they will the more speedily grow well. The result will be that the divinity will stand in higher esteem and find his dignity increased, all owing to the nature of his site. There will also be natural propriety in using an eastern light for bedrooms and libraries, a western light in winter for baths and winter apartments, and a northern light for picture galleries and other places in which a steady light is needed; for that quarter of the sky grows neither light nor dark with the course of the sun, but remains steady and unshifting all day long. 8. Economy denotes the proper management of materials and of site, as well as a thrifty balancing of cost and common sense in the construction of works. This will be observed if, in the first place, the architect does not demand things which cannot be found or made ready without great expense. For example: it is not everywhere that there is plenty of pitsand, rubble, fir, clear fir, and marble, since they are produced in different places and to assemble them is difficult and costly. Where there is no pitsand, we must use the kinds washed up by rivers or by the sea; the lack of fir and clear fir may be evaded by using cypress, poplar, elm, or pine; and other problems we must solve in similar ways. 9. A second stage in Economy is reached when we have to plan the different kinds of dwellings suitable for ordinary householders, for great wealth, or for the high position of the statesman. A house in town obviously calls for one form of construction; that into which stream the products of country estates requires another; this will not be the same in the case of money-lenders and still different for the opulent and luxurious; for the powers under whose deliberations the commonwealth is guided dwellings are to be provided according to their special needs: and, in a word, the proper form of economy must be observed in building houses for each and every class. CHAPTER III THE DEPARTMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE 1. There are three departments of architecture: the art of building, the making of timepieces, and the construction of machinery. Building is, in its turn, divided into two parts, of which the first is the construction of fortified towns and of works for general use in public places, and the second is the putting up of structures for private individuals. There are three classes of public buildings: the first for defensive, the second for religious, and the third for utilitarian purposes. Under defence comes the planning of walls, towers, and gates, permanent devices for resistance against hostile attacks; under religion, the erection of fanes and temples to the immortal gods; under utility, the provision of meeting places for public use, such as harbours, markets, colonnades, baths, theatres, promenades, and all other similar arrangements in public places. 2. All these must be built with due reference to durability, convenience, and beauty. Durability will be assured when foundations are carried down to the solid ground and materials wisely and liberally selected; convenience, when the arrangement of the apartments is faultless and presents no hindrance to use, and when each class of building is assigned to its suitable and appropriate exposure; and beauty, when the appearance of the work is pleasing and in good taste, and when its members are in due proportion according to correct principles of symmetry. CHAPTER IV THE SITE OF A CITY 1. For fortified towns the following general principles are to be observed. First comes the choice of a very healthy site. Such a site will be high, neither misty nor frosty, and in a climate neither hot nor cold, but temperate; further, without marshes in the neighbourhood. For when the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy. Again, if the town is on the coast with a southern or western exposure, it will not be healthy, because in summer the southern sky grows hot at sunrise and is fiery at noon, while a western exposure grows warm after sunrise, is hot at noon, and at evening all aglow. 2. These variations in heat and the subsequent cooling off are harmful to the people living on such sites. The same conclusion may be reached in the case of inanimate things. For instance, nobody draws the light for covered wine rooms from the south or west, but rather from the north, since that quarter is never subject to change but is always constant and unshifting. So it is with granaries: grain exposed to the sun's course soon loses its good quality, and provisions and fruit, unless stored in a place unexposed to the sun's course, do not keep long. 3. For heat is a universal solvent, melting out of things their power of resistance, and sucking away and removing their natural strength with its fiery exhalations so that they grow soft, and hence weak, under its glow. We see this in the case of iron which, however hard it may naturally be, yet when heated thoroughly in a furnace fire can be easily worked into any kind of shape, and still, if cooled while it is soft and white hot, it hardens again with a mere dip into cold water and takes on its former quality. 4. We may also recognize the truth of this from the fact that in summer the heat makes everybody weak, not only in unhealthy but even in healthy places, and that in winter even the most unhealthy districts are much healthier because they are given a solidity by the cooling off. Similarly, persons removed from cold countries to hot cannot endure it but waste away; whereas those who pass from hot places to the cold regions of the north, not only do not suffer in health from the change of residence but even gain by it. 5. It appears, then, that in founding towns we must beware of districts from which hot winds can spread abroad over the inhabitants. For while all bodies are composed of the four elements (in Greek [Greek: stoicheia]), that is, of heat, moisture, the earthy, and air, yet there are mixtures according to natural temperament which make up the natures of all the different animals of the world, each after its kind. 6. Therefore, if one of these elements, heat, becomes predominant in any body whatsoever, it destroys and dissolves all the others with its violence. This defect may be due to violent heat from certain quarters of the sky, pouring into the open pores in too great proportion to admit of a mixture suited to the natural temperament of the body in question. Again, if too much moisture enters the channels of a body, and thus introduces disproportion, the other elements, adulterated by the liquid, are impaired, and the virtues of the mixture dissolved. This defect, in turn, may arise from the cooling properties of moist winds and breezes blowing upon the body. In the same way, increase or diminution of the proportion of air or of the earthy which is natural to the body may enfeeble the other elements; the predominance of the earthy being due to overmuch food, that of air to a heavy atmosphere. 7. If one wishes a more accurate understanding of all this, he need only consider and observe the natures of birds, fishes, and land animals, and he will thus come to reflect upon distinctions of temperament. One form of mixture is proper to birds, another to fishes, and a far different form to land animals. Winged creatures have less of the earthy, less moisture, heat in moderation, air in large amount. Being made up, therefore, of the lighter elements, they can more readily soar away into the air. Fish, with their aquatic nature, being moderately supplied with heat and made up in great part of air and the earthy, with as little of moisture as possible, can more easily exist in moisture for the very reason that they have less of it than of the other elements in their bodies; and so, when they are drawn to land, they leave life and water at the same moment. Similarly, the land animals, being moderately supplied with the elements of air and heat, and having less of the earthy and a great deal of moisture, cannot long continue alive in the water, because their portion of moisture is already abundant. 8. Therefore, if all this is as we have explained, our reason showing us that the bodies of animals are made up of the elements, and these bodies, as we believe, giving way and breaking up as a result of excess or deficiency in this or that element, we cannot but believe that we must take great care to select a very temperate climate for the site of our city, since healthfulness is, as we have said, the first requisite. 9. I cannot too strongly insist upon the need of a return to the method of old times. Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm. If they continued to find it abnormal, they argued from this that the food and water supply found in such a place would be just as unhealthy for man, and so they moved away and changed to another neighbourhood, healthfulness being their chief object. 10. That pasturage and food may indicate the healthful qualities of a site is a fact which can be observed and investigated in the case of certain pastures in Crete, on each side of the river Pothereus, which separates the two Cretan states of Gnosus and Gortyna. There are cattle at pasture on the right and left banks of that river, but while the cattle that feed near Gnosus have the usual spleen, those on the other side near Gortyna have no perceptible spleen. On investigating the subject, physicians discovered on this side a kind of herb which the cattle chew and thus make their spleen small. The herb is therefore gathered and used as a medicine for the cure of splenetic people. The Cretans call it [Greek: hasplênon]. From food and water, then, we may learn whether sites are naturally unhealthy or healthy. 11. If the walled town is built among the marshes themselves, provided they are by the sea, with a northern or north-eastern exposure, and are above the level of the seashore, the site will be reasonable enough. For ditches can be dug to let out the water to the shore, and also in times of storms the sea swells and comes backing up into the marshes, where its bitter blend prevents the reproductions of the usual marsh creatures, while any that swim down from the higher levels to the shore are killed at once by the saltness to which they are unused. An instance of this may be found in the Gallic marshes surrounding Altino, Ravenna, Aquileia, and other towns in places of the kind, close by marshes. They are marvellously healthy, for the reasons which I have given. 12. But marshes that are stagnant and have no outlets either by rivers or ditches, like the Pomptine marshes, merely putrefy as they stand, emitting heavy, unhealthy vapours. A case of a town built in such a spot was Old Salpia in Apulia, founded by Diomede on his way back from Troy, or, according to some writers, by Elpias of Rhodes. Year after year there was sickness, until finally the suffering inhabitants came with a public petition to Marcus Hostilius and got him to agree to seek and find them a proper place to which to remove their city. Without delay he made the most skilful investigations, and at once purchased an estate near the sea in a healthy place, and asked the Senate and Roman people for permission to remove the town. He constructed the walls and laid out the house lots, granting one to each citizen for a mere trifle. This done, he cut an opening from a lake into the sea, and thus made of the lake a harbour for the town. The result is that now the people of Salpia live on a healthy site and at a distance of only four miles from the old town. CHAPTER V THE CITY WALLS 1. After insuring on these principles the healthfulness of the future city, and selecting a neighbourhood that can supply plenty of food stuffs to maintain the community, with good roads or else convenient rivers or seaports affording easy means of transport to the city, the next thing to do is to lay the foundations for the towers and walls. Dig down to solid bottom, if it can be found, and lay them therein, going as deep as the magnitude of the proposed work seems to require. They should be much thicker than the part of the walls that will appear above ground, and their structure should be as solid as it can possibly be laid. 2. The towers must be projected beyond the line of wall, so that an enemy wishing to approach the wall to carry it by assault may be exposed to the fire of missiles on his open flank from the towers on his right and left. Special pains should be taken that there be no easy avenue by which to storm the wall. The roads should be encompassed at steep points, and planned so as to approach the gates, not in a straight line, but from the right to the left; for as a result of this, the right hand side of the assailants, unprotected by their shields, will be next the wall. Towns should be laid out not as an exact square nor with salient angles, but in circular form, to give a view of the enemy from many points. Defence is difficult where there are salient angles, because the angle protects the enemy rather than the inhabitants. 3. The thickness of the wall should, in my opinion, be such that armed men meeting on top of it may pass one another without interference. In the thickness there should be set a very close succession of ties made of charred olive wood, binding the two faces of the wall together like pins, to give it lasting endurance. For that is a material which neither decay, nor the weather, nor time can harm, but even though buried in the earth or set in the water it keeps sound and useful forever. And so not only city walls but substructures in general and all walls that require a thickness like that of a city wall, will be long in falling to decay if tied in this manner. 4. The towers should be set at intervals of not more than a bowshot apart, so that in case of an assault upon any one of them, the enemy may be repulsed with scorpiones and other means of hurling missiles from the towers to the right and left. Opposite the inner side of every tower the wall should be interrupted for a space the width of the tower, and have only a wooden flooring across, leading to the interior of the tower but not firmly nailed. This is to be cut away by the defenders in case the enemy gets possession of any portion of the wall; and if the work is quickly done, the enemy will not be able to make his way to the other towers and the rest of the wall unless he is ready to face a fall. 5. The towers themselves must be either round or polygonal. Square towers are sooner shattered by military engines, for the battering rams pound their angles to pieces; but in the case of round towers they can do no harm, being engaged, as it were, in driving wedges to their centre. The system of fortification by wall and towers may be made safest by the addition of earthen ramparts, for neither rams, nor mining, nor other engineering devices can do them any harm. [Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF CITY WALLS (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)] 6. The rampart form of defence, however, is not required in all places, but only where outside the wall there is high ground from which an assault on the fortifications may be made over a level space lying between. In places of this kind we must first make very wide, deep ditches; next sink foundations for a wall in the bed of the ditch and build them thick enough to support an earth-work with ease. 7. Then within this substructure lay a second foundation, far enough inside the first to leave ample room for cohorts in line of battle to take position on the broad top of the rampart for its defence. Having laid these two foundations at this distance from one another, build cross walls between them, uniting the outer and inner foundation, in a comb-like arrangement, set like the teeth of a saw. With this form of construction, the enormous burden of earth will be distributed into small bodies, and will not lie with all its weight in one crushing mass so as to thrust out the substructures. 8. With regard to the material of which the actual wall should be constructed or finished, there can be no definite prescription, because we cannot obtain in all places the supplies that we desire. Dimension stone, flint, rubble, burnt or unburnt brick,--use them as you find them. For it is not every neighbourhood or particular locality that can have a wall built of burnt brick like that at Babylon, where there was plenty of asphalt to take the place of lime and sand, and yet possibly each may be provided with materials of equal usefulness so that out of them a faultless wall may be built to last forever. CHAPTER VI THE DIRECTIONS OF THE STREETS; WITH REMARKS ON THE WINDS 1. The town being fortified, the next step is the apportionment of house lots within the wall and the laying out of streets and alleys with regard to climatic conditions. They will be properly laid out if foresight is employed to exclude the winds from the alleys. Cold winds are disagreeable, hot winds enervating, moist winds unhealthy. We must, therefore, avoid mistakes in this matter and beware of the common experience of many communities. For example, Mytilene in the island of Lesbos is a town built with magnificence and good taste, but its position shows a lack of foresight. In that community when the wind is south, the people fall ill; when it is northwest, it sets them coughing; with a north wind they do indeed recover but cannot stand about in the alleys and streets, owing to the severe cold. 2. Wind is a flowing wave of air, moving hither and thither indefinitely. It is produced when heat meets moisture, the rush of heat generating a mighty current of air. That this is the fact we may learn from bronze eolipiles, and thus by means of a scientific invention discover a divine truth lurking in the laws of the heavens. Eolipiles are hollow bronze balls, with a very small opening through which water is poured into them. Set before a fire, not a breath issues from them before they get warm; but as soon as they begin to boil, out comes a strong blast due to the fire. Thus from this slight and very short experiment we may understand and judge of the mighty and wonderful laws of the heavens and the nature of winds. 3. By shutting out the winds from our dwellings, therefore, we shall not only make the place healthful for people who are well, but also in the case of diseases due perhaps to unfavourable situations elsewhere, the patients, who in other healthy places might be cured by a different form of treatment, will here be more quickly cured by the mildness that comes from the shutting out of the winds. The diseases which are hard to cure in neighbourhoods such as those to which I have referred above are catarrh, hoarseness, coughs, pleurisy, consumption, spitting of blood, and all others that are cured not by lowering the system but by building it up. They are hard to cure, first, because they are originally due to chills; secondly, because the patient's system being already exhausted by disease, the air there, which is in constant agitation owing to winds and therefore deteriorated, takes all the sap of life out of their diseased bodies and leaves them more meagre every day. On the other hand, a mild, thick air, without draughts and not constantly blowing back and forth, builds up their frames by its unwavering steadiness, and so strengthens and restores people who are afflicted with these diseases. 4. Some have held that there are only four winds: Solanus from due east; Auster from the south; Favonius from due west; Septentrio from the north. But more careful investigators tell us that there are eight. Chief among such was Andronicus of Cyrrhus who in proof built the marble octagonal tower in Athens. On the several sides of the octagon he executed reliefs representing the several winds, each facing the point from which it blows; and on top of the tower he set a conical shaped piece of marble and on this a bronze Triton with a rod outstretched in its right hand. It was so contrived as to go round with the wind, always stopping to face the breeze and holding its rod as a pointer directly over the representation of the wind that was blowing. 5. Thus Eurus is placed to the southeast between Solanus and Auster: Africus to the southwest between Auster and Favonius; Caurus, or, as many call it, Corus, between Favonius and Septentrio; and Aquilo between Septentrio and Solanus. Such, then, appears to have been his device, including the numbers and names of the wind and indicating the directions from which particular winds blow. These facts being thus determined, to find the directions and quarters of the winds your method of procedure should be as follows. 6. In the middle of the city place a marble amussium, laying it true by the level, or else let the spot be made so true by means of rule and level that no amussium is necessary. In the very centre of that spot set up a bronze gnomon or "shadow tracker" (in Greek [Greek: skiathêras]). At about the fifth hour in the morning, take the end of the shadow cast by this gnomon, and mark it with a point. Then, opening your compasses to this point which marks the length of the gnomon's shadow, describe a circle from the centre. In the afternoon watch the shadow of your gnomon as it lengthens, and when it once more touches the circumference of this circle and the shadow in the afternoon is equal in length to that of the morning, mark it with a point. [Illustration: THE TOWER OF THE WINDS AT ATHENS] 7. From these two points describe with your compasses intersecting arcs, and through their intersection and the centre let a line be drawn to the circumference of the circle to give us the quarters of south and north. Then, using a sixteenth part of the entire circumference of the circle as a diameter, describe a circle with its centre on the line to the south, at the point where it crosses the circumference, and put points to the right and left on the circumference on the south side, repeating the process on the north side. From the four points thus obtained draw lines intersecting the centre from one side of the circumference to the other. Thus we shall have an eighth part of the circumference set out for Auster and another for Septentrio. The rest of the entire circumference is then to be divided into three equal parts on each side, and thus we have designed a figure equally apportioned among the eight winds. Then let the directions of your streets and alleys be laid down on the lines of division between the quarters of two winds. 8. On this principle of arrangement the disagreeable force of the winds will be shut out from dwellings and lines of houses. For if the streets run full in the face of the winds, their constant blasts rushing in from the open country, and then confined by narrow alleys, will sweep through them with great violence. The lines of houses must therefore be directed away from the quarters from which the winds blow, so that as they come in they may strike against the angles of the blocks and their force thus be broken and dispersed. 9. Those who know names for very many winds will perhaps be surprised at our setting forth that there are only eight. Remembering, however, that Eratosthenes of Cyrene, employing mathematical theories and geometrical methods, discovered from the course of the sun, the shadows cast by an equinoctial gnomon, and the inclination of the heaven that the circumference of the earth is two hundred and fifty-two thousand stadia, that is, thirty-one one million five hundred thousand paces, and observing that an eighth part of this, occupied by a wind, is three million nine hundred and thirty-seven thousand five hundred paces, they should not be surprised to find that a single wind, ranging over so wide a field, is subject to shifts this way and that, leading to a variety of breezes. 10. So we often have Leuconotus and Altanus blowing respectively to the right and left of Auster; Libonotus and Subvesperus to the right and left of Africus; Argestes, and at certain periods the Etesiae, on either side of Favonius; Circias and Corus on the sides of Caurus; Thracias and Gallicus on either side of Septentrio; Supernas and Caecias to the right and left of Aquilo; Carbas, and at a certain period the Ornithiae, on either side of Solanus; while Eurocircias and Volturnus blow on the flanks of Eurus which is between them. There are also many other names for winds derived from localities or from the squalls which sweep from rivers or down mountains. 11. Then, too, there are the breezes of early morning; for the sun on emerging from beneath the earth strikes humid air as he returns, and as he goes climbing up the sky he spreads it out before him, extracting breezes from the vapour that was there before the dawn. Those that still blow on after sunrise are classed with Eurus, and hence appears to come the Greek name [Greek: euros] as the child of the breezes, and the word for "to-morrow," [Greek: aurion], named from the early morning breezes. Some people do indeed say that Eratosthenes could not have inferred the true measure of the earth. Whether true or untrue, it cannot affect the truth of what I have written on the fixing of the quarters from which the different winds blow. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE WINDS (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)] 12. If he was wrong, the only result will be that the individual winds may blow, not with the scope expected from his measurement, but with powers either more or less widely extended. For the readier understanding of these topics, since I have treated them with brevity, it has seemed best to me to give two figures, or, as the Greeks say, [Greek: schêmata], at the end of this book: one designed to show the precise quarters from which the winds arise; the other, how by turning the directions of the rows of houses and the streets away from their full force, we may avoid unhealthy blasts. Let A be the centre of a plane surface, and B the point to which the shadow of the gnomon reaches in the morning. Taking A as the centre, open the compasses to the point B, which marks the shadow, and describe a circle. Put the gnomon back where it was before and wait for the shadow to lessen and grow again until in the afternoon it is equal to its length in the morning, touching the circumference at the point C. Then from the points B and C describe with the compasses two arcs intersecting at D. Next draw a line from the point of intersection D through the centre of the circle to the circumference and call it E F. This line will show where the south and north lie. [Illustration] 13. Then find with the compasses a sixteenth part of the entire circumference; then centre the compasses on the point E where the line to the south touches the circumference, and set off the points G and H to the right and left of E. Likewise on the north side, centre the compasses on the circumference at the point F on the line to the north, and set off the points I and K to the right and left; then draw lines through the centre from G to K and from H to I. Thus the space from G to H will belong to Auster and the south, and the space from I to K will be that of Septentrio. The rest of the circumference is to be divided equally into three parts on the right and three on the left, those to the east at the points L and M, those to the west at the points N and O. Finally, intersecting lines are to be drawn from M to O and from L to N. Thus we shall have the circumference divided into eight equal spaces for the winds. The figure being finished, we shall have at the eight different divisions, beginning at the south, the letter G between Eurus and Auster, H between Auster and Africus, N between Africus and Favonius, O between Favonius and Caurus, K between Caurus and Septentrio, I between Septentrio and Aquilo, L between Aquilo and Solanus, and M between Solanus and Eurus. This done, apply a gnomon to these eight divisions and thus fix the directions of the different alleys. CHAPTER VII THE SITES FOR PUBLIC BUILDINGS 1. Having laid out the alleys and determined the streets, we have next to treat of the choice of building sites for temples, the forum, and all other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility. If the city is on the sea, we should choose ground close to the harbour as the place where the forum is to be built; but if inland, in the middle of the town. For the temples, the sites for those of the gods under whose particular protection the state is thought to rest and for Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, should be on the very highest point commanding a view of the greater part of the city. Mercury should be in the forum, or, like Isis and Serapis, in the emporium: Apollo and Father Bacchus near the theatre: Hercules at the circus in communities which have no gymnasia nor amphitheatres; Mars outside the city but at the training ground, and so Venus, but at the harbour. It is moreover shown by the Etruscan diviners in treatises on their science that the fanes of Venus, Vulcan, and Mars should be situated outside the walls, in order that the young men and married women may not become habituated in the city to the temptations incident to the worship of Venus, and that buildings may be free from the terror of fires through the religious rites and sacrifices which call the power of Vulcan beyond the walls. As for Mars, when that divinity is enshrined outside the walls, the citizens will never take up arms against each other, and he will defend the city from its enemies and save it from danger in war. 2. Ceres also should be outside the city in a place to which people need never go except for the purpose of sacrifice. That place should be under the protection of religion, purity, and good morals. Proper sites should be set apart for the precincts of the other gods according to the nature of the sacrifices offered to them. The principle governing the actual construction of temples and their symmetry I shall explain in my third and fourth books. In the second I have thought it best to give an account of the materials used in buildings with their good qualities and advantages, and then in the succeeding books to describe and explain the proportions of buildings, their arrangements, and the different forms of symmetry. BOOK II INTRODUCTION 1. Dinocrates, an architect who was full of confidence in his own ideas and skill, set out from Macedonia, in the reign of Alexander, to go to the army, being eager to win the approbation of the king. He took with him from his country letters from relatives and friends to the principal military men and officers of the court, in order to gain access to them more readily. Being politely received by them, he asked to be presented to Alexander as soon as possible. They promised, but were rather slow, waiting for a suitable opportunity. So Dinocrates, thinking that they were playing with him, had recourse to his own efforts. He was of very lofty stature and pleasing countenance, finely formed, and extremely dignified. Trusting, therefore, to these natural gifts, he undressed himself in his inn, anointed his body with oil, set a chaplet of poplar leaves on his head, draped his left shoulder with a lion's skin, and holding a club in his right hand stalked forth to a place in front of the tribunal where the king was administering justice. 2. His strange appearance made the people turn round, and this led Alexander to look at him. In astonishment he gave orders to make way for him to draw near, and asked who he was. "Dinocrates," quoth he, "a Macedonian architect, who brings thee ideas and designs worthy of thy renown. I have made a design for the shaping of Mount Athos into the statue of a man, in whose left hand I have represented a very spacious fortified city, and in his right a bowl to receive the water of all the streams which are in that mountain, so that it may pour from the bowl into the sea." 3. Alexander, delighted with the idea of his design, immediately inquired whether there were any fields in the neighbourhood that could maintain the city in corn. On finding that this was impossible without transport from beyond the sea, "Dinocrates," quoth he, "I appreciate your design as excellent in composition, and I am delighted with it, but I apprehend that anybody who should found a city in that spot would be censured for bad judgement. For as a newborn babe cannot be nourished without the nurse's milk, nor conducted to the approaches that lead to growth in life, so a city cannot thrive without fields and the fruits thereof pouring into its walls, nor have a large population without plenty of food, nor maintain its population without a supply of it. Therefore, while thinking that your design is commendable, I consider the site as not commendable; but I would have you stay with me, because I mean to make use of your services." 4. From that time, Dinocrates did not leave the king, but followed him into Egypt. There Alexander, observing a harbour rendered safe by nature, an excellent centre for trade, cornfields throughout all Egypt, and the great usefulness of the mighty river Nile, ordered him to build the city of Alexandria, named after the king. This was how Dinocrates, recommended only by his good looks and dignified carriage, came to be so famous. But as for me, Emperor, nature has not given me stature, age has marred my face, and my strength is impaired by ill health. Therefore, since these advantages fail me, I shall win your approval, as I hope, by the help of my knowledge and my writings. 5. In my first book, I have said what I had to say about the functions of architecture and the scope of the art, as well as about fortified towns and the apportionment of building sites within the fortifications. Although it would next be in order to explain the proper proportions and symmetry of temples and public buildings, as well as of private houses, I thought best to postpone this until after I had treated the practical merits of the materials out of which, when they are brought together, buildings are constructed with due regard to the proper kind of material for each part, and until I had shown of what natural elements those materials are composed. But before beginning to explain their natural properties, I will prefix the motives which originally gave rise to buildings and the development of inventions in this field, following in the steps of early nature and of those writers who have devoted treatises to the origins of civilization and the investigation of inventions. My exposition will, therefore, follow the instruction which I have received from them. CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE DWELLING HOUSE 1. The men of old were born like the wild beasts, in woods, caves, and groves, and lived on savage fare. As time went on, the thickly crowded trees in a certain place, tossed by storms and winds, and rubbing their branches against one another, caught fire, and so the inhabitants of the place were put to flight, being terrified by the furious flame. After it subsided, they drew near, and observing that they were very comfortable standing before the warm fire, they put on logs and, while thus keeping it alive, brought up other people to it, showing them by signs how much comfort they got from it. In that gathering of men, at a time when utterance of sound was purely individual, from daily habits they fixed upon articulate words just as these had happened to come; then, from indicating by name things in common use, the result was that in this chance way they began to talk, and thus originated conversation with one another. 2. Therefore it was the discovery of fire that originally gave rise to the coming together of men, to the deliberative assembly, and to social intercourse. And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendour of the starry firmament, and also in being able to do with ease whatever they chose with their hands and fingers, they began in that first assembly to construct shelters. Some made them of green boughs, others dug caves on mountain sides, and some, in imitation of the nests of swallows and the way they built, made places of refuge out of mud and twigs. Next, by observing the shelters of others and adding new details to their own inceptions, they constructed better and better kinds of huts as time went on. 3. And since they were of an imitative and teachable nature, they would daily point out to each other the results of their building, boasting of the novelties in it; and thus, with their natural gifts sharpened by emulation, their standards improved daily. At first they set up forked stakes connected by twigs and covered these walls with mud. Others made walls of lumps of dried mud, covering them with reeds and leaves to keep out the rain and the heat. Finding that such roofs could not stand the rain during the storms of winter, they built them with peaks daubed with mud, the roofs sloping and projecting so as to carry off the rain water. 4. That houses originated as I have written above, we can see for ourselves from the buildings that are to this day constructed of like materials by foreign tribes: for instance, in Gaul, Spain, Portugal, and Aquitaine, roofed with oak shingles or thatched. Among the Colchians in Pontus, where there are forests in plenty, they lay down entire trees flat on the ground to the right and the left, leaving between them a space to suit the length of the trees, and then place above these another pair of trees, resting on the ends of the former and at right angles with them. These four trees enclose the space for the dwelling. Then upon these they place sticks of timber, one after the other on the four sides, crossing each other at the angles, and so, proceeding with their walls of trees laid perpendicularly above the lowest, they build up high towers. The interstices, which are left on account of the thickness of the building material, are stopped up with chips and mud. As for the roofs, by cutting away the ends of the crossbeams and making them converge gradually as they lay them across, they bring them up to the top from the four sides in the shape of a pyramid. They cover it with leaves and mud, and thus construct the roofs of their towers in a rude form of the "tortoise" style. 5. On the other hand, the Phrygians, who live in an open country, have no forests and consequently lack timber. They therefore select a natural hillock, run a trench through the middle of it, dig passages, and extend the interior space as widely as the site admits. Over it they build a pyramidal roof of logs fastened together, and this they cover with reeds and brushwood, heaping up very high mounds of earth above their dwellings. Thus their fashion in houses makes their winters very warm and their summers very cool. Some construct hovels with roofs of rushes from the swamps. Among other nations, also, in some places there are huts of the same or a similar method of construction. Likewise at Marseilles we can see roofs without tiles, made of earth mixed with straw. In Athens on the Areopagus there is to this day a relic of antiquity with a mud roof. The hut of Romulus on the Capitol is a significant reminder of the fashions of old times, and likewise the thatched roofs of temples or the Citadel. 6. From such specimens we can draw our inferences with regard to the devices used in the buildings of antiquity, and conclude that they were similar. Furthermore, as men made progress by becoming daily more expert in building, and as their ingenuity was increased by their dexterity so that from habit they attained to considerable skill, their intelligence was enlarged by their industry until the more proficient adopted the trade of carpenters. From these early beginnings, and from the fact that nature had not only endowed the human race with senses like the rest of the animals, but had also equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals under their sway, they next gradually advanced from the construction of buildings to the other arts and sciences, and so passed from a rude and barbarous mode of life to civilization and refinement. 7. Then, taking courage and looking forward from the standpoint of higher ideas born of the multiplication of the arts, they gave up huts and began to build houses with foundations, having brick or stone walls, and roofs of timber and tiles; next, observation and application led them from fluctuating and indefinite conceptions to definite rules of symmetry. Perceiving that nature had been lavish in the bestowal of timber and bountiful in stores of building material, they treated this like careful nurses, and thus developing the refinements of life, embellished them with luxuries. Therefore I shall now treat, to the best of my ability, of the things which are suitable to be used in buildings, showing their qualities and their excellencies. 8. Some persons, however, may find fault with the position of this book, thinking that it should have been placed first. I will therefore explain the matter, lest it be thought that I have made a mistake. Being engaged in writing a complete treatise on architecture, I resolved to set forth in the first book the branches of learning and studies of which it consists, to define its departments, and to show of what it is composed. Hence I have there declared what the qualities of an architect should be. In the first book, therefore, I have spoken of the function of the art, but in this I shall discuss the use of the building materials which nature provides. For this book does not show of what architecture is composed, but treats of the origin of the building art, how it was fostered, and how it made progress, step by step, until it reached its present perfection. 9. This book is, therefore, in its proper order and place. I will now return to my subject, and with regard to the materials suited to the construction of buildings will consider their natural formation and in what proportions their elementary constituents were combined, making it all clear and not obscure to my readers. For there is no kind of material, no body, and no thing that can be produced or conceived of, which is not made up of elementary particles; and nature does not admit of a truthful exploration in accordance with the doctrines of the physicists without an accurate demonstration of the primary causes of things, showing how and why they are as they are. CHAPTER II ON THE PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE ACCORDING TO THE PHYSICISTS 1. First of all Thales thought that water was the primordial substance of all things. Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed by the Greeks [Greek: skoteinos] on account of the obscurity of his writings, thought that it was fire. Democritus and his follower Epicurus thought that it was the atoms, termed by our writers "bodies that cannot be cut up," or, by some, "indivisibles." The school of the Pythagoreans added air and the earthy to the water and fire. Hence, although Democritus did not in a strict sense name them, but spoke only of indivisible bodies, yet he seems to have meant these same elements, because when taken by themselves they cannot be harmed, nor are they susceptible of dissolution, nor can they be cut up into parts, but throughout time eternal they forever retain an infinite solidity. 2. All things therefore appear to be made up and produced by the coming together of these elements, so that they have been distributed by nature among an infinite number of kinds of things. Hence I believed it right to treat of the diversity and practical peculiarities of these things as well as of the qualities which they exhibit in buildings, so that persons who are intending to build may understand them and so make no mistake, but may gather materials which are suitable to use in their buildings. CHAPTER III BRICK 1. Beginning with bricks, I shall state of what kind of clay they ought to be made. They should not be made of sandy or pebbly clay, or of fine gravel, because when made of these kinds they are in the first place heavy; and, secondly, when washed by the rain as they stand in walls, they go to pieces and break up, and the straw in them does not hold together on account of the roughness of the material. They should rather be made of white and chalky or of red clay, or even of a coarse grained gravelly clay. These materials are smooth and therefore durable; they are not heavy to work with, and are readily laid. 2. Bricks should be made in Spring or Autumn, so that they may dry uniformly. Those made in Summer are defective, because the fierce heat of the sun bakes their surface and makes the brick seem dry while inside it is not dry. And so the shrinking, which follows as they dry, causes cracks in the parts which were dried before, and these cracks make the bricks weak. Bricks will be most serviceable if made two years before using; for they cannot dry thoroughly in less time. When fresh undried bricks are used in a wall, the stucco covering stiffens and hardens into a permanent mass, but the bricks settle and cannot keep the same height as the stucco; the motion caused by their shrinking prevents them from adhering to it, and they are separated from their union with it. Hence the stucco, no longer joined to the core of the wall, cannot stand by itself because it is so thin; it breaks off, and the walls themselves may perhaps be ruined by their settling. This is so true that at Utica in constructing walls they use brick only if it is dry and made five years previously, and approved as such by the authority of a magistrate. 3. There are three kinds of bricks. First, the kind called in Greek Lydian, being that which our people use, a foot and a half long and one foot wide. The other two kinds are used by the Greeks in their buildings. Of these, one is called [Greek: pentadôron], the other [Greek: tetradôron]. [Greek: Dôron] is the Greek for "palm," for in Greek [Greek: dôron] means the giving of gifts, and the gift is always presented in the palm of the hand. A brick five palms square is called "pentadoron"; one four palms square "tetradoron." Public buildings are constructed of [Greek: pentadôra], private of [Greek: tetradôra]. 4. With these bricks there are also half-bricks. When these are used in a wall, a course of bricks is laid on one face and a course of half-bricks on the other, and they are bedded to the line on each face. The walls are bonded by alternate courses of the two different kinds, and as the bricks are always laid so as to break joints, this lends strength and a not unattractive appearance to both sides of such walls. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' BRICK-BOND ACCORDING TO REBER] In the states of Maxilua and Callet, in Further Spain, as well as in Pitane in Asia Minor, there are bricks which, when finished and dried, will float on being thrown into water. The reason why they can float seems to be that the clay of which they are made is like pumice-stone. So it is light, and also it does not, after being hardened by exposure to the air, take up or absorb liquid. So these bricks, being of this light and porous quality, and admitting no moisture into their texture, must by the laws of nature float in water, like pumice, no matter what their weight may be. They have therefore great advantages; for they are not heavy to use in building and, once made, they are not spoiled by bad weather. CHAPTER IV SAND 1. In walls of masonry the first question must be with regard to the sand, in order that it may be fit to mix into mortar and have no dirt in it. The kinds of pitsand are these: black, gray, red, and carbuncular. Of these the best will be found to be that which crackles when rubbed in the hand, while that which has much dirt in it will not be sharp enough. Again: throw some sand upon a white garment and then shake it out; if the garment is not soiled and no dirt adheres to it, the sand is suitable. 2. But if there are no sandpits from which it can be dug, then we must sift it out from river beds or from gravel or even from the sea beach. This kind, however, has these defects when used in masonry: it dries slowly; the wall cannot be built up without interruption but from time to time there must be pauses in the work; and such a wall cannot carry vaultings. Furthermore, when sea-sand is used in walls and these are coated with stucco, a salty efflorescence is given out which spoils the surface. 3. But pitsand used in masonry dries quickly, the stucco coating is permanent, and the walls can support vaultings. I am speaking of sand fresh from the sandpits. For if it lies unused too long after being taken out, it is disintegrated by exposure to sun, moon, or hoar frost, and becomes earthy. So when mixed in masonry, it has no binding power on the rubble, which consequently settles and down comes the load which the walls can no longer support. Fresh pitsand, however, in spite of all its excellence in concrete structures, is not equally useful in stucco, the richness of which, when the lime and straw are mixed with such sand, will cause it to crack as it dries on account of the great strength of the mixture. But river sand, though useless in "signinum" on account of its thinness, becomes perfectly solid in stucco when thoroughly worked by means of polishing instruments. CHAPTER V LIME 1. Sand and its sources having been thus treated, next with regard to lime we must be careful that it is burned from a stone which, whether soft or hard, is in any case white. Lime made of close-grained stone of the harder sort will be good in structural parts; lime of porous stone, in stucco. After slaking it, mix your mortar, if using pitsand, in the proportions of three parts of sand to one of lime; if using river or sea-sand, mix two parts of sand with one of lime. These will be the right proportions for the composition of the mixture. Further, in using river or sea-sand, the addition of a third part composed of burnt brick, pounded up and sifted, will make your mortar of a better composition to use. 2. The reason why lime makes a solid structure on being combined with water and sand seems to be this: that rocks, like all other bodies, are composed of the four elements. Those which contain a larger proportion of air, are soft; of water, are tough from the moisture; of earth, hard; and of fire, more brittle. Therefore, if limestone, without being burned, is merely pounded up small and then mixed with sand and so put into the work, the mass does not solidify nor can it hold together. But if the stone is first thrown into the kiln, it loses its former property of solidity by exposure to the great heat of the fire, and so with its strength burnt out and exhausted it is left with its pores open and empty. Hence, the moisture and air in the body of the stone being burned out and set free, and only a residuum of heat being left lying in it, if the stone is then immersed in water, the moisture, before the water can feel the influence of the fire, makes its way into the open pores; then the stone begins to get hot, and finally, after it cools off, the heat is rejected from the body of the lime. 3. Consequently, limestone when taken out of the kiln cannot be as heavy as when it was thrown in, but on being weighed, though its bulk remains the same as before, it is found to have lost about a third of its weight owing to the boiling out of the water. Therefore, its pores being thus opened and its texture rendered loose, it readily mixes with sand, and hence the two materials cohere as they dry, unite with the rubble, and make a solid structure. CHAPTER VI POZZOLANA 1. There is also a kind of powder which from natural causes produces astonishing results. It is found in the neighbourhood of Baiae and in the country belonging to the towns round about Mt. Vesuvius. This substance, when mixed with lime and rubble, not only lends strength to buildings of other kinds, but even when piers of it are constructed in the sea, they set hard under water. The reason for this seems to be that the soil on the slopes of the mountains in these neighbourhoods is hot and full of hot springs. This would not be so unless the mountains had beneath them huge fires of burning sulphur or alum or asphalt. So the fire and the heat of the flames, coming up hot from far within through the fissures, make the soil there light, and the tufa found there is spongy and free from moisture. Hence, when the three substances, all formed on a similar principle by the force of fire, are mixed together, the water suddenly taken in makes them cohere, and the moisture quickly hardens them so that they set into a mass which neither the waves nor the force of the water can dissolve. 2. That there is burning heat in these regions may be proved by the further fact that in the mountains near Baiae, which belongs to the Cumaeans, there are places excavated to serve as sweating-baths, where the intense heat that comes from far below bores its way through the earth, owing to the force of the fire, and passing up appears in these regions, thus making remarkably good sweating-baths. Likewise also it is related that in ancient times the tides of heat, swelling and overflowing from under Mt. Vesuvius, vomited forth fire from the mountain upon the neighbouring country. Hence, what is called "sponge-stone" or "Pompeian pumice" appears to have been reduced by burning from another kind of stone to the condition of the kind which we see. 3. The kind of sponge-stone taken from this region is not produced everywhere else, but only about Aetna and among the hills of Mysia which the Greeks call the "Burnt District," and in other places of the same peculiar nature. Seeing that in such places there are found hot springs and warm vapour in excavations on the mountains, and that the ancients tell us that there were once fires spreading over the fields in those very regions, it seems to be certain that moisture has been extracted from the tufa and earth, by the force of fire, just as it is from limestone in kilns. 4. Therefore, when different and unlike things have been subjected to the action of fire and thus reduced to the same condition, if after this, while in a warm, dry state, they are suddenly saturated with water, there is an effervescence of the heat latent in the bodies of them all, and this makes them firmly unite and quickly assume the property of one solid mass. There will still be the question why Tuscany, although it abounds in hot springs, does not furnish a powder out of which, on the same principle, a wall can be made which will set fast under water. I have therefore thought best to explain how this seems to be, before the question should be raised. 5. The same kinds of soil are not found in all places and countries alike, nor is stone found everywhere. Some soils are earthy; others gravelly, and again pebbly; in other places the material is sandy; in a word, the properties of the soil are as different and unlike as are the various countries. In particular, it may be observed that sandpits are hardly ever lacking in any place within the districts of Italy and Tuscany which are bounded by the Apennines; whereas across the Apennines toward the Adriatic none are found, and in Achaea and Asia Minor or, in short, across the sea, the very term is unknown. Hence it is not in all the places where boiling springs of hot water abound, that there is the same combination of favourable circumstances which has been described above. For things are produced in accordance with the will of nature; not to suit man's pleasure, but as it were by a chance distribution. 6. Therefore, where the mountains are not earthy but consist of soft stone, the force of the fire, passing through the fissures in the stone, sets it afire. The soft and delicate part is burned out, while the hard part is left. Consequently, while in Campania the burning of the earth makes ashes, in Tuscany the combustion of the stone makes carbuncular sand. Both are excellent in walls, but one is better to use for buildings on land, the other for piers under salt water. The Tuscan stone is softer in quality than tufa but harder than earth, and being thoroughly kindled by the violent heat from below, the result is the production in some places of the kind of sand called carbuncular. [Illustration: TRAVERTINE QUARRIES ON THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 1. 2. Ancient quarries. 3. A similar modern quarry. The top of the rock shows the original ground level. The present ground level shows the depth to which the rock has been removed.] CHAPTER VII STONE 1. I have now spoken of lime and sand, with their varieties and points of excellence. Next comes the consideration of stone-quarries from which dimension stone and supplies of rubble to be used in building are taken and brought together. The stone in quarries is found to be of different and unlike qualities. In some it is soft: for example, in the environs of the city at the quarries of Grotta Rossa, Palla, Fidenae, and of the Alban hills; in others, it is medium, as at Tivoli, at Amiternum, or Mt. Soracte, and in quarries of this sort; in still others it is hard, as in lava quarries. There are also numerous other kinds: for instance, in Campania, red and black tufas; in Umbria, Picenum, and Venetia, white tufa which can be cut with a toothed saw, like wood. 2. All these soft kinds have the advantage that they can be easily worked as soon as they have been taken from the quarries. Under cover they play their part well; but in open and exposed situations the frost and rime make them crumble, and they go to pieces. On the seacoast, too, the salt eats away and dissolves them, nor can they stand great heat either. But travertine and all stone of that class can stand injury whether from a heavy load laid upon it or from the weather; exposure to fire, however, it cannot bear, but splits and cracks to pieces at once. This is because in its natural composition there is but little moisture and not much of the earthy, but a great deal of air and of fire. Therefore, it is not only without the earthy and watery elements, but when fire, expelling the air from it by the operation and force of heat, penetrates into its inmost parts and occupies the empty spaces of the fissures, there comes a great glow and the stone is made to burn as fiercely as do the particles of fire itself. 3. There are also several quarries called Anician in the territory of Tarquinii, the stone being of the colour of peperino. The principal workshops lie round the lake of Bolsena and in the prefecture of Statonia. This stone has innumerable good qualities. Neither the season of frost nor exposure to fire can harm it, but it remains solid and lasts to a great age, because there is only a little air and fire in its natural composition, a moderate amount of moisture, and a great deal of the earthy. Hence its structure is of close texture and solid, and so it cannot be injured by the weather or by the force of fire. 4. This may best be seen from monuments in the neighbourhood of the town of Ferento which are made of stone from these quarries. Among them are large statues exceedingly well made, images of smaller size, and flowers and acanthus leaves gracefully carved. Old as these are, they look as fresh as if they were only just finished. Bronze workers, also, make moulds for the casting of bronze out of stone from these quarries, and find it very useful in bronze-founding. If the quarries were only near Rome, all our buildings might well be constructed from the products of these workshops. 5. But since, on account of the proximity of the stone-quarries of Grotta Rossa, Palla, and the others that are nearest to the city, necessity drives us to make use of their products, we must proceed as follows, if we wish our work to be finished without flaws. Let the stone be taken from the quarry two years before building is to begin, and not in winter but in summer. Then let it lie exposed in an open place. Such stone as has been damaged by the two years of exposure should be used in the foundations. The rest, which remains unhurt, has passed the test of nature and will endure in those parts of the building which are above ground. This precaution should be observed, not only with dimension stone, but also with the rubble which is to be used in walls. [Illustration: Photo. Moscioni EXAMPLE OF OPUS INCERTUM. THE CIRCULAR TEMPLE AT TIVOLI] CHAPTER VIII METHODS OF BUILDING WALLS 1. There are two styles of walls: "opus reticulatum," now used by everybody, and the ancient style called "opus incertum." Of these, the reticulatum looks better, but its construction makes it likely to crack, because its beds and builds spread out in every direction. On the other hand, in the opus incertum, the rubble, lying in courses and imbricated, makes a wall which, though not beautiful, is stronger than the reticulatum. 2. Both kinds should be constructed of the smallest stones, so that the walls, being thoroughly puddled with the mortar, which is made of lime and sand, may hold together longer. Since the stones used are soft and porous, they are apt to suck the moisture out of the mortar and so to dry it up. But when there is abundance of lime and sand, the wall, containing more moisture, will not soon lose its strength, for they will hold it together. But as soon as the moisture is sucked out of the mortar by the porous rubble, and the lime and sand separate and disunite, the rubble can no longer adhere to them and the wall will in time become a ruin. 3. This we may learn from several monuments in the environs of the city, which are built of marble or dimension stone, but on the inside packed with masonry between the outer walls. In the course of time, the mortar has lost its strength, which has been sucked out of it by the porousness of the rubble; and so the monuments are tumbling down and going to pieces, with their joints loosened by the settling of the material that bound them together. 4. He who wishes to avoid such a disaster should leave a cavity behind the facings, and on the inside build walls two feet thick, made of red dimension stone or burnt brick or lava in courses, and then bind them to the fronts by means of iron clamps and lead. For thus his work, being no mere heap of material but regularly laid in courses, will be strong enough to last forever without a flaw, because the beds and builds, all settling equally and bonded at the joints, will not let the work bulge out, nor allow the fall of the face walls which have been tightly fastened together. 5. Consequently, the method of construction employed by the Greeks is not to be despised. They do not use a structure of soft rubble polished on the outside, but whenever they forsake dimension stone, they lay courses of lava or of some hard stone, and, as though building with brick, they bind the upright joints by interchanging the direction of the stones as they lie in the courses. Thus they attain to a perfection that will endure to eternity. These structures are of two kinds. One of them is called "isodomum," the other "pseudisodomum." 6. A wall is called isodomum when all the courses are of equal height; pseudisodomum, when the rows of courses do not match but run unequally. Both kinds are strong: first, because the rubble itself is of close texture and solid, unable to suck the moisture out of the mortar, but keeping it in its moist condition for a very long period; secondly, because the beds of the stones, being laid smooth and level to begin with, keep the mortar from falling, and, as they are bonded throughout the entire thickness of the wall, they hold together for a very long period. 7. Another method is that which they call [Greek: emplekton], used also among us in the country. In this the facings are finished, but the other stones left in their natural state and then laid with alternate bonding stones. But our workmen, in their hurry to finish, devote themselves only to the facings of the walls, setting them upright but filling the space between with a lot of broken stones and mortar thrown in anyhow. This makes three different sections in the same structure; two consisting of facing and one of filling between them. The Greeks, however, do not build so; but laying their stones level and building every other stone length-wise into the thickness, they do not fill the space between, but construct the thickness of their walls in one solid and unbroken mass from the facings to the interior. Further, at intervals they lay single stones which run through the entire thickness of the wall. These stones, which show at each end, are called [Greek: diatonoi], and by their bonding powers they add very greatly to the solidity of the walls. [Illustration: Photo. Moscioni OPUS RETICULATUM FROM THE THERMAE OF HADRIAN'S VILLA AT TIVOLI] [Illustration: Photo. Moscioni EXAMPLE OF OPUS RETICULATUM FROM THE DOORWAY OF THE STOA POECILE. VILLA OF HADRIAN AT TIVOLI] 8. One who in accordance with these notes will take pains in selecting his method of construction, may count upon having something that will last. No walls made of rubble and finished with delicate beauty--no such walls can escape ruin as time goes on. Hence, when arbitrators are chosen to set a valuation on party walls, they do not value them at what they cost to build, but look up the written contract in each case and then, after deducting from the cost one eightieth for each year that the wall has been standing, decide that the remainder is the sum to be paid. They thus in effect pronounce that such walls cannot last more than eighty years. 9. In the case of brick walls, however, no deduction is made provided that they are still standing plumb, but they are always valued at what they cost to build. Hence in some states we may see public buildings and private houses, as well as those of kings, built of brick: in Athens, for example, the part of the wall which faces Mt. Hymettus and Pentelicus; at Patras, the cellae of the temple of Jupiter and Hercules, which are brick, although on the outside the entablature and columns of the temple are of stone; in Italy, at Arezzo, an ancient wall excellently built; at Tralles, the house built for the kings of the dynasty of Attalus, which is now always granted to the man who holds the state priesthood. In Sparta, paintings have been taken out of certain walls by cutting through the bricks, then have been placed in wooden frames, and so brought to the Comitium to adorn the aedileship of Varro and Murena. 10. Then there is the house of Croesus which the people of Sardis have set apart as a place of repose for their fellow-citizens in the retirement of age,--a "Gerousia" for the guild of the elder men. At Halicarnassus, the house of that most potent king Mausolus, though decorated throughout with Proconnesian marble, has walls built of brick which are to this day of extraordinary strength, and are covered with stucco so highly polished that they seem to be as glistening as glass. That king did not use brick from poverty; for he was choke-full of revenues, being ruler of all Caria. 11. As for his skill and ingenuity as a builder, they may be seen from what follows. He was born at Melassa, but recognizing the natural advantages of Halicarnassus as a fortress, and seeing that it was suitable as a trading centre and that it had a good harbour, he fixed his residence there. The place had a curvature like that of the seats in a theatre. On the lowest tier, along the harbour, was built the forum. About halfway up the curving slope, at the point where the curved cross-aisle is in a theatre, a broad wide street was laid out, in the middle of which was built the Mausoleum, a work so remarkable that it is classed among the Seven Wonders of the World. At the top of the hill, in the centre, is the fane of Mars, containing a colossal acrolithic statue by the famous hand of Leochares. That is, some think that this statue is by Leochares, others by Timotheus. At the extreme right of the summit is the fane of Venus and Mercury, close to the spring of Salmacis. 12. There is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it with an unnatural lewdness. It will not be out of place to explain how this idea came to spread throughout the world from a mistake in the telling of the tale. It cannot be that the water makes men effeminate and unchaste, as it is said to do; for the spring is of remarkable clearness and excellent in flavour. The fact is that when Melas and Arevanias came there from Argos and Troezen and founded a colony together, they drove out the Carians and Lelegans who were barbarians. These took refuge in the mountains, and, uniting there, used to make raids, plundering the Greeks and laying their country waste in a cruel manner. Later, one of the colonists, to make money, set up a well-stocked shop, near the spring because the water was so good, and the way in which he carried it on attracted the barbarians. So they began to come down, one at a time, and to meet with society, and thus they were brought back of their own accord, giving up their rough and savage ways for the delights of Greek customs. Hence this water acquired its peculiar reputation, not because it really induced unchastity, but because those barbarians were softened by the charm of civilization. [Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS AS RESTORED BY FRIEDRICH ADLER] 13. But since I have been tempted into giving a description of this fortified place, it remains to finish my account of it. Corresponding to the fane of Venus and the spring described above, which are on the right, we have on the extreme left the royal palace which king Mausolus built there in accordance with a plan all his own. To the right it commands a view of the forum, the harbour, and the entire line of fortifications, while just below it, to the left, there is a concealed harbour, hidden under the walls in such a way that nobody could see or know what was going on in it. Only the king himself could, in case of need, give orders from his own palace to the oarsmen and soldiers, without the knowledge of anybody else. 14. After the death of Mausolus, his wife Artemisia became queen, and the Rhodians, regarding it as an outrage that a woman should be ruler of the states of all Caria, fitted out a fleet and sallied forth to seize upon the kingdom. When news of this reached Artemisia, she gave orders that her fleet should be hidden away in that harbour with oarsmen and marines mustered and concealed, but that the rest of the citizens should take their places on the city wall. After the Rhodians had landed at the larger harbour with their well-equipped fleet, she ordered the people on the wall to cheer them and to promise that they would deliver up the town. Then, when they had passed inside the wall, leaving their fleet empty, Artemisia suddenly made a canal which led to the sea, brought her fleet thus out of the smaller harbour, and so sailed into the larger. Disembarking her soldiers, she towed the empty fleet of the Rhodians out to sea. So the Rhodians were surrounded without means of retreat, and were slain in the very forum. 15. So Artemisia embarked her own soldiers and oarsmen in the ships of the Rhodians and set forth for Rhodes. The Rhodians, beholding their own ships approaching wreathed with laurel, supposed that their fellow-citizens were returning victorious, and admitted the enemy. Then Artemisia, after taking Rhodes and killing its leading men, put up in the city of Rhodes a trophy of her victory, including two bronze statues, one representing the state of the Rhodians, the other herself. Herself she fashioned in the act of branding the state of the Rhodians. In later times the Rhodians, labouring under the religious scruple which makes it a sin to remove trophies once they are dedicated, constructed a building to surround the place, and thus by the erection of the "Grecian Station" covered it so that nobody could see it, and ordered that the building be called "[Greek: abaton]." 16. Since such very powerful kings have not disdained walls built of brick, although with their revenues and from booty they might often have had them not only of masonry or dimension stone but even of marble, I think that one ought not to reject buildings made of brick-work, provided that they are properly "topped." But I shall explain why this kind of structure should not be used by the Roman people within the city, not omitting the reasons and the grounds for them. 17. The laws of the state forbid that walls abutting on public property should be more than a foot and a half thick. The other walls are built of the same thickness in order to save space. Now brick walls, unless two or three bricks thick, cannot support more than one story; certainly not if they are only a foot and a half in thickness. But with the present importance of the city and the unlimited numbers of its population, it is necessary to increase the number of dwelling-places indefinitely. Consequently, as the ground floors could not admit of so great a number living in the city, the nature of the case has made it necessary to find relief by making the buildings high. In these tall piles reared with piers of stone, walls of burnt brick, and partitions of rubble work, and provided with floor after floor, the upper stories can be partitioned off into rooms to very great advantage. The accommodations within the city walls being thus multiplied as a result of the many floors high in the air, the Roman people easily find excellent places in which to live. 18. It has now been explained how limitations of building space necessarily forbid the employment of brick walls within the city. When it becomes necessary to use them outside the city, they should be constructed as follows in order to be perfect and durable. On the top of the wall lay a structure of burnt brick, about a foot and a half in height, under the tiles and projecting like a coping. Thus the defects usual in these walls can be avoided. For when the tiles on the roof are broken or thrown down by the wind so that rainwater can leak through, this burnt brick coating will prevent the crude brick from being damaged, and the cornice-like projection will throw off the drops beyond the vertical face, and thus the walls, though of crude brick structure, will be preserved intact. 19. With regard to burnt brick, nobody can tell offhand whether it is of the best or unfit to use in a wall, because its strength can be tested only after it has been used on a roof and exposed to bad weather and time--then, if it is good it is accepted. If not made of good clay or if not baked sufficiently, it shows itself defective there when exposed to frosts and rime. Brick that will not stand exposure on roofs can never be strong enough to carry its load in a wall. Hence the strongest burnt brick walls are those which are constructed out of old roofing tiles. 20. As for "wattle and daub" I could wish that it had never been invented. The more it saves in time and gains in space, the greater and the more general is the disaster that it may cause; for it is made to catch fire, like torches. It seems better, therefore, to spend on walls of burnt brick, and be at expense, than to save with "wattle and daub," and be in danger. And, in the stucco covering, too, it makes cracks from the inside by the arrangement of its studs and girts. For these swell with moisture as they are daubed, and then contract as they dry, and, by their shrinking, cause the solid stucco to split. But since some are obliged to use it either to save time or money, or for partitions on an unsupported span, the proper method of construction is as follows. Give it a high foundation so that it may nowhere come in contact with the broken stone-work composing the floor; for if it is sunk in this, it rots in course of time, then settles and sags forward, and so breaks through the surface of the stucco covering. I have now explained to the best of my ability the subject of walls, and the preparation of the different kinds of material employed, with their advantages and disadvantages. Next, following the guidance of Nature, I shall treat of the framework and the kinds of wood used in it, showing how they may be procured of a sort that will not give way as time goes on. CHAPTER IX TIMBER 1. Timber should be felled between early Autumn and the time when Favonius begins to blow. For in Spring all trees become pregnant, and they are all employing their natural vigour in the production of leaves and of the fruits that return every year. The requirements of that season render them empty and swollen, and so they are weak and feeble because of their looseness of texture. This is also the case with women who have conceived. Their bodies are not considered perfectly healthy until the child is born; hence, pregnant slaves, when offered for sale, are not warranted sound, because the fetus as it grows within the body takes to itself as nourishment all the best qualities of the mother's food, and so the stronger it becomes as the full time for birth approaches, the less compact it allows that body to be from which it is produced. After the birth of the child, what was heretofore taken to promote the growth of another creature is now set free by the delivery of the newborn, and the channels being now empty and open, the body will take it in by lapping up its juices, and thus becomes compact and returns to the natural strength which it had before. 2. On the same principle, with the ripening of the fruits in Autumn the leaves begin to wither and the trees, taking up their sap from the earth through the roots, recover themselves and are restored to their former solid texture. But the strong air of winter compresses and solidifies them during the time above mentioned. Consequently, if the timber is felled on the principle and at the time above mentioned, it will be felled at the proper season. 3. In felling a tree we should cut into the trunk of it to the very heart, and then leave it standing so that the sap may drain out drop by drop throughout the whole of it. In this way the useless liquid which is within will run out through the sapwood instead of having to die in a mass of decay, thus spoiling the quality of the timber. Then and not till then, the tree being drained dry and the sap no longer dripping, let it be felled and it will be in the highest state of usefulness. 4. That this is so may be seen in the case of fruit trees. When these are tapped at the base and pruned, each at the proper time, they pour out from the heart through the tapholes all the superfluous and corrupting fluid which they contain, and thus the draining process makes them durable. But when the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing. Therefore, if the draining process does not exhaust them while they are still alive, there is no doubt that, if the same principle is followed in felling them for timber, they will last a long time and be very useful in buildings. 5. Trees vary and are unlike one another in their qualities. Thus it is with the oak, elm, poplar, cypress, fir, and the others which are most suitable to use in buildings. The oak, for instance, has not the efficacy of the fir, nor the cypress that of the elm. Nor in the case of other trees, is it natural that they should be alike; but the individual kinds are effective in building, some in one way, some in another, owing to the different properties of their elements. 6. To begin with fir: it contains a great deal of air and fire with very little moisture and the earthy, so that, as its natural properties are of the lighter class, it is not heavy. Hence, its consistence being naturally stiff, it does not easily bend under the load, and keeps its straightness when used in the framework. But it contains so much heat that it generates and encourages decay, which spoils it; and it also kindles fire quickly because of the air in its body, which is so open that it takes in fire and so gives out a great flame. 7. The part which is nearest to the earth before the tree is cut down takes up moisture through the roots from the immediate neighbourhood and hence is without knots and is "clear." But the upper part, on account of the great heat in it, throws up branches into the air through the knots; and this, when it is cut off about twenty feet from the ground and then hewn, is called "knotwood" because of its hardness and knottiness. The lowest part, after the tree is cut down and the sapwood of the same thrown away, is split up into four pieces and prepared for joiner's work, and so is called "clearstock." 8. Oak, on the other hand, having enough and to spare of the earthy among its elements, and containing but little moisture, air, and fire, lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures. It follows that when exposed to moisture, as its texture is not loose and porous, it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks in the structures in which it is used. 9. The winter oak, being composed of a moderate amount of all the elements, is very useful in buildings, but when in a moist place, it takes in water to its centre through its pores, its air and fire being expelled by the influence of the moisture, and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech, both containing a mixture of moisture, fire, and the earthy, with a great deal of air, through this loose texture take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus, containing an abundance of fire and air, a moderate amount of moisture, and only a small amount of the earthy, are composed of a mixture which is proportionately rather light, and so they are of great service from their stiffness. Although on account of the mixture of the earthy in them they are not hard, yet their loose texture makes them gleaming white, and they are a convenient material to use in carving. 10. The alder, which is produced close by river banks, and which seems to be altogether useless as building material, has really excellent qualities. It is composed of a very large proportion of air and fire, not much of the earthy, and only a little moisture. Hence, in swampy places, alder piles driven close together beneath the foundations of buildings take in the water which their own consistence lacks and remain imperishable forever, supporting structures of enormous weight and keeping them from decay. Thus a material which cannot last even a little while above ground, endures for a long time when covered with moisture. 11. One can see this at its best in Ravenna; for there all the buildings, both public and private, have piles of this sort beneath their foundations. The elm and the ash contain a very great amount of moisture, a minimum of air and fire, and a moderate mixture of the earthy in their composition. When put in shape for use in buildings they are tough and, having no stiffness on account of the weight of moisture in them, soon bend. But when they become dry with age, or are allowed to lose their sap and die standing in the open, they get harder, and from their toughness supply a strong material for dowels to be used in joints and other articulations. 12. The hornbeam, which has a very small amount of fire and of the earthy in its composition, but a very great proportion of air and moisture, is not a wood that breaks easily, and is very convenient to handle. Hence, the Greeks call it "zygia," because they make of it yokes for their draught-animals, and their word for yoke is [Greek: zyga]. Cypress and pine are also just as admirable; for although they contain an abundance of moisture mixed with an equivalent composed of all the other elements, and so are apt to warp when used in buildings on account of this superfluity of moisture, yet they can be kept to a great age without rotting, because the liquid contained within their substances has a bitter taste which by its pungency prevents the entrance of decay or of those little creatures which are destructive. Hence, buildings made of these kinds of wood last for an unending period of time. 13. The cedar and the juniper tree have the same uses and good qualities, but, while the cypress and pine yield resin, from the cedar is produced an oil called cedar-oil. Books as well as other things smeared with this are not hurt by worms or decay. The foliage of this tree is like that of the cypress but the grain of the wood is straight. The statue of Diana in the temple at Ephesus is made of it, and so are the coffered ceilings both there and in all other famous fanes, because that wood is everlasting. The tree grows chiefly in Crete, Africa, and in some districts of Syria. 14. The larch, known only to the people of the towns on the banks of the river Po and the shores of the Adriatic, is not only preserved from decay and the worm by the great bitterness of its sap, but also it cannot be kindled with fire nor ignite of itself, unless like stone in a limekiln it is burned with other wood. And even then it does not take fire nor produce burning coals, but after a long time it slowly consumes away. This is because there is a very small proportion of the elements of fire and air in its composition, which is a dense and solid mass of moisture and the earthy, so that it has no open pores through which fire can find its way; but it repels the force of fire and does not let itself be harmed by it quickly. Further, its weight will not let it float in water, so that when transported it is loaded on shipboard or on rafts made of fir. 15. It is worth while to know how this wood was discovered. The divine Caesar, being with his army in the neighbourhood of the Alps, and having ordered the towns to furnish supplies, the inhabitants of a fortified stronghold there, called Larignum, trusting in the natural strength of their defences, refused to obey his command. So the general ordered his forces to the assault. In front of the gate of this stronghold there was a tower, made of beams of this wood laid in alternating directions at right angles to each other, like a funeral pyre, and built high, so that they could drive off an attacking party by throwing stakes and stones from the top. When it was observed that they had no other missiles than stakes, and that these could not be hurled very far from the wall on account of the weight, orders were given to approach and to throw bundles of brushwood and lighted torches at this outwork. These the soldiers soon got together. 16. The flames soon kindled the brushwood which lay about that wooden structure and, rising towards heaven, made everybody think that the whole pile had fallen. But when the fire had burned itself out and subsided, and the tower appeared to view entirely uninjured, Caesar in amazement gave orders that they should be surrounded with a palisade, built beyond the range of missiles. So the townspeople were frightened into surrendering, and were then asked where that wood came from which was not harmed by fire. They pointed to trees of the kind under discussion, of which there are very great numbers in that vicinity. And so, as that stronghold was called Larignum, the wood was called larch. It is transported by way of the Po to Ravenna, and is to be had in Fano, Pesaro, Ancona, and the other towns in that neighbourhood. If there were only a ready method of carrying this material to Rome, it would be of the greatest use in buildings; if not for general purposes, yet at least if the boards used in the eaves running round blocks of houses were made of it, the buildings would be free from the danger of fire spreading across to them, because such boards can neither take fire from flames or from burning coals, nor ignite spontaneously. 17. The leaves of these trees are like those of the pine; timber from them comes in long lengths, is as easily wrought in joiner's work as is the clearwood of fir, and contains a liquid resin, of the colour of Attic honey, which is good for consumptives. With regard to the different kinds of timber, I have now explained of what natural properties they appear to be composed, and how they were produced. It remains to consider the question why the highland fir, as it is called in Rome, is inferior, while the lowland fir is extremely useful in buildings so far as durability is concerned; and further to explain how it is that their bad or good qualities seem to be due to the peculiarities of their neighbourhood, so that this subject may be clearer to those who examine it. CHAPTER X HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND FIR 1. The first spurs of the Apennines arise from the Tuscan sea between the Alps and the most distant borders of Tuscany. The mountain range itself bends round and, almost touching the shores of the Adriatic in the middle of the curve, completes its circuit by extending to the strait on the other shore. Hence, this side of the curve, sloping towards the districts of Tuscany and Campania, lies basking in the sun, being constantly exposed to the full force of its rays all day. But the further side, sloping towards the Upper Sea and having a northern exposure, is constantly shrouded in shadowy darkness. Hence the trees which grow on that side, being nourished by the moisture, not only themselves attain to a very large size, but their fibre too, filled full of moisture, is swollen and distended with abundance of liquid. When they lose their vitality after being felled and hewn, the fibre retains its stiffness, and the trees as they dry become hollow and frail on account of their porosity, and hence cannot last when used in buildings. 2. But trees which grow in places facing the course of the sun are not of porous fibre but are solid, being drained by the dryness; for the sun absorbs moisture and draws it out of trees as well as out of the earth. The trees in sunny neighbourhoods, therefore, being solidified by the compact texture of their fibre, and not being porous from moisture, are very useful, so far as durability goes, when they are hewn into timber. Hence the lowland firs, being conveyed from sunny places, are better than those highland firs, which are brought here from shady places. 3. To the best of my mature consideration, I have now treated the materials which are necessary in the construction of buildings, the proportionate amount of the elements which are seen to be contained in their natural composition, and the points of excellence and defects of each kind, so that they may be not unknown to those who are engaged in building. Thus those who can follow the directions contained in this treatise will be better informed in advance, and able to select, among the different kinds, those which will be of use in their works. Therefore, since the preliminaries have been explained, the buildings themselves will be treated in the remaining books; and first, as due order requires, I shall in the next book write of the temples of the immortal gods and their symmetrical proportions. BOOK III INTRODUCTION 1. Apollo at Delphi, through the oracular utterance of his priestess, pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Of him it is related that he said with sagacity and great learning that the human breast should have been furnished with open windows, so that men might not keep their feelings concealed, but have them open to the view. Oh that nature, following his idea, had constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view! For if it had been so, not merely the virtues and vices of the mind would be easily visible, but also its knowledge of branches of study, displayed to the contemplation of the eyes, would not need testing by untrustworthy powers of judgement, but a singular and lasting influence would thus be lent to the learned and wise. However, since they are not so constructed, but are as nature willed them to be, it is impossible for men, while natural abilities are concealed in the breast, to form a judgement on the quality of the knowledge of the arts which is thus deeply hidden. And if artists themselves testify to their own skill, they can never, unless they are wealthy or famous from the age of their studios, or unless they are also possessed of the public favour and of eloquence, have an influence commensurate with their devotion to their pursuits, so that people may believe them to have the knowledge which they profess to have. 2. In particular we can learn this from the case of the sculptors and painters of antiquity. Those among them who were marked by high station or favourably recommended have come down to posterity with a name that will last forever; for instance, Myron, Polycletus, Phidias, Lysippus, and the others who have attained to fame by their art. For they acquired it by the execution of works for great states or for kings or for citizens of rank. But those who, being men of no less enthusiasm, natural ability, and dexterity than those famous artists, and who executed no less perfectly finished works for citizens of low station, are unremembered, not because they lacked diligence or dexterity in their art, but because fortune failed them; for instance, Teleas of Athens, Chion of Corinth, Myager the Phocaean, Pharax of Ephesus, Boedas of Byzantium, and many others. Then there were painters like Aristomenes of Thasos, Polycles and Andron of Ephesus, Theo of Magnesia, and others who were not deficient in diligence or enthusiasm for their art or in dexterity, but whose narrow means or ill-luck, or the higher position of their rivals in the struggle for honour, stood in the way of their attaining distinction. 3. Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere pretence. Now if, as Socrates wished, our feelings, opinions, and knowledge gained by study had been manifest and clear to see, popularity and adulation would have no influence, but men who had reached the height of knowledge by means of correct and definite courses of study, would be given commissions without any effort on their part. However, since such things are not plain and apparent to the view, as we think they should have been, and since I observe that the uneducated rather than the educated are in higher favour, thinking it beneath me to engage with the uneducated in the struggle for honour, I prefer to show the excellence of our department of knowledge by the publication of this treatise. 4. In my first book, Emperor, I described to you the art, with its points of excellence, the different kinds of training with which the architect ought to be equipped, adding the reasons why he ought to be skilful in them, and I divided up the subject of architecture as a whole among its departments, duly defining the limits of each. Next, as was preëminent and necessary, I explained on scientific principles the method of selecting healthy sites for fortified towns, pointed out by geometrical figures the different winds and the quarters from which they blow, and showed the proper way to lay out the lines of streets and rows of houses within the walls. Here I fixed the end of my first book. In the second, on building materials, I treated their various advantages in structures, and the natural properties of which they are composed. In this third book I shall speak of the temples of the immortal gods, describing and explaining them in the proper manner. CHAPTER I ON SYMMETRY: IN TEMPLES AND IN THE HUMAN BODY 1. The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect. They are due to proportion, in Greek [Greek: analogia]. Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard. From this result the principles of symmetry. Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man. 2. For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under side of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the under side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown. 3. Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square. 4. Therefore, since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly proportioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for their rule, that in perfect buildings the different members must be in exact symmetrical relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in the case of temples of the gods, buildings in which merits and faults usually last forever. 5. Further, it was from the members of the body that they derived the fundamental ideas of the measures which are obviously necessary in all works, as the finger, palm, foot, and cubit. These they apportioned so as to form the "perfect number," called in Greek [Greek: teleion], and as the perfect number the ancients fixed upon ten. For it is from the number of the fingers of the hand that the palm is found, and the foot from the palm. Again, while ten is naturally perfect, as being made up by the fingers of the two palms, Plato also held that this number was perfect because ten is composed of the individual units, called by the Greeks [Greek: monades]. But as soon as eleven or twelve is reached, the numbers, being excessive, cannot be perfect until they come to ten for the second time; for the component parts of that number are the individual units. 6. The mathematicians, however, maintaining a different view, have said that the perfect number is six, because this number is composed of integral parts which are suited numerically to their method of reckoning: thus, one is one sixth; two is one third; three is one half; four is two thirds, or [Greek: dimoiros] as they call it; five is five sixths, called [Greek: pentamoiros]; and six is the perfect number. As the number goes on growing larger, the addition of a unit above six is the [Greek: ephektos]; eight, formed by the addition of a third part of six, is the integer and a third, called [Greek: epitritos]; the addition of one half makes nine, the integer and a half, termed [Greek: hêmiolios]; the addition of two thirds, making the number ten, is the integer and two thirds, which they call [Greek: epidimoiros]; in the number eleven, where five are added, we have the five sixths, called [Greek: epipemptos]; finally, twelve, being composed of the two simple integers, is called [Greek: diplasios]. 7. And further, as the foot is one sixth of a man's height, the height of the body as expressed in number of feet being limited to six, they held that this was the perfect number, and observed that the cubit consisted of six palms or of twenty-four fingers. This principle seems to have been followed by the states of Greece. As the cubit consisted of six palms, they made the drachma, which they used as their unit, consist in the same way of six bronze coins, like our _asses_, which they call obols; and, to correspond to the fingers, divided the drachma into twenty-four quarter-obols, which some call dichalca others trichalca. 8. But our countrymen at first fixed upon the ancient number and made ten bronze pieces go to the denarius, and this is the origin of the name which is applied to the denarius to this day. And the fourth part of it, consisting of two asses and half of a third, they called "sesterce." But later, observing that six and ten were both of them perfect numbers, they combined the two, and thus made the most perfect number, sixteen. They found their authority for this in the foot. For if we take two palms from the cubit, there remains the foot of four palms; but the palm contains four fingers. Hence the foot contains sixteen fingers, and the denarius the same number of bronze _asses_. 9. Therefore, if it is agreed that number was found out from the human fingers, and that there is a symmetrical correspondence between the members separately and the entire form of the body, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard, we can have nothing but respect for those who, in constructing temples of the immortal gods, have so arranged the members of the works that both the separate parts and the whole design may harmonize in their proportions and symmetry. CHAPTER II CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES 1. There are certain elementary forms on which the general aspect of a temple depends. First there is the temple in antis, or [Greek: naos en parastasin] as it is called in Greek; then the prostyle, amphiprostyle, peripteral, pseudodipteral, dipteral, and hypaethral. These different forms may be described as follows. 2. It will be a temple in antis when it has antae carried out in front of the walls which enclose the cella, and in the middle, between the antae, two columns, and over them the pediment constructed in the symmetrical proportions to be described later in this work. An example will be found at the Three Fortunes, in that one of the three which is nearest the Colline gate. 3. The prostyle is in all respects like the temple in antis, except that at the corners, opposite the antae, it has two columns, and that it has architraves not only in front, as in the case of the temple in antis, but also one to the right and one to the left in the wings. An example of this is the temple of Jove and Faunus in the Island of the Tiber. 4. The amphiprostyle is in all other respects like the prostyle, but has besides, in the rear, the same arrangement of columns and pediment. 5. A temple will be peripteral that has six columns in front and six in the rear, with eleven on each side including the corner columns. Let the columns be so placed as to leave a space, the width of an intercolumniation, all round between the walls and the rows of columns on the outside, thus forming a walk round the cella of the temple, as in the cases of the temple of Jupiter Stator by Hermodorus in the Portico of Metellus, and the Marian temple of Honour and Valour constructed by Mucius, which has no portico in the rear. [Illustration: THE CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES ACCORDING TO THE ARRANGEMENTS OF THE COLONNADES] [Illustration: THE HYPAETHRAL TEMPLE OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH THE PARTHENON AND THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO NEAR MILETUS] 6. The pseudodipteral is so constructed that in front and in the rear there are in each case eight columns, with fifteen on each side, including the corner columns. The walls of the cella in front and in the rear should be directly over against the four middle columns. Thus there will be a space, the width of two intercolumniations plus the thickness of the lower diameter of a column, all round between the walls and the rows of columns on the outside. There is no example of this in Rome, but at Magnesia there is the temple of Diana by Hermogenes, and that of Apollo at Alabanda by Mnesthes. 7. The dipteral also is octastyle in both front and rear porticoes, but it has two rows of columns all round the temple, like the temple of Quirinus, which is Doric, and the temple of Diana at Ephesus, planned by Chersiphron, which is Ionic. 8. The hypaethral is decastyle in both front and rear porticoes. In everything else it is the same as the dipteral, but inside it has two tiers of columns set out from the wall all round, like the colonnade of a peristyle. The central part is open to the sky, without a roof. Folding doors lead to it at each end, in the porticoes in front and in the rear. There is no example of this sort in Rome, but in Athens there is the octastyle in the precinct of the Olympian. CHAPTER III THE PROPORTIONS OF INTERCOLUMNIATIONS AND OF COLUMNS 1. There are five classes of temples, designated as follows: pycnostyle, with the columns close together; systyle, with the intercolumniations a little wider; diastyle, more open still; araeostyle, farther apart than they ought to be; eustyle, with the intervals apportioned just right. [Illustration: THE CLASSIFICATION OF TEMPLES ACCORDING TO INTERCOLUMNIATION] 2. The pycnostyle is a temple in an intercolumniation of which the thickness of a column and a half can be inserted: for example, the temple of the Divine Caesar, that of Venus in Caesar's forum, and others constructed like them. The systyle is a temple in which the thickness of two columns can be placed in an intercolumniation, and in which the plinths of the bases are equivalent to the distance between two plinths: for example, the temple of Equestrian Fortune near the stone theatre, and the others which are constructed on the same principles. 3. These two kinds have practical disadvantages. When the matrons mount the steps for public prayer or thanksgiving, they cannot pass through the intercolumniations with their arms about one another, but must form single file; then again, the effect of the folding doors is thrust out of sight by the crowding of the columns, and likewise the statues are thrown into shadow; the narrow space interferes also with walks round the temple. 4. The construction will be diastyle when we can insert the thickness of three columns in an intercolumniation, as in the case of the temple of Apollo and Diana. This arrangement involves the danger that the architraves may break on account of the great width of the intervals. 5. In araeostyles we cannot employ stone or marble for the architraves, but must have a series of wooden beams laid upon the columns. And moreover, in appearance these temples are clumsy-roofed, low, broad, and their pediments are adorned in the Tuscan fashion with statues of terra-cotta or gilt bronze: for example, near the Circus Maximus, the temple of Ceres and Pompey's temple of Hercules; also the temple on the Capitol. 6. An account must now be given of the eustyle, which is the most approved class, and is arranged on principles developed with a view to convenience, beauty, and strength. The intervals should be made as wide as the thickness of two columns and a quarter, but the middle intercolumniations, one in front and the other in the rear, should be of the thickness of three columns. Thus built, the effect of the design will be beautiful, there will be no obstruction at the entrance, and the walk round the cella will be dignified. [Illustration: THE EUSTYLE TEMPLE OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH THE TEMPLE OF TEOS] 7. The rule of this arrangement may be set forth as follows. If a tetrastyle is to be built, let the width of the front which shall have already been determined for the temple, be divided into eleven parts and a half, not including the substructures and the projections of the bases; if it is to be of six columns, into eighteen parts. If an octastyle is to be constructed, let the front be divided into twenty-four parts and a half. Then, whether the temple is to be tetrastyle, hexastyle, or octastyle, let one of these parts be taken, and it will be the module. The thickness of the columns will be equal to one module. Each of the intercolumniations, except those in the middle, will measure two modules and a quarter. The middle intercolumniations in front and in the rear will each measure three modules. The columns themselves will be nine modules and a half in height. As a result of this division, the intercolumniations and the heights of the columns will be in due proportion. 8. We have no example of this in Rome, but at Teos in Asia Minor there is one which is hexastyle, dedicated to Father Bacchus. These rules for symmetry were established by Hermogenes, who was also the first to devise the principle of the pseudodipteral octastyle. He did so by dispensing with the inner rows of thirty-eight columns which belonged to the symmetry of the dipteral temple, and in this way he made a saving in expense and labour. He thus provided a much wider space for the walk round the cella between it and the columns, and without detracting at all from the general effect, or making one feel the loss of what had been really superfluous, he preserved the dignity of the whole work by his new treatment of it. 9. For the idea of the pteroma and the arrangement of the columns round a temple were devised in order that the intercolumniations might give the imposing effect of high relief; and also, in case a multitude of people should be caught in a heavy shower and detained, that they might have in the temple and round the cella a wide free space in which to wait. These ideas are developed, as I have described, in the pseudodipteral arrangement of a temple. It appears, therefore, that Hermogenes produced results which exhibit much acute ingenuity, and that he left sources from which those who came after him could derive instructive principles. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' RULES FOR THE DIAMETER AND HEIGHT OF COLUMNS IN THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF TEMPLE COMPARED WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES] 10. In araeostyle temples, the columns should be constructed so that their thickness is one eighth part of their height. In the diastyle, the height of a column should be measured off into eight and a half parts, and the thickness of the column fixed at one of these parts. In the systyle, let the height be divided into nine and a half parts, and one of these given to the thickness of the column. In the pycnostyle, the height should be divided into ten parts, and one of these used for the thickness of the column. In the eustyle temple, let the height of a column be divided, as in the systyle, into nine and a half parts, and let one part be taken for the thickness at the bottom of the shaft. With these dimensions we shall be taking into account the proportions of the intercolumniations. 11. For the thickness of the shafts must be enlarged in proportion to the increase of the distance between the columns. In the araeostyle, for instance, if only a ninth or tenth part is given to the thickness, the column will look thin and mean, because the width of the intercolumniations is such that the air seems to eat away and diminish the thickness of such shafts. On the other hand, in pycnostyles, if an eighth part is given to the thickness, it will make the shaft look swollen and ungraceful, because the intercolumniations are so close to each other and so narrow. We must therefore follow the rules of symmetry required by each kind of building. Then, too, the columns at the corners should be made thicker than the others by a fiftieth of their own diameter, because they are sharply outlined by the unobstructed air round them, and seem to the beholder more slender than they are. Hence, we must counteract the ocular deception by an adjustment of proportions. [Illustration: THE DIMINUTION OF COLUMNS IN RELATION TO THEIR DIMENSIONS OF HEIGHT] 12. Moreover, the diminution in the top of a column at the necking seems to be regulated on the following principles: if a column is fifteen feet or under, let the thickness at the bottom be divided into six parts, and let five of those parts form the thickness at the top. If it is from fifteen feet to twenty feet, let the bottom of the shaft be divided into six and a half parts, and let five and a half of those parts be the upper thickness of the column. In a column of from twenty feet to thirty feet, let the bottom of the shaft be divided into seven parts, and let the diminished top measure six of these. A column of from thirty to forty feet should be divided at the bottom into seven and a half parts, and, on the principle of diminution, have six and a half of these at the top. Columns of from forty feet to fifty should be divided into eight parts, and diminish to seven of these at the top of the shaft under the capital. In the case of higher columns, let the diminution be determined proportionally, on the same principles. 13. These proportionate enlargements are made in the thickness of columns on account of the different heights to which the eye has to climb. For the eye is always in search of beauty, and if we do not gratify its desire for pleasure by a proportionate enlargement in these measures, and thus make compensation for ocular deception, a clumsy and awkward appearance will be presented to the beholder. With regard to the enlargement made at the middle of columns, which among the Greeks is called [Greek: entasis], at the end of the book a figure and calculation will be subjoined, showing how an agreeable and appropriate effect may be produced by it. CHAPTER IV THE FOUNDATIONS AND SUBSTRUCTURES OF TEMPLES 1. The foundations of these works should be dug out of the solid ground, if it can be found, and carried down into solid ground as far as the magnitude of the work shall seem to require, and the whole substructure should be as solid as it can possibly be laid. Above ground, let walls be laid under the columns, thicker by one half than the columns are to be, so that the lower may be stronger than the higher. Hence they are called "stereobates"; for they take the load. And the projections of the bases should not extend beyond this solid foundation. The wall-thickness is similarly to be preserved above ground likewise, and the intervals between these walls should be vaulted over, or filled with earth rammed down hard, to keep the walls well apart. [Illustration: THE ENTASIS OF COLUMNS 1. The entasis as given by Fra Giocondo in the edition of 1511. 2. The entasis from the temple of Mars Ultor in Rome compared with Vignola's rule for entasis.] 2. If, however, solid ground cannot be found, but the place proves to be nothing but a heap of loose earth to the very bottom, or a marsh, then it must be dug up and cleared out and set with piles made of charred alder or olive wood or oak, and these must be driven down by machinery, very closely together like bridge-piles, and the intervals between them filled in with charcoal, and finally the foundations are to be laid on them in the most solid form of construction. The foundations having been brought up to the level, the stylobates are next to be put in place. 3. The columns are then to be distributed over the stylobates in the manner above described: close together in the pycnostyle; in the systyle, diastyle, or eustyle, as they are described and arranged above. In araeostyle temples one is free to arrange them as far apart as one likes. Still, in peripterals, the columns should be so placed that there are twice as many intercolumniations on the sides as there are in front; for thus the length of the work will be twice its breadth. Those who make the number of columns double, seem to be in error, because then the length seems to be one intercolumniation longer than it ought to be. 4. The steps in front must be arranged so that there shall always be an odd number of them; for thus the right foot, with which one mounts the first step, will also be the first to reach the level of the temple itself. The rise of such steps should, I think, be limited to not more than ten nor less than nine inches; for then the ascent will not be difficult. The treads of the steps ought to be made not less than a foot and a half, and not more than two feet deep. If there are to be steps running all round the temple, they should be built of the same size. 5. But if a podium is to be built on three sides round the temple, it should be so constructed that its plinths, bases, dies, coronae, and cymatiumare appropriate to the actual stylobate which is to be under the bases of the columns. [Illustration: FRA GIOCONDO'S IDEA OF THE "SCAMILLI IMPARES" (From his edition of Vitruvius, Venice, 1511)] The level of the stylobate must be increased along the middle by the scamilli impares; for if it is laid perfectly level, it will look to the eye as though it were hollowed a little. At the end of the book a figure will be found, with a description showing how the scamilli may be made to suit this purpose. CHAPTER V PROPORTIONS OF THE BASE, CAPITALS, AND ENTABLATURE IN THE IONIC ORDER 1. This finished, let the bases of the columns be set in place, and constructed in such proportions that their height, including the plinth, may be half the thickness of a column, and their projection (called in Greek [Greek: ekphora]) the same.[1] Thus in both length and breadth it will be one and one half thicknesses of a column. [Note 1: Reading _aeque tantam_ as in new _Rose._ Codd. _sextantem;_ Schn. _quadrantem._] 2. If the base is to be in the Attic style, let its height be so divided that the upper part shall be one third part of the thickness of the column, and the rest left for the plinth. Then, excluding the plinth, let the rest be divided into four parts, and of these let one fourth constitute the upper torus, and let the other three be divided equally, one part composing the lower torus, and the other, with its fillets, the scotia, which the Greeks call [Greek: trochilos]. 3. But if Ionic bases are to be built, their proportions shall be so determined that the base may be each way equal in breadth to the thickness of a column plus three eighths of the thickness; its height that of the Attic base, and so too its plinth; excluding the plinth, let the rest, which will be a third part of the thickness of a column, be divided into seven parts. Three of these parts constitute the torus at the top, and the other four are to be divided equally, one part constituting the upper trochilus with its astragals and overhang, the other left for the lower trochilus. But the lower will seem to be larger, because it will project to the edge of the plinth. The astragals must be one eighth of the trochilus. The projection of the base will be three sixteenths of the thickness of a column. [Illustration: THE IONIC ORDER ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH THE ORDER OF THE MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS The difference between the Roman and the Greek relation of the baluster-side of the capital to the echinus is to be noted.] 4. The bases being thus finished and put in place, the columns are to be put in place: the middle columns of the front and rear porticoes perpendicular to their own centre; the corner columns, and those which are to extend in a line from them along the sides of the temple to the right and left, are to be set so that their inner sides, which face toward the cella wall, are perpendicular, but their outer sides in the manner which I have described in speaking of their diminution. Thus, in the design of the temple the lines will be adjusted with due regard to the diminution. 5. The shafts of the columns having been erected, the rule for the capitals will be as follows. If they are to be cushion-shaped, they should be so proportioned that the abacus is in length and breadth equivalent to the thickness of the shaft at its bottom plus one eighteenth thereof, and the height of the capital, including the volutes, one half of that amount. The faces of the volutes must recede from the edge of the abacus inwards by one and a half eighteenths of that same amount. Then, the height of the capital is to be divided into nine and a half parts, and down along the abacus on the four sides of the volutes, down along the fillet at the edge of the abacus, lines called "catheti" are to be let fall. Then, of the nine and a half parts let one and a half be reserved for the height of the abacus, and let the other eight be used for the volutes. 6. Then let another line be drawn, beginning at a point situated at a distance of one and a half parts toward the inside from the line previously let fall down along the edge of the abacus. Next, let these lines be divided in such a way as to leave four and a half parts under the abacus; then, at the point which forms the division between the four and a half parts and the remaining three and a half, fix the centre of the eye, and from that centre describe a circle with a diameter equal to one of the eight parts. This will be the size of the eye, and in it draw a diameter on the line of the "cathetus." Then, in describing the quadrants, let the size of each be successively less, by half the diameter of the eye, than that which begins under the abacus, and proceed from the eye until that same quadrant under the abacus is reached. 7. The height of the capital is to be such that, of the nine and a half parts, three parts are below the level of the astragal at the top of the shaft, and the rest, omitting the abacus and the channel, belongs to its echinus. The projection of the echinus beyond the fillet of the abacus should be equal to the size of the eye. The projection of the bands of the cushions should be thus obtained: place one leg of a pair of compasses in the centre of the capital and open out the other to the edge of the echinus; bring this leg round and it will touch the outer edge of the bands. The axes of the volutes should not be thicker than the size of the eye, and the volutes themselves should be channelled out to a depth which is one twelfth of their height. These will be the symmetrical proportions for capitals of columns twenty-five feet high and less. For higher columns the other proportions will be the same, but the length and breadth of the abacus will be the thickness of the lower diameter of a column plus one ninth part thereof; thus, just as the higher the column the less the diminution, so the projection of its capital is proportionately increased and its breadth[2] is correspondingly enlarged. [Note 2: Codd. _altitudo_.] 8. With regard to the method of describing volutes, at the end of the book a figure will be subjoined and a calculation showing how they may be described so that their spirals may be true to the compass. The capitals having been finished and set up in due proportion to the columns (not exactly level on the columns, however, but with the same measured adjustment, so that in the upper members there may be an increase corresponding to that which was made in the stylobates), the rule for the architraves is to be as follows. If the columns are at least twelve feet and not more than fifteen feet high, let the height of the architrave be equal to half the thickness of a column at the bottom. If they are from fifteen feet to twenty, let the height of a column be measured off into thirteen parts, and let one of these be the height of the architrave. If they are from twenty to twenty-five feet, let this height be divided into twelve and one half parts, and let one of them form the height of the architrave. If they are from twenty-five feet to thirty, let it be divided into twelve parts, and let one of them form the height. If they are higher, the heights of the architraves are to be worked out proportionately in the same manner from the height of the columns. 9. For the higher that the eye has to climb, the less easily can it make its way through the thicker and thicker mass of air. So it fails when the height is great, its strength is sucked out of it, and it conveys to the mind only a confused estimate of the dimensions. Hence there must always be a corresponding increase in the symmetrical proportions of the members, so that whether the buildings are on unusually lofty sites or are themselves somewhat colossal, the size of the parts may seem in due proportion. The depth of the architrave on its under side just above the capital, is to be equivalent to the thickness of the top of the column just under the capital, and on its uppermost side equivalent to the foot of the shaft. 10. The cymatium of the architrave should be one seventh of the height of the whole architrave, and its projection the same. Omitting the cymatium, the rest of the architrave is to be divided into twelve parts, and three of these will form the lowest fascia, four, the next, and five, the highest fascia. The frieze, above the architrave, is one fourth less high than the architrave, but if there are to be reliefs upon it, it is one fourth higher than the architrave, so that the sculptures may be more imposing. Its cymatium is one seventh of the whole height of the frieze, and the projection of the cymatium is the same as its height. 11. Over the frieze comes the line of dentils, made of the same height as the middle fascia of the architrave and with a projection equal to their height. The intersection (or in Greek [Greek: metopê]) is apportioned so that the face of each dentil is half as wide as its height and the cavity of each intersection two thirds of this face in width. The cymatium here is one sixth of the whole height of this part. The corona with its cymatium, but not including the sima, has the height of the middle fascia of the architrave, and the total projection of the corona and dentils should be equal to the height from the frieze to the cymatium at the top of the corona. [Illustration: A COMPARISON OF THE IONIC ORDER ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES AND WITH VIGNOLA'S ORDER A: Showing the orders reduced to equal lower diameters. B: Showing the orders to a uniform scale.] And as a general rule, all projecting parts have greater beauty when their projection is equal to their height. 12. The height of the tympanum, which is in the pediment, is to be obtained thus: let the front of the corona, from the two ends of its cymatium, be measured off into nine parts, and let one of these parts be set up in the middle at the peak of the tympanum, taking care that it is perpendicular to the entablature and the neckings of the columns. The coronae over the tympanum are to be made of equal size with the coronae under it, not including the simae. Above the coronae are the simae (in Greek [Greek: epaietides]), which should be made one eighth higher than the height of the coronae. The acroteria at the corners have the height of the centre of the tympanum, and those in the middle are one eighth part higher than those at the corners. 13. All the members which are to be above the capitals of the columns, that is, architraves, friezes, coronae, tympana, gables, and acroteria, should be inclined to the front a twelfth part of their own height, for the reason that when we stand in front of them, if two lines are drawn from the eye, one reaching to the bottom of the building and the other to the top, that which reaches to the top will be the longer. Hence, as the line of sight to the upper part is the longer, it makes that part look as if it were leaning back. But when the members are inclined to the front, as described above, they will seem to the beholder to be plumb and perpendicular. 14. Each column should have twenty-four flutes, channelled out in such a way that if a carpenter's square be placed in the hollow of a flute and turned, the arm will touch the corners of the fillets on the right and left, and the tip of the square may keep touching some point in the concave surface as it moves through it. The breadth of the flutes is to be equivalent to the enlargement in the middle of a column, which will be found in the figure. 15. In the simae which are over the coronae on the sides of the temple, lion's heads are to be carved and arranged at intervals thus: First one head is marked out directly over the axis of each column, and then the others are arranged at equal distances apart, and so that there shall be one at the middle of every roof-tiling. Those that are over the columns should have holes bored through them to the gutter which receives the rainwater from the tiles, but those between them should be solid. Thus the mass of water that falls by way of the tiles into the gutter will not be thrown down along the intercolumniations nor drench people who are passing through them, while the lion's heads that are over the columns will appear to be vomiting as they discharge streams of water from their mouths. In this book I have written as clearly as I could on the arrangements of Ionic temples. In the next I shall explain the proportions of Doric and Corinthian temples. BOOK IV INTRODUCTION 1. I have observed, Emperor, that many in their treatises and volumes of commentaries on architecture have not presented the subject with well-ordered completeness, but have merely made a beginning and left, as it were, only desultory fragments. I have therefore thought that it would be a worthy and very useful thing to reduce the whole of this great art to a complete and orderly form of presentation, and then in different books to lay down and explain the required characteristics of different departments. Hence, Caesar, in my first book I have set forth to you the function of the architect and the things in which he ought to be trained. In the second I have discussed the supplies of material of which buildings are constructed. In the third, which deals with the arrangements of temples and their variety of form, I showed the nature and number of their classes, with the adjustments proper to each form according to the usage of the Ionic order, one of the three which exhibit the greatest delicacy of proportion in their symmetrical measurements. In the present book I shall speak of the established rules for the Doric and Corinthian orders, and shall explain their differences and peculiarities. CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS OF THE THREE ORDERS, AND THE PROPORTIONS OF THE CORINTHIAN CAPITAL 1. Corinthian columns are, excepting in their capitals, of the same proportions in all respects as Ionic; but the height of their capitals gives them proportionately a taller and more slender effect. This is because the height of the Ionic capital is only one third of the thickness of the column, while that of the Corinthian is the entire thickness of the shaft. Hence, as two thirds are added in Corinthian capitals, their tallness gives a more slender appearance to the columns themselves. 2. The other members which are placed above the columns, are, for Corinthian columns, composed either of the Doric proportions or according to the Ionic usages; for the Corinthian order never had any scheme peculiar to itself for its cornices or other ornaments, but may have mutules in the coronae and guttae on the architraves according to the triglyph system of the Doric style, or, according to Ionic practices, it may be arranged with a frieze adorned with sculptures and accompanied with dentils and coronae. 3. Thus a third architectural order, distinguished by its capital, was produced out of the two other orders. To the forms of their columns are due the names of the three orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, of which the Doric was the first to arise, and in early times. For Dorus, the son of Hellen and the nymph Phthia, was king of Achaea and all the Peloponnesus, and he built a fane, which chanced to be of this order, in the precinct of Juno at Argolis, a very ancient city, and subsequently others of the same order in the other cities of Achaea, although the rules of symmetry were not yet in existence. 4. Later, the Athenians, in obedience to oracles of the Delphic Apollo, and with the general agreement of all Hellas, despatched thirteen colonies at one time to Asia Minor, appointing leaders for each colony and giving the command-in-chief to Ion, son of Xuthus and Creusa (whom further Apollo at Delphi in the oracles had acknowledged as his son). Ion conducted those colonies to Asia Minor, took possession of the land of Caria, and there founded the grand cities of Ephesus, Miletus, Myus (long ago engulfed by the water, and its sacred rites and suffrage handed over by the Ionians to the Milesians), Priene, Samos, Teos, Colophon, Chius, Erythrae, Phocaea, Clazomenae, Lebedos, and Melite. This Melite, on account of the arrogance of its citizens, was destroyed by the other cities in a war declared by general agreement, and in its place, through the kindness of King Attalus and Arsinoe, the city of the Smyrnaeans was admitted among the Ionians. 5. Now these cities, after driving out the Carians and Lelegans, called that part of the world Ionia from their leader Ion, and there they set off precincts for the immortal gods and began to build fanes: first of all, a temple to Panionion Apollo such as they had seen in Achaea, calling it Doric because they had first seen that kind of temple built in the states of the Dorians. 6. Wishing to set up columns in that temple, but not having rules for their symmetry, and being in search of some way by which they could render them fit to bear a load and also of a satisfactory beauty of appearance, they measured the imprint of a man's foot and compared this with his height. On finding that, in a man, the foot was one sixth of the height, they applied the same principle to the column, and reared the shaft, including the capital, to a height six times its thickness at its base. Thus the Doric column, as used in buildings, began to exhibit the proportions, strength, and beauty of the body of a man. 7. Just so afterwards, when they desired to construct a temple to Diana in a new style of beauty, they translated these footprints into terms characteristic of the slenderness of women, and thus first made a column the thickness of which was only one eighth of its height, so that it might have a taller look. At the foot they substituted the base in place of a shoe; in the capital they placed the volutes, hanging down at the right and left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front with cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds of columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the one, and for the other the delicacy, adornment, and proportions characteristic of women. 8. It is true that posterity, having made progress in refinement and delicacy of feeling, and finding pleasure in more slender proportions, has established seven diameters of the thickness as the height of the Doric column, and nine as that of the Ionic. The Ionians, however, originated the order which is therefore named Ionic. The third order, called Corinthian, is an imitation of the slenderness of a maiden; for the outlines and limbs of maidens, being more slender on account of their tender years, admit of prettier effects in the way of adornment. 9. It is related that the original discovery of this form of capital was as follows. A free-born maiden of Corinth, just of marriageable age, was attacked by an illness and passed away. After her burial, her nurse, collecting a few little things which used to give the girl pleasure while she was alive, put them in a basket, carried it to the tomb, and laid it on top thereof, covering it with a roof-tile so that the things might last longer in the open air. This basket happened to be placed just above the root of an acanthus. The acanthus root, pressed down meanwhile though it was by the weight, when springtime came round put forth leaves and stalks in the middle, and the stalks, growing up along the sides of the basket, and pressed out by the corners of the tile through the compulsion of its weight, were forced to bend into volutes at the outer edges. [Illustration: Photo. Sommer THE BASILICA AT POMPEII] [Illustration: THE CORINTHIAN CAPITAL OF VITRUVIUS COMPARED WITH THE MONUMENTS] 10. Just then Callimachus, whom the Athenians called [Greek: katatêxitechnos] for the refinement and delicacy of his artistic work, passed by this tomb and observed the basket with the tender young leaves growing round it. Delighted with the novel style and form, he built some columns after that pattern for the Corinthians, determined their symmetrical proportions, and established from that time forth the rules to be followed in finished works of the Corinthian order. 11. The proportions of this capital should be fixed as follows. Let the height of the capital, including its abacus, be equivalent to the thickness of the base of a column. Let the breadth of the abacus be proportioned so that diagonals drawn from one corner of it to the other shall be twice the height of the capitals, which will give the proper breadth to each face of the abacus. The faces should curve inwards, by one ninth of the breadth of the face, from the outside edge of the corners of the abacus. At the bottom the capital should be of the thickness of the top of the column omitting the congé and astragal. The height of the abacus is one seventh of the height of the capital. 12. Omitting the height of the abacus, let the rest be divided into three parts, of which one should be given to the lowest leaf. Let the second leaf occupy the middle part of the height. Of the same height should be the stalks, out of which grow leaves projected so as to support the volutes which proceed from the stalks, and run out to the utmost corners of the abacus; the smaller spirals between them should be carved just under the flower which is on the abacus. The flowers on the four sides are to be made as large as the height of the abacus. On these principles of proportion, Corinthian capitals will be finished as they ought to be. There are other kinds of capitals set upon these same columns and called by various names, but they have no peculiarities of proportion of which we can speak, nor can we recognize from them another order of columns. Even their very names are, as we can see, derived with some changes from the Corinthian, the cushion-shaped, and the Doric, whose symmetrical proportions have been thus transferred to delicate sculptures of novel form. CHAPTER II THE ORNAMENTS OF THE ORDERS 1. Since the origin and invention of the orders of columns have been described above, I think it not out of place to speak in the same way about their ornaments, showing how these arose and from what original elements they were devised. The upper parts of all buildings contain timber work to which various terms are applied. And not only in its terminology but actually in its uses it exhibits variety. The main beams are those which are laid upon columns, pilasters, and antae; tie-beams and rafters are found in the framing. Under the roof, if the span is pretty large, are the crossbeams and struts; if it is of moderate extent, only the ridgepole, with the principal rafters extending to the outer edge of the eaves. Over the principal rafters are the purlines, and then above these and under the roof-tiles come the common rafters, extending so far that the walls are covered by their projection. 2. Thus each and every detail has a place, origin, and order of its own. In accordance with these details, and starting from carpenter's work, artists in building temples of stone and marble imitated those arrangements in their sculptures, believing that they must follow those inventions. So it was that some ancient carpenters, engaged in building somewhere or other, after laying the tie-beams so that they projected from the inside to the outside of the walls, closed up the space between the beams, and above them ornamented the coronae and gables with carpentry work of beauty greater than usual; then they cut off the projecting ends of the beams, bringing them into line and flush with the face of the walls; next, as this had an ugly look to them, they fastened boards, shaped as triglyphs are now made, on the ends of the beams, where they had been cut off in front, and painted them with blue wax so that the cutting off of the ends of the beams, being concealed, would not offend the eye. Hence it was in imitation of the arrangement of the tie-beams that men began to employ, in Doric buildings, the device of triglyphs and the metopes between the beams. 3. Later, others in other buildings allowed the projecting principal rafters to run out till they were flush with the triglyphs, and then formed their projections into simae. From that practice, like the triglyphs from the arrangement of the tie-beams, the system of mutules under the coronae was devised from the projections of the principal rafters. Hence generally, in buildings of stone and marble, the mutules are carved with a downward slant, in imitation of the principal rafters. For these necessarily have a slanting and projecting position to let the water drip down. The scheme of triglyphs and mutules in Doric buildings was, therefore, the imitative device that I have described. 4. It cannot be that the triglyphs represent windows, as some have erroneously said, since the triglyphs are placed at the corners and over the middle of columns--places where, from the nature of the case, there can be no windows at all. For buildings are wholly disconnected at the corners if openings for windows are left at those points. Again, if we are to suppose that there were open windows where the triglyphs now stand, it will follow, on the same principle, that the dentils of the Ionic order have likewise taken the places of windows. For the term "metope" is used of the intervals between dentils as well as of those between triglyphs. The Greeks call the seats of tie-beams and rafters [Greek: opai], while our people call these cavities columbaria (dovecotes). Hence, the space between the tie-beams, being the space between two "opae," was named by them [Greek: metopê]. 5. The system of triglyphs and mutules was invented for the Doric order, and similarly the scheme of dentils belongs to the Ionic, in which there are proper grounds for its use in buildings. Just as mutules represent the projection of the principal rafters, so dentils in the Ionic are an imitation of the projections of the common rafters. And so in Greek works nobody ever put dentils under mutules, as it is impossible that common rafters should be underneath principal rafters. Therefore, if that which in the original must be placed above the principal rafters, is put in the copy below them, the result will be a work constructed on false principles. Neither did the ancients approve of or employ mutules or dentils in pediments, but only plain coronae, for the reason that neither principal nor common rafters tail into the fronts of pediments, nor can they overhang them, but they are laid with a slope towards the eaves. Hence the ancients held that what could not happen in the original would have no valid reason for existence in the copy. 6. For in all their works they proceeded on definite principles of fitness and in ways derived from the truth of Nature. Thus they reached perfection, approving only those things which, if challenged, can be explained on grounds of the truth. Hence, from the sources which have been described they established and left us the rules of symmetry and proportion for each order. Following in their steps, I have spoken above on the Ionic and Corinthian styles, and I shall now briefly explain the theory of the Doric and its general appearance. CHAPTER III PROPORTIONS OF DORIC TEMPLES 1. Some of the ancient architects said that the Doric order ought not to be used for temples, because faults and incongruities were caused by the laws of its symmetry. Arcesius and Pytheos said so, as well as Hermogenes. He, for instance, after getting together a supply of marble for the construction of a Doric temple, changed his mind and built an Ionic temple to Father Bacchus with the same materials. This is not because it is unlovely in appearance or origin or dignity of form, but because the arrangement of the triglyphs and metopes (lacunaria) is an embarrassment and inconvenience to the work. 2. For the triglyphs ought to be placed so as to correspond to the centres of the columns, and the metopes between the triglyphs ought to be as broad as they are high. But in violation of this rule, at the corner columns triglyphs are placed at the outside edges and not corresponding to the centre of the columns. Hence the metopes next to the corner columns do not come out perfectly square, but are too broad by half the width of a triglyph. Those who would make the metopes all alike, make the outermost intercolumniations narrower by half the width of a triglyph. But the result is faulty, whether it is attained by broader metopes or narrower intercolumniations. For this reason, the ancients appear to have avoided the scheme of the Doric order in their temples. 3. However, since our plan calls for it, we set it forth as we have received it from our teachers, so that if anybody cares to set to work with attention to these laws, he may find the proportions stated by which he can construct correct and faultless examples of temples in the Doric fashion. Let the front of a Doric temple, at the place where the columns are put up, be divided, if it is to be tetrastyle, into twenty-seven parts; if hexastyle, into forty-two. One of these parts will be the module (in Greek [Greek: embatês]); and this module once fixed, all the parts of the work are adjusted by means of calculations based upon it. 4. The thickness of the columns will be two modules, and their height, including the capitals, fourteen. The height of a capital will be one module, and its breadth two and one sixth modules. Let the height of the capital be divided into three parts, of which one will form the abacus with its cymatium, the second the echinus with its annulets, and the third the necking. The diminution of the column should be the same as described for Ionic columns in the third book. The height of the architrave, including taenia and guttae, is one module, and of the taenia, one seventh of a module. The guttae, extending as wide as the triglyphs and beneath the taenia, should hang down for one sixth of a module, including their regula. The depth of the architrave on its under side should answer to the necking at the top of the column. Above the architrave, the triglyphs and metopes are to be placed: the triglyphs one and one half modules high, and one module wide in front. They are to be arranged so that one is placed to correspond to the centre of each corner and intermediate column, and two over each intercolumniation except the middle intercolumniations of the front and rear porticoes, which have three each. The intervals in the middle being thus extended, a free passage will be afforded to those who would approach the statues of the gods. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' DORIC ORDER COMPARED WITH THE TEMPLE AT CORI AND THE DORIC ORDER OF THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS] 5. The width of the triglyph should be divided into six parts, and five of these marked off in the middle by means of the rule, and two half parts at the right and left. Let one part, that in the centre, form a "femur" (in Greek [Greek: mêros]). On each side of it are the channels, to be cut in to fit the tip of a carpenter's square, and in succession the other femora, one at the right and the other at the left of a channel. To the outsides are relegated the semichannels. The triglyphs having been thus arranged, let the metopes between the triglyphs be as high as they are wide, while at the outer corners there should be semimetopes inserted, with the width of half a module. In these ways all defects will be corrected, whether in metopes or intercolumniations or lacunaria, as all the arrangements have been made with uniformity. 6. The capitals of each triglyph are to measure one sixth of a module. Over the capitals of the triglyphs the corona is to be placed, with a projection of two thirds of a module, and having a Doric cymatium at the bottom and another at the top. So the corona with its cymatia is half a module in height. Set off on the under side of the corona, vertically over the triglyphs and over the middle of the metopes, are the viae in straight lines and the guttae arranged in rows, six guttae broad and three deep. The spaces left (due to the fact that the metopes are broader than the triglyphs) may be left unornamented or may have thunderbolts carved on them. Just at the edge of the corona a line should be cut in, called the scotia. All the other parts, such as tympana and the simae of the corona, are to be constructed as described above in the case of the Ionic order. 7. Such will be the scheme established for diastyle buildings. But if the building is to be systyle and monotriglyphic, let the front of the temple, if tetrastyle, be divided into nineteen and a half parts; if hexastyle, into twenty-nine and a half parts. One of these parts will form the module in accordance with which the adjustments are to be made as above described. 8. Thus, over each portion of the architrave two metopes and two triglyphs[3] will be placed; and, in addition, at the corners half a triglyph and besides a space large enough for a half triglyph. At the centre, vertically under the gable, there should be room for three triglyphs and three metopes, in order that the centre intercolumniation, by its greater width, may give ample room for people to enter the temple, and may lend an imposing effect to the view of the statues of the gods. [Note 3: That is: two metopes with a triglyph between them, and half of the triglyph on either side.] 9. The columns should be fluted with twenty flutes. If these are to be left plane, only the twenty angles need be marked off. But if they are to be channelled out, the contour of the channelling may be determined thus: draw a square with sides equal in length to the breadth of the fluting, and centre a pair of compasses in the middle of this square. Then describe a circle with a circumference touching the angles of the square, and let the channellings have the contour of the segment formed by the circumference and the side of the square. The fluting of the Doric column will thus be finished in the style appropriate to it. 10. With regard to the enlargement to be made in the column at its middle, let the description given for Ionic columns in the third book be applied here also in the case of Doric. Since the external appearance of the Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic proportions has now been described, it is necessary next to explain the arrangements of the cella and the pronaos. CHAPTER IV THE CELLA AND PRONAOS 1. The length of a temple is adjusted so that its width may be half its length, and the actual cella one fourth greater in length than in width, including the wall in which the folding doors are placed. Let the remaining three parts, constituting the pronaos, extend to the antae terminating the walls, which antae ought to be of the same thickness as the columns. If the temple is to be more than twenty feet in width, let two columns be placed between the two antae, to separate the pteroma from the pronaos. The three intercolumniations between the antae and the columns should be closed by low walls made of marble or of joiner's work, with doors in them to afford passages into the pronaos. 2. If the width is to be more than forty feet, let columns be placed inside and opposite to the columns between the antae. They should have the same height as the columns in front of them, but their thickness should be proportionately reduced: thus, if the columns in front are in thickness one eighth of their height, these should be one tenth; if the former are one ninth or one tenth, these should be reduced in the same proportion. For their reduction will not be discernible, as the air has not free play about them. Still, in case they look too slender, when the outer columns have twenty or twenty-four flutes, these may have twenty-eight or thirty-two. Thus the additional number of flutes will make up proportionately for the loss in the body of the shaft, preventing it from being seen, and so in a different way the columns will be made to look equally thick. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' TEMPLE PLAN COMPARED WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES] 3. The reason for this result is that the eye, touching thus upon a greater number of points, set closer together, has a larger compass to cover with its range of vision. For if two columns, equally thick but one unfluted and the other fluted, are measured by drawing lines round them, one line touching the body of the columns in the hollows of the channels and on the edges of the flutes, these surrounding lines, even though the columns are equally thick, will not be equal to each other, because it takes a line of greater length to compass the channels and the flutes. This being granted, it is not improper, in narrow quarters or where the space is enclosed, to use in a building columns of somewhat slender proportions, since we can help out by a duly proportionate number of flutings. 4. The walls of the cella itself should be thick in proportion to its size, provided that their antae are kept of the same thickness as the columns. If the walls are to be of masonry, let the rubble used be as small as possible; but if they are to be of dimension stone or marble, the material ought to be of a very moderate and uniform size; for the laying of the stones so as to break joints will make the whole work stronger, and their bevelled edges, standing up about the builds and beds, will give it an agreeable look, somewhat like that of a picture. CHAPTER V HOW THE TEMPLE SHOULD FACE 1. The quarter toward which temples of the immortal gods ought to face is to be determined on the principle that, if there is no reason to hinder and the choice is free, the temple and the statue placed in the cella should face the western quarter of the sky. This will enable those who approach the altar with offerings or sacrifices to face the direction of the sunrise in facing the statue in the temple, and thus those who are undertaking vows look toward the quarter from which the sun comes forth, and likewise the statues themselves appear to be coming forth out of the east to look upon them as they pray and sacrifice. 2. But if the nature of the site is such as to forbid this, then the principle of determining the quarter should be changed, so that the widest possible view of the city may be had from the sanctuaries of the gods. Furthermore, temples that are to be built beside rivers, as in Egypt on both sides of the Nile, ought, as it seems, to face the river banks. Similarly, houses of the gods on the sides of public roads should be arranged so that the passers-by can have a view of them and pay their devotions face to face. CHAPTER VI THE DOORWAYS OF TEMPLES 1. For the doorways of temples and their casings the rules are as follows, first determining of what style they are to be. The styles of portals are Doric, Ionic, and Attic. In the Doric, the symmetrical proportions are distinguished by the following rules. Let the top of the corona, which is laid above the casing, be on a level with the tops of the capitals of the columns in the pronaos. The aperture of the doorway should be determined by dividing the height of the temple, from floor to coffered ceiling, into three and one half parts and letting two and one half[4] thereof constitute the height of the aperture of the folding doors. Let this in turn be divided into twelve parts, and let five and a half of these form the width of the bottom of the aperture. At the top, this width should be diminished, if the aperture is sixteen feet in height, by one third the width of the door-jamb; if the aperture is from sixteen to twenty-five feet, let the upper part of it be diminished by one quarter of the jamb; if from twenty-five to thirty feet, let the top be diminished by one eighth of the jamb. Other and higher apertures should, as it seems, have their sides perpendicular. [Note 4: Codd. _duae._] 2. Further, the jambs themselves should be diminished at the top by one fourteenth of their width. The height of the lintel should be equivalent to the width of the jambs at the top. Its cymatium ought to be one sixth of the jamb, with a projection equivalent to its height. The style of carving of the cymatium with its astragal should be the Lesbian. Above the cymatium of the lintel, place the frieze of the doorway, of the same height as the lintel, and having a Doric cymatium and Lesbian astragal carved upon it. Let the corona and its cymatium at the top of all be carved without ornamentation, and have a projection equal to its height. To the right and left of the lintel, which rests upon the jambs, there are to be projections fashioned like projecting bases and jointed to a nicety with the cymatium itself. 3. If the doorways are to be of the Ionic style, the height of the aperture should be reached in the same manner as in the Doric. Let its width be determined by dividing the height into two and one half parts and letting one of them form the width at the bottom. The diminutions should be the same as for Doric. The width of the faces of the jambs should be one fourteenth of the height of the aperture, and the cymatium one sixth of the width. Let the rest, excluding the cymatium, be divided into twelve parts. Let three of these compose the first fascia with its astragal, four the second, and five the third, the fasciae with their astragals running side by side all round. 4. The cornices of Ionic doorways should be constructed in the same manner as those of Doric, in due proportions. The consoles, otherwise called brackets, carved at the right and left, should hang down to the level of the bottom of the lintel, exclusive of the leaf. Their width on the face should be two thirds of the width of the jamb, but at the bottom one fourth slenderer than above. Doors should be constructed with the hinge-stiles one twelfth of the width of the whole aperture. The panels between two stiles should each occupy three of the twelve parts. 5. The rails will be apportioned thus: divide the height into five parts, of which assign two to the upper portion and three to the lower; above the centre place the middle rails; insert the others at the top and at the bottom. Let the height of a rail be one third of the breadth of a panel, and its cymatium one sixth of the rail. The width of the meeting-stiles should be one half the rail, and the cover-joint two thirds of the rail. The stiles toward the side of the jambs should be one half the rail. If the doors have folds in them, the height will remain as before, but the width should be double that of a single door; if the door is to have four folds, its height should be increased. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' RULE FOR DOORWAYS COMPARED WITH TWO EXAMPLES] 6. Attic doorways are built with the same proportions as Doric. Besides, there are fasciae running all round under the cymatia on the jambs, and apportioned so as to be equal to three sevenths of a jamb, excluding the cymatium. The doors are without lattice-work, are not double but have folds in them, and open outward. The laws which should govern the design of temples built in the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styles, have now, so far as I could arrive at them, been set forth according to what may be called the accepted methods. I shall next speak of the arrangements in the Tuscan style, showing how they should be treated. CHAPTER VII TUSCAN TEMPLES 1. The place where the temple is to be built having been divided on its length into six parts, deduct one and let the rest be given to its width. Then let the length be divided into two equal parts, of which let the inner be reserved as space for the cellae, and the part next the front left for the arrangement of the columns. 2. Next let the width be divided into ten parts. Of these, let three on the right and three on the left be given to the smaller cellae, or to the alae if there are to be alae, and the other four devoted to the middle of the temple. Let the space in front of the cellae, in the pronaos, be marked out for columns thus: the corner columns should be placed opposite the antae on the line of the outside walls; the two middle columns, set out on the line of the walls which are between the antae and the middle of the temple; and through the middle, between the antae and the front columns, a second row, arranged on the same lines. Let the thickness of the columns at the bottom be one seventh of their height, their height one third of the width of the temple, and the diminution of a column at the top, one fourth of its thickness at the bottom. [Illustration: THE TUSCAN TEMPLE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS.] 3. The height of their bases should be one half of that thickness. The plinth of their bases should be circular, and in height one half the height of the bases, the torus above it and congé being of the same height as the plinth. The height of the capital is one half the thickness of a column. The abacus has a width equivalent to the thickness of the bottom of a column. Let the height of the capital be divided into three parts, and give one to the plinth (that is, the abacus), the second to the echinus, and the third to the necking with its congé. 4. Upon the columns lay the main beams, fastened together, to a height commensurate with the requirements of the size of the building. These beams fastened together should be laid so as to be equivalent in thickness to the necking at the top of a column, and should be fastened together by means of dowels and dove-tailed tenons in such a way that there shall be a space two fingers broad between them at the fastening. For if they touch one another, and so do not leave airholes and admit draughts of air to blow between them, they get heated and soon begin to rot. 5. Above the beams and walls let the mutules project to a distance equal to one quarter of the height of a column; along the front of them nail casings; above, build the tympanum of the pediment either in masonry or in wood. The pediment with its ridgepole, principal rafters, and purlines are to be built in such a way that the eaves shall be equivalent to one third of the completed roof. CHAPTER VIII CIRCULAR TEMPLES AND OTHER VARIETIES 1. There are also circular temples, some of which are constructed in monopteral form, surrounded by columns but without a cella, while others are termed peripteral. Those that are without a cella have a raised platform and a flight of steps leading to it, one third of the diameter of the temple. The columns upon the stylobates are constructed of a height equivalent to the diameter taken between the outer edges of the stylobate walls, and of a thickness equivalent to one tenth of their height including the capitals and bases. The architrave has the height of one half of the thickness of a column. The frieze and the other parts placed above it are such as I have described in the third[5] book, on the subject of symmetrical proportions. [Illustration: _Photo. Anderson_ THE CIRCULAR TEMPLE AT TIVOLI] [Illustration: THE MAISON CARR�E AT N�MES, A PSEUDO-PERIPTERAL TEMPLE] [Note 5: 1 Codd. _quarto._] [Illustration: TEMPLE AT TIVOLI] [Illustration: _From Durm_ PLAN OF THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT ROME] 2. But if such a temple is to be constructed in peripteral form, let two steps and then the stylobate be constructed below. Next, let the cella wall be set up, recessed within the stylobate about one fifth of the breadth thereof, and let a place for folding doors be left in the middle to afford entrance. This cella, excluding its walls and the passage round the outside, should have a diameter equivalent to the height of a column above the stylobate. Let the columns round the cella be arranged in the symmetrical proportions just given. 3. The proportions of the roof in the centre should be such that the height of the rotunda, excluding the finial, is equivalent to one half the diameter of the whole work. The finial, excluding its pyramidal base, should have the dimensions of the capital of a column. All the rest must be built in the symmetrical proportions described above. [Illustration: _From Durm_ THE CIRCULAR TEMPLE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS] 4. There are also other kinds of temples, constructed in the same symmetrical proportions and yet with a different kind of plan: for example, the temple of Castor in the district of the Circus Flaminius, that of Vejovis between the two groves, and still more ingeniously the temple of Diana in her sacred grove, with columns added on the right and left at the flanks of the pronaos. Temples of this kind, like that of Castor in the Circus, were first built in Athens on the Acropolis, and in Attica at Sunium to Pallas Minerva. The proportions of them are not different, but the same as usual. For the length of their cellae is twice the width, as in other temples; but all that we regularly find in the fronts of others is in these transferred to the sides. 5. Some take the arrangement of columns belonging to the Tuscan order and apply it to buildings in the Corinthian and Ionic styles, and where there are projecting antae in the pronaos, set up two columns in a line with each of the cella walls, thus making a combination of the principles of Tuscan and Greek buildings. 6. Others actually remove the temple walls, transferring them to the intercolumniations, and thus, by dispensing with the space needed for a pteroma, greatly increase the extent of the cella. So, while leaving all the rest in the same symmetrical proportions, they appear to have produced a new kind of plan with the new name "pseudoperipteral." These kinds, however, vary according to the requirements of the sacrifices. For we must not build temples according to the same rules to all gods alike, since the performance of the sacred rites varies with the various gods. 7. I have now set forth, as they have come down to me, all the principles governing the building of temples, have marked out under separate heads their arrangements and proportions, and have set forth, so far as I could express them in writing, the differences in their plans and the distinctions which make them unlike one another. Next, with regard to the altars of the immortal gods, I shall state how they may be constructed so as to conform to the rules governing sacrifices. CHAPTER IX ALTARS Altars should face the east, and should always be placed on a lower level than are the statues in the temples, so that those who are praying and sacrificing may look upwards towards the divinity. They are of different heights, being each regulated so as to be appropriate to its own god. Their heights are to be adjusted thus: for Jupiter and all the celestials, let them be constructed as high as possible; for Vesta and Mother Earth, let them be built low. In accordance with these rules will altars be adjusted when one is preparing his plans. Having described the arrangements of temples in this book, in the following we shall give an exposition of the construction of public buildings. BOOK V INTRODUCTION 1. Those who have filled books of unusually large size, Emperor, in setting forth their intellectual ideas and doctrines, have thus made a very great and remarkable addition to the authority of their writings. I could wish that circumstances made this as permissible in the case of our subject, so that the authority of the present treatise might be increased by amplifications; but this is not so easy as it may be thought. Writing on architecture is not like history or poetry. History is captivating to the reader from its very nature; for it holds out the hope of various novelties. Poetry, with its measures and metrical feet, its refinement in the arrangement of words, and the delivery in verse of the sentiments expressed by the several characters to one another, delights the feelings of the reader, and leads him smoothly on to the very end of the work. 2. But this cannot be the case with architectural treatises, because those terms which originate in the peculiar needs of the art, give rise to obscurity of ideas from the unusual nature of the language. Hence, while the things themselves are not well known, and their names not in common use, if besides this the principles are described in a very diffuse fashion without any attempt at conciseness and explanation in a few pellucid sentences, such fullness and amplitude of treatment will be only a hindrance, and will give the reader nothing but indefinite notions. Therefore, when I mention obscure terms, and the symmetrical proportions of members of buildings, I shall give brief explanations, so that they may be committed to memory; for thus expressed, the mind will be enabled to understand them the more easily. 3. Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time. Then again, Pythagoras and those who came after him in his school thought it proper to employ the principles of the cube in composing books on their doctrines, and, having determined that the cube consisted of 216[6] lines, held that there should be no more than three cubes in any one treatise. [Note 6: Codd. _CC. & L._] 4. A cube is a body with sides all of equal breadth and their surfaces perfectly square. When thrown down, it stands firm and steady so long as it is untouched, no matter on which of its sides it has fallen, like the dice which players throw on the board. The Pythagoreans appear to have drawn their analogy from the cube, because the number of lines mentioned will be fixed firmly and steadily in the memory when they have once settled down, like a cube, upon a man's understanding. The Greek comic poets, also, divided their plays into parts by introducing a choral song, and by this partition on the principle of the cubes, they relieve the actor's speeches by such intermissions. 5. Since these rules, founded on the analogy of nature, were followed by our predecessors, and since I observe that I have to write on unusual subjects which many persons will find obscure, I have thought it best to write in short books, so that they may the more readily strike the understanding of the reader: for they will thus be easy to comprehend. I have also arranged them so that those in search of knowledge on a subject may not have to gather it from different places, but may find it in one complete treatment, with the various classes set forth each in a book by itself. Hence, Caesar, in the third and fourth books I gave the rules for temples; in this book I shall treat of the laying out of public places. I shall speak first of the proper arrangement of the forum, for in it the course of both public and private affairs is directed by the magistrates. CHAPTER I THE FORUM AND BASILICA 1. The Greeks lay out their forums in the form of a square surrounded by very spacious double colonnades, adorn them with columns set rather closely together, and with entablatures of stone or marble, and construct walks above in the upper story. But in the cities of Italy the same method cannot be followed, for the reason that it is a custom handed down from our ancestors that gladiatorial shows should be given in the forum. [Illustration: _From Gsell_ FORUM AT TIMGAD A, Forum. B, Basilica. C, Curia. C', Official Building. D, Small Temple. E, Latrina. F, Atrium.] 2. Therefore let the intercolumniations round the show place be pretty wide; round about in the colonnades put the bankers' offices; and have balconies on the upper floor properly arranged so as to be convenient, and to bring in some public revenue. The size of a forum should be proportionate to the number of inhabitants, so that it may not be too small a space to be useful, nor look like a desert waste for lack of population. To determine its breadth, divide its length into three parts and assign two of them to the breadth. Its shape will then be oblong, and its ground plan conveniently suited to the conditions of shows. 3. The columns of the upper tier should be one fourth smaller than those of the lower, because, for the purpose of bearing the load, what is below ought to be stronger than what is above, and also, because we ought to imitate nature as seen in the case of things growing; for example, in round smooth-stemmed trees, like the fir, cypress, and pine, every one of which is rather thick just above the roots and then, as it goes on increasing in height, tapers off naturally and symmetrically in growing up to the top. Hence, if nature requires this in things growing, it is the right arrangement that what is above should be less in height and thickness than what is below. 4. Basilicas should be constructed on a site adjoining the forum and in the warmest possible quarter, so that in winter business men may gather in them without being troubled by the weather. In breadth they should be not less than one third nor more than one half of their length, unless the site is naturally such as to prevent this and to oblige an alteration in these proportions. If the length of the site is greater than necessary, Chalcidian porches may be constructed at the ends, as in the Julia Aquiliana. 5. It is thought that the columns of basilicas ought to be as high as the side-aisles are broad; an aisle should be limited to one third of the breadth which the open space in the middle is to have. Let the columns of the upper tier be smaller than those of the lower, as written above. The screen, to be placed between the upper and the lower tiers of columns, ought to be, it is thought, one fourth lower than the columns of the upper tier, so that people walking in the upper story of the basilica may not be seen by the business men. The architraves, friezes, and cornices should be adjusted to the proportions of the columns, as we have stated in the third book. [Illustration: _From Mau_ FORUM AT POMPEII A, Forum. B, Basilica. C, Temple of Apollo. D, D', Market Buildings. E, Latrina. F, City Treasury. G, Memorial Arch. H, Temple of Jupiter. I, Arch of Tiberius. K, Macellum (provision market). L, Sanctuary of the City Lares. M, Temple of Vespasian. N, Building of Eumachia. O, Comitium. P, Office of the Duumvirs. Q, The City Council. R, Office of the Aediles.] 6. But basilicas of the greatest dignity and beauty may also be constructed in the style of that one which I erected, and the building of which I superintended at Fano. Its proportions and symmetrical relations were established as follows. In the middle, the main roof between the columns is 120 feet long and sixty feet wide. Its aisle round the space beneath the main roof and between the walls and the columns is twenty feet broad. The columns, of unbroken height, measuring with their capitals fifty feet, and being each five feet thick, have behind them pilasters, twenty feet high, two and one half feet broad, and one and one half feet thick, which support the beams on which is carried the upper flooring of the aisles. Above them are other pilasters, eighteen feet high, two feet broad, and a foot thick, which carry the beams supporting the principal raftering and the roof of the aisles, which is brought down lower than the main roof. [Illustration: _From Durm_ PLAN OF THE BASILICA AT POMPEII] 7. The spaces remaining between the beams supported by the pilasters and the columns, are left for windows between the intercolumniations. The columns are: on the breadth of the main roof at each end, four, including the corner columns at right and left; on the long side which is next to the forum, eight, including the same corner columns; on the other side, six, including the corner columns. This is because the two middle columns on that side are omitted, in order not to obstruct the view of the pronaos of the temple of Augustus (which is built at the middle of the side wall of the basilica, facing the middle of the forum and the temple of Jupiter) and also the tribunal which is in the former temple, shaped as a hemicycle whose curvature is less than a semicircle. [Illustration: VITRUVIUS' BASILICA AT FANO] 8. The open side of this hemicycle is forty-six feet along the front, and its curvature inwards is fifteen feet, so that those who are standing before the magistrates may not be in the way of the business men in the basilica. Round about, above the columns, are placed the architraves, consisting of three two-foot timbers fastened together. These return from the columns which stand third on the inner side to the antae which project from the pronaos, and which touch the edges of the hemicycle at right and left. 9. Above the architraves and regularly dispersed on supports directly over the capitals, piers are placed, three feet high and four feet broad each way. Above them is placed the projecting cornice round about, made of two two-foot timbers. The tie-beams and struts, being placed above them, and directly over the shafts of the columns and the antae and walls of the pronaos, hold up one gable roof along the entire basilica, and another from the middle of it, over the pronaos of the temple. 10. Thus the gable tops run in two directions, like the letter T, and give a beautiful effect to the outside and inside of the main roof. Further, by the omission of an ornamental entablature and of a line of screens and a second tier of columns, troublesome labour is saved and the total cost greatly diminished. On the other hand, the carrying of the columns themselves in unbroken height directly up to the beams that support the main roof, seems to add an air of sumptuousness and dignity to the work. CHAPTER II THE TREASURY, PRISON, AND SENATE HOUSE 1. The treasury, prison, and senate house ought to adjoin the forum, but in such a way that their dimensions may be proportionate to those of the forum. Particularly, the senate house should be constructed with special regard to the importance of the town or city. If the building is square, let its height be fixed at one and one half times its breadth; but if it is to be oblong, add together its length and breadth and, having got the total, let half of it be devoted to the height up to the coffered ceiling. 2. Further, the inside walls should be girdled, at a point halfway up their height, with coronae made of woodwork or of stucco. Without these, the voice of men engaged in discussion there will be carried up to the height above, and so be unintelligible to their listeners. But when the walls are girdled with coronae, the voice from below, being detained before rising and becoming lost in the air, will be intelligible to the ear. CHAPTER III THE THEATRE: ITS SITE, FOUNDATIONS AND ACOUSTICS 1. After the forum has been arranged, next, for the purpose of seeing plays or festivals of the immortal gods, a site as healthy as possible should be selected for the theatre, in accordance with what has been written in the first book, on the principles of healthfulness in the sites of cities. For when plays are given, the spectators, with their wives and children, sit through them spell-bound, and their bodies, motionless from enjoyment, have the pores open, into which blowing winds find their way. If these winds come from marshy districts or from other unwholesome quarters, they will introduce noxious exhalations into the system. Hence, such faults will be avoided if the site of the theatre is somewhat carefully selected. 2. We must also beware that it has not a southern exposure. When the sun shines full upon the rounded part of it, the air, being shut up in the curved enclosure and unable to circulate, stays there and becomes heated; and getting glowing hot it burns up, dries out, and impairs the fluids of the human body. For these reasons, sites which are unwholesome in such respects are to be avoided, and healthy sites selected. 3. The foundation walls will be an easier matter if they are on a hillside; but if they have to be laid on a plain or in a marshy place, solidity must be assured and substructures built in accordance with what has been written in the third book, on the foundations of temples. Above the foundation walls, the ascending rows of seats, from the substructures up, should be built of stone and marble materials. 4. The curved cross-aisles should be constructed in proportionate relation, it is thought, to the height of the theatre, but not higher than the footway of the passage is broad. If they are loftier, they will throw back the voice and drive it away from the upper portion, thus preventing the case-endings of words from reaching with distinct meaning the ears of those who are in the uppermost seats above the cross-aisles. In short, it should be so contrived that a line drawn from the lowest to the highest seat will touch the top edges and angles of all the seats. Thus the voice will meet with no obstruction. 5. The different entrances ought to be numerous and spacious, the upper not connected with the lower, but built in a continuous straight line from all parts of the house, without turnings, so that the people may not be crowded together when let out from shows, but may have separate exits from all parts without obstructions. Particular pains must also be taken that the site be not a "deaf" one, but one through which the voice can range with the greatest clearness. This can be brought about if a site is selected where there is no obstruction due to echo. 6. Voice is a flowing breath of air, perceptible to the hearing by contact. It moves in an endless number of circular rounds, like the innumerably increasing circular waves which appear when a stone is thrown into smooth water, and which keep on spreading indefinitely from the centre unless interrupted by narrow limits, or by some obstruction which prevents such waves from reaching their end in due formation. When they are interrupted by obstructions, the first waves, flowing back, break up the formation of those which follow. 7. In the same manner the voice executes its movements in concentric circles; but while in the case of water the circles move horizontally on a plane surface, the voice not only proceeds horizontally, but also ascends vertically by regular stages. Therefore, as in the case of the waves formed in the water, so it is in the case of the voice: the first wave, when there is no obstruction to interrupt it, does not break up the second or the following waves, but they all reach the ears of the lowest and highest spectators without an echo. 8. Hence the ancient architects, following in the footsteps of nature, perfected the ascending rows of seats in theatres from their investigations of the ascending voice, and, by means of the canonical theory of the mathematicians and that of the musicians, endeavoured to make every voice uttered on the stage come with greater clearness and sweetness to the ears of the audience. For just as musical instruments are brought to perfection of clearness in the sound of their strings by means of bronze plates or horn [Greek: êcheia], so the ancients devised methods of increasing the power of the voice in theatres through the application of harmonics. CHAPTER IV HARMONICS 1. Harmonics is an obscure and difficult branch of musical science, especially for those who do not know Greek. If we desire to treat of it, we must use Greek words, because some of them have no Latin equivalents. Hence, I will explain it as clearly as I can from the writings of Aristoxenus, append his scheme, and define the boundaries of the notes, so that with somewhat careful attention anybody may be able to understand it pretty easily. 2. The voice, in its changes of position when shifting pitch, becomes sometimes high, sometimes low, and its movements are of two kinds, in one of which its progress is continuous, in the other by intervals. The continuous voice does not become stationary at the "boundaries" or at any definite place, and so the extremities of its progress are not apparent, but the fact that there are differences of pitch is apparent, as in our ordinary speech in _sol_, _lux_, _flos_, _vox_; for in these cases we cannot tell at what pitch the voice begins, nor at what pitch it leaves off, but the fact that it becomes low from high and high from low is apparent to the ear. In its progress by intervals the opposite is the case. For here, when the pitch shifts, the voice, by change of position, stations itself on one pitch, then on another, and, as it frequently repeats this alternating process, it appears to the senses to become stationary, as happens in singing when we produce a variation of the mode by changing the pitch of the voice. And so, since it moves by intervals, the points at which it begins and where it leaves off are obviously apparent in the boundaries of the notes, but the intermediate points escape notice and are obscure, owing to the intervals. 3. There are three classes of modes: first, that which the Greeks term the enharmonic; second, the chromatic; third, the diatonic. The enharmonic mode is an artistic conception, and therefore execution in it has a specially severe dignity and distinction. The chromatic, with its delicate subtlety and with the "crowding" of its notes, gives a sweeter kind of pleasure. In the diatonic, the distance between the intervals is easier to understand, because it is natural. These three classes differ in their arrangement of the tetrachord. In the enharmonic, the tetrachord consists of two tones and two "dieses." A diesis is a quarter tone; hence in a semitone there are included two dieses. In the chromatic there are two semitones arranged in succession, and the third interval is a tone and a half. In the diatonic, there are two consecutive tones, and the third interval of a semitone completes the tetrachord. Hence, in the three classes, the tetrachords are equally composed of two tones and a semitone, but when they are regarded separately according to the terms of each class, they differ in the arrangement of their intervals. 4. Now then, these intervals of tones and semitones of the tetrachord are a division introduced by nature in the case of the voice, and she has defined their limits by measures according to the magnitude of the intervals, and determined their characteristics in certain different ways. These natural laws are followed by the skilled workmen who fashion musical instruments, in bringing them to the perfection of their proper concords. [Illustration] 5. In each class there are eighteen notes, termed in Greek [Greek: phthongoi], of which eight in all the three classes are constant and fixed, while the other ten, not being tuned to the same pitch, are variable. The fixed notes are those which, being placed between the moveable, make up the unity of the tetrachord, and remain unaltered in their boundaries according to the different classes. Their names are proslambanomenos, hypate hypaton, hypate meson, mese, nete synhemmenon, paramese, nete diezeugmenon, nete hyperbolaeon. The moveable notes are those which, being arranged in the tetrachord between the immoveable, change from place to place according to the different classes. They are called parhypate hypaton, lichanos hypaton, parhypate meson, lichanos meson, trite synhemmenon, paranete synhemmenon, trite diezeugmenon, paranete diezeugmenon, trite hyperbolaeon, paranete hyperbolaeon. [Illustration] 6. These notes, from being moveable, take on different qualities; for they may stand at different intervals and increasing distances. Thus, parhypate, which in the enharmonic is at the interval of half a semitone from hypate, has a semitone interval when transferred to the chromatic. What is called lichanos in the enharmonic is at the interval of a semitone from hypate; but when shifted to the chromatic, it goes two semitones away; and in the diatonic it is at an interval of three semitones from hypate. Hence the ten notes produce three different kinds of modes on account of their changes of position in the classes. 7. There are five tetrachords: first, the lowest, termed in Greek [Greek: hypaton]; second, the middle, called [Greek: meson]; third, the conjunct, termed [Greek: synêmmenon]; fourth, the disjunct, named [Greek: diezeugmenon]; the fifth, which is the highest, is termed in Greek [Greek: hyperbolaion]. The concords, termed in Greek [Greek: symphôniai], of which human modulation will naturally admit, are six in number: the fourth, the fifth, the octave, the octave and fourth, the octave and fifth, and the double octave. 8. Their names are therefore due to numerical value; for when the voice becomes stationary on some one note, and then, shifting its pitch, changes its position and passes to the limit of the fourth note from that one, we use the term "fourth"; when it passes to the fifth, the term is "fifth."[7] [Note 7: The remainder of this section is omitted from the translation as being an obvious interpolation.] 9. For there can be no consonances either in the case of the notes of stringed instruments or of the singing voice, between two intervals or between three or six or seven; but, as written above, it is only the harmonies of the fourth, the fifth, and so on up to the double octave, that have boundaries naturally corresponding to those of the voice: and these concords are produced by the union of the notes. CHAPTER V SOUNDING VESSELS IN THE THEATRE 1. In accordance with the foregoing investigations on mathematical principles, let bronze vessels be made, proportionate to the size of the theatre, and let them be so fashioned that, when touched, they may produce with one another the notes of the fourth, the fifth, and so on up to the double octave. Then, having constructed niches in between the seats of the theatre, let the vessels be arranged in them, in accordance with musical laws, in such a way that they nowhere touch the wall, but have a clear space all round them and room over their tops. They should be set upside down, and be supported on the side facing the stage by wedges not less than half a foot high. Opposite each niche, apertures should be left in the surface of the seat next below, two feet long and half a foot deep. 2. The arrangement of these vessels, with reference to the situations in which they should be placed, may be described as follows. If the theatre be of no great size, mark out a horizontal range halfway up, and in it construct thirteen arched niches with twelve equal spaces between them, so that of the above mentioned "echea" those which give the note nete hyperbolaeon may be placed first on each side, in the niches which are at the extreme ends; next to the ends and a fourth below in pitch, the note nete diezeugmenon; third, paramese, a fourth below; fourth, nete synhemmenon; fifth, mese, a fourth below; sixth, hypate meson, a fourth below; and in the middle and another fourth below, one vessel giving the note hypate hypaton. 3. On this principle of arrangement, the voice, uttered from the stage as from a centre, and spreading and striking against the cavities of the different vessels, as it comes in contact with them, will be increased in clearness of sound, and will wake an harmonious note in unison with itself. But if the theatre be rather large, let its height be divided into four parts, so that three horizontal ranges of niches may be marked out and constructed: one for the enharmonic, another for the chromatic, and the third for the diatonic system. Beginning with the bottom range, let the arrangement be as described above in the case of a smaller theatre, but on the enharmonic system. [Illustration] 4. In the middle range, place first at the extreme ends the vessels which give the note of the chromatic hyperbolaeon; next to them, those which give the chromatic diezeugmenon, a fourth below; third, the chromatic synhemmenon; fourth, the chromatic meson, a fourth below; fifth, the chromatic hypaton, a fourth below; sixth, the paramese, for this is both the concord of the fifth to the chromatic hyperbolaeon, and the concord[8] of the chromatic synhemmenon. [Note 8: Codd. _diatessaron_, which is impossible, paramese being the concord of the fourth to the chromatic meson, and identical with the chromatic synhemmenon.] 5. No vessel is to be placed in the middle, for the reason that there is no other note in the chromatic system that forms a natural concord of sound. In the highest division and range of niches, place at the extreme ends vessels fashioned so as to give the note of the diatonic hyperbolaeon; next, the diatonic diezeugmenon, a fourth below; third, the diatonic synhemmenon; fourth, the diatonic meson, a fourth below; fifth, the diatonic hypaton, a fourth below; sixth, the proslambanomenos, a fourth below; in the middle, the note mese, for this is both the octave to proslambanomenos, and the concord of the fifth to the diatonic hypaton. 6. Whoever wishes to carry out these principles with ease, has only to consult the scheme at the end of this book, drawn up in accordance with the laws of music. It was left by Aristoxenus, who with great ability and labour classified and arranged in it the different modes. In accordance with it, and by giving heed to these theories, one can easily bring a theatre to perfection, from the point of view of the nature of the voice, so as to give pleasure to the audience. 7. Somebody will perhaps say that many theatres are built every year in Rome, and that in them no attention at all is paid to these principles; but he will be in error, from the fact that all our public theatres made of wood contain a great deal of boarding, which must be resonant. This may be observed from the behaviour of those who sing to the lyre, who, when they wish to sing in a higher key, turn towards the folding doors on the stage, and thus by their aid are reinforced with a sound in harmony with the voice. But when theatres are built of solid materials like masonry, stone, or marble, which cannot be resonant, then the principles of the "echea" must be applied. 8. If, however, it is asked in what theatre these vessels have been employed, we cannot point to any in Rome itself, but only to those in the districts of Italy and in a good many Greek states. We have also the evidence of Lucius Mummius, who, after destroying the theatre in Corinth, brought its bronze vessels to Rome, and made a dedicatory offering at the temple of Luna with the money obtained from the sale of them. Besides, many skilful architects, in constructing theatres in small towns, have, for lack of means, taken large jars made of clay, but similarly resonant, and have produced very advantageous results by arranging them on the principles described. CHAPTER VI PLAN OF THE THEATRE 1. The plan of the theatre itself is to be constructed as follows. Having fixed upon the principal centre, draw a line of circumference equivalent to what is to be the perimeter at the bottom, and in it inscribe four equilateral triangles, at equal distances apart and touching the boundary line of the circle, as the astrologers do in a figure of the twelve signs of the zodiac, when they are making computations from the musical harmony of the stars. Taking that one of these triangles whose side is nearest to the scaena, let the front of the scaena be determined by the line where that side cuts off a segment of the circle (A-B), and draw, through the centre, a parallel line (C-D) set off from that position, to separate the platform of the stage from the space of the orchestra. 2. The platform has to be made deeper than that of the Greeks, because all our artists perform on the stage, while the orchestra contains the places reserved for the seats of senators. The height of this platform must be not more than five feet, in order that those who sit in the orchestra may be able to see the performances of all the actors. The sections (cunei) for spectators in the theatre should be so divided, that the angles of the triangles which run about the circumference of the circle may give the direction for the flights of steps between the sections, as far as up to the first curved cross-aisle. Above this, the upper sections are to be laid out, midway between (the lower sections), with alternating passage-ways. 3. The angles at the bottom, which give the directions for the flights of steps, will be seven in number (C, E, F, G, H, I, D); the other five angles will determine the arrangement of the scene: thus, the angle in the middle ought to have the "royal door" (K) opposite to it; the angles to the right and left (L, M) will designate the position of the doors for guest chambers; and the two outermost angles (A, B) will point to the passages in the wings. The steps for the spectators' places, where the seats are arranged, should be not less than a foot and a palm in height, nor more than a foot and six fingers; their depth should be fixed at not more than two and a half feet, nor less than two feet. [Illustration: THE ROMAN THEATRE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS] 4. The roof of the colonnade to be built at the top of the rows of seats, should lie level with the top of the "scaena," for the reason that the voice will then rise with equal power until it reaches the highest rows of seats and the roof. If the roof is not so high, in proportion as it is lower, it will check the voice at the point which the sound first reaches. 5. Take one sixth of the diameter of the orchestra between the lowest steps, and let the lower seats at the ends on both sides be cut away to a height of that dimension so as to leave entrances (O, P). At the point where this cutting away occurs, fix the soffits of the passages. Thus their vaulting will be sufficiently high. 6. The length of the "scaena" ought to be double the diameter of the orchestra. The height of the podium, starting from the level of the stage, is, including the corona and cymatium, one twelfth of the diameter of the orchestra. Above the podium, the columns, including their capitals and bases, should have a height of one quarter of the same diameter, and the architraves and ornaments of the columns should be one fifth of their height. The parapet above, including its cyma and corona, is one half the height of the parapet below. Let the columns above this parapet be one fourth less in height than the columns below, and the architraves and ornaments of these columns one fifth of their height. If the "scaena" is to have three stories, let the uppermost parapet be half the height of the intermediate one, the columns at the top one fourth less high than the intermediate, and the architraves and coronae of these columns one fifth of their height as before. [Illustration: _From Durm_ THE THEATRE AT ASPENDUS] 7. It is not possible, however, that in all theatres these rules of symmetry should answer all conditions and purposes, but the architect ought to consider to what extent he must follow the principle of symmetry, and to what extent it may be modified to suit the nature of the site or the size of the work. There are, of course, some things which, for utility's sake, must be made of the same size in a small theatre, and a large one: such as the steps, curved cross-aisles, their parapets, the passages, stairways, stages, tribunals, and any other things which occur that make it necessary to give up symmetry so as not to interfere with utility. Again, if in the course of the work any of the material fall short, such as marble, timber, or anything else that is provided, it will not be amiss to make a slight reduction or addition, provided that it is done without going too far, but with intelligence. This will be possible, if the architect is a man of practical experience and, besides, not destitute of cleverness and skill. 8. The "scaena" itself displays the following scheme. In the centre are double doors decorated like those of a royal palace. At the right and left are the doors of the guest chambers. Beyond are spaces provided for decoration--places that the Greeks call [Greek: periaktoi], because in these places are triangular pieces of machinery ([Greek: D, D]) which revolve, each having three decorated faces. When the play is to be changed, or when gods enter to the accompaniment of sudden claps of thunder, these may be revolved and present a face differently decorated. Beyond these places are the projecting wings which afford entrances to the stage, one from the forum, the other from abroad. 9. There are three kinds of scenes, one called the tragic, second, the comic, third, the satyric. Their decorations are different and unlike each other in scheme. Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, statues, and other objects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit private dwellings, with balconies and views representing rows of windows, after the manner of ordinary dwellings; satyric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, mountains, and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style. CHAPTER VII GREEK THEATRES 1. In the theatres of the Greeks, these same rules of construction are not to be followed in all respects. First, in the circle at the bottom where the Roman has four triangles, the Greek has three squares with their angles touching the line of circumference. The square whose side is nearest to the "scaena," and cuts off a segment of the circle, determines by this line the limits of the "proscaenium" (A, B). Parallel to this line and tangent to the outer circumference of the segment, a line is drawn which fixes the front of the "scaena" (C-D). Through the centre of the orchestra and parallel to the direction of the "proscaenium," a line is laid off, and centres are marked where it cuts the circumference to the right and left (E, F) at the ends of the half-circle. Then, with the compasses fixed at the right, an arc is described from the horizontal distance at the left to the left hand side of the "proscaenium" (F, G); again with the centre at the left end, an arc is described from the horizontal distance at the right to the right hand side of the "proscaenium" (E, H). 2. As a result of this plan with three centres, the Greeks have a roomier orchestra, and a "scaena" set further back, as well as a stage of less depth. They call this the [Greek: logeion], for the reason that there the tragic and comic actors perform on the stage, while other artists give their performances in the entire orchestra; hence, from this fact they are given in Greek the distinct names "Scenic" and "Thymelic." The height of this "logeum" ought to be not less than ten feet nor more than twelve. Let the ascending flights of steps between the wedges of seats, as far up as the first curved cross-aisle, be laid out on lines directly opposite to the angles of the squares. Above the cross-aisle, let other flights be laid out in the middle between the first; and at the top, as often as there is a new cross-aisle, the number of flights of steps is always increased to the same extent. [Illustration: THE GREEK THEATRE ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS] CHAPTER VIII ACOUSTICS OF THE SITE OF A THEATRE 1. All this having been settled with the greatest pains and skill, we must see to it, with still greater care, that a site has been selected where the voice has a gentle fall, and is not driven back with a recoil so as to convey an indistinct meaning to the ear. There are some places which from their very nature interfere with the course of the voice, as for instance the dissonant, which are termed in Greek [Greek: katêchountes]; the circumsonant, which with them are named [Greek: periêchountes]; again the resonant, which are termed [Greek: antêchountes]; and the consonant, which they call [Greek: synêchountes]. The dissonant are those places in which the first sound uttered that is carried up high, strikes against solid bodies above, and, being driven back, checks as it sinks to the bottom the rise of the succeeding sound. 2. The circumsonant are those in which the voice spreads all round, and then is forced into the middle, where it dissolves, the case-endings are not heard, and it dies away there in sounds of indistinct meaning. The resonant are those in which it comes into contact with some solid substance and recoils, thus producing an echo, and making the terminations of cases sound double. The consonant are those in which it is supported from below, increases as it goes up, and reaches the ears in words which are distinct and clear in tone. Hence, if there has been careful attention in the selection of the site, the effect of the voice will, through this precaution, be perfectly suited to the purposes of a theatre. The drawings of the plans may be distinguished from each other by this difference, that theatres designed from squares are meant to be used by Greeks, while Roman theatres are designed from equilateral triangles. Whoever is willing to follow these directions will be able to construct perfectly correct theatres. CHAPTER IX COLONNADES AND WALKS 1. Colonnades must be constructed behind the scaena, so that when sudden showers interrupt plays, the people may have somewhere to retire from the theatre, and so that there may be room for the preparation of all the outfit of the stage. Such places, for instance, are the colonnades of Pompey, and also, in Athens, the colonnades of Eumenes and the fane of Father Bacchus; also, as you leave the theatre, the music hall which Themistocles surrounded with stone columns, and roofed with the yards and masts of ships captured from the Persians. It was burned during the war with Mithridates, and afterwards restored by King Ariobarzanes. At Smyrna there is the Stratoniceum, at Tralles, a colonnade on each side of the scaena above the race course, and in other cities which have had careful architects there are colonnades and walks about the theatres. 2. The approved way of building them requires that they should be double, and have Doric columns on the outside, with the architraves and their ornaments finished according to the law of modular proportion. The approved depth for them requires that the depth, from the lower part of the outermost columns to the columns in the middle, and from the middle columns to the wall enclosing the walk under the colonnade, should be equal to the height of the outer columns. Let the middle columns be one fifth higher than the outer columns, and designed in the Ionic or Corinthian style. 3. The columns will not be subject to the same rules of symmetry and proportion which I prescribed in the case of sanctuaries; for the dignity which ought to be their quality in temples of the gods is one thing, but their elegance in colonnades and other public works is quite another. Hence, if the columns are to be of the Doric order, let their height, including the capital, be measured off into fifteen parts. Of these parts, let one be fixed upon to form the module, and in accordance with this module the whole work is to be developed. Let the thickness of the columns at the bottom be two modules; an intercolumniation, five and a half modules; the height of a column, excluding the capital, fourteen modules; the capital, one module in height and two and one sixth modules in breadth. Let the modular proportions of the rest of the work be carried out as written in the fourth book in the case of temples. 4. But if the columns are to be Ionic, let the shaft, excluding base and capital, be divided into eight and one half parts, and let one of these be assigned to the thickness of a column. Let the base, including the plinth, be fixed at half the thickness, and let the proportions of the capital be as shown in the third book. If the column is to be Corinthian, let its shaft and base be proportioned as in the Ionic, but its capital, as has been written in the fourth book. In the stylobates, let the increase made there by means of the "scamilli impares" be taken from the description written above in the third book. Let the architraves, coronae, and all the rest be developed, in proportion to the columns, from what has been written in the foregoing books. 5. The space in the middle, between the colonnades and open to the sky, ought to be embellished with green things; for walking in the open air is very healthy, particularly for the eyes, since the refined and rarefied air that comes from green things, finding its way in because of the physical exercise, gives a clean-cut image, and, by clearing away the gross humours from the eyes, leaves the sight keen and the image distinct. Besides, as the body gets warm with exercise in walking, this air, by sucking out the humours from the frame, diminishes their superabundance, and disperses and thus reduces that superfluity which is more than the body can bear. 6. That this is so may be seen from the fact that misty vapours never arise from springs of water which are under cover, nor even from watery marshes which are underground; but in uncovered places which are open to the sky, when the rising sun begins to act upon the world with its heat, it brings out the vapour from damp and watery spots, and rolls it in masses upwards. Therefore, if it appears that in places open to the sky the more noxious humours are sucked out of the body by the air, as they obviously are from the earth in the form of mists, I think there is no doubt that cities should be provided with the roomiest and most ornamented walks, laid out under the free and open sky. 7. That they may be always dry and not muddy, the following is to be done. Let them be dug down and cleared out to the lowest possible depth. At the right and left construct covered drains, and in their walls, which are directed towards the walks, lay earthen pipes with their lower ends inclined into the drains. Having finished these, fill up the place with charcoal, and then strew sand over the walks and level them off. Hence, on account of the porous nature of the charcoal and the insertion of the pipes into the drains, quantities of water will be conducted away, and the walks will thus be rendered perfectly dry and without moisture. 8. Furthermore, our ancestors in establishing these works provided cities with storehouses for an indispensable material. The fact is that in sieges everything else is easier to procure than is wood. Salt can easily be brought in beforehand; corn can be got together quickly by the State or by individuals, and if it gives out, the defence may be maintained on cabbage, meat, or beans; water can be had by digging wells, or when there are sudden falls of rain, by collecting it from the tiles. But a stock of wood, which is absolutely necessary for cooking food, is a difficult and troublesome thing to provide; for it is slow to gather and a good deal is consumed. 9. On such occasions, therefore, these walks are thrown open, and a definite allowance granted to each inhabitant according to tribes. Thus these uncovered walks insure two excellent things: first, health in time of peace; secondly, safety in time of war. Hence, walks that are developed on these principles, and built not only behind the "scaena" of theatres, but also at the temples of all the gods, will be capable of being of great use to cities. [Illustration: _Photo. Brooklyn Institute_ THE TEPIDARIUM OF THE STABIAN BATHS AT POMPEII] [Illustration: _Photo. Brooklyn Institute_ APODYTERIUM FOR WOMEN IN THE STABIAN BATHS AT POMPEII] As it appears that we have given an adequate account of them, next will follow descriptions of the arrangements of baths. CHAPTER X BATHS 1. In the first place, the warmest possible situation must be selected; that is, one which faces away from the north and northeast. The rooms for the hot and tepid baths should be lighted from the southwest, or, if the nature of the situation prevents this, at all events from the south, because the set time for bathing is principally from midday to evening. We must also see to it that the hot bath rooms in the women's and men's departments adjoin each other, and are situated in the same quarter; for thus it will be possible that the same furnace should serve both of them and their fittings. Three bronze cauldrons are to be set over the furnace, one for hot, another for tepid, and the third for cold water, placed in such positions that the amount of water which flows out of the hot water cauldron may be replaced from that for tepid water, and in the same way the cauldron for tepid water may be supplied from that for cold. The arrangement must allow the semi-cylinders for the bath basins to be heated from the same furnace. 2. The hanging floors of the hot bath rooms are to be constructed as follows. First the surface of the ground should be laid with tiles a foot and a half square, sloping towards the furnace in such a way that, if a ball is thrown in, it cannot stop inside but must return of itself to the furnace room; thus the heat of the fire will more readily spread under the hanging flooring. Upon them, pillars made of eight-inch bricks are built, and set at such a distance apart that two-foot tiles may be used to cover them. These pillars should be two feet in height, laid with clay mixed with hair, and covered on top with the two-foot tiles which support the floor. [Illustration: The Stabian Baths at Pompeii S, S. Shops. B. Private Baths. A-T. Men's Bath. A'-T'. Women's Baths. E, E'. Entrances. A, A'. Apodyteria. F. Frigidarium. T, T'. Tepidarium. C, C. Caldarium. K, K, K. Kettles in furnace room. P. Piscina.] 3. The vaulted ceilings will be more serviceable if built of masonry; but if they are of framework, they should have tile work on the under side, to be constructed as follows. Let iron bars or arcs be made, and hang them to the framework by means of iron hooks set as close together as possible; and let these bars or arcs be placed at such distances apart that each pair of them may support and carry an unflanged tile. Thus the entire vaulting will be completely supported on iron. These vaults should have the joints on their upper side daubed with clay mixed with hair, and their under side, facing the floor, should first be plastered with pounded tile mixed with lime, and then covered with polished stucco in relief or smooth. Vaults in hot bath rooms will be more serviceable if they are doubled; for then the moisture from the heat will not be able to spoil the timber in the framework, but will merely circulate between the two vaults. 4. The size of the baths must depend upon the number of the population. The rooms should be thus proportioned: let their breadth be one third of their length, excluding the niches for the washbowl and the bath basin. The washbowl ought without fail to be placed under a window, so that the shadows of those who stand round it may not obstruct the light. Niches for washbowls must be made so roomy that when the first comers have taken their places, the others who are waiting round may have proper standing room. The bath basin should be not less than six feet broad from the wall to the edge, the lower step and the "cushion" taking up two feet of this space. 5. The Laconicum and other sweating baths must adjoin the tepid room, and their height to the bottom of the curved dome should be equal to their width. Let an aperture be left in the middle of the dome with a bronze disc hanging from it by chains. By raising and lowering it, the temperature of the sweating bath can be regulated. The chamber itself ought, as it seems, to be circular, so that the force of the fire and heat may spread evenly from the centre all round the circumference. CHAPTER XI THE PALAESTRA 1. Next, although the building of palaestrae is not usual in Italy, I think it best to set forth the traditional way, and to show how they are constructed among the Greeks. The square or oblong peristyle in a palaestra should be so formed that the circuit of it makes a walk of two stadia, a distance which the Greeks call the [Greek: diaulos]. Let three of its colonnades be single, but let the fourth, which is on the south side, be double, so that when there is bad weather accompanied by wind, the drops of rain may not be able to reach the interior. 2. In the three colonnades construct roomy recesses (A) with seats in them, where philosophers, rhetoricians, and others who delight in learning may sit and converse. In the double colonnade let the rooms be arranged thus: the young men's hall (B) in the middle; this is a very spacious recess (exedra) with seats in it, and it should be one third longer than it is broad. At the right, the bag room (C); then next, the dust room (D); beyond the dust room, at the corner of the colonnade, the cold washing room (E), which the Greeks call [Greek: loutron]. At the left of the young men's hall is the anointing room (F); then, next to the anointing room, the cold bath room (G), and beyond that a passage into the furnace room (H) at the corner of the colonnade. Next, but inside and on a line with the cold bath room, put the vaulted sweating bath (I), its length twice its breadth, and having at the ends on one side a Laconicum (K), proportioned in the same manner as above described, and opposite the Laconicum the warm washing room (L). Inside a palaestra, the peristyle ought to be laid out as described above. 3. But on the outside, let three colonnades be arranged, one as you leave the peristyle and two at the right and left, with running-tracks in them. That one of them which faces the north should be a double colonnade of very ample breadth, while the other should be single, and so constructed that on the sides next the walls and the side along the columns it may have edges, serving as paths, of not less than ten feet, with the space between them sunken, so that steps are necessary in going down from the edges a foot and a half to the plane, which plane should be not less than twelve feet wide. Thus people walking round on the edges will not be interfered with by the anointed who are exercising. [Illustration: I. THE PALAESTRA AT OLYMPIA; II. THE GREEK PALAESTRA ACCORDING TO VITRUVIUS] 4. This kind of colonnade is called among the Greeks [Greek: xystos], because athletes during the winter season exercise in covered running tracks. Next to this "xystus" and to the double colonnade should be laid out the uncovered walks which the Greeks term [Greek: paradromides] and our people "xysta," into which, in fair weather during the winter, the athletes come out from the "xystus" for exercise. The "xysta" ought to be so constructed that there may be plantations between the two colonnades, or groves of plane trees, with walks laid out in them among the trees and resting places there, made of "opus signinum." Behind the "xystus" a stadium, so designed that great numbers of people may have plenty of room to look on at the contests between the athletes. I have now described all that seemed necessary for the proper arrangement of things within the city walls. CHAPTER XII HARBOURS, BREAKWATERS, AND SHIPYARDS 1. The subject of the usefulness of harbours is one which I must not omit, but must explain by what means ships are sheltered in them from storms. If their situation has natural advantages, with projecting capes or promontories which curve or return inwards by their natural conformation, such harbours are obviously of the greatest service. Round them, of course, colonnades or shipyards must be built, or passages from the colonnades to the business quarters, and towers must be set up on both sides, from which chains can be drawn across by machinery. 2. But if we have a situation without natural advantages, and unfit to shelter ships from storms, it is obvious that we must proceed as follows. If there is no river in the neighbourhood, but if there can be a roadstead on one side, then, let the advances be made from the other side by means of walls or embankments, and let the enclosing harbour be thus formed. Walls which are to be under water should be constructed as follows. Take the powder which comes from the country extending from Cumae to the promontory of Minerva, and mix it in the mortar trough in the proportion of two to one. 3. Then, in the place previously determined, a cofferdam, with its sides formed of oaken stakes with ties between them, is to be driven down into the water and firmly propped there; then, the lower surface inside, under the water, must be levelled off and dredged, working from beams laid across; and finally, concrete from the mortar trough--the stuff having been mixed as prescribed above--must be heaped up until the empty space which was within the cofferdam is filled up by the wall. This, however, is possessed as a gift of nature by such places as have been described above. But if by reason of currents or the assaults of the open sea the props cannot hold the cofferdam together, then, let a platform of the greatest possible strength be constructed, beginning on the ground itself or on a substructure; and let the platform be constructed with a level surface for less than half its extent, while the rest, which is close to the beach, slopes down and out. 4. Then, on the water's edge and at the sides of the platform, let marginal walls be constructed, about one and one half feet thick and brought up to a level with the surface above mentioned; next, let the sloping part be filled in with sand and levelled off with the marginal wall and the surface of the platform. Then, upon this level surface construct a block as large as is required, and when it is finished, leave it for not less than two months to dry. Then, cut away the marginal wall which supports the sand. Thus, the sand will be undermined by the waves, and this will cause the block to fall into the sea. By this method, repeated as often as necessary, an advance into the water can be made. 5. But in places where this powder is not found, the following method must be employed. A cofferdam with double sides, composed of charred stakes fastened together with ties, should be constructed in the appointed place, and clay in wicker baskets made of swamp rushes should be packed in among the props. After this has been well packed down and filled in as closely as possible, set up your water-screws, wheels, and drums, and let the space now bounded by the enclosure be emptied and dried. Then, dig out the bottom within the enclosure. If it proves to be of earth, it must be cleared out and dried till you come to solid bottom and for a space wider than the wall which is to be built upon it, and then filled in with masonry consisting of rubble, lime, and sand. 6. But if the place proves to be soft, the bottom must be staked with piles made of charred alder or olive wood, and then filled in with charcoal as has been prescribed in the case of the foundations of theatres and the city wall. Finally, build the wall of dimension stone, with the bond stones as long as possible, so that particularly the stones in the middle may be held together by the joints. Then, fill the inside of the wall with broken stone or masonry. It will thus be possible for even a tower to be built upon it. 7. When all this is finished, the general rule for shipyards will be to build them facing the north. Southern exposures from their heat produce rot, the wood worm, shipworms, and all sorts of other destructive creatures, and strengthen and keep them alive. And these buildings must by no means be constructed of wood, for fear of fire. As for their size, no definite limit need be set, but they must be built to suit the largest type of ship, so that if even larger ships are hauled up, they may find plenty of room there. I have described in this book the construction and completion of all that I could remember as necessary for general use in the public places of cities. In the following book I shall consider private houses, their conveniences, and symmetrical proportions. BOOK VI INTRODUCTION 1. It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: "Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man." With that he made for the city of Rhodes, and went straight to the gymnasium. There he fell to discussing philosophical subjects, and presents were bestowed upon him, so that he could not only fit himself out, but could also provide those who accompanied him with clothing and all other necessaries of life. When his companions wished to return to their country, and asked him what message he wished them to carry home, he bade them say this: that children ought to be provided with property and resources of a kind that could swim with them even out of a shipwreck. 2. These are indeed the true supports of life, and neither Fortune's adverse gale, nor political revolution, nor ravages of war can do them any harm. Developing the same idea, Theophrastus, urging men to acquire learning rather than to put their trust in money, states the case thus: "The man of learning is the only person in the world who is neither a stranger when in a foreign land, nor friendless when he has lost his intimates and relatives; on the contrary, he is a citizen of every country, and can fearlessly look down upon the troublesome accidents of fortune. But he who thinks himself entrenched in defences not of learning but of luck, moves in slippery paths, struggling through life unsteadily and insecurely." 3. And Epicurus, in much the same way, says that the wise owe little to fortune; all that is greatest and essential is under the direction of the thinking power of the mind and the understanding. Many other philosophers have said the same thing. Likewise the poets who wrote the ancient comedies in Greek have expressed the same sentiments in their verses on the stage: for example, Eucrates, Chionides, Aristophanes, and with them Alexis in particular, who says that the Athenians ought to be praised for the reason that, while the laws of all Greeks require the maintenance of parents by their children, the laws of the Athenians require this only in the case of those who have educated their children in the arts. All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life. 4. Hence, I am very much obliged and infinitely grateful to my parents for their approval of this Athenian law, and for having taken care that I should be taught an art, and that of a sort which cannot be brought to perfection without learning and a liberal education in all branches of instruction. Thanks, therefore, to the attention of my parents and the instruction given by my teachers, I obtained a wide range of knowledge, and by the pleasure which I take in literary and artistic subjects, and in the writing of treatises, I have acquired intellectual possessions whose chief fruits are these thoughts: that superfluity is useless, and that not to feel the want of anything is true riches. There may be some people, however, who deem all this of no consequence, and think that the wise are those who have plenty of money. Hence it is that very many, in pursuit of that end, take upon themselves impudent assurance, and attain notoriety and wealth at the same time. 5. But for my part, Caesar, I have never been eager to make money by my art, but have gone on the principle that slender means and a good reputation are preferable to wealth and disrepute. For this reason, only a little celebrity has followed; but still, my hope is that, with the publication of these books, I shall become known even to posterity. And it is not to be wondered at that I am so generally unknown. Other architects go about and ask for opportunities to practise their profession; but I have been taught by my instructors that it is the proper thing to undertake a charge only after being asked, and not to ask for it; since a gentleman will blush with shame at petitioning for a thing that arouses suspicion. It is in fact those who can grant favours that are courted, not those who receive them. What are we to think must be the suspicions of a man who is asked to allow his private means to be expended in order to please a petitioner? Must he not believe that the thing is to be done for the profit and advantage of that individual? 6. Hence it was that the ancients used to entrust their work in the first place to architects of good family, and next inquired whether they had been properly educated, believing that one ought to trust in the honour of a gentleman rather than in the assurance of impudence. And the architects themselves would teach none but their own sons or kinsmen, and trained them to be good men, who could be trusted without hesitation in matters of such importance. But when I see that this grand art is boldly professed by the uneducated and the unskilful, and by men who, far from being acquainted with architecture, have no knowledge even of the carpenter's trade, I can find nothing but praise for those householders who, in the confidence of learning, are emboldened to build for themselves. Their judgment is that, if they must trust to inexperienced persons, it is more becoming to them to use up a good round sum at their own pleasure than at that of a stranger. 7. Nobody, therefore, attempts to practise any other art in his own home--as, for instance, the shoemaker's, or the fuller's, or any other of the easier kinds--but only architecture, and this is because the professionals do not possess the genuine art but term themselves architects falsely. For these reasons I have thought proper to compose most carefully a complete treatise on architecture and its principles, believing that it will be no unacceptable gift to all the world. In the fifth book I have said what I had to say about the convenient arrangement of public works; in this I shall set forth the theoretical principles and the symmetrical proportions of private houses. CHAPTER I ON CLIMATE AS DETERMINING THE STYLE OF THE HOUSE 1. If our designs for private houses are to be correct, we must at the outset take note of the countries and climates in which they are built. One style of house seems appropriate to build in Egypt, another in Spain, a different kind in Pontus, one still different in Rome, and so on with lands and countries of other characteristics. This is because one part of the earth is directly under the sun's course, another is far away from it, while another lies midway between these two. Hence, as the position of the heaven with regard to a given tract on the earth leads naturally to different characteristics, owing to the inclination of the circle of the zodiac and the course of the sun, it is obvious that designs for houses ought similarly to conform to the nature of the country and to diversities of climate. 2. In the north, houses should be entirely roofed over and sheltered as much as possible, not in the open, though having a warm exposure. But on the other hand, where the force of the sun is great in the southern countries that suffer from heat, houses must be built more in the open and with a northern or north-eastern exposure. Thus we may amend by art what nature, if left to herself, would mar. In other situations, also, we must make modifications to correspond to the position of the heaven and its effects on climate. 3. These effects are noticeable and discernible not only in things in nature, but they also are observable in the limbs and bodies of entire races. In places on which the sun throws out its heat in moderation, it keeps human bodies in their proper condition, and where its path is very close at hand, it parches them up, and burns out and takes away the proportion of moisture which they ought to possess. But, on the other hand, in the cold regions that are far away from the south, the moisture is not drawn out by hot weather, but the atmosphere is full of dampness which diffuses moisture into the system, and makes the frame larger and the pitch of the voice deeper. This is also the reason why the races that are bred in the north are of vast height, and have fair complexions, straight red hair, grey eyes, and a great deal of blood, owing to the abundance of moisture and the coolness of the atmosphere. 4. On the contrary, those that are nearest to the southern half of the axis, and that lie directly under the sun's course, are of lower stature, with a swarthy complexion, hair curling, black eyes, strong legs, and but little blood on account of the force of the sun. Hence, too, this poverty of blood makes them over-timid to stand up against the sword, but great heat and fevers they can endure without timidity, because their frames are bred up in the raging heat. Hence, men that are born in the north are rendered over-timid and weak by fever, but their wealth of blood enables them to stand up against the sword without timidity. [Illustration] 5. The pitch of the voice is likewise different and varying in quality with different nations, for the following reasons. The terminating points east and west on the level of the earth, where the upper and lower parts of the heaven are divided, seem to lie in a naturally balanced circle which mathematicians call the Horizon. Keeping this idea definitely in mind, if we imagine a line drawn from the northern side of the circumference (N) to the side which lies above the southern half of the axis (S), and from here another line obliquely up to the pivot at the summit, beyond the stars composing the Great Bear (the pole star P), we shall doubtless see that we have in the heaven a triangular figure like that of the musical instrument which the Greeks call the "sambuca." 6. And so, under the space which is nearest to the pivot at the bottom, off the southern portions of the line of the axis, are found nations that on account of the slight altitude of the heaven above them, have shrill and very high-pitched voices, like the string nearest to the angle in the musical instrument. Next in order come other nations as far as the middle of Greece, with lower elevations of the voice; and from this middle point they go on in regular order up to the extreme north, where, under high altitudes, the vocal utterance of the inhabitants is, under natural laws, produced in heavier tones. Thus it is obvious that the system of the universe as a whole is, on account of the inclination of the heaven, composed in a most perfect harmony through the temporary power of the sun. 7. The nations, therefore, that lie midway between the pivots at the southern and the northern extremities of the axis, converse in a voice of middle pitch, like the notes in the middle of a musical scale; but, as we proceed towards the north, the distances to the heaven become greater, and so the nations there, whose vocal utterance is reduced by the moisture to the "hypatès" and to "proslambanomenon," are naturally obliged to speak in heavier tones. In the same way, as we proceed from the middle point to the south, the voices of the nations there correspond in extreme height of pitch and in shrillness to the "paranetès" and "netès." 8. That it is a fact that things are made heavier from being in places naturally moist, and higher pitched from places that are hot, may be proved from the following experiment. Take two cups which have been baked in the same oven for an equal time, which are of equal weight, and which give the same note when struck. Dip one of them into water and, after taking it out of water, strike them both. This done, there will be a great difference in their notes, and the cups can no longer be equal in weight. Thus it is with men: though born in the same general form and under the same all-embracing heaven, yet in some of them, on account of the heat in their country, the voice strikes the air on a high note, while in others, on account of abundance of moisture, the quality of tones produced is very heavy. 9. Further, it is owing to the rarity of the atmosphere that southern nations, with their keen intelligence due to the heat, are very free and swift in the devising of schemes, while northern nations, being enveloped in a dense atmosphere, and chilled by moisture from the obstructing air, have but a sluggish intelligence. That this is so, we may see from the case of snakes. Their movements are most active in hot weather, when they have got rid of the chill due to moisture, whereas at the winter solstice, and in winter weather, they are chilled by the change of temperature, and rendered torpid and motionless. It is therefore no wonder that man's intelligence is made keener by warm air and duller by cold. 10. But although southern nations have the keenest wits, and are infinitely clever in forming schemes, yet the moment it comes to displaying valour, they succumb because all manliness of spirit is sucked out of them by the sun. On the other hand, men born in cold countries are indeed readier to meet the shock of arms with great courage and without timidity, but their wits are so slow that they will rush to the charge inconsiderately and inexpertly, thus defeating their own devices. Such being nature's arrangement of the universe, and all these nations being allotted temperaments which are lacking in due moderation, the truly perfect territory, situated under the middle of the heaven, and having on each side the entire extent of the world and its countries, is that which is occupied by the Roman people. 11. In fact, the races of Italy are the most perfectly constituted in both respects--in bodily form and in mental activity to correspond to their valour. Exactly as the planet Jupiter is itself temperate, its course lying midway between Mars, which is very hot, and Saturn, which is very cold, so Italy, lying between the north and the south, is a combination of what is found on each side, and her preëminence is well regulated and indisputable. And so by her wisdom she breaks the courageous onsets of the barbarians, and by her strength of hand thwarts the devices of the southerners. Hence, it was the divine intelligence that set the city of the Roman people in a peerless and temperate country, in order that it might acquire the right to command the whole world. 12. Now if it is a fact that countries differ from one another, and are of various classes according to climate, so that the very nations born therein naturally differ in mental and physical conformation and qualities, we cannot hesitate to make our houses suitable in plan to the peculiarities of nations and races, since we have the expert guidance of nature herself ready to our hand. I have now set forth the peculiar characteristics of localities, so far as I could note them, in the most summary way, and have stated how we ought to make our houses conform to the physical qualities of nations, with due regard to the course of the sun and to climate. Next I shall treat the symmetrical proportions of the different styles of houses, both as wholes and in their separate parts. CHAPTER II SYMMETRY, AND MODIFICATIONS IN IT TO SUIT THE SITE 1. There is nothing to which an architect should devote more thought than to the exact proportions of his building with reference to a certain part selected as the standard. After the standard of symmetry has been determined, and the proportionate dimensions adjusted by calculations, it is next the part of wisdom to consider the nature of the site, or questions of use or beauty, and modify the plan by diminutions or additions in such a manner that these diminutions or additions in the symmetrical relations may be seen to be made on correct principles, and without detracting at all from the effect. 2. The look of a building when seen close at hand is one thing, on a height it is another, not the same in an enclosed place, still different in the open, and in all these cases it takes much judgment to decide what is to be done. The fact is that the eye does not always give a true impression, but very often leads the mind to form a false judgment. In painted scenery, for example, columns may appear to jut out, mutules to project, and statues to be standing in the foreground, although the picture is of course perfectly flat. Similarly with ships, the oars when under the water are straight, though to the eye they appear to be broken. To the point where they touch the surface of the sea they look straight, as indeed they are, but when dipped under the water they emit from their bodies undulating images which come swimming up through the naturally transparent medium to the surface of the water, and, being there thrown into commotion, make the oars look broken. 3. Now whether this appearance is due to the impact of the images, or to the effusion of the rays from the eye, as the physicists hold, in either case it is obvious that the vision may lead us to false impressions. 4. Since, therefore, the reality may have a false appearance, and since things are sometimes represented by the eyes as other than they are, I think it certain that diminutions or additions should be made to suit the nature or needs of the site, but in such fashion that the buildings lose nothing thereby. These results, however, are also attainable by flashes of genius, and not only by mere science. 5. Hence, the first thing to settle is the standard of symmetry, from which we need not hesitate to vary. Then, lay out the ground lines of the length and breadth of the work proposed, and when once we have determined its size, let the construction follow this with due regard to beauty of proportion, so that the beholder may feel no doubt of the eurythmy of its effect. I must now tell how this may be brought about, and first I will speak of the proper construction of a cavaedium. CHAPTER III PROPORTIONS OF THE PRINCIPAL ROOMS 1. There are five different styles of cavaedium, termed according to their construction as follows: Tuscan, Corinthian, tetrastyle, displuviate, and testudinate. In the Tuscan, the girders that cross the breadth of the atrium have crossbeams on them, and valleys sloping in and running from the angles of the walls to the angles formed by the beams, and the rainwater falls down along the rafters to the roof-opening (compluvium) in the middle. In the Corinthian, the girders and roof-opening are constructed on these same principles, but the girders run in from the side walls, and are supported all round on columns. In the tetrastyle, the girders are supported at the angles by columns, an arrangement which relieves and strengthens the girders; for thus they have themselves no great span to support, and they are not loaded down by the crossbeams. [Illustration: _From Mau_ THE HOUSE OF THE SURGEON, POMPEII Illustrating the Tuscan Atrium 1. Fauces 2, 3. Shops 4. Storage 5. Atrium 6. Chambers 7. Tablinum 8. Alae 9, 10. Dining rooms 13. Kitchen, _a_, hearth 14. Rear Entrance 16. Portico 18. Stairs to rooms over the rear of the house 20. Garden ] [Illustration: _From Mau_ HOUSE OF EPIDIUS RUFUS AT POMPEII Illustrating Corinthian Atrium] 2. In the displuviate, there are beams which slope outwards, supporting the roof and throwing the rainwater off. This style is suitable chiefly in winter residences, for its roof-opening, being high up, is not an obstruction to the light of the dining rooms. It is, however, very troublesome to keep in repair, because the pipes, which are intended to hold the water that comes dripping down the walls all round, cannot take it quickly enough as it runs down from the channels, but get too full and run over, thus spoiling the woodwork and the walls of houses of this style. [Illustration: _From Mau_ HOUSE OF THE SILVER WEDDING AT POMPEII Illustrating the Tetrastyle Atrium _a._ fauces _d._ tetrastyle atrium _n._ dining room _o._ tablinum _p._ andron _r._ peristyle _w._ summer dining room ] The testudinate is employed where the span is not great, and where large rooms are provided in upper stories. 3. In width and length, atriums are designed according to three classes. The first is laid out by dividing the length into five parts and giving three parts to the width; the second, by dividing it into three parts and assigning two parts to the width; the third, by using the width to describe a square figure with equal sides, drawing a diagonal line in this square, and giving the atrium the length of this diagonal line. 4. Their height up to the girders should be one fourth less than their width, the rest being the proportion assigned to the ceiling and the roof above the girders. The alae, to the right and left, should have a width equal to one third of the length of the atrium, when that is from thirty to forty feet long. From forty to fifty feet, divide the length by three and one half, and give the alae the result. When it is from fifty to sixty feet in length, devote one fourth of the length to the alae. From sixty to eighty feet, divide the length by four and one half and let the result be the width of the alae. From eighty feet to one hundred feet, the length divided into five parts will produce the right width for the alae. Their lintel beams should be placed high enough to make the height of the alae equal to their width. 5. The tablinum should be given two thirds of the width of the atrium when the latter is twenty feet wide. If it is from thirty to forty feet, let half the width of the atrium be devoted to the tablinum. When it is from forty to sixty feet, divide the width into five parts and let two of these be set apart for the tablinum. In the case of smaller atriums, the symmetrical proportions cannot be the same as in larger. For if, in the case of the smaller, we employ the proportion that belong to the larger, both tablina and alae must be unserviceable, while if, in the case of the larger, we employ the proportions of the smaller, the rooms mentioned will be huge monstrosities. Hence, I have thought it best to describe exactly their respective proportionate sizes, with a view both to convenience and to beauty. [Illustration: _From Mau_ PLAN OF A TYPICAL ROMAN HOUSE] 6. The height of the tablinum at the lintel should be one eighth more than its width. Its ceiling should exceed this height by one third of the width. The fauces in the case of smaller atriums should be two thirds, and in the case of larger one half the width of the tablinum. Let the busts of ancestors with their ornaments be set up at a height corresponding to the width of the alae. The proportionate width and height of doors may be settled, if they are Doric, in the Doric manner, and if Ionic, in the Ionic manner, according to the rules of symmetry which have been given about portals in the fourth book. In the roof-opening let an aperture be left with a breadth of not less than one fourth nor more than one third the width of the atrium, and with a length proportionate to that of the atrium. [Illustration: _Photo. Sommer_ THE PERISTYLE OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII AT POMPEII] 7. Peristyles, lying athwart, should be one third longer than they are deep, and their columns as high as the colonnades are wide. Intercolumniations of peristyles should be not less than three nor more than four times the thickness of the columns. If the columns of the peristyle are to be made in the Doric style, take the modules which I have given in the fourth book, on the Doric order, and arrange the columns with reference to these modules and to the scheme of the triglyphs. [Illustration: _From Durm_ PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII, POMPEII] 8. Dining rooms ought to be twice as long as they are wide. The height of all oblong rooms should be calculated by adding together their measured length and width, taking one half of this total, and using the result for the height. But in the case of exedrae or square oeci, let the height be brought up to one and one half times the width. Picture galleries, like exedrae, should be constructed of generous dimensions. Corinthian and tetrastyle oeci, as well as those termed Egyptian, should have the same symmetrical proportions in width and length as the dining rooms described above, but, since they have columns in them, their dimensions should be ampler. 9. The following will be the distinction between Corinthian and Egyptian oeci: the Corinthian have single tiers of columns, set either on a podium or on the ground, with architraves over them and coronae either of woodwork or of stucco, and carved vaulted ceilings above the coronae. In the Egyptian there are architraves over the columns, and joists laid thereon from the architraves to the surrounding walls, with a floor in the upper story to allow of walking round under the open sky. Then, above the architrave and perpendicularly over the lower tier of columns, columns one fourth smaller should be imposed. Above their architraves and ornaments are decorated ceilings, and the upper columns have windows set in between them. Thus the Egyptian are not like Corinthian dining rooms, but obviously resemble basilicas. 10. There are also, though not customary in Italy, the oeci which the Greeks call Cyzicene. These are built with a northern exposure and generally command a view of gardens, and have folding doors in the middle. They are also so long and so wide that two sets of dining couches, facing each other, with room to pass round them, can be placed therein. On the right and left they have windows which open like folding doors, so that views of the garden may be had from the dining couches through the opened windows. The height of such rooms is one and one half times their width. 11. All the above-mentioned symmetrical relations should be observed, in these kinds of buildings, that can be observed without embarrassment caused by the situation. The windows will be an easy matter to arrange if they are not darkened by high walls; but in cases of confined space, or when there are other unavoidable obstructions, it will be permissible to make diminutions or additions in the symmetrical relations,--with ingenuity and acuteness, however, so that the result may be not unlike the beauty which is due to true symmetry. CHAPTER IV THE PROPER EXPOSURES OF THE DIFFERENT ROOMS 1. We shall next explain how the special purposes of different rooms require different exposures, suited to convenience and to the quarters of the sky. Winter dining rooms and bathrooms should have a southwestern exposure, for the reason that they need the evening light, and also because the setting sun, facing them in all its splendour but with abated heat, lends a gentler warmth to that quarter in the evening. Bedrooms and libraries ought to have an eastern exposure, because their purposes require the morning light, and also because books in such libraries will not decay. In libraries with southern exposures the books are ruined by worms and dampness, because damp winds come up, which breed and nourish the worms, and destroy the books with mould, by spreading their damp breath over them. 2. Dining rooms for Spring and Autumn to the east; for when the windows face that quarter, the sun, as he goes on his career from over against them to the west, leaves such rooms at the proper temperature at the time when it is customary to use them. Summer dining rooms to the north, because that quarter is not, like the others, burning with heat during the solstice, for the reason that it is unexposed to the sun's course, and hence it always keeps cool, and makes the use of the rooms both healthy and agreeable. Similarly with picture galleries, embroiderers' work rooms, and painters' studios, in order that the fixed light may permit the colours used in their work to last with qualities unchanged. CHAPTER V HOW THE ROOMS SHOULD BE SUITED TO THE STATION OF THE OWNER 1. After settling the positions of the rooms with regard to the quarters of the sky, we must next consider the principles on which should be constructed those apartments in private houses which are meant for the householders themselves, and those which are to be shared in common with outsiders. The private rooms are those into which nobody has the right to enter without an invitation, such as bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, and all others used for the like purposes. The common are those which any of the people have a perfect right to enter, even without an invitation: that is, entrance courts, cavaedia, peristyles, and all intended for the like purpose. Hence, men of everyday fortune do not need entrance courts, tablina, or atriums built in grand style, because such men are more apt to discharge their social obligations by going round to others than to have others come to them. 2. Those who do business in country produce must have stalls and shops in their entrance courts, with crypts, granaries, store-rooms, and so forth in their houses, constructed more for the purpose of keeping the produce in good condition than for ornamental beauty. For capitalists and farmers of the revenue, somewhat comfortable and showy apartments must be constructed, secure against robbery; for advocates and public speakers, handsomer and more roomy, to accommodate meetings; for men of rank who, from holding offices and magistracies, have social obligations to their fellow-citizens, lofty entrance courts in regal style, and most spacious atriums and peristyles, with plantations and walks of some extent in them, appropriate to their dignity. They need also libraries, picture galleries, and basilicas, finished in a style similar to that of great public buildings, since public councils as well as private law suits and hearings before arbitrators are very often held in the houses of such men. 3. If, therefore, houses are planned on these principles to suit different classes of persons, as prescribed in my first book, under the subject of Propriety, there will be no room for criticism; for they will be arranged with convenience and perfection to suit every purpose. The rules on these points will hold not only for houses in town, but also for those in the country, except that in town atriums are usually next to the front door, while in country seats peristyles come first, and then atriums surrounded by paved colonnades opening upon palaestrae and walks. I have now set forth the rules for houses in town so far as I could describe them in a summary way. Next I shall state how farmhouses may be arranged with a view to convenience in use, and shall give the rules for their construction. CHAPTER VI THE FARMHOUSE 1. In the first place, inspect the country from the point of view of health, in accordance with what is written in my first book, on the building of cities, and let your farmhouses be situated accordingly. Their dimensions should depend upon the size of the farm and the amount of produce. Their courtyards and the dimensions thereof should be determined by the number of cattle and the number of yokes of oxen that will need to be kept therein. Let the kitchen be placed on the warmest side of the courtyard, with the stalls for the oxen adjoining, and their cribs facing the kitchen fire and the eastern quarter of the sky, for the reason that oxen facing the light and the fire do not get rough-coated. Even peasants wholly without knowledge of the quarters of the sky believe that oxen ought to face only in the direction of the sunrise. [Illustration: _From Mau_ THE VILLA RUSTICA AT BOSCOREALE NEAR POMPEII _A._ Court. _B._ Kitchen. _C-F._ Baths. _H._ Stable. _J._ Toolroom. _K, L, V, V._ Bedrooms. _N._ Dining Room. _M._ Anteroom. _O._ Bakery. _P._ Room with two winepresses. _Q._ Corridor. _B._ Court for fermentation of wine. _S._ Barn. _T._ Threshing-floor. _Y._ Room with oil press. ] 2. Their stalls ought to be not less than ten nor more than fifteen feet wide, and long enough to allow not less than seven feet for each yoke. Bathrooms, also, should adjoin the kitchen; for in this situation it will not take long to get ready a bath in the country. Let the pressing room, also, be next to the kitchen; for in this situation it will be easy to deal with the fruit of the olive. Adjoining it should be the wine room with its windows lighted from the north. In a room with windows on any other quarter so that the sun can heat it, the heat will get into the wine and make it weak. 3. The oil room must be situated so as to get its light from the south and from warm quarters; for oil ought not to be chilled, but should be kept thin by gentle heat. In dimensions, oil rooms should be built to accommodate the crop and the proper number of jars, each of which, holding about one hundred and twenty gallons, must take up a space four feet in diameter. The pressing room itself, if the pressure is exerted by means of levers and a beam, and not worked by turning screws, should be not less than forty feet long, which will give the lever man a convenient amount of space. It should be not less than sixteen feet wide, which will give the men who are at work plenty of free space to do the turning conveniently. If two presses are required in the place, allow twenty-four feet for the width. 4. Folds for sheep and goats must be made large enough to allow each animal a space of not less than four and a half, nor more than six feet. Rooms for grain should be set in an elevated position and with a northern or north-eastern exposure. Thus the grain will not be able to heat quickly, but, being cooled by the wind, keeps a long time. Other exposures produce the corn weevil and the other little creatures that are wont to spoil the grain. To the stable should be assigned the very warmest place in the farmhouse, provided that it is not exposed to the kitchen fire; for when draught animals are stabled very near a fire, their coats get rough. 5. Furthermore, there are advantages in building cribs apart from the kitchen and in the open, facing the east; for when the oxen are taken over to them on early winter mornings in clear weather, their coats get sleeker as they take their fodder in the sunlight. Barns for grain, hay, and spelt, as well as bakeries, should be built apart from the farmhouse, so that farmhouses may be better protected against danger from fire. If something more refined is required in farmhouses, they may be constructed on the principles of symmetry which have been given above in the case of town houses, provided that there is nothing in such buildings to interfere with their usefulness on a farm. 6. We must take care that all buildings are well lighted, but this is obviously an easier matter with those which are on country estates, because there can be no neighbour's wall to interfere, whereas in town high party walls or limited space obstruct the light and make them dark. Hence we must apply the following test in this matter. On the side from which the light should be obtained let a line be stretched from the top of the wall that seems to obstruct the light to the point at which it ought to be introduced, and if a considerable space of open sky can be seen when one looks up above that line, there will be no obstruction to the light in that situation. 7. But if there are timbers in the way, or lintels, or upper stories, then, make the opening higher up and introduce the light in this way. And as a general rule, we must arrange so as to leave places for windows on all sides on which a clear view of the sky can be had, for this will make our buildings light. Not only in dining rooms and other rooms for general use are windows very necessary, but also in passages, level or inclined, and on stairs; for people carrying burdens too often meet and run against each other in such places. I have now set forth the plans used for buildings in our native country so that they may be clear to builders. Next, I shall describe summarily how houses are planned in the Greek fashion, so that these also may be understood. CHAPTER VII THE GREEK HOUSE 1. The Greeks, having no use for atriums, do not build them, but make passage-ways for people entering from the front door, not very wide, with stables on one side and doorkeepers' rooms on the other, and shut off by doors at the inner end. This place between the two doors is termed in Greek [Greek: thyrôreion]. From it one enters the peristyle. This peristyle has colonnades on three sides, and on the side facing the south it has two antae, a considerable distance apart, carrying an architrave, with a recess for a distance one third less than the space between the antae. This space is called by some writers "prostas," by others "pastas." [Illustration: PLAN OF VITRUVIUS' GREEK HOUSE ACCORDING TO BECKER] 2. Hereabouts, towards the inner side, are the large rooms in which mistresses of houses sit with their wool-spinners. To the right and left of the prostas there are chambers, one of which is called the "thalamos," the other the "amphithalamos." All round the colonnades are dining rooms for everyday use, chambers, and rooms for the slaves. This part of the house is termed "gynaeconitis." 3. In connexion with these there are ampler sets of apartments with more sumptuous peristyles, surrounded by four colonnades of equal height, or else the one which faces the south has higher columns than the others. A peristyle that has one such higher colonnade is called a Rhodian peristyle. Such apartments have fine entrance courts with imposing front doors of their own; the colonnades of the peristyles are decorated with polished stucco in relief and plain, and with coffered ceilings of woodwork; off the colonnades that face the north they have Cyzicene dining rooms and picture galleries; to the east, libraries; exedrae to the west; and to the south, large square rooms of such generous dimensions that four sets of dining couches can easily be arranged in them, with plenty of room for serving and for the amusements. 4. Men's dinner parties are held in these large rooms; for it was not the practice, according to Greek custom, for the mistress of the house to be present. On the contrary, such peristyles are called the men's apartments, since in them the men can stay without interruption from the women. Furthermore, small sets of apartments are built to the right and left, with front doors of their own and suitable dining rooms and chambers, so that guests from abroad need not be shown into the peristyles, but rather into such guests' apartments. For when the Greeks became more luxurious, and their circumstances more opulent, they began to provide dining rooms, chambers, and store-rooms of provisions for their guests from abroad, and on the first day they would invite them to dinner, sending them on the next chickens, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and other country produce. This is why artists called pictures representing the things which were sent to guests "xenia." Thus, too, the heads of families, while being entertained abroad, had the feeling that they were not away from home, since they enjoyed privacy and freedom in such guests' apartments. [Illustration: _From Bull. de. Corr. Hell. 1895_ GREEK HOUSE AT DELOS] 5. Between the two peristyles and the guests' apartments are the passage-ways called "mesauloe," because they are situated midway between two courts; but our people called them "andrones." This, however, is a very strange fact, for the term does not fit either the Greek or the Latin use of it. The Greeks call the large rooms in which men's dinner parties are usually held [Greek: andrônes], because women do not go there. There are other similar instances as in the case of "xystus," "prothyrum," "telamones," and some others of the sort. As a Greek term, [Greek: xystos] means a colonnade of large dimensions in which athletes exercise in the winter time. But our people apply the term "xysta" to uncovered walks, which the Greeks call [Greek: paradromides]. Again, [Greek: prothyra] means in Greek the entrance courts before the front doors; we, however, use the term "prothyra" in the sense of the Greek [Greek: diathyra]. [Illustration: _From Mitt. d. Deutsch. Arch. Inst_. GREEK HOUSE DISCOVERED AT PERGAMUM IN 1903 13. Prothyron. 7. Tablinum.] 6. Again, figures in the form of men supporting mutules or coronae, we term "telamones"--the reasons why or wherefore they are so called are not found in any story--but the Greeks name them [Greek: atlantes]. For Atlas is described in story as holding up the firmament because, through his vigorous intelligence and ingenuity, he was the first to cause men to be taught about the courses of the sun and moon, and the laws governing the revolutions of all the constellations. Consequently, in recognition of this benefaction, painters and sculptors represent him as holding up the firmament, and the Atlantides, his daughters, whom we call "Vergiliae" and the Greeks [Greek: Pleiades], are consecrated in the firmament among the constellations. 7. All this, however, I have not set forth for the purpose of changing the usual terminology or language, but I have thought that it should be explained so that it may be known to scholars. I have now explained the usual ways of planning houses both in the Italian fashion and according to the practices of the Greeks, and have described, with regard to their symmetry, the proportions of the different classes. Having, therefore, already written of their beauty and propriety, I shall next explain, with reference to durability, how they may be built to last to a great age without defects. CHAPTER VIII ON FOUNDATIONS AND SUBSTRUCTURES 1. Houses which are set level with the ground will no doubt last to a great age, if their foundations are laid in the manner which we have explained in the earlier books, with regard to city walls and theatres. But if underground rooms and vaults are intended, their foundations ought to be thicker than the walls which are to be constructed in the upper part of the house, and the walls, piers, and columns of the latter should be set perpendicularly over the middle of the foundation walls below, so that they may have solid bearing; for if the load of the walls or columns rests on the middle of spans, they can have no permanent durability. 2. It will also do no harm to insert posts between lintels and sills where there are piers or antae; for where the lintels and beams have received the load of the walls, they may sag in the middle, and gradually undermine and destroy the walls. But when there are posts set up underneath and wedged in there, they prevent the beams from settling and injuring such walls. 3. We must also manage to discharge the load of the walls by means of archings composed of voussoirs with joints radiating to the centre. For when arches with voussoirs are sprung from the ends of beams, or from the bearings of lintels, in the first place they will discharge the load and the wood will not sag; secondly, if in course of time the wood becomes at all defective, it can easily be replaced without the construction of shoring. 4. Likewise in houses where piers are used in the construction, when there are arches composed of voussoirs with joints radiating to the centre, the outermost piers at these points must be made broader than the others, so that they may have the strength to resist when the wedges, under the pressure of the load of the walls, begin to press along their joints towards the centre, and thus to thrust out the abutments. Hence, if the piers at the ends are of large dimensions, they will hold the voussoirs together, and make such works durable. 5. Having taken heed in these matters to see that proper attention is paid to them, we must also be equally careful that all walls are perfectly vertical, and that they do not lean forward anywhere. Particular pains, too, must be taken with substructures, for here an endless amount of harm is usually done by the earth used as filling. This cannot always remain of the same weight that it usually has in summer, but in winter time it increases in weight and bulk by taking up a great deal of rain water, and then it bursts its enclosing walls and thrusts them out. 6. The following means must be taken to provide against such a defect. First, let the walls be given a thickness proportionate to the amount of filling; secondly, build counterforts or buttresses at the same time as the wall, on the outer side, at distances from each other equivalent to what is to be the height of the substructure and with the thickness of the substructure. At the bottom let them run out to a distance corresponding to the thickness that has been determined for the substructure, and then gradually diminish in extent so that at the surface their projection is equal to the thickness of the wall of the building. [Illustration: RETAINING WALLS (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice 1511)] 7. Furthermore, inside, to meet the mass of earth, there should be saw-shaped constructions attached to the wall, the single teeth extending from the wall for a distance equivalent to what is to be the height of the substructure, and the teeth being constructed with the same thickness as the wall. Then at the outermost angles take a distance inwards, from the inside of the angle, equal to the height of the substructure, and mark it off on each side; from these marks build up a diagonal structure and from the middle of it a second, joined on to the angle of the wall. With this arrangement, the teeth and diagonal structures will not allow the filling to thrust with all its force against the wall, but will check and distribute the pressure. 8. I have now shown how buildings can be constructed without defects, and the way to take precautions against the occurrence of them. As for replacing tiles, roof timbers, and rafters, we need not be so particular about them as about the parts just mentioned, because they can easily be replaced, however defective they may become. Hence, I have shown by what methods the parts which are not considered solid can be rendered durable, and how they are constructed. 9. As for the kind of material to be used, this does not depend upon the architect, for the reason that all kinds of materials are not found in all places alike, as has been shown in the first book. Besides, it depends on the owner whether he desires to build in brick, or rubble work, or dimension stone. Consequently the question of approving any work may be considered under three heads: that is, delicacy of workmanship, sumptuousness, and design. When it appears that a work has been carried out sumptuously, the owner will be the person to be praised for the great outlay which he has authorized; when delicately, the master workman will be approved for his execution; but when proportions and symmetry lend it an imposing effect, then the glory of it will belong to the architect. 10. Such results, however, may very well be brought about when he allows himself to take the advice both of workmen and of laymen. In fact, all kinds of men, and not merely architects, can recognize a good piece of work, but between laymen and the latter there is this difference, that the layman cannot tell what it is to be like without seeing it finished, whereas the architect, as soon as he has formed the conception, and before he begins the work, has a definite idea of the beauty, the convenience, and the propriety that will distinguish it. I have now described as clearly as I could what I thought necessary for private houses, and how to build them. In the following book I shall treat of the kinds of polished finish employed to make them elegant, and durable without defects to a great age. BOOK VII INTRODUCTION 1. It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publication in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning. And so the ancients deserve no ordinary, but unending thanks, because they did not pass on in envious silence, but took care that their ideas of every kind should be transmitted to the future in their writings. 2. If they had not done so, we could not have known what deeds were done in Troy, nor what Thales, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Xenophanes, and the other physicists thought about nature, and what rules Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and other philosophers laid down for the conduct of human life; nor would the deeds and motives of Croesus, Alexander, Darius, and other kings have been known, unless the ancients had compiled treatises, and published them in commentaries to be had in universal remembrance with posterity. 3. So, while they deserve our thanks, those, on the contrary, deserve our reproaches, who steal the writings of such men and publish them as their own; and those also, who depend in their writings, not on their own ideas, but who enviously do wrong to the works of others and boast of it, deserve not merely to be blamed, but to be sentenced to actual punishment for their wicked course of life. With the ancients, however, it is said that such things did not pass without pretty strict chastisement. What the results of their judgments were, it may not be out of place to set forth as they are transmitted to us. 4. The kings of the house of Attalus having established, under the influence of the great charms of literature, an excellent library at Pergamus to give pleasure to the public, Ptolemy also was aroused with no end of enthusiasm and emulation into exertions to make a similar provision with no less diligence at Alexandria. Having done so with the greatest care, he felt that this was not enough without providing for its increase and development, for which he sowed the seed. He established public contests in honour of the Muses and Apollo, and appointed prizes and honours for victorious authors in general, as is done in the case of athletes. 5. These arrangements having been made, and the contests being at hand, it became necessary to select literary men as judges to decide them. The king soon selected six of the citizens, but could not so easily find a proper person to be the seventh. He therefore turned to those who presided over the library, and asked whether they knew anybody who was suitable for the purpose. Then they told him that there was one Aristophanes who was daily engaged in reading through all the books with the greatest enthusiasm and the greatest care. Hence, when the gathering for the contests took place, and separate seats were set apart for the judges, Aristophanes was summoned with the rest, and sat down in the place assigned to him. 6. A group of poets was first brought in to contend, and, as they recited their compositions, the whole audience by its applause showed the judges what it approved. So, when they were individually asked for their votes, the six agreed, and awarded the first prize to the poet who, as they observed, had most pleased the multitude, and the second to the one who came next. But Aristophanes, on being asked for his vote, urged that the poet who had least pleased the audience should be declared to be the first. 7. As the king and the entire assembly showed great indignation, he arose, and asked and received permission to speak. Silence being obtained, he stated that only one of them--his man--was a poet, and that the rest had recited things not their own; furthermore, that judges ought to give their approval, not to thefts, but to original compositions. The people were amazed, and the king hesitated, but Aristophanes, trusting to his memory, had a vast number of volumes brought out from bookcases which he specified, and, by comparing them with what had been recited, obliged the thieves themselves to make confession. So, the king gave orders that they should be accused of theft, and after condemnation sent them off in disgrace; but he honoured Aristophanes with the most generous gifts, and put him in charge of the library. 8. Some years later, Zoilus, who took the surname of Homeromastix, came from Macedonia to Alexandria and read to the king his writings directed against the Iliad and Odyssey. Ptolemy, seeing the father of poets and captain of all literature abused in his absence, and his works, to which all the world looked up in admiration, disparaged by this person, made no rejoinder, although he thought it an outrage. Zoilus, however, after remaining in the kingdom some time, sank into poverty, and sent a message to the king, requesting that something might be bestowed upon him. 9. But it is said that the king replied, that Homer, though dead a thousand years ago, had all that time been the means of livelihood for many thousands of men; similarly, a person who laid claim to higher genius ought to be able to support not one man only, but many others. And in short, various stories are told about his death, which was like that of one found guilty of parricide. Some writers have said that he was crucified by Philadelphus; others that he was stoned at Chios; others again that he was thrown alive upon a funeral pyre at Smyrna. Whichever of these forms of death befell him, it was a fitting punishment and his just due; for one who accuses men that cannot answer and show, face to face, what was the meaning of their writings, obviously deserves no other treatment. 10. But for my part, Caesar, I am not bringing forward the present treatise after changing the titles of other men's books and inserting my own name, nor has it been my plan to win approbation by finding fault with the ideas of another. On the contrary, I express unlimited thanks to all the authors that have in the past, by compiling from antiquity remarkable instances of the skill shown by genius, provided us with abundant materials of different kinds. Drawing from them as it were water from springs, and converting them to our own purposes, we find our powers of writing rendered more fluent and easy, and, relying upon such authorities, we venture to produce new systems of instruction. 11. Hence, as I saw that such beginnings on their part formed an introduction suited to the nature of my own purpose, I set out to draw from them, and to go somewhat further. In the first place Agatharcus, in Athens, when Aeschylus was bringing out a tragedy, painted a scene, and left a commentary about it. This led Democritus and Anaxagoras to write on the same subject, showing how, given a centre in a definite place, the lines should naturally correspond with due regard to the point of sight and the divergence of the visual rays, so that by this deception a faithful representation of the appearance of buildings might be given in painted scenery, and so that, though all is drawn on a vertical flat façade, some parts may seem to be withdrawing into the background, and others to be standing out in front. 12. Afterwards Silenus published a book on the proportions of Doric structures; Theodorus, on the Doric temple of Juno which is in Samos; Chersiphron and Metagenes, on the Ionic temple at Ephesus which is Diana's; Pytheos, on the Ionic fane of Minerva which is at Priene; Ictinus and Carpion, on the Doric temple of Minerva which is on the acropolis of Athens; Theodorus the Phocian, on the Round Building which is at Delphi; Philo, on the proportions of temples, and on the naval arsenal which was[9] at the port of Peiraeus; Hermogenes, on the Ionic temple of Diana which is at Magnesia, a pseudodipteral, and on that of Father Bacchus at Teos, a monopteral; Arcesius, on the Corinthian proportions, and on the Ionic temple of Aesculapius at Tralles, which it is said that he built with his own hands; on the Mausoleum, Satyrus and Pytheos who were favoured with the greatest and highest good fortune. [Note 9: Codd. _fuerat_.] 13. For men whose artistic talents are believed to have won them the highest renown for all time, and laurels forever green, devised and executed works of supreme excellence in this building. The decoration and perfection of the different façades were undertaken by different artists in emulation with each other: Leochares, Bryaxis, Scopas, Praxiteles, and, as some think, Timotheus; and the distinguished excellence of their art made that building famous among the seven wonders of the world. 14. Then, too, many less celebrated men have written treatises on the laws of symmetry, such as Nexaris, Theocydes, Demophilus, Pollis, Leonidas, Silanion, Melampus, Sarnacus, and Euphranor; others again on machinery, such as Diades, Archytas, Archimedes, Ctesibius, Nymphodorus, Philo of Byzantium, Diphilus, Democles, Charias, Polyidus, Pyrrus, and Agesistratus. From their commentaries I have gathered what I saw was useful for the present subject, and formed it into one complete treatise, and this principally, because I saw that many books in this field had been published by the Greeks, but very few indeed by our countrymen. Fuficius, in fact, was the first to undertake to publish a book on this subject. Terentius Varro, also, in his work "On the Nine Sciences" has one book on architecture, and Publius Septimius, two. 15. But to this day nobody else seems to have bent his energies to this branch of literature, although there have been, even among our fellow-citizens in old times, great architects who could also have written with elegance. For instance, in Athens, the architects Antistates, Callaeschrus, Antimachides, and Pormus laid the foundations when Peisistratus began the temple of Olympian Jove, but after his death they abandoned the undertaking, on account of political troubles. Hence it was that when, about four hundred years later, King Antiochus promised to pay the expenses of that work, the huge cella, the surrounding columns in dipteral arrangement, and the architraves and other ornaments, adjusted according to the laws of symmetry, were nobly constructed with great skill and supreme knowledge by Cossutius, a citizen of Rome. Moreover, this work has a name for its grandeur, not only in general, but also among the select few. 16. There are, in fact, four places possessing temples embellished with workmanship in marble that causes them to be mentioned in a class by themselves with the highest renown. To their great excellence and the wisdom of their conception they owe their place of esteem in the ceremonial worship of the gods. First there is the temple of Diana at Ephesus, in the Ionic style, undertaken by Chersiphron of Gnosus and his son Metagenes, and said to have been finished later by Demetrius, who was himself a slave of Diana, and by Paeonius the Milesian. At Miletus, the temple of Apollo, also Ionic in its proportions, was the undertaking of the same Paeonius and of the Ephesian Daphnis. At Eleusis, the cella of Ceres and Proserpine, of vast size, was completed to the roof by Ictinus in the Doric style, but without exterior columns and with plenty of room for the customary sacrifices. 17. Afterwards, however, when Demetrius of Phalerum was master of Athens, Philo set up columns in front before the temple, and made it prostyle. Thus, by adding an entrance hall, he gave the initiates more room, and imparted the greatest dignity to the building. Finally, in Athens, the temple of the Olympion with its dimensions on a generous scale, and built in the Corinthian style and proportions, is said to have been constructed, as written above, by Cossutius, no commentary by whom has been found. But Cossutius is not the only man by whom we should like to have writings on our subject. Another is Gaius Mucius, who, having great knowledge on which to rely, completed the cella, columns, and entablature of the Marian temple of Honour and Valour, in symmetrical proportions according to the accepted rules of the art. If this building had been of marble, so that besides the refinement of its art it possessed the dignity coming from magnificence and great outlay, it would be reckoned among the first and greatest of works. 18. Since it appears, then, that our architects in the old days, and a good many even in our own times, have been as great as those of the Greeks, and nevertheless only a few of them have published treatises, I resolved not to be silent, but to treat the different topics methodically in different books. Hence, since I have given an account of private houses in the sixth book, in this, which is the seventh in order, I shall treat of polished finishings and the methods of giving them both beauty and durability. CHAPTER I FLOORS 1. First I shall begin with the concrete flooring, which is the most important of the polished finishings, observing that great pains and the utmost precaution must be taken to ensure its durability. If this concrete flooring is to be laid level with the ground, let the soil be tested to see whether it is everywhere solid, and if it is, level it off and upon it lay the broken stone with its bedding. But if the floor is either wholly or partly filling, it should be rammed down hard with great care. In case a wooden framework is used, however, we must see that no wall which does not reach up to the top of the house is constructed under the floor. Any wall which is there should preferably fall short, so as to leave the wooden planking above it an unsupported span. If a wall comes up solid, the unyielding nature of its solid structure must, when the joists begin to dry, or to sag and settle, lead to cracks in the floor on the right and left along the line of wall. 2. We must also be careful that no common oak gets in with the winter oak boards, for as soon as common oak boards get damp, they warp and cause cracks in floors. But if there is no winter oak, and necessity drives, for lack of this it seems advisable to use common oak boards cut pretty thin; for the less thick they are, the more easily they can be held in place by being nailed on. Then, at the ends of every joist, nail on two boards so that they shall not be able to warp and stick up at the edges. As for Turkey oak or beech or ash, none of them can last to a great age. When the wooden planking is finished, cover it with fern, if there is any, otherwise with straw, to protect the wood from being hurt by the lime. 3. Then, upon this lay the bedding, composed of stones not smaller than can fill the hand. After the bedding is laid, mix the broken stone in the proportions, if it is new, of three parts to one of lime; if it is old material used again, five parts may answer to two in the mixture. Next, lay the mixture of broken stone, bring on your gangs, and beat it again and again with wooden beetles into a solid mass, and let it be not less than three quarters of a foot in thickness when the beating is finished. On this lay the nucleus, consisting of pounded tile mixed with lime in the proportions of three parts to one, and forming a layer not less than six digits thick. On top of the nucleus, the floor, whether made of cut slips or of cubes, should be well and truly laid by rule and level. 4. After it is laid and set at the proper inclination, let it be rubbed down so that, if it consists of cut slips, the lozenges, or triangles, or squares, or hexagons may not stick up at different levels, but be all jointed together on the same plane with one another; if it is laid in cubes, so that all the edges may be level; for the rubbing down will not be properly finished unless all the edges are on the same level plane. The herring-bone pattern, made of Tibur burnt brick, must also be carefully finished, so as to be without gaps or ridges sticking up, but all flat and rubbed down to rule. When the rubbing down is completely finished by means of the smoothing and polishing processes, sift powdered marble on top, and lay on a coating of lime and sand. 5. In the open air, specially adapted kinds of floors must be made, because their framework, swelling with dampness, or shrinking from dryness, or sagging and settling, injures the floors by these changes; besides, the frost and rime will not let them go unhurt. Hence, if necessity drives, we must proceed as follows in order to make them as free from defects as possible. After finishing the plank flooring, lay a second plank flooring over it at right angles, and nail it down so as to give double protection to the framework. Then, mix with new broken stone one third the quantity of pounded tile, and let lime be added to the mixture in the mortar trough in the proportion of two parts to five. 6. Having made the bedding, lay on this mixture of broken stone, and let it be not less than a foot thick when the beating is finished. Then, after laying the nucleus, as above described, construct the floor of large cubes cut about two digits each way, and let it have an inclination of two digits for every ten feet. If it is well put together and properly rubbed down, it will be free from all flaws. In order that the mortar in the joints may not suffer from frosts, drench it with oil-dregs every year before winter begins. Thus treated, it will not let the hoarfrost enter it. 7. If, however, it seems needful to use still greater care, lay two-foot tiles, jointed together in a bed of mortar, over the broken stone, with little channels of one finger's breadth cut in the faces of all the joints. Connect these channels and fill them with a mixture of lime and oil; then, rub the joints hard and make them compact. Thus, the lime sticking in the channels will harden and solidify into a mass, and so prevent water or anything else from penetrating through the joints. After this layer is finished, spread the nucleus upon it, and work it down by beating it with rods. Upon this lay the floor, at the inclination above described, either of large cubes or burnt brick in herring-bone pattern, and floors thus constructed will not soon be spoiled. CHAPTER II THE SLAKING OF LIME FOR STUCCO 1. Leaving the subject of floors, we must next treat of stucco work. This will be all right if the best lime, taken in lumps, is slaked a good while before it is to be used, so that if any lump has not been burned long enough in the kiln, it will be forced to throw off its heat during the long course of slaking in the water, and will thus be thoroughly burned to the same consistency. When it is taken not thoroughly slaked but fresh, it has little crude bits concealed in it, and so, when applied, it blisters. When such bits complete their slaking after they are on the building, they break up and spoil the smooth polish of the stucco. 2. But when the proper attention has been paid to the slaking, and greater pains have thus been employed in the preparation for the work, take a hoe, and apply it to the slaked lime in the mortar bed just as you hew wood. If it sticks to the hoe in bits, the lime is not yet tempered; and when the iron is drawn out dry and clean, it will show that the lime is weak and thirsty; but when the lime is rich and properly slaked, it will stick to the tool like glue, proving that it is completely tempered. Then get the scaffolding ready, and proceed to construct the vaultings in the rooms, unless they are to be decorated with flat coffered ceilings. CHAPTER III VAULTINGS AND STUCCO WORK 1. When vaulting is required, the procedure should be as follows. Set up horizontal furring strips at intervals of not more than two feet apart, using preferably cypress, as fir is soon spoiled by decay and by age. Arrange these strips so as to form a curve, and make them fast to the joists of the floor above or to the roof, if it is there, by nailing them with many iron nails to ties fixed at intervals. These ties should be made of a kind of wood that neither decay nor time nor dampness can spoil, such as box, juniper, olive, oak, cypress, or any other similar wood except common oak; for this warps, and causes cracks in work in which it is used. 2. Having arranged the furring strips, take cord made of Spanish broom, and tie Greek reeds, previously pounded flat, to them in the required contour. Immediately above the vaulting spread some mortar made of lime and sand, to check any drops that may fall from the joists or from the roof. If a supply of Greek reed is not to be had, gather slender marsh reeds, and make them up with silk cord into bundles all of the same thickness and adjusted to the proper length, provided that the bundles are not more than two feet long between any two knots. Then tie them with cord to the beams, as above described, and drive wooden pegs into them. Make all the other preparations as above described. 3. Having thus set the vaultings in their places and interwoven them, apply the rendering coat to their lower surface; then lay on the sand mortar, and afterwards polish it off with the powdered marble. After the vaultings have been polished, set the impost mouldings directly beneath them. These obviously ought to be made extremely slender and delicate, for when they are large, their weight carries them down, and they cannot support themselves. Gypsum should by no means be used in their composition, but powdered marble should be laid on uniformly, lest gypsum, by setting too quickly should keep the work from drying uniformly. We must also beware of the ancients' scheme for vaultings; for in their mouldings the soffits overhang very heavily, and are dangerous. 4. Some mouldings are flat, others in relief. In rooms where there has to be a fire or a good many lights, they should be flat, so that they can be wiped off more easily. In summer apartments and in exedrae where there is no smoke nor soot to hurt them, they should be made in relief. It is always the case that stucco, in the pride of its dazzling white, gathers smoke not only from its own house but also from others. 5. Having finished the mouldings, apply a very rough rendering coat to the walls, and afterwards, when the rendering coat gets pretty dry, spread upon it the layers of sand mortar, exactly adjusted in length to rule and line, in height to the plummet, and at the angles to the square. The stucco will thus present a faultless appearance for paintings. When it gets pretty dry, spread on a second coat and then a third. The better the foundation of sand mortar that is laid on, the stronger and more durable in its solidity will be the stucco. 6. When not less than three coats of sand mortar, besides the rendering coat, have been laid on, then, we must make the mixture for the layers of powdered marble, the mortar being so tempered that when mixed it does not stick to the trowel, but the iron comes out freely and clean from the mortar trough. After this powdered marble has been spread on and gets dry, lay on a medium second coat. When that has been applied and well rubbed down, spread on a finer coat. The walls, being thus rendered solid by three coats of sand mortar and as many of marble, will not possibly be liable to cracks or to any other defect. 7. And further, such walls, owing to the solid foundation given by thorough working with polishing instruments, and the smoothness of it, due to the hard and dazzling white marble, will bring out in brilliant splendour the colours which are laid on at the same time with the polishing. These colours, when they are carefully laid on stucco still wet, do not fade but are permanent. This is because the lime, having had its moisture burned out in the kiln, becomes porous and loses its strength, and its dryness makes it take up anything that may come in contact with it. On mixing with the seeds or elements that come from other substances, it forms a solid mass with them and, no matter what the constituent parts may then be, it must, obviously, on becoming dry, possess the qualities which are peculiar to its own nature. 8. Hence, stucco that is properly made does not get rough as time goes on, nor lose its colours when it is wiped off, unless they have been laid on with little care and after it is dry. So, when the stucco on walls is made as described above, it will have strength and brilliancy, and an excellence that will last to a great age. But when only one coat of sand mortar and one of fine marble have been spread on, its thin layer is easily cracked from want of strength, and from its lack of thickness it will not take on the brilliance, due to polishing, which it ought to have. 9. Just as a silver mirror that is formed of a thin plate reflects indistinctly and with a feeble light, while one that is substantially made can take on a very high polish, and reflects a brilliant and distinct image when one looks therein, so it is with stucco. When the stuff of which it is formed is thin, it not only cracks but also soon fades; when, however, it has a solid foundation of sand mortar and of marble, thickly and compactly applied, it is not only brilliant after being subjected to repeated polishings, but also reflects from its surface a clear image of the beholder. 10. The Greek stucco-workers not only employ these methods to make their works durable, but also construct a mortar trough, mix the lime and sand in it, bring on a gang of men, and beat the stuff with wooden beetles, and do not use it until it has been thus vigorously worked. Hence, some cut slabs out of old walls and use them as panels, and the stucco of such panels and "reflectors" has projecting bevelled edges all round it. 11. But if stucco has to be made on "wattle and daub," where there must be cracks at the uprights and cross-sticks, because they must take in moisture when they are daubed with the mud, and cause cracks in the stucco when they dry and shrink, the following method will prevent this from happening. After the whole wall has been smeared with the mud, nail rows of reeds to it by means of "fly-nails," then spread on the mud a second time, and, if the first rows have been nailed with the shafts transverse, nail on a second set with the shafts vertical, and then, as above described, spread on the sand mortar, the marble, and the whole mass of stucco. Thus, the double series of reeds with their shafts crossing on the walls will prevent any chipping or cracking from taking place. CHAPTER IV ON STUCCO WORK IN DAMP PLACES, AND ON THE DECORATION OF DINING ROOMS 1. Having spoken of the method by which stucco work should be done in dry situations, I shall next explain how the polished finish is to be accomplished in places that are damp, in such a way that it can last without defects. First, in apartments which are level with the ground, apply a rendering coat of mortar, mixed with burnt brick instead of sand, to a height of about three feet above the floor, and then lay on the stucco so that those portions of it may not be injured by the dampness. But if a wall is in a state of dampness all over, construct a second thin wall a little way from it on the inside, at a distance suited to circumstances, and in the space between these two walls run a channel, at a lower level than that of the apartment, with vents to the open air. Similarly, when the wall is brought up to the top, leave airholes there. For if the moisture has no means of getting out by vents at the bottom and at the top, it will not fail to spread all over the new wall. This done, apply a rendering coat of mortar made with burnt brick to this wall, spread on the layer of stucco, and polish it. 2. But if there is not room enough for the construction of a wall, make channels with their vents extending to the open air. Then lay two-foot tiles resting on the margin of the channel on one side, and on the other side construct a foundation of pillars for them, made of eight-inch bricks, on top of each of which the edges of two tiles may be supported, each pillar being not more than a hand's breadth distant from the wall. Then, above, set hooked tiles fastened to the wall from bottom to top, carefully covering the inner sides of them with pitch so that they will reject moisture. Both at the bottom and at the top above the vaulting they should have airholes. 3. Then, whitewash them with lime and water so that they will not reject the rendering coat of burnt brick. For, as they are dry from the loss of water burnt out in the kiln, they can neither take nor hold the rendering coat unless lime has been applied beneath it to stick the two substances together, and make them unite. After spreading the rendering coat upon this, apply layers of burnt brick mortar instead of sand mortar, and finish up all the rest in the manner described above for stucco work. 4. The decorations of the polished surfaces of the walls ought to be treated with due regard to propriety, so as to be adapted to their situations, and not out of keeping with differences in kind. In winter dining rooms, neither paintings on grand subjects nor delicacy of decoration in the cornice work of the vaultings is a serviceable kind of design, because they are spoiled by the smoke from the fire and the constant soot from the lamps. In these rooms there should be panels above the dadoes, worked in black, and polished, with yellow ochre or vermilion blocks interposed between them. After the vaulting has been treated in the flat style, and polished, the Greek method of making floors for use in winter dining rooms may not be unworthy of one's notice, as being very inexpensive and yet serviceable. 5. An excavation is made below the level of the dining room to a depth of about two feet, and, after the ground has been rammed down, the mass of broken stones or the pounded burnt brick is spread on, at such an inclination that it can find vents in the drain. Next, having filled in with charcoal compactly trodden down, a mortar mixed of gravel, lime, and ashes is spread on to a depth of half a foot. The surface having been made true to rule and level, and smoothed off with whetstone, gives the look of a black pavement. Hence, at their dinner parties, whatever is poured out of the cups, or spirted from the mouth, no sooner falls than it dries up, and the servants who wait there do not catch cold from that kind of floor, although they may go barefoot. CHAPTER V THE DECADENCE OF FRESCO PAINTING 1. For the other apartments, that is, those intended to be used in Spring, Autumn, and Summer, as well as for atriums and peristyles, the ancients required realistic pictures of real things. A picture is, in fact, a representation of a thing which really exists or which can exist: for example, a man, a house, a ship, or anything else from whose definite and actual structure copies resembling it can be taken. Consequently the ancients who introduced polished finishings began by representing different kinds of marble slabs in different positions, and then cornices and blocks of yellow ochre arranged in various ways. 2. Afterwards they made such progress as to represent the forms of buildings, and of columns, and projecting and overhanging pediments; in their open rooms, such as exedrae, on account of the size, they depicted the façades of scenes in the tragic, comic, or satyric style; and their walks, on account of the great length, they decorated with a variety of landscapes, copying the characteristics of definite spots. In these paintings there are harbours, promontories, seashores, rivers, fountains, straits, fanes, groves, mountains, flocks, shepherds; in some places there are also pictures designed in the grand style, with figures of the gods or detailed mythological episodes, or the battles at Troy, or the wanderings of Ulysses, with landscape backgrounds, and other subjects reproduced on similar principles from real life. 3. But those subjects which were copied from actual realities are scorned in these days of bad taste. We now have fresco paintings of monstrosities, rather than truthful representations of definite things. For instance, reeds are put in the place of columns, fluted appendages with curly leaves and volutes, instead of pediments, candelabra supporting representations of shrines, and on top of their pediments numerous tender stalks and volutes growing up from the roots and having human figures senselessly seated upon them; sometimes stalks having only half-length figures, some with human heads, others with the heads of animals. 4. Such things do not exist and cannot exist and never have existed. Hence, it is the new taste that has caused bad judges of poor art to prevail over true artistic excellence. For how is it possible that a reed should really support a roof, or a candelabrum a pediment with its ornaments, or that such a slender, flexible thing as a stalk should support a figure perched upon it, or that roots and stalks should produce now flowers and now half-length figures? Yet when people see these frauds, they find no fault with them but on the contrary are delighted, and do not care whether any of them can exist or not. Their understanding is darkened by decadent critical principles, so that it is not capable of giving its approval authoritatively and on the principle of propriety to that which really can exist. The fact is that pictures which are unlike reality ought not to be approved, and even if they are technically fine, this is no reason why they should offhand be judged to be correct, if their subject is lacking in the principles of reality carried out with no violations. 5. For instance, at Tralles, Apaturius of Alabanda designed with skilful hand the scaena of the little theatre which is there called the [Greek: ekklêsiastêrion], representing columns in it and statues, Centaurs supporting the architraves, rotundas with round roofs on them, pediments with overhanging returns, and cornices ornamented with lions' heads, which are meant for nothing but the rainwater from the roofs,--and then on top of it all he made an episcaenium in which were painted rotundas, porticoes, half-pediments, and all the different kinds of decoration employed in a roof. The effect of high relief in this scaena was very attractive to all who beheld it, and they were ready to give their approval to the work, when Licymnius the mathematician came forward and said that (6.) the Alabandines were considered bright enough in all matters of politics, but that on account of one slight defect, the lack of the sense of propriety, they were believed to be unintelligent. "In their gymnasium the statues are all pleading causes, in their forum, throwing the discus, running, or playing ball. This disregard of propriety in the interchange of statues appropriate to different places has brought the state as a whole into disrepute. Let us then beware lest this scaena of Apaturius make Alabandines or Abderites of us. Which of you can have houses or columns or extensive pediments on top of his tiled roof? Such things are built above the floors, not above the tiled roofs. Therefore, if we give our approval to pictures of things which can have no reason for existence in actual fact, we shall be voluntarily associating ourselves with those communities which are believed to be unintelligent on account of just such defects." 7. Apaturius did not venture to make any answer, but removed the scaena, altered it so that it conformed to reality, and gave satisfaction with it in its improved state. Would to God that Licymnius could come to life again and reform the present condition of folly and mistaken practices in fresco painting! However, it may not be out of place to explain why this false method prevails over the truth. The fact is that the artistic excellence which the ancients endeavoured to attain by working hard and taking pains, is now attempted by the use of colours and the brave show which they make, and expenditure by the employer prevents people from missing the artistic refinements that once lent authority to works. 8. For example, which of the ancients can be found to have used vermilion otherwise than sparingly, like a drug? But today whole walls are commonly covered with it everywhere. Then, too, there is malachite green, purple, and Armenian blue. When these colours are laid on, they present a brilliant appearance to the eye even although they are inartistically applied, and as they are costly, they are made exceptions in contracts, to be furnished by the employer, not by the contractor. I have now sufficiently explained all that I could suggest for the avoidance of mistakes in stucco work. Next, I shall speak of the components as they occur to me, and first I shall treat of marble, since I spoke of lime at the beginning. CHAPTER VI MARBLE FOR USE IN STUCCO Marble is not produced everywhere of the same kind. In some places the lumps are found to contain transparent grains like salt, and this kind when crushed and ground is extremely serviceable in stucco work. In places where this is not found, the broken bits of marble or "chips," as they are called, which marble-workers throw down as they work, may be crushed and ground and used in stucco after being sifted. In still other places--for example, on the borderland of Magnesia and Ephesus--there are places where it can be dug out all ready to use, without the need of grinding or sifting, but as fine as any that is crushed and sifted by hand. CHAPTER VII NATURAL COLOURS As for colours, some are natural products found in fixed places, and dug up there, while others are artificial compounds of different substances treated and mixed in proper proportions so as to be equally serviceable. 1. We shall first set forth the natural colours that are dug up as such, like yellow ochre, which is termed [Greek: ôchra] in Greek. This is found in many places, including Italy, but Attic, which was the best, is not now to be had because in the times when there were slaves in the Athenian silver mines, they would dig galleries underground in order to find the silver. Whenever a vein of ochre was found there, they would follow it up like silver, and so the ancients had a fine supply of it to use in the polished finishings of their stucco work. 2. Red earths are found in abundance in many places, but the best in only a few, for instance at Sinope in Pontus, in Egypt, in the Balearic islands of Spain, as well as in Lemnos, an island the enjoyment of whose revenues the Senate and Roman people granted to the Athenians. 3. Paraetonium white gets its name from the place where it is dug up. The same is the case with Melian white, because there is said to be a mine of it in Melos, one of the islands of the Cyclades. 4. Green chalk is found in numerous places, but the best at Smyrna. The Greeks call it [Greek: theodoteion], because this kind of chalk was first found on the estate of a person named Theodotus. 5. Orpiment, which is termed [Greek: arsenikon] in Greek, is dug up in Pontus. Sandarach, in many places, but the best is mined in Pontus close by the river Hypanis. CHAPTER VIII CINNABAR AND QUICKSILVER 1. I shall now proceed to explain the nature of cinnabar. It is said that it was first found in the Cilbian country belonging to Ephesus, and both it and its properties are certainly very strange. First, before getting to the vermilion itself by methods of treatment, they dig out what is called the clod, an ore like iron, but rather of a reddish colour and covered with a red dust. During the digging it sheds, under the blows of the tools, tear after tear of quicksilver, which is at once gathered up by the diggers. 2. When these clods have been collected, they are so full of moisture that they are thrown into an oven in the laboratory to dry, and the fumes that are sent up from them by the heat of the fire settle down on the floor of the oven, and are found to be quicksilver. When the clods are taken out, the drops which remain are so small that they cannot be gathered up, but they are swept into a vessel of water, and there they run together and combine into one. Four pints of it, when measured and weighed, will be found to be one hundred pounds. 3. If the quicksilver is poured into a vessel, and a stone weighing one hundred pounds is laid upon it, the stone swims on the surface, and cannot depress the liquid, nor break through, nor separate it. If we remove the hundred pound weight, and put on a scruple of gold, it will not swim, but will sink to the bottom of its own accord. Hence, it is undeniable that the gravity of a substance depends not on the amount of its weight, but on its nature. 4. Quicksilver is a useful thing for many purposes. For instance, neither silver nor copper can be gilded properly without it. And when gold has been woven into a garment, and the garment becomes worn out with age so that it is no longer respectable to use, the pieces of cloth are put into earthen pots, and burned up over a fire. The ashes are then thrown into water and quicksilver added thereto. This attracts all the bits of gold, and makes them combine with itself. The water is then poured off, and the rest emptied into a cloth and squeezed in the hands, whereupon the quicksilver, being a liquid, escapes through the loose texture of the cloth, but the gold, which has been brought together by the squeezing, is found inside in a pure state. CHAPTER IX CINNABAR (_continued_) 1. I will now return to the preparation of vermilion. When the lumps of ore are dry, they are crushed in iron mortars, and repeatedly washed and heated until the impurities are gone, and the colours come. When the cinnabar has given up its quicksilver, and thus lost the natural virtues that it previously had, it becomes soft in quality and its powers are feeble. 2. Hence, though it keeps its colour perfectly when applied in the polished stucco finish of closed apartments, yet in open apartments, such as peristyles or exedrae or other places of the sort, where the bright rays of the sun and moon can penetrate, it is spoiled by contact with them, loses the strength of its colour, and turns black. Among many others, the secretary Faberius, who wished to have his house on the Aventine finished in elegant style, applied vermilion to all the walls of the peristyle; but after thirty days they turned to an ugly and mottled colour. He therefore made a contract to have other colours applied instead of vermilion. 3. But anybody who is more particular, and who wants a polished finish of vermilion that will keep its proper colour, should, after the wall has been polished and is dry, apply with a brush Pontic wax melted over a fire and mixed with a little oil; then after this he should bring the wax to a sweat by warming it and the wall at close quarters with charcoal enclosed in an iron vessel; and finally he should smooth it all off by rubbing it down with a wax candle and clean linen cloths, just as naked marble statues are treated. 4. This process is termed [Greek: ganôsis] in Greek. The protecting coat of Pontic wax prevents the light of the moon and the rays of the sun from licking up and drawing the colour out of such polished finishing. The manufactories which were once at the mines of the Ephesians have now been transferred to Rome, because this kind of ore was later discovered in Spain. The clods are brought from the mines there, and treated in Rome by public contractors. These manufactories are between the temples of Flora and Quirinus. 5. Cinnabar is adulterated by mixing lime with it. Hence, one will have to proceed as follows, if one wishes to prove that it is unadulterated. Take an iron plate, put the cinnabar upon it, and lay it on the fire until the plate gets red hot. When the glowing heat makes the colour change and turn black, remove the plate from the fire, and if the cinnabar when cooled returns to its former colour, it will be proved to be unadulterated; but if it keeps the black colour, it will show that it has been adulterated. 6. I have now said all that I could think of about cinnabar. Malachite green is brought from Macedonia, and is dug up in the neighbourhood of copper mines. The names Armenian blue and India ink show in what places these substances are found. CHAPTER X ARTIFICIAL COLOURS. BLACK 1. I shall now pass to those substances which by artificial treatment are made to change their composition, and to take on the properties of colours; and first I shall treat of black, the use of which is indispensable in many works, in order that the fixed technical methods for the preparation of that compound may be known. 2. A place is built like a Laconicum, and nicely finished in marble, smoothly polished. In front of it, a small furnace is constructed with vents into the Laconicum, and with a stokehole that can be very carefully closed to prevent the flames from escaping and being wasted. Resin is placed in the furnace. The force of the fire in burning it compels it to give out soot into the Laconicum through the vents, and the soot sticks to the walls and the curved vaulting. It is gathered from them, and some of it is mixed and worked with gum for use as writing ink, while the rest is mixed with size, and used on walls by fresco painters. 3. But if these facilities are not at hand, we must meet the exigency as follows, so that the work may not be hindered by tedious delay. Burn shavings and splinters of pitch pine, and when they turn to charcoal, put them out, and pound them in a mortar with size. This will make a pretty black for fresco painting. 4. Again, if the lees of wine are dried and roasted in an oven, and then ground up with size and applied to a wall, the result will be a colour even more delightful than ordinary black; and the better the wine of which it is made, the better imitation it will give, not only of the colour of ordinary black, but even of that of India ink. CHAPTER XI BLUE. BURNT OCHRE 1. Methods of making blue were first discovered in Alexandria, and afterwards Vestorius set up the making of it at Puzzuoli. The method of obtaining it from the substances of which it has been found to consist, is strange enough. Sand and the flowers of natron are brayed together so finely that the product is like meal, and copper is grated by means of coarse files over the mixture, like sawdust, to form a conglomerate. Then it is made into balls by rolling it in the hands and thus bound together for drying. The dry balls are put in an earthern jar, and the jars in an oven. As soon as the copper and the sand grow hot and unite under the intensity of the fire, they mutually receive each other's sweat, relinquishing their peculiar qualities, and having lost their properties through the intensity of the fire, they are reduced to a blue colour. 2. Burnt ochre, which is very serviceable in stucco work, is made as follows. A clod of good yellow ochre is heated to a glow on a fire. It is then quenched in vinegar, and the result is a purple colour. CHAPTER XII WHITE LEAD, VERDIGRIS, AND ARTIFICIAL SANDARACH 1. It is now in place to describe the preparation of white lead and of verdigris, which with us is called "aeruca." In Rhodes they put shavings in jars, pour vinegar over them, and lay pieces of lead on the shavings; then they cover the jars with lids to prevent evaporation. After a definite time they open them, and find that the pieces of lead have become white lead. In the same way they put in plates of copper and make verdigris, which is called "aeruca." 2. White lead on being heated in an oven changes its colour on the fire, and becomes sandarach. This was discovered as the result of an accidental fire. It is much more serviceable than the natural sandarach dug up in mines. CHAPTER XIII PURPLE 1. I shall now begin to speak of purple, which exceeds all the colours that have so far been mentioned both in costliness and in the superiority of its delightful effect. It is obtained from a marine shellfish, from which is made the purple dye, which is as wonderful to the careful observer as anything else in nature; for it has not the same shade in all the places where it is found, but is naturally qualified by the course of the sun. 2. That which is found in Pontus and Gaul is black, because those countries are nearest to the north. As one passes on from north to west, it is found of a bluish shade. Due east and west, what is found is of a violet shade. That which is obtained in southern countries is naturally red in quality, and therefore this is found in the island of Rhodes and in other such countries that are nearest to the course of the sun. 3. After the shellfish have been gathered, they are broken up with iron tools, the blows of which drive out the purple fluid like a flood of tears, and then it is prepared by braying it in mortars. It is called "ostrum" because it is taken from the shells of marine shellfish. On account of its saltness, it soon dries up unless it has honey poured over it. CHAPTER XIV SUBSTITUTES FOR PURPLE, YELLOW OCHRE, MALACHITE GREEN, AND INDIGO 1. Purple colours are also manufactured by dyeing chalk with madder root and with hysginum. Other colours are made from flowers. Thus, when fresco painters wish to imitate Attic yellow ochre, they put dried violets into a vessel of water, and heat them over a fire; then, when the mixture is ready, they pour it onto a linen cloth, and squeeze it out with the hands, catching the water which is now coloured by the violets, in a mortar. Into this they pour chalk and bray it, obtaining the colour of Attic yellow ochre. 2. They make a fine purple colour by treating bilberry in the same way and mixing it with milk. Those who cannot use malachite green on account of its dearness, dye blue with the plant called dyer's weed, and thus obtain a most vivid green. This is called dyer's malachite green. Again, for want of indigo, they dye Selinusian or anularian chalk with woad, which the Greeks call [Greek: isatis], and make an imitation of indigo. 3. In this book I have written down, so far as I could recall them, the methods and means of attaining durability in polished finishings, how pictures that are appropriate should be made, and also the natural qualities of all the colours. And so, having prescribed in seven books the suitable principles which should govern the construction of all kinds of buildings, I shall treat in the next of water, showing how it may be found in places where it is wanting, by what method it may be conducted, and by what means its wholesomeness and fitness may be tested. BOOK VIII INTRODUCTION 1. Among the Seven Sages, Thales of Miletus pronounced for water as the primordial element in all things; Heraclitus, for fire; the priests of the Magi, for water and fire; Euripides, a pupil of Anaxagoras, and called by the Athenians "the philosopher of the stage," for air and earth. Earth, he held, was impregnated by the rains of heaven and, thus conceiving, brought forth the young of mankind and of all the living creatures in the world; whatever is sprung from her goes back to her again when the compelling force of time brings about a dissolution; and whatever is born of the air returns in the same way to the regions of the sky; nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before. But Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epicharmus, and other physicists and philosophers have set forth that the primordial elements are four in number: air, fire, earth, and water; and that it is from their coherence to one another under the moulding power of nature that the qualities of things are produced according to different classes. 2. And, in fact, we see not only that all which comes to birth is produced by them, but also that nothing can be nourished without their influence, nor grow, nor be preserved. The body, for example, can have no life without the flow of the breath to and fro, that is, unless an abundance of air flows in, causing dilations and contractions in regular succession. Without the right proportion of heat, the body will lack vitality, will not be well set up, and will not properly digest strong food. Again, without the fruits of the earth to nourish the bodily frame, it will be enfeebled, and so lose its admixture of the earthy element. 3. Finally, without the influence of moisture, living creatures will be bloodless and, having the liquid element sucked out of them, will wither away. Accordingly the divine intelligence has not made what is really indispensable for man either hard to get or costly, like pearls, gold, silver, and so forth, the lack of which neither our body nor our nature feels, but has spread abroad, ready to hand through all the world, the things without which the life of mortals cannot be maintained. Thus, to take examples, suppose there is a deficiency of breath in the body, the air, to which is assigned the function of making up the deficiency, performs that service. To supply heat, the mighty sun is ready, and the invention of fire makes life more secure. Then again, the fruits of the earth, satisfying our desires with a more than sufficient store of food stuffs, support and maintain living beings with regular nourishment. Finally, water, not merely supplying drink but filling an infinite number of practical needs, does us services which make us grateful because it is gratis. 4. Hence, too, those who are clothed in priesthoods of the Egyptian orders declare that all things depend upon the power of the liquid element. So, when the waterpot is brought back to precinct and temple with water, in accordance with the holy rite, they throw themselves upon the ground and, raising their hands to heaven, thank the divine benevolence for its invention. Therefore, since it is held by physicists and philosophers and priests that all things depend upon the power of water, I have thought that, as in the former seven books the rules for buildings have been set forth, in this I ought to write on the methods of finding water, on those special merits which are due to the qualities of localities, on the ways of conducting it, and how it may be tested in advance. For it is the chief requisite for life, for happiness, and for everyday use. CHAPTER I HOW TO FIND WATER 1. This will be easier if there are open springs of running water. But if there are no springs which gush forth, we must search for them underground, and conduct them together. The following test should be applied. Before sunrise, lie down flat in the place where the search is to be made, and placing the chin on the earth and supporting it there, take a look out over the country. In this way the sight will not range higher than it ought, the chin being immovable, but will range over a definitely limited height on the same level through the country. Then, dig in places where vapours are seen curling and rising up into the air. This sign cannot show itself in a dry spot. 2. Searchers for water must also study the nature of different localities; for those in which it is found are well defined. In clay the supply is poor, meagre, and at no great depth. It will not have the best taste. In fine gravel the supply is also poor, but it will be found at a greater depth. It will be muddy and not sweet. In black earth some slight drippings and drops are found that gather from the storms of winter and settle down in compact, hard places. They have the best taste. Among pebbles the veins found are moderate, and not to be depended upon. These, too, are extremely sweet. In coarse grained gravel and carbuncular sand the supply is surer and more lasting, and it has a good taste. In red tufa it is copious and good, if it does not run down through the fissures and escape. At the foot of mountains and in lava it is more plentiful and abundant, and here it is also colder and more wholesome. In flat countries the springs are salt, heavy-bodied, tepid, and ill-flavoured, excepting those which run underground from mountains, and burst forth in the middle of a plain, where, if protected by the shade of trees, their taste is equal to that of mountain springs. 3. In the kinds of soil described above, signs will be found growing, such as slender rushes, wild willows, alders, agnus castus trees, reeds, ivy, and other plants of the same sort that cannot spring up of themselves without moisture. But they are also accustomed to grow in depressions which, being lower than the rest of the country, receive water from the rains and the surrounding fields during the winter, and keep it for a comparatively long time on account of their holding power. These must not be trusted, but the search must be made in districts and soils, yet not in depressions, where those signs are found growing not from seed, but springing up naturally of themselves. 4. If the indications mentioned appear in such places, the following test should be applied. Dig out a place not less than three feet square and five feet deep, and put into it about sunset a bronze or leaden bowl or basin, whichever is at hand. Smear the inside with oil, lay it upside down, and cover the top of the excavation with reeds or green boughs, throwing earth upon them. Next day uncover it, and if there are drops and drippings in the vessel, the place will contain water. 5. Again, if a vessel made of unbaked clay be put in the hole, and covered in the same way, it will be wet when uncovered, and already beginning to go to pieces from dampness, if the place contains water. If a fleece of wool is placed in the excavation, and water can be wrung out of it on the following day, it will show that the place has a supply. Further, if a lamp be trimmed, filled with oil, lighted, and put in that place and covered up, and if on the next day it is not burnt out, but still contains some remains of oil and wick, and is itself found to be damp, it will indicate that the place contains water; for all heat attracts moisture. Again, if a fire is made in that place, and if the ground, when thoroughly warmed and burned, sends up a misty vapour from its surface, the place will contain water. 6. After applying these tests and finding the signs described above, a well must next be sunk in the place, and if a spring of water is found, more wells must be dug thereabouts, and all conducted by means of subterranean channels into one place. The mountains and districts with a northern exposure are the best spots in which to search, for the reason that springs are sweeter, more wholesome, and more abundant when found there. Such places face away from the sun's course, and the trees are thick in them, and the mountains, being themselves full of woods, cast shadows of their own, preventing the rays of the sun from striking uninterruptedly upon the ground and drying up the moisture. 7. The valleys among the mountains receive the rains most abundantly, and on account of the thick woods the snow is kept in them longer by the shade of the trees and mountains. Afterwards, on melting, it filters through the fissures in the ground, and thus reaches the very foot of the mountains, from which gushing springs come belching out. But in flat countries, on the contrary, a good supply cannot be had. For however great it is, it cannot be wholesome, because, as there is no shade in the way, the intense force of the sun draws up and carries off the moisture from the flat plains with its heat, and if any water shows itself there, the lightest and purest and the delicately wholesome part of it is summoned away by the air, and dispersed to the skies, while the heaviest and the hard and unpleasant parts are left in springs that are in flat places. CHAPTER II RAINWATER 1. Rainwater has, therefore, more wholesome qualities, because it is drawn from the lightest and most delicately pure parts of all the springs, and then, after being filtered through the agitated air, it is liquefied by storms and so returns to the earth. And rainfall is not abundant in the plains, but rather on the mountains or close to mountains, for the reason that the vapour which is set in motion at sunrise in the morning, leaves the earth, and drives the air before it through the heaven in whatever direction it inclines; then, when once in motion, it has currents of air rushing after it, on account of the void which it leaves behind. 2. This air, driving the vapour everywhere as it rushes along, produces gales and constantly increasing currents by its mighty blasts. Wherever the winds carry the vapour which rolls in masses from springs, rivers, marshes, and the sea, it is brought together by the heat of the sun, drawn off, and carried upward in the form of clouds; then these clouds are supported by the current of air until they come to mountains, where they are broken up from the shock of the collision and the gales, turn into water on account of their own fulness and weight, and in that form are dispersed upon the earth. 3. That vapour, mists, and humidity come forth from the earth, seems due to the reason that it contains burning heat, mighty currents of air, intense cold, and a great quantity of water. So, as soon as the earth, which has cooled off during the night, is struck by the rays of the rising sun, and the winds begin to blow while it is yet dark, mists begin to rise upward from damp places. That the air when thoroughly heated by the sun can make vapours rise rolling up from the earth, may be seen by means of an example drawn from baths. 4. Of course there can be no springs above the vaultings of hot bathrooms, but the atmosphere in such rooms, becoming well warmed by the hot air from the furnaces, seizes upon the water on the floors, and takes it up to the curved vaultings and holds it up there, for the reason that hot vapour always pushes upwards. At first it does not let the moisture go, for the quantity is small; but as soon as it has collected a considerable amount, it cannot hold it up, on account of the weight, but sprinkles it upon the heads of the bathers. In the same way, when the atmospheric air feels the heat of the sun, it draws the moisture from all about, causes it to rise, and gathers it into clouds. For the earth gives out moisture under the influence of heat just as a man's heated body emits sweat. 5. The winds are witnesses to this fact. Those that are produced and come from the coolest directions, the north and northeast winds, blow in blasts that are rarefied by the great dryness in the atmosphere, but the south wind and the others that assail us from the direction of the sun's course are very damp, and always bring rain, because they reach us from warm regions after being well heated there, and licking up and carrying off the moisture from the whole country, they pour it out on the regions in the north. 6. That this is the state of the case may be proved by the sources of rivers, the majority and the longest of which, as drawn and described in geographies of the world, are found to rise in the north. First in India, the Ganges and Indus spring from the Caucasus; in Syria, the Tigris and Euphrates; in Pontus in Asia, the Dnieper, Bug, and Don; in Colchis, the Phasis; in Gaul, the Rhone; in Celtica, the Rhine; on this side of the Alps, the Timavo and Po; in Italy, the Tiber; in Maurusia, which we call Mauretania, the Dyris, rising in the Atlas range and running westerly to Lake Heptagonus, where it changes its name and is called Agger; then from Lake Heptabolus it runs at the base of barren mountains, flowing southerly and emptying into the marsh called[10]... It surrounds Meroë, which is a kingdom in southern Ethiopia, and from the marsh grounds there, winding round by the rivers Astansoba and Astoboa and a great many others, it passes through the mountains to the Cataract, and from there it dashes down, and passes to the north between Elephantis and Syene and the plains of Thebes into Egypt, where it is called the Nile. [Note 10: Here something is lost, as also in chapter III, sections 5 and 6.] 7. That the source of the Nile is in Mauretania is known principally from the fact that there are other springs on the other side of the Atlas range flowing into the ocean to the west, and that ichneumons, crocodiles, and other animals and fishes of like nature are found there, although there are no hippopotamuses. 8. Therefore, since in descriptions of the world it appears that all rivers of any size flow from the north, and since in the plains of Africa, which are exposed to the course of the sun in the south, the moisture is deeply hidden, springs not common, and rivers rare, it follows that the sources of springs which lie to the north or northeast are much better, unless they hit upon a place which is full of sulphur, alum, or asphalt. In this case they are completely changed, and flow in springs which have a bad smell and taste, whether the water is hot or cold. 9. The fact is, heat is not at all a property of water, but when a stream of cold water happens upon a hot place, it boils up, and issues through the fissures and out of the ground in a state of heat. This cannot last very long, but in a short time the water becomes cold. If it were naturally hot, it would not cool off and lose its heat. Its taste, however, and its smell and colour are not restored, because it has become saturated and compounded with these qualities on account of the rarity of its nature. CHAPTER III VARIOUS PROPERTIES OF DIFFERENT WATERS 1. There are, however, some hot springs that supply water of the best taste, which is so delightful to drink that one does not think with regret of the Fountain of the Muses or the Marcian aqueduct. These hot springs are produced naturally, in the following manner. When fire is kindled down beneath in alum or asphalt or sulphur, it makes the earth immediately over it very hot, and emits a glowing heat to the parts still farther above it, so that if there are any springs of sweet water found in the upper strata, they begin to boil in their fissures when they are met by this heat, and so they run out with their taste unimpaired. 2. And there are some cold springs that have a bad smell and taste. They rise deep down in the lower strata, cross places which are on fire, and then are cooled by running a long distance through the earth, coming out above ground with their taste, smell, and colour spoiled; as, for instance, the river Albula on the road to Tivoli and the cold springs of Ardea, which have the same smell and are called sulphur springs, and others in similar places. Although they are cold, yet at first sight they seem to be hot for the reason that when they happen upon a burning spot deep down below, the liquid and the fire meet, and with a great noise at the collision they take in strong currents of air, and thus, swollen by a quantity of compressed wind, they come out at the springs in a constant state of ebullition. When such springs are not open but confined by rocks, the force of the air in them drives them up through the narrow fissures to the summits of hills. 3. Consequently those who think that they have excavated sources of springs at the height of such hills find themselves mistaken when they open up their excavations. Suppose a bronze vase filled not to the very lips, but containing two thirds of the quantity of water which forms its capacity, and with a cover placed upon it. When it is subjected to a very hot fire, the water must become thoroughly heated, and from the rarity of its nature it greatly expands by taking in the heat, so that it not only fills the vase but raises its cover by means of the currents of air in it, and swells and runs over. But if you take the cover off, the expanding forces are released into the open air, and the water settles down again to its proper level. So it is with the sources of springs. As long as they are confined in narrow channels, the currents of air in the water rush up in bubbles to the top, but as soon as they are given a wider outlet, they lose their air on account of the rarity peculiar to water, and so settle down and resume their proper level. 4. Every hot spring has healing properties because it has been boiled with foreign substances, and thus acquires a new useful quality. For example, sulphur springs cure pains in the sinews, by warming up and burning out the corrupt humours of the body by their heat. Aluminous springs, used in the treatment of the limbs when enfeebled by paralysis or the stroke of any such malady, introduce warmth through the open pores, counter-acting the chill by the opposite effect of their heat, and thus equably restoring the limbs to their former condition. Asphaltic springs, taken as purges, cure internal maladies. 5. There is also a kind of cold water containing natron, found for instance at Penne in the Vestine country, at Cutiliae, and at other similar places. It is taken as a purge and in passing through the bowels reduces scrofulous tumours. Copious springs are found where there are mines of gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and the like, but they are very harmful. For they contain, like hot springs, sulphur, alum, asphalt,... and when it passes into the body in the form of drink, and spreading through the veins reaches the sinews and joints, it expands and hardens them. Hence the sinews, swelling with this expansion, are contracted in length and so give men the cramp or the gout, for the reason that their veins are saturated with very hard, dense, and cold substances. 6. There is also a sort of water which, since it contains... that are not perfectly clear, and it floats like a flower on the surface, in colour like purple glass. This may be seen particularly in Athens, where there are aqueducts from places and springs of that sort leading to the city and the port of Piraeus, from which nobody drinks, for the reason mentioned, but they use them for bathing and so forth, and drink from wells, thus avoiding their unwholesomeness. At Troezen it cannot be avoided, because no other kind of water at all is found, except what the Cibdeli furnish, and so in that city all or most of the people have diseases of the feet. At the city of Tarsus in Cilicia is a river named Cydnus, in which gouty people soak their legs and find relief from pain. 7. There are also many other kinds of water which have peculiar properties; for example, the river Himera in Sicily, which, after leaving its source, is divided into two branches. One flows in the direction of Etruria and has an exceedingly sweet taste on account of a sweet juice in the soil through which it runs; the other runs through a country where there are salt pits, and so it has a salt taste. At Paraetonium, and on the road to Ammon, and at Casius in Egypt there are marshy lakes which are so salt that they have a crust of salt on the surface. In many other places there are springs and rivers and lakes which are necessarily rendered salt because they run through salt pits. 8. Others flow through such greasy veins of soil that they are overspread with oil when they burst out as springs: for example, at Soli, a town in Cilicia, the river named Liparis, in which swimmers or bathers get anointed merely by the water. Likewise there is a lake in Ethiopia which anoints people who swim in it, and one in India which emits a great quantity of oil when the sky is clear. At Carthage is a spring that has oil swimming on its surface and smelling like sawdust from citrus wood, with which oil sheep are anointed. In Zacynthus and about Dyrrachium and Apollonia are springs which discharge a great quantity of pitch with their water. In Babylon, a lake of very great extent, called Lake Asphaltitis, has liquid asphalt swimming on its surface, with which asphalt and with burnt brick Semiramis built the wall surrounding Babylon. At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield very large masses of asphalt, which are carried off by the inhabitants thereabouts. 9. There is nothing marvellous in this, for quarries of hard asphalt are numerous there. So, when a quantity of water bursts its way through the asphaltic soil, it carries asphalt out with it, and after passing out of the ground, the water is separated and so rejects the asphalt from itself. Again, in Cappadocia on the road from Mazaca to Tyana, there is an extensive lake into which if a part of a reed or of some other thing be plunged, and withdrawn the next day, it will be found that the part thus withdrawn has turned into stone, while the part which remained above water retains its original nature. 10. In the same way, at Hierapolis in Phrygia there is a multitude of boiling hot springs from which water is let into ditches surrounding gardens and vineyards, and this water becomes an incrustation of stone at the end of a year. Hence, every year they construct banks of earth to the right and left, let in the water, and thus out of these incrustations make walls for their fields. This seems due to natural causes, since there is a juice having a coagulating potency like rennet underground in those spots and in that country. When this potency appears above ground mingled with spring water, the mixture cannot but be hardened by the heat of the sun and air, as appears in salt pits. 11. There are also springs which issue exceedingly bitter, owing to a bitter juice in the soil, such as the river Hypanis in Pontus. For about forty miles from its source its taste is very sweet; then it reaches a point about one hundred and sixty miles from its mouth, where it is joined by a very small brook. This runs into it, and at once makes that vast river bitter, for the reason that the water of the brook becomes bitter by flowing through the kind of soil and the veins in which there are sandarach mines. 12. These waters are given their different flavours by the properties of the soil, as is also seen in the case of fruits. If the roots of trees, vines, or other plants did not produce their fruits by drawing juices from soil of different properties, the flowers of all would be of the same kind in all places and districts. But we find in the island of Lesbos the protropum wine, in Maeonia, the catacecaumenites, in Lydia, the Tmolian, in Sicily, the Mamertine, in Campania, the Falernian, between Terracina and Fondi, the Caecuban, and wines of countless varieties and qualities produced in many other places. This could not be the case, were it not that the juice of the soil, introduced with its proper flavours into the roots, feeds the stem, and, mounting along it to the top, imparts a flavour to the fruit which is peculiar to its situation and kind. 13. If soils were not different and unlike in their kinds of juices, Syria and Arabia would not be the only places in which the reeds, rushes, and all the plants are aromatic, and in which there are trees bearing frankincense or yielding pepper berries and lumps of myrrh, nor would assafoetida be found only in the stalks growing in Cyrene, but everything would be of the same sort, and produced in the soil of all countries. It is the inclination of the firmament and the force of the sun, as it draws nearer or recedes in its course, that make these diversities such as we find them in different countries and places, through the nature of the soil and it's juices. And not only in the case of the things mentioned, but also in that of sheep and cattle. These diversities would not exist if the different properties of soils and their juices were not qualified by the power of the sun. 14. For instance, there are in Boeotia the rivers Cephisus and Melas, in Lucania, the Crathis, in Troy, the Xanthus, and certain springs in the country of the Clazomenians, the Erythraeans, and the Laodiceans. When sheep are ready for breeding at the proper season of the year, they are driven every day during that season to those rivers to drink, and the result is that, however white they may be, they beget in some places whity-brown lambs, in other places gray, and in others black as a raven. Thus, the peculiar character of the liquid, entering their body, produces in each case the quality with which it is imbued. Hence, it is said that the people of Ilium gave the river Xanthus its name because reddish cattle and whity-brown sheep are found in the plains of Troy near that river. 15. Deadly kinds of water are also found, which run through soil containing a noxious juice, and take in its poisonous quality: for instance, there is said to have been a spring at Terracina, called the spring of Neptune, which caused the death of those who thoughtlessly drank from it. In consequence, it is said that the ancients stopped it up. At Chrobs in Thrace there is a lake which causes the death not only of those who drink of it, but also of those who bathe in it. In Thessaly there is a gushing fount of which sheep never taste, nor does any sort of creature draw near to it, and close by this fount there is a tree with crimson flowers. 16. In Macedonia, at the place where Euripides is buried, two streams approach from the right and left of his tomb, and unite. By one of these, travellers are in the habit of lying down and taking luncheon, because its water is good; but nobody goes near the stream on the other side of the tomb, because its water is said to be death-dealing. In Arcadia there is a tract of land called Nonacris, which has extremely cold water trickling from a rock in the mountains. This water is called "Water of the Styx," and no vessel, whether of silver, bronze, or iron, can stand it without flying to pieces and breaking up. Nothing but a mule's hoof can keep it together and hold it, and tradition says that it was thus conveyed by Antipater through his son Iollas into the province where Alexander was staying, and that the king was killed by him with this water. 17. Among the Alps in the kingdom of Cottius there is a water those who taste of which immediately fall lifeless. In the Faliscan country on the Via Campana in the Campus Cornetus is a grove in which rises a spring, and there the bones of birds and of lizards and other reptiles are seen lying. Some springs are acid, as at Lyncestus and in Italy in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in many other places. These when used as drinks have the power of breaking up stones in the bladder, which form in the human body. 18. This seems to be due to natural causes, as there is a sharp and acid juice contained in the soil there, which imparts a sharpness to these springs as they issue from it; and so, on entering the body, they disperse all the deposits and concretions, due to the use of other waters, which they find in the body. Why such things are broken up by acid waters we can see from the following experiments. If an egg is left for some time in vinegar, its shell will soften and dissolve. Again, if a piece of lead, which is very flexible and heavy, is put in a vase and vinegar poured over it, and the vase covered and sealed up, the lead will be dissolved and turn into white lead. 19. On the same principle, copper, which is naturally more solid, will disperse and turn into verdigris if similarly treated. So, also, a pearl. Even rocks of lava, which neither iron nor fire alone can dissolve, split into pieces and dissolve when heated with fire and then sprinkled with vinegar. Hence, since we see these things taking place before our very eyes, we can infer that on the same principle even patients with the stone may, in the nature of things, be cured in like manner by means of acid waters, on account of the sharpness of the potion. 20. Then there are springs in which wine seems to be mingled, like the one in Paphlagonia, the water of which intoxicates those who drink of the spring alone without wine. The Aequians in Italy and the tribe of the Medulli in the Alps have a kind of water which causes swellings in the throats of those who drink it. 21. In Arcadia is the well-known town of Clitor, in whose territory is a cave with running water which makes people who drink of it abstemious. At this spring, there is an epigram in Greek verses inscribed on stone to the effect that the water is unsuitable for bathing, and also injurious to vines, because it was at this spring that Melampus cleansed the daughters of Proetus of their madness by sacrificial rites, and restored those maidens to their former sound state of mind. The inscription runs as written below: Swain, if by noontide thirst thou art opprest When with thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring--Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From Argos came to rugged Arcady. 22. In the island of Zea is a spring of which those who thoughtlessly drink lose their understanding, and an epigram is cut there to the effect that a draught from the spring is delightful, but that he who drinks will become dull as a stone. These are the verses: This stone sweet streams of cooling drink doth drip, But stone his wits become who doth it sip. 23. At Susa, the capital of the Persian kingdom, there is a little spring, those who drink of which lose their teeth. An epigram is written there, the significance of which is to this effect, that the water is excellent for bathing, but that taken as drink, it knocks out the teeth by the roots. The verses of this epigram are, in Greek, as follows: Stranger, you see the waters of a spring In which 'tis safe for men their hands to lave; But if the weedy basin entering You drink of its unpalatable wave, Your grinders tumble out that self-same day From jaws that orphaned sockets will display. 24. There are also in some places springs which have the peculiarity of giving fine singing voices to the natives, as at Tarsus in Magnesia and in other countries of that kind. Then there is Zama, an African city, which King Juba fortified by enclosing it with a double wall, and he established his royal residence there. Twenty miles from it is the walled town of Ismuc, the lands belonging to which are marked off by a marvellous kind of boundary. For although Africa was the mother and nurse of wild animals, particularly serpents, yet not one is ever born in the lands of that town, and if ever one is imported and put there, it dies at once; and not only this, but if soil is taken from this spot to another place, the same is true there. It is said that this kind of soil is also found in the Balearic Islands. The above mentioned soil has a still more wonderful property, of which I have learned in the following way. 25. Caius Julius, Masinissa's son, who owned all the lands about that town, served with Caesar the father. He was once my guest. Hence, in our daily intercourse, we naturally talked of literary subjects. During a conversation between us on the efficacy of water and its qualities, he stated that there were springs in that country of a kind which caused people born there to have fine singing voices, and that consequently they always sent abroad and bought handsome lads and ripe girls, and mated them, so that their progeny might have not only fine voices but also beautiful forms. 26. This great variety in different things is a distribution due to nature, for even the human body, which consists in part of the earthy, contains many kinds of juices, such as blood, milk, sweat, urine, and tears. If all this variation of flavours is found in a small portion of the earthy, we should not be surprised to find in the great earth itself countless varieties of juices, through the veins of which the water runs, and becomes saturated with them before reaching the outlets of springs. In this way, different varieties of springs of peculiar kinds are produced, on account of diversity of situation, characteristics of country, and dissimilar properties of soils. 27. Some of these things I have seen for myself, others I have found written in Greek books, the authorities for these writings being Theophrastus, Timaeus, Posidonius, Hegesias, Herodotus, Aristides, and Metrodorus. These men with much attention and endless pains showed by their writings that the peculiarities of sites, the properties of waters, and the characteristics of countries are conditioned by the inclination of the heaven. Following their investigations, I have set down in this book what I thought sufficient about different kinds of water, to make it easier, by means of these directions, for people to pick out springs from which they can conduct the water in aqueducts for the use of cities and towns. 28. For it is obvious that nothing in the world is so necessary for use as water, seeing that any living creature can, if deprived of grain or fruit or meat or fish, or any one of them, support life by using other foodstuffs; but without water no animal nor any proper food can be produced, kept in good condition, or prepared. Consequently we must take great care and pains in searching for springs and selecting them, keeping in view the health of mankind. CHAPTER IV TESTS OF GOOD WATER 1. Springs should be tested and proved in advance in the following ways. If they run free and open, inspect and observe the physique of the people who dwell in the vicinity before beginning to conduct the water, and if their frames are strong, their complexions fresh, legs sound, and eyes clear, the springs deserve complete approval. If it is a spring just dug out, its water is excellent if it can be sprinkled into a Corinthian vase or into any other sort made of good bronze without leaving a spot on it. Again, if such water is boiled in a bronze cauldron, afterwards left for a time, and then poured off without sand or mud being found at the bottom of the cauldron, that water also will have proved its excellence. 2. And if green vegetables cook quickly when put into a vessel of such water and set over a fire, it will be a proof that the water is good and wholesome. Likewise if the water in the spring is itself limpid and clear, if there is no growth of moss or reeds where it spreads and flows, and if its bed is not polluted by filth of any sort but has a clean appearance, these signs indicate that the water is light and wholesome in the highest degree. CHAPTER V LEVELLING AND LEVELLING INSTRUMENTS 1. I shall now treat of the ways in which water should be conducted to dwellings and cities. First comes the method of taking the level. Levelling is done either with dioptrae, or with water levels, or with the chorobates, but it is done with greater accuracy by means of the chorobates, because dioptrae and levels are deceptive. The chorobates is a straightedge about twenty feet long. At the extremities it has legs, made exactly alike and jointed on perpendicularly to the extremities of the straightedge, and also crosspieces, fastened by tenons, connecting the straightedge and the legs. These crosspieces have vertical lines drawn upon them, and there are plumblines hanging from the straightedge over each of the lines. When the straightedge is in position, and the plumblines strike both the lines alike and at the same time, they show that the instrument stands level. 2. But if the wind interposes, and constant motion prevents any definite indication by the lines, then have a groove on the upper side, five feet long, one digit wide, and a digit and a half deep, and pour water into it. If the water comes up uniformly to the rims of the groove, it will be known that the instrument is level. When the level is thus found by means of the chorobates, the amount of fall will also be known. 3. Perhaps some reader of the works of Archimedes will say that there can be no true levelling by means of water, because he holds that water has not a level surface, but is of a spherical form, having its centre at the centre of the earth. Still, whether water is plane or spherical, it necessarily follows that when the straightedge is level, it will support the water evenly at its extremities on the right and left, but that if it slopes down at one end, the water at the higher end will not reach the rim of the groove in the straightedge. For though the water, wherever poured in, must have a swelling and curvature in the centre, yet the extremities on the right and left must be on a level with each other. A picture of the chorobates will be found drawn at the end of the book. If there is to be a considerable fall, the conducting of the water will be comparatively easy. But if the course is broken by depressions, we must have recourse to substructures. CHAPTER VI AQUEDUCTS, WELLS, AND CISTERNS 1. There are three methods of conducting water, in channels through masonry conduits, or in lead pipes, or in pipes of baked clay. If in conduits, let the masonry be as solid as possible, and let the bed of the channel have a gradient of not less than a quarter of an inch for every hundred feet, and let the masonry structure be arched over, so that the sun may not strike the water at all. When it has reached the city, build a reservoir with a distribution tank in three compartments connected with the reservoir to receive the water, and let the reservoir have three pipes, one for each of the connecting tanks, so that when the water runs over from the tanks at the ends, it may run into the one between them. 2. From this central tank, pipes will be laid to all the basins and fountains; from the second tank, to baths, so that they may yield an annual income to the state; and from the third, to private houses, so that water for public use will not run short; for people will be unable to divert it if they have only their own supplies from headquarters. This is the reason why I have made these divisions, and also in order that individuals who take water into their houses may by their taxes help to maintain the conducting of the water by the contractors. 3. If, however, there are hills between the city and the source of supply, subterranean channels must be dug, and brought to a level at the gradient mentioned above. If the bed is of tufa or other stone, let the channel be cut in it; but if it is of earth or sand, there must be vaulted masonry walls for the channel, and the water should thus be conducted, with shafts built at every two hundred and forty feet. 4. But if the water is to be conducted in lead pipes, first build a reservoir at the source; then, let the pipes have an interior area corresponding to the amount of water, and lay these pipes from this reservoir to the reservoir which is inside the city walls. The pipes should be cast in lengths of at least ten feet. If they are hundreds, they should weigh 1200 pounds each length; if eighties, 960 pounds; if fifties, 600 pounds; forties, 480 pounds; thirties, 360 pounds; twenties, 240 pounds; fifteens, 180 pounds; tens, 120 pounds; eights, 100 pounds; fives, 60 pounds. The pipes get the names of their sizes from the width of the plates, taken in digits, before they are rolled into tubes. Thus, when a pipe is made from a plate fifty digits in width, it will be called a "fifty," and so on with the rest. 5. The conducting of the water through lead pipes is to be managed as follows. If there is a regular fall from the source to the city, without any intervening hills that are high enough to interrupt it, but with depressions in it, then we must build substructures to bring it up to the level as in the case of channels and conduits. If the distance round such depressions is not great, the water may be carried round circuitously; but if the valleys are extensive, the course will be directed down their slope. On reaching the bottom, a low substructure is built so that the level there may continue as long as possible. This will form the "venter," termed [Greek: Koilia] by the Greeks. Then, on reaching the hill on the opposite side, the length of the venter makes the water slow in swelling up to rise to the top of the hill. 6. But if there is no such venter made in the valleys, nor any substructure built on a level, but merely an elbow, the water will break out, and burst the joints of the pipes. And in the venter, water cushions must be constructed to relieve the pressure of the air. Thus, those who have to conduct water through lead pipes will do it most successfully on these principles, because its descents, circuits, venters, and risings can be managed in this way, when the level of the fall from the sources to the city is once obtained. 7. It is also not ineffectual to build reservoirs at intervals of 24,000 feet, so that if a break occurs anywhere, it will not completely ruin the whole work, and the place where it has occurred can easily be found; but such reservoirs should not be built at a descent, nor in the plane of a venter, nor at risings, nor anywhere in valleys, but only where there is an unbroken level. 8. But if we wish to spend less money, we must proceed as follows. Clay pipes with a skin at least two digits thick should be made, but these pipes should be tongued at one end so that they can fit into and join one another. Their joints must be coated with quicklime mixed with oil, and at the angles of the level of the venter a piece of red tufa stone, with a hole bored through it, must be placed right at the elbow, so that the last length of pipe used in the descent is jointed into the stone, and also the first length of the level of the venter; similarly at the hill on the opposite side the last length of the level of the venter should stick into the hole in the red tufa, and the first of the rise should be similarly jointed into it. 9. The level of the pipes being thus adjusted, they will not be sprung out of place by the force generated at the descent and at the rising. For a strong current of air is generated in an aqueduct which bursts its way even through stones unless the water is let in slowly and sparingly from the source at first, and checked at the elbows or turns by bands, or by the weight of sand ballast. All the other arrangements should be made as in the case of lead pipes. And ashes are to be put in beforehand when the water is let in from the source for the first time, so that if any of the joints have not been sufficiently coated, they may be coated with ashes. 10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:--if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome. 11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste. 12. But if there are no springs from which we can construct aqueducts, it is necessary to dig wells. Now in the digging of wells we must not disdain reflection, but must devote much acuteness and skill to the consideration of the natural principles of things, because the earth contains many various substances in itself; for like everything else, it is composed of the four elements. In the first place, it is itself earthy, and of moisture it contains springs of water, also heat, which produces sulphur, alum, and asphalt; and finally, it contains great currents of air, which, coming up in a pregnant state through the porous fissures to the places where wells are being dug, and finding men engaged in digging there, stop up the breath of life in their nostrils by the natural strength of the exhalation. So those who do not quickly escape from the spot, are killed there. 13. To guard against this, we must proceed as follows. Let down a lighted lamp, and if it keeps on burning, a man may make the descent without danger. But if the light is put out by the strength of the exhalation, then dig air shafts beside the well on the right and left. Thus the vapours will be carried off by the air shafts as if through nostrils. When these are finished and we come to the water, then a wall should be built round the well without stopping up the vein. 14. But if the ground is hard, or if the veins lie too deep, the water supply must be obtained from roofs or higher ground, and collected in cisterns of "signinum work." Signinum work is made as follows. In the first place, procure the cleanest and sharpest sand, break up lava into bits of not more than a pound in weight, and mix the sand in a mortar trough with the strongest lime in the proportion of five parts of sand to two of lime. The trench for the signinum work, down to the level of the proposed depth of the cistern, should be beaten with wooden beetles covered with iron. 15. Then after having beaten the walls, let all the earth between them be cleared out to a level with the very bottom of the walls. Having evened this off, let the ground be beaten to the proper density. If such constructions are in two compartments or in three so as to insure clearing by changing from one to another, they will make the water much more wholesome and sweeter to use. For it will become more limpid, and keep its taste without any smell, if the mud has somewhere to settle; otherwise it will be necessary to clear it by adding salt. In this book I have put what I could about the merits and varieties of water, its usefulness, and the ways in which it should be conducted and tested; in the next I shall write about the subject of dialling and the principles of timepieces. BOOK IX INTRODUCTION 1. The ancestors of the Greeks have appointed such great honours for the famous athletes who are victorious at the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean games, that they are not only greeted with applause as they stand with palm and crown at the meeting itself, but even on returning to their several states in the triumph of victory, they ride into their cities and to their fathers' houses in four-horse chariots, and enjoy fixed revenues for life at the public expense. When I think of this, I am amazed that the same honours and even greater are not bestowed upon those authors whose boundless services are performed for all time and for all nations. This would have been a practice all the more worth establishing, because in the case of athletes it is merely their own bodily frame that is strengthened by their training, whereas in the case of authors it is the mind, and not only their own but also man's in general, by the doctrines laid down in their books for the acquiring of knowledge and the sharpening of the intellect. 2. What does it signify to mankind that Milo of Croton and other victors of his class were invincible? Nothing, save that in their lifetime they were famous among their countrymen. But the doctrines of Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, and the daily life of other learned men, spent in constant industry, yield fresh and rich fruit, not only to their own countrymen, but also to all nations. And they who from their tender years are filled with the plenteous learning which this fruit affords, attain to the highest capacity of knowledge, and can introduce into their states civilized ways, impartial justice, and laws, things without which no state can be sound. 3. Since, therefore, these great benefits to individuals and to communities are due to the wisdom of authors, I think that not only should palms and crowns be bestowed upon them, but that they should even be granted triumphs, and judged worthy of being consecrated in the dwellings of the gods. Of their many discoveries which have been useful for the development of human life, I will cite a few examples. On reviewing these, people will admit that honours ought of necessity to be bestowed upon them. 4. First of all, among the many very useful theorems of Plato, I will cite one as demonstrated by him. Suppose there is a place or a field in the form of a square and we are required to double it. This has to be effected by means of lines correctly drawn, for it will take a kind of calculation not to be made by means of mere multiplication. The following is the demonstration. A square place ten feet long and ten feet wide gives an area of one hundred feet. Now if it is required to double the square, and to make one of two hundred feet, we must ask how long will be the side of that square so as to get from this the two hundred feet corresponding to the doubling of the area. Nobody can find this by means of arithmetic. For if we take fourteen, multiplication will give one hundred and ninety-six feet; if fifteen, two hundred and twenty-five feet. 5. Therefore, since this is inexplicable by arithmetic, let a diagonal line be drawn from angle to angle of that square of ten feet in length and width, dividing it into two triangles of equal size, each fifty feet in area. Taking this diagonal line as the length, describe another square. Thus we shall have in the larger square four triangles of the same size and the same number of feet as the two of fifty feet each which were formed by the diagonal line in the smaller square. In this way Plato demonstrated the doubling by means of lines, as the figure appended at the bottom of the page will show. 6. Then again, Pythagoras showed that a right angle can be formed without the contrivances of the artisan. Thus, the result which carpenters reach very laboriously, but scarcely to exactness, with their squares, can be demonstrated to perfection from the reasoning and methods of his teaching. If we take three rules, one three feet, the second four feet, and the third five feet in length, and join these rules together with their tips touching each other so as to make a triangular figure, they will form a right angle. Now if a square be described on the length of each one of these rules, the square on the side of three feet in length will have an area of nine feet; of four feet, sixteen; of five, twenty-five. 7. Thus the area in number of feet made up of the two squares on the sides three and four feet in length is equalled by that of the one square described on the side of five. When Pythagoras discovered this fact, he had no doubt that the Muses had guided him in the discovery, and it is said that he very gratefully offered sacrifice to them. This theorem affords a useful means of measuring many things, and it is particularly serviceable in the building of staircases in buildings, so that the steps may be at the proper levels. 8. Suppose the height of the story, from the flooring above to the ground below, to be divided into three parts. Five of these will give the right length for the stringers of the stairway. Let four parts, each equal to one of the three composing the height between the upper story and the ground, be set off from the perpendicular, and there fix the lower ends of the stringers. In this manner the steps and the stairway itself will be properly placed. A figure of this also will be found appended below. 9. In the case of Archimedes, although he made many wonderful discoveries of diverse kinds, yet of them all, the following, which I shall relate, seems to have been the result of a boundless ingenuity. Hiero, after gaining the royal power in Syracuse, resolved, as a consequence of his successful exploits, to place in a certain temple a golden crown which he had vowed to the immortal gods. He contracted for its making at a fixed price, and weighed out a precise amount of gold to the contractor. At the appointed time the latter delivered to the king's satisfaction an exquisitely finished piece of handiwork, and it appeared that in weight the crown corresponded precisely to what the gold had weighed. 10. But afterwards a charge was made that gold had been abstracted and an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of the crown. Hiero, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked, and yet not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to consider the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his mind, happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment's delay, and transported with joy, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, "[Greek: Eurêka, eurêka]." 11. Taking this as the beginning of his discovery, it is said that he made two masses of the same weight as the crown, one of gold and the other of silver. After making them, he filled a large vessel with water to the very brim, and dropped the mass of silver into it. As much water ran out as was equal in bulk to that of the silver sunk in the vessel. Then, taking out the mass, he poured back the lost quantity of water, using a pint measure, until it was level with the brim as it had been before. Thus he found the weight of silver corresponding to a definite quantity of water. 12. After this experiment, he likewise dropped the mass of gold into the full vessel and, on taking it out and measuring as before, found that not so much water was lost, but a smaller quantity: namely, as much less as a mass of gold lacks in bulk compared to a mass of silver of the same weight. Finally, filling the vessel again and dropping the crown itself into the same quantity of water, he found that more water ran over for the crown than for the mass of gold of the same weight. Hence, reasoning from the fact that more water was lost in the case of the crown than in that of the mass, he detected the mixing of silver with the gold, and made the theft of the contractor perfectly clear. 13. Now let us turn our thoughts to the researches of Archytas of Tarentum and Eratosthenes of Cyrene. They made many discoveries from mathematics which are welcome to men, and so, though they deserve our thanks for other discoveries, they are particularly worthy of admiration for their ideas in that field. For example, each in a different way solved the problem enjoined upon Delos by Apollo in an oracle, the doubling of the number of cubic feet in his altars; this done, he said, the inhabitants of the island would be delivered from an offence against religion. 14. Archytas solved it by his figure of the semi-cylinders; Eratosthenes, by means of the instrument called the mesolabe. Noting all these things with the great delight which learning gives, we cannot but be stirred by these discoveries when we reflect upon the influence of them one by one. I find also much for admiration in the books of Democritus on nature, and in his commentary entitled [Greek: Cheirokmêta], in which he made use of his ring to seal with soft wax the principles which he had himself put to the test. 15. These, then, were men whose researches are an everlasting possession, not only for the improvement of character but also for general utility. The fame of athletes, however, soon declines with their bodily powers. Neither when they are in the flower of their strength, nor afterwards with posterity, can they do for human life what is done by the researches of the learned. 16. But although honours are not bestowed upon authors for excellence of character and teaching, yet as their minds, naturally looking up to the higher regions of the air, are raised to the sky on the steps of history, it must needs be, that not merely their doctrines, but even their appearance, should be known to posterity through time eternal. Hence, men whose souls are aroused by the delights of literature cannot but carry enshrined in their hearts the likeness of the poet Ennius, as they do those of the gods. Those who are devotedly attached to the poems of Accius seem to have before them not merely his vigorous language but even his very figure. 17. So, too, numbers born after our time will feel as if they were discussing nature face to face with Lucretius, or the art of rhetoric with Cicero; many of our posterity will confer with Varro on the Latin language; likewise, there will be numerous scholars who, as they weigh many points with the wise among the Greeks, will feel as if they were carrying on private conversations with them. In a word, the opinions of learned authors, though their bodily forms are absent, gain strength as time goes on, and, when taking part in councils and discussions, have greater weight than those of any living men. 18. Such, Caesar, are the authorities on whom I have depended, and applying their views and opinions I have written the present books, in the first seven treating of buildings and in the eighth of water. In this I shall set forth the rules for dialling, showing how they are found through the shadows cast by the gnomon from the sun's rays in the firmament, and on what principles these shadows lengthen and shorten. CHAPTER I THE ZODIAC AND THE PLANETS 1. It is due to the divine intelligence and is a very great wonder to all who reflect upon it, that the shadow of a gnomon at the equinox is of one length in Athens, of another in Alexandria, of another in Rome, and not the same at Piacenza, or at other places in the world. Hence drawings for dials are very different from one another, corresponding to differences of situation. This is because the length of the shadow at the equinox is used in constructing the figure of the analemma, in accordance with which the hours are marked to conform to the situation and the shadow of the gnomon. The analemma is a basis for calculation deduced from the course of the sun, and found by observation of the shadow as it increases until the winter solstice. By means of this, through architectural principles and the employment of the compasses, we find out the operation of the sun in the universe. 2. The word "universe" means the general assemblage of all nature, and it also means the heaven that is made up of the constellations and the courses of the stars. The heaven revolves steadily round earth and sea on the pivots at the ends of its axis. The architect at these points was the power of Nature, and she put the pivots there, to be, as it were, centres, one of them above the earth and sea at the very top of the firmament and even beyond the stars composing the Great Bear, the other on the opposite side under the earth in the regions of the south. Round these pivots (termed in Greek [Greek: poloi]) as centres, like those of a turning lathe, she formed the circles in which the heaven passes on its everlasting way. In the midst thereof, the earth and sea naturally occupy the central point. 3. It follows from this natural arrangement that the central point in the north is high above the earth, while on the south, the region below, it is beneath the earth and consequently hidden by it. Furthermore, across the middle, and obliquely inclined to the south, there is a broad circular belt composed of the twelve signs, whose stars, arranged in twelve equivalent divisions, represent each a shape which nature has depicted. And so with the firmament and the other constellations, they move round the earth and sea in glittering array, completing their orbits according to the spherical shape of the heaven. 4. They are all visible or invisible according to fixed times. While six of the signs are passing along with the heaven above the earth, the other six are moving under the earth and hidden by its shadow. But there are always six of them making their way above the earth; for, corresponding to that part of the last sign which in the course of its revolution has to sink, pass under the earth, and become concealed, an equivalent part of the sign opposite to it is obliged by the law of their common revolution to pass up and, having completed its circuit, to emerge out of the darkness into the light of the open space on the other side. This is because the rising and setting of both are subject to one and the same power and law. 5. While these signs, twelve in number and occupying each one twelfth part of the firmament, steadily revolve from east to west, the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, as well as Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, differing from one another in the magnitude of their orbits as though their courses were at different points in a flight of steps, pass through those signs in just the opposite direction, from west to east in the firmament. The moon makes her circuit of the heaven in twenty-eight days plus about an hour, and with her return to the sign from which she set forth, completes a lunar month. 6. The sun takes a full month to move across the space of one sign, that is, one twelfth of the firmament. Consequently, in twelve months he traverses the spaces of the twelve signs, and, on returning to the sign from which he began, completes the period of a full year. Hence, the circuit made by the moon thirteen times in twelve months, is measured by the sun only once in the same number of months. But Mercury and Venus, their paths wreathing around the sun's rays as their centre, retrograde and delay their movements, and so, from the nature of that circuit, sometimes wait at stopping-places within the spaces of the signs. 7. This fact may best be recognized from Venus. When she is following the sun, she makes her appearance in the sky after his setting, and is then called the Evening Star, shining most brilliantly. At other times she precedes him, rising before day-break, and is named the Morning Star. Thus Mercury and Venus sometimes delay in one sign for a good many days, and at others advance pretty rapidly into another sign. They do not spend the same number of days in every sign, but the longer they have previously delayed, the more rapidly they accomplish their journeys after passing into the next sign, and thus they complete their appointed course. Consequently, in spite of their delay in some of the signs, they nevertheless soon reach the proper place in their orbits after freeing themselves from their enforced delay. 8. Mercury, on his journey through the heavens, passes through the spaces of the signs in three hundred and sixty days, and so arrives at the sign from which he set out on his course at the beginning of his revolution. His average rate of movement is such that he has about thirty days in each sign. 9. Venus, on becoming free from the hindrance of the sun's rays, crosses the space of a sign in thirty days. Though she thus stays less than forty days in particular signs, she makes good the required amount by delaying in one sign when she comes to a pause. Therefore she completes her total revolution in heaven in four hundred and eighty-five days, and once more enters the sign from which she previously began to move. 10. Mars, after traversing the spaces of the constellations for about six hundred and eighty-three days, arrives at the point from which he had before set out at the beginning of his course, and while he passes through some of the signs more rapidly than others, he makes up the required number of days whenever he comes to a pause. Jupiter, climbing with gentler pace against the revolution of the firmament, travels through each sign in about three hundred and sixty days, and finishes in eleven years and three hundred and thirteen days, returning to the sign in which he had been twelve years before. Saturn, traversing the space of one sign in twenty-nine months plus a few days, is restored after twenty-nine years and about one hundred and sixty days to that in which he had been thirty years before. He is, as it appears, slower, because the nearer he is to the outermost part of the firmament, the greater is the orbit through which he has to pass. 11. The three that complete their circuits above the sun's course do not make progress while they are in the triangle which he has entered, but retrograde and pause until the sun has crossed from that triangle into another sign. Some hold that this takes place because, as they say, when the sun is a great distance off, the paths on which these stars wander are without light on account of that distance, and so the darkness retards and hinders them. But I do not think that this is so. The splendour of the sun is clearly to be seen, and manifest without any kind of obscurity, throughout the whole firmament, so that those very retrograde movements and pauses of the stars are visible even to us. 12. If then, at this great distance, our human vision can discern that sight, why, pray, are we to think that the divine splendour of the stars can be cast into darkness? Rather will the following way of accounting for it prove to be correct. Heat summons and attracts everything towards itself; for instance, we see the fruits of the earth growing up high under the influence of heat, and that spring water is vapourised and drawn up to the clouds at sunrise. On the same principle, the mighty influence of the sun, with his rays diverging in the form of a triangle, attracts the stars which follow him, and, as it were, curbs and restrains those that precede, not allowing them to make progress, but obliging them to retrograde towards himself until he passes out into the sign that belongs to a different triangle. 13. Perhaps the question will be raised, why the sun by his great heat causes these detentions in the fifth sign from himself rather than in the second or third, which are nearer. I will therefore set forth what seems to be the reason. His rays diverge through the firmament in straight lines as though forming an equilateral triangle, that is, to the fifth sign from the sun, no more, no less. If his rays were diffused in circuits spreading all over the firmament, instead of in straight lines diverging so as to form a triangle, they would burn up all the nearer objects. This is a fact which the Greek poet Euripides seems to have remarked; for he says that places at a greater distance from the sun are in a violent heat, and that those which are nearer he keeps temperate. Thus in the play of Phaethon, the poet writes: [Greek: kaiei ta porrô, tangythen d eukrat echei]. 14. If then, fact and reason and the evidence of an ancient poet point to this explanation, I do not see why we should decide otherwise than as I have written above on this subject. Jupiter, whose orbit is between those of Mars and Saturn, traverses a longer course than Mars, and a shorter than Saturn. Likewise with the rest of these stars: the farther they are from the outermost limits of the heaven, and the nearer their orbits to the earth, the sooner they are seen to finish their courses; for those of them that have a smaller orbit often pass those that are higher, going under them. 15. For example, place seven ants on a wheel such as potters use, having made seven channels on the wheel about the centre, increasing successively in circumference; and suppose those ants obliged to make a circuit in these channels while the wheel is turned in the opposite direction. In spite of having to move in a direction contrary to that of the wheel, the ants must necessarily complete their journeys in the opposite direction, and that ant which is nearest the centre must finish its circuit sooner, while the ant that is going round at the outer edge of the disc of the wheel must, on account of the size of its circuit, be much slower in completing its course, even though it is moving just as quickly as the other. In the same way, these stars, which struggle on against the course of the firmament, are accomplishing an orbit on paths of their own; but, owing to the revolution of the heaven, they are swept back as it goes round every day. 16. The reason why some of these stars are temperate, others hot, and others cold, appears to be this: that the flame of every kind of fire rises to higher places. Consequently, the burning rays of the sun make the ether above him white hot, in the regions of the course of Mars, and so the heat of the sun makes him hot. Saturn, on the contrary, being nearest to the outermost limit of the firmament and bordering on the quarters of the heaven which are frozen, is excessively cold. Hence, Jupiter, whose course is between the orbits of these two, appears to have a moderate and very temperate influence, intermediate between their cold and heat. I have now described, as I have received them from my teacher, the belt of the twelve signs and the seven stars that work and move in the opposite direction, with the laws and numerical relations under which they pass from sign to sign, and how they complete their orbits. I shall next speak of the waxing and waning of the moon, according to the accounts of my predecessors. CHAPTER II THE PHASES OF THE MOON 1. According to the teaching of Berosus, who came from the state, or rather nation, of the Chaldees, and was the pioneer of Chaldean learning in Asia, the moon is a ball, one half luminous and the rest of a blue colour. When, in the course of her orbit, she has passed below the disc of the sun, she is attracted by his rays and great heat, and turns thither her luminous side, on account of the sympathy between light and light. Being thus summoned by the sun's disc and facing upward, her lower half, as it is not luminous, is invisible on account of its likeness to the air. When she is perpendicular to the sun's rays, all her light is confined to her upper surface, and she is then called the new moon. 2. As she moves on, passing by to the east, the effect of the sun upon her relaxes, and the outer edge of the luminous side sheds its light upon the earth in an exceedingly thin line. This is called the second day of the moon. Day by day she is further relieved and turns, and thus are numbered the third, fourth, and following days. On the seventh day, the sun being in the west and the moon in the middle of the firmament between the east and west, she is half the extent of the firmament distant from the sun, and therefore half of the luminous side is turned toward the earth. But when the sun and moon are separated by the entire extent of the firmament, and the moon is in the east with the sun over against her in the west, she is completely relieved by her still greater distance from his rays, and so, on the fourteenth day, she is at the full, and her entire disc emits its light. On the succeeding days, up to the end of the month, she wanes daily as she turns in her course, being recalled by the sun until she comes under his disc and rays, thus completing the count of the days of the month. 3. But Aristarchus of Samos, a mathematician of great powers, has left a different explanation in his teaching on this subject, as I shall now set forth. It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun. Of all the seven stars, the moon traverses the shortest orbit, and her course is nearest to the earth. Hence in every month, on the day before she gets past the sun, she is under his disc and rays, and is consequently hidden and invisible. When she is thus in conjunction with the sun, she is called the new moon. On the next day, reckoned as her second, she gets past the sun and shows the thin edge of her sphere. Three days away from the sun, she waxes and grows brighter. Removing further every day till she reaches the seventh, when her distance from the sun at his setting is about one half the extent of the firmament, one half of her is luminous: that is, the half which faces toward the sun is lighted up by him. 4. On the fourteenth day, being diametrically across the whole extent of the firmament from the sun, she is at her full and rises when the sun is setting. For, as she takes her place over against him and distant the whole extent of the firmament, she thus receives the light from the sun throughout her entire orb. On the seventeenth day, at sunrise, she is inclining to the west. On the twenty-second day, after sunrise, the moon is about mid-heaven; hence, the side exposed to the sun is bright and the rest dark. Continuing thus her daily course, she passes under the rays of the sun on about the twenty-eighth day, and so completes the account of the month. I will next explain how the sun, passing through a different sign each month, causes the days and hours to increase and diminish in length. CHAPTER III THE COURSE OF THE SUN THROUGH THE TWELVE SIGNS 1. The sun, after entering the sign Aries and passing through one eighth of it, determines the vernal equinox. On reaching the tail of Taurus and the constellation of the Pleiades, from which the front half of Taurus projects, he advances into a space greater than half the firmament, moving toward the north. From Taurus he enters Gemini at the time of the rising of the Pleiades, and, getting higher above the earth, he increases the length of the days. Next, coming from Gemini into Cancer, which occupies the shortest space in heaven, and after traversing one eighth of it, he determines the summer solstice. Continuing on, he reaches the head and breast of Leo, portions which are reckoned as belonging to Cancer. 2. After leaving the breast of Leo and the boundaries of Cancer, the sun, traversing the rest of Leo, makes the days shorter, diminishing the size of his circuit, and returning to the same course that he had in Gemini. Next, crossing from Leo into Virgo, and advancing as far as the bosom of her garment, he still further shortens his circuit, making his course equal to what it was in Taurus. Advancing from Virgo by way of the bosom of her garment, which forms the first part of Libra, he determines the autumn equinox at the end of one eighth of Libra. Here his course is equal to what his circuit was in the sign Aries. 3. When the sun has entered Scorpio, at the time of the setting of the Pleiades, he begins to make the days shorter as he advances toward the south. From Scorpio he enters Sagittarius and, on reaching the thighs, his daily course is still further diminished. From the thighs of Sagittarius, which are reckoned as part of Capricornus, he reaches the end of the first eighth of the latter, where his course in heaven is shortest. Consequently, this season, from the shortness of the day, is called bruma or dies brumales. Crossing from Capricornus into Aquarius, he causes the days to increase to the length which they had when he was in Sagittarius. From Aquarius he enters Pisces at the time when Favonius begins to blow, and here his course is the same as in Scorpio. In this way the sun passes round through the signs, lengthening or shortening the days and hours at definite seasons. I shall next speak of the other constellations formed by arrangements of stars, and lying to the right and left of the belt of the signs, in the southern and northern portions of the firmament. CHAPTER IV THE NORTHERN CONSTELLATIONS 1. The Great Bear, called in Greek [Greek: arktos] or [Greek: helikê], has her Warden behind her. Near him is the Virgin, on whose right shoulder rests a very bright star which we call Harbinger of the Vintage, and the Greeks [Greek: protrygêtês]. But Spica in that constellation is brighter. Opposite there is another star, coloured, between the knees of the Bear Warden, dedicated there under the name of Arcturus. 2. Opposite the head of the Bear, at an angle with the feet of the Twins, is the Charioteer, standing on the tip of the horn of the Bull; hence, one and the same star is found in the tip of the left horn of the Bull and in the right foot of the Charioteer. Supported on the hand of the Charioteer are the Kids, with the She-Goat at his left shoulder. Above the Bull and the Ram is Perseus, having at his right...[11] with the Pleiades moving beneath, and at his left the head of the Ram. His right hand rests on the likeness of Cassiopea, and with his left he holds the Gorgon's head by its top over the Ram, laying it at the feet of Andromeda. [Note 11: From this point to the end of section 3 the text is often hopelessly corrupt. The translation follows, approximately, the manuscript reading, but cannot pretend to be exact.] 3. Above Andromeda are the Fishes, one above her belly and the other above the backbone of the Horse. A very bright star terminates both the belly of the Horse and the head of Andromeda. Andromeda's right hand rests above the likeness of Cassiopea, and her left above the Northern Fish. The Waterman's head is above that of the Horse. The Horse's hoofs lie close to the Waterman's knees. Cassiopea is set apart in the midst. High above the He-Goat are the Eagle and the Dolphin, and near them is the Arrow. Farther on is the Bird, whose right wing grazes the head and sceptre of Cepheus, with its left resting over Cassiopea. Under the tail of the Bird lie the feet of the Horse. 4. Above the Archer, Scorpion, and Balance, is the Serpent, reaching to the Crown with the end of its snout. Next, the Serpent-holder grasps the Serpent about the middle in his hands, and with his left foot treads squarely on the foreparts of the Scorpion. A little way from the head of the Serpent-holder is the head of the so-called Kneeler. Their heads are the more readily to be distinguished as the stars which compose them are by no means dim. 5. The foot of the Kneeler rests on the temple of that Serpent which is entwined between the She-Bears (called Septentriones). The little Dolphin moves in front of the Horse. Opposite the bill of the Bird is the Lyre. The Crown is arranged between the shoulders of the Warden and the Kneeler. In the northern circle are the two She-Bears with their shoulder-blades confronting and their breasts turned away from one another. The Greeks call the Lesser Bear [Greek: kynosoura], and the Greater [Greek: elikê]. Their heads face different ways, and their tails are shaped so that each is in front of the head of the other Bear; for the tails of both stick up over them. 6. The Serpent is said to lie stretched out between their tails, and in it there is a star, called Polus, shining near the head of the Greater Bear. At the nearest point, the Serpent winds its head round, but is also flung in a fold round the head of the Lesser Bear, and stretches out close to her feet. Here it twists back, making another fold, and, lifting itself up, bends its snout and right temple from the head of the Lesser Bear round towards the Greater. Above the tail of the Lesser Bear are the feet of Cepheus, and at this point, at the very top, are stars forming an equilateral triangle. There are a good many stars common to the Lesser Bear and to Cepheus. I have now mentioned the constellations which are arranged in the heaven to the right of the east, between the belt of the signs and the north. I shall next describe those that Nature has distributed to the left of the east and in the southern regions. CHAPTER V THE SOUTHERN CONSTELLATIONS 1. First, under the He-Goat lies the Southern Fish, facing towards the tail of the Whale. The Censer is under the Scorpion's sting. The fore parts of the Centaur are next to the Balance and the Scorpion, and he holds in his hands the figure which astronomers call the Beast. Beneath the Virgin, Lion, and Crab is the twisted girdle formed by the Snake, extending over a whole line of stars, his snout raised near the Crab, supporting the Bowl with the middle of his body near the Lion, and bringing his tail, on which is the Raven, under and near the hand of the Virgin. The region above his shoulders is equally bright. 2. Beneath the Snake's belly, at the tail, lies the Centaur. Near the Bowl and the Lion is the ship named Argo. Her bow is invisible, but her mast and the parts about the helm are in plain sight, the stern of the vessel joining the Dog at the tip of his tail. The Little Dog follows the Twins, and is opposite the Snake's head. The Greater Dog follows the Lesser. Orion lies aslant, under the Bull's hoof; in his left hand grasping his club, and raising the other toward the Twins. 3. At his feet is the Dog, following a little behind the Hare. The Whale lies under the Ram and the Fishes, and from his mane there is a slight sprinkling of stars, called in Greek [Greek: harpedonai], regularly disposed towards each of the Fishes. This ligature by which they hang is carried a great way inwards, but reaches out to the top of the mane of the Whale. The River, formed of stars, flows from a source at the left foot of Orion. But the Water, said to pour from the Waterman, flows between the head of the Southern Fish and the tail of the Whale. 4. These constellations, whose outlines and shapes in the heavens were designed by Nature and the divine intelligence, I have described according to the view of the natural philosopher Democritus, but only those whose risings and settings we can observe and see with our own eyes. Just as the Bears turn round the pivot of the axis without ever setting or sinking under the earth, there are likewise stars that keep turning round the southern pivot, which on account of the inclination of the firmament lies always under the earth, and, being hidden there, they never rise and emerge above the earth. Consequently, the figures which they form are unknown to us on account of the interposition of the earth. The star Canopus proves this. It is unknown to our vicinity; but we have reports of it from merchants who have been to the most distant part of Egypt, and to regions bordering on the uttermost boundaries of the earth. CHAPTER VI ASTROLOGY AND WEATHER PROGNOSTICS 1. I have shown how the firmament, and the twelve signs with the constellations arranged to the north and south of them, fly round the earth, so that the matter may be clearly understood. For it is from this revolution of the firmament, from the course of the sun through the signs in the opposite direction, and from the shadows cast by equinoctial gnomons, that we find the figure of the analemma. 2. As for the branch of astronomy which concerns the influences of the twelve signs, the five stars, the sun, and the moon upon human life, we must leave all this to the calculations of the Chaldeans, to whom belongs the art of casting nativities, which enables them to declare the past and the future by means of calculations based on the stars. These discoveries have been transmitted by the men of genius and great acuteness who sprang directly from the nation of the Chaldeans; first of all, by Berosus, who settled in the island state of Cos, and there opened a school. Afterwards Antipater pursued the subject; then there was Archinapolus, who also left rules for casting nativities, based not on the moment of birth but on that of conception. 3. When we come to natural philosophy, however, Thales of Miletus, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, Pythagoras of Samos, Xenophanes of Colophon, and Democritus of Abdera have in various ways investigated and left us the laws and the working of the laws by which nature governs it. In the track of their discoveries, Eudoxus, Euctemon, Callippus, Meto, Philippus, Hipparchus, Aratus, and others discovered the risings and settings of the constellations, as well as weather prognostications from astronomy through the study of the calendars, and this study they set forth and left to posterity. Their learning deserves the admiration of mankind; for they were so solicitous as even to be able to predict, long beforehand, with divining mind, the signs of the weather which was to follow in the future. On this subject, therefore, reference must be made to their labours and investigations. CHAPTER VII THE ANALEMMA AND ITS APPLICATIONS 1. In distinction from the subjects first mentioned, we must ourselves explain the principles which govern the shortening and lengthening of the day. When the sun is at the equinoxes, that is, passing through Aries or Libra, he makes the gnomon cast a shadow equal to eight ninths of its own length, in the latitude of Rome. In Athens, the shadow is equal to three fourths of the length of the gnomon; at Rhodes to five sevenths; at Tarentum, to nine elevenths; at Alexandria, to three fifths; and so at other places it is found that the shadows of equinoctial gnomons are naturally different from one another. 2. Hence, wherever a sundial is to be constructed, we must take the equinoctial shadow of the place. If it is found to be, as in Rome, equal to eight ninths of the gnomon, let a line be drawn on a plane surface, and in the middle thereof erect a perpendicular, plumb to the line, which perpendicular is called the gnomon. Then, from the line in the plane, let the line of the gnomon be divided off by the compasses into nine parts, and take the point designating the ninth part as a centre, to be marked by the letter A. Then, opening the compasses from that centre to the line in the plane at the point B, describe a circle. This circle is called the meridian. 3. Then, of the nine parts between the plane and the centre on the gnomon, take eight, and mark them off on the line in the plane to the point C. This will be the equinoctial shadow of the gnomon. From that point, marked by C, let a line be drawn through the centre at the point A, and this will represent a ray of the sun at the equinox. Then, extending the compasses from the centre to the line in the plane, mark off the equidistant points E on the left and I on the right, on the two sides of the circumference, and let a line be drawn through the centre, dividing the circle into two equal semicircles. This line is called by mathematicians the horizon. [Illustration] 4. Then, take a fifteenth part of the entire circumference, and, placing the centre of the compasses on the circumference at the point where the equinoctial ray cuts it at the letter F, mark off the points G and H on the right and left. Then lines must be drawn from these (and the centre) to the line of the plane at the points T and R, and thus, one will represent the ray of the sun in winter, and the other the ray in summer. Opposite E will be the point I, where the line drawn through the centre at the point A cuts the circumference; opposite G and H will be the points L and K; and opposite C, F, and A will be the point N. 5. Then, diameters are to be drawn from G to L and from H to K. The upper will denote the summer and the lower the winter portion. These diameters are to be divided equally in the middle at the points M and O, and those centres marked; then, through these marks and the centre A, draw a line extending to the two sides of the circumference at the points P and Q. This will be a line perpendicular to the equinoctial ray, and it is called in mathematical figures the axis. From these same centres open the compasses to the ends of the diameters, and describe semicircles, one of which will be for summer and the other for winter. 6. Then, at the points at which the parallel lines cut the line called the horizon, the letter S is to be on the right and the letter V on the left, and from the extremity of the semicircle, at the point G, draw a line parallel to the axis, extending to the left-hand semicircle at the point H. This parallel line is called the Logotomus. Then, centre the compasses at the point where the equinoctial ray cuts that line, at the letter D, and open them to the point where the summer ray cuts the circumference at the letter H. From the equinoctial centre, with a radius extending to the summer ray, describe the circumference of the circle of the months, which is called Menaeus. Thus we shall have the figure of the analemma. 7. This having been drawn and completed, the scheme of hours is next to be drawn on the baseplates from the analemma, according to the winter lines, or those of summer, or the equinoxes, or the months, and thus many different kinds of dials may be laid down and drawn by this ingenious method. But the result of all these shapes and designs is in one respect the same: namely, the days of the equinoxes and of the winter and summer solstices are always divided into twelve equal parts. Omitting details, therefore,--not for fear of the trouble, but lest I should prove tiresome by writing too much,--I will state by whom the different classes and designs of dials have been invented. For I cannot invent new kinds myself at this late day, nor do I think that I ought to display the inventions of others as my own. Hence, I will mention those that have come down to us, and by whom they were invented. CHAPTER VIII SUNDIALS AND WATER CLOCKS 1. The semicircular form, hollowed out of a square block, and cut under to correspond to the polar altitude, is said to have been invented by Berosus the Chaldean; the Scaphe or Hemisphere, by Aristarchus of Samos, as well as the disc on a plane surface; the Arachne, by the astronomer Eudoxus or, as some say, by Apollonius; the Plinthium or Lacunar, like the one placed in the Circus Flaminius, by Scopinas of Syracuse; the [Greek: pros ta historoumena], by Parmenio; the [Greek: pros pan klima], by Theodosius and Andreas; the Pelecinum, by Patrocles; the Cone, by Dionysodorus; the Quiver, by Apollonius. The men whose names are written above, as well as many others, have invented and left us other kinds: as, for instance, the Conarachne, the Conical Plinthium, and the Antiborean. Many have also left us written directions for making dials of these kinds for travellers, which can be hung up. Whoever wishes to find their baseplates, can easily do so from the books of these writers, provided only he understands the figure of the analemma. 2. Methods of making water clocks have been investigated by the same writers, and first of all by Ctesibius the Alexandrian, who also discovered the natural pressure of the air and pneumatic principles. It is worth while for students to know how these discoveries came about. Ctesibius, born at Alexandria, was the son of a barber. Preëminent for natural ability and great industry, he is said to have amused himself with ingenious devices. For example, wishing to hang a mirror in his father's shop in such a way that, on being lowered and raised again, its weight should be raised by means of a concealed cord, he employed the following mechanical contrivance. 3. Under the roof-beam he fixed a wooden channel in which he arranged a block of pulleys. He carried the cord along the channel to the corner, where he set up some small piping. Into this a leaden ball, attached to the cord, was made to descend. As the weight fell into the narrow limits of the pipe, it naturally compressed the enclosed air, and, as its fall was rapid, it forced the mass of compressed air through the outlet into the open air, thus producing a distinct sound by the concussion. 4. Hence, Ctesibius, observing that sounds and tones were produced by the contact between the free air and that which was forced from the pipe, made use of this principle in the construction of the first water organs. He also devised methods of raising water, automatic contrivances, and amusing things of many kinds, including among them the construction of water clocks. He began by making an orifice in a piece of gold, or by perforating a gem, because these substances are not worn by the action of water, and do not collect dirt so as to get stopped up. 5. A regular flow of water through the orifice raises an inverted bowl, called by mechanicians the "cork" or "drum." To this are attached a rack and a revolving drum, both fitted with teeth at regular intervals. These teeth, acting upon one another, induce a measured revolution and movement. Other racks and other drums, similarly toothed and subject to the same motion, give rise by their revolution to various kinds of motions, by which figures are moved, cones revolve, pebbles or eggs fall, trumpets sound, and other incidental effects take place. 6. The hours are marked in these clocks on a column or a pilaster, and a figure emerging from the bottom points to them with a rod throughout the whole day. Their decrease or increase in length with the different days and months, must be adjusted by inserting or withdrawing wedges. The shutoffs for regulating the water are constructed as follows. Two cones are made, one solid and the other hollow, turned on a lathe so that one will go into the other and fit it perfectly. A rod is used to loosen or to bring them together, thus causing the water to flow rapidly or slowly into the vessels. According to these rules, and by this mechanism, water clocks may be constructed for use in winter. 7. But if it proves that the shortening or lengthening of the day is not in agreement with the insertion and removal of the wedges, because the wedges may very often cause errors, the following arrangement will have to be made. Let the hours be marked off transversely on the column from the analemma, and let the lines of the months also be marked upon the column. Then let the column be made to revolve, in such a way that, as it turns continuously towards the figure and the rod with which the emerging figure points to the hours, it may make the hours short or long according to the respective months. 8. There is also another kind of winter dial, called the Anaphoric and constructed in the following way. The hours, indicated by bronze rods in accordance with the figure of the analemma, radiate from a centre on the face. Circles are described upon it, marking the limits of the months. Behind these rods there is a drum, on which is drawn and painted the firmament with the circle of the signs. In drawing the figures of the twelve celestial signs, one is represented larger and the next smaller, proceeding from the centre. Into the back of the drum, in the middle, a revolving axis is inserted, and round that axis is wound a flexible bronze chain, at one end of which hangs the "cork" which is raised by the water, and at the other a counterpoise of sand, equal in weight to the "cork." 9. Hence, the sand sinks as the "cork" is raised by the water, and in sinking turns the axis, and the axis the drum. The revolution of this drum causes sometimes a larger and sometimes a smaller portion of the circle of the signs to indicate, during the revolutions, the proper length of the hours corresponding to their seasons. For in every one of the signs there are as many holes as the corresponding month has days, and a boss, which seems to be holding the representation of the sun on a dial, designates the spaces for the hours. This, as it is carried from hole to hole, completes the circuit of a full month. 10. Hence, just as the sun during his passage through the constellations makes the days and hours longer or shorter, so the boss on a dial, moving from point to point in a direction contrary to that of the revolution of the drum in the middle, is carried day by day sometimes over wider and sometimes over narrower spaces, giving a representation of the hours and days within the limits of each month. To manage the water so that it may flow regularly, we must proceed as follows. 11. Inside, behind the face of the dial, place a reservoir, and let the water run down into it through a pipe, and let it have a hole at the bottom. Fastened to it is a bronze drum with an opening through which the water flows into it from the reservoir. Enclosed in this drum there is a smaller one, the two being perfectly jointed together by tenon and socket, in such a way that the smaller drum revolves closely but easily in the larger, like a stopcock. 12. On the lip of the larger drum there are three hundred and sixty-five points, marked off at equal intervals. The rim of the smaller one has a tongue fixed on its circumference, with the tip directed towards those points; and also in this rim is a small opening, through which water runs into the drum and keeps the works going. The figures of the celestial signs being on the lip of the larger drum, and this drum being motionless, let the sign Cancer be drawn at the top, with Capricornus perpendicular to it at the bottom, Libra at the spectator's right, Aries at his left, and let the other signs be given places between them as they are seen in the heavens. 13. Hence, when the sun is in Capricornus, the tongue on the rim touches every day one of the points in Capricornus on the lip of the larger drum, and is perpendicular to the strong pressure of the running water. So the water is quickly driven through the opening in the rim to the inside of the vessel, which, receiving it and soon becoming full, shortens and diminishes the length of the days and hours. But when, owing to the daily revolution of the smaller drum, its tongue reaches the points in Aquarius, the opening will no longer be perpendicular, and the water must give up its vigorous flow and run in a slower stream. Thus, the less the velocity with which the vessel receives the water, the more the length of the days is increased. 14. Then the opening in the rim passes from point to point in Aquarius and Pisces, as though going upstairs, and when it reaches the end of the first eighth of Aries, the fall of the water is of medium strength, indicating the equinoctial hours. From Aries the opening passes, with the revolution of the drum, through Taurus and Gemini to the highest point at the end of the first eighth of Cancer, and when it reaches that point, the power diminishes, and hence, with the slower flow, its delay lengthens the days in the sign Cancer, producing the hours of the summer solstice. From Cancer it begins to decline, and during its return it passes through Leo and Virgo to the points at the end of the first eighth of Libra, gradually shortening and diminishing the length of the hours, until it comes to the points in Libra, where it makes the hours equinoctial once more. 15. Finally, the opening comes down more rapidly through Scorpio and Sagittarius, and on its return from its revolution to the end of the first eighth of Capricornus, the velocity of the stream renews once more the short hours of the winter solstice. The rules and forms of construction employed in designing dials have now been described as well as I could. It remains to give an account of machines and their principles. In order to make my treatise on architecture complete, I will begin to write on this subject in the following book. BOOK X INTRODUCTION 1. In the famous and important Greek city of Ephesus there is said to be an ancient ancestral law, the terms of which are severe, but its justice is not inequitable. When an architect accepts the charge of a public work, he has to promise what the cost of it will be. His estimate is handed to the magistrate, and his property is pledged as security until the work is done. When it is finished, if the outlay agrees with his statement, he is complimented by decrees and marks of honour. If no more than a fourth has to be added to his estimate, it is furnished by the treasury and no penalty is inflicted. But when more than one fourth has to be spent in addition on the work, the money required to finish it is taken from his property. 2. Would to God that this were also a law of the Roman people, not merely for public, but also for private buildings. For the ignorant would no longer run riot with impunity, but men who are well qualified by an exact scientific training would unquestionably adopt the profession of architecture. Gentlemen would not be misled into limitless and prodigal expenditure, even to ejectments from their estates, and the architects themselves could be forced, by fear of the penalty, to be more careful in calculating and stating the limit of expense, so that gentlemen would procure their buildings for that which they had expected, or by adding only a little more. It is true that men who can afford to devote four hundred thousand to a work may hold on, if they have to add another hundred thousand, from the pleasure which the hope of finishing it gives them; but if they are loaded with a fifty per cent increase, or with an even greater expense, they lose hope, sacrifice what they have already spent, and are compelled to leave off, broken in fortune and in spirit. 3. This fault appears not only in the matter of buildings, but also in the shows given by magistrates, whether of gladiators in the forum or of plays on the stage. Here neither delay nor postponement is permissible, but the necessities of the case require that everything should be ready at a fixed time,--the seats for the audience, the awning drawn over them, and whatever, in accordance with the customs of the stage, is provided by machinery to please the eye of the people. These matters require careful thought and planning by a well trained intellect; for none of them can be accomplished without machinery, and without hard study skilfully applied in various ways. 4. Therefore, since such are our traditions and established practices, it is obviously fitting that the plans should be worked out carefully, and with the greatest attention, before the structures are begun. Consequently, as we have no law or customary practice to compel this, and as every year both praetors and aediles have to provide machinery for the festivals, I have thought it not out of place, Emperor, since I have treated of buildings in the earlier books, to set forth and teach in this, which forms the final conclusion of my treatise, the principles which govern machines. CHAPTER I MACHINES AND IMPLEMENTS 1. A machine is a combination of timbers fastened together, chiefly efficacious in moving great weights. Such a machine is set in motion on scientific principles in circular rounds, which the Greeks call [Greek: kyklikê kinêois]. There is, however, a class intended for climbing, termed in Greek [Greek: akrobatikon], another worked by air, which with them is called [Greek: pneumatikon], and a third for hoisting; this the Greeks named [Greek: baroulkos]. In the climbing class are machines so disposed that one can safely climb up high, by means of timbers set up on end and connected by crossbeams, in order to view operations. In the pneumatic class, air is forced by pressure to produce sounds and tones as in an [Greek: organon]. 2. In the hoisting class, heavy weights are removed by machines which raise them up and set them in position. The climbing machine displays no scientific principle, but merely a spirit of daring. It is held together by dowels and crossbeams and twisted lashings and supporting props. A machine that gets its motive power by pneumatic pressure will produce pretty effects by scientific refinements. But the hoisting machine has opportunities for usefulness which are greater and full of grandeur, and it is of the highest efficacy when used with intelligence. 3. Some of these act on the principle of the [Greek: mêchanê], others on that of the [Greek: organon]. The difference between "machines" and "engines" is obviously this, that machines need more workmen and greater power to make them take effect, as for instance ballistae and the beams of presses. Engines, on the other hand, accomplish their purpose at the intelligent touch of a single workman, as the scorpio or anisocycli when they are turned. Therefore engines, as well as machines, are, in principle, practical necessities, without which nothing can be unattended with difficulties. 4. All machinery is derived from nature, and is founded on the teaching and instruction of the revolution of the firmament. Let us but consider the connected revolutions of the sun, the moon, and the five planets, without the revolution of which, due to mechanism, we should not have had the alternation of day and night, nor the ripening of fruits. Thus, when our ancestors had seen that this was so, they took their models from nature, and by imitating them were led on by divine facts, until they perfected the contrivances which are so serviceable in our life. Some things, with a view to greater convenience, they worked out by means of machines and their revolutions, others by means of engines, and so, whatever they found to be useful for investigations, for the arts, and for established practices, they took care to improve step by step on scientific principles. 5. Let us take first a necessary invention, such as clothing, and see how the combination of warp and woof on the loom, which does its work on the principle of an engine, not only protects the body by covering it, but also gives it honourable apparel. We should not have had food in abundance unless yokes and ploughs for oxen, and for all draught animals, had been invented. If there had been no provision of windlasses, pressbeams, and levers for presses, we could not have had the shining oil, nor the fruit of the vine to give us pleasure, and these things could not be transported on land without the invention of the mechanism of carts or waggons, nor on the sea without that of ships. 6. The discovery of the method of testing weights by steelyards and balances saves us from fraud, by introducing honest practices into life. There are also innumerable ways of employing machinery about which it seems unnecessary to speak, since they are at hand every day; such as mills, blacksmiths' bellows, carriages, gigs, turning lathes, and other things which are habitually used as general conveniences. Hence, we shall begin by explaining those that rarely come to hand, so that they may be understood. CHAPTER II HOISTING MACHINES 1. First we shall treat of those machines which are of necessity made ready when temples and public buildings are to be constructed. Two timbers are provided, strong enough for the weight of the load. They are fastened together at the upper end by a bolt, then spread apart at the bottom, and so set up, being kept upright by ropes attached at the upper ends and fixed at intervals all round. At the top is fastened a block, which some call a "rechamus." In the block two sheaves are enclosed, turning on axles. The traction rope is carried over the sheave at the top, then let fall and passed round a sheave in a block below. Then it is brought back to a sheave at the bottom of the upper block, and so it goes down to the lower block, where it is fastened through a hole in that block. The other end of the rope is brought back and down between the legs of the machine. 2. Socket-pieces are nailed to the hinder faces of the squared timbers at the point where they are spread apart, and the ends of the windlass are inserted into them so that the axles may turn freely. Close to each end of the windlass are two holes, so adjusted that handspikes can be fitted into them. To the bottom of the lower block are fastened shears made of iron, whose prongs are brought to bear upon the stones, which have holes bored in them. When one end of the rope is fastened to the windlass, and the latter is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut, and thus it raises the load to the proper height and to its place in the work. 3. This kind of machinery, revolving with three sheaves, is called a trispast. When there are two sheaves turning in the block beneath and three in the upper, the machine is termed a pentaspast. But if we have to furnish machines for heavier loads, we must use timbers of greater length and thickness, providing them with correspondingly large bolts at the top, and windlasses turning at the bottom. When these are ready, let forestays be attached and left lying slack in front; let the backstays be carried over the shoulders of the machine to some distance, and, if there is nothing to which they can be fastened, sloping piles should be driven, the ground rammed down all round to fix them firmly, and the ropes made fast to them. 4. A block should then be attached by a stout cord to the top of the machine, and from that point a rope should be carried to a pile, and to a block tied to the pile. Let the rope be put in round the sheave of this block, and brought back to the block that is fastened at the top of the machine. Round its sheave the rope should be passed, and then should go down from the top, and back to the windlass, which is at the bottom of the machine, and there be fastened. The windlass is now to be turned by means of the handspikes, and it will raise the machine of itself without danger. Thus, a machine of the larger kind will be set in position, with its ropes in their places about it, and its stays attached to the piles. Its blocks and traction ropes are arranged as described above. 5. But if the loads of material for the work are still more colossal in size and weight, we shall not entrust them to a windlass, but set in an axle-tree, held by sockets as the windlass was, and carrying on its centre a large drum, which some term a wheel, but the Greeks call it [Greek: amphiesis] or [Greek: perithêkion]. 6. And the blocks in such machines are not arranged in the same, but in a different manner; for the rows of sheaves in them are doubled, both at the bottom and at the top. The traction rope is passed through a hole in the lower block, in such a way that the two ends of the rope are of equal length when it is stretched out, and both portions are held there at the lower block by a cord which is passed round them and lashed so that they cannot come out either to the right or the left. Then the ends of the rope are brought up into the block at the top from the outside, and passed down over its lower sheaves, and so return to the bottom, and are passed from the inside to the sheaves in the lowest block, and then are brought up on the right and left, and return to the top and round the highest set of sheaves. 7. Passing over these from the outside, they are then carried to the right and left of the drum on the axle-tree, and are tied there so as to stay fast. Then another rope is wound round the drum and carried to a capstan, and when that is turned, it turns the drum and the axle-tree, the ropes get taut as they wind round regularly, and thus they raise the loads smoothly and with no danger. But if a larger drum is placed either in the middle or at one side, without any capstan, men can tread in it and accomplish the work more expeditiously. 8. There is also another kind of machine, ingenious enough and easy to use with speed, but only experts can work with it. It consists of a single timber, which is set up and held in place by stays on four sides. Two cheeks are nailed on below the stays, a block is fastened by ropes above the cheeks, and a straight piece of wood about two feet long, six digits wide, and four digits thick, is put under the block. The blocks used have each three rows of sheaves side by side. Hence three traction ropes are fastened at the top of the machine. Then they are brought to the block at the bottom, and passed from the inside round the sheaves that are nearest the top of it. Then they are brought back to the upper block, and passed inwards from outside round the sheaves nearest the bottom. 9. On coming down to the block at the bottom, they are carried round its second row of sheaves from the inside to the outside, and brought back to the second row at the top, passing round it and returning to the bottom; then from the bottom they are carried to the summit, where they pass round the highest row of sheaves, and then return to the bottom of the machine. At the foot of the machine a third block is attached. The Greeks call it [Greek: epagôn], but our people "artemon." This block fastened at the foot of the machine has three sheaves in it, round which the ropes are passed and then delivered to men to pull. Thus, three rows of men, pulling without a capstan, can quickly raise the load to the top. 10. This kind of machine is called a polyspast, because of the many revolving sheaves to which its dexterity and despatch are due. There is also this advantage in the erection of only a single timber, that by previously inclining it to the right or left as much as one wishes, the load can be set down at one side. All these kinds of machinery described above are, in their principles, suited not only to the purposes mentioned, but also to the loading and unloading of ships, some kinds being set upright, and others placed horizontally on revolving platforms. On the same principle, ships can be hauled ashore by means of arrangements of ropes and blocks used on the ground, without setting up timbers. 11. It may also not be out of place to explain the ingenious procedure of Chersiphron. Desiring to convey the shafts for the temple of Diana at Ephesus from the stone quarries, and not trusting to carts, lest their wheels should be engulfed on account of the great weights of the load and the softness of the roads in the plain, he tried the following plan. Using four-inch timbers, he joined two of them, each as long as the shaft, with two crosspieces set between them, dovetailing all together, and then leaded iron gudgeons shaped like dovetails into the ends of the shafts, as dowels are leaded, and in the woodwork he fixed rings to contain the pivots, and fastened wooden cheeks to the ends. The pivots, being enclosed in the rings, turned freely. So, when yokes of oxen began to draw the four-inch frame, they made the shaft revolve constantly, turning it by means of the pivots and rings. 12. When they had thus transported all the shafts, and it became necessary to transport the architraves, Chersiphron's son Metagenes extended the same principle from the transportation of the shafts to the bringing down of the architraves. He made wheels, each about twelve feet in diameter, and enclosed the ends of the architraves in the wheels. In the ends he fixed pivots and rings in the same way. So when the four-inch frames were drawn by oxen, the wheels turned on the pivots enclosed in the rings, and the architraves, which were enclosed like axles in the wheels, soon reached the building, in the same way as the shafts. The rollers used for smoothing the walks in palaestrae will serve as an example of this method. But it could not have been employed unless the distance had been short; for it is not more than eight miles from the stone-quarries to the temple, and there is no hill, but an uninterrupted plain. 13. In our own times, however, when the pedestal of the colossal Apollo in his temple had cracked with age, they were afraid that the statue would fall and be broken, and so they contracted for the cutting of a pedestal from the same quarries. The contract was taken by one Paconius. This pedestal was twelve feet long, eight feet wide, and six feet high. Paconius, with confident pride, did not transport it by the method of Metagenes, but determined to make a machine of a different sort, though on the same principle. 14. He made wheels of about fifteen feet in diameter, and in these wheels he enclosed the ends of the stone; then he fastened two-inch crossbars from wheel to wheel round the stone, encompassing it, so that there was an interval of not more than one foot between bar and bar. Then he coiled a rope round the bars, yoked up his oxen, and began to draw on the rope. Consequently as it uncoiled, it did indeed cause the wheels to turn, but it could not draw them in a line straight along the road, but kept swerving out to one side. Hence it was necessary to draw the machine back again. Thus, by this drawing to and fro, Paconius got into such financial embarrassment that he became insolvent. 15. I will digress a bit and explain how these stone-quarries were discovered. Pixodorus was a shepherd who lived in that vicinity. When the people of Ephesus were planning to build the temple of Diana in marble, and debating whether to get the marble from Paros, Proconnesus, Heraclea, or Thasos, Pixodorus drove out his sheep and was feeding his flock in that very spot. Then two rams ran at each other, and, each passing the other, one of them, after his charge, struck his horns against a rock, from which a fragment of extremely white colour was dislodged. So it is said that Pixodorus left his sheep in the mountains and ran down to Ephesus carrying the fragment, since that very thing was the question of the moment. Therefore they immediately decreed honours to him and changed his name, so that instead of Pixodorus he should be called Evangelus. And to this day the chief magistrate goes out to that very spot every month and offers sacrifice to him, and if he does not, he is punished. CHAPTER III THE ELEMENTS OF MOTION 1. I have briefly set forth what I thought necessary about the principles of hoisting machines. In them two different things, unlike each other, work together, as elements of their motion and power, to produce these effects. One of them is the right line, which the Greeks term [Greek: eutheia]; the other is the circle, which the Greeks call [Greek: kyklôtê]; but in point of fact, neither rectilinear without circular motion, nor revolutions, without rectilinear motion, can accomplish the raising of loads. I will explain this, so that it may be understood. 2. As centres, axles are inserted into the sheaves, and these are fastened in the blocks; a rope carried over the sheaves, drawn straight down, and fastened to a windlass, causes the load to move upward from its place as the handspikes are turned. The pivots of this windlass, lying as centres in right lines in its socket-pieces, and the handspikes inserted in its holes, make the load rise when the ends of the windlass revolve in a circle like a lathe. Just so, when an iron lever is applied to a weight which a great many hands cannot move, with the fulcrum, which the Greeks call [Greek: hupomochlion], lying as a centre in a right line under the lever, and with the tongue of the lever placed under the weight, one man's strength, bearing down upon the head of it, heaves up the weight. 3. For, as the shorter fore part of the lever goes under the weight from the fulcrum that forms the centre, the head of it, which is farther away from that centre, on being depressed, is made to describe a circular movement, and thus by pressure brings to an equilibrium the weight of a very great load by means of a few hands. Again, if the tongue of an iron lever is placed under a weight, and its head is not pushed down, but, on the contrary, is heaved up, the tongue, supported on the surface of the ground, will treat that as the weight, and the edge of the weight itself as the fulcrum. Thus, not so easily as by pushing down, but by motion in the opposite direction, the weight of the load will nevertheless be raised. If, therefore, the tongue of a lever lying on a fulcrum goes too far under the weight, and its head exerts its pressure too near the centre, it will not be able to elevate the weight, nor can it do so unless, as described above, the length of the lever is brought to equilibrium by the depression of its head. 4. This may be seen from the balances that we call steelyards. When the handle is set as a centre close to the end from which the scale hangs, and the counterpoise is moved along towards the other arm of the beam, shifting from point to point as it goes farther or even reaches the extremity, a small and inferior weight becomes equal to a very heavy object that is being weighed, on account of the equilibrium that is due to the levelling of the beam. Thus, as it withdraws from the centre, a small and comparatively light counterpoise, slowly turning the scale, makes a greater amount of weight rise gently upwards from below. 5. So, too, the pilot of the biggest merchantman, grasping the steering oar by its handle, which the Greeks call [Greek: oiax], and with one hand bringing it to the turning point, according to the rules of his art, by pressure about a centre, can turn the ship, although she may be laden with a very large or even enormous burden of merchandise and provisions. And when her sails are set only halfway up the mast, a ship cannot run quickly; but when the yard is hoisted to the top, she makes much quicker progress, because then the sails get the wind, not when they are too close to the heel of the mast, which represents the centre, but when they have moved farther away from it to the top. 6. As a lever thrust under a weight is harder to manage, and does not put forth its strength, if the pressure is exerted at the centre, but easily raises the weight when the extreme end of it is pushed down, so sails that are only halfway up have less effect, but when they get farther away from the centre, and are hoisted to the very top of the mast, the pressure at the top forces the ship to make greater progress, though the wind is no stronger but just the same. Again, take the case of oars, which are fastened to the tholes by loops,--when they are pushed forward and drawn back by the hand, if the ends of the blades are at some distance from the centre, the oars foam with the waves of the sea and drive the ship forward in a straight line with a mighty impulse, while her prow cuts through the rare water. 7. And when the heaviest burdens are carried on poles by four or six porters at a time, they find the centres of balance at the very middle of the poles, so that, by distributing the dead weight of the burden according to a definitely proportioned division, each labourer may have an equal share to carry on his neck. For the poles, from which the straps for the burden of the four porters hang, are marked off at their centres by nails, to prevent the straps from slipping to one side. If they shift beyond the mark at the centre, they weigh heavily upon the place to which they have come nearer, like the weight of a steelyard when it moves from the point of equilibrium towards the end of the weighing apparatus. 8. In the same way, oxen have an equal draught when their yoke is adjusted at its middle by the yokestrap to the pole. But when their strength is not the same, and the stronger outdoes the other, the strap is shifted so as to make one side of the yoke longer, which helps the weaker ox. Thus, in the case of both poles and yokes, when the straps are not fastened at the middle, but at one side, the farther the strap moves from the middle, the shorter it makes one side, and the longer the other. So, if both ends are carried round in circles, using as a centre the point to which the strap has been brought, the longer end will describe a larger, and the shorter end a smaller circle. 9. Just as smaller wheels move harder and with greater difficulty than larger ones, so, in the case of the poles and yokes, the parts where the interval from centre to end is less, bear down hard upon the neck, but where the distance from the same centre is greater, they ease the burden both for draught and carriage. As in all these cases motion is obtained by means of right lines at the centre and by circles, so also farm waggons, travelling carriages, drums, mills, screws, scorpiones, ballistae, pressbeams, and all other machines, produce the results intended, on the same principles, by turning about a rectilinear axis and by the revolution of a circle. CHAPTER IV ENGINES FOR RAISING WATER 1. I shall now explain the making of the different kinds of engines which have been invented for raising water, and will first speak of the tympanum. Although it does not lift the water high, it raises a great quantity very quickly. An axle is fashioned on a lathe or with the compasses, its ends are shod with iron hoops, and it carries round its middle a tympanum made of boards joined together. It rests on posts which have pieces of iron on them under the ends of the axle. In the interior of this tympanum there are eight crosspieces set at intervals, extending from the axle to the circumference of the tympanum, and dividing the space in the tympanum into equal compartments. 2. Planks are nailed round the face of it, leaving six-inch apertures to admit the water. At one side of it there are also holes, like those of a dovecot, next to the axle, one for each compartment. After being smeared with pitch like a ship, the thing is turned by the tread of men, and raising the water by means of the apertures in the face of the tympanum, delivers it through the holes next to the axle into a wooden trough set underneath, with a conduit joined to it. Thus, a large quantity of water is furnished for irrigation in gardens, or for supplying the needs of saltworks. 3. But when it has to be raised higher, the same principle will be modified as follows. A wheel on an axle is to be made, large enough to reach the necessary height. All round the circumference of the wheel there will be cubical boxes, made tight with pitch and wax. So, when the wheel is turned by treading, the boxes, carried up full and again returning to the bottom, will of themselves discharge into the reservoir what they have carried up. 4. But, if it has to be supplied to a place still more high, a double iron chain, which will reach the surface when let down, is passed round the axle of the same wheel, with bronze buckets attached to it, each holding about six pints. The turning of the wheel, winding the chain round the axle, will carry the buckets to the top, and as they pass above the axle they must tip over and deliver into the reservoir what they have carried up. CHAPTER V WATER WHEELS AND WATER MILLS 1. Wheels on the principles that have been described above are also constructed in rivers. Round their faces floatboards are fixed, which, on being struck by the current of the river, make the wheel turn as they move, and thus, by raising the water in the boxes and bringing it to the top, they accomplish the necessary work through being turned by the mere impulse of the river, without any treading on the part of workmen. 2. Water mills are turned on the same principle. Everything is the same in them, except that a drum with teeth is fixed into one end of the axle. It is set vertically on its edge, and turns in the same plane with the wheel. Next to this larger drum there is a smaller one, also with teeth, but set horizontally, and this is attached (to the millstone). Thus the teeth of the drum which is fixed to the axle make the teeth of the horizontal drum move, and cause the mill to turn. A hopper, hanging over this contrivance, supplies the mill with corn, and meal is produced by the same revolution. CHAPTER VI THE WATER SCREW 1. There is also the method of the screw, which raises a great quantity of water, but does not carry it as high as does the wheel. The method of constructing it is as follows. A beam is selected, the thickness of which in digits is equivalent to its length in feet. This is made perfectly round. The ends are to be divided off on their circumference with the compass into eight parts, by quadrants and octants, and let the lines be so placed that, if the beam is laid in a horizontal position, the lines on the two ends may perfectly correspond with each other, and intervals of the size of one eighth part of the circumference of the beam may be laid off on the length of it. Then, placing the beam in a horizontal position, let perfectly straight lines be drawn from one end to the other. So the intervals will be equal in the directions both of the periphery and of the length. Where the lines are drawn along the length, the cutting circles will make intersections, and definite points at the intersections. [Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF THE WATER SCREW] [Illustration: THE WATER SCREW (From the edition of Vitruvius by Fra Giocondo, Venice, 1511)] 2. When these lines have been correctly drawn, a slender withe of willow, or a straight piece cut from the agnus castus tree, is taken, smeared with liquid pitch, and fastened at the first point of intersection. Then it is carried across obliquely to the succeeding intersections of longitudinal lines and circles, and as it advances, passing each of the points in due order and winding round, it is fastened at each intersection; and so, withdrawing from the first to the eighth point, it reaches and is fastened to the line to which its first part was fastened. Thus, it makes as much progress in its longitudinal advance to the eighth point as in its oblique advance over eight points. In the same manner, withes for the eight divisions of the diameter, fastened obliquely at the intersections on the entire longitudinal and peripheral surface, make spiral channels which naturally look just like those of a snail shell. 3. Other withes are fastened on the line of the first, and on these still others, all smeared with liquid pitch, and built up until the total diameter is equal to one eighth of the length. These are covered and surrounded with boards, fastened on to protect the spiral. Then these boards are soaked with pitch, and bound together with strips of iron, so that they may not be separated by the pressure of the water. The ends of the shaft are covered with iron. To the right and left of the screw are beams, with crosspieces fastening them together at both ends. In these crosspieces are holes sheathed with iron, and into them pivots are introduced, and thus the screw is turned by the treading of men. 4. It is to be set up at an inclination corresponding to that which is produced in drawing the Pythagorean right-angled triangle: that is, let its length be divided into five parts; let three of them denote the height of the head of the screw; thus the distance from the base of the perpendicular to the nozzle of the screw at the bottom will be equal to four of those parts. A figure showing how this ought to be, has been drawn at the end of the book, right on the back. I have now described as clearly as I could, to make them better known, the principles on which wooden engines for raising water are constructed, and how they get their motion so that they may be of unlimited usefulness through their revolutions. CHAPTER VII THE PUMP OF CTESIBIUS 1. Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height. It is made of bronze, and has at the bottom a pair of cylinders set a little way apart, and there is a pipe connected with each, the two running up, like the prongs of a fork, side by side to a vessel which is between the cylinders. In this vessel are valves, accurately fitting over the upper vents of the pipes, which stop up the ventholes, and keep what has been forced by pressure into the vessel from going down again. 2. Over the vessel a cowl is adjusted, like an inverted funnel, and fastened to the vessel by means of a wedge thrust through a staple, to prevent it from being lifted off by the pressure of the water that is forced in. On top of this a pipe is jointed, called the trumpet, which stands up vertically. Valves are inserted in the cylinders, beneath the lower vents of the pipes, and over the openings which are in the bottoms of the cylinders. 3. Pistons smoothly turned, rubbed with oil, and inserted from above into the cylinders, work with their rods and levers upon the air and water in the cylinders, and, as the valves stop up the openings, force and drive the water, by repeated pressure and expansion, through the vents of the pipes into the vessel, from which the cowl receives the inflated currents, and sends them up through the pipe at the top; and so water can be supplied for a fountain from a reservoir at a lower level. 4. This, however, is not the only apparatus which Ctesibius is said to have thought out, but many more of various kinds are shown by him to produce effects, borrowed from nature, by means of water pressure and compression of the air; as, for example, blackbirds singing by means of waterworks, and "angobatae," and figures that drink and move, and other things that are found to be pleasing to the eye and the ear. 5. Of these I have selected what I considered most useful and necessary, and have thought it best to speak in the preceding book about timepieces, and in this about the methods of raising water. The rest, which are not subservient to our needs, but to pleasure and amusement, may be found in the commentaries of Ctesibius himself by any who are interested in such refinements. CHAPTER VIII THE WATER ORGAN 1. With regard to water organs, however, I shall not fail with all possible brevity and precision to touch upon their principles, and to give a sufficient description of them. A wooden base is constructed, and on it is set an altar-shaped box made of bronze. Uprights, fastened together like ladders, are set up on the base, to the right and to the left (of the altar). They hold the bronze pump-cylinders, the moveable bottoms of which, carefully turned on a lathe, have iron elbows fastened to their centres and jointed to levers, and are wrapped in fleeces of wool. In the tops of the cylinders are openings, each about three digits in diameter. Close to these openings are bronze dolphins, mounted on joints and holding chains in their mouths, from which hang cymbal-shaped valves, let down under the openings in the cylinders. 2. Inside the altar, which holds the water, is a regulator shaped like an inverted funnel, under which there are cubes, each about three digits high, keeping a free space below between the lips of the regulator and the bottom of the altar. Tightly fixed on the neck of the regulator is the windchest, which supports the principal part of the contrivance, called in Greek the [Greek: kanôn mousikos]. Running longitudinally, there are four channels in it if it is a tetrachord; six, if it is a hexachord; eight, if it is an octachord. 3. Each of the channels has a cock in it, furnished with an iron handle. These handles, when turned, open ventholes from the windchest into the channels. From the channels to the canon there are vertical openings corresponding to ventholes in a board above, which board is termed [Greek: pinax] in Greek. Between this board and the canon are inserted sliders, pierced with holes to correspond, and rubbed with oil so that they can be easily moved and slid back into place again. They close the above-mentioned openings, and are called the plinths. Their going and coming now closes and now opens the holes. 4. These sliders have iron jacks fixed to them, and connected with the keys, and the keys, when touched, make the sliders move regularly. To the upper surface of the openings in the board, where the wind finds egress from the channels, rings are soldered, and into them the reeds of all the organ pipes are inserted. From the cylinders there are connecting pipes attached to the neck of the regulator, and directed towards the ventholes in the windchest. In the pipes are valves, turned on a lathe, and set (where the pipes are connected with the cylinders). When the windchest has received the air, these valves will stop up the openings, and prevent the wind from coming back again. 5. So, when the levers are raised, the elbows draw down the bottoms of the cylinders as far as they can go; and the dolphins, which are mounted on joints, let the cymbals fall into the cylinders, thus filling the interiors with air. Then the elbows, raising the bottoms within the cylinders by repeated and violent blows, and stopping the openings above by means of the cymbals, compress the air which is enclosed in the cylinders, and force it into the pipes, through which it runs into the regulator, and through its neck into the windchest. With a stronger motion of the levers, the air is still more compressed, streams through the apertures of the cocks, and fills the channels with wind. 6. So, when the keys, touched by the hand, drive the sliders forward and draw them back regularly, alternately stopping and opening the holes, they produce resonant sounds in a great variety of melodies conforming to the laws of music. With my best efforts I have striven to set forth an obscure subject clearly in writing, but the theory of it is not easy, nor readily understood by all, save only those who have had some practice in things of this kind. If anybody has failed to understand it, he will certainly find, when he comes to know the thing itself, that it is carefully and exquisitely contrived in all respects. CHAPTER IX THE HODOMETER 1. The drift of our treatise now turns to a useful invention of the greatest ingenuity, transmitted by our predecessors, which enables us, while sitting in a carriage on the road or sailing by sea, to know how many miles of a journey we have accomplished. This will be possible as follows. Let the wheels of the carriage be each four feet in diameter, so that if a wheel has a mark made upon it, and begins to move forward from that mark in making its revolution on the surface of the road, it will have covered the definite distance of twelve and a half feet on reaching that mark at which it began to revolve. 2. Having provided such wheels, let a drum with a single tooth projecting beyond the face of its circumference be firmly fastened to the inner side of the hub of the wheel. Then, above this, let a case be firmly fastened to the body of the carriage, containing a revolving drum set on edge and mounted on an axle; on the face of the drum there are four hundred teeth, placed at equal intervals, and engaging the tooth of the drum below. The upper drum has, moreover, one tooth fixed to its side and standing out farther than the other teeth. 3. Then, above, let there be a horizontal drum, similarly toothed and contained in another case, with its teeth engaging the tooth fixed to the side of the second drum, and let as many holes be made in this (third) drum as will correspond to the number of miles--more or less, it does not matter--that a carriage can go in a day's journey. Let a small round stone be placed in every one of these holes, and in the receptacle or case containing that drum let one hole be made, with a small pipe attached, through which, when they reach that point, the stones placed in the drum may fall one by one into a bronze vessel set underneath in the body, of the carriage. 4. Thus, as the wheel in going forward carries with it the lowest drum, and as the tooth of this at every revolution strikes against the teeth of the upper drum, and makes it move along, the result will be that the upper drum is carried round once for every four hundred revolutions of the lowest, and that the tooth fixed to its side pushes forward one tooth of the horizontal drum. Since, therefore, with four hundred revolutions of the lowest drum, the upper will revolve once, the progress made will be a distance of five thousand feet or one mile. Hence, every stone, making a ringing sound as it falls, will give warning that we have gone one mile. The number of stones gathered from beneath and counted, will show the number of miles in the day's journey. 5. On board ship, also, the same principles may be employed with a few changes. An axle is passed through the sides of the ship, with its ends projecting, and wheels are mounted on them, four feet in diameter, with projecting floatboards fastened round their faces and striking the water. The middle of the axle in the middle of the ship carries a drum with one tooth projecting beyond its circumference. Here a case is placed containing a drum with four hundred teeth at regular intervals, engaging the tooth of the drum that is mounted on the axle, and having also one other tooth fixed to its side and projecting beyond its circumference. 6. Above, in another case fastened to the former, is a horizontal drum toothed in the same way, and with its teeth engaging the tooth fixed to the side of the drum that is set on edge, so that one of the teeth of the horizontal drum is struck at each revolution of that tooth, and the horizontal drum is thus made to revolve in a circle. Let holes be made in the horizontal drum, in which holes small round stones are to be placed. In the receptacle or case containing that drum, let one hole be opened with a small pipe attached, through which a stone, as soon as the obstruction is removed, falls with a ringing sound into a bronze vessel. 7. So, when a ship is making headway, whether under oars or under a gale of wind, the floatboards on the wheels will strike against the water and be driven violently back, thus turning the wheels; and they, revolving, will move the axle, and the axle the drum, the tooth of which, as it goes round, strikes one of the teeth of the second drum at each revolution, and makes it turn a little. So, when the floatboards have caused the wheels to revolve four hundred times, this drum, having turned round once, will strike a tooth of the horizontal drum with the tooth that is fixed to its side. Hence, every time the turning of the horizontal drum brings a stone to a hole, it will let the stone out through the pipe. Thus by the sound and the number, the length of the voyage will be shown in miles. I have described how to make things that may be provided for use and amusement in times that are peaceful and without fear. CHAPTER X CATAPULTS OR SCORPIONES 1. I shall next explain the symmetrical principles on which scorpiones and ballistae may be constructed, inventions devised for defence against danger, and in the interest of self-preservation. The proportions of these engines are all computed from the given length of the arrow which the engine is intended to throw, and the size of the holes in the capitals, through which the twisted sinews that hold the arms are stretched, is one ninth of that length. 2. The height and breadth of the capital itself must then conform to the size of the holes. The boards at the top and bottom of the capital, which are called "peritreti," should be in thickness equal to one hole, and in breadth to one and three quarters, except at their extremities, where they equal one hole and a half. The sideposts on the right and left should be four holes high, excluding the tenons, and five twelfths of a hole thick; the tenons, half a hole. The distance from a sidepost to the hole is one quarter of a hole, and it is also one quarter of a hole from the hole to the post in the middle. The breadth of the post in the middle is equal to one hole and one eighth, the thickness, to one hole. 3. The opening in the middle post, where the arrow is laid, is equal to one fourth of the hole. The four surrounding corners should have iron plates nailed to their sides and faces, or should be studded with bronze pins and nails. The pipe, called [Greek: syrigx] in Greek, has a length of nineteen holes. The strips, which some term cheeks, nailed at the right and left of the pipe, have a length of nineteen holes and a height and thickness of one hole. Two other strips, enclosing the windlass, are nailed on to these, three holes long and half a hole in breadth. The cheek nailed on to them, named the "bench," or by some the "box," and made fast by means of dove-tailed tenons, is one hole thick and seven twelfths of a hole in height. The length of the windlass is equal to...[12] holes, the thickness of the windlass to three quarters of a hole. [Note 12: The dots here and in what follows, indicate lacunae in the manuscripts.] 4. The latch is seven twelfths of a hole in length and one quarter in thickness. So also its socket-piece. The trigger or handle is three holes in length and three quarters of a hole in breadth and thickness. The trough in the pipe is sixteen holes in length, one quarter of a hole in thickness, and three quarters in height. The base of the standard on the ground is equal to eight holes; the breadth of the standard where it is fastened into the plinth is three quarters of a hole, its thickness two thirds of a hole; the height of the standard up to the tenon is twelve holes, its breadth three quarters of a hole, and its thickness two thirds. It has three struts, each nine holes in length, half a hole in breadth, and five twelfths in thickness. The tenon is one hole in length, and the head of the standard one hole and a half in length. 5. The antefix has the breadth of a hole and one eighth, and the thickness of one hole. The smaller support, which is behind, termed in Greek [Greek: antibasis], is eight holes long, three quarters of a hole broad, and two thirds thick. Its prop is twelve holes long, and has the same breadth and thickness as the smaller support just mentioned. Above the smaller support is its socket-piece, or what is called the cushion, two and a half holes long, one and a half high, and three quarters of a hole broad. The windlass cup is two and seven twelfths holes long, two thirds of a hole thick, and three quarters broad. The crosspieces with their tenons have the length of... holes, the breadth of three quarters, and the thickness of two thirds of a hole. The length of an arm is seven holes, its thickness at its base two thirds of a hole, and at its end one half a hole; its curvature is equal to two thirds of a hole. 6. These engines are constructed according to these proportions or with additions or diminutions. For, if the height of the capitals is greater than their width--when they are called "high-tensioned,"--something should be taken from the arms, so that the more the tension is weakened by height of the capitals, the more the strength of the blow is increased by shortness of the arms. But if the capital is less high,--when the term "low-tensioned" is used,--the arms, on account of their strength, should be made a little longer, so that they may be drawn easily. Just as it takes four men to raise a load with a lever five feet long, and only two men to lift the same load with a ten-foot lever, so the longer the arms, the easier they are to draw, and the shorter, the harder. I have now spoken of the principles applicable to the parts and proportions of catapults. CHAPTER XI BALLISTAE 1. Ballistae are constructed on varying principles to produce an identical result. Some are worked by handspikes and windlasses, some by blocks and pulleys, others by capstans, others again by means of drums. No ballista, however, is made without regard to the given amount of weight of the stone which the engine is intended to throw. Hence their principle is not easy for everybody, but only for those who have knowledge of the geometrical principles employed in calculation and in multiplication. 2. For the holes made in the capitals through the openings of which are stretched the strings made of twisted hair, generally women's, or of sinew, are proportionate to the amount of weight in the stone which the ballista is intended to throw, and to the principle of mass, as in catapults the principle is that of the length of the arrow. Therefore, in order that those who do not understand geometry may be prepared beforehand, so as not to be delayed by having to think the matter out at a moment of peril in war, I will set forth what I myself know by experience can be depended upon, and what I have in part gathered from the rules of my teachers, and wherever Greek weights bear a relation to the measures, I shall reduce and explain them so that they will express the same corresponding relation in our weights. 3. A ballista intended to throw a two-pound stone will have a hole of five digits in its capital; four pounds, six digits; and six pounds, seven digits; ten pounds, eight digits; twenty pounds, ten digits; forty pounds, twelve and a half digits; sixty pounds, thirteen and a half digits; eighty pounds, fifteen and three quarters digits; one hundred pounds, one foot and one and a half digits; one hundred and twenty pounds, one foot and two digits; one hundred and forty pounds, one foot and three digits; one hundred and sixty pounds, one foot and a quarter; one hundred and eighty pounds, one foot and five digits; two hundred pounds, one foot and six digits; two hundred and forty pounds, one foot and seven digits; two hundred and eighty pounds, one foot and a half; three hundred and twenty pounds, one foot and nine digits; three hundred and sixty pounds, one foot and ten digits. 4. Having determined the size of the hole, design the "scutula," termed in Greek [Greek: peritrêtos],... holes in length and two and one sixth in breadth. Bisect it by a line drawn diagonally from the angles, and after this bisecting bring together the outlines of the figure so that it may present a rhomboidal design, reducing it by one sixth of its length and one fourth of its breadth at the (obtuse) angles. In the part composed by the curvatures into which the points of the angles run out, let the holes be situated, and let the breadth be reduced by one sixth; moreover, let the hole be longer than it is broad by the thickness of the bolt. After designing the scutula, let its outline be worked down to give it a gentle curvature. 5. It should be given the thickness of seven twelfths of a hole. The boxes are two holes (in height), one and three quarters in breadth, two thirds of a hole in thickness except the part that is inserted in the hole, and at the top one third of a hole in breadth. The sideposts are five holes and two thirds in length, their curvature half a hole, and their thickness thirty-seven forty-eighths of a hole. In the middle their breadth is increased as much as it was near the hole in the design, by the breadth and thickness of... hole; the height by one fourth of a hole. 6. The (inner) strip on the "table" has a length of eight holes, a breadth and thickness of half a hole. Its tenons are one hole and one sixth long, and one quarter of a hole in thickness. The curvature of this strip is three quarters of a hole. The outer strip has the same breadth and thickness (as the inner), but the length is given by the obtuse angle of the design and the breadth of the sidepost at its curvature. The upper strips are to be equal to the lower; the crosspieces of the "table," one half of a hole. 7. The shafts of the "ladder" are thirteen holes in length, one hole in thickness; the space between them is one hole and a quarter in breadth, and one and one eighth in depth. Let the entire length of the ladder on its upper surface--which is the one adjoining the arms and fastened to the table--be divided into five parts. Of these let two parts be given to the member which the Greeks call the [Greek: chelônion], its breadth being one and one sixth, its thickness one quarter, and its length eleven holes and one half; the claw projects half a hole and the "winging" three sixteenths of a hole. What is at the axis which is termed the... face... the crosspieces of three holes? 8. The breadth of the inner slips is one quarter of a hole; their thickness one sixth. The cover-joint or lid of the chelonium is dove-tailed into the shafts of the ladder, and is three sixteenths of a hole in breadth and one twelfth in thickness. The thickness of the square piece on the ladder is three sixteenths of a hole,... the diameter of the round axle will be equal to that of the claw, but at the pivots seven sixteenths of a hole. 9. The stays are... holes in length, one quarter of a hole in breadth at the bottom, and one sixth in thickness at the top. The base, termed [Greek: eschara], has the length of... holes, and the anti-base of four holes; each is one hole in thickness and breadth. A supporter is jointed on, halfway up, one and one half holes in breadth and thickness. Its height bears no relation to the hole, but will be such as to be serviceable. The length of an arm is six holes, its thickness at the base two thirds of a hole, and at the end one half a hole. I have now given those symmetrical proportions of ballistae and catapults which I thought most useful. But I shall not omit, so far as I can express it in writing, the method of stretching and tuning their strings of twisted sinew or hair. CHAPTER XII THE STRINGING AND TUNING OF CATAPULTS 1. Beams of very generous length are selected, and upon them are nailed socket-pieces in which windlasses are inserted. Midway along their length the beams are incised and cut away to form framings, and in these cuttings the capitals of the catapults are inserted, and prevented by wedges from moving when the stretching is going on. Then the bronze boxes are inserted into the capitals, and the little iron bolts, which the Greeks call [Greek: epizygides], are put in their places in the boxes. 2. Next, the loops of the strings are put through the holes in the capitals, and passed through to the other side; next, they are put upon the windlasses, and wound round them in order that the strings, stretched out taut on them by means of the handspikes, on being struck by the hand, may respond with the same sound on both sides. Then they are wedged tightly into the holes so that they cannot slacken. So, in the same manner, they are passed through to the other side, and stretched taut on the windlasses by means of the handspikes until they give the same sound. Thus with tight wedging, catapults are tuned to the proper pitch by musical sense of hearing. On these things I have said what I could. There is left for me, in the matter of sieges, to explain how generals can win victories and cities be defended, by means of machinery. CHAPTER XIII SIEGE MACHINES 1. It is related that the battering ram for sieges was originally invented as follows. The Carthaginians pitched their camp for the siege of Cadiz. They captured an outwork and attempted to destroy it. But having no iron implements for its destruction, they took a beam, and, raising it with their hands, and driving the end of it repeatedly against the top of the wall, they threw down the top courses of stones, and thus, step by step in regular order, they demolished the entire redoubt. 2. Afterwards a carpenter from Tyre, Bright by name and by nature, was led by this invention into setting up a mast from which he hung another crosswise like a steelyard, and so, by swinging it vigorously to and fro, he threw down the wall of Cadiz. Geras of Chalcedon was the first to make a wooden platform with wheels under it, upon which he constructed a framework of uprights and crosspieces, and within it he hung the ram, and covered it with oxhide for the better protection of the men who were stationed in the machine to batter the wall. As the machine made but slow progress, he first gave it the name of the tortoise of the ram. 3. These were the first steps then taken towards that kind of machinery, but afterwards, when Philip, the son of Amyntas, was besieging Byzantium, it was developed in many varieties and made handier by Polyidus the Thessalian. His pupils were Diades and Charias, who served with Alexander. Diades shows in his writings that he invented moveable towers, which he used also to take apart and carry round with the army, and likewise the borer, and the scaling machine, by means of which one can cross over to the wall on a level with the top of it, as well as the destroyer called the raven, or by others the crane. 4. He also employed the ram mounted on wheels, an account of which he left in his writings. As for the tower, he says that the smallest should be not less than sixty cubits in height and seventeen in breadth, but diminishing to one fifth less at the top; the uprights for the tower being nine inches at the bottom and half a foot at the top. Such a tower, he says, ought to be ten stories high, with windows in it on all sides. 5. His larger tower, he adds, was one hundred and twenty cubits high and twenty-three and one half cubits broad, diminishing like the other to one fifth less; the uprights, one foot at the bottom and six digits at the top. He made this large tower twenty stories high, each story having a gallery round it, three cubits wide. He covered the towers with rawhide to protect them from any kind of missile. 6. The tortoise of the battering ram was constructed in the same way. It had, however, a base of thirty cubits square, and a height, excluding the pediment, of thirteen cubits; the height of the pediment from its bed to its top was seven cubits. Issuing up and above the middle of the roof for not less than two cubits was a gable, and on this was reared a small tower four stories high, in which, on the top floor, scorpiones and catapults were set up, and on the lower floors a great quantity of water was stored, to put out any fire that might be thrown on the tortoise. Inside of this was set the machinery of the ram, termed in Greek [Greek: kriodochê], in which was placed a roller, turned on a lathe, and the ram, being set on top of this, produced its great effects when swung to and fro by means of ropes. It was protected, like the tower, with rawhide. 7. He explained the principles of the borer as follows: that the machine itself resembled the tortoise, but that in the middle it had a pipe lying between upright walls, like the pipe usually found in catapults and ballistae, fifty cubits in length and one cubit in height, in which a windlass was set transversely. On the right and left, at the end of the pipe, were two blocks, by means of which the iron-pointed beam, which lay in the pipe, was moved. There were numerous rollers enclosed in the pipe itself under the beam, which made its movements quicker and stronger. Numerous arches were erected along the pipe above the beam which was in it, to hold up the rawhide in which this machine was enveloped. 8. He thought it needless to write about the raven, because he saw that the machine was of no value. With regard to the scaling machine, termed in Greek [Greek: epibathra], and the naval contrivances which, as he wrote, could be used in boarding ships, I have observed that he merely promised with some earnestness to explain their principles, but that he has not done so. I have set forth what was written by Diades on machines and their construction. I shall now set forth the methods which I have learned from my teachers, and which I myself believe to be useful. CHAPTER XIV THE TORTOISE 1. A tortoise intended for the filling of ditches, and thereby to make it possible to reach the wall, is to be made as follows. Let a base, termed in Greek [Greek: eschara], be constructed, with each of its sides twenty-one feet long, and with four crosspieces. Let these be held together by two others, two thirds of a foot thick and half a foot broad; let the crosspieces be about three feet and a half apart, and beneath and in the spaces between them set the trees, termed in Greek [Greek: hamaxopodes], in which the axles of the wheels turn in iron hoops. Let the trees be provided with pivots, and also with holes through which levers are passed to make them turn, so that the tortoise can move forward or back or towards its right or left side, or if necessary obliquely, all by the turning of the trees. 2. Let two beams be laid on the base, projecting for six feet on each side, round the projections of which let two other beams be nailed, projecting seven feet beyond the former, and of the thickness and breadth prescribed in the case of the base. On this framework set up posts mortised into it, nine feet high exclusive of their tenons, one foot and a quarter square, and one foot and a half apart. Let the posts be tied together at the top by mortised beams. Over the beams let the rafters be set, tied one into another by means of tenons, and carried up twelve feet high. Over the rafters set the square beam by which the rafters are bound together. 3. Let the rafters themselves be held together by bridgings, and covered with boards, preferably of holm oak, or, this failing, of any other material which has the greatest strength, except pine or alder. For these woods are weak and easily catch fire. Over the boardings let there be placed wattles very closely woven of thin twigs as fresh as possible. Let the entire machine be covered with rawhide sewed together double and stuffed with seaweed or straw soaked in vinegar. In this way the blows of ballistae and the force of fires will be repelled by them. CHAPTER XV HEGETOR'S TORTOISE [Illustration: HEGETOR'S RAM AND TORTOISE 1. From a MS. of the sixteenth century (Wescher's Poliorcétique des Grecs). 2. From a model made by A. A. Howard.] 1. There is also another kind of tortoise, which has all the other details as described above except the rafters, but it has round it a parapet and battlements of boards, and eaves sloping downwards, and is covered with boards and hides firmly fastened in place. Above this let clay kneaded with hair be spread to such a thickness that fire cannot injure the machine. These machines can, if need be, have eight wheels, should it be necessary to modify them with reference to the nature of the ground. Tortoises, however, which are intended for excavating, termed in Greek [Greek: oryktides], have all the other details as described above, but their fronts are constructed like the angles of triangles, in order that when missiles are shot against them from a wall, they may receive the blows not squarely in front, but glancing from the sides, and those excavating within may be protected without danger. 2. It does not seem to me out of place to set forth the principles on which Hegetor of Byzantium constructed a tortoise. The length of its base was sixty-three feet, the breadth forty-two. The corner posts, four in number, which were set upon this framework, were made of two timbers each, and were thirty-six feet high, a foot and a quarter thick, and a foot and a half broad. The base had eight wheels by means of which it was moved about. The height of these wheels was six and three quarters feet, their thickness three feet. Thus constructed of three pieces of wood, united by alternate opposite dovetails and bound together by cold-drawn iron plates, they revolved in the trees or amaxopodes. 3. Likewise, on the plane of the crossbeams above the base, were erected posts eighteen feet high, three quarters of a foot broad, two thirds of a foot thick, and a foot and three quarters apart; above these, framed beams, a foot broad and three quarters of a foot thick, held the whole structure together; above this the rafters were raised, with an elevation of twelve feet; a beam set above the rafters united their joinings. They also had bridgings fastened transversely, and a flooring laid on them protected the parts beneath. 4. It had, moreover, a middle flooring on girts, where scorpiones and catapults were placed. There were set up, also, two framed uprights forty-five feet long, a foot and a half in thickness, and three quarters of a foot in breadth, joined at the tops by a mortised crossbeam and by another, halfway up, mortised into the two shafts and tied in place by iron plates. Above this was set, between the shafts and the crossbeams, a block pierced on either side by sockets, and firmly fastened in place with clamps. In this block were two axles, turned on a lathe, and ropes fastened from them held the ram. 5. Over the head of these (ropes) which held the ram, was placed a parapet fitted out like a small tower, so that, without danger, two soldiers, standing in safety, could look out and report what the enemy were attempting. The entire ram had a length of one hundred and eighty feet, a breadth at the base of a foot and a quarter, and a thickness of a foot, tapering at the head to a breadth of a foot and a thickness of three quarters of a foot. 6. This ram, moreover, had a beak of hard iron such as ships of war usually have, and from the beak iron plates, four in number, about fifteen feet long, were fastened to the wood. From the head to the very heel of the beam were stretched cables, three in number and eight digits thick, fastened just as in a ship from stem to stern continuously, and these cables were bound with cross girdles a foot and a quarter apart. Over these the whole ram was wrapped with rawhide. The ends of the ropes from which the ram hung were made of fourfold chains of iron, and these chains were themselves wrapped in rawhide. 7. Likewise, the projecting end of the ram had a box framed and constructed of boards, in which was stretched a net made of rather large ropes, over the rough surfaces of which one easily reached the wall without the feet slipping. And this machine moved in six directions, forward (and backward), also to the right or left, and likewise it was elevated by extending it upwards and depressed by inclining it downwards. The machine could be elevated to a height sufficient to throw down a wall of about one hundred feet, and likewise in its thrust it covered a space from right to left of not less than one hundred feet. One hundred men controlled it, though it had a weight of four thousand talents, which is four hundred and eighty thousand pounds. CHAPTER XVI MEASURES OF DEFENCE 1. With regard to scorpiones, catapults, and ballistae, likewise with regard to tortoises and towers, I have set forth, as seemed to me especially appropriate, both by whom they were invented and in what manner they should be constructed. But I have not considered it as necessary to describe ladders, cranes, and other things, the principles of which are simpler, for the soldiers usually construct these by themselves, nor can these very machines be useful in all places nor in the same way, since fortifications differ from each other, and so also the bravery of nations. For siege works against bold and venturesome men should be constructed on one plan, on another against cautious men, and on still another against the cowardly. 2. And so, if any one pays attention to these directions, and by selection adapts their various principles to a single structure, he will not be in need of further aids, but will be able, without hesitation, to design such machines as the circumstances or the situations demand. With regard to works of defence, it is not necessary to write, since the enemy do not construct their defences in conformity with our books, but their contrivances are frequently foiled, on the spur of the moment, by some shrewd, hastily conceived plan, without the aid of machines, as is said to have been the experience of the Rhodians. 3. For Diognetus was a Rhodian architect, to whom, as an honour, was granted out of the public treasury a fixed annual payment commensurate with the dignity of his art. At this time an architect from Aradus, Callias by name, coming to Rhodes, gave a public lecture, and showed a model of a wall, over which he set a machine on a revolving crane with which he seized an helepolis as it approached the fortifications, and brought it inside the wall. The Rhodians, when they had seen this model, filled with admiration, took from Diognetus the yearly grant and transferred this honour to Callias. 4. Meanwhile, king Demetrius, who because of his stubborn courage was called Poliorcetes, making war on Rhodes, brought with him a famous Athenian architect named Epimachus. He constructed at enormous expense, with the utmost care and exertion, an helepolis one hundred and thirty-five feet high and sixty feet broad. He strengthened it with hair and rawhide so that it could withstand the blow of a stone weighing three hundred and sixty pounds shot from a ballista; the machine itself weighed three hundred and sixty thousand pounds. When Callias was asked by the Rhodians to construct a machine to resist this helepolis, and to bring it within the wall as he had promised, he said that it was impossible. 5. For not all things are practicable on identical principles, but there are some things which, when enlarged in imitation of small models, are effective, others cannot have models, but are constructed independently of them, while there are some which appear feasible in models, but when they have begun to increase in size are impracticable, as we can observe in the following instance. A half inch, inch, or inch and a half hole is bored with an auger, but if we should wish, in the same manner, to bore a hole a quarter of a foot in breadth, it is impracticable, while one of half a foot or more seems not even conceivable. 6. So too, in some models it is seen how they appear practicable on the smallest scale and likewise on a larger. And so the Rhodians, in the same manner, deceived by the same reasoning, inflicted injury and insult on Diognetus. Therefore, when they saw the enemy stubbornly hostile, slavery threatening them because of the machine which had been built to take the city, and that they must look forward to the destruction of their state, they fell at the feet of Diognetus, begging him to come to the aid of the fatherland. He at first refused. 7. But after free-born maidens and young men came with the priests to implore him, he promised to do it on condition that if he took the machine it should be his property. When these terms had been agreed upon, he pierced the wall in the place where the machine was going to approach it, and ordered all to bring forth from both public and private sources all the water, excrement, and filth, and to pour it in front of the wall through pipes projecting through this opening. After a great amount of water, filth, and excrement had been poured out during the night, on the next day the helepolis moving up, before it could reach the wall, came to a stop in the swamp made by the moisture, and could not be moved forwards, nor later even backwards. And so Demetrius, when he saw that he had been baffled by the wisdom of Diognetus, withdrew with his fleet. 8. Then the Rhodians, freed from the war by the cunning of Diognetus, thanked him publicly, and decorated him with all honours and distinctions. Diognetus brought that helepolis into the city, set it up in a public place, and put on it an inscription: "Diognetus out of the spoils of the enemy dedicated this gift to the people." Therefore, in works of defence, not merely machines, but, most of all, wise plans must be prepared. 9. Likewise at Chios, when the enemy had prepared storming bridges on their ships, the Chians, by night, carried out earth, sand, and stones into the sea before their walls. So, when the enemy, on the next day, tried to approach the walls, their ships grounded on the mound beneath the water, and could not approach the wall nor withdraw, but pierced with fire-darts were burned there. Again, when Apollonia was being besieged, and the enemy were thinking, by digging mines, to make their way within the walls without exciting suspicion, and this was reported by scouts to the people of Apollonia, they were much disturbed and alarmed by the news, and having no plans for defence, they lost courage, because they could not learn either the time or the definite place where the enemy would come out. 10. But at this time Trypho, the Alexandrine architect, was there. He planned a number of countermines inside the wall, and extending them outside the wall beyond the range of arrows, hung up in all of them brazen vessels. The brazen vessels hanging in one of these mines, which was in front of a mine of the enemy, began to ring from the strokes of their iron tools. So from this it was ascertained where the enemy, pushing their mines, thought to enter. The line being thus found out, he prepared kettles of hot water, pitch, human excrement, and sand heated to a glow. Then, at night, he pierced a number of holes, and pouring the mixture suddenly through them, killed all the enemy who were engaged in this work. 11. In the same manner, when Marseilles was being besieged, and they were pushing forward more than thirty mines, the people of Marseilles, distrusting the entire moat in front of their wall, lowered it by digging it deeper. Thus all the mines found their outlet in the moat. In places where the moat could not be dug they constructed, within the walls, a basin of enormous length and breadth, like a fish pond, in front of the place where the mines were being pushed, and filled it from wells and from the port. And so, when the passages of the mine were suddenly opened, the immense mass of water let in undermined the supports, and all who were within were overpowered by the mass of water and the caving in of the mine. 12. Again, when a rampart was being prepared against the wall in front of them, and the place was heaped up with felled trees and works placed there, by shooting at it with the ballistae red-hot iron bolts they set the whole work on fire. And when a ram-tortoise had approached to batter down the wall, they let down a noose, and when they had caught the ram with it, winding it over a drum by turning a capstan, having raised the head of the ram, they did not allow the wall to be touched, and finally they destroyed the entire machine by glowing fire-darts and the blows of ballistae. Thus by such victory, not by machines but in opposition to the principle of machines, has the freedom of states been preserved by the cunning of architects. Such principles of machines as I could make clear, and as I thought most serviceable for times of peace and of war, I have explained in this book. In the nine earlier books I have dealt with single topics and details, so that the entire work contains all the branches of architecture, set forth in ten books. FINIS * * * * * SCAMILLI IMPARES (BOOK III, ch. 4) No passage in Vitruvius has given rise to so much discussion or been the subject of such various interpretations as this phrase. The most reasonable explanation of its meaning seems to be that of �mile Burnouf, at one time Director of the French School at Athens, published in the _Revue Générale del' Architecture_ for 1875, as a note to a brief article of his on the explanation of the curves of Greek Doric buildings. This explanation was accepted by Professor Morgan, who called my attention to it in a note dated December 12, 1905. It has also quite recently been adopted by Professor Goodyear in his interesting book on _Greek Refinements_. Burnouf would translate it _nivelettes inégales_, "unequal levellers." He states that in many parts of France in setting a long course of cut stone the masons make use of a simple device consisting of three pointed blocks of equal height used as levellers, of which two are placed one at each extremity of the course, while the third is used to level the stones, as they are successively set in place, by setting it upon the stone to be set and sighting across the other two levellers. If two "levellers" of equal height are used with a third of less height placed at the centre of the course, with perhaps others of intermediate height used at intermediate points, it would obviously be equally easy to set out a curved course, as, for instance, the curved stylobate of the Parthenon which rises about three inches in its length of one hundred feet. By a simple calculation any desired curve could be laid out in this way. The word scamillus is a diminutive of _scamnum_, a mounting-block or bench. Practically the same explanation is given by G. Georges in a memoir submitted to the Sorbonne in April, 1875. Georges adds an interesting list, by no means complete, of the various explanations that have been offered at different times. Philander (1522-1552). Projections of the stylobate or pedestals. Barbaro (1556-1690). The same. Bertano (1558). Swellings of the die of the stylobate or bosses in the stylobate or the frieze of the entablature. Baldus (1612). Sub-plinths placed under the bases of the columns. Perrault (1673-1684). Projection of the stylobate. Polleni (1739). The same. Galiani (1758-1790). Projection of the stylobate with hypothesis of embossments on the stylobates and the bases of the columns. Tardieu and Coussin (1837) and Mauffras (1847). Projection of the stylobates. Aurès (1865). Steps or offsets between the stylobate and the columns. The list of Georges is wholly French and Italian. Fra Giocondo's interpretation is indicated in our reproduction of the illustration in his edition of 1511. Hoffer (1838) and afterwards Pennethorne (1846) and Penrose (1851) gave measurements showing the curvatures in the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus in Athens. Penrose and most writers who followed him supposed the "scamilli impares" to be projections or offsets on the stylobate required on account of the curves to bring the column into relation with the architraves above, and similar offsets of unequal or sloping form were supposed to be required above the abaci of the capitals, but such offsets, although sometimes existing, have no obvious connection with the passage in Vitruvius. C. Bötticher (1863) and more recently Durm have denied the original intention of the curves and ascribe them to settlement, a supposition which hardly accords with the observed facts. Reber, in the note on this passage in his translation of Vitruvius (1865), thinks the scamilli were sloping offsets on the stylobate to cause the inclination of the columns, but admits that nothing of the kind has been found in the remains so far examined. It may be added that this is at variance with the statement of the purpose of the scamilli which Vitruvius gives. Assuming, as I think we must, that the horizontal curvature of the stylobate in such buildings as the Parthenon was intended and carefully planned, Burnouf's explanation fits the case precisely and makes this passage of Vitruvius straightforward and simple. This can be said of no other explanation, for all the others leave the passage obscure and more or less nonsensical. Durm's attempt to refer the passage to the case of the temple with a podium which has just been spoken of by Vitruvius is somewhat forced, or at least unnecessary. Clearly the passage refers to stylobates in general; but Reber also so translates and punctuates as to make the use of the "scamilli impares" refer only to the case of temples built in the Roman manner with the podium. His resulting explanation still leaves the passage obscure and unsatisfactory. One may finally refer to the ingenious but improbable explanation of Choisy, who translates it echelons impairs, and explains them as offsets arranged according to the odd numbers, _nombres impairs_, i. e., offsets varying at equal intervals in the proportion of 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc., and which he claims was applied also to the entasis of columns. H. L. WARREN. INDEX Abacus, 92, 106, 110, 122. [Greek: Abaton], 56. Abdera, 212, 269. Acanthus pattern, origin of, 104. Accius, 255. Acoustics, of the site of a theatre, 153 _f._ Acroteria, 96. Aequians have springs which produce goitre, 239. Aeruca (verdigris), 219. Aeschylus, 198. Aesculapius, proper site for temple of, 15; temple of, at Tralles, 198. Aetna, 47. Africa, 240. Agatharcus, 198. Agesistratus, 199. Agger (river), 231. Agnus castus (tree), 60 _f._, 296. [Greek: Akrobatikon], 283. Alabanda, 212; temple of Apollo at, 78. Alae, of house, 177; of temples, 120. Albula (river), 233. Alder, 61. Alexander, 35 _f._, 195, 310. Alexandria, 36, 196, 197, 218; length of shadow of gnomon at, 270. Alexis (poet), 168. Altars, 125 _f._ Altino, 21. Aluminous springs, 234. Amiternum, stone quarries of, 49. Ammon, 235. Amphiprostyle, 75. Amphithalamos, 186. Amyntas, 310. Analemma, 257; its applications, 270 _ff._ Anaphoric dial, 275. Anaxagoras, 195, 198, 225, 269. Ancona, 63. Andreas, 273. Andromeda (constellation), 266. Andron of Ephesus, 70. Andrones, 187. Andronicus of Cyrrhus, 26. Antae, 114, 120, 186; temple in antis, 75. Antiborean (sun dial), 273. Antimachides, 199. Antiochus, 199. Antipater, 238, 269. Antistates, 199. Apaturius, 212. Apelles, 11. Apollo, 69, 102, 103, 196; Panionion, 103, 255; colossal statue of, 289; temple of, at Alabanda, 78; at Miletus, 200; at Rome, 80; site of temple of, 80. Apollonia, 235; siege of, 317 _f._ Apollonius, 273. Apollonius of Perga, 12. Aqueducts, 244 _ff._; Marcian, 232. Aquileia, 21. Arabia, 235, 237. Arachne (sun dial), 273. Aradus, 315. Araeostyle temples, 78, 80; proportions of columns in, 84. Aratus, 269. Arcadia, 238. Arcesius, 109, 198. Arched substructures, 190. Archer (constellation), 266. Archimedes, 8, 12, 199, 243; detects a theft of gold by a contractor, 253 _f._ Archinapolus (astrologer), 269. Architecture, fundamental principles of, 13 _ff._; departments of, 16 _ff._ Architrave, 94, 288. Archytas of Tarentum, 12, 199, 255. Arcturus (star), 266. Ardea, 233. Arevanias, 54. Arezzo, ancient wall of brick at, 53. Argo (constellation), 268. Argolis, precinct of Juno at, 102. Argos, 54. Ariobarzanes, 154. Aristarchus, 11. ----of Samos, 12, 263, 273. Aristides, 241. Aristippus, shipwreck of, 167. Aristomenes of Thasos, 70. Aristophanes, 168; grammaticus, 196. Aristotle, 195, 251. Aristoxenus, 11, 140, 145. Armenian blue, 213, 217. [Greek: Harpedonai] (star group), 268. Arrow (constellation), 266. Arsenal, naval, at Peiraeus, 198. Arsinoe, 103. Artemisia, 55 _f._ Artemon ([Greek: Epagôn]), 287. Asphalt, 235; asphaltic springs, 234; lake Asphaltitis, 235. [Greek: Asplênon], 20. Assafoetida grown in Cyrene, 237. Astansoba (river), 231. Astoboa (river), 231. Astragals, 90. Astrology, 269 _ff._ Athens, 26, 40, 53, 78, 124, 199, 200, 234; colonnades at, 154; temple of Minerva at, 198; length of shadow of gnomon at, 257, 270. Athos, Mt., 35. [Greek: Atlantes], 188. Atlantides, 189. Atlas, 188, 231. Atrium, 185, 210; proportions of, 176 _f._ Attalus, 53, 103, 195. Attic doorways, 120. Aurelius, Marcus, 3. Aventine, 216. Babylon, 24, 235. Bacchus, proper site for temple of, 31; Ionic order appropriate to, 15; temple of, at Teos, 82, 109, 198. Baiae, 46, 47. Bakeries, 184. Balance (constellation), 266. Balconies in forum, 131. Balearic Isles, 214, 240. Ballistae, rules for making, 305 _ff._ Bankers' offices, 131. Barns, 184. [Greek: Baroulkos], 283. Bases, Ionic, 90 _ff._ Basilica, 132 _ff._; of Vitruvius at Fano, 134 _ff._ Bathrooms, 180; of farmhouse, 183. Baths, 157 _ff._ Beast (constellation), 268. Bedrooms, 181. Beech, 60. Berosus, 262, 269, 273. Bilbery, used to make purple, 220. Bird (constellation), 266. Black, 217 _f._ Block (_rechamus_), 285 _ff._ Blue, 218 _f._ Body, proportions of, 72. Boedas of Byzantium, 70. Boeotia, 237. Bolsena, lake of, 50. Boscoreale, villa rustica at, 183. Bowl (constellation), 268. Breakwaters, 162 _ff._ Brick, 42 _ff._; test of, 57. Bright (Pephrasmenos), inventor of battering ram, 309. Bryaxis, 199. Bucket-pump, 294. Bug (river), 231. Bull (constellation), 266. Burnt-ochre, 218 _f._ Buttresses, 190 _f._ Byzantium, 310. Cadiz, 309. Caecuban (wine), 236. Caesar, Julius, 62 _f._, 240. Callaeschrus, 199. Callias of Aradus, 315. Callimachus ([Greek: katatêxitechnos]), 104. Callippus, 269. Campania, 48, 64, 236, 238. Campus Cornetus, 238. Canon of water organ, 299. Canopus (star), 268. Capitals, Ionic, 92 _ff._; Corinthian, 102, 104 _f._; Doric, 110; of triglyphs, 112. Capitol, hut of Romulus on, 40; temple on, 80. Cappadocia, 235. Carpion, 198. Carthage, 235. Caryae, 6 _f._ Caryatides, 6 f_f._ Casius (town in Egypt), 235. Cassiopea (constellation), 266. Castor, temple of, 124. Catacecaumenites (wine), 236. Catapults, 303 _ff._; stringing and tuning of, 308 _f._ Cataract of Nile, 231. Catheti, 92. Caucasus, 231. Cavaedium, 176 _ff._ Cedar, 62. Ceilings of baths, 158. Cella, 114 _ff._, 120; of circular temple, 123. Celtica, 231. Censer (constellation), 267. Centaur (constellation), 267. Cepheus (constellation), 266. Cephisus, 237. Ceres, temple of 80, 200; site of temple of, 32. Chalcedon, 309. Chaldeans, 262. Charias, 199, 310. Charioteer (constellation), 266. [Greek: Cheirokmêta] of Democritus, 255. Chersiphron, 78, 198, 200, 288. Chion of Corinth, 70. Chionides, 168. Chios, 103, 197; siege of, 317. Chorobates, levelling instrument, 242 _f._ Chrobs, poisonous lake at, 237. Chromatic mode, 140. Cibdeli, 234. Cicero, 256. Cilbian country, 215. Cilicia, 235. Cinnabar, 215 _ff._; adulteration of, 217. Circular temples, 122 _ff._ Circumference of earth, 27 _f._ Circumsonant sites of theatres ([Greek: periêchountes]), 153. Circus, Flaminius, 124, 273; Maximus, 80. Cisterns, 244 _ff._ City, site of, 17 _ff._; walls, 21 _f._ Classification of temples, 75 _ff._, 78 _ff._ Clazomenae, 103, 269. Clearstock of fir, 60. Climate determines the style of houses, 170. Clitor, spring at, 239. Colchis, 231. Colline Gate, 75. Colonnades, 131, 154, 155, 156 _f._, 160 _f._ Colophon, 103, 269. Colours, 214 _ff._; natural, 214 _f._; artificial, 217; manufactured from flowers, 220; how applied to stucco, 207. Columbaria ([Greek: opai]), 108. Columns, proportions of, in colonnades, 154; in forums, 132; in basilicas, 132; Corinthian, 102; diminution in top of, 84 _f._; Ionic order, 90 _ff._; arrangement of, 114. Conarachne (sun dial), 273. Concords in music, 142. Concrete floors, 202. Cone (sun dial), 273. Conical Plinthium (sun dial), 273. Consonancies in music, 142. Consonant sites of theatres ([Greek: synêchountes]), 153. Constellations, northern, 265 _ff._; Southern, 267 _ff._ Consumptives, resin of larch good for, 63. Corinth, 145. Corinthian cavaedium, 176. Corinthian order, 15; origin of, 102 _f._; proportions of, 106 _f._; treatise on, by Arcesius, 198. Cornelius, Gnaeus, 3. Corona, 102, 107, 112. Cos, island of, 269. Cossutius, 200. Courage dependent on climate, 173. Counterforts, 190. Courtyards, 183. Crab (constellation), 268. Crathis (river), 237. Crete, 20, 62. Creusa, 103. Croesus, 195; house of, at Sardis, 53. Cross-aisles in theatre, 138, 146; in Greek theatre, 151. Crown (constellation), 266. Ctesibius, 8, 198, 273 _f._; pump of, 297 _f._ Cube, properties of, 130. Cubit equals six palms or twenty-four fingers, 74. Cumae, 162. Cunei in theatre, 146. Cutiliae, 234. Cyclades, 214. Cydnus, 234. Cymatium, 94, 110; Doric, 112. Cypress, 59, 61. Cyrene, 27, 237, 255. Daphnis of Miletus, 200. Darius, 195. Decorations of walls, 209 _f._ Defence, measures for, 315 _ff._ Delos, problem enjoined upon, by Apollo, 255. Delphi, Round Building at, 198. Demetrius of Phalerum, 200. Demetrius Poliorcetes, 316. Demetrius (slave of Diana), 200. Democles, 199. Democritus, 42, 195, 251, 255, 269; his study of perspective, 198. Demophilus, 199. Denarius, 74. Dentils, 94, 102, 108. Departments of architecture, 16 _f._ Diades, 199; inventor of siege machines, 310. Dials arranged to show hours of varying length, 274 _ff._ Diana, temple of Ionic order, 15, 78; temple of, at Ephesus, 78, 103, 198, 200, 288 _f._; at Rome, 80, 124; at Magnesia, 78, 198; statue of, 62. Diatonic mode, 140. Diastyle temples, 78, 80; proportions of columns in, 84; Doric, 113. [Greek: Diathyra], 188. Dichalca, 74. Diesis, 140. Diminution in top of column, 84, 110. Dining rooms, proportions of, 179, 181, 186; Cyzicene, 186; winter, 209 _f._ Dinocrates, 35 _f._ Diognetus, Rhodian architect, 315 _ff._ Diomede, 21. Dionysodorus, 273. Dioptra, 242. Diphilus, 199. Dipteral temple, 75, 78. Displuviate cavaedium, 177. Dissonant sites of theatres ([Greek: katêchountes]), 153. Dnieper, 231. Dog (constellation), 268. Dolphin (constellation), 266. Don (river), 231. Doors, of temples, 118 _f._; of dwellings, 178; in theatres, 146. Doorways of temples, proportions of, 117 _ff._ Doric order, 15; proportions of, 109 _ff._; doorways, 117; temples of, 198. Dorus, 102. Drachma, 74. Dyer's weed, 220. Dyris (river), 231. Dyrrachium, 235. Eagle (constellation), 266. Echea ([Greek: êcheia]), 9, 143 _ff._ Echinus, 93, 110, 122. Economy, 16. Education of the architect, 5 _ff._, 168 _f._ Egypt, 214, 231, 235, 269. [Greek: Ekphora], 90. Elements ([Greek: stoicheia]) and their proportions, 18 _ff._, 225. Elephantis, 231. Eleusis, 200. [Greek: Helikê], 267. Elpias of Rhodes, 21. Empedocles, 225. [Greek: Emplekton], 52. Engines, 283; for raising water, 293 _ff._ Enharmonic mode, 140. Ennius, 255. [Greek: Entasis] of columns, 86. Eolipiles, 25. Ephesus, 103, 214, 215, 281; temple of Diana at, 78, 198, 200. Epicharmus, 225. Epicurus, 42, 167, 195. Epimachus, 316. Equestrian Fortune, temple of, 80. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, 12, 27, 28, 255. Erythrae, 103. Ethiopia, 231, 235. Etruria (Tuscany), 48, 64, 235. Eucrates, 168. Euctemon, 269. Eudoxus, 269, 273. Eumenes, colonnades of, 154. Euphranor, 199. Euphrates, 231. Euripides, 225; buried in Macedonia, 238; "Phaethon" of, 261. Eurythmy, 14. Eustyle temples, 78, 80 _f._; proportions of columns in, 84. Exedrae, 160, 179, 186, 211. Exposure, proper for rooms, 180, _f._ Faberius, 216. Falernian (wine), 236. Fano, 63; basilica at, 134 _ff._ Farmhouses, 183 _f._ Fascia, 94; of Attic doorway, 120. Fauces, their dimensions, 178. Faunus temple on the Island of the Tiber, 75. Femur ([Greek: mêros]), 112. Ferento, 50. Fidenae, stone quarries at, 49. Fir, qualities of, 60; highland and lowland, 64 _f._ Fire, origin of, 38. Fishes (constellation), 266. Flaminius circus, 124. Floors, 202 _ff._; Greek method of making, 210; of baths, 157, _f._ Flora, temple of Corinthian order, 15. Flutes of columns, 96; Doric, 113. Folds for sheep and goats, 184. Fondi, 236. Foot equals four palms, or sixteen fingers, 74. Fortune, temple of Equestrian, 80; Three Fortunes, 75. Forum, 131 _ff._ Foundations of temples, 86 _ff._; of houses, 189 _ff._ Fresco painting, decadence of, 210 _ff._ Frieze, 94, 123. Fuficius (architect), 199. Fulcrum ([Greek: hypomochlion]), 290. Ganges, 231. [Greek: Ganôsis], 217. Gaul, 220, 231. Geras, inventor of shed for battering ram, 309. Gilding, 215. Gnomon, 257; length of shadow at different places, 270. Gnosus, 20, 200. Gorgon's head (star group), 266. Gortyna, 20. Grain rooms, 184. Greater Dog (constellation), 268. Great Bear, 257; ([Greek: arktos] or [Greek: helikê]), 265. Grecian Station, 56. Greek houses, 185 _ff._ Green chalk ([Greek: theodoteion]), 214. Grotta Rossa, stone quarries at, 49. Guttae, 102, 110, 112. Gynaeconitis, 186. Gypsum not to be used for stucco work, 206. Halicarnassus, 53, 54. Harbinger of the Vintage (star), 265. Harbours, 162 _ff._ Harmonics, 139 _ff._ Hegesias, 241. He-Goat (constellation), 266. Helepolis of Epimachus, 316 _f._ Hellen, 102. Hemisphere (sun dial), 273. Heptabolus, lake, 231. Heptagonus, lake, 231. Heraclea, 289. Heraclitus of Ephesus, 42, 225. Hercules, Doric order appropriate to, 15; site of temple of, 31; cellae of temple of, 53; Pompey's temple of, 80. Hermodorus, temple of Jupiter Stator, 78. Hermogenes, 109; temple of Diana by, 78; determined rules of symmetry for eustyle temples, 82. Herodotus, 241. Herring-bone pattern, 203. Hierapolis, boiling springs at, 236. Hiero, 253 _f._ Hinge-stiles, 118. Hipparchus, 269. Hippocrates, 11. Hodometer, 301 _ff._ Hoisting machines, 285. Homer, 197. Hornbeam, 61. Horse (constellation), 266. Hostilius, Marcus, 21. Hot springs, 232; healing properties of, 233 _f._ Hours, how marked by clocks, 274. House, origin of, 38 _f._; early types of, 39 _f._; style of, determined by climate, 170 _f._ Hypaethral temple, 14, 75, 78. Hypanis, 214, 236. Hysginum, 220. Ictinus, 198, 200. Iliad and Odyssey, 197. Ilium, 237. Incertum opus, 51. India, 231. India ink, 217, 218. Indigo, substitute for, 220. Indus, 231. Iollas, 238. Ion, 103. Ionic order, 15; proportions of, 90 _ff._; doorways of, 118; temples of, 198, 200. Isis, site of temple of, 31. Ismuc, 240. Isodomum, 52. Isthmian games, 251. Italy, 48, 53, 131, 145, 173, 214, 231, 239. Jaffa, 235. Jambs, proportions of, 117. Juba, King, 240. Julius, Caius, son of Masinissa, 240. Juno, Ionic order appropriate to, 15; site for temple of, 31; precinct at Argolis, 102; Doric temple of, in Samos, 198. Jupiter, temple of, 14, 199; site for temple of, 31; cellae of temple, 53; temple on Island of the Tiber, 75; altars of, 125. Jupiter (planet), 258, 260, 261, 262. Kids (constellation), 266. Kitchen, 183. Kneeler (constellation), 266. Knotwood, 60. [Greek: Kynosoura], 267. Lacedaemonians, 7. Laconicum, 159. Lacunar (sun dial), 273. Language, origin of, 38. Larch, 62 _f._ Larignum, 62, 63. Law governing architects at Ephesus, 281. Lead pipes poisonous, 247. Lebedos, 103. Lemnos, 214. Leochares, 54, 199. Leonidas, 199. Lesbos, 25, 236. Levelling instruments, 242 _f._ Lever, explanation of, 290 _f._ Libraries, 181, 186. Licymnius, 212 _f._ Lighting of rooms, how to test, 185. Lime, 45 _f._; slaking of, for stucco, 204. Linden, 60. Lintels, height of, 117. Lion (constellation), 268. Liparis (river), 235. Little Dog (constellation), 268. Liver examined to determine site of towns, 20. [Greek: Logeion], scenic and thymelic, 151; dimensions of, 151. Logotomus, 272. Lucania, 237. Lucretius, 256. Lyncestus, acid springs of, 238. Lyre (constellation), 267. Lysippus, 69. Macedonia, 217, 238. Machines, 283 _ff._; for defence, 315 _ff._ Maeonia, wine of, 236. Magi, 225. Magnesia, 78, 214, 240; temple of Diana at, 198. Malachite green, 213; where found, 217; substitute for, 220. Mamertine (wine), 236. Marble, powdered for stucco work, 206, 213 _f._; where quarried, 289. Marius' temple of Honour and Valour, 78. Mars, temple should be Doric, 15; site of temple of, 31. Mars (planet), 259 _f._, 262. Marseilles, siege of, 318. Maurusia (Mauretania), 231. Mausoleum, 54, 199. Mausolus, 53 _ff._ Mazaca, lake near, petrifies reeds, etc., 235. Medicine, architect should know, 10. Medulli have springs which produce goitre, 239. Melampus, 199, 239. Melas of Argos, 54. Melas (river), 237. Melassa, 54. Melian white, 214. Melite, 103. Melos, 214. Menaeus, 272. Mercury, site of temple of, 31; temple of, 54. Mercury (planet), 258, 259. Meroë, 231. Mesauloe, 187. Metagenes, 198, 200, 288. Metellus, portico of, 78. Meto, 269. Metopes ([Greek: metopê]), 94, 108, 110; size of, 112; arrangement of, in Doric temples, 113. Metrodorus, 241. Miletus, 103, 200, 269. Milo of Croton, 251. Minerva, temple should be Doric, 15; site of temple, 31; temple at Sunium, 124; at Priene, 11, 198; at Athens, 198. Minidius, Publius, 3. Mithridates, 154. Modes of music, 140 _ff._ Moon, 258; phases of, 262 _f._ Mortar, consistency of, for stucco work, 206 _f._; of burnt brick, 209. Motion, elements of, 290 _ff._ Mouldings for stucco work, 206. Mucius, C., temple of Honour and Valour, 78, 200. Mummius, Lucius, 145. Muses, 253; fountain of, 232. Music useful to architect, 8. Mutules, 102, 108; of Tuscan temples, 122. Myager the Phocaean, 70. Myron, 11, 69. Mysia the "Burnt District," 47. Mytilene, 25. Myus, 103. Nemean games, 251. Neptune, spring of, 237. Nexaris, 199. Nile, 36, 231; temples on, should face the river, 117. Nonacris, "Water of the Styx," 238. Notes, names of, 141 _f._ Number, perfect, 73 _f._ Nymphodorus, 199. Nymphs, temple of Corinthian order, 15. Oak, 60; in floors, 202. Obols, 74. Ochre ([Greek: ôchra]), 214. Oeci, distinction between Corinthian and Egyptian, 179; Cyzicene, 180. Oil room, 184. Olympian games, 251. [Greek: Opai], 108. Opus incertum, 51; reticulatum, 51; Signinum, 247 _f._ Orchestra, reserved for senators, 146; of Greek theatre, 151. Order appropriate to temples, 15; origin of different orders, 102 _ff._ Organ, water, 299 _f._ [Greek: Organon], 283. Orientation of streets, 24 _ff._; of temples, 116 _f._ Orion (constellation), 268. Ornaments of the orders, 107 _ff._ Orpiment ([Greek: arsenikon]), 214. Ostrum, source of purple dye, 220. Paconius, 289. Paeonius of Ephesus, 200. Palaestra, 159 _ff._ Palla, stone quarries at, 49. Panels of doors, 118. Paphlagonia, intoxicating springs of, 239. [Greek: Paradromides], 188. Paraetonium, 235; white, 214. Parapet of theatre, dimensions of, 148. Parmenio, 273. Paros, 289. Pastas, 186. Patras, cellae of temple built of brick, 53. Patrocles, 273. Pausanias, son of Agesipolis, 7. Peiraeus, 234; naval arsenal at, 198. Peisistratus, 199. Pelecinum (sun dial), 273. Penne, 234. Pentaspast (hoisting machine), 285. Pergamus, 196. Peripteral temple, 75 _f._ Peristyle, 186; decorations of, 210 _f._; proportions of, 179; Rhodian, 186. Peritreti, 303 _f._ Perseus (constellation), 266. Persian Porch, 7. Persians, statues of, 8 _f._ Perspective, commentaries on by Agatharcus, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, 198. Pesaro, 63. Pharax of Ephesus, 70. Phasis, 231. Phidias, 69. Philippus (physicist), 269. Philip son of Amyntas, 310. Philo, 198, 200; of Byzantium, 199. Philolaus of Tarentum, 12. Philosophy, why useful to architect, 8. Phocaea, 103. Phrygia, 236. Phthia, 102. Picenum, 49. Picture galleries, 179, 186. Piles, of alder, 61; olive, or oak, 88. [Greek: Pinax] of water organ, 299. Pine, 61. Pixodorus discovers marble near Ephesus, 289; his name changed to Evangelus, 290. Planets, 257 _ff._; their retrograde movement, 260 _f._ Plataea, battle of, 7. Plato, 195, 251; rule for doubling the square, 252. [Greek: Pleiades], 189. Plinthium (sun dial), 273. [Greek: Pneumatikon], 283. Po, 231. Podium of theatre, height of, 148. Pollis, 199. [Greek: Poloi] (pivots of heaven), 257. Polus (star), 267. Polycles of Ephesus, 70. Polyclitus, 11, 69. Polyidus, 199, 310. Polyspast (hoisting machine), 288. Pompeian pumice, 47. Pompey, colonnades of, 154; temple of Hercules, 80. Pontic wax, 216, 217. Pontus, 214, 220, 231, 236. Poplar, 60. Pormus, 199. Posidonius, 241. Pothereus (river), 20. Pozzolana, 46 _f._ Praxiteles, 199. Pressing room, 183 _f._ Priene, 103; Temple of Minerva at, 11, 198. Primordial substance, 42. Prison, location of, 137. Proconnesus, 289. Pronaos, 114 _ff._, 120. Proportions, 72, 174 _f._; of circular temples, 123 _f._; of colonnades, 154 _f._; of columns and intercolumniations, 78 _ff._, 116; of the Corinthian order, 106 _f._; of doorways of temples, 117 _ff._; of Doric temples, 109 _ff._; of the Ionic order, 90 _ff._; of rooms, 176 _ff._ Propriety, 14 _ff._ Proscaenium of Greek theatre, 151. Proserpine temple of Corinthian order, 15; temple of, 200. [Greek: Pros pan klima] (sun dial), 273. [Greek: Pros ta historoumena] (sun dial), 273. Prostas, 186. Prostyle, 75. Proteus, daughters of, 239. Prothyra, 188. Protropum (wine), 236. [Greek: Protrygêtês] (star), 265. Pseudisodomum, 52. Pseudodipteral temple, 75, 78, 82. Pseudoperipteral temples, 125. Pteroma, 82, 114, 125. Ptolemy, 196, 197; Philadelphus, 197. Public buildings, sites of, 31 _f._ Pump of Ctesibius, 297 _f._ Purple, 213, 219; substitutes for, 220 _f._ Puzzuoli, 218. Pycnostyle temples, 78 _f._; proportions of columns in, 84. Pyrrus, 199. Pythagoras, 42, 130, 225, 251, 269; right triangle of, 252 _f._ Pytheos, 11, 109, 198, 199. Pythian games, 251. Quarries of Grotta Rosa, Palla, Fidenae, Campania, Umbria, Picenum, Tivoli, Amiternum, Venetia, Tarquinii, Lake of Bolsena, Ferento, 49, 50. Quicksilver, 215 _ff._ Quirinus, temple of, 78. Quiver (sun dial), 273. Rainwater, 229 _ff._ Ram, battering, 309 _f._; Hegetor's, 314 _f._ Ram (constellation), 266. Raven (constellation), 268. Raven, a machine of no value, 310 _f._ Ravenna, 21, 61, 63. Reduction of columns, 114. Refraction explained, 175. Resin, soot of, used to make black, 218. Resonant sites of theatres ([Greek: antêchountes]), 153. Retaining walls, 190 _f._ Reticulatum opus, 51. Retrogression of planets, 261. Rhine, 231. Rhodes, 55 _f._, 167, 219, 220; length of shadow of gnomon at, 270; siege of, 316 _f._ Rhone, 231. River (constellation), 268. Rivers rise in the north, 231. Rome, 63, 64, 78, 80, 145, 217; site of, determined by divine intelligence, 174; length of shadow of gnomon at, 270. Romulus, hut of, 40. Roofs, of mud, 39 _f._; timbers of, 107; of Tuscan temples, 122; of circular temples, 124. Rooms, proportions of, 176 _ff._; proper exposure for, 180 _f._; should be suited to station of the owner, 181 _f._ Round Building at Delphi, 198. Salmacis, spring of, 54. Salpia in Apulia, 21. Sambuca illustrates effect of climate on voice, 171. Samos, 12, 103, 263, 269, 273; Doric temple of Juno in, 198. Sand, 44 _f._, 48. Sandarach, 214; made from white lead, 219. Sardis, 53. Sarnacus, 199. Saturn (planet), 260, 261, 262. Satyrus, 199. Scaena of theatre, 146; dimensions of, 148; scheme of, 150; decorations of, 150; of theatre at Tralles, 212. Scale, musical, 141. Scaling machine, 311. Scamilli impares, 89, 155, 320. Scaphe (sun dial), 273. Scopas, 199. Scopinas, 12, 273. Scorpion (constellation), 266. Scorpiones, rules for making, 303 _ff._ Scotia, 90, 112. Scutula of ballistae, 306 _f._ Seats in theatre, dimensions of, 148. Selinusian chalk ([Greek: isatis]), 220. Semiramis, 235. Senate house, location of, 137. Septentriones (She-Bears), 267. Septimius, P., 199. Serapis, site of temple of, 31. Serpent (constellation), 266. Serpent-holder (constellation), 266. Sesterce, 74. She-Goat (constellation), 266. Ship, motion of, explained, 291. Shipyards, 164. Sicily, 236. Siege machines, 309 _ff._ Signinum work, 247 _f._ Signs of the Zodiac, 258; sun's course through, 264 _f._; shown on dials, 276 _f._ Silanion, 199. Silenus, on the proportions of Doric structures, 198. Simae ([Greek: epaietides]), 96, 108. Sinope, 214. Smyrna, 197, 214; Stratoniceum at, 154. Snake (constellation), 268. Socrates, 69, 70, 195. Soli, 235. Soracte, stone quarries of, 49. Sounding vessels in the theatre, 143 _ff._ Southern Fish (constellation), 267. Spain, 214; cinnabar mines of, 217. Sparta, paintings on brick walls at, 53. Spica (star), 265. Stables, 184, 186. Statonia, 50. Steelyard, description of, 291. Steps of temples odd in number, 88. Stereobates, 88. Stone, 48, 49 _f._ Stratoniceum, 154. Streets, directions of, 24. Stucco, 204 _ff._; in damp places, 208 _ff._ Stucco-workers, Greek, 208. Stylobates, 88. Substructures of houses, 189 _ff._ Sulphur springs, 233 _f._ Sun, 258 _f._; course of, through the twelve signs, 264 _f._ Sundials, 273 _ff._; how designed, 270 _ff._ Sunium, temple of Pallas at, 124. Susa, spring at, 240. Syene, 231. Symmetry, 14; in temples and in the human body, 72 _f._; modifications to suit site, 174 _ff._ Syracuse, 273. Syria, 231, 235, 237. Systyle temples, 78 _f._; proportions of columns in, 84; Doric, 113. Tablinum, proportions of, 178. Tarentum, 12, 255; length of shadow of gnomon at, 270. Tarquinii, 50. Tarsus, 234, 240. Teano, acid springs of, 238. Telamones, 188. Teleas of Athens, 70. [Greek: Teleion] (perfect number), 73 _f._ Tempering of iron, 18. Temples, classification of, 75 _ff._; circular, 122 _ff._; Corinthian, 102 _f._; Doric, 109 _ff._; Ionic, 90 _ff._; Tuscan, 120; foundations of, 86 _ff._; orientation of, 116 _f._; proportion of columns of, 78 _ff._; sites of, 31 _f._; Aesculapius, 15, 198; Apollo, 31, 78, 80, 200; Bacchus, 15, 31, 82, 109, 198; Castor, 124; Ceres, 32, 80, 200; Diana, 15, 78, 80, 103, 124, 198, 200, 288 _f._; Equestrian Fortune, 80; Faunus, 75; Flora, 15; Three Fortunes, 75; Hercules, 15, 31, 53, 80; Isis, 31; Juno, 15, 31, 198; Jupiter, 14, 31, 53, 75, 199; Honour and Valour, 78, 200; Mars, 15, 31; Mercury, 31, 54; Minerva, 11, 15, 31, 124, 198; Nymphs, 15; Proserpine, 15, 200; Quirinus, 78; Serapis, 31; Vejovis, 124; Venus, 15, 31, 54; Vulcan, 31. Teos, 103; temple of Bacchus at, 82, 198. Terracina, 236, 237. Testudinate cavaedium, 177. Tetrachords, 140 _ff._ Tetrastyle cavaedium, 176. Thalamos, 186. Thales, 42, 195, 225, 269. Thasos, 289. Theatre, 137 _ff._; site of, 137; foundations of, 138 _f._; entrances to, 138, 148; plan of Roman, 146 _ff._; plan of Greek, 151 _ff._; sounding vessels in, 143 _f._; acoustics of site of, 153 _ff._ Thebes in Egypt, 231. Themistocles, colonnade of, 154. Theo of Magnesia, 70. Theocydes, 199. Theodorus, 198. Theodorus the Phocian, 198. Theodosius, 273. Theodotus, 214. Theophrastus, 167, 241. Thessaly, 237. Thrace, 237. [Greek: Thyrôreion], 186. Tiber, 231. Tigris, 231. Timaeus, 241. Timavo, 231. Timber, 58 _ff._ Timotheus, 54, 199. Tivoli, 233; stone quarries of, 49. Tortoise, 311 _ff._; of battering ram, 310; Hegetor's, 312 _ff._ Torus, 90. Towers, construction of, 22 _f._; dimensions of moveable, 310. Tralles, 212; palace of brick at, 53; colonnades at, 154; temple of Aesculapius at, 198. Treasury, location of, 137. Trichalca, 74. Triglyphs, origin of, 107 _ff._; arrangement of, 109 _f._, 113; size of, 112. Trispast (hoisting machine), 285. [Greek: Trochilos] (scotia), 90. Troezen, 54, 234. Troy, 195, 211, 237. Trypho, Alexandrine architect, 317 _f._ Tufa, its qualities, 49. Tuscan, cavaedium, 176; temples, 120 _f._ Twins (constellation), 266. Tyana, 235. Tympanum, 96, 122; water tympanum, 293. Tyre, 309. Ulysses, 211. Universe, definition of, 257. Varro, M. Terentius, 199, 256. Vaultings, 205 _ff._ Vejovis, temple of, 124. Velian country, acid springs of, 238. Venter ([Greek: koilia]), 245. Venus, Corinthian order appropriate to, 15; site of temple of, 31; temple of, 54. Venus (planet), 259. Verdigris, 219. Vergiliae, 189. Vermilion, 213, 215; preparation of, 216. Vesta, altar of, 125. Vestorius, 218. Vesuvius, 46, 47. Via Campana, 238. Vinegar a solvent of rocks, 239. Violets used for purple colour, 220. Virgin (constellation), 265. Vitruvius, education, 13, 168; personal appearance, 36; method of writing, 197 _ff._; military service, 3; his basilica at Fano, 134 _ff._ Voice, defined, 138 _f._; pitch of, determined by climate, 171. Volutes, 93. Voussoirs, 190. Vulcan, site of temple of, 31. Walks, how to be constructed, 156; serve practical purpose, 156. Walls, material for, 24; methods of building, 51 _ff._, 56; of brick are durable, 53; of rubble, 53. Warden (constellation), 265. Water (constellation), 268. Water, 225 _ff._; indispensable, 226; how to find, 227 _ff._; properties of, 232 _ff._; tests of good, 242; methods of conducting, 244 _ff._ Water clocks, 273 _ff._ Waterman (constellation), 266. Water organ, 299 _f._ Water pipes, 244 _ff._ Water screw, 295 _ff._ Water wheels, 294. Wattle and daub, 57 _f._ Weather prognostics, 269 _ff._ Wells, 244 _ff._ Whale (constellation), 267. Wheel (treadmill), 286 _f._ White lead, 219, 238 _f._ Willow, 60. Winds, names and number of, 26 _ff._; diagrams of, 29 _f._; orientation of cities with reference to, 24 _ff._ Wine, given its flavour by soil and water, 236; lees used to make black, 218. Wine rooms, 184. Xanthus, 237. Xenia, 187. Xenophanes, 195, 269. [Greek: Xystos], 161, 188. Xuthus, 103. Xysta ([Greek: paradromides]), 161, 188. Yellow ochre, 220. Zacynthus, 235. Zama, 240. Zea, spring at, 239 _f._ Zeno, 195. Zodiac, 257 _ff._ Zoilus (Homeromastix), 197. 
20924	----	[Transcriber's Note: Text surrounded by +plus signs+ is in blackletter typeface in the original book. Text surrounded by _underscores_ is in italics in the original book. An equal sign preceding a character in brackets, e.g. [=E], represents a macron.] ELY CATHEDRAL [Illustration] ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ELY. HILLS & SON LONDON. SIMPKIN & CO. & ALL BOOKSELLERS [Illustration: THE PRIOR'S DOORWAY] THOS. KELL, LITH. 40, KING STREET COVENT GARDEN, LONDON [Illustration: Ely: Hills & Son Thos. Kell Sculpt. London ELY CATHEDRAL--THE OCTAGON.] [Illustration: +Ely Cathedral.+ GROUND PLAN OF THE CHOIR.] +Ground Plan of the Choir of Ely Cathedral.+ The first three bays are in the Decorated style, about the same date as the Octagon (1337-1361). The Norman bays which they replaced were injured by the fall of the central Tower in 1322. The six eastern bays (the Presbytery) are in the Early English Style, and were built by Bishop Northwold (1235-1252). Having entered the South aisle of the Choir by the iron gate marked 1 on the plan, and passed, on the right, the monuments of Bishop Allen, and the Stewards, we come to 2. Bishop de Luda's monument (1298) restored on the north side by Dean Peacock. 3. Bishop Barnet's tomb (1373). 4. Tomb of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, and his two wives (1470). 5. Tomb of Bishop Hotham (1337) who left money for the rebuilding of the three Decorated bays of the Choir. 6. On the south side of the aisle is the monument erected in 1879 to Canon Selwyn. 7. Bishop West's Chapel, built about 1534, containing the graves of Bishops West, Keene, and Sparke, and on the south side the remains of seven benefactors of the monastery removed from the Conventual Church in 1154; and built in the north wall is the tomb of Cardinal de Luxemburg, Bishop of Ely, who died 1443. 8. In the Retro-Choir is the tomb of Dr. Mill, Canon of Ely, and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, who died in 1853. 9. Grave of Bishop and Mrs. Allen (1845). 10. The east wall on which are traces of painting of which no account can be given. 11. Bishop Alcock's Chapel, containing his grave; he died in 1500; he was founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. 12. Tomb of Bishop Northwold, founder of the Presbytery, who was Abbot of Bury before he became Bishop of Ely; died in 1254. 13. The monument formerly placed over Bishop Hotham's tomb, but supposed to be part of the shrine of St. Etheldreda as adapted by Alan de Walsingham. 14. Tomb of Bishop Kilkenny (1250). 15. Tomb of Bishop Redman (1505). 16. The Reredos, designed by Sir G.G. Scott, presented by John Dunn Gardner, Esq., in memory of his wife (1851). 17. The spiral Staircase leading to the organ loft: the organ was built by Hill and Son, of London. 18 and 19. The Stalls--very ancient, though the carved panels above them are modern; the north side represents a series of pictures from the New Testament; on the south side are illustrations of the Old Testament; they were carved by Abeloos of Louvain. The sub-stalls are new. 20. The oaken Screen designed by Sir G.G. Scott. For further particulars see "Hand-Book to the Cathedral," published by Messrs. HILLS AND SON, Minster Place, near the western entrance to the Cathedral. HAND-BOOK TO THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF +The Monastic Buildings, &c.,+ At ELY: ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS AND GROUND PLANS. [Illustration] NEW EDITION, REVISED. ELY: T.A. HILLS AND SON, BOOKSELLERS, MINSTER PLACE; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO., LONDON; AND ALL OTHER BOOKSELLERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. [Illustration: HILLS & SON PRINTERS ELY] TO +The Rev. the Dean and Chapter of Ely,+ WHOSE UNREMITTING EXERTIONS TO PROMOTE THE RESTORATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS OF THEIR CATHEDRAL CHURCH MERIT THE GRATITUDE OF EVERY LOVER OF ART, AND THE SUPPORT OF THE COUNTRY AT LARGE: THIS ELEVENTH EDITION OF "_A HAND-BOOK TO THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH_," IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY THEIR OBLIGED SERVANT, _THE COMPILER_. [Illustration: ST. ETHELDREDA.] +Advertisement+ TO THE ELEVENTH EDITION. When this Work first appeared as a candidate for public favour in 1852, the Compiler had but faint hopes of its ever attaining a position of usefulness which the sale of the several editions has proved it to have done. His constant aim has been to render it a faithful as well as a convenient and useful companion to strangers and others when examining this interesting Cathedral; and, in order to render each succeeding edition more complete, his study has been to give from time to time the best information in his power upon the improvements which have for many years been in progress. He tenders his best thanks for the kindness of many friends who have afforded him information, and has availed himself of the important remarks of the late Sir G.G. Scott at the Etheldreda Festival in 1873, and of the valuable work of Mr. Stewart to correct as well as to verify and support his own statements, for which his grateful acknowledgments are due. The whole has been revised, and some additions have been made, which he is induced to hope will enhance its value, and render it more worthy of public favor. _April, 1880._ +Advertisement+ TO THE FIRST EDITION. This Hand-book is intended simply as a "guide" for those who visit Ely for the purpose of seeing the Cathedral, the remains of the ancient Monastery, and other objects of similar interest. The Compiler acknowledges himself greatly indebted for much valuable information to the elaborate works of Mr. Bentham and Mr. Millers; and, although he is conscious that his task has been performed but imperfectly, he still ventures to hope that, in the absence of the larger works above referred to, his little compilation will prove both interesting and useful. _May, 1852._ [Illustration] CONTENTS. Introduction Page 1 Historical Summary 14 The See of Ely 17 List of Abbots, Bishops, &c. 19 Officers of the Diocese 22 Dean and Chapter 23 List of Priors and Deans 24 List of Clergy and Officers 26 The Cathedral--West Front 27 Galilee or Portico 30 Interior of the Tower 31 South-west Transept, Baptistry, &c. 34 Nave 35 Nave Aisles 40 Transept 45 Octagon 49 Choir 58 North Aisle of Choir 77 Retro-Choir 80 South Aisle of Choir 81 Lady Chapel, or Trinity Church 88 Upper parts of the Church 91 Exterior 91 Dimensions of the Cathedral 99 The Monastic Buildings, &c. 101 Prior Crauden's Chapel 105 The Bishop's Palace 110 St. Mary's Church 112 The Grange 115 St. John's Hospital 115 Appendix I. The Cathedral Organ 117 II. Statement of Restorations, &c. 120 THE MINSTER. _Copied, by permission, from "Good Words."_ Stone upon stone! Each in its place, For strength and for grace, Rises stone upon stone! Like a cluster of rods, Bound with leaf-garlands tender, The great massive pillars Rise stately and slender; Rise and bend and embrace Until each owns a brother, As down the long aisles They stand linked to each other; While a rod of each cluster Rises higher and higher Breaking up in the shadow, Like clouds that aspire. While here in the midst, 'Neath the great central tower, The strength and the unity Mingle in power, And the mystery greatens: Nowhere in the place Can the eye see the whole, Or the sun light the space. And here the gloom gathers, And deepens to dense, While yonder the white light Breaks sharp and intense. Unity! Mystery! Majesty! Grace! Stone upon stone, And each stone in its place. [Illustration] +Introduction.+ The introductory chapter of a book is often passed over without the careful perusal it very frequently deserves, when, perhaps, its purpose is to promote a better understanding of the subject contained in the main portion of the work. In the present instance our object is to give our readers an outline--a very brief one it is true--of the history and foundation of the monastery at Ely twelve centuries ago, which led to the subsequent erection of one of the noblest Cathedrals in the kingdom, in order to enable them to understand more fully some of the remarks in our description of this grand edifice as we now see it. To those who desire a more elaborate detail or fuller description than we can offer in our limited space, we would recommend a reference to _The History and Antiquities of Ely Cathedral_, by the Rev. James Bentham; or a more recent work, _The Architectural History of Ely Cathedral_, by the Rev. D.J. Stewart, M.A., formerly Minor Canon of Ely. Christianity was first introduced into East Anglia about the end of the sixth century, by Redwald, the grandson of Uffa, founder of that kingdom; but it appears that little progress was made in his time, although Ethelbert, king of Kent, is said to have founded a monastery at Ely about A.D. 604. Eorpwald, and after him, Sigebert, sons of Redwald, greatly promoted the cause of Christianity, and it was during the reign of Sigebert that the truths of the Gospel spread over the kingdom; three monasteries were founded, one at Bury St. Edmunds, another at Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth, and a third at Soham; and the first Bishop of East Anglia was consecrated. The pagan king of Mercia frequently disturbed the tranquility of the kingdom, and Sigebert and his cousin Egric (to whom Sigebert had resigned his kingdom) were both slain in repelling an invasion. Anna met with the same fate; he was a prince greatly esteemed for his good qualities; he married Heriswitha, sister of St. Hilda, the foundress of Whitby Abbey, and had a numerous family, among whom may be named Sexburga, who was married to Ercombert, king of Kent; Withburga, who founded a nunnery at Dereham; and Æthelryth, or, as she is more commonly called, Etheldreda, the renowned foundress of the monastery at Ely, who was born about the year 630, at Exning, in Suffolk, a short distance from Newmarket. Before commencing our sketch of the life of Etheldreda, we may by way of explanation say that what is now the Isle of Ely, was "anciently called _Suth Girwa_,"[1] and is a large tract of high ground en-compassed with fens that were formerly overflowed with water, of which Ely is the principal place, and gives name to the whole. The boundaries as now recognised are Lincolnshire on the north, Norfolk on the east, Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire on the west, and Cambridgeshire on the south, of which county it forms the northern portion, with a jurisdiction partially separate; within its bounds there are, besides the city of Ely, several towns and villages, as Wisbech, March, Chatteris, &c. and the former great waste of marsh and fen has become, by means of drainage, a fertile corn-growing district of great importance. Ely is believed to have taken its name from _Elig_ in the Saxon tongue, signifying a willow; or from _Elge_ in the Latin of Bede the historian, from the abundance of eels produced in the surrounding waters. We now continue our sketch. [Footnote 1: Bentham's History, i. 47.] Etheldreda, or Audrey, a princess of distinguished piety, devoted herself to the service of God in early life, but urged by her parents, was married to Tonbert, or Tonberet, Earldorman, or Prince of the South Gyrvii, or Fenmen, A.D. 652, who settled upon her the whole Isle of Ely as a dower. Three years after her marriage Tonbert died, and left Etheldreda in sole possession, who, after a short time, committed the care of her property to Ovin, her steward, and retired to Ely for the purpose of religious meditation, for which it was well adapted, as being surrounded by fens and waters it was difficult of access. She was again solicited to enter the marriage state, and, although for some time reluctant, she was induced by her uncle Ethelwold, then king of East Anglia, to give her hand to Egfrid, son of Oswy, king of Northumberland, and she afterwards became queen by the accession of her husband to his father's kingdom. After the lapse of twelve years she gained the permission of her husband to withdraw from his court, and retired to the Abbey of Coldingham, where she took the veil; thence withdrew to Ely, and repaired the old church founded by Ethelbert, at a place called Cratendune, about a mile from the present city, (of which place however nothing is now known); but, shortly after, a more commodious site was chosen nearer the river, where the foundations of her church were laid, and the monastery was commenced. The history of this distinguished princess as related by various writers, would be interesting and amusing, if space allowed; it is to be found in _Bede's Ecclesiastical History_, in the _Liber Eliensis_, a very valuable manuscript written or compiled by Thomas, a monk of Ely, who lived in the twelfth century; and Mr. Bentham also relates it at some length in his work;[2] but it would extend far beyond the limits allowed in this sketch; we have, however, we hope given sufficient to throw some light upon remarks we may make in subsequent pages. She governed her house in such a manner as to gain the esteem both of its members and the inhabitants of the surrounding country; living and dying an example of piety and holiness, for we read that "in her last sickness, when sensible of her approaching end, she was calm and composed, and retained her memory and understanding to the last, and expired in the very act of her calling, in the presence of her flock; and whilst she was instructing them how to live, by her example also taught them how to die."[3] She was interred, in accordance with her own wish, in the grave-yard of the monastery, but after a period of sixteen years her remains were translated, with much reverence and ceremony, to the church she had founded. The account of this translation might interest some of our readers, but is too long for insertion here. [Footnote 2: Bentham's History, i. 45, &c.] [Footnote 3: Ibid. i. 59.] The following lines, written at an early date, picture the fen country as a series of lakes and water-courses, (as it was until drained six centuries after,) studded with islands, on one of which the monastery of Ely stood, and the music of its '_nones_' or '_vespers_' sounding soft and sweet over the solitude. Sweetly sang the Monks at Ely, Knüt, the king, row'd nigh: "Listen how the winds be bringing From yon church a holy singing! Row, men, nearer by." Newborn sunbeams kiss the turrets Of the minster high, All the beauties of the morning,-- Grey at first, then golden dreaming,-- Deck the vernal sky. Loudly sang the Monks of Ely On that Thursday morn: 'Twas the Feast of "God Ascended"-- Of the wond'rous drama ended;-- God for sinners born! Hark! "_I will not leave you orphans, I will not leave you long_," Grand the minster music sounded And the fen-land air resounded With the holy song! Sweetly sang the Monks at Ely Knüt, the king, row'd nigh: "Listen to the angels bringing Holy _thoughts_ that seem like singing! Row yet nearer by." We will now continue our narrative, briefly taking in review the history of the monastery as it is handed down to us. About A.D. 673 Etheldreda commenced the foundation of a monastery for both sexes, and was installed the first abbess; she gave the whole Isle of Ely to the monastery as an endowment, and died A.D. 679. She was succeeded by her elder sister Sexburga, then a widow, who died A.D. 699, and was buried beside her sister in the church of the monastery. Erminilda, daughter of Sexburga, and widow of Wulfure, king of Mercia, next succeeded; and the fourth abbess was Werburga, daughter of Erminilda, the time of whose death is not known. Although St. Etheldreda's monastery continued to enjoy a regular succession of abbesses for nearly two centuries, not a single name of its superiors is preserved; protected by its situation in the midst of waters, it was little molested by external troubles until A.D. 870, when it was destroyed--like that of Peterborough--by the Danes, the monastery burnt, and the inhabitants put to the sword. After the destruction of the monastery a century elapsed before steps were taken for its restoration. At length Ethelwold, then Bishop of Winchester, who is spoken of as "a great builder of churches and of various other works," re-founded the monastery in the year 970, by the direction of Edgar "the peaceful," who then sat on the throne of England. After some time Ethelwold arranged with the king for the surrender of the whole district of the Isle of Ely, by way of purchase and exchange, for the use of the monastery. The king, for certain considerations, gave his royal charter[4] restoring the revenues, rights, and privileges to the monastery for ever. This charter (which was afterwards confirmed by king Edward the Confessor,) formed the base of that temporal power given to the church and monastery of Ely by St. Etheldreda, and exercised (with some interruption) by the abbots and bishops down to the year 1836, when it was discontinued by an Act of Parliament. [Footnote 4: This Charter is given at length in the Saxon language, with an English translation, in the Appendix to Bentham's History.] On the re-foundation of the monastery it was placed under the Benedictine rule, which required the separation of the sexes, whereas under the previous order both men and women had resided in the same establishment. Brithnoth, prior of Winchester, was instituted as the first abbot of the restored monastery, by Ethelwold, and appears to have been zealous in his duty; he governed the house eleven years, but in the year 981 he met an untimely death at the instigation of Elfrida, queen dowager of king Edgar. He was succeeded by Elsin, Leofric, Leofsin, Wilfric, Thurstan, (the last Saxon abbot, who surrendered the monastery to the Conqueror in 1071,) Theodwin, Godfrey, (a monk, as Administrator _ad interim_,) and Simeon, the ninth abbot, who was a relative of king William, and prior of Winchester; he recovered for his monastery some of the lands which had been given to the Normans during the siege of the fen district. This was the "Camp of Refuge" for all the English who refused submission to the arbitrary rule of the foreigners, and thus it was the last strong hold of the Saxons, and cost the Norman king much loss of time, blood, and treasure, before he obtained possession, which was, however, at last effected by the treachery of the abbot Thurstan. Simeon, though a very old man when he was appointed abbot, laid the foundation of a new church (the present Cathedral) A.D. 1083, as his brother Walkelin, bishop of Winchester, had done there about four years before; he lived to the age of one hundred years, and died in 1093; after this a vacancy of seven years occurred, during which the revenues were claimed for the use of the king (William II.) after whose death the work was continued by Richard, the tenth and last abbot, who was appointed on the accession of Henry I. A.D. 1100, and governed the monastery seven years, and his church is said by Thomas of Ely[5] to have been one of the noblest in the kingdom, and a marvel of architectural skill; and was sufficiently far advanced to allow him to translate into it on the 17th of October, 1106, the remains of Etheldreda and her companions and canonized successors, placing them behind the high altar in the new presbytery, with great pomp and ceremony. Further progress was made under Hervè le Breton, formerly Bishop of Bangor, who was appointed administrator to the monastery after the death of Richard. [Footnote 5: Liber Eliensis, ii.] Hitherto, spiritual jurisdiction over the Isle of Ely had been claimed by the Bishop of Lincoln, but Abbot Richard obtained the consent of the king (Henry I.) to a scheme for converting the abbacy into a bishopric; and after much negociation, the change was effected in 1109, by the appointment of Hervè (then administrator) as the first Bishop of Ely. He set himself energetically to the task of settling the government of his See, and of apportioning the lands and revenues of the monastery between the monks and himself, with a keen eye to his own interests and those of his successors. At the time of the conversion of the abbacy into a bishopric, when the Conventual Church became a Cathedral, the number of monks was about fifty, though the usual number was seventy; of these the chief in subordination to the Bishop, was the Prior, (sometimes styled the Lord Prior) who had the superintendence over all the inferior members; and next, the Sub-Prior, or Prior's deputy, to assist him when present and act for him in his absence. The other officers were, the Sacrist, who had the care of the books, vestments, plate, and ornaments belonging to the church, as well as the superintendence of the buildings; the Cellarer, who procured all the necessaries for the living of the community; the Chamberlain, who provided their clothes, beds, and bedding; the Almoner, who distributed the charities of the monastery; the Precentor, who regulated the singing and the choristers; the Hosteller, who entertained strangers; the Infirmarer, who had the charge of the sick; and the Treasurer, who received the rents and other means of revenue, and made the disbursements. We have endeavoured briefly to bring down our history from the period of the introduction of Christianity into East Anglia, and the foundation of the monastery, to the time when the present Cathedral was commenced and some way advanced; we will follow it up with a brief account of the periods of erection of this noble edifice, reserving the more particular description of the several parts for our survey of the building. There is no Cathedral in England which possesses finer examples of the various successive styles of ecclesiastical architecture than that of Ely; affording excellent opportunities of judging of the comparative merits of each. The Norman portion of the building--the Nave and Transept--is lighter in character than earlier examples of the same style; indeed, in many places it bears marks of transition from the round to the pointed style. Of each of the several periods of what is usually termed Pointed, or Gothic, Ely Cathedral possesses pure and perfect specimens: the Galilee, or western porch, and the Presbytery were built when the Early English style was perfected: the Octagon, the three bays of the stalled Choir, and the Lady Chapel, when the Decorated English prevailed: and the chapels of bishops Alcock and West when the Perpendicular style was adopted. "It will be thus seen that this remarkable structure completely illustrates the history of church architecture in England from the Conquest to the Reformation," viz., Norman, A.D. 1066-1150; Transitional, 1150-1200; Early English, 1200-1300; Decorated, 1300-1460; Florid, or Perpendicular, 1460-1550.[6] [Footnote 6: The periods were thus divided by the late Mr. Sharpe: Norman, A.D. 1066-1145; Transitional, 1145-1190; Lancet, 1190-1245; Geometrical, 1245-1315; Curvilinear, 1315-1360; Rectilinear, 1360-1550.] The Cathedral was commenced, as before stated, in A.D. 1083, by Simeon, in the Norman style; the Choir, with its apse or semicircular end--altered however to a square end before it had proceeded far--the central Tower, the great Transept, and part of the Nave were begun by him, but were not finished at his death in 1093; of this work, only the ground-story of the great Transept now remains; the original plan, as was usual in Norman churches, comprehended an eastern arm of moderate length, a Transept, with a central Tower at the crossing, and a Nave; the Choir usually occupying the crossing and one or more bays of the Nave, the eastern arm being used as a presbytery or sanctuary. After a delay of seven years, the work was carried on by Abbot Richard (1100-1107), who probably completed them, with the exception of the Nave, which was finished about 1174, affording a fine specimen of later Norman, and by its extension westward gave the church the form of a Latin cross, then much used. It is not improbable that the Conventual Church, which the new building was intended to supersede, stood on the site of the present Nave, and was removed from time to time to make room for the new and enlarged building then in progress. A few years later the great western Tower with the wings, forming a second Transept, were begun, but whether by Bishop Harvey or by the monks themselves during the episcopate of Bishop Nigel (1133-1169), we cannot say; they were carried on during the episcopate of Bishop Ridel (1174-1189), and completed as high as the first battlements during that of his successor, Longchamp (1189-1197), producing a fine example of what is called the Transitional style. During this latter period the Romanesque had been rapidly giving way to the Pointed style, and thus as the building progressed one style merged into the other. After some years further progress was made towards the west, as the Galilee, or western porch, is stated to have been erected by Bishop Eustace (1198-1215), of whom it is recorded that "he built from the foundation the new Galilee of the Church at Ely, towards the west, at his own cost." "This has given rise to much difference of opinion. Some persons think that by the 'Galilee towards the west,' is meant the western porch, while others holding that so fine a work is inconsistent with so early a date, suppose the Galilee to have been the northern half (now lost) of the western Transept.... My own impression has always been that it was the west porch which still exists."[7] Be this as it may, it is a beautiful specimen of the Early English style; and Bishop Northwold (1229-1254) took down the east end of the church and lengthened it by the six eastern arches, usually called the Presbytery, with its magnificent eastern façade, in the same style; they were begun A.D. 1234, and finished and dedicated in 1252, being "one of the noblest pieces of architecture of that glorious architectural period." About the same time a spire of timber covered with lead was erected on the Tower. [Footnote 7: Lecture on Ely Cathedral by the late Sir G.G. Scott, at the Etheldreda Festival, Oct. 1873.] We now come to the period in which the "two great and famous productions of the fourteenth century--the two special objects of pride which our Cathedral boasts--the Lady Chapel and the central Octagon, with the three adjoining bays eastward,"[8] were erected; "each work is of the highest and of undisputed merit, and forms a most marked feature in the building;"[9] affording most admirable specimens of the Decorated English style. In 1321 the foundation stone of the vast and magnificent Lady Chapel was laid by Alan de Walsingham, then sub-prior, in the time of Bishop Hotham (1316-1337), the work was continued under Bishop Montacute (1337-1345), and finished in 1349, under Bishop L'Isle (1345-1362). In the year following the commencement of this work the fall of the great central Tower took place, ruining the adjoining bays all round, and especially those of the Norman Presbytery. This catastrophe was not altogether unexpected, for the monks had discontinued the use of the Choir and held their services in St. Catherine's Chapel, in the western part of the Cathedral. The Tower fell with such noise and violence as "to make the whole city to tremble, and to cause men to think that an earthquake had taken place." The work of rebuilding was soon undertaken, and under the skilful directions of the same Alan de Walsingham (who was doubtless the architect of both these erections,) the grand work was accomplished; the stone-work of the Octagon was finished (if indeed it ever was quite finished) in 1328, and the woodwork and roof about 1342. The plan of the Octagon included in its area one bay on each of its four sides. The expense of rebuilding the three bays on the eastern side was defrayed by a sum of money left by Bishop Hotham. [Footnote 8: Ibid.] [Footnote 9: Ibid.] The spire erected on the western Tower by Bishop Northwold was taken down in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and was replaced by an octagonal story, flanked with turrets, in the Decorated style, above which a spire was again placed. This was an injudicious step, and has been thought to have been the primary cause of the ruin of the north-western Transept, the great additional weight being more than the four supporting arches (which were lofty) were intended to bear. Of the period when the Transept fell, or was taken down, we have no record; but the character of the buttress on the site of the western wall shows that it must have been at an early period, probably about A.D. 1400, as the strengthening arches placed within the original ones appear to have been erected a few years after. We have no further additions to the fabric to particularise in this sketch, with the exception of the chapel of Bishop Alcock, (1486-1500), in the Perpendicular style; and that of Bishop West (1515-1533), in the same style, but when it was approaching to Renaissance; but the alterations of windows and other parts, together with necessary repairs, have been numerous and various at different periods. The Choir was under the Octagon until 1770, when it was removed to the east end of the church; it was again altered in 1852 to its present position. Many costly and extensive restorations[10] and alterations have been made within the last thirty-five years, and others are still in progress. The Galilee, or western porch, has been cleansed and floored, and the arch of communication with the Tower beautifully restored; the western Tower has been strengthened, the interior thrown more open, a painted ceiling put up, and a new floor laid; the south-west Transept has been opened, repaired, ceiled, paved and cleansed; the apsidal Chapel of St. Catherine has been rebuilt and paved; the roof of the Nave has been re-covered with lead, the interior walls have been cleansed, a new and beautiful painted ceiling completed, and a new floor laid in the Nave and aisles; the Octagon and Lantern have undergone a thorough repair, and the decoration of the dome and lantern has been effected; the great Transept has been repaired, the polychrome roof re-painted, and a new floor laid in the northern portion. The whole of the eastern portion of the church has been cleansed and restored; the beautiful Purbeck marble pillars have been re-polished; the floor of the Choir has been re-laid with veined and black marble combined with encaustic tiles; an enriched oaken screen has been erected at the entrance of the Choir, near which a new and elegant stone pulpit has been placed; the original stalls have been repaired, and improved by the introduction of a series of carved panels, and new sub-stalls erected; and a new and elaborate reredos or altar screen has been placed in the Choir. More than eighty windows, exclusive of the eight lights at the east end of the church, have been filled with stained glass by various artists, and several others, which had for many years been stopped up, have been re-opened; the organ has been very considerably enlarged and improved, put into a new and elegant case, and placed in another position; and several stoves have been introduced for warming the Cathedral when necessary. The whole has been done at considerable expense, to meet which the funds have been raised by subscriptions, towards which the late Bishops Sparke, Allen, Turton, and Browne, the late Deans Peacock and Goodwin, the Canons and their families and connections, with many noblemen, gentlemen, and others, have been contributors: the capitular body have done much towards the work in general, but particularly towards the repairs of the fabric, the enlargement of the organ, and the warming of the Cathedral. For a more detailed account of works and expenses we refer our readers to Appendix II. at the end of the work. [Footnote 10: The Restorations, which have been for some years in progress, have been executed throughout with the most scrupulous care, preserving every portion of uninjured surface, and re-producing what is mutilated or destroyed as nearly as possible in exact conformity with the indications of the ancient work afforded by the parts which remain, and in the same material. They were at first carried out under the directions of the late Dean Peacock, assisted from time to time by Professor Willis, and by the occasional advice of Professional friends: but towards the end of the year 1847, Sir G.G. Scott was appointed architect to the works, and under his direction the rearrangement of the Choir was effected, and other restorations in progress carried out until his death. The windows have been filled with stained glass chiefly through the munificence and exertions of the late Canon E.B. Sparke.] * * * * * St. Etheldreda's church was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; the church erected by Ethelwold to St. Peter and St. Etheldreda; but since the Reformation the dedication of the Cathedral has been to "The Holy and Undivided Trinity." * * * * * HISTORICAL SUMMARY. A.D. 673 Foundation of the Monastery for men and women, married and single, by Queen Etheldreda. Etheldreda, first abbess, succeeded by (1) her sister Sexburga. (2) Erminilda, daughter of Sexburga. (3) Withburga, daughter of Erminilda. 870 The Monastery destroyed by the Danes. 970 The secular clergy, who had returned to Ely, dismissed by Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and the monastery reconstituted for monks only under the rule of St. Benedict. Brithnoth first abbot. 1071 The Abbey, after a long defence by Hereward, surrendered to William the Conqueror by Abbot Thurstan. 1083 The building of the present Cathedral commenced with the south-eastern Transept, by Abbot Simeon, brother of Walkelin of Winchester. 1109 Erection of the Diocese of Ely, Hervè le Breton being appointed the first Bishop. Building of the Nave, Transepts, Tower and Choir continued through the twelfth century. 1215 (about) Erection of Galilee Porch. 1235 Erection of the Presbytery, eastward of the Choir, by Bishop Northwold. A spire erected on the Tower. 1321 Building of the Lady Chapel (Trinity Church) commenced. 1322 Fall of the Central Tower, followed by construction of the Octagon and Lantern, by Alan de Walsingham. Western portion of the Choir reconstructed by Bishop Hotham. 1330 (about) Prior Crauden's Chapel and the Guest Chamber, now the Deanery, erected. 1340 The Stalls, the work of Alan de Walsingham, placed in the Octagon, the position of the Choir before the fall of the central Tower. 1400 (about) William de Walpol, prior, erected the great gate of the Abbey (Ely Porta). About this time erection of the Octagon or Campanile on the West Tower, followed by the strengthening of the piers below. 1440 Erection of the Cloisters, and towards the end of the century, Bishop Alcock's Chapel. 1534 Bishop West's Chapel. 1541 The Abbey dissolved by Henry VIII. and reconstituted as a Chapter of Dean and Canons. Robert Steward last Prior and first Dean. The conventional [Transcriber's Note: so in original, probably should be "conventual"] buildings sold and destroyed, portions only reserved for residence of Dean and Canons and other officers. The Guest Chamber used as the common Hall of the College, but converted at a later period into the Deanery. 1642 Dean Fuller deprived by the Parliament. During the Rebellion Ely occupied by Cromwell's soldiers, and the Cathedral said to have been used for stabling their horses. 1649 Commissioners under the Commonwealth survey and cause further destruction of the conventual buildings. 1676 Pavement of the Nave restored by Mr. Clopton. 1699 Fall of the north-west angle of the north-eastern Transept; rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. 1754 Extensive repairs of the roof of the Octagon and Choir by Bishop Mawson, and Deans Allix and Thomas. 1770 The stalls transferred from the Octagon to the Presbytery by Essex, architect, and important repairs of the fabric executed. 1771 Publication of Bentham's "History and Antiquities of Ely Cathedral" 1801 The upper parts of the Tower repaired. 1823 The Nave, Octagon, Lantern, and Transepts coloured, and the Stalls painted. This was done at considerable expense, and deemed at the time a great improvement. 1831 A new Organ put in the old case. 1842 A fire accidentally commenced in the roof of the Nave adjoining the Tower, but was soon extinguished. The roof of the Nave re-covered with lead. 1845 Commencement of the modern Restoration of the Cathedral under Dean Peacock. St. Catherine's Chapel rebuilt. South-western Transept restored. Interior of the western Tower opened and ceiled. 1847 Sir G. Gilbert Scott appointed architect. The stalls removed westward and Choir re-arranged. Painting of the Nave ceiling commenced, &c. A large number of stained windows introduced. 1851 The Organ re-modelled, enlarged and removed to the triforium. 1857 The east windows filled with stained glass. 1858 Restorations continued under Dean Goodwin. The Reredos erected. The Lantern reconstructed as a memorial to Dean Peacock. Western entrance repaired. Commencement of pavement of the Nave, &c., &c. Foundations of the South Aisle of the Choir repaired. 1867 The Organ further enlarged and improved, towards which some of the inhabitants of the town contributed £80 for a sub-base of 32 feet tone [Transcriber's Note: so in original; possibly "of stone."]. 1870 Restorations continued under the present Dean. Foundations of south-east Transept and south side of the Choir repaired. Western Tower braced with iron bands. Pavement of Nave and Aisles completed. Further additions to stained glass in Choir. Fourth stained window placed in the Octagon. 1873 Celebration of the Bissexcentenary or Twelve-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Monastery. 1874 Commencement of the decoration of the Octagon, Lantern, &c. 1875 Several new sculptured figures placed in the Octagon, and the decoration of the Octagon and Lantern completed and re-opened. 1876 The paving of the north Transept completed. 1878 The ceiling of the Baptistry painted by Mr. Parry. 1879 The corona of pinnacles on the exterior of the Octagon completed. A monument to Canon Selwyn placed in the South Aisle of the Choir. [Illustration] +The See of Ely.+ Edgar "the peaceful," by his charter, as mentioned in the Introduction, restored the powers and privileges enjoyed by the Superiors of the monastery previous to its destruction by the Danes, to the newly-appointed Abbot on its re-foundation by Bishop Ethelwold, A.D. 970, and the Abbots of Ely successively exercised powers nearly similar to a County Palatine, and after the change from an abbacy to a bishopric, the bishops continued to exercise similar authority until the reign of Henry VIII., when they were greatly abridged by an Act of Parliament. The successive Bishops of Ely, however, until the year 1836, possessed a jurisdiction of considerable importance, and had almost sovereign authority within the district known as the Isle of Ely, which was styled "_The Royal Franchise or Liberty of the Bishops of Ely_." On the conversion of the abbacy into a bishopric A.D. 1109, a division of the property and revenues took place, and the bishop took care to protect his own interests and those of his successors, but the charge and repairs of the church and monastery fell to the share of the prior and monks, the bishop retaining a certain jurisdiction over them. The County of Cambridge, with the exception of a few parishes, was transferred from the See of Lincoln to the new See of Ely, and the Manor of Spaldwick, in the County of Huntingdon, was given to the Bishop of Lincoln in compensation. The See now comprises the Counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Bedford, and the western division of the County of Suffolk, comprised in the Archdeaconry of Sudbury. It is divided into four Archdeaconries, which are subdivided into thirty-three Rural Deaneries, except the Isle of Ely, which is under the peculiar Archidiaconal jurisdiction of the Bishop, and is divided into two Rural Deaneries. There are five hundred and fifty-four benefices in the diocese. The population of the whole is about 500,000; and the area in acres is 1,357,756. The Bishop has patronage to a considerable extent; he appoints to the Chancellorship, to the Registrarship, to the four Archdeaconries, the Rural Deaneries, to four Canonries in the Cathedral, and several Honorary Canonries; to the Mastership and one Fellowship of Jesus College, to one Fellowship at St. John's College, to the Mastership of St. Peter's College, and is Visitor of four Colleges, in Cambridge, and of several schools; and has about fifty livings in his gift. * * * * * _Arms of the See_--Gu. three ducal coronets or. These are derived from the arms of the East Anglian kings. * * * * * The following list of the Bishops, to which is prefixed the succession of Abbesses and Abbots, is derived chiefly from Mr. Bentham's _History and Antiquities of Ely Cathedral_. ABBESSES. A.D. 673. St. Etheldreda. Foundress, and first Abbess. 679. St. Sexburga. 699. St. Erminilda. ? St. Werburga. ABBOTS. A.D. 970. Brithnoth. First Abbot. 981. Elsin. 1016. Leofwin, or Oschitel. 1022. Leofric. 1029. Leofsin. 1045. Wilfric. 1066. Thurstan. Last Saxon Abbot. 1072. Theodwin. A monk of Jumièges. 1075. [Godfrey, Administrator _ad interim_.] 1081. Simeon. Founder of the Norman Church. _Interval of seven years._ 1100. Richard. Completed the Norman Choir. Translated into it the remains of the sainted Abbesses. Commenced negociations for the conversion of the abbacy into a bishoprick. Died 1107. BISHOPS. 1109. Hervè, or Hervey, first Bishop. The abbey estates divided, and the See firmly established. Died 1131. 1133. Nigellus, a Prebendary of St. Paul's, London. Treasurer to the King, Henry I. A Baron of the Exchequer. Died 1169. 1174. Geoffry Ridel, Archdeacon of Canterbury. Chaplain to King Henry II. Baron of the Exchequer. Opponent of Becket. He built the lower part of the great western tower of the church. 1189. William Longchamp, Chancellor of England. Papal Legate. Died at Poictiers, 1197. 1198. Eustachius, Archdeacon of Richmond, Treasurer of York, and Dean of Salisbury. Chancellor of England. Founder of the Galilee or western porch. (See Stewart's Arch. Hist. of Ely Cathedral, p. 50.) Died 1215. 1215. [Robert of York, chosen by the monks, but never consecrated, held possession of the temporalities of the See for five years.] 1220. John de Fontibus, Abbot of Fountains in Yorkshire. 1225. Geoffery de Burgh, Archdeacon of Norwich. 1229. Hugh de Northwold, Abbot of St. Edmundsbury. This distinguished prelate built the magnificent Presbytery, or eastern portion of the choir. On the occasion of the dedication of the whole church, he entertained sumptuously the King, Henry III., Prince Edward his son, and many nobles and bishops. 1254. William de Kilkenny, Archdeacon of Coventry, and Chancellor. 1257. Hugh de Balsham, Sub-prior of the abbey. Founder of St. Peter's, the first endowed College at Cambridge. 1286. John de Kirkeby. Treasurer of King Edward I. Canon of Wells and York. Archdeacon of Coventry. 1290. William de Luda, (or Louth), Archdeacon of Durham. Prebendary of St. Paul's, of York, and of Lincoln. Sometime Chancellor. Died 1298. 1299. Ralph de Walpole, Bishop of Norwich. 1302. Robert de Orford, Prior of the convent. 1310. John de Ketene, almoner of the church. 1316. John Hotham, Chancellor of the king's (Edward II.) exchequer; Prebendary of York; Rector of Cottingham, in Yorkshire. Bishop Hotham was a munificent promoter of the great architectural works carried on under the rule of Prior Crauden, and from the designs of Alan de Walsingham, then Sacrist. In his time the Lady Chapel was begun; the Octagon completed; and the exquisite bays of the western Choir designed. 1337. Simon de Montacute, Bishop of Worcester. The Monks had chosen Prior Crauden. 1345. Thomas L'Isle, Prior of Dominicans at Winchester. The choice of the Monks, which had fallen upon Alan of Walsingham the illustrious architect, then their Prior, was again set aside by the Pope, 1361. 1362. Simon Langham, Abbot of Westminster, and Treasurer of England. Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chancellor. In 1368 created Cardinal. 1366. John Barnet. Treasurer of England. Had been Bishop of Worcester; afterwards of Bath, thence translated to Ely. 1374. Thomas de Arundel, Archdeacon of Taunton. Appointed Chancellor of England in 1386; Archbishop of York in 1388, of Canterbury, 1396. 1388. John Fordham, Dean of Wells; Keeper of the Privy Seal. 1426. Philip Morgan, Bishop of Worcester. Died 1435. 1438. Louis de Luxemburg, Archbishop of Rouen. Had been Chancellor of France and Normandy. Afterwards Cardinal. 1444. Thomas Bourchier, Bishop of Worcester; translated to Canterbury 1454. Cardinal, 1464. 1454. William Gray, D.D., Archdeacon of Northampton. Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Lord Treasurer. Bishop Gray altered some of the aisle windows of the Presbytery. 1478. John Morton, LL.D., Master of the Rolls. Archdeacon of Winchester. Lord Chancellor, 1479. Translated to Canterbury, 1486. Cardinal, 1493. Bishop Morton was the first to attempt to drain the Fens; hence "Morton's Leam," a drain extending from Guyhirn to Peterborough. 1486. John Alcock, LL.D., Master of the Rolls. Bishop of Rochester; afterwards of Worcester; translated to Ely. Founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. Bishop Alcock built the elaborate mortuary chapel in which his remains lie buried, and much of the Episcopal Palace at Ely. 1501. Richard Redman, D.D., Bishop of St. Asaph; then of Exeter. 1506. James Stanley, D.D., Archdeacon of Richmond; Precentor of Salisbury. 1515. Nicholas West, LL.D., Chaplain to King Henry VII. Dean of Windsor. Built a chapel bearing his name. 1534. Thomas Goodrich, D.D., a zealous promoter of the Reformation. One of the revisers of the Translation of the New Testament. Lord Chancellor, 1551. Built Gallery of the Palace. 1554. Thomas Thirlby, D.D., Bishop of Westminster; translated to Norwich; thence to Ely. Dispossessed for refusing the oath of supremacy to Queen Elizabeth, 1559. 1559. Richard Cox, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and of Westminster. Died 1581. _The See vacant Eighteen years._ 1600. Martin Heton, D.D., Dean of Winchester. 1609. Lancelot Andrewes, D.D., Bishop of Chichester. Translated from Ely to Winchester, 1619. Author of the celebrated Book of Devotions. 1619. Nicholas Felton, D.D., Bishop of Bristol. One of the Translators of the Bible. 1628. John Buckeridge, D.D., Bishop of Rochester. 1631. Francis White, D.D., Bishop of Carlisle; then of Norwich. 1638. Matthew Wren, D.D., Bishop of Hereford; thence translated to Norwich; thence to Ely. Bishop Wren was confined in the Tower for 18 years, in consequence of his firm support of the Royal Authority. 1667. Benjamin Laney, D.D., translated from Peterborough to Lincoln; thence to Ely. Bishop Laney bequeathed an estate to trustees for putting out youths as apprentices. 1675. Peter Gunning, D.D., translated from Chichester. 1684. Francis Turner, D.D., translated from Rochester. Bishop Turner was one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower, and was deprived, as a non-juror, in 1691. Died 1700. 1691. Simon Patrick, D.D., Dean of Peterborough; Bishop of Chichester: translated to Ely. Well known for his Devotional and Theological Works. 1707. John Moore, D.D., Bishop of Norwich. 1714. William Fleetwood, D.D., Bishop of St. Asaph. 1723. Thomas Greene, D.D., Bishop of Norwich. 1738. Robert Butts, D.D., Bishop of Norwich. 1748. Sir Thomas Gooch, Bart., D.D., Bishop of Bristol; translated to Norwich; thence to Ely. 1754. Matthias Mawson, D.D., Master of Corp. Chris. College, Cambridge; Bishop of Llandaff: translated to Chichester; thence to Ely. Bishop Mawson was the first to make a road practicable for wheeled carriages from Cambridge. 1771. Edmund Keene, D.D., Bishop of Chester. Effected great improvements in the Palace at Ely. 1781. James Yorke, D.D., Bishop of St. David's; translated to Gloucester; thence to Ely. 1808. Thomas Dampier, D.D., Bishop of Rochester. 1812. Bowyer Edward Sparke, D.D., Bishop of Chester. On the death of Bishop Sparke the temporal jurisdiction exercised within the Isle of Ely by the Bishops ceased by Act of Parliament. 1836. Joseph Allen, D.D., Bishop of Bristol. The additions to the Diocese of the Counties of Huntingdon and Bedford, and the Archdeaconry of Sudbury were made in 1837. 1845. Thomas Turton, D.D., Dean of Peterborough; afterwards of Westminster, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. 1864. Edward Harold Browne, D.D., Canon of Exeter; Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Translated to Winchester, 1873. 1873. James Russell Woodford, D.D., Vicar of Leeds, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. +Diocese of Ely.+ _The Lord Bishop._ The Right Rev. JAMES RUSSELL WOODFORD, D.D., The Palace, Ely, and Ely House, Dover Street, London, W. _Chancellor of the Diocese._ Worshipful Isambard Brunel, Esq., D.C.L., 4, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, London, W.C. _Archdeacons._ _Ely_, Ven. William Emery, B.D., The College, Ely. _Bedford_, Ven. Frederick Bathurst, M.A., Biggleswade. Beds. _Huntingdon_, Ven. Francis Gerald Vesey, M.A., LL.D., Huntingdon. _Sudbury_, Ven. Frank Robert Chapman, M.A., Stowlangtoft Rectory, Bury St. Edmunds, and Ely. _Registrar._ William Johnson Evans, Esq., Ely. _Chaplains to the Bishop._ Rev. H.M. Luckock, D.D., Canon of the Cathedral.[11] Rev. H.F. St. John, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge, Dinmore House, Hereford. Rev. A.R. Evans, M.A., Oriel College, Oxford.[12] Rev. V.H. Stanton, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.[13] Rev. J. Watkins, M.A., St. John's College, Cambridge; Gamlingay Vicarage, Sandy. Rev. Francis Paget, M.A., Senior Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford.[14] [Footnote 11: Examining Chaplain.] [Footnote 12: Domestic Chaplain.] [Footnote 13: Examining Chaplain.] [Footnote 14: Examining Chaplain.] _Proctors in Convocation._ Rev. Canon Hopkins. Rev. Canon Birkett. _Secretaries._ J.B. & H.W. Lee, Esqs., 2, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster. William Johnson Evans, Esq., Ely. _Diocesan Architect._ Arthur Blomfield, Esq. [Illustration] +The Dean and Chapter.+ When the abbacy was converted into a bishopric, A.D. 1109, the office of Abbot merged into that of bishop, and an officer called the Prior, or Lord Prior, became the head of the community; he presided in chapter, and governed generally the affairs of the monastery; and in the reigns of some of our kings he was summoned to sit in Parliament. The first Prior after this alteration was Vincent, and there followed in succession thirty-six others, the last of whom, Robert Wells otherwise Steward, surrendered the monastery, with its goods and possessions, into the hands of King Henry the Eighth, at the general dissolution in November, 1539. Agreeably to the powers vested in him by Parliament, the king, by letters patent dated September 10th, 1541, "did grant his royal charter for erecting the Cathedral Church of the late monastery of _St. Peter and St. Etheldreda_ at Ely into a Cathedral Church, by the name and title of "_The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely_" to consist of one Dean, a priest, and eight Prebendaries,[15] priests, with other ministers necessary for the celebrating Divine service therein." And "did ordain the said Cathedral Church to be the Episcopal See of the Bishop of Ely and his successors, with all the honours and privileges of an Episcopal See and Cathedral Church. And that the said Dean and Prebendaries be one body corporate, have perpetual succession, one common seal, be the Chapter of the then Bishop of Ely, and his successors, and be called '_The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely_:' also did give and grant unto them the whole site of the late dissolved monastery, with all the ancient privileges, liberties, and free customs of the same, and nearly all the revenues thereof." Robert Steward, the late Prior, was made the first Dean, since whose time twenty-three others have held the office exclusive of the present Dean, who was appointed in December, 1869. [Footnote 15: By an Act of Parliament passed in 1840, the number of Prebendaries was in future to be reduced to six, two of which stalls were to be attached respectively to the Regius Professorships of Greek and Hebrew in the University of Cambridge.] We append a list of the Priors and Deans of Ely. PRIORS. 1. Vincent. 2. Henry. 3. William. 4. Tombert, or Thembert. 5. Alexander. 6. Solomon. 7. Richard. 8. Robert Longchamp. 9. John de Strateshete. 10. Hugh. 11. Roger de Brigham. 12. Ralph. 13. Walter. 14. Robert de Leverington. 15. Henry de Banccis. 16. John de Hemingston. 17. John de Shepreth. 18. John Saleman. 19. Robert de Orford. 20. William de Clare. 21. John de Fresingfield. 22. John de Crauden. 23. Alan de Walsingham. 24. William Hathfield. 25. John Bucton. 26. William Walpole. 27. William Powcher. 28. Edmund Walsingham. 29. Peter de Ely. 30. William Wells. 31. Henry Peterborough. 32. Roger Westminster. 33. Robert Colville. 34. William Witlesey. 35. William Foliott. 36. John Cottenham. 37. Robert Wells, _alias_ Steward, last Prior, and first Dean. DEANS. A.D. 1541. Robert Steward, or Wells, M.A., last Prior. 1557. Andrew Perne, D.D., Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge. 1589. John Bell, D.D., Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. 1591. Humphrey Tindall, D.D., President of Queen's College, Cambridge. 1614. Henry Cæsar, or Adelmare, D.D. Dean Cæsar was a great patron of Music. A musical Service, known as "Cæsar's Service," but written by John Amner, Organist, is preserved among the MSS. in the Cathedral Library. 1636. William Fuller, D.D. In 1646, Dean of Durham. 1646. William Beale, D.D., nominated but never admitted; Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. Died at Madrid, 1650. _A vacancy of ten years._ 1660. Richard Love, D.D., Master of Bene't College, Cambridge. 1661. Henry Ferne, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; in 1662 Bishop of Chester. Died five weeks after his consecration. 1662. Edward Martin, D.D., Master of Queen's College, Cambridge. Died a few days after his institution. 1662. Francis Wilford, D.D., Master of Bene't College, Cambridge. 1667. Robert Mapletoft, D.D., Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Dean Mapletoft left several acres of land to augment the Stipends of the Singing Men. 1677. John Spencer, D.D., Master of Bene't College, Cambridge. 1693. John Lamb, M.A., Chaplain to King William and Queen Mary. 1708. Charles Roderick, D.D., Provost of King's College, Cambridge. 1712. Robert Moss, D.D., Fellow and Tutor of Bene't College, Cambridge. 1729. John Frankland, D.D., Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. 1730. Peter Allix, D.D., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Commenced important repairs in the fabric of the Church. 1758. Hugh Thomas, D.D., Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. 1780. William Cooke, D.D., Provost of King's College, Cambridge. 1797. William Pearce, D.D., Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. 1820. James Wood, D.D., Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. 1839. George Peacock, D.D., Lowndean Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge. Extensive repairs and restorations were commenced in 1844. 1858. Harvey Goodwyn, D.D. In 1869, Bishop of Carlisle. 1869. Charles Merivale, D.D., D.C.L. * * * * * _Arms of the Deanery_--Gu. three keys or. These were the arms of Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, and from him assumed as the arms of the monastery. * * * * * The Dean and Chapter have the patronage of sixteen livings in this diocese, three in the diocese of Norwich, and one in the diocese of Rochester. They also appoint to the Minor Canonries and other offices connected with the Cathedral. * * * * * Service--On Sundays at 9 0, a.m., 11 0, a.m., and 4 0, p.m. A Parochial Service at 6 30, p.m. The Ordinary Daily Service at 10 0, a.m., and 4 0, p.m. +List of Clergy and Officers.+ _Dean._ The Very Rev. CHARLES MERIVALE, D.D., D.C.L. 1869. _Canons._[16] Thomas Jarrett, M.A.[17] 1854. Benjamin Hall Kennedy, D.D.[18][19] 1867. William Emery, B.D.[20] 1870. Edward Clarke Lowe, D.D.[21] 1873. Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D. 1875. Frank Robert Chapman, M.A. 1879. [Footnote 16: All have Residences.] [Footnote 17: Annexed to the Regius Professorship of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge.] [Footnote 18: Annexed to the Regius Professorship of Greek in the University of Cambridge.] [Footnote 19: Proctor for the Chapter in Convocation.] [Footnote 20: Vice Dean.] [Footnote 21: Treasurer.] _Honorary Canons._ William Bonner Hopkins, B.D., 1865. Samuel Blackall, M.A. 1866. Wm. Hepworth Thompson, D.D. 1867. Thomas Tylecote, B.D. 1867. George Heathcote, M.A. 1868. Alexander Ronald Grant, M.A. 1868. Frederick Bathurst, M.A. 1869. John Scott, M.A. 1869. John Parker Birkett, M.A. 1870. Charles Gray, M.A. 1870. Thomas Rawson Birks, M.A. 1871. Francis Gerald Vesey, M.A. 1871. Thomas Ed. Abraham, M.A. 1872. Jeremiah W. Haddock, M.A. 1872. C.W. Underwood, M.A. 1875. Hon. A.F. Phipps, M.A. 1875. G. Bulstrode, M.A. 1876. H.I. Sharpe, M.A. 1876. J.W. Cockshott, M.A. 1877. C. Brereton, M.A., B.C.L. 1877. J.H. Macaulay, M.A. 1878. W.T. Harrison, M.A. 1880. W.M. Campion, M.A. 1880. _Head Master of the Grammar School_--Rev. R. Winkfield, M.A. _Second Master_--Rev. C. Bokenham, M.A. _Precentor, Sacrist, and Prælector Theologicus._--W.E. Dickson, M.A., 1858. _Minor Canons._ George Hall, M.A. 1852. William Edward Dickson, M.A. 1858. John Franey, M.A. 1870. George Simey, M.A. 1874. _Chaplains._ George Hall, M.A. John Franey, M.A. Richard Winkfield, M.A. E.H. Lowe, M.A. _Librarian_, George Simey, M.A., 1874. _Chapter Clerk and Registrar_--W.J. Evans, Esq., Ely. _Master of the Choristers, and Organist_--Edmund Thomas Chipp, Mus. Doc. Eight Lay Clerks and Eight Choristers, and Twelve Supernumeraries. The Choristers are educated in a School within the College, maintained by the Dean and Chapter. _Master_--Henry Jackman, Battersea College. _King's Scholars_--Twelve on the Foundation. _Sub-Sacrists and Vergers_,--William Henry Southby; Henry Stone White. _Bedesmen_--Six on the Foundation. _Clerk of the Works_--Mr. R.R. Rowe. [Illustration] +The Cathedral.+ "Without--the world's unceasing noises rise, Turmoil, disquietude, and busy fears. Within--there are sounds of other years, Thoughts full of prayer, and solemn harmonies." _The Cathedral._ +The West Front.+ In taking a survey of this noble edifice it is better to commence with the western front, which, as Mr. Millers observes, on account of its height and breadth, should be viewed from a competent distance; a good point of observation may be easily found on the Palace Green. Even in its present state it must be admired for its impressive though irregular grandeur, but when the north wing was standing, corresponding with the south, which remains comparatively perfect--before the erection of the octagonal story on the Tower, and the Galilee or portico, which, however beautiful in itself, has no proper connection with the rest--it must have presented a frontage exceedingly grand, and inferior to but few others in the kingdom. Such, we believe, was the original design, but succeeding bishops or rulers made such alterations and additions as their tastes dictated, and in the style then prevailing. This may in some measure account for the alterations of windows and other parts from their original designs, and the transitions from one style to another, producing examples partaking of two periods, but not perfect in either. The stone used in the erection of the Cathedral was brought from Barnack, near Stamford, and is of a much harder nature than what was commonly used; it gives proof of great soundness and durability in the excellent preservation of some of the mouldings. The soft white stone used for some of the interior decorations is called "clunch," and is found within a few miles of Ely; it is well adapted for the purposes to which it is applied, it is easily worked and capable of being highly finished, but will not bear exposure to the weather. Most of the pillars with their capitals and bases, as well as many of the mouldings and ornaments in the Early English portion of the church, are of Purbeck marble. The lower portions both of the Tower and wings were built by Bishop Ridel (1174-1189), and completed as high as the first battlements, during the episcopate of his successor, Longchamp (1189-1197), who however, spent none of his money on the fabric; the lower part of this work is late Norman, but the upper portions show indications of transition towards the pointed style. The architecture of the Tower is worthy of attention, as it shews some beautiful specimens of arcading in bands between rows of windows, all enriched with mouldings of various kinds; the western face shows three rows of windows, the others but two, as the lower one would have been hidden by the roof of the nave and of the wing on each side, these last being originally of a higher pitch than the remaining one now is. The upper band consists of circular openings with quatrefoils in the centre, and above that is a corbel-table. A spire of timber covered with lead was erected on the Tower about the middle of the thirteenth century, but it was afterwards removed, and the upper portion of the Tower, in the Decorated style, was added, and it was again surmounted by a spire. These additions were found to be injurious, and it became necessary to strengthen the lower portions of the Tower to support it; nor is it improbable that the fall of the north-western Transept was in some degree owing to the great additional weight, or that it was so far injured as to require removal. The spire was, we believe, finally removed about the end of the last century. The octagonal story does not harmonize with the lower portion. There is a large window with transoms in each of the four principal sides, the upper portions only being glazed; it is flanked by octagonal turrets, which rise a little higher than the centre, they are faced with shallow arcading and connected with the centre portion by small flying buttresses; in each turret is a winding stair, but only that in the south-eastern turret is used. In the top of this turret is placed the clock bell. The wings of the western Tower formed a second Transept to the church, and were doubtless perfectly similar; the remaining wing has towers at the angles; that at the south-west angle is larger than the other, though they are of equal height, and rise considerably higher than the wing. Both wing and towers are covered with ranges of arcading one above another, commencing a few feet from the bottom; the three lowest tiers are round-headed, the fourth are trefoil-headed, the fifth and all above are pointed and profusely adorned with mouldings; and the whole surface is enriched with diaper patterns. The roof was formerly of a higher pitch, as may be seen by the marks on the Tower. Some years ago there was a communication by a covered viaduct over the road, between this Transept and the east wing of the Bishop's Palace, which enabled him to visit the Cathedral under cover; and the road over which it passed is still called "The Gallery." "Mr. Stewart has pointed out the fact that the Galilee porch is not parallel to the axis of the Nave, but has a marked inclination to the north, while the Choir on the other hand (like that of Exeter), inclines to the south. This doubtless was for a symbolical reason. The ground plans of churches, by so frequently assuming a cross form, typify the doctrine of the Atonement--the Choir or Chancel marking the position of the Saviour's Head, the Transepts His Arms, and the Nave His Body. By an expansion of this idea the Choir is made to bend southwards to shew the inclination of the Redeemer's Head upon the cross; while, as it would seem here the Porch is turned in an opposite direction to indicate the position of His feet."[22] [Footnote 22: Hewitt's description of Ely Cathedral, p. 13.] +The Galilee[23] or Western Porch.+ [Footnote 23: The name "Galilee" is thus accounted for by the late Rev. G. Millers in his "Description of Ely Cathedral," p. 43. "As Galilee, bordering on the Gentiles, was the most remote part of the Holy Land from the Holy City of Jerusalem, so was this part of the building most distant from the sanctuary, occupied by those unhappy persons, who, during their exclusion from the mysteries, were reputed scarcely, if at all better than heathens." Another writer gives as a reason for the name, that upon a woman applying for leave to see a monk, her relation, she was answered in the words of Scripture, "Behold he goeth before you into Galilee, there you shall see him."] This has been stated to have been erected by Bishop Eustace (1198-1215), but although he is known to have made large additions to the building and to have built the Church of St. Mary, it has been thought the present building is not quite so early as that date, and that it was "the work of some unknown benefactor, who had probably seen Hugh de Northwold's presbytery, and determined to lengthen the church westward as it had been extended in the opposite direction?"[24] and that it occupies the site of a former building. Sir G. Scott seemed to think it was the work of Bishop Eustace.[25] [Footnote 24: Stewart, p. 53.] [Footnote 25: Mr. Scott's Lecture.] It is a beautiful specimen, and may fairly be ranked among the most exquisite Early English works we possess. "Nothing," says Mr. Parker, "can exceed the richness, freedom and beauty of this work; it is one of the finest porches in the world."[26] Externally, both sides are adorned with four tiers of arcading of different heights, one above another; in front, the recesses of the arches are deeper, and were probably intended for the reception of statues; some of them are ornamented with dog-tooth mouldings, and have trefoils in the spandrils. It is of two stories without windows in the sides; in the upper story there is a triple lancet window at the west end, the middle light being higher than the one on either side; the lower story receives light through the western opening. The arch of entrance is very elegant, and worthy of notice; it is receding, with rich and various mouldings, which on each side rest upon slender columns; a central group of shafts separates the opening into two smaller arches, with good tracery in the tympanum. The length on each side, internally, is occupied by two large pointed arches, comprehending under each two tiers of subordinate ones, the upper tier of five and the lower of three, which contains both outer and inner arches of different heights, supported by very slender columns; all the shafts were originally of Purbeck marble, with elegant capitals; the ribs of the vaulting are of free-stone, but the vault is of clunch. The arch of communication with the Tower is also very beautiful; it is similar in form to the exterior arch, but the ornaments in the mouldings are richer and more delicate: this has just been restored, and the Purbeck marble pillars--some of which had disappeared and others had become decayed--have been replaced by pillars of Devonshire marble with Purbeck plinths and capitals; the vesica in the tympanum has been filled with stained glass representing St. Etheldreda, the foundress; the original oaken doors have been repaired, faced, and ornamented with scrollwork in iron: this has been effected at a cost of more than £1000. contributed by Mrs. Waddington, of Twyford House, Winchester, as a memorial to her husband. [Footnote 26: Parker's "Introduction to the study of Gothic Architecture," p. 91.] +The Interior of the Tower+ has been considerably improved by the removal of a floor which had been inserted just above the lower arches, thus opening it to the great lantern, bringing into view a series of beautiful colonnades and arches, for many years hidden, except to those who explored the upper portions, besides relieving it of the weight of a large quantity of stone and materials.[27] The tops of the four fine arches which originally supported the Tower can now be partially seen; they were spacious openings, but are contracted by interior arches in a different style, which were inserted in the early part of the fifteenth century, for the purpose of strengthening the building. The beautiful painted ceiling of the Tower was designed, and all its essential parts executed, with a rare union of artistic skill and archæological knowledge, by H.S. le Strange, Esq., of Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, at the expense of H.R. Evans, Esq., then Registrar to the Dean and Chapter; the centre contains a figure of the Saviour in an aureole: He is represented as holding a globe in His left hand, and is surrounded by the sun, moon, and stars; on either side are Cherubim and Seraphim bearing scrolls containing the words "Holy! Holy! Lord God of Sabaoth." The eastern centre contains a shield on which is the _dextra Domini_, the "right hand of the Lord," as an emblem of the Creator; the corners are enriched with foliage, and the whole is surrounded by a border containing the words "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created." This was finished in 1855. The floor, of which the pattern forms a labyrinth, was completed in 1870. [Footnote 27: At the time these works were in progress (Oct., 1845), Mr. Bassevi, the eminent architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge, visited the Tower, and unfortunately fell from one floor to another, and was killed. He was buried in the north aisle of the Choir, and an elegant monumental brass, by Messrs. Waller has been laid over his remains.] The window over the entrance from the Galilee, was inserted A.D. 1800, and improved in 1807 at the expense of Bishop Yorke, who filled two portions of the upper part with stained glass, the other two being filled at the cost of Dr. Waddington, then a Prebendary of the Cathedral; the remainder has lately been completed by Mr. Clutterbuck; the subjects are taken from the history of our Lord. This, with the wall decoration below, has been done at the expense of J.T. Waddington, Esq., and of his widow. Beneath the window are four shields of arms; the upper one on the south side shows the arms of Bishop Yorke impaled with the arms of the see; on the north side are those of Bishop Yorke with those of Dr. Waddington; the lower ones contain on the south, the arms of J.T. Waddington, Esq., and on the north side, the same impaled with those of the family of Cocksedge, of which Mrs. Waddington was a member. * * * * * Before proceeding further the visitor should pause, and observe the great length of the Cathedral, the noble appearance of the lofty arches, and the sublime grandeur of the whole. When we look around and see the lofty Tower with its decorated ceiling above; on the right, the south-west Transept, rich in the extreme with its several arcades of plain, intersecting, and trifoliated arches; and in front, through the long vista of the Nave, the noble Octagon, and the enriched Choir, to the extreme end of the church, we cannot but pause and admire the skill of man shewn in such a work; but when we consider to whose honour and glory such skill is exerted, we no longer wonder that man's best energies should be called forth to construct and ornament such a temple, "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."--_Gray_. May those who visit this temple for the purpose of examining it as a building made with hands, ever bear in mind the great and solemn purpose for which it was erected--the worship of Almighty God--and let their aspirations of prayer and praise ascend to Him in thankfulness for the privilege afforded to them of freely and openly worshipping Him, who as freely invites all to become partakers of a home made without hands, eternal in the heavens. +The South-west Transept+ was, until a few years ago, separated from the Tower by a wall of stud and plaster, and used as a receptacle for materials required for the repair of the fabric, but is now thrown open in all its beauty; it has been repaired and restored at considerable expense. The architecture of this portion of the Cathedral is worthy of special notice; the various forms of the arches, and the beautiful mouldings and ornaments on some of them, cannot but attract attention. The panelled ceiling has been painted by T. Gambier Parry, Esq., of Highnam Court, Gloucester; the floor has been re-laid with encaustic tiles and marble; a new font[28] in the transitional style, has been placed here, at the cost of the late Canon Selwyn, and this Transept will in future be used as the Baptistry of the Cathedral. Several windows, which had for many years been blocked up with stone and rubbish, have been re-opened, and those of the lower tier at the south end filled with stained glass by Mr. Wailes: The west window contains--the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel; the Choice of Esther; and the Crowning of Esther; and was the gift of Dean Peacock. The east window comprises--the Meeting of Isaac and Rebecca; of Boaz and Ruth; and the Marriage at Cana: given by Hamilton Cooke, Esq., of Carr House, Doncaster. [Footnote 28: A font, the gift of Dean Spencer, in 1693, formerly stood under the third arch on the south side of the Nave, but having no accordance in style with the architecture of the building, it has been removed, and placed in a newly erected church at Prickwillow, near Ely.] Adjoining this Transept on the east is the apsidal +Chapel of St. Catharine+, for many years in ruins, but rebuilt in 1848, and the floor laid in a combination of marble and encaustic tiles, with borders of incised Portland stone, the incisions being filled with coloured cement; the windows have been filled with stained glass by Mr. Wilmshurst: The east window, representing the Baptism of our Lord, by John, after a picture by Bassans; given by the Rev. W.G. Townley, of Upwell, Norfolk, as a memorial of his brother, R.G. Townley, Esq., of Fulbourn, for several years one of the representatives of the county in Parliament. The subject of the other window is from the words of our Lord, "Suffer little children to come unto me;" from a picture by Overbeck: the gift of Canon Selwyn. We now proceed on our course, and enter +The Nave,+ which is of ample dimensions, being 203 feet in length; it has a lighter appearance than many churches of Norman architecture, and may be considered a late specimen of that style, having been finished about 1174. The length originally comprised thirteen bays, one of which has been included in the plan of the Octagon; there are no single cylindrical columns as in many churches, but the pillars are clustered and alternate in size and pattern; the arches appear to be somewhat higher than semicircular, being stilted, or some little way rectilinear before they take the circular bend. Those of the second tier comprehend in each two smaller ones, supported by a much lighter column; each compartment in the upper tier is divided into three small arches, the middle one being larger and higher than that on either side of it. Over the whole aisle on each side runs a broad gallery usually called the "triforium," lighted by Perpendicular windows in the outer wall; and above is the "clerestory," or "clear-story," affording a narrow passage in the thickness of the main wall, lighted by the original Norman windows; thus the height is divided into three parts--ground-story, triforium, and clerestory; and the breadth into the same number--nave, north aisle, and south aisle; probably designed as a type of the Trinity, as it is thought by many that these symbolical considerations were used in the building of churches in early ages. A new floor has been laid in the Nave[29] in a design which introduces several kinds of stone and marble, each bay in a pattern differing from the adjoining one; the large slab of marble which laid in the second bay from the east, and from which the memorial brass has long disappeared, remains _in situ_, it is not known to whose memory it was originally placed, but evidently to some dignified ecclesiastic. Towards the west the floor has been lowered so as to shew the bases of the columns which had for many years been hidden. A semicircular roof-shaft runs from the floor to the top of the wall between the bays, but the roof, until lately, was open to view from the floor to the rafters; a new painted ceiling has been executed,[30] which adds much to the grandeur of the building. [Footnote 29: Bishop Turton by his will left the sum of £500 towards this object, and Bishop Harold Browne gave a like sum towards the completion of the paving of the Nave and aisles.] [Footnote 30: A portion of the expense of this work was defrayed by a bequest by the Rev. G. Millers, a Minor Canon, augmented by the liberality of his Executors to £400.] This ceiling was commenced in 1858, by Henry Styleman le Strange, Esq., of Hunstanton Hall, and the six western bays were designed and the chief parts executed by him, and finished in 1861; his lamented decease in the following year gave rise to some fears as to its completion, but his friend T. Gambier Parry, Esq., undertook to finish the work so ably begun, as a token of affection to his memory, and it now presents a beautiful series of pictures in compartments, forming, as it were, a carefully studied epitome of the sacred history of man as recorded in Holy Scripture; and exhibiting specimens of skill and taste executed by two gentlemen of independent fortune that may be almost considered marvellous. It may be mentioned that the ceiling is upwards of 200 feet long, and is 86 feet from the floor, and the general size of the principal figures in the painting is nine feet. The central subjects are arranged in chronological order from the west, each being surrounded by a border varying in form, and containing a legend; in the ten western bays the subjects are supported by figures which are for the most part representations of Patriarchs and Prophets, carrying scrolls[31] upon which are written words of their own, bearing more or less forcibly upon the coming of the Messiah. The eleventh subject has, properly speaking, no supporters, but the Shepherds and the Magi are so arranged as to carry on the artistic effect of a central group with conspicuous lateral figures. In the twelfth and last subject, the picture extends entirely across the ceiling; in the centre is the Lord Jesus in His glorified humanity, seated on a throne, round about which is a "rainbow like unto an emerald." Above His head is the choir of Seraphim, painted in prismatic colours, and reflected in the "sea of glass before the throne." On the right and left are the figures of the twelve apostles seated; beyond them, on the dexter side, are two archangels, St. Gabriel, "the angel of redemption," holding the standard of the cross, and St. Raphael, holding a sword with its point downwards, expressive of victory and peace; at their feet rise three figures, typical of the blessed received into glory. On the sinister side are also two archangels, St. Uriel holding his sword downwards, and St. Michael spearing the dragon, expressive of the condemnation of, and victory over, sin. The figure of our Lord is connected with the tree of Jesse by its last branches, which break into scrolls and golden fruit at His feet. [Footnote 31: In the key to the ceiling as represented in the two following pages, we have placed the words of the legends under the principal subjects, and the contents of the scrolls under the names of the persons represented.] The arch which separates the Nave from the Octagon has also been decorated, as well as the wall which connects the arch with the ceiling; the design contains the evangelistic symbols of St. Matthew and St. John, and the text "Blessed be the Name of His Majesty for ever, and all the earth shall be filled with His Majesty. Amen and Amen." [Transcriber's Note: In the original book, the following text in brackets is placed sideways along the right and left sides of a box around the rest of the text. The top and bottom of the box are represented here by a line of asterisks.] [The heads forming the border represent the human ancestors of our Lord, according to the genealogy in St. Luke's Gospel; they commence at the Eastern end, and terminate at the Western, thus linking together the Glorified Manhood, as exhibited in the last of the pictorial representations, with the Creation of Man in the first.] * * * * * "Non nobis, Domini, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam." 12. THE LORD IN GLORY. 'I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.' 11. THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS AND OF THE MAGI. 'Unto us a child is born: Gentiles shall come to thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising.' | 10. | ST. MATTHEW. | THE NATIVITY. | ST. LUKE. | 'The Word was made flesh, | ST. MARK. | and dwelt among us: full of | ST. JOHN. | grace and truth.' | | | | | MALACHI. | 9. | ZEPHANIAH. 'The Sun of | THE ANNUNCIATION. | 'The Lord their God Righteousness shall | 'A Virgin shall conceive and | shall visit them.' arise.' | bear a Son, and shall call | | his name Immanuel.' | | | ZECHARIAH. | | NAHUM. 'I will bring forth my | 8. | 'Him that bringeth servant the Branch.' | DAVID. | glad tidings.' | 'Of the fruit of thy body | JEREMIAH. | shall I set upon thy | EZEKIEL. 'Unto David a | throne.' | 'My servant David righteous Branch.' | | shall be a Prince.' | 7. | | JESSE. | DANIEL. | 'There shall come forth a | HAGGAI. 'He shall confirm the | rod out of Jesse, and a | 'The desire of all covenant.' | branch shall grow out of | nations shall come.' | roots.' | | | | 6. | MICAH. | THE MARRIAGE OF RUTH. | ISAIAH. 'Out of thee, | 'The Lord make the woman | 'There shall come a Bethlehem, shall He | like Rachel and Leah. Be | rod out of the stem come forth.' | thou famous in Bethlehem.' | of Jesse.' | | | 5. | AMOS. | JACOB'S DREAM. | HOSEA. 'I will raise up the | 'In thee and in thy seed | 'O Grave I will be tabernacle of David.' | shall all the families of | thy destruction.' | the earth be blessed.' | | | | 4. | JONAH. | ISAAC CARRYING THE WOOD. | JOEL. 'Thou hast brought up | 'Behold the fire and the | 'I will pour out my my life from | wood, but where is the burnt | spirit upon all corruption.' | offering? | flesh.' | | | 3. | MOSES. | NOAH'S SACRIFICE. | NATHAN. 'The Lord shall raise | 'I do set my bow in the | 'I will stablish up a prophet like unto | cloud, to be a token of | the throne of His me.' | covenant between me and the | kingdom.' | earth.' | | | | 2. | JOB. | THE FALL OF MAN. | BALAAM. 'I know that my | 'Her seed shall bruise thy | 'There shall come a Redeemer liveth.' | head, and thou shalt bruise | star out of Jacob.' | his heel.' | | | | 1. | ABRAHAM. | THE CREATION OF MAN. | JACOB. 'My son, God will | 'Which was the son of God.' | 'The sceptre shall provide himself a | | not depart until lamb.' | | Shiloh come.' "Sit splendor Domini Dei nostri super nos, et opera manuum nostrarum dirige super nos," &c. * * * * * Traces of early fresco work may be seen on some of the arches of the Nave, on both sides, and in all probability other parts were also decorated. Before proceeding further eastward we will examine the +Nave Aisles,+ commencing with that on the south, at the western end. We first observe a range of small semicircular arches running under the windows, with a chevron moulding over some of them; in the first bay from the west there is a row of intersecting arches over them. The vaulting is supported by semi-columns placed at the back of the pillars on one side, and on the other by wall-shafts between the windows, and forms a great contrast to the rich vaulting of the eastern portions of the Cathedral. Several traces of early fresco work may be observed in the vault of the tenth bay from the west, and in other places. Under the fourth window is a doorway, which is, on the exterior, richly ornamented, filling all available space, the whole of the imposts, arch mouldings and capitals being thickly sculptured with interlaced carving. In the tympanum is a figure of the Saviour in an aureole (or 'glory' of a pointed oval shape), held up by two angels sitting, holding an open book surmounted by a cross in His left hand, His right being elevated in the act of benediction. The mouldings above, as well as the capitals, jambs, and pilasters, are enriched with running foliage, and with a series of medallions containing birds, animals, flowers, &c., some of which are very curious. This was formerly the Prior's entrance from the cloisters; it now opens into a private garden belonging to the Deanery.[32] [Footnote 32: A new door, with scrollwork in iron, has been put in at the cost of the Bedfordshire Archæological Society.] Near this doorway stands a curious relic, deserving attention. It is the lower portion of a stone cross with a square pedestal, found some years ago at Haddenham, in the Isle of Ely, where it was used as a horse-block; the inscription on the pedestal is in Roman capitals, except the E, which is Saxon: "LUCEM-TUAM-OVINO-DA-DEUS-ET-REQUI[=E].-AMEN." A translation of it is thus given by Mr. Bentham: "Grant, O God, to Ovin, thy light and rest. Amen." On reference to the history of St. Etheldreda, foundress of the monastery at Ely,[33] to which allusion was made in the introduction to this work, it will be seen that her steward bore the name of Ovin, and it is not improbable that the cross was erected either to his honour during his life, or to his memory soon after his death; probably in the early part of the eighth century: this would make it earlier by nearly four hundred years than anything else in the church. The Bissexcentenary, or twelve-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the monastery at Ely by St. Etheldreda was commemorated by a grand Festival in October, 1873. [Footnote 33: Bentham's History, i. 45, &c.] The doorway at the east end of the aisle, under the last window, formerly the entrance for the monks from the cloisters, now the south entrance to the Cathedral, is also worthy of special observation; the head is trefoiled, and ornamented with figures holding pastoral staves; above, two dragons are represented with their necks entwined; the mouldings are rich and various, and the capitals and jambs are sculptured with grotesque ornaments. By some persons it has been thought that these doorways were insertions, as they do not accord with the lines of the adjoining wall, perhaps brought from some other building, and re-erected here when the cloisters were built. On the second pillar from the east end of the Nave in both aisles, may be observed a niche with a canopy, indicating the position of the rood-screen at the western extremity of the original Choir, which extended eastward across and beyond the space now covered by the Octagon. The windows of the aisles, as also those of the triforium, were originally Norman, but were altered at some subsequent period to a later style; those, however, of this aisle have, with one exception, been restored to their original form, and all are filled with stained glass. We will endeavour to describe them in their order, beginning at the western end of the aisle. _1st._ The days of Creation; Adam expelled from Eden; the punishment of Mankind; the Offerings of Cain and Abel--executed by Messrs. Henri and Alfred Gerente, of Paris; the contributions of Visitors to the Cathedral. _2nd._ The Building of the ark; the entry into the ark; the Flood; and Noah's Sacrifice--by M. Alfred Gerente: the gift of Mrs. Pleasance Clough, as a memorial of her aunt, Susannah, wife of John Waddington, Esq. _3rd._ The Annunciation; the Salutation of Mary and Elizabeth; the Birth of Christ--by Mr. Warrington: his own gift. _4th._ The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of tongues--by Mr. Howes: the contribution of various tradesmen connected with the Cathedral. _5th._ Abraham visited by angels; the expulsion of Hagar; and the Blessing of Jacob--by Mr. Gibbs, his own gift. _6th._ The institution of the Passover; the Death of the firstborn; and the Exodus of the Israelites--by Mr. Howes, his own gift. _7th._ The fall of the walls of Jericho; the passage of the Jordan; and the return of the spies--by Mr. Wailes: presented by the Rev. G. Millers, as a memorial of his wife. _8th._ Samson slaying the lion; Samson carrying away the gates of Gaza; and Samson destroying the Philistines--executed and presented by M. Alfred Gerente. _9th._ The history of the Venerable Bede--by Mr. Wailes: his own gift. _10th._ David anointed; David playing before Saul; David chosen king; and David reproved by Nathan--by Mr. Hardman: presented by the ladies of the (then) Dean and Canons. _11th._ The Judgment of Solomon; the Building of the Temple; the Dedication of the Temple; and the Queen of Sheba's visit--designed and executed by the Rev. A. Moore, of Walpole St. Peter, Norfolk, at the cost of the Chapter. We now turn our attention to the north aisle, and observe a range of arches similar to those in the south aisle, but with the line of chevron moulding in the eastern bay only; an intermission under one of the windows marks the place where probably was a doorway for communication with the church of St. Cross, but closed above two hundred years ago, when the Lady Chapel was given for the use of the parish of the Holy Trinity in lieu of that church which had become ruinous. The windows in this aisle retain their altered form; and all have been recently filled with stained glass; in describing them we will commence at the western end, as the subjects are arranged chronologically. _1st._ From the history of our first parents--Adam tilling the ground; Cain ploughing the earth, and Abel attending sheep; Adam and Eve discovering the body of Abel--by Mr. Cottingham: presented by Mr. Bacon, Clerk of the Works to the Dean and Chapter, as a memorial of his father. _2nd._ From the history of Lot--Angels visit Lot; Lot entertaining angels; the multitude struck with blindness; Sodom destroyed; Lot's departure; Lot entering Zoar--by Mr. Preedy; as a memorial of the Rev. John Maddy, D.D., Canon of the Cathedral. _3rd._ From the History of Abraham--the Death of Sarah: Abraham purchasing the cave of Machpelah; and the Burial of Abraham--by Mr. Preedy: designed as a memorial of Mr. Freeman; given by his family. _4th._ From the Book of Judges--Gideon and the Angel; Gideon's present consumed; the Midianites put to flight--by Mr. Ward: subscribed for by some of Her Majesty's Judges who were educated at the University of Cambridge. _5th._ From the history of Samuel--Hannah praying; Samuel presented to Eli; Eli blesses Elkanah and Hannah; Samuel praying; Samuel called; Samuel telling his vision to Eli--by Messrs. Ward and Nixon: as a memorial of H.R. Evans, sen., Esq., for many years Chapter Clerk; given by his family. _6th._ David and the Minstrels; executed by Mr. Oliphant, from designs by W.R. Dyce, Esq., R.A.: the gift of Mr. Thomas Ingram, Professor of Music, formerly a Chorister and Pupil in the Cathedral. _7th._ From the history of Elijah--Elijah feeds the prophets in a cave; Elijah praying for rain; Elijah visited by angels--by Mr. Wailes: presented by Colonel Allix, as a memorial of Dr. Peter Allix, a former Dean of Ely. _8th._ From the history of Elijah--Elijah fed by ravens; Translation of Elijah; Elijah's burnt offering--by Mr. Wailes: presented by J.J. Rawlinson, Esq., as a memorial of the Rev. G. Millers, Minor Canon, and author of a "Description of Ely Cathedral." _9th._ From the history of Elisha--Elisha healing the Shunamite's son--by Mr. Wailes: presented by the Rev. S. Smith and others, connections and legatees of the Rev. J. Griffith, B.D., many years Minor Canon of the Cathedral. _10th._ Events from the history of Hesekiah--by Mr. Wailes; presented as a memorial of Thomas Archer, Esq., of Ely, by his family. _11th._ From the history of Jonah--the People of Ninevah mourning; Jonah preaching; Repentance of the Ninevites--by Mr. Edgland; presented by C. Steggall, Esq., Mus. Doc., designed as a memorial of his wife. _12th._ From the history of Daniel--Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream; Daniel before king Darius; Daniel in the lion's den--by M. Lusson, of Paris: designed to commemorate the establishment of a Savings Bank in Ely, in 1839, being the contribution of certain subscribers, assisted by a special contribution from Canon J.H. Sparke. A tablet on the wall, near the eastern window of this aisle, bears the following inscription:-- "1676, _Roger Clopton, Rector of Downham, Gave two hundred pounds, By which The greatest Part of the Nave of This Church Was paved._" The Nave and aisles do not now require a gift of this kind, having been recently paved at considerable expense, but the floor of the Octagon, South Transept, and Choir aisles will require a large sum to complete them, and if some kind friends will follow the example of Roger Clopton it will indeed be a timely benefaction, and now very much to be desired as an important step towards the completion of the work of restoration. Before examining the Octagon we will make some observations on +The Great Transept.+ This includes both arms, although for distinction it is frequently spoken of as the north and south Transept. This is the oldest portion of the Cathedral, having been begun by Abbot Simeon A.D. 1083, of whose work, however, but little more than the ground story remains. Before the fall of the Norman Tower in 1322, each arm was longer by one bay, which is now included in the plan of the Octagon, in the same manner as the Nave. Both arms have aisles, but those of the south, and one in the north, are enclosed for various purposes. In each arm there is a simple cylindrical shaft, of which no other specimen occurs in any other part of the church. The capitals of the columns and the arches above the lower tier are similar to those of the Nave. The roof in both is of bare rafters with rich cornices, painted with flowers and devices, and angels with wings expanded under the principals; both arms have recently undergone a thorough repair, the rafters and cornices have been re-painted and gilded in their original style, which, with the stained glass lately inserted in the windows, produces an amount of colour the effect of which is very striking. We will first refer for details to the north arm; of which the western aisle is open, and is lighted by three Norman windows, all of which have been recently filled with stained glass: The south window--executed by M. Lusson, of Paris; the subjects taken from the Parables; as a memorial of the Rev. A. Moore, of Walpole, who designed and executed three windows in the Cathedral. The middle window, by the same artist; subject, the Good Samaritan: given by John Muriel, Esq. The northern window was executed by the Rev. A. Moore; the subject taken from the parable of the Prodigal Son. At the north end of the Transept is a small colonnade, the arches of which are irregular, those opposite the lower windows being higher than the others to allow free passage to the light. At the north-east corner is a doorway communicating with a staircase leading to the upper parts of the church. In the year 1699 the fall of a portion of the north-west corner took place, but it was so well rebuilt as not to be discernable in the interior. The windows in the triforium on the east side are original; those of the triforium on the west side, and the upper ones at the north end, are Perpendicular insertions; the rest are all in their original form, or have been restored to it; those in the north end have been filled with stained glass: The two lower, and the western window of the second tier, by Mr. Wailes, at the cost of the late Canon E.B. Sparke. The eastern window of the second tier, by the Rev. A. Moore. The subjects of these four windows are incidents in the history of St. Paul. The windows in the upper tier--by Messrs. Ward and Hughes--also at the cost of the late Canon E.B. Sparke, contain figures of eminent persons in New Testament history, with arms, &c. in the tracery. Those in the western window represent Silas; Clement, bishop; Apollos; Judas Barsabas; Dionysius, areopagite; and Philip, deacon: in the eastern window, Titus, bishop; St. Paul; Timothy; St. Mark; St. Barnabas; and St. Luke. The eastern aisle is divided by walls behind the columns into compartments; the northern one forms a communication with the entrance to the Lady Chapel; the middle one a vestry for the Grammar Scholars; and the third a vestry for the Lay-Clerks; remains of fresco paintings may be seen on the walls of both these compartments. The stained glass window in the middle compartment contains subjects from the history of our Saviour; executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell: presented by--Heywood, Esq., as a memorial to his mother. The window in the third compartment, by the same artists, represents the Entombment and the Ascension, and is the gift of C.L. Higgins, Esq., of Turvey Abbey. The floor of this portion has been recently re-laid by the munificence of the late Canon E.B. Sparke. We now cross the Octagon (which we will examine afterwards) to the south arm of the Transept. At the south end is a colonnade, but differing in design to that in the north arm, the arches being all of equal height, but not so high as the others; over these is a row of intersecting arches. It is probable that these galleries were added at a period subsequent to the erection of the Transept, and intended as a means of communication from one triforium to the other; in the south east corner is a staircase leading to the triforium. Some remains of ancient decoration may be observed on the walls and capitals, portions of which have been renewed. The eastern aisle was formerly divided by a wall behind each column into three compartments, with wooden screens in front; but these were all removed in 1814, when it was enclosed as we now see it to form the Library, which is lighted on the east by three Early English windows, and on the south by a Norman one. The western aisle appears to have been closed for many years, as on the walls built in the arches (and which until lately completely filled the openings,) there is an arcade of intersecting Norman arches. Of this aisle, thus inclosed, one portion is used as a vestry by the Vergers, having an entrance from the south aisle of the Nave; the remaining portion as a vestry for the Clergy. The carved oak door to this vestry deserves attention; it is not exactly known whether it originally belonged to the Cathedral, the carved devices are similar to those in the chapel of Bishop Alcock, in the north aisle of the Choir; there is no doubt that it belonged to some building erected by that prelate, if not to this, probably to the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge, of which Bishop Alcock was the founder. It was found at Landbeach, and sent to the Cathedral by Canon Fardell. The windows of the western aisle and those of the clerestory on both sides are in their original form, and so are those of the two lower tiers at the south end, but the others are of later age; in the gable is a low window of seven lights, very different to the upper windows in the north arm: those in the south end and two in the western aisle have been filled with stained glass: The eastern window of the lower tier of the south end, by M. Henri Gerente, contains incidents in the history of Joseph; presented by the late Canon E.B. Sparke. The western window by the same artist, contains incidents from the history of Moses: contributed by some of the then Lessees under the Bishop. The eastern window of the second tier, by Messrs. Henri and Alfred Gerente, contains subjects from the history of Abraham, with parallels: the gift of Incumbents of livings in the diocese, and in the patronage of the Bishop. The western window, by M. Alfred Gerente, contains subjects from the history of Jacob; the gift of Incumbents of livings formerly in the patronage of the Bishop, but not in his diocese. The gable window contains six figures of the Patriarchs, with a figure of our Lord in the centre; some of which were executed by Mr. Howes and others by Mr. Preedy: the gift of some of the Peers and Prelates educated at the University of Cambridge. The middle window of the western aisle, by M. Lusson; the subjects taken from the Book of Jeremiah: given by the Rev. G. Rous, Laverton, as a memorial of Dr. Hugh Thomas, nineteenth Dean of Ely. The north window is also by a French artist, and given by the late Canon E.B. Sparke. The piece of tessellated pavement in the floor was found some years ago between the Choir and the Lady Chapel, under the present level of the earth, and was placed here for preservation; when the floor of this arm of the Transept is re-laid, this may perhaps be again inserted, or removed to some other place. +The Octagon.+ We now come to this special glory of the Cathedral, "in which," says Mr. Millers, "elegance, magnificence, and strength are so happily blended, that it is impossible to determine in which respect it is most admirable." We follow up the description nearly in his own words. Here stood originally a square Norman tower, which in the year 1322, from the unequal pressure of the four parts of the church, gave way and fell eastward, crushing in its fall several adjoining arches. "It could not have happened at a more favourable conjuncture; as the convent was rich, spirited, and liberal; and though another great work had been begun the preceding year, (the erection of a new Lady Chapel,) the repair of this great dilapidation was immediately undertaken, and completed in a few years, by Alan de Walsingham, at that time sacrist,[34] an officer under whose particular charge were all the monastic buildings. It has continued above five hundred years, and may it yet continue a noble proof of his consummate skill as an architect!" The conception was original, being perhaps the first building of the kind ever erected. By throwing the weight upon eight strong piers and arches instead of four, he has probably guarded against the recurrence of a similar accident; at the same time he has given a larger space, a more agreeable form, and greater scope for embellishment, which is, however, most judiciously confined within such limits as not to interfere with sober and impressive grandeur. No one can behold it without admiring the skill which has suspended, rather than supported, a very heavy timber roof over so wide an area without a pillar. [Footnote 34: He was made Sub-Prior, then Prior, and elected Bishop, A.D. 1344, but the election was not confirmed.] "It is not equilateral; there are four longer and four shorter sides, alternate and respectively equal. Four lofty arches, in the four longer sides, open into the four principal parts of the church: alternately with these, in the four shorter sides, are as many more, much lower, opening obliquely into the aisles above and below the Transept. The arches are all supported by elegant clustered and conjoined columns, and their capitals are wreaths of flowers and foliage." In the shorter sides there is room for some ornamentation, but the ornaments are chaste and not profuse. The four low arches in them are under canopies resting on good carved heads, which remain perfect. Those on the north-east are said to be intended for Edward III. and his queen Phillippa, in whose time the building was erected; on the south-eastern arch are represented the heads of a bishop and a priest, perhaps meant for Bishop Hotham and Prior Crauden, superiors at the period of erection. On the north-west arch are the heads of another priest, apparently younger, and of some secular person with long hair; the former is supposed to represent Alan de Walsingham, the skilful architect of this noble work; and the latter the chief mason. On the remaining arch are two figures, the meaning of which we can scarcely comprehend. A little above each of these lower arches are three brackets, or corbels, with canopies; the original figures (if any) placed on these brackets have long since disappeared, but the spaces have lately been filled with sitting figures of the Apostles,[35] executed in stone by Mr. Redfern, each holding a symbolical instrument. If we start from the Choir and proceed to the right hand we shall find them placed in the following order:-- { St. Matthew--box. S.E. { St. John--chalice and dragon. { St. James, minor--club. { St. Philip--small cross. S.W. { St. Paul--sword. { St. Bartholomew--knife. { St. Thomas--mason's square. N.W. { St. Peter--keys. { St. Andrew--cross. { St. Jude--spear. N.E. { St. James, major--pilgrim's staff. { St. Simon--saw. [Footnote 35: These were contributed by the Bishop of Carlisle (5), Dr. Kennedy, Sir G.G. Scott, Captain Horton, Canon Underwood, and others.] There are also sixteen small stone heads, four connected with each group of three Apostles, which are not very clearly seen, perhaps, from the floor of the Cathedral, but which, when examined, shew by the conventual prophetic cap given to them, that they are intended to represent the sixteen Prophets of the Old Testament. Above these canopies, in each of the four sides, is a gallery or passage with an embattled parapet, and above that a large window of four lights with geometrical tracery; it is extremely sharp pointed, and towards the top each window is faced internally with a trellis or lattice-work of stone, which adds to its elegance without intercepting the light. These windows rise to the same height as the higher arches; they have been filled with stained glass by Mr. Wailes, and the subjects are chiefly representations of persons who were instrumental in the foundation, erection, or restoration of the Cathedral, of the reigning sovereigns at the respective periods, and of others who figured in the traditionary history of the foundress. The window in the south-east angle is designed to commemorate the principal persons who figured in the traditionary history of the foundress. The figures in the upper tier represent Anna, father of St. Etheldreda; St. Etheldreda as queen; Tonbert, her first, and Egfrid, her second husband. In the lower tier, St. Etheldreda as abbess; Wilfred Bishop of York; St. Erminilda, the third abbess; and St. Sexburga, the second abbess. The tracery contains other figures and emblems, with the arms of the donor, the late Canon E.B. Sparke. The window in the north-east angle, in continuation of the same design, contains in the upper tier figures representing St. Withburga, St. Edmond, St. Werberga, fourth abbess of Ely, and Archbishop Dunstan. In the lower tier, Bishop Ethelwold; Brithnoth, Duke of Northumberland; Abbot Brithnoth, and King Edgar. The tracery contains the arms of the University of Cambridge, with other figures and devices: contributed by subscriptions from the Bachelors and Undergraduates of the University of Cambridge. The window in the north-west angle also contains eight representative figures, viz., in the upper tier, (reading from right to left) are William I., Henry I., Henry III., and Edward II.; and under these, Abbot Simeon, who commenced the present Cathedral; Harvey, the first Bishop of Ely; Bishop Northwold, who erected the Presbytery; and Alan de Walsingham, the skilful architect of the Octagon. The tracery contains medallions in which are pictured the shrine of St. Etheldreda; Abbot Simeon laying the foundation stone of the Cathedral; Alan de Walsingham and monks weeping over the ruins of the central tower; the arms of the University of Cambridge, of the See of Ely, of Bishop Sparke, with other devices. Half the cost of this window was defrayed by subscriptions from some graduates of the University of Cambridge, and the other half by a portion of the accumulation of the money given by Bishop Sparke[36] for the east window. [Footnote 36: Bishop Sparke gave £1500 stock in the Reduced Three per cents. about 1833, but the east window was not completed until 1857; the amount had in the mean time accumulated considerably, and proved sufficient to defray the cost of the east window, of six windows in the clerestory of the Choir, of the four windows of the triforium of the Presbytery, and half the cost of the north-west window of the Octagon.] The window in the south-west angle also contains eight figures in the four principal lights, arranged in the following order--the Queen in her coronation robes; the Prince Consort in his robes as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and under these are represented Dr. Turton, the then bishop, and Dr. Peacock, the then dean of Ely; these figures being commemorative of the present extensive restorations: the other four represent King Edward III. and his queen Philippa, in whose reign the Octagon was built; and under these, Bishop Hotham and Prior Crauden, the great officers of the Cathedral at that period. The tracery contains the arms of the University of Cambridge in the centre, and on either side the arms respectively of those whose figures are represented in the window. The cost of a portion of this was graciously defrayed by Her Majesty; Bishop Turton and Dean Peacock gave the cost of their own figures respectively, and the remainder was paid by the capitular body. Midway up each vaulting shaft is a canopied niche of unusual but very beautiful character; these niches rest upon sculptured corbels representing some striking incidents of St. Etheldreda's life, by beginning at the right-hand side of the north-west arch, and continuing our course to the right-hand round the Octagon, we may examine them in detail. The first represents her marriage. The second, her taking the veil at the Monastery of Coldingham at the hands of Wilfred, bishop of York; her crown laid upon the altar. The third, her pilgrim's staff taking root and bearing leaves and branches over her whilst she slept by the way. The fourth, her preservation, with her attendant nuns, on a rock surrounded by a miraculous inundation, when pursued by the king and his attendants. The fifth, her installation as abbess of Ely, by Wilfred. The sixth, her death and burial. The seventh, a legendary tale of one Brithstan delivered from bonds by her merits. The eighth, the translation of her body. These were probably placed there to break the apparent great preponderance of vertical lines. The vaulting is of wood, and its fan-shaped compartments terminate at a distance from the centre, thus allowing an aperture thirty feet wide, over which rises the Lantern, an exact octagon, having on each of its sides a large pointed window of four openings with rich tracery, all filled with stained glass, which has the effect of subduing the light; below these windows are a series of panels with decorated heads, and under them another series of smaller ones; above the ceiling is a chamber formerly used for bells. The Lantern also is of English oak, and its construction a curious piece of carpentry. The whole has been thoroughly repaired, and in a great measure restored in exact conformity with the original, at a considerable expense.[37] [Footnote 37: This great work is designed as a memorial of Dean Peacock, and a more fitting one could scarcely be found, as it is one of the great works he had in contemplation. "The Dean and Chapter felt that they could not propose any record of the zealous exertions of the late Dean, so appropriate as the restoration of the central portion of the Cathedral Church; which, after the great improvements executed under his superintendence in the eastern and western portions of the fabric, would form as it were a keystone of the whole work." Subscriptions amounting to about £10,000, were given by many noblemen as well as other friends of Dean Peacock; the capitular body contributing very largely towards the work.] When the white and yellow-wash was cleared away from the woodwork of the Octagon and Lantern in 1850, some remnants of ancient colouring were discovered. In the archives of the Cathedral are preserved the accounts of the materials used in this painting, the prices of the colours, and the wages paid to the workmen. The name of the principal artist was Walter; he is dignified by the name of "Pictor," but he only received Eightpence per week, "_præter mensam et robam_" the "_roba_" being the painter's dress of the period, which was very like a modern gentleman's dressing gown. The colouring of this "Walter" between the years 1335 and 1351 seems to have been of a very simple character. The only evidence of designs that remained in 1850 were on the flat panels of the vaulting, which was covered with an imitation of ordinary gothic flowing tracery. The pattern was a series of quatrefoils painted in stone-colour on the wood, outlined black, and filled with green. The bosses of the Lantern, which are not carved, had been evidently painted and gilt, but the patterns of foliage were rough and too much injured to afford any distinct composition. The small amount of colouring which remained on some of the mouldings of the Octagon was principally of a bright red, but only in small patches, the ground-work having peeled off and the colour with it. In attempting to describe briefly the recent decoration of the Octagon and Lantern we cannot do better than quote the substance of a paper read during the Conference in June, 1875, explaining the history and nature of the ornamentation which has been carried out with such loving care and artistic skill under Gambier Parry, Esq., who designed the whole and painted the chief figures. "The internal repair of the Lantern and Octagon was begun in February, 1874, and required a year for its completion. The ornamentation is in the style of the fourteenth century. The central boss of the lantern groining is a half-length figure of Christ in glory, considerably above life size, and with the conventual clouding around it; it is boldly carved in oak. The right hand is raised in the attitude of blessing, and with the left the inner garment is drawn open to exhibit the wound in the right side. Around this figure is painted a group of Seraphim on a grey blue ground. The panels of the window hoods are painted red, marking the distinction already made by the architectural construction, and on them are painted Cherubim and golden stars. The windows of the lantern were filled, some years ago, with coloured glass, the colouring of which is harsh, and in strong contrast with the mellow and rich painting of the woodwork, and injurious to the general effect. "Below the windows are thirty-two openings surmounted with rich tracery. They are filled by panels on which is painted the angel choir. The figures are composed in groups of four, under each window, and are represented playing mediæval instruments. The two eastern and two western bays are intended to be severally grouped together, forming distinct series of eight figures. The instruments in the hands of the figures over the transepts are the psaltery and cithern, the regale, tabret, lute, violin, bagpipe and trumpet, (illustrating the 150th Psalm.) Below this range of figures are smaller panels, simply ornamented with the sacred monogram, the cross and the crown, resting on a fine and richly carved cornice, which forms the base of the lantern. The groining of the Octagon forms eight hoods, four above the windows, and four above the great arches of the Choir, Nave and Transepts. Beneath these last are remarkable statues of the four evangelists, about life size, seated in the attitude of writing, with a pen in one hand and a long scroll in the other; a writing table by the side of each figure with the ink horn attached to it by a strap, and a loop to hold the pen, is very complete. The space between the great arch and the groining of the Choir is filled with rich tracery, on the central panel of which is painted the Crucifixion, with angels holding the chalice and palm branch on the right and left. The long spandrils of the groining are painted with conventional scrollwork of leaves and flowers in a style contemporaneous with the architecture. The monogram and crown of St. Etheldreda are found in several parts of the ornamental design. The total expense of the decoration has been about £2500." An elegantly carved pulpit has been placed near the entrance to the Choir; it is of Ancaster stone resting upon columns of Purbeck marble, the front relieved by alabaster figures of St. Peter and St. Paul; the steps are of Purbeck marble, guarded by very elaborate scrollwork in iron. It was designed by Sir G.G. Scott, and executed by Messrs. Rattee and Kett; the figures by Mr. Redfern, and the iron work by Messrs. Potter and Son. It was supplied by a legacy left by the daughter of Bishop Allen, and adds much towards the general improvements. * * * * * Before leaving the Octagon the visitor would do well to contemplate this portion of the building, as affording an extraordinary example of the skill and judgment of the man who designed and carried into effect so grand and unique a specimen of architecture, covering, as it does, a large area without supporting columns; no heavy mass of stone-work meets the eye, but the pillars, though strong and of great height are so constructed as to give an appearance of lightness and elegance; the vaulting is rich though simple, and the lantern above deserves notice from its singular position, apparently without support, but starting as it were from the ends of the ribs of the groining: taken as a whole it may be fairly considered as without parallel in this country. The architectural views from the Octagon in every direction are exceedingly fine, and will repay the visitor for a pause of a few minutes to notice them; on all sides are examples of great beauty and variety. There are many other points in the Cathedral which afford attractive scenes as shewn in the effects of light and shade, the intersections of arches, perspective, &c., which may be found by the visitor in his survey, if watched for, but we cannot undertake to point them out. * * * * * The next portion of the building to which our attention is attracted is +The Choir,+ which, previous to 1322 was under the central Tower, and extended, including the rood-loft, from the second column at the eastern end of the Nave, as it now is, (it then extended one bay further eastward,) to about the same distance, or rather more, on the opposite side; and after the erection of the Octagon was again placed there; in 1770 it was removed to the six eastern arches of the Cathedral, the space under the Octagon and the two bays eastward of it being used as a sermon-place.[38] It was again removed in 1852, and now commences at the eastern side of the Octagon, extending to the length of seven bays, (the stalled portion occupying three of them,) leaving the two eastern bays as a retro-choir. [Footnote 38: Previous to the last removal, the custom was that only one sermon was preached in the morning to the congregations severally from the Choir, St. Mary's Church, and Holy Trinity Church, who assembled together, and occupied generally seats provided by themselves, in the Octagon and the two bays east of it, the third being taken up by the screen dividing it from the Choir with the organ loft over. The sermons were usually preached by the Canon in residence at the time.] This will be better understood by reference to the accompanying plans, (for the use of which we are indebted to the kindness of the Editor of the "Architectural Quarterly Review,") one shewing the position of the Choir previous to the year 1770, and the other the arrangement made at the last alteration. [Illustration: GENERAL PLAN: A Octagon, with the arrangement of Choir previous to 1770. B Presbytery. C The Nave. D North Transept. E South Transept. F Part of Cloisters (ruined.) G Western Tower. H West Porch or Galilee. I St. Catharine's Chapel. K The Lady Chapel. L The Font. M Rood Screen. N Foundations of Norman apse. O Foundations of N.W. Transept. P South-western Transept.] [Illustration: CHOIR AND TRANSEPT, SHEWING NEW ARRANGEMENTS. _The black tint represents the Norman work of Abbots Simeon and Richard, 1083-1106._ _The lined tint represents Bishop Northwold's work, 1229-1254._ _The dotted tint represents the work of Bishops Hotham, Montacute, and L'Isle, 1316-1361._ A The Octagon. B Choir, as now carried out. C Nave. D North arm of Transept. E South arm of Transept. F Lady Chapel. a Altar. b Bishop Alcock's Chapel. c Bishop West's Chapel. d Organ and Staircase. e Part of Cloisters (ruined). f Monuments.] The new oaken screen at the entrance of the Choir will attract the attention of the visitor, both by its elegant design and its skilful execution; it is of open work, comprising a centre opening with brass gates, through which is the passage into the Choir, under a pointed arch, over this is rich tracery within a high pointed gable, having an elegant foliated cross on the apex: on either side are three smaller openings, each divided into two parts by a bar or transom, and finished at the top with a gable; the openings below the transoms are filled with elaborate grilles of brass foliage; a beautiful cresting runs over the whole, with a high pinnacle of tabernacle work at each end; several statuettes have been placed under canopies in each face, which add considerably to the general effect. The screen was designed by Sir G.G. Scott, and executed by Mr. Rattee; the statuettes by M. Abeloos, and the brass gates with the foliage in the lower panels by Mr. Hardman: the whole testifies highly to the taste of the designer as well as to the skill of those who executed the several parts. In making a particular survey of the Choir, it would perhaps be better to examine carefully the architecture of the six eastern bays first, and then the three western bays, which were built subsequently to the others, before examining the reredos, monuments, &c.; this is simply a suggestion, we leave the visitor to follow his own inclination, and continue our description in the order of our course from west to east. The architecture of the three first bays is greatly to be admired as a specimen of the Decorated style, perhaps not surpassed by any other in the kingdom; they were erected about the same time as the Octagon, and most probably under the superintendence of the same skilful architect, and for which purpose Bishop Hotham left a sum of money at his death; they were built during the episcopate of his successors, Bishops Montacute (1337-1345), and L'Isle (1345-1361). The lower columns are nearly, the capitals entirely, of the same form with those of the Octagon, but the arches are more ornamented, some of them having bosses of foliage attached to their mouldings; and those of the triforium are, as Mr. Bentham observes, "embellished with tracery work of such elegance and delicacy as seems scarcely consistent with strength." Between each of the lower arches is a corbel or elongated bracket profusely adorned with foliage carved in high relief, richly coloured and gilded; from this rises a column between the upper arches, and from the top of this column spring the ribs of the vaulting, which spread in lavish ramifications over it, dividing it into angular compartments, and at the angles are flowers and other ornaments, curiously carved, and originally were coloured. In the spandrils of the lower and triforium arches (with the exception of the first bay on the south side, which contains the arms of the see, those of Bishop Hotham, and another shield), are sunk trefoils, some of which are painted dark blue relieved with small stars in gold, having an elegant appearance. The range of pierced parapet at the bases of the triforium and clerestory has been entirely renewed; and on the south side, the triforium roof (which on both sides is of bare rafters,) has been recently painted and ornamented in a style similar to those of the Transept. The windows in the clerestory are large, filling the whole opening, having in each four lights with rich tracery, and the same kind of trellis-work we noticed in the large windows in the Octagon; these windows, on both sides have been recently filled with stained glass, executed by Mr. Wailes, the expense defrayed out of the balance of the accumulated fund for the east window; the subjects are illustrative of two verses of the "Te Deum," with figures of angels and the arms of the donor, &c., in the tracery: NORTH SIDE--"_The noble army of Martyrs_"--represented in the western window by figures of St. George, St. Agnes, St. Catharine, and St. Alban; middle window--St. Lawrence, St. Cecilia, St. Justin, and St. Prisca; eastern window--St. Ignatius, St. Polycarp, St. Lucian, and St. Stephen. SOUTH SIDE--"_The Holy Church throughout all the World_," the Eastern Church being represented in the western window by figures of St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Athanasius, and St. Gregory Nazienzen; the Western Church in the middle window, by figures of St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the great; the British Church in the eastern window, by figures of St. Columba, St. David, the Venerable Bede, and St. Augustine of Canterbury. The absence of a bishop's throne is peculiar to this Cathedral; the bishop occupies the return stall on the south side, and the dean that on the north; those seats being generally appropriated to the dean and sub dean. When the abbacy was converted into a bishopric (A.D. 1109) the bishop took the seat previously held by the abbot, the prior retaining his own; and, on the re-foundation in 1541, the dean took the seat previously used by the priors, and here occupies traditionally the side opposite to his customary position. On the right hand of the entrance, therefore, is the seat of the bishop, and on the left hand that of the dean, both surmounted by lofty pinnacles of tabernacle work; and the ancient stalls, formerly used under the Octagon, extend on both sides to the length of the three western bays. These, which we believe form the sole existing specimen of stalls of that date in England, have been cleansed from their coats of paint and restored, and harmonise well with the new work: the canopies are rich and elaborate, and the panels in the upper portions have recently been filled with sculptured groups illustrative of Scripture history, those on the north side from the New, and those on the south side from the Old Testament; they are beautifully designed, and contribute greatly to the good effect of the whole. These sculptures have been executed in oak by M. Abeloos, of Louvain, (with one exception, "the Nativity," by Mr. Philip,) and are the gifts of various benefactors. They are placed in chronological order and, as we proceed from west to east, the subjects may be noticed in the positions described as follows. NORTH SIDE. The Annunciation. The Salutation. The Nativity. The Presentation in the Temple. The Adoration of the Magi. The Murder of the Innocents. The Flight into Egypt. Jesus disputing with the Doctors. The Baptism. The Temptation. The Miracle at Cana in Galilee. The Transfiguration. Mary anointing the Lord's feet. The Betrayal. Our Lord before Caiaphas. Jesus mocked. Pilate washing his hands. Jesus scourged. "Behold the Man." The Crucifixion. The Entombment. The Resurrection. Our Lord at Emmaus. The incredulity of Thomas. The Ascension. SOUTH SIDE. The Creation of Man. The Creation of Woman. Adam and Eve in Paradise. The Fall of Man. The Expulsion from Paradise. Adam and Eve at Work. Cain killing Abel. Noah building the Ark. The Deluge. Noah's Sacrifice. Promise to Abraham. Isaac carrying the wood. Abraham's Sacrifice. Isaac blessing Jacob. Jacob's Dream. Joseph sold by his Brethren. The Burning Bush. The Passover. Moses striking the Rock. Moses raising the brazen serpent. Return of the Spies. David anointed by Samuel. Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon. Jonah. Elijah's ascent to Heaven. The sub-stalls are new, and of good design; the stall-ends in the upper range have a series of statuettes of the principal among the ancient benefactors, or of the builders of various portions of the church, each under a canopy, and for finials they have figures of angels with instruments of music. Each of the statuettes (where finished) is represented as holding some type or model of the particular portion with which its prototype is more intimately connected. They were designed and modelled by Mr. J. Philip, and executed partly by him and partly by Mr. Rattee; we append a list of them in the order in which they are placed, commencing from the west, as before: NORTH SIDE. St. Etheldreda. King Edgar. Abbot Simeon. Abbot Richard. Bishop Hervey. Bishop Ridel. SOUTH SIDE. Bishop Alcock. Alan de Walsingham. Prior Crauden. Bishop Hotham. Bishop Northwold. Bishop Eustachius. The fronts of the stalls are generally of open work, shewing the hinged seats, or misereres as they are usually called, behind; in both series of stalls these are curiously and grotesquely carved beneath. On the faces of the stall-ends of the lower tier are various emblematical devices, crests, and shields, beautifully carved; our list is made in the same order as of the statuettes. NORTH SIDE. Crest of Dean Peacock. Crest of the late Canon Sparke. Crest of Canon Fardell. Arms of Canon Ashley. Bull--emblem of St. Luke. Eagle--emblem of St. John. SOUTH SIDE. Arms of the See of Ely. Arms of Canon Selwyn. Arms of Canon Mill. Pelican--ancient Church symbol. Lion--emblem of St. Mark. Angel--emblem of St. Matthew. An elegant brass lectern the gift of the late Canon Sparke, has been placed in the Choir, as a memorial of H.S. le Strange, Esq., who painted the ceiling of the Tower and the western portion of the Nave ceiling. The organ is placed in a position differing from that of most others in England, although not unusual in Continental Cathedrals. The pedal and swell organs have been placed in the triforium on the north side, and the great organ, with the choir organ beneath it, project in front of the third bay, resting upon an over-hanging chamber behind the stalls. The organ was reconstructed, with great additions, by Messrs. Hill and Son, of London, when the removal took place in 1851, and several important additions were made in 1867, by the same firm.[39] The magnificent organ-case, with its sculptures, was executed by Mr. Rattee; the pipes in front have been gilded and ornamented by Mr. Castell, of London, and much of the woodwork having been left in its natural colour forms an agreeable contrast, and the effect produced, from almost every point of view, is rich and beautiful; while from its unusual position it loses little of its power or sweetness of tone, but sends forth its pealing sounds reverberating through the lofty arches with fine effect. We know nothing more sublime than the voices of a congregation, guided and supported by such an instrument, praising and adoring the great Creator and Father of all, and are led to exclaim with the poet Milton-- "There let the pealing organ blow, To the full voiced choir below, In service high and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes." [Footnote 39: See Appendix I.] The division between the Early English work of Bishop Northwold and that part generally spoken of as Hotham's work is marked by two steps in the floor, and by two strong piers rising from the floor to the vault, which were in fact the original Norman shafts near the commencement of the apse or east end taken down by Hugh de Northwold, eighth bishop, who added the six beautiful eastern bays at his own expense; these form a pure and good example of Early English work, and were completed A.D. 1252, and dedicated in the same year, in the presence of King Henry III., and many nobles and prelates. This was called the "Presbytery," or "Sanctuary," a common name at that time for the east end of a church. "The character of the three western bays is singularly yet beautifully arranged to harmonize, in point of elevation of its parts, with the six eastern arches; this and the very great excellence of the details, render this part of the edifice a most valuable study."[40] The absolute contact here of the two styles, Early English and Decorated, affords the spectator an opportunity of contrasting them, and of judging of the comparative merits of each. By many, the eastern bays are preferred for their chaste and elegant appearance, not being so profusely ornamented as those of the western ones, but, as Mr. Millers observes, "everything seems in its proper place and fitly proportioned: all harmonize, and taken altogether, give a general character of lightness and elegance. This is nowhere more conspicuous than in the roof; the plain ribs of which, diverging from their imposts, instead of crossing each other and spreading into intricate forms, go straight to a longitudinal midline running from west to east, and decorated with coloured figures or flowers where the springers meet it. There is a precise line of separation between this and the more elaborate ceiling of Bishop Hotham's work; being thus brought into contact the two may be compared with singular advantage."[41] [Footnote 40: Rickman.] [Footnote 41: Millers' Description of Ely Cathedral, p. 74.] The bases of the piers of the lower arches are octagonal, but the shafts are cylindrical, surrounded by slenderer detached ringed shafts with foliated capitals, all of Purbeck marble. The triforium (except in the first and second bays on both sides,) extends over the aisles, and is lighted by large windows with Decorated tracery in the outer wall; and the arches are separated by a cluster of slender shafts into two smaller ones with trefoil heads; and between the two is a quatrefoil; all highly adorned with mouldings. Between each of these lower arches is an enriched corbel of Purbeck marble, adorned with foliage in high relief, from which rises the vaulting-shaft, in a group of three, between the arches of the triforium to the base of the clerestory, having a capital of leafage, and from the top of which spring the ribs of the vaulting. The spandrils throughout are relieved with trefoils and quatrefoils, deeply sunk and backed with Purbeck marble; and, on the whole, the contrast of light and shade, depth and projection, produces a very fine effect. The clerestory arches are of the same span, but each is divided into three smaller ones, the centre arch being higher than those on either side, in order to admit light through the windows behind, which are three lancet-shaped lights under one arch in the outer wall, and are, we believe, original; these windows have been filled with stained glass, which is another important step towards the general improvement. The windows of the aisles and triforium were originally three lancet-shaped lights under one arch, but were replaced in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by larger windows of a flamboyant character. In the first and second bays on both sides the triforium windows are placed in the inner wall, probably to give more light to the high altar, the position of which was indicated by a boss in the ceiling with a figure of St. Peter; and also to give greater effect to the rich and gorgeous shrine of St. Etheldreda, said to have been of pure silver adorned with jewels, which at that period stood near the altar and to her place of sepultre, indicated by a boss in the ceiling with her effigy on it. The tracery in these windows bears a similarity to those in the corresponding arches of Hotham's work, but is not so ornamented. All have been filled with stained glass by Mr. Wailes, the expense defrayed out of the east window fund: The western window on the north side--The descent of the Holy Ghost, with figures and emblems. The eastern window--The Ascension, with figures, &c. The western window on the south side--Incidents from the history of Moses, with figures, &c. The eastern window--Incidents from the history of Elijah, with devices, &c. "The east end," says Mr. Millers, "is eminently beautiful, and will not by any means shrink from comparison with the more gorgeous termination of any church built after great end windows came into fashion. There are two tiers of lights; the lower consists of three very high lancet-shaped lights, nearly all equal; the second of five, the middle one being higher, and those on the sides gradually lower."[42] They are enriched by slender columns, with leafy capitals, and ornamented with toothed and other mouldings, presenting altogether more gracefulness and elegance than one large window filling nearly the whole end. In the last century Bishop Mawson had formed a design of filling this window (for it is generally considered as one window of eight lights,) with stained glass, and selected an artist to carry it into effect; the work, however, was not then finished; a figure of St. Peter, and the arms of the bishop and contemporary members of the Chapter, are the only remains of it known to be in existence, and these were lately removed from the centre lancet and placed in the east window of the north triforium of the Nave. The window has at length been completed by the liberality of Bishop Sparke, who gave in his lifetime a large sum for that purpose.[43] The bishop died some few years after making his munificent donation, and his two sons, Rev. J.H. Sparke and Rev. E.B. Sparke, then Canons of the cathedral, as Trustees of the fund, took steps to carry his wishes into effect. Several designs were prepared, and one by Mr. Wailes was selected, but the execution was deferred for some years in order that advantage might be taken of further experience, and thus, if possible, to realize some of those gorgeous effects which have made the thirteenth century windows of Canterbury, Chartres, Bourges, and elsewhere, so justly celebrated. [Footnote 42: Millers' Description of Ely Cathedral, p. 76.] [Footnote 43: See note p. 53.] The eastern lancets were executed by Mr. Wailes in 1857, and the representatives of the donor have good reason to be satisfied with the result. The general effect produced is magnificent; the three lower lancets in particular present that happy combination of sparkling brilliancy with that somewhat mysterious indefiniteness in the distribution of colour which is so well suited to the architectural effect. It is sufficient to compare the present window with others in the Cathedral, not excluding the productions of Mr. Wailes himself, to shew the great advance which the art of glass-painting has recently made, both in the richness of the colours employed and their arrangement--the improvement arising, doubtless, from a more accurate study of the great masters of the middle ages. The figures and groups in the three noble lancets are executed with great spirit; and although numerous, are arranged, more especially in the central window, in masses which the eye can readily follow, and by occupying so large a portion of the entire surface, leave little room for the monotonous repetitions of foliage or other patterns; the distribution of colour is also thus sufficiently varied without its masses in one part of the window unduly preponderating over those in another, a condition which is never grossly violated without serious injury to just architectural effect. In the central window of the clerestory range, the spaces between the medallions and the border are filled with a diapered ground, which, though rich in colour, is somewhat formal in effect; whilst the field in the side windows, within the border, is too narrow to allow the figures to be sufficiently separated and relieved from the rest of the ground. It arises, probably, from these or other causes that the general effect which the upper lancets produce, though otherwise good, is by no means so rich and sparkling as that of the lower windows. The subjects of the three lower lights are illustrative of the history of our blessed Lord; commencing at the bottom of the south lancet--where is represented a figure of Jesse, from whose body issues a genealogical tree--and continuing in ascending order, through a series of nine medallions, following in the same manner through a similar number in the north lancet, and five others in the central lancet; alternately with these five are quatrefoils containing representation of types from the Old Testament of the events of the Passion represented in the other medallions; and in the segmental spaces round these quatrefoils are represented eighteen other incidents of the last days of the Saviour. In the segmental spaces in the south lancet the figures of the kings are disposed in pairs; and in the north lancet these spaces are filled with the figures of Moses, Elias, and the prophets; and at the bottom a kneeling figure of the donor. The five upper windows, two on the north and two on the south, contain figures of the apostles; at the top of the central window our Lord is represented as sitting in glory, beneath which are depicted four incidents which occurred after the Crucifixion. The floor of the Choir has been re-laid with marble combined with Minton's encaustic tiles, and a large marble slab has been placed over the grave of Bishop Hotham, inlaid with brass and bearing the arms of the see and those of the bishop, surrounded by an inscription. At the foot of this another has been laid over the grave of Prior Crauden, superior of the monastery at the time of the erection of the Octagon; this is the original gravestone of the prior, but it had been removed with several others to another part of the church; the brass insertion has been renewed, shewing a kneeling figure with a large foliated cross issuing from his bosom, with the initials I.C. on either side, and surrounded by an inscription. In the wide treading of one of the steps at the end of the stalled choir are placed the arms of some of the benefactors to the restoration of the Cathedral;[44] executed by Messrs. Minton. In the Presbytery, where the absence of stall-work allows space for more elaborate design, it will be seen much care and skill has been used, and the effect produced is very good. The communion table is raised five steps above the level of the floor, each step being laid in mosaic and encaustic tiles of beautiful and varied patterns, used in conjunction with veined, and faced with black, marble. [Footnote 44: In the centre are the arms of the Duke of Bedford; on the south side those of Alexander Beresford Hope, Esq., and the Rev. T. Halford; on the north those of J. Dunn Gardner, Esq., and J.C. Sharpe, Esq.] The new reredos or altar screen is remarkable for its chaste but elaborate design and richness of detail, as well as skill in execution; and is not, perhaps, surpassed by any modern work of the kind; our limited space will not allow us to attempt anything like an adequate description of this beautiful work, but we will endeavour briefly to point out the prominent features, and recommend to the visitor a careful examination of its various details. It comprises a centre with wings, having openings with geometrical tracery and foliated mouldings, surmounted by an elegant cresting. The front of the central portion is of the most beautiful design, executed in alabaster, enriched with colour and gilding, and will doubtless claim the first attention of the visitor. The sides of the space occupied by the altar is covered with diaper work exhibiting a series of roses, apparently connected together by their stems running through the pattern under the bars of the diaper-work; above this, the whole width is divided into five compartments--the centre one being wider than the others--separated by enriched columns, around which are spiral belts with cornelians and blood-stones on a gold ground, and having elegant foliated capitals, copied from natural objects; on these capitals stand a series of angels bearing instruments of the passion--cross, crown of thorns, nails, spear, &c., and each having under his feet a dragon or other reptile, typical of the triumph over Satan by the Sacrifice of the Atonement. The lower part of each compartment is occupied by quatrefoils ornamented with ball-flowers, and filled in with mosaic work of _verd antique_, _rosso antico_, _gialo antico_, and _lapis lazuli_: above these are panels containing alto-relievo sculptures of great excellence, the subjects taken from the life of the Saviour; beginning on the north side, we find Christ's entry into Jerusalem, Christ washing His disciples' feet, the Institution of the Sacrament, Christ's agony in the Garden, and Christ bearing His cross: another series of spiral pillars stand in the front and on the sides of these panels with capitals similar to those already mentioned. These pillars have their spiral course in the opposite direction to the former, which adds to the general beauty of the whole. Above the sculptured panels, each of the four side compartments is surmounted by two small gables with their outer mouldings foliated, crowned with a finial, and finished at the bottom by a grotesque figure of a dragon or other animal; the inner face of each gable contains within a circle a head in bas-relief, those on the north side representing the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; those on the south represent four doctors of the church, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory; the other portions being filled in with mosaic work. The centre compartment has three projecting canopies, the faces of which are enriched with mosaic, the angles are crocketed, and finished at the bottom with roses and grotesque figures. Above the centre canopy, on a lofty enriched pinnacle, stands a figure of our Lord; on the north side, on a lower pinnacle, stands a figure of Moses; and on the south side a figure of Elias, the three being typical of the Transfiguration. The upper portion of the white stone screen behind the alabaster work is also divided into five compartments of open work with geometrical tracery; in front rise five gables, the centre being larger and higher than the others. The outer mouldings of the centre gable are enriched with foliated crocketing with which is intermixed the early church symbol--pelican feeding her young--and the apex surmounted by a figure of our Lord enthroned: the inner portion of the gable contains, in a trefoil, a basso-relievo of the Annunciation, in alabaster. The four side compartments are also surmounted by gables, on the top of which stand respectively the figures of the four Evangelists, in alabaster, their respective emblems being worked in the crockets; on the inner faces of the gables, within trefoils, are busts in relief, those on the north side represent Mary Magdelene and Mary the mother of James; those on the south, St. John the Baptist and St. John the divine; the remaining space in each gable being filled in with mosaic. Outside and between these gables rise spiral pillars, on the tops of which are placed figures of the virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, on the north side; and of the graces, Justice, Prudence, and Fortitude, on the south side, executed in alabaster. The wings also are of white stone, and not so high as the centre; in each are three openings with geometrical tracery; and below these openings the wall is covered with diaper-work of an elegant pattern. The portion of this screen, which forms the reredos, is the munificent gift of John Dunn Gardner, Esq., of Chatteris, in this county, and designed as a memorial to his first wife. The work took upwards of five years to execute, and cost about £4000. Some of the more important of the sculptures, mosaics, and other decorations, were suggested by the donor, and the whole was designed by Sir G.G. Scott, and affords a magnificent example of his skill and taste. The stone-work, including the architectural carving, was executed by Mr. Rattee and his successors, at Cambridge; the sculptures by Mr. Philip; the mosaics by Mr. Field; and the gilding and painting by Mr. Hudson. The Reredos was expressly designed with reference to a painted window placed behind it: it is hardly necessary to say that it is greatly benefitted by the general reduction of the glare of light, which rendered the outlines of much of the statuary and more delicate ornaments undistinguishable at a distance, but still more by the transmission through it of glimpses of the most beautiful colours, which change with every movement, however slight, in the position of the eye, and whose very indistinctness and transitory character contributes not a little to the effect which they tend to produce on the mind. The altar being raised above the level of the floor shews to advantage the magnificent altar cloth, which is of rich crimson velvet, embroidered with much taste and skill by Miss Agnes and Miss Ellen Blencowe, and is thought to be worthy of the best ages of Mediæval embroidery. "Its length is divided into three parts; the middle containing a very beautiful figure of our Lord as risen, contained within a pointed aureole of a deep blue colour, and bordered by radiating beams. Broad orphreys embroidered in flowers divide the middle compartment from the sides, which are of red velvet powdered with conventional flowers;"[45] the largest were copied from ancient examples at East Langdon, Kent, and the others from Ottery, Somersetshire. The following passage is worked in gold on the super-frontal:-- [Maltese cross symbol] "+Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem. Agnus Dei, miserere nobis.+"[46] [Maltese cross symbol] [Footnote 45: Ecclesiologist.] [Footnote 46: "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us Thy peace. Lamb of God, have mercy upon us."] We now direct our attention to the monuments in the Choir, and commence with the first arch on the south side of the Presbytery which is occupied by the once gorgeous monument of Bishop de Luda, or Louth (1290-1298), it consists of a lofty central arch with smaller openings on the sides; above the arches are enriched gables with pinnacles and finials; over the centre arch in a trefoil is a figure of the Saviour; the restoration of the north side of this monument will afford some idea of its original appearance; the effect has been somewhat subdued by the softened light from the east window. The indent in the gravestone under the arch leaves no doubt of its having been once finished with a brass effigy. The next arch contains the tomb of Bishop Barnet (1366-1373); it is of Purbeck marble, with quatrefoils on the sides, and had originally the effigy of the bishop engraved in brass on the table of the tomb. Under the third arch is the high monument of John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, one of the patrons of Caxton, the first English printer; this is in the Perpendicular style, but less beautiful than that of Bishop Redman, on the opposite side: on the table of the tomb are the effigies of the earl and his two wives; the two latter only were buried here, the earl having been beheaded and buried in London in 1470. The tomb of Bishop Hotham (1316-1337) has been partially restored and placed in the next arch, on the south side of the altar; it formerly stood under a high canopy on the north side, but originally in the first arch of his own work. There was probably a recumbent figure on the top, but it has long since disappeared. Opposite to this, on the north side of the altar, on a base of Purbeck marble, are placed the interesting remains of the tomb of Bishop Northwold (1229-1254), the munificent founder of the Presbytery, which were originally placed over his grave in the centre of his own work. It is a large slab of Purbeck marble, highly adorned with carving; perhaps one of the finest specimens of its period: the effigy of the prelate is represented as resting beneath a cinquefoil canopy in his robes, bearing his crosier, with a lion and dragon under his feet; beneath this is a representation of the martyrdom of St. Edmund, a prince of East Anglia, by the Danes, commemorative of his having been lord abbot of Bury before he was preferred to the see of Ely; the niches in the sides of the prelate's stall have statuettes--on the left, St. Etheldreda, an abbess crowned, and a nun; on the right, a king, an abbot, and a monk: at the top on each side of the head are angels with censers, and other symbolical figures. The monument or shrine which was formerly placed over the tomb of Bishop Hotham, has been in part restored, and now occupies the third arch on the north side. This, with the tomb now on the south side of the altar under it, originally stood in the first arch of his own work, near his place of sepultre; it is in the Decorated style, and was richly coloured and gilded. Part of it was cut away in order to make room for the stalls when the choir occupied the six eastern arches, but this has been rebuilt. This is now thought to have been part of the sub-structure of the shrine of St. Etheldreda, as adapted by Alan de Walsingham. The second arch from the west, is occupied by the tomb of Bishop Kilkenny (1254-1256,) who died at Sugho, in Spain, while on an embassy to the Spanish Court; his body was buried there, his heart being only interred here. The tomb is of Purbeck marble, and is a fine example of the Early English style. The bishop is represented as in the act of benediction, with a pastoral staff, and in full pontificals; his head is shown as resting on a cushion, and is surmounted by a trefoil arch with a crocketed gable, and a censer-bearing angel on each side. In the next, or more western arch, is the beautiful monument of Bishop Redman (1501-1505). It is a fine specimen of the Perpendicular Style, and is richly ornamented with niches and canopies, and a variety of shields with arms, and emblems of the passion; the effigy of the bishop is recumbent on a high tomb under a rich canopy, with a space left at the foot for a chantry priest. Passing through this space we enter the +North Aisle of the Choir,+ and first proceeding towards the western end of it, we notice the new back screens which have been erected to mask the stall work in two of the bays, and against which have been placed the monuments of Bishop Fleetwood (1714-1723), and of his son Dr. Charles Fleetwood (1737); the third bay is occupied by the new and elegant staircase to the organ; it is of open work, richly carved, with foliated mouldings and ornaments. Opposite to this, in the north wall, is a beautiful door-arch, formerly the means of communication with the Lady Chapel; it has statues in large niches on each side, many smaller niches, crockets, and finials, and over the keystone a sitting figure; the mouldings and ornaments were originally beautified by colours and gilding, but all are injured and defaced, and the figures have disappeared. A little further eastward is the memorial brass laid over the grave of Mr. Bassevi, the eminent architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, who was accidentally killed by a fall in the western Tower in 1845. The monuments of Bishop Redman and Kilkenny, which we noticed in our survey of the Choir, are in their original places; and we now pass in succession those of Bishops Patrick (1691-1707), Mawson (1754-1770), and Laney (1667-1675). In 1770 many monuments were removed from the Presbytery to make room for the Choir, and a few were again removed for the purpose of carrying out the recent arrangements. In the last bay but one (now opening to the Retro-Choir) stood the monument of Bishop Gray (1454-1478), but the gravestone only remains, from which the brass has been removed. The arms of this prelate may be observed in the sides of three of the windows of this aisle, no doubt altered by him to their present form. The first or western window of the Presbytery has been filled with stained glass executed by M. Lusson, of Paris, illustrative of the history of St. John the Baptist; the gift of the Rev. Chancellor Sparke. The second window, executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell, contains subjects illustrative of the miracles; designed as a memorial of the Rev. J.H. Sparke, many years Canon of the Cathedral, and Chancellor of the Diocese. The third window, by the same artist, also contains subjects illustrative of the miracles; designed as a memorial of Agneta, widow of Chancellor Sparke. The fourth window, executed by Mr. Hughes, contains subjects from the parables--the wheat and tares, the vineyard, and the lost sheep; and the miraculous draught of fishes, designed as a memorial of Eliza, widow of Canon Fardell. The fifth window, executed by Mr. Ward, contains in the two western lights subjects from the parable of the ten virgins; and in the others illustrations of the passage in Matt. XXV. 35, 36. "I was an hungered and ye gave me meat," &c.; designed as a memorial of Rev. H. Fardell, Canon of Ely. At the end of this aisle, occupying the space of one bay, is the +Chapel of Bishop Alcock+, (1486-1500), who was comptroller of works under Henry VII., and founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. The chapel is in the Perpendicular style, and was built A.D. 1488, as appears from a stone found underground some years ago, and inserted in the wall under the east window, bearing the following inscription, scarcely legible: "+Johanes Alkoc epus Eliesis hanc fabrica fieri fecit. M.cccclxxxviii.+" The ornamental portion is curiously executed, but the pinnacles are disproportioned and crowded, presenting a confused and heavy appearance; the vaulted ceiling is rich and elaborate, with a large pendent of curious workmanship in the centre. The principal entrance is on the west, but there is a door on the south side; and the bishop's tomb is on the north side with a window behind containing some fragments of stained glass. It is probable from its appearance that the monument contained two effigies, one representing the bishop in his pontifical robes and another on a higher ledge, which represented a body in a state of decay, as contrasting life and death. A carved oak door at the foot of the monument appears as an entrance to a chantry, or as by some supposed to have been a confessional. The bishop was buried in the centre of the chapel; his favorite device--a rebus of his name--a cock standing on a globe, and his arms may be seen in the window and in several other places. The chapel has been much defaced and many figures and ornaments have disappeared, but something has been done towards restoration at the cost of the Master and Fellows of Jesus College; the new portion of the floor was laid at the cost of the Rev. Lord Aylwyne Compton; and we hope ere long to see the east window filled with stained glass, which will contribute much to its improvement. +The Retro-Choir.+ This occupies the space of the two eastern bays of the Cathedral, allowing a passage behind the altar-screen from one aisle to the other, and affords a good position for a closer inspection of the lower portions of the east window, under which are some remains of ancient decoration on the wall. Nearly under the central window, a memorial brass has been laid over the grave of Canon Fardell, who died in 1854, and of his widow, who died in 1861; to whose memories respectively the two stained glass windows were inserted in the north aisle of the Choir, noticed in p. 79. Near this stands an ancient oaken chest, covered with elaborate and curious ironwork, with four locks. Behind the new altar-screen, beneath a large and costly slab of Alexandrine mosaic, is the grave of Bishop Allen (1836-1845), to whose memory a monument in white marble has been erected in the south aisle of the Choir. A little further southward is a monument erected over the grave of Dr. Mill, Canon of Ely, and Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, who died in 1853. It is an altar tomb of serpentine and alabaster, ornamented with marble mosaic and polished stones, bearing a recumbent effigy of Dr. Mill in his robes; at the feet are two kneeling figures, one an oriental character, and the other a student; the figure is in copper and was formed by the electrotype process. It was designed by Sir G.G. Scott, and executed by Mr. Philip. In the eastern bay on the south side is a monument of Cardinal de Luxemburg, Archbishop of Rouen, and Bishop of Ely (1438-1443). This monument was for many years hidden by a screen, but on the removal of the Choir the screen was taken away and the monument partially restored, the figure remains but the head is gone. The Cardinal-bishop died at Hatfield, and his body was buried at Ely, but his heart was conveyed to his Cathedral at Rouen. The niches and canopies with their finials in the tympanum of the arch above this monument will attract attention, being chaste and elegant; they are similar to those in the interior of Bishop West's chapel, but are in a more perfect state. +South Aisle of the Choir.+ The eastern portion of this aisle is occupied by the elegant mortuary +Chapel of Bishop West+, (1515-1534), filling the space of one bay in a similar way to that of Bishop Alcock in the north aisle. It is a rich specimen of that gorgeous style by some called the "Florid English," by others the "Perpendicular," but when that style was verging into "Renaissance." The niches and canopies are very numerous, and almost endless in variety of size, shape, and decoration. There are places for upwards of two hundred statues, large and small; and some of the carved heads were of medallion size, and well executed. It is impossible to contemplate this beautiful oratory, even in its mutilated state, but with feelings of admiration; the taste of the designer, no less than the execution of the sculptor, are wonderful, and although every part is covered with niches, pedestals, and canopies, interspersed with relievos, grotesque designs and ornaments, the whole appears light and airy. The ceilings of the canopies are covered with tracery that can only be compared to lace-work exquisitely varied and finished; the ceiling and pendents are deserving attention; the former is divided into lozenge shaped compartments of different sizes, all are coloured, and on many of them are painted the arms of the see, and those of the founder of the chapel; the pendents are formed by figures of angels holding the same arms and those of Henry VIII. Over the door on the inside is this inscription: "GRACIA DEI SUM QUOD ID SUM, A.D. 1534." and the same without the date and the word "id" is to be seen in several other places both within and without. The gates are worthy of notice as originals, and as specimens of wrought-iron work of that period. This chapel, which is the burial place of Bishop West, may be compared with that built by him in the parish church of his birth-place, Putney; but every part of it has suffered the most barbarous mutilation, not a figure can be found perfect, all have been removed or defaced, probably in consequence of an order in council made A.D. 1547-8, against the Romish superstition, and for removing images out of churches; or it might have been done by the Puritans in the time of the Protector (Cromwell), whose soldiers it is stated, made use of the Cathedral as stabling for their horses. Bishop Keene (1771-1781), was also buried here; and Bishop Sparke (1812-1836) and Mrs. Sparke were interred in this chapel, to whose memories the monument at the east end has been erected, and the stained glass window behind is inserted: The window was executed by Mr. Evans, of Shrewsbury, and contains figures of the four Evangelists, with St. John the Baptist in the centre; the tracery being filled with appropriate emblems and ornamental devices. A slab of black marble, inlaid with a foliated cross, the arms of the sees of Chester and Ely, and surrounded by an inscription in brass, has been laid over the grave of Bishop Sparke, and the gravestones of Bishops West and Keene have been replaced, and the remainder of the floor laid with encaustic tiles. Some fragments of stained glass may be seen in a window on the south side, under which stand the remains of Bishop West's monument. Just above this, in seven small arches, closed with as many stones inscribed with names and dates, are immured the remains of seven eminent persons[47] of the tenth and eleventh centuries, who were originally interred in the Conventual church, but from which they were removed in 1154, and the small chests which contained their remains, were placed in the north wall of the Choir of the present Cathedral; and when the position of the Choir was altered in 1770 they were again removed, and deposited in their present resting places. [Footnote 47: Wolstan, Archbishop of York; Osmund, a Swedish bishop; Ednoth, Bishop of Dorchester (Lincoln); Alfwyn, Elfgar, and Athelstan, severally Bishops of Elmham; and Brithnoth, Duke of Northumberland. An interesting account of the removal of these remains may be found in the Addenda to Bentham's History, vol. ii. p. 23, &c.] The perspective view westward through the south aisles of the Choir and the Nave is worthy of notice for the various intersections of the arches and groinings, as seen from a narrow window in the west side of the chapel, or from the door. The architecture of the south aisle is similar to the north aisle, and the windows were probably altered to their present form about the same period as those in the north aisle. Five of them (as on the other side) have been filled with stained glass: The first window from the chapel, executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell, contains subjects taken from the Parables; designed as a memorial of Astley Sparke, Esq., (son of the Rev. Chancellor Sparke,) who was killed in the celebrated cavalry charge at Balaclava in 1854. The second window was executed by Mr. Cottingham, and contains subjects from the history of Lazarus; the joint gift of Lady Buxton and of her son, Sir Robert Buxton, Bart., of Shadwell Park, Norfolk. The third window contains incidents in the history of the Saviour, and of St. John; executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell: the gift of Mrs. Pratt, youngest daughter of Bishop Sparke. The fourth window, by the same artists, contains subjects illustrative of the history of St. Peter; the gift of the same lady, as a memorial of her husband, Colonel Pratt. The fifth window, by the same artists, contains subjects illustrative of the history of our Lord: given by the same lady. Under the second window from the chapel is an arched recess, which is thought to have formed an entrance to the church for the convenience of the sisters and others attendant on the sick in the Infirmary which stood near, but it has been closed on the exterior for many years. The interior may have been since used as a receptacle for relics; now it is occupied as a receptacle for a beautiful life-size effigy of Dr. Selwyn, for upwards of forty years Canon of Ely, and for many years St Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge;[48] who died in 1875. The figure is represented as vested in cassock, surplice, and stole, with the hands joined as in prayer, in white statuary marble, and resting on a moulded base of Purbeck marble. The cost was defrayed by subscriptions from several noblemen and gentlemen formerly Eton scholars. [Footnote 48: The Professor left the sum of £10,000 towards the erection of Divinity Schools in connection with the University of Cambridge, which have just been completed.] Near this we may notice an ancient gravestone, or part of a monument found under the floor of the nave in St. Mary's Church, in 1829. It represents an angel with wings raised above the head, bearing a small naked figure, probably representing the soul of a bishop, as a crozier appears at the side; the angel has on a kind of cope with an ornamental border; and around the head is a large circular aureole, and the canopy shows a mass of buildings with semicircular arches. There is an inscription on the rim, "_St. Michael oret p' me_." To whose memory it was executed it is impossible to say, but it is doubtless of great interest. A good view of the organ may be had from this aisle by looking over the tomb in the fourth bay from the chapel. Several other monuments to former prelates of the church, and to other persons, may be observed in this aisle: one to Bishop Gunning (1675-1684), worthy of remembrance as the author of the "Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men." Near the foot of this monument is a piscina in the wall. A little further we find one to Bishop Heton (1600-1609), occupying the fifth bay, and is perhaps the only instance since the Reformation, of the effigy of a bishop in a cope ornamented with saints; the figures on the left border are those of St. Bartholomew, St. Matthias, St. Andrew, St. Peter, and St. John. Before passing on to the few remaining monuments we will notice the only two specimens of ancient memorial brasses, of which there were many in the Cathedral, as appears by the numerous incised stones in different parts of the church, many of them were evidently of a rich and elaborate character, but all, with the above exception, have disappeared by the act of the mercenary or the fanatic. The first is a memorial to Bishop Goodrich (1534-1554), a singular instance of a hot reformer commemorated by a brass in which are pourtrayed all the ecclesiastical vestments, he holds his crozier in his left hand, and in his right he carries a Bible from which depends the great seal of England, the bishop having been appointed Lord High Chancellor in 1551; the inscription has been removed. The other is in memory of Humphrey Tyndall, fourth dean of the Cathedral (1591-1614), who is represented in his robes, with a square-cut beard; an inscription is engraved in the border, and the following lines beneath the feet of the effigy: "THE BODY OF THE WOORTHY & REVERENDE PRELATE VMPHRY TYNDALL, DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, THE FOVRTH DEAN OF THIS CHVRCH, AND MASTER OF QVEENES COLLEDGE IN CAMBRIDGE DOTH HERE EXPECT THE COMING OF OVR SAVIOVR. "In presence, gouerment, good actions and in birth, Graue, wise, couragious, Noble was this earth, The poor, the church, the colledge saye here lyes 'A friende, A Deane, A maister, true, good, wise.'" We have now an opportunity of noticing the piers which separate Bishop Northwold's work from that of Bishop Hotham; "they are," as Mr. Millers observes, "a combination of the two sorts of column severally in use at the respective times at which the two fabrics were erected; the east side has the small shafts distinct from the main column, and the west side is clustered, and where they meet is a niche for a statue."[49] In the niche on this side is a tablet to the memory of the Rev. James Bentham, Canon of Ely, and author of "The History and Antiquities of Ely Cathedral," a work of acknowledged merit, the result of many years' labour and research. He died in 1794, aged 86. [Footnote 49: Millers' Description of Ely Cathedral, p. 89.] The monument to Robert Steward, Esq., who died A.D. 1570, is next in our route, and beyond that one to Sir Mark Steward, who died A.D. 1603, both examples of no particular style. In the last bay is the monument erected to the memory of Bishop Allen, whose gravestone we noticed in passing the retro-choir; on the table of the monument is a reclining figure of the prelate in his robes, in white marble, considered to be a good likeness. Back-screens to mask the stalls, similar to those in the north aisle, have been erected on this side, against which have been placed the monuments of Bishop Moore (1707-1714), Bishop Butts (1738-1748), and Bishop Greene (1723-1738). On the pillar between the two last is a tablet to the memory of William Lynne, gentleman, of Bassingbourne, the first husband of Elizabeth, daughter of William Steward, of Ely, and afterwards mother of Oliver Cromwell. The new screens with gates at the western end of the aisles are worthy of notice as specimens of modern work in wrought iron; they were executed by Mr. Skidmore, of Coventry, from designs by Sir G.G. Scott. That in the south aisle was given by G.A. Lowndes, Esq., of Barrington Hall, Essex; and that in the north aisle by Dean Peacock. Near the Library door is a simple memorial stone[50] to Dean Peacock, the great promoter of the recent restorations, who died in 1858, and was buried in the Cemetery. Just below this is an elegant memorial brass to the Rev. Solomon Smith, M.A., for over forty years a Minor Canon of the Cathedral, and for many years Incumbent of St. Mary's. [Footnote 50: See note, p. 50.] Several other memorial remains may be observed in various parts of the church, but to enumerate them or to point them out would exceed our limits, one we may notice in passing, that of Dean Cæsar (1614-1636), which has been removed from a position it long occupied in the north aisle of the Choir, to the junction of that aisle with the closed end of the eastern aisle of the north Transept, near the new pulpit. We may also notice a new oaken lectern or reading desk near the pulpit, containing a beautifully carved figure representative of the first beatitude, under a cinquefoil canopy, the gift of the Very Rev. the Dean. "Of fifty-four bishops of Ely," says Mr. Millers, "thirty-five are known to have been buried in this Cathedral, and two in the Lady Chapel. Of these thirty-seven, there are memorials of twenty; some of them very scanty and much mutilated, and many removed from the spots where the bodies of those whom they commemorate repose. Of the other seventeen, there were no doubt, similar memorials, but they 'are perished as though they had never been.'"[51] Since the above was written two others have been buried in the Cathedral--Bishop Sparke in West's chapel, and Bishop Allen behind the altar screen, as we have noticed; Bishop Turton (1845-1864), was buried at Kensal Green. [Footnote 51: Millers' Description of Ely Cathedral, p. 85.] * * * * * +The Lady Chapel.+ We will now direct the attention of the visitor to this most interesting building, which stands on the north side of the Cathedral, parallel with the Choir, and is approached through a doorway at the north-east corner of the north Transept. This chapel was erected in the early part of the fourteenth century, the first stone being laid on Lady-day, 1321, by Alan de Walsingham, then sub-prior, and the whole was completed A.D. 1349. The works were carried on chiefly under the charge of John de Wisbech, one of the monks, who, it is stated, whilst assisting in digging the foundations, found a brazen pot of old coins buried in the earth, and which proved a great assistance in carrying on the work. This was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and elaborate specimens of the Decorated style in England; and as Mr. Stewart observes, "must have been a perfect storehouse of statuary and elaborate tabernacle work." Even in its present dilapidated state it will amply repay a careful examination. It was dedicated to St. Mary, and after the Reformation, was (in 1566) assigned by the Dean and Chapter for the use of the inhabitants of the parish of Holy Trinity in lieu of their own church then in ruins, and has since been frequently called "Trinity Church." This is, perhaps, the widest single-span church in the kingdom, being 46 feet in width; the length is 100 feet, and the height 60 feet to the centre of the ceiling. Its length is divided into five severies, in each of which, on both sides, is a window of great size with four lights and rich tracery, in some of which are fragments of the original stained glass, sufficient to indicate that they were all, at one period, entirely so filled. The end windows are noble and spacious, the west window having eight lights, and the east window seven, both have transoms, and each with tracery differing from the other, and from the windows in the sides. Both are insertions of a somewhat later date than the building, the east window by Bishop Barnet about 1373, and the other a little later. The walls everywhere display a rich profusion and variety of ornament, once beautified with colouring and gilding, but some years ago covered with whitewash; a few faint traces of its former splendour may yet be found in various parts of the chapel, enough perhaps to shew that it must have been gorgeous in the extreme. A low bench table runs along the walls and carries a series of niches with canopies richly decorated, the piers of which rise from the floor, but each is divided into two by a slender pillar rising from the bench table; the arcade on the north side consists of nineteen tabernacles separated by square pilasters of Purbeck marble; there are five sets of three each under the windows, and the remaining four fill up the intermediate spaces between the five groups. The canopy of each of the fifteen tabernacles consists of a head of singular beauty, radiated and inclined forwards, on the apex is, or was, the figure of a saint; above these is a hood-mould crocketed, and terminating with a finial. The other four are wider, and instead of the figure of a saint on the apex each terminates in a group of three elaborately carved brackets or corbels, which support two other ranges of niches in pairs, surmounted by ornamented canopies, and between them runs a roof-shaft, from which spring the ribs of the vaulting, which is similar to that of the stalled Choir. The spandrils of the tabernacle work is filled with diaper work and alto relievos which are supposed to represent some legendary history, most probably that of the virgin. The south side is similar to the north, except that the range of tabernacles is broken by doorways. The west end contains eight of these tabernacles, and at the east end a larger niche occupied the centre with others on the sides, but these were altered at a later period. The altar is elevated above the level of the floor, and the niches on the side walls are raised in accordance. Large niches are placed on the sides of all the windows, and a pierced parapet standing on an entablature formed of a receding hollow, runs under the side windows only. The backs of the niches and indeed many parts of the chapel show remains of rich colouring; the ceiling was painted a rich blue studded with silver stars, the bosses at the intersections of the ribs represented flowers, foliage, and grotesque masks, and some of those along the mid-rib represented emblems of the nativity, crucifixion, the virgin, &c.; they had been richly coloured and gilded, but, like other parts of the building, have been defaced and injured; and every person who sees it must feel a deep regret that so beautiful a building should ever reach such a stage of desecration. A few modern monumental tablets are placed on the walls, but they diminish rather than increase the decoration: some others have been removed to the entrance, and in 1865 the close pews were taken away and replaced by open seats; the organ has been enlarged and its position changed, which does not improve the appearance of the church; some of the windows have been re-glazed and other improvements effected. The present Incumbent is the Rev. E.H. Lowe, M.A. The position of the Lady Chapel here is rather unusual, it is generally placed at the east end of the Church; but in some few instances that honourable position was appropriated to the shrine of the local saint; here it was occupied by the shrine of St. Etheldreda, whose final resting place was within the apse of the original Choir, before the Presbytery was built. * * * * * +The Upper parts of the Church.+ To those who may feel disposed to explore the upper parts of the church, facilities are afforded by a staircase commencing at the south-west Transept leading to the western Tower; and by another leading from the north Transept; but permission must be obtained, for which an application should be made to the Verger in attendance. The ascent, though tedious, is not dangerous, if due caution be used. Many parts will be found worthy of attention; the timber work of the Octagon is a very curious piece of carpentry executed in English oak, and very massive. A fine view of the interior may be had by standing against the upper tier of the windows at the east end, and looking westward; and another from the great Tower, by looking eastward through one of the openings near the clock face in the Nave. An extensive view of the surrounding country may be obtained from the summit of the Tower, exhibiting a complete panorama of the district, with several churches peeping from among the trees, and the river Ouse tracing its meandering course towards the sea, while corn-fields, meadows, and pastures contribute towards the beauty of the scene. +Exterior of the Cathedral.+ After a careful examination of the interior, the visitor will do well to look round the exterior. We will continue our observations for his guidance and assistance, starting from the western front where we began; or by leaving the Cathedral by the north door into the church-yard, we turn to the left hand towards the north-west corner of the building, and proceed eastward. While we are on the spot it may be well to observe the burial-ground near us, where lie the remains of generation after generation of former inhabitants of the town. Reader, let thy foot tread lightly hereabout, for the dust it presses on is all that remains of the earthly portion of creatures once breathing and living like yourself. What a lesson is afforded us when we contemplate, on the one hand the works of men of ages long past, but still standing as monuments of their skill and piety, and on the other the graves of the silent dead; the heads which planned and the hands which executed, where are they? Long since consigned to earth. All must feel, more or less, the influence of impressions to which such thoughts and scenes give rise, and may such feelings cause us to remember that we are but dust, and that we must, perhaps soon, become as those who lie beneath our feet! "Our time is fixed, and all our days are numbered, How long, how short, we know not."--_Blair_. The church-yard has been closed from burials for some years, and a cemetery has been formed a short distance from the town for the use of both parishes, as well as for the precincts which are extra-parochial. Many of the gravestones have been laid down, others removed, but a few inscriptions might be found which would afford food for meditation to those who may feel inclined to examine them. * * * * * At the commencement of our survey we examined the western front, and will now turn our attention to the remains of the north-west Transept. Some persons have doubted whether this wing ever existed, but Sir. G.G. Scott, in his able Lecture on the Cathedral, delivered at the Etheldreda Festival in October, 1873, gave good reasons for believing that it was built at the same time as the Tower and the south wing; and we cannot but think the ruins give strong evidence of its having been similar in all respects to that on the south side. There is in this, as in the other, a grand semicircular arch on the eastern side, and portions of another which probably communicated with some chapel, of which however there are neither remains nor record. It would appear that after the fall of the original wing a new building was begun on the same spot, not however of the same dimensions, and carried but a few feet and then discontinued. A band of panelling in the western face of the buttress corresponds with the work on the monument of Bishop Redman, who died in 1505, but the fall of the Transept took place some years, probably a century, before that. The arches built within the original arches of the Tower to afford additional support are believed to have been erected in the early part of the fifteenth century. We have reasons to hope that steps will ere long be taken to raise a fund towards rebuilding this Transept;[52] which would indeed be a grand improvement, and worthy the support, not only of the Diocese of Ely but of the nation at large. [Footnote 52: At the meeting of the Diocesan Conference at Ely, in July, 1874, the subject of the Restorations of the Cathedral was discussed, and the following Resolution passed unanimously.--"That it is desirable that a Diocesan Committee of Clergy and Laity, with Branch Committees in each Archdeaconry, be formed to co-operate with the Bishop, Dean, and Chapter, for raising funds to carry on the Restoration of the Cathedral by rebuilding in the first instance, after the completion of the works now in hand, the north-west Transept."--_Ely Conference Report, 1874._] A good view of the Nave may be obtained as it is unobstructed through its whole length. A band of treble billet moulding runs under the lower windows; a double hatched moulding under the second tier; and immediately below the parapet is the ornament called the corbel table; these with the billet moulding round the clerestory windows, are in excellent preservation. The parapet on the wall of the aisle is embattled, that above the clerestory windows is plain. Although at one time battlements ran the whole length on both sides, those on the north were removed nearly one hundred years ago. The windows in the clerestory retain their original form, but those of the two lower tiers have been altered. Over one of the lower windows there appears a date (1662), probably referring to the period of some important repairs or alterations on this side. The removal of the ruins of the old Church of St. Cross, which stood near this spot, took place in the reign of Elizabeth, when the use of the Lady Chapel was granted to the parish of Holy Trinity. We next turn our attention to the Octagon, which forms a grand central point from which radiate the four principal parts of the church--the Nave, the Choir, and the north and south arms of the Transept. Here originally stood a large square Norman Tower, which fell down in 1322, and was replaced by the present building; it is not an exact octagon, having four longer sides adjoining the four main portions of the building, and four shorter sides at the angles. The design was a grand one, but whether it was ever fully carried out is somewhat doubtful, the stone-work is carried up to a height a little above the roof of the Nave, &c., but the Lantern above is of English oak covered with lead. From a strong buttress, surmounted by a pinnacle, at each of the angles formed by the walls of the Nave and Choir aisles with those of the Transept spring two massive flying buttresses, abutting octagonal turrets at each angle of the Octagon; these turrets were probably originally designed to be finished with pinnacles, and thus form a corona; between them runs a pierced parapet formerly surmounted by a bold cresting of leaves and other ornaments; and there are bases of pillars at the cardinal points. These pinnacles with the cresting have just been completed in Clipsham stone, by Mr. Wood, of Ely, in a manner highly creditable to his skill, and greatly to the improvement of the appearance of the building. Beneath the parapet, instead of a corbel table, there is a deep hollow, with running leaves, and small ball flowers at intervals. The sides of the Octagon are adorned with an arcade of pointed arches, some of which are pierced and glazed to admit light; the longer sides have six, and the shorter three, of these arches. In each of the turrets is a winding stair communicating respectively with the main parts of the building. The Lantern above is of two stories, the lower, (which is open to the interior of the Octagon) is lighted by windows assimilating with the large windows in the angles of the Octagon; the upper story is lighted by louvres as adapted to a belfry, for which purpose this chamber was originally designed; the lower windows have been reconstructed, a series of flying buttresses (which had been taken away) have been re-placed against the angle divisions, which are finished with embattled turrets instead of pinnacles, and between them runs an open-work parapet. The whole of the Lantern has been repaired, and the exterior wood work re-covered with lead. The portion of the north Transept which fell down in 1699, although soon afterwards carefully restored, and the mouldings and ornaments nicely replaced, may yet be distinguished from the old work: the Tuscan door-arch, however, in its northern face, is quite out of place here, not according with the style of the building in which it is placed. The restorations were executed under the directions of Sir Christopher Wren. The northern face of the Transept shows two pairs of Norman windows, the second pair being longer than those in the lower tier; above these is an arcade of small arches, and over these are two high Perpendicular windows, which reach partly into the gable. Over the doorway in the eastern aisle is an original Norman window, and in the western aisle is a replaced one. The west front of the Lady Chapel[53] is richly decorated with niches, and has a noble window, under which is an arcade of small arches formed entirely in the thickness of the wall, in the back of some of which may be seen traces of coloured decoration; the gable point is adorned with a niche rising above the pierced parapet running up the sides. On each side of the building are five large windows, the tracery of which is much decayed, having been executed in a softer kind of stone than the walls. Between each two windows is a deep projecting buttress surmounted by a crocketed pinnacle; at the angles are double buttresses, on which are two kinds of tabernacles, both are square and occupy the breadth of the buttress, the upper one is recessed in the body of the buttress, the lower one is open on three sides, and had small pillars at the front angles rising from the set-off and carrying the projecting canopy; the tops being finished with crocketed pinnacles. The east end is not so richly ornamented as the west; the window is a very fine one but not so large as the western one, and there are no niches on the sides nor beneath it. [Footnote 53: Now in course of restoration.] The north side of the Choir is somewhat hidden by the Lady Chapel, which stands parallel to it, although the latter is much shorter; but a better view may be had by going between them. An opportunity is also thus afforded of observing the original Norman windows of the triforium of the Transept. The windows of the aisle are uniform in size and shape, those of the triforium are nearly similar, but all were originally lancet-shaped, but altered to their present form in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The aisle roof of the two western bays of Bishop Northwold's work (the six eastern bays) was perhaps originally as high as the other parts, but altered at a later period; the tracery of these windows on the north side remains, but on the south side there is a difference which should be noticed. The lighter style of architecture and the large windows of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made the support of buttresses necessary, in this instance they are deep, and surmounted by crocketed pinnacles; on the sides of many of them are gargoyles, or water-spouts of grotesque figures; flying buttresses are sometimes used in addition, reaching from the side buttresses to the clerestory walls, thus forming an important addition to the support as well as to the external beauty of the fabric: of this the exterior of the Choir of Ely Cathedral is a splendid proof. The east end of the Cathedral is one of the finest specimens extant of an Early English east front. It is divided into three stories; the lowest has three lancet windows of nearly equal height; the next tier has five windows of the same shape, side by side, the centre one being higher and those on the sides gradually lower; the third story, which is within the gable, contains three lancet windows, not seen in the Choir, but giving light to the space between the ceiling and the roof. There are several niches for statues, but no figures; and the spandrils of the window arches are relieved by quatrefoils and other ornaments. The gable point is adorned with an ornamented cross, which has been restored at the expense of Lady Mildred Hope; and a crocketed pinnacle at the south-east corner has been given by A.J.B. Beresford Hope, Esq. Rather more than a century ago this end was about two feet out of the perpendicular, but was skilfully restored by Mr. Essex, the architect. The eastern faces of the aisles appear as wings to the end of the Choir, and are flanked with double buttresses at the angles, upon which are set larger pinnacles crocketed. The windows lighting the two chapels at the end of the aisles were probably inserted when the chapels were erected; that in the north aisle is set in the wall, while that in the south aisle projects beyond the wall nearly to the depth of the buttress. The south side of the Choir is similar to the north, with the exception before mentioned--the two western bays of Bishop Northwold's work, in each of which the opening in the triforium is formed into two arches of a style differing from the adjoining portion of the building, but which have the appearance of originality. The walls of the triforium, both in the Choir and Nave were not originally so high as we now see them, but no doubt were heightened when the larger windows were inserted. The south end of the Transept differs from the north in the arrangement of the windows; in the gable is a low Perpendicular window of seven lights, sunk within a deep recess; the north end has in the upper tier two large Perpendicular windows side by side. There is also a difference in the gable and pinnacles. Some corbels in the lower part of the wall would indicate the former existence of an adjoining structure but what it was we cannot undertake to say. Considerable anxiety has been felt as to the stability of some portions of the south side, and it has been found necessary to underpin some of the buttresses of the Choir and the walls of the Transept with large slabs of Yorkshire stone. It has also been deemed desirable to circumscribe the two round towers of the south west Transept with iron bands. The south entrance to the Cathedral is through a portion of the eastern side of the +Cloisters+. The arch of entrance however, does not harmonise with the other portions of the Transept, and was doubtless an insertion, probably at the same time as a similar one in the north Transept, and by the same architect. It passes through a beautiful Norman door-arch in the south wall of the Nave, as described in p. 41. Near this are the remains of an enriched arch, recently discovered when the wall was repaired; if it is in its original position it must have formed a communication from the Cloisters to that portion of the western aisle of the south Transept which now forms the Vergers' vestry. The south side of the Nave is nearly similar to the north, but there is no corbel table under the embattled parapet of the aisle: the aisle windows have, with one exception, been restored to their original form; those in the second tier retain their altered shape; but those of the clerestory, as on the north side, are original. The apsidal +Chapel of St. Catharine+, adjoining the south-west Transept, has been rebuilt in accordance with the original structure. * * * * * +Dimensions of the Cathedral.+ INTERIOR. Ft. In. The Galilee, or Western Portico 42 0 The Tower 40 4 The Nave 208 0 Crossing the Octagon 71 5 The Choir 123 0 Retro-choir 35 10 The whole length, from west to east 520 7 The length of Transept from north to south (including the Octagon) 178 6 Breadth of the Nave with the Aisles 77 3 Breadth of the Transept with the Aisles 73 0 Breadth of the Choir with the Aisles 77 3 Height of the walls of the Nave 72 9 Height of the ceiling from the floor, at the east end of the Nave 86 2 Height of the Pillars which support the Dome and Lantern 62 0 Perpendicular height of the Dome, springing from the capitals of the pillars, to the aperture of the Lantern 32 0 Height of the Lantern itself, from its aperture on the Dome to its vaulted roof 48 0 The whole height from the floor to the centre of the Lantern 142 0 Height of the vaulted roof of the Choir 70 0 Clear diameter of the Octagon, from one pillar to the opposite 65 4 Clear diameter of the Lantern, within 30 0 Length of the Lady Chapel (now Trinity Church) 100 0 Breadth of the same 46 0 Height to its vaulted roof 60 0 EXTERIOR. The whole length, from west to east 537 0 The length of the great Cross, or Transept, from north to south 190 0 Height of the four stone turrets of the western Tower 215 0 Height of the two Towers of the south-west Transept 120 0 Height of the roof over the Nave 104 0 Height of the Lantern over the Dome 170 7 Height of the eastern front, to the top of the Cross 112 0 Having finished our survey of this noble edifice, we will proceed to make a few observations on the remains of the monastery, which will form the subject of a separate chapter. In order to bring them all conveniently before the visitor we will retrace our steps for a short distance round the east end of the Cathedral, and commence with the buildings on the north side of the Lady Chapel. [Illustration] +The Monastic Buildings.+ _&c. &c._ We will commence our notice of these remains of former ages by observing that as they now, in a great measure, form private residences, they can only be seen by visitors externally; it will be sufficient, therefore, for us to point out the several localities, and state, as far as we are able, their original uses, and present appropriation. On the north side of the Lady Chapel stands an old square tower, now used as a belfry for the parish of the Holy Trinity, but it is not certain for what purpose it was originally used. Adjoining this is a building recently erected on the site of a former one, comprising a practice-room and school-room for the Choristers, with a residence for the master; beyond this, eastward, is an arched gateway communicating with the public street: this was closed up for many years, but has lately been re-opened; over it is the muniment room of the Dean and Chapter. Next is a residence for one of the Vergers, and beyond that is another dwelling house; the next portion is in a dilapidated state, and at the present time is used as a mason's yard and workshop for carrying on the works in progress: these occupy the site of the ancient +Sacristy+. A little further in the same direction stands the residence of one of the prebendaries, on the site of the ancient +Almonry+; there are in this building some remains of Early English vaulting, and at the east end may be observed the remains of a triplet window of the same period; the middle window has been destroyed by the insertion of a modern window, now blocked up, but the stone work of the side windows can easily be traced. We next proceed round the east end of the Cathedral to the south end of the Transept, a few yards south of which may be observed a range of Early English arches, each containing a double arch, which is again subdivided, but all have been long blocked up; this was a portion of what was called the "Dark Cloister." To the eastward of these is another range of arches with piers about twelve feet in height, some of which are comparatively perfect; these piers are alternately cylindrical and octagonal, the octagonal columns presenting alternately a side or an angle in front. The arches are profusely enriched with mouldings; the walls above were pierced with a row of small windows with semicircular heads. These piers and arches may be seen on both sides of the road-way, corresponding with each other like the nave of a church, and afford a good example of "highly refined Norman work." A beautiful arch at the end leads to another series, and beyond this, in one of the prebendal houses, is a vaulted room which seems to have been erected about the period of the transition from the Norman style to the Early English. They form a church-like building, and by some historians have been described as the remains of the Conventual Church erected at the restoration of the monastery by Ethelwold, A.D. 970, and including the ruins of St. Etheldreda's own church, founded A.D. 673. This, if correct, would make it one of the oldest specimens of the Saxon style in the kingdom. This statement has been contradicted by others, and Professor Willis, who had devoted much attention to these buildings, stated that they are the remains of the +Infirmary+ of the monastery, with a chapel attached, and erected many years subsequent to the period mentioned; the portion we have likened to the nave of a church--now affording an approach to several residences--was the body of the Infirmary; the portion east of the arch was no doubt the chapel, and the vaulted room spoken of, the chancel. This statement derives some confirmation from the existence, in a similar position, of the Infirmary at Peterborough, and at some other places. The style of architecture too denotes a period subsequent to the erection of the nave of the Cathedral. The house on the north side, adjoining the chapel before mentioned, now a prebendal residence, appears to have undergone little alteration since its erection; the parapet, and the almost flat roof covered with lead, appear to be original. This was probably used by the master of the Infirmary as a residence, and a hall to entertain the aged and infirm separately from the sick monks, being near the chapel and the Infirmary. The next house westward, now the residence of a Minor Canon, is said to have been the "Painted Chamber," but to what use it was applied we are not able to say. The residence on the south side of the Infirmary, opposite to the last mentioned, now the residence of a prebendary, stands on the site of the "Cellarer's Lodging"; and the next house, eastward, also a prebendal residence, on the site of the "Black Hostelry," or near it. The +Dormitory+ of the monks was generally a long narrow room, standing north and south, near the church, convenient for the monks' attendance on the nocturnal services; here it was situated near what has been pointed out as part of the "Dark Cloister," not far from the south end of the Transept, and probably the communication was by a passage leading to a winding stair still standing in the south-east angle of the Transept. The +Chapter House+ is believed to have stood between the north end of the Dormitory and the Transept, similar to Peterborough, having its entrance from the east side of the Cloisters; nothing however remains to shew its exact position; both Mr. Bentham and Mr. Millers describe it as having stood on the space now occupied by the Dean's flower garden, where are some remains of a building in the Norman style, but which has since been stated to have been the Monks' kitchen; but in consequence of the many alterations which have been made at different periods, the demolition and removal of some buildings, and the ruin of others, it is difficult to speak with certainty. The monastery was a large one, and the buildings numerous for the various requirements, of many of which no traces remain, nor is it known where they were situated. The only part remaining of the +Cloisters+ is the north-east angle, through one part of which is the south entrance to the Cathedral. The inner wall of the north side and part of the east side are yet standing, with the openings partially bricked up, but the roof is gone. These are not the original Cloisters, but occupy nearly the same position as the earlier ones. The +Refectory+, according to Professor Willis and others, stood at the south side of the Cloisters, on part of the space now occupied by the Dean's garden, a portion of a very thick wall, in which are some Early English corbels, is still remaining. Our attention will next be directed to the Deanery, sometime thought to have been the Refectory, but was more probably the +Guest-hall+ for the entertainment of strangers and others visiting the monastery. It is a large building, standing like several others upon vaults, and appears to have been built in the latter part of the thirteenth century; it has, however, undergone considerable alterations at different times, and now presents but few remains of that period, although the walls, buttresses, and vaults bear strong characteristics of it. This formed the northern side of a small court, around which were buildings forming the residence of the priors of the monastery, of which also the next house, now the residence of a prebendary, formed a part; the vaulting of this is very ancient, probably in the early part of the Norman era, but the superstructure is of a later period. There is a fine fourteenth-century fire place in the house. [Illustration] Adjoining this house, at the south-west corner, next the garden, stands a building generally known as "+Prior Crauden's Chapel+," having been founded by John de Crauden, prior of Ely (1321-1341), as a private chapel attached to his residence, and built under the direction of Alan de Walsingham, the skilful architect of the Octagon. It is most interesting for the rich remains of architectural beauty which it displays. "It is," says Mr. Rickman, "one of the most curious and valuable Decorated remains in the kingdom; its ornaments are of the best character, and well executed, and the whole design is of great excellence." It belongs to the Deanery, but was for many years used in connection with the adjoining house, having been converted into three rooms by floors inserted; these floors have been removed, and the chapel in some degree restored; some of the windows which had been closed have been re-opened, and the eastern one filled with stained glass, the gift of Mrs. Smart. It is now used as a private chapel for the Grammar School. The Chapel stands upon a vault, the floor of which is nearly upon a level with the surrounding ground; the vault has a groined ceiling supported by plain columns, and the original entrance was directly under the west window of the Chapel, but is now on the north side. The entrance to the chapel is by a staircase which winds within the buttress at the north-west angle. The length is divided into four compartments by clustered columns, from the tops of which sprung the ribs of the vaulting. The first compartment is plain, and was probably the ante-chapel: the second is ornamented with a double niche, richly decorated with small columns, pinnacles, crockets, &c.; in the lower niche the wall is pierced for a small window; the upper one probably contained a figure: the third and fourth compartments have long pointed windows, separated into two lights by a mullion. The east end has ornamented niches in the angles, it projects a little beyond the compartments, forming a recess, in which is the large window, divided into five lights, with elaborate tracery. The floor is elevated at the east end for the altar, and is formed of mosaic tiles; upon the raised portion is represented the Fall of man, and the remainder is ornamented with various other figures and devices; some portions are nearly perfect, but the colouring is greatly faded. Some remains of fresco painting were discovered on the walls when the restorations were in progress, and probably the chapel had originally been richly embellished with colours and gilding, in the style of the period in which it was built. We have now an opportunity of glancing at some of the other portions of the monastic buildings, which formerly extended from the Prior's Lodge to the gateway, but are now somewhat short of it, as a garden intervenes. The first, adjoining the Deanery, formerly the Registry, but originally part of the residence of the former priors, was called "+The Lodge+," and contained the great hall, named "The Fair Hall," the high sharp-pointed windows of which still remain in the first story; from the corner of this hall a gallery or passage led to the prior's chapel just mentioned. This formed the western side of the small court before spoken of, around which the residence of the priors was built. This is now the residence of the Rev. R. Winkfield, Head Master of the Grammar School, and the adjoining house, formerly the school house, is used as a dormitory, &c. for the pupils. Next to this is the residence of the Rev. W.E. Dickson, Minor Canon and Precentor, which brings us to the end of this series of the buildings. These all stand upon vaults or crypts, which were probably used as cellars or store-houses, and the superstructure as lodgings for guests of the prior, being near his residence; these buildings formed the western side of the monastery, and were built about 1180, but raised and altered by Alan de Walsingham, about 1320. [Illustration] This brings us in our progress to the great gate of the monastery, called "+Ely Porta+," or more frequently, the "Porter's Lodge." It is a large and massive pile, having square towers at the angles, and was begun by Prior Buckton shortly before his death in 1397, and probably finished by his successor, Walpol, as it is sometimes spoken of as "Walpol's Gate." On the eastern side the opening is a single arch of great span, but on the western side there are two, a large one--but smaller than that on the eastern side--for carriages, and a still smaller one for foot passengers. The north end of the building is occupied as the residence of the Porter, who is also a Verger of the Cathedral; the south end with the rooms above, including a large one over the archway, is used for the Cathedral Grammar School, or +King's School+, founded in 1541, by Henry VIII., and is under the control of the Dean and Chapter. The foundation is for twenty-four boys, who are elected without restriction as to birth or residence, and are entitled to some privileges in reduction of school fees. The school has lately been re-modelled by the Dean and Chapter, in order to bring it up to the requirements of the age, and extensive alterations have been made to provide accommodation for boarders.[54] The school is not restricted to the foundation boys, but is open to all who are prepared to accede to the terms, and is now in a flourishing condition. [Footnote 54: We understand it is intended to make some further alterations, and to build a new "hostel," on a plot of ground nearly opposite the gateway on the western side, forming a block of buildings to include accommodation for sixty boys, with masters' and servants' offices, as well as the dormitories, studies, and day rooms for the boys.] We will now cast our eyes over the Park, which was much improved by the exertions of Dean Peacock; it was formerly divided into several inclosures by walls or hedges, but is now in two pieces, separated by iron fencing, and has been planted in various parts with ornamental trees; a pathway runs round the south-eastern portion, and another across it, and by a pair of iron gates (closed at night) a communication is formed with a street at the lower part of the city. On the south side is an artificial mound generally called "Cherry Hill," the origin of which is uncertain; but it was probably occupied by a mill for the use of the monastery; Mr. Millers thought it once formed the site of a castle erected for the defence of the monastery, which in early times experienced some of the vicissitudes of war; it is covered with trees and shrubs, and a winding path leads to the top, where there is a kind of summer-house. A good view of the adjacent country may be had from the summit, particularly towards the east, south, and west. From the foot of this hill, extending to some length westward, is a range of buildings used in part as stables and coach-houses, and partly as workshops and store-houses for stone and materials required for the repair of the Cathedral and buildings; this was the small grange within the precincts, a larger one stood more to the westward, outside the monastery. We will pass through the gateway and examine its western front which remains nearly in its original state; there are some niches and canopies, and several shields but their bearings are nearly all obliterated. The gates are closed at night. While here we may notice at a short distance to the left, at the south-west corner of the open space, the new Theological College, designed for candidates for Holy Orders desirous of religious preparation, theological instruction, and pastoral training; and is open to students who have graduated at one of the Universities: of which the Rev. Dr. Luckock, Canon of the Cathedral, is principal. The building is of red brick with stone dressings, and contains chapel, lecture room, studies and dormitories for the accommodation of twelve students, with the usual offices. Our course will now take us northwards towards the Cathedral, outside the western boundary of the monastery, thus giving the opportunity of observing the other side of the buildings we noticed after Prior Crauden's chapel: that they are of great antiquity is evident by the flat Norman buttresses on part of the western wall; but they have at various times undergone considerable alterations which have done much to obliterate their original appearance, and alter the character of the buildings. We first pass the house occupied by the Rev. W.E. Dickson, then those occupied by the Rev. R. Winkfield, including the house standing a few feet in retreat, originally part of the prior's residence, which adjoins the western end of the Deanery; the remaining space to the south-west Transept being occupied as a private garden by the Dean. On our left are the gardens belonging to the Bishop's Palace; and this brings us to the west end of the Cathedral, from whence we started on our tour of observation. The Cathedral is too much encumbered by buildings to allow us to take the whole of it into view from any one position; but several good points of view may be found at moderate distances, ranging from south-west to east, which will, we think, amply repay those who may have leisure and inclination to go a short distance to observe them. * * * * * Having endeavoured to point out, to the best of our ability, the objects most worthy of notice in the Cathedral, as well as others around it within the precincts of the ancient monastery, we will add a brief notice of a few other buildings which are without the precincts, but should not be passed without some observation. +The Bishop's Palace.+ This is a large mansion consisting of a centre and two wings, nearly adjoining the west end of the Cathedral, being separated from it only by a public road. But little is known of a palace here prior to the time of Bishop Alcock, who erected the present wings with a noble hall or gallery about the end of the fifteenth century: his arms, and those of the see may be seen in the face of the eastern wing. The gallery adjoining the western wing was erected by Bishop Goodrich in the third year of the reign of Edward VI., whose arms appear in stone on the centre of the lower panels of the bay window; on the panel to the right of this are the arms of Bishop Goodrich, and on the left panel, the same arms impaling those of the see; on the left-hand splay panel is carved the "Duty towards God," and on the right-hand splay panel the "Duty towards our neighbour." The more modern part of the house next the garden is said to have been erected by Bishop Keene, but was perhaps only altered by him, as there was on the eastern side of the part projecting into the garden, a stone door arch apparently much older than this part of the house; and another on the eastern side near the chapel; this has been removed, and now forms the servants' entrance from "the Green." The interior of the house has been much improved, and the chapel in the eastern wing fitted up with taste, the windows being filled with stained glass. The gardens are neat and kept in excellent order. There are in the Palace several portraits of bishops and others, also a curious painting called the "_Tabula Eliensis_" representing the forty knights who were quartered on the monastery by William I., each with his shield of arms, and a monk as his companion. There is also a picture 6 ft. 6 in. long and 2 ft. 2 in. high, representing the funeral of Bishop Cox, in 1581. Bishop Turton left by his will two pictures, to remain in the palace; and there is a good library belonging to the see. Formerly the bishops of Ely had residences at several other places, viz., palaces at Somersham and Downham; Wisbech Castle, and the Manor-houses at Doddington, Fen Ditton, and other places in Cambridgeshire; and Hatfield, and Hadham, in Hertfordshire; there were ten manor-houses and places of residence belonging to the Bishop of Ely at the time of Bishop Barnet. The London residence of the bishops of Ely was formerly in Ely Place, Holborn, which was occupied successively by forty-one bishops, extending over a period of nearly five hundred years; it is now in Dover Street, Piccadilly, in a house built by Bishop Keene, on the site of Albemarle House and other messuages, which were purchased for the see in 1772. The "Green" in front of the palace was formerly a piece of waste ground; a few years ago it was laid out and planted with shrubs, and fenced off with a neat iron railing, at the expense of Bishop Turton, reserving to the public the right of free admission from eight a.m., until an hour after sunset; this improvement has, we regret to say, through an unfortunate misunderstanding, been done away, and it now presents an appearance of desolation and neglect much to be deprecated. We hope something may be done in order to remedy this sad state, and render it more worthy of its position in front of one of the noblest Cathedrals in England, and of the residence of the chief pastor of a large and important diocese. The house standing in a garden with iron gates, nearly opposite the bay window in the palace stands upon the site of the residence of the chaplains of an ancient chantry founded by Bishop Northwold, called "The Chantry on the Green." [Illustration] +St. Mary's Church.+ This church will be found a short distance to the westward of the Palace, standing in a large grave-yard with a row of lime trees in front. It is a neat building having a Nave with aisles, a Chancel and a Tower surmounted by a spire at the west end. The Church is a mixture of the Transitional and Early English styles, but the Tower and Spire are in the Decorated style. It was built by Bishop Eustachius in the early part of the thirteenth century on the site of a former church. "It contains," says Mr. Millers, "some curious architectural remains, particularly the north and south[55] door arches, which are pointed and decorated with different sorts of Norman mouldings; but the columns have slender detached shafts, united under one capital wreathed with foliage, as in the Early English style. Of this mixture there is no other specimen at Ely, and I have not met with an account of such an one in any other place." "In the Tower of the Cathedral we have the Norman style with pointed arches; in the Galilee, built a very few years after, we have the Early English style; but each of these is perfectly and characteristically distinct: in the interval, between the erection of one and the other, the public taste had undergone a change. It seems as if the work before us had been erected in that interval, and that the architect was disposed to adopt the new style without quitting the old one."[56] The Galilee of the Cathedral was erected about 1215, and it is not improbable that this church was erected shortly before, and as it is stated during the episcopate of the same bishop. [Footnote 55: This door was blocked up when the Church was repaired in 1829.] [Footnote 56: Millers' Description of Ely Cathedral, p. 148, 149.] The columns of the Nave are simple and cylindrical, the capitals are Norman, and nearly similar to some of those in what has been called "The Infirmary," but the high pointed arches which they support are of a shape usual in the age in which this church was built, and some of the mouldings are Early English. The windows in the aisles and clerestory are Perpendicular, probably inserted at a later period, when the church was repaired. The Chancel is Early English, with an inserted Perpendicular east window; there is a double sedile under one trefoil arch, and a double piscina in the south wall. A chapel on the south side is also Early English; it has a triple lancet east window, and a west window of two lights with a quatrefoil in the head; there is here also a double piscina in the south wall. A portion of this chapel was partitioned off for use as a vestry, but is now thrown open to the church. The church was repaired and pewed, and a gallery erected on the south side in 1829-30, but this gallery, with another at the west end erected many years before, have lately been removed, the tower arch opened, and the nave restored, the floor raised, and the passages and other portions laid with Staffordshire tiles; the nearly flat plastered ceiling is divided into compartments by moulded ribs of wood, and the panels painted in distemper, among the patterns of which may be seen the sacred monogram, the arms of the see and of the Dean and Chapter. The pews erected in 1829 have been removed and replaced by open seats of oak, free to all, and a new oaken pulpit resting on a pillar of stone, the gift of the Bishop, placed against the chancel arch on the south side. A new font, the gift of one friend, and an elegant brass lectern the gift of another, have assisted in the general improvement. A fine-toned organ, built by Bishop and Sons, removed from Trinity Church, Paddington, has been erected at the east end of the north aisle, on a site formerly occupied by a large faculty pew belonging to "Chantry House," alluded to in p. 112. The chancel has been partially rebuilt and thoroughly restored, and fitted with appropriate seats in oak, at the cost of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The church is warmed by hot water, and lighted by gas. A fine peal of eight bells hang in the Tower. There are no ancient monuments, but a few modern tablets on the walls record the deaths of some former residents of the parish; and a new and elegant memorial brass has been put up in the chancel to the Rev. Solomon Smith, M.A., Minor Canon of the Cathedral, and for forty years incumbent of the parish. The restoration of the church, the purchase of the organ, the fittings, &c., has been effected by subscriptions at a cost of nearly £2500, but a further sum is still required to repair and restore the tower and spire, improve the church-yard, &c. The living is a vicarage, in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter; the present incumbent is the Rev. John Franey, M.A. Minor Canon of the Cathedral. +The Grange.+ The premises adjoining the church-yard on the west stand on part of the ground formerly occupied by "The Grange" of the monastery, and the house is stated to have been at one time the residence of the Protector, Cromwell. The "Sextry Barn," one of the largest in the county, perhaps in the kingdom, stood here, and is stated to have been 291 ft. 6 in. long, and 39 ft. 5 in. wide, inside; it was built about the middle of the thirteenth century, and taken down in 1842, and the space once occupied by the monastic "farm-yard" is now covered by modern buildings, part of which at least, are used for as good purposes; on one part excellent and commodious National Schools for both boys and girls have been erected, and on another a series of substantial and comfortable Almshouses for aged men and women, inhabitants of Ely. +St. John's Hospital.+ The site of this hospital is a few hundred yards further west; the remains of it are very scanty, but sufficient to show that the buildings were of an early age, although not enough to enable us to give an opinion as to their form or extent; what is left has been converted into use as farm buildings, one portion near the dwelling house, and another a short distance from it. There were formerly two hospitals in Ely, this dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and another to St. Mary Magdelene, the site of which is now unknown. According to Mr. Bentham, the revenues of the two were united, and the communities associated by Bishop Northwold about A.D. 1240, by whose ordinance the united hospital was to consist of thirteen chaplains and brethren, who were to have a common refectory and dormitory, and to wear an uniform habit, and be under the immediate government of the Sacrist of Ely. It seems that this was not, like other hospitals of the kind, dissolved by Henry VIII., for it was held under the mastership of Edward Leedes, the second prebendary of the eighth stall, who was also chancellor of the diocese under Bishop Goodrich, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; he was at the same time chaplain to Archbishop Parker, and Master of Clare Hall, Cambridge; he afterwards obtained from the queen a grant of the hospital, and with the consent of Bishop Cox, he surrendered the whole site and possession to his college; his grant to the college was confirmed by the Dean and Chapter in 1562, and the property is now in the hands of the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of Clare College, Cambridge. APPENDIX I. THE CATHEDRAL ORGAN. The following brief account of this fine instrument, furnished by the Rev. the Precentor, may be interesting to many:-- At a very early period the Cathedral or Conventual Church contained an organ or organs: this clearly appears from records preserved among the muniments of the Chapter; and at the dissolution of the Abbey we read that there were "two pair of organs in the Quire, and one pair in the Lady Chapel." It is highly probable, from indications in the stone-work, that one, at least, of these Pre-Reformation organs was placed in the triforium of the present nave, on the north side. It is well known that the Quire at that period extended westward across the Octagon: the organ therefore was situated near the gates, and above the stalls of the ancient Quire, nearly as it is now in the modern Quire. The Great Rebellion swept away organs from Ely, as from all other English Cathedrals; and during this dreary period the Choral Service was suppressed and prohibited. After the Restoration, viz., about the year 1685, a new organ was erected by the celebrated Harris; and it is remarkable that this organ remained in daily use up to the year 1831, without material alteration, not even a swell having been added to the original great and choir. It is worthy of mention, that during the extensive repairs of the Cathedral, conducted by the able architect, Essex, about the middle of the last century, a proposition to place the organ at the eastern end of the Quire was seriously urged by him on the consideration of the Dean and Chapter. He alleged that the instrument would "conceal much cold unornamented wall!" The condition of Harris' organ had become dangerously crazy when Messrs. Elliot and Hill were employed to rebuild it, or rather to insert a new instrument in the old case. This they did with great ability and success, and the organ which comprised ten stops in the great, five in each of choir and swell, and one set of pedal pipes, was a fine specimen of the art as it was understood and practised about forty years ago. When the restorations were commenced which have resulted in the present splendid embellishment of the Cathedral, the organ-screen was removed; and in 1851 the organ was re-modelled and altered to the CC compass, enclosed in its costly and exquisite case of carved oak, and _suspended_ from the triforium of the Choir, above the stalls on the north, or (at Ely) Decani side. Provision was made for an adequate pedal organ, lodged in the triforium gallery, where an admirable site was also secured for the swell-box: the choir organ is _beneath_ the great, and behind it, in a picturesque stone tribune or loft, the organist was seated at the manuals. Three stops, viz. a manual Double of wood and metal, 16 feet tone; a metal Quint of 6 feet; and a Posaune of 8 feet; were added to the great organ, which then possessed a tone of great power and beauty. By the liberality of the Chapter, the completion and great enlargement of the organ was effected in the year 1867. Messrs. Hill have introduced a new swell of 13 stops throughout, with a pedal organ of adequate dimensions. To this pedal organ the principal inhabitants of the city of Ely contributed the important addition of a Sub-base of 32 feet tone, at a cost of upwards of £80. The whole instrument has 40 sounding stops, and it will be seen from an inspection of the list that every stop, even to the clarionet, is complete and entire, extending through the full compass of its manual. The tone of the full organ, with swell coupled, is very grand. The reeds, like all the stops of this class manufactured by Messrs. Hill, are positively models of smoothness, equality, and power. The two 8 feet reeds of the great, and the 16 feet reed, with the Horn, of the swell, are specimens of which the builders may well be somewhat proud. All the compound stops are very brilliant. Equal temperament has been applied to the tuning. GREAT ORGAN--CC to F in Alt. Ft. Pipes. 1. Double Diapason, open metal to GG, 12 feet stopt wood below 16 54 2. Open Diapason, metal 8 54 3. Open Diapason, metal 8 54 4. Stopt Diapason, wood 8 54 5. Principal, metal 4 54 6. Harmonic Flute, metal (vice Quint) 4 54 7. Twelfth, metal 2-2/3 54 8. Fifteenth, metal 2 54 9. Sesquialtera, iii ranks, metal -- 162 10. Mixture, iii ranks, metal -- 162 11. Posaune, metal 8 54 12. Trumpet, metal 8 54 13. Clarion, metal 4 54 --- 918 SWELL ORGAN--CC to F in Alt. Ft. Pipes. 1. Double Diapason, open metal to Gamut G, 6 feet, stopt wood below. 16 54 2. Open Diapason, metal 8 54 3. Salcional, metal 8 54 4. Stopt Diapason, wood 8 54 5. Principal, metal 4 54 6. Lieblich Flute, metal 4 54 7. Fifteenth, metal 2 54 8. Mixture, iv ranks 2 216 9. Double Trumpet, metal and wood 16 54 10. Horn, metal 8 54 11. Trumpet, metal 8 54 12. Oboe, metal 8 54 13. Clarion, metal 4 54 --- 864 CHOIR ORGAN--CC to F in Alt. Ft. Pipes. 1. Open Diapason, metal to 6 feet, open wood below 8 54 2. Dulciana, metal 8 54 3. Stopt Diapason, wood 8 54 4. Principal, metal 4 54 5. Flute, wood 4 54 6. Gamba, metal 4 54 7. Clarionet, metal 8 54 --- 378 PEDAL ORGAN--CCC to E. 1. Sub-bass, wood 32 tone 29 2. Open wood 16 29 3. Open metal 16 29 4. Bourdon, wood 16 tone 29 5. Octave, metal 8 29 6. Mixture, iii ranks, metal 4 87 7. Trombone, wood 16 29 --- 261 COUPLERS. 1. Swell to Great. 2. Great to Pedal. 3. Ditto by the foot. 4. Choir to Pedal. 5. Swell to Pedal. Six composition pedals, three to the Great, acting simultaneously on Pedal: three to Swell. Total number of Pipes, 2421. APPENDIX II. STATEMENT OF RESTORATIONS ACCOMPLISHED AND REQUIRED, AND OF SUMS EXPENDED THEREON. _The following extract from a Memorandum issued by the Dean in October, 1873, is appended, by permission, to show the progress of works done, and the amount expended; as well as of works required to complete the restorations._ The following Memorandum of Works accomplished or required, was issued by Dean Goodwin, January, 1866:-- "The time seems to be now come, when the completion of the great work of restoration, commenced under Dean Peacock and guided for many years by his care and judgment, may be looked upon as being within reach. The works which have been hitherto accomplished may be enumerated as follows:-- 1. The Choir restored and re-arranged. 2. Central Lantern restored (Peacock Memorial). 3. South-east Transept restored. 4. South-west Transept restored. 5. Roof of North Transept restored and painted. (The painting at the expense of tradesmen employed upon the Cathedral.) 6. The Nave ceiled and painted. (The painting by the late Mr. le Strange and Mr. Gambier Parry.) 7. Nave roof repaired and re-leaded. 8. St. Catherine's Chapel rebuilt. 9. Bishop Alcock's Chapel restored. 10. Galilee Porch re-paved. 11. The Western Tower opened, ceiled, (the ceiling painted by Mr. le Strange), re-roofed, strengthened, &c., (part of the expense borne by the late H.R. Evans, Esq., and his son, the present H.R. Evans, Esq.) 12. About seventy windows filled with painted glass. The expense of the restoration of the Cathedral cannot be given with perfect accuracy, but the account which is here subjoined will be near enough for all practical purposes. GENERAL RESTORATION. £ _s._ _d._ Contributed by the public to the "Ely Cathedral Restoration Fund" 9578 0 0 Expended by the Dean and Chapter (about) 11,000 0 0 PEACOCK MEMORIAL. Contributed by the friends of Dean Peacock to the restoration of the Lantern 2407 0 0 Expended by the Dean and Chapter (about) 4200 0 0 It would thus appear that since the commencement of the great works in 1845 to the present time, the sum of £27,185 has been expended, of which £15,200 has been furnished by the Dean and Chapter. It ought to be added that the sum contributed by the public includes a donation of £500 by the Bishop of the Diocese, and about £1000 contributed by members of the Chapter in their individual capacity. It must be observed, however, that the sum just mentioned by no means represents all that has been done for the Cathedral. The following works and gifts are not included:-- 1. The painted windows, which have been supplied partly by individual donors, partly by a bequest of Bishop Sparke. Amongst the donors are Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince Consort. To the bequest of Bishop Sparke the Cathedral is indebted for the East windows, and those in the clerestory of the Choir, and the fund is not yet exhausted. 2. The carved panels above the Stalls in the Choir, now amounting to 37, and supplied almost entirely by individual donors, at a cost of about £18 each. 3. Bishop Alcock's Chapel, restored by Jesus College, Cambridge. 4. A pinnacle at the south-east corner of the Choir, built by A.J.B. Beresford Hope, Esq. 5. The magnificent Reredos, presented by J. Dunn-Gardner, Esq. 6. The contribution of Canon E.B. Sparke towards the restoration of the south-west Transept, and that by the two Messrs. Evans to the works in the western Tower. 7. The Font, presented by Canon Selwyn. 8. The Gates of the Choir Aisles, presented by Alan Lowndes, Esq. and Dean Peacock. 9. The Brass Eagle Lectern, presented by Canon E.B. Sparke. 10. The Tombs of Bishop Allen and Dr. Mill. 11. A legacy of £100 by the late Mr. Millers, Minor Canon of the Cathedral, and a contribution of £300 by his residuary legatees, applied to the ceiling of the Nave. Neither does the sum mentioned as having been contributed by the public include a legacy of £500 from the late Miss Allen, daughter of Bishop Allen, (which has been appropriated to a new pulpit, now in progress from the designs of G.G. Scott, Esq.,) and a legacy of equal amount, from Bishop Turton, for the purpose of re-paving the Nave. It may be safely stated that the expense of the works and the gifts above specified has not been less than £13,000; the windows alone have cost nearly £9000. The entire sum already expended upon the Cathedral will thus be found to exceed £40,000. In order to bring the Cathedral into such a condition as would appear satisfactory to those who have taken part in its restoration, the following works require to be done:-- 1. The Nave, Octagon, and Transepts must be paved. Towards this work Bishop Turton gave by his will (as before stated) the sum of £500. The whole expense will probably be not less than £2500. 2. The stone-work of the Octagon must be completed by the restoration of the pinnacles and parapet. The external effect of Alan de Walsingham's Lantern cannot be rightly estimated until this restoration has been made; the cost will be about £2500. 3. The Lantern must be internally decorated. This work, though highly necessary for completing the effect of the interior, will probably cost not more than £500. 4. The Galilee porch requires extensive repair, partly from the decay of the Purbeck marble which is largely used in its construction, and partly from the unskilful treatment to which it has been submitted in former times. A grand commencement of this work has been made by Mrs. John Thomas Waddington, of Twyford Lodge, Winchester, at whose sole expense the portal which forms the eastern side of the Galilee is undergoing complete restoration, as a memorial of her late husband. The restoration of the remainder of the Galilee would probably cost £2000. 5. The warming of the Cathedral is another work, for which it would be impossible to set down less than £500; probably it would cost much more; but this is a work which, if considered desirable, may fairly be left to the Dean and Chapter. 6. The proper lighting of the Cathedral is a matter for consideration; this also might be regarded as a work devolving upon the capitular body: but when the extremely artistic character of the standards or coronæ, which such a building requires, is taken into account, perhaps it may be fairly added to the list of works in which the friends of the Cathedral may be asked to co-operate. From this statement then it would appear that an expenditure of from £7000 to £8000 would complete the principal necessary works of the Cathedral, with the exception of the rebuilding of the north-west Transept, which it will probably be deemed desirable to omit from consideration, at all events until all the other works specified have been finished. Call the sum necessary £7000; this is not much to raise for so good a purpose; and when it is considered what the effect of the expenditure of such a sum will be, it seems difficult to believe that the money will not be forthcoming. The Dean and Chapter have not shown themselves hitherto insensible to the primary claim which the Cathedral has upon them, nor are they likely to do so in the completion of the great work which they have now had in hand so long. But the Cathedral has claims upon others beside the Capitular body. It has claims, which it is believed will be once more acknowledged by the wealthy landowners of the Diocese, by the Colleges of Cambridge, several of which are intimately connected with Ely, and finally by lovers of architectural beauty and ecclesiastical propriety throughout the country. To all persons, therefore, who take an interest in Ely Cathedral on Diocesan or any other grounds, an appeal is now made, and they are respectfully urged to make one final effort for the purpose of completing a work which has been so well begun, and hitherto so prosperously carried out. H. GOODWIN." "_The Deanery, Ely, January, 1866._" Since the issue of the foregoing memorandum further progress has been made in the Restoration of the Cathedral. 1. The Nave and Aisles have been re-paved. 2. The great Western doors have been repaired and decorated. 3. The Cathedral has been warmed and lighted. 4. Many stained windows have been inserted in the Choir. 5. The fourth large window in the Octagon has been filled with painted glass. 6. The foundation of the south side of the Choir and the south-eastern Transept have been underpinned and thoroughly repaired. 7. The great Western Tower has been braced with iron bands, and, it is believed, effectually secured. 8. The stone pulpit in the Octagon has been erected. 9. Many figures in wood have been placed on the Choir screen, the decoration of which is now completed. 10. Nine stone figures have been placed in the ancient niches in the Octagon; three more are needed to complete the design. 11. The whole of the carved panels over the stalls in the Choir have been completed. * * * * * Several works still remain to be effected before the restoration can be considered as complete. 1. The paving of the Octagon and Transepts. The cost of the paving of the Nave has much exceeded the sum anticipated. The completion of this work will cost from £1000 to £2000 additional. 2. The re-paving of the aisles of the Choir, a work of no pressing importance at present, but which will demand great care and consideration whenever it is undertaken. 3. The decoration of the blank space of wall beneath the great East Window, on which there remain some traces of painted figures. If these are found too faint and uncertain for restoration, the space might perhaps be covered with a copy of some appropriate painting in mosaic. 4. The restoration of the exterior of the east end of the Choir. Window shafts to the number of about fifty have disappeared or are broken. The south-east angle turret has been crowned with a pinnacle, but the corresponding turret at the north-east still remains truncated. In the eastern face of the Choir there are twelve niches, which probably were once all filled with figures. 5. The restoration of the Galilee is still very incomplete. The shafts of Purbeck marble, which are so numerous throughout it, require to be repaired or replaced. The niches in the west face, intended for figures, are all empty. 6. The pitch of the roof of the Galilee and of the south-western Transept ought to be raised to give their full effect to the proportions of the great western Tower. 7. The rebuilding of the fallen Transept (north-west) is a work much to be desired, perhaps hardly to be anticipated, yet surely not to be despaired of. 8. The completion of the pinnacles and parapet of the Octagon. This is very important to give full effect to the central portion of the Cathedral, which suffers unduly in estimation from the original design being so imperfectly carried out. 9. Exterior repairs of Trinity Church, formerly the Lady Chapel, which is still under the charge of the Capitular body. The cost of restoring the interior decoration of this elaborate specimen of art, if it be deemed desirable, may be left at present out of calculation. A generous offer has been made for the interior decoration of the Lantern and vault of the Octagon, which there is every reason to hope will be executed at no distant time. C. MERIVALE. _The Deanery, October, 1873._ Summary of Expenditure upon Restorations, Memorials, and Special Works executed in Ely Cathedral within the last thirty years. £ _s._ _d._ Restoring the interior and exterior of the Choir, providing Memorials, special works, and decorations 28,067 0 0 Restoring the Lantern as a memorial to the late Dean Peacock, furnishing Octagon, and filling large windows with stained glass 10,022 0 0 Restoring north and south-east Transepts 4123 0 0 Repairing roof, making new ceiling, laying new floors to the Nave and side aisles, providing memorials, &c. 7269 19 4 Opening the Lantern of the great Western Tower, securing the Tower, &c. 4017 15 10 Restoring St. Catherine's Chapel, restoring the south-west Transept, now the Baptistry 2384 16 9 Restoring west Entrance-gates, &c. 1168 15 10 -------------- £57,053 7 9 ============== Lists of those persons who have contributed from time to time to these Restorations have been published. The general amount of these offerings are shown by the following summary:-- £ _s._ _d._ Contributions and special works by the Bishops of Ely and their families 3600 0 0 Contributions and payments by the Dean £ _s._ _d._ and Chapter corporate 22,927 10 7 Contributions by individual members of the Chapter and their families 14,907 19 0 ---------------37,835 9 7 Contributions and special works by the Officers and Tradesmen of the Dean and Chapter 1412 1 0 Contributions by other Inhabitants of the City of Ely 365 11 0 Contributions by the general public 13,840 6 2 -------------- £57,053 7 9 ============== Besides the Restorations of the Cathedral, and the defraying of numerous expenses incident to their position as patrons or proprietors, considerable works have been carried on by the Dean and Chapter during the last thirty years in providing houses for the Masters of the Grammar School, converting the Great Gate into suitable Schoolrooms (towards which friends have contributed £575, including £325 by the City of Ely), partially restoring Prior Crauden's Chapel, improving the Deanery and the Canons' houses, building new Schools for the Choristers, with a Master's house, turning part of the old Sacristy into a muniment room and Verger's lodge, executing important sanitary works, laying underground drains, laying out and planting the grounds around the Cathedral, &c., at a cost altogether exceeding £12,000, exclusive of ordinary repairs. Total cost of Restorations and Improvements about £70,000. * * * * * Some of the works named as being required to be done have been completed since the issue of the Dean's statement in 1873, viz., the decoration of the Octagon and Lantern; the three figures of the Apostles required to complete the series in the Octagon; the floor of the north arm of the Transept; and the erection of pinnacles on the exterior of the Octagon. +Illustrations of Ely Cathedral.+ T.A. HILLS AND SON, GENERAL STATIONERS, PRINTERS, PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, _&c., &c._ MINSTER PLACE, ELY, Have constantly on hand a large and well-selected Stock of FRITH'S PHOTO-PICTURES OF ELY CATHEDRAL, _MOUNTED AND UNMOUNTED_. Panoramic size, 11 in. by 6 in., exclusive of mounts, about 17 varieties. Universal series, 8-1/2 in. by 6-1/3 in., " 30 " Cabinet series, 6 in. by 4 in., " 25 " Carte de visite series, 4 in. by 2 in., " 30 " _Lists may be had on application._ A SELECTION of 20 PHOTOGRAPHS, Cabinet size, mounted, and bound in a volume for the Drawing Room table, _21s._ cloth. Any of Frith's Photographs of English and Foreign Scenery, Cathedrals, &c. can be supplied. [pointing hand symbol] _A large SELECTION of PHOTOGRAPHS by various artists, mounted and unmounted, from 6d. to 3s. 6d. each._ * * * * * +Architectural Gems of Ely Cathedral,+ A series of beautiful Engravings of the various styles of Architecture. _1s. sewed._ A Packet of Six colour-printed Views, in wrapper, _1s._ And a variety of Fancy Articles. WORKS PUBLISHED BY T.A. HILLS AND SON, MINSTER PLACE, ELY. THE PSALTER, OR PSALMS OF DAVID; together with the Te Deum, Jubilate, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, &c., _carefully marked and pointed for chanting_. By the late ROBERT JANES, Organist of Ely Cathedral. A New Edition, revised and accented under the direction of a Committee of the Ely Diocesan Church Music Society. _Quarto, price 4s. sewed. Pocket Edition, 1s. 6d. cloth._ THE HYMNS AND CANTICLES used in the Morning and Evening Services of the Church; selected from "The Psalter," carefully marked and pointed for chanting. For the use of Congregations of Churches and Chapels where the Psalms are not usually chanted.--_price 2d. sewed._ THE ORDER OF MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER, Daily throughout the year; together with the Order of the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, set to Music, as used in the Cathedral Church of Ely. _Royal 16mo. 1s 6d. limp cloth; or with red rubrics and border lines, in cloth boards and red edges, 2s. 6d._ _An allowance to Clergymen and Organists taking a quantity._ THE Words of about 400 ANTHEMS used in the Cathedral Church of Ely, edited by the Rev. W.E. Dickson, Precentor. _Price 2s. cloth limp._ A HAND-BOOK TO THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ELY; with some account of the Monastic Buildings, Bishop's Palace, &c. _Illustrated by Engravings and Ground Plans._ Eleventh Edition revised. _Crown Octavo, from 1s._ THE ELY DIOCESAN CALENDAR AND CLERGY LIST, published annually, contains a variety of official and general information for the Clergy and Laity. _Price 1s._ 
20967	----	[Illustration: Peterborough Cathedral--West Front] [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] A GUIDE TO PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL; COMPRISING A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY FROM ITS FOUNDATION TO THE PRESENT TIME, WITH A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF ITS ARCHITECTURAL PECULIARITIES AND RECENT IMPROVEMENTS; COMPILED FROM THE WORKS OF GUNTON, BRITTON, AND ORIGINAL & AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS. BY GEORGE S. PHILLIPS. [JANUARY SEARLE.] A New Edition, Revised and Corrected. PETERBOROUGH: PUBLISHED BY GEO. C. CASTER, BOOKSELLER, MARKET PLACE. 1881. PRINTED BY GEO. C. CASTER, AT HIS PRINTING OFFICE, IN THE "KING'S LODGINGS," WITHIN THE MINSTER PRECINCTS, PETERBOROUGH. 1881. A GUIDE TO PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. _From the foundation of the monastery by Peada, A.D. 655, to its destruction by fire in the reign of Henry the First;--embracing a period of 461 years._ The history of our monastic establishments is but little regarded and as little known. The obscurity in which all monastic institutions is involved renders it difficult to give any certain and positive information respecting the origin of the building to whose history these pages are devoted; but it appears to have been founded at a very early period--the churches of Canterbury, Rochester, London, Westminster, York, and Winchester, being the only large sacred edifices that preceded it. The date of the first building is stated to have been A.D. 655--fifty-eight years after the introduction of Christianity into England by St. Augustine; and so large were the foundation stones, that it required eight yoke of oxen to draw them. From this it may be inferred that the structure was not, like many of the Anglo-Saxon churches of this period--built entirely of wood; though it was probably far inferior in size and style of architecture to the building which succeeded it. It was one of the kings of Mercia who laid the foundation of the monastery of _Medeshamstede_[1] in 655; his name was Peada, the eldest son of Penda, the fourth monarch of that kingdom. The facts are thus related by the Saxon chronicler:--"From the beginning of the world had now elapsed 5,850 winters, when Peada the son of Penda assumed the government of the Mercians. In his time came together himself and Osway, brother of King Oswald, and said they would rear a _minster_ to the glory of Christ and honour of Saint Peter; and they did so, and gave it the name of _Medeshamstede_, because there is a well there called _Medeswell_. And they began the ground-wall and wrought thereon, after which they committed the work to a monk, whose name was Saxulf. Peada reigned no while, for he was betrayed by his own queen in Eastertide, 658." Wolfere was the youngest son of Penda, and when Peada died, King Osway assumed the government of Mercia, and ruled very despotically for about three years, when the nobles, incensed at his conduct, rebelled against him, drove him from the kingdom, and chose Wolfere for their king. It was in his reign that "_Medeshamstede_ waxed rich," for Wolfere not only caused the monastery to be built, but he endowed it with a great number of lands, and made it "not subject except to Rome alone;" and the abbey, which was by this time completed, was dedicated with great pomp and ceremony to "Christ and St. Peter," and hallowed in the name of "Saint Peter and Saint Andrew." Saxulf, who had superintended the building of the abbey, was the first abbot whose name is mentioned in the monkish chronicles as its ruler. He was remarkable for his learning, piety, and humility, and was chiefly instrumental in bringing Christianity into the kingdom of Mercia. Both Saxulf and Cuthbaldus who succeeded him were abbots of the monastery during the rule of Wolfere, although there is little mention made of either in the records which have been handed down to us. Wolfere died in 683, and was succeeded by his brother Ethelred, who contributed very largely to the monastery, and secured to it by his interest extraordinary privileges. Those who could not afford to go to Rome to offer up vows and get absolved from their sins were allowed both indulgences at this monastery, and could likewise receive "the apostolical benediction." Ethelred built a house for the abbot, which is now the palace of the bishop, but, excepting for its antiquity, it possesses no features of interest. After a reign of thirty years, Ethelred exchanged the insignia of royalty for the rough garments of a monk, and became abbot of Bardney, in Lincolnshire, where he died, in the year, 716. From the death of Cuthbaldus to the accession of Beonna in 775, there is a blank in the history of the monastery. During his rule one or two important concessions were made to the monks by King Offa. The name of the next abbot was Celredus, but of him nothing particular is recorded. He was succeeded by Hedda, in 833, during whose abbacy the first destruction of the monastery by the Danes occurred, which founded an important era in the history of this institution. A band of savage Danes, headed by Earl Hubba, invaded the territory of the Mercians, and after committing numerous depredations in the country, they plundered the monastery of Croyland, and proceeded to attack _Medeshamstede_. The monks of this abbey had, however, gained intelligence of their intentions, and having closed the gates, resolved to act on the defensive. Hubba and his desperadoes soon surrounded them, and demanded that the gates should be opened; and when he was told that he should not enter, he commenced to batter the walls. In the course of the attack, one of the monks hurled a great stone from the top of the building upon the besiegers, and Tulba, the brother of Hubba, was killed by it. This so incensed the earl, that he vowed to put every monk to death by his own hand; and having forced the gates, proceeded to put his horrible threat into execution,--robbed the monastery of everything that was valuable, and then set it on fire. It burned fifteen days. All the portable valuables were then packed on waggons and taken away. The plunder, however, is said to have been lost, "either in the Nen or in the neighbouring marshes."[2] This was in 870. In a short time a few monks who escaped at Croyland re-assembled at their abbey there, and after electing Godric their abbot, proceeded to _Medeshamstede_, and buried the monks of that monastery who had been murdered by the Danish invaders in one vast tomb. Godric likewise had their effigies cut out in stone (a representation of which is here shown, the original being in the Lady Chapel),[3] and, to honour their memory, he went every year to weep over the grave in which he had laid his brethren. From this time until the reign of Alfred the Great [872] the monastery of _Medeshamstede_ was frequently invaded, and the lands which belonged to it were seized by the conquerors. It was left for the wisdom and courage of Alfred to restore that tranquility to England which it had so long lost, and to give protection and security to his subjects. The Danes who had committed so many depredations before his accession to the throne were now beaten back and finally checked by the powerful fleet which he built to protect the kingdom from invasion. King Edgar, who succeeded Alfred, followed his example in this respect, and kept up the strength of the fleet. By this means increased security was given to England, and the people, comparatively happy in their internal government, and freed from the fear of foreign interruption, began to improve their public buildings and religious houses. It was in 966 that the monastery of _Medeshamstede_ was rebuilt after the old model, at the instigation of Athelwold, who was at that time Bishop of Winchester. King Edgar assisted in the re-construction of the monastery; and so important did he consider religion to be in the amelioration of the morals of his subjects, that he is said to have rebuilt upwards of forty religious establishments during his reign. [Illustration: Ancient Monumental Stone in the Cathedral.] After the abbey of _Medeshamstede_ was finished in 972, he ratified all the former charters which it possessed, and gave it the name of Burgh. The first abbot of the monastery, after its destruction, was called Adulphus, formerly the king's chancellor; but having accidentally been the cause of the death of his only son, he could no longer live happily in the world, and he therefore endowed the abbey with all his wealth, and was elected its first abbot. The monastery of _Burgh_ was now in a more prosperous and wealthy condition than ever; all the neighbouring country was subject to it, and its possessions were so immense that its name was changed to _Gildenburg_. Adulphus, wishing to increase the value of the estates of the monastery and to encourage agriculture, had all the surrounding forests cut down and the lands cultivated. He was afterwards made Archbishop of York, [992,] and the eloquent Kenulfus succeeded him in the reign of Ethelred. Kenulfus built a high wall round the monastery, part of which is still in existence. He was translated to the see of Winchester, in 1006, and was so celebrated for his virtue and learning, that he gave a character to the monastery, and the monks were for a long time afterwards considered the most enlightened and intelligent men in the island. Elsinus was the next abbot of whom we read in connection with the monastery, and was remarkable for the number of relics which he had collected. Gunton tells us that the arm of St. Oswald[4] was the most famous, and Walter de Whittlesea informs us that King Stephen came to _Peterburgh_ to witness the miracles which it is said to have performed. During the abbacy of Elsinus, England was invaded by the Danes under King Sweyn, in revenge of a massacre of his subjects by the order of King Ethelred. They landed in the north, and, having gained some advantages, proceeded southward to the fen country, which they plundered and laid waste with fire and sword. Heavy fines were extorted from the rich abbeys; that on Crowland amounting to £64,000 of the present value of money. Elsinus died in 1055. Arwinus was then elected abbot, but he resigned in 1067 to Leofric. He was nephew to Earl Leofric, of Mercia, whose Countess, according to the chroniclers, redeemed Coventry from toll by riding naked through the streets of that town. During the third year of this abbot, William the Conqueror invaded England, and we are told that Leofric fought for some time in the English army, but in consequence of ill health, was obliged "to return to his monastery, where he died on the third of the kalends of November, A.D. 1066." Braddo (or Brand) was the next successive abbot, but died after a rule of three years. Thorold of Fescamp, who for some service rendered to the conqueror, had been appointed to an abbacy near Salisbury, was considered by William, on account of his soldier-like qualities, to be a fit person to transfer to the rebellious and disorderly neighbourhood of the Camp of Refuge, and he was accordingly appointed Abbot of Peterborough, in 1069. Between the death of Braddo and the arrival of his successor, the second destruction of the monastery took place. A band of Danish soldiers, headed by Hereward de Wake, nephew of Braddo, attacked the monastery, and all the valuable treasures which it possessed were either taken away or destroyed. They then set fire to the building. The following is Gunton's account of the treasures which they captured; and, as it puts us in possession of much curious information concerning those times, we will give the extract entire:--"They took the golden crown from the head of the crucifix, the cross with the precious stones, and the footstool under; _duo aurea feretra_ (two golden or gilded biers whereon they carried the saints' reliques, and other such like things, in procession), and nine silver ones; and twelve crosses, some of gold and some of silver. And, besides all this, they went up to the tower and took away the great table which the monks had hidden there, which was all of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and wont to be before the altar, with abundance of books, and other precious things, which were valuable, there being not the like in all England." The monks were disconsolate at the loss of these valuable treasures, and the abbot solicited William the King to interfere for them, in order that they might be returned. It appears, however, that the conqueror did not pay much attention to their request; and it is probable that, as he had just after this depredation concluded a treaty of peace with the Danish sovereign, he was unwilling to do anything that should cause a breach of peace between them, especially as they were such troublesome and dangerous enemies. The greater part of the treasure was by some means once more restored to the monks,[5] and, according to the Saxon chronicler, they commenced from this time to build ramparts for their own protection, and for the security of the monastery. Tout Hill[6] in the vineyard field was raised at this time, and there is said to have been a subterraneous passage which ran thence to Croyland and Thorney. This hill was originally called Mount Thorold. After the arrival of Thorold at Peterborough, being accompanied by 160 well-armed Frenchmen, he proceeded to turn his attention to the Camp of Refuge, situated near Ely; and, joining Ives of Taillebois in an assault upon it, was repulsed by Hereward de Wake, and taken prisoner, with many of the monks; nor was he liberated, according to Dean Patrick, until he had paid three thousand marks. After his liberation, he returned to the monastery, and made himself more odious to the monks than before. He was depraved and dissolute, and, to satisfy his licentious desires, he is said to have made free with the treasury. He introduced two monks likewise into the monastery, who were foreigners, and quite as unscrupulous as himself, in purloining the wealth of the abbey. He was afterwards made a bishop in France, but owing to his utter recklessness of conduct and morality, he was sent back to England four days after: was again admitted abbot of the monastery of _Peterburgh_, where he died in 1098, after an odious government of twenty-eight years. During the reign of Henry I., the son of the Conqueror, Ernulphus became Abbot of _Peterburgh_. This event took place in the year 1107, and he made several important improvements in the monastery; built a new dormitory and refectory, and completed the chapter-house, which had been left in an unfinished state for several years. He likewise enriched the convent by making an arrangement with all who held in rent the abbey lands to pay tithes to him, and, when they died, that they should give the third part of their estates to be buried in the church. Thus it was that the monastery continued to grow in wealth, and when Ernulphus was made Bishop of Rochester, which happened in 1114, the abbey was entitled to a tithe of 40,800 acres of land. During the rule of his successor, John de Sais, the monastery was burned down. The fire is said to have occurred accidentally, and such was the violence of the flames, that they reached the village and consumed most of the cottagers' houses. The additions which Ernulphus had made to the abbey, however, are said to have escaped the general ruin. [1] The most probable etymology of this word is that which is given by Britton in his History of Peterborough Cathedral, viz.--"_Mede_ or _Mead_, a meadow; _ham_, a sheltered habitation; and _sted, stead_, or _stad_, a bank, station, or place of rest." [2] In cleaning out the river, a little below the bridge, in June, 1820, a dagger was found, which is supposed to have belonged to these Danes. It is in the possession of the present Bishop. [3] At a meeting of the Archæological Society at Peterborough, in 1861, Mr. Bloxam read a paper in which he denied the authenticity of this monument, which had previously been regarded as one of the oldest monumental stones extant. Mr. Bloxam regards it as a Norman, and not a Saxon work, and some centuries later in date than the massacre of the monks. He considers that the figures are not martyred monks with their abbot, but Christ and his eleven disciples. It has been further conjectured by Canon Westcott that it is part of the shrine erected over the relics of St. Kyneburgha, which were removed from Castor to Peterborough during the Abbacy of Elsinus, A.D. 1005-1055. A fragment of sculpture in the same style is built into the west wall of the South Transept. [4] A Saxon King of Northumbria and the second Christian monarch of that province. An interesting account of this prince, and of the extraordinary miracles said to have been performed by his remains after death, will be found in a larger edition of the Guide to the Cathedral, by Thos. Craddock, Esq. Price 2.6 & 15. [5] Britton says, on the authority of Gunton, that they sent the secretary of the monastery over to Denmark, on purpose to obtain it. It is, however, more probable that Hereward, knowing the disposition of the Norman abbot would lead him to enrich himself at the expense of the monastery, took this means of removing temptation out of the way of Thorold, and subsequently restored the treasure to the monastery, when there was no longer any danger of its being appropriated by the abbot. [6] Toot is an old Saxon word, signifying to stand out, or be prominent. CHAPTER II. _From the Foundation of the New Church, in 1117, to its dissolution as an Abbey by Henry the Eighth, in 1541;--embracing a period of 425 years._ In the first chapter of our history, we traced the rise and progress of the monastery of _Peterburgh_ through a period of 462 years, at the expiration of which time we saw it burned to the ground, with all the treasures which it had accumulated. We have now to witness its restoration, and to follow it until we come to the nineteenth century, through all the ravages which it has survived. At the time of the eventful destruction which we have mentioned [1116], John de Sais was abbot of the monastery, and had regained for it several of the lands which had been forfeited by his predecessors. He was, according to Gunton, a very learned man, and possessed great strength of mind and decision of character. He showed his energy by the prompt measures which he took to rebuild the abbey after its destruction, and to get all those lands, manors, and fees confirmed to it which it had so long enjoyed, and which continued daily to increase. It was a very long time, however, before the new monastery was built. John de Sais superintended it during his abbacy, but he lived only nine years after he had laid the foundation-stone (which ceremony he performed in the month of March, 1117), and the building was not completed at his death; nor did he succeed in securing to the monastery all its former possessions, although he exerted himself very assiduously to obtain them. John de Sais was succeeded by Henri de Angeli, in 1128, of whom nothing of moment is recorded. He was a man of no character, and tried to injure the monastery in the estimation of the king, by speaking falsely of the brotherhood. Some writers say that he was detected in his villany by the king, who obliged him to resign his chair, and leave the country; others assert that he quitted England on account of other crimes. All historians agree, however, that he was a very bad man. The appointment of the next abbot devolved upon the king, and Martin de Vecti was chosen by him to govern the monastery, in 1133. The monks received him with every expression of respect, as he was reported to be a man of profound erudition and good moral character. He began his rule by forwarding the erection of the new monastery, and it was during his abbacy that it was completed and re-dedicated--which latter ceremony was conducted with great pomp, and all the abbots of the neighbouring monasteries, with numbers of the barons and gentry, were present [1140]. It appears that De Vecti was very zealous in the work of improvement, and that he not only built a new gate to the monastery, but formed a new village on the western side of it; altered the place of wharfage, erected a new bridge, planted the present vineyard, and built many new houses near the abbey. He is also said to have re-built the parish church, then situate in St. John's close, in the precincts. The destruction of the castle, which stood near this church, is likewise attributed to this abbot. It is probable that it was situate upon Mount Thorold, or Tout Hill, as it is now called. This hill may yet be seen in a close on the north-western side of the cathedral. De Vecti ruled twenty-two years, and died in 1155. After the death of De Vecti, the monks resolved to maintain the right which they possessed of choosing their own abbot, and William de Waterville was elected by them to the government of the monastery: their choice was afterwards ratified by the king. Waterville was formerly a chaplain to Henry II., and having some influence with him, he regained for his abbey "the eight hundreds of that part of the country which had formerly been granted by the king's predecessors;" and, being firmly established in the monastery, he turned his attention to the improvement of the town. He founded a hospital for the sick in Spitalfield; built St. Martin's church and St. Michael's nunnery, at Stamford--besides settling a yearly sum upon the church of St. John Baptist,[7] _Peterburgh_--covering the monastery with lead, and founding the chapel of Thomas à Becket. It is stated by Gunton, that this chapel is in "the middle of the arch of the church porch," but this is an error which it will be well to correct. The present school-house near the minster gateway is found to be the chancel of the chapel; and it is thus described by Kennel--"The chapel of the blessed Thomas the Martyr, near the outer gate of the abbey there." After a government of 20 years, Waterville was deposed, at the instigation of the monks, by the Archbishop of Canterbury. No positive crime was alleged against him--at least the monks have not mentioned any in their accounts of the monastery. The next abbot of whom we read is Benedict, a man of great learning, who was appointed to the rule of the monastery by the king in 1177, after he had held it in his possession two years. The abbot brought several relics to the monastery, and finished the chapel of Thomas à Becket. He was very zealous likewise in his endeavours to re-obtain the abbey lands which had been forfeited or seized during the rule of his predecessors; nor was he scrupulous of the means which he took to effect it: sometimes he took possession of them by force, and at others he tried to conciliate the usurpers by large sums of money and fair promises. The monastery, during his government, underwent many important changes. He rebuilt the whole body of the church, "from the lantern to the porch;" and it is the opinion of Gunton, that the curiously painted ceiling which covers the middle of the building was of his workmanship. He likewise added several houses to those which were already within the precincts of the abbey, and built the present gate which leads to the west front of the cathedral, with a chapel over it, which was dedicated to St. Nicholas.[8] Benedict likewise obtained a charter for holding a fair upon the feast of St. Peter, and a market to be held every Thursday. The fair was to continue eight days. This abbot ruled seventeen years, and died in 1194. Andreas succeeded Benedict, and rose gradually from a monk to a prior, and finally to an abbot. It is said that he was a good man, and secured the esteem of the monks by giving them the lands of Fletton and Alwalton to enrich their table. He ordered likewise six marks a year to be given out of the monastery funds to the infirmary. This donation was continued by his successors for a long time, but Abbot Walter, during his rule, directed that it should be employed in purchasing wine for the "pitanciary." During the reign of Andreas there were several lands given to the "Eleemossynary," and the monastery was very flourishing. He governed seven years, and died in 1201. His body was entombed in the south aisle, with two of his brethren, under a Norman arch, beneath which is the following epitaph:-- Hos tres abbates quibus est prior abba Iohannes, Alter Martinus, Andreas ultimus, unus Hic claudit tumulus; pro clausis ergo rogemus. Acharius succeeded Andreas in 1200. He was originally a prior of St. Albans, but was presented by King John to the abbacy of this monastery, on account of his many virtues and distinguished talents. He seems to have had the interest of the monastery at heart as greatly as any of his predecessors, and was engaged in several lawsuits with different landowners, in order to recover the lost possessions of the abbey. He gained the marsh of Singlesholt from the Abbot of Crowland "for a yearly acknowledgement of four stones of wax," and increased the number of his monks. He endowed the church with many valuable articles--such as silver basins for the great altar, with a case of gold and silver, set with precious stones, for the arm of St. Oswald! He gave likewise two large silver cups to the refectory, with silver feet richly gilt, according to Gunton, and four table knives with ivory hafts. He paid money off the monastery debts, and purchased houses in London, which he added to the abbey possessions. During the festival of St. Peter, a large wax candle, of five pounds weight,[9] was set before the altar, and burnt day and night, until the festival was completed. This custom was observed in all other feasts of the saints in the abbey; and during the rule of Acharius the festivals were remarkable for their pomp and splendour. This abbot ruled ten years, died in 1214, and was succeeded by Robert of Lindsay, or Lyndesheye. It was during the rule of this abbot that one of the most interesting changes was effected in the monastery: the windows until this time had been "stuffed with straw," to keep out the cold and the rain; and, at an immense expense, he had thirty-nine of them adorned with glass, which enterprise gained for him a considerable amount of fame and esteem. Not content with this change in his own monastery, he extended his generosity to other parts, and built a chancel to the church at Oxney. He was confirmed by the king at Winchester, and received the benediction of the Bishop of Lincoln. Being thus installed in his new office with so much honour, he directed his attention to the forest lands by which he was surrounded. By virtue of the forest laws, foresters let their cattle run at liberty to graze, and they frequently did much damage to the possessions of the monastery, and to the property of the town inhabitants. Lindsay therefore wrote to the king to try to "disafforest" the lands which were contiguous to the monastery, and he effected his object by payment of 1320 marks. Of his other improvements we read that "he made in the south cloister a lavatory of marble, for the monks to wash their hands in when they went to meals--their hall being near on the other side of the wall, the door leading into it being yet standing; the lavatory continued entire until the year 1651, and then, with the whole cloister, it was also pulled down." About this time, in the reign of King John, England was the scene of those civil contentions which terminated in favour of the barons, and the attainment of a charter of liberties. A large number of the monasteries in England were, however, despoiled by the king before the fate of the war was decided, and amongst them was Crowland Abbey. It is likely that of _Peterburgh_ escaped the fury of the king's soldiers, for we do not read of any outrage being committed upon it at that time in the monkish records. Lindsay wrote a history of the monastery, according to Pitseus, but he did not enrich the church library with any valuable additions. He ruled seven years, and died in 1222. Alexander de Holderness was the successor of Lindsay, and was elected November 30, 1222. He was called Holderness from the place where he was born. This abbot made a number of improvements in his monastery, and enriched it with money and relics. He built, says Gunton, "_the solarium magnum_ at the door of the abbot's chamber, and a _cellerarium_ under it, and furnished the church also with that precious crystal vessel wherein the blood of Thomas à Becket was kept." He likewise built halls at Oundle, Castor, Eyebury, and other places. He was much beloved by the monks, and died, after a government of four years, in 1226. An interesting incident in connexion with this abbot may here be mentioned. On the 2nd of April, 1830, when the workmen were making a foundation in the cathedral church for the erection of a new choir, they discovered beneath one of the slabs a stone coffin, which their curiosity led them to open. They were surprised to find that it contained the body of a man, with a large coarse garment around it, equipped with boots, and having a crosier by its side. There were several very remarkable things connected with this discovery. The boots were what are called "rights and lefts," and in a good state of preservation. The crosier was perfect, and a part of the body was hard, and of a copper-coloured hue, whilst the other part was decomposed. The body was headless, and a piece of lead was found lying in _place of the skull_, with this inscription upon it-- ABBAS: ALEXANDR: These remains were gathered together, replaced in the shell, and buried in the south aisle, nearly opposite the burial place of Mary Queen of Scots. Martin de Ramsey was chosen abbot after the death of Alexander. His election was sanctioned by the king, and he was confirmed by the Bishop of Lincoln, at Westminster. There is nothing remarkable recorded of this abbot. He "disafforested" several lands about _Peterburgh_, and added them to the possessions of the monastery. During the rule of this abbot, Pope Gregory IX. ordered that when there should be an interdiction of the monastery lands, the monks should close their doors, and not allow the people to hear their prayers, or participate in them; but the privilege was granted to the monks of Peterborough to say the service in a low voice to themselves, the ringing of the bell being dispensed with. Martin ruled six years, died in 1232, and was succeeded by Walter de St. Edmond, in 1233. It was during the government of this abbot that the monastery of _Peterburgh_ was re-dedicated and consecrated with holy oil, by the Bishops of Lincoln and Exeter [1238], according to the decrees of the constitution of Otto.[10] The ceremony was attended with the usual pomp of such proceedings, and the possessions of the monastery were ratified anew. Walter de Whittlesea gives a very favourable account of the disposition of this abbot, and speaks very highly of his benevolence to King Henry, who was reduced to the necessity of seeking support from this and other monasteries. St. Edmond entertained the king twice at _Peterburgh_, in company with the queen and the young prince. He also "gave 60 marks towards the marriage of Margaret, his daughter, with Alexander III., King of Scotland," and increased the number of his monks to one hundred and ten. He made likewise three several journeys to Rome upon civil and ecclesiastical business. The cause of one of these journeys was this:--The Pope (Gregory, 1241) sent messages to _Burgh_, demanding that the abbot should give unto one of his favourites a certain yearly sum, or a number of lands equal to that sum, and the abbot refused to do so without the consent of the king who was patron of the monastery; and going to Rome to know the cause of such an arbitrary demand, he was reproved by the Pope in person, and treated with great indignity by the cardinals, and expelled the court. The abbot was so much grieved, by this cruel and ungenerous treatment that he never recovered, but died in the same year [1245], after having ruled twelve years with the greatest mildness, prudence, and benevolence. This story of the Pope's arbitrary conduct calls forth a very pithy couplet from Gunton-- "Rome gnaweth hands as dainty cates, And when it cannot gnaw--it hates." Walter was a learned man, and increased the books of the library. Gunton says "he was pious and merciful to all, exacted nothing unduly of his tenants, whether rich or poor; but if any poor man or woman made their necessities known to him, he would burst into tears, and take compassion upon them." The next abbot of whom we read is William de Hotot, who was elected on the 6th of February, 1246. His rule was not favourable to the monastery. He lavished the possessions of the church upon his friends and kinsmen. His conduct was reprehended by the monks, and finally represented to the Bishop of Lincoln, when William, fearing he should be deposed, resigned his office, and retired upon an allowance from the monastery in 1249, after governing three years. Mr. Owen Davys, in his Guide to the Cathedral, remarks that "it is a matter of great surprise that we have no record handed down to us of the exact date when that magnificent appendage to the Cathedral, the western front, was erected, though it must have been about this time. The name of the architect under whose directions this original and strikingly beautiful design was carried out is also buried in obscurity. This noble front is almost entirely built in the style usually known by the name of early English Gothic, of which it is, perhaps, the finest example we have now left us. "It would seem that scarcely any time elapsed between the building of the western transepts of this monastic church and the commencement of the west front, as the style of the western transepts is Late Transition Norman, and in some places almost Early English, and that of the west front pure Early English. Now, as the Transition Norman gave place to the Early English in this country, about the commencement of the thirteenth century, it would seem probable that these western transepts were built at that time, probably during the government of Acharius [1200]; these works being carried on by Robert de Lindsay, his successor, might have been completed by him: the mixture of Early English work with that of the former style in them may thus be satisfactorily accounted for. It would seem, therefore, that these transepts were erected before the time of Walter St. Edmonds, and that the building of the west front probably followed immediately after the erection of them. Mr. Britton, in his 'History and Antiquities of Peterborough Cathedral,' page 56, refers the building of this interesting feature of the church to the times of Acharius and Robert de Lindsay. It would seem, however, that though it was probably begun in the time of the latter abbot, it was not finished till the time of John de Caleto, who came to the government of this abbey A.D. 1249. The reason for this opinion is the similarity of some of its details to those of the infirmary church, which was erected by this abbot. Some beautiful portions of this church are still to be seen. This abbot is said to have been a great builder; and it is probable that the refectory and south cloister were rebuilt by him; and that the door by which the Bishop usually enters the Cathedral, was inserted at the same time. The Chapel of St. Lawrance, which stood at the east end of the infirmary church, seems to have been erected about this time. There was an entrance into this chapel, from the infirmary church, through an arch, which is still standing, the chapel having been converted into a prebendal house." Richard de London was elected abbot in 1274. He had held several offices in the monastery before his instalment, and being well acquainted with the discipline of the church, he governed well and wisely. He recovered the manor of Biggins, near Oundle, of the Earl of Clare, and his success was mainly owing to the eloquence of one of his monks, who pleaded the cause of the monastery in person, before the judge of assize at Northampton. It was during the government of Richard de London that Prior Parys built and endowed the Lady Chapel.[11] This abbot ("when he was sacrist") also built one of the largest steeples of the church, and gave two bells to the monastery. He died in 1295, having ruled twenty years. In his reign the library and the monastery lands were increased considerably. William de Woodford was next elected abbot. During the latter part of the rule of Richard, he had assisted him in performing the duties of abbot, which the latter was unable to do of himself, on account of his great age. Swapham informs us that whilst William was abbot, the Pope taxed all the manors of the abbey. Woodford is described as a fair and impartial man, of much kindness and benevolence, who added to the provisions of the monks,--obtained a charter for the possession of all the deer that might be slain on the monastery lands, and devoted his attention to the better regulation of the hospital of St. Leonard.[12] He died after a rule of four years, in 1299, and was succeeded by Godfrey de Croyland in the same year. This abbot, on his installation, was presented by Prince Edward with a silver cup, and had the confirmation fees returned to him by the Bishop's order. The service in the chapel of Thomas à Becket was for a time suspended during this abbot's rule, in consequence of a violation of the sanctity of the place by certain officers, who, being in search of several men that had transgressed against the laws, and hearing they had taken shelter in the monastery, dragged them hence by force. The Bishop of Lincoln therefore put his curse upon the place, nor was it without much persuasion that he granted an absolution. The same year, being 1300, says Gunton, "a marriage being intended betwixt the heirs of Offord and Southorp, king Edward supposing himself to be interested therein, appointed inquisition to be made whether the disposal of that marriage belonged to him or the abbot of _Peterburgh_. And it being upon the inquisition certified that those heirs and their progenitors held their lands of the abbey of _Peterburgh_, the right of disposal of those heirs did therefore belong to the abbot, which the king, understanding, desisted." This right of disposal is well worthy of notice, as it illustrates the spirit of the time better than a great deal of writing. Godfrey was remarkable for his generosity and sumptuous entertainments. The king and queen, with all their retinues, were provided for at the monastery, and once Prince Edward came with Peter Gaveston, and the abbot presented them with two magnificent robes.[13] Godfrey added many beautiful improvements to his monastery, and built "the great gate-tower, over which was the chamber called the knights' chamber," being the gateway leading to the Bishop's Palace. The walls of this room were carved with knights and their coats of arms. [Illustration: Peterborough Cathedral--Remains of Cloisters.] Whilst Edward was preparing for war against Scotland, he sent five successive times to this abbey for money to assist him in carrying on his enterprise, and Godfrey gave him in all about £500. His other gifts and entertainments were sumptuous and large, and the sum of money which he expended during his abbacy was £3646 4s. 3d. This remarkable man died in 1321, after a splendid rule of twenty-two years. The value of the monastery possessions in his time, about _Peterborough_ alone, was £621 16s. 3d; but this sum was but a small portion of the vast property which then belonged to the church. Adam de Boothby was the next abbot. He entertained the king, queen, and royal household, in the year 1327, which cost him £327 15s. Prince Edward, with his sisters and servants, were likewise hospitably treated at this abbey during a stay of eight weeks. Like Godfrey, Boothby was a generous man, but the expenses which the royal family cost him and his predecessors must have been a heavy impost upon the monastery. He died in 1338, in the eighteenth year of his rule. Henry de Morcot was installed in February, 1338. There is nothing of any moment recorded of him, except that he was engaged in successful litigation with a baron for the recovery of some church lands. He died in 1346, having ruled eight years. "Henry being dead, was buried betwixt the quire and the great altar, near unto his predecessor Adam. His grave being, in the year 1648, opened to receive the body of John Towers, late head bishop of this place, there was found a seal of lead (the instrument wholly consumed), having on one side these letters thus inscribed:--'SPA SPE,' over their several effigies; on the reverse--'CLEMENS P P VI.' (Gunton, p. 47-48). It is probable that the instrument was some indulgence gotten at the jubilee, which was but three years before." Robert Ramsey succeeded to the abbacy in 1346, but of him nothing particular is recorded. Henry de Overton was Abbot in 1361, and was followed by Nicholas, who was noted for his prudence and economy. We now come to the rule of William Genge, who was elected in 1396, and ruled twelve years. He was, according to Gunton the first abbot of this monastery who was dignified with a mitre. In the supplement to Gunton's history, it is stated "that they put on mitres in token they had episcopal jurisdiction, and being advanced to the dignity of barons, and to sit in parliament which no other abbots had done." During his abbacy, the church which was then situate in St. John's close, in Boongate, was taken down, and re-erected on its present site. The cause of this removal was the fearful inundations to which, from its proximity to the fens, it was exposed. Between 1408 and 1438 the monastery was presided over by John Deeping. During his abbacy great complaints were made of the conduct of the Monks, and the heads of the Benedictine order were summoned before the King at Westminster, to answer the charge of abuses, which they could not deny, but promised to reform. Richard Ashton was appointed abbot in 1438, and ruled 33 years. He made many visits to the neighbouring monasteries, and likewise received many from their abbots. He granted several corrodies to persons who endowed his abbey. One to John Delaber, bishop of St. David's, is worthy of notice.--This John had his choice, whether to remain at _Peterburgh_ for life, and receive a pension of £32 per annum, or retreat to the abbot's manor at Eyebury[14] with the same advantages. There was another corrody granted to Alice Garton, the widow of Thomas Garton, who was a benefactor to the Cathedral, and whose name is engraved on stone, in characters of an hieroglyphic kind, over the large painted window at the west end of the building; it is well worth examining. It was in the year 1439 that king Henry granted a charter unto this abbot to hold a fair "for three days," commencing on St. Matthew's day, (O.S.) in a field, (now named the Mending,) which joins the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton together. This fair, on account of its vicinity to the bridge, was called "Brigge Fair," by which name it is still known. Ashton was called to parliament at Westminster, but being too infirm to attend, he deputed William Tresham, (probably one of his monks) to appear for him. He afterwards took the oaths of allegiance to his sovereign, at Coventry. During his rule it is stated that 33 monks died in the monastery, and many festivals were suspended in consequence, there not being a sufficient number left to perform the ceremonies. This abbot made several additions to the church; and the building at the east end, according to Britton, was commenced by him. Mr. Davys is of opinion that, "though we read of no further additions being made to the church between the time of Godfrey, (1299), and that of abbot Ashton, much took place in this interval. Almost all the windows of the church must have been transformed from their original character into their present shapes, and those which escaped this mutilation, as in the transepts and clerestory, were filled with their present unsuitable tracery, about the conclusion of the fourteenth century. "The porch, or chapel, now used as the Chapter Library, standing within the central arch of the West Front, was probably built soon after this time. The reason why it was erected will be evident to any one who will examine the front carefully; for it will be seen that the clustered column, between the northern and middle arch, leans out to a very great extent, and were it not for the support it receives from this chapel, very serious consequences must ensue. The whole front also leans to the westward, though not so much so as this column. This inclination is evidently of very early date, and probably took place shortly after the completion of the front. This chapel was therefore added as a support to the front; its insertion is, nevertheless, much to be regretted, as it materially diminishes the beauty of the finest part of the Cathedral. "Many alterations, and additions, seems to have taken place in this abbey, during the time when the decorated style was prevalent in England; and consequently between the time when the Infirmary Church was built, and the last-mentioned structure was erected, at the west end of the church. Of these may be mentioned, the two elegant spires on the north and south towers of the West Front, and the great south-west tower of the church, which has since been materially diminished in height. The present Chapter School, which was originally the chancel of Thomas à Becket's Chapel, was also built at this period; its nave was taken down in the time of Abbot Genge, who presided here between the years 1396 and 1408, and the materials were given to the inhabitants of Peterborough to re-build their parish church with, in a more convenient situation. The eastern and western arches of the lantern must also have been altered into their present shape about this time, and the first story of a tower, which, if it had been completed, would have been one of the finest in England, built upon them: this is now remaining, and forms all the pretence that this Cathedral can show to a central tower." Ashton resigned in 1471, to the Bishop of Lincoln, and was succeeded by William Ramsey, in the same year, who, with the assistance of prior Maldon, erected a "brazen eagle" in the church, to which the bible and mass book were chained. This eagle is now in the choir of the Cathedral, and used when reading the lessons. Ashton was indicted[15] in 1480, for releasing a felon from the gaol at _Peterburgh_, and accepting a bribe for the same. He was tried and convicted, and was obliged to find sureties for better conduct. The original judgment is yet retained in the chapter-house; with the names of the abbot's sureties. He died in 1496, after a rule of 25 years. Robert Kirton was made abbot in 1496. During his rule the regulations of the monastery were in a measure broken up; many of the monks had become disorderly and even licentious, and one of them robbed the shrine of St. Oswald of a number of jewels, and other valuable articles, for the purpose of paying a woman in the town the wages of her prostitution. Others gave themselves up to bacchanalian riots in a neighbouring tavern, and, instead of devoting their nights to "prayer," gave themselves up to the vulgar "company of dancers and ballad singers." These irregularities took place in the 19th year of this abbot's rule. They were, however, speedily terminated by the Bishop of Lincoln, who, hearing of such notorious infringements of the monastic rules, came in person to restore those licentious members of the fraternity to their duty. Abbot Kirton had many contests with his tenants, "but notwithstanding," says Gunton, "he forgat not to enlarge and beautify his monastery, for he built that goodly building at the east end of the church, now commonly known by the name of the new building,"[16] wherein he placed three altars, opposite three pair of stairs, descending from the back of the great altar. He likewise built a chamber in the abbey house, which is still called "heaven-gate chamber." He made also a beautiful window in the great hall "overlooking the cloyster." He added many pictures to those which were already in the chapel of St. Mary, or the Lady's Chapel, as it is now called, all which have since been destroyed. The gate that leads to the deanery is likewise of his workmanship, and bears his signature in hieroglyphics, viz:--a Kirk, and a tun under it. This gate is a magnificent specimen of architecture, and should be seen by every person who visits Peterborough. Abbot Kirton ruled nearly 32 years, and died in 1528. John Chambers was the last abbot, and was elected in 1528. Cardinal Wolsey visited the abbey in the 17th year of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and washed and kissed the feet of fifty-nine poor people, which ceremony was called "keeping his maundy." He then gave them twelve pence, three ells of canvas, a pair of shoes, and divided a barrel of red herrings amongst them: he likewise sang mass himself on Easter-day, and absolved from their sins all those who heard him. It was during the rule of Chambers that Queen Catherine, the first wife of Henry the 8th, died [July 1, 1535], and was buried in the monastery. Her tomb may be seen in the north side of the choir. The scaff which covered her pall was originally deposited at the back of the great altar. It was inwoven with silver, and was very massive and heavy. [7] This sum made the church dependent upon the monastery, and the chaplain was required to bring his church key to the sacrist of the monastery, yearly, as an acknowledgement of it.--_See Gunton's Hist. Church, Peterborough, p. 24._ [8] Britton says "he founded a chapel to St. Nicholas _near_ it;" but Gunton is doubtless correct, when he says that the chapel was over it. [9] After Acharius had recovered the marsh of Singlesholt from the Abbot of Crowland by the law of the land, he let it to him with the understanding that, instead of his paying four stones of wax to the Abbot of Crowland, the abbot should pay him a yearly rental in kind, of the same amount. [10] These decrees were, that all churches not consecrated with holy oil, should be dedicated within two years.--_See Britton's Hist. Cathedral Church, Peterborough, pp. 22-3._ [11] There was at one time an entrance from the Choir into the Lady Chapel through a door, on the right side of which was a small oratory, with a stone roof; the remains are yet to be seen. [12] This hospital was afterwards called Spittle, and some of the stones are still remaining in Spittle-field. It was left by Agnes Pudding, with eight acres of arable land adjoining it. [13] The Prince at first refused the robe offered to him, because the abbot did not make a similar offer to his companion; Godfrey, however, soon settled the affair, by presenting one to each. [14] A gentleman in this city who is an excellent antiquarian, and has seen the corrody alluded to above, says, "It was granted by charter of the abbot, and presents many curiosities--mentioning particularly the abbot's wine cellar at the over end of the cloister, under the present passage into the square."--_Private MS._ [15] The abbot was indicted at the sessions at _Peterburgh_ before Guy Woolston.--_Private MS._ [16] It is still commonly, but incorrectly, called The Lady Chapel. A building of corresponding position at Lincoln is called the Presbytry. CHAPTER III. _From the transformation of the monastery into a Cathedral during the rule of abbot Chambers, in 1541, to the present time._ The dissolution of the religious houses of England is one of the most important events recorded in our national history. It changed the whole aspect of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, and produced an entire revolution in the scheme of legislation. John Chambers, who was the abbot of _Peterburgh_ before these changes commenced, conformed to the new order of things, and was retained in office by the king,--the monastery being converted into a cathedral, and the abbot into a bishop. The new establishment consisted of a Bishop, a Dean, and six canons; besides these the statutes directed that there should be six Minor Canons chosen, among other good qualifications, for their skill in singing, by whom the services in the Cathedral, were to be conducted, according to the usage of the old Cathedrals. Of these, one was to be chosen as Precentor, to whom the other Minor Canons, the Organists, Lay Clerks, and Choristers, were to be subordinate. The chancel of Thomas à Becket's Chapel, already spoken of, was then converted into a school-room, in which the Choristers, and a certain number of other boys, were to receive a classical education at the hands of one of the Minor Canons appointed, for his superior learning, to the office of schoolmaster. Chambers governed 15 years in his new office. There is some dispute amongst the historians of this church about the time of his death, but it is generally agreed that the tablet to his memory is dated wrong, and that he died in 1556. There were two monuments erected to him, by his own orders, before his death; and this circumstance may account for the error in the date upon the tablets. One of the monuments was a beautifully executed statue of himself, in white chalk, but it was destroyed in 1643. The bishop adorned the doors of the church with carved images and hieroglyphics, one of which at the west front represents a sinner tormented by devils, though it is now much defaced. From the death of Bishop Chambers to the accession of Richard Howland, in 1584, nothing of importance occurred. It was during his rule that the unhappy queen of Scots fell a victim to the vanity and jealousy of Elizabeth, in the castle of Fotheringhay.[17] "Although that unfortunate Queen had been executed on the 8th of February, her body was not brought to Peterborough for burial till the night of the thirtieth of July following, when it was conveyed by torch-light from Fotheringhay Castle by Garter King at Arms, and other Heralds, with a guard of horsemen, in a chariot made for the purpose, covered with black cloth. The corpse was met at the entrance of the cathedral by the bishop, Richard Howland, and Fletcher, the dean of the cathedral, with others, who attended it in solemn procession to the vault appointed for it, in which it was immediately deposited. The vault was then covered, an opening merely being left through which the Heralds might deposit their broken staves. No service was said at the time, as it was agreed that it had better be done on the day fixed for the solemnization of the funeral. On the day following, there came to Peterborough all those persons of rank appointed to attend the funeral, for whom a grand supper was prepared at the bishop's palace. On Tuesday, the first of August, 1586, being the day fixed for the funeral, they all marched in order to the church, the Countess of Bedford being chief mourner. The funeral service was performed by the Dean of Peterborough; the prebendaries and choir of the Cathedral then sang an anthem, after which a sermon was preached by Wickham, Bishop of Lincoln. The officers having broken their staves and cast them into the vault, and the offerings appointed having been made to the Bishop and Dean and Chapter of Peterborough, the nobility and officers, who had attended the funeral, returned to the bishop's palace, where a sumptuous repast was provided, after which they all returned to their respective homes. "The place where this queen was interred, is now marked by a marble slab directly under the doorway leading from the choir into its south aisle. Over this was erected a superb monument to her memory, which remained perfect until the time of the great rebellion. "After the queen's body had lain at Peterborough about 25 years, her son, James I., wishing to have it removed to Westminster Abbey, wrote to the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough, requesting them to allow of the removal.[18] The corpse was accordingly taken from its grave at Peterborough, and removed to the place where it now lies, at Westminster, under the care of Richard Neile, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, on October 11th, 1612." The next event of public interest happened during the bishopric of John Towers, in 1643; namely, the destruction and defacement of all the monuments and ornamental pictures of the cathedral, through the foolish prejudices and blinded bigotry of the puritanical followers of Cromwell, who destroyed every thing valuable within it, and spread terror over the surrounding country. The stately front, the curious altar-piece, and beautiful cloister, for which the cathedral was remarkable, were defaced and injured by them as they passed through the city, on their way to Croyland, which they were going to besiege, it having declared in favour of the king. To reduce that town, the Parliamentarian forces marched through Peterborough about the middle of the month of April. The first regiment that came did no harm to the church, for, being commanded by one Hubbart, who seems to have been a great improvement upon the puritanical leaders of that time, the soldiers received orders, in no way to injure the Cathedral. But unfortunately, about two days after, a regiment of horse arrived, commanded by Colonel Cromwell; and these men the morning after their arrival, commenced the work of destruction. They broke open the doors of the church, demolished the monuments, and turned the building into a stable. The fury of Cromwell's soldiers is thus described in an old paper called:-- "_A short and true narrative of the Rising and Defacing the Cathedral Church of Peterborough, in the year 1643._" "The next day after their arrival, early in the morning, they break open the church doors, pull down the organs, of which there were two pair. The greater pair which stood upon a high loft over the entrance into the quire, was thence thrown down upon the ground, and then stamped and trampled on, and broke in pieces. "Then the souldiers entered the quire, and their first business was to tear in pieces all the common prayer books that could be found. The great bible indeed, that lay upon a brass eagle for reading the lessons, had the good hap to escape with the loss only of the apocrypha. "Next they break down all the seats, stalls and wainscots that was behind them, being adorned with several historical passages out of the old testament, a latin distich being in each seat to declare the story. Whilst they were thus employed, they happened to find a great parchment book, behind the ceiling, with some twenty pieces of gold laid there, by a person a little before.--This encourages the souldiers in their work, and makes them the more eager in breaking down all the rest of the wainscot. The book was called 'Swapham,' and was afterwards redeemed by a person belonging to the minster for ten shillings.[19] "There was also a great brass candlestick hanging in the middle of the quire, containing a dozen and a half of lights, with another bow candlestick about the brass eagle. These both were broke in pieces, and most of the brass carried away and sold. "A well disposed person standing by and seeing the souldiers make such spoil speaks to an officer, desiring him to restrain them; who answered, '_See how these poor people are concerned to see their idols pulled down_.' "When they had thus defaced and spoiled the quire, they made up next to the east end of the church, and there break and cut in pieces, and afterwards burn the rails that were about the communion table. The table itself was thrown down, the table cloth taken away, with two fair books in velvet covers; the one a bible, the other a common prayer book, with a silver basin gilt, and a pair of silver candlesticks beside. But upon request made to Colonel Hubbert, the books, bason, and all else, save the candlesticks, were restored again. "Not long after, on the 13th day of July, 1643, Captain Barton and Captain Hope, two martial ministers of Nottingham or Darbyshire, coming to Peterburgh, break open the vestry, and take away a fair crimson satten table cloth, and several other things, that had escaped the former souldiers hands. "Now behind the communion table there stood a curious piece of stone-work, admired much by strangers and travellers: a stately skreen it was, well wrought, painted and gilt, which rose up as high almost as the roof of the church, in a row of three lofty spires, with other lesser spires growing out of each of them. This now had no imagery work upon it, or any thing else that might justly give offence, and yet because it bore the name of the high altar,[20] was pulled all down with ropes, lay'd low and level with the ground. "Over this place, in the roof of the church, in a large oval yet to be seen, was the picture of Our Saviour seated on a throne; one hand erect, and holding a globe in the other, attended with the four evangelists, and saints on each side, with crowns in their hands, intended, I suppose, for a representation of Our Saviour's coming to judgment. Some of the company espying this, cry out and say, 'Lo, this is the God these people bow and cringe unto; this is the idol they worship and adore.' Hereupon several souldiers charged their muskets, (amongst whom one Daniel Wood, of Captain Roper's company was the chief) and discharge them at it: and by the many shots they made, at length do quite deface and spoil [the] picture. "The odiousness of this act gave occasion (I suppose) to a common fame, very rife at that time, and whence _Mercurius Rusticus_ might have his relation, viz.:--that divine vengeance had signally seized on some of the principal actors; that one was struck blind upon the place; by a rebound of his bullet; that another dyed mad a little after, neither of which I can certainly attest. For, though I have made it my business to enquire of this, I could never find any other judgment befal them then, but that of a mad blind zeal, wherewith these persons were certainly possest. "Then they rob and rifle the tombs, and violate the monuments of the dead. And where should they first begin, but with those of the two queens, who had been there interr'd: the one on the north side, the other on the south side of the church, both near unto the altar. First then they demolished Queen Katherin's tomb, Henry the Eighth his repudiated wife: they break down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse,--overthrow the herse itself, displaced the gravestone that lay over her body, and have left nothing now remaining of that tomb, but only a monument of their own shame and villany. The like they had certainly done to the Queen of Scots, but that her herse and pall were removed with her body to Westminster by King James the First, when he came to the crown. But what did remain they served in like manner; that is, her royal arms and escutcheons, which hung upon a pillar, near the place where she had been interr'd [which] were most rudely pulled down, defaced and torn. "In the north isle of the church there was a stately tomb in memory of Bishop Dove, who had been thirty years bishop of the place. He lay there in portraicture in his episcopal robes, on a large bed under a fair table of black marble, with a library of books about him. These men that were such enemies to the name and office of a bishop, and much more to his person, hack and hew the poor innocent statue in pieces, and soon destroy'd all the tomb. So that in a short space, all that fair and curious monument was buried in its own rubbish and ruines. "The like they do to two other monuments standing in that isle; the one the tomb of Mr. Worm, the other of Dr. Angier, who had been prebendary of that church. "In a place then called the new building, and since converted to a library, there was a fair monument, which Sir Humphrey Orm (to save his heir that charge and trouble), thought fit to erect in his own life time, where he and his lady, his son and wife and all their children, were lively represented in statues, under which were certain English verses written:-- _"Mistake not, reader, I thee crave,_ _This is an altar not a grave,_ _Where fire raked up in ashes lyes,_ _And hearts are made the sacrifice, &c._ "Which two words, altar and sacrifice, 'tis said, did so provoke and kindle the zealots indignation, that they resolve to make the tomb itself a sacrifice: and with axes, poleaxes, and hammers, destroy and break down all that curious monument, save only two pilasters still remaining, which shew and testifie the elegancy of the rest of the work. Thus it hapned, that the good old knight who was a constant frequenter of Gods publick service, three times a day, outlived his own monument, and lived to see himself carried in effigie on a souldiers back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, a crew of souldiers going before in procession, some with surplices, some with organ pipes, to make up the solemnity. "When they had thus demolished the chief monuments, at length the very gravestones and marbles on the floor did not escape their sacrilegious hands. For where there was any thing on them of sculptures or inscriptions in brass, these they force and tear off. So that whereas there were many fair pieces of this kind before, as that of abbot William of Ramsey, whose large marble gravestone was plated over with brass, and several others the like, there is not any such now in all the church to be seen; though most of the inscriptions that were upon them are preserved in this book. "One thing, indeed, I must needs clear the souldiers of, which _Mercurius Rusticus_ upon misinformation charges them with, viz.:--That they took away the bell clappers and sold them, with the brass they plucked off from the tombs. The mistake was this: the neighbourhood being continually disturbed with the souldiers jangling and ringing the bells auker, as though there had been a scare-fire, (though there was no other, but what they themselves had made,) some of the inhabitants by night took away the clappers and hid them in the roof of the church, on purpose only to free their ears from that confused noise; which gave occasion to such as did not know it, to think the souldiers had stolen them away. "Having thus done their work on the floor below, they are now at leasure to look up to the windows above, which would have entertained any persons else with great delight and satisfaction, but only such zealots as these, whose eyes were so dazzled, that they thought they saw popery in every picture and piece of painted glass. "Now the windows of this church were very fair, and had much curiosity of workmanship in them, being adorned and beautified with several historical passages out of scripture, and ecclesiastical story; such were those in the body of the church, in the isles, in the new building, and elsewhere. But the cloister windows were most famed of all for their great art and pleasing variety. One side of the quadrangle containing the history of the Old Testament; another, that of the new; a third, a history from the first foundation of the Monastery of King Peada to the restoring of it by King Edgar; a fourth, all the kings of England downwards from the first Saxon king. All which notwithstanding were most shamefully broken and destroyed." [But little remains to be seen of these famous cloisters beyond the mouldings of arches imposed in rough walls on each side. The five recesses in the south wall were partly the lavatories used by the Monks before entering the refectory by the richly cut door in the corner.] _"Every window had at the bottom the explanation of the history thus in verse:_-- _First Window._ COL. 1. "King Penda, a paynim, as writing seyth, "'Gate yese five children of Christen feyth." COL. 2. "The noble Peada, by God's grace, "Was the first founder of this place." COL. 3. "By Queen Ermenyld, had King Wulfere, "These twey sons that ye see here." COL. 4. "Wulfade rideth, as he was wont, "Into the forest, the hart to hunt." _Second Window._ COL. 1. "Fro' all his men Wulfade is gone, "And 'suyth himself the hart alone."[21] COL. 2. "The hart brought Wulfade to a well, "That was beside Seynt Chaddy's cell." COL. 3. "Wulfade askyd of Seynt Chad,-- "Where is the hart that me hath lad." COL. 4. "The hart that hither thee hath brought, "Is sent by Christ, that thee hath bought." _Third Window._ COL. 1. "Wulfade prayd Chad, that ghostly leech, "The feyth of Christ him for to teach." COL. 2. "Seynt Chad teacheth Wulfade the feyth, "And words of baptism over him he seyth." COL. 3. "Seynt Chad devoutly to mass him dight, "And hoseled Wulfade Christy's knight." COL. 4. "Wulfade wished Seynt Chad, that day, "For his brother Rufine to pray." _Fourth Window._ COL. 1. "Wulfade told his brother Rufine "That he was christned by Chaddy's doctrine." COL. 2. "Rufine to Wulfade said again,-- "Christned also would I be fain." COL. 3. "Wulfade, Rufine to Seynt Chad leadeth, "And Chad with love of feyth him feedeth." COL. 4. "Rufine is christned, of Seynt Chaddys, "And Wulfade, his brother, his godfather is." _Fifth Window._ COL. 1. "Werbode, steward to King Wulfere, "Told that his sons christned were." COL. 2. "Towards the chappel Wulfere 'gan goe, "By guiding of Werbode, Christy's foe." COL. 3. "Into the chappel entred the King, "And found his sons worshipping." COL. 4. "Wulfere in woodness his sword out drew, "And both his sons anon he slew."[22] _Sixth Window._ COL. 1. "King Wulfere, with Werbode yoo, "Burying gave his sons two." COL. 2. "Werbode for vengeance his own flesh tare, "The devil him strangled, and to hell bare." COL. 3. "Wulfere, for sorrow, anon was sick, "In bed he lay, a dead man like." COL. 4. "Seynt Ermenyld, that blessed Queen, "Counselled Wulfere to shrive him clean." _Seventh Window._ COL. 1. "Wulfere contrite, hyed him to Chad, "As Ermenyld him counselled had"[23] COL. 2. "Chad bade Wulfere, for his sin, "Abbeys to build his realm within." COL. 3. "Wulfere in haste performed than, "Brough that Peada his brother began." COL. 4. "Wulfere endued with high devotion, "The abbey of Brough with great possession." _Eighth Window._ COL. 1. "The third brother, King Ethelred, "Confirmed both his brethren's deed." COL. 2. "Saxulf, that here first abbot was, "For Ankery's, at Thorney, made a place." COL. 3. "After came Danes, and Brough brent, "And slew the Monkys as they went." COL. 4. "Fourscore years and sixteen, "Stood Brough destroyed by Danes teen." _Ninth Window._ COL. 1. "Seynt Athelwold was bidden by God's lore, "The abbey of Brough again to restore." COL. 2. "Seynt Athelwold to King Edgar went, "And prayed him to help him in his intent." COL. 3. "Edgar bade Athelwold the work begin, "And him to help he would not lyn." COL. 4. "Thus Edgar and Athelwold restored this place, "God save it and keep it for his grace."[24] "But to proceed, notwithstanding all the art and curiosity of workmanship these windows did afford, yet nothing of all this could oblige the reforming rabble, but they deface and break them all in pieces, in the church and in the cloyster, and left nothing undemolisht, where either any picture or painted glass did appear; excepting only part of the great west window in the body of the church, which still remains entire, being too high for them, and out of their reach. Yea, to encourage them the more in this trade of breaking and battering windows down, Cromwell himself, (as 'twas reported,) espying a little crucifix in a window aloft, which none, perhaps, before had scarce observed, gets a ladder, and breaks it down zealously with his own hand. "But before I conclude the narrative, I must not forget to tell, how they likwise broke open the chapterhouse, ransack'd the records, broke the seals, tore the writings in pieces, specially such as had great seals annexed unto them, which they took or mistook rather for the popes bulls. So that a grave and sober person coming into the room at the time, finds the floor all strewed and covered over with torn papers, parchments and broken seals; and being astonisht at this sight, does thus expostulate with them. Gentlemen, (says he,) what are ye doing? they answered, we are pulling and tearing the popes bulls in pieces. He replies, ye are much mistaken: for these writings are neither the popes bulls, nor any thing relating to him. But they are the evidences of several mens estates, and in destroying these, you will destroy and undo many. With these they were something perswaded, and prevailed upon by the same person, to permit him to carry away all that were left undefaced, by which means, the writings the church hath now came to be preserved. "Such was the souldiers carriage and behaviour all the time during their stay at Peterburgh, which was a fortnights space: They went to church duly, but it was only to do mischief, to break and batter the windows and any carved work that was yet remaining, or to pull down crosses wheresoever they could find them; which the first founders did not set up with so much zeal, as these last confounders pulled them down. "Thus, in a short time, a fair and goodly structure was quite stript of all its ornamental beauty, and made a ruthful spectacle, a very chaos of desolation and confusion, nothing scarce remaining but only bare walls, broken seats, and shatter'd windows on every side. "And in the time of this publick confusion, two other things hapned not unworthy of relating: the one for the strangeness, the other for the sadness of the accident. The first was this, when now the church lay open to all comers, without locks and bars, and none to look after them, those specially that lead up to the leads above; two young children not above five years old, had got up the steeple by themselves, and having lost their way down, come to the place where the great bells hang. Here there was a large round space left purposely in the arch, when first built, for the drawing up bells or any other things, as there should be occasion. This place used to be safely closed before, but now it lay wide open, and was between thirty and forty yards off from the ground. The two children, coming hither and finding this passage, one, out of his childish simplicity, was for jumping down: No, (saies the other) let us rather swarm down, there being a bell rope then hanging down through that place to the clockhouse below. Now, this last they did, and a gentleman walking there beneath at that time, sees two children come with that swiftness down the rope, like arrows from a bow, who were both taken up for dead, on the place. This hapned on a Sunday ith' afternoon, in sermon time. The news coming into the parish church, that two children falling off from the minster were slain, the congregation were exceedingly disorder'd, so that the preacher could not go on for a time, every parent fearing it might be their own childrens case; till at length they understood the truth and certainty of all. For it pleased God by a strange and wonderful providence to preserve both these children, having no hurt but only their hands galled by the rope, and their feet a little stunted by the fall from the clock-house, where they were thrown off, the rope being fastened there, and this some four or five yards high. The persons, I suppose, are both living still; and one of them, (whose father was then one of the chief tradesmen of the town) since a grave minister, and rector of a parish in Northamptonshire. "The other thing that hapned of more fatal consequences was this:--it being that time of the year when young lads are busie in rifling jackdaws nests to get their young, a scholar of the free-school, a son to a parliament officer, was got upon the top of the minster about this employment; who going along the cieling in the body of the church, and treading unwarily on some rotten boards, fell down from thence, upon the loft where the organ now stands, having his pockets filled with those inauspicious birds, and with the fall from so great a height, was slain outright and never stirred more. "These two things hapned much about the same time, and in the time of that publick confusion and disorder. But to proceed in our intended narrative. These things I have related before were indeed the acts of private persons only, men of wild intemperate zeal, and who had no commission for what they did, but what was owing to the swords by their sides. Yet notwithstanding all these things seemed afterwards to be own'd and approved by the powers then in being, when they sold all the churches lands, and many fair buildings adjoyning to the minster, were likewise pulled down and sold by publick order and authority, such were the cloysters, the old chapter-house, the library, the bishops hall and chapel at the end of it: the hall was as fair a room as most in England; and another call'd the green chamber, not much inferior to it. These all were then pull'd down and destroyed; and the materials, lead, timber, and stone exposed to sale, for any that would buy them. But some of the bargains proved not very prosperous; the lead especially that came off the palace, was as fatal as the gold of Tholouse; for to my knowledge, the merchant that bought it, lost it all, and the ship which carried it, in her voyage to Holland. "And thus the church continued ruined and desolate, and without all divine offices for a time; till at length by the favour of a great person in the neighbourhood, it was repaired and restored to some degrees of decency again; and out of the ashes of a late cathedral, grew up into a new parochial church, in which way it was employ'd and used ever after, untill the kings happy restauration. For Mr. Oliver St. John, chief justice then of the common pleas, being sent on an embassy into Holland by the powers that governed then, requested this boon of them at his return, that they would give him the ruin'd church or minster at Peterburgh; this they did accordingly, and he gave it to the town of Peterburgh for their use, to be employ'd as a parochial church, their own parish church being then very ruinous and gone to decay. "Now the town considering the largeness of the building, and the greatness of the charge to repair it, which of themselves they were not able to defray, they all agree to pull down the ladies chapel as it was then called, an additional building to the north side of the minster, (being then ruinous and ready to fall) and to expose the materials thereof, lead, timber, and stone to sale, and to convert the mony that was made of them, towards the repairs of the great fabrick. "All this they did, and appointed certain persons to oversee the work, and expended several summs thus in repairs, mending the leads, securing the roof, glazing several windows, and then fitting up the quire, and making it pretty decent for the congregation to meet in. And this they did, by taking the painted boards that came off from the roof of the ladies chapel, and placing them all along at the back of the quire, in such manner as they continue to this day. "When the place was thus fitted up, and the devastations which the souldiers had made in some measure repaired, one Mr. Samuel Wilson, school master of the charter-house, in London, was sent down by the committee of plundred ministers, as they were then called, to be preacher, with a sallary of 160_l._ per an. in which employment he continued untill the kings return. Then Dr. Cofin, the antient dean of the church, after almost twenty years exile in France, return'd and re-assumed his right again, in the year 1660, about the end of July. He then after so long an interval renew'd the antient usage, and read divine service first himself, and caused it to be read every day afterward, according to the laudable use and custome, and settled the church and quire in that order wherein it now continues. "But though the church was thus delivered from public robbers and spoilers, yet it was not safe from the injuries of private hands. For some ten or twelve years after, certain thieves in the dead of the night, broke into the church and stole away all the plate they could find, viz.: a fair silver bason gilt, and the virgers two silver rods, and a linnen table-cloth to wrap them in, which were never heard of to this day. This was the same bason that had been plunder'd by the souldiers, and recovered again, but irrecoverably lost now. Yet both these losses were soon repaired, one by Dr. Henshaw, bishop then of the place, who gave a fair new silver basin gilt; the other made up by Dr. Duport, then dean, who furnisht the virgers again with the ensigns of their office, by buying two new silver maces for the churches use. "And thus is this history brought down at length within our own knowledge and remembrance; where we have seen what various fortunes this antient church has had, which now reckons at least one thousand years from its first foundation. It has been often ruinated, and as often re-edified. Once it was destroyed by Danes; twice consumed by fire; it escaped the general downfal of abbies, in Hen. the Eighth's time, though not without the loss of some of her fairest manners; and yet what that king took away in revenues, he added to it in dignity, by converting it from an abbey into a cathedral church. But the worst mischief that ever befel it, was that in the late rebellious times, when the church itself was miserably defaced and spoiled; and all the lands for the maintenance thereof, quite alienated and sold. And yet through Gods especial goodness and favour, we have lived to see the one repaired, the others restored, and the church itself recovering her antient beauty and lustre again. And that it may thus long continue, flourish and prosper, and be a nursery for vertue, a seminary for true religion and piety, a constant preserver of Gods publick worship and service, and free from all sacrilegious hands, is the earnest and hearty prayer wherewith I shall conclude this discourse." [17] Sir William Fitzwilliam, of Milton, to whom the castle then belonged, used to pay visits to the queen of Scots during her confinement, and his noble and gentlemanly conduct, secured the good esteem of Mary. At a later period, a little before the queen was executed, she presented him with a picture of her son, as a testimony of the value which she set upon his friendship. This picture is now in the possession of the Fitzwilliam family. [18] The original letter, in the king's own hand-writing, is still in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough, and has recently been placed in a frame by the entrance from the south aisle. The following is a copy:--"JAMES R. Trusty and wel-beloved, wee greet you well, for that wee remember it appertaynes to ye duty wee owe to our dearest mother that like honour should be done to hir body and like monument be extant of hir as to others, hirs and our progenitors have bene used to be done, and ourselves have already performed to our deare sister ye late Queen Elizabeth. Wee have commanded a Memoriall of hir to be made in our church of Westminster, ye place where ye Kings and Queens of this realme are usually interred. And for that wee thinke it inconvenient that ye monument and hir body should be in severall places, we have ordered that hir said body remayning now interred in that our Cathedrall Church of Peterborough shalbe removed to Westminster to hir said monument; and have committed ye care and chardg of ye said translation of hir body from Peterborough to Westminster to ye reverend father in God our right trusty and wel beloved servant ye Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, bearer hereof, to whom wee require you (or to such as ye shall assigne) to deliver ye corps of our said deceased mother, ye same being taken up in a decent and respectfull manner as is fitting. And for that there is a pall now upon ye hearse over hir grave which wilbe requisite to be used to cover hir said body in ye removing thereof, which may perhapps be deemed as a ffee that should belong to ye church. We have appointed ye said reverend father to pay you a reasonable redemption for ye same, which being done by him wee require you that he may have ye pall to be used for ye purpose aforesaid. Given under our signet at our Honor of Hampton Court ye eight and twentieth day of September in ye tenth yeare of our reigne of England, France and Ireland, and of Scotland ye six and fortieth. To our trusty and welbeloved ye Dean and Chapter of our Cathedrall Church of Peterborough, and in theire absence to ye right reverend father in God ye Bishop of Peterborough and to such of ye Prebends or other officers of that church as shalbe found being there." [19] This ancient record is said to have been written about the year 1217, by a monk named Hugh Candidus. It is a MS. account of the History of the Abbey from its foundation. Dean Patrick gives the following account of its singular preservation:--"One book indeed, and but one, still remains, which was happily redeemed from the fire by the then precentor of the church, Mr. Humfrey Austin, who knowing the great value of it, first hid it, in February, 1642, under a seat in the quire: and when it was found by a soldier on the twenty-second of April, 1643 (when all the seats were pulled down), rescued it again by the offer of ten shillings, 'for that old latin bible' as he called it, and about which he pretended to enquire. The name of the bible by the help of the ten shillings, preserved this precious treasure from the flames, whither it was going, as Mr. Austin hath left a record in the beginning of the book; with a copy of the soldier's acknowledgement:--'_This booke was hide in the Church by me Humphrey Austin; February, 1642. And found by one of Coll. Cromwelle souldyers when they pul'd down all the seats in the quire, April 22th, 1643. And I makeing inquirie amongst them for an old Latin Bible which were lost, I found out at last the partie who had it, and I gave him for the booke tenn shillings as you see by this acquittance.... The coppie of his acquittance:--I pray let this Scripture Book alone, for he hath paid me for it, and therefore I would desire you to let it alone. By me HENRY TOPCLIFFE, souldyer under Captain Cromwell, Colonel Cromwell's sonn; therefore I pray let it alone._--By me Henry Topcliffe.'" This Ancient Manuscript book is now kept with other documents in the Chapter house of the Cathedral. [20] Dean Patrick, in his supplement to _Gunton's History of the Cathedral_, says it was famous for three things, "a stately front, a curious altar piece, and a beautiful cloister." Mr. Davys, in his _Guide_, also says, "we learn, from other writings, that the stall-work, in its choir, was remarkably fine, that its windows of painted glass were of a most superb description, and that, in the number, and beauty of its monuments and brasses, it excelled most of the other churches of the realm. Its central tower, though then in an incomplete state, was much finer than it now is, as it had a handsome octagon above what now forms the central tower. The north western transept tower was also adorned with a lofty spire. This spire, which was of wood covered with lead, was taken down soon after this time." [21] "Wulfade was much addicted to hunting, and one day pursuing a goodly hart, which being hotly pursued, took soil in a fountain near unto the cell of St. Chad, who espying the hart weary, and almost spent, was so compassionate towards him that he covered him with boughs and leaves, conjecturing, as if heaven had some design in the access and deportment of that beast. Presently comes Prince Wulfade, and enquired of St. Chad concerning the hart, who answered, That he was not a keeper of beasts, but the souls of men, and that Wulfade was then, as an hart to the water brooks, sent by God to the fountain of living water: which Wulfade hearing with astonishment, entered into further conference with St. Chad in his cell, and was by him baptized: and returning with joy to his father's court, he secretly told his brother Rufine of all that had passed, perswading him to be baptized also; to which Rufine consenting, Wulfade brought him to St. Chad, who likewise baptized this other brother." [22] "This Christian pair of brothers did often resort to a private oratory, where they performed their devotions; but at length being discovered to their father by the steward Werbode, who instigated, and enflamed the fire of paternal fury against the sons, King Wolfere, the father, watching the time when his sons were gone to pray, followed them, and entering the oratory, slew both his sons with his own hand; and he, and Werbode demolishing the place, left the bodies of his sons buried in the rubbish." "Queen Ermenild, having searched for the bodies of her sons, found them out, and giving them burial, [in one stone coffin,] built in the same place where they were slain, a church of stone." [23] Dean Kipling, on the authority of tradition, is of opinion, that St. Chad's well was in the quadrangle on the south side of the minster, called the laurel court; but Gunton says, "St. Chad had his cell in the county of Stafford, was the first bishop of Lichfield, where he founded the cathedral church, and there lieth buried." And this assertion would appear to be born out by the fact that the "church of stone" referred to in the previous note, is known to have been erected at _Stone_, in Staffordshire. [24] The present painted windows are of modern date, excepting one or two, which are composed of fragments of the windows of the cloisters above described. CHAPTER IV. _Historical account of the building of the monastery, and description of the architectural peculiarities of the present cathedral._ Having in the preceding chapters given a brief history of the former monastery and present cathedral of Peterborough, up to the present time, it now remains for us to say something of its architectural peculiarities, and to notice some of the remarkable relicts of antiquity which are still to be found within its walls. It has already been stated, that in the year 655, the foundation for a monastic institution was laid at _Medeshamstede_; that it was completed seven years afterwards;--and was destroyed by fire in 870. The architectural character of the building at this period cannot be strictly ascertained; but, from the accounts given of it by monkish writers, it is supposed to have been of the pure Saxon style. The monastery was again re-built in 966, and again destroyed by the lawless hands of barbarian invaders. Five successive times did it undergo various changes of ruin and desolation, until the year 1117, when a new building was raised upon the foundations of the old one, and many additions were made to it;--extending its circuit, and improving its architectural appearance. The immense stones which were laid as the foundation of the minster of _Medeshamstede_, is a sufficient proof of the vastness and massive strength of the building which was raised upon it;[25]--yet, as we have no definite information respecting the size of the monastery, we must leave it to be imagined by the reader, and proceed with the "new church," which was commenced in 1117, under the rule of John de Sais, and which we have already noticed in the first chapter of our history. This John was a Norman by birth, and an admirer of the Norman style of architecture, which is discernable throughout the whole of this great building. That there is a mixture of style, however, in the monastery, is admitted on all hands;--nor could it well have been otherwise, if we take into consideration the different character of the ages in which additions were made to it. Still the leading features of the building clearly show that they are of Norman origin; and in this opinion we are supported by Mr. Britton, who says, "I cannot consent to discontinue this phrase, [viz. that the cathedral is a specimen of Norman architecture,] although it offends certain critics, who manifest more prejudice than discrimination in their reprobatory animadversion. That the Normans not only employed a peculiar style and character in the buildings of their own provence, and in England, after they possessed this country, is sufficiently proved by history, by the older edifices still remaining, and by the admission of the best informed antiquaries. It seems to me therefore absurd, as well as false, to say there is no Norman architecture--that the term is misapplied,--that the Normans were incompetent either to invent a novelty in art, or improve upon any thing of their Saxon predecessors. The instance of the building before us, which is said by its monastic historians to have been raised between the years 1117 and 1250, is sufficient evidence to confute the reasoning, or rather dogmatic assertions, of those who wish to exalt the Saxons by depreciating the Normans: and we have a still stronger confutation of this theory in the style and general character of the Trinity chapel, Canterbury, the history of which is well authenticated and generally credited. That it is a novelty and great beauty in architecture can only be disputed by those who are blinded by prejudice, or influenced by obstinacy and bad taste."[26] During the prelacy of Bishop Marsh, 1819-1839, great efforts were made to restore the cathedral to its original beauty, under the auspices of Dr. Monk, then Dean of Peterborough, and afterwards Bishop of Gloucester. "By him the noble west front, which he found in a very ruinous state, was perfectly restored from top to bottom; six-and-thirty windows were opened in various parts of the church, which were built up, and two Norman doors were brought to light, which had been hidden under mean depressed arches." It may, perhaps, be desirable to describe the different portions of the building in the order in which they present themselves to the visitor, and in doing this, we shall avail ourselves of the excellent remarks made by the Rev. Owen Davys, son of bishop Davys, in his work on the cathedral, and also of the superior talent of a gentleman, formerly well known in this city, (the Rev. T. Garbett,) who has investigated, with great care, the whole plan of the building, and has laid the result of his researches before the public. [Sidenote: Western Gateway.] First, then, is the ancient western gateway, built by Benedict, and though it has since been much altered, a considerable part of the original structure remains: "The western side has been faced with Perpendicular work, and an arch of that character has been built in front of the original Norman arch, above which is a very elegant arcade, the alternate arches of which have small windows within them; these light the chamber over the gateway which occupies the situation of the chapel of St. Nicholas. The lower roof of this gateway is a good specimen of a plain Norman roof, being groined with bold cross ribs. The arcades on the right and left hand, which have lately been very judiciously restored, are also worthy of notice; one of the arches in each arcade is considerably larger than the others, and forms a door-way. Above the arch, on the east side of this gateway, is a window which may strike the architect at first sight as being somewhat peculiar. It is in reality a part of an ancient Perpendicular shrine, which formerly existed in the cathedral, of which a portion is still standing in the northern part of the new building; it was brought there, and turned to its present use as a window, some time ago." [Sidenote: Thomas à Becket's Chapel.] On the left hand, as we pass through the gate, is the grammar school-room, formerly the chapel of Thomas à Becket, who was assassinated at Canterbury, and canonized by the catholics as a saint and a martyr. "The chancel of this building is of a very Late Decorated character, in fact so late as almost to come under the denomination of Transition from that style to Perpendicular; it has, on the south side, two windows, each of three lights, which appear, at first sight, to be Decorated, but, upon further examination, the architectural student will perceive, by a tendency to right lines in the tracery, that they are of Transition character, of which they form good examples. The east window of this chancel is a very good one, it is of five lights, and the tracery is very beautiful, though of a description not at all uncommon; in fact most of the Decorated windows in parish churches throughout Northamptonshire, which have any pretensions to size or beauty, have their tracery of this form, as, for instance, the east window of Higham Ferrers church, and many others. Above this window is an elegant pierced cross, probably of the same date as the window itself. The parapet of this chancel has nothing worthy of notice about it; it is like the rest of the building, of plain Late Decorated character." [Sidenote: Palace Gateway.] On the right of us, is the magnificent gateway which leads to the bishop's palace, over which is a chamber, called the knights' chamber. "This gateway is of somewhat peculiar Early English character, having a fine groined roof, springing from very beautiful clustered shafts. A line of arches, each of which contain within them two smaller arches, continues along either side of the interior; which is entered on the north and south sides, through fine and lofty arches supported by clustered columns. The bases of all these columns, like those of many others about the remains of this abbey, are covered with soil which the lapse of years has caused to accumulate around them; this of course much diminishes the height of each shaft. This beautiful gateway is flanked at its angles by square turrets, each ornamented, as also is the apex of the gable, with a fine niche, which has within it a figure of an unusually large size. The niches on the south side, contain the figures of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew; those on the north, contain the representations of King Edward II., Abbot Godfrey de Croyland, and the Prior of the Abbey of that time, in full Benedictine costume. [Sidenote: West Front.] "The splendid front of the building is the most interesting and important of its members. This beautiful and original composition cannot fail to strike the mind of the beholder with awe and admiration; the first sight of it usually makes an impression on the memory which is not easily obliterated. It is indeed one of the finest specimens which the universe can produce, of the Pointed style of architecture. As a west front, scarcely any in this kingdom can be brought into comparison with it for beauty of proportion, and elegance of design. The west fronts of the cathedrals of Wells, York, and Lichfield have been mentioned as surpassing it in some respects; and in point of richness of detail, the two first may be perhaps considered as superior to it; but they all of them fall far short of Peterborough in the grandeur of their general effect. "The outline of this front forms a regular square of 156 feet, that being the height of the side spires, and also the extreme width of the building. Its plan consists of three lofty arches of the same height, of which that in the middle is considerably the narrowest, the two side ones being of equal dimensions. These rest on triangular piers faced with shafts. At either extremity of this arcade are two lofty turrets, flanked at the angles by clustered columns, instead of buttresses, which run the whole height of the turrets. These turrets connect the arcade with the western wall of the church, from which it is distant fifteen feet, which gives the appearance of great depth and beauty to the arches." [_Davys' Guide._] "There was, perhaps little or no interval between the completion of the nave in the Circular style of architecture, and the erection of the north-west tower, in the Lancet, or first style of the Pointed. The original plan of the front, like that of Lincoln, comprised, no doubt, two towers rising at the western extremity of the side aisles of the nave, having a Norman base with circular lights, and an additional transept, projecting north and south beyond the line of the side aisles. But before this design could be carried into execution, architecture itself had undergone a change; pointed arches were substituted for circular ones, and slender isolated columns for the clustered shaft, or solid cylinder. Hence the difference in style of the tower just referred to: the string moulding at the base of it, together with the superstructure, and the pinnacles and pediment which surmount the adjacent transept, being all of a later order than the work of the nave: and hence also the union of both styles in the transept itself--its lofty arches, parallel to the side walls, being highly pointed, but with the zigzag ornament, and resting on Norman shafts; and the doorways of the front having circular heads, in accommodation to the arches of the nave, but with pointed mouldings and pillars. "The tower, towards the south, appears never to have been finished, although unquestionably included in the architect's design. The present base, above the transept, is of a comparatively modern date, and altogether inferior to the work of the north-west tower. In the progress of great undertakings it not unfrequently happens that fresh objects present themselves to the mind, which at first were not thought of. Such appears to have been the case in respect of this cathedral, the architect of which, while completing the front, seems to have caught a new idea--that of erecting two lofty turrets beyond the outer angles of the transept, towards the west, and of converting the intermediate space into a sort of piazza, by arches constructed in front of the nave and closed in above by a vaulted roof. This idea so unique and at the same time so splendid, he was enabled to realize: and posterity, at the distance of six centuries, beholds with ineffable delight and admiration, a composition, the outlines and details of which, for their beauty and variety, render it one of the noblest facades in existence. Towards the north and south are two lofty turrets, flanked at the angles by clustered shafts, rising from a projecting base and crowned with spires, the height of which from the ground, makes a square with the breadth of the front. The space between these turrets is occupied by three pointed arches, reaching the whole height of the upper walls of the nave, and resting on triangular piers, which are faced with clustered shafts like those of the turrets, and terminate in octangular pinnacles, resting each upon a square basement, and divided by a moulding into two stages, the upper one of which is perforated with narrow lights, edged with the dog-toothed quatrefoil. The sides of the pier are lined with isolated columns in channelled recesses, each column sustaining a ribbed moulding of the arch above, and the whole series being finished with interlaced and foliated capitals. "The centre arch is narrower than the outer ones, the reason of which will appear when we look at the situation of the doorways opening into the side aisles of the nave. Had the architect designed the three arches of equal breadth, the piers which sustain the centre arch must have stood immediately in front of these door-ways, or the outer arches must have been so contracted as to bring the turrets within the line of the transept, and thereby conceal, in part at least, the towers behind. "This circumstance of itself shows that the turrets, piers, and arches, as they now exist, formed no part of the original plan. The interstices between the pillars which sustain the centre arch differ from those of the outer arches, in that they are chequered at regular distances with clumps of foliage, as if exuberance of ornament were designed to compensate for inequality in other respects. This inequality has been still further obviated by the erection of a porch, which, after a minute inspection, appears to have been inserted by way of support to the central piers, both of which had previously swerved from the perpendicular, as may still be seen. Over each arch rises a lofty pediment, bounded by the wave and billet ornaments, and surmounted by a perforated cross. The spandrils formed by the base of the pediment and the arches beneath, severally contain, first, a deeply recessed quatrefoil, above this two trefoil arches, and still higher two pointed arches, resting on slender pillars, and filled with statues,--and also a hexagon, the featherings of which clasp a human head. "The pediments contain each a large circular light, with other apertures and niches. The circle of the central pediment is divided by mullions into eight lights, under trefoil arches radiating from an orb. Those on the sides are divided into six lights, the featherings of which are very beautiful. The mullions, or radii, are all faced with small pillars and capitals, and lined with the dog-toothed quatrefoil. The outer moulding of the central circle is composed of closely compacted trefoils, that of the others has the wave ornament. At the base of each circle is a series of trefoil arches, rested on isolated columns, four of which admit light into an apartment above the vaulting, and three contain statues. The intermediate spaces formed by the circle and the pediment, contain two niches, one on each side and another above, all filled with statues. The niche in the apex of the central pediment contains a statue, apparently of St. Peter, to whom the church is dedicated, representing the apostle with the mitre, pall, keys, and other insignia of the bishop of Rome. "The turrets, before mentioned, are divided by the round moulding and string courses into six stages, which are empannelled in front with arches of different forms and dimensions. In the first stage from the ground, and rising from a channelled base, are two lofty pointed arches resting on slender pillars. In the second stage are four trefoil arches similarly supported; this range is continued round the facings of the inner wall immediately over the doorways, and forms the base of the windows. The third stage contains one pointed arch, intersected by a pillar in the centre, with curved mouldings, forming two lesser arches; which last are again subdivided by pillars sustaining one circular arch in the centre, and segments of arches on the sides. "The interstices above contain two trefoil arches, with brackets at the base for the figures. The mouldings of the outer arch, with the sides of the pillars and all the sub-divisions, are studded with the dog-toothed quatrefoil. In the fourth stage, are two deeply recessed pointed arches, resting on clustered pillars; immediately over these is a string course of stemmated trefoils, which is continued round the front, the transepts, and the base of the north-west tower, together with the more modern base towards the south. In the fifth stage are four trefoil arches, like those of the second stage: these lie parallel with those at the base of the pediments, already described, and with those also of the side transepts. The sixth stage contains four long and narrow pointed arches, having corbels in the space above, and resting, like the whole series of arches below, on slender isolated columns, with prominent foliated capitals: above these is a string course of rosettes, forming the base of the parapet. Thus far the two turrets are strictly uniform; but in the parapets, by which they are surmounted, and in the pinnacles, which terminate the clustered shafts, there is a marked difference. "The parapet of the north turret consists of the wave ornament, with double featherings and intersections: the pinnacles at the angles are hexagonal, corbelled at the base of the pyramid with human heads, and finished above with crockets and finials. "The parapet of the south turret contains a series of quatrefoils, while the pinnacles at the angles are beautifully blended with the clustered shafts, so as to form a regular and continuous course and termination; the mouldings are carried up in high pointed pediments, and from these a cinquefoil arch at each angle, surmounted also by a pediment, with a quatrefoil in the spandril, connects them with the spire in the centre, and sustains a lofty triangular pinnacle, which, like the pediments below, is decorated with crockets and a finial. In this respect the south spire differs from the other, which has no connection with the side pinnacles. Both are pierced with pointed windows in two ranges, four in each range, divided by mullions, and crowned with crocketted pediments; and the apex of each is terminated by a finial and a cross, included in the extensive repairs carried on by the present dean[27] and chapter. "The style of these spires, with the parapets and pinnacles, marks them out as a later work than the turrets beneath; and we may infer from the similarity of their details to those of the porch, that they formed a part of the repairs and alterations which the whole front appears to have undergone when the appendage was inserted; and when the central window of the nave was enlarged, and that, and the others which now enliven the inner wall, were filled with perpendicular tracery. The porch is vaulted with stone, and is entered by an obtuse arch, over which is an elliptical window, divided by mullions into six lights under cinquefoil arches, which are again subdivided in the head into lesser arches. "The spandrils formed by the curve of the arch, and the base of the window, are enriched with circles, clasping shields of arms, and rosettes with other devices. The arches and windows are bounded by buttresses, which are broken by offsets and empannelled with niches. Besides these, the porch is flanked with staircases, one on each side, forming three parts of an octagon, and leading to an apartment now used as a library. The summit is closed with an embattled parapet, having a pediment at each end, and one in the centre. The surface of the walls is enriched with canopied niches, pilasters, brackets, panel work, and string courses in all the wildness and profusion which distinguish the last stage of gothic architecture. "Besides the arch before mentioned, the porch has two smaller arches, north and south, parallel with the piazza formed by the great arches and piers of the front, and keeping up the communication with its opposite extremities. Over these also are mullioned windows with blank interstices. "The great window of the nave, the outer arch of which is obviously an alteration from the original design, is divided by mullions into five lights,--those of the side aisles into three lights, both under cinquefoil arches, and the lancet windows of the transepts into two lights, under trefoil arches: these windows are parted, each by an embattled transome into an upper and lower range of lights, and the heads filled with subordinate tracery. "The door-ways beneath are exceedingly rich, and in point of execution and delicacy of detail perhaps the finest portions of the front. The central door-way is divided by a pillar, rising from a carved cylindrical base into two smaller arches; but the whole design and finish cannot be made out, in consequence of the introduction of the porch, the foundation and butments of which are built against it. "The arches of the side door-ways are lined with isolated columns, receding in the manner of perspective; the ribbed mouldings between these columns, the interlaced and pendent foliage of the capitals, and the multiplied mouldings of which the arches above are composed, cannot be too closely examined, or too much admired. This is that peculiar style of gothic architecture, in which the beauty of the pointed arch, with its accompaniments is best discerned; and, therefore, it is that judges are wont to give it the preference over all subsequent alterations and refinements. The spaces between these door-ways, like those of the windows over them, are empannelled with pointed arches, subdivided by smaller arches, and resting on slender pillars. "From the description thus given of this stately front, the reader will perceive that it was begun in one age, and finished, as we now behold it, in another. Some discrepancies of style may therefore be expected to present themselves, but these are so eclipsed by the grandeur in its leading features, that the eye takes in the whole as a single conception, and overlooks, in its contemplation of such a magnificent association of objects, the marks of difference that exist between the efforts of earlier and later genius."[28]--The Purbeck pillar, which divides the greater arch of the West door into two lesser arches, has a curiously sculptured base, apparently representing a sinner being tormented by devils. [Sidenote: Gateway and Deanery.] As we cross the square to the north-eastern side of the church, we pass another gateway, which leads into the deanery, which is a fine specimen of architecture, and bears the monogram of its builder, viz.--the letter R, a kirk, and a tun, [R. Kirkton] and we then enter at once into the Burial Ground. [Sidenote: Exterior north, east, and south.] A finer association of beautiful and mournful objects could not well be imagined than is here presented to us. The most graceful trees, arranged in delightful groups, hang over the decayed tombs, which are carpeted to their base by a green sward, covered with flowers. As we pass along, we get a view of the deanery, and at the end of the eastern part of the church we see Tout Hill with the Training College for schoolmasters on the left, and the pretty villa in the vineyard, with a splendid avenue of old elm trees leading to it by a broad gravel walk. We pass likewise the large painted window, and as we turn the eastern end of the building, we catch a glimpse of the ruins of the infirmary and great hall, with their magnificent arches and ivy clad columns. Proceeding round to the southern side of the cathedral, we enter the square, where are the ruins of the cloisters, through a fine old door-way with a pointed arch, surmounting others of a circular form, and enriched with sculptural mouldings and figures. The southern and western walls of the cloisters remain, and contain a singular variety of tracery, mouldings, columns, and door-ways. Two door-ways to the southern aisles of the nave are also seen in the cloisters--one having a semicircular arch, with archivolt mouldings, enriched with the chevron and other Norman ornaments; the other in the pointed or gothic style, with raised mouldings, and supported by slender shafts at the sides.[29] At the southern extremity of the cloisters is another door-way of the same style and character as that by which we entered them, which leads through the bishop's garden to the palace.[30] Passing along the western wall of the cloisters we go through a plain Norman door-way, which brings us again, by a narrow passage, to the west front of the cathedral. The Dimensions _Of the several parts of the Cathedral are as follows:--_ The breadth of the west front, measuring from corner to corner on the outside of it, is 156 feet. The length of the whole cathedral, measured on the outside of it, is 471 feet. In this measurement are included the most prominent buttresses at the west and east ends. The distance from the inside of the west door of the cathedral to the organ screen at the entrance into the choir is 267 feet. From the organ screen to the altar screen, 117 feet. From the altar table to the east window 38 feet. So that the distance from the west door to the east window is 422 feet. The length of the two cross aisles or transepts within, including the diameter of the lantern, 180 feet. The breadth of the nave within, measuring from the south wall to the north wall, is 78 feet; that is half the breadth of the west front. From the floor of the nave to its painted wooden roof is a height of 81 feet. The height of the lantern within the church is 135 feet. The whole height of it without is 150 feet. The height of each gothic arch at the west front of the cathedral is 82 feet. The distance from the ground to the top of each pinnacle at the corners of the west front is 156 feet; that is, the same with the breadth of the front. The Interior of the Building is grand beyond conception. The northern and southern aisles are formed by massive ranges of pillars, supporting vast arches of singular simplicity and beauty. The great pictured roof or ceiling in the nave of the church, is a curious specimen of fanciful ingenuity. The divisions are of a diagonal form filled with various devices, some representing kings and queens or early patrons and founders of the monastery: others being of an hieroglyphical character. "The nave and its aisles," says Mr. Britton, [page 70] "display a uniform style of architecture in their arches, piers, triforia, and walls; but the windows of the clerestory, triforia, and aisles are all of a later date, and are evident insertions in the original walls,--excepting indeed the exterior walls of the triforium, which appear to have been raised, and a new roof formed when some great alterations were made to the church. On the eastern side of the transept is an aisle, the southern division of which is separated into three chapels, or oratories, as they were originally appropriated, but now used as appendages to the choir. Over this aisle is a triforium, behind an arched screen, which extends along the aisles of the choir to their junction with the new work." The lantern is another remarkable feature in this building. It "is open to the vaulted roof," and is a fearful height to contemplate. The choir is nearly of the same kind of architecture as the transept. Its vaulted roof is boarded, but assumes an imitation of the florid pointed style,--being disposed in several compartments by thin ribs. Over the altar end it is painted with an emblematical representation of Christ as a vine, and his disciples the branches. The remaining portion of the roof, which had been painted white and yellow, has also been recently restored to its original character, the bosses being gilt and the spandrils painted bright blue and richly ornamented. Until the year 1827, the choir of this cathedral was composed of deal painted to resemble oak, and "although in good repair," was generally allowed to be "unworthy of the magnificent structure to which it belonged." At the suggestion, and under the immediate patronage of the then dean and chapter, a subscription was entered into for the purpose of erecting a new choir and organ screen; and the sum of £5021 11s. 0d. was shortly obtained towards that object. The architect employed was the celebrated Mr. Blore, who, assisted by Mr. Ruddle, of Peterborough, completed the work in 1830. The organ screen is composed of clunch stone, and is decorated with spiral turrets, having a number of gaudily painted shields in the spandrils, which, together with the rainbow hues of the organ pipes, give it an appearance rather offensive to modern taste, although strictly in accordance with the rest of the work, which is in the style of the 1st and 3rd Edward. On the right of the entrance to the choir is a brass plate with the following inscription:-- THIS ORGAN SCREEN WITH THE CHOIR AND ALTAR SCREEN, WAS ERECTED A.D. MDCCCXXX. BY SUBSCRIPTION FROM THE MEMBERS OF THIS CATHEDRAL CHURCH, THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITY AND NEIGHBOURHOOD OF PETERBOROUGH, AND OTHER ADMIRERS OF ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE VERY REV. JAMES HENRY MONK, D.D., DEAN. The New Pulpit, Erected to the memory of the Rev. John James, D.D., for 40 years Canon of the Cathedral, has a most massive appearance. The principal material used in its construction is Dumfries stone, with pillars of Devonshire and Greek marble. The body rests on a centre marble base, with corner pillars of Greek marble. At each corner of the pulpit stand figures of the four evangelists. The three panels are richly carved, and in the centres are cut the figure of a lamb, a Norman cross, and the letters I.H.S. Greek marble has been employed as pillars for the stair rails, along which and around the upper part of the pulpit is Devonshire marble. The following inscription inlaid with gold is cut in the Greek marble bordering:--"In Memoriam. Johannes James, S.T.P., hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis XL.; Anno Canonici P.C. Filii Superstites A.D. MDCCCLXXIII, O.B. XV Dec. MDCCCLXVIII." The arms of the See and the Dean and Chapter are cut in the stone body. The architect was Mr. Barry, of London, and the work was executed by Messrs. Field, Poole, and Sons, Westminster. Monuments. There are very few ancient monuments remaining in this cathedral, the greater portion having been destroyed by Cromwell's soldiers. A brazen eagle, or lectern, in the centre aisle of the choir, from which the daily lessons are read; an ancient stone at the east end of the building, till lately supposed to be commemorative of the murder of eighty-four monks by the Danes, in 870;[31] and a picture of old Scarlet, who died in 1594, aged 98, are the principal objects of interest. Turning to the left, as you enter the west door of the cathedral, hangs the portrait of this celebrated character, who buried within the walls of the cathedral, Catherine of Arragon, who died at Kimbolton Castle, in 1536; and Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed at Fotheringhay Castle fifty-one years afterwards. The accompanying engraving is a representation of the old sexton, with his spade, pickaxe, and other emblems of office. In the south-west or opposite corner of the nave, is an _ancient font_, originally composed of native marble, obtained from the quarries at Alwalton.[32] The basin of this font was, for many years, in one of the prebendal gardens, where it was placed upon the base of an old Norman pillar, and used for holding flowers, but was removed by Dr. Monk, when dean of Peterborough, to the chapterhouse. The celebrated statuary, Mr. Gresley, of Oxford, put it upon its present pediments, which are composed of Purbeck marble, and it was then placed where it now stands. It is considered a very fine piece of workmanship. [Illustration: YOV SEE OLD SCARLEITS PICTVRE STAND ON HIE BVT AT YOVR FEETE THERE DOTH HIS BODY LYE HIS GRAVESTONE DOTH HIS AGE AND DEATH TIME SHOW HIS OFFICE BY THEIS TOKENS YOV MAY KNOW SECOND TO NONE FOR STRENGTH AND STVRDYE LIMM A SCAREBABE MIGHTY VOICE WITH VISAGE GRIM HEE HAD INTERD TWO QVEENES WITHIN THIS PLACE AND THIS TOWNES HOVSE HOLDERS IN HIS LIVES SPACE TWICE OVER: BVT AT LENGTH HIS OWN TVRN CAME WHAT HEE FOR OTHERS DID FOR HIM THE SAME WAS DONE: NO DOVBT HIS SOVL DOTH LIVE FOR AYE IN HEAVEN: THO HERE HIS BODY CLAD IN CLAY.] As you enter the south aisle of the choir, upon the wall is a neat marble tablet to the _Rev. Dr. William Parker_, who died October 3rd, 1730. Next, in a recess, is a tablet to abbot _Andreas_, and two of his predecessors, with the following Latin inscription:-- "Hos tres abbates quibus est prior abba Iohannes Alter Martinus, Andreas ultimus unus Hic claudit tumulus; pro clausis ergo rogemus." The following is a free translation of the above:-- "_These three abbots, of whom the first is abbot John, The other Martin, the last Andrew, This one tomb shuts up [incloses]; therefore for those shut up, let us pray._" Above this is a small tablet to the memory of _Mary_, the wife of the _Rev. Payne Edmunds_. Next, is a marble tablet to _Robert Pemberton_, who was a magistrate of this city, and steward to the Rev. the Dean and Chapter. He died in 1695, in the 75th year of his age. Near these, removed from the old chapter-house, founded by king Peada, are the statues of _three other abbots_, whose names are unknown. Adjoining, is an effigy of _Abbot Alexander_, whose body, with his boots and crosier, were found by some workmen when making a foundation for the new choir in 1830, as related at page 15 of this work. Opposite to this, is a black marble slab, beneath which the body of _Mary, Queen of Scots_, was at first deposited, and remained for twenty-five years, when it was disinterred and removed to Westminster Abbey, by order of her son, king James the 1st. Hanging near it is the original letter of the king ordering the removal. See note on page 29. At the end of this aisle are two handsome compartments; the left hand, to the memory of _Joseph Stamford_, who died in 1683; and the right hand, to _Thomas Whitwell_, who died at Wisbech in 1759. Above that of _Joseph Stamford_, is a tablet to _Francis Lockier_, who died 1740; and below, a small tablet to _John Speechley_, for 33 years organist of the cathedral. We now enter the building known by the name of The New Building. "The whole appearance of the interior of this beautiful building is grand and imposing in the extreme; its roof, which is composed of the elaborate fan vaulting, for which the Perpendicular style is so famous, rises from slender shafts, and is ornamented with large and handsome bosses, upon each of which is carved a shield, with armorial bearings. In these respects, as well as in the general aspect of its details, this building so nearly resembles the noble chapel of King's College, Cambridge, as to warrant the supposition that they were both erected from the designs of one architect. The New Building is lighted by thirteen very fine windows, two of which are filled with modern painted glass. The space below the windows is occupied by a rich cornice, an elegant arcade, and a stone seat. Here is to be seen a monument, till lately supposed to be that of abbot Hedda and his monks, whose massacre by the Danes was spoken of in the first chapter of this work, which is considered to be one of the oldest christian monuments now extant in England." See note on page 4. At the south end of this building, are the remains of a beautiful marble monument, erected by Sir Humphrey Orme, the destruction of which is recorded at page 34 of this work. By the side of this monument are two tablets, one in memory of _Archdeacon Davys_, his wife _Selina_, and their son _John William Owen_; underneath which is a black tablet, surmounted by a shield, bearing a coat of arms, with a mitre, in memory of _Francis Jeune, D.C.L._, twenty-fifth bishop of Peterborough, who died in 1868. On the south-east side of the altar, is a very stately and handsome marble monument of the Corinthian order; on which is a portraiture of the gentleman for whom it was erected, lying on his left side, and leaning on a cushion, with his hand upon a scull; above which statue is this inscription-- "Sacred to the memory of _Thomas Deacon_, Esq., a native of this city; sometime high sheriff of this county: a person eminent for his morality and good life; a true son of the established church: a constant attendant on her worship and service: his piety consisted not in empty profession, but in sincerity and unaffected truth. He had an ample estate, which he fairly acquired, and increased by an honest industry, and managed with excellent prudence, and disposed of to laudable purposes. His charity (even in the time of his life) was very large, extensive, and exemplary; of which he has left a lasting monument in this city, by founding a charity school, and endowing it with a freehold estate, of above one hundred and sixty pounds per annum: And also, by settling another estate of twenty-five pounds per annum, for a constant annual distribution of alms to poor ancient inhabitants of this city. Having thus laid up in store to himself a good foundation against the time to come, he quietly departed this life, on the 19th day of August, 1721, aged 70 years. "To whose memory as an instance of her conjugal affection, Mary, his sorrowful relict, caused this monument to be erected." Beneath his effigy, and upon the front of the tomb, is the following inscription-- "In memory of _Mary_, the relict of Thomas Deacon, Esq.; daughter of John Harvey, of Spalding, gent. To which place she was a kind generous benefactor, and bestowed upwards of £400 in pious and useful charities. She gave also to Fleet £250, for founding a charity school in that parish. To the poor of this city, she extended her daily bounty, so private as not to be told; so large as not to be equalled; to which she added several public benefactions, and gave towards augmenting the vicarage of St. John Baptist £100; and likewise £100 to the salary of the grammar school; she died January 27th, 1730, aged 77 years." In a recess adjoining this monument, is a neat tablet to the memory of _Mary_, the mother of the Rev. J. S. Pratt, formerly a prebendary of this cathedral, and vicar of the parish of St. John the Baptist, Peterborough. Underneath this, a handsome tablet to the late _William Strong_, D.D., forty-five years archdeacon of this diocese, and for nearly half a century a magistrate for the Liberty of Peterborough. Near the last monument, behind the altar screen, are interred the remains of six bishops, viz.:--_Cumberland_, _Kennett_, _Hinchcliffe_, _Madan_, _Marsh and Davys_; tablets to the four latter, are in the recess opposite the large painted window. Beneath these, is an effigy, supposed to be that of _Abbot William de Hotot_, who died in 1250. On the north-east side of the altar, is a very handsome marble monument to _Bishop Cumberland_, great grandfather to the celebrated dramatist of that name. Beneath this, is a neat tablet to _Joseph Parsons_, formerly a prebendary of this cathedral, and _Letitia_, his wife; near which, is a monument erected to his intimate friend _William Tournay_, D.D., also a prebendary of this cathedral, and of St. Peter's, Westminster, and for twenty-five years warden of Wadham College, Oxford, &c. Adjoining, are the remains of an ancient shrine, supposed to be that of _St. Ibba_. Above this is a marble tablet to _Louisa Cole_, of the Vineyard. On leaving the Lady Chapel, in the north aisle of the choir, is a splendid monument to _Richard Trice_, beneath which is a handsome double _piscina_. Opposite to this, a small marble monument to _Frances_, wife of _Dean Cosin_, who died March 25th, 1642; above which is an epitaph to _Dorothy_, the wife of _Francis Standish_, formerly precentor of this cathedral, who died in 1689. Opposite, is another plain black marble slab, similar to that in the south aisle, with a small brass inscription which marks the grave of _Catherine of Arragon_. On the north wall of the side aisle is a monument by the celebrated Gibbons, with the following inscription-- "Sacred to the memory of _Constance_, daughter of _John May_, of Rawmeare, in Sussex, Esquire; and of _Constance_, his wife, one of the daughters and co-heiress of _Thomas Panton_, of Westminster, knight and baronet, and wife of _John Workman_, prebendary of this church, who, having by all christian virtues and good qualities, been an ornament to her worthy family, and an honour to all her relations in her life, resigned up her soul to God with admirable patience at her death; she deceased in childbed at London; and, together with her infant son, she was according to her desire, here interred, where she had frequently worshipped God, in hope of a joyful resurrection, September 30th, A.D. 1681." Next, is a tablet to _James Duport_, formerly dean of this cathedral, chaplain to Charles II., and professor of Greek at Trinity College, Cambridge. Adjoining, is another tablet to the memory of the _Rev. John Workman_, M.A., formerly a prebendary of this cathedral, and rector of Peakirk, &c. Next, is a tablet to _William Rowles_, of Washingley, and _Ann Wilkinson_, his daughter. The next is to the _Rev. William Gery_, also a prebendary of this cathedral, and Susannah, his wife, who lived together 47 years. This is a very handsome tablet. The last is a handsome tablet to the _Rev. William Waring_, A.M., formerly master of the grammar school, who died 1726, aged 66. In a small chapel, known as the Morning Chapel, dedicated to St. John and St. James, is some _ancient tapestry_; one piece representing St. Peter and St. John healing the lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple; the other representing St. Peter's deliverance from prison. In the north-east corner is a tablet to the _Rev. John Stevens_, A.M., rector of Folksworth, Hunts.; and in the centre of the east wall is a stained glass window, representing four scenes from the life of our Lord. Here also are the remains of the woodwork of the _old choir_, which have been converted into seats, and will serve to show to the curious its former character and style. The Organ, Which is placed above the screen, dividing the nave from the choir, is a very fine toned instrument, and was built in 1809, by the late Mr. Allen, of Sutton Street, Soho. It has within the last few years been much improved and enlarged. It contains forty-eight stops, viz.:--twelve in the great organ, twelve in the swell, ten in the choir, eight in the pedal organ, and six couplers. These improvements were made by H. P. Gates, Esq., of the Vineyard, and are commemorated by a brass plate on the south side of the organ, inscribed as follows: "To the praise and glory of God and memory of John and Frances Gates, this organ was re-built and enlarged at the charge of Henry Pearson Gates, their son, Anno Domini 1871." The case of the instrument, which is of carved oak, presents towards the nave, a front in the early English style, while on the side looking into the choir, the fronts are decorated, to harmonize with the interior fittings. The Choir. As we enter the choir, the bishop's throne, with the stalls, pulpit, pews, and altar screen burst upon us, all of which are beautifully carved. The altar screen is composed of a soft white stone, found near Cambridge; the rest that we have mentioned, is oak, very finely carved in the decorated style of architecture. The bishop's throne especially, with its ogee canopies, and elegant and almost fairy-like spire, rivets the eye of the spectator. The _coup d'oeil_ of the choir is so strikingly beautiful, from the good arrangement and entire keeping of the whole, that it can scarcely be surpassed. At the east end, immediately under the large window, are three tablets with the names of all the Abbots, Bishops, and Deans from the foundation of the monastery to the present time, of which the following is a copy:-- List of the Abbots of the Cathedral, _With the date of their appointment._ Saxulphus 654 Cuthbaldus 673 Egbaldus Pusa Beonna Celredus Hedda 833 Adulphus 972 Kenulphus 992 Elsinus 1005 Arwinus 1055 Leofricus 1063 Brando 1066 Thoroldus 1069 Godricus 1098 Matthias 1103 Ernulpus 1107 Iohn of Salisbury 1114 Henricus de Angeli 1128 Martinus de Vecti 1133 William de Waterville 1155 Benedictus 1177 Andreas 1194 Acharius 1200 Robert of Lindsay 1214 Alexander 1222 Martin of Ramsey 1226 Walter St. Edmonds 1233 William Hotot 1246 Iohn de Caleto 1249 Robert Sutton 1262 Richard of London 1274 William of Woodford 1295 Godfrey of Croyland 1299 Adam Boothby 1321 Henry Morcot 1338 Robert Ramsey 1346 Henry of Overton 1361 Nicholaus 1391 Willielmus Genge 1396 Johannes Deeping 1408 Richard Ashton 1438 William Ramsey 1471 Robert Kirton 1496 Iohn Chambers 1528 Iohn Chambers was the last Abbot and the first Bishop. List of the Bishops of Peterborough, _With the date of their appointment._ Iohn Chambers, B.D. 1541 David Pool, LL.D. 1556 Edmund Scambler, D.D. 1560 Richard Howland, D.D. 1584 Thomas Dove, A.M. 1600 William Pierse, D.D. 1630 Augustine Lindsel, D.D. 1632 Francis Dee, D.D. 1634 Iohn Towers, D.D. 1638 Benjamin Lany, D.D. 1660 Joseph Henshaw, D.D. 1663 William Loyd, D.D. 1679 Thomas White, D.D. 1685 Richard Cumberland, D.D. 1691 White Kennet, D.D. 1718 Robert Clavering, D.D. 1728 Iohn Thomas, D.D. 1747 Richard Terrick, D.D. 1757 Robert Lamb, LL.D. 1764 Iohn Hinchliffe, D.D. 1769 Spencer Madan, D.D. 1794 John Parsons, D.D. 1813 Herbert Marsh, D.D. 1819 George Davys, D.D. 1839 Francis Jeune, D.C.L. 1864 William Connor Magee, D.D. 1868 Bishop Davys was advanced to this see in 1839. He was formerly a fellow of Christ's Church College, Cambridge, and took a wrangler's degree in 1803. He subsequently became curate of Littlebury, and in 1814 of Chesterford; this latter curacy he held until Dr. Bloomfield, the late bishop of London, was presented to that living, when Mr. Davys became curate of Swaffham Prior; he afterwards removed to Kensington, and was appointed tutor to the Princess Victoria. Shortly after this he was presented to the rectory of All-Hallows, London, and in 1831 to the deanery of Chester, on which occasion he took the degree of doctor of divinity. He discharged his episcopal duties for a period of about twenty-five years in such a manner as to gain universal esteem; and died at Peterborough, after a short illness, in the 84th year of his age, on the 18th April, 1864. The Rev. Dr. Francis Jeune, who was appointed to the Bishopric in the room of Dr. Davys, was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, were he graduated in 1827, when he took a first-class in classics. In 1832 he was admitted into Holy Orders by Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, being then tutor of his College. In 1834 he was elected to the Head Mastership of King Edward's School, Birmingham, and held that appointment until 1838, when he was nominated to the Deanery of Jersey, and the Rectory of St. Heliers. In 1843 he was elected to the Mastership of Pembroke College, with a canonry at Gloucester annexed, and almost immediately afterwards he was presented by the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester to the Rectory of Taynton. In 1850 he was appointed one of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry for the University of Oxford, and in 1859 was elected Vice-Chancellor of the University. About three months previous to his promotion to this Bishopric, Dr. Jeune was made Dean of Lincoln, in the room of the Rev. Thomas Garnier. Dr. Jeune lived only four years after his appointment to the see. Suffering from an internal disease he went to Whitby for change of air, where he died on the 21st of August, 1868, after a short and painful illness, and was succeeded by the Rev. W. Connor Magee. Bishop Magee was born at Cork in the year 1821, his father at that time holding a cure in that city before being presented to the living of St. Peter's, Drogheda, in 1829. His grandfather filled the Metropolitan see of Dublin previous to Archbishop Whately. The future bishop of Peterborough received his earliest education at Kilkenny, from which place, at the age of thirteen, he was removed to Trinity College, Dublin. Here he obtained a scholarship in 1838, and Archbishop King's Divinity prize. He graduated A.B. in 1842, A.M. and B.D. in 1854, and D.D. in 1860. In 1844 Mr. Magee received deacon's orders at the hands of the Bishop of Chester, and in the following year was ordained priest by the Bishop of Tuam. His first curacy was that of St. Thomas, Dublin, which he was obliged to resign through ill health, and after a two years' residence abroad he accepted a curacy at St. Saviour's, Bath, in 1848. Two years later he was appointed to the joint incumbency of the Octagon Chapel, Bath. During his residence in Bath, Mr. Magee published two volumes of sermons. In 1859 he was nominated an Hon. Canon of Wells Cathedral, and received the degree of D.D. from his University; and on the resignation of Dr. Goulburn, minister of Quebec Chapel, Portman Square, London, Canon Magee was appointed to the vacant post. In 1860 he was transferred to the precentorship of Clogher in conjunction with the rectory of Enniskillen; in 1864, on the death of Dr. Newman, he was installed Dean of Cork; and in 1866 was appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin. He was enthroned as Bishop of Peterborough shortly after the death of Bishop Jeune in 1868, receiving his appointment from the Conservative Prime Minister, Mr. Disraeli. List of the Deans of Peterborough, _With the date of their appointment._ Francis Abree, D.D. 1541 Gerard Carlton, B.D. 1543 James Curtop, A.M. 1551 Iohn Boxhall, LL.D. 1558 William Latimer, D.D. 1560 Richard Fletcher, D.D. 1585 Thomas Nevil, D.D. 1590 Iohn Palmer, D.D. 1598 Richard Cleyton, D.D. 1608 George Meriton, D.D. 1612 Henry Beaumont, D.D. 1616 William Pierse, D.D. 1622 Iohn Towers, D.D. 1630 Thomas Jackson, D.D. 1638 Iohn Cosin, D.D. 1640 Edward Rainbow, D.D. 1660 James Duport, D.D. 1664 Simon Patrick 1679 Richard Kidder, D.D. 1689 Samuel Freeman, D.D. 1691 White Kennet, D.D. 1707 Richard Reynolds, LL.D. 1718 William Gee, D.D. 1721 Iohn Mandevil, D.D. 1722 Francis Lockyer, D.D. 1725 Iohn Thomas, D.D. 1740 Robert Lamb, LL.D. 1744 Charles Tarrant, D.D. 1764 Charles M. Sutton, D.D. 1791 Peter Peckard, D.D. 1792 Thomas Kipling, D.D. 1797 James Henry Monk, D.D. 1822 Thomas Turton, D.D. 1830 George Butler, D.D. 1842 Augustus P. Saunders, D.D. 1853 J. J. Stewart Perowne, D.D. 1878 The present Dean of Peterborough, The Very Rev. John James Stewart Perowne, D.D., was born about the year 1823, and married in 1862 Anna Maria, third daughter of the late Humphry William Woolrych, Esq., Serjeant-at-Law, of Croxley, Hertfordshire. His family is of French (Huguenot) extraction, which came over to this country at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was appointed to the Deanery in August, 1878. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of which College he became a Fellow. He was a Bell's University Scholar in 1842, took the Members' Prize for a Latin Essay on three different occasions, viz., 1844, 1846, and 1847, and graduated B.A. in 1845, in which year he was also Crosse Scholar, and in 1848 he proceeded M.A. and was Tyrwhitt's Hebrew Scholar. Eight years afterwards he took the degree of B.D., having in the meantime been ordained deacon in 1847 and priest in the same year that he took his master's degree. In 1855 he was appointed examining chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, and was made prebendary of S. Andrew's and canon of Llandaff cathedral in 1869. In 1872 he became prælector in Theology of Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1873 took his degree of D.D., and became Fellow of Trinity College. In 1875 Her Majesty was pleased to graciously appoint him one of her hon. chaplains, and in the same year he was appointed Hulsean Professor of Divinity. In 1851 and 1852 he was examiner for the Classical Tripos at Cambridge, and select preacher before the University on several different occasions. For 10 years he held the vice-principalship of St. David's College, Lampeter, which appointment he resigned in 1872. Before this, he had been Lecturer in Divinity at King's College, London, and assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn. In 1868 he was Hulsean Lecturer, and Lady Margaret's Preacher in 1874-5. From 1867 to 1872 he was third cursal prebendary of S. David's Cathedral. From 1874 to 1876 he was one of the Whitehall preachers. The Dean is the author of "The Book of Psalms, a New Translation with Notes, Critical and Exegetical;" Hulsean Lectures on "Immortality"; a volume of Sermons; occasional Sermons; Articles in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; _Contemporary Review; Good Words, &c._ And he is a member of the Company engaged on the revision of the Old Testament. [25] Gunton says, "that in the foundation thereof, Peada laid such stones, as that eight yoke of oxen could scarce draw one of them." [26] See _Britton's His. Cathedral Church of Peterboro'_, note p. 53. [27] James Henry Monk, afterwards bishop of Gloucester. [28] _Garbett's Architectural Account of Peterborough Cathedral._ [29] Britton, in speaking of these door-ways, says, "There are also two door-ways to the southern aisle of the nave, _both_ having _semicircular_ arches, &c.;" but this is evidently an oversight. [30] These door-ways are supposed to have been built in the middle of the 12th century. It is worthy of remark, that one door-way in the western wall, which is now filled up, is attributed to the Anglo-Saxon age. [31] Vide note at page 4 of this work. [32] The columns of the beautiful west front were also composed of the same marble; but, being much dilapidated, they were in the time of Dean Monk, taken down, the best sorted and again put up, and the others replaced by Ketton stone. GEO. C. CASTER, PRINTER, MARKET-PLACE, PETERBOROUGH. LIST OF BOOKS & FORMS PUBLISHED BY _GEO. C. CASTER, Printer & Bookseller_, MARKET PLACE, PETERBOROUGH. FASTING. A Lenten Sermon, by the Very Rev. J. J. Stewart Perowne, D.D., Dean of Peterborough. Price 3d. NATIONAL EDUCATION. A Sermon by the Very Rev. J. J. Stewart Perowne, D.D. Price 3d. OUR DEBT TO THE PAST. Two Sermons by the Rev. Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., Canon of Peterborough. Price 6d. ADVENT SERMONS, Preached in Peterborough Cathedral: "The Gospel Preached to the Poor," by the Very Rev. J. J. Stewart Perowne, D.D., Dean; "The Word of God," by the Rev. B. F. L. Blunt, M.A., Vicar of Scarborough; and "Preparation," by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, D.D., Canon of Westminster. 6d. each, by post 7d.; or the three in wrapper, 1/-, by post 1/1. PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. A General, Architectural, and Monastic History. By Thomas Craddock. Fcap. fo., 234 pages, fancy wrapper, 2/6, cloth gilt, 5/- NEW GUIDE TO PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. By G. S. Phillips. Illustrated, Crown 8vo., 1/- PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL at the Commonwealth; being extracts from Simon Gunton's History, with a sketch of his life. The work is illustrated by four photographs from scarce engravings, showing the original Ladye Chapel, Altar Screen, etc. Crown 4to., bevelled boards, red edges, 6/- NOTES ON THE PARISH CHURCHES in and around Peterborough, including the Cathedral, and Crowland, Ramsey, and Thorney Abbeys. By the Rev. W. D. Sweeting, M.A., Head Master of the King's School, Peterborough, Illustrated by 32 Photographs. Demy 8vo., cloth antique, bevelled boards, 21/-; or in three parts, wrappered, 2/6 each. NOTES ON TWENTY PARISH CHURCHES in the five mile circle round Peterborough, comprising Alwalton, Castor, Eye, Farcet, Fletton, Glinton, Helpstone, Marholm, Orton Longueville, Orton Waterville, Paston, Peakirk, Stanground, Thorpe, Waternewton, Werrington, Whittlesey (St. Mary), Whittlesey (St. Andrew), Woodstone, and Yaxley. Paper covers, 1/-; cloth, 1/6. FIRST WORDS AND LAST, or EASTER THOUGHTS, in verse. By Rev. A. S. Newman, M.A. Crown 8vo., paper covers, 1/6; cloth gilt, 2/- CROWLAND AND THORNEY ABBEYS. By the Rev. W D. Sweeting, M.A., with two photographs, wrappered, 1/- WILD FLOWERS. Being a list of varieties found in the neighbourhood of Peterborough. By F. A. Paley, M.A. Price 1/- CÆSAR'S COMMENTARIES. For the use of Junior Classes, Book II., with vocabulary. Price 6d. CANTICLES POINTED FOR CHANTING. Suitable for Village Choirs. By John Speechley, late Organist of Peterborough Cathedral. Price 1d. SAVIGAR'S ARITHMETICAL TABLES. For the use of Schools, with rules for mental accounts. Price 1d.; or twelve copies, post free, 1/- THE SHOWER OF PEARLS. By Charlotte Phillips. A collection of Poems suitable for Home and School use. 14th edition, Demy 18mo., cloth gilt, 1/- THE BOOK OF ANTHEMS. As used in Peterboro' Cathedral, with a new appendix. Crown 8vo., Cloth lettered on side, red edges 2/6 Ditto, bevelled boards 3/- Roan, lettered on side, red edges, burnished 3/6 French Morocco limp, gilt or red edges 5/- Persian limp, gilt or red edges 6/- Best Calf limp, gilt or red edges 7/- Best Turkey Morocco do. 7/6 PHOTOGRAPHS OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. In various sizes, at 6d., 1/-, 2/6, and 5/- PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE CHURCHES in Sweeting's "Notes on Parish Churches." Carte de Visite size, 6d. each. DIRECTORY OF PETERBOROUGH and 52 Neighbouring Places, with Plan of the City. Price 2/6. SPIRIT STOCK BOOKS. 1/- each. OVERSEER'S and SURVEYOR'S BOOKS and FORMS. NOTICES TO QUIT. Tenant to Landlord or Landlord to Tenant. 1d. each. CERTIFICATE FORMS for Baptism, Burial, Banns of Marriage, and Marriage. 1d. each; two dozen, assorted, 1/6. DISTRAINT NOTICES. 1d. each. PROBATE FORMS. BANKRUPTCY FORMS. PARCELS DELIVERY BOOKS. Strongly bound. 100 pages, 2/6; 200 pages, 3/6. CASTER'S HOUSEKEEPER'S ACCOUNT BOOK. To commence at any time, and last one year. Price 2/- CONFIRMATION CARDS. In red and black. 1d. each; 25 for 1/6. AGREEMENT FORMS. For letting Unfurnished Apartments. RECEIPT BOOKS. MAP OF PETERBOROUGH, and 20 miles around. Plain, 1/-; Coloured, 1/6; Mounted on Cloth in case, 4/-; Mounted on Roller and varnished, 5/-. AN APPEAL. THE DEAN AND CHAPTER _earnestly hope that Visitors to the Cathedral will contribute something to the Fund in aid of its Restoration. For this purpose a box has been placed in the Nave, under the Screen, and a book in which names, together with the amount of the donation, may be entered. It will be seen that the need of Restoration is urgent, the central tower being much shattered, and its south-eastern pier presenting a very unsightly appearance. One of the most striking features of the Cathedral, the beautiful groined roof of this tower is at present entirely concealed by a scaffolding put up some years ago when the work of Restoration was suspended for want of funds._ THE DEAN AND CHAPTER _feel that they may with the more confidence appeal to the liberality of Visitors in aid of the Restoration, because the Cathedral is open free of all charge throughout the day (except during the hours of Divine Service), the Vergers not being allowed to ask for any gratuity._ 
21003	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the msny original illustrations. See 21003-h.htm or 21003-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/0/0/21003/21003-h/21003-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/1/0/0/21003/21003-h.zip) THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ELY A History and Description of the Building with a Short Account of the Former Monastery and of the See by THE REV. W. D. SWEETING, M.A. Vicar of Holy Trinity, Rotherhithe and Author of "Peterborough" With XLVII Illustrations [Illustration: ELY CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] [Illustration: The Arms of the See.] London George Bell & Sons 1910 First Published June 1901. Reprinted 1902, 1910. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. It is hardly necessary to give a complete list of all the authorities consulted in the preparation of this book. As specially valuable for Ely may be named the "Liber Eliensis" and the "Inquisitio Eliensis"; the histories of Bentham, Hewett, and Stewart; the "Memorials of Ely," and the Handbook to the Cathedral edited and revised by the late Dean; Professor Freeman's Introduction to Farren's "Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich"; and the various reports of Sir G. G. Scott. But numerous other sources of information have been examined, and have supplied facts or theories; and in nearly every instance, particularly where the very words are quoted, the authority is given in the text or in the notes. My best thanks are due to the Dean of Ely for his ready courtesy in allowing free access to every part of the cathedral and for his solution of various difficulties which had presented themselves in comparing different accounts of the fabric. I have also to thank the Rev. T. Perkins and the Photochrom Company for the use of the photographs from which the illustrations have been prepared. For many curious details, and for the loan of some books that are out of print and difficult to obtain, I acknowledge my obligation to Mr. C. Johnson, of Ely. W. D. SWEETING. LIST OF CONTENTS. I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING 3 II. THE CATHEDRAL: EXTERIOR 41 The West Front 43 The Galilee Porch 44 The West Tower 47 The North Side of the Nave 49 The Octagon 50 The North Transept 51 The Lady-Chapel 52 The East End 55 The Aisles 56 The Triforium Windows 57 The South Transept 60 The Monks' Door 60 The Prior's Door 60 The Cloister 61 III. THE INTERIOR 63 The Western Transept and S. Catharine's Chapel 64 The Nave 66 The Ceiling 67 The Nave Aisles 69 The Octagon 71 The Transepts 74 The Choir and Presbytery 76 The Lady-Chapel 84 Monuments and Stained Glass 87 The Chapel of Bishop Alcock 90 The Chapel of Bishop West 93 IV. HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY 99 V. HISTORY OF THE SEE 113 VI. THE PRECINCTS 131 The Infirmary 131 Prior Crauden's Chapel 132 Ely Porta 133 INDEX 135 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Ely Cathedral from the South _Frontispiece._ The Arms of the See _Title._ The North Side of the Cathedral 2 The Cathedral from the South 3 The Interior of the Galilee before Restoration 18 The Shrine of S. Etheldreda (from Bentham) 20 The Octagon about 1825 23 Ely Cathedral at the End of the Eighteenth Century 33 The Cathedral from the West 40 Entrance To The Cathedral From The Galilee 41 Doorway of the Galilee 45 The West Tower from the South 48 The Choir and Lady-Chapel from the North-East 53 Elevation of Original Bays of Bishop Northwold's Presbytery 55 The Lantern and South Transept 57 The Prior's Doorway 59 The Nave, looking West 62 S. Catharine's Chapel 63 The Nave, looking East 65 Panels in the Nave Ceiling 67 The North Aisle of the Nave 69 The South Aisle of the Nave 70 The South Transept 74 The North Transept 75 The Choir Screen 76 Elevation of the Bays of the Presbytery 77 The Choir, looking West 79 The Triforium of the Choir and Presbytery 80 The Choir Stalls: North Side 81 The Reredos 84 The Lady-Chapel 85 Doorway of the Lady-Chapel 86 The North Choir Aisle, looking West 89 The Presbytery and the supposed Shrine of S. Etheldreda 91 Bishop Alcock's Chapel 94 Bishop West's Chapel 95 The Choir, looking East 98 The Chapter Seal (from Bentham) 99 Bishop Alcock's Chantry from the Retro-Choir 112 The North Choir Aisle, looking East 122 Bishop West's Chapel 123 The Brass of Bishop Goodrich 124 Bishop Woodford's Tomb 129 Prior Crauden's Chapel 131 Plan of the Infirmary (from Bentham) 132 Ely Porta, The Great Gate Of The Monastery, 1817 133 Ground Plan Of Ely Cathedral _At end._ [Illustration: THE NORTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] ELY CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING. No mention has been found of Ely as a town before the time of the virgin queen S. Etheldreda. The district known as the Isle of Ely--which now includes the whole of the northern part of Cambridgeshire above the River Ouse, together with a few parishes east of that river that are in the county--is spoken of at the time of the marriage of the princess as if it were a district well known and perhaps of some importance, as it was assigned to her as a dowry. Some writers have held that the expression the Isle of Ely applied only to the rising ground on which the city now stands and to its immediate neighbourhood. If this were ever the case, the name was soon used for a larger district. In the "Liber Eliensis" the limits of the isle are given as seven miles in length by four in breadth, while the extent of the two hundreds belonging to Ely reaches from Tydd to Upware and from Bishop's Delf to Peterborough. We have many examples of large inland districts where a series of rivers has happened to isolate them being known as isles. The Isles of Athelney, Axholme, Purbeck, Thanet, are familiar instances. Perhaps the town is more likely to take its name from the district than the district from the town. It will be seen that in none of the examples just given is the name derived from a town. We have the authority of Bede for the statement that Ely (_Elge_) was a region containing about six hundred families, like an island (_in similitudinem insulæ_), and surrounded by marshes or waters. When told that Ely means the "Island of Eels," many persons suppose this to be a fanciful etymology, and smile at the idea; but the best authorities are agreed that this is the true derivation of the name.[1] A suggestion that the willow-trees, so abundant in the region, gave the name (Celtic, _Helyg_) has met with some support. A third suggestion, that the word comes from the Greek for a "marsh," hardly deserves mention. The Saxon word for "eel" was apparently pronounced exactly as the modern word. Bede gives this etymology: "A copia anguillarum, quæ in iisdem paludibus capiuntur, nomen accepit." William of Malmesbury, in his "Gesta Pontificum," 1125, takes the same view. The "Liber Eliensis," of about the same date, also adopts it. Milton may not be regarded as a great authority upon such a question; he writes, however, as considering the matter settled. In his Latin poem on the death of Bishop Felton, of Ely, who died in 1626, he says that Fame, with her hundred tongues, ever a true messenger of evil and disaster, has spread the report of the bishop's death: "Cessisse morti, et ferreis sororibus, Te, generis humani decus, Qui rex sacrorum fuisti in insulâ Quæ nomen Anguillæ tenet." That Ely should mean "Isle of Eels," and that the expression Isle of Ely is consequently redundant, is no argument against this view. The Isle of Athelney, beyond all question, means the Isle of the Æthelings' Isle. Compare also a remarkable instance of redundancy in the name of the Isle of Axholme. This name, says Canon Taylor, "shows that it has been an island during the time of the Celts, Saxons, Danes, and English. The first syllable, _Ax_, is the Celtic word for the water by which it was surrounded. The Anglo-Saxons added their word for island to the Celtic name, and called it Axey. A neighbouring village still goes by the name of Haxey. The Danes added _holm_--the Danish word for island--to the Saxon name, and modern English influences have corrupted Axeyholme into Axelholme, and contracted it into Axholme, and have finally prefixed the English word _Isle_."[2] The North Girvii and the South Girvii were two peoples that formed districts of the East Anglian kingdom. In the early part of the seventh century Anna was King of the East Angles; and Etheldreda, his daughter, was born at Exning, near Newmarket,--a Suffolk parish, but detached from the main county and entirely surrounded by Cambridgeshire,--about the year 630. When quite young there were many suitors for her hand, but she was altogether unwilling to accept any one of them. But the king, her father, had so high an opinion of Tonbert--one of the noblemen of his Court, who was alderman, or, as some render it, prince, of the South Girvii--that he prevailed upon his daughter to be married to him, and the marriage took place in 652, two years before Anna's death. From her husband Etheldreda received the Isle of Ely--that is, the whole of the region of the South Girvii--as a marriage settlement ("Insulam Elge ab eodem sponso ejus accepit in dotem"). It is clear, therefore, that Tonbert was something more than an officer of the king's if he had the power of assigning such a district to his wife. Tonbert only lived for three years after his marriage, and at his death his widow came into possession of the Isle of Ely according to the terms of her marriage settlement. She resided within it, and gave herself up entirely to works of religion and devotion, entrusting the civil government of her territory to Ovin. Her reputation for piety was spread far and wide, and attracted the attention of Egfrid, son of Oswy, King of Northumberland, who sought her hand in marriage. But no attraction he could offer could persuade the princess to change her state, until her Uncle Ethelwold, who was now King of East Anglia, overcame her scruples. The disturbed state of his kingdom and the importance of an alliance with so powerful a house as that of Oswy are believed to have influenced Ethelwold to urge his niece to give her consent to the proposed marriage; and the marriage took place at York. It is constantly affirmed by all historians that in neither of these marriages did the married couple live together as man and wife. At the Northumbrian Court Etheldreda lived for twelve years, her husband meanwhile, in 670, having become king. He had been for some years previously associated with his father in the government. The queen, however, became more and more wearied of the glories of her royal position, and tired out her husband with persistent entreaties that she might be permitted to withdraw herself altogether from his Court and devote herself entirely to the religious life. At last she obtained his reluctant consent, and betook herself to Coldingham, where Ebba, the king's aunt, was abbess, and was there admitted into the order of nuns at the hands of Wilfrid, Archbishop of York. This Ebba was afterwards canonised, and her name is preserved in the name of the promontory on the coast of Berwickshire known as S. Abb's Head. After remaining about a year at Coldingham, the queen found it necessary to move away. The king began to regret the permission he had given her, and, following the advice of some of his courtiers, made his way to the religious house where Etheldreda was settled, with the intention of forcibly compelling her return to his Court. His intention having become known to the abbess, she recommended the queen to escape at once to her own territory, the Isle of Ely. The queen immediately followed this advice. Egfrid arrived at Coldingham very soon after her departure, and set off in pursuit. No reason for her leaving Coldingham is given by Bede; but a lengthy account of the journey and its occasion is given in the "Liber Eliensis." In the remarkable sculptures on the corbels in the octagon are representations of two scenes that are unintelligible without this account; it is necessary, therefore, to summarise it here. Directly after setting out from Coldingham, which is some ten miles north of the Tweed, not far from the sea, the queen, with two lady companions, Sewenna and Sewara, reached a rocky eminence on the coast, where the king in pursuit came up with them; but he was "prevented from coming near them by a sudden and unusual inundation of water from the sea, which surrounded the hill, and continued in that state several days, without retiring into its former channel. Amazed at the strangeness of this appearance, the king presently interpreted it as the interposition of Heaven in her favour, and concluded that it was not the will of God that he should have her again; and this occasioned his retiring to _York_ again, leaving the queen quietly to pursue her journey."[3] After the king had abandoned his intention of reclaiming his wife, the three ladies proceeded southwards, and crossed the Humber, and so through Winteringham and Alftham, where she stayed a few days, and where she is said to have built a church. This can only mean that she arranged for its building or undertook the cost. At West Halton, the next village to Winteringham (as Bentham has observed), the church is dedicated to S. Etheldreda; and this place may be identified with the Alftham of the chronicler. The party had now assumed the dress of pilgrims, and went by unfrequented roads, so as to escape observation. At one point of their journey a second miraculous event is recorded. The queen had lain down to sleep while her attendants kept watch, and had stuck her pilgrim's staff in the ground. When she awoke, this staff was found to have taken root and already to have brought forth leaves. It was left standing, and grew into a flourishing tree; and the place, from the circumstance, was named Etheldrede's-Stow.[4] A church was afterwards built and dedicated to S. Etheldreda. In course of time the three pilgrims arrived safely at their destination. Wilfrid, the archbishop, soon joined them. He had lost favour with King Egfrid, being supposed to have influenced the queen in her decision to take the veil. The king, regarding his marriage with Etheldreda as being _de facto_ dissolved, took another wife, who was for various reasons much opposed to Wilfrid. The archbishop also greatly resented the action of the king and Archbishop Theodore in dividing his diocese without his consent into four different sees, and he was at one time banished and at another imprisoned. Etheldreda now set to work in earnest to establish a religious house. Her buildings were begun in 673. This year is accordingly taken as the date of the foundation of the monastery and of the town itself. King Ethelbert is indeed said to have built a church a short distance from the site of the present cathedral, at a place called Cratendune[5]; but there is much uncertainty as to the fact, and some considerable difficulties in reconciling the different references to it. It is stated that this church had but a short existence, being destroyed by Penda, King of Mercia. This Ethelbert was the Bretwalda, King of Kent, husband of the Christian queen Bertha. After his conversion he was instrumental in furthering the spread of Christianity among the East Saxons, and also apparently in East Anglia, one of the East Anglian kings, Redwald, having (but only for a time) given his adherence to the Christian religion. As the building of this church near Ely is stated to have been undertaken on the advice of Augustine, who died in 604, we have an approximate date for it, since Augustine only arrived in England in 597. Whether this church was so built by Ethelbert or not, it seems clear there was some church in a state of partial decay standing in 673, because it is recorded that at first Etheldreda designed to restore it and to make it the centre of her religious work; but the present site was judged to be more suitable, and there she began to build. The few remaining inhabitants of Cratendune soon abandoned their dwellings, and came to live near the rising buildings of the monastery. Upon the death of King Anna, who fell in battle against Penda, King of the Mercians, he was succeeded in turn by his brothers Adelbert and Ethelwold, and the kingdom then went to Adulphus, Anna's son and Etheldreda's brother. He greatly assisted his sister in raising the buildings of her monastery, contributing considerably to the cost; but the plans and arrangements are thought to have been designed by Wilfrid, who is known to have spent much time at Ely. It was he who gave his benediction when Etheldreda was formally instituted as abbess, and who admitted the earliest members of the house. As was not unusual, the society included monks as well as nuns. In later times the Benedictine rule was adopted. In the very year of the foundation, possibly on account of its royal foundress and the support of the king, her brother, the special privilege of exemption from interference, either by king or bishop, was assigned to it in a national assembly. This at least seems to be the meaning of the decree, as given in "Liber Eliensis," that with respect to the Isle of Ely, now dedicated to God's service, "Non de Rege nec de Episcopo libertas loci diminueretur, vel in posterum confringeretur." To endow and provide for her monastery, the foundress assigned her entire principality of the isle. In this way the temporal power, which was afterwards so peculiar a feature in the privileges of the bishops, was acquired. In about five years Wilfrid went to Rome to obtain the Papal confirmation of the grants and liberties of the new foundation; but Etheldreda did not live to see his return. She died of some contagious disease, June 23, 679, in the seventh year after she had become abbess. She was buried, by her own directions, not in the church, but in the nuns' graveyard. She was certainly not fifty years of age at the time of her death. As will be seen hereafter, her body was removed into the church in the time of her successor. No description is extant of the buildings of the monastery first erected. We know that the present cathedral is on the same site. Nor has any record been preserved of any discoveries that may have been made in later times, when extensive operations must have necessitated the laying bare of some of the original foundations. From what is known of some contemporary monasteries, we may conclude that the church at least was of stone. Not a fragment of it is known to be in existence at the present day. Whatever may have been its extent, it was wholly destroyed by the Danes in 870. For four years the Danes had been ravaging the eastern part of the country, burning monasteries and slaying their inmates. In the immediate district, Crowland and Thorney, Medeshamstede (Peterborough), and Ramsey had already felt the severity of their attack; crumbling walls alone remained where their destructive violence had been experienced. On their first attack on Ely they were repulsed. The advantages of the situation among the fens had already suggested the formation of something very similar to the famous Camp of Refuge in the eleventh century; and the force thus collected was sufficient to drive the Danes to their ships. But before long they returned with greater numbers, headed by one of their kings, most likely Hubba, and altogether overcame the resistance of the people of the isle. The conquerors then marched "directly to the Monastery of _S. Etheldreda_, at _Ely_, broke their way into it, and put all the Religious to the sword, as well the Nuns as the Monks, and others belonging to it, without any respect to age, sex, or condition; and after they had stript the Monastery of every thing that was valuable, and plundered the town, they set fire to the Church and all the buildings and houses; and went away loaded with the spoils, not only of the Town and Monastery of Ely, but likewise the chief effects and riches of the country round about, which the inhabitants of those parts had brought with them, as to a place of security."[6] The destruction of Ely monastery in 870 and its resuscitation by King Edgar in 970 are an almost exact repetition of what took place at Peterborough. But there is a difference in the history of the interval. In the case of Peterborough, as far as is known, the ruin was complete, and not the smallest attempt was made for a hundred years either to restore the buildings or to revive the society. But at Ely, though the destruction was hardly less complete, we read that within a few years eight of the inmates of the monastery who had escaped when the place was burnt came back, and to a certain extent continued the establishment. They effected a partial restoration of a small portion of the church, and performed divine service. It is said that King Alfred, who succeeded in expelling the Danes, acquiesced in these clerks thus taking possession of the place, although the former King of Mercia, finding the monasteries deserted, had annexed all their property. It does not appear certain whether these clerks were actual monks of the old monastery or clergy of the place; but the new society thus inaugurated was like a college of secular clergy. They were so far recognised as a settled establishment that new endowments were acquired from various benefactors. The latter part of the tenth century was a time of great activity in founding monasteries and in restoring those that had fallen into decay. Edgar, the king, Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, were all enthusiastic in the work. The advancement of the monastic system was the great object they all had at heart. Application was made to the king by two nobles about his Court, both foreigners, for a grant of the Isle of Ely, lately the possession of the monastery. It does not appear what services either had rendered to warrant the application. The sheriff of the county, however, interfered to prevent any such grant being made. He represented to the king the true state of affairs--in what way the Isle of Ely had become the property of the monastery, how all had been lost after the Danish invasion, and in what a lamentable condition the place was at the time, although the remains of the sainted abbesses were still on the spot. The king immediately saw here a new opportunity of furthering his religious work. Committing the details to Bishop Ethelwold, he authorised him to repair the church, provide fresh monks (but no nuns), make arrangements for divine service, and supply new buildings for the new inmates. At the same time the king undertook to provide lands and revenues for the support of the monastery. When the bishop had discharged his commission he obtained from the king a new grant of the whole of the Isle of Ely for the restored monastery. The charter of King Edgar is printed in the appendix to Bentham's "History and Antiquities." The king describes himself as "Basileus dilecte insule Albionis," and as desirous of shewing his gratitude for the peace secured after conquering the Scots, Cambrians, and Britons by restoring decayed monasteries and establishing them under the Benedictine rule; and in particular he desires to honour the monastery in the region of Ely (_Elig_), anciently dedicated to S. Peter, rendered famous by the relics and miracles of the renowned virgin Etheldreda, "who, with body uncorrupted, lasts even to this day in a white marble mausoleum." He appoints Brithnoth first abbot, and assigns certain lands and revenues, including ten thousand eels due to him as king, for the maintenance of the monastery. To signify the public character of the grant, it is stated in the attestation clause that it is made not in a corner, but in the open: "Non clam in angulo sed sub divo palam evidentissime." The charter is signed by the king, two archbishops, twelve bishops, the queen, eleven abbots, nine dukes (_duces_), and forty-one knights. This was in the year 970. As has been said, the old establishment had given place to a company of secular clergy. These were dispossessed by Bishop Ethelwold, unless any chose to attach themselves to the new foundation upon the constitution of the Benedictine house. But during the century that had elapsed since the Danes evicted the monks, these clergy must have been careful custodians of the church and buildings, most likely restoring by degrees and erecting fresh accommodation as their means permitted, for there is no account of any considerable rebuilding by Bishop Ethelwold. Repairs and enlargement and decorations were necessary; but the bishop probably found everything nearly ready to his hands, and he was not required to undertake anything so extensive as had to be done under similar circumstances at Peterborough. Everything was duly prepared for the new monastery by the Feast of the Purification, 970; and on that day the church and buildings, some partly restored and some newly erected, were consecrated by Archbishop Dunstan. During the time of Elsin, the second abbot (981-1016), some considerable improvements were effected by Leofwin (of whom more will be told in a later chapter) in the church. He rebuilt and enlarged the south aisle, joining it to the rest of the building. In one of its porches, or side-chapels (_in uno porticu_), he built an altar to the Virgin Mary, erecting over it a stately image of gold and silver, adorned with valuable jewels. It is probable that this chapel, and the one that possibly replaced it when the present cathedral was built, may have been colloquially known as the lady-chapel, for it is sometimes said that a lady-chapel was in existence before the fourteenth century; but there was nothing about it of the dignity and importance usually associated with the name. Although the Isle of Ely plays so important a part in the history of the Norman Conquest, and was the scene of the last great stand made against the Conqueror, neither the party of Hereward and the Camp of Refuge, nor the forces of the king, did any material damage to the buildings of the monastery. Its affairs were indeed brought to confusion, as the monks had sided with Hereward, and the Conqueror gave orders for the plunder of all the goods of the monastery. But the monks purchased from the king his forgiveness, and the liberty of the place, and the restoration of what property had been taken away, for the sum of a thousand marks. To raise this amount they had to sell almost everything in the church of gold and silver; and the "Liber Eliensis" enumerates among precious objects thus alienated, crosses, altars, shrines, texts, chalices, patens, basins, brackets, pipes (_fistulas_), cups, salvers, and the image of the Virgin seated with her Son on a throne, which Abbot Elsin had wrought of gold and silver. It is true that most, if not all, of these were recovered in about ten years, for it is on record that the Norman abbot, Theodwin, refused to accept the abbacy until the king would restore what had been taken away. This seems to refer to the goods sold to raise the money demanded as the price of his forgiveness. When the building of the existing cathedral was commenced there was not the same necessity as existed in many other cases. There was no ruin to be rendered serviceable. A church was actually standing and in constant use. It must therefore have been felt that the importance and wealth of the foundation demanded a more magnificent minster. When Simeon, the ninth abbot (1081-1093), was appointed, he found the property of the abbey still in an unsatisfactory state. Lands really belonging to it were in many instances held by powerful persons, who under various pretences defied the rights of the religious house. So the abbot's first work was to recover these. By help of the king's commission he was entirely successful. But while inquiries were being instituted, and proceedings for recovery were being taken, he conceived the design of erecting a very noble church, and set about laying the foundations of it. He could not, from his great age, have hoped to see much progress made, but he did live to see a very considerable portion completed. He devoted a great part of his private fortune, which was large, to the work. He began with the transepts. This is in itself sufficient to shew that there was a choir in use. The regular practice, when a wholly new church was to be built, was to commence at the east end. The lower part of both transepts is Simeon's work. It is of plain Early Norman character, and represents all that is now in existence of what he erected. From a slight increase in ornamentation in the capitals in the north transept, we infer that the actual commencement was made in the south transept. Of course these transepts were of four bays--not as at present, of three only--the bay in each case nearest the central tower having been destroyed when the tower fell. That tower was of Norman date, and is sometimes spoken of as Simeon's Tower. But he cannot have built the whole of it. If he raised it as high as the great supporting arches, which is of course possible, there must have been also supports in all the four adjacent portions of the church, reaching almost to the summit of the arches, so that he would have had to build at least one bay of the triforium and clerestory stages. If he did so, all such work perished with the fall of the tower. It is more probable that he raised the piers of the tower arches only a few feet higher than the main arcade of the transepts. Abbot Simeon's successor, Richard (1100-1107), proceeded with the building. No abbot had been appointed by William II., and the works had consequently been suspended for seven years. Notwithstanding many troubles and distractions (he was actually deposed at a council at Westminster in 1102, though restored by Papal bull in the next year), Abbot Richard made great advance in the building of the church. He was only abbot for seven years. By 1106 he had finished the east end, which may have terminated in an apse as at Peterborough, and possibly the tower. On October 17 in that year the remains of Saints Etheldreda, Sexburga, Ermenilda, and Withburga were solemnly removed to the new choir, and re-interred in front of the high altar. For some reason not explained there was no such attendance of high ecclesiastical dignitaries as was usual on such occasions. The Bishop of Norwich, four abbots, and one archdeacon were all that could be found to attend the translation. The account is noteworthy because it describes the orderly processions from "the Old Church," and the taking the bodies thence one at a time, "with singing and praise into the New Church." We are not to conclude from this that the former church was on a different site. The new buildings were apparently quite close to the former, and possibly some part of the old church had already been pulled down as the new choir was being built, and the completion of the aisles of the choir would necessitate the pulling down of the remainder. But the remains of the foundress and others must first be removed to their new resting-place. Both Simeon and Richard, while urging on the church building, were by no means regardless of the domestic buildings of the monastery. These were being enlarged and improved at the same time. Two bays of the nave next to the tower were also the work of Abbot Richard. Two years after the death of Abbot Richard the bishopric was constituted. The bishop henceforward was the abbot of the house, though the superintendence of the domestic concerns of the monastery devolved upon the prior. Until 1198 the bishops appointed the priors, but afterwards they were elected by the monks. There was naturally some difficulty in dividing fairly between the bishop and the monastery the peculiar rights which were attached to the government of the Isle of Ely; but all was amicably arranged. As part of the arrangement the bishops were discharged from all obligation to repair or sustain the fabric of the church. But numbers of the bishops did contribute largely to its building and embellishments; and henceforward the works carried on are assigned to the bishops holding office at the time. By degrees, during the twelfth century, the building of the nave advanced. For upwards of sixty years we find no record in the chronicles of any specific work done at any particular time. When we come to Bishop Riddell (1174-1189) we read that he "carried on the new work and Tower at the West-end of the Church, almost to the top." How high this tower was we cannot tell. It was probably surmounted by a pyramid. A later bishop, Northwold (1229-1254), removed the original capping and built the existing Early English stage; so we conclude from the words: "Ipse construxit de novo turrim ligneam versus galileam ab opere cementario usque ad summitatem." The first three bishops ruled for a period of eighty years. This seems too long a time to assign for the building of the nave, because there is so little difference in detail as we examine the work from east to west; and even when later work in a large building is purposely made to assimilate to what had been built some years before, the experienced eye can usually discover slight variations in mouldings or ornamentation which indicate something of a new fashion in architecture. Here we detect nothing of the sort. We can well understand how much reason there was at Ely why building work should have been in the twelfth century intermittent. The troublous times of Henry I. and Stephen were specially unfavourable to this place. Bishop Hervey, moreover, would have had but little time to devote to building. The complete constitution of the bishopric, the regaining possession of property that had been alienated in the time of Rufus, and the thorough establishment of his temporal jurisdiction over the isle took up all his time and energies. He was also constantly abroad in attendance on the king. In the next bishop's time the disaffected barons assembled in the Isle of Ely, and the bishop was of their party. The whole district was alternately in the hands of the king and of the barons. The property of the monastery suffered greatly by fines and exactions. The bishop himself was constantly moving about from place to place, and was many times compelled to make a hurried escape in fear of being apprehended by the king's party. When at last his peace was made with the king, his submission cost him three hundred marks. Neither his own resources nor those of the monastery were sufficient to raise this sum. Some of the treasures of the church had already been sold. Now the monks were persuaded to part with silver from S. Etheldreda's shrine and other valuable ornaments, in order to lend the bishop the sum he required. After the death of King Stephen there occurred a time of tranquillity. The bishop was advanced in dignity and became a Baron of the Exchequer. These various considerations make it at least very probable that no additions to the church of any importance were made until the reign of Henry II.; and, if so, we may come to the conclusion that the whole of the nave was built in his reign. The difference in the style of architecture between the Late Norman and the Transition to Early English is very noticeable as we look at the remaining portion of the west front, south of the galilee porch, the lower stages shewing no trace of anything but pure Norman, while above we see pointed arches, quatrefoils in circles, and other indications of the approaching change of style. Bishop Eustace (1198-1215) made large additions to the fabric at his own expense. One sentence in the account of his work has given rise to much controversy: "Ipse construxit a fundamento novam galileam ecclesiæ Eliensis versus occidentem sumptibus suis." Was this the Early English porch now known as the galilee? Some have thought that this name was bestowed upon the whole of the western transept, not including the porch. This is the view taken in recent years by Canon Stewart. He shews it was the current local opinion at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Dr. Tanner, who wrote the account of Ely in Browne Willis's "Mitred Abbies," takes this view, and speaks of the south arm of the transept as the "old Galilee" and the north arm as the "new Galilee." In the plan in Willis's "Survey of Cathedrals," 1727, the south part is described as the "South galilee, now the church workhouse," while on the north side we read, "Ruined part of Galilee." No doubt the character of the architecture is not inconsistent with the theory that the northern part may have been built or finished by Bishop Eustace, soon after he was appointed, in intentional imitation of the pronounced Norman work adjacent. Canon Stewart also points out that Bishop Eustace is known to have rebuilt S. Mary's Church, where the rough masonry and plain lancets are wholly unlike the beautiful work in the west porch. And he adds: "It is evident that Eustace had nothing to do with the erection of any part of the present cathedral. The galilee which he built has totally disappeared, and the porch which has gone under that name of late years must be the work of some unknown benefactor, who had probably seen Hugh de Northwold's presbytery, and determined to lengthen the church westward as it had been extended in the opposite direction."[7] The more generally received opinion, however, is that Bishop Eustace did really build what is now called the galilee. This is accepted by Bentham, Essex, and Miller, and more recently by Sir G. G. Scott. [Illustration: The Interior Of The Galilee Before Restoration, _c._ 1817. _From Stevenson's Supplement to Bentham_.] No one can doubt that the entire west front, when standing, was much improved by the addition of this great porch. The front indeed never had the painfully flat appearance presented at some cathedrals, for its extreme length was not very great, and the projecting turrets at each end would greatly relieve the impression that it was the side, and not the end, of a building. But it requires something more than a tower in the centre of the front to give a true finish to a composition in which there runs at the top a single horizontal line from north to south. Richly traceried windows are not sufficient. Deeply recessed doorways are better; but here there was only one, of the nature of which we have no account. The great porch is exactly what was wanted. In 1757 Essex recommended the removal of the galilee as being an encumbrance. The roof was ruinous, the walls were in bad condition; it was "neither ornamental nor useful"; it would cost a large sum to put it into decent repair. Happily this advice was not followed. In the course of the renovation then undertaken it was discovered that the remains of an older porch had been incorporated with the present one. Bishop Northwold (1229-1254) commenced the building of the present presbytery.[8] There are now nine bays between the screen and the east end. The apse, if such were the termination of the Norman church, was situated between what are now on each side the fourth and fifth piers from the screen. A line drawn from the west side of the fifth piers north and south would just touch the eastern end of the apse. Bishop Northwold pulled down the apse and one bay west of it, and extended the presbytery four more bays to the east, building in all six bays, of which two were included in the ritual choir, and four were to the east of the high altar. All this was done between the years 1235 and 1251. The bishop also erected a lofty timber spire on the west tower, which remained until the present Decorated stage was built. We have no account of the consecration of the Norman choir. But after this extension of the building eastwards we read that the whole church was solemnly dedicated on September 17, 1252, in honour of Saints Mary, Peter, and Etheldreda. King Henry III. was present, as well as Prince Edward, afterwards king. When the new portion of the church was ready, the remains of the four saints were removed further east. In the Norman church the high altar was in the chord of the apse, assuming one to have been built; after Bishop Northwold's alterations it was placed at the east end of the present sixth bay, where the apse terminated. The shrine of the foundress was placed some feet further to the east, its eastern face standing about twelve feet in front of the existing altar. This work of Bishop Northwold completed the plan of the cathedral as it now stands. The lady-chapel was indeed built afterwards, but that is to all intents and purposes a separate building. Nor is there any later thirteenth-century work in the church itself. The building operations of the second half of the century were confined to the domestic part of the monastery. As these were doubtless carried out by the convent from its own resources, there is little notice to be found of them in the records of the see. It is known that the rectory, now in the deanery grounds, belonged to this period. It was finished in the time of Prior Hemmingston (1274-1288). [Illustration: THE SHRINE OF S. ETHELDREDA AS GIVEN IN BENTRAM'S "HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES"] The first half of the next century was a time of great and important work at the church. In 1321 the first stone of the lady-chapel was laid by Alan de Walsingham, the sub-prior, afterwards sacrist. It was finished in 1349; and though John of Wisbech had the charge of the erection, the sacrist having more important work to do at the church itself, we can hardly doubt that the designs were by Walsingham. The position of the lady-chapel, to the north-east of the north transept, is unique. At Bristol it is to the north of the north choir aisle. At Peterborough the lady-chapel (destroyed during the Commonwealth) was in a nearly similar situation, projecting eastward from the north transept. Whatever may have been the reason at Peterborough for this unusual position (some say that a public road close to the apse prevented an extension of the choir to the east), there is no necessity to question the accuracy of the explanation generally given of the site of the lady-chapel here--namely, that the place of honour, east of the high altar, was already appropriated to the shrine of S. Etheldreda. On the night of February 12, 1322, the eve of S. Ermenilda's day, the central tower fell. Its insecurity had long been known. The monks had just left their matin service in S. Catharine's Chapel. Some persons conclude from this fact that the choir had already been disused as being unsafe; but unless there is other evidence of this, the mere fact of the monastic matins being held in the chapel nearest to the domestic buildings seems hardly sufficient to justify the conclusion. The chapel here named was not (according to Dean Stubbs) the one now dedicated to S. Catharine at the west end of the cathedral, but one that adjoined the chapter-house. The fall of the tower destroyed three bays of the choir. Different opinions are held as to the character of the architecture of the bays thus destroyed. Some hold that Bishop Northwold built the choir and presbytery, from the central tower to the east end, in the Early English style, and that three of his bays were thrown down by the fall of the tower[9]; others think that the bays now ruined were part of the Norman work.[10] It is most probable that Northwold, designing to increase the length of the presbytery, only pulled down so much of the Norman work as was necessary for his purpose, leaving the western arches standing. This opinion is adopted in the account of his work given above. If this is correct, there would have been _four_ Norman arches left standing between the tower and the Early English work. Of these, three on each side fell. When the new choir was constructed, the octagon taking up the space of the first bay, the fourth bay--presumably left uninjured--was removed, as being out of keeping between the Early English and the new Decorated bays; and hence three new bays were built, reaching to Bishop Northwold's work. All accounts agree that _three_ bays were destroyed. But if both choir and presbytery were of Early English date, there must have been _four_ bays overthrown, because the three Decorated bays now existing do not correspond in position to the three destroyed, for the present third bay from the screen is where the fourth bay was when the tower was standing. No one could possibly have been found in the whole kingdom better qualified to cope with the great disaster that took place at Ely in 1322 than the officer of the house who had the special custody of the fabric. The originality and skill with which he designed and carried out the noble work that takes the place of the central tower, which is without a rival in the architecture of the whole world, are beyond all praise. The exquisite work in the lady-chapel would in itself have been sufficient to establish Walsingham's reputation as an architect of the very highest order of merit; but it would have revealed nothing, if it stood alone, of the consummate constructive genius which he displayed in the conception of the octagon. Of the design itself we shall speak hereafter. No time was lost in removing the mass of ruins; and we can imagine, as the ground was cleared and the grandeur of the opportunity gradually dawned upon Walsingham's mind, how he formed the design of dispensing with the four central pillars, and thereby securing eight instead of four for the support of his substitute for a central tower. At the same time the weight which these supports would have to bear was very much less than that of a massive tower of stone; so that there need be little fear of the fall of the lantern. Fergusson has pointed out that the roof of the octagon is the only Gothic dome in existence. Beresford Hope[11] compares the octagonal lanterns of Milan and Antwerp with that at Ely, which he calls unique in this country. The building was begun as soon as the space was cleared. The stonework was finished in 1328, little more than six years after the tower fell. The woodwork of the vaulting and lantern took longer time; but this also was quite complete in 1342. Walsingham had become prior in the previous year. The weight of the lantern, it need hardly be said, is not borne, though it looks like it from below, by the vaulting that we see. There is a perfect forest of oak hidden from sight, the eight great angle posts being no less than 3 feet 4 inches by 2 feet 8 inches in section. There is also the leaden roof of the octagon (of that part which is exclusive of the lantern), 18 feet above the vaulting, to be supported. A glance at Plate 44 in Bentham's "History" gives some slight idea of the method of construction.[12] [Illustration: THE OCTAGON ABOUT 1825. _From Wilds' English Cathedrals._] With such a man as Walsingham on the spot we cannot be wrong in assigning to him the authorship of all the architectural designs that were carried out in his lifetime. It is believed--for the date is not exactly known--that he died in 1364. Besides the lady-chapel and octagon, he must have designed the singularly beautiful bays of the presbytery between the octagon and Northwold's work. The exquisite way in which the main characteristics of the Early English work are adapted to the Decorated style demands our highest admiration. The arrangement of the three western bays on each side is exactly like Northwold's work, while the additional grace and beauty of ornamentation mark the advance in taste that distinguished the Decorated period. Bishop Hotham undertook the whole expense of rebuilding this portion of the cathedral. He did not live to see it completed, as he died in 1337, but he left money for the purpose. The total expense of this rebuilding is given at £2034 12_s._ 8¼_d._, while the cost of the octagon and lantern amounted to not very much more--£2406 6_s._ 11_d._ Nearly all this latter cost was defrayed by the monastery, little more than £200 having been contributed from external sources. These amounts must be multiplied by twenty, if not twenty-five, to represent the present value. The rebuilding of these three bays in the presbytery involved the rebuilding of the corresponding portions of the aisles. The domestic buildings were also improved, and some new ones erected by Walsingham. "The Sacrist's Office he almost new built, made several additional apartments in it, and encompassed the whole with a strong wall; in the North-west corner of which he built a square building of stone, and covered it with lead; part of this he appropriated to the use of Goldsmith's work, and for other purposes relative to his Office; another Building taken notice of as built by him, was contiguous to the Infirmary; it was of stone, covered with lead, and had convenient offices under it, chiefly intended for the use of the _Custos_ of the Infirmary. In his time also, Bells[13] were first put up in the great Western Tower."[14] Of this period the following are enumerated as works executed in the monastery[15]: Prior Crauden's chapel, the prior's new hall above the old one, the guest hall, the fair hall, and the residence of the sub-prior. On the death of Bishop de Lisle in 1361, Walsingham was elected bishop by the convent, but the election was set aside by the pope. This eminent architect was buried in the cathedral, but the precise spot is not known. The epitaph on his tomb has been preserved, and in it we find that he was buried "ante Chorum" (in front of the choir). This would mean the ritual choir as then existing, and would fix the place of his interment approximately at the spot where there is now a large monumental slab, from which the brass has been removed; and this has always been traditionally said to be the actual stone placed over his body. The brass represented an ecclesiastic with mitre and pastoral staff. The objection to this having been Walsingham's memorial, that these emblems could not have been correctly placed upon it, has been thus met: "On the other hand it is contended that although Alan died a Prior of the Convent, he had been elected Bishop by the Monks, though his election was overruled by the Pope, and that seeing to his successor Prior Powcher the Pope gave permission that he and all future Priors of Ely should wear the mitre and carry the crozier, it is possible that the Monks had anticipated somewhat the Pope's edict, and had represented their beloved Prelate with episcopal mitre on his head and crozier in his hand."[16] He well deserved the description in the epitaph, "Flos operatorum" ("The Flower of Craftsmen"). The rich woodwork in the choir--the stalls with their beautiful canopies--is also certainly Walsingham's work. Besides the great operations of this century there were various alterations and additions made in the cathedral of which the date is not recorded. The triforium in the presbytery was rearranged; the external walls were raised, and the Early English windows of Northwold's work were replaced by much larger ones with Decorated tracery. As the clerestory windows were not altered, the lean-to roof of the triforium was of course made much more flat than before. The graceful flying buttresses, with their elegant pinnacles, are of this same date. The character of Northwold's triforium windows and the corbel table below the parapet may be still seen in two bays on the south side. The aisle windows of the presbytery were also enlarged in the Decorated period; but they are not of the same design as the triforium windows, and they were probably not inserted at the same time. Judging by ordinary methods of discriminating dates by character and style, we should suppose the aisle windows to be earlier than those above; possibly some of this was done by Bishop Barnet (1366-1373). The whole designing is so unlike any of Walsingham's known work that we can hardly suppose that he was the author. After the extensive changes of the fourteenth century were completed, the fabric of the cathedral was left practically as we see it now. Rearrangements of the interior have taken place on many occasions since, and the numerous side-chapels have been despoiled of their altars; but there has been no material structural change. From the death of Bishop Barnet in 1373 to the suppression of the monasteries no Bishop of Ely is credited with having done anything towards the fabric of the cathedral except Bishop Gray (1454-1478). Some of them were at variance with the prior and convent, and would be little inclined to spend money on the church. Those that had a taste for architecture displayed it in beautifying their palaces or manor-houses, or upon buildings connected with the universities or other places in which they had private interest. Some were men of great political influence, and found their time and energies fully occupied in matters of national importance. One at least spent immense sums upon the drainage of the fens. Some did indeed erect chapels or shrines in the cathedral, or left provision that they should be erected after their deaths, but these were as memorials of themselves. The monastery carried out whatever was done in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as long as the monastery existed. The first such work was begun early in the fifteenth century by Prior Powcher: this was the erection of the upper portion of the western tower. At the top of the tower, before this addition, there was a wooden spire covered with lead. The upper story now is octagonal, and there are also octagonal turrets at the corners, detached, except at top and bottom, from the main body. These were clearly built so as to harmonise with the large projecting turrets--massive enough themselves to be called towers--at the ends of the west front. This octagon was also itself--but probably at a much later date--surmounted with some sort of spire. An engraving dated 1786 shows this spire: it was no improvement to the tower. It was happily removed early in the nineteenth century. This additional story was built without due preparation. The extra weight was too much for the support which had been sufficient for the smaller tower; accordingly casing was added round the four great piers to increase the support. This was in Bishop Gray's time, and he contributed largely towards the cost. "The Prior and Convent were at great charges in repairing the lower part of the Western Tower; the Arches and Pillars of which, being found insufficient for its support, were therefore obliged to be strengthened, by wholly new-casing them with Stone, in the most substantial manner, as we now see them."[17] It has been reasonably conjectured that this extra weight was the cause of the ruin of the northern part of the west transept, or that it was then damaged beyond repair. To Bishop Gray is also assigned in particular the insertion of two windows in the north aisle of the presbytery, near the place where he was afterwards buried. The undoubted Decorated character of the upper stage of the west tower marks it as belonging to the very earliest years of the century. There is not the least tendency towards any features of the Perpendicular style. Without reckoning tombs and chapels, there is no structural work of distinct Perpendicular character to be seen at Ely Cathedral, except some remains of the cloisters, and the windows in the nave aisles and clerestory, and those in the upper parts of the great transept, and the large supporting arches which have been inserted beneath the Norman arches of the west tower. The triforium walls in the nave were raised in the fifteenth century, as those in the presbytery had been raised in the fourteenth. The style of the tracery shews that this alteration was carried out quite late in the century, perhaps about 1480. In the south transept there is also a large Perpendicular window. The very late east window of the south presbytery aisle was inserted as part of Bishop West's Chapel, who died in 1533. In 1539 the monastery was surrendered to the king. Such of the domestic buildings as were not required for the use of the dean and canons were as usual sold. The Constitution of Henry VIII. provided for the customary officers of a cathedral establishment. The prior became the first dean, and remained in office till his death, eighteen years later. Though the minster had become a cathedral when the bishopric was instituted, yet the prior and convent were always custodians of the fabric, and apparently supreme therein; and there was nothing strictly corresponding to a capitular body. A memory of the fact that the bishop was in place of the abbot remains to this day in the position of the bishop's seat in the choir. There is no throne, properly so called. The bishop occupies what is in most cathedrals the dean's seat--on the south of the entrance at the screen. The north side is in consequence the Decani side, and the Cantoris side is on the south. This position of the dean's stall on the north, though very unusual, is not unique. It occurs also at Durham and Carlisle; but at those cathedrals there is a throne for the bishop, and the bishop's seat in a stall in the south, corresponding to the dean's in the north, is not met with elsewhere. "At Ely alone, of all cathedrals in Christendom, owing to its first bishop having been an abbot who was himself the banished bishop of another see, the diocesan has continued to occupy the abbot's stall, while the head of the corporation (before the Reformation a prior, and since then a dean) has occupied the opposite stall, usually assigned to a sub-prior or sub-dean."[18] There were three Benedictine abbeys which retained their monastic establishment after a bishop had been made and the minster became a cathedral--Canterbury, Durham, and Ely. It is always taken for granted that the destruction of the beautiful work in the lady-chapel, as well as of the shrines and statuary in the cathedral, was effected very soon after the dissolution of the monastery; but precise authority for this seems not to be forthcoming. It is known that Bishop Goodrich was an ardent supporter of the Reformation movement, and that he issued an injunction in 1541 which would have authorised such destruction. There was no other material damage done to the cathedral at this time. In 1566 a parish church, dedicated to S. Cross, which was situated at the north side of the nave, was found to be so dilapidated that no attempt was made to render it fit for service, and the dean and chapter gave to the parishioners the lady-chapel for a parish church, and it has so remained to this day. It is probable that the wealth of the monastery had kept the fabric itself in such a state of complete repair that there was no occasion for much sustentation work for a long time after the Reformation--at least, we read nothing of any work being undertaken or of any portions of the building falling into decay. In the Commonwealth period the cathedral suffered less than in many places. The stained glass was indeed destroyed, and the cloisters and some parts of the domestic buildings pulled down, by order of commissioners. As Oliver Cromwell was Governor of the Isle of Ely, and often in the city, he was not likely to let the cathedral services alone. In January, 1644, he interfered during service, and stopped it, ejecting the congregation, and is said to have professed that this was an act of kindness, in order to prevent damage to the building. According to Carlyle,[19] he had written to the officiating minister, requiring him "to forbear altogether the choir service, so unedifying and offensive, lest the soldiers should in any tumultuary or disorderly way attempt the reformation of the cathedral church." If the people of Ely had heard about the "reformation" of the cathedral church at Peterborough, as carried out by the soldiers of the Parliament in July of the preceding year, they were certainly well advised in taking this hint. Bishop Wren--an eager opponent of the Puritans--was at the time in prison, where he remained until the Restoration. The only account we have met with of disrepair in the seventeenth century says: "A little part of the end of the North Part fell down _March_ 28, _Anno_ 1699, but it was soon neatly rebuilt again at the Charge of the Church, with some Assistance from a Brief."[20] This was the north-west[21] corner of the north transept. The rebuilding was carried out under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, nephew of the bishop. There is an account of the impression produced upon a visitor to Ely in the reign of William and Mary, the quaintness of which may perhaps justify the length of the quotation: "The Bishop does not care to stay long in this place, not being good for his health; he is Lord of all the island, has the command and ye jurisdiction.... There is a good palace for the Bishop built, but it was unfurnished. There are two Churches. Ely Minster is a curious pile of building all of stone, the outside full of Carvings and great arches, and fine pillars in the front, and the inside has the greatest variety and neatness in the works. There are two Chappels, most exactly carv'd in stone, all sorts of figures, Cherubims Gilt, and painted in some parts. Ye Roofe of one Chappell was One Entire stone most delicately Carv'd and hung down in great poynts all about ye Church. The pillars are Carv'd and painted with ye history of the bible, especially the new testament and description of Christ's miracles. The Lanthorn in ye quire are vastly high and delicately painted, and fine Carv'd work all of wood. In it ye bells used to be hung (five); the demention of ye biggest was so much that when they rung them it shooke ye quire so, and ye Carv'd worke, that it was thought unsafe; therefore they were taken down. There is one Chappel for Confession, with a Roome and Chaire of State for ye priest to set to hear ye people on their knees Confess into his Eare through a hole in ye wall. This Church has ye most popish remaines of any I have seen. There still remains a Cross over the alter; the Candlesticks are 3 quarters of a yard high, massy silver gilt, very heavy. The ffont is One Entire piece of White Marble, stemm and foote; the Cover was Carv'd Wood, with ye image of Christ's being baptised by John, and the holy Dove descending on him, all finely Carv'd white wood, without any paint or varnish."[22] In the eighteenth century some extensive repairs became necessary, and some alterations in the arrangements of the choir were carried out. The former chiefly affected the roofs of the octagon and presbytery. Other parts of the cathedral seem to have needed some repair, but not to a considerable extent. The latter consisted in the moving of the ritual choir to the extreme east end of the church, the returned stalls at its western limit being at the sixth piers from the east end. This alteration was effected in 1770. The position of the high altar has been perhaps more often moved in this cathedral than in any other. In the Norman choir the altar was situated in the centre of the fourth bay east of the present octagon. When Bishop Northwold enlarged the presbytery it was moved one bay further east. After the rebuilding of the three bays west of Northwold's work, it seems to have been moved again westward, as far as the first piers east of the octagon. Again in 1770, at the time of which we are now speaking, it was moved to the extreme east end, and was placed just against the east wall. Now it stands between the second piers from the east. It is not a little singular to notice the enthusiasm with which this eighteenth-century change was greeted. Bentham says[23] it was "an alteration which had long been wished for, by all persons of true taste." And again: "It is allowed by the best judges to be one of the most useful and ornamental Improvements that could have been effected"; and he gives a long disquisition highly praising the alteration. The eastern portion, formerly "an useless encumbrance," was now brought into use. The organ and voices could be better heard, the view of the octagon was greatly improved, and the nave and transepts "have acquired their due Dimensions." Compare this with Hewett's observations less than eighty years later: "Never was there a more ill-judged step than the removal of the Choir hither, towards the latter portion of the last century. To give it such stinted proportions, and for this purpose to displace some of the fine old monuments, and to hide others, to obscure the pillars, and, above all, to erect the miserable organ gallery which we now behold, may surely be pronounced most tasteless performances"[24] When he wrote, the proposal was to replace Walsingham's stalls in the octagon, and to make Bishop Hotham's three Decorated bays into a sacrarium, and so presumably re-erect the high altar on the very spot where it stood in Norman times. Bishop Mawson contributed £1000 towards the removal of the choir to the east end. He had also been at the expense of paving the choir with black and white marble, and of inserting stained glass at the east end. The work done at this time was under the superintendence of the architect Essex. An organ-gallery was placed at the entrance of the choir: judging by the plan given by Bentham, this occupied the whole of the eastern bay of Hotham's work. Screens of some sort are marked as crossing both aisles, as a continuation of the western face of this organ-gallery: or perhaps these were only metal gates. The design of the whole seems to have been very poor: "the miserable organ gallery" is what Hewett calls it. The original stone screen that formed the entrance to the choir before the tower fell, situated in the bay of the nave next to the octagon, was still standing. It had served as the organ-loft until the alteration. Browne Willis, who wrote before Bishop Mawson came to Ely, records that the choir had been paved with black and white marble at the charge of Bishop Gunning, and that he had proposed to move the choir to the east end nearly a hundred years before it was actually done, "which if he had done ... it would have added vastly to the Beauty of the Church."[25] Still later in the century, in 1796, Wyatt "the destructive" was directed to make a report on the state of the fabric, and to supply estimates for a restoration. Among other things he recommended the selling of the lead on the roof, the removal of the rood-loft, and the reducing of the number of bells from five to one. The nineteenth century began with works of destruction. In 1801[26] the spire on the tower was taken down. Soon afterwards, in accordance with Wyatt's recommendation, the ancient rood-loft in the nave was removed. As it had ceased to be the entrance to the choir, it was probably deemed useless. The roof of the galilee was also removed, and the lancets at the west of the cathedral blocked up. Mr. Bernasconi's contract, in 1801, for the repair of part of the west end, amounting to £232 14_s._ 6_d._,[27] probably covered the whole of this. A note on the receipt speaks of a picture at the east end in 1800, a pulpit in 1806, and a new window in 1808; but whether all these were new or merely repaired does not appear. From Goodwin's "Ely Gossip" we learn that the upper part of the doorway of the galilee porch was "renewed in plaster." In a pamphlet published in 1827 it is said that "so much has been done to this cathedral of late as to afford a reasonable ground of hope, that ere long the beautiful Purbeck shafts will be cleared of the yellow ochre which coats and defiles them, and that the earth will be cleared away from the walls on the north side, where at present it is injuring both walls and pavement."[28] What had then been recently done, and thus mentioned, apparently with approval, did not long satisfy the public taste, although a large outlay testified to the good intentions, if not the judgment, of the authorities. Walsingham's stalls were painted; and the nave, octagon, lantern, and transepts were colour-washed. Within about twenty-five years what had been introduced as embellishments were removed as disfigurements, and the removal cost possibly as much as the introduction. [Illustration: ELY CATHEDRAL AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. _From Stevenson's Supplement to Bentham._] Soon after Dean Peacock came to Ely he commenced the restoration and decoration of the fabric which have gone on continuously to the present time, and are not yet complete. Besides many munificent gifts, of which the cost is not known, upwards of £70,000 has been expended upon the works at the cathedral since 1843. The first great work included in this sum was the entire re-leading of the roof. In 1842 there had been a fire discovered in the roof near the west tower, but no great damage was done. Most likely it was the prospect of having to spend large sums upon the cathedral itself that induced the dean and chapter to sanction the demolition of the sextry-barn, "on the ground that the repairs it required were too expensive." This barn was situated to the north of the lady-chapel. It was an object of the greatest architectural interest, and its destruction is much to be lamented. It was of Early English date, and is said to have been a "noble and almost unrivalled" building. It seems to have been of the same character as the abbey tithe-barn at Peterborough, which was perfect a very few years ago, and of which the whole of the wooden posts and beams are still to be seen _in situ_. The Peterborough barn was also of thirteenth century date; it had aisles and nave all formed by the oak beams and supports. The Ely barn was much smaller. In July, 1845, the restoration had been well begun, and was being carried on with energy. The works in Bishop Alcock's chapel had been commenced. The south end of the west transept, hitherto used as a kind of storehouse or lumber-room, was repaired and thrown open to the church. A poor deal roof was added as a temporary protection. The choir roof was scraped and cleaned. In the lady-chapel the colour-wash that had obscured the remains of the beautiful carvings was removed. The west tower was ceiled. Up to this time there appears to have been no properly qualified architect in charge of the work. In 1847 Mr. Scott (afterwards Sir G. G. Scott) was appointed architect to the cathedral. He soon made an extensive examination of the whole building, and issued a report upon the state of the fabric and the amount of restoration needful. Dean Peacock, who so thoroughly identified himself with the restoration, died in 1858. His successor, Dean Goodwin, entered with enthusiasm upon the work, and was instrumental in raising large sums of money for the carrying out of the architect's designs. After he had been dean seven years he published a paper upon the progress that had been made, which commences with these words: "The time seems to be now come, when the completion of the great work of restoration, commenced under Dean Peacock, and guided for many years by his care and judgment, may be looked upon as within reach."[29] In this paper he enumerated these works as already accomplished: 1. The choir restored and rearranged. 2. Central lantern restored (Peacock Memorial). 3. South-east transept restored. 4. South-west transept restored. 5. Roof of north transept restored and painted. 6. Nave ceiled and painted. 7. Nave roof repaired and re-leaded. 8. S. Catherine's chapel rebuilt. 9. Bishop Alcock's chapel restored. 10. Galilee porch re-paved. 11. Western tower opened, ceiled, re-roofed, strengthened, etc. 12. About seventy windows filled with stained glass. Of the painting the north transept roof the expense was borne by the tradesmen employed upon the cathedral. The restoration of Bishop Alcock's chapel was undertaken, out of respect to the memory of their founder, by Jesus College, Cambridge. The painting of the nave ceiling was the work of Mr. le Strange and Mr. Gambier Parry, the former of whom also painted the ceiling of the west tower. Exclusive of special donations for specific works included in the above list, the dean reckoned that up to the time of his report £27,185 had been spent, of which the dean and chapter had contributed no less than £15,200. Several individual members of the chapter had, besides money gifts, presented windows or other decorations, or had been responsible for various structural repairs. At a rough estimate the total sum expended had amounted to £40,000. The works still to be executed were these: 1. Paving the nave, octagon, and transepts. 2. Completion of pinnacles and parapet of octagon. 3. Internal decoration of lantern. 4. Repair of galilee. There would also be much to be done in the matter of properly warming and lighting the cathedral; but those expenses were more strictly within the ordinary obligations of the dean and chapter. The only one of the above works that calls for special notice is the restoration of the octagon and lantern. In a statement circulated by the dean and chapter in 1853 it was declared that "of all works which remain to be undertaken, the most considerable and the most important is the restoration of the lantern, including the decoration of the vault, the substitution of windows of an appropriate character for those which now disfigure it so seriously, and the addition of the outer corona of turrets and pinnacles as originally designed by Alan de Walsingham." But nothing was done towards this during Dean Peacock's lifetime. In the summer before his death he had described more particularly the disfigurements and the mutilations which the lantern had undergone; and he further pointed out the unsafe condition of the exterior. The upper windows of the octagon were of the "meanest description of carpenter's Gothic"; they had been reduced from four to three lights each; they had been shortened more than three feet (probably by Essex in the eighteenth century); the upper timbers were in a ruinous state, and incapable of being used again. The original design provided for eight lofty turrets at the angles of the greater octagon and four pinnacles in the middle of its longer sides. At the first meeting of the chapter after Dean Peacock's death it was resolved that no memorial of him would be so appropriate as the restoration of the lantern, and Mr. Scott was instructed to prepare designs at once. A tentative sketch of his design was published in October, 1859; and the opinion of experts was invited. Mr. Scott's report, dated June 10, 1859, gave the result of his careful examination. He concluded that the wooden lantern was originally "to a certain extent an imitation of the general form of the _stone octagon_ below it. Each had large windows of four lights below, with circular panels in the spandrils; each had a distinct story over these windows, lighted by smaller windows consisting of several detached lights, and each had considerable turrets, probably surmounted by pinnacles at the angles, and, in all probability, open parapets between them."[30] He embodied the results of the evidence he had got together in the design he submitted. Further examination, in the following year, satisfied the architect that no spire had ever been erected on the lantern, and that even if Walsingham had ever intended to have one, he had yet finished his work without any preparation for such an addition. A design for such a spire was, however, prepared and submitted to the dean and chapter, but it was never adopted. As was to be expected, many opinions were expressed upon the design. Some wanted the whole to be surmounted by a pyramidal capping. It was objected that the design was a stone construction for what must of necessity be erected of wood. It was pointed out that Walsingham used his upper story as a bell-chamber, and argued that a true restoration should aim at reproducing this feature. In the end Scott's design was carried out exactly as proposed, except that the eight small square turrets of the wooden lantern have no pinnacles. The enumeration of works completed in 1866, as given by Dean Goodwin above, did not include several important and costly gifts. The chief of these were: the carved panels above the stalls, supplied by individual donors; a pinnacle at the south-east corner of the choir (Mr. Beresford Hope); the reredos (Mr. J. Dunn Gardner); the font (Canon Selwyn); the gates of aisles of presbytery (Mr. Lowndes and Dean Peacock); the brass eagle lectern (Canon E. B. Sparke); and the monumental effigies of Bishop Allen and Dr. Mill. Canon E. B. Sparke had also contributed to the restoration of the south transept; Mr. H. R. Evans, sen., and Mr. H. R. Evans, jun., had helped with the works in the west tower; the Rev. G. Millers, minor canon, had bequeathed £100, and his residuary legatees gave another £300, which was applied to the ceiling of the nave; Miss Allen, daughter of the bishop, also bequeathed £500, appropriated to a new pulpit; and Bishop Turton left the same amount for re-paving the nave. The only other work of importance done before Dean Goodwin left for Carlisle was the reconstruction of the organ. Canon Dickson, in his admirable historical account of the organ, is confident that the instrument in use in 1831 was the original pre-Reformation organ, gradually enlarged from time to time with "all the improvements suggested by the progress of musical and mechanical art." Its preservation during the Commonwealth period is possibly due to the personal influence of Oliver Cromwell. About that date (1831) the organ was rebuilt by Elliott and Hill. It was fitted into the old cases, of Renaissance design. From the similarity of these cases to some which are known to have inclosed organs built by Renatus Harris, the old organ has sometimes been attributed to him; but there is "no record whatever of the employment of Harris by the Dean and Chapter." The progress made in the time of Dean Merivale (1869-1894) was steady and substantial, but calls for no detailed account. The foundations of many parts of the building were made more secure; much of the pavement was renewed; the tower at the west was strengthened with iron bands; several stained glass windows were inserted. Perhaps the most noteworthy undertaking of this period was the decoration of the interior, and the completion of the series of pinnacles of the exterior, of the octagon and lantern. In a summary of the amount spent between 1843 and 1898 the total, exclusive of special gifts, is given at £69,543 1_s._ 0_d._[31] FOOTNOTES: [1] The origin of the name Ely has been discussed in "Fenland Notes and Queries," ii., pp. 316, 371. [2] "Words and Places," 2nd ed., 1865, p. 355. [3] Quoted in Bentham, p. 52. [4] This place has not been positively identified; but the general opinion is that Stow, about ten miles north-west of Lincoln, is the place. The existing church there is, however, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It has been said that, besides Ely Cathedral, six ancient churches in England are dedicated to S. Etheldreda. In this number the ancient episcopal chapel in Ely Place and the destroyed church at Histon, Cambridgeshire, are probably not included. Other churches with this dedication occur at Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, West Halton, Lincolnshire, Bishop's Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Norwich, and S. Audrie's, in Somerset. The writer has not been able to discover the sixth. At Swaffham Prior, ten miles south of Ely, are the ruins of a small chapel with this dedication. [5] A mile south is a field still known as Cratendon Field. [6] Bentham, p. 68. [7] "Architectural History of Ely Cathedral," 1868, p. 53. [8] The presbytery, as the term is used at Ely, signifies the six eastern bays of the central portion of the church east of the transepts. The choir, or portion devoted to the daily choral service, varied in position from time to time. [9] See Murray's "Handbook," p. 198. [10] See Hewett's "Brief History," p. 10. [11] "The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century," 1861, p. 195. [12] See also Dean Stubbs' "Historical Memorials of Ely Cathedral," pp. 151, 152. [13] The largest of these bells, weighing 6,280 pounds, was called by Walsingham's name. [14] Bentham, pp. 221, 222. [15] "Handbook," ed. Stubbs, 20th ed., p. 29. [16] Ibid., p. 83. The full epitaph is given on p. 84. [17] Bentham, pp. 177, 178. [18] Hope's "The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century," p. 178. [19] Quoted in Murray's "Handbook," p. 258. [20] Browne Willis's "Survey," vol. iii., p. 334. [21] Hewett ("Brief History," p. 24) says the north-eastern angle, and gives the date 1669; but the account in the text is correct. [22] "Through England On a Side-Saddle in the time of William and Mary, being the Diary of Celia Fiennes." Published 1888. Quoted in "Fenland Notes and Queries," vol. i., pp. 291-293. [23] Page 214. [24] Page 17. [25] Page 334. [26] Date so given in "Handbook," 20th ed. [27] Gibbons' "Ely Episcopal Records," p. 112. [28] "Notes on the Cambridgeshire Churches," p. 4. [29] "Ecclesiologist," xxvii., p. 71. [30] "Ecclesiologist," xxi., p. 26. [31] "Handbook," 20th ed., App. II. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST.] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE GALILEE.] CHAPTER II. THE CATHEDRAL: EXTERIOR. Few persons would dispute the statement that for external grandeur of effect the cathedral at Ely is surpassed only, if at all, in England by Durham and Lincoln. With the natural advantages of position enjoyed by those cathedrals Ely cannot compete. In both these cases, also, there are grand mediæval buildings of great size near at hand, that group well with the cathedrals and materially improve the effect. But, compared with the adjacent country, Ely does stand on an eminence, and consequently can be seen from a great distance in all directions. At Durham the distant view is limited by the hilly nature of the district; Lincoln, except on the north side, can probably be seen more than thirty miles off, from the ground.[1] Ely can be seen quite well from the tower of Peterborough--about thirty-five miles as the crow flies. Ely is nearly, but not quite, the highest spot in the Fenland. One place in Ely is 109 feet above mean sea-level. The highest elevation in the Fenland is near Haddenham, some five miles to the south-west of Ely, where a few bench-marks give 121 and 122 feet above sea-level. It is not only its magnificence that makes the view of Ely Cathedral so remarkable, there is also the feeling that it has so many striking features, to which we can find nothing to compare. "The first glimpse of Ely overwhelms us, not only by its stateliness and variety of its outline, but by its utter strangeness, its unlikeness to anything else." So says Professor Freeman[2] and again: "Ely, ... with its vast single western tower, with its central octagon unlike anything else in the whole world, has an outline altogether peculiar to itself." Although Ely, with the single exception of Wells,[3] is the smallest of the ancient episcopal cities[4] of England, the area of the cathedral is exceeded only by four others--York, S. Paul's, Lincoln, and Winchester. The church certainly gives the impression of being out of all proportion to the town.[5] There has been nothing to occasion any considerable increase in the number of the inhabitants. Sixty years ago there were within about four hundred as many as now. The town, as has been pointed out above, grew out of the foundation of the monastery. "The history of Ely is the history of Wells, Lichfield, Peterborough, Bury Saint Edmunds, and a crowd of others, where the church came first and the town grew up at the gate of the bishop or abbot." The great wealth of the monastery accounts for the original magnificence of the church; and even when the resources both of the see and the cathedral body were reduced, they were still amply sufficient to maintain the fabric without the loss of any material portion of it. We have no knowledge of the occasion of the ruin of the northern part of the west transept, but there is no suggestion that it was allowed to fall through want of means to keep it up. #The West Front.#--The visitor will naturally commence his investigation of the cathedral with studying the view of the tower from the west; and here he should endeavour to picture to himself the appearance of the west front as it originally stood. It has, indeed, been questioned whether the northern limb of the western transept had ever been really completed. The prevailing opinion is that it was completed, and the weather-mould against the north wall of the tower is held by many to be almost conclusive evidence of the fact. From what we see remaining, it is clear that it was (if ever built) similar to the southern limb; and it was doubtless terminated in the same way by two massive octangular towers. Imagine, therefore, a west front, having to the left of the tower (as we look at it from the west) a limb corresponding to that on the right; imagine also a line of roof, extending over both western transepts, situated in a line with the foot of the three lancet windows just below the clock; imagine also, further, a roof of similar pitch over the galilee porch,[6] and, instead of the present Decorated stage at the summit, a pyramidal spire of timber, leaded. "The front, with its tower thus terminated, with leaded spires also on the four terminal towers of the transept, and with the high roofs of the transept and western porch, must have presented a _tout ensemble_ of the most imposing and majestic character."[7] When we examine the details of the architecture we can express nothing but the greatest admiration. The whole of the south wing of the front belongs to the last quarter of the twelfth century. The lowest stage of all (for there are six stages, divided by horizontal strings) is blank; the next three are late Norman. These have in the lowest stage in each of the two divisions an arcade of seven tall lancets; in the next above are four broader arches, each containing two small lancets beneath; in the upper one is a large window, under a round arch of four receding orders, with a blank lancet on each side. In the north wing, it should be noted, the late Norman work was carried up one stage higher than on the south. The upper stages are Transitional in character, but they carry on the idea of the Norman design below. Here we see first an arcade of four trefoiled lancets, of greater depth than those underneath; while the uppermost stage has a large pointed window, with a lancet on each side, and above each lancet a quatrefoil in a circle. The arches of the window and lancets are highly enriched with carving. Below the parapet is a good corbel table. The fourth and sixth stages are further covered with admirable diaper panel-work. The octagonal towers at the end of the southern transept, of which that to the west is larger than the other, have three more stages, the central one having small, deeply sunk trefoiled lancets; the other two, large plain ones; the uppermost tier of lancets being open. A singular effect is produced in the third stage from the top by the lancets being divided in the centre by the main shaft that rises from the ground at the angles of the tower. On the south and east these shafts are not perfect. #The Galilee Porch# is of excellent Early English work, with details of great beauty. Certainly nowhere in England, possibly nowhere in the world, is there to be seen so fine a porch. "Perhaps the most gorgeous porch of this style in existence is the Galilee at the west end of Ely Cathedral: this magnificent specimen of the Early English style must be seen to be duly appreciated; it combines the most elegant general forms with the richest detail; a very happy effect is produced by the double arcade on each side, one in front of the other with detached shafts, not opposite but alternate."[8] Each side, externally, is covered with lancet arcading in four tiers. In the upper tier the lancets are trefoiled, with dogtooth in the moulding; in the next lower tier the lancets are cinquefoiled, with two sets of dogtooth. The lancets in the west face are all cinquefoiled, and the three lower tiers here have trefoils in the spandrels. Nearly all are highly enriched with dogtooth; while the mouldings of the west door have conventional foliage as well. The lancets here are deeper than on the sides of the porch, and were probably designed to hold figures. Of the three large lancets in the west window the central one is slightly more lofty than the others. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE GALILEE.] The interior of the porch is even more beautiful; the profusion of ornamentation on the inner doorway and the exceeding gracefulness of the double arcades in the sides are quite unsurpassed. Both doorways are divided by a shaft, and both have open tracery of exceptional beauty above. Bishop Eustace, to whom this porch is attributed, died in 1215. It is not surprising to learn that many careful students of English architecture have found a difficulty in believing that work of such consummate grace and perfection of detail can belong to so early a date. Many dated examples belonging to later years in the century, which seem to indicate a steady growth from the simplest pointed lancets to the elaborately cusped arches which were themselves the prelude to the Geometric period, are adduced as evidence of the improbability of the Early English style having, so to say, grown suddenly to perfection at Ely. Numerous instances may, however, be found in other great minsters, where a similar difficulty has been encountered. The probable explanation is that the best artists and the most original designers belonged to the monastic or cathedral bodies. They maintained what would be described in modern language as schools of architects; and the very best talents and energies of such bodies would naturally be brought to bear upon any great work connected with their own church. We cannot suppose that a new conception in architectural design sprang into existence simultaneously in several different centres. There must have been a beginning in some one place. The idea would spread in the neighbourhood and in buildings where the particular abbey or cathedral had property or influence, and would by degrees be carried to other religious houses, and so become generally adopted, and mark a distinct change in style. But this would take time. Sometimes we can trace how new methods were carried about. Those who were brought over from Normandy by the Norman kings of England to be abbots in English monasteries, brought with them their characteristic style of building; and at the end of the twelfth century this had entirely superseded the old English style. One monastery passed on the new fashion to another, as Simeon, at Ely, came fresh from the great work being carried on at Winchester under his brother Walkelin. It is not claimed for Bishop Eustace that his work here is the earliest known specimen of the style finished in so perfect a form. At Lincoln the choir was erected in the time of Bishop Hugh, who died in 1200. Some features there have been pointed out that shew that the style was a new departure, and that the architect was feeling his way. It is admitted that there is not to be found an earlier dated example of the finest Early English work than the choir at Lincoln. Second only to this the galilee porch at Ely may take rank. Other erections of very nearly the same date have admirable work, such as the lady-chapel at Winchester and the east end of Chichester; but there is nothing in either of those examples to compare with the elaborate richness of detail at Ely. #The West Tower# has six stages of Early English date above the porch. Three of these have each three separate lancet windows, the two lower having banded shafts. In the projecting corner turrets are lancets of similar design in the two upper stages, but not so broad and not pierced for windows; while in the lowest stage in the turrets above the porch are several tall, thin, trefoiled lancets, having more the character of Transition Norman work. Between the window ranges are arcades of short, deep, trefoiled lancets; at the top below the parapet and corbel table are five quatrefoils in circles, one not pierced. On the north and south sides are but two ranges of windows. The tower must, of course, have been built before the porch, and may consequently be assigned to the last years of the twelfth century; and it is a noble specimen for such an early date. The upper Decorated stage consists of an octagon having a fine window of three lights in each face, the part below the transom not glazed, and an open parapet above. At the corners are octagonal turrets, with open lights above the level of the central portion, and plain parapets. The turrets are detached from the centre, except at the top and bottom. The latest calculations give the height of these turrets as 215 feet. This would be nearly the same as the central tower at Durham. The Early English tower must have had some erection above it, probably of wood, of a low pyramidal form. But before long it was replaced by something of a better style. Bishop Northwold (1229-1254) "construxit de novo turrim ligneam versus galileam ab opere cementario usque ad summitatem." This was in turn removed when the present octagonal stage was erected, about the year 1400. This addition was soon found to be a source of danger, and it threatened the destruction of the whole tower. For several years, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the tower was undergoing repairs. Before this the upper part had been braced together with frames of timber. In the interior, as will be seen hereafter, inner arches of great strength were inserted under the original Norman arches of the tower. A light and thin wooden spire was unwisely placed at the top, and this was in 1757 reported to be in bad condition, and injurious to the tower. It was not finally restored till about 1801, when the whole of the upper portion, including the corner turrets, was materially strengthened. [Illustration: THE WEST TOWER FROM THE SOUTH.] On the west face of the buttress, built against the tower in the north, can be seen some panels of Perpendicular date. These have suggested the idea that it was in contemplation to rebuild what had fallen in a later style. Notwithstanding the ruins, the view of the cathedral from the north-west is very striking, and in some respects more remarkable than any other (see p. 2). We have here the only external view of the whole length of the #North Side Of The Nave#. With the exception of the clerestory range, and, of course, the north transept, the first impression is not that of a Norman building. The single broad light of the Norman clerestory, with its adjacent round-headed lancets in the wall, remains in each bay unaltered. Above these windows was once a battlement; but Miller records, in 1834, that it was "removed within the last sixty years." The aisle battlement remains. The walls of the triforium were raised, and the Norman windows, both of the aisle and triforium, altered, in the Perpendicular period, the alterations having been begun on the south side in 1469. All these windows now have ogee arches, and are of three lights. The tracery is unimposing. About the middle of the wall can be distinctly seen the marks of the door and covered way that led from the cathedral to the Church of S. Cross. This church had been erected in the early part of the fourteenth century, but (as has been mentioned, p. 29), was found in 1566 to be too dilapidated for use, and beyond repair. It was accordingly destroyed, and the lady-chapel assigned, in lieu of it, to the parishioners for their parish church. Either the fabric of this church must have been strangely neglected by its custodians, or it must have been very inferior in merit of construction to Walsingham's work, which was being erected at the same time, if it could last no longer than about two hundred and thirty years. Round the clerestory windows and arcading can be seen the billet moulding; under the triforium parapet is a corbel table with billets; below the triforium windows is a string-course consisting of little double squares with a diagonal (sometimes called the hatched moulding), a form of ornament not one of the most common. Good examples of it are to be seen in Westminster Hall. In the sixth bay from the transept is a tablet with the date 1662. This must be the time when some alterations were made; but it can neither refer to the raising of the triforium walls, nor to the building up the wall when the door to the destroyed church was no longer needed. Between this point and the transepts can be plainly seen the marks of the original Norman windows over the heads of the existing Perpendicular ones. #The Octagon# can be nowhere seen to better advantage than from this point of view. Restored as a memorial to Dean Peacock, it has been brought as nearly as possible to what Walsingham intended; for it is not quite certain that he entirely completed his own design. The quadrangular turrets, for instance, at the corners of the lantern, were probably meant to be surmounted by pinnacles. These were included in Scott's original designs for the restoration, but have not been erected. Indeed, two of Bentham's views of the building represent pinnacles at the corners of both octagon and lantern, while one view has them to neither. It is certain also that there were slighter pinnacles designed for the middle of the longer sides of the octagon. These have now been built. The lantern has quite recovered its original beauty, after being sadly mutilated and altered at various times. During the discussions about the correct way of completing the lantern not a few persons maintained that the true termination of the whole was a lofty, light, open spire, and that if Walsingham never erected one, he must, at least, have had one in contemplation. The examination of the interior construction leaves no doubt whatever that no such flèche was ever erected, and also that Walsingham intentionally completed the whole without making any preparation for the addition of such a feature, a preparation which he would beyond question have made had he thought a spire was necessary to the completion of the work. The octagon is not equilateral. The cardinal faces, being equal to the inner breadth of the nave and transepts, are the longer. In all the faces just below the open parapet are arcades of cinquefoiled arches, some of them pierced for windows. The cardinal faces have each six such arches, and the other faces only three. These shorter sides only have large windows, the others abutting directly upon the roofs. These large windows have exquisite tracery; they are all of four lights, with transoms, and are beneath arches unusually acute for the Decorated period. The windows in the lantern are new, Essex having destroyed the original four-light windows and substituted poor ones of three lights each. The way in which the octagon and lantern combine in producing a perfectly harmonious composition is in great part due to two points of difference, points which very few observers detect. These are, firstly, that the lantern is a regular octagon, having all its sides equal, in this respect being unlike the stone octagon beneath it; and, secondly, that the eight faces of the lantern are not parallel to the eight faces of the octagon. The new windows of the lantern are similar to the large ones below, but are not mere copies of them. The upper stage of the lantern, above the roof as seen from within, was once a bell-chamber; its lights are not, and never have been, glazed. The whole of the lantern is of wood, covered with lead. Two flying buttresses rise from the corners of the nave and transept aisles to the corbel table of the clerestory range. There are also eight elegant flying buttresses, one to each of the angles of the lantern. These are part of the new work, the originals having long disappeared. #The North Transept# retains its original Norman windows in the lower stage of its western aisle, though we must remember that the north-western angle of this transept fell down in 1699, and was rebuilt[9] under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren. It is said that an earthquake had occurred some few years before, and had caused some damage which was not suspected at the time. However much we may admire Wren's constructive genius, we cannot justify the incongruous door in the north wall of the transept, for which we take it for granted he was responsible. It is in the classical style, utterly out of keeping with the architecture near. The arch and jambs of the Norman window above it were replaced; but this again is spoilt by the insertion of rude unadorned mullions. The corresponding window over the eastern aisle is original and unaltered. The north end of the transept has also Norman lights, larger than those below, on the second range; while above are two large Perpendicular windows, each of three lights, with transoms. To see the east wall of the transept we have to go round the lady-chapel. Here both triforium and clerestory are in their original Norman condition. The lower windows are Decorated. It cannot but be regretted that the two large windows east and west of #The Lady-Chapel# are not portions of the building as it stood at first. That to the east, of seven lights, is known to have been inserted by Bishop Barnet, who died in 1373. The authority for this is the sacrist's roll for that year. The item is given in Dean Stubbs' "Historical Memorials," p. 147. The bishop's executors paid £20 "for making a certain window in the lady-chapel near the high altar in the preceding year." The west window, of eight lights, is of somewhat later date. Considering that the chapel was finished in 1349, and that there is no reason to doubt that the east and west ends were adorned with fine windows of the same character as those in the sides, it seems extraordinary that within twenty-five years it should have been thought worth while to alter the eastern end. Was the alteration made in connection with the insertion of a grander reredos than had been at first provided? This seems possible, as may be judged from the following observations of the present Dean: "It is evident from indications supplied by the masonry of the central light of the east window, the mullions of which are of unusual solidity, that the Reredos and East window were originally combined in some structure, of which the chief object was the large figure of S. Mary, often mentioned in the Rolls of the Custos Capellæ, and which must have occupied a canopied niche, blocking up the whole of the middle light from sill to transom."[10] The design of the east window is inelegant, the transom is heavy, and the tracery in the large circle at the top spoils the effect of the window as a whole. [Illustration: THE CHOIR AND LADY-CHAPEL FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] The west window, except for the central portion at the top and the heavy mullions, is just like two of the side windows placed side by side. But here again the vertical lines in the upper part harmonise ill with the rest. There are some good niches at the west end above the window, but there are no figures in them; and there are shallow arches on the surface of the wall, on each side of the window as well as beneath it. Above most of the niches are shields with heraldic bearings, twelve in all. Among these are the coats of Edward the Confessor, the See of Ely, Bishops Hotham, Montacute, Fordham, and perhaps Barnet.[11] One shield has a cross, and one a lion between three helmets. The arms of the monastery--three keys (said to have been adopted from Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester)--occur four times, in three cases with initials beneath. These initials are: A. W., which may certainly be assigned to Alan de Walsingham; J. C.; and C. W. S. From the occurrence of Bishop Fordham's arms we may conclude that this west end was reconstructed, or at least that its reconstruction was completed, in his time (1388-1425). In some of the lower niches are memorial tablets. On each side of the lady-chapel are five large windows of four lights each, with very beautiful tracery. Those on the north side have been thoroughly restored within the last few years. At the same time the cusps have been replaced in the large circles, of which two are over the head of each window. Between the windows are buttresses, necessarily large, to support the vast extent of the stone-groined roof. At the four corners are double buttresses, with much larger pinnacles, and two niches toward the top, the upper one shallow, but the lower deep enough to hold a statue, and with a projecting canopy. The east end is less decorated than the west. There was once, as it seems, some sculptured figure or figures in front of the upper part of the window, no doubt destroyed when the interior was mutilated. [Illustration: ELEVATION OF ORIGINAL BAYS OF BISHOP NORTHWOLD'S PRESBYTERY.] "The #East End# of the cathedral itself (Bishop Hugh's work) is a grand example of Early English."[12] Except for the windows of the chapels of Bishops Alcock and West in the aisles, and that the Early English lancets in the triforium range in the south aisle have been removed and a plain wall substituted, this eastern front is almost unaltered. It does not appear when this last alteration was made. In the view in Bentham, dated 1767, are represented lancets glazed and blank, exactly similar to those in the triforium on the north. The windows are all lancets, without any cusping. Their grouping is specially effective. In the centre, in the lowest stage, are three broad lancets of equal height, divided by shafts, and with deep mouldings, and with two sets of dogtooth all round. Below the string-course above are four deep quatrefoils. In the next stage the lancets are five in number, the central one being the tallest, while above the outer ones are trefoiled niches; and there are two six-foils below the next string-course. The upper stage has three lancets of equal height, which give light to the space above the stone-groined roof, with a small trefoiled arch, unglazed, and half of another on each side. In the gable are three large sunk panels, two of six cusps, and one of eight. The whole is surmounted by a large handsome cross, restored at the expense of Lady Mildred Hope. The large buttresses on each side of the central group of windows have four niches on each side, the three upper ones having bases to support statues; the upper and lower of these have trefoiled heads, the two others cinquefoiled heads. At the summit are sunk trefoils under the gabled tops; and a little further to the west, on the south, the whole is finished by an octangular turret with shallow arches and a pyramidal top with crockets.[13] The buttresses at the corners of the aisles have much loftier pyramidal heads. These have also crockets. The east end of the triforium range on the north is particularly good. The east window of Bishop Alcock's chapel, which was of course in existence long before his time, is round-headed, with four lights, and some good Decorated tracery. That to Bishop West's chapel, in the south aisle, is of five lights, of very late Perpendicular character. It may be noticed that the window in the north aisle is in the wall as originally built, but in the south aisle the whole wall has been advanced further east, as far as the bases of the buttresses. Both of #The Aisles# have on the sides large pinnacled buttresses of graceful design; and from all of these on the north, and from some on the south, there rise flying buttresses to support the roof of the presbytery and choir. Two of the bays on the south side have the Early English triforium range unaltered. This gives the original height of Bishop Hugh's triforium walls. Below the parapet here is a characteristic corbel table. These bays form the western portion of Bishop Hugh's work in the presbytery. [Illustration: THE LANTERN AND SOUTH TRANSEPT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The retention of this little portion of the Early English #Triforium# is very interesting and instructive; for we should otherwise not have known precisely how this part of the work had been carried out. Professor Willis traced out with great care the alterations to which the presbytery had been subjected, and his conclusions are given in Canon Stewart's book. Early triforium windows were only for lighting the triforium passage; they were small, and could not be seen from the floor of the church. It will be noticed that the windows remaining in the portion spoken of are quite small and quite close to the floor. The changes that were made in the three great Norman minsters, Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, were "made evidently for the purpose of introducing more light into the church." The walls were raised, the windows much enlarged, and the slope of the roof consequently much flattened. No doubt, as regards dimensions, Bishop Hugh's triforium was a continuation of the Norman triforium of the choir. The first appearance of a high triforium outer wall is in Bishop Hotham's work (1316-1337). "In the following centuries this new form was extended by alterations, first to Hugh de Northwold's presbytery and next to the nave. But before the Early English gallery had been thus completely transformed, it happened that some architect, apparently employed by Bishop Barnet [1366-1374], introduced in two of the southern compartments a method of getting rid of the gloom of the low-windowed, Early English triforium, which, although perfectly successful within the church, would, if it had been carried throughout, have been productive of a most injurious effect upon the appearance of the fabric within and without, as may be seen at present in the compartments in question."[14] This method was to remove entirely the triforium roof, and to convert the open arcade of the triforium towards the church into windows by filling the tracery with glass. The designer thus introduced a flood of light upon the choir altar, the shrines in the neighbourhood, and Bishop Barnet's tomb under the pier arch, which is beneath one of these windows. Fortunately the experiment was not repeated. After some time had elapsed, the changes above indicated were carried out; the low Early English triforium outer wall was removed, and the loftier Decorated wall and windows erected. In the extract above given it looks as if the removal of the triforium roof, putting a lead roof to the aisle below, and turning the triforium arches into windows, were confined to these two bays on the south. But the same thing was also done in the two corresponding bays on the north. But there, when the later raising of the triforium walls took place, this raised wall was continued over the two bays in question; and we do not now see there any remains of Early English work. [Illustration: THE PRIOR'S DOORWAY. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] In the east wall of the #South Transept# are broad, geometrical windows of two lights each. At the top of the southern face of this transept, deeply recessed, is an extraordinary Perpendicular window of seven lights. There seems no record of this being constructed. By the remains of corbels in the lower part of the wall we see that there was once a covered passage here, no doubt connecting the cloister with the chapter-house. Beyond the transept are three Norman doors of exceptional interest. One, indeed, is in the west side of the transept, and must have been the original entrance here into the church. It is now quite blocked up with stone. It has only recently been discovered. There are remains of two Norman doors, the lower, with enriched mouldings and shaft, being considerably later in date than the round arch above it. This latter has the nail-head ornament. The northern end of the arch is concealed, as well as the eastern end of the adjoining door into the south aisle, by a mass of masonry built for a buttress. The door into the south aisle is known as #The Monks' Door#, and is the regular entrance into the cathedral from the south. It opened from the eastern walk of the cloister. It is of later date than the wall in which it is placed. The ornamentation is very rich; one spiral column is especially noteworthy. There is a trefoiled arch, the cusps having circular terminations with the star ornament. In the spandrels are quaint, crouching monks, each holding a pastoral staff. Above are two curiously twisted dragons. #The Prior's Door# is nearly at the west end of the north alley of the cloister. Like the monks' door, it is an insertion, being later than the wall. It is a very fine specimen of late Norman. The tympanum is filled with carving in high relief. In the centre is the Saviour, seated, enclosed within a _vesica piscis_, His right hand uplifted in blessing, His left hand resting on an open book; His bare feet rest upon the border of the oval enclosure. This oval is supported by two angels, the arms which hold the upper part being abnormally lengthened. On each side is a round shaft, enriched with a deeply cut series of ornaments running in a spiral; and at the head is a cushion capital with interlacing ornamentation. On each side of the shaft is a square pillar, the outer one having some curious figures of beasts and other objects enclosed in circular rings, while the foliage of the inner one is singularly like a premature specimen of Early English conventional decoration. The topmost stone of this inner jamb is enlarged into a corbel to support the lintel, and is carved with a large face. The expense of the restoration of this doorway was undertaken by the Bedfordshire Architectural Society.[15] One or two bays of the north alley of #The Cloister# have been lately restored by Canon Dickson as a vestry for the choir-boys. These are not, of course, now open to the air. Against the wall of the church can be seen the Norman arcading, showing there were cloisters from the first; while the remains of the windows towards the cloister enclosure, to be seen in the north and east alleys, tell us that they were rebuilt in the Perpendicular period, probably in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. Some corbels remain in the wall of the cathedral. The roof of the cloister was therefore of wood; but there are remains of vaulting to the west of the prior's door, so perhaps the western alley had a stone roof. The first window to the west of the prior's door is original Norman; all the rest (except one) were changed into three light windows, apparently of the same date as those in the north aisle, but have lately been reconstructed in the Norman style. This applies only to the windows in the aisle; those in the triforium are of three lights, similar to those removed from the aisle; and those in the clerestory are the original Norman, just as on the north side. FOOTNOTES: [1] Not many persons who travel by the Great Northern main line know that a good view of Lincoln Cathedral is to be obtained from it. [2] Introduction to Farren's "Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich." [3] Population of Ely, 1891, was 6,646; of Wells, 5,899. [4] Ely is almost universally called a city, upon the supposition that the mere fact of its having a cathedral constitutes the town a city. But since the Norman Conquest the dignity of a city has always been conferred by grant, and no such grant is known to have been made to Ely. [5] An American visitor whom the writer was once conducting over Peterborough Cathedral observed, "This is a very large church for so small a place." Ely is about a quarter of the size of Peterborough in respect to population. [6] But there is no indication that such a roof actually reached the tower. [7] Scott's Paper, read at Bissexcentenary Festival, 1873. [8] From the additions to Rickman's "Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England," given in the 5th ed., 1848. The "happy effect" described is in the interior of the porch. [9] Some money was raised towards the expense of this rebuilding by means of a brief. At Castor, co. Northants, 5_s._ 4½_d._ was sent "for Ely Cathedral"; this was in 1701. In the same year, at Bishop's Hatfield, co. Herts, £1 5_s._ 2½_d._ was raised upon the "Brief for Ely Cathedral." In the following year a brief was issued for a fire in the city of Ely, but it does not appear that this had anything to do with the cathedral. [10] "Historical Memorials," p. 116. [11] One shield has a saltire: Bishop Barnet used a saltire with a leopard's head in chief. [12] Murray's "Eastern Cathedrals," p. 221. [13] The cost of this pinnacle was defrayed by Mr. Beresford Hope. The corresponding pinnacle on the north is still wanting. It is, however, figured, by mistake, in the view of the east end in Murray's "Eastern Cathedrals." [14] Professor Willis's observations upon this subject are given in Stewart's "Architectural History," pp. 76-81. [15] Bishop Goodwin's "Ely Gossip," 1892, p. 48. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] [Illustration: S. CATHARINE'S CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] CHAPTER III. THE CATHEDRAL: INTERIOR. Entering the cathedral from the west, we have the full view of the entire building, the vista being not broken, but relieved, by the open screen. Before examining the nave itself, the visitor should inspect the lower part of the west tower, beneath which he is standing. The curious labyrinth worked in the pavement was there placed by Sir G. G. Scott, and is believed to have been designed by him, and not copied from any foreign example. The troubles that arose from the great weight of the tower have been already described. We can here see the methods taken to secure the stability of the structure.[1] Very massive Perpendicular arches have been built beneath the lofty Norman ones; and all the four great piers were surrounded with masonry at the same time. Both Bentham and Miller give the date 1405-1406 for the beginning of this work. This date is quite consistent with the character of the mouldings of the arches. There was at one time a plaster ceiling just above these lower arches. Above the inner west door is a series of panels bearing coats of arms, so much resembling the fronts of galleries built for the accommodation of instrumental performers--which were known as "Minstrels' galleries"--as to suggest the idea that the large room over the porch was devoted to this purpose. The window above is an unfortunate insertion, dating only from 1800; and this, as well as the stained glass with which it is filled, could well be spared. #The Western Transept# and #S. Catharine's Chapel.#--The Transitional character of the late Norman work here is more marked than on the outside of the west front. It will be noticed that the great arches of the tower, though retaining all other characteristics of the period, are pointed. There are two rows of mouldings, and in the spandrels above are pointed ovals. Above the string-course are three stages: the lowest has three sets of lofty trefoiled lancets, supported by double detached shafts; above is a similar series, less lofty; at the top are three large glazed windows. The painted ceiling of the tower was Mr. le Strange's first experiment in painting at Ely. Some ancient decoration in the vault of the south aisle of the nave had been brought to light when he was on a visit at the Deanery, and this to some extent suggested the thought of painting the flat roof of the tower. The subject is the Creation. We see the right hand of the Lord; the Saviour holding a globe, surrounded by the heavenly bodies of the fourth day of the Creation; the Holy Dove; angels holding scrolls, with the Trisagion; and all these are in circular designs, united by branches of foliage. A very sad accident occurred during the early period of the restoration of the tower in 1845, when Mr. Basevi, the architect, met his death by falling from the upper floor of the scaffold which had been erected for the work. He was buried in the cathedral, and a brass has been laid over his grave. He was not in any way professionally connected with the work of the restoration. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST.] The very late appearance of the highly enriched work in the south part of the western transept makes it probable that this part was completed in quite the latest years of the twelfth century. The zigzag mouldings to the two arches in the east are of extraordinary richness; one opens to the south aisle, and one to S. Catharine's chapel. The whole of this arm of the transept was at one time walled off, and the chapel itself was destroyed. This has been rebuilt, under the advice and authority of Professor Willis. The Woodford Trustees of the Theological College were at the expense of providing the alabaster altar; and the chapel is now used for the daily service of the members of that college, as well as for early celebrations of Holy Communion. Although now known as S. Catharine's chapel, it has never, strictly speaking, been so dedicated; and the present Dean has pointed out that the name was given under a misapprehension. The font in the transept was the gift of Canon Selwyn. Its style is in keeping with the adjacent architecture. The north portion of the western transept is entirely walled off. No documentary evidence has been discovered to decide if it had been actually built. The old tradition of the cathedral was that it had been finished by Bishop Eustace at the beginning of the thirteenth century. #The Nave.#--Originally of thirteen bays, but since the fall of the central tower of twelve bays, the nave is a most complete and perfect specimen of late Norman work. The naves of Ely and Peterborough are conspicuously the best examples of the period in England. In most respects they are very similar, and it would be difficult to pronounce one superior to the other. In one point, indeed, the superiority is with the Ely nave. There is not in it the slightest mixture of any Transitional details. At Peterborough we can detect, towards the west, some unmistakable evidences of the approaching change in style. It is believed that the nave was completed in the time of Bishop Riddell--that is, before 1173. This is probably somewhat earlier than the nave at Peterborough; but both were obviously being built at the same time for the greater part of the period of their erection. Both are manifestly superior to Norwich, where (to mention only one point) the excessive height of the triforium arches and the comparative low elevation of the nave arches--so that the two arcades are almost of the same dimensions--produce an unpleasing effect. But the work at Norwich was earlier, perhaps by thirty years, than either of the others. It is very difficult to obtain exact and authoritative measurements; but those usually given supply the following comparison:--Norwich, 14 bays; length of nave, 250 feet: Peterborough, 11 bays; length of nave, 228 feet: Ely, 12 bays; length of nave, 208 feet. From this it will be seen that before the tower fell the naves of Ely and Peterborough were almost exactly of the same length, while the former had two more bays than the latter. The piers are of alternate design. In front of each an inner shaft runs up to the roof. The string-course above the main arcade has the billet moulding. All the attached shafts in all three stages have cushion capitals. Under each of the large triforium arches are two smaller ones. Though it has been said that there is no trace of any change of style throughout the entire nave, yet it has been noticed that there is a certain roughness about the execution of the arches towards the east which is not seen further west. The floors of the nave and its aisles are on one level; but till recently the floors of the aisles were a few inches lower, and this is believed to have been the original arrangement. The clerestory range has three arches, the central being the highest. [Illustration: PANELS IN THE NAVE CEILING. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The western half of the #ceiling# was painted by Mr. Styleman le Strange, of Hunstanton Hall, in Norfolk, between 1858 and 1861. He died in 1862. The eastern half was then undertaken by Mr. Gambler Parry, of Highnam Court, near Gloucester; and the main design of Mr. le Strange was carried to a most successful issue. The original idea had been that a Jesse tree should commence at the seventh bay, and the arrangement of the subjects towards the west was meant to lead up to this. But Mr. le Strange himself, as the work proceeded, realised that a grander effect would be produced by introducing larger scriptural subjects towards the east; and Mr. Gambier Parry accordingly acted upon what was known to be the intention of the original designer. It has been many times said that the whole design was suggested by the painted ceiling at Hildesheim, and some words of Sir G. G. Scott have been quoted as proof of this; but Dean Goodwin says that the scheme was not taken in any way from the foreign example, and that Mr. le Strange had not seen the Hildesheim ceiling when his design was formed.[2] It is worth noting that some of the faces of the prophets are portraits; that of Isaiah, for instance, is a portrait of Dean Peacock. The general tone of the colouring is intentionally subdued, and the effect of this is said to be to increase the apparent height of the nave. The twelve subjects along the central portion of the ceiling, commencing at the west, are these: (1) The Creation, (2) The Fall, (3) The Sacrifice of Noah, (4) The Sacrifice of Isaac, (5) Jacob's Dream, (6) The Marriage of Ruth, (7) Jesse, (8) David, (9) The Annunciation, (10) The Nativity, (11) The Adoration of the Shepherds and of the Magi, (12) The Lord in Glory.[3] On the inner slope on each side of the central line for the ten western bays are figures of patriarchs and prophets, each with a scroll bearing some of his own words, all having prophetic reference to the Messiah. On the outer slope on each side are heads in circular medallions, three in each bay. "The heads forming the border represent the human ancestors of our Lord, according to the genealogy in S. Luke's Gospel; they commence at the eastern end and terminate at the western, thus linking together the Glorified Manhood, as exhibited in the last of the pictorial representations, with the Creation of Man in the first."[4] The sloping sides of the ceiling follow the course of the great beams supporting the roof. Till it was resolved to construct this ceiling the beams were exposed, and the whole was open to the leads. Canon Stewart speaks of it as a "remarkable example of a trussed rafter roof of seven cants," and says that such a roof was sometimes called a compass roof. He thinks it might have taken the place of an original roof of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: THE NORTH AISLE OF THE NAVE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #The Nave Aisles.#--These retain their groined roofs. Some remains of coloured decoration may be seen in various places, especially in the south aisle; and the appearance of more elaborate colouring at one place seems to indicate that there was a side altar beneath. The rood-screen in the nave was by the pier in which is a small canopied niche. In the north aisle, beneath the windows, is an arcade of round-headed lancets, four in each bay. Above the arcade was originally a string of chevron moulding running along the whole length of the aisle; but this has been hacked off, except beneath the most eastern window. In the south aisle there are five such lancets in each bay west of the prior's door, and four in each bay beyond. The windows east of this door are higher in the wall than the others, because of the cloister, and the wall arcade is correspondingly more lofty. The chevron moulding remains in this aisle for seven bays, after which (until the last bay but one) the marks of it are clearly to be seen. One of the windows in the south aisle is original; all the rest, except one, have been recently made like it. In the north aisle all the windows are of the Perpendicular period, and have three lights under ogee arches. All are filled with stained glass. [Illustration: THE SOUTH AISLE OF THE NAVE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] In the south aisle is placed an ancient memorial stone of the greatest interest. It consists of the square base and part of the shaft of a cross. It was brought here from Haddenham, where it had been used as a horse-block, by Mr. Bentham. On the base is this inscription: LVCEM TVAM OVINO DA DEVS ET REQVIE(M) AMEN. Ovin has been named in the account of the foundress as being her chief agent, to whom was entrusted the civil government of her territory. There is every reason to believe that this cross was erected either by him or to his memory; and if so it must be twelve centuries old. Just west of the monks' door is the entrance to the recently constructed vestry for the choir-boys. This is thought to have been originally the entrance to the cloister library or bookcase. #The Octagon.#--Few visitors will perhaps be disposed to examine any of the objects of interest in the cathedral before an inspection of the beauties of this magnificent erection, the first sight of which, from one of the smaller arches towards the aisles, is a thing never to be forgotten. There is not one of the many able artists and architects who have written about the octagon that has not spoken of it as being without rival in the whole world; and the admiration that was expressed fifty and more years ago would have been far greater, and the enthusiasm more profound, had the writers seen it in its present state of perfect restoration. No description can do adequate justice to the grandeur of the conception or to the brilliancy of the execution of this renowned work. The four great arches rise to the full height of the roof; that to the east, indeed, is higher than the vaulted roof of the choir and presbytery, the intervening space being occupied with tracery of wood-work on painted boards, the Saviour on the Cross being painted in the middle. The wooden vaulting of the octagon springs from capitals on the same level as those of the great arches. The four small arches to the aisles are of course no higher than the roofs of the aisles: above these, on each side, are three figures of apostles, under canopies with crockets. The figures are seated, and each holds an emblem, by which it can be seen for whom the figure is intended. It may be noticed (in the central figure on the south-west side) that S. Paul, not S. Matthias, is put in the place of Iscariot. The hood-moulds of the arches are terminated by heads, of which six are portraits. King Edward III. and Queen Philippa are at the north-east, Bishop Hotham and Prior Crauden at the south-east, Walsingham and his master mason (so it is believed) at the north-west; those to the south-west are mere grotesques. Above the seated figures on each side is a window of four broad lights, filled with stained glass. The eight chief vaulting shafts rise from the ground as slight triple shafts; they support, a little above the spring of the side arches, large corbels, which form bases for exquisitely designed niches, and through these spring more shafts reaching to the vault. On each of the corbels is a boldly carved scene from the career of S. Etheldreda; they commence at the north-west arch. The subjects (two to each arch) are as follows: NORTH-WEST ARCH.--S. Etheldreda's second marriage. Her taking the veil at Coldingham. NORTH-EAST ARCH.--Her staff taking root. Her preservation in the flood at S. Abb's Head. SOUTH-EAST ARCH.--Her installation as Abbess of Ely, Her death and burial (two scenes). SOUTH-WEST ARCH.--One of her miracles. Her translation. All these incidents have been sufficiently explained in the chapter on the history of the building, with the exception of the seventh. The authority for this is the "Liber Eliensis." A man named Brytstan,[5] being ill, had vowed that if he were restored to health he would become a monk. Upon his taking steps to carry out this intention he was charged with seeking refuge in a monastery simply to escape the consequences of robberies of which he had been guilty in his business. After trial at Huntingdon he was condemned and put in chains in prison in London. After continuous prayers for the intercession of S. Etheldreda and S. Benedict, these two saints appeared to him, and the latter drew the links of the chain apart and set the prisoner free. The miracle came to the knowledge of Matilda, Henry I.'s queen, and investigations followed, which resulted in the release of Brytstan, and he was conducted to Ely with manifestations of joy. Some have thought that the ribands still to be bought at the stalls at the annual fair, and known as "S. Audrey's laces," are a reminiscence of this legend, and that they represent the chains from which Brytstan was delivered. But the more probable explanation is that they refer to the disease that afflicted S. Etheldreda, a swelling in the neck, which she held to be a fit punishment for the vanity of her youthful days, when she was fond of wearing necklaces and jewels. "Saint Audrey's laces" became corrupted into "Tawdry laces"; and so the adjective has been applied to all cheap and showy pieces of female ornament. Special attention may be given to some points in the sculpture of these corbels, every one of which is worthy of careful study. In (1) notice the figure of Ovin, previously named as the steward, bearing an official staff, or perhaps a sword. In (2) the surrender of royal dignity is signified by the crown placed on the altar. In (3) the leaf-bearing staff has an abundance of conventional foliage. In (5) Wilfrid bears a simple pastoral staff, and not an archbishop's cross, as in previous scenes--a point to which Dean Stubbs calls attention as indicating the historical accuracy of the designer, because in former scenes the archbishop is represented in his own diocese, while here he is a simple bishop in banishment. In (6) there is a dignified figure--probably S. Sexburga--standing behind the priest who is ministering to the dying abbess. In (7) the kneeling figure is S. Benedict handling the fetters. Until the plain colour-wash with which the vault had been covered was removed in 1850 there was no knowledge of what had been the character of the original decoration. Traces of colouring were then discovered, and in some places geometrical designs, but there was no evidence of anything very elaborate. The whole of the present decoration forms accordingly an entirely new design; it is by Mr. Gambier Parry, who himself painted the principal figures. The central boss of the lantern is carved in oak, and is original; only its painting is new. All the remaining figures are wholly new. Groups of seraphim, bands of heavenly minstrels bearing all kinds of ancient musical instruments, monograms, and sacred emblems, all combine to give a rich variety. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #The Transepts.#--The architectural student will find the transepts of the greatest interest; as in them is to be seen the earliest work in the cathedral. They are similar in general character to those at Winchester, which were built by Abbot Simeon's brother. The transepts at Winchester were ready for consecration in 1093, and this was seven years before Simeon came to Ely. The triforium is probably only in part Simeon's work; and the clerestory was almost certainly added by his successor. Both transepts have aisles, but in the south transept the western aisle is walled off. Along the western wall in the north transept is a stone bench. The square capitals of the piers here have indentations at the corners, and this is an early example of such indentation. Some slight ornamentation may be noticed in the cushions of the capitals, especially in the south transept, where there are traces of ancient colouring. The three chapels to the east of the north transept are divided by walls, and two have wooden screens. One of these has been restored by Professor Stanton for use as a chapel for early celebrations and for private devotion. Some early paintings on the vaulted roof, representing the martyrdom of S. Edmund, are sufficient to justify this being called S. Edmund's chapel. It is probable that this was the Chantry on the Green (so called from the place of residence of the four chaplains) founded by Bishop Northwold. The screen in front of this chapel is exceedingly light and graceful; it dates from about 1350. At one time it is said to have been in the south transept, and afterwards where it now stands; it was removed in 1865, but is now replaced. In the south transept the whole of the eastern aisle is walled off for the library. In the plan in Bentham's History, 1770, only the single bay to the south is marked as the library. The walls of partition between the chapels were taken down in 1814. The western aisle has always been separated by a low wall of Norman date, possibly a little later than the adjacent piers; this wall has an intersecting arcade of round arches, with a string of chevrons above. This aisle is used as a vestry. Within is the ancient Norman vaulting; and there are some good original windows, which cannot be seen from without except from the Deanery gardens. From the devices on the late Perpendicular door it is clear that it belonged to some church erected by Bishop Alcock; it was only brought here from Landbeach about fifty years ago. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The triforium and clerestory ranges are almost identical with those in the nave. In the south transept the western windows of the triforium have been altered into three-light Perpendicular windows. The roofs of both transepts have been raised, but it is not known at what time. At the north end are two large windows of good Perpendicular character; at the south is a single window of seven lights, of very singular design. At the ends of the transepts are two original galleries, level with the triforium, supported on round-headed arches. On the north are five arches, not of equal height, the two most lofty of which reach nearly to the triforium level. On the south are six much lower arches, and above them is a blank arcade of intersecting arches. In the floor of the south transept are laid some very remarkable ancient tiles. [Illustration: THE CHOIR SCREEN. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #The Choir# and #Presbytery#--A beautiful screen of oak, with brass gates, designed by Scott, divides the choir from the octagon. It is of early geometric character; and if there had been an original screen of this design it would have been intermediate in date between the presbytery and the choir. The tracery is very graceful. A rich cresting runs along the top, cut through by the gable over the gates, which bears a terminal cross. On both sides the small niches have statuettes. [Illustration: ELEVATION OF THE BAYS OF THE PRESBYTERY. (_for exterior see p. 55._)] The choir, of three bays, is the work of Bishop Hotham. The last six bays are the work of Bishop Northwold, and form the presbytery. In the present arrangement seven of these nine bays form the ritual choir, and two form the retro-choir. The difference in date between the presbytery and choir may be roughly taken as very nearly a hundred years. The former had been begun in 1240; the latter was nearly finished in 1340. In the juxtaposition of these two magnificent specimens of the Early English and Decorated periods of architecture there is an opportunity of comparison which on such a scale occurs nowhere else. It is to be remembered that in neither case is the treatment of the upper part quite in accordance with the usual practice of the period. When the presbytery was being built there were still standing east of the central tower the four original bays of the Norman choir. These, it may be assumed, were very similar in character to those in the nave. There would, beyond question, have been in each bay large triforium arches, each with a couple of subordinate arches; and a single window in the clerestory with a blank arch on each side. Bishop Northwold's work was purposely made to correspond with these bays as far as Early English work could do so; and when after the fall of the tower it became necessary to rebuild the choir, Bishop Hotham in like manner made his Decorated work correspond with the Early English presbytery. The choir is, as would be expected, richer in detail as well as more elaborate in design; and it would be difficult to find in England anything to surpass the tracery of the clerestory windows and triforium arches, the beautiful cusped inner arches of the clerestory range, the open parapets at the base of the two stages, or the long corbels, covered with foliage, that support the vaulting shafts. In the choir the clerestory windows have four lights each; in the presbytery are triplets. The old colouring has been renewed throughout. On the north side of the choir the three bays are precisely alike; but on the south there is a variation in the tracery of the western triforium arch. There are also shields of arms (of the See of Ely and of Bishop Hotham) in the spandrels of the triforium and arch below; and the shaft between this arch and the next is enlarged at the top into a base for a statue (probably of S. Etheldreda); while level with the string above is a very fine large canopy (called by the work-men "the table"), which is like nothing else in the cathedral. The clerestory windows also on the south have different tracery. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The difference between the two styles of architecture is well marked in the groining of the roof, the Decorated portion being much more elaborate. Some of the bosses are very remarkable: one has S. Etheldreda with pastoral staff; one has the coronation of the Virgin Mary; one has the foundress bearing the model of a church, in which (as Dean Stubbs has pointed out) both arms of the western transept are represented, so that it is a fair inference that at the time this roof was constructed the whole of the western transept was standing. [Illustration: THE TRIFORIUM OF THE CHOIR AND PRESBYTERY. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] Between the choir and presbytery there rise the massive Norman piers built as the entrance to the apse; and these are the only remains of the Norman church east of the octagon. Since the careful examination of the foundations here, made by Professor Willis in 1850, it is not thought certain that the apse was actually built. The foundations of the apse were very manifest, and the design did not include a passage round it; but there was also clear evidence that the apsidal foundation was altered into a straight wall of the same thickness, and the probability is that before the apse was built "it was resolved to convert it into a square-ended presbytery, such as we now see at Oxford Cathedral and St. Cross."[6] [Illustration: THE CHOIR STALLS: NORTH SIDE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The two most western triforium arches in the presbytery are glazed, the roof of the triforium itself being wholly removed. The object of this alteration has been fully explained in the account of the exterior of the cathedral. On the ground beneath were the shrines; and under one of the arches was erected, not long afterwards, the monument of Bishop Barnet, in whose time and at whose expense the alteration was made. The arrangement of the lancets at the east end is even more effective within than without. The east end of Ely, says Professor Freeman, "is the grandest example of the grouping of lancets.... Ely is also undoubtedly the head of all east ends and eastern limbs of that class in which the main body of the church is of the same height throughout, and in which the aisles are brought out to the full length of the building."[7] It will hardly be believed that the magnificent stalls which were formerly ranged in the octagon, and at a later period in the presbytery, were once painted all over with a mahogany colour. They are the finest Decorated stalls in England, the beautiful ones at Winchester being of late thirteenth-century date. The carved panels in the upper parts are new, and are the gifts of individual donors. They were executed in Belgium. It is not known how these spaces were originally filled; Mr. le Strange thought possibly with heraldic devices. The designs on the south are from the New Testament, those on the north from the Old Testament The seats in the lower range are also modern, as are the various statuettes at the Stall ends, which represent the builders of the most important parts of the fabric. On the misereres of the ancient stalls are some wonderful grotesque carvings. The brass eagle lectern has been copied, as to its main features, from an ancient example at Isleham. The organ is in the triforium, on the north, and part of the case projects over the easternmost arch of the choir. The reredos is the first example in modern cathedral work of the elaborate style of decoration for the most holy part of the sanctuary, which is now not uncommon. It was the gift of Mr. John Dunn Gardner, of Chatteris, and was designed by Scott. It forms the central portion of a screen of stone which extends for the whole width of the presbytery. The lower part of the whole is of deeply cut diaper-work; the upper part has an open arcade of six arches, each with a mullion and tracery in the early Decorated style. The reredos itself is of alabaster, and consists of five main arches under canopies, and with tracery, and is ornamented with a rich abundance of mosaic work, panels, medallions, statuettes, twisted columns, and various kinds of carving. Five scenes from the last days of our Lord's life on earth are carved in relief under canopies beneath the chief arches. A full description, giving all the details of the sculpture, and the materials of the mosaic, and the different persons and emblematic graces represented by the busts and figures, would require more space than we can give. The altar cross, of silver gilt, is in memory of Bishop Woodford. [Illustration: THE REREDOS. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] [Illustration: THE LADY-CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #The Lady-chapel.#--Notwithstanding the cruel mutilation of the sculpture all round this chapel, it can be seen that for perfection of exquisite work there is no building of the size in this country worthy for one moment to be compared with this in its unmutilated state. Its single defect strikes the beholder at once: the span of the roof is too broad and the vaulting too depressed for the size of the chapel. The windows, of which those on the north have been restored, have already been described. The end windows, which are of great size, are of later date; that to the east has a look of Transition work about it. The building was finished in 1349, and the east window was inserted by Bishop Barnet, _circa_ 1373. For a possible explanation of the insertion of this window, only a quarter of a century after the completion of the chapel, see _ante_, p. 52. It is not thought probable that the original designers left anything incomplete. The great beauty of the interior consists in the series of tabernacle work and canopies that runs round all the four sides below and between the windows. The heads of the canopies project. In the tracery beneath, at the head of the mullion, was a statue. The delicate carving of the cusps and other tracery is varied throughout. On the spandrels were incidents connected with the history of the Virgin Mary (mainly legendary) and of Julian the Apostate; and though in no single instance is a perfect uninjured specimen left, yet enough remains, in all but a few cases, for the original subjects to be identified.[8] All was once enriched with colour, and many traces remain; and in various parts of the windows there are fragments of stained glass. Most of the monumental tablets which once disfigured the arcade below the windows have been happily removed into the vestibule. The arches and canopies at the east end are arranged differently from those on the sides. In the roof, which reminds us of the contemporary roof in the choir, are some carved bosses, not large, but singularly good. Among the subjects can be recognised a Crucifixion, with half-figures beside the cross; Adam and Eve; the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth, holding between them a book inscribed "Magnificat"; the Annunciation, with "Ave Maria Gracia plena"; the Ascension, indicated by the skirt and feet of the Saviour and five heads of apostles; the coronation of the Virgin; and the Virgin in an aureole. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF THE LADY-CHAPEL. _Rev. T. Perkins Photo._] The arrangements for worship present an appearance very unlike those of sixty years ago. A writer in 1876, writing of his early recollections, says: "When I first knew Ely the state of the lady-chapel--then, as now, used as a parish church--was so miserable from decay, violence, and neglect, that it was simply painful to enter it." ... Now, "well-designed benches have replaced the mean deal square pews, the whitewash and yellow-wash which thickly clogged the carving has been removed, the windows have been repaired and made water-tight, and the altar and its adjuncts made to assume an air of reverent dignity." We do not remember to have anywhere seen an explanation of the fact that this chapel is now used as the parish church of Holy Trinity parish; whereas the old church, the destruction of which occasioned the appropriation of the lady-chapel to parochial use, was dedicated to S. Cross. #Monuments And Stained Glass#--It is convenient to treat the monuments as a separate subject, so as not to break the continuity of the architectural description. We will commence at the west, proceeding along the north aisle, and so round the cathedral, pointing out those that have anything of special interest. Against the blocked doorway which gave access to the church of S. Cross is placed an altar-tomb to the late Bishop Woodford (see below, p. 129). The figure of the bishop is vested in cope and mitre, and has a pastoral staff. The Crucifixion is on the wall at the back. There are several shields of arms relating to the bishop's career or to the cathedral history: among these are those of the Merchant Taylors' Company, at whose school he was educated; Pembroke College, Cambridge, of which he was a member; and of other colleges at Cambridge founded by bishops of Ely. Three tablets in this north aisle, near the transept, record donations towards the re-paving of the nave and aisles in 1676, 1869, and 1873. There is no monumental memorial in the nave. But the large slab of marble in the centre, just in front of the position of the old rood-loft, which has been already referred to as traditionally marking the grave of Alan de Walsingham, should be noticed. Under the four arches of the presbytery on the north, between the stalls and the altar, are monuments of great importance. First we see that of Bishop Redman (d. 1505), a very fine specimen of enriched Perpendicular work. The mitred figure of the bishop is on an altar-tomb beneath a richly groined roof, and a space is left at the feet, where a priest might stand to pray for the soul of the deceased prelate.[9] There are grand canopies on the sides, with crockets and coloured shields bearing emblems of the Crucifixion, the arms of the See of Ely and of S. Asaph, where Bishop Redman was at first; but the arms of the See of Exeter, from which diocese he came to Ely, as now used, are not to be seen. Above the roof is fine open screen-work, and against the adjoining piers, east and west, are large canopied niches. Next to this is the effigy of Bishop Kilkenny (d. 1256), a fine example of Early English. The figure has cope, mitre, and staff. The bishop's heart only was buried here. [Illustration: THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE.] In the next arch is a large Decorated structure of two stories, believed by Scott to have been built by Walsingham as the base for the shrine of S. Etheldreda. It was formerly known as Bishop Hotham's shrine, and his effigy was placed beneath it. The lower story is open. In the arch north of the altar is the tomb of the builder of the presbytery, Bishop Northwold (d. 1254). He is represented in full vestments. At the east of the tomb is a curious carving, apparently meant for the martyrdom of S. Edmund. A king naked above the middle, except for his kingly crown, is tied to a tree and pierced by arrows; archers with drawn bows are behind; at one end the king has his head, still crowned, in his hands, with a figure bearing a sword over him; at the other side is either the wolf of the legend or an evil spirit in animal shape. In the aisle itself are several memorials, mostly of the eighteenth century, that call for no special mention. The latest is the brass to Mr. Basevi, 1845. At the east end of the aisle is the #Chapel Of Bishop Alcock# (d. 1500). The date, 1488, is fixed precisely by the inscribed stone now placed in the wall above a small stone altar. The stone in the wall has five crosses, as though intended for a chantry altar, but the slab of the altar beneath has no crosses. The inscription is, "Iohanes Alkoc epus Eliesis hanc fabricam fieri fecit M cccc iiij(xx) viij." The sides of the chapel are covered with niches, canopies, crockets, panels, and devices. The roof has fan tracery with a massive pendant. A singular little chantry is at the north, access to which is through a door at the foot of the bishop's tomb. In a small window here is a little contemporary stained glass. The bishop's rebus--a cock on a globe--repeatedly occurs in the stone-work. The ornamentation strikes the spectator as being excessive and too profuse. No figures have been replaced in the niches. In the retro-choir a mosaic slab over the remains of Bishop Allen (d. 1845) has a curious history. A son of the bishop was passing through Paris soon after Napoleon's tomb was finished, and the surplus materials were offered for sale by auction. Some of these were purchased by Mr. Allen and utilised for the slab over the bishop's grave. The large monument to Canon Mill (d. 1853) has an effigy in copper on a support of marble and alabaster; students of India and Cambridge are by the feet. The tomb of Cardinal Luxemburg (d. 1443) is beneath the most eastern arch on the south, just north of Bishop West's chapel. When the monument was concealed behind some wood-work great dispute arose as to the headdress of the effigy. Bentham has an engraving with a cardinal's hat on the archbishop's head. Cole records that it was a mitre. When the wood-work was removed it was found that the figure was headless, as it still remains. [Illustration: THE EARLY ENGLISH PRESBYTERY AND THE SUPPOSED SHRINE OF S. ETHELDREDA.] Corresponding to the chapel of Bishop Alcock on the north is that of #Bishop West# (d. 1533) in the south aisle. This is a most valuable example of the Renaissance style. The niches and canopies with which the walls are covered are much smaller than those in the other chapel, and consequently more numerous; but by reason of the great delicacy of the tracery and the wonderful variety of the designs there is no impression that the decoration is overdone. No perfect specimen is left of the statues or of the heads which were introduced in the tabernacle work; and in its complete state this exquisite work can have existed for not more, than twelve or thirteen years, as the Order in Council for removing images was made in 1548. The roof is curious, as being an adaptation in the Renaissance of the late Gothic fan tracery Some colouring remains. The wrought-iron gates, with motto in Latin several times repeated, and the curious little pendants from the roof, consisting of angels bearing shields of arms, should be noticed. Bishops Greene (d. 1738), Keene (d. 1781), Sparke (d. 1836), and Woodford (d. 1885) are all buried in this chapel. On the south side, within a shrine-like receptacle, have been placed the relics of seven early benefactors of the church. Originally buried in the Saxon church, they have been several limes removed. They were placed here in 1771. The names are carved in seven shallow niches. One was an archbishop, five were bishops, and the seventh was Alderman Brithnoth. The dates range from 991 to 1067. The very interesting early Norman monumental slab, with carving in relief, preserved in the aisle, does not strictly belong to the cathedral, having been found at S. Mary's Church. Above a round-headed canopy are some Norman buildings; in the chamfer of the canopy is an invocation of the Archangel Michael, a figure of whom below has wings and nimbus, and in the robe a portion of a naked figure with pastoral staff beside it. [Illustration: BISHOP ALCOCK'S CHAPEL.] Proceeding westward, the monuments under the windows are those of Canon Selwyn (d. 1875), Bishop Gunning (d. 1684), wearing a mitre, with long hair and short beard, and Bishop Heton (d. 1609), in a cope and having an ample beard. Under the arches of the presbytery, after the huge tablet to Bishop Moore (d. 1714), are four monuments. The first is all that is left of the tomb of Bishop Hotham (d. 1337). The next has figures of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, K.G., and his two wives. The earl was beheaded in 1470, and is not interred here. One of the wives was Cecily Neville, sister of Richard, Earl of Warwick, the King-maker. Of the tomb of Bishop Barnet (d. 1373) the base only remains. It resembles in general character the monument of Bishop Northwold. [Illustration: BISHOP WEST'S CHAPEL.] Under the last arch of the presbytery is the fine monument of Bishop Louth (d. 1298). It is a very beautiful early Decorated composition. Two brasses remain in the floor of the south aisle, both of great interest. The famous brass of Bishop Goodrich (d. 1554) represents him in full vestments (wearing a chasuble, not a cope), with mitre and pastoral staff (see below, p. 124). This is specially noteworthy as he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Reformation changes and is believed to have encouraged, if he did not order the wholesale destruction of statues and other ornamentation of the cathedral. He was Lord Chancellor for three years, and the Great Seal is figured on the brass. Dean Tyndall (d. 1614) is represented in a very different style. He is figured in academical dress, wearing a ruff and a skull-cap, and with a long beard. On one of the shields of arms may be seen the arms of the Deanery impaling Tyndall. Very many other tablets and inscriptions remain; but we have no space for a more extended treatment of the subject. In the south transept is a tablet to Dean Merivale (d. 1894), with a likeness in slight relief; and mention of this gives opportunity for saying that the very greatest care seems to have been taken to secure good likenesses in the most recent monuments, those of three, as to which the writer can speak from personal knowledge--Bishop Woodford, Dean Merivale, and Canon Selwyn--being of conspicuous merit. It would require a book to itself to treat exhaustively of the stained glass in the windows. In nearly all cases, certainly in those which can be examined without the aid of a glass, the names of the donors, or of the persons to whose memory the windows were inserted, are plainly set forth either in the windows or on brass tablets adjoining. It should be stated that the greatest encouragement to this form of decoration was given by Canon E. B. Sparke, who secured, partly by his influence and persuasion, and largely by his own munificence, the insertion of so many windows. It is true that in the first instance not a few were prepared in too great a hurry, and some of those first placed in the restored cathedral (as those in the octagon) have been at a later time condemned as being deficient in harmony of colouring and in artistic design; but there is little fault to be found with the most recent additions. Among so many it is inevitable that very different degrees of merit will be exhibited. It has been said that the entire series is an exemplification of the Horatian maxim, "Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura"; and, except that we should be disposed to exchange the position of the words "quædam" and "plura" (if the metre allowed it), with this sentiment we agree. FOOTNOTES: [1] Quite recently further security has been attained by a system of iron bracing, not visible from beneath. [2] "Ely Gossip," p. 39. [3] When Murray's "Eastern Cathedrals" was published, Mr. Gambier Parry's work had not been begun; and by comparing the above list with the list there given as the proposed series of sacred subjects for the last six bays of the ceiling, it will be seen that the last three subjects are not the same as at first intended. [4] From the key to the ceiling by Dean Stubbs, in "Handbook," 20th ed., pp. 60, 61. [5] Admirable and exhaustive descriptions of these pieces of sculpture, with sketches of six of them, are given in Dean Stubbs' "Historical Memorials of Ely Cathedral," pp. 71-84. The account in the text of the miracle on the seventh corbel is condensed from this description. [6] Canon Stewart, in _The Builder_, April 2nd, 1892. [7] Introduction to Farren's "Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich." [8] For a full account and list of all the subjects as far as is known, see Dean Stubbs' catalogue of them, abridged from Dr. Montagu James' work on the iconography of the lady-chapel, given in the "Handbook," 20th ed., pp. 127-132. [9] In the inventory of plate, etc., "belonging to the late priory at Ely," made 31 Hen. VIII., printed in Bentham's "History" from the MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the only altars mentioned are the high altar, those in the lady-chapel, in the chapels of Bishops Alcock and West, and in "Byslope Redmannes Chaple." [Illustration: THE CHOIR LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: THE CHAPTER SEAL. _From Bentham._] CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE MONASTERY. All that need be said of the original establishment at Ely has already been told in the account of the foundress. There is no doubt that in the monastery there were religious persons of both sexes. Dean Stubbs says "the mixed community was the fashion of the time"[1] and he gives Coldingham, Kildare, and three in Normandy--Chelles, Autun Brie, and Fontevrault--as examples of similar foundations. In this instance the abbess was the head of all; and this accounts for Bede's calling the house a nunnery. What name was given to the superior of the men's part does not appear. Of all the abbesses who ruled over this "twin monastery" we know only the names of the first four; and all these were in due time canonised. These were S. Etheldreda (673-679), S. Sexburga (679-699), S. Ermenilda (699-?), and S. Werburga (dates unknown). If we allow ten years for the duration of the rule of the last two, we still have the names of the abbesses for only thirty-six years out of the one hundred and ninety-seven years that the institution lasted. It is said to have been in a very flourishing condition when the Danes came to destroy it; and there is no hint anywhere that there was not a continuous succession of abbesses during the whole period. S. Sexburga, the elder sister of the foundress, succeeded her as abbess. She was the widowed queen of Ercombert, King of Kent, and had herself founded the monastery of Sheppey, at the place now known as Minster, and set over it her daughter Ermenilda, another widowed queen. S. Sexburga joined the house at Ely, and had resided there some time before her sister's death. The body of S. Etheldreda was in her time removed into the church, under the superintendence of Archbishop Wilfrid. Bede gives a full account of the translation. The monks who had the charge of providing a stone coffin suitable for the reception of the remains of the foundress are said to have "found" one of marble among the ruins of Grantchester, the name of the old town of Cambridge. When disinterred, the body was reported free from all corruption. The account would not be complete without the customary miracles--marvellous cures effected by touching the clothes and coffin, and by the healing efficacy of a spring that flowed from the place of the first interment. This translation took place on October 17th, 695. This is the day assigned to the commemoration of S. Etheldreda. The importance of this festival is sometimes held to account for the fact that the Feast of S. Luke, on October 18th, is not preceded by a fast. But as no fast is assigned to the vigils of the Conversion of S. Paul, S. Mark, or Saints Philip and James, it is questionable if this opinion is sound. Upon the death of S. Sexburga, in 699, her body was laid in the church next to that of her sister. The next abbess was her daughter, S. Ermenilda. Her husband had been Wulphere, King of Mercia, who died in 675. She had been professed at Ely, and left to become the head of her mother's foundation at Sheppey. The date of her death is not known. She was succeeded, both at Sheppey and at Ely, by her daughter, S. Werburga. How long she ruled at Ely is not recorded. She was buried by her own desire at Hanbury, in Staffordshire. When the Danes reached Derbyshire in their incursions, this was deemed no longer a safe place, and her body was removed to Chester, where the cathedral was afterwards placed under the joint invocation of S. Werburga and S. Oswald.[2] The reason why it is suggested above that ten years may be taken as the limit of time to be assigned to the rules of S. Ermenilda and S. Werburga is that the author of her Life[3] says that her body was taken up "9 years after her decease, to translate it to a more eminent part" of Hanbury Church, by order of Ceolred, King of Mercia. As this king died at latest in 717, it would follow that S. Werburga must have died not later than 708. Probably in the Isle of Ely more special respect was paid to the festivals of these four sainted abbesses than elsewhere. But we find no churches dedicated to any of the four in the isle except those previously named as dedicated to S. Etheldreda, the cathedral, Histon, and a chapel at Swaffham Prior. Minster Church, in Kent, is dedicated to Saints Mary and Sexburga. In a tenth-century will of the widowed queen of Edmund I. we read: "I give to S. Peter's, and to S. Ætheldryth, and to S. Wihtburh, and to S. Sexburh, and to S. Eormenhild at Ely where my lord's body rests, the three lands which we both promised to God and His saint."[4] There were no doubt side-altars erected in honour of one or more of the four. At Wisbech, for instance, there was a "light" of S. Etheldreda, to which we find persons bequeathing small sums. Of the monastery of S. Etheldreda and that of Bishop Ethelwold, Professor Freeman writes that there is "no continuity between the two."[5] By this we must probably understand that he considered the original monastery absolutely at an end after its destruction by the Danes; and that the monastery founded in its place a century later was something quite new, that had no claim to be regarded as the continuation of the former one. But the history of the place during the interval was not an absolute blank. The Danish destruction took place in 870. The reconstruction by King Edgar and Bishop Ethelwold took place in 970. In the monastery so founded, or, as most would prefer to say, resuscitated, there were no nuns. It has been pointed out that at Ely, unlike other religious houses in the district, there was not complete desolation during the century intervening between the destruction of the former and the construction of the latter house. Some clergy banded themselves together and formed a religious community, of what precise character is not known, but apparently it was something in the nature of a college of secular priests. When the second monastery arose, these clergy were either absorbed or evicted. #Brithnoth# (970-981) was the first abbot. He had been Prior of Winchester. He devoted his energies to the consolidation of the new house, securing many fresh endowments, settling the boundaries of the Isle of Ely, and laying out the grounds of the abbey in beautiful order. The church possessed only the bodies of three of the four saints connected with the original foundation. There being no hope of recovering the fourth, Bishop Ethelwold and the abbot resolved to find a substitute in the body of S. Withburga, the youngest sister of S. Etheldreda. Her youth had been spent at Holkham, in Norfolk, where the church is now said to be dedicated to her, and afterwards founded a nunnery at Dereham, in the same county, where she died and was buried. A long account is given by Bentham[6] of the trickery by which her body was purloined and brought to Ely, where it was interred near the bodies of the three abbesses.[7] Brithnoth is said to have been murdered at the instigation of Queen Elfrida, having grievously offended her in many ways, especially by reproving her infamous and abandoned life. This is the same Elfrida who, two years before, had caused her stepson, King Edward (thence called the Martyr), to be assassinated in order that her own son, Ethelred (the Unready), might have the crown. Edward only reigned four years; but during that time much that his father, King Edgar, had done towards establishing the monastic rule in England was set aside. In some instances "the monastic rule was quashed, and minsters dissolved, and monks driven out, and God's servants put down, whom King Edgar had ordered the holy bishop Ethelwold to establish."[8] The queen confessed before her death to having compassed the death of Abbot Brithnoth. His body was conveyed to Ely for interment. He was succeeded by #Elsin# (981-1016), "of a noble family." In his time very considerable donations and bequests were made to the monastery. In some cases members of the house who rose to eminence and obtained lucrative appointments became benefactors; sometimes the parents of young men who joined the society testified their confidence by munificent gifts; sometimes widows gave manors and lands in their lifetimes or in their wills. In one case at least much wealth was acquired by way of penance. Leofwin, a man of large possessions, in a violent fit of anger had occasioned the death of his own father. In his remorse he betook himself to Rome to obtain absolution, undertaking to perform any penance that might be enjoined. The pope required him to dedicate his eldest son to the religious life in some monastery which he was liberally to endow, and to bestow largely of his substance to the relief of the poor. His son Edelmor was accordingly devoted to the service of God at Ely, and very large estates were assigned by Leofwin to the monastery. He further improved the church, rebuilding and enlarging the south aisle, and joining it to the rest of the building; and in one of its porches, or side-chapels (_in uno porticu_), he built an altar to the Virgin Mary, erecting over it a stately image of gold and silver, adorned with valuable jewels. It is probably to this altar that reference is made when we find some speak as if there were a lady-chapel in existence before the present one. At Leofwin's death his body was buried in the church, and to it he bequeathed his entire property. Alderman Brithnoth, a man of great rank and eminence, and of great reputation as a soldier, was another considerable benefactor. On one occasion he was marching with his forces from the north to encounter the Danes, who had been plundering in Suffolk and had reached Essex. Passing Ramsey Abbey, he sent word to the abbot that he proposed to stop there with his men for refreshment. But the abbot, though willing to entertain the alderman and a few select friends, declined the honour of providing for his troops. This did not suit Brithnoth, and he went on to Ely. There the whole company was hospitably entertained; and Brithnoth was so pleased that he on the next day made over to the monastery a number of manors into their immediate possession, and also assigned certain others, on condition that if he should be slain in battle his body should be buried at Ely. In the battle the English forces were outnumbered, and Brithnoth fell, the Danes taking his head away with them in their triumph. On hearing of his death, the abbot and some of the monks went to the scene of the engagement, recovered the body, and interred it with all honour in their church. A great accession of dignity was granted by King Ethelred. While his brother, King Edward, was on the throne, Ethelred, with his mother, had visited the tomb of S. Etheldreda, and professed great admiration for her character and work. When Ethelred became king he granted to the churches of Ely, Canterbury, and Glastonbury the office of Chancellor of the King's Court, putting, as it were, the office in commission; so the abbot of each place, or his deputy, officiated as chancellor for periods of four months each. This privilege was only retained till the time of the Normans. Elsin died in a good old age, "after a life of great sanctity and observance of the commandments of God, and after the acquisition of much honour and great possessions to the church." His death took place, according to the "Liber Eliensis," in King Ethelred's time--that is, not later than 1016. Wharton gives 1019 as the date. Possibly the unsettled state of the kingdom may have caused the abbey to be vacant for three years. At the Battle of Assendun, 1016, some of the monks of Ely, as well as Ednod, Bishop of Dorchester, and the Abbot of Ramsey, were slain. The Ely monks took with them to the camp the relics of S. Wendreda, which were there lost and never recovered. Canute is thought to have acquired them, and to have bestowed them upon the Church of Canterbury. The body of Bishop Ednod was brought to Ely, with the intention of taking it on to Ramsey, where he had been abbot, for interment. But when the body arrived at Ely it was buried privately by night in the church. Of #Leofwin#, called also Oschitel (1019?-1022), who is given in the lists as the third abbot, nothing whatever is known, except that he was deposed by the monks, and reinstated, after a journey to Rome, by the pope. His successor, #Leofric# (1022-1029), who had been prior, is remembered only as being abbot when Archbishop Wulstan of York and Bishop Alfwin of Elmham were buried at Ely, and when divers possessions were acquired by gift or bequest of a certain Countess Godiva. #Leofsin# (1029-1045), like his predecessor, was appointed by King Canute. Canute was much in the eastern counties; and he is said to have made a point, when possible, of keeping the Feast of the Purification at Ely, that being the date on which the abbot's turn as chancellor commenced. It was on one of these occasions, while coming by water with his queen and nobles, that the remarkable incident occurred of his hearing the monks singing in the distance, and breaking out himself into verse. Four lines of his song have been preserved.[9] The Latin of them, as given in the "Liber Eliensis," runs thus: "Dulce cantaverunt monachi in Ely Dum Canutus rex navigaret prope ibi, Nunc milites navigate propius ad terram, Et simul audiamus monachorum harmoniam." The incident has attracted many writers, and not a few poems have been written upon it. Wordsworth's sonnet on the subject commences: "A pleasant music floats along the mere. From monks in Ely chanting service high, While as Canute the king is rowing by: 'My oarsmen,' quoth the mighty king, 'draw near, That we the sweet song of the monks may hear.'" And in a ballad upon Chelsea, a quarter of New York where the General Theological Seminary of the American church is situated, a poet of that communion has these verses: "When old Canúte the Dane Was merry England's king, A thousand years agone, and more, As ancient rymours sing, His boat was rowing down the Ouse, At eve, one summer day, Where Ely's tall cathedral peered Above the glassy way. Anon, sweet music on his ear, Comes floating from the fane, And listening, as with all his soul Sat old Canúte the Dane; And reverent did he doff his crown, To join the clerkly prayer, While swelled old lauds and litanies Upon the stilly air."[10] Ely minster was, however, not a cathedral in Canute's time; and it is a strange poetical licence that can describe an evening just before the Feast of the Purification as a "summer day." Perhaps the greatest distinction belonging to the monastery at this period was the honour of having educated King Edward the Confessor. He had been brought here in his infancy and offered by his parents on the altar; "and it was a constant tradition with the Monks that he used to take great delight in learning to sing Psalms and godly Hymns, among the children of his own age, in the Cloister, on which account he always retained a favourable regard to the place, after he became King."[11] In 1036, the year after Canute's death, Edward and his brother Alfred came over from Normandy to England, ostensibly to visit their mother, Queen Emma, who lived at Winchester, but really to ascertain the feeling of the nation with regard to the succession to the throne. Alfred fell into the hands of Earl Godwin, by whose orders he was deprived of his eyes and committed to the custody of the monks of Ely. He lived a very short time after this cruel treatment, and died and was buried at Ely. Abbot #Wilfric# (1045-1065) came from Winchester. He was a kinsman of Edward the Confessor. Through this relationship, as well as from personal connection with the place, the king greatly favoured the abbey. He granted a confirmatory charter himself, and obtained a bull from the pope confirming all the rights and privileges of the church. But several of the possessions of the abbey were lost in Wilfric's time. In one instance the High Constable of England seized a village belonging to the monks. Proceedings were taken against him and sentence pronounced; but he evaded even the king's orders, and at last actually secured the possession of the village for his own life, after which it was to revert to the true owners. After the Conquest, however, all the lands of this nobleman were seized by the Conqueror, this village among the rest; nor could the Church of Ely ever regain it. In another instance Abbot Wilfric himself was the cause of the loss of much landed property. In order to advance his brother he conveyed to him, without the consent of the monastery, several estates. Upon discovery, the abbot withdrew from Ely in sorrow and disgrace, and soon fell sick and died. As in the previous case, a composition was effected between Guthmund, the late abbot's brother, and the monks, whereby he was to retain the lands for his life. But, as before, these lands were alienated after the Conquest, and never recovered. Abbot #Thurstan# (1066-1072) was appointed by King Harold, and was the last Saxon abbot. He was a native of the Isle of Ely, having been born at Witchford. He naturally took the part of Edgar Atheling--whom he regarded as the rightful heir after Harold was killed--against William the Conqueror. He gave every support to the many who gathered together in the isle as to a fastness, and encouraged the plans of Hereward. When the cause of the English seemed hopeless, the monks endeavoured to persuade the soldiers to surrender; not being successful, they sent messengers to the king assuring him of their sorrow at having taken part against him, and promising to behave better in future. Afterwards the abbot himself went, and gave the king much information about the place, and the best method of subduing it. But when the isle was finally subdued, the king signified his great displeasure at the behaviour of the monks, and exacted a heavy fine. He is said to have gone in person to the minster, after his victory, and to have made an offering at the altar; but the monks were under such strict surveillance, and the king's visit was so secret, that no one knew of his coming till after he was gone. Thurstan escaped deprivation by his complete submission and prudent conduct, and remained abbot till his death in 1072. But it appears that the monks had not thoroughly made their peace with the Conqueror by the time of Abbot Thurstan's death, for we read, "Eodem anno monachi Elienses, quibusdam Anglorum magnatibus contra regem Willelmum rebellantibus succursum præbentes, exlegati sunt."[12] He was succeeded by a Norman, #Theodwin# (1072-1075), a monk of Jumièges. This was a Benedictine abbey of great repute in the diocese of Rouen. Its church had been built during the abbacy of Robert, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury; and he died and was buried at Jumièges. Theodwin was present at the Council of London in 1075. He died the same year. For upwards of six years the affairs of the monastery were administered by Godfrey, one of the monks. He was an able and efficient administrator. In his time the king sent a number of knights and gentlemen to live at Ely, and he supported them out of the revenues of the house. The names and armorial bearings of these pensioners are preserved in a curious painting called the "Tabula Eliensis," now in the palace. This is a copy, as it is said, of one formerly in the refectory. It cannot be earlier than the fifteenth century. There are in it forty compartments, in each of which is represented a knight and a monk, the names of both being given above, and the arms of the knights being placed beside their heads. Some of the names are still to be found among the nobility and gentry of England, and in some instances the very same armorial bearings are used. This is the case in the families of Lacy, St. Leger, Montfort, Clare, Touchet, Furnival, Fulke, Newbury, Lucy, Talbot, Fitzallen, Longchamp. It need hardly be pointed out that no contemporary Norman painting could have given such shields of arms to the different knights, heraldry having only established itself as a science in England in the thirteenth century. The affairs of the abbey had been in a very unsettled state since the time when the Camp of Refuge was attacked, so many of the estates of the church having been granted to Norman followers of the Conqueror. But the king's resentment at last gave way, and he was induced to sanction an inquiry into the rights and liberties of the monastery. He appointed his brother Odo, then Bishop of Bayeux, to summon an assembly of barons, sheriffs, and others interested in the matter, to consider and determine the claims of the monks. The meeting was held at Kentford, in Suffolk; and the report was so favourable that the king directed the church to be put into possession of all the rights, customs, and privileges which it enjoyed at the time of King Edward's death. Godfrey, the administrator, being made Abbot of Malmesbury, an abbot was at length given to Ely in the person of #Simeon# (1081-1093). He was prior of Winchester, and brother to Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester. He was very old when he came to Ely; but though upwards of eighty-six years of age at the time, he remained abbot for more than twelve years. He laid the foundations of the present church, and completed some part of the building, as has been previously told. He died in 1093.[13] King William II. immediately took possession of the abbey estates, let them to various tenants, and appointed a receiver to pay the rents into his treasury. This arrangement lasted during the remainder of his reign. King Henry I., upon coming to the throne, at once "restored the liberties" of the church, and made Richard (1100-1107) abbot. He was a Norman and a kinsman of the king, as his grandfather, Earl Gilbert, was descended from Robert, Duke of Normandy. He successfully resisted the claim of the Bishop of Lincoln to give him benediction, though Simeon had received benediction from Bishop Remigius. In the Council of London, in 1102, Abbot Richard, with many others, was deposed. "Anselmus archiepiscopus, concilio convocato apud Londiniam, rege consentiente, plures deposuit abbates vel propter simoniam vel propter aliam vitæ infamiam."[14] The abbots of Burgh, Ramsey, and Ely were three of nine so deposed. The "Liber Eliensis" attributes Richard's deposition to the intrigues of the Court. The pope annulled the sentence in the following year. This abbot proceeded with the building of the church, and seems to have finished the Norman transepts and choir, and perhaps the whole of the Norman tower. He is, however, most worthy of note from having been the first to suggest the creation of the See of Ely. He submitted the idea to the king, who was quite favourable; and he then sent messengers to the pope to obtain his approval. Before this could be secured the abbot died, but in little more than two years after his death the proposal was carried into effect. Richard was the last of the ten abbots. Hervey, Bishop of Bangor, had the management of the affairs of the abbey for the next two years. His rigorous discipline at Bangor had aroused very violent opposition, which came at last to armed insurrection, and the bishop had withdrawn to the king's court for safety. When appointed administrator of the abbey at Ely, he exerted himself to bring to a successful conclusion the creation of the bishopric. The consent of the Bishop of Lincoln to the subdivision of his diocese was secured by a grant of the Manor of Spaldwick. At a Council of London in 1108 the enormous size of the Lincoln diocese was under consideration; and Ely seemed on every account to be the best place for the cathedral of a new diocese to be taken from it. The pope was entirely favourable to the design. Though the letters announcing the pope's consent were dated November 21st, 1108, it was not till October, 1109, that the king granted his charter for constituting the bishopric. In this he nominated Hervey to be the first bishop, in accordance with the recommendation of the pope himself. The monastery did not come to an end by the substitution of a bishop for an abbot. But for the purposes of this handbook, concerned as it is mainly with the fabric of the cathedral, the remainder of the historical portion will be associated with the names of the bishops--not that, by any means, the most important works connected with the church were due to the initiation of the bishops, nor was the cost always, or indeed generally, defrayed by them. The monastic body spent large sums upon the building, as has been seen in the case of the octagon: but these works are mostly to be credited to the whole body, and, except in a few cases, which are duly noticed, are not assigned specially to the prior who was the head of the house at the time. [Illustration: BISHOP ALCOCK'S CHANTRY FROM THE RETRO-CHOIR.] FOOTNOTES: [1] "Memorials of Ely," p. 18. Gloucester is another example. [2] "The Cathedral Church of Chester," in Bell's "Cathedral Series," p. 3. [3] In MS., Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Referred to by Bentham, p. 63. [4] Quoted in "Fenland Notes and Queries," i., p. 163. The writer has found a will in the Probate Registry at Peterborough in which the testator, John Mobbe, of March, dates his will on the day of S. Ermenilda (February 13th), 1457. [5] Introduction to Farren's "Cathedral Cities of Ely and Norwich." [6] Pages 76-78. [7] The success of this attempt may have encouraged the monks to make a similar effort some fifty years later. The body of S. Felix, the first of the East Anglian bishops, had been interred at Soham, where he is said to have founded a monastery. Soham was also at first, before the removal of the seat of the bishopric to Dunwich, the headquarters of his diocese. Felix had indeed first been buried at Dunwich, but (probably from fear of the Danes) the body had been removed to Soham. But Soham itself, in its turn, was utterly destroyed by the Danes, and the remains of the bishop became neglected. In 1020 the Abbot of Ramsey obtained permission to move them to his abbey; and while he was doing this, the monks of Ely set out with the intention of intercepting the convoy and securing the body for their own church. A dense fog prevented the Ely men from reaching the monks of Ramsey. [8] "Annals of England," i., p. 115. [9] The Saxon version, together with some valuable notes by Professor Skeat, including a literal transcript, a corrected transcript in the true spelling of the period, and a discussion of the grammatical forms, is given in Dean Stubbs' "Memorials of Ely," pp. 49-52. [10] "Christian Ballads and Poems," by Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe. The author was ultimately Bishop of Western New York. [11] Bentham, p. 97. [12] "Chronicon Angliæ Petriburgense," p. 57, _sub anno_ 1072. [13] Bentham says, "after he had lived too years complete." The "Liber Eliensis" says he was in his eighty-seventh year when appointed abbot; if so, he was nearly, but not quite, one hundred years old at his death. [14] "Chronicon Angliæ Petriburgense," _sub anno_ 1102. CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF THE SEE. Ely thus became a cathedral--of the kind that was called conventual cathedrals. No such cathedral had a dean and canons till the time of Henry VIII. The prior and convent were the custodians of the fabric, and perhaps to a certain extent they acted as the bishop's council; and the bishop, as representing the abbot, had the right to preside in the chapter-house whenever he chose.[1] The bishop also had the power of appointing several of the officers of the monastery, and of displacing them. At Ely the priors were appointed by the bishop until 1198. In 1197 the offices of bishop and prior were vacant at the same time, and the convent was unable to elect a bishop without having a prior: so the Archbishop of Canterbury authorised the monks to proceed to the election of a prior; and it is believed that subsequent priors were all elected by the monks, and not appointed by the bishop. The first bishop, as has been seen, was #Hervey# (1109-1131), Bishop of Bangor.[2] He had been consecrated in 1102. His ecclesiastical discipline in Wales was very strict, and he made many enemies; and he thought to carry out his spiritual censures with the help of armed forces, but insurrections arose, in one of which his own brother and several of his company were slain. Upon this Bishop Hervey made his way to the English court, where he remained until he was sent to take charge of Ely monastery at the death of Abbot Richard. He was bishop here for nearly twenty-two years, and was most active and painstaking in managing the very difficult business of settling the affairs of the bishopric and monastery in such a way that justice was done to both. He died in 1131. After two years #Nigel# (1133-1169) was made bishop. He was Prebendary of S. Paul's and also Treasurer to King Henry I. This latter office necessitated his continuous absence from his diocese, and may also serve to explain the very active part he took in the civil wars. He espoused the cause of the Empress Matilda, and built a castle at Ely as a military position where a good stand could be made against the partisans of Stephen. More than once he narrowly escaped being taken; and when at first Stephen's cause prospered, all Bishop Nigel's estates and property were seized. When the chances of war favoured Matilda he recovered the Isle of Ely and was fully restored to his bishopric. By this time he had had enough of fighting, and made his peace with Stephen. But his troubles were not at an end. As he was going to consult some friends who were with the Empress upon a matter unconnected with politics, he was nearly taken prisoner by a party of the king's forces, losing all his baggage and everything he had with him. Being summoned to Rome, he was, in his absence, suspected of favouring the king's enemies, and his possessions were again seized. Only with great difficulty, and after paying a large fine, did he obtain Stephen's pardon. At one time he was suspended by the Pope "pro bonis Ecclesise suse dispersis"; but the suspension was removed on condition that he restored the goods. When King Henry II. came to the throne, Nigel was made Baron of the Exchequer. Some have attributed to him the foundation of the hospital for canons regular dedicated to S. John at Cambridge, an institution afterwards absorbed in Lady Margaret's College of S. John the Evangelist. He died in 1169. There was an interval of four years before a new bishop was appointed, and it was more than five before #Geoffrey Riddell# (1174-1189) was consecrated. He was one of the king's chaplains, a Baron of the Exchequer, and Archdeacon of Canterbury. The delay in his consecration was due to a disagreement between King Henry II. and his son Henry, who had actually been crowned, the latter considering that he ought to have a voice in the appointment. The dispute was not settled without an appeal to Rome. Bishop Riddell furthered the building of the church, and embellished it in various ways. He also recovered some property that had been taken away. Before consecration he had been compelled to profess publicly that he had had nothing to do with the murder of Archbishop Becket: "Mortem S. Thomæ Archiepiscopi neque verbo neque facto neque scripto scienter procuravit." He became very wealthy. He died in 1189 at Winchester, whither he had gone to welcome King Richard. Not long after his death his tomb was violated, and the episcopal ring on his finger purloined. The violators were anathematised from the pulpit. The fourth bishop was #William Longchamp# (1189-1197), Chancellor of England and subsequently Papal Legate. When the king went abroad he was appointed to govern England south of the Trent. He behaved in this office "with great insolence, pride, and oppression," and having particularly offended John, the king's brother, he made an attempt to escape from the country in the disguise of a woman; but he was detected at Dover and thrown into prison. Being allowed, after a time, to go to Normandy, he there waited until the king's return, by whom he was restored to favour. He died in 1197 at Poictiers, and was buried there in a Cistercian abbey, his heart being brought to Ely. He was succeeded by #Eustace# (1198-1215), Archdeacon of Richmond, Treasurer of York, Dean of Salisbury, and Keeper of the Great Seal. He was one of the bishops to whom was entrusted the invidious employment of publishing the excommunication of King John and putting the kingdom under an interdict. For this, in 1209, he was outlawed, and had to leave the country. Upon the king's submission in 1213, he (with Archbishop Stephen Langton and three other bishops) returned to England. He built the galilee at the west end of the church. He died in 1215 at Reading. Robert of York was chosen by the monks to succeed him. They had at first selected Geoffrey de Burgh, but for some reason that does not appear they altered their minds before making their selection known. Robert got possession of the temporalities, and even gave away preferments that were in the bishop's gift, for five years; but the king never consented to his appointment, nor was he ever consecrated. He took the part of the French against the king, who at last applied to the pope to nominate some one else to the See of Ely. Accordingly, upon the recommendation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Legate Pandulph, and the Bishop of Salisbury, who had been authorised by the pope to make the selection, #John Pherd# (1220-1225), Abbot of Fountains, hence called De Fontibus, was made bishop. He was also Treasurer of England. He died at Downham in 1225, and was succeeded by the same #Geoffrey De Burgh# (1225-1228) who had at first been elected by the convent upon the death of Eustace. He was Archdeacon of Norwich, and brother to Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent. He gave much costly plate to the monastery, as well as three hundred acres of land. Upon his death, #Hugh Norwold# or Northwold (1229-1254), Abbot of Bury S. Edmunds, became bishop. He had been a justice itinerant. He was one of the embassy sent to conduct to England the king's bride, Eleanor of Provençe. "He was one of the most eminent examples of piety and virtue in his time." He is especially commended for his hospitality and liberality to the poor; and he was a great benefactor to the monastery. He spent more than £5000 on the fabric of the church, and built the palace. The six eastern bays of the presbytery are his work. After removing to this new part of the church the remains of the three sainted abbesses and S. Withburga and also the so-called relics of S. Alban, he dedicated the whole church on September 17th, 1252, in the presence of King Henry III. and his son, Prince Edward. Bishop Norwold died at Downham in 1254, and was buried at the feet of S. Etheldreda, where a splendid monument was erected over his body, now removed to the north side of the presbytery, beneath the third arch from the east. The next bishop was #William De Kilkenny# (1255-1256), Archdeacon of Coventry and chancellor of the king. After his consecration, which took place ten months after his election, he only lived thirteen months. He was consecrated by Archbishop Boniface at Belley, in Savoy, a place near the Rhone, about forty miles east of Lyons. He died in Spain while negotiating a treaty, and was there buried, at Sugho. His heart was brought to Ely. #Hugh Belsham# (1257-1286) the sub-prior, came next. He founded Peterhouse (now S. Peter's College) at Cambridge. He had been elected in defiance of the king's recommendation, and the king tried to annul his election; but he proceeded to Rome, and was actually consecrated there by the pope. It is in connection with his election that we learn that the custom of the monks was to depute the election of a bishop to a committee of seven chosen from among themselves. Bishop Hugh died at Doddington in 1286. The next bishop, #John Kirkby# (1286-1290), although at the time of his appointment Dean of Wimborne, Archdeacon of York, and Canon both of Wells and York, was only in deacon's orders. He was accordingly ordained priest one day and consecrated bishop the next. Three years previously he had been elected to the See of Rochester, but had declined it. He had also been Chancellor and Treasurer of England. He gave to his successors a house in Holborn, which formed the nucleus of the grand palace afterwards erected, adjacent property being subsequently acquired. He died in 1290. His successor, #William De Louth# (1290-1298) was not even in holy orders at all when elected; yet he held prebends at S. Paul's, York, and Lincoln, the Archdeaconry of Durham, and the Deanery of S. Martin's-le-Grand. He is the only Bishop of Ely who was consecrated at Ely (it was in S. Mary's Church, not the cathedral), a provincial council of bishops happening to meet there at the time. #Ralph Walpole# (1299-1302), Bishop of Norwich, was, on the death of Bishop Louth in 1298, translated to Ely; the prior, John Salmon, who had been elected by the monks, being made instead Bishop of Norwich. Walpole had been formerly Archdeacon of Ely. He revised the statutes of the monastery during the short time that he held the see, which was less than three years. The next bishop, #Robert Orford# (1302-1310), like his predecessor, Hugh Belsham, was consecrated at Rome, though not, as he had been, by the pope himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury had refused his consent to the appointment on the ground that the elect was illiterate, but the pope overruled the objection. He died at Downham in 1310. A monk of the house, #John Keeton# (1310-1316), succeeded. King Edward II. visited Ely in his time, and while there settled the controversy between Ely and S. Albans as to the true place where the body of the proto-martyr of England was deposited. The remains of S. Alban had been carried off to Denmark by the Danes, after plundering the abbey raised to his honour, and recovered by a trick. At a later time, fearing again an attack from the Danes, the Abbot of S. Albans sent to Ely a chest containing (so he said) the relics of the martyr for safe custody. When the troubles were over, the monks of Ely sent back the chest, but with other bones in it, supposing that they had thereby secured the true relics for their own church. So the Abbot of S. Albans declared that they were not the true relics that he had sent to Ely, but that he had buried them in a fresh place in his own church. The king, in 1314, decided the matter in favour of S. Albans. At the death of Bishop Keeton in 1316 the bishopric was conferred upon #John Hotham# (1316-1337), Chancellor of the Exchequer. Bentham calls him Prebendary of York and Rector of Collingham; Browne Willis calls him Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and Chancellor of the University, and S.T.P., being the first bishop in his list who is credited with any university degree. He was a man of great eminence both as a bishop and as a statesman. In his political capacity he was Lord Chancellor. He was employed more than once on foreign embassies. He was one of the commissioners to arrange a truce between England and Scotland after the Battle of Myton in 1319, at which he had been present. He was made special commissioner to settle the troubles in Gascony. In his ecclesiastical capacity he added much landed property both to the see and the monastery. He erected the choir, providing for the building of the western bays after the fall of the tower. He obtained confirmatory charters from the king, and also a grant giving to the prior and convent the custody of the temporalities of the see during a vacancy, upon paying to the king, as long as their custody lasted, at the rate of £2000 a year. He died, "vir prudens, Justus, et munificus," in 1337. The monks desired that their prior, John Crauden, should become bishop; but the king translated hither #Simon Montacute# (1337-1345), Bishop of Worcester. In a letter to the pope about him, in 1318, King Edward II. calls him his cousin (_consanguineus_). He materially assisted the buildings at the church, particularly the lady-chapel. He died in 1345. Again the nomination of the monks, in favour of their prior, Alan de Walsingham, was set aside, and #Thomas De Lisle# (1345-1361) became bishop. He was prior of the Dominican Friars at Winchester. For nearly the whole of his episcopate he was engaged in a prolonged controversy with Lady Blanche Wake, a daughter of the Earl of Lancaster--the same lady who afterwards married John of Gaunt and became mother of King Henry IV. Her estates were contiguous to the bishop's manors in Huntingdonshire, and frequent disputes arose about their boundaries. The tenants took violent measures to assert the claims of their respective landlords, and much litigation ensued. The bishop, by his haughty behaviour, offended both the courts and the king, to whom he appealed; and at last he was constrained to escape to Avignon, then the seat of the pope. Here he had been consecrated; and here, while negotiations were proceeding for settling the dispute, in 1361 he died; and here he was buried. This time the monks elected, not one of their own body, but the Dean of Lichfield. But once again their nomination was disregarded, and #Simon Langham# (1362-1366) was appointed bishop. He was Abbot of Westminster and Treasurer of England. He had lately declined the See of London. He was afterwards Lord Chancellor, and in 1366 he was translated to Canterbury; but he only remained archbishop till he was created a cardinal in 1368. In 1374 he was appointed Bishop of Præneste. Like his predecessor, he died and was buried at Avignon. This was in 1376. After three years his body was removed to Westminster Abbey, where his handsome monument is well known. The inscription implies that all the world sorrowed at his death: "Orbe dolente Pater ... ruit." On his removal to Canterbury, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, #John Barnet# (1366-1373), was translated to Ely. He had been previously Bishop of Worcester, and for a time Treasurer of England. He "beautified" five of the windows in the presbytery. He died at Hatfield in 1373, but was buried at Ely. His successor was #Thomas Fitz-Alan# (1374-1388), son of the Earl of Arundel, Archdeacon of Taunton. He is said at the time not to have been in holy orders and under twenty-three years of age. The convent had in vain elected the Archdeacon of Northampton. Bishop Arundel (so he is generally called) was Chancellor of England in 1386, but resigned that office in 1389, the year after he was made Archbishop of York. He ultimately became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1414. He almost rebuilt the Bishop of Ely's palace in London. He fell into disfavour with King Richard II., and was banished; but he returned to England on the accession of King Henry IV. He was buried at Canterbury. #John Fordham# (1388-1425), who succeeded Bishop Arundel at Ely, was Bishop of Durham. He had been Keeper of the Privy Seal. He died at Downham in 1425, and was followed by #Philip Morgan# (1426-1435), Bishop of Worcester. The king had given licence to the monks to elect, and had recommended his confessor. They elected instead their prior; but neither obtained the see. In Bishop Morgan's time the University of Cambridge secured entire freedom from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishops of Ely: in the time of the previous bishop the University had got rid of the necessity of presenting their chancellor to the Bishop of Ely for confirmation. Bishop Morgan died at Hatfield in 1435, and was buried at the Charterhouse in London. There was much dispute about the next bishop. The monks chose Fitz-Hugh, Bishop of London; but he died. The king then recommended the Bishop of S. David's; but the monks preferred Thomas Bouchier, Bishop of Worcester, whom the king refused. Bouchier appealed to the pope, who at first confirmed his election; but the bishop-elect was afraid to present the papal bull. This was an opportunity for the king (Henry VI.) "to gratify one of his numerous adherents of the French nation, who had lost their all in that kingdom, and followed his fortunes in this." He accordingly obtained the pope's consent to appoint #Lewis De Luxemburg# (1438-1443), Archbishop of Rouen, to be administrator of the Diocese of Ely, at the same time assigning him the £2000 a year due from the prior and convent to the king during a vacancy. The bulls for Bishop Bouchier's translation from Worcester were revoked. This was in 1438, which is held to be the beginning of Bishop Luxemburg's tenure of the see; but the spiritualities were not legally surrendered to him till the next year, and even then it seems to have been only under the title of "Perpetual Administrator of the See of Ely"; and in formal documents some time later he still has the same title, and even in the pope's bull appointing a new Bishop of Ely after his death. He had been Bishop of Terouanne, Chancellor of Normandy, and Governor of Paris, and was a great upholder in France of the cause of the King of England. He was afterwards cardinal. He was hardly ever in his diocese of Ely. He died at Hatfield in 1443, and was buried at Ely, his heart being taken to Normandy to be interred at Rouen. There was now no opposition to the appointment of #Thomas Bouchier# (1444-1454), Bishop of Worcester. He was of the blood royal, being grandson of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, son of King Edward III. He was not liked at Ely, where, after his installation, he would never take part in any solemn service. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1454, Lord Chancellor in 1455, and cardinal in 1464. He crowned three kings. He died in 1486 at his palace at Knole, and was buried at Canterbury. He was succeeded by #William Gray# (1454-1478), Archdeacon of Northampton. He was for a time Treasurer of England and employed as Commissioner and Ambassador. He gave material assistance to the cost of the works at the west tower of the cathedral, and in various ways improved the presbytery. He was a great benefactor to Balliol College, Oxford. He died at Downham in 1478. The next bishop was #John Morton# (1479-1486). He had held very numerous preferments, including no less than five archdeaconries, and was Master of the Rolls. He was made Lord Chancellor in the same year that he was appointed to Ely. While bishop he executed some important works to improve the navigation and drainage of the fens. The great artificial cut between Peterborough and Wisbech which he constructed is still called Morton's Learn. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486, and cardinal in 1493. He died at Knole in 1500, and was buried at Canterbury. [Illustration: THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE, LOOKING EAST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #John Alcock# (1486-1500) succeeded him at Ely. He was Bishop of Worcester, previously of Rochester, and had been for a few months Lord Chancellor. He founded Jesus College, Cambridge, upon the dissolution of the ancient nunnery of S. Rhadegund. He was a great architect, and erected many costly buildings. He built the great hall in the palace at Ely, much improved the palace at Downham, founded a school at Hull, and erected a chapel in the church there, and built the beautiful chapel in Ely Cathedral, where his body now lies. He died at Wisbech in 1500. After nearly a year's interval, #Richard Redman# (1501-1505) became bishop. He was Bishop of Exeter, previously of S. Asaph. He died at Ely House in London in 1505. [Illustration: BISHOP WEST'S CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] The next bishop was #James Stanley# (1506-1515), son of the first Earl of Derby. Among other preferments he held was the Wardenship of Manchester. He built part of Somersham palace, and was a considerable benefactor to the Collegiate Church of Manchester, where he was ultimately buried, although he left directions in his will to be buried at Ely. His numerous promotions are possibly due to the influence of his stepmother, the famous Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the mother of King Henry VII. He was very little at Ely, and bore an indifferent moral character. The quaint set of verses[3] drawing his character says there was "little Priest's metal in him," that he was "a goodly tall man as any in England," that he was made bishop "for his wisdom and parentage," that he was "a great Viander as any in his days," which last expression probably means that he was unduly given to hospitality. He died at Manchester in 1515. #Nicholas West# (1515-1533) who succeeded him, was the son of a baker. He had been employed in foreign embassies, and was Dean of Windsor and Archdeacon of Derby. He lived in great splendour, and relieved the poor with much bounty. He was a benefactor to King's College, Cambridge, where he had been fellow. He took the part of Queen Katherine of Arragon, to whom he was chaplain, in the question of the divorce; and the disfavour into which he consequently fell with the king is thought to have hastened his death, which took place in 1533. [Illustration: THE BRASS OF BISHOP GOODRICH, LORD CHANCELLOR TO EDWARD VI., DIED 1554. (He holds the Great Seal in his right hand.)] #Thomas Goodrich# (1533-1554) was a "zealous forwarder of the Reformation." He was one of the revisers of the translation of the New Testament, and assisted in the compilation of the Prayer-book. He was also Lord Chancellor. In his time, in 1539, the monastery was surrendered to the king. All the inmates were pensioned or otherwise provided for. Dugdale gives the revenues of the monastery at its dissolution as £1084 6_s._ 9_d._; Speed says £1301 8_s._ 2_d._ Bishop Goodrich's monumental brass in the cathedral is a very important example of such memorials. He died at Somersham in 1554. #Thomas Thirlby# (1554-1559) was Bishop of Norwich, having been previously the first and only Bishop of Westminster. "He is said to have been a discreet moderate man"; but he lived in troublous times, and had the distasteful task of committing some so-called heretics to the flames. He was dispossessed of his bishopric soon after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and sent to the Tower. He was, however, soon released, and permitted to live in retirement with Archbishop Parker at Lambeth, where he died and was buried in 1570. #Richard Cox# (1559-1581) was Dean of Westminster and of Christ Church, Oxford. He was much troubled at the series of alienations of the property of the see insisted upon by the Government, and used every effort to secure what he could for his successors; and for this opposition, and also for his being married, he fell under the queen's disfavour, and many times solicited permission to resign his see, but he remained bishop till his death in 1581. For eighteen years the see was vacant, all the revenues being absorbed by the Crown. At last #Martin Heaton# (1600-1609) was made bishop. He was Dean of Winchester. He has the reputation of having been a pious, hospitable man, and a good preacher. He died at Mildenhall, in Suffolk, in 1609. His successor was the famous #Lancelot Andrewes# (1609-1619), Bishop of Chichester. He was a man "of extraordinary endowments, very pious and charitable, of a most blameless life, an eminent Preacher, of universal learning, and one of those principally concerned in the new Translation of the Bible." He became Bishop of Winchester in 1619, and died in 1626, being buried at S. Saviour's, Southwark. Milton has a Latin elegy upon his death, written when the poet was in his seventeenth year. Dean Duport[4] has also a short poem in the form of an epitaph on him, in which occur these lines: "Hoc sub nomine quippe continentur Virtus, ingenium, eruditioque, Fides, et pietas, amorque veri, Doctrinæ jubar, Orthodoxiæque Ingens destina, schismatis flagellum, Tortor tortilis illius Draconis, Scutum Ecclesiæ et ensis Anglicanæ Contra bella, minas, et arma Romæ." #Nicolas Felton# (1619-1626) was Bishop of Bristol. He died in 1626, and was buried at S. Antholin's, London, where he had been rector. #John Buckridge# (1628-1631) succeeded after an interval of eighteen months. He was Bishop of Rochester. "A Person of great Learning and Worth, and a true Son of the Church of England." He died in 1631, and was buried at Bromley in Kent, near the palace of the Bishops of Rochester. #Francis White# (1631-1638) was Bishop of Norwich, previously of Carlisle. Dying in 1638, he was buried in S. Paul's Cathedral. #Matthew Wren# (1638-1667) was also Bishop of Norwich, and previously of Hereford. He was an unflinching supporter of King Charles I. and Archbishop Laud, and had a full share of the sufferings which his principles involved, being imprisoned in the Tower for eighteen years, from which imprisonment he was only released at the Restoration, when of course he was restored to his see. Sir Christopher Wren was his nephew. He had been fellow of Pembroke, Cambridge, and after the Restoration he built a chapel for his old college, in which he was buried upon his death in 1667. #Benjamin Laney# (1667-1675) had been Bishop of Peterborough and then of Lincoln. He spent a great deal of money in repairing the palace at Ely, which was much dilapidated. He died in 1675. He is described on his monument as being "facundia amabilis, acumine terribilis, eruditione auctissimus." #Peter Gunning# (1675-1684) had been Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Master of Corpus Christi, and then of S. John's College, and Bishop of Chichester. He composed the prayer "For all Sorts and Conditions of Men" in the Prayer-book. He is very highly praised in the inscription on his monument, which also records that he never was married. #Francis Turner# (1685-1691) had been Master of S. John's College, Cambridge, also Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Rochester. He was, with six other bishops, sent to the Tower in 1688 for presenting to the king a petition which was called a seditious libel. They were committed on June 8th and tried on June 29th. Amidst universal acclamations of joy and enthusiasm they were acquitted. In 1691 Bishop Turner, with Archbishop Sancroft and four other bishops, upon refusing to take the oaths to William and Mary, were deprived of their bishoprics. He lived in retirement for nine years, and died in 1700. He was buried at Therfield, in Hertfordshire, where he had been rector. #Simon Patrick# (1691-1707) had been Dean of Peterborough and Bishop of Chichester. He was a very learned man and a great writer. His writings, says his epitaph, are superior to any inscription and more lasting than any marble. He died in 1707. #John Moore# (1707-1714), Bishop of Norwich, was a book-collector, and after his death his library was purchased by the king and presented to the University of Cambridge. He died in 1714. #William Fleetwood# (1714-1723) was translated to Ely from S. Asaph. He was a great supporter of the principles of the Revolution, and towards the end of Queen Anne's reign, when the Jacobites seemed to be making very many adherents, he published some sermons, to which was prefixed a preface setting forth his opinion of the dangerous tendency of the views that were being spread so industriously. The House of Commons condemned the book; but upon the arrival of King George, his services were recognised by his translation to Ely. He died at Tottenham in 1723. #Thomas Greene# (1723-1738) was Bishop of Norwich and previously Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. In Masters' history of that college a very high character of him is given, and his publications are greatly praised. He was zealous "for the Protestant Succession in the illustrious House of Hanover." He died at Ely House in London in 1738. His epitaph in the cathedral says he had the credit of diligence, impartiality, and integrity in the administration of his diocese. One expression is curious: "Pietate et Annis gravis, Accepta tandem Rude, Uxori et numerosæ Proli ... Flebilis decessit." According to this he was greatly lamented "when he received his discharge." #Robert Butts# (1738-1748), like his predecessor, came from Norwich, where he had been dean and then bishop. He died at Ely House in 1748, possessed (according to the epitaph at Ely) of nearly all the virtues. He came of a gentle family of moderate means: "tenui vico, at honesto genere." Again a Bishop of Norwich was translated to Ely. #Sir Thomas Gooch#, second Baronet of Benacre (1748-1754), had been Master of Caius College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Bristol before he went to Norwich. At Cambridge he was instrumental in raising funds for building the Senate House; at Norwich he greatly improved the palace, and obtained charters for two societies for the relief of widows and orphans of the clergy; but there is no record of anything special achieved by him at Ely. He died at Ely House in 1754, and was buried in the chapel at Caius, where is a lengthy inscription enumerating his preferments and his three wives. #Matthias Mawson# (1754-1770) had been Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Bishop of Llandaff, and Bishop of Chichester. While at Ely he spent large sums on the cathedral alterations, as described above, and was also very active in encouraging, by his advice and purse, the steps that were being taken to improve the roads near Ely and to erect draining-mills. The adjoining lowlands had "been several years under water; and the publick roads, at the same time, in so bad a state, as not to be travelled with safety."[5] He founded several scholarships at his old college, of the aggregate value of £400 a year. He died in 1770. #Edmund Keene# (1771-1781) had been Master of Peterhouse and Bishop of Chester. The inscription on his monument at Ely was written by himself. He died in 1781. #The Hon. James Yorke# (1781-1808), fifth son of the first Earl of Hardwicke, had been Dean of Lincoln, Bishop of S. David's, and Bishop of Gloucester. He died in 1808, and was buried at Forthampton, in Gloucestershire. #Thomas Dampier# (1808-1812) was son of the Dean of Durham. He was Dean and afterwards Bishop of Rochester. He died suddenly in London in 1812, and was buried in the chapel of Eton College. [Illustration: BISHOP WOODFORD'S TOMB. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] #Bowyer Edward Sparke# (1812-1836), Bishop of Chester, previously Dean of Bristol. In his time the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop over the Isle of Ely came to an end. On State occasions a sword used to be carried before the bishop when he attended cathedral service; but this practice ceased when it was no longer right to exhibit any emblem of judicial authority. The sword itself was buried with Bishop Sparke. #Joseph Allen# (1836-1845), Bishop of Bristol. He published some sermons and charges. He secured from the ecclesiastical commissioners a large increase in the income of the bishopric. #Thomas Turton# (1845-1864) had been Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Dean of Peterborough, and, for a short time, Dean of Westminster. He was author of several works. By his will he left £500 for the improvement of the nave of the cathedral. He died in 1864. #Edward Harold Browne# (1864-1873) was of great reputation as a scholar and theologian. He was chairman of the Old Testament Revision Committee. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1873, and died at Bitterne, in Hampshire, in 1891. He was buried at West End, Southampton. #James Russell Woodford# (1873-1885) was Vicar of Leeds. He published many sermons and lectures, and was well known as a successful organizer and an eloquent preacher. He died in 1885. #Lord Alwyne Compton# (1885-1905) was a son of the second Marquess of Northampton, and was previously Dean of Worcester. Resigned, and died, 1906, and was buried at S. Martin's, Canterbury. #Frederic Henry Chase# (1905-) was formerly Norrisian and Lady Margaret Professor, and President of Queens' College, Cambridge, and is the author of numerous works in critical theology. The names and dates of the earlier bishops are taken from Bishop Stubbs' "Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum." Of the bishops between 1609 and 1845 there was only one (Peter Gunning) who was not translated to Ely from some other see. It is now an unwritten law that the Bishop of Ely should be a Cambridge man. For at least two centuries and a half this rule has been followed, if we except Francis Turner; and he, though of New College, Oxford, had been Master of S. John's, Cambridge. Unless otherwise stated, the bishops were buried at Ely. The original diocese of Ely was enlarged, in 1837, by the addition of the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford, and the archdeaconry of Sudbury. FOOTNOTES: [1] Cathedrals "of the old foundation" were cathedrals from the first, and had deans and chapters of secular canons. Those that were once conventual churches had no deans or canons till Henry VIII. An easy way of identifying cathedrals of the old foundation is this: if the non-resident canons have the title of prebendaries, they are members of a cathedral of the old foundation. The modern dignity of honorary canon was created in order that all other cathedrals might have a body of clergy corresponding to the prebendaries of the ancient cathedrals. [2] He is called, in Bishop Stubbs' "Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum," Herve le Breton. [3] Quoted by Bentham, p. 187. [4] Of Peterborough, in his "Musæ Subsecivæ." [5] Bentham, p. 213. [Illustration: PRIOR CRAUDEN'S CHAPEL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] CHAPTER VI. THE PRECINCTS. Besides numerous remains of mediæval architecture to be found in the residences and private grounds of the cathedral clergy, there are some buildings of great interest to the south of the cathedral, the two most remarkable being the infirmary and Prior Crauden's chapel. Of the former no more than the piers and arches are to be seen, as the roof is gone, and the whole has been converted into residences. The latter is quite perfect. The #Infirmary# is in the same relative position to the church as at Peterborough, at the south-east. The plan was that of an ordinary church, with nave, aisles, and chancel; but the chancel was the chapel, the aisles were the quarters of the inmates, and the nave was a common hall, or ambulatory. So complete was the resemblance to a church that the true purpose of this and other similar buildings elsewhere had been quite forgotten, and it was left to Professor Willis to discover that the remains were not those of a disused church. Bentham[1] has an engraving of the arches and clerestory, divested of all the domestic additions, which to a modern student of ecclesiastical architecture indicates at once a building of Norman date, which is described as an elevation "of the remains of the Old Conventual Church of Ely, built in the time of the Heptarchy, A.D. 673, and repaired in King Edgar's Reign, A.D. 970." In the plan given in the same plate an imaginary apse is marked out with dotted lines.[2] In the chapel is a groined roof, and this belongs to the latter part of the twelfth century; but the nave arches, where are some very good and unusual mouldings, have nothing of Transitional work, and in the absence of documentary evidence would be assigned to 1140 or 1150. The hall, situated to the north of what would, in a church, be called the north aisle of the nave, is the work of Walsingham. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE INFIRMARY AS GIVEN IN BENTHAM'S "HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES"] #Prior Crauden's Chapel# is a most exquisite specimen of the Decorated period, designed by the same master mind that created the octagon and the lady-chapel. Crauden was prior from 1321 to 1341. Built as a private chapel, it was at one time converted into a dwelling, but is now restored to sacred uses as the chapel of the King's School. It is situated to the south of the deanery. It is of small dimensions, being only thirty-one feet long; and this is exactly double its breadth. The vaulted roof springs from clustered shafts in the walls; in the eastern half, on each side, are two tall windows of two lights, with most graceful tracery; at the east is a window of five lights, of equally beautiful tracery, filled with stained glass, of which the five lower figures are ancient and said to have been brought from Cologne. The west window has four lights. When Professor Willis was conducting some members of an architectural congress, in 1860,[3] over the monastic buildings, on arriving at this "beautiful little gem of architecture," in the course of his remarks "he pointed to the restorations that had taken place, and found that they were good ones, the actual mason's lines having been taken in some instances. In one or two cases where the work was destroyed the spaces had been filled up with plain block, purposely to show where the masonry had been knocked away." Some curious tiling is to be seen on the altar platform: there are figures of Adam and Eve and numerous unusual designs. On no account should this chapel be left unvisited. [Illustration: ELY PORTA, THE GREAT GATE OF THE MONASTERY, 1817. _From Stevenson's Supplement to Bentham._] The great gateway of the abbey, #Ely Porta#, remains in a nearly perfect condition. It was the place where the manor courts were held, and was in course of erection when Prior Bucton died in 1397. From his successor, in whose time it seems to have been completed, it is sometimes called Walpole's gate. At one time a portion was devoted to the brewery, and here the audit ale was brewed till so recently as Dean Goodwin's time.[4] It is now used partly as a house for the porter and partly for the school. The new buildings of the school, just opposite, are on the site of an ancient hostelry called the Green Man, which was "possibly the descendant of some mediæval lodging-house to which pilgrims resorted."[5] Between Ely Porta and the cathedral are to be seen many fragmentary remains of the old monastery, some of Norman date, now forming parts of houses. Over the road to the west of these buildings there used to be a covered passage, called "The Gallery"--a name still retained by the street itself--leading from the bishop's palace to the cathedral. Access to this from the cathedral was in the western transept. The writer has not been able to hear of any engraving or drawing of this. The remains of the refectory and of the Norman kitchen are in the deanery grounds. The guest-house is wholly absorbed in the deanery. There is a picturesque entrance into the close, on the north side, from High Street. The buildings on each side of it and the room above (now the muniment room) are quite ecclesiastical, though modernised and in part new. The eastern portion occupies the site of the sextry. FOOTNOTES: [1] "History," 1771, Plate IV. [2] Another instance of imperfect acquaintance with church architecture is found in one plan of the cathedral (not in Bentham) in which the lady-chapel is called the chapter-house. [3] At which the writer was present. [4] "Ely Gossip," p. 5. [5] _Ib._, p. 7. INDEX. Alban's, S., relics, 116, 118 Alcock, Bishop, 122; his chapel, 35, 90--pl., 94, 112 Allen, Bishop, 130; tomb, 90 Altar, often moved, 90 Andrewes, Bishop, 125 Apse, 19, 80 Arundel, Archbishop, 120 Barnet, Bishop, 26, 119; tomb, 95 Basevi, Mr., fatal accident, 64; brass 90 Belsham, Bishop, 117 Bishop, in abbot's stall, 29; his sword of state, 129 Bishopric constituted, 15, 110 Bourchier, Archbishop, 120-1 Brithnoth, Abbot, 12, 102 Brithnoth, Alderman, 93, 103 Browne, Bishop, 131 Buckeridge, Bishop, 126 Butts, Bishop, 128 Canute, King, 105 Catharine's, S., chapel, 21, 64-5--pl., 63 Cathedrals of old foundation, 113 Choir, 77--pl., 53, 55, 79, 98; aisles, 56--pl., 89, 122; screen, 76--pl., 76; compared with presbytery, 78 Cloister, 61 College of Secular Clergy, 12, 102 Compton, Bishop, 131 Cox, Bishop, 125 Cratendune, 8 Crauden, Prior, his chapel, 25, 131--pl., 131 Cromwell, Oliver, 29 Cross, S., church, 29, 49, 97 Dampier, Bishop, 128 De Burgh, Bishop, 116 De Fontibus, Bishop, 116 De L'Isle, Bishop, 25, 119 Dickson, Canon, 61 Dunstan, Archbishop, 11, 12 East End, 55 Edmund's, S., chapel, 75; representation of his martyrdom, 90 Edward, Confessor, educated at Ely, 105 Elsin, Abbot, 12, 13, 103 Ely Cathedral, built, 13; congregation ejected, 29; in seventeenth century, 30; in eighteenth century, 31--pl., 33 Ely, etymology, 4; above sea level, 42; population, 42 Ely, Isle of, 3, 9, 11, 13 Ely monastery, founded, 8; destroyed by Danes, 10, 101; reconstituted, 102; monks and nuns, 99; surrendered, 29; mitred prior, 25 Ely Porta, 133--pl., 133 Ermenilda, S., Abbess, 15, 100 Etheldreda, S., foundress, 3-9; translation, 15; scenes from career on corbels, 6, 72; churches dedicated to her, 7; her shrine, 16,20,21, 89--pl., 20, 91; S. Audrey's laces, 73 Ethelwold, Bishop, 11, 12 Eustace, Bishop, 17, 18, 66, 114 Felix, S., attempted seizure of his remains, 102 Felton, Bishop, 4, 126 Fitz-Alan, Archbishop, 120 Fleetwood, Bishop, 127 Fordham, Bishop, 120 Front, west, 17, 43 Galilee, 17-19, 44, 46--pl., 18, 41, 45 Gardner, Mr. J. D., gave the reredos, 83 Godfrey, administrator, 13, 108 Gooch, Bishop, 128 Goodrich, Bishop, 29, 124; brass, 96--pl., 124 Goodwin, Dean, restoration in his time, 35 Gray, Bishop, 26, 121 Greene, Bishop, 90, 127 Guest-hall, 25 Gunning, Bishop, 32, 126; tomb, 95 Hereward, 16 Hervey, Bishop, 114 Heton, Bishop, 125; tomb, 95 Hotham, Bishop, 29, 99, 118; tomb, 89 Infirmary, 24, 131--pl., 132 Keene, Bishop, 93, 128 Keeton, Bishop, 118 Kilkenny, Bishop, 116; tomb, 83 Kirkby, Bishop, 117 Labyrinth, 63 Lady-chapel, 20, 24, 28, 52, 84--pl., 53, 85, 86; bosses in roof, 28 Laney, Bishop, 126 Langham, Cardinal Archbishop, 119 Lantern, 36, 73--pl., 57 Leofric, Leofsin, Leofwin, Abbots, 105 Le Strange, Mr., painted ceiling, 67 Longchamp, Bishop, 114 Louth, Bishop, 117; tomb, 95 Luxemburg, Cardinal Archbishop, 120; tomb, 93 Mary's, S., Church, 17, 93 Mawson, Bishop, 32, 128 Merivale, Dean, restoration in his time, 38; tablet, 96 Mill, Canon, tomb, 90 Monks' door, 60 Montacute, Bishop, 119 Monuments, 87 Moore, Bishop, 127; tomb, 95 Morgan, Bishop, 120 Morton, Cardinal Archbishop, 121 Nave, 15-17, 49, 66--pl., 2, 62, 65; aisles, 69--pl., 69, 70; ceiling, 67-69--pl., 67 Nigel, Bishop, 114 Northwold, Bishop, 15, 19, 21, 116; tomb, 90 Octagon, 22-4, 36, 50, 71--pl., 23; cost, 29 Orford, Bishop, 117 Organ, 38; gallery, 32 Ovin, 5, 71, 73 Parry, Mr. Gambier, painted ceiling, 67 Patrick, Bishop, 127 Peacock, Dean, restoration in his time, 29; octagon restored as memorial, 37 Pherd, Bishop, 116 Powcher, Prior, 25, 27 Presbytery, 26, 76--pl., 55, 77, 91; bosses in roof, 80 Prior's door, 60--pl., 59 Redman, Bishop, 123; tomb, 88 Refectory, 20 Reredos, 83--pl., 84 Richard, last Abbot, 14, 15, 110 Riddell, Bishop, 15, 114 Robert of York, 114 Rood-loft, 32 Sacrist's Office, 24 Scott, Sir G. G., 35, 37, 63 Selwyn, Canon, 96; tomb, 95 S. Sexburga, Abbess, 100 Sextry-barn, 34 Simeon, Abbot, 13, 14 Sparke, Bishop, 90, 129 Sparke, Canon E. B., 96 Spire on west tower, 19, 27, 32, 49 Stained glass, 96 Stalls, 32, 34, 83--pl., 81 Stanley, Bishop, 123 Stubbs, Dean, 21, 25, 52, 72, 73, 80 Tabula Eliensis, 108 Theodwin, Abbot, 13, 108 Thirlby, Bishop, 125 Thurstan, Abbot, 107 Tower, central, 21; west, 14, 43, 47, 63--pl., 40, 48 Transepts, 19, 75; north, 29, 51--pl., 74; south, 60--pl., 75; west, 35, 64; galleries, 76 Triforium, 26, 57, 58, 83--pl., 80 Turner, Bishop, 127 Turton, Bishop, 131 Tyndall, Dean, brass, 96 Walpole, Bishop, 117 Walsingham, Alan de, 20, 22, 24-5; elected bishop, 25, 119; stone over his grave, 25, 88 Werburga, S., Abbess, 16, 100 West, Bishop, 124; his chapel, 28, 93--pl., 95, 123 White, Bishop, 126 Wilfrid, Archbishop, 6, 9 Wisbech, John de, 20 Withburga's, S., body purloined, 102 Woodford, Bishop, 93, 131; tomb, 88 96--pl., 129 Worcester, Earl of, tomb, 95 Wren, Bishop, 126 Wren, Sir C., 51 Wyatt's report, 32 Yorke, Bishop, 128 DIMENSIONS OF ELY CATHEDRAL. Length (interior) 517 feet. " of nave 230 " Width of nave 78 " " " octagon 74 " Height of vault 72 " " " western tower 215 " Area 46,000 sq. feet. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF ELY CATHEDRAL.] 1. S. Edmund's Chapel. 2. Bishop Alcock's Chapel. 3. Bishop West's Chapel. 4. Cardinal Luxemburg. 5. Bishop Allen. 6. Canon Mill. 7. Bishop Hotham. 8. Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. 9. Bishop Barnet. 10. Bishop Louth. 11. Bishop Goodrich (brass). 12. Dean Tyndall (brass). 13. Bishop Heton. 14. Bishop Gunning. 15. Canon Selwyn. 16. Bishop Redman. 17. Bishop Kilkenny. 18. Shrine of S. Etheldreda. 19. Bishop Northwold. 20. Bishop Sparke. * * * * * Bell's Cathedral Series ILLUSTRATED MONOGRAPHS ON THE GREAT ENGLISH CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES _Crown 8vo. Profusely Illustrated, in specially designed cloth binding, 1s. 6d. net each._ * * * * * This series of monographs upon our great English Cathedral Churches has been framed to give students of Architecture handy reference volumes, and the visitor trustworthy guide-books, at once cheaper and more fully illustrated than any previous works of similar character. Each volume contains not only a complete history of the see and of the Cathedral fabric, but a critical and descriptive survey of the building in all its detail; sufficiently accurate from the archaeological point of view to furnish a trustworthy record of the building in its past and present condition, and not too technical in its language for the occasional use of the casual visitor. Brief biographical accounts of the bishops and other notable men connected with the Diocese are also included. 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21511	----	[Illustration: THE INTERIOR FROM THE ORGAN GALLERY. _E. Scamell. Photo._] THE PRIORY CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT, SMITHFIELD A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE FABRIC AND ALSO OF THE CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS BY GEORGE WORLEY AUTHOR OF "SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL," "THE TEMPLE CHURCH," ETC. WITH XLII [Illustration] ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1908 CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. * * * * * PREFACE In gathering material for this handbook I have received valuable help from several friends, whose kindness calls for grateful recognition. My thanks are due, in the first place, to the Rev. W. F. G. Sandwith, Rector of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, and the lay custodians of the church, for the facilities which have allowed me to examine the building in all its parts, and for the readiness with which they have given information, not accessible elsewhere, on various points of its history and architecture. In this matter, besides more personal obligations, I feel that I owe much, in common with many others, to Mr. E. A. Webb, the active member of the Restoration Committee, for the suggestive data of his open lectures, and for the interesting expositions of the fabric by which he has always supplemented them. Others to whom I am indebted are Dom Henry Norbert Birt, O.S.B., of Downside Abbey, and Mr. Charles W. F. Goss, Librarian to the Bishopsgate Institute, for their skilful guidance in the literature of the subject; Mr. F. C. Eeles, Secretary to the Alcuin Club, for the Elizabethan Inventory and account of the Mediaeval Bells; and Messrs. Wm. Hill and Son, the famous builders, for particulars of the organ. For the illustration of the book, Mr. A. Russell Baker has kindly contributed a selection from his rare set of old engravings, before presenting the whole to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. The photographic views of the church and monuments, as seen at the present day, were taken by Mr. Edgar Scamell, of 120, Crouch Hill; and the seal-impressions by Mr. A. P. Ready, the British Museum artist. Finally, Sir Aston Webb, R.A., has to be thanked for the ground-plans of the church and monastic buildings; and Mr. G. H. Smith for the plan and dimensions of St. Bartholomew-the-Less. A list of books and papers is appended for the benefit of students anxious for more detailed information than could be included here. G. W. _June, 1908_ * * * * * A SELECTION OF WORKS ON ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT "The Book of the Foundation of St. Bartholomew's Church in London, sometime belonging to the Priory of the same in West Smithfield." Edited from the original manuscript, with an Introduction and Notes by Norman Moore, M.D. 1885. "The Charter of King Henry I to St. Bartholomew's Priory, addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Gilbert the Universal, Bishop of London, in the year 1133." Edited with Notes, from the copy in the Record Office, by Norman Moore, M.D. 1891. "Rahere's Charter of 1137." Translated, with Explanatory Notes, by Norman Moore, M.D. 1904. "The Ordinance of Richard de Ely, Bishop of London, as to St. Bartholomew's Priory in West Smithfield, witnessed by Henry Fitzailwin, First Mayor of London, in the year 1198." Edited from the original document by Norman Moore, M.D. 1886. Dugdale's "Monasticon Anglicanum" (edit. Bandinel, Caley, and Sir Henry Ellis) is indispensable to the student. The sixth volume (p. 291 _sqq_.) contains an account of the Smithfield Foundation, and (p. 37 _sqq_.) the Rule for Austin Canons. For the latter the reader will do well to consult also R. Duellius' "Antiqua Statuta Canonicorum S. Augustini metrice cum glossulis optimis," and "Regula Canonicorum Regularium per Hugonem de S. Victore Commentario declarata." For illustrative matter during the Tudor period reference may be made to "The Elizabethan Religious Settlement," by Dom Henry Norbert Birt, O.S.B., 1907; the Rev. C. F. Raymund Palmer's "Articles, chiefly on the Friars Preachers of England, reprinted from archaeological journals, 1878-85"; and "Obituary Notices of the Friars Preachers or Dominicans of the English Province." 1884. The literary work of Fr. Perrin (the Marian Prior) is described in Charles Dodd's "Church History of England" (1727 edition), and Pit's "De Illust. Scriptoribus Angliae." Besides the invaluable "Historia Anglorum" of Matthew Paris (ed. Sir F. Madden), and Stow's "Survey of London" (ed. John Strype), the following books may be found useful: "Repertorium, or History of the Diocese of London." Richard Newcourt. 1708. "New View of London." Edward Hatton. 1708. "New Remarks of London: by the Company of Parish Clerks." 1732. "London and its Environs described." R. and J. Dodsley. 1761. "History of London." Win. Maitland. (Ed. Entick, 1772.) "Londinium Redivivum." J. P. Malcolm. 1803. "Londina Illustrata." Robert Wilkinson. 1819. "The Churches of London." G. Godwin and J. Britton. 1839. "Memories of Bartholomew Fair." H. Morley. 1859. The progress of the modern work at the church has been announced from time to time in the circulars issued by the Restoration Committee, the substance of which is incorporated in the text, where also the other authorities consulted by the present writer are referred to. * * * * * CONTENTS PAGE Preface v List Of Works Of Reference vii List Of Illustrations xi Chapter I. History Of The Foundation 3 II. Exterior Of The Church 25 III. Interior Of The Church 33 IV. St. Bartholomew-the-less And The Hospital 63 Appendix I. The Priory Seals 73 II. The Priors And Rectors 77 III. Inventory Of Vestments, Etc. 79 IV. The Organ 80 Index 83 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Interior Of The Church From The Organ Gallery _Frontispiece_ The Priory Arms _Title-Page_ Interior Of The Church From The East (1805) 2 North Side Of The Choir From The Triforium 9 Interior Of The Choir (1822) 11 Plan Of The Monastic Buildings At The Dissolution 15 The Choir Before Restoration 19 The Priory Church From The West 24 The Priory Church From The West (1810) 25 The North Porch 29 View Of The Crossing From The Triforium 32 South Aisle From The West--showing Early English Shafts 34 North Transept And Screen 36 North Transept From The South 37 The Font And Freshwater Monument 41 Interior From The East--showing Prior Bolton's Gallery 42 The Founder's Tomb 45 The Founder's Tomb, Showing The Original Extent Of Arcaded Work 46 The Chamberlayne Monument 48 The Smalpace Monument 49 The Ambulatory And Entrance To The Lady Chapel 51 The Mildmay Monument 53 The Lady Chapel 56 The Crypt 57 The Remaining Bays Of The Cloister 59 St. Bartholomew-the-less And The Hospital Gate 62 Interior Of St. Bartholomew-the-less 65 Brass Of William And Alice Markeby 67 Ancient Sculptured Tablets 68 Seals Of The Convent And Hospital (Eleven Examples) 73-76 Plan Of St. Bartholomew-the-less 71 Plan Of St. Bartholomew-the-great (Existing Church) _At End_ * * * * * [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH, FROM THE EAST _From a print of 1805._ _E. Nash del. J. Greig sc._] ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT CHAPTER I HISTORY The spring and fountain-head of our information about the Priory of St. Bartholomew-the-Great is an account of the foundation, interwoven with the life and miracles of Rahere, the founder, which was written in Latin by one of the Canons soon after Rahere's death in the reign of Henry II. An illuminated copy of this work, made at the end of the fourteenth century, is preserved in the British Museum, with an English translation, which forms the groundwork of all subsequent histories.[1] Allowing for a few contradictory dates and statements in this precious document, and for the occasional flights of a pious imagination in the biographer or his subject, we arrive at the following historical basis: Rahere was a man of humble origin, who had found his way to the Court of Henry I, where he won favour by his agreeable manners and witty conversation, rendered piquant, as it appears, by a certain flavouring of licentiousness, and took a prominent part in arranging the music, plays, and other entertainments in which the King and his courtiers delighted during the first part of the reign.[2] In the year 1120 a total change was wrought in Henry's character by the loss of his only legitimate son in the wreck of the "White Ship," on its voyage from Normandy to England, after which the King is said never to have smiled again. The event naturally cast a gloom over the Court; frivolities were abandoned, and religious devotion, either genuine or assumed in polite acquiescence with the royal humour, took the place of the amusements which had hitherto held sway. In one case, at least, the spirit of reformation was at work in good earnest. Rahere, repenting of his wasted life, thereupon started on a pilgrimage to Rome, to do penance for his sins on the ground hallowed by the martyrdom of St. Paul, some three miles from the city. The spot known as the Three Fountains, now rendered more or less sanitary by the free planting of eucalyptus, was then and long afterwards particularly unhealthy, and while there Rahere was attacked by malarial fever. In his distress he made a vow that, if he were spared, he would establish a hospital for the poor, as a thank-offering, on his return to England. His prayer was granted, but his recovery was slow. During his convalescence he had a vision, or dream, in which he thought a winged monster had seized him in its claws, and was about to drop him into a bottomless pit, when a majestic form came to his rescue, and thus addressed him: "I am Bartholomew, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, that come to succour thee in thine anguish, and to open to thee the secret mysteries of heaven. Know me truly, by the will and commandment of the Holy Trinity, and the common favour of the celestial court and council, to have chosen a place in the suburbs of London, at Smithfield, where in my name thou shall found a church. This spiritual house Almighty God shall inhabit, and hallow it, and glorify it. Wherefore doubt thou nought; only give thy diligence, and my part shall be to provide necessaries, direct, build, and end this work."[3] Rahere at once promised compliance, and, as soon as he got back to London, first obtained the King's consent, and then, "nothing omitting of care and diligence, two works of piety began, one for the vow that he had made, the other as to him by precept was enjoined."[4] The suburb of Smithfield (Smoothfield) is said to have already occurred to Edward the Confessor as a suitable place for a church on the outskirts of London, possibly as affording a similar area, in its level and marshy surface, to that chosen for his Abbey at Westminster. The greater part of it was, indeed, covered by water, the one dry spot (known as "The Elms") being reserved for public executions, which continued to take place there till some centuries later. The eastern portion of this waste land was granted by Henry I, through the agency of Richard de Belmeis, Bishop of London; and it was here that, in the year 1123, Rahere began building.[5] In a marvellously short time the funds were forthcoming, and his double object was achieved in the erection of the Hospital, with the Church at a little distance, the whole being dedicated by the same friendly bishop to St. Bartholomew the Apostle, in fulfilment of Rahere's vow and the Saint's instructions. Rahere is said to have been assisted in his architectural work by Alfune, who had founded St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, in the year 1090; and there is a story to the effect that three noble travellers, or merchants, from Byzantium were present at the foundation, when they foretold its future greatness, and were consulted by Rahere as to the design and character of the building while his plans were under consideration. On the southern side of the church the group of buildings gradually arose which constituted the Priory, of which the founder, having devoted himself to the monastic life, of course became the first Prior; and here he spent the rest of his days with thirteen companions--the sub-prior and twelve subordinates--all living under the Rule of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine. The number was afterwards brought up to thirty-five by Thomas of St. Osyth, the second Prior (1144-1174), who made a corresponding addition to the premises.[6] In 1133, when the buildings were fairly advanced, and the value of Rahere's work had got to be recognized, a charter of privileges was granted by Henry I to the Prior and Canons. Commencing with an invocation of the Holy Trinity, it was addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, with a greeting to all the King's faithful subjects, especially the citizens of London. Its comprehensive immunities may be inferred from the opening paragraph: Know ye that I have granted, and have by this my charter confirmed, to the Church of St. Bartholomew of London, and to Rahere the Prior, and to the Canons Regular, in the same church serving God, and to the poor of the Hospital of the same church, that they be free from all earthly servitude, and all earthly power and subjection, except episcopal customs, to wit, only consecration of the church, baptism, and ordination of clergy; and that as any church in all England is free, so this church be free, and all lands to it appertaining, which it now has, or which Rahere the Prior, or the Canons, may be able reasonably to acquire, whether by purchase or by gift. And it shall have socc and sac, and thol and theme, and infogheneteof; and all liberties and free customs and acquittances in all things which belong to the same church in wood and in plain, in meadows and pastures, in waters and mills, in ways and paths, in pools and vineyards, and marshes and fisheries, and in all places now and for ever.[7] Another paragraph may be worth quoting, as it expressly includes Bartholomew Fair among the privileges conveyed, though it is clear from the terms of the instrument that a fair had previously been held in the open space at Smithfield on the Saint's anniversary. Even before the accession of Henry I there had been a market on the spot, known as "the King's Market" when the ground was allotted to Rahere. (_Vide_ "Vetusta Monumenta," vol. ii.) I grant also my firm peace to all persons coming to and returning from the fair which is wont to be celebrated in that place at the Feast of St. Bartholomew; and I forbid any one of the royal officials to send to implead any one, or without the consent of the Canons on those three days--to wit, the eve of the feast, the feast itself, and the day following--to demand customary dues from them. The observance was afterwards extended to a double octave of fourteen days, and included all kinds of shows and entertainments, theatrical, conjuring, and acrobatic performances, in addition to the traffic in cloth-stuffs, horses and cattle, which gave the fair its commercial importance. The stalls, or booths, in which the portable goods were exposed for sale, were held within the monastery walls, the gates of which were locked at night, and a watch kept over the enclosure.[8] Rahere died on 20th September, 1144, and was buried in the church, where his tomb occupies the usual place for Founders on the north side of the sanctuary, surrounded by his magnificent Norman work in the choir, with the ambulatory beyond it, and extending upwards to the arcading of the triforium. The eastern part of the clerestory is a modern reproduction of that which superseded Rahere's; but, with this exception, the interior of the choir was probably much the same originally as it is (restored) to-day. There was, however, a central tower, and, if the design on the twelfth-century Priory seal is to be trusted, a high circular turret at each end of the exterior.[9] Thomas of St. Osyth, the second Prior (d. 1174), erected the transepts and the easternmost bays of the nave, all of which bear signs of the architectural transition. The nave was probably completed during the next half-century, in the Early-English (then superseding the heavier Norman) style, as may be inferred from the surviving western gateway, and the mutilated columns which remain within the building at the western end. [Illustration: THE NORTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR FROM THE TRIFORIUM _E. Scamell. Photo._] Perpendicular work was introduced early in the fifteenth century, when Roger de Walden, Bishop of London (1405-1406), built a chantry-chapel to the north-east of the choir, and inserted a new clerestory, in the then fashionable style, in place of the original. He also made a considerable alteration in the chancel by substituting a square east-end for the circular apse, part of which was taken down and used as building material for the innovation. But de Walden's work was cut short by his death, when he had scarcely held the See of London for two years, and was buried in his Chapel at St. Bartholomew's, instead of in the Cathedral Church like most of his predecessors. The Lady Chapel, with the crypt beneath it, dates from about 1410, when also the central tower was probably rebuilt, and decorative additions were made to the Founder's tomb, in the shape of a canopy and panelling. In the first part of the next century Prior Bolton (1505-32) inserted the Oriel window on the southern side of the choir-triforium and the doorway in the south ambulatory, both of which bear his sculptured rebus--a _bolt_, or arrow, driven through a _tun_. In 1539 his successor, Robert Fuller, the last of the Augustinian Priors, surrendered the entire property to Henry VIII, in compliance with the Act of Dissolution, its value having been already ascertained in the twenty-sixth year of the King's reign. The exact figures are given by Dugdale as follows: Summa totalis hujus monasterii. £773 0_s._ 1¾_d._ " " reprisarum £79 10_s._ 3½_d._ --------------------------- Et remanet clare £693 9_s._ 10¼_d._ --------------------------- [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CHOIR _From a print of 1822_ _T. H. Shepherd del. Howlett sc._] For many years before the dissolution of the monasteries the system on which they rested had been gradually undermined by the spread of the Reformation, accompanied by a growing conviction that the religious communities had not only outlived their usefulness, and to a great extent departed from the high standard of their founders, but that their enormous wealth had given them an influence far beyond that of any other institution, or combination of institutions, in the kingdom, and brought them into formidable rivalry with the State itself--the more dangerous in proportion to their devoted adherence to the Papacy, with which the State was in collision. By whatever unworthy motives Henry VIII may have been governed in aiming at the monastic property, he was therefore able to bring forward many political considerations, which coincided with those arising out of religious doctrines, to make his measures intelligible to his people, and consequently easy to himself. Among the various plausible reasons which were urged against the continued existence of the conventual houses, one of the most likely to appeal to the practical sense of the multitude was the misuse of the resources with which they had been endowed. While it was admitted that in their earlier days they had been extremely useful in mitigating distress among the poor, it was now argued that their indiscriminate charities were doing more harm than good, and that the changed economic conditions of the sixteenth century called for a corresponding change in the distribution of relief, to save the country from being overrun by undeserving mendicants, amongst whom some of the religious Orders were themselves to be reckoned. It does not appear that any part of this argument held good against the Augustinian Canons, or that the more serious moral charges brought against the smaller communities were at all applicable to their case, which was rather one of involvement in a common ruin than the result of any specific accusation. It is true there are instances of laxity at individual houses, showing a too easy discipline where they occurred, but there is nothing sufficiently extensive or important to compromise the Order as a whole, or materially damage its character in the eyes of the impartial modern student.[10] It might have been expected that some immunity from the wholesale spoliation which followed the Act would have been granted to Rahere's foundation, in view of his special provision for the poor in the hospital which was an integral part of it. The hospital has indeed been allowed to survive as a separate institution; but the whole of the strictly monastic buildings were doomed, the nave of the church being at once pulled down, and the choir only preserved for the use of the parish. With this reservation, the site of the Priory and the buildings upon it, including the Lady Chapel, were sold in 1546 to Sir Richard Rich, Knight (Attorney General), for the consideration of £1,064 11_s._ 3_d._, and the property has remained in the hands of his descendants till quite recent years. The possession was, however, interrupted by Queen Mary, who introduced the Dominican Order of Black Friars into the Convent. They had started rebuilding the nave when the accession of Elizabeth meant a return to the policy of her father, the expulsion of the friars, and the restitution of the Priory estate to Richard (then Lord) Rich and his heirs "in free socage," by a renewal of the previous grant.[11] Some idea of the strong ecclesiastical influence broken up at the Dissolution may be gathered from a glance at any old map of London, showing the numerous religious foundations by which the Priory was then surrounded, now for the most part swept away, or only surviving here and there in institutions which retain the ancient names under modern conditions. Immediately to the north lay the Carthusian monastery, familiarly known as the Charterhouse. On the north-west was the Priory of St. John-of-Jerusalem, founded by the Knights Hospitallers. The Franciscan Convent of the Grey Friars extended along the southern boundary of St. Bartholomew's, between the Priory walls and St. Paul's Cathedral. To the south-west, near the Thames, there was the monastery of the Carmelites, or White Friars, with the church and houses of the Knights Templars beyond it. Within the City, to the east, were the great establishments of the Austin Friars and St. Helen's nunnery, while east and west the churches spread--many of monastic origin--culminating in two of the most important buildings in Europe, the Tower of London and the palace of Westminster, each with its ecclesiastical dependencies, the whole dominated by the mediaeval spirit about to be dispelled, for good or evil, by the great movements of the Renaissance and Reformation. A conjectural restoration of the Priory buildings, as they stood in Prior Bolton's time, based on the records available in 1893, and the architectural fragments which then remained, shows them to have been bounded on the northern side by the Church, which extended from the Lady Chapel at its eastern extremity to somewhere near the line indicated by the small archway now leading from the public square into the churchyard on the west. This churchyard covers the ground formerly occupied by the nave, a mutilated portion of which remains within the building, attached to the lower stage of the central tower. It seems clear that the choir once extended over the tower-space, and was separated from the nave by a screen, with a parish-altar on its western side for public worship, while the chancel was reserved for the monastic services, with a raised presbytery for the high altar at its eastern end--a threefold division providing for the ancient ritual arrangement. In the ambulatory on the northern side of the choir there were apparently three chapels, besides Bishop Walden's chantry, which was the easternmost of the series, and is supposed to have had a semicircular apse. There was a similar, but rather smaller, chapel opposite to it on the south side, and between it and the south transept a sacristy, erected about 1350. Outside the Lady Chapel lay the cemetery of the Canons, on the favourite (south) side for burials. The cloister formed a large quadrangle attached to the south aisle. The Prior's residence was probably on the western side of the quadrangle, and on the south there was a range of buildings comprising the refectory, buttery, and kitchen, with the Close beyond them. Opening into the cloister on the east was the Chapter House, an oblong structure, adjoining which, on the south, was the dormitory, overlooking the Mulberry Gardens on the east, and the Close on its western side.[12] [Illustration: PLAN, PARTLY CONJECTURAL, OF THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS AT THE DISSOLUTION A Lady Chapel. B Founder's tomb. C Bishop Walden's chantry. D Pulpit (destroyed 1828). EE Chapels (conjectural). F Sacristy (c. 1350). G North transept. H Central tower and ritual choir. I South transept. K Parish altar. L Nave (c. 1250) destroyed at the Dissolution. M Chapter House (destroyed by fire 1830). N Dormitory (undercroft destroyed about 1870). O Parlour. P Kitchen. Q Buttery. R Refectory.] The work of demolition commenced immediately after the transfer of the property to Henry VIII, when the nave was destroyed; and as soon as Sir Richard Rich came into possession, he started pulling down the buildings for the sake of the materials, which were used in the erection of new houses where the old had formerly stood, as well as on the gardens and orchards around them. By the time of Queen Elizabeth the district had become a favourite residential quarter for great people, who gradually disappeared with the growth of London, and the migration of gentry westwards, when the houses vacated in Smithfield were let off in tenements to the same sort of poor people who now share the neighbourhood with merchants and shopkeepers. During Elizabeth's reign the church had been allowed to get into a very dilapidated state, and that it was in some danger of total destruction appears from a letter written by Edmund Grindal in 1563, while he was Bishop of London, to Sir William Cecil, proposing to take the lead from the roof, and transfer it to St. Paul's Cathedral: St. Bartholomew's Churche, adjoining to my L. Rich's house, is in decaye, and so increaseth dailye. It hath an heavie coate of lead, wch wolde doe a verie goode service for the Mother Churche of Powles. I have obtayned my L. Rich's goode wishes, and if I coulde obteyne my L. Chiefe Justice of the K. Benche and Sir Walter Mildmaye's assente, I wolde not doubte to have the assente also of the whole parishe, that ye leade might goe to the coveringe of Powles.... Now remayneth only this scruple--How shall the parisshe be providett of a churche? That is thus answered: There is an house adjoininge, wch was the _Fratrie_, as they termed it, a very fayre and a large house, and indeed al-readye: if it were purged, it lacketh nothinge but the name of a churche; is well buylded of free stone, garnished inwarde aboute with marble pyllers, large windowes, etc. I assure you, without partialitie, if it were roofed up, it were farre more beautiful and conveniente than the other. Yt is provided with goode sclate. If we mighte have the leade, we wolde compownde with my L. Rich for convertinge the said _Fratrie_ to a _Churche_, and wee wylle also supplye all imperfections of the same, and not desire the p'isshe to remove tylle the other be meete and conveniente to goe to.[13] Lord Rich thought favourably of the proposal; but that fears were entertained elsewhere would seem probable from a second letter, in which Grindal writes as follows: For S. Bartholomewes--I meane not to pulle it downe, but to change it for a Churche more conveniente ... unlesse some strange opinion shulde arise that prayer were more acceptable under leade than under sclate. The long period of neglect and desecration which follows is rather to be inferred from the condition of the buildings in the early part of the nineteenth century than from any actual records respecting them. What that condition was in 1809 is described in two letters which appeared in "The Gentleman's Magazine" for March and April in that year. They were written in a spirit of indignation at the behaviour of "a powerful junto" which had been formed in the parish to sweep the whole structure away, church included, on the pretext that part of the choir was in danger of tumbling down. It had, however, been saved by the exertions and judicious repairs of Mr. Hardwick, to whom the writer pays a just compliment for his timely action against the particular committee. He then goes on with a lamentable picture of what met his eyes on a "recent survey" of the Priory, which he had previously examined in 1791, when it was pretty much in the same state.[14] The Lady Chapel was still in existence, but wholly filled up with modern tenements; the north transept was more or less destroyed, and the arch bricked up to reduce that side of the church to a level, while the south transept--a ruin without a roof--was walled off from the church, and used as a burial-ground. The eastern side of the cloister was all that remained of the quadrangle, and was turned to account as a "comfortable eight-stall stable" for horses. The site of the north cloister was occupied by a blacksmith's forge, a public house, and certain private offices; the south and west being covered with store-rooms and coach-houses. Of the Chapter House the remaining walls were "no higher than a dado," and under them the timber was stored after treatment in the sawpit of the enclosure. The dormitory to the south of the Chapter House had been demolished, and the crypt beneath it bricked off into divisions for stores, with a common thoroughfare open between them. It may here be mentioned that a close examination of the ground has shown that there was formerly the usual "slype," or open pathway, running from the cloister-garth, between the south transept and the Chapter House, to the canons' cemetery on the southern side of the Lady Chapel. The building against the south wall of the choir (probably the sacristy, though called a chapel) is described as a magnificent structure, of about the time of Edward III, with windows on the eastern and southern sides, and a grand arch (then latticed up) which formerly connected it with the south transept. It was being used as a store-room for hops. The chapel to the east of this was destroyed in its upper part, and the windows had lost their arched heads, though the columns and architraves to the jambs remained, showing some very delicate and beautiful work, which was also remarkably fine in the dado mouldings. The ceiling of the church--the wreck of the Tudor open-worked timber roof--had been "pared down to a common pediment covering," supported on the heads of cherubim as corbels. The Doric altar-piece is contemptuously referred to as "a painted theatrical scene of architecture."[15] While the subordinate buildings were dropping into ruin, the church, besides having suffered from fire and neglect, had been disfigured by a long series of repairs and embellishments, the character of which may be inferred from the glaring instances pointed out in the letters just quoted. The other alterations made in the interior may be briefly summarized as follows: The level of the floor was raised by a thick deposit of earth; the walls were enveloped in whitewash, to the concealment of the ancient mural paintings and certain delicate sculptured ornament; and high pews were erected, which reached almost to the capitals of the piers. The openings of the triforium were bricked up--in some cases entirely obliterated--and at the east end, above the altar-piece just mentioned, there rose a brick wall, pierced with two ugly round-headed windows, filled with square panes of glass, and destitute of mullions and tracery. The space between the termination thus formed and the original apse went by the name of "Purgatory," as a receptacle for human bones, some thousands of which were found to have accumulated when it was cleared out in 1836.[16] [Illustration: THE CHOIR BEFORE RESTORATION, SHOWING THE FACTORY FLOOR EXTENDING OVER THE APSE AND SUPPORTED BY TWO IRON COLUMNS] The secularization of this extreme eastern part of the church is traced to the first purchaser from the Government, who held that the sanctuary was bounded by the straight wall which there ran across it. A more modern consequence than that just mentioned was the intrusion into the triforium of a Nonconformist school, which was held there during the eighteenth century, in connection with a chapel belonging to the particular denomination immediately outside, having a convenient access to the triforium from its own galleries. Another encroachment was a fringe manufactory, which extended westwards along the triforium so as to include Prior Bolton's window, and held its ground for some time after the main arcading of the apse had been restored. Visitors to the church before the restoration was complete will remember a substantial iron bar which was carried across the curve, above the altar, to strengthen the walls--an eyesore which could not be removed till the intruding factory was bought out (_vide infra_). The real work of restoration was begun in 1863 by the late Rev. John Abbiss, then Rector of the parish, who raised something like £5,000, and spent it in reducing the floor to its original level, removing the pews (which had previously been lowered), repairing the walls and piers, and rebuilding the central part of the apse, which had been pulled down early in the fifteenth century, as already explained. Outside the church a dry area was formed for the better protection of the fabric against the subsidence known to follow on the ignorance, or indifference, of early builders as to underlying strata. All this was accomplished in three years, when the money was exhausted, and a fresh fund had to be created for the continuation of the restorative work. In raising subscriptions the then patron of the living, the Rev. F. P. Phillips, was well supported by the parishioners, the City Companies, the Charity Commissioners (out of the City Ecclesiastical Funds), and the general public, with the result that a sum of over £28,000 was got together. The chief individual contributor was the patron himself, who purchased the projecting fringe factory for £6,500,[17] and completed the restoration of the apse at his own expense. At the same time the church was provided with a new roof, and the blacksmith's forge, which occupied the site of the north transept, was bought out. On the 30th November, 1886, the restored portions were formally opened, the actual work having started about two years before, under the active interest of the Rev. William Panckridge, who succeeded Mr. Abbiss in the Rectory. The long list of works undertaken and completed from 1887 to 1893, under the succeeding Rector, the Rev. Sir J. Borradaile Savory, Bart., includes the restoration of both transepts, the opening out of both sides of the choir triforium,[18] the erection of the north and west porches, the refacing of the west front, the reparation of the brick tower, and the re-hanging of the bells, besides numerous external and internal details. The crowning work was the reconstruction of the Lady Chapel, which was not completed till 1896, after the tedious business of releasing it from its secular holders, and the recovery of the original design amidst the mutilation in which they left it. The whole has been admirably carried through by Sir Aston Webb, R.A., who has restored the precious fabric as nearly as possible to its original state, by replacing what was destroyed, and revealing what was concealed when the difficult task was committed to him. The restoration has since been extended to three bays on the eastern side of the cloister, all that remained of the original quadrangle, and these in a sadly ruinous state. Whether the cloisters were completed by Rahere is a matter of conjecture; but it may be fairly assumed that they were begun by him as a necessary part of the monastery. The surviving Norman fragments point to the twelfth century as the date of their first erection. It is certain that they were rebuilt in the fifteenth, for besides the architectural remains of that period, there is historical evidence that the work was done under Prior John Watford soon after his appointment in 1404. For in September, 1409, Pope Alexander V, when making a grant of Indulgences to those who visited and gave alms at the church on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Feast of the Assumption, expressly mentions the reconstruction of the Cloisters and Chapter House by the Prior among the reasons which had induced him to confer the privilege. When the monastery was suppressed, the archway leading into the east cloister from the church was built up, and the doors were taken from it--in all probability to be transferred (in 1544) to the principal entrance at the western end of the truncated building. In the reconstruction attempted by the Dominican Friars, it seems that, instead of re-opening the cloister-arch to its full extent, they contented themselves with inserting a smaller doorway within it, the jambs and lintel of which were discovered in the rubble masonry when the arch was opened out in 1905. On the suppression of the Dominicans by Queen Elizabeth, the cloisters passed again into secular hands, and disappear from history until the year 1742, when there is a record of the stabling that occupied the ruins till our own day, with the temporary interruption of a fire in 1830, which brought most of the eastern side to the ground. The stables were afterwards rebuilt, and left undisturbed till 1900, when negotiations were opened for the purchase of the freehold from the owners. It was not till Michaelmas, 1904, that possession, even of a part, could be obtained, as there were various leasehold interests to be reckoned with, and many beneficiaries to be satisfied, whose rights will not be finally extinguished until June, 1926. But excavation was at once commenced, and the actual rebuilding in 1905. It need hardly be said that all that has been discovered of the ancient work, here and elsewhere, whether above or below ground, has been carefully preserved, and incorporated (as far as possible _in situ_) into the restoration. FOOTNOTES: [1] I. "Liber fundationis ecclesiae et prioratus S. Bartholomaei in West-Smithfield, London; per Raherum qui illic religiosos viros secundum regulam S. patris Augustini aggregavit, iisdemque per XXII annos prioris dignitate et officio functus praetuit, et de miraculis ipsius." II. "Idem liber Anglice." Both are on parchment, in pages of the same (quarto) size, and bound together in a single volume of eighty-three leaves, divided almost equally between the Latin and English versions.--Cottonian MSS. Vespasian, B. ix. [2] "When he attained the flower of youth, he began to haunt the households of noblemen and the palaces of princes, where, under every elbow of them, he spread their cushions, with apings and flatterings delectably anointing their eyes, to draw to him their friendships. And yet he was not content with this, but haunted the King's palace, and among the noisefull press of that tumultuous Court enforced himself with jollity and carnal suavity, by the which he might draw to him the hearts of many a one."--Cottonian MS., _ut supra_. [3] Cottonian MS. [4] _Ibid._ [5] This Richard de Belmeis (Beauvais) was the first of two bishops of the same name, and held the See of London for twenty years (1108-1128). The name of Rahere, which appears in various forms, suggests a French origin; and from the fact that it occurs in the signature, or attestation, of certain documents discovered in Brittany, as well as from the close relations between the bishop and the founder of St. Bartholomew's, it is conjectured that they both came from the same neighbourhood. Otherwise their joint interest in the foundation at Smithfield is sufficiently accounted for by the benevolent object and the situation within the London diocese. Leland gives the credit of the foundation to Henry I, as having granted the land out of the royal domain. [6] The Canons Regular of St. Augustine (of Hippo) are said to have been founded at Avignon in or about 1061. Their first establishment in England was at Colchester (_circa_ 1105), where the picturesque ruins of the Priory Church, dedicated to St. Botolph, are all that remain of the monastic buildings. The habit consisted of a black cassock with a white rochet, over which a black cloak and hood were worn, thus leading to their familiar name of the Black Canons--not to be confused with the Black _Friars_, a Dominican Order of mendicants, introduced at St. Bartholomew's Priory under Queen Mary. From an anecdote related by Matthew Paris (under the year 1250), and quoted in most accounts of the Priory, it seems that the inmates, while recognizing the authority of the Bishop of London, were extremely jealous of outside interference. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Boniface of Savoy) had ventured to include St. Bartholomew's in one of his visitations. He was received with becoming dignity by the sub-prior, but politely warned against going beyond his jurisdiction. This so enraged his Grace that he struck the sub-prior in the face, and, "with many oaths," rent in pieces the rich cope he was wearing, treading it under his feet, and thrusting the sub-prior against a pillar of the chancel with such violence as almost to kill him. A general conflict followed between the Canons and the Archbishop's attendants, which was taken up outside and set the whole city in an uproar. [7] _Vide_ Dr. Norman Moore's edition from the copy in the Record Office. [8] There had been a decline in public interest for some years before 1691, when the abuses which had grown round the celebration led to its reduction from fourteen to four days: but the fair lingered on in a degenerate state till it was last proclaimed by the Lord Mayor in 1850, and finally ceased in 1855. The live cattle market, so vividly described, with its attendant nuisances, in the twenty-first chapter of "Oliver Twist," was closed at the same time, and the business transferred to the new Caledonian Market. The open pens at Smithfield have been superseded by covered buildings, to which the old Newgate Market has been removed, and considerably developed, for the sale of meat, the slaughtering for the most part being done locally in the various places whence the supplies are derived. The memory of old associations is preserved in the street which runs along the north side of the church, and still bears the name of "Cloth Fair": and the site of "Pye Corner," where the great fire of 1666 reached its limit, is marked by a tablet in the wall, at the entrance to Cock Lane in Giltspur Street, a short distance to the south-west. The place took its name from the "Court of Pie-Powder," which was held during the fair here, as at similar gatherings throughout the country, to deal expeditiously with disturbers of the peace. The etymology is traced to the old French _pied pouldré_, with supposed reference to the dusty feet of pedlars and others who came before the court--now extinguished in the more modern Petty Sessions. A lively description of the fair, in its palmy days, is given in a tract, printed in 1641 for Richard Harper at the "Bible and Harp" in Smithfield, entitled, "Bartholomew Fair, or varieties of fancies, where you may find a faire of wares, and all to please your mind, with the several enormityes and misdemeanours which are there seen and heard." Among the more gloomy associations of Smithfield are the martyrdoms which took place there during the Marian persecution of 1555-57. Of the victims, John Rogers, John Bradford, and John Philpot are commemorated in a modern tablet let into the wall of the hospital facing the square where they suffered. The church to their memory, referred to in the inscription, is in St. John Street Road, where it was built as a Chapel-of-Ease to the parish church of St. John-of-Jerusalem, founded by the Knights Hospitallers in 1185. [9] The late Mr. J. H. Parker was inclined to think there was a tower in each corner (though two only could be represented in the seal), as was not unusual in France and elsewhere, but rarely the case in England. (See his lecture delivered in the church on 13th July, 1863.) [10] _Vide_ "Henry VIII and the English Monasteries," by the Rt. Rev. Abbot Gasquet, D.D., O.S.B., for an able statement of the case for the communities: and an article by G. G. Perry ("Eng. Hist. Review," April, 1889), on "Episcopal Visitations of the Austin Canons," for some cases of laxity. [11] The Dominicans were introduced at St. Bartholomew's in 1556, when their old monastery (dating from 1276), near the north end of Blackfriars Bridge, was no longer available. Possibly their work and reputation in making converts may have had some influence on the choice of the Order, which, moreover, was governed by the Augustinian rule, adopted (with additions) by their founder in 1215, and so far brought the community under the traditions of their predecessors. The members at Smithfield consisted of English, Spanish, and Belgian friars, and Fr. William Perrin, O.P., was appointed as their chief. When he died in 1558, Fr. Richard Hargrave was elected in his place, but was not allowed to take office, apparently in view of the suppression which was impending when the Letters Patent from the General, confirming his election, reached England in the following year. By the time of the actual expulsion (13th July, 1559) the community had been reduced by deaths and migrations to "three priests and one young man," who would seem to have conformed, in preference to leaving the country. (_Vide_ "The Elizabethan Religious Settlement," ch. iv, by Dom H. N. Birt, O.S.B.) For the general history of the Black Friars the reader is referred to Archbishop Alemany's "Life of St. Dominic, with a Sketch of the Dominican Order," the "Etudes sur l'Ordre de St. Dominique" by D'Anzas, and "The Coming of the Friars" by Dr. Aug. Jessopp. The "Chronica Majora" of Matthew Paris afford some lively reading on the subject. [12] It is possible that investigations now pending may involve a slight rearrangement of this conjectural plan, as those previously drawn have similarly been modified from time to time by fresh discoveries. [13] This suggestion of Bishop Grindal's recalls the case of Beaulieu Abbey where the beautiful refectory is still preserved as the parish church. [14] The church had been "restored" in 1789 by Mr. George Dance, architect to the hospital, in a spirit which may be inferred from the description of the interior given above. A more sympathetic restoration was inaugurated by Mr. Philip Hardwick in 1823. [15] When the church was repaired by Mr. John Blyth in 1836, this painting was removed, and a range of columns, bearing small semicircular arches, substituted for it as a reredos. During these alterations it was discovered that the stone wall (erected by de Walden) between the wooden altar-piece and the original apse, was painted in bright red tempera, sprinkled with black stars. $$ The above-mentioned letters are attributed to Mr. John Carter, but are merely signed by "An Architect." [16] It would probably be unfair to infer any unusual neglect in spiritual matters from the architectural conditions. In Paterson's "Pietas Londinensis" there is a list of public services at many London churches, as held in the early part of the eighteenth century. The services at St. Bartholomew-the-Great are there quoted as "Daily in the last week in the month at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.," and at St. Bartholomew-the-Less as "Daily at 11 a.m." [17] It should be stated that the fringe factory had covered the remains of the crypt and Lady Chapel, besides projecting some twenty feet into the east end of the church. The architects for these earlier restorations were Professor Hayter Lewis and Mr. Slater, who deserve credit for their careful preservation of the old work. [18] The obstruction on the south side of the triforium has been already mentioned. The northern side was used for the parochial boys' school for many years down to 1892, when the scholars were transferred to the new schools built for them adjoining the church. * * * * * [Illustration: THE PRIORY CHURCH FROM THE WEST _E. Scamell. Photo._] [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE WEST _From a print of 1810_ _W. Pearson del. W. Preston sc._] CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR The church lies in a general east and west direction, and, at the present day, consists of the Choir and encircling Ambulatory, Lady Chapel, north and south Transepts, with the lower stage of the central Tower, one bay of the ancient Nave, three bays of the Cloister, and a seventeenth-century brick Tower--the whole hidden behind the houses, in an obscure corner of West Smithfield, by no means easy for a stranger to discover. It will be well for him, therefore, in the first place, to make his way to the better known buildings of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and then walk across the open square, between them and Smithfield Market, to its eastern side, where he will find the entrance close to the narrow street called Cloth Fair. #The Gateway# is interesting, as a surviving fragment of the Early-English period, supposed by some authorities to mark the site of the original west front, of which they regard it as having formed part--the entrance to the south aisle--which was allowed to stand, after the grand central porch, and a corresponding doorway on the northern side, were destroyed with the nave. More probable is the conjecture that it was merely the entrance to the monastic enclosure, turned to account as a ready-made structure when the work at the church was the reverse of constructive, as it seems too large and too high for a mere doorway at the end of an aisle, besides being rather too far from the church to agree with its supposed dimensions. The modern iron gate is surmounted by a gilded cross and the name of the church on a framework in the tympanum. The arch is acutely pointed, and moulded in four orders, with a tooth ornament in the hollows, and is in tolerably good condition; but the supporting shafts have been superseded by a wall on each side, with the circular moulded capitals (much decayed) above it, the bases either being destroyed or buried in the earth beneath. The gateway is in a line with the houses facing the public square, which touch it on both sides, and are carried on without interruption above the opening. When the floor of the church was lowered to its original level in 1863-6, the present approach to it was made by an excavation through the churchyard, which covered the site of the nave, and is now walled off on the northern side of the passage. The gravestones are of comparatively modern date, and of no special interest. A few of them have been left against the wall on the right, where there is something of more antiquarian value in a collection of _débris_ from the old building, containing the bases of some of the Early-English columns in their original place, but hopelessly mutilated. The existing #West Front# dates from the time when the nave was destroyed. In 1893 a great improvement was made in its appearance by refacing the wall with flint and stone, and otherwise ornamenting the surface, to bring it into uniformity with the porch which was then built at that end of the church. There are now three round-headed recesses in the central portion of the wall, those at the extremities containing narrow windows; a band of chequered stonework is carried across the space beneath them, and a small circular window inserted above. It may be mentioned here that the pointed arch has generally been adopted in the new work, to distinguish it from the old, but the characteristic massiveness and predominant scale of the original has been preserved throughout the restoration. A practical illustration of these principles will be seen in #The Porch#, as an ingenious compromise between the older and newer types of architecture which are brought together in the main fabric. It is built of a combination of flint and Portland stone, like the wall-front just described, with which it is connected by a small circular tower and an oblong extension on the northern side. The two storeys of which it consists are divided externally by a band of chequered diaper. The shallow arch of the doorway is simply moulded and very slightly pointed, suggesting a transition from the Romanesque to the Early-English style, while the Perpendicular is represented in the battlements on the roof and the octagonal turret on the southern side. In a niche above the apex of the arch, and on a bracket displaying the Priory arms, upheld by two angels, stands a figure of Rahere, the founder, with his left hand raised in benediction, and in his right a model of the church. The design of this little edifice is taken from one of the ancient seals (see Illustration in the Appendix), and shows the central tower, with a round turret at each end, and a small building (probably the original Lady Chapel) projecting from the east. Rahere's features are copied from the effigy on his tomb, which is believed to be an authentic portrait. The figure occupies the central position in the higher storey, with three arched recesses on either side (the middle one in each case containing a window), diminishing in height outwards, in harmony with the lines of the roof. The ceiling within the porch is groined in four divisions; and the "priest's chamber" above it makes a convenient private room for the rector of the parish. This new porch bears its own date (1893), and the date of the foundation, seven hundred and seventy years earlier.[1] #The Brick Tower#, built in 1628, is said to have been altered to some extent in subsequent repairs, which have not improved its appearance. So at least say the admirers of King Charles I, who argue that nothing quite so hideous could have been erected in his reign. It is a plain square structure, seventy-five feet in height, in four stages, gradually diminishing in area upwards, the lower part supported by buttresses, and the summit crowned by battlements, with a small bell-turret and vane. More interesting than the tower itself--which is, in fact, an incongruous addition to the church--are the #Bells# which it contains, a precious inheritance from the Augustinian Canons, and in some respects the most remarkable in London. The foundry stamp shows them to have been cast by Thomas Bullisdon, who died about 1510. They are the smaller five of a ring of twelve, six of which were sold at the Dissolution to the Church of St. Sepulchre, Holborn, where they have since been re-cast, and one has disappeared from history. The measurements and inscriptions are as follows: 1. #SANCTE BARTHOLEMEO: ORA PRO NOBIS.# Diameter 22 in. 2. #SANCTA KATERINA: ORA PRO NOBIS.# Diameter 24 in. 3. #SANCTA ANNA: ORA PRO NOBIS.# Diameter 26¾ in. 4. #SANCTE JOHANNES BAPTISTE: ORA PRO NOBIS.# Diameter 29¼ in. 5. #SANCTE PETRE: ORA PRO NOBIS.# Diameter 31 in. The clock-bell, in the cage on the top, is inscribed, "<sc>T. Mears of London Fecit</sc> 1814." Diameter about 25 inches. The churchyard is overlooked on its northern side by the back windows of some rickety old wooden houses, suggestive of an easy conflagration, and dangerously near the church. They date from the time of Queen Elizabeth, and stand on a piece of the ground formerly devoted to Bartholomew Fair, the memory of which is perpetuated in the adjoining street (Cloth Fair), where the humble shops in front of the same houses are said to be a survival of the ancient booths. They run close up to the #North Porch#, which projects into the street from the transept. It was erected in 1893, at the same time that the transept was restored. The porch is similar in material and character to that on the west, with some differences in detail, the chief of which are that the figure over the door represents St. Bartholomew, with only one window on each side of it--in this case square-headed, with a label-moulding--and the chequered diaper covers the whole wall-surface of the upper storey. The Saint is raising his right hand in the act of blessing, and holds in the left a knife, which has become his emblem, as the instrument of his passion. A scroll entwined about the effigy bears the appropriate words (in English) from Rahere's vision: _Almighty God this spiritual house shall inhabit and hallow it._ The upper chamber here is reserved for the mission-lady working in the district. [Illustration: THE NORTH PORCH _E. Scamell. Photo._] The face of the transept visible above displays three lancet-headed windows of the clerestory; the spaces are laid out in ornamental panels; and there is an octagonal turret on the right, with battlements and a pointed roof. The rest of the church is hemmed in, and for the most part concealed, by tumble-down houses, forming a labyrinth of narrow winding passages about the walls, and even encroaching upon them--a bit of old London which has escaped the modern spirit of improvement, and would appear to be full of suggestive material for the writer of romance. As we thread our way through this network round the east end and south side, to reach the entrance once more, we get an occasional glimpse of the choir and Lady Chapel through a gap in the surrounding buildings; but are far more impressed with the sense of poverty and ruin than by anything in the way of architecture, which can be much better seen and described from within. The new schools in the south-east corner (built to supersede the old structure which still remains attached to the north triforium) are worth a visit _en route_: and so, perhaps, is the abandoned burial-ground outside the south transept, if only as a melancholy souvenir of the past. The church is open every day, and the services are as follows: SUNDAYS 8.15 a.m. Holy Communion. 11 a.m. Mattins. 11.45 a.m. Holy Communion (choral) and Sermon. 4 p.m. Children's Service and Catechizing. 7 p.m. Evensong and Sermon. SAINTS' DAYS 8.15 a.m. Holy Communion. 11 a.m. Mattins. 8.30 p.m. Evensong and Sermon. ORDINARY DAYS 11 a.m. Mattins. 4 p.m. Evensong, except on Wednesdays, when the arrangement is the same as for Saints' Days. FOOTNOTES: [1] Within the porch a tablet on the south wall gives a list of the Priors and Rectors. On the opposite wall another tablet, recording some of the restorative work, forms part of the memorial to Sir Borradaile Savory. For the rest of the memorial see notes on pp. 48 and 57. * * * * * [Illustration: VIEW OF THE CROSSING FROM THE TRIFORIUM _E. Scamell. Photo._] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR As soon as the visitor enters the church, he will be able to contrast the Norman work of the twelfth century with that which succeeded it in the thirteenth, as both are brought into juxtaposition immediately within the western doorway. The surviving #Bay of the Nave#, which probably marks the boundary of the monastic choir, now answers the purpose of a vestibule to the church, from the body of which it is separated by the organ-screen, the instrument being carried on a gallery built against the western wall. The nave arches, at each end of the passage thus formed, are semicircular in shape, with a zigzag moulding on the inner sides, and rest on massive rounded piers, with square bases and abaci and simple cushioned capitals--the whole obviously of early twelfth century date. The northern arch has been built up, and a small Tudor doorway, inserted in the wall, gives access to the transept. At right angles with the southern arch, and on each side of the entrance to the choir aisle, or ambulatory, there is a cluster of #Early English Columns#, still bearing a portion of the vaulting-shafts, from which it can be seen that the pitch of the roof to the nave aisle was much higher than that of the ambulatory to which it was attached, probably implying a corresponding difference in the height of the nave. The slender columns on both sides are alike in their moulded bases, which resemble those left (_in situ_) among the ruins outside, as far as the latter can be discerned; but there is an interesting variety in other details, the capitals of the northern group being cut into foliage, while they are moulded on the south, where also the shafts are banded. #The Organ-screen# (modern) is an elegant piece of work in oak, panelled and canopied in the Perpendicular style. With the organ-front above, it forms an admirable background to the choir-stalls, which are arranged in the space within the old central tower, the seats for the congregation being carried along towards the east, facing each other chapel-wise, in continuation of the stalls on either side. A description of the organ will be found in the Appendix. [Illustration: THE SOUTH AISLE FROM THE WEST, SHOWING THE EARLY ENGLISH SHAFTS _E. Scamell. Photo._] #The Tower Arches# are worth particular notice. Those on the north and south are pointed, and much narrower than the others, which have a bold semicircular sweep. An intelligible reason sometimes assigned for the difference is that the area enclosed is not exactly square, and that it became necessary for the builders to carry the transept-arches to a point, to accommodate them to the oblong plan, and bring the upper mouldings into line with those of the rounded arches between the choir and nave. On this supposition the result has been called "an incidental use of the pointed arch," examples of which occur elsewhere (_e.g._, at Christ Church, Oxford, and other churches of the transitional period) before it became a distinguishing feature of the later style. It is tolerably certain, however, that the tower was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and that the north and south arches were then altered from their first design. And their appearance is strongly in favour of a reconstruction; for it will be noticed that, instead of the usual elegant inclination in a continuous curve from the spring to the apex, they rise perpendicularly for some distance above the piers on either side, and then take rather an abrupt turn inwards, suggesting the imposition of a pointed heading on an original stilted form. Further signs of alteration appear on the northern side, where the capitals have been recut in the Perpendicular fashion; but the Norman pilasters and mouldings on the south remain untouched. On both sides the double serrated line of moulding claims attention, as an example of the "saw-tooth" ornament found in early work. A difference will be observed in the corbels supporting the mouldings of the eastern and western arches. The former are much more boldly cut, with all the appearance of original work, while those on the west would seem to have been modified by some architect of the Perpendicular age. In the decoration of the inner tower walls there is a lozenge-shaped panel in each of the spandrels, sculptured into a floral ornament something like the Greek honeysuckle, a shallow arcading in the angles, and a cornice of zigzag moulding extending round the walls, immediately below the modern ceiling (1886) of panelled oak. The piers at the angles of the tower are not very much more massive than the adjacent walls, and do not strike one as capable of sustaining a superstructure of any great weight. It may therefore be inferred that the tower was a low one, as is in fact borne out by the representation on the Priory seal, where the circular turrets at each end of the church are shown to exceed it in height. #The North Transept#, which had been occupied for many years as a blacksmith's forge, was re-opened on 5th June, 1893, after restoration to something like its original state. It is now used as a morning chapel, with an altar in a recess on the north side, slightly to the east of the porch already described, by which the church is entered from Cloth Fair.[1] [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT AND SCREEN _E. Scamell. Photo._] [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT FROM THE SOUTH _E. Scamell. Photo._] Both transepts had been injured by fire, and were originally much deeper than they are at present, but to have rebuilt them exactly on the old lines would have involved the suppression of a right of way and the purchase of neighbouring properties, besides adding to the cost of heating and maintenance, expenses which the funds would not allow. Here, as elsewhere, the old work, as far as it remained, has been left undisturbed, and simply incorporated into the new, the architect contenting himself with removing the modern walls which had been set up at the extremities to keep out the weather, providing abutments to strengthen the central arches, and supplying what was wanted to complete the first design within the more limited area. During the reconstruction of this transept the fine arcaded #Stone Screen# was revealed which separates it from the space within the tower. The screen was buried some four feet in earth, and the upper part entirely concealed by the smithy. The style shows it to be of the fifteenth century, when there was probably a similar screen on the opposite side of the choir, the two backing the stalls, which are known to have been carried under the tower. The existing screen is divided into two wide arches, slightly depressed, with a moulding in four orders. It has been refaced on the choir side, and a partition of ironwork, ornamented with coloured coats of arms, inserted in the open spaces, to serve as a barrier without obstructing the view in either direction. Under one of the arches there is a stone coffin, with a much decayed cover of Purbeck marble, which is supposed to have contained the body of a Prior. It was opened for examination during the rebuilding, when a skeleton was found within it, with sandals still on the feet, but as the skull was gone it was evident that the coffin had previously been opened. In the arch by its side there was another coffin of the same character, which has unfortunately been shifted to the north ambulatory. It is without a cover, and the skeleton is no longer there; but the leaden envelope remains, more or less in the state in which it was folded round the corpse. The arched recess on the east, by the side of the opening to the ambulatory, is supposed to have been the entrance to the Walden Chantry; but it has been built up with a return-wall. The triforium is continuous through all three walls of the transept, each bay consisting of a double pointed arch, except that above the ambulatory, where the surviving Norman fragment shows three round-headed openings, included in a semicircular arch with billet moulding. The clerestory in the north wall, where the work is entirely new, is ornamented with a traceried arcading on an interior plane, which has a very beautiful effect. #The South Transept#, opened after restoration on 14th March, 1891, had been turned to account as a burial-ground, supplementary to that at the west end. The side walls were allowed to stand for the enclosure, but the south wall was pulled down, and another erected within the space, to separate the "Green Churchyard," as it was called, from the church. In this case, therefore, the restoration meant little more than the removal of the intercepting wall to open out the transept, and building a new one at the extremity, with a partial reconstruction of those which were decayed to connect them with it. In the renovation of both transepts blue Bath stone has been used internally, and Portland stone with flints for the exterior. The conservative nature of the work is here seen in the side walls, each of which retains a bay of the old Norman triforium, with its round-headed divisions, to which a new bay has been added, with a slightly pointed arcade, as a connection, without any violent contrast, between the older parts of the transept and the new south wall. This presents an agreeable variety to that facing it in the opposite transept. In the upper stage, instead of a triforium and clerestory, there are three tall windows of two lights each, the central being carried above the others, and distinguished by a more ornate tracery, here taking a cruciform pattern above the trefoil-headed divisions, instead of a foliated circle as in the side windows. The arcading in which they are all placed is severely simple in character, the slightly pointed headings resting on plain shafts, with moulded bases and capitals--the whole composition a pleasing relief to the heavier architecture on each side without being discordant. The same may be said of the lower stage, also arcaded in three divisions, corresponding with those above, but rather more massive in character. The central arch forms a porch, giving access to the church on that side, with a recess to the east and west of it, each lighted by a dwarfed window. The eastern of these recesses answers the purpose of a baptistery. #The Font# dates from the early fifteenth century, and is octagonal in shape, with a tall cover, crocketed at the angles, suspended on a swivel above it. The facets of the octagon are perfectly plain, but there is an oblong incision in one of them which looks very much like the matrix of a brass, or the seat of a sculptured panel, which has been removed. There is a traditional interest attaching to the font as that in which William Hogarth, the famous painter and satirist, was baptized. He was born in Bartholomew Close on 10th November, 1697, and his baptism is entered in the parish register on the 28th of the same month.[2] It is recorded that the font had a narrow escape in the eighteenth century, when the Vestry ordered it to be removed for a new one, but fortunately the order was never carried out. In a recess on the eastern side of the transept there is a monument to #Elizabeth Freshwater#, whose effigy, in the costume and ruff collar of her time, is shown kneeling at a small _priedieu_, with English and Latin inscriptions beneath: Here lyeth interred the body of Elizabeth Freshwater, late wife of Thomas Freshwater, of Henbridge, in the County of Essex, Esquire; eldest daughter of John Orme of this parish, Gentleman, and Mary his wife. She died the 16th day of May Anno Domini 1617, being of the age of 26 years. Mors properius, quali tinxisti tela veneno Ut sic trina uno vulnere praeda cadat? Unam saeva feris; sed et uno hoc occidit ictu Uxor dulcis, amans filia, chara soror. (=O hasty death, how hast them so contrived Thy darts with venomous poison to direct That, by one cruel stroke, not one but three are killed, Sweet wife, a loving daughter, sister dear!) The doorway beneath the monument opens on the staircase to the south triforium. #The Choir#, now restored as nearly as possible to its original state, consists of five bays on each side, with an apsidal termination of five arches, distinguished from the others (mainly semicircular) by their "stilted" form and much narrower span, which, in fact, measures no more than the diameter of the intervening columns, and gives an appearance of extra massiveness to the east end of the church. All the arches display some approximation to the "horseshoe," in a slight inward inclination on either side towards the capitals on which they rest; but the shape is very definitely assumed in each of those immediately contiguous to the transverse curve. These are of the genuine "horseshoe" pattern characteristic of Arabian or Moorish buildings; and their exact similarity in detail, with their position facing one another at each extremity of the apse, would seem to indicate a structural necessity, or deliberate intention in the design, which, neither here nor elsewhere in the arcading, is to be attributed to any subsidence, or imperfect workmanship, sometimes held to account for the deflection as a mere accident. [Illustration: THE FONT AND THE FRESHWATER MONUMENT _E. Scamell. Photo._] [Illustration: INTERIOR FROM THE EAST, SHOWING PRIOR BOLTON'S GALLERY _E. Scamell. Photo._] The character of these arches, with the slightly domical vaults noticeable in the adjacent aisles, has led some persons to detect an Oriental influence in the building--possibly traceable to the visitors from Byzantium whom the founder is said to have consulted while it was in course of erection--though it is argued to the contrary that these features are sufficiently accounted for by the general tendency of Anglo-Norman architecture at the time, as illustrated elsewhere. The arcading throughout rests on massive piers and circular columns, with square bases and abaci (incised at the angles) and low cushioned capitals, ornamented with a simple scallop. Above the arches, on the choir side, there is a billet moulding, which is considered unique in that, instead of forming a separate decoration to each arch, it is carried along horizontally above the abaci on either side in a continuous line of ornament. #The Triforium# consists of a series of rounded arches, the piers from which they spring being placed directly above those of the main arcade. Each of the side bays is divided into four compartments by small columns, above which the tympanum of the enclosing arch is occupied by a blank wall. The sequence is, of course, interrupted by the oriel window in the central bay on the south; and the narrower openings in the apse only admit of a twofold division. There are said to have been originally windows at the back of the triforium-gallery, as at Durham, Peterborough, and other Norman churches of the same period; but the mutilation and rebuilding in the external walls have greatly destroyed the original work. #Prior Bolton's Window# was probably inserted about 1530, when the device of a "bolt in tun" was officially authorized for Bolton's arms, on his own choice, as presenting his name in the emblematical form then in vogue. The window is an "oriel" in the Perpendicular style, separated vertically by mullions into three lights in front, with one at each end of the projection, and horizontally by transoms into an upper and lower tier, the former having a trefoil heading to each division. There is a sloping hipped roof to the window, and a broad moulded corbel below it. The well-known rebus is boldly displayed upon the central of the five square panels (all sculptured) which adorn the face of this picturesque chamber (_oriolum_), probably built as a convenient private pew for the Prior, from which he could survey the whole of the choir and the Founder's tomb. The Tudor doorway, which now opens into the choir vestry at the eastern end of the south wall, has the Bolton rebus in the spandrels of the arch.[3] #The Clerestory.#--In his reconstruction here Sir Aston Webb has followed the precedent of the Perpendicular work introduced in the fifteenth century, which, fortunately, had not been seriously injured in the upper part of the side walls. He has accordingly adopted that style in the apse, where the clerestory arcade is entirely new. It displays a series of five windows of two lights each, with traceried headings, and slender columns on the inner and outer plane, sufficient to uphold the arcading without intercepting the light--none too abundant in any part of the church, though it is entirely destitute of stained glass at the present day. The walls of the triforium and clerestory are perforated longitudinally to form a continuous passage on each side of the choir--interrupted, however, by the interposition of masonry at the junction of the lateral walls with the apse. The passage along the clerestory is formed by a succession of "shouldered arches," as they are commonly called, though each merely consists of a flat lintel resting on corbels, which is not strictly an arch at all. As there are no signs of vaulting-shafts, it may be fairly assumed that the original roof was a wooden one, probably painted, like those still in existence at other Norman churches. The present ceiling, about forty-seven feet above the level of the floor, is of panelled oak (uncoloured), and supersedes an unsatisfactory timber structure which had taken the place of the earlier Tudor work. It was divided into compartments by a tie-beam and king-post at intervals, supported on corbels representing the heads of cherubim--an innovation more modern, and even more out of character with the building, than the ceiling itself. The cross beams from the latter have been retained in the modern work. [Illustration: THE FOUNDER'S TOMB _E. Scamell. Photo._] #The Founder's Tomb# occupies a bay on the northern side of the sanctuary. Resting on a simple base of rectangular stones, it consists of an altar-tomb in the Perpendicular style, ornamented by four quatrefoil panels in front, each displaying a shield of arms, above which runs the inscription: _Hic jacet Raherus Primus Canonicus et Primus Prior hujus Ecclesiae._ [Illustration: THE TOMB OF RAHERE _From an old engraving, showing the original extent of the arcaded work, and the doorway now removed_ _E. Scamell. Photo._] The painted effigy of Rahere lies upon its back, vested in the black Habit of the Augustinian Canons, the hands joined in prayer, and the tonsured head reposing upon a tasselled cushion. At the feet an angel, with flowing black hair, and crowned, is represented rising from clouds, holding towards the recumbent figure a shield, on which the Priory Arms are embossed and illuminated: _Gules_, two lions _passant guardant: or_, two ducal coronets in chief. On each side of the effigy a kneeling monk of the same Order is reading from a book, opened at Isaiah, li, 3, as may be inferred from the words distinguishable on the page nearest the spectator, the text obviously having been chosen with reference to the ground on which the Priory stands: "Consolabitur ergo Dominus Sion, et consolabitur omnes ruinas ejus: et ponat desertum ejus quasi delicias, et solitudinem ejus quasi hortum Domini." The group is enclosed in a canopied frame of tabernacle work in three divisions, elaborately carved, with a vaulted ceiling; and each of the panels in the back wall is perforated with a small decorated window, unglazed, probably inserted not only for ornament but for the benefit of pilgrims on the ambulatory side of the shrine. The design is continued in a fourth panel towards the east, with a blank wall behind it, and another separating it from the actual tomb. Originally there were two other panels beyond this, similarly arcaded, and carried over the face of the adjacent Norman arch, which had a doorway beneath it leading into the ambulatory (_see_ illustration, p. 46). The canopy and panelling were added to the tomb in the fifteenth century. It was repaired in the reign of Henry VIII, and the painting has been more than once renewed, apparently with some rearrangement of the arms in front, as they do not appear in the present order in old engravings. Taking them from left to right they are now those of the City of London, the Priory, England and France, and Sir Stephen Slaney, Lord Mayor of London in 1595. The sanctuary is paved with coloured tesserae and marbles, in a series of five steps, the uppermost of which forms the predella, or footpace, to the altar. The latter is of oak, and was presented by Miss Overbury, sister-in-law to the Rev. W. Panckridge, Rector of the Parish from 1884 to 1887. The somewhat classical design of the pavement is uniform throughout, but the higher and lower portions are distinguished by separate inscriptions, one across the chord of the apse, the other along the step immediately within the railing. These inscriptions are respectively as follows: To the Glory of God, and in memory of John Abbiss, 64 years Rector of this Church, this Apse was rebuilt by his nephew, Frederick P. Phillips, A.D. 1886. Let Thy priests be clothed with righteousness. Where I am, there shall also my servant be. * * * * * In memory of the Rev. Canon F. Parr Phillips, Rector of Stoke d'Abernon, Surrey, and Patron of this Church. Died 17 March, 1903, aged 84. Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His Name. Bring an offering and come before Him. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.[4] [Illustration: THE CHAMBERLAYNE MONUMENT _E. Scamell. Photo._] #The Pulpit# is built against a pier on the north side, midway between the ordinary seats and the choir-stalls. It is a low oblong structure, with a short flight of steps at each end, and is ornamented in the upper part with a series of panels, arcaded and perforated to resemble small windows. The Hopton Wood stone, or marble, as it is sometimes called, has a delicate gray vein, which is brought out by polish on the cornice and balustrade, as a relief to the unpolished surface elsewhere displayed. There is no inscription; but visitors are usually told about Mrs. Charlotte Hart, the apparently impecunious pew-opener at the church, who surprised her friends by dying worth close upon £3,000, and by leaving £600 to the restoration fund. A new pulpit happened to be wanted at the time, and the bequest was applied in its erection. [Illustration: THE SMALPACE MONUMENT _E. Scamell. Photo._] On the wall above is the #Monument of Sir Robert Chamberlayne#, an elegant piece of Jacobean work, deserving a closer examination than can be bestowed upon it without mounting the pulpit, and even there the inscription is scarcely legible. The sculpture, which is extremely well executed, represents Sir Robert kneeling in prayer within a circular pavilion, the curtains of which are held up by an angel on either side. The figure wears a partial suit of plate armour over the costume of the period, and the (bearded) face is turned obliquely towards the east yet away from the spectator, in the attitude of secret devotion. The tent is surmounted by a rich cornice, above which the monument terminates in an ornamental pediment displaying the crest of the deceased. The Latin inscription beneath relates his descent, through the holders of Sherburn Castle, Oxon, from the most ancient Tankerville family of Normandy; and adds that he was knighted by James I, and died between Tripoli and Cyprus, on a journey to the Holy Sepulchre, at the age of thirty-five, in the year 1615. The monument was erected by an unknown friend (_amico amicus_), who concludes with the pious ejaculation _Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam_--Heaven covers him who has no sepulchre! On the south wall, facing this monument, there is another of some interest and artistic merit. It is to the memory of #Percival Smalpace# and Agnes his wife, whose boldly sculptured heads are projecting from separate panels above the tablet containing the inscription. This is chiefly in Latin, and informs us that the deaths occurred respectively on 2nd February, 1568, and 3rd September, 1588, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that Michael and Thomas erected the memorial jointly to the best of parents. The moral of the English lines Behold yourselves by us; Such once were we as you: And you in time shall be Even dust as we are now. is enforced by a drawing, in outline, representing the nude figures of the departed lying side by side upon a couch in the sleep of death--no doubt intended as a _memento mori_ of a less repulsive kind than the usual desiccated corpse. The monument has been invested with a coating of black, which at once conceals the whole of the marble (said to be brown), and shows up the inscription and the figures, both clearly incised and gilded. #The Ambulatory#, which encompasses the choir, and is open to it on the inner side throughout its course, is an interesting part of the original fabric, and displays to full advantage the characteristic features of early Norman work--here made more conspicuous by the low pitch of the roof, which gives the columns and arches an appearance of even greater solidity than really belongs to them. The semicircular arches which support the roof spring from the capitals of the main arcade, and are merely wide bands of stone, without moulding or adornment of any kind. The intermediate spaces are equally plain, each compartment simply taking the quadripartite form (without vaulting-ribs) to accommodate it to the arcading on which it rests. The ceiling has been repaired with stone, and overlaid with plaster in the panels, but the design has been left undisturbed, as a specimen of early vaulting, rare enough to be worth preserving.[5] [Illustration: THE AMBULATORY AND ENTRANCE TO THE LADY CHAPEL _E. Scamell. Photo._] Perpendicular work occurs here and there throughout the ambulatory, conspicuously in the three recesses in the exterior wall on the north, each of which contains a three-light window in that style. The first and second of these recesses, or small chapels, are open to the ground level; but the third (nearest the east) has been walled up beneath the window sill. Beyond it is the door of the clergy vestry, which occupies the site of another chapel: and in the curve of the wall towards the Lady Chapel there is a tablet which usually attracts attention for the curious device upon it--three pillars crowned by a garland of roses--and the poetical conceit of the epitaph, which explains the emblem, and otherwise speaks for itself: Sacred To the memory of that worthy and lerned Francis Anthony, Doctor in Physick. There needs no verse to beautify thy praise, Or keepe in memory thy spotless name. Religion, virtue, and thy skil did raise A threefold pillar to thy lasting Fame; Though poisenous envye ever sought to blame Or hyde the fruits of thy intention, Yet shall they all commend that high desygne Of purest gold to make a medicine That feel thy helpe by that thy rare invention. He dyed the 26th of May 1623, of his age 74. His loving sonne John Anthony, doctor in physick, Left this remembrance of his sorrow. He dyed ye 28th April 1655, being aged 70 years, and was buried nere this place, and left behind him 1 sone and 3 daughters.[6] [Illustration: THE MILDMAY MONUMENT _E. Scamell. Photo._] Before leaving this northern side of the ambulatory it may be noticed that the pavement is made up of an intermixture of gravestones with encaustic tiles. The latter are not so old as they look, for they only date from 1863, when the floor was reduced to its original level, exactly twenty-seven inches below that which was removed, as shown by the marks on the wall backing Rahere's tomb, at the line where the pavement was taken away. The advantage as regards the proportions of the church is obvious enough; but a question has been opened as to whether the intermediate pavement was really so modern as had been taken for granted. It is suggested to the contrary that it may have been first introduced during the Middle Ages, when the increasing veneration for the East required a greater elevation for that part of the church, to distinguish it from the less sacred nave, and give proper dignity to the High Altar and its surroundings. In some accounts it is positively stated that the floor was raised two feet six inches by Prior Bolton early in the sixteenth century. Continuing our perambulation past the Lady Chapel and Prior Bolton's door (now leading into the choir vestry) at the eastern end of the south wall, we come to the magnificent #Tomb of Sir Walter Mildmay#. It formerly stood facing that of the Founder in the sanctuary, but was shifted to its present place in 1865, and renovated by Henry Bingham Mildmay in 1870, as stated in an inscription upon it, which, however, shows more signs of decay than any other part of the monument, and is scarcely legible. This very fine altar tomb is composed of various coloured marbles, panelled and gilded in a design combining the Elizabethan form with the classical ornament of the Renaissance, and is remarkable for the absence of figures usually conspicuous in monuments of the same age. This peculiarity is perhaps accounted for by the strong Puritan leanings of Sir Walter, who took no pains to conceal them in his lifetime. He founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1583, where his architectural work is pointed out, in illustration of his principles, as running counter to all the traditions of the Dominican Friars, whose buildings came into his hands after the Dissolution, and formed the nucleus of his foundation. Instead of saints and angels, or kneeling effigies, we have here eight shields of arms, showing the family alliances, arranged in panelling round the central inscription: Hic jacent Gualterus Mildmay, miles, et Maria uxor ejus. Ipse obiit ultimo die Maii 1589. Ipsa 16 die Martii 1576. Reliquierunt duos filios et tres filias. Fundavit Collegium Emanuelis Cantabrigiae. Moritur Cancellarius et Sub-Thesaurarius Scaccarii et Regiae Majestati a Consiliis. (= Here lie Walter Mildmay, Knight, and Mary his wife. He died the last day of May, 1589. She the 16th day of March, 1576. They left two sons and three daughters. He founded Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He died Chancellor and Sub-Treasurer of the Exchequer, and a Member of Her Majesty's Council.) There is a commendable absence of eulogy in the epitaph, and, instead of any direct quotation from scripture, the motto, _Mors nobis lucrum_ is given, as an adaptation of Phil. i, 21. The tomb is surmounted by three classical urns and the escutcheon of the deceased, with the legend, _Virtute non vi_. Sir Walter was one of the Royal Commissioners appointed in 1586 for the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Fotheringhay Castle. There are numerous other monuments in the church, and there were formerly many more than now remain, but those selected for description are the most important and the most interesting for their artistic merit. The first rector of the parish, Sir John Deane, is commemorated in a modern brass (1893) let into the pavement of the ambulatory on the southern side of the chancel. It was inserted by the pupils of the Witton Grammar School, Northwich, founded by Sir John in the year 1557. #The Lady Chapel# is a restoration of that built about the year 1410. At the Dissolution it passed into the hands of Sir Richard Rich, who converted it into a dwelling-house, and in more modern times it was occupied by a fringe manufacturer, as related in our historical sketch. The building was recovered by purchase in 1885, and the reconstruction begun, which was completed eleven years later. There are signs of an earlier chapel on the site, which was considerably altered, or entirely rebuilt, in the fourteenth century, as appeared from the architectural remains of that period discovered within the fifteenth-century fabric--itself in a frightful state of dilapidation--when the restoration was taken in hand. [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL _E. Scamell. Photo._] Though every care has been taken to preserve the old work, with a strict adherence to the general design, the greater part of the chapel is necessarily new. It is separated from the ambulatory by an elegant screen of ironwork, surmounted by a crucifix of white metal, which has been blackened into uniformity with the rest of the screen so that it can hardly be distinguished in the dim light. This characteristic of the church is preserved in the chapel by the omission of an east window. In place of it the wall-space above the altar is laid out in an arcading of five niches, with canopies and pedestals arranged in parallel lines, providing for a double row of statues, not yet inserted. The lower part of the wall is curtained, with a small canopy over the altar, containing an oil painting of the Virgin and Child as an appropriate form of reredos. There are three rather large windows on each side, of which those on the south are entirely new, but the sills and jambs on the north show a retention of fifteenth-century work. This appears again in the walls on either side of the sanctuary, each of which contains an arcaded recess of three divisions (the central glazed), those on the south forming the sedilia. The sanctuary is paved with Roman tesserae and coloured marbles, in agreement with the pavement beneath the High Altar, but of a less elaborate pattern.[7] [Illustration: THE CRYPT _E. Scamell. Photo._] #The Crypt# beneath the Lady Chapel has no internal connection with it, but is entered by an outside door in the south wall. Like the rest of the Priory buildings it has gone through many vicissitudes. Obviously built at the same time as the chapel, it is supposed to have been used originally as a receptacle for the bones exhumed from time to time in the neighbouring canons' cemetery. Passing into secular hands at the Dissolution, it was partly filled up with earth, and then used as a coal and wine cellar to the dwelling-house above, and eventually formed part of the manufactory before mentioned, the marks of which have been left here and there upon the walls. The little building is now equipped as a mortuary chapel, with an altar against the east wall, and an oblong space marked off on the floor before it, with the usual lateral candlesticks, for the reception of a corpse. As a general rule, however, the funeral services are held in the choir, where there are greater facilities. Though extremely simple, the architectural features are very interesting, the old work having been retained in the walls, piers, and windows, the vaulting alone being new. This merely consists of depressed arches, carried across from the north to the south wall, the intermediate spaces being overlaid with plaster. At the eastern end, above the altar, one of the window recesses has the socket of an old iron hinge within it, and otherwise shows signs of having been formerly occupied by a door, which may possibly have been the original entrance. It is supposed that all the windows were left unglazed for the sake of ventilation, but plain glass is now inserted. The recesses are very deeply splayed in the thickness of the walls, and it will be noticed that the exterior openings are above the level of the roof, so as to admit the daylight obliquely, an ingenious contrivance to intensify the solemnities within, where an artificial light is almost a necessity. The plain bands of stone which constitute the vaulting are supported by shallow piers, or pilasters, built against the lateral walls, and all alike in their general structure and moulded bases; but there is a curious difference between those on the north and south, which has given rise to some antiquarian speculation. In one case (the north) the pilasters are carried down to the floor: in the other they rest upon a stone plinth or skirting a few inches above it. #The Cloister#, as next in importance to the church itself, and so characteristic of a monastic foundation as to give a name to the whole, was in all probability begun by Rahere, or at least some time in the twelfth century. This may be inferred from the Norman work found and preserved at the restoration--at present confined to three bays of the eastern side, at right angles to the south wall of the church. The cloister was originally continued parallel with this wall to the extremity of the nave, whence it extended in the usual quadrangular form, each side consisting of eight bays, enclosing the area known as the cloister-garth. That there was a reconstruction under Prior John Watford, early in the fifteenth century, is clear from the evidence already given, which is confirmed by the architectural remains within the restored fragment--all that was in existence, as a ruin, when the renovation was attempted. [Illustration: THE REMAINING BAYS OF THE CLOISTER _E. Scamell. Photo._] The entrance is through a round-headed doorway in the south aisle--an interesting piece of Norman work--but the doors are probably those inserted during the fifteenth century reconstruction. It seems that they were taken out when the nave was destroyed, and fitted to the main entrance in the wall then built at the west end. Subsequently stored within the church among the lumber which might possibly come in useful, they were found exactly to fit the opening into the cloister, where they were re-hung in what seems to be their proper place. The first bay on the right, which formerly opened into the northern side of the quadrangle, is now occupied by a blank wall, with some fifteenth century work on each side, and the Tudor door-jambs within it, supposed to have been inserted by the Dominican Friars in their restoration of the following century. The second and third bays contain windows, with very fine modern tracery in the headings, and some old Perpendicular work retained at the sides. The wall on the left (eastern) side shows a similar intermixture of styles in its three unlighted bays. The elaborately vaulted roof is for the most part new, but a few of the old bosses, and some portions of the original vaulting-shafts recovered during the excavations, have been incorporated into it, without renovation of their surfaces, so that the ancient and modern can be easily distinguished. The new bosses are sculptured with shields bearing respectively the royal arms, the arms of the Diocese, the Priory, the late Rector (Sir Borradaile Savory), and the City of London. The Priory arms form the central point in the vaulting, surrounded by smaller bosses containing the emblems of the four Evangelists. On a table at the end of the cloister there is a small collection of stones and encaustic tiles from the old building, and some more precious relics in a case. These include a few broken pieces of stained glass, the metal seal struck by Father Perrin for the Dominicans, a book of "Spiritual Exercises" by the same Prior, and a charred fragment of Rahere's coffin and sandal, which had been surreptitiously taken from his tomb. Before leaving the church, the visitor is recommended to look through the scrap-book of old engravings in charge of the verger, showing the buildings in various phases of their history since the Dissolution. These interesting pictures were presented anonymously, but a note on the fly-leaf by Dr. Norman Moore, dated 23rd May, 1885, informs us that the donor was William Morrant Baker, F.R.C.S., Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Lecturer on Physiology, and Warden of its College. There is a tablet to his memory in the Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less. A special permit is required for an inspection of the church registers. They date from 1616, and show an average death-rate of ten in each month till the year 1665, when the Plague of London brought up the entries to about eighteen on each day. The interior of the church presents an interesting perspective from almost any point. A good general view may be obtained from the north-east or south-west corner, and another from the organ-gallery, which is recommended as commanding features not well seen from below in the scanty light. FOOTNOTES: [1] This altar is an interesting piece of (Jacobean?) woodwork which has recently been uncovered. The low recess in which it stands seems better suited for a tomb, or recumbent effigy, while the more lofty recess against the eastern wall, originally supposed to have been open to the Walden Chantry, would hold the altar admirably, and give it the proper orientation. [2] There are two large canvases of his on the staircase of the Hospital representing "The Pool of Bethesda" and "The Good Samaritan," besides four smaller paintings, one of which gives "Rahere's Dream," and another "The Building of the Priory." [3] The manor of Canonbury, formerly included in the Priory estates, is said to have been presented to the community by Sir Ralph de Berners in the reign of Edward III. The Prior and canons built themselves a mansion there as a country residence, and there is no doubt that the place takes its name from their connection with it. According to Stow (_Ed. Strype_, vol. 1), the manor-house was rebuilt by Prior Bolton, whose rebus on the walls of the tower seemed to prove that it was either his work, or erected shortly after his time to his memory. The house is a plain brick structure with gable ends, and the tower (of the same material) covers a rather large square. The spacious rooms within it have some literary interest, as at one time occupied by Ephraim Chambers, the encyclopaedist (1680-1750), and by the more famous Oliver Goldsmith. The whole building, renovated within and without, is now held by a social club. For many years a fable was believed that a subterranean passage connected it with the Smithfield Priory. [4] The new bronze railing to the sanctuary forms part of the memorial to the late Rector, the Rev. Sir Borradaile Savory, Bart. It is in the Renaissance style, and the words from the _Gloria in Excelsis_ ("We praise Thee," etc.), in each of its four divisions, were selected by his successor, the present Rector, as suitable to the place, and expressing the governing principle of Sir Borradaile's life, as well as that of Rahere the Founder. [5] The substructure in the chamber of the Pix, at Westminster, will be remembered among the surviving examples of this early kind of vaulting in England. [6] Francis Anthony (1550-1623) lived in Bartholomew Close. He had obtained the M.A. degree at Cambridge, but none in medicine, and having practised for six months in London without a licence, he was summoned before the President and Censors of the College of Physicians to give an account of himself. Failing to satisfy his examiners, he was interdicted from practice, but ignored the prohibition, and suffered more than one imprisonment in consequence. The medicine "of purest gold" was a panacea, known as _Aurum potabile_, which was supposed to be made from the precious metal, and certainly put a great deal of it into the inventor's pocket, as a fashionable remedy for all kinds of diseases. (See article in the "Dictionary of National Biography" for a sketch of his life.) [7] A tablet, in the Renaissance style, has recently been affixed to the north wall in memory of Sir Borradaile Savory, Bart., the late Rector. It was unveiled and formally dedicated by the Bishop of Stepney, on Sunday, 10th May, 1908. * * * * * [Illustration: ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS AND THE HOSPITAL GATE _E. Scamell. Photo._] CHAPTER IV ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS AND THE HOSPITAL Visitors to Rome will remember the Isola Tiberina, which lies in a curve of the river between the city and Trastevere, and is reached from the respective sides by the Ponte Quattro Capi and the Ponte San Bartolomeo. It was to the hospital on this island that Rahere was sent for medical treatment in his illness; and it is possible that the disposing cause of his vision, with its practical outcome, may be found in the circumstances of the place. The island had been dedicated to Aesculapius on the strength of an ancient Roman legend; and about the year 1000 the Emperor Otho III, erected a Christian church there--probably on the site of a temple to the god--which was named after St. Bartholomew, on the supposition that it contained the saint's relics.[1] Below the church there are the remains of the old travertine ramparts which gave the island the appearance of a ship on which the edifice was resting--a fanciful picture of the "Navis Ecclesiae" as reproduced in the twelfth century Priory seal. (_Vide_ Fig. C, page 73) The combination of a hospital with a church, suggested by the island and the vision, was realized in Rahere's double foundation on his return to England. Until the time of the Dissolution the corporate body of the hospital, and the staff for attendance upon the patients, were identical, and consisted of a master, eight brethren, and four sisters, all living in obedience to the Augustinian rule. Unfortunately no record is preserved of the grant of the site, or of the deed of endowment; but a Charter granted by Henry I in 1133 is extant, conferring certain privileges on the church, prior, canons, and poor of the hospital. (_Vide ante_ chap. i.) The annexation of the hospital to the priory was subsequently confirmed by a Charter of King John in the fifth year of his reign, which remained in force without material change till the separation effected under Henry VIII. The connection involved the presentation of each newly elected Master to the Prior of St. Bartholomew's, or, if he refused institution, to the Bishop of London; the assent of the prior and canons being, however, required before any one could become a member of the Hospital Society. The Act of 1539 superseded all previous legislation affecting the monastic foundations; the Priory and Hospital were separated; and the revenues of both transferred to the royal exchequer. But on the petition of Sir Richard Gresham, Lord Mayor of London, and father of Sir Thomas Gresham, the Hospital was refounded by royal charter--27th December, 1546, 38 Henry VIII--which restored the greater part of its former revenues, in consideration of the miserable estate of the poore, aged, sick, low, and impotent people, as well men as women, lying and going about begging in the common streets of the said City of London and the suburbs of the same, to the great paine and sorrowe of the same poore, aged, sick, and impotent people, and to the great infection, hurt, and annoyance of His Grace's loving subjects, which of necessity must daily goe and pass by the same poore, sick, low, and impotent people, being infected with divers great and horrible sicknesses and diseases. The Indenture goes on to convey to the mayor, commonalty, and citizens of London the buildings formerly belonging to the Grey Friars as well as the late Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in West Smithfield, otherwise called the Hospital of Little St. Bartholomew, and the Church of the same, and all the manors, parsonages, messuages, lands, tithes, advowsons, and hereditaments, late part of the possession of the said Hospital with certain specified exceptions which the charity had to lose, and no longer form part of its history. The immediate result was that the Church of the Grey Friars became the parish church of Christ Church, Newgate, and the chapel pertaining to the hospital (the survivor of four, three of which were alienated) the parish church of Little St. Bartholomew, now more familiarly known as St. Bartholomew-the-Less. Two priests were then attached to it, one called the vicar, who was granted a mansion and a stipend of _£13 6s. 8d._ per annum; the other, the hospitaller or visitor, whose stipend was fixed at _£10_. The accommodation of the hospital at that time was for one hundred poor men and women, lodging within it, under the superintendence of a single matron, with twelve women assistants. It is interesting to compare these figures with those of the present day, when the hospital contains as many as six hundred and seventy beds, with three hundred and fifty nurses on the staff, and every year relieves over one hundred and fifty thousand poor sick people, besides maintaining a convalescent home, with seventy beds, at Kettlewell, Swanley, Kent.[2] [Illustration: ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS _E. Scamell. Photo._] The hospital chapel, converted into a parish church after the Dissolution, had fallen into a very dilapidated state towards the end of the eighteenth century. In the year 1789 the restoration of the building was committed to Mr. George Dance, then architect and surveyor to the hospital. He made a considerable alteration in the interior by ruthlessly destroying the old work, for which he substituted an octagonal structure, within the rectangular plan, allowing the external walls to remain in their original form, with the square tower which still stands at the western end--the whole enveloped in a coating of cement. The internal erection was entirely in wood, ingeniously carved and coloured to resemble stone; but the false economy of it was soon manifested in dry-rot, which spread to such an alarming extent that a reconstruction became necessary. The rebuilding was taken in hand in 1823 by Mr. Thomas Hardwick, who had a much better knowledge of pointed architecture than his predecessor. He removed the whole of the timber, substituting stone and iron for it, and while adhering to Mr. Dance's general design, improved upon it by introducing fresh details of his own, more in harmony with the fabric in which it was enclosed. The church has since been restored, but the incongruity is still obvious enough, especially from the outside, where the octagon projects above the ancient walls, and the small pentagonal chancel beyond them at the eastern end. [Illustration: BRASS OF WILLIAM AND ALICE MARKEBY] The entrance is by a low Tudor doorway in the tower, which still bears traces of the original work. On the pavement of the vestibule there is an interesting brass, with the figures of William Markeby and his wife, and an inscription which now reads: "Hic jacent Will'mo Markeby de Londiniis gentlemo' qui obiit XI die Julii A. D'ni MCCCCXXXIX et Alicia uxor ei," the concluding words "quorum animabus propitietur Deus. Amen" having been erased.[3] There are two other ancient memorials in this part of the church which call for special notice, viz.: on the north wall, within the present vestry, a niche contains the figure of an angel bearing a shield of arms, beneath which another shield, surmounted by a crown, and upheld by two angels, displays the arms of Edward the Confessor impaled with those of England. And against the western wall there is a good example of a canopied altar-tomb, in the Tudor style, with a memorial tablet (1741) inserted in it, which is obviously much later than the tomb itself. This is said to have originally stood at the eastern end of the south wall, where it was discovered during the eighteenth century reconstruction, and then deprived of its ornamental projections, where the marks of the chisel are seen upon the surface. [Illustration: ANCIENT SCULPTURED TABLETS IN ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS WEST END OF NORTH WALL] At the eastern end of the north wall there is a tablet to the memory of the wife of Sir Thomas Bodley, whose name has been given to the famous library at Oxford. The curious old stone beneath it, which was discovered during the alterations, and then affixed to the wall, has the double interest of great antiquity and a puzzling inscription beginning, "_Ecce sub hoc tumulo Guliemus conditur_." The exterior of the church, though spoilt by the composition laid over the walls, has still a certain interest as part of the original fabric, and still contains the arches of most of the old windows, viz., three on each side, one at the west end, another immediately over the doorway, and four in the uppermost storey of the tower. There were originally four windows on each side, but those in the easternmost bays have been removed, and the spaces filled up. Besides containing the memorials above mentioned, the vestibule has more architectural interest than any other part of the building in the surviving arches on the northern and eastern sides of the space beneath the tower. Here there is an aggregation of columns, with moulded bases and capitals, and banded in the centre, varied by the introduction of half-length shafts resting on sculptured corbels. The central area is nearly square, but has been formed into an octagon by an arcading, on a series of clustered columns, from each of which spring the moulded ribs of the ceiling. These ribs are of Bath stone, and after an elaborate intertwining, are brought together above in a central boss, from which hangs a large brass corona to light the church. The roof is of iron, the panels within the groining being overlaid with plaster. Above the main arcade there is a clerestory of dwarfed windows, filled with tinted glass in an ornamental framework, as are also the side windows, excepting those nearest the east. These display a selection of Scripture miracles. There are three painted windows over the altar, the central containing scenes from the life of Christ, those to the north and south representing the Old and New Testaments respectively. To the north of the recess forming the sanctuary there is an alabaster pulpit,[4] and on the south stands a small organ. Services are held at eleven and five o'clock on Sundays, and the church is open every day for private devotion. It is provided with seats to accommodate about 200 people. The present vicar and hospitaller is the Rev. Herbert Skillicorn Close, M.A. FOOTNOTES: [1] St. Bartholomew was first interred at Albanopolis, in Greater Armenia, the scene of his passion, and his remains were afterwards translated successively to Daras, a city on the confines of Persia; to the island of Lipari; and to Beneventum. There is a tradition that his relics were eventually conveyed to Rome, but exactly where they were laid is uncertain. [2] A full account of the hospital, brought down to 1837, is given in the Report of the Charity Commissioners on "Charities in England," issued in that year (_vide_ No. 32, part vi), and since reprinted by Messrs. Wyman and Sons. Dr. Norman Moore is now engaged in writing a new history to the present time. The name of the first patient is recorded in the "Liber Fundationis" as "Adwyne of Dunwych." [3] At the time of Stow's survey the church contained many brasses and monuments which have disappeared; but a tolerably complete account of them may be obtained by adding the descriptions supplied by Weever ("Funeral Monuments") and Gough ("Sepulchral Monuments," vol. ii) to those given by the old chronicler. [4] There was formerly a chapel in the north-east corner. * * * * * [Illustration: PLAN OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-LESS Dimensions: length, including vestibule, 65 ft.; without vestibule, 50 ft.; width, 41 ft. 9 in. (The measurements do not include the small chancel.)] * * * * * APPENDIX I THE PRIORY SEALS _Fig. A._ Twelfth century. Sulphur cast from fine impression, the edge chipped. About 3-1/8 � 2 in. when perfect. Pointed oval: St. Bartholomew standing, with nimbus, lifting up the right hand in benediction, in the left hand a long cross. ... HOSPITALIS SANCTI ... HOLOME ... (3487. lxviii. 45.) [Illustration: A B C] _Fig. B._ Twelfth century. Sulphur cast from imperfect impression. About 2½ � 2¼ in. when perfect. Oval: St. Bartholomew, with nimbus, lifting up the right hand in benediction, in the left hand a long cross. The saint is half length on the section of a church, with round-headed arches, and two circular side-towers. [Symbol: Maltese Cross] SIGILL' CONVENTUS ECC ... HOLO ... I. DE. L[=V]DON. (3488. lxviii. 22.) _Fig. C._ _A Counterseal._ Twelfth century. Sulphur cast, 1¾ in. A church, with central tower, a cross at each gable end, and two tall round-headed arches in the wall, standing on a ship of antique shape, with curved prow and stern, each terminating in a bird's head, on the sea. In a field over the tower, the inscription: NAVIS ECCL'IE. On the left a wavy estoile of six points, on the right a crescent. SIGILL' : PRIORIS : ECCLESIE : S[=C]I:BARTOLOMEI. (3489. lxviii. 23.) _Fig. D._ _Later Seal._ Thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Sulphur cast from imperfect impression. About 3 � 1-7/8 in. [Illustration: D E F] Pointed oval: St. Bartholomew standing on a lion _couchant guardant_, in the right hand a knife, his emblem, in the left hand a book. Overhead, a trefoil canopy pinacled and crocketed. On each side in the field a tree on which is slung by the strap a shield of arms: England. S'C ... E. HOSPITAL ... SANCTI : BARTH'I. LONDON'. (3490. lxviii. 46.) _Fig. E._ _A Counterseal._ Thirteenth century. Sulphur cast from chipped impression. 1-1/4 � 7/8 in. Pointed oval: the impression of an antique oval intaglio gem. An eagle displayed. [Symbol: Maltese Cross] SI ... HOSPITAL'. S. BARTHOL'. (3491. lxviii. 47.) _Fig. F._ _Common Seal of the Prior and Convent._ A.D. 1533. Bronze-green: fine, showing marks of the pins or studs employed to keep the two sides of the matrix in proper position, 2-1/8 in. _Obverse._ St. Bartholomew, seated on a carved throne (somewhat resembling the throne on the _obv._ of the great seal of Edward I), in the right hand a book, in the left hand a knife. In the field, on the left a crescent, on the right an estoile, each between two groups of three small spots (the whole representing the heavens). Thirteenth century style of work. [Symbol: Six-petals] SIGILLVM : COMMVNE : PRIOR' : ET : C[=O]V[=E]TV[S : S[=C]I : BA]RTHOLOMEI : LONDON'. (3492 and _Harl. Ch._ 83 A. 43.) [Illustration: G H I] _Fig. G._ _Reverse of the same seal._ A church, with central spire, a cross at each gable end, masoned walls imitating ashlar-work, and traceried windows, standing on a ship with a castle at each end, that on the left pointed, that on the right square, on the sea. In the field at the sides, the inscription: NAVIS ECCL'E. CREDIMVS : ANTE : DEVM : PROVEHI : PER : BARTHOLOMEVM. Beaded borders. ("Vetusta Monumenta," vol. ii, pl. xxxvi.) _Fig. H. Seal ad Causas._ Fourteenth century. Sulphur cast from imperfect impression. 2-3/8 � 1-1/2 in. Pointed oval: St. Bartholomew standing on a corbel, in the right hand a knife, in the left hand a long cross. ... ET CONV ... THOL'I LOND' AD CAVS ... (3495. lxviii. 26.) _Fig. I._ _Seal of the New Foundation for Preaching Friars, by Queen Mary._ A.D. 1556-1558. 2-1/2 x 1-5/8 in. Pointed oval: St. Bartholomew, standing, with nimbus, in the right hand a knife, in the left hand a book, under a dome-shaped baldachin or canopy in the style of the Renaissance, supported on two pilasters. In the exergue a floral ornament. [Illustration: K L] SIGILL[=V]. C[=O]V[=E]T' SCTI : BARTHOLOMEI : ORDINIS FRATR[=V] PREDICATOR[=V] : L[=O]D[=O]. Inner border beaded. (From an impression taken direct from the matrix in the Church. There is an example on red sealing-wax in the British Museum.--3496. XXV. 88; see also "Archaeologia," vol. XV, p. 400.) _Later Seal of the Hospital._ A.D. 1695. Red, covered with paper before impression. 3 in. (3498, and Add. Ch. 1685.) _Fig. K._ _Obverse._ St. Bartholomew, full-length, surrounded with radiance, lifting up the right hand in benediction, in the left hand a long cross. [Symbol: Maltese Cross] COMM ... SIGILL[=V] HOSPITAL' APOSTOLI. _Fig. L._ _Reverse._ A shield of arms: City of London. In the field, the inscriptions: 1[66]1 (?). INSIGNIA LONDO. Background diapered with wavy branches of foliage. ... EST SMITHFIELD [Symbol: Fleur] ET [Symbol: Fleur] HOSPITALI ... With the exception of the Marian seal (Fig. _I_), the illustrations come from the impressions in the British Museum, whose catalogue numbers are given in every case for convenient reference. APPENDIX II THE AUGUSTINIAN PRIORS Rahere 1123-1144 Thomas 1144-1174 Roger about 1174 Richard 1202-1206 G. of Osney 1213 John 1226-1232 Gerard 1232-1241 Peter le Duc 1242-1255 Robert 1255-1261 Gilbert de Weledon 1261-1263 John Bacun 1265 Henry Hugh 1273-1295 John de Kensington 1295-1316 John de Pekenden 1316-1350 Edmund de Broughyng 1350-1355 John de Carleton 1355-1361 Thomas de Watford 1361-1382 William Gedeney 1382-1391 John Eyton, D.D., _alias_ Repyngdon 1391-1404 John Watford 1404-1414 William Coventre 1414-1436 Reginald Colier 1436-1471 Richard Pulter 1471-1480 Robert Tollerton 1480-1484 William Guy 1484-1505 William Bolton 1505-1532 Robert Fuller, Abbot of Waltham 1532-1539 Priory suppressed, 31 Henry VIII 25th October, 1539 Priory revived, 2 and 3 Philip and Mary Easter, 1556 DOMINICAN PRIOR William Perrin, D.D. 1556-1558 Priory suppressed, I Elizabeth 13th July, 1559 RECTORS John Deane {Parish Priest 1539-1544 {Rector 1544-1563 Ralph Watson 1565-1569 Robert Binks 1570-1579 James Stancliffe, M.A. 1581 John Pratt 1582-1587 David Dee, M.A. 1587-1605 Thomas Westfield, D.D., Bishop of Bristol 1605-1644 John Garrett, M.A. 1644-1655 Randolph Harrison, D.D. 1655-1663 Anthony Burgess, M.A. 1663-1709 John Poultney, M.A. 1709-1719 Thomas Spateman, M.A. 1719-1738 Richard Thomas Bateman 1738-1761 John Moore, M.A. 1761-1768 Owen Perrott Edwardes, M.A. 1768-1814 John Richard Roberts, B.D. 1814-1819 John Abbiss, M.A. 1819-1883 William Panckridge, M.A. 1884-1887 Sir Borradaile Savory, Bart., M.A. 1887-1906 William Fitzgerald Gambier Sandwith, M.A. 1907 PATRON OF THE LIVING Capt. F. A. Phillips. APPENDIX III INVENTORY OF VESTMENTS, ETC., AT THE CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT, TAKEN IN THE YEAR 1574 "Certayne things appertaining to the Churche as followethe:-- Imprimis a comunion cloth of redd silke and goulde. Itm a comunion coppe (cup) of silver withe a cover. Itm a beriall cloth of red velvet and a pulpitte clothe of the same. Itm two grene velvet quishins (cushions). Itm a blewe velvet cope. Itm a blewe silke cope. Itm a white lynnen abe (albe) and a hedd clothe (amice) to the same. Itm a vestment of tawney velvet. Itm a vestment of redd rought velvet. Itm a vestment of grene silke with a crosse garde of red velvet. Itm a crosse banner of redd tafata gilted. Itm two stoles of redd velvet. Itm two white surplices. Itm two comunion table clothers. Itm two comunion towels. Itm one olde bible. Itm one great booke. Itm one olde sarvice booke for the minister." APPENDIX IV THE ORGAN The organ now at St. Bartholomew's, where it supersedes one purchased by subscription in 1731, was originally built by George England in 1760 for the Church of St. Stephen, Walbrook. Considerable work was there done upon it by Messrs. William Hill and Son in 1872, viz: I. The pipes of Great and Choir stops were replanted, CC pipes over the GG grooves, and the compass altered to CC to G throughout. II. The following alterations were made in the Great organ: Open Diapason (ii) extended from gamut G to CC. Mixture replaced by new pipes where required. New Trumpet inserted, and the old one transferred to Swell. _Choir._ Dulciana (new) C (grooved). Keraulophon (new) C (grooved). Clarinet CC. _Swell._ New soundboard (CC to G), swell-box and new action. New Bourdon, 16 feet. Cornet made into 12 and 15 feet. New mixture--four ranks. German Flute revoiced. Old Great organ Trumpet arranged to form Double Trumpet from tenor C. All stops, except German Flute and Double Trumpet, carried down to CC. _Pedal._ Bourdon, new, 16 feet. Open Diapason, 16 feet (compass arranged CCC to F thirty notes). Trombone, new, 16 feet. _Couplers._ New, Swell to Great, Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal, Choir to Pedal, Swell to Choir. New keyboards. New Pedal keyboard. New Drawstop knobs. New additional bellows. Five new Composition Pedals (three to Great organ, and two to Swell organ). Specification of the instrument after the above-mentioned work was done. GREAT ORGAN, CC TO G. Open Diapason (i) 8 feet Open Diapason (ii) 8 " Stopped Diapason 8 " Principal 4 " Twelfth 2-2/3 " Fifteenth 2 " Nason Flute 4 " Furniture. Sesquialtra. Trumpet 8 " Clarion 8 " SWELL ORGAN, CC TO G. Bourdon 16 feet Open Diapason 8 " German Flute 8 " Stopped Diapason 8 " Principal 4 " Twelfth 2-2/3 " Fifteenth 2 " Double Trumpet (C) 16 " Trumpet 8 " Oboe 8 " Clarion 4 " CHOIR ORGAN, CC TO G. Dulciana 8 feet Keraulophon (C grooved) 8 " Stopped Diapason 8 " Principal 4 " Flute 4 " Fifteenth 2 " French Horn tenor F# 8 " Vox Humana 8 " Clarinet 8 " PEDAL ORGAN, CCC TO F. Open Diapason 16 feet Bourdon 16 " Trombone 16 " COUPLERS. Swell to Great. Swell to Choir. Swell to Pedal. Great to Pedal. Choir to Pedal. Three Composition Pedals to Great. Two Composition Pedals to Swell. In 1886 the organ was purchased from St. Stephen's, Walbrook, for St. Bartholomew-the-Great, where a new case was made for it, the original being retained at St. Stephen's, for the sake of the carving, attributed to the famous Grinling Gibbons. Several alterations were then made in the instrument to adapt it to its new position, and at the present time the specification is as follows: GREAT ORGAN, CC TO G. Open Diapason (i) 8 feet Open Diapason (ii) 8 " Stopped Diapason 8 " Principal 4 " Wald-Flute 4 " Twelfth 2-2/3 " Fifteenth 2 " Mixture (4 ranks). Furniture (3 ranks). Trumpet 8 " Clarion 4 " CHOIR ORGAN, CC TO G. Dulciana 8 feet Keraulophon 8 " Hohl Flute 8 " Gamba 8 " Suabe Flute 4 " Fifteenth 2 " French Horn 8 " Clarinet 8 " Vox Humana 8 " SWELL ORGAN, CC TO G. Bourdon 16 feet Open Diapason 8 " German Flute 8 " Stopped Diapason 8 " Vox Angelica 8 " Principal 4 " Fifteenth 2 " Mixture (4 ranks). Double Trumpet 16 " Trumpet 8 " Oboe 8 " Clarion 4 " PEDAL ORGAN, CCC TO F. Open Diapason 16 feet Bourdon 16 " Trombone 16 " COUPLERS. Swell to Great. Swell to Choir. Great to Pedal. Choir to Pedal. Swell to Pedal. Five Combination Pedals. * * * * * INDEX Ambulatory, 50. Anthony, Francis, 52, and note. Bartholomew Fair, 7, and note. Bells, 28. Belmeis, Bishop Richard de. 5. Black Friars, Dominican Order of, 13, and note. Canonbury House, 43 (note). Canons Regular of St. Augustine, 6, and note. Choir, 40. Clerestory, 44. Cloister, 58. Crypt, 57. Dimensions of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, 84. ---- of St. Bartholomew-the-Less, 71. Early English columns, 33. ---- gateway, 26. Exterior of the Church, 25, _et seq._ Font, 39. Grindal, Bishop Edmund, 16. History of the Foundation, 3, _et seq._ Hogarth, William, 39. "Horseshoe" arches, 40. Hospital, 63, _et seq._ Lady Chapel, 10, 55. Monasteries in London at the Dissolution, 13. Monuments: Anthony, 52. Chamberlayne, 48. Freshwater, 40. Mildmay, 54. Savory, 57 (note). Smalpace, 49. Nave, surviving bay of, 33. Oriel Window (Prior Bolton's), 10, 43. Organ, Specifications of, 80-82. ---- Screen, 33. Porches: West, 26. North, 28. South, 39. Priors, list of, 77-78. Priory Buildings, conjectural plan of, 14. ---- Desecration of, 17-20. Pulpit, 48. Rahere: Early life, 3. Conversion, 4. Vision and vow, 4. Realized in the Smithfield Foundation, 5. Charter of privileges granted, 6. Death, 8. Tomb, 45. Rectors, list of, 78. Restoration of the Church, 20-22. Rich, Sir Richard, 12, 16. St. Bartholomew-the-Less and the Hospital, 64, _et seq._ Savory, Sir Borradaile, Memorials to, 27, 48, 57 (notes). Seals of the Convent and Hospital, 73-77. Services at the Church, 30. Smithfield, 5. Stone Screen (ancient), 38. Surrender of the Priory to Henry VIII, 10. Tower (ancient central) and arches, 35. ---- (17th century western), 27. Transepts: North, 35. South, 38. Triforium, 43. Vestments, Inventory of, 79. West Front, 26. * * * * * DIMENSIONS OF THE CHURCH OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT (_Internal_) CHOIR: Length 105 feet 2 inches Breadth 27 " 8 " AMBULATORY: Breadth 12 " 10 " NAVE (surviving bay): From east to west 8 " 3 " NORTH TRANSEPT: From east to west 27 " 8 " From north to south 19 " 3 " SOUTH TRANSEPT: From east to west 27 " 4 " From north to south 21 " 6 " LADY CHAPEL: Length 60 " 6 " Breadth 23 " 7 " CLOISTER (three bays restored): Length 38 " 8 " Breadth 13 " 2 " [Illustration: PLAN OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW-THE-GREAT (EXISTING CHURCH) REFERENCES. A Choir. B Lady Chapel. C South Transept. D North Transept. E Portion of Cloister. F West Porch. G North Porch. H South Porch. I Clergy Vestry. K Pulpit. L Baptistery. M Founder's Tomb. N Mildmay Monument.] [Illustration] CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. * * * * * BELL'S CATHEDRAL SERIES _Profusely Illustrated. Cloth, crown 8vo_, #1s. 6d.# _net each_. NOW READY. ENGLISH CATHEDRALS. An Itinerary and Description. Compiled by J. G. GILCHRIST, A.M., M.D. Revised and edited with an Introduction on Cathedral Architecture by Rev. T. PERKINS, M.A., F.R.A.S. BANGOR. By P. B. IRONSIDE-BAX. BRISTOL. By H. J. L. J. MASS�, M.A. CANTERBURY. By HARTLEY WITHERS. 4th Edition. CARLISLE. By C. K. ELEY. CHESTER. By CHARLES HIATT. 2nd Edition, revised. CHICHESTER. By H. C. CORLETTE, A.R.I.B.A. 2nd Edition. DURHAM. By J. E. BYGATE, A.R.C.A. 2nd Edition. ELY. By Rev. W. D. SWEETING, M.A. 2nd Edition. EXETER. By PERCY ADDLESHAW, B.A. 2nd Edition. GLOUCESTER. By H. J. L. J. 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WORCESTER. By EDWARD F. STRANGE. YORK. By A. GLUTTON BROCK. 3rd Edition. _Others to follow._ * * * * * _Uniform with above Series_, 1s. 6d. _net each_. BATH ABBEY, MALMESBURY ABBEY, AND BRADFORD-ON-AVON CHURCH. By Rev. T. PERKINS, M.A. BEVERLEY MINSTER. By CHARLES HIATT. 47 Illustrations. ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, CANTERBURY. By Rev. CANON ROUTLEDGE, M.A. F.S.A. 24 Illustrations. ROMSEY ABBEY. By Rev. T. PERKINS, M.A. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. By HAROLD BAKER. THE TEMPLE CHURCH. By GEORGE WORLEY. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S, SMITHFIELD. By GEORGE WORLEY. TEWKESBURY ABBEY AND DEERHURST PRIORY. By H. J. L. J. MASS�, M.A. 44 Illustrations. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. By CHARLES HIATT. WIMBORNE MINSTER AND CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY. By Rev. T. PERKINS, M.A., F.R.A.S. 65 Illustrations. #Bell's Handbooks to Continental Churches.# _Profusely Illustrated. Crown 8vo, cloth_, #2s. 6d.# _net each_. CHARTRES: The Cathedral and Other Churches. By H. J. L. J. MASS�, M.A. ROUEN: The Cathedral and Other Churches. By the Rev. T. 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We should imagine architects and students of architecture will be sure to buy the series as they appear, for they contain in brief much valuable information."--_British Architect._ "Bell's 'Cathedral Series,' so admirably edited, is more than a description of the various English cathedrals. It will be a valuable historical record, and a work of much service also to the architect. The illustrations are well selected, and in many cases not mere bald architectural drawings but reproductions of exquisite stone fancies, touched in their treatment by fancy and guided by art."--_Star._ "Each of them contains exactly that amount of information which the intelligent visitor, who is not a specialist, will wish to have. The disposition of the various parts is judiciously proportioned, and the style is very readable. The illustrations supply a further important feature; they are both numerous and good. A series which cannot fail to be welcomed by all who are interested in the ecclesiastical buildings of England."--_Glasgow Herald._ "Those who, either for purposes of professional study or for a cultured recreation, find it expedient to 'do' the English cathedrals will welcome the beginning of Bell's 'Cathedral Series.' This set of books is an attempt to consult, more closely, and in greater detail than the usual guide-books do, the needs of visitors to the cathedral towns. The series cannot but prove markedly successful. In each book a business-like description is given of the fabric of the church to which the volume relates, and an interesting history of the relative diocese. The books are plentifully illustrated, and are thus made attractive as well as instructive. They cannot but prove welcome to all classes of readers interested either in English Church history or in ecclesiastical architecture."--_Scotsman._ "They have nothing in common with the almost invariably wretched local guides save portability, and their only competitors in the quality and quantity of their contents are very expensive and mostly rare works, each of a size that suggests a packing-case rather than a coat-pocket. The 'Cathedral Series' are important compilations concerning history, architecture, and biography, and quite popular enough for such as take any sincere interest in their subjects."--_Sketch._ LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names, and dialect or obsolete word spelling, has been maintained as in the original. 4. Special characters and symbols have been represented as follows: Single characters with line above: [=x], where x is the character. Solid Maltese cross: [Symbol : Maltese Cross] Line drawing of a six-petaled flower: [Symbol : 6-Petal] Line drawing of a fleur-de-lis: [Symbol: Fleur] 
19998	----	file was produced from images produced by Core Historical Literature in Agriculture (CHLA), Cornell University) [Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors and inconsistencies are listed at the end of the text.] * * * * * RURAL ARCHITECTURE. Being A Complete Description of FARM HOUSES, COTTAGES, and OUT BUILDINGS, Comprising Wood Houses, Workshops, Tool Houses, Carriage and Wagon Houses, Stables, Smoke and Ash Houses, Ice Houses, Apiary or Bee House, Poultry Houses, Rabbitry, Dovecote, Piggery, Barns and Sheds for Cattle, &c., &c., &c. Together With Lawns, Pleasure Grounds and Parks; The Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Garden. Also, Useful and Ornamental Domestic Animals for the Country Resident, &c., &c., &c. Also, The Best Method Of CONDUCTING WATER INTO CATTLE YARDS AND HOUSES. BY LEWIS F. ALLEN. Beautifully Illustrated. New York: C. M. SAXTON, Agricultural Book Publisher. 1852. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852. By LEWIS F. ALLEN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Stereotyped by JEWETT, THOMAS AND CO. Buffalo, N.Y. ADVERTISEMENT. The writer of these pages ought, perhaps, to apologize for attempting a work on a subject, of which he is not a _professional_ master, either in design or execution. In the science of Farm buildings he claims no better knowledge than a long practical observation has given him. The thoughts herein submitted for the consideration of those interested in the subject of Farm buildings are the result of that observation, added to his experience in the use of such buildings, and a conviction of the inconveniences attending many of those already planned and erected. Nor is it intended, in the production of this work, to interfere with the labors of the professional builder. To such builder all who may be disposed to adopt any model or suggestion here presented, are referred, for the various details, in their specifications, and estimates, that may be required; presuming that the designs and descriptions of this work will be sufficient for the guidance of any master builder, in their erection and completion. But for the solicitation of those who believe that the undersigned could offer some improvements in the construction of Farm buildings for the benefit of our landholders and practical farmers, these pages would probably never have appeared. They are offered in the hope that they may be useful in assisting to form the taste, and add to the comfort of those who are the main instruments in embellishing the face of our country in its most pleasing and agreeable features--the American Farmer. LEWIS F. ALLEN. Black Rock, N.Y. 1851. NOTE.--For throwing the Designs embraced in these pages into their present artistic form, the writer is indebted to Messrs. Otis & Brown, architects, of Buffalo, to whose skill and experience he takes a pleasure in recommending such as may wish instruction in the plans, drawings, specifications, or estimates relating to either of the designs here submitted, or for others of any kind that may be adapted to their purposes. L. F. A. CONTENTS. Page. PREFATORY, 9 INTRODUCTORY, 13 General Suggestions, 19 Style of Building--Miscellaneous, 23 Position of Farm Houses, 29 Home Embellishments, 32 Material for Farm Buildings, 37 Outside Color of Houses, 42 A Short Chapter on Taste, 48 The Construction of Cellars, 54 Ventilation of Houses, 56 Interior Accommodation of Houses, 65 Chimney Tops, 68 Preliminary to our Designs, 69 DESIGN I. A Farm House, 72 Interior Arrangement, 75 Ground Plan, 76 Chamber Plan, 77 Miscellaneous, 80 As a Tenant House, 81 DESIGN II. Description, 84 Ground and Chamber Plans, 89 Interior Arrangement, 90 Miscellaneous Details, 95 DESIGN III. Description, 101 Ground and Chamber Plans, 105 Interior Arrangement, 106 Miscellaneous, 111 DESIGN IV. Description, 114 Interior Arrangement, 118 Ground Plan, 119 Chamber Plan, 120 Surrounding Plantations, Shrubbery, Walks, &c., 125 Tree Planting in the Highway, 129 DESIGN V. Description, 133 Interior Arrangement, 135 Ground Plan, 136 Chamber Plan, 142 Construction, Cost of Building, &c., 147 Grounds, Plantations, and Surroundings, 149 DESIGN VI. A Southern, or Plantation House, 154 Interior Arrangement, 159 Chamber Plan, 162 Carriage House, 163 Miscellaneous, 163 Lawn and Park Surroundings, 166 An Ancient New England Family, 168 An American Homestead of the Last Century, 169 Estimate of Cost of Design VI, 172 DESIGN VII. A Plantation House, 175 Interior Arrangement, 176 Ground Plan, 177 Chamber Plan, 178 Miscellaneous, 179 LAWNS, GROUNDS, PARKS, AND WOODS, 181 The Forest Trees of America, 183 Influence of Trees and Forests on the Character of men, 184 Hillhouse and Walter Scott as Tree Planters, 187 Doctor Johnson, no Rural Taste, 188 Fruit Garden--Orchard, 194 How to lay out a Kitchen Garden, 197 Flowers, 202 Wild Flowers of America, 203 Succession of Home Flowers, 206 FARM COTTAGES, 208 DESIGN I, and Ground Plan, 213 Interior Arrangement 214 DESIGN II, and Ground Plan, 216 Interior Arrangement, 216 DESIGN III, and Ground Plan, 220 Interior Arrangement, 220 DESIGN IV, and Ground Plan, 226 Interior Arrangement, 229 Cottage Outside Decoration, 231 Cottages on the Skirts of Estates, 233 House and Cottage Furniture, 235 APIARY, OR BEE HOUSE, 246 View of Apiary and Ground Plan, and description, 249 Mode of Taking the Honey, 252 AN ICE HOUSE, 258 Elevation and Ground Plan, 260 AN ASH HOUSE AND SMOKE HOUSE, 264 Elevation and Ground Plan, 265 THE POULTRY HOUSE, 267 Elevation and Ground Plan, 269 Interior Arrangement, 271 THE DOVECOTE, 275 Different Varieties of Pigeons, 278 A PIGGERY, 279 Elevation and Ground Plan, 281 Interior Arrangement, 282 Construction of Piggery--Cost, 283 FARM BARNS, 286 DESIGN I. Description, 291 Interior Arrangement, and Main Floor Plan, 293 Underground Plan, and Yard, 295 DESIGN II. Description, 300 Interior Arrangement, 303 Floor Plan, 304 BARN ATTACHMENTS, 308 RABBITS, 311 Mr. Rotch's Description of his Rabbits, 313 Rabbits and Hutch, 315 Dutch, and English Rabbits, 318 Mode of Feeding, 319 Mr. Rodman's Rabbitry, Elevation, and Floor Plan, 322 Explanations, 323 Loft or Garret, Explanation, 324 Cellar plan, Explanation, 325 Front and Back of Hutches, and Explanation, 326 DAIRY BUILDINGS, 330 Cheese Dairy House, 330 Elevation of Dairy House and Ground Plan, 331 Interior Arrangement, 333 The Butter Dairy, 335 THE WATER RAM, 237 Figure and Description, 338 GRANARY--Rat-proof, 343 IMPROVED DOMESTIC ANIMALS, 345 Short Horn Bull, 349 Short Horn Cow, 352 Devon Cow and Bull, 355 Southdown Ram and Ewe, 359 Long-wooled Ram and Ewe, 362 Common Sheep, 364 Remarks, 365 WATERFOWLS, 370 The African Goose, 370 China Goose, 371 Bremen Goose, 372 A WORD ABOUT DOGS, 374 Smooth Terrier, 377 Shepherd Dog, 381 PREFATORY. This work owes its appearance to the absence of any cheap and popular book on the subject of Rural Architecture, exclusively intended for the farming or agricultural interest of the United States. Why it is, that nothing of the kind has been heretofore attempted for the chief benefit of so large and important a class of our community as our farmers comprise, is not easy to say, unless it be that they themselves have indicated but little wish for instruction in a branch of domestic economy which is, in reality, one of great importance, not only to their domestic enjoyment, but their pecuniary welfare. It is, too, perhaps, among the category of neglects, and in the lack of fidelity to their own interests which pervades the agricultural community of this country, beyond those of any other profession--for we insist that agriculture, in its true and extended sense, is as much a profession as any other pursuit whatever. To the reality of such neglects they have but of late awaked, and indeed are now far too slowly wheeling into line for more active progress in the knowledge pertaining to their own advancement. As an accessory to their labors in such advancement, the present work is intended. It is an opinion far too prevalent among those engaged in the more active occupations of our people,--fortified indeed in such opinion, by the too frequent example of the farmer himself--that everything connected with agriculture and agricultural life is of a rustic and uncouth character; that it is a profession in which ignorance, as they understand the term, is entirely consistent, and one with which no aspirations of a high or an elevated character should, or at least need be connected. It is a reflection upon the integrity of the great agricultural interest of the country, that any such opinion should prevail; and discreditable to that interest, that its condition or example should for a moment justify, or even tolerate it. Without going into any extended course of remark, we shall find ample reason for the indifference which has prevailed among our rural population, on the subject of their own domestic architecture, in the absence of familiar and practical works on the subject, by such as have given any considerable degree of thought to it; and, what little thought has been devoted to this branch of building, has been incidentally rather than directly thrown off by those professionally engaged in the finer architectural studies appertaining to luxury and taste, instead of the every-day wants of a strictly agricultural population, and, of consequence, understanding but imperfectly the wants and conveniences of the farm house in its connection with the every-day labors and necessities of farm life. It is not intended, in these remarks, to depreciate the efforts of those who have attempted to instruct our farmers in this interesting branch of agricultural economy. We owe them a debt of gratitude for what they have accomplished in the introduction of their designs to our notice; and when it is remarked that they are insufficient for the purposes intended, it may be also taken as an admission of our own neglect, that we have so far disregarded the subject ourselves, as to force upon others the duty of essaying to instruct us in a work of which we ourselves should long ago have been the masters. Why should a farmer, because he _is_ a farmer, only occupy an uncouth, outlandish house, any more than a professional man, a merchant, or a mechanic? Is it because he himself is so uncouth and outlandish in his thoughts and manners, that he deserves no better? Is it because his occupation is degrading, his intellect ignorant, his position in life low, and his associations debasing? Surely not. Yet, in many of the plans and designs got up for his accommodation, in the books and publications of the day, all due convenience, to say nothing of the respectability or the elegance of domestic life, is as entirely disregarded as if such qualities had no connection with the farmer or his occupation. We hold, that although many of the practical operations of the farm may be rough, laborious, and untidy, yet they are not, and need not be inconsistent with the knowledge and practice of neatness, order, and even elegance and refinement within doors; and, that the due accommodation of the various things appertaining to farm stock, farm labor, and farm life, should have a tendency to elevate the social position, the associations, thoughts, and entire condition of the farmer. As the man himself--no matter what his occupation--be lodged and fed, so influenced, in a degree, will be his practice in the daily duties of his life. A squalid, miserable tenement, with which they who inhabit it are content, can lead to no elevation of character, no improvement in condition, either social or moral, of its occupants. But, the family comfortably and tidily, although humbly provided in their habitation and domestic arrangements, have usually a corresponding character in their personal relations. A log cabin, even,--and I speak of this primitive American structure with profound affection and regard, as the shelter from which we have achieved the most of our prodigious and rapid agricultural conquests,--may be so constructed as to speak an air of neatness, intelligence, and even refinement in those who inhabit it. Admitting, then, without further argument, that well conditioned household accommodations are as important to the farmer, even to the indulgence of luxury itself, when it can be afforded, as for those who occupy other and more active pursuits, it is quite important that he be equally well instructed in the art of planning and arranging these accommodations, and in designing, also, the various other structures which are necessary to his wants in their fullest extent. As a question of economy, both in saving and accumulating, good and sufficient buildings are of the first consequence, in a pecuniary light, and when to this are added other considerations touching our social enjoyment, our advancement in temporal condition, our associations, our position and influence in life, and, not least, the decided item of national good taste which the introduction of good buildings throughout our extended agricultural country will give, we find abundant cause for effort in improvement. It is not intended in our remarks to convey the impression that we Americans, as a people, are destitute of comfortable, and, in many cases, quite convenient household and farm arrangements. Numerous farmeries in every section of the United States, particularly in the older ones, demonstrate most fully, that where our farmers have taken the trouble to _think_ on the subject, their ingenuity has been equal, in the items of convenient and economical arrangement of their dwellings and out-buildings, to their demands. But, we are forced to say, that such buildings have been executed, in most cases, with great neglect of _architectural_ system, taste, or effect; and, in many instances, to the utter violation of all _propriety_ in appearance, or character, as appertaining to the uses for which they are applied. The character of the farm should be carried out so as to _express_ itself in everything which it contains. All should bear a consistent relation with each other. The former himself is a plain man. His family are plain people, although none the less worthy, useful, or exalted, on that account. His structures, of every kind, should be plain, also, yet substantial, where substance is required. All these detract nothing from his respectability or his influence in the neighborhood, the town, the county, or the state. A farmer has quite as much business in the field, or about his ordinary occupations, with ragged garments, out at elbows, and a crownless hat, as he has to occupy a leaky, wind-broken, and dilapidated house. Neither is he any nearer the mark, with a ruffled shirt, a fancy dress, or gloved hands, when following his plough behind a pair of _fancy_ horses, than in living in a finical, pretending house, such as we see stuck up in conspicuous places in many parts of the country. All these are out of place in each extreme, and the one is as absurd, so far as true propriety is concerned, as the other. A fitness of things, or a correspondence of one thing with another, should always be preserved upon the farm, as elsewhere; and there is not a single reason why propriety and good keeping should not as well distinguish it. Nor is there any good cause why the farmer himself should not be a man of taste, in the arrangement and architecture of every building on his place, as well as other men. It is only necessary that he devote a little time to study, in order to give his mind a right direction in all that appertains to this department. Or, if he prefer to employ the ingenuity of others to do his planning,--which, by the way, is, in most cases, the more natural and better course,--he certainly should possess sufficient judgment to see that such plans be correct and will answer his purposes. The plans and directions submitted in this work are intended to be of the most practical kind; plain, substantial, and applicable, throughout, to the purposes intended, and such as are within the reach--each in their kind--of every farmer in our country. These plans are chiefly original; that is, they are not copied from any in the books, or from any structures with which the writer is familiar. Yet they will doubtless, on examination, be found in several cases to resemble buildings, both in outward appearance and interior arrangement, with which numerous readers may be acquainted. The object, in addition to our own designs, has been to apply practical hints, gathered from other structures in use, which have seemed appropriate for a work of the limited extent here offered, and that may serve to improve the taste of all such as, in building useful structures, desire to embellish their farms and estates in an agreeable style of home architecture, at once pleasant to the eye, and convenient in their arrangement. INTRODUCTORY. The lover of country life who looks upon rural objects in the true spirit, and, for the first time surveys the cultivated portions of the United States, will be struck with the incongruous appearance and style of our farm houses and their contiguous buildings; and, although, on examination, he will find many, that in their interior accommodation, and perhaps relative arrangement to each other, are tolerably suited to the business and convenience of the husbandman, still, the feeling will prevail that there is an absence of method, congruity, and correct taste in the architectural structure of his buildings generally, by the American farmer. We may, in truth, be said to have no architecture at all, as exhibited in our agricultural districts, so far as any correct system, or plan is concerned, as the better taste in building, which a few years past has introduced among us, has been chiefly confined to our cities and towns of rapid growth. Even in the comparatively few buildings in the modern style to be seen in our farming districts, from the various requirements of those buildings being partially unknown to the architect and builder, who had their planning--and upon whom, owing to their own inexperience in such matters, their employers have relied--a majority of such dwellings have turned out, if not absolute failures, certainly not what the necessities of the farmer has demanded. Consequently, save in the mere item of outward appearance--and that, not always--the farmer and cottager have gained nothing, owing to the absurdity in style or arrangement, and want of fitness to circumstances adopted for the occasion. We have stated that our prevailing rural architecture is discordant in appearance; it may be added, that it is also uncouth, out of keeping with correct rules, and, ofttimes offensive to the eye of any lover of rural harmony. Why it is so, no matter, beyond the apology already given--that of an absence of cultivation, and thought upon the subject. It may be asked, of what consequence is it that the farmer or small property-holder should conform to given rules, or mode, in the style and arrangement of his dwelling, or out-buildings, so that they be reasonably convenient, and answer his purposes? For the same reason that he requires symmetry, excellence of form or style, in his horses, his cattle, or other farm stock, household furniture, or personal dress. It is an arrangement of artificial objects, in harmony with natural objects; a cultivation of the sympathies which every rational being should have, more or less, with true taste; that costs little or nothing in the attainment, and, when attained, is a source of gratification through life. Every human being is bound, under ordinary circumstances, to leave the world somewhat better, so far as his own acts or exertions are concerned, than he found it, in the exercise of such faculties as have been given him. Such duty, among thinking men, is conceded, so far as the moral world is concerned; and why not in the artificial? So far as the influence for good goes, in all practical use, from the building of a temple, to the knocking together of a pig-stye--a labor of years, or the work of a day--the exercise of a correct taste is important, in a degree. In the available physical features of a country, no land upon earth exceeds North America. From scenery the most sublime, through the several gradations of magnificence and grandeur, down to the simply picturesque and beautiful, in all variety and shade; in compass vast, or in area limited, we have an endless variety, and, with a pouring out of God's harmonies in the creation, without a parallel, inviting every intelligent mind to study their features and character, in adapting them to his own uses, and, in so doing, to even embellish--if such a thing be possible--such exquisite objects with his own most ingenious handiwork. Indeed, it is a profanation to do otherwise; and when so to improve them requires no extraordinary application of skill, or any extravagant outlay in expense, not to plan and to build in conformity with good taste, is an absolute barbarism, inexcusable in a land like ours, and among a population claiming the intelligence we do, or making but a share of the general progress which we exhibit. It is the idea of some, that a house or building which the farmer or planter occupies, should, in shape, style, and character, be like some of the stored-up commodities of his farm or plantation. We cannot subscribe to this suggestion. We know of no good reason why the walls of a farm house should appear like a hay rick, or its roof like the thatched covering to his wheat stacks, because such are the shapes best adapted to preserve his crops, any more than the grocer's habitation should be made to imitate a tea chest, or the shipping merchant's a rum puncheon, or cotton bale. We have an idea that the farmer, or the planter, according to his means and requirements, should be as well housed and accommodated, and in as agreeable style, too, as any other class of community; not in like character, in all things, to be sure, but in his own proper way and manner. Nor do we know why a farm house should assume a peculiarly primitive or uncultivated style of architecture, from other sensible houses. That it be a _farm_ house, is sufficiently apparent from its locality upon the farm itself; that its interior arrangement be for the convenience of the in-door farm work, and the proper accommodation of the farmer's family, should be quite as apparent; but, that it should assume an uncouth or clownish aspect, is as unnecessary as that the farmer himself should be a boor in his manners, or a dolt in his intellect. The farm, in its proper cultivation, is the foundation of all human prosperity, and from it is derived the main wealth of the community. From the farm chiefly springs that energetic class of men, who replace the enervated and physically decaying multitude continually thrown off in the waste-weir of our great commercial and manufacturing cities and towns, whose population, without the infusion--and that continually--of the strong, substantial, and vigorous life blood of the country, would soon dwindle into insignificance and decrepitude. Why then should not this first, primitive, health-enjoying and life-sustaining class of our people be equally accommodated in all that gives to social and substantial life, its due development? It is absurd to deny them by others, or that they deny themselves, the least of such advantages, or that any mark of _caste_ be attempted to separate them from any other class or profession of equal wealth, means, or necessity. It is quite as well to say that the farmer should worship on the Sabbath in a _meeting-house_, built after the fashion of his barn, or that his district school house should look like a stable, as that his dwelling should not exhibit all that cheerfulness and respectability in form and feature which belongs to the houses of any class of our population whatever. Not that the farm house should be like the town or the village house, in character, style, or architecture, but that it should, in its own proper character, express all the comfort, repose, and quietude which belong to the retired and thoughtful occupation of him who inhabits it. Sheltered in its own secluded, yet independent domain, with a cheerful, _intelligent_ exterior, it should exhibit all the pains-taking in home embellishment and rural decoration that becomes its position, and which would make it an object of attraction and regard. * * * * * RURAL ARCHITECTURE. * * * * * GENERAL SUGGESTIONS. In ascertaining what is desirable to the conveniences, or the necessities in our household arrangement, it may be not unprofitable to look about us, and consider somewhat, the existing condition of the structures too many of us now inhabit, and which, in the light of true fitness for the objects designed, are inconvenient, absurd, and out of all harmony of purpose; yet, under the guidance of a better skill, and a moderate outlay, might be well adapted, in most cases, to our convenience and comfort, and quite well, to a reasonable standard of taste in architectural appearance. At the threshold--not of the house, but of this treatise--it may be well to remark that it is not here assumed that there has been neither skill, ingenuity, nor occasional good taste exhibited, for many generations back, in the United States, in the construction of farm and country houses. On the contrary, there are found in the older states many farm and country houses that are almost models, in their way, for convenience in the main purposes required of structures of their kind, and such as can hardly be altered for the better. Such, however, form the exception, not the rule; yet instead of standing as objects for imitation, they have been ruled out as antiquated, and unfit for modern builders to consult, who have in the introduction of some real improvements, also left out, or discarded much that is valuable, and, where true comfort is concerned, indispensable to perfect housekeeping. Alteration is not always improvement, and in the rage for innovation of all kinds, among much that is valuable, a great deal in house-building has been introduced that is absolutely pernicious. Take, for instance, some of our ancient-looking country houses of the last century, which, in America, we call old. See their ample dimensions; their heavy, massive walls; their low, comfortable ceilings; their high gables; sharp roofs; deep porches, and spreading eaves, and contrast them with the ambitious, tall, proportionless, and card-sided things of a modern date, and draw the comparison in true comfort, which the ancient mansion really affords, by the side of the other. Bating its huge chimneys, its wide fire-places, its heavy beams dropping below the ceiling overhead, and the lack of some modern conveniences, which, to be added, would give all that is desired, and every man possessed of a proper judgment will concede the superiority to the house of the last century. That American house-building of the last fifty years is out of joint, requires no better proof than that the main improvements which have been applied to our rural architecture, are in the English style of farm and country houses of two or three centuries ago; so, in that particular, we acknowledge the better taste and judgment of our ancestors. True, modern luxury, and in some particulars, modern improvement has made obsolete, if not absurd, many things considered indispensable in a ruder age. The wide, rambling halls and rooms; the huge, deep fire-places in the chimneys; the proximity of out-buildings, and the contiguity of stables, ricks, and cattle-yards--all these are wisely contracted, dispensed with, or thrown off to a proper distance; but instead of such style being abandoned altogether, as has too often been done, the house itself might better have been partially reformed, and the interior arrangement adapted to modern convenience. Such changes have in some instances been made; and when so, how often does the old mansion, with outward features in good preservation, outspeak, in all the expression of home-bred comforts, the flashy, gimcrack neighbor, which in its plenitude of modern pretension looks so flauntingly down upon it! We cannot, in the United States, consistently adopt the domestic architecture of any other country, throughout, to our use. We are different in our institutions, our habits, our agriculture, our climates. Utility is our chief object, and coupled with that, the indulgence of an agreeable taste may be permitted to every one who creates a home for himself, or founds one for his family. The frequent changes of estates incident to our laws, and the many inducements held out to our people to change their locality or residence, in the hope of bettering their condition, is a strong hindrance to the adoption of a universally correct system in the construction of our buildings; deadening, as the effect of such changes, that home feeling which should be a prominent trait of agricultural character. An attachment to locality is not a conspicuous trait of American character; and if there be a people on earth boasting a high civilization and intelligence, who are at the same time a roving race, the Americans are that people; and we acknowledge it a blemish in our domestic and social constitution. Such remark is not dropped invidiously, but as a reason why we have thus far made so little progress in the arts of home embellishment, and in clustering about our habitations those innumerable attractions which win us to them sufficiently to repel the temptation so often presented to our enterprise, our ambition, or love of gain--and these not always successful--in seeking other and distant places of abode. If, then, this tendency to change--a want of attachment to any one spot--is a reason why we have been so indifferent to domestic architecture; and if the study and practice of a better system of building tends to cultivate a home feeling, why should it not be encouraged? Home attachment is a virtue. Therefore let that virtue be cherished. And if any one study tend to exalt our taste, and promote our enjoyment, let us cultivate that study to the highest extent within our reach. STYLE OF BUILDING.--MISCELLANEOUS. Diversified as are the features of our country in climate, soil, surface, and position, no one style of rural architecture is properly adapted to the whole; and it is a gratifying incident to the indulgence in a variety of taste, that we possess the opportunity which we desire in its display to almost any extent in mode and effect. The Swiss chalêt may hang in the mountain pass; the pointed Gothic may shoot up among the evergreens of the rugged hill-side; the Italian roof, with its overlooking campanile, may command the wooded slope or the open plain; or the quaint and shadowy style of the old English mansion, embosomed in its vines and shrubbery, may nestle in the quiet, shaded valley, all suited to their respective positions, and each in harmony with the natural features by which it is surrounded. Nor does the effect which such structures give to the landscape in an ornamental point of view, require that they be more imposing in character than the necessities of the occasion may demand. True economy demands a structure sufficiently spacious to accommodate its occupants in the best manner, so far as convenience and comfort are concerned in a dwelling; and its conformity to just rules in architecture need not be additionally expensive or troublesome. He who builds at all, if it be anything beyond a rude or temporary shelter, may as easily and cheaply build in accordance with correct rules of architecture, as against such rules; and it no more requires an extravagance in cost or a wasteful occupation of room to produce a given effect in a house suited to humble means, than in one of profuse accommodation. Magnificence, or the attempt at magnificence in building, is the great fault with Americans who aim to build out of the common line; and the consequence of such attempt is too often a failure, apparent, always, at a glance, and of course a perfect condemnation in itself of the judgment as well as taste of him who undertakes it. Holding our tenures as we do, with no privilege of entail to our posterity, an eye to his own interest, or to that of his family who is to succeed to his estate, should admonish the builder of a house to the adoption of a plan which will, in case of the sale of the estate, involve no serious loss. He should build such a house as will be no detriment, in its expense, to the selling value of the land on which it stands, and always fitted for the spot it occupies. Hence, an imitation of the high, extended, castellated mansions of England, or the Continent, although in miniature, are altogether unsuited to the American farmer or planter, whose lands, instead of increasing in his family, are continually subject to division, or to sale in mass, on his own demise; and when the estate is encumbered with unnecessarily large and expensive buildings, they become an absolute drawback to its value in either event. An expensive house requires a corresponding expense to maintain it, otherwise its effect is lost, and many a worthy owner of a costly mansion has been driven to sell and abandon his estate altogether, from his unwillingness or inability to support "the establishment" which it entailed; when, if the dwelling were only such as the estate required and could reasonably maintain, a contented and happy home would have remained to himself and family. It behooves, therefore, the American builder to examine well his premises, to ascertain the actual requirements of his farm or plantation, in convenience and accommodation, and build only to such extent, and at such cost as shall not impoverish his means, nor cause him future disquietude. Another difficulty with us is, that we oftener build to gratify the eyes of the public than our own, and fit up our dwellings to accommodate "company" or visitors, rather than our own families; and in the indulgence of this false notion, subject ourselves to perpetual inconvenience for the gratification of occasional hospitality or ostentation. This is all wrong. A house should be planned and constructed for the use of the household, with _incidental_ accommodation for our immediate friends or guests--which can always be done without sacrifice to the comfort or convenience of the regular inmates. In this remark, a stinted and parsimonious spirit is not suggested. A liberal appropriation of rooms in every department; a spare chamber or two, or an additional room on the ground floor, looking to a possible increase of family, and the indulgence of an easy hospitality, should always govern the resident of the country in erecting his dwelling. The enjoyments of society and the intercourse of friends, sharing for the time, our own table and fireside, is a crowning pleasure of country life; and all this may be done without extraordinary expense, in a wise construction of the dwelling. The farm house too, should comport in character and area with the extent and capacity of the farm itself, and the main design for which it is erected. To the farmer proper--he who lives from the income which the farm produces--it is important to know the extent of accommodation required for the economical management of his estate, and then to build in accordance with it, as well as to suit his own position in life, and the station which he and his family hold in society. The owner of a hundred acre farm, living upon the income he receives from it, will require less house room than he who tills equally well his farm of three, six, or ten hundred acres. Yet the numbers in their respective families, the relative position of each in society, or their taste for social intercourse may demand a larger or smaller household arrangement, regardless of the size of their estates; still, the dwellings on each should bear, in extent and expense, a consistent relation to the land itself, and the means of its owner. For instance: a farm of one hundred acres may safely and economically erect and maintain a house costing eight hundred to two thousand dollars, while one of five hundred to a thousand acres may range in an expenditure of twenty-five hundred to five thousand dollars in its dwelling, and all be consistent with a proper economy in farm management. Let it be understood, that the above sums are named as simply comporting with a financial view of the subject, and such as the economical management of the estate may warrant. To one who has no regard to such consideration, this rule of expenditure will not apply. He may invest any amount he so chooses in building beyond, if he only be content to pocket the loss which he can never expect to be returned in an increased value to the property, over and above the price of cheaper buildings. On the other hand, he would do well to consider that a farm is frequently worth less to an ordinary purchaser, with an extravagant house upon it, than with an economical one, and in many cases will bring even less in market, in proportion as the dwelling is expensive. _Fancy_ purchasers are few, and fastidious, while he who buys only for a home and an occupation, is governed solely by the profitable returns the estate will afford upon the capital invested. There is again a grand error which many fall into in building, looking as they do only at the extent of wood and timber; or stone and mortar in the structure, and paying no attention to the surroundings, which in most cases contribute more to the effect of the establishment than the structure itself, and which, if uncultivated or neglected, any amount of expenditure in building will fail to give that completeness and perfection of character which every homestead should command. Thus the tawdry erections in imitation of a cast-off feudalism in Europe, or a copying of the massive piles of more recent date abroad, although in miniature, both in extent and cost, is the sheerest affectation, in which no sensible man should ever indulge. It is out of all keeping, or propriety with other things, as we in this country have them, and the indulgence of all such fancies is sooner or later regretted. Substance, convenience, purpose, harmony--all, perhaps, better summed up in the term EXPRESSION--these are the objects which should govern the construction of our dwellings and out-buildings, and in their observance we can hardly err in the acquisition of what will promote the highest enjoyment which a dwelling can bestow. POSITION. The site of a dwelling should be an important study with every country builder; for on this depends much of its utility, and in addition to that, a large share of the enjoyment which its occupation will afford. Custom, in many parts of the United States, in the location of the farm buildings, gives advantages which are denied in others. In the south, and in the slave states generally, the planter builds, regardless of roads, on the most convenient site his plantation presents; the farmer of German descent, in Pennsylvania and some other states, does the same: while the Yankee, be he settled where he will, either in the east, north, or west, inexorably huddles himself immediately upon the highway, whether his possessions embrace both sides of it or not, disregarding the facilities of access to his fields, the convenience of tilling his crops, or the character of the ground which his buildings may occupy, seeming to have no other object than proximity to the road--as if his chief business was upon that, instead of its being simply a convenience to his occupation. To the last, but little choice is left; and so long as a close connection with the thoroughfare is to control, he is obliged to conform to accident in what should be a matter of deliberate choice and judgment. Still, there are right and wrong positions for a house, which it is necessary to discuss, regardless of conventional rules, and they should be considered in the light of propriety alone. A fitness to the purposes for which the dwelling is constructed should, unquestionably, be the governing point in determining its position. The site should be dry, and slightly declining, if possible, on every side; but if the surface be level, or where water occasionally flows from contiguous grounds, or on a soil naturally damp, it should be thoroughly drained of all superfluous moisture. That is indispensable to the preservation of the house itself, and the health of its inmates. The house should so stand as to present an agreeable aspect from the main points at which it is seen, or the thoroughfares by which it is approached. It should be so arranged as to afford protection from wind and storm, to that part most usually occupied, as well as be easy of access to the out-buildings appended to it. It should have an unmistakable front, sides, and rear; and the uses to which its various parts are applied, should distinctly appear in its outward character. It should combine all the advantages of soil, cultivation, water, shade, and shelter, which the most liberal gratification, consistent with the circumstances of the owner, may demand. If a site on the estate command a prospect of singular beauty, other things equal, the dwelling should embrace it; if the luxury of a stream, or a sheet of water in repose, present itself, it should, if possible, be enjoyed; if the shade and protection of a grove be near, its benefits should be included; in fine, any object in itself desirable, and not embarrassing to the main purposes of the dwelling and its appendages, should be turned to the best account, and appropriated in such manner as to combine all that is desirable both in beauty and effect, as well as in utility, to make up a perfect whole in the family residence. Attached to the building site should be considered the quality of the soil, as affording cultivation and growth to shrubbery and trees,--at once the ornament most effective to all domestic buildings, grateful to the eye always, as objects of admiration and beauty--delightful in the repose they offer in hours of lassitude or weariness; and to them, that indispensable feature in a perfect arrangement, the garden, both fruit and vegetable, should be added. Happily for the American, our soils are so universally adapted to the growth of vegetation in all its varieties, that hardly a farm of considerable size can be found which does not afford tolerable facilities for the exercise of all the taste which one may indulge in the cultivation of the garden as well as in the planting and growth of trees and shrubbery; and a due appropriation of these to an agreeable residence is equal in importance to the style and arrangement of the house itself. The site selected for the dwelling, and the character of the scenery and objects immediately surrounding it, should have a controlling influence upon the style in which the house is to be constructed. A fitness and harmony in all these is indispensable to both expression and effect. And in their determination, a single object should not control, but the entire picture, as completed, should be embraced in the view; and that style of building constituting the most agreeable whole, as filling the eye with the most grateful sensations, should be the one selected with which to fill up and complete the design. HOME EMBELLISHMENTS. A discussion of the objects by way of embellishment, which may be required to give character and effect to a country residence, would embrace a range too wide, in all its parts, for a simply practical treatise like this; and general hints on the subject are all indeed, that will be required, as no specific rules or directions can be given which would be applicable, indiscriminately, to guide the builder in the execution of his work. A dwelling house, no matter what the style, standing alone, either on hill or plain, apart from other objects, would hardly be an attractive sight. As a mere representation of a particular style of architecture, or as a model of imitation, it might excite our admiration, but it would not be an object on which the eye and the imagination could repose with satisfaction. It would be incomplete unless accompanied by such associates as the eye is accustomed to embrace in the full gratification of the sensations to which that organ is the conductor. But assemble around that dwelling subordinate structures, trees, and shrubbery properly disposed, and it becomes an object of exceeding interest and pleasure in the contemplation. It is therefore, that the particular style or outward arrangement of the house is but a part of what should constitute the general effect, and such style is to be consulted only so far as it may in itself please the taste, and give benefit or utility in the purposes for which it is intended. Still, the architectural design should be in harmony with the features of the surrounding scenery, and is thus important in completing the effect sought, and which cannot be accomplished without it. A farm with its buildings, or a simple country residence with the grounds which enclose it, or a cottage with its door-yard and garden, should be finished sections of the landscape of which it forms a part, or attractive points within it; and of consequence, complete each within itself, and not dependent upon distant accessories to support it--an _imperium in imperio_, in classic phrase. A tower, a monument, a steeple, or the indistinct outline of a distant town may form a striking feature in a pictorial design and the associations connected with them, or, the character in which they are contemplated may allow them to stand naked and unadorned by other objects, and still permit them to fill up in perfect harmony the picture. This idea will illustrate the importance of embellishment, not only in the substitution of trees as necessary appendages to a complete rural establishment, but in the erection of all the buildings necessary for occupation in any manner, in form and position, to give effect from any point of view in which the homestead may be seen. General appearance should not be confined to one quarter alone, but the house and its surroundings on every side should show completeness in design and harmony in execution; and although humble, and devoted to the meanest purposes, a portion of these erections may be, yet the character of utility or necessity which they maintain, gives them an air of dignity, if not of grace. Thus, a house and out-buildings flanked with orchards, or a wood, on which they apparently fall back for support, fills the eye at once with not only a beautiful group, in themselves combined, but associate the idea of repose, of comfort, and abundance--indispensable requisites to a perfect farm residence. They also seem to connect the house and out-buildings with the fields beyond, which are of necessity naked of trees, and gradually spread the view abroad over the farm until it mingles with, or is lost in the general landscape. These remarks may seem too refined, and as out of place here, and trenching upon the subject of Landscape Gardening, which is not designed to be a part, or but an incidental one of the present work, yet they are important in connection with the subject under discussion. The proper disposition of trees and shrubbery around, or in the vicinity of buildings is far too little understood, although tree planting about our dwellings is a practice pretty general throughout our country. Nothing is more common than to see a man build a house, perhaps in most elaborate and expensive style, and then plant a row of trees close upon the front, which when grown will shut it almost entirely out of view; while he leaves the rear as bald and unprotected as if it were a barn or a horse-shed--as if in utter ignorance, as he probably is, that his house is more effectively set off by a _flanking_ and _background_ of tree and shrubbery, than in front. And this is called good taste! Let us examine it. Trees near a dwelling are desirable for shade; _shelter_ they do not afford except in masses, which last is always better given to the house itself by a veranda. Immediately adjoining, or within touching distance of a house, trees create dampness, more or less litter, and frequently vermin. They injure the walls and roofs by their continual shade and dampness. They exclude the rays of the sun, and prevent a free circulation of air. Therefore, _close_ to the house, trees are absolutely pernicious, to say nothing of excluding all its architectural effect from observation; when, if planted at proper distances, they compose its finest ornaments. If it be necessary to build in good taste at all, it is quite as necessary that such good taste be kept in view throughout. A country dwelling should always be a conspicuous object in its full character and outline, from one or more prominent points of observation; consequently all plantations of tree or shrubbery in its immediate vicinity should be considered as aids to show off the house and its appendages, instead of becoming the principal objects of attraction in themselves. Their disposition should be such as to create a perfect and agreeable whole, when seen in connection with the house itself. They should also be so placed as to open the surrounding landscape to view in its most attractive features, from the various parts of the dwelling. Much in the effective disposition of trees around the dwelling will thus depend upon the character of the country seen from it, and which should control to a great extent their position. A single tree, of grand and stately dimensions, will frequently give greater effect than the most studied plantations. A ledge of rock, in the clefts of which wild vines may nestle, or around which a mass of shrubbery may cluster, will add a charm to the dwelling which an elaborate cultivation would fail to bestow; and the most negligent apparel of nature in a thousand ways may give a character which we might strive in vain to accomplish by our own invention. In the efforts to embellish our dwellings or grounds, the strong natural objects with which they are associated should be consulted, always keeping in view an _expression_ of the chief character to which the whole is applied. MATERIAL FOR FARM BUILDINGS. In a country like ours, containing within its soils and upon its surface such an abundance and variety of building material, the composition of our farm erections must depend in most cases upon the ability or the choice of the builder himself. Stone is the most durable, in the long run the cheapest, and as a consequence, the _best_ material which can be furnished for the walls of a dwelling. With other farm buildings circumstances may govern differently; still, in many sections of the United States, even stone cannot be obtained, except at an expense and inconvenience altogether forbidding its use. Yet it is a happy relief that where stone is difficult, or not at all to be obtained, the best of clay for bricks, is abundant; and in almost all parts of our country, even where building timber is scarce, its transportation is so comparatively light, and the facilities of removing it are so cheap, that wood is accessible to every one. Hence we may indulge in almost every fitting style of architecture and arrangement, to which either kind of these materials are best adapted. We shall slightly discuss them as applicable to our purposes. Stone is found either on the surface, or in quarries under ground. On the surface they lie chiefly as bowlders of less or greater size, usually of hard and durable kinds. Large bowlders may be either blasted, or split with wedges into sufficiently available shapes to lay in walls with mortar; or if small, they may with a little extra labor, be fitted by the aid of good mortar into equally substantial wall as the larger masses. In quarries they are thrown out, either by blasting or splitting in layers, so as to form regular courses when laid up; and all their varieties may, _unhammered_, except to strike off projecting points or angles, be laid up with a sufficiently smooth face to give fine effect to a building. Thus, when easily obtained, aside from the greater advantages of their durability, stone is as cheap in the first instance as lumber, excepting in new districts of country where good building lumber is the chief article of production, and cheaper than brick in any event. Stone requires no paint. Its color is a natural, therefore an agreeable one, be it usually what it may, although some shades are more grateful to the eye than others; yet it is always in harmony with natural objects, and particularly so on the farm where everything ought to wear the most substantial appearance. The outer walls of a stone house should always be _firred_ off inside for _lathing_ and plastering, to keep them thoroughly dry. Without that, the rooms are liable to dampness, which would penetrate through the stone into the inside plastering unless cut off by an open space of air between. Bricks, where stone is not found, supply its place tolerably well. When made of good clay, rightly tempered with sand, and well burned, they will in a wall remain for centuries, and as far as material is concerned, answer all purposes. Brick walls may be thinner than stone walls, but they equally require "firring off" for inside plastering, and in addition, they need the aid of paint quite as often as wood, to give them an agreeable color--bricks themselves not usually being in the category of desirable colors or shades. Wood, when abundant and easily obtained, is worked with the greatest facility, and on many accounts, is the cheapest material, _for the time_, of which a building can be constructed. But it is perishable. It requires every few years a coat of paint, and is always associated with the idea of decay. Yet wood may be moulded into an infinite variety of form to please the eye, in the indulgence of any peculiar taste or fancy. We cannot, in the consideration of material for house-building therefore, urge upon the farmer the adoption of either of the above named materials to the preference of another, in any particular structure he may require; but leave him to consult his own circumstances in regard to them, as best he may. But this we will say: _If it be possible_, never lay a _cellar_ or underground wall of perishable material, such as wood or soft bricks; nor build with soft or _unburnt_ bricks in a wall exposed to the weather _anywhere;_ nor with stone which is liable to crumble or disintegrate by the action of frost or water upon it. We are aware that unburnt bricks have been strongly recommended for house-building in America; but from observation, we are fully persuaded that they are worthless for any _permanent_ structure, and if used, will in the end prove a dead loss in their application. Cottages, out-buildings, and other cheap erections on the farm, for the accommodation of laborers, stock, or crops, may be made of wood, where wood is the cheapest and most easily obtained; and, even taking its perishable nature into account, it may be the most economical. In their construction, it may be simply a matter of calculation with him who needs them, to calculate the first cost of any material he has at hand, or may obtain, and to that add the interest upon it, the annual wear and tear, the insurance, and the period it may last, to determine this matter to his entire satisfaction--always provided he have the means at hand to do either. But other considerations generally control the American farmer. His pocket is apt more often to be pinched, than his choice is to be at fault; and this weighty argument compels him into the "make shift" system, which perhaps in its results, provided the main chance be attained, is quite as advantageous to his interests as the other. As a general remark, all buildings should show for themselves, what they are built of. Let stone be stone; bricks show on their own account; and of all things, put no counterfeit by way of plaster, stucco, or other false pretence other than paint, or a durable wash upon wood: it is a miserable affectation always, and of no possible use whatever. All counterfeit of any kind as little becomes the buildings of the farmer, as the gilded _pinchbeck_ watch would fit the finished attire of a gentleman. Before submitting the several designs proposed for this work, it may be remarked, that in addressing them to a climate strictly American, we have in every instance adopted the wide, steeply-pitched roof, with broad eaves, gables and cornices, as giving protection, shade, and shelter to the walls; thus keeping them dry and in good preservation, and giving that well housed, and comfortable expression, so different from the stiff, pinched, and tucked-up look in which so many of the haberdasher-built houses of the present day exult. We give some examples of the hipped roof, because they are convenient and cheap in their construction; and we also throw into the designs a lateral direction to the roofs of the wings, or connecting parts of the building. This is sometimes done for effect in architectural appearance, and sometimes for the economy and advantage of the building itself. Where roofs thus intersect or connect with a side wall, the connecting gutters should be made of copper, zinc, lead, galvanized iron, or tin, into which the shingles, if they be covered with that material, should be laid so as to effectually prevent leakage. The _eave gutters_ should be of copper, zinc, lead, galvanized iron or tin, also, and placed _at least_ one foot back from the edge of the roof, and lead the water into conductors down the wall into the cistern or elsewhere, as may be required. If the water be not needed, and the roof be wide over the walls, there is no objection to let it pass off naturally, if it be no inconvenience to the ground below, and can run off, or be absorbed into the ground without detriment to the cellar walls. All this must be subject to the judgment of the proprietor himself. OUTSIDE COLOR. We are not among those who cast off, and on a sudden condemn, as out of all good taste, the time-honored white house with its green blinds, often so tastefully gleaming out from beneath the shade of summer trees; nor do we doggedly adhere to it, except when in keeping, by contrast or otherwise, with everything around it. For a century past white has been the chief color of our wooden houses, and often so of brick ones, in the United States. This color has been supposed to be strong and durable, being composed chiefly of white lead; and as it _reflected_ the rays of the sun instead of _absorbing_ them, as some of the darker colors do, it was thus considered a better preserver of the weather-boarding from the cracks which the fervid heat of the sun is apt to make upon it, than the darker colors. White, consequently, has always been considered, until within a few years past, as a fitting and _tasteful_ color for dwellings, both in town and country. A new school of _taste_ in colors has risen, however, within a few years past, among us; about the same time, too, that the recent gingerbread and beadwork style of country building was introduced. And these were both, as all _new_ things are apt to be, carried to extremes. Instead of _toning_ down the glare of the white into some quiet, neutral shade, as a straw color; a drab of different hues--always an agreeable and appropriate color for a dwelling, particularly when the door and window casings are dressed with a deeper or lighter shade, as those shades predominate in the main body of the house; or a natural and soft _wood_ color, which also may be of various shades; or even the warm russet hue of some of our rich stones--quite appropriate, too, as applied to wood, or bricks--the _fashion_ must be followed without either rhyme or reason, and hundreds of our otherwise pretty and imposing country houses have been daubed over with the dirtiest, gloomiest pigment imaginable, making every habitation which it touched look more like a funeral appendage than a cheerful, life-enjoying home. We candidly say that we have no sort of affection for such sooty daubs. The fashion which dictates them is a barbarous, false, and arbitrary fashion; void of all natural taste in its inception; and to one who has a cheerful, life-loving spirit about him, such colors have no more fitness on his dwelling or out-buildings, than a tomb would have in his lawn or dooryard. Locality, amplitude of the buildings, the purpose to which they are applied--every consideration connected with them, in fact, should be consulted, as to color. Stone will give its own color; which, by the way, some prodigiously smart folks _paint_--quite as decorous or essential, as to "paint the lily." Brick sometimes must be painted, but it should be of a color in keeping with its character,--of substance and dignity; not a counterfeit of stone, or to cheat him who looks upon it into a belief that it may be marble, or other unfounded pretension. A _warm_ russet is most appropriate for brick-work of any kind of color--the color of a russet apple, or undressed leather--shades that comport with Milton's beautiful idea of "_Russet_ lawns and fallows _gray_." Red and yellow are both too glaring, and slate, or lead colors too somber and cold. It is, in fact, a strong argument in favor of bricks in building, where they can be had as cheap as stone or wood, that any color can be given to them which the good taste of the builder may require, in addition to their durability, which, when made of good material, and properly burned, is quite equal to stone. In a wooden structure one may play with his fancy in the way of color, minding in the operation, that he does not play the mountebank, and like the clown in the circus, make his tattooed tenement the derision of men of correct taste, as the other does his burlesque visage the ridicule of his auditors. A _wooden_ country house, together with its out-buildings, should always be of a cheerful and softly-toned color--a color giving a feeling of warmth and comfort; nothing glaring or flashy about it. And yet, such buildings should not, in their color, any more than in their architecture, appear as if _imitating_ either stone or brick. Wood, of itself, is light. One cannot build a _heavy_ house of wood, as compared with brick or stone. Therefore all imitation or device which may lead to a belief that it may be other than what it really is, is nothing less than a fraud--not criminal, we admit, but none the less a fraud upon good taste and architectural truth. It is true that in this country we cannot afford to place in stone and brick buildings those ornate trimmings and appendages which, perhaps, if economy were not to be consulted, might be more durably constructed of stone, but at an expense too great to be borne by those of moderate means. Yet it is not essential that such appendages should be of so expensive material. The very purposes to which they are applied, as a parapet, a railing, a balustrade, a portico, piazza, or porch; all these may be of wood, even when the material of the house _proper_ is of the most durable kind; and by being painted in keeping with the building itself, produce a fine effect, and do no violence to good taste or the most fastidious propriety. They may be even sanded to a color, and grained, stained, or otherwise brought to an identity, almost, with the material of the house, and be quite proper, because they simply are _appendages_ of convenience, necessity, or luxury, to the building itself, and may be taken away without injuring or without defacing the main structure. They are not a _material_ part of the building itself, but reared for purposes which may be dispensed with. It is a matter of taste or preference, that they were either built there, or that they remain permanently afterward, and of consequence, proper that they be of wood. Yet they should not _imitate_ stone or brick. They should still show that they _are_ of wood, but in color and outside preservation denote that they are appendages to a _stone_ or _brick_ house, by complying with the proper shades in color which predominate in the building itself, and become their own subordinate character. Not being a professional painter, or compounder of colors, we shall offer no receipts or specifics for painting or washing buildings. Climate affects the composition of both paints and washes, and those who are competent in this line, are the proper persons to dictate their various compositions; and we do but common justice to the skill and intelligence of our numerous mechanics, when we recommend to those who contemplate building, to apply forthwith to such as are masters of their trade for all the information they require on the various subjects connected with it. One who sets out to be his own architect, builder, and painter, is akin to the lawyer in the proverb, who has a fool for his client, when pleading his own case, and quite as apt to have quack in them all. Hints, general outlines, and oftentimes matters of detail in interior convenience, and many other minor affairs may be given by the proprietor, when he is neither a professional architect, mechanic, or even an amateur; but in all things affecting the _substantial_ and important parts of his buildings, he should consult those who are proficient and experienced in the department on which he consults them. And it may perhaps be added that none _professing_ to be such, are competent, unless well instructed, and whose labors have met the approbation of those competent to judge. There is one kind of color, prevailing to a great extent in many parts of our country, particularly the northern and eastern, which, in its effect upon any one having an eye to a fitness of things in country buildings, is a monstrous perversion of good taste. That is the glaring red, made up of Venetian red, ochre, or Spanish brown, with doors and windows touched off with white. The only apology we have ever heard given for such a barbarism was, that it is a good, strong, and lasting color. We shall not go into an examination as to that fact, but simply answer, that if it be so, there are other colors, not more expensive, which are equally strong and durable, and infinitely more tasteful and fitting. There can be nothing less comporting with the simplicity of rural scenery, than a glaring red color on a building. It _connects_ with nothing natural about it; it neither _fades_ into any surrounding shade of soil or vegetation, and must of necessity, stand out in its own bold and unshrouded impudence, a perfect Ishmaelite in color, and a perversion of every thing harmonious in the design. We eschew _red_, therefore, from every thing in rural architecture. A SHORT CHAPTER ON TASTE. The compound words, or terms _good-taste_ and _bad-taste_ have been used in the preceding pages without, perhaps, sufficiently explaining what is meant by the word _taste_, other than as giving vague and unsatisfactory terms to the reader in measuring the subject in hand. _Taste_ is a term universally applied in criticism of the fine-arts, such as painting, sculpture, architecture, &c., &c., of which there are many schools--of _taste_, we mean--some of them, perhaps natural, but chiefly conventional, and all more or less arbitrary. The proverb, "there is no accounting for taste," is as old as the aforesaid schools themselves, and defines perfectly our own estimate of the common usage of the term. As we have intended to use it, Webster defines the word _taste_ to be "the faculty of discerning beauty, order, congruity, proportion, symmetry, or whatever constitutes excellence; style; manner with respect to what is pleasing." With this understanding, therefore; a fitness to the purpose for which a thing is intended--got up in a manner agreeable to the eye and the mind--preserving also a harmony between its various parts and uses; pleasing to the eye, as addressed to the sense, and satisfactory to the mind, as appropriate to the object for which it is required;--these constitute _good-taste_, as the term is here understood. The term _style_, also, is "the _manner_ or _form_ of a thing." When we say, "that is a stylish house," it should mean that it is in, or approaches some particular style of building recognized by the schools. It may or may not be in accordance with good taste, and is, consequently, subject to the same capricious test in its government. Yet _styles_ are subject to arrangement, and are classified in the several schools of architecture, either as distinct specimens of acknowledged orders, as the Doric, the Ionic, the Corinthian, in Grecian architecture, or, the Tuscan and Composite, which are, more distinctly, styles of Roman architecture. To these may be added the Egyptian, the most massive of all; and either of them, in their proper character, grand and imposing when applied to public buildings or extensive structures, but altogether inapplicable, from their want of lightness and convenience, to country or even city dwellings. Other styles--not exactly orders--of architecture, such as the Italian, the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Swiss, with their modifications--all of which admit of a variety of departures from fixed rules, not allowed in the more rigid orders--may be adapted in a variety of ways, to the most agreeable and harmonious arrangement in architectural effect, for dwellings and structures appurtenant to them. The Italian style of architecture, modified somewhat in pretension and extent, is admirably adapted to most parts of the United States. Its general lightness, openness, and freedom gives a wide range of choice; and its wings, verandas, and terraces, stretching off in any and almost every direction desired, from the main building, make it exceedingly appropriate for general use. The modern, or rural Gothic, branching off sometimes into what is termed the English cottage style, and in many instances blending so intimately with the Italian, as hardly to mark the line of division, is also a beautiful _arrangement_ of building for country dwellings. These, in ruder structures, may also be carried into the Rustic--not a style proper, in itself--but so termed as approximating in execution or pretension to either of the above; while the Swiss, with its hanging roofs, and sheltering eaves may be frequently brought in aid to show out the rustic form in more completeness, and in greater harmony with surrounding objects, than either of the others. For farm houses, either of these _arrangements_ or departures from a _set_ and _positive_ style, are better fitted than any which we have noticed; and in some one or other of the modifications named, we have applied them in the examples submitted in this work. They may not therefore be viewed as _distinct_ delineations of an _order_ of architecture, or style _proper_, even; but as a _mode_ appropriate to the object required. And so long as they do not absolutely conflict with true taste, or in their construction commit a barbarism upon any acknowledged system of architecture, in any of its modifications, we hazard no impropriety in introducing them for the imitation of country builders. Congruity with the objects to which it is applied should be the chief merit of any structure whatever; and so long as that object be attained, good taste is not violated, and utility is fully subserved. Intimately connected with this subject, in rural buildings, is the _shape_ of the structure. Many of the designs recently introduced for the imitation of builders, are full of angles and all sorts of zig-zag lines, which, although they may add to the variety of style, or relieve the monotony of straight and continuous lines, are carried to a needless excess, expensive in their construction, and entail infinite trouble upon the owner or occupant, in the repairs they subject him to, in the leakages continually occurring, against which last, either of wind or rain, it is almost impossible to guard. And what, let us ask, are the benefits of a parcel of needless gables and peaked windows, running up like owl's ears, above the eaves of a house, except to create expense, and invite leakage and decay? If in appearance, they provoke an association of that kind, they certainly are not in good taste; and a foot or two of increased height in a wall, or a low window sufficient for the purpose intended, would give a tone of dignity, of comfort, and real utility, which a whole covey of such pretentious things could not. All such trumpery should be scouted from the dwelling house of the farmer, and left to the special indulgence of the town builder. A _square_ form of house will afford more area within a given line of wall than any other _sensible_ form which may be adopted. Yet a square house is not so agreeable to the eye as an oblong. Thus, a house should stand somewhat broader on one front than on another. It should also be relieved from an appearance of monotony and tameness, by one or more wings; and such wings should, at their junction with the main building, retreat or advance a sufficient distance from a continuous line, as to relieve it effectually from an appearance of stiffness, and show a different character of occupation from that of the main structure. The front of a house should be the most imposing and finished in its architecture of any one of its parts; and unless some motive of greater convenience control otherwise, its entrance the most highly wrought, as indicating the luxury of the establishment--for even the humblest habitations have their luxuries. The side rooms, or more usually occupied apartments, require less pretension in both architectural effect and finish, and should wear a more subdued appearance; while the kitchen section, and from that, the several grades of apartments stretching beyond it, should distinctly show that they are subservient in their character, and wear a style and finish accordingly. Thus, each part of the house speaks for itself. It is its own finger-board, pointing the stranger to its various accommodation, as plainly as if written on its walls, and saying as significantly as dumb walls can do, that here dwells a well regulated family, who have a parlor for their friends; a library, or sitting-room for their own leisure and comfort; an ample bedroom and nursery, for the parents and the little ones; a kitchen for the cooking; and a scullery and closets, and all the other etceteras which belong to a perfect family homestead. And so with the grounds. The lawn or "dooryard," should be the best kept ground on the place. The most conspicuous part of the garden should show its shrubbery and its flowers. The side or rear approach should be separated from the lawn, and show its constant _business_ occupation, and openly lead off to where men and farm stock meet on common ground, devoted to every purpose which the farm requires. Such arrangement would be complete in all its parts, satisfactory, and lasting. Tinsel ornament, or gewgaw decoration should never be permitted on any building where the sober enjoyment of agricultural life is designed. It can never add consideration or dignity to the retired gentleman even, and least of all should it be indulged in by the farmer, dwelling on his own cultivated acres. THE CONSTRUCTION OF CELLARS. Every farm house and farm cottage, where a family of any size occupy the latter, should have a good, substantial _stone_-walled cellar beneath it. No room attached to the farm house is more profitable, in its occupation, than the cellar. It is useful for storing numberless articles which are necessary to be kept warm and dry in winter, as well as cool in summer, of which the farmer is well aware. The walls of a cellar should rise at least one, to two, or even three feet above the level of the ground surrounding it, according to circumstances, and the rooms in it well ventilated by _two_ or more sliding sash windows in each, according to size, position, and the particular kind of storage for which it is required, so that a draft of pure air can pass through, and give it thorough ventilation at all times. It should also be at least seven and a half feet high in the clear; and if it be even nine feet, that is not too much. If the soil be compact, or such as will hold water, it should be thoroughly drained from the lowest point or corner, and the drain always kept open; (a stone drain is the best and most durable,) and if floored with a coat of flat, or rubble stones, well set in good hydraulic cement--or cement alone, when the stone cannot be obtained--all the better. This last will make it _rat proof_. For the purpose of avoiding these destructive creatures, the _foundation_ stones in the wall should be brought to a joint, and project at least six inches on each side, from the wall itself, when laid upon this bottom course; as the usual manner of rats is to burrow in a nearly perpendicular direction from the surface, by the side of the wall, when intending to undermine it. On arriving at the bottom, if circumvented by the projecting stones, they will usually abandon their work. Plank of hard wood, or hard burnt bricks, may answer this purpose when stone cannot be had. All cellar walls should be laid in good lime mortar, or if that be not practicable, they should be well pointed with it. This keeps them in place, and renders them less liable to the ingress of water and vermin. The thickness of wall should not be less than fifteen to eighteen inches, in any event, when of stone; and if the house walls above be built of stone or brick, two feet is better; and in all cases the cellar wall should be full three inches thicker than the wall resting upon it. In the cellar of every farm house there should be an outside door, with a flight of steps by which to pass roots and other bulky or heavy articles, to which a wagon or cart may approach, either to receive or discharge them. This is indispensable. Every out-building upon the farm, let it be devoted to what purpose it may, having a wooden floor on the ground story, should be set up sufficiently high from the surface to admit a cat or small terrier dog beneath such floor, with openings for them to pass in and out, or these hiding places will become so many rat warrens upon the premises, and prove most destructive to the grain and poultry. Nothing can be more annoying to the farmer than these vermin, and a trifling outlay in the beginning, will exclude them from the foundations and walls of all buildings. Care, therefore, should be taken to leave no haunt for their convenience. With these suggestions the ingenuity of every builder will provide sufficient guards against the protection of vermin beneath his buildings. VENTILATION OF HOUSES. Pure air, and enough of it, is the cheapest blessing one can enjoy; and to deny one's self so indispensable an element of good health, is little short of criminal neglect, or the sheerest folly. Yet thousands who build at much needless expense, for the protection of their health and that of their families, as they allege, and no doubt suppose, by neglecting the simplest of all contrivances, in the work of ventilation, invite disease and infirmity, from the very pains they so unwittingly take to ward off such afflictions. A man, be he farmer or of other profession, finding himself prosperous in life, sets about the very sensible business of building a house for his own accommodation. Looking back, perhaps, to the days of his boyhood, in a severe climate, he remembers the not very highly-finished tenement of his father, and the wide, open fireplace which, with its well piled logs, was scarcely able to warm the large living-room, where the family were wont to huddle in winter. He possibly remembers, with shivering sympathy, the sprinkling of snow which he was accustomed to find upon his bed as he awaked in the morning, that had found its way through the frail casing of his chamber window--but in the midst of all which he grew up with a vigorous constitution, a strong arm, and a determined spirit. He is resolved that _his_ children shall encounter no such hardships, and that himself and his excellent helpmate shall suffer no such inconvenience as his own parents had done, who now perhaps, are enjoying a strong and serene old age, in their old-fashioned, yet to them not uncomfortable tenement. He therefore determines to have a snug, _close_ house, where the cold cannot penetrate. He employs all his ingenuity to make every joint an air-tight fit; the doors must swing to an air-tight joint; the windows set into air-tight frames; and to perfect the catalogue of his comforts, an air-tight stove is introduced into every occupied room which, perchance, if he can afford it, are further warmed and poisoned by the heated flues of an air-tight furnace in his air-tight cellar. In short, it is an air-tight concern throughout. His family breathe an air-tight atmosphere; they eat their food cooked in an "air-tight kitchen witch," of the latest "premium pattern;" and thus they start, father, mother, children, all on the high road--if persisted in--to a galloping consumption, which sooner or later conducts them to an air-tight dwelling, not soon to be changed. If such melancholy catastrophe be avoided, colds, catarrhs, headaches, and all sorts of bodily afflictions shortly make their appearance, and they wonder what is the matter! They live so snug! their house is so warm! they sleep so comfortable! how can it be? True, in the morning the air of their sleeping-rooms feels close, but then if a window is opened it will chill the rooms, and that will give them colds. What _can_ be the matter? The poor creatures never dream that they have been breathing, for hour after hour, decomposed air, charged with poisonous gases, which cannot escape through the tight walls, or over the tight windows, or through the tight stoves; and thus they keep on in the sure course to infirmity, disease, and premature death--all for the want of a little ventilation! Better indeed, that instead of all this painstaking, a pane were knocked out of every window, or a panel out of every door in the house. We are not disposed to talk about cellar furnaces for heating a farmer's house. They have little to do in the farmer's inventory of goods at all, unless it be to give warmth to the hall--and even then a snug box stove, with its pipe passing into the nearest chimney is, in most cases, the better appendage. Fuel is usually abundant with the farmer; and where so, its benefits are much better dispensed in open stoves or fireplaces, than in heating furnaces or "air-tights." We have slightly discussed this subject of firing in the farm house, in a previous page, but while in the vein, must crave another word. A farmer's house should _look_ hospitable as well as _be_ hospitable, both outside and in; and the broadest, most cheerful look of hospitality within doors, in cold weather, is an _open_ fire in the chimney fireplace, with the blazing wood upon it. There is no _mistake_ about it. It thaws you out, if cold; it stirs you up, if drooping; and is the welcome, winning introduction to the good cheer that is to follow. A short time ago we went to pay a former town friend a visit. He had removed out to a snug little farm, where he could indulge his agricultural and horticultural tastes, yet still attend to his town engagements, and enjoy the quietude of the country. We rang the door bell. A servant admitted us; and leaving overcoat and hat in the hall, we entered a lone room, with an "air-tight" stove, looking as black and solemn as a Turkish eunuch upon us, and giving out about the same degree of genial warmth as the said eunuch would have expressed had he been there--an emasculated warming machine truly! On the floor was a Wilton carpet, too fine to stand on; around the room were mahogany sofas and mahogany chairs, all too fine to sit on--at all events to _rest_ one upon if he were fatigued. The blessed light of day was shut out by crimson and white curtains, held up by gilded arrows; and upon the mantle piece, and on the center and side tables were all sorts of gimcracks, costly and worthless. In short, there was no _comfort_ about the whole concern. Hearing our friend coming up from his dining-room below, where too, was his _cellar kitchen_--that most abominable of all appendages to a farm house, or to any other country house, for that matter--we buttoned our coat up close and high, thrust our hands into our pockets, and walked the room, as he entered. "Glad to see you--glad to see you, my friend!" said he, in great joy; "but dear me, why so buttoned up, as if you were going? What's the matter?" "My good sir," we replied, "you asked us to come over and see you, 'a _plain farmer_,' and 'take a quiet family dinner with you.' We have done so; and here find you with all your town nonsense about you. No fire to warm by; no seat to rest in; no nothing like a farm or farmer about you; and it only needs your charming better half, whom we always admired, when she lived in town, to take down her enameled harp, and play 'In fairy bowers by moonlight hours,' to convince one that instead of ruralizing in the country, you had gone a peg higher in town residence! No, no, we'll go down to farmer Jocelyn's, our old schoolfellow, and take a dinner of bacon and cabbage with him. If he does occupy a one-story house, he lives up in sunshine, has an open fireplace, with a blazing wood fire on a chilly day, and his 'latch string is always out.'" Our friend was petrified--astonished! We meant to go it rather strong upon him, but still kept a frank, good-humored face, that showed him no malice. He began to think he was not exactly in character, and essayed to explain. We listened to his story. His good wife came in, and all together, we had a long talk of their family and farming arrangements; how they had furnished their house; and how they proposed to live; but wound up with a sad story, that their good farming neighbors didn't call on them the _second_ time--kind, civil people they appeared, too--and while they were in, acted as though afraid to sit down, and afraid to stand up;--in short, they were dreadfully embarrassed; for why, our friends couldn't tell, but now began to understand it. "Well, my good friends," said we, "you have altogether mistaken country life in the outset. To live on a farm, it is neither necessary to be vulgar, nor clownish, nor to affect ignorance. _Simplicity_ is all you require, in manners, and equal simplicity in your furniture and appointments. Now just turn all this nonsense in furniture and room dressing out of doors, and let some of your town friends have it. Get some simple, comfortable, cottage furniture, much better for all purposes, than this, and you will settle down into quiet, natural country life before you are aware of it, and all will go 'merry as a marriage bell' with you, in a little time"--for they both loved the country, and were truly excellent people. We continued, "I came to spend the day and the night, and I will stay; and this evening we'll go down to your neighbor Jocelyn's; and you, Mrs. N----, shall go with us; and we will see how quietly and comfortably he and his family take the world in a farmer's way." We did go; not in carriage and livery, but walked the pleasant half mile that lay between them; the exercise of which gave us all activity and good spirits. Jocelyn was right glad to see us, and Patty, his staid and sober wife, with whom we had romped many an innocent hour in our childhood days, was quite as glad as he. But they _looked_ a little surprised that such "great folks" as their new neighbors, should drop in so unceremoniously, and into their common "keeping room," too, to chat away an evening. However, the embarrassment soon wore off. We talked of farming; we talked of the late elections; we talked of the fruit trees and the strawberry beds; and Mrs. Jocelyn, who was a pattern of good housekeeping, told Mrs. N---- how _she_ made her apple jellies, and her currant tarts, and cream cheeses; and before we left they had exchanged ever so many engagements,--Mrs. Patty to learn her new friend to do half a dozen nice little matters of household pickling and preserving; while she, in turn, was to teach Nancy and Fanny, Patty's two rosy-cheeked daughters, almost as pretty as their mother was at their own age, to knit a bead bag and work a fancy chair seat! And then we had apples and nuts, all of the very best--for Jocelyn was a rare hand at grafting and managing his fruit trees, and knew the best apples all over the country. We had, indeed, a capital time! To cut the story short, the next spring our friend sent his _fancy_ furniture to auction, and provided his house with simple cottage furnishings, at less than half the cost of the other; which both he and his wife afterward declared was infinitely better, for all house-keeping purposes. He also threw a neat wing on to the cottage, for an upper kitchen and its offices, and they now live like sensible country folks; and with their healthy, frolicksome children, are worth the envy of all the dyspeptic, town-fed people in existence. A long digression, truly; but so true a story, and one so apt to our subject can not well be omitted. But what has all this to do with ventilation? We'll tell you. Jocelyn's house was _ventilated_ as it should be;--for he was a methodical, thoughtful man, who planned and built his house himself--not the mechanical work, but directed it throughout, and saw that it was faithfully done; and that put us in mind of the story. To be perfect in its ventilation, every room in the house, even to the closets, should be so arranged that a current of air _may_ pass through, to keep it pure and dry. In living rooms, fresh air in sufficient quantity may usually be admitted through the doors. In sleeping rooms and closets, when doors may not be left open, one or more of the lower panels of the door may be filled by a rolling blind, opening more or less, at pleasure; or a square or oblong opening for that purpose, may be left in the base board, at the floor, and covered by a wire netting. And in all rooms, living apartments, as well as these, an opening of at least sixty-four square inches should be made in the wall, near the ceiling, and leading into an air flue, to pass into the garret. Such opening may be filled by a rolling blind, or wire screen, as below, and closed or kept open, at pleasure. Some builders prefer an air register to be placed in the chimney, over the fireplace or stove, near the ceiling; but the liability to annoyance, by smoke escaping through it into the room, if not thoroughly done, is an objection to this latter method, and the other may be made, in its construction, rather ornamental than otherwise, in appearance. All such details as these should be planned when the building is commenced, so that the several flues may be provided as the building proceeds. In a stone or brick house, a small space may be left in the walls, against which these air registers may be required; and for inner rooms, or closets, they may pass off into the openings of the partitions, and so up into the garret; from which apertures of escape may be left, or made at the gables, under the roof, or by a blind in a window. For the admission of air to the first floor of the house, a special opening through the walls, for that purpose, can hardly be necessary; as the doors leading outside are usually opened often enough for such object. One of the best ventilated houses we have ever seen, is that owned and occupied by Samuel Cloon, Esq., of Cincinnati. It is situated on his farm, three miles out of the city, and in its fine architectural appearance and finished appointments, as a rural residence and first-class farm house, is not often excelled. Every closet is ventilated through rolling blinds in the door panels; and foul air, either admitted or created within them, is passed off at once by flues near the ceiling overhead, passing into conductors leading off through the garret. Where chambers are carried into the roof of a house, to any extent, they are sometimes incommoded by the summer heat which penetrates them, conducted by the chamber ceiling overhead. This heat can best be obviated by inserting a small window at each opposite peak of the garret, by which the outside air can circulate through, above the chambers, and so pass off the heated air, which will continually ascend. All this is a simple matter, for which any builder can provide, without particular expense or trouble. INTERIOR ACCOMMODATION OF HOUSES. Ground, in the country, being the cheapest item which the farmer can devote to building purposes, his object should be to _spread over_, rather than to go deeply into it, or climb high in the air above it. We repudiate cellar kitchens, or under-ground rooms for house work, altogether, as being little better than a nuisance--dark, damp, unhealthy, inconvenient, and expensive. The several rooms of a farm dwelling house should be compact in arrangement, and contiguous as may be to the principally-occupied apartments. Such arrangement is cheaper, more convenient, and labor-saving; and in addition, more in accordance with a good and correct taste in the outward appearance of the house itself. The general introduction of cooking stoves, and other stoves and apparatus for warming houses, within the last twenty years, which we acknowledge to be a great acquisition in comfort as well as in convenience and economy, has been carried to an extreme, not only in shutting up and shutting out the time-honored open fireplace and its broad hearthstone, with their hallowed associations, but also in prejudice to the health of those who so indiscriminately use them, regardless of other arrangements which ought to go with them. A farm house should never be built without an ample, open fireplace in its kitchen, and other _principally_ occupied rooms; and in all rooms where stoves are placed, and fires are daily required, the _open_ Franklin should take place of the close or air-tight stove, unless extraordinary ventilation to such rooms be adopted also. The great charm of the farmer's winter evening is the open fireside, with its cheerful blaze and glowing embers; not wastefully expended, but giving out that genial warmth and comfort which, to those who are accustomed to its enjoyment, is a pleasure not made up by any invention whatever; and although the cooking stove or range be required--which, in addition to the fireplace, we would always recommend, to lighten female labor--it can be so arranged as not to interfere with the enjoyment or convenience of the open fire. In the construction of the chimneys which appear in the plans submitted, the great majority of them--particularly those for northern latitudes--are placed in the interior of the house. They are less liable to communicate fire to the building, and assist greatly in warming the rooms through which they pass. In southern houses they are not so necessary, fires being required for a much less period of the year. Yet even there they may be oftentimes properly so placed. Where holes, for the passage of stovepipes through floors, partitions, or into chimneys, are made, stone, earthen, or iron thimbles should be inserted; and, except in the chimneys, such holes should be at least one to two inches larger than the pipe itself. The main flues of the chimney conducting off the smoke of the different fires, should be built separate, and kept apart by a partition of one brick in thickness, and carried out independently, as in no other way will they rid the house of smoky rooms. [Illustration] An illustration in point: Fifteen years ago we purchased and removed into a most substantial and well-built stone house, the chimneys of which were constructed with open fireplaces, and the flues carried up separately to the top, where they all met upon the same level surface, as chimneys in past times usually were built, thus. Every fireplace in the house (and some of them had stoves in,) smoked intolerably; so much so, that when the wind was in some quarters the fires had to be put out in every room but the kitchen, which, as good luck would have it, smoked less--although it did smoke there--than the others. After balancing the matter in our own mind some time, whether we should pull down and rebuild the chimneys altogether, or attempt an alteration; as we had given but little thought to the subject of chimney draft, and to try an experiment was the cheapest, we set to work a bricklayer, who, under our direction, simply built over each discharge of the several flues a separate top of fifteen inches high, in this wise: The remedy was perfect. We have had no smoke in the house since, blow the wind as it may, on any and all occasions. The chimneys _can't_ smoke; and the whole expense for four chimneys, with their twelve flues, was not twenty dollars! The remedy was in giving each outlet a _distinct_ current of air all around, and on every side of it. [Illustration] CHIMNEY TOPS. Nothing adds more to the outward expression of a dwelling, than the style of its chimneys. We have just shown that independent chimney tops pass off their smoke more perfectly, than when only partitioned inside to the common point of outlet. Aside from the architectural beauty which a group of chimney flues adds to the building, we have seen that they are really useful, beyond the formal, square-sided piles so common throughout the country. They denote good cheer, social firesides, and a generous hospitality within--features which should always mark the country dwelling; and more particularly that of the farmer. The style and arrangement of these chimney groups may be various, as comporting with the design of the house itself; and any good architect can arrange them as fitted to such design. Our illustrations will show them of different kinds, which are generally cheap in construction, and simple, yet expressive in their arrangement. PRELIMINARY TO OUR DESIGNS. We have discussed with tolerable fullness, the chief subjects connected with farm buildings--sufficiently so, we trust, to make ourselves understood as desiring to combine utility with commendable ornament in all that pertains to them. The object has been, thus far, to give hints, rather than models, in description. But as the point to which we have endeavored to arrive will be but imperfectly understood without illustration, we shall submit a few plans of houses and outbuildings, as carrying out more fully our ideas. We are quite aware that different forms or fashions of detail and finish, to both outside and inside work, prevail among builders in different sections of the United States. Some of these fashions are the result of climate, some of conventional taste, and some of education. With them we are not disposed to quarrel. In many cases they are immaterial to the main objects of the work, and so long as they please the taste or partialities of those adopting them, are of little consequence. There are, however, certain matters of _principle_, both in general construction and in the detail of finish, which should not be disregarded; and these, in the designs submitted, and in the explanations which follow, will be fully discussed, each in its place. The particular form or style of work we have not directed, because, as before remarked, we are no professional builder, and of course free from the dogmas which are too apt to be inculcated in the professional schools and workshops. We give a wide berth, and a free toleration in all such matters, and are not disposed to raise a hornet's nest about our ears by interfering in matters where every tyro of the drafting board and work-bench assumes to be, and probably may be, our superior. All minor subjects we are free to leave to the skill and ingenuity of the builder--who, fortunately for the country, is found in almost every village and hamlet of the land. Modes and styles of finish, both inside and outside of buildings, change; and that so frequently, that what is laid down as the reigning fashion to-day, may be superseded by another fashion of to-morrow--immaterial in themselves, only, and not affecting the shape, arrangement, and accommodation of the building itself, which in these, must ever maintain their relation with the use for which it is intended. The northern dwelling, with its dependencies and appointments, requires a more compact, snug, and connected arrangement than that of the south; while one in the middle states may assume a style of arrangement between them both, each fitted for their own climate and country, and in equally good taste. The designs we are about to submit are intended to be such as may be modified to any section of the country, although some of them are made for extremes of north and south, and are so distinguished. Another object we have had in view is, to give to every farmer and country dweller of moderate means the opportunity of possessing a cheap work which would guide him in the general objects which he wishes to accomplish in building, that he may _have his own notions_ on the subject, and not be subject to the caprice and government of such as profess to exclusive knowledge in all that appertains to such subjects, and in which, it need not be offensive to say, that although clever in their way, they are sometimes apt to be mistaken. Therefore, without assuming _to instruct_ the professional builder, our plans will be submitted, not without the hope that he even, may find in them something worthy of consideration; and we offer them to the owner and future occupant of the buildings themselves, as models which he may adopt, with the confidence that they will answer all his reasonable purposes. DESIGN I. We here present a farm house of the simplest and most unpretending kind, suitable for a farm of twenty, fifty, or an hundred acres. Buildings somewhat in this style are not unfrequently seen in the New England States, and in New York; and the plan is in fact suggested, although not copied, from some farm houses which we have known there, with improvements and additions of our own. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 73-74.] This house may be built either of stone, brick, or wood. The style is rather rustic than otherwise, and intended to be altogether plain, yet agreeable in outward appearance, and of quite convenient arrangement. The body of this house is 40�30 feet on the ground, and 12 feet high, to the plates for the roof; the lower rooms nine feet high; the roof intended for a pitch of 35°--but, by an error in the drawing, made less--thus affording very tolerable chamber room in the roof story. The L, or rear projection, containing the wash-room and wood-house, juts out two feet from the side of the house to which it is attached, with posts 7½ feet high above the floor of the main house; the pitch of the roof being the same. Beyond this is a building 32�24 feet, with 10 feet posts, partitioned off into a swill-room, piggery, workshop, and wagon-house, and a like roof with the others. A light, rustic porch, 12�8 feet, with lattice work, is placed on the front of the house, and another at the side door, over which vines, by way of drapery, may run; thus combining that sheltered, comfortable, and home-like expression so desirable in a rural dwelling. The chimney is carried out in three separate flues, sufficiently marked by the partitions above the roof. The windows are hooded, or sheltered, to protect them from the weather, and fitted with simple sliding sashes with 7�9 or 8�10 glass. Outer blinds may be added, if required; but it is usually better to have these _inside_, as they are no ornament to the outside of the building, are liable to be driven back and forth by the wind, even if fastenings are used, and in any event are little better than a continual annoyance. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door, over which is a single sash-light across, opens into a hall or entry 9�7 feet, from which a door opens on either side into a sitting-room and parlor, each 16�15 feet, lighted by a double, plain window, at the ends, and a single two-sash window in front. Between the entrance door and stove, are in each room a small pantry or closet for dishes, or otherwise, as may be required. The chimney stands in the center of the house, with a separate flue for each front room, into which a thimble is inserted to receive the stovepipes by which they are warmed; and from the inner side of these rooms each has a door passing to the kitchen, or chief living room. This last apartment is 22�15 feet, with a broad fireplace containing a crane, hooks, and trammel, if required, and a spacious family oven--affording those homely and primitive comforts still so dear to many of us who are not ready to concede that all the virtues of the present day are combined in a "perfection" cooking stove, and a "patent" heater; although there is a chance for these last, if they should be adopted into the peaceful atmosphere of this kitchen. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN.] On one side of the kitchen, in rear of the stairs, is a bedroom, 9�8 feet, with a window in one corner. Adjoining that, is a buttery, dairy-room, or closet, 9�6 feet, also having a window. At the inner end of the stairway is the cellar passage; at the outer end is the chamber passage, landing above, in the highest part of the roof story. Opposite the chamber stairs is a door leading to the wash-room. Between the two windows, on the rear side of the kitchen, is a sink, with a waste pipe passing out through the wall. At the further corner a door opens into a snug bedroom 9�8 feet, lighted by a window in rear; and adjoining this is a side entry leading from the end door, 9�6 feet in area; thus making every room in the house accessible at once from the kitchen, and giving the greatest possible convenience in both living and house-work. The roof story is partitioned into convenient-sized bedrooms; the ceiling running down the pitch of the roof to within two feet of the floor, unless they are cut short by inner partitions, as they are in the largest chamber, to give closets. The open area in the center, at the head of the stairs, is lighted by a small gable window inserted in the roof, at the rear, and serves as a lumber room; or, if necessary, a bed may occupy a part of it. In rear of the main dwelling is a building 44�16 feet, occupied as a wash-room and wood-house. The wash-room floor is let down eight inches below the kitchen, and is 16�14 feet, in area, lighted by a window on each side, with a chimney, in which is set a boiler, and fireplace, if desired, and a sink in the corner adjoining. This room is 7½ feet in height. A door passes from this wash-room into the wood-house, which is 30�16 feet, open in front, with a water-closet in the further corner. The cellar is 7½ feet in height--and is the whole size of the house, laid with good stone wall, in lime mortar, with a flight of steps leading outside, in rear of the kitchen, and two or more sash-light windows at the ends. If not in a loose, gravelly, or sandy soil, the cellar should be kept dry by a drain leading out on to lower ground. The building beyond, and adjoining the wood-house, contains a swill-house 16�12 feet, with a window in one end; a chimney and boiler in one corner, with storage for swill barrels, grain, meal, potatoes, &c., for feeding the pigs, which are in the adjoining pen of same size, with feeding trough, place for sleeping, &c., and having a window in one end and a door in the rear, leading to a yard. Adjoining these, in front, is a workshop and tool-house, 16�10 feet, with a window at the end, and an entrance door near the wood house. In this is a joiner's work-bench, a chest of working tools, such as saw, hammer, augers, &c., &c., necessary for repairing implements, doing little rough jobs, or other wood work, &c., which every farmer ought to do for himself; and also storing his hoes, axes, shovels, hammers, and other small farm implements. In this room he will find abundant rainy-day employment in repairing his utensils of various kinds, making his beehives, hencoops, &c., &c. Next to this is the wagon-house, 16�14 feet, with broad doors at the end, and harness pegs around the walls. The posts of this building are 10 feet high; the rooms eight feet high, and a low chamber overhead for storing lumber, grain, and other articles, as may be required. Altogether, these several apartments make a very complete and desirable accommodation to a man with the property and occupation for which it is intended. On one side and adjoining the house, should be the garden, the clothes-yard, and the bee-house, which last should always stand in full sight, and facing the most frequented room--say the kitchen--that they can be seen daily during the swarming season, as those performing household duties may keep them in view. MISCELLANEOUS. In regard to the surroundings, and approach to this dwelling, they should be treated under the suggestions already given on these subjects. This is an exceedingly _snug_ tenement, and everything around and about it should be of the same character. No pretension or frippery whatever. A neat garden, usefully, rather than ornamentally and profusely supplied; a moderate court-yard in front; free access to the end door, from the main every-day approach by vehicles--not on the highway, but on the farm road or lane--the business entrance, in fact; which should also lead to the barns and sheds beyond, not far distant. Every feature should wear a most domestic look, and breathe an air of repose and content. Trees should be near, but not so near as to cover the house. A few shrubs of simple kind--some standing roses--a few climbing ones; a syringa, a lilac, a snow ball, and a little patch or two of flowers near the front porch, and the whole expression is given; just as one would wish to look upon as a simple, unpretending habitation. It is not here proposed to give working plans, or estimates, to a nicety; or particular directions for building any design even, that we present. The material for construction best suited to the circumstances and locality of the proprietor must govern all those matters; and as good builders are in most cases at hand, who are competent to give estimates for the cost of any given plan, when the material for construction is once settled, the question of expense is readily fixed. The same sized house, with the same accommodation, may be made to cost fifty to one hundred per cent. over an economical estimate, by the increased style, or manner of its finish; or it may be kept within bounds by a rigid adherence to the plan first adopted. In western New York this house and attachments complete, the body of stone, the wood-house, wagon-house, &c., of wood, may be built and well finished in a plain way for $1,500. If built altogether of wood, with grooved and matched vertical boarding, and battens, the whole may be finished and painted for $800, to $1,200. For the lowest sum, the lumber and work would be of a rough kind, with a cheap wash to color it; but the latter amount would give good work, and a lasting coat of mineral paint both outside and within. As a _tenant_ house on a farm of three, four, or even five hundred acres, where all who live in it are laborers in the field or household, this design may be most conveniently adopted. The family inhabiting it in winter may be well accommodated for sleeping under the main roof, while they can at all seasons take their meals, and be made comfortable in the several rooms. In the summer season, when a larger number of laborers are employed, the lofts of the carriage or wagon-house and work-shop may be occupied with beds, and thus a large share of the expense of house building for a very considerable farm be saved. Luxury is a quality more or less consulted by every one who builds for his _own_ occupation on a farm, or elsewhere; and the tendency in building is constantly to expand, to give a higher finish, and in fact, to over-build. Indeed, if we were to draw the balance, on our _old_ farms, between scantily-accommodated houses, and houses with needless room in them, the latter would preponderate. Not that these latter houses either are too good, or too convenient for the purpose for which they were built, but they have _too much_ room, and that room badly appropriated and arranged. On a farm proper, the whole establishment is a _workshop_. The shop _out of doors_, we acknowledge, is not always _dry_, nor always warm; but it is exceedingly well aired and lighted, and a place where industrious people dearly love to labor. Within doors it is a work-shop too. There is always labor and occupation for the family, in the _general business_ of the farm; therefore but little room is wanted for either luxury or leisure, and the farm house should be fully occupied, with the exception, perhaps, of a single room on the main floor, (and that not a large one,) for some regular business purpose. All these accommodated, and the requirements of the house are ended. Owners of _rented_ farms should reflect, too, that expensive houses on their estates entail expensive repairs, and that continually. Many tenants are careless of highly-finished houses. Not early accustomed to them, they misappropriate, perhaps, the best rooms in the house, and pay little attention to the purposes for which the owner designed them, or to the _manner_ of using them. It is therefore a total waste of money to build a house on a tenant estate anything beyond the mere comfortable wants of the family occupying it, and to furnish the room necessary for the accommodation of the crops, stock, and farm furniture, in the barns and other out-buildings--all in a cheap, tidy, yet substantial way. So, too, with the grounds for domestic purposes around the house. A kitchen garden, sufficient to grow the family vegetables--a few plain fruits--a _posey_ bed or two for the girls--and the story is told. Give a larger space for these things--anything indeed, for elegance--and ten to one, the plow is introduced, a corn or potato patch is _set out_, field culture is adopted, and your choice grounds are torn up, defaced, and sacrificed to the commonest uses. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, a cheerful, home-expression may be given, and should be given to the homestead, in the character and construction of the buildings, be they ever so rough and homely. We can call to mind many instances of primitive houses-_log_ cabins even--built when none better could be had, that presented a most comfortable and life-enjoying picture--residences once, indeed, of those who swayed "the applause of listening senates," but under the hands of taste, and a trifle of labor, made to look comfortable, happy, and sufficient. We confess, therefore, to a profound veneration, if not affection, for the humble farm house, as truly American in character; and which, with a moderate display of skill, may be made equal to the main purposes of life and enjoyment for all such as do not aspire to a high display, and who are content to make the most of moderate means. DESIGN II. This is the plan of a house and out-buildings based chiefly on one which we built of wood some years since on a farm of our own, and which, in its occupation, has proved to be one of exceeding convenience to the purposes intended. As a farm _business_ house, we have not known it excelled; nor in the ease and facility of doing up the house-work within it, do we know a better. It has a subdued, quiet, unpretending look; yet will accommodate a family of a dozen workmen, besides the females engaged in the household work, with perfect convenience; or if occupied by a farmer with but his own family around him, ample room is afforded them for a most comfortable mode of life, and sufficient for the requirements of a farm of two, to three or four hundred acres. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 85-86] This house is, in the main body, 36�22 feet, one and a half stories high, with a projection on the rear 34�16 feet, for the kitchen and its offices; and a still further addition to that, of 26�18 feet, for wash-room. The main body of the house is 14 feet high to the plates; the lower rooms are 9 feet high; the roof has a pitch of 35° from a horizontal line, giving partially-upright chambers in the main building, and _roof_ lodging rooms in the rear. The rear, or kitchen part, is one story high, with 10 feet posts, and such pitch of roof (which last runs at right angles to the main body, and laps on to the main roof,) as will carry the peak up to the same air line. This addition should retreat 6 inches from the line of the main building, on the side given in the design, and 18 inches on the rear. The rooms on this kitchen floor are 8 feet high, leaving one foot above the upper floor, under the roof, as a chamber garret, or lumber-room, as may be required. Beyond this, in the rear, is the other extension spoken of, with posts 9 feet high, for a buttery, closet, or dairy, or all three combined, and a wash-room; the floor of which is on a level with the last, and the roof running in the same direction, and of the same pitch. In front of this wash-room, where not covered by the wood-house, is an open porch, 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, the roof of which runs out at a less angle than the others--say 30° from a horizontal line. Attached to this is the wood-house, running off by way of L, at right angles, 36�16 feet, of same height as the wash-room. Adjoining the wood-house, on the same front line, is a building 50�20 feet, with 12 feet posts, occupied as a workshop, wagon-house, stable, and store-room, with a lean-to on the last of 15�10 feet, for a piggery. The several rooms in this building are 8 feet high, affording a good lumber room over the workshop, and hay storage over the wagon-house and stable. Over the wagon-house is a gable, with a blind window swinging on hinges, for receiving hay, thus relieving the long, uniform line of roof, and affording ample accommodation on each side to a pigeon-house or dovecote, if required. The style of this establishment is of plain Italian, or bracketed, and may be equally applied to stone, brick, or wood. The roofs are broad, and protect the walls by their full projection over them, 2½ feet. The small gable in the front roof of the main dwelling relieves it of its otherwise straight uniformity, and affords a high door-window opening on to the deck of the veranda, which latter should be 8 or 10 feet in width. The shallow windows, also, over the wings of the veranda give it a more cheerful expression. The lower _end_ windows of this part of the house are hooded, or sheltered by a cheap roof, which gives them a snug and most comfortable appearance. The veranda may appear more ornamental than the plain character of the house requires; but any superfluous work upon it may be omitted, and the style of finish conformed to the other. The veranda roof is flatter than that of the house, but it may be made perfectly tight by closer shingling, and paint; while the deck or platform in the centre may be roofed with zinc, or tin, and a coat of sanded paint laid upon it. The front chimney is plain, yet in keeping with the general style of the house, and may be made of ordinary bricks. The two parts of the chimney, as they appear in the front rooms, are drawn together as they pass through the chamber above, and become one at the roof. The kitchen chimneys pass up through the peaks of their respective roofs, and should be in like character with the other. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN. GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door of this house opens into a small entry or hall, 9�6 feet, which is lighted by a low sash of glass over the front door. A door leads into a room on each side; and at the inner end of the hall is a recess between the two chimneys of the opposite rooms, in which may be placed a table or broad shelf to receive hats and coats. On the left is a parlor 22�15 feet, lighted on one side by a double window, and in front by a single plain one. The fireplace is centrally placed on one side of the room, in the middle of the house. On one side of the fireplace is a closet, three feet deep, with shelves, and another closet at the inner end of the room, near the kitchen door; or this closet may be dispensed with for the use of this parlor, and given up to enlarge the closet which is attached to the bedroom. Another door opens directly into the kitchen. This parlor is 9 feet high between joints. The sitting-room is opposite to the parlor, 19�15 feet, and lighted and closeted in nearly the same manner, as will be seen by referring to the floor plan. The kitchen is the grand room of this house. It is 24�16 feet in area, having an ample fireplace, with its hooks and trammels, and a spacious oven by its side. It is lighted by a double window at one end, and a single window near the fireplace. At one end of this kitchen is a most comfortable and commodious family bedroom, 13�10 feet, with a large closet in one corner, and lighted by a window in the side. Two windows may be inserted if wanted. A passage leads by the side of the oven to a sink-room, or recess, behind the chimney, with shelves to dry dishes on, and lighted by the half of a double window, which accommodates with its other half the dairy, or closet adjoining. A door also opens from this recess into the closet and dairy, furnished with broad shelves, that part of which, next the kitchen, is used for dishes, cold meat and bread cupboards, &c.; while the part of it adjoining the window beyond, is used for milk. This room is 14�6 feet, besides the L running up next to the kitchen, of 6�4 feet. From the kitchen also opens a closet into the front part of the house for any purpose needed. This adjoins the parlor, and sitting-room, closets. In the passage to the sitting-room also opens the stairway leading to the chambers, and beneath, at the other end of it, next the outside wall, is a flight leading down cellar. The cellar is excavated under the whole house, being 36�22, and 34�16 feet, with glass windows, one light deep by four wide, of 8�10 glass; and an outer door, and flight of steps outside, under either the sitting-room or kitchen windows, as may be most convenient. A door opens, also, from the kitchen, into a passage 4 feet wide and 12 feet long leading to the wash-room, 18�16 feet, and by an outside door, through this passage to the porch. In this passage may be a small window to give it light. In the wash-room are two windows. A chimney at the far end accommodates a boiler or two, and a fireplace, if required. A sink stands adjoining the chimney. A flight of stairs, leading to a garret over head on one side, and to the kitchen chamber on the other, stands next the dairy, into which last a door also leads. In this wash-room may be located the cooking stove in warm weather, leaving the main kitchen for a family and eating room. A door also leads from the wash-room into the wood-house. The wood-house stands lower than the floor of the wash-room, from which it falls, by steps. This is large, because a plentiful store of wood is needed for a dwelling of this character. If the room be not all wanted for such purpose, a part of it may devoted to other necessary uses, there seldom being too much shelter of this kind on a farm; through the rear wall of this wood-house leads a door into the garden, or clothes-yard, as the case may be; and at its extreme angle is a water closet, 6�4 feet, by way of lean-to, with a hipped roof, 8 feet high, running off from both the wood-house and workshop. This water-closet is lighted by a sliding sash window. On to the wood-house, in a continuous front line, joins the workshop, an indispensable appendage to farm convenience. This has a flight of stairs leading to the lumber-room above. For the furnishing of this apartment, see description of Design I. Next to the work-house is the wagon and tool-house, above which is the hay loft, also spread over the stable adjoining; in which last are stalls for a pair of horses, which may be required for uses other than the main labors of the farm--to run to market, carry the family to church, or elsewhere. A pair of horses for such purposes should always be kept near the house. The horse-stalls occupy a space of 10�12 feet, with racks and feeding boxes. The plans of these will be described hereafter. The door leading out from these stalls is 5 feet wide, and faces the partition, so that each horse may be led out or in at an easy angle from them. Beyond the stalls is a passage 4 feet wide, leading to a store-room or area, from which a flight of rough stairs leads to the hay loft above. Beyond this room, in which is the oat bin for the horses, is a small piggery, for the convenience of a pig or two, which are always required to consume the daily wash and offal of the house; and not for the general _pork_ stock of the farm; which, on one of this size, may be expected to require more commodious quarters. The chamber plan of this house is commodious, furnishing one large room and three smaller ones. The small chamber leading to the deck over the porch, may, or may not be occupied as a sleeping room. The small one near the stairs may contain a single bed, or be occupied as a large clothes-closet. Through this, a door leads into the kitchen chamber, which may serve as one, or more laborers' bed-chambers. They may be lighted by one or more windows in the rear gable. If more convenient to the family, the parlor and sitting-room, already described, may change their occupation, and one substituted for the other. The main business approach to this house should be by a lane, or farm road opening on the side next the stable and wagon-house. The yard, in front of these last named buildings, should be separated from the lawn, or front door-yard of the dwelling. The establishment should stand some distance back from the traveled highway, and be decorated with such trees, shrubbery, and cultivation, as the taste of the owner may direct. No _general_ rules or directions can be applicable to this design beyond what have already been given; and the subject must be treated as circumstances may suggest. The unfrequented side of the house should, however, be flanked with a garden, either ornamental, or fruit and vegetable; as buildings of this character ought to command a corresponding share of attention with the grounds by which they are surrounded. This house will appear equally well built of wood, brick, or stone. Its cost, according to materials, or finish, may be $1,000 or $1,500. The out-buildings attached, will add $400 to $600, with the same conditions as to finish; but the whole may be substantially and well built of either stone, brick, or wood, where each may be had at equal convenience, for $2,000 in the interior of New York. Of course, it is intended to do all the work plain, and in character for the occupation to which it is intended. MISCELLANEOUS DETAILS. At this point of our remarks a word or two may be offered on the general subject of inside finish to farm houses, which may be applicable more or less to any one, or all of the designs that may come under our observation; therefore what is here said, may be applied at large. Different sections of the United States have their own several _local_ notions, or preferences as to the mode of finish to their houses and out-buildings, according to climate, education, or other circumstances. In all these matters neither taste, fashion, nor climate should be arbitrary. The manner of finish may be various, without any departure from truth or propriety--always keeping in mind the object for which it is intended. The _material_ for a country house should be _strong_, and _durable_, and the work simple in its details, beyond that for either town or suburban houses. It should be _strong_, for the reason that the interior of the farm house is used for purposes of industry, in finishing up and perfecting the labors of the farm; labors indispensable too, and in amount beyond the ordinary housekeeping requirements of a family who have little to do but merely to live, and make themselves comfortable. The material should be _durable_, because the distance at which the farm house is usually located from the residences of building mechanics, renders it particularly troublesome and expensive to make repairs, and alterations. The work should be _simple_, because cheaper in the first place, in construction, and finish; quite as appropriate and satisfactory in appearance; and demanding infinitely less labor and pains to care for, and protect it afterward. Therefore all mouldings, architraves, _chisel_-work, and gewgawgery in interior finish should be let alone in the living and daily occupied rooms of the house. If, to a single parlor, or _spare_ bedchamber a little _ornamental_ work be permitted, let even that be in moderation, and just enough to teach the active mistress and her daughters what a world of scrubbing and elbow work they have saved themselves in the enjoyment of a plainly-finished house, instead of one full of gingerbread work and finery. None but the initiated can tell the affliction that _chiseled_ finishing entails on housekeepers in the spider, fly, and other insect lodgment which it invites--frequently the cause of more annoyance and _daily_ disquietude in housekeeping, because unnecessary, than real griefs from which we may not expect to escape. Bases, casings, sashes, doors--all should be plain, and painted or stained a quiet _russet_ color--a color natural to the woods used for the finish, if it can be, showing, in their wear, as little of dust, soiling, and fly dirt as possible. There is no poetry about common housekeeping. Cooking, house-cleaning, washing, scrubbing, sweeping, are altogether matter-of-fact duties, and usually considered _work_, not recreation; and these should all be made easy of performance, and as seldom to be done as possible; although the first item always was, and always _will_ be, and the last item _should_ be, an every-day vocation for _somebody_; and the manner of inside finish to a house has a great deal to do with all these labors. In a stone, or brick house, the inside walls should be firred off for plastering. This may be done either by "plugging," that is, driving a plug of wood strongly into the mortar courses, into which the firring should be nailed, or by laying a strip of thin board in the mortar course, the entire length of each wall. This is better than _blocks_ laid in for such purpose, because it is effectually _bound_ by the stone, or brick work; whereas, a block may get loose by shrinking, but the nails which hold the firring to the plug, or to the thin strip of board will split and _wedge_ it closer to the mason work of the outside wall. This is an important item. It makes close work too, and leaves no room for rats, mice, or other vermin; and as it admits a _space_--no matter how thin--so that no outside damp from the walls can communicate into, or through the inner plastering, it answers all purposes. The inside, and partition walls should be of coarse, strong mortar, _floated off_ as smoothly as may be, not a _hard finish_, which is fine, and costly; and then papered throughout for the better rooms, and the commonly-used rooms whitewashed. Paper gives a most comfortable look to the rooms, more so than paint, and much less expensive, while nothing is so sweet, tidy, and cheerful to the _working_ rooms of the house as a _lime_ wash, either white, or softened down with some agreeable tint, such as _light_ blue, green, drab, fawn, or russet, to give the shade desired, and for which every _professional_ painter and whitewasher in the vicinity, can furnish a proper recipe applicable to the place and climate. On such subjects we choose to prescribe, rather than to play the apothecary by giving any of the thousand and one recipes extant, for the composition. Our remarks upon the strength and durability of _material_ in house-building do not apply exclusively to brick and stone. Wood is included also; and of this, there is much difference in the kind. Sound _white_ oak, is, perhaps the best material for the heavy frame-work of any house or out-building, and when to be had at a moderate expense, we would recommend it in preference to any other. If _white_ oak cannot be had, the other varieties of oak, or chesnut are the next best. In _light_ frame-timbers, such as studs, girts, joists, or rafters, oak is inclined to spring and warp, and we would prefer hemlock, or chesnut, which holds a nail equally as well, or, in its absence, pine, (which holds a nail badly,) whitewood, or black walnut. The outside finish to a wooden house, may be _lighter_ than in one of stone or brick. The wood work on the outside of the latter should always be heavy, and in character with the walls, giving an air of firmness and stability to the whole structure. No elaborate carving, or beadwork should be permitted on the outside work of a country house at all; and only a sufficient quantity of ornamental _tracery_ of any kind, to break the monotony of a plainness that would otherwise give it a formal, or uncouth expression, and relieve it of what some would consider a pasteboard look. A farm house, in fact, of any degree, either cheap or expensive, should wear the same appearance as a well-dressed person of either sex; so that a stranger, not looking at them for the purpose of inspecting their garb, should, after an interview, be unable to tell what particular sort of dress they wore, so perfectly in keeping was it with propriety. In the design now under discussion, a cellar is made under the whole body of the house; and this cellar is a _shallow_ one, so far as being sunk into the ground is concerned, say 5½ feet, leaving 2½ feet of cellar wall above ground--8 feet in all. A part of the wall above ground should be covered by the excavated earth, and sloped off to a level with the surrounding surface. A commodious, well-lighted, and well-ventilated cellar is one of the most important apartments of the farm house. It should, if the soil be compact, be well drained from some point or corner within the walls into a lower level outside, to which point within, the whole floor surface should incline, and the bottom be floored with water-lime cement. This will make it hard, durable, and dry. It may then be washed and scrubbed off as easily as an upper floor. If the building site be high, and in a gravelly, or sandy soil, neither drain nor flooring will be required. The cellar may be used for the storage of root crops, apples, meats, and household vegetables. A partitioned room will accommodate either a summer or a winter dairy, if not otherwise provided, and a multitude of conveniences may be made of it in all well arranged farmeries. But in all cases the cellar should be well lighted, ventilated, and dry. Even the ash-house and smoke-house may be made in it with perfect convenience, by brick or stone partitions, and the smoke-house flue be carried up into one of the chimney flues above, and thus make a more snug and compact arrangement than to have separate buildings for those objects. A wash-room, in which, also, the soap may be made, the tallow and lard tried up, and other extraordinary labor when fire heat is to be used, may properly be made in a cellar, particularly when on a sloping ground, and easy of access to the ground level on one side. But, as a general rule, such room is better on a level with the main floor of the dwelling, and there are usually sufficient occupations for the cellar without them. All cellar walls should be at least 18 inches thick, for even a wooden house, and from that to 2 feet for a stone or brick one, and well laid in strong lime-mortar. Unmortared cellar walls are frequently laid under wooden buildings, and _pointed_ with lime-mortar inside; but this is sometimes dug out by rats, and is apt to crumble and fall out otherwise. A _complete_ cellar wall should be thoroughly laid in mortar. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 101-102.] DESIGN III. We here present the reader with a substantial, plain, yet highly-respectable stone or brick farm house, of the second class, suitable for an estate of three, to five hundred acres, and accommodation for a family of a dozen or more persons. The style is mixed rural Gothic, Italian, and bracketed; yet in keeping with the character of the farm, and the farmer's standing and occupation. The main body of this house is 42�24 feet on the ground, and one and three quarter stories high--the chambers running two or three feet into the roof, as choice or convenience may direct. The roof has a pitch of 30 to 40° from a horizontal line, and broadly spread over the walls, say two and a half feet, showing the ends of the rafters, bracket fashion. The chimneys pass out through the peak of the roof, where the hips of what would otherwise be the gables, connect with the long sides of the roof covering the front and rear. On the long front is partly seen, in the perspective, a portico, 16�10 feet--not the _chief_ entrance front, but rather a side front, practically, which leads into a lawn or garden, as may be most desirable, and from which the best view from the house is commanded. Over this porch is a small gable running into the roof, to break its monotony, in which is a door-window leading from the upper hall on to the deck of the porch. This gable has the same finish as the main roof, by brackets. The chamber windows are two-thirds or three-quarters the size of the lower ones; thus showing the upper story not full height below the plates, but running two to four feet into the garret. The rear wing, containing the entrance or business front, is 24�32 feet, one and a half stories high, with a pitch of roof not less than 35°, and spread over the walls both at the eaves and gable, in the same proportion as the roof to the main body. In front of this is a porch or veranda eight feet wide, with a low, hipped roof. In the front and rear roofs of this wing is a dormer window, to light the chambers. The gable to this wing is bold, and gives it character by the breadth of its roof over the walls, and the strong brackets by which it is supported. The chimney is thrown up strong and boldly at the point of the roof, indicating the every-day uses of the fireplaces below, which, although distinct and wide apart in their location on the ground floors, are drawn together in the chambers, thus showing only one escape through the roof. The wood-house in the rear of the wing has a roof of the same character, and connects with the long building in the rear, which has the same description of roof, but hipped at one end. That end over the workshop, and next the wood-house, shows a bold gable like the wing of the house, and affords room and light to the lumber room over the shop, and also gives variety and relief to the otherwise too great sameness of roof-appearance on the further side of the establishment. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN. CHAMBER PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. As has been remarked, the main entrance front to this house is from the wing veranda, from which a well finished and sizeable door leads into the principal hall, 24�8 feet in area, and lighted by a full-sized window at the front end. Opposite the entrance door is the door leading into the parlor; and farther along is the staircase, under the upper landing of which a door leads into a dining or sitting-room, as may be determined. This hall is 10 feet high, as are all the rooms of this lower main story. In the chimney, which adjoins the parlor side of this hall, may be inserted a thimble for a hall stovepipe, if this method of warming should be adopted. The parlor, into which a door leads from the hall, is 18�16 feet, with two windows on the side, shown in perspective, and one on the front facing the lawn, or garden. It has also a fireplace near the hall door. At the further angle is a door leading to an entry or passage on to the portico. E is the entry just mentioned, six feet square, and lighted by a short sash, one light deep, over the outside door. This portico may be made a pleasant summer afternoon and evening resort for the family, by which the occupied rooms connect with the lawn or garden, thus adding to its retired and private character. Opposite the parlor, on the other side of this entry, a door leads into a room 18�12 feet, which may be occupied as a family bedroom, library, or small sitting-room. This is lighted by two windows, and has a closet of 6�5 feet. A fireplace is on the inner side of this room; and near to that, a door connects with a dining-room of the same size, having a window in one end, and a fireplace, and closet of the same size as the last. Through the rear wall is a door leading into a pantry, which also communicates with the kitchen; and another door leads to the hall, and from the hall, under the staircases, (which, at that point, are sufficiently high for the purpose,) is a passage leading to the kitchen. Under the wing veranda, near the point of intersection of the wing with the main body of the house, is an _every-day_ outer door, leading into a small entry, 6�5 feet, and lighted by a low, one-sash window over the door. By another door, this leads to the kitchen, or family room, which is lighted by three windows. An ample fireplace, with oven, &c., accommodates this room at the end. A closet, 7�5 feet, also stands next to the entry; and beyond that, an open passage, to the left, leading out under the front hall stairs to the rooms of the main building. A door also leads from that passage into a _best_ pantry, for choice crockery, sweetmeats, and tea-table comforts. Another door, near the last, leads into a dairy or milk-room, 9�8 feet, beyond the passage; in which last, also, may be placed a tier of narrow shelves. This milk, or dairy-room, is lighted by a window in the end, and connects also, by a door in the side, with the _outer_ kitchen, or wash-room. Next to this milk-room door, in the front kitchen, is another door leading down cellar; and through this door, passing by the upper, broad stair of the flight of cellar steps, is another door into the wash-room. At the farther angle of the kitchen is still another door, opening into a passage four feet wide; and, in that passage, a door leading up a flight of stairs into the wing chambers. This passage opens into the back kitchen, or wash-room, 16�16 feet in area, and lighted by two windows, one of which looks into the wood-house. In this wash-room is a chimney with boilers and fireplace, as may be required. The cellar and chamber stairs, and the milk-room are also accessible direct, by doors leading from this wash-room. The chamber plan will be readily understood, and requires no particular description. The space over the wing may be partitioned off according to the plan, or left more open for the accommodation of the "work folks," as occasion may demand. But, as this dwelling is intended for substantial people, "well to do in the world," and who extend a generous hospitality to their friends, a liberal provision of sleeping chambers is given to the main body of the house. The parlor chamber, which is the best, or _spare_ one, is 18�16 feet, with roomy side-closets. Besides this, are other rooms for the daughters Sally, and Nancy, and Fanny, and possibly Mary and Elizabeth--who want their own chambers, which they keep so clean and tidy, with closets full of nice bedclothes, table linen, towels, &c., &c., for certain events not yet whispered of, but quite sure to come round. And then there are Frederick, and Robert, and George, fine stalwart boys coming into manhood, intending to be "somebody in the world," one day or another; they must have _their_ rooms--and good ones too; for, if any people are to be well lodged, why not those who toil for it? All such accommodation every farm house of this character should afford. And we need not go far, or look sharp, to see the best men and the best women in our state and nation graduating from the wholesome farm house thus tidily and amply provided. How delightfully look the far-off mountains, or the nearer plains, or prairies, from the lawn porch of this snug farm house! The distant lake; the shining river, singing away through the valley; or the wimpling brook, stealing through the meadow! Aye, enjoy them all, for they are God's best, richest gifts, and we are made to love them. The wood-house strikes off from the back kitchen, retreating two feet from its gable wall, and is 36�14 feet in size. A bathing room may be partitioned off 8�6 feet, on the rear corner next the wash-room, if required, although not laid down in the plan. At the further end is the water-closet, 6�4 feet. Or, if the size and convenience of the family require it, a part of the wood-house may be partitioned off for a wash-room, from which a chimney may pass up through the peak of the roof. If so, carry it up so high that it will be above the eddy that the wind may make in passing over the adjoining wing, not causing it to smoke from that cause. At the far end of the wood-house is the workshop and tool-house, 18�16 feet, lighted by two windows, and a door to enter it from beneath the wood-house. Over this, is the lumber and store-room. Next to this is the swill-room and pigsty for the house pigs, as described in the last design; and over it a loft for farm seeds, small grains, and any other storage required. Adjoining this is the wagon and carriage-house; and above, the hayloft, stretching, also, partly over the stable which stands next, with two stalls, 12�5 feet each, with a flight of stairs leading to the loft, in the passage next the door. In this loft are swinging windows, to let in hay for the horses. This completes the household establishment, and we leave the surroundings to the correct judgment and good taste of the proprietor to complete, as its position, and the variety of objects with which it may be connected, requires. Stone and brick we have mentioned as the proper materials for this house; but it may be also built of wood, if more within the means and limits of the builder. There should be no pinching in its proportions, but every part carried out in its full breadth and effect. The cost of the whole establishment may be from $2,000, to $3,000; depending somewhat upon the material used, and the finish put upon it. The first-named sum would build the whole in an economical and plain manner, while the latter would complete it amply in its details. MISCELLANEOUS. It may be an objection in the minds of some persons to the various plans here submitted, that we have connected the out-buildings _immediately_ with the offices of the dwelling itself. We are well aware that such is not always usual; but many years observation have convinced us, that in their use and occupation, such connection is altogether the most convenient and economical. The only drawback is in the case of fire; which, if it occur in any one building, the whole establishment is liable to be consumed. This objection is conceded; but we take it, that it is the business of every one not able to be his own insurer, to have his buildings insured by others; and the additional cost of this insurance is not a tithe of what the extra expense of time, labor, and exposure is caused to the family by having the out-buildings disconnected, and at a _fire-proof_ distance from each other. There has, too, in the separation of these out-buildings, (we do not now speak of barns, and houses for the stock, and the farmwork proper,) from the main dwelling, crept into the construction of such dwellings, by modern builders, _some_ things, which in a country establishment, particularly, ought never to be there, such as privies, or _water-closets_, as they are more _genteelly_ called. These last, in our estimation, have no business _in_ a _farmer's_ house. They are an _effeminacy_, only, and introduced by _city_ life. An _appendage_ they should be, but separated to some distance from the living rooms, and accessible by sheltered passages to them. The wood-house should adjoin the outer kitchen, because the fuel should always be handy, and the outer kitchen, or wash-room is a sort of _slop_-room, of necessity; and the night wood, and that for the morning fires may be deposited in it for immediate use. The workshop, and small tool-house naturally comes next to that, as being chiefly used in stormy weather. Next to this last, would, more conveniently, come the carriage or wagon-house, and of course a stable for a horse or two for family use, always accessible at night, and convenient at unseasonable hours for farm labor. In the same close neighborhood, also, should be a small pigsty, to accommodate a pig or two, to eat up the kitchen slops from the table, refuse vegetables, parings, dishwater, &c., &c., which could not well be carried to the main piggery of the farm, unless the old-fashioned filthy mode of letting the hogs run in the road, and a trough set outside the door-yard fence, as seen in some parts of the country, were adopted. A pig can always be kept, and fatted in three or four months, from the wash of the house, with a little grain, in any well-regulated farmer's family. A few fowls may also be kept in a convenient hen-house, if desired, without offence--all constituting a part of the _household_ economy of the place. These out-buildings too, give a comfortable, domestic look to the whole concern. Each one shelters and protects the other, and gives an air of comfort and repose to the whole--a family expression all round. What so naked and chilling to the feelings, as to see a country dwelling-house all perked up, by itself, standing, literally, out of doors, without any dependencies about it? No, no. First should stand the house, the chief structure, in the foreground; appendant to that, the kitchen wing; next in grade, the wood-house; covering in, also, the minor offices of the house. Then by way of setting up, partially on their own account, should come the workshop, carriage-house, and stable, as practically having a separate character, but still subordinate to the house and its requirements; and these too, may have their piggery and hen-house, by way of tapering off to the adjoining fence, which encloses a kitchen garden, or family orchard. Thus, each structure is appropriate in its way--and together, they form a combination grateful to the sight, as a complete rural picture. All objections, on account of filth or vermin, to this connection, may be removed by a cleanly keeping of the premises--a removal of all offal immediately as it is made, and daily or weekly taking it on to the manure heaps of the barns, or depositing it at once on the grounds where it is required. In point of health, nothing is more congenial to sound physical condition than the occasional smell of a stable, or the breath of a cow, not within the immediate contiguity to the occupied rooms of the dwelling. On the score of neatness, therefore, as we have placed them, no bar can be raised to their adoption. DESIGN IV. This is perhaps a more ambitious house than either of the preceding, although it may be adapted to a domain of the same extent and value. It is plain and unpretending in appearance; yet, in its ample finish, and deeply drawn, sheltering eaves, broad veranda, and spacious out-buildings, may give accommodation to a larger family indulging a more liberal style of living than the last. By an error in the engraving, the main roof of the house is made to appear like a double, or gambrel-roof, breaking at the intersection of the gable, or hanging roof over the ends. This is not so intended. The roofs on each side are a straight line of rafters. The Swiss, or hanging style of gable-roof is designed to give a more sheltered effect to the elevation than to run the end walls to a peak in the point of the roof. By a defect in the drawing, the roof of the veranda is not sufficiently thrown over the columns. This roof should project at least one foot beyond them, so as to perfectly shelter the mouldings beneath from the weather, and conform to the style of the main roof of the house. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 115-116.] The material of which it is built may be of either stone, brick, or wood, as the taste or convenience of the proprietor may suggest. The main building is 44�36 feet, on the ground. The cellar wall may show 18 to 24 inches above the ground, and be pierced by windows in each end, as shown in the plan. The height of the main walls may be two full stories below the roof plates, or the chambers may run a foot or two into the garret, at the choice of the builder, either of which arrangements may be permitted. The front door opens from a veranda 28 feet long by 10 feet in depth, dropping eight inches from the door-sill. This veranda has a hipped roof, which juts over the columns in due proportion with the roof of the house over its walls. These columns are plain, with brackets, or braces from near their tops, sustaining the plate and finish of the roof above, which may be covered either with tin or zinc, painted, or closely shingled. The walls of the house may be 18 to 20 feet high below the plates; the roof a pitch of 30 to 45°, which will afford an upper garret, or store, or small sleeping rooms, if required; and the eaves should project two to three feet, as climate may demand, over the walls. A plain finish--that is, ceiled underneath--is shown in the design, but brackets on the ends of the rafters, beaded and finished, may be shown, if preferred. The gables are _Swiss-roofed_, or _truncated_, thus giving them a most sheltered and comfortable appearance, particularly in a northerly climate. The small gable in front relieves the roof of its monotony, and affords light to the central garret. The chimneys are carried out with partition flues, and may be topped with square caps, as necessity or taste may demand. Retreating three feet from the kitchen side of the house runs, at right angles, a wing 30�18 feet, one and a half stories high, with a veranda eight feet wide in front. Next in rear of this, continues a wood-house, 30�18 feet, one story high, with ten feet posts, and open in front, the ground level of which is 18 inches below the floor of the wing to which it is attached. The roof of these two is of like character with that of the main building. Adjoining this wood-house, and at right angles with it, is a building 68�18 feet, projecting two feet outside the line of wood-house and kitchen. This building is one and a half stories high, with 12 feet posts, and roof in the same style and of equal pitch as the others. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door from the veranda of the house opens into a hall, 18�8 feet, and 11 feet high, amply lighted by sash windows on the sides, and over the door. From the rear of this hall runs a flight of easy stairs, into the upper or chamber hall. On one side of the lower hall, a door leads into a parlor, 18 feet square, and 11 feet high, lighted by three windows, and warmed by an open stove, or fireplace, the pipe passing into a chimney flue in the rear. A door passes from this parlor into a rear passage, or entry, thus giving it access to the kitchen and rear apartments. At the back end of the front hall, a door leads into the rear passage and kitchen; and on the side opposite the parlor, a door opens into the sitting or family room, 18�16 feet in area, having an open fireplace, and three windows. On the hall side of this room, a door passes into the kitchen, 22�16 feet, and which may, in case the requirements of the family demand it, be made the chief family or living room, and the last one described converted into a library. In this kitchen, which is lighted by two windows, is a liberal open fireplace, with an ample oven by its side, and a sink in the outer corner. A flight of stairs, also, leads to the rear chambers above; and a corresponding flight, under them, to the cellar below. A door at each end of these stairs, leads into the back entry of the house, and thus to the other interior rooms, or through the rear outer door to the back porch. This back entry is lighted by a single sash window over the outside door leading to the porch. Another door, opposite that leading down cellar, opens into the passage through the wing. From the rear hall, which is 16�5 feet, the innermost passage leads into a family bedroom, or nursery, 16�14 feet, lighted by a window in each outside wall, and warmed by an open fireplace, or stove, at pleasure. Attached to this bedroom is a clothes-closet, 8�4 feet, with shelves, and drawers. Next the outer door, in rear end of the hall, is a small closet opening from it, 6�4 feet in dimensions, convertible to any use which the mistress of the house may direct. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN.] Opening into the wing from the kitchen, first, is a large closet and pantry, supplied with a table, drawers, and shelves, in which are stored the dishes, table furniture, and edibles necessary to be kept at a moment's access. This room is 14�8 feet, and well lighted by a window of convenient size. If necessary, this room may have a partition, shutting off a part from the everyday uses which the family requires. In this room, so near to the kitchen, to the sink, to hot-water, and the other little domestic accessories which good housewives know so well how to arrange and appreciate, all the nice little table-comforts can be got up, and perfected, and stored away, under lock and key, in drawer, tub, or jar, at their discretion, and still their eyes not be away from their subordinates in the other departments. Next to this, and connected by a door, is the dairy, or milk-room, also 14�8 feet; which, if necessary, may be sunk three or four feet into the ground, for additional coolness in the summer season, and the floor reached by steps. In this are ample shelves for the milkpans, conveniences of churning, &c., &c. But, if the dairy be a prominent object of the farm, a separate establishment will be required, and the excavation may not be necessary for ordinary household uses. Out of this milk-room, a door leads into a wash-room, 18�14 feet. A passage from the kitchen also leads into this. The wash-room is lighted by two windows in rear, and one in front. A sink is between the two rear windows, with conductor leading outside, and a closet beneath it, for the iron ware. In the chimney, at the end, are boilers, and a fireplace, an oven, or anything else required, and a door leading to a platform in the wood-house, and so into the yard. On the other side of the chimney, a door leads into a bathing-room, 7�6 feet, into which hot water is drawn from one of the boilers adjoining, and cold water may be introduced, by a hand-pump, through a pipe leading into the well or cistern. As no more convenient opportunity may present itself, a word or two will be suggested as to the location of the bath-room in a country house. In city houses, or country houses designed for the summer occupancy of city dwellers, the bathing-rooms are usually placed in the second or chamber story, and the water for their supply is drawn from cisterns still above _them_. This arrangement, in city houses, is made chiefly from the want of room on the ground floor; and, also, thus arranged in the city-country houses, _because_ they are so constructed in the city. In the farm house, or in the country house proper, occupied by whom it may be, such arrangement is unnecessary, expensive, and inconvenient. Unnecessary, because there is no want of room on the ground; expensive, because an upper cistern is always liable to leakages, and a consequent wastage of water, wetting, and rotting out the floors, and all the slopping and dripping which such accidents occasion; and inconvenient, from the continual up-and-down-stair labor of those who occupy the bath, to say nothing of the piercing the walls of the house, for the admission of pipes to lead in and let out the water, and the thousand-and-one vexations, by way of plumbers' bills, and expense of getting to and from the house itself, always a distance of some miles from the mechanic. The only defence for such location of the bath-room and cisterns is, the convenience and privacy of access to them, by the females of the family. This counts but little, if anything, over the place appropriated in this, and the succeeding designs of this work. The access is almost, if not quite as private as the other, and, in case of ill-health, as easily approachable to invalids. And on the score of economy in construction, repair, or accident, the plan here adopted is altogether preferable. In this plan, the water is drawn from the boiler by the turning of a cock; that from the cistern, by a minute's labor with the hand-pump. It is let off by the drawing of a plug, and discharges, by a short pipe, into the adjoining garden, or grassplat, to moisten and invigorate the trees and plants which require it, and the whole affair is clean and sweet again. A screen for the window gives all the privacy required, and the most fastidious, shrinking female is as retired as in the shadiest nook of her dressing-room. So with water-closets. A fashion prevails of thrusting these noisome things into the midst of sleeping chambers and living rooms--pandering to effeminacy, and, at times, surcharging the house--for they cannot, at _all_ times, and under _all_ circumstances, be kept perfectly close--with their offensive odor. _Out_ of the house they belong; and if they, by any means, find their way within its walls proper, the fault will not be laid at our door. To get back to our description. This bathing-room occupies a corner of the wood-house. A raised platform passes from the wash-room in, past the bath-room, to a water-closet, which may be divided into two apartments, if desirable. The vaults are accessible from the rear, for cleaning out, or introducing lime, gypsum, powdered charcoal, or other deodorizing material. At the extreme corner of the wood-house, a door opens into a feed and swill-room, 20�8 feet, which is reached by steps, and stands quite eighteen inches above the ground level, on a stone under-pinning, or with a stone cellar beneath, for the storage of roots in winter. In one corner of this is a boiler and chimney, for cooking food for the pigs and chickens. A door leads from this room into the piggery, 20�12 feet, where half-a-dozen swine may be kept. A door leads from this pen into a yard, in the rear, where they will be less offensive than if confined within. If necessary, a flight of steps, leading to the loft overhead, may be built, where corn can be stored for their feeding. Next to this is the workshop and tool-house, 18�14 feet; and, in rear, a snug, warm house for the family chickens, 18�6 feet. These chickens may also have the run of the yard in rear, with the pigs, and apartments in the loft overhead for roosting. Adjoining the workshop is the carriage house, 18�18 feet, with a flight of stairs to the hayloft above, in which is, also, a dovecote; and, leading out of the carriage floor, is the stable, 18�12 feet, with stalls for two or four horses, and a passage of four feet wide, from the carriage-house into it; thus completing, and drawing under one continuous roof, and at less exposure than if separated, the chief every-day requirements of living, to a well-arranged and highly-respectable family. The chamber plan of the dwelling will be readily understood by reference to its arrangement. There are a sufficiency of closets for all purposes, and the whole are accessible from either flight of stairs. The rooms over the wing, of course, should be devoted to the male domestics of the family, work-people, &c. SURROUNDING PLANTATIONS, SHRUBBERY, WALKS, ETC. After the general remarks made in the preceding pages, no _particular_ instructions can be given for the manner in which this residence should be embellished in its trees and shrubbery. The large forest trees, always grand, graceful, and appropriate, would become such a house, throwing a protecting air around and over its quiet, unpretending roof. Vines, or climbing roses, might throw their delicate spray around the columns of the modest veranda, and a varied selection of familiar shrubbery and ornamental plants checker the immediate front and sides of the house looking out upon the lawn; through which a spacious walk, or carriage-way should wind, from the high road, or chief approach. There are, however, so many objects to be consulted in the various sites of houses, that no one rule can be laid down for individual guidance. The surface of the ground immediately adjoining the house must be considered; the position of the house, as it is viewed from surrounding objects; its altitude, or depression, as affected by the adjacent lands; its command upon surrounding near, or distant objects, in the way of prospect; the presence of water, either in stream, pond, or lake, far or near, or the absence of water altogether--all these enter immediately into the manner in which the lawn of a house should be laid out, and worked, and planted. But as a rule, all _filagree_ work, such as serpentine paths, and tortuous, unmeaning circles, artificial piles of rock, and a multitude of small _ornaments_--so esteemed, by some--should never be introduced into the lawn of a _farm_ house. It is unmeaning, in the first place; expensive in its care, in the second place; unsatisfactory and annoying altogether. Such things about a farm establishment are neither dignified nor useful, and should be left to town's-people, having but a stinted appreciation of what constitutes _natural_ beauty, and wanting to make the most of the limited piece of ground of which they are possessed. Nor would we shut out, by these remarks, the beauty and odor of the flower-borders, which are so appropriately the care of the good matron of the household and her comely daughters. To them may be devoted a well-dug plat beneath the windows, or in the garden. Enough, and to spare, they should always have, of such cheerful, life-giving pleasures. We only object to their being strewed all over the ground,--a tussoc of plant here, a patch of posey there, and a scattering of both everywhere, without either system or meaning. They lower the dignity and simplicity of the country dwelling altogether. The business approach to this house is, of course, toward the stables and carriage-house, and from them should lead off the main farm-avenue. The kitchen garden, if possible, should lie on the kitchen side of the house, where, also, should be placed the bee-house, in full sight from the windows, that their labors and swarming may be watched. In fact, the entire economy of the farm house, and its appendages, should be brought close under the eye of the household, to engage their care and watchfulness, and to interest them in all the little associations and endearments--and they are many, when properly studied out--which go to make agricultural life one of the most agreeable pursuits, if not altogether so, in which our lot in life may be cast. A fruit-garden, too, should be a prominent object near this house. We are now advancing somewhat into the _elegances_ of agricultural life; and although fruit trees, and _good_ fruits too, should hold a strong place in the surroundings of even the humblest of all country places--sufficient, at least, for the ample use of the family--they have not yet been noticed, to any extent, in those already described. It may be remarked, that the fruit-_garden_--the _orchard_, for market purposes, is not here intended--should be placed in near proximity to the house. All the _small_ fruits, for household use, such as strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, grapes, as well as apricots, plums, nectarines, peaches, pears, apples, quinces, or whatever fruits may be cultivated, in different localities, should be close by, for the convenience of collecting them, and to protect them from destruction by vermin, birds, or the depredations of creatures _called_ human. A decided plan of arrangement for all the plantations and grounds, should enter into the composition of the site for the dwelling, out-houses, gardens, &c., as they are to appear when the whole establishment is completed; and nothing left to accident, chance, or after-thought, which can be disposed of at the commencement. By the adoption of such a course, the entire composition is more easily perfected, and with infinitely greater expression of character, than if left to the chance designs, or accidental demands of the future. Another feature should be strictly enforced, in the outward appointments of the farm house,--and that is, the entire withdrawal of any use of the highway, in its occupation by the stock of the farm, except in leading them to and from its enclosures. Nothing looks more slovenly, and nothing can be more unthrifty, in an _enclosed_ country, than the running of farm stock in the highway. What so untidy as the approach to a house, with a herd of filthy hogs rooting about the fences, basking along the sidewalk, or feeding at a huge, uncouth, hollowed log, in the road near the dwelling. It may be out of place here to speak of it, but this disgusting spectacle has so often offended our sight, at the approach of an otherwise pleasant farm establishment, that we cannot forego the opportunity to speak of it. The road lying in front, or between the different sections of the farm, should be as well, and as cleanly kept as any portion of the enclosures, and it is equally a sin against good taste and neighborhood-morality, to have it otherwise. TREE-PLANTING IN THE HIGHWAY. This is frequently recommended by writers on country embellishment, as indispensable to a finished decoration of the farm. Such may, or may not be the fact. Trees shade the roads, when planted on their sides, and so they partially do the fields adjoining, making the first muddy, in bad weather, by preventing the sun drying them, and shading the crops of the last by their overhanging foliage, in the season of their growth. Thus they are an evil, in moist and heavy soils. Yet, in light soils, their shade is grateful to the highway traveler, and not, perhaps, injurious to the crops of the adjoining field; and when of proper kinds, they add grace and beauty to the domain in which they stand. We do not, therefore, indiscriminately recommend them, but leave it to the discretion of the farmer, to decide for himself, having seen estates equally pleasant with, and without trees on the roadside. Nothing, however, can be more beautiful than a clump of trees in a pasture-ground, with a herd, or a flock beneath them, near the road; or the grand and overshadowing branches of stately tree, in a rich meadow, leaning, perhaps, over the highway fence, or flourishing in its solitary grandeur, in the distance--each, and all, imposing features in the rural landscape. All such should be preserved, with the greatest care and solicitude, as among the highest and most attractive ornaments which the farm can boast. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 131-132.] DESIGN V. We here present a dwelling of a more ambitious and pretending character than any one which we have, as yet, described, and calculated for a large and wealthy farmer, who indulges in the elegances of country life, dispenses a liberal hospitality, and is every way a country gentleman, such as all our farmers of ample means should be. It will answer the demands of the retired man of business as well; and is, perhaps, as full in its various accommodation as an American farm or country house may require. It claims no distinct style of architecture, but is a composition agreeable in effect, and appropriate to almost any part of the country, and its climate. Its site may be on either hill or plain--with a view extensive, or restricted. It may look out over broad savannas, cultivated fields, and shining waters; it may nestle amid its own quiet woods and lawn in its own selected shade and retirement, or lord it over an extensive park, ranged by herds and flocks, meandered by its own stream, spreading anon into the placid lake, or rushing swiftly over its own narrow bed--an independent, substantial, convenient, and well-conditioned home, standing upon its own broad acres, and comporting with the character and standing of its occupant, among his friends and neighbors. The main building is 50�40 feet in area upon the ground, two stories high; the ground story 11 feet high, its floor elevated 2½ or 3 feet above the level of the surrounding surface, as its position may demand; the chambers 9 feet high, and running 2 feet into the roof. The rear wing is one and a half stories high, 36�16 feet; the lower rooms 11 feet high, with a one story lean-to range of closets, and small rooms on the weather side, 8 feet in width and 9 feet high. In the rear of these is a wood-house, 30�20 feet, with 10 feet posts, dropped to a level with the ground. At the extremity of this is a building, by way of an L, 60�20 feet, one and a half stories high, with a lean-to, 12�30 feet, in the rear. The ground rooms of this are elevated 1½ feet above the ground, and 9 feet high. A broad roof covers the whole, standing at an angle of 40 or 45° above a horizontal line, and projecting widely over the walls, 2½ to 3 feet on the main building, and 2 feet on the others, to shelter them perfectly from the storms and damps of the weather. A small cupola stands out of the ridge of the rear building, which may serve as a ventilator to the apartments and lofts below, and in it may be hung a bell, to summon the household, or the field laborers, as the case may be, to their duties or their meals. The design, as here shown, is rather florid, and perhaps profusely ornamental in its finish, as comporting with the taste of the day; but the cut and moulded trimmings may be left off by those who prefer a plain finish, and be no detriment to the general effect which the deep friezes of the roofs, properly cased beneath, may give to it. Such, indeed, is our own taste; but this full finish has been added, to gratify such as wish the full ornament which this style of building may admit. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front of this house is accommodated by a porch, or veranda, 40 feet long, and 10 feet wide, with a central, or entrance projection of 18 feet in length, and 12 feet in width, the floor of which is eight inches below the main floor of the house. The wings, or sides of this veranda may be so fitted up as to allow a pleasant conservatory on each side of the entrance area in winter, by enclosing them with glass windows, and the introduction of heat from a furnace under the main hall, in the cellar of the house. This would add to its general effect in winter, and, if continued through the summer, would not detract from its expression of dignity and refinement. From the veranda, a door in the center of the front, with two side windows, leads into the main hall, which is 26�12 feet in area, two feet in the width of which is taken from the rooms on the right of the main entrance. On the left of the hall a door opens into a parlor or drawing-room, marked P, 20 feet square, with a bay window on one side, containing three sashes, and seats beneath. A single window lights the front opening on to the veranda. On the opposite side to this is the fireplace, with blank walls on each side. On the opposite side of the hall is a library, 18�16 feet, with an end window, and a corresponding one to the parlor, in front, looking out on the veranda. In case these portions of the veranda, opposite the two front windows are occupied as conservatories, these windows should open to the floor, to admit a walk immediately into them. At the farther corner of the library a narrow door leads into an office, or business apartment, 12�8 feet, and opening by a broad door, the upper half of which is a lighted sash. This door leads from the office out on a small porch, with a floor and two columns, 8�5 feet, and nine feet high, with a gable and double roof of the same pitch as the house. Between the chimney flues, in the rear of this room may be placed an iron safe, or chest for the deposit of valuable papers; and, although small, a table and chairs sufficient to accommodate the business requirements of the occupant, may be kept in it. A chimney stands in the center of the inner wall of the library, in which may be a fireplace, or a flue to receive a stovepipe, whichever may be preferred for warming the room. Near the hall side of the library a door opens into a passage leading into the family bedroom, or nursery. A portion of this passage may be shelved and fitted up as a closet for any convenient purpose. The nursery is 18�16 feet in size, lighted by two windows. It may have an open fireplace, or a stove, as preferred, let into the chimney, corresponding to that in the library. These two chimneys may either be drawn together in the chambers immediately above, or carried up separately into the garret, and pass out of the roof in one stack, or they maybe built in one solid mass from the cellar bottom; but they are so placed here, as saving room on the floors, and equally accommodating, in their separate divisions, the stovepipes that may lead into them. On the inner side of the nursery, a door leads into a large closet, or child's sleeping-room, 9�8 feet; or it may be used as a dressing-room, with a sash inserted in the door to light it. A door may also lead from it into the small rear entry of the house, and thus pass directly out, without communicating with the nursery. On the extreme left corner of the nursery is a door leading into the back entry, by which it communicates either with the rear porch, the dining-room, or the kitchen. Such a room we consider indispensable to the proper accommodation of a house in the country, as saving a world of up-and-down-stairs' labor to her who is usually charged with the domestic cares and supervision of the family. On the right of the main hall an ample staircase leads into the upper hall by a landing and broad stair at eight feet above the floor, and a right-angled flight from that to the main floor above. Under this main hall staircase, a door and stairs may lead into the cellar. Beyond the turning flight below, a door leads into the back hall, or entry, already mentioned, which is 13�4 feet in area, which also has a side passage of 8�4 feet, and a door leading to the rear porch, and another into the kitchen at its farther side, near the outer one. Opposite the turning flight of stairs, in the main hall, is also a door leading to the dining-room, 20�16 feet. This is lighted by a large double window at the end. A fireplace, or stove flue is in the center wall, and on each side a closet for plate, or table furniture. These closets come out flush with the chimney. At the extreme right corner a door leads into the rear entry--or this may be omitted, at pleasure. Another door in the rear wall leads into the kitchen, past the passage down into the cellar--or this may be omitted, if thought best. Still another door to the left, opens into a large dining closet of the back lean-to apartments, 8�8 feet. This closet is lighted by a window of proper architectural size, and fitted up with a suite of drawers, shelves, table, and cupboards, required for the preparation and deposit of the lighter family stores and edibles. From this closet is also a door leading into the kitchen, through which may be passed all the meats and cookery for the table, either for safe-keeping, or immediate service. Here the thrifty and careful housekeeper and her assistants may, shut apart, and by themselves, get up, fabricate, and arrange all their table delicacies with the greatest convenience and privacy, together with ease of access either to the dining-room or kitchen--an apartment most necessary in a liberally-arranged establishment. From the rear entry opens a door to the kitchen, passing by the _rear_ chamber stairs. This flight of stairs may be entered directly from the kitchen, leading either to the chamber, or under them, into the cellar, without coming into the passage connecting with the entry or dining-room, if preferred. In such case, a broad stair of thirty inches in width should be next the door, on which to turn, as the door would be at right angles with the stairs, either up or down. The kitchen is 20�16 feet, and 11 feet high. It has an outer door leading on the rear porch, and a window on each side of that door; also a window, under which is a sink, on the opposite side, at the end of a passage four feet wide, leading through the lean-to. It has also an open fireplace, and an oven by the side of it--old fashion. It may be also furnished with a cooking range, or stove--the smoke and fumes leading by a pipe into a flue into the chimney. On the lean-to side is a milk or dairy-room, 8�8 feet, lighted by a window. Here also the kitchen furniture and meats may be stored in cupboards made for the purpose. In rear of the kitchen, and leading from it by a door through a lighted passage next the rear porch, is the wash-room, 16�16 feet, lighted by a large window from the porch side. A door also leads out of the rear on to a platform into the wood-house. Another door leads from the wash-room into a bath-room in the lean-to 8�8 feet, into which warm water is drawn by a pipe and pump from the boiler in the wash-room; or, if preferred, the bath-room may be entered from the main kitchen, by the passage next the sink. This bath-room is lighted by a window. Next to the bath-room is a bedroom for a man servant who has charge of the fires, and heavy house-work, wood, &c., &c. This bedroom is also 8�8 feet, and lighted by a window in the lean-to. In front of this wash-room and kitchen is a porch, eight inches below the floor, six feet wide, with a railing, or not, as may be preferred. (The railing is made in the cut.) A platform, three feet wide, leads from the back door of the wash-room to a water-closet for the family _proper_. The wood-house is open in front, with a single post supporting the center of the roof. At the extreme outer angle is a water-closet for the domestics of the establishment. Adjoining the wood-house, and opening from it into the L before mentioned, is a workshop, and small-tool-house, 20�16 feet, lighted by a large double window at one end. In this should be a carpenter's work-bench and tool-chest, for the repairs of the farming utensils and vehicles. Overhead is a store-room for lumber, or whatever else may be necessary for use in that capacity. Next to this is a granary or feed-room, 20�10 feet, with a small chimney in one corner, where may be placed a boiler to cook food for pigs, poultry, &c., as the case may be. Here may also be bins for storage of grain and meal. Leading out of this is a flight of stairs passing to the chamber above, and a passage four feet wide, through the rear, into a yard adjoining. At the further end of the stairs a door opens into a poultry house, 16�10 feet, including the stairs. The poultry room is lighted at the extreme left corner, by a broad window. In this may be made roosts, and nesting places, and feeding troughs. A low door under the window may be also made for the fowls in passing to the rear yard. Adjoining the granary, and leading to it by a door, is the carriage-house, 20�20 feet, at the gable end of which are large doors for entrance. From the carriage-house is a broad passage of six feet, into the stables, which are 12 feet wide, and occupy the lean-to. This lean-to is eight feet high below the eaves, with two double stalls for horses, and a door leading into the _side_ yard, with the doors of the carriage-house. A window also lights the rear of the stables. A piggery 12 feet square occupies the remainder of the lean-to in rear of the poultry-house, in which two or three pigs can always be kept, and fatted on the offal of the house, for _small_ pork, at any season, apart from the swine stock of the farm. A door leads out of the piggery into the rear yard, where range also the poultry. As the _shed_ roof shuts down on to the pigsty and stables, no loft above them is necessary. In the loft over the granary, poultry, and carriage-house is deposited the hay, put in there through the doors which appear in the design. CHAMBER PLAN.--This is easily understood. At the head of the stairs, over the main hall, is a large passage leading to the porch, and opening by a door-window on the middle deck of the veranda, which is nearly level, and tinned, or coppered, water-tight, as are also the two sides. On either side of this upper hall is a door leading to the front sleeping chambers, which are well closeted, and spacious. If it be desirable to construct more sleeping-rooms, they can be partitioned laterally from the hall, and doors made to enter them. A rear hall is cut off from the front, lighted by a window over the lower rear porch, and a door leads into a further passage in the wing, four feet wide, which leads down a flight of stairs into the kitchen below. At the head of this flight is a chamber 20�12 feet, for the female domestic's sleeping-room, in which may be placed a stove, if necessary, passing its pipe into the kitchen chimney which passes through it. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN.] It is also lighted by a window over the lean-to, on the side. Back of this, at the end of the passage, is the sleeping-room, 16 feet square, for the "men-folks," lighted on both sides by a window. This may also be warmed, if desired, by a stove, the pipe passing into the kitchen chimney. The cellar may extend under the entire house and wing, as convenience or necessity may require. If it be constructed under the main body only, an offset should be excavated to accommodate the cellar stairs, three feet in width, and walled in with the rest. A wide, _outer_ passage, with a flight of steps should also be made under the rear nursery window, for taking in and passing out bulky articles, with double doors to shut down upon it; and partition walls should be built to support the partitions of the large rooms above. Many minor items of detail might be mentioned, all of which are already treated in the general remarks, under their proper heads, in the body of the work, and which cannot here be noticed--such as the mode of warming it, the construction of furnaces, &c. It may, by some builders, be considered a striking defect in the interior accommodation of a house of this character, that the chief entrance hall should not be extended through, from its front to the rear, as is common in many of the large mansions of our country. We object to the large, open hall for more than one reason, except, possibly, in a house for _summer_ occupation only. In the first place it is uncomfortable, in subjecting the house to an unnecessary draught of air when it is not needed, in cold weather. Secondly, it cuts the house into two distinct parts, making them inconvenient of access in crossing its wide surface. Thirdly, it is uneconomical, in taking up valuable room that can be better appropriated. For summer ventilation it is unnecessary; that may be given by simply opening the front door and a chamber window connected with the hall above, through which a current of fresh air will always pass. Another thing, the hall belongs to the front, or _dress_ part of the house, and should be _cut off_ from the more domestic and common apartments by a partition, although accessible to them, and not directly communicating with such apartments, which cannot of necessity, be in keeping with its showy and pretending character. It should contain only the _front_ flight of stairs, as a part of its appointments, besides the doors leading to its best apartments on the ground floor, which should be centrally placed--its rear door being of a less pretending and subordinate character. Thus, the hall, with its open doors, connecting the best rooms of the house on each side, with its ample flight of stairs in the background, gives a distinct expression of superiority in occupation to the other and humbler portions of the dwelling. In winter, too, how much more snug and comfortable is the house, shut in from the prying winds and shivering cold of the outside air, which the opposite outer doors of an open hall cannot, in their continual opening and shutting, altogether exclude! Our own experience, and, we believe, the experience of most housekeepers will readily concede its defects; and after full reflection we have excluded it as both unnecessary and inconvenient. Another objection has been avoided in the better class of houses here presented, which has crept into very many of the designs of modern builders; which is, that of using the living rooms of the family, more or less, as passages from the kitchen apartments in passing to and from the front hall, or chief entrance. Such we consider a decided objection, and hence arose, probably, the older plans of by-gone years, of making the main hall reach back to the kitchen itself. This is here obviated by a cutting up of the rear section of the hall, by which a passage, in all cases of the better kind of dwelling, is preserved, without encroaching upon the occupied rooms in passing out and in. To be sure, the front door is not the usual passage for the laborers or servants of the house, but they are subject, any hour of the day, to be called there to admit those who may come, and the continual opening of a private room for such purposes is most annoying. Therefore, as matter of convenience, and as a decided improvement on the designs above noticed, we have adhered strictly to the separate rear passage. The _garret_, also, as we have arranged our designs, is either altogether left out, or made a quite unimportant part of the dwelling. It is but a _lumber_ room, at best; and should be approached only by a flight of steps from a rear chamber or passage, and used as a receptacle for useless traps, or cast-off furniture, seldom wanted. It is hot in summer, and cold in winter, unfit for decent lodging to any human being in the house, and of little account any way. We much prefer running the chambers partially into the roof, which we think gives them a more comfortable expression, and admits of a better ventilation, by carrying their ceilings higher without the expense of high _body_ walls to the house, which would give them an otherwise naked look. If it be objected that thus running the chambers above the plates of the roof prevents the insertion of proper ties or beams to hold the roof plates together to prevent their spreading, we answer, that he must be a poor mechanic who cannot, in framing the chamber partitions so connect the opposite plates as to insure them against all such difficulty. A _sheltered, comfortable_ aspect is that which should distinguish every farm house, and the _cottage_ chamber is one of its chiefest characteristics; and this can only be had by running such apartments into the roof, as in our design. CONSTRUCTION. A house of this kind must, according to its locality, and the material of which it is built, be liable to wide differences of estimate in its cost; and from our own experience in such matters, any estimate here made we know cannot be reliable as a rule for other localities, where the prices of material and labor are different from our own. Where lumber, stone, and brick abound, and each are to be had at reasonable prices, the cost of an establishment of this kind would not vary much in the application of either one of these materials for the walls, if well and substantially constructed. There should be no _sham_, nor slight, in any part of the building. As already observed, the design shows a high degree of finish, which, if building for ourself, we should not indulge in. A plain style of cornice, and veranda finish, we should certainly adopt. But the roof should not be contracted in its projecting breadth over the walls, in any part of the structure--if anything, it should be more extended. The bay-window is an appendage of luxury, only. Great care should be had, in attaching its roof to the adjoining outer wall, to prevent leakage of any kind. If the walls be of brick, or stone, a beam or lintel of wood should be inserted in the wall over the window-opening, quite two inches--three would be better--back from its outer surface, to receive the casing of the window, that the drip of the wall, and the driving of the storms may fall _over_ the connecting joints of the window roof, beyond its point of junction with it. Such, also, should be the case with the intersection of the veranda or porch roof with the wall of the house, wherever a veranda, or porch is adopted; as, simply joined on to a _flush_ surface, as such appendages usually are--even if ever so well done--leakage and premature decay is inevitable. The style of finish must, of course, influence, in a considerable degree, its cost. It may, with the plainest finish, be done for $4,000, and from that, up to $6,000. Every one desirous to build, should apply to the best mechanics of his neighborhood for information on that point, as, in such matters, they are the best judges, and from experience in their own particular profession, of what the cost of building must be. The rules and customs of housekeeping vary, in different sections of the United States, and the Canadas. These, also, enter into the estimates for certain departments of building, and must be considered in the items of expenditure. The manner in which houses should be warmed, the ventilation, accommodation for servants and laborers, the appropriations to hospitality--all, will have a bearing on the expense, of which we cannot be the proper judge. A sufficient time should be given, to build a house of this character. A house designed and built in a hurry, is never a satisfactory house in its occupation. A year is little enough, and if two years be occupied in its design and construction, the more acceptable will probably be its finish, and the more comfort will be added in its enjoyment. GROUNDS, PLANTATIONS, AND SURROUNDINGS. A house of this kind should never stand in vulgar and familiar contact with the highway, but at a distance from it of one hundred to a thousand yards; or even, if the estate on which it is built be extensive, a much greater distance. Breadth of ground between the highway and the dwelling adds dignity and character to its appearance. An ample lawn, or a spreading park, well shaded with trees, should lay before it, through which a well-kept avenue leads to its front, and most frequented side. The various offices and buildings of the farm itself, should be at a respectable distance from it, so as not to interfere with its proper keeping as a genteel country residence. Its occupant is not to be supposed as under the necessity of toiling with his daily laborers in the fields, and therefore, although he may be strictly a man of business, he has sufficient employment in planning his work, and managing his estate through a foreman, in the various labor-occupations of the estate. His horse may be at his door in the earliest morning hours, that he may inspect his fields, and give timely directions to his laborers, or view his herds, or his flocks, before his breakfast hour; or an early walk may take him to his stables, his barns, or to see that his previous directions are executed. The various accommodation appurtenant to the dwelling, makes ample provision for the household convenience of the family, and the main business of the farm may be at some distance, without inconvenience to the owner's every-day affairs. Consequently, the indulgence of a considerable degree of ornament may be given, in the surroundings of his dwelling, which the occupant of a less extensive estate would neither require, nor his circumstances warrant. A natural forest of stately trees, properly thinned out, is the most appropriate spot on which to build a house of this character. But that not at hand, it should be set off with plantations of forest trees, of the largest growth, as in keeping with its own liberal dimensions. A capacious kitchen garden should lead off from the rear apartments, well stocked with all the family vegetables, and culinary fruits, in their proper seasons. A luxuriant fruit-garden may flank the least frequented side of the house. Neat and tasteful flower beds may lie beneath the windows of the rooms appropriated to the leisure hours of the family, to which the smaller varieties of shrubbery may be added, separated from the chief lawn, or park, only by a wire fence, or a simple railing, such as not to cut up and _checker_ its simple and dignified surface; and all these shut in on the rear from the adjoining fields of the farm by belts of large shrubbery closely planted, or the larger orchards, thus giving it a style of its own, yet showing its connection with the pursuits of the farm and its dependence upon it. These various appointments, however, may be either carried out or restricted, according to the requirements of the family occupying the estate, and the prevailing local taste of the vicinity in which it is situated; but no narrow or stingy spirit should be indicated in the general plan or in its execution. Every appointment connected with it should indicate a liberality of purpose in the founder, without which its effect is painfully marred to the eye of the man of true taste and judgment. Small yards, picketed in for small uses, have no business in sight of the grounds in front, and all minor concerns should be thrown into the rear, beyond observation from the main approach to the dwelling. The trees that shade the entrance park, or lawn, should be chiefly forest trees, as the oak, in its varieties, the elm, the maple, the chestnut, walnut, butternut, hickory, or beech. If the soil be favorable, a few weeping willows may throw their drooping spray around the house; and if exotic, or foreign trees be permitted, they should take their position in closer proximity to it than the natural forest trees, as indicating the higher care and cultivation which attaches to its presence. The Lombardy poplar, albeit a tree of disputed taste with modern planters, we would now and then throw in, not in stiff and formal rows, as guarding an avenue, but occasionally in the midst of a group of others, above which it should rise like a church spire from amidst a block of contiguous houses--a cheerful relief to the monotony of the rounder-headed branches of the more spreading varieties. If a stream of water meander the park, or spread into a little pond, trees which are partial to moisture should shadow it at different points, and low, water shrubs should hang over its border, or even run into its margin. Aquatic herbs, too, may form a part of its ornaments, and a boat-house, if such a thing be necessary, should, under the shade of a hanging tree of some kind, be a conspicuous object in the picture. An overhanging rock, if such a thing be native there, may be an object of great attraction to its features, and its outlet may steal away and be hid in a dense mass of tangled vines and brushwood. The predominating, _natural_ features of the place should be _cultivated_, not rooted out, and metamorphosed into something foreign and unfamiliar. It should, in short, be _nature_ with her _hair combed_ out straight, flowing, and graceful, instead of pinched, puffed, and curling--a thing of luxuriance and beauty under the hand of a master. The great difficulty with many Americans in getting up a new place of any considerable extent is, that they seem to think whatever is common, or natural in the features of the spot must be so changed as to show, above all others, their own ingenuity and love of expense in fashioning it to their peculiar tastes. Rocks must be sunk, or blasted, trees felled, and bushes grubbed, crooked water-courses straightened--the place gibbeted and put into stocks; in fact, that their own boasted handiwork may rise superior to the wisdom of Him who fashioned it in his own good pleasure; forgetting that a thousand points of natural beauty upon the earth on which they breathe are "When unadorned, adorned the most;" and our eye has been frequently shocked at finding the choicest gems of nature sacrificed to a wanton display of expense in perverting, to the indulgence of a mistaken fancy, that, which, with an eye to truth and propriety, and at a trifling expense, might have become a spot of abiding interest and contentment. DESIGN VI. A SOUTHERN OR PLANTATION HOUSE.--The proprietor of a plantation in the South, or South-west, requires altogether a different kind of residence from the farmer of the Northern, or Middle States. He resides in the midst of his own principality, surrounded by a retinue of dependents and laborers, who dwell distant and apart from his own immediate family, although composing a community requiring his daily care and superintendence for a great share of his time. A portion of them are the attachés of his household, yet so disconnected in their domestic relations, as to require a separate accommodation, and yet be in immediate contiguity with it, and of course, an arrangement of living widely different from those who mingle in the same circle, and partake at the same board. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 155-156.] The usual plan of house-building at the South, we are aware, is to have _detached_ servants' rooms, and offices, and a space of some yards of uncovered way intervene between the family rooms of the chief dwelling and its immediate dependents. Such arrangement, however, we consider both unnecessary and inconvenient; and we have devised a plan of household accommodation which will bring the family of the planter himself, and their servants, although under different roofs, into convenient proximity with each other. A design of this kind is here given. The style is mainly Italian, plain, substantial, yet, we think, becoming. The broad veranda, stretching around three sides, including the front, gives an air of sheltered repose to what might otherwise appear an ambitious structure; and the connected apartments beyond, show a quiet utility which divests it of an over attempt at display. Nothing has been attempted for appearance, solely, beyond what is necessary and proper in the dwelling of a planter of good estate, who wants his domestic affairs well regulated, and his family, and servants duly provided with convenient accommodation. The form of the main dwelling is nearly square, upright, with two full stories, giving ample area of room and ventilation, together with that appropriate indulgence to ease which the enervating warmth of a southern climate renders necessary. The servants' apartments, and kitchen offices are so disposed, that while connected, to render them easy of access, they are sufficiently remote to shut off the familiarity of association which would render them obnoxious to the most fastidious--all, in fact, under one shelter, and within the readiest call. Such should be the construction of a planter's house in the United States, and such this design is intended to give. A stable and carriage-house, in the same style, is near by, not connected to any part of the dwelling, as in the previous designs--with sufficient accommodation for coachman and grooms, and the number of saddle and carriage horses that may be required for either business or pleasure; and to it may be connected, in the rear, in the same style of building, or plainer, and less expensive, further conveniences for such domestic animals as may be required for family use. The whole stands in open grounds, and may be separated from each other by enclosures, as convenience or fancy may direct. The roofs of all the buildings are broad and sweeping, well protecting the walls from storm and frosts, as well as the glaring influences of the sun, and combining that comfortable idea of shelter and repose so grateful in a well-conditioned country house. It is true, that the dwelling might be more extensive in room, and the purposes of luxury enlarged; but the planter on five hundred, or five thousand acres of land can here be sufficiently accommodated in all the reasonable indulgences of family enjoyment, and a liberal, even an elegant and prolonged hospitality, to which he is so generally inclined. The chimneys of this house, different from those in the previous designs, are placed next the outer walls, thus giving more space to the interior, and not being required, as in the others, to promote additional warmth than their fireplaces will give, to the rooms. A deck on the roof affords a pleasant look-out for the family from its top, guarded by a parapet, and giving a finish to its architectural appearance, and yet making no ambitious attempt at expensive ornament. It is, in fact, a plain, substantial, respectable mansion for a gentleman of good estate, and nothing beyond it. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. This house stands 50�40 feet on the ground. The front door opens from the veranda into a hall, 24�14 feet, in which is a flight of stairs leading to the chambers above. On the left a door leads into a library, or business room, 17�17 feet, lighted by three windows. A fireplace is inserted in the outer wall. Another door leads into a side hall, six feet wide, which separates the library from the dining-room, which is also 17�17 feet in area, lighted and accommodated with a fireplace like the other, with a door leading into it from the side hall, and another door at the further right hand corner leading into the rear hall, or entry. On the right of the chief entrance hall, opposite the library, a door opens into the parlor or drawing-room, 23�19 feet in area, lighted by three windows, and having a fireplace in the side wall. A door leads from the rear side of the parlor into a commodious nursery, or family bedroom, 19�16 feet in size, lighted by a window in each outer wall. A fireplace is also inserted on the same line as in the parlor. From the nursery a door leads into and through a large closet, 9�7 feet, into the rear hall. This closet may also be used as a sleeping-room for the children, or a confidential servant-maid, or nurse, or devoted to the storage of bed-linen for family use. Further on, adjoining, is another closet, 7�6 feet, opening from the rear hall, and lighted by a window. Leading from the outer door of the rear hall is a covered passage six feet wide, 16 feet long, and one and a half stories high, leading to the kitchen offices, and lighted by a window on the left, with a door opening in the same side beyond, on to the side front of the establishment. On the right, opposite, a door leads on to the kitchen porch, which is six feet wide, passing on to the bath-room and water-closet, in the far rear. At the end of the connecting passage from the main dwelling, a door opens into the kitchen, which is 24�18 feet in size, accommodated with two windows looking on to the porch just described. At one end is an open fireplace with a cooking range on one side, and an oven on the other. At the left of the entrance door is a large, commodious store-room and pantry, 12�9 feet, lighted by a window; and adjoining it, (and may be connected with it by a door, if necessary,) a kitchen closet of the same size, also connected by a corresponding door from the opposite corner of the kitchen. Between these doors is a flight of stairs leading to the sleeping-rooms above, and a cellar passage beneath them. In the farther right corner of the kitchen a door leads into a smaller closet, 8�6 feet, lighted by a small window looking on to the rear porch at the end. A door at the rear of the kitchen leads out into the porch of the wash-room beyond, which is six feet wide, and another door into the wash-room itself, which is 20�16 feet, and furnished with a chimney and boilers. A window looks out on the extreme right hand, and two windows on to the porch in front. A door opens from its rear wall into the wood-house, 32�12 feet, which stands open on two sides, supported by posts, and under the extended roof of the wash-room and its porch just mentioned. A servants' water-closet is attached to the extreme right corner of the wood-house, by way of lean-to. The bath-room is 10�6 feet in area, and supplied with water from the kitchen boilers adjoining. The water-closet beyond is 6 feet square, and architecturally, in its roof, may be made a fitting termination to that of the porch leading to it. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN.] The main flight of stairs in the entrance hall leads on to a broad landing in the spacious upper hall, from which doors pass into the several chambers, which may be duly accommodated with closets. The passage connecting with the upper story of the servants' offices, opens from the rear section of this upper hall, and by the flight of rear stairs communicates with the kitchen and out-buildings. A garret flight of steps may be made in the rear section of the main upper hall, by which that apartment may be reached, and the upper deck of the roof ascended. The sleeping-rooms of the kitchen may be divided off as convenience may dictate, and the entire structure thus appropriated to every accommodation which a well-regulated family need require. [Illustration: CARRIAGE HOUSE.] The carriage-house is 48�24 feet in size, with a projection of five feet on the entrance front, the door of which leads both into the carriage-room and stables. On the right is a bedroom, 10�8 feet, for the grooms, lighted by a window; and beyond are six stalls for horses, with a window in the rear wall beyond them. A flight of stairs leads to the hayloft above. In the rear of the carriage-room is a harness-room, 12�4 feet, and a granary of the same size, each lighted by a window. If farther attachments be required for the accommodation of out-building conveniences, they may be continued indefinitely in the rear. MISCELLANEOUS. It may strike the reader that the house just described has a lavish appropriation of veranda, and a needless side-front, which latter may detract from the _precise_ architectural keeping that a dwelling of this pretension should maintain. In regard to the first, it may be remarked, that no feature of the house in a southern climate can be more expressive of easy, comfortable enjoyment, than a spacious veranda. The habits of southern life demand it as a place of exercise in wet weather, and the cooler seasons of the year, as well as a place of recreation and social intercourse during the fervid heats of the summer. Indeed, many southern people almost live under the shade of their verandas. It is a delightful place to take their meals, to receive their visitors and friends; and the veranda gives to a dwelling the very expression of hospitality, so far as any one feature of a dwelling can do it. No equal amount of accommodation can be provided for the same cost. It adds infinitely to the _room_ of the house itself, and is, in fact, indispensable to the full enjoyment of a southern house. The side front in this design is simply a matter of convenience to the owner and occupant of the estate, who has usually much office business in its management; and in the almost daily use of his library, where such business may be done, a side door and front is both appropriate and convenient. The _chief_ front entrance belongs to his family and guests, and should be devoted to their exclusive use; and as a light fence may be thrown off from the extreme end of the side porch, separating the front lawn from the rear approach to the house, the veranda on that side may be reached from its rear end, for business purposes, without intruding upon the lawn at all. So we would arrange it. Objections may be made to the _sameness_ of plan, in the arrangement of the lower rooms of the several designs which we have submitted, such as having the nursery, or family sleeping-room, on the main floor of the house, and the uniformity, in location, of the others; and that there are no _new_ and _striking_ features in them. The answer to these may be, that the room appropriated for the nursery, or bedroom, may be used for other purposes, equally as well; that when a mode of accommodation is already as convenient as may be, it is poorly worth while to make it less convenient, merely for the sake of variety; and, that utility and convenience are the main objects to be attained in any well-ordered dwelling. These two requisites, utility and convenience, attained, the third and principal one--comfort--is secured. Cellar kitchens--the most abominable nuisances that ever crept into a country dwelling--might have been adopted, no doubt, to the especial delight of some who know nothing of the experimental duties of housekeeping; but the recommendation of these is an offence which we have no stomach to answer for hereafter. Steep, winding, and complicated staircases might have given a new feature to one or another of the designs; dark closets, intricate passages, unique cubby-holes, and all sorts of inside gimcrackery might have amused our pencil; but we have avoided them, as well as everything which would stand in the way of the simplest, cheapest, and most direct mode of reaching the object in view: a convenient, comfortably-arranged dwelling within, having a respectable, dignified appearance without--and such, we trust, have been thus far presented in our designs. LAWN, AND PARK SURROUNDINGS. The trees and shrubbery which ornament the approach to this house, should be rather of the graceful varieties, than otherwise. The weeping-willow, the horse-chesnut, the mountain-ash, if suitable to the climate; or the china-tree of the south, or the linden, the weeping-elm, and the silver-maple, with its long slender branches and hanging leaves, would add most to the beauty, and comport more closely with the character of this establishment, than the more upright, stiff, and unbending trees of our American forests. The Lombardy-poplar--albeit, an object of fashionable derision with many tree-fanciers in these more _tasty_ days, as it was equally the admiration of our fathers, of forty years ago--would set off and give effect to a mansion of this character, either in a clump at the back-ground, as shown in the design, or occasionally shooting up its spire-like top through a group of the other trees. Yet, if built in a fine natural park or lawn of oaks, with a few other trees, such as we have named, planted immediately around it, this house would still show with fine effect. The style of finish given to this dwelling may appear too ornate and expensive for the position it is supposed to occupy. If so, a plainer mode of finish may be adopted, to the cheapest degree consistent with the manner of its construction. Still, on examination, there will be found little intricate or really expensive work upon it. Strength, substance, durability, should all enter into its composition; and without these elements, a house of this appearance is a mere bauble, not fit to stand upon the premises of any man of substantial estate. If a more extensive accommodation be necessary, than the size of this house can afford, its style will admit of a wing, of any desirable length, on each side, in place of the rear part of the side verandas, without prejudice to its character or effect. Indeed, such wings may add to its dignity, and consequence, as comporting with the standing and influence which its occupant may hold in the community wherein he resides. A man of mark, indeed, should, if he live in the country, occupy a dwelling somewhat indicating the position which he holds, both in society and in public affairs. By this remark, we may be treading on questionable ground, in our democratic country; but, practically, there is a fitness in it which no one can dispute. Not that extravagance, pretension, or any other _assumption_ of superiority should mark the dwelling of the distinguished man, but that his dwelling be of like character with himself: plain, dignified, solid, and, as a matter of course, altogether respectable. It is a happy feature in the composition of our republican institutions, both social and political, that we can afford to let the flashy men of the _day_--not of _time_--flaunter in all their purchased fancy in house-building, without prejudice to the prevailing sober sentiment of their neighbors, in such particulars. The man of money, simply, may build his "villa," and squander his tens of thousands upon it. He may riot within it, and fidget about it for a few brief years; he may even hang his coat of arms upon it, if he can fortunately do so without stumbling over a lapstone, or greasing his coat against the pans of a cook-shop; but it is equally sure that no child of his will occupy it after him, even if his own changeable fancy or circumstances permit him to retain it for his natural life. Such are the episodes of country house-building, and of frequent attempts at agricultural life, by those who affect it as a matter of ostentation or display. For the subjects of these, we do not write. But there is something exceedingly grateful to the feelings of one of stable views in life, to look upon an estate which has been long in an individual family, still maintaining its primitive character and respectability. Some five-and-twenty years ago, when too young to have any established opinions in matters of this sort, as we were driving through one of the old farming towns in Massachusetts, about twenty miles west of Boston, we approached a comfortable, well-conditioned farm, with a tavern-house upon the high road, and several great elms standing about it. The road passed between two of the trees, and from a cross-beam, lodged across their branches, swung a large square sign, with names and dates painted upon it--name and date we have forgotten; it was a good old Puritan name, however--in this wise: "John Endicott, 1652." "John Endicott, 1696." "John Endicott, 1749." "John Endicott, 1784." "John Endicott, 1817." As our eyes read over this list, we were struck with the stability of a family who for many consecutive generations had occupied, by the same name, that venerable spot, and ministered to the comfort of as many generations of travelers, and incontinently took off our hat in respect to the record of so much worth, drove our horse under the shed, had him fed, went in, and took a quiet family dinner with the civil, good-tempered host, and the equally kind-mannered hostess, then in the prime of life, surrounded with a fine family of children, and heard from his own lips the history of his ancestors, from their first emigration from England--not in the Mayflower, to whose immeasurable accommodations our good New England ancestors are so prone to refer--but in one of her early successors. All over the old thirteen states, from Maine to Georgia, can be found agricultural estates now containing families, the descendants of those who founded them--exceptions to the general rule, we admit, of American stability of residence, but none the less gratifying to the contemplation of those who respect a deep love of home, wherever it may be found. For the moral of our episode on this subject, we cannot refrain from a description of a fine old estate which we have frequently seen, minus now the buildings which then existed, and long since supplanted by others equally respectable and commodious, and erected by the successor of the original occupant, the late Dr. Boylston, of Roxbury, who long made the farm his summer residence. The description is from an old work, "The History of the County of Worcester, in the State of Massachusetts, by the Rev. Peter Whitney, 1793:" "Many of the houses (in Princeton,) are large and elegant. This leads to a particular mention, that in this town is the country seat of the Hon. Moses Gill, Esq., ('Honorable' meant something in those days,) who has been from the year 1775 one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of Worcester, and for several years a counsellor of this commonwealth. His noble and elegant seat is about one mile and a quarter from the meeting-house, to the south. The farm contains upwards of three thousand acres. The county road from Princeton to Worcester passes through it, in front of the house, which faces to the west. The buildings stand upon the highest land of the whole farm; but it is level round about them for many rods, and then there is a very gradual descent. The land on which these buildings stand is elevated between twelve hundred and thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, as the Hon. James Winthrop, Esq. informs me. The mansion house is large, being 50�50 feet, with four stacks of chimnies. The farm house is 40 feet by 36: In a line with this stand the coach and chaise-house, 50 feet by 36. This is joined to the barn by a shed 70 feet in length--the barn is 200 feet by 32. Very elegant fences are erected around the mansion house, the out-houses, and the garden. "The prospect from this seat is extensive and grand, taking in a horizon to the east, of seventy miles, at least. The blue hills in Milton are discernible with the naked eye, from the windows of this superb edifice, distant not less than sixty miles; as also the waters in the harbor of Boston, at certain seasons of the year. When we view this seat, these buildings, and this farm of so many hundred acres, now under a high degree of profitable cultivation, and are told that in the year 1766 it was a perfect wilderness, we are struck with wonder, admiration, and astonishment. The honorable proprietor thereof must have great satisfaction in contemplating these improvements, so extensive, made under his direction, and, I may add, by his own active industry. Judge Gill is a gentleman of singular vivacity and activity, and indefatigable in his endeavors to bring forward the cultivation of his lands; of great and essential service, by his example, in the employment he finds for so many persons, and in all his attempts to serve the interests of the place where he dwells, and in his acts of private munificence, and public generosity, and deserves great respect and esteem, not only from individuals, but from the town and country he has so greatly benefited, and especially by the ways in which he makes use of that vast estate wherewith a kind Providence has blessed him." Such was the estate, and such the man who founded and enjoyed it sixty years ago; and many an equal estate, founded and occupied by equally valuable men, then existed, and still exist in all our older states; and if our private and public virtues are preserved, will ever exist in every state of our union. Such pictures, too, are forcible illustrations of the _morals_ of correct building on the ample estates of many of our American planters and farmers. The mansion house, which is so graphically described, we saw but a short time before it was pulled down--then old, and hardly worth repairing, being built of wood, and of style something like this design of our own, bating the extent of veranda. The cost of this house may be from $5000 to $8000, depending upon the material of which it is constructed, the degree of finish given to it, and the locality where it is built. All these circumstances are to be considered, and the estimates should be made by practical and experienced builders, who are competent judges in whatever appertains to it. [Illustration: FARM HOUSE. Pages 173-174.] DESIGN VII. A PLANTATION HOUSE.--Another southern house is here presented, quite different in architectural design from the last, plain, unpretending, less ornate in its finish, as well as less expensive in construction. It may occupy a different site, in a hilly, wooded country of rougher surface, but equally becoming it, as the other would more fitly grace the level prairie, or spreading plain in the more showy luxury of its character. This house stands 46�44 feet on the ground, two stories high, with a full length veranda, 10 feet wide in front, and a half length one above it, connecting with the main roof by an open gable, under which is a railed gallery for summer repose or recreation, or to enjoy the scenery upon which it may open. The roof is broad and overhanging, thoroughly sheltering the walls, and giving it a most protected, comfortable look. Covering half the rear is a lean-to, with shed roof, 16 feet wide, communicating with the servants' offices in the wing, the hall of which opens upon a low veranda on its front, and leading to the minor conveniences of the establishment. The main servants' building is 30�20 feet, one and a half stories high, with a roof in keeping with the main dwelling, and a chimney in the center. In rear of this is attached a wood-house, with a shed roof, thus sloping off, and giving it a reposed, quiet air from that point of view. A narrow porch, 23 feet long and 8 feet wide, also shades the remaining rear part of the main dwelling, opening on to the approach in rear. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door opens into a hall 34 feet long and 10 feet wide, with a flight of stairs. On the left of this opens a parlor or dining-room, 22�18 feet, lighted by two windows in front and one on the side, and connecting with the dining-room beyond, which is 18�16 feet, with two small dining closets between. The dining-room has two windows opening on to the rear veranda. Under the cross flight of stairs in the hall, a partition separates it from the rear hall, into which is a door. On the right of the entrance hall is a library, 18�18 feet, lighted by three windows. At the farther end is a closet, and by the side of it a small entry leading into the nursery or family bedroom, 18�15 feet in size, which also has a corresponding closet with the library. On the rear of the nursery is a flight of back stairs opening from it. Under these stairs, at the other end, a door opens to another flight leading into the cellar below. A door also leads out from the nursery into the rear passage, to the offices; another door on the further side of the room opens into the rear hall of the house. The nursery should have two windows, but the drawing, by an error, gives only one. From this rear hall a door opens on the rear veranda, and another into the passage to the rear offices. This passage is six feet wide and 34 feet long, opening at its left end on to the veranda, and on the right, to the servants' porch, and from its rear side into three small rooms, 10 feet square each, the outer one of which may be a business room for the proprietor of the estate; the next, a store-room for family supplies; and the other a kitchen closet. Each of these is lighted by a window on the rear. A door also leads from the rear passage into the kitchen, 20�16 feet in area, with a window looking out in front and two others on the side and rear, and a door into the wood-house. In this is placed a large chimney for the cooking establishment, oven, &c., &c. A flight of stairs and partition divides this from the wash-room, which is 14�14 feet, with two windows in the side, and a door into the wood-house. This wood-house is open on two sides, and a water-closet is in the far corner. The small veranda, which is six feet wide, fronting the kitchen apartments, opens into the bath-room, 9�6 feet, into which the water is drawn from the kitchen boilers in the adjoining chimney. Still beyond this is the entrance to the water-closets, 6�5 feet. [Illustration: CHAMBER PLAN.] The chamber plan is simple, and will be readily comprehended. If more rooms are desirable, they can be cut off from the larger ones. A flight of garret stairs may also be put in the rear chamber hall. The main hall of the chambers, in connection with the upper veranda, may be made a delightful resort for the summer, where the leisure hours of the family may be passed in view of the scenery which the house may command, and thus made one of its most attractive features. MISCELLANEOUS. We have given less veranda to this house than to the last, because its style does not require it, and it is a cheaper and less pains-taking establishment throughout, although, perhaps, quite as convenient in its arrangement as the other. The veranda may, however, be continued round the two ends of the house, if required. A screen, or belt of privet, or low evergreens may be planted in a circular form from the front right-hand corner of the dwelling, to the corresponding corner of the rear offices, enclosing a clothes drying yard, and cutting them off from too sightly an exposure from the lawn in front. The opposite end of the house, which may be termed its _business_ front, may open to the every-day approach to the house, and be treated as convenience may determine. For the _tree_ decoration of this establishment, evergreens may come in for a share of attraction. Their conical, tapering points will correspond well with its general architecture, and add strikingly to its effect; otherwise the remarks already given on the subject of park and lawn plantation will suffice. As, however, in the position where this establishment is supposed to be erected, land is plenty, ample area should be appropriated to its convenience, and no pinched or parsimonious spirit should detract from giving it the fullest effect in an allowance of ground. Nor need the ground devoted to such purposes be at all lost, or unappropriated; various uses can be made of it, yielding both pleasure and profit, to which a future chapter will refer; and it is one of the chief pleasures of retired residence to cultivate, in the right place, such incidental objects of interest as tend to gratify, as well as to instruct, in whatever appertains to the elevation of our thoughts, and the improvement of our condition. All these, in their place, should be drawn about our dwellings, to render them as agreeable and attractive as our ingenuity and labor may command. LAWNS, GROUNDS, PARKS, AND WOODS. Having essayed to instruct our agricultural friends in the proper modes of erecting their houses, and providing for their convenient accommodation within them, a few remarks may be pardoned touching such collateral subjects of embellishment as may be connected with the farm residence in the way of plantations and grounds in their immediate vicinity. We are well aware that small farms do not permit any considerable appropriation of ground to _waste_ purposes, as such spots are usually called which are occupied with wood, or the shade of open trees, near the dwelling. But no dwelling can be complete in all its appointments without trees in its immediate vicinity. This subject has perhaps been sufficiently discussed in preceding chapters; yet, as a closing course of remark upon what a farm house, greater or less in extent, should be in the amount of shade given to it, a further suggestion or two may be permitted. There are, in almost all places, in the vicinity of the dwelling, portions of ground which can be appropriated to forest trees without detriment to other economical uses, if applied in the proper way. Any one who passes along a high road and discovers the farm house, seated on the margin or in the immediate vicinity of a pleasant grove, is immediately struck with the peculiarly rural and picturesque air which it presents, and thinks to himself that he should love such a spot for his own home, without reflecting that he might equally as well create one of the same character. Sites already occupied, where different dispositions are made of contiguous ground, may not admit of like advantages; and such are to be continued in their present arrangement, with such course of improvement as their circumstances will admit. But to such as are about to _select_ the sites of their future homes, it is important to study what can best embellish them in the most effective shade and ornament. In the immediate vicinity of our large towns and cities it is seldom possible to appropriate any considerable breadth of land to ornamental purposes, excepting rough and unsightly waste ground, more or less occupied with rock or swamp; or plainer tracts, so sterile as to be comparatively worthless for cultivation. Such grounds, too, often lie bare of wood, and require planting, and a course of years to cover them with trees, even if the proprietor is willing, or desirous to devote them to such purpose. Still, there are vast sections of our country where to economize land is not important, and a mixed occupation of it to both ornament and profit may be indulged to the extent of the owner's disposition. All over the United States there are grand and beautiful sweeps and belts of cultivated country, interspersed with finely-wooded tracts, which offer the most attractive sites for the erection of dwellings on the farms which embrace them, and that require only the eye and hand of taste to convert them, with slight labor, into the finest-wooded lawns and forested parks imaginable. No country whatever produces finer trees than North America. The evergreens of the north luxuriate in a grandeur scarcely known elsewhere, and shoot their cones into the sky to an extent that the stripling pines and firs, and larches of England in vain may strive to imitate. The elm of New England towers up, and spreads out its sweeping arms with a majesty unwonted in the ancient parks or forests of Europe; while its maples, and birches, and beeches, and ashes, and oaks, and the great white-armed buttonwood, make up a variety of intervening growth, luxuriant in the extreme. Pass on through the Middle States, and into the far west, and there they still flourish with additional kinds--the tulip and poplar--the nut-trees, in all their wide variety, with a host of others equally grand and imposing, interspersed; and shrub-trees innumerable, are seen every where as they sweep along your path. Beyond the Alleghanies, and south of the great lakes, are vast natural parks, many of them enclosed, and dotted with herds of cattle ranging over them, which will show single trees, and clumps of forest that William the Conqueror would have given a whole fiefdom in his Hampshire spoliations to possess; while, stretching away toward the Gulf of Mexico, new varieties of tree are found, equally imposing, grand, and beautiful, throughout the whole vast range, and in almost every locality, susceptible of the finest possible appropriation to ornament and use. Many a one of these noble forests, and open, natural parks have been appropriated already to embellish the comfortable family establishment which has been built either on its margin, or within it; and thousands more are standing, as yet unimproved, but equally inviting the future occupant to their ample protection. The moral influences, too, of lawns and parks around or in the vicinity of our dwellings, are worthy of consideration. Secluded as many a country dweller may be, away from the throng of society, there is a sympathy in trees which invites our thoughts, and draws our presence among them with unwonted interest, and in frequent cases, assist materially in stamping the feelings and courses of our future lives--always with pure and ennobling sentiments-- "The groves were God's first temples." The thoughtful man, as he passes under their sheltering boughs, in the heat of summer, with uncovered brow, silently worships the Hand that formed them there, scarcely conscious that their presence thus elevates his mind to holy aspirations. Among them, the speculative man "Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones." Even children, born and educated among groves of trees, drink in early impressions, which follow them for good all their days; and, when the toils of their after life are passed, they love to return to these grateful coverts, and spend their remaining days amid the tranquillity of their presence. Men habituated to the wildest life, too, enjoy the woods, the hills, and the mountains, beyond all the captivation and excitement of society, and are nowhere at rest, but when in their communion. The love of forest scenery is a thing to be cultivated as a high accomplishment, in those whose early associations have not been among them. Indeed, country life is tame, and intolerable, without a taste, either natural or acquired, for fine landscape scenery; and in a land like this, where the country gives occupation to so great a proportion of its people, and a large share of those engaged in the active and exciting pursuits of populous towns, sigh and look forward to its enjoyment, every inducement should be offered to cultivate a taste for those things which make one of its chief attractions. Nor should seclusion from general society, and a residence apart from the bustling activity of the world, present a bar to the due cultivation of the taste in many subjects supposed to belong only to the throng of association. It is one of the advantages of rural life, that it gives us time to think; and the greatest minds of whose labors in the old world we have had the benefit, and of later times, in our own land, have been reared chiefly in the solitude of the country. Patrick Henry loved to range among the woods, admiring the leafy magnificence of nature, and to follow the meandering courses of the brooks, with his hook and line. Washington, when treading the vast solitudes of central Virginia, with his surveyor's instruments on his back, conceived the wonderful resources of the great empire of which he will ever be styled the "father." The dwelling of the late John C. Calhoun, sheltered by noble trees, stands on an elevated swell of a grand range of mountain land, and it was there that his prolific genius ripened for those burning displays of thought which drew to him the affections of admiring thousands. Henry Clay undoubtedly felt the germ of his future greatness while sauntering, in his boyhood days, through the wild and picturesque slashes of Hanover. Webster, born amid the rugged hills of New Hampshire, drew the delightful relish of rural life, for which he is so celebrated, from the landscapes which surrounded his early home, and laid the foundation of his mighty intellect in the midst of lone and striking scenery. Bryant could never have written his "Thanatopsis," his "Rivulet," and his "Green River," but from the inspiration drawn from his secluded youthful home in the mountains of Massachusetts. Nor, to touch a more sacred subject, could Jonathan Edwards ever have composed his masterly "Treatise on the Will," in a pent-up city; but owes his enduring fame to the thought and leisure which he found, while ministering, among the sublime mountains of the Housatonic, to a feeble tribe of Stockbridge Indians. And these random names are but a few of those whose love of nature early imbibed, and in later life enjoyed in their own calm and retired homes, amid the serene beauty of woods and waters, which might be named, as illustrations of the influence which fine scenery may exercise upon the mind, to assist in moulding it to greatness. The following anecdote was told us many years ago, by a venerable man in Connecticut, a friend of the elder Hillhouse, of New Haven, to whom that city is much indebted for the magnificent trees by which it has become renowned as "the City of the Elms:" While a member of the General Assembly of that state, when Hillhouse was in Congress, learning that he had just returned home from the annual session, our informant, with a friend, went to the residence of the statesman, to pay him a visit. He had returned only that morning, and on their way there, they met him near his house, with a stout young tree on his shoulder, just taken from a neighboring piece of forest, which he was about to transplant in the place of one which had died during his absence. After the usual salutations, our friend expressed his surprise that he was so soon engaged in tree-planting, before he had even had time to look to his private and more pressing affairs. "Another day may be too late," replied the senator; "my tree well planted, it will grow at its leisure, and I can then look to my own concerns at my ease. So, gentlemen, if you will just wait till the tree is set, we'll walk into the house, and settle the affairs of state in our own way." Walter Scott, whose deep love of park and forest scenery has stamped with his masterly descriptions, his native land as the home of all things beautiful and useful in trees and plantations, spent a great share of his leisure time in planting, and has written a most instructive essay on its practice and benefits. He puts into the mouth of "the Laird of Dumbiedikes," the advice, "Be aye sticking in a tree, Jock; it will be growing while you are sleeping." But Walter Scott had no American soil to plant his trees upon; nor do the grandest forest parks of Scotland show a tithe of the luxuriance and majesty of our American forests. Could he but have seen the variety, the symmetry, and the vast size of our oaks, and elms, and evergreens, a new element of descriptive power would have grown out of the admiration they had created within him; and he would have envied a people the possession of such exhaustless resources as we enjoy, to embellish their homes in the best imaginable manner, with such enduring monuments of grace and beauty. To the miscellaneous, or casual reader, such course of remark may appear merely sublimated nonsense. No matter; we are not upon stilts, talking _down_ to a class of inferior men, in a condescending tone, on a subject above their comprehension; but we are addressing men, and the sons of men, who are our equals--although, like ourself, upon their farms, taking their share in its daily toils, as well as pleasures--and can perfectly well understand our language, and sympathize with our thoughts. They are the thoughts of rural life everywhere. It was old Sam Johnson, the great lexicographer, who lumbered his unwieldy gait through the streets of cities for a whole life, and with all his vast learning and wisdom, had no appreciation of the charms of the country, that said, "Who feeds fat cattle should himself be fat;" as if the dweller on the farm should not possess an idea above the brutes around him. We wonder if he ever supposed a merchant should have any more brain than the parcel that he handled, or the bale which he rolled, or directed others to roll for him! But, loving the solitude of the farm, and finding a thousand objects of interest and beauty scattered in profusion, where those educated among artificial objects would see nothing beyond things, to them, vulgar and common-place, in conversing with our rural friends upon what concerns their daily comfort, and is to constitute the nursery of those who succeed them, and on the influences which may, in a degree, stamp their future character, we cannot forbear such suggestions, connected with the family Home, as may induce them to cultivate all those accessories around it, which may add to their pleasure and contentment. We believe it was Keats, who said, "A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever." And the thought that such "beauty" has been of our own creation, or that our own hands have assisted in its perpetuation, should certainly be a deep "joy" of our life. We have remarked, that the farm house is the chief nursery on which our broad country must rely for that healthy infusion of stamina and spirit into those men who, under our institutions, guide its destiny and direct its councils. They, in the great majority of their numbers, are natives of the retired homestead. It is, therefore, of high consequence, that good taste, intelligence, and correct judgment, should enter into all that surrounds the birth-place, and early scenes of those who are to be the future actors in the prominent walks of life, either in public or private capacity; and as the love of trees is one of the leading elements of enjoyment amid the outward scenes of country-life, we commend most heartily all who dwell in the pure air and bright sunshine of the open land to their study and cultivation. Every man who lives in the country, be he a practical farmer or not, should _plant_ trees, more or less. The father of a family should plant, for the benefit of his children, as well as for his own. The bachelor and the childless man should plant, if for nothing more than to show that he has left _some_ living thing to perpetuate his memory. Boys should early be made planters. None but those who love trees, and plant them, know the serene pleasure of watching their growth, and anticipating their future beauty and grandeur; and no one can so exquisitely enjoy their grateful shade, as he whose hand has planted and cared for them. Planting, too, is a most agreeable pastime to a reflecting mind. It may be ranked among the pleasures, instead of the toils of life. We have always so found it. There is no pleasanter sight of labor than to see a father, with his young lads about him, planting a tree. It becomes a landmark of their industry and good taste; and no thinking man passes a plantation of fine trees but inwardly blesses the man, or the memory of the man who placed them there. Aside from all this, trees properly distributed, give a value to an estate far beyond the cost of planting, and tending their growth, and which no other equal amount of labor and expense upon it can confer. Innumerable farms and places have been sold at high prices, over those of perhaps greater producing value, merely for the trees which embellished them. Thus, in a pecuniary light, to say nothing of the pleasure and luxury they confer, trees are a source of profitable investment. It is a happy feature in the improving rural character of our country, that tree-planting and tree preservation for some years past have attracted much more attention than formerly; and with this attention a better taste is prevailing in their selection. We have gained but little in the introduction of many of the foreign trees among us, for ornament. Some of them are absolutely barbarous in comparison with our American forest trees, and their cultivation is only a demonstration of the utter want of good taste in those who apply them. For ordinary purposes, but few exotics should be tolerated; and those chiefly in collections, as curiosities, or for arboretums--in which latter the farmer cannot often indulge; and for all the main purposes of shade, and use, and ornament, the trees of no country can equal our own. Varied as our country is, in soils and climates, no particular directions can be given as to the individual varieties of tree which are to be preferred for planting. Each locality has its own most appropriate kinds, and he who is to plant, can best make the selections most fitted to his use. Rapid-growing trees, when of fine symmetry, and free from bad habits in throwing up suckers; not liable to the attacks of insects; of early, dense, and long-continued foliage, are most to be commended; while their opposites in character should be avoided in all well-kept grounds. It requires, indeed, but a little thought and observation to guide every one in the selection which he should make, to produce the best effect of which the tree itself is capable. Giving the importance we have, to trees, and their planting, it may be supposed that we should discuss their position in the grounds to which they should be appropriated. But no specific directions can be given at large. All this branch of the subject must be left to the locality, position, and surface of the ground sought to be improved. A good tree can scarcely stand in a wrong place, when not injurious to a building by its too dense shade, or shutting out its light, or prospect. Still, the proper disposition of trees is a _study_, and should be well considered before they be planted. Bald, unsightly spots should be covered by them, when not devoted to more useful objects of the farm, either in pasturage or cultivation. A partial shading of the soil by trees may add to its value for grazing purposes, like the woodland pastures of Kentucky, where subject to extreme droughts, or a scorching sun. If the planter feels disposed to consult authorities, as to the best disposition of his trees, works on Landscape Gardening may be studied; but these can give only general hints, and the only true course is to strive to make his grounds look as much like nature herself as possible--for nature seldom makes mistakes in her designs. To conclude a course of remark, which the plain farmer, cultivating his land for its yearly profit alone, may consider as foreign to the subject of our work, we would not recommend any one to plant trees who is not willing to spend the necessary time to nurse and tend them afterward, till they are out of harm's way, and well established in a vigorous growth. All this must be taken into the account, for it is better to have even but a few trees, and those what trees should be, than a whole forest of stinted things, writhing and pining through a course of sickly existence. A chapter might also be written upon the proper mode of taking up and planting trees, but as this would lead us to a subject more directly belonging to another department, the proper authorities on that head must be consulted. FRUIT GARDEN--ORCHARDS. As the fruit garden and orchards are usually near appendages to the dwelling and out-buildings, a few remarks as to their locality and distribution may be appropriate. The first should _always_ be near the house, both for convenience in gathering its fruits, and for its due protection from the encroachments of those not entitled to its treasures. It should, if possible, adjoin the kitchen garden, for convenience of access; as fruit is, or should be, an important item in the daily consumption of every family where it can be grown and afforded. A sheltered spot, if to be had, should be devoted to this object; or if not, its margin, on the exposed side, should be set with the hardiest trees to which it is appropriated--as the apple. The fruit garden, proper, may also contain the smaller fruits, as they are termed, as the currant, gooseberry, raspberry, and whatever other shrub-fruits are grown; while the quince, the peach, the apricot, nectarine, plum, cherry, pear, and apple may, in the order they are named, stand in succession behind them, the taller and more hardy growth of each successive variety rising higher, and protecting its less hardy and aspiring neighbor. The soil for all these varieties of tree is supposed to be congenial, and our remarks will only be directed to their proper distribution. The aspect for the fruit garden should, if possible, front the south, south-east, or south-west, in a northerly climate. In the Middle and Southern States the exposure is of less consequence. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, &c., should, for their most productive bearing, and the highest quality of their fruits, be set at least four feet apart, in the rows, and the rows six feet distant from each other, that there may be abundant room to cultivate them with the plow, and kept clean of weeds and grass. The quince, peach, apricot, nectarine, and plum should be 16 feet apart each way. The pear, if on quince stock, may be 12 feet apart, and if on its own stock, 20 to 24 feet; while the apple should always be 30 to 36 feet apart, to let in the requisite degree of sun and air to ripen as well as give growth, color, and flavor to its fruit. The tendency of almost all planters of fruit trees is to set them too close, and many otherwise fine fruit gardens are utterly ruined by the compact manner in which they are planted. Trees are great consumers of the atmosphere; every leaf is a lung, inhaling and respiring the gases, and if sufficient breathing room be not allowed them, the tree sickens, and pines for the want of it; therefore, every fruit tree, and fruit-bearing shrub should be so placed that the summer sun can shine on every part of its surface at some hour of the day. In such position, the fruit will reach its maximum of flavor, size, and perfection. The ground, too, should be rich; and, to have the greatest benefit of the soil, no crops should be grown among the trees, after they have arrived at their full maturity of bearing. Thus planted, and nursed, with good selections of varieties, both the fruit garden and the orchard become one of the most ornamental, as well as most profitable portions of the farm. In point of position, as affecting the appearance of the homestead, the fruit garden should stand on the _weather-side_ of the dwelling, so as, although protected, in its several varieties, by itself, when not altogether sheltered by some superior natural barrier, it should appear to shelter both the dwelling and kitchen gardens, which adjoin them. As this is a subject intended to be but incidentally touched in these pages, and only then as immediately connected in its general character with the dwelling house and its attachments, we refrain from going into any particulars of detail concerning it. It is also a subject to which we are strongly attached, and gladly would we have a set chat with our readers upon it; but as the discussion for so broad a field as we should have to survey, would be in many points arbitrary, and unfitting to local information as to varieties, and particular cultivation, we refer the reader, with great pleasure, to the several treatises of Downing, and Thomas, and Barry, on this interesting topic, with which the public are fortunately in possession; observing, only, that there is no one item of rural economy to which our attention can be given, which yields more of luxury, health, and true enjoyment, both to the body and the mind, than the cultivation of good fruits. HOW TO LAY OUT A KITCHEN GARDEN. The kitchen garden yields more necessaries and comforts to the family, than any other piece of ground on the premises. It is, of consequence, necessary that it be so located and planned as to be ready of access, and yield the greatest possible quantity of products for the labor bestowed upon it; and as locality and plan have much to do with the labor bestowed upon it and the productions it may yield, both these subjects should be considered. As to locality, the kitchen garden should lie in the _warmest_ and _most sheltered_ spot which may be convenient to the _kitchen_ of the house. It should, in connection with that, be convenient of access to the dung-yards of the stables. The size may be such as your necessities or your convenience may demand. The shape, either a parallelogram or a square; for it will be recollected, that this is a place allotted, not for a _show_ or _pleasure_ ground, but for _profit_. If the garden be large, this shape will better allow the use of the plow to turn up the soil, which, in a large garden, is a much cheaper, and, when properly done, a better mode than to spade it; and if small, and it be worked with the spade, _right_ lines are easier made with the spade than curved ones. One or more walks, at least eight feet wide, should be made, leading from a broad gate, or bars, through which a cart and horse, or oxen, may enter, to draw in manure, or carry out the vegetables; and if such walk, or walks, do not extend around the garden, which, if in a large one, they should do, a sufficient area should be thrown out at the farther extremity, to turn the cart upon. If the soil be free, and stony, the stones should be taken out _clean_, when large--and if small, down to the size of a hen's egg--and the surface made as level as possible, for a loose soil will need no draining. If the soil be a clay, or clayey loam, it should be underdrained two and a half feet, _to be perfect_, and the draining so planned as to lead off to a lower spot outside. This draining _warms_ the soil, opens it for filtration, and makes it friable. Then, properly fenced, thoroughly manured, and plowed deep, and left rough--no matter how rough--in the fall of the year, and as late before the setting in of winter as you dare risk it, that part of the preparation is accomplished. The _permanent_ or wide walks of the garden, after being laid out and graded, should never be plowed nor disturbed, except by the hoe and rake, to keep down the weeds and grass; yet, if a close, and well-shorn grass turf be kept upon them, it is perhaps the cheapest and most cleanly way of keeping the walks. They need only cutting off close with the hand-hook, in summer. We have known a great many people, after laying out a kitchen garden, and preparing it for use, fill it up with fruit trees, supposing that vegetables will grow quite as well with them as without. This is a wide mistake. _No tree larger than a currant or gooseberry bush should ever stand in a vegetable garden._ These fruits being partially used in the cooking department, as much in the way of vegetables, as of fruits, and small in size, may be permitted; and they, contrary to the usual practice, should always stand in _open_ ground, where they can have all the benefits of the sun and rain to ripen the fruit to perfection, as well as to receive the cultivation they need, instead of being placed under fences around the sides of the garden, where they are too frequently neglected, and become the resort of vermin, or make prolific harbors for weeds. Along the main walks, or alleys, the borders for perennial plants, as well as the currant and gooseberry bushes, should be made--for the plow should run parallel to, and not at right angles with them. Here may stand the rhubarbs, the sea kales, the various herbs, or even the asparagus beds, if a particular quarter be not set apart for them; and, if it be important, a portion of these main borders may be appropriated to the more common flowers and small shrubbery, if desired to cultivate them in a plain way; but not a peach, apricot, or any other larger tree than a currant or raspberry, should come within it. They not only shade the small plants, but suck up and rob them of their food and moisture, and keep off the sun, and prevent the circulation of air--than which nothing needs all these more than garden vegetables, to have them in high perfection. If it be necessary, by means of a cold exposure on the one side, to have a close plantation of shrubbery to screen the garden, let it be _outside_ the fence, rather than within it; but if within, let there be a _broad_ walk between such shrubbery and the garden beds, as their roots will extend under the vegetables, and rob them of their food. A walk, alley, or cartway, on the sides of the garden, is always better _next to the fence_, than to fill that space with anything else, as it is usually shaded for a portion of the day, and may be better afforded for such _waste_ purposes than the open, sunny ground within. It will be observed that _market gardeners_, men who always strive to make the most profit from their land and labor, and obtain the _best_ vegetables, cultivate them in open fields. Not a tree, nor even a bush is permitted to stand near the growing crop, if they can prevent it; and where one is not stinted in the area of his domain, their example should be followed. A word upon _plowing_ gardens. Clays, or clayey loams, should always be manured and plowed in the fall, just before the setting in of the winter frosts. A world of pounding and hammering of lumps, to make them fine, in spring, is saved by fall plowing, besides incorporating the manure more thoroughly with the soil, as well as freezing out and destroying the eggs of worms and insects which infest it. Thrown up deeply and roughly with the plow or spade, the frosts act mechanically upon the soil, and slack and pulverise it so thoroughly that a heavy raking in early spring, is all that becomes necessary to put it in the finest condition for seeds, and make it perhaps the very best and most productive of all garden soils whatever. A light sandy loam is better to lie compact in winter, and manured and turned up in early spring. Its friable nature leaves it always open and light, and at all times in the absence of frost, accessible to the spade or the hoe. On these accounts, it is usually the most desirable and convenient soil for the kitchen garden, and on the whole, generally preferred where either kind may be a matter simply of choice. FLOWERS. Start not, gentle reader! We are not about to inflict upon you a dissertation on Pelargoniums, Calla-Ethiopias, Japonicas, and such like unmentionable terms, that bring to your mind the green-house, and forcing-house, and all the train of expense and vexation attending them; but we desire to have a short familiar conversation about what is all around you, or if not around you, should be, and kept there, with very little pains or labor on your part. Still, if you dislike the subject, just hand this part of our book over to your excellent wife, or daughters, or sisters, as the case may be, and we will talk to them about this matter. Flowers have their objects, and were made for our use and pleasure; otherwise, God would never have strewed them, as he has, so bountifully along our paths, and filled the world with their fragrance and beauty. Like all else beautiful, which He made, and pronounced "good," flowers have been objects of admiration and love since man's creation; and their cultivation has ever been a type of civilization and refinement among all people who have left written records behind them. Flowers equally become the cottage and the palace, in their decoration. The humblest cottager, and the mightiest monarch, have equally admired their beauty and their odor; and the whole train of mortals between, have devoted a portion of their time and thoughts to the development of their peculiar properties. But let that pass. Plain country people as we are, there are enough of sufficient variety all around us, to engage our attention, and give us all that we desire to embellish our homes, and engage the time which we have to devote to them. Among the wild flowers, in the mountains and hills of the farthest North, on the margin of their hidden brooks, where "Floats the scarce-rooted watercress;" and on their barren sides, the tiny violet and the laurel bloom, each in their season, with unwonted beauty; and, sloping down on to the plains beneath, blush out in all their summer garniture, the wild rose and the honeysuckle. On, through the Middle States, the lesser flowers of early spring throw out a thousand brilliant dyes, and are surrounded by a host of summer plants, vieing with each other in the exuberance of their tints. On the Alleghanies, through all their vast range, grow up the magnificent dogwood, kalmia, and rhododendron, spangling mile upon mile of their huge sides and tops with white, and covering crags and precipices of untold space with their blushing splendor. Further west, on the prairies, and oak openings, and in the deep woods, too, of the great lakes, and of the Mississippi valley, with the earliest grass, shoot up, all over the land, a succession of flowers, which in variety and profusion of shape, and color, and odor, outvie all the lilies of the gardens of Solomon; and so they continue till the autumnal frosts cut down both grass and flower alike. Further south, along the piney coast, back through the hills and over the vast reach of cotton and sugar lands, another class of flowers burst out from their natural coverts in equal glory; and the magnolia, and the tulip-tree, and the wild orange throw a perfume along the air, like the odors of Palestine. In the deep lagoons of the southern rivers, too, float immense water-lilies, laying their great broad leaves, and expanded white and yellow flowers, upon the surface, which the waters of the Nile in the days of Cleopatra never equaled. And these are nature's wild productions only. Flowers being cultivated, not for profit, but for show and amusement, need not intrude upon the time which is required to the more important labors of the farm. A little time, given at such hours when it can be best spared, will set all the little flower-beds in order, and keep the required shrubbery of the place in trim--and should not be denied in any family who enjoy a taste for them. Even the simplest of their kind, when carefully disposed, produce a fine effect; and the hardy bulbous, and tuberous-rooted plants require but slight aid in producing the highest perfection of their bloom; while the fibrous-rooted perennials, and the flowering shrubs, bloom on from year to year, almost uncared for and untouched. The annuals require the most attention. Their seeds must be planted and gathered every year; they must be weeded and nursed with more care than the others; yet they richly repay all this trouble in their fresh bloom when the others are gone, and will carry their rich flowers far into the frosts of autumn, when their hardier companions have composed themselves for a winter's rest. The position of the flower-bed, or borders, may be various. As a matter of taste, however, they should be near the house, and in view of the windows of the most frequented rooms. They thus give more enjoyment in their sight, than when but occasionally seen in special visits; and such spots can usually be set apart for them. If not in the way of more important things, they should always be thus placed, where they are ever objects of interest and attraction. The ground which flowering plants occupy should be devoted to them alone, and the soil be made deep and rich. They should not be huddled up, nor crowded, but stand well apart, and have plenty of breathing-room for their branches and leaves, and space for the spread of their roots. They are consumers of the fertilizing gases, and require, equally with other plants, their due supply of manures--which also adds to the brilliance and size of their bloom, as well as to the growth of their stems. Their roots should be protected in winter by coarse litter thrown over them, particularly the earlier flowering plants, as it gives them an early and rapid start in the spring. In variety, we need scarcely recommend what may be most desirable. The crocus, and snowdrop are among (if not quite) the earliest in bloom; and to these follow the hyacinth, and daffodil, the jonquil, and many-varied family of Narcissus, the low-headed hearts-ease, or pansy; with them, too, comes the flowering-almond, the lilac, and another or two flowering shrubs. Then follow the tulips, in all their gorgeous and splendid variety of single, double, and fringed. To these follow the great peonies, in their full, dashing colors of crimson, white and pink, and the tree-like snow-ball, or guelder-rose. By the side of these hangs out the monthly-trumpet-honeysuckle, gracing the columns of your veranda, porch, or window, and the large Siberian honeysuckle, with its white and pink flowers; and along with them, the various Iris family, or fleur-de-lis, reminding one of France and the Bourbons, the Prussian lilac, and the early phloxes. Then blush out, in all their endless variety of shade and tint, from the purest white to the deepest purple, the whole vast family of roses; and in stature, from the humblest twig that leans its frail stem upon the ground, up to the hardy climber, whose delicious clusters hang over your chamber window; and a month of fragrance and beauty of these completes the succession of bulbs, and tubers, and perennial plants and shrubs--scores of which have not been noticed. Now commence the annuals, which may carry you a month further into the season, when the flaunting dahlia of every hue, and budding from its plant of every size, from the height of little Tommy, who is just toddling out with his mother to watch the first opening flower, up to the top of his father's hat, as he stands quite six feet, to hold the little fellow up to try to smell of another, which, like all the rest, has no sign of odor. Then come, after a long retinue of different things--among which we always count the morning-glory, or convolvulus, running up the kitchen windows,--the great sun-flower, which throws his broad disk high over the garden fence, always cheerful, and always glowing--the brilliant tribe of asters, rich, varied, and beautiful, running far into the autumnal frosts; and, to close our floral season, the chrysanthemum, which, well cared-for, blooms out in the open air, and, carefully taken up and boxed, will stay with us, in the house, till Christmas. Thus ends the blooming year. Now, if you would enjoy a pleasure perfectly pure, which has no alloy, save an occasional disappointment by casualty, and make home interesting beyond all other places, learn first to love, then to get, and next to cultivate flowers. FARM COTTAGES. Altogether too little attention has been paid in our country to these most useful appendages to the farm, both in their construction and appearance. Nothing adds more to the feeling of comfort, convenience, and _home_ expression in the farm, than the snug-built laborers' cottage upon it. The cottage also gives the farm an air of respectability and dignity. The laborer should, if not so sumptuously, be as comfortably housed and sheltered as his employer. This is quite as much to the interest of such employer as it is beneficial to the health and happiness of the laborer. Building is so cheap in America, that the difference in cost between a snugly-finished cottage, and a rickety, open tenement, is hardly to be taken into consideration, as compared with the higher health, and increased enjoyment of the laborer and his family; while every considerate employer knows that cheerfulness and contentment of disposition, which are perhaps more promoted by good home accommodations for the workingman than by any other influence, are strong incentives to increased labor on his part, and more fidelity in its application. A landed estate, of whatever extent, with its respectable farm house, in its own expressive style of construction, relieved and set off by its attendant cottages, either contiguous, or remote, and built in their proper character, leaves nothing wanting to fill the picture upon which one loves to gaze in the contemplation of country life; and without these last in due keeping with the chief structures of the estate, a blank is left in its completeness and finish. The little embellishments which may be given, by way of architectural arrangement, or the conveniences in accommodation, are, in almost all cases, appreciated by those who occupy them, and have an influence upon their character and conduct; while the trifling decorations which may be added in the way of shrubbery, trees, and flowering plants, costing little or nothing in their planting and keeping, give a charm to the humblest abode. The position of cottages on a farm should be controlled by considerations of convenience to the place of labor, and a proper economy in their construction; and hardly a site can be inappropriate which ensures these requirements. In the plans which are submitted, due attention has been paid to the comfort of those who inhabit them, as well as to picturesque effect in the cottage itself. Decency, order, and respectability are thus given to the estate, and to those who inhabit the cottages upon it, as well as to those whose more fortunate position in life has given the enjoyment of a higher luxury in the occupancy of its chief mansion. On all estates where the principal dwelling is located at any considerable distance from the public road, or where approached by a side road shut off from the highway by a gate, a small cottage, by way of lodge, or laborer's tenement, should be located at or near the entrance. Such appendage is not only ornamental in itself, but gives character to the place, and security to the enclosure; in guarding it from improper intrusion, as well as to receive and conduct into the premises those who either reside upon, or have business within it. It is thus a sort of sentry-box, as well as a laborer's residence. [Illustration: COTTAGE. Pages 211-212.] DESIGN I. This cottage is 10 feet high, from the sill to the plates, and may be built of wood, with a slight frame composed of sills and plates only, and planked up and down (vertically) and battened; or grooved and tongued, and matched close together; or it may be framed throughout with posts and studs, and covered with rough boards, and over these clapboards, and lathed and plastered inside. The first mode would be the cheapest, although not so warm and durable as the other, yet quite comfortable when warmed by a stove. On the second plan of building, it will cost near or quite double the amount of the first, if neatly painted. A small brick chimney should rest upon the floor overhead, in the side of which, at least a foot above the chamber floor, should be inserted an earthen or iron thimble, to receive the stovepipe and guard against fire; unless a flat stone, 14 to 16 inches square, and 2 to 4 inches thick, with a pipe-hole--which is the better plan--should rest on the floor immediately over the pipe. This stone should be, also, the foundation of the chimney, which should pass immediately up through the ridge of the roof, and, for effect, in the center longitudinally, of the house. Such position will not interfere with the location of the stove, which may be placed in any part of the room, the pipe reaching the chimney by one or more elbows. INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The main body of this cottage is 18�12 feet, with a lean-to, 8 feet wide, running its whole length in rear. This lean-to may be 8 or 9 inches lower, on the floor, than the main room, and divided into a passage, (leading to an open wood-house in rear, 10�12 feet, with a shed roof,) a large closet, and a bedroom, as may be required; or, the passage end may be left open at the side, for a wood shelter, or other useful purpose. The roof, which is raftered, boarded, and shingled in the usual mode, is well spread over the gables, as well as over the front and rear--say 18 inches. The porch in front will give additional convenience in summer, as a place to sit, or eat under, and its posts so fitted with grooves as to let in rough planks for winter enclosure in front and at one end, leaving the entrance only, at the least windy, or stormy side. The extra cost of such preparation, with the planks, which should be 1¼ or 1½ inches thick, and jointed, would not exceed ten or fifteen dollars. This would make an admirable wood-house for the winter, and a perfect snuggery for a small family. While in its summer dress, with the porch opened--the planks taken out and laid overhead, across the beams connecting the porch with the house--it would present an object of quiet comfort and beauty. A hop vine or honeysuckle might be trained outside the posts, and give it all the shade required. In a stony country, where the adjoining enclosures are of stone, this cottage may be built of stone, also, at about double the cost of wood. This would save the expense of paint, or wash of any kind, besides the greater character of durability and substance it would add to the establishment. Trees, of course, should shelter it; and any little out-buildings that may be required should be nestled under a screen of vines and shrubbery near by. This being designed as the humblest and cheapest kind of cottage, where the family occupy only a single room, the cost would be small. On the plan first named, stained with a coarse wash, it could be built for $100. On the second plan, well-framed of sills, plates, posts, studs, &c. &c., covered with vertical boarding and battens, or clapboarded, and well painted in oil, it might cost $150 to $200. Stone, or brick, without paint, would add but little, if anything in cost over the last sum. The ceiling of the main floor is 8 feet high, and a low chamber or garret is afforded above it, into which a swing-step ladder ascends; and when not in use, it may be hung to the ceiling overhead by a common hook and staples. DESIGN II. This cottage is a grade beyond the one just described, both in appearance and accommodation. It is 20�16 feet on the ground, with a rear wing 26�8 feet in area. The main body is 10 feet high, to the roof, vertically boarded and battened. A snug, half-open (or it may be closed, as convenience may require,) porch shelters the front door, 5�4 feet in area. The cottage has a square or hipped roof, of a 30° pitch from a horizontal line, which spreads full two feet over the walls and bracketed beneath. The rear wing retreats two feet from the wall line of the main building, and has also a hipped roof of the same pitch as the main one, with eight-feet posts. The open end of the wing advances 6 feet toward the front of the main part for wood-house and storage. The construction of this is in the same style as Design I. The windows are plain, two-sashed, of six lights each, 8�12 glass in front, and 8�10 in the rear. [Illustration: COTTAGE. Pages 217-218.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door opens into a common living room, 16�12 feet, with two windows, in which is a stove-chimney running up from the main floor next the partition, or placed over it in the chamber, and running up through the center of the roof. On one side of the living room is a bedroom, 10�8 feet, with two windows. Next to this bedroom is a large closet, 8�6 feet, with one window, and shelves, and tight cupboard within. These rooms are 9 feet high, and over them is a chamber, or garret, 20�16 feet, entered by a swing step ladder, as in Design No. I. This garret is lighted by a small dormer window in the rear roof, over the shed or lean-to. A bed may be located in this chamber, or it may serve as a storage and lumber-room. The wing contains a small kitchen, in case the living room be not occupied for that purpose, 10�8 feet, lighted by a side-window, and having a small chimney in the rear wall. It may contain, also, a small closet, 3 feet square. A door passes from this small kitchen into the wood-house, which is 16�8 feet, or with its advance L, 14 feet, in the extreme outer corner of which is a water-closet, 5�3 feet; thus, altogether, giving accommodation to a family of five or six persons. The construction of this cottage is shown as of wood. Other material, either brick or stone, may be used, as most convenient, at a not much increased cost. The expense of this building may be, say fifty per cent. higher than that of No. I, according to the finish, and may be sufficiently well done and painted complete for $300; which may be reduced or increased, according to the style of finish and the taste of the builder. A cellar may be made under this cottage, which can be reached by a trap-door from the living room, opening to a flight of steps below. DESIGN III. This cottage is still in advance of No. II, in style and arrangement, and may accommodate not only the farm laborer or gardener, but will serve for a small farmer himself, or a village mechanic. It is in the French style of roof, and allied to the Italian in its brackets, and gables, and half-terraced front. The body of the cottage is 22�20 feet, with twelve-feet posts; the roof has a pitch of 50° from a horizontal line, in its straight dimensions, curving horizontally toward the eaves, which, together with the gables, project 3 feet over the walls. The terrace in front is 5 feet wide. On the rear is a wood-house, 18�16 feet in area, open at the house end, and in front, with a roof in same style as the main house, and posts, 8 feet high, standing on the ground, 2 feet below the surface of the cellar wall, which supports the main building. [Illustration: COTTAGE. Pages 221-222.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door opens, in the center of the front wall, into a hall, 12�8 feet, with a flight of stairs on one side, leading to the chamber above; under the stairs, at the upper end, is a passage leading beneath them into the cellar. On one side of this hall is a bedroom 8�10 feet, lighted by a window in front, and part of the hooded double window on the side. On the inner side, a door leads from the hall into the living room or kitchen, 18�12 feet. On one side of this is a bedroom, or pantry, as may be most desirable, 9�6 feet, from which leads a close closet, 3 feet square. This bedroom has a window on one side, next the hall. A door from the kitchen leads into a closet, 3 feet wide, which may contain a sink, and cupboard for kitchen wares. The living room is lighted by a part of the double hooded window on one side, and another on the rear. A door leads into the wood-house, which is 12�16 feet, in the extreme corner of which is the water-closet, 5�3 feet. The rooms in this cottage are 9 feet high. A chimney leads up from the floor of the living room, which may receive, in addition to its own fireplace, or stove, a pipe from the stove in the hall, if one is placed there. The chamber has two feet of perpendicular wall, and the sharp roof gives opportunity for two good lodging rooms, which may be partitioned off as convenience may require, each lighted by a window in the gables, and a dormer one in the roof, for the passage leading into them. The hall may serve as a pleasant sitting or dining-room, in pleasant weather, opening, as it does, on to the terrace, which is mostly sheltered by the overhanging roof. The construction of this cottage may be of either stone, brick, or wood, and produce a fine effect. Although it has neither porch, nor veranda, the broad eaves and gables give it a well-sheltered appearance, and the hooded windows on the sides throw an air of protection over them, quite agreeable to the eye. The framing of this roof is no way different, in the rafters, from those made on straight lines, but the curve and projection is given by planks cut into proper shape, and spiked into the rafters, and apparently supported by the brackets below, which should be cut from two to three-inch plank, to give them a heavy and substantial appearance. The windows are in casement form, as shown in the design, but may be changed into the ordinary sash form, if preferred, which is, in this country, usually the better way. It will be observed, that we have in all cases adopted the usual square-sided form of glass for windows, as altogether more convenient and economical in building, simple in repairing, and, we think, quite as agreeable in appearance, as those out-of-the-way shapes frequently adopted to give a more picturesque effect. In a hilly, mountainous, and evergreen country, this style of cottage is peculiarly appropriate. It takes additional character from bold and picturesque scenery, with which it is in harmony. The pine, spruce, cedar, or hemlock, or the evergreen laurel, planted around or near it, will give it increased effect, while among deciduous trees and shrubs, an occasional Lombardy poplar, and larch, will harmonize with the boldness of its outline. Even where hill or mountain scenery is wanting, plantations such as have been named, would render it a pleasing style of cottage, and give agreeable effect to its bold, sharp roof and projecting eaves. In a snowy country, the plan of roof here presented is well adapted to the shedding of heavy snows, on which it can find no protracted lodgment. Where massive stone walls enclose the estate, this style of cottage will be in character, as comporting with that strong and solid air which the rustic appearance of stone alone can give. It may, too, receive the same amount of outer decoration, in its shrubbery and plantations, given to any other style of building of like accommodation, and with an equally agreeable effect. DESIGN IV. This cottage is still in advance of the last, in its accommodation, and is suitable for the small farmer, or the more liberal cottager, who requires wider room, and ampler conveniences than are allowed by the hitherto described structures. It is a first class dwelling, of its kind, and, in its details and finish, may be adapted to a variety of occupation, while it will afford a sufficient amount of expenditure to gratify a liberal outlay, to him who chooses to indulge his taste in a moderate extent of decoration and embellishment. The ground plan of this cottage is 30�22 feet, in light rural-Gothic style, one and a half stories high, the posts 14 feet in elevation. It has two chimneys, passing out through the roof on each side of the ridge, uniformly, each with the other. The roof has a pitch of 45° from a horizontal line, giving it a bold and rather dashing appearance, and deeply sheltering the walls. The side gables give variety to the roof, and light to the chambers, and add to the finish of its appearance; while the sharp arched double window in the front gable adds character to the design. [Illustration: COTTAGE. Pages 227-228.] The deep veranda in front covers three-quarters of its surface in length, and in the symmetry of its roof, and airiness of its columns, with their light braces, give it a style of completeness; and if creeping vines or climbing shrubs be trained upon them, will produce an effect altogether rural and beautiful. Or, if a rustic style of finish be adopted, to render it cheaper in construction, the effect may still be imposing, and in harmony with the purposes to which it is designed. In fact, this model will admit of a variety of choice in finish, from the plainest to a high degree of embellishment, as the ability or fancy of the builder may suggest. INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. From the veranda in the center of the front, a door opens into a hall, 17�7 feet, with a flight of stairs leading, in three different angles, to the chambers above. Opposite the front door is the passage into the living room, or parlor, 17�15 feet, lighted by three windows, two of which present an agreeable view of an adjacent stream and its opposite shores. At the line of partition from the hall, stands a chimney, with a fireplace, if desirable, or for a stove, to accommodate both this room and the hall with a like convenience; and under the flight of stairs adjoining opens a china closet, with spacious shelves, for the safe-keeping of household comforts. From this room, a door leads into a bedroom, 10�13 feet, lighted by a window opening into the veranda, also accommodated by a stove, which leads into a chimney at its inner partition. Next to this bedroom is the kitchen, 12�13 feet, accommodated with a chimney, where may be inserted an open fireplace, or a stove, as required. In this is a flight of back chamber and cellar stairs. This room is lighted by two windows--one in the side, another in the rear. A door leads from its rear into a large, roomy pantry, 8 feet square, situated in the wing, and lighted by a window. Next to this is a passage, 3 feet in width, leading to the wood-house, (in which the pantry just named is included,) 16�12 feet, with nine-feet posts, and roof pitched like the house, in the extreme corner of which is a water-closet, 5�3 feet. Cornering upon the wood-house beyond, is a small building, 15�12 feet, with ten-feet posts, and a roof in same style as the others--with convenience for a cow and a pig, with each a separate entrance. A flight of stairs leads to the hay-loft above the stables, in the gable of which is the hay-door; and under the stairs is the granary; and to these may be added, inside, a small accommodation for a choice stock of poultry. The chamber plan is the same as the lower floor, mainly, giving three good sleeping-rooms; that over the kitchen, being a _back_ chamber, need not have a separate passage into the upper hall, but may have a door passage into the principal chamber. The door to the front bedroom leads direct from the upper hall. Thus, accommodation is given to quite a numerous family. Closets may be placed in each of these chambers, if wanted; and the entire establishment made a most snug and compact, as well as commodious arrangement. COTTAGE OUTSIDE DECORATION. Nothing so perfectly sets off a cottage, in external appearance, as the presence of plants and shrubbery around it. A large tree or two, by giving an air of protection, is always in place; and creeping vines, and climbing shrubs about the windows and porch, are in true character; while a few low-headed trees, of various kinds, together with some simple and hardy annual and other flowers--to which should always be added, near by, a small, well-tended kitchen garden--fill up the picture. In the choice of what varieties should compose these ornaments, one can hardly be at a loss. Flanking the cottage, and near the kitchen garden, should be the fruit trees. The elm, maples, oak, and hickory, in all their varieties, black-walnut, butternut--the last all the better for its rich kernel--are every one appropriate for shade, as _large_ trees. The hop, morning-glory, running beans--all useful and ornamental as summer climbers; the clematis, bitter-sweet, ivy, any of the _climbing_ roses; the lilac, syringa, snow-ball, and the _standard_ roses; while marigolds, asters, pinks, the phloxes, peonies, and a few other of the thousand-and-one simple and charming annuals, biennials, and perennials, with now and then a gorgeous sunflower, flaunting in its broad glory, will fill up the catalogue. Rare and costly plants are not required, and indeed, are hardly in place in the grounds of an ordinary cottage, unless occupied by the professional gardener. They denote expense, which the laboring cottager cannot afford; and besides that, they detract from the simplicity of the life and purpose which not only the cottage itself, but everything around it, should express. There is an affectation of _cottage_ building, with some people who, with a seeming humility, really aim at higher flights of style in living within them, than truth of either design or purpose will admit. But as such cases are more among villagers, and those temporarily retiring from the city for summer residence, the farm cottage has little to do with it. Still, such fancies are contagious, and we have occasionally seen the ambitious cottage, with its covert expression of humility, insinuating itself on to the farm, and for the farmer's own family occupation, too, which at once spoiled, to the eye, the _substantial reality_ of the whole establishment. A farmer should discard all such things as _ornamental_ cottages. They do not belong to the farm. If he live in a cottage himself, it should be a _plain_ one; yet it may be very substantial and well finished--something showing that he means either to be content in it, in its character of plainness, or that he intends, at a future day, to build something better--when this may serve for the habitation of one of his laborers. The cottage should never occupy a principal, or prominent site on the farm. It should take a subordinate position of ground. This adds to its expression as subordinate in rank, among the lesser farm buildings. A cottage cannot, and should not aspire to be _chief_ in either position or character. Such should be the farm house proper; although unpretending, still, in style, above the cottage; and if the latter, in addition, be required on the farm, it should so appear, both in construction and finish; just what it is intended for--a tenement for economical purposes. There is another kind of cottage, the dwellers in which, these pages will probably never reach, that expresses, in its wild structure, and rude locality, the idea of Moore's pretty song-- "I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled Above the green elms, that a cottage was near." Yet, in some parts of our country, landlords may build such, for the accommodation of tenants, which they may make useful on the outskirts of their estates, and add indirectly to their own convenience and interest in so doing. This may be indulged in, _poetically_ too--for almost any thinking man has a spice of poetry in his composition--vagabondism, a strict, economizing utilitarian would call it. The name matters not. One may as well indulge his taste in this cheap sort of charitable expenditure, as another may indulge, in his dogs, and guns, his horses and equipages--and the first is far the cheapest. They, at the west and south, understand this, whose recreations are occasionally with their hounds, in chase of the deer, and the fox, and in their pursuit spend weeks of the fall and winter months, in which they are accompanied, and assisted, as boon companions for the time, by the rude tenants of the cottages we have described: "A cheerful, simple, honest people." Another class of cottage may come within the farm enclosures, half poetical, and half economical, such as Milton describes: "Hard by a cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged oaks;" and occupied by a family pensioner and his infirm old wife--we don't think _all_ "poor old folks" ought to go to the alms-house, because they cannot work _every_ day of the year--of which all long-settled families of good estate have, now and then, one near to, or upon their premises. Thousands of kind and liberal hearts among our farming and planting brethren, whose impulses are-- "Open as the day to melting charity," are familiar with the wants of those who are thus made their dependents; and in their accommodation, an eye may be kept to the producing of an agreeable effect in locating their habitations, and to rudely embellish, rather than to mar the domain on which they may be lodged. In short, cottage architecture, in its proper character, may be made as effective, in all the ornament which it should give to the farm, as that of any other structure; and if those who have occasion for the cottage will only be content to build and maintain it as it should be, and leave off that perpetual aspiration after something unnatural, and foreign to its purpose, which so many cottage builders of the day attempt, and let it stand in its own humble, secluded character, they will save themselves a world of trouble, and pass for--what they now do not--men possessing a taste for truth and propriety in their endeavors. HOUSE AND COTTAGE FURNITURE. This is a subject so thoroughly discussed in the books, of late, that anything which may here be said, would avail but little, inasmuch as our opinions might be looked upon as "old-fashioned," "out of date," and "of no account whatever,"--for wonderfully modern notions in room-furnishing have crept into the farm house, as well as into town houses. Indeed, we confess to altogether ancient opinions in regard to household furniture, and contend, that, with a few exceptions, "modern degeneracy" has reached the utmost stretch of absurdity, in house-furnishing, to which the ingenuity of man can arrive. Fashions in furniture change about as often as the cut of a lady's dress, or the shape of her bonnet, and pretty much from the same source, too--the fancy shops of Paré, once, in good old English, Paris, the capital city of France. A farmer, rich or poor, may spend half his annual income, every year of his life, in taking down old, and putting up new furniture, and be kept uncomfortable all the time; when, if he will, after a quiet, good-tempered talk with his better-half, agree with her upon the list of _necessary_ articles to make them _really comfortable_; and then a catalogue of what shall comprise the _luxurious_ part of their furnishings, which, when provided, they will fixedly make up their mind to keep, and be content with, they will remain entirely free from one great source of "the ills which flesh is heir to." It is pleasant to see a young couple setting out in their housekeeping life, well provided with convenient and properly-selected furniture, appropriate to all the uses of the family; and then to keep, and use it, and enjoy it, like contented, sensible people; adding to it, now and then, as its wear, or the increasing wants of their family may require. Old, familiar things, to which we have long been accustomed, and habituated, make up a round share of our actual enjoyment. A family addicted to constant change in their household furniture, attached to nothing, content with nothing, and looking with anxiety to the next change of fashion which shall introduce something _new_ into the house, can take no sort of comfort, let their circumstances be ever so affluent. It is a kind of dissipation in which some otherwise worthy people are prone to indulge, but altogether pernicious in the indulgence. It detracts, also, from the apparent respectability of a family to find nothing _old_ about them--as if they themselves were of yesterday, and newly dusted out of a modern shop-keeper's stock in trade. The furniture of a house ought to look as though the family within it once had a grandfather--and as if old things had some veneration from those who had long enjoyed their service. We are not about to dictate, of what fashion household furniture should be, when selected, any further than that of a plain, substantial, and commodious fashion, and that it should comport, so far as those requirements in it will admit, with the approved modes of the day. But we are free to say, that in these times the extreme of absurdity, and unfitness for _use_, is more the fashion than anything else. What so useless as the modern French chairs, standing on legs like pipe-stems, _garote_-ing your back like a rheumatism, and frail as the legs of a spider beneath you, as you sit in it; and a tribe of equally worthless incumbrances, which absorb your money in their cost, and detract from your comfort, instead of adding to it, when you have got them; or a bedstead so high that you must have a ladder to climb into it, or so low as to scarcely keep you above the level of the floor, when lying on it. No; give us the substantial, the easy, the free, and enjoyable articles, and the rest may go to tickle the fancy of those who have a taste for them. Nor do these flashy furnishings add to one's rank in society, or to the good opinion of those whose consideration is most valuable. Look into the houses of those people who are the _really_ substantial, and worthy of the land. There will be found little of such frippery with them. Old furniture, well-preserved, useful in everything, mark the well-ordered arrangement of their rooms, and give an air of quietude, of comfort, and of hospitality to their apartments. Children cling to such objects in after life, as heir-looms of affection and parental regard. Although we decline to give specific directions about what varieties of furniture should constitute the furnishings of a house, or to illustrate its style or fashion by drawings, and content ourself with the single remark, that it should, in all cases, be strong, plain, and durable--no sham, nor ostentation about it--and such as is _made for use_: mere trinkets stuck about the room, on center tables, in corners, or on the mantel-piece, are the foolishest things imaginable. They are costly; they require a world of care, to keep them in condition; and then, with all this care, they are good for nothing, in any sensible use. We have frequently been into a country house, where we anticipated better things, and, on being introduced into the "parlor," actually found everything in the furniture line so dainty and "prinked up," that we were afraid to sit down on the frail things stuck around by way of seats, for fear of breaking them; and everything about it looked so gingerly and inhospitable, that we felt an absolute relief when we could fairly get out of it, and take a place by the wide old fireplace, in the common living room, comfortably ensconced in a good old easy, high-backed, split-bottomed chair--there was positive comfort in that, when in the "parlor" there was nothing but restraint and _dis_comfort. No; leave all this vanity to town-folk, who have nothing better--or who, at least, think they have--to amuse themselves with; it has no fitness for a country dwelling, whatever. All this kind of frippery smacks of the boarding school, the pirouette, and the dancing master, and is out of character for the farm, or the sensible retirement of the country. In connection with the subject of furniture, a remark may be made on the _room_ arrangement of the house, which might, perhaps, have been more fittingly made when discussing that subject, in the designs of our houses. Some people have a marvellous propensity for introducing into their houses a _suite_ of rooms, connected by wide folding-doors, which must always be opened into each other, furnished just alike, and devoted to extraordinary occasions; thus absolutely sinking the best rooms in the house, for display half a dozen times in the year, and at the sacrifice of the every-day comfort of the family. This is nothing but a bastard taste, of the most worthless kind, introduced from the city--the propriety of which, for city life, need not here be discussed. The presence of such arrangement, in a country house, is fatal to everything like domestic enjoyment, and always followed by great expense and inconvenience. No room, in any house, should be too good for occupation by the family themselves--not every-day, and common-place--but occupation at any and all times, when convenience or pleasure demand it. If a large room be required, let the single room itself be large; not sacrifice an extra room to the occasional extension of the choicer one, as in the use of folding-doors must be done. This "parlor" may be better furnished--and so it should be--than any other room in the house. Its carpet should be not too good to tread, or stand upon, or for the children to roll and tumble upon, provided their shoes and clothes be clean. Let the happy little fellows roll and tumble on it, to their heart's content, when their mother or elder sisters are with them--for it may be, perhaps, the most joyous, and most innocent pleasure of their lives, poor things! The hearth-rug should be in keeping with the carpet, also, and no floor-cloth should be necessary to cover it, for fear of soiling; but everything free and easy, with a comfortable, inviting, hospitable look about it. Go into the houses of our great men--such as live in the country--whom God made great, not money--and see how _they_ live. We speak not of statesmen and politicians alone, but great merchants, great scholars, great divines, great mechanics, and all men who, in mind and attainments, are head and shoulder above their class in any of the walks of life, and you find no starch, or flummery about them. We once went out to the country house--he lived there all the time, for that matter--of a distinguished banker of one of our great cities, to dine, and spend the day with him. He had a small farm attached to his dwelling, where he kept his horses and cows, his pigs, and his poultry. He had a large, plain two-story cottage house, with a piazza running on three sides of it, from which a beautiful view of the neighboring city, and water, and land, was seen in nearly all directions. He was an educated man. His father had been a statesman of distinguished ability and station at home, and a diplomatist abroad, and himself educated in the highest circles of business, and of society. His wife, too, was the daughter of a distinguished city merchant, quite his equal in all the accomplishments of life. His own wealth was competent; he was the manager of millions of the wealth of others; and his station in society was of the highest. Yet, with all this claim to pretension, his house did not cost him eight thousand dollars--and he built it by "days-work," too, so as to have it faithfully done; and the furniture in it, aside from library, paintings, and statuary, never cost him three thousand. Every room in it was a plain one, not more highly finished than many a farmer's house can afford. The furniture of every kind was plain, saving, perhaps, the old family plate, and such as he had added to it, which was all substantial, and made for use. The younger children--and of these, younger and older, he had several--we found happy, healthy, cheerful, and frolicking on the carpets; and their worthy mother, in the plainest, yet altogether appropriate garb, was sitting among them, at her family sewing, and kindly welcomed us as we took our seats in front of the open, glowing fireplace. "Why, sir," we exclaimed, rubbing our hands in the comfortable glow of warmth which the fire had given--for it was a cold December day--"you are quite plain, as well as wonderfully comfortable, in your country house--quite different from your former city residence!" "To be sure we are," was the reply; "we stood it as long as we could, amid the starch and the gimcracks of ---- street, where we rarely had a day to ourselves, and the children could never _go_ into the streets but they must be tagged and tasselled, in their dress, into all sorts of discomfort, merely for the sake of appearance. So, after standing it as long as we could, my wife and I determined we would try the country, for a while, and see what we could make of it. We kept our town-house, into which we returned for a winter or two; but gave it up for a permanent residence here, with which we are perfectly content. We see here all the friends we want to see; we all enjoy ourselves, and the children are healthy and happy." And this is but a specimen of thousands of families in the enjoyment of country life, including the families of men in the highest station, and possessed of sufficient wealth. Why, then, should the farmer ape the fashion, and the frivolity of the butterflies of town life, or permit his family to do it? It is the sheerest possible folly in him to do so. Yet, it is a folly into which many are imperceptibly gliding, and which, if not reformed, will ultimately lead to great discomfort to themselves, and ruin to their families. Let thoughtless people do as they choose. Pay no attention to their extravagance; but watch them for a dozen years, and see how they come out in their fashionable career; and observe the fate of their families, as they get "established" in the like kind of life. He who keeps aloof from such temptation, will then have no cause to regret that he has maintained his own steady course of living, and taught his sons and daughters that a due attention to their own comfort, with economical habits in everything relating to housekeeping, will be to their lasting benefit in future. But, we have said enough to convey the ideas in house-furnishing we would wish to impart; and the reader will do as he, or she, no doubt, would have done, had we not written a word about it--go and select such as may strike their own fancy. We received, a day or two since, a letter from a person at the west, entirely unknown to us, whose ideas so entirely correspond with our own, that we give it a place, as showing that a proper taste _does_ prevail among many people in this country, in regard to buildings, and house-furnishings; and which we trust he will pardon us for publishing, as according entirely with our own views, in conclusion: ----, ----, Ill., Dec. 18, 1851. DEAR SIR,--I received, a few days since, a copy of the first number of a periodical called the "Plough," into which is copied the elevation of a design for a farm house, purporting to be from a forthcoming work of yours, entitled "Rural Architecture." Although a perfect stranger to you, you will perhaps allow me to make one or two suggestions. I have seen no work yet, which seems fully to meet the wants of our country people in the matter of furniture. After having built their houses, they need showing how to furnish them in the cheapest, most neat, comfortable, convenient, and substantial manner. The furniture should be designed for use, not merely for show. I would have it plain, but not coarse--just enough for the utmost convenience, but nothing superfluous. The articles of furniture figured, and partially described in the late works on those subjects, are mostly of too elaborate and expensive a cast to be generally introduced into our country houses. There is too much _nabobery_ about them to meet the wants, or suit the taste of the plain American farmer. As to out-houses--the barn, stable, carriage and wagon-house, tool-house, piggery, poultry-house, corn-crib, and granary, (to say nothing of the "rabbit-warren" and "dovecote,")--are necessary appendages of the farm house. Now, as cheapness is one great desideratum with nearly all our new beginners in this western region, it seems to me, that such plans as will conveniently include the greatest number of these under the same roof, will be best suited to their necessities. I do not mean to be understood that, for the sake of the first cost, we should pay no regard to the appearance, or that we should slight our work, or suffer it to be constructed of flimsy or perishable materials: we should not only have an eye to taste and durability, but put in practice the most strict economy. I hope, in the above matters, you may be able to furnish something better suited to the necessities and means of our plain farmers, than has been done by any of your predecessors. I remain, &c., most respectfully yours, ----, ----. Having completed the series of Designs for dwelling houses, which we had proposed for this work, and followed them out with such remarks as were thought fitting to attend them, we now pass on to the second part of our subject: the out-buildings of the farm, in which are to be accommodated the domestic animals which make up a large item of its economy and management; together with other buildings which are necessary to complete its requirements. We trust that they will be found to be such as the occasion, and the wants of the farmer may demand; and in economy, accommodation, and extent, be serviceable to those for whose benefit they are designed. AN APIARY, OR BEE-HOUSE. Every farmer should keep bees--provided he have pasturage for them, on his own land, or if a proper range for their food and stores lie in his immediate vicinity. Bees are, beyond any other domestic _stock_, economical in their keeping, to their owners. Still they require care, and that of no inconsiderable kind, and skill, in their management, not understood by every one who attempts to rear them. They ask no food, they require no assistance, in gathering their daily stores, beyond that of proper housing in the cheapest description of tenement, and with that they are entirely content. Yet, without these, they are a contingent, and sometimes a troublesome appendage to the domestic stock of the farm. We call them _domestic_. In one sense they are so; in another, they are as wild and untamed as when buzzing and collecting their sweets in the vineyard of Timnath, where the mighty Sampson took their honey from the carcass of the dead lion; or, as when John the Baptist, clothed with camel's hair, ate "locusts and wild honey" in the arid wastes of Palestine. Although kept in partial bondage for six thousand years, the ruling propensity of the bee is to seek a home and shelter in the forest, when it emerges in a swarm from the parent hive; and no amount of domestic accommodation, or kindness of treatment, will induce it willingly to migrate from its nursery habitation to another by its side, although provided with the choicest comforts to invite its entrance. It will soon fly to the woods, enter a hollow and dilapidated tree, and carve out for itself its future fortunes, amid a world of labor and apparent discomfort. The bee, too, barring its industry, patience, and sweetened labors, is an arrant thief--robbing its nearest neighbors, with impunity, when the strongest, and mercilessly slaughtering its weaker brethren, when standing in the way of its rapacity. It has been extolled for its ingenuity, its patience, its industry, its perseverance, and its virtue. Patience, industry, and perseverance it has, beyond a doubt, and in a wonderful degree; but ingenuity, and virtue, it has none, more than the spider, who spins his worthless web, or the wasp, who stings you when disturbing his labors. Instinct, the bee has, like all animals; but of kind feeling, and gratitude, it has nothing; and with all our vivid nursery remembrance of good Doctor Watts' charming little hymn-- "How doth the little busy bee," &c. &c., we have long ago set it down as incorrigible to kind treatment, or charitable sympathy, and looked upon it simply as a thing to be treated kindly for the sake of its labors, and as composing one of that delightful family of domestic objects which make our homes attractive, pleasant, and profitable. The active labors of the bee, in a bright May or June morning, as they fly, in their busy order, back and forth from their hives, or the soothing hum of their playful hours, in a summer's afternoon, are among the most delightful associations of rural life; and as a luxury to the sight, and the ear, they should be associated with every farmer's home, and with every laborer's cottage, when practicable. And as their due accommodation is to be the object of our present writing, a plan is presented for that object. In many of the modern structures held out for imitation, the bee-house, or apiary, is an expensive, pretentious affair, got up in an ambitious way, with efforts at style, in the semblance of a temple, a pagoda, or other absurdity, the very appearance of which frightens the simple bee from its propriety, and in which we never yet knew a colony of them to become, and remain successful. The insect is, as we have observed, wild and untamable--a savage in its habits, and rude in its temper. It rejects all cultivated appearances, and seeks only its own temporary convenience, together with comfortable room for its stores, and the increase of its kind; and therefore, the more rustic and simple its habitation, the better is it pleased with its position. [Illustration: APIARY.] The bee-house should front upon a sheltered and sunny aspect. It should be near the ground, in a clean and quiet spot, free from the intrusion of other creatures, either human or profane, and undisturbed by noisome smells, and uncouth sounds--for it loathes all these instinctively, and loves nothing so much as the wild beauty of nature itself. The plan here presented is of the plainest and least expensive kind. Nine posts, or crutches, are set into the ground sufficiently deep to hold them firm, and to secure them from heaving out by the frost. The distance of these posts apart may be according to the size of the building, and to give it strength enough to resist the action of the wind. The front posts should be 9 feet high, above the ground; the rear posts should be 7 feet--that a man, with his hat on, may stand upright under them--and 6 feet from the front line. The two end posts directly in the rear of the front corner posts, should be 3 feet back from them, and on a line to accommodate the pitch of the roof from the front to the rear. A light plate is to be fitted on the top line of the front posts; a plate at each end should run back to the posts in rear, and then another cross-plate, or girt, from each one of these middle posts, to the post in rear of all, to meet the plate which surmounts this rear line of posts; and a parallel plate, or rafter, should be laid from the two intermediate posts at the ends, to connect them, and for a central support to the roof. Intermediate central posts should also be placed opposite those in front, to support the central plate, and not exceeding 12 feet apart. A shed roof, of boards, or shingles, tightly laid, should cover the whole, sufficiently projecting over the front, rear, and sides, to give the house abundant shelter, and make it architecturally agreeable to the eye--say 12 to 18 inches, according to its extent. A corner board should drop two feet below the plate, with such finish, by way of ornament, as may be desirable. The ends should be tightly boarded up against the weather, from bottom to top. The rear should also be tightly boarded, from the bottom up to a level with the stand inside, for the hives, and from 15 to 18 inches above that to the roof. Fitted into the space thus left in the rear, should be a light, though substantial, swing door, hung from the upper boarding, made in sections, extending from one post to the other, as the size of the house may determine, and secured with hooks, or buttons, as may be convenient. The outside of the structure is thus completed. The inside arrangement for the hives, may be made in two different ways, as the choice of the apiarian may govern in the mode in which his hives are secured. The most usual is the _stand_ method, which may be made thus: At each angle, equidistant, say 18 to 24 inches, inside, from the rear side and ends of the building--as shown in the ground plan--and opposite to each rear and end post, suspend perpendicularly a line of stout pieces of two-inch plank, 4 inches wide, well spiked on to the rafters above, reaching down within two feet of the ground--which is to hold up the bottom of the stand on which the hives are to rest. From each bottom end of these suspended strips, secure another piece of like thickness and width, horizontally back to the post in rear of it, at the side and ends. Then, lengthwise the building, and turning the angles at the ends, and resting on these horizontal pieces just described, lay other strips, 3�2 inches, set edgewise--one in front, and another in rear, inside each post and suspended strip, and close to it, and secured by heavy nails, so that there shall be a double line of these strips on a level, extending entirely around the interior, from the front at each end. This forms the hanging frame-work for the planks or boards on which the hives are to rest. Now for the hives. First, let as many pieces of sound one and a half, or two-inch plank as you have hives to set upon them, be cut long enough to reach from the boarding on the rear and ends of the building, to one inch beyond, and projecting over the front of the outer strip last described. Let these pieces of plank be well and smoothly planed, and laid lengthwise across the aforesaid strips, not less than four inches apart from each other--if a less number of hives be in the building than it will accommodate at four inches apart, no matter how far apart they may be--these pieces of plank are the _ferms_ for the hives, on which they are to sit. And, as we have for many years adopted the plan now described, with entire success, a brief description is given of our mode of hive, and the process for obtaining the surplus honey. We say surplus, for destroying the bees to obtain their honey, is a mode not at all according to our notions of economy, or mercy; and we prefer to take that honey only which the swarm may make, after supplying their own wants, and the stores for their increasing family. This process is given in the report of a committee of gentlemen appointed by the New York State Agricultural Society, on a hive which we exhibited on that occasion, with the following note attached, at their show at Buffalo, in 1848: "I have seen, examined, and used several different plans of _patent_ hive, of which there are probably thirty invented, and used, more or less. I have found all which I have ever seen, unsatisfactory, not carrying out in full, the benefits claimed for them. "The bee works, and lives, I believe, solely by instinct. I do not consider it an inventive, or very ingenious insect. To succeed well, its accommodations should be of the _simplest_ and _securest_ form. Therefore, instead of adopting the complicated plans of many of the patent hives, I have made, and used a simple box, like that now before you, containing a cube of one foot square _inside_--made of one and a quarter inch sound pine plank, well jointed and planed on all sides, and put together perfectly tight at the joints, with white lead ground in oil, and the inside of the hive at the bottom champered off to three-eighths of an inch thick, with a door for the bees in front, of four inches long by three-eighths of an inch high. I do this, that there may be a thin surface to come in contact with the shelf on which they rest, thus preventing a harbor for the bee-moth. (I have never used a patent hive which would exclude the bee-moth, nor any one which would so well do it as this, having never been troubled with that scourge since I used this tight hive.) On the top of the hive, an inch or two from the front, is made a passage for the bees, of an inch wide, and six to eight inches long, to admit the bees into an upper hive for surplus honey, (which passage is covered, when no vessel for that purpose is on the top.) For obtaining the honey, I use a common ten or twelve-quart water pail, inverted, with the bail turned over, in which the bees deposit their surplus, like the sample before you. The pail will hold about twenty pounds of honey. This is simple, cheap, and expeditious; the pail costing not exceeding twenty-five cents, is taken off in a moment, the bail replaced, and the honey ready for transportation, or market, and _always in place_. If there is time for more honey to be made, (my bees made two pails-full in succession this year,) another pail can be put on at once. "Such, gentlemen, in short, is my method. I have kept bees about twenty years. I succeed better on this plan than with any other." In addition to this, our hives are painted white, or other light color, on the outside, to protect them from warping, and as a further security against the bee-moth, or miller, which infests and destroys so many carelessly-made hives, as to discourage the efforts of equally careless people in keeping them. Inside the hive, on each end, we fasten, by shingle nails, about half-way between the bottom and top, a small piece of half-inch board, about the size of a common window button, and with a like notch in it, set upward, but stationary, on which, when the hive is to receive the swarm, a stick is laid across, to support the comb as it is built, from falling in hot weather. At such time, also, when new, and used for the first time, the under-side of the top is scratched with the tines of a table fork, or a nail, so as to make a rough surface, to which the new comb can be fastened. In addition to the pails on the top of the hives, to receive the surplus honey, we sometimes use a flat box, the size of the hive in diameter, and six or seven inches high _inside_, which will hold twenty-five to thirty pounds of honey. The pails we adopted as an article of greater convenience for transporting the honey. The other plan of arranging the hives alluded to, is suspending them between the strips before described, by means of _cleats_ secured on to the front and rear sides of the hive, say two-thirds the way up from the bottom. In such case, the strips running lengthwise the house must be brought near enough together to receive the hives as hung by the _cleats_, and the bottom boards, or forms, must be much smaller than those already described, and hung with wire hooks and staples to the sides, with a button on the rear, to close up, or let them down a sufficient distance to admit the air to pass freely across them, and up into the hive--Weeks' plan, in fact, for which he has a patent, together with some other fancied improvements, such as chambers to receive the boxes for the deposit of surplus honey. This, by the way, is the best "patent" we have seen; and Mr. Weeks having written an ingenious and excellent treatise on the treatment of the bee, we freely recommend his book to the attention of every apiarian who wishes to succeed in their management. As a rule, we have no confidence in _patent_ hives. We have seen scores of them, of different kinds, have tried several of great pretension to sundry virtues--such as excluding moths, and other marvelous benefits--and, after becoming the victim of bee empirics to the tune of many a dollar, have thrown aside the gimcracks, and taken again to a common-sense method of keeping our bees, as here described. The bees themselves, we feel bound to say, seem to hold these patent-right habitations in quite as sovereign contempt as ourself, reluctantly going into them, and getting out of them at the first safe opportunity. But, as a treatise on bee-keeping is not a part of this present work, we must, for further information, commend the inquirer on that subject to some of the valuable treatises extant, on so prolific a subject, among which we name those of Bevan, Weeks, and Miner. The bee-house should be thoroughly whitewashed _inside_ every spring, and kept clean of cobwebs, wasp's nests, and vermin; and it may be painted outside, a soft and agreeable color, in keeping with the other buildings of the farm. Its premises should be clean, and sweet. The grass around should be kept mowed close. Low trees, or shrubbery, should stand within a few yards of it, that the new swarms may light upon them when coming out, and not, for want of such settling places, be liable to loss from flying away. It should, also, be within sight and hearing, and at no great distance from a continually-frequented room in the dwelling--perhaps the kitchen, if convenient, that, in their swarming season, they may be secured as they leave the parent hive. The apiary is a beautiful object, with its busy tenantry; and to the invalid, or one who loves to look upon God's tiny creatures, it may while away many an agreeable hour, in watching their labors--thus adding pleasure to profit. The cost of a bee-house, on the plan given, may be from ten to fifty dollars, according to the price of material, and the amount of labor expended upon it. It should not be an expensive structure, in any event, as its purpose does not warrant it. If a gimcrack affair be wanted, for the purposes of ornament, or expense, any sum of money may be squandered upon it which the fancy of its builder may choose to spare. AN ICE-HOUSE. Among the useful and convenient appendages to the farm and country family establishment, is the ice-house. Different from the general opinion which prevailed in our country before ice became so important an article of commerce, and of home consumption, the building which contains it should stand above-ground, instead of below it. And the plainer and more simple it can be constructed, the better. The position of the ice-house may be that which is most convenient to the dwelling, or to the wants of those who use it. If it can be placed beneath the shade of trees, it will so far be relieved from the influence of the sun; but it should be so constructed that sunshine will not affect the ice within it, even if it stand unsheltered; and as it has, by the ice-merchants of our eastern cities, who put up large quantities for exportation abroad, and others in the interior, who furnish ice in quantity for home consumption, been proved to be altogether the better plan to build the ice-house entirely above ground, we shall present no other mode of construction than this. It may be added, that five years' experience with one of our own building, has confirmed our opinion of the superiority of this over any other plan which may be adopted. The design here presented is of the most economical kind, yet sufficiently ornamental to make it an agreeable appendage to any family establishment. The size may be 12 feet square--less than that would be too small for keeping ice well--and from that up to any required extent. The idea here given is simply the _principle_ of construction. The posts should be full eight feet high above the ground, to where the plate of the roof is attached, and built thus: [Illustration: ICE-HOUSE.] Mark out your ground the size you require for the house; then, commencing at one corner, dig, opposite each other, a double set of holes, one foot deep, and two and a half feet apart, on each side of the intended building, say three feet equidistant, so that when the posts stand up they will present a double set, one and a half feet apart. Then set in your posts, which should be of oak, chestnut, or some lasting wood, and pack the earth firmly around them. If the posts are sawed, they may be 4�6 inches in size, set edgeways toward each other. If not sawed, they may be round sticks cut from the woods, or split from the body of a tree, quartered--but sizable, so as to appear decent--and the insides facing each other as they stand up, lined to a surface to receive the planking. Of course, when the posts are set in the ground, they are to show a square form, or skeleton of what the building is to be when completed. When this is done, square off the top of each post to a level, all round; then frame, or spike on to each line of posts a plate, say six inches wide, and four to six inches deep, and stay the two plates together strongly, so as to form a double frame. Now, plank, or board up closely the _inside_ of each line of posts, that the space between them shall be a fair surface. Cut out, or leave out a space for a door in the center of the side where you want it, two and a half or three feet wide, and six and a half feet high, and board up the inner partition sides of this opening, so as to form a door-casing on each side, that the space between the two lines of posts may be a continuous box all around. Then fill up this space between the posts with moist tan-bark, or saw-dust, well packed from the ground up to the plates; and the body of the house is inclosed, sun-proof, and air-proof, to guard the ice. Now lay down, inside the building, some sticks--not much matter what, so that they be level--and on them lay loose planks or boards, for a floor. Cover this floor with a coating of straw, a foot thick, and it is ready to receive the ice. For the roof, take common 3�4 joists, as rafters; or, in place of them, poles from the woods, long enough, in a pitch of full 35° from a horizontal line, to carry the roof at least four feet over the outside of the plates, and secure the rafters well, by pins or spikes, to them. Then board over and shingle it, leaving a small aperture at the top, through which run a small pipe, say eight inches in diameter--a stove-crock will do--for a ventilator. Then set in, 4 little posts, say two feet high--as in the design--throw a little four-sided, pointed cap on to the top of these posts, and the roof is done. If you want to ornament the under side of the roof, in a rude way--and we would advise it--take some pieces of 3�4 scantling, such as were used for the roof, if the posts are of sawed stuff--if not, rough limbs of trees from the woods, to match the rough posts of the same kind, and fasten them to the posts and the under side of the roof, by way of brackets, as shown in the design. When the ice is put into the house, a close floor of boards should be laid on joists, which rest on the plates, loosely, so that this floor can be removed when putting in ice, and that covered five or six inches deep with tan, or saw-dust--straw will do, if the other can not be had--and the inside arrangement is complete. Two doors should be attached to the opening, where the ice is put in and taken out; one on the inner side of the lining, and the other on the outer side, both opening out. Tan, saw-dust, or straw should also be placed on the top of the ice, when put in, so as to keep the air from it as much as possible; and as the ice is removed, it will settle down upon, and still preserve it. Care must be taken to have a drain under the floor of the house, to pass off the water which melts from the ice, as it would, if standing there, injure its keeping. It will be seen, that, by an error in the cut of the ground plan, the inside line of posts does not show, as in the outer line, which they should do; nor is the outside door inserted, as is shown in the elevation. These defects, however, will be rectified by the builder. We have given considerable thought to this subject, and can devise no shape to the building more appropriate than this, nor one cheaper in construction. It may be built for fifty to a hundred dollars, according to the cost of material and labor, and the degree of finish given to it. It is hardly worth while to expatiate upon the convenience and economy of an ice-house, to an American. Those who love well-kept meats, fruits, butter, milk, and various etceteras for the table, understand its utility well; to say nothing of the cooling draughts, in the way of drinks, in hot weather, to which it adds--when not taken to extremes--such positive luxury. We commend the ice-house, _well-filled_, most heartily, to every good country housekeeper, as a matter of convenience, economy, and luxury, adding next to nothing to the living expenses, and, as an appendage to the main buildings, an item of little cost, and a considerable degree of ornament. If an under-ground ice-house be preferred to the plan here shown, a side hill, or bank, with a northerly exposure, is the best location for it; and the manner of building should be mainly like this, for the body of the house. The roof, however, should be only two-sided, and the door for putting in and taking out the ice may be in the gable, on the ground level. The drainage under the floor, and precautions for keeping the ice, should be quite as thorough as we have described; as, otherwise, the earth surrounding it on three sides, at least, of the house, will be a ready conductor of warmth, and melt the ice with great rapidity. If the under-ground plan is adopted, but little more than the roof will show, and of course, be of little ornament in the way of appearance. THE ASH-HOUSE AND SMOKE-HOUSE. These two objects may, both for convenience and economy, be well combined under one roof; and we have thus placed them in connection. The building is an exceedingly simple structure, made of stone, or brick; the body 10 feet high, and of such size as may be desirable, with a simple roof, and a plain, hooded chimney. [Illustration: ASH HOUSE AND SMOKE HOUSE.] In the ground plan will be seen a brick, or stone partition--which may extend to such height as may be necessary to contain the bulk of ashes required for storage within it--on one side of the building, to which a door gives access. The opposite side, and overhead, is devoted to the smoke-house, in which the various girts and hooks may be placed, for sustaining the meats to be smoked. The building should be tied together by joists at the plates, properly anchored into the walls, to prevent their spreading. A stove, or pans, or neither, as the method of keeping the smoke alive may govern, can be placed inside, to which the chimney in the roof may serve as a partial escape, or not, as required. The whole process is so simple, and so easily understood, that further explanation is unnecessary. A great advantage that a house of this construction has, is the convenience of storing the smoked meats for an indefinite time, even through the whole season, keeping them dark, dry, and cool; and permitting, at any time, a smoke to be made, to drive out the flies, if they find their way into it. The ashes can, of course, be removed at any time, by the door at which they are thrown in. THE POULTRY-HOUSE. As poultry is an indispensable appendage to the farm, in all cases, the poultry-house is equally indispensable, for their accommodation, and for the most profitable management of the fowls themselves, and most convenient for the production of their eggs and young. Indeed, without well-arranged quarters for the fowls of the farm, they are exceedingly troublesome, and of doubtful profit; but with the proper buildings devoted to them exclusively, they become one of the most interesting and agreeable objects with which either the farm or the country house is associated. It is hardly worth while to eulogize poultry. Their merits and virtues are written in the hearts of all provident housekeepers; and their beauty and goodness are familiar to every son and daughter of the rural homestead. We shall, then, proceed at once to discuss their proper accommodation, in the cheapest and most familiar method with which we are acquainted. The hen-house--for hens (barn-door fowls, we mean) are the first and chief stock, of the kind, to be provided for, and with them most of the other varieties can be associated--should be located in a warm, sheltered, and sunny place, with abundant grounds about it, where they can graze--hens eat grass--and scratch, and enjoy themselves to their heart's content, in all seasons, when the ground is open and they _can_ scratch into, or range over its surface. Some people--indeed, a good many people--picket in their gardens, to keep hens _out_; but we prefer an enclosure to keep the hens _in_, at all seasons when they are troublesome, which, after all, is only during short seasons of the year, when seeds are planted, or sown, and grain and vegetables are ripening. Otherwise, they may range at will, on the farm, doing good in their destruction of insects, and deriving much enjoyment to themselves; for hens, on the whole, are happy things. [Illustration: POULTRY LAWN.] We here present the elevation of a poultry-house in perspective, to show the _principle_ which we would adopt in its construction, and which may be extended to any required length, and to which may be added any given area of ground, or yard-room, which the circumstances of the proprietor may devote to it. It is, as will be seen, of a most rustic appearance, and built as cheaply, yet thoroughly, as the subject may require. Its length, we will say, is 20 feet, its breadth 16, and its height 10 feet, made of posts set into the ground--for we do not like sills, and floors of wood, because rats are apt to burrow under them, which are their worst enemies--and boarded up, either inside or outside, as in the case of the ice-house previously described, though not double. Plates are laid on these posts, to connect them firmly together; and the rafters rest on the plates, as usual. The chamber floor is 9 feet high, above the ground, and may be used either for laying purposes by the fowls, or reserved as a storage-room for their feed. The roof is broadly drawn over the body of the building, to shelter it, and through the point of the roof, in the center, is a ventilator, with a covered top, and a vane significant of its purpose. It is also sufficiently lighted, with glass windows, into which our draughtsman has put the diamond-paned glass, contrary to our notions; but, as he had, no doubt, an eye to the "picturesque," we let it pass, only remarking, that if we were building the house on our own account, there should be no such nonsense about it. The front windows are large, to attract the warmth of the winter's sun. A section of picket fence is also attached, and trees in the rear--both of which are necessary to a complete establishment; the first, to secure the poultry in the contiguous yards, and the trees to give them shade, and even roosting-places, if they prefer such lodgings in warm weather--for which we consider them eminently wholesome. The wooden floor is dispensed with, as was remarked, to keep rid of the vermin. If the ground be gravelly, or sandy, it will be sufficiently dry. If a heavy or damp soil be used, it should be under-drained, which will effectually dry it, and be better for the fowls than a floor of either wood, brick, or stone. Doors of sufficient size can be made on the yard sides of the house, near the ground, for the poultry to enter either the living or roosting apartments, at pleasure, and hung with butts on the upper side, to be closed when necessary. INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door opens into the main living room. At each end, and in the rear, are tiers of boxes, one foot wide, one and a half feet long, and one and a half feet high--the lowest tier elevated two feet above the ground--and built one tier above the other, and snugly partitioned between, with a hole at one corner of each, ten inches high, and eight inches wide, for passing in to them; and a shelf, or passage-board, nine inches wide, in front. These are the nesting boxes, and should be kept supplied with short, soft straw, or hay orts, for that purpose. Hens love secrecy in their domestic economy, and are wonderfully pleased with the opportunity to hide away, and conceal themselves while laying. Indeed, such concealment, or the supposition of it, we have no doubt promotes fecundity, as it is well known that a hen _can_ stop laying, almost at pleasure, when disturbed in her regular habits and settled plans of life. Burns says-- "The best laid schemes of _mice_ and _men_ Gang aft agley;" and why not hen's? We think so. If turkeys be kept in the premises, the females can also be accommodated in these boxes, as they are fond of laying in company with the hens, and frequently in the same nests, only that they require larger entrances into them; or, a tier of boxes may be made on the ground, for their convenience. A door leads from the rear of this room into the roosting apartment, through which is a passage to the back side of the building, and a door opposite, leading out into the yard. On each side of this passage are roosts, rising, each behind and above the other, 18 inches apart. The lowest roosts may be three feet from the ground, and the highest six feet, that they may easily fly from one to the other; and in this way they may all be approached, to catch the fowls, when required. For the roosts, slender poles, two to three inches in diameter--small trees, cut from the woods, with the bark on, are the best--may be used; and they should be secured through augur holes in board slats suspended from the floor joists overhead. This apartment should be cleaned out as often as once a fortnight, both for cleanliness and health--for fowls like to be clean, and to have pure air. A flight of stairs may be made in one corner of the front room, to go into the chamber, if preferred; but a swing ladder, hung by one end, with hinges, to the joists above, is, for such purpose, a more cleanly mode of access; which, when not in use, may be hooked up to the under side of the floor above; and a trap door, shutting into the chamber floor, and also hung on hinges, will accommodate the entrance. For feeding troughs, we have seen many ingenious contrivances, and among them, possibly, a Yankee patent, or two; but all these we put aside, as of little account. A common segar box, or any other cast-off thing, that will hold their food, is just as good as the most complicated invention; and, in common feeding, there is no better mode than to scatter abroad their corn, and let them pick it up at their pleasure--when spread on a clean surface. We think, also, that, except for fattening poultry, stated hours of feeding are best for the birds themselves, and that they be fed only such quantity as they will pick up clean. Water should, if possible, be kept constantly by them; and if a small running stream could pass through the yard, all the better. If it be desirable to have fresh eggs during winter--and that is certainly a convenience--a box stove may be set in the living room, and properly protected by a grating around it, for warming the living apartment. It may be remarked, however, that this winter-laying of hens is usually a _forcing_ business. A hen will lay but about a given number of eggs in a year; say a hundred--we believe this is about the number which the most observant of poultry-keepers allow them--and what she lays in winter must be subtracted from the number she would otherwise lay in the spring, summer, or autumn. Yet a warm house will, laying, aside, keep the fowls with less food, and in greater comfort, than if cold, and left to their own natural warmth. There is usually little difficulty in keeping hens, turkies, ducks, and geese together, in the same inclosure, during winter and early spring, before the grass grows. But geese and turkies require greater range during the warm season than the others, and should have it, both for convenience to themselves and profit to their owners. For winter quarters, low shelters may be made for the water-fowls in the yards, and the turkies will frequently prefer to share the shelter of the hens, on the roosts in the house. Guinea-hens--cruel, vindictive things, as they are--should never be allowed within a common poultry yard. Always quarrelsome, and never quiet, they should take to the farmyard, with the cattle, where they may range at will, and take their amusement in fisticuffs with each other, at pleasure. Neither should peacocks be allowed to come into the poultry inclosures, during the breeding season; they are anything but amiable in their manners to other birds. With the care and management of the poultry department, after thus providing for their accommodation, it is not our province to interfere; that is a subject too generally understood, to require further remark. Nor need we discuss the many varieties of poultry which, at the present time, so arrest the attention of many of our good country people; and we will leave so important a subject to the meditations of the "New England Poultry Society," who have taken the gallinaceous, and other tribes under their special cognizance, and will, doubtless, in due time, illumine the world with various knowledge in this department of rural economy, not yet "dreamt of in our philosophy." The recently published poultry books, too, with an amplitude and particularity in the discussion of the different breeds and varieties, which shuts all suspicions of _self-interest_ into the corner, have given such a fund of information on the subject, that any further inquiry may, with entire good will, be turned over to their pages. THE DOVECOTE. This is a department, in itself, not common among the farm buildings, in the United States; and for the reason, probably, that the domestic pigeon, or house-dove, is usually kept more for amusement than for profit--there being little actual profit about them--and is readily accommodated in the spare lofts of sheds and out-buildings devoted to other purposes. Pigeons, however, add to the variety and interest of the poultry department; and as there are many different breeds of them, they are general favorites with the juveniles of the family. Our present object is, not to propose any distinct building for pigeon accommodation; but to give them a location in other buildings, where they will be conveniently provided with room, and least annoying by their presence--for, be it known, they are oft-times a most serious annoyance to many crops of the farm, when kept in any considerable numbers, as well as in the waste and havoc they make in the stores of the barns and granaries. Although graceful and beautiful birds, generally clean and tidy in their personal habits out of doors, they are the filthiest housekeepers imaginable, and no building can be especially devoted to their use, if not often swept and cleaned, but what will soon become an intolerable nuisance within, and not much better without, and the ground immediately around the premises a dirty place. The common pigeon is a pugnacious cavalier, warring apparently upon mere punctilio, as we have often seen, in the distant strut-and-coo of a stranger bird to his mate, even if she be the very incarnation of "rejected addresses." On all these accounts, we would locate--unless a small and select family of fancy birds, perhaps--the pigeon stock at the principal farm-yard, and in the lofts of the cattle sheds, or the chambers of the stable. Wherever the pigeon accommodations are designed to be, a close partition should separate their quarters from the room occupied for other purposes, with doors for admission to those who have to do with them, in cleaning their premises, or to take the birds, when needed. A line of holes, five inches high, and four inches wide--the top of the hole slightly arched--should be made, say 18 inches apart, for the distance of room they are to occupy in the building. A foot above the top of these, another line may be made; and so on, tiering them up to the height intended to devote to them. A line of shelves, or lighting-boards, six to eight inches wide, should then be placed one inch below the bottom of these holes, and firmly braced beneath, and nailed to the weather-boarding of the house. Inside, a range of box should be made, of corresponding length with the line of holes, to embrace every entrance from the outside, 18 inches wide, and partitioned equidistant between each entrance, so as to give a square box of 18 inches to each pair of birds. The bottom board of each ascending tier of boxes will, of course, be the top of the boxes below, and these must be made _perfectly tight_, to prevent the offal of the upper ones from falling through, to the annoyance of their neighbors below. The back of these boxes should have a line of swing doors, hung with butts, or hinges, from the top, and fastened with buttons, or hooks, at the bottom, to allow admission, or examination, at any time, to those who have the care of them. This plan of door is indispensable, to clean them out--which should be done as often as once a week, or fortnight, at farthest--and to secure the birds as they may be wanted for the table, or other purposes--for it will be recollected that squabs, just feathered out, are considered a delicious dish, at the most sumptuous tables. It will be understood, that these boxes above described, are within a partitioned room, with a floor, in their rear, with sufficient space for the person in charge of them to pass along, and to hold the baskets, or whatever is to receive the offal of their boxes, as it is taken out. This offal is valuable, as a highly stimulating manure, and is sought for by the morocco tanners, at a high price--frequently at twenty-five cents a bushel. As pigeons are prolific breeders, laying and hatching six or seven times a year, and in warm climates oftener, they require a good supply of litter--short cut, soft straw is the best--which should be freely supplied at every new incubation, and the old litter removed. The boxes, too, should be in a warm place, snugly made, and well sheltered from the wind and driving storms; for pigeons, although hardy birds when grown, should be well protected while young. The common food of the pigeon is grain, of almost any kind, and worms, and other insects, which they pick up in the field. On the whole, they are a pleasant bird, when they can be conveniently kept, and are worth the trifling cost that their proper housing may demand. If our opinion were asked, as to the best, and least troublesome kind of pigeon to be kept, we should say, the finest and most hardy of the common kind, which are usually found in the collections throughout the country. But there are many _fancy_ breeds--such as the fan-tail, the powter, the tumbler, the ruffler, and perhaps another variety or two--all pretty birds, and each distinct in their appearance, and in some of their domestic habits. The most beautiful of the pigeon kind, however, is the Carrier. They are the very perfection of grace, and symmetry, and beauty. Their colors are always brilliant and changing, and in their flight they cleave the air with a rapidity which no other variety--indeed, which scarce any other bird, of any kind, can equal. History is full of examples of their usefulness, in carrying tidings from one country to another, in letters, or tokens, fastened to their necks or legs, for which they are trained by those who have thus used them; but which, now, the well known telegraph wire has nearly superseded. All these fancy breeds require great care in their management, to keep them pure in blood, as they will all mix, more or less, with the common pigeon, as they come in contact with them; and the selection of whatever kind is wanted to be kept, must be left to those who are willing to bestow the pains which their necessary care may demand. A PIGGERY. The hog is an animal for which we have no especial liking, be he either a tender suckling, nosing and tugging at the well-filled udder of his dam, or a well-proportioned porker, basking in all the plenitude of swinish luxury; albeit, in the use of his flesh, we affect not the Jew, but liking it moderately well, in its various preparations, as a substantial and savory article of diet. Still, the hog is an important item of our agricultural economy, and his production and proper treatment is a valuable study to all who rear him as a creature either of profit or convenience. In the western and southern states, a mild climate permits him to be easily reared and fed off for market, with little heed to shelter or protection; while in the north, he requires care and covering during winter. Not only this; in all places the hog is an unruly, mischievous creature, and has no business really in any other place than where he can he controlled, and kept at a moment's call. But, as tastes and customs differ essentially, with regard to his training and destiny, to such as agree with us in opinion, that his proper place is in the sty, particularly when feeding for pork, a plan of piggery is given, such as may be economical in construction, and convenient in its arrangement, both for the swine itself, and him who has charge of him. The design here given, is for a building, 36 feet long, and 24 feet wide, with twelve-feet posts; the lower, or living room for the swine, 9 feet high, and a storage chamber above, for the grain and other food required for his keeping. The roof has a pitch of 40° from a horizontal line, spreading over the sides and gables at least 20 inches, and coarsely bracketed. The entrance front projects 6 feet from the main building, by 12 feet in length. Over its main door, in the gable, is a door with a hoisting beam and tackle above it, to take in the grain, and a floor over the whole area receives it. A window is in each gable end. A ventilator passes up through this chamber and the roof, to let off the steam from the cooking vats below, and the foul air emitted by the swine, by the side of which is the furnace-chimney, giving it, on the whole, as respectable an appearance as a pigsty need pretend to. [Illustration: PIGGERY.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. At the left of the entrance is a flight of stairs, (_b_,) leading to the chamber above. On the right is a small area, (_a_,) with a window to light it. A door from this leads into the main room, (_c_,) where stands a chimney, (_d_,) with a furnace to receive the fuel for cooking the food, for which are two kettles, or boilers, with wooden vats, on the top, if the extent of food demands them; these are secured with broad wooden covers, to keep in the steam when cooking. An iron valve is placed in the back flue of the furnace, which may fall upon either side, to shut off the fire from either of the kettles, around which the fire may revolve; or, the valve may stand in a perpendicular position, at will, if both kettles be heated at the same time. But, as the most economical mode is to cook one kettle while the other is in process of feeding out, and _vice versa_, scarcely more than one at a time will be required in use. Over each kettle is a sliding door, with a short spout to slide the food into them, when wanted. If necessary, and it can be conveniently done, a well may be sunk under this room, and a pump inserted at a convenient place; or if equally convenient, a pipe may bring the water in from a neighboring stream, or spring. On three sides of this room are feeding pens, (_e_,) and sleeping partitions, (_f_,) for the swine. These several apartments are accommodated with doors, which open into separate yards on the sides and in rear, or a large one for the entire family, as may be desired. CONSTRUCTION. The frame of this building is of strong timber, and stout for its size. The sills should be 8 inches square, the corner posts of the same size, and the intermediate posts 8�6 inches in diameter. In the center of these posts, grooves should be made, 2 inches wide, and deep, to receive the _plank_ sides, which should be 2 inches thick, and let in from the level of the chamber by a flush cutting for that purpose, out of the grooves inside, thus using no nails or spikes, and holding the planks tight in their place, that they may not be rooted out, or rubbed off by the hogs, and the inner projection of the main posts left to serve as rubbing posts for them--for no creature so loves to rub his sides, when fatting, as a hog, and this very natural and praiseworthy propensity should be indulged. These planks, like the posts, should, particularly the lower ones, be of _hard_ wood, that they may not be eaten off. Above the chamber floor, thinner planks may be used, but all should be well jointed, that they may lie snug, and shut out the weather. The center post in the floor plan of the engraving is omitted, by mistake, but it should stand there, like the others. Inside posts at the corners, and in the sides of the partitions, like the outside ones, should be also placed and grooved to receive the planking, four and a half feet high, and their upper ends be secured by tenons into mortices in the beams overhead. The troughs should then, if possible, be made of _cast iron_, or, in default of that, the hardest of white oak plank, strongly spiked on to the floor and sides; and the apartment may then be called hog-proof--for a more unquiet, destructive creature, to a building in which he is confined, does not live, than the hog. The slide, or spout to conduct the swill and other feed from the feeding-room into the trough, should be inserted through the partition planks, with a steep _slant_ the whole length of the trough, that the feed may be readily thrown into any or all parts of it. This slide should be of two-inch white-oak plank, and bound along the bottom by a strip of hoop-iron, to prevent the pigs from eating it off--a habit they are prone to; then, firmly spiked down to the partition planks, and through the ends, to the adjoining studs, and the affair is complete. With what experience we have had with the hog, and that by no means an agreeable one, we can devise no better method of accommodation than this here described, and it certainly is the cheapest. But the timber and lumber used must be sound and strong; and then, properly put together, it may defy their most destructive ingenuity. Of the separate uses to which the various apartments may be put, nothing need be said, as the circumstances of every farmer will best govern them. One, to three hundred dollars, according to price of material and labor, will build this piggery, besides fitting it up with furnace and boilers. It may be contracted, or enlarged in size, as necessity may direct; but no one, with six to twenty porkers in his fatting pens, a year, will regret the expense of building a convenient appurtenance of this kind to his establishment. A word may be pardoned, in relation to the too universal practice of permitting swine to prowl along the highways, and in the yards and lawns of the farm house. There is nothing so slovenly, wasteful, and destructive to one's thrift, and so demoralizing, in a small way, as is this practice. What so revolting to one, of the least tidy nature whatever, as a villainous brute, with a litter of filthy pigs at her heels, and the slimy ooze of a mud-puddle reeking and dripping from their sides? See the daubs of mud marking every fence-post, far and near, along the highway, or where-ever they run! A burrow is rooted up at every shady point, a nuisance at every corner you turn, and their abominable snouts into everything that is filthy, or obscene--a living curse to all that is decent about them. An Ishmaelite among the farm stock, they are shunned and hated by every living thing, when at large. But, put the creature in his pen, with a ring in his nose, if permitted to go into the adjoining yard, and comfortably fed, your pig, if of a civilized breed, is a quiet, inoffensive--indeed, gentlemanly sort of animal; and as such, he is entitled to our toleration--regard, we cannot say; for in all the pages of our reading, we learn, by no creditable history, of any virtuous sympathies in a hog. FARM BARNS. The farm barn, next to the farm house, is the most important structure of the farm itself, in the Northern and Middle States; and even at the south and southwest, where less used, they are of more importance in the economy of farm management than is generally supposed. Indeed, to our own eyes, a farm, or a plantation appears incomplete, without a good barn accommodation, as much as without good household appointments--and without them, no agricultural establishment can be complete in all its proper economy. The most _thorough_ barn structures, perhaps, to be seen in the United States, are those of the state of Pennsylvania, built by the German farmers of the lower and central counties. They are large, and expensive in their construction; and, in a strictly economical view, perhaps more costly than required. Yet, there is a substance and durability in them, that is exceedingly satisfactory, and, where the pecuniary ability of the farmer will permit, may well be an example for imitation. In the structure of the barn, and in its interior accommodation, much will depend upon the branches of agriculture to which the farm is devoted. A farm cultivated in grain chiefly, requires but little room for stabling purposes. Storage for grain in the sheaf, and granaries, will require its room; while a stock farm requires a barn with extensive hay storage, and stables for its cattle, horses, and sheep, in all climates not admitting such stock to live through the winter in the field, like the great grazing states west of the Alleghanies. Again, there are wide districts of country where a mixed husbandry of grain and stock is pursued, which require barns and out-buildings accommodating both; and to supply the exigencies of each, we shall present such plans as may be appropriate, and that may, possibly, by a slight variation, be equally adapted to either, or all of their requirements. It may not be out of place here, to remark, that many _designers_ of barns, sheds, and other out-buildings for the accommodation of farm stock, have indulged in fanciful arrangements for the convenience and comfort of animals, which are so complicated that when constructed, as they sometimes are, the practical, common-sense farmer will not use them; and, in the _learning_ required in their use, are altogether unfit for the use and treatment they usually get from those who have the daily care of the stock which they are intended for, and for the rough usage they receive from the animals themselves. A very pretty, and a very plausible arrangement of stabling, and feeding, and all the etceteras of a barn establishment, may be thus got up by an ingenious theorist at the fireside, which will work to a charm, as he dilates upon its good qualities, untried; but, when subjected to experiment will be utterly worthless for practical use. All this we, in our practice, have gone through; and after many years experience, have come to the conclusion that the simplest plan of construction, consistent with an economical expenditure of the material of food for the consumption of stock, is by far the most preferable. Another item to be considered in this connection, is the comparative value of the stock, the forage fed to them, and the _labor_ expended in feeding and taking care of them. We will illustrate: Suppose a farm to lie in the vicinity of a large town, or city. Its value is, perhaps, a hundred dollars an acre. The hay cut upon it is worth fifteen dollars a ton, at the barn, and straw, and coarse grains in proportion, and hired labor ten or twelve dollars a month. Consequently, the manager of this farm should use all the economy in his power, by the aid of cutting-boxes, and other machinery, to make the least amount of forage supply the wants of his stock; and the internal economy of his barn arranged accordingly; because labor is his cheapest item, and food the dearest. Then, for any contrivance to work up his forage the closest--by way of machinery, or manual labor--by which it will serve the purposes of keeping his stock, is true economy; and the making, and saving of manures is an item of the first importance. His buildings, and their arrangements throughout, should, on these accounts, be constructed in accordance with his practice. If, on the other hand, lands are cheap and productive, and labor comparatively dear, a different practice will prevail. He will feed his hay from the mow, without cutting. The straw will be either stacked out, and the cattle turned to it, to pick what they like of it, and make their beds on the remainder; or, if it is housed, he will throw it into racks, and the stock may eat what they choose. It is but one-third, or one-half the labor to do this, that the other mode requires, and the saving in this makes up, and perhaps more than makes up for the increased quantity of forage consumed. Again, climate may equally affect the mode of winter feeding the stock. The winters may be mild. The hay may be stacked in the fields, when gathered, or put into small barns built for hay storage alone; and the manure, scattered over the fields by the cattle, as they are fed from either of them, may be knocked to pieces with the dung-beetle, in the spring, or harrowed and bushed over the ground; and with the very small quantity of labor required in all this, such practice will be more economical than any other which can be adopted. It is, therefore, a subject of deliberate study with the farmer, in the construction of his out-buildings, what plans he shall adopt in regard to them, and their fitting up and arrangement. With these considerations before us, we shall submit such plans of barn structures as may be adapted for general use, where shelters for the farm crops, and farm stock, are required; and which may, in their interior arrangement, be fitted for almost any locality of our country, as the judgment and the wants of the builder may require. DESIGN I. This is a design of barn partially on the Pennsylvania plan, with under-ground stables, and a stone-walled basement on three sides, with a line of posts standing open on the yard front, and a wall, pierced by doors and windows, retreating 12 feet under the building, giving, in front, a shelter for stock. Two sheds, by way of wings, are run out to any desired length, on each side. The body of this barn, which is built of wood, above the basement, is 60�46 feet; the posts 18 feet high, above the sills; the roof is elevated at an angle of 40° from a horizontal line, and the gables hooded, or truncated, 14 feet wide at the verge, so as to cover the large doors at the ends. The main roof spreads 3 to 4 feet over the body of the barn, and runs from the side eaves in a _straight_ line, different from what is shown in the engraving, which appears of a gambrel or hipped fashion. The sides are covered with boards laid vertically, and battened with narrow strips, 3 inches wide. The large doors in the ends are 14 feet wide, and 14 feet high. A slatted blind window is in each gable, for ventilation, and a door, 9�6 feet, on the yard side. [Illustration] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. A main floor, _A_, 12 feet wide, runs the whole length through the center of the barn. _S, S_, are the large doors. _H, H,_ are trap doors, to let hay or straw down to the alleys of the stables beneath. _B_, is the principal bay for hay storage, 16 feet wide, and runs up to the roof. _C_, is the bay, 26�16 feet, for the grain mow, if required for that purpose. D, is a granary, 13�16 feet, and 8 feet high. _E_, a storage room for fanning mill, cutting-box, or other machinery, or implements, of same size and height as the granary. _F_, is a passage, 8 feet wide, leading from the main floor to the yard door, through which to throw out litter. Over this passage, and the granary, and store-room, may be stored grain in the sheaf, or hay. The main floor will accommodate the thrashing-machine, horse-power, cutting box, &c., &c., when at work. A line of movable sleepers, or poles, may be laid across the floor, 10 feet above it, on a line of girts framed into the main posts, for that purpose, over which, when the sides of the barn are full, either hay or grain may be deposited, up to the ridge of the roof, and thus afford large storage. And if the demands of the crops require it, after the sides and over the floor is thus filled, the floor itself may, a part of it, be used for packing away either hay or grain, by taking off the team after the load is in, and passing them out by a retreating process, on the side of the cart or wagon; and the vehicle, when unloaded, backed out by hand. We have occasionally adopted this method, when crowded for room for increased crops, to great advantage. It requires somewhat more labor, to be sure, but it is much better than stacking out; and a well-filled barn is a good sight to look upon. [Illustration: MAIN FLOOR PLAN.] Underneath the body of the barn are the stables, root cellar, calf houses, or any other accommodation which the farm stock may require; but, for the most economical objects, is here cut up into stables. At the ends, _l, l_, are passages for the stock to go into their stalls; and also, on the sides, for the men who attend to them. The main passage through the center double line of stalls is 8 feet wide; and on each side are double stalls, 6½ feet wide. From the two end walls, the cattle passages are 5 feet wide, the partition between the stalls running back in a _slant_, from 5 feet high at the mangers to the floor, at that distance from the walls. The mangers, _j, j_, are 2 feet wide, or may be 2½ feet, by taking an additional six inches out of the rear passage. The passage is, between the mangers, 3 feet wide, to receive the hay from the trap doors in the floor above. [Illustration: UNDER-GROUND PLAN AND YARD.] The most economical plan, for room in tying cattle in their stalls, is to fasten the rope, or chain, whichever is used, (the wooden stanchion, or _stanchel_, as it is called, to open and shut, enclosing the animal by the neck, we do not like,) into a ring, which is secured by a strong staple into the post which sustains the partition, just at the top of the manger, on each side of the stall. This prevents the cattle in the same stall from interfering with each other, while the partition effectually prevents any contact from the animals on each side of it, in the separate stalls. The bottom of the mangers, for grown cattle, should be a foot above the floor, and the top two and a half feet, which makes it deep enough to hold their food; and the whole, both sides and bottom, should be made of two-inch, sound, strong plank, that they may not be broken down. The back sides of the stalls, next the feeding alleys, should be full 3½ feet high; and if the cattle are large, and disposed to climb into their mangers with their fore-feet, as they sometimes do, a pole, of 2½ or 3 inches in diameter, should be secured across the front of the stall, next the cattle, and over the mangers--say 4½ feet above the floor, to keep them out of the manger, and still give them sufficient room for putting their heads between that and the top of the manger, to get their food. Cattle thus secured in double stalls, take up less room, and lie much warmer, than when in single stalls; besides, the expense of fitting them up being much less--an experience of many years has convinced us on this point. The doors for the passage of the cattle in and out of the stables, should be five feet wide, that they may have plenty of room. In front of these stables, on the outside, is a line of posts, the feet of which rest on large flat stones, and support the outer sill of the barn, and form a recess, before named, of 12 feet in width, under which may be placed a line of racks, or mangers for outside cattle, to consume the orts, or leavings of hay rejected by the in-door stock; or, the manure may be housed under it, which is removed from the stables by wheel-barrows. The low line of sheds which extend from the barn on each side of the yard, may be used for the carts, and wagons of the place; or, racks and mangers may be fitted up in them, for outside cattle to consume the straw and coarse forage; or, they may be carried higher than in our plan, and floored overhead, and hay, or other food stored in them for the stock. They are so placed merely to give the idea. There may be no more fitting occasion than this, perhaps, to make a remark or two on the subject of managing stock in stables of any kind, when kept in any considerable numbers; and a word may not be impertinent to the subject in hand, as connected with the construction of stables. There is no greater benefit to cattle, after coming into winter quarters, than a straight-forward regularity in everything appertaining to them. Every animal should have its own particular stall in the stable, where it should _always be kept, and in no other_. The cattle should be fed and watered at certain hours of the day, as near as may be. When let out of the stables for water, unless the weather is very pleasant, when they may be permitted to lie out an hour or two, they should be immediately put back, and not allowed to range about with the outside cattle. They are more quiet and contented in their stables than elsewhere, and eat less food, than if permitted to run out; and are every way more comfortable, if properly bedded and attended to, as every one will find, on trying it. The habit of many people, in turning their cattle out of the stables in the morning, in all weathers--letting them range about in a cold yard, hooking and thorning each other--is of no possible benefit, unless to rid themselves of the trouble of cleaning the stables, which pays twice its cost in the saving of manure. The outside cattle, which occupy the yard, are all the better, that the stabled ones do not interfere with them. They become habituated to their own quarters, as the others do to their's, and all are better for being each in their own proper place. It may appear a small matter to notice this; but it is a subject of importance, which every one may know who tries it. It will be seen that a driving way is built up to the barn doors at the ends; this need not be expensive, and will add greatly to the ease and convenience of its approach. It is needless to remark, that this barn is designed to stand on a shelving piece of ground, or on a slope, which will admit of its cellar stables without much excavation of the earth; and in such a position it may be economically built. No estimate is given of its cost, which must depend upon the price of materials, and the convenience of stone on the farm. The size is not arbitrary, but may be either contracted or extended, according to the requirements of the builder. [Illustration] DESIGN II. Here is presented the design of a barn built by ourself, about sixteen years since, and standing on the farm we own and occupy; and which has proved so satisfactory in its use, that, save in one or two small particulars, which are here amended, we would not, for a stock barn, alter it in any degree, nor exchange it for one of any description whatever. For the farmer who needs one of but half the size, or greater, or less, it may be remarked that the extent of this need be no hindrance to the building of one of any size--as the general _design_ may be adopted, and carried out, either in whole or in part, according to his wants, and the economy of its accommodation preserved throughout. The _principle_ of the structure is what is intended to be shown. The _main_ body of this barn stands on the ground, 100�50 feet, with eighteen-feet posts, and a broad, sheltering roof, of 40° pitch from a horizontal line, and truncated at the gables to the width of the main doors below. The sills stand 4 feet above the ground, and a raised driving way to the doors admits the loads of grain and forage into it. The manner of building the whole structure would be, to frame and put up the main building as if it was to have no attachment whatever, and put on the roof, and board up the gable ends. Then frame, and raise adjoining it, on the long sides, and on the rear end--for the opposite gable end to that, is the entrance front to the barn--a continuous lean-to, 16 feet wide, attaching it to the posts of the barn, strongly, by girts. These ranges of lean-to stand on the ground level, nearly--high enough, however, to let a terrier dog under the floors, to keep out the rats--but quite 3 feet below the sills of the barn. The outer posts of the lean-to's should be 12 feet high, and 12½ feet apart, from center to center, except at the extreme corners, which would be 16 feet. One foot below the roof-plates of the main building, and across the rear gable end, a line of girts should be framed into the posts, as a _rest_ for the upper ends of the lean-to rafters, that they may pass under, and a foot below the lower ends of the main roof rafters, to make a break in the roof of one foot, and allow a line of eave gutters under it, if needed, and to show the lean-to line of roof as distinct from the other. The stables are 7 feet high, from the lower floor to the girts overhead, which connect them with the main line of barn posts; thus giving a loft of 4 feet in height at the eaves, and of 12 feet at the junction with the barn. In this loft is large storage for hay, and coarse forage, and bedding for the cattle, which is put in by side windows, level with the loft floor--as seen in the plate. In the center of the rear, _end_ lean-to, is a large door, corresponding with the front entrance to the barn, as shown in the design, 12 feet high, and 14 feet wide, to pass out the wagons and carts which have discharged their loads in the barn, having entered at the main front door. A line of board, one foot wide, between the line of the main and lean-to roofs, is then nailed on, to shut up the space; and the rear gable end boarded down to the roof of the lean-to attached to it. The front end, and the stables on them vertically boarded, and battened, as directed in the last design; the proper doors and windows inserted, and the outside is finished. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN.] INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. Entering the large door, (_a_,) at the front end, 14 feet wide, and 14 feet high, the main floor (_g_,) passes through the entire length of the barn, and rear lean-to, 116 feet--the last 16 feet through the lean-to--and sloping 3 feet to the outer sill, and door, (_a_,) of that appendage. On the left of the entrance is a recess, (_e_,) of 20�18 feet, to be used as a thrashing floor, and for machinery, cutting feed, &c., &c.--5 feet next the end being cut off for a passage to the stable. Beyond this is a bay, (_b_,) 18�70 feet, for the storage of hay, or grain, leaving a passage at the further end, of 5 feet wide, to go into the further stables. This bay is bounded on the extreme left, by the line of outside posts of the barn. On the right of the main door is a granary, (_d_,) 10�18 feet, two stories high, and a flight of steps leading from the lower into the upper room. Beyond this is another bay, (_b_,) corresponding with the one just described on the opposite side. The passages at the ends of the bays, (_e_, _e_,) have steps of 3 feet descent, to bring them down on to a level with the stable floors of the lean-to. A passage in each of the two long side lean-to's, (_e_, _e_,) 3 feet wide, receives the hay forage for cattle, or other stock, thrown into them from the bays, and the lofts over the stables; and from them is thrown into the mangers, (_h_, _h_.) The two apartments in the extreme end lean-to, (_f_, _f_,) 34�16 feet each, may be occupied as a hospital for invalid cattle, or partitioned off for calves, or any other purpose. A calving house for the cows which come in during the winter, is always convenient, and one of these may be used for such purpose. The stalls, (_i_, _i_,) are the same as described in Design I, and back of them is the passage for the cattle, as they pass in and out of their stalls. The stable doors, (_j_, _j_,) are six in number. Small windows, for ventilation, should be cut in the rear of the stalls, as marked, and for throwing out the manure, with sliding board shutters. This completes the barn accommodation--giving twenty-eight double stalls, where fifty-six grown cattle may be tied up, with rooms for twenty to thirty calves in the end stables. If a larger stock is kept, young cattle may be tied up, with their heads to the bays, on the main floor, beyond the thrashing floor, which we practice. This will hold forty young cattle. The manure is taken out on a wheel-barrow, and no injury done to the floor. They will soon eat out a place where their forage can be put, and do no injury beyond that to the hay in the bays, as it is too closely packed for them to draw it out any farther. In this way we can accommodate more than a hundred head of cattle, of assorted ages. The hay in the bays may drop three feet below the level of the main floor, by placing a tier of rough timbers and poles across them, to keep it from the ground, and many tons of additional storage be thus provided. We have often stored one hundred and fifty tons of hay in this barn; and it will hold even more, if thoroughly packed, and the movable girts over the main floor be used, as described in Design I. The chief advantages in a barn of this plan are, the exceeding convenience of getting the forage to the stock. When the barn is full, and feeding is first commenced, with a hay knife, we commence on each side next the stables, on the top of the bays, cut a _well_ down to the alley way in front of the mangers, which is left open up to the stable roof. This opens a passage for the hay to be thrown into the alleys, and in a short time it is so fed out on each side, that, the sides of the main barn being open to them, the hay can be thrown along their whole distance, and fed to the cattle as wanted; and so at the rear end stables, in the five-foot alley adjoining them. If a root cellar be required, it may be made under the front part of the main floor, and a trap-door lead to it. For a milk dairy, this arrangement is an admirable one--we so used it for four years; or for stall-feeding, it is equally convenient. One man will do more work, so far as feeding is concerned, in this barn, than two can do in one of almost any other arrangement; and the yards outside may be divided into five separate inclosures, with but little expense, and still be large enough for the cattle that may want to use them. It matters not what kind of stock may be kept in this barn; it is convenient for all alike. Even sheep may be accommodated in it with convenience. But low, open sheds, inclosed by a yard, are better for them; with storage for hay overhead, and racks and troughs beneath. This barn is built of wood. It may be well constructed, with stone underpinning, without mortar, for $1,000 to $1,500, as the price of materials may govern. And if the collection of the water from the roofs be an object, cheap gutters to carry it into one or more cisterns may be added, at an expense of $200 to $300. As before observed, a barn may be built on this principle, of any size, and the stables, or lean-to's may only attach to one side or end; or they may be built as mere sheds, with no storage room over the cattle. The chief objection to stabling cattle in the _body_ of the barn is, the continual decay of the most important timbers, such as sills, sleepers, &c., &c., by the leakage of the stale, and manure of the cattle on to them, and the loss of so much valuable storage as they would occupy, for hay and grain. By the plan described, the stables have no attachment to the sills, and other durable barn timbers below; and if the stable sills and sleepers decay, they are easily and cheaply replaced with others. Taking it altogether, we can recommend no better, nor, as we think, so good, and so cheap a plan for a _stock_ barn, as this. We deem it unnecessary to discuss the subject of water to cattle yards, as every farm has its own particular accommodations, or inconveniences in that regard; and the subject of leading water by pipes into different premises, is too well understood to require remark. Where these can not be had, and springs or streams are not at hand, wells and pumps must be provided, in as much convenience as the circumstances of the case will admit. Water is absolutely necessary, and that in quantity, for stock uses; and every good manager will exercise his best judgment to obtain it. BARN ATTACHMENTS. It may be expected, perhaps, that in treating so fully as we have of the several kinds of farm building, a full cluster of out-buildings should be drawn and exhibited, showing their relative positions and accommodation. This can not be done, however, except as a matter of "fancy;" and if attempted, might not be suited to the purposes of a single individual, by reason of the particular location where they would be situated, and the accommodation which the buildings might require. Convenience of access to the barns, from the fields where the crops are grown, a like convenience to get out manures upon those fields, and a ready communication with the dwelling house, are a part of the considerations which are to govern their position, or locality. Economy in labor, in the various avocations at the barn, and its necessary attachments; and the greatest convenience in storage, and the housing of the various stock, grains, implements, and whatever else may demand accommodation, are other considerations to be taken into the account, all to have a bearing upon them. Compactness is always an object in such buildings, when not obtained at a sacrifice of some greater advantage, and should be one of the items considered in placing them; and in their construction, next to the arrangement of them in the most convenient possible manner for their various objects, a due regard to their architectural appearance should be studied. Such appearance, where their objects are apparent, can easily be secured. _Utility_ should be their chief point of expression; and no style of architecture, or finish, can be really _bad_, where this expression is duly consulted, and carried out, even in the humblest way of cheapness, or rusticity. We have heretofore sufficiently remarked on the folly of unnecessary pretension in the farm buildings, of any kind; and nothing can appear, and really be more out of place, than ambitious structures intended only for the stock, and crops. Extravagant expenditure on these, any more than an extravagant expenditure on the dwelling and its attachments, does not add to the _selling_ value of the farm, nor to its economical management, in a productive capacity; and he who is about to build, should make his proposed buildings a study for months, in all their different requirements and conveniences, before he commences their erection. Mistakes in their design, and location, have cost men a whole after life of wear-and-tear of temper, patience, and labor, to themselves, and to all who were about them; and it is better to wait even two or three years, to fully mature the best plans of building, than by hurrying, to mis-locate, mis-arrange, and miss, in fact, the very best application in their structure of which such buildings are capable. A word might also be added about barn-_yards_. The planning and management of these, also, depends much upon the course the farmer has to pursue in the keeping of his stock, the amount of waste litter, such as straw, &c., which he has to dispose of, and the demands of the farm for animal and composted manures. There are different methods of constructing barn-yards, in different parts of the country, according to climate and soils, and the farmer must best consult his own experience, the most successful examples about him, and the publications which treat of that subject, in its connection with farm husbandry, to which last subject this item more properly belongs. RABBITS. It may appear that we are extending our "Rural Architecture" to an undue length, in noticing a subject so little attended to in this country as Rabbit accommodations. But, as with other small matters which we have noticed, this may create a new source of interest and attachment to country life, we conclude to give it a place. It is a matter of surprise to an American first visiting England, to see the quantities of game which abound at certain seasons of the year in the London and other markets of that country, in contrast with the scanty supply, or rather no supply at all, existing in the markets of American cities. The reason for such difference is, that in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, every acre of the soil is appropriated to some profitable use, while we, from the abundance of land in America, select only the best for agricultural purposes, and let the remainder go barren and uncared for. Lands appropriated to the rearing of game, when fit for farm pasturage or tillage, is unprofitable, generally, with us; but there are thousands of acres barren for other purposes, that might be devoted to the breeding and pasturage of rabbits, and which, by thus appropriating them, might be turned to profitable account. All the preparation required is, to enclose the ground with a high and nearly close paling fence, and the erection of a few rude hutches inside, for winter shelter and the storage of their food. They will burrow into the ground, and breed with great rapidity; and in the fall and winter seasons, they will be fat for market with the food they gather from the otherwise worthless soil over which they run. Rocky, bushy, and evergreen grounds, either hill, dale, or plain, are good for them, wherever the soils are dry and friable. The rabbit is a gross feeder, living well on what many grazing animals reject, and gnawing down all kinds of bushes, briars, and noxious weeds. The common domestic rabbits are probably the best for market purposes, and were they to be made an object of attention, immense tracts of mountain land in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the New York and New England highlands could be made available for this object. Some may think this a small business. So is making pins, and rearing chickens, and bees. But there are an abundance of people, whose age and capacity are just fitted for it, and for want of other employment are a charge upon their friends or the public; and now, when our cities and large towns are so readily reached by railroads from all parts of the country, our farmers should study to apply their land to the production of everything that will find a profitable market. Things unthought of, a few years ago, now find a large consumption in our large cities and towns, by the aid of railroads; and we know of no good reason, why this production and traffic should not continue to an indefinite extent. When the breeding of rabbits is commenced, get a good treatise on the breeding and rearing of them, which may be found at many of the bookstores. As the rearing of rabbits, and their necessary accommodation, is not a subject to which we have given much personal attention, we applied to Francis Rotch, Esq., of Morris, Otsego county, New York, who is probably the most accomplished rabbit "fancier" in the United States, for information, with which he has kindly furnished us. His beautiful and high-bred animals have won the highest premiums, at the shows of the New York State Agricultural Society. He thus answers: "I now forward you the promised plan from Mr. Alfred Rodman, of Dedham, Massachusetts, which, I think, will give you the information you wish upon these subjects. "Rabbits kept for profit in the vicinity of a city, and where there are mills, may be raised at a very small cost; and when once known as an article of food, will be liberally paid for by the epicure, for their meat is as delicate as a chicken's, and their fat mild, and very rich. "I am surprised they are not more generally kept, as a source of amusement, and for the purposes of experiment. "There is, I think, in many, a natural fondness for animals, but not easily indulged without more room than is often to be found in city residences. Fowls, and pigeons, trespass on our neighbors, and are a frequent cause of trouble. This objection does not hold good against the rabbit, which occupies so small a space, that where there is an outhouse there may be a rabbitry. _English_ children are encouraged in their fondness for animals, as tending to good morals and good feelings, and as offering a _home_ amusement, in contradistinction to _street_ associations." [Illustration: Drawn from life, by Mr. FRANCIS ROTCH.] Mr. Rotch continues: "I have just finished the enclosed drawing of a 'fancy rabbit,' which I hope will answer your purpose, as an illustration of what the little animal should be in form, color, marking, and carriage, according to the decisions of the various societies in and out of London, who are its greatest admirers and patrons. These amateurs hold frequent meetings for its exhibition, at which premiums are awarded, and large prizes paid for such specimens as come up to their standard of excellence. This standard is, of course, conventional; and, as might be expected, is a combination of form and color very difficult to obtain--based, it is true, on the most correct principles of general breeding; but much of _fancy_ and beauty is added to complete the requisites of a prize rabbit. For instance, the head must be small and clean; the shoulders wide and full; the chest broad and deep; the back wide, and the loin large. Thus far, these are the characteristics of all really _good_ and _improved_ animals; to which are to be added, on the score of 'fancy,' an eye round, full, and bright; an ear _long_, broad, and pendant, of a soft, delicate texture, dropping nearly perpendicularly by the side of the head--this is termed its 'carriage.' The color must be in rich, unmixed _masses_ on the body, spreading itself over the back, side, and haunch, but breaking into spots and patches on the shoulder, called the 'chain;' while that on the back is known as the 'saddle.' The head must be full of color, broken with white on the forehead and cheeks; the marking over the bridge of the nose and down on both sides into the lips, should be dark, and in shape somewhat resembling a butterfly, from which this mark takes its name; the ear, however, must be uniform in color. Add to all this, a large, full dewlap, and you will have a rabbit fit to '_go in and win_.' "The most esteemed colors are black and white; yellow and white; tortoise-shell and white; blue and white, and gray and white. These are called 'broken colors,' while those of _one_ uniform color are called 'selfs.'" It will be observed that Mr. Rotch here describes a beautiful "fancy" variety of "lop-eared" rabbits, which he brought from England a few years since. They were, originally, natives of Madagascar. He continues: "The domestic rabbit, in all its varieties, has always been, and still is, a great favorite, in many parts of the European continent: "In Holland, it is bred with reference to color only, which must be a pure white, with dark ears, feet, legs, and tail; this distribution has a singular effect, but, withal, it is a pretty little creature. The French breed a long, rangy animal, of great _apparent_ size, but deficient in depth and breadth, and of course, wanting in constitution; no attention is paid to color, and its marking is matter of accident. The White Angola, with its beautiful long fur and red eyes, is also a great favorite in France. "In England, the rabbit formerly held the rank of 'farm stock!' and thousands of acres were exclusively devoted to its production; families were supported, and rents, rates, and taxes were paid from its increase and sale. The '_gray-skins_' went to the hatter, the '_silver-skins_' were shipped to China, and were dressed as furs; while the flesh was a favorite dish at home. This was the course pursued in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and many other counties, with their light sandy soils, before the more general introduction of root culture, and the rotation of crops, gave an increased value to such land. Since then, however, I remember visiting a farm of Lord Onslow's, in Surrey, containing about 1,400 acres. It was in the occupation of an eminent flock-master and agriculturist, who kept some hundreds of hutched rabbits for the sake of their manure, which he applied to his turnep crop; added to this, their skins and carcasses were quite an item of profit, notwithstanding the care of them required an old man and boy, with a donkey and cart. The food used was chiefly brewer's grains, miller's waste, bran and hay, with clover and roots, the cost of keeping not exceeding two pence a week. The hutches stood under a long shed, open on all sides, for the greater convenience of cleaning and feeding. I was told that the manure was much valued by the market gardeners round London, who readily paid 2s. 6d. a bushel at the rabbitries. These rabbitries are very numerous in all the towns and cities of England, and form a source of amusement or profit to all classes, from the man of fortune to the day laborer. Nor is it unfrequent that this latter produces a rabbit from an old tea-chest, or dry-goods box, that wins the prize from its competitor of the mahogany hutch or ornamental rabbitry. "The food of the rabbit embraces great variety, including grain of all kinds, bran, pea-chaff, miller's waste, brewer's grains, clover and other hay, and the various weeds known as plantain, dock, mallow, dandelion, purslain, thistles, &c., &c. "The rabbit thus easily conforms itself to the means, condition, and circumstances of its owner; occupies but little space, breeds often, comes early to maturity, and is withal, a healthy animal, requiring however, to be kept clean, and to be _cautiously_ fed with _succulent_ food, which must always be free from dew or rain--water is unnecessary to them when fed with 'greens.' My own course of feeding is, one gill of oats in the morning, with a medium-sized cabbage leaf, or what I may consider its _equivalent_ in any other vegetable food, for the rabbit in confinement must be, as already stated, cautiously fed with what is succulent. At noon, I feed a handfull of cut hay or clover chaff, and in the evening the same as in the morning. To does, when suckling, I give what they will eat of both green and dry food. The cost to me is about three cents per week, per head. "I by no means recommend this as the best, or the most economical mode of feeding, but it happens to suit my convenience. Were I in a town, or near mills, I should make use of other and cheaper substitutes. My young rabbits, when taken from the doe, say at eight, ten, or twelve weeks old, are turned out together till about six months old, when it becomes necessary to take them up, and put them in separate hutches, to prevent their fighting and destroying each other. The doe at that age is ready to breed; her period of gestation is about thirty-one or two days, and she produces from three or four to a dozen young at a 'litter'. It is not well to let her raise more than six, or even four at once--the fewer, the larger and finer the produce. "Young rabbits are killed for the table at any age, from twelve weeks to twelve months old, and are a very acceptable addition to the country larder. The male is not allowed to remain with the doe, lest he should destroy the young ones. "Hutches are made singly, or in stacks, to suit the apartment, which should be capable of thorough ventilation. The best size is about three feet long, two feet deep, and fourteen inches high, with a small apartment partitioned off from one end, nearly a foot wide, as a breeding place for the doe. A wire door forms the front, and an opening is left behind for cleaning; the floor should have a descent to the back of the hutch of two inches. All edges should be tinned, to save them from being gnawed. "Having now given the leading characteristics and qualities which constitute a good 'fancy lop-eared rabbit,' and its general management, allow me to remark on the striking difference observable between Americans and the people of many other countries, as to a fondness for animals, or what are termed 'fancy pets,' of and for which we, as a people, know and care very little. Indeed, we scarcely admit more than a selfish fellowship with the dog, and but too seldom does our attachment even for this faithful companion, place him beyond the reach of the _omnipotent dollar_. "The operatives, mechanics, and laborers, in other countries, seem to have a perfect passion for such pursuits, and take the greatest interest and pride in breeding and perfecting the lesser animals, though often obliged to toil for the very food they feed to them. Here, too, home influences are perceived to be good, and are encouraged by the employer, as supplying the place of other and much more questionable pursuits and tastes." We here present the elevation, and floor plan of Mr. Rodman's rabbitry, together with the front and rear views of the hutches within them: [Illustration: ELEVATION. MAIN FLOOR PLAN.] No. 1 is the gable end elevation of the building, with a door and window. No. 2 is the main-floor plan, or living room for the rabbits. EXPLANATION. A, the doe's hutches, with nest boxes attached. B, hutches three feet long, with movable partitions for the young rabbits; the two lower hutches are used for the stock bucks. C, a tier of grain boxes on the floor for feeding the rabbits--the covers sloping out toward the room. D, small trapdoor, leading into the manure cellar beneath. E, large trapdoor leading into root cellar. F, troughs for leading off urine from rear of hutches into the manure cellar at K, K. G, wooden trunk leading from chamber above No. 3, through this into manure cellar. H, trap opening into manure cellar. I, stairs leading into loft No. 3, with hinged trapdoor overhead; when open, it will turn up against the wall, and leave a passage to clear out the hutches. NOTE.--The grain boxes are one foot high in front, and fifteen inches at the back, with sloping bottoms, and sloping covers. The floors of the hutches have a slope of two inches back. The hutches are furnished, at the back of the floor, with pieces of zinc, to keep them free from the drippings from above. The hutches are 16 inches high, 3 feet long, and 2 feet deep. The foregoing plans and explanations might perhaps be sufficient for the guidance of such as wish to construct a rabbitry for their own use; but as a complete arrangement of all the rooms which may be conveniently appropriated to this object, to make it a complete thing, may be acceptable to the reader, we conclude, even at the risk of prolixity, to insert the upper loft, and cellar apartments, with which we have been furnished; hoping that our youthful friends will set themselves about the construction of a branch of rural employment so home-attaching in its associations. [Illustration: LOFT OR GARRET.] No. 3 is the loft or chamber story, next above the main floor. EXPLANATION. A, place for storing hay. B, stairs leading from below. C, room for young rabbits. D, trapdoor into trunk leading to manure cellar. E, partition four feet high. This allows of ventilation between the two windows, in summer, which would be cut off, were the partition carried all the way up. [Illustration: CELLAR.] No. 4 is the cellar under the rabbitry. EXPLANATION. A, manure cellar. B, root cellar. C, stairs leading to first, or main floor. D, stairs leading outside. E, window--lighting both rooms of cellar. No. 5 is a front section of rabbit hutches, eight in number, two in a line, four tiers high, one above another, with wire-screened doors, hinges, and buttons for fastening. A, the grain trough, is at the bottom. No. 6 is the floor section of the hutches, falling, as before mentioned, two inches from front to rear. [Illustration: FRONT OF HUTCH. REAR OF HUTCH.] A, is the door to lift up, for cleaning out the floors. B, is the zinc plate, to carry off the urine and _running_ wash of the floors. C, is the trough for carrying off this offal into the manure cellars, through the trunk, as seen in No. 2. No. 7 is a rear section of hutches, same as in No. 5, with the waste trough at the bottom leading into the trench before described, with the cross section, No. 8, before described in No. 6. A, a grated door at the back of the hutch, for ventilation in summer, and covered with a thin board in winter. B, a flap-door, four inches wide, which is raised for cleaning out the floor; under this door is a space of one inch, for passing out the urine of the rabbits. C, are buttons for fastening the doors. D, the backs of the bedrooms, without any passage out on back side. This matter of the rabbitry, and its various explanations, may be considered by the plain, matter-of-fact man, as below the dignity of people pursuing the _useful_ and _money-making_ business of life. Very possible. But many boys--for whose benefit they are chiefly introduced--and _men_, even, may do worse than to spend their time in such apparent trifles. It is better than going to a horse-race. It is better even than going to a trotting match, where _fast men_, as well as _fast_ horses congregate. It is better, too, than a thousand other places where boys _want_ to go, when they have nothing to interest them at home. One half of the farmer's boys, who, discontented at home, leave it for something more congenial to their feelings and tastes, do so simply because of the excessive dullness, and want of interest in objects to attract them there, and keep them contented. Boys, in America at least, are apt to be _smart_. So their parents think, at all events; and too smart they prove, to stay at home, and follow the beaten track of their fathers, as their continual migration from the paternal roof too plainly testifies. This, in many cases, is the fault of the parents themselves, because they neglect those little objects of interest to which the minds and tastes of their sons are inclined, and for want of which they _imagine_ more attractive objects abroad, although in the search they often fail in finding them. We are a progressive people. Our children are not always content to be what their fathers are; and parents must yield a little to "the spirit of the age" in which they live. And boys _pay_ too, as they go along, if properly treated. They should be made companions, not servants. Many a joyous, hearty spirit, who, when properly encouraged, comes out a whole man at one-and-twenty, if kept in curb, and harnessed down by a hard parent, leaves the homestead, with a curse and a kick, determined, whether in weal or in woe, never to return. Under a different course of treatment, he would have fixed his home either at his birthplace, or in its immediate vicinity, and in a life of frugality, usefulness, and comparative ease, blessed his parents, his neighborhood, and possibly the world, with a useful example--all, perhaps, grown out of his youthful indulgence in the possession of a rabbit-warren, or some like trifling matter. This may appear to be small morals, as well as small business. We admit it. But those who have been well, and indulgently, as well as methodically trained, may look back and see the influence which all such little things had upon their early thoughts and inclinations; and thus realize the importance of providing for the amusements and pleasures of children in their early years. The dovecote, the rabbitry, the poultry-yard, the sheep-fold, the calf-pen, the piggery, the young colt of a favorite mare, the yoke of yearling steers, or a fruit tree which they have planted, and nursed, and called it, or the fruit it bears, _their own_,--anything, in fact, which they can call _theirs_--are so many objects to bind boys to their homes, and hallow it with a thousand nameless blessings and associations, known only to those who have been its recipients. Heaven's blessings be on the family homestead! "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!" sung the imaginary maid of Milan, the beautiful creation of John Howard Payne, when returning from the glare and pomp of the world, to her native cottage in the mountains of Switzerland. And, although all out of date, and conventionally vulgar this sentiment may be _now_ considered, such is, or should be the subdued, unsophisticated feeling of all natives of the farm house, and the country cottage. We may leave the quiet roof of our childhood; we may mix in the bustling contentions of the open world; we may gain its treasures; we may enjoy its greatness, its honors, and its applause; but there are times when they will all fade into nothing, in comparison with the peace, and quietude, and tranquil happiness of a few acres of land, a comfortable roof, and contentment therewith! DAIRY BUILDINGS. Wherever the dairy is made an important branch of farm production, buildings for its distinct accommodation are indispensable. The dairy is as much a _manufactory_ as a cotton mill, and requires as much conveniences in its own peculiar line. We therefore set apart a building, on purpose for its objects; and either for cheese, or butter, separate conveniences are alike required. We commence with the [Illustration: CHEESE DAIRY HOUSE.] CHEESE DAIRY HOUSE. This building is one and a half stories high, with a broad, spreading roof of 45° pitch; the ground plan is 10 feet between joists, and the posts 16 feet high. An ice-house, made on the plan already described, is at one end, and a wood-shed at the opposite end, of the same size. This building is supposed to be erected near the milking sheds of the farm, and in contiguity to the feeding troughs of the cows, or the piggery, and adapted to the convenience of feeding the whey to whichever of these animals the dairyman may select, as both, or either are required to consume it; and to which it may be conveyed in spouts from the dairy-room. INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT. The front door is protected by a light porch, (_a_,) entering by a door, (_b_,) the main dairy room. The cheese presses, (_c_, _c_,) occupy the left end of the room, between which a passage leads through a door, (_l_,) into the wood-shed, (_h_,) open on all sides, with its roof resting on four posts set in the ground. The large cheese-table, (_d_,) stands on the opposite end, and is 3 feet wide. In the center of the room is a chimney, (_e_,) with a whey and water boiler, and vats on each side. A flight of stairs, (_f_,) leading into the storage room above, is in the rear. A door, (_b_,) on the extreme right, leads into the ice-house, (_g_.) There are four windows to the room--two on each side, front and rear. In the loft are placed the shelves for storing the cheese, as soon as sufficiently prepared on the temporary table below. This loft is thoroughly ventilated by windows, and the heat of the sun upon it ripens the cheese rapidly for market. A trapdoor, through the floors, over which is hung a tackle, admits the cheese from below, or passes it down, when prepared for market. The cheese house should, if possible, be placed on a sloping bank, when it is designed to feed the whey to pigs; and even when it is fed to cows, it is more convenient to pass it to them on a lower level, than to carry it out in buckets. It may, however, if on level ground, be discharged into vats, in a cellar below, and pumped out as wanted. A cellar is convenient--indeed, almost indispensable--under the cheese dairy; and water should be so near as to be easily pumped, or drawn, into the vats and kettles used in running up the curd, or for washing the utensils used in the work. When the milk is kept over night, for the next morning's curd, temporary tables may be placed near the ice-room, to hold the pans or tubs in which it may be set, and the ice used to temper the milk to the proper degree for raising the cream. If the dairy be of such extent as to require larger accommodation than the plan here suggested, a room or two may be partitioned off from the main milk and pressing-room, for washing the vessels and other articles employed, and for setting the milk. Every facility should be made for neatness in all the operations connected with the work. Different accommodations are required, for making the different kinds of cheese which our varied markets demand, and in the fitting up of the dairy-house, no _positive_ plan of arrangement can be laid down, suited alike to all the work which may be demanded. The dairyman, therefore, will best arrange all these for the particular convenience which he requires. The main plan, and style of building however, we think will be generally approved, as being in an agreeable architectural style, and of convenient construction and shape for the objects intended. THE BUTTER DAIRY. This, if pursued on the same farm with the cheese dairy, and at different seasons of the year, may be carried on in the lower parts of the same building. But as it is usually a distinct branch of business, when prosecuted as the chief object on a farm, it should have accommodations of its own kind, which should be fitted up specially for that purpose. We cannot, perhaps, suggest a better model of a building for the butter dairy, than the one just submitted for the cheese-house, only that there is no necessity for the upper story; and the posts of the main building should not stand more than nine feet above the sills. A good, walled cellar, well lighted, as a room for setting the milk, is indispensable, with a broad, open flight of steps, from the main floor above, into it. Here, too, should stand the stone slabs, where the butter is worked, and the churns, to be driven by hand, or water, or animal power, as the two latter may be provided, and introduced into the building by belt, shaft, or crank. If running water can be brought on to the milk-shelves, from a higher level, which, for this purpose, should have curbs two or three inches high on their sides, it can flow in a constant gentle current over them, among the pans, from a receiving vat, in which ice is deposited, to keep the milk at the proper temperature--about 55° Fahrenheit--for raising the cream; and if the quantity of milk be large, the shelves can be so arranged, by placing each tier of shelf lower than the last, like steps, that the water may pass among them all before it escapes from the room. Such a mode of applying water and ice, renders the entire process of cream-rising almost certain in all weathers, and is highly approved wherever it has been practiced. The low temperature of the room, by the aid of water and ice, is also beneficial to the butter packed in kegs, keeping it cool and sweet--as much like a spring-house as possible, in its operation. The washing and drying of pans, buckets, churns, and the heating of water, should all be done in the room above, where the necessary kettles are set, and kept from contact with the cool atmosphere of the lower room. The latter apartment should have a well-laid stone or brick floor, filled and covered with a strong cement of water lime, and sloping gradually to the outer side, where all the water may pass off by a drain, and everything kept sweet and clean. The buttermilk may, as in the case of the whey, in the cheese dairy, be passed off in spouts to the pigsty, which should not be far distant. As all this process of arrangement, however, must conform somewhat to the shape of the ground, the locality, and the facilities at hand where it may be constructed; it is hardly possible to give any one system of detail which is applicable to an uniform mode of structure; and much will be left to the demands and the skill of the dairyman himself, in the plan he may finally adopt. THE WATER RAM. As water, and that of a good quality, and in abundant quantity, is indispensable to the various demands of the farm, it is worth some pains to provide it in the most economical manner, and at the most convenient points for use. In level grounds, wells are generally dug, and the water drawn up by buckets or pumps. In a hilly country, springs, and streams from higher grounds, may be brought in by the aid of pipes, the water flowing naturally, under its own head, wherever it may be wanted, away from its natural stream. [Illustration: WATER RAM.] But, of all contrivances to elevate water from a _lower_ fountain, or current, to a _higher_ level, by its _own action_, the Water Ram is the most complete in its operation, and perfect in its construction, of anything within our knowledge. And as it may not be generally known to our readers, at our request, Messrs. A. B. ALLEN & CO., of New York--who keep them of all sizes for sale, at their agricultural warehouse, No's. 189 and 191, Water-street--have kindly furnished us with the following description of the machine, given by W. & B. Douglass, of Middletown, Connecticut, manufacturers of the article: "H, spring or brook. C, drive, or supply-pipe, from brook to ram. G, discharge pipe, conveying water to house or other point required for use. B, D, A, E, I, the Ram. J, the plank or other foundation to which the machine is secured for use. "The various uses of the ram are at once obvious, viz., for the purposes of irrigating lands, and supplying dwellings, barnyards, gardens, factories, villages, engines, railroad stations, &c., with running water. "The simplicity of the operation of this machine, together with its effectiveness, and very apparent durability, renders it decidedly the most important and valuable apparatus yet developed in hydraulics, for forcing a portion of a running stream of water to any elevation, proportionate to the fall obtained. It is perfectly applicable where no more than eighteen inches fall can be had; yet, the greater the fall applied, the more powerful the operation of the machine, and the higher the water may be conveyed. The relative proportions between the water raised, and wasted, is dependent entirely upon the relative height of the spring or source of supply above the ram, and the elevation to which it is required to be raised. The quantity raised varying in proportion to the height to which it is conveyed, with a given fall; also, the distance which the water has to be conveyed, and consequent length of pipe, has some bearing on the quantity of water raised and discharged by the ram; as, the longer the pipe through which the water has to be forced by the machine, the greater the friction to be overcome, and the more the power consumed in the operation; yet, it is common to apply the ram for conveying the water distances of one and two hundred rods, and up elevations of one and two hundred feet. Ten feet fall from the spring, or brook, to the ram, is abundantly sufficient for forcing up the water to any elevation under say one hundred and fifty feet in height, above the level of the point where the ram is located; and the same ten feet fall will raise the water to a much higher point than above last named, although in a _diminished_ quantity, in proportion as the height is increased. When a sufficient quantity of water is raised with a given fall, it is not advisable to increase said fall, as in so doing the force with which the ram works is increased, and the amount of labor which it has to perform greatly augmented, the wear and tear of the machine proportionably increased, and the durability of the same lessened; so that economy, in the expense of keeping the ram in repair, would dictate that no greater fall should be applied, for propelling the ram, than is sufficient to raise a requisite supply of water to the place of use. To enable any person to make the calculation, as to what fall would be sufficient to apply to the ram, to raise a sufficient supply of water to his premises, we would say, that in conveying it any ordinary distance, of say fifty or sixty rods, it may be safely calculated that about one-seventh part of the water can be raised and discharged at an elevation above the ram five times as high as the fall which is applied to the ram, or one-fourteenth part can be raised and discharged, say ten times as high as the fall applied; and so in that proportion, as the fall or rise is varied. Thus, if the ram be placed under a head or fall of five feet, of every seven gallons drawn from the spring, one may be raised twenty-five feet, or half a gallon fifty feet. Or with ten feet fall applied to the machine, of every fourteen gallons drawn from the spring, one gallon may be raised to the height of one hundred feet above the machine; and so in like proportion, as the fall or rise is increased or diminished. "It is presumed that the above illustrations of what the machine will do under certain heads and rise, will be sufficient for all practical purposes, to enable purchasers of the article to determine, with a sufficient degree of nicety, as to the head or fall to apply to the ram for a given rise and distance, which they may wish to overcome in raising water from springs or brooks to their premises, or other places where water is required. Yet, we have the pleasure of copying the following article, which we find in the 'American Agriculturist,' a very valuable journal published by C. M. Saxton, 152 Fulton-street, New York, which may serve to corroborate our statements as to what our ram will accomplish under given circumstances: "'The following is a correct statement of a water ram I have had in successful operation for the last six months: "'1. The fall from the surface of the water in the spring is four feet. 2. The quantity of water delivered per ten minutes, at my house, is three and a quarter gallons, and that discharged at the ram twenty-five gallons. Thus, nearly one-seventh part of the water is saved. 3. The perpendicular height of the place of delivery above the ram is nineteen feet--say fifteen feet above the surface of the spring. 4. The length of the pipe leading from the ram to the house is one hundred and ninety feet. 5. The pipe leading from the ram to the house has three right angles, rounded by curves. 6. The ram is of Douglass' make, of a small size. 7. The length of the drive or supply-pipe is sixty feet. Its inner diameter one inch. 8. The depth of water in the spring, over the drive pipe, is six inches. 9. The inner diameter of the pipe, conducting the water from the ram to the house, is three-eighths of an inch. "'I consider it very essential that the drive or supply-pipe should be laid as straight as possible, as in the motion of the water in this pipe consists the power of the ram. V. H. HALLOCK. North-East Center, N.Y., April 2d, 1849.'" We have seen several of these rams at work; and in any place where the required amount of fall can be had, with sufficient water to supply the demand, we are entirely satisfied that no plan so cheap and efficient can be adopted, by which to throw it to a higher level, and at a distance from the point of its flow. We heartily commend it to all who need a thing of the kind, and have at hand the facilities in the way of a stream for its use. It is hardly worth while to add, that by the aid of the ram, water can be thrown into every room in the dwelling house, as well as into the various buildings, and yards, and fields of the farm, wherever it may be required. RAT-PROOF GRANARY. This plan, and description, we take from an agricultural periodical published in New York--"The Plow." We can recommend no plan of a better kind for the objects required. It is an old-fashioned structure, which many of our readers will recognize--only, that it is improved in some of its details. [Illustration: GRANARY] The illustration above needs but little description. The posts should be stone, if procurable, one foot square, and four feet long, set one-third in the ground, and capped with smooth flat stones, four to six inches thick, and two feet, at least, across. If wooden posts are used, make them sixteen inches square, and set them in a hole previously filled, six inches deep, with charcoal, or rubble stone and lime grouting, and fill around the posts with the same. Four inches from the top, nail on a flange of tin or sheet iron, six inches wide, the projecting edge of which may be serrated, as a further preventive against the depredating rascals creeping around. The steps are hinged to the door-sill, and should have a cord and weight attached to the door, so that whenever it is shut, the steps should be up also; this would prevent the possibility of carelessness in leaving them down for the rats to walk up. The sides should be made of slats, with large cracks between, and the floor under the corn-crib, with numerous open joints; no matter if shattered corn falls through, let the pigs and chickens have it; the circulation of the air through the pile of corn, will more than pay for all you will lose through the floor. If you intend to have sweet grain, be sure to have a ventilator in the roof, and you may see by the vane on the top of it, how the wind will always blow favorably for you. IMPROVED DOMESTIC ANIMALS. Having completed the series of subjects which we had designed for this work, we are hardly content to send it out to the public, without inviting the attention of our farmers, and others who dwell in the country and occupy land, to the importance of surrounding themselves with the best breeds of domestic animals, as an item of increased profit in their farm management, and as a subject of interest and satisfaction to themselves in the embellishment of their grounds. We have addressed ourselves through these pages to the good sense of men who, in their general character and pursuits, comprise the most stable class of our population. We have endeavored to impress upon them the importance of providing all the conveniences and comforts to themselves, in their dwellings, as well as the due provision for their animals and crops, in the rougher farm buildings, which their circumstances will admit; and we trust they have been shown that it is proper economy so to do. We have, in addition to these, somewhat dilated upon objects of embellishment, in the way of grounds to surround them, and trees to beautify them, which will in no way interfere with a just economy, and add greatly to the pleasure and interest of their occupation. We now want them to introduce into those grounds such domestic animals as shall add to their ornament, and be far more profitable to themselves, than the inferior things which are called the common, or native stock of the country. Without this last lesson, half our object would be lost. Of what avail will be the best provision for the conveniences of a family, and the labors of the farm, if the farm be badly cultivated, and a worthless or inferior stock be kept upon it? The work is but half done at best; and the inferiority of the last will only become more conspicuous and contemptible, in contrast with the superior condition of the first. It is not intended to go into an examination of the farm-stock of our country at large, nor into their modes of treatment; but, to recommend such varieties of animals as are profitable in their breeding and keeping, both to the professional farmer in his vocation, and to such as, beyond this, find them an object of convenience, or of pleasure. We, in America, are comparatively a young people. Yet, we have surmounted _necessity_. We have arrived at the period when we enjoy the fruits of competence--some of us, the luxuries of wealth. A taste for superior domestic animals has been increasing, and spreading over the United States for many years past; so that now, a portion of our farmers and country people understand somewhat of the subject. It has been thoroughly demonstrated, that good farm stock is better, and more profitable than poor stock. Still, a taste for good stock, and the advantages of keeping them, over the common stock of the country, is not _generally_ understood; and that taste has to be cultivated. It is not altogether a thing of nature, any more than other faculties which require the aid of education to develope. We have known many people who had a fine perception in many things: an eye for a fine house, pleasant grounds, beautiful trees, and all the surroundings which such a place might command; and when these were complete, would place about it the veriest brutes, in the way of domestic animals, imaginable. The resident of the city, who lives at his country-house in summer, and selects a picture of mean or inferior quality, to hang up in his house by way of ornament, would be laughed at by his friends; yet he may drive into his grounds the meanest possible creature, in the shape of a cow, a pig, or a sheep, and it is all very well--for neither he nor they know any better; yet, the one is quite as much out of place as the other. The man, too, who, in good circumstances, will keep and drive a miserable horse, is the ridicule of his neighbors, because everybody knows what a good horse is, and that he should be well kept. Yet, the other stock on his farm may be the meanest trash in existence, and it creates no remark. On the contrary, one who at any _extra_ cost has supplied himself with stock of the choicer kinds, let their superiority be ever so apparent, has often been the subject of ribaldry, by his unthinking associates. And such, we are sorry to say, is still the case in too many sections of our country. But, on the whole, both our public spirit, and our intelligence, is increasing, in such things. Now, we hold it to be a _practical_ fact, that no farm, or country place, can be complete in its appointments, without good stock upon it; and it is useless for any one to suppose that his farm, or his place, is _finished_, without it. The man who has a fine lawn, of any extent, about his house, or a park adjoining, should have something to graze it--for he cannot afford to let it lie idle; nor is it worth while, even if he can afford it, to be mowing the grass in it every fortnight during the summer, to make it sightly. Besides this, grass will grow under the trees, and that too thin, and short, for cutting. This ground must, of course, be pastured. Now, will he go and get a parcel of mean scrubs of cattle, or sheep, to graze it, surrounding his very door, and disgracing him by their vulgar, plebeian looks, and yielding him no return, in either milk, beef, mutton, or wool? Of course not, if he be a wise, or a provident man, or one who has any true taste in such matters. He will rather go and obtain the best stock he can get, of breeds suited to the climate, and soil, which will give him a profitable return, either in milk, or flesh, or their increase, for his outlay; and which will also embellish his grounds, and create an interest in his family for their care, and arrest the attention of those who visit him, or pass by his grounds. Of the proper selection of this branch of his stock, we shall now discourse. [Illustration] In cattle, if your grounds be rich, and your grass abundant, the short-horns are the stock for them. They are "the head and front," in appearance, size, and combination of good qualities--the very aristocracy of all neat cattle. A well-bred, and well developed short-horn cow, full in the qualities which belong to her character, is the very perfection of her kind. Her large, square form; fine orange, russet, or nut-colored muzzle; bright, prominent, yet mild, expressive eye; small, light horn; thin ears; clean neck; projecting brisket; deep, and broad chest; level back, and loin; broad hips; large, and well-spread udder, with its silky covering of hair, and clean, taper, wide-standing teats, giving twenty to thirty quarts of rich milk in a day; deep thigh, and twist; light tail; small, short legs; and, added to this, her brilliant and ever-varying colors of all, and every-intermingling shades of red, and white, or either of them alone; such, singly, or in groups, standing quietly under the shade of trees, grazing in the open field, or quietly resting upon the grass, are the very perfection of a cattle picture, and give a grace and beauty to the grounds which no living thing can equal. Here stands a short-horn cow, in all the majesty of her style and character! We add, also, a short-horn bull, which exhibits, in a high degree, the vigor, stamina, and excellence of his kind. Nor, in this laudation of the short-horns, are we at all mistaken. Go into the luxuriant blue-grass pastures of Kentucky; the rich, and wide-spread grazing regions of central, and lower Ohio; the prairies of Indiana, and Illinois, just now beginning to receive them; the sweet, and succulent pastures of central and western New York, or on the Hudson river; and now and then, a finely-cultivated farm in other sections of the United States, where their worth has become established; and they present pictures of thrift, of excellence, of beauty, and of profit, that no other neat cattle can pretend to equal. As a family cow, nothing can excel the short-horn, in the abundance and richness of her milk, and in the profit she will yield to her owner; and, on every place where she can be supplied with abundance of food, she stands without a rival. From the short-horns, spring those magnificent fat oxen and steers, which attract so much admiration, and carry off the prizes, at our great cattle shows. Thousands of them, of less or higher grade in blood, are fed every year, in the Scioto, the Miami, and the other great feeding valleys of the west, and in the fertile corn regions of Kentucky, and taken to the New York and Philadelphia markets. As a profitable beast to the grazier, and the feeder, nothing can equal them in early maturity and excellence. For this purpose, the short-horns are steadily working their way all over the vast cattle-breeding regions of the west; and, for the richness and abundance of her milk, the cow is eagerly introduced into the dairy, and milk-producing sections of the other states, where she will finally take rank, and maintain her superiority over all others, on rich and productive soils. [Illustration: DEVON COW. DEVON BULL.] On lighter soils, with shorter pastures; or on hilly and stony grounds, another race of cattle may be kept, better adapted to such localities, than those just described. They are the Devons--also an English breed, and claimed there as an aboriginal race in England; and if any variety of cattle, exhibiting the blood-like beauty, and fineness of limb, the deep, uniformity of color, and the gazelle-like brilliancy of their eye, can claim a remote ancestry, and a pure descent, the Devons can make such claim, beyond almost any other. They were introduced--save now and then an isolated animal at an earlier day--into the United States some thirty-two or three years ago, about the same time with the short-horns; and like them, have been added to, and improved by frequent importations since; until now, probably our country will show some specimens equal in quality to their high general character in the land of their nativity. Unlike the short-horn, the Devon is a much lighter animal, with a like fine expression of countenance; an elevated horn; more agile in form; yet finer in limb, and bone; a deep mahogany-red in color; and of a grace, and beauty in figure excelled by no other breed whatever. The Devon cow is usually a good milker, for her size; of quiet temper; docile in her habits; a quick feeder; and a most satisfactory animal in all particulars. From the Devons, spring those beautifully matched red working-oxen, so much admired in our eastern states; the superiors to which, in kindness, docility, endurance, quickness, and honesty of labor, no country can produce. In the _quality_ of their beef, they are unrivaled by any breed of cattle in the United States; but in their early maturity for that purpose, are not equal to the short-horns. We here present a cut of a Devon cow; but with the remark, that she presents a deficiency of bag, and stands higher on the leg, than she ought to do; and her leanness in flesh gives her a less graceful appearance than is her wont, when in good condition. We present, also, the cut of a Devon bull. This figure does not do him full justice, the head being drawn in, to give the cut room on the page. Several beautiful herds of Devons are to be found in New York, in Maryland, in Connecticut, and in Massachusetts; and some few in other states, where they can be obtained by those who wish to purchase. And it is a gratifying incident, to learn that both the breeds we have named are increasing in demand, which has created a corresponding spirit in those who breed them, to bestow their best attention in perfecting their good qualities. Another branch of domestic stock should also excite the attention of those who wish to embellish their grounds, as well as to improve the quality of their mutton--obtaining, withal, a fleece of valuable wool. These are the Southdown, and the Cotswold, Leicester, or other improved breeds of long-wooled sheep. There is no more peaceful, or beautiful small animal to be seen, in an open park, or pleasure ground, or in the paddock of a farm, than these; and as they have been of late much sought after, they will be briefly noticed. [Illustration: SOUTHDOWN RAM. SOUTHDOWN EWE.] [Illustration: LONG-WOOLED RAM. LONG-WOOLED EWE.] The Southdown, a cut of which we present, is a fine, compact, and solid sheep, with dark face and legs; quiet in its habits, mild in disposition, of a medium quality, and medium weight of fleece; and yielding a kind of mutton unsurpassed in flavor and delicacy--equal, in the estimation of many, to the finest venison. The carcass of a Southdown wether, when well fatted, is large, weighing, at two to three years old, a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds. The ewe is a prolific breeder, and a good nurse. They are exceedingly hardy, and will thrive equally well in all climates, and on all our soils, where they can live. There is no other variety of sheep which has been bred to that high degree of perfection, in England. The great Southdown breeder, Mr. Webb, of Batraham, has often received as high as fifty, to one hundred guineas, in a season, for the _use_ of a single ram. Such prices show the estimation in which the best Southdowns are held there, as well as their great popularity among the English farmers. They are extensively kept in the parks, and pleasure grounds of the wealthy people, where things of profit are usually connected with those devoted to luxury. For this cut of the Southdown ewe, we are indebted to the kindness of Luther Tucker, Esq., of the Albany "Cultivator." The Cotswold, New Oxford, and Leicester sheep, of the long-wooled variety, are also highly esteemed, in the same capacity as the Southdowns. They are large; not so compactly built as the Southdowns; producing a heavy fleece of long wool, mostly used for combing, and making into worsted stuffs. They are scarcely so hardy, either, as the Southdowns; nor are they so prolific. Still, they have many excellent qualities; and although their mutton has not the fine grain, nor delicacy, of the other, it is of enormous weight, when well fattened, and a most profitable carcass. It has sometimes reached a weight of two hundred pounds, when dressed. They are gentle, and quiet in their habits; white in the face and legs; and show a fine and stately contrast to the Southdowns, in their increased size, and breadth of figure. They require, also, a somewhat richer pasture; but will thrive on any good soil, yielding sweet grasses. For the cut of the Cotswold ewe, we are also indebted to Mr. Tucker, of "The Cultivator." To show the contrast between the _common_ native sheep, and the improved breeds, of which we have spoken, a true portrait of the former is inserted, which will be readily recognized as the creature which embellishes, in so high a degree, many of the wild nooks, and rugged farms of the country! [Illustration: A COMMON SHEEP.] That the keeping of choice breeds of animals, and the cultivation of a high taste for them, is no _vulgar_ matter, with even the most exalted intellects, and of men occupying the most honorable stations in the state, and in society; and that they concern the retired gentleman, as well as the practical farmer, it is only necessary to refer to the many prominent examples in Great Britain, and our own country, within the last fifty years. The most distinguished noblemen of England, and Scotland, have long bred the finest of cattle, and embellished their home parks with them. The late Earl Spencer, one of the great patrons of agricultural improvement in England, at his death owned a herd of two hundred of the highest bred short-horns, which he kept on his home farm, at Wiseton. The Dukes of Bedford, for the last century and a half, have made extraordinary exertions to improve their several breeds of cattle. The late Earl of Leicester, better known, perhaps, as Mr. Coke, of Holkham, and the most celebrated farmer of his time, has been long identified with his large and select herds of Devons, and his flocks of Southdowns. The Duke of Richmond has his great park at Goodwood stocked with the finest Southdowns, Short-horns, and Devons. Prince Albert, even, has caught the infection of such liberal and useful example, and the royal park at Windsor is tenanted with the finest farm stock, of many kinds; and he is a constant competitor at the great Smithfield cattle shows, annually held in London. Besides these, hundreds of the nobility, and wealthy country gentlemen of Great Britain, every year compete with the intelligent farmers, in their exhibitions of cattle, at the royal and provincial shows, in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In the United States, Washington was a great promoter of improvement in farm stock, and introduced on to his broad estate, at Mount Vernon, many foreign animals, which he had sent out to him at great expense; and it was his pride to show his numerous and distinguished guests, his horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. Henry Clay, of Kentucky, was among the first promoters of the improvement of domestic animals in the fertile region, of which his own favorite Ashland is the center; and to his continued efforts in the breeding of the finest short-horns, and mules, is the state of Kentucky greatly indebted for its reputation in these descriptions of stock. Daniel Webster has introduced on to his estate, at Marshfield, the finest cattle, and sheep suited to its soil and climate, and takes much pride in showing their good qualities. Indeed, we have never heard either of these two last remarkable men more eloquent, than when discoursing of their cattle, and of their pleasure in ranging over their pastures, and examining their herds and flocks. They have both been importers of stock, and liberal in their dissemination among their agricultural friends and neighbors. Public-spirited, patriotic men, in almost every one of our states, have either imported from Europe, or drawn from a distance in their own country, choice animals, to stock their own estates, and bred them for the improvement of their several neighborhoods. Merchants, and generous men of other professions, have shown great liberality, and the finest taste, in importing, rearing, and distributing over the country the best breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. Their own beautiful home grounds are embellished with them, in a style that all the dumb statuary in existence can not equal in interest--models of grace, and beauty, and utility, which are in vain sought among the sculpture, or paintings of ancient time. And many a plain and unpretending farmer of our country, emulating such laudable examples, now shows in his luxuriant pastures, and well-filled barns and stables, the choicest specimens of imported stock; and their prizes, won at the cattle shows, are the laudable pride of themselves, and their families. Nor is this laudable taste, confined to _men_ alone. Females of the highest worth, and domestic example, both abroad and at home, cultivate a love for such objects, and take much interest in the welfare of their farm stock. We were at the annual state cattle show, in one of our large states, but a short time since, and in loitering about the cattle quarter of the grounds, met a lady of our acquaintance, with a party of her female friends, on a tour of inspection among the beautiful short-horns, and Devons, and the select varieties of sheep. She was the daughter of a distinguished statesman, who was also a large farmer, and a patron of great liberality, in the promotion of fine stock in his own state. She was bred upon the farm, and, to rare accomplishments in education, was possessed of a deep love for all rural objects; and in the stock of the farm she took a peculiar interest. Her husband was an extensive farmer, and a noted breeder of fine animals. She had her own farm, too, and cattle upon it, equally as choice as his, in her own right; and they were both competitors at the annual exhibitions. Introduced to her friends, at her request, we accompanied them in their round of inspection. There were the beautiful cows, and the younger cattle, and the sheep--all noticed, criticised, and remarked upon; and with a judgment, too, in their various properties, which convinced us of her sound knowledge of their physiology, and good qualities, which she explained to her associates with all the familiarity that she would a tambouring frame, or a piece of embroidery. There was no squeamish fastidiousness; no affectation of prudery, in this; but all natural as the pure flow of admiration in a well-bred lady could be. At her most comfortable, and hospitable residence, afterward, she showed us, with pride, the several cups, and other articles of plate, which her family had won as prizes, at the agricultural exhibitions; and which she intended to preserve, as heir-looms to her children. This is not a solitary example; yet, a too rare one, among our fair countrywomen. Such a spirit is contagious, and we witness with real satisfaction, their growing taste in such laudable sources of enjoyment: contrary to the _parvenue_ affectation of a vast many otherwise sensible and accomplished females of our cities and towns--comprising even the wives and daughters of farmers, too--who can saunter among the not over select, and equivocal representations, among the paintings and statuary of our public galleries; and descant with entire freedom, on the various attitudes, and artistical merits of the works before them; or gaze with apparent admiration upon the brazen pirouettes of a public dancing girl, amid all the equivoque of a crowded theater; and yet, whose delicacy is shocked at the exhibitions of a cattle show! Such females as we have noticed, can admire the living, moving beauty of animal life, with the natural and easy grace of purity itself, and without the slightest suspicion of a stain of vulgarity. From the bottom of our heart, we trust that a reformation is at work among our American women, in the promotion of a taste, and not only a taste, but a genuine _love_ of things connected with country life. It was not so, with the mothers, and the wives, of the stern and earnest men, who laid the foundations of their country's freedom and greatness. They were women of soul, character, and stamina; who grappled with the _realities_ of life, in their labors; and enjoyed its pleasures with truth and honesty. This over-nice, mincing delicacy, and sentimentality, in which their grand-daughters indulge, is but the off-throw of the boarding-school, the novelist, and the prude--mere "leather and prunella." Such remarks may be thought to lie beyond the line of our immediate labor. But in the discussion of the collateral subjects which have a bearing upon country life and residence, we incline to make a clean breast of it, and drop such incidental remark as may tend to promote the enjoyment, as well as instruction, of those whose sphere of action, and whose choice in life is amid the pure atmosphere, and the pure pleasures of the country. WATER-FOWLS. If a stream flow through the grounds, in the vicinity of the house; or a pond, or a small lake be near, a few varieties of choice water-fowls may be kept, adding much to the interest and amusement of the family. Many of the English nobility, and gentry, keep swans for such purpose. They are esteemed a bird of much grace and beauty, although silent, and of shy, unsocial habits, and not prolific in the production of their young. For such purposes as they are kept in England, the great African goose, resembling the China, but nearly double in size, is a preferable substitute in this country. It is a more beautiful bird in its plumage; equally graceful in the water; social, and gentle in its habits; breeding with facility, and agreeable in its voice, particularly at a little distance. The African goose will attain a weight of twenty to twenty-five pounds. Its body is finely formed, heavily feathered, and its flesh is of delicate flavor. The top of the head, and the back of its neck, which is long, high, and beautifully arched, is a dark brown; its bill black, with a high protuberance, or knob, at its junction with the head; a dark hazel eye, with a golden ring around it; the under part of the head and neck, a soft ash-color; and a heavy dewlap at the throat. Its legs and feet are orange-colored; and its belly white. Taken altogether, a noble and majestic bird. [Illustration: CHINA GOOSE.] The small brown China goose is another variety which may be introduced. She is nearly the color of the African, but darker; has the same black bill, and high protuberance on it, but without the dewlap under the throat; and has black legs and feet. She is only half the size of the other; is a more prolific layer,--frequently laying three or four clutches of eggs in a year; has the same character of voice; an equally high, arched neck, and is quite as graceful in the water. The neck of the goose in the cut should be one-third longer, to be an accurate likeness. The White China is another variety, in size and shape like the last, but perfectly white, with an orange colored bill and legs. Indeed, no swan can be more beautiful than this, which is of the same pure, clean plumage, and, in its habits and docility, equally a favorite with the others we have described. The Bremen goose is still another variety, of about the same size as the African, but in shape and appearance, not unlike the common goose, except in color, which is pure white. Young geese of this breed, at nine months old, frequently weigh twenty pounds, alive. We have had them of that weight, and for the table, none can be finer. They are equally prolific as the common goose, but, as a thing of ornament, are far behind the African and the China. Still, they are a stately bird, and an acquisition to any grounds where water-fowls are a subject of interest, convenience, or profit. All these birds are more domestic, if possible, than the common goose, and we have found them less troublesome, not inclined to wander abroad, and, in all the qualities of such a bird, far more agreeable. We have long kept them, and without their presence, should consider our grounds as incomplete, in one of the most attractive features of animated life. It is too much a fault of our farming population, that they do not pay sufficient attention to many little things which would render their homes more interesting, both to themselves, if they would only think so, and to their families, most certainly. If parents have no taste for such objects as we have recommended, or even others more common, they should encourage their children in the love of them, and furnish them for their amusement. The very soul of a farmer's home is to cluster every thing about it which shall make it attractive, and speak out the character of the country, and of his occupation, in its full extent. Herds and flocks upon the farm are a matter of course; and so are the horses, and the pigs. But there are other things, quite as indicative of household abundance, and domestic enjoyment. The pigeons, and the poultry of all kinds, and perhaps the rabbit warren, which are chiefly in charge of the good housewife, and her daughters, and the younger boys, show out the domestic feeling and benevolence of character in the family, not to be mistaken. It is a sign of enjoyment, of domestic contentment, and of mental cultivation, even, that will lead to something higher, and more valuable in after life; and it is in such light that it becomes an absolute _duty_ of the farmer who seeks the improvement and education of his children, to provide them with all these little objects, to engage their leisure hours and promote their happiness. How different a home like this from one--which is, really, not a home--where no attention is paid to such minor attractions; where a few starveling things, by way of geese, perhaps, picked half a dozen times a year, to within an inch of their lives, mope about the dirty premises, making their nightly sittings in the door yard, if the house has one; a stray turkey, or two, running, from fear of the untutored dogs, into the nearest wood, in the spring, to make their rude nests, and bring out half a clutch of young, and creeping about the fields through the summer with a chicken or two, which the foxes, or other vermin, have spared, and then dogged down in the winter, to provide a half got-up Christmas-dinner; and the hens about the open buildings all the year, committing their nuisances in every possible way! There need be no surer indication than this, of the utter hopelessness of progress for good, in such a family. A WORD ABOUT DOGS. We always loved a dog; and it almost broke our little heart, when but a trudging schoolboy, in our first jacket-and-trowsers, our kind mother made us take back the young puppy that had hardly got its eyes open, which we one day brought home, to be kept until it was fit to be taken from its natural nurse. We are now among the boys, John, Tom, and Harry; and intend to give them the benefit of our own experience in this line, as well as to say a few words to the elder brothers,--and fathers, even,--if they do not turn up their noses in contempt of our instruction, on a subject so much beneath their notice. We say that we love dogs: not _all_ dogs, however. But we love some dogs--of the right breeds. There is probably no other civilized country so dog-ridden as this, both in "Mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of _low_ degree." Goldsmith, kind man that he was, must have been a capital judge of dogs, like many other poetical gentlemen. Still, other men than poets are sometimes good judges, and great lovers of dogs; but the mass of people are quite as well satisfied with one kind of dog as with another, so that it be a dog; and they too often indulge in their companionship, much to the annoyance of good neighborhood, good morals, and, indeed, of propriety, thrift, and common justice. Of all these we have nothing to say--here, at least. Ours is a "free country"--for dogs, if for nothing else. Nor shall we discuss the various qualities, or the different breeds of dogs for sporting purposes. We never go out shooting; nor do we take a hunt--having no taste that way. Perhaps in this we are to be pitied; but we are content as it is. Therefore we shall let the hounds, and pointers, and setters, the springers, and the land and the water spaniels, all alone. The mastiffs, and the bull dogs, too, we shall leave to those who like them. The poodle, and the little lap-dog of other kinds, also, we shall turn over to the kindness of those who--we are sorry for them, in having nothing better to interest themselves about--take a pleasure in keeping and tending them. We want to mix in a little _usefulness_, as well as amusement, in the way of a dog; and after a whole life, thus far, of dog companionship, and the trial of pretty much every thing in the line of a dog--from the great Newfoundland, of a hundred pounds weight, down to the squeaking little whiffet, of six--we have, for many years past, settled down into the practical belief that the small ratting terrier is the only one, except the shepherd dog, we care to keep; and of these, chiefly, we shall speak. There are many varieties of the Terrier. Some are large, weighing forty or fifty pounds, rough-haired, and savage looking. There is the bull-terrier, of less size, not a kindly, well-disposed creature to strangers; but irascibly inclined, and unamiable in his deportment; still useful as a watch-dog, and a determined enemy to all vermin, whatever. Then, again, are the small rat-terriers, as they are termed, weighing from a dozen to twenty pounds; some with rough, long, wiry hair; a fierce, whiskered muzzle; of prodigious strength for their size; wonderful instinct and sagacity; kind in temper; and possessing valuable qualities, bating a lack of beauty in appearance. They are of all colors, but are generally uniform in their color, whatever it be. Another kind, still, is the smooth terrier, of the same sizes as the last; a very pretty dog indeed; with a kinder disposition to mankind; yet equally destructive to vermin, and watchful to the premises which they inhabit, or of whatever else is put under their charge. The fidelity of the terrier to his master is wonderful; equal, if not superior to any other dog whatever. In courage and perseverance, in hardihood, and feats of daring, he has hardly an equal; and in general _usefulness,_ no dog can compare with him. [Illustration: THE SMOOTH TERRIER.] Sir Walter Scott, who was a great friend to dogs, as well as a nice and critical judge of their qualities, used to tell this story:--When a young man, first attending, as an advocate, the Jedburgh assizes, a notorious burglar engaged Sir Walter to defend him on his trial for housebreaking in the neighborhood. The case was a hard one; the proof direct and conclusive; and no ingenuity of the defence could avoid the conviction of the culprit. The matter was settled beyond redemption; and before he left for his imprisonment, or transportation, the thief requested Sir Walter to come into his cell. On meeting, the fellow frankly told his counsel that he felt very grateful to him for his efforts to clear him; that he had done the best he could; but the proof was too palpable against him. He would gladly reward Sir Walter for his services; but he had no money, and could only give him a piece of advice, which might, perhaps, be serviceable hereafter. Sir Walter heard him, no doubt, with some regret at losing his fee; but concluding to hear what he had to say. "You are a housekeeper, Mr. Scott. For security to your doors, use nothing but a common lock--if rusty and old, no matter; they are quite as hard to pick as any others. (Neither Chubbs' nor Hobbs' _non-pickable_ locks were then invented.) Then provide yourself with a small rat terrier, and keep him in your house at night. There is no safety in a mastiff, or bull-dog, or in a large dog of any breed. They can always be appeased and quieted, and burglars understand them; but a terrier can neither be terrified nor silenced; nor do we attempt to break in where one is known to be kept." Sir Walter heeded the advice, and, in his housekeeping experience, afterward, confirmed the good qualities of the terrier, as related to him by the burglar. He also commemorated the conversation by the following not exceedingly poetical couplet: "A terrier dog and a rusty key, Was Walter Scott's first Jedburgh fee." The terrier has a perfect, thorough, unappeasable instinct for, and hatred to all kinds of vermin. He takes to rats and mice as naturally as a cat. He will scent out their haunts and burrows. He will lie for hours by their places of passage, and point them with the sagacity of a pointer at a bird. He is as quick as lightning, in pouncing upon them, when in sight, and rarely misses them when he springs. A single bite settles the matter; and where there are several rats found together, a dog will frequently dispatch half a dozen of them, before they can get twenty feet from him. A dog of our own has killed that number, before they could get across the stable floor. In the grain field, with the harvesters, a terrier will catch hundreds of field-mice in a day; or, in the hay field, he is equally destructive. With a woodchuck, a raccoon, or anything of their size--even a skunk, which many dogs avoid--he engages, with the same readiness that he will a rat. The night is no bar to his vigils. He has the sight of an owl, in the dark. Minks, and weasels, are his aversion, as much as other vermin. He will follow the first into the water, till he exhausts him with diving, and overtakes him in swimming. He is a hunter, too. He will tree a squirrel, or a raccoon, as readily as the best of sporting dogs. He will catch, and hold a pig, or anything not too large or heavy for him. He will lie down on your garment, and watch it for hours; or by anything else left in his charge. He will play with the children, and share their sports as joyfully as a dumb creature can do; and nothing can be more affectionate, kind, and gentle among them. He is cleanly, honest, and seldom addicted to tricks of any kind. We prefer the high-bred, smooth, English terrier, to any other variety. They are rather more gentle in temper, and very much handsomer in appearance, than the rough-haired kind; but perhaps no better in their useful qualities. We have kept them for years; we keep them now; and no reasonable inducement would let us part with them. A year or two ago, having accidentally lost our farm terrier, and nothing remaining on the place but our shepherd dog, the buildings soon swarmed with rats. They were in, and about everything. During the winter, the men who tended the horses, and cattle, at their nightly rounds of inspection, before going to bed, would kill, with their clubs, three or four, in the barns and stables, every evening. But still the rats increased, and they became unendurable. They got into the grain-mows, where they burrowed, and brought forth with a fecundity second only to the frogs of Egypt. They gnawed into the granaries. They dug into the dairy. They entered the meat barrels. They carried off the eggs from the hen-nests. They stole away, and devoured, the young ducks, and chickens. They literally came into the "kneading troughs" of the kitchen. Oh! the rats were intolerable! Traps were no use. Arsenic was innocuous--they wouldn't touch it. Opportunity favored us, and we got two high-bred, smooth, English terriers--a dog, and a slut. Then commenced such a slaughter as we seldom see. The rats had got bold. The dogs caught them daily by dozens, as they came out from their haunts, fearless of evil, as before. As they grew more shy, their holes were watched, and every morning dead rats were found about the premises. The dogs, during the day, pointed out their holes. Planks were removed, nests were found, and the rats, young and old, killed, _instanter_. Hundreds on hundreds were slaughtered, in the first few weeks; and in a short time, the place was mostly rid of them, until enough only are left to keep the dogs "in play," and to show that in spite of all precaution, they will harbor wherever there is a thing to eat, and a possible place of covert for them to burrow. To have the terrier in full perfection, it is important that the breed be _pure_. We are so prone to mix up everything we get, in this country, that it is sometimes difficult to get anything exactly as it should be; but a little care will provide us, in this particular. He should be properly trained, too, when young. That is, to mind what is said to him. His intelligence will be equal to all your wants in the _dog_-line; but he should not be _fooled_ with. His instincts are _sure_. And, with a good education, the terrier will prove all you need in a farm, and a watch-dog. We speak from long experience, and observation. [Illustration: THE SHEPHERD DOG.] The shepherd dog is another useful--almost indispensable--creature, on the sheep, or dairy farm. This cut is an accurate representation of the finest of the breed. To the flock-master, he saves a world of labor, in driving and gathering the flocks together, or from one field, or place, to another. To the sheep-drover, also, he is worth a man, at least; and in many cases, can do with a flock what a man can not do. But for this labor, he requires training, and a strict, thorough education, by those who know how to do it. He is a peaceable, quiet creature; good for little else than driving, and on a stock farm will save fifty times his cost and keeping, every year. He is a reasonably good watch-dog, also; but he has neither the instinct, nor sagacity of the terrier, in that duty. To keep him in his best estate, for his own peculiar work, he should not be troubled with other labors, as it distracts his attention from his peculiar duties. We had a remarkably good dog, of this kind, a few years since. He was worth the services of a stout boy, in bringing up the cattle, and sheep, until an idle boy or two, in the neighborhood, decoyed him out in "_cooning_," a few nights during one autumn--in which he proved a most capital hunter; and after that, he became worthless, as a cattle dog. He was always rummaging around among the trees, barking at birds, squirrels, or any live thing that he could find; and no man could coax him back to the dull routine of his duty. A shepherd dog should never go a-hunting. We would not be understood as condemning everything else, excepting the dogs we have named, for farm use. The Newfoundland, and the mastiff, are enormously large dogs, and possessed of some noble qualities. They have performed feats of sagacity and fidelity which have attracted universal admiration; but, three to one, if you have them on your farm, they will kill every sheep upon it; and their watchfulness is no greater than that of the shepherd dog, or the terrier. We have spoken of such as we have entire confidence in, and such as we consider the best for useful service. There are some kinds of cur dog that are useful. They are of no _breed_ at all, to be sure; but have, now and then, good qualities; and when nothing better can be got, they will do for a make-shift. But as a rule, we would be equally particular in the _breed_ of our dog, as we would in the breed of our cattle, or sheep. There are altogether too many dogs kept, in the country, and most usually by a class of people who have no need of them, and which prove only a nuisance to the neighborhood, and a destruction to the goods of others. Thousands of useful sheep are annually destroyed by them; and in some regions of the country, they can not be kept, by reason of their destruction by worthless dogs, which are owned by the disorderly people about them. In a western state, some time ago, in conversing with a large farmer, who had a flock of perhaps a hundred sheep running in one of his pastures, and who also kept a dozen hounds, for hunting, we asked him whether the dogs did not kill his sheep? "To be sure they do," was his reply; "but the dogs are worth more than the sheep, for they give us great sport in hunting deer, and foxes; and the sheep only give us a little mutton, now and then, and some wool for the women to make into stockings!" 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Other errors are individually noted. _Table of Contents_ Indentation of the Contents does not always correspond to chapters and subchapters of the body text, and many entries have different names. All secondary indentations were added by the transcriber, representing text sections that have no distinct header. There is no separate list of illustrations. PREFATORY ... 9 _in body text, "Prefatory" covers pgs. ix-xv_ Miscellaneous Details _indented in printed Contents, as if a subsection of "Design II"_ Tree Planting in the Highway _indented in printed Contents, as if a subsection of "Design IV"_ Design VII ... Miscellaneous ... Lawns, Grounds, Parks, and Woods _printed Contents shows Miscellaneous as a chapter heading, with Lawns... indented as a subsection_ Fruit Garden ... Kitchen Garden ... Flowers _all shown in body text as separate chapters_ Explanations (under Rabbits) _not indented in printed Contents_ The Butter Dairy _shown in body text as a separate chapter_ The Water Ram ... 337 _text reads "237"_ Short Horn Bull ... 349 Short Horn Cow ... 352 _pages reversed: bull is on 352, cow on 349_ _Body Text_ [frontispiece] _illustration is shown again on page 85_ its huge chimneys, its wide fire-places the huge, deep fire-places _hyphens in original: normal for text is "fireplaces"_ The Swiss chalêt _error for "châlet"?_ their good farming neighbors didn't call on them _text reads "did'nt"_ an entrance door near the wood house _form "wood house" unchanged: normal for text is "wood-house" (but note title page)_ Within doors it is a work-shop too. _hyphen in original: normal for text is "workshop"_ so perfectly in keeping was it with propriety. _text has final comma_ In the front and rear roofs of this wing is a dormer window _text reads "dormar"_ small-tool-house _hyphens in original_ The Lombardy-poplar--albeit, an object of fashionable derision _hyphen in original: normal for text is "Lombardy poplar"_ four stacks of chimnies _spelling unchanged_ dogwood, kalmia, and rhododendron _text reads "rhodendendron"_ while the fibrous-rooted perennials _text reads "perenials"_ a seeming humility _text reads "humilty"_ tool-house, piggery, poultry-house, corn-crib _text reads "con-crib"_ about the size of a common window button _text unchanged: error for "batten"?_ to support the comb as it is built _text reads "as t is" with blank space_ and why not hen's? _apostrophe in original_ what she lays in winter must be subtracted _text reads "substracted"_ should then be placed one inch below _text reads "theu"_ the collections throughout the country _text reads "throughout the the"_ he applied to his turnep crop _spelling unchanged_ require the aid of education to develope. _spelling unchanged_ the finest Southdowns, Short-horns, and Devons _capitalization as in original: normal for text is "short-horns"_ but irascibly inclined _text reads "irrascibly"_ He will tree a squirrel _text reads "sqirrel"_ _Advertising Pages_ Punctuation of book titles is unchanged. The Complete Farmer and American Gardener ... 2 vols. _numeral "2" unclear_ Rural Architecture ... Piggeries ... _text reads "Pigeries"_ Experimental Researches on the Food of Animals ... Thompson ... _name usually found as "Thomson"_ The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America ... colored, 15.00. _no $ sign_ The Plants of Boston and Vicinity. _text reads "o Boston" with empty space_ Downing' Horticulturist. _missing "s" in "Downing's"_ The Muck Manual ... By Samuel L. Dana ... _text reads "Da a" with empty space_ The Dog and Sportsman ... cts. _price missing, with no extra space_ The American Herd Book ... $_. _number illegible, possibly "2"_ 
21596	----	THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS VOL XXVII JANUARY-MARCH 1890 TICKNOR & CO. PUBLISHERS. 211 TREMONT ST. BOSTON. S. J. PARKHILL & CO. Printers Boston Mass. [Illustration: The AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS] INDEX TO VOLUME XXVII. JANUARY-MARCH, 1890. Abattoirs, 128 Aberbrothwick. The Abbey of, 13 Aboriginal Races of America. The, 151 ACCIDENTS:-- Fall of a Hotel in Sydney, N.S.W., 184 " " " Scaffold, 104 " " St. Louis Academy of Music, 66 " " the Roof of the Flora Hall, Hamburg, 196 Agreement between Architect and Client, 30 Albany Capitol. Defective Gutters on the, 97 Aluminium from Bauxite, 194 Alva. Statue of the Duke of, 74 America. The Aboriginal Races of, 151 _American Architect_ Travelling-Scholarship Design for a New White House. The, 158 American Bricks, 77 A.I.A. Convention. The, 79 " Illinois Chapter of, 182 " Philadelphia Chapter, 46 " St. Louis Chapter, 206 " Washington Chapter, 43 Amsterdam. High-level Bridge for, 47 Ancient Architecture, 19, 35, 51 André, Architect. Death of Jules, 145 " The Career of M. Jules, 162 "Angelus." Millet's, 12 Apartment-house. The, 3 ARCHÆOLOGICAL:-- Burial Mounds, 99, 151 Cleopatra's Tomb, 141 Delphi. The Proposed Excavations at, 65 Dighton Rock. The, 93 Hissarlik Controversy. The, 144 History of Habitation. The, 149, 168 Locrian Town. The Site of a, 16 Maya. Temples of Ancient, 204 Mesopotamia. Explorations in, 160 Obelisk. Protecting the New York, 178, 207 Persian Court Art, 16 Rome. Discovery of an Ancient Viaduct in, 80 St. Emilion. The Monolithic Church of, 16 Scandinavia. Discoveries in, 63 Uxmal, 204 Vikings. The Art of the, 37, 53 Yucatan. Ancient Temples in, 204 " Exploring Expedition. A New, 112 " Ruins and Works of Art in, 58 Arches. Concrete, 1 ARCHITECT:-- New York State. The, 206 ARCHITECTS:-- Annoyances of. The, 194 Chimney-flues and, 146 Dismissal of. The Right of, 158 Examinations and Diplomas, 162 in Canada. The Registration of, 183 " Spanish America, 18 Incomes of. The, 1, 47, 127 Libel-suit Between. A, 206 New South Wales Institute of. Quarrel in the, 183 of Mons Cathedral. The, 114 Office. A Chicago, 50 Ontario Association of, 41 Philadelphia Master-Builders and the, 161 Reputation of. The Influence of Architectural Journals on the, 17 Responsibility of. The, 2, 130 Stray Thoughts for Young, 90 Suit against a Railroad. An, 194 ARCHITECTURAL:-- Club. Boston, 95 Drawings at the League Exhibition, 40, 57, 143 " Philadelphia Exhibitions of, 107, 146 Education at Munich, 181 " in France, 162 Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy, 107 Journals on the Reputation of Architects. The Influence of, 17 League Exhibition. The, 40, 57, 143 Prints. Arranging, 207 Shades and Shadows, 56 Styles. Changes of, 108 Water-color Drawings, 107 ARCHITECTURE:-- Ancient, 19, 35, 51 at Evanston, Ill., 118 Civil and Domestic, 19, 35, 51, 67, 83 Decoration and, 6 Funerary, 99, 115, 131, 147, 163 History of. The, 150 in Baltimore, 187 " Brooklyn, 5 of the Brooklyn Institute. Department of, 206 Military, 179, 195 Sculpture and, 7 Spanish. Sir Frederick Leighton on a Device of, 146 Study of. The, 6 Army Engineer and our Public Buildings. The, 143 Arranging Architectural Prints, 207 Art Museum. The Cost of a Small, 23 " of the Vikings. The, 37, 53 " The Tariff on Works of, 18 Artificial-ice Skating-rink. An, 145 Artists. Quarrel among French, 80 Asphalt Paving, 82 Assyrian Architecture, 20 " Fortifications, 179 " Tombs, 116, 144 Australia. Engineering Triumphs in, 106 " Letters from, 106, 183 " Roman Catholic Buildings in, 107 Automatic Sprinklers in Mills, 177 BALTIMORE:-- Architecture in, 187 Building-permits in, 97 Letters from, 187 Pennsylvania Steel Company's Works near. The, 188 Railway. The proposed "Belt Line," 188 Balveny Castle, Scotland, 61 Barye Exhibition. The, 10 Barye's English Admirer, 15 Bauxite. Aluminium from, 194 Belgian Prizes and Honors, 34 Belle Isle Dam. The Straits of, 48 Belt Line Railway for Baltimore. A, 188 Berlin Industrial Museum Exhibition, 174 " Technical College. The, 140 Beryt or Fluid Marble, 160 Bids. The Right of Revising, 194 "Black-lining"? What is, 65 Books on School-houses, 207 Borrowing Suburban Fire-Engines, 18, 146 BOSTON:-- Architectural Club, 95 Building Laws. The, 109 Fires. Water Used in, 79 Letter from, 190 Lock-out in the Freestone-Cutting Trade, 161, 177 Manufacturers Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Annual Report of, 177 Museum of Fine Arts. The, 175, 190 Society of Architects, 14 Walking-delegate's Power. A, 193 Botticher _vs._ Dr. Schliemann. Dr., 144 Bourse du Commerce, Paris. The New, 185 Brentano, Architect. Death of Signor, 130 Brick. Cheap Unbaked Colored, 176 Bricks. American, 77 Bridge at London. The Tower, 192 " for Amsterdam. High-level, 47 " Testing the Forth, 160 " The Hawkesbury Railway, 106 Bridges in China. Ancient, 96 British Museum. Electric-Light at the, 104 Brooklyn. Architecture in, 5 " Institute. Department of Architecture of the, 206 Bronze Gates for Cologne Cathedral, 135 Brunswick Monument at Geneva. The, 18 Buenos Ayres, 18 Builders. Convention of National Association of Master, 34, 81 BUILDING:-- Committee. A Competitor's Suit against a, 104 Contracts. German, 82 Laws. The Boston, 109 Permits in Baltimore, 97 Safe, 121, 135, 197 Stones. Decay of, 98 Swedish Penalties for Bad, 72 Syndicate. Proposed, 81 Trades. Troubles in the, 193 Bull-fights in Paris, 130 Bull-ring for Paris. Proposed, 50 Bureau of Ethnology's Fifth Annual Report. The, 151 Burial-mounds, 99, 151 Building and the Underwriters. Safe, 49, 97 Burmese Temples. Jewels in, 58 Burnham & Root's Office, 50 Byzantine Architecture, 52 Canada. Letters from, 41, 104, 182 " Proposed Public Buildings in, 104 " The History of Education in, 183 " The Registration of Architects in, 183 Cast-iron and its Treatment for Artistic Purposes, 201 " Pavements, 192 Castle Campbell, Scotland, 127 " of St. Angelo, Rome. The, 208 " " Vincigliata, Italy. The, 62 Casts at the Boston Art Museum, 190 Catacombs, 147 Cathedral. Bronze Gates for Cologne, 135 " Drawings at the League Exhibition, 30, 62 " of Mons. The, 114 " " St. Machar. The, 27 " Strasbourg, 153 " The Completion of Milan, 130 " Towers, 92, 102 Cathedrals. Clearing away Buildings around, 162 Cats. Egyptian Mummy, 208 Cawdor Castle, Scotland, 110 Celtic Tumuli, 99 Cement. Palming off Poor, 113 Cemented Surfaces. Painting on, 146 Cemeteries. Mediæval, 164 Cemetery Vaults, 47 Centennial Hall, Sydney, N.S.W., 184 Charges. A Question of, 207 CHICAGO:-- Letters from, 118, 182 Suburban Building in. Rapid Transit and, 182 World's Fair. The, 177, 182 Chimney. A Tall, 16 " flues. Architects and, 146 China. Ancient Bridges in, 96 Chinese Architecture, 19 Christians. The Primitive, 147 Church-restoring by Lottery, 128 " Towers, 91, 92, 102 Churches. The Picturesque Lighting of, 146 Cippi, 134 Circular Annoyance. The, 194 "City of the Gods," Mexico. The, 172 Civil and Domestic Architecture, 19, 35, 51, 67, 83 Clark, Architect. Death of George, 63 Cleopatra's Tomb, 141 Clerk-of-works Question. The, 79, 111, 159 Cohesive Construction, 123 Cologne Cathedral. Bronze Gates for, 135 " " Clearing away Buildings around, 162 Color Changes in New York Buildings, 108 Colored Brick. Cheap unbaked, 176 Columbaria, 134 Columns. Ventilating Wooden, 31 Commission on a Standing Party-wall, 142 Commissioner of the Albany Capital The, 206 Commissions. The Question of, 31, 159 Compensation. A Question of, 207 COMPETITIONS:-- Drawings, 40, 62, 65 Grant Monument. The, 145 Hartford Railroad Station. The, 194 Montreal Insane Asylum, 104 New York Episcopal Cathedral, 40, 62 Quebec City-hall. The, 63 Sheffield Municipal Buildings. The, 33 Competitor's Suit against a Building-committee. A, 104 Composite Metal. A New, 93 Concentrated Residence in various Countries, 88, 119 Concrete Arches, 1 "Concrete." Laying a Foundation of Dry, 113 Concrete. Wrong Methods of Mixing, 114 Condé. Fremiet's Figure of, 76 Congressional Palace. The Mexican, 96 Construction. Cohesive, 123 " German, 155 " Improvements in Mill, 177 " Slow-burning, 29, 97 Contract. The Lowell City-hall, 194 " " "Standard Form" of, 81 " taking Labor Syndicates, 194 Contracting Syndicate. Proposed, 81 Contractors. Great, 95 Contractor's Profit-sharing. A, 2, 43 Contracts. German Building, 82 " Importance of Written, 65 Convention of National Association of Master-Builders, 34, 81 Copan in Yucatan. The Ruins of, 59 Copper-rolling. Remarkable, 80 Corrections, 79 Cotman. John Sell, 174 Count and his Machine. A Mysterious, 112 County Council. The London, 104 Coverings for Steam-pipes, 22, 157 Craigievar Castle, Scotland, 189 Dalmeny Church, Scotland, 189 Dam. The Straits of Belle Isle, 48 Dangers of Electricity. The, 15, 27 Dead. The Disposition of the, 24 Deaths from Electricity, 15, 27 Decay of Building Stones. The, 98 Decoration and Architecture, 6 Decorative Paintings in the new Bourse du Commerce, Paris. The, 185 Delphi. The Proposed Excavations at, 65 Dessication of the Dead, 25 Dighton Rock. The, 93 Directory. A Lamp-post, 98 Dismissal of an Architect. The Right of, 158 Divining-rod. The, 15 Domes. Spires, Towers and, 91, 101 Domestic Architecture. Civil and, 19, 35, 51, 67, 83 Doors. Fire, 156 Drawing Instruments. A Yale Professor's Trouble through Prescribing, 66 Drawings at Architectural League Exhibition, 40, 57, 143 " " Philadelphia. Exhibition of Architectural, 107, 146 " "Black-lining" Competition, 65 Durand, Architect. Death of George F., 1 Duty on Window-glass. The, 31 Earnings of Architects. The, 1 East River Tunnel. The Proposed, 178 Education in Canada. The History of, 183 Effigies. Funeral, 164 Egyptian Architecture, 20 " Fortifications. Ancient, 179 " Tombs, 99, 115 Eight-hour Movement. The, 1, 93, 194 ELECTRIC:-- Light at the British Museum, 104 Lights and Motors, 79 Railways, 64, 111, 128 Reading light for Railways, 50 Welding, 176 Wire. The Queen of Greece and an, 128 Electrical Terms, 44 Electricity and Insurance, 79 " The Dangers of, 15, 27 Elevator in Stockholm. An American, 111 Emperor Frederick. A Statue of the, 208 Engine. A new Style of Railway, 82 Engineer and our Public Buildings. The Army, 143 ENGINEERING:-- Bridge. A complete Account of the Forth, 177 " for Amsterdam. High-level, 47 " London's Tower, 192 " Testing the Forth, 160 " The Hawkesbury Railway, 106 " in China. Ancient, 96 Dam. The Straits of Belle Isle, 48 Docks at Vizagapatam. Mud, 63 Electric Railways, 64, 111 Elevator in Stockholm. American, 111 Railroad. A Pneumatic Street, 95 " for Baltimore. A Proposed Belt-line, 188 Tower for the Exhibition of 1892. High, 177 " The Watkin, 16, 105 Tunnel. The East River, 178 " " St. Clair River, 128 " " Washington Aqueduct, 103 Water-power. A Remarkable, 47 "Entombment" in Mexico. A Titian, 60 Entombment. Sanitary, 24 Episcopal Cathedral, New York, Competition, 40, 62 Equestrian Monuments, 72, 170 Estimates. Builders' and Sub-Contractors', 161 Ethnology's Fifth Annual Report. The Bureau of, 151 Etruscan Architecture, 36 " Tombs, 131 Evanston, Ill. Architecture at, 118 Evaporation of Water in Traps, 15 Examinations and Diplomas. Architects', 162 EXHIBITION:-- Architectural League. The, 40, 57, 143 Boston Architectural Club, 95 of 1892. The Chicago, 177 EXHIBITIONS:-- of Architectural Drawings at Philadelphia, 107, 146 EXPOSITION OF 1889:-- Algerian Pavilion at the, 105 Buildings of the, 21, 105 Cairo Street at the, 105 Cochin-Chinese Pavilion at the, 106 Colonial Sections at the, 105 Double Statue at the, 32 Forestry Pavilion at the, 105 History of Habitation at the, 149, 168 Indian Pavilion at the, 105 Palaces of Liberal and Fine Arts, 21 Pavilions at the. The City of Paris, 21 Portuguese Pavilion at the, 105 Sanitary Exhibits at the, 21 Spanish Pavilion at the, 105 Tunisian Pavilion at the, 106 Views of Old Paris at the, 21 Fall of a Hotel in Sydney, N.S.W., 184 " " St. Louis Academy of Music, 66 " " the Roof of the Flora Hall, Hamburg, 196 Ferstel. Baron, 66 Feudal Military Architecture, 195 Fifteenth Century "Working-day." A, 155 FIRE:-- Apparatus, 29 Backs, 201, 203 Destruction of Toronto University by, 182 Doors, 156 Engines. Borrowing Suburban, 18, 146 in Secretary Tracy's House. The, 186 Loss. Reducing the, 28 Fireplace Throat. The Open, 159 Fireproof Floor. The Schneider, 158 " Whitewash, 208 FIRES:-- in American Cities, 97 " Mills. Extinguishing, 177 Water Used in Boston, 79 "Flats," 3 Flues. Floor-beams and, 146 Floor. Beams and Flues, 146 " The Schneider Fireproof, 158 Font in St. Peter Mancroft, 62 Forth Bridge Issue of "_Engineering_," 177 " " Testing the, 160 Fortifications. Ancient Egyptian, 179 " Assyrian, 179 " Greek, 179 " Modern, 195 " Roman, 180 Foundation of Dry "Concrete." A, 113 Foundations. A New Process of Preparing, 160 France. Architectural Education in, 162 Frederick the Great's Tomb, 144 Freestone-Cutters. Lock-out among Boston, 161, 177 Fremiet's Figure of Condé, 76 French Architects. Proposed Licensing of, 162 " " The Responsibility of, 2 Frost on Stone. The Action of, 98 Funerary Architecture, 99, 115, 131, 147, 163 Gallic Architecture, 52 Garnier's History of Habitation, 149, 168 Gates for Cologne Cathedral. Bronze, 135 Geneva. The Brunswick Monument at, 16 German Building Contracts, 82 " Construction, 155 Glass. The Duty on Window, 31 " The Salviati Murano, 207 " Lined Tubes for Underground Wires, 160 Grant Monument Competition. The, 145 Gravity Transit, 178 Great Wall of China. The, 19 Greek Architecture, 35 " Fortifications, 179 " Mouldings, 139 " Tombs, 131 "Gods," Mexico. "The City of the," 172 Gustavus Adolphus. Statue of, 74 Gutters on the Albany Capitol. Defective, 97 Habitation. History of, 149, 168 Halls. The Sizes of Some Large, 184 Hand _vs._ Machine Work, 108 Hawkesbury Railway Bridge. The, 106 Hawthorn Tree of Cawdor. The, 110 Hay Fuel, 159 Heat. Loss of Power by Radiation of, 22, 157 Heating by Hot-water, 33 Hindoo Architecture, 19 " Tombs, 148 History of Habitation, 149, 168 Horse in Sculpture. The, 72, 170 Hot-water Heating, 33 Hotel. A Paper, 160 " at the Pyramids. A, 160 House of St. Simon, Angoulême, 61 Houses for Workingmen, 105 Hungary. Railway Zones in, 178 Hydraulic Power in London, 155 " Pressure. Rocks Upheaved by, 26 Hypogea, 115 Ice for Domestic Use, 34 " Skating-rink. An Artificial, 145 " The Power of, 118 Illinois Chapter A.I.A. The, 182 Incomes of Architects. The, 1, 47, 127 India-rubber Paving, 192 Industrial Museum. The Berlin, 174 Inspection of Buildings in New York, 31 " " School-houses. State, 129 Insurance. A Question of, 18, 146 " and Electricity, 79 " and Safe Building, 49, 97 " Company. Annual Report of Boston Manufacturers Mutual Fire, 177 " Companies and Building Construction. The, 49, 97 Interiors. Photographing, 96 International Edition. Our, 17, 18, 65 Iron and its Treatment for Artistic Purposes. Cast, 201 Japanese Collections at the Boston Art Museum. The, 192 Jewels in Burmese Temples, 58 Jewish Architecture, 20 Judean Tombs, 117 Keely, Architect. Death of Charles, 18 Kirby's Drawings. Mr. H. P., 107 Labor Syndicates. Contract-taking, 194 " Troubles, 130, 161, 177, 193 Lamp-post Directory. A, 98 Land Values in Milwaukee, 160 "Lantern of the Dead." The, 164 Laths. A Corner in, 192 Lead-pencils, 178 League Exhibition. The Architectural, 40, 57, 143 Leclère Prize. The Achille, 50 LEGAL:-- Alterations and Old Material, 109 Boston Building Laws. The, 109 Commission on a Standing Party-wall, 142 Compensation for Designs, 31 Competitor's Suit against a Building-committee. A, 104 Contracts. Importance of Written, 65 Dismissal. Right of, 158 Libel Suit between Architects. A, 206 Lien Law. The New Rhode Island, 113 Owner's Right to Build. An, 97 Responsibility of Architects. The, 2, 130 Suit against a Railroad. An Architect's, 194 "Trolley" System. Decision against the, 128 Understanding between Architect and Client, 159 Van Beers Suits. The, 80 Leighton on a Device of Spanish Architecture. Sir Frederick, 146 LETTERS FROM:-- Australia, 106, 183 Boston, 190 Canada, 41, 104, 182 Chicago, 118, 182 London, 42, 104 New York, 108 Paris, 21, 105, 185 Philadelphia, 197 Washington, 43, 186 Libel-suit between Architects. A, 206 Licensing of Architects. The, 162 Lien Law. The New Rhode Island, 113 Light-house at Houstholm. The, 88 Lighting Effects. Picturesque Interior, 146 Lime in Architect's Specifications, 161 Lock-out among Boston Freestone-Cutters, 161, 177 Locomotive. A New Style of, 82 Locrian Town. The Site of a, 16 LONDON:-- British Museum. Electric-light at the, 104 County Council. The, 104 Houses for Workingmen, 105 Hydraulic Power. The Distribution of, 155 Letters from, 42, 104 National Portrait Gallery. The New, 208 Prize-men of the R.I.B.A., 104 St. Saviour's, Southwark, 43 Subways for. Proposed, 43 Tower Bridge. The, 192 Waterhouse's Annual Address before the R.I.B.A. Mr., 42 Watkin Tower. The, 16, 105 Lottery. Church Restoring by, 128 Louis XIV. Equestrian Statues of, 170 Lowell City-hall Contracts. The, 194 Machine-work. Hand _vs._, 103 Magnesia Coverings for Steam-pipes, 23, 157 Manual Training-school Pupils, 96 Marble and Freestone Cutters, 161 " Beryt or Fluid, 160 Marcus Curtius. Statue of, 172 Massachusetts. State Inspection of School-houses in, 129 Master-builders' Attempt to Discipline Architects. The Philadelphia, 161 Mausoleums, 133 Maximilian at Innsbruck. Tomb of, 61 Maximilian I. Statue of, 76 Maya. Temples of Ancient, 204 McAlpine, Civil Engineer. Death of, W. J., 129 McArthur, Jr., Architect. Death of John, 33 " " The Late John, 48 Mediæval Architecture, 52, 67 " Cemeteries, 164 " Tombs, 163 Mesopotamia. Explorations in, 160 Metal. A new Composite, 93 Mexican Congressional Palace. The Proposed, 96 " Pyramids, 172 Mexico. A Titian "Entombment" in, 60 " "The City of the Gods," 172 Milan Cathedral. The Completion of, 130 Military Architecture, 179, 195 Mill-construction. Improvements in, 177 Millet's "Angelus," 12 Milwaukee. Land Values in, 160 Missouri State Association of Architects, 46 Modern Fortifications, 195 " Tombs, 166 Monolithic Church of St. Emilion, 16 Mons. The Cathedral of, 114 Monument to the Emperor William. National, 32 " " Prison-ship Martyrs, 128 Monuments. Equestrian, 72, 170 " Funerary, 99, 115, 131, 147, 163 " New York, 151 Mosaic. The Salviati, 208 Mouldings. Greek, 139 Mud-docks at Vizagapatam, 63 Mummy Cats. Egyptian, 208 Munich. The Royal Polytechnicum at, 181 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The, 175, 190 " The Cost of a small, 23 Mussulman Architecture, 52 Naples. Heavy Rains at, 95 National Portrait Gallery, London. The New, 208 Natural-gas Supply. The, 32 Neutral Axis. To Find the, 111 New South Wales Institute of Architects. Quarrel in the, 183 NEW YORK:-- Architectural League Exhibition, 40, 57, 143 Architecture. Color in, 108 Barye Exhibition. The, 10 City-hall Park. The, 138 East River Tunnel. The, 178 Episcopal Cathedral Competition. The, 40, 62 Inspection of Buildings in, 31 Letters from, 108 Monuments, 151 Obelisk. The Protection of the, 178, 207 Paintings at the Barye Exhibition, 11 Tenement-houses, 89, 119 Newark Architectural Sketch-Club, 30 Northwestern University. The Buildings of the, 118 Nun. A Written Contract Necessary even when Dealing with a, 65 Oak-trees built into Chimney-walls, 146 " Warfare on, 10 Obelisk. Protection of the New York, 198, 207 OBITUARY:-- André. Jules, Architect, 145 Brentano. Signor, Architect, 130 Clark. George, Architect, 63 Durand. George F., Architect, 1 Keely. Charles, Architect, 18 McAlpine. W. J., Civil Engineer, 129 McArthur, Jr. John, Architect, 33 Oudinot. Eugène, Glass-stainer, 81 Roberts. E. L., Architect, 177 Sidel. Edouard, Architect, 113 Wells. Joseph M., Architect, 95 Office. A Chicago Architect's, 50 Ontario Association of Architects, 41 Open-fireplace Throat. The, 159 Oriental Textiles at Berlin, 175 " Tombs, 148 Oudinot, Glass-stainer. Death of Eugène, 81 Owner's Right to Build. An, 97 Paint for Underground Work. A Cheap, 146 Painting on Cemented Surfaces, 146 Paintings at the Barye Exhibition, 11 " " " Boston Art Museum, 191 Palace of San Giorgio, Genoa, 64 Paper Hotel. A, 160 Paraffine Process used on the Egyptian Obelisk. The, 178, 207 PARIS:-- Bourse du Commerce. The New, 185 Bull-fights in, 130 Bull-ring Proposed for. A, 50 Halle au Blé. The, 185 Lamp-post Directory. A, 98 Letters from, 21, 105, 185 Model School-house. A, 82 Peabody Homes in, 56 Plasterers, 94 _Salons_. The Proposed two, 80 Skating-rink. An Artificial Ice, 145 PARIS EXPOSITION:-- Algerian Pavilion at the, 105 Buildings of the, 21, 105 Cairo Street at the, 105 Cochin-Chinese Pavilion at the, 106 Colonial Sections at the, 105 Double Statue at the, 32 Forestry Pavilion at the, 105 History of Habitation at the, 149, 168 Indian Pavilion at the, 105 Palaces of Liberal and Fine Arts, 21 Pavilions at the. The City of Paris, 21 Portuguese Pavilion at the, 105 Sanitary Exhibits at the, 21 Spanish Pavilion at the, 105 Tunisian Pavilion at the, 106 Views of Old Paris at the, 21 Pavement. India-rubber, 192 Pavements. Cast-iron, 192 Paving. Asphalt, 82 Peabody Homes in Paris, 56 Pencils. Lead, 178 Persian Court Art, 16 " Tombs, 117 PHILADELPHIA:-- Architectural Exhibition at the Art Club, 146 " " at the Penn. Academy, 107 Chapter, A.I.A., 46 Letters from, 107 Master-builders' Attempt to Discipline Architects. The, 161 T-Square Club, 206 Phoenician Architecture, 20 " Tombs, 117 Photographing Interiors, 96 Pirating Sculpture, 160 Planning of School-buildings. The, 81 Plaster-of-Paris and Marshmallow, 48 Plasterers. Paris, 94 Plate-glass. Protecting, 8 " Works Convention. The, 176 Pneumatic Street Railroad. A, 95 Polytechnicum at Munich. The Royal, 181 Polytechnique. The Zurich, 154 Power in London. Hydraulic, 155 " Lost by Radiation of Heat, 22, 156 Prehistoric Ruins of Yucatan. The, 58 Prints. Arranging Architectural, 207 Prison-ship Martyrs' Monument. The, 128 Prize-winners. The R.I.B.A., 104 Profit-sharing. A Contractor's, 2, 43 Protecting Building Stone, 98 Public Buildings in Canada. Proposed, 104 Pueblo Indians and the Works of the Rio Grande Irrigation Co. The, 63 Pyramids, 100 " A Hotel at the, 160 " Mexican, 172 Quebec City-hall Competition. The, 63 Queen of Greece and an Electric-wire. The, 128 Radiation of Heat. Loss of Power by, 22, 156 Railroad. A Pneumatic Street, 95 " An Architect's Suit against a, 194 Railway Bridge. The Hawkesbury, 106 " Zones in Hungary, 178 Railways. Electric, 64, 111, 128 Rains at Naples. Heavy, 95 Rantzau. Statuette of Marshal, 76 Rapid Transit for Chicago, 182 Ravenna. The Early Christian Tombs at, 147 Reading-light for Railways. Electric, 50 Registration of Architects in Canada. The, 183 Renaissance Architecture, 69 " Tombs, 165 Report of Boston Manufacturers Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Annual, 177 " The Bureau of Ethnology's Fifth Annual, 151 Reputation of Architects. The Influence of Architectural Journals on the, 17 Residence in Various Countries. Concentrated, 88, 119 Responsibility of Architects. The, 2, 130 Revising Bids. The Right of, 194 Rhode Island Lien Law. The New, 113 Richardson, H. H., 145 Rio Janeiro. The Sewage of, 156 Roberts, Architect. Death of E. L., 177 Rock. The Dighton, 93 Rocks Upheaved by Hydraulic Pressure, 26 Roman Architecture, 36, 51 " Catholic Buildings in Australia, 107 " Fortifications, 180 " Tombs, 133 Romanesque Tombs, 163 ROME:-- Castle of St. Angelo. The, 208 Vandalism in, 79 Vatican Museum. The, 208 Viaduct in. Discovery of an Ancient, 80 Rotting. To Prevent Wood from, 146 Royal Institute of British Architects. Prize-winners, 104 Ruskin and His Work. John, 49 Safe Building, 121, 135, 197 St. Alban's Abbey. The Restoration of, 42 " Angelo, Rome. The Castle of, 208 " Clair River Tunnel. The, 128 " Emilion. The Monolithic Church of, 16 " Louis Academy of Music. Fall of, 66 " " Chapter, A.I.A., 206 " Regulus Church. St. Andrews, 45 " Salvator's Church, St. Andrews, 46 " Saviour's, Southwark. The Restoration of, 43 " Sebald. Restoring the Church of, 128 _Salons_. The Proposed Two, 80 Salviati. Death of Dr., 208 Sandstone. The Structure of, 9 Sandy Foundations, 160 SANITARY:-- Concentrated Residence in Various Countries, 88, 119 Dessication of the Dead, 25 Entombment, 24 Exhibits at the Paris Exposition, 21 Inspection of New York Buildings, 31 Sewage of Rio Janeiro. The, 156 Tenement-houses, 88, 119 Ventilation of School-buildings, 82, 129 Sarcophagi, 163 Scaffold Accidents, 104 Scandinavian Art, 37, 53, 63 Schliemann _vs._ Dr. Botticher. Dr., 144 Schmiedbarenguss, 93 Schneider Fireproof Floor. The, 158 Scholar. Our Travelling. 153, 181 School-buildings. The Planning of, 81 " House at Evanston, Ill. A, 118 " " The Model, 82 " Houses. Books on, 207 " " The Ventilation of 82, 129 Sculpture and Architecture, 7 " Pirating, 160 " The Horse in, 72, 170 Sewage of Rio Janeiro. The, 156 Sgraffito-work, 154 Shades and Shadows. Architectural, 56 Sidel, Architect. Death of Edouard, 113 Skating-rink in Paris. An Artificial-Ice, 145 Slater Memorial Museum. The, 23 Slow-burning Construction, 29, 97 Soldiers' Home at Washington. The, 143 South America. Architects in, 18 Spanish Architecture. A Device of, 146 Specifications Should be _Specific_. Good, 161 "Spectator" on the Underwriters' Interest in Building. The, 49 Spires, Towers and Domes, 91, 101 Sprinklers in Mills. Automatic, 177 Stand-pipes and the Underwriters, 49 State Architect. The New York, 206 Statue Giving a Double Image, 32 " of the Emperor Frederick. A, 208 Steam-pipes and Woodwork, 48 " Coverings for, 22, 156 Steel Company's Works near Baltimore. The Pennsylvania, 188 Stelæ, 99, 115 Stevens, Sculptor. Alfred, 201, 203 Stockholm. An American Elevator in, 111 Stones. The Decay of Building, 98 Straightening Walls, 22 Strasbourg Cathedral, 153 " University, 154 Stray Thoughts for Young Architects, 90 Strikes and Lockouts. Threatened, 130 Styles. Changes of Architectural, 108 Subterranean Tombs, 115, 147 Suburban Building in Chicago, 132 Subways in London. Proposed, 43 Suspension-bridges. Chinese, 96 Swedish Penalties for Bad Building, 72 Syndicate. Proposed Contracting, 81 Syndicates. Contract-taking Labor, 191 Tapestries at Berlin. Exhibition of Textiles and, 174 Tariff on Works of Art. The, 18 Taxation of Roman Catholic Property in Montreal. The Exemption from, 42 Technical College. The Berlin, 140 Temples of Ancient Maya, 204 Tenement-houses, 88, 119 Teotihuacan, Mexico, 172 Testing the Forth Bridge, 160 Textiles and Tapestries at Berlin. Exhibition of, 174 Thirty Year's War. The, 72 Thoughts for Young Architects. Stray, 90 Titian "Entombment" in Mexico. A, 60 Tobacco in England. The first Use of, 110 Tomb. Cleopatra's, 141 " Frederick the Great's, 144 " of Cecilia Metella, 134 " " Maximilian at Innsbruck, 61 TOMBS:-- Assyrian, 116 Egyptian, 99, 115 Etruscan, 131 Greek, 131 Hindoo, 148 Judean, 117 Mediæval, 163 Modern, 166 Oriental, 148 Persian, 117 Phoenician, 117 Renaissance, 165 Roman, 133 Romanesque, 163 Subterranean, 115, 147 TORONTO:-- Architectural Sketch-Club, 142 Burning of the University. The, 182 Proposed Improvements in, 42 Tower for the Exhibition of 1892. High, 177 " The Watkin, 16, 105 Towers and Domes. Spires, 91, 101 Towns. The Laying-out of, 184 Tracy's House. The Fire in Secretary, 186 Trade Surveys, 16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 144, 160, 176, 192, 208 Trades-unions, 193 Training-school Pupils, 96 Traps. Evaporation of Water in, 15 Travelling-Scholar. Our, 153, 181 "Trolley" System. Decision against the, 128 T-Square Club, Philadelphia. The, 206 Tumuli. Celtic, 99 Tunnel. The East River, 178 " " St. Clair River, 128 " " Washington Aqueduct, 103 Underground Wires. Glass-lined Tubes for, 160 " Work. A Cheap Paint for, 146 Understanding between Architect and Client. The, 159 Underwriter's Interest in Building. The _Spectator_ on the, 49 Undermining. Well-sinking by, 98 University. Strasbourg, 154 Uxmal, 204 Van Beers. The Artist Jan, 80 Vandalism in Rome, 79 Vane in Burmah. A Jewelled, 58 Vatican. Art at the, 208 Ventilating Wooden Columns, 31 Ventilation of School-buildings, 82, 129 Verplanck Homestead. The, 26 Viaduct in Rome. Discovery of an Ancient, 80 Vikings. The Art of the, 37, 53 Walking Delegate. The Power of a, 193 Wall. Collapse of a Retaining, 113 Walls. Straightening, 22 Walnut Logs, 192 Warren's Sketches at the League Exhibition. Mr., 57, 143 WASHINGTON:-- Aqueduct Tunnel. The, 103 Building in. Recent and Future, 44 Chapter, A.I.A., 43 Letters from, 43, 186 Railroad. A Pneumatic Street, 95 Soldiers' Home Building. The, 143 Tracy's House. The Fire in Secretary, 186 Water-color Drawings. Architectural, 107 " Painting. Books on, 31 Waterhouse's Annual Address before the R.I.B.A. Mr., 42 Water-power. A Remarkable, 47 " supply of London. The, 156 " used in Boston Fires, 79 Watkin Tower. The, 16, 105 Wattle-tree. The, 10 Welding. Electric, 176 Well-sinking by Undermining, 98 Wells, Architect. Death of Joseph M., 95 White House. The _American Architect_ Travelling-scholarship Design for a new, 158 Whitewash. Fireproof, 208 Will. The Power of the, 112 William of Orange. Statue of, 74 Wood from Rotting. To Prevent, 146 "Working-day." A Fifteenth-century, 155 Working-drawings, 63 World's Fair. The Chicago, 177, 182 Yucatan. Ancient Temples of, 204 " Exploring Expedition. A New, 112 " Ruins and Works of Art in, 58 Zones in Hungary. Railway, 178 ILLUSTRATIONS. [_The figures refer to the number of the journal, and not to the page._] DETAILS. Old Iron and Brasswork at Providence, R.I., 737 Renaissance Doorways, Toulouse, France, 737 DWELLINGS. Balveny Castle, Scotland, 735 Block of Houses for E. K. Greene, Kearney, Neb. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 741 Cottage at Tuxedo, N.Y. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, Architects, 744 " for Dr. T. H. Willard, Jr., Greenville, N.Y. Adolph Haak, Architect, 737 House at Malden, Mass. Chamberlin & Whidden, Architects, 738 " " Rochester, N.Y. W. C. Walker, Architect, 736 HOUSE OF:-- J. R. Burnett, Orange, N.J. F. W. Beall, Architect, 743 C. H. Elmendorff, Kearney, Neb. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 737 C. De Lacey Evan, Ruxton, Md. E. G. W. Dietrich, Architect, 734 Geo. W. Frank, Kearney, Neb. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 743 Capt. Jesse H. Freeman, Brookline, Mass. W. A. Rodman, Architect, 738 Prof. C. E. Hart, New Brunswick, N.J. H. R. Marshall, Archt., 736 J. H. Howe, Rochester, N.Y. Nolan Bros., Architects, 736 Julius Howells, Chicago, Ill. Wm. H. Pfau, Architect, 740 A. H. Stem, Minnetonka Beach, Minn. A. H. Stem, Architect, 741 W. S. Wells, Newport, R.I. G. E. Harding & Co., Architects, 736 Albert Will, Rochester, N.Y. Otto Block, Architect, 735 Houses for Potter Palmer, Chicago, Ill. C. M. Palmer, Architect, 735 " " Dr. A. Wharton, St. Paul, Minn. A. H. Stem, Architect, 739 Netley Corners, Minneapolis, Minn. J. C. Plant, Architect, 744 Premises of G. G. Booth, Detroit, Mich. Mason & Rice, Architects, 740 Suggestion for the Executive Mansion by Theodore F. Laist. Successful Design for the American Architect Travelling-Scholarship. Workman's Dwelling-house on the Cohesive System, 739 ECCLESIASTICAL. Aberbrothwick Abbey, Arbroath, Scotland, 732 Baptist Church, Gardiner, Me. Stevens & Cobb, Architects, 737 Cathedral of St. Machar, Aberdeen, Scotland, 733 Chapel, St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H. Henry Vaughan, Architect, 742 Competitive Design for First Baptist Church, Malden, Mass. Lewis & Phipps, Architects, 740 COMPETITIVE DESIGN FOR THE:-- Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, N.Y. Glenn Brown, Architect, 732 Cram & Wentworth, Architects, 738 (_Imp._) B. G. Goodhue, Architect, 738 (_Imp._) J. R. Rhind, Architect, 743 (_Imp._) Congregational Church, Wakefield, Mass. Hartwell & Richardson, Architects, 744 Dalmeny Church, Linlithgow, Scotland, 743 (_Imp._) Design for Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tenn. W. Albert Swasey, Architect, 742 First Baptist Church, Elmira, N.Y. Pierce & Dockstader, Architects, 739 Memorial "Church of the Angels," Los Angeles, Cal. E. A. Coxhead, Architect, 733 St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church Buildings, Brooklyn, N.Y. Parfitt Bros., Architects, 733 " Luke's Church, Mansfield, O. W. G. Preston, Architect, 744 " Regulus's Church, St. Andrews, Scotland, 734 (_Imp._) " Salvator's Church, St. Andrews, Scotland, 734 (_Imp._) Sketch for a Church. Edward Stotz, Architect, 742 Throop Ave. Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N.Y. Fowler & Hough, Architects, 742 EDUCATIONAL. High School, Cambridge, Mass. Chamberlin & Austin, Architects, 743 " " Los Angeles, Cal. J. N. Preston & Son, Architects, 738 School-house, Lewiston, Me. Geo. F. Coombs, Architect, 735 University, Strasbourg, Germany. Prof. Worth, Architect, 741 FOREIGN. Aberbrothwick Abbey, Arbroath, Scotland, 732 Balveny Castle, Scotland, 735 Cathedral of St. Machar, Aberdeen, Scotland, 733 Central Dome of Exhibition Buildings, Paris, France, 740 Dalmeny Church, Linlithgow, Scotland, 743 (_Imp._) Hall, Craigievar Castle, Aberdeen, Scotland, 743 (_Imp._) Renaissance Doorways, Toulouse, France, 737 St. Regulus's Church, St. Andrews, Scotland, 734 (_Imp._) " Salvator's Church, St. Andrews, Scotland, 734 (_Imp._) Tower, St. Etienne du Mont, Paris, France, 737 Town Hall, Sydney, N.S.W., 743 University, Strasbourg, Germany. Prof. Worth, Architect, 741 HOTELS. Alicia Springs Hotel, Pennfield, Pa. E. Culver, Architect, 738 Hotel de Soto, Savannah, Ga. W. G. Preston, Architect, 733 Sketch for Hotel at Norton, Va. Geo. T. Pearson, Architect, 734 INTERIORS. Hall, Craigievar Castle, Aberdeen, Scotland, 743 (_Imp._) " in House of W. R. Ray, Los Angeles, Cal. W. Redmore Ray, Architect, 740 Sitting-room in House of J. H. Howe, Rochester, N.Y. Nolan Bros., Architects, 736 MERCANTILE. Anniston City Land Co. Building, Anniston, Ala. Chisolm & Green, Architects, 734 Building for the Boston Real Estate Trust. Cabot, Everett & Mead, Architects, 744 Design for an Office-building, Boston, Mass. C. H. Blackall, Archt., 734 Factory Building, on the Cohesive System, 739 Sketch of Store, Boston, Mass. Wait & Cutter, Architects, 732 MISCELLANEOUS. Alcove Sleeping-car, 742 Heads of Mexican Gods, 742 Vault, Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, Architects, 744 PUBLIC. Central Dome of Exhibition Buildings, Paris, France, 740 Town-hall, East Providence, R.I. W. K. Walker & Son, Architects, 738 " Sydney, N.S.W., 743 RAILROAD. Competitive Designs for Railroad-stations, by the Rochester Architectural Sketch Club, 738 STABLES. Sketch of Stable, Paterson, N.J. C. Edwards, Architect, 735 TOWERS AND SPIRES. Tower, St. Etienne du Mont, Paris, France, 737 " Sketched from the Competitive Design of C. B. Atwood, Architect, for the New City-hall, New York, N.Y., 736 Town Clock-tower. Designed by Willis Polk, Architect, 736 BARONIAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND. Aberbrothwick Abbey, 732 Balveny Castle, 735 Castle Campbell, 739 (_Int._) Cawdor Castle, 738 (_Int._) Craigievar Castle, 743 (_Imp._) Dalmeny Church, 743 (_Imp._) St. Machar's Cathedral, 733 " Regulus's Church, 734 (_Imp._) " Salvator's Church, 734 (_Imp._) ROTCH SCHOLARSHIP DRAWINGS. [_Published only in the Imperial and International Editions._] Angers Cathedral, 734 (_Imp._) Catania, 734 (_Imp._) Nôtre Dame, Poitiers, 734 (_Imp._) Pierrefonds, 734 (_Imp._) St. Ours, Loches, 731 (_Imp._) ILLUSTRATIONS.--INTERNATIONAL EDITION. [_The figures refer to the number of the journal and not to the page._] COLORED PRINTS. [_Published only in the Imperial and International Editions._] Detail of Entrance, Osborn Hall, New Haven, Conn. Bruce Price, Architect, 744 (_Imp._) House of W. A. Burnham, Boston, Mass. E. C. Curtis, Archt., 739 (_Imp._) Ruined Chapel of Charles V, Yuste, Spain, 732 Street View in Dinan, France, 736 Torre del Vino, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, 732 U.S. Trust Co.'s Building, New York, N.Y. R. W. Gibson, Architect, 734 (_Imp._) DETAILS. Capitals from Chamber of Commerce, Cincinnati, O. H. H. Richardson and Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, _Successors_, Architects, 740 (_Gel._) Detail of Entrance, Osborn Hall, New Haven, Conn. Bruce Price, Architect, 744 (_Gel._) Entrance, Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 739 Font and Canopy, St. Peter, Mancroft, Norwich, Eng. Frank T. Baggallay, Architect, 735 House-gable on Taubenstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Holst, Architect, 742 (_Gel._) Piers of the Cathedral Portico, Lucca, Italy, 739 (_Gel._) Porte Cochère, Paris, France, 744 (_Gel._) Portico, Ecole de Medicine, Paris, France, 741 (_Gel._) Window in Grisaille Glass. W. R. Lethaby, Designer, 740 Wrought-iron Gates, Chelmsford, Eng., 732 DWELLINGS. A Country House. Horace R. Appelbee, Architect, 732 Black Knoll, Brockenhurst, Eng. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 Butler's Wood, Chislehurst, Eng. Ernest Newton, Architect, 733 Castle Campbell, Clackmannan, Scotland, 739 Cawdor Castle, Nairn, Scotland, 738 Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 733 (_Gel._) Coombe Warren, Kingston, England. George Devey, Architect, 732, 734 Folkton Manor House, Eng. E. J. May, Architect, 743 Hall Place, Tonbridge, Eng. George Devey, Architect, 741 Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 735, 738 House at Exeter, Eng. James Crocker, Architect, 733 " " Goring-on-Thames, Eng. Geo. W. Webb, Architect, 740 " " Tunbridge Wells, Eng. George Devey, Architect, 741 House-gable on Taubenstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Holst, Archt., 742 (_Gel._) House, James St., Buckingham Gate, London, Eng. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 " near Birmingham, Eng. Essex & Nicol, Architects, 743 HOUSE OF:-- J. Benic, Karlstadt, Austria. Hans Pruckner, Architect, 743 (_Gel._) Mrs. Charles Blake, Boston, Mass. Sturgis & Cabot, Archts., 732 (_Gel._) Charles F. Brush, Cleveland, O. George H. Smith, Archt., 742 (_Gel._) W. A. Burnham, Boston, Mass. E. C. Curtis, Architect, 739 (_Gel._) Mrs. Consino, Santiago, Chili, 733, 734 Señor Cuda, Santiago, Chili, 740 (_Gel._) Mrs. S. T. Everett, Cleveland, O. C. F. & J. A. Schweinfurth, Architects, 735 (_Gel._) Herr Hatner, Buda-Pesth, Austria. Alfred Wellisch, Archt., 744 (_Gel._) Mrs. T. T. Haydock, Cincinnati, O. J. W. McLaughlin, Archt., 743 (_Gel._) Edwin Long, R.A., Hampstead, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 744 Mr. McKenna, Santiago, Chili, 740 (_Gel._) E. D. Pearce, Providence, R.I. Rotch & Tilden, Architects, 740 G. M. Smith, Providence, R.I. Stone, Carpenter & Willson, Architects, 733 (_Gel._) St. Simon, Angoulême, France, 735 House on the Rauchstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Kaiser & Grossheim, Archts., 741 (_Gel._) " " " Yorkstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Rintz, Architect, 744 (_Gel._) Mill Pond Farm, Cranbrook, Eng. M. E. Macartney, Architect, 743 Official Residence of the Intendente, Santiago, Chili, 734 Palace of Count Pallavicini, Vienna, Austria. Herr Von Hohenberg, Architect, 743 (_Gel._) Residence of the Former Viceroy of the Province, Santiago, Chili, 738 (_Gel._) Semi-detached Houses, Ripon, Eng. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 740 The Gables, Felixstowe, Eng. William A. Thorp, Architect, 740 Vicarage, Tweedmouth, Eng. F. R. Wilson, Architect, 744 Villa Blanca, near Innsbruck, Austria. J. W. Deininger, Archt., 740 (_Gel._) ECCLESIASTICAL. All Saints' Church, Leek, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 735 " " " London, Eng. Christopher & White, Architects, 743 Cathedral, Quimper, France, 742 (_Gel._) Chapel of St. Mary of Nazareth, Edgware, Eng. James Brooks, Architect, 736 Church of All Saints, Falmouth, Eng. J. D. Sedding, Archt., 737 " " St. John the Baptist, Reading, Eng. E. Prioleau Warren, Architect, 737 " " " Martin, Seamer, Eng. C. Hodgson Fowler, Architect, 742 Cloister, Poblet, Spain, 737 (_Gel._) COMPETITIVE DESIGN FOR THE:-- Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, N.Y. Edward C. Casey, Architect, 736 Stephen C. Earle, Architect, 736 John L. Faxon, Architect, 736 Design for a Village Church. Gerald C. Horsley, Architect, 740 " " Church of the Good Shepherd, London, Eng. T. Phillips Figgis, Archt., 733 Episcopal Church, West Medford, Mass. H. H. Richardson, Archt., 737 (_Gel._) Font and Canopy, St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, Eng. Frank T. Baggallay, Architect, 735 Interior of St. Paul Extra Muros, Rome, Italy, 734 (_Gel._) " " the Cathedral, Albi, France, 734 (_Gel._) " " " Hofkirche with Tomb of Maximilian I, Innsbruck, Austria, 735 (_Gel._) " " " Recoletu Church, Santiago, Chili, 735 (_Gel._) Parish Room and School, Charleton, Devon, Eng. F. J. Commin, Architect, 739 Ruined Chapel of Charles V, Yuste, Spain, 732 Wesleyan Chapel, Leeds, Eng. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 734 EDUCATIONAL. Board School, Bromley, Kent, Eng. Vacher & Hellicar, Architects, 739 COMPETITIVE DESIGN FOR:-- Gymnasium for Brown University, Providence, R.I. Gould & Angell, Architects, 741 Stone, Carpenter & Willson, Architects, 741 Design for a Board School. Geo. W. Webb, Architect, 733 Old Façade, Ecole de Medecine, Paris, France, 741 (_Gel._) Osborn Hall, New Haven, Conn. Bruce Price, Architect, 741 (_Gel._) Parish Room and School, Charleton, Devon, Eng. F. J. Commin, Architect, 739 Swimming-bath and Gymnasium, Grocers' Company's Schools, Hackney Downs, Eng. Henry C. Boyes, Architect, 736 FOREIGN. All Saints' Church, Leek, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 735 " " " London, Eng. Christopher & White, Archts., 743 Arch of Septimus Severus, Rome, Italy, 734 Auditorium of the Palace of the Trocadéro, Paris, France, 732 (_Gel._) "Bargello," Florence, Italy. The, 734 Black Knoll, Brockenhurst, Eng. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 Board School, Bromley, Kent, Eng. Vacher & Hellicar, Architects, 739 Business Premises, London, Eng. Frederick Wallen, Architect. 738 Butler's Wood, Chislehurst, Eng. Ernest Newton, Architect, 733 "Ca' d'Oro," Venice, Italy. The, 734 Castle Campbell, Clackmannan, Scotland, 739 Cathedral, Quimper, France, 742 (_Gel._) Cawdor Castle, Nairn, Scotland, 738 Chapel of St. Mary of Nazareth, Edgware, Eng. James Brooks, Architect, 736 Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 733 (_Gel._) Church of All Saints, Falmouth, Eng. J. D. Sedding, Archt., 737 " " St. John the Baptist, Reading, Eng. E. Prioleau Warren, Architect, 737 " " " Martin, Seamer, Eng. C. Hodgson Fowler, Architect, 742 Clee Park Hotel, Grimsby, Eng. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 Cloister, Poblet, Spain, 737 (_Gel._) Congress Hall and Chamber of Deputies, Santiago, Chili, 738 (_Gel._) Coombe Warren, Kingston, England. George Devey, Architect, 732 Corridor in House of Edwin Long, R.A., Hampstead, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 744 Design for Church of the Good Shepherd, London, Eng. T. Phillips Figgis, Architect, 733 Dining-room, Coombe Warren, Kingston, Eng. George Devey, Archt., 734 Drawing-room, Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 736 Entrance, Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 739 Folkton Manor House, Eng. E. J. May, Architect, 743 Font and Canopy, St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, Eng. Frank T. Baggallay, Architect, 735 Frome Union Offices, Frome, Eng. Drake & Bryan, Architects, 744 Grand Hotel, Vienna, Austria. Carl Tietz, Architect, 741 (_Gel._) Hall, Castle Campbell, Clackmannan, Scotland. The, 739 " Coombe House, near Shaftesbury, Eng. E. Towry White, Architect, 736 " Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. The, 738 Hill Place, Tonbridge, Eng. George Devey, Architect, 741 Holcombe, Chatham, England. John Belcher, Architect, 733, 736 House at Exeter, Eng. James Crocker, Architect, 733 " " Goring-on-Thames, Eng. Geo. W. Webb, Architect, 740 " " Tunbridge Wells, England. George Devey, Archt., 741 House-gable on Taubenstrasse, Berlin, Germany, 742 (_Gel._) House, James St., Buckingham Gate, London, Eng. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 " near Birmingham, Eng. Essex & Nicol, Architects, 743 HOUSE OF:-- J. Benic, Karlstadt, Austria. Hans Pruckner, Architect, 743 (_Gel._) Mrs. Consino, Santiago, Chili, 733, 734 Señor Cuda, Santiago, Chili, 740 (_Gel._) Herr Hatner, Buda-Pesth, Austria. Alfred Wellisch, Archt., 744 (_Gel._) Edwin Long, R.A., Hampstead, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Archt., 744 Mr. McKenna, Santiago, Chili, 740 (_Gel._) St. Simon, Angoulême, France, 735 House on the Rauchstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Kaiser & Grossheim, Archts., 741 (_Gel._) " " " Yorkstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Rintz, Architect, 744 (_Gel._) Interior in the Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 732, 733 (_Gel._) " of St. Paul Extra Muros, Rome, Italy, 734 (_Gel._) " " the Cathedral, Albi, France, 734 (_Gel._) " " " Hofkirche, with Tomb of Maximilian I, Innsbruck, Austria, 735 (_Gel._) " " " Recoletu Church, Santiago, Chili, 735 (_Gel._) Italian Sketches, 734 Kitchen, Castello di Vincigliata, Italy. G. Fancelli, Architect, 735 "Lloyds," Trieste, Austria. Baron Heinrich von Ferstel, Architect, 740 (_Gel._) Mill Pond Farm, Cranbrook, Eng. M. E. Macartney, Architect, 743 New Bourse du Commerce, Paris, France. H. Blondel, Architect, 735 " Premises, Chester, Eng. T. M. Lockwood, Architect, 737 Official Residence of the Intendente, Santiago, Chili, 734 Old Façade, Ecole de Medecine, Paris, France, 741 (_Gel._) Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall of the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 743 (_Gel._) Palace of Count Pallavicini, Vienna, Austria. Herr Von Hohenberg, Architect, 743 (_Gel._) " " the Liberal Arts, Paris, France. J. C. Formigé, Architect, 735 Parish Room and School, Charleton, Devon, Eng. F. J. Commin, Architect, 739 Piers of the Cathedral Portico, Lucca, Italy, 739 (_Gel._) Porte Cochère, Paris, France, 744 (_Gel._) Portico, Ecole de Medecine, Paris, France, 741 (_Gel._) Railway Tavern, Grimsby, Eng. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 Residence of the Former Viceroy of the Province, Santiago, Chili, 738 (_Gel._) Ruined Chapel of Charles V, Yuste, Spain, 732 Savings Bank, Linz, Austria. Austrian Building Co., Architects, 742 (_Gel._) Semi-detached Houses, Ripon, Eng. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 740 Stables, Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 739 Street View in Dinan, France, 736 " " " Santiago, Chili, 736 (_Gel._) Swimming-bath and Gymnasium, Grocers' Company's Schools, Hackney Downs, Eng. Henry C. Boyes, Architect, 736 Temples of Faustina and Romulus, Rome, Italy, 734 The Gables, Felixstowe, Eng. William A. Thorp, Architect, 740 Torre del Vino, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, 732 Vicarage, Tweedmouth, Eng. F. R. Wilson, Architect, 744 Villa Blanca, near Innsbruck, Austria. J. W. Deininger, Architect, 740 (_Gel._) Warehouse, Stockholm, Sweden. A. Egendomen, Architect, 735 Wesleyan Chapel, Leeds, Eng. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 734 Wrought-iron Gates, Chelmsford, Eng., 732 GELATINE. [_Published only in the Imperial and International Editions._] Auditorium of the Palace of the Trocadéro, Paris, France, 732 Capitals from Chamber of Commerce, Cincinnati, O. H. H. Richardson and Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge _Successors_, Architects, 740 (_Imp._) Cathedral, Quimper, France, 742 Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 733 Cloister, Poblet, Spain, 737 Congress Hall and Chamber of Deputies, Santiago, Chili, 738 Detail of Entrance, Osborn Hall, New Haven, Conn. Bruce Price, Architect, 744 (_Imp._) Entrance Hall in House of Prof. C. E. Hart, New Brunswick, N.J. H. R. Marshall, Architect, 736, (_Imp._) Episcopal Church, West Medford, Mass. H. H. Richardson, Archt., 737 (_Imp._) Grand Hotel, Vienna, Austria. Carl Tietz, Architect, 741 House-gable on Taubenstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Holst, Archt., 742 HOUSE OF:-- J. Benic, Karlstadt, Austria. Hans Pruckner, Architect, 743 Mrs. Charles Blake, Boston, Mass. Sturgis & Cabot, Archts., 732 (_Imp._) Charles F. Brush, Cleveland, O. George H. Smith, Archt., 742 (_Imp._) Señor Cuda, Santiago, Chili, 740 Mrs. S. T. Everett, Cleveland, O. C. F. & J. A. Schweinfurth, Architects, 735 (_Imp._) Herr Hatner, Buda-Pesth, Austria. Alfred Wellisch, Architect, 744 Mrs. T. T. Haydock, Cincinnati, O. J. W. McLaughlin, Architect, 743 (_Imp._) Mr. McKenna, Santiago, Chili, 740 G. M. Smith, Providence, R.I. Stone, Carpenter & Willson, Architects, 733 (_Imp._) House on the Rauchstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Kaiser & Grossheim, Architects, 741 House on the Yorkstrasse, Berlin, Germany. Herr Rintz, Archt., 744 Interior in the Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 732, 733 " of St. Paul Extra Muros, Rome, Italy, 734 " " the Cathedral, Albi, France, 734 " " " Hofkirche with Tomb of Maximilian I, Innsbruck, Austria, 735 " " " Recoletu Church, Santiago, Chili, 735 Interiors in House at Malden, Mass. Chamberlin & Whidden, Architects, 738 (_Imp._) "Lloyds," Trieste, Austria. Baron Heinrich von Ferstel, Architect, 740 Old Façade, Ecole de Medecine, Paris, France, 741 Osborn Hall, New Haven, Conn. Bruce Price, Architect, 741 (_Imp._) Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall of the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 743 Palace of Count Pallavicini, Vienna, Austria. Herr Von Hohenberg, Architect, 743 Piers of the Cathedral Portico, Lucca, Italy, 739 Porte Cochère, Paris, France, 744 Portico, Ecole de Medecine, Paris, France, 741 Residence of the Former Viceroy of the Province, Santiago, Chili, 738 Savings Bank, Linz, Austria. Austrian Building Co., Architects, 742 Street View in Santiago, Chili, 736 Villa Blanca, near Innsbruck, Austria. J. W. Deininger, Architect, 740 HOTELS. Clee Park Hotel, Grimsby, Eng. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 Grand Hotel, Vienna, Austria. Carl Tietz, Architect, 741 (_Gel._) Railway Tavern, Grimsby, Eng. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 INTERIORS. Auditorium of the Palace of the Trocadéro, Paris, France, 732 (_Gel._) Church of All Saints, Falmouth, Eng. J. D. Sedding, Archt., 737 " " St. Martin, Seamer, Eng. C. Hodgson Fowler, Architect, 742 Corridor in House of Edwin Long, R.A., Hampstead, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 744 Dining-room, Coombe Warren, Kingston, Eng. George Devey, Archt., 734 Drawing-room, Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Archt., 736 Entrance Hall in House of Prof. C. E. Hart, New Brunswick, N.J. H. R. Marshall, Architect, 736 (_Gel._) Hall, Castle Campbell, Clackmannan, Scotland. The, 739 " Coombe House, near Shaftesbury, Eng. E. Towry White, Architect, 736 " Holcombe, Chatham, Eng. John Belcher, Architect, 738 Interior in the Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France, 732, 733 (_Gel._) " of All Saints' Church, Leek, Eng. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 735 " " St. Paul Extra Muros, Rome, Italy, 734 (_Gel._) " " the Cathedral, Albi, France, 734 (_Gel._) " " " Hofkirche with Tomb of Maximilian I, Innsbruck, Austria, 735 (_Gel._) " " " Recoletu Church, Santiago, Chili, 735 (_Gel._) Interiors in House at Malden, Mass. Chamberlin & Whidden, Architects, 738 (_Gel._) Kitchen, Castello di Vincigliata, Italy. G. Fancelli, Architect, 735 Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall of the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 743 (_Gel._) Swimming-bath and Gymnasium, Grocers' Company's Schools, Hackney Downs, Eng. Henry C. Boyes, Architect, 736 MERCANTILE. Business Premises, London, England. Frederick Wallen, Architect, 738 "Lloyds," Trieste, Austria. Baron Heinrich von Ferstel, Architect, 740 (_Gel._) New Premises, Chester, Eng. T. M. Lockwood, Architect, 737 Savings Bank, Linz, Austria. Austrian Building Co., Archts., 742 (_Gel._) U.S. Trust Co.'s Building, New York, N.Y. R. W. Gibson, Architect, 734 (_Gel._) Warehouse, Stockholm, Sweden. A. Egendomen, Architect, 735 MISCELLANEOUS. Historical Figures from the Lord Mayor's Procession, 732 Italian Sketches, 734 "Lion and Serpent." A. L. Barye, Sculptor, 732 New Year's Day in the Olden Time, 735 Norwich, from the Cromer Road, by John Sell Cotman, 742 Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall of the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 743 (_Gel._) Sketches in Normandy, by Herbert Railton, 739 Street View in Dinan, France, 736 " " " Santiago, Chili, 736 (_Gel._) Swimming-bath and Gymnasium, Grocers' Company's Schools, Hackney Downs, Eng. Henry C. Boyes, Architect, 736 Winter, from a Painting by Nicolas Lancret, 741 MONUMENTAL. Interior of the Hofkirche with Tomb of Maximilian I, Innsbruck, Austria, 735 (_Gel._) PUBLIC. Congress Hall and Chamber of Deputies, Santiago, Chili, 738 (_Gel._) Frome Union Offices, Frome, England. Drake & Bryan, Architects, 744 New Bourse du Commerce, Paris, France. H. Blondel, Architect, 735 Palace of the Liberal Arts, Paris, France. J. C. Formigé, Archt., 735 STABLES. Stables, Holcombe, Chatham, England. John Belcher, Architect, 739 TOWERS AND SPIRES. Torre del Vino, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, 732 TEXT CUTS. [_These figures refer to the page of text, not to the plates._] Arch at Naples, 77 Axe-head, 89 Bracteates, 53, 54 Capitals, 60, 91, 94, 156 Cartoon for Sgraffito, 3 Centennial Hall, Sydney, 184 Chair from Khorsabad, 72 CIVIL & DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE:-- Basilica. A Roman, 51 Baths of Caracalla. Plan of, 36 Colonnade of the Louvre, Paris, 70 Foscari Palace, Venice, 68 Fountain, Place Stanislas, Nancy, 85 Garde-Meuble, Paris, 83 Gare d'Orléans, Paris, 88 Halle au Blé, Paris, 83, 84 Halles Centrales, Paris, 87, 88 Hôtel de Ville, Brussels, 67 " " " Paris, 69 " " " St. Antonin, France, 51 " des Invalides, Paris, 70, 71 Library of St. Geneviève, Paris, 87 Mint, Paris. The, 83 Monument of Lysicrates, 35 Odéon, Paris. The, 84 Opéra-House, Paris, 86 Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 67 Place Stanislas, Nancy, 85 Procurazie Nuove, Venice, 68 Strozzi Palace, Florence, 70 Theatre of Herculaneum, 51 Tower of the Winds, 36 Copper-plates from Etowah Mound, 153 "Dance," Paris Opéra-House. Carpeaux's, 101 Doorway, Newport, R.I., 28 Doorways. Carved Church, 38, 39 Dormer, 58 Entrance, Stokesay Castle, 155 Equestrian Designs, 72, 170 EQUESTRIAN MONUMENTS:-- Condé. The Great, 76 Louis XIV, 170, 171 Gustavus Adolphus, 73 Maximilian I, 74 Marcus Curtius, 170 Marshal Rantzau, 76 William of Orange, 72 Fibula, 54 FUNERARY ARCHITECTURE:-- Absalom's Tomb, 116 Campo Santo at Genoa, 167 " " " Pisa, 164 Catacombs, 147 Celtic Tumuli, 99 Egyptian Tombs, 100 Etruscan Tombs, 131 Hypogea, 115 Mausoleum of Taghlak, 148 Mediæval Tombs, 163 Mougheir Tombs, 115 Phoenician Tombs, 116 Pyramids. The, 100 Roman Cippus, 134 " Columbarium, 134 " Funerary Urn, 134 Sepulchral Chapel at Paris, 167 Stelæ, 116 Tomb at Montmorency, 166 Tomb at Palmyra, 134 Tomb at Pompeii, 133 Tomb in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome, 165 Tomb of Louis de Brézé, Rouen, 165 Cecilia Metella, Rome, 132 Hadrian, 132, 133 Louis XII, St. Denis, 164 Mazarin, Paris, 166 Nakschi Roustam, 117 Paul III, Rome, 166 St. Stephen, Obazine, 163 Marshal Saxe, Strasbourg, 167 Theodoric, Ravenna, 147 Tombs at Mycenæ, 131 Tombs at Telmissus and Theron, 131 Tombs in India, 148 Tombs in Judea and Asia Minor, 117 Tomb of the Caliphs at Cairo, 148 Urn Containing Heart of Francis I, 164 George Inn, Norton, Eng., 44 Hall in House of J. H. Howe, Rochester, N.Y. Nolan Bros., Architects, 78 Hinge. Wrought-iron, 135 HISTORY OF HABITATION:-- Aztec Dwelling. An, 169 Byzantine House, 151 Egyptian House, 150 Etruscan House, 168 Gallo-Roman House, 150 Hebrew House, 169 Inca Dwelling, 149 Pelasgian Hut, 149 Phoenician House, 168 Horns. Golden, 55, 56 House of A. A. Carey, Cambridge, Mass. Sturgis & Brigham, Architects, 23 Impost, 50 Martyrs Column, Naples, Italy, 22 MILITARY ARCHITECTURE:-- Arch of Austria. The Louvre, 195 Assyrian Fortress, 179 Bastioned City. A, 196 Enceinte of Constantinople, 180 Fortification. Section of a, 196 Fortresses. Egyptian, 179 Plan of Tiryns, 179 Towers of Messene, 180 Tyre, 180 Wall of Castellum of Jublaius, 180 Wall of Château Gaillard, 195 Walls of Pompeii, 180 Walls of Verona, 180 "Modern Improvements." "All the," 109, 141, 156, 174 Monument. Scandinavian, 55 " to Egmont and Horn, Brussels, 9 " " Liszt, 5 " " Minine and Pojarsky, Russia, 27 " " the Heroes of the Franco-Prussian War, Berlin, 19 Pulpit, 10 Quintus Church, Mainz, 172 Scabbard Ornament, 40 Sculpture, Campanile of St. Mark's, 57, 93 Sword Hilt, 37 Tower, 24 Turret, Rothenburg, Ger., 204 Verplanck Homestead, Fishkill, N.Y., 26 Waterspout, 90 Window at Ulm, 201 INDEX BY LOCATION. [_The figures refer to the number of the journal, and not to the page._] Aberdeen, Scotland. Cathedral of St. Machar, 733 (_Reg._) " " Hall, Craigievar Castle, 743 (_Imp._) Albi, France. Interior of the Cathedral, 734 (_Int._) Angoulême, France. House of St. Simon, 735 (_Int._) Anniston, Ala. Anniston City Land Co. Building. Chisolm & Green, Architects, 734 (_Reg._) Arbroath, Scotland. Aberbrothwick Abbey, 732 (_Reg._) Balveny Castle, Scotland, 735 (_Reg._) Berlin, Ger. House-gable on Taubenstrasse. Herr Holst, Architect, 742 (_Int._) " " House on the Rauchstrasse. Kaiser & Grossheim, Architects, 741 (_Int._) " " House on the Yorkstrasse. Herr Rintz, Architect, 744 (_Int._) Birmingham, Eng. House near, Essex & Nicol, Architects, 743 (_Int._) BOSTON, MASS.:-- Building for the Boston Real Estate Trust, 744 (_Reg._) Design for an Office-building. C. H. Blackall, Architect, 734 (_Reg._) House of Mrs. Charles Blake. Sturgis & Cabot, Architects, 732 (_Imp._) " " W. A. Burnham. E. C. Curtis, Archt., 739 (_Imp._) Sketch of Store. Wait & Cutter, Architects, 732 (_Reg._) Brockenhurst, Eng. Black Knoll. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 (_Int._) Bromley, Eng. Board School. Vacher & Hellicar, Architects, 739 (_Int._) Brookline, Mass. House of Capt. Jesse H. Freeman. W. A. Rodman, Architect, 738 (_Reg._) Brooklyn, N.Y. St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church Buildings. Parfitt Bros., Architects, 733 (_Reg._) " " Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church. Fowler & Hough, Architects, 742 (_Reg._) " " Vault, Greenwood Cemetery. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, Archts., 744 (_Reg._) Buda-Pesth, Austria. House of Herr Hatner. Alfred Wellisch, Architect, 744 (_Int._) Cambridge, Mass. High School. Chamberlin & Austin, Architects, 743 (_Reg._) Castle of Vincigliata, Italy. Kitchen. G. Fancelli, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Charleton, Eng. Parish Room and School. F. J. Commin, Architect, 739 (_Int._) Chatham, Eng. Holcombe. John Belcher, Architect, 735, 736, 738, 739 (_Int._) Chelmsford, Eng. Wrought-iron Gates, 732 (_Int._) Chester, Eng. New Premises. T. M. Lockwood, Architect, 737 (_Int._) Chicago, Ill. House of Julius Howells. Wm. H. Pfau, Architect, 740 (_Reg._) " " Houses for Potter Palmer. C. M. Palmer, Architect, 735 (_Reg._) Chislehurst, Eng. Butler's Wood. Ernest Newton, Architect, 733 (_Int._) Cincinnati, O. Capitals from Chamber of Commerce. H. H. Richardson and Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, Successors, Architects, 740 (_Imp._) " " House for Mrs. T. T. Haydock. J. W. McLaughlin, Architect, 743 (_Imp._) Clackmannan, Scotland. Castle Campbell, 739 (_Int._) Cleveland, O. House of Chas. F. Brush, George H. Smith, Architect, 742 (_Imp._) " " House of Mrs. S. T. Everett. C. F. & J. A. Schweinfurth, Architects, 735 (_Imp._) Concord, N.H. Chapel, St. Paul's School. Henry Vaughan, Architect, 742 (_Reg._) Cranbrook, Eng. Mill Pond Farm. M. E. Macartney, Architect, 743 (_Int._) Detroit, Mich. Premises of G. G. Booth. Mason & Rice, Architects, 740 (_Reg._) Dinan, France. Street View, 736 (_Int._) East Providence, R.I. Town-hall. W. R. Walker & Son, Archts., 738 (_Reg._) Edgware, Eng. Chapel of St. Mary of Nazareth. James Brooks, Architect, 736 (_Int._) Elmira, N.Y. First Baptist Church. Pierce & Dockstader, Archts., 739 (_Reg._) Exeter, Eng. House at. James Crocker, Architect, 733 (_Int._) Falmouth, Eng. Church of All Saints. J. D. Sedding, Architect, 737 (_Int._) Felixstowe, Eng. The Gables. William A. Thorp, Architect, 740 (_Int._) Frome, Eng. Frome Union Offices. Drake & Bryan, Architects, 744 (_Int._) Gardiner, Me. Baptist Church. Stevens & Cobb, Architects, 737 (_Reg._) Goring-on-Thames, Eng. House. Geo. W. Webb, Architect, 740 (_Int._) Granada, Spain. Torre del Vino, Alhambra, 732 (_Int._) Greenville, N.Y. Cottage for Dr. T. H. Willard, Jr. Adolph Haak, Architect, 737 (_Reg._) Grimsby, Eng. Clee Park Hotel. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 (_Int._) " " Railway Tavern. E. W. Farebrother, Architect, 738 (_Int._) Hackney Downs, Eng. Swimming-bath and Gymnasium, Grocers' Company Schools. H. C. Bowes, Archt., 736 (_Int._) Hampstead, Eng. House of Edwin Long, R.A. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 734 (_Int._) Innsbruck, Austria. Interior of the Hofkirche, with Tomb of Maximilian I, 735 (_Int._) " " Villa Blanca, near. T. W. Deininger, Architect, 740 (_Int._) Karlstadt, Austria. House of J. Benic. Hans Pruckner, Architect, 743 (_Int._) Kearney, Neb. Block of Houses for E. K. Greene. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 741 (_Reg._) " " House of C. H. Elmendorff. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 737 (_Reg._) " " House of Geo. W. Frank. Frank, Bailey & Farmer, Architects, 743 (_Reg._) Kingston, Eng. Coombe Warren. George Devey, Archt., 732, 734 (_Int._) Leeds, Eng. Wesleyan Chapel. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 734 (_Int._) " " All Saints' Church. R. Norman Shaw, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Lewiston, Me. School-house. Geo. F. Coombs, Architect, 735 (_Reg._) Linlithgow, Scotland. Dalmeny Church, 742 (_Imp._) Linz, Austria. Savings Bank. Austrian Building Co., Architects, 742 (_Int._) LONDON, ENG.:-- All Saints' Church. Christopher & White, Architects, 743 (_Int._) Business Premises. Frederick Wallen, Architect, 738 (_Int._) Design for Church of the Good Shepherd. T. Phillips Figgis, Architect, 733 (_Int._) House, James Street, Buckingham Gate. R. T. Blomfield, Architect, 742 (_Int._) Los Angeles, Cal. Hall in House of W. R. Ray. W. Redmore Ray, Architect, 740 (_Reg._) " " " High-School. J. N. Preston & Son, Archts., 738 (_Reg._) " " " Memorial "Church of the Angels." E. A. Coxhead, Archt., 733 (_Reg._) Lucca, Italy. Piers of the Cathedral Portico, 739 (_Int._) Malden, Mass. Competitive Design for the First Baptist Church. Lewis & Phipps, Architects, 740 (_Reg._) " " House. Chamberlin & Whidden, Architects, 738 (_Reg._) " " Interiors in House at. Chamberlin & Whidden, Architects, 738 (_Imp._) Mansfield, O. St. Luke's Church. W. G. Preston, Architect, 744 (_Reg._) Memphis, Tenn. Design for Presbyterian Church. W. Albert Swasey, Architect. 742 (_Reg._) Minneapolis, Minn. Netley Corners. J. C. Plant, Architect, 744 (_Reg._) Minnetonka Beach, Minn. House of A. H. Stem. A. H. Stem, Architect, 741 (_Reg._) Morbihan, France. Château de Josselin, 733 (_Int._) " " Interior in the Château de Josselin, 732, 733 (_Int._) Nairn, Scotland. Cawdor Castle, 738 (_Int._) New Brunswick, N.J. Entrance-hall in House of Prof. C. E. Hart. H. R. Marshall, Architect, 736 (_Imp._) " " " House of Prof. C. E. Hart. H. R. Marshall, Architect, 736 (_Reg._) New Haven, Conn. Osborn Hall. Bruce Price, Architect, 741, 744 (_Imp._) Newport, R.I. House of W. S. Wells. G. E. Harding & Co., Archts., 736 (_Reg._) NEW YORK, N.Y.:-- Competitive Design for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Glenn Brown, Architect, 732 (_Reg._) Edward C. Casey, Archt., 736 (_Int._) Cram & Wentworth, Architects, 738 (_Imp._) Stephen C. Earle, Archt., 736 (_Int._) John L. Faxon, Architect, 736 (_Int._) B. G. Goodhue, Archt., 738 (_Imp._) J. R. Rhind, Architect, 743 (_Imp._) U.S. Trust Co.'s Building. R. W. Gibson, Architect, 734 (_Imp._) Normandy. Sketches in. By Herbert Railton, 739 (_Int._) Norton, Va. Sketch for Hotel at. Geo. T. Pearson, Architect, 734 (_Reg._) Norwich, Eng. Font and Canopy, St. Peter, Mancroft. Frank T. Baggallay, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Orange, N.J. House of J. R. Burnett. F. W. Beall, Architect, 743 (_Reg._) PARIS, FRANCE:-- Auditorium of the Palace of the Trocadéro, 732 (_Int._) Central Dome of Exhibition Buildings, 740 (_Reg._) Ecole de Medecine, 741 (_Int._) New Bourse du Commerce. H. Blondel, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall of the Sorbonne, 743 (_Int._) Palace of the Liberal Arts. J. C. Formigé, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Porte Cochère, 744 (_Int._) Tower, St. Etienne du Mont, 737 (_Reg._) Paterson, N.J. Sketch of Stable. C. Edwards, Architect, 735 (_Reg._) Pennfield, Pa. Alicia Springs Hotel. E. Culver, Architect, 738 (_Reg._) Poblet, Spain. Cloister, 737 (_Int._) PROVIDENCE, R.I.:-- Competitive Design for Gymnasium for Brown University. Gould & Angell, Architects, 741 (_Int._) Competitive Design for Gymnasium for Brown University. Stone, Carpenter & Willson, Archts., 741 (_Int._) House of E. D. Pearce. Rotch & Tilden, Archts., 740 (_Int._) " " G. M. Smith. Stone, Carpenter & Willson, Architects, 733 (_Imp._) Old Iron and Brass Work, 737 (_Reg._) Quimper, France, Cathedral, 742 (_Int._) Reading, Eng. Church of St. John the Baptist. E. Prioleau Warren, Architect, 737 (_Int._) Ripon, Eng. Semi-detached Houses. T. Butler Wilson, Architect, 740 (_Int._) Rochester, N.Y. House of J. H. Howe. Nolan Bros., Architects, 736 (_Reg._) " " House of Albert Will. Otto Block, Architect, 735 (_Reg._) " " House on Portsmouth Terrace. W. C. Walker, Architect, 736 (_Reg._) Rome, Italy. Interior of St. Paul Extra Muros, 734 (_Int._) Ruxton, Md. House of C. De Lacey Evan. E. G. W. Dietrich, Architect, 734 (_Reg._) St. Andrews, Scotland. Churches of St. Regulus and St. Salvator, 734 (_Imp._) St. Paul, Minn. Houses for Dr. A. Wharton. A. H. Stem, Archt., 739 (_Reg._) SANTIAGO, CHILI:-- Congress Hall and Chamber of Deputies, 738 (_Int._) House of Mrs. Consino, 733, 734 (_Int._) " " Señor Cuda, 740 (_Int._) " " Mr. McKenna, 740 (_Int._) Interior of the Recoletu Church, 735 (_Int._) Official Residence of the Intendente, 734 (_Int._) Residence of the former Viceroy of the Province, 738 (_Int._) Street View, 736 (_Int._) Savannah, Ga. Hotel de Soto. W. G. Preston, Architect, 733 (_Reg._) Seamer, Eng. Church of St. Martin. C. Hodgson Fowler, Archt., 742 (_Int._) Shaftesbury, Eng. Hall, Coombe House, near. E. T. White, Archt., 736 (_Int._) Stockholm, Sweden. Warehouse. A. Egendomen, Architect, 735 (_Int._) Strasbourg, Germany. University. Prof. Worth, Architect, 741 (_Reg._) Sydney, N.S.W. Town-hall, 743 (_Reg._) Tonbridge, Eng. Hall Place. George Devey, Architect, 741 (_Int._) Toulouse, France. Renaissance Doorways, 737 (_Reg._) Trieste, Austria. Lloyds. Baron Heinrich von Ferstel, Architect, 740 (_Int._) Tunbridge Wells, Eng. House. George Devey, Architect, 741 (_Int._) Tuxedo, N.Y. Cottage at. Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell, Architects, 744 (_Reg._) Tweedmouth, Eng. Vicarage. F. R. Wilson, Architect, 744 (_Int._) Vienna, Austria. Grand Hotel. Carl Tietz, Architect, 741 (_Int._) " " Palace of Count Pallavicini. Herr Von Hohenberg, Archt., 743 (_Int._) Wakefield, Mass. Congregational Church. Hartwell & Richardson Architects, 744 (_Reg._) West Medford, Mass. Episcopal Church. H. H. Richardson, Architect, 737 (_Imp._) Yuste, Spain. Ruined Chapel of Charles V, 732 (_Int._) THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS. VOL. XXVII. Copyright, 1890, by TICKNOR & COMPANY, Boston, Mass. No. 732. Entered at the Post-office at Boston as second-class matter. JANUARY 4, 1890. [Illustration: CONTENTS] SUMMARY:-- The Incomes of Architects.--Death of Mr. George F. Durand, Architect.--Concrete Arches.--An Architect's Responsibility for Exceeding the Stipulated Cost of a Building.--A French Case in Point.--A Contractor Engages in Profit-Sharing with his Workmen. 1 THE APARTMENT-HOUSE. 3 ARCHITECTURE IN BROOKLYN. 5 THE STRUCTURE OF SANDSTONE. 9 THE BARYE EXHIBITION. 10 ILLUSTRATIONS:-- "The Lion and the Serpent."--Auditorium of the Palace of the Trocadéro, Paris, France.--An Interior in the Château de Josselin, Morbihan, France.--Torre del Vino, Alhambra, Granada, Spain.--Ruins of the Chapel of Charles V, Yuste, Spain.--Coombe Warren, Kingston, England: Garden Front.--Coombe Warren, Kingston, England: Entrance Front.--A Gentleman's Country House.--Wrought-Iron Gates, Duke Street, England.--Historical Figures from Lord Mayor's Procession, 1889.--House of Mrs. Charles Blake, Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.--Competitive Designs for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, N.Y.--Abbey of Aberbrothwick: Gallery over Entrance.--Abbey of Aberbrothwick: The Western Doorway.--Design for a Store. 12 SOCIETIES. 14 COMMUNICATIONS.-- Barye's Admirer.--Evaporation of Water in Traps. 15 NOTES AND CLIPPINGS. 15 TRADE SURVEYS. 16 * * * * * That extraordinary phenomenon, which those who read many newspapers sometimes encounter, of the inspiration of two writers following tracks so closely parallel that their effusions are word for word the same from beginning to end, was recently to be observed in the case of the New York _Herald_ and the Pittsburgh _Leader_, which published on the same day an article devoted to architects or, rather, to their incomes, which held up these fortunate professional men as objects to be envied, if not by all the world, at least by journalists, many of whom have just now a way of writing about rich men or women which suggests the idea that the journalist himself was brought up in a jail, and sees nothing but the pockets of those whom he favors with his attention. The present writers, after half a column or so of rubbish about the grandeur of American buildings, furnish the New York and Pittsburgh public with the information that "there are in the city of New York at least ten architects whose annual net income is in excess of a hundred thousand dollars, while in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston and St. Louis there are quite as many who can spend a like amount of money every year without overdrawing their bank accounts." This is certainly very liberal to the architects, but what follows is even more so. "There are," we are told, in addition to the magnates just mentioned, "hosts of comparatively small fry whose annual profits will pass the fifty-thousand-dollar mark." If an architect whose net income is only a thousand dollars a week belongs to the "small fry," what name would these journalists have for the remaining insignificant beings who practise architecture faithfully and skilfully, and thank Providence sincerely if their year's work shows a profit of three thousand dollars? Yet, with a tolerably extended acquaintance in the profession, we are inclined to think that this list includes the greater part of the architects in this country. As to the architects whose usual income from their business is a hundred thousand dollars, they are pure myths. The New York-Pittsburgh authority mentions by name Mr. R. M. Hunt as one of them. As a counterpoise to this piece of information, we will mention what a worthy contractor once said to us about Mr. Hunt. The builders were not, in those days, very fond of our venerated President. He had altogether too many new ideas to suit their conservatism, which looked with horror on anything out of the common way. "The fact is," said the contractor, in a burst of confidence, "Mr. Hunt never could get a living at all if he hadn't a rich wife." By averaging these two pieces of misinformation, after the manner of the commissioners of statistics, one may, perhaps, get some sort of notion of what a very able and distinguished architect in New York, seconded by skilful and devoted assistants, can make out of his business; but men so successful are extremely rare exceptions in the profession, and the "hosts" of "small fry" whose annual profits amount to fifty thousand dollars, of course, do not exist. It would be a waste of time to notice such ridiculous assertions, were it not that they do a great deal of harm to the profession and the public: to the profession by making people believe that architects are combined to extort an unreasonable compensation for their work; and to the public by spreading the idea that the profession of architecture is just the one in which their sons can become rapidly rich without much trouble. It would be a useful thing to publish here, as is done in England, the value of the estate left at their death by architects of distinction, although in many cases this is greatly increased by inheritance, by marriage, by fortunate investments or by outside employment; but, if this should be done, it would be not less useful to publish also a few true accounts of the early trials and struggles of architects. How many of them have we known who have given drawing-lessons, illustrated books, designed wall-papers, supervised laborers, delivered lyceum-lectures or written for newspapers, happy if they could earn two dollars a day while waiting for a vacancy in the "hosts" of architects with a thousand dollars a week income. How many more, who were glad of the help of their faithful young wives in eking out the living which had love for its principal ingredient. And of those who have persisted until time and opportunity have brought them a comparatively assured, though modest position, how many have found their way to it through architecture? If we are not mistaken, less than half of the trained students in architecture turned out by our technical schools are to be found in the profession six years later. The others, ascertaining, on a closer view, that their expected income of fifty thousand dollars a year is farther off than they anticipated, and that fifty thousand cents is about as much as they can expect for a good many years to come, drift away into other employments, and some of them, no doubt, will be much astonished to learn from the newspaper reporters what they have missed. * * * * * We regret very much to hear of the death of Mr. George F. Durand, Vice-President of the Canadian Society of Architects; which occurred at London, Ontario, last week. Mr. Durand was young in the profession, being only thirty-nine years old, but was very widely and favorably known among architects and the public, both in Canada and elsewhere. He was a native of London, but after spending a short time in the office of the city engineer there, he went to Albany, N.Y., where he was employed by Mr. Thomas Fuller as his chief assistant in the work on the new capitol, which was then in Mr. Fuller's hands. When Mr. Fuller was superseded, Mr. Durand left Albany with him, and, after a year spent in Maine, with a granite company, he returned to his native city, where he soon found constant and profitable employment, having for several years built a large part of the most important structures in Western Ontario. The London _Advertiser_, to which we owe most of our information as to his works, offers to his relatives and friends the sincere sympathy of the public which it represents, and we are sure that the architects of the United States will join with their brethren in Canada in mourning the loss of one who, at so early an age, had conquered for himself so conspicuous a place in his laborious profession. * * * * * Some interesting experiments on concrete arches were made recently, during the construction of the new railway station at Erfurt. Some of the rooms were to be covered with concrete floors, carried on iron beams, while others, of smaller size, were intended to be spanned by arches extending from wall to wall. One of the latter, something over seven feet in width, was covered with concrete, flat on top, and forming on the underside a segmental arch, the thickness of the material at the crown of the arch being four inches, and about eleven inches at the springing. The concrete was made of "Germania" Portland cement, mixed dry with gravel, moistened as required, and well rammed on the centring; and skew-backs were cut in the brick walls at the springing line, extending two courses higher, so as to give room for the concrete to take a firm hold on the walls. Fourteen days after completion, this floor was loaded with bricks and sacks of cement to the amount of more than six hundred pounds per square foot, without suffering any injury, although, after the load was on, a workman hammered with a pick on the concrete, close to the loaded portion, so as to provoke the cracking of the arch if there had been any tendency to rupture. In the other cases, the concrete arches being turned between iron beams, the strength of the floor was limited by that of the beams, so the extreme load could not be put on; but the curious fact was established that a section of concrete flat on top, and forming a regular segmental arc beneath, was far stronger than one in which a portion of the under surface was parallel to the upper; showing, apparently, that the arched form, even with homogeneous concrete, causes the conversion of a large part of a vertical pressure into lateral thrust, reducing by so much the tendency of the load to break the concrete transversely. This observation is important theoretically as well as practically. It has been of late generally maintained that a concrete arch is not an arch at all, but a lintel, without thrust, and that the common form, flat above and arched beneath, is objectionable, as it gives least material at the centre, where a lintel is most strained. The Erfurt experiments directly contradict this view, and it remains for some students of architecture to render the profession a service by repeating them, and, at the same time, actually determining the thrust, for a given load, of arches of particular forms. Until this is done, the concrete construction, which is likely, we may hope, to become before many years the prevailing one in our cities, will be practised with difficulty and uncertainty, if not with danger. Incidentally, a trial was made of the effect of freezing on the concrete. The floor of a room arched in four bays, between iron beams, had just been finished when the weather became cold, and on the morning after its completion the thermometer stood at twenty above zero. The concrete had not been protected in any way, and the contractor was notified that it had been frozen, and must be removed. This was early in December, and it was about the first of April before the work of removal, preliminary to replacing the concrete with new material, was begun. Three bays had been wholly or partly removed when the hardness of the concrete under the workmen's tools attracted attention, and the arch remaining intact was tested with a load of three hundred pounds per square foot, which it bore perfectly. * * * * * The question how far an architect can be held responsible in damages, in cases where the cost of work exceeds the estimates, is examined in a recent number of _La Semaine des Constructeurs_, and some considerations are mentioned which are new to us. According to Frémy-Ligneville, the most familiar authority on the subject, the architect incurs no responsibility whatever, either for his own estimates or those of other people, unless he intentionally and fraudulently misleads his client by a pretended estimate. In this case, as in that of any other fraud, he is liable for the results of his crime. Except under such circumstances, however, the architect's estimate of cost is simply an expression of opinion, the correctness of which he does not guarantee, any more than a lawyer guarantees the correctness of an opinion, although important interests may depend upon it. The owner can estimate the value of the architect's opinion, as of the lawyer's, by the professional reputation of the man who gives it, and, if he wishes to be more secure, he can go to another architect, as he would to another lawyer, for an independent estimate. Moreover, if the owner of the projected building is still anxious that the cost should be strictly limited to the sum estimated by the architects, he can have a contract drawn by which the builder shall be obliged to complete it for that sum, and can have his plans and specifications examined by competent authority, to see if they include everything necessary. This ought to make him reasonably sure what his house will cost him, provided he does not himself make changes in the plans or specifications. If he has omitted to take this precaution, and, as his building goes on, he finds that it is likely to exceed the estimate, he has another excellent opportunity to protect himself, by ordering immediately such changes in the plans and specifications for the work yet remaining to be done as may reduce the expense to the desired amount, and by doing so he generally suffers no damage, as, if he does not get all he expected to for his money, he gets all his money will pay for. * * * * * With all these opportunities for revising and testing the correctness of an architect's estimate, the man who neglects to avail himself of any of them, and who allows the work on his house to go on, after it has become evident that it will cost more than the estimate, has, according to M. Frémy-Ligneville, no claim against any one on account of his disappointment. Of course, the architect should be as careful in his estimates as his experience allows him to be, and any conscientious man would try not to mislead a client, but both he and his client must remember that when the tenders of the builders themselves usually vary from fifty to a hundred per cent for the same piece of work, an architect's estimate cannot be anything more than an opinion. Moreover, the architect should not forget that, being an opinion, and not a guaranty, he is not only at liberty to modify it as much and as often as he sees fit, but is bound to do so, and to inform his client at once of the change, when fuller information, or alteration in the circumstances, shall show him that the original estimate is likely to be exceeded. If he does this frankly, although his client may be disappointed, he cannot reproach the architect with trying to deceive him, and there will probably still be time to make the changes necessary for reducing the expense to the desired point. In a case decided in Paris in July, 1855, a man was condemned to pay fifty-four thousand francs for repairs done on a house. He proved that his architect had estimated the expense at seven or eight thousand, but it was shown that the architect had subsequently informed him that it would be necessary to do more work than was at first contemplated, and that he had made inquiries about the matter, and had turned out his tenants so that the work might be done, and had paid the contractors more than the sum originally estimated; and the court thought he had no case at all against the architect. * * * * * The great building firm of Peto Brothers, in England, having been awarded a contract for a large public building, have taken advantage of what, as they say, they consider a favorable opportunity to initiate a system of profit-sharing with their men, in accordance with a circular which is printed in the _Builder_. The system described by the circular is very simple. It is to apply for the present, only to the contract mentioned, but, if it works well, will be extended to future cases. Under the arrangement proposed one-quarter of the net profits of the contract are, when the building is done and the accounts settled, to be divided, as a bonus above their wages, among the men who have worked on it, in proportion to the wages they have earned. The conditions under which each man is entitled to his share are that he shall have worked long enough on the contract to have earned five pounds, at the regular rate of wages; that he shall not have neglected his duty, or misconducted himself, or wasted his time, or in other ways have acted so as to diminish the profits of the contract, or injure the reputation of the firm for good and honest work; and, that he shall not have engaged in any strike for shorter hours, or for wages above the schedule of wages which prevailed at the time the contract was made, and upon which the contract price was based. That the workmen may assure themselves of the fairness with which the division is carried out they are invited by the circular to send a representative to watch the making-up of the accounts by the auditor of the firm, and to sign the balance-sheet. In order to identify the claimants, every man must obtain a printed ticket from the time-keeper, on beginning his work, countersigned by the foreman, and noting the day and hour when his employment commenced, with his name, number and wages. This is to be again signed and countersigned when he leaves, and must be produced to secure a share in the dividend. Unpretending as it is, this bids fair to be one of the most interesting experiments in social science yet tried, and unless the trades-unions in England have forgotten their prowess, it will not be carried out without a struggle. Our readers will remember Mr. Lewis H. Williams's experiences in trying a similar plan with his carpenters in New York, and his final victory, but he had only one union to contend with, and that not a very compact one, while Messrs. Peto Brothers will have all the building trades about their ears at once, and the great question whether men shall be allowed to do only a fixed amount of work in a day, and that amount as small as possible, or whether they shall be allowed to work as they please, will be fairly brought before the parties for decision. THE APARTMENT-HOUSE. [Illustration: "THE SURE REVOLVING TEST OF TIME--PAST AND PRESENT" CARTOON FOR SGRAFFITO by HEYWOOD SUMNER.] From _Building News_. Most people are willing to admit that they cannot afford to pay over twice as much for a thing as it is worth; but few in this country are aware that they do this very thing when they build for themselves an independent city dwelling-house or pay a rent equivalent to or greater than the interest on this outlay. In the old country the secret of obtaining luxury and economy combined in building has been learned, and rich and poor, fashionable and unfashionable alike live in "flats." In America, people have not yet learned this lesson, but cling to the old and barbarous custom of living _perpendicularly_ in isolated towers, with all the cares and worries that go with isolated management. [Illustration: Figure 1.] Nothing shows more clearly than this, how much man is a creature of habit. In his savage state, the nature of his existence necessitated the isolated hut. As civilization advanced, however, the necessity for, and enormous advantages of coöperation became evident, but habit perpetuated the isolated dwelling long after the reasons for its existence had disappeared, and it required centuries for civilized men to learn that coöperation is an element as essential to perfection in the arrangement of their habitations as it is in other things. _A given accommodation may be obtained in the form of a "flat" for less than one-half the outlay required to obtain it in the form of an independent dwelling built on the same land._ The form of comparison herein presented has never, to my knowledge, been heretofore made, and the results are as surprising as they are important and interesting. The estimates of cost have been made by several competent contractors on scale drawings and accurate specifications, are easily verified and hence may be accepted as reliable. Figure 1 is one of the plans of our apartment-house which is to be built on the Back Bay, Boston. Figure 2 shows the floor-plans of an independent house which might be built on the same land. Both figures are drawn to the same scale for convenience in comparing the dimensions. The independent-house (which I shall, in contradistinction to the "flat," designate as the "tower" to mark its prominent point of difference from the "flat" in form) contains a kitchen, pantry, furnace-room, fuel-cellar, laundry, dining-room, china-closet, parlor, eight bed-chambers provided with suitable closets, two bath-rooms, a trunk-room, a front staircase extending from the first floor to the attic, and a back staircase extending from the basement to the third floor. What will these accommodations cost in this form and what in the form of a "flat" in an apartment-house? The apartment-house contains a public kitchen, steam-heating, ventilating and electric-lighting isolated plants, fuel-cellar, laundry, café, billiard-room, gentlemen's smoking-room, ladies' parlor, small public dining-rooms, and eighty suites, _averaging_ five rooms, a bath-room and closets in each, and with a trunk or storage-room in the basement for each suite; four elevators and four fireproof staircases of iron and marble enclosed in brick walls from basement to roof. The suites are of different sizes to suit the proposed occupants, and will have from two to twelve or more rooms of varying dimensions as desired. They are partly "housekeeping" suites, _i. e._, having kitchens and dining-rooms; partly "hotel" suites, _i. e._, having neither kitchens nor dining-rooms, the occupants preferring to use the public café and dining-rooms; and partly "semi-housekeeping" suites, _i. e._, having dining-rooms and china-closets with dumb-waiters connecting them with the public-kitchen, but no independent kitchen. The "housekeeping" suites require one more bed-room than the others, to accommodate a private cook. Assuming now at first in our comparison those conditions which are least favorable to the apartment-house, we will take one of the "housekeeping" suites, having precisely the same number and size of rooms as we find in our independent house or "tower" and compare costs. The only difference in the accommodation in each case is that, in the "flat," the rooms are accessible to one another without the use of stairs, while in the "tower" six flights of stairs in all are used, constituting in the aggregate a ladder, as it were, of about a hundred steps; also in the fact that in the "tower" the owner has to manage his own heating, ventilating and hot-water supply apparatus, while in the "flat" this work is done for him; that in the "tower" wooden staircases and no elevators are used, while in the "flat" fireproof staircases enclosing elevators are provided; that in the "tower" the main partitions are often of wood while in the flat they are of brick a foot thick and each "flat" is separated from its neighbor by a brick wall a foot thick and all the floors are completely deadened against the transmission of sound; and finally that in the "tower" no external fire-escape is provided, while the "flat" has convenient external fire-escapes of iron. Otherwise the accommodations are in both cases precisely the same. The total cost of this apartment-house, including the building-lot valued at, say, $5 a square foot, has been carefully estimated at $617,771. This is the highest of two competitive estimates given by two responsible builders, and comprises general cooking-plant, electric-lighting, steam-heating and ventilating apparatus, iron staircases and fire-escapes, elevators, copper roofing, architect's commission, and, in short, everything required for occupancy and use except wall-paper. The first floor contains 16,688 square feet of available room. (By "available" I mean room which is directly occupied by, and which must be separately provided for each owner. That is, it excludes staircases, furnace, laundry, etc., which might be used in common by many owners and therefore need not be duplicated for each, and which are only indirectly serviceable to each owner in contributing to the usefulness of those which are directly enjoyed.) The six floors above contain 23,288 square feet of available room each, making a total of 156,416 square feet. Adding 10,880 square feet for basement storage and trunk-room for the suites, and 2,000 square feet in the basement for barber's shop, apothecary, carriage and other offices along the street fronts, we have a total of 169,296 square feet of available room in the entire apartment-house. Dividing the total cost $617,771 by this figure we have $3.65 for the cost of each square foot of available room in the building. Our "tower" measures twenty-five feet front on party lines, by seventy feet deep. Its available rooms comprise parlor, library, music-room, eight closeted-chambers, two bath-rooms, a trunk-room, a dining-room, and we may add a kitchen for those who still believe in having an independent cook. The area of these rooms is as follows: Parlor 374 sq. ft. Library 374 " Music-room 154 " Chamber No. 1 384 " Chamber No. 2 528 " Chamber No. 3 170 " Chamber No. 4 252 " Chamber No. 5 162 " Chamber No. 6 286 " Chamber No. 7 242 " Chamber No. 8 315 " 2 Bath-rooms 144 " Trunk-room 136 " Dining-room 408 " Kitchen 384 " China-closet 136 " Other closets 410 " Making a total of 4,859 square feet of available room in the "tower." Its total cost on a twenty-five foot lot of the average depth on the Back Bay, _i. e._, 112 feet, the land being valued as before at $5 per square foot, would be at the lowest estimate $32,000 at the present prices, the wood finish being equally good with that in the "flat." If we figure, however, for the same style of lighting, heating, ventilating and fireproofing, and provide an elevator and outside fire-escape, the cost could not be put below $40,000. The same amount of available space, _i. e._, 4,859 square feet in our "flat" would cost at $3.65 per square foot as above estimated, $17,735. If now we consider that the management of a private kitchen and an Irish cook does not actually constitute the essence of a home in its broadest sense, but, that on the contrary, it really deprives a home of its greatest charm, namely, peace of mind and rest of body, the kitchen and the cook's bed-chamber may be omitted from our "flat" in view of the public kitchen. The area of our "flat" then becomes 4,475 square feet, which, at $3.65 per foot, brings the cost down to a little over $16,000. Finally, if we omit the dining-room also, with its china-closet, our area becomes 3,931 square feet, and the cost only $14,350 for the "flat," against $40,000 for the "tower," the former being but little over a third of the latter. So much for the saving in the case of a large family and large suite. For a small suite, such as would be required for a single person, or a small family of two or three persons, the saving at once mounts to a very much larger figure; so much so, indeed, as to render the use of the isolated house in such cases a most inordinate extravagance, except for the very rich. Thus a single person, or a family of two or three, could be very comfortably provided for with three or four rooms, and a bath-room in an apartment-house having a good café. Estimating the rooms to measure 18 x 22 feet, their area would be a little over 400 feet each, including closets, and their cost $1,460 apiece; or for smaller rooms of, say, 14 x 15 feet, or 224 square-feet surface, the cost would be but $818 apiece. An isolated dwelling, on the same land, of only eighteen feet frontage and fifty feet deep, would cost, including the lot at $5 a foot, not less than $18,000 or $8,000, without the land. Of course, in such an isolated dwelling, electric-lighting, steam-heating, fireproof stairs, and other luxuries of the "flat," would hardly be expected. By the arrangement of our apartment-house, there are twenty-four corner-suites out of the eighty. These have direct sunlight on either one or both of their exposed fronts, and may be estimated as worth fifty per cent more than the rest. In other words, 3/10 of the whole available room space is worth fifty per cent more, and 7/10 correspondingly less than the average price of $3.65 per foot. Therefore, $3.65 x 1-1/2 = $5.47 = price of corner-suites per foot, 3/10 x the total area 169,296 square feet = 50,788 square feet x $5.47 = $277,810, which, deducted from $617,771, leaves $339,961 to represent the total cost of the remaining 7/10. The total area 169,296 x 7/10 = 118,507 square feet of available space in the inner-suites. Hence $339,961/118,507 = $2.86 as the price per square foot of the inner-suites, or all suites which are not corner-suites. Now, as our estimates on the "tower" were made on the basis of its being an inner building in a block and not a corner-house, our estimates for the "flat" should be on a basis of $2.86, instead of $3.65, as taken. Therefore, our suite of 4,859 square feet would be but $13,896 if the "flat" were any other than a corner one, and if the public kitchen and café were used, it would be $11,242, or _but a little more than a quarter of that of the "tower!"_ The foregoing figures are easily explained, and their correctness verified by the following simple diagrams and considerations: [Illustration: Figure 2.] In Figure 2 the shaded parts of the plans represent the unavailable room which, under the apartment-house system, are rendered unnecessary, and they are practically wasted. Thus the eighty families, by uniting their eighty homes in one coöperative apartment, save 156 staircases consisting of seventy-six front and eighty back staircases, seventy-eight furnaces, seventy-nine laundries, etc., and nearly all the space they occupy, and the land, foundation and roof they represent. [Illustration: Figure 3.] This waste space may be graphically shown by the diagrams in Figure 3. The large black-and-white line represents the "tower," and the shorter the "flat." The black part of each line denotes unavailable, and the white part available room, the sum of the two denoting the total cubical contents of each dwelling. The white parts of the lines measure the same length in each case, because the amount of available room in "tower" and "flat" is assumed at the outset to be the same. Thus in the "tower," the front and back staircases and halls take up 22,000 cubic feet out of the total 106,000 cubic feet covered by the entire building. In the "flat" the proportional part of the halls and staircases for each suite is represented by a comparatively insignificant quantity as shown. Again, an enormous waste is shown in the flooring, roof and air-spaces of the "tower," while this item is but a trifle in the "flat." The six floors, each 16 inches thick, and the roofing make up together in the "tower" 12,000 cubic feet, or nearly the equivalent of an entire story. Add to this 12,000 cubic feet of air-space under the roof and over the concrete, and we have in these items a waste of 24,000 cubic feet, against only 4,000 in the "flat." Thus we see that the waste space in the "tower" actually exceeds the available. Yet it must be paid for at the same rate with the latter. Deducting the waste in the "flat" from that in the "tower," we find the balance of waste space in the "tower" to be equal to the available, showing graphically that the "tower" must cost, in these items alone, just twice as much as the "flat." [Illustration: Figure 4.] Figure 4 shows a block-plan on a very small scale of the apartment-house, and a block-plan on the same scale of 40 "towers" adjoining each other, and having the same available space as the apartment-house. These plans show how much more land is required to give the same accommodations (minus the conveniences and luxuries of an apartment-house) in the "tower" system than in the "flat." The shaded portions in each block-plan represent the aggregate of available room in each case. This shows very strikingly what an enormous proportion of land and material is wasted in the "tower" system. In short, the possible saving in first cost for each family adopting the "flat" system of building lies between $14,265 and $28,758, making an aggregate saving for the 80 families occupying the apartment of between one and two millions of dollars. The annual running expenses are also greatly in favor of the "flat" system when the advantages of coöperation are used to its greatest extent. Eighty independent Irish cooks give way to a professional _chef_ and half-a-dozen _attachés_. The wages and maintenance of the 80 cooks would amount to an annual sum of not less than $40,000; those of the _chef_ and his assistants to hardly $10,000, making in this one item a possible annual saving of $30,000. The management of the 80 independent Irish cooks, if possible at all, could only be accomplished by the constant struggle of 80 worried and largely inexperienced owners or their wives. The management of the _chef_ and his _attachés_ could more easily be managed by a single person, either selected from among the 80 families and suitably recompensed, or employed as a professional manager at a regular salary. Or the entire control of the _café_, and kitchen could be let out by contract to some suitable caterer, if preferred. Corresponding savings are evidently possible in every other department of housekeeping, including steam-heating, ventilating, laundry-work, lighting and elevator-work. In all of these particulars, coöperation, judiciously conducted, has been shown to yield surprising economies. But there are other advantages even more important than its economy in favor of the "flat." Freedom from housekeeping cares has already been touched upon. In the "tower," life is spent in training and treating with servants, mechanics and market-men. The private cook is a volcano in a house, slumbering at times, but always ready to burst forth into destructive eruption. True repose is out of the question, and we are told that "the motive for foreign travel of perhaps one-half of Americans is rest from household cares and the enjoyment of good attendance, freed from any responsibility in its organization and management." Security against burglary and fire is another. In a good apartment-house, trained watchmen stand on guard night and day to protect the occupants, and stand-pipes, hose and fire-buckets are provided in all the halls, and kept in repair for emergency. The family may leave their apartments for travel summer or winter, knowing that their property is as secure as modern appliances, system and ingenuity can make it. Not so with our isolated dwelling. The cost of providing all these means of protection is too great to make them practicable. The result is that the fear of burglary and fire at all times causes uneasiness, particularly on the part of the wife during the absence of her husband. Beauty in the architectural arrangement of the rooms is a third advantage of the "flat." In this it has all the advantage of the double house or residence of the immensely rich. The rooms may be grouped in a manner which renders possible the highest architectural effect, whereas in the "tower" the perpendicular arrangement evidently precludes such opportunity by limiting the design to a wearisome and monotonous repetition from basement to attic. No argument can be sustained against the "flat" on the ground of transmission of sound or want of privacy and isolation, for sound may be as fully deadened as in the "tower" by means of the 12-inch brick separating walls shown in our plan, and the most improved deafening treatment of the floor-joists. Isolation may be made complete in the "flat," the private halls and front doors of each suite being in every respect the equivalent of those in the "tower"; the only difference being that with the "flat" the outer world begins with the public hall and its elevator, while with the "tower" it begins with the public street and its horse-car. Add to these advantages the possibility for a greatly enlarged and delightful social intercourse which a properly arranged and conducted apartment-house provides, and we have as near an approach to the ideal of a human habitation as has yet been devised. J. P. PUTNAM. ARCHITECTURE IN BROOKLYN. [Illustration] The city of Brooklyn has at last waked up to realize her size and importance architecturally. Brooklyn, though growing very rapidly and having many buildings of importance, has really had very little good architecture, for the simple reason that the profession, not being in any way organized, could not, as a rule, receive the treatment due respectable architects. For this reason many young men who would not be capable of practising elsewhere, have flocked to this city, and by various methods, many of which are far from honorable, have succeeded in getting control of most of the work. However, we hope for better things. The Brooklyn Institute some time ago decided to organize a Department of Architecture, and for this purpose a meeting of architects was called, which led to several more meetings and the attendance at these was exceedingly hopeful for the new department, some forty or fifty architects signifying their willingness to help along in the work; finally a public meeting was held in the Institute on Friday December 13, at which some six or seven hundred persons were present, and the Department was fully organized; the constitution carefully thought-out at the previous meetings was adopted, and the following list of officers chosen: _President_, G. L. Morse; _Vice-President_, Louis De Coppet Berg; _Secretary_, William B. Tubby; _Treasurer_, Gustave A. Jahn; _Committee on Current Work_, Richard M. Upjohn, R. L. Daus and Louis De Coppet Berg; _Committee on Museum and Library_, Walter E. Parfitt, Pierre Le Brun; and Wm. Hamilton Gibson; _Committee on Competitions and Awards_, R. L. Daus, D. E. Laub, Russell Sturgis; _Committee on Professional Practice_, Walter Dickson, Albert F. D'Oench, Richard M. Upjohn; _Committee on Social Intercourse_, H. P. Fowler, Charles T. Mott and General Ingram. During the necessary intervals of balloting, etc., the President, Mr. George L. Morse, made a short address, setting forth the history of the previous meetings, and congratulating the local architects on the prospect of having a strong and well-organized society. Mr. Louis De Coppet Berg, of the firm of J. C. Cady & Co., Architects, then addressed the meeting as follows:-- When a young man enters a profession, and particularly the profession of architecture, if perchance he gets an original idea, or a little knowledge, he at once becomes very secretive, tries to keep it all to himself for fear some one else will benefit by it, and marks all his drawings "The property of...," and "Not to be copied, or used, without the consent of the author, _under penalty of the law_." As he grows a little older in his profession he begins to find out that a few others have ideas as well as himself, and know a little something once in a while; and as he grows still older he finds that there are a great many others, who know a great deal more than he does, and who have a great many better ideas than he has; and then it is, that he longs for communication with his professional brethren, and he finds that, in order to get the benefit of their ideas and knowledge, he must freely communicate his own to them. Hence it is that in most of the large cities we find some association of architects; Brooklyn, however, the third city of the Union, is unique in this respect, that it has absolutely no place where professional architects can meet and discuss the different problems of their profession. To remedy this evil, the Brooklyn Institute proposed to establish a Department of Architecture, and for this purpose called together a large number of local architects. Now, we have decided that, if we have any Department at all, it shall be a live one; and this reminds me of a squib I read in the paper the other day, telling how, somewhere in Spain, they had unearthed an old painting, which was pronounced a genuine Murillo. It was said that the experts could not as yet determine whether the subject of the cracked and dingy old canvas was a Madonna or a Bull Fight, but that, nevertheless, they did not hesitate to declare that it was a great acquisition to art. Now, that is the trouble with most associations of architects; if the subject for discussion is only old, cracked and dingy enough, they are happy. Nothing delights them more than to spend all their time and energies in discussing Etruscan or other antique architectures, or the exact differentiations between the many styles of architecture. Now, while we value the history of an art, and shall give it all due attention, we propose to remember that the modern architect, besides being an artist, must be one of the most practical and executive of business men. We admit that our ancestors in the profession designed beautiful castles, magnificent cathedrals and lovely châteaux, but we remember that these castles, these cathedrals, these châteaux were planned without any comfort; that they had no plumbing devices, no methods for cooking, no systems of heating or ventilation, and no way of getting light but the miserable taper; while to-day the architect, besides being a thorough artist, who knows how to design and to color, besides being thoroughly up in the history of his art, must know how to plan for comfort, to construct for strength and stability; must understand all the details of boilers, machinery, dynamos, electric-wiring, heating and ventilating systems, plumbing and sanitation, and lastly must be able to manage the complicated finances of large undertakings. Now, to carry out these ideas in our work, we shall, in the first place, establish a museum and library, to which we shall welcome all gifts of books, pictures, models, casts, etc., whether illustrating the artistic, or the practical side of the profession. Then we shall have a course of monthly, public lectures by competent authorities, the subjects of which will probably be very largely chosen from the artistic side of the profession. We also propose to have stated meetings of the Department monthly, at which some carefully selected papers will be read by experts, the subjects of which will be given out as long in advance as possible, in order that all may be thoroughly prepared for a full and open discussion; and then, after these meetings, in order to promote sociability amongst the members, and to show how thoroughly practical we are, we propose to have something to eat. We also hope later to establish schools, not only for young men, but particularly for draughtsmen, where they can be taught, not only the art of drawing, but also the many practical branches connected with the profession. The meeting was also addressed by the Rev. Dr. Chas. H. Hall, President of the Associate Members. He spoke at great length and kept his audience intensely interested by describing his own acquaintance with architecture, beginning with the original negro log-house down South, then the prim buildings of old Andover and Harvard, and finally how he saw the great former St. Ann's of Brooklyn, the likeness of which, he said, could be seen any day on the piers of New York when they were unloading dry-goods boxes; and how he finally went abroad and saw the beautiful architecture of Paris, which he could not praise enough. He was also unstinted in his praise of the modern beauty and architecture of Washington. He also spoke of his visits to London, and, while he admitted that Englishmen thought their architecture beautiful, he took exception, and claimed that the great St. Paul's, though beautiful to the English eye, was a cold barren building, blacked with smoke inside and out, a place where you could not be comfortable, nor hear the speaker at any distance. We regret that we are not able to give a verbatim account of his witty address. At the end of Dr. Hall's address, the lecturer of the evening, Professor Russell Sturgis, architect, of New York, addressed the meeting as follows, his subject being "The Study of Architecture," with particular reference to the architecture of to-day. ADDRESS OF MR. RUSSELL STURGIS. With regard to architecture and all the arts of decoration, there is a strange difference between the practice of them, and such study as looks toward practice, on the one hand, and the history and theory of them, with such study as that involves, on the other. Quite completely are these two studies separated, each from the other. A man may be most active and successful as a practising designer, and successful in an artistic way, too, with no knowledge and little thought of the history of his own branch of art, and with little curiosity as to its philosophy or its poetry. And, on the other hand, a man may be a very earnest student, and a happy and delighted student of the history and criticism of art, and know nothing, and care as little, about the profession or practice of any art, or about studio ways and studio traditions. I do not know that in any branch of human study this distinction is so marked and so strong. This is to be regretted, for many reasons, but it can hardly be done away with so long as the community is generally careless of both the theoretical and the practical--so long as the students and the practitioners alike feel themselves nearly isolated units, floating in a sea of good-humored indifference. This state of things only time can alter. Only time can civilize our new community in intellectual and perspective matters; but there are some other conditions which are more immediately in our power to modify, perhaps--let us see: It is as true as if it had not been repeated, even to fatigue and boredom, that the arts of decoration have been in a bad way for a good part of the century past, at least among some European and Europeanized nations. I do not imagine that a Frenchman would admit that architecture and the arts of decoration had ever languished in his own society. Your cultivated Frenchman would say that some periods were better than others, but that there were no bad periods; he would say that, to be sure, the style of the First Napoleon's Empire was not a very fortunate style,--too stiff, too absurdly pseudo-classic, unworthy of France, a poor enough successor of the dainty and playful art of Louis XV, or the somewhat more refined and restrained art of Louis XVI: but he would say that it was art still, and the period a not wholly inartistic period; and even of the dull times of the Napoleon of Peace, from 1830 to 1848, while he would confess to a great deal of languor and lack of public spirit of all sorts, except in the struggle which the Romantic artists, headed by Delacroix, waged with the Classicists, headed by Ingres; while he would admit that the abundant wood-cuts and lithographs, the painting and statues much less abundant even in proportion, and the buildings very few and unimportant, were not sufficient to make up a great artistical epoch, that is, for France; yet as for its being an epoch without art,--such a thing as that, he would say France had not known since she was France. And he would be right. But if said of England it would be pretty nearly true, if it were said that the whole amount of art of the decorative kind that existed in England between 1810 and 1850, for instance, would fill but a small museum, and that its quality would fill but slight requirements, it would require a bold Anglophil to contradict. There came a dull pall, like that of her own black fogs, over social London, and the stucco-fronted languors of Baker Street and Portland Place are no worse than were the dull monotony of the interiors behind them. Veneered and polished mahogany furniture, very much too large and too heavy for the rooms; black haircloth, like the grave clothes of Art, for the covering of everything that could be sat upon; cold, brownish-red curtains, of shiny but not lustrous material; silver candlesticks of monstrous design,--these, and such as these, were the decorative objects which our fathers or our grandfathers admired, or felt that they must admire for want of better, during the unhappy years that I have cited. The delicate carvings that the furniture of a generation just previous had received, were forgotten. People put up with Chippendale chairs in their dining-rooms because they had belonged to their fathers and nothing special was offered to take their place; but there is no record that they cared for them. The richer and more fantastic carvings of Grinling Gibbons had never obtained any general recognition nor availed to modify the woodwork of the domestic interiors of England. The brocades and flowered silks which the eighteenth century had revelled in, and if in England not strong enough artistically to produce them itself, had brought into England from other lands;--these were replaced by the dismal things I have alluded to, and no vestige of them seems to have remained in the parlors of that unhappy time. Richness of costume had disappeared with the wars of the French Revolution. Embroidered silk coats had given place gradually to claret-colored and blue broadcloth, and this gave place to black, and all variety in costume had disappeared completely; and now, from 1810 to 1850, fantastically varied and interesting house-furnishing and decoration had followed, as I suppose it inevitably must follow; costume, being, one fears, a necessary part of anything like a prosperous artistic epoch. Out of this gloomy depression the Anglo-Saxon world, in England and in this country, is trying to emerge. It began its efforts with the perfectly natural conviction that by studying the artistic history of the past, something could be done to benefit the arts of the present. The Gothic revival, which you have heard of so much, and which was followed with real ardor and with unquestioning zeal by crowds of devotees for years, beginning with, perhaps, 1840, was an attempt along the most obvious lines,--along what seemed to be the line of least resistance, to change the metaphor. To develop anew an old art, which had flourished so greatly in the past,--how easy! and how certain! How certain were the enthusiasts of that time, that by earnestly poring over and closely analyzing and heartily loving the buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such buildings, and others like them, could be built in the nineteenth! How happy was the conviction of all these men that it was not more difficult than that! The secret of what had been done was to be found in the phenomena themselves. There, in this parish church, in this cathedral, lay the secret of their charm. Let us analyze first, they said, and let us put together again the ingredients that our analysis shall have discovered, and we will re-create the thing that we are in search of. In like manner, in the minor arts, the people of 1850 felt, or some of them did, that they did not know how to weave curtains that it was worth any one's while to hang up, except to shut out the light and shut in the warmth; that so far as beauty of texture, beauty of pattern, and beauty of color went, they were powerless to produce anything of any avail. But they saw that the Venetians of the sixteenth century and the Florentines of the seventeenth century and the French of the eighteenth century had produced splendid stuffs; and although there were no museums in those days that condescended to anything so humble, such stuffs were still to be bought of the bric-à-brac dealers, and very cheap, too, and still existed, rolled up in some old garrets. By studying them, surely the art of making others like them could be learned. And so around the whole circle of the arts of decoration, it was believed, and in thoroughly good faith, and with, as it seemed, perfectly good reason, that the study of what had been would suffice, with zeal and patience and good will, to the production of what should be. Well, the experiment has failed. Archæology is the most delightful of pursuits, but it is not particularly conducive of good art. The German professor, who knows the most about Phidian sculpture, is as far as his youngest pupil from being able to produce anything Phidian, but, of course, this is not a fair example. The German professor does not profess to be a sculptor. Let us say then, that that sculptor now alive who knows the most, theoretically and historically about Greek art, is as far as his most ignorant contemporary and rival from having Greek methods of work. This is a safe proposition. I do not know who he is, nor can any one tell me. It is not a question of men, but of principles. The study of the monuments of art is one thing, their analysis, their criticism, their comparison, is one of the most attractive, the most fascinating, the most stimulating, the most absorbing of studies, one that I shall never cease commending in the most earnest way to all those persons to whom scholarship is dear and to whom it is a question of recommending a study which is worthy of their most earnest and hearty devotion, but it is not the study of practical art, that is another and a very different thing. The way to make good sculpture is to let the youth thumb and punch and dabble in wet clay, and see what he can make of it; and the way to make a painter is to give the boy now a burnt stick, and at another time a pin and a back of a looking-glass, and see what he can delineate with such materials as these and with all other materials with which a line can be drawn. To look at the world, and what it contains, and to try and render what is suggested to him,--that is the training for the artist, and it has more to do with our beloved study of archæology than if they were not concerned with the same subject. This, I say, has been proven. Sad experience, the waste of forty years of work, disappointment and despair, have taught some of our artists what others did not need to learn,--that the way to succeed was not through study of the past. The artist has no primary need of archæological knowledge; the archæologist has no need of any fact that the artist can furnish him with. Suggestions; yes! Each side can furnish the other with suggestions in abundance, and suggestions which each can immediately profit by. An able artist, if a fellow of modesty and frank speech, can hardly talk without giving the student of the theory of art hints which the latter should study over at home before he sleeps upon them; for the secret of much that is vital and essential in his study is to be found in these hints; and on the other hand, I imagine that an artist would be better off, and have more play of mind, and readier and fresher conceptions, if he would now and then listen to what the student of old art has to tell him about what is to be observed in this or that monument of the past. But beyond that there is no connection between them. I will run two _ateliers_ side by side, one for archæologists, and one for practical students of architecture and they need never mix. This will be more readily admitted, perhaps, in the case of the arts of expression than in the case of arts of decoration and let us define these terms. If you will allow me, I will quote from an address delivered a year ago before the New York Architectural League. Any work of art whose object is to explain and express the thing represented, or to convey the artist's thought about the thing represented, is art of representation, or, if you please, art of expression, or if you please, expressional art. I offer these as nearly synonymous terms. But if, on the other hand, the work of art has for its object the adornment of a surface of any sort, as a weapon, a utensil, an article of costume, and if the natural objects represented or suggested are used only as suggestions to furnish pretty lines and pleasant tints, which lines and tints might have been after all represented apart from the object were man's mind more creative than it is,--that is art of decoration. Now, architecture, you see, is primarily an industrial affair, a method of covering men in from the rain, and admitting light into their protected interiors, and of warming those interiors, and in a few rare cases of ventilating them, and in providing a variety of apartments, communications, and the like for the varied requirements of a complicated existence; and it need not put on any artistic character at all. But as architecture becomes a fine art, it is perforce one of the arts of decoration. It has nothing to do with the arts of expression. Mr. Ruskin and all his life work to the contrary, notwithstanding, the business of building is not to tell tales about the world and its contents, not to set forth the truths of botany or of zoology, or of humanity, or of theology. If zoological or botanical or human objects are introduced, or representations of them, it is not for the sake of information that can be given about these interesting things, nor for the sake of expressing the artist's mind about them, nor for the sake of saying anything whatever in regard to them. It is for the sake of making the building beautiful. When the Oxford Museum stood presenting to the street a flat-fronted wall, diversed with pointed arches, and carvers were set to work bands of rich sculpture around the windows; although Mr. Ruskin had a great deal to do with that edifice, and architects of his own choosing were in charge of it, and clever Irish workmen of his own approval were producing the interesting carvings of those archivolts and tympanums, in spite of all theories, the object aimed at and the object attained by that outlay of time and money and skill was the beautifying of the building, and this was achieved to an extent probably beyond what its planners proposed to themselves, for the effect of well-applied sculpture upon a building is beneficial to an extent that would never be believed by one who has not often watched the changes that can be wrought in this way. They who have said that the Gothic Cathedral is nothing but a work of associated sculpture are not far wrong, and to produce a lovely building, one would rather have the blankest malt-house or brewery in New York, and some good carvers set to work upon it, than to have the richest architectural achievement of our time, devoid as it is and must be of decorative sculpture. For to get decorative sculpture, you must have your sculptors; and they, you know, are wanting. Where are the men who will model capitals and panels in clay, with some sense of ornamental effect? We have the men who can make a copy in relief of an architect's drawings: but then the architect, even if he have the sense of ornamental effect, in the first place can never draw out, full size and with care, all the work required in a rich building, and, in second place, can never design sculptured form aright by mere drawings on the flat. The architects of New York and Brooklyn are employing today, I suppose, 3,000 draughtsmen, of which number two or three hundred at least are engaged most of the time in making large scale and full-size drawings of architectural detail, in which sculpture plays a large part. Well, we need as many modellers, who, either in architects' offices, or in stone-cutters' yards and terra-cotta works, shall be putting into tangible form the dreams and thoughts of the designer's brain. "As many," do I say? Once it is found that architectural sculpture can be got promptly and cheaply, and conveniently, it is not 200 modellers only that this big community around the big bridge will need; but architects will engage three or four or a dozen at a time, as they now engage draughtsmen when big jobs come in. For so the relative success and power today of the arts of expression seem to assure us. When we come to look into the subject, we find that modern life, which finds its expression freely in prose and in verse, and to a slight extent in music, finds some expression also in those arts which deal with expression. It is perhaps not a great artistic epoch that we are living in, although, if some one were to rise by and by, and maintain that it was, I would not be sure that he was wrong. It is certainly a kind of novel and in many ways admirable art in the way of expression. Great thoughts have found expression almost worthy of them in painting, in sculpture, in etching, in wood-engravings, in color and in black-and-white; in the single costly work of art and in the easily multiplied and cheap productions of the press. It is true that in these the thoughts are not always worthy of the expression they receive. This is partly because we have nearly lost the desire of talking about our religious beliefs in line and color and modelled form, and that no other subject of equal universal interest has taken the place of the ancient, simple and popular theology. Patriotism, as shown in scenes of battle and pictures of deeds of gallantry and self-sacrifice; poetry, as seen in pictures which suggest sweet thoughts of young love and of home affections and of childish grace; the love of wild nature, as seen in our school of landscape art, now nearly fifty years old and flourishing--none of these nor all of them together have quite replaced the priestly theology of the Middle Ages as a subject for art, for none are quite so universal or appeal quite so readily to the untutored eye and mind. And so the uniform is better painted than the soldier very often, and the outside of nature than her inward spirit, and the flesh of the baby or the golden hair of the girl better than the baby nature or the girl nature in each instance. But this is to be stated merely as a drawback from praise which would otherwise be too unmeasured and too universal. The world contains a vast amount of good art of very recent date, and every year adds to the amount. The worst thing that can be said of the time is that it should be capable of producing so incalculably great an amount of bad art at the same time; that the walls of the Paris _Salon_ should be so hung with inferior work every year that the important pictures are lost in chaos; and that, while this is true of the _Salon_, it is true to an immeasurably greater degree of the Royal Academy, of the New York Academy and every other exhibition in the world, except where a selected few paintings hang on reserved walls. And as for sculpture, that is to say expressional sculpture, it is even more true in this case that the poor works terribly outnumber the good ones, though this is less noticed and makes less impression on the public. Our English-speaking communities do not even think of sculpture as a thing to look to for any refined enjoyment. How far the labors of a dozen living men, all Frenchmen but two or three, may have sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and perfunctory way of doing one's duty to a great occasion or a great man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So much for expressional art. But, as for the arts of decoration, once more, there is not so much to be said. As yet the way to subdue technicalities and enthrone design has not been discovered. The way to produce beautiful buildings is known to none. The way to produce good interior decoration, good furniture, good jewelry, beautiful stuffs, has only been seen by here and there one, and his lead no one will follow. The fact of his having done a fine thing, or of his doing fine things habitually, acts not as an attraction to others, but as a warning to them to keep off. Every artist strives to do, not as his neighbor has done, and better, but as his neighbor has not done. The potteries work no better, because of one pottery which turns out beautiful work. The wall-paper makers still copy, slavishly from Europe and Japan, fortunately if they do not spoil in copying, in spite of the occasional production of a wall-paper which an artist has succeeded in. The carpet-weavers caricature Oriental designs by taking out of them all movement and spirit, while their best customers buy the original rugs. If some rich man were to make a museum of modern decorative art, from which he would carefully exclude all that which was not in some way fresh and intelligent, and if not good, at least promising, a room like this one would hold all his trophies, even though he should use his millions to ransack Europe and America. It is nobody's fault, least of all is it the architect's fault. For see what you expect of an architect. He must know about digging deep holes; and about sheath-piling, that he may retain the loose soil and keep it from smothering the workmen at the bottom of his excavation; and he must know the best machines to use for drilling rock and the best method for removing it; he must know about all the stones in the country and the best way of making concrete; he must be familiar with the thousand new inventions, and discriminate carefully and rightly between this range and that, and between this form of trap and the other, between a dozen different steam-heaters and twenty systems of ventilation; he must be prepared to give his owners exactly what they want in the way of windows and chimney-corners, of cupboards, shelves in available corners, and recesses to put away step-ladders and brooms. But observe that if he fails in any one of these things, he will fail in that which his owner really cares about; still more, if he fails in the economical administration of the funds allowed for the building, will he fail in that which the owner most cares about. Less beauty, less success in producing a novel, an original, a thoughtful, a purposeful design will hurt him but little, but insufficient care as to the circulation of hot-water will ruin him. Now, no man can do all that, and still produce delicate and thoughtful designs. No man can be busy laying out work, superintending work, explaining to contractors and reasoning with employers, and still be producing delicate and thoughtful designs. An extraordinary fellow here and there may surprise us by what he does under such circumstances, but it will be but little and feeble in comparison with what he might do. The community must see its way to paying some to eschew plumbing and stick to design, if they mean to have any design. This has been done, indeed, in the matter of monumental-glass, and to a certain extent in wall-decoration by means of painting; but it must be done in what is more vital yet--in architectural sculpture of all sorts and all grades; of vegetable, animal and human subjects; in low relief, in high relief and in the round; in detached work and associated groups--or no architecture for us. I say, then, that as things are constituted, the architects are not particularly to blame for not having achieved much in the way of decorative art, either on the exteriors of their great buildings or in the beauty of their interiors. Not much to blame; but yet they are so far to blame as that no one else is to do this work if they do not. The architects and the artists who are associated with them in the work of supplying us with what we call decorative arts of all sorts, form the only class of the community to whom the rest of the community can look to for advancement in this direction. It is probable, then, that what such an associate has to do is two-fold; or rather it has two things to do: One is to study the beautiful art of the past, and to study it patiently and lovingly, feeling confident of this that the interests of the pursuit grow more absorbing every day; and the other is to watch the arts of the present, and to keep an open and perspective mind with regard to them, feeling sure of this that they will grow more complex and interesting every day, and that now and again some chance of something good will appear, here and there, giving us great opportunities to help, if we are clever enough to perceive them. The study of the arts of the past is more entrancing every day because we are so much better informed, because we are daily better informed about them. Archæology, having gone through a long apprenticeship, is doing wonders today; and, although ancient buildings are suffering from the accursed restorer, they are also more thoroughly known, more rightly judged, more sympathetically analyzed than ever before; while monuments other than buildings, those, that is, that are not open to the attacks of the restorer, are preserved in practical safety, and they also are minutely and honestly studied in a way of which our ancestors knew nothing. There is, therefore, more pleasure to be got out of the study of ancient art today than ever before, and that condition of things is a permanent one. Our children will have even better opportunities than we. And, as for the arts of the present, the arts that are being produced around us, they are to be looked at as calmly and temperately; with, on the other hand, as little as possible of that provincial which makes cathedrals out of carpenters' Gothic churches, and, on the other hand, without carping, but with good-natured patience, with a feeling that if things are not very good, they can hardly be expected to be better; that we, in this country at least, are only half-civilized in the ways of cultivation, and we do uncommonly well for such babes as we are in literature and art. With patience then, and with impatience about nothing but this, that we deny ourselves the study of the great works of art of Europe and Asia by thirty per cent and forty per cent and sixty per cent duty, and deny to the author all proper remuneration for his work by the lack of common honesty. No other nation of European blood does these things. It is not a matter of politics. No protectionists so ardent in the Bismarck ranks as to propose to levy a tax on literature and science. No selfish grabber so small, even among peoples whom we consider less honest than we, who approves of stealing an author's books under color of the law. While we send to Washington Congressmen who keep such laws on the statute-books, our community is not "barbarous" so much as savage; for such acts are the acts of savages; that is, of men who have no reasonable motive for their acts, but act impulsively, like grown-up children. And now, after this evening, let us return from theory and general principles, to practice and details, and see whether we can find out how it is that Indians combine color, how Japanese use natural form decoratively, how Chinamen make porcelain lovely and noble; how Greeks of old time have sculptured and Frenchmen have created Gothic architecture, and Italians have raised painting to the highest heaven of achievement. There is happiness, if study can give it. And for those to whom scholarship is less attractive than action and production, there is sculpture in small and large, in stone, marble, terra-cotta, wax, clay, plaster, bronze, iron, lead, gold and silver; there is inlay of all material and styles, from square tiles to minute glass tesseræ; there is painting with all known vehicles and of all sorts; the whole to be devoted to the beautifying of buildings in which we have to live and work and rest. There is a plenty to do for those who know how to begin. * * * * * TO PROTECT PLATE-GLASS IN BUILDING.--Passing along Dearborn Street, recently, I saw a crowd watching closely the placing in position of some enormous panes of glass in a handsome new building. The glass was the best French plate, and the workmen handled it as carefully as if it were worth something more than a week's wages. The task of putting it in place was no sooner completed than one of the workmen grabbed a pot of whiting and with a big brush daubed a lot of meaningless marks on it. I thought it about as silly a thing as a man could do, and with the usual reportorial curiosity asked the foreman why he allowed it. The answer was a crusher. "Why," said he, "we have to mark them in that way or they'd be smashed in no time." My look of amazement doubtless prompted him to further explanation, for he said: "You see, the workmen around a new building get in the custom of shoving lumber, etc., through the open sash before the glass is put in. They would continue to do it even after the glass is in if we didn't do something to attract their attention. That's the reason you always see new windows daubed with glaring white marks. Even if a careless workman does start to shove a stick of timber through a costly plate of glass he will stop short when his eye catches the danger sign. That white mark is just a signal which says, 'Look out; you'll break me if you are not careful.'"--_Chicago Journal._ THE STRUCTURE OF SANDSTONE.[1] AS AFFECTING ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING WORKS. [Illustration] The native stones we Liverpool architects have at command are all sandstones belonging to the geological division called the Trias, or, in older phraseology, the "New Red Sandstone," which lies above the coal-measures. The term "New Red" was given to distinguish these rocks from the "Old Red," which lies below the Mountain Limestone, the lowest division of the carboniferous rocks. It is, perhaps, needless to remark that the "New Red" is not always red; sometimes it is yellow, at others, like some of the Storeton stone, white. These red rocks occupy a large part of Lancashire and Cheshire, and especially in the latter county give the characteristic scenery which distinguishes it. The escarpment of the Peckforton Hills of which Beeston Castle Hill is an outlier, and that at Malpas, farther south, gives rise to some very beautiful scenery; and again at Grinshill and Hawkstone, in Shropshire, we have a repetition of much the same kind of landscape. It will be necessary for my purpose to say briefly that these red rocks have been divided into the "Bunter" and "Keuper"; the lower division, the Bunter, occupying most of the ground about Liverpool; the upper, the Keuper, being more developed on the Cheshire side. All these sandstones are not fit for building purposes, and those that are so used differ considerably in their durability. It is my object in this short Paper to show upon what the perfection or imperfection of the various stones for building purposes depends--a matter of great moment to an architect or engineer who is desirous that his work should last. Sandstones, or, in masons' language, "free-stones," from the freedom with which most of them are worked when freshly taken from the quarry, are plastic or sedimentary rocks. That is, they are composed of separate particles which have once existed as sand, like that we see on our own shores, or in the sand dunes of Hoylake or Crosby. Sandstones are usually more or less laminated, and are stronger to transverse stress at right angles to their natural bedding than in any other direction, a fact recognized in every architect's specification, which states "all stones must be laid on their natural bed," a direction that unfortunately sometimes begins and ends in the specification. The cause of the superior strength is not, however, generally understood. I have devoted some considerable time to an investigation of the internal structure of sandstones, which I have communicated from time to time to various scientific societies and publications, and will now briefly explain it in a manner I judge will be most likely to interest architects and engineers. The particles or grains of which the rock is built up are of various forms and sizes, from a thoroughly rounded grain, almost like small shot, to a broken and jagged structure, and to others possessing crystalline faces. These grains, most of them possessing a longer axis, have been rolled backwards and forwards by the tides or by river-currents. The larger grains naturally lie on their sides when freshly deposited, with their axes in the plane of bedding; the smaller and more rounded particles naturally tend to occupy the interstices between the others, and in this way rude divisional planes or laminations are formed. Each layer forms a sort of course like coursed-rubble in a wall, and by the necessities of deposition a certain rude geometric arrangement results, by which the particles of the future rock overlap each other, and thereby gain what is known to architects as bond. But, so far, this is only like "dry walling," the mass wants cementing together to make it solid. The cementing process happens in this way in our rocks, which are almost purely silicious: Water containing a minute quantity of carbonic acid in solution, which most rain-water does, especially when it comes into contact with decaying vegetation, has the power of dissolving silica to a slight extent. This is proved in various ways, and is shown in the fact that all river water contains more or less silica in solution. The circulation of water through the sand deposit of which our rocks are made dissolves part of the grains, and the silica taken up is redeposited on others. I cannot explain the chemical reaction that produces this deposition, but that it takes place in the rock during some period of its history is certain. I exhibit a quartzite pebble taken from the Triassic sandstone at Stanlow Point, which, as can be easily seen, was at one time worn perfectly smooth by attrition and long-continued wear, for the quartzite is very hard. Upon this worn surface you will see spangles and facets which reflect the light, and on closer inspection it will be evident that they are crystals of quartz that have been deposited upon the surface of the worn pebble after it became finally enclosed in the rock. A microscopic examination of the granules of the rock itself will show that many of them have had crystalline quartz deposited upon their surfaces, and in some cases rounded grains have in this way become almost perfect crystals. An examination of the best sandstones for building purposes shows that they possess more of these crystalline particles than the inferior ones, and a good silicious sandstone shows its good quality by a fresh fracture sparkling in the sun. In addition to these crystalline deposits of silica I believe it exists also as a cement which binds the particles together when in contact. It certainly is, however, with this secondary silica that the original sand has become a building stone, and the particles have become interlaced and bound together. Thus, in building parlance, the grains are the rubble of the wall, the currents the quarrymen, masons and laborers, and the silicious infiltration the mortar. And now, when I am on the subject, I may point out that this hard and compact quartzite pebble was also once loose sand. The only difference between the sandstone in which it was imbedded and itself is that in the latter case the process of silicious deposit has gone further, so that all the interstices between the grains have been absolutely filled up with the cement. It is not possible to see this clearly with the naked eye, but by the aid of a slice of the rock prepared for the microscope the granular structure of the quartzite is made perfectly plain. So much for the mechanical, chemical, and molecular structure of sandstone, all of which affect the strength and quality of the stone; but to architects there is another element of consequence, namely, the color. The rich red of our Triassic sandstones is due to a pellicle of peroxide of iron coating each of the grains. That this is merely surface coloring is shown by the fact that hydro-chloric acid will discharge the color and leave the grains translucent. Unfortunately the most brilliantly colored stone is not the most durable, and it so happens that these brilliant red sandstones are often composed of exceedingly rounded grains. Also some of the very red sandstone has an interfilling of a loose argillaceous irony matter detrimental to the stone as a building stone. The most durable of the red sandstones are those having a paler or grayer hue, like those of Woolton, Everton, and Runcorn. This distinction of color was brought freshly to my mind a short time since in looking at the church of Llandyrnog, in the Vale of Clwyd, a few miles from Ruthin. Some of the dressings, quoins for instance, were of a very brilliant-colored red sandstone, and others of a pale gray or purple red. It struck me that these latter must be of Runcorn stone, which I was afterwards informed was the case. The very red stone was the natural stone of the Vale, originally used for dressings, which were replaced, on the restorations being made, with Runcorn stone. The original stone was æsthetically the best, but the introduced stone the best structurally. The old stone of Chester Cathedral was a very red Bunter sandstone, which decayed badly. It has been replaced in the restorations by Runcorn stone, which belongs to the Keuper division, which has caused the Geological Surveyors to say that the Keuper is a better building stone than the Bunter. In this case it is; but, on the other hand, the Bunter sandstones, or Pebble-beds, as they are called, near Liverpool, are often better than the Runcorn Keuper. The Runcorn building stone lies between two beds of very red loose rock, showing that it is not its geological position, but its _structure_, that makes it a good durable stone. It is a remarkable fact that most of the pebbles included in the red rocks are quartzites, or indurated silicious sandstones; and, as showing that their solidity and hardness are due only to a further continuance of the deposit of silica in the interstices, it has been proved that the purple quartzites are purple only by reason of the original coloration of the grains which have been enclosed between the original grains and the secondary silica. Yellow sandstone is colored also by iron, and I have frequently seen the red sandstone shading of to the yellow without any division whatever. The various shades and tints of sandstone are necessarily due to the coloration of the individual grains. Most of you will, no doubt, have observed the sort of marbling or grain upon the stone of our old buildings, such as the Town-Hall, which I believe was obtained from quarries occupying the site of the St. James's Cemetery. This is due to what is called current bedding; that is to say, the grains have been arranged along oblique lines and curves instead of in parallel laminæ. This stone, which is geologically equivalent to the Storeton Stone, and of the same nature, has stood very well. Some of the Storeton Stone, if free from clay galls, although very soft when quarried, becomes hardened by exposure, and will stand the weather much better than a harder and more pretentious material. The stone of Compton House is in a very good condition, although the mason told me such was the hurry in rebuilding that they could not stop to select the stone, and also that it is placed in all sorts of positions with respect to its quarry bed. Perhaps the circumstances that the stone is not in parallel laminæ may have something to do with its durability, notwithstanding this latter fact. It would take a long Paper, and several evenings, to exhaust the subject even of our local stones. I may mention, however, that the quarries of Grinshill, between Shrewsbury and Hawkstone, yield a beautiful white sandstone, of a finer grain than Storeton, but of a similar quality. Most of the public buildings of Shrewsbury are built of it, and I am informed that it was to some extent used in the Exchange buildings. The rocky substratum of a district can be well seen in its ancient buildings, for in old times carriage was so important an item that the old builders could not go far for their stone; hence we see that the old churches of part of Lancashire and most of Cheshire, and a large portion of Shropshire, are of red sandstone. Some of it has stood very well, while some has decayed into shapeless masses. There is a tendency to exfoliate parallel to the exposed or worked surface, in all stones, irrespective of the way of the bed, but more so where the stone is set up on edge, or at right angles, to its quarry bed. It is interesting and peculiar to see in some of the old buildings erected with pebbly sandstone how the white quartz pebbles stand out from the surface like _warts_. This is due to the greater indestructibility of the quartz pebbles, and the weathering away, or denudation, of the sandstone face. Before leaving the subject of local sandstones it will be necessary to refer to one quality they have which is of excellent utility as regards the storage of water, but which is decidedly a disadvantage in building stone--that is, their porosity. I have proved by actual experiment that a cubic foot of Runcorn Stone will take up three quarts of water by capillarity, and that it is possible to make a syphon of solid sandstone which will empty a vessel of water into another vessel by capillarity alone.[2] This shows the absolute necessity of damp-proof courses, not only in the main walls of buildings of stone, but even in fence walls, for the continual sucking up of moisture from the earth, and its evaporation at the surface of the stone, make it rapidly decay. I think I could show you this fact in almost any stone building in Liverpool or elsewhere where the stone is in direct connection with the earth. It also shows the necessity of taking care that no stones go through the wall to the interior surface, and of precautions for backing up stone walls with less porous materials, or the introduction of a cavity. If you could suppose such a sandstone wall 40 feet long, 20 feet high, and 1 foot 6 inches thick fully saturated, it would hold almost a ton of water! Of course, it never would be fully saturated, because of the evaporation from the surfaces, but with a southwest aspect, and very wet weather, it might become half saturated. But what does evaporation mean? It means the loss of so much heat and the burning of so much coal to supply its place. From this it will be seen that a pure sandstone wall is a thing to be avoided. The subject is so wide a one that I have felt compelled to restrict my remarks to local sandstones, but the general principles of structure apply to all sandstones alike. It is difficult by written description to tell you how to select a good stone, but one essential is that there shall be a good deposition of secondary quartz, as shown by the crystalline sparkling on the freshly fractured surface. It must also be free from very decided laminations, for these constitute planes of weakness and are often indications of the deposition of varying materials, or the same material in various grades of fineness. It must also not be full of argillaceous and iron-oxide infillings. It should possess a homogeneous texture. The best way to study building stones is to study them in old buildings, for nature has then dissected their weaknesses. FOOTNOTES: [1] Read before the Liverpool Architectural Society, on the 18th November, 1889, by Mr. T. Mellard Reade, F.S.G.S. _Fellow_, President of the Society, and printed in the _R.I.B.A. Journal_. [2] This experiment was made before the audience.--T. M. R. * * * * * WARFARE ON OAK TREES.--"The world seems to have waged a special warfare upon oak trees," says a St. Louis man. "Before iron ships were built, and that was only twelve years ago, oak was the only thing used. When this drain ceased oak came into demand for furniture, and it is almost as expensive now as black walnut. No one feels the growing scarcity of oak like the tanner, and the substitution of all sorts of chemical agencies leads up to the inquiry as to whether other vegetable products cannot be found to fill the place of oak bark. The wattle, a tree of Australian growth, has been found to contain from twenty-six to thirty per cent of tannic acid. Experiments have been made on the Pacific Slope, where the wattle readily grows, and in a bath of liquor, acid was made from it in forty-seven days, whereas in liquor made from Santa Cruz oak, the best to be found in all the Pacific States, the time required is from seventy-five to eighty days. The wattle will readily grow on the treeless plains of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, the bark of which ought to yield five dollars per acre counting the fuel as nothing."--_Invention._ THE BARYE EXHIBITION. [Illustration] Entering the handsome galleries of the American Art Association, one finds the lower floor given up to the Barye bronzes, while the upper rooms are devoted to the "Angelus" and the paintings by Millet and other contemporaries of the great French sculptor. Passing on the left of the entrance the superb, large bronze of "Theseus battling with the Centaur," one is fronted by the great cast of the "Lion and Serpent," which from the centre of the gallery dominates the surrounding exhibits. Both of these are the property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the cast having lately been presented to that institution by the French government. Upon the right hangs Bonnat's vigorous portrait of Barye, on the left wall one sees the water-color of the "Tiger Hunt," and all around are cases, groups and isolated pieces of the bronzes. Here are over 450 works in wax, plaster and bronze, of which Mr. W. T. Walters contributes one-fourth, while the Corcoran Gallery sends its entire collection, numbering nearly a hundred, Mr. Cyrus J. Lawrence loans sixty-two pieces, Mr. James F. Sutton fifty-two and Mr. Samuel P. Avery thirty. Other contributors, who have followed their generous example, are Messrs. R. Austin Robertson, Theodore K. Gibbs, Robert and Richard M. Hoe, James S. Inglis, Richard M. Hunt and Albert Spencer. Of many of the subjects there are several copies, and amateurs can study proofs and patinas to their heart's content. From Mr. Walters's famed collection are the four unique groups modelled for the table of the Duke of Orleans, chief of which is the "Tiger Hunt," where two of the huge cats attack an elephant from whose back three Indians defend themselves with courage. The giant pachyderm writhes his serpent-like trunk in air and plunges forward open-mouthed, trumpeting with pain from the keen claws of the tigers hanging on his flanks. The Hunts of the Bull, the Bear and the Elk are worthy companions of this magnificent bronze, offering wonderfully fine examples of condensed composition in the entwined bodies of men and beasts, and filling the eye with the grand sweeps of their circling forms. The same liberal patron of art also lends his unique piece of a walking lion, in silver, made in 1865 for a racing prize, and a plaster-proof of the little medallion of "Milo of Crotona attacked by a Lion," executed by Barye in 1819 for the Prix de Rome competition at the École des Beaux-Arts. This little gem, worthy of the antique, did not secure the prize, however, which went to a now-forgotten sculptor named Vatinelle. It had often been so before, it has often been so since down to our day (Comerre was preferred to Bastien Lepage in 1875) and doubtless it will be so for who knows how many years to come. All the phases of that terrific struggle for existence where beast hunts beast, which have been depicted by Barye's genius, are here. Here is the "Tiger devouring a Crocodile" (with which Barye made his first appearance at the _Salon_, in 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a Gazelle," the "Bear on a tree devouring an Owl" and the "Lion devouring a Boar." What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to us, but a second, reminds that it is but their instinct and a necessity of natural law, and repulsion is lost in astonishment and delight at the marvellous fidelity with which the sculptor has rendered these links in the great chain of animal life. Their (as we call it) savage eagerness, their almost blind rage for their appointed food, the tenacity with which they clutch and the ravening _anxiety_ (caused by the dread of losing their prey) with which they tear the flesh of their victims, is portrayed to the life. We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip--death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild creatures. Then there are the battles of the more evenly-matched animals--not always as a result of the need of sustenance--such are the tiger transfixed by the elephant; the python's folds crushing the crocodile; and the bear dragging the bull to earth, or itself, in turn, overthrown by mastiffs. Then comes those groups into which man enters--the African horseman surprised by a great serpent whose formidable folds already enclose his struggling body; the Arabs killing a lion; and the "Theseus overcoming the Minotaur," wherein the calmly irresistible hero is about to bury his keen, short sword in the bull-neck of the gross monster. The success with which Barye has combined the human and bestial characteristics of the minotaur is most remarkable and a similar triumph is won in the hippogriff--the winged horse, with forefeet of claws and beaked nose, which leaps so swiftly over the coiled-shape of the dolphin-serpent, which serves for his pedestal--bearing upon his back the charming, nude figure of Angelica held in the mail-clad arms of Ariosto's hero. To this category _seems_ to belong the "Ape riding a Gnu," the forms, however, being true to nature though appearing fantastic when placed in juxtaposition. The horse as we know him, and carrying more familiar burdens, is shown in numerous equestrian statuettes, the best of which is the slender, nervous figure of Bonaparte as First Consul, mounted on a proudly-stepping Arab. There is another one of Napoleon, showing him at a later period of his life, and the other equestrian portraits include one of the Duke of Orleans, who looks every inch a gentleman; one of Gaston de Foix, the hero of Ravenna; and one of Charles VII. Then there is a spirited statuette of a Tartar warrior in chain armor sharply pulling back his steed, and a graceful figure of a lady wearing the riding-dress of 1830. A painful contrast is presented by the doomed horse unwillingly carrying a lion whose dreadful grip his frantic rearing cannot loosen. In addition there are many studies of horses, various in breed and attitude, and the small wax model of a young man mastering a horse which though but a rough "first sketch" has all the "go and fire" possible. It would have been of interest if some illustration of Barye's equestrian monument of Napoleon at Ajaccio could have been shown, and this reminds me that except a photograph of the Château d'Eau at Marseilles, showing the four groups of animals designed by him (which Mr. Cyrus J. Lawrence was thoughtful enough to send), and the two reclining river-gods from the Louvre (sent by Mr. Walters), there is nothing which gives any idea of Barye's public work. Not even photographs of the War, Order, Glory and Peace groups of the Louvre, which could have easily been taken from the copies given by Mr. Walters to Baltimore, now on Mount Vernon Place, are present. But, in face of the admirable collection here gathered together, this may savor of ingratitude, and I will return to the consideration of the remaining sculptures. Among them are some masterly pieces of decoration, the most important being the superb candelabra made for the Duc de Montpensier. These have seated at their base nude figures of the three chief goddesses of classic mythology, whose noble proportions and purity of outline prove the versatility and completeness of the sculptor's art. Juno is accompanied by her peacock and bears the rod of power; Minerva lifts a sword, and Venus holds the golden apple. The candelabra are further enriched with masks and chimeras, and bear at their top a charming circular group of the three graces, small undraped figures, with arms entwined and faces turned toward each other. The general design and exquisite detail of this work is worthy of the Renaissance. There are some more candlesticks and other works of decorative art, all of which bear the marks of a master-hand. The humorous side of things is presented by some of the groups: in the ungainly figure of the elephant of Senegal running; in the bear lying on his back in a trough and eating with great gusto some sweet morsel which he holds between his paws; and in the meditative stork standing on the back of a turtle. Some of the animals are shown as sleeping or reclining, and there is a cat sitting, a goat feeding, a deer scratching its side and a pheasant walking, among others, but the tragic note is struck in most of them. Probably the best works are to be found among those pieces representing members of the feline race, which were always the subject of Barye's most thorough study. The sculptures of horses are also very numerous, and it strikes one at first as curious that, after all the rebuffs he received from the academic faction, who recognized no animals but the horse and lion as worthy of representation in sculpture, he should have modelled so many of these very creatures. But, after all, Barye's lions and horses belong to an entirely different race from those which the tradition-bound old fogies were pleased with. The collection embraces many admirable bronzes of birds: an eagle holding a dead heron; an owl with a rat; a paroquet on a tree, and a strikingly fine composition of a hawk killing a heron; and there are some beautiful studies of dogs, especially a large seated greyhound, belonging to Mr. Walters. There are rabbits, badgers, wolves and camels, but I remember no cows or pigs, and only one group of sheep. Wild life, much more than domestic, touched the sympathies of Barye. Mr. Walters loans twenty-three of Barye's powerful water-colors of animals and a fine oil, of unusual size for this artist, of a tiger. One of the most striking of the water-colors shows a great snake swallowing an antelope, whose head is partly engulfed, and it is almost exactly the same as one of the bronzes from the Walters collection. Other gentlemen have contributed water-colors and oil-paintings by Barye, among them being several landscapes at Fontainebleau, and there are various etchings and prints after his works and some of his lithographs, pencil-sketches and autographs, with a copy of the only etching--a stag fighting a cougar--which, according to so good an authority as Mr. Avery, he ever made. These remarkable water-colors alone would suffice to show the genius of Barye, for they are full of the same qualities of truth and originality of expression which we see in his bronzes. Their color is exceedingly fine, and their topics are generally tigers, lions, elephants and serpents. It is a source of wonder how Barye, who never visited the East, could have so well depicted the tropical landscapes in which he has placed these tawny tigers and majestic lions. The drawings, like the sculptures, impress us with their air of absolute veracity, and, even in their most dramatic moments, suggest a reticence behind. Barye does not exhaust himself or his subject, yet he seems to have said the last word in this direction of art, and I cannot imagine that his profound and searching genius will ever be surpassed. The managers of the galleries announce the exhibition of a hundred "masterpieces" by the contemporaries and friends of Barye, but I do not think that the visitor will find so large a number which can rightly be thus classed. To me it appears that something less than one-half are works of the first order, but among the remainder are many good things worthy of attention. Here again the treasures of Mr. Walters's collection are drawn upon and he sends some twenty-five pictures, prominent among which is the great "Martyrdom of St. Sebastian," by Corot; the "Evening Star," by the same master; Troyon's "Cattle Drinking"; Diaz's "Storm" and "Autumn Scene in the Forest of Fontainebleau"; Rousseau's "Le Givre"; Decamps's "Suicide"; Daubigny's large "Sunset on the Coast of France"; Delacroix's "Christ on the Cross"; and Millet's "Breaking Flax." One of the finest Millets I have ever seen is here, lent by Mr. Walters. This is the "Sheepfold at Night," which with several others of Mr. Walters's paintings here shown, was in the exhibition of "One Hundred Masterpieces" held at Paris in 1883. In its foreground a line of sheep pass by toward the gate of the fold through which some have already entered under the guidance of the shepherd and his dog, who stand near. The horizon is low, and just above it swings a swollen moon, shaped like a cup, from which floods of pale light fill the scene with color. If this were Mr. Walters's only contribution it would be sufficient to place us under a heavy obligation to him. The "St. Sebastian" is a large canvas, measuring four feet wide by eight feet high, which was first shown at the _Salon_ of 1853, and afterwards twice received important changes at the artist's hands. It shows an opening in a great wood, with the saint reclining on the ground tended by two holy women, while above appear some angels who bear the martyr's palm and crown. Rousseau's "Le Givre" is well described by Sensier, who says in his "_Souvenirs sur Th. Rousseau_," it represents "the hills of Valmondois as seen a mile away across the Oise, along the des Forgets road. The composition could not be more simple. Little hillocks heaped in the foreground are covered with half-melted snow, and the sun, red in the midst of a leaden sky, is seen dying and threatening through the clouds." The "Suicide," of Decamps, shows the body of a young artist stretched lifeless on his pallet in a gloomy room, and is painted with extraordinary force. The "Sunset," by Daubigny, describes a scene on the French coast with some cows near a pool separated from the sea only by a few yards. The foreground is rich in sombre greens and browns, the ocean a glorious blue and the sky tinged with the roses of sunset. A superb specimen of the lately dead veteran, Jules Dupré, "The Old Oak," is lent by Mr. John G. Johnson, who contributes several other pictures, among them a fine "Going to the Fair," by Troyon, in which is seen a drove of cattle and sheep, with a woman on horseback behind talking to a man. Another still finer Troyon, the "Drove of Cattle and Sheep," which brought $26,000 at the Spencer sale, is lent by Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt. It will be recalled as showing a flock of sheep coming along a road toward the spectator, while behind are two cows, one with head uplifted to avoid the threatening stick of the drover--a dumb but eloquent protest against man's cruelty. Corot's lovely "Lake Nemi," the property of Mr. Thomas Newcombe, is here, while Mr. Jay Gould sends his "Evening"; Mr. William F. Slater, of Norwich, Conn., the "Fauns and Nymphs," and Mr. Charles A. Dana his beautiful "Dance of Loves." To the same gentleman the public is indebted for an opportunity to admire Millet's admirable "Turkey-keeper." Mr. D. C. Lyall has Delacroix's splendid page of romance, "The Abduction of Rebecca," and among the numerous paintings which come from Mr. George I. Seney's gallery, is the same artist's well-known "Convulsionaries," a crowd of self-tortured fanatics wildly rushing through the white-walled streets of Tangiers. There are several other works by Delacroix, including examples of his vivid renditions of lions and tigers, and Mr. Slater has here his "Christopher Columbus," Mr. Potter Palmer, of Chicago, lending the "Giaour and Pacha." Gericault is represented by but one picture, a noble couchant lion, but in addition to the "Suicide," there are several other Decamps, notably the magnificently colored "Turkish Butcher's Shop," which, with a splendid Rousseau, the "Forest of Fontainebleau," comes from the collection of Mr. Henry Graves. The gorgeous blues and crimsons of Diaz's "Coronation of Love," which Mr. Brayton Ives is fortunate enough to own, glow in a corner of one of the galleries--a bouquet of living color. It was pleasant to meet again a familiar picture in Millet's "Waiting," which the writer recalls often seeing at the Boston Art Museum when it belonged to Mr. Henry Sayles. It is now the property of Mr. Seney, and will be at once remembered by any who have ever seen its homely but touching figures of the old mother looking down the road for the coming of her absent son, and the blind father stumbling hastily over the steps to the door. I renewed my acquaintance with the inimitable cat which arches its back, elevates its tail and miaows on the bench outside, its ginger-colored coat relieved against the cool blue-grays of the stone wall. It is the apocryphal story of Tobit and Anna, with the waiting parents made into peasants of Millet's own country, and when it was exhibited at the _Salon_ of 1861, the public, of course, passed it by to gaze at the "Phryne" of Gérôme. Millet has doubtless painted better pictures, but for direct simple pathos it would be hard to surpass this. Boston, through Mr. Quincy Shaw and other gentlemen, sends to the exhibition some of the best paintings shown. Mr. Shaw exhibits his "Potato-planters," to me the most beautiful in its rosy tones of any example of the artist here; of the same size, a fine "End of the Village of Greville," walled with graystone, its little street monopolized by geese and ducks, and the sea-gulls flying above; and the "Buckwheat Threshers," with two smaller canvases. Mr. F. L. Ames, lends two Millets, a beautiful Rousseau, "The Valley of Tiffauge," Decamps's splendid picture of an African about to sling a stone at a vulture sitting on some ruins, and the superbly painted dogs of Troyon's "Gardechasse." Dr. H. C. Angell's fine Jules Dupré, "Symphony," is also here. The Millets number about a third of the paintings and among them is an interesting variation of the "Sower," narrower in shape than the others and with a steeper hillside. It would have been a delight to have seen Mr. Shaw's "Sower" temporarily lifted from its place in the modest house which conceals so many treasures, and brought here, especially as it was not possible to borrow the replica belonging to the estate of the late W. H. Vanderbilt, but such good fortune was not in store for us. A beautiful little nude by Millet, "After the Bath," has been sent by Mr. A. C. Clark. I think it must be the same one which was at the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund Exhibition some years ago, when it belonged to Mr. Erwin Davis. Messrs. Boussod, Valadon & Co., have lent an important and beautiful "November" by Millet, showing a sloping field with a harrow lying on the foreground and a man shooting at a flock of birds from behind a tree at the top of the hill. The "Angelus," draped with crimson, is given the entire end of the long upper gallery and, I think, proves a disappointment to most, if not all. One chief reason for this is its small size,--it is but about 21 x 25 inches--and then it is certainly not to be compared for painting with half a dozen other Millets which are here. Its sentiment is lasting, however, but it is not new to us, on the contrary it is a household word now, and the painting gives but little more than does Waltner's etching. Mr. Walters loans the crayon sketch for it and one of "The Sower" and the "Sheepfold by Moonlight," with others, and there are some very interesting pastels and water-colors by Millet, Rousseau and Delacroix. Altogether the exhibition is an extraordinarily good one, unapproached as to the Baryes and not easily surpassable as to the paintings of the Fontainebleau school, and any lover of art would find himself amply repaid by it for a journey to New York. [Illustration: THE ILLUSTRATIONS] [_Contributors are requested to send with their drawings full and adequate descriptions of the buildings, including a statement of cost._] "THE LION AND THE SERPENT." M. A. L. BARYE, SCULPTOR. [Photogravure issued only with the International Edition.] See article elsewhere in this issue. AUDITORIUM OF THE PALACE OF THE TROCADERO, PARIS, FRANCE. MM. DAVIOUD & BORDAIS, ARCHITECTS. [Gelatine Plate issued only with the International Edition.] AN INTERIOR IN THE CHATEAU DE JOSSELIN, MORBIHAN, FRANCE. [Gelatine Plate issued only with the International Edition.] TORRE DEL VINO, ALHAMBRA, GRANADA, SPAIN. [Grano-chrome issued only with the International Edition.] RUINS OF THE CHAPEL OF CHARLES V, YUSTE, SPAIN. [Grano-chrome issued only with the International Edition.] COOMBE WARREN, KINGSTON, ENGLAND.--GARDEN FRONT. THE LATE MR. GEORGE DEVEY, ARCHITECT. [Issued only with the International Edition.] COOMBE WARREN, KINGSTON, ENGLAND.--ENTRANCE FRONT. THE LATE MR. GEORGE DEVEY, ARCHITECT. [Issued only with the International Edition.] A GENTLEMAN'S COUNTRY HOUSE. MR. HORACE R. APPELBEE, ARCHITECT. [Issued only with the International Edition.] This design is founded upon the Francis I style of architecture, though it by no means slavishly follows it. It was required to obtain a house suited in all respects to modern requirements, including such things as sash-windows, and in places plate-glass. These hardly harmonize with the ordinary character of English country-houses of the Elizabethan and Queen Anne types, with their many mullioned windows and lead-glazed casements, nor is the other extreme of heavy Classic with ponderous detail and a portico two stories high at all desirable. The style of Francis I offers a mean between these, giving emphasis to the principal block by a certain amount of symmetrical planning, together with picturesqueness, with rich and refined detail, which a gentleman's country-house certainly requires. The exterior would be of long and thin red bricks, with stone cornices and other dressings, and roofed with green slates. The interior has oak-work and enriched plaster ceilings to the principal rooms, with the exception of the hall, where the ceiling would be of oak. The hall and the staircase would have some stained-glass in the windows. The original drawing was exhibited in this year's Academy. WROUGHT-IRON GATES, DUKE STREET, CHELMSFORD, ENGLAND. [Issued only with the International Edition.] HISTORICAL FIGURES FROM LORD MAYOR'S PROCESSION, 1889. DESIGNED BY MR. JOHN JELLICOE. [Issued only with the International Edition.] These figure sketches embrace five typical examples from the late Lord Mayor's show, in which Mediæval, Tudor and Stuart costumes were (thanks to the research and artistic knowledge of Hon. Lewis Wingfield) so pleasantly associated. We have selected five, both on account of their diversity and also because of their being representative costumes of different eras in English history. The dresses, for magnificence and accuracy of detail, have rarely been equalled. HOUSE OF MRS. CHARLES BLAKE, BEACON ST., BOSTON, MASS. MESSRS. STURGIS & CABOT, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON, MASS. [Issued only with the Imperial and International Editions.] COMPETITIVE DESIGN FOR THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, NEW YORK, N.Y. MR. GLENN BROWN, ARCHITECT, WASHINGTON, D.C. Although the selection of material is a matter that can be well dispensed with until the general design has been determined, the architect suggests as in harmony with the treatment, Westerly, R.I. granite for the body of the cathedral, with trimmings of carved capitals, bases, columns, belts, arches and other ornamental stonework of a Georgia marble. The granite is cream color, with a suspicion of red, and the marble is of the same shade but a trifle darker and more positive. Both from chemical and physical tests they are apparently of equal strength and durability. The colors suggested would not give the building the cold appearance of white marble, or the somewhat sombre appearance produced by gray granite. The stones are to be laid in square blocks, regular courses and rock-face in the body of the building, with square and sharp corners. The columns, lintels, sills, belts, finials and mouldings are to be close hammered work, with carving where indicated on the drawings. The different tower roofs are to be fine-hammered or rubbed granite. The distinction between the tower roofs and the body of the building is not brought out clearly in the different drawings, as this would require shading all the granite stonework except the tower roofs, and shading is prohibited by the instructions. The interior of the church is designed to be finished in marbles of harmonious colors, with carved and other decorated work, as shown in the section. The surface of the floor is to be laid in mosaic tile, the presumption being that fixed pews will not be used in the cathedral. Ample storage can be obtained for portable seats in the cellar. The floors are laid on terra-cotta arches, built on iron beams, and the beams are protected by terra-cotta casings. The roof of the building is to be covered with slate [preferably red], laid on terra-cotta and supported by iron trusses and beams; the iron-work to be protected by a fireproof covering. The tower roofs contemplate granite, lapped and jointed so as to be weatherproof, laid on iron beams and supported by iron trusses. If a cheaper covering is desired, slate or tile can be used without affecting the design. The ceiling is a barrel-vault with large and small arched ribs pierced in each bay by the small vaults in which the clerestory windows open. It may be treated in one of three ways: first, finished in marble; second, marble ribs, the larger surfaces being terra-cotta blocks covered with mosaic tile; third, the larger surfaces frescoed on plaster. The ceiling of the lantern in the centre of the cathedral will be supported by arch trusses, and show metallic ribs on the interior, glazed with cathedral glass. The screens between the choir and aisles and between the aisle and vestries and chapels are intended to be of wrought-iron, bronze or brass, or a combination. They should be arranged so as to slide down into the cellar and leave the entire building open and unobstructed whenever it might be thought desirable. The outside doors are to be bronze, with figures on them in low relief. The size of columns and piers, and the weights imposed upon them, the thrusts of arches and trusses, their proper abutments and ties and other constructional problems have been calculated with a sufficient degree of accuracy to determine the feasibility of the execution of the design according to the drawings. In the lantern where the frescoing is contemplated the wall will be faced with porous brick, on which the proper fresco plaster can be spread. The plan is arranged to facilitate the ingress and egress of large assemblages of people, five doorways being provided in the nave entrance and two in each of the transepts. The galleries over the nave and transept vestibules and the triforium have stairways with entrances on the side porches. Including the clergy entrances, fifteen outside doors are planned. The vestibules and porches connect with each other so that worshippers can pass from one to the other under cover. The arrangement adopted for the central tower allows a central auditorium about one hundred feet in diameter, unobstructed by columns or piers, with the nave transepts and choir opening into it. The aisles are not decreased by this central enlargement, as they deflect through the four abutting towers. The different vestry-rooms, library or sacristy and the treasury are grouped conveniently to the choir, with separate entrances for the church officials. The meeting-room for the clergy or chapter and the chapel have entrances independent of the church, or by lowering the screen they can be thrown open into the cathedral. Toilet-rooms, custodian's and a committee-room are located on the transept vestibules, as these entrances would most probably be constantly open. Elevators are placed in two of the supplemental towers, and stairways in the ones adjoining the choir, landing visitors on the triforium gallery, which encircles the building, and in the two galleries which encircle the central lantern. From the lantern galleries visitors can obtain fine interior views of the building, and comprehend the crucial form of the plan at a glance. TABULATIONS OF APPROXIMATE DIMENSIONS. Length. Breadth. Height. Square feet. Ground-floor including walls height to the ridge of roof 400 156 to 230 148 69,000 Lantern or central tower exterior 106 106 400 11,236 Nave interior 125 50 100 6,250 Transepts interior 30 50 100 3,000 for the two Choir interior 95 50 100 4,750 Central tower interior 88 88 200 Aisles interior 16 40 Chapel and Chapter 52 26 Square feet of auditorium exclusive of aisles, columns and space between columns, triforium and galleries 20,486 Auditorium including everything except choir 48,106 ABBEY OF ABERBROTHWICK: GALLERY OVER ENTRANCE. ABBEY OF ABERBROTHWICK: THE WESTERN DOORWAY. The traveller by sea, along the east coast of Scotland, is liable to be reminded with startling emphasis of the demolition to which the ecclesiastical architecture of the country has been subjected. Leaving behind him on his northward course the fragments of the metropolitan Cathedral of St. Andrews, he crosses a wide arm of the sea, and when he again approaches the shore, the objects most prominent against the sky are the still more disastrously shattered remnants of the great Abbey of Aberbrothwick. One lofty fragment presents in its centre a circle, doubtless once filled with richly moulded mullions and stained-glass, but through which the blue sky is now visible. This vacant circle is the only symmetrical form in these lofty masses that at a distance strikes the eye--all else is shapeless and fragmentary. Around these huge unsightly vestiges of ancient magnificence the types of modern comfort and commercial wealth cluster thickly, in the shape of a small but busy manufacturing town, with its mills, tall chimneys and rows of substantial houses. The ruins, which are interesting only in their details, scarcely present a more inviting general aspect as they are approached. Nearing them from the High Street of the burgh, the first prominent object is a grim, strong, square tower, the sole remaining complete edifice of the great establishment, now used as a butcher's shop. It was not perhaps without design that this formidable building was so placed as to frown over the dwellings of the industrious burghers--it was the prison of the regality of the abbey--the place of punishment or detention through which a judicial power, scarcely inferior to that of the royal courts, was enforced by this potent brotherhood; and thus it served to remind the world without, that the coercive power of the abbot and his chapter was scarcely inferior to their spiritual dignity and their temporal magnificence. Passing onward, the whole scene is found to be a chaos of ruin. Fragments of the church, with those of the cloisters and other monastic edifices, rise in apparently inseparable confusion from the grassy ground; but, with a little observation, the cruciform outline of the church can be traced, and then its disjointed masses reduce themselves into connected details. The dark-red stone of which the building was constructed is friable, and peculiarly apt to crumble under the moist atmosphere and dreary winds of the northeast coast. The mouldings and tracery are thus wofully obliterated, and the facings are so much decayed as to leave the original surface distinguishable only here and there. At comparatively late periods large masses of the ruins have fallen down; and Pennant mentions such an event as having taken place just before he visited the spot. This palpable progress towards the complete extinction of the relics of one of the finest Gothic buildings in Scotland, certainly rendered it not only justifiable but highly praiseworthy that the Exchequer should make some effort for preserving so much of the pile as was preservable. Restoration was not to be expected--the preservation of the existing fragments was all that could be reasonably looked for. It must be confessed, however, that the operations, by means of which this service was accomplished, have given no picturesque aid to the mass of ruins, but have rather introduced a new element of discordance and confusion, in the contrast between the cold, flat, new surfaces of masonry and the rugged, weatherbeaten ruins in which they are embodied. There are few buildings in which the Norman and the early English are so closely blended, and the transition so gentle. The great western door has the Norman arch, with an approach to the later types in some of its rather peculiar mouldings, while the broad and equally peculiar gallery above it--the only interior portion of the church remaining in a state of preservation--shows the pointed arch, with all the simplicity of the Norman pillar and capital. All the material fragments of the church now remaining are represented in the four accompanying plates, from which as full an idea of the shape and character of the remains may be derived as the visitor could acquire on the spot. It will be seen that over the gallery, at the western end of the nave, there widens the lower arc of a circular window, which must have been of great size. The only portions of the aisle windows still existing are on the south side of the nave. None of the central pillars remain, but their bases have been carefully laid bare: and it is supposed, from the greater size of those at the meeting of the cross, that here there had been a great central tower. Among the tombs of more modern date, in the grave-yard near the church, there are many which bear sculptural marks of a very remote antiquity; and among the ornaments they present, the primitive form of the cross is conspicuous. During the operations for cleaning out the ruins, which were conducted under the authority of the Exchequer in 1815,[3] some pieces of monumental sculpture were discovered, two of which are curious and remarkable. The one is the mutilated figure of a dignified churchman--probably an abbot. The head, the hands--which appear to have been clasped--and the feet, are broken off and lost; but the fragment thus truncated has much appearance of grace in the folds of the drapery and the disposition of the limbs, while a series of rich ceremonial ornaments appear to have been brought out with great force and minuteness. The other figure, still more mutilated, is simpler in the ordinary details, but has attached to it some adjuncts which have perplexed the learned. The feet appear to have rested on the effigy of a beast, the remains of which indicate it to have represented a lion. It has, from this circumstance, been inferred that the statue was that of William the Lion, the founder of the abbey. The figure has, however, been attired in flowing robes, and a purse hangs from the girdle. But the portions of this fragment which chiefly contributed to rouse curiosity, are some incrustations, which had at first the appearance of the effigies of lizards crawling along the main figure. It was supposed that these reptiles were intended to embody the idea of malevolent spirits, and that the piece of sculpture might have been designed to represent a myth, probably in reference to the machinations of the infernal world. But, upon a closer inspection, it was found that these tiny figures represented pigmy knights in armor, scrambling, as it were, up the massive figure. One appears to be struggling with the drapery below; another has reached the waist; and the fracture, which is across the shoulder, leaves dangling the mailed heels of two others, which must have reached the neck. Is it possible that there can be here any reference to the slaughter of Becket, to whom the abbey was dedicated? FOOTNOTE: [3] New Stat. Account, Forfar, p. 80. HISTORICAL SKETCH. The historical circumstances connected with the foundation of this monastic institution are remarkable. It was founded and endowed by William the Lion, King of Scots, in the year 1178, and dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, the martyr of the principle of ecclesiastical supremacy, whose slaughter at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral occurred in 1170, and who was canonized in 1173. This great establishment, richly endowed, was thus a magnificent piece of homage by the Scottish King to a principle which, especially under the bold and uncompromising guidance of its great advocate, had solely perplexed and baffled his royal neighbor on the English throne, and boded future trouble and humiliation to all thrones and temporal dignities. Much antiquarian speculation has been exerted, but without very obvious success, to fathom the motives for this act of munificence. William had invaded those parts of the north of England which were previously held in a species of feudality by the Kings of Scotland, and was disgracefully defeated at Alnwick, and committed to captivity, just at the time when the English monarch, whose forces accomplished the victory and capture, was enduring his humiliating penance at the tomb of the canonized archbishop. Lord Hailes, who says that "William was personally acquainted with Becket, when there was little probability of his ever becoming a confessor, martyr and saint," endeavoring to discover a motive for the munificence of the Scottish King, continues to say: "Perhaps it was meant as a public declaration that he did not ascribe his disaster at Alnwick to the ill-will of his old friend. He may, perhaps, have been hurried by the torrent of popular prejudices into the belief that his disaster proceeded from the partiality of Becket towards the penitent Henry; and he might imagine that if equal honors were done in Scotland to the new saint as in England he might, on future occasions, observe a neutrality."[4] It is remarkable that several of the early chroniclers allude to this friendship between the Scottish monarch, who was a resolute champion of temporal authority, and the representative of ecclesiastical supremacy.... Princes may be induced, by personal circumstances, to change their views, and in the times when they were not controlled by responsible ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. It is quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was partial to Church ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. This King's disputes with the Church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of his own dominions had a spiritual war against the English hierarchy, who asserted a claim to exercise metropolitan authority over them; and it might have been supposed that William, if he sought to humble his own clergy, would have found it politic to favor the pretensions of those of England. But the interests of the two clerical bodies became in the end united. Thus the war which had so long raged in England, passed towards the north, with this difference, that the King of Scots had to encounter not only his own native hierarchy, but the victorious Church of England, just elated by its triumph over Henry. The Chapter of St. Andrews had elected a person to be their bishop, not acceptable to William, who desired to give the chair to his own chaplain. The King seized the temporalities, and prevailed on the other bishops to countenance his favorite. The bishop-elect appealed to Rome. Pope Alexander III issued legatine powers over Scotland to the Archbishop of York, who, along with the Bishop of Durham, after an ineffectual war of minor threats and inflictions, excommunicated the King, and laid the kingdom under interdict. At this point Alexander III died, and the new pope thought it wise to make concessions to an uncompromising adversary in a rude and distant land, who had shown himself possessed of an extent of temporal power sufficient to counteract the power of Rome, even among the ecclesiastics themselves. It was before this great feud commenced that the Abbey was founded; but during its continuance the institution received, from whatever motives, many tokens of royal favor, as well as precious gifts from the great barons. Among the list of benefactors we find many of those old Norman names, which cease to be associated with Scottish history after the War of Independence. It is a still more striking instance of the community of interest between the two kingdoms anterior to this war, that while we find a Scottish king devoting a great monastic establishment to the memory of an English prelate, we should find an English king conferring special privileges and immunities within his realm on the Scottish brotherhood.... The Abbey was founded for Tyronesian monks, and the parent stock whence it received its first inmates was the old Abbey of Kelso. In the year of the foundation, Reginald, elected "Abbot of the Church of St. Thomas," was, with his convent, released of all subjection and obedience to the abbot and convent of Kelso. The church was completed and consecrated under the abbacy of Ralph de Lamley, in 1233. Aberbrothwick was one of those ecclesiastical institutions immediately connected with the spread of the Roman hierarchy, which gradually sucked up the curious pristine establishment of the Culdees; and the muniments of the Abbey thus afford some traces of the character and history of this religious body, at least towards the period of their extinction. Thus, while the Church of Abernethy, an ancient seat of the Culdees, is granted by King William to his new foundation, Orme of Abernethy, who is also styled Abbot of Abernethy, grants the half of the tithes of the property of himself and his heirs, the other half of which belongs to the Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a strictly ecclesiastical character are made by the same document. Thus we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs--a counterpart to those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which frequently puzzle the antiquary in his researches through early Scottish ecclesiastical history. The Abbot of Aberbrothwick possessed a peculiar privilege, the origin of which is in some measure associated with the Culdees--the custody of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba. The lands of Forglen, the church of which was dedicated to Adomnan the biographer of Columba, were gifted for the maintenance of the banner. The privilege was conferred on the Abbey by King William, but as it inferred the warlike service of following the banner to the King's host, the actual custody was held by laymen, the Abbey enjoying the pecuniary advantages attached to the privilege, as religious houses drew the temporalities of churches served by vicars. It will readily be believed that this, one of the richest and most magnificent monastic institutions in Scotland, numbered many eminent men among its abbots, who from time to time connect it with the early history of Scotland. It is even associated with a literature that has survived to the present day, in having been presided over by Gavin Douglas, the translator of Virgil. The two Beatons, Cardinal David and Archbishop James, also successively its abbots, give it a more ambiguous reputation. At the Reformation, the wealth of the Abbey was converted into a temporal lordship, in favor of Lord Claude Hamilton, third son of the Duke of Chatelherault, and the greater part of the temporalities came, in the seventeenth century, into the hands of the Panmure family. In a tradition immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean, which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell Rock" from the peculiar character of the warning machinery of which the abbot made use: "The Abbot of Aberbrothwick Had placed that bell on the Inchcape rock, On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung. "When the rock was hid by the surge's swell, The mariners heard the warning bell; And then they knew the perilous rock, And bless'd the Abbot of Aberbrothwick." The tradition represents a rover, in the recklessness of prosperity and sunshine, cutting the bell-rope, and afterwards returning in foul weather to be shipwrecked on the rock from which he had impiously removed the warning beacon. No evidence of the existence of the bell is found in the records of the Abbey; and on the subject of its wanton removal, the sagacious engineer of the Northern Lights say, "It in no measure accords with the respect and veneration entertained by seamen of all classes for landmarks; more especially as there seems to be no difficulty in accounting for the disappearance of such an apparatus, unprotected, as it must have been, from the raging element of the sea."[5] FOOTNOTES: [4] Annals, 1178. [5] Stevenson on the Bell Rock Light-house, 69. DESIGN FOR A STORE. MESSRS. WAIT & CUTTER, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON, MASS. [Illustration: SOCIETIES] BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS. Recommendations by the Boston Society of Architects, in regard to practice in obtaining estimates from contractors: 1. Drawings, when offered for final or competitive estimates, should be sufficient in number and character to represent the proposed works clearly; should be at a scale of not less than one-eighth of an inch to the foot, and be rendered in ink or some permanent process. 2. Proper details should be furnished for work that is not otherwise sufficiently described for estimate. 3. Specifications should be in ink. They should be definite where not sufficiently defined and explained by drawings, and every distinctive class of work to be included in contract should be mentioned and placed under its appropriate heading. 4. Contractors should be notified, at time of estimate, if they are to be restricted in the employment of their subcontractors. 5. Sub-bids received by architects should be held as confidential communications until all the estimates in a given class of work have been submitted. The principal contractor should add to his bids all these subestimates while in the architect's office, and should sign a tender in which the names of these above-mentioned subcontractors should be enumerated. 6. A subcontractor should not (without his free consent) be placed under a general contractor, and no general contractor should be compelled to accept (without his free consent) the estimate of any subcontractor. 7. Should a contractor decline to assume in his contract the estimate for any work not included in his original estimate, he should not thereby be denied the contract upon the portions of the work covered by his original estimate. 8. Estimates should not be binding more than thirty days after received. 9. Unless previous notification has been given to the contrary in the specification or otherwise, the lowest invited bidder is entitled to the contract. If radical changes are made, the whole competition should be reopened. 10. After bids have been received, and before the award, bidders should not be allowed to amend their estimates. [Illustration: COMMUNICATIONS] [_The editors cannot pay attention to demands of correspondents who forget to give their names and addresses as guaranty of good faith; nor do they hold themselves responsible for opinions expressed by their correspondents._] BARYE'S ADMIRER. NEW YORK, N.Y., December 28, 1889. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:-- _Dear Sirs,_--I have just seen a letter from "Anglo-American" in your issue of December 14, in which he calls for the name of the English artist who said concerning the French sculptor, Barye: "Had he been born in Great Britain, we would have had a group by Barye in every square in London." Théophile Silvestre reports this remark as if uttered in his presence. He says (1856) that the speaker was Mr. Herbert, an artist of distinction. Probably this was Arthur J. Herbert. Your correspondent takes the remark perhaps too literally, when it merely meant to express admiration through a slight exaggeration. Mr. Herbert would have been content to see a few squares only decorated with groups by an English equivalent of Barye, had one existed. As to the assertion by "Anglo-American" that Alfred Stevens was "an artist not inferior to Barye" it will be shared by few who have studied the works of the great French sculptor of animals and men. "Anglo-American" is right in saying that my short paper in _Harper's Weekly_ errs in giving two bronze groups after Barye to Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore, instead of four. Were I a resident of that city, I could hardly have known this better, and how the error got there puzzles me. Certainly had I been permitted to see a proof of that paper the mistake would have been corrected, unimportant as it is, so far as Barye is concerned. I must compliment your correspondent on the quickness of eye that detected the slip and regret that the proof-reader of _Harper's Weekly_ did not know his Baltimore to the same degree. But he is himself in error when he speaks of the "_Life and Works of Antoine Louis Barye_," written by me and published by the Barye Monument Association as a catalogue. The catalogue is quite another thing from the _édition deluxe_, which is the only edition of the "_Life_." CHARLES DE KAY. EVAPORATION OF WATER IN TRAPS. TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN ARCHITECT:-- _Dear Sirs,_--In a late issue of your journal an advocate of Trap-venting, says of ordinary S-traps "If the traps are filled even once in two months they will keep their seals intact." Most persons now agree that S-traps which are back-vented in the ordinary manner require refilling by hand as often as once a fortnight. It is, therefore, clear that the system of back-venting is a very dangerous one. Its original object was to afford security. It is now found (and strangely enough, even by its advocates) that it totally fails in this respect and that it requires an amount of attention which experience and common-sense show us it will never receive. My experiments on the rate of seal-reduction through evaporation produced by back-venting were made with the greatest care and show a more rapid loss than is generally supposed. If the reports of these experiments are studied, it will be seen that every precaution was taken to secure trustworthy results. Although my experiments on siphonage were made during the same year and on the same system of piping with those on evaporation, it will be seen by studying the drawings and text of the report that the former in no wise interfered with the latter. No experiments on siphonage were made while the water stood high in the traps during the tests for evaporation, and no disturbance of the water seals was made by this or any other cause during the evaporation tests. It would have been exceedingly careless and totally unnecessary to allow of any such disturbance. Moreover, most of the experiments on evaporation were made, as shown, on a stack so connected with the rest of the system of piping that such disturbance would have been impossible. Even had we not so carefully closed the inlet or house-side of the traps. I found that a warm flue caused the back-vent pipe to evaporate enough of the water from the seal of the trap to break it in less than a week, and I am confident that this often happens in practice. How short-sighted and foolish is it to endeavor to throw discredit on these experiments which were made with the greatest care and honesty and which were witnessed and subscribed to by impartial experts, and to argue that, because other experiments made under different conditions showed a somewhat slower rate of evaporation, therefore cases could never occur in which the more rapid rate might be encountered in practice. It is likely that the public will very soon awake to a sense of the importance of investigating this matter for themselves. Their Boards of Health will then find that with a very small outlay they can obtain the truth; and that a vast amount of unnecessary complication and expense can be saved in plumbing and, at the same time greater security be obtained. When we consider, too, the well-known unreliability of the vent-pipe in other ways and the frequency with which it is found totally closed by grease, it becomes something more than folly to recommend the public to place implicit reliance upon it. J. P. PUTNAM. [Illustration: NOTES AND CLIPPINGS] THE DIVINING-ROD.--Professor Ray Lankester, having recently expressed some doubts of the alleged powers of a boy "water-finder." Dr. McClure, who is chairman of the company by whom the boy is employed, has denied emphatically that the boy, whose name is Rodwell, is an impostor. He says that the lad, when tested, never failed to find either water or mineral veins, the lodes having always been found exactly at the places indicated. The divining-rod which he holds only moves in obedience to the muscular contraction of his hands, and a rod of any kind of wood, or even of any material substance whatever, can be used, provided it be a conductor of electricity. Dr. McClure's statements have excited considerable comment in England. The phenomena of tests by the divining-rod are not by any means new. They have never been described from a scientific point-of-view, nor has any philosophical explanation of them ever been advanced, but there is no question whatever of their existence, and of their being now regarded by the most advanced scientists as beyond the region of chicanery and imposture. Mr. W. J. Jenks, in a recent lecture on "The Protection of Electric Light Stations from Lightning," treats the subject very exhaustively, and shows that where the ability to locate electrical or magnetic attraction is vested in an individual the results are absolutely reliable. He instances the case of two gentlemen of Merrimac, Massachusetts, named Prescott, who for several years have given displays of this rare faculty. As an illustration of the certainty with which the Prescott brothers could indicate the location of electrical attraction, Mr. Jenks gives a well-authenticated incident which took place at Amesbury not long ago. Several old citizens were sceptical as to the accuracy of the conclusions supposed to have been reached, and determined on a severe test. Taking twenty or more citizens as witnesses, they requested the Prescott brothers to accompany them, and indicating a stretch of highway before them, some forty or fifty rods in length, stated that some years previous lightning had struck on that road, and wished to be informed as to the exact spot. Proceeding several rods, two cross currents were marked out; both extending for some distance in the travelled pathway and crossed by another at right angles. Testing carefully the roads in both directions, this electrical centre was pointed out as the greatest danger in the vicinity. The party was then invited to examine an ancient volume of official records, where it was chronicled that on the 7th of October, 1802, a man who was driving two yoke of cattle was struck by lightning in that exact spot and, with all his animals, was instantly killed. The occurrence had been deemed at the time so remarkable that the circumstance, with a minute description of the locality, had been recorded, though long forgotten by all but perhaps a few of the oldest citizens. * * * * * THE DANGERS OF ELECTRICITY.--The rapid spread of electric lighting in America has not been accomplished without very considerable loss of life. From a list compiled by Mr. Harold P. Brown, of New York, we learn that eighty-seven persons have been killed up to the commencement of this year. This is a very serious total, and if there were any likelihood of the rate being maintained, it would supply ample reason for very stringent legislative control being exercised over all electric installations. Happily many of the accidents may be attributed to the want of knowledge which always characterizes a new manufacture, while numbers of them are also due to the hasty and careless methods of erection adopted in America. Both these causes may be expected to decrease rapidly in the future, particularly if the municipalities insist on the mains being placed underground, instead of being strung on poles in the streets. Mr. Brown is well-known from his persistent opposition to the alternate current system; he never misses an opportunity of insisting upon its dangers, and of comparing it, to its detriment, with the direct-current system. Now as the alternate system is rapidly spreading all over London and also in many parts of the kingdom, this is a question which interests us directly. Are we running special risks by permitting its establishment? As far as lighting currents of fifty or one hundred volts are concerned, it certainly matters little or nothing whether they are direct or alternate, for neither will produce any serious injury on the human frame. When it comes to currents of distribution of two thousand volts, then it is quite conceivable that death is more certain by the alternate current, but unfortunately it is also fairly certain with the direct current, so that there is very little to choose between them. A house in which the fittings were charged to such a potential would be as dangerous as a battlefield. What is wanted is sufficiently good workmanship to prevent contact ever being made between the distributing mains and the service wires, and this there should be no difficulty in obtaining. Even if a leak should occur the device of putting the service main to earth at one point will prevent it doing any harm. Mr. Brown refers to two cases in which men were killed by contact with a perfectly insulated wire, their death being caused by the static charge. We feel considerable doubt as to the possibility of any one being killed by a static charge under these circumstances; we prefer to believe that the insulator was bad, probably a mere taping of non-waterproof material. Just as the death-rate on a railway varies inversely as the perfection of the signalling appliances, so the fatalities in America from electricity will decrease as better materials are adopted, and more care is expended in erection.--_Engineering._ * * * * * THE MONOLITHIC CHURCH OF ST. EMILION.--About twenty miles to the north-east of Bordeaux is Libourne, one of the principal towns founded by Edward I. This flourishing commercial town was the ruin of its neighbor, St. Emilion, which affords a fine field for the antiquary, nearly the whole town consisting of buildings of the Middle Ages. A considerable part of the town wall of the twelfth century remains, with the ditch, now turned into vineyards, and at one corner is a fine house of the same period, which is called the Palace of the Cardinal de la Mothe, who may perhaps have resided in it; but it is at least a century older than his time, and can hardly be later than 1200, as will at once be seen by the details. The French antiquaries say that it was built by the Cardinal in 1302, and speak of it as a remarkable synchronism in art; but the fact appears to me simply incredible. The most remarkable feature of St. Emilion is the monolithic church, which is probably one of the most curious of its class. It is cut entirely out of the solid rock, and is of early Romanesque character. The precise date is uncertain, but it appears most probable that the work was commenced in the eleventh century, and carried on through the whole of the twelfth. St. Emilion is said to have lived in the eighth century. A fragment of an inscription remains, the characters of which agree with the eleventh century; but some of the French antiquaries attribute it to the ninth. Others consider it as merely the crypt of the church above on the top of the rock; but that church is of much later character, and it is much more probable that the subterranean church was first made, and the other built long afterwards, when the country was in a more settled state. This church is 115 feet long by 80 wide. It consists of three parallel aisles, or rather a nave and two aisles, with plain barrel-shaped vaults, if they can be so called, with transverse vaults or openings, and round arches on massive square piers; the imposts are of the plain early Norman character, merely a square projection chamfered off on the under side, but one of them is enriched with the billet ornament. There are recesses for tombs down the sides, and a fourth aisle or passage has been cut out on the south side, apparently for tombs only, as it has recesses on both sides to receive the stone coffins. Still farther to the south, but connected by a passage, is a circular chamber in an unfinished state, with a domical vault, and an opening in the centre to a shaft which is carried up to the surface. Whether this was intended for a chapter-house, or for a sepulchral chapel in imitation of the Holy Sepulcre, is an undecided point. I incline to the latter opinion. This subterranean church or crypt is necessarily lighted from one end only, where it is flush with the face of the rock; and these openings are filled with Flamboyant windows, which are very evident insertions. On the surface of the hill over this church, but with a large space of solid rock intervening, is the tower and spire belonging to it. The tower is of late Norman and Transitional character surmounted by a Flamboyant crocketed spire. There is a kind of well or flue cut through the rock under the tower into the church below, apparently for the bell-ropes. In the church are remains of early painting, and some shallow sculpture, the character of which appears to be of the twelfth century. Adjoining to the church, on the south side, is a detached chapel of transition Norman work, with an apse vaulted with good ribs and vaulting shafts. A considerable part of the old painting is preserved; some of the ribs are painted with zigzags. Under this chapel is a crypt or cave cut out of the rock called the Grotto of St. Emilion, with a spring of water in it. The work is of the same early character as the other vaults.--_J. H. Parker._ * * * * * ANOTHER TALL CHIMNEY.--A factory chimney, said to be the highest in the world, is now being erected at the Royal Smelting-Works, near Freiberg, in Saxony. The horizontal flue from the works to the chimney is 1,093 yards long; it crosses the river Mulde, and then takes an upward course of 197 feet to the top of the hill upon which the chimney is being built. The base of the structure is thirty-nine feet square by thirty feet in height, on which is placed a short octagonal transition, from which the round shaft starts. This is 430 feet high, or altogether, with the base 460 feet high, with an inside diameter of twenty-three feet at the bottom, and sixteen feet and six inches at the top. It will take 1,500,000 bricks, and the cost is £6,000.--_Exchange._ * * * * * SITE OF A LOCRIAN TOWN.--The site of an ancient city of the Locri in modern Calabria, Italy, is in progress of excavation, under the direction of Dr. Orsi. The modern name of the spot is Gerace. A temple of six columns has been unearthed, and among the prizes is a Greek group in Parian marble, showing a divinity with a fishtail, a horse and a nude youth. The group is supposed to have been placed in the pediment of the west gable. Other finds are awaited.--_New York Times._ * * * * * THE WATKIN TOWER.--Four hundred plans have already been received by the committee who offered prizes for the best and second-best plan for the proposed Watkin tower--the English Eiffel. It has been said that it will be so high that all that need be done when fog comes on will be to enter the lift and in a few minutes be up in the clear blue.--_Boston Post._ * * * * * PERSIAN COURT ART.--M. Georges Perrot will maintain in his forthcoming volume on Persian art, being the fifth volume of "The History of Art," that the old art of Persia had nothing to do with the Persian people, being simply official or Court art. The designers and builders, sculptors and artists, were, he thinks, not Persians, but Greeks. The architect of the palaces of Darius was a Greek or a Phoenician.--_New York Times._ [Illustration: TRADE SURVEYS] There are signs of a subsidence of popular hostility to railroad combinations, trusts and commercial and manufacturing organizations of various kinds intended to conserve mutual interests. If the granger spirit had its own way it would, through its control of the legislative mills, grind a good many corporations to powder, and do tenfold more damage by its destructive methods than could possibly be repaired by mistaken remedies. It is, after all, a question whether any form of combination is possible which can very long do much damage to the people at large. These gigantic commercial and railroad organizations with which we have recently become familiar are giant-like efforts of enormous interests to rise up out of old conditions. Progress and development must take place, and the efforts of trusts, associations and combinations by whatever name known are simply the preliminary movements of mighty interests to reorganize themselves upon a broader and higher platform. The people in their jealousy and anxiety to protect themselves have, in some sections of the country, run into the adoption of extreme measures. They are already preparing to retrace their steps, and for several reasons. They are discovering that they have been fighting a bugbear; also, that their legislation against the bugbear cannot legislate. Also, that money stays away from radical communities, that many possible advantages are lost; that combinations properly controlled have, within themselves, the capabilities of accomplishing much good. Despite the threatened damage of these monster combinations prices have been quietly and steadily declining in nearly every direction; railroad freights have slipped down, notch after notch. Association after association has come and gone, and the Interstate Railway Law itself is in danger of being set aside for something better. The people are learning to have less fear of these combinations, and more confidence in themselves and for the underlying laws of trade. The year ends with gratifying results to business men in every avenue of activity. The action of the Treasury Department furnishes a hint to the country that a large supply of currency may soon become a necessity. The evil that would result from an unexpected and prolonged financial stringency cannot be measured. Over five thousand new corporations, firms and business associations have started in the South last year, as against something like 3,700 for 1888. Never in our history was there such an incubation of new business ventures. A stringency in money will destroy these by the thousand. Two or three scores of railroad enterprises which have reached the stage of bond-issuing would also be thrown aside, and thousands of enlargements of manufacturing and mining properties would be postponed; but it is useless to borrow trouble, or to paint dismal possibilities, as it is to be presumed that the people and their spokesmen fully understand the question. There is not a single branch of business in which reasonable fault can be found with results, excepting the one general result of very narrow margins. Consuming-capacity, on the whole, has increased. The wage-earners are earning as much as for years past, and are receiving more for their expenditures; that is to say, less of the product of labor in the aggregate is being absorbed by middlemen, or what might be termed non-productive agencies. The production of labor is being more evenly and equitably distributed than ever before. The ideal justice dreamed of by the philosophic socialists is within reach. In short, the wage-worker is better off, has more advantages, greater opportunities, and is yearly becoming a more important factor in the Government. As long as railway gross and net earnings continue to improve no reaction is to be feared, according to the dictum of Wall Street. There are strong probabilities that the favorable showing will continue. The anthracite coal production for 1889 foots up 35,200,000 tons, as against 38,145,718 tons for 1888. The distribution of soft coal throughout the New England and Middle States for steam-raising and general manufacturing purposes is gradually increasing. Last week's distribution of Connellsville coke reached the unprecedented figures of 125,000 tons. The production for the year foots up over 4,500,000 tons. The expansion and development of industries throughout the Middle and Southern States continues, and hundreds of new enterprises will take shape early in the spring. Iron and steel makers are projecting new furnaces and mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Some forty or fifty cotton mills are projected between Georgia and Texas. Mining companies representing fully forty million dollars of capital--that is, actual working capital--will begin operations this winter along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Industrial and building activity will take a fresh start upon the Pacific coast. Among the branches which will be developed will be saw-mill and foundry building. Machinery, engines, castings of all kinds, stoves and small iron and wood work are in great demand all along the coast from the Columbia River to Los Angeles. A great deal of capital and enterprise has been encouraged thither during 1889, and, as a result, manufacturing is greatly stimulated. The Dominion Government is also alive to the importance of developing relations with Asiatic and other foreign countries, and ship-lines are projected from its western seaports to foreign countries. Railroad-building is also being greatly stimulated by private enterprise. A vast amount of capital is drifting into the Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast regions from Eastern cities, and a great empire is being built up there which will be a source of wealth to those who obtain possession of land, timber, minerals and manufacturing facilities before the general enhancement of values takes place. The benefits originally contemplated by the construction of the trans-continental roads are now only being felt in their intensity. Irrigation companies, heavily capitalized, are doing excellent work in reclaiming vast tracts which geographers declared lost to all future utility. Mining engineers who have made a very careful examination and survey of much Western territory in the interest of Boston and New York moneyed men furnish evidences of wealth in those sections, which cannot but bring to them the money and enterprise necessary to their full development. The smaller industries throughout the States east of the Mississippi River are all doing well. Manufacturers are making money, but not as rapidly as they would like. Competition is exercising a healthy restraining influence. Like interests are being drawn together through the spirit of organization. Manufacture and agriculture are evenly balancing themselves. Commercial failures for 1889 show a moderate increase, but, considering the rashness with which ill-equipped persons enter into business and manufacturing, it is surprising that the failures are so few. * * * * * S. J. PARKHILL & CO., Printers, Boston. Transcriber's Note: Minor printer errors (omitted or incorrect punctuation, missing or transposed letters etc.) have been corrected without note. All remaining variations in spelling, hyphenation, etc. are preserved as in the original, with the following exceptions: Page iv--Concontractors amended to Contractors--"Estimates. Builders' and Sub-Contractors', 161" Page iv--Judæan amended to Judean--"Judean Tombs, 117" Page v--Scandinavan amended to Scandinavian--"Scandinavian Art, 37, 53, 63" Page v--Maxmilian amended to Maximilian--"Tomb. [of] Maximilian at Innsbruck, 61" Page vii--place name and page reference transposal reversed--"Strozzi Palace, Florence, 70" Page viii--Ruitz amended to Rintz--"Berlin, Ger. ... House on the Yorkstrasse. Herr Rintz, ..." Page viii--Willisch amended to Wellisch--"Buda-Pesth, Austria. House of Herr Hatner. Alfred Willisch, ..." Page viii--Felixtowe amended to Felixstowe--"Felixstowe, Eng. The Gables." etc. Page viii--repeated 'the' deleted--"Painting by Puvis de Chavannes in the Grand Hall ..." Page 5--succedded amended to succeeded--"... far from honourable, have succeeded in getting control ..." Page 7--scholorship amended to scholarship--"... to whom scholarship is dear ..." Page 9--argillacious amended to argillaceous--"... of a loose argillaceous irony matter ..." Page 9--repeated 'is' deleted--"... showing that it is not its geological position ..." Page 11--gripe amended to grip--"... carrying a lion whose dreadful grip his frantic rearing cannot loosen." The index entry on p vi, Suggestion for the Executive Mansion by Theodore F. Laist, etc. has no page reference in the original publication. The word Phoenician was printed with an oe ligature. This has not been retained in this version. Illustrations have been shifted slightly so as not to fall in the middle of paragraphs. 
22832	----	[Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CANTERBURY A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARCHIEPISCOPAL SEE BY HARTLEY WITHERS, B.A. [Illustration: Arms of Canterbury.] LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1897 _First Edition December, 1896._ _Second Edition, Revised, with many Additional Illustrations, May, 1897._ * * * * * GENERAL PREFACE. This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of archæology and history, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--firstly, the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognized; secondly, the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the transactions of the antiquarian and archæological societies; thirdly, the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; fourthly, the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and, lastly, the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals, originated by the late Mr. John Murray, to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE. E.F. STRANGE. _Editors of the Series._ * * * * * PREFACE. Among authorities consulted in the preparation of this volume, the author desires to name specially Prof. Willis's "Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral" (1845), Dean Stanley's "Historical Memorials of Canterbury" (Murray, 1855, and fifth edition, 1868), "Canterbury," by the Rev. R.C. Jenkins (1880), and the excellent section devoted to Canterbury in Murray's "Handbooks to the English Cathedrals, Southern Division," wherein Mr. Richard John King brought together so much valuable matter, to which reference has been made too often to be acknowledged in each instance. For permission to use this the publishers have to thank Mr. John Murray. For the reproduction of the drawings of the various parts of the Cathedral, and the arms on the title page, by Mr. Walter Tallent Owen, the editors are greatly indebted to the artist, from whose volume, "Bits of Canterbury Cathedral," published by W.T. Comstock, New York, 1891, they have been taken. Others are taken from Charles Wild's "Specimens of Mediæval Architecture," and from Carter's "Ancient Sculpture and Paintings." The illustrations from photographs in this volume have been reproduced from the originals by Messrs. Carl Norman and Co. H.W. * * * * * CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Building 3 CHAPTER II.--Exterior and Precincts: The Angel or Bell Tower 24 The Monastery 32 Christchurch Gate 35 Ruins of the Infirmary 38 The Treasury 38 The Lavatory Tower 40 The Chapter House 42 The Library 44 The Deanery 44 The Green Court 48 CHAPTER III.--Interior: The Nave 52 The Central Tower 55 The Western Screen 56 The Choir 57 The Altar 61 The Choir 64 The Choir Stalls 65 South-East Transept 67 South-West Choir Aisle 69 St. Anselm's Tower and Chapel 69 The Watching Chamber 72 Trinity Chapel 72 Tomb of the Black Prince 75 Becket's Crown 88 St. Andrew's Tower 90 North-East Transept 90 Chapel of the Martyrdom 92 The Dean's Chapel 94 South-West Transept 95 St. Michael's Chapel 95 The Main Crypt 96 The Eastern Crypt 101 CHAPTER IV.--The History of the See 103 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE The Cathedral from the South _Frontispiece_ Arms of Canterbury _Title_ The Cathedral from the North 1 Plan of Canterbury Cathedral (_Circa 1165_) 4 The Cloisters 19 View on the Stour 22 The Central Tower, "Bell Harry" 25 Detail of St. Anselm's Tower 32 The Christchurch Gate 33 The South-West Porch of the Cathedral 36 Cloisters of the Monks' Infirmary 37 Ruins of the Monks' Infirmary 38 The Baptistery Tower 39 Turret of South-West Transept 41 The Cloisters 43 Norman Staircase in the Close 45 Details of the Norman Staircase in the Close 46 Details of Ornament 47 Old Painting, "The Murder of St. Thomas à Becket" 51 The Shrine of St. Thomas à Becket (from the Cottonian MS.) 52 Capitals of Columns in the Eastern Apse 54 The Choir--looking East 59 Do. before Restoration 62 A Miserere in the Choir 65 Some Mosaics from the Floor of Trinity Chapel 73 The Black Prince's Tomb 77 Shield, Coat, etc., of the Black Prince 80 West Gate 81 Trinity Chapel, looking into Corona, "Becket's Crown" 88 Chair of St. Augustine 89 Transept of "The Martyrdom" 92 Part of South-Western Transept 94 The Crypt 97 Do. St. Gabriel's Chapel 100 Do. Cardinal Morton's Monument 101 Plans of Cathedral at three periods 130 * * * * * [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).] CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING. More than four hundred years passed by between the beginning of the building of this cathedral by Archbishop Lanfranc (1070-1089) and its completion, by the addition of the great central tower, at the end of the fifteenth century. But before tracing the history of the construction of the present well-known fabric, a few words will not be out of place concerning the church which preceded it on the same site. A British or Roman church, said to have been built by a certain mythical King Lucius, was given to St. Augustine by Ethelbert in A.D. 597. It was designed, broadly speaking, on the plan of the old Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, but as to the latest date of any alterations, which may or may not have been made by Augustine and his immediate successors, we have no accurate information. It is, however, definitely stated that Archbishop Odo, who held the see from A.D. 942-959, raised the walls and rebuilt the roof. In the course of these alterations the church was roofless for three years, and we are told that no rain fell within the precincts during this time. In A.D. 1011 Canterbury was pillaged by the Danes, who carried off Archbishop Alphege to Greenwich, butchered the monks, and did much damage to the church. The building was, however, restored by Canute, who made further atonement by hanging up his crown within its walls, and bringing back the body of Alphege, who had been martyred by the Danes. In the year 1067 the storms of the Norman Conquest overwhelmed St. Augustine's church, which was completely destroyed by fire, together with many royal deeds of privilege and papal bulls, and other valuable documents. A description of the church thus destroyed is given by Prof. Willis, who quotes all the ancient writers who mention it. The chief authority is Eadmer, who was a boy at the monastery school when the Saxon church was pulled down, and was afterwards a monk and "singer" in the cathedral. It is he who tells us that it was arranged in some parts in imitation of the church of St. Peter at Rome. Odo had translated the body of Wilfrid, Archbishop of York, from Ripon to Canterbury, and had "worthily placed it in a more lofty receptacle, to use his own words, that is to say, in the great Altar which was constructed of rough stones and mortar, close to the wall at the eastern part of the presbytery. Afterwards another altar was placed at a convenient distance before the aforesaid altar.... In this altar the blessed Elphege had solemnly deposited the head of St. Swithin ... and also many relics of other saints. To reach these altars, a certain crypt which the Romans call a Confessionary had to be ascended by means of several steps from the choir of the singers. This crypt was fabricated beneath in the likeness of the confessionary of St. Peter, the vault of which was raised so high that the part above could only be reached by many steps." The resting-place of St. Dunstan was separated from the crypt itself by a strong wall, for that most holy father was interred before the aforesaid steps at a great depth in the ground, and at the head of the saint stood the matutinal altar. Thence the choir of the singers was extended westward into the body of the church.... In the next place, beyond the middle of the length of the body there were two towers which projected beyond the aisles of the church. The south tower had an altar in the midst of it, which was dedicated in honour of the blessed Pope Gregory.... Opposite to this tower and on the north, the other tower was built in honour of the blessed Martin, and had about it cloisters for the use of the monks.... The extremity of the church was adorned by the oratory of Mary.... At its eastern part, there was an altar consecrated to the worship of that Lady.... When the priest performed the Divine mysteries at this altar he had his face turned to the east.... Behind him, to the west, was the pontifical chair constructed with handsome workmanship, and of large stones and cement, and far removed from the Lord's table, being contiguous to the wall of the church which embraced the entire area of the building. Lanfranc, the first Norman archbishop, was granted the see in 1070. He quickly set about the task of building himself a cathedral. Making no attempt to restore the old fabric, he even destroyed what was left of the monastic building, and built up an entirely new church and monastery. Seven years sufficed to complete his cathedral, which stood on the same ground as the earlier fane. His work, however, was not long left undisturbed. It had not stood for twenty years before the east end of the church was pulled down during the Archiepiscopate of Anselm, and rebuilt in a much more splendid style by Ernulph, the prior of the monastery. Conrad, who succeeded Ernulph as prior, finished the choir, decorating it with great magnificence, and, in the course of his reconstruction, nearly doubling the area of the building. Thus completed anew, the cathedral was dedicated by Archbishop William in A.D. 1130. At this notable ceremony the kings of England and Scotland both assisted, as well as all the English bishops. Forty years later this church was the scene of Thomas à Becket's murder (A.D. 1170), and it was in Conrad's choir that the monks watched over his body during the night after his death. Eadmer also gives some description of the church raised by Lanfranc. The new archbishop, "filled with consternation" when he found that "the church of the Saviour which he undertakes to rule was reduced to almost nothing by fire and ruin," proceeded to "set about to destroy it utterly, and erect a more noble one. And in the space of seven years he raised this new church from the very foundations and rendered it nearly perfect.... Archbishop Anselm, who succeeded Lanfranc, appointed Ernulf to be prior.... Having taken down the eastern part of the church which Lanfranc had built, he erected it so much more magnificently, that nothing like it could be seen in England, either for the brilliancy of its glass windows, the beauty of its marble pavement, or the many coloured pictures which led the wondering eyes to the very summit of the ceiling." It was this part of the church, however, that was completed by Ernulf's successor, Conrad, and afterwards known as Conrad's choir. It appears that Anselm "allowed the monks to manage their own affairs, and gave them for priors Ernulf, and then Conrad, both monks of their own monastery. And thus it happened that, in addition to the general prosperity and good order of their property, which resulted from this freedom, they were enabled to enlarge their church by all that part which stretches from the great tower to the east; which work Anselm himself provided for," having "granted to the said church the revenues of his town of Peckham, for seven years, the whole of which were expended upon the new work." Prof. Willis, unable to account for the haste with which the east end of Lanfranc's church was pulled down, assumes that the monks "did not think their church large enough for the importance of their monastery," and moreover wanted shrine-room for the display of relics. The main body of Lanfranc's church was left standing, and is described as follows by Gervase. "The tower, raised upon great pillars, is placed in the midst of the church, like the centre in the middle of a circle. It had on its apex a gilt cherub. On the west of the tower is the nave of the church, supported on either side upon eight pillars. Two lofty towers with gilded pinnacles terminate this nave or aula. A gilded _corona_ hangs in the midst of the church. A screen with a loft (_pulpitum_) separated in a manner the aforesaid tower from the nave, and had in the middle and on the side towards the nave, the altar of the holy cross. Above the _pulpitum_ and placed across the church, was the beam, which sustained a great cross, two cherubim, and the images of St. Mary and St. John the Apostle.... The great tower had a cross from each side, to wit, a south cross and a north cross, each of which had in the midst a strong pillar; this pillar sustained a vault which proceeded from the walls on three of its sides," etc. Prof. Willis considers that as far as these parts of the building are concerned, the present fabric stands exactly on the site of Lanfranc's. "In the existing building," he says, "it happens that the nave and transepts have been transformed into the Perpendicular style of the fourteenth century, and the central tower carried up to about double its original altitude in the same style. Nevertheless indications may be detected that these changed parts stand upon the old foundations of Lanfranc." The building, however, was not destined to remain long intact. In A.D. 1174 the whole of Conrad's choir was destroyed by a fire, which was described fully by Gervase, a monk who witnessed it. He gives an extraordinary account of the rage and grief of the people at the sight of the burning cathedral. The work of rebuilding was immediately set on foot. In September, 1174, one William of Sens, undertook the task, and wrought thereat until 1178, when he was disabled by an unfortunate fall from a scaffolding, and had to give up his charge and return to France. Another William, an Englishman this time, took up the direction of the work, and under his supervision the choir and eastern portion of the church were finished in A.D. 1184. Further alterations were made under Prior Chillenden at the end of the fourteenth century. Lanfranc's nave was pulled down, and a new nave and transepts were constructed, leaving but little of the original building set up by the first Norman archbishop. Finally, about A.D. 1495, the cathedral was completed by the addition of the great central tower. [Illustration: PLAN OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, ABOUT A.D. 1165. From a Norman drawing inserted in the Great Psalter of Eadwin, in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. First published in _Vetusta Monumenta_ (Society of Antiquaries, 1755). For full description and a plan of the waterworks see _Archæologia Cantiana_, Vol. VII., 1868.] During the four centuries which passed during the construction and reconstruction of the fabric, considerable changes had manifested themselves in the science and art of architecture. Hence it is that Canterbury Cathedral is a history, written in solid stone, of architectural progress, illustrating in itself almost all the various kinds of the style commonly called Pointed. Of these the earliest form of Gothic and Perpendicular chiefly predominate. The shape and arrangement of the building was doubtless largely influenced by the extraordinary number of precious relics which it contained, and which had to be properly displayed and fittingly enshrined. Augustine's church had possessed the bodies of St. Blaize and St. Wilfrid, brought respectively from Rome and from Ripon; of St. Dunstan, St. Alphege, and St. Ouen, as well as the heads of St. Swithin and St. Furseus, and the arm of St. Bartholomew. These were all carefully removed and placed, each in separate altars and chapels, in Lanfranc's new cathedral. Here their number was added to by the acquisition of new relics and sacred treasures as time went on, and finally Canterbury enshrined its chiefest glory, the hallowed body of St. Thomas à Becket, who was martyred within its walls. Since, owing to an almost incredible act of royal vindictiveness in A.D. 1538, Becket's glorious shrine belongs only to the history of the past, some account of its splendours will not be out of place in this part of our account of the cathedral. It stood on the site of the ancient chapel of the Trinity, which was burnt down along with Conrad's choir in the destructive fire of A.D. 1174. It was in this chapel that Thomas à Becket had first solemnized mass after becoming archbishop. For this reason, as we may fairly suppose, this position was chosen to enshrine the martyr's bones, after the rebuilding of the injured portion of the fabric. Though the shrine itself has been ruthlessly destroyed, a mosaic pavement, similar to that which may be seen round the tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey, marks the exact spot on which it stood. The mosaic is of the kind with which the floors of the Roman basilicas were generally adorned, and contains signs of the zodiacs and emblems of virtues and vices. This pavement was directly in front of the west side of the shrine. On each side of the site is a deep mark in the pavement running towards the east. This indentation was certainly worn in the soft, pinkish marble by the knees of generations of pilgrims, who prostrated themselves here while the treasures were displayed to their gaze. In the roof above there is fixed a crescent carved out of some foreign wood, which has proved deeply puzzling to antiquaries. A suggestion, which hardly seems very plausible, connects this mysterious crescent with the fact that Becket was closely related, as patron, with the Hospital of St. John at Acre. It was believed that his prayers had once repulsed the Saracens from the walls of the fortress, and he received the title of St. Thomas Acrensis. Near this crescent a number of iron staples were to be seen at one time, and it is likely that a trophy of some sort depended from them. The Watching Tower was set high upon the Tower of St. Anselm, on the south side of the shrine. It contained a fireplace, so that the watchman might keep himself warm during the winter nights, and from a gallery between the pillars he commanded a view of the sacred spot and its treasures. A troop of fierce ban-dogs shared the task of guarding the shrine from theft. How necessary such precautions were is shown by the fact that such a spot had to be guarded not only from common robbers in search of rich booty, but also from holy men, who were quite unscrupulous in their desire to possess themselves and their own churches of sacred relics. Within the first six years after Becket's death we read of two striking instances of the lengths to which distinguished churchmen were carried by what Dean Stanley calls "the first frenzy of desire for the relics of St. Thomas." Benedict, a monk of Christ Church, and "probably the most distinguished of his body," was created Abbot of Peterburgh in A.D. 1176. Disappointed to find that his cathedral was very poor in the matter of relics he returned to Canterbury, "took away with him the flagstones immediately surrounding the sacred spot, with which he formed two altars in the conventual church of his new appointment, besides two vases of blood and parts of Becket's clothing." Still more striking and characteristic of the prevalent passion for relics is the story of Roger, who was keeper of the "Altars of the Martyrdom," or "Custos Martyrii." The brothers of St. Augustine's Abbey were so eager to obtain a share in the glory which their great rival, the neighbouring cathedral, had won from the circumstances of Becket's martyrdom within its walls, that they actually offered Roger no less a reward than the position of abbot in their own institution, on condition that he should purloin for them some part of the remains of the martyr's skull. And not only did Roger, though he had been specially selected from amongst the monks of Christ Church to watch over this very treasure, agree to their conditions, and after duly carrying out this piece of sacrilegious burglary become Abbot of St. Augustine's; but the chroniclers of the abbey were not ashamed to boast of this transaction as an instance of cleverness and well-applied zeal. The translation of Becket's remains from the tomb to his shrine took place A.D. 1220, fifty years after his martyrdom. The young Henry III., who had just laid the foundation of the new abbey at Westminster, assisted at the ceremony. The primate then ruling at Canterbury was the great Stephen Langton, who had won renown both as a scholar and a statesman. He had carried out the division of the Bible into chapters, as it is now arranged, and had won a decisive victory for English liberty by forcing King John to sign the Great Charter. He was now advanced in years, and had recently assisted at the coronation of King Henry at Westminster. The translation was carried out with imposing ceremony. The scene must have been one of surpassing splendour; never had such an assemblage been gathered together in England. Robert of Gloucester relates that not only Canterbury but the surrounding countryside was full to overflowing: "Of bishops and abbots, priors and parsons, Of earls, and of barons, and of many knights thereto; Of serjeants, and of squires, and of husbandmen enow, And of simple men eke of the land--so thick thither drew." The archbishop had given notice two years before, proclaiming the day of the solemnity throughout Europe as well as England: the episcopal manors had been bidden to furnish provisions for the huge concourse, not only in the cathedral city, but along all the roads by which it was approached. Hay and provisions were given to all who asked it between London and Canterbury; at the gates of the city and in the four licensed cellars tuns of wine were set up, that all who thirsted might drink freely, and wine ran in the street channels on the day of the festival. During the night before the ceremony the primate, together with the Bishop of Salisbury and all the members of the brotherhood, who were headed by Walter the Prior, solemnly, with psalms and hymns, entered the crypt in which the martyr's body lay, and removed the stones which covered the tomb. Four priests, specially conspicuous for their piety, were selected to take out the relics, which were then placed in a strong coffer studded with iron nails and fastened with iron hasps. Next day a procession was formed, headed by the young king, Henry III. After him came Pandulf, the Italian Bishop of Norwich and Papal Nuncio, and Langton the archbishop, with whom was the Archbishop of Rheims, Primate of France. The great Hubert de Burgh, Lord High Justiciary, together with four other barons, completed the company, which was selected to bear the chest to its resting-place. When this had been duly deposited, a solemn mass was celebrated by the French archbishop. The anniversary of this great festival was commemorated as the Feast of the Translation of the Blessed St. Thomas, until it was suppressed by a royal injunction of Henry VIII. in 1536. A picture of the shrine itself is preserved among the Cottonian MSS., and a representation of it also exists in one of the stained windows of the cathedral. At the end of it the altar of the Saint had its place; the lower part of its walls were of stone, and against them the lame and diseased pilgrims used to rub their bodies, hoping to be cured of their afflictions. The shrine itself was supported on marble arches, and remained concealed under a wooden covering, doubtless intended to enhance the effect produced by the sudden revelation of the glories beneath it; for when the pilgrims were duly assembled on their knees round the shrine, the cover was suddenly raised at a given signal, and though such a device may appear slightly theatrical in these days, it is easy to imagine how the devotees of the middle ages must have been thrilled at the sight of this hallowed tomb, and all the bravery of gold and precious stones which the piety of that day had heaped upon it. The beauties of the shrine were pointed out by the prior, who named the giver of the several jewels. Many of these were of enormous value, especially a huge carbuncle, as large as an egg, which had been offered to the memory of St. Thomas by Louis VII. of France, who visited the shrine in A.D. 1179, after having thrice seen the Saint in a vision. A curious legend, thoroughly in keeping with the mystic halo of miraculous power which surrounds the martyred archbishop's fame, relates that the French king could not make up his mind to part with this invaluable gem, which was called the "Regale of France;" but when he visited the tomb, the stone, so runs the story, leapt forth from the ring in which it was set, and fixed itself of its own will firmly in the wall of the shrine, thus baffling the unwilling monarch's half-heartedness. Louis also presented a gold cup, and gave the monks a hundred measures, medii, of wine, to be delivered annually at Poissy, also ordaining that they should be exempt from "toll, tax, and tallage" when journeying in his realm. He himself was made a member of the brotherhood, after duly spending a night in prayer at the tomb. It is said that, "because he was very fearful of the water," the French king received a promise from the Saint that neither he nor any other that crossed over from Dover to Whitsand, should suffer any manner of loss or shipwreck. We are told that Louis's piety was afterwards rewarded by the miraculous recovery, through St. Thomas's intercession, of his son from a dangerous illness. Louis was the first of a series of royal pilgrims to the shrine. Richard the Lion Heart, set free from durance in Austria, walked thither from Sandwich to return thanks to God and St. Thomas. After him all the English kings and all the Continental potentates who visited the shores of Britain, paid due homage, and doubtless made due offering, at the shrine of the sainted archbishop. The crown of Scotland was presented in A.D. 1299 by Edward Longshanks, and Henry V. gave thanks here after his victory over the French at Agincourt. Emperors, both of the east and west, humbled themselves before the relics of the famous English martyr. Henry VIII. and the Emperor Charles V. came together at Whitsuntide, A.D. 1520, in more than royal splendour, and with a great retinue of English and Spanish noblemen, and worshipped at the shrine which had then reached the zenith of its glory. But though the stately stories of these royal progresses to the tomb of the martyred archbishop strike the imagination vividly, yet the picture presented by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" is in reality much more impressive. For we find there all ranks of society alike making the pilgrimage--the knight, the yeoman, the prioress, the monk, the friar, the merchant, the scholar from Oxford, the lawyer, the squire, the tradesman, the cook, the shipman, the physician, the clothier from Bath, the priest, the miller, the reeve, the manciple, the seller of indulgences, and, lastly, the poet himself--all these various sorts and conditions of men and women we find journeying down to Canterbury in a sort of motley caravan. Foreign pilgrims also came to the sacred shrine in great numbers. A curious record, preserved in a Latin translation, of the journey of a Bohemian noble, Leo von Rotzmital, who visited England in 1446, gives a quaint description of Canterbury and its approaches. "Sailing up the Channel," the narrator writes, "as we drew near to England we saw lofty mountains full of chalk. These mountains seem from a distance to be clad with snows. On them lies a citadel, built by devils, '_a Cacodæmonibus extructa_,' so stoutly fortified that its peer could not be found in any province of Christendom. Passing by these mountains and citadel we put in at the city of Sandwich (_Sandvicum_).... But at nothing did I marvel more greatly than at the sailors climbing up the masts and foretelling the distance, and approach of the winds, and which sails should be set and which furled. Among them I saw one sailor so nimble that scarce could any man be compared with him." Journeying on to Canterbury, our pilgrim proceeds: "There we saw the tomb and head of the martyr. The tomb is of pure gold, and embellished with jewels, and so enriched with splendid offerings that I know not its peer. Among other precious things upon it is beholden the carbuncle jewel, which is wont to shine by night, half a hen's egg in size. For that tomb has been lavishly enriched by many kings, princes, wealthy traders, and other righteous men." Such was Canterbury Cathedral in the middle ages, the resort of emperors, kings, and all classes of humble folk, English and foreign. It was in the spring chiefly, as Chaucer tells us, that "Whanne that April with his showres sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foules maken melodie That slepen alle night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in hir corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strange strondes To serve hauves couthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende The holy blissful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen when that they were seke." The miracles performed by the bones of the blessed martyr are stated by contemporary writers to have been extraordinarily numerous. We have it on the authority of Gervase that two volumes full of these marvels were preserved at Canterbury, and in those days a volume meant a tome of formidable dimensions; but scarcely any record of these most interesting occurrences has been preserved. At the time of Henry VIII.'s quarrel with the dead archbishop--of which more anon--the name of St. Thomas and all account of his deeds was erased from every book that the strictest investigation could lay hands on. So thoroughly was this spiteful edict carried out that the records of the greatest of English saints are astonishingly meagre. A letter, however, has been preserved, written about A.D. 1390 by Richard II. to congratulate the then archbishop, William Courtenay, on a fresh miracle performed by St. Thomas: "_Litera domini Regis graciosa missa domino archiepiscopo, regraciando sibi de novo miraculo Sancti Thome Martiris sibi denunciato._" The letter refers, in its quaint Norman-French, to the good influence that will be exercised by such a manifestation, as a practical argument against the "various enemies of our faith and belief"--_noz foie et creaunce ount plousours enemys_. These were the Lollards, and the pious king says that he hopes and believes that they will be brought back to the right path by the effect of this miracle, which seems to have been worked to heal a distinguished foreigner--_en une persone estraunge_. Another document (dated A.D. 1455) preserves the story of the miraculous cure of a young Scotsman, from Aberdeen, _Allexander Stephani filius in Scocia, de Aberdyn oppido natus_. Alexander was lame, _pedibus contractus_, from his birth, we are told that after twenty-four years of pain and discomfort--_vigintiquatuor annis penaliter laborabat_--he made a pilgrimage to Canterbury, and there "the sainted Thomas, the divine clemency aiding him, on the second day of the month of May did straightway restore his legs and feet, _bases et plantas_, to the same Alexander." Other miracles performed by the saint are pictured in the painted windows of Trinity Chapel, of which we shall treat fully later on. The fame of the martyr spread through the whole of Christendom. Stanley tells us that "there is probably no country in Europe which does not exhibit traces of Becket. A tooth of his is preserved in the church of San Thomaso Cantuariense at Verona, part of an arm in a convent at Florence, and another part in the church of St. Waldetrude at Mons; in Fuller's time both arms were displayed in the English convent at Lisbon; while Bourbourg preserves his chalice, Douay his hair shirt, and St. Omer his mitre. The cathedral of Sens contains his vestments and an ancient altar at which he said mass. His story is pictured in the painted windows at Chartres, and Sens, and St. Omer, and his figure is to be seen in the church of Monreale at Palermo." In England almost every county contained a church or convent dedicated to St. Thomas. Most notable of these was the abbey of Aberbrothock, raised, within seven years after the martyrdom, to the memory of the saint by William the Lion, king of Scotland. William had been defeated by the English forces on the very day on which Henry II. had done penance at the tomb, and made his peace with the saint, and attributing his misfortunes to the miraculous influence of St. Thomas, endeavoured to propitiate him by the dedication of this magnificent abbey. A mutilated image of the saint has been preserved among the ruins of the monastery. This is perhaps the most notable of the gifts to St. Thomas. The volume of the offerings which were poured into the Canterbury coffers by grateful invalids who had been cured of their ailments, and by others who, like the Scotch king, were anxious to propitiate the power of the saint, must have been enormous. We know that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the yearly offerings, though their sums had already greatly diminished, were worth about £4,000, according to the present value of money. The story of the fall of the shrine and the overthrow of the power of the martyr is so remarkable and was so implicitly believed at the time, that it cannot be passed over in spite of the doubts which modern criticism casts on its authenticity. It is said that in April, A.D. 1538, a writ of summons was issued in the name of King Henry VIII. against Thomas Becket, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, accusing him of treason, contumacy, and rebellion. This document was read before the martyr's tomb, and thirty days were allowed for his answer to the summons. As the defendant did not appear, the suit was formally tried at Westminster. The Attorney General held a brief for Henry II., and the deceased defendant was represented by an advocate named by Henry VIII. Needless to relate, judgment was given in favour of Henry II., and the condemned Archbishop was ordered to have his bones burnt and all his gorgeous offerings escheated to the Crown. The first part of the sentence was remitted and Becket's body was buried, but he was deprived of the title of Saint, his images were destroyed throughout the kingdom, and his name was erased from all books. The shrine was destroyed, and the gold and jewels thereof were taken away in twenty-six carts. Henry VIII. himself wore the Regale of France in a ring on his thumb. Improbable as the story of Becket's trial may seem, such a procedure was strictly in accordance with the forms of the Roman Catholic Church, of which Henry still at that time professed himself a member: moreover it is not without authentic parallels in history: exactly the same measures of reprisal had been taken against Wycliffe at Lutterworth; and Queen Mary shortly afterwards acted in a similar manner towards Bucer and Fagius at Cambridge. The last recorded pilgrim to the shrine of St. Thomas was Madame de Montreuil, a great French dame who had been waiting on Mary of Guise, in Scotland. She visited Canterbury in August, A.D. 1538, and we are told that she was taken to see the wonders of the place and marvelled at all the riches thereof, and said "that if she had not seen it, all the men in the world could never 'a made her believe it." Though she would not kiss the head of St. Thomas, the Prior "did send her a present of coneys, capons, chickens, with divers fruits--plenty--insomuch that she said, 'What shall we do with so many capons? Let the Lord Prior come, and eat, and help us to eat them tomorrow at dinner' and so thanked him heartily for the said present." Such was the history of Becket's shrine. We have dwelt on it at some length because it is no exaggeration to say that in the Middle Ages Canterbury Cathedral owed its European fame and enormous riches to the fact that it contained the shrine within its walls, and because the story of the influence of the Saint and the miracles that he worked, and the millions of pilgrims who flocked from the whole civilized world to do homage to him, throws a brighter and more vivid light on the lives and thoughts and beliefs of mediæval men than many volumes stuffed with historical research. No visitor to Canterbury can appreciate what he sees, unless he realizes to some extent the glamour which overhung the resting place of St. Thomas in the days of Geoffrey Chaucer. We have no certain knowledge as to whether the other shrines and relics which enriched the cathedral were destroyed along with those of St. Thomas. Dunstan and Elphege at least can hardly have escaped, and it is probable that most of the monuments and relics perished at the time of the Reformation. We know that in A.D. 1541, Cranmer deplored the slight effect which had been wrought by the royal orders for the destruction of the bones and images of supposed saints. And that he forthwith received letters from the king, enjoining him to cause "due search to be made in his cathedral churches, and if any shrine, covering of shrine, table, monument of miracles, or other pilgrimage, do there continue, to cause it to be taken away, so as there remain no memory of it." This order probably brought about the destruction of the tombs and monuments of the early archbishops, most of whom had been officially canonised, or been at least enrolled in the popular calendar, and were accordingly doomed to have their resting-places desecrated. We know that about this time the tomb of Winchelsey was destroyed, because he was adored by the people as a reputed saint. Any monuments that may have escaped royal vandalism at the Reformation period, fell before the even more effective fanaticism of the Puritans, who seem to have exercised their iconoclastic energies with especial zeal and vigour at Canterbury. Just before their time Archbishop Laud spent a good deal of trouble and money on the adornment of the high altar. A letter to him from the Dean, dated July 8th, A.D. 1634, is quoted by Prynne, "We have obeyed your Grace's direction in pulling down the exorbitant seates within our Quire whereby the church is very much beautified.... Lastly wee most humbly beseech your Grace to take notice that many and most necessary have beene the occasions of extraordinary expences this yeare for ornaments, etc." And another Puritan scribe tells us that "At the east end of the cathedral they have placed an Altar as they call it dressed after the Romish fashion, for which altar they have lately provided a most idolatrous costly glory cloth or back cloth." These embellishments were not destined to remain long undisturbed. In A.D. 1642, the Puritan troopers hewed the altar-rails to pieces and then "threw the Altar over and over down the three Altar steps, and left it lying with the heels upwards." This was only the beginning: we read that during the time of the Great Rebellion, "the newly erected font was pulled down, the inscriptions, figures, and coats of arms, engraven upon brass, were torn off from the ancient monuments, and whatsoever there was of beauty or decency in the holy place, was despoiled." A manuscript, compiled in 1662, and preserved in the Chapter library, gives a more minute account of this work of destruction. "The windows were generally battered and broken down; the whole roof, with that of the steeples, the chapter-house and cloister, externally impaired and ruined both in timber-work and lead; water-tanks, pipes, and much other lead cut off; the choir stripped and robbed of her fair and goodly hangings; the organ and organ-loft, communion-table, and the best and chiefest of the furniture, with the rail before it, and the screen of tabernacle work richly overlaid with gold behind it; goodly monuments shamefully abused, defaced, and rifled of brasses, iron grates, and bars." The ringleader in this work of destruction was a fanatic named Richard Culmer, commonly known as Blue Dick. A paper preserved in the Chapter library, in the writing of Somner, the great antiquarian scholar, describes the state in which the fabric of the cathedral was left, at the time of the Restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. "So little," says this document, "had the fury of the late reformers left remaining of it besides the bare walles and roofe, and these, partly through neglect, and partly by the daily assaults and batteries of the disaffected, so shattered, ruinated, and defaced, as it was not more unserviceable in the way of a cathedral than justly scandalous to all who delight to serve God in the beauty of Holines." Most of the windows had been broken, "the church's guardians, her faire and strong gates, turned off the hooks and burned." The buildings and houses of the clergy had been pulled down or greatly damaged; and lastly, "the goodly oaks in our common gardens, of good value in themselves, and in their time very beneficial to our church by their shelter, quite eradicated and _set to sale_." This last touch is interesting, as showing that the reforming zeal of the Puritans was not always altogether disinterested. After the Restoration some attempt was made to render the cathedral once more a fitting place of worship, and the sum of £10,000 was devoted to repairs and other public and pious uses. A screen was put up in the same position as the former one, and the altar was placed in front. But, in A.D. 1729, this screen no longer suited the taste of the period, and a sum of £500, bequeathed by one of the prebendaries, was devoted to the erection of a screen in the Corinthian style, designed by a certain Mr. Burrough, afterwards Master of Caius College, Cambridge. A little before this time the old stalls, which had survived the Puritan period were replaced: a writer describes them, in the early half of the seventeenth century, as standing in two rows, an upper and lower, on each side, with the archbishop's wood throne above them on the south side. This chair he mentions as "sometime richly guilt, and otherwise well set forth, but now nothing specious through age and late neglect. It is a close seat, made after the old fashion of such stalls, called thence _faldistoria_; only in this they differ, that they were moveable, this is fixt." Thus wrote Somner in A.D. 1640: the dilapidated throne of which he speaks was replaced, in A.D. 1704, by a splendid throne with a tall Corinthian canopy, and decorated with carving by Grinling Gibbons, the gift of Archbishop Tenison, who also set up new stalls. At the same time Queen Mary the Second presented new and magnificent furniture for the altar, throne, stalls of the chief clergy, and pulpit. Since then many alterations have been made. The old altar and screen have been removed, and a new reredos set up, copied from the screen work of the Lady Chapel in the crypt; and Archbishop Tenison's throne has given place to a lofty stone canopy. In 1834 owing to its tottering condition the north-west tower of the nave had to be pulled down. It was rebuilt on an entirely different plan by Mr. George Austin, who, with his son, also conducted a good deal of repairing and other work in the cathedral and the buildings connected with it. A good deal of the external stonework had to be renewed, but the work was carried out judiciously, and only where it was absolutely necessary. On the west side of the south transept a turret has been pulled down and set up again stone by stone. The crypt has been cleared out and restored, and its windows have been reopened. The least satisfactory evidences of the modern hand are the stained glass windows, which have been put up in the nave and transepts of the cathedral. The Puritan trooper had wrought havoc in the ancient glass, smashing it wherever a pike-thrust could reach; and modern piety has been almost as ruthless in erecting windows which are quite incredibly hideous. In September, 1872, Canterbury was once more damaged by fire, just about seven hundred years after the memorable conflagration described by Gervase. On this occasion, however, the damage did not go beyond the outer roof of the Trinity Chapel. The fire broke out at about half-past ten in the morning, and was luckily discovered before it had made much progress, by two plumbers who were at work in the south gutter. According to the "Builder" of that month, "a peculiar whirring noise" caused them to look inside the roof, and they found three of the main roof-timbers blazing. "The best conjecture seems to be that the dry twigs, straw, and similar _débris_, carried into the roof by birds, and which it has been the custom to clear at intervals out of the vault pockets, had caught fire from a spark that had in some way passed through the roof covering, perhaps under a sheet raised a little at the bottom by the wind." Assistance was quickly summoned, and "by half-past twelve the whole was seen to be extinguished. At four o'clock the authorities held the evening service, so as not to break a continuity of custom extending over centuries; and in the smoke-filled choir, the whole of the Chapter in residence, in the proper Psalm (xviii.), found expression for the sense of victory over a conquered enemy." Thus little harm was done, but it must have been an exciting crisis while it lasted. "The bosses [of the vaulting], pierced with cradle-holes, happened to be well-placed for the passage of the liquid lead dripping on the back of the vault from the blazing roof," which poured down on to the pavement below, on the very spot which Becket's shrine had once occupied. "Through the holes further westward water came, sufficient to float over the surfaces of the polished Purbeck marble floor and the steps of the altar, and alarmed the well-intentioned assistants into removing the altar, tearing up the altar-rails, etc., etc. The relics of the Black Prince, attached to a beam (over his tomb) at the level of the caps of the piers on the south side of Trinity Chapel, were all taken down and placed away in safety. The eastern end of the church is said to have been filled with steam from water rushing through with, and falling on, the molten lead on the floor; and, in time, by every opening, wood-smoke reached the inside of the building, filling all down to the west of the nave with a blue haze." The scene in the building is said to have been one of extraordinary beauty, but most lovers of architecture would probably prefer to view the fabric with its own loveliness, unenhanced by numerous streams of molten lead pouring down from the roof. Since that date Canterbury Cathedral has been happy in the possession of no history, and we pass on, therefore, to the examination in detail of its exterior. [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS.] CHAPTER II. EXTERIOR AND PRECINCTS--THE MONASTERY. The external beauties of Canterbury Cathedral can best be viewed in their entirety from a distance. The old town has nestled in close under the walls of the church that dominates it, preventing anything like a complete view of the building from the immediate precincts. But Canterbury is girt with a ring of hills, from which we may enjoy a strikingly beautiful view of the ancient city, lying asleep in the rich, peaceful valley of the Stour, and the mighty cathedral towering over the red-tiled roofs of the town, and looking, as a rustic remarked as he gazed down upon it "like a hen brooding over her chickens." Erasmus must have been struck by some such aspect of the cathedral, for he says, "It rears its crest (_erigit se_) with so great majesty to the sky, that it inspires a feeling of awe even in those who look at it from afar." Such a view may well be got from the hills of Harbledown, a village about two miles from Canterbury, containing in itself many objects of antiquarian and æsthetic interest. It stands on the road by which Chaucer's pilgrims wended their way to the shrine of St. Thomas, and it is almost certainly referred to in the lines in which the poet speaks of "A little town Which that yeleped is Bob Up and Down Under the Blee in Canterbury way." The name Harbledown is derived by local philologists from Bob up and Down, and the hilly nature of the country fully justifies the title. Here stands Lanfranc's Lazar-house, "so picturesque even now in its decay, and in spite of modern alterations which have swept away all but the ivy-clad chapel of Lanfranc." In this hospital a shoe of St. Thomas was preserved which pilgrims were expected to kiss as they passed by; and in an old chest the modern visitor may still behold a rude money-box with a slit in the lid, into which the great Erasmus is said to have dropped a coin when he visited Canterbury at the time when St. Thomas's glory was just beginning to wane. Behind the hospital is an ancient well called "the Black Prince's Well." The Black Prince, as is well known, passed through Canterbury on his way from Sandwich to London, whither he was escorting his royal prisoner, King John of France, whom he had captured at the battle of Poitiers, A.D. 1357. We need not doubt that he halted at Harbledown to salute the martyr's shoe, and he may have washed in the water of the well, which was henceforward called by his name. Another tradition relates that he had water brought to him from this well when he lay sick, ten years later, in the archbishop's palace at Canterbury. [Illustration: VIEW ON THE STOUR.] Another good view may be had from the crest on which stands St. Martin's Church, which was formerly believed to be the oldest in England, so ancient that its origin was connected with the mythical King Lucius. Modern research has decided that it is of later date, but there is no doubt that on the spot on which it now stands, Bertha, the wife of Ethelbert--who was ruling when Augustine landed with his monks--had a little chapel, as Bede relates, "in the east of the city," where she worshipped, before her husband's conversion, with her chaplain, Luidhard, a French priest. Dean Stanley has described this view in a fine passage: "Let any one sit on the hill of the little church of St. Martin, and look on the view which is there spread before his eyes. Immediately below are the towers of the great abbey of St. Augustine, where Christian learning and civilization first struck root in the Anglo-Saxon race; and within which, now, after a lapse of many centuries, a new institution has arisen, intended to carry far and wide to countries of which Gregory and Augustine never heard, the blessings which they gave to us. Carry your view on--and there rises high above all the magnificent pile of our cathedral, equal in splendour and state to any, the noblest temple or church, that Augustine could have seen in ancient Rome, rising on the very ground which derives its consecration from him. And still more than the grandeur of the outward building that rose from the little church of Augustine, and the little palace of Ethelbert, have been the institutions of all kinds, of which these were the earliest cradle. From the first English Christian city--from Kent, the first English Christian kingdom--has, by degrees, arisen the whole constitution of Church and State in England which now binds together the whole British Empire. And from the Christianity here established in England has flowed, by direct consequence, first, the Christianity of Germany--then after a long interval, of North America, and lastly, we may trust in time, of all India and all Australasia. The view from St. Martin's Church is, indeed, one of the most inspiriting that can be found in the world; there is none to which I would more willingly take any one who doubted whether a small beginning could lead to a great and lasting good--none which carries us more vividly back into the past, or more hopefully forward to the future." In the town itself, the best point of vantage from which the visitor can get a good view of the cathedral is the summit of the Dane John, a lofty mound crowned by an obelisk; from this height we look across at the roof and towers of the cathedral rising above thickly clustering trees: from here also there is a fine view over the beautiful valley of the Stour in the direction of Thanington and Chartham. In the immediate precincts, a delightful picture is presented from the Green Court, which was once the main outer court of the monastery. Here are noble trees and beautifully kept turf, at once in perfect harmony and agreeable contrast with the rugged walls of the weather-beaten cathedral: the quiet soft colouring of the ancient buildings and that look of cloistered seclusion only to be found in the peaceful nooks of cathedral cities are seen here at their very best. [Illustration: "BELL HARRY," THE CENTRAL TOWER.] The chief glory of the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral is the central #Angel or Bell Tower#. This is one of the most perfect structures that Gothic architecture, inspired by the loftiest purpose that ever stimulated the work of any art, has produced. It was completed by Prior Selling, who held office in 1472, and has been variously called the Bell Harry Tower from the mighty Dunstan bell, weighing three tons and three hundredweight, and the Angel Tower from the gilded figure of an angel poised on one of the pinnacles, which has long ago disappeared. The tower itself is of two stages, with two two-light windows in each stage; the windows are transomed in each face, and the lower tier is canopied; each angle is rounded off with an octagonal turret and the whole structure is a marvellous example of architectural harmony, and in every way a work of transcendent beauty. The two buttressing arches and the ornamental braces which support it were added at the end of the fifteenth century by Prior Goldstone, to whom the building of the whole tower is apparently attributed in the following quaint passage from a mediæval authority: "He by the influence and help of those honourable men, Cardinal John Morton and Prior William Sellyng, erected and magnificently completed that lofty tower commonly called Angyll Stepyll in the midst of the church, between the choir and the nave--vaulted with a most beautiful vault, and with excellent and artistic workmanship in every part sculptured and gilt, with ample windows glazed and ironed. He also with great care and industry annexed to the columns which support the same tower two arches or vaults of stone work, curiously carved, and four smaller ones, to assist in sustaining the said tower" ("Ang. Sac." i. 147, translated by Professor Willis). The western front of the cathedral is flanked by two towers of great beauty; a point in which Mediæval architecture has risen above that of all other ages is the skill which it displays in the use of towers of different heights, breaking the dull straight line of the roof and carrying the eye gradually up to the loftiest point of the building. Canterbury presents an excellent example of the beauty of this subordination of lower towers to the chief; we invite the visitor, when looking at the exterior, to compare it mentally, on the one hand, with the dull severity of the roof line of a Greek temple, and on the other, to take a fair example of modern so-called Gothic, with the ugly straight line of the Houses of Parliament, as seen from the Lambeth Embankment, broken only by the two stark and stiff erections at each end. The two towers at the west end of Canterbury were not always uniform. At the northern corner an old Norman tower formerly uplifted a leaden spire one hundred feet high. This rather anomalous arrangement must have had a decidedly lopsided effect, and it is probable that the appearance of the cathedral was changed very much for the better when the spire, which had been taken down in 1705, was replaced by Mr. Austin in 1840, by a tower uniform with the southernmost tower, called the Chicele or Oxford steeple: this tower was completed by Prior Goldstone, who, during his tenure of office from 1449-68, also built the Lady Chapel. On its south side stands the porch, with a remarkable central niche, which formerly contained a representation of Becket's martyrdom. The figures of the Archbishop's assassins now no longer remain; but their place has been filled up with figures of various worthies who have lived under the shadow of the cathedral. Dean Alford suggested, about 1863, that the many vacant niches should be peopled in this manner, and since then the work has proceeded steadily. The western towers are built each of six stages: each of the two upper tiers contains two two-light windows, while below there is a large four-light window uniform with the windows of the aisles. The base tier is ornamented with rich panelling. The parapet is battlemented and the angles are finished with fine double pinnacles. At the west end there is a large window of seven lights, with three transoms. The gable contains a window of very curious shape, filled with intricate tracery. The space above the aisle windows is ornamented with quatrefoiled squares, and the clerestory is pierced by windows of three lights. In the main transept there is a fine perpendicular window of eight lights; the choir, or south-east transept, has a Norman front, with arcades, and a large round window; also an arcaded west turret surmounted by a short spire. Beyond this, the line is again broken by the projection of St. Anselm's so-called Tower; this chapel hardly merits such a title, unless we adopt the theory that it, and the corresponding building on the north side, were at one time a good deal more lofty, but lost their upper portions at the time of the great fire. The end of the cathedral has a rather untidy appearance, owing to the fact that the exterior of the corona was never completed. On the northern side the building is so closely interwoven with the cloister and monastic buildings that it can only be considered in conjunction with them. The length of the cathedral is 514 feet, the height of the central tower 235 feet, and that of the western towers 130 feet. The chief interest of ancient buildings to the ordinary observer, as apart from the architectural specialist, is the fact that they are after all the most authentic documents in our possession from which we can gain any insight into the lives and modes of thought of our ancestors. To tell us how ordinary men lived and busied themselves is beneath the dignity of history. As Carlyle says: "The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the _Life of Man_ in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; ... Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the business 'called History' in these so enlightened and illuminated times, still continues to be. Can you gather from it, read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to that great question: How men lived and had their being; were it but economically, as, what wages they got, and what they bought with these? Unhappily they cannot.... History, as it stands all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade more instructive than the wooden volumes of a backgammon-board." Most of us have felt, at one time or another, the truth of these words, though it is only fair to add that the fault lies not so much at the door of the modern historian as of our ancestors themselves, who were too busy with fighting and revelling to leave any but the most meagre account of their own lives behind them; so that "Redbook Lists and Parliamentary Registers" are all that the veracious chronicler, who will not let his imagination run riot, can find to put before us. But happily, in the wildest days of the Middle Ages, there were found some peace-loving souls who preferred to drone away their lives in quiet meditation behind the walls of the great monasteries, undisturbed by the clash of swords. Some outlet had to be found for their innate energies and their intense religious enthusiasm; missionary zeal had not yet been invented, and the writing of books would have seemed to them a waste of good parchment, for in their eyes the Scriptures and the Aristotelian writings supplied all the food that the most voracious intellect could crave for. So they applied all their genius--and it is probable that the flower of the European race, as far as intelligence and culture are concerned, was gathered in those days into the Church--and all the ecstatic fervour of their religious devotion, the strength of which men of these latter days can hardly realize, to the construction of beautiful buildings for the worship of God. They have written a history in stone, from which a thoughtful student can supply much that is left out by the dry-as-dust annalists, for it is not only the history, but the actual result and expression, of the lives of the most gifted men of the Middle Ages. If we would read this history aright it is necessary that we should look at it as far as possible, as it was originally published. If the old binding has been torn off, and the volume hedged in by a crowd of modern literature, we must try to put these aside and consider the book as it was first issued; in other words, to drop metaphor altogether, in considering a building like Canterbury Cathedral, we must forget the busy little country town, with its crowded streets and noisy railway stations, though, from one point of view, the contrast that they present is agreeable and valuable, and try to conceive the church as it once stood, the centre of a harmonious group of monastic buildings. The founder of the monastic system in the West was the famous Benedict of Nursia, who had adapted the strict code of St. Basil, mitigating its severity, and making it more in accordance with the climate, manners, and general circumstances of Western peoples. His code was described by Gregory the Great as "excellent in its discretion, lucid in its expression"--_discretione præcipuam sermone luculentam_. He founded the monasteries of Montecassino and Subiaco in the beginning of the sixth century. In the ninth and tenth centuries--the worst period of the Dark Ages--corruption and laxity pervaded society in general, and the Benedictine monasteries especially. At the end of this deplorable epoch many efforts were made in the direction of reform. Gregory the Great himself was a member of the Benedictine brotherhood; so also was Augustine, who founded the great monastery of Christ Church. The venerable Bede relates that "when Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, assumed the episcopal throne in that royal city, he recovered therein, by the king's assistance, a church which, as he was told, had been constructed by the original labour of Roman believers. This church he consecrated in the name of the Saviour, our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and there he established an habitation for himself and all his successors." This was the Basilica-Church, mentioned in an earlier part of this work, an imitation of the original Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. Augustine's monastery was handsomely endowed. A large stretch of country was given to the monks, and they were the first who brought the soil into cultivation, and built churches and preached in them. "The monks," says Bede, "were the principal of those who came to the work of preaching." In the city itself there were thirty-two "mansuræ" or mansions, held by the clergy, rendering 35_s._ a year, and a mill worth 5_s._ per annum. Augustine's monastery lived and prospered--though, as we shall see, it did not escape the general corruption of the eighth and ninth centuries--until the time of the Norman invasion. In 1067 a fire destroyed the Saxon cathedral and the greater part of the monastic buildings. But the year 1070 marks an epoch in the history of the monastery, for it was then that William the Conqueror having deposed Stigand, the Saxon Primate, invited Lanfranc, the Abbot of Caen, to accept the vacant see. He "being overcome by the will of God as much as by the apostolic authority, passed over into England, and, not forgetful of the object for which he had come, directed all his endeavours to the correction of the manners of his people, and settling the state of the Church. And first he laboured to renew the church of Canterbury ... and built also necessary offices for the use of the monks; and (which is very remarkable) he caused to be brought over the sea in swift sailing vessels squared stones from Caen in order to build with. He also built a house for his own dwelling near the church, and surrounded all these buildings with a vast and lofty wall." Also "he duly arranged all that was necessary for the table and clothing of the monks," and "many lands which had been taken away he brought back into the property of the Church and restored to it twenty-five manors." He also added one hundred to the original number of the monks, and drew up a new system of discipline to correct the laxity which was rife when he entered on the primacy. He tells Anselm in a letter that "the land in which he is, is daily shaken with so many and so great tribulations, is stained with so many adulteries and other impurities, that no order of men consults for the benefit of his soul, or even desires to hear the salutary doctrine of God for his increase in holiness." Perhaps the most interesting feature of his reconstruction of the "regula," or rule for the monks' discipline, was his enactment with regard to the library and the studies of the brethren. In the first week in Lent, the monks had to bring back and place in the Chapter House the books which had been provided for their instruction during the previous year. Those who had not duly performed the yearly portion of reading prostrated themselves, confessing their fault and asking pardon. A fresh distribution was then made, and the brethren retired, each furnished with a year's literary task. Apparently no examination was held, no test applied to discover whether the last year's instruction had been digested and assimilated. It was assumed that anything like a perfunctory performance of the allotted task was out of the question. Another important alteration introduced by Lanfranc was his inauguration of the system under which the monastery was in immediate charge, no longer of the archbishop, but of a prior. Henceforward the primate stood forth as the head of the Church, rather than as merely the chief of her most ancient foundation. We have dwelt at some length on the subject of the monastery at Canterbury, because, as we have said, it is impossible to learn the lesson of the cathedral truly, unless we regard the fabric in its original setting, surrounded by monastic buildings; and it is impossible to interest ourselves in the monastic buildings without knowing something of the institution which they housed. [Illustration: DETAIL OF ST. ANSELM'S TOWER.] The buildings which contained a great #monastery# like that of Canterbury were necessarily very extensive. Chief among them was the chapter house, which generally adjoined the principal cloister, bounded by the nave of the church and one of the transepts. Then there were the buildings necessary for the actual housing and daily living of the monks--the dormitory, refectory, kitchen, buttery, and other indispensable offices. Another highly important building, usually standing eastward of the church, was the infirmary or hospital for sick brethren, with its chapel duly attached. Further, the rules of Benedictine monasteries always enjoined the strict observance of the duty of hospitality, and some part of the buildings was invariably set aside for the due entertainment of strangers of various ranks. Visitors of distinction were entertained in special rooms which generally were attached to the house of the prior or abbot: guests of a lower order were lodged hard by the hall of the cellarer; while poor pilgrims and chance wanderers who craved a night's shelter were bestowed, as a rule, near the main gate of the monastery. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that a well-endowed monastery was always the steward of a great estate, so that many storehouses and farm-buildings--barns, granaries, bakehouse, etc.--were a necessary part of the institution. Extensive stabling was also required to shelter the horses of illustrious visitors and their suites. Moreover, the clergy themselves were often greatly addicted to the chase, and we know that the pious St. Thomas found time to cultivate a taste for horseflesh, which was remarkable even in those days when all men who wanted to move at all were bound to ride. The knights who murdered him thought it worth while to pillage his stable after accomplishing their errand. [Illustration: THE CHRISTCHURCH GATE (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO).] The centre round which all these manifold buildings and offices were ranged was, of course, the cathedral. Wherever available space and the nature of the ground permitted it, the cloister and chief buildings were placed under the shelter of the church on its southern side, as may be seen, for instance, at Westminster, where the cloisters, chapter house, deanery, refectory (now the College Hall), etc., are all gathered on the south side of the Abbey. At Canterbury, however, the builders were not able to follow the usual practice, owing to the fact that they were hemmed in closely by the houses of the city on the south side, so that we find that the space between the north side of the cathedral and the city wall, all of which belonged to the monks, was the site of the monastic buildings. The whole group formed by the cathedral and the subsidiary buildings was girt by a massive wall, which was restored and made more effective as a defence by Lanfranc. It is probable that some of the remains of this wall, which still survive, may be considered as dating from his time. The chief gate, both in ancient and modern days, is Prior Goldstone's Gate, usually known as #Christ Church Gate#, an exceedingly good example of the later Perpendicular style. A contemporary inscription tells us that it was built in 1517. It stands at the end of Mercery Lane, a lofty building with towers at its corners, and two storeys above the archway. In front there is a central niche, in which an image of our Saviour originally stood, while below a row of shields, much battered and weather-beaten, display armorial bearings, doubtless those of pious contributors to the cost of the building. An early work of Turner's has preserved the corner pinnacles which once decorated the top of the gate; these were removed some thirty years ago. [Illustration: THE SOUTH-WEST PORCH OF THE CATHEDRAL.] [Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE MONKS' INFIRMARY.] Entering the precincts through this gateway we find ourselves in what was the _outer_ cemetery, in which members of the laity were allowed to be buried. The _inner_ cemetery, reserved as a resting-place for the brethren themselves, was formerly divided from the outer by a wall which extended from St. Anselm's chapel. A Norman door, which was at one time part of this wall, has now been put into a wall at the east end of the monks' burying ground. This space is now called "The Oaks." A bell tower, _campanile_, doubtless used for tolling the passing bell, once stood on a mound in the cemetery, close to the dividing wall. The houses on the south side of this space are of no great antiquity or interest, and the site on which they stand did not become part of the monastery grounds before a comparatively late period. But if we skirt the east end of the cathedral we come to the space formerly known as the "Homors," a word supposed to be a corruption of _Ormeaux_, a French word, meaning elms.[1] Here stood the building in which guests of rank and distinction were entertained; and the great hall, with its kitchen and offices, is still preserved in a house in the north-east corner of the inclosure, now the residence of one of the prebendaries. The original building was one of great importance in a monastery like Canterbury, which was so often visited, as has already been shown, by royal pilgrims. It is said to have been rebuilt from top to bottom by Prior Chillenden, and the nature of the architecture, as far as it can be traced, is not in any way at variance with this statement. The hall, as it originally stood, was pierced with oriel windows rising to the roof, and at its western end a walled-off portion was divided into two storeys, the lower one containing the kitchens, while the upper one was either a distinct room separated from the hall, or it may have been a gallery opening upon it. [1] Though it is also derived from one Dr. Omerus, who lived on the spot in the thirteenth century. To the west of this house we find the #ruins of the Infirmary#, which contained a long hall with aisles, and a chapel at the east end. The hall was used as the hospital, and the aisles were sometimes divided into separate compartments; the chapel was really part of the hall, with only a screen intervening, so that the sick brethren could take part in the services. This infirmary survived until the Reformation period, but not without undergoing alterations. Before the fifteenth century the south aisle was devoted to the use of the sub-prior, and the chancel at the east end of the chapel was partially restored about the middle of the fourteenth century. A large east window was put in with three-light windows on each side. In the north wall there is a curious opening, through which, perhaps, sufferers from infectious diseases were allowed to assist at the services. On the southern side, the whole row of the pillars and arches of the chapel, and some traces of a clerestory, still remain. On the wall are some traces of paintings, which are too faded to be deciphered. Such of the pillars and arches of the hall as still survive are strongly coloured by the great fire of 1174, in which Prior Conrad's choir was destroyed. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE MONKS' INFIRMARY.] [Illustration: THE BAPTISTERY TOWER.] Westward of the infirmary, and connected with St. Andrew's tower, stands a strikingly beautiful building, which was once #the Vestiarium, or Treasury#: it consists of two storeys, of which the lower is open on the east and west, while the upper contained the treasury chamber, a finely proportioned room, decorated with an arcade of intersecting arches. An archway leads us from the infirmary into what is called the Dark Entry, whence a passage leads to the Prior's Gate and onward into the Prior's Court, more commonly known as the Green Court: this passage was the eastern boundary of the infirmary cloister. Over it Prior de Estria raised the _scaccarium_, or checker-building, the counting-house of the monastery. Turning back towards the infirmary entrance we come to #the Lavatory Tower#, which stands out from the west end of the substructure of the Prior's Chapel. The chapel itself was pulled down at the close of the seventeenth century, and a brick-built library was erected on its site. The lavatory tower is now more commonly called the baptistery, but this name gives a false impression, and only came into use because the building now contains a font, given to the cathedral by Bishop Warner. The lower part of the tower is late Norman in style, and was built in the latter half of the twelfth century, when the monastery was supplied with a system of works by which water was drawn from some distant springs, which still supply the cathedral and precincts. The water was distributed from this tower to the various buildings. The original designs of the engineer are preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt by Prior Chillenden. From the lavatory tower a covered passage leads into the great cloister, which can also be approached from a door in the north-west transept. The cloister, though it stands upon the space covered by that built by Lanfranc, is largely the work of the indefatigable Prior Chillenden. It shows traces of many architectural periods. The east walk contains a door, leading into the transept, embellished with a triple arcade of early English; under the central arch of the arcade is the doorway itself, a later addition in Perpendicular. There is also a Norman doorway which once communicated with the monks' dormitory: after the Reformation it was walled up, but in 1813 the plaster which concealed it was taken away, and since then it has been carefully restored. The rest of the work in this part of the cloister is chiefly Perpendicular. The north walk is adorned with an Early English arcade, against which the shafts which support Chillenden's vaulting work are placed with rather unsatisfactory effect. Towards the western end of this walk is the door of the refectory. [Illustration: TURRET OF SOUTH-WEST TRANSEPT.] The cellarer's quarters were outside the west walk, and they were connected with the cloister by a doorway at the north-west corner: opposite this entrance was a door leading to the archbishop's palace, and through this Becket made his way towards the cathedral when his murderers were in pursuit of him. The great dormitory of the monks was built along the east walk of the cloister, extending some way beyond it. It was pulled down in 1547, but the substructure was left standing, and some private houses were erected upon it. These were removed in the middle of the last century, and a good deal of the substructure remained until 1867, when the vaulting which survived was pulled down to make way for the new library, which was erected on the dormitory site. Some of the pillars on which the vault of the substructure rested are preserved in a garden in the precincts; and a fragment of the upper part of the dormitory building, which escaped the demolition in 1547, may be seen in the gable of the new library. The substructure was a fine building, 148 feet by 78 feet; the vaulting was, as described by Professor Willis, "of the earliest kind; constructed of light tufa, having no transverse ribs, and retaining the impressions of the rough, boarded centring upon which they had been formed." A second minor dormitory ran eastward from the larger one, while outside this was the third dormitory, fronting the Green Court. Some portion of the vaults of this building is still preserved in the garden before the lavatory tower. #The Chapter House# lies eastward of the wall of the cloister, on the site of the original Norman building, which was rather less extensive. The present structure is oblong in shape, measuring 90 feet by 35 feet. The roof consists of a "barrel vault" and was built by Prior Chillenden, along with the whole of the upper storey at the end of the fourteenth century. The windows, high and four-lighted, are also his work; those at the east and west ends exceed in size all those of the cathedral, having seven lights. The lower storey was built by Prior de Estria about a century before the work was completed by Chillenden. De Estria also erected the choir-screen in the cathedral, which will be described in its proper place. The walls of the chapter house are embellished with an arcade of trefoiled arches, surmounted by a cornice. At the east end stands a throne with a splendid canopy. This building was at one time, after the Reformation, used as a sermon house, but the inconvenience caused by moving the congregation from the choir, where service was held, across to the chapter house to hear the discourse, was so great that the practice was not long continued. It has been restored, and its opening by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, May 29th, 1897, is announced just as this edition goes to press. [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS.] #The Library# covers a portion of the site of the monks' dormitory. Stored within it is a fine collection of books, some of which are exceedingly rare. The most valuable specimens--among which are some highly interesting bibles and prayer-books--are jealously guarded in a separate apartment called the study. The most interesting document in the collection of charters and other papers connected with the foundation is the charter of Edred, probably written by Dunstan _propriis digitorum articulis_; this room also contains an ancient picture of Queen Edgiva painted on wood, with an inscription below enlarging on the beauties of her character and her munificence towards the monastery. In the garden before the lavatory tower, to the west of the prior's gateway, two columns are preserved which once were part of the ancient church at Reculver--formerly Regulbium, whither Ethelbert retired after making over his palace in Canterbury to Augustine. These columns were brought to Canterbury after the destruction, nearly a hundred years ago, of the church to which they belonged. After lying neglected for some time they were placed in their present position by Mr. Sheppard, who bestowed so much care on all the "antiquities" connected with the cathedral. These columns are believed by experts to be undoubted relics of Roman work: they are of circular form with Ionic capitals. A curious ropework decoration on the bases is said to be characteristically Roman, occurs on a monument outside the Porta Maggiore at Rome. #The Deanery# is a very much revised version of what once was the "New Lodging," a building set up for the entertainment of strangers by Prior Goldstone at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Nicholas Wotton, the first Dean, chose this mansion for his abode, but since his day the building has been very materially altered. [Illustration: NORMAN STAIRCASE IN THE CLOSE (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).] [Illustration: DETAILS OF THE NORMAN STAIRCASE IN THE CLOSE.] The main gate of the #Green Court# is noticeable as a choice specimen of Norman work; on its northern side formerly stood the Aula Nova which was built in the twelfth century; the modern buildings which house the King's School have supplanted the hall itself, but the splendid staircase, a perfect example of Norman style and quite unrivalled in England, is luckily preserved, and ranks among the chief glories of Canterbury. The site of the archbishop's palace is commemorated by the name of the street--Palace Street--in which a ruined archway, all that remains of the building, may still be seen. This mansion, in which so many royal and imperial guests had been entertained with "solemne dauncing" and other good cheer, was pillaged and destroyed by the Puritans; since then the archbishops have had no official house in their cathedral city. [Illustration: DETAILS OF ORNAMENT.] CHAPTER III. INTERIOR. Dean Stanley tells us that in the days of our Saxon forefathers and for some time after, "all disputes throughout the whole kingdom that could not be legally referred to the king's court or to the hundreds of counties" were heard and judged on in the south porch of Canterbury Cathedral. This was always the principal entrance, and was known in early days as the "Suthdure" by which name it is often mentioned in "the law books of the ancient kings." Through this door we enter the nave of the cathedral; this part of the building was erected towards the end of the fourteenth century; Lanfranc's nave seems to have fallen into an unsafe and ruinous state, so much so that in December, 1378, Sudbury, who was then archbishop, "issued a mandate addressed to all ecclesiastical persons in his diocese enjoining them to solicit subscriptions for rebuilding the nave of the church, '_propter ipsius notoriam et evidentem ruinam_' and granting forty days' indulgence to all contributors." Archbishop Courtenay gave a thousand marks and more for the building fund, and Archbishop Arundell gave a similar contribution, as well as the five bells which were known as the "Arundell ryng." We are told also that "King Henry the 4th helped to build up a good part of the Body of the Chirch." The immediate direction of the work was in the hands of Prior Chillenden, already frequently mentioned; his epitaph, quoted by Professor Willis, states that "Here lieth Thomas Chyllindene formerly Prior of this Church, _Decretorum Doctor egregius_, who caused the nave of this Church and divers other buildings to be made anew. Who after nobly ruling as prior of this Church for twenty years twenty five weeks and five days, at length on the day of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary closed his last day. In the year of the Lord 1411." It is not certain that Chillenden actually designed the buildings which were erected under his care, with which his name is connected. For we know that work which was conceived and executed by humble monks was ascribed as a matter of course to the head of the monastery, under whose auspices and sanction it was carried out. Matthew Paris records that a new oaken roof, well covered with lead, was built for the aisles and tower of St. Alban's by Michael of Thydenhanger, monk and _camerarius_; but he adds that "these works must be ascribed to the abbot, out of respect for his office, for he who sanctions the performance of a thing by his authority, is really the person who does the thing." Prior Chillenden became prior in 1390, and seems at any rate to have devoted a considerable amount of zeal to the work of renovating the ruined portions of the church. [Illustration: THE MURDER OF ST. THOMAS À BECKET. (Restoration, by T. Carter, of a painting on board hung on a column near the tomb of Henry IV.).] [Illustration: THE SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS À BECKET. (Specially reproduced from a drawing among the Cottonian MSS. Brit. Mus.)] The new #Nave# replaced the original building of Lanfranc. Professor Willis says: "The whole of Lanfranc's piers, and all that rested on them, appear to have been utterly demolished, nothing remaining but the plinth of the side-aisle walls.... The style [of Chillenden's new work] is a light Perpendicular, and the arrangement of the parts has a considerable resemblance to that of the nave of Winchester, although the latter is of a much bolder character. Winchester nave was going on at the same time with Canterbury nave, and a similar uncertainty exists about the exact commencement. In both, a Norman nave was to be transformed; but at Winchester the original piers were either clothed with new ashlaring, or the old ashlaring was wrought into new forms and mouldings where possible; while in Canterbury the piers were altogether rebuilt. Hence the piers of Winchester are much more massive. The side-aisles of Canterbury are higher in proportion, the tracery of the side windows different, but those of the clerestory are almost identical in pattern, although they differ in the management of the mouldings. Both have 'lierne' vaults [_i.e._, vaults in which short transverse ribs or 'liernes' are mixed with the ribs that branch from the vaulting capitals], and in both the triforium is obtained by prolonging the clerestory windows downward, and making panels of the lower lights, which panels have a plain opening cut through them, by which the triforium space communicates with the passage over the roof of the side-aisles." Chillenden, then, setting to work with the thoroughness that marks his handiwork throughout, rebuilt the nave from top to bottom, leaving nothing of Lanfranc's original structure save the "plinth of the side-aisle walls," which still remains. The resemblance between the naves of Canterbury and Winchester, pointed out by Professor Willis, will at once strike a close observer, though the greater boldness of character shown in the Winchester architecture is by no means the only point of difference. The most obvious feature in the Canterbury nave--a point which renders its arrangement unique among the cathedrals both of England and the Continent--is the curious manner in which the choir is raised aloft above the level of the floor; this is owing to the fact that it stands immediately above the crypt; the flight of steps which is therefore necessarily placed between the choir and the nave adds considerably to the general effect of our first view of the interior. On the other hand, the raising of the choir is probably to some extent responsible for the great height of the nave in comparison with its length, a point which spoils its effectiveness when we view it from end to end. Stanley, in describing the entrance of the pilgrims into the cathedral, points out how different a scene must have met their eyes. "The external aspect of the cathedral itself," he says, "with the exception of the numerous statues which then filled its now vacant niches, must have been much what it is now. Not so its interior. Bright colours on the roof, on the windows, on the monuments; hangings suspended from the rods which may still be seen running from pillar to pillar; chapels, and altars, and chantries intercepting the view, where now all is clear, must have rendered it so different, that at first we should hardly recognize it to be the same building." The pilgrims on entering were met by a monk, who sprinkled their heads with holy water from a "sprengel," and, owing to the crowd of devout visitors, they generally had to wait some time before they could proceed towards a view of the shrine. Chaucer relates that the "pardoner, and the miller, and other lewd sots," whiled away the time with staring at the painted windows which then adorned the nave, and wondering what they were supposed to represent: "'He beareth a ball-staff,' quoth the one, 'and also a rake's end;' 'Thou failest,' quoth the miller, 'thou hast not well thy mind; It is a spear, if thou canst see, with a prick set before, To push adown his enemy, and through the shoulder bore.'" [Illustration: CAPITALS OF COLUMNS IN THE EASTERN APSE.] None of these windows now remain entire, though the west window has been put together out of fragments of the ancient glass. The latter-day pilgrims will do well to look as little as possible at the hideous glass which the Philistinism of modern piety has inserted, during the last half-century, in the windows of the clerestory and the nave. Its obtrusive unpleasantness make one wish that "Blue Dick" and his Puritan troopers might once more be let loose, under judicious direction, for half an hour on the cathedral. When Erasmus visited Canterbury, the nave contained nothing but some books chained to the pillars, among them the "Gospel of Nicodemus"--printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509--and the "tomb of some person unknown." The last words must refer either to the chapel in the south wall, which was built by Lady Joan Brenchley in 1447, and removed in 1787, or to the monument of Archbishop William Wittlesey, who died in 1374, and was interred in the south side of the nave in a marble tomb with a brass, now destroyed. At present the south aisle contains a monument, in alabaster, to Dr. Broughton, sometime Bishop of Sydney, who was educated in the King's School, under the shadow of the cathedral. The figure is recumbent, and the base of the monument, which is by Lough, is decorated with the arms of the six Australian sees. In the north aisle we find monuments to Orlando Gibbons, Charles I.'s organist; Adrian Saravia, prebendary of Canterbury, and the friend of Hooker, the author of the "Ecclesiastical Polity;" Sir John Boys, who founded a hospital for the poor outside the north gate of the town, and died in 1614; Dean Lyall, who died in 1857; and Archbishop Sumner, who died in 1862. These last two monuments are by Phillips and H. Weekes, R.A., respectively. #The Central Tower.#--In the nave the whole of Lanfranc's work was destroyed, but in the central tower, which we will next examine, the original supporting piers were left standing, though they were covered over by Prior Chillenden with work more in keeping with the style in which he had renewed the nave. "Of the tower piers," says Willis, "the western are probably mere casings of the original, and the eastern certainly appendages to the original.... Of course I have no evidence to show how much of Lanfranc's piers was allowed to remain in the heart of the work. The interior faces of the tower walls appear to have been brought forward by a lining so as to increase their thickness and the strength of the piers, with a view to the erection of a lofty tower, which however was not carried above the roof until another century had nearly elapsed." It was Prior Goldstone the second who, about 1500, carried upward the central tower, which Chillenden seems to have left level with the roof of the cathedral. "With the countenance and help of Cardinal John Morton and Prior William Sellyng he magnificently completed that lofty tower commonly called Angyll Stepyll in the middle of the church. The vaulting of the tower is his work--_testudine pulcherrimâ concameratam consummavit_--and he also added the buttressing arches--with great care and industry he annexed to the columns which support the same tower two arches or vaults of stonework, curiously carved, and four smaller ones, to assist in sustaining the said tower." The addition of these buttressing arches, not altogether happy in its artistic effect, was probably rendered necessary by some signs of weakness shown by the piers of the tower, for the north-west pier, which was not so substantially reinforced as the others, now shows a considerable bend in an eastward direction. The "two arches or vaults of stonework" were inserted under the western and southern tower arches. "The eastern arch having stronger piers did not require this precaution, and the northern, which opened upon the 'Martyrium,' seems to have been left free, out of reverence to the altar of the martyrdom, and accordingly to have suffered the dislocation just mentioned." The four smaller arches connected the two western tower-piers with the nearest nave-pier and the wall of the transept. The buttressing arches are strongly built, and are adorned with curious bands of reticulated work. The central western arch occupies the place of the rood-loft, and it is probable that until the Reformation the great rood was placed over it. The rebus of Prior Thomas Goldstone--a shield with three gold stones--is carved upon these arches. #The Western Screen#, which separates the nave from the choir, is now more commonly known as the organ-screen: it is a highly elaborate and beautiful piece of work, and the carvings which decorate it are well worthy of examination. In the lower niches there are six crowned figures: one holding a church is believed to be Ethelbert, while it has been assumed that the figure on the extreme right represents Richard II.: probably Henry IV., who, as has been already mentioned, "helped to build a good part of the body of the Church" has a place of honour here, but no certainty on this matter is possible. The thirteen mitred niches which encircle the arch once contained figures of Christ and the twelve Apostles, but these were destroyed by the Puritans. The exact date of this outward screen is uncertain, but it was set up at some time during the fifteenth century. "A little examination," says Willis, "of its central archway will detect the junction of this new work with the stone enclosure of the choir." In fact, this archway is considerably higher than that of De Estria which still remains behind it. The apex of this arch reaches but a little above the capitals of the new arch, and the flat space, or tympanum, thus left between the two, is filled with Perpendicular tracery. #The Choir.#--"In the year of grace one thousand one hundred and seventy-four, by the just but occult judgment of God, the Church of Christ at Canterbury was consumed by fire, in the forty-fourth year from its dedication, that glorious choir, to wit, which had been so magnificently completed by the care and industry of Prior Conrad" ("Gervase," translated by Willis). The work of rebuilding was immediately begun by William, the architect of Sens. At the beginning of the fifth year of his work, he was, by a fall from the height of the capitals of the upper vault, "rendered helpless alike to himself and for the work, but no other person than himself was in the least injured. Against the master only was the vengeance of God or spite of the devil directed." He was succeeded in his charge by one "William by name, English by nation, small in body, but in workmanship of many kinds acute and honest." Now in the sixth year from the fire, we read that the monks were "seized with a violent longing to prepare the choir, so that they might enter it at the coming Easter. And the master, perceiving their desires, set himself manfully to work, to satisfy the wishes of the convent. He constructed, with all diligence, the wall which encloses the choir and presbytery. He carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege. The choir thus hardly completed even with the greatest labour and diligence, the monks were resolved to enter on Easter Eve with the 'new fire,'" that is, the paschal candle which was lit on Easter Eve and burnt until Ascension Day. The kindling of this light was carried out in a very ceremonious manner as enjoined in Lanfranc's statutes. A fire was made in the cloister and duly consecrated, and the monks, having lit a taper at this fire carried it on the end of a staff in solemn procession, singing psalms and hymns and burning incense, and lit the paschal candle in the choir with it. Thus was the new choir completed, in the sixth year after the burning of Conrad's. This part of the cathedral will be peculiarly interesting to the architectural student, owing to the curious mixture of styles, which enables him to compare the Norman and Early English characteristics side by side. A striking feature in the aspect of the building, as seen from the choir, is the remarkable inward bend with which the walls turn towards one another at the end of the cathedral. The choir itself is peculiar in the matter of length (180 feet--the longest in any English church), and the lowness of the vaulting. The pillars, with their pier-arches and the clerestory wall above are said by Willis to be without doubt the work of William of Sens: but the whole question as to where the French William left off and his English namesake began is extremely uncertain, as there can be no doubt that William of Sens had fully planned out the work which he was destined never to complete, and it is more than probable that his successor worked largely upon his plans. We are on safer ground when we assert that the new choir was altogether different from the building which it replaced. The style was much more ornate and considerably lighter: the characteristics of the work of the Williams are rich mouldings, varied and elaborately carved capitals on the pillars, and the introduction of gracefully slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that "the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured. The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones. Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir." "Sculptured with an axe," reads rather curiously, but Professor Willis points out that "the axe is not quite so rude a weapon in the hands of a mason as it might appear at first sight. The French masons use it to the present day with great dexterity in carving." The mouldings used by Ernulf were extremely simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow class of notched ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate employment of round and pointed arches. This feature, as Willis remarks, "may have arisen either from the indifference of the artist as to the mixture of forms or else from deliberate contrivance, for as he was compelled, from the nature of his work, to retain round-headed arcades, windows, and arches, in the side-aisles, and yet was accustomed to and desirous of employing pointed arches in his new building, he might discreetly mix some round-headed arches with them, in order to make the contrast less offensive by causing the mixture of forms to pervade the whole composition, as if an intentional principle." [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).] Whatever the motive, this daring mixture renders the study of the architectural features of our cathedral peculiarly interesting. In the triforium we find a semicircular outer arch circumscribing two inner pointed ones. The clerestory arch is pointed, while some of the transverse ribs of the great vault are pointed and some round. The inward bend of the walls at the end of the choir was necessitated by the fact that the towers of St. Anselm and St. Andrew had survived the great fire of 1174. Naturally the pious builders did not wish to pull down these relics of the former church, so that a certain amount of contraction had to be effected in order that these towers should form part of the new plan. This arrangement also fitted in with the determination to build a chapel of the martyred St. Thomas at the end of the church, on the site of the former Trinity Chapel. For the Trinity Chapel had been much narrower than the new choir, but this contraction enabled the rebuilders to preserve its dimensions. #The Altar#, when the choir was at first completed by William, stood entirely alone, and without a reredos; behind it the archbishop's chair was originally placed, but this was afterwards transferred to the corona. The remarkable height at which the altar was set up is due to the fact that it is placed over the new crypt, which is a good deal higher than the older, or western crypt. Before the Reformation the high altar was richly embellished with all kinds of precious and sacred ornaments and vessels: while beneath it, in a vault, were stored a priceless collection of gold and silver vessels: such of these as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII. were destroyed by the bigotry of the Puritan zealots: the latter made havoc of the reredos which had been erected behind the high altar, probably during the fourteenth century, and also a "most idolatrous costly glory cloth," the gift of Archbishop Laud. The reredos was replaced by a Corinthian screen, which was of elaborate design, but must have been strangely out of keeping with its surroundings; it was removed about 1870, to make way for the present reredos which was designed in the style of the screen work in the Lady Chapel in the crypt, but which cannot be commended as an object of beauty. The altar coverings which are now in use were presented to the cathedral by Queen Mary, the wife of William III., when she visited Canterbury. A chalice, given by the Earl of Arundel in 1636, is among the communion-plate. In his account of the building of the new choir, Gervase tells us that "the Master carefully prepared a resting-place for St. Dunstan and St. Elfege--the co-exiles of the monks." When the choir was ready, "Prior Alan, taking with him nine of the brethren of the Church in whom he could trust, went by night to the tombs of the saints, so that he might not be incommoded by a crowd, and having locked the doors of the church, he commanded the stone-work that inclosed them to be taken down. The monks and the servants of the Church, in obedience to the Prior's commands, took the structure to pieces, opened the stone coffins of the saints, and bore their relics to the _vestiarium_. Then, having removed the cloths in which they had been wrapped, and which were half-consumed from age and rottenness, they covered them with other and more handsome palls, and bound them with linen bands. They bore the saints, thus prepared, to their altars, and deposited them in wooden chests, covered within and without with lead: which chests, thus lead-covered, and strongly bound with iron, were inclosed in stone-work that was consolidated with melted lead." This translation was thus carried out by Prior Alan on the night before the formal re-entry into the choir: the rest of the monks, who had not assisted at the ceremony, were highly incensed by the prior's action, for they had intended that the translation of the fathers should have been performed with great and devout solemnity. They even went so far as to cite the prior and the trusty monks who had assisted him before the Archbishop, and it was only by the intervention of the latter, and other men of authority, and "after due apology and repentance," that harmony was restored in the convent. [Illustration: THE CHOIR BEFORE RESTORATION.] The bones of St. Dunstan were long a cause of contention between the churches of Canterbury and Glastonbury. The monks of Glastonbury considered that they had a prior claim on the relics of the sainted archbishop, and stoutly contended that his body had been conveyed to their own sanctuary after the sack of Canterbury by the Danes; and they used to exhibit a coffin as containing Dunstan's remains. But early in the fourteenth century they went so far as to set up a gorgeous shrine in which they placed, with much pomp and circumstance, the supposed relics. Archbishop Warham, who then ruled at Canterbury, accordingly replied by causing the shrine in our cathedral to be opened, and was able to declare triumphantly that he had found therein the remains of a human body, in the costume of an archbishop, with a plate of lead on his breast, inscribed with the words "SANCTUS DUNSTANUS." In the course of the subsequent correspondence which passed between the two monasteries, the Abbot of Glastonbury, after trying to argue that perhaps part only of the saint's relics had been conveyed to his church, at last frankly confesses "the people had believed in the genuineness of their saint for so long, that he is afraid to tell them the truth." This shrine of St. Dunstan stood on the south of the high altar, and was erected after the manner of a tomb: though the shrine itself perished at the time of the Reformation, there still remains, on the south wall of the choir, between the monuments of Archbishops Stratford and Sudbury, some very fine open diaper-work, in what is known as the Decorated style, which once formed part of the ornamentation of St. Dunstan's altar. The shrine of St. Elfege, or Alphege, who was archbishop at the time of the sacking of Canterbury by the Danes, and was murdered by them, has been altogether destroyed. #The Choir Screen#, a solid structure of stone we know to be the work of Prior de Estria, _i.e._, of Eastry in Kent, who was elected in 1285, and died in 1331. According to the Obituary record, he "fairly decorated the choir of the church with most beautiful stone-work cunningly carved." In his Register there is an entry which evidently refers to the same work: "Anno 1304-5. Reparation of the whole choir with three new doors and a new screen (_pulpito_)." The three doors referred to are the north and south entrances and the western one. It has already been pointed out that the present western screen is a later addition. Professor Willis, whose great work on the Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral should be studied by all who wish to examine the details of the building more closely than is allowed by the scope of this work, describes De Estria's screen as follows: "The lateral portions of this wall of enclosure are in excellent order. In the western part of the choir, namely, between the eastern transepts and the organ-screen, this wall is built so that its inner face nearly ranges with the inner faces of the pillars; but eastward of the transepts it is built between the pillars. The north doorway remains perfect. The present south doorway, which is in a much later style, is manifestly a subsequent insertion. This enclosure consists of a solid wall, seven feet nine inches in height from the pavement of the side-aisles. It has a stone-bench towards the side-aisles, and above that a base, of the age of William of Sens; so that it is clear that the work of De Estria belongs to the upper part only of the enclosure, which consists of delicate and elaborately worked tracery, surmounted by an embattled crest.... The entire work is particularly valuable on account of its well-established date, combined with its great beauty and singularity." A portion of the choir-pavement, lying between the two transepts, is interesting as being undoubtedly part of the original flooring of Conrad's choir, and probably the only fragment of it that was left undisturbed after the great fire which destroyed "that glorious choir which had been so magnificently completed by the care and industry of Prior Conrad." This part of the pavement consists of large slabs of a peculiar "stone, or veined marble of a delicate brown colour. When parts of this are taken up for repair or alteration, it is usual to find lead which has run between the joints of the slabs and spread on each side below, and which is with great reason supposed to be the effect of the fire of 1174, which melted the lead of the roof, and caused it to run down between the paving stones in this manner." It is said that when the choir was filled with pews in 1706, and it was necessary to remove part of the pavement, the men engaged on the work picked up enough of this lead to make two large gluepots. [Illustration: A MISERERE IN THE CHOIR.] The original wooden #stalls of the choir# were described by the writer of a book published in 1640. He relates that there were two rows on each side, an upper and a lower, and that above the stalls on the south side stood the archbishop's wooden chair, "sometime richly guilt, and otherwise richly set forth, but now nothing specious through age and late neglect." Perhaps the battered and shabby condition of this part of the cathedral furniture accounts for its having survived the Puritan period; it is at least certain that it remained untouched until 1704, when the refurnishing of the choir was begun by Archbishop Tenison; he himself presented a wainscoted throne with lofty Corinthian canopy adorned with carving by Gibbons, while the altar, the pulpit, and the stalls for the dean and vice-dean were provided with rich fittings by Queen Mary II. The tracery of the screen was hidden by a lining of wainscoting, which was put before it. This arrangement lasted little more than a century. In the time of Archbishop Howley, who held office from 1828 to 1848, the wainscoting which concealed the screen was taken away, and Archbishop Tenison's throne has made way for a lofty canopy of tabernacle work. Some carved work, which has been ascribed to Gibbons, still remains before the eastern front of the screen, between the choir and the nave. The position of the organ has been frequently shifted. In Conrad's choir it was placed upon the vault of the south transept; afterwards it was set up upon a large corbel of stone, over the arch of St. Michael in the same transept. This corbel has now been removed; subsequently it was placed between two pillars on the north side of the choir, and, later on, it was again transferred to a position over the west door of the choir, the usual place for the organ in cathedral churches; finally it has been "ingeniously deposited out of sight in the triforium of the south aisle of the choir; a low pedestal with its keys stands in the choir itself, so as to place the organist close to the singers, as he ought to be, and the communication between the keys and the organ is effected by trackers passing under the pavement of the side aisles, and conducted up to the triforium, through a trunk let into the south wall." This arrangement not only secures the retirement from view of the organ, which, with its tedious rows of straight and unsightly pipes, is generally more or less an eyesore in cathedrals, but is said to have caused a great improvement in the effect of its music. The present organ, which was built by Samuel Green, is believed to have been used at the Handel Festival in Westminster Abbey in 1784. It was enlarged by Hill in 1842, and entirely reconstructed in 1886. In this connection we may mention that Archbishop Theodore first introduced the ecclesiastical chant in Canterbury Cathedral. The tombs in the choir are all occupied by famous archbishops and cardinals. On the south side, hard by the site of the shrine of St. Dunstan, is the tomb of Simon of Sudbury, who was archbishop from 1375 to 1381. He built the west gate of the city, and a great part of the town walls; in consideration of these benefits the mayor and aldermen used at one time to make an annual procession to his resting-place and offer prayers for his soul. Outside Canterbury his acts were not regarded with so much gratitude, for he was the inventor, or reviver, of the poll tax, and was in consequence beheaded on Tower Hill by Wat Tyler and his followers. Stanley relates that "not many years ago, when this tomb was accidentally opened, the body was seen within, wrapped in cere-cloth, a leaden ball occupying the vacant place of the head." Sudbury is also famous as having spoken against the "superstitious" pilgrimages to St. Thomas' shrine, and his violent death was accordingly attributed to the avenging power of the incensed saint. Westward of his monument stands that of Archbishop Stratford (1333-1348), who was Grand Justiciary to Edward III. during his absence in Flanders, and won fame by his struggle with the king. Between this tomb and the archbishop's throne lies Cardinal Kemp (1452-1454), who was present at Agincourt in the camp of Henry V.; his tomb is surmounted by a remarkable wooden canopy. Opposite, on the north side, is the very interesting monument of Archbishop Henry Chichele (1414-1443). Shakespeare tells us that he was the instigator of Henry V.'s war with France, and it is supposed that out of remorse for this act he built, during his lifetime, the curious tomb which now conceals his bones; it is kept in repair by All Souls' College, which was founded by the penitent archbishop that its fellows might pray for the souls of all who had perished during the war; the effigy, in full canonicals, with its head supported by angels, and with two monks holding open books, kneeling at its feet, lies on the upper slab; and underneath is a ghastly figure in a winding-sheet, supposed to represent the archbishop after death; the diminutive figures which originally filled the niches were destroyed by the Puritans, but have been to some extent replaced. The gaudy colours of the tomb enable one to form some idea of the appearance of the churches in the Middle Ages, when they were bedizened with painted images, hangings, and frescoes: to judge from this specimen the effect must have been distinctly tawdry. Further east we find the monument of Archbishop Howley; he was chiefly remarkable as having crowned Queen Victoria and married her to the Prince Consort, and his monument is noticeable as being the first erected to an archbishop, in the cathedral, since the Reformation; he himself lies at Addington. Beyond is a fine tomb well worthy of examination, crowned by an elaborate canopy which shows traces of rough usage at the hands of the restoring enthusiasts, who surrounded the choir with classical wainscoting after the Restoration. It is the monument of Archbishop Bourchier, a staunch supporter of the House of York; he was primate for thirty-two years, from 1454 to 1486, and crowned Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII. The "Bourchier knot" is among the decorations which enrich the canopy of his tomb. #The South-East Transept.#--According to the present custom of the Canterbury vergers, the visitor is led from the choir to the south-east transept. "In the choir of Ernulf," says Willis, "the transepts were cut off from the body by the continuity of the pier-arches and the wall above, and each transept was therefore a separate room with a flat ceiling.... But in the new design of William the transepts were opened to the central portion, and the triforium and clerestory of the choir were turned at right angles to their courses, and thus formed the side walls of the transepts.... The entire interior of the eastern transept has been most skilfully converted from Ernulfian architecture to Willelmian (if I may be allowed the phrase for the nonce). It was necessary that the triforium and clerestory of the new design should be carried along the walls of these transepts, which were before the fire probably ornamented by a continuation of those of Ernulf. But the respective level of these essential members were so different in the old and new works that the only parts of them that could be retained were the windows of the old clerestory, which falls just above the new triforium tablet, and accordingly these old windows may still be seen in the triforia of the transepts, surmounted by the new pointed clerestory windows. But the whole of the arcade work and mouldings in the interior of these transepts belongs to William of Sens, with the sole exception of the lower windows. Even the arches which open from the east wall of these transepts to the apses have been changed for pointed arches, the piers of which have a singularly elegant base." In the two apses of this transept altars to St. Gregory and St. John once stood, and here were shrines of four Saxon primates. There is a window in the south wall erected to the memory of Dean Alford; below it is the spot on which the tomb of Archbishop Winchelsea (1294-1313) was placed. He was famous for his contest with Edward I. concerning clerical subsidies, and for having secured from the king the confirmation of the charter. He was more practically endeared to the people by the generosity of his almsgiving--it is said that he distributed two thousand loaves among the poor every Sunday and Thursday when corn was dear, and three thousand when it was cheap. His tomb was heaped with offerings like the shrine of a saint, but the Pope refused to confirm the popular enthusiasm by canonizing the archbishop; the fact, however, that it had been so reverenced was enough to qualify it for destruction in the days of Henry VIII. This transept is used at present as a chapel for the King's School, a direct continuation of the monastery school, at which Archbishops Winchelsea and Kemp were both educated. It contains the Corinthian throne which was set up in the choir early in the last century. #The South-West Choir Aisle.#--At the corner of this aisle we may notice the arcade which shows the combination of the Norman rounded arch and double zigzag ornamentation with the pointed arch and dogtooth tracery of William. Here also are two tombs, which have given rise to a good deal of speculation. The more easterly one used to be regarded as the monument of Hubert Walter, who was chancellor to Richard Coeur de Lion and followed him and Archbishop Baldwin to Palestine, and, on the death of the latter, was made primate in the camp at Acre: it is thought more probable, however, in the light of recent research, that he is buried in the Trinity Chapel. The other tomb used to be the resting place of Archbishop Reynolds, the favourite of Edward II., but it also affords food for discussion, as there is no trace of the "pall"--a Y-shaped strip of lamb's wool marked with crosses, a special mark of metropolitan dignity which was sent to each primate by the Pope--on the vestments of the effigy. Hence conjecture doubts whether these tombs are tenanted by archbishops at all, and inclines to the theory that they contain the bones of two of the Priors, perhaps of d'Estria. From this point we can notice the ingenious apparatus connected with the organ. #St. Anselm's Tower and Chapel.#--Proceeding eastward, towards the Trinity Chapel, we pause to examine the chapel or tower of St. Anselm, which corresponds to that of St. Andrew on the north side of the cathedral. Both these chapels probably at one time were much more lofty, as they are described as "lofty towers" by Gervase; it was in order to bring them into the church, when it was reconstructed after the fire, that the eastward contraction, which presents such a curious effect as seen from the choir, was found necessary. They are now, as Willis points out, "only of the same height as the clerestory of the Norman Church, to which they formed appendages, and consequently they rose above the side-aisles of that church as much as the clerestory did. The external faces of the inward walls of these towers are now inclosed under the roof of William's triforium, and it may be seen that they were once exposed to the weather." The arches in St. Anselm's tower were originally set up by Ernulf, but there is reason to believe that they were rebuilt after the great conflagration. "The arch of communication," says Willis, "is a round arch, at first sight plainly of the Ernulfian period, having plaited-work capitals and mouldings with shallow hollows. A similar arch opens on the eastern side of the tower into its apse. But a close examination will shew that both these arches have undergone alteration.... I am inclined to believe that both these arches were reset and reduced in space after the fire, probably to increase their strength and that of their piers, on account of the loss of abutment, when the circular wall of the choir-apse was removed." The alterations that were made in these arches were probably not important, and did not extend beyond the re-modelling of the mouldings on the side of the arch towards the choir-aisle; for we may notice that above both the arches we can still trace the notched decoration which is peculiar to Ernulf's work. This chapel was originally dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, and a very interesting relic of this saintly patronage has lately been discovered. Apparently, in order to strengthen the building, two of the three windows in the chapel were blocked up, and a buttress was built across a chord of the apse, in the early part of the thirteenth century. In the course of the restoration of the tower which was recently carried out, this buttress was taken away, and its removal laid bare a fresco painting, representing St. Paul and the viper at Melita. This piece of decoration, as need hardly be said, must have been put in before the construction of the buttress which has concealed and preserved it for nearly seven centuries; it is conjectured, with a good deal of reason, that a similar presentment of St. Paul [Transcriber: St. Peter?] was painted at the same time on the opposite wall, but as it had no buttress to protect it, it has been altogether effaced. A copy of the fresco of St. Paul has been placed in the cathedral library. The altar of SS. Peter and Paul stood at the east end, and behind it was the tomb of the celebrated Archbishop Anselm, by whose name the chapel is now commonly called. A very interesting feature of this tower is a large and elaborate five-light window of the Decorated period. It replaced the original south window of the chapel, and was inserted by Prior d'Estria in 1336; it is remarkable as being one of the few instances of Decorated architecture in the cathedral, and also because of the detailed account that has been preserved of its erection and cost. The passage in the archives runs as follows:--"Memorandum, that in the year 1336, there was made a new window in Christ Church, Canterbury, that is to say, in the chapel of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, upon which there were expended the following sums: _£ s. d._ "Imprimis, for the workmanship, or labour of the masons 21 17 9 Item, for the breaking down of the wall, where the window now is 0 16 9 ----for lime and gravel 1 0 0 ----for 20 cwt. of iron bought for said window 4 4 0 ----for the labour of the smiths 3 5 4 ----for Caen stone bought for same 5 0 0 ----for glass and the labour of the glaziers 6 13 4 ----------- Total 42 17 2." On the heads of the lights of this window were pendent bosses, like those of the door in the choir-screen, which, as has been said, was also the work of Prior de Estria. These bosses and the stones from which they were suspended, have altogether disappeared, otherwise the internal tracery of the window is in good preservation. "The outside, however, is in a very bad condition for the purpose of the antiquarian; for, apparently on account of the decayed state of its surface, the tracery has undergone the process of splitting, namely, the whole of the outer part has been faced down to the glass, and fresh worked in Portland stone; Portland stone mullions, or _monials_ as they are more properly called, have also been supplied. And as this repair was executed at a period when this class of architecture was ill understood, the mouldings were very badly wrought, which, with the unfortunate colour and surface of the Portland stone, has given the window a most ungenuine air. However, the interior is as good as ever it was, and it is on account of its date, as well as for its beauty, a most valuable example" (Willis). The insertion of the window in question probably had the effect of weakening the walls of the chapel; at any rate they show signs of a tendency to settle. Beneath it is the tomb of Archbishop Bradwardine, a great scholar and divine, whose primacy only lasted three months. Opposite to him lies Simon de Mepeham--archbishop from 1328 to 1333--whose tomb forms the screen of the chapel. It is a black marble monument well worthy of examination, with a double arcade and a richly decorated canopy; the ornamentation has been greatly damaged, but the shattered remains show traces of beautiful work. Mepeham's short primacy was brought to an untimely end by the contumacy of Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, who refused to allow him to enter Exeter Cathedral, actually guarding the west door with an armed force. The pope sided with the recalcitrant bishop, and Mepeham died, according to Fuller, of a broken heart in consequence of this humiliation. #The Watching Chamber.#--Above the Chapel of St. Anselm is a small room, which is reached by a staircase from the north-west corner. A window in it commands a view into the cathedral, and from this circumstance it has been inferred that a watcher was stationed here at night to protect the priceless treasures of St. Thomas's shrine from pillage by marauders. Some doubt has been thrown on this assumption, since the site of the shrine is not fully seen from the window, but the room is still generally known as the Watching Chamber. Probably the shrine was much more efficiently guarded than by the presence of a solitary monk in a chamber, from which even if he could see thieves he certainly could not arrest them; for we know that "on the occasion of fires the shrine was additionally guarded by a troop of fierce ban-dogs" (Stanley). It is also said that King John of France was imprisoned in this chamber during his stay at Canterbury, but this is most unlikely, seeing that he was treated by the Black Prince more as a sovereign than as a captive. [Illustration: SOME MOSAICS FROM THE FLOOR OF TRINITY CHAPEL.] #Trinity Chapel.#--Passing further east, we ascend the flight of steps, deeply worn by innumerable pilgrims, and enter the precincts of the Trinity Chapel. All this part of the cathedral, from the choir-screen to the corona, was rebuilt from the ground, specially with a view to its receiving the shrine of St. Thomas. It is still, however, called by the name of the Trinity Chapel, which previously occupied this site, and was burnt down by the fire which destroyed Conrad's choir. In this chapel Thomas à Becket celebrated his first mass after his installation as archbishop, and his remains were laid for some time in the crypt below it. This portion of the building was all carried out under the direction of English William. Gervase relates that when William of Sens, after his accident, "perceiving that he derived no benefit from the physicians, returned to his home in France," his successor, English William "laid the foundation for the enlargement of the church at the eastern part, because a chapel of St. Thomas was to be built there; for this was the place assigned to him; namely the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, where he celebrated his first mass--where he was wont to prostrate himself with tears and prayers, under whose crypt for so many years he was buried, where God for his merits had performed so many miracles, where poor and rich, kings and princes, had worshipped him, and whence the sound of his praises had gone out into all lands." As to the extent to which the second William was guided by the plans of his predecessor we have no means of judging accurately. Certainly the general outline of this part of the building must have been arranged by William of Sens, for the contraction of the choir, in order to preserve the width of the ancient Trinity Chapel had been carried out up to the clerestory before his retirement. Willis deals with the subject at some length: "Whether," he says, "we are to attribute to the French artist the lofty elevation of the pavement of the new chapel, by which also so handsome a crypt is obtained below, must remain doubtful. The bases of his columns, as well as those of the shafts against the wall are hidden and smothered by the platform at the top of these steps and by the side steps that lead to Becket's chapel. This looks like an evidence of a change of plan, and induces me to believe that the lofty crypt below may be considered as the unfettered composition of the English architect.... The Trinity Chapel of the Englishman is under the influence of the French work of which it is a continuation, and accordingly the same mouldings are employed throughout, and the triforium and clerestory are continued at the same level; but the greater level of the pavement wholly alters the proportion of the piers to their arches, and gives a new and original, and at the same time a very elegant character to this part of the church compared with the work of the Frenchman, of which, at first sight, it seems to be a mere continuation. The triforium also of this Trinity Chapel differs from that of the choir, in that its four pointed arches instead of being, like them, included under two circular ones, are set in the form of an arcade of four arches, of two orders of mouldings each. The mouldings are the same as in the choir, but the effect of their arrangement is richer. Also in the clerestory two windows are placed over each pier-arch, instead of the single window of the choir. The mixture of the two forms of arches is still carried on, for although the semicircular arch is banished from the triforium, it is adopted for the pier-arches. "However, in the side-aisles of the Trinity chapel, and in the corona, our English William appears to have freed himself almost as completely from the shackles of imitation, as was possible. In the side-aisles the mouldings of the ribs still remain the same, but their management in connection with the side walls, and the combination of their slender shafts with those of the twin lancet windows, here for the first time introduced into the building, is very happy. Slender shafts of marble are employed in profusion by William of Sens, and Gervase expressly includes them in his list of characteristic novelties. But here we find them either detached from the piers, or combined with them in such a manner as to give a much greater lightness and elegance of effect than in the work of the previous architect. This lightness of style is carried still farther in the corona, where the slender shafts are carried round the walls, and made principal supports to the pier-arches, over which is placed a light triforium and a clerestory; and it must be remarked that all the arches in this part of the building are of a single order of mouldings, instead of two orders as in the pier-arches and triforium of the choir." So much for the architectural details of the Trinity Chapel. To the ordinary visitor its interest lies rather in the fact that it contained Becket's shrine, and that we here see the curious old windows portraying the sainted Archbishop's miracles, and what is, perhaps, most important of all to many, #the tomb of Edward the Black Prince#. This monument is the first feature that we notice as we enter by the south-west gate of the chapel; it stands between the two first pillars, and by the side of the site of the shrine. By the Prince's will he had left directions that he should be buried in the crypt, where he had already founded a chantry, at the time of his marriage with the "Fair Maid of Kent" in 1363. But for some unknown reason, probably in order that the dead hero's bones might be placed in the most sacred spot possible--he was laid to rest by the side of the martyr, then in the zenith of his sanctity. One of the most romantic figures in English history is that of Edward the Black Prince, who "fought the French" as no Briton, except perhaps Nelson, has fought them since; he was sixteen years old when he commanded the English army in person at the battle of Cressy, and was wounded in the thickest of that most sanguinary fray: ten years later, facing an army of 60,000 men with a mere 8,000 behind him, he inflicted a still more severe defeat on the French at Poitiers, and captured their king, whom he took with him to Canterbury on his triumphant return to London. In all our list of national heroes there is not one who upheld the prowess of the English arms more gallantly than this mighty warrior who was cut off while still in the flower of his years, leaving England to the miseries of sedition and civil war. His tomb is one of the most impressive of such monuments. The gilding and bright colours have almost entirely disappeared, but the striking effect of the effigy is probably only enhanced by the solemn sombreness of its present appearance. It is a figure clad in full armour, spurred and helmeted, as the Prince had ordained by his will. The head rests on the helmet and the hands are joined in the attitude of prayer. The face, which is undoubtedly a portrait, is stern and masterful. "There you can see his fine face with the Plantagenet features, the flat cheeks, and the well-chiselled nose, to be traced, perhaps, in the effigy of his father in Westminster Abbey, and his grandfather in Gloucester Cathedral." The tomb itself is worthy to support the figure and guard the ashes of the Black Prince. Carved on its side clearly, that all might read it, is the inscription which he had himself chosen; it is in Norman French, which was still the language spoken by the English Court, and in the same spirit which moved the designer of Archbishop Chichele's tomb to portray the living man and the mouldering skeleton, this epitaph contrasts the glories of the Prince's life--his wealth, beauty, and power--with the decay and corruption of the grave. It is distinctly pagan in thought, and reminds one strongly of the laments of the dead Homeric heroes as they wail for the joys of life and strength and lordship. Stanley states that it is "borrowed, with a few variations, from the anonymous French translation of the 'Clericalis Disciplina' of Petrus Alphonsus composed between the years 1106 and 1110." But it is strangely un-Christian in sentiment as a few lines will show-- "Tiel come tu es, je autiel fu, tu seras tiel come je su, De la mort ne pensay je mie, tant come j'avoy la vie. En terre avoy grand richesse, dont je y fys grand noblesse, Terre, mesons, et grand tresor, draps, chivalx, argent et or. Mesore su je povres et cheitifs, perfond en la terre gys, Ma grand beaute est tout alee, ma char est tout gastee Moult est estroite ma meson, en moy ne si verite non, Et si ore me veissez, je ne quide pas que vous deeisez Que j'eusse onges hom este, si su je ore de tout changee." Below this inscription are ranged coats-of-arms, bearing the ostrich feathers and the motto _Ich Diene_ ("I serve"), which, according to time-honoured but unauthenticated tradition, the prince won from the blind King of Bohemia, who was led into the thick of the fighting at Cressy, and died on the field. Welsh archæologists, however, maintain that these words are Celtic, and mean "behold the man;" their theory suggests that this was the phrase used by Edward I. when he presented his firstborn son to the Welsh people as their prince, and that the words thus became the motto of the princes of Wales. This is a rather far-fetched piece of reasoning, and one would certainly prefer to accept the more picturesque tradition which connects the phrase with the glories of Cressy. The other word found on these escutcheons--_Houmont_--is still more puzzling. We know that the Black Prince was wont to sign himself _Houmont, Ich Diene_. Stanley explains the combination gracefully, but not very convincingly. "If, as seems most likely, they are German words, they exactly express what we have seen so often in his life, the union of 'Hoch muth,' that is _high spirit_, with 'Ich Dien,' _I serve_. They bring before us the very scene itself after the battle of Poitiers, where, after having vanquished the whole French nation, he stood behind the captive king, and served him like an attendant." [Illustration: THE BLACK PRINCE'S TOMB (FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY CARL NORMAN AND CO.).] The tomb is surmounted by a canopy on which is painted an interesting representation of the Trinity. The work is a good deal faded, but still worthy of notice; the absence of the figure of the dove is curious, but is not unparalleled in such designs. At the corners are symbols of the four evangelists. The Holy Trinity--on whose feast-day he died--was held in peculiar veneration by the Black Prince. The ordinance of the chantry founded by him in the crypt contains the phrase, _Ad honorem Sancte Trinitatis quam peculiari devocione semper colimus_. A curious metal badge, preserved in the British Museum, is stamped with the figure of the prince kneeling before the Almighty and our Saviour, whose representation is almost identical with the design on the canopy over the tomb; here also the figure of the dove is absent. Round the canopy and in the pillars we can still see the hooks which upheld the black tapestry, bordered with crimson and embroidered with _cygnes avec têtes de dames_, which was hung, as ordained by his will, round the prince's tomb and Becket's shrine. [Illustration: SHIELD, COAT, ETC., OF THE BLACK PRINCE.] Lastly, above the canopy, on a cross-beam between two pillars, are suspended the brazen gauntlets, the helmet, the wooden shield with its moulded leather covering, the velvet coat emblazoned with the arms of England and France, and the empty sheath. The gauntlets were once embellished with little figures of lions on the knuckles; these have been detached by "collectors," vandals almost as ruthless as Blue Dick and his troopers, and without their excuse of mistaken religious zeal. The helmet still has its original lining of leather, showing that it was actually worn. The sword which fitted the now empty sheath is said to have been taken away by Oliver Cromwell; it appeared in Manchester at the beginning of this century under circumstances so curious, that we may be excused for quoting the following letter from Canon Wray, given in Stanley's Appendix on the Black Prince's will. "The sword, or supposed sword, of the Black Prince, which Oliver Cromwell is said to have carried away, I have seen and many times have had in my hands. There lived in Manchester, when I first came here, a Mr. Thomas Barritt, a saddler by trade; he was a great antiquarian, and had collected together helmets, coats of mail, horns, etc., and many coins. But what he valued most of all was a sword: the blade about two feet long, and on the blade was let in, in letters of gold, 'EDWARDUS WALLIE PRINCEPS'.... He was in possession of this sword A.D. 1794. He told me he purchased many of the ancient relics of a pedlar, who travelled through the country selling earthenware, and I think he said he got this sword from this pedlar. When Barritt died, in 1820, his curiosities were sold by his widow at a raffle, but I believe this sword was not amongst the articles so disposed of. It had probably been disposed of beforehand, but to whom I never knew; yet I think it not unlikely that it is still in the neighbourhood. The sword was a little curved, scimitar-like, rather thick, broad blade, and had every appearance of being the Black Prince's sword." Truly a most remarkable story. This historic blade, which may have hewn down the French ranks at Poitiers, is disposed of by an itinerant crockery vender to an antiquarian saddler; on his death is, or is not, "sold at a raffle" and--vanishes! [Illustration: WEST GATE.] These arms that hang over the prince's tomb are all that are left of two distinct suits, one for war, and one for use in the joust and the ceremonials of peace, which were, according to directions given in the will, carried in the funeral procession through the West Gate and along the High Street to the cathedral. The pieces which remain all belong to the suit worn in actual warfare. The centre of the chapel looks curiously blank, being left so by the thoroughness with which all trace of Becket's shrine was removed by the reforming zeal and insatiable rapacity of Henry VIII. and his minions. The effect of the bare stone pavement presents an impressive contrast to the vanished glories of the shrine blazing with gold and jewels, as we read of it. (For a description of the shrine and its history, see Chapter I.) The exact place on which it stood is plainly shown by the marks worn in the stones by the knees of generations of pilgrims as they knelt before it, while the prior, with his white wand, pointed out the choicest of its treasures. To the west, between the altar-screen--the unhappy effect of which is painfully conspicuous from this point--and the site of the shrine, there is some very interesting mosaic pavement, containing the signs of the zodiac, and emblems of virtue and vice, an example of the _Opus Alexandrinum_, which appears in the floors of most of the Roman basilicas. A similar piece of mosaic work may be seen round the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster. Above the eastern end of the shrine a gilded crescent was fixed in the roof, which still remains; the origin and meaning of this emblem have been disputed with considerable heat, and many ingenious conjectures have been framed to account for its presence here. One theory regards it as an allusion to the tradition according to which Becket's mother was a Saracen. But this legend is believed to be comparatively modern, and, as Mr. George Austin points out, "even if the legend of Becket's mother had obtained credence at that early period, it may be observed that in the painted windows around no reference is made to the subject, though evidently capable of so much pictorial effect." Another solution would connect the crescent with the worship of the Virgin Mary, who is often pictured as standing on the moon (comp. Rev. xii. 1). Supporters of this theory lay stress on the fact that the Trinity Chapel at Canterbury occupies the extreme east end of the church, which is generally the site of the Lady Chapel, and that therefore the presence of this emblem--if it can be connected with the Virgin--would be peculiarly appropriate here. Mr. Austin propounded the explanation which is now most generally accepted. "When the groined roof," he says, "was relieved of the long-accumulated coats of whitewash and repaired, the crescent was taken down and regilt. It was found to be made of a foreign wood, somewhat like in grain to the eastern wood known by the name of iron-wood. It had been fastened to the groining by a large nail of very singular shape, with a large square head, apparently of foreign manufacture." He comes to the conclusion that the crescent is one of a number of trophies which he supposes to have once decorated this part of the cathedral, and he is led to his conclusion by the fact that "more than one fresco painting of encounters with the Eastern infidels formerly ornamented the walls (the last traces of which were removed during the restoration of the cathedral under Dean Percy, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle), and in one of which the green crescent flag of the enemy seems borne away by the English archers. Might not these frescoes have depicted the fights in which these trophies were won?" Also, in the hollows of the groining which radiate from the crescent, there were a number of slight iron staples, which Mr. Austin, having shown that they cannot have supported either hanging lamps or the covering of the shrine, believes to have upheld flags, horsetails, etc., which formed the trophy of which the gilded crescent was the centre. We know that Becket received the title of St. Thomas Acrensis owing to his close connection with the knights of the Hospital of St. John at Acre. But none of these explanations seem very convincing, and the history and significance of the crescent in the roof seem likely to remain a mystery. Before we turn from Becket and his shrine to the other monuments in the Trinity Chapel, we must call the attention of our readers to the stained windows which depict the miracles of the sainted martyr. The chapel was at one time entirely surrounded with glass of this sort, but only a portion has survived the ravages of the Puritans. "Of these windows," says Austin, "unfortunately but three remain, but they are sufficient to attest their rare beauty; and for excellence of drawing, harmony of colouring, and purity of design, are justly considered unequalled. The skill with which the minute figures are represented cannot even at this day be surpassed; it is extraordinary to see how every feeling of joy or sorrow, pain and enjoyment, is expressed both in feature and position. But in nothing is the superiority of these windows shown more than the beautiful scrolls and borders which surmount the windows, and gracefully connect the groups of medallions." Most of these windows probably contained representations of Becket, and so were doomed to destruction by the decree of Henry VIII., in which "his Grace straitly chargeth and commandeth, that henceforth the said Thomas Becket shall not be esteemed, named, reputed, nor called a saint, but Bishop Becket, and that his images and pictures throughout the whole realm shall be put down and avoided out of all churches and chapels, and other places; and that from henceforth the days used to be festivals in his name shall not be observed, nor the service, office, antiphonies, collects and prayers in his name read, but rased and put out of all books." This proclamation was rigorously carried out though the stained windows which come within its terms have, in some cases, escaped destruction. For instance there remains a window in the south transept of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, representing the martyrdom of Becket, but it is interesting to note that even here the archbishop's head was removed from the glass. Three of the windows of the Trinity Chapel have survived, and fragments of others are scattered over the glass of the building. They are entirely devoted to depicting the miracles of the martyr, which began immediately after his death and reception--according to a vision of Benedict--in a place between the apostles and the martyrs, above even St. Stephen. The window towards the east on the north side of the shrine is divided into geometrical figures, each figure composed of a group of fine medallions; every group tells the story of a miracle, or series of miracles, performed by the influence of the saint. The lower group portrays the story of a child who was drowned in the Medway, and afterwards restored to life by the efficacy of the saint's blood mixed with water. The first medallion shows the boy falling into the stream, while his companions pelt the frogs in the reeds by the river side; the next shows the companions relating the story of the accident to the boy's parents, and in the third we see the grief-stricken parents watching their son's corpse being drawn out of the river. "The landscape in these medallions is exceedingly well rendered; the trees are depicted with great grace" (Austin). Unfortunately the medallions which complete this story have been destroyed. The next group depicts the quaint story of a succession of miracles which were wrought in the family of a knight called Jordan, son of Eisult. His ten year old boy died, and the knight, who had been an intimate friend of Becket in his lifetime, resolved to try to restore his son with water mixed with the saint's blood. At the third draught, as Benedict tells the story, the dead boy "opened one eye, and said, 'Why are you weeping, father? Why are you crying, lady? The blessed martyr, Thomas, has restored me to you!' At evening he sat up, ate, talked, and was restored." But the father forgot the vow which he made in the first moment of joy at his son's recovery, namely, that he would offer four silver pieces at the martyr's shrine before Mid Lent. And once more all the household was stricken with sickness, and the eldest son died. Then the parents, though sore smitten themselves, dragged themselves to Canterbury and performed their vow. The whole of this story with other details for which we have no space may be accurately traced on this unique window. The most striking is the central medallion of the group in which the vengeance of the saint is shown forth. In the middle of a large room we see a bier on which lies the dead son; the father and mother, overcome with despair, stand at the head and feet of the body. Behind the bier are several figures, which, from their "unusually violent attitudes expressive of grief," Mr. Austin considered to be professional mourners. Above, unseen by the group below, the figure of St. Thomas, clad in full episcopal robes, holding a sword in his right hand, and pointing to the corpse with his left, is seen appearing through the ceiling. "The expression," says Austin, "of the various figures in the above compartments, both in gesture and feature, is rendered with great skill. In the execution of this story, the points which, doubtless, the artists of the monastery were chiefly anxious to impress upon the minds of the devotees who thronged to the shrine are prominently brought out: the extreme danger of delaying the performance of a vow, under whatever circumstances made, the expiation sternly required by the saint, and the satisfaction with which the martyr viewed money offerings made at the shrine." One of the other groups is noteworthy as proving that severe penances were sometimes performed before the shrine. One medallion shows a woman prostrating herself before a priest at the altar, while two men stand near, holding formidable-looking rods. The next picture represents the two men vigorously flagellating the woman with the rods; while, in the third, one of the men is still beating the woman, who now lies fainting on the ground, while the other is addressing the priest, who sits hard by composedly reading his book. The other two windows contain representations of the healings effected by the saint, which seem to have been of a very varied character, to judge from the catalogue with which Benedict sums them up. "What position," he asks, "in the Church, what sex or age, what rank or order is there, which could not find something beneficial to itself [_aliquid sibi utile_] in this treasure-house of ours? Here the light of truth is furnished to schismatics, confidence to timid pastors, health to the sick, and pardon to the deserving penitent [_pænitentibus venia ejus meritis_, the last two words probably implying an offering]. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the dumb speak, the poor have the gospel preached to them, the paralytic recover, the dropsical lose their swellings [_detumescunt hydropici_], the mad are restored to sense, the epileptic are cured, the fever-stricken escape, and, to sum up, _omnimoda curatur infirmitas_." The last of these windows to which we must call the special attention of our readers is one on the north side, representing a vision which Benedict tells us that he saw himself. The martyr is seen coming forth from his shrine in full pontifical robes, and making his way towards the altar as if to celebrate mass. This window is noticeable as containing the only representation that now exists of the shrine itself--for the picture in the Cottonian MSS. evidently shows us, not the shrine, but its outer shell, or covering. "The medallion," says Austin, "is the more interesting, from being an undoubted work of the thirteenth century; and having been designed for a position immediately opposite to and within a few yards of the shrine itself, and occupying the place of honour in the largest and most important window, without doubt represents the main features of the shrine faithfully." On the north side of the Trinity Chapel, immediately opposite the tomb of the Black Prince, is that of King Henry IV., who died in 1413, and his second consort, Joan of Navarre, who followed him in 1437. This king had made liberal offerings towards the rebuilding of the nave of the cathedral, and it has been conjectured that one of the figures on the organ-screen represents him: his will ordered that he should be laid to rest in the church at Canterbury, and here accordingly he was buried on the Trinity Sunday after his death. The tomb, with its rich canopy, is a beautiful piece of work, and the figures of the king and queen are probably faithful representations. A curious story was circulated by the Yorkists, to the effect that Henry was never buried here, but that his body was thrown into the water between Gravesend and Barking, during the voyage of the funeral _cortège_ to Faversham, and that only an empty coffin was laid in the Trinity Chapel. That this point might be cleared up, the tomb was opened in 1832 in the presence of the Dean, and there the king was found in perfect preservation, and bearing a close resemblance to the effigy on the monument--"the nose elevated, the beard thick and matted, and of a deep russet colour, and the jaws perfect, with all the teeth in them, except one foretooth." In the wall of the north aisle, just opposite the king's tomb, is a small chapel, built according to the directions contained in his will "that ther be a chauntre perpetuall with twey prestis for to sing and prey for my soul." The roof shows the first piece of fan-vaulting admitted into the cathedral. On the eastern wall an account is scratched of the cost of a reredos which once stood here, but has been entirely destroyed: it tells us that the cost of "ye middil image was xix^s 11^d." This chapel was doubtless used at one time as a storehouse of sacred relics. Two recesses in the west wall have lately been chosen to receive certain archiepiscopal vestments which were discovered in a tomb on the south side of Trinity Chapel, which was long believed to be that of Archbishop Theobald. To the east of Henry IV.'s monument is the tomb of Dean Wotton, adorned with his kneeling figure. He was the first Dean of Canterbury after the reorganization by Henry VIII. Opposite to him is an unsightly brick erection which was once intended as a temporary covering for the remains of Odo Coligny, Cardinal of Chatillon and brother of Admiral Coligny, who was one of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Cardinal fled from France in 1568, on account of his leanings towards the tenets of the Huguenots, and was welcomed by Queen Elizabeth. It is believed that he died from the effects of a poisoned apple given to him by a servant. It seems curious that the French Huguenots who settled in Canterbury never provided him with a more fitting monument. Between this tomb and that of the Black Prince is the monument of Archbishop Courtenay, who was primate from 1381 to 1396, and was celebrated for his severity towards Wycliffe and his followers. He was a large contributor to the fund for the re-building of the nave, which perhaps accounts for the distinguished position of his tomb; the fact also that he was executor to the Black Prince may be responsible for his being buried at his feet. It is not, however, certain that his body actually lies here, though the ledger book of the cathedral states that he was buried within the walls of the church. It is known, however, that he died at Maidstone, and that he ordered in his will that his remains should rest there, and a slab in the pavement of All Saints', Maidstone, shows traces of a brass representing the figure of an archbishop, whence it has been concluded that Courtenay was in fact buried there, and that his monument in Canterbury is only a cenotaph. [Illustration: TRINITY CHAPEL, LOOKING INTO THE CORONA, "BECKET'S CROWN," WITH CHAIR OF ST. AUGUSTINE.] #Becket's Crown.#--The circular apse at the extreme east end of the church is known as Becket's Crown. The name has caused a good deal of discussion. The theory once generally received was to the effect that the portion of Becket's skull which was cut away by Richard le Breton was preserved here as a relic of special sanctity. We know that the Black Prince bequeathed, by his will, tapestry hangings for the High Altar and for three others, viz., "l'autier la ou Mons'r Saint Thomas gist--l'autier la ou la teste est--l'autier la ou la poynte de l'espie est." The first and last are evidently the altars at the shrine and in the Chapel of the Martyrdom, and it has been contended that the altar "where the head is" was the altar of which traces may still be seen in the pavement of the corona, or Becket's Crown. Against this notion we must place the authority of Erasmus, whose words plainly show that the martyr's head was displayed in the crypt: "_hinc digressi subimus cryptoporticum: illic primum exhibetur calvaria martyris perforata_ (the martyr's pierced tonsure): _reliqua tecta sunt argento, summa cranii pars nuda patet osculo_." While Willis considers that the term corona was a common one for an apse at the end of a church, citing "Ducange's Glossary," which defines "Corona Ecclesiæ" as _Pars templi choro postica, quod ea pars fere desinat in circulum_; "at all events," he concludes, "it was a general term and not peculiar to Christ Church, Canterbury. The notion that this round chapel was called Becket's Crown, because part of his skull was preserved here as a relic, appears wholly untenable. There is at least no doubt that a relic of some sort was preserved here, because we know from a record of the offerings--Oblaciones S. Thomæ--during ten years in the first half of the thirteenth century, that the richest gifts were made at the shrine and in the corona. And we know that the spot was one of peculiar sanctity from the fact that the shrines of St. Odo and St. Wilfrid were finally transferred thither. _Corpus S. Odonis in feretro, ad coronam versus austrum. Corpus S. Wilfridi in feretro ad coronam versus aquilonem._" [Illustration: CHAIR OF ST. AUGUSTINE.] On the north side of the corona is the tomb of Cardinal Pole, the last Archbishop of Canterbury who acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope. He held office from 1556 to 1558, and died the day after Queen Mary. Here stands also the patriarchal chair, made out of three pieces of Purbeck marble. It is called St. Augustine's chair, and is said to be the throne on which the old kings of Kent were crowned; according to the tradition, Ethelbert, on being converted, gave the chair to Augustine, from whom it has descended to the Archbishops of Canterbury. It is needless to say that this eminently attractive legend has been attacked and overthrown by modern criticism. It is pointed out that the original archiepiscopal throne was of one piece only, and that Purbeck marble did not come into use until some time after Augustine's death. From its shape it is conjectured that the chair dates from the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth, and that it may have been constructed for the ceremony of the translation of St. Thomas' relics. It is in this chair, and not in the archiepiscopal throne in the choir, that the archbishops are still enthroned. From the corona we have a view of the full length of the cathedral, which measures 514 feet, and is one of the longest of English cathedrals. Of the windows in Becket's Crown, the centre one is ancient, while the rest are modern and afford a most instructive contrast. #St. Andrew's Tower, or Chapel.#--Leaving the Trinity Chapel, and descending the steps, we find on our right the door of St. Andrew's Chapel which is now used as a vestry. Formerly, it was the sacristy, a place from which the pilgrims of humble rank were excluded, but where those of wealth and high station were allowed to gaze at a great array of silken vestments and golden candlesticks, and also the Martyr's pearwood pastoral staff with its black horn crook, and his cloak and bloodstained kerchief. Here also was a chest "cased with black leather, and opened with the utmost reverence on bended knees, containing scraps and rags of linen with which (the story must be told throughout) the saint wiped his forehead and blew his nose" (Stanley). Erasmus describes this exhibition with a touch of scorn. "_Fragmenta linteorum lacera plerumque macci vestigium servantia. His, ut aiebant, vir pius extergebat sudorem e facie_," etc. The walls of this chapel show many traces of fresco decoration: the pattern seems to have consisted of a clustering vine tree spread over the roof. In the north wall is a Norman chamber which originally served as the Treasury; the door is still secured by three locks, the keys of which were held by different officials. St. Andrew's Chapel is part of Ernulf's work, and the peculiar ornamentation which marks his hand may be noticed over the arch of the apse which terminates it. #The North-East Transept.#--Passing along the choir aisle, we see the old Bible desk, holding the Bible which was originally placed there, and was restored to this position by the late Bishop Parry. Next we enter the north-east transept, which in its architectural features is practically a repetition of the south-east transept, with which we have already dealt. The monument to Archbishop Tait, designed by Boehm, is well worthy of its surroundings. Above it, in the north wall, about ten feet from the ground, we may notice three slits in the wall. These are what are called hagioscopes. On the other side of the wall was a recess connected with the Prior's Chapel. Through these hagioscopes--or "holy spy-holes"--the prior could see mass being celebrated at the high altar and at the altars below in the transept, without entering the cathedral. These transeptal altars are in the Chapels of St. Martin and St. Stephen which occupy two apses in the eastern wall. St. Martin is represented in a medallion of ancient glass preserved in the modern window, as dividing his coat with a beggar. Scratched on the walls are the names "Lanfrancus" and "Ediva Regina;" the bodies of Lanfranc and Queen Ediva were removed to this transept after the fire. Lanfranc originally lay in the old Trinity Chapel, and when this building was levelled to the ground, he was "carried to the vestiarium in his leaden covering, and there deposited until the community should decide what should be done with so great a Father." Apparently the heavy sheet of lead was removed, for Gervase goes on to say that "Lanfranc having remained untouched for sixty-nine years, his very bones were consumed with rottenness, and nearly all reduced to powder. The length of time, the damp vestments, the natural frigidity of lead, and above all the frailty of the human structure, had conspired to produce this corruption. But the larger bones, with the remaining dust, were collected in a leaden coffer, and deposited at the altar of St. Martin." Queen Ediva, as we learn from the same authority, "who before the fire reposed under a gilted _feretrum_ in nearly the middle of the south cross, was now deposited at the altar of St. Martin, under the _feretrum_ of Living," an archbishop who died in 1020. Ediva, the wife of Edward the Elder, and a generous benefactress to the cathedral, died about 960. From an early list of the subjects represented in the windows of the cathedral, it appears that the north windows of the north-east transept depicted the Parable of the Sower. The ancient glass, however, has been displaced, and a good deal of it has been moved to the windows of the north choir aisle, between the transept and the Chapel of the Martyrdom, which are of great beauty, and should be examined carefully. In the transept itself are windows in memory of Dean Stanley, Dr. Spry, and Canon Cheshyre. On the wall of the choir aisle, close to the transept, we can trace the remains of a fresco representing the conversion of St. Hubert. Further on, there hangs a picture, by Cross, which is intended to represent the murder of Becket. As a work of art it is not without merit, but its details are entirely inaccurate. #The North-West Transept, or Chapel of the Martyrdom.#--The actual site of the tragedy which rendered Becket and his cathedral famous throughout Christendom was the North-West Transept, or as it was more commonly called the Chapel of the Martyrdom. Hardly any portion, however, of this structure as it stands actually witnessed the murder. In the time of Becket the transept was of two storeys, divided by a vault, which was upheld by a single pillar. The upper partition was dedicated to St. Blaise, and the lower to St. Benedict. In the west wall, as now, was a door which opened into the cloister. [Illustration: THE MARTYRDOM, NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT.] The story of Becket and his quarrel with Henry II. will be dealt with in the next chapter. But before examining the spot on which he was assassinated it is perhaps fitting to recall the events which immediately preceded his death. Henry's wrathful exclamation, which stirred the four knights to set out on their bloodthirsty mission, is well known. Whatever we may think of the methods employed by these warriors--Fitzurse, de Moreville, de Tracy, and le Bret were their names--we must at least concede that they were gifted with undaunted courage. To slay an anointed archbishop in his own cathedral was to do a deed from which the boldest might well shrink, in the days when excommunication was held to be a living reality, and the Church was believed to hold the power of eternal blessing or damnation in her hand. These men--who were all closely attached to the king's person, and were sometimes described as his "cubicularii," or Grooms of the Bedchamber--arrived at the gate of the archbishop's palace in the afternoon of Tuesday, December 29th, 1170. With a curious want of directness they seem to have left their swords outside, and entered, and had a stormy interview with Becket; enraged by his unyielding firmness, they went back for their weapons, and in the meantime the archbishop was hurried by the terrified monks through the cloister and into the cathedral, where the vesper service was being held. The knights quickly forced their way after him, and the monks locked and barricaded the cloister door. But Becket, who bore himself heroically through the whole scene, insisted that the door should be thrown open, exclaiming that "the church must not be turned into a castle." Then all the monks but three fled in terror. Those who stayed urged Becket to hide himself in the crypt or in the Chapel of St. Blaise above. But he would not hear of concealment, but preferred to make his way to the choir that he might die at his post by the high altar. As he went up the steps towards the choir the knights rushed into the transept, calling for "the archbishop, the traitor to the king," and Becket turned and came down, and confronted them by the pillar of the chapel. Clad in his white rochet, with a cloak and hood over his shoulders, he faced his murderers, who were now girt in mail from head to foot. They tried to seize him and drag him out of the sacred precinct, but he put his back against the pillar and hurled Tracy full-length on the pavement. Then commending his cause and the cause of the Church "to God, to St. Denys, the martyr of France, to St. Alfege, and to the saints of the Church," he fell under the blows of the knights' swords. The last stroke was from the hand of le Bret, it severed the crown of the archbishop's head, and the murderer's sword was shivered into two pieces. Then the assassins left the church, ransacked the palace, and plundered its treasures, and, lastly, rode off on horses from the stables, in which Becket had to the last taken especial pride. Such is the brief outline of the events of this remarkable tragedy, for a fuller account of which we must refer our readers to the excellent description in Stanley's "Memorials of Canterbury." As we have already said, the present transept has been entirely rebuilt; although not damaged by the fire, it was reconstructed by Prior Chillenden at the time when he erected the present nave. It is even doubtful whether the present pavement is the same as that which was trodden by Becket and his murderers. A small square stone is still shown in the floor of the transept, as marking the exact spot on which the archbishop fell; it is said to have been inserted in place of the original piece which was taken out and sent to Rome, but there is little or no authority for this statement. On the other hand, we read that Benedict, when he became Abbot of Peterborough, in order to supply his new cathedral with relics, in which it was sadly deficient, came back to Canterbury and carried off the stones which had been sprinkled with St. Thomas's blood, and made therewith two altars for Peterborough. In this transept an altar was erected, called the Altar of the Martyrdom, or the Altar of the Sword's Point (_altare ad punctum ensis_), from the fact that upon it was laid the broken fragment of le Bret's sword, which had been left on the pavement. Also, a portion of the martyr's brains were kept under a piece of rock crystal, and a special official, called the Custos Martyrii, was appointed to guard these relics. The chief window in this chapel was presented by Edward IV.; in it we can still see the figures of himself and his queen and his two daughters, and the two young princes who were murdered in the Tower. It originally contained representations of "seven glorious appearances" of the Virgin, and Becket himself in the centre, but all this portion was destroyed by Blue Dick, the Puritan zealot. The west window was the gift of the Rev. Robert Moore, sometime Canon of Canterbury; it is an elaborate piece of work depicting Becket's martyrdom and scenes in his life. Here also we see the very beautiful and interesting monument to Archbishop Peckham (1279-1292), the oldest Canterbury monument which survives in its entirety; even it has been encroached upon by the commonplace erection adjoining it, which commemorates Warham who was archbishop from 1503 to 1532, and was the friend of Erasmus. #The Dean's Chapel.#--Eastward of the north-west transept is the chapel which was formerly known as the Lady Chapel, but has latterly been named the Dean's Chapel from the number of deans whose monuments have been placed here. It stands on the site of the Chapel of St. Benedict, and was built by Prior Goldstone, who dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin in 1460. The usual place for the Lady Chapel in cathedrals is, of course, at the extreme east end; but at Canterbury the situation was occupied by the shrine of St. Thomas. The principal altar to the Virgin in our cathedral was that in the crypt, in the "Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft." The vault of the Dean's Chapel is noticeable. It is a fan vault, of the style developed to so great perfection in the Tudor period, as shown in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and in the roof of the staircase leading to the dining-hall of Christ Church, Oxford. The architecture of this chapel is Perpendicular in style, and its delicate decoration should be carefully noticed; the screen which separates it from the Martyrdom Transept is also worthy of close attention. The monuments here are interesting rather than beautiful. Dean Fotherby is commemorated by a hideous erection bristling with skulls. Dean Boys is represented as he died, sitting among his books in his library; it is curious that the books are all apparently turned with the backs of the covers towards the wall, and the edges of the leaves outwards. Here also is the monument of Dean Turner, the faithful follower of Charles I. [Illustration: PART OF SOUTH-WESTERN TRANSEPT.] #The South-West Transept.#--Crossing the cathedral through the passage under the choir steps, we find ourselves in the south-west transept, which, together with the nave and the north-west transept, was rebuilt by Prior Chillenden. In the pavement we see memorial stones to canons and other departed worthies. Among them is the tombstone of Meric Casaubon, Archbishop Laud's prebendary, and son of Isaac Casaubon, the famous scholar. #St. Michael's, or the Warrior's Chapel.#--Eastward of the south-west transept is a small chapel, generally known as that of St. Michael. In position and size it closely corresponds with the Dean's Chapel on the north side of the church. In general style there is also some resemblance, but the vaulting of the roof is quite different; it is described by Professor Willis as "as a complex lierne vault of an unusual pattern, but resembling that of the north transept of Gloucester Cathedral, which dates from 1367 to 1372." The exact date and the name of the builder of this chapel are alike uncertain, but it probably replaced the old Chapel of St. Michael at some time towards the end of the fourteenth century, and Willis comes to the conclusion that it is most probable that its erection may be ascribed to Prior Chillenden, and that "it formed part of the general scheme for the transformation of the western part of the church." A curious effect is presented by the tomb of Stephen Langton, who was archbishop from 1207 to 1228, and is famous as having compelled King John to sign the Great Charter, and also as having divided the Bible into chapters. His tomb, shaped like a stone coffin, is half in the chapel and half under the eastern wall, and Professor Willis considers that it was originally outside the wall, in the churchyard; "and thus the new wall, when the chapel was rebuilt and enlarged in the fourteenth century, was made to stride over the coffin by means of an arch." The reverence in which Langton's memory was held is attested by the fact that his remains must have lain under the altar of the chapel, a most unusual position except in the case of celebrated saints. In the middle of the chapel is a very beautiful and interesting monument erected by Margaret Holland, who died in 1437, to the memory of her two husbands and herself. The monument is of alabaster and marble, and represents the lady reposing with her first spouse, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, and son of John of Gaunt, on her left, and Thomas, Duke of Clarence, her second husband, on her right. The latter was the second son of Henry IV., and, so, nephew of John of Somerset the first husband; he was killed at the battle of Baugé in 1421. Leland thinks that this chapel was built expressly for the reception of this tomb: "This chapel be likelihood was made new for the Honor of Erle John of Somerset," but it is probably of rather earlier date than would be allowed by this theory. The figures of Margaret and her two lords are very fine and are interesting examples of fifteenth century costume. As such they may be contrasted with the effigy of Lady Thornhurst, who exhibits all the beauty of an Elizabethan ruff. Sir Thomas Thornhurst, whose monument is hard by, was killed in the ill-fated expedition to the Isle of Rhé. In the corner of the chapel is the bust of Sir George Rooke, Vice-Admiral, who led the assault on Gibraltar by which it was first captured. And the title of "Warrior's" Chapel is further justified by the presence here of tattered standards, memorials of dead comrades, left by the famous Kentish regiment, "the Buffs." [Illustration: THE CRYPT.] #The Main Crypt.#--Returning through the passage under the steps that lead up to the choir, we turn to the right into the crypt which originally supported Conrad's "glorious choir." On the wall as we enter we may notice some diaper-work ornamentation, interesting from the fact that a similar decoration may be traced on the wall of the chapter house at Rochester for Ernulf who built the westward crypt, was afterwards made Bishop of Rochester. Willis tells us that there are five crypts in England under the eastern parts of cathedrals, namely, at Canterbury, Winchester, Gloucester, Rochester, and Worcester, and that they were all founded before 1085. "After this they were discontinued except as a continuation of former ones, as in Canterbury and Rochester." This crypt of Ernulf's replaced the earlier one set up by Lanfranc; Willis thinks it not impossible that the whole of the pier-shafts may have been taken from the earlier crypt. "The capitals of the columns are either plain blocks or sculptured with Norman enrichments. Some of them, however, are in an unfinished state." He describes minutely one of the capitals on the south-west side. "Of the four sides of the block two are quite plain. One has the ornament roughed out, or "bosted" as the workmen call it, that is, the pattern has been traced upon the block, and the spaces between the figures roughly sunk down with square edges preparatory to the completion. On the fourth side, the pattern is quite finished. This proves that the carving was executed after the stones were set in their places, and probably the whole of these capitals would eventually have been so ornamented had not the fire and its results brought in a new school of carving in the rich foliated capitals, which caused this merely superficial method of decoration to be neglected and abandoned. In the same way some of the shafts are roughly fluted in various fashions. The plain ones would probably have all gradually had the same ornament given to them, had not the same reasons interfered." The crypt then stands as it was left by Ernulf except that some of the piers were afterwards strengthened and one new pillar was inserted in the aisle by William of Sens, in order to fit in with the new arrangement of the pillars in the choir which he was then rebuilding. It is therefore, of course, the oldest part of the church, and remains a most beautiful and interesting relic of Norman work in spite of the hot water pipe apparatus which now disfigures it, and its general air of unkempt untidiness. There are signs, however, that in this respect there is likely to be some improvement. The floor is being lowered to its original level by the removal of about a foot of accumulated dirt which had been heaping itself up for the last eight hundred years and had at last entirely smothered the bases of the columns, and it is even whispered that the part now cut off and used as the French church, may be opened out and restored to its original position as part of the main crypt. According to Gervase, the whole of the crypt was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Here stood the Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft, surrounded by Perpendicular stone-work screens, from which the altar-screen in the choir above was imitated. The shrine of the Virgin was exceedingly rich and was only shown to privileged worshippers: traces of decoration may still be seen in the vault above. It was at the back of this shrine that Becket was laid between the time of his murder and his translation to the resting-place in the Trinity Chapel. In the main crypt we may notice the monument of Isabel, Countess of Athol, who died in 1292; she was heiress of Chilham Castle, near Canterbury, and grand-daughter of King John. She was twice married, her second husband being Alexander, brother of John Baliol, King of Scotland. The monument of Lady Mohun of Dunster is in the south screen of the Chapel of Our Lady. She was ancestress of the present Earl of Derby, and founded a perpetual chantry. Lastly, here is the tomb of Cardinal Archbishop Morton, the friend of Sir Thomas More, and the faithful servant of the House of Lancaster; it was he who brought about the union of the Red and White Roses by arranging the marriage of Henry of Richmond with Elizabeth of York. As Henry VII.'s Chancellor he made great exactions under the euphonious title of "Benevolences," and propounded the famous dilemma known as "Morton's Fork," by which he argued that those who lived lavishly must obviously have something to spare for the king's service, while those who fared soberly must be grown rich on their savings, and so were equally fair game to the royal plunderer. He lies in the south-west corner of the crypt, and his monument, which has suffered considerably at the hands of the Puritans, bears the Tudor portcullis and the archbishop's rebus, a hawk or _mort_ standing on a tun. [Illustration: ST. GABRIEL'S CHAPEL.] In the south-east corner, under Anselm's Tower, is a chapel generally known as that of St. John, sometimes as that of St. Gabriel. It has been divided into two compartments by a wall. There are some very interesting paintings[2] on the roof, representing Our Lord in the centre of the angelic host, the Adoration of the Magi, and a figure of St. John; this work is believed to be of the thirteenth century. The central pillar of this chapel, with the curved fluting in the column and the quaintly grotesque devices of the figures carved on the capital, is well worthy of close examination. The grate that we see here was erected by the French Protestants, large numbers of whom fled to England during the persecution which was instituted against their sect in 1561. They were welcomed by Queen Elizabeth, and allowed to settle in Canterbury, where the cathedral crypt was made over to them to use as a weaving factory. It is possible that the ridges in the floor of St. John's Chapel are marks left by their looms, but more evident trace of their occupation is afforded by the inscriptions in French painted on the pillars and arches of the main crypt, and again by the custom which still survives of holding a French service in the south aisle of the crypt; this part has been walled off especially as a place of worship for the descendants of the French exiles, and here service is still held in the French tongue. Alterations have been lately made by which the French service is held in the Black Prince's Chantry, and the part of the crypt formerly walled off has been merged with the rest of the crypt, which is thus completely thrown open. Access to the French church is now obtained from the crypt, and not from outside. This chantry was founded by the Black Prince in 1363 to commemorate his marriage with his cousin Joan, the "Fair Maid of Kent." Here, according to the prince's ordinance, two priests were to pray for his soul, in his lifetime and after; the situation of the two altars, at which the priests prayed, can still be traced. On the vaulting we see the arms of the prince, and of his father, and what seems to be the face of his wife. In return for the permission to institute this chantry, the prince left to the monastery of Canterbury an estate which still belongs to the Chapter, the manor of Fawkes' Hall. This was a piece of land in South Lambeth, which had been granted by King John to a baron called Fawkes. His name still survives in the word "Vauxhall." [2] The above paintings are illustrated in Dart's "History of Canterbury," 1726, and in "Archæologia Cantiana," vol. xviii. [Illustration: IN THE MAIN CRYPT, WITH TOMB OF CARDINAL MORTON (see p. 99).] #The Eastern Crypt.#--The eastern portion of the crypt, under the Trinity Chapel and the corona, is a good deal more lofty than Ernulf's building. We noticed the ascent from the choir and presbytery to the Trinity Chapel, and it is, of course, this greater elevation of the cathedral floor at the east end which accounts for the greater height of the eastern crypt. The effect, both above and below, is exceedingly happy. The most striking thing about the interior of the cathedral is the manner in which it rises--"church piled upon church"--from the nave to the corona, and this characteristic enabled William the Englishman to build a crypt below which has none of the cramped squatness which generally mars the effect of such buildings. "The lofty crypt below," says Willis, "may be considered the unfettered composition of the English architect. Its style and its details are wholly different from those of William of Sens. The work, from its position and office, is of a massive and bold character, but its unusual loftiness prevents it from assuming the nature of a crypt.... There is one detail of this crypt which differs especially from the work above. The abacus of each of the piers, as well as that of each central shaft, is round; but in the whole of the choir the abacuses are either square, or square with the corners cut off." It was in the smaller eastern crypt, which formerly occupied the site of William's building which we are now examining, that Becket was hastily buried after his assassination, when his murderers were still threatening to come and drag his body out, "hang it on a gibbet, tear it with horses, cut it into pieces, or throw it in some pond to be devoured by swine or birds of prey." And from that time until the translation of the relics in 1220, this was the most sacred spot in the cathedral, and it was known, down to Reformation times, as "Becket's tomb." Hither came the earliest pilgrims in the first rush of enthusiasm for the newly-canonized martyr. And here Henry II. performed that penance, which is one of the most striking examples of the Church's power presented by history. We are told that he placed his head and shoulder in the tomb, and there received five strokes from each bishop and abbot who was present, and three from each of the eighty monks. After this castigation he spent the night in the crypt, fasting and barefooted. His penitence and piety were rewarded by the victory gained at Richmond, on that very day, by his forces over William the Lion of Scotland, who was taken prisoner, and afterwards, recognizing the power of the saint, founded the abbey of Aberbrothwick to Saint Thomas of Canterbury. CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORY OF THE SEE. The history of the See of Canterbury may be said to have begun with the coming of Augustine, for there can be no doubt that it is owing to its being the settling-place of the first messengers of the gospel in Saxon England that Canterbury has been the metropolis of the English Church. Pope Gregory, with his usual thoroughness, sent to Augustine, soon after his arrival here, an elaborate scheme for the division of our island into sees, which were to be gradually developed as Christianity spread. According to his arrangement, there were to be two archbishops, one at London and one at York. But we cannot regret that this scheme was not carried out, as an archiepiscopal see is much more picturesquely framed by the hills which encircle Canterbury than it could have been by the dingy vastness of the political and social capital. #Augustine# reached England in 597, and found that his path had been made easy by the fact that Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, was a Christian. He soon effected the conversion of the king himself, and his labours were so rapidly successful that at Christmas, 597, no less than ten thousand Saxons were baptized at the mouth of the Medway. The archiepiscopal pall, and a papal Bull, creating Augustine first English archbishop, were duly sent from Rome, and the royal palace in Canterbury, with an old church--Roman or British--close by, were handed over to him by Ethelbert. The first archbishop died in 605, and was buried, according to the old Roman custom, by the side of the high road which had brought him to Canterbury. A few years later, however, his remains were transferred to the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul, which had then just been completed. Augustine was succeeded by one of the monks who had originally come with him from Rome. The new archbishop's name was #Lawrence#; he had been already consecrated by Augustine in his lifetime. This unusual measure was thought to be necessary, as the Church had hardly yet established itself in a strong position. Indeed, so weak was its hold over its rapidly acquired converts, that when Ethelbert's son, who succeeded his father in 616, backslid into the path of heathendom, the great majority of the people followed the royal example, and Lawrence, together with the Bishops of London and Rochester, prepared to leave England altogether, as a country hopelessly abandoned to paganism. However, the archbishop determined to make one more attempt to maintain his position, and succeeded in terrifying the king, by a pretended miracle, into becoming a Christian. He then recalled the two bishops who had already crossed to France, and on his death, in 619, was succeeded by the Bishop of London, #Mellitus#. Mellitus only held the Primacy till 624, when his place was filled by #Justin#, who also had a brief archiepiscopal life, being succeeded in 627 by #Honorius#. This archbishop held the see for twenty-six years, till 653, and it was not until 655 that his successor was appointed. So far the archbishops had all been foreigners who had come over either with Augustine or with the second company of missionaries who were despatched by Gregory soon after Ethelbert's conversion. In 655, however, a native Englishman, named Frithona, was consecrated by the Saxon Bishop of Rochester, and adopted the name of #Deus Dedit#. He ruled at Canterbury till 664, and after his death the see remained vacant for four years, probably owing to the plague which was then wasting all Europe, and caused the death of Wighard, a Saxon, who had started for Rome to receive his consecration there. But in 668, #Theodore#, a native of Tarsus in Cecilia, was appointed, and was welcomed by the members of the torn and divided English Church. He devoted all his energy to centralizing and consolidating the power of the archbishop, which had been hitherto largely nominal. He journeyed all over England, correcting the prevalent laxity of discipline and establishing the control of the metropolitan authority. He went so far as to interfere with the Archbishopric of York, and with the help of the king attempted to divide it into three sees. He was, moreover, an enthusiastic scholar, and first diffused the study of Greek in England. He had brought a copy of Homer with him, and is said to have established a school of Greek in Canterbury. He died in 690, and after his death there was no archbishop for three years. In 693, one #Brethwald#, an English monk, some time Abbot of Reculver, was appointed to the see. The Saxon Church shows that it had benefited by Theodore's rigorous discipline, in that it was henceforth able to supply its own archbishops; it had now securely established itself all over the country, and the last home of paganism, which, curiously enough, held its own longest in Sussex, had been finally converted in Theodore's time. Brethwald ruled till 731, and was followed by #Tatwin# (731-734) and #Nothelm# (734-740). In 740 #Cuthbert# became archbishop. He seems to have been an interesting personage with a good deal of zeal for reform; he is recorded to have assembled a synod at Cliff to discuss measures for the improvement of the lives and behaviour both of clergy and laity. Probably at his instigation the synod ordained that the Lord's Prayer and the Creed should be taught in the vulgar tongue; he was the first archbishop buried in the cathedral. He was succeeded by #Bregwin#, who held the see from 759 to 765. He was an exception among the series of English primates, being of German origin. During the rule of the next archbishop, #Jaenbert#, an attempt was made to transfer the primacy from Canterbury. Offa, the King of Mercia, had established himself in a position of commanding power, and wishing that the seat of the chief ecclesiastical authority should be within his own dominion, obtained a Bull from Pope Adrian I. by which an Archbishop of Lichfield was created, with a larger see than that of Canterbury. Jaenbert seems to have acquiesced, though doubtless most unwillingly, in this arrangement, but in spite of the central situation of Lichfield, the traditional claims of Canterbury were too strong, and Adulf was the first and last Archbishop of Lichfield. #Athelard#, who succeeded Jaenbert in 790, had the primacy restored to him. The Northmen began their raids on the English coasts at this time, and their ravages probably continued through the days of his successors, #Wulfred#, #Feologild#, #Ceolnoth#, and #Ethelred# (805-889). In 889 the learned #Plegmund#, formerly tutor of Alfred, was by his quondam pupil's influence made Archbishop of Canterbury. It was during his time that the sees of Wells for Somerset and Crediton for Devonshire were established. #Athelm# (914-923). #Wulfhelm# (923-942). #Odo# (942-959), called "the severe," was born a pagan Dane of East Anglia, but having been received into a noble Saxon family, was duly baptized into the faith. He was appointed to the Wiltshire bishopric by Athelstane, and combined in his person the characters of the warlike Dane and the Christian churchman. Like his successor Dunstan, Odo made his chief objects in life the maintenance of the Church's supremacy and the reformation of the married clergy. He bore his archbishopric with much pomp and dignity through the reigns of Edmund, Edred, and Edwy. He was responsible for Dunstan's conduct on the occasion of King Edwy's coronation, though it is not known how far he sanctioned the cruelties subsequently practised on Elgiva. Odo reconstructed and enlarged the cathedral. His immediate successor was #Elsi#, Bishop of Winchester, but this archbishop died while on his way to Rome to receive his pall from the Pope. #Dunstan# (960-988), the next archbishop, continued Odo's crusade against the married clergy, which he conducted relentlessly. In many cases the secular clergy were turned out of their livings to make room for members of the regular monkish orders. Even with these harsh measures and the employment of miracles the archbishop does not seem to have succeeded in enforcing celibacy among the clergy. Dunstan was born in Somersetshire of noble parents, and educated at the Abbey of Glastonbury. He became abbot of that place, and Bishop of Worcester and London. At the coronation of Edwy he intruded himself into the king's presence, and was afterwards obliged to retire to Ghent. He held the See of Canterbury for twenty-seven years, and on his death was buried in the cathedral, where countless miracles are said to have been worked at his tomb. #Ethelgar# (988-989). #Siricius# (990-994). #Ælfric# (995-1005). #Alphege# (1005-1012), Prior of Glastonbury, migrated thence to Bath, where he founded the great abbey, afterwards united to the See of Wells. After holding the See of Winchester for twenty-two years, he was translated to Canterbury. When in 1011 Canterbury was sacked by the Danes, he was carried off a prisoner, and on his refusal to ransom himself, was barbarously murdered by his captors. His body was ransomed by the people of London and buried at St. Paul's Cathedral, whence it was removed to Canterbury by Canute. Subsequently, in the time of Lanfranc, he was canonized. #Living# (1013-1020) also suffered much from the Danes, who from this time continued their incursions until the reign of Canute. #Egelnoth# (1020-1038) is described as the first dean of the Canterbury canons who seem to have acquired an ascendancy over the monks ever since the massacre of the latter by the Danes in 1011. He restored the cathedral after the damages inflicted by the invaders. #Eadsi# (1038-1050). #Robert of Jumièges# (1051-1052) was one of the many Normans who were brought over into England by King Edward the Confessor; he took an active part in the king's quarrel with the great Earl Godwin, and in the reaction which followed against the Normans retired to Jumièges, where he remained till his death. #Stigand# (1052-1070), Bishop of Winchester, held this see conjointly with that of Canterbury. He was remarkable for his avarice. His espousal of the cause of Edgar the Atheling led the Conqueror to regard him with suspicion. William took the archbishop with him when he returned into Normandy, and eventually dispossessed him, along with some other bishops and abbots, at a synod held at Winchester in the year 1070. Stigand was imprisoned at Winchester, where he eventually died, resisting to the last the attempts made by the king to elicit information as to the whereabouts of the vast treasures which he had accumulated and hidden. #Lanfranc# (1070-1089) was the first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury. He was born at Pavia, and educated at the monastery of Bec, in Normandy, then the most remarkable seat of learning existing in Europe. His conspicuous abilities raised him to the position of prior of the monastery. He was subsequently abbot of the new monastery which William of Normandy founded at Caen, and on the deposition of Stigand was called over by that king to complete the subjection and reform of the Anglo-Saxon Church, which task he undertook with much zeal and not a little high-handed procedure. He assisted the king in the removal of the Saxon bishops and the substitution of Normans in their places, as also in the reformation of the great English monasteries which appear to have fallen into considerable disorder. Lanfranc's character was remarkable for its firmness, and brought him into frequent collision with the imperious temper of his royal master. On one occasion Lanfranc insisted on the restoration of twenty-five manors which belonged to the archiepiscopal see, and which had been appropriated by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, William's half-brother. William, however, continued to honour his able servant, and during the king's absence in Normandy, Lanfranc held the office of chief justiciary and vice-regent within the realm, and maintained his independent attitude against all the world, refusing to go to Rome at the summons of the pope. Lanfranc crowned William II., and as long as he lived did much to moderate that monarch's rapacious attacks on the wealth of the Church. He rebuilt the cathedral which had fallen into ruin, and founded the great monastery of Christ Church. He was the author of a celebrated treatise in refutation of the doctrine of Berengarius of Tours, on the subject of the Real Presence, and was present at the council held in Rome by Leo IX., in which Berengarius was condemned. He lies buried in the nave of his cathedral, but the exact spot is not known. #Anselm# (1093-1109) was born at Aosta, and studied under Lanfranc at Bec, when he succeeded him as Prior of the Convent, and subsequently became abbot. He visited England on the invitation of Hugh the Fat, Earl of Chester, and while there was called in by the king and made Archbishop of Canterbury. Rufus had kept the see vacant, and appropriated the revenues of this and many other Church properties, and was only induced by the fear of impending death to appoint Anselm to the see. Anselm was with difficulty persuaded to accept the post, but from that hour posed as the firm champion of the rights of the Church, and the opponent and denouncer of the king's exactions and the general immorality of the times. He refused to receive his pall at the hands of the king, but eventually agreed to take it himself from the high altar of the cathedral at Canterbury. Though deserted by his bishops he held his own against the king until an accusation of failing in his duty to supply troops for the king's Welsh expedition drove him into exile and he made his way to Rome, when his learning created much sensation and was enlisted against the errors of the Greek Church on the subject of the procession of the Holy Ghost. On his accession to the throne, Henry I., as part of his reversal of his brother's ecclesiastical policy recalled Anselm from banishment and filled up the vacant see. But Anselm remained firm on the subject of the rights of the church in the matter of the investiture of the clergy, and refused to consecrate the bishops who had received their investiture from the king, or to do homage or swear fealty to Henry. The king, on his side, was determined to uphold the rights of the crown and the matter was referred to the pope. Anselm had to visit Rome in person, and meeting with but lukewarm support from the pope agreed at last to a compromise, at Bec, in 1106, by which the king surrendered the symbols of the ring and crozier, while retaining his right to the oaths of fealty and homage. Anselm returned to England and spent the last two years of his life in comparative repose: he died at Canterbury, and was buried near Lanfranc, but his remains were afterwards removed to the tower that bears his name. After his death the see was again vacant for five years, and was managed by Ralf, Bishop of Rochester, who was however made archbishop later; he was a disciple of Lanfranc, but as an archbishop was unimportant. #William de Corbeuil# (1123-1136) was the first archbishop who received the title of Papal Legate. He crowned King Stephen after solemnly swearing to support the cause of Matilda, and is said to have died of remorse for his conduct in the matter. He completed the restoration of the cathedral and dedicated it with much pomp and display. #Theobald# (1139-1161), the next archbishop, had been Abbot of Bec, and was a Benedictine. His importance as archbishop was much overshadowed by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen. The pope granted him the title of "Legatus natus," which was retained by his successors until the Reformation. The life of this prelate was one of varying fortunes, and he was twice in exile. He eventually, along with Henry of Blois, took an important part in the final compromise which was effected between the factions of Stephen and Matilda. On his death the see remained vacant for more than a year. #Thomas Becket# (1162-1170) was the son of a London merchant, and was educated among the Augustinian canons of Merton, in Surrey. He came under the patronage of Archbishop Theobald whom he accompanied when the latter visited Rome. While still only a deacon Becket received many ecclesiastical benefices, including the Archdeaconry of Canterbury. About 1155 he was appointed Chancellor, through the influence of Theobald, and thenceforward, until he became archbishop enjoyed the most intimate friendship and confidence of King Henry II. His magnificence and authority during this period of his career exceeded that of the most powerful nobles, and created much sensation in France whither he was dispatched to demand the hand of the Princess Margaret for the king's infant son. When offered the Archbishopric of Canterbury he is said to have warned the king that his acceptance of the office would entail his devotion to God and his order in preference to the interests of the king. He was however persuaded to accept the primacy, and after being duly ordained priest was consecrated archbishop by Henry of Blois, the Bishop of Winchester. From this moment onwards the entire character and attitude of Becket was changed. He gave up his old pomp and magnificence and devoted himself to monastic severity and works of charity: he furthermore insisted on resigning his temporal offices, including that of chancellor, and engaged on his lifelong struggle with the king on the subject of the privileges of the clergy. Since the separation of the bishops from the secular courts by the Conqueror, a gross system of abuse had arisen under which all persons who could read and write could claim exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary secular courts, and insist on being tried only before their own ecclesiastical tribunal. The spiritual courts could inflict no corporal punishment, and the result was that many guilty persons escaped punishment at their hands, and the benefit of clergy came to mean a practical licence to commit crimes. This was naturally in radical opposition to the judicial policy of Henry II., and matters were brought to a climax by the scandalous case of Philip Brois, a murderer, whom Becket rescued from the king's justice and condemned to a totally inadequate sentence. The king determined to clear the question of all doubt, and to this end drew up the famous constitutions of Clarendon in which the clergy was subjected equally with the laity to the common laws of the land. The archbishop took the oath, but refused to sign the constitution, as he insisted on the immunity of the clergy from all secular jurisdiction. On retiring from the council he sought and obtained absolution from his oath at the hands of the pope--Alexander III.--who, insecure in his own position, and unable to dispense with the friendship of the King of England, maintained a vacillating attitude in the quarrel between Becket and Henry. The king now began a systematic persecution of the archbishop. He was pressed with various charges, and finally was ordered to account for the moneys which he had received from the vacant See of Canterbury and other ecclesiastical properties in his capacity as Chancellor. There seems small reason to doubt that the charge was an unjust one, and was merely employed by the king as an instrument of offence against his political adversary. The archbishop came before the council in all the pomp and panoply of his office, and bearing his own cross, as he had been deserted by most of his bishops. After an exciting scene he escaped before any definite judgment was pronounced, and took refuge in France, where he was hospitably and honourably received by King Louis VII. Here he continued his struggle with the King of England. Henry seized upon the revenues of the See of Canterbury, and banished all Becket's kinsmen, dependants, and friends. Becket replied by solemnly denouncing the constitution of Clarendon, and excommunicating all who should enforce them. After further contentions and fruitless negotiations Henry issued a proclamation withdrawing his subjects' obedience to the archbishop, enforced by an oath from all freemen. This oath many of the bishops refused to take. The pope, under temporary pressure from Becket's enemies, authorized the Archbishop of York to crown the young prince Henry: and the supremacy of the See of Canterbury over all England, being thus called in question, became thenceforward one of the principal subjects of dispute between Becket and the king. The action of the king was unpopular, and Henry, seeing that he had gone too far, consented to enter on some sort of reconciliation with Becket, who ventured to return to England. In spite of the manifest danger in which he found himself, Becket, on his return to England, continued his high-handed policy, excommunicating the Archbishop of York and others of his enemies. On hearing of this conduct Henry's fury got the better of him, and his famous exclamation led to the departure of the four knights to Canterbury. They demanded the immediate removal of the excommunication. Becket was hurried into the cathedral by the monks and murdered at the altar. On his death he was immediately canonized, and many miracles occurred at his tomb. Henry himself was ordered to do penance for his death. The fame of his shrine brought countless pilgrims to Canterbury, which was thus for the first time raised to a position of importance throughout the whole of Europe. #Richard# (1174-1184), Prior of Dover, was the next archbishop: he had been present at Becket's murder and helped to convey his body to the crypt. He was somewhat indifferent to spiritual matters, and was chiefly occupied in supporting the supremacy of the See of Canterbury over that of York, a question which led to at least one scene of unseemly disturbance in which the Archbishop of York nearly lost his life. One result of the quarrel was the conferring of the title of "Primate of England," and "Primate of all England," on the Archbishops of York and Canterbury respectively, by the pope. #Baldwin# (1185-1190) was the first monk of the Cistercian order who held the See of Canterbury. He came into collision with the Benedictine monks with whom the election to the primacy had always rested, and whom he attempted in vain to deprive of that privilege in favour of a body of canons at Lambeth, which he purchased for the see. He accompanied Richard Coeur de Lion to the Holy Land, and died in camp before Acre. #Reginald Fitz Jocelyn#, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was next elected, but died before receiving the pall. #Hubert Walter# (1193-1205) was born at West Derham, in Norfolk, and educated by Ranulph de Glanville: he was made Bishop of Salisbury, and accompanied Richard I. to the Holy Land. When archbishop he held the office of Justiciary, but was removed from the latter by a Papal Bull since it compelled him to judge "causes of blood." He became chancellor, and conducted the duties of his high offices in an admirable manner. The laws enacted under Richard I. are said to have been drawn up by him, and he completed the house of regular canons at Lambeth. He was buried in his own cathedral where his effigy still remains. After some disputes on the subject of election, the Pope, Innocent III., was appealed to and decided in favour of #Stephen Langton# (1207-1228) who was an Englishman of spotless character and profound theological learning: he was consecrated at Peterborough by Innocent III. The "fury of King John knew no bounds," he drove the monks of Canterbury to Flanders, and refused to allow Langton to set foot in England. The result of this conduct was the publication of the celebrated Interdict, followed soon after by the personal excommunication of the king and the absolution of his subjects from their oath of allegiance by the pope. Philip of France was ordered to depose the English king, whose crown was declared forfeited. Hard pressed by his enemies, and having alienated his people from his cause, King John was driven to humiliating submission: he promised to receive Langton and to restore the Church property, and finally, formally resigned his crown into the hands of Pandulph, the Papal Legate. Archbishop Langton was received with honour, and King John threw himself at his feet and reconciled himself with the Church. He also ordered a great council to meet at St. Alban's to settle finally the restitution of the church property. Here, however, he was met by an open declaration of the complaints of all classes. Langton, though elevated to the primacy, entirely through the influence of the pope, proved himself a staunch Englishman, and posed as the champion of national liberty against the claims of both pope and king. It was he who produced to the malcontents the Coronation Charter of Henry I., which the barons accepted as a declaration of the views and demands of their party. He was at the head of the barons in their struggle with the king, and his name appears as that of the first witness to the famous Magna Charta. John at once applied to the pope, and obtained from him the abrogation of the charter and a papal order to Langton to excommunicate the king's enemies. This he refused to do. John overran the country with foreign mercenaries, and his cruelties eventually resulted in the barons summoning Louis of France to their assistance. Langton was summoned to Rome to attend the Lateran Council, and was detained there until the deaths of Innocent III. and King John, after which he was permitted to return to his see and passed the remainder of his life in comparative tranquillity, siding strongly with the national party under Hubert de Burgh. He presided at the translation of Becket's remains from the crypt to Trinity Chapel; he rebuilt much of the archiepiscopal palace at Canterbury and he lies buried in his own cathedral. He was the first who divided the Bible into chapters. #Richard de Wethershed# (1229-1231), Chancellor of Lincoln, was next appointed, but died on his way back from Italy. After three more elections by the monks which were all set aside by the pope, Honorius III., the monks consented to accept #Edmund Rich# (1234-1240), treasurer of Salisbury: he was the son of a merchant of Abingdon, and was educated at Oxford University. He had a great reputation for learning and piety. He came into disfavour with the king by his opposition to the marriage of his sister Eleanor to Simon de Montfort. His sympathies were all on the side of the national party: he procured the downfall of Des Roches and maintained the struggle against the foreign favourites and papal exactions for which the reign of Henry III. is notorious. At length he retired to the Cistercian Abbey at Pontigny, which had formerly sheltered Becket and Langton, in despair at the condition of England and of her Church. It was during his time that the great movements of the Dominican and Franciscan friars reached England and though the archbishop never actually joined their ranks, he was doubtless much influenced by their teaching and example, and was himself an itinerant preacher after leaving Oxford. He was canonized six years after his death. He was succeeded by #Boniface of Savoy# (1241-1270), one of the king's uncles, whose violence and warlike bearing made him a strange contrast to his predecessor. His term of office was one long history of papal exactions from the English clergy, and of the tyranny of foreigners, creatures of Henry III., over the rights of the nation. The revenues of the See of Canterbury and the enormous sums wrung from the clergy were squandered on foreign wars, and the archbishop himself resided abroad. Boniface took a leading part in the spoliation of the English Church: he was one of the king's council at the so-called "Mad Parliament." #Robert Kilwardby# (1273-1278) was nominated by the pope, after a fruitless election of their subprior by the monks. He was a very learned Dominican, educated at Oxford and Paris. #John Peckam# (1279-1292) was, like his predecessor, nominated by the pope after an education at Oxford and Paris; he also was a Franciscan. He was at first a staunch supporter of King Edward I., whom he accompanied to Wales. It is to be regretted that he supported the king in his cruelties to the conquered Welsh and in the expulsion of the Jews. He firmly defended the privileges of his see against first, the Archbishop of York, and secondly, the king. It was in his time (1279) that the famous Statute of Mortmain was passed. The exactions of the papacy had been considerably lessened, and the Church was beginning to recover its wealth and national character. Peckam died at Mortlake, and was buried in the transept of the martyrdom at Canterbury, where his tomb and effigy still remain. #Robert Winchelsea# (1292-1313) was next nominated, king and clergy being unanimous on this occasion, and at once proceeded to Rome, where he remained some time before returning to England. Meanwhile, Edward I. had demanded the enormous subsidy of one half their annual revenue from the clergy. Winchelsea is said to have been responsible for the celebrated Bull _Clericis laicis_ issued by Boniface VIII. in defence of the property of the Church. On his return home the archbishop continued to lead the clergy in their opposition to the king's demands, and paid the penalty in the seizure of his whole estate for the king's use. He retired with a single chaplain to a country parsonage, discharged the humble duties of a priest, and lived on the alms of his flocks. When the war broke out Edward sought to propitiate the clergy by restoring the archbishop to his barony, and summoning him to a parliament at Westminster, where the clergy abandoned their own ground of ecclesiastical immunity from taxation and took shelter under the liberties of the realm, thus identifying themselves with the popular cause in their opposition to the exactions of the king. On his return from Flanders Edward accused Winchelsea of conspiring against him in his absence, and the archbishop was again deprived of all his possessions, and, after many privations, escaped to France. On the accession of Edward II. he was recalled and restored to his honour, but subsequently became again the centre of revolution, and himself excommunicated the king's favourite, Gaveston. He nevertheless continued undisturbed in the discharge of his office until his death. During his prosperous years Winchelsea was famous for his charities and liberality. After his death he was regarded as a saint, and his shrine in the south-east transept was removed by the commissioners of Henry VIII. at the same time as that of Saint Thomas à Becket. #Walter Reynolds# (1313-1327) was appointed by the pope at the request of the king, who had set aside an election of the monks. He was tutor and subsequently Chancellor to Edward II. After Gaveston's death he became Keeper of the Great Seal. He obtained many bulls of privilege from Rome. In spite of the favour he had received from Edward II. he deserted him in his troubles. His tomb remains in the south aisle of the choir. #Simon Mepeham# (1328-1333) was elected by the monks and consecrated at Avignon. He was opposed in his visitation by Grandisson, the powerful Bishop of Exeter, who refused him admission to his cathedral by force. He was unsupported by the pope, and is said to have died of a broken heart in consequence. His tomb forms the screen of St. Anselm's Chapel. #John Stratford# (1333-1348) was appointed by the pope at the request of Edward III. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, and became Archdeacon of Lincoln and Bishop of Winchester. He was made Lord Treasurer by Edward II., to whose cause he remained faithful during the short-lived triumph of Isabella and the desertion of the archbishop. Edward III. made him Lord Chancellor, in which office he was succeeded by his own brother, Robert. Stratford had endeavoured to dissuade the king from entering on the French war, and the king, hard pressed for money, had the archbishop arraigned for high treason. Stratford fled from Lambeth to Canterbury, where he excommunicated his accusers. He subsequently returned to London and sheltered himself, not under his ecclesiastical immunity, but under his privileges of parliament as a member of the House of Peers, a significant landmark in the history of the English Church. The quarrel between the king and the archbishop was amicably settled. Stratford held exalted opinions on the subject of clerical superiority, and his arraignment, without the support of the pope, was a decisive blow against the power of the Church. In his time, also, a layman was for the first time appointed to the office of Chancellor, and Edward III. wrote a letter to the pope protesting against the frequent papal nominations to vacant English sees, which was followed up by the Statute of Provisors in 1350. Stratford died at Mayfield in Sussex, and was buried in his own cathedral, where his monument still remains. #Thomas Bradwardine# (1349) was consecrated after election by the monks of Christ Church after the death of John Ufford, the king's nominee, who died of the Black Death before consecration. Bradwardine had been the king's confessor. He was educated at Merton College, and was one of the best geometers of his time, besides being the author of an important tract against Pelagianism. #Simon Islip# (1349-1366), the king's secretary, built most of the palace at Mayfield, and completed that at Maidstone. He founded and endowed Canterbury Hall, now forming one of the quadrangles of Christ Church, Oxford, in which he endeavoured to bring together the monastic and secular priests. #Simon Langham# (1366-1368) had been Bishop of Ely, Treasurer of England, and Lord Chancellor, and also Prior and Abbot of Westminster. On being appointed a cardinal by the Pope Urban V., he resigned his archbishopric, the temporal powers and revenues of which had been seized by the king, and died at Avignon. #William Whittlesea# (1368-1374), a nephew of Islip, was translated from Worcester. #Simon of Sudbury# (1375-1381) was Chancellor of Salisbury and Bishop of London, whence he was transferred to Canterbury. As chancellor he proposed the famous poll tax, which supplied the motive for Wat Tyler's rebellion, and, as archbishop, caused to be imprisoned the priest, John Ball. He was captured in the tower, and beheaded during Wat Tyler's rebellion; his body was eventually removed to Canterbury, and buried in the south aisle of the choir. He built the west gate at Canterbury, and a great part of the city walls. #William Courtenay# (1381-1396) was, like his predecessor, translated from the See of London. In a synod he condemned twenty-four articles in the writing of Wycliffe, who was unjustly held responsible for the recent rebellion. Much persecution of Wycliffe's followers ensued. Courtenay succeeded in establishing his right to visit his province, although opposed by the Bishops of Exeter and Salisbury. His monument adjoins that of the Black Prince. #Thomas Arundel# (1396-1414) was translated from the See of York. He was involved in the conspiracy for which his brother, the Earl of Arundel, was executed, and was himself exiled. He was restored after Bolingbroke's success, and received the abdication of Richard II. In 1400 the statute _De haeretico comburendo_ was enacted, and Arundel began to put it in force against the Lollards. He condemned Sawtree, the first English Protestant martyr, to be burnt, and took a prominent part in the attack upon Sir John Oldcastle. In the parliament of 1407 he defended the clergy against the attempts of the Commons to shift the burden of taxation upon the wealth of the Church. #Henry Chichele# (1414-1443) was educated at New College, Oxford. He became successively Archdeacon of Dorset and of Salisbury, and Bishop of St. David's. He supported Henry V. in his unjust claim to the crown of France, and promised large subsidies from the Church for its support. There is no doubt that this was a successful attempt at diverting the popular attention from threatened attempts on the wealth of the Church. He was reproached by the Pope Martin V. with lack of zeal in the interests of the papacy in not procuring the reversal of the statutes of provisors and of præmunire by which, amongst others, the papal power was held in check in England. Among his foundations are the colleges of St. Bernard (afterwards St. John's), and All Souls, at Oxford, and a library at Canterbury for the monks of Christ Church. In his old age he was stricken with remorse for his sin in instigating the French war, and applied to the pope for permission to resign his see. Before a reply was received the archbishop died, after holding the see for nearly thirty years, a longer time than any of his predecessors. His tomb, constructed by himself during his lifetime, is in the north aisle of the choir, and is kept in repair by the Fellows of All Souls. #John Stafford# (1443-1452), Bishop of Bath and Wells, was nominated by the pope with the king's consent on the recommendation of Chichele. He also held the office of chancellor for ten years, but was undistinguished in either office. He lies in the south aisle of the choir. #John Kemp# (1452-1454), Archbishop of York, succeeded. He was educated at Merton College, and was Archdeacon of Durham and Bishop of Rochester, Chichester, and London. He died at an advanced age, after a very brief primacy, and was buried in the north choir aisle. #Thomas Bourchier# (1454-1486), Bishop of Ely, was next elected by the monks. He was a great-grandson of Edward III. He was educated at Oxford, of which university he became chancellor; he subsequently held the sees of Worcester and Ely. His lot fell upon difficult times, and he endeavoured to maintain a position of neutrality in the struggle between the two Roses, and at last effected their union by performing the marriage of Henry VII. with Elizabeth of York. He died soon after, and his tomb remains at Canterbury. He was bishop for fifty-one years, out of which he held the primacy for thirty-two years. He actively encouraged education, and helped to introduce printing into this country. #John Morton# (1486-1500) was, like his predecessor, translated from Ely. He was educated at Balliol College. Richard of Gloucester, after making vain overtures to him, removed him from his office and committed him to the Tower, and afterwards to Brecknock Castle, whence he escaped and joined the Earl of Richmond on the Continent. After Bosworth he was recalled, and on Bourchier's death was made archbishop. In 1493 he obtained a cardinal's hat. In 1487 he was made Lord Chancellor, and continued for thirteen years, until his death, in this office and in the confidence of the king, whom he assisted in his system for controlling the great feudal barons and in the exaction of "benevolence." His famous dilemma propounded to the merchants was known as "Morton's fork." It was he who prevailed upon the Pope to canonize Archbishop Anselm. His tomb, constructed during his lifetime, may be seen in the crypt of his cathedral. #Henry Dean# (1501-1503) was translated from Salisbury; he held the Great Seal, with the title of Lord Keeper, after the death of Morton. #William Warham# (1503-1532) was born of a good Hampshire family, and educated at Winchester and New College. He was sent to Burgundy on a mission to protest against the support of Perkin Warbeck by the Duchess Margaret. He held the offices of Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor, Master of the Rolls, and Bishop of London. He crowned King Henry VIII., and protested from the first against his marriage with Catherine. He was a great rival of Wolsey, and retired from the court until the fall of the cardinal. In the disputes of the time he embraced the side of the old religion, and gave some countenance to Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent. The last part of his life was devoted to the cares of his diocese and to letters, which he cultivated diligently. He was a personal friend of Erasmus, whom he induced to visit England. His tomb remains in the Transept of the Martyrdom. #Thomas Cranmer# (1533-1556) may be considered the first Protestant archbishop. From the first he would only accept the archbishopric as coming from the king without intervention of the pope. He was born of a good family in Nottinghamshire, and was educated at Cambridge, where he became fellow of Jesus. He was first brought to the king's notice by his suggestion that the question of Catherine's divorce might be settled without reference to the pope. The king set him to write on the subject, and he was rewarded with the Archdeaconry of Taunton. In 1530 he accompanied the Earl of Wiltshire to the papal court, and was there offered preferment by the pope. He married the niece of Osiander, who had himself written on the subject of the divorce. On Warham's death he succeeded him in the primacy, and returned to England. As archbishop, Cranmer pronounced the divorce against Catherine and crowned Anne Boleyn, and was sponsor to the Princess Elizabeth, whom he baptized. After Anne Boleyn's trial he pronounced her marriage void, and acted as her confessor in the Tower. Throughout his primacy Cranmer actively supported the reforming party. In 1539 he was one of the commissioners for inspecting into the matter of religion. In 1545 he was accused of heresy by the opposite party led by Gardiner, and would have fallen but for the support of the king, who befriended Cranmer throughout his life, and sent for him to attend his death-bed. Great changes had occurred at Canterbury. Becket's shrine had been destroyed, and a dean and twelve canons were established in place of the old monastery of Christ Church, which was dissolved. Under Henry's will Cranmer was appointed one of the Regents of the Kingdom and Executors of the Will, and it was he who crowned Edward VI. who, like Elizabeth, was his godchild. Throughout the reign of Edward, Cranmer earnestly supported the cause of the Reformation. The Six Articles were repealed and the first Book of Common Prayer was issued. On the death-bed of Edward, Cranmer signed the king's will, in which he appointed Lady Jane Grey his successor. On the accession of Queen Mary he was at once ordered to appear before the council and within a month was committed to the Tower. In November, 1553, he was pronounced guilty of high treason, but was pardoned on this count, and it was decided to proceed against him as a heretic. In 1554 he was sent to Oxford, with Latimer and Ridley, where he remained two years in prison and was condemned as a heretic by two successive commissions. After the death of Latimer and Ridley, Cranmer was degraded and deprived. It was after this that, in the hopes of saving his life, he made his famous recantation. He was brought into St. Mary's, and in his address to the people withdrew his recantation and declared that his right hand which had signed it should be the first to burn. He was hurried to the place of execution opposite Balliol College, and, when the pyre was lighted, held his right hand in the flames till it was consumed, and died, calling on the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit. #Reginald Pole# (1556-1558) a near connection of Henry VIII. then succeeded. He was born in Worcestershire and was educated by the Carthusians at Shene and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was early advanced to the Deanery of Exeter and other preferments. On leaving Oxford he visited the universities of France and Italy and returned to England in 1525. Henry attempted in vain to secure Pole's support on the divorce question, and on the appearance of his book, "Pro Unitate Ecclesiastica," he was sent for by the king, and when he refused to come, an act of attainder was passed against him. In 1537 Pole was induced to accept a cardinal's hat. It is said that he was most unwilling to do so on the ground that he contemplated marrying the Princess Mary and seating himself on the English throne. He took an active part in promoting the Pilgrimage of Grace and the second rising in 1541. He remained in Italy until the death of Edward VI. On the accession of Mary he returned to England as papal legate after the question of his marriage with Mary had been again discussed and set aside through the influence of the Emperor Charles V. On Cranmer's execution Pole was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. As legate he absolved the Parliament and made a solemn entry into London. For the next three years Pole was in sole management of the ecclesiastical affairs of England, and was consenting to the persecutions which disgraced the reign of Mary. He was at one time deprived of his legatine authority by Pope Paul IV. who had wished for the elevation of Gardiner to the primacy. The archbishop submitted to the pope and was again appointed legate shortly before his death which occurred about the same time as that of Mary. He was buried in the corona at Canterbury, where his tomb yet remains. He was the last Archbishop of Canterbury to be buried in his own cathedral, until the recent interment of Dr. Benson. #Matthew Parker# (1559-1575) was born of an old Norfolk family and educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Wolsey invited him to become a fellow of Christ Church, his new foundation at Oxford, but this he declined. After various other offices he was appointed to the Deanery of Lincoln by Edward VI. On the accession of Mary he was deprived of all his offices as a married priest, and lived privately until the accession of Elizabeth, who made him archbishop. He was duly elected by the new Chapter of Canterbury, and held his post during a most difficult time with marvellous tact and judgment. Religious toleration for its own sake was an idea yet unknown, but Parker directed that great caution should be observed in administering the oath of supremacy to those of the clergy who still favoured the old religion. It is much to his credit that he managed to preserve such good relations with the queen in face of Elizabeth's prejudice against the marriage of the clergy. He was an enlightened patron of learning, and did much to encourage all branches of art. #Edmund Grindall# (1576-1583) was born at St. Bees and educated at Cambridge, where he became Master of Pembroke Hall. He was Chaplain to Edward VI. During the troubles of Mary's reign he lived in Germany, and on Elizabeth's accession became the first Protestant Bishop of London. Thence he was removed to York and in 1575 was appointed as archbishop. He was inclined to view the Puritans with more leniency than his predecessor and always refused to forbid the prophesyings, or meetings of the clergy for discussing the meaning of scripture, which Elizabeth disliked so much, and was in consequence deprived of his jurisdiction. He went blind before his death and was buried at Croydon. #John Whitgift# (1583-1604) was born at Great Grimsby and educated at Cambridge, where John Bradford was his tutor: he became one of Elizabeth's chaplains and Master of Pembroke Hall and of Trinity. He wrote an answer to Cartwright's "Admonition" and was preferred to the Deanery of Lincoln and Bishopric of Worcester. After Grindall's death he was translated to Canterbury. From this date his severity towards the Puritans increased. He insisted that every minister of the Church should subscribe to three points: the queen's supremacy, the Common Prayer, and the Thirty-nine Articles, and enforced his principle with much vigour, contrary to the advice of the more enlightened Lord Burleigh. The severity of these measures called into existence the "Martin Marprelate" libels and produced much dissatisfaction and suffering among the more Puritanical clergy, which was by no means lessened by the accession of James, who, on his way to London rejected a petition signed by more than one thousand Puritan ministers. Whitgift was buried at Croydon where he founded a school and hospital. #Richard Bancroft# (1604-1610) was born near Manchester and educated at Jesus College, Oxford. He became one of Elizabeth's chaplains, and Bishop of London, whence he was translated to Canterbury. He was even more severe than his predecessor against the Puritans, and was a most stern champion of conformity. He advocated the king's absolute power beyond the law and attempted to establish episcopacy in Scotland. He died at Lambeth and was buried in the parish church there. #George Abbot# (1610-1633) was born at Guildford and educated at Balliol College. He assisted in establishing union between the Scotch and English Churches and was rewarded with the Bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry. Thence he was translated to London, and on the death of Bancroft was appointed to the primacy. In contrast to his predecessor he connived at some irregularities of discipline in the Puritanical clergy. At the same time he was a zealous Calvinist and hater of popery, and disapproved of those who preached up the arbitrary power of the king. These latter views rendered him unpopular with the courtiers and the party of Laud. The accidental death of a keeper at the hands of the archbishop was utilized against him by his enemies and he was with difficulty restored to his archiepiscopal functions. On refusing to licence a sermon by Dr. Sibthorpe, asserting the king's right to tax his subjects without their consent, he was obliged to retire to his palace of Ford, near Canterbury. He assisted at the coronation of Charles I., but never managed to win the favour of that monarch. He died at Croydon, and was buried at Guildford, where his tomb and effigy still remain. #William Laud# (1633-1645) was born at Reading, and educated at St. John's College, Oxford. At the university he soon became conspicuous for his hatred of the Puritans and his devotion to High Church doctrines. He became President of St. John's in spite of the opposition of Archbishop Abbot. He became successively one of the royal chaplains, Dean of Gloucester, Bishop of St. David's, Bath and Wells, and London. He acted as Dean of Westminster at Charles I.'s coronation. He was made Dean of the Chapel Royal, Chancellor of Oxford, and a Privy Councillor of Scotland. On Abbot's death he was elevated to the primacy, and is said to have refused the offer of a cardinal's hat. As archbishop he was responsible for the general Church persecution which produced his own unpopularity and downfall, and was one of the main causes of the Civil War. Prosecutions for non-conformity were enforced with the utmost severity. The courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were brought to bear on the Puritans, and Laud became universally detested. The superiority of the king over the law was openly preached, and the Irish and Scotch Puritans were alienated by the severity of the measures taken against them. On the common idea of popular government, the Puritans were driven into coalition and identification with the national party, while the king, court, bishops, and judges represented the High Church movement and the doctrine of the king's absolute authority. In 1639 the palace at Lambeth was attacked, but the archbishop was removed to Whitehall and escaped for the time. In 1640, however, he was impeached for high treason, and confined in the Tower. Various charges were brought against him and fines inflicted, and his property was seized and sold or destroyed for the use of the commonwealth. The charge of high treason could not be legally established, and a bill of attainder was passed against him in 1645. He was eventually beheaded on Tower Hill, at the age of seventy-one years; his remains were interred at Barking, but subsequently removed to the chapel of St. John's College at Oxford. His conduct has been differently judged by his friends and enemies. He built the greater part of the inner quadrangle of St. John's, and presented a large collection of important manuscripts to the university. In his time the archiepiscopal palace at Canterbury was ruined by the Puritans, and on the Restoration an Act was passed dispensing the archbishops from restoring it. From this time they have had no official residence in Canterbury. #William Juxon# (1660-1663) was born at Chichester, and educated, like his predecessor, at St. John's College, Oxford, where he attracted the attention of Laud. He became successively President of St. John's, Dean of Worcester, Bishop of Hereford, and Bishop of London. He also became Lord Treasurer, a post which had been held by no churchman since the days of Henry VII., and was the last instance of any of the great offices of State being filled by an ecclesiastic. He attended Charles I. on the occasion of his execution. On the Restoration he became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died three years afterwards. He lies in the chapel of St. John's College. #Gilbert Sheldon# (1663-1677) was educated at Oxford, and became Fellow and Warden of All Souls' College. He was a strong supporter of the king during the Civil War. He was deprived of his wardenship and imprisoned by the Parliamentarian commissioners when they visited Oxford. He retired to Derbyshire until the Restoration, when he was restored to his wardenship; he was made Dean of the Chapel Royal, and succeeded Juxon in the See of London. In 1661 he assisted at the discussion of the liturgy between the Presbyterian and Episcopal divines known as the Savoy Conference. In 1663 he succeeded Juxon in the primacy, and in 1667 was elected Chancellor of Oxford. He built the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, which building is an early work of Sir Christopher Wren's. He offended the court party by his open disapproval of the king's morals, and retired in 1669 to his palace at Croydon, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. He was buried at the parish church at Croydon, where his tomb and effigy still remain. #William Sancroft# (1678-1691) was born at Fresingfield, in Suffolk, and educated at St. Edmundsbury and at Cambridge, where he became Fellow of Emmanuel College. He was deprived of his fellowship in 1649, and retired to the Continent, where he remained until the restoration of Charles II. He then returned to England, and subsequently became Master of Emmanuel College, and Dean of York, and of St. Paul's, and Archdeacon of Canterbury, and was raised to the primacy by Charles II., whose death-bed he attended. In the reign of James he was at the head of the seven bishops who presented the famous petition against the Declaration of Indulgence, for which they were committed to the Tower, tried, and acquitted amidst immense popular excitement. After James's flight, Sancroft acted as the head of the council of peers who took upon themselves the administration of the government of the country. His plan was to retain James nominally on the throne, while placing the reins of government in the hands of a regent. He refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, considering himself bound by his former oath to James II. He was accordingly suspended and deprived, and when ejected by law from Lambeth he retired to his small ancestral property at Fresingfield, where he died and was buried. #John Tillotson# (1691-1694) was born of Puritan parents at Sowerby, in Yorkshire, and was educated at Cambridge. During the Protectorate he had followed the teachings of the Presbyterians, but on the Restoration he submitted to the Act of Uniformity. He held among other posts those of Preacher at Lincoln's Inn and Dean of Canterbury, and enjoyed the intimate confidence of William and Mary. On the deprivation of Sancroft he was reluctantly induced to accept the primacy, which he was destined to hold only for some three years. He died at Lambeth after this short term of office, and was buried in the Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry. As a theologian Tillotson was remarkable for his latitudinarianism, and he was one of the finest preachers who have ever lived. #Thomas Tenison# was born at Cottenham, in Cambridgeshire, and educated at Cambridge. His fame as a preacher procured him the Archdeaconry of London and the Bishopric of Lincoln, in which diocese he did admirable work. He died at Lambeth, and lies buried in the parish church there. #William Wake# (1716-1737) was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and became Dean of Exeter and Bishop of Lincoln. He was gifted with great learning, and took an active part in the controversy with Atterbury on the subject of the rights of convocation. #John Potter# (1737-1747) was the son of a linendraper at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, and was educated at University College, Oxford, becoming Fellow of Lincoln and afterwards Bishop of Oxford. He was a learned divine and writer. Like his predecessor he was buried in the parish church at Croydon. #Thomas Herring# (1747-1757) and #Matthew Hutton# (1757-1758) were both translated to Canterbury from York. #Thomas Secker# (1758-1768) was born of dissenting parents near Newark. At the instance of Butler, afterwards the famous Bishop of Durham, he joined the Church of England and abandoned the study of medicine, and took holy orders. He held many posts in succession, including the Bishoprics of Bristol and Oxford. He died and was buried at Lambeth, where his portrait, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, still remains. #Frederick Cornwallis# (1768-1783) was the seventh son of Charles, 4th Lord Cornwallis. He was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1750, and in 1766 became Dean of St. Paul's. On October 6th, 1768, he was enthroned Archbishop of Canterbury. In Hasted's "Kent" we find him commended highly for having abolished that "disagreeable distinction of his chaplains dining at a separate table." More renowned for his affability and courteous behaviour than for learning, he entertained at times with semi-regal state; but once fell into some disfavour because "his lady was in the habit of holding _routs_ on Sundays." #John Moore# (1783-1805) became Dean of Canterbury in 1771. He was consecrated Bishop of Bangor in 1775, and thence translated to the archiepiscopal see in 1783. Although a promoter of Sunday-schools and foreign missions, he did not escape reproach for paying undue regard to the interests of his family. It has been well said that during his tenure of office and that of his immediate successor, the sinecures and pluralities held by the highest clergy were worthy of the mediæval period. #Charles Manners-Sutton# (1805-1828) was grandson of John, 3rd Duke of Rutland. In 1791 he was made Dean of Peterborough, and Bishop of Norwich in 1792. In 1794 he was appointed Dean of Windsor, and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1805 owing to Court influence, which outweighed the hostility of Pitt, who wished to appoint his own nominee. As a prelate he was distinguished for many virtues and qualities befitting his office. He was president at the foundation of the National Society, and worked strenuously to advance the cause of education which it represents. While he held the primacy a fund which had been accumulated from the sale of Croydon Palace was applied to the purchase of Addington, where he lies buried. #William Howley# (1828-1848) was tutor to the Prince of Orange (afterwards William II. of Holland) then successively Regius Professor of Divinity of Oxford, Bishop of London, 1813, and archbishop, 1823. He played a prominent part in politics and state ceremonials and marked the transition between the new _régime_, and the old princely days of the archbishoprics. #John Bird Sumner# (1848-1862) was brother of Dr. C. Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. In 1823 he was appointed Bishop of Chester, and in 1848 was promoted to the See of Canterbury. He published a large number of works, and by his activity and simplicity of life is "remembered everywhere as realizing that ideal of the Apostolic ministry which he had traced in his earliest and most popular work."[3] [3] Diocesan Histories: "Canterbury," by R.C. Jenkins, M.A. 1880. #Charles Thomas Longley# (1862-1868) was the son of a Recorder of Rochester. In 1836 he was consecrated the first bishop of the newly founded See of Ripon, translated to Durham in 1856, became Archbishop of York in 1860, and in 1862 was transferred to Canterbury. Perhaps the most memorable incidents in a memorable career are the Pan-Anglican Synod held at Lambeth in 1867, and his establishment of the Diocesan Society for Church Building. #Archibald Campbell Tait# (1868-1882) was son of Craufurd Tait, Esq., a Scots attorney. He succeeded Arnold as Master of Rugby in 1842, and became Dean of Carlisle in 1850. He presided over the Pan-Anglican Synod in 1867, and in 1868 succeeded to the archbishopric. "Memorials of Catherine and Craufurd Tait" is a book so well known that even the barest sketch of his career here would be superfluous. #Edward White Benson# (1882-1896), son of Edward White Benson, Esq., of Birmingham Heath, was a master of Rugby. He was Head Master of Wellington from 1858 to 1872, Prebendary and Chancellor of Lincoln in 1872, was consecrated the first bishop of the newly created See of Truro in 1877, and translated to Canterbury in 1883. He was buried in the Cathedral on October 16th, 1896, in a secluded corner of the north aisle, immediately under the north-west tower, the first archbishop who was interred in the cathedral of the metropolitan see since Reginald Pole in 1558. #Frederick Temple# (1896- ), the present archbishop, is son of the late Major Octavius Temple. He was Head Master of Rugby, 1858 to 1869, consecrated the sixty-first Bishop of Exeter in 1869, translated to London in 1885, and to Canterbury in 1896. His share in the famous "Essays and Reviews," and the many active works he has instituted, are too well known to need comment. PLANS OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Plan of Saxon Cathedral (from Willis).] [Illustration: Fig. 2. The Cathedral in 1774. The lighter shading shows the conjectural termination of Lanfranc's church (from Willis).] REFERENCES TO FIG. 2. Altars. E. Holy Cross. F. St. Mary the Virgin. H. St. Michael's (below). All Saints (above). M. St. Benedict (below). St. Blaise (above). X. High Altar. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of Canterbury Cathedral at the present time.] REFERENCES TO FIG. 3. EXTERIOR. A. West Door. B. South Door. CC. Nave. D. South Aisle. E. North Aisle. G. Tower, N.W. H. Tower, S.W. J. Transept, S.W. K. Martyrdom, or Transept, N.W. L. Central Tower. M. Choir. N. South Aisle. O. North Aisle. P. Transept, S.E. Q. Transept, N.E. R. Presbytery. S. Altar. T. Trinity Chapel. U. Aisle ditto. W. Corona. X. Anselm's Tower. Y. Vestry. Z. Treasury. INTERIOR. 1. Doorway to Cloister. 3. " to Warrior's Chapel. 4. " to Dean's Chapel. 5. " to Crypt. 6. " to Cloister. 7. Warham's Mt. (Monument [Transcriber's Note]) 8. Peckham's Mt. 9. Staircase. 10. Lady Holland's Mt. 11, 12 and 13. Stairs. 15. Walter's Mt. 16. Reynold's Mt. 17. Kemp's Mt. 18. Stratford's Mt. 19. Sudbury's Mt. 20. Mepeham's Mt. 21. Black Prince's Mt. 22. Courtney's Mt. 23. Chatillon's Mt. 24. Theobald's Mt. 25. Pole's Mt. 26. Dean Wotton's Mt. 27. Henry IV.'s Mt. 28. Henry IV.'s Chantry. 29. Bourchier's Mt. 30. Chichele's Mt. 31. Stairs to Crypt. 35. Library. 38. Chapter-House. 39. Cloister Square. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names, and dialect or obsolete word spelling, has been maintained as in the original. 
22880	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 22880-h.htm or 22880-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/8/8/22880/22880-h/22880-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/8/8/22880/22880-h.zip) Transcriber's Notes: Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been surrounded by pound signs ('#'). Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names and dialect or obsolete word spellings have been maintained as in the original. A SHORT ACCOUNT OF ROMSEY ABBEY A Description of the Fabric and Notes on the History of the Convent of Ss. Mary & Ethelfleda by THE REV. T. PERKINS Rector of Turnworth, Dorset Author of "Amiens," "Rouen," "Wimborne and Christchurch," Etc. With XXXII Illustrations [Illustration: ROMSEY ABBEY FROM THE EAST] [Illustration: Abbess's Seal] London George Bell and Sons 1907 Chiswick Press: Charles Whittingham and Co. Tooks Court, Chancery Lane, London. PREFACE The architectural and descriptive part of this book is the result of careful personal examination of the fabric, made when the author has visited the abbey at various times during the last twenty years. The illustrations are reproduced from photographs taken by him on the occasions of these visits. The historical information has been derived from many sources. Among these may especially be mentioned "An Essay descriptive of the Abbey Church of Romsey," by C. Spence, the first edition of which was published in 1851; the small official guide sold in the church, and "Records of Romsey Abbey, compiled from manuscript and printed records," by the Rev. Henry G. D. Liveing, M.A., Vicar of Hyde, Winchester, 1906. This last-named work contains all that is at present known, or that is likely to be known, of the history of the abbey from its foundation early in the ninth century up to the year 1558. To this book the reader who desires fuller information and minuter details than could be given in the following pages is referred. The thanks of the writer are due to the late and present Vicars for kind permission to examine the building, and to take photographs of it from any point of view he desired. TURNWORTH RECTORY, BLANDFORD, DORSET. _March, 1907._ CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE BUILDING 15 II. THE EXTERIOR 27 III. THE INTERIOR 39 IV. THE ABBESSES OF ROMSEY 67 VICARS OF ROMSEY 79 INDEX 81 DIMENSIONS OF THE ABBEY CHURCH 82 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ROMSEY ABBEY FROM THE EAST _Frontispiece_ ABBESS'S SEAL _Title-page_ APSIDAL CHAPEL, SOUTH TRANSEPT 14 THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST 19 JUNCTION OF NORMAN AND EARLY ENGLISH WORK 21 VIEW FROM THE NORTH-WEST 23 THE ABBESS'S DOOR 26 THE WEST END AND SOUTH TRANSEPT 29 THE SOUTH TRANSEPT FROM THE WEST 31 THE SAXON ROOD 33 THE CHOIR, SOUTH SIDE 35 THE NAVE, NORTH SIDE 38 CYLINDRICAL PIER: NORTH NAVE ARCADE 40 THE CLERESTORY OF NAVE 41 EARLY ENGLISH BAYS OF THE NAVE 43 THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR 44 TRIFORIUM ARCH IN THE NORTH TRANSEPT 45 THE INTERIOR FROM THE WEST 46 BASE OF A PIER IN THE NAVE 47 ARCADING IN THE TOWER 48 IN THE RINGERS' CHAMBER 49 THE WEST WALL OF NORTH TRANSEPT 50 THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE 51 THE AMBULATORY 52 THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE 55 SAXON CARVING, SOUTH AISLE 56 THE NORTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE CROSSING 57 TOMB AND EFFIGY IN THE SOUTH TRANSEPT 61 THE NORTH AISLE OF THE NAVE 63 THE SOUTH TRANSEPT 66 PIER IN THE NORTH NAVE ARCADE 73 PLAN _End_ [Illustration: APSIDAL CHAPEL, SOUTH TRANSEPT] ROMSEY ABBEY CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE BUILDING The etymology of the name Romsey has been much disputed. There can be no doubt about the meaning of the termination "ey"--island--which we meet with under different spellings in many place-names, such as Athelney, Ely, Lundy, Mersea and others, for Romsey stands upon an island, or rather group of islands, formed by the division of the river Test into a number of streams, which again flow together to the south of the town, and at last, after a course of about seven miles, empty themselves into Southampton Water. But several derivations have been suggested for the first syllable of the name. Some writers derive it from Rome, and regard Romsey as a hybrid word taking the place of "Romana insula," the first word having been shortened and the second translated into Old English, or Saxon as some prefer to call it. Now it is true that there were several important Roman stations in the neighbourhood: Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum), Brige (Broughton), Venta Belgarum (Winchester), and Clausentum (near Southampton), and in passing to and fro between these the Roman legions must frequently have marched either through or near to the site of Romsey. Roman coins found in the immediate neighbourhood clearly show that the place was inhabited during the Roman occupation. Another derivation is the Celtic word "Ruimne" (marshy); this would make the name mean "Marshy island," and there can be no doubt that this would be an apt description of the place in olden times; against this may be alleged that again the word would be hybrid. Yet another derivation which avoids this objection is the Old English "Rûm" from whence we get "room" and if we adopt this derivation Romsey, or Rumsey as it is still sometimes written and more often pronounced, would mean the roomy or "Spacious Island." The reader can form his own opinion as to which is the most probable of these three suggestions. The writer is inclined to favour the third. But the visitor who, arriving at the railway station either by the branch line via Redbridge or by that which runs from Eastleigh, or from Salisbury, or Andover, proceeds to the Abbey, would not realize when he arrived at his destination that he was in an island, for the minor streams are not spanned by bridges, but have been completely covered in and run through small tunnels beneath some of the streets. We have no records of Romsey before the original foundation of the Abbey, nor indeed for many years afterwards. The first authentic mention of the abbey is found in the chronicle of Florence of Worcester, who died in 1118, and whose work, at least that part of it which deals with English history, is a Latin translation of the Old English Chronicle. He writes "In anno 967. Rex Anglorum pacificus Edgarus in monasterio Rumesige, quod avus suus Rex Anglorum Eadwardus senior construxerat, sanctimoniales collocavit, sanctamque Marewynnam super eas Abbatismam constituit."[1] [1] In the year 967, Eadgar the Peaceable, King of the English, placed nuns in the monastery which his grandfather, Eadward the Elder, King of the English, had built, and appointed St. Meriwenna abbess over them. This Eadward, also surnamed the Unconquered, was the son and successor of the greatest of the Old English Kings, Ælfred, and reigned from 901 to 925. Sometime during his reign he founded the Romsey nunnery. There is no documentary evidence to fix the exact date, but it is generally assumed to have been 907. It is said that about two centuries earlier there had been a monastery at Nursling nearer the mouth of the Test, and on the tideway of the river. It was here that the great missionary to the Germans Winfrid or St. Boniface had been trained, but it was within reach of the ships of the Danish pirates, and in 716 they had ravaged it and reduced it to such utter ruin that scarcely one stone remained on another to mark the site. This monastery was never rebuilt, and Eadward, probably having its fate in mind, now chose a safer position for the new foundation, for the river at Romsey was too shallow to allow of the seagoing vessels of the marauding Danes to reach it. Eadward's eldest daughter Ælflæd and her sister Æthelhild both adopted the religious life, and lived for a time at the monastery at Wilton. Here Æthelhild was buried, while Ælflæd was buried at Romsey. Their half-sister St. Eadburh became abbess of St. Mary's Abbey at Winchester; and it is highly probable that Ælflæd ruled as abbess over the sister establishment at Romsey. Probably this was only a small religious community. Whether it was continued or not when she died no record remains to tell, but, as we have seen, it was refounded by Eadgar the Peaceable in 967, and on Christmas day of the year 974 St. Meriwenna was put in charge of the completed Abbey, which was constituted according to the Benedictine Rule. Some traces of this church still remain, though only discovered in 1900. Under the pavement of the present church, immediately below the tower, the foundations of an apsidal east ending of a church were found; now as it is well known that this is a Norman form for the east end, it must not be supposed that this apse was built in the time of Eadgar, but it very probably occupied the same position as the choir of his church. Other foundations were then looked for and found. And as a result of this investigation, it appears that the nave of Eadgar's church extended as far to the west as the fourth bay of the present nave, that its crossing lay immediately to the west of the present transept, and that the apsidal choir was as wide as the present nave, and extended eastward as far as the screen now dividing the choir from the transept. Thus the total interior length of the church was about 90 ft. instead of about 220 ft., the length of the present building. Although the church was comparatively small, Eadgar made provision in the domestic buildings for one hundred nuns, a number rarely exceeded in after days. Peter de Langtoft, a canon of Bridlington who died early in the fourteenth century, writing of Eadgar says: Mikille he wirschiped God, and served our Lady; The Abbey of Romege he feffed richely With rentes full gode and kirkes of pris, He did ther in of Nunnes a hundreth ladies. Eadgar's church, however, was not destined to last long. Early in the year 1003, according to one of the few legends connected with the abbey, the form of St. Ælflæd appeared during mass to the Abbess Elwina, and warned her that the Danes were at hand, and would plunder and destroy the abbey; whereupon she, not disobedient to the heavenly vision, gathered her nuns together, and, collecting all the treasures that could be carried away, sought safety at Winchester, and there they abode until the danger was past; on their return they found the abbey in ruins. The inroad of the Danes in this year, led by Swegen, was undertaken as a retribution on the English for the cowardly and barbarous massacre on St. Brice's Day, November 13th of the previous year, in which Swegen's sister, in spite of the fact that she had embraced Christianity, had been condemned to death by Æthelred.[2] There is no record of the rebuilding of the abbey after this destruction, but it could not have been long delayed, since we hear that in 1012 Æthelred's wife Ælfgyfu (who afterwards married Knut, and is known under the name Emma) gave lands to the abbey, and shortly after Knut came to the throne, we learn from a still existing list that, including two who are marked as abbesses, there were fifty-four nuns at Romsey.[3] [2] According to some accounts, the raid in which the abbey was destroyed took place in 994, but the later date is more probable since it is said that Swegen's son, Knut, who was born in 994, took part in it. [3] This list shows us what were the names most in favour at the time. Eight nuns bore the name of Ælfgyfu, six of Ælflæd, four of Eadgyth (Edith), four of Eadgyfu, three of Wulflæd; besides these there were two, each bearing the names of Æthelgyfu, Ælfgyth, Ælfhild, Byrhflæd, Wulfthryth, Wulfrun. It is worthy of note that none of these, and only one of the remaining seventeen nuns, namely, Godgyfu, had a scriptural or Christian name. The old names common among their heathen ancestors still survived, no less than ten being compounded of the word Ælf, the modern Elf, or mountain spirit. The church restored after the raid mentioned above probably remained untouched until after the Conquest, when possibly the apsidal east end was built. It would seem that about 1120 the present church was begun, as usual from the east. As this church is so much larger than the earlier one, it is quite possible that its outer walls were built without in any way disturbing the eleventh century church within them, so that the services could be conducted without interruption. The general character of the work is late Norman. At this time a double eastern chapel measuring about 21 ft. from east to west and 25 ft. from north to south, as we know from excavations made by the late vicar, the Rev. Edward Lyon Berthon, was built to the east of the choir. This was entered by two arches, which may still be seen leading out of the ambulatory. Traces of the position of two altars were found; the floor was lower than that of the rest of the church. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST] The three western bays were added in the thirteenth century, and at the end of the same, or the beginning of the fourteenth, two windows with plate tracery were inserted in the east wall, and two chapels measuring forty feet from east to west took the place of the double Norman chapels mentioned above. It will be seen, then, that the church shows specimens of Norman, Early English, and Decorated work, all of the best periods of the style, and therefore it is a splendid example for the student of architecture. We may be thankful that, with the exception of a few windows on the north side there is no Perpendicular work. When we remember that the wealth which flowed into the coffers of many cathedral and abbey churches during the Middle Ages chiefly in the form of offerings from pilgrims at wonder-working shrines, was often used in almost entirely rebuilding, or, at any rate remodelling, the churches in the fifteenth century, we may be surprised to find so little work of this period at Romsey. Possibly it is due to the fact that it did not possess any such shrine, and so did not attract pilgrims. It is not improbable that Henry of Blois, the builder of the Church at St. Cross, near Winchester, may have had something to do with designing the Norman part of the church at Romsey. We know that Mary, the daughter of his brother, King Stephen, was abbess from about 1155 until she broke her vows, left the Abbey, and married Matthew of Alsace, son of the Count of Flanders, about 1161. Henry was Bishop of Winchester from 1129 until 1171. What more likely, then, than that Mary should consult her uncle, known to be a great builder, about the erection of the large church at Romsey? In the time of Juliana, who probably succeeded Mary, and was certainly abbess for about thirty years before her death in 1199, the transitional work in the clerestory of the nave was carried out. [Illustration: JUNCTION OF NORMAN AND EARLY ENGLISH WORK, ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE NAVE] In the next century the church was extended westward by the erection of three bays and the west front with its three tall lancets and the small cinquefoil window above the central one, all inclosed within a pointed comprising arch. This work was done during the time when Henry III was king; there are records of several gifts to the abbey of timber by him from the royal forest. This was no doubt used in constructing the roof of the westward extension of the nave and aisles. The next work was the insertion of the two large east windows and the building of the pair of Decorated chapels, one of which was dedicated to Our Lady, and the other to St. Æthelflæd, or Ethelfleda, as her name was then spelt. They were probably divided by an arcade, and stood until the dissolution of the Abbey, when they were pulled down, being of no further use in the church of the abbey which was purchased by the people of Romsey and converted into a parish church. [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE NORTH-WEST] It has been said that little Perpendicular work is to be seen in Romsey Abbey, but some did exist at one time. At Romsey, as at Sherborne, there were disputes between the abbey and the town, though fortunately at Romsey an amicable arrangement was arrived at. The north aisle of the abbey church had been for many years set apart for the use of the people of Romsey as a parish church, and was known by the name of St. Laurence; in the year 1333 the abbess endowed a vicarage. As the town increased in size the north aisle became too strait for the parishioners, and at times of great festivals they used to encroach on the nuns' church. This led to disputes, and the matter was referred to William of Wykeham, the celebrated Bishop of Winchester, remodeller of his cathedral church, and founder of Winchester School, and New College, Oxford. He persuaded the nuns to give up the north arm of the crossing to make a choir for a new parish church to be built adjoining the abbey church, in such a way that the north aisle should be cut off by a wall and included in the new church. The north aisle of the abbey church thus became the south aisle of the parish church, the new building its nave, and the north end of the transept of the abbey church the parish chancel, the Norman apsidal chantry attached to the transept made a fitting eastern termination to the chancel. A chantry of the Confraternity of St. George, built on the north side of the new church, took the place of a north aisle. This was separated from the nave by a carved oak screen, part of which has been utilized in the construction of the screen between the nave and choir of the existing church. The building of this new parish church unfortunately involved the destruction of the north porch of the abbey church. When, after the dissolution of the nunnery, the people bought the abbey church of the King, the nave and north aisle of the new parish church were no longer needed, and were therefore demolished, the windows were inserted in the arches that had been cut in the wall of the north aisle of the abbey church, when these openings were again walled up. Two of these have, however, been removed, and modern Norman windows constructed on the old mouldings have taken their place. A doorway which had been cut in the north wall of the transept when the new parish church was built was no longer used after the church was pulled down, and a low side window near it has been blocked up and converted into a cupboard. The two eastern chapels were also demolished, and their east windows were inserted in the masonry used to block up the entrances into the chapels from the ambulatory. During the time that succeeded the Reformation many changes were made in the fittings of the church, galleries were erected in the transept and at the west end of the nave where the organ was placed. The walls were covered with whitewash, and probably with a view to make it easier to warm the church, walls were built behind the triforium arcading all round the church. These walls are shown in some of the illustrations made a few years ago; they have now been entirely removed. The internal appearance of the church about the middle of the nineteenth century was extremely distasteful to those affected by the Gothic revival, and drastic changes were made. "Restoration" was begun at first under the direction of Mr. Ferrey, who also restored Christchurch Priory. The inner roof of the three western bays of the nave aisles which had not been, like those of the other bays, vaulted in stone, were restored in wood and plaster about 1850, when the Hon. Gerard Noel was vicar; the nave roof was rebuilt a little later. Under the direction of Mr. Christian, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the chancel roof was restored, and the roof of the north arm of the transept was taken in hand by Mr. Berthon. Other work has been done more recently, and the present vicar has the intention of building a porch with a room over it on the north side, to take the place of the porch which was destroyed when the nave of the church of St. Laurence was built in the time of William of Wykeham, as already described. The curious wooden erection on the top of the tower, somewhat resembling a hen coop or gigantic lobster pot, was added in comparatively recent times to contain the bells; drawings made at the beginning of the nineteenth century do not show it, but, those made about the middle of the century do. It is ugly, and adds nothing to the dignity of the church; probably the tower was originally crowned by a pyramidal roof which gave it the appearance of height so much required. The east ends of the two choir aisles have in quite recent years been provided with altars and fitted up as chapels for week-day services. The two apsidal chapels attached to the transept are used as vestries, the one on the south for clergy and that on the north for the choir. [Illustration: THE ABBESS'S DOOR] CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR The site of Romsey abbey church is not a commanding one. There are some cathedral churches, such as Ely, built on marsh-formed islands which rise considerably above the surrounding flats, and so form conspicuous objects in the landscape seen from far or near; but this is not the case with the abbey church with which we have to deal. The level of its floor does not rise much above the level of the river valley in which it stands, the building is not large or lofty, the parapets of its central tower, about 92 ft. above the ground, rise little above the ridges of the roofs of nave and choir and the north arm of the transept. But it has one great advantage: there is no part of the exterior of the building that cannot be fully examined. Perhaps we might be glad if the space from which it may be seen were here and there a little wider, yet nowhere do we find a garden wall or a building barring our passage as we make the circuit of the exterior of the church. On the north side lies the churchyard stretching a considerable distance to the north, from which an admirable general view is obtained; and again, there is open ground to the west, so that the unique and splendid western façade can be well seen. The space to the south side of the building is more limited; it is entered through an iron gateway running in a line with the west front; should this gate be locked, the space to the east of it may be entered by passing from the inside of the church through either the nuns' or the abbess's doorway; when access to this little strip of churchyard has once been gained, it is easy to pass right along the south side of the nave round the south end of the crossing and then to the eastern wall of the ambulatory. As we follow the winding lanes and streets that lead from the station to the church, we get our first view of it from the road that skirts its northern wall. On the left hand there is a wall running from the north-east corner of the choir, which conceals indeed a few details of the lower part of the east end, but does not hide the two beautiful geometrical windows in the east wall of the choir, inserted within the semicircular headed mouldings of the original Norman windows. We may also see the square-faced termination of the north choir aisle projecting eastward of the wall that forms the east end of the choir. The next noteworthy object is an apsidal chapel or chantry running out from the east wall of the transept, its walls pierced by wide round headed windows. This is also a good point from which to study the clerestory as seen in choir and crossing. The same general arrangement prevails throughout the building, though here and there certain modifications will be noticed. Each clerestory bay on the north side has a window consisting of three arches, the central and wider one is glazed, the two others are blocked with stone. Three tiers (two in each) of round headed windows light the ends of the transepts. On the north side the windows of the nave aisle are very irregular; this is due to the fact, mentioned in Chapter I, that considerable alterations were made in this part of the church at the beginning of the fourteenth century in order to provide a parish church for the inhabitants of the town. The north wall of the aisle was largely cut away in order to throw this aisle open to the new building erected parallel to the Abbey church, which was to be used as the nave of the parish church. Joining this on the north side was a chantry of the confraternity of St. George which formed a kind of north aisle for the parish church. Windows would of course be required to light this new building and would of necessity be designed in accordance with the style--the Perpendicular--then prevailing. When, after the dissolution of the nunnery, the Abbey church became the church of the parish, the recently erected Perpendicular church would be no longer of any use, and the keeping of it in repair a continual source of expense; hence it was pulled down, the openings in what had been the original north wall of the nave aisle of the Abbey church were walled up, and the mouldings and glass of the Perpendicular windows on the north side of the parish church were inserted in these new walls. Hence we get windows of different heights and levels between the great north door and the transept: recent alterations have still further increased the irregularity. The parish church did not, apparently, extend so far to the west as the Abbey church, hence the two windows to the west of the north door were not interfered with when the parish church was built. It has been already pointed out that the three western bays of the nave are of later date and later in style than the rest of the nave; they were built in the thirteenth century, and consequently all the windows found in this part of the church have pointed heads. [Illustration: THE WEST END AND SOUTH TRANSEPT] The #West Front#. A unique feature of this church is its west front. It is one of singular beauty, but its beauty does not depend on any enrichment of decoration, for a simpler front it would be impossible to find: there is not a single carved stone about it. Its beauty is due to the exquisite proportions of the various parts. The nave and aisles are of the same length. At the corners of the aisles are rectangular buttresses and two similar ones stand at the ends of the main walls of the nave. String-courses, starting from the aisle buttresses, run below the aisle windows and round the buttresses of the nave, but are not continued across the nave beneath the lancet windows. The buttresses do not quite rise to the full height of the side walls of the nave, and not a pinnacle is to be met with anywhere. The sill of the west window is about fifteen feet from the ground, and from it three tall lancets about four feet wide rise to a height of nearly thirty feet. They are placed under a comprising pointed arch, just beneath the point of which, and over the central lancet, is a cinquefoil opening. The wall finishes in a gable and the whole west wall is a true termination of the nave which lies behind. We notice that the glass is set well towards the outside of the openings, and also that no western doorway exists or ever existed here. The probable reason of this is that it was a nuns' church, and that the nuns found their way into the church from the domestic buildings through the doors on the south side. There is still a doorway (there was formerly a porch) on the north side, by which, on special occasions, outsiders were admitted to the north aisle, but as the parishioners had no right of entry into the nave it was unnecessary to make any provision for them in the form of a west doorway. From this position at the west of the building we notice that the roof of the south end of the transept differs from that at the north end. We can see no tiles above the parapet. Originally, no doubt, all the roofs had a high pitch, their central ridge rising almost to the parapet of the tower, but here, as in many another church, when the timbers of the roof decayed, it was found more economical to decrease the slope of the roof, and in some cases simply to lay horizontal beams across the tops of the wall, which of course did not give rise to the outward thrust of sloping timbers. This appears to have happened at Romsey; but, since the time when the restoration was begun, all the roofs save that of the south end of the transept have been raised to their original pitch. This roof, no doubt, will in due course be altered in a similar way. A fine and noteworthy feature in this church is the corbel table which runs nearly all round it. Here and here only do we find any carving on the exterior walls, but these corbels are carved into many fantastic devices: among them we find the very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle. It is fashioned into the likeness of a grindstone and it is handed down by tradition that once upon a time towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth a nobleman ran away with a blacksmith's wife, but afterwards repented of his sin and had imposed on him as penance the completion of the west end of the Abbey church. The grindstone, emblem of the blacksmith's calling, was, it is said, placed on the newly erected western bay to commemorate the incident. [Illustration: SOUTH TRANSEPT, FROM THE WEST] The #South Side# of the Church differs from the north in some respects: there is not the same rich arcading along the clerestory level of the nave, only the real windows appear, not the blind arcading. The windows of the south aisle have not been altered and re-altered as have been those of the north aisle. Their sills are set sufficiently high to allow the cloister arcades to be placed below them, but the cloister alleys have all disappeared. There is a fine late thirteenth-century door in the second bay from the western end of the south aisle, and another very beautiful one known as the Abbess's door at the extreme east end of the wall of the south nave aisle, in Norman style (see p. 26). The mouldings round the head are richly ornamented, and two twisted columns stand on each side of the door. Unfortunately a slanting groove has been cut through the upper mouldings of it. It is said that at one time a stonemason's shed stood here, probably the mason employed after the purchase of the church by the town, to keep the building in repair. We may regret the mutilation of the doorway, yet at the same time not condemn the existence of this shed as an unmixed evil, for it covered and protected a most interesting relic on the west wall of the transept from destruction by wind and sun and rain--the celebrated #Romsey Rood#, which, as far as England is concerned, is absolutely unique. The illustration reproduced from a negative taken about twenty years ago will give a better idea of the character and position of the rood than verbal description. Since the photograph was taken, a projecting pent house has been very wisely erected over the crucifix to protect it from the weather, but at the same time the addition does not exhibit it to advantage; hence the photograph which shows its previous condition has become valuable. Various opinions as to the date of this crucifix have been held. The first hasty opinion likely to be formed is that it is not older than the wall in which it appears, and therefore must be of Norman date, but careful examination of the stone work will show that it is older than the wall, and has been inserted in its present position, probably at the time when the existing Norman transept was built. Mr. Edward S. Prior, in his "History of Gothic Art in England," says that it is the best work of its date, in high relief of any size to be found in England, and adds that it is by some considered to be of Saxon date. This seems very probable. It is Byzantine in character. The limbs are clothed in a short tunic; the figure does not hang drooping from the nails, the arms are stretched out horizontally, the head is erect, and the eyes open. It represents not a dead Christ, but Christ reigning on the Tree; above the head the Father's hand is shown surrounded at the wrist by clouds. This may be taken to represent the pointing out of the beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased, or we may suppose that the hand has been extended downwards in answer to the words "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Some clue to the date is given by a drawing in a manuscript in the British Museum--the homilies of Archbishop Ælfric (about 994)--in which a crucifix almost identical with this may be seen. By the side of the figure is a rectangular recess, with small holes at the top to carry off smoke: probably it was customary to keep a lamp or taper constantly burning within this recess. The crucifix, considering its age and position, is in a wonderful state of preservation. How it escaped mutilation in the seventeenth century is hard to explain, for a crucifix would be particularly obnoxious to the Puritan mind, and, standing as this one does almost on the level of the ground, it would seem to have been especially exposed to risk of destruction. Fortunately, however, it has escaped with only the loss of part of the right forearm and shoulder. [Illustration: THE SAXON ROOD] Passing round the south face of the transept, we come to the #apsidal chapel# attached to its eastern wall. (See illustration, p. 14.) The round-headed windows and the original parapet are worthy of notice. Quite recently a new high-pitched roof has been placed over this chantry. The illustration shows it before this change was made. Beyond this we come to the south aisle of the choir, with its three bays, each containing a round-headed window. The arrangement here is rather peculiar. The east wall of the choir, containing the two fourteenth-century windows side by side, rises just to the east of the second bay; the outer eastern wall of lower height at the extremity of the third bay is the east wall of the ambulatory or retro-choir. This was originally pierced by two arches, leading into the two parallel chapels, dedicated respectively to St. Mary and St. Ethelfleda, which were built in the fourteenth century, taking the place of two chapels, in Norman style, only about half their length measured from west to east. These two chapels were pulled down after the parish bought the church, to save the expense of keeping them in repair. The two arches leading into them were built up, but the geometrical east windows of the chapels were inserted in them, and now give light to the retro-choir. The ends of the choir aisles are apsidal within, but flat without. This arrangement leads to great thickness at the corners of the walls. At one time there was a detached campanile for the bells of Romsey. This was pulled down in 1625 and the bells placed in the wooden cage erected for them on the roof of the central tower. At this time there were six bells only, but in 1791 they were, according to one account, taken down and sold, and a fresh peal of eight bells cast for the church. According to another account the six bells were melted down, fresh metal added, and from this the larger peal of eight bells was cast. It is said to be in perfect condition now, the tenor bell weighing 26 cwt. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, SOUTH SIDE] The stone of which the Abbey Church is built, was quarried at Binstead, in the Isle of Wight. These quarries are now entirely worked out, so that no stone can be obtained thence for repairs. It is not to be expected that the restoration has met with universal approval, but it may be truly said that the alterations have been far less drastic than in many churches, and that the interior of the Abbey Church, as we see it to-day, has much the appearance which it had after it had become the parish church of Romsey about the middle of the sixteenth century. [Illustration: THE NAVE, NORTH SIDE] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR Immediately after entering the Abbey Church by the north door, it will be well, in order to get a general idea of its size and beauty, to take one's stand close to the west wall under the large lancet window. There is nothing to break the view from the west to the east walls of choir and ambulatory, a total distance of about 250 feet; for the wooden screen which separates the choir from the crossing is too light and open to break the vista. It will be noticed that with the exception of the western bays of the nave, and the three-light geometrical windows in the eastern wall of the choir, and the two windows of the ambulatory, everything is Norman or transitional in character. The aisles have stone quadripartite vaulting except in the added bays to the west, where the vaulting is merely plaster. The high roof, like many in Norman churches, is a wooden one, for Norman builders rarely dared to throw a stone vault over the nave or choir, for as yet the principle that allows such a piece of engineering to be carried out with safety, namely, the balancing of thrust and counter-thrust, by means of vaulting ribs and external flying buttresses, had not been fully realized in England. In some few cases it is true that late Norman vaults may be found, but more often where stone vaults exist in Norman churches they were added in after times. In Romsey Abbey one of the most noteworthy features is that very little alteration was made in the church when once it was built. True there was a westward extension in the thirteenth century, and some insertion of windows in the fourteenth century, but nothing of the original church seems to have been swept away, as was so often the case, to make room for extensions and alterations. The #Nave# has seven bays, to the east of which is the transept, and beyond it the choir, which has three bays. Further to the east, as we shall find in due course, may be seen the low vaulted retro-choir or ambulatory of one bay. [Illustration: CYLINDRICAL PIER: NORTH NAVE ARCADE] It is well known that Norman choirs were generally short, and that when we find a considerable length of building eastward of the crossing, this eastward extension was made in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the new building being often begun to the east of the Norman choir, and the choir left untouched until the eastern part was finished, when very frequently the old Norman choir and presbytery were demolished, and the new work joined on to the transept by masonry in the later style. The inconvenience of a short architectural choir was very often avoided by bringing the ritual choir westward into the nave, an arrangement which exists up to the present day at the Abbey Church at Westminster. This seems to have been done at Romsey, the choir extending across the transept as far as the third pillar of the nave, counting from the east. But although the eastern bays of the nave and all of those of the choir are Norman, yet they are by no means of an ordinary type. There is much about this church that is unique, and certain arrangements are found only here and at St. Friedeswide's, now Christ Church, Oxford, Dunstable Priory, and Jedburgh Abbey. There is no strict uniformity: one bay frequently differs from another in its details. [Illustration: THE CLERESTORY OF NAVE: SOUTH SIDE] [Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH BAYS OF THE NAVE] It may be well at the outset to point out that of the three horizontal divisions of the nave the main arcading occupies approximately three-sevenths of the total height of the wall, while the triforium and clerestory each occupy about two-sevenths. [Illustration: THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR] [Illustration: TRIFORIUM ARCH IN THE NORTH TRANSEPT] The three western bays are early English in date and style, but they differ considerably from the typical early English of Salisbury; we do not find the detached shafts of Purbeck marble, nor the central cylindrical shaft; the bases, too, are rectangular, nor are there any enriched mouldings with dog-tooth ornament. In the triforium in some cases there are three, in other cases two subordinate arches, each with cusped heads, and the wall space above these smaller arches and the comprising one is pierced by a quatrefoil opening. The clerestory throughout the nave, whether in the Early English bays to the west or the Norman bays to the east, is of the same character, having three pointed arches in each bay with a window on the outside of the middle one. A passage protected by two iron rails runs right round the church at this level, and it is well worth ascending to this passage, as from it a good idea of the height of the church may be obtained. The clerestory of the transept and also that of the choir bear a general likeness to that of the nave, but are of earlier date, the arcading having semicircular and not pointed arches. The illustrations will show how shafts run on the face of the arcading right up from floor to roof. In the Norman part of the building the triforium is very peculiar; generally speaking, there are two subordinate round-headed arches, under the general round-headed comprising arch, but the tympanum or space above the former is left open, and from the point where the two smaller arches meet a shaft runs up to the centre of the main outer arch. I do not know of any similar arrangement in any other church, and, as it is a very peculiar one, hard to explain clearly in words, the reader should carefully study the illustrations in which the triforium appears. On the east side of the north arm of the transept a more elaborate arrangement of one of the arches may be seen. Here there are three, instead of two, subsidiary arches, which are interlaced, but here, also, the shaft above them appears, though necessarily much reduced in height. These shafts do not add to the beauty of the triforium, and they hardly seem necessary to give support to the outer arch (see illustrations, pp. 44, 45). [Illustration: THE INTERIOR FROM THE WEST] [Illustration: BASE OF A PIER IN THE NAVE] The arch at the east end of the triforium on the south side, which opens out to the transept, is worthy of special notice. Under the outer round-headed arch is a solid tympanum, beneath which are two very narrow round-headed arches, separated by a huge cylindrical shaft which has as its base a large plain rectangular block of stone. The two eastern bays of the nave on both sides are peculiar. Between them runs up a solid cylindrical pier, which has its capital at the level of the spring of the main arches of the triforium. The arches of the main arcade spring from corbels on the sides of these great pillars, so that it seems as if the triforium gallery were hanging beneath the arches which spring below the clerestory. A somewhat similar arrangement may be seen at the cathedral church of Christ Church at Oxford; some authorities have from this similarity asserted that the buildings must have been contemporaneous, but this does not seem to have been the case. Mr. Prior considers the Romsey work forty years earlier than that at Oxford, dating it about 1120 against the Oxford work, to which he assigns the date of about 1160. It may be noticed that the Romsey builder did not continue this arrangement throughout the nave and choir, whereas this was done at Oxford. [Illustration: ARCADING IN THE TOWER ABOVE THE MAIN ARCHES] Generally speaking, the Norman piers at Romsey are compound ones, formed of many minor shafts. The plain cylindrical form seen at Gloucester and Waltham is not met with at Romsey except in the pillar described above. The Norman aisles have stone vaults, except in the three western bays, and it is noteworthy that the arches leading into the transept are of horseshoe type. These are very elaborately moulded, the outer sides being ornamented with chevron decoration. The capitals in the choir aisles are elaborately and grotesquely carved, though it is not easy to interpret the subjects of this carving; on one capital in the north aisle is represented a fight between two kings, stayed by two winged figures; in the south aisle a crowned figure stands, holding a pyramid, possibly intended as a symbol of the church, while near by a seated figure and an angel between them hold a V-shaped scroll on which may be read the words, "Robert me fecit." Another somewhat similar chevron bears the words, "Robert tute consule x. d. s.", but who Robert was it is impossible to say. Henry I had a son Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who is spoken of as "Consul"; he it was who fought for his half-sister Maud against Stephen. He would have been alive at the time the church was built, but whether he had any part in the erection of it we cannot say, though he seems to have been interested in building, for the castles at Bristol and Cardiff and the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey Church are attributed to him. [Illustration: IN THE RINGERS' CHAMBER OF THE TOWER] The tower of Romsey was at one time a lantern, open to the roof, but when the bells were placed in the wooden cage on the roof, a ringing floor was inserted below. The arcading running round the interior of the tower is very beautiful. The ringers' chamber is a spacious room, a good idea of the plain architectural character of which is given in the accompanying illustration. In the west wall of the north end of the transept a perpendicular window has been cut through a group of Norman windows, showing how little regard mediaeval builders had for the preservation of earlier work. Opposite to this is one of the two apsidal chantries, which in its time has served various purposes. Originally it was a chapel or chantry where mass was said for the repose of the soul of some private benefactor of the Abbey; then it became the eastern apse of the parish church of St. Lawrence; still later it was used as a school, and now serves the purpose of a choir vestry. There are within it two piscinae and two aumbries at different levels, indicating, no doubt, an alteration of level in the altar itself during the period that this chantry was in use. An elaborate monument now stands under the eastern wall. [Illustration: THE WEST WALL OF NORTH TRANSEPT] In Mr. Spence's "Essay on the Abbey Church of Romsey" (1851), this tomb is described as standing in the south ambulatory. It commemorates one Robert Brackley, who died Aug. 14, 1628. A man that gave to the poor Some means out of his little store Let none therefore this fame deny him, But rather take example by him In spight of death in after dayes, To purchase to himself like prayse. The tomb, which is of imitation porphyry, takes the form of a sarcophagus, beneath an arch the soffit of which is adorned with red and white roses. Corinthian pillars of black marble support the structure. [Illustration: THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE] In the #North Choir Aisle#, on opposite sides, may be seen two interesting mediaeval relics. On the north side is part of a fourteenth-century reredos, probably that which stood behind the high altar. It was found at the back of the present altar, concealed behind the regulation panels on which the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments were painted. It had evidently been itself partially repainted in a rougher style than the original. The painting represents the Resurrection. The portrait of an abbess is to be seen in the left-hand corner; above is a row of ten figures--saints, bishops, and holy women. On the opposite wall, carefully preserved behind a sheet of glass, is a piece of fifteenth-century needlework; originally it was a cope, and was in more recent times used as an altar cloth, its shape having of course been altered to adapt it to its new use. The east end of the north choir aisle, internally apsidal though not externally, is now fitted up with an altar as a chapel for week-day or early morning services. Passing to the south we enter the ambulatory. It is vaulted in stone, and the plain horseshoe arches at the end without any ribs (see illustration), are worthy of notice. In this space several interesting relics of the old abbey, and some conjectural models of the church in its former condition, may be seen. Here, too, is a fifteenth-century walnut wood chest: and here are two stone cressets, possibly used by the builders, which when done with were built by them into the walls, where they remained until discovered during the nineteenth-century restoration of the church. [Illustration: THE AMBULATORY, LOOKING NORTH] Among the relics is a very curious one which was found in 1839. A grave was being dug in the south aisle near the abbess's door, and about five feet below the floor the workmen came upon a singular leaden coffin. It was 18 in. wide at the head and tapered gradually to 13 in. at the foot; it was only 5 ft. long and 15 in. deep. The lead was very thick, and the seams were folded over and welded, no solder being used. The lead was much decayed. The curious thing about it is that when it was opened not a bone was found within it; the lead coffin had contained an oaken shell which crumbled into dust on exposure to the air, but within the coffin lying on a block of oak, so shaped as to receive the head of the corpse, was a tress of auburn hair forming a plait about eighteen inches long. It was in perfect condition and looked as if the skull had only recently been removed from it. Why the hair and the block on which it lay should alone have been preserved is sufficiently mysterious; but there are other problems difficult of solution connected with this relic; it was found beneath a mass of concrete and rubbish; moreover the coffin lay partly beneath one of the piers of the main arcading of the nave, and was not placed in the usual direction, east and west, but the head was turned towards the north-west. This leads one to suppose that this coffin was originally buried in one of the earlier churches, and may have been somewhat disturbed from its original position at the time when the Norman church was built. Anyhow, it is strange that we should be able to look on that tress of golden hair probably belonging to some young damsel of high degree, one akin, it may be, to the royal house of Wessex, who was being educated at this Saxon nunnery so many centuries ago. This relic was at one time left exposed, but as it was thought that the hair was shrinking and losing its colour, it was covered with glass and kept in a locked wooden case. Here, too, may be seen several coins, including a "long cross" silver penny, not earlier than the second half of the thirteenth century, which was dug up in the churchyard; a ball probably discharged from a Parliamentary culverin which was found embedded in the north face of the tower; a clumsy pair of forceps which were used for extracting the teeth of nuns suffering from toothache; a mason's punch found under the floor of the destroyed Lady Chapel, and a Roman spearhead found at Greatbridge, a short distance to the north of the town. But among many precious relics, one recently recovered for the church is of the greatest interest, namely, the Romsey Psalter. This is a small octavo manuscript containing thirty pages of vellum measuring 6.9 by 4.7 inches, each page containing as a rule twenty-two lines. The approximate date is probably about the middle of the fifteenth century. This is arrived at partly from the character of the writing, and partly from the fact that the Kalendar in it contains no mention of the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin on 2nd July, a feast which was ordered to be used by the convocation of the province of Canterbury in 1480. Hence it would seem that this Psalter with its Kalendar must have been written before this date. The capital letters are painted either red or blue, and besides these there are eight illuminated initial letters, seven of which occupy a space equivalent to eight manuscript lines, and the other a space equal to nine lines. Connected with these illuminated letters are floral borders on the left-hand side of the page, and in most cases at the top or bottom also. The first and last pages of the book are soiled, probably from the book for some long period of its existence having been left lying about without covers. The present binding is of much more recent date. There are reasons for supposing that the book was the private property of some abbess or nun, or, at any rate, of some one connected with the nunnery, and not a public service book. It is also thought that the book was written by a Franciscan friar for the use of some one in a Benedictine house. For in the invocation of saints in the Litany which the book contains, the names of the monastic saints are arranged in the following order: Benedict, Francis, Anthony, Dominic (Bernard being omitted), instead of the usual order: Anthony, Benedict, Bernard, Dominic, Francis. The fact that the death days added to the Kalendar in the sixteenth century are chiefly those of the abbesses of St. Mary's nunnery, Winchester, seems to indicate that the book somehow before that date had passed from Romsey to the nunnery at Winchester. Of its further history nothing is known save that at one time it belonged to a certain T. H. Lloyd, whose name is written in it, until at last it was advertised for sale by Quaritch in his catalogue of old books in 1900. The Dean of Winchester happened to see this list, and called the attention of the Vicar of Romsey to the fact that a book of such interest might, provided the money to purchase it could be found, once more pass back into the possession of the church, where it had been used in its early days. There was little difficulty in collecting the money, and the book may now be seen preserved in a glass case in the ambulatory at Romsey. [Illustration: THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE] It is worth notice that in this book the Psalms are so divided that the first 109 would be recited at Mattins in the course of a week, the others being used at Vespers during the same time. There are certain hymns appointed for use on Sundays, canticles from the Old and New Testament, the Te Deum, Benedicite, and Quicunque Vult. Also a Litany, and sundry additional prayers. [Illustration: SAXON CARVING AT THE EAST END OF THE SOUTH AISLE] The east end of the #South Choir Aisle# corresponding to that of the north choir aisle is now fitted up with an altar for week-day services. But this chapel has in it one of the oldest if not the very oldest piece of carved work connected with the abbey. Taking the place of a reredos, is a carving of the Crucifixion of unmistakable pre-Conquest character, its probable date is about 1030. The figures are Byzantine in character, and besides the Virgin and St. John who are so often represented in carvings and paintings of the Crucifixion, there are two of the Roman soldiers, one holding the spear with which afterwards the side of Jesus was pierced, and the other offering the sponge of vinegar on the hyssop rod. What the original position of this carving was we do not know, it is described in 1742 as being on the south wall near the communion table; then it appears to have been built face inwards, into the wall, and was placed in its present position by the late vicar, the Rev. E. L. Berthon. [Illustration: THE NORTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE CROSSING] The apsidal chantry attached to the east wall of the southern arm of the crossing is now used as the clergy vestry, and contains in a frame the deed of sale of the abbey church to the parishioners of Romsey after the dissolution of the nunnery. It is dated 20th February, 1544. #The Screen.# The screen that divides the choir from the crossing looks at first sight distinctly modern, yet it contains some ancient carving dating from 1372. It has occupied various positions in the church. At one time it was used to separate from the Abbey Church the chancel of the parish church, formed as already described from the north arm of the crossing. It was afterwards placed across the nave, near the west end, under the organ which blocked up the great triple lancet window. In a guide book in the abbey, published in 1828, we read that "there is a curious oaken screen of neat Gothic workmanship, which now separates the west end from the part which is fitted up for worship. It formerly stood in the northern transept, and separated it from the body of the church, but when the alteration in the pewing was made, it was removed to the place it now occupies, immediately under the organ: it was then painted. The top of the screen is crowned with running foliage, underneath which, in twenty-three Gothic trefoils, are as many carved faces. They are evidently portraits very tolerably executed, and on this account curious and interesting. One of them is crowned, and all of them have their heads covered with flowing hair, or wigs, or caps; the last on the right hand is a head thrusting out its tongue, perhaps a sportive essay of the carver." When the restoration was begun about the middle of the nineteenth century, this screen was removed, treated as useless lumber, and stowed away in the triforium, which at that time, as already described, was separated from the church by a wall. Here in 1880 the vicar, the Rev. E. L. Berthon, found, to use his own words, "the ancient oak-carvings of heads in trefoils with a curious cresting above." He resolved to utilize it in the construction of the chancel screen. The lower part is modern, designed to match the old work. The seats in the choir were designed by Mr. Berthon, and the heads intended to represent various kings, saints, and abbesses, were carved in the town. The pulpit was erected in 1891, the figures being carved by Harry Hems of Exeter, who has done so much wood and stone carving in restored reredoses and screens in various churches. The #Organ# stands under the westernmost arch of the choir on the north side. [Illustration: TOMB AND EFFIGY IN THE SOUTH TRANSEPT] The mediaeval #Monuments# remaining at Romsey are not numerous, being for the most part the graves and coffins of former abbesses, many of them incapable of identification. The Old English chronicle states that Eadward the Elder, his son Ælfred, his daughter Eadburh, St. Æthelflæd, Eadmund, brother of King Æthelred, were all buried here, but their graves are unknown, and not a stone remains to commemorate them. There is one very beautiful effigy of Purbeck marble now placed under an ogee canopy at the south-east corner of the transept, but whom it represents we cannot say. The slab is about 7 ft. long. A small piece at the left-hand upper corner is broken off: were this replaced the stone would be 2 ft. 3 in. wide at the head, tapering downwards to about 1 ft. 3 in. at the foot. The recumbent figure is itself about 6 ft. in length. The lady is dressed in a tight-sleeved loose robe, which falls in folds to the feet, but is girt about the waist with band and buckle; the right hand holds a fold of the robe; the left hand, lying on the bosom, is in the position seen in so many of the figures on the west front of the Cathedral Church at Wells, grasping the cord that holds up the mantle to the shoulders; the head rests on a cushion; beneath the head-dress the wimple may be seen passing beneath the chin. The pointed shoes rest on an animal, possibly intended for a dog. This effigy bears a strong resemblance to that of Eleanor, wife of Edward I, at Westminster, and is certainly late thirteenth century work. There is no staff or other symbol to show that the lady was an abbess. By some it has been supposed that it was erected to the memory of Isabella de Kilpec by her daughter, Alicia Walrand, who was abbess from 1268 to 1298. At any rate, the date fits in well with the character of the monument. Its original position in the church is unknown. It was found somewhere towards the west end of the nave, by some workmen who were engaged in digging a grave, and as it chanced to fit the ogee canopy in the transept, it was laid under it, but it must not be supposed that it originally had any connection with it. Near by is a seventeenth century monument of John St. Barbe, and Grissel his wife, whose family owned the estate of Broadlands, near Romsey, which was afterwards bought by the great-grandfather of the well-known statesman, Lord Palmerston. Several coffin lids of various dates have been found, among them, that of the Abbess, Joan Icthe, who died in 1349, of the terrible scourge that visited England in the fourteenth century, known as the Black Death. Almost all the persons buried in the abbey were women, but one curious exception may be noted. In 1845 a coffin was discovered in the nave, under an enormous slab of stone, measuring 11 ft. 5 in. by 3 ft. 9 in. Mr. Ferrey, the architect, under whose supervision the restoration of the abbey was then being carried out, thus describes the discovery: "Great care was exercised in raising the stone. Upon its being moved, there was discovered immediately under it a stone coffin, 5 ft. 10 in. long, by 2 ft. wide in the broadest part, and 1 ft. deep; containing the skeleton of a priest in good preservation, the figure measuring only 5 ft. 4 in. in length; the head elevated and resting in a shallow cavity worked out of the stone, so as to form a cushion. He had been buried in the vestments peculiar to his office, viz., the alb and tunic. Across the left arm was the maniple, and in his hand the chalice covered with the paten. Considering these remains to be about five hundred years old, it is remarkable that they should be in such preservation. The chalice and paten are of pewter,[4] the latter much corroded: a great portion of the linen alb remains; the maniple is of brown velvet fringed at the extremity, and lined with silk; portions of the stockings remain, and also all the parts of the boots, though from the decay of the sewing, they have fallen in pieces. About 2 ft. from the end of the coffin is a square hole through the bottom, with channels worked in the stone leading to it. This was probably a provision to carry off the fluids, which would be caused by the decomposition of the body. On the sides of the coffin could be traced the marks of the corpse when it was first deposited, from which it would appear that the deceased had been stout as well as short of stature. It is to be regretted that the inscription being stripped from the verge of the slab, we have no means of knowing whose remains these are. The Purbeck marble slab has never been disturbed, being found strongly secured by mortar to the top of the stone coffin. It is curious that the covering should be so gigantic, and the coffin under it so small: judging by the size of the slab and the beauty of the large floriated cross, it might have been supposed to cover some dignified ecclesiastic. This is clearly not the case.... In the absence of any known date, judging from the impress on the marble, and the shape of the stone coffin, I should assign both to the early part of the fourteenth century." [4] It was common to bury not the real silver vessels used by the dead priest, but imitations in baser metal. There are sundry mural tablets of modern date, and near the west end an altar tomb, with the recumbent effigy by Westmacott of Sir William Petty, the founder of the Lansdowne family, who was born at Romsey in 1623, and was buried within the abbey, and on the north side a tomb on which a child lies on its side as if asleep, with its limbs carelessly stretched out. [Illustration: THE NORTH AISLE OF THE NAVE] There is no painted glass of mediaeval date to be seen in the church; such as we find is modern. The three lancets at the west are the work of Messrs. Clayton and Bell, and were inserted as a memorial to Lord Palmerston, who died in 1865. The glass in the windows in the east wall of the ambulatory commemorating C. B. Footner, who died in 1889, was painted by the same firm. The two east windows, painted by Messrs. Powell, were inserted as a memorial to Lord Mount-Temple, who died in 1888. To the same firm are due the windows in the transept, which commemorate the Hon. Ralph Dutton, Lady Mount-Temple, Mr. Tylee, Professor Ramsey, and the Rev. E. L. Berthon, and the one in the north chancel aisle erected to the memory of the wife of the Right Hon. Evelyn Ashley. The window at the east end of the north aisle is by Kempe, and commemorates Mr. G. B. Footner. The #Font# is in the north aisle of the nave, dates from about the middle of the last century, and stands on the same spot as the ancient font of the church of St. Laurence. The conventual church, of course, would not need a font. But in post-Reformation times one stood on a raised platform at the west end of the church. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT] CHAPTER IV THE ABBESSES OF ROMSEY A complete list of the abbesses who ruled the religious house at Romsey is not in existence; there are several gaps of many years in the succession. The exact dates of the election of some of those whose names have been handed down to us are not known. The following list is as complete as possible. The names printed in ordinary type are taken from a board suspended in the retro-choir, those printed in italics are added from a list given in the "Records of Romsey Abbey," by the Rev. H. G. D. Liveing, 1906, which embodies the result of the most recent research. Whenever the date is uncertain _c._ for "circa" is prefixed; the date of death when known is added, marked with _o._ for "obiit." The spelling of many of the names is uncertain; in the list below the spelling follows that given by the authorities quoted above: _c._ 907 Ælflæda, _o._ _c._ 959. * * * * 966 S. Merwenna. _c._ 999 Elwina. _c._ 1003 Æthelflæda. _c._ 1016 _Wulfynn._ _c._ 1025 _Ælfgyfu._ * * * * _c._ 1130 Hadewis. _c._ 1150 Matilda, _o._ 1155. 1155 Mary, married 1161, _o._ 1182. _c._ 1171 Juliana, _o._ 1199.[5] 1199 Matilda Walrane. 1219 Matilda (Paria), _o._ 1230. 1230 _Matilda de Barbfle_, _o._ 1237. 1237 _Isabella de Nevill._ 1238 _Cecilia._ 1247 _Constancia._ 1261 Amicia _de Sulhere_. 1268 Alicia Walerand, _o._ 1298. 1298 _Philippa de Stokes._ 1307 Clementia de Guildeford, _o._ 1314. 1314 Alicia de Wyntereshulle, _o._ 1315. 1315 Sybil Carbonel, _o._ 1333. 1333 Ioane Jacke (or _Icthe_). 1349 Iohanna Gervas (or _Gerneys_). 1352 Isabella de Camoys. 1396 Lucy Everard. 1405 Felicia Aas. 1417 Matilda Lovell. 1462 Ioan Bryggys. 1472 Elizabeth Broke, _o._ 1502. 1502 Joyce Rowse, resigned 1515. 1515 Ann Westbroke, _o._ 1523. 1523 Elizabeth Ryprose, dispossessed 1539. [5] Christina is mentioned as abbess in 1190, in the list suspended in the church, but it is uncertain if she was an abbess. About the majority of the abbesses little or nothing is known; some, indeed, were women of exemplary piety, others were remarkable for their administrative abilities, and did good work in their own way; but of many all that can be said is that In due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.[6] [6] "A Toccata of Galuppi's," R. Browning. In this chapter will be narrated any incidents connected with the lives of the abbesses and the nuns over whom they ruled that seem to the writer likely to be of interest to the general reader. It is noteworthy that the story of the nunnery is, for the most part, pre-eminently credible; with a few exceptions we hear nothing about visions or miracles; here and there we have touches of romance, which show that the life of discipline within "narrowing nunnery walls" is not always able to quell human passion, especially when pressure had been brought to bear by friends and relations upon women scarcely more than children, to induce them to take the veil. And as time went on grave scandals arose, which even the energetic action of reforming bishops was not altogether successful in stopping, so that although the greed of Henry VIII and his courtiers was, no doubt, the prime factor leading to the suppression of the religious houses, yet the unholy lives of the inmates gave them some valid reasons, or at rate excuses, for their action in closing nunneries and monasteries. A story is told of King Eadgar which, indirectly, has some bearing on the Abbey of Romsey. About the year 960 he heard of the surpassing beauty of one Ælfthryth,[7] daughter of Ordgar of Devon, and possibly never having heard of the mischief that befell Arthur when he sent Launcelot to ask at her father's hands his fair daughter Guinevere, or to Mark when he sent Tristram on a similar errand to Iseault's father, he sent his trusted and hitherto trustworthy friend Æthelwold to Ordgar. But Æthelwold as soon as he saw Ælfthryth fell hopelessly in love with her, and so hid the king's message, and wooed and won the fair damsel for himself; and on his return told the king that the accounts of her beauty were altogether false, that she was vulgar and commonplace. So the king, believing his friend, turned his thoughts to other ladies; but before long some rumours of the way in which he had been deceived came to the king's ear, and he, dissembling his purpose and not telling him of what he had heard, simply told Æthelwold that on a certain day he intended to visit the lady himself. Æthelwold, in alarm, hurried to his wife and begged her to conceal her beauty and clothe herself in unbecoming attire, so that she might not win the king's admiration; but she did just the reverse, and enhanced her natural beauty by donning handsome raiment and jewellery. Her plan succeeded, the king fell in love with her and, according to one account, slew Æthelwold with his own hand while they were hunting, and when no man was by; or, according to another version, he sent him to hold a dangerous command in the north and slew him by the sword of the Northumbrians. It is, however, doubtful if Eadgar compassed his death at all, but two years after it he married his widow, whose beauty was her chief recommendation, for though it has nothing to do with Romsey, it may be mentioned in passing that it was she by whose order Eadgar's eldest son by his first wife, Eadward the Martyr, was murdered at Corfegate, where the well-known castle afterwards rose and where its ruins remain until this day. Now Æthelwold had previously had to wife one Brichgyfu, a kins-woman of Eadgar, and had had by her many sons and daughters, the last born of them was named Æthelflæd; according to other accounts, Æthelflæd was born after her father's death, and therefore must have been Ælfthryth's child. Be this as it may, she was in any case akin to the king or queen, and was by them entrusted to the care of St. Merwynn of Romsey. A true mother in God the abbess proved, and a dutiful and loving daughter was Æthelflæd. In due time she took the veil, and the sanctity of her life was shown in various ways, and was attested by miracles. She made no display of her austerities, pretended to eat and drink with the other nuns but hid the food in order to give it to the poor, and used to leave her dormitory at night, even in winter time, to plunge naked into one of the streams and there remain until she had chanted the Psalms of the day. Once in her younger days, when the abbess was cutting some switches from the river banks wherewith to chastise the girls under her charge, the stone walls of the nunnery became clear as transparent glass to the eyes of Æthelflæd, and she saw what the abbess was doing, and when she came in she besought her with many tears not to beat her or her companions. The abbess, much astonished, asked her how she knew that she was going to beat them; to which Æthelflæd replied that she had seen her cutting the switches, and that they were even now hidden under her cloak. Another miracle is recorded which, for the saint's reputation, one would hope was a pure invention of the chronicler, since if it were true it might lay her open to the charge of performing an easy trick with phosphorus in order to gain credit for miraculous power. It is said that one night when it was her turn to read the lesson the lamp which she held in her hand went out, but that her fingers became luminous and shed sufficient light upon the book to enable her to read the lesson to the end. Other miracles are related of her, and though she was not elected abbess on the death of St. Merwynn she obtained that honour three years afterwards on the death of Abbess Ælwynn. [7] The Elgiva of school histories. The next sainted woman who calls for mention is Christine, daughter of Eadmund Ironside, and sister of Eadgar the Ætheling, and of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, who became a nun at Romsey, and is supposed by some to have been Abbess, though this is very doubtful. The Scotch king Malcolm Canmore and Margaret his queen, sent their two daughters Eadgyth and Mary to be educated by their aunt Christine. Aunt Christine acted on the principle of the proverb, "Spare the rod, spoil the child," and Eadgyth spoke in after days of the whippings she had received because she refused to wear a nun's veil. Professor Freeman tells us how on one occasion the Red King came to Romsey to woo Eadgyth, for it must be remembered that she was now the eldest female representative of the old Wessex kings, and a marriage with her would do much to weld together Normans and English. But, although he was admitted to the nunnery, Christine persuaded Eadgyth to put on a nun's garb as a disguise--she was at the time about twelve years old--and told her to go into the choir; to allow time for the change of raiment she invited the king to come and see the flowers in the cloister garden. As he went thither, he caught sight of Eadgyth in her veil, and imagined that he was too late, for even he, bad as he was, would not care to press his suit, especially as it was prompted by policy, not by love, and a marriage with a nun would be counted illegal and so would fail to have the result he desired. This took place in 1093. Later in the same year it is said that another king, her father Malcolm of Scotland, came to see her and was vexed to see her wearing a veil and tore it from her head, saying he did not wish her to be a nun but a wife. Another suitor in due course came to woo her, a more eligible one than Rufus, namely his brother Henry I. In this case the union was dictated not only by policy but by love. But there were certain difficulties. There was no doubt that Eadgyth had worn a veil, but whether simply as a disguise or a professed nun was open to argument; so a solemn assembly was called by Anselm to hear evidence on the subject. The decision it came to was that she was not a nun, and, to use Mr. Freeman's words, Anselm "gave her his blessing and she went forth as we may say Lady-Elect of the English." On her marriage she laid aside her English name Eadgyth, and assumed that of Matilda or Maud. Robert of Gloucester calls her "Molde the gode quene." And Peter de Langtoft says of her Malde hight that mayden, many of her spak, Fair scho was, thei saiden, and gode withouten lak. * * * * * * * Henry wedded dame Molde, that king was and sire, Saynt Anselme men tolde corouned him and hire. The corounyng of Henry and of Malde that may, At London was solemply on St. Martyn's day. Henry and Matilda were benefactors to many abbeys, and naturally the queen was not forgetful of Romsey when the days of her girlhood had been passed. She was the mother of the prince who perished in the White Ship, and of Matilda who married the Count of Anjou, and carried on warfare against Stephen on behalf of her son Henry. Matilda of Romsey died in 1118 and was buried at Winchester. The next abbess worthy of notice was Mary, daughter of King Stephen, of whom a true and romantic story is told, and who, by breaking her vows and marrying caused a great scandal at the time. She was the youngest daughter of the king, and a granddaughter on her mother's side of Mary, whom Christine had brought up with her sister Eadgyth. She was educated at Bourges, then was transferred with other French nuns to the abbey at Stratford le Bowe, but as the original English nuns and the imported French ones did not agree, the latter went to a Benedictine house near Rochester, which had been founded by Stephen, and later on, about 1155, Mary became Abbess of Romsey. Her brother William, Count of Boulogne, died about 1159, and his estates passed to his sister. Matthew of Alsace cast covetous eyes on her broad lands and encouraged, it is said, by Henry II, who thought thereby to gain a powerful friend on the continent and, at the same time, annoy Thomas Becket, sought the abbess's hand in marriage. He persuaded her to leave Romsey and become his wife: it is thought that Henry II may have brought some pressure to bear upon her to induce her to take this step. Anyhow, she was married in 1161. Her new people gladly received her, and her kindness of heart won and held their affection. For ten years Matthew and Mary lived happily together, or would have been happy if it had not been for the ban of the church. Then either on account of conscientious scruples about their past conduct, or on account of the disabilities imposed on them by the church, they separated, and Mary once more took on her the religious life, but not at Romsey. No doubt she thought it better to go to a convent entirely new to her, that at Montreuil, where she would not be constantly reminded of her former misconduct. Here she died in 1182, aged forty-five. It is noteworthy that her two daughters were legitimatized, their names were Ida and Maud. Ida, the elder, married first Gerard of Gueldres, and then Reginald of Damartin, and the younger, Maud, married the Duke of Brabant, so that it would seem that the pope did not take a very serious view of the Abbess Mary's broken vows. [Illustration: PIER IN THE NORTH NAVE ARCADE] The thirteenth century abbesses followed one another in quick succession, no good thing for the discipline of the abbey. When Matilda died in 1219, the old gallows on which the abbess had had the right of hanging offenders condemned by her court, fell into disuse, but the right was restored by the King to Amicia. Towards the end of the century, episcopal visitations began, and the Bishop of Winchester looked into various disorders that had grown up among the abbesses and sisters. The various methods of procedure and the things forbidden give us some idea of the abuses that prevailed. The abbess was required in the injunction issued about 1283 not to exercise an autocratic power but only a constitutional one, being guided by the advice of her chapter. It was forbidden to any men except the confessor, and the doctor in case of illness of a nun, to enter the convent; all conversation with outsiders was to take place in the presence of witnesses and in an appointed place. The nuns were forbidden to visit the laity in Romsey, and other like ordinances were enjoined. Philippa de Stokes and Clementia de Guildeford were infirm, and Clementia's successor, Alicia de Wynterseshull, was poisoned soon after her election, but no evidence could be produced to convict the murderer. Many episcopal visitations took place during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The injunctions issued at many of them are in existence: these deal only with what is blameworthy, not with that which calls for no reproof. Some of the things objected to seem to us very trivial. On one occasion the nuns were forbidden to keep pet animals, as the abbess was charged with giving her dogs and monkeys the food intended for the sisters. Sometimes the abbess was forbidden to take into the convent more than a certain number of nuns. In 1333 there were ninety-one, but after a time the numbers decreased, and at the dissolution there were only twenty-six. The injunctions of 1311 were very strict, some of them deal with the locking of doors, forbid the presence of children, whether boy or girl, in the dormitory or in the choir. Romsey, like many other religious houses, suffered severely at the time of the Black Death. The number and names of the ninety-one nuns voting in 1333 at the election of Johanna Icthe has come down to us. The pestilence reached Weymouth from the east in August, 1348, and of it died the abbess Johanna, two vicars, one prebendary, and no doubt many of the sisters, as in 1478 the number of nuns had dropped from ninety-one to eighteen, and after this there were never more than twenty-six nuns at Romsey. The reduction in the nuns not only decreased the importance of the abbey but led to a terrible relaxation of discipline. The worst scandal arose when Elizabeth Broke was abbess. The evidence given before Dr. Hede, Commissary of the Prior of Canterbury, is still extant. There were various charges against her, that she allowed some of the sisters to wear long hair, did not prevent the nuns going into the town and drinking at the taverns, treated some with great severity, did not keep the convent accounts accurately, suffered sundry roofs to get out of order, and that she was much under the influence of the chaplain, Master Bryce. Some years before this she had been charged with adultery; this she seems to have denied with oaths, and finally, when she could brazen it out no further, she confessed to adultery and perjury and resigned her office, the only thing she could do; but the most remarkable part of the story is still to come: the sisters being required to fill the vacant post by the election of an abbess, almost unanimously re-elected Elizabeth Broke. Two only, Elizabeth herself and one other, did not vote for her. The bishop thereupon restored her to her position as abbess, but to mark his displeasure with her he forbade her to use the abbatial staff for seven years. The remaining years of her rule were not satisfactory. The sisters took advantage of the scandal she had caused to act in an insubordinate way towards her. The next abbess was Joyce Rowse, but she was utterly unable to reinstate the old discipline--we hear of her revelling with some of the sisters in the abbess's quarters. Bishop Fox in his injunctions in 1507 forbade sundry priests to hold any communication with the abbess or with any of the nuns. William Scott was forbidden to gossip with the nuns at the kitchen window. Nature it would seem was much the same in the sixteenth century as it is now, and the convent servants loved gossip as much as ours do. The abbess, finding that she could not maintain her authority in the abbey, resigned, and Anne Westbrooke, formerly mistress of the convent school, was appointed to succeed her in 1515. She died in 1593, and was succeeded by the last abbess, Elizabeth Ryprose; she seems to have been a capable woman, and tried hard to do her duty. But it was too late to purify the abbey. Various nuns were reprimanded or punished in 1527 by the vicar-general. Alice Gorsyn confessed to having used bad language and having spread false and defamatory stories about the sisters; on her confession she was admitted to penance, but it was ordered that if she transgressed again in like manner she was to wear a tongue made of red cloth under her chin for a whole month, and the abbess was ordered to see the sentence carried out. Clemence Malyn was deposed from her office of sub-prioress and sextoness on account of the careless manner in which she had performed the duties of these offices, and she also, in answer to questions asked by the vicar-general, acknowledged that she had frequently hidden a key of the abbey church in a hole so that a certain Richard Johans might find it and enter the church, and might drink in the sacristy wine with which she provided him, though she denied having ever drunk with him or otherwise misconducted herself. Margaret Doumar confessed that she had been guilty of incontinence with Thomas Hordes, and she was severely punished: she was to be imprisoned for a year, to hold no conversation with any sister save her gaoler, she was to eat no food except bread and water every third and sixth day of the week, and to receive chastisement on those days in the Chapter House. The nunnery was suppressed in 1539, and the fact that no pensions were given to the abbess or sisters seems to point to the fact that the abbess did not voluntarily surrender. Where this was done the monks or nuns were generously treated by the King's commissioners, but when they refused to surrender they were expelled without any provision being made for them. What became of the majority of these expelled monks and nuns we do not know, possibly any of those who were in priest's orders found work in parish churches, but the case of the nuns was harder. We hear nothing of the after life of any of the Romsey nuns save Jane Wadham, who married one John Forster, who had been the collector of the abbey rents. She declared that she had been forced to take the veil against her will, and he said he had been similarly forced to enter the priesthood. After the suppression the domestic buildings of the abbey disappeared--but the church was sold to the people of Romsey by Henry VIII for the small sum of £100. The deed of sale may still be seen in the clergy vestry at Romsey. Queen Mary, at the beginning of her reign, restored some of the church plate. And so the history of the religious house at Romsey ends. In one respect it was more fortunate than the neighbouring nunneries at Shaftesbury, Wilton, and Amesbury. The abbey church remains until this day, and enables us to form an idea of the arrangements in force in the churches of Benedictine sisterhoods. Many monastic churches remain, some having become cathedrals, as Gloucester, some parish churches, as Sherborne, but few of the churches belonging to nunneries survived the suppression of the religious houses; one at Cambridge, now used as the chapel of Jesus College, and the church at Romsey, are, however, among the few exceptions. We could wish that we knew more about the history of this religious house, but sufficient is known to show us that it was once a very famous abbey, and a place of instruction for many royal and noble ladies, in its early days the discipline of the Benedictine rule seems to have been well maintained, though in later years faith grew cold and worldliness prevailed within its walls, as indeed it did in many another monastery and nunnery, so that when the old order changed giving place to new, the people of the country, especially in what was once the original kingdom of the West Saxons, saw them suppressed without any great feelings of regret. The architectural student and the archaeologist, indeed, regret that so many of the abbey churches have become little more than picturesque ruins such as Glastonbury, or mere grass-covered foundations such as Bindon and Shaftesbury, and when so many have perished we cannot be too thankful that the splendid abbey church at Romsey still stands in all its pristine beauty and interest. VICARS OF ROMSEY _As given in a list suspended in the Retro-choir_ 1282 Solomon de Roffa, Prebendary of St. Laurence Major. 1292 John de Romese, Prebendary of Edington. 1304 John de London, Prebendary of Edington. 1312 Gilbert de Middleton, Prebendary of Edington. 1322 Henry de Chilmark. 1325 Richard de Chaddesley, D.C.L. 1342 Nicholas de Gutleston. 1344 Nicholas de Ballestone. 1349 John de Minstede. _c._ 1360 Thomas Eggesworth. 1371 John Ffolliott. 1380 Roger Purge. 1400 John Winfrey or Umfray. 1420 John Bayley, M.A. 1464 John Green, M.A. 1482 Edward Coleman, M.A. 1500 John Hopwood. 1519 John Newman, LL.B. 1546 Roger Richardson. 1586 Samuel Adams. 1620 Anthony White, M.A. 1648 John Warren (an intruder). 1662 Thomas Doughty. 1666 Jacobus Wood. 1669 Samuel Walensius. 1680 Thomas Donne. 1690 William Mayo. 1727 John King. 1746 John Peverell. 1781 John Woodbron. 1808 Daniel Williams. 1833 William Vaux, Canon. 1841 Gerard Noel, Canon. 1849 William Carus, Canon.[8] 1855 Charles Avery Moore. 1860 Edward Lyon Berthon. 1892 James Cooke Yarborough. [8] Well known at Cambridge, where the Carus Greek Testament Prizes perpetuate his memory. INDEX Abbesses, historical list of, 67-78. Ælfgyfu (Emma), benefactress, 18. Ælflæd, 16, 17. Aisles, 24, 48; north choir, 22, 28; south, 56. Ambulatory, 52. Apse, foundations of, 17. Apsidal chapels, 24, 34, 50, 59. Bells, 34. Berthon, Rev. E. L., 18, 24, 59. Brackley tomb, 50. Broke, Eliz., Abbess, 76. Capitals, carved, 48. Chantry of St. George destroyed, 22, 28. Choir rebuilt, 40. Christ Church, Oxford, 47. Church purchased by the people, 22, 78. Clerestory, 45. Corbel table, 30. Danes, destruction by, 18. Dimensions, 82. Doors, 32. Eadgyth (Queen Maud), 71. Font, 64. Foundation, 16. Horse-shoe arches, 52. Icthe, Joan, Abbess, 61. Kilpec, Isabella de, supposed effigy of, 60. Lawrence, St., Parish Church, 22, 28, 50. Mary, Abbess, 72. Monuments, 60-63. Nave, interior, 39. Organ, 60. Petty, Sir W., tomb of, 63. Relics, hair, 52; sundry, 53. Reredos, fourteenth-century, 51. Restoration, 24, 36. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, 48. Romsey Psalter, 53. ---- Rood, 32. Ryprose, E., last Abbess, 77. St. Barbe John, monument of, 60. Saxon carving, 56. Screen, choir, 59. Suppression of the nunnery, 77. Tomb of priest, 62; of unknown lady, 60. Tower, top, 24; interior, 49. Triforium, 44, 46. Vaults, 39, 48. West front, 29. Western (Early English) addition, 20, 43. Windows, east, 21, 28, 64; west, 63. DIMENSIONS Total length of church, including buttresses 263 feet. " " from outer faces of walls 256 " Total width of nave and choir from outer faces of walls 86 " Total length of transept: exterior 140 " " " interior 127 " Length of nave, interior 165 " " choir " 54 " Width of retro-choir, interior, east and west 15 " " nave, interior, between centre of piers 39 " " aisles, interior, from centre of piers to walls 18 " Height of nave walls to wall plate 70 " Height of tower 93 " Length and breadth of tower, interior 28 " Total area 21,470 square feet. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF ROMSEY ABBEY CHURCH] A Saxon Rood. B Saxon Reredos. C Effigy of Lady. D Sir W. Petty's Monument. E Choir Screen. F Organ. G Font. H Abbess's Door. J Nuns' Door. K North Door. L Clergy Vestry. M Choir Vestry. (The three western bays are of thirteenth-century work). CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 
22990	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 22990-h.htm or 22990-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/9/9/22990/22990-h/22990-h.htm) o9 (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/9/1/22990/22990-h.zip) Transcriber's notes: This booklet appears to end abruptly, but there is no evidence of any missing pages in the original copy. The "oe" and "OE" ligatures are represented as "[oe]" and "[OE]" respectively. Superscripted text is not displayed as such in the text version. Superscripts are displayed in the HTML version. On page 20, a cross symbol, which indicates year of death, is represented as {+}. A list of corrections will be found at the end of the e-text. The Cathedral of Strasburg [Illustration] Strasburg A. Vix & Cie Publishers [Illustration: Death of the Virgin Maria.] HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE CATHEDRAL OF STRASBURG Twenty fourth Edition Strasburg Published by A. Vix & Cie 31, Place de la Cathédrale 1922. [Illustration: The interior of the Cathedral.] [Illustration] I. HISTORY Among the wonderful monuments to which the religious art of the middle ages has given rise and which will for ever excite the admiration of men, the church of _Notre-Dame_ or Cathedral of Strasburg occupies one of the first ranks. By its dimensions, the richness of the ornaments and figures that adorn its exterior, by the majesty of its nave, and by its light steeple, which towers towards Heaven with as much grace as boldness, this house of God proclaims afar its destination and leaves a deep and indelible impression on the soul of any one who gazes on it. Exhibiting in all its different parts models of every epoch of christian architecture, this Cathedral is for the artist a subject of serious study and for the inhabitant of Strasburg a venerable monument, which recalls to his mind the principal events of the ancient history of our city. According to some old traditions, the Cathedral is built on a spot, which, from the remotest times, had been devoted to worship. Originally this spot formed a hill sloping westward into a cavity, which was filled up many centuries ago. Around it, the Celts, the first inhabitants of our country, built their huts: its summit was covered by the sacred wood, in the midst of which rose the druidical _dolmen_. It was there that those barbarians offered sacrifices to Esus, their God of war, sacrifices which, in times of public calamity, were human victims. After the conquest of Gaul by the Romans, a regular and fortified town was very soon founded on the place hitherto occupied by the scattered habitations of the Celts. The old name of _Argentorat_ was alone preserved; it signified a town where the river is crossed over. It was there, according to tradition, that a temple dedicated to Hercules and Mars succeeded the druidical forest. There is nothing unlikely in these traditions; the high ground on which the Cathedral stands speaks as much in their favour as the pagan statues found in the neighbourhood[1]. [1] A brass statue of Hercules, called _Krutzmann_, was found among the christian statues that decorated the Cathedral; it was taken down in 1525 and is no longer extant. A Hercules of stone, found no doubt when digging the foundations, is yet seen in a niche of the northward tower, where it juts out into the nave. A small stone figure of Mars, coming also from the Cathedral, was preserved in the town-library, but it appeared to be modern. With respect to the first erection of a christian church in this place, history is destitute of authentic facts. Some old chronicles report that about the middle of the fourth century, saint Amand built a church on the ruins of a Roman temple, but the existence of this supposed first bishop of Strasburg is even very doubtful. During the first years of the fifth century, the invasion of barbarians filled the provinces of Gaul with terror and devastation; the German tribes that crossed the Rhine plundered the Roman city of Argentorat and its temples. Nobody knows whether from that time new inhabitants settled in the midst of these ruins, or whether they served but as temporary abodes to the hordes successively coming into Gaul. It was only after the conquest of that extensive country by the Franks that, about 510, Clovis had a church built at Argentorat, no doubt on the spot where the Cathedral now stands. The architecture of that church was as coarse and barbarous as the spirit of those times; it was built of wood and supported by earthen walls, extending from East to West; on this latter end was the front-gate and before it a portico; besides the principal nave it had two aisles; the western side opening into a yard that served as a passage to the priest's house. In proportion as the town, the name of which was by the Franks changed into Strasburg, increased in importance and population, the Merovegian kings granted greater favours to the church founded by one of their predecessors. The valuable donations they bestowed on the bishopric of Strasburg, enabled the inhabitants to embellish and enlarge the Cathedral. In 675 Dagobert II granted to bishop Arbogast the town of Ruffach with the castle of Isenburg and a vaste domain that he freed from tax and royal jurisdiction and which on that account was called superior _Mundat_. A no less important gift was that from Count Rudhart, who made over to the church of Strasburg, in 748, Ettenheim with several neighbouring villages on the right bank of the Rhine. Many other eminent personages of this country increased successively by their liberality the wealth of the episcopal see. A great advantage was granted by Charlemain in 775, which was to exempt the subjects of the bishopric from all tolls and taxes imposed upon the traders travelling through the empire. At that time considerable sums had already been employed to adorn the interior of the Cathedral. In the year 826, the abbot Ermold the Black, living in exile at Strasburg, speaks with enthusiasm of the _beautiful temple of the Virgin_ and of the other altars that decorate it. This ecclesiastic, with great ardour changed the metal of the antique statues he could yet find into sacred vases; a bronze Hercules, two cubits high, alone escaped the pursuit of his pious zeal; after preserving it several centuries in the Cathedral, it was at last sold, and is now at Issy near Paris. A fire, which in 873 destroyed a portion of the church and all its archives, occasioned, no doubt, important repairs, and this event was the cause of a new royal confirmation of all the possessions of the church. In 1002 it was plundered, profaned and set on fire by the soldiers of Hermann, duke of Suabia and Alsacia, who was then contending with Henry of Bavaria for the imperial crown, Strasburg and its bishop Wernher having declared for the latter. Subdued by Henry II, Hermann was compelled to repair the damage caused to the church by placing at bishop Wernher's disposal the income of the abbey of Saint-Stephen of which he was the patron. With these funds, which the bishop increased by means of a new levy of taxes and by indulgences, he was preparing to restore his Cathedral, when in 1007 a thunderbolt achieved its destruction. He then formed the project of rebuilding the church on a plan of much larger dimensions and after the style of architecture that was then making its first appearance. The revenues of the bishopric, contributions furnished by the clergy of Alsacia and large sums of money granted by the head of the empire, afforded Wernher the necessary resources for the execution of his plan. This was examined and discussed in the presence of several master-architects whom he had sent for. The plan once fixed upon, stones were brought from the fine quarries of free-stone in the Kronthal. The peasants and bondsmen of the country brought them to the town where they were cut in the square then called _Frohnhof_, between the Cathedral and the present palace. It was during these labours that in 1042 the emperor Henry II came to Strasburg; the dignified and austere deportment of the clergy of the high chapter, the tranquillity prevailing under the roof of the episcopal church, made such an impression on this prince, that he for a moment resolved to resign the crown and solicit his admittance among the canons of the Cathedral. The bishop appeared at first to accede to this wish; but it was only to prescribe to Henry, henceforth his subordinate, to resume the imperial authority which Providence had bestowed on him; the emperor acquiesced and perpetuated the remembrance of his pious wish by the foundation of a royal prebend. When, in 1015, a sufficient quantity of materials was collected, they set to work by digging the ground. At the depth of more than five fathoms they drove down stakes, filled the space between them with clay mixed with lime, fragments of bricks and coal; and on this solid base were laid the foundation stones. Tradition gives an account of a hundred and even two hundred thousand men being employed in the construction of this church, which work, thanks to the religious enthusiasm of that epoch and the labours performed by vassals and workmen _for the salvation of their souls_, advanced very rapidly. In the year 1027 bishop Wernher set out for Constantinople, and never returned to his native land. From that time we have but imperfect and uncertain accounts touching the progress of the building. All we know is, that in 1028 they had built up to the roof. It seems likely from that account that this monument, built in the byzantine style, at once so elegant and so simple, was soon after completed by the erection of a tower, and that it remained in the same state till, owing to sundry circumstances and, perhaps, to bad construction, it began to need important repair. It is impossible to determine the time when repairing the church took place; however, this happened probably not before the middle of the thirteenth century and in the then new style, since called the Gothic order. This opinion is confirmed by the ancient seal of our city, which likely enough and according to the custom of those times, represents the front of the Cathedral. That it had a tower in 1130 is a certain fact; for K[oe]nigscoven speaks of its destruction by fire in the course of that year; successive fires, in 1140, 1150, 1176 also materially injured the beautiful edifice; besides, the continual wars and tumultuous commotions of the time prevented the bishops from undertaking essential repairs. It appears that these causes, by degrees, brought on the complete ruin of bishop Wernher's constructions; for unquestionably the part included between the nave and the two towers dates but from the thirteenth century, and cannot have been begun before the middle of it. What remained of the old church was pulled down at that time and a new and more spacious edifice was erected, built in the style then spreading over all Europe. Considering the immense size of this monument, it is easy to imagine that the work went on but slowly, and an old chronicle mentions that on the 7th September 1275 they finished the middle part of the superior arch-roofs, with the exception of the towers in front. By whom these labours were directed is altogether unknown. It was bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg who undertook to rebuild the parts that were still in a state of ruin and thus at last to accomplish this great work of the Cathedral[1]. [1] «... _Ipsa ecclesia in meliorum statuum reedificetur_ ...» (See a charter of bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, published by M. L. SPACE 1841, p. 6). In order to execute this design, he published indulgences all over the country; and after collecting large sums of money in the town, he applied to the ecclesiastics of his diocese, asking their own gifts and offerings as well as those of the faithful under their direction; in a synod held in the diocese, the clergy agreed to give up, during four years, a fourth part of their revenues. Conrad entrusted the direction of this work to Master Erwin of Steinbach, who, according to some old documents, was a native of Mayence. This great architect began by rebuilding the nave, the arch-roofs of which were completed in 1275. Then he commenced the façade of the church and its towers from a plan so bold and sublime that the conception of it places Erwin for ever at the head of the architects of the middle age[1]. In 1276 they laid the foundation of the northern tower; to consecrate the spot, the bishop walked solemnly round it, then took a trowel in his hand and thrust it into the ground, as a sign for beginning the work. They relate that a quarrel having occured between two workmen who both wished to work with the trowel the bishop had held in his hand, one of them was killed. This murder was considered as a very bad omen; Conrad ordered their labour to be suspended for nine days; they were only resumed after he had consecrated the place anew. The following year, on saint Urban's day (25th May), Conrad himself laid the first stone of the tower. In the midst of his warfares, this bishop always entertained much affection for his Cathedral, as he beheld the gradual rising of this _glorious work_, as an old inscription terms it[2]; in his heartfelt joy he used to compare it to the flowers of May that bloom in the sun[3]. To the very end of his life Conrad of Lichtenberg neglected nothing to urge on the progress of his work of predilection; after his death, in 1299, he received in it a sepulchre worthy of him; his statue is still to be seen in saint John's chapel. Yet, during the life of Conrad, the Cathedral was shaken by several earthquakes in 1279, 1289, 1291; that of 1289 was so violent that the columns in the interior of the building threatened for a moment to fall down. But a very favourable circumstance happened in 1292, which was the surrender of the _[OE]uvre-Notre-Dame_ to the magistrate of the city, who was henceforth charged with the management of the revenues allotted to the keeping in repair of the Church and consequently also to the completion of it. A few years after, in 1298, a new misfortune happened to the Cathedral. A fire, caused by the imprudence of a cavalier of Albert I, during the sojourn of that prince at Strasburg, consumed all the timberwork and threatened even the pillars and walls. However the damage was promptly repaired. In 1302 a bloody conflict between two citizens of the town, which took place in the very chancel of the church, required again a new consecration of it. [1] They still preserve in the records of the convent of the _[OE]uvre Notre-Dame_ several old drawings on parchment of the façade and towers; these curious designs belong to different epochs; according to the opinion of the _connaisseurs_, the oldest would most likely be that of Erwin himself. [2] _Anno Domini MCCLXXVII in die beati Urbani hoc gloriosum opus inchoavit magister Erwinus de Steinbach._ This inscription was formerly placed in the vault of the northern portal. [3] In a letter of indulgence. After the death of bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, who in the year 1299 was killed in a battle near Friburg, his brother and successor, Frederic, showed no less ardour for the continuation of this building; in 1303 he invited the curates throughout Alsacia to exhort those of their faithful parishioners who had horses and carts, to convey stones for the edifice; in 1308 the magistrate of Strasburg, no doubt at the request of bishop John, promised freepasses to all those who would bring stones or wood, and he secured wine and wheat for the workmen. Erwin superintended the works until 1318, when he died on the 14th of January. All the children of this grand master were artists worthy of him: Sabina, his daughter, carved several statues for the Cathedral; one of his sons, who died in 1330, built the fine church of Haslach; his other son, John, succeeded him in directing the works of the Cathedral, and he died in 1339. In 1331 bishop Berthold of Bucheck built the chapel of saint Catherine, which also contains his tomb. The disturbances and calamities that desolated Strasburg during a great part of the fourteenth century, the revolution of 1332 that altered the form of the government of the town, the ravage caused by the black plague in 1349 with the insurrections accompanying it, the contest of bishop Berthold with his chapter and with the emperor, all this retarded of course the progress of the construction of the Cathedral. Nevertheless they terminated in 1365 the northern tower; K[oe]nigshoven calls it the new tower, perhaps, because they purposed erecting a pyramid on it, which was quite an innovation in the architecture of that time. The southern tower, which the chronicler calls the ancient one, because it was not intended to be raised higher, was finished at the same time. The name of the artist who made the plan of the pyramid and spire of the northern tower is still unknown; nor is it known who built the steeple which formerly rose above the _grande rosace_, or rose. In 1368 the church was again struck by lightning without receiving much damage; in 1384 a fire that broke out in the organ, burnt all the interior with the exception of the chancel. Ever since that time large vats were set in the different parts of the building and guardians placed in the interior and in the towers. In 1429, John Hültz of Cologne was sent for to complete this great work; ten years after, he finished the spire; on Midsummer's day 1439, in the presence of a great multitude, he laid the last stone, exactly a hundred and sixty two years after Conrad of Lichtenberg had placed the first stone of this monument; a statue of the Virgin Mary was also erected on the knob terminating the spire[1]. [1] It was taken down in 1488. At the time of the reformation the Cathedral passed over to the protestants; it is true that on account of their worship, they caused several chapels to be closed and some altars to be removed, but they made no material change, nor spoiled any thing; on the contrary, they watched with care over the magnificent building and even caused important repairs to be made in it. Several times it was very much injured by fire and by lightning, particularly in the years 1540, 1555, 1568, 1624 and 1625. In 1654 the spire was destroyed by lightning; the skilful architect Heckler was obliged to rebuild it sixty five feet high. By the capitulation of 1681 the Cathedral was restored to the catholics, who immediately began to repair it, but unfortunately in that wretched style then prevailing, and when not the least intelligence of christian art existed any longer, they pulled down the lobby made by Erwin, so much admired in the middle age as a masterpiece of elegance; in 1692 they adorned the interior of the choir with wainscots of wood painted and gilt; in 1732 they widened it to the detriment of a portion of the nave, and ten years later galleries were made for the orchestra. To punish, as it would seem, those who were thus spoiling this wonderful monument, an earthquake shook it in 1728; in 1759 it was struck by lightning and considerably injured; the lead on the roof of the nave was entirely melted, and the fine cupola or arched roof that crowned the dome fell into pieces; the roof was then covered with copper, but the cupola was not rebuilt. New destructions awaited the Cathedral in 1793; in their fury of levelling, the men who then ruled the country caused two hundred and thirty four effigies of saints and kings to be taken down from their niches, of which very few only were saved; the crazy jacobin Teterel even proposed pulling down the spire, because, by its height extending far beyond that of the ordinary houses, it was condemning the principle of equality; the motion not being carried on. Teterel obtained the assurance at least, that a large red cap made of tin should be placed on the top of the Cathedral, and it was to be seen among other curiosities in the town-library, before its destruction. The year 1870, so full of important events for Strasburg, was also fatal for the Cathedral, and during the seven weeks' cannonading of the town the beautiful building was constantly threatened with ruin. In the first period of the siege of Strasburg, the Germans tried to force the surrender by the bombardment and partial destruction of the inner town. In the night of the 23rd of August began for the frightened inhabitants the real time of terror; however that night the rising conflagrations, for instance in St. Thomas' church, were quickly put out. But in the following night the New-Church, the Library of the town, the Museum of paintings and many of the finest houses became a heap of ruins, and under the hail of shells all efforts to extinguish the fire were useless. For the Cathedral the night from the 25th to 26th of August was the worst. Towards midnight the flames broke out from the roof perforated by shells, and increased by the melting copper, they rose to a fearful height beside the pyramid of the spire. The sight of this grand volume of flames, rising above the town, was indescribable and tinged the whole sky with its glowing reflection. And the guns went on thundering and shattering parts of the stone ornaments which adorned the front and sides of the Cathedral. The whole roof came down and the fire died out only for want of fuel. The following morning the ground in the interior was covered with ruins, and through the holes in the vault of the nave one could see the blue sky. The beautiful Organ built by Silbermann was pierced by a shell and the magnificent painted windows were in great part spoiled. Fortunately the celebrated astronomical Clock had escaped unhurt. As the Military Command continued for some time to occupy a post of observation on the platform, the Cathedral was unfortunately still longer the aim of German guns which every day surrounded the building with ruins. On the 4th of September two shells hit the crown of the Cathedral and hurled the stonemasses to incredible distances; on the 15th a shot came even into the point below the Cross, which was bent on one side, and had its threatened fall only prevented by the iron bars of the lightning conductor which held it. After the entrance of the Germans into the reconquered town, the difficult and dangerous work of restauration of the point of the spire was begun at once and happily ended a few months after. They work also constantly to make the other damages disappear, and in a short time the magnificent house of God will be restored to all its ancient splendour. [Illustration] [Illustration: The Crypta.] II. DESCRIPTION. The first aspect of the Cathedral produces on the mind a deep impression. One is seized with admiration and amazed at the first view of this noble edifice whose steeple towers up so gracefully and majestically. No doubt that examined in all its particular parts, one may also be struck with the disproportion that exists between them; the nave is not in harmony with the dimensions of the tower, the chancel and transept still less so: but although this want of uniformity may lessen the symmetry of the monument, the impression it at first produces is no less extraordinary. And besides, have not those different styles a particular interest for those who study the history of architecture? In the Cathedral are, as it were, brought together all the styles or orders of architecture of the middle ages, from the byzantine art with its grave simplicity, down to the last glimmerings of the gothic art, now declining, and its works lined with an excess of superfluous ornaments. The byzantine taste prevails in the first constructions of the chancel and aisles and even somewhat in the lower part of the nave; higher up, the style in which the ogive was built extends to the other constructions and finally succeeds to the former entirely. The _façade_ of the church, of an imposing magnitude, cannot be sufficiently admired; the massive walls are hidden by _clochetoons_, arcades, small pillars and innumerable statues; these decorations all wrought to great perfection, give to that part of the edifice a nicety that makes it resemble a work coming from the hands of a chaser. But how to describe, in the short space which the limits of this sketch admit, all the details, all the particular parts of our Cathedral? There is in it such a profusion, such a richness, that to be properly explored, it would require volumes. We must therefore limit ourselves to some brief indications of the most interesting and essential parts[1]. Moreover a description of all the allegorical statues and figures that adorn particularly the inferior parts of the building, would be here so much the more superfluous, as an intelligent spectator may easily understand them. All these fine ornaments are meant to symbolize the mysteries of Redemption, taken from the principal facts in Scripture and from the fundamental doctrines of the christian faith. In this respect the lower tier is the most remarkable; the middle one has neither the same beauty nor the same religious signification; the third is the least satisfactory both as regards execution and artistical conception. [1] We refer the reader who wishes to study the Cathedral in all its parts, to the following works: Grandidier, _Essais historiques et topographiques sur l'église Cathédrale de Strasbourg_, Strasb. 1782, in 8o.--H. Schreiber, _Das Münster zu Strassburg_, Freib. 1828, in 8o, avec 11 lithographies gr. in-fol.--_Vues pittoresques de la Cathédrale de Strasbourg_, dessins par Chapuy et texte par Schweighäuser, 3 livr. in-fol. Strasb. 1827. _La Cathédrale de Strasbourg et ses détails_, par A. Friedrich, 4 liv. gr. in-fol., renfermant 57 planches accompagnées d'un texte explicatifet historique. We regret to say that but one number of this fine work has been published (in 1839).--_Kunst und Alterthum in Elsass-Lothringen_, von Prot. F. X. Kraus, I. Band. With numerous wood-engravings. 1877. [Illustration: Porch of Saint-Lawrence.] The whole of the façade is formed of the two fore-parts of the northern and southern towers and of the large central porch; these three distinct portions are separated by counterforts or pillars which divide, as it were, the frontispiece into three broad vertical bands, each of which has its portico. These porticos and their frontons are ornamented with a great many statues and bas-reliefs, some of which pulled down during the revolution, have since been replaced. The large figures in the left portico are twelve virgins, wearing diadems and trampling down human forms representing the seven deadly sins. On both sides of the right hand portico are seen the ten virgins of the parable; to the group of the wise virgins on the right is joined the statue of Jesus-Christ; the foolish virgins composing the group on the left side, have among them an allegoric figure expressing the lust of the world: on her head is a wreath, in one hand she holds an apple, the ancient symbol of lust; her back bears hideous vipers, to portray the sad fate which must be the inevitable result of inordinate earthly desires. All these statues, now blackened by the centuries that have passed over them, have all a stern appearance, like those that deck the magnificent middle porch representing either prophets of the Old Testament, Apostles or fathers of the Church. In the arches of these three porticos are figures of a smaller size, which like the bas-reliefs of the tympans, exhibit either scenes taken from Scripture, or saints and angels. In the tympan on the right hand door, Jesus is seen seated on a rain-bow, and over him is the Resurrection of the dead and the Judgment-day. On the butting pillar that divides both folds of the middle porch[1], is placed a blessed Virgin holding an infant Christ in her arms. The fronton of this portal is formed by two triangles and adorned with many figures; that on the summit of the interior triangle, which first strikes the eye, is king Solomon seated under a canopy; on both sides of him are fourteen lions raised on steps or benches that draw near towards the top and join near a Virgin Mary sitting with the infant Christ on one arm and holding a globe in her other hand; she is the Patroness of the church. Above her a radiated head, representing God the Father, forms the point of the triangle that encircles the inside fronton, which is decked with figures playing on different musical instruments. On the sides facing the North and South, the two towers have each a large window with most beautiful _rosaces_. Over the window on the South side is seen a very old sculpture, the grotesque figures of which represent the night revelling of sorcerers. The frontons of the other porticos are also adorned with _rosaces_. [1] The beautiful folds of the middle door, mounted with artful bronze ornaments which were executed in Paris after the designs of the architect of our cathedral, Mr. Klotz, were hung up in 1879. On the second tier of the middle porch is a large rose-window that occupies the whole width of it. It is surrounded by a detached arch, which as much on account of the elegance of its workmanship, as of the boldness of its construction, is one of the most admirable parts of the Cathedral. The large painted windows have been repaired by skilful artists, Mr. Ritter and Mr. Müller. Where the second tier begins, at the bottom of the rose-window, are four equestrian statues, placed in niches in the counterforts, three of which, those of Clovis, Dagobert and Rodolphe of Habsburg, were erected in 1291, the fourth, that of Louis XIV, was placed only in 1828. Clovis and Dagobert were the benefactors of the church of Strasburg. Rodolphe stands there, less on account of his liberalities to the Cathedral, than for having been to the last the valiant friend of the Republic of Strasburg. King Louis XIV accompanies the three others, rather from adulation than any other cause. On the upper tier of the façade are placed the equestrian statues of king Pepin the Short, of Charlemain, Otho the Great and Henry I the Fowler. On the south-side are seen in the first tier the emperors Otho II, Otho III and Henry II; in the upper tier of the same side, the equestrian statues of Conrad II, Henry III and the statue of Henry IV. On the north-side of the façade are the equestrian statues of Charles Martel, the Franconian majordomo; of Louis the Debonair and Lotharius, the son of Louis the Debonair; at last in the upper tier, the statues of Charles the Bald, king of the West-Franconians and the equestrian statues of Lotharius II and Louis the German ({+}876). Over the rose-window, but still in the compartment of the second tier, is a gallery furnished with the figures of the Apostles, and above them is placed Jesus-Christ holding in his hands a cross and banner. In the lateral towers, the same tier is taken up on each side by a high broad window in the shape of an ogee, before which rise very slender pillars. Exactly over these windows, on the third tier and also on each side, are three very high and narrow windows; the middle part, though wider, has but two, rather small ones, and surrounded by some statues. This very massive portion of the building betrays at first sight its later origin; when Erwin's plan was abandoned, this part was added to fill up the empty space between the two towers; these were already completed, and even have on the third tier their windows looking into the central porch, but which are at present hidden from the outside. That part of the middle porch is used as a belfry, four large bells are suspended in it, the largest of which, cast in 1427, weighs nine thousand kilogrammes, and serves to announce great festival days; it is also rung at the death of renowned personages, or in case of fire. It was only in the year 1849 that the front was ornamented with statues representing the day of judgment. This group, consisting of fifteen gigantic figures, was made after the old drawings preserved in the archives of the _[OE]uvre-Notre-Dame_. Jesus-Christ, as judge, is in the middle, with Mary and John the Baptist on either side; they are surrounded by angels sounding the trumpet of dooms-day, or bearing the instruments of our Saviour's passion; beneath are seen the Evangelists, having men's bodies surmounted by the heads of the four symbols which generally accompany them. Above the middle porch and the southward tower, is the platform, very spacious and surrounded by a handsome balustrade; on it is built a small house for the guardians charged to strike the hours and ring the alarm bell in case of fire. From the top of this platform one enjoys a magnificent view; the wonderful panorama that unfolds itself from there, has been drawn with as much taste as accuracy by Mr. Frederic Piton, a zealous _amateur_ of our local history. Towards the North, in the direction of the Wacken, an island near Strasburg, is seen on the horizon the mountain of the _Pigeonnier_ (_Scherhol_ in German), at the foot of which lies Wissemburg; to its right rise the peaks crowned by the ruins of _Gutenberg_ and _Trifels_, and the famous _Geisberg_ taken by storm in the war of 1870. On the other side of the Rhine, whose majestic stream the eye can easily trace, the long range of the mountains of the _Black Forest_ limits the horizon. The first peak that is seen is that of the _Eichelberg_, at the opening of the valley of the _Murg_; then comes the _Fremersberg_, the _Mount-Mercury_, the mountain with the ruins of _Yburg_; all these names are known to those who have visited Baden. Beyond these summits is the high level ground of the _Hornisgründe_, on the other side of which is seen, in the midst of a forest, the dark lake named _Mummelsee_. Farther on, eastward, beyond the arsenal of Strasburg and the village of Kehl, you observe the castle of _Schauenburg_, near Oberkirch, where the valley of the _Rench_ begins. After gliding over the ruin of _Fürsteneck_ and _Schauenburg_, the eye rests on the stately buildings of _Ortenberg_, rebuilt after the middle age architecture, at the entrance of the valley of the _Kinzig_. Directing your eye more towards the South, you discover the mountains of _Triberg_, and close to them those of _Lahr_; then comes the loftiest peak of the _Black Forest_, the _Feldberg_, 1494 metres high. Farther on the eye may discover (if tine) the _Ballon_ and the _Blauen_, behind the hills of the _Kaiserstuhl_; thence this ridge of mountains is lost sight of. In the plain, between the Rhine and the Vosges, a double row of poplars points out the _Canal_ (from the Rhone to the Rhine). The first peak seen in the range of the Vosges towards the South-East is the _Ballon of Sultz_, 993 metres high; the eye then discovers in a western direction the ruins of the three castles of _Egisheim_, _Haut-Hattstatt_ and _Landsberg_, the top of the _Ballon_ of _Gebwiller_, 1426 metres high the _Hoheneck_, the ruins of the old castles of _Kientzheim_, _Rappoltstein, Hoh-_ (High) _K[oe]nigsburg_, _Ortenburg_, _Bernstein_, _Frankenburg_ and the summits of the _Bressoir_ and _Ungersberg_. Looking in the direction of Saint-Thomas' church, at one glance the eye overlooks the country of the old _Hohenburg_, so picturesque and so rich in monuments and historical associations: the castle of _Landsberg_, the rock of the _Mænnelstein_, the convent of _Sainte-Odile_, behind which rises the level ground of the _Champ-du-Feu_; further on to the right, are the ruins of _Girbaden_, the peaks of the _Donon_ and _Schneeberg_. Here the mountains are by degrees lost from sight in the distance; on the horizon one may however distinguish the towers of the castles of _Geroldseck_ and _Hoh-_ (High) _Barr_, in the vicinity of Zabern; then nothing more is seen but meadows, forests, fields, from the centre of which you see now and then the modest church-steeples of the numerous villages that cover the fine plain of Alsacia. On the North side stands a tower of an octangular form, supporting the spire. This tower consists, as it were, but of strong buttresses adorned with small columns and statues, and having large apertures in which very high windows are set and take nearly the whole breadth on the four sides, where they are. Among the statues that face the platform, one must be noticed as being, according to tradition, that of Erwin of Steinbach. In the interior of this tower are the bells that strike the hours, that which is called the gates' bell (_Thorglocke_)[1] and also a clock made in 1786 by two clockmakers of Strasburg, Maybaum father and son. An inscription over the door leading to the platform recalls to mind the earthquake of 1728, so violent that the water was raised from the reservoirs and thrown to a distance of eighteen feet[2]. In front of the four principal sides of the octagon tower are turrets with winding stairs, and consisting but of a series of windows that rise in a spiral form. These elegant turrets seem hardly to rest on any thing; besides the gallery that covers them, they communicate with the principal tower but by means of flat stones that serve as an entrance into a gallery of the interior of the arch-roof, and which lie at a height of almost thirty metres. According to the old drawings, these turrets should have been surmounted by pyramidal spires. They terminate in a gallery that surrounds the tower, from whence one enjoys a most admirable view. It is from that spot that rises the spire (_flèche_), which is an octangular pyramid of an extraordinary boldness, offering to the astonished gazer nothing of a massive construction. Six successive tiers of little turrets are thus pyramidically placed one above the other[3]. Eight winding stair-cases, narrow and of rich open carvings, lead the visitor to a massive spot commonly called _the lantern_; higher up is _the crown_[4], which is not reached without danger, by means of steps placed outside, and with no other protection than the wall to which they are fastened; above another widened place, called _the rose_, the spire is nothing but a column whence jut out horizontal branches to give it the aspect of a cross. The monument terminates in a _knob_ being 0m .460 in diameter and to which ever since 1835 a lightning-conductor has been adapted; one may climb there but with the aid of iron bars to which you must cling with hands and feet. The total height of this stately building is 142m. [1] So called because it was rung morning and night before the opening and closing of the city gates. [2] In the interior of this tower and on the balustrade are seen a great many names of foreigners who have visited the Cathedral. Among these names are some of celebrated persons, as G[oe]the, Herder, etc. [3] Above the first tier of the turrets is seen around the spire (flèche) the following inscription: _Christus nos revocat. Christus gratis donat. Christus semper regnat. Christus imperat. Christus rex superat. Christus triumphat. Maria glorificat. Christus coronat._ [4] Besides some other inscriptions on the spire, you read round the first gallery of the crown these words: _Jesus Christus verbum caro factum est, Jesus Christus, et habitavit in nobis, Jesus Christus, et vidimus gloriam ejus, Jesus Christus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre._ (S. John. 1. 14.) [Illustration: The column of angels.] The nave, decked with a copper roof, abounds no less in decoration than the front. It has large ogive windows adorned with _rosaces_; at the place where the buttresses, equally carved with _rosaces_, join the counterforts or pillars, they have at their tops fine clochetoons; a great many statues and grotesque figures of heads complete the ornaments of this part of the church. Two galleries, one under the windows, the other below the clochetoons of the counterforts, lead from the towers to the cross-aisle. This, as we have already said, is still byzantine in several parts of it. The southern porch, formed by two semi-circular doors made evidently at one of the remotest periods of the Cathedral, is adorned with bas-reliefs and statues; according to tradition, it is reported that two of these statues are the work of Sabina of Steinbach. One is a woman in a triumphal posture holding in her hands a communion cup and a cross; she is the symbol of the church that vanquished the synagogue; the other, a symbol of the latter, is a woman looking down, blindfolded and leaning with pain on a broken spear, whilst the laws of the twelve tables drop from her left hand. On the parvis before this porch is erected, on the left, the statue of Sabina herself, and on the right, the statue of Erwin of Steinbach, both due to the chisel of Mr. Grass. The wall of the upper tier has openings for several windows of an ogive form, above which a gallery runs all along; two round-windows take up the third tier. The northern portion of the cross-aisle has more generally preserved the byzantine manner than that we have just spoken of; however, this intermixture with the gothic style denounces latter renovations. The ancient porch, the remains of very old constructions, is masked by a fore-front that belongs to the last period of the gothic art, and which was built in 1494 by James of Landshut; this new porch (_porch of St. Laurence_), though handsome in its _ensemble_, is wanting in that noble simplicity and purity of taste that distinguishes the other parts of the Cathedral; it is overloaded with ornaments, and its statues have a stiffness that is found nowhere else. The octangular dome over the chancel is also of the byzantine era; however, it has been renewed in several parts. In the place of the deformed cupola, destroyed by the fire of 1870, a handsome pyramid has been erected in the year 1878, after the plans of Mr. Klotz, architect of the Cathedral. Up to 1772 the lower part of the lateral fronts of the church was disfigured by paltry decayed houses; the same year they were pulled down and in their places the present porticos were built, which are not wanting in elegance: the shops and stalls that formerly obstructed in so disgraceful a manner the access to the nave, have also disappeared; and the porches have been repaired with a great amount of good taste. The view of the _interior_ of the nave leaves a deep impression. It is mysteriously lighted by magnificent painted windows, and supported on each side by seven large pillars, composed of round agglomerated columns. The two first of these pillars, more gigantic than the rest, support also the towers; the total elevation of the upper arch is more than 31 metres. The interior front, over the principal porch, is adorned with a beautiful sculptured round-window; between this and the grand rose-window is a glass gallery. Above the arches that unite the pillars on both sides of the nave and all along is a fine gothic gallery, serving as a basis to large windows, similar to those of the lower sides of the church. The lower part of the wall of the latter is ornamented with a range of small columns, joined together by og-arches. The magnificent windows of this church represent subjects and personages of Scripture and Legend. Among the artists who have painted these windows, the oldest one known, is master John of Kirchheim; those made after his drawings were put up in 1348; there is no doubt that many of his works still adorn the Cathedral. The names of John Markgraf, James Vischer and the brothers Link were mentioned later. At the latter part of the eighteenth century John Daniel Danegger painted also some, which, however, owing to their mediocrity, have since been removed. For some years past they have undergone considerable repair under the direction of artists of talent and well acquainted with the science of antiquities. The painted windows of the upper galleries of the nave represent the seventy four ancestors of Jesus Christ; higher up are the images of saints and martyrs; in the right aisle, over the vestry, is seen the gigantic figure of saint Christopher: on the South side, of the six windows that have each sixteen divisions, the four first contain some scenes from the history of the Bible; the two last, the day of Judgment and the celestial Jerusalem. On the North side, in an equal number of windows, you see the birth of Jesus Christ, the wise men, and the portraits of several German emperors; the last of these windows represents a series of the oldest events in Scripture. The effect produced by these beautiful windows is greatly increased since they had the happy idea to wash away the daubing with which, about thirty years ago, they had besmeared the inner walls of the Cathedral; by these means the bare part of the wall, a fine stone of a rosy tint, which served for the construction of the church, is rendered visible; it was a measure that bespoke much good taste and knowledge of the christian art. On the left side of the nave is fixed the organ which extends up to the superior arch. It is a master-piece of work of Andrew Silbermann, who was one of the most able organ-builders of his time and who built it in 1704. Pierced by a shell during the bombardment of 1870, this organ of Silbermann has been restored by a distinguished organ builder of our city. On the same side, at the fifth pillar, stands the pulpit, erected in 1486 by John Hammerer, by order of the magistrate, for the celebrated preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg. This work of sculpture, remarkably delicate, is adorned with nearly fifty little statues, the meaning of which is easy to understand. The canopy is of a modern style, and was made in 1824 to replace a more ancient one, perhaps the first erected in 1617, which has been handed down to us as a most simple piece of workmanship, and made of lime-wood. At the foot of the stairs are two figures, a man in the posture of rest and a woman praying; we may justly suppose that they are meant for the maker of the pulpit and his wife. [Illustration] The chancel is joined to the nave by two pillars of very large dimensions and whose tops belong to one of the constructions anterior to the gothic order. The magnificent lobby built by Erwin of Steinbach was taken down to make room for the taste prevailing in the seventeenth century; it was demolished in 1682. Two high and circular columns support the cupola of the chancel and separate it from its two aisles; in the centre of each of the latter stand also columns to sustain the arch-roofs; that of the northern part is round, whilst the column of the southern aisle is composed of a collection of very slender pillars, probably of a later construction; this long, thin and gracious column bears in its corners some statues, the fineness and gracefulness of which recall to mind the work of Sabina of Steinbach. Beneath are the four Evangelists; above four angels holding trumpets, and uppermost the Saviour and three angels with the implements of the Saviour's passion in their hands; it is called the angel's column or Erwin's column. On the large pillar which unites the nave to the chancel, are two inscriptions in commemoration of the famous preacher Geiler of Kaysersberg who, for many years, displayed his eloquence from the pulpit of the Cathedral. In this same aisle is erected the statue of bishop Wernher, meditating the design of the church laid before him. Opposite this statue, the work of Mr. Friderich, is the celebrated. Astronomical Clock. As early as 1352 an astronomical clock was begun under bishop Berthold of Bucheck, and finished two years after by an unknown artist, in the time of John of Lichtenberg. It was fixed to the wall facing the present one. The frame-work of that first clock was all of wood; the stones that formed its basis are to this day seen projecting from the wall. It was divided into three parts; the lower part contained a universal calendar; in the middle was an astrolabe, and in the superior division were seen the three wise men and the Virgin Mary carved in wood; the wise men bent every hour before the Virgin, by means of a peculiar mechanism, which at the same time put in motion a chime of harmonious sounds and a cock crowing and flapping his wings. The exact time at which this clock, which in the fourteenth century must have been a wonderful piece of workmanship, and was called the clock of the three sages, ceased going, is not known: it had been stopped for a long time, when in 1547 the magistrate of the town decided on having another made and putting it opposite the old one, in the very place the clock now occupies. Three distinguished mathematicians furnished the plan and superintended the execution of it: they were Dr Michel Herr, Christian Herlin, professor of mathematics at the school of Strasburg, and Nicholas Prugner, who, after preaching the reformation at Mulhouse and at Benfeld, occupied himself at Strasburg with mechanics and astrology. These three learned men began this work, but did not terminate it; it was resumed in the year 1570 by a pupil of Herlin, named Conrad Dasypodius of Strasburg, where he was a professor of mathematics. Dasypodius drew the design of the clock, but its execution was confided to two skilful mechanics of Schaffhouse, the brothers Isaac and Josiah Habrecht; Tobias Stimmer, also of Schaffhouse, had the charge of the paintings. This master-piece of the mechanical art of the sixteenth century was completed in 1574; it ceased going in 1789. As the exterior distribution of the present clock is nearly the same as that of the old clock, we shall abstain from describing the latter. In 1836 the corporation of the town of Strasburg adopted the resolution of causing this curious monument to be repaired. To Mr. Schwilgué, a distinguished mechanician of Strasburg, his native place, this remarkable work was entrusted; he began it the 24th of June 1838 and finished it at the end of 1842. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of workmanship of our age; its mechanism is entirely new and in accordance with the present state of the science of astronomy, which as is well known, has attained a very high degree of certainty and exactness. Mr. Schwilgué has not made use of any of the pieces of the old clock, which are deposited in the chapel of the _[OE]uvre-Notre-Dame_; by comparing them with the pieces composing the new clock, one may judge of the progress of science and of the talents of the modern artist. M. Schwilgué preserved of the former clock only its fine case, the paintings and ornaments of which were carefully repaired. In this he had many difficulties to overcome, as well for the proper arrangement of this mechanism and lodging it in a space that was often very limited, as for making the old signs or indications accord with the movements of the clockwork. Of these many were marked only in painting, and must have been renewed after a certain time, as for instance those for the eclipses, which now by a most ingenious mechanical combination will henceforth last for ever. The little statues which hitherto had no articulation, are now moveable; the twelve Apostles have been added to the former number of them. The figure of Death, formerly on the same level with that of Jesus-Christ, is now placed in the centre of figures representing the four ages of life and striking the quarters of hours; the idea of assigning this place to the image of death is assuredly a more rational and finer one than that which prevailed in the old distribution of the figures. Childhood strikes the first quarter; Youth the second; Manhood the third, and Old Age the last; the first stroke of each quarter is struck by one of the two genii seated above the perpetual calendar; the four ages strike the second. Whilst death strikes the hours, the second of these genii turns over the hourglass that he holds in his hand. The image of the Saviour stands now on a higher ground; at the hour of noon the twelve Apostles pass bowing before him; he lifts up his hand to bless them, and during that time, a cock, whose motions and voice imitate nature, flaps his wings and crows three times. Mr. Schwilgué has altered the old calendar into a perpetual one with the addition of the feasts that vary, according to their connexion with Easter or Advent Sundays. The dial, nine metres in circumference, is subject to a revolution of 365 or 366 days, according as the case may be. Mr. Schwilgué has even indicated the suppression of the secular bissextile days. He has moreover enriched his work by adding to it an ecclesiastic compute with all its indications; an orrery after the Copernican system, representing the mean tropical revolutions of each of the planets visible to the naked eye, the phases of the moon, the eclipses of the sun and moon, calculated for ever; the true time and the sideral time; a new celestial globe with the procession of the equinoxes, solar and lunary equations for the reduction of the mean geocentric ascension and declension of the sun and moon at true times and places. A dial placed without the church and showing the hours and days, is put in motion by the same mechanism of the clockwork. The camerated roof of the back part of the chancel was formerly covered with paintings executed in 1686 representing Dooms-day. A few paintings only adorned till now the interior of the Cathedral, among which the most remarkable oil-paintings, executed by artists of Strasburg, are: the _Shepherd's Adoration_, by Guerin, the _Laying in the tomb_, by Klein; the _Ascension_, by Heim, and some others. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the chancel was several times and in different ways enlarged and disfigured by ornaments little correspondent with the elegance and grandeur of the gothic order. Tribunes, stairs and wainscots that formed a strange contrast with the rest of the edifice were added. The altar, adorned in 1501, with fine figures carved in wood by Master Nicholas of Haguenau, was changed in 1685 by order of bishop William Egon of Fürstenberg; that new altar, covered with a baldachin, was destroyed by fire, and in 1765 the present one, which has nothing in its form worthy of notice, was erected. Great repairs were begun some years ago under the direction of the city corporation, struck, as every body was, by the great disproportion between the chancel and nave. It was resolved to restore the chancel to its primitive form and arrangement, and thus to reestablish the due proportions between that part and the rest of this magnificent church. This great labour is now finished. Their natural complement, as required by the style of this part of the pile and its extensive fronts and arch-roofs, is the execution of a certain number of monumental paintings, intrusted to two distinguished artists, Prof. Steinle, Director of Städel's Institute in Frankfort a/M. and the historical painter Steinheil in Paris, a native Alsacian. The former is charged with the execution of the fresco-paintings in the chancel and lateral naves, whilst the latter undertook the reestablishment of the paintings that represent the Dooms-day on the upper wall of the chancel, in front of the great nave. Both works, begun in 1876, came in sight for the visitors of the Cathedral, at the end of 1878. In restoring to this part of the edifice its former appearance, it has highly augmented the effect produced on the inward aspect of the Cathedral; now also may be decided the question, hitherto doubtful, of the exact time at which the chancel was built; with certainty, it may already be said, that it was not erected, as was often affirmed, in the time of the emperor Charlemain. [Illustration: Astronomical clock.] In removing the superfetations that had taken place during these two last centuries, and in reestablishing the architectural forms that the wretched style then prevailing had concealed, a succession of large ogive arches of an admirable and powerful proportion which form the inferior part of the Apsis, and support a gallery serving as a basis to the upper story, have come to light. On this story, which is separated from the _cul-de-four_ (spherical vault) by a single moulding, are three large ogive windows, the middle one of which is of colossal dimensions, and between the columns below are in a symmetrical manner placed, on each side, the doors of the treasury and chapter-room, and in the centre lies the bishop's throne, the niched vault of which is still more richly decorated; between the intermedial arches are the staircase doors leading to the gallery. The _Apsis_ is not very deep and terminates by a segment, cut out of a masonry work outwardly square; entirely devoted to the sanctuary, it only contains the high-altar, the twenty four stalls of the chapter and a necessary room to perform divine worship. In 1878 an accompanying organ has been erected on the left side. This beautiful instrument, made by Mr. Merklin, the skilful organ-builder of Lyons, is a masterpiece of art and taste that enhances indeed the chancel of the Cathedral. In front and a few steps lower down lies the chancel, destined to the inferior clergy and choristers. This chancel surmounted by a large octagonal cupola, the external part of which was struck by lightning in 1759, is placed at the intersection of the transepts and nave; open and lighted on all sides, one can admire the boldness and majesty of the columns and basis that support the arched roofs. The cripta or subterranean place, extending under the whole length of the chancel, is worthy of notice; it has also been recently restored. It is of an older order than the constructions of Erwin of Steinbach; it is perhaps the remainder of the edifice erected by bishop Werner, at the beginning of the eleventh century; the shape of the pillars, their cubical tops or chapters, the arches exclusively semi-circular, bring us back to those times. This crypta, that remained unimpaired during all the changes which the Cathedral must have undergone in the course of so many centuries, forms a nave with two arch-vaults and a round chancel. All along the walls of the nave are stone benches. Four of the inner pillars have still hinges affixed to them which prove that this portion of the crypta could be closed by a double door. At its entrance is what is called the holy tomb, a very ancient group of figures representing Jesus Christ and his disciples on the mount of Olives, at the moment when the soldiers are going to seize the Lord: this group comes from the chapel of the Augustines, erected in 1378; it was placed in the crypta in 1683. The most ancient of the present chapels of the Cathedral is that of Saint-Andrew, in the South aisle of the chancel; it is remarkable for the details of its columns and for its ornaments of a very old style; it contains the tombs of several bishops, the oldest of which is that of Henry of Hasenburg, who died in 1190. Behind the North aisle of the chancel, is Saint-John the Baptist's chapel, also very old, and being now lower than the pavement of the Cathedral. Besides several epitaphs, one here sees the fine gothic sepulchre of bishop Conrad of Lichtenberg, who died in 1299. The colossal statue of that prelate lies on a stone and has still some marks of the colours with which it had formerly been painted; in one hand he holds a book, in the other was his crosier of which only the lower part is now left; his head covered with the mitre rests on a cushion and his feet lie against a lion[1]. Near the entrance of this chapel, surrounded by an elegant railing, is the baptismal-font of sculptured stone, the master-piece of Josse Dotzinger of Worms, who died in 1449. [1] The epitaph of Conrad is as follows: «_Anno domini MCCLXXXXIX kal. Augusti obiit Conradus secundus de Lichtenberg natus, Argentinensis episcopus, hic sepultus. Qui omnibus bonis condicionibus, quæ in homine mundiali debent concurrere, eminebat; nec sibi visus similis est in illis. Sedit autem annis XXV et mensibus sex. Orate pro eo._» The first chapel built in the Cathedral was Saint-Lawrence's, next to the North portal of the transept. It was the oldest parish in the town and diocese of Strasburg; the vicar of Saint-Lawrence was the first archpriest of the diocese and at the same time grand-penitentiary of the Cathedral. This chapel, decayed with time, was rebuilt after the plans of master James of Landshut, who died in 1495, and was completed in 1505; when in the course of time it became too small for the parish, it was transferred in 1698 into the neighbouring chapel of Saint-Martin, which had been built in 1420 and then assumed the name of Saint-Lawrence's chapel that it retained ever since. Among the sepulchral monuments it contains, is seen that of Mr. de la Bâtie, in his live time commander of Strasburg. In this chapel is the entrance to the vaults, where to this day the bishops' mortal remains are deposited. The chapel opposite the latter, on the right side of the church, is dedicated to saint Catharine; it was erected in the year 1331 by bishop Berthold of Bucheck who is interred in it. It was newly arched in 1542 and formerly contained the holy tomb. The entrances both into this and the chapel of Saint-Lawrence are decorated with several old statues; in Saint-Catharine's chapel is the tomb of Conrad Bock, a nobleman of Strasburg, who died in 1480; this work is remarkable for the manner in which the numerous figures that surround the bed of the dying man, are grouped together. The sepulchral stones that served as flag-stones or pavement in the interior of this large building, have long ago been removed. Besides the sepulchral monuments and inscriptions already mentioned we shall note the epitaphs of Erwin of Steinbach, of Husa his wife, and of his son John, at the lower part of the buttress in the little yard behind Saint John's chapel[1]; also the inscription to the memory of Conrad Gürtler, who bequeathed to the chapter of the Cathedral his house, a large building in the rue du Dôme; this inscription is opposite that of Geiler of Kaysersberg; finally, in one of the vestries is the epitaph, in german verses, of the celebrated printer John Mentelin of Schlestadt. [1] _Anno domini MCCCXVI. XII Kal. Augustii obiit Domina Husa uxor magistri Erwini. Anno domini MCCCXVIII. XVI Kal. Februarii obiit magister Erwinus gubernator fabrice ecclessie Argentinensis. Anno domini MCCCXXXVIII. XV Kal. Aprilis obiit magister Johanni (sic) filius Erwini magistri operi huius ecclesie._--There was formerly on that spot a burial ground; it is very likely that Erwin and his family were buried there. When some years ago, they were digging a waste-well for the lightning conductor, they discovered an old coffin of stone, broken and filled with earth and bones. All these remains with the exception of some fragments taken away by some curious amateurs, were deposited in a vault. We shall add one word more on the _foundations_ of the Cathedral. Every one knows the old story, according to which this edifice rests on piles, between each of which it were possible to go in boats on canals extending even under the place Gutenberg. As far back as the seventeenth century, they dug to a considerable depth, and have since several times renewed the experiments, to ascertain the nature of the foundations, that have been found to lie very deep and to be very solid, formed of masonry reposing on clay mixed with gravel; under a portion of the nave this bottom is reinforced by oaken piles. Through a door on the right of saint Catharine's chapel you enter the area of the workhouse of the stone-cutters of the Cathedral (_Steinhütte_). These workmen, even to this day form a particular corporation that seems to have originated in the days of Erwin of Steinbach; at all events it is a certain fact that the masons of the Cathedral were from the beginning a body, distinct from the ordinary masons; that they have not admitted among them every one who presented himself, and that they had secret signs to know one another. This (_loge_) society of the masons of the Cathedral has become the cause of many others in Germany; Dotzinger, the successor of John Hültz as architect of this church, united them all in one body; a general meeting of the masters or chiefs of the different _loges_, held at Ratisbon in 1459, adopted certain rules and regulations, and chose as their grand-masters the architects of the Cathedral of Strasburg, where the principal loge or lodge (_Haupthütte_) was established. Maximilian I confirmed the establishment and the rules of this corporation on the 3d October 1498. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was transferred to Mayence. It has already been stated that at a very remote period the Cathedral had received rich and important donations composing the _[OE]uvre-Notre-Dame_, the revenues of which were originally under the direction of the bishops; but as they squandered them away «leaving the building to decay,» the chapter assumed their administration in 1263, after the war between the town and Walter of Geroldseck; however, the canons did no better and in 1290 the magistrate of the city was obliged to take back from them the management of the revenues. The estate and income of the _[OE]uvre_, employed only for keeping in good order and for repairing the Cathedral church, are still managed like other property that belongs to the city; the collector of the revenues is appointed by the city corporation, who also names the architect and sculptor of the _[OE]uvre_. The receiver's office is in a handsome house (_Frauenhaus_), built in 1581, after the taste of those times, situated opposite the South side of the Cathedral. In that house, where the old plans of the church and the pieces of the old clockwork, above mentioned, are carefully preserved, we have also to admire the light and elegant construction of the staircase. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES The following changes have been made as needed to facilitate reading: standardized punctuation and accents, moved illustrations, and renumbered and moved footnotes. Additional changes are listed below: Page 7: Changed "enthousiasm" to "enthusiasm" for consistency. Page 16: Changed "pittoresqu s" to "pittoresques" and "counter-forts" to "counterforts." Pages 20 and 34: Changed "doomsday" and "dooms-day" to "Dooms-day" for consistency. Page 21: The phrase "if tine" matches the original text. Page 22: Changed "Landsburg" to "Landsberg." Page 23: Changed "plat-form" to "platform." Page 24: The measurement "0m .460" matches the original text. Page 26: Changed typo "is" to "it" and changed "bizantine" to "byzantine" for consistency. Page 32: Changed "clock-work" to "clockwork." Page 40: Changed typo "eigtheenth" to "eighteenth." 
23668	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 23668-h.htm or 23668-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/6/6/23668/23668-h/23668-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/6/6/23668/23668-h.zip) +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Errors in the List of Illustration page numbers have been | | corrected. | | | | Text enclosed between equal signs was in bold face | | (=bold=). | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ First Edition, December, 1896. Second Edition, revised, and with Eighteen additional Illustrations, 1898. [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE BISHOP'S PALACE. _From a Photograph by Catherine Weed Ward._] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SALISBURY A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum by GLEESON WHITE With Fifty Illustrations [Illustration] London George Bell & Sons 1898 Chiswick Press:--Charles Whittingham and Co. Tooks Court, Chancery Lane, London. GENERAL PREFACE. This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of archæology and history, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--firstly, the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognized; secondly, the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the transactions of the antiquarian and archæological societies; thirdly, the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; fourthly, the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and, lastly, the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals, originated by the late Mr. John Murray, to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE. EDWARD F. STRANGE. _Editors of the Series._ AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The authorities consulted in the preparation of this book are too numerous to quote in detail. But the admirable works by the late Rev. W.H. Jones have been proved so full of useful information that the service they rendered must be duly acknowledged, although in almost every instance further reference was made to the building itself--or to officially authenticated documents. Nor must the help of one of the cathedral cicerones be overlooked, in spite of his desire to remain anonymous; for his knowledge of the building served to correct several mistakes in the first edition. One moot point concerning the bishop commemorated by an effigy in the North Choir Aisle is left an open question. Local authorities insist that it should be attributed to Bishop Poore, antiquarians of distinction affirm that it represents Bishop Bingham. The illustrations, with the exception of a few details from Britton and Carter, are from photographs most courteously placed at my disposal by Mrs. H. Snowden Ward, or from the series published by Messrs. S.B. Bolas and Co., Carl Norman and Co. (now The Photochrom Company, Ltd.), Poulton and Sons (of Lee) and Witcomb and Son, of Salisbury, in each case duly acknowledged below the engraving. G.W. CONTENTS. PAGE History of the Cathedral 1 Description of the Exterior 16 Tower and Spire 18 West Front 25 North Porch 32 Nave and Choir 32 Description of the Interior--Plan 37 Nave 39 Transepts 42 Monuments in the Nave 43 Monuments of the Boy Bishop 49 Choir Screen 52 Organ 52 Choir and Presbytery 52 Roof Paintings 53 Choir 54 Choir Stalls 57 Reredos 57 High Altar 58 East Transept 61 Eastern Aisle 63 Lady Chapel 63 Monuments in Choir, etc. 65 Chapter House 71 The Cathedral Precincts 80 Cloisters 80 Library 82 Muniment Room 84 The Close 86 Bell Tower 87 Hungerford Chapel 88 Beauchamp Chapel 89 The Stained Glass 91 History of the See 95 The Diocese of Sarum 99 List of the Bishops 99 The Close and Churches 115 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Salisbury Cathedral, from the Bishop's Palace _Frontispiece_ Arms of the Cathedral _Title_ Salisbury Cathedral, the West Front _Face_ 1 Salisbury, from Walpole's "British Traveller" 1 The Cathedral from the South 3 The Cathedral and Bell Tower, from an old print 19 Portals of the West Front 27 Details of Main West Portal _Face_ 30 One Bay of the Nave, Exterior 33 The Choir Screen 36 The Nave--looking West 38 The Nave--South Side 40 North Aisle 41 Nave Transept 42 Effigy of a Bishop 44 The Choir--looking West 55 The Reredos and High Altar 58 The Choir--looking East 59 Portion of the old Organ Screen 62 Piscina in South Choir Aisle 63 Altar and Triptych Reredos in Lady Chapel _Face_ 64 South Choir Aisle, showing Lady Chapel 68 South Choir Aisle, showing Hungerford Chapel _Face_ 68 Chantry of Bishop Bridport 69 The Chapter House--Interior _Face_ 70 The Chapter House--Exterior, and Bosses 72 The Chapter House--Details of Sculpture 73 The Chapter House--Details of Sculpture 77 The Chapter House--Painted Decoration 79 Tomb of Sir John Montacute 79 The Cloisters 81 The Cloisters looking North 82 Rings found in the Lady Chapel 84 Hanging Parapet in the Close 86 Old Wall Painting, "Death and the Gallant" 88 Interior of the demolished Beauchamp Chapel 90 Fragments of old Stained Glass 92 Tomb of William Longespée, 1st Earl of Salisbury 94 Tomb of the Boy Bishop 98 Monument attributed to Bishop Poore 103 North Choir Aisle with Bingham Monument 104 Brass of Bishop Wyville 114 The High Street Gate, North and South Fronts _Face_ 116 The Church House 117 The Poultry Cross 118 Old Plan of Salisbury 119 Plan of the Cathedral 121 [Illustration: SALISBURY. THE WEST FRONT. _From a Photograph by Carl Norman and Co._] [Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral.][1] HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF S. MARY. There is probably no cathedral church in Europe, certainly no other English one, that has such a clear record of its history as Salisbury. Whereas in almost every other instance we have only vague legendary accounts of the original foundation of the building, in this case there is a trustworthy chronicle of its first inception and each successive stage of its progress extant. Owing to reasons noted in another chapter, the former cathedral at Old Sarum was condemned to be abandoned, and a new site chosen for its successor; Bishop Richard Poore, through whose efforts the change of locality was effected, is said to have hesitated long before he could find one suitable. Wilton, then a place of some importance, attracted him first. There is a more or less accurate MS. extant which professes to give an account of his tentative attempts to induce the Abbess of Wilton to permit him to build his church in a meadow of her domain. An old sewing-woman (_quaedam vetula filatrix_) is said to have attributed his frequent visits to quite another motive; she inferred that the Bishop had a papal dispensation to marry, and was a suitor for the hand of the Abbess. The negotiations failed: "Hath not the Bishop land of his own that he must needs spoil the Abbess? Verily he hath many more sites on which he may build his church than this at Wilton," was the reply of the Abbess to his demand. During his period of indecision the Virgin appeared to him in a vision, and commanded him to build his new church in a place called Myr-field, or, as some accounts have it, Maer-field. He searched vainly for a piece of ground by that name, that he might obey the supernatural edict, until by chance he overheard a labourer (or a soldier, the legends vary,) talking of the Maer-field, and then having, as he thought, identified the place, which appears to have been within his own demesne, he commenced to plan the present building. Another tradition ignores the dream, and says the site of the cathedral was determined by an arrow shot from the ramparts of Old Sarum. Misled by the similarity of sound, the name Maer-field has been, naturally enough, interpreted to mean Mary-field. The apparently obvious form "Miry-field,"--as, according to Leland, it appears on an old inscription,--in spite of the marshy nature of the site, is probably a mere coincidence. Nor is Thomas Fuller's "Merry-field, for the pleasant situation thereof," better worth attention. The generally accepted theory at present is that _maer_, the Anglo-Saxon word for a boundary, supplies the clue. A hamlet, Marton, near Bedwin, another of the same name now corrupted to Martin, near Damerham, might each be truly described as boundary-towns. In Wiltshire to-day 'mere-stone' is the local idiom for a boundary-stone. Mere is alike the name of a hundred and of a parish in Wilts, both near its borders. The site of the present cathedral is at the junction of three ancient hundreds--Underditch, Alderbury, and Cawdon--the south-east wall of the close being the boundary line which divides the cathedral precincts from Cawdon. Not only from the fact that the site was given by the bishop may we infer that the Poores were a wealthy family; but his brother Herbert, who was his immediate predecessor in the see, is described in the Osmund Register, as _dives et assiduus_ (rich and painstaking), and Richard Poore before his enthronement was a benefactor to the monastery of Tarrant, in Dorsetshire, his native village. Later we find he gave a large estate at Laverstock to his new cathedral. Hence the old theory that his name was derived from Poor or Pauper, as it appears in several old chronicles, is untenable. Possibly like the Irish Poer or Power, it may be traced to the word _puer_, used in a restricted sense to denote the sons of royal or noble families not yet in possession of their heritage. A Prince of Wales in past times has been known as Puer Anglicanus, the Spanish "Infanta," the prefix "Childe," have all been cited in support of this theory. It is said indeed that the Childes trace their descent from the Le Poers, and Childe-Okeford and Poorstock, two villages in Dorset are quoted in evidence[2]. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._] Whatever the origin of his name there is little doubt that the Bishop was wealthy, and absolute certainty that he was a powerful and capable ruler--the whole story of his successful efforts to carry out his scheme proves this much, were other testimony wanting. Even his choice of a site is justified by results, although earlier accounts unanimously agree in saying it was little better than a swamp. That such descriptions of the place were true is evident enough; the subsidence of the tower piers show that their foundation was insecure, and the curious feature of a continuous base to the piers of the nave prove also that provision was taken from the first to overcome this obstacle. We have frequent records of floods to the extent at times of causing the daily service to be suspended owing to the water actually being within the building itself; as late as 1763 there is an account of a specially high one thus interrupting the daily ritual. The whole valley of the Salisbury Avon to its sea-mouth at Christchurch, about twenty-nine miles distant is still under water for months at a time during a wet winter. Of course the abundance of water has evoked the usual comparison with Venice. Thomas Fuller, who for the sake of his usual sagacity may be forgiven an allusion so unfounded, says: "This mindeth me of an epitaph made on Mr. Francis Hill, a native of Salisbury, who died secretary to the English liege at Venice--'Born in the English Venice, thou did'st die, dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury.'" One of the reasons most frequently alleged for the abandonment of Old Sarum was its lack of water; but if it was deemed unadvisable to acknowledge the political and administrative reasons which really decided the change, it is just possible that the superfluity of water was found useful as a plausible explanation of the removal on hygienic grounds; or it may even be that the whole story of the scarcity of water at Old Sarum was a later invention to excuse its unwelcome abundance in the new locality. Bishop Douglas is credited with the saying, "Salisbury is the sink of Wiltshire plain, the close is the sink of Salisbury, and the bishop's palace the sink of the close." Certainly the site lacks the natural dignity of position such an edifice demands, and which Lincoln, Durham, Ely, and many another English cathedral, show was frequently deemed essential. Thomas Fuller, who occupied a stall at Salisbury, has written, "The most curious and cavilling eye can desire nothing in this edifice except an ascent, seeing such as address themselves hither can hardly say with David, 'I will go up to the house of the Lord.'" The temporary chapel of wood, commenced on the Monday after Easter in 1219, must have been a modest structure, since on the next Trinity Sunday the Bishop celebrated mass, and the same day consecrated a cemetery there. In the MS. by William de Wanda, precentor and afterwards dean of Sarum, preserved in the Cathedral Library, we have a record of the very first ceremonies connected with the Cathedral, which being probably trustworthy in the main is so curiously interesting in itself, that it deserves quoting freely, from the version given by Francis Price, clerk of the works to the Cathedral, and author of a very interesting monograph upon it, published in the latter part of the last century. We find that in the year A.D. 1220, on the day of St. Vitalis the Martyr, being the fourth of the calends of May (which was the twenty-eighth of April), the foundations were laid by Bishop Richard Poore. "On the day appointed for the purpose the bishop came with great devotion, few earls or barons of the county, but a great multitude of the common people coming in from all parts; and when divine service had been performed, and the Holy Spirit invoked, the said bishop, putting off his shoes, went in procession with the clergy of the church to the place of foundation singing the litany; then the litany being ended and a sermon first made to the people, the bishop laid the first stone for our Lord the Pope Honorius, and the second for the Lord Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, at that time with our Lord the King in the Marches of Wales; then he added to the new fabric a third stone for himself; William Longespée, Earl of Sarum, who was then present, laid the fourth stone, and Elaide[3] Vitri, Countess of Sarum, the wife of the said earl, a woman truly pious and worthy because she was filled with the fear of the Lord, laid the fifth. After her certain noblemen, each of them added a stone; then the dean, the chantor, the chancellor, the archdeacons and canons of the church of Sarum who were present did the same, amidst the acclamations of multitudes of the people weeping for joy and contributing thereto their alms with a ready mind according to the ability which God had given them. But in process of time the nobility being returned from Wales, several of them came thither, and laid a stone, binding themselves to some special contribution for the whole seven years following." Another account, differing from the more generally accepted version just quoted, says that: Pendulph, the Pope's legate, in 1216 laid the first five stones; the first for the Pope, the second for the King, the third for the Earl of Salisbury, the fourth for the countess, and the fifth for the bishop. This statement is wrong in date, for Bishop Poore was not translated to the see of Sarum until the year 1217. In the charter of Henry I. the first stone is mentioned as having been laid by the king, _i.e._, in his name. "On the 15th of August, 1220, at a general chapter when the bishop was present, it was provided that if any canon of the church failed paying what he had promised to the fabric for seven years, that next after fifteen days from the term elapsed, some one should be sent on the part of the bishop and chapter to raise what was due from the corn found on the prebend, and so long as he should remain there for that purpose he should be maintained with all necessaries by the goods of the said prebend. But if the prebend or any person failing in the payment of what was promised be in any other bishopric than Sarum, such canon should be denounced to that bishop by the letter of the bishop and chapter for his contumacy, either to be suspended from entering the church, or from celebration of divine service, or excommunicated according as the chapter shall judge it." In the year 1225, Richard Poore, Bishop of Sarum, "finding the fabric of the new church was by God's alliance so far advanced that divine service might be conveniently performed therein, he rejoiced exceedingly, since he bestowed great pains and contributed greatly towards it. Thereupon he commanded William the Dean to cite all the canons to be present on the day of S. Michael following, at the joyful solemnity of their mother church, that is to say, at the first celebration of divine service therein. According on the vigil of S. Michael, which happened on a Sunday, the bishop came in the morning and consecrated three altars, the first in the east part, in honour of the holy and undivided Trinity and All Saints, on which henceforth the mass of the Blessed Virgin was appointed to be said every day. And the said bishop offered that day for the service of the said altar and for daily service of the Blessed Virgin, two silver basons and two silver candlesticks which were bequeathed by the will of the noble lady Gundria de Warren to the church of Sarum. Moreover the bishop gave out of his property to the clerks that were to officiate at the said mass thirty marks of silver a year until he settled so much in certain rents, and likewise ten marks every year to maintain lamps round the said altar. Then he dedicated another altar in the north part of the church in honour of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles; he also dedicated another altar in the south part thereof to St. Stephen and the rest of the martyrs. At this dedication were present: Henry, Bishop of Dublin, Stephen, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury." We read further in the same chronicle that the bishops and their retinues were entertained for a week by Bishop Poore at his sole charge. The next day, the feast of SS. Michael and All Angels, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached to a large company including many English and foreign prelates, Otto, the Pope's nuncio, and others. On the Thursday following, "Our Lord the King and Hubert de Burgh the justice came to the church and the King there heard the mass of the glorious Virgin and offered ten marks of silver and one piece of silk, and he granted to the same place that every year there should be a fair." The same day the justice made a vow that he would give a gold text set in the precious stones and the relics of divers saints in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the service of the new church; afterwards the King went down with many of his nobles to the Bishop's palace and were entertained. On the Friday following Hubert de Burgh offered his "texte after John, gilt with gold and having precious stones and relics of divers saints." "On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup of the weight of ten marks; and when the mass was celebrated the King told the dean that he would have that stone which he had offered and the gold of the ring applied to adorn the text which the justice had before given; and then the justice caused the text which he had given to be brought and offered with great devotion on the altar." On the 10th of January, 1226, William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, returned from Gascoigne, where he had resided twelve months with Richard, the King's brother, for the defence of Bordeaux (after three months on the channel between the Isle of Rhè and the coast of Cornwall, owing to the tempestuous weather, that so long delayed his landing), "and the said Earl came that day after nine o'clock to Sarum, where he was received with great joy, with a procession for the new fabric." The scandalous account of his death (as given by Stow), which occurred at the castle of Old Sarum, on the 7th of March in the same year, and the part played in the transaction by Hubert de Burgh cannot be told here, beyond the fact that the justice was strongly suspected of poisoning him. On the 8th of March, at the same hour of the day on which he had been received with great joy, he was brought to New Sarum with many tears and lamentations, and honourably buried in the new church of the Blessed Virgin. Matthew Paris gravely records that at his funeral, despite gusts of wind and rain, the candles furnished a continual light the whole of the way. Of all secular figures connected with this cathedral his is perhaps the most prominent, nor is his fame merely local. He was active in public affairs during the reign of King John, and one of the noticeable heroes in an expedition to the Holy Land in 1220, when, at the battle of Damietta, Matthew Paris tells us, he resisted the shock of the infidels like a wall. He fought both in Flanders and in France, was at his King's side at Runnymede, and a witness to Magna Charta--a copy of which famous charter, made probably for his special use, is still preserved in the cathedral library. In 1226, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, which was then the 18th day of the calends of July, the bodies of the three bishops, Jocelin, Roger, and Osmund (the latter not yet canonized), were brought from Old Sarum. Whether their tombs were also brought, is not said, nor is any mention made of Herman, who by popular report is credited with a monument in the cathedral. A Charter of Henry III., dated 30th of January, 1227, gives certain powers to make new roads and bridges, to inclose the city of New Saresbury, to institute a fair from the Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary to the octave of the same feast, etc., etc. This development of the city, more especially by its roads and bridges, is held to have been fatal to the prosperity of Wilton, which from that time ceased to progress, and was over-shadowed by the now rapidly increasing New Sarum. Bishop Poore was ably supported in his great undertaking by a group of notable men, among whom were: William de Wanda, the Dean, who threw his whole soul into the work, and traversed the diocese of London to collect alms in its behalf, besides leaving us most elaborate accounts of the various ceremonies; and the Precentor, Roger de Sarum, a man of some weight, who soon after became Bishop of Bath and Wells; Henry de Bishopston, a learned man and a scholar, should also be remembered, and, if Leland could be credited, we should need to add another member to this group, and find in Robert Hilcot, of Sarum, the author of the "Philobiblon" so generally attributed to Richard de Bury. After Bishop Poore was translated to Durham, his three successors, Bishops Robert Bingham (1229-1246), William of York (1247-1256), and Giles of Bridport (1257-1262), continued the works of the new building with great energy. In 1258 it was consecrated--some accounts say by Bishop Giles of Bridport, "who covered the roof throughout with lead," but more probably by Boniface of Savoy, Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry III. and his queen were present at the consecration; and as indulgences of a year and forty days were offered to all who should be present during the octave of the dedication, vast crowds visited it. It was not entirely completed according to a note in a Book of Statutes, until 1266, and it has been said that with all our modern appliances we could hardly shorten the forty-six years it occupied. The cost of the whole building, according to ancient authority, was about 40,000 marks, equal to £26,666 13s. 4d., of the money of that day, and probably equivalent roughly to half a million in our own time. Among many benefactors, one, Lady Alicia Bruere, who according to Leland contributed the marble and stone for twelve years, deserves to be mentioned. The cloisters and chapter house were not commenced until the episcopate of Bishop Walter de la Wyle (1263-1271) and possibly not completed until some ten years later. From the will of Robert de Careville, the treasurer in 1267, we find that there were seven altars in the church at this date; he bequeathed seven pounds to provide fourteen silver phials (each bearing a representation of three keys) in order that each altar might have two. The erection of the spire, evidently not included in the original plan, is often erroneously assigned to Wyville (1336-1375), who certainly completed the wall of the close, and enlarged the cloisters. The King granted him a charter for this purpose, and also gave him the stones of the old Cathedral, many of which, with the Norman work upon them, may be seen plainly at the present time. (See p. 22.) It is interesting to note that not only is Salisbury the most complete example of its period in this country, but is also the first important building carried out entirely in the style we now know as early English. Henry III. is believed to have been so enthusiastic in his admiration of Bishop Poore's new Cathedral that he set about the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, which was commenced in 1245 and completed in 1269, as far as the east end of the choir. The early English work at Salisbury has a certain poverty of detail when compared with Westminster, and the "Angel Choir" of Lincoln undoubtedly surpasses both; yet the effect of Salisbury has a character of its own and a purity in its ornament that is in itself a distinction. The Cathedral of Amiens, of exactly the same date, covers 71,000 square feet, Salisbury but 55,000; the vault of Amiens is 152 feet high, Salisbury only 85; but, as Fergusson observes in his "Handbook of Architecture," the fair mode of comparison is to ask whether the Cathedral of Amiens is finer than Salisbury would be if the latter were at least twice as large as it is. There has long been a tradition that Elias de Dereham was the architect of this stately pile, and the information gathered together by the Rev. J.A. Bennet, in a paper read before the British Archæological Association at Salisbury on August 5th, 1887, certainly does much to strengthen the belief. From this account, and other sources, we find that Elias de Derham is first mentioned in the Rot. Chartarum, Ap. 6 (6 John, 1208)? where he is described as one of the King's clerks and Rector of Meauton. In 1206 he appears to have been a royal official. In 1209 he is reported to have been the architect for the repairs of King John's palace at Westminster. In 1212 he attached himself to the opposite party, but was taken again into the King's favour in the following year. We have specially interesting notice of his work in 1220, when he was engaged upon the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Matthew Paris, in his account of the translation of St. Thomas, distinctly states that the shrine was the work of that incomparable officer, Walter de Colchester, Sacrist of St. Albans, assisted by Elias de Dereham, Canon of Salisbury. Leland mentions, in an extract from an old "Martyrologie" of Salisbury, that he was rector--or director--of the new church for twenty-five years from the beginning, whether he means architect or clerk of the works is not so clear. His name, as one of the Canons of the Cathedral, occurs eleven times in the "Osmund Register" at Salisbury. There are also references to him in the "Book of Evidences" (Liber Evidentiarum) among the bishop's muniments, as the builder of the original Aula Plumbea--Leden-hall--a famous old house in the close. The document is entitled "_Scriptura de domibus de Leden-hall per Eliam de Dereham sumptuose constructis_," "a deed concerning the house called Leden-hall, built at great expense by Elias de Dereham." This residence house remained six centuries after in the gift of the Bishop of Sarum. During the year in which he accompanied Bishop Poore in his translation to Durham, and from 1230 to 1238, he was employed upon some architectural work connected with Durham Cathedral, which, when Bishop Poore accepted it was a stately Norman fane with an apsidal choir; he removed this east end, and remodelled it in the early English manner. The chapel of the Nine Altars, as this portion is called, is remarkably similar in its details to much of the work at Salisbury. It is curious that two southern churches so near as Salisbury and Christchurch Priory should be found influencing or influenced by the great northern cathedral, but the likeness between Flambard's Norman work at Christchurch and the same bishop's work at Durham is as strongly marked as the Early English of Bishop Poore at both the churches in which he was enthroned. That Elias de Dereham is responsible for much of the work of both cathedrals is also a fair assumption. Curiously enough his name, hitherto hastily assumed to be equivalent to Elias of Durham, has probably no connection with that city; whether, however, his patronym should be traced to the Norfolk Dereham, or the Gloucester Dyrham, it is impossible to say with any certainty. On somewhat insufficient grounds it has been hazarded that his portrait may be found in a figure on the east side of the staircase buttress of what was formerly the great entrance to Wells Cathedral. Owing to the fact that the original design of the building was fully carried out, with the addition of a tower and spire, its architectural history ceases just where most others begin their chequered career. At the time of the Reformation it suffered but little, except in the wholesale destruction of its stained glass. Dr. Pope, in his "Life of Bishop Ward," says that even during the Civil War, when it was abandoned, workmen were engaged to keep it in repair, who when questioned as to the authority by which they worked, said, "Those who employ'd us will pay us; trouble not your selves to inquire who they are. Whoever they are, they do not desire to have their names known." We find as evidence of the secret influence exerted in its behalf that when one of Waller's officers sent up to the Parliament certain plate and a pulpit cloth from Salisbury Cathedral, he was ordered to restore them, as it was considered that he had overstepped his commission; all that was retained being certain copes, hangings, and a picture of the Virgin. At the Restoration, Bishop Ward, after a great thunderstorm in 1668, when fears were entertained for the safety of the spire, called in Sir Christopher Wren, who, after examining the tower, expressed his belief "that a spire was not contemplated by its builders;" that "out of fear to overburden the four piers of the tower, its inside was carried for 40 feet above the nave with a slender hollow work of pillars and arches, nor hath it any buttresses; the spire itself is but 9 inches thick, though the height be above 150 feet." This work of pillars and arches led him to conclude that the architect laid his first floor of timber 40 feet higher than the vault beneath. Dr. Walter Pope, in his "Life of Bishop Seth Ward," 1697, describes the restorations accomplished by this excellent prelate: "There being, therefore, not much to be done as to reparation, he employ'd himself in the Decoration of the Cathedral: First, at his proper charges Paving the Cloyster. I mean that side of it which leads out of his garden into the church. At his exhortation, and more than proportinable (_sic_) expence the Pavement of the Church was mended where it was faulty, and the whole Quire laid with white and black squares of marble. The Bishops, Deans, and all the Prebendaries Stalls made New & Magnificent, and the whole church was kept so clean, that anyone who had occasion for Dust to throw on the Superscription of a Letter, he would have a hard task to find it there.... His next care was to repair, I might almost say rebuild his Palace, which was much ruined, the Hall being pulled down, & the Greater part of the House converted to an Inn ... what remained of the Palace was divided into small Tenements and let out to poor Handicraft-men. This dilapidation was the work of one Van Ling, a Dutchman, by trade a Taylor, who bought it of Parliament when Bishop's lands were exposed to sale." In the minutes of the chapter for August 26th, 1789, we find instruction given to Wyatt "to make new Canopies to the Stalls, to build a new Pulpit and Bishop's Throne, to put new Iron Rails to the Communion, with coping thereon, and set new blue stone steps to receive the same, to put two Wainscot Screens across the Aisles, to lay blue stone paving in the Lady Chapel, in squares to be cut out of the old gravestones, and enrich the side walls according to the drawings, to clean and colour the church from the East end of the Transept, and make the Screen to the Western Side of the organ." They also ordered "the beam in the choir to be removed, the North and South Porches to be taken down, the south door near the Verger's house stopped up, and another opened near the Chapter Vestry, to open out the Chapel in the great North and South Transepts, and to convert the north-east transept into a morning chapel, to remove certain monuments in consequence of alterations in St. Mary's Chapel, & to take down the Beauchamp & Hungerford Chapels, on the plea that they were in a state as to greatly exceed any ordinary or possible means of repair." These formal instructions were not merely obeyed but exceeded, and the demolitions of that time confront the student of the building in all his researches. Of late years many minor alterations have been carried out, with a view to restore monuments to their original site, and, as far as possible, to obliterate Wyatt's damage; but the two superb chantries, the bell tower, the painted glass, and many other important features are hopelessly effaced, and the cathedral, spared by its avowed foes, has met with its greatest disaster from the hands of former guardians. For the last thirty years the work of restoration has been gradually carried on until its recent completion. An arrangement was made in 1862 by which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners permitted the Dean and Chapter to spend £10,000 on the building, as part of a payment in lieu of transfer of their property. Sir G. Gilbert Scott had control of the restoration. Owing to the necessary work proving far more costly than the sum allowed was able to effect, a public meeting was held, subscriptions were started, and ultimately sufficient money raised to repair thoroughly the exterior of the building. The tower and spire were strengthened by an ingenious system of iron ties planned by Mr. Shields, the well-known engineer. The west front was restored, and more than sixty statues placed in its vacant niches. In the interior the Lady Chapel was restored, and its floor laid with encaustic tiles from the designs of ancient examples in various parts of the cathedral. The walls were cleaned, and the paintings of the roof reproduced by Messrs. Clayton and Bell. The choir was restored in memory of Bishop Hamilton, and the old choir stalls cleared. The organ-screen built by Wyatt out of fragments of the Hungerford and Beauchamp chapels was removed. Throughout the building the Purbeck marble shafts have been most carefully preserved and repolished. Besides this much decorative work of various sorts, including some excellent examples of modern stained glass and metal work, has been added from time to time. At present the interior has less obvious evidence of age than any other English building of its date, but for this the modern restorer is not entirely responsible, as Wyatt rendered much alteration needful, and the design of the work has, as we have remarked elsewhere, a curiously modern quality in its finish and symmetry which is apt to mislead a casual observer. FOOTNOTES: [1] The headpiece is from an engraving in Walpoole's "British Traveller." [2] A paper on this subject was printed in the Wiltshire Archæological Mag., No. lvi. [3] So misspelt in the text quoted. THE CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR. Salisbury stands alone among English cathedrals for unity of design. To own its possession of this quality, which is undoubtedly both the earliest and the most mature impression the cathedral imparts, is by no means equivalent to unqualified praise. There are buildings of equal and less importance, whence illustrations might be taken for a complete history of every period of Gothic architecture; here the examples would be limited not only to one style, but if we except the upper stories of the tower and its spire, the cloisters, and a few minor additions, to a very restricted use of Early English, as it was practised from A.D. 1220 to 1258. Another uncommon feature not so apparent at first sight, but yet almost, if not quite as rare, is that the present building was erected on a virgin site. It is hard to find a mediæval church of any importance in England that is not only upon the self-same site, but more often in part upon the actual foundation of an earlier edifice. Consistency is the especial character of Salisbury, and now, owing to Wyatt's iconoclastic destruction of the two later chapels at its east end, we have in Salisbury "the most typical English cathedral," which is also our most complete example of Early English. That this artistic unity is as interesting as a design subsequently modified by other influences, may be an open question. There are those who think Salisbury "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," yet they would hardly dare to continue the quotation and say it was "dead perfection, no more." Even at a time when mediæval art was not generally appreciated in England, this cathedral won admiration from chance visitors such as Evelyn, who saw it in July, 1654, and pronounced it "the completest Gothic work in Europe." Pepys, who also left his impressions of it, says: "The minster most admirable, as big I think and handsomer than Westminster, and a most large close about it and offices for the officers thereof, and a fine palace for the bishop." In later times Motley, the historian, thought it "too neat." Henry James calls it "a blonde beauty among churches," and even hints that it is a little banal. Another American critic, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, in a sympathetic study of the cathedral which appeared in "The Century Magazine," says: "If we think it feeble, it will be because we cannot see strength where it has been brought to perfect poise and ease. If our verdict is 'banal,' it will be because we cannot tell the commonplace from the simply and exactly right, or we do not know how rare the latter is--because we long for eccentricity as a proof of personality, and need what the French call _emphase_ to impress us; there is no over-emphasis about Salisbury, neither in its effect as a whole, nor in any of its parts, neither in its design, nor in its treatment. But just in this fact lies its greatest merit, and just by reason of this fact, joined to its mighty size and its exceptional unity, it is intensely individual, personal, distinct from all other churches in the world." Dean Stanley, in comparing it with Westminster Abbey, hardly overpraised it in saying: "Salisbury is all-glorious without, Westminster is all-glorious within." Canon Venables considers it "as an architectural composition, more especially as seen from the outside, the most perfectly designed building in the world." Elsewhere he speaks of it as "presenting none of those architectural problems so baffling and perplexing at Canterbury, Lichfield, or Lincoln." Its appearance from a distance has been the theme of poets, and a favourite subject for artists. Constable especially delighted to paint it. Among several of his different versions of the theme, the view from the meadows (with the rainbow), made popular by Lucas' mezzotint, is perhaps the best known. Studying the building more closely one feels it is not accident that gives to it its peculiar charm, but pre-arranged design; the idea of one conception carried to its logical completion. This striking unity (despite the afterthought of the spire) certainly helps to impart an air of modernity to the building, that is lacking in far less ancient work, for oddly enough it is often the decaying features of the latest decorated style that impress the vulgar by their apparent age. The extreme care in the masonry has imparted a machine-like finish. As Professor Willis wrote: "The regularity of the size of the stones is astonishing. As soon as they had finished one part, they copied it exactly in the next, even though the additional expense was considerable. The masonry runs in even bands, and you may follow it from the south transept, eastward, round to the north transept, after which they have not taken such great pains in their regularity. It is almost impossible to distinguish where they could have left off, for it is hardly to be supposed they could have gone on with all at the same time." If at first sight this regular and symmetrical detail offers a suspicion of mere mechanism, yet it is no less evident that after longer study the charms of this exquisite structure tell with a lasting power. Too subtle to extort admiration at first, it bewitches a student of architecture who notes the scholarly reticence of its detail, the masterly way in which, as a rule, the construction is legitimately ornamented and the decoration made an integral part of the whole design. =The Tower=, with its famous spire, needs no apologist to justify its claim to be considered the most beautiful, not merely in England, but in Europe. From the time Leland naïvely wrote, "the tower of stone and the high pyramis of stone on it is a noble and memorable 'peace' of work," every critic of the cathedral praises the tower unreservedly, although Defoe was anxious to improve it, for he said: "The beauty of it is hurt by a thing easily to be remedied, which is this. The glass in the several windows being very old, has contracted such a rust, that it is scarcely to be distinguished from the stone walls; consequently, it appears as if there were no lights at all in the tower, but only recesses in the stone, whereas could the windows be glazed with squares and kept clean, which might be done, they would be plainly visible at a distance, and not only so, but from the adjacent hills you would see the light quite through the tower, which would have a very fine effect." It is curious to remember that perfectly as it accords with the rest of the pile, so that it seems the very central motive of the whole scheme, yet it is really an addition. Like the touch of genius which by one word changes a good poem to a flawless lyric, so the creator of this crown to an already beautiful building by his final touch seems to have imparted additional beauty to that which already existed. The first idea was doubtless to add a lantern after the style of Ely, or at most a wooden spire. That the lower part of the tower is part of the original design, and intended to be open to the church, is proved by the presence of a series of detached Purbeck marble columns in the style of the rest of the internal masonry, which, hidden by the groining, or half-concealed by later masonry, were obviously meant to be part of the decoration of the interior, but again, the original plan of the tower made no provision for the huge weight of a stone spire. Indeed, it is quite doubtful if in its first state it was able to support itself, for curiously designed abutments are built in the triforium and clerestory of the nave, choir, or transepts on each of its four sides. The stonework of these is Early English, which if slightly later than the first story of the tower, is yet considerably earlier than its two upper stories. Notwithstanding the faulty construction that needed additional work so soon after it was erected, about fifty years later a daring architect super-imposed two stories, and added the lofty spire, which still stands, despite an early settlement which deflected it 23 inches out of the perpendicular. But its stability can hardly be reckoned a tribute to the judgment of the architect, for many times since complex arrangements of iron bands and ties have been added to ward off such a disaster as that which lost Chichester its spire in 1861, and has caused many others to be rebuilt from the very foundations. By a report of Sir Christopher Wren made in the time of Bishop Seth Ward, two hundred years ago, it is evident that in his time the deflection was not increasing, nor do quite recent observations show any reason for serious anxiety. This haunting fear, however, has led to curiously precise experiments for ascertaining the state of the spire. Francis Price, at the end of the last century, describes many of these, especially one carried out in the presence of the bishop, on July 18th, 1717; he also illustrates an elaborate system of additional bands and ties in his time. During the restorations that were begun in 1863, a further arrangement of iron bands, planned by Mr. Shields, the engineer, was introduced into the lantern story of the tower. [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL AND BELL TOWER. _From an Old Engraving._] Parker, in his "Glossary," believes the date of the spire to be about 1300; other authorities fix it thirty years later. Certain deeds in the "Book of Evidences" preserved among the Cathedral muniments show that in 1326 Edward III. granted a license for surrounding the close with a wall, and in 1331 authorized the bishop and canons to use the stones of the church of Old Sarum for that purpose. But against the theory that the material thus obtained was used in the tower also, there is the patent fact that while on many stones in the wall there are traces of Norman mouldings and other evidence of former use, neither in the tower nor spire do the stones betray any such origin. Modern antiquaries are wellnigh agreed upon the earlier dates; for in the Capitular Register, begun in 1329, there is no mention of the spire, which could hardly have escaped record had so important a work been then in progress. In support of this theory it is urged that from 1258 to 1297 the deans were men who took great interest in the fabric and are entered in its calendar of benefactors. Three of these became successively Bishops of Salisbury. But the deans who were appointed after 1297 were chiefly foreigners, several being cardinals and relatives of the Pope, whose duties elsewhere would have left them little but a purely temporal interest in the building. One of them, Peter of Savoy, was in conflict with his bishop, and evaded an episcopal admonition ordering him to residence. Bishop Godwin, in his "Catalogue of Bishops," notes that in 1258 the cathedral was rehallowed by Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, and this fact is the basis of most of the argument for the earlier date of the spire, the completion of which, according to some, could alone have justified the ceremony. Remembering that Winchester had lost its central tower, which fell in 1107, we can understand the reasons which induced the original architect to distrust a spire, and to adopt a lantern in its place. If, however, timidity delayed it at first, when it was undertaken, its builder left it not only the most lofty in England then and since, but in actual effect the most lofty in the world. This is claimed in spite of its 404 feet being exceeded by Amiens (422 feet), and Strasburg (488 feet), and although it might appear special pleading to urge such a theory against contradictory facts, yet since at Amiens the nave roof is 208 feet high, against the 115 feet of Salisbury, it is obvious that the apparent height of the latter exceeds its French rival. At Strasburg the excess of elaboration in the ornament is detrimental to the effect of height, and the same may be said of Antwerp or Mechlin, where the whole effect is not so much that of a spire, as of an elaborately fretted finial, insubstantial if exquisite in itself, but merely an added ornament, not appearing part of the solid structure. Despite the somewhat ornate details of the upper stories and spire, they accord well with the rest of the building, and, although typical Early Decorated of the time of Edward III., fail to clash with the more severe Early English work. These two stories have elaborately canopied arcades running round them, the windows being pierced through two of the arches on each façade and not emphasized by any special treatment. Above each story is a traceried parapet of lozenge decoration, the same design being repeated in the two bands that encircle the spire itself. At each of the four angles of the tower is an octagonal turret with crocketed spire. Amid a coronet of decorated finials the great octagonal spire grows naturally with no abrupt revelation of its change of plan. The whole cresting of the tower, and the perfectly natural way in which its lines continue easily into the graceful spire itself, are triumphs of successful design. The silhouette of the mass against the sky so precisely reaches the ideal effect that it is difficult to restrain oneself to sober criticism in describing it, yet the result is achieved so naturally that until we compare it with others, especially with modern ones, we hardly do justice to the subtle beauty that gives it a right to the supremacy it has won. The timber framework erected as a scaffold during the progress of the building still remains inside the spire and helps to impart strength to it; those curious in such matters will find a mass of information and many plans and drawings of its internal construction in Francis Price's "Antiquities of Salisbury, 1774." In 1762, during the progress of some repairs to the capstone and the addition of a new copper vane, the workmen discovered a wooden box, and inside it a round leaden one 5-½ inches in diameter and 2-¼ inches deep, which contained a piece of woven fabric.[4] This was conjectured to be a relic of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of the church, which had been deposited there to guard the lofty spire from danger by lightning or tempest. When tested on the 600th anniversary of the building the spire showed, it is said, no further deflection from that registered two centuries earlier. Consequently the settlement in the two western piers being so long at a standstill, and the repeated additions of metal work to strengthen the spire being apparently entirely successful, there seemed no reason to doubt but that in the natural course of events it would remain for many centuries a landmark to its neighbourhood and one of the greatest triumphs of English mediæval workmanship.[5] Richard de Farley, a Wiltshire man, is supposed to have been the architect of the spire; that his artistic instinct was right is evident to-day, but his engineering foresight seems less certain, as in all probability the settlement began almost immediately after the erection. Indeed it is said that the efforts to obtain the canonization of Osmund were started in 1387 to increase the popularity of the cathedral as a place of pilgrimage, and thereby to augment its revenue, so that funds might be forthcoming for the additional work needed to support the tower. Frequent references to miracles at his shrine show that the saint was popularly adored long before his canonization in 1456. A local superstition says the tower was builded on woolpacks. According to Pliny's account, the temple of Diana of Ephesus was made firm with coats or fleeces of wool; but it is inconceivable that bags of wool were employed in either case for the foundation. At Rouen in Normandy a similar legend refers to butter as the foundation of one of the western towers, which tradition, absurd though it be, supplies the idea of a butter tax, which in turn suggests a wool tax, that in such a district as this would have been naturally a profitable source of revenue. Probably because of the early trouble with the foundation of the great tower, there was from the first no intention of making it a belfry. Even before the spire was decided upon, the oscillation of a mass of swaying bells was obviously too dangerous to be seriously considered. A special campanile, as at Chichester, was therefore built at the north-west corner of the close. Its style was evidently similar to that of the cloisters and the chapter house. Multangular in form, an early historian calls it, but the engravings still existing show it to have been a somewhat ordinary specimen of Early English design. Its special feature was a single central pillar of Purbeck marble that supported the weight of the bells and belfry. The spire was doubtless of wood, and, apparently, the upper lantern-like tower also.[6] Although its destruction is not ordered in the official document wherein the Chapter gave Wyatt authority to do so much mischief, on some pretext, probably his craze for what he called "vistas," it was demolished in the terrible destruction of 1789, opening up a view of the Cathedral that was entirely unnecessary, and wilfully destroying a feature of the close that could ill be spared. The custom of climbing the spire during the Whitsun fair, to which Francis Price, in a naïve description, attributes much damage to the leadwork of the roofs, has only ceased in recent times, some sixty or seventy years ago. Arnold, a watchmaker, wound up his watch while leaning actually against the vane. When a lad, during a royal visit, stood on his head on the capstone, George III. refused to reward him, saying that he was bound to provide for the lives of his people. On June 26th, 1741, the timber braces of the spire were found to be on fire. According to Francis Price, "there was, about ten o'clock the night before in a very great storm, a particular flash of lightning observed by many of the inhabitants to strike against the tower with a sort of smacking noise, and then to have been lost.... It may well be called dreadful since, had it continued half an hour longer, all the assistance on earth could not have prevented the total destruction of the pile." =The West Front= of the Cathedral was, beyond doubt, the last portion of the original design to be carried out, for among its details the ball-flower, a typical feature of the decorated style, frequently occurs. The governing idea of its façade is indefensible. Not merely because in common with Wells, Lincoln, and other churches, it does not emphasize the construction of the nave and aisles, and hides them by a screen, but because the screen itself poses as an integral part of the building. Even considered solely as an architectural composition, without regard to the building it professes to decorate rather than hide, it is hardly good. The two western towers it unites are, in themselves, not sufficiently important in comparison with the rest of the edifice; in fact, they are little more than finials to the screen. In many similar structures the unity of effect gained at the expense of theoretical consistency justifies the departure; here it is merely a huge surface adapted to display a great number of statues. Rich as it appears now that its long empty niches are again repeopled, it is of no remarkable excellence either in mass or in detail. Its worst fault, however, is that unlike Exeter, it does not content itself by frankly assuming to be nothing more than a screen, but at first sight appears to be the legitimate finish of the nave and aisles. A recent critic, defending the façade in spite of its architectural isolation from the building in its rear, points out that the chief objection to the west front is that it is wanting in that repose and refinement of detail which characterize the rest of the building, and that its design is entirely out of keeping therewith, and also complains that "the ragged outline at the angles produced by the high relief and rather clumsy sections of the decorative detail has a very bad effect." It has been suggested that as from the position of the site there was never a chance of the building being seen from a distance--owing to the level country around it, the projection of the transepts and the group of the whole pile could never tell out as they would had it been on a hill, therefore the form chosen was deliberately adopted to give a factitious importance to the west front on its own merits. The continental builders with much more lofty nave and aisles, and with their habit of making the west door the principal entrance, were able, by enriching its portal and decorating the natural divisions of the building, to attain a stately form that honestly fulfilled its purpose; here the magnificence is secured by masking the low aisles of the nave with a wall that is a mere theatrical adjunct, its simulated windows and its stringcourses marking stories that do not exist. Apart from theoretical criticism, it is not quite admirable in itself; the three doorways are hardly of sufficient importance, the central window is somewhat larger than it should be to accord with the scale of the whole façade, while the apparently built up windows above the genuine windows of the nave aisles, whose roofs have their apex about on a level with the sills of the large central lancets, are as much frauds as any of those sham windows in symmetrical Renaissance work, which so excite the ire of ardent champions of Gothic purity. It consists of five bays, of which the lateral ones are square turrets, covered with arcades, and terminated by spires. The lower story of the central bay is composed of three pedimented porches deeply recessed, each with a niche in its gable. Above these is a story of canopied trefoiled arches, with quatrefoil lozenges in their centres. Over this arcade is the large west window, a triplet of lancets with slender shafts and chevron ornament. Above this again is a band of quatrefoils at the foot of the gable, which is filled with double couplets of lancets with quatrefoils above their heads; and in the upper spandrils is a quatrefoiled aureole. The buttresses flanking this central bay have similar arcading continued around them. The side bays each have a triple porch, a two-lighted window with a quatrefoil in the head, with a window of the same form above it, and higher still the arcading continued from the towers. [Illustration: PORTALS OF THE WEST FRONT. _From a Photograph by S.B. Bolas and Co._] In 1863 the hundred and odd niches designed to contain statues were either despoiled or had never been occupied, with the exception of eight which held figures mutilated beyond certain recognition. Mr. Cockerell conjectured that two on the buttress of the south tower represented St. Peter and St. John the Baptist, on that to the north St. Paul and St. John the Evangelist, while a figure facing north on the same buttress he believed to represent Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Other figures are supposed to commemorate Bishop Poore, William Longespée, 1st Earl of Salisbury, St. Stephen, and Bishop Giles de Bridport. A sketch by Hollar, dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century, shows the niches completely filled; and Hatcher claims from this evidence that we are warranted in assuming that the figures were destroyed by Ludlow's troopers when he garrisoned the belfry. But such an assumption requires many facts to support it which are not forthcoming. We have no proof that Hollar's sketch was intended to be a literal transcript of what he saw; it is quite possible that for the sake of effect he preferred to complete the design according to the supposed intention of its builders. We are not certain that the niches were all filled originally; it is quite possible that some were purposely left vacant for future benefactors. We know also that during the Civil War the whole fabric of the Cathedral escaped serious injuries. The Hyde family, powerful at that time, had friends on both sides, and we find record of certain articles sent up to Parliament by one of Waller's officers were ordered to be restored. On the other hand, the Visitation of Cathedrals, ordered and undertaken during the reign of Edward VI., had especial instructions to remove images. In addition to these objections to attributing the destruction of the figures to the Ludlow soldiers, there is also to be considered the natural decay of carving exposed to the open air, which might reasonably account for the dilapidation of a certain number. However, whether wantonly destroyed or not, it is certain that the present figures must be all regarded as modern, since the eight actually left have been, with the exception of St. John the Baptist, very much restored. Redfern, the well-known sculptor, is responsible for the present statues. If not possessing the vigour of the old work, which from fragments in other parts of the building was certainly superior to these modern additions, yet they are creditable in design and scholarly in treatment. The arrangement is probably in harmony with the original scheme. It represents the orders of terrestrial and celestial beings mentioned in the four verses of the hymn, "Te Deum Laudamus." In "The Legend of Christian Art," by the Rev. H.T. Armfield, Minor Canon of Salisbury (published in 1869), the symbolism and history of the whole design is given at great length. Here it must suffice to quote a few of the more salient points. The statues are arranged in five horizontal lines from north to south, exclusive of the figure in the "vesica," the oval above. In the principal niches of the top row is a tier of angels, below this a tier of Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, then a tier of doctors, virgins, and martyrs, and lowest of all a tier of worthies, including princes, martyrs, bishops, and founders connected with the diocese and the Cathedral. The Vesica contains a figure of our Lord seated, known technically as a "Majesty." In the tier of angels below, noting them from left to right, are the celestial hierarchies, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominions, Powers, and Authorities; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. The Old Testament prophets are: David with the harp, Moses with the Tables of the Law, Abraham with the knife, Noah with the ark, Samuel with a sceptre, and Solomon with a church. The eight vacant niches should contain figures of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Elijah, Melchizedek, Enoch, Job, Daniel, and Jeremiah. The tier with the Apostles observes this order: On the northern turret St. Jude with a halberd, St. Simon Zelotes with a saw, St. Andrew with the cross that bears his name, St. Thomas with a builder's square; on the north buttress St. Peter with the keys; on the southern buttress St. Paul with a sword (both these are restorations of ancient figures); on the southern turret St. James the Less with a club, St. James the Greater with a pilgrim's staff, St. Bartholomew with the knife of his martyrdom and St. Matthias with a lance. [Illustration: DETAILS OF MAIN WEST PORTAL. _From a Drawing by H.P. Clifford._] The tier of the doctors, virgins, and martyrs, keeping to the same order, shows: St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, with a scourge in his right hand, and a bishop's staff in his left; St. Jerome in a cardinal's hat, with a church in his right hand and a bible in his left; St. Gregory in papal tiara, the legendary club on his shield, his pastoral staff doubly crossed, and a book, typical of his writings, on his left. On the smaller north buttress, near the turret, is a restored figure removed from its original place, which represents St. Augustine, wearing a bishop's mitre, and holding his hand as in the act of benediction. On the greater north buttress is the figure of St. Mary the Virgin, to whom the church is dedicated. This figure is also restored. In the eleven niches over the central door are, with their various symbols: St. Barbara, St. Catherine, St. Roche, St. Nicholas, St. George of England, St. Christopher, St. Sebastian, St. Cosmo, St. Damian, St. Margaret, and St. Ursula. On the greater south buttress is St. John the Baptist, and on the lesser an old figure unrestored, supposed to represent St. Bridget. On the southern turret are St. Mary, St. Agatha, St. Agnes and St. Cecilia, each wearing the martyr's crown. The tier of worthies comprises: Bishops Giles de Bridport and Richard Poore, and King Henry III. as a founder. Bishop Odo, with a wafer in his hand, commemorating the legend of his miraculous proof of the transubstantiation of the Blessed Sacrament; St. Osmund, Bishop Brithwold, St. Alban, St. Alphege, St. Edmund, and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Another figure on the north side of the north-west turret, for some time assumed to be St. Christopher, is now assigned to St. Birinus, or possibly with more truth to St. Nicholas, who had an altar dedicated to him, "probably just at the back of this spot." On the apex of the west front is an ancient carving of a bird on a scroll, which has puzzled many specialists. Mr. Armfield believes it to be intended for a dove, the emblem of the Holy Spirit, in a scroll to typify The Word, and thus with the "Majesty" near, to be a representation of the three persons of the Trinity, in a mode in accordance with English taste. =The North Porch= is a massive structure of two stories. The upper, now used as the dean's muniment room, has, like a similar example at Christchurch, Hants, no certain indication of its original use. Whether it was a dwelling for sacristans, a school, or a library, was doubtful; but later opinion thinks it was unquestionably used by the sacristans, since it is said that "the sub-treasurer of Sarum, who was usually one of the vicars choral, pledged himself to see that the clerks told off for given duties slept in the church in their accustomed places; and for himself he promised that unless lawfully excused, he would sleep each night in the treasury." Against this theory, however, it might be urged that the muniment room at the angle of the south-east transept is identified as the ancient treasury. This porch, sometimes called the Galilee, was possibly a place where penitents met, and from which they were expelled from the church on Ash-Wednesday until Maundy Thursday. Externally, although of exquisite proportions, it has no very important details, yet its pinnacles deserve notice; but the interior is very beautiful, the walls have sunk panelling, a base arcade of foliated arches, and in the upper tier large foliated circles with sub-arches, each comprising two trefoiled arches with quatrefoil heads. Mr. G.E. Street, who thoroughly appreciated this particular period of English Gothic as his work at the New Law Courts proves, just before his death restored this part of the cathedral admirably. Another porch, formerly the entrance to the north transept, removed by Wyatt for the most trivial reason, is now in the grounds of the college which occupies the site of the secular buildings belonging to the church of St. Edmund, founded in 1268. =The Exterior= of the =Nave= is simple, but with excellently disposed features. The triple lancets of the clerestory occur in pairs between flying buttresses with tall finials; below these, in the aisles, are two two-light windows, divided by lesser buttresses terminating in gables. The fronts of the main transepts show four stories, the two lower being divided into three bays by buttresses, and flanked by pinnacled buttresses at each side. The doors that had a ritual use have long since been walled up both on the north and south sides. A triplet window is in the lower stage, three-light windows with quatrefoil heads occupying the second, while the third has an arcade of six lancets below a floriated circle flanked by sunk panels and quatrefoils. The windows in the gable consist of two lesser windows, two-light, with quatrefoil heads, beneath a large octofoil, the whole grouped with blank panels at the side, beneath a cinquefoil moulding. The aisle has flying buttresses reaching to the clerestory, and good angle-pinnacles. The choir transept has no dividing buttresses, and a different grouping of windows. In the lower stage is a triple lancet; there is a group of three two-light windows in the story above, and in the upper one an arcade of four lancets grouped under a comprising arch with a quatrefoil in the head. The gable is lighted by a triplet window flanked with blind lancets, and terminates in a cross. [Illustration: ONE BAY OF THE NAVE (EXTERIOR), NORTH SIDE.] The transepts differ slightly in detail on their north and south fronts. It has also been pointed out that while in the one transept the lancet form rules, in the other the free employment of the circle and the quatrefoil almost foreshadows the Early Decorated style. The windows of both are so singularly pure in design and beautiful in proportion, that they have often been selected as typical examples of the best work in their style. The east front of the choir is flanked with square pinnacled buttresses. Above the Lady Chapel is an arcade with five members pierced with three windows, and in the gable a similar arrangement of five lancets, three being windows, arranged in harmony with the triangular space it fills. The flying buttresses on the south side were added by Bishop Beauchamp in 1450-58. The east front of the Lady Chapel is divided by buttresses into three bays, and has crocketed gables to each. The aisles show a lancet in the lower story, with a blind couplet beneath a quatrefoil in the gable; the central compartment has a triplet in each story. The south side corresponds in character to the north, but is partly hidden by the chapter house, the muniment room, the library, and cloisters. The walls of the latter are high, and the quadrangle they inclose entirely separated from the building, the long narrow space between being known as the Plumbery. Many consecration crosses of beautiful design are to be found on the building marking the spots touched by the oil of unction at the dedication of the edifice. (See initial letter, page 1.) The cathedral is built of freestone from the Chilmark quarries twelve miles distant, with a lavish use of Purbeck marble in its interior. The grey colour of the leaden roofs and the pure unstained tone of its walls, impart a quasi-modern aspect to it, which, no matter how little justified by facts, always presents Salisbury to one's mind, as a late addition to the superb array of English churches; yet considering that as we see it from the Close no portion (except possibly the spire) later than the twelfth century comes into the picture, there is no other cathedral that so little justifies such an impression, and one cannot escape a return to the first reason advanced, namely, that its singular unity has given it an aspect of perpetual youth. [Illustration: THE CHOIR SCREEN. _From a Photograph by Carl Norman and Co._] FOOTNOTES: [4] This was carefully replaced in its original position inclosed in a copper cylinder. [5] Recently, however, anxiety has been again aroused, and the spire has been once more strengthened. [6] This lantern story was removed in 1757 by order of the Dean and Chapter. THE INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL AND CHAPTER HOUSE. The ground plan of Salisbury is a well-proportioned double cross with the arms, of the choir transepts, more important than usual. Indeed, the exquisitely proportioned and balanced symmetry of every portion, as of the whole, which almost places Salisbury among classic buildings, is as marked in its ground plan as in any part of the building. As an appreciative student of the building has written: "This is the great beauty of Salisbury, the composition of its mighty body as a whole. So finely proportioned and arranged are its square masses of different heights and sizes, so splendid are the broad effects of light and shadow they produce, so appropriate is the slant of the roof lines, and so nicely placed and gracefully shaped are the simple windows, that for once we can give no thought of regret either to the circling apses of continental lands or the rich traceries and surface carvings and figures--sculptures of later generations. The whole effect is in the strictest sense architectural. Few large buildings teach so clearly the great lesson that beauty in a building depends first of all upon composition, not decoration; upon masses, not details; upon the use and shaping, not the ornamentation of features; and very few show half so plainly that mediæval architects could realize this fact. We are too apt to think that Gothic art cannot be individual without being eccentric, or interesting without being heterogeneous ... but Salisbury is both grand and lovely, and yet it is quiet, rational, and all of a piece, clear and smooth, and refined to the point of utmost purity. No building in the world is more logical, more lucid in expression, more restful to the mind and eye."[7] [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._] The number of its pillars, windows, and doorways is said to equal the hours, days, and months of the year; hence the local rhyme, attributed, on the authority of Godwin, to a certain Daniel Rogers: "As many days as in one year there be, So many windows in this church we see; As many marble pillars here appear As there are hours throughout the fleeting year; As many gates as moons one year does view-- Strange tale to tell! yet not more strange than true." Fuller, speaking of these, by a curious lapse falls into the vulgar error of believing Purbeck marble to be an artificial product melted and poured into moulds, says: "The cathedral is paramount of its kind, wherein the doors and chapels equal the months, the windows the days, the pillars and pillarets of fusile marble (an ancient art now shrewdly suspected to be lost) the hours of the year; so that all Europe affords not such an almanac of architecture. Once walking in this church (whereof then I was prebendary) I met a countryman wondering at the structure thereof. 'I once,' said he to me, 'admired that there could be a church that should have so many pillars as there be hours in the year, and now I admire more, that there should be so many hours in the year as I see pillars in this church.'" =The Nave.=--The first glimpse as we enter by the west door is undoubtedly impressive, notwithstanding the absence of colour and the lack of mystery for which the complete vista obtained at such a cruel cost by Wyatt is insufficient compensation. The whole scheme of decoration in its pristine state must have been extremely beautiful. "If you can imagine it with the walls and piers exhibiting strong contrasts of colour in the dark and polished Purbeck shafts and the lighter freestones, the arches picked out with colours, the groining elaborately decorated, and the whole lighted by brilliantly painted windows with a preponderance of dark blue and ruby, together with a flood of white light showing through the lancet of the centre, we may be allowed a doubt whether Tintern or York could have compared with it." Add to this picture the movable hangings and decorations of its many altars, and we cannot honestly attribute the coldness of the present effect to any fault in the original design. Elsewhere this austerity of monochrome is modified to a great extent by the variety (anachronisms though they be) of later architectural insertions. Salisbury, through the very purity of its design, especially suffers from its translation from chromatic harmony to monotone, for although possibly the architectural details are thereby rendered more apparent, yet the exaggeration of what is after all but the skeleton of the building, destroys the effect of the whole as its architect imagined it. Clustered columns of unpolished Purbeck marble on a quatrefoil plan, with smaller detached shafts of lustrous marble at the cardinal points, support, on either side, the ten great arches of the first story of the nave. These polished shafts are generally in two pieces, with a brass ring covering the joint; Francis Price discusses, at great length, this constant feature of the whole building, and points out, that although most of the shafts were probably not in place until after the masonry was fairly set, yet frequently subsequent settlement has crushed them; although, in the nave, the main piers in small blocks laid according to the natural bed of the stone, are still perfectly sound. The large arches are gracefully moulded with masses of carved foliage at the intersections. [Illustration: THE NAVE--SOUTH SIDE.] In the nave of this cathedral we have a very uncommon feature in the connected base of the main columns, which was doubtless introduced to aid in distributing the weight over a larger surface, and so to overcome the treacherous character of the foundation. The triforium, which, from its style, naturally suggests comparison with Westminster, and the Angel Choir of Lincoln, is simple, but extremely beautiful. Each of its rather flat-pointed arches, equalling in span that of the main arch below, is subdivided into pairs, which again each inclose two smaller ones. These are decorated with trefoils and quatrefoils, alternately with cinquefoils and octofoils. Immediately above the carving, at the intersection of the main arches, is a corbelled head, from which rises a triple vaulting-shaft with foliated capitals, on a line with the base of the clerestory. This upper story has, in each bay of the vaulting, simple lancet windows grouped in threes. The arches here, as in almost every instance throughout the building, are supported by Purbeck marble shafts. The nave aisles are lighted by double lancet-windows in each bay. The most noticeable feature of these aisles is the stone bench which extends the whole length of the building on both the north and south sides. [Illustration: NORTH AISLE.] The west wall is panelled in three main arches, with an upper story reaching to the height of the triforium base, and containing an arcade of four arches, subdivided each into two smaller trefoiled ones, with cinquefoil heads. Above these is the triplet lancet of the great west window. The effect of the nave looking west is clearly shown in the photograph here reproduced. Of the chapels and altars once existing we have records in various documents. In the "Sarum Processional" twelve altars are mentioned, dedicated respectively to SS. Andrew, Nicholas, John the Baptist, Margaret, Mary Magdalene, Laurence, Michael, Martin, Catherine, Edward, Edmund the King, and Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury. The sites of these so far as they can be traced appears to have been: St. Catherine and St. Martin in the north choir transept, St. Nicholas and St. Mary Magdalene in the south, and St. Edmund of Canterbury and St. Margaret respectively in the north and south great transepts. Throughout the nave it is evident that the first plans were rigidly obeyed, although the severity of the early years of the style had become much modified before the work was finished. The absence of ornate decoration, the simplicity of the mouldings, and the plate-tracery of the triforium all indicate the first period of "Early English." [Illustration: NAVE TRANSEPT.] The dimensions of the nave are: 229 feet 6 inches long, 82 feet wide, and 81 feet high. The aisles are 17 feet 6 inches wide, and 39 feet 9 inches high. =The Nave Transepts= are in three stories, with eastern aisles divided into three bays. The screens inclosing chapels in these were demolished by Wyatt. Above the entrances to the great transepts are arches inserted by Bishop Beauchamp (1450-1481) to withstand the side thrust of the great tower. These are of perpendicular work, with their spandrils panelled and their cornices battlemented, as shown in the engraving. Canterbury and Wells, in a far more prominent fashion, have similar features; in this instance the addition appears to have succeeded in its purpose to insure the stability of the tower. In the choir transepts these additional features take the form of an inverted arch, above the main arch. The vaulting of the tower roof is also in the perpendicular style and shows excellent groined work. Both Sir Christopher Wren and Francis Price, call its four main pillars the legs of the tower. Of the transept Fuller says: "The cross aisle of this church is the most beautiful and lightsome of any I have yet beheld. The spire steeple (not founded on the ground, but for the main supported by four pillars,) is of great height and greater workmanship. I have been credibly informed that some foreign artists beholding this building brake forth into tears, which some imputed to their admiration (though I see not how wondering could cause weeping): others to their envy, grieving that they had not the like in their own land." =Monuments in the Nave.=[8]--The peculiar arrangements of the ancient monuments in two long rows on the continuous plinth that connects the bases of the pillars on each side of the nave is another of Wyatt's freaks during his terrible innovations in 1789. Not only did he sever the historical associations of centuries by these arbitrary removals, but paid so little attention to consistency that portions of monuments belonging to entirely different periods were combined with curious results, and remains transferred to other "receptacles" than those designed for them. It is true that the effect of the present arrangement is not entirely bad, but it was not worth achieving at such a cost. The first monument on the south side as we enter by the great west door, is in memory of Thomas Lord Wyndham of Finglass, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, (1) who died in 1745; the marble figure of Hibernia which surmounts it is by Rysbrack. At the western base of the first south pillar is a Purbeck marble slab, (2) coffin-shaped, probably the oldest monument in the building. This is usually assigned to Bishop Herman, whose tomb it is supposed to have covered in Old Sarum; but no evidence exists to support this theory. In the first place his original burial-place is entirely unknown, and William de Wanda, who chronicles minutely the removal of the bodies of other bishops from the old cathedral, does not even mention Herman's name. [Illustration] The next (3) is an effigy of a bishop in full pontificals, also believed to have been originally at Old Sarum. The carving is rich, and the design a fine example of the early Norman style. The chasuble is decorated with stars, and the dalmatic has a rich border. Elaborately carved foliage, with birds, frames the figure, which has its right hand raised in the attitude of benediction, and grasps a pastoral staff in the left. It is usually believed that it commemorates Bishop Jocelin, who died in 1184, and was probably removed from Old Sarum at the translation of the bodies of the three bishops. The head of the effigy is evidently a much later restoration, probably, from the style of the richly ornamented mitre, about the time of Henry III. or Edward I. As the face is cleanly shaven, while the seal of Bishop Jocelin depicts him as bearded, some antiquaries hold this monument to belong to Bishop Roger, and assign to Bishop Jocelin the one formerly attributed to Bishop Herman. If, however, differences of opinion exist concerning the identity of these two effigies, they are as nothing compared to the uncertainty regarding the next, (4) which represents a bishop holding a pastoral staff. Down the front of this cope are the words, "Affer opem devenies in idem." Hatcher and Duke believe that it represents Bishop Jocelin. Britton, Gough and Planché, prefer to think that it commemorates Bishop Roger. Its inscription on the edge of the slab runs: "Flent hodie Salesberie quia decidit ensis Justitie, pater ecclesiæ Salisberiensis Dum viguit, miseros aluit, fastusque potentum Non timuit, sed clava fuit terrorque nocentum De Ducibus, de nobilibus primordia duxit Principibus, propeque tibi gemma reluxit." A version given in the Wilts Archeo. Mag. vol. xvii. runs: "They mourn to-day at Salesberie because there has fallen the sword of justice, the Father of the Church of Salesberie. While he lived he sustained the oppressed and wretched, and feared not the arrogance of the powerful, but himself was the scourge (literally, the club) and terror of the guilty. He traced his ancestry from dukes and noble princes, who shone near thee as a precious gem." Another item of indirect evidence supplied by this inscription is worth noting, namely, the "l" in Sa_l_isberie. The period when this letter superseded the "r" was about the time of Jocelin's death. Only a single coin of Stephen's has the "l." To Bishop Roger reference is made on page 100, and it is evident that even the fulsome praise of an epitaph would hardly go out of its way to describe him as "sprung from dukes and noble princes." Planché, despite this objection, does not deem it convincing, as poor priests were often of noble lineage. If, however, we assume it represents Bishop Jocelin, one of the house of Bohun, a great Norman family, and compare the effigy with the seal of that bishop, the later theory that deprives Bishop Roger of this much discussed monument will probably be chosen as the most acceptable. In a record at least three centuries old his burial-place is said to be near the chapel of St. Stephen; and in a plan of the Cathedral, dated 1773, and in Price's account, 1774, a plain slab with a cross upon it, in a shallow recess of the wall east of the north aisle, is assigned to Bishop Roger. But this and the other disputed monuments are undoubtedly genuine memorials of the earliest bishops, and not merely interesting for that reason, but as (with the exception of two slabs dated 1086 and 1172 in Westminster Abbey) the earliest examples of their class in England. Although the question of their identity of the individuals they commemorate were best left to those few who are peculiarly concerned with the history of the period that includes them. Near these effigies is a slab with faint traces of an incised figure, which may possibly have represented an abbot or prior. It can hardly be intended for a bishop, as no mitre can be traced, and the staff is held in the right hand. The monument (5) on the plinth under the next arch is also beyond identification. Next in order comes the altar tomb (6) which now contains the remains of Bishop Beauchamp, who died in 1481. When this was removed from the aisle at the north end of the great transept it was empty, and showed no trace of its original dedication. During the wanton demolition of the Beauchamp chantry, where, "in marble tumbes," with his father and mother on either hand, the remains of Bishop Beauchamp had been unmolested for over three hundred years, his own tomb was "mislaid" and never recovered. It is pleasant to note that even the apologists for Wyatt felt this incident was beyond their sympathy. Dodsworth naïvely remarks, "After this the greatest possible care was taken that nothing of the kind should again occur," and so far as we know, not even a prior was subsequently lost. Of this bishop much is said elsewhere in this book, and his beautiful chantry described on page 90. The elaborate effigy (7) beneath the next arch represents Robert Lord Hungerford clad in a superb suit of fifteenth century plate armour, with the collar of SS. round his neck, and with "his hair polled" in the fashion of Henry V. A superbly decorated sword and dagger hang from his jewelled girdle at his side, while his feet rest upon a dog wearing a rich collar. This monument was placed originally between the Lady Chapel and the (Hungerford) chantry founded by Margaret, his widow. By his will Lord Hungerford directed that his body should be interred before the altar of St. Osmund. The tomb beneath the effigy is made up from portions of the chapel. The monument known as Lord Stourton's (8), removed from the east end of the Cathedral, is next in order. Its three apertures on each side are said to be emblematic of the six sources of the river Stour, which rises at Storrhead, the ancient family seat, from whence the name is derived. The whole shape of the tomb is so unusual that in spite of the theory that it represents the six sources of the Stour, the curious arched openings appear as if pierced to exhibit something behind them. Yet this could not have been an effigy, for the interior is divided by a solid partition of stone. The pillars which stood between the arches are gone. Lord Stourton, to whom it is attributed, was hanged with a silken cord on March 6th, 1556, in the Salisbury market-place. The tragedy is too long to give in detail, as it is told in the country histories and elsewhere, here a brief summary must suffice:--When his mother became a widow Lord Stourton attempted to induce her to sign a bond promising that she would never re-marry. The family agents, a father and son named Hartgill, sided with Lady Stourton and seemed to have influenced her in declining to assent to the scheme. The Hartgills after much physical maltreatment at the hands of Lord Stourton's mercenaries, took legal action against him, with the result that he was fined and imprisoned for awhile in the Fleet. When let out on parole he invited the Hartgills to meet him that he might pay them the fine. Upon their appearance at Kilmington Churchyard, the appointed place, they were seized by armed men, carried away and murdered in cold blood in full sight of Lord Stourton himself the same night. For this he was committed to the Tower, tried at Westminster and hanged with four of his men at Salisbury. So late as 1775 a wire twisted into a noose was suspended above his tomb. The mutilated effigy (9) of Bishop de la Wyle (died 1271) rests on a base made up of portions of later work. The last monument on this side (10) is of the famous William Longespée, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the natural son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamond. This effigy still shows traces of the gorgeous ornament in gold and colours with which it was originally decorated. Westmacott, the sculptor, says: "The manly, warrior character of the figure is particularly striking even in its recumbent attitude, while the turn of the head, and the graceful flow of lines in the right hand and arm, with the natural heavy fall of the chain armour at the side, exhibit a feeling of art that would not do discredit to a very advanced school." The figure is clad in mail armour, which covers the mouth in a peculiar fashion, and wears a surcoat falling in simple folds, almost Greek in feeling, that are somewhat curious in connection with the rich mediæval luxuriance of the surface ornament. On his shield are borne six heraldic leopards or lions. The slab and effigy are stone, but the base is of wood encircled by an arcade of trefoiled arches. One of its compartments protected with glass yet shows a piece of the beautiful diaper work, in silver overlaid on white linen, remains of the rich colourings of two successive periods are present on the effigy itself. (See p. 94.) Crossing the nave, and following the northern base of the pillars, we find a very beautiful alabaster monument (11), with the effigy of Sir John Cheyney (died 1509) clad in military garb, and wearing the collar of SS. with the portcullis badge of Henry VII. suspended therefrom. Sir John Cheyney was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond at Bosworth Field. To quote from Hall's "Chronicle"--"King Richard set on so sharply at the first brount that he ouerthrew th'erle's standard and slew Sir William Brandon, his standard-bearer, and matched hand to hand with John Cheynye, a man of great strength, who would have resisted him, and the said John was by him manfully ouerthrowen." Wyatt, in his ghoulish explorations exhumed Sir John's bones, and confirmed the legend of his gigantic stature; the thigh-bone was found to be twenty-one inches in length, four inches more than the standard average. His original tomb was destroyed with the rest of the Beauchamp chapel, and his remains now lie beneath this effigy. Under the next arch to the westward are two tombs (12,13) deprived of the brasses they once bore, which represented Walter, Lord Hungerford, and his first wife, Catherine Peverell. The famous iron chapel has been removed to the choir by their descendant, the Earl of Radnor, who converted the monument into a family pew. The plain altar tomb of St. Osmund, that, moved hither by Wyatt, stood until 1878 below the next arch of the nave; is now replaced in the Lady Chapel on its former site. The effigy of Sir John de Montacute (14) (died 1389) clad in mail and chain armour, is, according to Meyrick, "a good specimen of highly ornamented gauntlets, of a contrivance for the easier bending of the body at the bottom of the breastplate, and of the elegant manner of twisting the hanging sword belt, pendant from the military girdle, round the upper part of the sword." The head of the figure reposes on a helmet, a lion couches at his feet. Armorial bearings appear on shields at the sides of the tomb. (See p. 79.) Then we come to Chancellor Geoffrey's tomb (15), and the next (16) has not been identified. The larger effigy (17) on the last portion of the northern plinth is of William Longespée, fourth Earl of Salisbury; the figure wears chain armour, and lies with its legs crossed and hands grasped upon his sword. He was twice a Crusader, in 1240-1242, and in 1249, when he served with St. Louis of France at Damietta, he fell in battle near Cairo in 1250, and was buried in the church of the Holy Cross near Acre. The night he was killed, according to Matthew Paris, his mother, the Countess Ela, saw in a vision "the heavens opened, and her son armed at all points, with the six lioncels on his shield, received in triumph by a company of angels." Many strange marvels were reported to have been worked by his bones. =The Boy Bishop.=--Near this monument is the one (18) known as the "Boy Bishop." Hidden for a long time underneath some seats near the pulpit, it was brought to light in 1680, and moved to its present position. At first it was covered with a wooden box; for which later on, owing to the great curiosity shown by the public, the strong iron grating which now protects it was substituted. (See p. 98.) Notwithstanding that the ceremony of the Boy Bishop was observed at Salisbury for many centuries, there is no reasonable proof that this effigy has any connection therewith. Even John Gregory, whose famous treatise on the Boy Bishop is printed in "Gregorii Posthuma," 1649-1669, admits there that it might well seem impossible to everyone that either a bishop should be so small in person or a child so great in clothes. Thomas Fuller also echoes the same objection when he writes: "But the curiosity of critics is best entertained with the tomb in the north of the nave of the church, where lieth a monument in stone of a little boy, habited all in episcopal robes, a mitre upon his head, a crozier in his hand, and the rest accordingly. At the discovery thereof, formerly covered over with pews, many justly admired that either a bishop could be so small in person or a child so great in clothes; though since all is unriddled; for it was then fashionable in that church (a thing rather deserving to be remembered than fit to be done), in the depth of Popery, that the choristers chose a boy of their society to be a bishop among them from St. Nicholas' till Innocents' day." If the effigy represents a boy it is hard to explain why it is not life-size. Stothard in his "Monumental Effigies," in common with most later authorities, favours the idea that it is a miniature representation of a real bishop. Canon Jones suggests probably Walter Scammel, Henry de Braundeston, or William de la Corner. Mackenzie Walcott inclined to the belief that it represented Bishop Wykehampton, who died 1284. A small figure of Bishop Ethelman, 1260, about the same date, is in Winchester Cathedral; there is also one 14-½ inches long in Abbey Dore Church, Herefordshire, one at Ayot, St. Lawrence, Herts, 2 feet 3 inches, and other small effigies of knights and civilians elsewhere. According to Digby Wyatt the custom of burying different portions of the body in different places was common in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; from which he infers that probably these figures commemorated the place of sepulture of the heart. Whether the monument in question be connected with the Chorister Bishop or not, there are so many records of the function with which popular credence has associated it, that a short digression is almost unavoidable. The pamphlet by John Gregory is elaborately minute and much too long to be quoted fully, yet some of the facts he brought together may be briefly noted. It seems that on the feast of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, the choir-boys[9] elected one of their number, who from that day to the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28th, bore the rank and exercised the functions of a bishop, the other choristers being his prebendaries. During his term of office he wore episcopal vestments. On the eve of the Holy Innocents he performed the entire office, excepting the mass, as a real bishop would have done. At Salisbury on that day the boy-bishop and his boy-prebendaries went in procession to the altar of the Holy Trinity, taking precedence of the dean and resident canons. At the first chapter afterwards the boy bishop attended in person and was permitted to receive the entire Oblation made at the altar during the day of his procession. The names of many of the choristers and the amounts of the oblations offered for the boy-bishops are the subject of many entries in the capitular registers of both English and continental churches. Bishop Mortival in his statutes, still preserved among the cathedral muniments, orders that the bishop of the choristers "shall make no visit (some commentators consider this has been misinterpreted, to infer that elsewhere he held visitations), nor keep any feast, but shall remain in the Common Hall, unless he be invited to the table of a Canon for recreation." The order of service in use in this diocese has been preserved (MS. No. 153 of the Cathedral Library); in it we find as a special collect, "O Almighty God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," etc., not, however, quite in the form in which it appears in the Prayer Book of Ed. VI. The spectacle was so popular, and attracted such great crowds, that by special edict it was prescribed that the penalty of the greater excommunication should be incurred by those who might interrupt or press upon the boys during their procession or in any part of their service. In spite of the doubts thrown upon the monument at Salisbury, it is distinctly recorded that if a boy-bishop died during his term of power, he was to be buried in his vestments and have his obsequies celebrated with the pomp pertaining to an episcopal funeral. This custom was not confined to this cathedral, but practised at many others in England and on the Continent, where we find records of much greater power being exercised by the boy-prelate, extending even to the presentation to prebends. At Winchester it was certainly observed. So far back as 1263 we find it described at St. Paul's Cathedral as an ancient custom. Several sermons preached by the boy-bishops are still preserved; one is reprinted in the Camden Society's "Miscellany," vol. vii. Dean Colet (once a prebendary of Sarum) in his statutes for St. Paul's school directs: "All these children shall every Childermas day come to Paules Church, and here the Childe-bishoppes sermon, and after be at high masse so each of them offer _one peny_ to the childe bishoppe. And with the maisters and surveyors of the scoole in general procession when they be warned they shall go tweyne and tweyne togither soberly, and not singe oute, but saye devoutly tweyne by tweyne seven psalmes with letany." (Add. MS. 6174.) At York the mock prelate held office longer, and wielded far more power than his fellows of Sarum. In 1299, on December 7th, a boy-bishop at Hoton, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, said vespers before Edward I., then on his way to Scotland. At Salisbury in 1542 Henry VIII. forbade the ceremony by royal proclamation. It was revived under Queen Mary, and finally abolished on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. Not entirely alien to the subject is the office of the bishop's boy, which is probably peculiar to Salisbury. His duty is to call at the palace before every service and inquire if the bishop will attend. He is formally appointed by the bishop, who lays his hands upon him, and repeats a prescribed office. A nameless tomb (19), and a memorial (20) to Dr. Daubigny Turberville, an oculist of Salisbury, who died April 21st, 1696, complete the more important monuments of the nave. Several mural tablets on the aisle walls are of hardly sufficient general interest to need description. In Price's "Antiquities of Salisbury," and many of the numerous works devoted to the cathedral, copies of nearly all the epitaphs are given, but, except in very special instances, they form peculiarly depressing reading. =The Choir Screen= was given as a memorial of the late Mr. Sidney Lear by his wife, to whom the cathedral is indebted for many of its modern enrichments. It is entirely of wrought metal, by Skidmore, of Coventry, and a good example of its class. It replaced the organ screen compiled by Wyatt from fragments of the Hungerford and Beauchamp chantries; to erect which he removed the original screen of exquisite workmanship, as may be seen by portions now placed along the west wall of the north-east transept. =The Organ=, that stood on the old screen until lately, was built by Green, of Isleworth, and a gift from King George III. in his capacity as "a Berkshire gentleman," that county being included in the diocese of Sarum until 1836. It was given by the Dean and Chapter to the church of St. Thomas. The present organ, a fine instrument, built by Willis, was the gift of Miss Chafyn Grove, is placed in the second arcade on each side of the choir, the necessary connecting mechanism being in a tunnel below the pavement, while the larger pipes and the bellows are inclosed within a screen in the north transept. The oak case is from a design by the late Mr. Street. =The Choir and Presbytery= are very similar to the nave in the main features of their design. The piers show a different plan, which provides for eight shafts of Purbeck marble to each. The inner mouldings of the arches exhibit the "dog-tooth" ornamentation of their period. The triforium and clerestory differ slightly from the corresponding parts of the nave. In each of the last two bays of the presbytery the triforium has five small cinquefoil arches. At the east wall of the choir above the reredos is an arcade of five simply-pointed arches, below a triplet window in the gable, which is filled with stained glass, given by the Earl of Radnor in 1781, and representing "The Brazen Serpent," after a design by Mortimer. The choir still bears traces of Wyatt's destruction. He removed the original reredos behind the high altar and the screen before the Lady Chapel, so that both, with the low eastern aisle, were thrown into the choir. He shifted the high altar from the choir to the extreme east end of the Lady Chapel, sacrificing several chantries and tombs to do so. Views of the cathedral after his reign of terror fail to show any gain to compensate for so much loss; the extreme length is not apparently an advantage, while the bare look of the interior seems decidedly intensified by the increased vista that he was so delighted to obtain, and for which with a light heart he effaced the silent records of dead centuries. =The Decorations of the Roof= of the choir and presbytery are reproductions by Messrs. Clayton and Bell of the original paintings, which dated probably from the thirteenth century. The series, commencing from the west, shows twenty-four prophets and saints, all, with the exception of St. John the Baptist, selected from the Old Testament. Taking them in lines parallel with the choir screen, the first row contains (reading from the left, as one faces the altar): Zechariah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and St. John the Baptist; the second: Zacharias, Joel, Hosea, and Zephaniah; the third: Job, Habakkuk, Nahum, David; the fourth: Moses, Micah, Jonah, and Jacob; the fifth: Malachi, Obadiah, Amos, and Isaac; and the sixth: Haggai, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Abraham. In the square of the transept crossing are (following the same order): St. Thomas and St. Andrew, St. Matthew and St. John, St. Philip and St. Simon, St. Bartholomew and St. Matthias. At the left the last panel on that side contains St. Peter and St. Andrew, while another in the opposite corner has St. James and St. John. In the centre is a figure of Christ, in majesty, surrounded by the four evangelists. From this point to the east the panels are devoted to secular subjects typifying the twelve months, "The signs of the Zodiac," Price calls them: January, warming at a fire; February, drinking wine; March, delving; April, sowing; May, hawking; June, flowers; July, reaping; August, threshing; September, fruit; October, brewing; November, cutting wood; December, killing the fatted pig. The originals were white, or rather buff-washed, in the last century. Owing to the tenacity of this wash, and the friable non-adhesive quality of the paint it covered, it was found impossible to remove the additional coating without destroying the original paintings. Tracings of some of them were made by Messrs. Clayton and Bell; but although the semi-transparent character of the buff wash allowed the subjects to be discerned from below; on nearer inspection the details became blurred and shapeless. The theory that the paintings of the choir had been re-painted before their defacement by buff wash seems hardly likely from the state reported by the restorers. The idea probably arose from an extract, itself possibly interpolated, frequently quoted from one edition of Defoe's "Tour through the Island of Great Britain:" "The choir resembles a theatre rather than a venerable choir of a church; it is painted white with the panels golden, and groups and garlands of roses and other flowers intertwined run round the top of the stalls; each stall hath the arms of its holder in gilt letters or blue writ on it; and the episcopal throne with Bishop Ward's arms upon it would make a fine theatrical decoration, being supported by gilt pillars and painted with flowers upon white all over. The roof of the choir hath some fresh painting, containing several saints as big as life, each in a circle by itself and holding a label in their hands telling who they are. The altar piece is very mean, and behind this altar, in the Virgin Mary's Chapel, are some very good monuments." But in the first edition of the same book Defoe himself says: "The inside is certainly hurt by the paltry old paintings in and over the choir, and the whitewashing badly done, wherein they have very stupidly everywhere drawn black lines to imitate joints of stone." In another edition of 1724 the passage reads: "The painting in the choir is mean and more like the ordinary method of Common Drawing Room or Tavern painting than that of a church." Whatever be the actual value of the painting on its own merits, as a record faithfully transcribed of very early roof-decoration, it has an interest of its own far beyond much more important work of later periods. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Carl Norman and Co._] =The Choir.=--In the second bay from the east, on the north side of the choir, stands the chantry of Bishop Audley, who died in 1524. This excellent example of late Perpendicular work was built by the bishop himself in 1520. Its style is not unlike the chantry of Bishop Fox at Winchester with octagonal shafts, (similar to those of the Salisbury Chapel at Christchurch,) which impart a semi-Oriental touch that is so characteristic of this final development of Gothic art. The images it once enshrined are lost, but the original rich colouring is still distinguishable on the fan tracery of the roof. The arms and initials of its founder are borne on the shields of the cornice. In the corresponding bay on the south side is the chantry founded by Walter Lord Hungerford, in 1429, and removed from the nave in 1778 by his descendant, the Earl of Radnor, who converted it into a family pew. It has been re-decorated, and new emblazonments added. The arms of its founder and his two wives appear on the base. The superstructure is of iron, and a fine example of its class, which includes among the few still extant the chantry of Edward IV. (died 1483) at Windsor, and that of Henry VII. at Westminster Abbey (died 1509). The Audley and Hungerford chantries are the most important left in a cathedral once rich in their kind, as the report of the alienation of their endowments proves. Of modern fittings, the Brass Lectern was given by members of the late Dean Lear's family. A brass eagle is mentioned by Price, and said to have been given in 1714 at a cost of £160. The pulpit is modern, with carved medallions on its sides. The bishop's throne, a lofty modern structure, made by Earp of Lambeth, was presented by those clergymen who had been ordained in the cathedral. It replaced one given in 1763. =The Choir Stalls= are made up from work of different periods, the seats and elbows being probably part of the original work; the poppy heads of the benches are of the time of Henry VIII. Much later Sir Christopher Wren added to the stalls, and still later Wyatt placed canopies over them, which have since been removed. The dean's seat has been said to be of the time of Charles I. =The Reredos= is modern. It was given by Earl Beauchamp in memory of Bishop Beauchamp (1450-81), whose chantry Wyatt swept away. Its design is adapted from the old choir screen, now in the Lady Chapel, and the monument of Bishop Bridport. A large centre panel, eight feet in height, has a bas-relief of the Crucifixion, with the Virgin and St. John; in the head of the central arch are angels amid foliage. On each side are two storied canopied niches, containing statues of the two Maries, and of St. Osmund and Bishop Beauchamp. The whole rises up to a gable terminating in a gemmed and floriated cross. The back facing the Lady Chapel is richly panelled. The sides are also elaborately decorated with birds. The design by Sir Gilbert Scott was executed at a cost of about £1,800 by Messrs. Farmer and Brindley. [Illustration: THE HIGH ALTAR AND REREDOS. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._] =The High Altar=, the credence table, and sedilia, are excellent examples of modern work. The altar itself is of English oak. Its design comprises an arcade with seven openings, divided into three panels, with much elaborate carving. It was given by those who had received confirmation at the hands of Bishop Hamilton. The altar cloths, worked and given by Mrs. Sidney Lear, are highly finished examples of modern ecclesiastical needlework. The credence table, of somewhat elaborate design, is of carved oak with a marble top. The altar rails are of brass, the grills of wrought iron, at each side of the reredos screen the choir partially from the Lady Chapel. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._] The definitely planned order of the subjects of the ceiling decoration is held to indicate originally a different place for the high altar than its present site, which is the same as that reported by Leland two hundred years ago, and until attention was drawn to this fact was generally accepted as its original position. From the rood screen the sequence of the figures of the patriarchs and prophets leads up to the climax of "Our Lord in Glory." At this point the capitals of the Purbeck shafts surrounding the pillars supporting the arch on which this figure is painted, are carved in foliage, unlike the others throughout the building, which are invariably moulded only. The whole subject is discussed at length in a paper printed in the "Wilts Archæological Magazine," vol. xvii., in a way that supports the hypothesis advanced. A somewhat important piece of circumstantial evidence came to light during the late restoration, namely a windlass close to the pier on the north side of the supposed original site of the altar, which was possibly intended to raise and lower a baldichino, or ciborium that hung originally over the altar, or still more probably the pyx, which as many instances show was usually suspended above it. Possibly the altar was moved when, owing to the early settlement of some of the piers, it was found necessary to wall up the space between the arches opening into the choir transepts, and insert the perpendicular arches as a counter thrust to the strain of the central tower. It is hardly conceivable that the evidence offered by the roof paintings, and the solitary instance of carved capitals, can be misleading on this point. =The East= (or =Choir=) =Transept=, which on the north side, screened as it is from the aisle, is used and known also as the Morning Chapel, has on its west wall a portion of a very beautiful screen of Early English work. Of this John Carter, from whose pages the accompanying sketch of a portion is reproduced, says that it was moved during Wyatt's restoration, as he naïvely puts it, "during the late dilapidatious innovations, and modern fanciful introductions so fatal to our study of antiquities." Other authorities consider its original position uncertain. Yet since its architecture is obviously coeval with that of the building, and the arches inserted by Bishop Beauchamp show proof of having been planned to rest on something at the base of the tower piers, there can be little doubt that when Wyatt removed the screen to re-erect a medley of his own composing made of fragments of the demolished chantries, he disturbed one more of the original features of the cathedral. [Illustration: PORTION OF THE OLD ORGAN SCREEN. _From a Drawing by H.P. Clifford._] A curious double aumbry in the north wall of this chapel is unusual, not merely in the pitch of its arches, which are triangular gables, but also in the solid stone shelves dividing its space into six compartments; other aumbries in this church show similar features, but this alone retains its original wooden doors. The superb brass of Bishop Wyville (illustrated on p. 114) is in the pavement of this transept. It is illustrated in almost every work on monumental brasses as a notable example. A canopied lavatory of beautiful design is upon the east wall to the right, the altar being not in the centre, but almost in the corner on the left-hand side. =The Eastern Aisle= is not so important as similar "processionals" at Exeter, Winchester, and some other English churches; still, the grace of its clustered columns, like those of the Lady Chapel, give it a character of its own. [Illustration: PISCINA IN THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] =The Lady Chapel=, originally separated from the choir, thrown into the presbytery by Wyatt for the sake of his much overrated vista, is once again partially hidden by the reredos and the grille work of the screen on either side. As the earliest portion of the building, and the only part Bishop Poore lived to see completed, it would not lack interest, were it commonplace in character; but it is on the contrary a particularly graceful example of its time. The whole chapel is divided into a nave and side aisles by single and clustered shafts of Purbeck marble. These extremely slender shafts look unequal to the heavy groined roof they support; for although nearly thirty feet high, the four largest are not quite ten inches in diameter, while the clustered ones are mere rods. Francis Price, whose interest in the building, as he showed throughout his monograph, was that of a practical builder, was "amazed at the vast boldness of the architect, who certainly piqued himself on leaving to posterity an instance of such small pillars bearing so great a load. One would not suppose them," he says, "to stand so firm of themselves as even to resist the force of an ordinary wind." The modern colouring of this part of the building, including the low eastern aisle immediately behind the reredos, is claimed to be an exact restoration of the original, but it is hardly agreeable. The black of the newly polished marble shafts, the dull green of other parts, with the red, green, and white of the vaulting ribs, is more bizarre than beautiful. In regarding traces of mediæval colouring one often forgets that time has blended harmoniously a scheme otherwise entirely crude, and to modern taste unpleasing. How far in English instances this is emphasized by the absence of rich hangings, carpets, vestments, and pictures, it is not within our subject to inquire; but since such restoration of the primitive colouring offends one less in churches that still preserve the more ornate furniture of the Roman Ritual, it is at least a moot point. The triple lancet east window at the end of the Lady Chapel was filled formerly with stained glass, representing "The Resurrection," after a design by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it is now replaced by modern glass in memory of the late Dean Lear. An altarpiece, composed of fragments of the destroyed Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels, was set up here by Wyatt. It has lately been replaced by a triptych designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, with very beautiful panels painted by Mr. Buckeridge. The seven-branched candlesticks in black-wood, silver mounted, are by the same architect. The altar frontal, designed by Mr. Sidney Gambier Parry, and worked by Mrs. Weigall, is so good that it must not be overlooked. The altar itself is of stone from an old altarpiece. Under the windows runs a series of niches, once in the Beauchamp Chapel. Above these rich and delicate canopies, with foliage and fan-tracery springing from corbelled heads, runs an exquisitely sculptured frieze. In this place, after he was canonized in 1456, the shrine of St. Osmund was erected. His supposed tomb, moved by Wyatt to the nave, is now replaced between the Lady Chapel and the southern aisle. Of the shrine no trace remains; but legends of the miracles worked at it, and the special indulgences granted to the pilgrims who visited it, prove that it existed on this spot. The date MXCIX. inscribed upon this slab has been questioned, on the authority of a diary made by Captain Symons (in 1644), now in the British Museum, in which an entry occurs with reference to this inscription, "a blew stone rising four ynches from the ground, the east end narrower than the west, this lately written Anno MXCIX.," but whether he means to infer that it was lately restored, or that the date itself was a later addition, is not quite clear. The characters of the inscription Planché pointed out correspond in form with those at the time of William the Conqueror, and as sepulchral effigies are uncommon until the middle of the twelfth century, the presumption is in its favour; still it is somewhat pathetic to find that the evidence which serves to connect this otherwise unknown monument with the famous St. Osmund, the greatest figure, not merely of the cathedral, but of the English Church of his time, is not absolutely beyond suspicion. Yet even if the Roman numerals were a later addition, it is hardly credible that the shrine of so popular a saint could have been wrongly identified. When Wyatt, according to his usual habit, explored the interior of the tomb, nothing was found within it. [Illustration: ALTAR AND TRIPTYCH REREDOS IN THE LADY CHAPEL. _From a Photograph by Witcomb and Son, Salisbury._] In 1540 Leland saw here a "ballet," which he transcribes for his Itinerary, with an inscription commanding the faithful to pray for the repose of the soul of Richard Poore. =Monuments in the Transept, Choir and Lady Chapel.=--The most important on the west wall of the north great transept is a brass (21) in memory of John Britton, who did so much to revive a taste for archæology and ecclesiastical art by his splendid series of monographs on the cathedrals, and his topographical works. A fine monument of its class is one by Bacon (22), which represents Moral Philosophy mourning over a medallion of James Harris, author of "Hermes" and father of the first Earl of Malmesbury; to whose memory close by is a full-length portrait figure by Chantrey. A figure (23) of Benevolence lifting the veil from a bas-relief of the good Samaritan, by Flaxman, commemorates William Benson Earle, Esq., of the Close, Salisbury. On the north wall of this transept is a canopied effigy (24) of a bishop said to represent John Blythe, who died in 1499. It was originally in the ambulatory of the Lady Chapel, behind the high altar, until Wyatt removed it to its present site. In this transept is the statue (25) to Sir Richard Colt Hoare, author of the "Histories of Modern and Ancient Wiltshire," and other works. It is a seated figure not without dignity, by R.C. Lucas, a native of Salisbury. A portrait bust to Richard Jefferies, with a long and eulogistic inscription, is upon a bracket on the west wall. Two other monuments by Flaxman deserve notice. That to Walter Long, Esq. (26), a medallion supported by two figures representing Justice and Literature, and one (27) to his brother, William Long, in florid Gothic style, with figures of Science and Benevolence. Dr. Waägen, in his "Art Treasures of Great Britain," says: "The three monuments by Flaxman (in Salisbury) two of which are in Gothic taste, prove that he was superior to most English sculptors in knowledge of the architectonic style. There is nothing extraordinary in the design, but the workmanship is good, and there is real feeling in the heads." In the north choir aisle, at its junction with the great transept, is a large Purbeck marble altar tomb (28), with panels and tracery, despoiled of the brass legend and armorial bearings it formerly exhibited. This is supposed to have commemorated Bishop Woodville, who died 1484. Two marble slabs that until 1778 were in the floor of this side beneath the first arch of the choir, and in the corresponding place on the south side, have been also stripped of their brasses which showed them to belong to Bishop Simon of Ghent, 1315, and Bishop Mortival, 1330. On the bench of this aisle is a figure (29) of a skeleton said to represent a man named Fox, who tried to fast forty days. A similar legend is told of the next figure (30), in memory of Dr. Bennett, Precentor of Salisbury (1541 to 1544). It is needless to say that both stories are mere inventions; in many monuments the effigy of the hero commemorated was shown in full pomp above, while in a niche below the skeleton was depicted, by way of pointing a moral too obvious to need further comment. A brass, in replica of the original, has been reinserted in the marble slab that commemorates Bishop Jewell (1560-71) (31). The next monument (32), for a long time attributed to Bishop Bingham (1229-47), has a flat pointed arch terminating in a decorated finial, above which rises a sort of pyramid of three stories, below is a slab formerly inlaid with brass. Later antiquaries, in spite of the fourteenth century character of its detail, assign it to Bishop Scammel (1284-87). The Audley chapel (33) is entered from this aisle. In the north-east choir transept aisle are three gravestones of Bishops Wyville (1375), Gheast (1576), and Jewell (1571), removed from the choir when its marble pavement was laid down. In the floor of this transept, which is known also as the morning chapel, is the famous brass to Bishop Wyvill (34), one that has been repeatedly figured in various works on memorial brasses, and it is generally ranked as one of the most interesting of existing examples. Near this is another brass (35) commemorating Bishop Gheast. The lavatory (36) is noticed elsewhere. In the Lady Chapel, under an arched niche in the north wall, is a coffin-shaped tomb (37) assigned to Bishop Roger, by those who refuse to accept the effigy in the nave as his monument. The monument (38) at the end of the north aisle of the Lady Chapel is a typical example of the mixed classical style so dear to the early seventeenth century taste. The effigies below its canopy, supported on twisted Corinthian pillars, represent Sir Thomas Gorges and his widow, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. Its medley of obelisks, globes, spheres, and images of the four cardinal virtues is more curious than interesting. Interred near in the choir, and all without monuments are many of the Earls of Pembroke and their wives, including "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother." In a niche of the east wall of the choir, behind an arcade of three pointed arches with cinquefoil heads, is a Purbeck marble effigy (39) of a bishop supposed by many to represent Richard Poore. It has been ascribed to Bishop Bingham because its bearded face fails to agree with that depicted on the seal of Bishop Poore, and also because an entry in an old book of records says that he was buried on the north side of the altar. This monument was removed by Wyatt to the north-east transept, to what is supposed to have been its original position. The effigy, whoever it represents, is a fine one, the pastoral crozier of particularly graceful design; above it is an angel supporting the circle of the sun and the crescent of the moon. The slab which is believed to commemorate St. Osmund (40) is now restored, and placed where his shrine stood formerly, between the south choir aisle and Lady Chapel. At the east end of the south aisle is the gorgeous monument (41) to Edward, Earl of Hertford, son of the Protector Somerset, uncle of Edward VI., and of his wife Catherine, sister to Lady Jane Grey. The effigies are both in a praying attitude, the Earl in armour. It is elaborately ornamented and splendid in gold and colours, restored by order of the late Duke of Northumberland. It is more ornate than modern taste desires, but still to call it "stately, though tasteless," as does one chronicler, is somewhat harsher criticism than is justified. It is seen in the illustration of the choir aisle given here. [Illustration: SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, LADY CHAPEL. _From a Photograph by Norman._] In the south wall is an altar tomb (42), now assigned to William Wilton, Chancellor of Sarum (1506-23). On its cornice are shields bearing the device of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon, a rose and a pomegranate; the arms of Bishop Audley, and those of Abingdon Abbey; also the rebus W.I.L. and a Tun. The monument (43) to Bishop Moberly, designed by Mr. Arthur Blomfield, is an excellent example of the modern revival. The monument (44) to Bishop Hamilton is also interesting as almost the last design prepared by Sir George Gilbert Scott, and one well worthy of its author. Next to the Hungerford iron chantry (45) is the monument (46) ordinarily assigned to Bishop William of York, but, like many of the bishops' tombs in this cathedral, without any certain clue to its identity. It consists of a pointed, crocketed arch, terminating in an elaborate finial; with a flat slab below, originally inlaid with a brass. [Illustration: SOUTH CHOIR AISLE, SHOWING THE HUNGERFORD CHAPEL. _From a Photograph by S.B. Bolas and Co._] In the south choir transept is the very beautiful chantry (47) to Bishop Giles de Bridport. On either side the gabled roof is carried by two open elaborately moulded arches with quatrefoil heads, inclosing two trefoil arches supported by clustered detached shafts. Each arch has a triangular hood moulding, crocketed with carved finials. The spandrils are ornamented with very interesting carvings. These have been interpreted to mean: on the south side, the birth of the bishop, his confirmation, his education, and possibly his first preferment; on the north, the bishop doing homage for his see, a procession with a cross-bearer (generally accepted as a memorial of the consecration of the building by this bishop); his death; and finally his soul borne up to heaven by an angel with outspread wings. [Illustration: CHANTRY OF BISHOP BRIDPORT. _From Britton's "Cathedrals."_] The recumbent effigy has figures of censing angels at its head. The whole style of this exquisite structure is akin to that of the cloisters and the chapter house. The artists who executed the sculptures are believed to have been contemporaries of Niccola Pisano. A chantry was formerly attached to this monument, to the east of which is a double aumbry, or cupboard, for the reservation of the sacrament. Near this is a tablet to the memory of Canon Bowles, whose edition of Pope plunged him into a bitter controversy with Lord Byron. He was author of many books, including a Life of Bishop Ken. A large modern monument to the late Bishop Burgess is against the south wall. On the west wall is the monument (48) of Bishop Seth Ward, whose additions to the palace, after the Restoration, are mentioned elsewhere. The Izaak Walton, whose gravestone is near, was the son of the famous angler. Near is one to the memory of the father of the poet Young, and a modern tablet to Richard Hooker, author of "Ecclesiastical Polity." In the south choir aisle is a rather interesting monument (51) to Bishop Davenant, who is usually credited with the honour of being one of the translators of the Bible. It is of white marble with two black Corinthian pillars, surmounted by a mitre and arms. There is also a tablet in coloured relief to the memory of Mrs. Wordsworth, wife of the bishop; and a brass, cruciform in shape, inserted in a polished granite slab, which forms a memorial to Canon Liddon. Many other monuments of ancient and modern date that concern forgotten celebrities, or are of purely local interest, cannot be catalogued. Nor is it needful to insist on morals they mostly enforce, that really all recent works of this class lack the dignity which has given the word monumental a new meaning. On the bench opposite is the monument (52), an altar tomb with shields and initials, of Bishop Salcot (or Capon), whose notoriety as a "time-serving courtier" is mentioned in another chapter. A pseudo-classical monument near (53), with vine-leaves and grapes in green and gold entwined round black Corinthian pillars, is to the memory of Sir Richard Mompesson, knight, who is represented in armour, and Dame Katherine, his wife, clad in black robe with gold flowers. [Illustration: THE CHAPTER HOUSE. _From a Photograph by Carl Norman and Co._] Close to the south transept, in the choir aisle, is the altar tomb (54) of Bishop Mitford, 1407, which Britton rightly calls a noble monument. In the spandrils of the flat arch of its canopy are armorial shields. Lilies and birds, holding in their beaks scrolls, inscribed, "Honor Deo et gloria," are on its cornice. The shields on the north bear the bishop's arms and those of his see; on the south are quartered the arms of England and France, and the ensign of Edward the Confessor--the cross _patonée_ surrounded by five martlets. Here also is a modern altar tomb (55), from a design by Mr. G.E. Street, to the memory of John Henry Jacob, and a fine Jacobean monument with bust and Latin inscription to Lord Chief Justice Hyde. Among many other post-reformation monuments are those to: Bishop Fisher (56) on the east wall; a canopied altar tomb (57) in the Gothic style to the memory of Edward and Rachel Poore (died 1780 and 1781), the collateral descendants of the famous bishop, and a marble slab set in a Gothic frame to Canon Hume (died 1834). On the south wall of the nave (58) there is an effigy of Mrs. Eleanor Sadler, who died July 30th, 1622, and was interred "according to her owne desire under this her pew, wherein with great devotion she had served God dailie almost L years." Amid other monuments on this wall, dating from late in the seventeenth century to the present day, is a small tablet (60) to one of the most famous Salisbury men in modern times, the Right Hon. Henry Fawcett, M.P., late Postmaster-General, who died in 1884. =The Chapter House=, which is entered from the eastern walk of the cloisters, dates probably from the time of Edward the First; later it may be, but certainly not earlier than the commencement of his reign, as, during certain excavations for underpinning the walls in 1854, several pennies of that king were found below its foundations. The architecture is somewhat later in style than that of the cloisters, and if it be not, as its admirers claim, the most beautiful in England, it has few rivals. Like Westminster, Wells, and other English examples, except York and Southwell, it has a central pillar, from which the groining of the roof springs gracefully in harmonious lines. A raised bench of stone runs round the interior. At its back, forty-nine niches of a canopied arcade borne on slight Purbeck marble shafts mark out as many seats. They are apportioned as follows: those at each side of the entrance to the Chancellor and Treasurer respectively, the rest to the Bishop, Dean, Arch-deacons, and other members of the chapter. [Illustration: THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHAPTER HOUSE.] [Illustration: BOSSES FROM THE CHAPTER HOUSE ROOF.] The plan of the building is octagonal, about fifty-eight feet in diameter and fifty-two feet in height. Each side has a large fanlight window with traceried head. Below these windows and above the canopies of the seats is a very remarkable series of bas-reliefs, noticed more fully later on. The bosses of the roof are somewhat elaborately carved; one north of the west doorway has groups of figures on it, apparently intended to represent armourers, musicians, and apothecaries, possibly commemorating guilds who were benefactors to the building; the others have foliage chiefly with grotesque monsters. On the base of the central pillar is a series of carvings taken probably from one of the many books of fables so popular in the middle ages. These were reproduced from the originals, which are preserved in the cloisters. [Illustration: DETAILS OF SCULPTURES IN THE CHAPTER HOUSE. _From Photographs by Catherine Weed Ward._] The quatrefoil over the doorway has an empty niche, and it is not possible to say with certainty whether it was originally filled by a crucifix, as Mr. Mackenzie Walcott infers from the symbols of the Evangelists in the angles of the panel; or, with a seated figure of our Lord in majesty; or, as a third archæologist has suggested, a coronation of the Virgin. Filling the voussoirs of the arch of the doorway are fourteen small niches containing subjects from the Psychomachia of Prudentius, the Battle of the Virtues against the Vices. The figures are not easily identified, but Mr. Burges, whose "Iconography of the Chapter House" is the most important monograph on the subject, suggests that on the right-hand side the figures in the third niche from the top appear to represent Concord triumphing over Discord; in the sixth, Temperance is pouring liquor down the throat of Intemperance; on the seventh, Fortitude tramples on Terror, who cuts her own throat. On the left hand in the first niche Faith is trampling on Infidelity; in the second, a Virtue covers a Vice with her cloak, while the Vice embraces her knees with one hand and stabs her with a sword held in the other. This incident is taken from Prudentius: "Discord by stealth wounds Concord; she is taken and killed by" Faith, which latter incident may be represented in the next compartment. In the fourth niche, Truth pulls out Falsehood's tongue; in the fifth, Modesty scourges Lust; in the sixth, Generosity pours coin into the throat of Avarice. To quote the words of the author from whom these interpretations are derived: "These sculptures are of the very highest class of art, and infinitely superior to any work in the chapter house; the only defect is the size of the heads: probably this was intentional on the part of the artist. The intense life and movement of the figures are worthy of special study." These allegories are common in paintings and sculptures of this period; at Canterbury the same subjects are incised on the pavement that surrounds the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket. On the spandrils of the continuous arcade, sculptures in high relief once restored as far as possible in the original colours are now again scraped clean, and with the new heads to the figures look so modern that it is hard to believe they are contemporary with the building they adorn, yet since on the whole the restoration has been faithfully accomplished they may be studied as peculiarly valuable examples of early mediæval sculpture, showing certain naïve qualities that raise them far above the usual level of contemporary work. They are supposed to have been defaced by the Commission sitting in this building during the time of the Rebellion. The subjects are: _West Wall._ 1. A Representation of Chaos. 2. The Creation of the Firmament. _North-west Wall._ 3. The Creation of the Earth. 4. The Creation of the Planets. 5. The Creation of the Birds and Fishes. 6. The Creation of Adam and Eve. 7. The Seventh Day. 8. The First Marriage. 9. The Temptation of Eve. 10. Adam and Eve hiding. _North Wall._ 11. The Flight from Paradise. 12. The First Labour. 13. Cain and Abel's Offering. 14. The First Murder. 15. The Punishment of Cain. 16. The Command to Noah. 17. The Ark. 18. The Vineyard of Noah. _North-east Wall._ 19. Noah's Drunkenness. 20. The Building of Babel. 21. Angels appearing to Abraham. 22. Abraham entertaining the Angels. 23. The Destruction of the Cities of the Plain. 24. Lot's Escape. 25. Abraham and Isaac. 26. The Sacrifice of Isaac. _East Wall._ 27. Isaac and Jacob. 28. Esau and Isaac. 29. Rebecca and Jacob. 30. Jacob and Rachel. 31. Rachel, Jacob, and Laban. 32. Jacob and the Angels. 33. The Angel touching Jacob's thigh. 34. Jacob meeting Esau. _South-east Wall._ 35. Joseph's Dream. 36. Joseph relating his Dream. 37. Joseph in the Pit. 38. Joseph sold into Egypt. 39. Joseph's Coat brought to Jacob. 40. Joseph and Potiphar. 41. Potiphar's Wife. 42. Joseph accused. _South Wall._ 43. Joseph in Prison. 44. Pharaoh's Baker and Butler. 45. Pharaoh's Dream. 46. Pharaoh's Indecision. 47. Joseph before Pharaoh. 48. Joseph as Ruler. 49. Joseph's Brethren. 50. The Cup placed in Benjamin's Sack. _South-west Wall._ 51. The Discovery of the Cup. 52. His Brethren before Joseph. 53. Jacob on his Way to Egypt. 54. Joseph and his Brethren pleading. 55. Joseph protecting his Brethren. 56. Moses on Sinai. 57. The Miracle of the Red Sea. 58. The Destruction of the Egyptians. _West Wall._ 59. Moses striking the Rock. 60. The Law declared. [Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE CHAPTER HOUSE.] [Illustration: DECORATIONS IN THE GROINING OF THE CHAPTER HOUSE.] The modern decoration of the chapter house includes stained glass of a geometrical pattern in the eight windows, which, if not peculiarly good, is harmless enough. Some diaper wall painting, shown in the photograph reproduced here, which until lately decorated the back of the arcade is now entirely cleaned off. The tiles of the floor have been reproduced from the designs of the original Norman pavement. The vaulted roof is re-painted in exact accordance with its original design. The marble shafts of the arcade are re-polished, and the central shaft has also been re-worked to a smooth surface. Gilding has been applied freely to the bosses of the roof and the capitals of the pillars. The ancient table, shown in the engraving, has also been restored; it is a very interesting specimen of early decorated furniture. [Illustration: TOMB OF SIR JOHN MONTACUTE. _From a Photograph by Catherine Weed Ward._] FOOTNOTES: [7] "The Century Magazine," March, 1888. [8] The numerals in brackets refer to the position of each monument as shown on the plan. [9] In 1448 Nicholas Upton the precentor tried to limit the choice of the choristers to three candidates selected by the chapter; but this attempt to curtail their privilege was successfully resisted by the boys. THE CATHEDRAL PRECINCTS. The common practice of writers who are describing any one of our more important cathedrals is to declare that altogether it may be fairly called the most beautiful. So great is the fascination exercised by continual study of a single mediæval building which has escaped destruction, or over-restoration, that such a statement may be advanced in all good faith. In claiming, however, that the cloisters of Salisbury are on the whole the most beautiful in England, it is merely re-asserting what many critics of Gothic architecture have already decided to be true. The cloisters of Gloucester are far richer, the space they cover at Wells (like Salisbury, not a monastic establishment) is greater, and in other details these may not be the finest. But, as a whole, their beautiful proportion and the general symmetry of their design make them worthy adjuncts to a building which is pre-eminent for these special qualities. Situated, according to the usual custom, on the south-west side of the cathedral, with their western wall in a line with its west front, they are exceedingly picturesque. Even so far back as the time of Leland, we find him declaring that "the cloister on the south side of the church is one of the largest and most magnificent in Britain." Yet, as a recent critic has observed, from a purely technical point of view, there is "too great a mass of blank wall above the arcade." The green sward of the large garth, 140 feet square, with its covered walks, 181 feet long, on each side, and the fine group of cedars in the centre, showing against the cool grey of the stonework realize the ideal of that cloistered solitude so dear to the poets; it should not be forgotten, however, that the arrangements of this cathedral are not monastic, for it was never aught but a collegiate building. The style is late thirteenth century with windows of exceedingly graceful design; double arches with quatrefoils above, united in pairs with a large six-foiled circle in the main head. The upper portions of the tracery had, not so long ago, traces of coloured glass here and there, but whether this feature was part of the original scheme is very doubtful. The shafts, originally of Purbeck marble (replaced in 1854 by stone) both between and in the centres of the windows have simply moulded capitals; while those of the clustered columns at the main angles are carved. Modern opinion is inclined to date the beginning of the work between 1260 to 1284; but so late as 1338, as a dated charter in Bishop Wyville's time which refers to the enlargement of the cloisters shows, they were not quite completed; hence it is inferred that a part, possibly only one side, was built at first. The north arcade is entirely independent of the south wall of the nave, the long space between being known as the Plumbery. The garth is used as a burial ground, and in the cloisters are many monuments, but none of more than local interest, except possibly a tablet to the memory of Francis Price (died Mar. 20th, 1753, aged 50), the cathedral architect, whose excellent monograph devoted to the building is still one of the most useful books of reference on the subject. The drawing here reproduced from Britton's "Salisbury," shows the work before its restoration by Bishop Denison; but it has been chosen because it suggests the peculiar beauty of the place better than any photograph. From the cloisters a very charming glimpse of the spire may be obtained. [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS. _From a Photograph by Messrs. Poulton._] [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, LOOKING NORTH.] The =Library= occupying the upper story that extends over part of the eastern arcade is an important collection, its manuscripts alone filling a hundred and eighty-seven volumes. These (with one exception, bequeathed by Bishop Denison, a splendidly illuminated breviary _circa_ A.D. 1460, containing among other specially interesting matter the order of service for the installation of the Boy-bishops,) have been in the possession of the dean and chapter at least four hundred years, and range in date, according to the best authorities, from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. Among the most important is (No. 150) A Psalter, of the Gallican Version, on vellum, 160 folios, tenth century. The decorations of this MS. are somewhat rude, the initials and colouring throughout being chiefly in red. Internal evidence fixes its date about A.D. 969. A Psalter (No. 180) on 173 folios, contains in parallel columns the Gallican and Hebrew of Jerome's translation, and other matter, with ornamental initials and devices; a Lectionary on vellum, 190 folios (No. 153) is a finely written manuscript, with elaborate initials in gold and colours, this is about A.D. 1277. A fifteenth century "Processional for the Use of Sarum," on vellum, 50 folios (No. 148) contains some entries that throw light on various local customs, as for example, the distribution of the carpet used in the enthronement of the bishop, which was laid from _ostio hospicii agni_ to the altar in the treasury. The unique "Tonale secundum usum Sarum" bound with an "Ordinale secundum usum Sarum" (No. 175) is of the fourteenth century, on 214 folios of vellum. In a volume (No. 39) is a copy of the Gospel of Nicodemus in an English version beginning, "Whanne Pylatus was reuler and justyse of ye Jewerye, and Rufus and Leo were consuls." Another book of more than ordinary interest is Chaucer's translation of Boethius' "De Consolatione Philosophiæ," on vellum in double columns, fifteenth century. A twelfth century MS. of the "Historia Regum Brittaniæ," by Geoffrey de Monmouth (No. 121); and the "Historia Miscella" of Paul Warnefrid, are among many others that deserve mention. Among the printed books of the Library are about a score belonging to the fifteenth century, and one hundred of the sixteenth. Some of these are of extreme rarity. In a copy of Sibbes' "Returning Backslider" is this couplet (attributed to Doddridge) in the handwriting, with autograph, of Isaac Walton: "Of this blest man let this just praise be given, Heaven was in him before he was in heaven." Bishop Gheaste was a benefactor to the library, and left it a large legacy, the foundation of the present collection of printed books. The library is shown to the public on certain days, and the clergy of the diocese have the privilege of borrowing books therefrom. According to the "Inventory of the Riches of the Cathedral Church of Sarum," made by Master Thomas Robertson, treasurer of the same church in 1536, 28th year of Henry VII., we find images, "of God the Father with our Saviour young, of silver and gilt with gold, ornate with red stones weighing 74 ounces." Others of Our Lady, including a "grate and fair ymage sitting in a chaire ... her child sits in her lap very costly and fair to look upon." Reliques of the 11,000 virgins, in four purses; Pyxides of Ivory of Chrystal, and silver gilt, "Cruces" of Gold and Silver. And a great Cross silver and gilt with images on the crucifix, Mary and John, and the left part of the cross--weighing 180 ounces. Calices (chalices), Fereta, Candelabra, Philateria, Tabernucla, Ampulæ, Thuribula, Chrismatones, Copes and Chasubles, Mitres, Basons, Garlands, and hangings, Morses and many other items. Also the textus, which was given by Hubert de Burgh, here described as "A text after Matthew having images of St. Joseph, and our Lady and our Saviour all in a bed of straw, in every corner is the image of an apostle," and a huge list of items not merely interesting in themselves, but as evidence of the wealth of the cathedral. [Illustration: RINGS FOUND IN THE LADY CHAPEL.] =The Muniment Room=, which is approached from the south choir transept, is part of a two-storied building, octagonal in plan. The ground floor, formerly the sacristy, is now used as a vestry for the canons; the upper one, a dimly-lighted room, with an oak roof supported by a central column of wood, is the muniment chamber. Traces of a cross on the central pillar support the theory that the "Altar in the Treasury," referred to in various early documents, stood here. The solidity and strength of the building, and the fact that it was undoubtedly the store house for the vestments and treasures of the church, leaves little doubt that the supposition is true. A very fine cope chest, reproduced by Mr. William Burges in his "Architectural Drawings," 1870, until lately preserved in the vestry, now in the north choir aisle, has a quaintly-carved capital on one of its shafts that suggests a very early date for its construction. The heavy lid was originally lifted by a rope and windlass. Although possessing no traces of painting or gilding, and but little carving, it is both curious and interesting as a specimen of woodwork coeval with the cathedral itself. A somewhat similar one exists in Westminster Abbey, in both the lifting lids worked on very slight pivots. At Westminster the chains remain. In 1834 a writer described the room as "a feast for moths and spiders;" now it is kept in admirable order. The most important of its extremely valuable documents have been printed in a volume devoted to Sarum in the "Master of the Rolls Series," in the late Canon Jones' "Fasti Ecclesiæ: Sarisberiensis." In addition to these historic papers there is an immense quantity of Chapter Registers and other MSS. of more local interest. Many of the chests and presses date from early times, when the three keys needed to open each were severally in the charge of three of the cathedral dignitaries. The contemporary copy of Magna Charta, made for William Longespée, first Earl of Salisbury, and referred to elsewhere, is sometimes exhibited here. The documents which contain "the statutes and ordinances" by which the cathedral is governed, extend over six centuries, commencing in 1091 and ending 1697. These were edited by Dr. Edward A. Dayman, and the late Rev. W.H. Rich Jones, Vicar of Bradford-on-Avon, whose researches in the past history of not merely the cathedral, but the whole district, were so extended, that it is impossible to do justice in every instance to many facts which have been taken from his pages in the preparation of this handbook. The privately printed volume, published in 1883, contains the Latin text with English notes of these various documents. The details of most of these, although of immense value to antiquarians, are too technical to be available for quotation here, but the indirect allusions to customs and manners of the past, makes many a paragraph pleasant reading, although the whole document may refer to merely the working details of administration. The statute, dated A.D. 1319, relating to the rights of the boy bishop, is one of the few that have more than local interest. [Illustration: HANGING PARAPET ON THE EAST WALL OF THE CLOSE.] =The Close= is certainly a fit setting for the jewel it surrounds, and with full remembrance of the superb position of Durham, the picturesque eminence of Lincoln, the dignity that marks the isolated hill whereon Ely towers over the fens around it, the harmonious environment of Wells, and many another site made memorable by its cathedral, Salisbury is, in its own way, not less beautiful. The quiet tranquillity of the large lawn, the half-hidden houses that nestle among its trees, the sense of being completely shut off from the work-a-day world, impress one as much as the apparent vastness of the area thus devoted to the cathedral. Leland, in his "Itinerary," was equally struck with its beauty, although, as the frontispiece shows, the surroundings were very different before Wyatt's exploits, and probably in Leland's time preserved still more of their mediæval aspect. He says: "The great and large embatelid waulle of the palace having 3 gates to entre into it thus namyd: the close gate as principale by north ynto the town, Saint Anne's gate by est, and Harnham gate by south toward Harham bridge. The close wall was never ful finished as in one place evidently apperith I redde that in Bishop Rogers days as I remembere a convention was between him and the Canons of Saresbyri de Muro clausi." Whether the builders of our great churches were conscious of the beauty of their surroundings, or whether no little of that loveliness is but the slow result of centuries of care and the accident of natural growth, need not be discussed. That to an American especially this peculiar beauty tells with great force we can readily believe, and Mrs. Van Rensselaer, whose paper on Salisbury has been quoted before in this book, expresses admirably the feeling, which, whether it be true or only imaginary, is no doubt the impression of such a place as the Close of Salisbury on many an educated visitor. "Salisbury," she writes, "is the very type and picture of the Church of the Prince of Peace. Nowhere else does a work of Christian architecture so express purity and repose and the beauty of holiness, while the green pastures that surround it might well be those of which the Psalmist writes. When the sun shines on the pale grey stones, and the level grass, and the silent trees, and throws the long shadow of the spire across them, it is as though a choir of seraphs sang in benediction of that peace of God which passeth understanding. The men who built and planted here were sick of the temples of Baalim, tired of being cribbed and cabined, weary of quarrelsome winds and voices. They wanted space and sun, and stillness, comfort and rest, and beauty, and the quiet ownership of their own; and no men ever more perfectly expressed, for future times to read, the ideal they had in mind." The =Bell Tower=, a striking feature of the close as it was before 1789, is shown on page 19, in the facsimile of an engraving originally published in 1761, and re-engraved in the superb County History in 1804(?). This shows the campanile standing at the north-west corner of the inclosure. In style it was about the same period as the chapter house and cloisters. The plan appears to have been square, although one writer, frequently quoted, calls it multangular; the stone tower was in two massive stories with lancet windows in the lower, and windows with plate tracery above, with a spire apparently of wood crowning the whole. Leland speaks of it as "a notable and strong square tower for great belles, and a pyramis on it, in the cemiterie." It was evidently massive enough to have stood for centuries, and the single pillar of Purbeck marble, "lying in its natural bed," which was the central support that carried the bells, the belfry, and the spire, is specially mentioned by Price as perfectly sound, but he owns that the leaden spire, and a wooden upper story, were decayed, and puts forward a design of a sham classic dome which he hopes might be erected in its place. When the cathedral was visited in 1553 by the Royal Commission there remained a peal of ten bells, and the re-casting in 1680 of the seventh and eighth by the Purdues, local founders, is recorded among the muniments. The sixth is now the clock bell of the cathedral, but the fate of the others is absolutely unknown. [Illustration: DEATH AND THE GALLANT.] Several of Wyatt's iconoclastic blunders have been already mentioned; we now come to his chief iniquity. The =Hungerford Chapel=, demolished by Wyatt, stood at the east end of the building on the north side of the Lady Chapel, with which it was connected by openings cut in the main wall. This chapel was one of those of which Fuller so quaintly wrote, "A chantry was what we call in grammar an adjective, unable to stand of itself, and was therefore united for better support to some ... church." An addition to the building in a much later style, it was founded by Margaret (daughter and sole heir of William, Lord Botreaux,) in 1464; she was interred within its walls in 1477. Her history, too full to note here, is a sad one, the loss of her movable goods by "fyre" in Amesbury Abbey being but a small incident among her many troubles. A peculiarly interesting inventory of the ornaments and furniture that she gave to this chantry has been preserved; it is printed in Dugdale's "Baronage," vol. ii., p. 207, and also in "The Wiltshire Archæological Magazine," vol. xi. The chapel, in the somewhat florid late Perpendicular style, had a large east window of five lights, and three of triple lights in its north wall. The outside was adorned with shields and devices of the family, and crested with battlements. Within it had a richly-groined roof, and underneath a large arch cut in the north wall of the Lady Chapel, and therefore opening into the hall of the chantry, stood the monument of Lord Hungerford, surmounted by an ornamental four-arched canopy. This altar tomb, now devoid of the gold and colour that once enriched it, is in the nave. Its armour, "like a lobster," with its peculiar pattern, its large shoulders and elbow-pieces, and its jewelled girdle, is quoted by Meyrick as a very fine example of its period. Above were eight niches of demi-quatrefoiled arches, with a fascia of quatrefoils surmounted by a cornice of oak leaves. Between the monument and the doorway was a series of wall-paintings of great interest. One, "Death and the Gallant," has been engraved, and the dialogue below it preserved. As the verses are archaic in spelling, it may be best to follow a more modern version ("Wilts Archæological Magazine," vol. ii., p. 95): "Alas, Death alas! a blissful thing thou were If thou wouldst spare us in our lustiness, And come to wretches that be of heavy cheer When they thee ask to lighten their distress. But out, alas, thine own self-willedness Harshly refuses them that weep and wail To close their eyes that after thee do call. Graceless Gallant in all thy lust and pride Remember this, that thou shalt one day die, Death shall from thy body thy soul divide-- Thou mayst him escape not certainly, To the dead bodies (here) cast down thine eye; Behold them well, consider too and see, For such as they are, such shalt thou too be." Of this Mr. Francis Douce, in his volume "The Dance of Death," says it was "undoubtedly a portion of the Macaber Dance, as there was close to it another compartment belonging to the same subject. This painting was made about the year 1460, and from the remaining specimen its destruction is greatly to be regretted, as judging from the dress of the young gallant the dresses of the time would be correctly exhibited." There were other wall paintings, including a large St. Christopher with the Christ Child on his shoulder, and an Annunciation, said to have been a fine work. An interesting memorial of the chapel as it stood in the middle of the seventeenth century, is to be found in an MS. pocket-book, still preserved in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 939), which belonged to a Captain Symons, of the Royalist Army. When he visited Salisbury in 1644 he made many notes and sketches of the armorial bearings in this chantry. =The Beauchamp Chapel.=--The interior view here reproduced from "Gough's Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" although not very clear is curiously interesting, conveying as it does trustworthy evidence of the building so wantonly swept away. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DEMOLISHED BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL.] Of the Beauchamp Chapel, on the south side of the Lady Chapel, there appears to be no exterior view extant, but from sketches of its interior, and descriptions, it must have been a fine specimen of its period, and worthy of its designer, the builder of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It was larger and more elaborate in detail than the Hungerford chantry, but like it in plan, and similarly lighted by one large east window, and three in the side wall. The remains of its founder, Bishop Beauchamp, reposed in a plain tomb in the centre. In the wall on the north side were exquisite canopies above the tombs of the father and mother of the bishop. An altar tomb of Sir John Cheyne, now in the nave, stood formerly at the south-west corner (see page 48). There was a custom that on Christmas Day and all holy days the wives of the mayor and aldermen and gentry of the city, came to prayers in the Beauchamp chapel in the evening with flambeaux and torches, excepting on Innocents' Day, when they went to their own parish churches. In an interesting Guide to the Cathedral, now in the British Museum, annotated in the last century by some visitor, we find an entry concerning this chapel, "The ceiling is of Irish oak, and never known to have spiders or cobwebs in it." Much of the carved work in both these chantries was employed elsewhere in the buildings. The plea put forward for their removal was founded on a report by Francis Price thirty-six years before, wherein he considered them unsafe. When the Hungerford Chantry was added one of the outside buttresses of the Lady Chapel aisle was removed to make room for it; the opening pierced through the main walls of the cathedral into both the chapels were also sources of weakness. Wyatt seized upon these facts, and with the precedent of Price's report, declared the chapels unsafe, and also, which was no doubt his real motive for action, that "their lack of uniformity" injured the appearance of the buildings. Wyatt's ideal virtues were of the lowest order, to obtain neatness and tidiness he was prepared to sacrifice any and every thing, and the two chapels were obviously not in the style of the cathedral, nor, unluckily (for had they been they might yet be standing), precisely symmetrical in effect, so they were swept away. These actions at Salisbury, and similar destruction at Lincoln, Hereford, and elsewhere, have made Wyatt's name odious; but deserving though he be of all blame, it must not be forgotten that restorers of to-day, even at Salisbury, have effaced much interesting work of past time on the same pretext: that it failed to accord with the rest of the work to which it was obviously a late addition. This plea, specious and even excellent in theory, has probably done more irreparable injury to our ancient buildings than even the iconoclasts of the Reformation. A shattered ruin may convey a clear idea of its original state, while a smooth, pedantic restoration will obliterate it entirely. =The Stained Glass= throughout the whole building survives but in a few instances, and these, with two exceptions, not in their original places. Of its wholesale destruction we have sad evidence extant in a letter, dated 1788, from John Berry, glazier, of Salisbury, to Mr. Lloyd, of Conduit Street, London. It may be transcribed in full, to show how reckless the custodians of the fabric were at that time:--"Sir. This day I have sent you a Box full of old Stained & Painted glass, as you desired me to due, which I hope will sute your Purpos, it his the best that I can get at Present. But I expect to Beate to Peceais a a great deal very sune, as it his of now use to me, and we do it for the lead. If you want more of the same sorts you may have what thear is, if it will pay for taking out, as it is a Deal of Truble to what Beating it to Peceais his; you will send me a line as soon as Possoble, for we are goain to move our glasing shop to a Nother plase, and thin we hope to save a great deal more of the like sort, which I ham your most Omble servant--John Berry." [Illustration: PORTIONS OF THE OLD STAINED GLASS.] The fragments that survived were collected some fifty years since, and placed in the nave windows, and in parts of some of the others. The most important are in the great west triple lancet, wherein the glass ranges in date from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Mr. Winston, in his Paper read in 1849 before the Archæological Institute and printed in the Salisbury volume for that year, considered that the earliest fragments are from a Stem of Jesse about 1240, and some medallions about 1270. He describes two of the ovals that are on each side of the throned bishop, a prominent figure in the lower half of the central light, one of the Christ enthroned, the other of the Virgin. The two medallions below them he believes represent "Zacharias in the Temple," and "The Adoration of the Magi." The later glass now in the same window may be either Flemish work brought hither from Dijon, or possibly partly from Rouen, and partly from a church near Exeter. It has been conjectured that in the south lancet the figures represent SS. Peter and Francis, in the central one the Crucifixion, the Coronation of the Virgin, and the Invention of the Cross, and in the north light the Betrayal of Christ and St. Catherine. In two of the side windows of the nave are the arms of John Aprice (1555-1558) and Bishop Jewell (1562). The stained glass in the north choir aisle includes a window executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell, in memory of Archdeacon Huxtable, with figures of archangels and angels in the upper lights, and the Angel appearing to Gideon, and the Vision of Isaiah, in the lower panels. Also a window by Clayton and Bell to the memory of the wife of the Rev. Chancellor Swayne, having for its subject the reply of our Lord to his disciples. In the east side of the Morning Chapel is a window by Messrs. Burleson and Gryles to the memory of Mrs. W.R. Hamilton, with the Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and the three archangels, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael. In the south choir aisle are two Clayton and Bell windows, to the memory of George Morrison, and two others excellently treated, both designed by Holiday, and executed by Powell. In the one eight panels represent four holy women of the Old Testament, and the four Maries. This is to the memory of the late Countess of Radnor. In the other, to the memory of Jacob, the 4th Earl of Radnor, a similar screen of decoration embodies figures of eight prophets. In the south-east transept is a window erected to the officers of the Wiltshire Regiment who fell in the Sutlej Campaign in 1845-6, and in the Crimean War of 1854-5; also one of "The Raising of Lazarus." In the upper windows of this transept is a quantity of old glass of different dates, which had been stored away for over a century in the roof of the Lady Chapel, until lately collected and placed where it now is. The south choir aisle has a window in memory of the late Duke of Albany, "Jacob's Dream," and two of the intended six windows of a hierarchy of angels--the Angeli Ministrantes and the Angeli Laudantes--designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones, and executed by William Morris, which are notably among the most superb examples of the art of glass painting since mediæval times. Next in order towards the east is a window of fine design to the memory of the late Duke of Albany. In the south-west transept there are three Clayton and Bell windows: in memory of Archdeacon Macdonald, with three subjects from the Life of Christ; in memory of Bishop Douglas, and in memory of C.G. Verrinder; also one to the memory of Sir G.A. Arney, with Moses and the Tables of the Law, and the Sermon on the Mount; and the large south window, by Bell, to the memory of Dean Hamilton. Above the altar is a fine light window of last century work, singularly good of its kind--bad though the kind may be. In the south aisle of the nave is a window to the memory of Mr. W.M. Coates, with subjects, the miracles of healing, executed by Messrs. Clayton and Bell. In 1890 a fine modern window, from a design by Henry Holiday, was inserted in the south aisle of the nave. This has for its subject, "Suffer little children to come unto me." It is to the memory of John Henry Jacob and his wife. In 1620 Dr. Simpson mentions "three great windows newly glazed in rich colours to make the story of St. Paul." Throughout the cathedral, and in the Chapter House, were many specimens of geometrical painted glass, some of which are figured in Mr. Winston's Paper, before referred to. These have served as motives for much modern design, which, faithfully as it may have copied the forms, has generally missed the softened colour that distinguishes the original work. [Illustration: TOMB OF WILLIAM LONGESPÉE, 1ST EARL OF SALISBURY (P. 47). _From a Photograph by Catherine Weed Ward._] HISTORY OF THE SEE. The site of old Sarum--Searobyrig, the dry city, as the Saxons called it--is about a mile to the north of the present New Sarum, or Salisbury, to use the more familiar name. It was probably a fortified place from very early times, long before it became the Roman station of Sorbiodunum. William of Malmesbury says that "the town was more like a castle than a city, being environed with a high wall, and notwithstanding that it was very well accommodated with other conveniences, yet such was the want of water that it sold at a great rate." This latter statement, although repeated by every chronicler, is not supported by investigations of recent explorers, who found an ample supply in divers wells. Francis Price concludes that "it was frequented by Roman Emperors from the coins of Constantine, Constans Magnentius, Crispus, and Claudius, being found frequently among its ruins." This statement also lacks probability. A legend of the visit of a single emperor might have been barely credible; but the lavish variety the otherwise trustworthy historian offers is fatal to one's belief. Its early history, more or less legendary, need not be chronicled here. Probably Kenric the Saxon, who captured it in 553, lived there, and it seems to have been kept in his line until Egbert united the whole Heptarchy. King Alfred ordered Leofric, Earl of Wiltunscire, to add to its fortifications, which appear to have fallen into decay after the Romans held it. In 1003 Svein, King of Denmark, pillaged and burnt it, but the religious establishments if not spared were soon re-established, for we find that Editha, Queen of Ædward the Confessor, conveyed the lands of Shorstan to the nuns of St. Mary, Sarum. At this time it appears to have possessed a mint, as a coin of Ædward the Confessor bears an inscription showing that it was struck by Godred at Sarum. From the time of St. Aldhelm, in 705, to that of Herman, in 1058, there are no other facts of its secular history sufficiently pertinent to our purpose to warrant their quotation here, as the record of the place is so woven into the lives of its bishops, that the brief summary of the ecclesiastics who held the see includes all we need of the history of the city. In this kingdom within a kingdom, a cathedral surrounded by a fortress, its inhabitants were naturally split into factions; the soldiers and the clergy failed to agree, and in spite of the document quoted below, there is little doubt that political rather than climatic reasons led to the removal of the cathedral. Whether, as some writers think, it was but an insignificant structure, it is certainly recorded that the church erected by Osmund took fifteen years to build. Five days after its consecration, on April 5th, 1092, it was partially destroyed by a thunderstorm. We find in Robert of Gloucester's "Chronicle" (Hearnes ed., p. 416) this allusion to the disaster: "So gret lytnynge was the vyfte yer, so that it al to nogte, The rof the Church of Salesbury it broute Rygt evene the vyfte day that he yhalwed was." Whether the sentence in an old chronicler that Roger "made anew the church of Sarum" means it was so seriously damaged by the lightning that he actually rebuilt it, or merely that he restored it, is not clear. Roger was the great architectural genius of his time, and from the evidence of its ground plan, traced in the foundations revealed in the singularly dry summer of 1834, it may be that the stately edifice, 270 feet long by 75 feet wide, on the plan of a Latin cross, was in its last state not the work of Osmund. During the excavations at this time, various fragments of stained glass and several keys were discovered, also what was apparently the original grave of St. Osmund before his body was moved to Sarum. An extract from Harrison's "Description of Britain," prefixed to Hollinshed's "Chronicle" shows clearly enough the principal events that produced the crisis which doomed Old Sarum to desolation. "In the time of ciuile warres the souldirs of the castell and chanons of Old Sarum fell at ods, inasmuch that often after brawles they fell at last to sadde blowes. It happened therefore in a rogation weeke that the cleargie going in solemn procession a controversie fell between them about certaine walkes and limits which the one side claimed and the other denied. Such also was the hot entertainment on eche part, that at last the Castellans espieing their time gate betweene the cleargie and the towne and so coiled them as they returned homewards that they feared anie more to gang their boundes for that year. Hereupon the peope missing their belly-chere, for they were wont to haue banketing at every station, a thing practised by the religious in old tyme, they conveyed forthwith a deadly hatred against the Castellans, but not being able to cope with them by force of arms, they consulted with their bishop ... that it was not ere the chanons began a church upon a piece of their own ground.... And thus became Old Sarum in a few years utterly desolate." By other accounts we find there was insufficient room for all the canons to live within the walls, and the right of free egress being disputed the position became so intolerable, that Bishop Richard Poore, a man of great force of character, who succeeded his brother, took up the design Herbert had set aside, and commenced negotiations in earnest, the result of which is best explained by the following document: "Honorius, bishop, Servant of the servants of God to our rev. brother Richard, bishop, and to our beloved sons the Dean and Chapter of Sarum, health and apostolical benediction. My sons the dean and chapter, it having been heretofore alleged before us on your behalf, that forasmuch as your church is built within the compass of the fortifications of Sarum, it is subject to so many inconveniences and oppressions, that you cannot reside in the same without corporal perils: for being situated on a lofty place, it is, as it were, continually shaken by the collision of the winds; so that while you are celebrating the divine offices, you cannot hear one another the place itself is so noisy: and besides the persons resident there suffer such perpetual oppressions, that they are hardly able to keep in repair the roof of the church, which is constantly torn by tempestuous winds. They are also forced to buy water at as great a price as would be sufficient to purchase the common drink of the country: nor is there any access to the same without the licence of the Castellan. So that it happens on Ash Wednesday when the Lord's Supper is administered at the time of the Synods, and celebrations of orders, and on other solemn days, the faithful being willing to visit the said church, entrance is denied them by the keepers of the castle, alleging that the fortress is in danger, besides you have not there houses sufficient for you, wherefore you are forced to rent several houses of the laity; and that on account of these and other inconveniences many absent themselves from the service of the said church." This mandate, dated at "the Lateran, 4th of the calend of April, in the second year of our Pontificat," concludes by giving formal power for the translation of the church to another convenient place. After the cathedral was removed the prosperity of the place quickly waned. The new roads and bridges made access to the new city more convenient. Wilton suffered from the growth of its new rival, but Sarum ceased to be even a ruin, as the very stones of its cathedral were ultimately taken to build a wall around the precincts of the new church, and oblivion soon overtook the ancient city, which to-day is not even a hamlet, but at most a geographical expression. As a specimen of an early "burgh," or hill fortress, its form well deserves study. Its circular walls, and various ditches and ramparts, are shown in plans in the County History, in Francis Price's book, and elsewhere. [Illustration: TOMB OF "THE BOY BISHOP" (P. 49). _From a Photograph by Catherine Weed Ward._] THE DIOCESE OF SARUM. So far as its history concerns us here, it suffices to note that the greater part of Wiltshire, and those portions of Dorset and Somerset which had been comprised in the see of Winchester, were, about the year 705, during the reign of Ina, King of the West Saxons, included in the new diocese of Sherbourne, which in its turn, about two hundred years after, _circa_ 905-9, was sub-divided into those of Wells, for Somerset, and Crediton, for Devon. About 920, a new see was allotted to Wiltshire, whose bishop took his title from Ramsbury, near Marlborough, on the borders of the county; and with this was soon after re-united the smaller diocese of Sherbourne, and in 1075, the episcopal seat was removed to the fortress of Old Sarum, whence in 1218 it was again removed to the present city. In 1542, part of the see was devoted to the new diocese of Bristol. The see of Sherbourne, ruled over by St. Aldhelm from 705 to 709, was a much larger one than the second diocese of the same name which in 1058 was united to Ramsbury, under Herman, who held it from 1058 to 1078. The eight previous bishops are more or less well known, and in the admirable "Diocesan History" and in the "Fasti Ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis," both by the late Rev. W.H. Jones, there is much interesting detail of the earlier rulers of the diocese now called Salisbury. =Herman=, by birth a Fleming, was one of the ecclesiastics brought over by Edward the Confessor. His record is unmarked by events that left lasting results. He made a bold but fruitless attempt to annex the Abbey of Malmesbury. During his time, as an old writer quaintly phrases it, "it is agreed by all authors, both printed and in manuscript, that there was not yet any cathedral, church, or chapter, either within or without the King's Castle [of Old Sarum], but only a chapel and a dean." Later authorities, however, assign to him the commencement, at least, of a cathedral. In Benson and Hatcher's "Wiltshire," we find it has been conjectured that Herman, on removing his see to Sarum, found there a chapel and a dean, and that in exchange for this building he transferred the two cathedrals of Sherborne and Sunning to the Dean to whose peculiar jurisdiction they have since belonged; other evidence, however, points to the church having been begun and finished by Osmund, his successor, whose own words in the charter of foundation run: "I have built the church at Sarum and constituted canons therein." An epistle of Gregory IX. to the bishops of Bath and Wells states that, "Osmund of pious memory had employed great care as well in temporals as in spirituals, so that he had magnificently builded the said church from its foundations and enriched it with books, treasures, ... and lands from his own property." Herman, like other English bishops who were his fellow-natives Leofric at Exeter, and Giso at Wells, was not deprived of his see after the Conquest; but in 1075, in obedience to the decree of the Council of London that bishops' sees should be removed from obscure to more important places, he chose the hill of Sarum. His remains are said to have been transferred to a tomb in the present cathedral, but later antiquarians decline to endorse the tradition. =Osmund=, who is believed to have been the nephew of William the Conqueror, was son of Henry, Count of Seez, in Normandy; he was created Earl of Wiltshire soon after the Conquest, before he became an ecclesiastic; Camden speaks of him as the "Earl of Dorset." As the author of the "Consuetudinariam," the ordinal of offices for the use of Sarum, wherein he collated the various forms of ritual in use at many churches, both in England and on the Continent, he won a fame far more than the building of Old Sarum, were it never so stately a cathedral, could have secured him. His famous "Sarum Use" was adopted by almost the whole of England, and reflected glory upon the church that instituted it, so that in the words of an old historian, "like the sun in his heavens, the church of Salisbury is conspicuous above all other churches in the world, diffusing the light everywhere and supplying their defects." The original manuscript of this great work is one of the choicest treasures of the cathedral library exhibited to those who have access to that collection; it is also available to the ordinary student in a volume entitled, "The Church of our Fathers," published by Dr. Rock in 1849. "As a man," says William of Malmesbury, "Osmund was rigid in the detection of his own faults, and unsparing to those of others." Although his body and his tomb were moved to the Lady Chapel of the new cathedral in 1226, and his name adored popularly, he was not canonized until over two hundred years later. Pope Callistus, the first of the Borgias, issued the bull on January 1st, 1456, but not, according to rumour, until ample funds had been supplied to facilitate his action. Some interesting correspondence relating to it has been lately printed in the "Sarum Charters and Documents," issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. The bull itself, in the keeping of the chapter, has been printed in Volume iii. of the great collection of Papal bulls edited by Cocqueline, and published in Rome, 1743. On July 15th, 1457, according to the authority of a writer in "Archæologia," Vol. xiv., the translation of his body was completed, principally at the expense of the bishop, a huge concourse of people being present at the festival. From the plentiful accounts of miracles worked at his shrine long before he was officially canonized, there is but little doubt but that it had become a favourite place of pilgrimage. He died in 1099, and in spite of his tomb being removed to the cathedral in 1226 and a stately shrine erected later, a stone with no inscription but a date of doubtful authenticity--MXCIX--is all that commemorates him there to-day. The next bishop was =Roger=, who was elected in 1102, consecrated in 1107, and died in 1139. If his fame as an ecclesiastic is not so assured as that of his illustrious predecessor, in architecture and in secular history he has left a decided mark. He was a poor Norman priest, who won his mitre by singing a hunting mass quickly before Henry I. Made chaplain by the king on his accession, he afterwards became first chancellor, and then justiciary. He organized the Court of Exchequer, which has preserved the earliest official records known to us. His castles at Devizes, Sherborne, and Malmesbury excited the jealousy of the nobles; his son was chancellor, one nephew Bishop of Ely, and another nephew Bishop of Lincoln. Besides much work, now destroyed, at Old Sarum (so that whether he merely restored the damage caused by lightning, or rebuilt it from the foundations, according to the Norman custom, we cannot tell), his additions to Sherborne Minster are still memorable as a new departure in Norman architecture; in fact, he has been called the great architectural genius of the thirteenth century. "Unscrupulous, fierce, and avaricious," he is a type of the great feudal churchmen when they were veritable rulers. According to William of Malmesbury, "was there anything contiguous to his property which might be advantageous to him, he would directly extort it either by entreaty or purchase, or if that failed, by force." Although after King Henry's death Henry, Bishop of Winchester, persuaded him to open the vast treasure of the late king to Stephen, yet in the fourth year of his reign Stephen imprisoned him, and the Bishop of Lincoln, his nephew, and seized their castles of Devizes and Sherborne, Newark, and Sleaford. Bishop Roger the same year, according to one chronicler, "by the kindness of death, escaped the quartan ague which had long afflicted him, and died broken-hearted." But another version says that "he starved to death through a promise to King Stephen that his castle of Devizes should be surrendered to him before he eat or drank; but his nephew, the Bishop of Ely, who then had possession of it, kept it three days before he made the surrender to the king." =Jocelin de Bohun=, or, as he is sometimes called, de Bailleul (1142 to 1184), is best known from his quarrel with Thomas à Becket, of Canterbury. For his share in framing the "Constitutions of Clarendon," he was excommunicated by the archbishop. On the death of Roger, in 1139, King Stephen nominated Philip de Harcourt, but the canons preferred Jocelin, who was not, however, consecrated until 1142. After the murder of A'Becket he "purged himself by oath of his offences" towards his late foe. In 1184 he retired to a Cistercian monastery, and died shortly afterwards. A monument on the south side of the cathedral nave is attributed to him. The see was now left vacant for five years, when Hubert Walter, was consecrated, in 1189; he shortly after went to the Holy Land to join Richard I. in his crusade. While at Acre he was nominated to the vacant archbishopric of Canterbury, to which he returned in 1193. He exercised a powerful influence on both king and people; the latter, with whom he had never been popular, found at his death that "they had lost the only bulwark strong enough to resist or break the attack of royal despotism." =Herbert de la Poer=, or Poore (1194-1217), who succeeded him, ruled in a troubled period, when the realm was under the interdict of Pope Innocent III. Compelled to quit Old Sarum, he died at Wilton in 1217. [Illustration: MONUMENT LOCALLY ACCREDITED TO BISHOP POORE.] With =Richard Poore=, who was consecrated Bishop of Chichester in 1215, and in 1217 Bishop of Old Sarum, where he had been dean, begins the record of the bishops immediately connected with the building. His history is so intimately bound up with that of the cathedral, that here it is sufficient to note that he ruled at Old Sarum and Salisbury until 1229, when he was translated to Durham.[10] His distinct influence upon the architecture of that cathedral, in connection with Elias de Derham, is noticed elsewhere. He died at his birthplace, Tarrant (Tarent Crawford[11]), in Dorsetshire, where he had founded a Cistercian nunnery, in which his heart is said to have been interred; his body was taken to Durham, and a monument with his effigy erected in the new cathedral at Salisbury. The names of St. Osmund and Richard Poore stand out beyond all others in connection with this see. The one for the indirect glory he conferred upon it by his memorable ordinal; the other by his removal of the cathedral and the superb fabric he left to commemorate his fame. With them, excepting possibly Bishop Hallam, the record of men of mark ceases; of their successors hardly one has had a reputation beyond his diocese, and certainly there is not one whose fame has spread beyond his native land. [Illustration: NORTH CHOIR AISLE, WITH BISHOP BINGHAM'S MONUMENT.] =Robert Bingham= (1229-1246) finished the work of the cathedral during his eighteen years' rule; but when he died he left it in debt 1,700 marks. His monument, with effigy, is now in the north choir aisle. =William of York= (1247-1256) was one of the chaplains to Henry II.; by his renewal of the vexatious custom of attending the lord's courts, he became very unpopular. Matthew Paris mentions him as one of the favourites of the king, and Bishop Godwin says that he was better versed in the laws of the realm than in those of God. =Giles of Bridport=, or de Bridlesford (1257-1262), who held also the Deanery of Wells by a faculty "in Commendam," for Pope Honorius, continued the works of the cathedral until it was consecrated, in 1258, by Boniface, Archbishop of Savoy, the brother of the queen of Edward I. He also founded the college of Vaux. In 1260, during his bishopric, there is a curious entry in a document, lately printed, which refers to Nicholas of York, Canon of Salisbury, _Le engineur_. In the same volume (Rolls Chronicles, 1891), there is a note of this bishop granting 200 lbs. of wax annually from his wardrobe for increasing the lights in the church, as he had been told that amount would be sufficient to double the number of the candles at each ministration. =Walter de la Wyle= (1263-1271), the founder of the church of St. Edmund of Abingdon, has a mutilated effigy assigned to him in the cathedral. =Robert de Wykehampton= (1274-1284), although elected by the canons, the monks of Canterbury, and the king, was opposed by the archbishop, who, after four years' interval and an appeal to Rome, was forced to consecrate him. He is said to have become blind in 1278. =Walter Scammel= (1284-1286). Although on his election the monks of Canterbury appealed to the Pope against it, they subsequently withdrew their opposition. He was buried near the Audley Chapel. =Henry de Braundeston= (1287), who died the same year, was buried, according to Leland, in the Lady Chapel. =Walter de la Corner= (1289-1291) was one of the chaplains of the Pope. He was buried in the middle of the choir, "nearly under the eagle." =Nicholas Longespée= (1292-1297) was fourth and youngest son of the first Earl of Salisbury, and Countess Ela. =Simon of Ghent=, or de Gand (1297-1315), first empowered the mayor and citizens to fortify the city. According to a document printed in the "Rolls Chronicles," 1891, the visitation of many of the churches, about 1300, compares badly with a similar record for 1220; ignorance of the clergy, gross neglect of the fabric, insufficient and dilapidated books and vestments, with other evidences of lack of energy, are very frequent. =Roger Mortival= (1315-1330) founded a collegiate establishment at Knowsley, his birthplace. The Library of Merton College, Oxford, contains many manuscripts, his gift while he was Archdeacon of Leicester. He is said also to have drawn up the statutes by which the cathedral is still partly governed. =Robert Wyville=, or Wivil (1330-1375), was, by Walsingham's account, not merely destitute of learning, but so deformed and ugly, "it is hard to say whether he was more dunce or dwarf, more unlearned or unhandsome," that had the Pope seen him he would never have endorsed his appointment. He was a militant bishop, and in 1355 instituted a suit against William de Montacute, and sent his champion clothed in white to try wager of battle with him. He recovered for his see 2,500 marks and the ancient castle of Old Sarum, also that of Sherborne. He obtained permission to fortify his manors of Sarum, Sherborne, Woodford, Chardstock, Potterne, Canning, Sunning, and his mansion in Fleet Street (now Salisbury Court), "in the suburbs of London." His brass is in the Morning Chapel. =Ralph Erghum= (1375-1388) was probably of Flemish birth. He was translated to Bath and Wells in 1388, where he died in 1400. He is said to have erected the City Cross as a penance, but the Sarum register seems rather to indicate that he compelled the Earl of Salisbury to do so. =John Waltham= (1388-1395) was Master of the Rolls in 1382, and Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1391. For a time he resisted the metropolitan visitation of Archbishop Courtney, notwithstanding that the Bishop of Exeter had been forced to yield in a similar contest, but when the archbishop excommunicated him he was compelled to submit. He was specially in the favour of his king, Richard II., and died Lord High Treasurer in 1305. He was buried ("not without much general dissatisfaction," according to Walsingham,) in Westminster Abbey, where his brass can be seen in the floor of the chapel of the Confessor, to the right of King Edward's tomb. =Richard Mitford= (1395-1407) was the favourite, and confessor of Richard II., but during the so-called "wonderful" parliament he was imprisoned in Bristol Castle, until released by the King on his re-assumption of power. In 1389 he was nominated to the see of Chichester, and translated therefrom to Salisbury in 1395. His tomb stands in an angle of the south transept. =Nicholas Bubwith= (1407), at one time Treasurer of England, held Salisbury for three months only, between the bishoprics of London and Bath and Wells. He died at Wells, 1424. =Robert Hallam= (1407-1417). Notwithstanding his brilliant career, both the origin and birthplace of this prelate are unknown. "Born in England of royal blood," says one chronicler, but there is no corroborative evidence. Prebendary of York, Archdeacon of Canterbury in 1401, Chancellor of Oxford 1403, he left England in 1406 for Rome, and was nominated by Pope Gregory XII. to be Archbishop of York; this latter preferment was withdrawn, but in its stead he became Bishop of Salisbury in 1407. He was at the Council of Pisa in 1409, and, in 1411, was created a cardinal by Pope John XXIII. At the famous Council of Constance, 1415-1417, he was one of the foremost champions of religious liberty, and almost alone in condemning the punishment of death for heresy. Indeed, the whole future of the Roman church is said to have been changed by his death at the Castle of Gotlieb in 1417, and the supremacy of the Italian party assured by the decease of its most formidable opponent. The brass that marks his burial place in Constance cathedral is supposed to have been executed in England, and sent thence some time after his death. It is engraved in Kites' "Monumental Brasses of Wiltshire." =John Chandler= (1417-1426) is remembered chiefly for his brief life of William of Wykeham. =Robert Neville= (1427-1438) was the nephew of Henry IV.; after holding the see of Salisbury for ten years he was translated to Durham. He founded the monastery at Sunning. =William Ayscough= (1438-1450), who has left little record of his life, met his death during a local rising in 1450, the year of the Jack Cade rebellion. On the feast of SS. Peter and Paul his church at Edingdon, near Westbury, one of his palaces, was attacked by a mob, who seized the bishop in the vestments wherein he had just said mass, and, dragging him to a hill-top near, there they stoned and beheaded him, stripping off his garments and dividing them among themselves for memorials. His body was afterwards interred at Edingdon. Possibly his scholarship, which separated him from his people, was the real cause of his unpopularity, which is, however, generally attributed to his frequent absence with King Henry VI., to whom he was Confessor. =Richard Beauchamp= (1450-1481) was translated from the bishopric of Hereford. Son of Sir Walter, and grandson of Lord Beauchamp of Powick, he was sent on diplomatic missions to various courts, including Burgundy. In 1471 he was one of the signatories of the truce with the Duke of Brittany. In 1477 he became Dean of Windsor, and was appointed by Edward IV. master of the works then in progress, which included the rebuilding of St. George's Chapel. At Salisbury he left the great hall of the bishop's palace and his own superb chantry as memorials of his architectural skill. Elsewhere in this book is a fuller description of this beautiful tomb demolished by Wyatt. He himself was buried at Windsor; in an arch opposite his tomb was a missal carved in stone with a quaint inscription, beginning, "Who leyde this boke here." He is said to have been the first chancellor of the Order of the Garter, although Dr. Milner assigns that honour to William de Edingdon. Whether the first or not, he and his successors in the see held it by charter of Edward, until they were deprived in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1671 it was again awarded to the see of Salisbury, but passed, in 1836, with Berkshire to that of Oxford. =Lionel Woodville=, or Wydville (1482-1484), nephew of Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV., was appointed to the see in 1482. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, was beheaded in Salisbury market place just before the battle of Bosworth. Woodville is said to have died of grief occasioned by the downfall of the fortunes of his house on the accession of Richard III. =Thomas Langton= (1485-1493) is best remembered as a patron of literature, for which he has been called a second Mæcenas, yet, despite the "fostering hand he always afforded to learned men," he was an opponent of Wicklif's heresies, and did his best to stamp them out in his see when they had gained a number of adherents. =John Blyth= (1494-1499) was Chancellor of Ireland in 1499. An effigy, assumed to be his, is in the north transept. =Henry Dean=, or Denny, or Syer (1500-1501), was translated to Canterbury shortly after his appointment to Salisbury. He is believed to have been one of the victims of the Great Plague, and to have died at Lambeth in 1503. =Edmund Audley= (1502-1524) was Bishop of Rochester in 1480, translated to Hereford in 1492, and to Salisbury in 1502. His beautiful chantry still remains in its original position. St. Mary's, Oxford, contains a pulpit said to be his gift. =Lorenzo Campegio=, Cardinal of St. Anastatius, was nominated by Pope Clement in 1524. He was sent to England to join Cardinal Wolsey in adjudicating upon the royal divorce. In 1535, when Henry VIII. disgraced Wolsey, Campegio was also deprived of his see by Act of Parliament. At Rome, however, he was regarded as Bishop of Salisbury until his death; and "for some time after" an independent succession was maintained by the Pope in two English bishoprics, namely, Salisbury and Worcester. =Nicholas Shaxton= (1535-1539) was President of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, and for a while a sturdy supporter of the king. At the time of Latimer's resignation he also resigned in common with many other bishops. He was imprisoned, and in 1546 condemned to be burnt, for denying the real presence; but recanting became prominent as opponent of the reformers, preaching fiery sermons at the martyrdom of Anne Askew and others. After he resigned his see he became suffragan to the Bishop of Ely. He died at Cambridge in 1556. =John Capon=, or =Salcote= (1539-1557), had been Bishop of Bangor. His record is notorious for its greed and time-serving. First orthodox, then Protestant, and one of the revisers of the Liturgy under Edward VI., again changing under Mary, and one of the judges at the trial of Bishop Hooper of Gloucester. Fuller impeaches him with Veysey, or Harman, of Exeter, saying, "it seems as if it were given to binominous bishops to be impairers of their churches." =Peter Peto= (1557), a cardinal nominated by the Pope, was refused possession by Queen Mary, who appointed Francis Malet, Dean of Lincoln, in his stead, but he in turn, before his consecration, was ejected by Elizabeth, who had succeeded to the throne meanwhile. =John Jewel= (1560-1571) is one of the few Protestant bishops connected with this see who can claim more than diocesan fame. He was born at Berry Narbor, Devonshire, in 1522, and appears to have belonged to a good old family. When a Fellow of Corpus, at Oxford, his adherence to the doctrines of the Reformation caused him to be expelled; but so greatly was he beloved for his pure life and his profound scholarship there, that in spite of his expulsion he was chosen to be Public Orator at his University. His life is too widely known to need an epitome here. Among his writings, the most famous, the "Apology for the Church of England," published in 1562, was quickly translated into every language in Europe. In episcopal matters he took great interest, and built the library over the cloisters,[12] besides devoting great care to the education of students, having always a number of poor lads in his house, and maintaining others at Oxford, one of whom was the famous "Judicious Hooker." Fuller praises him in terms that seem, however extravagant, to be generally admitted by his contemporaries to be fully deserved, and the famous sentence, "It is hard to say whether his soul or his ejaculations arrived first in heaven, seeing he prayed dying, and died praying," shows that he was reverenced by the Reformed Church as a veritable saint. He died at Monkton Fairleigh in 1571, his tombstone, despoiled of its brass, is now near that of Bishop Wyvil, whence it was removed from its former place in the choir. =Edmund Gheast=, or =Gest= (1571-1577), the first Protestant Bishop of Rochester, was translated to Salisbury, where he gave a fine collection of books to the new library of the cathedral. His tombstone is in the north choir aisle. =John Piers= (1577-1589) preached before Queen Elizabeth at the solemn thanksgiving for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He was translated to York in 1589. =John Coldwell= (1591-1596), a physician before he became a cleric, is also noticeable as the first married bishop who held the see. He was accused of wasting its revenues, and is responsible for the loss of Sherborne Castle, which he alienated, says Fuller, "owing to the wily intrigues of Sir Walter Raleigh." =Henry Cotton= (1598-1615) was one of the chaplains of Elizabeth, and a godson of the Queen, of whom she is reported to have remarked that "she had blessed many of her godsons, now one should bless her." Sir John Harrington says, "he had nineteen children by one wife, which is no ordinary blessing, and most of them sonnes. His wife's name was Patience; the name of which I have heard in few wives, the quality in none." As the second married bishop he certainly appears to have supported fully the Protestant opposition to the celibacy of the clergy. =Robert Abbott= (1615-1618) was the elder brother of George, Archbishop of Canterbury. Fuller says, "George was the more plausible preacher, Robert the greater scholar; George the abler statesman, Robert the deeper divine. Gravity did frown in George, and smile in Robert." As one might infer from so strong an opponent of Laud, amid the large number of his published works most are polemical and Anti-Romish. =Martin Fotherby= (1618-1620) held the see but a year, and hence left no lasting impression upon it. =Robert Townson= (1620-1621), who attended the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, and has left a graphic and touching account of his last hours, was but ten months bishop when he died, says Fuller, who was his nephew, of a fever contracted by "unseasonable sitting up to study," when preparing a sermon to preach before Parliament. =John Davenant= (1621-1641) attended the Synod of Dort at the bidding of James I., and was the author of many theological works. =Brian Duppa=, or =de Uphaugh= (1641-1660) was tutor to the sons of Charles I., and appointed to Salisbury just before the Commonwealth; he was deprived almost immediately, and lived in seclusion at Richmond until, at the Restoration, he was translated to Winchester. His memorial tablet is in Westminster. Of him Izaak Walton said, "he was one of those men in whom there was such a commixture of general learning, of natural eloquence, and Christian humility, that they deserve a commemoration by a pen equal to their own, which none have exceeded." =Humphrey Henchman= (1660-1663) was appointed at the Restoration, no doubt as a reward for his great services to King Charles after the battle of Worcester. After holding the see three years he was translated to London. =John Earles= (1663-1665), appointed Bishop of Worcester at the Restoration, was translated to Salisbury in 1663. One of his books, "The Microcosmographie, or a Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and Characters," first published anonymously in 1628, was extremely popular, and ran through many editions; it is still read as a faithful picture of its times. Hallam in his "Literary History" praises it highly, Clarendon in his "Memoirs" also eulogizes its author, and Izaak Walton in his "Life of Hooper" speaks of his innocent wisdom, sanctified learning, and pious, peaceable, and primitive temper. Earles was constantly with Prince Charles during his exile, and hence one of the first ecclesiastics to receive preferment. =Alexander Hyde= (1665-1667) was first cousin to the famous Lord Chancellor Clarendon. A portrait, alleged to represent this prelate, was found by Bishop Fuller in an obscure cottage; it is now in the Bishop's palace. =Seth Ward= (1667-1689), who was made Bishop of Exeter at the Restoration, and translated to Salisbury in 1667, took great interest in the fabric, and restored the bishops' palace. The survey of the cathedral by Sir Christopher Wren was undertaken by his request and at his own cost. He regained for his see the Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter, lost for a century and a half. He founded the College of Matrons, and at his death at Knightsbridge in 1688, was buried in the south choir aisle. Dr. Walter Pope's biography of this bishop is an interesting record of an eventful life. =Gilbert Burnet= (1689-1715). Lord Macaulay has summed up the character of this bishop in terms, that if they convey an impression of a vain, indiscreet, and somewhat blundering partisan, yet do justice to the vigour and strength of his character, while of the "History of his Own Times," and many other volumes yet remembered, he says: "A writer whose voluminous works in several branches of literature find numerous readers one hundred and thirty years after his death, may have had great faults, but must also have had great merits." =William Talbot= (1715-1721) was of the house of Shrewsbury, and father of Lord Chancellor Talbot. He was translated to Durham in 1721. =Richard Willis= (1721-1723) held the see for two years, when he was translated to Winchester. =Benjamin Hoadly=, Bishop of Bangor 1716, Hereford 1721, Sarum 1723. Owing to the controversy raised by one of his sermons, Convocation was suspended for 150 years. =Thomas Sherlock= (1734-1748) was appointed to Bangor in 1727, translated to Salisbury in 1734, declined the Archbishopric of Canterbury in 1747, and was translated to London in 1748. In the most apathetic time of the Anglican Church he is a striking example of activity and earnestness. =John Gilbert= (1749-1757) was a turbulent bishop whose record is full of disputes with the civic authorities at Salisbury. =John Thomas= (1757-1761), Bishop of Peterborough 1746, and afterwards Bishop of Winchester, was married four times, and is reported to have said that he had killed three wives by never contradicting them. =Robert Hay Drummond= (1761) was translated to the Archbishopric of York four months after his appointment to Salisbury. He preached at the coronation of George III. =John Thomas= (1761-1766), elected Bishop of St. Asaph in 1743, but consecrated to Lincoln, was eighty years old when translated to Salisbury. =John Hume= (1766-1782), Bishop of Bristol 1756, Bishop of Oxford and Dean of St. Paul's 1758. =Shute Barrington= (1782-1791), translated to Durham. Excepting Bishop Wilson, his fifty-six years' tenure of office is the longest in the Anglican Church. He died in 1826. =John Douglas= (1791-1807) was present as an army chaplain at the battle of Fontenoy, in which he very nearly took an active part, but was so laden with valuables left in his care by officers, that he was compelled to refrain and be content to remain a non-combatant, and remove his treasures to a safe place. As author of "The Criterion, or Rules by which True may be distinguished from Spurious Miracles," 1754, and many other books, he established for himself a sound literary reputation. Made Bishop of Carlisle in 1787, and translated to Salisbury in 1791; he was also Dean of Windsor from 1780 to his death, when he was buried in St. George's Chapel. =John Fisher= (1807-1825). Exeter, 1803, Preceptor to Princess Charlotte. =Thomas Burgess= (1825-1837). St. David's, 1803. =Edward Denison= (1837-1854). Brother of a late Speaker of the House of Commons, Viscount Ossington. =Walter Kerr Hamilton= (1854-1869). Author of a "Letter on Cathedral Reform," which followed his exhaustive contribution to the Cathedral Commission Reports, 1853. =George Moberley= (1869-1885). Head Master of Winchester, 1835-1866. =John Wordsworth= (1885). [Illustration: BRASS OF BISHOP WYVILLE (_see_ P. 66).] FOOTNOTES: [10] 14th May, 1228. _Vide_ "Hist. Dunelm. Script.," App. lii. [11] Others say Tarrant Monkton. [12] This statement is open to doubt. THE CLOSE AND CHURCHES. The =King's House=, which faces the west front, on the western side of the Close, is a stately building, wherein, tradition says, monarchs have dwelt. Richard III. is said to have been housed there when the Duke of Buckingham was brought prisoner to Salisbury; and in the reign of James I. its owner, Sir Thomas Sadler, was often honoured by visits from that monarch. Underneath the great gateway which pierces the building, in the north wall, is the shaft of a "sack lift," a curious relic of mediæval times. The fine proportions and sturdy treatment of the architecture of this house deserve study. It is now used as a training establishment for school mistresses. Close by is the Deanery, and to the south a building known as the =Wardrobe House=; which name is supposed to indicate its use in connection with the King's House; still farther south is =Leden Hall= (or Leyden Hall), hidden behind trees, so that from the Close you can but catch a glimpse of the building by Elias de Derham, to which reference has been made earlier in this book. In the other direction are the =Theological College=, a very lovely and spacious building, the =Choristers' School=, and many private houses of great antiquity and considerable beauty. Indeed, it is possible that at no other place could you find such a display of English domestic architecture, from mediæval to Georgian times. The beauty of the Close, well wooded as it still is, despite the havoc wrought by the terrible gale in March, 1897, is not to be put into words. No matter how praise were lavished in a description, it would yet be inadequate. But whether you see it for the first time, or after many visits, it still keeps its place as the most perfect thing of its sort in the world. The =High Street Gate=, which from its position may be regarded as the chief entrance to the Close, is an embattled structure of two stories, built, as the pieces of Norman stone work clearly show, from material brought from Old Sarum. In the niche above the arch on the south side is a figure, popularly supposed to represent Charles I., although its proportions more nearly resemble those of James I. It is said that a statue of Henry III. originally occupied the niche. To the left, as you have passed the gateway, stands the picturesque =Matron's College= founded and endowed by Bishop Seth Ward in 1685. Also on the left is a house formerly occupied by Canon Bowles, and still earlier by Archdeacon Cole, both Salisbury worthies with more than local reputation. =St. Ann's Gate= is in the east wall of the Close, in the southern angle. It is a long, low two-storied building, with two light perpendicular windows in the upper story, and from the street outside, where a projecting window is a noticeable feature, is very picturesque. In common with the other gates and with the walls of the Close, Norman stones moulded and carved are visible in many places. A house near the south side was occupied by Fielding, who moved afterwards next door to the Friary in St. Ann's Street, and finally to another at Milford Hill, where he wrote "Tom Jones." =Harnham Gate= near the south boundary is but a fragment, an embattled archway devoid of an upper story. Near this gateway, just outside the precincts, stood the ancient college of De Vaux, founded in 1260 by Bishop Bridport. =The Bishop's Palace= is not visible from the Close, but can be seen through a doorway in the cloisters. It is set in the midst of delightful gardens, a rambling picturesque building dating from many periods. Bishop Poore began it--Bishop Beauchamp built its great hall; within its walls are portraits of all the bishops of Salisbury since the Restoration. =The Hospital of St. Nicholas= is situated between Harnham Gate and Harnham Bridge. The charter of its endowment dates from the castle of Old Sarum in September, 1227. It still shelters a dozen inmates in a most picturesque house, part of the original structure. On an islet is a more modern building, which is on the foundation of the chapel of St. John, suppressed at the Reformation. =The Church House=, as it is now called, was formerly known as Audley House, and belonged to the Earl of Castlehaven who was beheaded in 1631, and his property divided between the bishop and others. It is most picturesquely placed by Crane Bridge. [Illustration: SOUTH FRONT. HIGH STREET GATE. NORTH FRONT. _From Photographs by Carl Norman and Co._] =The Poultry Cross= is still standing near the Market Place. At one time a sundial and ball crowned the structure, but these have been replaced by a cross. Close by it and scattered frequently throughout the streets of the city are overhanging houses that betray their antiquity at a glance. [Illustration: THE CHURCH HOUSE. _From a Photograph by Witcomb and Son, Salisbury._] =The Guildhall=, a very interesting building as engravings show, was demolished at the end of the eighteenth century. The Joiners Hall, the Tailors Hall, the Hall of John Halle, the Old George, are still standing, with some of their features modified but not sufficiently altered to deprive them of interest. =The Church of St. Thomas à Becket= is a most picturesque structure, and, placed as it is in a square of old tiled houses, makes a delightful picture. It consists of a nave with two aisles, a chancel with aisles, and a vestry room. It was built in 1240 by Bishop Bingham. The embattlemented tower has in its south front two niches containing much mutilated figures of the Virgin and Child and St. Thomas à Becket. In the porch is a very curious panel with a biblical subject rudely carved by Humphrey Beckham, who died, aged eighty-eight, in 1671, and left this as his memorial. The most striking feature of the interior is the large painting above the chancel arch, representing the Day of Judgment, in the naïve manner of its time. A reproduction will be found in Hoare's "Modern Wiltshire" (vol. 6), and most works on ecclesiastical mural decoration mention it as one of the most important examples that have come down to us. Other paintings in the south aisle were brought to light by Mr. G.E. Street during the restoration in 1867. Without and within it is a building hardly less worth study than the cathedral itself. [Illustration: THE POULTRY CROSS. _From a Photograph by Carl Norman and Co._] =St. Edmund=, founded by Bishop de la Wyle in 1268 for a Provost and twelve secular canons, is at the north-east of the city. To the east of its churchyard is the college of St. Edmunds, on the site of the convent founded in 1268 by the same bishop. In the grounds of the college stands the old north transept porch of the cathedral, a picturesque ruin whose architecture at once disposes of the theory that it came from Old Sarum. [Illustration: OLD PLAN OF SALISBURY.] =St. Martin= is another church of very ancient foundation, containing an interesting Norman font. It is impossible to close even the most brief note of objects of interest at, or near, Salisbury, without naming George Herbert's church, Bemerton, and Stonehenge; two places which attract pilgrims from all parts of the world. Yet no space is left to describe them, or to refer to Henry Lawes, musician, and Philip Massinger, dramatist, two of the many famous men who had the city for their birthplace. The cathedral has been the main object of this volume, and other matters, interesting though they may be, must needs be left untouched here. THE END. [Illustration: PLAN OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.] 
21688	----	THE GUILD LIBRARY "All the manuals are fine examples of careful workmanship and scholarly industry."--"Independent and Nonconformist," 17th August 1896. "A series of which we have often spoken in terms of very high commendation."--"Record," 11th March 1898. "A most admirable series."--"Methodist Times," 25th August 1898. "No more beautiful series of the kind passes under our notice."--"Literary World," 21st October 1898. LONDON: A. & C. BLACK. EDINBURGH: R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED. Edited by Rev. Prof. CHARTERIS, D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh, and Rev. J. A. M'CLYMONT, D.D., Aberdeen. _Crown 8vo Edition, Price 1s. 6d. net. Copies may be had interleaved for 8d. extra._ _Now Ready._ SCOTTISH CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS. By Rev. D. BUTLER, M.A., Abernethy. With Introduction by Very Rev. Principal STORY, D.D., LL.D. =First Series.= RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 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Edited by Rev. Prof. CHARTERIS, D.D., LL.D., Edinburgh, and Rev. J. A. M'CLYMONT, D.D., Aberdeen. All the volumes in the First Series of the GUILD LIBRARY are also to be had in the Sixpenny form with reduced contents also "Bible Manners and Customs." LIFE AND CONDUCT. By Very Rev. J. CAMERON LEES, D.D., LL.D., Dean of the Chapel Royal of Scotland. _30th Thousand._ "An excellent manual of instruction."--_Religious Review of Reviews._ "Written in an unusually bright lively manner."--_Manchester Guardian._ EXPOSITION OF THE APOSTLES' CREED. By Rev. J. DODDS, D.D., Corstorphine. _10th Thousand._ "This is an excellent little volume, and from its conciseness, clearness, and comprehensiveness is a great improvement on the well-known 'Pearson' of an earlier generation."--_Aberdeen Journal._ HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE. By Rev. GEORGE MILLIGAN, B.D., Caputh. _10th Thousand._ "This book is like a fine sermon following a beautiful text."--_Expository Times._ "When we say that it is worthy of its position in such a series we know of no higher praise we can give."--_Methodist N. C. Magazine._ CHURCH, MINISTRY, AND SACRAMENTS. By Rev. NORMAN MACLEOD, D.D., Inverness. _10th Thousand._ "The subject is handled with great good sense and in a liberal spirit."--_Critical Review._ "The book may be safely recommended as a safe guide along a thorny but important path of study."--_Scotsman._ "A model of what such a text-book should be."--_Glasgow Herald._ STUDIES IN THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. By Rev. WM. ROBERTSON, M.A., Coltness. [_In the Press._ * * * * * SCOTTISH CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS [Illustration: _From Photo by T. & R. Annan & Sons._ GLASGOW CATHEDRAL.] SCOTTISH CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS BY REV. D. BUTLER, M.A. ABERNETHY, PERTHSHIRE AUTHOR OF 'THE ANCIENT CHURCH AND PARISH OF ABERNETHY,' 'JOHN WESLEY AND GEORGE WHITEFIELD IN SCOTLAND,' 'HENRY SCOUGAL AND THE OXFORD METHODISTS' WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE VERY REV. R. HERBERT STORY, D.D., LL.D. PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW LONDON: A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE EDINBURGH: R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED PUBLICATION AGENTS FOR THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 1901 PREFACE In preparation for this Guild Book I wrote an account of every pre-Reformation structure in Scotland of which any remains now survive, but the prescribed limits of the series necessitated a selection. The Scottish cathedrals are all here treated, with representative collegiate and monastic buildings. Reference is also made to parish churches that represent the architecture of the various periods indicated in Chapter II. A survey of Scottish mediæval architecture will be found in pp. 194-206 that may enable readers to take a comprehensive view of the whole. A study of those treated in particular will lead to a study of those treated of necessity in general, and illustrate the idea that the history of the Scottish Church is the history of the ideality and faith of the Scottish people, and that the one cannot be separated from the other. A healthy present must always be bound by a natural piety to the past that has made it, or at least helped it to be what it is, and this study may enable readers to realise more that the Church of Scotland has a great and glorious past that begins with the days of St. Ninian and St. Columba. The past has much to teach the present, and the narrative of historical facts is not without suggestiveness to the varied life and work that characterise the Church of Scotland to-day. I desire to express my indebtedness to the investigations of many workers, which I have striven to recognise in the many references throughout the work, but most of all I am indebted to Messrs. MacGibbon and Ross in their colossal work, the _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_--a book of national importance. D. B. MANSE OF ABERNETHY, PERTHSHIRE, _14th January 1901_. CONTENTS GLASGOW CATHEDRAL _Frontispiece_ PAGE INTRODUCTION ix CHAP. 1. RELATION OF CELTIC CHURCH TO ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 2. SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE 4 NORMAN ARCHITECTURE 7 TRANSITION STYLE 8 FIRST POINTED PERIOD 9 MIDDLE POINTED PERIOD 10 LATE POINTED PERIOD 11 3. CATHEDRALS-- ST. ANDREWS 13 GLASGOW 22 DUNKELD 35 ABERDEEN 37 MORAY 40 BRECHIN 44 DUNBLANE 47 ROSS 52 CAITHNESS 54 GALLOWAY 56 LISMORE 59 ISLES 60 (KIRKWALL) ORKNEY 69 4. COLLEGIATE CHURCHES-- INTRODUCTION 76 BIGGAR 77 BOTHWELL 77 ST. NICHOLAS (NEW ABERDEEN) 78 KING'S COLLEGE (OLD ABERDEEN) 80 ROSLIN 85 CHAPEL ROYAL (STIRLING) 88 ST. GILES' (EDINBURGH) 89 ST. MARY'S AND ST. SALVATOR'S (ST. ANDREWS) 102 5. SCOTTISH NORMAN PARISH CHURCHES-- DALMENY 102 LEUCHARS 104 MIDDLE POINTED-- LINLITHGOW 105 HADDINGTON 107 LATE POINTED-- ST. JOHN'S (PERTH) 108 DUNDEE 113 STIRLING 114 ST. LEONARD (ST. ANDREWS) 116 HOLY TRINITY 117 6. SCOTTISH MONASTICISM 119 ST. ANDREW'S PRIORY (AUGUSTINIAN) 123 HOLYROOD ABBEY " 124 JEDBURGH " " 129 DRYBURGH " (PRAEMONSTRATENSIAN) 134 DUNFERMLINE " (BENEDICTINE) 139 PAISLEY " (CLUNIACENSIAN) 148 KELSO " (TYRONENSIAN) 169 ARBROATH " " 177 MELROSE " (CISTERCIAN) 184 7. GENERAL SURVEY OF SCOTTISH MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE-- NORMAN 194 TRANSITION STYLE 197 FIRST POINTED PERIOD 198 MIDDLE POINTED PERIOD 201 LATE POINTED PERIOD 203 APPENDIX-- DEFINITION OF LEADING ARCHITECTURAL TERMS 209 INTRODUCTION This book is designed to render to Scottish Churchmen the special service of presenting to them, in a brief but comprehensive survey, the record of their ecclesiastical history which is engraved in their ecclesiastical architecture. There is no record so authentic as that which is built in stone. There is none so sacred as that which attests and illustrates the religion of our forefathers. Much of that record has perished: enough remains to engage our reverent study and our dutiful care. Foreign war and rapine have wasted and destroyed our heritage of sacred places. Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, and Haddington fell before the English invader. Iona was ravaged by the Dane, while yet the island formed part of a Scandinavian diocese. Internal lawlessness and tribal fury have wrought like disasters. Elgin, once "the fair glory of the land," stands a forlorn monument of the savagery of a Highland chief. St. Andrews, Lindores, Perth, Paisley, and many others bear witness to the reckless outrage which cloaked its violence under the guise of religious zeal. Of all our spoilers this has been the most destructive. The pretence (for it often was nothing else) of "cleansing the sanctuary" not only robbed the Church of many a priceless possession, but begat, in the popular mind, a ruthless disregard of the sacred associations of places where generation after generation had worshipped God, and a coarse indifference to the solemnity of His ordinances, which made it easy for those who should have been the guardians of the churches to let them fall, unheeded, into decay. It is not uncommon, even yet, to find people who ought to know, and perhaps do know, better, blaming Knox and his co-reformers for the dilapidation and desecration of our ancient fanes. The blame belongs to the "rascal multitude," and to the rapacious laymen who were served heirs to the properties of the despoiled Church. What is the Church the better for their enrichment? What has religion gained by it? The Reformed Faith could have flourished none the less graciously if its purified doctrine had been preached, and its reasonable worship offered, under the same roofs that had protected priest and people in the days of Romanist error. Is the cause of pure and undefiled religion stronger in the land because Melrose and Crossraguel and Pluscarden are desolate; St. Andrews a roofless ruin; Iona as yet open to the Atlantic winds? Is the voice of praise and prayer sweeter in the North because Mortlach is effaced and Fortrose shattered, and the bells are silent which men on the mainland used to hear when the north wind blew from Kirkwall? Granted that ignorant superstition may have tainted the veneration in which our fathers' holy and beautiful houses were held 400 years ago, the iconoclasm which devastated them was not the remedy for it. The revived interest in our old churches, which has asserted its influence in such restorations as those of St. Giles, Dunblane, Linlithgow, St. Vigeans, and Arbuthnott, is no revival of superstition. It is the outcome of a more reverent spirit; of a deeper sense of the honour due to God; of the conviction that we owe Him, in all that pertains to His worship, the offering of our very best; and of a deeper consciousness also of the supreme value of the Church's national position and character, and of the duty of piously conserving whatever helps to illustrate the historical continuity which binds its present to its past. As regards this, nothing is so full of helpful stimulus as an intelligent study of our ecclesiastical architecture. In it we can read the lessons of the gradual growth of the Scottish nation from the loosely connected tribal conditions of the ninth and tenth centuries onwards to its consolidation under a settled monarchy; the development of its commercial and industrial progress; its expanding relations to the peoples of the Continent; and the vital changes in its political life, and its religious system and belief, thence resulting. All these have left their mark in those records which neither time nor revolution, neglect nor violence, have been able wholly to destroy--the architecture of our cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries. The primitive buildings of the early Celtic period of the Church have long since disappeared. Their clay and wattles could not withstand the wear and tear of time; only in a distant glen or lonely island can we discover scattered traces of the beehive cell or simple shrine of the anchorite or missionary. Few relics of the more substantial structures of that time survive. The Roman era of Church organisation superseded the Celtic; and with the Roman dominance came the architecture of the Anglo-Normans, whom the presence and policy of Margaret, saint and queen, attracted to Scotland. It developed itself, always with some national characteristics of its own, until the War of Independence broke off all friendly intercourse with England. Later came, in place of alliance with England, the alliance with France, which lasted till the Reformation, and left its mark on many of the pages of "The Great Stone Book," which chronicle for us the vicissitudes of the past, the days of peace and prosperity, of war and penury, of reviving national health and energy, of new combinations and ideas in politics and statecraft, of spiritual decay and carnal pride and ostentation. These annals can be deciphered by the patient student of the walls and cloisters of the ancient churches and religious houses. To the founders and the owners of the latter, and chiefly to the great orders of the Augustinians, the Benedictines, and the Cistercians, we owe many of our noblest remnants of the past--all of them unhappily ruined; for the popular violence of the sixteenth century raged more fiercely against the monasteries than against the cathedrals. To the Episcopal system of government, introduced under Margaret, we owe the bishops' churches or cathedrals. The life and thought of the Church at the present day, move far enough apart from either prelacy or monasticism to allow us to look at each with an impartial eye, and to consider whether in its abolition we have parted with aught that it would have profited the Church to retain. The monasteries, at first the homes and shelters of charity and learning, had, before the sixteenth century, waxed fat with unduly accumulated wealth, become enervated with luxury and corrupt through bad government. They were swept away, their possessions secularised, and their communities broken up. But with them disappeared two things which were of great price: a large and liberal provision for the poor, and a comprehensive scheme of Education. The monastery gate was never shut against the suffering and the needy. The monks were indulgent landlords and kind neighbours; the sick benefited by their medical skill; the indigent could always look to them for eleemosynary aid; the houseless wanderer was never sent empty away. Those great centres of friendly helpfulness and charity were planted all over the land. No doubt the gift of indiscriminate alms to every applicant would tend to abuse and lazy beggary; but a scheme of sympathetic and well directed aid thoughtfully administered would not. _Abusus non tollit usum._ The scandals of the monasteries did not justify the robbery of the destitute for the benefit of the secular supplanters of the monks. The Kirk-sessions of the Reformed Kirk did their best to take the place of the former guardians and kindly benefactors of the poor, but their funds were scanty; the old wealth had fallen into tenacious hands; and schism and sectarianism finally necessitated the transfer of the care of the poor from the Church to the State. Could the ancient system have been reformed and not destroyed, the poverty of the country would have been less grievous than it is to-day; the Church's relation to the poor more intimate; and the method of relief pleasanter to the recipients than that which makes them familiar with the grim charity of the Poor's House, the Inspector, and the Parochial Board. The monasteries were the seats of a general system of higher education. The burghs had their own independent seminaries; the "song schools" were more closely connected with the churches in town and in country; but the highest grade of education was found in the monasteries. Before the foundation of any of the universities they supplied the place both of secondary school and university, and trained the youth, especially of the higher ranks, until prepared to go out into the world, as they constantly did, speaking the "lingua-franca" of all scholars, and carrying Scottish energy, genius, and scholarship into the halls and cloisters of many a college and many a monastery, from Coimbra to Cracow, from Salerno to Upsala. These schools all perished with the downfall of the monasteries; and consequently we cannot, to this day, cope with the great public schools of England, or adequately supply the blank in our educational system created by their spoliation and abolition. Here, too, wise reform might have spared and remodelled what misguided zeal, allied with unprincipled greed, destroyed. With the ruination and impoverishment of the cathedrals, an element in the Church's life inseparable from them, and most salutary and useful, ceased to be. The bishops' deprivation of an authority they had too often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the presbyterate; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, an immense boon would have been secured for the Reformed Church. Had the stipends attached to them not been alienated, the Church would have possessed, at all its most important centres, a staff of clergymen chosen for their ability and worth, for their learning and power of government and organisation, aiding the minister in his work, or enriching the theological literature of their time. With them might have been associated younger men, either under their supervision as candidates for the ministry, or as probationers acquiring practical knowledge of its duties and requirements. The cathedral would have stood out, in its city, great or small, as the Mother Church--holding forth the model of devout ritual, of earnest and learned teaching, of zealous work. How vastly superior its influence would have been, spiritually, intellectually, socially, to that of struggling _quoad sacra_ churches, with their ill-paid clergy, or "missions" in charge of worse-paid probationers, it is, I think, needless to point out. But the possibility of such an institution passed away when the cathedrals were desecrated, and their revenues were "grippit"--to use Knox's phrase--by the ungodly robbers of the Church. I have written these few pages to serve as an introduction to what follows, from the hand of my friend, Mr. Butler. The Committee of the Guild asked me to prepare a volume on the most notable of our ancient churches; and finding that other engagements stood in the way of my doing so, I recommended that the work should be entrusted to Mr. Butler, of whose ability to do it well I felt confident. Having read what he has written, I find my confidence was not misplaced, and that his treatment of the subject is most instructive, thorough, and exact. It will add to the reputation he has already gained by his history of his own parish of Abernethy on Tay, and his books on Wesley in Scotland, and on Henry Scougal; and will prove an invaluable guide to all students of our historic churches, cathedral, collegiate, and monastic. R. H. S. SCOTTISH CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS CHAPTER I RELATION OF CELTIC CHURCH TO ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH The period begun by the influence of Queen Margaret (1047-1093), continued by her sons and their successors on the Scottish throne, and culminating in the Scottish Reformation of 1560, is that with which this book deals. The old Celtic Church of Scotland was brought to an end by two causes--internal decay and external change. Under the first head, notice must be taken of the encroachment upon the ecclesiastic element by the secular, and of the gradual absorption of the former by the latter. There was a vitality in the old ecclesiastical organisation, but it was weakened by the assimilation of the native Church to that of Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries, which introduced a secular element among the clergy; and the frequent Danish invasions, which may be described as the organised power of Paganism against Scottish Christianity, grievously undermined its native force. The Celtic churches and monasteries were repeatedly laid waste or destroyed, and the native clergy were compelled either to fly or take up arms in defence; the lands, unprotected by the strong arm of law, fell into the hands of laymen, who made them hereditary in their families, and ultimately nothing was left but the name of abbacy, applied to the lands, and that of abbot, borne by a secular lord. Under the second head--external change--may be noted the policy adopted towards the Celtic Church by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It consisted (1) in placing the Church upon a territorial in place of a tribal basis, in substituting the parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; (2) in introducing the orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as counter influences to the Celtic Church; (3) in absorbing the Culdees or Columban clergy into the Roman system, by first converting them from secular into regular canons, and afterwards by merging them in the latter order.[1] King David especially founded bishoprics and established cathedrals, equipped with the ordinary cathedral staff of deans, canons, and other functionaries, and monasteries equipped with representatives of the monastic orders. Thus the native Celtic Church, undermined by internal decay, was extinguished by external change and a course of aggression which rolled from St. Andrews until it reached the far-off shores of Iona. All that remained to speak of its vitality and beneficence to the people of Scotland consisted of the roofless walls of an early church, or an old churchyard with its Celtic cross; the names of the early pastors by whom the churches were founded, or the neighbouring wells at the old foundations, dedicated to their memory; the village fairs, stretching back to a remote antiquity, and held on the saint's day in the Scottish calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient "girth" or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against the might. The new policy was connected with the introduction of the orders of the Roman Catholic Church, and with the building of cathedrals and abbeys. This movement commenced with the close of the eleventh century, and continued to the middle of the sixteenth; it embraced all the time when the Church of Scotland was guided by the regime of Rome, although it is to be recalled that the Scottish Church never ceased to maintain a native independence--its heirloom from the ancient Celtic Church. This independence, manifested on important historical occasions throughout mediæval times, at last found its national embodiment in the Reformed Church of 1560. Scotland was divided into thirteen dioceses--St. Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Aberdeen, Moray, Brechin, Dunblane, Ross, Caithness, Galloway, Lismore or Argyll, the Isles, and Orkney; but before sketching the history and architecture of each of the thirteen cathedrals, it will be necessary to indicate the general features of the various periods of Scottish architecture itself, as it is of this movement the structures themselves are all an expression. CHAPTER II SKETCH OF SCOTTISH ARCHITECTURE Architecture is a great stone book in which nations have recorded their annals, before the days of the printing-press: have written their thoughts, expressed their aspirations, and embodied their feelings as clearly and truly as by any other form of utterance. We know Egypt as vividly by its pyramids, the age of Pericles by the Parthenon of Athens, Imperial Rome by the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla, as from the pages of their respective literature. The mediæval cathedrals, monasteries, and churches are a living record of the faith and devotion of mediæval men, who have left besides them but little else whereby we can know their aspirations and civilisation; we find in them an expression of the deepest life that characterised the periods to which they belong, and a record which, though often mutilated, and sometimes nearly obliterated, never deceives. Wherever these architectural creations are found, there also a voice ought to be heard, telling what at that spot and at some previous time men thought and felt; what their civilisation enabled them to accomplish, and to what state they had attained in their conception of God. In a very true sense it can be said that the architecture of a country is the history of that country, and that the record of the architecture is the record of its civilisation. "Mediæval architecture," said Sir Gilbert Scott, "is distinguished from all other styles as being the last link of the mighty chain which had stretched unbroken through nearly 4000 years--the glorious termination of the history of original and genuine architecture....[2] It has been more entirely developed under the influence of the Christian religion, and more thoroughly carried out its tone and sentiment, than any other style. It is _par eminence_ Christian.... Its greatest glory is the solemnity of religious character which pervades the interior of its temples. To this all its other attributes must bend, as it is this which renders it so pre-eminently suited to the highest uses of the Christian Church. It was this, probably, which led Romney to exclaim, that if Grecian architecture was the work of glorious men, Gothic was the invention of gods."[3] This architecture was perfected by the mediæval builders--the round arch in the twelfth and the pointed arch in the two succeeding centuries. Its progress was the realisation of three great aims, towards which the Romanesque architects were ever striving--the perfecting of the arcuated and vaulted construction, the increase of the altitude of their proportion, and the general adding of refinement and delicacy to their details.[4] Scotland, it has been maintained by those competent to judge, can show a continuous series of Christian structures, beginning with the primitive cells and oratories of the early anchorites, and extending through all the periods of mediæval art. It exemplifies two distinctive phases of artistic development--the first comprising the rise and decline of Celtic Art in early Christian times, and the second allied to the various stages of general European culture. The Celtic churches, round towers, and sculptured monuments similar to those found in Ireland, are followed by primitive examples of Norman work, pointing to the Saxon and Norman influence of the eleventh century, which produced a complete revolution in the artistic elements of the country and led to a full development of the Romanesque or Norman style of architecture--a style similar to the round arched architecture of other European countries in the twelfth century. This is manifested chiefly in small parish churches, but also in large, elaborate buildings, and one cathedral.[5] The succeeding Gothic styles are also well represented in Scotland, and exhibit both certain local peculiarities and a general correspondence with the arts of the different periods in France and England. The First Pointed style is represented in Scotland during the thirteenth century, but owing to the disastrous situation of the country during the fourteenth century, the number of "decorated" buildings is pronounced to be comparatively small. On the other hand, it is maintained that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the "Perpendicular" style prevailed in England and the "Flamboyant" in France, the architecture of Scotland was distinguished by a style peculiar to the country, in which many features derived from both the above styles may be detected.[6] "While the mediæval architecture of Scotland thus corresponds on the whole with that of the rest of Europe, there exists in the ecclesiology of the country an amount of native development sufficient to give it a special value as one of the exponents of the art of the Middle Ages. Its buildings further contribute largely to the illustration of the history of the country, by showing in their remains the condition and growth of its religious ideas and observances at different epochs, and the manner in which its civilisation advanced. We observe striking evidences of the Irish influence in the relics of the primitive Celtic Church. The Norman and English influences are clearly traceable up to the invasion of Edward I., and the political connection with France and the Netherlands is distinctly observable in the period of the Jameses."[7] 1. NORMAN ARCHITECTURE The Abernethy Round Tower, the Priory of Restennet, Forfarshire, and St. Regulus' or St. Rule's Church, St. Andrews, illustrate the transition from Celtic to Norman architecture.[8] The dates of the Irish round towers[9] extend from the ninth to the twelfth century, and the Abernethy Tower is regarded on historical grounds by Dr. Skene as belonging to the period about 870 A.D.; the upper windows and doorway are either additions of the twelfth century, or, as this was an early Irish house in Scotland, may illustrate what has been asserted, that in Ireland a form of Romanesque was introduced before the Anglo-Saxon Invasion.[10] At any rate, the tower is a combination of Celtic and Norman work. As to Restennet, the present choir is a First Pointed structure. David I. founded there an Augustinian Priory, which Malcolm IV. made a cell of the Abbey of Jedburgh. The tower is the only one of the square towers which has very marked features of a pre-Norman character.[11] The building above the second story is probably fifteenth-century work. St. Regulus' Church is treated pp. 17-19. The twelfth century was in Scotland as elsewhere the great church-building period, and the number of churches in the south and east that reflect the Norman movement is very large. All the large ones were conventual. Parish churches of the period are generally small and aisleless--the most of them being single oblong chambers, with an eastern chancel, sometimes with an eastern apse, and occasionally with a western tower.[12] Towards the close of the period, the ornament became very elaborate, especially in the arched heads of doorways. A common feature was the arcade running round the walls below the windows, either in the exterior, interior, or both; the caps and arches are generally carved elaborately and richly with ornaments, the chevron or zig-zag enrichment being a characteristic feature. The windows are always single and simple in detail.[13] Some of the towers connected with such churches are amongst the earliest instances of Norman work which survive; they are simple in design, square on plan, and are carried up, without break or buttress, to the parapet, where they are finished with a gable roof, forming the saddle-back arrangement still preserved in the Muthill Tower.[14] The break in the height is formed by string courses, which mark the unequal stories. A small wheel-stair usually leads to the top, and the doorway is occasionally several feet from the ground. Such are the leading features that can be traced in the buildings connected with the period. 2. SCOTTISH TRANSITION STYLE The term "transition" is by general agreement reserved for the architecture of the end of the twelfth century, when the Norman style gradually gave place to the first pointed Gothic style. In England this period extends from about 1180 to 1200; in Scotland it extends considerably into the thirteenth century. The characteristics of the style are the gradual introduction of the pointed arch and its use along with some of the decorative features of the Norman style. "The pointed arch shows the advent of the new style, but the ornaments of the old style continue to linger for a time. The first pointed style was not complete till these old ornaments were abandoned, and the more vigorous enrichments of the new style were introduced. The other constructive features of the Norman style gradually changed at the same time as the arch. The buttresses by degrees assumed the projecting form of the first pointed style, and the pinnacles and spires of the latter style were in course of time introduced."[15] 3. SCOTTISH FIRST POINTED PERIOD "The pointed Gothic style which had its origin in the north of France about the middle of the twelfth century appeared in England about 1170, but can scarcely be said to have reached Scotland till after the close of the twelfth century.... The pointed arch, for example, although generally adopted, did not entirely displace, as it had done in the south, the round form of the Normans, a feature which, especially in doorways, continued to be employed not only in the thirteenth century, but throughout the whole course of Gothic art in Scotland. In other respects the thirteenth century style in this country corresponds very closely with that of England. Its features are however, generally speaking, plainer and the structures are smaller."[16] "This new departure sprung from the necessity which arose for the invention of an elastic system of vaulting which should admit of all the arches, forming vaults over spaces of any form or plan, being carried to the same height at the ridge. This requirement led to the introduction of the pointed arch in the vaulting, and from that departure it soon spread to all the other arched features of the architecture."[17] Architecture, which had hitherto been confined to the monasteries, was now undertaken by laymen, and while the great monasteries were either rebuilt or founded, the cathedrals mostly belong to this period. To these attention was chiefly devoted, and the number of parish churches constructed was comparatively small. This partly arose from the large number of parish churches built during the Norman period. In Scotland the cathedrals of St. Andrews, Dunblane, Glasgow (the choir and crypt), Elgin, Brechin, Dunkeld, Caithness, the choir of St. Magnus in Orkney and Galloway belong in whole or in part to this epoch.[18] 4. SCOTTISH MIDDLE POINTED OR DECORATED PERIOD The period from 1214 to 1286 comprised the first pointed work in Scotland. The country was during the time prosperous, and is believed to have been more wealthy than at any time till after the Union with England.[19] The disputed succession after the death of Alexander III. gave Edward I. the opportunity of asserting his claims to the Scottish throne; war followed, and with it poverty and barbarism. "The first note of contest," says Dr. Joseph Robertson, "banished every English priest, monk, and friar from the northern realm. Its termination was followed by the departure of those great Anglo-Norman lords--the flower of the Scottish baronage--who, holding vast possessions in both countries, had so long maintained among the rude Scottish hills the generous example of English wealth and refinement. Then it was that De la Zouche and De Quincy, Ferrars and Talbot, Beaumont and Umfraville, Percy and Wake, Moubray and Fitz-Warine, Balliol and Cumyn, Hastings and De Coursi, ceased to be significant names beyond the Tweed--either perishing in that terrible revolution or withdrawing to their English domains, there to perpetuate in scutcheon and pedigree the memory of their rightful claims to many of the fairest lordships of Albany, and to much of the reddest blood of the north."[20] This had a twofold consequence to architecture. Comparatively few buildings arose in the north, and these were in a smaller scale. And England now becoming an hereditary enemy, no longer supplied models for the churches north of the Tweed, which received the impress of France. In England the First Pointed was succeeded about 1272 by the Middle Pointed or Decorated, which swayed for about a century, being succeeded by the Third Pointed or Perpendicular, whose reign, beginning about 1377, ended with the Reformation.[21] The Decorated style did not reach Scotland till it had passed away in England, and the Scottish representatives of the style are scanty in number and late in date.[22] When the country revived after the long struggle with England, and building began towards the close of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, few new works were undertaken, energy and resources were concentrated on the rebuilding or completion of the edifices that had been destroyed or left unfinished. This period, along with the Third Pointed in Scotland, is regarded as the work of native architects.[23] 5. SCOTTISH THIRD OR LATE POINTED PERIOD The Middle Pointed passed by a gentle gradation into the Late Pointed style, and it is difficult to say when the one ceased and the other began. Yet there are some characteristics of the Third Pointed which are peculiar to it and render it a distinct epoch. The large churches are nearly all restorations, and no new churches of great size were undertaken. The Scottish churches are usually smaller in size than the English ones, and consist of single compartments without aisles. The east end frequently terminates with a three-sided apse--a feature which owes its origin to the Scottish alliance and intercourse with France. The leading and distinguishing feature is, however, the vaulting--the pointed barrel vault being almost universally employed. The windows of these churches are necessarily low, so as to allow the point of the arch-head to come beneath the spring of the main vault. The buttresses are generally somewhat stunted. The windows are almost always pointed, and contain simple tracery derived from the earlier styles. The doorways are generally of the old round-headed form, with late foliage and enrichments. Porches are occasionally introduced, and coats of arms are commonly carved on shields of the period, and are useful in determining the dates of portions of the buildings. Towers were generally erected or intended, and are somewhat stunted, finished with short spires, having small dormer windows inserted in them. Monuments are of frequent occurrence, and are frequently placed in arched and canopied recesses. Richly carved sacrament-houses are occasionally introduced, and perhaps some of the good carving may be due to the French masons who were numerous in Scotland during the reigns of James IV. and James V. The structures of the period were either parish or collegiate churches.[24] CHAPTER III 1. DIOCESE OF ST. ANDREWS The connection between St. Andrews and the neighbouring Pictish Church at Abernethy was, during the early period, very close. Dr. Skene thinks that the first church at Abernethy was built during the visit of St. Ninian to the Southern Picts, or the people living between the Forth and the territory south of the Grampians; it was endowed with lands by King Nectan in 460 A.D., and dedicated to St. Bride;[25] and between 584 and 596, during St. Columba's visit, and as a result of his mission, a church was rebuilt by Gartnaidh, King of the Picts.[26] St. Columba is distinctly stated to have preached among the tribes on the banks of the Tay,[27] and to have been assisted in this work by St. Cainnech, who founded a church in the east end of the province of Fife, near where the Eden pours its waters into the German Ocean, at a place called Rig-Monadh, or the royal mount, which afterwards became famous as the site on which the church of St. Andrews was founded, and as giving to that place the name of Kilrimont.[28] The earliest Celtic church at St. Andrews was probably, like that of Iona, constructed with wattles and turf and roofed with thatch. It was customary to have caves or places of retirement for the hermits; they were used, too, as oratories or places of penance, and one such there is at St. Andrews, known as St. Rule's cave:-- Where good Saint Rule his holy lay, From midnight to the dawn of day, Sang to the billows' sound.[29] The connection of the place with St. Andrew has no historical basis till between 736 and 761, when a cathedral was dedicated to St. Andrew, and a portion of his relics was brought by Acca, Bishop of Northumbria, who was banished from that country in 732, and founded a church among the Picts. Dr. Skene points to the similarity of the events which succeeded one another in Northumbria and Southern Pictland in the eighth century. In the former country the Columban clergy were expelled, secular clergy were introduced, dedications were made to St. Peter, and afterwards Hexham was dedicated to St. Andrew and received the relics of the Apostle, brought there by one of its bishops; in the latter country, sixty years later, the Picts expelled the Columban monks, introduced the secular clergy, placed the kingdom under the patronage of St. Peter, and then receiving from some unknown quarter the relics of St. Andrew, founded the church in honour of that Apostle, who became the national patron-saint.[30] This "cathedral," dedicated to St. Andrew, was probably of stone, and was the church intervening between the early Celtic Church and that of St. Regulus. Angus, King of the Picts, endowed it with lands. On the destruction of Iona by the Danes, the bishopric was first transferred to Dunkeld (850-864); then to Abernethy (865-908), when the Round Tower was probably built;[31] and in 908 it was transferred to St. Andrews, which retained it until the Reformation. St. Adrian was probably one of the three bishops of Alban[32] at Abernethy, as chapels and crosses in the district are all connected with his name; and Cellach appears as the first Bishop at St. Andrews, and he was succeeded by eight Culdee bishops, the last of whom was Fothad, who officiated at the marriage of Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret. The next three bishops all died before consecration, and for about sixteen years after the death of Malcolm the bishopric would appear to have been vacant. Turgot, Queen Margaret's friend and confessor, was the thirteenth bishop, and ruled from 1107-1115--the first bishop not of native birth. Prior to 1107 the Culdee community had split up into two sections, dividing the spiritualities and temporalities between them, and Bishop Robert (1121-1159), with the object of superseding the Culdees, founded in 1144 a priory for the regular monks of St. Augustine, granting to them the Hospital of St. Andrews, with portions of the altarage. In the same year King David granted a charter to the prior and canons of St. Andrews, in which he provided that they shall receive the Keledei of Kilrimont into the canonry, with all their possessions and revenues, if they were willing to become canons-regular; but, if they refused, those who are now alive are to retain the property during their lives, and, after their death, as many canons-regular are to be instituted in the church of St. Andrews as there are now Keledei, and all their possessions are to be appropriated to the use of the canons. There were thus two rival ecclesiastical bodies in St. Andrews--the old corporation of secular priests and the new order of Austin-canons; the former enjoyed the greater part of the old endowments, and the latter recovered a considerable portion of the secularised property that had passed into lay hands. Popes, bishops, and kings endeavoured to end this rivalry, but their efforts were not crowned with success; although influence was on the side of the canons-regular, the Keledei clung to their prescriptive right to take part in the election of a bishop down to 1273, when they were excluded by protest; in 1332 they were absolutely excluded, and the formula of their exclusion from taking part in the election was repeated;[33] we hear of them afterwards not as Keledei, but as "the provostry of the Church of St. Mary of the city of St. Andrews," of "the Church of the Blessed Mary of the Rock," and of "the provostry of Kirkheugh"--the society consisting of a provost and ten prebendaries.[34] In the reign of Malcolm IV. the bishopric of St. Andrews included the counties of Fife, Kinross, Clackmannan, the three Lothians, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, parts of Perthshire, Forfarshire, and Kincardineshire; and, although the see was lessened by the creation of new bishoprics, the importance of St. Andrews was always great, for at the Reformation the primate's ecclesiastical jurisdiction included 2 archdeaconries, 9 rural deaneries, the patronage of 131 benefices, the administration of 245 parishes. In 1471 or 1472 the see was erected into an archbishopric by a bull of Pope Sixtus IV. and at this time the Archbishop of York surrendered his claim to have the Bishop of St. Andrews as his suffragan--a claim repeatedly made since the time of Turgot and as frequently resented. The office of bishop or archbishop involved great spiritual and temporal power; the primates were lords of regality and ultimate heirs of all confiscated property within their domains; they levied customs and at times had the power of coining money; they presided at synods, controlled the appointment of abbots and priors, were included with the King in the oath of allegiance, and took precedence next to the royal family, and before all the Scottish nobility. There were in all thirty-one bishops and six archbishops, who held the see in succession from 908 to 1560, and among the more famous of them may be mentioned Turgot, the friend and biographer of Queen Margaret (1107-1115); Robert, prior of Scone, who founded the Priory of St. Andrews, received the gift of the Culdee Monastery of Lochleven, and built the church and tower of St. Rule (1124-1158); Arnold, Abbot of Kelso, who started the building of the great cathedral (1158-1159); William Wishart of Pitarrow, who was lord-chancellor and bishop (1273-1279), and rebuilt, between 1272 and 1279, the west front, which was blown down by a tempest of wind; William Lamberton (1298-1328), who consecrated the cathedral in 1318, in the presence of King Robert the Bruce; Henry Wardlaw (1404-1440), who founded in 1411 the University of St. Andrews; James Kennedy (1440-1466)--the greatest of all the bishops--who founded St. Salvador's College; James Stewart (1497-1503), second son of James III., Duke of Ross and Marquis of Ormond, who was made primate at twenty-one; Alexander Stewart (1506-1513), who was the natural son of James IV., and fell with his father at Flodden; James Beaton (1522-1539), who founded St. Mary's College and burnt Patrick Hamilton; David Beaton, nephew of James Beaton (1539-1546), who burnt Wishart and was murdered; John Hamilton (1549-1571), who was the author of the Catechism of 1552.[35] As to the buildings, St. Regulus' or St. Rule's, standing in the ancient churchyard at a distance of about 120 feet south-east of the east end of the Cathedral of St. Andrews, was unquestionably the earlier Cathedral Church, and occupies probably the site of the earlier Celtic church. Bishop Robert (1121-1159) introduced the canons-regular of St. Augustine in 1144, and these gradually absorbed many of the Culdees into their community. It was during this time also that St. Rule's was built. Dr. Joseph Robertson says of it:--"The little Romanesque church and square tower at St. Andrews, which bear the name of St. Rule, have, so far as we know, no prototype in the south.... No one acquainted with the progress of architecture will have much difficulty in identifying the building with the small 'basilica' reared by Bishop Robert, an English canon-regular of the order of St. Augustine, between the years 1127 and 1144."[36] The Pictish Chronicle states that Robert was elected Bishop in the reign of Alexander I., but was not consecrated till the reign of David I. in 1138; that, after his consecration by Thurstan, Archbishop of York, he expended on this work one-seventh of the altar dues which fell to him, reserving them for his own use. "But inasmuch as the outlay was small, the building made correspondingly small progress, until, by the Divine favour, and the influence of the King, offerings flowed in, and the work went on apace. The basilica was thus founded and in great part constructed."[37] What now remains of this building consists of a square tower, 112 feet high, and an oblong chamber. Discussion has arisen as to whether there ever was a nave, and in favour of the positive view it is urged that marks of three successive roofs may be seen on the tower-wall, and that the seals of the church, dated 1204 and 1214, show a nave and chancel. Eminent authorities take this view. Sir Gilbert Scott thinks that the large size of the western arch, and the mark of the roof on the tower, suggest a nave;[38] while later authorities, recalling that this church was once a cathedral, as well as the church of a monastery, and served the purpose of a parish church, hold it as more than probable that it must have been a larger building than the simple oblong chamber to the east of the tower which now survives.[39] The architecture corresponds with the period of Bishop Robert,[40] so that there is more than probability in averring that St. Rule's was the cathedral built by this bishop, and took the place of an earlier Celtic church, founded by Bishop Acca. The square tower of St. Regulus was probably designed to fulfil the same purposes as the Round Towers of Abernethy and Brechin: (1) to serve as a belfry; (2) to be a keep or place of strength in which the sacred utensils, books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, and into which the ecclesiastics could retire for security in case of sudden predatory attack; (3) when occasion required, to be a beacon or watch-tower.[41] Besides the Church of St. Regulus, there are still to be seen the ruins of the great Cathedral of St. Andrews, which consisted of a short aisleless presbytery, and choir of five bays with side aisles, with an eastern chapel in each aisle; north and south transepts, each of three bays with eastern aisles; nave of twelve bays with north and south aisles, and a large central tower over the crossing. The interior dimensions were--total length, 355 feet; width of nave, 63 feet; length of transepts, 167 feet 6 inches; width, 43 feet 2 inches. The older parts of the Cathedral exhibit traces of the transition from the Norman architecture, but the principal parts of the structure have been carried out in the First Pointed style.[42] The Cathedral Church was also the Conventual Church of the Austin-canons, and the Bishop was _ex officio_ prior of the monastery. Of the conventual buildings erected by Bishop Robert nothing remains. The Cathedral was erected from east to west in about 115 years.[43] The work was commenced by Bishop Arnold in 1161, was continued by eleven successive bishops, and was consecrated by Bishop Lamberton in 1318. During its progress in 1276, the eastern end was greatly injured by a violent tempest, and in 1378 the Cathedral suffered from fire, which according to Wyntoun destroyed the south half of the nave from the west end, and eastward to and including the ninth pillar. The restoration was begun at once by Bishop Landel (1341-1385), and completed in the time of Bishop Wardlaw (1404-1440), who in 1430 improved the interior by the introduction of fine pavements in the choir, transept, and nave, and by filling the nave with stained glass and building a large window in the eastern gable. The south wall of the nave extends considerably westwards beyond the present west end, and contains the remains of a vaulting shaft, leading to the inference that the Cathedral was originally of greater length than it now is by at least 34 feet. The north wall of nave also projects westwards about 7 feet. There is a difficulty in connection with the west front, and it is regarded by competent authorities that this wall was not part of a western porch, but "indicates that there has been a change in the design, and that the original intention of having a wide porch extending along the whole of the west end has been departed from after the first story was built up to the level of the above string course, all above that point being of later design and execution."[44] The early chapter-house was 26 feet square, and was vaulted with four central pillars. It opened to the cloisters, and the doorway is pronounced to be in the purest style of early pointed architecture.[45] Bishop Lamberton (1298-1328) erected a new chapter-house, and the old one was made a vestibule to the new. South of the early chapter-house was probably the fratery; on the upper floor of this building and the chapter-house was the dormitory--a wheel-stair leading to it from the south transept. On the west side of the cloister was the sub-prior's house, known also as Senzie House; south-east of the fratery is the prior's house or Hospitium Vetus, which was sometimes the residence of the bishop. West of the cathedral are the remains of the entrance gateway, called the "Pends," and in continuation of the "Pends" was the enclosing wall of the priory grounds, containing sixteen towers. The Guest-House was within the precinct of St. Leonard's College, and was built about the middle of the thirteenth century.[46] Within the precincts of the Priory-grounds were the various offices connected with the great ecclesiastical establishment. The conventual and other buildings attached to the Cathedral have been recently excavated at the expense of the late Marquis of Bute, and considerable remains of the foundations disclosed to view. The ruins of the castle stand on a rocky promontory, overhanging the sea, N.N.W. of the Cathedral; and between the Cathedral-wall on the N.E. and the sea are the foundations of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin. In 1559 the Cathedral was attacked by the mob and greatly destroyed. Time and weather helped to complete the work of destruction; the Protestant Archbishop Spottiswoode in 1635 strove to make provision for its restoration, but nothing appears to have been done to arrest the work of destruction. The Barons of Exchequer in 1826 took possession of the ruins, had the rubbish cleared away, and what remained of the great building strengthened. The pier-bases have been made visible, and the outline of the building marked on the turf. St. Andrews has been associated with most of the stirring events in Scottish Church history, and will always possess its two great voices of the Cathedral and the Sea. 2. DIOCESE OF GLASGOW Towards the end of the fourth century, St. Ninian, a Christian missionary trained at Rome in the doctrine and discipline of the Western Church, is said to have established a religious cell on the banks of the Molendinar. How long he remained there is uncertain, but his labours are chiefly centred around the Candida Casa at Whithorn and among the southern Picts, whose district, according to Bede, he evangelised. With St. Ninian's departure, the district around the Molendinar relapsed into barbarism, and the only remaining monument of his work was a cemetery which he was reputed to have consecrated. The next historical reference to Glasgow is in connection with St. Kentigern, or, as he was popularly known, St. Mungo, about the middle of the sixth century. He was of royal descent, and was born in 518 or 527. His biographer, Joceline, states that he was adopted and educated by St. Servanus or St. Serf, who lived at Culross, and by him was named "Munghu," _i.e._ dearest friend. But this must be a mistake, for Servanus lived two centuries after Kentigern's time;[47] if it is correct, there must have been an earlier and a later St. Serf. On attaining his twenty-fifth year, according to Joceline, he proceeded to Carnock, where lived a holy man named Fergus. After he reached the abode of Fergus, the good man said his "nunc dimittis" and died; and Kentigern, placing his body on a wain drawn by two bulls, took his departure, praying to be guided to the place which might be appointed for burial. The place where the wain stopped was Cathures, afterwards called Glasgow, where St. Ninian had consecrated a cemetery, and here Fergus was buried. Such is Joceline's account of Kentigern's first connection with Glasgow. The king and people of the district pressed him to remain as their bishop, and he consented, establishing his see at Cathures and founding a lay society of the servants of God, and fixing his own abode on the banks of the Molendinar. After some years of austerity and beneficence there, he was driven from his work by the persecutions of an apostate prince and settled in the vale of Clwyd, North Wales, where he founded a monastery. After a time he returned to Glasgow, at the solicitation of the King of Cumbria, and appointed St. Asaph as his successor in Wales. In a martyrology ascribed to the year 875 Kentigern appears as "bishop of Glasgow and confessor."[48] While resident at Glasgow, St. Kentigern was visited by St. Columba, his distinguished contemporary and the apostle of the Picts, who presented him with a crozier, which, Fordun says, was afterwards preserved in St. Wilfrid's Church at Ripon. Bishop Forbes describes the meeting of the two great men "as one of those incidents which we wish to be true, and which we have no certainty for believing not to be so."[49] St. Kentigern died in 603 or 614, and was buried in Glasgow, which is still known as the city of St. Mungo--Mungo being his name of honour or affection. Everything connected with St. Mungo's early church, of wood and wattles or of stone, on the banks of the Molendinar, is shrouded in the mists of antiquity until the first quarter of the twelfth century, when David, Prince and Earl of Cumbria, the youngest son of Queen Margaret, took measures to reconstruct the see and recover its property. Of Glasgow during the Culdee period nothing can be definitely known. The result of Prince David's inquest is contained in the _Register_ of the Bishopric,[50] and it sets forth that Prince David, from love to God and by the exhortation of the Bishop, having caused inquiry to be made concerning the lands belonging to the church in Cumbria, had ascertained that they belonged to the church of Glasgow, and restored them. These lands extended from the Clyde on the north to the Solway and English March on the south, from the western boundary of Lothian on the east to the river Urr on the west, including Teviotdale, and comprehended what afterwards formed the site of the city of Glasgow.[51] The building of the cathedral would appear to have been begun before David succeeded to the throne in 1124, and he appointed his tutor John (called Achaius) to the bishopric. In 1136 the church, which was probably chiefly of wood, was dedicated, and King David endowed it further with lands, tithes, and churches. The church of Achaius was destroyed by fire, but through the exertions of Bishop Joceline a society was founded to collect funds for its restoration, and the work was sufficiently advanced for its consecration on 6th July 1197.[52] Although built at different dates, the building has a very homogeneous appearance, and might be mistaken for a building of one period. Under competent guidance,[53] we now propose to give a short sketch of the cathedral itself. The first attempt to erect a cathedral was made by Bishop Achaius, whose episcopate extended from 1115 to 1147, and Mr. Honeyman regards the portion of the lower church at the south-west angle as the most ancient part of the structure. He holds that the church built by Achaius was restored by Bishop Joceline (1175-1199) at the end of the twelfth century, and that the above portion formed a chapel, and was part of that restoration. The strongest argument is its nearness to the tomb of the patron saint. If we assume that the old choir terminated in a semicircular apse, projecting eastward beyond the aisles, we shall find that the tomb would be enclosed in such a position as to admit of the high altar being placed immediately over it. Assuming that the choir was not apsidal but square, we get the same result. The probability is that the end of the church erected or altered by Joceline was square, and that it projected two bays beyond the aisles, as at St. Andrews and other churches of the same period.[54] The crypt, or, strictly speaking, "lower church," was evidently suggested by the sloping eastward character of the site, which would have placed St. Mungo's tomb at a depth below the level on which a large church could possibly be built; while Achaius, from his long residence in Italy, would be led to imitate some notable Italian examples.[55] Some similarities between Glasgow and Jedburgh (which was in the diocese of Glasgow) have suggested that there was in the olden times such a servant of the church as a diocesean architect.[56] "One thing is abundantly clear," says Mr. Honeyman, "to any one who intelligently studies the building, namely, that the whole design was carefully thought out and settled before a stone was laid. It is a skilful and homogeneous design, which could only be produced by a man of exceptional ability and great experience. Nothing has been left to chance, or to the sweet will of the co-operating craftsman, but the one master-mind has dictated every moulding and every combination, and has left the impress of his genius upon it all. The mark of the master may be discerned by the practised eye in every feature of the magnificent edifice; the marks of the craftsmen may be seen on the work they were told to do, and did so well."[57] To Bishop Joceline is due the credit of having formed a society to collect funds for the restoration of Bishop John's church, which was burnt by fire,[58] and he appears to have rebuilt the choir, and also to have designed, if he did not also partly build, the nave.[59] This part of his work was sufficiently advanced for consecration on 6th July 1197.[60] The work was probably continued by his successors, but the next great benefactor of the cathedral was Bishop William de Bondington (1233-1258), who perfected Joceline's work, and built both choir and lower church or "crypt," as they now are.[61] According to Mr. Honeyman, the foundations of the nave were laid and part of the walls was carried up before the building of the choir was begun.[62] Most of the nave appears, from its architecture, to have been erected at the end of the thirteenth, or the beginning of the fourteenth century, and is pronounced to form "one of the finest examples of the late First Pointed or Early Decorated style in Scotland."[63] "The spacing (of the piers) is that of the twelfth century (considerably less than that of the choir), while the height and the treatment, in other respects, is that of the latter portion of the thirteenth."[64] Bishop Wishart during the war of Independence supported the Scottish party; he obtained permission from Edward I. to cut timber in Luss forest for erecting the spire of the cathedral, and it was one of the causes of accusation against him, which led to his imprisonment in England, that he had used the said timber not for building the spire but for making engines of war wherewith to attack Edward's army. In 1400 the wooden spire of the cathedral was destroyed by lightning, but a new tower of masonry was erected over the crossing by Bishop Lauder (1408-1425), who carried the work as high as the main parapet. "This bishop appears also to have begun the completion of the chapter-house, a detached structure lying to the north-east of the choir. The walls of this building were partly erected about the time of the construction of the choir, but were afterwards raised to two storeys in height, and vaulted by Bishop Cameron."[65] This latter prelate (1426-1446) was known as "the Magnificent," from the splendour of his retinue and court. He erected the stone spire above the tower of Bishop Lauder, and also completed the chapter-house wing containing the sacristy on the upper floor, and the chapter-house on the ground floor. His arms are still to be seen on the portions of the structure erected by him. The beautiful rood-screen was also probably constructed by him.[66] Bishop Cameron also increased the number of prebendaries from seven to thirty-two, and ordained that they should all have manses and reside near the cathedral. In his day the episcopal court was said to rival that of the King, and he built the great tower of the castle or episcopal palace, which was probably erected by Bishop Bondington and stood with the garden in the open space between the cathedral and the present Castle Street, now called Infirmary Square. The Bishop's palace was a Scottish baronial structure, and had an elaborate turreted gateway or port at the south-east angle of the wall nearly opposite the gate that now leads to the cathedral yard.[67] Bishop William Turnbull, who succeeded Bishop Cameron, held office from 1448 to 1454. He did not add much to the cathedral, but his memory ought to be gratefully remembered, for in response to his representation and that of the King, Pope Nicholas V. issued his bull, on 7th January 1450-1451, by which he erected the University, ordaining that it should flourish in all time to come, as well in theology and canon and civil law as in the arts and every lawful faculty, and that the doctors, masters, readers, and students might there enjoy all the liberties, honours, exemptions, and immunities granted by the Apostolic see to the doctors, masters, and students in the University of Bologna. He gave the power to confer degrees and make licentiates--an important recognition in those days, for it brought the influence of the Church on the side of schools of learning, and gave universal European validity to the degrees so conferred.[68] The Bishop of Glasgow was the patron and head of the University of Glasgow, which was thus founded forty years after that of St. Andrews, and forty years before that of Aberdeen. The next prelate, Bishop Andrew Muirhead (1455-1473) took an important part in the State affairs of the period, and as far as his work in the cathedral is concerned, built the hall of the choral vicars. It is situated between the two buttresses at the west end of the north aisle of the choir, and is a low building now roofed with flags. It was called the "aula vicariorum chori," and was built as an accommodation for the vicars choral, whose duties were to serve and sing in the choir. They were formed into a college by Bishop Muirhead, were originally twelve in number, but were afterwards increased to eighteen, and were aided by boy choristers. Archbishop Eyre thinks that this building on the north side of the cathedral was the early song-school of the church, which passed into the hands of the college of vicars choral, and was a hall for their business meetings and musical practice, the second storey being probably their reading-room, or the sleeping-place of the sacristan, who was required to sleep in the church.[69] Robert Blacader (1484-1508) was high in favour with King James IV., and was one of the embassy sent to England to arrange the marriage of the Scottish monarch with the daughter of Henry VII. James had previously sought consolation under the Bishop's care, enrolled himself as a prebendary in the cathedral, and in person attended as a member of the cathedral-chapter. The King was always favourable to Glasgow, and did not desire the see to be subordinate to that of St. Andrews. He urged upon the Pope that the pallium should be granted to the Bishop of Glasgow, whose cathedral, he urged, "surpasses the other cathedral churches of my realm by its structure, its learned men, its foundation, its ornaments, and other very noble prerogatives." A bull was granted in 1491-1492 by Pope Innocent VIII. in which he declared the see to be metropolitan, and appointed the bishops of Dunkeld, Dunblane, Galloway, and Argyll to be its suffragans.[70] Blacader was the first Archbishop of Glasgow, and beautified his cathedral by building or adorning the fine rood-screen which separates the nave from the choir[71] by founding altarages and erecting two altars in front of the rood-screen, on both of which his arms and initials are carved.[72] He built also the decorated flights of steps from the aisles of the nave to the choir, and partly erected the building in continuation of the south transept, called Blacader's aisle, but it was never carried higher than the ground storey or crypt.[73] It is also known as Fergus's aisle.[74] Archbishop Blacader was the last to add to the cathedral, and there is reason to believe that his addition occupies the site of the cemetery consecrated by St. Ninian, and thus the earliest consecration and the latest building effort are identified with the same spot.[75] Glasgow, like Elgin, Aberdeen, and Brechin, possessed originally two western towers, but at Glasgow, grievously and unfortunately, the south-west tower was removed in 1845, and the north-west one in 1848 by the Restoration Committee. They were venerable in their antiquity, and were probably built after the completion of the nave and aisles, if not at the same time. Evidence showed "that probably the north-west tower was part of the original design, or if not, that its erection was resolved on before the north aisle was completed, and it was built before the west window of the north aisle required to be glazed. The south-west tower was probably of the same date."[76] The latter was best known as the consistory house, and was the place where the bishops held their ecclesiastical courts and the diocesan records were kept. The only comfort amid the demolition of the towers is that the proposed new ones were not erected in their place; and better counsel ought to have prevailed, since Mr. Billings described the removal as an act of barbarism. "All who now see the grand old building, shorn of its cathedral features, and made like a large parish church, mock and laugh at the action of the local committee, saying, "These men had two towers, and they went and pulled them both down.""[77] The higher church had twenty-four altars or chapels;[78] the lower church, commonly but incorrectly called the crypt, had six altars;[79] the high altar occupied the usual place, was dedicated to St. Kentigern, had a wooden canopy or tabernacle work over it, and in front of it, on the right-hand side, was the bishop's throne.[80] When it is recalled that the cathedral possessed these thirty altars or chapels (most of them beautiful works of art), thirty-two canons, college of choral vicars, with other assistants, one can well understand the great, almost dangerous power which the "Spiritual Dukedom" possessed, and the dread, felt even by its own chapter, when it was first proposed to make the bishopric into an archbishopric, for they regarded the movement as conferring too much power on the bishop.[81] A conception of the archbishop's power may be formed by recalling that the archdeaconry of Glasgow contained the following deaneries--Nycht, Nith, or Dumfries, with 31 parishes, besides 2 in Annandale and 8 in Galloway; Annandale, 28 parishes, besides 8 in Eskdale; Kyle, 17 parishes; Cunningham, 15; Carrick, 9; Lennox, 17; Rutherglen, 34; Lanark or Clydesdale, 25; Peebles or Stobo, 19; the archdeaconry of Teviotdale, 36 parishes.[82] Besides the prelates already mentioned there were, as the direct successors of Blacader, James Beaton (1508-1522), afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews; Gavin Dunbar (1524-1547); James Beaton, the last Roman Catholic archbishop, who at the Reformation retired to France with the writs of the see, which were deposited, by his directions, partly in the archives of the Scots College, and partly in the Chartreuse of Paris, and have been since published by the Maitland Club.[83] Among the Protestant archbishops space will only permit us recording the names of John Spottiswood (1612-1615) and Robert Leighton (1671-1674).[84] Glasgow has passed through the various stages of burgh, burgh of barony, burgh of regality, city, royal burgh, and county of a city.[85] But it grew under the protection of the Church, for as David I. granted to Bishop John of St. Andrews the site of the burgh of that name, so William the Lion granted to Bishop Joceline of Glasgow the right to have a burgh in Glasgow, with all the freedoms and customs which any royal burgh in Scotland possessed.[86] Glasgow thus owed its existence to the Church, under whose fostering care it developed for centuries, and the ruling ecclesiastic elected the provost, magistrates, and councillors. Its motto still is "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word," and its seal emblems have been thus interpreted: "The employment of these four emblems (fish, bird, tree, bell) in connection with St. Kentigern was meant to convey that he was sent as a fisher of men, that his work from small beginnings grew to very large dimensions, 'like to a grain of mustard-seed, ... which is the least indeed of all seeds, but when it is grown up ... becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in the branches thereof'; and that his name and fame became so great that he was heard of everywhere. 'Verily their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world.'"[87] The most beautiful features of the exterior are pronounced to be the doorways, especially those of the lower church,[88] the vaulting of which was said by Sir Gilbert Scott to contain nowhere two compartments in juxtaposition which are alike.[89] It has been suggested that the motive of the architect was to reproduce, as nearly as circumstances permitted, the plan of Solomon's Temple, and the arrangement corresponds exactly.[90] The beauty of the lower church is much obscured by the dark stained glass in the windows, and it is matter for regret that this masterpiece of design and wonderful variety of effect[91] are not more visible. "The plan of the cathedral," says Mr. Honeyman, "is remarkably compact, and the exterior is symmetrical and harmonious. The best points of view are from the north-east and the south-east. From either of these points the full height of the structure is seen, and that is sufficiently great to give the building a dignified and impressive effect, the height from the ground-level to the apex of the choir gable being 115 feet. The well-proportioned short transept breaks the monotony of the long clerestory, without unduly hiding it, as transepts with more projections do. The gable of the choir, with its four lancets, rises picturesquely over the double eastern aisles, while the sombre keep-like mass of the chapter-house adds a romantic element to the effect of the whole composition, which culminates gracefully in the lofty spire. The pervading characteristic is simplicity, and the effect solemnising. Sir Walter Scott, with his usual quick perception of _character_ in buildings, as well as in man, puts an admirable reference to these salient points into the mouth of Andrew Fairservice, who exclaims, 'Ah! it's a brave kirk; nane o' yer whigmaleeries an' curliwurlies, an' open-steek hems about it.' It may, indeed, be called severe, but not tame."[92] Internally the cathedral has a nave of eight bays, with side aisles; transepts, not projecting beyond the aisles; a choir of five bays, with side aisles and an aisle at the east end, with chapels beyond it. At the north-east corner of the choir is the sacristy or vestiarium; below it is the chapter-house, with an entrance from the lower church; on the south side of the church, as a continuation of the transept, is another low church or crypt, called "Blacader's Aisle"; on the north side are the foundations of a large chapel. Over the crossing rise the tower and spire, 217 feet high. The church within is 283 feet long by 61 feet broad.[93] The history of the cathedral is closely connected with many of the stirring events in Scottish history. King Edward prostrated himself before its altar; Robert the Bruce within it received absolution, "while the Red Cumyn's blood was scarce yet dry upon his dagger"; and within its walls was held the Glasgow Assembly of 1638, when the Episcopate was abolished, and the Presbyterian government was restored. Robert Leighton has preached within its choir, in his low, sweet voice, and with those angelic strains of eloquence and devotion which lingered in the memory of his hearers to their dying day. 3. DIOCESE OF DUNKELD Dunkeld is situated amid lovely scenery, and was from the earliest times a religious centre. The name means fort of the Culdees. After the destruction of Iona by the Norsemen in the beginning of the ninth century, Dunkeld became the seat of the Columban authority in Scotland, and part of the relics of St. Columba were brought here by King Kenneth Macalpine in 850. Its abbot was named Bishop of Fortreum, but in 865 the primacy was transferred to Abernethy, and thence to St. Andrews in 908. One of the lay abbots at Dunkeld married a daughter of Malcolm II., and through the influence of their descendants the religious order in Scotland was changed. Emerging as great secular chiefs, these lay abbots weakened, if they did not destroy, the ecclesiastical foundation. The bishopric was revived by Alexander I. in 1107, and prior to the thirteenth century was not confined to Atholl, but extended to the western sea, and included the districts stretching along its shores from the Firth of Clyde to Lochbroom, and forming the province of Argyll.[94] The western part was separated about 1200, and formed into a new bishopric, termed first that of Argyll, and afterward that of Lismore.[95] Cormac, the Culdee abbot, was the first bishop under the new order, and among his successors may be mentioned Bishop Sinclair (1312-1338), the friend of Bruce, and a "man of courage, the champion of the Church, and the brave defender of the constitution of the kingdom";[96] Bishop Lauder (1452-1476), who filled the see "with unfading honour,"[97] and built a bridge across the Tay, as well as adorned the cathedral; George Brown (1485-1514), who divided the see into four deaneries, procured Gaelic preachers,[98] promoted clerical efficiency, enlarged the palace at Dunkeld, and built the castle of Cluny;[99] Gavin Douglas (1516-1522), "a noble, learned, worthy bishop,"[100] who translated the _Æneid_ into Scots verse, and thus in a barbarous age, Gave to rude Scotland Virgil's page. The diocese had four deaneries: (1) Atholl and Drumalbane, with 47 parishes; (2) Angus, with 5; (3) Fife, Fotherick, and Stratherne, with 7; (4) South Forth, with 7.[101] Canon Myln's quaint _Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld_ professes to give an account of the building of the cathedral, and it appears that the existing structure is chiefly of the fifteenth century.[102] It consists of an aisleless choir, a nave with two aisles, a north-west tower, and a chapter-house to the north of the choir. It appears that the different parts of the structure were begun at the dates given by Abbot Myln, but were not completed until some time afterwards.[103] All are Third Pointed in style except the choir, which retains some scanty portions of First Pointed work. The following are given as the approximate dates of the original construction: choir (1318-1400); nave (1406-1465); chapter-house (1457-1465); tower (1469-1501). The episcopal palace was a little south-west of the cathedral, which contained many valuable ornaments and vessels, a painted reredos, and in its great tower two large bells, named St. George and St. Colm (Columba). At the Reformation in 1560, the cathedral suffered the common fate of most of such structures, although Argyll and Ruthven, in requiring the lairds of Airntully and Kinvaid "to purge the kirk of all kinds of monuments of idolatry," requested them also "to tak good heid that neither the desks, windocks, nor doors be onyways hurt or broken, either glassin work or iron work." The closing injunction was not observed, and the roofs were also demolished. In 1600 the choir was re-roofed, and is the present parish church. But the ruins still speak of the former grandeur of this old church-town, and perhaps a like day may yet dawn for Dunkeld, as has been seen at Dunblane. 4. DIOCESE OF ABERDEEN The earliest ecclesiastical history of Aberdeen is connected with St. Machar (a disciple of St. Columba), who preached the Gospel among the Northern Picts and settled on the banks of the Don, founding there both a Christian colony and a church, which, from its situation, was called the Church of Aberdon. Another band of Columban missionaries established themselves in the sequestered vale of the Fiddich, at Morthlac, and in the beginning of the twelfth century the "Monastery of Morthlach" possessed five dependent churches.[104] The tradition that there was a bishopric at Murthlack or Morthlach is not founded on reliable evidence, and is discredited by Dr. Cosmo Innes[105] and Dr. Skene.[106] What David I. did was to graft on the Culdee monastery of St. Machar the chapter of a new diocese, and in this manner the bishopric was founded before 1150, and endowed with old Culdee possessions, among others with the "Monastery of Morthlach" and its five churches.[107] The third bishop, Matthew de Kininmond, began to build a cathedral between 1183 and 1199 to supersede the primitive church then existing,[108] "which (new building), because it was not glorious enough, Bishop Cheyne threw down."[109] The second edifice was begun by Bishop Cheyne about 1282, and the work was interrupted by the Scottish war with Edward I. during the bishop's absence in temporary banishment. "The king (Bruce) seeing the new cathedral he had begun, made the church to be built with the revenues of the bishopric."[110] The cathedral thus built was thrown down in turn by Bishop Alexander Kininmond, who succeeded in 1355 and began the present cathedral about 1366. "Of his operations there remain two large piers for the support of the central tower, which form the earliest portion of the structure of St. Machar's now remaining."[111] The dean and chapter (of which Barbour, the father of Scottish poetry, was a member) taxed themselves for the fabric in sixty pounds annually for ten years; the bishop surrendered revenues worth about twice that sum; the Pope in 1380 made a grant of indulgences to all who should help the work. All these appliances but availed to raise the foundations of the nave a few feet above ground.[112] Forty years elapsed before Bishop Leighton (1422-1440) completed the wall of the nave, founded the northern transept, and reared the two western towers.[113] Bishop Lindsay (1441-1459) paved and roofed the cathedral; it was glazed by Bishop Spens (1459-1480). Bishop Elphinstone (1487-1514), who founded King's College in 1500, and who was "the most distinguished of all who ever filled the episcopal chair," ... and possessed "manners and temperance in his own person, befitting the primitive ages of Christianity,"[114] adorned the cathedral. He built the great central tower and wooden spire, provided the great bells, and covered the roofs of nave, aisles, and transept with lead.[115] This central tower was four storey high, and square, and had two battlements and fourteen bells; it was a noted landmark to mariners at sea.[116] Bishop Gavin Dunbar (1519-1531) built the southern transept, added spires to Leighton's towers, and constructed at his own "pains and expenses" the flat ceiling of oak, which still remains with the heraldries of the Pope, the Emperor, St. Margaret, the kings and princes of Christendom, the bishops and the earls of Scotland. Bishop Elphinstone began to rebuild the choir, but it never seems to have been finished. Alluding to 1560, Orme says, "The glorious structure of said cathedral church, being near nine score years in building, did not remain twenty entire, when it was almost ruined by a crew of sacrilegious church robbers."[117] The ruins of the choir have been entirely removed; of the transepts only the foundations now remain, the architecture being destroyed by the fall of the central tower in 1688. The nave is nearly perfect, and is used as the parish church. The west front, except the spires, is entirely built with granite, and is regarded as one of the most impressive and imposing structures in Scotland,[118] and as stately in the severe symmetry of its simple design.[119] There is a remarkable entrance doorway, the jambs being mere rounds and hollows, with a flat stone laid along at the springing of the round arch. Above the doorway are seven lofty narrow windows, crowned each with a round and cusped arch, and forming a striking feature of the whole. The clerestory windows are narrow and round arched, without any moulding, while the aisle windows are filled with the simplest tracery. East of the cathedral was the bishop's palace (1470), "a large and fair court, having a high tower at each of its four corners";[120] to the south stood the deanery. Aberdeen was created a city or bishop's see by King David,[121] and the diocese contained five deaneries, with 94 parishes. 5. DIOCESE OF MORAY Previously to Elgin, the see was successively at Birnay, Kinnedor, and Spyny, but without a proper cathedral.[122] Alexander I., shortly after his accession in 1107, founded the bishopric, but it was not till the time of Bricius, the sixth Bishop of Moray, who filled that position from 1203 to 1222, that the bishops had any fixed residence in the diocese.[123] When Bricius became bishop in 1203, he fixed his cathedral at Spyny, founded a chapter of eight secular canons, and gave to his church a constitution founded on the usage of Lincoln, which he ascertained by a mission to England.[124] Andrew de Moravia succeeded him in 1222, and in his time (1224) the transference of the episcopal see and the cathedral of the diocese to Elgin was effected, which had probably been designed and solicited by his predecessor.[125] This bishop probably built the cathedral church, munificently endowed it, increased the number of prebends to twenty-three, of which he held one, and sat as a canon in the chapter.[126] The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity was founded in 1224, on the site of an older church with the same dedication, and the work proceeded under Bishop Andrew's supervision during the eighteen remaining years of his life.[127] The _Register_ of the see shows us "Master Gregory the mason and Richard the glazier" at work in autumn 1237.[128] Of the building itself probably now little is left, for it is recorded by Fordun under the year 1270 that the Cathedral of Elgin and the houses of the canons were burnt, but whether by accident or design he does not add. The ruins now standing probably date from a subsequent period, when there was raised the stately building, of which Bishop Alexander Bur wrote to the king that it was "the pride of the land, the glory of the realm, the delight of wayfarers and strangers, a praise and boast among foreign nations, lofty in its towers without, splendid in its appointments within, its countless jewels and rich vestments, and the multitude of its priests, serving God in righteousness."[129] This description is taken from a letter addressed to King Robert III., complaining that on the feast of St. Botolph, in 1390, the king's own brother, the Earl of Buchan, popularly known as the "Wolf of Badenoch," had descended from the hills with a band of wild Scots, and burned a considerable part of the town of Elgin, St. Giles Church, the Maison Dieu, the manses of the clergy, and the cathedral itself. The bishop appealed for aid and reparation, and the "Wolf of Badenoch" was compelled to yield, but, on condition that he should make satisfaction to the bishop and church of Moray and obtain absolution from the Pope, he was absolved by the Bishop of St. Andrews in the Blackfriars Church at Perth. Notwithstanding his age and feebleness, Bishop Bur energetically pressed on the restoration of the cathedral, and it was continued by Bishops Spynie (1397-1406) and Innes (1406-1421), and even then it was not completed. It thus occupied many years, even though it was promoted by grants of the royal favour, by a third part of the whole revenues of the see being devoted to it for a time, and by yearly subsidies being levied on every benefice in a diocese stretching "from the Ness to the Deveron, from the sea to the passes of Lochaber and the central mountains that divide Badenoch and Athol."[130] Early in the sixteenth century the central tower showed signs of weakness, and had to be rebuilt in 1538. It fell in 1711, destroying the nave and transepts.[131] The Cathedral of Elgin was complete in all arrangements, and had a large nave with double aisles, an extended choir and presbytery, north and south transepts, a lady chapel, and a detached octagonal chapter-house. It had a great tower and spire over the crossing, two beautiful turrets at the east end, and two noble towers at the west end. Most of the existing portions are pronounced to belong to the period when Scottish architecture was at its best.[132] The existing ruins testify to the former splendour of the completed structure, which was said to be a building of Gothic architecture inferior to few in Europe. "Elgin alone," says Dr. Joseph Robertson, "among the Scottish cathedrals of the thirteenth century, had two western towers. They are now shorn of their just height, but still they may be seen from far, lifting their bulk above the pleasant plain of Murray, and suggesting what the pile must have been when the amiable and learned Florence Wilson loved to look upon its magnificence as he meditated his _De Animi Tranquillitate_ on the banks of the Lossie, and when the great central spire soared to twice the altitude of the loftiest pinnacle of ruin that now grieves the eye."[133] The destruction of the cathedral was hastened by the alienation of Church lands by Bishop Patrick Hepburn, among the worst of the bishops; by the Privy Council in 1568 ordering the removal of lead from the roofs; by wind and weather; by Cromwell's troops; by an irrational zeal, which in 1630 broke down the carved screen and lovely wood-work; and lastly by the falling of the central tower, which destroyed the whole nave and part of the transepts. The passing away of such a colossal work of beauty is grievous, and not less so when it is recalled that the cathedral expressed the devoted labour of centuries. According to the latest authorities, the following are the probable dates. The transept was erected about 1224, and may possibly have formed part of the original Church of the Trinity. The western towers followed soon after; the western portal somewhat later. The west part of the north wall of the choir may have been part of the original church, but the general work of choir, nave, and early chapter-house would appear to have been carried out during the thirteenth century, and before the Scottish War of Independence. The cathedral, thus completed, remained for about a century, when the "Wolf of Badenoch" deformed or destroyed nave and chapter-house. The west front above the portal and the whole of the nave were reconstructed about the time of Bishop Dunbar (1422-1435), and the chapter-house by Bishop David Stewart (1482-1501). The architecture corresponds with their respective periods, and bears their coats of arms, engraved on each department.[134] Dr. Thomas Chalmers considered the ruins of Elgin to be the finest remains of antiquity in Scotland, and as picturesque in their variety.[135] 6. DIOCESE OF BRECHIN The two bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane were formed from the old Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, in so far as its churches were not yet absorbed by the growing bishopric of St. Andrews, which immediately succeeded it.[136] Abernethy was the last of the bishoprics which existed while the kingdom ruled over by the Scottish dynasty was called the kingdom of the Picts; St. Andrews was associated with that of the Scots.[137] Abernethy was from the earliest days dedicated to St. Bride, and Panbride in the diocese of Brechin, and Kilbride in that of Dunblane, indicate, in Dr. Skene's view, that the veneration of the patroness of Abernethy had extended to other churches included in these dioceses.[138] From this old Pictish diocese the bishopric of Brechin was formed, towards the end of King David's reign, about 1150.[139] The Church of Brechin has no claim to represent an old Columban monastery:[140] its origin as a church is clearly recorded in the Pictish Chronicle, which states that King Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who reigned from 971 to 995, gave "the great city of Brechin to the Lord," founding a church to the Holy Trinity, a monastery apparently after the Irish model, combined with a Culdee college. We hear of it next in two charters of David I. to the Church of Deer, and in the second of these the "abbot" of the first appears as "Bishop of Brechin" (about 1150). The abbacy passed to lay hereditary bishops, and the Culdees were first conjoined with, next distinguished from, and at last superseded by, the cathedral chapter.[141] The early Church of Brechin emanated from the Irish Church, and was assimilated in its character to the Irish monastery. Of the early connection, there still survives at Brechin the famous Round Tower, which now occupies the place of a spire at the south-west angle of the present church. This, with the older one at Abernethy, and the ruined one at Egilshay in Orkney, are the only surviving types in Scotland. There were said to have been four others, which are no longer existing, viz. Deerness in Orkney; West Burray, Tingwall, and Ireland Head, in Shetland.[142] Dr. Skene gives the date of the Abernethy one as about 870, or between that year and the close of the century, and asserts that the date of the Brechin tower can be placed with some degree of certainty late in the succeeding century.[143] Probably it was erected in the reign of Kenneth (971-995), or about 1012, when Brechin was destroyed by the Danes.[144] Egilshay probably dates about 1098.[145] The Brechin tower is capped by a conical stone roof. Dr. Joseph Anderson shows that those round towers are outliers of a group of which Ireland is the home;[146] and they were erected during the time when the Celtic Church was much perplexed by the pillaging attacks of the Danes, that the ecclesiastics might protect their valuable illuminated manuscripts, and other costly possessions. The Brechin one corresponds with the Irish ones, and is built in sixty irregular courses, of blocks of reddish-grey sandstone, dressed to the curve, but squared at neither top nor bottom; within, string-courses divide it into seven storeys, the topmost lighted by four largish apertures facing the cardinal points. A western doorway, 6-2/3 feet from the ground, has inclined jambs and a semicircular head, all three hewn from single blocks, and the arch being rudely sculptured with a crucifix, each jamb with a bishop bearing a pastoral staff, and each corner of the sill with a nondescript crouching animal.[147] The sculpture on the graceful Tower of Brechin was, there as elsewhere, the repetition in stone of the illuminated page of the Celtic scribe, who in turn repeated many of the graceful and varied designs of the pre-Christian worker in bronze and gold,[148] adding to them Christian symbols. Dr. Joseph Anderson finds in the figures of the crouching beast and winged griffin at Brechin a close affinity to the figures of nondescript creatures carved on the early sculptured memorial stones.[149] The cathedral, founded about 1150, and added to at various periods, was originally a cruciform structure, consisting of a five-bayed nave with two aisles, late First Pointed mixed with Second Pointed; a transept formed by an extension of these aisles to the north and south; an aisleless choir (with lancet windows), the ruins of which are a fine example of First Pointed work,[150] and which when complete must have been a very pure and beautiful piece of architecture. The north-west tower was being constructed in the time of Bishop Patrick (1351-1373), but must have been a long time in erection. The western doorway presents the oldest feature of the existing building,[151] and is simple and massive. The tower and spire are pronounced to be the completest and best remaining example of their kind in Scotland.[152] By the alteration of 1806 the choir was reduced, the transepts demolished, new and wider aisles built on each side of the nave, while the outer walls of the aisles were carried to such a height that the whole nave could be covered with a roof of one span, "thus totally eclipsing the beautiful windows in the nave, and covering up the handsome carved cornice of the nail-head quatrefoil description which ran under the eaves of the nave."[153] The cathedral was thus sadly deformed, but plans of restoration have been recently adopted, funds are being raised, and the noble minster will before long be restored to its former grandeur. The diocese contained thirty parishes, and the bishop sat in the chapter as Rector of Brechin, that being his prebend.[154] The Maison Dieu formed part of a hospital, and is an interesting part of First Pointed work. The rector of the Grammar School is still "Praeceptor Domus Dei." 7. DIOCESE OF DUNBLANE Dunblane was an early ecclesiastical centre. Its first church dates back to the seventh century, and seems to have been an offshoot of the Church of Kingarth in Bute, the founder of which was St. Blane, whose name is perpetuated in that of the cathedral town.[155] St. Blane was of the race of the Irish Picts, and "bishop" of the Church of Kingarth which Cathan his uncle had founded. The church at Dunblane seems to have had a chequered history, for the ancient town was burned (844-860) by the Britons of Strathclyde, and in 912 was again ravished by Danish pirates. Bishop Keith thinks there was a college of Culdees at Dunblane,[156] but we do not hear anything about it in history, and the important college was at Muthill, where the Dean of Dunblane afterwards had his seat. Centres of the Celtic Church were also at the neighbouring Blackford, Strageath, and Dunning, and they all served their day, until the new order, inaugurated by Queen Margaret and continued by her successors on the Scottish throne, was established in the district. About 1150, King David I. established the bishopric of Dunblane, and about 1198 Earl Gilbert and his countess introduced canons-regular by the foundation of the Priory of Inchaffray. Under the growing importance of these centres, the possession of the Keledei fell into lay hands, and after 1214 the prior and Keledei of Muthill disappear from the records.[157] The square tower of Dunblane, which still survives, is a relic of the structure erected in the twelfth century,[158] and is one of the group, centred in early Pictavia, revealing characteristics of Norman work, and all connected with the sites of early Culdee establishments. Those north of the Tay are at Brechin and Restennet; those south of it, at St. Andrews (Regulus), Markinch, and Dunblane; Abernethy, Muthill, and Dunning.[159] The lower four storeys of the Dunblane tower form part of the original structure; the two highest are evidently of a late date;[160] the walls are not parallel with those of the nave, and the tower projects into the south aisle from 6 to 7 feet, and may have been associated with an earlier church. The see seems to have fallen into a forlorn condition, for when the learned Dominican, Clement, was bishop (1233-1258), he made a pilgrimage to Rome, and represented to the Pope among other things that "its rents were barely sufficient to maintain him for six months; there was no place in the cathedral wherein he could lay his head; there was no collegiate establishment, and that in this unroofed church, the divine offices were celebrated by a certain rural chaplain."[161] Evidently the fourth part of the tithes of all the parishes within the diocese were given for the support of the bishop and the building of the cathedral, and he left it "a stately sanctuary, rich in land and heritage, served by prebendary and canon." Bishop Clement built the nave, the most beautiful part of the structure, but later in its architecture than the north aisle of the choir or lady chapel, which was originally separated from the choir by a solid wall, in which there never was any opening into the aisle except the small doorway near the east end, which is of First Pointed date.[162] Above the vault there is an upper storey with small two-lighted windows, which may possibly have been used as a scriptorium.[163] The cathedral consists of a nave of eight bays, with north and south aisles, an aisleless choir of six bays, an eastern aisle unconnected with the choir except by a doorway, and the tower attached to the south aisle of nave. The following is a narrative of the building of the cathedral as given by the most recent authorities. "The greater part of the structure is of First Pointed date. The lady chapel may be the oldest part (after the tower), and next to it is the east portion of the nave. The western half of the nave seems to have followed soon after the eastern portion, and is carried out nearly after the same design. The transition tracery in the arcade of the clerestory and west end is very interesting, as showing bar tracery in the act of being formed. This could scarcely have occurred in Scotland before the end of the thirteenth century. The style of the choir is further advanced than the nave, and exhibits some transitional features between First Pointed and Decorated work. The great east window and the large side windows of the choir probably contained tracery more advanced than that of the west end, and may probably date from the fourteenth century. The pinnacles and parapet are of about 1500."[164] The west end, with its doorway, deeply recessed with shafts and mouldings of First Pointed work, with an acutely pointed blind arch on each side with trefoiled head within it; with three lofty pointed windows, each divided into two lights by a central mullion, and with arch-heads filled with cinquefoil and quatrefoils; with north buttress so large as to contain a wheel stair--is the finest part of the cathedral. Above the western window is a vesica, set within a bevilled fringe of bay-leaves arranged zigzagwise, with their points in contact. Of this Ruskin said in his lecture,[165] "Do you recollect the west window of your own Dunblane Cathedral? It is acknowledged to be beautiful by the most careless observer. And why beautiful? Simply because in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf, and because in its decoration it has used nothing but forest leaves. He was no common man who designed that cathedral of Dunblane. I know nothing so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, so far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am acquainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind, that man was content to work under Nature's teaching, and, instead of putting a merely formal dog-tooth, as everybody else did at that time, he went down to the woody bank of the sweet river beneath the rocks on which he was building, and he took up a few of the fallen leaves that lay by it, and he set them in his arch, side by side for ever." Six of the stalls with, and several others without, canopies still survive, and on one of the misereres are the arms of the Chisholm family, surmounted by a mitre. Three bishops of this name presided in Dunblane,[166] and the stalls were probably provided by the first, Bishop James Chisholm, dating between 1486 and 1534. The stalls were probably brought from Flanders, and the carving is spirited and full of grotesque figures.[167] Other bishops, who ought gratefully to be remembered for building done, are Bishop Dermoch (1400-1419) and Bishop Ochiltree (1429-1447). Maurice, Abbot of Inchaffray and Bishop of Dunblane (1320-1347), is described as a man of fervent spirit, who gave great encouragement at the battle of Bannockburn, and was chosen by King Robert the Bruce as his chaplain and confessor.[168] There are some vestiges of the bishop's palace still left to the south-west of the cathedral; and the Bishop's Walk, leading southward not far from the river, and overshadowed by venerable beech trees, will always be associated with Leighton, of whom Burnet wrote, "He had the most heavenly disposition that I ever yet saw in mortal ... and I never once saw him in any other temper but that which I wished to be in, in the last moments of my life."[169] Leighton was Bishop of Dunblane from 1661 to 1670, and chose it as the poorest and smallest of Scotland's sees. At his death he bequeathed to it his library, which is still preserved. Those who wish to understand his devotion and inner life may be directed to Dr. Walter Smith's beautiful poem _The Bishop's Walk_. Until recently, only the choir was used as the parish church, but in 1893 the cathedral was reopened after a complete restoration costing £28,000. The restoration was largely due to the munificent generosity of Mrs. Wallace of Glassingall. The town bears witness to the influence of the cathedral-- A quaint old place--a minster grey, And grey old town that winds away Through gardens, down the sloping ridge To river's brim and ancient bridge, Where the still waters flow To the deep pool below.[170] 8. DIOCESE OF ROSS David I. followed the foundation of the great bishoprics by dividing the country north of the great range of the Mounth into separate sees, and the first of such appears to have been the diocese of Rosemarky or Ross. Makbeth, the first Bishop of Ross, appears as the witness to a charter between 1128 and 1130.[171] The church was founded as a Columban monastery by Lugadius or Moluoc of Lismore before 577, and Bonifacius refounded it in the eighth century, and dedicated the church to St. Peter. The Culdees disappear in the course of history, and instead there emerges a regular cathedral body of canons under a dean.[172] The Bishop of Ross had this peculiarity, that he took his title from the province, and not from the town, where he held his see. When the see was founded by David I., Rosmarkie continued as the cathedral centre, but after the chapter was enlarged by Gregory IX. in 1235, the cathedral site was changed to Fortrose or Chanonry, and the church was dedicated to SS. Peter and Bonifacius. Chanonry is half a mile south-westward from Rosemarkie, and was united with it in 1455 by James II. as a free burgh under the common name of Fortrose. The presence of an educated clergy made the place a centre of culture, and famous schools of divinity and law flourished under the shadow of the cathedral. The undercroft of the sacristy (afterwards enlarged) seems to indicate that the work must have been begun before 1250,[173] but the architecture of the aisle presents a beautiful specimen of the Middle Pointed or Decorated period, and dates before or about the beginning of the fifteenth century.[174] The cathedral, when entire, was a handsome red sandstone building, comprising a nave of four bays, with aisles 14 feet wide and round-headed windows; a choir, with aisles, lady chapel, west tower, quasi-transept, rood-turret, and to the north-east a vaulted chapter-house over a crypt. It stood on level ground, and commanded a fine view of the Moray Firth. When complete it must have been an architectural gem, and its mouldings have been said to show that in whatever other respects these remote parts of Scotland were barbarous, in ecclesiology at least they were on a par with any other branch of the mediæval Church.[175] All that now remains of the cathedral consists of the south aisle of the nave, and the sacristy or undercroft of the chapter-house. No vestige remains of the various manses of the chapter that were within the cathedral precincts. The cathedral suffered at the Reformation, but was repaired by Bishop Lindsay in 1615, and in 1649 was not very ruinous. It would appear that the tradition is correct which says that the masonry of the walls was removed by Cromwell, like that of Kinloss Abbey, to provide material for the construction of his fort at Inverness. In the south wall there is a beautiful piscina, and in the north wall an ambry with a small stone penthouse; an octagonal baptismal font of remarkable design stands against the east wall of the aisle. There is a range of canopied monuments, which stand between the pillars on the north side. The east end had a large traceried window of five lights, and when complete it must have been very beautiful. The most famous of the bishops was John Leslie (1527-1596), who studied at King's College, Aberdeen, at Paris, and at Poitiers. He held offices both in the Aberdeen University and in the State, and in 1566 Queen Mary bestowed on him the Abbey of Lindores _in commendam_, and subsequently appointed him Bishop of Ross. He was a zealous supporter of Queen Mary, and, after her flight to England, followed her, and never afterwards returned to reside in Scotland. He was imprisoned in the Tower,[176] where he wrote two small books for her spiritual profit, which Queen Mary liked and endeavoured to turn into French verse. After his release he retired to France, where he wrote his _History of Scotland_. On the day before her execution, Queen Mary wrote to Philip of Spain, beseeching him to show kindness to the Bishop of Ross for his faithful and devoted services to her. The request was complied with, and he was able to end his days tranquilly in a monastery near Brussels. It is said that the bishop persuaded the Queen in 1565 to grant to all men a liberty of conscience.[177] 9. DIOCESE OF CAITHNESS The early history of the Church in Caithness points to a time before the Northmen had any footing there, and connects it with the missionaries of Ireland and Scotland. The legend of St. Finbar or St. Barr marks the settlement of some Irish colonists, who brought with them the veneration they had rendered in their old country to the patron saint of their tribe or province.[178] SS. Duthac and Fergus are also associated with the church of the district during the Celtic period, and during the time of the former Keledei they may have been introduced here. The early church of Dornoch was dedicated to St. Bar or Finbar, and before 1196 the Culdees had disappeared, and the clerical element was reduced to a single priest.[179] The deed establishing a cathedral chapter of ten canons, with dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, and archdeacon, proceeds on the narrative "that in the times of his (Bishop Gilbert's) predecessors there was but a single priest ministering in the cathedral, both on account of the poverty of the place and by reason of frequent hostilities; and that he desired to extend the worship of God in that church, and resolved to build a cathedral church at his own expense, to dedicate it to the Virgin Mary, and, in proportion to his limited means, to make it conventual."[180] This benefactor of Dornoch was Bishop Gilbert de Moravia (1222-1245), who organised the chapter after the pattern of Elgin, which again had Lincoln for its model; and although the see of Caithness is first heard of about 1130, to him is due the credit of rebuilding the cathedral, which consisted of an aisled nave, transept, choir, and massive central tower, with dwarfish spire. The old cathedral town, with its society of learned churchmen, maintaining a high position by their influence and example, cultivating letters, preaching peace and practising it, must have been a centre of good in the north, and Bishop Gilbert's name deserves to be honourably remembered for his statesmanship, beneficence, and Christian character. "He rests," says the breviary of Aberdeen, "in the church which he built _with his own hands_"; even the glass was manufactured at Cyderhall under his personal supervision.[181] The tower is all that remains of Bishop Gilbert's work, for the cathedral was burnt in 1570; the tower escaped with some fine Gothic arches which fell before the terrific gale of 5th November 1605--the day on which the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. In 1614 the 13th Earl of Sutherland partially repaired the cathedral, to make it available for the parish church, and in 1835-1837 it was rebuilt by the Duchess of Sutherland at a cost of £6000. It had thus the misfortune to be restored at a time when church restoration in Scotland was at its lowest ebb. "The blame really attaches to those whom she entrusted with the execution of her design."[182] The structure is now used as the parish church of Dornoch. The square tower of the bishop's palace still survives. 10. DIOCESE OF GALLOWAY The name of Whithorn is a venerable one in Scottish Church history. It is mentioned by Ptolemy, the Alexandrian geographer, in the second century as Leukopibia, a town of the Novantae. The Greek name is synonymous with the Latin Candida Casa or "White House," under which designation it was latterly known. It is associated with the first known apostle of Christianity in Scotland, St. Ninian, who was probably born here about the middle of the fourth century. Of studious and ascetic habits, he visited Rome, and on his homeward journey visited St. Martin of Tours, who died in 397. After his arrival in Scotland, he founded the Candida Casa or Church of Whithorn, dedicated it to St. Martin, and, although Christianity was probably known in Scotland before his time, his work is the first distinct fact in the history of the Scottish Church. After preaching the Gospel among the Southern Picts, he died in 432, and was buried within his church at Whithorn. It is a matter of dispute, whether this first Christian oratory was built, after the custom of the early Scottish Church, on a small island or peninsula at the point of the promontory which lies between the bays of Luce and Wigtown, about three miles south from Whithorn, or on the spot where the monastery afterwards arose. There are the ruins of a small chapel on "The Isle," and although belonging to a later date, it is more than probable that it was the successor of St. Ninian's first church. Whithorn was famous also for its early schools and monastery, and exercised no small influence in Christianising both the surrounding district and Northumbria, or what is now known as the northerly parts of England. A bishopric of Whithorn was founded by the Angles in 727, was held by five successive bishops, and came to an end about 796, when the disorganisation of the Northumbrian kingdom enabled the native population to eject the strangers and assert their own independence. During the reign of David I. (1124-1153), Fergus, Lord of Galloway, re-established the see of Galloway, and founded at Whithorn a Premonstratensian priory, whose church became the cathedral, and contained the shrine of St. Ninian. The see included the whole of Wigtownshire and the greater part of Kirkcudbrightshire; the bishop remained under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of York till at least the fourteenth century, and in 1472 became suffragan of St. Andrews. In 1491, when Glasgow became a metropolitan see, the Bishop of Galloway became a Vicar-General of it during vacancies. The canons of Whithorn Priory formed the chapter of the see of Galloway, and the prior ranked next to the bishop; the diocese was divided into three rural deaneries. The shrine of St. Ninian became a place of pilgrimage for people from all parts of Scotland, and was visited by Scottish queens and kings--James IV. visited it generally once and frequently twice a year throughout his whole reign. The priory became wealthy, and the church and other buildings were of great extent. Among its priors may be mentioned Gavin Dunbar (1514), who was tutor to James V. and afterwards Archbishop of Glasgow; and James Beaton, who was prior and afterwards Bishop of Galloway, was advanced to the archbishopric of Glasgow in 1509, and of St. Andrews in 1522. The buildings of the priory are now reduced to the nave--an aisleless structure--and to some underground vaulted buildings, which no doubt formerly supported the choir and other erections above.[183] The west tower fell in the beginning of last century; the cloister lay to the north of the nave; the chapter-house, slype, and site of domestic buildings extended to the north of the transept. The north wall of the nave interior contains two pointed recesses for monuments, which are of excellent design. At the south-west angle of the nave is a doorway which is undoubtedly Norman,[184] and the sculptures on the right and left of the projecting wall point to a close affinity between the sculptured figures on the ancient stones and the architecture of the twelfth century in Scotland.[185] The ancient font, probably of Norman date, bowl-shaped, and of simple design, has been preserved in the church, and St. Ninian's Cave--probably a place of religious retirement--about three miles south-east of the village, contains some very old stone crosses, and on its east wall some very old inscriptions, a number of which are partly unintelligible by being covered with more recent ones. The neighbourhood will always be associated with St. Ninian, the apostle of the Britons and of the Southern Picts, and may be called the historical fountain-head of the Scottish Church. 11. DIOCESE OF LISMORE OR ARGYLL Lismore is an ancient settlement, and is the Epidium of Ptolemy, one of his five Ebudae.[186] The island lies near the south end of Loch Linnhe, and at a short distance from the mainland of Argyllshire. The bishopric was formed about 1200 by the separation of the districts, belonging to the bishopric of Dunkeld, which lay to the west of the great range of Drumalban. Eraldus was the first Bishop of Argyll, and had his seat at Muckairn, while his church bore the name of Killespeckerill, or the church of Bishop Erailt.[187] It is possible that some of the Keledei from Dunkeld may have accompanied the new bishop and been established there. In 1236 the see was transferred from Muckairn, on the south side of Loch Etive, to Lismore, where, long before, a Columban monastery had been founded by St. Lughadh or Moluoc. The see was afterwards known as the bishopric of Lismore, and contained the following deaneries: Kintyre, with twelve parishes; Glassary or Glasrod, with thirteen; Lorn, with fourteen; and Morvern, with eight.[188] The cathedral was perhaps the humblest in Britain, and was probably erected soon after the transference of the see in the thirteenth century. It is said to have been a structure 137 feet long by 29-1/3 wide, but of this there only now survives an aisleless choir, with traces of a chapter-house and sacristy; and, as re-roofed in 1749, this choir now serves as a parish church. It has four buttresses of simple form against the south wall, and two at each of the north and south angles of the east wall. In the south wall, and in the usual position near the east end, there are remains of a triple sedilia; there is a piscina in a pointed recess, having a trefoil-headed niche in the wall behind.[189] One of the deans of Lismore, Sir James MacGregor, between 1512 and 1540, compiled a commonplace book, filled chiefly with Gaelic heroic ballads, several of which are ascribed to the authorship of Ossian. 12. DIOCESE OF THE ISLES The history of Iona is associated with St. Columba, and, although its church did not attain full cathedral status until 1506, the island was one of the earliest centres of Christianity in Scotland. St. Columba (Columcille or Colm) was born at Gartan, County Donegal, 7th December 521, and was the son of a chief related to several of the princes then reigning in Ireland and the west of Scotland. He studied under St. Finnian at Moville, and under another of the same name at Clonard. In 546 he founded the monastery of Derry, and in 553 that of Durrow. The belief that he had caused the bloody battle of Culdremhne led to his excommunication and exile from his native land, and, accompanied by twelve disciples, he left Ireland and sailed for the Western Islands, settling ultimately at Iona, where he and his companions began their work among the heathen Picts. The legend of his perpetual exile seems to be a fable, and Dr. Skene adds, "His real motive for undertaking this mission seems therefore to have been partly religious and partly political. He was one of the twelve apostles of Ireland who had emerged from the school of Finnian of Clonard, and he no doubt shared the missionary spirit which so deeply characterised the monastic Church of Ireland at that period. He was also closely connected through his grandmother with the line of the Dalriadic kings, and, as an Irishman, must have been interested in the maintenance of the Irish colony in the west of Scotland. Separated from him by the Irish Channel was the great pagan nation of the Northern Picts, who, under a powerful king, had just inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Scots of Dalriada, and threatened their expulsion from the country; and, while his missionary zeal impelled him to attempt the conversion of the Picts, he must have felt that, if he succeeded in winning a pagan people to the religion of Christ, he would at the same time rescue the Irish colony of Dalriada from a great danger, and render them an important service by establishing peaceable relations between them and their greatly more numerous and powerful neighbours, and replacing them in the more secure possession of the western districts they had colonised."[190] It was in 563, and at the age of forty-two, that he settled at Iona and commenced his mission-work by founding his monastery[191] there. He met there "two bishops," who came to receive his submission from him, but "God now revealed to Columcille that they were not true bishops, whereupon they left the island to him, when he told of them their history." They were, thinks Dr. Skene, the remains of that anomalous church of seven bishops which here, as elsewhere, preceded the monastic church, while Columba appears to have refused to recognise them as such, and the island was abandoned to him. Possessed as he was with the soul of a poet, and susceptible to the impressive in nature, Columba could not have chosen a finer spot than Iona for his work, or one where he could better combine with missionary activity a life of purity and self-denial. Tradition says he landed at the bay now known as Port-a-churaich, and proceeded to found the monastery and establish the church which was ultimately to embrace in its jurisdiction the whole of Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde, to be for a century and a half the national church of Scotland, and to give to the Angles of Northumbria the same form of Christianity for a period of thirty years. The buildings that now remain are of much later date, but it may be inferred that in its constitution, spirit, and work the Columban Church was not isolated, but was in reality a mission from the Irish Church, formed an integral part of it, and never lost its connection with it. The principal buildings were constructed of wood and wattles, and were originally (1) a monastery with a small court, on one side of which was the church, with a small side chamber, on a second side the guest-chamber, on the third a refectory, and on the fourth dwellings of the monks; a little way off on the highest part of the ground were (2) the cell of St. Columba, where he sat and read or wrote during the day, and slept at night on the bare ground with a stone for his pillow; and (3) various subsidiary buildings, including a kiln, a mill, a barn, all surrounded by a rampart or rath. Not far off was a sequestered hollow (Cabhan cuildeach) to which Columba retired for solitary prayer. The mill has left its traces in the small stream to the north of the present cathedral ruins, and remains of old causeways may be traced from the landing places of Port-na-martir, Port-Ronan, and Port-na-muintir. All the early buildings, except the kiln, were of wood; the guest-chamber was wattled, Columba's cell was made of planks, and the church was of oak. The members of the community were termed brethren, and were addressed by Columba as familia or chosen monks. They consisted of three classes: (1) the older brethren, who devoted themselves to the religious services of the church, and to reading and transcribing the Scriptures; (2) the younger and stronger working brothers, who devoted themselves to agriculture and the service of the monastery; (3) the alumni or youth, who were under instruction. The dress of the monks consisted of a white tunica or undergarment, over which they wore a camilla, consisting of a body and hood made of wool, and of the natural colour of the material. When working or travelling their feet were shod with sandals; they took a solemn monastic vow on bended knees in the oratorium, were tonsured from ear to ear--the fore part of the head being made bare, and the hair allowed to grow only on the back part of the head. The church of Iona was monastic, and in it we find neither a territorial episcopacy nor a presbyterian parity. The bishops were under the monastic rule, and were, in respect of jurisdiction, subject to the abbot, even though a presbyter, as the head of the monastery; the privilege of the episcopate was not interfered with.[192] The monastery was described as a "gloriosum caenobium." Columba made Iona his centre of activity, but his labours were not confined to it. He travelled with his companions and preached the Gospel as far north as Inverness, where King Brude was converted. He also preached among the Southern Picts, and a church was built at Abernethy by King Gartnaidh, as an outcome of his mission and as a memorial of his labours. He was also a far-seeing statesman, and succeeded in reconciling the feuds of the Northern and Southern Picts, and in making the two kingdoms one. His life was spent in missionary activity and beneficent service, and he died at Iona. The day before his death he "ascended the hill that overlooketh the monastery, and stood for some little time on its summit, and as he stood there with both hands uplifted, he blessed his monastery, saying, 'Small and mean though this place is, yet it shall be held in great and unusual honour, not only by Scotic kings and people, but also by the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations, and by their subjects; the saints also, even of other churches, shall regard it with no common reverence.'" On the following day, at nocturnal vigils, he went into the church, and knelt down in prayer beside the altar, and "his attendant Diormit, who more slowly followed him, saw from a distance that the whole interior of the church was filled with a heavenly light in the direction of the saint," which, as he drew near, quickly disappeared. "Feeling his way in the darkness, as the brethren had not yet brought in the lights, he found the saint lying before the altar," and all the monks coming in, Columba moved his hand to give them his benediction, and died 9th June 597, while "the whole church resounded with loud lamentations of grief." He left behind him an imperishable memory in the hearts of the people converted by him to the Christian faith, and in the national church which he so splendidly helped to build up. He wrote an Altus, and is said to have copied 300 books with his own hand. He was buried at Iona. After Columba's death, the monastery of Iona appears to have been the acknowledged head of all the monasteries and churches which his mission had founded in Scotland, as well as of those previously founded by him in Ireland. It was a centre of light and life, but the monks were not permitted to pursue their work unmolested. The monastery was burned and plundered by the sea-pirates in 795, 798, and 802; in 806 sixty-eight of the community were ruthlessly slain. The monks remaining were filled with fear, and before 807 the relics of St. Columba were carried away to Ireland, and enshrined at Kells. In 818 they were brought back, and the monastery at Iona was rebuilt with stone. The Danes, however, granted little respite, and in 878 the relics were again removed, and were probably placed first at Dunkeld and afterwards at Abernethy,[193] where the primacy was successively established, and a memorial of which exists in the Abernethy round tower. The plundering continued at intervals, and the buildings were more or less ruinous till about 1074, when Queen Margaret "restored the monastery, ... rebuilt it, and furnished it with monks, with an endowment for performing the Lord's work." "One of the present buildings," said the late Duke of Argyll--"the least and the most inconspicuous, but the most venerable of them all--St. Odhrain's Chapel, may possibly be the same building which Queen Margaret of Scotland is known to have erected in memory of the saint, and dedicated to one of the most famous of his companions. But Queen Margaret died in A.D. 1092, and therefore any building which she erected must date very nearly five hundred years after Columba's death; that is to say, the most ancient building which exists upon Iona must be separated in age from Columba's time by as many centuries as those which now separate us from Edward III. But St. Odhrain's Chapel has this great interest--that in all probability it marks the site of the still humbler church of wood and wattles in which Columba worshipped."[194] Shortly afterwards the island passed into the possession of Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, and in 1099 the old order culminated in the death of Abbot Duncan, the last of the old abbots. Under the bishopric of Man and the Isles, the monastery became subject to the Bishop of Drontheim till 1156, when Somerled won it, and once more restored the connection between Iona and Ireland by placing the monastery under the care of the Abbot of Derry. In 1164 the community was represented by the priest, the lector, the head of the Culdees, and the Disertach or the head of the disert for the reception of pilgrims.[195] Somerled appears to have rebuilt the ruined monastery on a larger scale, and about 1203 the Lord of the Isles (Reginald) adopted the policy of the Scottish kings, and founded at Iona a monastery of Benedictine monks (Tyronenses), and at the same time a nunnery for Benedictine nuns, of which Beatrice, sister of Reginald, was first prioress. It is of this Benedictine monastery and nunnery that the present ruins are the remains, and they were formerly connected by a causeway which extended from the nunnery to the monastery. After a struggle, the Culdees seem to have conformed to the new order of Benedictines, and the head of the Culdees was represented by the Prior of Iona, whom we afterwards find in the monastery. Iona was suffragan to the Bishop of Man and the Isles till 1431, when the Abbot of Iona made obedience to the Bishop of Dunkeld. In 1498, the Isles were made suffragan to St. Andrews; in 1506 they passed back to the care of the Bishop of the Isles; and from that date till the Reformation the abbey church became the cathedral church of the diocese. In 1648 Charles I. granted the island to Archibald, Marquis of Argyll,[196] and it still belongs to his descendant, the Duke of Argyll. The diocese contained forty-four parishes. Surrounding the Chapel of St. Oran is a very ancient churchyard, containing beautiful specimens of Highland carved tombstones, and near which reposes the dust of Scotch, Irish, and Norwegian kings and ecclesiastics. The late Duke of Argyll both preserved and restored, and the foundations of the chapels and cloisters have been plainly marked out, and give a clear idea of the original plan of the abbey. The abbey or cathedral, although begun in the twelfth century, took a long time in building, was altered and added to, and is classed with the buildings of the Third Pointed period, as the greater part of the work connected with it belongs to a late date.[197] It is cruciform in shape, consisting of nave, transepts, and choir, with sacristy on the north side of the choir, and aisle on the south. Near the west entrance was a small chamber called St. Columba's tomb. Over the crossing is a square tower, 70 feet high, and supported by arches resting on four pillars. It is lighted on one side by a window formed by a slab with quatrefoil openings, and on the other by a marigold or Catherine-wheel window with spiral mullions. The capitals of the pillars are carved with beautiful ornamentation and grotesque figures, which are still sharp and well defined.[198] There are three sedilia, and the high altar seems to have been of marble. North of the nave is the cloister-garth; to the north and east of the cloisters are the refectory and chapter-house; the building over the chapter-house was the library, which was large and valuable. There were said to be many crosses in Iona; the entire ones are St. Martin's Cross, opposite the west door of the abbey church, and Maclean's Cross, on the wayside between the nunnery and the cathedral. There are the ruins of a small detached chapel to the north-east of the chapter-house, and of another to the west of the cloister: to the north-east of the cloister lie the total ruins of what is called the abbot's house.[199] A short distance north-east of the abbey church, at Cladh-an-diseart, there was found in 1872 a heart-shaped stone, with an incised cross on it, which Dr. Skene is disposed to think was the stone used by St. Columba as a pillow.[200] The ruins of the nunnery, of which Beatrice, sister of Reginald, was the first abbess, and which was apparently erected soon after 1203, consist of a quadrangle about 68 feet square, having the church on the north side, foundations of the chapter-house and other apartments on the east side, and the refectory on the south side. There may have been other buildings on the west side, as the walls are broken at the ends; but if so, they are now removed.[201] The church was an oblong structure, divided into nave and choir, and had a northern aisle extending along both. At a distance of about 30 feet north of the convent church stand the ruins of another building, said to have been the parish church. It was a simple oblong chamber, and was dedicated to St. Ronan.[202] Lovely carved work has been found around the buildings, and these are carefully preserved and have been reproduced in illustration.[203] These designs were probably carved on stone from the beautiful illuminated tracery which the Celtic monks executed in their scriptorium. No ruthless destruction about the Reformation period could deprive Iona of its three great voices of the mountain, the sky, and the sea. That St. Columba's poetic nature and susceptible heart were impressed by them is beyond doubt, for they survive in his poem-- Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailiun On the pinnacle of a rock, That I might often see The face of the ocean: That I might see its heaving waves Over the wide ocean, When they chant music to their Father Upon the world's course: That I might see its level sparkling strand, It would be no cause of sorrow: That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds, Source of happiness: That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves Upon the rocks: That I might hear the roar by the side of the church Of the surrounding sea: . . . . . That I might bless the Lord Who conserves all, Heaven with its countless bright orders, Land, strand, and flood: . . . . . At times kneeling to beloved heaven: At times at psalm singing: At times contemplating the King of Heaven, Holy the chief: At times at work without compulsion; This would be delightful.[204] Thus Iona, the isle of the saints, the lamp lit amid the darkness of the western sea, impressed the founder as he heard its voices. May there soon be added another, the voice of the restored cathedral, connecting the present with a glorious past, carrying us away in thought by its architecture to earlier days, and by its situation to the hour when the great apostle of the Picts first landed on its shores. This may at no distant future be realised, since the late Duke of Argyll gifted the ruined cathedral to the Church of Scotland, which hopes to do for it what has already been done for Dunblane. 13. DIOCESE OF ORKNEY Christianity reached the Orkneys through the labours of the Columban clergy, and there are many traces in the islands that speak of their work. Under the rule of the Norse, in the ninth and tenth centuries any Christian influence that survived from the labours of such early pioneers of the Christian faith must have died out. The first actual Bishop of Orkney was William the Old, who was consecrated in 1102, held the bishopric for sixty-six years, and died in 1168. His see was first at Birsay, and was removed to Kirkwall on the erection of the cathedral in 1137-1152. The Bishop of Orkney was one of the suffragans of the metropolitan see at Throndhjeim, erected in 1154. In 1472 the see of Orkney was placed under the metropolitan Bishop of St. Andrews. The story of the foundation at Kirkwall is as follows. The possession of the Orkneys was divided between two relatives, and about the beginning of the twelfth century two cousins, Hacon and Magnus, shared the government. In 1115 Magnus was treacherously slain at Egilsay by Hacon, who thus obtained the whole earldom. Rognvald, son of Magnus' sister, became a claimant for Magnus' share of the earldom, and vowed that if he succeeded he would erect a "stone minster" in honour of his predecessor St. Magnus, who had been canonised. Rognvald was successful, and fulfilled his vow by founding at Kirkwall a cathedral dedicated to St. Magnus. The building was designed and superintended by the Norwegian Kol, the father of Rognvald; the relics of St. Magnus were brought from Christ's Kirk in Birsay, to be deposited in the cathedral as soon as it was prepared to receive them, and until the work was finished they rested in the Church of St. Olaf, an older edifice which then existed in Kirkwall.[205] "The Cathedral of St. Magnus was thus designed and erected by a Norwegian earl, while the bishopric was under the authority of the Norwegian Metropolitan of Throndhjeim. It is thus practically a Norwegian edifice, and is by far the grandest monument of the rule of the Norsemen in Orkney. In these circumstances, it is not to be expected that the architecture should in every detail follow the contemporary styles which prevailed in Britain, but it is astonishing to find how closely the earlier parts correspond with the architecture of Normandy, which was developed by a kindred race,--the successors of Rollo and his rovers, who settled in that country at an earlier date. There can be little doubt that the Romanesque architecture which prevailed in the north of Europe found its way at a comparatively late date into Scandinavia. The Norman form of that style would naturally follow the same course amongst the kindred races in Norway and Denmark, just as it did in England and Scotland, and from Norway it would be transplanted into Scotland."[206] Kirkwall Cathedral, begun in 1137, was carried on with great expedition, unlike Glasgow Cathedral, which took so long in completion that it gave rise to a proverb, "Like St. Mungo's work, it will never be finished." The Orcadians did their work nobly, and when a difficulty arose as to funds, it was overcome by allowing the proprietors of land in Orkney to redeem their property by a single payment of a sum per acre, paid at once, instead of according to the usual practice, on each succession.[207] Help was received from far and wide, and the building was so liberally sped by the oblations of a past age, that all Christendom was popularly said to have paid tribute for its erection;[208] but the spirit of religion must have been fervid in the islands themselves. The earl who founded the cathedral died after a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. "He had begun his High Church on no mean scale, and it was afterwards greatly enlarged in length. To this circumstance, together with its severe simplicity, its narrowness, its height, and the multiplicity of its parts, must be ascribed the most striking characteristic of the pile--its apparent vastness."[209] It has been doubted if either York or Lincoln gives the _idea_ of greater internal length, though Kirkwall measures less by half than the smaller of these minsters. As pointed out by the latest authorities on the cathedral, its western doorways recall the portals of the cathedrals of France rather than those of England; its interior gives the impression of great size, arising from the height and length of the building as compared with its width; the exterior presents at a glance the changes which have taken place in it, and the layers and masses of different coloured stones tell their own tale; the oldest work (comprising several periods) is constructed with dark slaty stone, having red freestone dressings; the Norman work is observed in the transept and several bays of the nave and choir nearest the transept, while the pointed work is specially noticeable in the eastern half of the choir.[210] The first parts of the cathedral built were the three westmost or Norman bays of the choir, with their aisles, both the transepts, the crossing (afterwards altered) intended to receive a tower over it, and two bays of the nave, which served to form an abutment for the crossing. These portions, where unaltered, are said to be in the earliest style of Norman work in the edifice. The round piers and responds of the choir, the two south piers and one north pier of the nave (with their cushion caps), the main arches (with their label mouldings in the choir and transept), the round arched and labelled windows in choir, transept, and nave, and the interlaced arcades in the nave, all point to a somewhat advanced period of Norman work. The choir originally terminated with a central apse beyond the third pier. The Norman windows of the choir aisle have three external orders, with a label ornament in the outer order; the single shafts have cushion caps; the windows are largely splayed internally.[211] An interlacing arcade of round arches, with single shafts and cushion caps (some with volutes) runs round the north, south, and west sides of the transept. The large arches leading into the east chapels are part of the original structure, but the chapels were built later. The lower string-course of the transept is enriched with a four-leaved flower.[212] After the completion of these portions, attention was given to the continuation of the nave westwards for several bays. The north aisle wall opposite the three bays, west from the crossing, would appear to have been built early.[213] The buttresses are of flat Norman form. The north aisle doorway is pronounced to be Norman in detail, but has been restored at a later date; the south aisle doorway retains its old Norman arch and shafts in the interior, but has been altered externally. The nave piers were probably continued as far as the above doors about this time, with the triforium, but the upper part of the nave walls and the vaulting are later.[214] The transition style is prominently seen in the piers and arches of the crossing, and the windows in the choir nearest the main arches of the crossing, and the triforium openings into the transept, appear to have been altered and rebuilt at the time of this operation. The upper part of the north transept was probably raised and its windows inserted at this time; the raising of the south transept and the introduction of the rose windows is of somewhat later date.[215] This circular window is very similar to that in the east window of the choir. The chapels on the east side of the transept are of the advanced transition period, which, in Orkney, was probably the middle of the thirteenth century.[216] The completion of the nave would be next undertaken.[217] The apse was taken down, and the choir, with its aisles, was extended by three bays eastwards,[218] the style having a resemblance to advanced First Pointed work, with some peculiarities of detail, exhibiting probable French influence from Upsala.[219] The triforium consists of plain, chamfered, semicircular arches and jambs in three orders; the clerestory has simple pointed windows, moulded on sconsion, but without cusps. A vaulting shaft is carried up between the piers.[220] The east end of the cathedral is of First Pointed period, and the great east window fills the whole space available.[221] The three western doorways and the pointed doorway in the south transept are later than the choir;[222] they present the finest examples in Great Britain of the use of coloured stones in the construction.[223] The north doorway and the central doorway of the west front have the colours arranged in concentric rings in the arches, red and yellow alternating. In the south doorway the same colours radiate and alternate, and in the doorway of the south transept the red and yellow stones are arranged chequerwise.[224] They are among the most charming portions of the edifice, and are unique in Scotland. The upper part of the gablet over the centre doorway is of the seventeenth century, and bears the shield of Sir George Hay of Kinfauns, who rented the lands of the bishopric about the beginning of the seventeenth century, the crozier being added to the shield in connection with the lands of the see.[225] The tower has been considerably operated upon in modern times; the old wooden spire was destroyed by lightning in 1671. The parapet and pinnacles are modern, as also the pointed and slated roof--the lower part being of considerable age. The part within the roof of the church is apparently of transition date; the upper part, with the large pointed windows, is probably of fifteenth-century work.[226] There were originally beautiful specimens of wood-work; the canopy over the bishop's throne has disappeared.[227] The tower contains four bells, three of which were given by Bishop Maxwell (1526-1540). The cathedral does not appear to have suffered during the Reformation period, but an attempt made by the Earl of Caithness to destroy it in 1606, during the rebellion of Earl Patrick Stewart and his son, was prevented by the intervention of Bishop Law (sacred be his memory!). The bishop's palace was founded about the beginning of the thirteenth century. Twenty bishops held the see in succession. The diocese contained the archdeaconries of Orkney, with thirty-five parishes, and of Tingwall (Shetland) with thirteen. The church suffered from vandalism in 1701 and 1855, and the east end is used as the parish church. May the northern minster soon be restored and made worthy of its glorious past. Lord Tennyson's son's diary contains the following entry on the Cathedral of St. Magnus: "Gladstone and my father admired the noble simplicity of the church, and its massive stone pillars, but we all shuddered at the liberal whitewash and the high pews."[228] A catalogue of the Bishops of Orkney, by Professor Munch of Christiania, will be found in the _Bannatyne Miscellany_.[229] CHAPTER IV SCOTTISH COLLEGIATE CHURCHES The creation of collegiate churches was a practical endeavour toward ecclesiastical reform in the fifteenth century, when the foundation of monastic establishments ceased. They had no parishes attached to them, and were regulated very much as the cathedrals. They arose with the purpose of counteracting the evils incidental to the monastic system, and were formed by grouping the clergy of neighbouring parishes into a college, or by consolidating independent chaplainries. They were called præposituræ, were presided over by a dean or provost, and the prebendaries were generally the clergy holding adjacent cures. In Scotland, during more recent times, the term "collegiate" was applied to a church where two ministers (as at St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh) served the cure as colleagues, but in the fifteenth century the term had a different and wider significance. Collegiate churches were then an expression of the zeal and munificence that were displayed in the enlargement and decoration of buildings, when all classes vied with each other in the endowment of chaplainries for the maintenance of daily stated service, always including prayers and singing of masses for the souls of their founders, their relations, and benefactors. The collegiate churches were also an evidence from within the Church itself of the need for reform in the great Benedictine and Augustinian abbeys that were then in the ascendant throughout the country. Scotland possessed forty-one collegiate churches, but space will only permit us here to deal with nine of them: Biggar, Bothwell, St. Nicholas (Aberdeen), King's College (Aberdeen), Roslin, Stirling (Chapel Royal), St. Giles (Edinburgh), St. Mary's and St. Salvator's (St. Andrews). _Biggar (Lanarkshire)._--The collegiate parish church of St. Mary was founded in 1545 by Malcolm, third Lord Fleming, for a provost, eight prebendaries, four singing boys, and six bedesmen. It is interesting as being among the latest, if not indeed the last, of the Scottish pre-Reformation churches. It belongs to the Late Pointed period, is cruciform in plan, consists of chancel with apsidal east end, transept, and nave, with square tower and north-east belfry turret over the crossing. There are no aisles. Formerly a chapter-house existed on the north side of the chancel, but it has been removed. The ancient roof was of oak, and the timbers in the chancel were gilt and emblazoned. _St. Bride's Collegiate Church, Bothwell_, was founded by Archibald "the Grim," Earl of Douglas, in 1398, for a provost and eight prebendaries. He endowed and added a choir to the existing parish church. The present church is a fine Gothic building, erected in 1833, with a massive square tower to the height of 120 feet. East of this tower is the choir of the old collegiate church, of the Middle Pointed or Decorated period; it is a simple oblong chamber with a sacristy on the north side. The church, externally divided by buttresses, has four bays with a series of pointed windows in the south wall, and three windows in the north wall. The arch of the entrance doorway in the south wall is elliptic in form. The roof of the church is covered with overlapping stone slabs, which rest on a pointed barrel vault--one of the earliest examples met with. In the sacristy there are a piscina and a locker, and in the south wall of the choir the remains of a triple beautifully carved sedilia and a piscina. The sacristy is roofed with overlapping stone flags supported on a vault. Monuments to the two Archibald Douglases, Earls of Forfar, are in the church. In this church David, the hapless Earl of Rothesay, wedded Marjory, the founder's daughter, in 1400, and one of its provosts was Thomas Barry, who celebrated the victory of Otterburn in Latin verse. It has been recently restored and made worthy of its great past. _New Aberdeen._--The Parish Church of St. Nicholas, said to be the largest mediæval parish church in Scotland, was made collegiate about 1456 by Bishop Ingeram de Lyndesay (1441-1459), and is said to have possessed, besides the vicar, "chaplains to the number of thirty."[230] Its clergy were named the "College of the Chaplains" of St. Nicholas, and after, as before, the institution of this new order the church remained the parish church. Only two portions of the ancient building now remain--the transepts and the crypt at the east end below the choir.[231] The present nave was rebuilt about 1750; the choir was taken down in 1835 and rebuilt in the most tasteless fashion; the walls of the crypt and transepts were all refaced except the north front of the transept, which was altered considerably in the seventeenth century; the central tower was burned in 1874, and the existing central spire was thereafter erected. A carillon of thirty-seven bells has been placed within it. After the Reformation the rood-screen gave place to a wall, and St. Nicholas was divided into two churches, the West consisting of the former nave, the East of the choir, and the Romanesque transept between (known as Drum's and Collison's aisles) serving as vestibule. For the early architecture attention must be confined to the interior of the transept and crypt. The transepts are of the transitional style of the end of the twelfth century; the piers which carry the central tower are of the usual transitional type, having graceful capitals and square abaci supporting round arches; on each side of the north transept there are two original clerestory windows, and one of them has angle shafts, with carved caps and mouldings. The present large north window has remains of its original features, but its tracery is of late work. There is a transition attached shaft with carved cap and square abacus in the low pointed recess. There is only a shaft on one side of the recess, and the pointed arch of this recess, as well as the tomb alongside, below the large window, are of later work.[232] On the west side of the north wall there has been a round arched doorway, and traces of it are yet visible. The crypt is at the east end of the choir, but is on a lower level, and was approached by two stairs, one from the north and another from the south aisle of the choir. Only their round arched openings remain as recesses in the walls of the crypt. The present stairs are modern. The crypt consists of one central and two side aisles, with an eastern apse; it is pronounced to be a very picturesque and interesting structure, and it fortunately escaped being rebuilt, like the rest of the church. It has a groined roof, and the three compartments in the length are separated by pointed arches that spring from moulded caps on octagonal responds. "The opening into the apse has a stunted round arch, and is a prominent example of the love of the Scottish builders for this form of arch all through the Gothic period."[233] Each compartment of the apse has a central boss, and there is a considerable amount of carved woodwork in the crypt--some of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and some later. The choir that was recently taken down superseded an older one, and it is probably to this former choir that references are contained in the _Council Register_ for about a century from 1442. _Old Aberdeen, King's College._--Of Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen (1488-1514) it is said: "With no private fortune, and without dilapidating his benefice, he provided for the buildings requisite for his University and Collegiate Church, and for the suitable maintenance of its forty-two members; and the Cathedral Choir, the King's College, and the old gray bridge spanning the valley of the Dee are monuments to his memory that command the respect of those who have no sympathy with his Breviary, rich in legends of Scottish Saints, and who would scarcely approve of his reformed Gregorian chant."[234] The college was dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary, and being placed under the immediate protection of the King, came to be known as King's College. King James IV. and Bishop Elphinstone endowed it with large revenues. It was a faithful copy of the University of Paris. The Collegiate Church of St. Mary, on the north side of the quadrangle, was consecrated by Edward, Bishop of Orkney, and had eight priests or vicars choral belonging to it, and six singing boys.[235] It was begun in 1500 and finished in 1506, and it was said that all its stones and beams proclaim Bishop Elphinstone their founder, who also presented the chapter with many valuable vestments, vessels, etc. The chapel is a long, narrow building, with a three-sided apsidal east end. It is divided into six bays by projecting buttresses, and has a large window filled with mullions and tracery in each bay on the north side, except the second one from the west, which contains a doorway. Similar large windows are continued in the apse, and there is also one in the east bay of the south side. Over the west doorway there is a large west window of four lights, with solid built mullions and loop tracery enclosed within a round arch.[236] The tower at the south-west corner has massive corner buttresses. It is finished with one of the few crown steeples remaining in Scotland, forming, "with that of St. Giles, Edinburgh, and the Tolbooth, Glasgow, the only three surviving of those which we could at one time boast. The general style of the structure is very similar to that of St. Giles, but in this case there are only four arches thrown from the angles of the tower to the central lantern, while in the case of St. Giles there are eight, which produce a fuller and richer effect.... The part blown down (by a violent storm in 1633) was probably only the lantern on the top of the four arches, the details of this part having a decidedly Renaissance character, and being different from the other parts of the tower. Doubtless the arches themselves would suffer in the crash, and would require repairing and rebuilding in part, which was evidently done, as the date 1634 is carved on the soffit of the crossing. This difference of detail is interesting as showing how persistently these old designers wrought in the style of their time. Although it is evident that the present lantern is not quite the same as the original one, it must be admitted to be an extremely happy and picturesque composition."[237] The chapel suffered both externally and internally in the course of the centuries, but, thanks to the enlightened liberality of Aberdeen citizens and alumni, it has been recently restored under the direction of Dr. Rowand Anderson. In 1823 the choir end was fitted up for worship on the Sundays, and the nave was occupied by the library, which was not removed and located in a building of its own until 1873. The choir screen was then shifted westward from its original position, where its west front formerly bisected the chapel. "In the ideas of Bishop Elphinstone," said the late Principal Sir William Geddes, "and his age, the choir-screen was intended to partition off the sacred _clerus_ from the _non-clerus_ or laity, and, by the predominance of anthems and songs in the choir-service, to image forth the conception of the blest society in heaven, where there is only praise; but the 'Collegium' which he constituted has, through historical causes, given way to the wider society of the 'Congregation,' in which preaching is as prominent as praise, and hence came the removal of the choir-screen westward, so as to accommodate a larger audience than the Collegium proper. This removal the Restoration Committee of 1891 acquiesced in and accepted, but the change is one for which they are not responsible."[238] It will be interesting to give here a brief resumé of what has been stated by the Principal regarding shields and symbolism in the restored chapel. (1) As to the treatment of the floor: no shield has been admitted into the floor but such as represent persons in close relation to the King's College, of a date antecedent to the Scottish Reformation of 1560. When the series is completed, they will be found to represent:-- _Royal Shields_ 1. James IV., the Royal Founder. Motto, _Leo Magnanimus_. 2. Margaret Tudor, his Queen. " _Rosa sine spina_. 3. St. Margaret, Queen of Malcolm " _Crux columbis lex_. III. (Canmore). _Episcopal_ 4. Bishop Elphinston. Motto, _Non confundar_. 5. " Gavin Dunbar. " _Sub spe_. 6. " William Stewart. " _Virescit vulnere virtus_. 7. " John Leslie. " _Memento_. _Literary_ 8. Principal Hector Boece. Motto, _Silva frequens trabibus_. 9. Dean Robert Maitland. " _Consilio et animis._ _In Ante-Chapel_ 1. (North side) _Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae_ (Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy House), Psalm xxvi. 8. 2. (East side) _Initium sapientiae timor Domini_ (The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom), Motto of the University. 3. (South side) _Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum confitemur_ (We praise Thee, O Lord, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord). 4. (West side) _In te Domine speravi: non confundar_ (In Thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me never be confounded). The roof has a continuous system of decoration in colour and floral ornament, except in the four compartments at the extreme east end over the apse, where structural necessities imposed a variation. The central space of the roof is filled with scrolls containing the words, Laus, Potestas, Honor, Gloria, in ecclesiastical letter, varied by insertions of the monogram of the Saviour, I.H.S., at intervals recurring. "Below these, and towards the junction of the roof with walls, appears what may be called a flying scroll of inscriptions, being a series of Latin texts and chants, chiefly from the Vulgate, capable of being read continuously, round the roof, and interrupted only by the apse, which, as explained, has a separate treatment." "In the apse, which, like Scottish apses of that period, is not semicircular, but has three facets, being semi-hexagonal, the frieze inscriptions are the University motto in its two clauses, with Sursum Corda in the centre. These occupy severally the three divisions into which the apse frieze falls, while in the compartments above are the symbolical figures in gold usually associated with the four Evangelists, viz. the Angel of S. Matthew, the Lion of S. Mark, the Ox of S. Luke, and the Eagle of S. John. The flying scroll attached to these figures is the text in Revelation (iv. 8). The band at the springing of the arched roof is variegated by a series of shields or disks, in which the sacred monogram alternates with the emblems of the Passion. The order in which the emblems have been placed is as follows: _West End_ South side ends. North side begins. 15. Moon. 1. Sun. 14. Ladder. 2. Bag of Judas. 13. Spear and Sponge. 3. Lantern. 12. Dice. 4. Cock. 11. Seamless Coat. 5. Scourges. 10. Hammer and Pincers. 6. Pillar and Cords. 9. Three Nails. 7. Crown of Thorns. 8. Cross, I.N.R.I. _East or Apse End_ "The figures of the sun or moon, which are usually represented in the Crucifixion scene, on either side of, and close to, the cross, have here by a certain liberty been made to commence and close the series." ... "Fortunately the fretwork, when reversed, was found, though fragile, to be fairly sound; and, although not all entirely on a uniform pattern, a large section of it, when turned upward, presented the appearance of a series of Pots of Lilies, side by side, a discovery which largely reconciled one to the alteration, inasmuch as this emblem of the Virgin is known to have been not only familiar to, but also a favourite with, the Founder of the College. The King's College, besides, was originally the College of S. Mary." _Chancel and Apse_ The Professorial stalls have for the cresting the emblems of the Seven Virtues, viz. the four cardinal virtues of the Philosophers, and the three celestial virtues, or Graces of the Theologians. The sequence is:-- {1. Justice, symbolised by the Scales and Balance. {2. Courage " " Thistle. {3. Temperance " " Bridle. {4. Prudence " " Compasses (Mariner's and Carpenter's). {5. Faith " " Pillar with Wreath of Victory. {6. Hope " " Anchor. {7. Love " " Flaming Heart. They are repeated in such order on both sides, and the four Cardinal Virtues are towards the west or exterior; the three Theological Virtues toward the east or interior of the apse. On the stall forming the eighth on the south side, there is the monogram of the Alpha and Omega. On the panels of the stalls, "the leading idea sought to be maintained was the representation in sequence of the various emblems of Christ and the Christian life, as drawn from the cornu copiæ of Nature, in the fruits and flowers of the vegetable world, that unfallen portion of creation which the Divine Teacher honoured by drawing from it, and from it alone, His similes and parables. They are severally as follows, commencing from the west:-- 1. The Lily.} 2. The Palm.} 3. The Rose.} 4. The Trefoil. 5. The Vine and Grapes.} 6. The Olive. } 7. The Wheat-ears." } At the eighth panel on the south side, under the [Greek: Alpha] and [Greek: Omega] of the cresting, stands the Pot of Lilies as a symbol of the Virgin. We have given an account of the late learned Principal's paper as appropriate to this history. It shows how art can both express the spirit of the place and become a servant of religion. It illustrates Professor Flint's declaration:--"God as the perfectly good is not only Absolute Truth and Absolute Holiness, but also Absolute Beauty. He is the source, the author, the giver of all beautiful things and qualities. All the beauties of earth and sea and sky, of life and mind and spirit, are rays from His beauty. The powers by which they are perceived are conferred by Him. The light in which they are seen is His light."[239] _Roslin (Mid-Lothian)._--The church was founded in 1450 by Sir William St. Clair, Baron of Roslin and third Earl of Orkney. It was dedicated to St. Matthew, and founded for a provost, six prebendaries, and two choristers. In the quaint language of Father Hay:-- "His adge creeping on him, to the end that he might not seem altogither unthankfull to God for the benefices he receaved from Him, it came in his mind to build a house for God's service, of most curious worke: the which that it might be done with greater glory and splendor, he caused artificers to be brought from other regions and forraigne kingdomes, and caused dayly to be abundance of all kinde of workmen present: as masons, carpenters, smiths, barrowmen, and quarriers, with others. The foundation of this rare worke he caused to be laid in the year of our Lord 1446: and to the end the worke might be the more rare: first he caused the draughts to be drawn upon Eastland boords, and made the carpenters to carve them according to the draughts thereon, and then gave them for patterns to the masons that they might thereby cut the like in stone." He was probably himself the source of the design, and his enlightened liberality attracted to the place the best workmen in Scotland, as well as from parts of the Continent. It has been said by the most recent authorities:-- "The church, so far as erected, is in perfect preservation, and is a charming portion of an incomplete design. It is, in some respects, the most remarkable piece of architecture in Scotland; and had the church been finished in the same spirit as that in which it has been so far carried out, it would have gone far to have realised a poet's dream in stone. When looked at from a strictly architectural point of view, the design may be considered faulty in many respects, much of the detail being extremely rude and debased, while as regards construction many of the principles wrought out during the development of Gothic architecture are ignored. But notwithstanding these faults, the profusion of design so abundantly shown everywhere, and the exuberant fancy of the architect, strike the visitor who sees Rosslyn for the first time with an astonishment which no familiarity ever effaces."[240] The original intention was to complete the building as a cross church, with choir, nave, and transepts, but the choir only has been completed. The transepts have been partly erected, the east wall being carried up to a considerable height, but the nave has not been erected. The church consists of a choir, with north and south aisles, connected by an aisle which runs across the east end, giving access to a series of four chapels beyond it to the east. Beyond the east end of the church, and on a lower level, to suit the slope of the ground, a chapel has been erected that is reached from the south aisle by a stair. It is barrel-vaulted and is lighted by an eastern window. There are ambries in the walls and an eastern altar with a piscina. There are also a fireplace and a small closet on the north side. On the south a door leads to what has been an open court, where there are indications of other buildings having existed or being intended. In all probability there was a residence here, and the chapel may have served both as sacristy and private chapel. This chapel was probably built by the liberality of Lady Douglas, Sir William St. Clair's first wife. The church is profusely adorned with sculpture which generally represents Scripture scenes, and one of the most curious examples in the remarkable decoration of the edifice is the ornamentation of the south pillar of the east aisle, known as the "Prentice Pillar"--named by Slezer (1693) as the "Prince's Pillar" and by Defoe (1723) the "Princess's Pillar." It consists of a series of wreaths twisted round the shaft, each wreath curving from base to capital round one quarter of the pillar. The ornamentation of the wreaths corresponds in character with the other carving of the church, and the grotesque animals on the base find a counterpart in those of the chapter-house pillar at Glasgow Cathedral. At the Reformation the lands and revenue of the church were virtually taken away, and in 1572 they were relinquished by a formal deed of resignation. The chapel does not seem to have suffered much violence till 1688, when a mob did much mischief. It remained uncared for, and gradually became ruinous till the middle of the eighteenth century, when General St. Clair glazed the windows, relaid the floor, renewed the roof, and built the wall round about. Further repairs were executed by the first Earl of Rosslyn, and again by the third Earl, who spent £3000 principally in renewing and retouching the carvings of the Lady Chapel--a work said to have been suggested by the Queen, who visited the church in 1842. Since 1862, services in connection with the Scottish Episcopal Church have been held within it. At the west end a vestry and organ-chamber were erected a few years ago. _Stirling (Chapel Royal, St. Mary's, and St. Michael's)._--On the north side of the Castle Square is the building erected by King James VI. as a chapel, and generally called now the armoury. There seems to have been a chapel in the castle founded by Alexander I., and it was connected with the monastery at Dunfermline. The original dedication is unknown, but in the fourteenth century there is mention of the chapel of St. Michael, which may possibly date from the time when an Irish ecclesiastic--St. Malachi or Michael--visited David I. at Stirling Castle, and healed his son, Prince Henry. The chapel was rebuilt in the early part of the fifteenth century, and in the time of James III. became an important church. It was constituted both as a royal chapel and as a musical college, and endowed with the rich temporalities of Coldingham Abbey. This chapel was the scene of the penitence of James IV., who, after the victory at Sauchie, "daily passed to the Chapel Royal, and heard matins and evening song: in the which every day the chaplains prayed for the King's grace, deploring and lamenting the death of his father: which moved the King, in Stirling, to repentance, that he happened to be counselled to come against his father in battle, wherethrough he was wounded and slain. To that effect he was moved to pass to the dean of the said Chapel Royal, and to have his counsel how he might be satisfied, in his own conscience, of the art and part of the cruel deed which was done to his father. The dean, being a godly man, gave the King a good comfort: and seeing him in repentance, was very glad thereof." James IV. endowed the chapel with large revenues, and in 1501 erected it into a collegiate church for dean, subdean, chanter, sacristan, treasurer, chancellor, archpriests, sixteen chaplains, six singing boys and a choir master. It was the richest of the provostries, and held many churches. The deans of the chapel, who were first the provosts of Kirkheugh at St. Andrews, afterwards the bishops of Galloway, and eventually the bishops of Dunblane, possessed in their capacity as deans an episcopal jurisdiction. The chapel, erected by James III., fell evidently into a ruinous condition, and in 1594 James VI. pulled the old structure down and erected on its site the present building. It was the scene of the baptism of Prince Henry. ST. GILES, EDINBURGH "In the centre of the old town of Edinburgh," writes Dr. Cameron Lees, "stands the great church of St. Giles. From whatever point of view the city is looked at, the picturesque crown of the steeple is seen sharply outlined against the sky. Soaring aloft unlike every other spire in its neighbourhood, it seems like the spirit of old Scottish history, keeping watch over the city that has grown up through the long years beneath its shadow. Edinburgh would not be Edinburgh without it. The exterior of the church itself is plain and unadorned, and it is evident that unsympathetic hands have been laid upon it and modernised it; but when one enters the building, a vast and venerable interior is presented to him, and every stone seems to speak of the past. St. Giles is a church whose history is closely interwoven with the history of Scotland from the very earliest ages, and it has been the scene of many remarkable events which have left their impress upon our national character."[241] Dr. David Laing thinks that a parish church of small dimensions may have existed nearly coeval with the castle and town,[242] and the present St. Giles occupies the site of the original parish church of Edinburgh. Symeon of Durham, who flourished in the early part of the thirteenth century, includes Edinburgh under the year 854 in reckoning the churches and towns belonging to the Bishopric of Lindisfarne or Holy Island, in the district of Northumbria, a see which, previous to the Scoto-Saxon period, extended over the range of Lothian and the more southern districts of North Britain.[243] The name "Edwinesburch" is taken as having a special reference to the castle and town.[244] When David I. founded the abbey in honour of the Holy Cross, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints, he conferred upon the canons (among other churches) the church of the castle, the Church of St. Cuthbert under the castle wall, and at the period there were lands lying to the south of Edinburgh which bore the name of St. Giles' Grange--so called from being the grange of the vicar of St. Giles' Church. These lands were gifted by King David I. to the English abbey of Holm Cultram or Harehope in Cumberland, and probably the church went along with them; at all events, it continued to belong to some monastery. In 1393 it belonged to the Crown, and King Robert III. granted it to the Abbey of Scone; to that house it belonged for some time, remaining still an humble vicarage.[245] It is the most reasonable conjecture that the parish church, dedicated in honour of St. Ægidius or St. Giles, and which has ever since retained the name of that patron saint, was erected during the reign of Alexander I. (1107-1124), the founder also of the Abbey of Scone and other religious houses.[246] Some fragments of this church remained till the end of last century, the richly ornamented Norman porch, which had formed the entrance to the nave on the north side of the church, being removed about 1797.[247] Dr. Lees thinks that possibly some of the pillars of the choir, and also the door at the entry to the royal pew, belonged to the first church of St. Giles.[248] The edifice appears to have been rebuilt about the time of David II.[249] In the frequent wars with England, Edinburgh suffered much, notably so in 1322 and 1335. This latter raid, having occurred in February, was afterwards known as the "burnt Candlemas." A reconstruction of the church was probably required after these repeated conflagrations, and this appears to have been carried out during the fourteenth century. But shortly afterwards a devastation of the town and its buildings was occasioned by Richard II. in 1385, when, during his occupation of five days, he left the town and parish church in ashes. The citizens, with the help of the Crown, made a great effort to repair the disaster to their church, and from this period the history of the present structure may be said to date. "It is said that during the restoration, which took place in 1870-80, traces of fire were observed on the pillars of the choir, and it is inferred that these pillars must have existed before the burning caused by Richard II. This view is confirmed by the fact that, after 1387, when, doubtless, the town authorities were doing all they could to complete the restoration of St. Giles', they entered into a contract with certain masons to erect five chapels along the south side of the nave, having pillars and vaulted roofs, covered with dressed stone slabs. These chapels still exist, and the wall rib of the vaulting is yet visible on the south side of the arcade, next the south aisle; but the vault and stone roof have been removed, and a plaster ceiling of imitation vaulting substituted. The above contract indicates that the walls of the nave then existed. We must, therefore, assume that the church had been rebuilt previous to the destruction of 1385, and that the above contract was an addition to the building connected with its restoration two years after the fire. Although, doubtless, much injured by the conflagration, the walls and pillars of the church seem to have escaped total destruction. The style of the architecture would lead to the same view; the octagonal pillars of the choir, with their moulded caps, being most probably of the fourteenth century."[250] The church, as restored and added to after 1387, is regarded as consisting of a choir of four bays, with side aisles; a nave of five bays, also with side aisles; a central crossing, north and south transepts, and the five chapels just added south of the nave.[251] An open porch, to the south of these chapels, was also erected along with them, with a finely groined vault in the roof, and over it a small chamber, lighted by a picturesque oriel window, supported on a corbel, carved with an angel displaying the city arms.[252] The whole of the main divisions of the structure were vaulted, and the massive octagonal piers of the crossing were probably raised about this period.[253] The vaulting of the crossing, with its central opening, was executed about 1400.[254] The ancient Norman porch, forming the north entrance to the nave, was the only part of the twelfth century structure then preserved. The restoration seems to have continued from 1385 to 1416. Shortly after the erection of the five south chapels, another chapel, called the Albany Aisle, was built on the north side of the nave to the west of the old doorway. It opens from the nave with two arches, resting on a central pillar, and the roof is covered with groined vaulting in two bays.[255] On the pillar are sculptured the arms of the Duke of Albany and also those of the Earl of Douglas. Their names are often ominously found together in the history of the times, and both were accused of the murder of the Duke of Rothesay, heir to the throne. They were justly accused, and, although acquitted of the deed, the stain continues to rest on their memory. The chapels were either built to expiate their crime, or more probably to get a reputation for piety and obtain the favour of the Church.[256] Two other chapels were probably added to the north side of the nave about the same period; they were on the east side of the Norman doorway, and between it and the transept. One of them has disappeared, and the eastern one was dedicated to St. Eloi. The vaulting of the north aisle of the nave was necessarily rebuilt at the time when the north chapels were erected.[257] About fifty years later, great extensions and improvements were carried out under the auspices of Queen Mary of Gueldres, by whom Trinity College Church was also founded in 1462. The Town Council and merchants of Edinburgh also endowed it. The extensions of St. Giles consisted of (1) the lengthening of the choir by one bay; (2) the heightening of the central aisle of the choir and vaulting it anew, together with the introduction of a new clerestory; and (3) the lengthening of the transepts.[258] The church is thus the work of many generations, and is the outcome of public and private contributions. That the choir was enlarged at this period is chiefly made evident by the heraldic devices and armorial bearings still existing. While the pillars nearest to the centre are plain octagons, with arches corresponding in simplicity, those at the east end have decorated capitals, supporting moulded arches. The King's pillar, as it is called, is the first from the window on the north side, and is near the spot where stood the High Altar. On the foliated capital are four coats of arms, and the first has the lion within the double tressure, and the armorial bearings are usually supposed to be those of King James II. (1436-1460); the second, impaled, of his Queen, Mary of Gueldres (1449-1463); the third has also the lion within the double tressure and a label of three points, which is held to denote a prince or heir, if not a younger son. The fourth shield has three _fleurs-de-lys_ for France.[259] These shields clearly connect the pillar with Mary of Gueldres, and her husband, James II., and their son, James III., who was born in 1453. The work was probably executed between 1453 and 1463.[260] On the opposite pillar, on the south side of the high altar, are also four coats of arms, viz. those of the town of Edinburgh and of the families of Kennedy, Otterburn, and Preston. To commemorate other benefactors, on the demi-pillar, on the north side of the eastern window, we have the arms (three cranes _gorged_) of Thomas Cranstoun, chief magistrate of Edinburgh in 1439 and 1454; on the south side, those of Napier of Merchiston, Provost of Edinburgh in 1457--a saltier engrailed, cantoned with four rosettes.[261] (2) The heightening of the choir and the introduction of a new clerestory were also carried out shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, the height of the former choir being shown by the vault of the crossing, which it doubtless resembled, and which was not altered at that time. The outline of the old roof may also be observed against the east and west walls of the tower--the raglet and a stepped string-course above it being yet preserved, and being specially visible on the east side next the choir. The beauty of the vaulting of the central choir aisle is noticeable when contrasted with that of the side aisles.[262] The central crossing, with its vault, was left unaltered, and still remains in the same position, with its vaulting at the level it was raised to about 1400. It forms a break between the nave and the choir, in both of which the vault has been raised.[263] (3) The transepts were extended, their original length being marked by breaks in the roof, where the vaulting terminates. In a charter dated 11th January 1454-1455,[264] it is narrated that William Preston of Gourtoun, after much trouble and expense abroad, and aided by "a high and mighty prince, the King of France, and many other Lords of France," had succeeded in obtaining an arm bone of the patron saint, which he generously bequeathed to the church. The Town Council were so gratified with the gift that they resolved to add an aisle to the choir in commemoration of the event, and to place therein a tablet of brass recording the bounty of the donor. This aisle was to be built within six or seven years "furth frae our Lady isle, quhair the said William lyis." It thus appears that the south aisle of the nave was known as the lady chapel, and that Sir William was buried there. The resolution was carried into effect, and a new aisle called the Preston Aisle was constructed, south of the lady chapel. The Preston Aisle was afterwards known as the Assembly Aisle. In carrying out the work the south wall opposite the three westmost bays of the choir was removed, and three arches carried on two piers substituted. These piers and arches correspond with the work of the same period at the east end of the choir. One of the caps contains a shield bearing the three unicorns' heads of the Prestons. The structure extends into the choir the great width of the four aisles of the church previously formed in the nave, and adds greatly both to spaciousness and grandeur. The church was now complete in all its parts, as, internally, it still remains, with a few exceptions, to the present day.[265] Several additional chapels were afterwards thrown out. In 1513 an aisle of two arches was formed by Alexander Lauder of Blyth, Provost of the city; in 1518 the altar of the Holy Blood was erected in this aisle, which lay on the south of the nave, and to the east of the south porch, immediately adjoining the south transept. It opened into the south chapels of the nave with two arches, and had two windows to the south. There was within it a handsome monument containing a recumbent statue, or forming, as some suppose, part of the altar canopy. The monument is still preserved, but one half of the chapel was obliterated in 1829. In 1466 the parish church of St. Giles was erected by charter of James III. into a collegiate establishment, but it is not called collegiate till 1475. The chapter consisted of a provost or dean, sixteen prebendaries, a master of the choir, four choristers, a sacristan, and a beadle with chaplains. The revenues of the altars and chaplainries in the church were appropriated for the support of the several officers in the new establishment. The King reserved the nomination of the dean or provost, who enjoyed the tithes and other revenues of St. Giles' Church, with the adjacent manse; the provost had the right of choosing a curate, who had a yearly allowance of 25 marks with a house adjoining.[266] In subsequent charters the church is called the College Kirk of St. Geill of Edinburgh. About this period a few additions were made. A small chapel, called the Chapman Aisle, was thrown out from the Preston Aisle close to the south transept. It was dedicated to St. John the Evangelist by Walter Chapman, called the Scottish Caxton, from his having introduced into Scotland in 1507 the art of printing. The chapel was dedicated within a month of King James' death at Flodden. The south transept seems to have been extended southward during the erection. The chapel to the east of the north transept contained several storeys and a staircase. It is said to have been erected after the Reformation. Used as the Town Clerk's office, and later as a vestry, it has been recently set apart to contain the monument of Dr. William Chambers, by whose liberality the cathedral has been recently restored. In 1829 the church was entirely renewed as regards the exterior, and two chapels to the south of those built in 1389 and the south porch were removed. The round arched doorway of the south porch was again erected between the north pillars of the crossing as the entrance to the central division of the church. It has now been transferred to the entrance doorway to the royal pew at the east end of the Preston Aisle.[267] The only portions of the exterior which escaped the unfortunate renewal of 1829 were the tower and steeple. Fortunately the well-known crown of St. Giles was not interfered with. It was probably erected about 1500.[268] "This crown," say the same authorities, "seems to have been a favourite feature with Scottish architects. The crown of the tower of King's College, Aberdeen, was built after 1505, and similar crowns formerly existed on the towers of Linlithgow and Haddington churches. The crown of St. Nicholas' Church, Newcastle, which is probably the only other steeple of this kind in Great Britain, is also of a late date. There is a crown of the same description on the tower of the Town Hall at Oudenarde, in Belgium, which is also of late Gothic work.... Some of the above crown steeples have an arch thrown from each angle to a central pinnacle, an arrangement which renders them rather thin and empty looking; but that of St. Giles' has, in addition to the arches from the angles, another arch cast from the centre of each side to the centre pinnacle. This produces an octagonal appearance, which, together with the numerous crocketed pinnacles with which the arches are ornamented, gives a richness and fulness of effect which is wanting in some of the other steeples of this description. The steeple of St. Giles' was partly rebuilt in 1648."[269] In the tower was placed the great bell of St. Giles, which must have been heard far and near on special occasions, as when, after the news of the disastrous field of Flodden, the inhabitants were ordered at the tolling of the common bell to assemble in military array for the defence of the city. The bell was cast in Flanders.[270] About 1500 several of the guilds had chapels assigned to them, and for these they contributed to the church funds. Many famous Scotsmen were buried within St. Giles, and amongst them were the Napiers of Merchiston, although it is doubtful whether Baron Napier rests there or not.[271] The Regent Murray, assassinated at Linlithgow in 1569, was buried in the south aisle; his monument was destroyed, but the brass plate, with the inscription written in his honour by George Buchanan, was rescued, and is inserted in a new monument erected in the Murray Aisle. The scattered members of the body of the great Montrose were collected and buried in the Chapman Aisle, in the south part of St. Giles, in 1661, but all trace of his remains has now been lost, and no monument until recently indicated his grave. The last day on which mass was said in St. Giles was probably the 31st of March 1560;[272] the disturbances connected with the Reformation broke out in Edinburgh at an early date, and St. Giles' Church was one of the first to suffer. All things have their end. Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men, Must have like death that we have. The images were stolen from the church; that of St. Giles was carried off by the mob, drowned in the North Loch, and then burned; his arm bone, so precious before, is supposed to have been thrown into the adjacent churchyard; the church was pillaged and the altars and images cast down; the valuables were taken by the authorities and sold, while the proceeds were spent in the repairs of the church. "Irreverence," writes Dr. Lees, "had long been common. It was not to be expected that with the change of religion would come any additional reverence for the things and places which the old religion had proclaimed sacred. We read without much surprise, therefore, of weavers being allowed to set up their looms and exercise their craft 'in ane volt prepared for them in the rufe of Sanct Gellis Kirk,' of the vestry of the church being turned into an office for the town clerk.... It is almost inconceivable that old associations should so thoroughly and quickly have died out."[273] The church suffered from the over-zeal of the early reformers and also from the effects of civil contention when Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange and Queen Mary's adherents retained possession of the castle. Kirkaldy took forcible possession of St. Giles' Church, and placed some of his men in the steeple to keep the citizens in awe. They made "holes in the vaute of the Great Kirk of Edinburgh, which they made like a riddell, to shoot thorough at suche as they pleased within the kirk, or at such as would prease to breake down the pillars."[274] In 1560 St. Giles' again became the parish church, with John Knox for its minister. It was afterwards considered too large for Protestant worship, and in Knox's time the Magistrates began to cut it up into sections and formed several churches. Other alterations were made at different times, so that besides the High Church in the choir and the Tolbooth Church in the nave there were under the same roof a grammar school, courts of justice, the Town Clerk's office, a weaver's workshop, and a place for the Maiden, or instruments of public executions! In 1633, on the introduction of Laud's form of worship, the church became the seat of a bishop, and the choir was used as a cathedral. Between 1637 and 1661 it was again Presbyterian; from 1661 to 1690 it was once more Episcopalian; at the Revolution the Presbyterian worship was again restored, and the cathedral was divided with walls and filled with galleries. The Tolbooth Church occupied the south-west angle, and Haddow's Hole Church the north-west angle. The Old Church comprised the south transept and portions adjoining; the Preston Aisle was used as a place of meeting for the General Assembly and other purposes. The dark portions under the crossing and north transept were occupied as the police office. The alterations and rebuilding of 1829 left the cathedral still divided into three separate churches, and "the ancient architecture of the exterior of St. Giles was entirely obliterated by the reconstruction."[275] As to this "restoration," Dr. Lees writes, "What ensued was deplorable, and can scarcely be conceived by those who have not themselves seen what was done."[276] On the other hand, advantage was obtained by the removal of the small houses and booths that had been built against the structure and between the buttresses. All must at least be grateful that the steeple "was left alone." The position of affairs remained thus until Dr. William Chambers, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, conceived the idea of removing the partitions and opening up the whole building. By his exertions, and largely by his own personal munificence, the restoration was effected between 1870 and 1883. "The Cathedral," says Dr. Cameron Lees, "restored from end to end, was opened with a public service on the 23rd May 1883. Her Majesty the Queen was represented by a Scottish nobleman (the Earl of Aberdeen), and representatives of all the chief corporations in Scotland attended. The ceremonial was fitting the occasion, and three thousand persons filled the immense building. The whole scene recalled the brilliant pageants of an earlier day. But there was sadness in the hearts of all present, for three days previous to the ceremonial Dr. William Chambers had passed away. The words of the preacher[277] received, and still receive a response from many. 'So long as these stones remain one upon another, will men remember the deed which William Chambers hath done, and tell of it to their children.' Two days after the reopening of the church, the funeral service of the restorer was conducted within the building his patriotism had beautified and adorned, and amid a vast and solemn crowd his body was borne forth from the place he loved so well, and for which he had done so much, to his burial."[278] "What a strange story its old gray crown, as it towers high above the city, tells out day by day to all who have ears to hear. It is the story of Scotland's poetry, romance, religion--the story of her progress through cloud and sunshine, the story of her advance from barbarism to the culture and civilisation of the present day."[279] _St. Andrews--St. Mary's, or Kirkheugh._--A very old chapel, known as St. Mary's on the Rock, is said to have stood on the Lady's Craig, but no trace of it now remains. Another chapel, also dedicated to St. Mary, stood on the Kirk Heugh, and was known as the Chapel of the King of Scotland on the Hill. All traces of it were for a long time lost, but in 1860 the foundations were discovered, and they show it to have been a cruciform structure. It is between the cathedral wall on the north-east and the sea. It had a provost and ten prebendaries.[280] _St. Salvator's, St. Andrews._--The College of St. Salvator was founded and endowed by Bishop Kennedy in 1456 for a provost and prebendaries. This bishop was distinguished for his liberality to the Church. The Church of St. Salvator is the only portion of the college buildings which still survives. It is now attached to the united colleges of St. Leonard's and St. Salvator, which form the existing University of St. Andrews, and the other buildings of which are modern. The church bears the mark of the period when it was erected, the latter half of the fifteenth century.[281] It consists of a single oblong chamber, with a three-sided apse at the east end, a tower, with octagonal spire, at the south-west angle of the church. In the interior of the north wall, close to the apse, there is the splendid monument erected to Bishop Kennedy, the founder of the college. The south wall is divided by buttresses into seven bays. CHAPTER V PARISH CHURCHES ILLUSTRATING THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE NORMAN PERIOD _Dalmeny Church (Linlithgowshire)._--"Two nearly perfect churches of the Romanesque age," says Dr. Joseph Robertson, "survive at Dalmeny and Leuchars--the former apparently in the twelfth century a manor of the Anglo-Norman house of Avenel, the latter a Scottish fief of one of the Magna Charter barons, Saier de Quincy, Earl of Winchester. Neither building need fear comparison with the common standard of English examples. Both are late in style: Leuchars is the richer, Dalmeny the more entire of the two. Both have semicircular apses--a feature found also in the parish churches of St. Kentigern at Borthwick, and St. Andrew at Gulane, and in the chapel bearing the name of St. Margaret within the walls of Edinburgh Castle."[282] Dalmeny Church is the most complete of Scottish Norman churches, and consists of a chancel with eastern apse, and a nave separated from the chancel by an elaborate chancel arch. The arch has three orders, decorated with elaborate chevron ornaments, enclosed with a hood moulding carved with an enrichment somewhat resembling the dog-tooth. The soffit contains a similar faceted enrichment. The arch is carried on three attached shafts on each side, built in ashlar, and provided with subdivided cushion caps and plain bases. The chancel has one small window on the south side, and is vaulted with bold diagonal groin-ribs, enriched with chevron ornaments and springing from grotesque corbels. The apse is semicircular, and is entered from the chancel by an enriched arch with shafts and caps similar to those of the chancel arch. It is lighted by three plain window openings, the central one being enlarged. In the exterior a string-course runs round the building immediately below the windows, of which it forms the sills, and is enriched with a carved floral pattern. The chief feature is the main entrance door in a porch, projecting to the south, the archway of which is supported on two plain pillars with Norman capitals. There are over this door the remains of a line, concentric with the arch, of sculptured figures and animals, very similar to those found on the ancient sculptured monuments of Scotland. Associated with the Agnus Dei, Leo, Sagittarius, serpents, birds, dragons, and human figures, we have one perhaps bearing a pastoral staff. From the rough nature of the masonry at the west end of the nave it is probable that a tower was intended to be built there.[283] On the north side projecting wings have been added to the church, but the south front and east end are almost untouched and show twelfth century work, uninjured save by weather and natural decay. The church is believed to have been dedicated to St. Adamnan, and this is rendered very probable by the fact that the neighbouring church of Cramond was dedicated to St. Columba. _Leuchars Church, Fifeshire._--We hear of a church here in 1187, and it was given to the canons of St. Andrews (1171-1199). The church now consists of a choir with a circular apse; there are traces of an arch at the west end of the choir which opened into the nave, that has been rebuilt. In the seventeenth century a turret was built, which is incongruous and out of place; and to support the belfry a plain arch has been introduced in the interior amongst the Norman work of the apse. The exterior of the semicircular apse shows an arcade of two storeys, "the shafts of the upper tier resting on the arches of the lower one, and all the shafts bearing cushion caps. Those of the lower story are double shafts, and those of the upper story are double shafts, with a broad fillet between them. All the arches are enriched with chevron and billet mouldings, and the upper tier has an extra order of elaborate billet-work. The string-course between the two arcades is carved with zigzags. The cornice is supported on a series of boldly-carved grotesque heads, all varying in design.... The design of the exterior of the choir is similar to that of the apse, there being two arcades, one above the other, surmounted by a cornice, with corbels carved as grotesque heads. The lower arcade, however, has interlacing arches, which indicate a late period of the style. The two arcades are separated by a string-course, enriched with scroll floral ornament. In the interior ... the chancel arch (which has elaborate carving) is carried on a central attached shaft and two plain nook shafts, built in courses, with simple cushion caps and plain bases. The chancel is vaulted with heavy moulded groins, springing from the cushion caps of short single shafts resting on grotesque heads. A small window is introduced in each of the divisions formed by the shafts, and each window has a pair of nook shafts in the interior and enriched arch above. The lower part of the apse is plain, and is separated from the upper part by a string-course, enriched with faceted ornaments."[284] PARISH CHURCHES ILLUSTRATING MIDDLE POINTED OR DECORATED PERIOD _St. Michael's Parish Church, Linlithgow_, was the scene of the apparition that is said to have warned King James IV. against the battle of Flodden, and is one of the largest parish churches in Scotland. A church dedicated to St. Michael existed here as early as the time of David I. A new church is said to have been erected in 1242, and probably some parts of this are incorporated in the present edifice. In 1384 Robert II. contributed to the erection or repair of the church tower, and in 1424 the church was injured and considerably destroyed by the fire that reduced the town to ashes. The reconstruction of the edifice probably progressed, under the Jameses, simultaneously with that of the palace adjoining. St. Michael's consists of a choir, including two aisles and a three-sided apse at the east end; a nave, including two aisles; two chapels inserted, north and south, in the place usually occupied by the transept; a square tower at the west end, and a south porch giving access to the nave. The nave is the oldest part of the building, and appears to have been erected before the middle of the fifteenth century. The choir is of somewhat later date.[285] A broad stone bench or seat is carried round the nave, and the bases of the triple wall shafts of the vaulting rest upon it. Those of the choir, different in design, rest on the floor. In the nave there are triforium openings in each bay, and clerestory windows above them. The windows throughout the church are of large size, and filled with varied geometric tracery. The windows of the apse are large, and the tracery of two of the windows is perpendicular in character. The transepts (or north and south chapels) and the south porch have crow-stepped gables both on their outer walls and also over the inner or aisle wall which separates them from the church. Each of these contains an apartment over the vault, that over the south porch being probably a place for preserving documents. The buttresses of the nave have a simpler character than those of the apse and north transept. The canopies of the niches are ornamented somewhat similarly to those of Rosslyn. The buttress of the south-west angle of the nave, crowned with the sculptured figure of St. Michael, is a striking feature on approaching the church. The western tower was originally terminated with a crown of open stone-work, similar to that of St. Giles, Edinburgh. About 1821 it was found to be in a dangerous condition, and had to be taken down. The tower is of late design and contains a doorway, continental in style, which may possibly be the work of Thomas French, the King's master-mason, and above which there is a large perpendicular window. The upper part of the tower would contrast well with the crown on the top. The tower opens into the nave with a wide and lofty arch, carried up to the clerestory level, and the groined vault with large window below produces a good effect. In each side wall of the tower is a richly canopied recess, intended for monuments or sculpture. A portion of what seems to have been a carved altar-piece is preserved in the church and represents scenes in our Lord's Passion.[286] The steeple contains three bells with inscriptions. The south transept contained an altar dedicated to St. Katherine, and was the place where James IV. is reported to have seen the apparition that warned him against the fatal expedition to England--an incident chronicled by Pitscottie, and forming the basis of Sir David Lyndsay's tale in _Marmion_. The church contained twenty-four altarages, which were removed in 1559 by the Lords of the Congregation in their march from Perth to Edinburgh; and probably still further damage was done by Cromwell's dragoons, who used it as a stable. The church belonged to St. Andrew's priory, and was long served by perpetual vicars. It has been recently restored, and made worthy of its great past. The west doorway is pronounced to be a pleasing specimen of the half continental manner in which that feature was usually treated in Scotland.[287] _Haddington Parish Church (East Lothian)_ is one of the ecclesiastical structures belonging to the ancient royal burgh of Haddington. Besides it there were the monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans, the Cistercian nunnery, and the chapels of St. Martin, St. Ann, St. Katherine, St. John, and St. Ninian. Of these establishments the only two that now survive are St. Martin's (a very ancient chapel) and the parish church, which deserves the name now applied to it (although originally it seems to have been given to the vanished church of the Franciscan monastery) on account both of its beauty and the distance at which its lights were visible--Lucerna Laudoniæ, or Lamp of Lothian. The ancient church of Haddington was founded by David I., dedicated to the Virgin, and by him granted in 1134 to the priory of St. Andrew. The present structure is of later date, and from the style of the architecture, was probably rebuilt in the first half of the fifteenth century.[288] The church is cruciform, having choir and nave, both with side aisles, and north and south transepts without aisles. Over the crossing is the central tower. The choir and transepts are ruinous, and the restored nave is used as the parish church. The tower was originally crowned with a canopy or spire of open work similar to that of St. Giles, Edinburgh, and King's College, Aberdeen; and large picturesque gargoyles still break the line of the cornice on the top. Although the edifice has been so sadly damaged, it does not appear to have suffered at the Reformation. The town was under siege in 1548, when it was held by the English after the battle of Pinkie, and was attacked and taken by the Scots and their French allies. It is not unlikely that the church suffered at that time. PARISH CHURCHES OF THIRD OR LATE POINTED PERIOD _Parish Church of St. John the Baptist, Perth._--The ancient city of Perth possessed many endowed religious establishments, but the only one that survives is the church of St. John the Baptist, from which the city derived its title of "St. John's Town." This church, divided by walls so as to form three separate places of worship, is still the parish church of the town. The first church of Perth was probably connected with the neighbouring Pictish monastery at Abernethy, and was erected by the monks there during the Celtic period. The register of Dunfermline contains the earliest historical mention of the church under the years 1124-1127, when it was granted by David I., with its property and tithes, to that abbey. The church was consecrated by David de Bernham, Bishop of St. Andrews, in 1242, and it is stated that the heart of Alexander III. was buried in the church of St. John.[289] The abbots of Dunfermline allowed the building to become ruinous, and tried to place upon the citizens of Perth the burden of upholding the fabric. The interest of the citizens seems to have been diverted from the church, and directed, probably at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to the building of the Dominican monastery, and about the middle of the century to the erection of the Carmelite or Whitefriars' monastery. It is probable that in connection with repairs necessary for the church, King Robert the Bruce in 1328 granted that stones might be taken from quarries belonging to the Abbey of Scone, "for the edification of the Church of Perth." Of the twelfth century church of St. John nothing now remains to indicate its architecture, although it may have been both magnificent and extensive. After the death of Robert the Bruce in 1329 the restoration begun by him probably ceased, and during the unrest of the fourteenth century the church probably suffered further damage. In 1335 King Edward III. was in Perth, and slew his brother, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall, before the high altar of the Church of St. John for his excesses and ravages in the western districts of Scotland. In 1393-1394, after a parliament at Scone, Walter Trail, Bishop of St. Andrews, conducted divine service in St. John's Church. From 1401 till 1553-1556 there is a continuous record of the foundation of altars in the church, and of endowment of already existing ones. The chapel in which St. James' altar was situated stood on the south side of the church, and the foundation charter of the altar of St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1448 by Sir John de Bute, states that the altar was situated "in the new choir of the Parish Church." The church consists of a choir and nave, with north and south aisles, and north and south transepts without aisles. The nave and choir are of almost equal length; there was a chapel on the west side of the north transept that no longer exists, but the wide arch of the opening into it is partly visible in the transept. It was two storeys in height. It is pronounced[290] as evident from the style of the architecture that the choir and crossing beneath the central tower belong to the period about 1448. The transepts may be later, and both are of the same period. The two eastern bays of the main arcade of the choir are more elaborately moulded than the others, and round the eastmost pillar on the south side there is cut an inscription containing the names of John Fullar and his wife.[291] It has been remarked that the tithes and fees received by the magistrates probably did not suffice for the work laid on them by the monks of Dunfermline, and that John Fullar and his wife volunteered to pay for a part, certainly for the pillar on which their names are inscribed. In the second bay of the choir from the east on the north side there is a round arched doorway, now built up, and it led to the sacristy, afterwards used as a session-house; it was taken down about 1800, and the meetings were held in a building on the south side of the nave near the west end, which has also been removed. The present north and south doorways in the choir are modern, although the south one is in the position of the old doorway. The choir has no triforium, but good plain masonry instead, undivided by wall shafts; the clerestory windows are small and round arched, are divided into two lights by a central mullion, and have plain tracery in the arch-head. The nave is divided, like the choir, into five bays, and has no triforium nor clerestory; there is a deep blank wall above the arcade arches. "This wall is of rough masonry compared to that in the choir, and the whole of this part of the church is of a much coarser and ruder description, betokening a later age. The capitals of the piers are of the very rudest kind, and are a perfect contrast to the delicate work of the choir. In the meagre description of St. John's to be found in the books on Perth, this rudeness is pointed to as a sign of great antiquity, but the reverse is unquestionably the case. This nave is undoubtedly 'the New Kirk of Perth' referred to in the Chronicle, in which 'ane Synodall assemblie' was held in April 1606."[292] Early in the nineteenth century it was contemplated to raise the nave wall and erect a clerestory; two of the windows adjoining the tower on the north side were actually built, and still remain with massive buttresses, surmounted by high finials; the work was never finished, and could not be carried farther west, as there is no proper support for such a massive building. Tradition says that at one time the church extended farther west, and it seems not improbable that a western tower in the centre of the front may have been contemplated, and even begun. "This tower, like those at Stirling, Linlithgow, and Dundee, may have been intended to open towards the church with a wide arch, of which the jambs still remain; but this idea having been abandoned, and any part of the tower which then had been built having been taken down, the present makeshift gable was put up instead to fill up the gap, which, in these circumstances, would be left for the supposed opening into the church."[293] On the north side of the nave there is a large porch called Halkerston's Tower. It was a two-storied building, the upper storey being of great height and vaulted as well as the lower one. The erection of the west end of the church is referable to about 1489,[294] when payments were made "to the kirk werk of Pertht." The central tower was erected after the adjoining part of the nave, and has one window in each face. The parapet and corbelling were renewed about forty years ago.[295] The exterior of the church has been altered at various times, and an open parapet carried along the top of the choir wall over the clerestory windows as well as along the aisle walls and up the sloping gables of the east end. Dormer windows to light the galleries break in on this aisle-wall parapet, as well as on the roof of the nave. It was in the Church of St. John, Perth, that John Knox denounced the Mass in 1559, and the multitude afterwards demolished the ornaments, images, and altarpieces as well as the monasteries and religious houses in Perth--an example quickly followed by others throughout the country. In Scott's novel, _The Fair Maid of Perth_, the church is the scene of the trial by bier-right to discover the slayer of Proudfute. The East Church (or choir) has been recently restored, and many look forward to the day when, the present partition walls being removed, St. John's Church will once more reveal the full splendour of its striking and grand interior. Perth awaits a generous restorer, and St. John's affords a grand opportunity for patriotism and beneficence. DUNDEE CHURCH TOWER About 1198 the church of Dundee was bestowed on Lindores Abbey, and the church then existing is stated to have been erected by David, Earl of Huntingdon, as a thank-offering for his escape from a storm at sea. About 1442 an agreement was formed between the abbot of Lindores and the provost and burgesses of Dundee, by which the latter undertook the construction and maintenance of the choir of Dundee Church. The only part of the ancient church which now remains is the western tower, and it was erected about 1450.[296] Three parish churches in connection with the tower were developed from the original chapel--St. Mary's or the East Church, St. Paul's or the South Church, St. Clement's or the West Church. The church was damaged by the English before the Union, and St. Clement's had to be rebuilt in 1789. The three churches were almost totally destroyed by fire in 1841, and the choir and transepts were thereafter rebuilt. The church tower survived, and has resisted for over four centuries storm and tempest, fire and siege. Its massive strength and height are features that strike the eye from far. It is square, and 165 feet high. The western entrance consists of two round arched doorways, comprised within a larger circular or elliptical arch, which is again enclosed by a square moulding. The arch mouldings are enriched with foliage, while the jambs and central pillar are moulded with alternate rounds and hollows. In the spandril over the centre shaft there is a circular panel with a Virgin and Child; below are the arms of the diocese of Brechin on a shield. Above the doorway is a lofty traceried window, and above this window the tower is vaulted. The height from the floor to the groined ceiling is about 47 feet. At each of the four corners there is a large circular shaft, and each shaft is fitted into its position in a manner different from the others. The sedilia or stone seats still remain entire, and extend along the north, south, and west walls. The tower is divided into two principal stages by an enriched parapet and outside passage. The parapet is pierced with quatrefoils and ornamented with crocketed pinnacles. The roof is of the saddle-back kind, with gables towards the east and west. It was evidently meant to have an open crown termination, and the preparations exist for the springing of the angle arches.[297] The tower was restored by the eminent Sir Gilbert Scott in 1871-1873. _Stirling Parish Church._--Two churches in Stirling are spoken of in the reign of David I. One of them was the chapel royal, which was dedicated by Alexander I.; and the "vicar" of the "Kirk of Stirling" is mentioned in 1315 and in the time of David II. There are also notices of it in the reigns of Robert II. and Robert III., when it is designated as the Church of the Holy Cross of Stirling. Of this earlier church, which was burnt, nothing now remains. The present edifice consists of two divisions, the nave and the choir, which were built at two different periods. The nave, which is the oldest part, is referred to in the Chamberlain's Accounts from July 1413 to June 1414, and the date of the choir is known to be between 1507 and 1520. The church contains a central nave with north and south aisles (the aisles being vaulted in stone), an eastern apse, and a western tower. The nave has five bays, the choir three bays, and they are separated by a wide bay which may be termed the crossing. The crossing now serves as an entrance hall to the two churches, into which the building is now divided. Walls are built across each side of the crossing, so as to enclose the choir as one church and the nave as the other. The west tower, which is vaulted, opens into the nave through a lofty pointed arch, springing from moulded responds. The original entrance to the church was through the western tower, but the western doorway was destroyed in 1818, and part of a window now occupies its place. The tower is pronounced to be one of the best specimens of the Scottish architecture of the sixteenth century, as applied to ecclesiastical structures,[298] and the situation of the church on the Castle Hill gives it an imposing and picturesque effect. The piers of the nave (with the exception of two) are round and massive cylinders, and the east and west responds are semi-cylinders. The general appearance of these pillars has been taken to illustrate what is so often found in Scotland (both in ecclesiastic and domestic work) during the fifteenth century and onwards--viz. a tendency to imitate Norman and Early Pointed details. "This tendency is also seen in the nave piers of Dunkeld Cathedral, in the piers and arches of the naves of Aberdour Church and Dysart Church, in the imitation of First Pointed work in the late cloisters of Melrose, and many other examples which might be cited. But the later counterfeit is never perfect, there being always some touch of contemporary design which reveals the imitation.[299]" Over the crossing was an upper room, known as the King's room, from which the service could be seen, but it was destroyed about the middle of this century. At the north-west corner of the church was a chapel (now removed) with a wide opening into the church. It was called Queen Margaret's, and is supposed to have been built by James IV. in honour of his queen. Another chapel was dedicated to St. Andrew at the north-east end of the nave, and is still entire. It was erected by Duncan Forrester of Garden, Knight, who was a liberal benefactor of the church. The church is associated with many historical events. It was here that the Regent Arran publicly renounced Protestantism in 1543, and here in the following year also the Convention met that appointed Mary of Guise regent. The church, although "purged" in 1559, was not injured, and was used in 1567 for the coronation of James VI., then but thirteen months old. When General Monk in 1651 was besieging the castle, the church tower was one of the points of vantage seized by his soldiers, and the little bullet pits all over it indicate how hot must have been the fire directed against them. It was held by the Highlanders in 1746, and its bells pealed in honour of the victory at Falkirk. John Knox has preached within its venerable walls. It was divided into two buildings in 1656, and comprises still the east and west parish churches, the east being renovated in 1869. Since then a large number of stained-glass windows have been introduced. _Church of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews._--The Hospitium or Guest Hall of St. Leonard's was founded by Prior John White in the middle of the thirteenth century for the reception of pilgrims and visitors to St. Andrews. Some remains of the guest hall have been excavated, from which it seems to have been a hall with central nave and two side aisles. The building was afterwards used as a nunnery, and in 1512 was appropriated as a college. It was then founded by Prior John Hepburn in conjunction with Archbishop Alexander Stewart. As a college, it was under the superintendence of the prior and chapter, and was for the education of twenty-four poor students. It became famous, however, and was attended by sons of noblemen. George Buchanan was at one time principal, and the college helped to spread a knowledge of sacred music throughout the country. A long range of buildings on the south side of the church was used as the students' residence. The church was long used for public worship, but after the college of St. Leonard's was united to that of St. Salvator in 1747, St. Leonard's was abandoned in 1759. Within recent times several alterations have been made on it, the steeple being taken down and the west end "set back" to give more room for access to a private house. The chapel is an oblong, and is without division between nave and chancel. The church appears to have been extended 24 feet at the east end, when it was converted into a college.[300] The design of windows and buttresses (perpendicular) is pronounced to accord well with the date of erection in the sixteenth century, and is similar to that of English colleges. On the north side is a room with a round barrel vault, probably the sacristy.[301] There is a piscina in the east window sill. _Church of The Holy Trinity, St. Andrews._--This church, usually named the Town Church, is of ancient foundation, but was almost entirely rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century. An early church is said to have been built here in 1112 by Bishop Turgot, and subsequently dedicated by Bishop de Bernham to the Holy Trinity. It had in its palmy days thirty altarages, each with a separate priest and fifteen choristers, and it was from the pulpit here that John Knox preached his famous sermon on the purifying of the temple. The church demolished at the close of last century is believed to have been erected in 1412.[302] The north-west tower is the only part of the old structure which survives.[303] "Like the north-west tower at Cupar, it rises from the north and west walls of the north aisle, without buttresses to mark its outline or break the upright form of the walls. The square outline, however, is partly relieved by a square projection at north-west angle, which contains the staircase. The east and south walls are carried by arches, which formerly allowed the lower story of the tower to be included within the church, and the round pier at the south-east angle is made of extra thickness, so as to bear the weight of the tower."[304] The parapet is plain and rests on simple corbels. Above it rises a short and stunted octagonal spire with lucarnes, like most of the late Scottish examples. There is over the staircase a small turret with pointed roof. It is carried up within the parapet, and groups picturesquely with the main spire. The tower resembles the one at Wester Crail, and both are of fifteenth century date. It is of this tower or steeple[305] that we hear in John Knox's _History of the Reformation in Scotland_. When a captive on a French galley lying between Dundee and St. Andrews the second time that the ship returned to Scotland (probably June 1548), "The said Johne (Knox), being so extreamlye seak that few hoped his lyeff, the said Maister James (Balfour) willed him to look to the land, and asked if he knew it? Who answered, "Yes, I know it weall: for I see the stepill of that place whare God first in publict opened my mouth to His glorie, and I am fullie persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I shall nott departe this lyif till that my toung shall glorifie his godlie name in the same place."[306] His hope, as we have just seen, was not disappointed." CHAPTER VI SCOTTISH MONASTICISM The old Celtic monastic system, with Iona as its centre, was superseded by the monastic system of the Roman Church in the eleventh century, and the old Culdee monks were either driven from their ancient settlements or compelled to become Augustinian canons or Benedictine monks. The life of Queen Margaret marks the period of transition in Scotland from the old system to that of the Church of Rome both in building and in every other department, and what Queen Margaret began, her sons, Edgar, Alexander and David completed. St. Margaret had a monk of Durham for her chaplain; Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, was her chosen counsellor. She introduced Benedictines from Canterbury into her foundation at Dunfermline. Edgar and Alexander took for their adviser St. Anselm--Lanfranc's successor, preferred English priests, and peopled the monasteries with English monks. David was even more earnest in the pursuit of this policy, and the kings who followed him found little to "Anglicise." Saxon refugees were followed into Scotland by Norman knights; these were received by David and presented with lands, and the extent of their possessions is apparent in the names of the proprietors settled in every part of the country. The policy is apparent: their settlement helped to keep the country in order, and defend it from the attacks of the unsubdued tribes in the north and west. It also helped to facilitate the spread of the Roman Catholic system throughout the country. "The new colonists," says Dr. Cosmo Innes, "were of the 'upper classes' of Anglican families long settled in Northumbria, and Normans of the highest blood and name. They were men of the sword, above all service and mechanical employment. They were fit for the society of court, and many became the chosen companions of our princes. The old native people gave way before them, or took service under the strong-handed strangers, who held lands by the written gift of the sovereign."[307] ... "The new settlers were of the progressive party, friends of civilisation and the Church. They had found churches on their manors, or if not already there, had founded them. To each of these manorial churches the lord of the manor now made a grant of the tithes of his estate; his right to do so does not seem to have been questioned, and forthwith the manor--tithed to its church--became what we now call a parish."[308] Examples of these parish churches have already been considered, and the two-fold movement of a cathedral system with parochial benefices was continued for a time. It was the most effective way of superseding the old Celtic church, and the policy was throughout inspired by the aim of substituting the parochial system with a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy. But this was accompanied by a third movement, which to a very great extent paralysed it, and became a source of weakness to religion. The parochial system was shipwrecked when scarcely formed by the introduction of monasticism, which was then in the ascendant throughout Europe. "The new monks," says Dr. Cosmo Innes, "of the reformed rule of St. Benedict or canons of St. Augustine, pushing aside the poor lapsarian Culdees, won the veneration of the people by their zealous teaching and asceticism.... The church, too, with all its dues and pertinents, was bestowed on the monastery and its patron saint for ever, reserving only a pittance for a poor priest to serve the cure, or sometimes allowing the monks to serve it by one of their own brethren. William the Lion gave thirty-three parishes to the new monastery of Arbroath, dedicated to the latest and most fashionable High Church saint, Thomas à Becket."[309] The Church thus became territorial instead of tribal; episcopal instead of abbatial, and the new abbeys began to acquire large territory in the country. By the end of the thirteenth century the old line of Celtic kings closed in Alexander, and the movement was complete; the Church had ceased to be Celtic in usage and character, and had become Roman. This stream of tendency came from the south, and cathedrals with abbeys were constituted after English models. "Of the Scottish sees, all," says Dr. Joseph Robertson, "save three or four, were founded or restored by St. David, and their cathedral constitutions were formally copied from English models. Thus the chapter of Glasgow took that of Salisbury for its guide. Dunkeld copied from the same type, venerable in its associations with the name of St. Osmund, whose "Use of Sarum" obtained generally throughout Scotland. Elgin or Moray sent to Lincoln for its pattern, and transmitted it, with certain modifications, to Aberdeen and to Caithness. So it was also with the monasteries. Canterbury was the mother of Dunfermline; Durham, of Coldingham; St. Oswald's at Nosthill, near Pontefract, was the parent of Scone, and through that house, of St. Andrews and Holyrood. Melrose and Dundrennan were daughters of Rievaux, in the North Riding. Dryburgh was the offspring of Alnwick; Paisley, of Wenlock."[310] Roman monasticism thus became an important factor in Scottish life, and it is true to say that for a very considerable period the history both of piety and civilisation in Scotland was the history of its monasticism. It was a stage in the national development, a movement in religious progress, and it was only abolished when the salt had lost its savour, when monasticism had ceased to be spiritual and had become worldly and corrupt. The system had served its day in helping to educate the nation, and when its purpose was achieved it passed away. Mediæval architecture was, too, the outcome of the leisure in the cloister, and the men who designed and built those venerable temples must have been men to whom their work was their religion, and who regarded it as the way of honouring God. One cannot look at their architecture without realising how true are Ruskin's definitions of Art:--"Art has for its business to praise God."[311] "Great Art is the expression of a God-made great man."[312] "Art is the expression of delight in God's work."[313] "All great art is praise." "Art is the exponent of ethical life."[314] One cannot look at their ruins and not recall that by their destruction a beauty has passed away from the earth; one cannot read of the rude forces that destroyed them, and not see that the judgment on things is always on character, and that the last testing principle is, "See--not what manner of stones, _but what manner of men_." While we deplore the forces that destroyed, we have also to deplore the indefensible lives of the monks which at their last stage stirred such forces to their depths. There were four principal rules, under which might be classed all the religious orders. (1) _That of St. Basil_, which prevailed by degrees over all the others in the East, and which is retained by all the Oriental monks; (2) _That of St. Augustine_, which was adopted by the regular canons, the order of Premontré, the order of the Preaching Brothers or Dominicans, and several military orders. (3) _That of St. Benedict_, which, adopted successively by all the monks of the West, still remained the common rule of the monastic order, properly so called, up to the thirteenth century; the orders of the Camaldules of Vallombrosa, of the Carthusians, and of Citeaux recognised this rule as the basis of their special constitutions, although the name of monk of St. Benedict or Benedictine monk may still be specially assigned to others. (4) _The Rule of St. Francis_ signalised the advent of the Mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. It is to be noted that the denomination of monks is not generally attributed to the religious who follow the rule of St. Augustine, nor to the Mendicant orders.[315] The canonical hours at which the monastic bell regularly summoned the monks were seven in number:--(1) Prime, about 6 A.M.; (2) Tierce, about 9 A.M.; (3) Sext, about noon; (4) Nones, from 2 to 3 P.M.; (5) Vespers, about 4 P.M. or later; (6) Compline, 7 P.M.; (7) Matins and Lauds, about midnight. Scottish monasticism exhibited the expansion of the two main streams--the Augustinian and the Benedictine, and each subsequent order is to be regarded as an endeavour towards reform. Space will only permit us to deal with the Augustinian establishments at St. Andrews, Holyrood, and Jedburgh; with the Premonstratensian abbey of Dryburgh; with the Benedictine abbey of Dunfermline; with the Cluniacensian abbey of Paisley; with the Tyronensian abbeys of Kelso and Arbroath; with the Cistercian abbey of Melrose. The Premonstratensian order was a reform on the Augustinian, and the Cluniacensian, Tyronensian, and Cistercian orders, reforms on the Benedictine order. A study of their history and architecture in representative forms will introduce us to the piety and beauty of former days, as well as to an order of things very different from our own.[316] _St. Andrew's Priory._--The priory or Augustinian monastery was situated to the south of the cathedral (_q.v._), and was founded by Bishop Robert in 1144. The structure has now almost disappeared. It comprised about twenty acres, and was enclosed about 1516 by Prior John Hepburn with a magnificent wall, which, starting at the north-east corner of the cathedral, passed round by the harbour and along behind the houses, till it joined the walls of St. Leonard's College on the south-west. This, about a mile in extent, is all that now remains, but it is thought at one time to have passed back from the college to the cathedral. The wall has thirteen turrets, and each has a canopied niche for an image. The portion towards the shore has a parapet on each side, as if designed for a walk. There were three gateways, the chief of which, on the S.W., is known as the Pends, and of which considerable ruins still remain. Another gateway is near the harbour, and the third was on the S. side. Martine in his _Reliquiæ Divi Andreæ_ mentions that in his time fourteen buildings were discernible besides the cathedral and St. Rule's Chapel. Among these were the Prior's House or the old inn to the S.E. of the cathedral, of which only a few vaults now remain; the cloisters, W. of this house, and now the garden of a private house, in the quadrangle of which the Senzie Fair used to be held, beginning in the second week of Easter, and continuing for fifteen days; the Senzie House, or house of the sub-prior, subsequently used as an inn, but now pulled down and the site occupied by a private house. The refectory was on the S. side of the cloister, and has now disappeared, as well as the dormitory between the Prior's House and the cloister, and from which Edward I. carried off all the lead to supply his battering machines at the siege of Stirling. The Guests' Hall was within the precincts of St. Leonard's College, S.W. of Pend's Lane; the Teinds' Barn, Abbey Mill, and Granary were all to the S.W. The new inn, the latest of all the buildings, was erected for the reception of Magdalene, the first wife of James V. The young queen, of delicate constitution, was advised by her physicians to reside here; she did not live to occupy the house, as she died on 7th July 1537, six weeks after her arrival in Scotland. It was for a short time the residence of Mary of Guise when she first arrived in Scotland, and after the priory was annexed to the archbishopric in 1635 the building became the residence of the later archbishops. Several of its canons had sympathies with the Scottish Reformation. The prior of St. Andrews had superiority over the priories of Pittenweem, Lochleven, Monymusk, and the Isle of May, and was also a lord of regality. In Parliament he took precedence of all priors, and he, his sub-prior, and canons formed the cathedral chapter. The priory possessed in all thirty-two churches or their great tithes. From 1144 to 1535 there were twenty-five priors; from 1535 to 1586 the lands were in the possession of the Earl of Murray and Robert Stewart, as lay commendators; from 1586 to 1606 they were held by the Crown; from 1606 to 1635 by the Duke of Lennox; from 1635 to 1639 by the Archbishop of St. Andrews; from 1639 to 1661 by the University; from 1661 to 1688 by the archbishop again; from 1688 by the Crown. The part within the abbey wall was sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to the United Colleges.[317] _Holyrood Abbey (Midlothian)._--The abbey of Holyrood was founded by King David I. in 1128 for the canons regular of the order of St. Augustine, and was dedicated in honour of the holy cross or rood brought to Scotland by his mother, Queen Margaret. This cross, called the Black Rood of Scotland, fell into the hands of the English at the battle of Neville's Cross in 1346. The abbey was several times burned by the English, and the nave on the last of these occasions, 1547, was repaired with the ruins of the choir and transepts. This was used as the parish church till 1672, when it was converted into the chapel royal. In 1687 it was set apart by King James VII. for the service of the Roman Catholic Church, but was plundered and again burned at the Revolution in the following year. It remained neglected until 1758, when it was repaired and roofed; the new roof, proving too heavy for the walls, fell with a crash in 1768, destroying all the new work. It suffered neglect again till 1816, when it was repaired, and in 1857 it was still further improved. The abbey early became the occasional abode of the kings of Scotland, and James II. was born, crowned, married, and buried in it. The foundations of a palace apart from the abbey were laid in the time of James IV., Edinburgh having then become the acknowledged capital of the country. Holyrood Palace was henceforth the chief seat of the Scottish sovereigns. In it the nuptials of James IV. were celebrated; here also Mary Queen of Scots took up her abode in 1561 on her return from France, and here James VI. dwelt much before his accession to the throne of England in 1603. The abbey church was beautiful in its architecture and of great size. It consisted of nave, choir, transepts with aisles, and probably lady chapel to the east, two western towers, and a tower over the crossing; but of all that splendid structure there now only remain the ruins of the nave and one western tower. The surviving nave is in a ruinous state and consists of eight bays, the main piers of which are complete on the south side, but only represented by two fragments on the north side.[318] The vaulting of the south aisle still survives, but that of the north aisle is gone. The north wall of the aisle still stands, and the east and west ends of the nave are restored. The N.W. tower is still preserved, but the companion tower at the S.W. angle was demolished when the palace was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Some remains of the cloister are still observable on the S. side of the nave. The chief part of the architecture is pronounced to be first pointed, but the doorway at the S.E. angle, which led from the cloister into the nave is pronounced to be of genuine though late Norman architecture. There was a nook shaft on either side, the divided cushion caps of which survive. The arch is round and contains two orders, both ornamented with zigzags. These orders are enclosed with a label, containing a double row of square facets and sinkings. Some alterations have taken place adjoining the doorway, and two of the windows, that over the doorway and that to the west of it, are circular-headed and have a Norman character in their nook shafts and cushion caps. These windows were probably constructed in imitation of Norman windows which existed there originally. It is not improbable that the choir was built before the nave, and was of Norman work, and this supposition is regarded as accounting for the Norman work found at the first bay of the nave, and which may have been erected in connection with the choir and crossing. The oldest part of the nave after the S.E. doorway is the wall of the north aisle. The windows above the arcade are single lancets, one in each bay. The south wall of the south aisle is similarly designed, but the details are different and of a rather later character. The lower story contains a wall arcade having single pointed arches, with first pointed mouldings. The windows over the arcade correspond generally to those in the north wall, and are all pointed except the two east bays already mentioned. The lower part of the exterior of the south wall, running westward from the Norman doorway, is arcaded with a series of large pointed arches, each enclosing five smaller pointed arches, and with a plain wall space between the large and small arches. The above large arches were the wall arches for a groined roof over the cloister walk, but whether that vault was ever built it is now regarded as impossible to say. The vaulting of both aisles has apparently been similar, but the south aisle alone retains it, which is of a simple character, consisting of transverse and diagonal ribs. The main arcade of the nave has consisted of eight bays; the triforium is divided into two arches in each bay by a single central shaft, springing from a corbel over the apex of each arch of the main arcade, and running up to the string-course beneath the clerestory. This would suggest the view that the vaulting was sex-partite. Each arch of the triforium is acutely pointed, and contains two smaller pointed arches within it, each of which has an inner trefoiled arch. The tympanum of the large arch is pierced with a quatrefoil or trefoil. To counteract the weakening tendency of the triforium passage, saving arches, as may be seen from the south, have been introduced to carry the chief pressure across from main pier to main pier. A similar strengthening arch exists in the outer wall of the triforium gallery at Amiens. The west end is pronounced to have contained the finest work of the building, and the west door with the two towers must have presented a lovely and imposing front. The S.W. tower was removed to make way for the palace being erected, and even the W. doorway is encroached on by the palace wall. A portion of the S.W. tower is still visible in the interior, and contains a doorway. The upper part of the W. end was reconstructed by Charles I. in 1633, and contains two nondescript windows of seventeenth century Gothic with an inscription between them. The tympanum of the doorway has also been altered at this time, and an oaken lintel introduced containing a shield with the initials of Charles I. The western doorway has been a beautiful specimen of first pointed work, and the W. side of the N.W. tower is ornamented with two tiers of arcades. "The lower arcade contains five pointed arches, with a trefoiled arch within each. These rest on triple shafts, with carved caps and rounded abaci. Over each shaft and between the arches there is a circle containing a boldly carved Norman head. The feature is unique and its effect is fine. The upper arcade consists of three larger arches, each containing two smaller arches, and all resting on shafts with carved and rounded caps. The shields in the larger arches are pierced with bold quatrefoils. Two circles occur in the spandrils over the arches, but they do not now contain heads."[319] The same design is continued round the S. side of the tower, and along the W. wall of the nave as far as the main doorway, but the N. and E. sides of the tower are plain. Above the two arcades the tower contains a large two-light window on the N.E. and W. sides. Each window is divided into two openings by a single central shaft, having a carved cap and broad square abacus, on which rest the two plain pointed arches of the inner openings. The shield above is pierced with a bold quatre-foil. The two western piers of the crossing are still standing, and within the arch there has been erected in modern times a large traceried window. The spaces below the window and across the side aisles have been built up with fragments of the demolished structure, and a window is thus formed at the east end of each aisle. The church has evidently undergone a thorough repair during the fifteenth century, probably during the period when Crawford was abbot (1460-1483). "The work executed at this time consisted of the addition of seven buttresses on the north side and several buttresses on the south side of the aisles. Those on the north side are large, and may either enclose the old buttresses or have been substituted for them. They have a set-off near the centre, above which each contains an elaborately ornamented and canopied niche. Beneath and above the niche there are carved panels, which have contained angels and shields, with coats of arms. The arms of Abbot Crawford are said to have been carved on the panels, but they are now too much decayed to be distinguishable. Above the upper panels the buttresses are continued with several set-offs, and finished with a small square pinnacle. The pinnacles have been crocheted and terminated with a carved finial, but they are now greatly wasted away. There were, doubtless, flying arches from the above buttresses to the clerestory, but they must have fallen with the roof. A somewhat elaborate north doorway has been introduced, in a style similar to that of the buttresses, in the second bay from the west tower. The arch is semicircular, and has an ogee canopy. There are small niches above the arch on each side which contained statues, now demolished. This doorway was probably constructed by Abbot Crawford at the same date as the buttresses."[320] "A series of buttresses was also erected about the same time on the south side of the fabric. It is believed, however, that these buttresses are partly old or are on old foundations. In order not to interfere with the cloister walk, which ran along next the south wall, and where it would have been inconvenient to have any projections, the buttresses were carried in the form of flying arches over the top of the cloister roof. At the clerestory level flying arches, similar to those on the north side, rested against the upper portions of buttresses and pinnacles introduced between the windows. On the outside of the cloister walk the flying arch abutted upon oblong masses of masonry, which probably at one time were finished with pinnacles, but these no longer exist."[321] Robert Bellenden, the twenty-fifth abbot of Holyrood, and successor to Abbot Crawford,[322] presented the abbey with bells, a great brass font, and a chalice of gold. He was also beneficent to the poor, and completed the restoration of the fabric by covering the roof with lead. This happened about 1528, and in 1539 the office of commendator was given to Robert, natural son of James V., while still an infant. The brass font was carried off by Sir Richard Lee, an officer in Hertford's army, in 1544, and was removed to St. Alban's Abbey. It was afterwards sold for old metal. The brass lectern of the abbey was also taken by Sir Richard Lee, and presented to the Parish Church of St. Stephen's at St. Alban's, where it still is. It is in the form of an eagle with outstretched wing, and contains a shield with a lion rampant and a crozier, with the inscription, "Georgius Crichton, Episcopus Dunkeldensis."[323] Before becoming bishop, Crichton was abbot of Holyrood, 1515-22. _Jedburgh Abbey (Roxburghshire)._--In 1118 David I., while Prince of Cumbria, founded a priory on the banks of the Jed, and placed it in possession of canons regular from the Abbey of St. Quentin at Beauvais in France. In 1147 the priory was raised to the dignity of an abbey and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, while the smaller buildings of the priory served as a nucleus for the larger buildings of the abbey. Its abbots were sometimes men of distinction, and in 1285, when John Morel was abbot, Alexander III. was married in the abbey with much ceremony to Iolanda, daughter of the Count de Dreux. In the wars between England and Scotland (1297-1300) the abbey suffered so severely that the monks were unable to inhabit it, and were billeted on other religious houses. Jedburgh had to bear the brunt of many English onslaughts, and in 1410, 1416, 1464 it was damaged by repeated attacks of the English. In 1523 both town and abbey fell before the forces of the Earl of Surrey. The abbey was stripped of everything valuable and set on fire. In 1544-1545 the process of destruction was twice repeated under Sir Ralph Eure and the Earl of Hertford respectively. In 1559 the abbey was suppressed, and its resources went to the Crown. For some years it was left a roofless ruin, and a building designed for the parish church was afterwards erected within the nave, roofed over at the level of the triforium, and used as a place of worship till 1875, when a new church built in excambion by the Earl of Lothian was opened for worship, and the abbey ruin can now be viewed "clear of that incubus upon its lovely proportions." Like most ancient buildings that have been added to from time to time, the abbey shows different styles of architecture, and the choir, which is early Norman, is undoubtedly the oldest part. The church consists of a choir with side aisles extending eastward for two bays, beyond which was an aisleless presbytery, the east end of which is demolished; a nave of nine bays, which had vaulted side aisles; a central crossing with square tower above; a north transept well preserved, and a south transept, of which the south end is destroyed.[324] It has been suggested that the choir may have terminated with an eastern apse, but of this there is no proof. What survives consists of two bays next the crossing, the lower portions of which are in the Norman style. A unique arrangement is visible here, as far as Scotland is concerned, and resembles a somewhat similar design at Gloucester Cathedral and Romsey Church, Hampshire. The main piers have the peculiarity of being carried up as massive cylindrical columns to the arch over the triforium. The lower story has the round arch and vaulting ribs supported on corbels, projected from the round face of the piers. The triforium arch is round and moulded, and has a well-wrought chevron ornament. "It rests on large caps of the divided cushion pattern. The main arch is formed into two openings by a central round shaft and two half round responds, with massive cushion caps carrying plain arches."[325] The clerestory is of Transition work, having one lofty stilted and pointed arch, and two smaller pointed arches in each bay. When the Transitional clerestory was erected, the eastern part of the choir is thought to have been built, and the remains of two lofty pointed windows are preserved to the east of the cylindrical piers. The same Norman style of architecture as in the choir is continued in the south and north transepts, and appears to have originally also extended into the nave. "This is apparent from the mode in which the string-course over the triforium runs along on the north side from the choir to the nave, where it is broken off. That the Norman nave has probably extended westwards from the crossing is further evidenced by the existence of the west end wall, with its great doorway and windows, and the south doorway to the cloister, which portions are all of characteristic Norman design." The Norman work must have preceded the Transition work in choir and nave by a considerable portion of time. There is no gradual development visible. The nave (129 feet in length and 27-1/2 feet in breadth) "is divided into nine bays, each of which comprises a main arch resting on clustered piers, a triforium with one round arch containing two pointed arches, and a clerestory forming a continuous arcade, with four pointed arches in each bay. The main clustered piers contain four principal shafts at the angles, and four intermediate shafts between them. The former are brought to a point on the face, the latter are flatter. The caps are simple and of an ordinary transitional form, each with a square abacus. The bases are also simple, and stand on a massive square plinth, a feature not uncommon in Norman work. The arches of the main arcade are somewhat acutely pointed, and the mouldings are bold, and resemble first pointed work." The clerestory shafts are of trefoil section; the arches are all pointed, and contain first pointed mouldings. The west end of the nave and doorway are Norman in character, and Sir Gilbert Scott declared the great western doorway and south doorway to be "perfect gems of refined Norman of the highest class and most artistic finish." The doorpiece is surrounded by three gablets, the central one still retaining a trefoiled arch. The west wall has flat buttresses of Norman character, and "the upper portion of the wall has a central round-headed window, flanked on each side by three small pointed arch heads, the caps carrying which rested on long single free shafts, now gone. The central window has deep mouldings, but no enrichments. The west front has been finished with an octagonal turret on each side, as at Kelso Abbey, and the gable contains a central circular window, which has been filled with tracery at a late date. The west end walls of the aisles have each contained a circular-headed window of Norman design, with a chevron ornament in the arch and a nook shaft at each side." "The lower part of the walls of the choir and the western wall and doorway and south doorway being all of Norman work, it seems probable that the whole building was set out and partially executed in Norman times, and that the work was either stopped for a considerable period and then resumed, or that the structure, after being completed, was destroyed, and had to be restored in the late Transition style. The Transition work is well advanced in style, and may be regarded as being of the date of the end of the twelfth century or beginning of the thirteenth century." "The Norman north transept is fairly well preserved, but both the north and south transepts have undergone great repairs about the end of the fifteenth century. The crossing appears to have been so greatly damaged by the assaults of the fifteenth century that it was found necessary to rebuild it. The restoration is distinctly visible in the south-east pier of the crossing, the style of which is quite different from that of the Norman work adjoining in the choir and south transept, and the junction of the new work with the old is very apparent. This pier has clearly been rebuilt. It is plain next the crossing, but next the aisle it consists of a series of shafts with a moulded cap of late date. The upper mouldings of the cap form a continuous straight line, while the bells of the caps are broken round the shafts--a style of cap common in Scotland at the end of the fifteenth century." "This pier and the south aisle of the choir beside it appear to have been restored by Abbot John Hall (appointed 1478), whose name occurs on the pier and on one of the bosses. The south-west pier of the crossing has also been rebuilt. This work was carried out by Abbot Thomas Cranston (appointed 1482). On a shield on this pier are carved the arms and initials of Abbot Cranston--three cranes and two pastoral staves--saltierwise. The same abbot's initials are placed on the north side of the west arch of the crossing, where the chamfer begins, and on the lower part of the north-west pier. The south-west pier, the north-west pier, and the arch between them would thus appear to have been rebuilt by Abbot Cranston. The base inserted by him is different from the old Norman base. "About half-way up the south-east pier, rebuilt by Abbot Hall, the springer of an arch may be seen projecting to the west. Abbot Hall had evidently intended to throw an arch across the transept at this point, but Abbot Cranston changed his plan and the arch was not carried out. The mouldings of the portions executed by the two abbots differ in their respective parts of the structure. "To the north of the original Norman north transept an addition to the transept has been erected. It is cut off from the old transept by a wall, and thus forms a separate chapel, measuring 27 feet in length by 22 feet in width internally. This chapel is vaulted with the pointed barrel vault usual in Scotland in the fifteenth century, and, consequently, the side windows are low, their pointed arch being kept below the springing of the vault. The window in the north end wall, however, is of large dimensions. The windows are all filled with good fifteenth century tracery, similar to that in the restored south aisle of the choir. This part of the edifice is now used as a mortuary chapel for the family of the Marquess of Lothian. The tower over the crossing is 33 feet square and 86 feet in height. It contains three pointed and cusped lancets on each side, and is without buttresses. It appears to have been erected about 1500. At the top, near the north-west corner, are engraved the arms and initials of Abbot Robert Blackadder, who was afterwards promoted to the offices of Bishop and Archbishop of Glasgow. He was appointed to that see in 1484, and died 1508. His arms are a chevron between three roses." The abbey thus completed was not permitted to remain unmolested. Described by Sir Ralph Eure as "the strength of Teviotdale," and by Hertford as "a house of some strength which might be made a good fortress," it was, as already mentioned, the frequent object of attacks by the English. It was pillaged and burnt in 1544 and 1545, and never recovered from the damage done. In 1559 the monastery was suppressed. In 1587 the bailery of the abbey was continued or restored by a grant of King James VI. to Sir Andrew Ker, and in 1622 the entire property of the lands and baronies which had belonged to the canons of Jedburgh was erected into a temporal lordship, and granted to him with the title of Lord Jedburgh. Sir Alexander Kerr of Fernieherst was ancestor to the Marquess of Lothian.[326] _Dryburgh Abbey (Berwickshire)._--The name Dryburgh has been derived by some from the Celtic darach-bruach, "bank of the grove of oaks," and vestiges of pagan worship have been found in the Bass Hill, a neighbouring eminence. St. Modan, a champion of the Roman party, is said to have come hither from Ireland in the eighth century, and a monastery on very scanty evidence has been attributed to him. St. Mary's Abbey was founded by Hugh de Morville, Lord of Lauderdale and Constable of Scotland, in 1150. According to the Chronicle of Melrose, Beatrix de Beauchamp, wife of de Morville, obtained a charter of confirmation for the new foundation from David I.; the cemetery was said to have been consecrated on St. Martin's Day 1150, "that no demons might haunt it"; the community, however, did not come into residence till 13th December 1152. The monks were Premonstratenses or White Friars; called by the latter name because their garb was a coarse black cassock, covered by a white woollen cape, "in imitation of the angels in heaven, who are clothed with white garments." The monks introduced were from Alnwick. "A large part of the domestic buildings seems to have been erected within fifty or sixty years of the date of the foundation, as they are built in the transition style of the beginning of the thirteenth century. The church appears to have been in progress during the thirteenth century, as in 1242 the Bishop of St. Andrews, owing to the debts incurred in building the monastery and other expenses, gave the canons permission to enjoy the revenues of the churches under their patronage, one of their number performing the office of vicar in each parish. The canons took the oath of fidelity to Edward I. in 1296, upon which their property was restored to them. Their possessions were widely spread, and extended into several counties, as appears from letters addressed by Edward regarding them to the sheriffs in the counties of Fife, Berwick, Roxburgh, and Edinburgh."[327] Tradition states that the English under Edward II., in their retreat in 1322, provoked by the imprudent triumph of the monks in ringing the church bells at their departure, returned and burned the abbey in revenge. Dr. Hill Burton remarks that Bower cannot be quite correct in saying that Dryburgh was entirely reduced to powder, since part of the building yet remaining is of older date than the invasion. King Robert the Bruce contributed to its repair, but it has been doubted whether it ever was fully restored to its former magnificence. Certain disorders among the monks in the latter part of the fourteenth century brought the censure of Pope Gregory XI. upon its inmates. Being within twenty miles of the border, the abbey was frequently exposed to hostile English attacks, and we hear of its burning by Richard II. in 1385, by Sir Robert Bowes and Sir Bryan Latoun in 1544, and again by the Earl of Hertford in 1545--James Stewart, the abbot commendator, having with others crossed the Tweed into Northumberland and burned the village of Horncliffe. It was annexed to the Crown in 1587, and the lands were erected into a temporal barony, with the title of Lord Cardross, in favour of the Earl of Mar, from whom they have passed by purchase through the hands of several proprietors. Chaucer was held to have visited the abbey, but the claim has been demolished by Dr. Hill Burton in Billings' _Antiquities_. Among the distinguished men, however, connected with the abbey was Ralph Strode, "the Philosophicall Strode," to whom and the "moral Gower" Chaucer inscribed his Troilus and Cresseide. He was a friend both of Chaucer and John Wiclif.[328] Andrew Forman was superior of Dryburgh, and was much occupied with affairs of Church and State under James IV. and James V. He was appointed in 1501 to the bishopric of Moray, holding at the same time the priories of Coldingham and Pittenweem, with the commendatorship of Dryburgh. He became afterwards Archbishop of Brouges, and finally Archbishop of St. Andrews. He is said to have written (1) _Contra Lutherum_, (2) _De Stoica Philosophia_, (3) _Collectanea Decretalium_.[329] The monastery had the usual buildings around the cloister; the church was on the north side, and stood about ten steps above the level of the cloister garth. The sacristy, chapter-house, fratery, and other apartments stretch from the transept southwards along the east side; above these, on the upper floor, were the dormitories, entering by an open staircase from the south transept. Along the south side of the cloisters lay the refectory, which, on account of the slope of the ground, was raised on a basement floor of vaulted cellars. On the west side of the cloister garth are now only a few vaulted cellars. A small stream runs along the S.W. side of the monastic buildings, and beyond the stream are the remains of what seems to have been a detached chapel. The oldest portions of the structure are those forming the eastern range; they are of Transitional date or about the beginning of the thirteenth century.[330] The sacristy has a stone bench round the walls and three steps in the floor. It has a door from the transept and an outer semicircular-headed doorway of Transition character from the cloister. Access is also obtained by a small door in the north side to a wheel-stair leading to the upper floors, and visible as a projecting turret at the S.E. angle of the transept. The east window of the sacristy is pronounced remarkable, having two round-headed windows surmounted by a visica-formed aperture. It has a piscina in the south wall near the east end. The apartment next the sacristy may originally have been a parlour, but is now appropriated as a mausoleum. There is an ambry in the south wall near the east end, and the doorway is semicircular and of Norman character. The floor of the chapter-house is several feet below the level of the cloister walk; the ordinary central doorway and side windows opening from the cloister are placed in their usual position on the level of the cloister walk. The side openings were unglazed, and were used for seeing and hearing what was proceeding in the chapter-house below. The doorway is large and deeply recessed; the outer arches of the windows on each side of the doorway are plain semicircles, filled in with two pointed lights having a central shaft. The chapter-house retains its round barrel vault, and has three pointed windows in the east end and two similar ones in the side walls, where the chapter-house projects beyond the general line of the buildings. In the interior a round arched arcade runs along the east side, supported on single shafts, and there are traces of a similar arcade running round the side walls. There is an entrance doorway in the south wall; the east gable wall over the chapter-house still exists, possessing flat buttresses of a Norman type at the angles and between the windows, but the pointed arches indicate Transition work. There is a lovely fragment of carved work still preserved in the chapter-house, representing the pascal lamb slain and surrounded by a wreath of foliage, above which are the letters I.H.S. The vine leaves flowing from the lamb may symbolise the branches springing from the true vine. South of the chapter-house was probably the fratery or monks' day room. It has been vaulted at a late period--probably third pointed. There is a fire-place in the centre of the west wall, and an outer doorway at the south end of the same wall. The apartment was lighted by three plain round arched windows in the east wall, one of which has had tracery inserted in after times. At the N.W. angle, opening from the level of the cloister, is a round-headed doorway, and traces of a staircase which served as the day access to the dormitory. South of the fratery is the slype or passage, with arched openings to the east and west. It has also a doorway to the fratery, and another to the apartment on the south side, the latter of which now only exists in part, the south end of the range having been destroyed. The range of these buildings still retains its eastern wall to the full height of two stories--the upper story being doubtless the dormitory. On the south side of the cloister, where the refectory once stood, there are now only the ruins of the vaulted basement on which it stood. At the east end of this range there is a doorway from the cloister giving access to a staircase which led down to the lower level of the fratery, and the remainder of the south side was probably all occupied by the refectory. The west wall is almost all that survives; it is now ivy-clad, and contains a picturesque circular window, with radiating tracery. Adjoining this wall in the S.W. angle of the cloister there is an arched recess, apparently intended for a tomb and monument, but now empty. Over the doorway in this angle is a large shield, containing the arms of John Stewart, who was commendator in 1555. On the shield are the initials J.S., with the crozier in the centre. He was brother to the Earl of Lennox, and uncle to Lord Darnley, who married Queen Mary. The arms are those of the Stewarts of Lennox. The cloister occupies a space of 93 feet by 91 feet, and was surrounded by a vaulted walk which has entirely disappeared. It is evident that the cloister walk was at least partly vaulted, from the small remains of the springing of the vaults which are visible in the eastern wall on each side of the doorway to the chapter-house. The south wall of the nave of the church extends along the north side of the cloister, and at the N.E. angle is the doorway which led from the cloister into the nave--a handsome specimen of the Transition style. The nave of the church is entered through this handsome doorway by ten steps up from the cloister, and presents a scene of terrible destruction. The west end wall partly remains, "and shows by the responds attached to it the form of the nave piers, with their caps and bases. The position of the piers along the nave is now roughly indicated by a collection of fragments arranged as nearly as possible in the original position and form. The mouldings indicate a late date, and were, doubtless, restorations; but the responds, which were not so liable to destruction, are of first pointed date. The responds which form part of the west wall show that there was a central nave 28 feet wide and side aisles, each about 13 feet 6 inches wide, making a total width of 55 feet. There have been side chapels in the nave, apparently divided by walls, some portions of which remain, with ambries in the chapels. The western doorway has a round arched head, but its details show that it is of late design. This part of the edifice has apparently been restored in the fifteenth century, after the destruction of the abbey by Richard II. in the end of the fourteenth century."[331] The transept has a slight projection to the north and south; this part of the building and all to the east of it are evidently of thirteenth century work, but only a few detached portions remain. The south transept gable has a large window filled with simple pointed tracery, rising in steps above the roof of the dormitory. The arch through which the stair to the dormitory passed is visible in this wall. To the east of the transept is a choir of two bays, with aisles, and beyond which is an aisleless presbytery. The portions left are pronounced to be of a very beautiful design, both internally and externally. The exterior is simple but elegant, and of first pointed work; the interior shows evidence of more advanced design. The clerestory is of beautiful design; "each bay contains an arcade of three arches, the central one, which is opposite the window, being larger than the side arches. The arches are supported on detached piers, behind which runs a gallery. These piers each consist of two shafts, with central fillet. They have first pointed round caps, over which a round block receives the arch mouldings as they descend. A small portion of the north end of the transept adjoins the above, which shows that the structure has been carried up in two stories of richly moulded windows, all in the same style as the adjoining portions of the choir. The remaining portion of the aisle is vaulted with moulded ribs springing from responds and corbels corresponding in style with the choir."[332] Here rests the dust of Sir Walter Scott and his kinsfolk, and of it Alexander Smith wrote that "when the swollen Tweed raves as it sweeps, red and broad, round the ruins of Dryburgh, you think of him who rests there--the magician asleep in the lap of legends old, the sorcerer buried in the heart of the land he has made enchanted." _Dunfermline Abbey (Fife)._--Dunfermline was from a very early period the residence of the kings of Scotland and here Malcolm Canmore had his tower; here he entertained the royal fugitives from England, and married the Princess Margaret in 1068. The Glen of Pittencrieff contains the remains of the Tower of Malcolm Canmore, and of a subsequent royal palace, and they were in 1871 pronounced by the House of Lords to be Crown property. Malcolm's Tower is believed to have been built between 1057 and 1070, and the royal palace may have been founded as early as 1100, although more likely it was not built till after the departure of Edward I. of England, in February 1304. The kings of Scotland, from Robert Bruce onward, appear to have frequently resided in the palace. According to Turgot, Queen Margaret, after her marriage, founded a church "in that place where her nuptials were celebrated," and it was dedicated to the Holy Trinity in 1074. It became the place of royal sepulture, and Queen Margaret was buried within it. There are frequent references from this time onwards of grants to the church of the Holy Trinity, and to interments of royal personages therein. "The original church of Canmore," says Professor Innes, "perhaps not of stone, must have been replaced by a new edifice when it was dedicated in the reign of David I.,"[333] and Messrs. MacGibbon and Ross add "As no notice has been preserved of the erection of any new church till the building of the choir in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, it has been supposed that the nave of the existing structure (which is in the Norman style) may have been the church founded and erected by Queen Margaret. But the style of the building forbids this supposition. None of the English cathedrals were founded till the end of the eleventh century, and few were carried out till the expiry of the first quarter of the twelfth century. Scotland would certainly not be in advance of England in its style of architecture, and we know that little, if any, Norman work was executed in this country till the days of David I.... The style of the structure is early Norman, and would naturally follow the erection of Durham Cathedral, which took place about twenty-five years earlier."[334] The same authorities think that the original church of Malcolm stood where the new choir was afterwards erected, and that David I. added the Norman nave to it. "The nature of the site seems to favour this view, as the ground to the west slopes rapidly away, and scarcely allows room for the west end of the nave; while the conventual buildings, for want of suitable space, have had to be carried with an archway over a public street."[335] Alexander I. seems to have contemplated its erection into an abbey, and in the year of his succession David I. remodelled it as a Benedictine Abbey, and placed in it an abbot and twelve brethren brought from Canterbury. By the close of the thirteenth century it had become one of the most magnificent institutions in Scotland. David I., after introducing the Benedictine order, probably added the Norman nave to the then existing church erected by his royal parents, and it was evidently resolved at no distant time from this to rebuild the early church and form a new choir and transept worthy of the new settlement. This was done, and between 1216 and 1226 the choir, aisles, transept, and presbytery were erected, and Abbot Patrick, formerly Dean and Prior of Canterbury, presided at Dunfermline during the whole of the above time. Appeals were made to the Popes Honorius III. and Gregory IX. on account of the expenses incurred by church erection and the increase of the number of canons from thirty to fifty. In the dispute of 1249 regarding the consecration of the new choir, Pope Honorious IV. decided that a new consecration was not necessary, as the consecrated walls of the oldest part (the nave) continued in use. In that year Queen Margaret was canonised, and in 1250 her body was transferred from the old church to the new lady chapel in presence of all the chief men of the kingdom. "The translation of the saintly foundress," says Professor Innes, "was probably arranged to give solemnity to the opening of the new church."[336] This is known in history as the "Translation of S. Margaret," and the "grate companie" of king, nobles, bishops, abbots, and dignitaries in procession kept time "to the sound of the organ and the melodious notes of the choir singing in parts." Soon after this, describing what it had become towards the close of the thirteenth century, Matthew of Westminster wrote: "Its boundaries were so ample, containing within its precincts three carrucates of land, and having so many princely buildings, that three potent sovereigns, with their retinues, might have been accommodated with lodgings here at the same time without incommoding one another." In 1244 it had become a mitred abbey, Pope Innocent IV. having, at the request of Alexander II., empowered and authorised the abbot to assume the mitre, the ring, and other pontifical ornaments; and in the same year, in consideration of the excessive coldness of the climate, he granted to the monks the privilege of wearing caps suitable to their order; but they were, notwithstanding, enjoined to show proper reverence at the Elevation of the Host and other ceremonies.[337] "This sumptuous pile," says Professor Innes, "was destroyed and levelled with the ground by the soldiers of Edward in 1303, excepting only the church and a few dwellings for the monks[338]--Edward I. of England having occupied it from 6th November 1303 to 10th February 1304. It was restored, probably in much less than its former magnificence, after Bruce was settled on the Scottish throne, and it evidently remained in that condition until 28th March 1560, when the choir, transepts, and belfry were, with the monastic buildings, "cast down."" It was a very wealthy abbey, and the greater part of the lands in the western, southern, and eastern districts of Fife, as well as in other counties, belonged to it. The abbey also possessed many rights, and the abbot was Superior of lands--the property of others--and received the resignation of his vassals sitting on their bended knees, and testifying all due humility. The abbot and convent were invested with the power of enforcing their rights by excommunication, and they exercised it on several occasions. The abbey possessed the right of a free regality, with civil jurisdiction equivalent to that of a sheriff over the occupiers of the lands belonging to it, and with a criminal jurisdiction equivalent to that of the Crown, wielding the power of life and death. A bailie of regality, appointed by the abbot, and officiating in his name, resided in an edifice called the Bailie House, near the Queen's House, and presided in the regality courts. The abbey church succeeded Iona as a place of royal sepulture, and kings, queens, and princes were buried within it. Gordon gives the list of eight kings, five queens, seven princes, and two princesses, besides other notable persons,[339] so that it may well be called the "Scottish Westminster." The abbey church, when complete, was cruciform, and comprised a seven-bayed nave, with side aisles, a transept, a choir with a lady chapel, and three towers, two western ones terminating the aisles and flanking the gable of the nave, and the great central tower rising from the crossing. The monastic buildings were also on a magnificent scale, but of the church and monastic structures there only now remain the Norman nave, the base of the Lady Chapel, and part of the refectory and kitchen. The nave is well preserved and the piers are circular. The plan of these with that of the wall responds shows that the original intention was to groin the aisles. The two eastern bays between the eastern pillars are built up with solid masonry, and only a portion of the arches is visible. The two western bays and the triforium arches above them have also been filled up with solid building to strengthen the western towers.[340] "The pillars which support the west towers are of greater size than the others, and are of a different section. One of the pillars and the corresponding arch of the north arcade are of late Gothic work, and may be part of the repairs ordered by the Privy Council in 1563, or of the work done in 1594 under the direction of William Schaw, Master of Works, who at that time built the north-west tower and steeple, as well as the porch on the north side of the nave. At the same time, also, certain great buttresses were built against the outer walls, which are now conspicuous features of the structure."[341] The great western doorway, a good example of Norman work, remains unaltered, and consists of five orders, having alternately round and octagonal shafts, chiefly with cushion caps, but some are ornamented with scrolls. The abacus is heavy, and is carved with sunk diapers. The orders are continued round the arches, and contain chevron ornaments (much decayed), rosettes, and diapers.[342] The outer order contains large heads and geometric figures in the alternate voussoirs--an arrangement similar to that of Whithorn and Dalmeny, where the geometric figures also resemble those adopted here.[343] The _original_ north doorway, partly concealed by Schaw's porch, is similar in design, with the addition of an arcade above the arch, resembling but still plainer than that over the doorway of Dalmeny Church. The south doorway of the church is of late work, and there appears to have been another south doorway at the east end of the nave, but it is now built up.[344] The whole of the aisle walls are arcaded in the interior up to the height of the window sills, but the arcade has been partly cut away for monuments. The general design of the nave recalls that of Durham Cathedral, and Dr. Joseph Robertson remarks, "Though not of great size, the sombre masses of the (nave) interior are impressive. The English visitor will remark more than one point of resemblance to Durham and Lindisfarne; and there is no violence in the conjecture that the same head may have planned, or the same hands have hewn, part of all the three. We know that when the foundations of Durham were laid in 1093 by the confessor and biographer of St. Margaret, her husband Malcolm was present; and when the new church received the relics of St. Cuthbert in 1104, her son Alexander witnessed the rites."[345] Both at Durham and Dunfermline there are the same circular piers with zig-zag ornaments, and massive cushion caps and clustered piers occur in each. The small circular bases, resting on great square plinths, are also common to both. The triforium and clerestory are simple in design, and the aisles are vaulted and groined. The windows of the aisles are single round-headed lights, having plain sconsions, with one recessed shaft on each side, and the arch enriched with chevron mouldings.[346] Internally and externally they are of similar design. From the existence of the large west end pillars, it was evidently intended from the first to have two western towers. The northern one, along with the upper part of the adjoining gable, was destroyed to a considerable extent at the Reformation, and in its present state it was designed and built up by William Schaw. The bold corbelling at the top recalls the similar treatment of the towers of St. Machar's, Aberdeen, and other examples derived from domestic architecture.[347] The south-west tower seems to have remained intact, although in a ruinous condition, till 1807, when it fell, having been struck with lightning. Three years later the present top was put on the old walls.[348] The Lady Chapel at the east end was built to receive Queen Margaret's shrine, and is now reduced to a small fragment, consisting of part of the south and east walls, which remain to the height of about 2 or 3 feet. "It has been a small structure of about 26 feet 9 inches by 22 feet, of delicate and refined pointed work, as is apparent from the bases of the wall arcading and the edge of the surrounding seat, enriched with nail-head ornaments, which still exist. The Lady Chapel appears from an old view to have been a low structure, reaching only to the sill of the great east window of the choir, and it was evidently vaulted in two compartments."[349] No stones now remain of the thirteenth century choir, as they were all removed to make room for the modern church, begun in 1818; before this, however, considerable remains of the choir and the whole of the foundations were standing.[350] The choir was a prolongation of the present nave, having transepts and a great aisle on the north side. There was a lofty central tower of two stories, with three windows in each storey facing the four sides, and it was this part of the structure which suffered on the 28th March 1560, when "the wholl lordis and barnis that were on thys syde of Forth passed to Stirling, and be the way kest doun the Abbey of Dunfermling."[351] The nave was used as a parish church till 1821, when the new choir was opened. In the south transept of it are three much-admired white marble monuments: General Bruce's by Foley (1868), the Hon. Dashwood Preston Bruce's by Noble (1870), and Lady Augusta Stanley's by Miss Grant of Kilgraston (1876). The remains of King Robert the Bruce were discovered in 1818 at the digging for the foundation of the new parish church. They were found wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold, thrown apparently over two coverings of sheet lead, in which the body was encased, all being enclosed in a stone coffin. "There was strong internal evidence of the remains being those of Robert Bruce, and after a cast of the skull had been taken, they were replaced in the coffin, immersed in melted pitch, and reinterred under mason work in front of the _pulpit_ of the new parish church. An inlaid monumental brass was in 1889 inserted in the floor over his tomb." Near the east end of the church is a square tower, with terminals showing an open hewn stone-work, in place of a Gothic balustrade, having in capitals on the four sides of the tower's summit the words "King Robert the Bruce," and at each corner of the tower there is a lofty pinnacle. The church occupies a commanding situation, from which the ground falls away on the west and south sides. The monastic buildings were on the south side of the nave, but on a lower level. Of these structures considerable remains still exist. "The ground between the dark walls and the church has, in recent years, been levelled up, the outer portions of the monastic buildings serving as retaining walls. With the exception of these outer walls, the site of the monastery is thus buried."[352] The refectory stood on the south side of the cloister, and the whole length and height of its south and west walls still exist. The south wall was divided into seven bays, and in six of them there are lofty two-light windows. The eastern bay has a reading desk, from which one of the monks read aloud during meals. It is lighted from the outside by two windows. On the side next the hall there are two lofty openings.[353] Adjoining the refectory on the south-west is a large tower, beneath which runs St. Catherine's Wynd, through a "pend" or archway, whence it is called the "Pend Tower." "The outside of the refectory and 'Pend Tower' is very imposing, with a simple row of lofty buttresses and windows along the top. The west gable wall of the refectory is still entire, and has a large window of seven lights. The tracery of this window is in good preservation, and is one of the most favourable examples of a kind of tracery developed in Scotland during the fifteenth century. At the north-west corner of the refectory is the staircase tower, which leads down to the offices below, and upwards to the refectory roof, over which access was obtained to the upper story of the 'Pend Tower.' In the north wall of the refectory, near the west end, are the remains of a flue, which may have belonged to a fire-place. The 'Pend Tower' is still entire, wanting only the cape house and roof. It served as a connecting passage between the abbey buildings and the royal palace beyond. A door led from the refectory by a passage into a groined chamber, and from thence into a room in the palace situated over the kitchen. The kitchen is a lofty room, now roofless, having remains of large fire-places and some curious recesses. Below the kitchen, but entering from another part of the palace, there is a large vaulted apartment with central pillars. These pillars were continued up through the kitchen, and probably to the room, now gone, which stood over the kitchen. Another arched passage led from this apartment through below St. Catherine's Wynd and up to the monastery. The building known as the palace was doubtless intimately connected with the monastery, and the kitchen may have been used in connection with both."[354] Within the "Pend Tower" on the first floor is a five-sided room with a fire-place, and it appears to have been a sort of guard room. It is vaulted and has irregularly placed ribs. Over this, and entering from the circular stair adjoining, is another groin-vaulted room, which had a fire-place of good design. The passage and staircase are additions made at the time when the tower was built, and the arches were thrown between the already existing buttresses of the refectory, and in the second bay the arch is at a low level to permit of the descending stair, while the builders have just managed to save a very beautiful doorway belonging to the earlier building, and now hardly seen in the shadow of the overhanging addition.[355] To the east of the refectory is a narrow chamber with the remains of a two-light window in the south wall, and projecting southwards from this is the lower part of the wall of the fratery, reaching as high as the floor of the refectory. On the east side of the fratery extends the south wall of a building called the Baillery Prison.[356] These fragmentary structures exhaust the remains of the monastic buildings. The chapter-house was on the east side of the cloister garth. The monastery was burned by Edward I. in 1303-4, but Tytler says the church escaped.[357] Froissart states that in 1385 Richard II. burned the abbey and town, and it is doubted if any of the existing monastic buildings belong to an earlier date than that last mentioned.[358] "William Schaw, Master of Works, besides the buildings already referred to,[359] erected in 1594 certain of the immense buttresses which form such conspicuous features in all the views of the abbey. He likewise built, and doubtless designed, the Queen's House and the Bailie and Constabulary House. In connection with the latter houses there are considerable remains of buildings still existing to the north-west of the abbey, and there seems every probability that they formed part of the structures of the abbey and of the Queen's House. They are extremely picturesque as seen from the low ground to the west. The lofty house on the right hand dates probably from the end of the seventeenth century, and is a fine example of the period. The adjoining buildings are considerably earlier, and in the lower parts, where they are buttressed, they are probably of pre-Reformation times. The upper portions are somewhat later, and are very likely part of the work of Schaw. The porch to the latter buildings is on the other side, and is quaint and well known from being seen from the church. William Schaw died in 1602, and was buried in the nave, when the monument to his memory was erected by order of Queen Anne."[360] _Paisley Abbey (Renfrewshire)._--In his history of this great abbey, the Very Rev. Dr. Cameron Lees thus describes its situation:-- "In the heart of the busy town of Paisley stands the Abbey, its venerable appearance contrasting most strangely with its surroundings. Many chimneys--so many that it seems impossible to count them--pour forth their smoke on every side of it; crowds of operatives jostle past it; heavily laden carts cause its old walls to tremble; the whirr of machinery and the whistle of the railway engine break in upon its repose; while within a stone's throw of it flows the River Cart, the manifold defilements of which have passed into a proverb. But it is not difficult, even without being imaginative, to see how beautiful for situation was once the spot where the Abbey rose in all its unimpaired and stately grace. It stood on a fertile and perfectly level piece of ground, close by the Cart, then a pure mountain stream, which, after falling over some bold and picturesque rocks in the middle of its channel, moved quietly by the Abbey walls on its course to the Clyde. Divided from the Abbey by this stream, rose wooded slopes, undulating like waves of the sea till they reached the lofty ridge called the Braes of Gleniffer, from the summit of which the lay brother, as he herded his cattle or swine, could get views of the Argyleshire hills, the sharp peaks of Arran, and the huge form of Ben Lomond. To the north, on the other side of the Clyde, were the fertile glades of Kilpatrick, and beyond, the Campsie range. Gardens and deer parks girdled the Abbey round; few houses were near except the little village of dependants on the other side of the stream; and no sound beyond the precincts broke the solitude, save the wind as it roared through the beech forest, the bell of a distant chapel, or, on a calm evening, the chimes of the Cathedral of Saint Mungo, seven miles away. It was a well-chosen spot, answering in every way the requirements of the Benedictines, who, we are told, "preferred to build in an open position at the back of a wooded chain of hills.""[361] Paisley illustrates what was said by Dr. Cosmo Innes regarding the country as a whole. "Scotland of the twelfth century had no cause to regret the endowment of a church.... Repose was the one thing most wanted, and people found it under the protection of the crozier."[362] The Church became the great factor in the development of civilisation throughout the district. Had not the monastic system been good, it would not have lasted so long; had it not had within it the elements of weakness, it would not have come to such an untimely end. And even while we criticise it is well to recall the words of Newman: "Not a man in Europe who talks bravely against the Church, but owes it to the Church that he can talk at all."[363] The great abbey of Paisley was much to its neighbourhood, and its history is the history of its district. It is a memorial of the coming to Scotland of the great family of Stewart, which has left such a deep impress on Scottish history. Walter, son of Alan of Shropshire, joined David I. at the siege of Winchester, and the king showed to him great favour, taking him into his household, and conferring on him the title of Lord High Steward of Scotland. King Malcolm was even more generous, ratified the title to Walter and his heirs, and bestowed on him a wide territory, chiefly in Renfrewshire.[364] The Steward soon colonised after the fashion of the time, built a castle for himself in the neighbourhood of Renfrew, and gave holdings to his followers throughout the wide territory of Strathgyff, as his Renfrewshire property was called. But in those days no colonisation was complete without a monastery, and this the Lord High Steward proceeded to found, entering into an agreement with Humbold, Prior of Wenlock Abbey in the native county of his family, to establish at "Passelay" a house of the Cluniac Order of Benedictines, being the same order as the house at Wenlock. Humbold in 1169 brought thirteen monks from the parent house, and, having settled them at Renfrewshire in an island of the Clyde called the King's Inch, returned to Wenlock. There was at this time in Paisley an early church, dedicated to St. Mirinus, an Irish saint of the sixth century, and a disciple of the great school of St. Congal at Bangor. St. Mirin was a contemporary of St. Columba, and must have been a friend of the great apostle of Scotland. He was probably the founder of the early Celtic church at Paisley, and seems to have been an itinerant preacher round the district, regarding Paisley as his centre, where at last, "full of miracles and holiness, he slept in the Lord." It matters little whether these legends regarding miracles are historically correct, for the value lies in the moral of them. "The falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a truth, and in all these legends there is set forth the victory of a good and beneficent man over evil, whether it be of matter or of spirit."[365] When the monks had founded their church at Paisley they dedicated it to the Virgin Mary, to St. James, St. Milburga, and St. Mirinus. St. James was the patron saint of the Stewarts, and to him the church on the Inch of Renfrew, where the monks first took up their abode, was dedicated. St. Milburga was the patron saint of Wenlock, and it was natural that the Shropshire monks should place their new home at Paisley under the patronage of a saint whom they held in reverence, and who was a link between Paisley and the scene of former days. St. Mirinus was the Celtic saint of the neighbourhood, and by calling the new monastery after his name they reconciled the sympathies of the people to themselves, and connected their church with the old historic church of Scotland. The monastery was at first in the second rank of religious houses, and was ruled by a prior. The abbey of Clugny was very jealous of raising any of its subordinate houses to the rank of an abbey, but it was very inconvenient for the monastery of Paisley to be in subjection to one so far away as the French abbot, and commissioners appointed by a papal bull in 1219 decreed that the monks of Paisley might proceed to the canonical election of an abbot, the patron of Paisley, the Lord High Stewart, also giving his permission. Twenty-six years later, the abbot of Clugny surrendered his rights, which had been reserved by the papal bull,--the monks, through the Bishop of Glasgow, promising prompt payment of the two marks for the future, and undertaking that the abbot of Paisley should personally or by proxy visit Clugny every seven years to make obeisance and render an account to his superior.[366] William was probably the first abbot of Paisley, and he presided from 1225 to 1248. He established and consolidated the prosperity of the convent, and obtained from the Popes several bulls conferring privileges on the monastery.[367] The following picture, drawn by a master-hand, has been applied by Dr. Lees to the monastic life at Paisley during the prosperous reigns of Alexander II. and III. "In black tunics, the mementoes of death, and in leathern girdles, the emblems of chastity, might then be seen carters silently yoking their bullocks to the team, and driving them in silence to the field, or shepherds interchanging some inevitable whispers while they watched their flocks; or wheelwrights, carpenters, and masons plying their trades like the inmates of some dumb asylum, and all pausing from their labours as the convent bell, sounding the hours of prime, nones, or vespers, summoned them to join in spirit where they could not repair in person, to those sacred offices. Around the monastic buildings might be seen the belt of cultivated land continually encroaching on the adjoining forest, and the passer-by might trace to the toil of these mute workmen the opening of roads, the draining of marshes, the herds grazing, and the harvests waving in security under the shelter of ecclesiastical privileges which even the Estergoth and Vandal regarded with respect. If we exchange for the 'Estergoth and Vandal' the marauding baron and Highland chief, the picture is a true one of the surroundings of Paisley Abbey in those peaceful years."[368] "During the prosperous reigns of Kings Alexander II. and III. the church was erected, but of the work of that period (the thirteenth century) there remain only a portion of the west front and part of the south wall of the nave, including the south-east doorway to the cloister and three windows. The structure appears to have suffered severely during the War of Independence. It stood in the vicinity of Elderslie, the land of Sir William Wallace, and doubtless met with a similar savage treatment to that allotted to the patriot leader. It is stated to have been burnt by the English in 1307, and the burning would appear to have led to a very complete destruction of the edifice, as the portions of the original work which survive are very small."[369] The abbey church was a parish church, within the territory of which the house of Elderslie was situated, and the connection of the family of Elderslie with the monks of Paisley would naturally be very close. Wallace himself was probably educated at the school of the Paisley Clunaics,[370] and the influence of the abbey may have helped to mould within him the character which Fordun thus describes:-- "He (Wallace) venerated the church and respected the clergy; his greatest abhorrence was for falsehood and lying; his uttermost loathing for treason, and therefore the Lord was with him, through whom he was a man whose every work prospered in his hand."[371] The monks of Paisley during the times of Wallace and Bruce were on the patriotic side. After Bruce had murdered the Red Comyn before the altar of the Franciscan friars at Dumfries, the deed lay heavy on his conscience, and the Steward used his influence with the Pope to procure absolution. A commission was issued to the abbot of Paisley by Berengarius, the penitentiary of the Pope, to absolve the Bruce and appoint him proper penance for his crime. "How the duty committed to him was discharged by the Abbot or what penance he enjoined, we do not know. It may have been to fulfil the penance imposed at Paisley that Bruce desired so ardently to visit the Holy Sepulchre. He was excommunicated again soon afterwards, and years elapsed before he was finally restored to the favour of the Church; but his absolution at Paisley was a gleam of sunshine in the midst of his stormy life, and one of the most interesting pictures in the history of our abbey is that of the monarch kneeling before its altar and amidst its fire-stained walls."[372] James, the Steward, died on 16th July 1309, and, like the earlier Stewarts, was probably buried in the ruined abbey. He was succeeded by his son Walter, who married Marjory, the daughter of Robert the Bruce. Their married life was short, and the untimely death of Marjory took place within a year. Walter died at Bathgate in 1326, and, like his wife, was buried in the abbey. "When long time their dule had made The corps to Paslay have they had, And there with great solemnity And with great dule eirded was he." Robert, the son of Walter and Marjory, was but a boy of ten or eleven years of age at his father's death, but he was a boy with great expectations. Failing the death of the king's son without heirs, the Scottish Parliament had solemnly ratified his succession to the Scottish throne. King Robert the Bruce died in 1329, and his only son, David II., succeeded him. By neither of his marriages had he any issue, and he was succeeded by his sister's son, Robert II., who became the founder of the Stewart dynasty. "The abbey was now under royal patronage, and Walter, the son of Alan, its founder--the Shropshire colonist--the progenitor of a race of kings."[373] Under royal favour and patronage the abbey entered on a course of prosperity, unbroken till the time of the Reformation. Robert II. died in 1390, and was buried at Scone. "If this be true, he was the first of the Stewarts who were laid elsewhere than in the precincts of the abbey, and the circumstance is all the more strange because Elizabeth More, the much-loved wife of his youth, and Euphan Ross, his queen, are buried there."[374] Robert III. had two sons, the elder of whom was David, Duke of Rothesay (1378-1402). He was under the guardianship of Albany, who after a short time starved him to death at Falkland. Robert, anxious for the safety of his younger son, James, resolved to send him to France, but on his way thither he was captured by an English vessel, and thereafter imprisoned in the Tower of London. There is good reason for believing that Albany and the Douglases had to do with the imprisonment of the Prince, and they did everything to prevent his release. When the news was brought to the king in the castle of Rothesay, he succumbed to paroxysms of grief, and died 4th April 1406. "Touched by grief," says Fordun, "his bodily strength vanished, his countenance paled, and, borne down by sorrow, he refused all food, until at last he breathed forth his spirit to his Creator." He was buried in the abbey of Paisley before the high altar, and was the last of the Stewarts who was laid there.[375] After the destruction of the abbey, caused by the wars with England, the edifice seems to have remained for long in a dismantled condition, but gifts having been received from the Bishops of Argyle and Glasgow to aid the restoration of the building, the work was begun. Besides, the abbey was from 1388 to 1408 under the ban of excommunication, and this must have powerfully added to the delay in the building operations. Part of this work was carried out under Abbot Lithgow (1384-1433), who was buried by his own desire in the north porch, where his memory is still preserved. The chief part of the rebuilding of the abbey church was carried out under Abbot Thomas de Tervas (1445-1459). The _Chronicle of Auchinleck_ says of this abbot:-- "The quhilk wes ane richt gud man, and helplyk to the place of ony that ever wes, for he did mony notabil thingis, and held ane nobil hous, and wes ay wele purvait. He fand the place al out of gud reule, and destitute of leving, and al the kirkis in lordis handis, and the kirk unbiggit. The bodie of the kirk fra the bucht stair up he biggit, and put on the ruf, and theekit it with sclats and riggit it with stane, and biggit ane great porcioun of the steple, and ane staitlie yet-hous: and brocht hame mony gude jowellis, and clathis of gold, silver, and silk, and mony gud bukis, and made statelie stallis, and glassynnit mekle of al the kirk, and brocht hame the staitliest tabernakle that wes in al Skotland, and the maist costlie: and schortlie he brocht al the place to fredome and fra nocht till ane michty place, and left it out of al kind of det, and al fredome, till dispone as them lykit, and left ane of the best myteris that wes in Skotland, and chandillaris of silver, and ane lettren of brass, with mony uther gud jowellis."[376] Abbot Thomas is said to have obtained the privilege of having a tavern and selling wine within the gates of the monastery, and is believed to have raised money thereby for the reconstruction of his church.[377] The quaint language of the ancient _Chronicle of Auchinleck_, translated into ordinary English, means that besides journeying to Rome and procuring the articles mentioned, he carried up the triforium and clerestory, finished the roof, erected a great part of the steeple, and built a stately gate-house. At the death of Abbot Tervas, Pope Pius II. decreed that the disposition of the office and of the whole revenues of the monastery should fall to the Pope, and he appointed Henry Crichton, a monk of Dunfermline, to be commendator of the abbey, and assigned a pension of 300 florins out of the revenues to Pietro Barlo, Cardinal of St. Mark's in Venice, to be paid to him by Henry and his successors at the Feast of St. John the Baptist, under pain of excommunication, in case of his failing to make payment within thirty days after the appointed term, and total deprivation if he persisted in his opposition six months after his excommunication. When he got himself fairly installed as abbot he declined to pay the stipulated pension to the Cardinal of St. Mark's, and made some legal quibble the ground of his neglect. Trouble followed, and since this, the appointment of its first commendator, the rights of the abbey began to be invaded. Abbot George Shaw (1472-1498) endeavoured to guard the monastery against encroachments; he built a refectory and other structures, reared a lofty tower over the principal gate, enclosed the church, the precincts of the convent, the gardens, and a little park for deer within a wall about a mile in circuit.[378] Of this once magnificent wall, with its four-sided beautiful stones and lofty statues, very few fragments now remain, but there are still two tablets that belonged to it. The central shield bears the royal arms, the shields to the right and left of it the Stewart arms and the abbot's own; and there is an inscription by the pious builder himself, which is as follows:-- Ye call it ye Abbot Georg of Schawe About yis Abbey gart make yis waw A thousande four hundereth zheyr Auchty ande fywe the date but veir [Pray for his saulis salvacioun] That made thys nobil fundacioun. It has been thought that this inscription was designed by John Morow, whose name appears on a tablet in Melrose Abbey.[379] "The character of the lettering in design and workmanship is the same as at Melrose. The references to the building operations, the poetical form of the composition, the manner in which the names are introduced, 'Callit was I,' and 'Ye callit,' and the devout expressions with which they close, make it clear that the inscriptions are the work of the same author." The fifth line is chiselled away, and was possibly deleted because it did not harmonise with the theology of the Reformed Church. Abbot George Shaw was succeeded by his nephew, Robert Shaw, vicar of Munkton, and a son of the Governor of Stirling. He was canonically elected, and his election was approved by the Crown,--the Pope also gave his consent on condition that Robert Shaw should take the monastic habit within six months, and decreed that the old abbot should enjoy as his pension a third part of the fruits of the monastery, and might return to his former position when he thought proper. Robert Shaw took office in 1498, and his uncle lived for some years after, "the pensioner of the abbey" as he is called in charters. George Shaw died probably in 1505, and Dr. Lees says of him:-- "He filled his place well, and the visitor to Paisley who sees his shield of three covered cups with the pastoral crook behind them upon the wall of one of the outhouses, which has been ruthlessly transformed by modern iconoclasts, or reads the defaced inscription which tells of the 'nobil fundacioun' he reared, will do well to remember that they are the memorials of a good man, one of the best of his time, to whose wisdom and benevolence the town of Paisley owes its existence."[380] This refers to the creation of Paisley as a burgh by Abbot Shaw, who obtained in 1488 a charter creating the village of Paisley into a free burgh of barony, and thereby raising the status of the people both socially and politically. The burgher was no longer in the condition of a serf or slave, who could be transferred from one master to another, and he escaped from all the severities and exactions of the feudal system. The burghs had power of self-government, and were able to develop commercial and industrial operations. The burgh of Paisley was endowed with the usual privileges, and a right to hold a market every Monday, and two yearly fairs--one on the day of St. Mirren, and the other on the day of St. Marnock. In 1490 the abbot and chapter granted to the magistrates of the burgh in feu-farm the ground on which the old town stands and certain other privileges. After an examination of the Rental Book, Dr. Lees regards it as "corroborating all that historians tell us regarding the lands of those ecclesiastics being the best cultivated and the best managed in Scotland.... The neighbourhood of a convent was always recognisable by the well-cultivated land and the happy tenantry which surrounded it, and those of the Abbey of Paisley were no exception to the general rule prevailing throughout the rest of Scotland.[381] "The monks were kind masters. No cases of eviction or deprivation are recorded. The same lands descended without rise of rent from father to son. Children are held bound to maintain their parents in their old age, and widows are specially cared for, and are occasionally provided with another husband!"[382] During the fifteenth century many altars were erected and endowed by the burgesses, and the Chapel of St. Mirin, which occupies part of the site of the south transept, was erected in 1499, and endowed by James Crawford of Kylwynet, a burgess of Paisley, and his wife. Abbot Robert (1498-1525) was received on 19th October 1525 as Bishop of Moray in the cathedral of his northern diocese, and the next abbot was John Hamilton, a natural son of the Earl of Arran, who had entered the church as a monk of Kilwinning, and whom Magnus speaks of with contempt as a "yonge thing." The earl was high in favour with the queen, who had at the time the disposal of the church benefices, and he wished the bishopric for his son. The queen, however, appointed Abbot Robert to the see of Moray, and Hamilton to the abbey of Paisley. It was one of the deeds of shame enacted in the Scottish Church which ultimately brought its severe judgment. Abbot John Hamilton (1525-1547) rebuilt at immense cost the first tower that appears to have had insecure foundation, and fell. It seems to have had an untimely end, falling, according to one account, with its own weight, and with it the choir of the church, or, according to an another account, being struck with lightning. In 1559, with Kilwinning and Dunfermline, the abbey of Paisley was suppressed, and what that meant can best be expressed in the words of Sir Walter Scott:-- "They fumigated the church with burnt wool and feathers instead of incense, put foul water into the holy-water basins; they sung ludicrous and indecent parodies to the tunes of church hymns; they violated whatever vestments belonging to the abbey they could lay their hands upon; and playing every freak which the whim of the moment could suggest to their wild caprice. At length they fell to more lasting deeds of demolition, pulled down and destroyed carved woodwork, dashed out the painted windows, and in their vigorous search after sculpture dedicated to idolatry, began to destroy what ornaments yet remained entire upon the tombs and around the cornices of the pillars." Although the monks were expelled, the people of Paisley still continued firm in adhering to the old faith, and the doors of the abbey were "steyked" against the reformed preachers. The abbot and his friends were accused as "in the toun of Paslay, Kirkyard and Abbey place thereof, openlie, publicklie, and plainlie taking auricular confession in the said kirk, toun, kirkyaird, chalmeris, barns, middens, and killogies thereof, and thus makand an alteration and innovation in the state of religion, which our Soverane Lady found publicklie standing and professit within this realm, ministrand, and alswa irreverently and indecentlie the Sacramentis of Holy Kirk, namely, the Sacramentis of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." It was a serious charge, and if proven was punishable by death. Hamilton had a powerful friend in Queen Mary, who interfered in his behalf, and he and his companions were committed to ward. Besides retaining the office of abbot at Paisley, Hamilton was appointed Bishop of Dunkeld in 1543-44 by his brother, acting for the Queen, and after the murder of Cardinal Beaton, on 29th May 1546, was raised to the position of Archbishop of St. Andrews and Primate of Scotland. Probably he never returned to Paisley until, in the adversities of his later years, and the monastery being sacked and burnt by the Reformers, he was forced to take refuge at Dumbarton Castle, where he was made prisoner, and afterwards executed at Stirling. The Master of Sempill had been appointed bailie of the monastery, and, at the dissolution, the whole of the church property was handed over to Lord Sempill. The property finally came into the possession of Lord Claud Hamilton, nephew of the archbishop, and the monastic buildings were converted into the "Place of Paisley," the residence of the Abercorn family. After the archbishop's execution his body was quartered, and afterwards buried, probably in Paisley. Dr. Lees says:-- "There is in the church a tablet, which looks as if it had marked his grave. It has upon it the archbishop's coat of arms, the letters J. H., the initials of his name, and the motto he assumed, and which contrasts strangely with his troubled life and tragic end--'Misericordia et Pax.'"[383] Amid all that is said against the last archbishop of the old Church of Scotland, and the last abbot of Paisley, it is well to recall that the "Catechisme," which usually passes under his name, from having been printed at his expense at St. Andrews in 1552, exhibits a solitary instance of an attempt on the part of the old Roman Catholic clergy to convey spiritual instruction to the people, and is creditable to Archbishop Hamilton's memory.[384] Referring to the disposal of the abbey property, Dr. Lees says:-- "The manner in which the Church property was gifted away forms a scandalous episode in the history of Scotland. Men like Claud Hamilton, who never had done anything for their country, became enriched and ennobled through the spoliation. It is vain to picture regretfully what might have been; but any one can see how much better it would have been for Scotland if the whole community, instead of a few unworthy individuals, had got the benefit of the Church's wealth. Those who did get it have in too many instances made a very miserable use of their ill-gotten gain."[385] Prior to the Reformation the monastery consisted of a church, the cloister and conventual buildings. The church comprised a long aisleless choir, a nave with aisles, a north transept, a south transept, with St. Mirin's Chapel attached to the south of it, and a tower and spire over the crossing.[386] The choir walls, containing an elegant sedilia and piscina, remain standing to the height of 9 feet, and it is questioned whether the choir was ever finished during the restoration. There is a string-course all round; the building is of fifteenth century work, and occupies the place of an earlier choir, which has been demolished. The wall at the east end of the nave, which separates it from the transept, may have been erected during the restoration of the fifteenth century, with the intention of rendering the nave a complete church until the transept and choir were restored. This seems to have been in progress when the Reformation interrupted the work. The design of the sedilia resembles that at St. Monans, Fife, and adjoining the sedilia is the piscina, the aperture of which is still visible. The north transept is in ruins, but the north wall, with the remains of a fine traceried window, still exists, as well as a traceried window in the west wall. The south transept is also in ruins, while the tower and spire have disappeared. St. Mirin's Chapel is well preserved, but the openings connecting it with the south transept are built up. The nave survives as a whole, and contains six bays, divided by massive piers, and surmounted by a triforium and clerestory. There is a north porch, and two doorways from the cloister on the south side. The oldest portion of the building is pronounced to be the eastern part of the south wall of the south aisle of the nave, where it adjoins the transept. This portion of the wall consists of three bays, containing the S.E. doorway from the cloister to the nave, and three pointed windows in the upper part. The doorway is of the transition style, and the windows above are simple in style, and are early pointed work--this part of the building probably dating from the first half of the thirteenth century.[387] The western portion of the south aisle of the nave and the whole of the south clerestory are evidently portions of the restored church of the fifteenth century.[388] The south aisle wall contains the S.W. and S.E. doors from the nave to the cloister. The west end of the nave is in part amongst the ancient portions of the structure, and the western entrance doorway is thirteenth century work.[389] The aisle windows of the west front belong to the first pointed period. The upper portion of the west front above the two large windows is of considerably later date.[390] "The design of the west front, which contains above the door-piece two large windows, with pointed niches and small circles inserted between the arch-heads, is probably original, but the upper portion and gable, including the large traceried window, are doubtless part of the restoration of the fifteenth century. The tracery of the two central windows is peculiar, and may possibly be of the fourteenth century, but that of the large upper window is later, probably of the same period as the restoration of the interior of the nave. The tracery of the large upper window is a specimen of the late kind of design employed in Scotland in the fifteenth century."[391] The interior of the west end of the nave exhibits the change of style caused by the restoration of the fifteenth century. The first or western bay of the main arcade is original, including the first arches (one on each side), the first pillars, and the arches between them, and the aisle responds. "These pillars and arches are of large dimensions and first pointed section, and appear to have been designed to carry western towers, but a part of their thickness has been cut off next the choir. A portion of the triforium wall, a piece of the string-course over the main arcade, and the corbelled vaulting shaft in the angle as high as the top of the triforium, are also parts of the original structure. The later work has been joined to the above old parts in a very awkward manner."[392] The cap of the west pier on the north side belongs to the first pointed work, while the corresponding cap on the south side and all the other caps belong to the fifteenth century restoration.[393] Except the west piers, the piers of the nave are of the clustered form, common in late Scottish work, and might be about the same date as the restoration of St. Giles, Edinburgh (which they resemble), in the early part of the fifteenth century.[394] The triforium design consists of large segmental arches, the same width as the main arches, springing from short clustered piers introduced between them. It somewhat resembles the triforium of the nave at Dunkeld Cathedral. The clerestory is probably designed in imitation of that of Glasgow Cathedral, and is divided into two pointed arches in each bay. They spring from a series of clustered shafts with round moulded caps that are late imitations of early work.[395] The earlier part of the nave restoration, including the main piers and arches, and perhaps the tracery of the two lower windows of the west front, were possibly executed by Bishop Lithgow, who built the north porch, and the completion of the nave (the upper portions) was carried out in the time of Abbot Tervas--the middle of the fifteenth century. A peculiarity of the nave interior is a series of large corbels, which project from the spandrils of the triforium arcade, and the object of which was to enable a passage to be carried round the solid piers introduced between the windows. Each of the large corbels springs at its lowest point from the sculptured grotesque figure of a man or animal. They were mostly the work of Thomas Hector, a sculptor, who lived at Crossflat,[396] and whom the abbot retained for his skill in the art.[397] The employment of such grotesque figures was very much affected by the monks of Clugny, and was the occasion of a rebuke from St. Bernard. "What business had these devils and monstrosities in Christian churches, taking off the attention of the monks from their prayers." One of these figures near the west gable represents a man in a kilt, and Dr. Lees thinks that many worshippers in the Abbey in more modern times have in the midst of long sermons found relief in the contemplation of those curious carvings which the saint thus vigorously denounced.[398] St. Mirin's Aisle was erected in 1499, and there is a large pointed window in the east end, having jambs with single shafts. It is divided into four lights, and the arch-head is filled with good simple tracery. Beneath the eastern window is a frieze of one foot eight inches deep between two cornices of eight inches deep, which were intended for sculpture. Three compartments, measuring four feet, at the north or right side, and seven compartments, measuring ten feet, at the south or left side, are carved and filled with sculpture. Dr. Lees says the reference of them to Mirin is clear beyond all doubt: "In the one on the extreme left we see Mirin's mother bringing him to St. Congal. In the next St. Congal putting the religious habit on Mirin. In the next Mirin taking oversight of the monastery of Banchor. There is after this a blank, and then we have certain sculptures relating to Mirin's encounter with the Irish king, who wears a crown on his head. In the first we have the servant of the King driving Mirin away from the door of the palace. In the next the King roaring with pain and held by his servants. In the next the Queen lying in bed with a picture of the Virgin on the wall, it being the custom to hang such before women during confinement. Then we have the King on his knees before Mirin, and afterwards Mirin received by him with joy. The next two sculptures represent the last two acts of the Saint--the brother looking through the keyhole and seeing Mirin illuminated by a celestial light, and the Saint restoring to life the dead man in the Valley of Colpdasch.... As they are evidently earlier than the date of the erection of the chapel, they have probably been transferred with the relics of the Saint from an older shrine. They look like twelfth-century work, but it is possible they may be even earlier."[399] The ceiling of the chapel is beautifully groined, and the east end, where the altar stood, is raised four steps above the western part. The west wall contains an outer doorway from the cloister court, and there is a traceried window above it. A large ambry adjoins the door in the outer wall. The chapel was connected with the south transept by two wide archways, now built up, and near the east end is a piscina, with three-sided head, like that in the choir. There is a dormitory above the chapel, arched by stone, and the entrance is by a doorway in the middle of the south side of the arch. The apartment is lighted by two windows--one in the east gable, and the other in the west. In the west gable there is a private stair leading from the dormitory to the chapel, and the priest, who was bound by the charter to live at the chapel, doubtless occupied the sleeping-place above it.[400] The chapel at the Reformation was converted into a family burying-place by Claud Hamilton, the commendator, and various members of the Abercorn family lie buried in the vault below, the chapel belonging to the present Duke, and being under his control. On the floor of this chapel there now stands an ornamental altar tomb, which was found lying in fragments near the Abbey by the Rev. Dr. Boog, one of the Abbey ministers, and who in 1817 had it brought within the chapel and erected again. It supports a recumbent figure, believed to be the effigy of Marjory Bruce, the daughter of Robert I. and the mother of Robert II. "The head of the figure is surmounted by a large cusped canopy, placed in a horizontal position, on the end of which is carved a crucifixion. The pedestal is carved with a series of Gothic compartments, in each of which there is carved a shield, enriched with heraldic blazons and figures of ecclesiastics. The panels at the west end contain--the first the _fess chequé_ of the Stewarts between three roses; the third the _fess chequé_, surmounted of a lion rampant, and the central one, two keys saltierwise, between two crosiers in pale."[401] The chapel is famed for an echo, described by Pennant in his _Tour Through Scotland_,[402] but Dr. Lees regards the description of the far-famed traveller as either much exaggerated, or the strength of the echo has become diminished since his time. "When any number of persons are within the building, an echo is scarcely audible at all. It is amusing sometimes to see a group of people expending the strength of their lungs in vain by attempting to evoke it."[403] Crosses seem to have been placed at intervals on the roads leading to the church. One of the south piers of the nave is called the Cathcart pillar, and has carved upon it a shield bearing the Cathcart arms. This is believed to be a memorial of Sir Allan Cathcart, who has thus been described by Barbour:-- A knycht, that their wis in hys rout, Worthy and wycht, stalwart and stout, Curtaiss and fayr, and off gud fame, Schyr Allane of Catkert by name. King Robert the Bruce died in 1329, and Sir Allan of Cathcart and Sir James of Douglass sailed in 1330 for the Holy Land with the King's heart. Sir James was killed in Spain in conflict with the Moors, and Sir Allan came back with the heart of the King, which was buried in Melrose Abbey. The pillar commemorates his safe return. On the west buttress of the north transept, at 21 feet in height, is the shield of the Stewarts, with a pastoral staff, and the word "Stewart." The first central tower erected over the crossing seems to have been of inferior workmanship and to have given way. Another is believed to have been erected by Abbot Tervas, which probably fell during the siege by Lennox and Glencairn, and may have destroyed much of the choir and transept in its fall. Western towers appear to have been contemplated. "We are only able," says Dr. Cameron Lees, "to conjecture what was the position of the conventual buildings. But after comparing the plan of Wenlock, from which the monks originally came, with that of Crosraguel, which they afterwards erected, we think it is probable that the chapter-house, with Saint Mirin's Chapel, occupied the east side of the cloister court, the refectory the south side, and the dormitory the west. The Abbot's house probably stood at the south end of what is called Cotton Street. There were buildings also between the Abbey and the river Cart attached to the monastery, portions of the foundations of which are occasionally uncovered."[404] "The shape of the cloister court has been partially retained. The conventual buildings were almost all converted after the Reformation into dwelling-houses, and though fragments of the old houses, such as an occasional pillar or arch, are to be found, there is little to remind one of dormitory, parlour, or refectory."[405] The nave is still used as the parish church. About 1782 it was in a dreadful condition. The roof was full of holes, through which the birds obtained free access, "distracting the attention of the worshippers in time of sermon." They built their nests and reared their young under the arches of the clerestory. A few of the gentry had "lofts" or galleries, but the bulk of the worshippers brought their seats to church with them, while the poorest sat upon stones on the earthen floor.[406] Things had become so bad that the heritors thought of pulling down the abbey, and building a "commodious kirk" with the stones.[407] This insane proposal was averted from execution by the energy and wisdom of the Rev. Dr. Boog, minister of the First Charge in 1782, and to him the country owes the credit of preserving all that now remains. "He received much assistance from the Dowager Countess of Glasgow, who resided at Hawkhead, and through their joint exertions the Abbey was not only saved from destruction, but was repaired in a way which, considering the ignorance of that time on the subject of restoration, was highly creditable."[408] Dr. Lees describes the condition of the building at his induction in 1859 as dreadful: "The interior was like a vault in a churchyard."[409] But thanks to the exertions of the Rev. Mr. Wilson and Dr. Lees himself, several thousand pounds were collected and spent in remedying this state of affairs. The church was made seemly as a venerable temple for prayer ought to be. "The unsightly galleries were taken down, the floor cleared of the accumulated rubbish of centuries, the body of the church re-seated, the clerestory windows opened up, the transept walls and windows restored, and the turrets rebuilt. Men of all creeds contributed to the work, and when the Abbey, on the 27th April 1862, was re-opened for public worship, it could scarcely be recognised, so changed was it from its former condition."[410] In closing his splendid volume Dr. Lees adds, "We trust the time is not far distant when the Abbey of the first Stewart will stand forth again in all its pristine beauty--with transept, and choir, and tower, as in the days of the founder." That hope will soon pass into a reality, and Scotland will have a completely restored abbey church used as a parish church. _Kelso Abbey (Roxburghshire)._--In 1113 David, Earl of Huntingdon, and heir-presumptive to the Scottish throne, introduced a colony of thirteen Reformed Benedictine monks from the newly founded abbey of Tiron in Picardy, and planted it near his forest castle of Selkirk. He endowed it with large possessions in Scotland, and a valuable territory in his southern earldom of Huntingdon, but the French monks were dissatisfied with their position on the banks of the Ettrick, and on David's accession to the throne of his brother he removed them from Selkirk--"a place unsuitable for an abbey"--and established the monastery "at the Church of the Blessed Virgin on the bank of the Tweed, beside Roxburgh, in the place called Calkow."[411] The abbey was dedicated to the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. Its first abbot was Ralph, one of the French monks, and the Scotch chronicles state that he succeeded St. Bernard, the reformer of the order, in his abbacy at Tiron, on his death in 1116, but Dr. Cosmo Innes thinks this can scarcely be reconciled with the succession of abbots as given by the French writers.[412] The monastery soon became the richest and most powerful in Scotland, and in 1165 the Pope granted permission to the abbot to wear the mitre, and the abbot claimed precedence of all the superiors of monasteries in Scotland. In 1420 this precedence was decided by James I. in favour of the prior of St. Andrews.[413] Many of the abbots were distinguished men, who were employed in the affairs of the kingdom, and several were promoted to bishoprics.[414] Foremost in rank and power, the monks of Kelso also vindicated their place by the practice of the monastic virtues, and a copy of Wyntoun's _Chronicle_ is supposed to have been written at Kelso.[415] They seem to have recalled the saying, claustrum sine lîteratura vivi hominis est sepultura ("the cloister without literature is the grave of a living man"), and Dr. Cosmo Innes remarks "That the arts were cultivated within the Abbey walls we may conclude without much extrinsic evidence. The beautiful and somewhat singular architecture of the ruined church itself still gives proof of taste and skill and some science in the builders, at a period which the confidence of modern times has proclaimed dark and degraded; and if we could call up to the fancy the magnificent Abbey and its interior decorations, to correspond with what remains of that ruined pile, we should find works of art that might well exercise the talents of high masters. The erection of such a structure often extended over several hundred years. Kelso bears mark of having been a full century in building; and during all that time at least, perhaps for long afterwards, the carver of wood, the sculptor in stone and marble, the tile-maker and the lead and iron-worker, the painter, whether of scripture stories or of heraldic blazonings, the designer and the worker in stained glass for those gorgeous windows which we now vainly try to imitate--must each have been in requisition, and each, in the exercise of his art, contributed to raise the taste and cultivate the minds of the inmates of the cloister. Of many of these works the monks themselves were the artists and artisans, and it would be a grievous mistake to suppose that the effect was merely that of living and working in an artist's shop. The interest and honour of the convent, the honest rivalry with neighbouring houses and other orders; above all, the zeal for religion which was honoured by their efforts, the strong desire to render its rites magnificent, and to set forth in a worthy manner the worship of the Deity--all these gave to the works of the old monks a principle and a feeling above what modern art must ever hope to reach."[416] Situated as it was near the Border, the abbey suffered severely during the War of Independence. The monastery was laid waste and the monks were supported by contributions from the other houses of their own order. In 1344 the abbey buildings were destroyed by fire, and David II. granted permission to the monks to cut wood in Selkirk and Jedwart Forest to enable them to carry out the necessary repairs. In 1511 the Bishop of Caithness was appointed commendator, and decline of the abbey soon followed. After the battle of Flodden in 1513, David Ker of Cessford took possession of the abbey, and his brother was appointed abbot. In 1522 and 1523 invasion and havoc spread over Teviotdale; Lords Ross and Dacre pillaged the town, sparing the abbey; but in 1523 Lord Dacre sacked and burned it. The abbot's house and buildings surrounding it, the chapel of the Virgin, and the cells of the dormitory were all reduced to ashes; the lead was stripped from the roof, and the abbey rendered uninhabitable. All religious services were stopped, and the monks had to retire in want and poverty to a village near. From 1536 to 1538 James Stewart, natural son of James V., was abbot, and drew the revenues. In 1542 the Duke of Norfolk, and in 1545 the Earl of Hertford, again attacked and further destroyed the abbey. On the latter occasion the garrison of the abbey--numbering 100, of whom 12 were monks--refused the summons of the Herald to surrender, and succeeded in repulsing the Spanish mercenaries, who were the first to attack the building. It was then bombarded and the monastery captured; but the garrison still held out in the strong square tower of the church, whence some of them, though strictly watched, escaped by means of ropes during the night. The next day the assault was resumed, the tower carried, and the defenders were put to the sword. The buildings were then sacked and destroyed, the order being given to "breik them" and "thake of the leied, and outer myen the towres and strong places, and to owaier trowe all." By the following Sunday this had been strictly carried out; the abbey was razed, and "all put to royen, howsses, and towres, and stypeles." The removal of the lead to Wark alone occupied the carts of the army for several days. After this the abbeys of Melrose, Dryburgh, and Jedburgh shared in the fate of Kelso,[417] but, unlike it, they did not resist. Kelso Abbey was still further reduced by Lord Eure in 1546; and finally in 1560, when a few monks still remained, the buildings were attacked by the mob, and all the remaining fittings and furnishings destroyed. In 1559 the revenues and property of the abbey were taken possession of by the Lords of the Congregation in the name of the Crown. The temporalities were afterwards distributed amongst the favourites of James VI., and were finally conferred on Sir Robert Ker of Cessford, who was created Lord Roxburgh in 1599. The abbey still belongs to his successor, the Duke of Roxburgh, and the remains of the late duke are buried in the south transept.[418] In 1649 a vault was thrown over the transept so as to convert it into a parish church, and above this another vault served as a prison! This is seen in Grose's view, made about a century ago. "During service on a Sunday in 1771 a panic was caused by the fall of a fragment of cement, and the church was thereafter abandoned. The ruins were partly disencumbered by the Duke of Roxburgh, 1805-16, and in 1823 the buildings were repaired by the noblemen and gentlemen of the county."[419] Referring to the modern town, Dr. Cosmo Innes says:-- "Reposing on the sunny bank of its own beautiful river, the modern town of Kelso looks a fitting rural capital for 'pleasant Teviotdale.' It has little of the air of an old monastic burgh, and still less calls up any recollection of the heaps of ruins that impeded the plans of the English engineers. There is not much knowledge or tradition of its former state, and but few memorials of its old inhabitants. Last year (1845) a worthy burgher, who had dug up in his garden under the abbey walls what seemed to him a rare coin of a Scotch king, was scarcely well pleased to learn that it was a leaden _bulla_ of Pope Alexander III., bronzed with the oxidising of seven centuries. In the midst of the modern town the abbey church stands alone, like some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later world."[420] Considering all the dangers and neglect of the centuries, it is astonishing that so many of the ruins still exist. The building has consisted of choir or chancel of considerable length, with north and south aisles, and of a transept and nave without aisles. The north and south divisions of the transept and nave form three arms of equal length round the three sides of the crossing, above which rises the massive square tower.[421] The church was originally constructed in the late Norman style of about the end of the twelfth century, passing into the transition style--the upper part of the tower having been rebuilt at a later period.[422] Of the chancel only a fragment remains--two of the south main piers with arches and two stories of arcades above, which represent the triforium and clerestory. The chancel only had aisles. The main piers consist of a circular column, five feet in diameter, with smaller attached half-columns on three sides to carry the moulded arches between the main piers and the arches between the latter and the aisles.[423] "The piers have caps of the usual Norman modified cushion pattern, and the arches were moulded and arranged in several orders. The arcade immediately over the main arches has a row of single round shafts, with spreading Norman caps, which carry a series of moulded arches, occupying the position of the triforium. The upper arcade, which takes the place of the clerestory, has shafts of triple form, with wide spreading bases and caps of Norman and transition design. On the latter rest the round boldly-moulded arches. The arches opposite the windows in the outer wall are slightly larger than the others. It will be observed that there is no main vaulting shaft carried up over the main piers, as is almost invariably the case, for the purpose of strengthening the wall. On the contrary, the triforium arcade is continuous, and no provision is made to support the side wall, except the single shafts of the running arcade, which have a very weak effect. In the usual arrangement, the triforium arches are separated by a substantial piece of wall, including a vaulting shaft, and the triforium arch, which is generally subdivided into several subordinate arches, is introduced between the vaulting shafts. That is a much more substantial form of construction, and also more satisfactory to the eye, than the plan adopted here of a simple continuous arcade." In the exterior of this portion of the choir the outside of the clerestory windows is visible, being simple round-headed openings, with flat buttresses between them. The remainder of the wall is plain, but, judging from the level of the triforium window, the vaulting of the aisle, which was very high and partly covered the windows, seems to have been added at a later date. The crossing is square; the piers are about nine feet square--that at the south-east angle standing detached in consequence of the opening into the south aisle, while those at the north-west and south-west angles are incorporated with the walls. The piers are designed as a series of shafts, set in square nooks (four on each of the complete sides), with a large semicircular shaft at each angle. The shafts are all built in courses with the piers, and have transition bases and caps. From the latter spring large pointed arches, with plain chamfered orders. The pointed arch indicates the transitional character of this part of the building, and was probably introduced in this position to give strength to sustain the tower. The three arms of the cross branching to the north, south, and west from the crossing are of equal size--an unusual arrangement, as the nave is generally the longest division of the church. This was part of the original design, as the western doorway is one of the most prominently Norman portions of the edifice, and no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the shortness of the Kelso nave. The upper portion of the west front has been in the transitional style, and the Norman arcading, which runs round the interior of the nave, was continued across the west end. The nave, north and south transepts, contain each four stories in height, consisting of an interlacing arcade of Norman work in the interior of the ground level, and three stories of windows above. The upper arcades of the choir do not extend round the nave and transepts, except in a portion of the south transept. The windows in the different stories have all round arches, both inside and outside, and the exterior is marked at each angle by broad and shallow Norman buttresses, with nook shafts in the angles, and an interlacing arcade round the lower story, both internally and externally. In the façades of the west end and north transept the windows of the different stories have been grouped so as to form distinct designs. "In the west end, over the great west doorway, there has been an arrangement of tall windows of apparently lancet form, having on either side an interlacing arcade of round arches, supported on tall, bended shafts. This is now, unfortunately, greatly destroyed. Above the arcade there runs a horizontal flat cornice, enriched with several rows of carved ornaments, and this was surmounted by a large opening of quatrefoil shape, surrounded with numerous mouldings and enrichments. The angle buttresses have been crowned with octagonal turrets."[424] The north wall of the north transept has a fine transitional door-piece, occupying the two lower stories. The next two stories have each two windows, separated by a small buttress, and the upper story has three arches in the interior. "Above these stories is a small circular window with a curious saving arch over it, and the whole is crowned with a top story, containing three round-headed openings, and a gable with a small circular aperture. The buttresses at the angles are crowned with circular turrets, which have been finished with a projecting parapet, the corbels for carrying which still survive. The upper part of the gable shows signs of having been altered."[425] The west doorway and the north door-piece are interesting; the former, the south half of which has perished, and which was finished with a sloping gable and stone roof, is regarded as a rich specimen of the elaborate carved work that characterised the late Norman period. "The jambs contained five detached shafts set in nooks, and having Norman bases and carved caps. Over each of these shafts there springs a circular order, carved with rich Norman ornament, now, however, very much decayed. The jambs of the doorway also formed moulded shafts, supporting their order in the arch."[426] The door-piece of the north transept wall is a prominent feature, projects 4 feet 6 inches from the main wall, has two stories, and is roofed with a sloping stone roof. The shafts have the usual Norman caps and bases, and the mouldings of the arch are pronounced to be peculiar in their profile. The outer one is enriched with small medallions, the central with the billet, and the inner one with rosettes. Above the archway there is an arcade of interlacing round shafts--the shafts, which were destroyed, having Norman caps. "The tympanum of the gable is covered with a reticulation of round beads or rolls."[427] The south and west sides and a small portion of the north and east sides of the tower remain. It is 35 feet square over the walls, and "is carried up with plain masonry externally, but the interior has immediately over the great arches of the crossing an arcade of round moulded arches, supported on triple shafts similar to those of the choir. Above this arcade is another story containing simple round arched openings, which are lighted on the exterior by circular windows containing quatrefoils. Over this tier is the upper story, which contains three pointed and deeply-recessed windows on each side of the tower. Broad, flat buttresses are placed at each angle of the tower, similar to those of the main building, and these were, no doubt, originally finished with turrets like those of the transepts.... The upper part of the tower is later than the lower part. This is apparent from the pointed windows of the top story and the quatrefoiled circular windows of the story beneath. The lower story immediately over the great arches is, without doubt, of about the same date as the choir."[428] There were probably similar staircases in other parts of the structure now removed, but the approach to the upper floors is now by one staircase in the N.W. angle of the transept. Passages between the arcades and the outer walls went round the building on every floor, and in the angles of the tower there are small wheel stairs leading to every floor, and passages running round the tower on every story. These arcades and passages have tended to weaken the structure, and it has been found necessary to strengthen it with numerous iron tie-rods, iron beams, etc.[429] There was an outer door in the S.W. angle of the transept, and another in the north wall of the nave adjoining the crossing. A tomb recess is in the south transept wall, and in the recess beneath are two ambries or lockers and a piscina, the only one remaining in the building. To the south of the transept there is a vaulted chamber that may have been the sacristy.[430] _Arbroath Abbey (Forfarshire)._--This abbey was founded in 1178 by William the Lion, and dedicated to S.S. Mary and Thomas à Becket. Becket had been martyred at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral only seven years before, and William the Lion had recently suffered defeat and capture by the English at Alnwick. William had been personally acquainted with Becket, and is supposed to have regarded him as a private friend. "Was this the cause," asks Dr. Cosmo Innes, "or was it the natural propensity to extol him who, living and dead, had humbled the crown of England, that led William to take St. Thomas as his patron saint, and to entreat his intercession when he was in greatest trouble? Or may we consider the dedication of his new abbey, and his invocation of the martyr of Canterbury, as nothing more than the signs of the rapid spreading of the veneration for the new saint of the high church party, from which his old opponent himself, Henry of England, was not exempt?" As showing the eagerness with which King William pushed on the buildings, Hollinshed mentions that "The King came by the Abbey of Aberbrothoc to view the work of that house, how it went forward, commanding them that were overseers and masters of the works to spare for no cost, but to bring it up to perfection, and that with magnificence."[431] The abbey received great endowments from King William and from many subsequent princes and barons; acquired in 1204 a charter of privileges from King John of England and was one of the foremost and richest in Scotland. Its monks were Tyronenses, and the first were brought from Kelso Abbey. "By the year 1178 part of the church was ready for dedication. William the Lion died in 1214, and was buried in the east end of the edifice, which was then finished. Shortly afterwards the south transept was sufficiently well advanced to admit of the burial within it, before the altar of St. Catherine, of Gilchrist, Earl of Angus. On the 18th of March 1233, during the time of Abbot Ralph de Lamley, the church was dedicated. The time occupied in the erection and completion of the structure was thus a little over fifty-five years, and when its dimensions are considered, it will be found in comparison with other churches to have been carried on with great rapidity."[432] The abbots had several special privileges; they were exempted from assisting at the yearly synods; they had the custody of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba; they acquired from Pope Benedict, by Bull, dated at Avignon, the right to wear a mitre, and were in some instances the foremost churchmen of the Kingdom. The abbey was toll-free, _i.e._ protected against the local impositions which of old beset all merchandise. "But," says Dr. Cosmo Innes, "the privilege the abbot most valued (and intrinsically the most valuable) was the tenure of all his lands, 'in free regality,' _i.e._ with sovereign power over his people, and the unlimited emoluments of criminal jurisdiction.... Even after the Reformation had passed over abbot and monk, the lord of regality had still the same power, and the Commendator of Arbroath was able to rescue from the King's Justiciar and to 'repledge' into his own court four men accused of the slaughter of William Sibbald of Cair--as dwelling within his bounds (quasi infra bondas ejusdem commorantes). The officer who administered this formidable jurisdiction was the Bailie of the Regality, or 'Justiciar Chamberlain and Bailie'--the Bailiary had become virtually hereditary in the family of Airlie.[433] ... The mair and the coroner of the abbey were the executors of the law within the bounds of the regality, and the best thought it no degradation to hold their lands as vassals of the great abbey."[434] The monks made a harbour and fixed a bell on the Inchcape Rock as a warning to sailors; the abbey was burnt in 1272 and 1380. Referring to its chartulary as a record of the names of the old Scottish families Dr. Cosmo Innes says:-- "Many of our ancient families went down in the War of Independence, and few of our present aristocracy trace back beyond the revolution of families and property which took place under Bruce. The Earls of Angus, Fife, and Strathearn are little more than mythological personages to the modern genealogist.... It is the common case all over Scotland."[435] In connection with the monks he has the following interesting note:-- "It is to be remarked that in Scotland, as in other countries, while the secular or parochial clergy were often the younger sons of good families, the convents of monk and friars were recruited wholly from the lower classes; and yet--not to speak of the daily bread, the freedom from daily care, all the vulgar temptations of such a life in hard times--the career of a monk opened no mean path to the ambitious spirit. The offices of the monastery alone might well seem prizes to be contended for by the son of the peasant or burgess, and the highest of these placed its holder on a level with the greatest of the nobility."[436] The last abbot was Cardinal Beaton, at the same time Archbishop of St. Andrews. The abbey suffered after the Reformation from the revenues having become the property of the Hamiltons, and as they were appropriated to the private use of that family, there were no funds to keep up the buildings, which fell gradually into decay, and were freely used by the magistrates and townspeople as a quarry. The property was converted into a temporal lordship in favour of Lord Claude Hamilton, third son of the Duke of Chatelherault. In sketching the history of this famous abbey, the "Aberbrothock Manifesto" of 1320 must be recalled, in which it becomes manifest that the Scottish Church was never a complaisant vassal of Rome.[437] There breathes in it a spirit of freedom and natural independence, and a refusal to accept the interference of Rome in the affairs of the State. The Scottish nobles protest against the papal countenance given to the English aggressions, and distinctly tell Pope John XXII. that "not for glory, riches, or honour we fight, but for _liberty alone_, which no good man loses but with his life."[438] The abbey church consisted of a choir of three bays, with side aisles and an aisleless presbytery; a nave of nine bays, with aisles and north and south transepts with eastern aisles; two western towers and one large central tower. Considerable portions of these divisions still remain, but the greater part of the north side of the choir, the north transept and nave, and almost all the piers and pillars have been swept away. Beginning at the east end, the eastern wall is entire for nearly half its height, having an arcade below and three lancet windows above, with the lower portions of an upper row of similar windows. Somewhat less of the return wall of the south side of the presbytery, comprising two bays, remains, and adjoining it is the sacristy, a late building fairly well preserved. The end wall of the south transept is almost complete, along with a considerable portion of the west wall of the transept, which gives a good idea of the grandeur of the church. The whole of the nave south wall remains, showing a row of windows and indications of the groining of the aisle. The central aisle was not vaulted, but covered with a wooden roof. Most of the bases of the nave pillars are in position, as are also the foundations of the north transept. The west end fragment and the two towers left standing, are striking and impressive in their vigorous work.[439] Bold, vigorous work, with refinement of detail, is seen in the western doorway. It is round arched, and its outer order, if it may be so called, extends inwards for about five feet, unadorned as a bold and plain tunnel arch, having a pointed arch in each ingoing. It then becomes shafted and richly moulded, after the transition manner. This arrangement, while it gives a fine shadow under the arch, has a feeling of rudeness, which, to a considerable extent, characterises the whole west front. "There is a remarkable resemblance in the decoration of this doorway to that of the doorway in the porch of Lerida Cathedral, Spain, supposing the tunnel arch of Arbroath away, and the moulded part brought forward to the face of the wall, as is the case at Lerida.... A similar ring ornament, on a large scale, is also to be seen in a doorway at Lamington, Lanarkshire, where it is likewise used along with the zig-zag, but there the ringed order is the outer enrichment."[440] The removal of the outer part of a gallery, which existed over this doorway, has increased the rude appearance of the west front, but the inner part of this gallery still remains. Within the great thickness of the wall a chamber of considerable size was obtained, and it opens into the nave by six pointed arches, and to the outside over the doorway by three arches. It is regarded as obvious that three gablets projected outwards from the wall for a distance of about four feet, supported on two intermediate shafts, and that the gallery was closed in at each end with walls or haffits, both of which still remain in part. We now see the west front robbed of its most unique features; the gallery was reached by a long passage at each end from stairs in the angle-buttresses. It probably was a gallery for an orchestra, and may have also been used as a pulpit to address an open-air audience.[441] Above this gallery was an immense circular window, a portion of which still survives. "It is probable that this part of the building was erected at two different times, the west doorway and some of the pillars of the gallery being in the early transition style, while the triple windows to the front and the six-light arcade towards the interior are in the first pointed style. When the gallery was completed in the first pointed period, the floor space was enlarged by extending it to the front, hence the necessity for the deep tunnel arch over the west doorway. The pointed arches in the ingoing also indicate this first pointed period."[442] The western towers opened with arches into the north, south, and central aisles, but only the north tower retains its massive pier and arches, while of the south tower nothing but the foundation of the pier exists. The south wall of the transept is externally plain, the upper part being visible above the dormitory roof. The façade has two plain lancet windows, one shorter than the other, and above them is a large wheel window. The interior of the transept is a very grand design in the early pointed style.[443] Beneath the splayed lancets there is a round arched open arcade, with a passage behind it, and beneath this, two tiers of wall arcades with pointed arches, the central arcade being very acutely pointed, the lower one not so decidedly, and with trefoil cusps in the arches. A staircase in the S.E. angle of the transept gave access to the dormitory by the door, seen built up on the outside.[444] This staircase also leads to the various passages in the thickness of the walls, and the church doorway leading to this stair is round arched and ranges with the lower pointed arcade. The lower arcade of the south end is continued along the west wall, and above this rise two widely-splayed windows. All the lofty south transept windows have passages on two floors, and the transepts had chapels on the east side. "The respond of the great arcade against the south wall is beautiful in detail. Above this there exist fragments of the responds of the triforium story and the clerestory. All the above features of this part of the abbey point plainly to its having some lingering remains of transition style, retaining, as it does, some round arches along with the general features of the design."[445] The vestry or sacristy was built by Abbot Walter Painter between 1411 and 1433, and is a two-storied building, the ground floor having a groined ceiling, still entire, and the upper room being roofless. Its features are of fifteenth-century work, and the building is in good preservation. Only fragments of the conventual buildings remain. "An octagonal turret marks the south-east corner of the chapter-house with the south and east return walls, and adjoining the south transept is the slype, the walls of which determine the other walls of the chapter-house. On the wall of the south transept is clearly seen the mark of the dormitory roof, with the door between the church and dormitory now built up."[446] The north wall and a portion of the west wall proceeding southward from it are all that remain of the extensive enclosure of the abbey. The enclosure was said to have been of great height and to have extended 1150 feet on the east and west, 760 feet on the north, and 480 feet on the south. There were great towers at the angles and entrance gateways on the north and at the south-east angle. In the centre of the north wall is the portcullis entrance gatehouse. The front wall is almost entire, and the upper floor window is crossed by the corbels which carried the movable wooden hoarding that was erected over the gateway when required for its defence.[447] At the western extremity of the north enclosing wall there is a large square tower, three stories in height in the inside, and four stories on the outside, owing to the fall of the ground. The two lower floors are round-vaulted, and the cape-house on top is said to have been removed during this century.[448] The building adjoining the tower to the east was called the Regality Court-house, and had a groined ceiling. The abbot's house is on the south side of the cloister, and is the best preserved abbot's house in Scotland. It is three stories high, and the two upper floors have been converted into a modern private dwelling-house. It has been altered externally and spoiled of its ancient internal fittings, with the exception of two fine carved panels, one representing the Virgin, and the other a large Scotch thistle. The kitchen has central pillars supporting a groined roof,[449] and the other offices connected with the kitchen are all vaulted. The abbey suffered from fire in 1272 and in 1380, while in 1350 it was injured "from the frequent assaults of the English ships."[450] Service was up to 1590 conducted in the lady chapel "stripped of its altars and images." _Melrose Abbey (Roxburghshire)._--The editor of the _Liber de Melros_ has said in reference to this abbey:-- "The incidental mention of the condition of the abbey itself at different times strongly illustrates the history of the district and the age. At one time powerful and prosperous, accumulating property, procuring privileges, commanding the support of the most powerful, and proudly contending against the slightest encroachment; at another, impoverished and ruined by continual wars, obliged to seek protection from the foreign invader: in either situation it reflects back faithfully the political condition of the country. But the political events of a country of so narrow bounds and small resources as Scotland are insignificant unless they are associated with the development of principles and feelings that know no limits of place or power. How rich Scotland has been in such associations is testified by the general sympathy which attends her history and her literature, and gives a pride to her children that forms not the weakest safeguard of their virtue. It is in recalling freshly the memory of times in which the proud and virtuous character of her people was formed, and which it is their delight and their duty to look back upon, that such studies as the present are most useful. Every local association, every faint illustration of antiquity, each indication of the bygone manners of a simple age, are in this view to be treasured, not only as filling a page of a meagre history, but as so many moral ties to bind us closer in affection to the country of our fathers."[451] This abbey has a charming site in the hill-girt hollow known as the vale of Melrose, occupying one of those peaceful situations near a river which the Cistercians delighted to choose and colonise. An ancient monastery of Melrose had existed since the seventh century, on a broad meadow nearly surrounded by a "loop" of the Tweed, about 2-1/2 miles lower down the river. It was established about 650 by St. Aidan, the missionary from Iona, who preached in Northumbria, and founded the abbey of Lindisfarne. Eata was the first abbot we hear of, and he was a disciple of St. Aidan. St. Cuthbert spent much of his early life at this monastery of old Melrose, and afterwards chose as the scene of his labours Hexham and Lindisfarne. The monks of Lindisfarne, when expelled by the Danes, took refuge at Melrose, and brought with them St. Cuthbert's body, which afterwards found its resting-place at Durham. In the eleventh century this old monastery of Melrose had become a ruined and desolate place. It afterwards became the retreat of a few monks, amongst whom was the celebrated Turgot, the confessor of Queen Margaret. A chapel was erected and dedicated to St. Cuthbert, which at first belonged to Coldingham, but was gifted finally by David I. to the new abbey of Melrose. This abbey was founded in 1136 at a place then called Fordell, and was endowed by David I. and his nobles with extensive lands. The monks were of the Cistercian order, and were brought from Rievalle in Yorkshire. The original buildings were not finished till 1146, and on the 28th of July in that year the church was solemnly consecrated and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It is thought that such buildings with an oratory were probably the residence of the monks, and their period would suggest the Norman style, like that of the abbeys of Kelso, Jedburgh, and Dryburgh. Every trace of these early buildings has disappeared, and, situated as it was on the border-country, Melrose Abbey was exposed to danger, and frequently suffered in the wars between the two countries. It was in the chapter-house at Melrose that the Yorkshire barons united against King John and swore fealty to Alexander II. in 1215. In 1295 Edward I. gave formal protection to its monks, and in 1296 he issued a writ ordering a restitution to them of all the property they had lost in the preceding struggle. In 1321 or 1322 the original structure was destroyed by the English under Edward II., and the abbot, with a number of the monks, was killed. In 1326 Robert I. gave a grant of £2000 to be applied to the rebuilding of the church, and in 1329, a few months before his death, he wrote a letter to his son David, requesting that his heart should be buried at Melrose and commending the monastery and the church to his successor's favour. His wish was granted, and so late as 1369 we hear of King David II. renewing his father's gift, and it is to this grant we owe a considerable part of the present building. In 1328 Edward III. ordered the restoration to the abbey of pensions and lands which it had held in England, and which had been seized by Edward II. In 1334 the same king granted a protection to Melrose in common with the other Border abbeys, and in 1341 he came to Melrose to spend Christmas. In 1385 Richard II., exasperated by his fruitless expedition into Scotland, spent a night in the abbey and caused it to be burned. Notwithstanding these disasters, the abbey increased in wealth and architectural splendour, and it was not till more severe damage and dilapidations befell it during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Elizabeth, that ruin began finally to impend. The approach of the Reformation influenced its downfall, and though donations for rebuilding were given by various individuals, the abbey never recovered the damage then suffered. In 1541 James V. obtained from the Pope the abbeys of Melrose and Kelso, to be held _in commendam_ by his illegitimate son James, who died in 1558. In 1560 all the "abbacie" was annexed to the Crown, and in 1566 Mary granted the lands to James, Earl of Bothwell, with the title of Commendator. After passing through the hands of Douglas of Lochleven and Sir John Ramsay, the estates were ultimately acquired by the Scotts of Buccleuch. The abbey gradually fell into decay through neglect. The materials were used for the erection of other structures, and Douglas built from the ruins a house which still stands to the north of the cloisters and bears the date 1590. The masonry also formed a quarry for the neighbourhood, and in 1618 the remaining portion of the structure was fitted up as the parish church, "and in order to render it secure, a plain pointed barrel vault was thrown across the nave, and was supported by plain square piers built against the old piers on the north side. The original vaulting seems to have been previously demolished."[452] A great number of the stone images of saints which filled the numerous wall niches were left untouched till 1649, when they were almost all cast down and destroyed, but by whose order is unknown. Of the abbey there now only remain the ruins of the church, and of it the most competent authorities say:-- "No building in Scotland affords such an extensive and almost inexhaustible field for minute investigation and enjoyment of detail such as this. Whether we consider the great variety of the beautifully sculptured figures of monks and angels playing on musical instruments, or displaying 'the scrolls which teach us to live and die,' or turn to the elaborate canopies and beautiful pinnacles of the buttresses, or examine the rich variety of foliage and other sculptures on the capitals of the nave and the doorway and arches of the cloisters; or if, again, we take a more general view of the different parts of the edifice from the numerous fine standpoints from which it can be so advantageously contemplated, we know of no Scottish building which surpasses Melrose either in the picturesqueness of its general aspect or in the profusion or value of its details. It occupies an important position also historically, and it in part supplies an admirable example of that decorated architecture, the existence of which in this country has been so often denied, but of which, we trust, a sufficient number of examples are now provided to render that reproach to Scottish architecture no longer justifiable. We have to thank the fine red sandstone of the district, of which the church is built, for the perfect preservation of all the details of the structure. These remain, even in the minutest carving, as perfect and complete as the day they were executed."[453] The cloister and domestic buildings, including the hall of Abbot Matthew, were situated on the _north_ side of the church. They have now entirely disappeared, leaving only a portion of the cloister which indicates their position. The church is cruciform, and the choir is unusually short and the nave unusually long. The aisled choir extends only two bays eastwards from the crossing, beyond which point the presbytery is carried one bay farther, without aisles, and is lighted by large north and south windows as well as by the great eastern window. The shortness of the choir rendered it necessary that part of the nave should be appropriated for the monks, and the enclosing screen wall of this portion of the "choir" extended to the fourth pier west from the crossing, where it was carried across the nave and formed the rood screen. The screen was wide and contained a gallery, on the top of which stood the rood.[454] The nave extends to eight bays, but it has been intended to be longer--the west end being incomplete. Extending southwards, beyond the south aisle, is a series of eight chapels, which produced externally, along with the south aisle, the appearance of a double aisle.[455] The north aisle is narrower than the south aisle, and the position of the cloister may have hampered the design. This difference may have arisen from the plan of the original abbey of the twelfth century being adhered to in the later construction.[456] The transepts contain the usual eastern aisle only, in which are situated four chapels. The superstructure of the church has severely suffered and the western part is greatly demolished. The portion eastwards from the rood screen is in better preservation. The vaulting of the aisles is well-preserved, but that of the centre aisle is demolished--a pointed tunnel vault having been constructed in 1618. The eight chapels are well preserved, but some parts of the three furthest west ones are damaged and have lost their vaulting. The tracery in the chapel windows is lovely; the vaulting of the nave, south aisle and chapels, is supported by a series of flying buttresses, "which form one of the most prominent and beautiful elements of the building. No church in Scotland retains such a striking example of that important feature of Gothic architecture."[457] The eastern piers of the crossing were demolished probably in Henry VIII.'s time, and their destruction entailed that of the central tower, of which the western wall only remains. The transepts have suffered by the fall of the tower, but fortunately the south wall of the transept with its finely decorated window is still preserved. From the south transept access is obtained to the roof of the nave aisle and to the uppermost parts of the structure by a turnpike stair, which also forms the only mode of approach to the tower.[458] "The choir, so far as the east is concerned, is well preserved, the buttresses and gable, the celebrated eastern window, and the remarkable vaulting of the presbytery being all in good order. The remainder of the choir, however, has been greatly wrecked by the fall of the central tower; but many of the windows of the choir and transept with their perpendicular tracery have escaped destruction, and afford the best example in Scotland of that form of design."[459] The building, as it now stands, is, generally speaking,[460] of a date subsequent to Bruce's time, and much of it is later than the destruction which occurred under Richard II. in 1385.[461] "The nave, from the crossing to the rood loft, and part of the transepts are, undoubtedly, the oldest portions of the existing edifice. The work in these is, for the most part, of the Scottish decorated period. The nave piers, with their beautifully carved caps, and the mouldings of the arches are distinctly decorated work; and the flying buttresses and pinnacles on the south side of the nave are, without doubt, of the same period. So also is the south wall of the transept, with its magnificent window and tracery and its buttresses, enriched with fine canopies and quaint figures carved as corbels. "All these features bear a close affinity to the decorated work of the nave of York Minster, erected about 1400. The flying buttresses, with pinnacles enriched with crockets and foliaged finials; the niches, with their elaborate canopies and corbels composed of figures of monks and angels; the statues which formerly filled the niches, of which very few now remain; the decorated tracery of the south transept window, and the whole character of the work, both in its general scope and in its details, is of fine decorated design, and vividly recalls that of York, Beverley, and other English examples. It is not improbable that some parts of the nave and transept were erected during the period between the death of King Robert Bruce and the invasion of Richard II. It should be mentioned that Bruce's bequest was not all received till 1399, and the operations also probably proceeded slowly. The doorway in the south wall of the south transept is apparently an insertion in older work."[462] The south chapels of the nave have apparently been added during the repairs in the earlier part of the fifteenth century; the buttresses were probably executed towards the middle of that century, and the east one contains the arms of Abbot Hunter.[463] There is a distinct change in the transept's design from that of the nave, as if the former had been added to the latter at a later period.[464] The east wall and the other eastern parts of the choir are more recent than the nave, and probably this portion of the church had been more damaged by Richard II. than the nave, and required to be almost wholly rebuilt. The style here corresponds closely with the "perpendicular" of England which prevailed in the fifteenth century.[465] The great eastern window is exceptional and unique, and has more of the character of perpendicular than any other style. Scott, referring to it, has described the moon as shining Through slender shafts of shapely stone, By foliaged tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand, Twixt poplars straight, the osier wand, In many a freakish knot, had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And changed the willow-wreaths to stone. The design of the west wall of the north transept is different from that of the other parts of the building, but the clerestory windows are of the same design as the rest of the older church. "The wall ribs of the vaulting include two windows in each; and the space between the windows is occupied by two niches, each carried up from a shaft--with late canopies, containing statues of St. Peter and St. Paul, the former having the keys and the latter holding his sword. These are the best preserved statues in the church, but they are not of very remarkable workmanship."[466] The building or restoration of the eastern part of the edifice is regarded as indicating, from its style, work of the middle of the fifteenth century, and the vaulting of the south transept appears to have been erected by Abbot Hunter about the same time,[467] probably from 1450 to 1460. More of the vaulting in the eastern part of the nave may have been carried out at that epoch. The vaults all contain, besides the main and ridge ribs, subsidiary ribs, or tiercerons, indicating a similarity to English examples.[468] The vaulting of the presbytery is peculiar, and points to a somewhat later time; examples of vaulting similar to that of the presbytery of Melrose may be seen at Winchester Cathedral, and other English examples of the fifteenth century.[469] The south chapels to the west of the fifth buttress west from the transept, on which buttress another specimen of Abbot Hunter's arms is engraved, are of comparatively late date.[470] "This buttress belongs to the earlier part of the nave, and the chapel seems to have been repaired when the additional chapels to the west were erected. Besides the three hunting horns in the shield of Abbot Hunter in the examples above mentioned, the arms engraved on the fifth buttress contain two crosiers, saltierwise, and the initials A. H. on the right and left; also, in chief a rose, and in base a mason's mell for Melrose. The work in the chapels to the west is inferior to that of those to the eastward, although copied from them. The chapels each contain an enriched piscina, and these are so inferior in style of workmanship as to lead to the belief that they were inserted after the chapels were built. One of them contains the initials of Abbot William Turnbull, whose date is the beginning of the sixteenth century. A late piscina has also been inserted in the south transept. "Work in the nave and in the south chapels was apparently in progress during the reign of James IV., as the royal arms, with the letters I. Q. (Jacobus Quartus) and the date 1505 on the westmost buttress testify."[471] On the south side of the cloister is a very lovely doorway that leads into the church. To the right of this and along the east wall of the cloister, are arched recesses of a late style, and in the south wall is an arcade of trefoil form, with nail-head enrichments. The latter is an example of the late revival of early forms which prevailed towards the close of the Gothic epoch.[472] It has been stated that the arcade of the cloister formerly extended 150 feet each way. The cloister wall is now reduced to the portions which abut against the nave and transept--50 feet on the east side and 80 feet on the south side. "The former side contains a wall arcade of seven arches. These are of the form called drop arches, with crocketed ogee hood moulding, and have plain spandrils above, over which there runs a straight cornice, enriched with flowers and shells of all descriptions very beautifully carved."[473] Of these Sir Walter Scott said:-- Nor herb nor floweret glistened there But was carved in the cloister arches as fair. The tower was doubtless erected about the same time as the transept.[474] In the south transept are two inscriptions that have given rise to much speculation and continue to exercise Border antiquaries. One of these is carved over the doorway in the west wall which gives access to the wheel stair, and part of the inscription is carried down one side for want of room. It is the following:-- Sa gays the cumpas evyn about, Sa trouth and laute. do but duite. Behald to ye hende q. Johne Morvo.[475] The other inscription is carved on a tablet in the wall on the south side of the same door:-- John Morow sum tym callit was I And born in Parysse certanly And had in kepyng al masoun werk Of Santandroys ye hye kyrk Of Glasgw Melros and Paslay Of Nyddysdayll and of Galway I pray to God and Mari bath And sweet S. John kep this haly kirk frae skaith. In the centre of the former inscription is a sunk panel containing a shield with two masons' compasses, arranged somewhat like a saltier, and beneath a figure resembling a _fleur-de-lys_. The late Dr. John Smith, in the _Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland_, considers these inscriptions as applying to one man, who may have been the master mason of the building. But Mr. Pinches, in his account of the abbey, mentions that John Murdo, or Morow, was engaged in building a church in Galloway in 1508. It thus seems likely that these inscriptions are not earlier than that date, and have been added to the building after its completion.[476] An interesting view regarding John Morow will be found in _A Mediæval Architect_, by Mr. P. MacGregor Chalmers. He believes that the south chapel of the transept was that of St. John, and as John Morrow's tablet is opposite this chapel, his prayer to "sweet St. John" is most appropriate. Mr. Chalmers also points out that the chapels at the east end of Glasgow Cathedral are dedicated to the same saints and in the same order as those in the east aisle of the transept at Melrose.[477] Immediately beneath the site of the high altar at Melrose is the resting-place of the heart of Robert Bruce, and to the south of it is a dark-coloured polished slab of encrinital limestone said to mark the grave of Alexander II., who was buried near the high altar in 1249. Others maintain, however, that it marks the burial-place of St. Waltheof or Waldeve, who was the second abbot of the monastery founded by King David, and that it is the slab placed here by Ingram, Bishop of Glasgow (1164-1174). The chancel was also the burial-place of the Douglases. The Douglas tombs were all defaced by Sir Ralph Evers in 1544. At the northern end of the north transept a small doorway leads into the sacristy, in which is the tombstone of Johanna, Queen of Alexander II., with the inscription "Hic jacet Johanna d. Ross." Melrose is the Kennaquhair of the _Abbot_ and the _Monastery_. CHAPTER VII GENERAL SURVEY OF SCOTTISH MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE Mediæval architecture of Scotland arranged according to the periods stated in Chapter II.:[478]-- _Transition from Celtic to Norman Architecture_:--_Abernethy Round Tower_, Perthshire (p. 7). _Restennet Priory_, Forfarshire (p. 7). _St. Regulus, St. Andrews_, Fifeshire (p. 18). _Norman Architecture_:--_Markinch Tower_ (Fifeshire). Present church modern, early church consecrated 1243; the tower is an ancient Norman building. _Muthill Church_ (Perthshire), has Norman tower at the west end, with nave having north and south aisles and an aisleless choir. The church is now in ruins, and was built by Michael Ochiltree, who was Dean of Dunblane (1425) and Bishop (1430). _St. Serf's, Dunning_ (Perthshire), has Norman tower, with elaborately carved and pointed archway opening from the tower into the church, which has been greatly altered. The W. gable wall of the church and part of the N. and E. wall are original. There appears to have been a chancel; the ancient corbels at N. parapet survive, and the raggle of the original roof is seen against the E. side of the tower. Church mentioned here in 1219 (ecclesia sancti servani de Dunnyne). _Cruggleton Church_ (Wigtownshire), in ruins; has early Norman chancel arch and north doorway recently restored; the plan shows a simple oblong with chancel arch. _Monymusk Church_ (Aberdeenshire), founded by Malcolm Canmore; remains of ancient Norman church in lower part of the tower and chancel arch, incorporated in modern church on old site. Ancient Celtic centre. _St. Brandon's, Birnie_ (Morayshire), has nave and chancel without aisles; chancel has no window in E. wall, but round-headed windows in N. and S. walls; chancel arch has semicircular attached shaft with moulded base and heavy Norman cap, with numerous sub-divisions. Advanced date. Stone font of Norman design, and Celtic bell. _St. Oran's Chapel, Iona_ (p. 65). _St. Margaret's Chapel, Edinburgh Castle_, comprises a nave with chancel arch and chancel, which has a round apse, formed within the square E. end of the exterior. The genuine surviving Norman masonry begins below the line of the S. windows; rest later work. Chancel has locker and piscina, chancel arch decorated with chevron design, nave arched roof is later than the walls. Chapel is a fairly advanced example of Norman work in plan and decoration. _Dunfermline Abbey_ (p. 139). _Kirkwall Cathedral_ (p. 69). _St. Blane's Church_ (Bute) has oblong nave and chancel separated by lofty wall with chancel arch. Norman masonry in nave and chancel arch. _Dalmeny Church_ (p. 102). _Leuchars Church_ (p. 104). _Bunkle Church_ (Berwickshire) has Norman work in ruined semicircular apse, with arch leading into it, and may be earlier than 12th century. _Edrom Church_ (Berwickshire) has still surviving a Norman doorway of beautiful design, now an entrance to a burial vault. An aisle is attached to the church, and was founded by Archbishop Blackadder in 1499; two angle buttresses are of interest. _Legerwood_ (Berwickshire) has attached to the parish church (old, but frequently repaired), and cut off by a wall, the roofless ruins of the original Norman chancel. A Celtic interlaced stone is built into the S. wall near the W. end. _Chirnside_ (Berwickshire) has Norman work in the doorway of the ruined church, and at the sides there are remains of a projection, probably a porch. A western tower, vaulted in stone, was removed in 1750. _St. Helen's Church_ (Berwickshire), near Cockburnspath, now in ruins, was a Norman structure, with the exception of the W. gable wall (14th or 15th century). It was barrel-vaulted throughout, and the N. chancel wall is entire. There is a narrow E. window. _Tyninghame Church_ (Haddingtonshire) was one of the churches dedicated to St. Baldred; the structural remains exhibit elaborate ornamental work of the Norman style. _Stobo Church_ (Peeblesshire) is a Norman structure, to which alterations and additions have been made in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was the church of a plebania, with subordinate churches. _Duddingston_ (Mid-Lothian) is a Norman edifice, used since 12th century as the parish church. It has been much altered, originally consisting of nave, chancel, and perhaps tower, and the chancel arch is the only Norman feature now remaining in the interior. _St. Andrew's Church, Gullane_ (Haddingtonshire), is now a roofless ruin, and was made collegiate in 1446. The semicircular chancel arch is almost the only part of the 12th century work now surviving. _Uphall Church_ and _St. Nicholas Church_ (Linlithgowshire). Uphall Church, consisting of nave, chancel, western tower, is a Norman structure throughout, much altered. When this became the parish church in the 16th century, St. Nicholas (one mile east) was abandoned. Two relics of it remain--the font, of which the basin is old, and the bell, now used in Uphall Church, and dated 1441. _Abercorn_ (Linlithgowshire). A church was founded here in 675 under St. Wilfrid, and became the see of the earliest bishopric in Scotland from 681 to 685. The monks were forced to retire to Whitby, but the site was occupied by a church, and part of the existing structure (the round-headed doorway in S. wall) is of Norman date. The tympanum is filled with stones arranged in zig-zag patterns. The church has been altered in modern times; there are good specimens in the churchyard of hog-backed tombstones, with figures of fish scale pattern arranged in rows, and scales of a squarer shape. _Kelso Abbey_ (p. 169). _St. Martin's Church_ (Haddington) is a very ancient chapel; a simple oblong; portion of barrel vault still exists; choir formerly existed; the arch is late Norman in design. _Kirkliston Church_, Linlithgowshire, has ancient tower and Norman doorways (S. and N.E.), and belonged originally to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. _St. Mary's, Ratho_, Mid-Lothian, has Norman work preserved in doorway in S.W. wall. _St. Peter's, Peterhead_, Aberdeenshire, has chancel of Norman period. _St. Mary's, Rutherglen_, Lanarkshire, had a nave with side aisles and a chancel, but of the ancient church only a fragment now remains in the E. wall with eastern tower attached to it. The E. wall masonry indicates the Norman period, and the eastern tower, although built against, had no connection with the church, while it is of later erection by two or three centuries. _Lamington Church_ (Lanarkshire) has the old N. doorway still preserved. _St. Boswell's Church_, Roxburghshire, has been entirely rebuilt, but has some relics of carved corbels and other fragments of Norman date. _Smailholm Church_, Roxburghshire, is distinctly a Norman structure throughout its entire length, although greatly altered in the 17th century. _Linton Church_, Roxburghshire, is old, but has been restored and renewed. There is a Norman font, and a sculpture in the tympanum of the ancient church doorway may possibly represent St. George and the Dragon, or Faith overcoming Evil. It was placed in 1858 over the entrance to a new porch then erected. _Duns Church_, Berwickshire, had the chancel of the ancient structure existing until 1874, when it was removed, and not a stone now remains. Its masonry, judged from a photograph, looks very like Norman work. _St. Lawrence Church, Lundie_, Forfarshire, was a Norman structure, of which little remains except the ashlar walls, a narrow window, and outside check for a shutter. The chancel arch was built up in 1786, when the apse appears to have been taken down; the top of a sacrament house of late date survives. _Kirkmaiden Church_, Wigtownshire, has a nave that appears to be of Norman date, and there is an apparent chancel at the east end, but its dimensions and origin are not distinct. _Herdmanston Font_, Haddingtonshire, is a relic of the Norman period, and stands in the burial vault of the Sinclairs of Herdmanston. _The Transition Style._--_Dundrennan Abbey_ (Cistercian), Kirkcudbrightshire, was founded by David I. about 1142. Portions of N. and S. transepts, choir, chapter-house, some cellar walls and other walls, with a few carved caps now remain. Queen Mary was welcomed at the abbey after her flight from Langside, and embarked for England from Port Mary, at the mouth of the Abbey Burn. _Jedburgh Abbey_ (p. 129). _Kinloss Abbey_ (Cistercian), Morayshire, was founded by David I. in 1150, and colonised from Melrose. The enlightened Robert Reid, founder of the College of Edinburgh, was its abbot in 1528. Till 1650 the buildings were tolerably entire, and were then used to construct Cromwell's citadel at Inverness. The remains are now mere fragments. _The Nunnery_, Iona (p. 68). _St. Nicholas Church, Aberdeen_ (p. 78). _Coldingham Priory_ (Benedictine), Berwickshire, was founded or refounded in 1098 by Edgar, son of Queen Margaret, and dedicated to St. Cuthbert, S.S. Mary and Ebba. The canons of Durham controlled it until 1504, and in 1509 it was placed under the rule of Dunfermline. It suffered both from fire and its nearness to the Border; it was also damaged by Cromwell, and was afterwards used as a quarry. Little of the monastery now remains, and of the church only the N. and E. walls of the choir and fragments of the S. transept. In 1662 the W. and S. walls of the choir were rebuilt to make that part of the edifice suitable for worship, and in 1854-55 the choir was restored, its W. and S. walls being again partly rebuilt, S. porch added, and the corner turrets carried up to their present height. Stones are preserved of an earlier church than the existing one. _Dryburgh Abbey_ (p. 134). _Airth Church_ (Stirlingshire) dates from the period about the beginning of the 13th century, but only a small part of the early structure remains--a bay of what has been a nave arcade, opening into a north aisle. _Lasswade Church_, Mid-Lothian, had an old church, consisting of oblong chamber and tower. The S. wall doorway and tower reveal Transition work about first half of 13th century. _Bathgate Church_, Linlithgowshire, is now a ruin, being abandoned in 1739 for a new church. The doorway is almost the only feature of its architecture left, and its details are of transitional period. In the church is a recumbent statue. _First Pointed Period._--_St. Andrews Cathedral and Priory_ (pp. 13, 123); _St. Mary's, Kirkheugh, St. Andrews_ (p. 102); _Arbroath Abbey_ (p. 177); _Holyrood Abbey_ (p. 124). _Kilwinning Abbey_ (Tironensian), Ayrshire, was erected on a site occupied in the 8th century by an Irish monk called St. Winnan, who is believed to be the same as St. Finnan of Moville. On the spot sanctified by his cell the monastery was erected in the 12th century by Richard or Hugh Moville, who came from England, was created by the Scottish king Great Constable of the Kingdom and presented with the lordships of Cuninghame, Largs, and Lauderdale. The church was erected early in 13th century. The buildings were destroyed shortly after the Reformation, and the parish church was erected on the site of the choir about 1775. The ruins consist of S. wall and gable of S. transept, one pier with respond and arch between S. transept and E. aisle; handsome door which led from nave to cloisters; entrance to the chapter-house from cloisters; long ancient wall which formed the wall of S. aisle of nave; some portions of W. end of nave and S.W. tower. The N. tower remained complete till this century, and a new tower has in recent times been erected on its site. _Dunblane Cathedral_ (p. 47). _Inchmahome Priory_ (Augustinian), Stirlingshire, was founded and endowed by Walter Comyn, fourth Earl of Menteith, and the church, which has striking resemblances in detail to the neighbouring cathedral of Dunblane, evidently dates about 1250. Inchmahome means Isle of Rest, and the church is fairly well preserved. In 1543 Queen Mary, as a child, found refuge here along with her mother after the battle of Pinkie, and stayed for some months. Dr. John Brown has charmingly written about the young queen's miniature or child's garden--a small flower plot, the boxwood edging of which has grown up into a thick shrubbery. _Elgin Cathedral_ (p. 40). _Pluscarden Priory_ (Valliscaulian), Morayshire, was, along with Beauly and Ardchattan, founded by Alexander II. for the Order of Vallis Caulium. Pluscarden is situated in a long, well-sheltered valley. About 1460, when the monks had become corrupt, they were superseded by the Black Benedictine monks from Dunfermline, and the priory became dependent on that house. The last prior was Alexander Dunbar, and the first lay prior Lord Seton. The existing buildings consist chiefly of the remains of the church--an aisleless choir N. and S. transepts with eastern aisles, and square tower. There is no nave. The monastic buildings consist of the sacristy, or St. Mary's aisle, the chapter-house, the slype, and monks' hall--the whole forming the E. side of the cloisters. To the S.E. of cloister garth is probably the prior's house. The oldest parts are transepts with eastern aisles, built doubtless soon after the foundation. _Glasgow Cathedral_ (p. 22). _Brechin Cathedral_ (p. 44). _Lindores Abbey_ (Tironensian), Fifeshire, was founded in 1178 by David, Earl of Huntingdon, grandson of David I., and brother of King William the Lion. The church of Dundee belonged to the monks of Lindores, and the name Lindores is believed to mean "church by the water." Alexander III., Wallace, Edward I., David II. visited the abbey, and the Duke of Rothesay was buried in the church. James, Earl of Douglas, passed the last years of his life here. Two small coffins, found buried in the choir, are believed to have contained the remains of two children of Earl David, the founder. The buildings, entering from the E. side of the cloister, are the best preserved, and of the church little but the foundations and some portions of the wall survive. Adjoining S. transept is the vaulted slype, and the room over it may have been the scriptorium or library. The night passage of the monks led through that apartment, as the stair was in S.W. angle of transept, and could only be thus reached. _Cambuskenneth Abbey_ (Augustinian), Stirlingshire, was founded by David I. about 1147. James III. and his queen, Margaret of Denmark, were interred before the high altar, and a stone altar monument has been erected over their remains by Queen Victoria. The detached tower at the W. is almost the only part remaining in a completed state; the W. doorway is nearly entire, as is also portion of gable wall and side walls at S.E. corner of the buildings. _Culross Abbey_ (Cistercian) and _Parish Church_, Perthshire. The abbey was founded in 1217 by Malcolm, Earl of Fife, and considerable remains of that period, and some walls of what might be of earlier date, still survive, but principal parts of existing church are of later date. A few fragments of the monastic structure survive. The tower divides the E. from the W. church. The aisleless choir serves as parish church. The old parish church is a ruinous structure, about one mile N.W. from the abbey; plain oblong; in 1633 the abbey became the parish church. _Beauly Priory_ (Valliscaulian), Inverness-shire, was founded in 1230 and endowed by Sir John Bisset of Lovat. The ruined church survives, but has been sadly abused. Monastic buildings have nearly disappeared. First Pointed was later here than elsewhere. _Newbattle or Newbotle Abbey_ (Cistercian), Mid-Lothian, was founded by David I. in 1140 for monks brought from Melrose. It was a great house, and about 1350 its annual income could maintain eighty monks and seventy lay brethren, with the corresponding establishment. The last abbot was Mark Ker, and the lordship of Newbotle was conferred on his son. The abbey appears to have been almost abolished shortly after the Reformation, the only parts of the monastic buildings allowed to remain being the fratery and portions of the chapter-house, which were incorporated with the mansion-house. The nave of the church contained 10 bays; the choir and presbytery comprised 1-1/2 bay. The piers supported a tower over the crossing, and the architecture of the transepts was massive. _Lismore Cathedral_ (p. 59). _St. Kentigern's_, Lanark, was ancient parish church; abandoned for new one about 1777. It consisted of two six-bayed aisles, each with a chancel, but without a nave; there remain the lofty pointed arches dividing the two aisles, the wall of the S. one, and a fragment of the chancels. In the S. wall is a beautiful doorway. _Burntisland Church_, Fifeshire, _Prestonkirk_, Haddingtonshire, _Cowie_, Aberdeenshire, also illustrate in whole or part this period. _Deer Abbey_ (Cistercian), Aberdeenshire, was founded in 1218, and succeeded a church founded in 580 by St. Columba and his nephew Drostan. The conventual buildings now existing are subsequent in date to the founding of the abbey church (completed first), and this may account for the abbot demitting office in 1267, "choosing rather to live in the sweet converse of his brethren at Melrose than to govern an unworthy flock under the lowly roofs of Deir." _Luffness Monastery, Redfriars_, Haddingtonshire, was founded by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar, in 1286. The church consisted of nave and choir, without aisles; the choir has arched recess and much-worn effigy. The remains consist mostly of foundations. _Tungland Abbey_ (Premonstratensian), Kirkcudbrightshire, was founded by Fergus, first lord of Galloway, in 12th century, and is now represented by only one doorway. _Inchcolm Abbey_ (Augustinian), Fifeshire, was founded in 1123 by Alexander I., who had been driven ashore on the island by a storm, and was maintained with his followers for three days by a hermit who made Inchcolm his retreat. There is still a small cell covered with a pointed barrel vault, which may have been his abode. The island was the cradle of religion in E. Scotland, and may have been visited by St. Columba himself. Like Inchkeith, the Bass, Isle of May, and Fidra, it possesses early ecclesiastical remains. The island, like Iona, was celebrated as a place of burial. The monastic buildings date from 1216 chiefly; Walter Bower continued the Scotichronicon in the abbey. The ruins consist of the cloister court with church on N. side, and chapter-house beyond E. range. To the N. of the church was possibly the infirmary. The S.E. has cellars, stores, and offices. First Pointed work is also found at the churches of _Deer_; _Auchindoir_; _St. Cuthbert's, Monkton_; _St. Nicholas, Prestwick_; _Altyre_; _St. Mary's, Rattray_; _Abdie_; _St. Ninian's on the Isle_; _St. Colmanel's, Buittle_; _Cockpen_; _Pencaitland_; _Gogar Font_. _Middle Pointed or Decorated Architecture._--_New Abbey_ or _Sweetheart Abbey_ (Cistercian), Kirkcudbrightshire, was dedicated to the Virgin. It was called New Abbey because it was founded a considerable time after Dundrennan, which was regarded as the old abbey. The founder was Devorgilla, daughter of Allan, Lord of Galloway, wife of John Baliol of Castle Barnard in Yorkshire, and mother of King John Baliol. When her husband died in 1269, Devorgilla had his heart embalmed and placed in an ivory coffin, which she carried about with her; at her death it was buried with her in a grave in front of the abbey high altar, hence the touching name of Sweetheart Abbey. She endowed the abbey, founded Balliol College, Oxford, and built the bridge over the Nith at Dumfries, portions of which still survive. The abbey suffered much last century, but it has since been well cared for, and is in good preservation. Few of our ancient churches are so well preserved, and the ruins represent a period of Scottish Gothic of which not many examples survive. The conventual buildings have been almost entirely demolished, but the church is complete, although the roof is gone, and the walls are much damaged. It comprises a nave with two side aisles, a choir without aisles, N. and S. transepts (with eastern chapels opening off them), and a square tower over the crossing. The precinct--a level field of about 20 acres--surrounds the abbey, and is still partly enclosed with a strong wall, built with large blocks of granite. _Melrose Abbey_ (p. 184). _Lincluden College_, Kirkcudbrightshire, was founded anew about the end of the 14th century by Archibald, the Grim, who expelled the nuns. It was a frequent residence of the Earls of Douglas, and consisted of choir separated from nave and transept by stone screen with wide doorway. The choir is aisleless, consisting of three bays; the nave had three bays with a window in each, and aisle on S. side. The architecture is of great beauty. _Fortrose Cathedral_ (p. 52). _Crossraguel Abbey_ (Cluniac), Ayrshire, was founded by the Earl of Carrick and dedicated to St. Mary. The last abbot, Quentin Kennedy, in 1562 held a famous dispute with John Knox at Maybole. The abbey was much associated with the Bruces. In 1570 occurred the cruel "roasting of the abbot." George Buchanan received a pension out of the abbey revenues, and King James intended to restore it as a residence for his son Henry. The abbey ruins comprise, with the remains of the church, cloisters, and usual buildings, an outer court to the S.W. with picturesque gate-house, pigeon-house, and domestic buildings. The church is a simple oblong with choir and nave, without aisles and transepts. _St. Giles'_, Edinburgh (p. 89). _St. Michael's_, Linlithgow (p. 105). _St. Monans_, Fifeshire, derives its name from St. Monanus, a missionary of the 8th century, who suffered martyrdom by the Danes on the Isle of May. The original chapel was replaced about 1362 by the present edifice, which suffered much at the hands of the English, and has been altered. It consists of chancel, N. and S. transepts, with tower and spire over the crossing, and is still used as the parish church. It is picturesque and interesting. _Whithorn Priory_ (p. 56). _St. Mary's_, Haddington (p. 107). _Fearn Abbey_ (Premonstratensian), Ross-shire, was founded during the reign of Alexander II. Of it there now only remain a part of the church, and the ruins of some structures attached to it. The church is a simple oblong, and part of it is still used as the parish church. _Balmerino Abbey_ (Cistercian), Fifeshire, was founded in 1229 by Ermengard, widow of William the Lion, and her son Alexander II. Ermengard was buried in the church before the high altar; she was a liberal benefactress, and her son was a frequent visitor at Balmerino. Bishop Leslie ascribes the demolition of the abbey in 1559 to "certain most worthless men of the common people," for the damage of 1547, when Admiral Wyndham "bornt the abbey with all thyngs that were in it," seems to have been much repaired. The abbey buildings are now in a ruinous state, only the chapter-house, with the erections adjoining it, being at all well preserved. To the E. of the chapter-house are the ruins of the abbot's house. The church is situated, as the mother church at Melrose, on the S. of the cloister, and consisted of nave with S. aisle, transepts with the usual eastern aisle, and short presbytery without aisles. _St. Bride's College_, Bothwell (p. 77). _Temple Church_, Mid-Lothian; _the Chapel in Rothesay Castle_; _St. Bride's_, Douglas, Lanarkshire; _St. Duthus'_, Tain, Ross-shire; _St. Peter's_, Inverkeithing, Fife; _St. Devenic's_, Creich, Fife; _Faslane Church_, Argyleshire; _the Monument of Sir W. Olifurd_, Aberdalgie, Perthshire, also embody architecture of this period. _Third or Late Pointed Period._--_Paisley Abbey_ (p. 148). _Dunkeld Cathedral_ (p. 35). _Iona Cathedral_ (p. 60). _St. Machar's Cathedral_ (p. 37). _Trinity College Church_, Edinburgh, was situated on the W. side of Leith Wynd, and founded by Mary of Gueldres, Queen of James II., in 1462. It was a very fine specimen of Scottish Gothic architecture of the 15th century, and consisted of a choir with N. and S. aisles, a five-sided apse, N. and S. transepts, with the commencement of a tower over the crossing and N. sacristy. The nave was never erected--the arch having a circular window inserted in it. It was the church of Trinity College Parish till 1848, when it was removed to make way for the railway station. The new church is in many details an exact reproduction of the corresponding features of the original building. _St. John's, Perth_ (p. 108). _Dundee Church_ (p. 113). _Glenluce Abbey_ (Cistercian), Wigtownshire, was founded in 1190 by Roland, Lord of Galloway; the chapter-house is the only portion of the abbey in good preservation. _Torphichen Church_, Linlithgowshire, represents the hospital or preceptory of Torphichen, from 1153 the principal Scottish residence of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Of the cruciform church, the chancel and nave are entirely gone, and there is only left a portion of the transept or "quier." The modern church is on the site of the nave. _St. Anthony's Chapel, Edinburgh_--"Sanct Antonis in the crag"--stands conspicuous from the Firth of Forth, and was perhaps chosen with the intention of attracting the notice of seamen coming up the Firth, who, in cases of danger, might be induced to make vows to its tutelary saint. There is a fine spring of clear water close to the site, which may have led to the establishment of the hermitage there. Wall remains survive. _Rosslyn Church_ (p. 85). _Dunglass Collegiate Church_, Haddingtonshire, is cruciform, and a deserted but complete edifice. The choir and tower may have been built in 1403, the nave after 1450. It was founded by Sir Alexander Home of Home. _Foulis-Easter Church_, Perthshire, is a simple, oblong structure without buttresses or projections of any kind; is well preserved and most interesting. It was built by Andrew, second Lord Gray. _St. Salvador's, St. Andrews_ (p. 102). _Dalkeith Church_ (Mid-Lothian) was constituted collegiate in the 15th century, and consists of a nave of three bays with aisles, N. and S. transepts, a W. tower, and aisleless choir of three bays with E. apse. Part is used as the parish church. _St. Mungo's, Borthwick_ (Mid-Lothian) has been rebuilt, with the exception of the S. aisle or chapel, and the structure has originally been a Norman one, with aisleless nave, choir, and round E. apse. _Ladykirk, Berwickshire_, is very complete and almost unaltered. It is situated on the high N. bank of the Tweed, and is said to have been built in 1500, and dedicated to St. Mary by James IV. in gratitude for his delivery from drowning by a sudden flood of the Tweed. It is a triapsidal cross church, without aisles, with an apsidal termination at the E. end of the chancel and at the N. and S. ends of the transept. The body of the church and transepts are covered with pointed barrel vaults, with ribs at intervals springing from small corbels, and the whole is roofed with overlapping stone flags. The upper part of the tower has been rebuilt, the lower part being of the same date as the church, which is still the parish church. _Seton Collegiate Church_, Haddingtonshire, probably rebuilt about the close of the 15th century, was added to by the second Lord Seton when he made the church collegiate in 1493, and was completed by the third Lord Seton. The transepts, tower, and spire would appear to have been erected by the Dowager Lady Seton in the 16th century, after her husband's death at Flodden. _Arbuthnott Church_, Kincardineshire, is an interesting and picturesque structure, containing work of three distinct periods. The chancel was dedicated in 1242, and the nave may be in part of the same period. The S. wing or aisle was built by Sir Robert Arbuthnott in the end of the 15th century. The quaint W. end represents a combination of the ecclesiastical and domestic architecture of Scotland. The church has been well restored; the Arbuthnott Missal with the Psalter and office were written for the use of this church by the vicar, James Sybbald, about 1491. _King's College, Aberdeen_ (p. 80). _Church of the Holy Rood, Stirling_ (p. 114). _St. Mary's Parish Church, Whitekirk_, Haddingtonshire, was a great place of pilgrimage, and was visited among others by Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius), who came to render thanks to the Virgin for his safe landing in Scotland. The church is on the plan of a cross without aisles; the choir is vaulted with a pointed barrel vault, and the roof is slated. Over the crossing is a square tower, finished with a plain parapet; the E. end is square, and there is a fine porch at the S.W. angle. The S.W. porch is one of the most striking features of the structure, and its interior is roofed with pointed barrel vaulting, having ribs springing from carved corbels. Third or late Pointed architecture is also found at _Crichton Collegiate Church_, Mid-Lothian; _Corstorphine Collegiate Church_, Mid-Lothian; _Crail Collegiate Church_, Fife; _Mid-Calder Church_, Mid-Lothian; _St. Mary's Church of the Carmelite Friars_, South Queensferry, Linlithgowshire; _Yester Collegiate Church_, Haddingtonshire; _Tullibardine Collegiate Church_, Perthshire; _Maybole Collegiate Church_, Ayrshire; _Biggar Collegiate Church_ (p. 77); _Carnwath Collegiate Church_, Lanarkshire; _St. Mary's Collegiate Church, Castle Semple_, Renfrewshire; _Church of the Franciscans or Greyfriars, Elgin_, Morayshire, and at _Aberdeen_; _Rowdil Priory_ (Augustinian), Harri, Inverness-shire; _Oronsay Priory_ (Augustinian), Argyleshire. Examples of Scottish mediæval architecture are also to be found in the following churches, arranged alphabetically by counties. _Aberdeenshire_:--Kinkell, Kintore, Leask. _Argyleshire_:--Ardchattan and St. Mund's Collegiate Church, Kilmun. _Ayrshire_:--Alloway, Old Dailly, and Straiton. _Banffshire_:--Cullen Collegiate Church, Deskford, and Mortlach. _Berwickshire_:--Church of Abbey St. Bathans (Cistercian Nuns), Bassendean, Cockburnspath (an ancient structure), Preston. _Buteshire_:--Church of St. Mary's Abbey, Rothesay. _Dumbartonshire_:--Dumbarton Collegiate Church and Chapel at Kirkton of Kilmahew. _Dumfriesshire_:--Canonby Priory (Augustinian), Kirkbryde, St. Cuthbert's, Moffat; Sanquhar. _Fifeshire_:--Carnock, Dysart, Kilconquhar, Kilrenny, Rosyth, Dominican Church, St. Leonard's (p. 116), Holy Trinity (p. 117), St. Andrews. _Forfarshire_:--Airlie, Invergowrie, Mains, Maryton, Pert, St. Vigean's. _Haddingtonshire_:--Church of Trinity Friars, Dunbar, and Keith. _Kincardineshire_:--St. Palladius' Church, Fordoun. _Kirkcudbrightshire_:--Old Girthon. _Lanarkshire_:--Blantyre Priory (Augustinian), and Covington. _Linlithgowshire_:--Auldcathie. _Mid-Lothian_:--St. Triduan's Collegiate Church, Restalrig. _Peeblesshire_:--Newlands, Churches of Holy Cross and St. Andrew, Peebles. _Perthshire_:--Aberuthven; St. Moloc, Alyth; St. Mechessoc, Auchterarder; Cambusmichael; Abbey of Coupar (Cistercian); Dron Church, Longforgan; Ecclesiamagirdle or Exmagirdle, Glenearn; Forgandenny; Abbey of Inchaffray (Augustinian); Innerpeffray (Collegiate); Kinfauns; Methven (Collegiate); Moncrieff Chapel; Wast-town (near Errol). _Renfrewshire_:--Houston, St. Fillan's, and Kilmalcolm. _Selkirkshire_:--Selkirk. _Wigtownshire_:--St. Machutus' Church, Wigtown. Mediæval architecture terminated with the Reformation in 1560. In closing this necessarily brief record of our ancient Scottish churches, a word must be added on the Scottish Reformation. It was the aim of Knox to cleanse, not to destroy the temple, and the iconoclasm that followed was the work of the "rascal multitude," while many of the churches and abbeys were ruined by the attacks of the English before the Reformation, as the previous pages indicate. The old builders, too, did a great deal of what is now known as "scamped work," although it was partly counteracted by the excellence of their lime and the thickness of their walls. The real cause of the subsequent destruction was _neglect_, not violence, while the secularising of the old endowments alienated into other channels the means that were necessary to undo the effects of wind and weather. As Carlyle said, "Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men," and it is known that he exerted himself to save the Abbey of Scone from destruction. In the case of Dunkeld Cathedral, the order makes it quite clear that neither desks, windows, nor doors, glass work nor iron work, was to be destroyed (pp. 36, 37). The aim of the reformers was at heart an endeavour to make the old temples fit symbols of the reformed faith, and the iconoclasm of the multitude is not to be attributed to them, but to the ignorance and savagery of the time, for which the Church of Rome was primarily to blame. It was this that lessened church feeling and separated the power of truth from the beauty of holiness. It is our privilege to-day to seek the unity of truth and goodness with beauty, to maintain the faith of the Reformation along with that beauty of church architecture which, in its brighter days, the old church witnessed to. It is a one-sided view which sees in Gothic nothing but the development of utility or the endeavour to attain greater height; it is the true view which beholds in it the ideality, piety, and faith that possessed the hearts of our forefathers. The architect's design could never have been realised apart from their offerings of devotion to the Christian religion. When Emerson visited Carlyle at Craigenputtock, the latter, pointing to the parish church, said to his American friend, "Christ's death built Dunscore Church yonder." It is a deep, true utterance, for Christ's death has built every church in Christendom, and these embodiments of beauty not least of all. In this light we see what is at the heart of these ancient Scottish churches, and what has created the affection that treasures them. The ruined walls of so many of them ought to have been the home of the reformed faith, life, and work, linking the present to the past by natural piety, and visibly reminding the worshippers of the church that endureth throughout all generations. The present revival of interest in them is like a new-discovered sense, and is undoing the spoliation and neglect of an age subsequent to the Reformation, and for which the Scottish Reformers are not to blame. Theirs was no easy work, and history has vindicated its results in the progressive genius of the Scottish people. The Reformation saved religion, but the alienation of the religious endowments to secular purposes, often by unworthy hands, is the chief cause of the ruins which tell of a beauty that has left the earth, and it has deprived the Church of so many of its venerable heirlooms. Otherwise there might have been said of the Scottish as was said of the English Reformation that but for it there would have been little Norman or Early English left in the cathedrals, for it just came at a time when the early styles were being pulled fast down to make room for the later.[479] It was the Scottish Reformers' aim to make all the churches parish churches, and each church the centre of the life and work of each parish. Their grievance against monasticism arose from the corrupt lives of the monks and from its intrusion on the parochial system with the alienation of the parish teinds to the use of the monastery. But the idea of _a church in the centre of a residence_, is one not without suggestiveness to the life of to-day, with its many activities, as a training home for workers; as a temporary retreat for rest, meditation, and prayer to the hard-wrought ministers in the city parishes; as a place for conference on the religious problems; as a theological hall and settlement for divinity students, like that at Loccum near Hanover, where a reformed mediæval monastery, free from vows, and in the full vigour of its life, is used as a college and residence for the students of the Reformed Church, and where the old monastic church is used as the parish church for the people around. To visit Loccum and see it presided over by the venerable Protestant theologian, Dr. Ullhorn, with its garden, grounds, and farm, its church and cloisters, its great library and residence for professors and students, is to be persuaded of the rich possibilities that lie within the reach of the Scottish Church in the restoration of some of its ruined abbeys. The saintly Leighton felt the need of this, and thought "the great and fatal error of the Reformation was, that more of these houses and of that course of life, _free from the entanglements of vows and other mixtures_, was not preserved; so that the Protestant churches had neither places of education nor retreat for men of mortified tempers."[480] The Reformed Church would thereby purify a great idea, and if it be true, as the late Master of Balliol asserted, that it is the great misfortune of Protestantism never to have had an art or architecture,[481] it can restore and adopt the old architecture that was the creation of the Christian spirit, amid the leisure of the cloister and in times more restful than our own. APPENDIX DEFINITION OF LEADING ARCHITECTURAL TERMS[482] _Abacus_--the flat member at the top of a capital. _Apse_--the semicircular space at the end of a building. _Arcade_--a series of arches; is usually applied to the small ornamental arches only. _Barrel vault_--resembling the inside of a barrel. _Bead_--a small round moulding. _Boss_--a projecting ornament in a vault at the intersection of the ribs. _Canopy_--the head of a niche over an image; also the ornamental moulding over a door or window or tomb. _Capital_, _cap_--the head of a column, pilaster, etc. _Chamfer_--a sloping surface forming the bevelled edge of a square pier, moulding, or buttress, when the angle is said to be chamfered off. _Chevron_--an inflected moulding, also called zigzag, characteristic of Norman architecture. _Clere-story_ or _clear-story_--the upper story of a church, as distinguished from the triforium or blind story below it, in which the openings, though resembling windows, are usually blank or blind, not glazed. _Corbel_--a projecting stone to carry a weight, usually carved. _Crocket_--an ornament usually resembling a leaf half opened, and projecting from the upper edge of a canopy or pyramidal covering. The term is supposed to be derived from the resemblance to a shepherd's crook. _Crypt_--a vault beneath a church, generally beneath the chancel only, and sometimes used for the exhibition of relics. _Cusp_--an ornament used in the tracery of windows, screens, etc., to form foliation. _Dormer_--an upright window placed on a sloping roof, giving light to the chambers next the roof. _Fillet_--a small square band used on the face of mouldings. _Finial_--the ornament which finishes the top of a pinnacle, a canopy, or a spire, usually carved into a bunch of foliage. _Flying buttress_--an arch carried over the roof of an aisle from the external buttress to the wall of the clerestory, to support the vault. _Gargoyle_--a projected water-spout, often ornamented with grotesque figures. _Jambs_--the sides of a window opening or doorway. _Mullion_--the vertical bar dividing the lights of a window. _Ogee_--a moulding formed by the combination of a round and hollow. _Pier arches_--the main arches of the nave or choir resting on piers. _Pinnacle_--a sort of small spire usually terminating a buttress. _Piscina_--a water-drain in a church placed on the right-hand side of an altar for the use of the priest. _Plinth_--the projecting member forming the lower part of a base or of a wall. _Shaft_--a small, slender pillar usually attached to a larger one, or in the sides of a doorway or window. _Slype_--a passage leading from the transept to the chapter-house. _String-course_--a horizontal moulding or course of masonry, usually applied to the one carried under the windows of the chancel, both externally and internally. _Tooth ornament_--an ornament resembling a row of teeth, sometimes called dog's tooth and shark's tooth. _Transept_--the portion of a building crossing the nave and producing a cruciform plan. _Transition_--the period of a change of style, during which there is frequently an overlapping of the styles. _Transom_--the transverse horizontal piece across the mullions of a window. _Triforium_ or blind story--the middle story of a large church, over the pier arches and under the clerestory windows; it is usually ornamented by an arcade, and fills the space formed by the necessary slope of the aisle roofs. _Tympanum_--the space between the flat lintel of a doorway and the arch over it, usually filled with sculpture. THE END. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh._ * * * * * THE SCOTT COUNTRY By W. S. CROCKETT [Illustration] _In One Volume. Large Crown 8vo, Cloth. Containing about 200 Illustrations._ _Probable price 3s. 6d. net._ Mr. W. S. Crockett's book on "The Scott Country" will tell the story of the famous Borderland and its undying associations with Sir Walter, its greatest son. His early years at Sandyknowe and Kelso will be sketched by one who is himself a native of that very district. Scott's first Border home at Ashestiel, and the making of Abbotsford, the Ettrick and Yarrow of Scott, the memories that cluster round Melrose, the district of Hawick, and the country of "Marmion," will all have a place in the work. Not a spot of historic and romantic interest but will be referred to all along the line of Tweedside and its tributaries from Berwick to the Beild. The Border country of Scotland has already been the subject of a very extensive literature, but the "Scott Country" being presented upon a more compact and comprehensive plan than has yet been attempted, will, we feel sure, be a source of satisfaction to every reader, whether Border-born or not. To the Scott abroad the volume will recall many a familiar memory, and at home it should take its place as a standard work of its kind, the author being, according to Dr. Robertson Nicoll and others, perhaps the most capable living student of the Border and its literature. The "Scott Country" will have close on 200 illustrations, many of them quite new; and the price is such as to bring it within the reach of all. A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON. * * * * * NEW POCKET EDITION. =HORÆ SUBSECIVÆ= BY JOHN BROWN, M.D., LL.D., ETC. [Illustration] CLOTH, GILT TOP, 2/- net EACH VOLUME. LIMP LEATHER, 2/6 net EACH VOLUME. _New Edition. In Three Volumes. 6-1/4 × 4-1/4 inches. Printed on thin Bible paper and bound uniform with Black's NEW POCKET EDITION WAVERLEY NOVELS. Volume I. contains a photogravure frontispiece of a portrait of Dr. John Brown, by Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A._ * * * * * =Some Appreciations of Dr. John Brown and his Books.= =WILLIAM ARCHER.=--"How came it that no one ever told me it was a thing unique in literature, the autobiography--yes, that is the word--of one of the most wonderful children, and quite the most adorable, that ever lived?... Never has so brief a piece of printed matter affected me so profoundly." (This refers to the story of "Pet Marjorie.") =W. E. GLADSTONE.=--"My estimate of Dr. John Brown was particularly high. It is easy and obvious to say he was a clever man and a good man, but this is only part of the truth, and he stood, I think, both in the intellectual and the moral order, much higher than these words of themselves convey." =ANDREW LANG.=--"Three volumes of essays are all that Dr. Brown has left us in the way of compositions; a light but imperishable literature.... No man of letters could be more widely regretted, for he was the friend of all who read his books, as even to people who only met him once or twice in life he seemed to become dear and familiar." =Professor DAVID MASSON.=--"Yes, many long years hence, when all of us are gone, I can imagine that a little volume will be in circulation, containing 'Rab and his Friends,' etc.; and that then readers now unborn, thrilled by that peculiar touch which only things of heart and genius can give, will confess to the same charm that now fascinates us, and will think with interest of Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh." =ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.=--"Marjorie Fleming I have known, as you surmise, for long. She was possibly--no, I take back possibly--she was one of the greatest works of God." A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] Skene's _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 365, 366. [2] _Mediæval Architecture_, vol. i. p. 8. [3] _Ibid._ pp. 8, 9, 26. [4] _Ibid._ p. 145. [5] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 1, 2. [6] _Ibid._ [7] _Eccles. Arch. of Scot._ vol. i. pp. 1, 2. [8] _Ibid._ pp. 175-190. [9] _Ibid._ p. 28. [10] _Ibid._ p. 28. [11] _Ibid._ p. 178. [12] _Eccles. Arch. of Scot._ vol. i. p. 191. [13] _Ibid._ p. 192. [14] _Ibid._ [15] _Eccles. Arch, of Scot._ vol. i. pp. 387, 388. [16] _Ibid._ pp. 46, 47. [17] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 1. [18] _Ibid._ p. 3. [19] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 50. [20] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, pp. 68, 69. [21] _Ibid._ p. 70. [22] _Eccles. Arch. of Scot._ vol. ii. p. 332. [23] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 57. [24] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. pp. 1-7. [25] _Ancient Church and Parish of Abernethy_, p. 95. [26] _Pictish Chronicle_, p. 201. [27] _Amra Columcille_, pp. 29, 63. [28] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 136, 137. [29] Scott's _Marmion_. [30] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 274. [31] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 309, 310. [32] _Scotichronicon_, bk. iv. c. 12. [33] _Reg. Pri. S. And._ App. p. xxxi. [34] Reeves's _British Culdees_, p. 41. [35] _Church of Scotland: Past and Present_, vol. ii. pp. 309, 310. [36] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 34. [37] _Chronicle of the Picts and Scots_, p. 191. [38] Lecture II. p. 24. [39] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 190. [40] _Ibid._ p. 186. [41] Petrie's _Round Towers and Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland_. [42] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 6-8. [43] _Ibid._ p. 6 [44] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 16. [45] _Ibid._ p. 19. [46] _Ibid._ p. 26. [47] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 184, 185. [48] _Celtic Scotland_, ii. p. 186. [49] _Historians of Scotland_, v. p. lxxxix. [50] Vol. i. pp. 3-5. [51] Sir James Marwick's _Charters and Documents relating to the City of Glasgow_, part i. p. dxxiii. [52] Preface to _Register_, p. xxiv. [53] Messrs. MacGibbon and Ross and Honeyman, architects. [54] _The Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 229. [55] _Ibid._ [56] _The Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 231. [57] _Ibid._ p. 274. [58] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, ii. p. 160. [59] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 232. [60] _Registrum Epis. Glas._ p. xxiv. [61] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, ii. p. 161. [62] _Ibid._ [63] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, ii. p. 161. [64] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 267. [65] _Eccles. Arch. of Scotland_, ii. p. 161. [66] _Ibid._ pp. 161, 162. [67] _The Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 324. [68] See Professor Laurie's _Lectures_, pp. 136, 137. [69] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, pp. 292-302. [70] _Theiner_, p. 505; _Reg. Epis. Glasg._ ii. 470-473, 543, 544. [71] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 265. [72] MacGibbon and Ross, vol. ii. p. 162. [73] _Ibid._ [74] See p. 23. [75] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 108. [76] _Ibid._ p. 277. [77] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 291. [78] _Ibid._ p. 305. [79] _Ibid._ p. 317. [80] _Ibid._ p. 304. [81] Sir James Marwick's _Charters and Documents of Glasgow_, part i. p. xli. [82] Dr. Rankin, vol. ii. p. 315. [83] _Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis._ [84] Complete list in _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, pp. 190-197. [85] Sir James Marwick's _Charters_, part. i. p. dxxiv. [86] _Ibid._ p. v. [87] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, pp. 375, 376. [88] _Ibid._ p. 244. [89] _Mediæval Architecture_, vol. ii. p. 200. [90] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, p. 252. [91] MacGibbon and Ross, vol. ii. p. 172. [92] _Book of Glasgow Cathedral_, pp. 239, 240. [93] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 165. [94] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 405. [95] _Ibid._ p. 408. [96] Myln's _Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld_, p. 38. [97] _Ibid._ p. 44. [98] Myln's _Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld_, p. 46. [99] _Ibid._ p. 56. [100] _Ibid._ p. 66. [101] _Scoti-Monasticon_, pp. 216, 217. [102] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 31. [103] _Ibid._ p. 47. [104] _Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis_, p. x. [105] _Ibid._ [106] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 379. [107] _Reg._ p. xi. [108] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 75. [109] _View of the Diocese of Aberdeen_, p. 148. [110] _Ibid._ p. 163. [111] _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, vol. iii. p. 75. [112] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 75. [113] _Ibid._ [114] Preface to _Register_, pp. xlii., xliii. [115] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 75. [116] _Collections of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, p. 150. [117] P. 104. [118] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, p. 77. [119] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 76. [120] _View of the Diocese of Aberdeen_, p. 151. [121] _Ibid._ p. 152. [122] _Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis_, p. xii. [123] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 369. [124] _Registrum_, pp. xiii and 40. [125] _Ibid._ p. xiii. [126] _Ibid._ [127] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 121. [128] P. xiii., No. 26. [129] _Register_, No. 173, p. 204. [130] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 52. [131] _Ecclesiastical Architecture_, vol. ii. pp. 122, 123. [132] _Ibid._ p. 125. [133] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 50. [134] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 145. [135] _Life_, vol. ii. p. 437. [136] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 397. [137] _Ibid._ [138] _Ibid._ [139] Preface to the Brechin _Register_, p. vi. [140] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 400. [141] _Ibid._ pp. 400, 401. [142] Dr. Rankin's _History_, vol. ii. p. 328. [143] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 309. [144] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 209. [145] Miss Stokes, _Early Christian Architecture_, p. 73. [146] _Scotland in Early Christian Times_, p. 45. [147] _Ordnance Gazetteer_, vol. i. p. 187. [148] _Early Christian Architecture in Ireland_, p. 5. [149] _Scotland in Early Christian Times_, p. 41. [150] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 213. [151] _Ibid._ p. 212. [152] _Ibid._ [153] Black's _Brechin_, pp. 253, 254. [154] Preface to _Register_, p. xvii. [155] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 402. [156] _Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops_, p. 174. [157] Reeves' _British Culdees_, p. 141. [158] MacGibbon and Ross, vol. ii. p. 86. [159] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 174. [160] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 89. [161] _Lib. Ins. Missarum_, preface, p. xxix. [162] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 92. [163] _Ibid._ [164] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 102. [165] _Edinburgh Lectures._ [166] Keith's _Scottish Bishops_, pp. 177-180. [167] MacGibbon and Ross, vol. ii. p. 107. [168] Keith's _Scottish Bishops_, p. 175. [169] _History of His Own Times_, vol. ii. p. 243. [170] _The Bishop's Walk_, p. 7. [171] _Regist. de Dunf._, p. 3. [172] Reeves' _Culdees_, p. 46. [173] _The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 395. [174] _Ibid._ p. 399. [175] Mr. Neale. [176] His diary for 1571 is published in the _Bannatyne Miscellany_, vol. iii. pp. 113-156. [177] Keith's _Scottish Bishops_, p. 198. [178] Cosmo Innes's "Records of the Bishopric of Caithness," _Bannatyne Miscellany_, vol. iii. p. 3. [179] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 383. [180] _Orig. Par._ vol. ii. part ii. p. 601. [181] _Transactions of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society_ (1892), p. 36. [182] _Transactions of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society_ (1892), p. 40. [183] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 482. [184] _Ibid._ p. 485. [185] _Ibid._ p. 486. [186] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. i. p. 69. [187] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 408. [188] Dr. Rankin, vol. ii. p. 350. [189] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 265. [190] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 83, 84. [191] _Ibid._ p. 85. [192] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 85-102. [193] They were thence taken to Ireland. [194] _Iona_, pp. 84, 85. [195] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 414. [196] _Register of the Great Seal_ (1634-1651), p. 708, No. 1903; _Origines Parochiales_, vol. ii. part i. p. 294. [197] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 49. [198] _Ibid._ pp. 57-59. [199] _Ibid._ p. 74. [200] _Transactions._ [201] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 421. [202] _Ibid._ p. 426. [203] Cf. Drummond's _West Highland Monuments_. [204] _Celtic Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 92. [205] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 266. [206] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 266-273. [207] _Ibid._ p. 273. [208] Dr. Joseph Robertson's _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 39. [209] Dr. Joseph Robertson's _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 40. [210] MacGibbon and Ross's _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 259-262. [211] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 273. [212] _Ibid._ pp. 273-275. [213] _Ibid._ p. 276. [214] _Ibid._ p. 277. [215] _Ibid._ [216] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 278. [217] _Ibid._ p. 279. [218] _Ibid._ p. 280. [219] _Ibid._ [220] _Ibid._ [221] _Ibid._ p. 282. [222] _Ibid._ [223] _Ibid._ p. 284. [224] _Ibid._ [225] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 288. [226] _Ibid._ p. 289. [227] _Ibid._ p. 290. [228] _Tennyson: A Memoir_, vol. ii. p. 280. [229] Vol. iii. pp. 181-196. [230] Dr. Cooper's Introduction to _Chartulary_, pp. xxv.-xxvi. [231] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 426. [232] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 427, 428. [233] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 431. [234] _Records of the University and King's College, Aberdeen_, p. xv. [235] _Collections of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, p. 210. [236] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. pp. 287-289. [237] _Ibid._ p. 295. [238] _Transactions of the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society_, sixth year (1891), p. 63 _et seq._ to p. 76. [239] _Sermons and Addresses_, p. 29. [240] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 151, also to p. 179. [241] _St. Giles, Edinburgh, Church, College, and Cathedral_, p. 1. [242] Of the early church, which stood on the site of the present _St. Cuthbert's_, Edinburgh, Dr. Skene has declared that "there is no doubt the church was founded by S. Cuthbert himself," and so there has been Christian worship there for over 1200 years (Rev. Dr. A. Wallace Williamson's paper in _Aberdeen Ecclesiological Transactions_, ninth year, p. 114). [243] _Charters of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles_, p. iv. [244] _Ibid._ [245] Dr. Lees' _St. Giles, Edinburgh_, p. 3. [246] Introduction to _Charters_, p. v. [247] _Ibid._ p. vi. [248] _St. Giles_, p. 4. [249] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 419. [250] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 420. [251] _Ibid._ [252] _Ibid._ p. 422. [253] _Ibid._ [254] _Ibid._ [255] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 425. [256] Dr Lees' _St. Giles_, p. 23. [257] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 426. [258] _Ibid._ [259] Introduction to _Charters_, p. xiv. [260] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 430. [261] Introduction to _Charters_, p. xv. [262] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 434. [263] _Ibid._ p. 436. [264] No. 77, p. 106. [265] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 441. [266] Dr. Laing's Introduction to _Charters_, p. xxx. [267] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 445. [268] _Ib._ p. 446 [269] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, pp. 445-449. [270] Intro. to _Charters_, p. xix. [271] Dr. Lees' _St. Giles_, p. 273. [272] Dr. Lees' _St. Giles_, p. 117. [273] _Ibid._ pp. 124, 125. [274] Calderwood's _History_, vol. iii. pp. 73, 257. [275] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 454. [276] _St. Giles_, p. 262. [277] Very Rev. Dr. Cameron Lees. [278] _St. Giles_, p. 270. [279] _Ibid._ p. 214. [280] Rankin, vol. ii. p. 361. [281] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 199. [282] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 36. [283] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 298-309. [284] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 313, 314. [285] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 455. [286] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, pp. 455-470. [287] Fergusson's _History of Architecture_, vol. ii. p. 222. [288] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 493. [289] Hay's _Sacra Scotia_, p. 323. [290] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 109. [291] Rev. John Fergusson of Aberdalgie in _Scottish Antiquary_, January 1897, p. 137. [292] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 116. [293] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 116. [294] _Ibid._ p. 121, and Lord High Treasurer's Accounts. [295] _Ibid._ p. 122. [296] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 125. [297] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 132. [298] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 330. [299] _Ibid._ p. 138. [300] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 450. [301] _Ibid._ p. 450 [302] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 451. [303] _Ibid._ [304] _Ibid._ [305] Professor Mitchell's _Scottish Reformation_, p. 96. [306] _The Works of John Knox_, vol. i. p. 228. [307] _Sketches of Early Scotch History_, p. 10. [308] _Ibid._ p. 11. [309] _Ibid._ p. 18. [310] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, p. 27. [311] _Modern Painters_, vol. i. p. 23. [312] _Ibid._ vol. iii. p. 44. [313] _Ibid._ vol. v. p. 206. [314] _Oxford Lectures_, p. 27. [315] Montalembert's _Monks of the West_, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41. [316] The Augustinian order had also monasteries at Scone, Inchcolm, Lochleven, Isle of May, and Pittenweem, Blantyre, Cambuskenneth, Restennet, Canonby, and Inchaffray, as well as smaller houses at Loch Tay, Portmoak, Monymusk, St. Mary's Isle Priory at Trail, Rowadil, Oronsay, Colonsay, Inchmahome, Rosneath, Strathfillan, Scarinche, Abernethy (Perthshire); the _Premonstratensian_ order had also abbeys at Saulseat, Holywood, Whithorn, Tongland, Fearn; the _Benedictine_ order had also abbeys at Coldingham and Urquhart; the _Cluniacensian_ order had also abbeys at Crossraguel, Fail, and Dalmulin; the _Tyronensian_ order had also abbeys at Lesmahagow, Kilwinning, Lindores, Iona, and smaller houses at Dull, Fyvie, Inchkenneth, Rothesay (St. Mary's); the _Cistercian_ order had also abbeys at Newbattle, Dundrennan, Kinloss, Deir, Cupar, Glenluce, Culross, Balmerino, Sweetheart, and smaller houses at Saddel, Friars Carse (near Dumfries), Hassendean, Mauchline, Cadvan (in Dunbog), and Holm Cultram; the _order of Vallis Caulium_ had priories at Pluscardine, Beauly, and Ardchattan; the _Carthusians_ had houses at Perth and Makerstone (Roxburghshire). There were 14 religious houses belonging to the Trinity Friars, 12 to the Carmelites, 18 to the Dominicans, 7 to the Franciscans, 13 to the Observantines, 6 to the Knights of Malta, 16 to the Knights Templars. [317] _Scottish Ordnance Gazetteer_, vol. vi. p. 300. [318] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 54 _et seq._ to p. 72. [319] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 68. [320] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 71. [321] _Ibid._ pp. 71, 72. [322] Gordon's _Monasticon_, p. 156. [323] Gordon's _Monasticon_, p. 158. [324] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 401 _et seq._ to p. 414. [325] _Ibid._ p. 403. [326] Gordon's _Monasticon_, p. 254. [327] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 448. [328] _Monasticon_, p. 324. [329] _Ibid._ p. 340. [330] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 451 _et seq._ to p. 464. [331] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 462. [332] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 464. [333] Introduction to _Registrum de Dunfermlyn_, p. 25. [334] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 231. [335] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 231. [336] Introduction to _Registrum_, p. 25. [337] _Monasticon_, p. 404. [338] _Registrum_, p. 25. [339] _Monasticon_, pp. 411, 412. [340] _The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 234. [341] _Ibid._ pp. 234, 238. [342] _Ibid._ p. 238. [343] _Ibid._ [344] _Ibid._ [345] _Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals_, pp. 33, 34. [346] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 238. [347] _Ibid._ p. 241. [348] _Ibid._ [349] _Ibid._ [350] _Ibid._ p. 242. [351] Lindsay's _Chronicle of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 555. [352] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 245. [353] _Ibid._ [354] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 246-249. [355] _Ibid._ pp. 251, 252. [356] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 252-254. [357] _History_, vol. i., year 1303-1304. [358] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 254. [359] See p. 144. [360] _Ecc. Arch. of Scot._ vol. i. pp. 254-256. [361] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 1, 2. [362] _Scotland in the Middle Ages_, p. 114. [363] _Historical Sketches_, p. 109. [364] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 26, 27. [365] Kingsley's _Roman and Teuton_, pp. 204-206. [366] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 58, 59. [367] _Ibid._ p. 63. [368] _Ibid._ p. 65. [369] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 8. [370] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 91. [371] _Ibid._ p. 91. [372] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 96. [373] _Ibid._ p. 109. [374] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 117. [375] _Ibid._ p. 120. [376] Page 19. [377] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 8. [378] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 142. [379] _A Scots Mediæval Architect_, by P. MacGregor Chalmers, pp. 14, 15 (Scots Lore). [380] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 144, 145. [381] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 159, 160. [382] _Ibid._ p. 165. [383] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 205. [384] See Laing's _Knox_. [385] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 228, 229. [386] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. pp. 10-26. [387] _Ibid._ p. 13. [388] _Ibid._ [389] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 16. [390] _Ibid._ [391] _Ibid._ [392] _Ibid._ [393] _Ibid._ p. 21. [394] _Ibid._ [395] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 21. [396] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 166. [397] _Ibid._ p. 209. [398] _Ibid._ [399] _The Abbey of Paisley_, pp. 211, 212. [400] _Ibid._ p. 212. [401] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. iii. pp. 25, 26. [402] _Ibid._ p. 168. [403] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 214. [404] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 215. [405] _Ibid._ p. 206. [406] _Ibid._ p. 337. [407] _Ibid._ p. 338. [408] _Ibid._ [409] _The Abbey of Paisley_, p. 339. [410] _Ibid._ p. 340. [411] Introduction to _Reg. Cart. de Kelso_, i. p. viii. [412] _Ibid._ [413] _Ibid._ p. xli. [414] _Ibid._ pp. viii-xvi. [415] _Ibid._ p. xliv. [416] Introduction to _Reg. Cart. de Kelso_, pp. xliii, xliv. [417] _Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Peebles_, by Sir George Douglas, Bart., pp. 284, 285. [418] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 350-352. [419] _Ibid._ p. 352. [420] Introduction to _Chartulary_, p. xlix. [421] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 353-361. [422] _Ibid._ [423] _Ibid._ [424] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 356, 357. [425] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 357, 358. [426] _Ibid._ p. 359. [427] _Ibid._ p. 360. [428] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 360, 361. [429] _Ibid._ p. 361. [430] _Ibid._ [431] Hay's _History of Arbroath_, p. 27. [432] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 31. [433] _Sketches of Early Scotch History_, p. 161. [434] _Ibid._ [435] _Ibid._ p. 171. [436] _Sketches of Early Scotch History_, p. 159. [437] _National Manuscripts_, part ii. [438] See Principal Story's _Apostolic Ministry in the Scottish Church_, p. 197. [439] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 31-35. [440] _Ibid._ pp. 35-37. [441] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 39. [442] _Ibid._ pp. 39-41. [443] _Ibid._ p. 41. [444] _Ibid._ [445] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 43-45. [446] _Ibid._ p. 45. [447] _Ibid._ pp. 46, 48. [448] _Ibid._ p. 48. [449] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 50. [450] Millar's _Arbroath and its Abbey_, p. 103. [451] Pp. xxxi, xxxii. [452] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 347. [453] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 377. [454] _Ibid._ p. 349. [455] _Ibid._ p. 351. [456] _Ibid._ [457] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 353, 356. [458] _Ibid._ p. 356. [459] _Ibid._ pp. 356, 357. [460] Messrs. MacGibbon and Ross consider it probable that a fragment of the original north wall may have been preserved as the core of the present wall, and faced up on both sides with newer work (_Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 360, 361). [461] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 361. [462] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 362, 363. [463] _Ibid._ p. 366. [464] _Ibid._ [465] _Ibid._ [466] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 372. [467] _Ibid._ p. 373. [468] _Ibid._ [469] _Ibid._ [470] _Ibid._ p. 374. [471] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 373, 374. [472] _Ibid._ p. 375. [473] _Ibid._ [474] _Ibid._ p. 377. [475] As given in Monteith's _Theater of Mortality_ (1713)--earliest and most accurate reference. [476] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 378. [477] See _Scots Lore_, Nos. 1-7. [478] In this summary I am specially indebted to the _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 175-477, vol. ii. pp. 5-559, vol. iii. pp. 7-533. The statements are much compressed on account of the limitations of the space at my disposal. [479] _Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, vol. ii. pp. 72, 73. [480] _Burnet's History of my Own Time_ (Clarendon edition), vol. i. p. 246. [481] _Life and Letters_, vol. ii. p. 71. [482] Cf. Parker's _Introduction to Gothic Architecture_, 321-331; also _Glossary of Architecture_, vol. i. 
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26354	----	WOODWARD'S COUNTRY HOMES, BY GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, ARCHITECTS, =Authors of "Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings."= FOURTH THOUSAND. NEW-YORK: GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, 37 PARK ROW, Office of the HORTICULTURIST. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. STEPHEN HALLET, PRINTER, No. 74 Fulton Street. CONTENTS. PAGE. INTRODUCTION. Domestic Architecture and Embellishment 7 DESIGN NO. 1. A Laborer's Cottage 25 DESIGN NO. 2. A Small Frame Cottage 28 DESIGN NO. 3. A Compact Frame Cottage 30 DESIGN NO. 4. A Rural Cottage of moderate extent 34 DESIGN NO. 5. A Gardener's Cottage 40 DESIGN NO. 6. Stone Stable and Coach House 45 DESIGN NO. 7. A Farm Cottage 46 DESIGN NO. 8. Design for a Timber Cottage 50 DESIGN NO. 9. Design for a Rural Church. 53 DESIGN NO. 10. A Suburban Cottage 58 DESIGN NO. 11. An Ornamental Summer House 64 DESIGN NO. 12. Stable and Carriage House 66 DESIGN NO. 13. A Model Cottage 68 DESIGN NO. 14. A Cottage Stable 75 DESIGN NO. 15. Design for an Ice House 76 DESIGN NO. 16. A Suburban Cottage 79 DESIGN NO. 17. Stable and Carriage House 86 DESIGN NO. 18. School House at Irvington 87 DESIGN NO. 19. A regular Country House 93 DESIGN NO. 20. A Country Chapel 96 DESIGN NO. 21. An Old House Remodeled 99 DESIGN NO. 22. Coach House and Stable 104 DESIGN NO. 23. Fences 106 DESIGN NO. 24. Plans of the Residence of C. F. Park, Esq. 108 DESIGN NO. 25. Carriage House and Stable 111 DESIGN NO. 26. Residence of T. H. Stout, Esq. 113 DESIGN NO. 27. A Chapter on Gates 119 DESIGN NO. 28. Mr. Tristram Allen's House at Ravenswood, Enlarged 131 DESIGN NO. 29. Plans of the Residence of L. M. Ferris, Esq. 134 DESIGN NO. 30. A Model Suburban Cottage 139 DESIGN NO. 31. Head Stone 149 BALLOON FRAMES. Balloon Frames 151 WOODWARD'S COUNTRY HOMES. IN presenting to the public a new work on DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE, it is our aim to furnish practical designs and plans, adapted to the requirements of such as are about to build, or remodel and improve, their COUNTRY HOMES. The rapid progress in rural improvement and domestic embellishment all over the land, during the last quarter of a century, is evident to the observation of every traveler, and, as we have found during several years of professional experience, there has grown up a demand for architectural designs of various grades, from the simple farm cottage to the more elaborate and costly villa, which is not supplied by the several excellent works on this subject which are within the reach of the building and reading public. Among the permanent dwellers in the country this spirit of improvement, fostered as it is by the diffusion of publications in the various departments of Rural Art, and by a wider and more genial general culture as the means of intercommunication and education are increased, is becoming more manifest every year. But besides these intelligent farmers and tradesmen who make the country their home the year round, there is a large class of persons whose tastes or business avocations compel them to reside a considerable portion of the year in our cities or suburbs--prosperous merchants, bankers, professional men, and wealthy citizens--who have the tastes and means to command such enjoyments and luxuries as the country affords; who need the change in scenes, associations, employments and objects of interest, for themselves and their households, and who enjoy, with a keen relish, the seclusion, the comparative freedom from restraint, the pure, sweet air, the broad, open sunshine, and the numerous other rural advantages which are essentially denied them in their city homes. In former years this class of people resorted, almost exclusively, to the sea-side, and a few popular mineral springs, taking in, perhaps, Niagara in their transit, and rarely venturing into the wild and unexplored regions of Lake George. They returned to town in the early days of September, with many a backward, longing look at the attractions and delights from which they reluctantly tore themselves away, and settled down again to the weary tread-mill of business. But for some years past this class has largely increased in number, and instead of confining themselves to their former resorts, they now seek the upper country, and prolong their stay into the glorious days of Autumn. Many of them have provided permanent summer homes, among the hills and on the lake or river shores. They have bought, and built, and planted, until they have identified themselves with the chosen spot, and as their trees have taken root in the fertile soil, so have their affections taken root in the beautiful country. They hasten gladly to these rural scenes with the opening Summer, and they leave them with regret when the exigencies of business require their presence in the city,--when the Summer suns have ripened the luscious fruits, and the flowers fade with the frosty kisses of the cold, and the passenger birds fly Southward. This class of our population know where to find all the facilities for the best country enjoyments, and their ample means assure them a free choice of summer resorts, and adequate command of all the appliances of pleasant country living. But there is another and still larger class of citizens who have neither the means to enable them to keep up both town and country residences, nor such command of their time that they can pass two or three months of every summer away from their business. There are thousands of clerks and subordinate officers in the banking and insurance institutions in our cities and in our large commercial houses; there are many merchants who are making their way slowly and surely to competence and wealth, who would gladly compromise for one-third of such a summer vacation. These are men of intelligence, and sometimes of a good deal of social and intellectual culture and refinement. Many of them were born, and their boyhood nurtured amongst the hills. They love the country with the intensity and purity of a first love, and they long for communion once more with nature in all her moods of loveliness. Their sweetest dreams still, when they forget the hard realities of life, are of green lawns and sloping hill-sides, of waving trees and cool streams. And they would wish that their children should become familiar with the same wholesome associations, and be moved by the same attachments and inspirations. In the city they are constantly exposed to its excitements, and subjected to the restraints of its artificial modes, with few outward influences to counteract upon their development; with very little, indeed, except the discipline and the affections of home to emancipate them from the tendencies to a trivial, artificial, and sordid life. They would gladly supply to them the healthful tone and vigor--the outer and inner bloom and freshness--which are the product of out-door life in the pure air of the country. But they are compelled by considerations of economy, to forego most of these advantages, and allow their children to grow up with city tastes and habits. They long for the country but think they must content themselves with the town, until the time comes when their fortunes will enable them to command the coveted indulgences. The time may come, sooner than they anticipate, when they will be obliged to choose the country. Our towns are rapidly overflowing their local boundaries, and spreading out into suburbs, more or less beautiful and desirable. As far as New York city is concerned, it is simply a question of time how soon our middle-class citizens, who desire to live comfortably, with due regard to economical conditions, will be obliged to choose the country for their homes. During the last forty years this city has increased in population with a rapid and uniform rate. Within the memory of persons now living, it has grown from an inconsiderable commercial town, until it has become one of the great cities of the world. This rapid stride and steady progress furnish us with the elements for calculating the period when the whole island will be covered with buildings, and there will remain no more vacant space for the use of its commerce, or the domestic accommodation of its citizens. The present population of the city is estimated at fully one million. The entire territorial capacity of the city, the density of the population remaining the same as it is at present, cannot much exceed two millions. The ratio of increase during each period of five years, since 1820, is about twenty-eight per cent. It will thus be seen that the utmost limit of the city's capacity will be reached within the next sixteen or seventeen years, and New York will be a solid and compact city from the Battery to Westchester County. Meanwhile, the expenses of living in the city are increasing every year. Rents are higher now than ever before, and there is no prospect of their coming down for many years. For it must be remembered that when we renew our building operations, which have been nearly suspended for the last four years, in consequence of the unsettled condition of the country, we shall have to provide not only for the current increase in population, but for the deficiencies which result from the past four years or more, when comparatively few houses were erected. At the present time the rent of a convenient and respectable house, suitable to the requirements of a family having a fair income, and occupying a desirable position in society, is an excessive item of cost. And the remedy for this is to go into the country. Along the lines of our railroads and navigable waters there are localities where land is comparatively cheap,--beautiful, healthy regions, where the comforts of a rural home may be secured, with all the advantages of society, and of religious and educational establishments and institutions. The facilities for reaching these country homes are already adequate for general purposes, and will be increased every year, as the demand for them grows. Railroads and steamboats are built and run for the purpose of profit on freight and passenger transportation. According to the general law of trade, the supply will equal the demand, and as the population increases along our lines of travel, the facilities and accommodations for transit will be multiplied. Why, then, should the man who loves the country, and possesses tastes and capacities for its enjoyment, and yet is compelled by circumstances to practice economy in his mode of living, be restrained to the city limits? It is quite a practicable thing for him to realize his wishes,--live in the country and enjoy its best luxuries, without abandoning the city as far as its commercial advantages are concerned. There are localities _within an hour_ of the city hall, where land can be purchased at reasonable rates, and where all the advantages of health and beauty, of retirement, pure air and attractive scenery can be enjoyed for less money than is now expended in the narrow house in the crowded street, where every sense is offended--with no open sky or distant horizon tinged with the glories of the dying day or rising morn--no grassy lawns, or waving trees, or fragrant banks of flowers. For such accommodations as he has, he pays, we will say, a rent of one thousand or twelve hundred dollars. In the country he might purchase two acres of land and build a cottage, which would afford him all, or more, conveniences than he now has, without the necessity of climbing four or five flights of stairs--at an outlay, at the usual cost of building, not exceeding six thousand dollars. The interest on this sum would be four hundred and twenty dollars. The difference between this amount and his present house rent would in a few years pay the whole cost of the place, and he would have a _home_--a centre and gathering place for his domestic interests and affections. And this is no fancy sketch--no exaggerated statement of possibilities. We know of localities which can be reached from Wall Street in as many minutes as would be required to go to 50th Street, where land can be obtained for about five hundred dollars an acre, where there are all the conditions of health, good water, pure air, extensive and attractive views, and whatever else is desirable for a country home. In the direction we have now specially in mind, there are at least twenty railroad trains which daily stop at convenient stations, between the early morning and ten o'clock at night. For the ordinary purposes of business, and social intercourse, this is ample travelling accommodation, and as we said before, these accommodations will be increased in the proportion that the country population in the neighborhood of our cities becomes more dense, and thus creates a larger demand for such facilities. The necessity and desirableness of country homes being thus easily demonstrable, it is of importance to know how to choose sites for them, and how to build. The Poet-author of "Letters from under a bridge," has given a wise and admirable suggestion in regard to choice of sites, "leaving the climate and productiveness of soil out of the question, the main things to find united, are, _shade_, _water_, _and inequality of surface_. With these three features given by nature, any spot may be made beautiful, and at very little cost: and fortunately for purchasers in this country, most land is valued and sold with little or no reference to these or other capabilities for embellishment." There is an affluence of choice sites all over the country, and what we need most to learn is how to develop their capabilities, and add such fitting embellishments as belong to beautiful and convenient houses. Here it is that the popular taste requires additional cultivation. The impulse already given in this direction should be kept up. There is no deficiency of wealth for the appropriation and culture of these attractive places, and there is often a lavish expenditure upon country homes which ought to make them complete and even magnificent. But unfortunately we see, every year, costly establishments, designed for summer residences, or for permanent homes, built up with as little regard for taste, as for expense. The deficiency is found rather in the culture than in the dispositions and means of our people. And the remedy and supply for this must be provided by the dissemination of works treating upon this and kindred topics of rural art, by means of which the public taste may be refined and elevated to a higher standard. In constructing country houses there are several prime conditions to be observed, such as adaptation, accommodation, and expression. By adaptation is meant not only the arrangement of the main structure, as to form and material, to suit the locality and character of the grounds, but a fitness as respects the real wants--the habits and condition--of the occupants and the purposes of a country home. Nobody wants a modern city house planted down in the open country, nor should any sensible man seek a refuge from the bare streets of the city in the little less bare streets of a country village. There is no congruity between the classical forms of Grecian Architecture and the varying climate of our land. The material used in the construction of our country houses has not been sufficiently considered by us. Timber is abundant in almost all parts of the country, and the facility with which an establishment--mansion-house, office, and outbuildings--can be built up in a few weeks, of this material, has been the main reason, we suppose, why we have so many abortions, in the shape of Grecian temples, and miniature Gothic cathedrals and castles, scattered over the land. Let it be considered, that in building our country houses, we are not simply providing for ourselves, but for our children--we are constructing a homestead. It is for the want of this consideration that we have so few _homes_ in our country, so few home associations, around and among which our deepest and purest affections are entwined. Our thin lath and plaster constructions, which rattle and tremble in every wind and leak in every rain, do not afford very good or permanent centers for these associations and affections. We have some native woods that are durable, out of which we may build houses that will last for several generations; but with these, even, the cost of frequent repairs and painting is so great, to say nothing of the annoyances thereby entailed, that, in point of economy, wood is by no means the most desirable material. Nor is it, in any way, the most desirable. The prevailing taste in country dwellings, before Mr. Downing's time, was defective enough. A large, square, wooden house, painted intensely white, garnished with bright green Venetian blinds--standing in a contracted yard--inclosed with a red or white wooden fence, was the very beau ideal of a gentleman's country dwelling. We are thankful that this dispensation has passed away; and we revere the memory of Downing, and of others like him, who were instrumental in bringing in a better taste in such matters. The first cost of a stone or brick dwelling somewhat exceeds that of wood, even in places where these materials are readily obtained. But if they are properly constructed, such buildings will need very few repairs for many years. It is often objected, on the other hand, that such buildings are damp and unwholesome. This is, undoubtedly, true of many of the old stone houses which we find scattered about the country. And it is true, because they were not properly built. When properly built, they preserve the most equal temperature at all seasons. They are warm in winter and cool in summer, and the sudden changes which affect the weather without, need scarcely be felt by the delicate invalid within the walls of the stone mansion, if suitable attention is given to the simple matter of ventilation. But let us return to the subject of adaptation. The illustrations which occur to us may serve to furnish a somewhat clear idea of what we mean by the prime conditions necessary to be observed in building. By the term adaptation, we mean such choice of style, material, size and arrangement as shall fit the structure: 1st, to the site; 2d, to the climate; and 3d, to the uses for which it is built. And, first, as to the site: It would be obviously incongruous to erect the same house on these two different sites, with their different characteristic features and surroundings; for example, _the one_ a nearly level plane gently rising, perhaps, as you approach from the road the position where the house shall stand, and sloping away again towards other broad green fields and the fertile meadows beyond--with no background of hills or mountains, no irregularly formed lake, but with a placid, lazy stream, half-sleeping, half-gliding by the weeping elms, and among the scattered groups of stately, old trees:--_the other_, a romantic hillside in the native forest, with its neighboring mountain range, where in the bright summer-time, the noisy, laughing brook keeps time to your thoughts and fancies as you wander among the hills, and in the bleak winter the winds sigh mournfully through the pines or utter their clarion calls to the spirit of the storm. The one situation would be appropriate to the Italian villa, with its flat roof, and overhanging cornices, its spacious verandahs and balconies, all having that depth and boldness and variety of outline necessary to secure the proper effects of light and shadow which, the absence of all variety of form in the landscape, would render indispensable. But no man with an artist's eye would think, for a moment, of building such a house as this on our wooded hillside. He would construct there his English cottage in good solid stone, whose steep roofs would shed with facility the summer rain and the winter snow, whose irregularities of form and outline would harmonize with nature's Gothic work in precipice and rock, in trees and climbing vines. Or else, he would place there his Swiss chalét, which would be in harmony with the scene, and a pleasing object to the eye of the observer. On the broad, open plane the villa should be made, or seem, to cover a considerable space, while the nice cottage might be built more compactly. But here let us remark, that many of our attempts at the English cottage, generally known as the Gothic, have been failures, and some of them sad abortions. This comes from defective models and plans, and these defects arise mainly from these sources--the lack of boldness and variety in the main outlines, and in the construction of the roofs and chimneys. Such a cottage, to be pleasing and satisfactory, must have irregularities in form, variety in ornament, and boldness in treatment. A square house with additions of gables, and dormers and pinnacles, and ridge crests, will not give us an English cottage. It is a work of art, like a poem or a picture, and not a mechanical aggregation of Gothic features and ornaments. We were about to say that it should never be attempted in any other material than stone, but as many of us cannot command the means for such permanent buildings, we will concede that it may be allowable for us to put our wooden buildings into the cottage form, using the best taste and the most beautiful and picturesque styles, even if the material is objectionable. One other observation, before we return to our main topic, may be indulged. It is simply the suggestion that too little attention has been paid to the _sky-outlines_ of our country houses. Roofs and chimney-tops have been treated as necessary evils, instead of being made, as they may be, highly ornamental. The unity of the plan, as a work of art, is lost as you ascend above the eaves, all the rest seeming like excrescences growing out of structures otherwise commendable and satisfactory. The superior horizontal lines of the roof will depend somewhat upon the background of the house. When a building is placed upon the crest of a hill, or upon a slope descending from the main point of view, so that its outlines are seen against the sky, the treatment of the plan will be obviously different from that required where the background is solid, as a hill or a forest. In any case, however, the horizontal lines should be broken, as far as practicable, by making the roofs of the several parts of the house of unequal height. It will be apparent, without special argument, that our choice of style in our country houses should be controlled essentially by the climate. In our northern climate, the flat roof is objectionable, and we are obliged to modify the Italian styles somewhat in this respect, to obviate inconveniences. The hot summer sun, when, as on an August day, in the city, "The pavements all are piping hot, The sky above is brazen, And every head as good as dead The sun can shed his rays on," will be more than likely to open the joints and seams of the flat roof, and the sudden shower coming down with the force of a tropical storm, will find its way through, sadly to the detriment of our ceilings, our stuccoes and frescoes, as well as to the comfort and the commendable equability of temper of those who suffer the invasion. The heavy winter snows, too, require a steep roof, from which they will readily dislodge themselves without injury. And so in the interior arrangements of the house, the provisions for heating and ventilation, for summer freedom and winter coziness, for domestic comfort and the exercise of the commendable grace of country hospitality, due regard must be had to the conditions of climate. There must be a proper adaptation to them, if we would secure satisfactory country homes. And this brings us to our last topic, the uses for which our country seats are built. The place designed simply for a summer residence for the citizen, who is obliged to be at his office or counting room daily, bating the few weeks of summer vacation, need not be so complete in its appointments and arrangements, as the permanent country residence. One essential condition, however, in this case is, that there shall be _room enough_, with ample verandahs, and shaded gravel walks, which will afford opportunities for open air exercise in all states of the weather. There is nothing, perhaps, that interferes so essentially with the citizen's enjoyment of the country, as the want of facilities for out door exercise. It is too hot or too dusty to ride or walk, before the shower, and after its refreshment has come, it is too wet and muddy. Spacious verandahs, shaded with vines, and well-made walks, always firm and dry, bordered with shrubbery, or overhung with trees, will give us "ample scope and verge enough." But the uses of country seats depend mainly upon the tastes and habitudes of the occupants; and their adaptation in style size and arrangement should be accordingly. We believe there is no law against a man's building an elegant library and picture gallery, though he may have no taste for literature or art, but having plenty of money, chooses to make this display of it. There are a great many absurdities to which poor, frail humanity is liable, against which the legislature, in its wisdom, has not thought it worth while to make solemn and positive enactments; it is better for the general moral condition of society, perhaps, that the vulgar rich man's ambition for display should manifest itself in books and pictures, rather than in fast horses. Might not the cultivation of the garden--vegetables, fruits and flowers,--take the place of both, as simple means of display? These are wholesome and agreeable employments even for those who have passed that time of life when a taste for books and art may be acquired. A country seat should combine and express the real uses which are required by the intellectual and social condition of its occupants, and not attract attention as blazoning the wealth and money importance of the owner. If he is rich, let him make it as complete and simply elegant as he will, and this he may do without proclaiming to every passer-by his miserable pride of wealth. With these preliminary observations, we submit our work to the judgment of those who are interested in these subjects. We have not included in our present volume any considerable number of designs for the more spacious and costly Villa, the work being designed for popular use and to meet a demand which is unprovided for by previous publications. DESIGN No. 1. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--_Front Elevation._] [Illustration: FIG. 2.--_End Elevation._] This design as shown in figures 1 and 2, is for a laborer's cottage intended to be erected on the grounds connected with a fine estate on the western slope of the Palisades in New Jersey. It is to be built of rough stone, plainly finished. It is 16 by 24 feet outside, having a living-room with bed room on the first floor, (Fig. 3,) a large pantry, stairway, etc., and a fine cellar below. The second floor (Fig. 4,) has two bed-rooms, well lighted and ventilated, and large closets to each. This size will admit of several different arrangements; the rear door might open out from the pantry, and afford more convenient access to the cellar stairs, to get in heavy articles, and shut out some cold in winter, but would interfere with the fine ventilation so necessary in summer to a generally heated apartment, as a kitchen, dining, and living-room combined. A porch might be placed over the rear door, or better still, at a small additional expense, a summer-kitchen and wood-house might be added. A house of this accommodation is usually the first one put up by settlers on the western prairies. They are built of wood, balloon frame, with a plain pitch roof, without ornament. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Second Floor._] The elevations as shown, give a greater variety than is usual in this class of building, and a house thus constructed may afterwards become a very pretty portion of a larger and more expensive structure. DESIGN No. 2. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--_Front Elevation._] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--_Side Elevation._] [Illustration: FIG. 7.--_First Floor._] The second design (Fig. 5,) is for a frame building giving more variety of outline. The plan (Fig. 7,) separates the sitting room from the kitchen and dining room, and insures more privacy. There is also a greater abundance of closets, though smaller. One of the bed rooms above might be divided into two, and thus increase the accommodation. A portion of the cellar may also be finished for a kitchen, and the living room used as a dining room. This plan admits of future additions being made without destroying the harmony or proportion of the building. To one of moderate means, such a mode of building presents some attractions, as it affords a house for immediate wants, to which additions may be made as one's means increase. Such houses, if tastefully furnished and embellished with suitable surroundings, as neat and well-kept grounds, fine trees, shrubbery, flowers, and climbing vines, will always attract more attention and admiration than the uninviting aspect of many more expensive structures. Money tastefully expended in this manner will always yield gratifying results. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--_Second Floor._] DESIGN No. 3. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--_Front Elevation._] [Illustration: FIG. 10.--_Side Elevation._] This design is similar, in some respects, to design No. 2, and gives, perhaps, the most compact arrangement of rooms for a building having so irregular an outline. Exteriorly considered, there is much to be admired in variety, and light and shadow, the different elevations being entirely unlike each other, and affording a constant change from every point of view; an object, we think, very much to be desired in cottage architecture, and when well managed never fails to make a pleasing impression. A high, bold appearance, without the overhanging eaves or depth of shadow, is not suitable for a country house; a feeling is created that something is wanting to make up the accessories of an agreeable habitation. [Illustration: FIG. 11.--_Basement Plan._] In this plan, (Fig. 11,) the kitchen is in the basement, convenient to the cellar, and with a good pantry attached to it. It is put there for the purpose of economizing in the construction. Our own preference is to put the kitchen in a well ventilated wing on a level with the main floor, and thus avoid, as much as possible, the necessity of running up and down stairs. This can be done at any future time when desired, as, indeed, can any addition of other rooms be made to meet the wants of an increasing family. A dumb waiter connects the kitchen with the dining room, and thus saves many steps. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--_First Floor._] The first floor (Fig. 12,) gives parlor, dining room, and a library, with a roomy vestibule, and a side door or private entrance, and supplies all the wants of a small family. The library might be used for a bed room. On the second floor (Fig. 13,) are 3 bed rooms with closets. The engravings are intended to tell their own story as far as possible, and but little explanation is necessary to make them fully comprehensible. In the matter of cost, one can hardly give a price that is reliable; the enormous advance in some building materials and slight advance in others, disarrange all old standards of estimating. Localities, of course, have much to do with the cost; yet, above all others, the business management must be considered. A good manager, thoroughly familiar with the qualities and values of materials, who knows how to direct labor to the best advantage, will execute work at a less cost than one who undertakes his own building without a previous training. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--_Second Floor._] DESIGN No. 4. This is a perspective view of a cottage, designed to afford a reasonable amount of accommodation for an average sized family, and which, if tastefully furnished, and fitted with suitable landscape surroundings, will convey a pleasing impression to all; much more so than dwellings of a more expensive class, where sufficient attention is not given to such accessories. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--_Perspective._] The plans of this house are compact, the rooms opening into each other in such a manner as to afford easy communication and economy in heating. The porch is spacious, and more pleasant than the long, narrow verandah. The supply of water for all purposes is from a filtering cistern, which is connected with the kitchen sink, by a pump. The entire house may be heated by a furnace, hot water, or steam, as is most preferable; or stoves may be used in nearly all the rooms, if first cost is to be closely considered. A passage underneath the staircase connects with the side door from the vestibule, and, with the exception of the library, all parts of the house are accessible without passing through other rooms. [Illustration: FIG. 15.--_Basement Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 16.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 17.--_Second Floor._] In the vicinity of large cities, and more particularly the city of New York, there are reasons which have a money value to them, why more attention should be given to suburban architecture, and why capitalists, as well as individuals, should undertake the construction of moderate-priced buildings, that shall command attention from the harmonious combination of fine architectural effects. It requires but a very limited experience to become aware of the fact, that dwellings of precisely the same cost, and similarly situated, will differ in their rental at least one half, and it is mainly owing to the reason that one is properly designed, and the other perhaps an amateur performance, modeled after the ill-proportioned Greek pediment style, too prevalent to be countenanced for a moment by any one who prides himself on his good taste. There can be no question that a fitly designed cottage, conveniently arranged, adds, independently of its own cost, a large per centage to the value of the acres which surround it, and is the point which arrests the eye and secures the purchaser. Rapid rail-road facilities, lower rents, more healthful localities, and the fact that the growth of this city "_Spuyten Duyvelward_" has reached a point beyond the convenient access of the strictly business man, necessarily turn the attention of those who look to the full measure of comfort, to a suburban life, ten to fifteen miles away from the unceasing noise and hurry of the city, where the business of the day is forgotten, and fresh air, fresh milk, butter and eggs, fruits, flowers, birds, &c., are luxuries unknown in town. Taking a strictly money view of building operations, for sale and rent, in suburban localities, and more particularly about New York, it would promise, by every course of reasoning, a remunerative return, if the plan were judiciously and tastefully carried out. The wants of the public, however, are so unequal, and their opinions so varied by the circumstances under which they are formed, that, unless an attractive beginning can be shown, very desirable property may remain a long time on the market. If we canvass real estate thoroughly, we shall find that property sells first, and at the best prices, which has ever so humble a cottage on it, a starting point in which one may temporarily reside, and lay out his plans of future operations; for the construction of a country place is of all things one with which to make haste slowly. With those actively engaged in business, and to whom time is every thing, there is no disposition to add the labor and annoyances of building; the demand is for a home ready for occupancy; the thought is entertained, and the wish gratified, simply because the opportunity presented itself; but it is far less trouble for young and middle-aged business men to stick to the city, than to give the time for building, particularly when they undertake their own architecture. Let capitalists invite them by snug, well-built, convenient, and tasteful cottages, and the demand will always be in advance of the supply, in all healthy localities, having rapid, reliable, and frequent communication with the city. [Illustration: FIG. 18.--_First Floor Enlarged._] DESIGN No. 5. A GARDENER'S COTTAGE. The accompanying design was made for William C. Bryant, Esq., by Fred'k S. Copley, Esq., Artist, Tompkinsville, Staten Island, and was erected on his beautiful estate at Roslyn, Long Island, in 1862. It stands on the hill above his residence, overlooking the bay from the village to the Sound, possessing one of the finest views on the Island. It was intended as a gardener's lodge, and to accommodate one or two families, as circumstances might require, (one on each floor,) giving each three rooms, and a joint right to the scullery, sink, and cellar. [Illustration: FIG. 19.--_Perspective View._] _Arrangement._--The first story is 9 feet in the clear throughout, with every convenience suitable for the health and comfort of the occupants. From the porch, a small hall, lighted from the roof, is entered, with doors on either hand, to parlor or living room, and staircase passage in front, communicating with the kitchen at the back, chambers above, and cellar beneath. [Illustration: FIG. 20.--_First Floor._] The chamber floor, second story, is 9 feet in the clear through the centre, and 6 feet at the sides, (from the floor to the plate,) the roof cutting off three feet of the ceiling at the sides at an angle of 45 degrees. This loss of a few feet of the ceiling is more than compensated by the cottage-like effect it gives to the rooms, harmonizing the inside with the external appearance. The two principal chambers are provided with fire-places and ample closet room. The one over the parlor has two closets, built outside the frame, and a door into the single room, over the porch, forming a most desirable family chamber. Both these rooms have ventilators in the same chimney breast, and the small one may be warmed by a stove leading thereto. The other has a large closet over the store-room for trunks, linen, &c. The attic room over the kitchen wing is intended for the domestics. [Illustration: FIG. 21.--_Chamber Floor._] By reference to the plans, it will be seen that every room is of good size and form, cheerfully lighted, thoroughly ventilated, and of easy access one to another, at the same time that privacy, so essential, is maintained throughout. _Construction._--The building is constructed of wood, vertically sided, and battened, (with 1-1/2 inch tongued and grooved pine plank,) with horizontal strips in line of the window sills and floors, to hide the buts, and small triangular pieces in the corners, which gives the pretty effect of paneling. The whole is stained by a mixture of oil, &c., that heightens the grain of the wood, and gives a brightness of color, and that cheerfulness of effect, so desirable in rural dwellings. The roof is of slate, in bands of purple and green, and the chimneys are surmounted by terra-cotta pots. The whole is filled in with brick. This cottage is built in a substantial and plain manner, with cellar under kitchen, cemented on the gravel the same as the cistern, and all the interior wood work is oiled and stained. As a specimen of cottage architecture, (on the smallest scale, lodge class,) it will rank as one of the best. For simplicity, variety of form, symmetry of proportion, with convenience of arrangement and economy of space and construction, it forms a model cottage, that any one might live in and many covet, besides being an addition to the landscape and an ornament to the grounds. DESIGN No. 6. STONE STABLE AND COACH HOUSE. [Illustration: FIG. 22.--_Perspective._] This design was erected on the Hudson, during the past year, of the beautiful rock faced stone so abundant between the Spuyten Duyvil and the Highlands, and is a good example of such a building as will meet the requirements of a moderately extensive establishment. It is conveniently arranged, enabling all the work to be done with the most ease, and gives thorough light and ventilation, so essential to the health and comfort of animals. The time has gone by to give prospective prices for anything, but we have seen the day when this building might have been erected for about $4,000. A room for the coachman may easily be made on the second floor, and the plan increased or decreased to suit the wants of any one. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--_Ground Plan._] DESIGN No. 7. A FARM COTTAGE. [Illustration: FIG. 24.--_Perspective View._] We show in this design a style of cottage which, in these high priced times of lumber and labor, can be erected at a very reasonable figure; and although prepared for a farm cottage, will admit of such changes as will adapt it to the wants of those who require a higher grade of accommodation. It is the most natural thing in the world for any one to take up a plan and suggest innumerable changes and additions, always forgetting the unalterable condition of price, situation, and object, which restrained the architect while working it up. To prepare a design regardless of expense is a very different matter from devising one that gives the largest amount of accommodation within a fixed limit of cost. We shall arrive gradually at the precise figures, and endeavor to get the accommodation wanted by some of our readers. [Illustration: FIG. 25.--_Cellar._] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 27.--_Second Floor._] It has been frequently observed that the gate lodges and farm cottages attached to large estates are generally more attractive in their architectural proportions and beauty than the mansion itself; and this has been usually attributed to the education of the proprietor's tastes, the cottages being the latest erections. This impression is not, however, always true; for there is a peculiar beauty and attractiveness about cottage architecture which can not be produced in buildings of a larger and more commodious class. Certain it is that a prettily designed cottage will always arrest attention. "Among the first and most pleasing impressions," says a late writer, "of our trite friend, the intelligent foreigner, as he entered England by the old Dover road, were those suggested by the little whitewashed and woodbined cottages which caught his eye at every turn. All books of travels on English ground are full of them. Snugly sheltered in its bower of apple trees, or more stately group of walnuts, approachable only by its rustic stairs, or dotted at neighborly distances along the straggling village, with its trim garden of lavender and wall flowers, seen through the wicket gate or over the privet hedge, the English cottage, above or below, near or in the distance, was alike the delight and envy of the traveler, the theme of the journalist and the poet. 'There is scarce a cottage,' says an American tourist just landed from America and France, 'between Dover and London which a poet might not be happy to live in. I saw a hundred little spots I coveted with quite a heart-ache.' Whether or not Rogers would have given up his picture-lighted snuggery in St. James' Place for his 'Cot beside the hill,' and really preferred to have his latch lifted by the pilgrim, instead of his knocker by a London footman, it is certain that the cottage homes of England that border the main roads have long possessed a beauty far beyond the houses in other lands belonging to classes much higher in the social scale, and have been coveted, sometimes not without reason, by those who could, if they chose, have purchased them fifty times over." DESIGN No. 8. This design for a timber cottage is simple and at the same time picturesque, and built upon a site adapted to it, and in harmony with the architectural expression, the effect could not fail to be in a high degree pleasing. [Illustration: FIG. 28.--_Perspective View._] It will be seen that some of the principal timbers of the frame are intended to show on the outside, and that there is a designed contrast between the horizontal siding extending to the top of the posts, and the vertical and battened covering of the pediment above the ornamental string course. The brackets and posts which support the roof of the porches, should be chamfered, and these timbers should be of sufficient thickness to avoid any appearance of meanness, while at the same time, they should not be too heavy, and so destroy the proportions of the design. [Illustration: FIG. 29.--_Cellar._] The roof should be covered with shingles having their ends clipped or rounded. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 31.--_Second Floor._] The cellar may be divided in such way as to serve the wants of the occupants. A portable furnace might be placed at the foot of the basement stairs, which would warm the rooms on the first floor, and temper the air of the chambers above. The interior accommodations and conveniences are readily seen on inspection of the plans--(Figs. 30. 31). There is no waste of room, and for the uses of a small family, the accommodations would be found as ample as could well be obtained in a cottage of such size and cost. DESIGN No. 9.--RURAL CHURCH. DESIGNED BY THE REV. DR. CRESSY. This design is intended for a church which is to occupy a beautiful and commanding site on the western shore of Lake George, in the midst of the original forest, and is now in process of erection. It will also meet the requirements of several correspondents who have requested plans for rural churches which could be erected as economically and cheaply as possible, with due regard to proportion, fitness and beauty of expression. This design will be found to comprehend, we may say, in an eminent degree, variety of outline, correctness of detail, force of expression and purity of taste, with simplicity of execution, and in those parts of the country where lumber is abundant, and labor not exorbitant, it can be erected at a low cost. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--_Perspective._] We have a right to congratulate ourselves on the improvement which the last quarter of a century has witnessed among our people in the building and adorning of our edifices devoted to Christian worship. Downing, in his time, said, "that the ugliest church architecture in Christendom, is at this moment to be found in the country towns and villages of the United States." And speaking of the influence of what our churches should be, in the beauty of their proportions, and in the expression of the sacred purposes which they embody, and the feelings of reverence and harmony with God and man which they suggest, he fitly says--"We fear there are very few country churches in our land that exert this kind of spell,--a spell which grows out of making stone, and brick, and timber, obey the will of the living soul, and express a religious sentiment. Most persons, most committees, select men, vestrymen, and congregations, who have to do with the building of churches, appear indeed wholly to ignore the fact, that the form and feature of a building may be made to express religious, civil, domestic, or a dozen other feelings, as distinctly as the form and features of the human face:--and yet this is a fact as well known by all true architects, as that joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, are capable of irradiating or darkening the countenance. Yes, and we do not say too much, when we add, that right expression in a building for religious purposes, has as much to do with awakening devotional feelings, and begetting an attachment in the heart, as the unmistakable signs of virtue and benevolence in our fellow-creatures have in awakening kindred feelings in our own breasts. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--_Floor Plan._] "We do not, of course, mean to say that a beautiful rural church will make all the population about it devotional, any more than that sunshine will banish gloom; but it is one of the influences that prepare the way for religious feeling, and which we are as unwise to neglect, as we should be to abjure the world and bury ourselves, like the ancient troglodytes, in caves and caverns." Happily we are coming to appreciate these truths, not only in our cities, but in the country, and the ugly, unsightly, and unseemly structures which have so long deformed the land are giving place to edifices in which the true ideas of harmony, grace, proportion, symmetry and expression, which make what we call Beauty, are brought out in due proportion. The church we present is designed to be of wood, the country about the site affording an abundance of that material, at the lowest cost. An inspection of the design will show that the principal timbers of the frame are intended to be visible externally,--the weather-boarding being set back from the face of the posts and beams. This exterior covering is intended to be made of sound _rough_ plank, from ten to fourteen inches wide, and at least one and a-half inches thick. These are to be tongued and grooved, so as to make a close joint, and nailed to the frame in a _vertical_ manner. The joint is to be covered with a narrow strip, or batten, of one and a-half inch plank. These unplaned plank may be painted with two good coats and sanded, or they may be left to take such tints and complexion as time and the weather may give them. Lumber, at the proposed site, being cheaper and more easily obtained than lime, the interior of the church will be neatly ceiled with narrow boards, which will be lightly stained and oiled. The roof will be "open timber" of simple construction. All the wood work of the interior will be of pine, smoothly planed, stained and oiled, without paint, except the ceiling of the roof which should be colored, in order to give something like warmth of tone to the interior, the lack of which is often sadly felt in our country churches, particularly. This mode of weather-boarding and "open timber" finish is now so common that a more particular description is unnecessary. This church will seat, comfortably, about two hundred persons. Its cost will depend entirely upon the price of lumber and labor, of course, and these vary with different localities, and are particularly uncertain at this time. We will only add that it will cost no more to build with correct proportions and in good taste, than in disregard and defiance of these desirable and commendable principles. DESIGN No. 10. [Illustration: FIG. 34.--_Perspective._] We give below a somewhat different example of Cottage Architecture, of a form that is compact and every way available, at the same time affording every convenience in the arrangement of rooms desirable for a family of refined tastes and moderate means. This cottage may be built of wood, or, better still, in favorable localities, of brick or stone, and if suitably surrounded with tasteful landscape embellishments, will make a snug, pretty, and attractive home. One can, by the exercise of appropriate taste, produce the right kind of an impression in a house of this character. It should become a part of, and belong to the acres which surround it; it should be an indispensable accessory to the place itself, and the grounds should be laid out and embellished in such a manner that the whole combination impresses all with harmonious beauty, and not, as is too frequently the case, seek to make up the wretched deficiencies in the grounds by elaborate expenditure and display about the house. A true appreciation of country life will not tolerate slovenly, ill-kept grounds, and no house exhibits its true value unless there is a harmony in its surroundings. If this be attended to, a high degree of effect can be produced in houses of very moderate cost; houses that shall be roomy, warm, substantial, and in every way agreeable to their occupants. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--_Basement Plan._] The plans show the arrangement of rooms, and these can be made larger or smaller, or be differently disposed, to suit almost any fancy. In this design the kitchen apartments are below stairs; in future plans we shall give some with kitchen, laundry, etc., on the principal floor; or they can be readily added to this plan. The cost of a house is the one thing desirable; every one asks for it, and yet every one within our knowledge who has built a house himself at a stated price has been sadly deceived. Close specifications are very dry reading, and not appropriate here, and it is questionable how much service they would be to any but professional builders. It is reasonable to suppose, that if one without building experience undertakes it, he will have to pay something additional for the knowledge he will gain. If he places it to the proper account, then we can not be accused of misleading him. [Illustration: FIG. 36.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 37.--_Second Floor._] Most men contemplate, at some period of life, the construction of a dwelling-house, but few deem it necessary to study their wants or prepare their plans until they have selected their site and made all other arrangements for building, and then proceed with all possible haste to plan a home. That which should have been the study of months or years, is hurried through in as many days, imperfectly done at the best, and the cause of frequent annoying and expensive changes after the work has commenced. It is true, that the site has very much to do with the distribution of rooms, but any ingenious architect can readily adapt a proper combination of rooms to suit the exposures and views of a particular site. It would be vastly better for those who prefer to arrange their own plan of rooms, (and there are but very few who do not,) that they take abundant time to consider well every thing relating to them; and although the hope of building may be very remote, it should not be considered time lost to begin to give one's thoughts a definite form of what he thinks a house should be; for if nothing else results, it may furnish a valuable hint for a friend, and will certainly enlarge one's information and experience in these matters. Almost every one is capable, with such hints as have been freely given in the volumes of the HORTICULTURIST, in the leading papers which treat on rural art, and the numerous valuable publications on rural architecture, to make such a combination of rooms as will best suit his peculiar wants, tastes, or fancies, and then, with the aid of an architect, it can readily be freed from mechanical impracticabilities, and put into a proportionate and harmonious form. Architecture, both in design and construction, is a profession that requires long years of study and practice to develop an expert, and those who really want a good thing at the least cost, usually seek such assistance; those who prefer to do their own designing and building, find out with absolute certainty the most expensive modes of erecting very ugly and ill-proportioned structures. DESIGN No. 11. A SUBURBAN SUMMER HOUSE. [Illustration: FIG. 38.] In the adornment of ornamental grounds, some considerable attention has been given to summer houses, and similar structures; but these have been mainly _rustic_ in their design and finish, and in this respect well adapted to their purpose and surroundings. The good taste of these structures will not be called in question. There are locations, however, in the more immediate vicinity of our large cities, where a style less rustic would seem to be more in harmony with the architecture which is found to prevail. We refer to residences on the outskirts of our large cities, with inclosures containing a few city lots. Here the architecture, so far from being rural, is, on the contrary, stiff, sharp, and sometimes very ornate. A rustic summer house in such a place would be an incongruity. A rustic house is in itself a beautiful object; but there is a certain charm in association which can not be widely departed from without doing violence to our conceptions of the fitness of things; and hence a purely rustic house without rural surroundings is destitute of the chief elements which give rise to the beautiful. Most persons would say it was out of place. The design herewith presented was prepared to meet the requirements of such a case; it is consequently somewhat elaborate. It is located on a small plot of ground within the city limits, and in full view from three streets. The grounds are laid out with a few rectangular walks, and such shrubs as the small size of the place would admit of. The house, we think corresponds with its surroundings. Its faults, if any, are a little too much ornament, but something of this kind seemed to be required in the absence of that more beautiful ornamentation produced by the drapery of Nature. The house is so located that it receives the morning sun for a few hours, but during the rest of the day is in the shade; it therefore constitutes a pleasant place of retreat for the family at all hours, and is used by the children freely as a play house. The floor is laid in narrow stuff, and is elevated a foot above the ground for the sake of dryness. Easy seats, a handsome centre table, and a hanging lamp complete the interior. Venetian blinds afford ample protection on a misty day or a chilly night, or admit the soft summer breeze on a hot and sultry eve.--_Horticulturist._ DESIGN No. 12. STABLE AND CARRIAGE HOUSE. This stable affords abundant accommodation for three horses, with carriage house, feed room, and a large harness room on the first floor, while the loft above may contain a coachman's room, and leave ample space for hay and straw. If required, a shed and cow house can be extended on the side opposite the carriage house, thus adding considerably to the effect of the external appearance. Under the stable there should be a cellar for the storage of roots for feed, and, if desirable, the winter stock of vegetables for household use. This stable may be built of wood, or of stone or brick. [Illustration: FIG. 39.--_Stable._] [Illustration: FIG. 40.--_Stable Plan._] DESIGN No. 13. This design is intended to cover, at a low cost, as much comfort and convenience as a moderate-sized family would require, and to distribute the same as much as possible on one floor. The cellar or basement kitchen is dispensed with and only enough cellar room provided to meet the wants of those who occupy suburban places of a few acres in extent. Where large quantities of vegetables are stored, or where cellar room is required for farm purposes, we think it better to build cellars separate from the residence, (an arrangement much more healthful, as well as convenient and desirable.) For the preservation in warm weather of meats, milk, and other perishable articles, a refrigerator, or, better still, an ice closet, can be set up at one end of the laundry. This can be supplied with ice through an outside door, and is infinitely better and more convenient than any cellar or spring house. The kitchen is without a fire-place, but is provided with a ventilator in the chimney near the ceiling. The cooking may be done by a stove, which, if properly contrived, is one of the most effective ventilators, and preferred by many housekeepers for all kitchen purposes. Or a range can be placed in the chimney, if desirable, or a fire-place, if it should be considered indispensable. [Illustration: FIG. 41.--_Elevation._] [Illustration: FIG. 42.--_Plan._] A door under the stair-way separates the front and rear halls, and disconnects the kitchen apartments from the rest of the house. All the doors opening into the rear hall should be hung with the new spiral spring butt, the best door spring that has come under our notice. It is entirely concealed, and works without a fault. The closets in the dining room are finished to give an interior appearance of a bay window. The dining room and the two chambers above, are intended to be heated by a fire-place heater set in the chimney, thus warming three rooms, at pleasure, with one fire. A small stove in the library will keep that comfortable. Or, in place of all this, the whole house may be heated by any of the approved modes, in the use of hot air, hot water, or steam. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--_First Floor._] The library, parlor, or general living room in a country house--and we like these rooms in one--should have the cheerful, healthful luxury of an open fire-place, and we know of no more elegant, cleanly and effective contrivance for this purpose than Dixon's low down, Philadelphia Grate, in which wood, coal, or any other fuel can be used equally well. The advantages combined in this grate are these:--the fire flat on the hearth, and radiating the heat from an oval cast iron backing: cold air supplied from below, and ashes, dirt, &c., shaken down into an ash-pit in the cellar, beneath the grate. We speak confidently of this invention, after a trial of two winters, and do not hesitate to say that, compared with this, the ordinary grate is worthless. Large rooms can be kept perfectly comfortable in the coldest weather, without heat from any other source. [Illustration: FIG. 44.--_Second Floor._] This house is supplied with a cistern, constructed with the utmost care, ten feet in diameter, and ten feet deep, holding 6,000 gallons of water. The roof is of slate, and the rain-water is therefore of great purity, free from color, and the woody taste usually imparted to it by falling on a shingle roof. At the laundry sink is one of West's lift and force pumps, which draws the water from the cistern. This pump is a simple and effective affair, and works with remarkable ease, is always in order, and may be considered one of the best pumps known. We have given it a thorough trial, and speak from personal knowledge. On one side of the laundry sink there is also one of Kedzie's large size rain-water filters, which holds several pails full of water, and which we commend as an admirable contrivance for the purposes intended. It possesses every merit claimed for it, and after more than a year's use, the water drawn from it is of such crystal purity and sweetness as to attract the attention of all to whom it is offered. No well has been dug or contemplated on the premises connected with this cottage. About one-half the cost of a well has been expended upon a slate roof, a large and carefully-constructed cistern, West's pump and Kedzie's filter--the other half has been safely invested in U. S. 7-30's, and instead of hoisting water fifty feet, for household, garden, and stable uses, the turn of a croton water tap is not more easy and convenient, and the finest flow of a silver spring of soft water, is not more beautiful than that delivered by West's pump and Kedzie's filter, which supplies for all purposes of the cottage, stable, and garden, water unsurpassed in its pleasant and wholesome properties. Those who seek the most convenient and reliable modes of procuring the purest and sweetest water, will find this to be the least costly and the most satisfactory. For a compact, convenient cottage, with every facility for doing the work of the household, with the least number of steps--in which all the essential modern conveniences are introduced, without the modern prices attached--for a low-priced, elegant cottage, we do not know of any plan more appropriate than this. In the construction of this house a bay-window was introduced in front, in the parlor, (Fig. 43.) and the veranda was made half octagon. These alterations add much to exterior appearance, as well as to the capacity of the parlor. On the side of the parlor and dining room an addition is contemplated, which will relieve the apparent want of variety which now exists, and essentially improve the external appearance. DESIGN No. 14. [Illustration: FIG. 45.--_Cottage Stable._] [Illustration: FIG. 46.--_Plan._] Fig. 45 shows a design for a cottage stable, giving accommodations for a horse and cow, two carriages, one or two wagons, and two tons of hay. The main building is so proportioned, that three more stalls may be added, and it may then become the wing of a larger building, to be used for carriage room and other purposes. For those who keep but one horse and cow, this design affords abundant room. DESIGN No. 15. ICE HOUSE. It is only within a few years that ice, in all seasons, has been classed among the necessaries of life. In large cities it is indispensable, but the cool spring-house or cellar in the country impresses many with the idea that ice, in summer months, can only be regarded as a luxury. Along with other conveniences in keeping with this progressive age, the ice-house has its place, and a country-seat of any pretensions is not complete without it. It is simple in construction, and can be built very cheaply of rough materials, or made as elaborate as is desirable. It forms a pretty feature about the grounds, if treated with some architectural taste. [Illustration: FIG. 47.--_Ice House._] [Illustration: FIG. 48.--_Ground Plan._] [Illustration: FIG. 49.--_Perspective._] DESIGN No. 16. This design, with the accompanying plans sufficiently explain themselves without minute description. The arrangement, as will be seen upon examination, secures a very large amount of accommodation, with good sized rooms, and ample store and closet conveniences. The building is compact, and at the same time presents a pleasing variety in its exterior appearance. By carrying up the library, two dressing rooms, for the two principal chambers, may be secured. When one contemplates building, and has put his thoughts and wishes into a tangible form, the leading question asked is, how much will all this cost? for what price in dollars and cents, without extras or additional charges of any kind, can this dwelling be erected in a good and workmanlike manner, in accordance with plans and specifications, and satisfactory to the owner? This is precisely the plain English of what a business man wants to know; for we hold that it is right and proper, that every one should look right through all the connected links and complications that require a considerable expenditure of money, and see that he lands carefully in the place anticipated. To start with the intention of disbursing $5,000, and wind up with an expenditure of $12,000, is not only annoying in a money point of view, but an impeachment of one's judgment and good sense, not pleasant to hear outsiders reflect on; for however much one might wish to shift the responsibility on others, it is one of those things that time will always place where it belongs. As long as men consider the arts of designing and constructing buildings to be of no special importance, or that they are qualified, without instruction or experience, to practice them, expensive blunders will naturally result, and sooner or later it will be discovered that such wisdom is dearly bought. There are many, however, who prefer to manage their building affairs thus, and who can only learn more agreeable and less expensive modes by actual experience; some do it from ignorance, some from supposed economy, and others from the supposition that they are best qualified. The design for a house or other building, and a plan of the interior arrangement of each floor, prepared by a professional man who makes such things the business of his life, is now very generally admitted by intelligent men to be essential; but the management or superintendence of the work by the party who has studied and designed it, does not seem quite so apparent. An architect prepares the drawings for a dwelling to cost $5,000; now whether it actually will cost $5,000, $8,000 or $10,000, in the hands of another superintendent, is an unanswered problem. A prevailing folly which we find very general, is to suppose that all men can build the same house, in all places, for precisely the same amount of money; and but few are willing to admit that they, of all others, are not the most competent to carry through the whole business of building at the lowest figure. Some must find out in the most expensive manner, that the profession of an architect, or the skill of a builder, can only be attained by long years of careful application. [Illustration: FIG. 50.--_Basement Plan._] [Illustration: FIG. 51.--_First Floor._] What a house will cost to build is a question always asked with the utmost simplicity, and a prompt and reliable answer always expected, and if not forthcoming at once, gives rise to a suspicion that one's professional ability is not of the most thorough character. There are so many conditions to govern results in house building, that even an approximate estimate may fall very wide of the mark. Two houses may be built from the same plan, and we may also say, from the same specifications; one by day's work, and the other by contract, and they shall be so exactly alike in all respects when finished, that an unprofessional observer would detect no difference, and yet one may honestly cost just double the amount in money expended on the other; even the same builder may build two houses precisely alike in all respects, and yet the cost be quite unequal. On one site stone may be easily obtained, a sand bank on the premises, a running brook close at hand, saw mills, brick yards, and lime kilns within moderate distances and accessible by good roads. The other site may be quite the reverse in situation, or have some decided disadvantages in obtaining some very necessary materials. We once built a fine stone house where stone was abundant and close at hand, but all the lumber and brick had to be hauled thirteen miles over hilly roads; the cost of that house has nothing to do with the cost of a similar house in a different locality. [Illustration: FIG. 52.--_Second Floor._] A competent business superintendent has a great deal to do with the cost of a house; one that understands all the tricks of every building trade, that knows the market well, and the value and quality of all building materials, and where inferior workmanship and materials can be used to an equal advantage with those of first class. To slight work and yet do it justice; to give it all the strength and endurance necessary, requires one of skillful acquirements. A mechanic may persuade a proprietor into many a long day's work, as it pays well to nurse good jobs when other work is slack, but an architect who understands such things would save the value of useless work. The cost of a house depends on a well-studied plan; this plan does not consist alone in the arrangement of rooms, windows, doors, etc., but involves a careful study of the anatomy of construction. One may save by a proper distribution of timbers, as well as make a very great saving by the arrangement of rooms. Good management is of the greatest importance, not only as a matter of economy, but as securing the best class of workmanship, and the most judicious use of materials. Good or bad management produces the same results in building operations as in war or any other pursuit. One takes up a capital work on rural architecture, written perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, before the general introduction of furnaces, steam pipes, gas, baths, marble basins, etc.; they find a house that suits them, which the book says will cost $6,000, and that is just the amount, by close figuring, that can be raised for building. The house is ordered, put in the hands of the best mechanic to finish all complete, and he goes ahead; he is unrestricted except by the book, and the author of it is a man of reputation. In the way of details perhaps nothing has been said; they are therefore extravagant in the use of materials, and elaborate in workmanship; as it is not considered good policy for a workman who has a good order, to make suggestions calculated to decrease the amount of work. When the bills to the amount of $6,000 have been settled, the house is found to be half finished, and an additional $6,000 is necessary to complete it; less that one year's interest of which would have amply sufficed to secure the services of one who has spent the best years of his life to learn how to design and to manage work to cost a specified price. When an architect says a house can be built for a certain price, it is to be understood that materials delivered on the ground shall not exceed an average cost, that the payments made are to be in cash, and that he manages the work. To hold an architect responsible or blame him for blunders in the cost of work that he designed and did not superintend, is manifestly unjust, yet it is a frequent occurrence. The cost of work is a question easily answered, when one is fully acquainted with all its bearings and has it under his control, but no one can say at what price a novice in building operations can execute it. DESIGN No. 17. [Illustration: FIG. 53.--_Stable._] [Illustration: FIG. 54.--_Stable Plan._ (_Reversed._)] Fig. 53 is a design for a cottage stable, with stalls for two horses, and the necessary carriage room and other conveniences. This design, in its exterior, presents as great a degree of variety in the combinations of form and shadow as the price will admit of. It answers the purposes of comfortable protection and convenience, as well or even better than the most costly structures. A horse needs a dry, well-ventilated apartment, and enjoys fresh air, daylight, and sunlight as well as human beings. Unless these very inexpensive wants are provided, no compensation is afforded by elaborate detail and workmanship. DESIGN No. 18. SCHOOL HOUSE AT IRVINGTON, ON THE HUDSON. Our architectural series would be by no means complete if devoted entirely to dwellings; and as the resources of an extensive professional practice in the arts which embellish and beautify our country may be largely made use of, we present here a design for another class of buildings. A school-house is not a building which every one contemplates erecting, and yet a large proportion are, or ought to be, interested in developing in structures of this class such architectural principles as shall make their impressions in early life, and influence future tastes. [Illustration: FIG. 55.--_School House._] This building is designed to accommodate about fifty scholars, being 25 by 40 feet, with a front projection 10 by 18 feet. In the basement a large furnace and abundant accommodation for coal. The main floor is divided into school-room, two recitation rooms, hat and coat room, wash closet with sink, and water closet, above which is a large tank, supplied from the roof. An outside cistern supplies cool drinking-water, the purest and healthiest water known, and renders the use of ice unnecessary in summer. The height of all these ceilings is nearly fourteen feet, and each room is thoroughly ventilated; the belfry is provided with a one hundred pound bell; indeed, nothing has been left undone that is calculated to promote the health and comfort of the pupils. The partition between the doors to the recitation rooms is made in sections, and can be easily removed, thus making one large room for exhibition and lecture purposes. The stage, in this case is to be placed at the left end of the room. The capacity of the building can be nearly doubled by occupying the entire floor as a school-room, and building an addition 12 by 24 feet directly in the rear, opposite to the front projection, for recitation rooms. The situation of this building at Irvington, on the Hudson, some twenty-five miles above the city of New York, is in a charming, healthy, and delightful locality; one made famous by the pen and residence of Washington Irving, and noted for its magnificent scenery, its views of river and mountain, and the fine taste displayed in landscape and architectural embellishments by those who have made their homes in this vicinity. We have always thought that those educational institutions possess the most attractions that are so situated that all surroundings shall have a favorable influence; and there is nothing like example in early training. Bring up and educate a boy among those who know nothing of the refinements of life, away from the progressive examples of art and taste, in a tumble-down, unplastered, ill-heated and ventilated apartment, and he never can become, with all the aid of books and teachers, as thoroughly cultivated and fitted for the duties of life, as one who has enjoyed associations of a higher order. School architecture has a meaning in it; there is value in proportion, harmony, beauty, light and shade, as applied to school buildings, that is not comprehended by all. A recent writer says better than we can say it, that "It is the duty of teachers, as well as parents and school committees, to see that the circumstances under which children study are such as shall leave a happy impression upon their minds; for whatever is brought under the frequent observation of the young must have its influence upon their susceptible natures for good or evil. Shabby school-houses induce slovenly habits. Ill-constructed benches may not only distort the body, but, by reflex influence, the mind as well. Conditions like these seldom fail to disgust the learner with his school, and neutralize the best efforts of his teachers. On the other hand, neat, comfortable places for study may help to awaken the associations enchaining the mind and the heart to learning and virtuous instruction with links of gold brightening forever." [Illustration: FIG. 56.--_Principal Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 57.--_Perspective View._] DESIGN No. 19. This design was prepared for erection in the vicinity of Goshen, Orange Co., N. Y., and the accommodation limited to a price not exceeding ----. It presents in hall, verandas, and large parlor, some of the very necessary attractions of a country house, and is a good example of what can be done for a limited sum. While the plan is a parallelogram, and the roof free from hips and valleys, the general arrangement is such as to show considerable variety in outline, and one, we think, that will have a pleasing effect. Such houses, erected in the vicinity of New York, and many of our large cities, would add a large value to the ground they stand on, and pay a handsome rate of interest on their cost; better than any other class of building investments, as the supply is in nowise equal to the demand. It is so simple a matter, with present prompt and rapid railroad facilities, to invite a fair proportion of the young business men of our large cities to make their homes in the adjoining country, that we wonder capitalists and real estate owners do not more frequently make money for themselves and others by erecting tasteful, low-priced suburban homes. In former times, a house of this class erected in the country, would be painted exteriorly a pure white, with no relief, except probably in the violent contrast of bright green venetian blinds to the windows. This sort of taste unfortunately still remains, although in the progress of rural taste and art, the country is much improved in this respect. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--_Cellar._] There is a variety of colors, known as neutral tints, which are suitable for exteriors, and the effect produced by them is altogether pleasing, while a house painted white can never be an agreeable object in any landscape, however admirable its architectural proportions and finish may be. The tone of color for a house will depend upon its size, form, and situation, and it often requires a nice and cultivated eye to determine what would be most appropriate and effective. [Illustration: FIG. 59.--_First Floor._] For such a house as this, we should choose a light fawn color--not yellow--and paint the cornice, window-frames and other projecting and ornamental parts two or three shades darker than the body of the building. This will give a depth of shadow and expression which cannot be obtained in any other way. Large houses, with massive features of construction, will bear to be painted with darker colors, but they should not be too sombre, so as to give a gloomy appearance to the house. The country, with its bright sunshine, its rich adornments of flowers, and its numberless forms of beauty and grace, is eminently cheerful. It often happens that the painter does all he can to mar this cheerfulness and beauty, by startling contrasts of colors, and by destroying the harmony which pervades the landscape. [Illustration: FIG. 60.--_Second Floor._] DESIGN No. 20. A COUNTRY CHAPEL. [Illustration: FIG. 61.--_Perspective._] We present in this design a plan for a substantial and permanent chapel, having capacity for seating about four hundred. For the purpose for which it was designed, no distinct chancel was required. Such a chancel could be arranged, if desired, in a recess taken off the lecture or class room in the rear of the chapel. It could be lighted at the roof, or on the sides. [Illustration: FIG. 62.--_Ground Plan._] This chapel, built of stone throughout, with an open timber roof and stained glass windows, would be an ornament to any country locality, and a credit to the taste and liberality of those who built it. Every thing about such a chapel should be _real_, and no suspicion of sham or unreality should be tolerated in any part of the work. The practice of building the fronts of churches of stone, while the side and rear walls are constructed of rough brick, painted and marked off to resemble the stone, is very common, we know, both in town and country, but it is a species of deceit and false pretence which ought not to be. If the best and costliest material cannot be used for the entire structure, let the rougher and inferior material be fairly shown, in every part. If the means and liberality of the parish cannot provide oak or walnut for the interior finish, let the wood work be plainly painted, or what is better still, simply oiled, but there should be no cunning deception of graining, to represent the costlier wood. It is not _honest_, and, we take it, a church, built for religious worship, is the last place that should betray our human meanness and want of honesty. DESIGN No. 21. We show in this design what can be done with a substantial old farm house; how easily and beautifully it can be changed into a suburban home of elegant exterior, and comfortable and convenient interior appointments. [Illustration: FIG. 63.--_View of the House at the time of Purchase._] [Illustration: FIG. 64.--_The same remodeled._] This class of spacious and substantial farm houses, with the gambrel, curb, or Mansard roof, as shown in Fig. 63, is very numerous about the suburbs of New York City, and more particularly in the "neighboring province of New Jersey," where one finds them nestled in the valleys or by the road side, as best fitting to the taste of our early Dutch settlers, who prized seclusion and protection above bleak exposure and far-reaching views. [Illustration: FIG. 65.] As a general thing, the better class of New Jersey farm houses of this type were built of squared and hammered red sand-stone, laid up in regular courses, and in many instances the character of the work differed on all sides, the front being the most finely finished. And in many of the most pretentious of these houses, brick was substituted for the front, as being less common. There is, perhaps, nothing more difficult in an architect's experience than to make a fine thing out of a subject so destitute of beauty of form or proportion, and yet preserve the substantial walls and other belongings, that have stood for half a century, and are now stronger, and promise a durability that exceeds those of other houses built in this progressive age; and yet here is a "presto change" that will almost defy the keen eyes of the old settlers to recognize any trace of the ancient landmark that for fifty years has overlooked the beautiful valley of the Tenakill. [Illustration: FIG. 66.] There are very many of these old houses that are equally well adapted to wear a modern face, though but few purchasers can look through all such changes with the eye of a professional expert, and select that to which, at a low price, a certain beauty can be added, which, when done, shall indicate the wisdom of their choice. First impressions many times are sadly against all hopes of success. "With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall." But these difficulties are the least troublesome to adjust, if the walls are good, and ceilings of a fair modern height. It may then be a better choice to adapt such a house to the present cultivated tastes and requirements, than to build anew from the foundation. In the plans, the dotted lines show the centers of the old partitions. Six feet have been added to the length of the wing, thus improving the kitchen accommodations. This house is situated some fifteen miles from the great commercial metropolis, on one of the new lines of Railroad, and in a locality of easy access to New York business men. DESIGN No. 22. [Illustration: FIG. 67.--_Stable._] [Illustration: FIG. 68.--_Plan._] This stable may be constructed either of wood, or of stone. It contains stalls for four horses, and affords space for their accommodation, together with a harness room and a tool closet. This latter is a convenience very essential to the comfort of the owner, as well as to the proper care and preservation of such implements as belong especially to the carriage house and stable. This building should be surrounded and screened with fruit trees and shrubbery, and then, with its evident architectural effects, it will become an attractive feature in the landscape of which it becomes a part, with the other accessories of the elegant country home. DESIGN No. 23. FENCES. In spite of all laws to the contrary, cattle will intrude upon one's property, and each and all must at great expense build and maintain fences for their own protection. There has not as yet been devised any practicable mode by which the enormous sums annually spent in fencing might be saved. The theory advanced, that it is cheaper for each to fence his cattle in, than to fence his neighbor's out, has not as yet been practically illustrated, if we except a few suburban localities. [Illustration: FIG. 69.] [Illustration: FIG. 70.] Fig. 69 represents a substantial fence, with a paneled base, of simple construction, and yet quite effective in appearance. In Fig. 70 the work is somewhat more elaborate, while the base is of stone, or brick. Each engraving shows two panels, with a gate in the centre. With chestnut or cedar posts, the pickets cut from 1-1/2 inch plank, and the whole kept painted, such a fence would last many years. DESIGN No. 24. RESIDENCE OF CHARLES F. PARK, ESQ. This residence of which we show only the floor plans, occupies a commanding position on the northern end of the Palisades, on the western side of the Hudson, some twenty miles above the city of New York, the river, mountain, and inland views from which are exceedingly fine, embracing the villages of Dobbs' Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, Sing Sing, Piermont, Nyack, and Tappan, as well as Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, the distant Highlands of the Hudson, and the beautiful valleys of the Sparkill and the Hackensack, a section of country rich in historic associations, and highly appreciated by those who seek suburban homes. [Illustration: FIG. 71.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 72.--_Second Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 73.--_Third Floor._] This house was designed principally for a summer residence, being nearly fifty feet square, with wide halls and spacious verandah, and commodious and well ventilated sleeping apartments, the plans showing the arrangement of rooms. The style of architecture selected is that generally known as the Rural Gothic, which, perhaps, is the most useful and most beautiful of any that are adapted to the requirements of our climate. The almost square form of the plan is one of the most difficult to treat successfully in this style, yet has been carried out in the most satisfactory manner. This style admits of an almost never-ending variety of form and proportion, and in effects of light and shadow at all hours of day is unequaled. Its comparative expense but little exceeds the hipped and Mansard roofs. The building is constructed in the most thorough and workman-like manner, and is as well adapted for a winter residence as for summer. The frame is built in the balloon style, (the strongest known form of framing,) with deep studding filled in with brick, having double air chambers, is thoroughly finished throughout, is covered with a slate roof, and fulfills all the requirements of a substantial and commodious country residence. DESIGN No. 25. CARRIAGE HOUSE AND STABLE. The accompanying design for a carriage house and stable affords about the same amount of accommodation as Design 22. The arrangement, however, is somewhat different, and the exterior quite unlike it. In this plan the portion appropriated to the stalls is more ample, and the means for ventilation abundant. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--_Stable._] [Illustration: FIG. 75.--_Stable Plan._] DESIGN No. 26. RESIDENCE OF THOS. H. STOUT, ESQ., IRVINGTON, ON THE HUDSON. Irvington is a noted locality for the higher grades of country homes, there being many fine examples of substantial, roomy, and elegantly appointed mansions. Far within the gradually extending circle which limits the daily intercourse of the business man to the city of New York, it has become, in virtue of its position, healthfulness, fine scenery, and ease of access, one of the most favored of the suburbs of this city; a city whose rapid increase of population and corresponding decreasing comforts in conveyance from one portion to another, is turning the attention of those who like ease of transit, and the quiet and health of the country, to a residence among its beautiful and attractive suburbs. What the last ten years have accomplished in introducing rapid and reliable communication, and building up and improving the country about New York, will probably be repeated several times over in the next decade. An impetus has been given to rural life, that will increase with every facility that is offered, and it will not be many years before the suburbs of New York will compare with any city in the world; and we question, even now, if elsewhere can be found a suburban locality comparable with the east bank of the Hudson, from New York to the Highlands. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--_Residence of Thos. H. Stout, Esq., Irvington, on the Hudson._] The accompanying engravings illustrate a country house that embraces many of the best features of exterior variety, and interior compactness and convenience. The workmanship and materials throughout have been of the best description, and no pains have been spared to make it first class in every respect. Situated on the slope of the eastern bank of the Hudson, it overlooks the broad expanse of "Tappan Zee," and commands the views peculiar to this locality, that reach from the Highlands to the ocean. To build well, and to do so at a low price, is always desirable; and to build artistically, imposingly, attractively, does not imply elaborate finish or profuse ornament. Sand paper and decoration will never make an ill-proportioned building attractive to an educated taste, while a rough exterior of harmonious lines and forms will pass current with those who have an eye to the artistic. One of the most important lessons that the art student learns is that of effect; that effects can not be produced by smoothly finished surfaces or details; and that in architecture, as well as in sculpture or painting, there must be a strong bold manner of execution, when there is a desire to convey an impression of strength or power. [Illustration: FIG. 77.--_Cellar._] Where stone is conveniently obtained as a building material, its use in rural architecture deserves far more consideration than is usually bestowed on it; and in its unchiselled, quarried form it becomes desirable in an economical point of view. There is an imposing grandeur in the unhewn stone that asserts its presence in both near and distant views, and, with the proper combinations of proportion, and light and shade, will illustrate the finest architectural effects. Prevailing prejudices are too apt to consider it not only cheap, but inferior in protection and durability to finely wrought surfaces and smooth, close-fitting joints. We are too apt to estimate the value and beauty of a stone house by the amount of labor lavished on its exterior, as if the chisel possessed the power to make the joints more impenetrable, and bestowed an endurance commensurate with the story of expense that it tells. So long as we build well and honestly, with a proper regard to protection from the weather, in a substantial and workmanlike manner, good taste and sound sense will uphold the use of quarried rock, and discover a permanent strength and power in this Cyclopean masonry that elaborately finished surfaces and delicately wrought ornaments fail to express. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--_First Floor._] Dressed in squared blocks and hammered lines, stone becomes an expensive building material, and preference is then given to something else less costly; but if used in its quarried form, irregular in size and shape, it becomes, wherever conveniently obtained, among the economical materials used for building, and is unsurpassed for its impressiveness and durability. No paint is required to preserve it from the weather, and no color is so good as the color of the stone; time softens its tints, and the clambering vine that lays hold of the massive walls is a decoration beyond the resources of architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--_Second Floor._] "If a building," says Mr. Ruskin, "be under the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry; but it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. "And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones, which would have been better left as they came from the quarry, would often raise a building a story higher. "There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage of the stone to which the art must indeed be great, that pretends to be equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate indeed who would desire to see the Pitti Palace polished." DESIGN No. 27. A CHAPTER ON GATES. We present in the following designs, several illustrations of the principle of the truss applied to wooden gates. It was described by us, several years ago in the _Country Gentleman_. [Illustration: FIG. 80.] [Illustration: FIG. 81.] [Illustration: FIG. 82.] [Illustration: FIG. 83.] Since then, in our professional rambles, we have accidentally noticed some thirty gates erected after these designs in different sections of the country, and, for aught we know to the contrary, it is one of the most popular gates that swing. The principle of this gate is best shown in figure 80, and consists of four panels of braces crossing each other, and held firmly in position by five iron rods, which can be tightened by the screws at the bottom. The braces are not tenoned, and there are no nails about the gate. There can be no sagging under any circumstances; but should such a thing occur from unequal shrinkage, it can easily be remedied by placing a thin strip of wood or sheet lead under the foot of the braces running forward. There is economy in the construction of these gates, as they can be made with a less number of joints, and greater strength and stiffness secured with lighter materials, than in any other style of gate we know of. The principle is the one used in railroad bridges and roofs of great span, and our own experience with them, having built and tested all the gates here illustrated, is, that they possess very decided merits. [Illustration: FIG. 84.] [Illustration: FIG. 85.] [Illustration: FIG. 86.] [Illustration: FIG. 87.] [Illustration: FIG. 88.] [Illustration: FIG. 89.] Fig. 81 is the principal entrance gate to one of the finest estates on the Hudson, above Tarrytown, and although similar in appearance to figure 82, has some very decided differences, the cross braces in this case reaching only to a second rail; the rods, however, pass through to the bottom; it is much more elaborate in workmanship, and the addition of a moulding on the top and bottom would increase its effect. Fig. 84 is the entrance gate at the New Windsor, N. Y., Parsonage, and has been hanging six years without a perceptible change. The braces in this are one inch square and doubled; they are not halved, but cross each other, two one way and one the other, in the manner shown in figure 85. There is no other mode of constructing gates in which rustic work can be made such good use of. The chief objection to all things made in the rustic manner is, that they soon fall to pieces, limbs shrink and twist, and nails do not hold; but a rustic gate held together by iron rods will remain good until the last brace has decayed. Fig. 86 is the principal entrance gate to one of the most finely finished country seats on Newburgh Bay. Figs. 87, 88, and 89, illustrate a novel style of hinge, peculiarly adapted to this gate, and is really stronger than any other. It requires less iron and less blacksmith work. Fig. 87 shows the top hinge corner, and figure 88 the bottom hinge corner. The iron which secures this end of the gate, passes through both top and bottom hinge, and binds them and the gate securely together. The additional fastenings for hinge are made with carriage-bolts. Nothing but a power beyond the enormous tensile strength of iron and the compressible strength of wood, will cause the gates to yield in ordinary use. Fig. 89 is a perspective view of the hinge, showing how it may be counter-sunk, and thus almost entirely concealed. Figs. 80, 81, 82, and 83, also show the hinge, and four different styles of stone gate piers. [Illustration: FIG. 90.] Fig. 90 is intended for a farm gate. The cross rails are secured by carriage-bolts passed through them and the main braces. Each end of the gate has an iron rod only, which is made heavier than the others, and saves framing. The hinge is made by having the iron rod project beyond the bolt head and nut, and the upper end is passed into an eye, as shown in Fig. 91, which is screwed into the post; the lower end is pointed, and is placed in a stone as shown, or it may rest on solid iron of similar form to the eye. Any intelligent laborer, with an axe and auger, can, with the iron work, make these farm gates. [Illustration: FIG. 91.] This principle of constructing gates admits of an infinite variety of designs; those given are merely suggestive. It admits of all classes of workmanship, from the plainest to the most elaborate, from the simplest farm gate to those required for the finished park, and in beauty, strength, and economy stands unequaled. Fig. 92 and 93.--Plan and elevation of an entrance gate, which we have executed in oak, and presents an effective appearance. [Illustration: FIG. 92.--_Elevation of Entrance Gate._] [Illustration: FIG. 93.--_Plan._] DESIGN No. 28. RESIDENCE OF TRISTRAM ALLEN, ESQ., RAVENSWOOD, N. Y. The accompanying view of Mr. Allen's house is a good example of the method of adding to a dwelling which has ceased to be of sufficient capacity for the requirements of the family. By reference to the basement or cellar plan, the outline of the old house and the foundation of the new will be distinctly seen. The addition transforms the cottage to a villa, and in a manner which preserves the proportions as harmoniously as if the whole had been erected at one time and from one plan, thus illustrating a prominent advantage in this style of architecture, which admits more freely than any other, successive additions, which, when properly designed, add to the variety of outline, and its beauty of light and shade. The different floor plans show the arrangements of rooms and their connection with the original building, which, it will be seen, are convenient and compact. [Illustration: FIG. 94.--_Perspective._] [Illustration: FIG. 95.--_Basement._] [Illustration: FIG. 96.--_First Floor._] [Illustration: FIG. 97.--_Second Floor._] Ravenswood is one of the most elegant of the suburbs of New York, being near at hand, and having frequent and rapid communication with the city. Situated on the Long Island shore, opposite the centre of Manhattan Island, overlooking the great metropolis and its outlying cities, of easy access to the Central Park by the Hell Gate Ferry, amid all the refinement of fine gardens, polished landscape scenery, and architectural taste, it presents at once all the enjoyments that a combination of city and country life can afford. [Illustration: FIG. 98.--_Attic._] DESIGN No. 29. RESIDENCE OF LINDLEY M. FERRIS, ESQ., NEAR POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. The residence of Mr. Ferris, of which we give the plans only, is located south of the city of Poughkeepsie, and almost or quite within its suburbs. The surrounding estate, of 150 acres of handsomely rolling land, possesses all the attractions of beauty and fertility so generally awarded to the finer portions of Dutchess county. In the immediate vicinity are some of the highly finished and well-kept country seats which adorn this portion of the Hudson, and make up the attractions which taste and refinement always add to country life. [Illustration: FIG. 99.--_First Floor._] The object aimed at in the design of this house, was that of a substantial and commodious mansion, suited to the requirements of a large family, and that should express its purpose in the simplest manner at a moderate expense. It was therefore desirable to avoid all costly irregularity of form, and all the fanciful varieties of gimcracks. The style selected as best illustrating this purpose is the Chateau roof, Louis XV style; the main building being 43 feet square, with a rear addition 25 by 29 feet; the plan illustrating the arrangement of rooms, verandah, etc. The first floor gives double parlors, (one of which may be used as a bed-room or library,) a sitting-room or reception-room, dining-room, and a large kitchen, with necessary closets, an inclosed verandah, water closets, etc. The second floor, main building, gives four large bed rooms and two smaller rooms for other purposes, and in the rear are four servants' rooms and a bath-room. The attic story, main building, has now five rooms, finished with closets, and two rooms more can be added by putting up two partitions. These upper rooms, in a roof of this character, are cool, well ventilated, well lighted, and agreeable in warm weather, there being roomy air chambers between the attic ceiling and the upper roof, and also between the walls of the rooms and the outer wall of the house. There is but little difference in the value of these rooms and those on the floor below, except convenience of access. The house is built of brick, in a first class manner, the lower roof slate, the upper one being tin; is thoroughly finished throughout, and is in all respects a convenient, durable, and commanding structure, giving the largest amount of room in a desirable and attractive form, with the most economy of means. It is situated on a knoll overlooking all the surrounding grounds, which include a number of other fine sites, one or two of which, we think, even more desirable than the one selected. It is not, however, an easy matter to choose one from a dozen sites, each almost equally good. [Illustration: FIG. 100.--_Second Floor._] A new road is now being laid through these and the adjoining premises, to connect two of the principal drives southward from Poughkeepsie, which when completed, will add a new attraction to the beautiful suburbs of this city. The views from the grounds, more particularly from the top of the house, are varied and extensive. The mountain panorama, which sweeps three-fourths of the horizon, beginning with the Fishkill mountains, and ending with the Catskills, is exceedingly fine. The eastern view embraces the Vassar Female College, the noble gift of Matthew Vassar, Esq., to the cause of female education. In the foreground and middle distance are the rich rolling landscapes of Dutchess and the fertile hillsides of Ulster counties, the glittering spires of Poughkeepsie, the lordly Hudson, and southerly are seen the famous Beacons and the Highland Pass, "Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands Winds through the hills afar." DESIGN No. 30. MODEL SUBURBAN COTTAGE--IN THE OLD ENGLISH OR RURAL GOTHIC STYLE. BY FREDERICK S. COPLEY, ARTIST, TOMPKINSVILLE, S. I. The general appearance of this Cottage, as seen from the road, is shown in the engraving, (Fig. 101.) which is a perspective view of the North and East Fronts. It is situated at Montrose, on the lake-like shores of Hempstead Harbor, near the village of Roslyn, Long Island, a spot noted for its beauty and healthfulness. [Illustration: FIG. 101.--_Perspective._] Size of building, 44 by 38 feet. Principal Plan (Fig. 103.) 10 feet high. P. shows a recessed porch, with double doors of oak, (oiled) the outer ones open, to be closed only at night and stormy weather, behind the one on the right is a space for wet umbrellas, &c., the inner doors have glazed panels to give light within, and should always be closed. V. is the vestibule, containing a spiral staircase, with walnut steps and rail (oiled). The floor laid with encaustic tiles, with ceiling groined, and walls finished in imitation of stone in the sand coat. On the left (under the stairs) is a private door opening into a lobby, fitted with wash-basin, water, &c., and lighted by a narrow window, that also serves to light the front basement stairs, so that a servant could answer a call, at either front or back doors, without passing through the central hall; which would not only be more convenient for them, but would be to the family and guests, especially in time of company, when the hall would form a central room, by closing the doors that lead to the stairs: nor would this interfere in the least with the domestics, or their duties: as they can go from cellar to attic without disturbing the privacy of a single room: and the guests could ascend, unseen to the dressing rooms above, (from either entrance) or depart in the same manner. [Illustration: FIG. 102.--_First Floor._] The hall screen, separating the vestibule, should be of real oak, (oiled) and lighted in the panels with stained glass, which would impart a soft and pleasant light to the hall, and produce a fine effect on either side, day or night. The hall is here placed in the centre of the plan, and so happily arranged are the doors and rooms, as not only to give it a symmetrical effect, but to unite the whole, _en suite_, without disturbing the individuality of either. Also, the hall lamp and stove would light and warm, equally, every room, besides passage, vestibule, and stairs. The cloak closet is in the passage which contains the back stairs. P. is the Parlor, which would be the favorite living room in the summer, as it faces the north, and has a large bay-window commanding a fine view down the harbor to the sound. [Illustration: FIG. 103.--_Second Floor._] L. is the Library, and living room, connected with the parlor by sliding doors, with recessed book-cases, on each side, and the same on the sides of the bay-window, here facing the south, and possessing a beautiful view of the bay and hills, with the village in the distance, which make it the favorite quarters in winter, being fully exposed to the genial influences of the sun during the absence of foliage at that season. On the right of the mantel is a private closet for plate, papers, &c., both these rooms have windows opening on the west veranda, with a fine view across the harbor. D. is the Dining room, and a most cheerful one, (as it should be,) with a large ornamental window on the east, admitting the morning sun, and a fine bay-window on the north, looking down the road and harbor, possessing a charming prospect of land and water. To harmonize with the bay (on the other end) is the sideboard recess with a dumb-waiter on the right, and a china closet on the left; on one side of the mantel is the door opening into the lobby, which communicates with the hall, and basement plan below, and fitted with wash-basin, water, &c., which would be found most convenient to wash hands or glasses, delicate or valuable articles of use not wished to be trusted to careless servants. It will be seen that the three bay-windows on this plan, are of different forms, and each fitted with inside shutters. C. is the principal chamber, or boudoir, facing south and east, with fine large windows in each. The one on the south has closets on each side, and opens into the conservatory, making this a most delightful ladies'-work-room. It will be seen that all the rooms on this floor, although not large, are of the most comfortable size, perfect and elegantly proportioned, and arranged with every conceivable convenience requisite for the enjoyment of all the comforts and luxuries of life. Chamber Plan (Fig. 103.) is nine feet high, and in keeping with the rest, in its admirable arrangements, furnishing five excellent rooms, with a bath room, convenient to all, fitted with the latest improvements, (the water closet enclosed, and vertical pipes, which would make freezing impossible). The four principal rooms are about equal in size and attractiveness, as they possess the same fine views as the corresponding ones beneath, and each finished with fire-places and ample closet room. The small room windows open on a balcony, with a charming view of the bay; and would afford an agreeable lounge in summer evenings, to enjoy the setting sun, or cool breeze. All the rooms on these two floors (except the last) to be fitted with Dixon's patent grates, and Arnott's ventilating valves, which would secure sweet, healthy, and warm rooms, without draughts. The hall, as will be seen, is well lighted and ventilated, not only by the staircase window, on the north, but by the ventilating sash-lights over the doors of every-room; the bath room door is also lighted in the panel with ground glass. Between the doors, on the east side, is the lift, or dumb-waiter, and dust register, which being in the centre of the plan, is of equal convenience to all. [Illustration: FIG. 104.--_Attic and Roof._] Fig. 104. Roof and attic plan. The attic contains five good rooms for the accommodation of the servants, storing fruit, trunks, &c., and drying clothes. As this plan has the same central arrangements as all the rest, consequently the same advantages in economy of space, and of direct and easy access to every room, stairs, &c. The landing here is lighted in the same way as the hall below, and by the same staircase window, with the addition of a large sky-light and ventilator in the centre, which would keep the rooms sweet and cool. Fig. 105, shows the Basement and Cellar plan, nine feet high, and containing every requisite convenience for the domestic duties of a family. As they are on the same level, and under the principal story, the noise and smell of the kitchen would be excluded. The garden entrance is shown by the steps on the southwest corner of area, which extends the whole of the west side, round to the hall door on the south; and covered by verandah, would make these rooms dry, cool, and pleasant, as they are but little below ground, and well lighted on two sides, with a large bay-window in each; the north bay fitted with wash-tubs, as this kitchen is intended as a back one, or scullery, and for cooking in during the heat of summer, it has a sink closet on the left of the fire-place, and dresser and shelves for pots and pans on the south side, by which, is a door opening into the basement, and one out on the area. The basement would be a cheerful room, facing the south with a large bay-window with seats and inside shutters, on the opposite side is a dresser fitted with plate rack, &c. On the east is the range and pantry; behind the range, in the hall, is a warm closet for clothes, shoes, &c., and opposite, under the stairs, is a dark one, for potatoes. At the north end of the hall, (and behind the scullery, fire-place, &c.) is the furnace room and front basement stairs. On the east side of the hall is the dumb-waiter, or lift. The coal cellar has two bins placed under the shoots, for large and small coal, with two on the east side for ashes and wood. Against the middle window is a wire gauze safe, for cooked meats, &c.; between this and the wine cellar is the dairy; the other division is for stores in general. All the partitions are made open, so as to admit the free circulation of light and air. [Illustration: FIG. 105.--_Basement and Cellar._] On observing the relative position of the different doors and windows, in the several plans, it will be found that the house may be ventilated by through drafts in every direction at pleasure; a luxury to be appreciated in the heat of summer. Also, by carrying the lift, or dumb-waiter, to the top of the house, and communicating with every floor, its full value would be secured, besides forming a ventilating shaft for the whole building, from cellar to attic. Another valuable labor-saving convenience (next to the water-works and lift) is the dust shoot, which is simply a tin tube, with registers in the floors of the different plans, to sweep the dust into, from the rooms, where it descends to the cellar, and is caught in a barrel, to be removed when full. It is here placed in the hall, by the side of the lift, on every floor, which by this central arrangement is at the door of every room. Construction, although of wood, is made nearly fire proof, by making the floors, walls, partitions and stairs solid. The walls and principal partitions are formed of slats of one inch thick by four inches broad, securely nailed one on the other, so as to form a one inch groove on both sides, to plaster on. This forms a good strong six inch solid wall, fire and vermin proof, and dryer than any built of stone or brick. The stairs to have their skeletons of iron work, filled in solid with cement. The floors of basement and entry to be of earthenware tiles, the kitchen and cellar cemented. That of the principal plan, (forming the ceiling of the basement, &c., the seat of danger,) should be formed of brick, arched on iron girders, and filled up with cement, and laid with larch, (as that burns less freely than any other wood). The hall, &c., to be laid with encaustic tiles. The floors of the chamber plans should have their timbers coated with plaster paris, and filled up with mortar and laid with larch, the plastering of the ceilings, &c., on wire gauze, instead of lath; a slate roof, and the walls of the basement plan of hollow brick, and plastered on the inner surface. By these simple and inexpensive means, the house would be nearly fire proof, and life and property secure. The exterior is covered by a sand coat, of a cheerful and rich light brown ochre tint, it being the most befitting for the situation and design, besides possessing the advantages of economy, and imparting a more substantial effect, it avoids that harsh and disagreeable glare and glisten of paint. DESIGN No. 31. The design on the following page, for a Head Stone, was published by us in the May number, 1864, of the HORTICULTURIST. It attracted the attention of one of our most intelligent subscribers and valuable contributors in Western New York, who desired to set up, in their beautiful Cemetery, a memorial of one of his household who "who had gone before." The monument was executed in this city, under the supervision of the friend who furnished the design for the HORTICULTURIST. It was cut from the Caen stone, and the execution was every way satisfactory. The gentleman for whom it was made says in a letter advising of its safe arrival:--"Last week I had it set in a solid foundation, and my highest anticipations are more than realized. I do not see how the monument could be better, as to material, design, and inscriptions. It is unique, yet chaste, highly significant and satisfactory. I have only words of praise and feelings of gratitude for a result that so fully answers to my ideal." [Illustration: FIG. 106.--_Head Stone._] "BALLOON FRAMES." "If it had not been for the knowledge of balloon frames, Chicago and San Francisco would never have arisen as they did, from little villages, to great cities in a single year."--SOLON ROBINSON. In these days of BALLOONING, it is gratifying to know that there is one practically useful, well tested principle, which has risen above the character of an experiment, and is destined to hold an elevated position in the opinions of the masses. That principle is the one which is technically, as well as sarcastically, termed Balloon Framing, as applied to the construction of all classes of wooden buildings. The early history of the Balloon Frame, is somewhat obscure, there being no well authenticated statements of its origin. It may, however, be traced back to the early settlement of our prairie countries, where it was impossible to obtain heavy timber and skillful mechanics, and the fact is patent to any one who has passed through the pleasures and the vicissitudes of the life of a pioneer, that his own necessities have indicated the adoption of some principle in construction, that, with the materials he has at hand, shall fulfill all the necessary conditions of comfort, strength and protection. To these circumstances we must award the early conception of this frame, which, with subsequent additions and improvements, has led to its universal adoption for buildings of every class throughout the States and cities of the West, and on the Pacific coast. The Balloon Frame has for more than twenty years been before the building public. Its success, adaptability, and practicability, have been fully demonstrated. Its simple, effective and economical manner of construction, has very materially aided the rapid settlement of the West, and placed the art of building, to a great extent, within the control of the pioneer. That necessity, which must do without the aid of the mechanic or the knowledge of his skill, has developed a principle in construction that has sufficient merit to warrant its use by all who wish to erect in a cheap and substantial manner any class of wooden buildings. Like all successful improvements, which thrive on their own merits, the Balloon Frame has passed through and survived the theory, ridicule and abuse of all who have seen fit to attack it, and may be reckoned among the prominent inventions of the present generation, an invention neither fostered nor developed by any hope of great rewards, but which plainly and boldly acknowledges its origin in necessity. [Illustration: FIG. 107.--_Isometrical Perspective View of the Balloon Frame._] The increasing value of lumber and labor, must turn the attention of men of moderate means to those successful plans which have demonstrated economy in both, and at the same time preserved the full qualities of strength and security so generally accorded to the old fogy principles of framing, and which, we presume to say, is inferior in all the true requisites of cheap and substantial building. Light sticks, uninjured by cutting mortices or tenons, a close basket-like manner of construction, short bearings, a continuous support for each piece of timber from foundation to rafter, and embracing and taking advantage of the practical fact, that the tensile and compressible strength of pine lumber is equal to one-fifth of that of wrought iron, constitute improvements introduced with this frame. If, in erecting a building, we can so use our materials that every strain will come in the direction of the fibre of some portion of the wood work, we can make inch boards answer a better purpose than foot square beams, and this application of materials is one reason of the strength of Balloon Frames. [Illustration: FIG. 108.--_Floor Plan._] The Balloon Frame belongs to no one person; nobody claims it as an invention, and yet in the art of construction it is one of the most sensible improvements that has ever been made. That which has hitherto called out a whole neighborhood, and required a vast expenditure of labor, time, and noise, can, by the adoption of the balloon frame, be done with all the quietness and security of an ordinary day's work. A man and boy can now attain the same results, with ease, that twenty men could on an old fashioned frame. The name of "Basket Frame" would convey a better impression, but the name "Balloon" has long ago outlived the derision which suggested it. [Illustration: FIG. 109.--_Elevation Section--manner of nailing--A. corner stud, 4 by 4--B. joist, 3 by 8--C. stud, 2 by 4._] [Illustration: FIG. 110.--_D. Upper Edge of Joist--E. Stud._] The moment the foundation is prepared, and the bill of lumber on the ground, the balloon frame is ready to raise, and a man and boy can do all of it. The sills are generally 3 inches by 8 inches, halved at the ends or corners, and nailed together with large nails. Having laid the sills upon the foundation, the next thing in order is to put up the studding. Use 4 by 4 studs for corners and door posts, or spike two 2 by 4 studs together, stand them up, set them plumb, and with stay laths secure them in position. Set up the intermediate studs, which are 2 by 4 inches, and 16 inches between centres, toe or nail them diagonally to the sill. Then put in the floor joists for first floor, each joist to be placed alongside each stud, and nailed to it and to the sill. Next measure the height to ceiling, and with a chalk line mark it around the entire range of studding; below the ceiling line notch each stud one inch deep and four inches wide, and into this, flush with the inside face of the studding, nail an inch strip four inches wide. This notch may be cut before putting up the studs. If the frame be lined on the inside, it will not be necessary to notch the strip into the studs, but simply to nail it to the studding; the object of notching the studding is to present a flush surface for lathing, as well as to form a shoulder or bearing necessary to sustain the second floor; both of these are accomplished by lining inside the studding--(for small barns and outbuildings that do not require plastering, nail the strip 1 by 4 to the studding)--on this rests the joists of the second floor, the ends of which come flush to the outside face of the studding, and both ends of each joist are securely nailed to each stud; the bearing of the joist on the inch strip below is close by the stud, and the inch strip rests on a shoulder or lower side of the notch cut to receive it. This bearing is so strong that the joists will break before it would yield. Having reached the top of the building, each stud is sawed off to an equal height; if any are too short they are spliced by placing one on top of the other, and nailing a strip of inch board on both sides. The wall plate, 2 by 4 inches, is laid flat on top of the studding, and nailed to each stud; the rafters are then put on; they are notched, allowing the ends to project outside for cornice, &c. The bearing of each rafter comes directly over the top of each stud, and is nailed to it. [Illustration: FIG. 111.--_Side Elevation.--G. Manner of splicing sills.--F. Manner of splicing studs._] [Illustration: FIG. 112.--_End Elevation._] A Balloon Frame looks light, and its name was given in contempt by those old fogy mechanics who had been brought up to rob a stick of timber of all its strength and durability, by cutting it full of mortices, tenons and augur holes, and then supposing it to be stronger than a far lighter stick differently applied, and with all its capabilities unimpaired. Properly constructed, and with timber adapted to its purposes, it will stand securely against the fury of the elements, and answer every purpose that an old fashioned timber frame is calculated to fulfill. When the building is supported on posts, heavy sills are necessary, and the frame should be securely nailed or spiked together. The bents may be 16, 24 or 30 inches apart, and covered in the usual manner. The thrust of both the rafters and contents of the building are outward; the tie, 1 by 4, is abundantly strong, as each one will practically sustain, in the direction of its fibre, three tons. The floor joists are nailed to studs at each end. No one need fear any lack of perfect security, as these ties exceed in strength any hold that tenons could have. Fig. 113 illustrates the manner of framing buildings of one story, such as are used about almost every farm or country seat, as tool houses, granaries, wash-houses, spring houses, &c., &c. [Illustration: FIG. 113.--_Isometrical Perspective Balloon Frame._] Very small buildings, if unplastered, will not require ceiling joists; a tie at each end will be all-sufficient. Moderate size buildings will be strong enough if the ceiling joists are left out, and collars put on half way up the rise of the rafter. According to the size and uses of the building, the collars or ceiling joists may be put on every rafter, every other, or every third rafter; floor joists should be about 16 inches between centres, and the studding may be from 16 inches to 8 feet apart; in the last case only, every sixth floor joist is nailed to the stud, the intermediate ones being arranged equally distant from each other between the studding. Where the studding is placed wide apart, the plate must necessarily be heavier to sustain the roof; if vertical siding be used, it should be nailed to the sill and plate, and to an intermediate horizontal strip spiked in between the studding; if done in this way, the plate may be lighter; when horizontal siding is used, the studding should not be more than 4 feet apart--in small buildings, say 12 by 20 feet, we should cut all our stuff, except joists, from 1-1/4 inch plank. Studs 4 inches wide, rafters 5 inches wide; floor joists should be 2 by 9 inches, and put all up 30 inches between centres. In Fig. 114 is shown the manner of constructing frames for buildings of three stories. The corner stud, 4 by 4, is composed of and built up with two 2 by 4 studs, which are nailed together, breaking joints as the building progresses in height; the splicing of studs is done in the same manner, being nailed together as fast as additional length is required; the joists of the last floor are laid upon the plate, and they act as tie-beams to sustain the thrust of the rafters. We consider the splice where the studs butt and have side strips nailed to them, to be the most secure; the lapping splice is very generally used, however, and found to answer every purpose. Ribs for vertical siding may be put on in two ways; one as shown, by which the ribs run over the sill, and are nailed to it; a strip of the same thickness as ribs, say 1-1/4 inches, nailed on to the sill to fill up the space between the ribs, and is then covered by the outside plinth or base. The other plan is to set the studs back 1-1/4 inches from face edge of sill; then let the end of ribs bevel down on the sill, or dovetail them into the edge. [Illustration: FIG. 114.--_Three Story Building._ _Balloon Framing._ _Details._ Fig. 115. Joist notched down on plate. Fig. 116. Side girt not gained in for small unplastered buildings. Fig. 117. Inside lining--answers the same purpose as a side girth. Fig. 118. Joist bearing on sill.] Either outside or inside lining may be used, or both together. Where diagonal lining is used, it should be reversed or run the other way on the opposite side of the house. [Illustration: FIG. 120.--_Diagonal Ribs for Vertical or Battened Siding._] The lining of a Balloon Frame adds immensely to its strength, particularly so if put on diagonally; it may be done outside or inside, though on the whole the inside is preferable. If done outside, it should be carried over the sill and nailed to it; the sill being wider than the studding, in order to get a larger bearing on the masonry, and the floor joists being in the way, does not admit of inside lining being put on in the same manner. A first-class Balloon Frame should be lined, if for vertical siding, outside the studding--if horizontal siding is used, line inside; it makes the frame stiffer and the building warmer. Some line diagonally, say from centre next the first floor towards extreme upper corners both ways; others line one side diagonally in one direction, and the other in an opposite direction. This makes assurance of strength doubly sure. If lined inside, nail perpendicular lath to the lining 16 inches from centres, and on this lath horizontally for plastering. [Illustration: FIG. 121.--_Showing lengthwise and crosswise manner of tying frame._] The principle of Balloon Framing is the true one for strength, as well as for economy. If a mechanic is employed, the Balloon Frame can be put up for _forty per cent. less money_ than the mortice and tenon frame. If you erect a balloon frame yourself, which you can easily do without the aid of a mechanic, it costs the price of the materials and whatever value you put upon your own time. Fig. 23 shows the manner of attaching the flooring to gable end studding, and in those buildings in which the thrust of the rafters is in the direction of the flooring--if every third stud be bolted to the joist in the manner shown, it makes the tie equal if not superior to that in the direction of the joists. [Illustration: FIG. 122.--_Manner of Framing Large Barns._] Fig. 122 explains the manner of framing the largest class of barns. Wide openings, like bays, require the use of heavy timber, and the mortice, tenon and brace, only so far as the gallows frame is concerned; the balance of the frame is of light stuff, studding 2 feet to 2-1/2 feet apart, 2 by 6 inches, every third one 2 by 8 inches, into which is gained the side girt, it being nailed to the others. On this rests one end of the temporary floors, the gallows frame supports the roof, and the rafters are secured to it, so that they become ties. The side of this building is like a floor turned on edge, and is firmly secured by the floor joists at the bottom and the rafters at the top. Warehouses, depots, and other buildings of a very large size, can be made stronger by using the Balloon Frame, instead of the heavy timber frame. Those who prefer to err on the right side, can get unnecessary strength by using deeper studding, placing them closer together, putting in one or more rows of bridging and as many diagonal ribs as they like. In large buildings there is no saving in timber, only the substitution of small sizes for large--the great saving is in the labor, which is quite important. The following are some of the advantages claimed for the Balloon Frame: 1. The principal labor of framing is dispensed with. 2. It is a far cheaper frame to raise. 3. It is stronger and more durable than any other frame. 4. Any stick can be removed, and another put in its place, without disturbing the strength of those remaining--in fact, the whole building can be renewed stick by stick. 5. It is adapted to every style of building, and better adapted for all irregular forms. 6. It is forty per cent. cheaper than any other known style of frame. 7. It embraces strength, security, comfort and economy, and can be put up without the aid of a mechanic. Established in 1846. "THE HORTICULTURIST," AND JOURNAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. Published Monthly at Two Dollars and Fifty Cents per Annum, Twenty-five Cents per Number, and devoted to GRAPE CULTURE, FLOWERS, RURAL ARCHITECTURE, FRUITS, GARDENING, LANDSCAPE ADORNMENT, AND RURAL PURSUITS. Forming an annual volume of 400 royal octavo pages handsomely Illustrated. The Author of _My Farm of Edgewood_, The Author of _Ten Acres Enough_, The Author of _The Grape Culturist_, The Author of _Flowers for Parlor and Garden_, The Author of _American Fruit Grower's Guide_. Rev. Dr. CRESCY, and others of the best practical talent and ability, both East and West, write regularly. _Back Volumes and Numbers supplied._ GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, PUBLISHERS, 37 PARK ROW, N. Y. WOODWARD'S GRAPERIES AND HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS, By Geo. E. & F. W. Woodward, ARCHITECTS AND HORTICULTURISTS. A new, practical, and original Work on the design and construction of all classes of Horticultural Buildings, including Hot-beds, Propagating Houses, Hot and Cold Graperies, Orchard Houses, Conservatories, &c., with the best modes of heating, &c. Elegantly Illustrated. Being the result of an extensive professional practice. GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, PUBLISHERS, _Office of the "Horticulturist," 37 PARK ROW, N. Y._ GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, PUBLISHERS No. 37 PARK ROW, NEW YORK OFFICE OF THE HORTICULTURIST. BOOKS ON AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE GARDENING, AND RURAL ART For Sale at this Office, or mailed, post paid, on receipt of Publisher's prices. *** _Priced Catalogue on application._ NEW YORK AGENTS for the _Country Gentleman, Gardeners' Monthly, & Hovey's Magazine_. Subscriptions received and back numbers supplied. FIRE ON THE HEARTH. GEO. E. & F. W. WOODWARD, 37 PARK ROW, N. Y. _New York Agents for Dixon's low down Philadelphia Grates, for burning Wood or Coal, for sale at Manufacturer's Prices._ "It is a plan for warming houses, which has never in all its points been surpassed." * * * * * * "It is believed that there is scarcely a single educated Physician in Philadelphia, who owns the house he lives in, who is not supplied with one or more of these delightful luxuries." * * "We have one of these admirable contrivances, put in our house in 1859, and every additional year only increases our appreciation of the luxury."--_Dr. W. W. Hall, editor of Hall's Journal of Health, N. Y._ _Price $35 and upwards according to size and finish. Samples at this Office._ * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. This text uses both hyphenated and spaced forms of its rooms, i.e. bed-room and bed room. Also used were variations on hyphenated and not words such stair-way and stairway. Page 16 "ofwhich" changed to "of which" (of which the public) Page 28, "accomodation" changed to "accommodation" (of this accommodation) Page 34, "accomodation" changed to "accommodation" (amount of accommodation) Page 83, "understand" changed to "understands" (one that understands) Page 104, "accomodation" changed to "accommodation" (for their accommodation) Page 124, "posesses" changed to "possesses" (possesses all the attractions) Page 148, "desends" changed to "descends" (where it descends) Page 164, "23" changed to "121" (Fig. 121 shows the manner) 
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27102	----	Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. An obvious printer error has been corrected, and it is listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature THE GROUND PLAN OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, MANAGER EDINBURGH: 100, PRINCES STREET BERLIN: A. ASHER AND CO. LEIPZIG: F. A. BROCKHAUS NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: Hedon, Yorkshire: nave from N.W.] [Illustration] THE GROUND PLAN OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON M.A., F.S.A. Cambridge: at the University Press 1911 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_. PREFACE There is as yet no book entirely devoted to the development of the plan of the parish church in England, and the body of literature which bears upon the subject is not very accessible to the ordinary student. The present volume is an attempt to indicate the main lines on which that development proceeded. It is obvious that, from necessary considerations of space, much has been omitted. The elevation of the building, and the treatment of its decorative features, window-tracery, sculpture, etc., belong to another and wider branch of architectural study, in which the parish church pursues the same line of structural development as the cathedral or monastic church, and the architectural forms of the timber-roofed building follow the example set by the larger churches with their roofs of stone. To this side of the question much attention has been devoted, and of late years increasing emphasis has been laid on the importance of the vaulted construction of our greater churches, which is the very foundation of medieval architecture and the secret of its progress through its various "styles." It is expected that the reader of this book, in which a less familiar but none the less important topic is handled, will already have some acquaintance with the general progress of medieval architectural forms, with which the development of the ground plan keeps pace. Some historical and architectural questions, which arise out of the consideration of the ground plan, and have an important bearing upon it, are treated in another volume of this series, which is intended to be complementary to the present one. The writer is grateful to his wife, for the plans and sketches which she has drawn for him, and for much help: to Mr C. C. Hodges and Mr J. P. Gibson, for the permission to make use of their photographs; and to the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., and the Rev. R. M. Serjeantson, M.A., F.S.A., for their kindness in reading through the proofs and supplying suggestions of the greatest value. A. H. T. GRETTON, NORTHANTS _26 January 1911_ CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH PLAN IN ENGLAND SECTION PAGE 1. The basilican church plan 1 2. Problem of its derivation 2 3. Rival theories of its origin 3 4. The Roman basilica: old St Peter's 6 5. Basilicas at Ravenna 8 6. Tomb-churches and baptisteries 9 7. Centralised plans at Ravenna 10 8. Relative advantages of the basilican and the centralised plan 12 9. The basilican church at Silchester 13 10. Early churches in Kent and Essex 14 11. Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts. 16 12. Escomb church, Durham 16 13. Early Northumbrian churches 18 14. Wilfrid's churches at Hexham and Ripon 20 15, 16. Brixworth, Northants: other basilican plans 21 17. Exceptional occurrence of the basilican plan in England 24 CHAPTER II PARISH CHURCHES OF THE LATER SAXON PERIOD SECTION PAGE 18. The normal pre-Conquest plan 27 19. The western bell-tower 29 20. Plans in which the ground floor of the tower forms the body of the church 30 21. Barton-on-Humber and the centralised plan 33 22. Centralised planning in England 34 23. The Saxon lateral porch 35 24. Development of the transeptal chapel 36 25. Towers between nave and chancel 37 26, 27. Development of the cruciform plan 38 28. Influence of local material upon the aisleless church plan 42 CHAPTER III THE AISLELESS CHURCH OF THE NORMAN PERIOD 29. Survival and development of the aisleless plan after the Conquest 44 30. The nave of the aisleless church 46 31. Rectangular chancels 47 32. Churches with no structural division between nave and chancel 49 33. Churches with apsidal chancels 49 34. The quire 53 35. The transeptal chapel 54 36. Cruciform plans: North Newbald and Melbourne 58 37. Later developments of the cruciform plan 60 38. Symbolism in planning 62 CHAPTER IV THE AISLED PARISH CHURCH I. NAVE, TOWER, AND PORCHES SECTION PAGE 39. Survival of the aisleless plan 64 40. The addition of aisles 66 41. Use of aisles for side altars 66 42. Twelfth century aisled plans 69 43. Ordinary method of adding aisles 70 44, 45. Consequent irregularities of plan 74 46. Gradual addition of aisles 77 47. Raunds church, Northants 79 48. Conservative feeling of the builders for old work 81 49. Aisles widened and rebuilt 83 50. Rebuilding of aisles as chantry chapels: Harringworth, Northants 84 51. Newark, Cirencester, Northleach, and Grantham 87 52. Naves lengthened westward 92 53. The western tower in relation to the plan 94 54. Engaged western towers, etc. 96 55. Rebuilding of towers 98 56. Porches 99 57. Position of the porch in the plan 99 CHAPTER V THE AISLED PARISH CHURCH II. TRANSEPTS AND CHANCEL 58. Cruciform churches with aisled transepts 101 59. Addition of transeptal chapels 102 60. Variety of treatment of transeptal chapels 105 61. Transeptal chapels as a key to original ground plans 107 62. Incomplete cruciform plans 108 63. Irregular cruciform plans 110 64. Central towers with transeptal chapels 113 65. Transeptal towers 113 66. Lengthening of chancels 114 67. Encroachment of the chancel on the nave: Tansor 115 68. Chancel chapels 117 69. Churches with one chancel chapel 119 70. Chantry chapels attached to chancels 120 71. Effect of the addition of chapels on the cruciform plan 121 72. The aisled rectangular plan 124 73. Variations of the plan with aisled nave and chancel 126 74. Development of the aisled rectangle at Grantham 129 75. Deviation of the axis of the chancel 131 INDEX OF PLACES 134 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Hedon. Interior of nave _Frontispiece_ FIGS. PAGE 1 Plan of old St Peter's 6 2 Plan of San Vitale, Ravenna 11 3 Plan of Escomb--typical Saxon church 17 4 St Peter's, Barton-on-Humber 31 5 Aisleless plan, 12th cent. 45 6 Birkin, Yorkshire: interior 51 7 Two aisleless plans with central tower 55 8 North Newbald 57 9 Sketch of older wall above nave arcade, Gretton 72 10 Plan of Raunds church 80 11 Plan of Harringworth church 85 12 Two plans, nos. 1 and 2, of Grantham church 88 13 Sketch of arch joining arcade to tower, Gretton 93 14 Plan of 13th cent. church: W. tower, S. Porch, transeptal chapels 103 15 St Mary's, Beverley. Interior of transept. 111 16 Plans of Grantham church, nos. 3 and 4 130 CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH PLAN IN ENGLAND § 1. Side by side with the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire, there appeared a fully developed plan for places of Christian worship. The normal Christian church of the fourth century of our era was an aisled building with the entrance at one end, and a semi-circular projection known as the apse at the other. The body of the building, the nave with its aisles, was used by the congregation, the quire of singers occupying a space, enclosed within low walls, at the end nearest the apse. In the apse, raised above the level of the nave, was the altar, behind which, ranged round the wall, were the seats for the bishop and assistant clergy. This type of church, of which the aisled nave and the apse are the essential parts, is known as the _basilica_. The name, employed to designate a "royal" or magnificent building, had long been applied to large buildings, whether open to the sky or roofed, which were used, partly as commercial exchanges, partly as halls of justice. It is still often said that the Christian basilicas were merely adaptations of such buildings to sacred purposes. Some of the features of the Christian plan are akin to those of the secular basilica. The apse with its semi-circular range of seats and its altar reproduces the judicial tribune, with its seats for the praetor and his assistant judges, and its altar on which oaths were taken. The open galleries, which in some of the earliest Christian basilicas at Rome form an upper story to the aisles, recall the galleries above the colonnades which surrounded the central hall of some of the larger secular basilicas. Again, the _atrium_ or forecourt through which the Christian basilica was often approached has been supposed to be derived from the _forum_ in connexion with which the secular basilica was frequently built. § 2. However, while the _atrium_ of the Christian basilica is merely an outer court, the secular basilica, when planned, like the Basilica Ulpia at Rome, with direct relation to a _forum_, was a principal building in connexion with the _forum_, but not a building of which the _forum_ was a mere annexe. Further, when we begin to seek for a complete identification of the Christian with the secular basilica, we are met by the obstacle that the secular basilica had no fixed plan. If we try to trace any principle of development in its plan, we find that this development is directly inverse to that of the Christian basilica. The secular basilica, in earlier examples a colonnaded building with its central space open to the sky, became at a later time a roofed hall, either, as in the case of the basilica at Trier, without aisles, or, like the basilica of Maxentius or Constantine in the Roman forum, with a series of deep recesses at the side, the vaulted roofs of which served to counteract the outward pressure of the main vault. The Christian basilica, if it were a mere imitation of this type of building, would follow the same line of development; but, as a matter of fact, the highest type of Christian church is always a colonnaded or aisled building. And, even if the Christian apse derived its arrangement from the apse or apses which projected from the ends or sides of the secular basilicas, there is again a difference. The apse with its altar was the main feature of the interior of the Christian church: it was the place in which the chief rite of Christian worship was performed before the eyes of all. In the secular basilica the apse was devoted to special purposes which set it apart from the main business of the body of the building: it was an appendage to the central hall, not necessarily within view of every part of it. In fact, the relation of the apse to the main building was totally different in the two cases. § 3. It seems probable, then, that the identity between the two buildings is mainly an identity of name, and that Christian builders, in seeking for suitable arrangements for public worship, may have borrowed some details from the arrangements of the secular basilica. It is natural, however, to look for the origin of a religious plan in buildings devoted to religious purposes. The Roman temple supplied no help for the plan of buildings which were required for public worship. Of recent years, it has been customary to assume that the Christian basilica took its form from the inner halls of the private houses of those wealthy citizens who embraced Christianity in its early days. Such halls may have been used for Christian services; and if their plan was adopted for the Christian basilica, the mature state of the basilican plan at its first appearance can be explained. The _atrium_ or entrance hall of the house is represented on this hypothesis by the forecourt of the basilica; the peristyle, or colonnade round the inner room, becomes the aisles and the space screened off at the entrance for those not entitled to take full part in the service; the colonnade at the further end survives in the arcaded screen which existed, for example, in old St Peter's at Rome; the apse takes the place of the _tablinum_, where the most sacred relics of family life were preserved; and the transept, which is found in some of the early Roman basilican plans, represents the _alae_, or transverse space, which existed between the _tablinum_ and the main body of the hall. But these close analogies are the result of an assumption by no means certain. It is always probable that the basilican plan had its origin in a plan originally aisleless. Some, intent on its religious source, explain it as a development of the plan of the Jewish synagogue. Others, regarding assemblies of Christians for public worship as, in their essence, meetings of persons associated in common brotherhood, have derived the basilica directly from the aisleless _scholae_ which were the meeting-places of the various confraternities or _collegia_ of ancient Rome. In these there is an apse at one end of the building; and, if we imagine aisles added by the piercing of the walls with rows of arches and columns, we have at once the essential features of the basilican plan. Each theory has its attractions and its difficulties; and to none is it possible to give unqualified adherence. It may be stated, as a tentative conclusion, that the basilican plan probably had its origin in an aisleless form of building, and thus pursued a course directly opposite to the development of the secular basilica. But it seems clear that, in many details of the plan, especially as we see it in Rome, the peristyled hall was kept in mind; while in two features, the arrangement of the apse and the occasional appearance of galleries above the aisles, the secular basilica was taken into consideration. The policy of the early Christian Church, when its services were sanctioned by the state, was to adapt existing and familiar forms where they could be suitably reproduced. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Plan of old St Peter's: (1) _atrium_ or fore-court; (2) nave with double aisles; (3) site of screen-colonnade; (4, 4) transepts; (5) apse with crypt below.] § 4. The plan of the old basilica of St Peter at Rome, founded by Constantine the Great, and destroyed early in the sixteenth century to make way for the present church, explains the principal features of the basilican plan in its developed state. (1) In common with other early basilicas in Rome, and in other parts of western Europe, the entrance was at the east, and the altar at the west end, so that the celebrant faced the congregation during the divine office. (2) The church was approached through a cloistered _atrium_ or fore-court, in the middle of which was a fountain, the place of purification for those intending to enter the church. (3) At the west end of the cloister three doorways opened into the nave of the church, and one on either side into the side aisles. (4) The nave communicated with the aisles by a row of columns beneath an entablature: there were also outer aisles, communicating with the inner by columns bearing rounded arches. (5) The side walls of the nave, above the entablature, were not pierced for galleries, but were covered by two rows of mosaic pictures, one above the other, on each side, the upper row corresponding to the height of the space between the outer and inner roofs of the aisle. Above this, the walls rose into a clerestory, pierced with round-headed windows at regular intervals; and a high entablature supported the great tie-beams of the wooden roof. (6) The quire of singers, divided from the rest of the church by low screen walls, probably occupied the centre of the western portion of the nave. (7) A tall open arch divided the nave from the transept, which was of equal height with the nave, and projected south and north as far as the walls of the outer aisles. Here probably were places reserved for distinguished persons, near the platform of the altar. (8) West of the transept, entered by a tall and wide arch, was the apse. Beneath the arch was a screen, formed by a row of columns, under an entablature which bore statues of our Lord and the apostles: this crossed the arch at the foot of the steps leading to the altar and seats of the clergy. (9) Beneath the altar platform, and entered by doorways on each side of the flight of steps, was the crypt or _confessio_, the traditional place of martyrdom of St Peter, and the resort of pilgrims to the tomb of the apostles. The hallowed place was immediately beneath the altar. § 5. The sixth century basilicas of Ravenna, Sant' Apollinare in Classe and Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, differ in plan from the Roman basilicas (1) in the fact that they have always had the altar at the east, and the entrance at the west end; (2) by substituting, for a colonnaded atrium, a closed porch or _narthex_ in front of the entrance of the building. In process of time, two of the greater Roman basilicas, San Paolo and San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, were enlarged in a westward direction, so that the positions of the altar and entrance were reversed; and, in several of the early basilicas at Rome, a space near the entrance of the nave was screened off, from which penitents and catechumens might watch the service. But, in the first instance, the eastern chancel and the structural _narthex_ appear to have been introduced from the eastern empire. Neither at Ravenna nor at Rome did bell-towers originally form part of the plan of the basilica: the round _campanili_ of both churches at Ravenna are certainly later additions. It may also be noted (1) that ordinarily the aisles were single, not double as at old St Peter's. (2) The columned screen of the apse at old St Peter's appears to have been exceptional. The ordinary screen or _cancelli_, from which is derived our word "chancel" for the space thus enclosed, was a low wall. This is the arrangement at the basilica of San Clemente, in which the enclosed quire also remains. (3) The transept, even in Rome, was an exceptional arrangement, and does not appear in the basilicas of Ravenna. § 6. Another type of plan, however, was used in Rome for churches devoted to the special purposes of burial and baptism. In this case the buildings were planned round a central point, and at Rome were uniformly circular. Recesses round the walls of the mausoleum-church contained sarcophagi: in the centre of the baptistery was the great font. The church of Santa Costanza, outside the north-eastern walls of Rome, circular in plan, with a vaulted aisle surrounding the central space, was built by Constantine the Great as a tomb-church for his family, and was also used as a baptistery. Both these uses were direct adaptations of pagan customs. The baptistery, with its central font for total immersion, was simply a large bath-room, like the great rotunda of the baths of Caracalla. The mausoleum preserved the form of which the finest example is the tomb of Hadrian, now known as the castle of Sant' Angelo. In the course of the middle ages, certain tomb-churches in Rome, with a centralised plan, were turned into places of public worship. But, for the plan of the ordinary church, the basilica, with its longitudinal axis, was general. In the eastern empire, on the other hand, the centralised plan was employed from an early date for large churches; and in this way was evolved the magnificent style of architecture which culminated in Santa Sophia at Constantinople. Here the centralised plan was triumphantly adapted to the internal arrangements of the basilica. § 7. The city of Ravenna, closely connected historically both with Rome and Constantinople, contains a series of monuments which is of unequalled interest in the history of the centralised plan. (1) The mausoleum of the empress Galla Placidia, sister of the emperor Honorius, who died in 450 A.D., is a building of cruciform shape, consisting of a square central space covered by a dome, with rectangular projections on all four sides. The projection through which the building is entered is longer than the others, and the plan thus forms the Latin cross so common in the churches of the middle ages. (2) To the same period belongs the octagonal baptistery, known as San Giovanni in Fonte. (3) In 493 A.D. Theodoric the Ostrogoth obtained possession of Ravenna. To the period of his rule belongs the Arian baptistery, also octagonal, known as Santa Maria in Cosmedin. (4) Theodoric died in 526 A.D. His mausoleum is formed by a polygon of ten equal sides, with a smaller decagonal upper stage, a circular attic above which bears the great monolithic dome. In the lower story was the tomb: the internal plan is a Greek cross, _i.e._ there is a central space with recesses of equal depth on all four sides. (5) In the year of the death of Theodoric, the octagonal church of San Vitale was begun. It was consecrated in 547, when Ravenna had become the capital of the Italian province of Justinian's empire. Its somewhat complicated plan was clearly derived from an eastern source, but not from Santa Sophia, which was not begun till 532 A.D. The central space is almost circular. Between each of the piers which support the octagonal clerestory at the base of the cupola is an apsidal recess, with three arches on the ground floor opening into the encircling aisle, and three upper arches opening into the gallery above the aisle. On the east side of the central space this arrangement is broken, and one tall arch opens into the chancel, which ends in a projecting apse, semi-circular inside, but a half octagon outside. The aisle with the gallery above thus occupies seven sides of the outer octagon, the eighth side being occupied by the western part of the chancel. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Plan of San Vitale, Ravenna: (1) _narthex_ with flanking turrets, as originally arranged; (2) central nave; (3) chancel and altar.] § 8. Of the two types of plan, which can be studied so satisfactorily at Ravenna, the ordinary basilican type is the more convenient. The long nave provides the necessary accommodation for worshippers, the raised apse gives a theatre for the performance of service within view of everybody, the aisles facilitate the going and coming of the congregation, and prevent over-crowding. The centralised plan provides, it is true, a large central area conveniently near the altar; but the provision of a chancel or altar-space necessitates the grafting on the plan of a feature borrowed from the ordinary basilica, which, as at San Vitale, breaks the symmetry of the design. At Santa Sophia, the basilican chancel forms an indissoluble part of a centralised plan; but this feat is beyond the reach of an ordinary architect. Even at San Vitale the planning is highly complicated, and must be due to an architect of some genius. In addition to complications of design, the centralised plan raised questions of roofing which did not trouble the builders of the long wooden-roofed basilicas. The vaulted half-dome of the basilican apse was a simple matter, compared with the mighty dome of Santa Sophia and its cluster of abutting half-domes. It was in the centralised churches, with their domed vaults and the groined vaults of their aisles, that the history of medieval vaulting began. But, even when medieval masons had learned to regard the vaulting of their churches as the controlling principle of their art, they left the centralised plan almost entirely alone, and applied what it had taught them to the work of roofing basilicas with vaults of stone. We shall trace the influence of the centralised church as we proceed; but the influence of the basilica will be found to predominate in the history of medieval planning. § 9. In England, as in other portions of the Roman empire, we might naturally expect to find the basilican plan applied to the earliest Christian churches. The foundations of a small Romano-British basilican church have been discovered at Silchester in Hampshire. The apse, as in the Roman basilicas, was at the west end. The nave had aisles, which, at the end nearest the apse, broadened out into two transept-like projections. The entrance front of the church was covered by a _narthex_, the whole width of nave and aisles. This feature, as has been shown, is of eastern rather than of Roman origin; while the projections at the end of the aisles appear to have been, not transepts like those at old St Peter's, but separate chambers corresponding to those which, in eastern churches, flank the chancel, and are used for special ritual purposes. In fact, the basilica at Silchester recalls the plans of the early basilicas of north Africa more closely than those of the basilicas of Rome; while it has, unlike them, the Roman feature of the western apse. This, however, gives rise to questions which, in our present state of knowledge, are beyond solution. § 10. Of the seven churches which are usually connected with the missionary activity of St Augustine and his companions, five, of which we have ruins or foundations, certainly ended in apses; and the apse in each case was divided from the nave, not by a single arch, but by an arcade with three openings, which recalls the screen-colonnade at old St Peter's. But only one church in the group, the ruined church of Reculver, followed the plan of the aisled nave of the basilica. From the description which remains of the early cathedral of Canterbury, destroyed by fire in 1067, we can see that it, too, was an aisled basilica, with its original apse at the west end. But the first cathedral of Rochester, the plan and extent of which may be gathered from existing foundations, was an aisleless building with an eastern apse. The church of St Pancras at Canterbury, the lower courses of the walls of which in great part remain, had an aisleless nave, divided from an apsidal chancel by a screen-wall with three openings, that in the middle being wider than the others. The foundations of two of the four columns which flanked these openings can still be traced. The walls of the chancel, which was slightly narrower than the nave, were continued straight for a little way beyond the screen-wall; and then the curve of the apse began. St Pancras also possessed a square entrance porch, much narrower than the nave, at its west end, and two chapels projecting from the nave on either side, half-way up its length. The church is thus cruciform in plan. The western porch and the chapels seem to have been added as the work proceeded, and not to have been contemplated in the original design. The material of the building is Roman brick, and buttress projections occur at the western angles of the nave and porch, in the fragment which remains of the south wall of the chancel, and at the outer angles of the side chapels. Small buttresses are also found at the angles and on the sides of St Peter's on the Wall in Essex. § 11. In one respect the plan of St Pancras at Canterbury is allied to that of the church at Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire. At Bradford there remains one of the two porches, which also were probably side chapels, projecting from the sides of the nave. But at Bradford the remaining porch is larger in proportion to the nave than is the case at St Pancras. There is no entrance porch on the west side. Further, the chancel at Bradford is rectangular, not apsidal. Instead of a screen-wall with a central opening nine feet wide, the wall dividing nave from chancel is pierced by a small arch only 3 ft. 6 in. wide. The date of this little church is a matter of great difficulty; and the character of its masonry seems to demand for it a later date than the early one popularly claimed for it. The contrast with St Pancras is accentuated further by the fact that the internal measurements of the nave show a different scheme of proportion. The nave of St Pancras is some three feet broader in proportion to its length than the much shorter nave at Bradford. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of Escomb--typical Saxon church.] § 12. A closer parallel to Bradford-on-Avon is found in the little church of Escomb, near Bishop Auckland. No record of the early history of this building is known; but its masonry is almost entirely composed of re-used Roman dressed stone-work. In this respect it presents a contrast to Bradford. In another respect the two churches are unlike. Both have their entrances in the side walls; but at Escomb there were no original porches covering the doorways, while there are traces of what may have been an entrance porch, like that of St Pancras, at the west end. But they have these points in common: (1) the nave at Escomb is long in proportion to its width; (2) the chancel is a rectangular eastern projection, narrower and much shorter than the nave; (3) there is a solid wall of division between nave and chancel, pierced by a narrow arch, broader than that of Bradford, but very much higher in proportion to its width. It may be added that the walls of both churches are high in proportion to their length and breadth, and that at Escomb the original windows are small openings with rounded and flat lintel-heads, and with internal splays. § 13. It is, however, with the plan that we are concerned. We now have met with three separate forms in England, viz. (1) the rare basilican plan; (2) the "Kentish" plan of aisleless nave with apsidal chancel; (3) the plan of aisleless nave with rectangular chancel. We also have seen that the screen-wall is common to (1) and (2), while the single chancel arch belongs to (3); and that side chapels and western porches are found incidentally in (2) and (3). Now, the early date of Escomb, apart from the evidence supplied by its masonry, can be suspected only by its analogy to the plan of other churches of which the date is practically certain. Two such churches remain in the same county of Durham. One is at Monkwearmouth, now a part of Sunderland. Its nave and the lowest stage of its western tower represent, and in great part actually are, the nave and western porch of an early Saxon church, which is generally identified with the church built here by Benedict Biscop for the monastery which he founded in 672 A.D. The nave was originally aisleless, long, narrow and lofty: the entrance porch had an upper story finished with a gabled roof, and a vaulted ground-floor with entrances on three sides. There was evidently a chancel arch, and probably the chancel was rectangular. The material of the building was not Roman; but, in the decoration applied to it, Roman work was imitated. Only a few miles further north, Benedict founded, in 680 A.D., the sister monastery of Jarrow. The long and narrow chancel of the present church of St Paul was the body of a church somewhat similar to that of Monkwearmouth. Stone-work which may represent the jambs of a broad chancel arch can be traced in the east wall; but this cannot be stated with positive certainty. The lower part of the tower, now between the present chancel and nave, may represent an original western porch; but, in its present state, it is of much later date than the work east of it, and its site must have been broadened when the tower was first planned. At Jarrow there is no Roman stone-work; but one type of Roman masonry has been imitated by the builders in the walls of the chancel, and small decorative shafts, turned in a lathe after the Roman fashion, such as exist at Monkwearmouth, have been found in the building. The inscribed stone, recording the dedication of the church, is preserved in the wall above the western tower-arch: the date given is 23 April, 684 A.D. In this inscription the building, though aisleless, is called a basilica. The word was now probably used to signify a Christian church, irrespective of its plan. A third early church in this district is that of Corbridge, near Hexham. Here, as at Monkwearmouth, the ground story of the tower was originally a western porch; while the lofty arch between tower and nave is, like the chancel arch at Escomb, entirely composed of dressed Roman masonry, and seems to have been removed from one of the buildings of the Roman station of Corstopitum, as the arch at Escomb was probably removed from the not far distant station of Vinovium. § 14. The date to which these four northern churches may be assigned is the half century of the activity of St Wilfrid in England (664-709 A.D.). Bede's account of the architectural work of Wilfrid's friend, Benedict Biscop, shows that he procured, for the building of the church at Monkwearmouth, stonemasons and glaziers from Gaul, who were acquainted with "the manner of the Romans." The account which another contemporary, Eddius, gives of Wilfrid's church at Hexham, is clear proof that this important building was a reproduction, in plan and elevation, of the aisled basilicas of the continent--a fact in keeping with Wilfrid's life-long aim of bringing English Christianity into closer touch with the main current of historic Christianity in Rome and Gaul. The foundations of the outer walls of most of Wilfrid's church were uncovered when, lately, the new nave of Hexham priory church was begun; but one of its features has been long known, and is of the highest interest. The crypt for relics below the apse and high altar consists of an oblong chamber, with a western vestibule, approached by a straight stairway from the nave. In addition to the western stair, there are two stairs which communicated with the apse. That on the south side remains perfect, and ends in a passage and vestibule, through which the relic-chamber is entered. The northern stairway leads through a passage to the western vestibule, at the foot of the stair from the nave. The crypt of Wilfrid's contemporary basilica at Ripon also remains: here the arrangement is less complicated; but the arrangement of the main relic-chamber is equally the chief feature of the plan. § 15. The foundations of the Saxon church at Peterborough present many difficulties, and may be of a later date than the foundation of the monastery in 655 A.D. But no such difficulties of date or plan exist with regard to the large Saxon church at Brixworth, between Northampton and Market Harborough. Its size and the fact that Roman material has been much re-used in its building have given rise to the tradition that it is a secular basilica applied to the purposes of a Christian church. As a matter of fact, the Roman brick-work has been re-used in obvious ignorance of Roman methods; so that this circumstance alone would make the legend improbable. The date of the building can hardly be earlier than about 680 A.D., when a monastery was founded here by a colony of monks from Peterborough. The plan originally consisted of (1) a western entrance porch, with a lofty western doorway, and smaller doorways on north and south; (2) a broad nave, divided from the aisles by arches, which spring from large square piers of plain brick-work; (3) a rectangular presbytery, divided from the nave by a screen-wall pierced with three arches; (4) an apsidal chancel, entered from the presbytery by a single arch. On each side of the chancel arch, a doorway entered into a narrow vaulted passage below the ground level, which probably formed an aisle round a crypt below the apse. At a later date, probably in the period of quiet following the later Danish invasions, the apse seems to have been rebuilt, polygonal externally, semi-circular on the inside, and the central crypt-chamber was then possibly filled up. The western porch was also used as the foundation for a tower, and the western arch blocked up with a filling containing a lower doorway, through which the circular turret for the tower-stair was entered. The aisles, either then or at a somewhat later date, having probably fallen into ruin, were removed. The clerestory of the nave remains, with unusually broad round-headed windows. § 16. The original plan of Brixworth has points in common with some of the other plans which have been noted. In its triple arched screen-wall it recalls the Kentish type of church; its rectangular presbytery between nave and apse is a development of the chancel space which existed west of the spring of the apse at St Pancras. It shares its western porch with St Pancras and two, if not four, of the northern group of churches. In the north and south doorways of this porch it has kinship with Monkwearmouth, and at Brixworth there are definite signs that these doorways led into passages which may have been connected with other buildings of the monastery, or possibly even with an _atrium_ or fore-court. The aisled nave and the traces of a crypt bring it into relation, not merely with Hexham or Ripon, but with the historical church plan of western Europe generally. At the same time, the plan, regarded as that of an English church, is exceptional. The aisled plan of the parish church was arrived at in spite, not in consequence, of the few early aisled churches which might have supplied it with a model. During the epoch which followed the Danish invasions the aisleless plan was deliberately preferred: the rectangular chancel entirely superseded the apse. No further example of the structural screen-wall occurs. In addition to those mentioned, only three more pre-Conquest examples of crypts are known, and such crypts as occur in parish churches after the Conquest are exceptional, and are usually due to exigencies of site. Only three more aisled churches of unquestionably pre-Conquest date exist above ground. Reculver has been mentioned. The others are Lydd in Kent, where only indications of an arcade remain, and the complete basilican church of Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, which has a polygonal apse with a crypt below. Wing is probably much later in date than most of Brixworth, but one cannot but be struck by a certain resemblance in construction between the two naves, and in plan between the crypt at Wing and the remains of the crypt at Brixworth. § 17. These early churches have been treated at some length, because they contain certain essential elements of planning in a state of probation. The basilican plan was doubtless the ideal of English builders during the sixth and early seventh centuries, but an ideal which was hard to compass where good building material was not plentiful. Thus Augustine and his companions contented themselves in most instances with a plan which recalled the aisled basilica, without following out its more elaborate details. It is remarkable that they should have departed from the usual Roman custom, and made their chancels at the east end of their churches: it is also remarkable to find at St Pancras the western porch, the origin of which appears to be the non-Roman _narthex_. Models existed, no doubt in the ruins of the Romano-British churches, which they repaired; and we have seen that at Silchester there is a regular _narthex_, while, on the other hand, there is a western apse. These models, however, were probably all of one general type, in which the chancel end was formed by an apsidal projection. When Roman Christianity reached the north, it had to contend with the efforts of Celtic missionaries; and those efforts were not met by it effectively until, in 664, the energetic leadership of Wilfrid secured a triumph for his party at the council of Whitby. Of the Celtic churches of the north we know but little: it seems likely that they were for the most part plain oratories of stone or wood, with or without a separate chancel. The simplest form, obviously, which a church can assume is a plain rectangle with an altar at one end. As the desirability of a special enclosure for the altar is recognised, a smaller rectangle will be added at the altar end of the main building, and so the distinction between nave and chancel will be formed. There are indications of this natural growth of plan in some of the early religious buildings in Ireland. In remote districts, as in Wales, the simple nave and chancel plan is general all through the middle ages; and the smaller country churches often follow the common Celtic plan of a single rectangle with no structural division. The ruined chapel at Heysham in Lancashire, a work of early date, is an undivided rectangle in plan. This is the form which would suggest itself naturally to the unskilled builder: the division of nave and chancel into a larger and smaller rectangle is the next step which would occur to his intelligence in the ordinary course of things. It is possible that Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop found that their aims would be best served by adhering in certain instances to the familiar Celtic plan, and so, while they hired foreign masons and craftsmen to build and furnish their earlier churches, and to set the example of building stone churches after the manner of the Romans, they were careful to avoid the prejudice which insistence on a new plan would have excited. The simplicity, moreover, of a plan like that at Escomb, which requires little architectural skill to work upon, may have been a recommendation; and the fact that the construction of an apse is more difficult than that of a rectangular chancel must have weighed powerfully with English masons, both at this time and later. The fact remains that, in the early age of our church architecture in stone, the aisled basilica was a rare exception, and the rectangular chancel was, in the north, at least as common as the apse. CHAPTER II PARISH CHURCHES OF THE LATER SAXON PERIOD § 18. In later Saxon churches the aisleless plan and the rectangular chancel were normal. Instances of an aisled plan after the seventh century have been noted already: it has been seen that there are only two definite examples, and, although there may be indications of others, these are few and far between and uncertain. The apsidal chancel again is exceedingly rare. We have noted it in combination with other basilican features at Wing: the instances in which it occurs again are very few, and in these, as in the important monastic church of Deerhurst, there are other variations from the aisleless plan. In by far the largest number of examples, the plan adhered to was that simple one of which we have a complete prototype at Escomb. Late Saxon fabrics which remain free of later additions are few; but there is a considerable number of churches which still keep the quoins of an aisleless Saxon nave _in situ_, although aisles have been added during the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Such are St Mary-le-Wigford and St Peter-at-Gowts at Lincoln, Bracebridge in the western suburb of Lincoln, St Benet's at Cambridge, and Wittering, near Stamford. At Winterton in Lincolnshire large pieces of the western part of both walls of the nave were kept as an abutment to the tower, when aisles were added. Sometimes, as at Geddington and Brigstock in Northamptonshire, the whole wall above the nave arcades is the upper part of the wall of the aisleless building; and instances in which blocked window openings, of a not improbably pre-Conquest date, remain in walls that have subsequently been pierced with arcades, are exceedingly common. If an untouched Saxon nave is a rare thing, an unaltered Saxon chancel is obviously rarer. The small rectangular chancel of the large medieval church at Repton, in Derbyshire, is practically unique; it was probably preserved for the sake of the crypt beneath, which, at first a plain rectangular chamber, was subsequently, but still in pre-Conquest times, vaulted in compartments supported by columns. But at Sidbury in Devon, where there is a small rectangular crypt, the chancel above was rebuilt in the twelfth, and lengthened in the thirteenth century, without any reference to the line of the walls of the crypt below it. A good example of an unaltered late Saxon fabric is the church of Coln Rogers in Gloucestershire. Here the western tower, built up inside the nave, is a later addition, but the nave, rectangular chancel, and arch between them, are still intact. The chancel arch, though by no means broad, is yet much wider than those at Escomb and Bradford-on-Avon; and its width probably represents the normal width of a chancel arch of this period. § 19. An addition occurs in most of these late Saxon plans, which had a great influence on the subsequent, and even on the contemporary, development of the church plan. We have noted that at Rome and Ravenna towers formed no part of the original basilican plan, but were added later as _campanili_. In England it appears that the tower formed no part of the plan until, at any rate, the epoch of the Danish wars. Western bell-towers were very general by the beginning of the eleventh century. In most of these towers, the ground floor forms an entrance porch; but it does not follow that the western tower in England was generated by the heightening of the western porch. The porches of Brixworth and Monkwearmouth were probably not heightened until the western tower had come into existence elsewhere. An origin for the western tower has been sought in the fore-buildings which occur in some of the early German churches, and contain separate upper chambers. It may be that, derived from this source, the western tower superseded the porch, and, where porches existed, they were adapted to the new fashion. § 20. The towers of Earl's Barton, Barnack, and St Peter's at Barton-on-Humber, are perhaps the most obviously interesting relics of Saxon architecture which we possess. All are much larger in area than the normal western tower of the later Saxon period. Earl's Barton is a western tower, and its ground floor has probably always served as a porch: the rest of the church, however, is a medieval building of various periods. At Barnack, again, the complete plan of the Saxon church has been lost. Here, however, the western tower was something more than a porch. The doorway is not in the west, but in the south wall; and in the west wall, inside the church, is a niche with a triangular head, which was certainly neither doorway nor window, but a seat. Whether this implies that the ground floor of the tower was used for special religious functions, or for some purpose connected with the common life of the parish, is not clear; but it shows, at any rate, that there was some good reason for the unusually roomy planning of the tower. We stand on firmer ground at Barton-on-Humber. Here, again, a large medieval church exists to the east of the tower. But upon its western side is a small rectangular building of contemporary date, which was not a porch in front of the tower, but a westward extension of the body of the church, the main entrances being on either side of the tower. The foundations of a similar projecting building have been discovered to the east of the tower, beneath the floor of the later nave. It is therefore clear that the ground floor of the tower, or rather of a high tower-like building, formed the body of the church, and that the eastern projection was the chancel. There are clear indications at Broughton, also in north Lincolnshire, that this plan was used, at any rate, once again. The tower at Broughton is obviously later than that at Barton: the doorway, whose details are of a post-Conquest character, is in the south wall; and a large circular stair-turret, like that at Brixworth, projects from the west wall. Probably there was only a chancel here, and no western annexe to correspond. A similar stair-turret occurs at Hough-on-the-Hill, between Grantham and Lincoln: the tower, now western, has a doorway in the south wall, and probably stands mid-way in date between Barton and Broughton. It is planned on a very ample scale, with thin walls and a large floor-space. The main fabric of the church is altogether of a later date; and there are no indications, at any rate above ground, of an earlier building east of the tower. The size of the tower, the provision of a stair-turret, as at Broughton, to leave the ground floor clear, suggest that here we may have a third example of the plan in which the tower covered the main body of the church. The arrangement at Barnack gives grounds for a suspicion of something of the same kind there. In all these cases the tower has been a tower from the beginning; but at Barton-on-Humber the uppermost stage was added towards the end of the Saxon period. [Illustration: Fig. 4. St Peter's, Barton-on-Humber: from S.W.] § 21. In these buildings we seem to discover the influence of the centralised plan, acting through the channel of German art. It would be absurd to say that the plan of Barton-on-Humber was inspired by the plan of the palace-church at Aachen, which was an adaptation, with some improvement, of the plan of San Vitale at Ravenna. No masterly intellectual effort, such as the Aachen plan shows, was necessary to plan a rectangle with two smaller rectangles at either end. But the church at Aachen had made the centralised plan familiar to the builders of western Europe. In Germany and in France there are traces of its influence; and we may reasonably suppose that the builders of Barton-on-Humber were acquainted with the existence of an alternative to the usual plan of the church with a longitudinal axis, and did not arrive by haphazard at their concentration of the plan upon a central point. One earlier example of the centralised plan is known to have existed in England. In addition to his basilica at Hexham, Wilfrid had built another church there in the shape of a Greek cross. The description of it which we possess shows that the central space was the actual church, that it was tower-like in form, and nearly circular in shape, and that the arms were simply porch-like projections. Probably it was a combination of baptistery with tomb-church. It is not likely that the simple plan of Barton was derived from that at Hexham. Both were probably the result of continental influence; but, while the church at Hexham may have been the work of Gallo-Roman masons in direct communication with the general current of architectural progress, the church at Barton was probably built by Englishmen, who adapted the centralised plan to methods natural to their comparative want of skill. § 22. Neither at this time nor later did the centralised plan in England develop along the lines suggested by Barton-on-Humber. No real development on such lines was possible. In Germany, the achievement at Aachen made possible the polygonal nave of St Gereon at Cologne and the centralised plan of the Liebfrauenkirche at Trier, as well as many twelfth and thirteenth century churches whose complicated parts are planned and massed together with relation to a central tower space. In England, however, the habit of dealing with circular or polygonal forms made little progress; and our few "round churches," the plan of the naves of which was a devout imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and our polygonal chapter houses, are almost all that we have to show in the way of attempts at a definitely centralised plan. Our church plan develops as the result of an effort to combine a series of rectangles effectively; and, while this combination can be attempted in several different ways, it is obvious that the rigid lines of the rectangle do not admit of that free scope in centralised planning which is given by the circle or polygon. § 23. We have seen, however, that, even in the earliest days, there was a tendency to admit additions to the simple longitudinal plan, which, in process of time, were bound to give birth, if not to a definitely centralised plan, to something, at any rate, in which a central point counted for much. A feature of the early cathedral and of St Pancras at Canterbury, was the projection of _porticus_, porches or side chapels, from the nave. These were entered by archways pierced in the centre of the lateral walls. In the cathedral they had outer doorways, and formed the main entrances of the church, on the north from the monastery, on the south from the city. The south porch contained the altar of St Gregory, and, as Eadmer tells us, was used as a court of justice to which litigants, in process of time, resorted from every part of England. In the north porch, dedicated to St Martin, was held the school of the monastery. Upon both porches towers were built at a date which cannot be ascertained, but was probably later than the time of Augustine. Of the use of the porches at St Pancras, which did not contain outer doorways, it is impossible to say anything definitely. Entrance porches, of which one remains, projected from the sides of the church at Bradford-on-Avon: the outer and inner doorways of the north porch are extremely narrow, and are placed west of the centre of its north and south walls. It is possible, therefore, that there was an altar in this porch, so that it served the double purpose of entrance porch and side chapel. § 24. As time went on, the western porch beneath the tower was disused as a public entrance. The principal entrance of most churches is on the south side, west of the centre of the aisle wall, and is usually covered by a porch. There is a Saxon example of this at Bishopstone in Sussex, where, as at Bradford, room seems to have been left for an altar on the east side. However, the main entrance of the ordinary Saxon church was at the west end, through the ground floor of the tower. The porch in the lateral wall seems to have been regarded primarily as a side chapel; and in some later Saxon churches the porches were dissociated from lateral doorways, and were planned as closed projections from the eastern part of the north and south walls of the nave. This seems to have happened at Britford, near Salisbury, where archways remain on both sides near the east end of the nave. At Deerhurst square projections were entered from both sides of the nave, immediately west of the chancel arch; and it is probable that there were somewhat similar projections at Repton. At Worth in Sussex, where the north and south doorways of the nave are Saxon, and there is no western entrance or original tower, there are large Saxon chapels projecting from the eastern part of the nave, and entered by wide arches. The cruciform plan is sufficiently marked in the conjectural restorations of Deerhurst and Repton. At Worth it is quite unmistakable. § 25. At Worth, however, in spite of the dignity of the lateral arches, the chapels are still porch-like excrescences, larger in scale than usual, but lower in elevation than the nave. In elevation their transept-like appearance is less noticeable than on plan. Moreover, the length of the nave remains unbroken from west wall to chancel arch: no central space is marked off to which these transeptal projections give emphasis. Nevertheless, a suggestion of an intermediate space between nave and chancel is given; and this space is definitely marked in the plans of churches which may be quite as early in date as Worth--_i.e._ about the first half of the eleventh century--by the admission of a tower between nave and chancel. The eastern part of the walls of the nave at St Mary's in Dover Castle are continued upwards as a tower, with small rectangular chapels projecting from the sides of the ground floor. Externally, no division between the tower and nave is noticeable; but, inside the church, in addition to the chancel arch and the arches into the chapels, a fourth arch is pierced in the western wall of the tower, and so an intermediate space between tower and nave is effectually created. At Breamore in Hants, a further step is taken. The tower space, between nave and chancel, is of the same width as the nave; but, in addition to the necessary internal division, an external division is also marked by the quoins of the tower, which are complete to the ground. Only one chapel remains at Breamore, on the south of the tower, entered by a narrow Saxon archway; but there was originally another on the north. § 26. The chapels which project from these early "central" towers are, it is to be noted, not true transepts. They are narrower than the tower, which is built up from the ground, and not upon a system of piers and arches which require lateral abutments in the form of transepts. The western tower is transferred, as it were, to a point near the centre of the church, assumes the width of the nave, and is provided with transeptal excrescences, to communicate with which its side walls are pierced. Such excrescences are not necessary. At Stanton Lacy, in Shropshire, there is only one. At Dunham Magna, in Norfolk, and other places, such as Waith in Lincolnshire, there are, or were originally, none at all. The construction of the "central" tower upon piers connected by arches was beyond the skill of the ordinary Saxon builder; and its natural consequence, the development of the full cruciform plan, with transepts of the height and width of nave and chancel, was thus out of his reach. We know, from contemporary evidence, that one important abbey church, that of Ramsey, had a central tower which was built upon piers and arches as early as 974 A.D.; and perhaps this was the case in other large churches. But, even in the large church of Stow in Lincolnshire, which is commonly taken on trust, without sufficient historical evidence, as the cathedral church of the Saxon diocese of Lindsey, although an advance in transeptal construction was made, the main principle was imperfectly grasped. This church was made the home of a community of clergy about the beginning of the reign of Edward the Confessor, by Leofric, earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva. It was restored after the Conquest by Rémi, the first Norman bishop of Lincoln. The aisleless nave and chancel are Norman work of two periods: probably the nave was rebuilt upon Saxon foundations. The transepts, however, of considerable length and equal height with nave and chancel, were retained from the pre-Conquest building. The tall jambs of the arches of the central tower also remain on all four sides. The arches which they bear are of early Norman character; and the present tower is a late Gothic structure, the arches and piers of which are built up on the inner side of the older masonry. But the Saxon tower space, including the area of the arch-jambs, is rather wider than the arms of the cross which project from it. The tower formed a separate building, with quoins complete from the ground, and nave, chancel, and transepts, instead of combining to support it, were mere excrescences from it, entered by arches in its walls. Possibly the example of Barton-on-Humber may have had to do with this treatment of the tower as a separate central pavilion, which may have been deliberately preferred to the arch and pier treatment. In other respects the plan is an advance upon the plans of Dover and Breamore. And the necessary advance upon Stow is found in the church of Norton-on-Tees in south Durham. Here the tower, between nave and chancel, rests on piers connected by arches. The arches have been widened; two have been entirely rebuilt at a later date; and the rest of the church has been subjected at different times to enlargement and rebuilding. In spite of this, we have at Norton our earliest surviving example of a plan in which the various portions of the church--nave, chancel, and transepts--are gathered together in one structural connexion. The tower is to the east of the centre of the longitudinal axis of the church; but structurally, it is the central point with regard to which the building is planned, and the unity of the composition depends upon it. § 27. We have arrived thus at a centralised plan of cruciform shape, of which the component parts are rectangular, the central space being approximately a square. The examples which have been given cannot be proved to follow one another in chronological order, but they represent successive steps in planning and construction, of which Norton-on-Tees is the highest. The importance of the inclusion of the tower in the plan is obvious. In its early appearances, its position is unsettled, but the natural tendency is to place it above a main entrance; and this is usually at the west end of the building. Where the builders aim at a simple centralised plan, the high central rectangle will form, like the round or octagonal central space of Wilfrid's church of St Mary at Hexham, _ecclesia ... in modum turris erecta_, and, as at Barton-on-Humber, will possibly be heightened by a later generation into a real tower. The distinction of the side chapel from the entrance porches, becoming more fully recognised, will lead to the building of transeptal chapels at the east end of the nave; and thus an important addition will be made to the ordinary longitudinal plan. The need of some central building, against which these additions may abut, will be felt. The tower will thus be introduced between nave and chancel, either as an independent structure, or as an upward extension of part of the side walls. The transepts thus, as at Stow, can be raised to an equal height with nave and chancel. From this to a plan in which the component parts are recognised as interdependent, and are closely knit together in structural unity, is an obvious step. At this point, architectural skill, as distinct from mere building ingenuity, comes into play. § 28. As we proceed, we shall find survivals of old plans, even at an advanced period in the middle ages, which prove that progress in architecture was by no means of an uniform kind. Builders in remote, and especially in hilly, districts, from Saxon times to the present day, have naturally restricted themselves to plans which require as little cost as possible to carry out. Local building material is also an important consideration. In districts where good building stone is to be obtained on the spot, or where money is plentiful and water carriage is possible, the development of plan is naturally rapid, and every fifty years or so, additions to churches will be made in which the old plan will become entirely transformed. In woodland districts, the plan will be controlled to no small extent by the requirements of timber construction. In such regions, Saxon churches were probably built of wood. The only wooden church of Saxon times which remains is that of Greenstead in south Essex, with a rectangular chancel and aisleless nave constructed of vertical logs placed side by side, and framed originally into a timber plinth. However, it may be stated as a general rule, that, whatever may be the helps or hindrances to development provided by local materials, the real starting-point of the parish church plan of the middle ages is in every part of the country an aisleless plan; and that this plan consists either of a nave and chancel with a longitudinal axis, or of a nave and chancel whose longitudinal axis is intersected by a transverse axis across transepts. Variations, no doubt, occur; but these will never carry us far from one or other of these fundamental plans. The aisled basilica of the continent found no scope for itself in Saxon England; and it was through an interval of aisleless building that the aisled plan eventually became acclimatised, and then in a form which bears only a superficial kinship to the basilican plan. CHAPTER III THE AISLELESS CHURCH OF THE NORMAN PERIOD § 29. During the century after the Norman Conquest, the great abbey churches and cathedrals represent the work of a foreign architectural school, gradually acclimatising itself in England; while, on the other hand, the parish church continued to be planned by local men, open to receive the improvements which more skilled foreign masons had introduced. Consequently, while local art received a continually increasing refinement, the plan of the church developed upon traditional lines, and not upon those novel lines which foreign masons would have laid down for it. The chief proof of this is seen in the persistence of the aisleless plan with rectangular chancel and western tower. The tendency of a Norman builder would be to design his church with an apsidal chancel, transepts, and a central tower; his practice would vary, but this would be his favourite plan. On the other hand, the rectangular chancel and western tower remained the favourite terminations of the parish church in England. But, while a large number of rubble-built, unbuttressed Norman towers, usually heightened or otherwise altered in the later middle ages, remain in many parts of England, their relation to the plan suffers some change. The ground floor of the Saxon tower was, as we have noticed, the main entrance to the church. The Norman western tower either contained no western doorway at all, or provided merely an entrance, which was used only on special occasions. At Caistor the ground floor was probably the main porch of the aisleless church; and there are exceptional instances, as at Finchingfield in Essex, where, in fairly advanced Norman work, the same arrangement was clearly contemplated. On the other hand, at Laceby, between Caistor and Grimsby, a south doorway, coeval with the western tower, has always been the main entrance to the church. Similarly, at Hooton Pagnell, and at Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire, south doorways, of the same age as the tower, form the chief entrance. These last three are early Norman examples; but we may go back even further, to find the same thing in churches which are usually reckoned as late Saxon work, at Heapham in Lincolnshire, and Kirk Hammerton, between York and Boroughbridge. In south Yorkshire there are a few churches of the middle of the twelfth century whose western towers are noticeably derived, in their plan and general construction, from the Saxon type--Birkin, Brayton, and Riccall. But in all three, the main entrance to the church was made through a south doorway, the arch of which is covered with elaborate late Norman ornaments. The western tower was thus reduced to the state of a bell-tower at one end of the church, and, while increasing in size and in magnificence, was actually a less indispensable part of the plan than before. [Illustration: Fig. 5. Aisleless plan: 12th century.] § 30. The nave of the Norman aisleless church was usually short, and, where the church was entirely rebuilt, rather wide in proportion to its length. The naves of churches like Garton-on-the-Wolds or Kirkburn in Yorkshire, give the effect of spacious halls, of no great length, but wide and lofty. It cannot be doubted, however, that the fabric of the Saxon church was frequently kept, or that the church was rebuilt upon Saxon foundations. It is not unusual, as already stated, to find Saxon quoins still existing at the angles of naves to which aisles have subsequently been added. Evidences, on the other hand, of the westward lengthening of a Saxon nave in the Norman period appear to be rare. At North Witham in south Lincolnshire, the south and (blocked) north doorways are Norman work, in the usual position near the west end of the nave. East of them, however, in the centre of the nave walls, there are distinct traces of the inner openings of a north and south doorway, which may belong to the late Saxon period. That we have here a case of the twelfth century lengthening of an earlier nave may be inferred. The probability is increased by the fact that, in the neighbouring church of Colsterworth, where aisles were added during the early Norman period to a late Saxon fabric, the nave and aisles, towards the end of the twelfth century, were certainly extended a bay westward. As little architectural work is done without a precedent, we may assume that the builders at Colsterworth were following the example of North Witham. § 31. The great majority of Norman rectangular chancels have been lengthened and enlarged; for the plain "altar-house" at the east end of the nave was too small for the purposes of the ritual of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and afforded no intermediate space between nave and chancel. However, short and approximately square chancels were by no means invariable; and, before the middle of the twelfth century, oblong chancels of considerable length in proportion to their width were being built. There is a good early twelfth century example at Moor Monkton, in the Ainsty of York; and the chancel of the middle of the twelfth century at Earl's Barton, Northants, is of considerable depth, and was of ample size for all later purposes. At Earl's Barton the eastern portion was the chancel proper; while the western portion supplied that space for a quire which was not provided in less elongated plans. In by far the larger number of cases, the rectangular chancel had a wooden roof. There is, however, a fair number of churches in which the system of ribbed vaulting, as employed in larger buildings, was used. Thus at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, there is a small square chancel with a ribbed vault. At Warkworth, there is a long vaulted chancel of two bays, built during the first quarter of the twelfth century; and at Tickencote, Rutland, two bays are combined in one by the use of sexpartite vaulting. In these cases the chancel arches are wide, forming the western transverse arches of the vaulting: that at Tickencote is of remarkable magnificence. § 32. There are certain cases in which the chancel was of the same width as the nave, and no structural division existed between them. At Askham Bryan and at the chapel of Copmanthorpe, near York, the plan, externally and internally, is a plain undivided oblong. At Tansor, Northants, the chancel was rebuilt about 1140, when the side walls were set back in a line with those of the nave. In St Mary's in the Castle at Leicester, the long and very narrow nave was, as may still be clearly seen, continued eastward without a break into the long and narrow quire and chancel. Here the eastern half was used, no doubt, by the college of dean and canons, while the western half was the parish church. The beautiful church of St Peter, Northampton, built towards the end of the third quarter of the twelfth century, gives us a complete example of an undivided plan, aisled throughout save in the eastern bay, which forms a projecting chancel east of the aisles of the choir. § 33. Hitherto we have dealt merely with the rectangular chancel. But there are also churches which end in an eastern apse. These are comparatively few and exceptional. In Yorkshire, where the number of Norman rectangular chancels is large, and buildings such as Adel exhibit the aisleless church in its highest state of architectural development, the number of apsidal chancels can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Sussex, where Caen stone was largely used, and we should expect foreign influence to be noticeable, the proportion of apsidal chancels is small. In Gloucestershire, the Cotswold district contains several small Norman churches, which have been little altered: the rectangular chancel is universal. These are typical districts; and, to state a general rule, we may say that, while the apsidal chancel is foreign to no part of England, and occurs in unexpected places, as in the chapel of Old Bewick, Northumberland, it is never general in any single region. Its rarity is an important fact. Were our parish churches the work of masons sent out from the larger churches and monasteries, we should expect to find it a common feature; for in those buildings the apsidal plan prevailed. But, in the hands of local masons, its sparing employment is easily explained. To build an apse needs skill, not only in planning, but in stone-cutting. The question of vaulting the apse increases the difficulty and the expense. These difficulties would not trouble masons who had worked at the building of Durham or Ely or Winchester; nor would expense trouble the monasteries, which, according to the popular idea, were so ready to lavish money on the fabrics of parish churches. Many apsidal chancels have disappeared, no doubt; but, if we take the bulk of those which remain into account, we shall find that they have a habit of occurring in small groups, as in Berkshire, where three occur together within a single old rural deanery, and that the large majority of the churches in which they are found were not monastic property. A few belonged to preceptories of Knights Templars in their neighbourhood; and perhaps we may see in their apses a reference to the circular form of the Holy Sepulchre. But, as a rule, we may say that a band of masons in certain neighbourhoods developed some skill in building apses, that money was forthcoming, and that so a few examples came into existence. In one curious instance, Langford in Essex, which is within easy distance of four or five other apsed churches, there is an apse at the west, and there are foundations of another at the east end of the building. For this church a Saxon origin has been claimed: the plan, at any rate, indicates a survival of a plan once common in western Christendom, and especially in the German provinces. In apsed churches, like Birkin in Yorkshire, the apse does not spring from points directly east of the chancel arch. The arch is wide and lofty; behind it is a nearly square rectangular space, which is divided from the apse by another arch. At Birkin the apse has ribbed vaulting, which allows the walls to be pierced freely for windows. At Copford in Essex, Old Bewick, and other places, the roof is a half-dome without ribs: this allows for the display of mural painting, but admits of less light. [Illustration: Fig. 6. Birkin, Yorkshire: interior.] § 34. The most important feature in the apsidal plan is the provision of the distinctly marked quire space between the nave and chancel. This space also occurs in plans where the chancel is rectangular; but in such cases it becomes the ground story of a tower. There are famous examples of this at Iffley, near Oxford, and Studland in Dorset, where the chancels are vaulted. Coln St Denis in Gloucestershire, where the tower is of very wide area, and projects noticeably north and south of nave and chancel; and Christon in Somerset, are further instances of the plan. The tower between nave and chancel, without transepts, is seldom found in an apsidal plan. It occurs at Newhaven in Sussex, where there is a small apse. Here the plan is virtually that of some small parish churches in Normandy, such as Yainville, near Jumièges. The majority of such plans in England, however, end in a rectangular chancel. Precedent for the plan is, as we have seen, to be found in Saxon churches. At St Pancras, Canterbury, we have noticed the westward prolongation of the apse: at Brixworth a definite presbytery or quire space was planned, on a large scale, between apse and nave. In later Saxon churches, where the chancel was rectangular, a tower, with or without transeptal chapels, was sometimes built between nave and chancel; and here, although externally the division was not always clearly marked, an internal quire space was divided off from the nave by the western arch of the tower. The aisleless plan, therefore, with a tower above the quire, and a rectangular chancel, points to a development along old-fashioned lines, even in churches in which, as at Iffley, the builders have acquired great skill in expressing themselves in Norman terms. In certain districts, as in Gloucestershire, this plan was a favourite one. Even in the fourteenth century, Leckhampton church, near Cheltenham, was rebuilt in faithful adherence to this tradition. Here the tower is narrower than the small chancel, and the nave has a south aisle. [Illustration: Fig. 7. Two aisleless plans with central tower: (1) tower between nave and chancel; (2) tower over crossing of transepts with nave and chancel.] § 35. In the cases of Dover, Breamore, Stow, and Norton, we have watched the gradual evolution of the cruciform plan with central tower. It must be noted once more that to the cruciform plan the central tower built on piers and arches is essential. It is possible, as in the Gloucestershire churches of Almondsbury and Avening, to pierce the north and south walls of a tower and add transeptal chapels: the plan will have a cruciform appearance, but will still be only an elongated plan with lateral additions. It is possible, in a church where there is no central tower at all, to extend the side walls at right angles north and south, and so form transepts; but here again the transepts have no structural reference to a central point in the plan, but are mere widenings of the nave or aisles. The thirteenth century aisleless churches of Potterne, in Wiltshire, and Acton Burnell, in Shropshire, are both cruciform in plan. The church at Potterne was planned throughout with reference to the crossing of transepts, nave, and quire, above which its central tower rose: the tower space is the central point of the whole. But, at Acton Burnell, there is no central tower or space: the body of the church consists of a long aisleless nave and an aisleless chancel beyond; and the transeptal chapels are simply stuck on, as it were, to the eastern part of either wall of the nave. This is at once noticeable in elevation, when the chapels are seen to be mere excrescences, with roofs lower than the nave. Moreover, where there is a true central crossing, with a tower above, such as we find in almost all our cathedrals, a transept on either side is necessary for the support of the tower. The transepts need not be wholly symmetrical, although in most cases they are; but they must be there. On the other hand, where there is no central tower, and the crossing is merely apparent, symmetry of treatment is quite unnecessary. While there are two transeptal chapels of similar size at Acton Burnell, or at Achurch in Northamptonshire, there are far more instances in which a less regular treatment was adopted. Thus, at Childs Wickham in Gloucestershire, and Montacute in Somerset, there is only one transeptal chapel, in each case on the north side. At Corbridge in Northumberland, transeptal chapels, extended outwards from the aisle walls, are of different lengths. At Medbourne in Leicestershire, a long aisleless transeptal chapel was built out from the north side of the nave in the thirteenth century. Within the next fifty years a south chapel was built, but, instead of copying the proportions of the northern chapel symmetrically, the builders gave their new chapel a much greater width, and placed its altars in an eastern aisle. The plan is thus accidentally cruciform. At Acton Burnell and Achurch it is, no doubt, designedly cruciform; at Montacute and Childs Wickham, imperfectly cruciform. But all three varieties belong to one class, the longitudinal plan with transeptal extensions. The structural feature which makes the truly cruciform plan, the central tower upon arches and piers, is wanting. And this distinction between churches planned from a centre, and churches whose plan follows a longitudinal axis, although often overlooked, is essential. [Illustration: Fig. 8. North Newbald, Yorkshire: tower arches, chancel and S. transept, from N.W.] § 36. A noble example of a Norman cruciform church, whose plan has suffered little alteration, exists at North Newbald in the east Riding of Yorkshire. At each angle of the crossing are masses of shafted piers, connected by wide and lofty rounded arches. The nave, as is usual, is the longest arm of the four, so that the plan is a Latin cross. It has north and south doorways: there are also doorways in the end walls of the transepts, placed in the western part of each wall. In the east wall of each transept is an arch, now blocked up, the filling being pierced with fifteenth century windows. These arches are the openings of original apses, which contained the transept altars. The chancel, probably always rectangular, was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. As a corollary of the true cruciform plan, the four arms are all of equal width. At Bampton-in-the-Bush, Oxon, where the plan of the church was greatly altered in the thirteenth century by the addition of aisles, the Norman plan was very similar to that of North Newbald. The cruciform plan of Melbourne, Derbyshire, with its aisled nave, was probably inspired more directly by continental examples. The aisleless chancel was vaulted, and ended in an apse, which was squared in later times by the addition of a rectangular piece east of its springing points. Out of the east walls of the short transepts opened wide apses, the walls of which joined the western ends of the walls of the chancel. Thus, externally, the plan of the eastern part of the church was closely allied to the plan with three apses which, in some of our larger churches, was derived from Normandy. At Melbourne, however, there are important variations from this plan. The chancel is short, there are no quire aisles, and the transept apses were rounded externally. In the larger churches of Normandy, the side apses were at the end of the quire aisles, and were usually squared externally, while the apses projecting from the east walls of the transepts, as at Saint-Georges-de-Boscherville, were left rounded. At Newbald and Bampton there seems to have been no attempt to give complete unity of design, as at Melbourne, to the rectangular chancel and transeptal apses. In any case, transeptal apses were the exception in the plans of our Norman cruciform churches, although their convenience for holding altars is obvious. § 37. The cruciform plan, beautiful as it is, was never generally adopted. It was inconvenient for purposes of public worship, as long as the rounded arch remained fashionable. In our own day, even in churches where the central tower is carried on high pointed arches, and the view of the altar is practically unhindered, the chancel is cut off from the nave by the crossing, and the acoustic problem, which in modern church planning is so necessary a consideration, is almost insurmountable. In the middle ages, this problem was not so acute; but it was undesirable that the interior of the chancel should be nearly invisible from the nave. At Newbald the tower arches are planned upon a liberal scale: at Bampton, on the other hand, where the eastern tower arch is left, the others having been rebuilt in the thirteenth century, it is very low. The low tower arches at Burford, Oxon, and the narrow arches at St Giles, Northampton, are examples of the way in which the supports of the Norman central tower interfered with the internal convenience of churches. It was not until much later that this difficulty was solved, and then only in one or two cases, when the cruciform plan had become exceptional. The plans of Bampton, Burford, and Witney, show how the builders of west Oxfordshire experimented in cruciform planning. The division between chancel and nave is felt much less at Witney than in the other two churches; for the great thirteenth century tower and spire, resting upon massive piers joined by pointed arches, throw a considerable portion of their weight upon nave and transept arcades, whose exceptional massiveness gives unity to the whole design. In the fifteenth century, however, the rebuilders of the aisleless church of Minster Lovell, between Witney and Burford, solved the problem by removing the supports of their square central tower from the angles of the crossing to points entirely within the church, and building arches from the piers thus formed to the angles of the crossing. The comparatively light piers, instead of hindering the view, allow of easy access from the nave to the transepts, and there is hardly a point in the body of the church from which seeing and hearing alike are in any way impeded. With the earlier builders, however, the natural course was to leave the piers where they were, and endeavour to lighten them as far as possible; and, in aisled churches, the difficulties involved often led to the abandonment of the complete cruciform plan. § 38. The cruciform church gives occasion for a brief remark on one aspect of medieval building which is often exaggerated. The revival of interest in medieval architecture, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was accompanied by an insistence on symbolism in the plan and design of churches. A minute symbolism, which often was the fruit of pious imagination, or was derived from the fancies of post-medieval writers on ritual, was read into every detail of the medieval church fabric. It is true that, as has been said, some builders worked imaginatively, imitating in the round naves of a few churches the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Other instances of devout imitation might be found, if we looked for them. But the imitation of a concrete model is a different thing from translating abstract mysteries into the plan and elevation of a building. And, although the ground plan with nave, transepts, and chancel, certainly forms a cross; and, although, as time went on, the resemblance to the chief symbol of the Christian faith was no doubt recognised and valued, the plan itself, as we have shown, came into being from entirely natural causes. Where the central tower was introduced, the plan was dictated by structural necessity. Where there was no central tower, transeptal chapels provided accommodation for altars, for which the body of the church afforded no convenience. In this and in other cases, medieval builders were impelled by practical common sense and the requirements of the services of the church; and symbolism, if it was a consideration at all, was purely secondary. CHAPTER IV THE AISLED PARISH CHURCH I. NAVE, TOWER, AND PORCHES § 39. The variations of the aisleless plan, which have been indicated, are all of which it is capable. Naturally, after the twelfth century, many aisleless churches were still built, and are common in country districts. In their humblest form we find them in the small churches of highland regions, the masonry of which is so rough that their date is often a matter of doubt. Sometimes they have been rebuilt, with a lengthened chancel, as at West Heslerton, near Scarborough. In many instances, we have aisleless country churches rebuilt in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with western towers. This, uncommon in no part of England, is especially common in Norfolk and Suffolk; and some of these churches, like Ranworth in Norfolk, have much dignity and spaciousness of proportion. In some late Gothic churches the structural division between nave and chancel is left out, and the building has been deliberately planned as a spacious aisleless rectangle, of which the eastern bay is allotted to the chancel. This happens at Temple Balsall in Warwickshire and the chapel of South Skirlaugh in Yorkshire. Aisleless plans with one or two transeptal chapels are to be found all through the middle ages: Acton Burnell represents a thoroughly symmetrical employment of this type. On the other hand, aisleless cruciform plans with central towers are by no means common after the twelfth century. Potterne is a perfect development of this plan in the thirteenth century. There is a complete aisleless cruciform plan at Othery, near Bridgwater, where the tall central tower is quite out of proportion to the humble church above which it rises, and has necessitated substantial outer buttressing. Here probably the church was rebuilt on earlier foundations, transepts being possibly added. In many instances an aisleless cruciform church seems to have been rebuilt on the lines of a complete Norman plan. This was with little doubt the case at Acaster Malbis, near York, where the church is planned with direct relation to the central space, but without a tower; and the foundations of earlier walls can be traced all round the building, at the foot of the walls built in the fourteenth century. The absence of the tower is an anomaly, but is one method of solving the problem of the connexion between nave and chancel in the cruciform plan. § 40. Thus, if here and there we can detect novelties which make for improvements upon the aisleless plan, the plan itself is subject to no general development upon its own unelastic lines. The real course of development is to be traced in the gradual addition of aisles to the church. Just as the basilica may have come into existence by the addition of aisles to an aisleless building, so the parish church was enlarged by the piercing of its walls for columns and arches, and the incorporation of aisles with the main building. The usefulness of aisles is at once apparent. They afford greater space for the distribution of the congregation. The aisleless church may be inconveniently crowded from wall to wall: on the other hand, where spaces are left between the nave and side walls, the congregation will mass itself in the nave, but the aisles will be left free until the nave is filled, and thus there will be free access through the side doorways for as long a time as possible. Aisles also afford a clear space for processions, and allow them to turn inside the church at a certain point and without difficulty. In addition to this, aisles form a convenient situation for the smaller altars of a church, and, from an early date, were added with this view. § 41. A parish church usually contained more than one altar, even if served by a single priest. In the small aisleless church of Patricio in Breconshire, in addition to the altar in the chancel, there were two smaller altars, which still remain in place, on either side of the central doorway of the rood screen. Such altars were dedicated in honour of various saints; and mass would be said at them on the festivals of those saints and on other occasions. The various popular devotions which came into being in the middle ages, led to the multiplication of special altars and chapels. In cathedral and abbey churches, where there were many priests, the provision of a number of altars was, from the first, a necessity. To this is due the adoption, from the beginning, of the aisled plan in our larger churches, where it is a direct inheritance from the basilican plan. At Norwich and at Gloucester, for instance, the apse was provided with an encircling aisle, which gave access to small apsidal chapels. The transepts also had eastern chapels ending in apses. At Durham each transept had an eastern aisle, containing a row of such chapels; and the abnormal development of the transepts in thirteenth century churches, as at York, Lincoln, and Salisbury, and the occasional provision of an eastern transept, or of a great transverse eastern arm, like the Nine Altars at Fountains and Durham, was made with a view to the continually growing number of altars and daily masses. In Cistercian abbeys, the churches of which were wholly devoted to the uses of the monastery, the aisles of the nave were divided into chapels by transverse walls. In the secular cathedral of Chichester, where the aisles had to be left free, outer aisles, similarly divided, were made. Great French cathedrals, like Amiens, not only have a complicated series of chapels opening from the aisles of the apse, but have their naves lined with chapels, which were formed by removing the outer walls of the aisles to a level with the outer face of the buttresses. The ordinary parish church had no need of these elaborate arrangements, although in towns and in districts where money was plentiful and its possessors recognised its true source, plans hardly less spacious than those of the cathedral and monastery churches came into being. But it is obvious that, in a church where there were no more than two or three altars, space would be gained by removing them from the body of the church to the end of the aisles. In some twelfth century churches there were probably altars against the wall on either side of the narrow chancel arch; and, in later days, as at Ranworth and Patricio, when the rood screen filled the lower part of a broad arch, altars were placed against the screen. In the first case, the chancel arch might have been widened; in the second case, the sides of the screen would have been freed, by the addition of aisles into which the altars could have been removed. § 42. The most common plan of the aisled church is formed by an aisled nave with a long aisleless chancel, western tower, and south porch. So common is this that it may be spoken of as the normal plan of the larger English parish church. There must have been, we already have said, a very large number of aisleless churches in England at the time of the Conquest. Where Norman builders reconstructed parish churches, they showed a distinct preference for the aisleless plan. But, in many churches, built about or soon after the beginning of the twelfth century, aisles were planned and executed. The walls of earlier churches were entirely taken down, and new arcades built in their place, not necessarily on the precise line of the old foundations. Aisled twelfth century naves on a magnificent scale may be seen, for example, at Melbourne in Derbyshire, and Sherburn-in-Elmet, between York and Leeds. Both places were important episcopal residences: Melbourne belonged to the bishops of Carlisle; the manor of Sherburn was the head of a barony of the archbishops of York, who, all through the middle ages, did much to promote architecture on their domains. Another twelfth century nave of great magnificence is that of Norham-on-Tweed, which belonged to the cathedral priory of Durham; and, although we must not assume that it was built at the expense of the monastery, it doubtless owes its stately proportions to the influence of the mother house. Less imposing in elevation, but richer in refined detail, are such aisled naves as those of Long Sutton in south Lincolnshire, and Walsoken in west Norfolk, which belong to the later part of the twelfth century. The plans in each case are very regular; and the new arcades were probably built, at any rate in part, on older foundations. These naves reach the extent, unusual in a parish church, of seven bays. The nave of Norham is of five bays. Melbourne has five bays, but the plan of the church was as exceptional at the west as at the east end. Western towers were planned, but not completed, at the end of either aisle: this feature, probably imitated from Southwell minster, was also contemplated at Bakewell in Derbyshire. Between the towers was an extra western bay of the nave, divided into two stories, the lower forming a vaulted return aisle, the upper forming a gallery. There are only four bays at Sherburn, but here the aisles were continued as far as the western face of the tower. The tower is thus engaged within the aisles, and its vaulted ground floor forms, like the western bay at Melbourne, a return to them. § 43. But, when the question of adding aisles to a church arose, the builders were met by the difficulty that the church was wanted constantly for service. The taking down of the walls and the building of new arcades interfered with this necessary use of the fabric. In our own day a congregation, driven out by builders or restorers, can resort to a school room or mission room. In the middle ages, these alternatives were unknown; and the church was positively indispensable. With this in view, the builders were obliged to add their aisles without touching more of the main fabric than they could help. Usually, then, they took the length of the existing aisleless building for the length of their aisles. They then set out the aisles upon either side of the church, building the outer walls, and dividing them into bays by external buttresses. Then, opposite each buttress, they proceeded to break through the walls of the church. Leaving a piece of the old wall to serve as a footing for each column, they built up the columns in the thickness of the wall, the masonry being gradually removed as each rose in height. The arches were made in the same way, the wall being removed by degrees until the two sides of each arch met at the key-stone. The aisles were then roofed, and, finally, the masses of wall which still remained beneath each arch were broken down, and the nave and aisles thrown into one. The old masonry could be removed through the doorways of the aisles; and sometimes one of the end walls of either aisle was left unbuilt to the last, so that the masons could have free entrance for new, and exit for old, material. The old walls of the nave, above the columns and arches, were left untouched. In this way the upper parts of the walls of several Saxon naves--more, probably, than we have opportunity of discovering--remain to us. The north wall at Geddington in Northamptonshire is the most striking instance. The practice was so common as to be general. In hundreds of country churches the plinths on which the columns of the nave rest are probably pieces of the foundation of the older wall, refaced, or even left in the rough. Instances are nearly as common in which the heads of the new arches have blocked earlier windows; for, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when glass was rare and expensive, and the openings were usually closed by latticed shutters, the windows were set high in the wall. There is a remarkable example of the retention of old work at Seamer, near Scarborough. To this fine twelfth century aisleless church a north aisle was added in the fifteenth century. The builders, possibly wishing to avoid expense, employed the old method, which in those days of prosperity and general rebuilding had fallen into disuse. In order not to interfere with the older windows, they deliberately made their arches very low: the result is that, from the interior of the aisle, one can see that the old wall was almost entirely kept, the new columns being built up on the line of the flat pilaster buttresses, which were left unaltered above the capitals. Sometimes, the connexion between nave and aisles was made by cutting arches at intervals in the wall, without building columns. The north arcade at Billingham in Durham, and the thirteenth century arcades at Tytherington in Gloucestershire consist of arches with large masses of the earlier wall left between them. Such a method was economical, as much less dressed stone was required; and we find it employed at Copford in Essex, where good building stone was hard to get. Nevertheless, it prevented the free circulation of light from the windows of the aisles, and practically shut off the aisles from the church. [Illustration: Fig. 9. Gretton, Northants: arcade of nave showing blocked window head.] § 44. There is one obvious consequence of the setting out of aisles on either side of an existing building which, although an imperfection in itself, contributes greatly to the variety of the parish church plan. The builders cannot see both their aisles at one and the same time: the older church comes in between. In fact, until the nave and aisles are actually joined, at the close of the work, by the breaking down of the walls beneath the arches, there can be no opportunity of appreciating the full effect of the work. There is a famous instance at Beverley minster of the mistakes to which the presence of the older building may lead. The aisles of the nave were set out in the fourteenth century on either side of an older and shorter nave. The south aisle was set out first, the width of the eastern bay being measured from a new buttress in the angle of nave and transept. On the north side there was a thirteenth century buttress in this position: the builders, in setting out their north aisle, overlooked the fact that this buttress was of less projection than the newly built one on the other side, with the result that their buttress measurements throughout varied on both sides, while the standard of width between the buttresses, which had been employed on the south side, was retained. Consequently, as the columns, in a vaulted church, have to be built in line with the buttresses of the corresponding aisle walls, the columns were not opposite one another, and the discrepancy increased as the church advanced westward. When the builders got clear of the intervening building, in the western bays of the nave, they were able to rectify their mistake slightly; but the effect is unpleasantly noticeable in the obliquity of the transverse arches of the vaulting. § 45. If errors like this could take place in churches where the width of the bays of the aisles was calculated, they were much more likely to take place where builders worked with less accurate ideas of measurement. In an unvaulted church, where the pressure of the roof is not a serious factor in the construction, the exact correspondence of pier to buttress need not be taken into account; and there are many churches in which the spacing of the aisles is quite independent of that of the arcades. This happens at Melbourne, where the church was not planned for stone vaulting. The builders seem to have thought that they could get in six bays between the transept and the space planned for one of the western towers; but found that, on the measurements they had adopted, there was room only for five. They corrected their miscalculation by broadening the division of the wall between the fourth and fifth bay of the aisles. When they came to build the arcades, they were conscious of their previous error, and planned them in five equal bays irrespective of the plan of the aisles. In churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially in districts like Norfolk or south Lincolnshire, where much rebuilding was done, the regularity of plan is often remarkable. The nave of the famous church of Heckington, near Sleaford, was planned with an exact correspondence between aisles and arcades: pier is opposite buttress, window opposite window. Islip and Brampton Ash in Northamptonshire show an equal accuracy. But, while such agreement is desirable, it is neither necessary nor general. And, where the arcades are broken through earlier walls, the correspondence is seldom very precise. The central line of the east walls of the aisles, as set out first, will usually correspond to a line drawn across the centre of the chancel arch: similarly, the line of the west walls will be an extension of the west wall of the nave, or of a line drawn across the tower arch. The aisles will be spaced into as many equal, or nearly equal bays, as can be got in between the buttresses at either end. When, however, the building of the arcade is taken in hand, the responds or half-piers at either end will seldom be built directly against the piers of the chancel arch, or against the west wall of the nave; but projecting pieces of the old walls will be left as a backing to them. It follows that, although the arcade may be divided into the same number of bays as the aisles, the standard of spacing will be different, and consequently, unless a very regular system of planning is adopted, the piers will not be exactly opposite the solid portions of the aisle walls, and consequently the centres of the arches will be out of line with the centres of the windows. Again, it may be that, by accident or design, the backing for the responds may project more on one side of the nave than on the other, at either or both ends. The result will be that the piers of one arcade will be out of line with those of the arcade opposite. That discrepancies of this kind were sometimes the result of intention cannot be denied; but there is generally some practical reason to be found for the intention, and the discrepancies themselves were a _pis aller_ which the builders would have avoided, if they could. That deliberate irregularity with which medieval masons are sometimes credited is a fancy, which careful consideration of the circumstances will dispel. § 46. Hitherto we have spoken of the aisled nave as though both aisles were planned at one and the same time. This, however, was by no means always the case. At Gretton in Northamptonshire, the north aisle was built soon after the beginning of the twelfth century: the south aisle followed twenty or thirty years later. The north arcade at Northallerton is of massive twelfth century work, with rounded arches: the south arcade was added in the thirteenth century, and has slender columns with pointed arches. In such cases, the north aisle may have been built first, to avoid interference with the burial ground south of the church. Very often only one aisle was added. The little church of Whitwell, Rutland, has a south aisle, added in the fourteenth century, with a chapel at its east end. No north aisle was built: but a drain in the north wall of the nave shows that there was a third altar against the north side of the rood screen. Usually, when one aisle was built long after another, the spacing of the new arcade was made to correspond with that of the old. If the old arcade had heavy twelfth century columns, the new one, with its lighter columns, would have broader arches. But it sometimes happens that the old spacing was disregarded, for very good reasons. The north arcade of Middleton Tyas church, in north Yorkshire, consists of six bays: the columns are heavy, the arches low and round headed, and very narrow. The interior of the church must have been very dark; and the builders of the south aisle, in the fourteenth century, aimed at throwing more light upon it. They therefore planned their new arcade, with broad pointed arches springing from octagonal columns, in four instead of six bays, and so, from broad windows in the aisle, introduced the necessary light. Something of the same kind happened at Theddingworth in Leicestershire: the effect is, of course, one-sided, but in both cases the light admitted enhances the merits of the earlier arcade, which, until then, had to be taken on trust. § 47. But there are further instances--and these, perhaps, are the most instructive--where aisles were not merely built at two different periods, but where the growth of one or both aisles was gradual. As an instance of this, may be cited the beautiful church of Raunds in Northamptonshire. Raunds seems to have been one of those cases in which the Norman chancel and nave were of the same width, and possibly were undivided by any chancel arch. In the thirteenth century the west tower and spire were built, and a broad south aisle was added to the nave. This aisle was of four bays, and the point at which it stopped probably marked the dividing line between the nave and chancel. However, the builders certainly intended to carry on the aisle eastward, as a south chapel to the chancel, which they now rebuilt and lengthened. Early in the fourteenth century, the south aisle was continued eastward, an arcade of five bays being added to the four bays already existing. The new bays were made rather narrower than those in the earlier part of the arcade. A strange feature of the new work was the insertion of a chancel arch, the south pier of which bisects one of the new arches. Thus, while three bays and a half of the new arcade belong to the chancel and quire, a bay and a half belong to the nave. The arch dividing the south aisle from the chancel chapel springs from the pier between the end of the old arcade and the inserted pier of the chancel arch. At the same time, the outer wall of the south aisle seems to have been practically rebuilt, although much of the older work was retained. There may have been a thirteenth century north aisle as well. Whether this was the case or no, a new north aisle and arcade were built during the fourteenth century. The aisle was set out in seven bays, six of which contained broad three-light windows, while a north doorway was made in the third bay from the west end. The east wall was built on foundations in a line with the chancel arch, while the west wall was in a line with the tower arch and west wall of the south aisle. It is obvious, therefore, that the planning of the new aisle was totally different from that of the older aisle and chapel. However, when the builders came to their arcade, instead of building it in seven bays, as the new aisle demanded, they built it in five, setting their new columns in a line with those on the opposite side. But while, on the south side, there was an awkward half-bay between the end of the arcade and the chancel arch, a solid piece of wall was left between the north pier of the chancel arch and the eastern respond of the new arcade. A compromise was thus effected between the aisles, and an appearance of regularity was ensured. Directly, however, one begins to examine the plan of the church, and to trace the transverse lines from window to window, and buttress to buttress, it will be found that only in one place can a line be drawn which will pass straight from the centre of one buttress to that of the buttress opposite, and will pass through the centre of the intervening columns on its way. [Illustration: Fig. 10. Plan of Raunds church, Northants.] § 48. It already has been shown that builders were very unwilling, in making their additions to churches, to destroy old work altogether. At times they displayed an extraordinary conservatism in their re-use of old material in their new work. This was not invariable. In the splendid churches of south Lincolnshire, during the fourteenth century, their aim seems to have been complete rebuilding; and such examples as the magnificent nave at Swaton, near Sleaford, or the neighbouring church of Billingborough, show how old work must have been swept away by the enthusiasm for lofty arcades, elaborately traceried windows, and walls of dressed stone-work. On the other hand, half the charm of the hardly less beautiful churches of Northamptonshire is the result of the clever way in which the masons dove-tailed all the old stone-work which was worth preserving into their new additions. Such churches as Tansor and Oundle are, for that reason, unexcelled in interest, offering, as they do, almost inexhaustible problems as to the development of their plan. In all parts of England we find that builders, whatever else they destroyed, carefully kept, as a general rule, the doorways, and especially the south doorway, of the buildings which they enlarged. This accounts for the large number of handsome Norman doorways which remain in the walls of aisles obviously later than the doorways themselves. At Birkin in Yorkshire, the south aisle was not built till the middle of the fourteenth century, but the doorway was removed to its new position from the wall of the aisleless church. One very exceptional case occurs at Felton in Northumberland. Towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, the west part of the south wall of the church was cut through, a chapel was added, and, east of the chapel, a porch was built. Rather more than fifty or sixty years later, it was determined to add a south aisle the full length of the nave. The width of the aisle was taken from that of the existing chapel and porch. To connect the chapel with the new work, the side walls of the porch were cut through. The outer doorway of the porch became the new south doorway, while the inner doorway was kept unaltered, as an arch in the new arcade. § 49. Features which have been touched upon in connexion with Raunds bring us to two new features in the plan--the rebuilding of aisles and the lengthening of churches westward. In most parish churches, aisles, when they were added at first, were extremely narrow. The west wall of Hallaton church in Leicestershire, for example, shows that, in the fourteenth century, originally narrow aisles were heightened and widened. The roof lines of the earlier aisles remain; they were clearly under the same roof as the nave of the church, and had very low side walls. This was not always the case. At Raunds the thirteenth century south aisle was always broad and lofty, and must have had its own roof from the first. And, as the principles of Gothic construction became more familiar, and the larger churches began to exercise a more wide-spread influence upon the parish church, aisles began to increase in breadth and elevation. The small and narrow windows of churches of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries gave way to the broad mullioned and traceried windows of fully developed Gothic work. For these, with their advantage of increased light, more headway was necessary. Aisle walls were consequently heightened or altogether rebuilt. The acutely pointed roof of the nave could no longer be continued downwards to cover these higher aisles. The aisle was consequently covered with a lean-to roof, or with a separate gabled roof of its own. A free increase in width was thus possible. The church of Appleton-le-Street in Yorkshire has a short nave with north and south aisles. The north aisle, added in the early part of the thirteenth century, is narrow, and the roof of the nave was continued over it. The south aisle, which was probably rebuilt a little before 1300, is broader and has a separate lean-to roof. The wide east window of this aisle could not have been introduced, had the south aisle been built to match the scale of the north aisle. [Illustration: Fig. 11. Plan of Harringworth church, Northants.] § 50. The introduction of more light, however, was not the only reason for the rebuilding and heightening of aisles. The east end of an aisle, as has been said, provided a convenient place for one of the side altars of the church. This was the case even in the narrow aisles of the twelfth and thirteenth century, many of which, like the north aisle of Great Easton church in Leicestershire, provided with a drain, aumbry, or a corbel for a statue, bear witness to the existence of a contemporary altar. At Harringworth in Northamptonshire there had been an aisleless church, to which a tower had been added at the end of the twelfth, and aisles early in the thirteenth century. On 24 October 1305 Edward I granted letters patent to William la Zouche, by which he had licence to assign a certain amount of land to two chantry chaplains in the chapel of All Saints. This may have been his private chapel, but was possibly in the church. A little earlier than this, to judge by the character of the architecture, a new north aisle had been built, with a new altar at the east end. Very soon after the granting of the licence, it would appear that the whole of the south arcade was taken down, and a new south aisle and arcade built. The work was done in a very conservative spirit, for the old thirteenth century porch and inner doorway were rebuilt on the new site, and an old string-course was re-used internally, beneath the new windows. The piscina and the three sedilia, which belonged to the altar at the end of the aisle, remain in the south wall, and there are corbels for statues on either side of the east window. However, rebuilding did not stop here; for it seems that, during the next few years, the north arcade was entirely rebuilt so as nearly to match that on the south. Thus the work, beginning with the north aisle, and extending over some thirty or forty years, finished on the side on which it began. Numerous examples of a closely parallel kind, fortified by documentary evidence, might be given. [Illustration: Fig. 12. Plans of Grantham church: (1) probable arrangement about 1190; (2) at beginning of 14th century.] § 51. The rebuilding of the south aisle, about 1313, at Newark, was the prelude to an entire rebuilding of the church, which extended over many years. The builders began by setting out their aisles as usual, and by the middle of the fourteenth century the south aisle was finished, and the lower courses of the north aisle and the new aisled chancel were built. However, in 1349, the Black Death interrupted the work. The north aisle and chancel were not completed, and the new arcades of nave and chancel were not built until the fifteenth century. In this case there were certainly older, and almost certainly narrower aisles. The rebuilding included aisles on a larger scale, and new internal arcades whose spacing corresponded to the spacing of the aisle walls. All systematic rebuilding, in the full development of Gothic art, began with the planning of the aisles. The naves of Cirencester and Northleach churches, rebuilt at the end of the middle ages, are examples of this method. The arcades at Cirencester are known to have been built about 1514-5; but the aisles were obviously completed first, and their remodelling may have been begun in the second quarter of the fifteenth century. At Northleach the nave was finished about 1458; and there seems to have been a break of some years between the building of the aisles and the destruction of the older church which, no doubt, lay within them. But it did not always happen that the full intention of the builders was carried out. One of the most splendid schemes which we possess for the enlargement of a parish church was the great enterprise begun at Grantham soon after the middle of the thirteenth century. An aisleless Norman church had been enlarged at the end of the twelfth century by the addition of aisles to the nave, the connexion being formed by arcades of rounded arches springing from very elegant clustered columns. Above the arcades were low clerestories, lighted by round-headed windows. About 1230, the neighbouring church of Newark was taken in hand by masons, who built a new west tower up to a certain height, and, as an afterthought, planned aisles to engage the tower completely. As we have seen, the building of the aisles at Newark upon their present scale did not begin till much later. The work of rebuilding at Grantham was clearly inspired by that already begun at Newark. A tower was planned on a site much to the west of the nave, and was engaged within very broad aisles. The tower and north aisle were set out first. The north aisle was divided into seven bays, with a large traceried window in each bay, the western bay being much wider between the buttresses than the rest, owing to the greater space taken up by the tower and its piers internally. The remaining six bays were set out with equal widths between the buttresses, the middle bay of the aisle being covered by a porch. The eastern bay overlapped the western part of the aisleless chancel, its western buttress being in a line with the division between chancel and nave. The western bay of the south aisle was set out about the same time, and there was, no doubt, an intention of proceeding with the rest on the same lines as in the north aisle. There can also be little doubt that the builders intended to take down the old arcades, and build new arcades, with spacing corresponding to that of their aisles, and to lengthen the chancel eastwards, while bringing its western portion into the nave. The tower and north aisle were built on the intended scale; and, when the tower had risen to a certain height, the ambition of the builders was fired to add to it an extra stage, hitherto uncontemplated, below the spire with which it was to be crowned. This project of giving their church a tower and stone spire, which remained, for many years, the loftiest in England, evidently curtailed the full accomplishment of their earlier plan. The columns of the old arcades were kept, and the tower was connected by arcades of two bays with the angles of the west wall of the old church; while an arch was pierced through the north wall of the chancel, to give access to the east bay of the new aisle. The new arches were pointed: in order to match them, the older round-headed arches were taken down, and pointed arches built, which cut into and blocked the clerestory windows. This change was made with great economy of material, the springing stones of some of the old arches being kept to afford footing for the new. When the south aisle was seriously begun, about 1300, similar economy was shown. Four bays, in addition to the western bay, were spaced out, without regard to the plan of the north aisle. The fourth bay from the west was covered by a porch, smaller than that on the north side; and the east wall of the aisle was probably built on a line with the division between nave and chancel. Half a century later, the east wall was taken down, and the south aisle was extended to the full length of the chancel; but this later development was not contemplated by the thirteenth century builders. These hesitations and changes, consequent upon the expense entailed by the north aisle and by the alteration in the elevation of the tower and spire, make Grantham second to no English church in interest. § 52. Grantham also provides us with a lengthened nave. The position of its earlier west wall is clearly shown by the masses of masonry which occur between the eastern bay of the new, and western bay of the old, arcade on either side. The responds on the eastern side of these pieces of wall are twelfth century work: on the west side, they belong to the later part of the thirteenth century. Such lengthening was probably very common in later Gothic times, and we may surmise that it took place in many instances where arcades were entirely rebuilt, and no visible trace of the process was left. However, there are many churches in which one or more extra bays have been added to the nave, and the join of the old and new work is marked as at Grantham. Whaplode church in south Lincolnshire had its early twelfth century nave lengthened by three bays about 1180. At Colsterworth, near Grantham, a western bay was added to the nave about the same time, and an earlier north aisle lengthened. Above the piece of wall which occurs between the older and newer work, the quoins of the aisleless church remain entire. Usually, as at Grantham, the lengthening of the nave was undertaken in connexion with a new western tower, which was built up outside the church, and then connected with it by one or two bays of arcading. Almost contemporary with the tower and spire of Grantham are those of Tilney All Saints, near Lynn. Here a single bay was added west of the late twelfth century nave; and, as no new aisles were contemplated, the old arcades, with their rounded arches, were left intact. Bubwith in Yorkshire, and Caunton in Nottinghamshire, are later examples of churches where the tower was built west of the end of an earlier nave, and a bay was built to connect it with the older work. Sometimes, as at Gretton in Northamptonshire, where the slope of a steep hill forbade extension far to the west, a new tower was built only a few feet beyond the limit of the old nave. In such a case, the side walls of the nave might be carried solid westwards to meet the tower, or, as happened at Gretton, narrow arches might be made between the tower and the west end of the older wall. The beautiful tower and spire at Oundle were built just outside the west wall of the thirteenth century nave; and were doubtless intended to be followed by a complete rebuilding of the arcades--such a rebuilding as took place at Lavenham in Suffolk, towards the end of the fifteenth century. The idea, however, was abandoned, and the space between the arcades and the tower filled in solid with rather rough masonry. [Illustration: Fig. 13. Gretton, Northants: extension of 12th century arcade to meet 15th century tower.] § 53. The position of the western tower in the plan is normally at the west end of the nave, with which it is connected by an arch, low at first, but loftier as time goes on, until, in later Gothic churches, its height frequently is nearly that of the whole nave. The remaining three walls are usually external, and clear of the aisles. But sometimes, owing to a freak of planning, or, more frequently, owing to the conditions of the site, the tower is, as at Bibury, at the west end of one of the aisles. At Gedling in Nottinghamshire the tower and spire are at the end of the north aisle. The tower of St Michael's, Cambridge, is at the west end of the south aisle: probably the western extension of the church was prevented by the neighbourhood of the street, a circumstance which often accounts for the irregularity of plan in some town churches. At St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, built on the edge of the "red cliff" from which it takes its name, the tower and spire are at the end of the north aisle: had they been planned in the usual place, a full bay of the nave would have been sacrificed. The tower at Spalding was planned, in the first instance, to stand against the south wall of the west bay of the south aisle: subsequently a new south aisle was built east of it. One of the most curious instances is that of St Mary's at Leicester, where the tower, subsequently, as at Spalding, heightened by a spire, was planned in the thirteenth century, outside a very narrow south aisle. A tower at the west end of the nave would have encroached upon the inner ward of the adjacent castle. The chancel of St Mary's was used for collegiate services, and parochial accommodation was limited. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, a very wide south aisle, a parish church in itself, was built the full length of the nave, and overlapping the chancel at the east end. The tower was left standing on piers entirely within the west end of the new aisle. It may be added that, where towers occur at the end of aisles, they seldom project beyond the west wall of the nave, but open into the nave by an arch in the north or south wall, as the case may be. Plans with two western towers, as at Melbourne or St Margaret's at Lynn, are of very rare occurrence; and, where they are found, the plan was probably designed on more ambitious lines than those of the ordinary parish church. § 54. The plan in which the western tower is engaged within the aisles--that is, where the aisles are brought up flush with the west end of the church--is not very common. Still, instances occur in all parts of England. At Grantham, the plan is deliberate. It was imitated, as has been said, from Newark, where the side walls of the tower had been pierced with arches as an after-thought. Newark, in turn, may have taken the design from Tickhill in south Yorkshire; and the design at Tickhill may have been taken from the early and unpretentious example at Sherburn-in-Elmet. Grantham probably suggested other similar designs, such as Ewerby, near Sleaford. Several of our finest late Gothic churches, like St Nicholas at Newcastle, have plans in which the aisles are continued up to the west face of the tower. The method affords full development to the aisles, and, as at Sileby in Leicestershire, has an imposing interior effect. Outside, however, the aisles crowd the base of the tower too much, and the fine effect of a lofty, free standing tower is lost. Sometimes aisles were extended westwards, so as to engage an earlier tower, as at Sleaford, where the low tower and spire are almost overwhelmed by a pair of wide fourteenth century aisles. At Brigstock and Winterton, late Saxon towers have been left without alteration inside aisles which have been brought westward in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The nave of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, was much widened in the fourteenth century, and a small tower and spire of earlier date were brought entirely within the new nave, as happened in the south aisle at St Mary's, Leicester, and were left without sufficient abutment. As a consequence, the arches of the ground story had to be strengthened about a century later with additional masonry. Cases occur, as at Coln Rogers in Gloucestershire, where a tower has been built within the west end of an earlier church. In most of such instances, the churchyard boundary probably allowed of no further building westward. The nearness of the churchyard boundary also seems to have given cause to a peculiarity which may be seen at Wollaton, near Nottingham, Dedham in Essex, and in a few other places, where the west tower is in its usual position, but is pierced from north to south by an archway. It is possible that this gave facility to processions, which could thus pass round the church without leaving consecrated ground. The tower of old All Saints, Cambridge, now destroyed, projected over the public foot-way of the street, which passed through its ground story; while St John's, Bristol, is built on the city wall, and the tower and spire, which it shared with the adjoining church of St Lawrence, are over the south gate of the city. § 55. Sometimes, as at Oundle, the tower was rebuilt with a view to the reconstruction of the whole church. But, as also at Oundle, the design was often abandoned, or was altered. The magnificent tower of St Michael's, Coventry, was built, between 1373 and 1394, at the west end of an older nave: its spire was not begun till 1430. Whether the rebuilding of the nave was contemplated when the tower was begun, it is impossible to say. A new nave was actually begun in 1432, and finished in 1450. A thoroughfare immediately south of the church prevented extension on that side. The old south porch was retained in place as the principal entrance, so that the line of the wall of the south aisle follows closely that of the original church. The new south arcade was set out, not in a line with the south-east buttress of the tower, but somewhat to the north of it, so that the buttress is external; while, for the width of the nave, a space approximating to twice the internal breadth of the tower was taken. The tower is thus placed almost wholly south of the central axis of the nave produced westward. Here, once more, we may note the influence of site on the plan. § 56. The people's entrance to the church was ordinarily through a porch, covering the north or south doorway of the nave. The south doorway is usually covered by a porch. Frequently, as at Hallaton in Leicestershire, or Henbury in Gloucestershire, there is a north as well as a south porch. At Warmington, near Oundle, where there is a beautiful doorway in the west tower, the vaulted south porch is the principal entrance; but there is also a somewhat smaller north porch, also vaulted. The chief porch at Grantham is on the north side; but there is also a large porch on the south. At Newark, there is only a south porch, on the side of the church next the market place. The south porch of St Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, is the ordinary entrance of the church; but the chief entrance of the building, until the fifteenth century, was on the north side, at the head of the abrupt slope towards the city. In the fourteenth century, this entrance was covered by a large and lofty octagonal porch, approached by a flight of steps. There is an octagonal south porch at Chipping Norton, and a hexagonal south porch at Ludlow. The magnificent porches of the fifteenth century, as at Burford in Oxfordshire, Northleach in Gloucestershire, Worstead in Norfolk, Walberswick in Suffolk, St Mary Magdalene's at Taunton, or Yatton in Somerset, are usually on the south side of the church. § 57. The positions of the porch and doorway in the wall of the aisle vary. At St Nicholas, Newcastle, where the west tower is engaged within the aisles, there is a porch in the western bay of each aisle. Usually, however, the porch will be found in the second bay of one of the aisles, counting from the west end. Sometimes, especially in larger churches, the porch occurs a bay further east. At Warmington and at Grantham, the two porches of either church are nearly opposite each other, and project approximately from the centre of the walls of the aisles. Where the porch has been pushed eastward in this way, the west end of the aisle seems to have been occupied by one or more chapels. There are indications of this at Warmington; while, in the neighbouring church of Tansor, where the porch is in the usual place, but the aisle has been lengthened somewhat to the west, there was certainly an altar west, as well as east, of the porch. There was at least one chantry chapel west of the south porch at Grantham. The south porch at Ludlow covers the wall of the third bay of the aisle from the west: here there were two chapels in the western part of the aisle. There was another chapel at the west end of the north aisle. It can hardly be proved that the position of porches was actually planned with this use of the aisles in view; but there can be no doubt that advantage was frequently taken of the space thus added to the aisle. CHAPTER V THE AISLED PARISH CHURCH II. TRANSEPTS AND CHANCEL § 58. The aisled nave, with its usual appendages of porch and tower, has now been described at length. Before we proceed to the development of the chancel, the transepts or transeptal chapels of the parish church invite discussion. The distinction between true transepts, in churches with central towers, and the transeptal chapels which are nothing more than northern and southern extensions of the aisles, has been made already; and it has been seen that the cruciform plan with central tower reached a very full state of perfection during the twelfth century. Further dignity was given to some cruciform churches by the addition of aisles to the transepts. St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, the plan of which is that of a large collegiate or cathedral rather than a parish church, has transepts with eastern and western aisles: there is no central tower, but the transepts form a definite cross-arm to the church, which was designed with regard to the central point formed by the crossing of a longitudinal and a transverse axis. There are few churches in England as beautiful as that of Melton Mowbray, with its aisled transepts and tower above the crossing: had the chancel only been planned on a larger scale and with aisles, the unrivalled beauty and dignity of St Mary Redcliffe might have been approached here. The cruciform plan with central tower is the most noble of all church plans, when carried out by builders with large ideas. Churches like Ludlow, Nantwich, Holy Trinity and St John's at Coventry, St Mary's at Beverley, excite an admiration which is the natural result of the fact that the plan, instead of straggling in the ordinary way from east to west, is brought to a focus beneath the central tower. [Illustration: Fig. 14. Plan of 13th century church: west tower, south porch, unequal transeptal chapels.] § 59. Apart, however, from the tower above the crossing, the transept had a value of its own. It gave additional room for the side altars of the church. The transeptal chapels at Worth allowed of greater width for the chancel arch: the altars, which naturally would have stood against the wall on either side of the chancel arch, could be placed within these excrescences from the north and south walls of the church, and the central space was thus left clear. This method of extension of the church by adding north and south chapels to the nave was pursued throughout the middle ages. The thirteenth century plan of Acton Burnell is virtually identical with the tenth or eleventh century plan of Worth. In aisled churches, such transeptal additions are simply outgrowths of the aisle walls, and were not necessarily planned with any regard to the spacing of the arcades of the nave. They may, of course, be placed symmetrically at the east end of the aisles, the width of each chapel corresponding to the width of the arch of the arcade which is opposite its opening. Thus Exton church in Rutland, rebuilt about the beginning of the thirteenth century, has north and south transeptal chapels whose width is that of the eastern bay of each arcade. A transverse arch was thrown across each aisle at its junction with the adjacent chapel. Here the chapels form quasi-transepts in perfect union with the design of nave and aisles. Symmetrical plans in which it is clear at a glance that the transeptal chapels are developments of the aisles, and have no necessary relation to the nave, are those of Kegworth in Leicestershire, rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and Aylsham, Cawston, and Sall in Norfolk, which belong to the fifteenth century. But even more obvious than these are the plans in which transeptal chapels have been thrown out at different periods, or even at one and the same period, without the least regard to symmetry. A small aisleless nave at Stretton in Rutland received a north aisle about the beginning of the thirteenth century. Soon after, the eastern part of the side walls was taken down, and chapels built out to north and south. The width of the south chapel was determined by that of the old chancel arch, which was rebuilt between the chapel and the nave, there being no aisle on that side. The north chapel, on the other hand, was formed simply by returning the wall of the aisle northward, and throwing a transverse arch across the aisle from the wall above the arcade. Its width corresponds roughly with that of the south chapel, but has no correspondence with that of the adjacent bay of the arcade. Examples of this form of growth of plan, dictated by convenience and the necessity of the moment, are common in every part of England. § 60. It is quite clear that the transeptal chapel, being nothing more than an excrescence from the wall of a nave or aisle, is a feature which may be treated with some freedom. Its width and length are dependent upon the convenience and will of the builders. The north chapel of the aisleless church of Clapton-in-Gordano, Somerset, is entered by an arch in the east part of the north wall: the chapel itself, however, extends some distance westward, so that its longer axis is parallel to the longer axis of the nave. The south chapel, again, at Lowick in Northamptonshire has its longer axis from east to west, although its roof is at right angles to that of the adjacent aisle. Externally, its transeptal character is apparent; internally, it has the appearance of an additional south aisle. A chantry was founded in this chapel in 1498. Very often, where special chantry chapels were built, they took the position of transeptal chapels. Cases in point are the late Gothic chantry chapels in All Saints and St Lawrence's at Evesham. Such chapels may obviously be lengthened westward, like the chapel at Clapton-in-Gordano, so that they become additional aisles. The Milcombe chapel at Bloxham in Oxfordshire, the Greenway aisle at Tiverton in Devonshire, and the side chapels of the north and south aisles at St Andrew's, Plymouth, and Plympton St Mary are the logical outcome of the habit of adding transeptal chapels to the plan. Two transeptal chapels of the ordinary type are found in other Devonshire churches rebuilt in the fifteenth century, as at East Portlemouth: the Kirkham chapel at Paignton, famous for its carved stone-work, is transeptal. From this it is but a step to the chapels at Plymouth and Plympton, with their longer axes from east to west: while the aisle at Tiverton (1517) develops naturally, in the churches of Cullompton (1526) and Ottery St Mary (before 1530), into a vaulted aisle the full length of the nave. At Bloxham, on the other hand, the Milcombe chapel, which extends from the east wall of the south aisle as far as the porch, was probably grafted upon an earlier and smaller transeptal chapel. A comparison with the neighbouring church of Adderbury shows that the fabric of the transeptal chapels at Adderbury is largely of the twelfth century. The north chapel at Bloxham is, in its present state, much later; but the similarity of plan to that of Adderbury leads to the justifiable conclusion that it was rebuilt on old foundations, and that there was a similar south chapel. About 1290 the aisles at Bloxham were widened, and a beautiful arcade of two bays was built at the east end of the north aisle, between it and the north chapel. Within the next few years, the aisles at Adderbury were also widened, and arcades similar to that at Bloxham, though coarser in detail, were built at the east end of either aisle. The projection of the transeptal chapels from the side walls was now very slight; and, in the fifteenth century, the projection of the south chapel at Bloxham was absorbed by the building of the Milcombe chapel, between which and the south aisle an arcade of two bays was made. There is more intrinsic interest in this gradual development of plan than in the Devonshire plans we have noticed, which are all due to fifteenth century rebuildings; and the mutual influence exercised throughout the middle ages by two neighbouring churches like Bloxham and Adderbury gives us an insight into the progress of local art which the energy of fifteenth century masons in certain districts has somewhat obscured. From the arrangement of the south transept at Adderbury, there appear to have been two altars in each of the chapels. § 61. Transeptal chapels occasionally appear in unusual positions. For example, at Branscombe in south Devon, there is a tower between nave and chancel. There are, however, no transepts; but transeptal chapels are built out from the walls of the aisleless nave, west of the tower. These chapels appear to be enlargements of earlier transeptal chapels; while the tower seems to have been built over the chancel of the earlier church. Heckington church in south Lincolnshire was rebuilt in the fourteenth century. The nave has aisles with transeptal chapels, very regular and symmetrical in plan, but is continued beyond the opening of the transeptal projections by an aisleless bay, east of which comes the chancel arch. At Bottesford in north Lincolnshire, where much rebuilding was done in the thirteenth century, the transeptal chapels open from the bay east of the chancel arch. In the case of Heckington, the earlier church was probably cruciform: when the rebuilding came to pass, the ground plan of the western portion of the church was kept, while the chancel was built on an extended plan, and the site of the western part of the old chancel thrown into the nave. The case of Bottesford is probably accounted for in the opposite way: the site was not enlarged eastwards, but the chancel was lengthened by the absorption of the eastern part of the old nave. § 62. There are a number of cases in which transeptal chapels have been kept from an earlier cruciform plan, in which they may have formed true transepts. The fine church of Oundle, whose western tower and spire already have been mentioned as built about 1400, has very fully developed transeptal chapels. The nave and aisles, and the greater part of the chapels, are, in their present state, work of the thirteenth century; but the eastern bay of the present nave was entirely remodelled about 1350, when a clerestory was added. This bay had evidently been designed to carry a central tower: the nave arcades stop west of it, and there is a thick piece of wall between them and the arches opening from it into the chapels. These arches and the chancel arch were entirely reconstructed at the time just mentioned. The western arch, however, was removed, and an original crossing was thus converted into a bay of the nave. Whether there ever was a central tower is, of course, an uncertain point; but the building of a west tower on a new site not many years after this reconstruction is a fact which makes the previous existence of a central tower probable. The removal of a central tower would be due to one of two causes. Either its supports were weak, or it blocked up the space between nave and chancel too much. The central tower of Petersfield in Hampshire was taken down; but its east wall still remains between nave and chancel. However, if there are cases in which a central tower was removed, and a west tower built, there are probably more in which a central tower was planned, and then abandoned. Campsall church, near Doncaster, has unmistakable signs of a projected cruciform plan with a central tower, and has a regular crossing with transepts. But it is probable that the builders changed their minds before the nave was finished; and, although they doubtless left the arches, which were intended to bear their tower, for a later generation to remove and rebuild, they went westward and built a tower at the other end of the nave. This tower was finished towards the end of the third quarter of the twelfth century. The builders of Newark church, who were peculiarly susceptible to after-thoughts, apparently planned a central tower in the later part of the twelfth century. It is difficult to explain otherwise the slender clusters of shafts which project into the nave from the first pier west of the chancel arch on either side. Such piers were hardly capable of bearing the weight of a tower; and so the builders must have thought. Early in the thirteenth century, they began the present west tower, the first stage of a rebuilding which, with long intervals, continued into the sixteenth century. The final step by which the church reached its present plan was the addition of a transeptal chapel to either aisle, opposite the site which, more than three centuries before, had been chosen for the piers of the abandoned central tower. [Illustration: Fig. 15. St Mary's, Beverley: arcades of quire and S. transept, from S.W.] § 63. Even in strictly cruciform churches, transepts were sometimes treated with a freedom which was more appropriate to the transeptal chapel. It is not unusual to find one transept longer than the other, as at Felmersham in Bedfordshire. Here, however, the transepts are not only of different lengths, but the south transept is loftier, as well as shorter, than the north, which is little more than a chapel-like excrescence from the tower. At Witney in Oxfordshire both transepts are of great projection, but the north transept is slightly longer than that on the south. Both have considerable traces of thirteenth century work; but, in the fourteenth century, the north transept was lengthened by an addition divided into two stories, the upper of which was a chapel, while the lower was probably a vaulted bone-hole. The south transept was also lengthened; and a chapel was built, projecting from its east wall near the south end. Both transepts have western aisles: that of the north transept, which stops short of the two-storied extension, contained an altar near the north end. There are traces of at least three other altars in the transepts, so that there was excellent reason for their somewhat unusual projection. At St Mary's, Beverley, an eastern aisle was added to the south transept in the fifteenth century, to provide more room for altars. The north transept already had a large chapel of two stages upon its eastern side, so that the plan was treated unsymmetrically. The tower of St Mary's at Stafford rests on heavy piers and narrow arches, and is flanked by north and south transepts. However, while the south transept, of good thirteenth century work, is rather small and short, the north transept was rebuilt with great magnificence in the fourteenth century, and its internal effect is that of a large side chapel rather than a transept. Aisled transepts are never common, even in large churches. Instances in which a transeptal chapel is aisled are even less common. The aisled south chapel at Medbourne in Leicestershire has been mentioned in an earlier chapter. Oakham and Langham churches in Rutland have large transeptal chapels with western aisles: the north chapel at Langham was removed in the fifteenth century, when the aisles of the nave were widened. § 64. Reference has also been made to those plans in which the side walls of a tower between chancel and nave have been pierced with arches, and quasi-transepts have been constructed. This is very noticeable at Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, where the transeptal chapels, turned at a later date into burial-places for two local families, are very large and roomy. The cross-plan of Burford church in Oxfordshire was formed in this way, early in the thirteenth century. Plans like this, in which the chapels grow out of the central space, instead of being planned from the first in relation to it, are imperfectly cruciform; but are highly characteristic of the irregular methods of development pursued by the builders of medieval parish churches. § 65. Towers above transeptal chapels are not uncommon. The two transeptal towers at Ottery St Mary in Devon were doubtless copied from the arrangement at Exeter cathedral: there was an altar against the east wall of each chapel. The tower at Coln St Aldwyn, Gloucestershire, rises above a south chapel projecting from an aisleless nave. This addition was made in the fifteenth century. At Duddington in Northamptonshire the ground floor of the tower virtually forms, in its present state, an eastward extension of the south aisle parallel to the western part of the chancel: the original plan was probably similar to the present plan of Coln St Aldwyn. The noble church of Whaplode had transeptal chapels projecting from the east end of either aisle: the thirteenth century tower is above the south chapel. At Clymping in Sussex the arrangement is very peculiar. The church, which is almost entirely of the thirteenth century, has north and south transeptal chapels, and only a south aisle to the nave. The tower, which is at the end of the south chapel, is earlier than the rest of the building, but is clearly in its original position. § 66. The early progress of Gothic art in parish churches was marked by a general lengthening of chancels, analogous to that elongation of the eastern arm which is characteristic of cathedrals and monastic churches. This may be seen very clearly at Iffley, near Oxford, and Avening in Gloucestershire, where vaulted chancels of the twelfth century were lengthened in the thirteenth century by an eastern bay. Sometimes, as at St Mary's, Shrewsbury, where successive generations of builders were very faithful to the remains of earlier work, the old sedilia of a twelfth century chancel have been left in place. But, as a rule, the enlargement of the chancel implied an entire reconstruction, or the entire transformation of old work by the insertion of new windows or buttresses. From the end of the twelfth century onwards, the normal chancel of the parish church has a length which is from a half to two-thirds of the length of the nave, the nave being slightly broader than the chancel. This is the case with most of those Norfolk churches, which may be regarded as the ideal examples of parish church planning. Room was in this way secured both for the altar and the quire stalls, for which the ordinary rectangular chancel offered a very restricted space. § 67. Sometimes a new chancel encroached upon the nave. This happened at Skipwith in Yorkshire, where the church underwent some alteration about the middle of the fourteenth century. The new chancel was made of the same width as the nave; and apparently the old chancel arch was entirely removed, and its site, with the part of the nave immediately west of it, made into an extra bay of the chancel. No new chancel arch was built. One of the most curious and perplexing instances, in which additional westward room has been given to the chancel, and there is no structural division between chancel and nave, is at Tansor in Northants. The perplexity which arises here is due to the plentiful re-use of old work by the builders, the presence of which in unexpected places makes the history of the building a nearly insoluble puzzle. The church reached its present length about 1140, when probably the Saxon nave was left as the west part of a church, which was now of the same width the whole way through, and had no chancel arch. Some forty years later, narrow aisles of three bays were added to the nave; and, about the same time, a transeptal chapel may have been thrown out from the south wall, immediately east of the south aisle. As the church stands on southward sloping ground, there seems to have been no room for another chapel on the north side. In the thirteenth century, the aisles were lengthened eastwards, to flank the western part of the chancel. The builders moved back the eastern responds of the old arcades to the points from which the lengthened arcades were to start. They set themselves, however, a difficult problem when they reserved a space at the end of the north aisle for a sacristy, and set the respond on the west side of this narrow bay. Their north aisle thus consisted of five bays and a very narrow eastern bay for the sacristy. On the south side no space corresponding to the sacristy was marked out, although the eastern respond was placed in a line with the east side of the opening of the sacristy. The number of bays on the south side had to be five, as there was no room for six. The result is that the pillars of the arcades, with the exception of those of the two bays furthest west, which were left unaltered, are not opposite each other. In the meantime, the old transeptal chapel was left standing between a south aisle and a short south chapel of the chancel. About 1300, the aisle and chapel seem to have been widened to the full length of the transeptal chapel, and thus a broad south aisle was formed. In this plan, the chancel proper projects for some distance east of the aisles; but, for ritual purposes, the eastern part of the nave, corresponding to the eastern bay of the north aisle and the sacristy bay beyond, forms, and has formed since the twelfth century, a western extension of the chancel. § 68. The addition of aisles to chancels was an even more gradual process than the addition of aisles to naves; and, as a rule, the aisles were at first mere chapels. Chancel aisles or chapels of twelfth century date are not very common in smaller churches. But a plan like that at Melbourne, where the apsidal chapels east of the transepts flank the chancel very closely, leads naturally to the provision of chapels communicating directly with the chancel. The logical consequence of such a plan is seen at Oundle, at the close of the twelfth century, where rectangular chapels were built along the north and south walls of the western part of the chancel. The walls were pierced with broad, low arches, and arches were built between the chapels and the transepts. The chapels, in this instance, are at the back of the quire stalls; and a long projecting piece of aisleless chancel was left beyond them, to which, in the fifteenth century, a large northern vestry was added. This plan, where both chancel chapels were added at much the same time and on the same scale, is symmetrical. But, as a rule, chancel chapels were built just when they were needed. At Arksey, near Doncaster, where, as at St Mary's, Shrewsbury, the walls of late twelfth century transepts have been largely preserved inside the church in spite of many alterations, the chancel is a long aisleless twelfth century building east of a central tower. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the north chancel wall was pierced, and a narrow chapel built, which was one bay shorter than the chancel itself. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the nave was enlarged, and the south aisle was widened to the full length of the south transept. A south chapel was added to the chancel: its outer wall was continued from the south wall of the transept, and carried eastwards for a little distance beyond the east wall of the chancel. Thus chancel, south chapel, and north chapel, are all of three different lengths and breadths, the south chapel being the longest and widest. When the south chapel was built, a considerable portion of the old chancel wall was left untouched on its north side. It is obvious that the methods of building employed in such additions were those which have been described in connexion with the addition of aisles to a nave. It is no uncommon thing to enter, as at Tamworth, a chancel aisle or chantry chapel, and find substantial remains of the old outer wall of the chancel, which has been pierced with one or more arches of communication. § 69. As the relative dates and proportions of chancel chapels vary so greatly, it is obvious that in many cases only one will be found. We frequently meet with churches which have only one aisle to the nave; but these are for the most part small buildings, and one aisle usually, in larger buildings, presupposes another, although symmetry of proportion need not be expected. However, many important churches have one chancel chapel, and no more. Raunds in Northamptonshire, and Leverington in Cambridgeshire, have south, but not north, chapels. Stanion in Northamptonshire, and Hullavington in Wiltshire, have north, but not south chapels. In both these last cases, the chapels are simply continuations of the aisles, without a break or intermediate arch; and the chapel at Stanion is neither more nor less than a second chancel. As the dedication of Stanion church is to St Peter and St Paul, it is not unlikely that the prominence given to the north chapel may be due to the provision of altars for both saints. The same consideration may have influenced the building of the church at Wisbech, which is also dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. Here, the twelfth century chancel had a south chapel; but when, at the end of the thirteenth century, the chancel was lengthened, the south chapel was also enlarged into what is practically a second chancel. Not only this, but the south aisle of the church was rebuilt on the scale of a second nave, a second south aisle was built out beyond it, and the whole church, which afterwards was enlarged towards the north and otherwise altered, was more than doubled in size. § 70. Where chantry chapels are attached to one side or other of a chancel, their variations in size and plan are almost infinite. In the smallest examples, they are mere projections from the wall of the chancel, and little more than tomb recesses, such as the Cresacre chapel at Barnburgh, near Rotherham, or the Booth chapel on the south side of the chancel at Sawley in Derbyshire. The little north chapel of the chancel at Clapton-in-Gordano in Somerset may have served as a vestry. At Brancepeth, near Durham, where there is a long chancel and an aisled nave with transeptal chapels, a south chantry chapel adjoins the east side of the south transeptal chapel, while a north chantry chapel forms an independent excrescence from the north wall, and is shut off from the chancel by a doorway. Brigstock in Northamptonshire has a very large north chancel chapel, which is virtually the eastern portion of a widened aisle: the south chapel, on the other hand, is of much later date, and is so small that there must have been room in it for an altar and little more. These smaller chantry chapels, like the beautiful south chapel at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northants, have often great architectural beauty of their own, and give great variety to the plan of the church. But chancel chapels are often larger and more important, like the fourteenth century south chapel at Leverton, near Boston, which is practically a separate building, separated from the chancel by a wall without an arcade, or like the very spacious north chapel of the priory church at Brecon. The south chapel of the chancel at Berkeley in Gloucestershire, and the Clopton chapel at Long Melford in Suffolk, are shut off from the adjacent parts of the church, and belong to that class of chantry chapel of which our cathedrals furnish many examples. In this case, the chapel is a small separate building, attached to the fabric of the church, but hardly forming an integral part of it. § 71. One very important consequence of the addition of aisles and chantry chapels to chancels, at any rate on a large scale, is seen where they are applied to plans originally cruciform. We have already seen that at St Mary's, Shrewsbury, and at Arksey, although much of the fabric of the old transepts was left, broad chancel chapels tended to obliterate the cruciform character of the building. The transepts at Spalding almost escape notice, owing to the double aisle on the south side of the nave, the aisle and north chapel on the opposite side, and the large chapel east of the south transept. Moreover, when, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, aisles were rebuilt or widened, there was always, as at Tansor, a tendency to decide the width of the aisle by the length of an existing transept or transeptal chapel, and to build the new outer wall flush with its gable wall. In this case, the aisle would be planned to communicate with the transept, and the west wall of the transept would have to be cut through. Where, as at Arksey, there was a central tower, the old transept was structurally necessary, and only as much of its masonry would be removed as was absolutely necessary. But we have seen that there were cases in which it was thought advisable to take down the central tower altogether, and build a new one at the west end, in which case the transepts were of no structural use; and there were far more cases in which the transeptal excrescences were merely projecting chapels. In these instances, the transept was felt to intervene awkwardly between the aisles of nave and chancel. Accordingly, its side walls and gabled roof were taken down, its end wall was remodelled, and it was placed under one roof with the adjacent aisles, in which it became merged. The cruciform plan was thus lost in certain churches, becoming absorbed in the ordinary elongated plan, with aisles to nave and chancel. Tamworth church in Staffordshire, and Marshfield in Gloucestershire, had twelfth century central towers. These were removed or destroyed, at Tamworth in the fourteenth, at Marshfield in the fifteenth century, and the aisles and chancel chapels were widened to the original length, approximately, of the transepts. The north and south arches of the crossing, however, remain in a blocked condition, and tell the tale of what has happened. Wakefield cathedral is another instance of a large parish church whose aisleless cruciform plan has gradually disappeared within the aisles, until the plan is--or was till the additions of a few years ago--an aisled rectangle, the origin of which is certainly not obvious at first sight. The transformations here described must clearly be understood not to apply to cruciform churches generally, but merely to churches which, with an originally cruciform plan, needed enlargement. Many handsome late Gothic buildings, like the churches of Rotherham and Chesterfield, or St Mary's at Nottingham, are regular cruciform churches with central towers; and sometimes, as at Newark, transeptal chapels were the latest of all additions to a church. But, where the transeptal chapel cramped necessary space, it had to disappear. At St Margaret's, Leicester, the arches into the transeptal chapels remain; but the chapels themselves have entirely disappeared, and the arches merely form part of the arcade between the nave and its broad aisles. § 72. The aim of restorers and rebuilders from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards was to convert the church into a rectangle with aisles. As we have seen, the chancel was constantly, in late Gothic churches, an aisleless projection from the main fabric; but, where it was aisled, the old haphazard methods were often abandoned, and the aisles were made of approximately equal size. The old distinction between nave and chancel, marked by the chancel arch, and the arches between chapels and aisles, begin to vanish. Where the chancel arch was kept, as at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, new chancel chapels were prolonged westward on each side of the nave, in place of the old nave aisles. Fairford church in Gloucestershire was rebuilt towards the end of the fifteenth century, to contain the splendid stained glass which had just been acquired for it. A central tower was built on strong piers, as a concession to the old plan; but the aisles of the nave were continued on either side of the tower and along the sides of the chancel till within a bay of the east end. But, in a great many churches, not merely the aisles, but the nave and chancel also became continuous, without a structural division. This feature, common in East Anglia and the south-west of England, was the result of the importance of carved and painted wood-work in late Gothic churches. The rood screen, stretching across nave and aisles, appeared to full advantage, when unbroken by the chancel arch. The splendid timber roofs of nave and aisles gained in effect, if they formed, as at Southwold, or in the churches of Norwich, an unbroken covering to the church from end to end. In Norfolk and Suffolk, where the work of rebuilding began in the fourteenth century, as at Cawston, Worstead, or Tunstead, the chancel arch was often kept. At Worstead and other Norfolk churches the method pursued by the builders was precisely opposite to that which we have seen employed by Gloucestershire masons at Cirencester and other places, and may see in most of the fifteenth century churches of Somerset. The arcades were rebuilt first, and the aisles followed. Many of these churches were doubtless enlarged from much smaller buildings. The south aisle at Ingham was probably the nave of the earlier church, to which the present nave, north aisle, chancel, and west tower, were added. The aisles in most cases continued at a uniform width eastward as chancel chapels. The north aisle at Worstead was continued by a two-storied sacristy to the level of the east wall of the chancel. The south aisle stops at a bay short of the east wall, leaving the end of the chancel projecting as an altar space. Whether the chancel arch was retained or not, the projection of this aisleless eastern bay became a very general feature of the larger churches of East Anglia, and, in churches like Trunch, Southwold, and Clare, its tall side windows flood the space with light The most striking example of this plan is at Long Melford in Suffolk, where there is no chancel arch, and the actual chancel projects beyond the aisles. Here, however, it is flanked on the north by the Clopton chapel, and on the south by the vestry, which forms a covered way to the detached lady chapel further east. The Long Melford plan, with a projecting altar space, and without a chancel arch, is nearly universal in Cornwall, and is common in south Devon, where, as at Totnes, the aisles of the chancel are usually little more than comparatively short chapels, and sometimes, as at West Alvington, near Kingsbridge, extend only a bay beyond the screen. Its great advantages, apart from the display of wood-work which it permits, are the gain of internal space permitted by the reduction of the solid portions of the building to a minimum, the additional light admitted by the same means, and the long uninterrupted clerestory which forms a wall of glass, with thin stone divisions, on each side of the upper part of the church. § 73. The tendency to give the whole church aisles of equal width throughout, and extending along its whole length, was irresistible, especially in East Anglia. The church of North Walsham, rebuilt towards the end of the fourteenth century, is a great rectangle of three parallel divisions, with axes from east to west, and of nearly equal breadth. The chapel of St Nicholas at Lynn, rebuilt in 1419, is an even more striking example of the same design: in both cases the simple and somewhat monotonous plan is varied by the projection of a handsome south porch. At Lynn, the thirteenth century west tower, with a spire, was kept at the south-west corner of the aisled building. But the aisled rectangular plan, if it attained its highest development in East Anglia, had been reached already in other parts of England by gradual methods. It has sometimes been fathered upon aisled naves of friary churches, which, like the great nave of the Black friars at Norwich, afforded space for large congregations who came to hear sermons. But it is probable that the first churches which followed the course of expansion into the aisled rectangle were directly influenced by the example of the larger churches, like Lincoln, or, at a later date, York, which, in extending their eastern arms, aisled their quires, presbyteries, and eastern chapels, right up to the east wall. Thus the whole quire and chancel of Newark, with aisles extending their whole length, were planned in the early part of the fourteenth century, when the great eastern chapel, the "Angel Quire," of Lincoln, was little more than a generation old; and, although the progress of the work was long delayed, the eventual arrangement, in which the high altar was brought two bays forward from the east wall, and a spacious chapel was left at the back, exactly recalls the arrangements of Lincoln and York. Similarly the quire and chancel of the cruciform church of Holy Trinity at Hull are aisled to their full length: the arrangement, again, is that of a cathedral rather than a parish church. The influence of cathedral plans is clearly visible in St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, and in the collegiate churches of Ottery St Mary and Crediton: but here the type followed is not that of Lincoln and York, but that more usual in the west and south of England at Hereford, Wells, Salisbury, Exeter, and elsewhere, where the aisles of the chancel are returned at the back of the east wall, and form a vestibule to a projecting aisleless lady chapel. This type of plan occurs outside its regular district at Tickhill, on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. But it is naturally exceptional, and would be used only where there was plenty of money and space to spare: it demands for its full effect a considerable elevation, involving a large clerestory, and a church could seldom, if ever, be found whose original plan invited expansion on these lines. On the other hand, the aisling of the chancel throughout was simply the logical development of the ordinary church plan: if the plans of cathedrals may have suggested the later developments at churches like Newark or Hull, the simple aisled rectangle, with its three parallel divisions, and without any clerestory to distinguish the nave from the aisles--a plan remarkably characteristic of Cornwall--came into existence in the ordinary course of things, by an extension of the wings of the building until they flanked the whole of the nave and chancel. § 74. The work done at Grantham in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries illustrates the purely natural development of the ordinary aisled church into the aisled rectangle. We have seen, in an earlier chapter, that, soon after 1300, the church consisted of an aisleless chancel, which was, however, overlapped at the west end by the north aisle of the nave; a nave, the north and south aisles of which followed different systems of spacing; a western tower and spire, engaged within the aisles; and north and south porches. Several chantries were founded in the church during the fourteenth century. Not long after the Black Death of 1349, the south aisle was extended eastward to the whole length of the chancel. The south wall of the chancel was pierced by an arcade; and the lady chapel thus formed was raised upon a double crypt. It was not until more than a century later that the east wall of the north aisle was taken down, and the "Corpus Christi chancel" built out, continuing the north aisle without a break, and completely flanking the north wall of the chancel, through which an arcade was made. Here the reason of expansion was obviously the growth of chantry chapels; and the expansion follows the simplest course. The last addition to the fabric was the present vestry, in which was a chantry founded by the Hall family. This was built out at right angles to the north aisle, at the point where the old work was met by the later extension. Not until the church had been fully aisled, and afforded no further room for new altars, were chantry chapels usually added in the shape of excrescences from the fabric. [Illustration: Fig. 16. Plans of Grantham church: (3) about 1350; (4) present day.] § 75. One interesting feature in the planning of chancels, which has been much discussed, is worth a note. This is the fact that the axis of the chancel is frequently out of line with the axis of the nave, and generally has a slight northward inclination. Sometimes, as at Henbury in Gloucestershire, the inclination is very considerable, so that, from the west end of the church, nearly a quarter of the east wall is out of sight. Usually, the inclination is very slight; and there are many cases in which it is not northward, but southward--Sidbury and Salcombe Regis, near Sidmouth, Eastbourne in Sussex and Aldwinkle St Peter in Northants, are cases in point. The popular explanation is that it symbolises the leaning of our Saviour's head upon the cross. Like most symbolical explanations, this is founded entirely upon fancy: the inclination is by no means confined to churches with cross plans, and, if it were, the theorists who argue from this standpoint confound the symbolism of the cross-plan between the cross itself and the Body which it bore. Others have sought to explain the phenomenon by suggesting that the orientation of the chancel followed the direction in which the sun rose on the morning of the patronal feast. A succession of visits at sunrise to churches on appropriate dates has not hitherto been attempted upon a comprehensive scale: if it were undertaken, it probably would be found that the sun, instead of rising obediently opposite the middle light of every east window, as the theory requires, would have many puzzling exceptions in reserve. The marked divergence of axis at Henbury is explained by the site of the building, which is on a gentle slope, with the axis of the nave distinctly from south-east to north-west. When the chancel was rebuilt in the thirteenth century, the masons kept as high upon the slope as they could, and so twisted the axis of the chancel a little further east. But we must also remember that, when chancels were lengthened and rebuilt, the work was done while the old chancels were still standing. The axis of the old chancel might be out of line with that of the nave. Unless very careful measurements were taken, the new east wall would probably be not quite parallel with the old east wall of the chancel. The side walls would be set out at right angles to the new east wall; and thus, when the new chancel was joined to the church, the divergence of axis would be more palpable than before. Or, for the same reason, a divergence of axis might be created for the first time. This seems to be the common sense explanation of a very common feature. But it must be added that there are instances in which the inclination is so decided that one is tempted to conclude either that the masons had very crooked sight, or that they were playing tricks with their perspective. The feature, where it is at all marked, is something of a deformity. In our own day it has been introduced, apparently by design, into the plan of Truro cathedral. In medieval work, however, it will seldom be found in a chancel where no enlargement upon an early site has taken place; and it seems safe to conclude that, like so much else in medieval building which is irregular, it generally arises from the rebuilding of a fabric upon an encumbered site. INDEX OF PLACES Aachen, Rhenish Prussia, palace church, 33, 34 Acaster Malbis, Yorks., 65 Achurch, Northants., 56, 58 Acton Burnell, Salop., 55, 56, 58, 65, 102 Adderbury, Oxon., 106, 107 Adel, Yorks., 49 Africa, basilicas in north, 14 Aldwinkle, Northants., All Saints, 121; St Peter, 131 Almondsbury, Glouces., 54, 113 Alvington, West, Devon, 126 Amiens, France (Somme), cathedral, 68 Appleton-le-Street, Yorks., 84 Arksey, Yorks., 118, 121, 122 Askham Bryan, Yorks., 49 Avening, Glouces., 54, 114 Aylsham, Norfolk, 104 Bakewell, Derby, 70 Bampton-in-the-Bush, Oxon., 59, 60, 61 Barnack, Northants., 30, 32 Barnburgh, Yorks., 120 Barton-on-Humber, Lincs., St Peter, 30, 32, 33, 34, 40, 41 Berkeley, Glouces., 121 Beverley, Yorks., minster, 74, 75; St Mary, 102, 111, 112 Bewick, Old, Northumb., 50, 52 Bibury, Glouces., 94 Billingborough, Lincs., 82 Billingham, Durham, 73 Birkin, Yorks., 46, 51, 52, 82, 83 Bishopstone, Sussex, 36 Blatherwycke, Northants., 46 Bloxham, Oxon., 105, 106, 107 Bottesford, Lincs., 108 Bracebridge, Lincs., 28 Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts., 16, 29, 36 Bradwell-juxta-Mare, Essex, St Peter's on the Wall, 16 Brampton Ash, Northants., 76 Brancepeth, Durham, 120 Branscombe, Devon, 107 Brayton, Yorks., 46 Breamore, Hants., 38, 40, 54 Brecon, priory church, 121 Brigstock, Northants., 28, 97, 120, 121 Bristol, St John Baptist, 98; St Lawrence, 98; St Mary Redcliffe, 95, 99, 101, 102, 128 Britford, Wilts., 36 Brixworth, Northants., 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 32, 53 Broughton, Lincs., 32 Bubwith, Yorks., 93 Burford, Oxon., 60, 61, 99, 113 Caistor, Lincs., 45 Cambridge, All Saints, 97, 98; St Benedict, 28; Holy Trinity, 97; St Michael, 94, 95 Campsall, Yorks., 109, 110 Canterbury, Kent, cathedral, 15, 35; St Pancras, 15, 16, 23, 24, 35, 36, 53 Caunton, Notts., 93 Cawston, Norfolk, 104, 125 Chesterfield, Derby, 123 Chichester, Sussex, cathedral, 68 Childs Wickham, Glouces., 56, 58 Chipping Norton, Oxon., 99 Christon, Som., 53 Cirencester, Glouces., 87, 88, 89, 125 Clapton-in-Gordano, Som., 105, 120 Clare, Suffolk, 126 Clymping, Sussex, 114 Coln Rogers, Glouces., 28, 29, 97 Coln St Aldwyn, Glouces., 113, 114 Coln St Denis, Glouces., 53 Cologne, Rhenish Prussia, St Gereon, 34 Colsterworth, Lincs., 47, 92 Constantinople, Sta Sophia, 10, 12, 13 Copford, Essex, 52, 74 Copmanthorpe, Yorks., 49 Corbridge-on-Tyne, Northumb., 19, 20, 56 Corstopitum, _see_ Corbridge-on-Tyne Coventry, Warwicks., Holy Trinity, 102; St John Baptist, 102; St Michael, 98 Crediton, Devon, 128 Cullompton, Devon, 106 Dedham, Essex, 97 Deerhurst, Glouces., 27, 36, 37 Dover, Kent, St Mary in the Castle, 37, 38, 40, 54 Duddington, Northants., 114 Dunham Magna, Norfolk, 38 Durham, cathedral, 50, 67, 69 Earl's Barton, Northants., 30, 48 Eastbourne, Sussex, 131 Easton, Great, Leices., 86 Ely, Cambs., cathedral, 50 Escomb, Durham, 17, 18, 20, 26, 27, 29 Evesham, Worces., All Saints, 105; St Lawrence, 105 Ewerby, Lincs., 96 Exeter, Devon, cathedral, 113, 128 Exton, Rutland, 103, 104 Fairford, Glouces., 124 Felmersham, Beds., 110 Felton, Northumb., 83 Finchingfield, Essex, 45 Fountains abbey, Yorks., 67 Garton-on-the-Wolds, Yorks., 46 Geddington, Northants., 28, 72 Gedling, Notts., 94 Gloucester, cathedral, 67 Grantham, Lincs., 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 99, 100, 129, 130, 131 Greenstead, Essex, 43 Gretton, Northants., 72, 78, 93, 94 Hallaton, Leices., 83, 99 Harringworth, Northants., 85, 86, 87 Heapham, Lincs., 46 Heckington, Lincs., 76, 107, 108 Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumb., 48 Henbury, Glouces., 99, 131, 132 Hereford, cathedral, 128 Heslerton, West, Yorks., 64 Hexham, Northumb., priory church, 20, 21, 23; St Mary, 33, 34, 41 Heysham, Lancs., 25 Hooton Pagnell, Yorks., 46 Hough-on-the-Hill, Lincs., 32 Hull, Yorks., Holy Trinity, 128, 129 Hullavington, Wilts., 119 Iffley, Oxon., 53, 54, 114 Islip, Northants., 76 Jarrow-on-Tyne, Durham, St Paul, 19 Jerusalem, Holy Sepulchre, 34, 52, 62 Kegworth, Leices., 104 Kirkburn, Yorks., 46 Kirk Hammerton, Yorks., 46 Laceby, Lincs., 45 Langford, Essex, 52 Langham, Rutland, 113 Lavenham, Suffolk, 94 Leckhampton, Glouces., 54 Leicester, St Margaret, 123, 124; St Mary in the Castle, 49, 95, 97 Leverington, Cambs., 119 Leverton, Lincs., 121 Lincoln, cathedral, 67, 127, 128; St Mary-le-Wigford, 28; St Peter-at-Gowts, 28 Lowick, Northants., 105 Ludlow, Salop., 99, 100, 102 Lydd, Kent, 24 Lynn, King's, Norfolk, St Margaret, 96; St Nicholas, 127 Marshfield, Glouces., 123 Medbourne, Leices., 56, 58, 113 Melbourne, Derby, 59, 60, 69, 70, 75, 76, 96, 117 Melford, Long, Suffolk, 121, 126 Melton Mowbray, Leices., 102 Middleton Tyas, Yorks., 78, 79 Minster Lovell, Oxon., 61 Monkwearmouth, Durham, 18, 19, 20, 23, 29 Montacute, Som., 56, 58 Moor Monkton, Yorks., 48 Nantwich, Cheshire, 102 Newark-on-Trent, Notts., 87, 89, 96, 99, 110, 123, 127, 128, 129 Newbald, North, Yorks., 57, 58, 59, 60 Newcastle-on-Tyne, Northumb., St Nicholas, 96, 100 Newhaven, Sussex, 53 Norham-on-Tweed, Northumb., 69, 70 Northallerton, Yorks., 78 Northampton, St Giles, 60, 61; St Peter, 49 Northleach, Glouces., 87, 88, 89, 99 Norton-on-Tees, Durham, 40, 41, 54 Norwich, cathedral, 67; church of Black friars, 127 Nottingham, St Mary, 123 Oakham, Rutland, 113 Othery, Som., 65 Othona, _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare Ottery St Mary, Devon, 106, 113, 128 Oundle, Northants., 82, 94, 98, 108, 109, 117, 118 Paignton, Devon, 106 Patricio, Brecon, 66, 67, 68 Peterborough, Northants., Saxon abbey church, 21, 22 Petersfield, Hants., 109 Plymouth, Devon, St Andrew, 105, 106 Plympton St Mary, Devon, 105, 106 Portlemouth, East, Devon, 106 Potterne, Wilts., 55, 56, 65 Ramsey, Hunts., Saxon abbey church, 39 Ranworth, Norfolk, 64, 68 Raunds, Northants., 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 119 Ravenna, Italy, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, 10; of Theodoric, 10, 11, 12; Sant' Apollinare in Classe, 8, 9; Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, 8, 9; San Giovanni in Fonte, 10; Sta Maria in Cosmedin, 10; San Vitale, 11, 12, 13, 33 Reculver, Kent, 15, 24 Repton, Derby, 28, 37 Riccall, Yorks., 46 Ripon, Yorks, cathedral, 21, 23 Rochester, Kent, cathedral, 15 Rome, Basilica of Maxentius, 3; Basilica Ulpia, 2; Baths of Caracalla, 9; Castle of Sant' Angelo, 9; San Clemente, 9; Sta Costanza, 9; San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, 8; San Paolo, 8; old St Peter's, 4, 6, 7, 8, 14, 15; _scholae_, 5 Rotherham, Yorks., 123 St-Georges-de-Boscherville, France (Seine-Inf.), 60 St Peter's on the Wall, _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare Salcombe Regis, Devon, 131 Salisbury, Wilts., cathedral, 67, 128 Sall, Norfolk, 104 Sawley, Derby, 120 Seamer, Yorks., 73 Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorks., 69, 70, 96 Shrewsbury, Salop., St Mary, 114, 118, 121 Sidbury, Devon, 28, 131 Silchester, Hants., 14, 24, 25 Sileby, Leices., 96 Skipwith, Yorks., 115 Skirlaugh, South, Yorks., 65 Sleaford, Lincs., 82, 97 Southwell, Notts., cathedral, 70 Southwold, Suffolk, 125, 126 Spalding, Lincs., 95, 122 Stafford, St Mary, 112 Stanion, Northants., 119 Stanton Lacy, Salop., 38 Stow, Lincs., 39, 40, 42, 54 Stretton-in-the-Street, Rutland, 104 Studland, Dorset, 53 Sutton, Long, Lincs., 70, 124 Swaton, Lincs., 82 Tamworth, Staffs., 119, 123 Tansor, Northants., 49, 82, 100, 115, 116, 117, 122 Taunton, Som., St Mary Magdalene, 99 Temple Balsall, Warwicks., 65 Theddingworth, Leices., 79 Tickencote, Rutland, 48 Tickhill, Yorks., 96, 128 Tilney All Saints, Norfolk, 92, 93 Tiverton, Devon, 105, 106 Totnes, Devon, 126 Trier, Rhenish Prussia, basilica, 3; Liebfrauenkirche, 34 Trunch, Norfolk, 126 Truro, Cornwall, cathedral, 133 Tunstead, Norfolk, 125 Tytherington, Glouces., 73 Vinovium, _see_ Escomb. Waith, Lincs., 38, 39 Wakefield, Yorks., cathedral, 123 Walberswick, Suffolk, 99 Walsham, North, Norfolk, 127 Walsoken, Norfolk, 70 Warkworth, Northumb., 48 Warmington, Northants., 99, 100 Wells, Som., cathedral, 128 Whaplode, Lincs., 92, 114 Whitwell, Rutland, 78 Winchester, cathedral, 50 Wing, Bucks., 24, 27 Winterton, Lincs., 28, 97 Wisbech, Cambs., 120 Witham, North, Lincs., 47 Witney, Oxon., 61, 110, 112 Wittering, Northants., 28 Wollaton, Notts., 97 Worstead, Norfolk, 99, 125 Worth, Sussex, 37, 102, 103 Yainville, France (Seine-Inf.), 53 Yatton, Som., 99 York, cathedral, 67, 127, 128 Ythanceaster, _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare * * * * * CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS * * * * * Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. An obvious printer error has been corrected, and it is listed below. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. Page 36: "a Saxon ex-example" changed to "a Saxon example". 
30444	----	THE TURKISH BATH: ITS DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION; WITH CHAPTERS ON THE ADAPTATION OF THE BATH TO THE PRIVATE HOUSE, THE INSTITUTION, AND THE TRAINING STABLE. BY ROBERT OWEN ALLSOP, ARCHITECT. ILLUSTRATED WITH PLANS AND SECTIONS _From Scale Drawings by the Author._ [Illustration] E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON. NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET. 1890 PREFACE. The present work originally appeared in the form of a series of illustrated articles in the columns of the _Building News_. It has been carefully revised and enlarged with the addition of much new matter. The object of the author in publishing the work in its present form is to provide, in addition to a text-book for the architect, a treatise which shall enable the public to form their own judgment as to the relative merits of the baths that compete for their patronage. The principles, herein enunciated, upon which good baths should be built, will be easily grasped by the ordinary reader; and the detailed plans and instructions will, it is hoped, supply such information as will enable the designer of baths to cope with the exigencies of any and every case with which he may be confronted. 37, NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON. _March 1890._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL REQUIREMENTS OF A PUBLIC BATH 9 CHAPTER III. THE GENERAL DISPOSITION OF PLAN OF PUBLIC BATHS 17 CHAPTER IV. A DETAILED CONSIDERATION OF FEATURES PECULIAR TO THE BATH 32 CHAPTER V. HEATING AND VENTILATION 59 CHAPTER VI. WATER-FITTINGS AND APPLIANCES 87 CHAPTER VII. LIGHTING, DECORATING, AND FURNISHING 102 CHAPTER VIII. THE TURKISH BATH IN THE HOUSE 118 CHAPTER IX. THE BATH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS, ETC. 134 CHAPTER X. THE TURKISH BATH FOR HORSES 141 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. PAGE 1. Turkish Baths, Savoy Hill, London 21 2. Turkish Baths, Charing Cross, London 24 3. Turkish Baths, Euston Road, London 28 4. A Plunge Bath 50, 51 5. Methods of arranging Couches in Cooling Room 56 6. View of a small Furnace Chamber, with portion of wall broken away to show the "Convoluted" Stove 65 7. An Air Filter 67 8. Plans and Section of a Furnace Chamber, &c., for a Bath on the ordinary Hot-air Principle 68 9. Section of Hot Room, showing Foul-air Conduit 72 10. A Fireclay Heating Apparatus 74 11. Longitudinal Section of Sudatory Chambers 84 12. A Shampooing Basin 90 13. Valve for Regulating Temperature of Water 91 14. A Needle Bath 94 15. Spray, Wave, and Douche Baths 95 16. Regulating Valves for Needle, Douche, &c. 96 17. Bather's Shower Bath 99 18. Section and Plan of an Enamelled Iron Ceiling 107 19. Plans of Plunge Baths 112 20. Section of Benches in Hot Rooms, and in Cooling Room Divans 115 21. Furniture of a Turkish Bath 117 22. Plan of Mr. Urquhart's Small Private Bath and of the Hot Room at Sir Erasmus Wilson's Bath at Richmond Hill 119 23. Methods of constructing Turkish Baths in existing Houses 124 24. A complete Private Turkish Bath 126 25. Design for a Private Turkish Bath 130, 131 26. Plan of the Baths at the Hotel Mont Dore, Bournemouth 135 27. Plan of the Great Northern Railway Company's Turkish Bath for Horses 142 THE TURKISH BATH. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Since the revival of the bath of antiquity, and its introduction into this country under the name of the Turkish bath, this method of bathing has become very generally adopted; and although onward progress is rendered less rapid than it might be, by the wide-spread popular ignorance that ascribes an element of danger to the bath, erroneous impressions are being gradually removed, and the continual building of new baths testifies to the manner in which the institution flourishes on British soil. To what extent the delusion concerning the supposed danger connected with this form of bathing is to be ascribed to popular ignorance and prejudice, or to the fact that baths of unsuitable design and construction, and of faulty heating and ventilation, are put before the public, it would be hard to say. Certain it is that the latter cause has done much--very much--injury. I cannot but think that one of the chief obstacles to the progress of the bath in this country, is that little or nothing has been written or said about its proper design, construction, and working, and that no full inquiry has been made into the best possible method of supplying heat to the bathers. As a consequence, we have had, and still have, placed before the public, and meeting with undeserved success, "Turkish baths" which are such only in name--unhealthy, ill-ventilated cellars, where the air, deteriorated at the outset by the heating apparatus, stagnates in the sudatory chambers, and becomes loaded with the exhalations and emanations of the bathers, and not unfrequently charged with a nauseating and disgusting odour. What wonder that we so often hear persons remark that they have tried the bath, but neither enjoyed it nor did it agree with them! The damaging effect of "baths" of this type on the prospects of the true bath is incalculable. In the absence of enlightenment, however, thousands, convinced of the value and benefit of the bathing, periodically attend these miserable substitutes for properly-planned, hygienically-heated, and effectively-ventilated Turkish baths. Viewing any self-evident shortcomings as irremediable evils, ignorant of the true principles of bath construction, and knowing little or nothing of the physiological action of the bath, they have neither the means of ascertaining, nor the power to detect, the genuine article from the harmful substitute. With the public the best bath will be the most elaborate and most flashily decorated, and the moth-and-candle principle comes into play with striking semblance to the original type. So much has been written and said about the arrangement, design, and working of the baths of the ancient Romans, and of the Oriental nations of to-day, that it will be superfluous and unnecessary here to enter upon the subject, fascinating though it be to any one interested in the building of modern baths. An intelligent study of old plans, and of the writings of those who have given their attention to the elucidation of the special purposes to which the various apartments of the Roman _Thermæ_ were devoted, serves in no small degree to a complete understanding of the problems involved in the perfecting of the bath in modern times. So also with regard to the Hammam of the East, an acquaintance with its plan and working is equally instructive. But to fully elucidate the history of thermo-therapeutic architecture would require a volume of itself, since the many questions that present themselves to the student of ancient baths cannot be properly understood without considerable and lengthy description. Those desirous of studying the subject of the design of ancient and Oriental baths will find many works within easy reach. In his 'Manual of the Turkish Bath,' the late David Urquhart has given a most complete account of Eastern baths; and in Sir Erasmus Wilson's 'Eastern or Turkish Bath,' will be found a popular account of the sumptuous baths of antiquity, which will serve as an introduction to further researches with the aid of more abstruse works, such as Wollaston's 'Thermæ Romano-Britannicæ,' Cameron's 'Baths of the Romans,' and particularly the careful description of the Pompeian _Balneæ_ in Sir William Gell's 'Pompeiana.' In the admirable works of Samuel Lysons, the Gloucestershire antiquary, will be found interesting accounts of the remains of old Roman baths in this country; and in Daremberg and Saglio's 'Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines,' is a most capable essay on ancient _Balneæ_. In Eastern travellers' books, desultory descriptions of the Oriental bath will be found; and in Owen Jones's work on the Palace of the Alhambra, at Granada, plans and sections are given of the elegant little bath that the Moorish builders erected therein. For the purposes of this work, and for the sake of brevity and convenience, I have thought fit to adopt the following terms from the old Roman vocabulary, to designate the apartments of the modern bath. I respectively term the first, second, and third hot rooms, the _Tepidarium_, _Calidarium_, and _Laconicum_. Although the exact nature of the ancient Roman _laconicum_ is still a question in debate, I have chosen to employ the term to designate herein the hottest of the hot. The washing room I call the _Lavatorium_; the cooling room, the _Frigidarium_; and the separate dressing room, the _Apodyterium_. The modern "Turkish bath" is rather a revival of the Roman bath, than that of the East. Among the Orientals, the air of the sudorific chambers is charged more or less heavily with vapour. In the ancient Roman bath, the atmosphere must have been more or less dry. And it has been decided by physiologists and physicians of the hydropathic school, that the air of the bath cannot be too free of all moisture. With a perfectly dry atmosphere a high degree of heat can be borne, and the dryness moreover is conducive to perspiration. This absolute need for a dry atmosphere in the bath will be found fully explained in an admirable work by Dr. W.B. Hunter, M.D., entitled 'The Turkish Bath: its Uses and Abuses.' But notwithstanding the fact that the type of bath employed at the present day resembles, in point of dryness of atmosphere, that of ancient Rome, the name of Turkish bath, originally given to it by Mr. Urquhart, has held good, and must now be accepted as the correct modern designation. Neither the term "Turkish," however, nor the designation "hot-air" bath, convey to the uninitiated any idea of the true principle of "the bath," as I shall hereinafter call it for brevity's sake. More properly it is a "_heat_ bath"--a _thermal cure_. In the ordinary hot-air bath, the heated air is simply a medium; and, as I have endeavoured to explain in the body of this little work, the heat is best supplied to the body of the bather by direct radiation. By the "Turkish bath," therefore, I would be understood to mean a method of supplying pure heat--not necessarily hot air--to the surface of the human body for hygienic, remedial, and curative purposes.[1] In the following pages, however, I have, in this respect, treated of the subject from the broadest point of view, and have explained the method of designing the _hot-air bath_ pure and simple, looking upon the convected and radiating heat principles as both good of their kind, and perfectly admissible modes of applying heat to the human frame. I have adhered to this plan throughout, because, even supposing that it were shown conclusively to-morrow, that the principle of heating by convection is absolutely wrong, baths of this type would, owing to the slow march of improvement in this country, still be built and require to be planned. Moreover, it has been in the past, and still is, the generally accepted idea that the Turkish bath is a hot-air bath pure and simple. Medical men of eminence who have studied the question have thought fit to retain the term "hot air" in descriptions of the Turkish bath. In deference to their opinion I may hereinafter, in places, speak of the _hot-air bath_. The arguments put forward in favour of radiant heat, with a comparatively cool atmosphere, in the sudorific chambers, are, for the most part, the result of my own experience and study. I treat of my subject in two sections, dealing with public and private baths respectively. Chapters II. to VII. are devoted to the elucidation of the principles to be observed in the building of public baths, either for true public purposes or as commercial speculations. It is unnecessary to speak of these two classes of baths under separate heads: what is required of the one is required of the other. The only difference is that one is the property of the people, and may be required to be designed in a block of buildings containing other kinds of baths; and the other is owned by a company of persons or by a single individual as the case may be, and is generally an establishment complete in itself. It is not to the credit of the English nation that so little has been done in connection with Turkish bath building for the people. The attention given to the question of supplying bath-houses of any kind is of the most meagre character. The provisions of the Public Baths and Wash-houses Act are entirely inadequate. In these matters the German nation is far ahead of us. Fortunately for the general health, the Englishman is renowned for his morning "tub." But the cold tub is merely a tonic bath, and the Turkish bath cleanses both the inward and outward man, besides constituting a most perfect tonic. The cleanliness of the vast body of the English depends on the warm shallow bath, an ineffective means at the best, and, often, when taken at a high temperature, fraught with a real danger to certain constitutions. Used, as customary, without a tonic application of cold water, it is eminently conducive to cold-catching. But one cannot blame the average Englishman for his neglect of the health-giving habit of scientific bathing, unless he sees the advantage of, and has means to afford, a Turkish bath in his own house. He looks in vain for an appropriate, comfortable, and attractive bath-house provided for him by the Legislature, and he dislikes the thought of the impure atmosphere and odours of the so-called "Turkish baths" provided by enterprising business men. He can do nothing but fall back on his warm water bath and cold morning tub. In the second section, comprised in Chapters VIII. to X., I have dealt with private baths, including the bath in the house and mansion, in institutions of one kind and another, and in connection with training stables. In the chapter on the bath in the private house, will be found plans of baths of several types, from the smallest and least expensive to the most elaborate and costly. It is my hope that this little work may lead to some attention being bestowed on the question of providing public Turkish baths worthy of the country; that it may add a stimulus to the building of high-class baths as commercial speculations; and that, from its pages, those desirous of experiencing the luxury of a model Turkish bath in their own homes, may learn the best methods of its design and construction. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The Germans, with more perception and accuracy than ourselves, term the therapeutic agent that we called the Turkish bath, the "Roman-Irish bath"--the _Römisch-irische Bäder_. Both the ancient Roman bath and the old Irish "sweating-house," gave out radiant heat from the walls to the bather, and did not depend on the supplying of hot air.] CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL REQUIREMENTS OF A PUBLIC BATH. In order to avoid unnecessary expense in working and management, a public Turkish bath should be convenient and _compact_ in plan. It should be as perfect as possible in regard to heating and ventilation, in order to insure patronage; and, for the same reason, it should be made a thing of beauty. A badly-ventilated, inconvenient, and ill-adorned bath does harm, both to the bather and the cause. It is its own enemy, and harmful also to all other baths; whereas every ably-designed bath has in itself the elements of success, and assists existing institutions by increasing the number of converts to the process. A good bath does not necessarily mean an elaborate and expensive one, but primarily one where the heating and ventilation are on the latest and most approved principles, and where the shampooing and washing rooms are kept sweet and clean, the bathing appliances effective, and the cooling rooms ample, and supplied with an abundance of fresh air. This is not the result of sumptuousness and elaboration, but of pure applied science. Amplitude of space, however, facilitates its attainment, as it is difficult to render a cramped bath beneficial and attractive. By an attractive bath, I would be understood to mean one in which the visitor will feel interest in the design; where pleasant objects are presented to his eye, both in the sudorific chambers and in the cooling rooms. Artistic decorations have here a commercial value. The bath requiring time, the bather is compelled to pass some hours in the various apartments, and it is therefore highly desirable that his surroundings be rendered pleasant and entertaining. In a Turkish bath, as in other architectural matters, this is not the result of a prodigal expenditure on costly decorations and fittings, but rather of a careful arrangement of necessary and desirable features, and a knowledge of the methods of obtaining piquancy of effect by their distribution on the plan. The arrangement of the modern bath is modified from that of the Ancients and Orientals to suit the accepted form of practice in this country, so that the order of the different processes through which the bather passes governs the disposition of the various apartments. The chief object to be attained is to induce a more or less vigorous perspiration by the application of heat. This heat is now generally applied through the medium of the air, which is raised to a high temperature by being passed over and in contact with the heated surfaces of stoves of various designs, or by direct radiation from hot metal or firebrick. Theoretically, the generally-adopted method of applying the heat to the bather might be greatly improved, but practically it has been found the best. Into these questions, however, I shall enter when treating of the heating and ventilating of the bath. For the present, it will suffice to say that the chief object to be attained in the bath is the supplying of an abundance of _pure hot air_ to the various sudorific chambers, and the rapid withdrawal of the foul air and exhalations. Since the disposition of the various apartments is governed by the methods of bathing in vogue, it will be necessary to first give the reader a brief account of the various processes undergone by the bather. The object of the profuse perspiration to be attained is twofold--(1) To cleanse the blood of impurities; and (2) to loosen the dead scales of the epidermis, or scarf-skin, that spreads itself everywhere over the true skin or cuticle. Besides this, however, physiologists tell us that the heat itself has a beneficial effect on the body in other ways, and is, in cases of disease, a most powerful curative and remedial agent. This latter fact explains the necessity for the high temperatures employed, as mere perspiration could be attained with a comparatively low degree of heat. The course of treatment to be undergone by the bather, as given by Sir Erasmus Wilson, is--(1) Exposure of the naked body to hot dry air. (2) Ablution with warm and cold water. (3) Cooling and drying the skin. In addition to these, however, there should be added the process of "massage" or shampooing before washing. The perspiration is attained in the various hot rooms--the _Tepidarium_, _Calidarium_, and _Laconicum_. The nature of these apartments--which I shall hereinafter consider in detail--must be determined by the pretensions of the establishment. Perspiration having been induced, the bather submits to the kneading of the muscles of the trunk and limbs by the shampooer. For this operation, which restores tone and vigour to the muscular and nervous system, a separate and distinct apartment should, in high class baths, be provided. Vigorous friction with a coarse glove succeeds the shampooing. This detaches the dead portions of the epidermis, and is an operation generally practised in the _Lavatorium_--a washing room adjoining the shampooing room. In the same place the bather receives copious ablutions with warm water. The less robust conclude the cleansing process with a douche, needle, spray, or shower bath, graduated from warm to cold; and the strong bather, by plunging into a bath of cold water, the object of which is to contract and close the sweat-glands and pores of the skin that have been swelled and opened by the high temperatures of the calorific apartments. For these purposes a small room, with the various appliances named, and a large chamber containing a more or less ample plunge bath, must be provided. In small baths, provision for both these operations is made in one general shampooing and washing room, where the bather is "massed," rubbed down, washed, and takes the plunge or shower bath. The plunge may, if thought advantageous, be placed partly in the cool apartment and partly in the hot rooms, in which case, the bather dives under a glazed partition of some sort, which, furnished with an india-rubber flap dangling in the water, prevents the hot air of the sudatorium from entering the cooling rooms. The above description gives an outline of the cleansing and hygienic processes, and of the nature of the requirements of those portions of the bath devoted to their attainment. I have named them first as being the most indispensable portion of the necessary suite of rooms, since the bath may exist if it be merely in the form of an old Irish "sweating-house," or a somewhat similar construction of the North American Indian; but without the heated chamber and its appurtenances there can be no bath. The next important features to be considered are the dressing and cooling rooms. Before entering the bath rooms proper, the bather must divest himself of his clothing, and assume the bathing garment. The dressing room or _Apodyterium_, and the cooling room or _Frigidarium_, are generally made one and the same; but they may, with advantage, be designed as separate and distinct apartments, the provision for dressing and undressing consisting of a room or rooms with small dressing-boxes around it. The frigidarium will then be a simple apartment designed for the economical reception of the reposing couches, it being absolutely essential that the bather rest awhile, after the bath, to allow the body to gradually assume its normal temperature. Neglect of this precaution may cause a renewal of perspiration, and possibly a "cold." If a combined apodyterium and frigidarium be adopted, it must be fitted with a number of divans to accommodate a given number of persons, or be divided into smaller spaces with dwarf screens, each space receiving a pair of couches. The divisions may be effected by more or less elaborate and ornamental wooden partitions. In ladies' baths more privacy must be observed. Each lady bather should have a private dressing and reposing room, even if only formed by dwarf wooden partitions. An arrangement may be designed whereby the bather enters first a room fitted with a number of dressing-boxes, and then passes through the frigidarium on his way to the hot rooms, whence he returns after his bath. Where the establishment is on a large scale, the arrangement may lead the bather first to a room fitted with dressing-boxes, then to the hot rooms, and finally, by way of the plunge bath, into a commodious and separate cooling room. Subsidiary to the cooling and dressing rooms should be others for the attendants, manager, and also for the hairdresser and chiropodist, or, at any rate, some sort of provision made for them. A pay office, with counter and a set of lockers for the receipt of the bather's watch, money, and other valuables, should be the first object that one meets on entering from the vestibule connecting the establishment with the street. In connection with this office may be the manager's room, and provision for the supply of refreshments. If the bath be the property of a company, a board room may be required. As on entering a bath the visitor must immediately divest himself of his boots and shoes, in order that he may not pollute apartments that are devoted to the attainment of that cleanliness which is next to godliness, a raised step must be provided at the entrance to the apodyterium to warn him to enter unshod, or a portion of the combined cooling and dressing room may be divided off by similar means. Provision for the boots and shoes must be in the form of a set of pigeon-holes near the entrance, where, also, racks for coats and hats must be placed. The hair-dressing room and accommodation for the chiropodist--if he does not practise his art at the couch of the bather--must adjoin the frigidarium, as also should the attendants' room. A lavatory must be placed in the frigidarium when used as the dressing room. Closet accommodation should be accessible from the same apartment, but should be perfectly cut off from it by means of a passage or lobby. The greatest care should be taken to prevent these conveniences from becoming offensive. Returning from the bath, the sense of smell is peculiarly sensitive, and the slightest odour is detected. The worst position for the closets is near the door by which the bather leaves the lavatorium. Defects in this point may ruin an otherwise excellent bath. If the cooling rooms and hot rooms be on separate floors, the closets may be designed off a landing on the staircase. In the separate accommodation for attendants and shampooers the same caution must be observed. Adjoining, under, or partly under, the laconicum must be placed the heating apparatus in its chamber, with stokery and provision for fuel, &c. The stokery should be large, light, and properly ventilated, and the attendants should be able easily to communicate with the stoker. Of the arrangements for heating and supplying the water to the lavatorium I shall speak in another chapter. Laundry, linen and towel rooms, and a drying room must be provided. They are important necessities, and should not be cramped in dimensions. CHAPTER III. THE GENERAL DISPOSITION OF PLAN OF PUBLIC BATHS. Although the process of the bath determines the position of the various apartments in relation to one another, the exact disposition of the plan must be governed by the shape of the ground to be covered, the nature of the site and surroundings, and--if the bath be constructed in an existing building--the amount of space allotted to it. The _relative_ position of chamber to chamber of the sudatorium, and of the latter to the cooling rooms, must remain more or less constant; but the angle of connection with each other, their shape, proportions, and floor levels, must, together with the positions of the subsidiary apartments, be determined by the exigencies of the site, and considerations of convenience and economy. Frequently, the architect will be called upon to design a bath in a given space in the lower floors of some existing building. He may be given the ground or basement floor to make the most of as best he can. His plan is thus considerably hampered. If the site includes the basement and ground floor of an ordinary house, he may arrange the offices and cooling and dressing rooms on the ground floor; and the hot rooms, shampooing room, and bath rooms, in the basement. Where possible, the hot rooms should be pushed out beyond the back wall of the houses, and lighted from the top. In cities, the hot rooms will often have to be in the actual basement. Where space is valuable a whole house may be given up to baths if the floors be made fire and heat proof. The basement may be devoted to hot rooms and shampooing rooms, the ground floor to offices and dressing rooms, and the first floor to cooling rooms. Ladies' baths, again, can be arranged on the floors above, and both baths can be heated from one apparatus. In a bath where three floors are available, the first floor may be devoted to extra cooling and dressing rooms. In inexpensive sites the bath may be all on one level. This is the most convenient arrangement, but in large cities is generally too costly. The Hammam and Savoy baths, in London, are, however, all on one level, the former being practically all above ground, and the latter constructed in the basement of an existing building. The London Hammam was the first public Turkish bath erected in this country, and owes its existence to the fervid zeal of the late David Urquhart. It was erected in 1862, from the designs of the late Somers Clarke. The bath rooms proper are modelled on the Eastern plan, and have quite an Oriental effect, with the stars of stained glass sparkling in the sombre domed tepidarium. In this bath the office is arranged in the old building in Jermyn Street, adjoining which is the combined frigidarium and apodyterium, a structure of wood, originally intended as a temporary building only. This is covered with an open-timbered roof, and divided into nave and aisles by cut-wood posts, and lighted by a clerestory. These posts form the divisions of the divans, which are separated from one another by ornamented wood partitions worked in an Eastern manner. Connected by double doors with this apartment are the hot rooms. The main room--a very moderately-heated tepidarium--is a square on plan, with splayed angles, over which rises a dome of brickwork. On either side of this square, and connected with it by the horseshoe arches supporting the dome, are transept-like apartments, used as portions of the tepidarium, similar adjuncts existing at the ends and joining on the one hand the frigidarium, and on the other a heated smoking saloon, which occupies a position corresponding to that of a Lady-chapel in this very ecclesiastical-looking plan. On either side of this saloon are two calidaria. A drying room and laundry are arranged over the smoking saloon, and w.c.'s, &c., are placed at the end of the latter apartment. In the splayed angles supporting the dome are doors leading to four apartments--two used as hot rooms of different temperatures, and the others as a washing-room and a shampooer's waiting room. Under the dome there is an extensive platform of marble slabs, beneath which is the douche room, reached by a short flight of steps. The plunge bath is placed, partly in the tepidarium, and partly in the frigidarium, with an arrangement to prevent the transmission of the hot air, such as I have herein before explained. In the centre of the frigidarium is a little marble fountain. One of the divans is partitioned off for the accommodation of the chiropodist. A gallery is provided for the hairdresser, and connected with a shop in Jermyn Street. The ground sloping considerably, a descent of a few steps has to be made to reach the frigidarium from the street. A refreshment bar is placed in the frigidarium. The manager's room is on the second floor, adjoining the old building, and has a window overlooking the frigidarium. The Hammam was the first public Turkish bath erected in this country, and the Savoy (Fig. 1) is one of the latest and largest, and also on one level. It was designed by Mr. C. J. Phipps, F.S.A., to suit the basement of an existing building. Entering from Savoy Hill, a short passage conducts to a staircase leading to the vestibule, where are provided rails for hats and coats. The counter of the ticket-office is placed at the entrance to the frigidarium, and near this office is the committee room--the bath being the property of a private company. In vaults projecting under the street, provision is made for an engine and dynamo. The frigidarium serves also as the apodyterium, and is cut up into divans by ornamental wood partitions. Connected with it is a saloon for the hairdresser and chiropodist, and an attendants' room. A lavatory is provided in a recess. Access is gained to the hot rooms through double doors. The plunge bath is placed partly in the hot rooms and partly in the frigidarium. The tepidarium is divided by arcades into miniature nave and aisles. Two subdivisions at the end of the tepidarium lead to the calidarium, adjoining which is the heating apparatus, fitted with two of Messrs. Constantine's "Convoluted" stoves. Access to the stokery is gained by a passage at the end of the tepidarium. The shampooing room is placed off the cooler end of the tepidarium, dwarf walls separating it from the latter apartment, as also from the lavatorium. Here, there are six marble basins, corresponding with the six marble slabs in the shampooing room. A small chamber is screened off the lavatorium to accommodate the douche and spray. A passage leads from the douche room to the attendants' room, by way of the laundry. Off this passage, and approached by doors from two of the divans, are the w.c.'s, &c., for the bathers' use. Provision for the supply of refreshments is made at the back of the office. This bath is designed in an Eastern style. [Illustration: FIG. 1. --PLAN-OF THE-SAVOY-TURKISH-BATHS-- Turkish Baths, Savoy Hill, London.] In the generality of modern baths, the frigidarium forms also the apodyterium. This arrangement is economical of space, and has been found, in practice, the most convenient for bathers; but there is much to be said in favour of a separate and distinct cooling room, such as that at the Camden Town Turkish Baths. Erected from the designs of Mr. H. H. Bridgman, F.R.I.B.A., these baths are specially noteworthy for their spacious frigidarium and ample plunge bath. Entering from the street, a corridor conducts to a short flight of stairs leading to the office. Adjoining this is an apodyterium, fitted with two ranges of dressing-boxes, one above the other, a gallery forming the floor of the upper tier. From hence a short staircase leads to the door of the tepidarium, at right angles to which is the calidarium. Adjoining the tepidarium is a combined shampooing and washing room, a door in which opens into a chamber containing a plunge bath of quite exceptional dimensions. A staircase leads to the door of the lofty and spacious cooling room. This is lighted from the top, and contains a fireplace, a feature usually omitted in cooling rooms, and really superfluous, though adding greatly to cheerfulness of aspect in the winter. From this frigidarium the bather can return to his dressing-box by way of a lobby. Thus he makes a complete round, and does not meet the incoming bathers on the staircase to the tepidarium. The latest built elaborate commercial baths in London are those of Messrs. Nevill in Northumberland Avenue (Fig. 2). They were designed by Mr. Robert Walker, F.R.I.B.A., and comprise both ladies' and gentlemen's baths, though, as at the old Pompeian _Balneæ_, the former set are ungallantly cramped into a very small space. They occupy a corner site, and the entrance to the gentlemen's bath is formed at the rounded angle. In the vestibule is the usual cashier's office, and provision for hats and coats. From the vestibule the combined cooling and dressing room is entered, after passing the boot room on the left and the refreshment bar on the right. Between the boot room and the staircase is the hairdresser's room. Dwarf wooden partitions divide the cooling room. Off a landing on the staircase are a lavatory and w.c.'s and toilet-table. The staircase leads to the first floor--where are provided extra couches--and to the bath rooms in the basement. The first floor is practically a gallery. In the basement are three hot rooms, the tepidarium being an elegant apartment elaborately adorned with marbles and rich faïence. A heated smoking room adjoins the second hot room. There are in this bath three shampooing rooms--an arrangement conducing greatly to privacy. A douche room and plunge bath are provided in the angle of the building. Vaults under the street are utilised as a laundry, attendants' room, meter room, and engineer's shop, and as store-rooms. [Illustration: FIG. 2. Turkish Baths, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross.] The ladies' baths partly adjoin the gentlemen's, and are partly separated by an area. They are entered from the side street. On the ground floor is the pay-office and cooling room. Additional couches are provided on the first floor, where is also an attendants' room. In the basement are three hot rooms and two shampooing rooms. A washing room, shower bath, and plunge bath adjoin the shampooing rooms. The hottest rooms of both sets of these baths are within a few feet of each other. Each, however, has its separate and distinct furnace. A passage formed by the area allows access to the stokery and furnace chambers. In Messrs. Nevill's baths at London Bridge the cooling rooms, &c., are in the basement, and the bath rooms proper in a sub-basement. Bartholomew's baths at Leicester Square are an excellent example of a compactly-arranged double set of baths. The various apartments are designed one above the other on different floors, the area of the building being limited. On the ground floor, as usual, are the pay office and a combined cooling and dressing room, and an attendant's room. In the basement are the bath rooms, arranged _en suite_--first a shampooing and washing room, containing, also, in a very compact manner, the plunge and shower baths; next is the tepidarium; then the smaller second hot room; and, lastly, the smallest hot room of a very high temperature. The heating chamber is placed adjoining this. The principle of its construction is that generally adopted in the baths erected under the late Mr. Bartholomew's direction, viz. a furnace with a coil of thin iron flue-pipes, radiating, in a measure, a certain amount of heat directly into the hot rooms. The bath rooms are divided from one another by glazed wood partitions, as distinct from the solid walls dividing baths like the Hammam and Savoy. A consideration of these two methods of dividing the hot rooms, does not, however, concern us here. A staircase from the entrance vestibule leads to the ladies' baths on the second and third floors, where also are manager's and other private rooms. Broadly speaking, baths may be divided into two classes, viz. those in which the various apartments are arranged _en suite_, and those irregularly planned. Where possible the former arrangement is preferable, as, with the hot rooms in a line, the circulation of air is facilitated. Fig. 11 is a section of a set of hot rooms arranged _en suite_; and the baths at Figs. 24 and 25, in Chapter VIII., are planned on this principle. As I have said above, where a basement and ground floor are available, and a little space can be gained at the back of the existing building, the office, cooling and dressing rooms can be arranged on the ground floor, and the bath rooms proper on the basement level, but with light and air above. If the site be an ordinary narrow-fronted town house, and the bath an unassuming one, the plan may be arranged after the manner of Mr. Joseph Burton's baths (Fig. 3), in the Euston Road, London. Here a pair of ordinary town dwelling-houses are pressed into the service of the bath. The basement and ground floors are devoted to the baths, the upper floors forming a private hotel. On one side are the gentlemen's, and on the other, the ladies' baths. Entering the former, we find a space on the ground floor, fronting the street, serving as an office. Adjoining this is a range of dressing-boxes, and further on a cooling room, excellently lighted by a large window forming the whole end of the apartment. From this little frigidarium a marble staircase leads to the door of the tepidarium, formed at basement level at the back of the houses. This chamber is lighted by means of a ceiling-light constructed in the form of a small, flat dome, with stained-glass stars set therein. A marble seat runs round the whole of this chamber. On one side of the staircase is placed the calidarium, and, on the other, the combined shampooing room and lavatorium, a door from the latter forming an exit for the visitor who has completed his bath. At one end of the shampooing room is a chamber containing the cold plunge bath and needle bath. A door from hence leads to a staircase conducting to the furnace-chamber. A laundry is provided at the head of these stairs. The furnace-chamber is placed under the further end of the calidarium. The baths for ladies are arranged on a very similar plan. The gentlemen's baths are among the earliest erected in this country, and still form a most compact and convenient institution. They were designed by Mr. James Schofield. The illustration shows the ladies' baths. The ceilings of the hot rooms are not indicated on the section. [Illustration: FIG. 3. Turkish Baths, Euston Road, London.] The whole of the baths mentioned in this chapter are the property of private individuals or companies. The number of baths provided in this country under Act of Parliament or by civic corporations is so small, and their size and design so insignificant, that it would be waste of space to describe them here. They are unworthy of the nation. One of the best is the pretty little bath provided on the first floor of the public bath-house recently erected by the Corporation of Stockport. The fine new baths at Bath erected from designs by Major Davis, the city architect, do not include a Turkish bath. It must be admitted that some slight increase in the amount of attention paid by corporate bodies to bath-building is latterly to be noticed, and a few years may possibly see a great advance in this direction. That this may indeed be so should be our sincere hope, since the lack of fine public baths is a standing disgrace to a nation that prides itself upon its cleanliness. In Germany, considerable attention has been bestowed upon the design of the Turkish bath, many excellent baths having been built in the more complete bath-houses of the Empire. Well-arranged Turkish baths are to be found in the baths at Nuremberg, Hanover, and Bremen, the latter planned with both a first and second class frigidarium to the one set of bath rooms. The plan, however, has nothing to recommend it, and in this country would be useless. The Nuremberg bath is handsomely planned, and has a spacious frigidarium. It is placed in a building comprising ladies' and gentlemen's swimming baths, shallow baths, and a Russian bath. In many of the hydropathic establishments (_Kurbäder_) of Germany, will be found excellent Turkish baths. A sumptuous double set of bath rooms is provided in the _Friedrichsbad_ in Baden-Baden, which was erected at a cost of about 100,000_l._ The Turkish baths are placed on the ground floor, and in other floors are provided baths of every kind. Each set of rooms for the ladies' and gentlemen's Turkish baths comprises undressing room and cooling room, two sudorific chambers, shampooing room, douche room with cold plunge bath, and a separate chamber with warm plunge. Adjoining the shampooing room are the warm and hot rooms of the Russian bath. Between the two sets of bath rooms is placed a handsome circular swimming-bath, and adjoining, the _Wildbad_--a deep, full bath of warm mineral water. One of the most elaborate Turkish baths erected, in modern times, is that on the Praterstern, at Vienna, which cost, in round numbers, 125,000_l._ The building comprises ladies' and gentlemen's Turkish and Russian baths, and includes a residential block for those taking a course of baths. The whole of the arrangements are on a most sumptuous scale. The cooling room of the gentlemen's baths measures no less than 35.3 metres long, and 10.5 broad. There are both warm and cold plunge baths, besides a fine circular _piscina_, in a circular domed chamber. Similar provisions are made for the ladies on a smaller scale. Though plain and somewhat heavy in external design, the building internally is resplendent with tiles, marble, and ornamental woodwork. CHAPTER IV. A DETAILED CONSIDERATION OF FEATURES PECULIAR TO THE BATH. It is scarcely necessary to say anything more as to the subsidiary apartments of a Turkish bath. Such adjuncts as the entrance hall and vestibule, the pay office, refreshment department, laundry and drying-rooms, hairdressing and attendants' rooms, and other minor provisions, are obviously simple matters, requiring little or no detailed explanation. Sufficient has already been said about them to enable the architect, assisted by the drawings given, to design them with convenience and economy. The features peculiar to the bath are those requiring careful consideration. It is upon the design of the hot rooms, the cooling rooms, and the washing rooms that the success or non-success of a new bathing establishment depends, and too much study cannot be given to these apartments. THE SUDORIFIC CHAMBERS. These are now generally required in a suite of three--"first, second, and third hot." The first is the tepidarium, and must be by far the largest of the three, since in it the greater number of bathers will assemble at one time. The last must be the hottest room--the laconicum--and need only be a very small one, as but few bathers use it, and that, generally, for a very short time. The second hot room should be about midway, in size and temperature, between the first and the third. Of a given area allotted to the hot rooms, from one-half to two-thirds may be devoted to the tepidarium, and from one-third to one-half to the super-heated rooms, always remembering that it is well to err on the side of providing a large and roomy tepidarium. Of the space allowed for the smaller rooms, one-quarter to one-third may be given to the hottest, and the remaining space to the second hot-room, or calidarium. The hot rooms, it should be remembered, are strictly bath rooms, and must be treated as such; that is to say, the whole of the floors, walls, ceilings, partitions, and fittings, must be capable of being frequently cleansed with water. The choice of materials to be employed for lining the walls, &c., is therefore limited. And in two ways. For not only must they be of this washable nature, but they must be of a character to resist the influence of the heat. Happily, this is an age of glazed-ware and vitrified goods of every description. Glazed and fire-burnt bricks and tiles, terracottas, faïence, and pottery generally, are now so extensively manufactured that there is little excuse for not constructing a bath throughout of materials at once washable and unaffected by high temperatures. Still, in baths where rigid economy must be studied, and lowness of cost is the great object, _plaster_ may be placed upon the walls of the hot rooms, and in its way will answer admirably, and be fairly washable. It has even one advantage--it does not become unbearably hot to the touch, should the bather lean against the walls, whereas, with a highly glazed surface the walls become burning hot, and need lining with a dado of felt or other non-conducting substance. And since this latter method overcomes the objection named, the best possible material for lining the walls is glazed brickwork. In cases where elaboration is desired, they may be lined with marbles and faïence. With a judicious selection of colours, however, a very pleasing appearance can be given by the employment of simple glazed brickwork, and at a very moderate cost. The flooring in cheap baths is admirably formed by simple unglazed tile pavement over concrete. A slight roughness is very agreeable to the feet. Glazed tiles are inadmissible, as they become too hot for the naked feet; and if the slightest moisture come upon them they are rendered dangerously slippery. In elaborate baths, marble, and marble mosaics may be used, but the surface must not be too smooth. In providing floorings, the greatest care should be taken to avoid anything liable to become slippery to the tread. Floors of ordinary-sized baths, where the soil is reliable, may be of 6 in. of concrete, with mosaics or tiles laid in cement. The benches for reclining and shampooing must be built up from this with half-brick risers and glazed fronts, having weathered marble slabs with rounded nosings, as illustrated at Fig. 3. The ceilings of the fire and heat-proof floors, which, when there are other apartments above, _must_ be provided over the hot rooms, may be of plaster. But the heat at the ceiling level is very great, and the plaster here rapidly darkens and blackens, and in this state looks anything but attractive in a place where the mere suspicion of uncleanliness is nauseating. If employed (and this remark also applies to plaster on walls), it should be used in the simplest manner possible, without the slightest attempt at modelling the surface. Enamelled iron may be used, with effect, for ceilings. The little laconicum is best covered with a flat vault, the soffit being of glazed bricks, and the springing being brought down below the main ceiling level. Fire-proof floors over hot rooms may be of any design that is also heat-proof. The main point is to have a sufficient thickness of concrete, and the iron joists and cross girders well buried therein. Ordinary floors may be rendered heat-proof by partially filling the space between ceiling and floorboards with sawdust or sheets of slag-wool laid on boarding nailed to fillets on the joists. The sawdust should be filled up to the top of the joists; over this a layer of thick felt, and the boarding above. This, however, is only a makeshift when compared with a solid floor of concrete. When the hot rooms are in a basement in the open, they may be top-lighted, and the ceiling above need not be a heavy fire-proof construction. A sufficient air space, however, must be provided between the ceiling and roof, to prevent irradiation of heat--a remark that applies also to anything in the shape of a window in the sudatorium. It must be double, or look into an area covered with pavement lights. In the case of a top-lighted room there must be a ceiling-light and a skylight. Where the hot rooms are constructed quite above ground, consideration must be given to the prevention of loss of heat by radiation. This may be effected by providing thick hollow walls, the cavity being often usefully employed for the extraction of the vitiated air. Heat permeating other apartments and neighbouring premises is a frequent source of trouble to the builder of a Turkish bath, but is always the result of want of study of the subject on the part of the designer. The evil may be successfully combated if it be resolved that no hot room, shampooing room, or lavatorium shall be constructed without a thick concrete floor above, and that the furnace chamber be perfectly and completely insulated. Should the walls of the hot rooms adjoin apartments to which it is urgently necessary that the heat should be prevented from being transmitted, they may be rendered heat-proof by building them hollow and filling the cavity with soot. Double doors and lobbies must be employed to prevent the transmission of the heated air to rooms where its presence would be injurious. To keep the hot air of the bath-rooms from the cooling-rooms, &c., should be the great aim of the architect. Many baths are rendered quite repulsive by what I may perhaps term the "sudorific smell" that assails the nostrils of the visitor entering the vestibule. The space allotted to the sudatory chambers may be divided into the various rooms, either by glazed brick walls or by framed and glazed partitions; or again, they may be formed by a combination of solid brickwork and glazed woodwork. Any piers in these rooms must be of brickwork, iron columns being inadmissible. Masonry, too, must be discarded throughout, or used with caution. Some stones--such as red Mansfield--become black with exposure to the heat, and others fare still worse. The employment of porous and absorbent materials must be guarded against throughout this portion of the bath, as it should be remembered that effete matters, particles of waste tissue, and possibly the germs of disease, are continually being given off by the perspiring bathers, and must be prevented from finding a lodgment. The best woods for use in the hot rooms are close-grained and free from essential oils. Mahogany is excellently adapted for the purpose, and so, also, is teak. Pitch pine must be discarded altogether. Deal, when employed, should be perfectly seasoned, and may then give trouble from the exudation of turpentine. The partitions, and the doorways in them, must be so placed as to govern the flow of hot air. So long as the main divisions be planned with this end in view, the separate rooms may be divided and broken up as the architect may fancy. But the constant flow of the heated air from the inlet in the hottest room towards the lavatorium must not be interfered with by recesses, nooks, and corners, or anything that would cause the current to stagnate. And here we may see the practical advantage possessed by a bath where the hot rooms are _en suite_, and in a line with one axis. For here the air sweeps uninterruptedly through the different chambers without eddying around corners and stagnating in recesses far out of the main stream. The doorways in the partitions should not be too lofty. They should not be hung with doors, as anything necessary in this way will be amply supplied by depending curtains. _Glazing_ in the hot rooms requires care. The glass will expand considerably with the heat, and, what is more, if the furnace fire die out rapidly at any time, will contract and fracture. This difficulty, however, is the result of bad management, and does not concern the architect, unless, indeed, it be the result of improper fixing. Even moderate-sized sheets of glass should be carefully fixed in chamois leather with screwed beading, _putty_ being wholly inadmissible. The sheets of glass should not be of too large dimensions. Rolled glass will be found the cheapest in the end, as inferior qualities, where homogeneity of texture is wanting, will crack and split in all directions. Lead glazing should be altogether discarded. No provision for draining the hot rooms is necessary, as they must, when in use, be kept free from moisture. The floor may, however, if thought desirable, be laid with an imperceptible fall the way the water would be swept when cleansing--viz. towards the lavatorium. As the best position for a bather to assume in the sudatorium is one approaching to the horizontal, a bath cannot be considered complete unless a liberal number of marble-slabbed benches be provided. These should run round the solid walls, the risers of the benches being formed of brickwork--glazed, faced with tiles, or plastered--and white marble slabs set thereon. These slabs cannot be less than 24 in. wide, and must be of the ordinary seat height--not lower. In the risers must be provided a liberal number of "hit-and-miss" ventilator gratings, the vitiated air finding its way from the space beneath the slabs in the way designed, which may be into surrounding areas, into hollow walls, or into a flue or flues running the whole height of the building. The air at the floor line and that at the ceiling level being of vastly different temperatures, it follows that an arrangement might be designed whereby the benches might be stepped in three or four rows, and, by ascending, the bather could select any temperature he might choose. Such an arrangement was often employed in the baths of the ancient Romans, and has been tried in modern institutions; but it should be avoided. The expirations from the lungs and the exudations from the bodies of the bathers _fall_, and it therefore follows that all below the first tier would be breathing air polluted by those above them. The system, therefore, stands condemned. As regards height, the sudorific chambers should not be too lofty, or they cannot, on the ordinary hot-air plan, be heated with due economy. The vastness of the old Roman tepidarium would have been impracticable under this system; but with the heat radiating direct from the walls and the floors, there was no difficulty. It is far better to have a comparatively low chamber with a constant stream of freshly-heated air passing through it, than a lofty one with a sluggish current. From 10 to 15 or 16 ft. may be taken as moderate extremes of height in a public bath. The small third hot room will be less lofty if the heating-chamber be placed under it; for by raising the floor of the laconicum a few feet, so as to necessitate ascending to it by a few steps from the level of the tepidarium, one can more economically construct the furnace chamber. This latter, which I have more particularly described and illustrated in the chapter on heating and ventilation, should, if the system adopted be on the ordinary hot-air principle, be so placed that an abundant supply of fresh pure cold air can be obtained for the furnace, which, when heated, can be delivered into the hottest room above, not less than 5 ft. from the level of the floor of that chamber, and, also, where a smoke flue of ample section can be constructed. The heated air may be delivered through the gratings in the walls of the laconicum, or a shaft of glazed brickwork, of rectangular section, may be constructed against the end wall and coped at the required level--5 ft. or more above the floor line. Should the exigencies of the site separate the furnace chamber from immediate connection with the hottest room, the heated air must be conducted from the former to the latter by means of a large shaft or shafts of glazed brickwork. Similar means may have to be employed to bring the cold air to the heating-chamber, and at the mouth of this shaft some provision must be made for filtering the air before it is brought into contact with the heating surfaces of the furnace. Horizontal and inclined flues for conducting hot or cold air may be carried from point to point on rolled iron joists having tooled York slabs set thereon, the flues being constructed of 4-1/2 in. brickwork with glazed face internally, and covered with tooled York slabs. Provision must be made, in such flues, for effective cleansing, by means of iron air-tight doors. THE LAVATORIUM AND SHAMPOOING ROOM. The lavatorium and shampooing room now engage our attention. In elaborate baths they may, for the sake of effect, be distinct apartments, while, where strict economy must be studied, they may be comprised in one room; and where, again, space is extremely valuable, the plunge bath and douche may be also included. If the first arrangement be adopted, the shampooing room must be connected with the tepidarium, and the lavatorium placed next. Where the combination apartment is used, it will take the position of the shampooing room. Practically, the combination arrangement is the best. It is putting the bather to needless and undesirable trouble to require him to move from one apartment to another during the washing process. The suite of washing and shampooing rooms may be arranged in either one of the following ways, according to the pretensions and requirements of the establishment:--(1) A shampooing room, a lavatorium, a douche room, and a plunge bath chamber; (2) a combined shampooing and washing room, and a combined douche and plunge bath chamber; (3) several small combined shampooing and washing rooms, a douche room, and a plunge bath chamber; (4) an apartment comprising shampooing slabs, washing basins, douche, &c., and a plunge bath. A single shampooing room does not present a very complicated problem to the designer. The chief object to be borne in mind is that the shampooers require "elbow-room," and their patient in a convenient position to allow of their practising their art. As this is no light task--if properly performed--it becomes of urgent moment that the apartment should be no less perfectly ventilated than a sudorific chamber. In a vitiated atmosphere, no shampooer can work well for a prolonged period, and, moreover, pure air is as necessary for the bathers when in these places, as when they are in the hot rooms. The shampooing benches may be similar in description and size to those in the hot rooms. A width of 2 ft. is an ample provision, since the shampooer can more conveniently work with the bather as near him as possible. The benches may be constructed in a similar manner to those before described. They must be arranged on plan so that the shampooer has ample room, whilst at the same time space is not extravagantly wasted. The benches must be topped with white marble slabs. They may run round the wall, or be placed at right angles to them; or, again, if found more convenient, they may be altogether isolated. Similar means of ventilating the shampooing and washing rooms as the hot rooms must be provided. The vitiated air must be extracted at the floor level, as the temperature here must be maintained considerably above that of respired air. Movable wooden-framed marble-topped benches may be substituted for those of a permanent type; but the plan has nothing to recommend it except lowness of cost. The separate lavatorium need not be so large as its adjoining shampooing room, as here the bathers will not recline, but sit or stand before washing-basins, to which must be conducted the flow pipes of hot water, and branches from the cold water supply pipe. These basins--which may be of glazed earthenware if solid marble cannot be afforded--should be large and capacious. Of water-fittings I shall speak under the head of "Appliances." In a combined shampooing and washing room the benches and basins will be required together. The basins may be fixed under a hole in the marble slabs, or affixed to the walls, as may be convenient. Whilst arranging the position of the benches with regard to the room, and the basins with regard to the benches, it will be as well to remember the postures that the bather assumes whilst being shampooed--viz. 1st, sitting; 2nd, on the back; 3rd, reverse. The basin must be so placed with respect to the slab that the shampooer may, without altering his position, take water from the basin with his handbowl, and pour it over the bather. A shampooer cannot well work with less than 5 ft. 6 in. between his slab and that of his adjoining fellow, when the slabs are at right angles to the wall and the adjoining shampooer is also working in the same space between the two benches. Where the room is long and a row of benches are placed at right angles to the wall, the shampooers have each their separate space to work in. Each one can then manage in 4 ft., and the slabs can be set out 6 ft. from centre to centre. Where the long sides of the slabs are against the walls and the basins are sunk into the slabs, there must be at least 7 ft. 6 in. from basin to basin. In the case of slabs at right angles to the walls, the basins are best placed between the slabs. It is an excellent plan to provide a slight screen in one corner of the washing room, behind which the entering bather may, if he chooses, have a warm spray from a large rose before proceeding to the hot rooms. In ladies' baths it is well to provide private shampooing recesses by means of partitions of sufficient height, which may be of wood and obscure glass. In this way any shampooing room may be rendered more private. Upright marble slabs will often be found useful in dividing the benches. The walls and ceilings of the apartments now under consideration may, so long as there be a dado of glazed ware, be lined in the same way as the hot rooms. But as regards flooring, still more care is required to prevent slipperiness. The soap and water that will be plentifully spilt around, renders this precaution needful. Moreover, provision must be made for drainage. The flooring may be of rough tile mosaic, or simple tiles. Marble is too slippery, and glazed tiles are wholly inadmissible. Marble mosaics, roughly set, may be employed. The fall to which the floor is laid must be determined by the position of the gullies. The drainage system of a hot-air bath is a most important consideration. In a place where the occupants are, literally, _breathing at every pore_, it is obvious that too much care cannot be taken to prevent all possible odours, and the slightest suspicion of an escape of deleterious sewer gases. The traps employed in the washing rooms should be of the best possible design and material, and proof against the evil known as "siphoning." The gullies above them are best placed adjoining one of the ventilators in the walls, at the floor level, as then a current of air sweeps over them and up the extraction flues. It is not always that an opportunity is afforded to cut off the waste water from the drainage; where the bath rooms are above ground, however, this should be done if practicable. Where possible, an excellent plan is to construct a culvert under the basement floor. In this the whole of the pipes can be placed--the soil-pipes, the lavatorium and plunge bath wastes, &c., and access gained to them by a manhole. By this means a cut-off could be effected between waste-pipes and the sewerage system. The culvert itself could be ventilated by connecting it with an extraction flue. This is all costly; but the builder of a Turkish bath will do well to be prepared to lay out a liberal sum to perfect the system of drainage of the establishment, and in the end, when the public have appreciated the attention bestowed, he will thank his architect for having impressed upon him the necessity for this extra expenditure. THE DOUCHE ROOM. The douche room should be a small chamber adjoining the lavatorium, and fitted with a circular needle bath with shower or douche above, and any other kind of spray bath that may be required. It should not be a dark, cold, uninviting hole. For this reason, and also because a corner is admirably adapted to receive an appliance of the shape of a needle bath, it is better, often, to fit it up in an angle of the lavatorium. But of these additions I shall have much to say anon, as one of the most important points about a bath is the arrangement of the water-fittings. Needle baths will be found indicated, on the plans given in these pages, by an incompleted circle. THE PLUNGE BATH. Though, according to medical authorities, this does not form a _necessary_ appendage to the hot-air bath, it is yet a feature that _must_ be provided in the least pretentious of public establishments. Ever since, and long before, Cicero observed, in a letter to his brother Quintus, "Latiorem piscinam voluissem ubi jactata brachia non offenderentur," men who have taken the hot-air bath have loved the ample plunge. But although it should be sufficiently large for any bather to take a dive, and for an expert to take a true "header," it is a vast mistake to overdo it, and construct a small swimming bath, out of all proportion with the other features of the establishment. One does not look for such an adjunct: it is a great expense to keep up, requires a lot of space, and tempts many to stay too long in the cold water. All purposes will be served by a bath which will allow the bather to swim without touching the sides with his hands, and to dive along under water without danger of striking his head at the other end before he rises to the surface. Wherever possible, the bath should be quite 25 ft. in length and at least 7 ft. wide. In inferior institutions it may be as narrow as 4 ft. and proportionately shorter; but in such a bath one can only flounder about, and healthy bathers will go elsewhere. In deciding the position of the plunge bath there is one point to be strongly guarded against, and that is, that it be not stowed away in a damp, cold-looking, cellar-like place. Such a position may be all very well when the proprietor wishes to conceal dirty water; but from every other point of view it is highly objectionable. The wise man will bring his bath forward into the lightest possible position, where its clear, limpid waters will look enticing instead of repelling. For preference, it should be placed where the bather will take it naturally, _en route_ to the frigidarium, as at the Charing Cross baths, previously illustrated. In baths all on one level, it is convenient to place the bath partly in the lavatorium and partly in the frigidarium; but, to most persons, the necessity for passing under the inevitable partition and flap spoils the full enjoyment of the plunge. If placed within the frigidarium, and approached by a door from the lavatorium, some sort of a screen should be provided over the bath, as, at times, the apparition appearing at the above door, in full view of the occupants of the cooling-room, is somewhat ludicrous. The demands of decency must be borne constantly in mind by the architect of a Turkish bath. If the bather, on leaving the plunge bath, finds himself in the frigidarium, he must ascend the steps under hanging towels. The arrangement that will be found the most convenient--a direct importation from the East--is to suspend a hoop from the ceiling, and from this hang cords attached to towels. The hoop can be swung by an attendant over the end of the bath, and in it the bather can dry himself and be wrapped in towels before proceeding to his couch. Whether the plunge bath be placed in a separate chamber, in the lavatorium, or partly in the frigidarium, its construction will remain essentially the same. If not in shape and size, in other respects it is a small swimming bath. The weight and pressure of the water must be remembered. A good foundation must be prepared for the bath, with a thick layer of concrete passing well under the side walls and covering the whole floor. The side walls should be built of concrete and lined with white glazed bricks. In certain soils, the excavation for the bath may be puddled with advantage, but if properly constructed, this should be unnecessary. The bottom of the bath need not be flat, as the most economical method of constructing a plunge bath is to make its deepest part about two-thirds of its length from the end at which the bather enters. This may be about 4 ft. 6 in. in depth from bottom to water-line. From this point the floor will slope towards either end, gradually towards the entering end, and more rapidly towards the exit. At either end, where the depth of water should be about 3 ft, must be provided steps for ascent and descent. If the bath be not more than 6 ft. wide, these should occupy the whole width, and be of marble or slabs of some cheaper material on brick bearers, or they may be built solid. A coping of marble, stone, or purpose-made bricks must be placed on the side walls; and, if the bath be in the cooling room, this may advantageously be raised several inches to protect from splashing. On the coping may be required metal standards and a neat hand-railing. A water-supply pipe and screw-down tap, an overflow and a waste-pipe will be needed, all of which I have more particularly specified hereinafter. The plunge bath is at times a source of two difficulties--it may leak, and it may be below the level of drain. The first evil is the result of an error in design, or of bad workmanship; the latter is unavoidable. The following method of constructing a plunge bath has been adopted with perfect success:--On the bed of concrete prepared for its floor, erect side walls of concrete, and on the floors and walls thus formed spread two distinct layers of asphalt, covering all and running up to the underside of coping. Against the sides build half-brick walls in cement, with glazed face, and lay the floor with glazed bricks flat. The general principles of this construction I show in the accompanying illustration. Where the bath is lower than the drain, all that can be done is to drain out as much as possible and pump the remaining water from a "sump" provided in a suitable position. By raising the plunge bath chamber a few feet, the bottom of bath may, in some cases, be just kept above the drain level; but steps must then be placed between it and the washing-room, and steps in such places are dangerous, being very liable to become slippery. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] [Illustration: A Plunge Bath.] THE FRIGIDARIUM OR COOLING ROOM, AND DRESSING ACCOMMODATION FOR BATHERS. Dressing and cooling accommodation in a public bath may be provided in one of the following ways:--1. A separate frigidarium and distinct dressing room, arranged (_a_) in direct communication with one another, or (_b_) connected by a lobby, corridor, or ante-room;--2. A combination apartment arranged (_a_) with dressing-boxes around the walls, and couches in the centre, or _vice versâ_; (_b_) with Oriental divans; (_c_) with couches screened off in pairs or singly by dwarf wood screens; (_d_) with a few private dressing-boxes, a few couches, and a few lounges, and easy cushioned chairs; and (_e_) as a simple room with couches placed therein, by the side of which the bather will undress, and on which he will recline after his bath. The first of these arrangements may be admirably adapted to unpretentious establishments, where, however, it is wished to employ separate rooms; the second (1, _b_) is only suitable for elaborate baths of the highest class, in which it may be adopted with excellent and with practical results. Of the combination arrangements (_a_) has little to recommend it; (_b_) is expensive and extravagant of space, though it may be made very effective in appearance and very pleasing and comfortable; (_c_) is suitable for ladies' baths; (_d_) is very practicable, and gives the apartment a pleasant, homely look; and (_e_) is best for cheap baths, being the simplest arrangement possible, wholly unsuited, however, to establishments of any pretension. If the plan include a separate cooling room, it is nothing more than a spacious, cheerful apartment, designed with a view to the reception of couches, and the usual accessories designed in connection with it--the refreshment room, hairdresser and chiropodist's saloon. If this separate cooling room be provided, a distinct apodyterium, with little dressing-boxes, must be designed. If the bath be small and easily managed, curtains may be employed to screen those undressing; but if it be a large establishment, with a number of bathers constantly dressing and undressing, doors must be provided, and these must be under lock and key in charge of an attendant. Each dressing-box must be fitted with a seat, rack, and shelf; and looking-glasses, toilet-tables, and lavatories for general use must be placed in the room, which must be designed in direct connection with the frigidarium. This should be spacious, light, lofty, and perfectly ventilated, the vitiated air being here extracted at the ceiling level, since the temperature at which the apartment will be kept is an ordinary one--_over_ that of the exterior air when the weather is cold, and _under_ when it is at all hot. Where the cooling room and dressing room do not immediately adjoin, the means of communication should be carefully studied, so that it may be free from cross draughts of cold air, and so that it may be dignified and room-like--not a mere passage. It may have the air of an ante-room, but must not be crossed by entering bathers who have not divested themselves of their boots or shoes. Slamming doors should be avoided, having regard to the exposed condition of the bathers. In spite of the theoretical and sentimental advantages of separate cooling and dressing-rooms, a combined frigidarium and apodyterium seems to have found favour latterly. Personally, I would gladly enter a protest against the employment of the combined cooling and dressing room as a decidedly uncleanly habit. It is certainly not pleasant to know that, having obtained perfect physical cleanliness, both inwardly and outwardly, one must return to couches whereon previous bathers may, as likely as not, have, however temporarily, deposited more or less of their underclothing or superimposed raiment. But economy of construction is nowadays a question that must be considered at every step, and the combination apartment saves both space and materials, and is also economical as regards attendance. Moreover, it must be confessed that a cooling room provided with elegant and spacious divans, wherein the bather dresses and undresses, may be made very pleasing to the eye and withal comfortable and convenient. The dressing-boxes, too, of the separate apodyterium are not conducive to the general sense of comfort. In arranging the plan of a combined cooling and dressing room it is necessary to first decide as to how the apartment will be furnished--viz. which of the plans above mentioned shall be adopted. This is much a matter of individual taste, though, as I have said above, the divan is to be preferred in many cases. It is often well to provide a cooling room of what may be called the "picturesque" order, or the reverse of stiff formality. By this I mean such an arrangement as 2, _d_. The bather can then choose between reclining in semi-privacy or in the open, or, again, resting in an easy chair. With a handsome plunge bath and a pretty little fountain, such rooms may be rendered very attractive. Whatever be the plan adopted, it must, I repeat, be carefully thought out previously, and not left as an afterthought. The size of the reclining couch will be found to be the governing feature. This should be 6 ft. 6 in. long by 2 ft. 6 in. wide, or 6 ft. by 2 ft., according as luxury or economy is the end in view. Next to this must be considered the space allowed for each bather to dress in, and also the routes for bathers and attendants. Four feet between the couches is a sufficient space where couches are screened off in pairs. Couches may be arranged in pairs or singly. _Two pairs_ of couches screened off with only a small space between of 4 ft. or so is an objectional arrangement. It is difficult to explain why this is so; but the bather who has made one of four strangers thus closely penned up will appreciate the objection. An arrangement of four couches must expand into a spacious divan. At Fig. 5 are shown different ways of arranging couches in the frigidarium. A shows the objectionable arrangement spoken of; B is the comfortable, spacious divan; C the method of placing couches in pairs; and D is a private couch suitable for ladies' baths. The floor of a cooling room must be boarded. In a bath where cost is subordinate to excellence, a parquetry floor may be provided, and mats employed, as cleaner than fixed carpets. The walls and ceilings may be treated in any manner that may be chosen--plastered, papered, or decorated with colour. [Illustration: FIG. 5. Methods of arranging Couches in Cooling Room.] Any shaped room may be adopted as a combined frigidarium and apodyterium so long as it fulfils the essential points--i.e. that it be spacious, capable of easy and perfect ventilation, and of being kept cool, light, and cheerful. In the cooling room the bather will often stay longer than in any other apartment, and no pains should be spared to render it healthy, comfortable, and attractive. The hygienic points to be attended to are, that there be an abundant supply of fresh cool air and an effective withdrawal of vitiated air; for the _cold-air bath_ in the cooling room is, in its way, as all-important as the bath of hot air. The freshness of the air is of equally vital importance, as much of the _invigorating_ effect of the bath--that effect which to the minds of the uninformed is _weakening_--results from submitting the heated skin to volumes of cold air.[2] In arranging any screens or screen walls in the cooling room, therefore, regard must be had to the method of ventilation, that there be no stagnant corners and recesses. The scheme of ventilation must be decided by the nature of the apartment and its position. In most cases the air is best admitted through the windows, fitted with fanlights falling backwards from the top, and extracted by a powerful self-acting exhaust at the ceiling level. In some positions extraction flues will have to be built, and, in others, flues of large area must conduct to the source from which the fresh air is drawn. Under certain circumstances perfect ventilation will not be obtainable without the aid of a powerful blowing fan-wheel driven by a motor of some sort, and running so as to exhaust the vitiated air. The means does not so much matter so long as the end be gained, and an ample supply of cool air obtained. A warm, close "cooling room" is worse than useless. In such places the bather will break out into renewed perspiration, and lie perspiring for hours, and become greatly weakened thereby, with a good chance of taking a chill on leaving the establishment. Cooling rooms will always remain sufficiently _warm_ in all weathers if they be in any ordinary relation to the heated apartments; but in the height of summer care is required to keep them sufficiently cool. Where simple, everyday precautions will not suffice, the air itself must be cooled, either by passing it through a cold chamber or over ice-boxes in inlet tubes, or through a water-spray. Only in exceptional cases, however, is it necessary to resort to such measures, as, contrary to the teachings of theorists, it has been found in practice that the proper temperature for the cooling room of a hot-air bath varies in different states of the weather, and should not remain constant all the year round. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: Not _draughts_. The ancient Romans, it is curious to note, would walk in the open air after the bath; and both the _Frigidarium_ of the Romans and the _Mustaby_ of the Turks were, and are, open to the heavens.] CHAPTER V. HEATING AND VENTILATION. Of the many questions that merit attention and study in connection with the Turkish bath, all sink into insignificance by the side of that of the _heating_ and the _nature of the heat_ supplied in the sudatory chambers. Other things being equal, it is, after all, the _heating_ that distinguishes one bath from another on the score of excellence. The heating of the "bath" is the Alpha and Omega of the whole matter. There are two ways in which heat may be applied to the body--by direct radiation, as from the sun or an open fire; and by convection, as through a volume of air. The ancient Roman bathers, with floors below them which rested upon _pilæ_, or little pillars of brick or tile, around which the flames and hot gases from the furnace played, and surrounded by heated, hollow walls, evidently submitted themselves to the action of a heat that must have been of a purely radiating character. So, also, in a less perfect manner, the Turks, who employ flues running beneath the floors, and the Moors, who adopt stoves visible to the bathers. Theoretically, radiant heat in a bath is vastly superior to that which is transmitted to the body through the medium of the air. Its virtues have been extolled by David Urquhart and other eminent authorities on the bath. "There is a difference," says Mr. Urquhart, "between radiating and transmitted caloric.... I cannot pretend to treat of this great secret of nature; to work out this problem a Liebig is required. This I can say, that such heat is more endurable than common heat. There is a liveliness about it which transmitted heat lacks. You are conscious of an electrical action. It is to transmitted heat what champagne is to flat beer.... Let us drop, if you please, the word 'bath': it is 'heat.' Let us away with that absurdity 'hot-air': it is the application of heat to the human frame." Elsewhere this writer has pointed out that the terms _thermæ_, _sèjac_, and _hammâm_--the names given to the bath by the Romans, Moors, and Orientals proper--mean _heat_, and not "hot-air" or "hot-air bath." My own studies, observations, and experience lead me to the conclusion that the direction in which we shall improve the "Turkish bath" will be in the way of providing sudatories that shall give off pure, radiant heat in such a manner that the whole surface of the body may be sensible of a degree of heat, while the lungs may breathe comparatively cool air--air that has not passed over the sides of a fiery furnace and been suddenly raised to an enormous temperature, but which has received its heat by a gentle and gradual process of warming. Under this system the heat of which we are sensible is as the gentle Zephyr to rude Boreas or the biting eastern winds. If we go into a kiln of brickwork, such as is employed in firing clay goods, after the charge has been removed and all fumes and odours have disappeared, we shall note the soft and balmy nature of the heat that radiates directly from the walls and vaulting. We are, to all practical intents and purposes, _in a Roman laconicum_. The thick walls have been highly charged with caloric during the firing of the bricks or other articles. They have absorbed vast quantities of heat, and are now giving off the same to the enclosed air and to ourselves standing within. In the old Roman bath the walls were charged with caloric by means of innumerable earthen tubes lining the sides of the laconicum, and covered with a peculiar plaster. But in both cases the nature of the resultant heat is identical. It radiates to one from all sides. There is no acrid biting of the face such as one feels in the worst type of _hot-air_ baths; no unpleasant fulness or aching of the head; and no panting or palpitating. Such is the "bath" of pure radiant heat, a thing totally distinct from, and altogether of a different genus to, the bath of heated air. And one might be pardoned for the enthusiasm which would lead one to suggest that it is only in the supplying of this kind of radiant heat in the modern bath that true and rapid progress can be expected, and possibly that not until this great or partial--according as the system of radiation and convection pertains in existing baths--revolution has been effected, will the bath, at present used by the few, become the custom of the many. Some day, peradventure, this hypothetical method of employing pure radiant heat may be rendered possible and practicable, and we may be placed in a bath where we shall receive great heat whilst breathing a comparatively cool atmosphere, and thus receive a measure of that electrical invigoration we experience when, in some sheltered bathing cove, we have exposed our bodies to the fiercest rays of the morning sun whilst yet we breathe the fresh, cool, ozone-laden air. Till modern invention, however, has provided us with this desideratum in the heating of the bath, we must be satisfied with existing methods. And unless something really practical is perfected, it is far wiser to rely upon the system of heating by convection through the air--the principle, generally adopted, of continuously passing large quantities of freshly-heated air through the sudatory chambers; exposing, however, the heating apparatus, so that a maximum of radiant heat may be obtained; and carefully guarding against injuring the air whilst raising its temperature. If only existing baths were in perfect harmony with this principle, one would have little cause for complaint, and might the more leisurely await the perfecting of the true radiating principle of heating, which I am satisfied is the one upon which we must base all our hopes for the future of the "Turkish" bath. For practical purposes, it will suffice if the method of heating and ventilating a bath on the hot-air principle be explained. This I shall now do, and subsequently give plans and instructions for methods of heating and ventilating on systems where, by the exposure of the heating surfaces of furnaces, a large proportion of radiant heat is thrown into the hot-rooms. The necessary appliances, and arrangements for the heating and ventilation of a bath on the ordinary hot-air principle comprise a furnace in its chamber, with flues or shafts supplying cold, and drawing off the heated air, and a stokery with provisions for firing and storing coke, &c. Too often the stokery is unscrupulously cramped, and the life of the stoker thereby rendered anything but pleasant. Its design is a simple matter, and perhaps for this reason neglected. The arrangement and construction of the furnace chamber requires care, and the selection of a stove or furnace great judgment. As regards the latter feature, the most important point to consider is the nature of the heating or radiating surfaces. What will raise the air to the required temperature, without in the process depriving it in any way of its vitalising elements, and without adulterating it with either smoke and fumes from leakage, or with particles of foreign matter given off from the material employed in its construction? There is nothing really better as a radiating surface than ordinary firebrick. From this material a soft heat is given off, differing in quality from that obtained from iron. An iron furnace, however, requires less thought in design, gives less trouble in fitting up, and is cheap, economical, and expeditious. Stoves, therefore, with an iron radiating surface, have been largely adopted in the past, in spite of the objection that, when super-heated, particles of metal are thrown into the air of the hot rooms. Of iron furnaces there are many placed before the public; but though all are doubtless suited to ordinary requirements, there are few that are capable of creditably fulfilling the conditions indispensable for the hygienic heating of the air of a Turkish bath. These conditions may be summarised as follows:-- 1. A maximum of heating-surface, with a minimum of grate space. 2. Perfect immunity from the danger of leakage from the furnace into the hot-air chamber or conduit. 3. Freedom from the defect of liability to overheat the air. 4. Inability to adulterate the air by throwing off matter from the heating surfaces. Such primary essentials must be constantly borne in mind by the designer of furnaces for the Turkish bath. Their importance must be obvious to all. Of the many iron stoves, Messrs. Constantine's "Convoluted" stove has been adopted the most frequently, as an eminently practical furnace for the effective heating of the sudatory chambers. The appearance of this stove is familiar to all architects, and it will be unnecessary, in these pages, to minutely describe its construction. [Illustration: FIG. 6. View of a small Furnace Chamber, with portion of wall broken away to show the "Convoluted" Stove.] The method of constructing a furnace suitable for a small public bath is, however, shown at Fig. 6. The excavations for stokery and heating chamber being completed, and the position of the furnace determined a solid foundation of concrete must be prepared, upon which the brickwork to support the stove must be laid. At the same time, the foundations for walls of furnace chamber, stokery, coke store, and the side walls for the horizontal cold-air conducting flues will be prepared. These latter must then be built in half-brick with glazed interior face, and the furnace inclosed in similar work, as shown in perspective sketch. The flues must be covered with York stone slabs 3 in. thick, up to within three inches or so of the convolutions of the stove, at which distance the side walls of the furnace must be erected, the back one similarly, and the front one round the four projecting doors, which are, respectively, the ash-pit door, the fire door, and two doors for cleansing the horizontal smoke-box and interior of convolutions. The furnace walls must be continued up to a few inches above the bend of iron smoke flue, and then--if, as shown, the furnace be small--covered with a 4-in. York slab in one piece. If the furnace be large, a flat brick arch must form the covering, as at Fig. 8, where this arch supports the flooring of the laconicum. The openings for the admission of the heated air into the conduit leading into the hot rooms may be either directly above, as shown in the last-named illustration, or in the side, as in Fig. 6, with inclined flues. As a rule, it is more economical, in heating on the principle now under consideration, to place the furnace below the level of the hot rooms; but if desirable to place both on one level, the back wall of the furnace chamber becomes the party wall of the laconicum, and it must be stopped short of the ceiling, and the air debouched over it. In cheap baths the interior face of furnace chamber may be of stock brickwork; but best glazed work should be adopted in good ones. All hot and cold-air ducts should be similarly lined with glazed ware. In first-class work the floors of horizontal and inclined flues should be of white glazed tiles set in cement. Manholes must be provided for cleaning when necessary. Every portion of furnace chamber, flues, shafts, and conduits for hot and cold air must be "get-at-able" either by means of manholes or by long brushes. Air-tight doors must be indicated on the plans wherever this necessity demands them. The iron smoke-pipe from furnace must be conducted to the smoke flue, and the connection between furnace chamber and flue hermetically sealed. The walls for a small furnace chamber need not be more than 4-1/2 in. thick. Large furnaces require walls one-brick thick. [Illustration: FIG. 7. An Air Filter.] The cold-air flues leading from either side of the furnace must be conducted to their respective inlets. If possible, at least two inlets should be provided, facing different ways: this with regard to the possibility of certain winds drawing the air out where it is wanted to enter. The openings should be vertical, like windows, and, in cities, furnished with a solid frame and casement, fitted with louvres of plate glass with polished edges. Between the rebate and the casement it is a good plan to leave a space of an inch and a half for a movable stretcher-frame holding several layers of "cheese-cloth" to filter the air. The construction of such an air filter is shown at Fig. 7. The glass louvres keep out the wet, and throw off coarse particles of falling soot; and the provision of a movable stretcher permits the cloths to be frequently changed for clean ones--a very important point, though little heeded, if not, perhaps, wholly ignored. [Illustration: FIG. 8. Plans and Section of a Furnace Chamber, &c., for a Bath on the ordinary Hot-air Principle.] The position of air intake is a matter of great importance, especially in large towns. It evidently is bad to draw a supply of air from the bottom of an area. Even the position shown in Fig. 8 is not good: the shaft should be carried higher. The best places for the intakes are where there is always a current of pure air blowing, and away from smoky chimneys. Theoretically, it would seem that the higher the level of intake the better; but in cities, by going high we get among the belching chimney-tops, even if we escape the stagnation below. Moreover, a high inlet with a strong wind tending to exhaust the air in the shaft might find the architect with the cold air sweeping through his bath, and all the heated air rushing up the supply-shaft. A large "lobster-back" automatically turning _towards_ the wind, would in many cases prevent such a disastrous result. Even in low-level intakes, as I have said, trouble will sometimes arise from the same cause. This may be remedied by providing more than one inlet, so that only the one facing the current of air will be employed, the other being closed, which could be effected by fixing the glass louvres, spoken of above, on pivots, and connecting them with a rod and adjustable rack. It would be a very simple matter to make the wind itself automatically open and shut the louvres. The theory of the heating and ventilation of the hot rooms requires most careful study, and the particular scheme to be adopted in any new bath must be well considered with respect to the restrictions of the site. At Fig. 8, I have endeavoured to show how to make the best of what is perhaps a bad job: the site only admits of ventilation at a back area, it is impossible to construct flues anywhere else, and the fresh air must be drawn from the same area. On the ground floor are cooling and dressing rooms; the bath rooms are in the basement and the furnace in a sub-basement, reached from a passage at the end of the stairs for the bather. Two convoluted stoves are shown in a vault; three air-inlets are provided, and the foul air is drawn up into the smoke flues, two in number, which, above, could join one another. Let us follow the air in its passage through the bath. Entering at the intakes, any coarse impurities are thrown off by the smooth louvres, and the tendency of finer particles to rush in is checked by the stretched canvas cheese-cloths. Thus deprived of its actually visible impurities, the air passes through a longer or shorter conduit of glazed brickwork until it reaches the horizontal flues running to beneath the furnace walls, along which it is rapidly drawn, and, ascending between the walls and heating surfaces and between the two adjacent heating surfaces, absorbs the radiating heat and enters the laconicum by way of the rectangular shaft constructed above the vault spanning the two stoves. Questions of temperature I will omit for the present. The air, on passing through the laconicum, will be practically pure, as it is in such great bulk compared with the number of occupants of this highly-heated chamber, and it will not be absolutely necessary to provide ventilators. These should commence in the calidarium, and should, in the scheme of ventilation here considered, be so disposed that the nearer they are to the lavatorium and shampooing-room, the more frequent will they become. The object of this disposition of outlets for vitiated air is, that the cross currents thus created may not interfere with the main flow from the heating chamber to the lavatorium. Were too many ventilators to be placed near the hotter end of the sudatorium, this stream would be diverted. Too much of the freshly-heated air would flow out at these points, and the onward movement of the air would be enfeebled. There would then be difficulty in maintaining the temperature in the tepidarium and lavatorium. In passing onward through the various rooms, two changes are wrought in the air: it loses so much of the caloric with which it is charged for every foot it travels, and it becomes laden with the exhalations from the lungs of the bathers. A large proportion of carbonic acid is thrown into the air, and as the normal temperature of the human body remains, in a healthy person, at about 98° Fahr., and rises but a few points even when submitted to the action of heat, these exhalations, in addition to being heavier than air, are very much below the average temperature of a sudatory chamber. Consequently they fall, and must be extracted at the floor level. The total area of the outlets for vitiated air should be about equal to the area of the narrowest part of the shaft that conducts the fresh, hot air from the heating chamber. Thus, supposing the latter to be 5 superficial feet, and the size of outlet ventilators a clear 12 in. by 3 in., there may be 20 ventilators disposed round the bath-rooms, say 4 in the calidarium, 7 in the tepidarium, and 9 in the combined shampooing room and lavatorium. In the diagrams at Figs. 8 and 9 the foul-air conduit is the space comprised under the marble-topped benches running round the hot rooms. At the end of the laconicum they enter flues, which I have shown as running side by side with the smoke flues. Other methods of heating the air, besides those mentioned, include coils of iron flue-pipes in a brick chamber--a principle that has been frequently adopted in the past--and plain cylindrical iron radiating stoves, such as employed at the Hammam in Jermyn Street. [Illustration: FIG. 9. Section of Hot Room, showing Foul-air Conduit.] In the latter plan, however, a great expense is created by the large number of furnace-fires to be kept constantly burning. An exposed stove in a hot room, has, moreover, the objection to its use that it re-heats the air in the bath, which should never on any account be done. If the iron stove-pipe system is adopted, a furnace similar to the one shown at Fig. 10 must be provided, and after an additional few feet of brick flue the iron pipe would commence and turn back upon itself much as the flue in the fire-brick furnace. Proper supports must be provided, and the pipes must be stout and jointed together with expansion joints, otherwise considerable difficulty will be found in keeping a long length of flue pipe perfectly free from leakage. Furnaces on this principle may be designed so that they throw a certain amount of radiant heat direct into the hot-rooms, and they possess this advantage over a mere stove, that they warm the air more gradually. The furnace should be built adjoining the laconicum, the partition wall being of 4-1/2-inch glazed brickwork, having a large number of small openings made therein by leaving void spaces as described further on for the fireclay heating apparatus. Behind this wall the iron flue-pipe should be placed, turning back upon itself, as described above, for perhaps half-a-dozen times, and ending in the vertical brick flue. The furnace itself should be of fire-clay, and so designed that its utmost heating power may be economically employed in warming the incoming air, which should pass over the furnace and iron flues, through the holes in partition wall, and thus into the hot rooms. The flue, if of wrought iron, should be rectangular in section, but if of cast-iron it should be round. The most economical way of obtaining a high temperature in a small, inexpensive, and unpretentious private bath is by means of a common laundry stove, with a longer or shorter length of iron flue in the apartment. This is the cheapest and quickest method of raising the temperature of a room for sudorific purposes. [Illustration: FIG. 10. A Fireclay Heating Apparatus.] To turn to methods of heating from a radiating surface of firebrick, at Fig. 10 I have given the plan, elevation, and sections of a fireclay heating apparatus. It is constructed wholly of fireclay--fireclay bricks, quarries, and cement. In the main it consists of a long flue of firebricks and slabs, which coils backwards and forwards over itself till the desired amount of radiating surface is gained. Between the coils are spaces for super-heating the air already warmed by passing over the actual furnace and into the warm air chamber, the air passing through by means of perforated bricks. The illustration shows a simple furnace; but it would be an easy matter to improve upon this by providing iron air-tight doors lined with fireclay, for cleansing flues and air-chambers. The example given is only suited to heat a small public bath. For a large set of hot rooms, a compound apparatus could be constructed by placing an additional furnace in a sub-basement, the one on the level of the sudatory supplying radiant heat, and the lower one hot air. Two such apparatus might be placed one behind the other, end to end, or might form the _sides_ of the laconicum; the last plan, however, being the least to be recommended, as in such positions they would not directly radiate their heat into the adjoining hot rooms. The advantage of such a furnace as that shown is that it supplies radiant heat of a most exhilarating kind, besides a proportion of heated air, and from a fireclay surface, the employment of which renders it absolutely impossible to overheat the air, or to contaminate it by deleterious particles resulting from the decomposition of metal. Moreover, the stoking of this class of furnace requires less arduous attention than an iron stove. Its disadvantage is that, should the temperature of the bath be allowed to fall markedly, it requires some time for the extra heat to be made up again. Inasmuch, however, as fires at public baths must be kept banked up overnight, this is not a matter of importance. It is this very slowness of increase in temperature that constitutes the safeguard against that overheated air, the presence of which we can, with practice, detect by the smell in so many baths. The difficulties involved in the construction of a furnace of this nature relate to the prevention of cracking and consequent escape of sulphurous fumes and carbon into the air. The very simplicity of the construction of the flues and air-chambers constitutes the chief danger, as the chances are that, unless the architect stands by and sees every joint made, the work will be done badly. Absolutely faultless workmanship must be employed throughout, and the fireclay materials must be literally of the very best and soundest description. Every single joint must be perfectly made with fireclay cement or paste. The fireclay bricks, &c., must be selected with regard to the amount of indestructible silica in the clay, consistent with hardness and toughness. Homogeneity of material must be obtained, having regard to expansion and contraction. The same material used for the bricks, &c., worked into a paste, must be employed for the joints. The design for a furnace on the principle shown at Fig. 10 must be prepared with constant regard to expansion and contraction in heating and cooling. Should this warning be disregarded, fractures will result. It will be seen, upon reference to the plans, that the block of flues and air spaces is left quite free, to allow of any expansion, the connection with the smoke-shaft being by means of an iron flue-pipe, which, being provided in considerable length before passing through the party-wall of laconicum and stokery, by its flexible nature permits any slight movement in a vertical direction. If an "expansion" joint were provided, there would be a sufficient length of iron pipe if it passed direct from the junction with the heating apparatus into the stokery. So much of the iron flue as is in the laconicum must be coated with asbestos or some composition, or the heating will not be wholly by firebrick. The junction of iron flue and heating apparatus is shown by a cast-iron cap sliding over a projecting rim of fireclay, moulded into the last quarry cover, similar to the way in which cast-iron mouthpieces are fitted to retorts. This heating apparatus is shown visible in the laconicum, but if thought desirable it could be screened by a wall of glazed bricks--9 in. and miss 4-1/2 in. The 4-1/2 by 3 in. holes can be arranged in diamond patterns. This screen wall, however, cuts off a large quantity of radiant heat. The first flue past the actual furnace--shown with ordinary dead-plate, raking fire-bars, ashpit, fire-door, and ashpit door for regulating draught--has walls 4-1/2 in. thick; above, smaller bricks, 3 in. wide; but in a larger apparatus, 9 in. and 4-1/2 in. respectively would be required. The quarries between flues and air spaces are 24 in. by 24 in. by 3 in., with rebated joints. Larger covers would be more liable to crack at any provocation. In addition to heating by means of furnaces, steam-heating may be employed, if found, as in many cases it would be, convenient and economical. The chief disadvantage of this method of heating Turkish baths, is the constant danger, however slight, of bursting a pipe in the heating coil, which, by immediately filling the highly-heated atmosphere with vapour, might prove most disastrous to the occupants of the hot rooms, who would be seriously scalded. Nevertheless, the principle has been largely employed in the heating of the most recent Turkish baths in Germany. If adopted it may be either on the hot-air or radiating plan, as in heating by means of furnaces. In the first method the fresh air is introduced into a chamber containing a coil of steam-pipes, and passes thence into the laconicum by a shaft or conduit, as in the case of air heated by a stove. In the second method, steam radiators--compact batteries of pipes--must be placed in recesses in the hot rooms, fresh air being introduced over them. The steam-pipes employed should be of the "small bore" type, about 5/8 inch internal diameter, and of wrought iron or copper. In order to ensure as far as possible against the danger of explosion, the system of pipes should be tested, when fixed, by severe hydraulic pressure. It is certainly a great advantage, in point of ease and economy, to be able to warm a building, drive machinery, and heat Turkish and Russian baths from one boiler, which can readily be done, very ordinary pressures of steam giving sufficient heat to keep the radiators of the requisite temperature. But the nature of the heating accomplished by means of steam-pipes is very inferior to that from large radiating surfaces of firebrick. The average temperatures of a public bath should range from about 110° in the shampooing rooms to 250°-260° in the hottest part of the laconicum, taking the readings of the thermometer at a level of 6 ft. 6 in. above floor-line. Between the entrance of the heated air and its point of furthest travel in the shampooing rooms, the bather should be able to select any temperature that may be most agreeable to him, and as many find by experience that a certain degree of heat is best suited to themselves, it shows attention to the _habitués_ of the bath, if the hot rooms are carefully maintained at the same uniform temperatures throughout the year. This may be 110°-120° in the shampooing rooms, 140° in the tepidarium, 180° in the calidarium, and 250° in the laconicum. These must be the maxima of the average temperatures of each room at 6 ft. 6 in. above the floor. In a pure atmosphere the highest temperatures are comfortable, but in a foul one they become insupportable. In a good bath, where there is a rapid and continuous flow of air, there will be comparatively little difference between the temperature at say 4 ft., 6 ft., and 8 ft. above the floor. In badly-ventilated rooms, where the air stagnates, there will be a considerable difference. And here we may note a serious objection to the heating of a bath by convection; for while the head may be in a high degree of heat the feet are in comparatively cool air, whereas, if possible, it should be just the reverse. In convected heat, this of course applies in its entirety, as where so-called radiant heat is employed the evil is not quite so marked. And here, too, we may note the admirable nature of the Roman system of heating, where the floors radiated the majority of the heat, and the walls a slightly less amount. The fresh air under the ancient system must have entered through the cooler rooms, and being drawn towards the _calidarium_ found its exit through the ceilings, at times by way of the regulating device mentioned by Vitruvius. Thus the ancient bather would not suffer the inconvenience that accrues to the bather in the modern hot-air bath, whose head, when he is standing upright, is in a considerably higher temperature than any other portion of his body. The temperature of a bath should not be regulated by the firing of the furnace. This should be regularly stoked, and kept at one uniform heat-giving condition. Bad firing and forced firing may crack the stove should it be of iron, and the air may be overheated. The temperature should be regulated by means of the hit-and-miss ventilators at the floor level. Fanlights between the various hot rooms, with screw-rod adjustment, serve as a means for regulating their relative temperatures. The heating power of furnaces must be studied. Having calculated the cubical contents of the rooms to be heated, and given the heating power of the stove or apparatus to be employed per cwt. of metal or superficial foot of radiating surface, we arrive at the necessary size. Messrs. Constantine give the following tables to show the heating power of the "Convoluted" stove. The figures give the requisite size of stove to raise the air to about the relative temperatures I have mentioned before, and with ordinary firing. Weight of Sq. ft. of Area capable metal. heating surface. of heating. --- --- --- cwt. sq. ft. cub. ft. 14 35 500 20 55 1,200 22 69 2,000 34 119 3,500 36 139 5,000 45 180 8,000 50 231 12,000 56 296 16,000 When different kinds of heating apparatus are employed, their heating power must be carefully ascertained and calculations entered into, or it may be found necessary to resort to the costly and humiliating process of dragging out the stove or pulling down the furnace and refitting a larger one. This point is worth attention. Such mistakes are not unfrequently made. As regards the amount of air that should flow through the hot rooms, an allowance of 40 cubic feet per head per minute should be the minimum, if purity of atmosphere is to be maintained. In a bath, the importance of perfect ventilation cannot possibly be over estimated, as not only has the respired air from the lungs to be removed, but also the deleterious exhalations from the skin which are produced by perspiration. The allowance of 40 cubic feet per head per minute should not, if properly distributed, cause an unpleasant draught in any part of the hot rooms; for it must be remembered that even in a highly-heated atmosphere a waft of air of the same temperature is felt to be cold. The main thing to be studied in this provision of a large volume of air is that the cold inlet be ample, and the passage from this intake to the point where the air is debouched into the laconicum equally roomy and unobstructed. The rapidity of flow will depend upon the means provided for the extraction of the foul air. With large horizontal flues, and a capacious and tall shaft, the so-called natural system of ventilation will be as effective as could be desired. Greater extraction power is gained if in the brick stack a smoke-pipe can be placed running up the whole height. In many cases mechanical ventilation could be employed with the greatest benefit. A powerful air-propeller fixed at the end of a system of horizontal flues under the floors of the hot rooms, and running so as to exhaust, would do away with all the objectionable odours and nastiness of many baths. The purity or foulness of the air in the hot rooms forms all the difference between a good bath and a bad one, which latter is infinitely worse than no bath at all. There exist, at the present time, scores of baths where the odours of the sudatory chambers are nauseating. Such foulness arises from stagnation of the air. There is no continuous flow, and the respirations and exhalations of the bathers are not removed. A system of ventilation may be pointed out, but it is on the wrong principle, and does not act. There is no change of air. The atmosphere of such places becomes pestilential. Owing to the expansion by heat, a relatively greater volume of air enters the laconicum than the cold intake. This fact, however, does not practically affect the arrangements for ventilation, &c. Theoretically, however, it would seem to demand that the shaft conducting from furnace to hot rooms should be of greater sectional area than that to the furnace from the intake--about one-third larger--and that the total area of outlets for the escape of vitiated air should be about midway between the two. The whole principle of the ventilation of the hot rooms of a Turkish bath resolves itself, primarily, into the fact that we have to continually remove _the bottom layer of air_. The provision of the foul-air conduits below the floor level is equivalent to providing a suspended floor with a hollow space under. This is just the reverse of the principle of ventilating rooms of ordinary temperature, where we require to constantly remove the top layer, and often actually do so when we provide false ceilings to passages, &c. The ventilators placed at the floor level of the hot rooms should be actually so, and not 3 in. or 6 in. above. Long, wide gratings 6 in. deep are preferable to those of deeper and narrower design. In theory, indeed, the whole circumference of the hot rooms should be lined round with gratings, thus making the sudatorium like a lidless box inverted, into which hot air is thrown and escapes all round the bottom edges. There is one point about the circulation of air in a set of hot rooms that requires considerable attention, and that is the _back-flow_ along the floor. In any bath where hot air is supplied, if the bather will hold his linen "check" across the top of the doorway between the rooms he will find that the air is flowing from the laconicum to the shampooing room. If, however, the sheet be held across the lower portion of the doorway, he will find that there is a current of air setting in an opposite direction--from the shampooing room to the laconicum. This is shown at Fig. 11. [Illustration: FIG. 11. Longitudinal Section of Sudatory Chambers.] It will be seen from the diagram that the bather is really in this back-flow when he is standing between and in a line with the doors of the hot rooms. All the air appears to be travelling along the top of the bath, and the bather reclining on the marble-topped benches would seem to be bathed in air that has passed along the top of the bath, round the shampooing rooms, and back along the floor. In reality, however, it is only from door to door that the currents exist exactly as shown at the diagram, Fig. 11, there being a secondary circulating process in each room. This circulation of air will exist in any bath heated on the modern system--that is to say, where freshly-heated air is passed in in sufficient quantity. It is a natural result, and tends to distribute the heat more equally. The back-flow is only objectionable when a door is opened direct from the heated shampooing rooms to a cooler apartment, as the plunge bath chamber. The bather standing in a line between the doorways may then feel a cold draught. To guard against this, double doors, with a small lobby between, should be provided to any means of communication with a cold chamber. A set of hot rooms could be constructed so that the bather would be in the top current of air that flows from the heating apparatus. By reference to Fig. 11 the reader will understand that by the provision of a platform or grating midway between the floor and ceiling this end would be attained. The atmosphere of the sudatorium must be perfectly free from vapour. "Perfect dryness of the air," says Mr. Urquhart, "is indispensable to the enduring of a high temperature.... This dryness is further requisite for electrical isolation. With vapour in the chamber an atmosphere is created injurious to health and conducive to disease. It is the very condition in which low, putrid, and typhus fevers flourish. The electrical spark will not ignite in such an atmosphere, and the magnet will lose its attractive power. We all know the difference of our own sensations on a dry and on a damp day." CHAPTER VI. WATER FITTINGS AND APPLIANCES. The water-fittings of a Turkish bath include a boiler of some form for heating the water, a cold-water cistern, and a hot-water tank; supply-pipes, flow and return pipes, and branch pipes; lavatorium fittings, comprising bowls, basins, and cocks; douche room fittings, as the "needle" bath, shower, douche, spray, and "wave" baths; a warm shower-bath for bathers entering the bath, or desiring such a shower at intervals; and the fittings of the plunge bath. In addition to this there may be required a drinking fountain in the tepidarium, and an ornamental fountain in the frigidarium; lavatories in various positions; and, possibly, fittings and appliances for the laundry. Premising an ample supply of pure water, it must be brought into the building through a water-meter to the cold water cistern, which should be at a sufficiently high level to obtain a good "head." This cistern must be capacious and properly connected, on the ordinary circulating principle, with a hot water tank and boiler. Of suitable boilers there are several in the market, of many and varied designs. Simplicity of construction should be the guide to a selection. The boiler will perhaps its most conveniently placed in the stokery, and have be separate furnace and flue, any scheme for combining the heating of the hot rooms and of the water being out of the question. In small baths, however, the hot-water tank may, for economy's sake, be placed near the ceiling in the laconicum. Where waste steam can be obtained, a water super-heater, with steam coil, may be employed with advantage; but in the majority of cases the ordinary circulating system will be found the most suitable. The supply-pipes must be of large section, and indeed, the whole scheme of water-fitting should be liberal. It must be remembered that, in addition to the wants of the lavatorium and douche room, plunge, &c., there will be a large amount of water required for laundry purposes, if washing be done upon the premises. The cold supply cistern may, by the exigencies of the case, be kept down as low as the ceiling of the bath-rooms, and be placed over some subsidiary apartment. This does not give much pressure of water. For all purposes it is best to have the cistern at a minimum height of about 20 ft. above the draw-off taps and valves of the various bathing appliances. This will ensure a good head of water, and make the douche a formidable affair. The pipes, unions, tees, valves, and cocks should all be of the best description in so important a work as the fitting-up of a public bath. Ordinary bungling plumbing is here out of place. Lead piping should be discarded for all but very cheap work, and iron employed in its stead, with proper screwed joints, angles, and tees. Should there be sufficient means, _copper_ piping should be employed for anything under 1 in. internal diameter, and gunmetal should be used for unions, &c., and for cocks and valves. Handsome, large, and well-made water-fittings conduce, in no small degree, to the effect of a bath. There should be no attempt at hiding away of pipes, &c. They should be made features of the bath, and be designed with care and neatly finished. Every pipe, joint, and connection should be prearranged, and the means of fixing and supporting the same carefully designed. Boxings, and the like, should be discarded, and everything frankly exhibited. The day for mysterious plumbing has gone by. There is some beauty even in a pipe. To consider the fittings, we will commence with the lavatorium. Branches from the hot and cold water supply pipes must be conducted to each shampooer's basin. These may be finished separately, with independent nozzles, as at Fig. 12; or the pipes may be connected with the valve shown at Fig. 13, about 18 in. above the basin, the outlet of the valve being fitted with a foot or 15 in. of indiarubber hose. In the latter case the pipes and valve would stand some 9 in. from the wall, and depend from the horizontal supply pipes, which in their turn could be carried on wrought-iron brackets affixed to the wall, or be hung by iron ties, as indicated by dotted lines at Fig. 16. The _internal_ diameter--the measurement given in all the figures--of these branch pipes to taps over shampooing basins should be 3/4 in. [Illustration: FIG. 12. A Shampooing Basin.] Cocks and valves for the purposes of the Turkish bath are best of the "gland" pattern. They should have bold handles. Those of the screw-down type are useless, except as stop-cocks. Roundways should be used, and, to insure freedom of running, the turning part should be equal to the inner diameter of the pipes. The whole should be of gunmetal, and, if the pipes to be used be of iron, screwed at the end. Fig. 13 shows the type of valve to be employed to regulate the temperature of water for shower baths, &c. To be useful, as well as bold and effective in appearance, the handles should be large. [Illustration: FIG. 13. Valve for Regulating Temperature of Water.] _In every case_, the cold water must be placed on the right hand, and the hot on the left. The earthenware basin is provided to hold water mixed to the required temperature. A waste and overflow are not shown in the illustration, but they should be provided. The basin is best wide and shallow--shallower than shown. There should be no overhanging ledge to catch the shampooer's hand-basin; for this reason I have shown, at Fig. 12, the basin sunk into the marble slab, instead of the marble being on top, as ordinary. The copper hand-basin is provided for the shampooer to take water from the earthenware basin and throw over the shampooing slab, or over the bather. In addition, a wooden, copper-banded soap-bowl must be provided. Should there be a row of shampooing basins and benches, the horizontal supply-pipes must be continued along the wall, and branches dropped to each basin. The basins are most conveniently placed when raised somewhat higher than the benches. In the illustration given, I have shown how to arrange horizontal foul-air flues under the basins. In other cases the fixing of the basins will be much simpler. For pure lavatorium purposes these basins, cocks, &c., are all the water-fittings to be considered; but in an apartment combining the purposes of douche room--and perhaps a plunge bath chamber--as well as a washing and massage room, more or less of the fittings about to be described will have to be accommodated. The tonic appliances for treating the bather subsequently to the shampooing, the soaping, and the cleansing, are various. The most useful is the simple shower bath, with a very large rose, and amply supplied with water through a regulating valve. It is employed for thoroughly cleansing the bather before he enters the plunge, whose waters are for the common use of all. In many small baths its place is efficiently taken by an ordinary hand rose or spray of the kind shown at Fig. 15. The shower proper is usually fixed above the "needle" bath, as at Fig. 14, or formed by a continuation of the "backbone" of the needle. It is best to have separate regulating valves for the needle and shower, as at Fig. 16; but at Fig. 14 it is shown with a branch from the pipe conducting to the needle, and with stop cocks. The needle-bath is a skeleton-like structure having a large hollow backbone and branching ribs. The water ascends the backbone, and, passing into the ribs, squirts out of small holes punctured in their internal circumferences. The bather stands in the centre of the apparatus, with the ribs encircling him. The ribs should be of 1/2-in. copper piping, the backbone and lesser supports being of iron, 2-1/2 and 1-1/2 in. diameter respectively. In a convenient position for the attendant must be placed the regulating valve. A more elaborate contrivance may be made, which will include needle, shower, ascending shower, spinal douche, and back shower; but this should be left for hydropathic institutions and invalids. Simplicity in these matters should be the great desideratum. The above-named additions, however, may be briefly described. At Fig. 14 I have indicated the position of ascending shower. It would be connected with the pipe supplying needle and shower, and have a stop-cock. The spinal douche is a little nozzle behind the shower proper, and should have similar connection with the supply-pipe. The back shower or spinal spray would be a rose placed about half-way up the iron backbone, and be connected in the same manner. Avoid these complications in a bath for healthy persons. [Illustration: FIG. 14. A Needle Bath.] The needle bath is best left exposed, but it may be enclosed in a metal shield if desired. This bath may be placed in one of three positions--(1) in the shampooing room, (2) in a separate chamber, (3) in the plunge bath chamber. It is most conveniently placed where the bather passes it _en route_ from the washing room to the plunge. For this appliance a good head of water is absolutely essential, as with a low pressure it is very ineffective. The illustration shows the bath standing on iron shoes. If fixed in a corner, as ordinarily, it can be secured to the wall by such cramps or brackets as may be necessary. [Illustration: FIG. 15. Spray, Wave, and Douche Baths.] Besides the needle and shower, as above, the tonic bathing appliances may include an ordinary horizontal douche that can be pointed in any direction, a spray, or large rose, and a "wave." These three appliances may be placed together as at Fig. 15. They are connected to the pipes from the regulating valves by means of a foot or so of flexible hose. To this is secured a tapering copper pipe. The douche has a gunmetal nozzle. It is directed against the back and spine, but must not be used upon the head or chest. With a good head of water this is a most powerful appliance, feeling more like a rod of some solid substance pressing against one than a stream of water. The "wave" is formed by a copper spreader. The spray is simply a large rose, 6 in. or 8 in. diameter. [Illustration: FIG. 16. Regulating Valves for Needle, Douche, &c.] It may be found convenient to arrange the valves for the whole of the above-mentioned appliances together, as at Fig. 16. Each pair of hot and cold handles are here brought together. These handles should be long, so as to admit of easy regulating of the temperature of the water; they may well be 9 in. in length. The douche, wave, and spray should be kept as close as possible to the handles that regulate their temperature. I would repeat the caution that it is very necessary to beware of complications in these water-fittings and appliances. Some of the more "fussy" contrivances--as, for example, the elaborated needle bath as above described--require so much regulating, and so many valves and stop-cocks, that it is quite an undertaking for the attendant to set them going. Simplicity in design and construction should be observed in this work: the pipes as few as need be; the valves as simple as possible; and the whole put together in a manner that will permit of their being easily examined and repaired. I have before hinted at the desirability of making some sort of provision whereby the bather may, on entering the bath, have a warm spray or shower, of any temperature that may be agreeable to him. In high class baths this feature should always be provided, as it is a great luxury, and, moreover, to certain constitutions a necessity, thus to be able to take such a shower before entering the hot rooms, or at such intervals during the sojourn in these apartments as may be desired. The proper position for this shower-bath requires some consideration. Were it only for the entering bather that it should be provided, it would be best placed in a lobby near the entrance to the hot rooms; but as the occupants of the hot rooms may frequently desire some such shower, it must be arranged with regard to this fact. It should be convenient for the entering bathers and for those in the bath. A small chamber entered by doors from the lobby to the tepidarium, and also from the tepidarium itself, would be convenient. At times it may be placed in a nook off the shampooing room. Wherever it be placed, the apparatus provided for the purpose of the shower must be such as can be managed by the bather himself, so as not to take up the time of the attendants; and for this reason it must be capable of easy regulation, and free from liability of scalding the user, unless through gross carelessness. A valve with one handle only must be employed, as, unless the bather has had some practice, it is difficult to obtain this immunity from danger of scalding when two handles are used. A valve such as that shown at Fig. 17 should be employed. This valve must be so designed as to supply cold, tepid, and hot water _in regular gradation_--not intermittently, as do some valves of this description. It must be so placed that any one taking the shower may, whilst beneath the rose, be able to easily reach the handle. The rose should not be less than 6 in. or 7 in. diameter. Fig. 12 illustrates the complete fitting up of this bather's shower-bath. In hydropathic establishments it might be an improvement to add a small foot-bath, formed by a sinking of about 6 in. in the floor, and filled with hot water; for physiologists tell us it is bad for invalids to enter the hot rooms with cold feet. Supply pipes, a waste, and overflow would have to be provided for this bath, and a marble seat might be placed round it. A marble coping and mosaic flooring would render it pleasing in appearance. [Illustration: FIG. 17. Bather's Shower Bath.] I have hereinbefore, at Fig. 4, given plan and sections of a plunge bath, and shown its water-fittings. The overflow and waste run into cast-iron drainpipes, which should be employed till outside the building. On the end of the overflow pipe is screwed a gunmetal rose with leather packing, the screw-holes being drilled into the flange of pipe. For the waste I have shown a "disc" valve of gunmetal. This is similarly screwed to flange of pipe, and with leather packing. The valve is opened and closed by a movable rod. If _fixed_, it might catch the toes of the swimmer, and for this reason it would perhaps be best to set the valve itself back in a recess. Instead of this valve, an ordinary 4-in., 5-in., or 6-in. "plug" waste could be employed, but it is rather clumsy on such a scale. When practicable, a screw-down valve, with wheel and spindle outside the bath, is the best means of letting out the waste water. The supply-pipe should be connected with the main supply just after the water meter. The valve should be of the "screw-down" pattern, either with a thumbscrew, wheel and spindle, or a key. In coast towns, where a _sea-water_ plunge may be employed, a little rose on a bracket should be provided in a convenient position, for cleansing the hair from salt water. Of the lavatory fittings in the cooling room, and of the "sanitary" water-fittings, it is unnecessary to speak, except to say that, in a place devoted to the attainment of cleanliness, plumbing of this nature should be as perfect as possible. A drinking fountain is a desirable feature in the tepidarium of a bath of any pretension. It should be placed at the coolest end of the room, affixed to a wall, and provided with a supply-pipe, waste, and tap of some sort. The bowl is best formed of glazed earthenware. If an ornamental fountain be required in the frigidarium, it should be of terra-cotta or modelled glazed ware, and must be provided with supply-pipe, waste, and means of regulating the jet of water. A fountain is a very desirable addition to a cooling room, as it is restful to the ear, and may be made pleasant to the eye by means of flowers and plants arranged around and upon it. CHAPTER VII. LIGHTING, DECORATING, AND FURNISHING. Light and shade being the soul of all ornamental effect, we may well consider first the methods of lighting the bath. As a rule, much artificial light will be required. The hot rooms, being often in a basement, are as a rule but feebly illumined from areas and the like. Seeing that purity of atmosphere in these apartments is of so vital importance, the method of artificial lighting adopted should not be such as impregnates the air with obnoxious and harmful, if unnoticeable, fumes. Gas, for this reason, used in the ordinary manner, is objectionable, as the ventilation being by means of low-level exits for the foul air, the products of combustion must of necessity pass by and envelop persons below the burners, though, of course, in a diluted state. Should, therefore, gas-lighting be employed in a sudatory chamber, it should for preference be on one of those systems whereby the burner is cut off from the atmosphere of the room, and provision made for carrying off the fumes. Happily, the use of electric lighting is at last increasing with marked rapidity; and the incandescent light is admirably adapted for all purposes of the Turkish bath. Where it can possibly be adopted it is a great addition to a bath. For cooling room purposes gas is not so objectionable, except that it is heating, and assists in vitiating the atmosphere. But inasmuch as the fumes in this case will ascend with the general body of air, the objection to gas is much lessened in these apartments. Nevertheless, the electric light is the illuminant to be coveted. The quality of the lighting in the cooling room should be toned and softened. It is not a place for brilliant general illumination, but rather for a soft light pervading the whole, and auxiliary lights where required, such as near couches, &c.--a system, in fact, diametrically opposed to sun-burner illumination. Nothing more objectionable of its kind can well be imagined than a glaring light in the ceiling of a cooling room. It would be found intolerable. For practical purposes, the greatest amount of light required in any part of a frigidarium is that at the heads of the couches, where it must be of such strength as will admit of comfortable reading. One gas-burner, or one small incandescent lamp, to every two couches is a fair allowance. If effect be desired, there is, of course, much in the distribution of the illuminating agent that affects for good or evil, and the placing and the relative powers of the lamps or burners must be considered. The dominant point of light might be a prettily-designed lantern with a few brilliant points of colour in it, depending from a chain over a fountain, throwing its rays downwards on to the falling waters, and _not_ in the eyes of those bathers who may be reclining upon the couches. Throughout the bath, in either natural or artificial lighting, by windows or lamps, it should be the aim not to throw strong light in the eyes of the bather--a principle of universal application, but especially to be regarded in a place where, more often than not, the occupants of the various apartments are reclining, _face upwards_, on benches or couches. In the hot rooms, as in the cooling room, little general illumination is required. A bright artificial light in such places seems especially painful to the eyes. What light, therefore, may be provided in the sudatory chambers, should be as diffused as possible, the additional lights for the few who practise reading in these apartments being so arranged as not to be objectionable to the majority of bathers. The lights should be shaded so as to throw their rays downwards in a very small compass. Considerably more light is required in the lavatoria and shampooing rooms. In scheming the plan of bath rooms in a basement, where daylight can only be obtained at one point, it is desirable, if practicable, to arrange the shampooing room so that it may enjoy the benefit of this light. For effect, the scale of lighting in the bath rooms may be a rather dark laconicum, and a gradually-increased amount of light from thence to the shampooing room. The plunge-bath chamber should be well lighted, but not above the tone of the frigidarium, or the bather will feel to be going from cheerfulness to comparative gloom, which would be unpleasant. A bright, warm light should be that in the plunge-bath chamber, with perhaps an ornamental lamp over the bath itself; and if the intermediary staircase--should there be such a feature--be lighted on a lower scale, the effect on entering the frigidarium will be a cheerful one. DECORATING. Under this heading, I would speak of the means of obtaining effect in a bath, of the materials to be employed, and of the design of features--of the effect of the whole and the proportions of its parts, rather than of anything implying the _laying on_ of so-called ornament. The architecture of a bath is _interior architecture_ as distinct from that involving external work. Much of this, moreover, can often only be seen by artificial light. These two restrictions point to the employment, for the most part, of surface decoration, rather than of modelling--of tiles, mosaics, marbles, in place of mouldings, cornices, and pilasters. There are three features of the bath that are fit subjects for handsome designing, and they are the frigidarium, the tepidarium, and the plunge bath. There is an excuse for elaborating the first two, in that these are the apartments in which the bather remains the longest time; and as for the plunge, it is in itself an object capable of giving a very pleasing effect. Over-elaboration--in respect to added ornament--in the hot rooms, however, gives an air of incongruity. Simplicity, with good proportions, seems here the most pleasing. The general effect of the hot rooms should be light, a statement which is wholly in harmony with what I have said on their lighting, though it may not at first sight appear to be so. The tone of the ceilings and walls and floors should be light, the darkest portions being a dado. A generally dark and heavy tone of colouring is very oppressive in a sudatory chamber. Keep them light: light ceilings of plaster for cheap baths, and of lightly decorated, large, thin tiles, or lightly-tinted enamelled iron, for more expensive establishments; light walls of white, ivory, cream, or buff glazed bricks, without startling bands of a vulgar, as distinct from a really bold, contrast; and mosaic floors of a light filling-in and not too dark pattern. The risers to marble-topped benches may be of another tone, but not too dark; and, in place of a dado of bare glazed bricks, it is perhaps best to stretch Indian matting to keep the bather from the burning wall, as at Fig. 20. This will necessitate fillets affixed to plugs in the brickwork. Woodwork looks best dark and polished, affording an agreeable contrast to the lighter materials. Bright points of colour may be obtained by stained glass in ceiling-lights or windows, and at night by coloured glass shades over lamps, &c. The use of iron joists with glazed brick arches between is not to be recommended for the ceilings of the hot rooms. To say the least, it is a heavy-looking arrangement. Enamelled iron may be made to look very well if affixed in sheets of delicate tint with light patterns, and affixed with "buttons" with enamelled heads to the fireproof floors, as at Fig. 18. Large thin tiles make an admirable ceiling for small baths. They may be fixed with ornamental wood fillets, or made with screw-holes and affixed to ceiling joists. [Illustration: FIG. 18. Section and Plan of an Enamelled Iron Ceiling.] Glazed brickwork for the walls of hot rooms, &c., should be specified to be executed with an extra neat joint, and should bond to less than 12 in. to the foot; otherwise the effect of the unwieldy mortar joints is clumsy. This applies equally to walling and to arches and vaults. Work which may pass as fair in ordinary cases, looks coarse and rough in the glazed interior walls of a bath. In selecting glazed bricks there is some difficulty in obtaining really delicate tints; much of the work produced is unfortunately of a very crude colouring. One portion of the tepidarium, and other bath rooms, admits of being rendered very attractive; and that is the flooring. Mosaic work is always pleasing, if it be designed with taste and executed artistically. Marble and tile mosaics are both good, the former admitting of a richness of effect quite its own, and the latter of brilliant colouring. In designing marble-mosaic floors, however, one may well fight shy of including that senseless, purposeless description which is nowadays so often employed as a filling-in between borders. I refer to the heterogeneous jumble of every colour mixed without regard to one another, and giving at a distance a dirty grey tone, and near at hand an effect like a gravel walk covered with faded cherry-blossom--to be flattering. Despite the fact that this method of design is of antique origin, and has a real classical designation, I cannot but think that it is to be avoided, and that fillings-in should be made with tesseræ of one tint, or that mosaic should be abandoned altogether. Given the means, it is easy to render a set of bath rooms elaborate, with faïence and modelled glazed ware, marbles and painted encaustic tiles, and many other suitable but expensive materials; but for my own part I prefer to see comparative simplicity in a sudatory chamber, though by this I do not mean monastic severity of style. The general air of the frigidarium requires some consideration. It should have an effect of its own, quite distinct from anything else. It should have something of the conservatory in it. It should be richly carpeted, have much woodwork about it, and be pleasant with plants and laden with the murmur of falling waters. It should be light, certainly; cheerful, cool, and airy looking; and as lofty as possible within reason and common sense. The ceiling should be of a light tone. A lantern-light where the light may come in, rather than be seen, and where the vitiated air may go out, is a pleasant and useful addition. Points for emphasising with a view to ultimate effect are the stairs to hot rooms--if a staircase be needed--the divans or screens for couches, and an ornamental fountain as above described. The staircase may be rendered attractive with bowl newels, and perhaps white marble treads to the stairs. The divans may be rendered things of beauty by designing ornamental, open-work wood partitions, in either an Oriental style or otherwise. It is not easy to make small dwarf partitions, enclosing a couple of couches, look handsome. As a rule, they are of a flimsy and gimcrack order of architecture. They should be made as solid as possible. For effect there is nothing better than prettily-designed divans. As regards style, I do not see why one method of design should be more suited than another for the bath. Having become popularly known as the "Turkish" bath, an Eastern or Saracenic style has been often adopted in the past. And, inasmuch as such style is essentially an interior style of architecture, there is something to be said on this score. It is, moreover, a style in which surface decoration pertains rather than modelled work, or, at least, the modelling is in very low relief. There is yet ample scope for the display of skill in the design of a bath in an Oriental style, as hitherto such attempts have only been made in a half-hearted manner; and in many smaller commercial baths the unskilful use of the style has vulgarised it to no small extent.[3] Considering that the old Romans brought the bath to a great pitch of excellence--far, very far, I should be inclined to say, in advance of our present knowledge of the subject--their style of architecture would seem fitted to its design at this day; and for large public baths, larger than any yet erected in this country, one can imagine that a very interesting design could be made in the Roman style, founded on a study of the old baths, and, for the sake of the interest attaching to them, reproducing many of the original mosaics, pictures, details, &c., of the public baths of the time of the Empire. In a like manner in the Moorish style one could obtain a very elegant effect by a careful study of old baths in Eastern countries,[4] drawing, perhaps, some inspiration from the courts of the palaces of the Moors, with their pleasant retired air, for the frigidarium. I have often thought, when looking at the late Owen Jones' splendid model at the Crystal Palace, what an admirable frigidarium the Court of the Lions would make, with its spacious central area, and retired nooks suitable for couches, and its pretty sparkling fountain and green plants, its brilliant colouring, and general cheerfulness of effect. Similarly, in a Roman style, a Pompeian court seems suggestive of the arrangement of a fine frigidarium, with its _cubicula_ for couches, and its central area and fountain. The above are but theoretical suggestions as to what might be done should the bath make such progress in this country as may necessitate the provision of handsome public baths for the people. In everyday practice there is not a great field for elaborate designing in baths. Although only the Roman and Eastern styles have been mentioned, there can be no manner of reason why an architect should not design his bath in whatsoever style he may please. I have spoken of the plunge bath as a feature capable of being rendered a thing of beauty. This is in reference as much to its plan as to the materials of the sides and floor, &c. There is no reason why a plunge should always be a plain oblong on plan. It may be of any of the shapes indicated at Fig. 19. Many bathers, especially in warm weather, like to stay some minutes in the plunge, and not go straight through; they may like to swim up and down the bath, and thus require room to turn, and a keyhole plan, such as at A, is suitable, and especially useful where the bather has to return to the end of bath he entered. Another shape is shown at B. In ladies' baths still more margin for novel planning is allowable, as here the true dive seldom pertains. A delicate semi-oval plan, such as that at D, which is much after the pattern of the Roman bath recently discovered at Box, could be employed; or a plain, circular bath with steps around, such as that of the Pompeian _Balneum_, shown at C; or, again, such a plan as that at E, after the classic one at Bognor in Sussex. For inspirations as to the plans of plunge baths, we cannot do better than refer direct to the old Roman remains, either in Italy itself, or in Great Britain and other provinces and colonial dependencies of the old Empire. The Romans were fully alive to the possibilities of the plunge bath as a subject for artistic design, and often produced baths of great beauty. [Illustration: FIG. 19. Plans of Plunge Baths.] The flooring and sides of these baths should be of a light tint, and there should always be more or less pure white. Nothing really is better than plain white glazed bricks, with neat joints. With this bottom the water always looks clean when it is clean, and shows contamination when it exists. Marble-mosaic floorings should be chiefly of white tesseræ, any simple patterns being executed in light tints. Delicate tints, such as strawberry, pea green, and peacock blue, look well through the water. The floor of the plunge bath may thus be made very pretty. The sides are best of glazed brickwork, neatly executed, and coping and treads of steps of so-called white marble. FURNISHING. The work of the upholsterer in fitting up a Turkish bath comprises the complete furnishing of the cooling room with couches, lounges, ottomans, carpets, mats, and any chairs and tables that may be required, besides the usual furniture common to all rooms. In the sudatory chambers may be required easy chairs of peculiar construction, with stretched canvas seats; in some cases movable wooden benches in lieu of fixed marble-topped ones; and any carpeting, matting, felt for benches, curtains (if any), and Indian matting for dadoes. These are the principal requirements that need consideration, the remaining furnishing of subordinate apartments being, of course, of commonplace and ordinary description. The refreshment department requires possibly a coffee-maker, refrigerator, ice-box, and shelf fittings; but, as a general rule, no arrangements for actual cooking. The cooling room couches are usually made 6 ft. by 2 ft.; but 6 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft. 6 in. is a more liberal allowance. They should be made of polished wood, strongly framed, stuffed with horsehair and covered with a red Turkey twill, as at A, Fig. 21. Where divans are adopted, on the Eastern model, the benches must be framed of wood, permanently fixed, and covered with mattresses kept in their places by a wooden fillet, as Fig. 20. Above the couch thus formed it is well to stretch a dado of Indian matting, affixed above to a moulded rail. The carpets employed in the cooling room should be soft to the tread. Nothing, of course, equals a Persian or Turkey carpet, and one or the other should be provided when their cost can be afforded. A rich carpet adds greatly to the effect of the room. In cases where a polished wood floor is adopted and shown, soft durable matting or strips of carpet must be placed along any routes, such as from and to the hot rooms and the boot-room, by the sides of couches, to lounges and tables, &c.--anywhere, in fact, where the bather may require to tread. Anything in the nature of fastenings likely, by any possibility, to injure the feet, must be carefully avoided. A table or two for books, papers, magazines, &c., should be provided in the cooling room. The provision of lounges, &c., must depend upon the design of the room, and whether nooks or angles are available for their accommodation. Little wooden or metal tripod tables must be placed by the heads of the couches (Fig. 21, B). [Illustration: FIG. 20. Section of Benches in Hot Rooms and in Cooling Room Divans.] The chairs in the hot rooms must be designed upon some such lines as at C and D, whereat are shown an iron, and a wooden, framed chair. Beechen frames are best, and the seat formed of rather closely-woven canvas fixed at top and bottom and hanging in a curve. A few of these seats should always be provided in the hot rooms. Movable wooden _benches_ are constructed of beech, oak, or well-seasoned yellow deal, as at E. The head end is best raised as shown. Very carefully-seasoned wood should be employed, for all joinery purposes, in the hot rooms. In the boot room, the pigeon-holes must not be forgotten, and a cushioned seat, perhaps, for taking off boots and shoes. A shelf or shelves for linen checks is useful in this position. Sometimes the floor of the calidarium is carpeted all over, but _strips_ of matting or carpet are better. The hot laconicum is best carpeted throughout. The tepidarium should have strips of carpet where the bathers must necessarily tread. In some baths it is the custom to provide, instead of carpet, felt sandals for use in the hot rooms. For similar reasons to the carpeting--the non-conduction of heat--fine white felting is sometimes placed in strips along the marble benches, as at Fig. 20. Of the Indian matting for a portion of the walls above the benches, I have already spoken. In the shampooing rooms, little blocks of wood shaped as at E, Fig. 5, are required as head-rests. They should be about 12 by 5 by 4 in., and hollowed to fit the head. [Illustration: FIG. 21. Furniture of a Turkish Bath.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: I do not know of any building--bath or otherwise, civil or domestic--in this country where the true spirit of Oriental colour decoration has been grasped. One of the chief principles which seems to have been missed is that in real Saracenic art the colours are employed in very small portions only, and no colour becomes insubordinate to the general effect.] [Footnote 4: Here is a branch of architectural design absolutely unstudied. Few architects visit the East, and none enter the baths there, either in Egypt, Turkey, or Morocco. The ordeal of the true Oriental shampooing doubtless deters the few who might be curious about these buildings.] CHAPTER VIII. PRIVATE BATHS. The Turkish bath in the house may be designed on any scale, from a single room heated to the required temperature by a common laundry stove, to an elaborate suite of apartments, providing all that is found in the public bath, and even added luxuries. It may be an addition to an existing building or a feature designed at one and the same time as the house. There are, of course, many expedients for producing perspiration by heated air much simpler than by the special construction of a suite of bath rooms; but as they will be familiar to all studying the subject of baths, I will pass them over here as mere makeshifts. For although there is something to be said in their favour, in that the head is free and one can breathe cooler air, there are serious objections to their use, as the lamps employed _burn the air_, and there is also an absence of that rapid aërial circulation which is so much to be desired. Besides the actual objections to their use, more or less inconvenience attends the employment of the sheet and lamp (or cabinet and lamp) baths, and there is little of the luxury of a true sudatorium about the extemporised bath, admirable as it may be as a hydropathic expedient. The bath in the house may consist of one of the following arrangements:--(1) A single room used as a sudatory chamber and for washing; (2) a hot room and a washing room; (3) a combined hot room and washing room, and a cooling room; (4) a cooling room, washing room, and hot room; or (5) a suite of chambers of such extent as to provide every possible luxury, such as even the old Roman gentlemen would have coveted. Where there is no second room the bather must use his bed room as a cooling and reposing room, as he must also in the cases where only a washing room and a hot room are provided. [Illustration: FIG. 22. Plan of Mr. Urquhart's Small Private Bath and of the Hot Room at Sir Erasmus Wilson's Bath at Richmond Hill.] For a simple sudatory chamber, where washing operations are also conducted, all that is required is a room with brick walls and fire- and heat-proof floor and ceiling, with an adjoining lobby, a flue to conduct smoke from a simple stove, and a sunk washing tank or _lavatrina_. Allowance must be made for a couch opposite the stove. Fig. 22 (A) shows the simplest form of a bath room possible; it is that which Mr. Urquhart constructed, and has described in his 'Manual of the Turkish Bath.' It was erected by him to show how cheaply an effective bath room might be built, the whole arrangement, with water fittings and building of three of its walls, only costing 37_l._ The room or rooms forming the Turkish bath in a private house should be cut off by a lobby from the other apartments of the house, with carefully-fitting self-closing doors at either end; and in the case of an elaborate bath, another little lobby with double doors and heavy curtains, should be placed between the cooling room and the two bathing rooms, as at Fig. 24. The air of the hot rooms should, of course, be perfectly and absolutely cut off from that of the house. The position of the bath in a house will depend upon the size of the bath and the house and its situation. In town houses, where the bath consists of only a washing and a hot room, the first floor will be the most convenient. Where a cooling room is provided, the ground floor is as handy as anywhere; and this position allows of the easier construction of the heating apparatus. In the country, the bath is best built away from the house, connected by a short lobby, which may be utilised for boots, &c., as at Fig. 24. The main difficulties to be overcome are the heating of the bath, and the non-conduction of heat to places where it is not wanted. The heating apparatus of a private bath may be, for the simplest, a common laundry stove, as at Fig. 22 (A) and at Fig. 23; for bigger baths, a small convoluted stove, as at Fig. 24; or a furnace of firebrick with an iron flue, as at B, Fig. 22--a plan of the hot room (15 ft. by 12 ft.) of the bath which Sir Erasmus Wilson built at Richmond Hill. For elaborate baths, a small furnace wholly constructed of fireclay, such as that of which I have given complete plans in the chapter on "Heating and Ventilation," would be the best. A furnace of this description is shown in the design for an elaborate private bath, at Fig. 25. Should the bath be heated regularly every day, a firebrick furnace is certainly the best, as such furnaces retain their heat a long time. It should be "banked" at night. A bath only required at times, and quickly, is best heated with a thin iron stove. A portable iron stove and a long length of iron flue will rapidly raise the temperature. The simple baths illustrated at Figs. 22 (A) and 23, are therefore very convenient and effective. The principle of heating by the transmission to the hot rooms of freshly-heated air is also a very convenient one for private purposes, as on this system the bath may be on an upper floor, and yet have its heating apparatus conveniently stowed away below, as at Fig. 24. A small furnace chamber, such as that at Fig. 6, _ante_, must be constructed, and a hot-air flue of large section built up to the hot room. If the bath be on the ground floor, the construction of any form of heating apparatus is rendered easier. To prevent the transmission of heat to other apartments of the house, the precautions hereinbefore mentioned must be observed. Hollow walls must be provided round the heated chambers, to prevent loss of heat on the external side, and the transmission of heat through internal walls. The floors above and below should--if not of solid fireproof construction--be formed as described in the section dealing with the design of the sudorific chambers, with puggings of slag-wool, asbestos, sawdust, or materials having similar properties. Windows should be double. Wherever possible, concrete floors should be provided to the hot rooms and washing rooms, so that they may be covered with tiles or mosaics, and on account of the spilling of water. It should be needless to point out the necessity of having most careful regard to safety from fire by the stoves or furnaces. The ventilation of private baths should receive as much careful attention as those for public use. The hollow external walls may often be used with advantage for the extraction of the vitiated air, which must be let into the cavity at the floor level. If the bath be constructed on the ground floor, with nothing beneath, the system of carrying off the vitiated air by horizontal conduits--recommended for public baths--should be employed, as in the accompanying design for a large private bath, where the whole of the foul air is drawn into one vertical shaft of sufficiently wide section. Much that I have said on the heating and ventilation, and, indeed, on many matters in connection with the design of public baths, applies in the case of the private one, and the reader is therefore referred to preceding pages for many hints as to its construction. In the accompanying figures I have endeavoured to explain the arrangement and construction of private baths, from those formed by converting existing rooms into bath rooms, to an elaborate and complete design. Fig. 22 (A) is a plan of Mr. Urquhart's cheap private bath, an apartment only measuring 11 ft. by 16 ft., yet forming an effective sudatory chamber, with simple iron stove, couch, seat, and sunk tank or lavatrina. On this principle I have arranged the plans of the baths adapted to existing rooms in a house, shown at Fig. 23. One plan shows a hot room built on to an existing ordinary bath room. A doorway is formed in the old external wall, and the new chamber constructed with hollow walls, with glazed bricks internally. An extra room would, of course, be thus formed on the floor below. A fireproof floor would be provided, and the pipes from iron stove conducted to old fireplace in bath room, which would become the lavatorium, and undressing room if necessary. A double-doored lobby is formed in the latter apartment, and the slipper bath used as ordinarily. It will be seen that by appropriating the adjoining bed room, a frigidarium is obtained, by taking away the flue-pipe to a new chimney, and knocking a doorway through the old partition wall, thus making a complete set of bath rooms. [Illustration: FIG. 23. Methods of constructing Turkish Baths in existing Houses.] The other plan, given at Fig. 23, shows an existing room divided into a combined hot room and washing room, and a cooling room. Three of the walls being ordinary external walls, the hot room is lined with lath and plaster on quartering, leaving an air-space between to prevent loss of heat by absorption and radiation. One or two of the spaces between the quarters should be formed into lath and plaster flues, for the withdrawal of the vitiated air, being connected below with the hot room, and above lead into the open air. A pugged partition and double-doored lobby separate the rooms. Space is left in the hot room for a full-length couch opposite the radiating stove, which has a metal screen around to protect the more adjacent walls from the heat. A lavatrina is provided, as shown at the enlarged section. A nook is formed for a shower. This recess could be fitted with enamelled iron screen and hood, as at the end of elaborate slipper-baths. A couple of couches, lavatory, and toilet table are compactly arranged in the little frigidarium. Where these plain iron radiating stoves are employed, the fresh air should be admitted as near the stove as possible, and if the inlet be connected with a space formed round the stove by a sheet-iron jacket, the air will enter the room at a considerably raised temperature. The temperature of the incoming air in a bath where the heat radiates directly from the stove or furnace to the body of the bather, is not a matter of such vital importance as it is in cases where the heat is transmitted through the agency of the air itself. [Illustration: FIG. 24. A complete Private Turkish Bath.] Cost of construction being now so constant a factor in every consideration, I have been led to give the above plans and descriptions of cheaply-formed baths as suggestions for the adaptation of other rooms. But plans of more elaborate baths are occasionally required, and at Fig. 24 I give the plan and cross section of a bath constructed as an appendage to, and at one and the same time as, the house. In this plan all necessaries are liberally provided for, but there is no extravagant outlay on elaboration of features and decoration. It is arranged on the first floor of a projecting wing off the main building. The frigidarium is cut off from the corridor or landing of the house by a lobby, which provides a w.c. and a space for boots and shoes and linen and towels. Between the frigidarium and bath rooms is a double-doored lobby of a kind that is very useful in both public and private baths. Hung with heavy curtains over the inner face of either door, it forms a perfect preventive against the entry of the air of the hot rooms into the cooling room. Between the combined tepidarium and lavatorium and the laconicum is a glazed partition with a doorway, fitted with a curtain if necessary. The walls are 18 in.--9 in. and 4-1/2 in., with 4-1/2 in. cavity, used for ventilation. The bath rooms are lined with glazed brickwork. The floor is of fireproof, iron and concrete, construction. Enamelled iron sheets are screwed to the ceiling joists in the hot rooms, and pugging placed over. Under the laconicum is the stokery and furnace chamber, fitted with a small convoluted stove, a hot-air shaft leading to the bath room. Fresh air comes to the stove by horizontal flues from either side of the building. The windows in the bath rooms are double. In the laconicum are two felt-covered wooden benches, as at Fig. 21 (E), _ante_, and a similar bench occupies one side of lavatorium, opposite which is the lavatrina, 18 in. deep, partly sunk into the floor and partly raised. The shower should be placed over this. In the frigidarium are two couches, hooks for clothes, lavatory, and toilet tables, &c. This would be a very effective plan for a comfortable private bath. The ordinary "slipper," "length," or "shallow" bath is out of place in the rooms of a Turkish bath; but where the bath has to be adapted with economy to an existing bath room, as at Fig. 23, and in cases where, say, some members of a family take the Turkish bath and others the ordinary warm bath, it may remain as at the last-named figure, and serve the purposes of a lavatrina. The lavatrina, as designed in the plan of the large Turkish bath appended, however, is the most convenient apparatus to facilitate the orthodox method of lathering and washing oneself in this style of bathing, as distinct from the ordinary method of immersion in a large body of water; and as the former manner is the most economical of water, it is unnecessary, in providing a Turkish bath in a house, to make any increased provision for the supply of hot and cold water over and above that which would be allowed for an ordinary slipper-bath. In a private bath the lavatorium will also serve the purpose of a tepidarium. This chamber should therefore be as large as possible. In it may be required a shampooing slab, and, possibly, a small plunge bath, in addition to the lavatrina, reclining-bench, and what water fittings are to be provided. All that will be required are hot and cold water taps over the edge of the lavatrina, which should also have a waste and overflow. Having to be worked by the bather himself, the shower arrangement should be such as shown at Fig. 17, _ante_. This will serve all purposes, unless a douche and a needle are desired, when the regulating valve of this appliance must be placed conveniently within the bather's reach while standing in the bath. The private bather, unless he can afford to engage a bath-man, must look upon shampooing as a _luxury_ but not a _necessity_ of the bath. Dr. W. J. Fleming, in a lecture on the "Physiology of Turkish Baths," read before the Glasgow Physiological Society some years back, said that the accessories of shampooing, &c., are, despite the popular opinion to the contrary, non-essential. A shampooing slab--which must be of marble--is therefore not a necessary provision in any but very elaborate private baths. A complete private bath must contain the _piscina_, or plunge. Unless space and expense be no object, this cannot well be made capable of affording a vigorous dive; but endeavours should be made to secure a bath of such dimensions as will admit of a refreshing immersion of the whole body. It will be constructed and fitted exactly as a small public plunge bath. The frigidarium of a private bath should be as pleasant, cheerful, and comfortable as possible. It should be a cosy place where the bather may recline and cool, and smoke and read, or otherwise divert himself to his heart's content. If so preferred, it might be arranged like an Eastern divan; or it might be a simple, homely room, fitted with one or two comfortable couches. A fireplace may here be a desirable feature, for appearance sake, during the winter months. The room should be _really_ ventilated--viz. well supplied with pure, fresh air, and with effective means of withdrawing the vitiated atmosphere, since, as I have pointed out in the chapters on public baths, the cooling process is, in its way, as important as the heating, it being essential that the bather should expose the whole surface of his skin to volumes of pure cool air. [Illustration: FIG. 25. DESIGN FOR A PRIVATE TURKISH BATH LONGITUDINAL SECTION.] At Fig. 25, pages 130 and 131, I give plans of a large private Turkish bath. It is such a building as would be a most desirable and pleasing addition to a country mansion; and considering the money prodigally lavished over the appurtenances of the modern mansion house, it is indeed surprising that more has not been attempted in the way of appending a feature that is at once a talisman of health, a cure for disease, and an untold luxury. The public bath may be a blessing, but for comfort and luxury it cannot compare with the well-appointed private bath. [Illustration: Design for a Private Turkish Bath.] The design I give as a suggestion, to be modified and adapted to any style of design. The building could be connected to the house by a corridor, or by a glazed _xystos_, either abutting on to the main wall of house or a little detached. Off the lobby to the frigidarium are recesses for boots and for linen. The frigidarium--about 15 ft. square--has benches fitted up like one side of a divan, bay windows with space for plants and flowers, lavatory and toilet-table, and an ornamental fountain. A lobby separates this apartment from the bath rooms, and off it are a w.c. and a towel closet, which latter could be supplied with hot air. The combined lavatorium and tepidarium--14 ft. square--is a domed chamber, with semicircular recesses containing the plunge bath and lavatrina. A shampooing bench is shown. A marble dado surrounds the walls, and marble corbels are provided to pendentives of dome--which could be of brick or terracotta and concrete--and marble springers to horse-shoe arches. The shower is placed over the lavatrina. Plenty of space is left for a bench or chair in this chamber. Adjoining is the laconicum with a firebrick furnace, after the nature of that of which I have before given full detailed drawings. The vitiated air is drawn through flues in the floor, to a shaft on the opposite side to the chimney. The stokery and coke-store adjoin the laconicum. Fresh air would be admitted to the furnace as explained in the detailed description of the furnace illustrated at Fig. 10. If there were no available supply of water from house, a boiler and tank could be placed in the stokery, and a cistern on the flat roof. The flat roof, if of iron and concrete, would form an abutment to dome. If thought desirable, the same flat roof could be carried over the combined tepidarium and lavatorium. An air space should be left between the masonry of dome and covering of copper or other material. The lights should be double glazed. With the radiating stove there is no objection to the loftiness of the dome. This bath could be perfectly ventilated and supplied with pure heat of a most hygienic character. CHAPTER IX. THE BATH IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS, ETC. The bath for the hydropathic establishment will generally be required in connection with, and--what is of greater moment--_in harmony with_, other baths, such as medicated baths, Russian or vapour baths, and the ordinary douche, wave, spray, and needle baths, which, where the Turkish bath is included, may often be efficiently administered with the appliances usually provided in the shampooing and washing room. Moreover, if the establishment include the pumilio-pine treatment, or system of pine-therapeutics, there will be required rooms or halls for the inhalation of dry pine and pinal vapour. The nature of the communication between these different baths, as the medicated, Russian, &c., and the Turkish bath, and their relative positions, must be carefully studied. It should be compact and the various passages and corridors as short as possible, these passages and corridors being provided with means for maintaining them at a suitable, and uniformly equable, temperature. This latter point we do not find so carefully studied in hydropathic establishments as its importance would warrant. The consequence is that, in passing backwards and forwards to and from the different bath rooms, the delicate invalid contracts a serious chill. [Illustration: FIG. 26. Plan of the Baths at the Hôtel Mont Dore, Bournemouth.] I give herewith, at Fig. 26, a plan of the baths at the Hôtel Mont Dore, at Bournemouth, which, though not confessedly a hydropathic institution, has yet a fine bathing establishment of the hydropathic type, as well as complete arrangements for the administration of the pine cure. These baths include a Turkish bath, with three hot rooms, a shampooing room, and cooling room, connected by an anteroom with the suite of miscellaneous bath rooms of the gentlemen's department. The latter comprise a room for the tonic water baths, such as the needle, douche, sitz, hip, and wave; a room or "hall" for the inhalation of pine vapour, whilst in a bath of condensed steam; and a room for the administration of the Mont Dore cure, consisting of the application of pulverised Mont Dore water, or spray, to the eye, nose, or ear, as may be required, this room being also used for the inhalation of dry pine. In addition are a range of slipper baths, in comfortably fitted bath rooms, for the purposes of electric and medicated baths, such as those of pine extract, sulphur, iodine, &c., &c., and for ordinary hot and cold spring-water and salt-water baths. In connection are arranged dressing and reposing rooms, besides necessary subsidiary apartments. A somewhat similar suite of rooms is arranged for ladies on the other side of the block. There is no separate Turkish bath, however; certain days of the week are set apart exclusively for ladies' use. The steam boilers, which supply the steam to the vapour baths and pine-vapour baths, and the water super heaters, as well as the hotel lift and pumping machinery, are arranged in a basement under the stairs, anteroom, tepidarium, and shampooing room. It will be seen that the compact little Turkish bath, which was arranged under the direction of the late Mr. Charles Bartholomew, is in direct communication with the other baths, allowing the bather to pass from the hot rooms, or shampooing room, to medicated or pine bath, or _vice versâ_. In designing the plan of baths of the type of those at the Mont Dore, this intercommunication between the various baths is the point to be most carefully studied. Direct communication is required between the Turkish, and the Russian, bath, inhalation hall, and medicated baths, as some methods of treatment render this an absolute necessity. In a small establishment the hydropathic appliances are movable, and used in ordinary bath rooms, the Turkish bath being the only feature requiring special design. A true hydropathic establishment of any size should be provided with two Turkish baths, one for ladies and one for gentlemen, as the power and efficiency of the treatment may depend upon the regularity and persistency with which it is carried out. Where there is only one bath, it has to be set apart on different days for the use of ladies and gentlemen, and it is evident that the benefit of a course of baths may be greatly lessened by the occasional unreadiness of the bath. Two suites of rooms should, therefore, be provided. It may be that they will be most economically constructed and worked if arranged side by side, so that they may have their furnaces together, and be stoked with economy. Where, as in country establishments, there is plenty of room, it is often convenient to arrange the Turkish and other baths on the ground floor adjoining the main building, a corridor of connection being placed, if necessary. It should be remembered, however, that invalids have to be taken--often carried or wheeled in movable chairs--to the baths, and allowance should therefore be made for the passage of such a wheeled chair from the top story, by way of a lift, to the door of the baths. In a large establishment, a full complement of rooms should be provided for the Turkish bath--viz. three hot rooms, a washing and shampooing room, and a cooling room. They will, of course, be on a small scale; but the whole number should be provided. A plunge bath should also be added, but in small hydropathics may be dispensed with altogether. For hydropathic purposes the lavatorium is generally required to have rather more elaborate water-fittings than other baths. The needle bath should include the ascending shower, the back shower, and the spinal douche--a small nozzle behind the rose of the vertical shower. The regulating appliances for these various showers, sprays, &c., should be brought together, and conveniently placed for the attendant. A very ingenious appliance, suitable for a hydropathic bath, is a thermometer regulating valve, which indicates the temperature of the water being supplied to the bather. The waters mix in a ball, into which is inserted the bulb of a sensitive thermometer, which rises and falls as the hot or cold handles are turned. If the shampooing and washing room of the Turkish bath is to be used for the administration of the tonic water baths to other bathers besides those taking the Turkish bath, it must be made of ample dimensions. So, also, if the cooling room is to be used as a reposing room for other bathers, it must be made of large size. Perfect ventilation is of paramount importance in baths used for the treatment of disease. Purity of atmosphere in the hot rooms is a vital necessity, and so also is it in the miscellaneous bath rooms of a hydropathic establishment. Unreadiness is a great vice in the Turkish bath appended to these institutions. Hot rooms beneath their proper temperature, and lukewarm water, are unpardonable delinquencies, either in the early morning, in the evening, or during the day. For this reason I would recommend a furnace of fireclay, as it retains its heat for a long time, and is not subject to the rapid changes of iron stoves. Much of that which I have said with respect to the hydropathic bath will apply to the design of the bath for hospital and asylum purposes. Here, however, efficiency is all that is required, and everything need be but of the plainest description. The conditions and exigencies of each case must determine the size, position, and nature of the suite of bath rooms. All that has been said upon the subject of the design and construction of the bath must be studied, and the principles, herein given, applied to the peculiar circumstances. So also in regard to Turkish baths for hotels, and for residential blocks of buildings, and for clubs. There is a wide field for activity in Turkish bath building, in the increased provision of baths in hospitals, asylums, and public and private institutions of one kind and another; and also in hotels, "flats," and clubs. The hydropathic establishments have long adopted the Turkish bath as a powerful remedial and curative agent in perfect harmony with the principles of the Water Cure. But it is only occasionally that such provision has been made in hospitals and asylums; and although within the last few years noticeable innovations have been made in this respect, the subject has heretofore been greatly neglected. Seeing, too, the immense extent to which co-operative living has developed, and the consequent enormous increase in size of large hotels, residential blocks, &c., I cannot but think that the builders of such tenements could with advantage turn their attention to the supplying of small Turkish baths for the visitors and residents. CHAPTER X. THE TURKISH BATH FOR HORSES. Animals of many kinds, including horses, dogs, cows, sheep, and pigs, have been experimented upon with regard to the bath, and with much success. But for practical purposes all we need here consider is the design of the bath for horses, since a bath for a horse will evidently be suitable for a cow, and might not be wholly beneath the dignity of a pig. It is, after all, only in connection with the training of horses that anything of practical importance has been accomplished in this direction. Several Turkish baths for horses have been erected in this country in connection with hospitals for horses, attached to large businesses, and appended to training stables. In the development of race-horses the treatment has, according to the opinion of several authorities, been found eminently beneficial. The bath must be arranged in connection, and in direct communication with the stables. It may consist, as Fig. 27--a plan of a bath built for the Great Northern Railway Company's hospital for horses--of a washing, and two hot, rooms. An airy shed will do for a place for the animals to cool, and in fine weather they will derive more benefit from being turned out in the open. In the plan given it will be seen that the horse is led through the washing room into the first hot room. Without turning round, he may be led into the second hot room and thence into the washing room again. In the hot rooms, which are heated by a convoluted stove, are stocks, wherein, if restive, the animal can be secured. A similar arrangement is made in the washing room, where, after undergoing the sweating process, the horse is groomed down, an operation that should be performed in part with an iron _strigil_, much after the pattern of those employed upon their own bodies by the ancient Romans. [Illustration: FIG. 27. Plan of the Great Northern Railway Company's Turkish Bath for Horses.] These equine Turkish baths need be very inexpensive and simply constructed, though, where it is desired to do the thing well, glazed bricks should, for the sake of cleanliness, be used for lining the walls. All that will be required in the washing rooms is a couple of draw-off taps with hot and cold water, some pails, a scraper, and wash-leather. On leaving the sudatory chamber, the horse should first be well scraped with the scraper, carefully sponging, or dousing him, if necessary, with warm water. Buckets of hot, tepid, and cold water should then be thrown over him, and having been well rubbed down with the leather, he should then be covered with a cotton sheet, and his legs bandaged with cotton bands, the sheets, &c., being gradually removed after an interval of about a quarter of an hour, and the animal turned into a shed, or into the open, to cool. THE END. INDEX. A. PAGE Air, allowance of, in hot rooms, 81 backflow of, 83 circulation of, in hot rooms, 85 expansion in heating, 82 filters, 67 flues for vitiated, 92 inlets for cold, 67 intake, position of, 68 arrangement of, 69 its changes in the bath, 71 of bath, necessity for dryness of, 85 overheated, 76 passage of, through bath rooms, 70 rapidity of flow of, 82 Apodyterium, the, 4, 13 and frigidarium, combined, 13 B. Bath, architecture of, 105 ascending shower, 93 back shower, 94 decoration of, 105 elaborate needle, 138 foot, 98 materials for, 105 Mr. Urquhart's cheap private, 120, 123 needle, 93, 94 position of private, 120 preliminary shower, 97 primary object of, 10 public, general requirements of, 9 shower, 92 style of design for, 109 subsidiary apartments of, 14 the, in asylums, 139 the, in hospitals, 139 the "slipper", 127 wave, 95 Baths, ancient and modern, difference between, 10 Roman and Oriental, 2 works on, 3 cheap, 66 private, 125 complete private, 125-127 construction of, in private houses, 123, 124 Eastern, 110 elaborate private, 129, 132, 133 importance of double sets of, 137 importance of intercommunication between various, 137 in crowded sites, 18 nature of private, 119 objections to extemporised hot air, 118 Old Roman, 110 on one level, 18 private, 118 public and commercial, 6 public, lack of, in England, 7 supply of water for private, 128 two classes of, 26 ventilation of private, 122 Bath-rooms arranged _en suite_, advantage of, 37 drainage of, 44 _Balneæ_, the Pompeian, 112 ancient, 4 Benches, felting for marble, 116 Bignor, Roman, bath at, 112 Boilers, 87 Boot-room, fittings for, 116 Box, Roman bath at, 112 C. Calidarium, the, 4, 33 floor of, 116 Ceilings of enamelled iron, 106 Checks, shelves for, 116 Cisterns, 87, 88 Cleansing process, ways of concluding, 12 Cold plunge, object of, 12 Combined cooling and dressing room, its arrangement, 54 Cooling and dressing rooms combined, their merits and demerits, 54 Cooling room, carpets for, 114 couches in, 114 furniture of, 113 importance of ventilating, 57 method, 57 lighting of, 103 the separate, 53 Cooling rooms in hydropathic establishments, 138 fireplaces in, 23 methods of arranging, 52 temperature of, 53, 58 D. Divans, construction of, 114 Douche, horizontal, 95 room, the, 45 spinal, 93 Drainage, importance of perfect, 44 Dressing and cooling rooms, 13 Dry atmosphere, necessity for, in bath, 4 F. Firing, evil of bad and forced, 80 Floorings for cheap baths, 34 Flues, hot and cold air, construction of, 40 Foul air conduits, 71 Frigidarium, design of, 108 divans in, 109 fountain in, 101 of private baths, 129 the, 4, 13 the old Roman, 57 Furnace, advantage of a fireclay, 75 fireclay, for private bath, 132 method of constructing, 74 expansion and contraction of, 76 Furnaces for private baths, 121 heating power of, 80 with iron flues, 72 Furnace chamber, position of, 40 G. Gas, objections to, in bath, 102 Glazed earthenware, its suitability for baths, 33 Good and bad baths, difference between, 82 Good bath, what it is, and how gained, 9 H. Hair-dresser and chiropodist, 15 Hammam, the, Jermyn Street, 18 Hammam, the Oriental, 3 Heat, convected and radiant, 5, 59 methods of applying to bather, 10, 56 prevention of transmission of, 122 Heating apparatuses for private baths, 120 screen walls to, 77 Heating by fireclay furnaces, 73 iron flue-pipes, 72 ordinary stoves, 72 convection, objection to, 79 steam, 77 arrangements for, 78 dangers attendant upon, 77 of small baths, 73 of the bath, its importance, 59 by the ordinary method, 62 on the hot-air principle, 62 and ventilation, 59 theory of, 69 High temperatures, beneficial effect of in cases of disease, 11 necessity for, 11 Horses, bathing of, 142 "Hot-air bath," a misleading term, 5 Hot-air bath, the, 6 appliances and arrangements for, 63 Hot air, height of delivery of, into laconicum, 40 manner, 40 principle, objections to, 61 Hot rooms, benches in, 38 brickwork in, 107 ceilings of, 34 chairs and benches in, 116 decoration of, 105 doorways in, 38 fireproof floors over, 35 glazing in, 38 height of, 39 Indian matting in, 106 joinery in, 37 lighting of, 102 materials for, 38 objection to stepped benches in, 39 proportional area of, 33 position of partitions in, 37 radiation of heat from, 35 Hot rooms, windows in, 35 treatment of woodwork in, 106 Hydropathy and the Turkish bath, 140 Hydropathic establishments, the bath in, 134 I. Invalids, consideration for, in bathing establishments, 138 Irish "sweating houses," old, 5, 13 L. Laconicum, the, 4, 32 ceiling of, 35 floor of, 116 Ladies' baths, 14, 44, 111 Laundry, 16 Lavatorium, the, 4, 43 and shampooing room, 41 the hydropathic, 138 of private bath, 128 washing basins in, 43 water fittings of, 89 Lavatrina, the, 119, 127 M. Mont Dore, baths at the Hotel, 135 cure, the, 136 Moorish bath, heating of the, 59 _Mustaby_, the Turkish, 57 O. Obstacles to the progress of the bath, 1 Oriental colour decoration, 110 P. Pay office, the, 14 Perspiration, object of, 11 Plumbing, 88, 100 Plunge bath, the, 46 between hot rooms and frigidarium, 12 chamber, lighting of, 104 construction of, 48 decoration of, 113 depth of, 48 for private baths, 129 in hydropathic establishments, 138 water fittings of, 99 Popular ignorance and the bath, 1 Processes of the bath, 11 Public Baths and Wash-houses Act, inadequacy of, 7 Public baths in England, unworthy of the nation, 29 general disposition of plan of, 17 R. Rest after bath, necessity for, 13 Roman baths, method of heating the old, 59 nature of heat in old, 79 S. Sanitary accommodation, necessity for care in providing, 15 Shampooer, space required by each, 43 Shampooing and the private bath, 128 benches, 34, 42 positions of bather during, 43 value of, 12 and washing room combined, arrangement of, 43 room, 42 ventilation of, 42 lighting of, 104 Shower for head, 100 preliminary warm, 44 So-called Turkish baths, their harmfulness, 2 Stokery, the, 15 Stoves, attributes of good, 64 Convolute, 264 heating power of 80 method, of constructing, furnace chamber for, 64 iron, 63 objections to exposing in hot rooms, 72 plain iron radiating 125 radiating surfaces of, 63 Subsidiary apartments of the bath, 32 Sudatorium, best position for bathers in 38 Sudatory chamber, a simple, 119 T. Tank, hot water, 87 Temperature, importance of maintaining 79 of bath rooms 78 regulating, 80 variations in 79 Tepidarium, the 4, 32 drinking fountain in, 100 mosaic floors in, 108 of private bath, 128 old Roman, 39 _Thermæ_, old Roman, 3 Tonic baths 92 Transmission of heated air, prevention of, 36 heat, 36 Treatment, course of, in the bath, 11 Turkish bath, association of miscellaneous hydropathic baths with the, 134 building, field for activity in 139 for animals 141 for horses 141 Great Northern Railway Company's 141 heating of the true 59 the, a misnomer 5 what it is, 4 direction in which improvement may be made in the, 60 Turkish baths, Baden-Baden, 30 Bartholomew's, Leicester Square, 25 Bremen, 29 Burton's, Euston Road, 27 Camden Town, 22 foul atmosphere of some so-called, 2, 82 in Germany, 29 lukewarm, 139 Nevill's, London Bridge, 25 Northumberland Avenue, 23 Nuremberg, 30 Savoy Hill, 20 Vienna, 30 V. Valve, thermometer regulating, 138 Valves and cocks, 90 regulating, for shower bath, &c., 96 Ventilation, 139 importance of, in hot rooms, 81 in cramped sites, 69 mechanical, 82 Ventilator gratings, 83 Ventilators, disposition of, in hot rooms, 70 number and size of, 71 position of, 71 W. Washing and shampooing rooms, various ways of arranging, 41 Water, pressure of, 88 Water fittings, 87 of private bath, 128 value of simplicity in, 97 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
27877	----	+----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: | | | | The combination "vv" which occurs at some places for | | "w" and the word "Jonick" used sometimes for "Ionick" | | has been kept to conserve the original appearance of the | | book. No changes have been made in the text except the | | correction of obvious typos. | +----------------------------------------------------------+ [Illustration: ARCHITECTVRE 1692] AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF VITRUVIUS. CONTAINING A System of the whole WORKS of that Author. Illustrated with divers Copper Plates, curiously engraved; with a Table of Explanation, To which is added in this Edition The Etymology and Derivation of the Terms used in _Architecture_. First done in _French_ by Monsr _Perrault_, of the Academy of _Paris_, and now _Englished_, with Additions. _LONDON_: Printed for _Abel Small_ and _T. Child_, at the _Unicorn_ in St. _Paul_'s Church-yard. 1692. A TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS. The Introduction. Article 1. _Of the great merits of_ Vitruvius, _and the Excellencies of his Works_. Page 1. Art. 2. _Of the method of the Works of_ Vitruvius, _with short Arguments of every Book_. 9. _A division of his whole Works into three parts, whereof 1. treats of Building, 2. Gnomonical, 3. Mechanical. A second division into three parts, 1. of Solidity, 2. of Convenience, and 3. of Beauty. The Arguments of the Ten Books._ 11, 12, &c. THE FIRST PART. Of the Architecture that is common to us with the Ancients. _Chap. I._ Of Architecture in general. Art. 1. _Of the Original of Architecture_, 17. _The first occasion of Architecture; the Models of the first_ _Architects_, 19. _The Inventers of the four Orders of Architecture_, 20. Art. 2. _What Architecture is_, 23. _Definition of it; an Architect ought to have the knowledge of eleven things_, viz. _Writing_, _Designing_, _Geometry_, _Arithmetick_, _History_, 24. _Philosophy, moral and natural_, 25. _Physick_, _Law_, _Astronomy_, and _Musick_. 26. Art. 3. _What the parts of Architecture are_, 27. _There are eight parts in Architecture_, viz. 1. _Solidity_, 27. 2. _Convenience_, 3. _Beauty_, 4. _Order_, 5. _Disposition_, 28. 6. _Proportion_, 7. _Decorum_, 8. _Oeconomy_, 32. _Chap._ II. Of the Solidity of Buildings. Art. 1. _Of the choice of Materials_, 33. Vitruvius _speaks of five sorts of Materials_, 1. _Stone_, 33. 2. _Bricks_, 34. 3. _Wood, whereof divers sorts are used, as Oak, Fir, Poplar, Alder_, 35. _Pine, Cypress, Juniper, Cedar, Larch_, 36. _and Olive_; 4. _Lime_; 5. _Sand and Gravel_, 37. _of which several sorts, Pit, River, and Pozzalane_, 38. Art. 2. _Of the use of Materials_, 39. _Of the Preparation of Stone_, 39. _Of Wood_, 40. _Of Bricks_, 41. _Lime and Sand_, 43. Art. 3. _Of the Foundation_, 45. _In Foundations, to take care that the Earth be solid_, 45. _Of the Masonry_, 46. Art. 4. _Of the Walls_, 47. _Six sorts of Masonry_, 48, 49. _Precautions to be used in binding the Walls, to strengthen them with Wood_, 50. _That they be exact perpendicular_, 51. _to ease them of their own weight, by Timber or Arches over doors and windows, and by Butresses in the earth_, 53. Art. 5. _Of Flooring and Ceiling_, 54. _Of Flooring upon the Ground_, 54. _between Stories_, 55. _Open to the Air as Terrass, &c._ 57. _the Roof_, 58. _Cornice_, 59. Art. 6. _Of Plaistering_, 59. _For great Walls, For Fresco_, 60. _for Partitions_, 61. _For moist places_, 61. _Chap. III._ Of the Convenience of Fabricks. Art. 1. _Of convenient Scituation_, 63. _That a place be convenient, it ought to be fertile, accessible, in a wholsom Air, not on low Ground or marshy_, 64. _How to know a wholsom Climate_, 65. Art. 2. _Of the Form and Scituation of the Building_, 65. _The Streets and Houses of a City to be the most advantagiously expos'd in respect to the Heavens and Wind_, 65, 66. _The scituation of each Room to be according to the use of it; of Dining-rooms, Libraries, Closets, &c._ 67, 68. Art. 3. _Of the Dispositions of Fabricks_, 68. _The Dispositions of Buildings to be according to the use of the House, either publick or private; of Merchants Houses; of Country Houses; Of the several Apartments_, 70. _Of Lights_, 71. Art. 4. _Of the convenient form of Buildings_, 71. _Of the Walls of Cities; Form of publick places_, 72. _which were different among the_ Greeks _and_ Romans; _of Stairs and Halls_, 72. _Chap. IV._ Of the Beauty of Buildings. Art. 1. _In what the beauty of Buildings consists_, 74. _Two sorts of beauty in Buildings; 1st, Positive, which consists in the Symmetry, Materials, and Performance_, 75. _2d. Arbitrary, which is of two sorts; 1. Prudence, 2. Regularity; which consist in the proper providing against Inconveniences, and observing the Laws of Proportion_, 76. _The beauty is most seen in the proportion of these principal parts_, viz. _Pillars, Piedments, and Chambrantes_, 78. _From these things result two other, Gender and Order_, 79. Art. 2. _Of the five Genders, or sorts of Fabricks_, 80. _The five sorts are Pycnostyle, Systile_, 80. _Diastyle, Areostyle, Eustyle_, 81. _The Genders to be always agreable to the Orders of Architecture_, 82. Art. 3. _Of the five Orders of Architecture_, 84. _The distinction and difference in the several Orders; consists in the Strength and Ornament_; Vitruvius _speaks but of three Orders_, 85. Art. 4. _Of things that are common to several Orders_, 85. _There are seven things common to all Orders_, viz. _Steps_, 85. _Pedastals_, 86. _the diminution of Pillars, the Channelings of Pillars, which is of three sorts_, 89. _the Piedemont_, 90. _Cornices, and Acroteres_, 93. Art. 5. _Of the_ Tuscane _Order_, 93. _The_ Tuscane _Order consists in the Proportion of Columns, in which there are three parts, the Base, the Shaft, and the Capital_, 94. _Of Chambrantes; and of the Piedement_, 95. Art. 6. _Of the_ Dorick _Order_, 96. _The_ Dorick _Order consists in the proportion; of the Columns, which have been different at diverse times, and in diverse Works_, 96, 97. _The parts of the Column are the Shaft; the Base which it anciently wanted, but hath since borrowed from the Attic; the proportion of the Base_, 97. _and the Captial_, 98. _the Archiatrave, which hath two parts, the Platbands and the Gouttes_, 98. _the Frise, in_ _which are the Triglyphs and the Metops_, 98. _the Proportion of them_, 99. _Of the Cornice, its proportion_, 99. Art. 7. _Of the_ Ionick _Order_, 101. _The preportion of Pillars of this Order_, 101. _The Pillars set upon the Bases two ways, perpendicular, and not so_, 101. _Proportion of the Base, divided into its parts the Plinthus, the Thorus, the Scotia upper and lower, with the Astragals_, 102. _Of the Capital, its proportion and parts_, 103. _Of the Architrave, wherein to be considered, the proportion it must have to the Pedestals, and to the heighth of the Column_, 105. _to the breadth at the bottom_, 106. _and to the jetting of the Cymatium_, 106. _Of the Frise and Cornice_, 107. Art. 8. _Of the_ Corinthian _Order_, 108. _This Order different from the_ Ionick _in nothing but in the Capitals of Pillars, being otherwise composed of the_ Dorick _and_ Ionick; _the proportion of the Capital_, 109. _in which are to be consider'd its heighth, its breadth at the bottom, the Leafs, Stalks, the Volutes, and the Roses_, 109. _Of the Ornaments_, 110. Art. 9. _Of the Compound Order_, 110. _The Compound is not described by_ Vitruvius, _it being a general Design, and borrows the parts of the Capital (which is the only distinction it has) from the_ Corinthian, Ionick, _and_ Dorick _Orders_, 111. THE SECOND PART, Containing the Architecture that was particular to the Ancients. _Chap. I._ Of publick Buildings. Art. 1. _Of Fortresses_, 113. _In Fortification four things are consider'd; the disposition of the Ramparts; the Figure of the whole place_, 114. _the building of the Walls; thickness, materials, and terrass; the figure and disposition of the Towers_, 115, 116. Art. 2. _Of Temples_, 116. _Temples divided in the_ Greek _and_ Tuscan _Fashion; of the_ Greek _some were round, and some square; in the square Temples of the Greeks three things are to be considered; 1. the_ Parts, _which are five, the Porch, the Posticum_, 117. _the Middle, the Portico, and the Gates, which were of three sorts_, viz. Dorick, 118. Jonick, 120. _and_ Attick, 120. _2. The_ Proportion, 121. _and 3. The_ Aspect, _in respect to the Heavens_, 122. _and to its own parts, which were different in Temples with Pillars, and those without Pillars; of Temples with Pillars there are eight sorts_, 122, 123, 124. Round Temples _were of two sorts, Monoptere_, 125. _Periptere_, 126. _Temples of the_ Tuscane Fashion, 126. _The Ancients had fourteen sorts of Temples_, 127. Art. 3. _Of publick Places, Basilica's, Theatres, Gates, Baths, and Academies_, 127. _The Fabricks for publick Convenience were of six sorts, I. Market-places of the_ Greeks _of the_ Romans, 128. _their Proportions; II. Basilica's, their Proportions, Columns,_ _Galleries, and Chalcediques_, 128. _III. Theatres composed of three parts; the Steps or Degrees which enclosed the Orchestra_, 125. _the Scene which had three parts, the Pulpit, the Proscenium_, 130. _and the Palascenium_, 131. _And the Walking-places_, 131. _IV. Gates, which were either natural or artificial, built three ways_, 132. _V. Baths, consisting of many Chambers, their Description_, 133, 134. _VI. Academies composed of three parts, the Peristyle_, 134. _the Xystile_, 135. _and the Stadium_, 136. _Chap. II._ Of Private Buildings. Art. 1. _Of the Courts of Houses_, 137. _The Courts of Houses were of five sorts, four whereof were made with jettings out, or Pent-houses of four sorts. the_ Tuscan, 137. _the_ Corinthian, _the Tetrastyle, the Vaulted_, 138. _the fifth sort uncoverted_, 138. Art. 2. _Of the Vestibulum or Entry_, 139. _The proportion of the Vestibulum was taken three ways, for the length, breadth, and heighth_, 139. _Of the Alley in the middle_, 140. Art. 3. _Of Halls_, 140. _Three sorts of Halls, the_ Corinthian, _the_ Ægyptian, _and the_ Cyzican, 141. Art. 4. _Of the Distribution of the Apartments among the Ancients_, 142. _The Distribution of the Apartments different among the_ Greeks _and_ Romans; _what the Difference was_, 141. _Chap. III._ Of things that equally appertain to Publick and Private Buildings. Art. 1. _Of Aqueducts_, 143. _The manner the Ancients used to take the Level exactly_, 143 _The Water was brought by Aqueducts, or by Pipes of Lead, or Potters Work_, 144. Art. 2. _Of Wells and Cisterns_, 145. _The Precautions the Ancients used in digging their Wells, to discover bad Water, and in making their Cisterns_, 145. Art. 3. _Of Machines for carrying and lifting up great Stones and Burthens_, 146. _Machines for drawing Pillars_, 147. _Architraves_, 147. _for raising great Weights, three sorts; first, with a Handmill; second, with a Windlas_, 147. _third, with several Ropes, to be drawn by Mens Hands_, 148. Art. 4. _Of Machines for elevating Waters_, 149. _Five sorts; I. The Tympan_, 149. _II. A Wheel with Boxes. III. A Chain with Buckets. IV. The Vice of Archimedes. V. The Pomp of_ Cresibius, 151. Art. 5. _Of Water-mills for grinding Corn_, 152. _The Water-mills of the Ancients were like ours._ Art. 6. _Of other Hydraulick Machines_, 153. _Three sorts of Water-Machines; first, for shewing the hour_, 153. _Second, Organs_, 154. _Third, for measuring the Way by Water_, 154. _by Land_, 155. Art. 7. _Of Machines of War_, 155. _Three kinds; I. To dart Arrows, &c._ 155. _II. To batter down Walls_, 157. _III. To cover them in their Approaches to the Walls of the Besieged_, 158. AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE TEN BOOKS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF VITRUVIUS. THE INTRODUCTION. ARTICLE I. _Of the great Merits of_ Vitruvius, _and the Excellencies of his Works_. There are so many things in the Works of _Vitruvius_ that do not directly appertain to Architecture, that one would think they were less fitted to Instruct those that have a design to learn the Precepts of this Art, than to perswade the World that the Author was the most knowing Architect that ever was, and a Person of the greatest Merit: He had the Honour to serve _Julius Cæsar_ and _Augustus_, the two Greatest and most Magnificent Princes of the World, in an Age when all things were come to the highest degree of Perfection. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Preface._] For one may see in reading his Works, which are full of a wonderful variety of Matters, which he treats of with a singular Erudition, that this great Man had acquired that Profound Knowledge which is necessary for his Profession by more excellent Methods, and more capable of producing something excellent, than the bare exercise and ordinary practice of a Mechanical Art could possibly do; being compleat in all the Liberal Arts and Sciences, and his great Wit being accustomed, even from his Cradle, to understand the most difficult Matters: He had acquired a certain Facility which meer Artizans have not, of penetrating the deepest Secrets, and all the difficulties of so vast an Art, as that of Architecture. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Pref._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Pref._] Now as it's true that in the Practice and Exercise of Arts, one does not always easily distinguish the Abilities of those that work in them. The great Capacity of _Vitruvius_ before the publishing of his Book, which he Composed when he was in Years, had not all the Esteem it deserved; which he complains of in his Preface, and in the Age he lived; though it was full of the most refined Wits, yet he had the fortune of others, to find few to defend him from the Surprizes and Attacks of false Reasoning, and from the injustice that prejudice creates, to those who apply themselves more to cultivate the Talents they possess, than to make parade of them. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Pref._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Pref._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. pref_.] [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Pref_.] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Pref_.] _Vitruvius_ was a Man, who, as to the exteriour, made a small Figure, and who had not heaped up great Riches by the practice of his Profession; and having, as it were, buried himself in study, and wholly given himself over to the Contemplation of Sciences, understood little of the Arts of the Court, or the Crafty Slights of pushing on his Fortune and making himself considerable; for though he was bestowed upon, and recommended to _Augustus_, by the Princess _Octavia_ his Sister, we cannot find that he was employed in any Works of great Importance. The Noblest Edifice that we can learn that _Augustus_ caused to be built, was, the Theatre of _Marcellus_; and this was done by another Architect: And the only Fabrick we can find he was employed in was not at _Rome_, but at _Fano_, a very little City; insomuch, that the greatest part of the Architects of that Age, who had gained the general Vogue, being so ignorant, that they did not know even (as himself is forced to declare) the first Principles of their Art: The Quality of a mere Architect was become so Contemptible, that if his Books had not carried all the Marks of an extraordinary Knowledge, and rare abilities, and undeceived the World by taking away the prejudice that his small employ created him, the Precepts he has left us would have wanted that Authority that was necessary to support them. For Architecture being an Art that has scarce any other Rule to walk by, in performing all those Excellencies her Works are capable of, than what we call a Good Fancy, which truly distinguishes that which is Beautiful and Good from that which is not so; it's absolutely necessary that one be perswaded that the Fancy he follows is better than any other; to the end, that this Perswasion insinuating it self into them that study this Art, it may form in them a Correct and Regular Idea, which without this Perswasion, would be always floating and uncertain; so that to establish this Good Fancy, it's necessary to have one to whom we give great deference, and who has merited great Credit by the Learning that is found in his Writings; and is believed to have had sufficient abilities of chusing well among all Antiquity, that which is most solid and capable of founding the Precepts of Architecture. The Veneration we have for the first Inventers of Arts, is not only Natural, but it's founded upon Reason; which makes us judge, that he that had the first Thought, and first invented any Thing, must needs have had a fitter Genius, and a better Capacity for it, than all those that afterwards laboured to bring it to its utmost Perfection. The _Greeks_, who were the Inventers of Architecture, as well as of other Sciences, having left many Works behind them as well in Building as in Books, which were looked upon in the time of _Vitruvius_, as the Models of what was perfect and accomplished in this Art, _Vitruvius_ chiefly followed and imitated them; and in the Composition of his Book, gathered from them all that was to be found Excellent and Rare in all their Works; which makes us believe, that he has omitted nothing that was necessary, to form the General Idea of Good and Beautiful, since there is not the least probability that any thing could escape so Rare a Wit, Illuminated with so many different Lights. But because at present the Reputation of _Vitruvius_ is so generally established, that all Ages have placed him in the first Rank of great Wits, and that there is nothing necessary to recommend the Precepts of Architecture, but to prove they were drawn out of his Works: We having here designed to make only an Abridgment of his Works, we thought it would be necessary to cut off many things that this Famous Author has drawn out of an infinity of Writers, whose Works are now lost, and only gives a short Account of the Contents of every Book, in the beginning of this Abridgment; handling only in this Book, those Things that directly belong to Architecture; disposing the Matter in a different Method from that of _Vitruvius_, who often leaves off the Matter he is treating of, and takes it up again in another place. The Order we have proposed to our selves in this Abstract, is, That after having given an Account in few words of what is contained in the whole Book; we Explain more particularly what we judge may be serviceable to those that study Architecture. This Treatise is divided into Two Parts; The First contains the Maxims and Precepts that may be accommodated to _Modern_ Architecture; the Second contains all that appertains to the _Ancient_ and _Antique_ Architectures; which, though often affected, have little that's now made use of, may yet nevertheless serve to form the Judgment, and regulate the Fancy, and serve for Examples of things that may be useful. I make a Distinction between the _Ancient_ Architecture, and the _Antique_ Architecture, and the _Modern_; for we call that Architecture _Ancient_ of which _Vitruvius_ has writ, and of which we may as yet see many Examples in the Fabricks that remain in _Greece_. The Architecture which we call _Antique_, is that which may be found in the Famous Edifices, which, since the Time of _Vitruvius_, were built at _Rome_, _Constantinople_, and many other places. The _Modern_, is that which being more accommodated to the present use, or for other Reasons, has changed some of the Dispositions and Proportions which were observed by the _Ancient_ and _Antique_ Architects. ART. II. _The Method of the Works of_ Vitruvius, _with short Arguments of every Book._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 3._] All his Works are divided into Three Parts: The First Treats of Building; The Second is Gnomonical, and treats at large of Astronomical and Geometrical Affairs. The Third gives Rules and Examples for making Machines or Engines serviceable, either in War or Building. The First Part is treated of in the Eight first Books: The Second in the Ninth: The Third in the Last. The First Part which relates to Building is twofold, for they are either publick or private. He speaks of private Buildings in the Sixth Book; and as to that which relates to publick Buildings, it's likewise divided into Three Parts, _viz._ That which has Relation to Security, which consists in Fortifications, described in the Third Chapter of the First Book; That which appertains to Religion, of which he treats in the Third and Fourth Books, and that which relates to publick Conveniencies, as _Town-Houses_, _Theatres_, _Baths_, _Academies_, _Market-places_, _Gates_; of which he treats in the Fifth Book. The Gnomonical part is treated of in the Ninth Book. The Third Part which treats of Machines, is treated of in the Tenth and Last Book. Besides these particular Matters of Architecture, there are Three things that appertain to all sort of Edifices, which are, Solidity, Convenience, and Beauty. He speaks of Solidity in the Eleventh Chapter of the Sixth Book; of Convenience, in the Seventh Chapter of the same Book; and of Beauty through the whole Chapter of the Seventh Book; which contains all the Ornaments that Painting and Sculpture are capable of giving to all sorts of Fabricks; and as to Proportion, which ought to be esteemed one of the principal Foundations of Beauty, it's treated of throughout all his Works. But to make it better understood, in what Method every Book explains those things, we must tell you, That in the First Book, after having treated of those things that belong to Architecture in General, by the Enumeration of the Parts that compose it, and of those that are required in an Architect, the Author explains in particular what choice ought to be made of the Seat where we ought to Build, as to Health and Convenience; after he speaks of the Foundations and of the Building of Fortifications, and the Form of Towers and Walls of Cities, he dilates himself upon the Air and Healthiness of the Situation. In the Second Book, he speaks of the Original of Architecture, and what were the first Habitations of Mankind; after he treats of the Materials, _viz._ of Brick, Sand, Lime, Stones, and Timber: After which he treats of the different Methods of laying, binding, and Masonry of Stones. He Philosophizes upon their Principles, and upon the Nature of Lime, upon the choice of Sand, and the time of cutting of Wood. The Third Book treats of the Proportion of the Temples, and of seven sorts of them which are those called _Antes_, _Prostyle_, _Amphiprostyle_, _Periptere_, _Pseudiptere_, _Diptere_ and _Hypæthre_. After he speaks of the Different spaces that ought to be betwxit every Pillar, to which he gives the Five Names following, (which in the latter Part of this Book shall be more fully explained, as well as divers Terms of Art) _viz._ _Pycnostyle_, _Systyle_, _Diastyle_, _Aræostyle_ and _Eustyle_. After that, he gives in particular the Proportions of the _Ionick_ Order, and demonstrates that it has a Proportion with Humane Bodies. The Fourth gives the Proportion of the _Corinthian_ and _Dorick_ Orders for Temples, with the Proportions of all the Parts that compose them. The Fifth treats of Publick Fabricks, _viz._ of _Market-places_, _Theatres_, _Palaces_, _Baths_, _Schools_ for Sciences, and _Academies_ for Exercises, and in Conclusion, of _Sea-Ports_; and after occasionally discourses at large upon Musick, because, speaking of Theatres, he gives an account how the Ancient Architects, were in some places of the Theatre wont to place Vessels of Brass to serve for several sorts of tunable Echo's, and augmenting the Voice of the Comedians. In the Sixth he teaches what were the Proportions and Forms of private Houses among the Greeks and Romans, as well in the City as Country; and describes all the parts of the House, _viz._ the Courts, Porches, Halls, Dining Rooms, Chambers, Cabinets and Libraries. In the Seventh he treats of the manner of making use of Mortar for Plaster and Floors; how Lime and the Powder of Marble ought to be prepared to make Stuck. He speaks likewise of the Ornaments that are common to all sorts of Buildings, as Painting; and all sorts of Colours, as well Natural as Artificial, that the Ancients made use of. In the Eighth he speaks of Waters, and Rivers, and Fountains; _viz._ of their Springs, of their Nature, and Properties; how they are to be sought; and of the Conduits that are to bring them to Cities and Villages. The Ninth is wholly Gnomonical, and teaches the manner of making Sun-Dials, and gives an account of the Rules of Geometry, how to measure solid Bodies. He discourses at large of the Course of the Stars, and the particular Description of those that are called Fixed Stars. The Last is taken up wholly in the Description of making Machines to lift up great Weights, and others for several uses; _viz._ for the Elevation of Water for Corn-Mills, Water-Organs and Measuring the Way as well by Sea as by Land; but it chiefly treats of Machines fit for the use of Building and War. AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE TEN BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE Written by VITRUVIUS. PART I. _Of Architecture that is common to us with the Ancients._ CHAP. I. _Of Architecture in General._ ARTICLE I. _Of the Original of Architecture._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 1._] It's related by Historians, That Men, who in former times inhabited Woods and Caverns like wild Beasts, first assembled themselves to make Houses and Cities, which was occasioned by a Forest that was set on fire, which drew all the Inhabitants together by its novelty and surprizing effects; so that many Men meeting together in the same place, they found out means, by helping one another, to harbour themselves more conveniently, than in Caves and under Trees; so that it is pretended, that Architecture was the Beginning and Original of all other Arts. For Men seeing that they had success in Building, which necessity made them invent, they had the Thoughts and Courage of seeking out other Arts, and applying themselves to them. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 2._] Now even as they took Trees, Rocks and other Things that Nature her self furnished Beasts to harbour themselves under, which were made use of as Models for the first Houses, which at first were only made of green Turf and broken Branches of Trees, they made use of them afterwards, in the same manner, to arrive at something more perfect. For passing from the Imitation of the Natural to that of Artificial, they invented all the Ornaments of Edifices that were most curiously wrought, in giving them the Form and Shape of those things that are simply necessary to the most natural Buildings: And the Pieces of Timber of which the Roofs and Floors of Houses are made, were the Original of _Pillars_, _Architraves_, _Frises_, _Triglyphs_, _Mutils_, _Brackets_, _Corniches_, _Frontons_ or _Piediments_, which are made of Stone or Marble. The Pillars which are to be smaller at top than at bottom, were made in Imitation of the Boles or Trunks of Trees, and their use was taken from the Carpenters' Posts that are made to support the Building. The _Architraves_ which are laid across many _Pillars_, represent _Summers_ that join many _Posts_ together. The _Frises_ imitate the _Muring_ that is raised upon the _Summers_ betwixt the ends of the Beams that are laid directly upon the _Pillars_. The _Triglyphs_ represent the Ceiling or Joyner's work which was made upon the ends of the Beams to conserve them. The _Corniches_ are as it were the extream parts of the _Joists_. The _Modillions_ represent the ends of the Sheers, and the _Dentels_ represent the ends of the principal _Rafter_. The _Frontons_ are made in imitation of the _Firms_ or _Girders_, upon which is laid the Roof of the House. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 2._] There is likewise another Original of Architecture, which is taken from the Inventers of the several Orders, and those that added the Ornaments to embellish them. For it's the common Opinion, that the first Fabrick that was made, according to any of the Orders, was the Temple that King _Dorus_ built in Honour of _Juno_ in the City _Argos_. And it obtained the name of the _Dorick_ Order, when _Ion_ the Conducter of a Colony, which he established in _Asia_, made many Temples be built according to the Model of the Temple built by _Dorus_ in _Greece_. But the _Ionians_ having changed some of the Proportions and Ornaments of the _Dorick_ Order, were the Authors of another Order, which was called the _Ionick_, according to which, they built a Temple in Honour of _Diana_. The reason of this change was, that this Temple being dedicated to a Divinity, which they represented under the Shape of a Young Lady, they thought it was proper to make their Pillars more tapering, the better to represent the airy Stature of this Goddess, and for this reason they adorned it more delicately, adding Bases which represent the Buskin'd Ornaments of the Legs and Feet, according to the Mode of that time; and Made the _Channellings_ deeper to represent the Foldings and Plaits of a fine light Garment. They put likewise _Volutes_ or _Scrowls_ upon the _Capital_, pretending that they imitated the Head-Dress of a Young Lady, whose Hair Beautifully descending from the top of her Head, was folded up under each Ear. Afterwards _Calimachus_ an _Athenian_, embellished the Capitals of the Pillars, adding to them more Beautiful _Volutes_ or _Scrowls_, and more in number, enriching them with the Leaves of _Brank Ursine_ and Roses. It's said, That this Capital, which, according to _Vitruvius_, makes all the Distinction betwixt the _Corinthian_ and _Ionick_ Order, was invented by this ingenious Artisan upon this occasion. Having seen the Leaves of the above-mentioned Plant grow round about a Basket which was set upon the Tomb of a Young _Corinthian_ Lady, and which, as it happened, was set upon the middle of the Plant. He represented the Basket by the _Tambour_ or _Vase_ of the Capital, to which he made an _Abacus_ to imitate the Tile with which the Basket was covered, and that he represented the Stalks of the Herb by the _Volutes_ or _Scrowls_, which were ever after placed upon the _Corinthian_ Capital. See Table the IXth. This great Artist likewise invented other Ornaments, as those we call _Eggs_, because of the _Ovals_ in the _Relief_ which are in the Mouldings of the _Corniches_ and are like _Eggs_. The Ancients called this Ornament _Echinus_, which signifies the sharp prickly shell of Chestnuts, because they found these Ovals represented a Chestnut half open, as it is when it's ripe. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 2._] He likewise makes mention of another Famous Author, who found out the proportion of all the Parts of a Fabrick, which was _Hermogenes_; to whom he attributes the Invention of the _Eustyle_, _Pseudodiptere_, and of all that is beautiful and excellent in Architecture. ART. II. _What Architecture is._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 1._] Architecture is a Science which ought to be accompanied with the Knowledge of a great many other Arts and Sciences, by which means it forms a correct Judgment of all the Works of other Arts that appertain to it. This Science is acquired by _Theory_ and _Practice_. The _Theory_ of _Architecture_ is that Knowledge of this Art which is acquired by study, travelling and discourse. The Practick is that knowledge that is acquired by the Actual Building of great Fabricks. These Two Parts are so necessary, that never any came to any great Perfection without them both. The one being lame and imperfect without the other, so they must walk hand in hand. Besides, the Knowledge of things that particularly belong to Architecture, there are infinite other things that are necessary to be known by an Architect. For, First, it's necessary that he be able to couch in writing his intended Building, and to design the Plan, and make an excellent Model of it. Geometry likewise is very necessary for him in many occasions. He must also know Arithmetick to make a true Calculation. He must be knowing in History, and be able to give a reason for the greatest part of the Ornaments of Architecture which are founded upon History. For Example, if instead of Pillars he support the Floors of the House with the figures of Women, which are called _Cariatides_, he ought to know that the _Greeks_ invented these Figures to let Posterity know the Victories they obtained over the _Cariens_, whose Wives they made Captives, and put their Images in their Buildings. It's necessary likewise, that he be instructed in the Precepts of Moral Philosophy; for he ought to have a great Soul, and be bold without Arrogance, just, faithful, and totally exempt from Avarice. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 11._] The Architect also ought to have a great Docility which may hinder him from neglecting the advice that is given him, not only by the meanest Artist, but also by those that understand nothing of Architecture; for not only Architects, but all the World must judge of his Works. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 2._] Natural Philosophy is likewise necessary for him for to discover what are the Causes of many things which he must put a remedy to. He ought also to know something of _Physick_, to know the qualities of the Air, which makes Places Healthful and Habitable, or the quite contrary. He should not be ignorant of the Laws and the Customs of Places for the Building of Partition Walls, for prospect and for the conveying of Waters and Sewers. He ought to know _Astronomy_, that he may be able to make all sorts of Dials. It was necessary among the Ancients, that an Architect should have skill in _Musick_ to make and order _Catapults_ and other Machines of War, which were strung with strings made of Guts, whose sound they were to observe, that they might judge of the strength and stiffness of the Beams which were bended with those Strings. _Musick_ was also necessary in those days for the placing musically Vessels of Brass in the Theatres, as we have said before. ART. III. _What are the Parts of Architecture._ There are Three Things which ought to meet in every Fabrick, _viz._ _Solidity_, _Convenience_ and _Beauty_, which Architecture gives them; by the due ordering and disposition of all the Parts that compose the Edifice, and which she rules by a just Proportion, having regard to a true _Decorum_, and well regulated _Oeconomy_; from whence it follows, that Architecture has Eight Parts, _viz._ _Solidity_, _Convenience_, _Beauty_, _Order_, _Disposition_, _Decorum_, _Oeconomy_. _Solidity_ depends upon the goodness of the Foundation, choice of Materials, and the right use of them; which ought to be with a due order, disposition and convenient Proportion of all Parts together, and of one in respect of another. _Convenience_ likewise consists in the ordering and disposition, which is so good that nothing hinders the use of any part of the Edifice. _Beauty_ consists in the excellent and agreeable form, and the just proportion of all its parts. _Order_ is that which makes, that all the parts of an Edifice have a convenient bigness, whether we consider them apart or with Relation to the whole. _Disposition_ is the orderly Ranging and agreeable Union of all the parts that compose the Work; so that as Order respects the Greatness, Disposition respects Form and Situation, which are Two Things compriz'd under the word _Quality_, which _Vitruvius_ attributes to Disposition, and opposes to Quantity, which appertains to Order. There are three ways by which the Architect may take a view beforehand of the Fabrick he is to build, _viz._ First, _Ichnography_, which is the _Geometrical_ Plan; _Orthography_, which is the _Geometrical Elevation_, and _Scenography_, which is _Perspective Elevation_. _Proportion_, which is also call'd _Eurythmy_, is that which makes the Union of all parts of the Work, and which renders the Prospect agreeable, when the Height answers the Breadth, and the Breadth the Length; every one having its just measure. It is defin'd, the Relation that all the Work has with its Parts, and which every one of them has separately to the Idea of the whole, according to the measure of any Part. For as in Humane Bodies there is a Relation between the Foot, Hand, Finger and other Parts; so amongst Works that are Perfect, from any particular Part, we may make a certain Judgment of the Greatness of the whole Work: For Example, the Diameter of a Pillar, or the Length of a _Triglyph_, creates in us a right Judgment of the Greatness of the whole Temple. And here we must remark, that to express the Relation that many things have one to another, as to their Greatness or different Number of Parts, _Vitruvius_ indifferently makes use of three words, which are _Proportion_, _Eurythmy_ and _Symmetry_. But we have thought it proper only to make use of the word Proportion, because _Eurythmy_ is a Greek word, which signifies nothing else but Proportion; and Symmetry, although a word commonly used, does not signifie in the Vulgar Languages what _Vitruvius_ understands by Proportion; for he understands by Proportion, a Relation according to Reason; and Symmetry, in the vulgar Languages, signifies only, a Relation of Parity and Equality. For the word _Simmetria_ signifies in Latin and Greek _Relation_ only. As for Example, as the Relation that Windows of Eight Foot high, have with other Windows of Six Foot, when the one are Four Foot broad, and the other Three: and Symmetry, in the Vulgar Languages, signifies the Relation, for Example, That Windows have one to another, when they are all of an equal height and equal breadth; and that their Number and Distances are equal to the Right and the Left; so that if the distances be unequal of one side, the like inequality is to be found in the other. Decorum or Decency, is that which makes the Aspect of the Fabrick so correct, that there is nothing that is not approv'd of, and founded upon some Authority. It teaches us to have regard to three things, which are, _Design_, _Custom_ and _Nature_. The Regard to Design makes us chuse for Example, other Dispositions and Propertions for a Palace than for a Church. The Respect we have to Custom, is the Reason, for Example, That the Porches and Entries of Houses are adorned, when the Inner Parts are Rich and Magnificent. The Regard we have to the Nature of Places, makes us chuse different Prospects for different Parts of the Fabrick, to make them the wholsomer and the more convenient: For Example, the Bed-Chambers and the Libraries are exposed to the Morning Sun; the Winter Apartments, to the West; the Closets or Pictures and other Curiosities, which should always have equal Light, to the North. Oeconomy teaches the Architect to have regard to the Expences that are to be made, and to the Quality of the Materials, near the Places where he Builds, and to take his Measures rightly for the Order and Disposition; _viz._ to give the Fabrick a convenient Form and Magnitude. These Eight Parts, as we have said, have a Relation to the Three first, _viz._ _Solidity_, _Convenience_, _Beauty_, which suppose, _Order, Disposition_, _Proportion_, _Decorum_ and _Oeconomy_. This is the reason that we divide this first Part only into Three Chapters; the first is of the Solidity; the second of the Convenience; the third of the Beauty of the Fabrick. CHAP. II. _Of the Solidity of Buildings._ ARTICLE I. _Of the Choice of Materials._ The Materials of which _Vitruvius_ speaks are, Stone, Brick, Wood, Lime, and Sand. All the Stones are not of one sort, for some are soft, some harder, and some extreamly hard. Those that are not hard are easily cut, and are good for the Inner Parts of the Buildings, where they are cover'd from Rain and Frost which brings them to Powder, and if they be made use of in Buildings near the Sea, the Salt Particles of the Air and Heat destroys them. Those that are indifferently hard, are fit to bear Weight; but there are some sorts of them, that easily crack with the heat of the Fire. There is likewise another sort of Stone, which is a kind of Free-Stone; some are Red, some Black, and some White, which are as easily cut with a Saw as Wood. The best Bricks are those which are only dry'd and not baked in the Fire; but there are many Years required to dry them well: and for this Reason, at _Utica_, a City of _Africa_, they made a Law, That none should make use of Bricks which had not been made five Years: For these sort of Bricks, so dry'd, had their Pores so close in their Superficies, that they would swim upon Water like a Pumice-Stone; and they had a particular Lightness, which made them very fit for all sorts of Buildings. The Earth of which these Bricks were usually made was very Fat, and a sort of White Chalky Clay without Gravel or Sand, which made them Lighter and more Durable; they mixed Straw with them to make them better bound and firmer. The Woods which were made use of in all Buildings, are Oak, Poplar, Beech, Elm, Cypress, Firr; but some of them are not so proper for Building as others. The Firr, because it has great plenty of Air, and Fire, and but little Earth and Water, is light, and does not easily bend; but is very subject to Worms and Fire. The Oak which is more Earthy lasts for ever under Ground; but above Ground is apt to cleave. The Beech which has little of Earthiness, Humidity and Fire, but great plenty of Air, is not very solid and easily breaks. The Poplar and the Linden Trees are only good for light Work, they are easily cut and so finest for Carving. The Alder is good to make Piles of in Marshy Places. The Elm and the Ash have this property, that they do not easily cleave, and that they are pliable. The Yoke-Elm is likewise pliable, and yet very strong; this is the Reason that they made Yokes for their Oxen of them in Old Time. The Pine and the Cypress have this defect, that they easily bend under any Weight, because of their great Humidity; but they have this Advantage, that their Humidity does not engender Worms, because of their Bitterness which kills them. The Juniper and the Cedar have the same Vertue of hindering Corruption: the Juniper by its Gum, which is call'd _Sandarax_, and the Cedar by its Oil call'd _Cedrium_. The Larch-Tree has likewise the same Vertue, but its particular property is, that it will not burn. There is a remarkable Story of this Wood, which is, That when _Julius Cæsar_ besieg'd a Castle at the Foot of the _Alpes_, there was a Tower built of this Wood, which prov'd the Principal Defence of the Place. He thought to take it easily by making a great Fire at the Foot of the Tower, but for all this great Fire, the Tower did not suffer the least Damage. The Olive-Tree is likewise very serviceable, if it be put in the Foundations, and Walls of Cities; for after it has been singed a little, and interlaced among the Stones, it lasts for ever, and is out of all danger of Corruption. Lime is made of White Stones or Flinty Pebbles, the harder the Stones are which 'tis made of, the better it is for Building. That which is made of soft Spongy Stones, is proper for Plastring. There are five sorts of Sand; _viz._ Sand that is dug out of the Ground, River Sand, Gravel, Sea-Sand, and Pozzolana, which is a Sand peculiar to some Parts of _Italy_. The best Sand is that which being rubb'd between the Hands makes a little Noise, which that Sand does not, which is Earthy, because it is not rough. Another Mark of good Sand is, that when 'tis put upon any Thing that is White and shak'd off, it leaves no Mark behind. The Sand which is dug out of the Earth has all these Qualities, and is esteem'd the best. _Vitruvius_ makes four sorts of it; _viz._ White, Black, Red, and Bright like a Carbuncle. If it happen that there be no good Place to dig Sand in, we may make use of Sea-Sand, or River-Sand, which is likewise better for Plastering than the Sand which is digged, which is excellent for Building, because it drys quickly. Gravel likewise is very good, provided the grosser Parts be taken away. Sea-Sand is worst of all, because 'tis long adrying; and for this Reason, where 'tis made use of in Building, they are forc'd to desist sometimes till it dry. The Sand which is found near _Naples_ call'd _Pozzolana_ is so proper to make good Mortar, if it be mixed with Lime, that not only in the ordinary Fabricks, but even in the very bottom of the Sea it grows into a wonderful hard Body. In Old Times they made use of it for Moles or Ports of the Sea, for after having made with Piles and Boards a Partition, they fill'd up the whole Compass of the Partition with this Mortar, which dry'd of it self in the middle of the Water and became a solid Body. ART. II. _Of the Use of the Materials._ The first thing we should have a Care of before we begin to build, is, to have the Stones dug out of the Quarry before they be used, and to expose them in some open Place, to the end that those which are endamaged by the Air, during this Time, may be put in the Foundation, and those that prove Durable and Good may be kept for the Walls above Ground. We must likewise have a great care of the Wood which we make use of; That it be cut in a seasonable Time, which is in Autumn and Winter; for then it is not full of that superfluous Humidity which weakened it in dilating its Fibers, but it is firm and well closed by the Cold. This is so true, that the Wood of Trees which grow and become very great in a little Time, by reason of their great Humidity, is tender and apt to break, and very unfit for Building. Which Experience shows us particularly in those Firrs call'd _Supernates_, which grow in _Italy_, on that side the _Apennine_, towards the _Adriatick_-Sea, for they are great and beautiful, but their Wood is not good for Building; whereas those on the other side of the Mountain, which are exposed to Heat and Dryness, call'd _Infernates_, are very good for Building. This superfluous Humidity endamages Trees so much, that we are sometimes constrain'd to make a hole at the foot of the Tree and let it run out, which is the occasion of the Practice which is observ'd in cutting of Wood for Building, to Tap that Tree at the Foot, cutting not only the Bark, but even some part of the Wood it self, and so leave it for some time before it be Fell'd. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 5._] It is likewise easie to judge of what great Importance the draining of this superfluous Humidity is for strengthning the Timber, and hindring Corruption, from this, That those Piles which are interlaced among the Stones in the Walls and Fortifications of Towns endure for ever without Corrupting, when they have been burnt a little on the outside. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 11._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 8._] Bricks ought not to be made use of but in very thick Walls; for this reason they did not build with Brick in _Rome_, for to save Ground; they were not permitted to make the Walls of their Houses above a Foot and a Half thick, which Makes about 16 Inches and a half of our Foot. They likewise never made the top of their Walls with Brick; for the Brick of the Ancients not being baked, this part of the Wall would have been easily endamaged; for this reason they built it with Tiles, a foot and a half high, comprizing the Cornish or Entablature which was made likewise of Tiles to cast off the Water and defend the rest of the Wall. They likewise chose for these Cornishes the best Tiles, _viz._ those that had been long on the top of the Houses, and given sufficient Proof that they were well baked and made of good Matter. The Walling with Brick was so much esteem'd among the Ancients, that all their Fabricks, as well publick as private, and their most beautiful Palaces were built with them. But that which principally made this sort of Building be esteem'd, was its great Duration; for when expert Architects were called to make an Estimate of Buildings, they always deducted an 80th. part of what they judged the Building cost for every Year that the Wall had been standing, for they supposed that the Walls could not ordinarily endure more than Fourscore Years; but when they valued Buildings of Brick, they always valued them at what they cost at first, supposing them to be of an Eternal Duration. To make the right use of Lime and Sand, and to make good Mortar of them, it is necessary that the Lime be first well Quench'd, and that it be kept a long time, to the end that if there be any Piece of it that is not well burnt in the Kiln, it may, being extinguished at leasure, soften as well as the rest. This is of Great Importance particularly in Plastering and Works of _Stuck_, which is a Composition of Marble finely beaten with Lime. For if any little Pieces remain that are not well baked, when they come to be made use of, they crack and break the Work. [Sidenote: _Lib. 7. Chap. 3._] The way to know whether the Lime be well Quench'd, is thus: You may thrust a Chip of Wood into it or a Knife, and if the Chip of Wood meet with any Stones, or that the Knife comes out clean without any sticking to it, it signifies the Lime was not will burnt; for when 'tis well Quench'd, it is Fat and will stick to the Knife; but the quite contrary happens to Mortar, for it is neither well prepar'd, nor well mix'd, if it stick to the Trowel. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 4._] For to make the right use of Sand, you must first consider what it is to be employ'd in; for if it be Mortar for Plastring, you must not make use of Sand that was lately dug out, for it drys the Mortar too fast, which cracks the Plastring; but quite contrary if it be to be employ'd in Masonry, it must not have been a long time expos'd to the Air, for the Sun and the Moon do so alter it, that the Rain dissolves it, and turns it almost all into Earth. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 5._] The Proportion that Sand and Lime ought to have to make good Mortar, should be three parts of Sand that is dug, or two parts of River-Sand or Sea-Sand against one of Lime, and 'twill be yet much better, if you add to the Sand of the Sea and the River a third part of Tiles well beaten. [Sidenote: _Lib. 7. Chap. 3._] One of the Principal Things that is to be observ'd in making Mortar, is, to mix it well. The Grecian Workmen were so careful of this, that they Tewed it a great while, putting Ten Men to every Vessel wherein they wrought it, which gave so great a hardness to the Mortar, that when any big pieces of Plaster fell off the Old Walls, they made Tables of it. ART. III. _Of the Foundation._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 11._] The Foundation is the most important part of the Fabrick; for the Faults committed in it cannot be so easily remedied as in other parts. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 5._] To lay the Foundation well, you must dig till you come to solid Ground, and even into the solid as much as is necessary to support the Weight of the Walls; it must be larger below than above the Superficies of the Earth. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] When you have found firm Earth to make it more solid, you must beat it with a Rammer; but if you cannot arrive at solid Earth, but find it still soft and spungy, you must dig as far as you can, and drive in Piles of Alder, Olive, or Oak, a little singed, near together, and fill up the void Places between the Piles with Coal. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 5._] In short, you must make all Masonry with the most solid Stone that can be found for this use. To make the Binding of the Stones the stronger in the Foundation of great Fabricks, you must put Piles of Olive a little singed and placed very thick from one Parement or Course to another, which serves, as it were, for Keys and Braces; for this Wood so prepar'd, is not subject to Worms, and will endure for ever, either in the Earth or in the Water, without the least Damage. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 11._] When you would make Cellars, the Foundations must be much larger; for the Wall that is to support the Earth requires a greater thickness to resist the strong Efforts that the Earth makes against it in Winter, at which time it swells and becomes more heavy by reason of the Water it has drunk up. ART. IV. _Of the Walls._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 2._] The right ordering of Stones joined with Mortar, which is call'd Masonry, is sevenfold; there are three of them which are of hewed Stone; _viz._ that which is in Form of a _Net_, that which is in _Binding_, that which is call'd the _Greek Masonry_. There are likewise three sorts of Masonry of unhewed Stones; _viz._ that which is of an _equal Course_; and that which is of an unequal, and that which is fill'd up in the middle; the seventh is compounded of all the rest. The _Net-Masonry_ is that which is made of Stones perfectly squar'd in their Courses, and are laid so, that the Joints go obliquely, and the Diagonals are the one Perpendicular, and the other Level. This is the most pleasing Masonry to the Sight, but it is apt to crack. See the Figure A. Table I. The Masonry call'd the _Bound-Masonry_, is that, as _Vitruvius_ explains it, in which the Stones are plac'd one upon another like Tiles; that is to say, where the Joints of the Beds are Level, and the Mounters are Perpendicular; so that the Joint that mounts and separates two Stones falls directly upon the middle of the Stone which is below. Some Authors call this sort of Masonry _Incertain_, but they are mistaken; for they read _Incerta_ instead of_Inserta_; it is not so Beautiful as the Net-work, but it is more solid and durable. See the Figure BB. Table I. The Masonry which _Vitruvius_ says is particular to the _Greeks_, is that, where after we have laid two Stones, each of which make a Parement or _Course_, another is laid at the end, which makes two Parements or _Courses_, and all the Building through observe this Order. This may be call'd _Double-Binding_; for the Binding is not only of Stones of the same _Course_ one with another, but likewise of one _Course_ with another _Course_. See Figure CC. Table I. The manner of Walling by unequal Courses call'd _Isodomum_ by the Ancients, differs in nothing from the Masonry call'd _Bound-Masonry_, but only in this, that the Stones are not hewed. See Figure D. Table I. The other manner by unequal Courses call'd _Pseudisodomum_ is also made of unhewed Stone, and laid in _Bound-Work_, but they are not of the same thickness, and there is no equality observ'd, but only in the several Courses, the Courses themselves being unequal one to another. See Figure A. Table I. The Masonry which is fill'd up in the middle, call'd by the Ancients _Emplecton_, is likewise made of unhewed Stone and by Courses, but the Stones are only set in order as to the _Parements_ or _Courses_, but the middle is fill'd up with Stones thrown in carelesly among the Mortar. See Fig. FF, GG, H. Table I. Among all these sorts of Masonry, that will always be best which is made of Stones of an indifferent size, rather lesser than greater; to the end that the Mortar penetrating them in more parts may bind them faster, and the strength of the Mortar does not so soon decay. For we see that the Mortar which is laid in the Joints or Seams of the greater Stones with time decays and turns to Dust, which never happens to the most Ancient Fabricks which have been built of little Stones. From thence we may conclude, that it is ill Husbandry to be sparing of Mortar. For this reason _Vitruvius_ proposes another sort of Masonry, which may be call'd the _Compound Masonry_, for it is all the former together, of Stones hewed and unhewed, and fastned together with Cramp-Irons. The Structure is as follows: The _Courses_ being made of hew'd Stone, the middle place which was left void is fill'd up with Mortar and Pebbles thrown in together; after this they bind the Stones of one _Parement_ or _Course_ to those of another with Cramp-Irons fasten'd with melted Lead. This is done to the end, that the abundance of Mortar which is in the middle may furnish and communicate a sufficient Humidity to the Joints of the great Stones which make the _Parements_. See the Figure K. Table I. There are many Precautions to be given to make the Masonry more firm and durable, and these Precautions are common to all the different sorts of Masonry. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 5._] When you would have the Walls very thick, for great and heavy Buildings, you must strengthen the inner part of the Wall with long Piles of singed Olive, which serves for Keys and Braces, for this Wood being so prepar'd never corrupts. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 11._] [Sidenote: _Vide Index._] It is likewise of great Importance for the strength of Walls, that all be directly Perpendicular, and that the _Chains_, the _Pillars_ and _Pieds-droits_ or _Piers_ be so situated, that _solid_ always answer'd to the _solid_; for if there be any part of the Wall or any Pillar that carrys false, it is impossible the Work should continue long. There are also two ways of strengthning the Walls, which are either to ease them of their own weight, or of that of the Earth which they are to support. The first way of easing is in those Places where there are void spaces, as above Doors or Windows. These easements may be made two different ways; the first is to put over the Lintel which supports the Wall, which is over the void space of the Gates and Windows, two Beams, which lying or resting below directly upon _Pieds-droits_ or _Piers_ meet together above. The other way is, to make directly over the void spaces Vaulted Arches with Stones cut corner-ways and tending to one Center. For the Walls be so strengthned by the means of these easements, that part of the Wall which is below will not sink at all being easied of the load of the part that is above, and if some defect should happen by tract of time, it may be mended without propping that which is above. The second way of easing, is, for Walls that are made to support the Earth; for, besides the extraordinary thickness which they ought to have, they should have likewise Buttresses on that side next the Earth, so far distant one from another as is the breadth of the Wall; they ought likewise to have an _Emparement_ or large Foundation which must be equal to the height of the Wall, so that they go diminishing by degrees from the bottom to the top, where they come to equal the height of the Wall. [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 5._] The effect of these _Buttresses_ is not only to support the Earth by their Resistance, but likewise to lessen its Efforts when it swells, in dividing it into many parts. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 11._] And if it be judg'd that these _Buttresses_ be not sufficient, the Wall also which supports the Earth must be strengthned with other _Buttresses_ within. ART. V. _Of Flooring and Ceiling._ There are four sorts of Flooring, some are upon the _Superficies_ of the Ground, others between two Stories, others make the Roof of the House in Plat-form, and the last is _Plat-Fond_. To make those Floors that are upon the Ground, you must first make the Earth smooth and plain, if it be firm and solid, if not, it must be beaten with a Rammer with which they ram down their Piles; and after having cover'd the Earth with the first _Lay_ or _Bed_, call'd _Statumen_ by the Ancients, which was of Flinty Stones about the bigness of ones Fist, among which was mixed Mortar made of Lime and Sand. Then they laid the second _Bed_, which they call'd _Rudus_, which was made of lesser Stones, of which there were three Parts for one of Stone if they were new, for if they were taken out of old Buildings, five parts of Stones or Pibbles would be required for two of Lime. [Sidenote: _Lib. 7. Cap. 4._] The _Greeks_ had a way of making their Floors in those low places where cold and humidity ordinarily reign, which freed them from these Inconveniences. They digged the Earth two Foot deep, and after having beaten it well, they laid a Bed of Mortar or Cement a little sloping from either side to the Channel, which convey'd the Water under Ground; they laid a Bed of Coal upon the first Mortar, and having beaten them well, they cover'd them with another Cement or Mortar made of Lime, Sand and Ashes, which they made smooth when it was dry with a Polishing-Stone. These Floors presently drank up the Water that fell upon them, that one might walk barefoot without being incommoded by the Cold. For the Floors which are between two Stories, there must be a particular care taken, that if there be any Partition below it, that it may not touch the Flooring for fear lest if the Flooring came to sink a little, it might be broke upon the Partition which remains firm. [Sidenote: _Vide Index._] To make these Floorings, the Boards must be nailed at each end upon every Joist, to the end they may not warp; these Boards or Planks being cover'd with Straw, to hinder the Lime from wasting the Timber, the first Bed must be laid, made of a mixture of Mortar and little Stones a hand breadth, which must be beaten a long time with Iron-Levers, and so it must make a solid Crust which must be nine Inches thick; upon it shall be laid the _Noyau_ or _Ame_, which must be at least six inches thick: It must be made of Cement, with which must be mix'd one part Lime for two parts of Cement. Upon the _Ame_ or _Noyau_ is placed the _Parement_ made with the Rule, afterwards it must be scrap'd and all the Eminences and Inequality taken away: After that must be laid a Composition of Lime, Sand and beaten Marble, to fill equally all the Seams or Joints. If a Flooring be to be made in the open Air, as upon _Terrasses_, that may endure Rain or Frost without any Damage; you must nail upon the Joists two Ranks of Boards across, one above the other; and having laid the first Bed, as is said before, it must be Paved with great Square Bricks two Foot Square, which must be hollow'd in the Ends in the Form of a half-Channel, the breadth of an Inch, which must be fill'd with Lime mixed with Oil. These Square Bricks must be higher in the middle, sloping two Inches for every six Foot; that is to say, a Forty-eighth Part. Upon these Square Bricks must be laid the _Ame_; upon which, after it has been well beaten, as well as the rest, must be put great Square Stones; and to hinder the Moisture from hurting the Boards, it is good to pour as much of the Lees of Oil as they will soak up. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 10._] The under part of the Flooring, and the _Plat-Fonds_, must be made also with great Care. To make the _Plat-Fonds_ or _Flat-roofs_, in the Form of a Vault, you must nail to the Joists of the Boards, or to the Rafters of the Roof, from two Foot to two Foot pieces of crooked Timber, and Choice must be made of Timber that is not apt to rot; such as, _viz._ _Cypress_, _Box_, _Juniper_, and _Olive_; no _Oke_ must be made use of, because it will warp and crack the Work. The Joists being fastened to the _Summers_, you must fix to them _Spanish-Broom_ with _Greek-Reeds_ well beaten. These Reeds are in stead of Laths, which at present are made use of to make the Eaves of Houses; over these Reeds must be laid a Plaster of Mortar, made of Sand, to hinder the Drops of Water which may fall from above from endamaging these _Plat-Fonds_. After which, the under part must be Plaster'd pretty thick, making all Places equal with Mortar made of Lime and Sand, that it may be afterwards Polished with Mortar made with Lime and Marble. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 10._] The Ancients sometimes made double Vaults, when they were afraid that the Humidity which is engender'd, by the Vapours which mount up might rot the Wood which is upon the Vaults. This Method they principally made use of in their Baths. The _Corniches_ which are made use of under the _Plat-Fonds_, ought to be little, lest their great Jetting out, or Projecture should make them heavy, and apt to fall. For this Reason they ought to be made of pure Stuck of Marble, without any Plaster, that all the Work drying at the same time, may be less apt to break. ART. VI. _Of Plastering_. To make Plaster that it may continue a long time, and not crack; you must take Care to lay it on Walls that are very Dry; for if the Walls be Moist, the Plastering being expos'd to the Air, and drying faster than the Walls, will crack. To do this Methodically, it must be laid, Bed after Bed, or Lay after Lay, having a great Care not to lay one Bed till the other be almost dry. The Ancients put six Lays, three of Mortar made of Lime and Sand, and three of Stuck. The first Lays or Beds were always thicker than the last, and they were very careful to make use of no Mortar made either of Sand or Stuck in their Plastring, that had not been a long time beaten and mix'd together; especially the Stuck, which must be beaten and mix'd till it will not stick to the Trowel. They took likewise a great deal of Pains to run several times over and beat the Plaster, which gave it a Hardness, a Whiteness, and Polish'd it so well, that it shin'd like a Mirror. These Plasterings so made, serve to Paint in _Fresco_ upon; for the Colours being laid upon the Mortar before it was dry, pierced it, and Embodied with it; so that the Painting could not be defaced though it were wash'd; which would easily be wash'd off if the Mortar were dry. They likewise laid these Plasterings upon Partitions of Wood filled with fat Earth, nailing Reeds to them, as we do Laths, and daubing it over with Clay, and then putting on another row of Reeds across upon the former, and another Bed of fat Earth or Clay, upon which they laid Beds of Mortar and Stuck, as we have said before. [Sidenote: _Lib. 7. Chap. 4._] For the Plastering of low and moist places, they had a great many other Precautions, especially within the House; for as what belonged to the Out-part of the House, they contented themselves to Plaster from the Bottom of the Wall to the height of three Feet, with Cement. But as to the Inward-parts of the House, when the Ground without was higher than the lowermost Flooring; they run up a little narrow Wall against the great one, leaving betwixt the two Walls only the distance of a Channel or Sewer, which they made lower than the Flooring, to receive the Water which might be gather'd against the Walls, and let it run out; and to the End they might hinder the gathering of much Water, by the Vapours which might be enclosed between these two Walls, they made towards the top of the little Wall Vents to let it out, and this little Wall was Plastered on the Out-side with Mortar and Stuck, as we have said before. When the Place was too narrow to permit those Counter-Walls to be made within, they put hollow Tiles one upon another against the Wall, and placed and plaster'd them over with Mortar and Stuck. These Tiles which were Pitch'd over within, and were Demi-Channels, let the Water fall down into the Sewer, which sweat from the great Wall, and so let all the Vapours, which were engendred by Humidity, go out at the Vents. CHAP. III. _Of the Convenience of Fabricks_. ARTICLE I. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Præs._] One of the Principal Things the Architect ought to consider, is the Convenience of the place where he would Build the Fabrick. This is the reason that _Dinocrates_ was blamed by _Alexander_, for having propos'd him an Excellent Design for Building a City in a Barren place, and incapable of Nourishing those who were to Inhabit it. We must then choose a place that is fertile, and hath abundance of every thing; and which hath likewise Rivers and Ports capable of furnishing it with all the Product and Commodities of the adjacent Countries. The Third thing to be considered is, whether the Air be wholesome; and for this End, we must choose a high situated place, that it may be less Subject to Fogs and Mists; it must be likewise far from all Morasses, because the Corruption that may be caused by the infectious Breath of Venomous Beasts which commonly are ingendred there, makes the place very unwholsom, unless these Morasses be near the Sea, and situated high, that the Water may fall easily from them into the Sea, and that the Sea may likewise sometimes overflow them, and by its Saltness kill all the Venomous Beasts. It is likewise to be remark'd, That a City situated upon the Sea, must needs have an unwholsom Air, if it be towards the South or the West; for generally the Heat weakens Bodies, and the Cold strengthens them; and so we see by Experience, that those who go out of a Cold Country into an Hot, have great difficulty to keep themselves in Health; whereas on the contrary, the Inhabitants of Hot Countries who go into Colder, have generally good Health. The Ancients were accustomed to judge of the Quality of the Air, Water and Fruits, which might render a place wholsome by the Constitution of the Bodies of those Beasts which were nourished there, and to this End they consulted their Entrails; for if the Liver was Corrupted, they conjectured that the same thing must happen to Men that should Inhabit in that place. ART. II. _Of the Form and Situation of the Building._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 6._] After having chosen a wholsome place, the Streets must be laid out according to the most Advantageous Aspect of the Heavens, and the best way will be to lay the Streets out so, that the Wind may not come directly into them, especially where the Winds are great and cold. The Prospect of Private Mens Houses is made more or less Commodious, by the Openings which are differently made, to receive the Air and the Light according to the Quality of the Parts that are in the Fabrick. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 9._] For the Cellars, Granaries, and generally all places that we wou'd Lock up, or keep any thing in, should be exposed to the North, and receive very few Rays of the Sun. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 7._] The different Use of the Parts which Compose the Buildings, do likewise require different Situations; for the Dining-Rooms in Winter, and the Baths among the Ancients, were always turned to the West, for that Situation made them warmer, because the Sun then shone upon them, about the time they were wont to make use of those Apartments. The Libraries ought to be turned to the rising Sun, because they are generally made use of in the Morning; besides, the Books are not so much damnified in Libraries so situated, as in those which are turned to the South and West, which are subject to Worms and a certain Humidity which engenders Moldiness, and consequently destroys the Books. The Dining-Rooms for the Spring and Autumn, should be turned towards the East, to the end, that being covered from the great force the Sun hath when it is near Setting, they may be cooler about the time they are to be made use of. The Summer Apartments must be turned to the North, that they may be fresher and cooler. This Situation is likewise very proper for Closets, which are adorn'd with Pictures for the Light which is always equal, represents the Colours always alike. There must likewise great respect be had to the difference of Climates, for the Excess of Heat and Cold, require different Situations and Structures; for the Houses in the Northern parts of the World, ought to be Vaulted, and have few Openings, and turn'd to the South; On the contrary in Hot Countries there must be great Openings and turn to the North; to the End that Art and Industry may remedy the Defects of the place. ART. III. _Of the Disposition of Fabricks_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 6._] The Disposition or Distribution of Fabricks contributes much to their Convenience, when each thing is so plac'd, that it is in a Proper place for the Use for which the Fabrick is Design'd; and for this reason the Town-House and the Market-Place ought to be in the Middle of the City, unless it happen that there be a Port or a River; for the Market ought not to be far distant from those places where the Merchandize is. The Houses of Private Men, ought to be differently disposed, according to the divers Conditions of those that Dwell in them: For in the Houses of Great Men, the Apartments of the Lord, must not be at the Entry, where ought to be nothing but _Portico's_, _Courts_, _Peristyles_, _Halls_, and _Gardens_ to receive the great Number of those who have Business with them, and make their Court to them. The Houses of Merchants ought to have at the Entry their _Shops_ and _Magazines_, and all other places where Strangers are to come about their Business. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 9._] The Country Houses ought to have a different Order and Disposition from those of the City. For the Kitchen ought to be near the Ox-house, so that from their Cratches they may see the Chimney and the rising Sun; for this makes the Oxen more Beautiful, and makes their Hair lie better. The Baths ought likewise to be near the Kitchen, that the Water may be more conveniently heated. The Press ought not to be far from the Kitchen, for that will much facilitate the Service that is necessary for the Preparation of Olives. If the Press be made of Wooden Beams, it ought to have at least for 16 Foot Breadth, 40 Foot of Length, if there be but one; or 24, if there be 2. Not far from the Press, must the Cellar be plac'd, whose Windows must be turned to the North, because the heat spoils the Wine. On the contrary, the Place where the Oil is kept, ought to be turned to the South; to the End, the gentle heat of the Sun may keep the Oil from freezing. The Houses for Sheep and Goats ought to be so large, that each of them may at least have 4 Foot for his place. The Stables must likewise be Built near the House in a warm place, but not turned towards the Chimney; for Horses that often see the Fire, are generally ill Coated. The Barns and Granaries, as likewise the Mills, ought to be at a pretty distance from the House, because of the Danger of Fire. In all sorts of Fabricks, a particular Care must be taken that they be well lighted; but the Light is principally necessary in the _Stair-Cases_, _Passages_, and _Dining-Rooms_. ART. IV. _Of the Convenient Form of Buildings._ When we are assur'd of the Convenience of the place where the City is to be Built, by the Knowledge we have of the goodness of the Air, of its Fertility, Rivers and Ports, care must be taken to make Fortifications, which do not only consist in the Solidity of the Walls and Ramparts, but principally in their Form. The Figure or Form of a place ought neither to be Square, nor Composed of Angles too far advanc'd, but it must have a great number of Corners, to the end the Enemy may be seen from all Parts; for the Angles that are so far advanc'd, are ill to be defended, and more favourable to the Besiegers than the Besieged. The Approach to the Walls must be made as difficult as possible. The most Convenient Form of Publick Places, is to have in their Breadth 2 Thirds of their Length; The _Greeks_ made about their Publick places _Double Portico's_, with Pillars near together, which Supported the Galleries above. But the _Romans_ finding this great number of Pillars to be inconvenient, placed them at a greater distance one from another, that they might have Shops well lighted. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 3._] The Stair-Cases of all Publick Buildings, ought to be large and streight, and to have many Entrances, to the End the People may come in and out conveniently; but we shall speak of this more largely in another place. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 2._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 6._] The Halls where great Assemblies are to meet, ought to have their _Ceiling_ very high, and to give them their true Proportion, we must unite the Length and Breadth, and give the half of the whole for the height of the _Ceiling_. The Halls where the _Ceiling_ is not so high, must have only their breadth, and half of their length for their height. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 2._] In vast and high places, to remedy the Inconvenience of the noisy Echo, about the middle of the height of the Wall, must be made a _Cornish_ round about to break the course of the Voice; which without that, beating against the Walls, would beat a Second time against the _Ceiling_, and cause a troublesom double Echo. CHAP. IV. _Of the Beauty of Buildings._ ARTICLE I. _In what the Beauty of Building Consists._ _Buildings_ may have two sorts of Beauty, the one _Positive_, and the other _Arbitrary_. _Positive Beauty_, is that which necessarily pleaseth of her self; _Arbitrary_, is that which doth not necessarily please of her self, but her agreeableness depends upon the Circumstances that accompany her. _Positive Beauty_, consists in Three principal Things; _viz._ In the Equality of the Relation that the Parts have one to another, which is called _Symmetry_, in the Richness of the Materials, in the Properness, Neatness, and Exactness of the Performance. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 8._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 1. Chap. 2._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 11._] As to what regards the Relation of the Parts of the Fabrick one to another, _Vitruvius_ hath not spoke of it, but only where he prefers the _Netway_ of Walling before all other sorts of _Masonry_, because of the Uniformity that is in that Figure, and the laying of the Stones; As to the Richness of the Materials, he leaves the Disposition to him that is at the Expences of the Building; and he acknowledges that the Beauty of the Performance depends wholly upon the Dexterousness and Industry of the Workmen. The second sort of _Beauty_, which only pleases by the Circumstances that accompany it, is of two sorts; The one is called _Wisdom_, and the other _Regularity_. _Wisdom_ consists in the reasonable use of _Positive Beauties_, which result from the use and convenient ranking of the Parts; for the Perfection of which, to a rich and precious Material, is given an Equal and Uniform Figure, with all the Property and Correctness possible. _Vitruvius_ gives us two Examples of this sort of _Beauty_; The first is, When _Bosses_ or _Relievo's_ are made to hide the Joynts, putting them directly under the _Bosses_ which hide them by their jetting or projecture, for this gives them great Beauty and an agreeable Aspect. The second is, When we consider the Winter-Appartments, that we have a care, that upon the Ceiling there be little or no Carving, and that the Ornaments be not made of Stuck, because it hath a shining whiteness, which will not endure the least nastiness; for it is impossible to hinder the smoak of the Fire and Candles which are lighted in the Winter, from tarnishing the beautiful Colour of the Work to which the Filth will stick, and enter into the Crevises of the Carving, which cannot be wiped out. The _Regularity_ depends upon the Observation of the Laws which are Established for the Proportions of all the Parts of _Architecture_, the Observation of these Laws extreamly pleases those that understand _Architecture_, who love these Proportions for two Reasons. The First is, That they are for the most part founded upon Reason; which requires, for example, that the parts that support and are under, be stronger than those above; as we see in _Pedestalls_, which are broader than the Pillars they support, and they are broader at the bottom than the top. The other Motive is _Prevention_, which is one of the most usual Foundations of the _Beauty_ of all things, for even as we love the Fashion of the Cloaths which the Courtiers wear, although this mode have no _Positive Beauty_, but only for the Positive Merit of the Persons that wear them; so we are accustomed to love the Proportions of the Members of _Architecture_, rather because of the great Opinion that we have of them that Invented them, than for any _Positive Beauty_ which is found in the Works of the Ancients, where these Proportions are observ'd; for often these Proportions are against Reason; as we may see in the _Thorus_ of the _Ionick Base_, in the _Faces_ of _Architraves_ and _Chambranles_, or _Door-Cases_, with their _Mouldings_, where the Strong is supported by the Weak, and many other things, which Custom only hath made supportable. These Proportions appertain to Three principal Members, which are _Pillars_, _Piedements_, _Chambranles_; the _Pillars_ taken Generically, and as opposite to _Piedements_, and _Chambranles_ or _Door-Cases_, have Three parts, _viz._ The _Pedestal_, the _Pillar_, and the _Ornaments_. Every one of these Parts is likewise divided into Three other Parts, for the _Pedestal_ is composed of the _Basis_, its _Die_ and its _Cornish_; the _Pillar_ Comprehends its _Base_, _Shaft_ and _Capital_. The _Ornaments_ consist in the _Architrave_, _Frise_, and _Corniche_. The _Piedement_ or _Fronton_, has likewise Three Parts, _viz._ The _Tympan_, the _Corniches_, and the _Acroteres_. The _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_ is composed of two _Pieds-droits_, or _Piers_, and the _Lintel_ which also supports a _Frise_, which has likewise its _Cornich_. The Disposition, Form, and different Proportions of all the Parts make two things, to which all that is Beautiful in Building hath a Relation, which is _Gender_ and _Order_. _Gender_ depends of the Proportion, which is between the thickness of the _Pillars_ and the space betwixt them. _Order_, doth likewise depend in part upon the Proportion which is between the thickness of the _Pillars_, and their height; but we must likewise joyn to this Proportion many other things that appertain to the principal Parts of the _Pillars_, and other Parts which accompany it, such as are the _Gates_, the _Chambranles_, or _Door-Cases_; and other things which are different in different _Orders_. ART. II. _Of the Five sorts of Fabricks_. There are Five sorts of Fabricks; The First is called _Pycnostyle_, viz. where the Pillars are very close one to another, in such a Proportion that there is but from one Pillar to another, the space of a Diameter and half of the Pillar. See the _Fig._ AA. _Tab._ 2. The Second is called _Systile_, viz. where the Pillars seem to be joyned together, are notwithstanding a little more distant one from another than in the _Pycnostile_; for the intercolumniation is two Diameters of the Pillars. [Sidenote: _Lib. 2. Chap. 3._] The Defect that is observ'd in the _Systile_ as well as in the _Pycnostile_ is, that the Entrance of the Fabricks which are placed in that distance are very narrow: So that _Vitruvius_ remarks that the Ladies as they walk to the Temple hand in hand, were forced when they came thither to quit one another, because they could not go two a Breast between the Pillars. See the Figure BB. Tab. II. The Third is called _Diastyle_; _viz._ where the Pillars are further distant, the space of the Intercolumniation being three Diameters, and the Inconvenience is, that the space is so great, that the _Architraves_ which lie upon the two Pillars are in danger of breaking; because the Ancients made them of one Stone. See Figure CC. Tab. II. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 8._] The Fourth is called _Areostyle_; _viz._ where the Pillars are set very thin, there is no certain Proportion, but the distance of one Pillar from another, is much greater than that of _Diastyle_; and for this reason it can have no _Architrave_ but of Wood. See the Figure DD. Tab. II. The Fifth is called _Eustyle_; _viz._ where the Pillars are distant from one another by a more convenient Proportion than in any of the other kind. The distance consists of two Diameters of the Pillars, and one Fourth part of the Diameter: It has also this in particular, That the Intercolumniation in the middle is larger than the rest, having three Diameters of the Pillars; for this reason it surpasseth all others in Beauty, Solidity, and Convenience. See Tab. III. Although the Essentials of these five Kinds, consist in the Proportion that is between the Diameter of the Pillar, and its Intercolumniation, they are also different by the Proportion which is between the Diameter of the Pillar and its height for the _Genders_ or sorts, in which the Pillars are close one to another, ought to have the lesser Pillars; and in that kind, where the Pillars are in a greater distance one from another, they ought to be greater. [Sidenote: _Lib._ 4. _Cap._ 7.] But it's true, notwithstanding that these Proportions are not always observ'd, and that very often, to the _Ionick_ and _Corinthian_ Pillars, which are the smallest of all, Intercolumniations are given, which are proper to those of the _Thuscan Order_, where the Pillars are the greatest. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 2._] But the Ordinary Practice is, to give to the Pillars of the _Areostyle_ kind, the Magnitude of the 8th part of their height. As to the _Diastyle_ and _Eustyle_, the height is divided into Eight parts and an half, to give one to the breadth. In the _Systyle_ Kind, the Height is divided into Nine parts and an half, and one is given to the thickness. In the _Picnostyle_, the thickness of the Pillar is the 10th part of the height, the reason of these different Proportions is founded upon this, that these Pillars do seem to lose of their thickness according as they are in Proportion great or long; and it's likewise for this Reason, that it is thought convenient to have the Pillars in the Corners thicker by a 50th part. See Tab. II. and Tab. III. ART. III. _Of the Five Orders of Architecture_. The Five Orders of Architecture are, the _Thuscan_, the _Dorick_, the _Ionick_, the _Corinthian_, and the _Compound_. These Orders were Invented to satisfie the Design that might be had of making Fabricks more or less Massy, and more or less adorn'd, for the Distinction of these Orders consists in two things, that as the _Thuscan_ and _Dorick_ Order are more massy and less adorn'd, so the _Corinthian_ and _Compound_ are Slenderer and Richer, the _Ionick_ holds the Middle, as well in its Proportions, as its Ornaments, being less massy and more adorn'd than the _Thuscan_ and the _Dorick_, and more massy and less adorn'd than the _Compound_ and the _Corinthian_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 1. Præf. 4.] [Sidenote: Lib. 4. Chap. 7._] Though _Vitruvius_ hath only divided Architecture into Three Orders; _viz._ The _Dorick_, the _Ionick_ and the _Corinthian_; he doth not for all that forget to give the Proportions of the _Thuscan_, and speak of the _Compound_. ART. IV. _Of Things that are Common to several Orders._ Before we treat of the Differences of these Five Orders, it would be proper to speak of those Things that are common to several Orders; as are the _Steps_, _Pedestals_, the _Diminution of Pillars_, their _Channelling_, _Piedements_, _Cornices_, and _Acroteres_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The _Steps_ which are before the Temple, ought always to be of an unequal Number, to the end, that having put the right Foot in mounting the first _Step_, it may likewise be upon the last. They ought not to be more than 6 Inches 10 Lines high, nor less than 6 Inches. [Sidenote: _Lib. 9. Chap. 2._] Their breadth ought to be proportion'd to their height, and this Proportion ought to be of 3 to 4; so that if the _Steps_ be 6 parts high, which is 3 times 2, they must be 8 broad, which is 4 times 2; following the Proportion of a Triangular Rectangle invented by _Pythagoras_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The Landing-places ought not to be narrower than 16 Inches and an half, nor broader than 22 Inches, and all the _Steps_ that are round about a Fabrick should be all of the same breadth. The _Pedestals_ which support many Pillars of the same Rank, will be much handsomer if one make them jet out before every Pillar like a Joynt-Stool; for otherwise, if the _Bases_ were all of one size, they would resemble a Channel. If Leaning-places, or Elbow-places are to be betwixt the _Pedestals_, it's necessary that they be as high as the _Pedestals_, and that the _Cornices_ of the _Pedestals_, and of the Leaning or Elbow-places be equal, and have a true Proportion one to another. [Sidenote: _Lib._ 5. _Chap._ 1.] [Sidenote: _Lib._ 3. _Chap._ 2.] All the Pillars ought to go diminishing towards the top, to augment their Strength, and render them more Beautiful, imitating the Bodies of Trees, which are greater at the Bottom than at the Top. But this _Diminution_ must be lesser in the great Pillars which have their highest part further from the Sight, and which by Consequence makes them at the top seem lesser, according to the ordinary Effect of Perspective; which always diminisheth Objects according to the measure that they are distant from the Eye. The Rule of this different _Diminution_ is, that a Pillar that is 15 Foot high, ought to have in the upper part 5 parts of 6 in the which the Diameter of the _Base_ of the Pillar is divided; that which is from 15 to 20 Foot, ought to have 5 and an half of the 6 and an half of the Diameter; that which is from 20 to 30, ought to have 6 of the 7 parts of the Diameter; that which is from 30 to 40, must have 6 and an half of 7 and an half of the Diameter; that which is from 40 to 50, must have 7 of 8 of the Diameter. These _Diminutions_ do not belong to the _Thuscan Order_, whose Pillars are much more diminished; as we shall show hereafter. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] Besides this _Diminution_ which is made towards the top of the Pillar, there is another below, which makes the Pillar about the middle swell like a Belly; the measure of this swelling is taken from the magnitude which makes up the Distance between the _Channels_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 2._] There is another sort of _Diminution of Pillars_, which is made of one Pillar in respect of another; It is of 2 sorts, _viz._ when a second rank is placed upon the first, for then the second Pillar must be lesser a fourth part than those below, or when _Portico's_ are made that have Pillars in the Corners, for those in the middle must be less than those in the Corners, a 50th part. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 1._] The _Channellings_ are so called, because they are as it were _Demi-Channels_, which descend from the top of the Pillar to the bottom; they represented the Plaites of the Garments of Women, which the Pillars resembled. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 3._] There are three sorts of _Channellings_, the two first are particular and proper to the _Dorick Order_; the third is common to the _Ionick_, _Corinthian_ and _Compound_: The two first are more plain and simple, and fewer in number than the others. The most Simple is that which is not hollowed at all, and which hath only _Pans_ and flat Fronts or Faces. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The other is a little hollowed; to make this hollowness, a Square must be made, whose Side must be equal to the _Pan_, in which the _Channelling_ is to be made, and having put one foot of the Compass in the middle of the Square, make a crooked Line from one Angle of the _Channelling_ to the other, both these _Channellings_ are made up to the number of Twenty. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 1._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 4._] The other Orders have 24, and sometimes 32, when it is design'd to make the Pillars seem greater than they are; for the Eye judgeth that all things are greater when they have more and different Marks, which lead as it were the Sight to more Objects at once. These _Channellings_ are deeper than those of the _Dorick Order_, and the depth ought to be just so much, that a Carpenter's Rule being put into the Cavity, touch with its Angle the bottom, and with its sides the two Corners of the _Channelling_. _Vitruvius_ hath not taught us what the Proportions of the _Channelling_ should be, in respect of the _Fillet_ which makes up the space between the _Channellings_, nor what the breadth of the _Fillet_ should be, which he hath establish'd for the rule of the swelling Belly of the Pillar. The _Piedement_ is composed of a _Tympan_ and _Cornices_; to have the true height of the _Tympan_, we must divide the breadth which is between the two ends of the _Cymatium_ of the _Larmier_, or _Drip_ which supports the _Piedement_, into 9 parts, and give one to the _Tympan_. The thickness of the _Cornice_ being added to this 9th part, makes up the height of the whole _Piedement_ or _Fronton_. The _Tympan_ ought to be Perpendicular upon the _Gorge_ of the Pillar, the things that are common to all _Cornices_ are, that the _Cornice_ of the _Piedement_ must be equal to that below, excepting the last great _Cymatium_, which ought not to be upon the _Cornice_ below the _Piedement_, but it ought to go over the _Cornices_ which are sloping upon the _Piedement_ or _Fronton_. This great _Cymatium_ ought to have of height an 8th part more than the _Crown_, or _Drip_, or _Larmier_. In places where there are no _Piedements_, in the great _Cymatiums_ of the _Cornices_, must be cut the Heads of Lions, at such a distance, that there must be one directly upon every Pillar, and that the other answer directly upon the great _Dalles_, that cover the House. These Heads of Lions are pierced through to convey the Water which falls from the Roof upon the _Cornice_: The Heads of the Lions which are not directly upon the Pillars, ought not to be pierced, to the end the Water may flow with the greater impetuosity through those which are directly upon the Pillars, and that it may not fall between the Pillars upon those who are to go into the _Portico's_. The _Greeks_ in their great Buildings never put any _Dentels_ under the _Modillons_, because the _Rafters_ could not be under the _Forces_, or _Sheers_, and it is a great fault that That, which according to the true Rules of Building ought to be placed above, should be placed under in the Representation. For this Reason, the Ancients never approved of _Modillons_ in the _Piedements_, nor of _Dentels_, but only simple _Cornices_; for neither the _Forces_, _Sheers_, nor the _Rafters_ can be represented in the _Piedements_, out of which they cannot jet but only directly out of the Eaves of the House upon which they lie sloping. The _Acroteres_ are three _Pedestals_, which are upon the Corners and Middle of the _Piedement_ to support Statues; those of the Corner ought to be as high as the Middle of the _Tympan_; but the _Acrotere_ in the middle ought to be higher by an 8th part than the other. All the Members or Parts which shall be placed upon the Capitals of Pillars, _viz. Architraves_, _Frises_, _Cornices_, _Tympans_, and _Acroteres_, should encline forward the 12th part of their height. There is likewise another General Rule; which is, that all the parts that jet out, should have their Projecture equal to their Height. ART. V. _Of the_ Thuscan _Order._ It hath been said that all Buildings have three Parts, which may be different according to the divers Order, _viz._ The _Pillars_, the _Piedements_, and the _Chambranles_, or _Door-Cases_; and that the _Pillars_ had three Parts, which are the _Pedestal_, the _Shaft_, and its Ornaments, _viz._ The _Architrave_, the _Frise_ and the _Cornice_. Neither the Proportion of the _Pedestals_, nor of the _Gates_ and _Chambranles_ of the _Thuscan Order_ are to be found in _Vitruvius_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 7._] The Proportion of the Pillar is this, that its thickness below is the 7th part of its height, it's Diminution is the 4th part of the Diameter of the Pillar, its _Base_ has half of the Diameter of the Pillar for its height, the _Plinthus_ being round, makes one half of the _Base_; the other half is for the _Thorus_, and for the _Conge_ or _Apophygis_, Vid. _Conge_ explained. The height of the Capital is half the Diameter of the Pillar, the breadth of the _Abacus_ is equal to the whole Diameter of the Pillar at the bottom, the height of the Capital is divided into three Parts; one of them is allowed the _Plinthus_, which serves instead of an _Abacus_; the _Echine_ hath another; and a third Part is for the _Gorge_ of the Capital comprehending the _Astragal_, the _Conge_, or _Apophygis_, which are immediately under the _Echine_. Upon the Pillars must be laid the _Sabliers_, or _Wooden Architrave_, joyned together by _Tenons_, in the form of a Swallows Tail. These _Sabliers_ ought to be distant one from another about an Inch; for if they should touch one another, the Timber would heat and corrupt. Upon these _Sabliers_ which serve for an _Architrave_, must be built a little Wall, which will serve instead of a _Frise_. The _Cornice_ which is laid upon this little Wall or _Frise_, has _Mutal's_ which jet out. All the Crowning should have the 4th part of the height of the Pillar. The little Walls that are built between the ends of the Beams which rest upon the Pillars, must be garnished and covered with Boards, which must be nailed upon the ends of the Beams. The _Piedement_, which may be either of Stone or Wood, and which must support the _Faistag_ or _Top_, the _Forces_, and the _Pans_, has a particular Proportion; for it must be much raised to give it a sufficient sloping for the running of the Water. See Tab. V. ART. VI. _Of the_ Dorick _Order._ [Sidenote: _Lib._ 4. _Chap._ 1.] The _Dorick_ Pillar has had in divers times, and in different Buildings, different Proportions; for at first it had only for its height 6 times its Diameter; this Proportion imitating that of Humane Bodies, in which the length of the Foot is the 6th part of all the Body, afterwards they allowed 7 times its Diameter. [Sidenote: _Lib._ 5. _Chap._ 9.] But this Proportion that the Pillars of the Temples had at the Beginning, was afterwards changed in that of the Theaters, where they were higher by half a Diameter; for they made them 15 Modules high, for in the _Dorick Order_ the Semi-Diameter of the Pillar at the bottom is the Module, which in other Orders is a whole Diameter. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 1._] The _Dorick_ Pillar is composed as well as the rest of a _Shaft_, _Base_ and _Capital_, though _Vitruvius_ makes no mention of the _Base_; and it's easie to conclude, that in the Ancient Buildings this _Order_ had none; for it is said, That when they would make the _Ionick Order_ more Beautiful than the _Dorick_, they added a _Base_ to it; and there is yet to be seen in Ancient Buildings of this Order, Pillars without a _Base_; but when a _Base_ is added to it, it must be _Attick Base_, whose Proportion is as follows. The whole _Base_ ought to have a _Module_ for its height; that is to say, half the Diameter of the Pillar; this _Module_ being divided into three parts; one is for the _Plinthus_; the other two parts are divided into four, of which one is allowed for the upper _Torus_, the three which remain, are divided into two: The half below is for the lower _Torus_, the other is for the _Scotiæ_, comprising the two little Squares or Filets. The breadth of the _Basis_ in General is a 4th of the Diameter of the Pillar at the bottom, added on every side; but this jetting is excessive, and without any Example, and _Vitruvius_ himself makes it lesser in the _Ionick Base_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 3._] The height of the _Capital_ as well as the _Base_ is one _Module_, the breadth is two _Modules_ and an half, the height of the _Capital_ being divided into three parts, one must be allowed for the _Plinthus_ or _Abacus_, with its _Cymatium_; the other is for the _Echine_, with its _Anulets_; the third appertains to the _Gorge_ of the _Capital_. _The Architrave_ which comprehends its _Platte-Band_ with the _Gouttes_ or _Pendant Drops_, which are under the _Triglyphs_, is as well as the _Capital_ of one only _Module_; the _Gouttes_ or _Drops_ with their little _Tringle_, ought to have the 6th part of a _Module_, the breadth under the _Architrave_ ought to be equal to that above the Pillar. Upon the _Architrave_ in the _Friese_ ought to be the _Triglyphs_ and the _Metops_. The _Triglyphs_ have a _Module_ and a half for their height, and a _Module_ for their breadth; the _Metops_ are as high as broad; One _Triglyph_ must be placed directly upon every Pillar, and the Intercolumniation ought to have three; towards the Corners must be placed the _Demi-Metops_. The breadth of the _Triglyph_ being divided into six parts, five of them must be left in the middle, and the two halfs which remain on the right and the left, must be for _Demi-Graveurs_; The part in the middle, and the two last of the five, must be for the three Feet, and the two which are betwixt the three Feet, must be for the _Graveurs_ or _Channels_, which must be hollowed, following the Corner of the _Mason_'s Rule. The _Capital_ of the _Triglyph_ ought to have the 6th. part of a _Module_. Upon the _Capital_ of the _Triglyph_ is placed the great _Cornice_, its Jetting or Projecture, is half a _Module_ and the 6th. part of a _Module_, its height is half a _Module_, comprising the _Dorick Cymatium_, which is under it. On the _Plat Fonds_ of the _Cornice_, must be hollowed little strait ways, which must answer perpendicularly to the sides of the _Triglyphs_, and the middle of the _Metops_. Streight upon the _Triglyphs_ must be cut 9 _Goutes_ or _Drops_, which must be so distributed, that there may be six length-wise, and three broad-wise; in the Spaces which are betwixt the _Metops_, because they are greater than those between the _Triglyphs_: nothing must be cut unless it be _Foudres_. Moreover towards the border of the Crown must be Carved a _Scotia_. Some advance perpendicularly above the _Triglyphs_, the Ends of the _Forces_ or _Principals_ to frame the _Mutils_ which support the _Cornices_; so that as the Disposition of _Beams_ hath caused the Invention of _Triglyphs_, so the jetting of the _Forces_ hath caused the Disposition of the _Mutils_, which support the _Cornices_. See Tab. VI. ART. VII. _Of the_ Ionick _Order_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 1._] The Proportion of the Pillars of the _Ionick Order_ in the beginning had Eight _Modules_ or Diameters for their height, but the Ancients quickly added half a Diameter, when to make this Pillar more Beautiful than the _Dorick_, not only for its height, but also for its Ornaments, they added a _Base_ to it, which was not used in the _Dorick Order_. The Pillars must be set upon their _Bases_ two ways; for sometimes they were perpendicularly set, and sometimes not, _viz._ The outward rows of Pillars; when there were more Ranks than one; for that part of the Pillar which is towards the Wall of the Fabrick must necessarily be perpendicular, and the outward part must have all the Diminution, and must lean towards the Wall. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The Pillars that are within the porch, and are betwixt the Wall and the outward Pillar must stand perpendicularly. The breadth of the _Ionick Base_ is the Diameter of the Pillar, to which is added a 4th. and an 8th. part; its height is half the Diameter; its height being divided into three parts, one is allowed for the _Plinthus_, the rest being divided into seven parts, three are allowed to the _Torus_ above, after equally dividing the four which remain, the two above are for the upper _Scotia_, with its _Astragal_: The two below are for the lower _Scotia_, which will appear greater than the upper, because it extends to the edge of the _Plinthus_, the _Astragals_ must have the 8th. part of the _Scotia_, whose Jetting or Projecture must be the 8th. part of the whole _Base_ joyned to the 6th. part of the Diameter of the Pillar. See Tab. VII. As to the _Capital_, the _Abacus_ must have in its Square the Diameter of the bottom of the Pillar, adding to it an 18th. part; half of the _Abacus_ ought to be the height of the _Capital_, comprizing the Round of the _Volute_ or _Scroll_, but there must be substracted from the corner of the _Abacus_ a 12th. part and an half of the height of the _Capital_, and after the whole thickness of the _Capital_ must be divided into nine parts and an half, and one and an half must be left for the thickness of the _Abacus_, that the _Volutes_ or _Scrolls_ may be made of the eight which remain; then having left under the _Abacus_ four parts and an half of these eight, a Line must be drawn in the place which cuts the two a-cross and the Points of the Section shall be _Eyes_, which shall have eight parts for their Diameter; in half the space of the _Eye_ shall be placed the Centers through which shall be drawn with a Compass the Spiral-Line of the _Volute_, beginning the height under the _Abacus_, and going into the four Quarters of the Division, diminishing till we come directly to the first Quarter, and giving to every Quarter a particular Center. Then the thickness of the whole _Capital_ must be so divided that of nine parts which it contains, the _Volute_ has the breadth of three under the _Astragal_, on the top of the Pillar, which must be directly upon the _Eye_ of the _Volute_, that which remains above the _Astragal_, must be allowed for the _Abacus_, _Channel_, and the _Echine_ or _Egge_, whose jetting beyond the Square of the _Abacus_ must be of the same bigness of the _Echine_ or _Egge_. The _Channel_ must be hollowed the 12th. part of its breadth. The _Girdle_ or _Cincture_, or the lateral part of the _Capital_, ought to advance out of the _Tailhoir Abacus_, as much as it is from the Center of the _Eye_ to the height of the _Echine_. The thickness of the _Axis_ of the _Volutes_, which is the thickness of the _Volute_, seen sideway, and which makes up the extreme parts of that which is called commonly _Balisters_, ought not to exceed the magnitude of the _Eye_. See Tab. VIII. These Proportions of the _Ionick Capital_, are only for Pillars of 15 Foot, those that are greater require other, and generally the greater Proportions are required for the Pillars that are greater; and for this reason we have said, that the higher the Pillars are, the less Diminution they must have; so when the Pillars are above 15 Foot, we must add a 9th. part to the Diameter of the Pillar for to give the breadth to the _Abacus_; to which is never added more than an 18th. part to Pillars of 15 Foot. The _Architraves_ shall be laid upon the Pillars with Jettings equal to the _Pedestals_, in case they be not all of one size, but in form of Joint-Stools, to the end Symmetry may be observ'd. The height ought to be different, according to the proportion of the height of the Pillar; for if the Pillar be from 12 to 15 Foot, we must allow the _Architrave_ the height of half a Diameter of the bottom of the Pillar, if it be from 15 to 20, we must divide the height of the Pillar into 15 parts, to the end we may allow one to the _Architrave_; so if it be from 20 to 25, the height must be divided into 12 parts and an half, that the _Architrave_ may have one; and so proportionably. The _Architrave_ ought to have at the bottom which lies upon the _Capital_, the same breadth that the top of the Pillar hath under the _Capital_. The Jetting of the _Cymatium_ of the _Architrave_ ought to answer the bottom of the Pillar, the height of the _Cymatium_ ought to be the 7th. part of the whole _Architrave_. The rest being divided into 12 parts; three must be allowed to the first _Face_, four to the second, and five to that above, upon which is the _Cymatium_. The _Frise_ ought not to be so high as the _Architrave_ by a 4th. part, unless something be carved there, for then that the Carving may be more graceful, the _Frise_ ought to be bigger than the _Architrave_ by a 4th. part. Upon the _Frise_ must be made a _Cymatium_ of height the 7th. part of the _Frise_, with a Jetting equal to its height. The _Dentil_ which is upon the _Cymatium_, shall have the height of the _Face_ of the middle of the _Architrave_, with a Jetting or Projecture equal to its height; the cutting of the _Dentils_ ought to be so made, that the breadth of every _Dentil_ may be the half of its height, and the Cavity of the cut which is between every _Dentil_ may have two parts of three, which maketh the breadth of the _Dentil_. The _Cymatium_ which is upon the _Dentil_, must have the 3d. part of the height of the _Dentil_. The Crown with its little _Cymatium_ must have the same height with the _Face_ of the middle of the _Architrave_. The great _Cymatium_ ought to have the height of an 8th. part more than the _Crown_ or _Drip_. The Jetting or Projecture of the whole _Cornice_ comprehending the _Dentil_ ought to be equal to the space that there is from the _Frise_, just to the top of the great _Cymatium_, and generally speaking all the Jettings or Projectures shall have the better grace when they are equal to the height of the Jetting Members. See Table VII. ART. VIII. _Of the_ Corinthian _Order_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 2._] The Pillars of the _Corinthian Order_ have no other Proportions than the _Ionick_, except in the _Capital_, whose height make them appear slenderer and higher. The other parts or Members, as the _Architrave_, _Frise_, and _Cornice_, borrow their Proportions from the _Dorick_ and _Ionick Order_, having nothing particular, for the _Corinthian Modillons_ are imitated by the _Mutils_ of the _Dorick Order_, and the _Dentils_ are the same with the _Ionick_; this being so, we have nothing to do but to give the Proportions of the _Capital_, which are these; The _Capital_ comprizing the _Abacus_, hath for its height, the breadth of the bottom of the Pillar. To have the true breadth of the _Abacus_, we must have a care that its _Diagonal_ be double the height of the _Capital_, the bending that the sides of the _Abacus_ have inward, is a 9th. part of a side, the bottom of the _Capital_ is equal to the Neck of the Pillar. The thickness of the _Abacus_ is a 7th. part of the whole _Capital_. Two of these seven parts must be taken for the height of every Leaf, of which there are two Ranks, each of which has four Leaves. The Stalks or little Branches are likewise composed of other Leaves, and which grow between the Leaves of the Rank above, ought to have two of these seven parts comprising the _Volutes_. These _Volutes_ begin within the Stalks, of which, those that are the greatest extend to the Extreme parts of the _Angles_ of the _Abacus_; the other are below the _Roses_. These _Roses_ which are in the middle of every _Face_ of the _Abacus_, ought to be as great as the _Abacus_ is thick. The _Ornaments_ of the _Corinthian Order_, viz. The _Architrave_, the _Frise_, and the _Cornice_, do not in the least differ from those of the _Ionick Order_. See Tab. IX. ART. IX. _Of the_ Compound _Order._ [Sidenote: _Lib._ 4. _Chap._ 1.] _Vitruvius_ hath not spoke of the _Compound Order_, as of an _Order_ distinct from the _Corinthian_, the _Ionick_ and the _Dorick_; He only tells us, that sometimes upon the _Corinthian Pillar_ was placed a _Capital_ composed of several parts, which were taken from the _Corinthian_, the _Ionick_ and _Dorick Orders_. But a Consequence may be drawn from thence, that the _Order_ at present called the _Compound_, might have been in use in the time of _Vitruvius_, although they then did not make a distinct _Order_ of it; Since that, our _Compound Order_ is not essentially different from the _Corinthian_, but by its _Capital_; and so one may say, that this sole difference of the _Capital_ ought to make it a distinct _Order_ from the _Corinthian_, since according to _Vitruvius_, the _Corinthian Capital_ alone, made the _Corinthian Order_. The parts that our _Compound Order_ borrow from the _Corinthian Order_, are the _Abacus_, and the two Ranks of the Leaves of _Branch-Ursin_, which it has retained, although the _Corinthian_ have quitted them for the Leaves of the _Olive_. The other part that it takes from the _Ionick_, are the _Volutes_; which it forms in some manner according to the Model of the _Volutes_ of the _Corinthian Order_, in bending them even as the _Abacus_; for they are direct upon the _Ionick Capital_, as well as the _Abacus_. The _Echine_, or Quarter Round, which it has under the _Abacus_, it borrows rather from the _Dorick Order_, than from the _Ionick_; because this _Echine_ is immediately under the _Abacus_, as it is in the _Dorick Order_, which is not in the _Ionick_, which between the _Echine_ and the _Abacus_, places the _Channel_ which makes the _Volute_; it may notwithstanding be said, that it imitates the _Echine_ of the _Ionick Order_, in that it is cut with _Oves_ or _Eggs_, which is rarely found in the _Dorick Capital_, but are always in the _Ionick_. AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE TEN BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE. PART II. _Containing the Architecture peculiar to the Ancients._ CHAP. I. _Of Publick Buildings._ ARTICLE I. _Of Fortresses._ [Sidenote: _Lib._ 1. _Cap._ 3.] Buildings are either _Publick_, or _Private_; Those that are Publick, appertain either to Security, or Religion, or Publick Convenience. The Fortifications of Cities are for _Security_, the Temples for _Religion_, the Market-places, Town-Houses, Theatres, Academies are for the _Publick Convenience_. The Disposition and Figures of the Ramparts were so ordered, that the Towers advanced out of the Walls to the end, that when the Enemy approached them, the Besieged which were in the Towers, might fall upon their Flank, both on the Right and the Left. They took likewise great Care to make the Approaches to the Walls difficult, ordering their Ways so, that they came not directly, but to the Left of the Gate. For by this means, the Besiegers were constrained to present to them that were upon the Walls the Right side, which was not covered with a Buckler. The Figure of a _strong_ place ought neither to be Square, nor composed of Angles that advance too far. But the Ancients made them with many Sinuosities or Corners, for Angles that are too far advanc'd, are more advantageous for the Besiegers, than the Besieged. The thickness of the Wall was so ordered, that two Armed Men might walk by one another upon the Wall without justling. They made their Walls strong and durable, with sindged Beams of Olive, which bound them and kept them up. Although there be nothing that makes the Ramparts so strong as Earth, they had not for all that the Custom of making Terrasses, unless it were in some place where some Eminency was so near the Wall, that the Besiegers might easily enter. To make the Terrasses strong, and to hinder the Earth from pushing down the two Walls that supported it, they made Buttresses or Counter-forts which went from one Wall to another, to the end, that the Earth being divided into many parts, might not have that weight to push the Walls. Their Towers were round, for those that are square are easily ruin'd by their War-like Engines, and their Battering easily broke down the Corners. Directly against the Tower, the Wall was cut off within the breadth of the Tower, and the Walls so interrupted were only joyned with Joyces, which were not nailed down; to the end, that if the Enemy made themselves Masters of some part of the Wall, the Besieged might take up this Bridge made of Joists, and hinder their further advance. ART. II. _Of Temples._ [Sidenote: _Lib._ 4. _Chap._ 4.] The second Sort of Publick Fabricks, which are those that belong to Religion are the _Temples_, which among the Ancients were of two Sorts; some were after the _Greek_, and some after the _Tuscan_ Fashion. The _Temples_ after the _Tuscan_ Fashion were Square, the _Greeks_ made them sometimes Round, sometimes Square; in the Square _Temples_ of the _Greeks_, there are three Things to be considered, _viz._ The Parts that compose it, the Proportion of the _Temple_, and its _Aspect_. The Parts of the Square _Temples_, were for the most part Five; for they had almost every one of them a Porch before the Temple called _Pronaos_, and another Porch behind the _Temple_, called _Posticum_, or _Opisthedomos_, the middle of the _Temple_, called _Cella_, or _Sacos_; the _Portico's_ or _Isles_, and the _Gate_. The Porch was a place covered at the Entrance at the greatest part of _Temples_, being as broad as the whole _Temple_. There were three sorts of them. Some were surrounded with Pillars on three Sides; Others had only Pillars in the Front, the Sides of the Porch being made up by the continuation of the Side-Walls of the _Temple_; Others were made up at the Sides, partly by Pillars, and partly by the Continuation of the Side-Walls of the _Temple_. The _Posticum_ of the _Temple_ was equal to the Porch, having likewise a Gate, but all Temples had not _Posticums_, though almost every _Temple_ had its _Pronaos_, or Porch. The Middle of the _Temple_, called _Cella_, was a place inclosed with four Walls, having no Light but at the Gate, unless it were uncovered, as we shall shew hereafter. The _Portico's_ which make the Isles, were ranks of Pillars, sometimes single, sometimes double, which stood along the Sides of the _Temple_ on the out-side: some _Temples_ wanted this part. The Gates of the _Temples_ were different according to the difference of the Order of the Architecture, according to which the _Temple_ was built: there was the _Dorick_, the _Ionick_, and the _Attick_. The height of the _Dorick_ Gate was taken by dividing into 3 parts and an half, the space which is from below to the bottom of the _Plat-fond_ of the _Portico_, which _Platfond_ was called _Lacunar_: they allow'd 2 to the height of the Gate under the _Lintel_: this height was divided into 12 parts; 5 and an half were taken for the breadth of the Gate below, for above it was straiter by a 3d. part. A 4th. part, and even an 8th. part of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, according to the height of the Gate, which was to be less straitened above, the higher it was. The breadth of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, was the 12th. part of the height of the Opening of the Gate. The _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_ grew straiter and straiter towards the top, _viz._ the 4th. part of its breadth: it was only edged with a _Cymatium_, with an _Astragal_. Upon the _Cymatium_ above the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, was a _Frise_ called _Hyperthyron_, which had the same breadth with the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_. Upon this _Frise_ was placed a _Dorick Cymatium_, with a _Lesbian Astragal_; both of them jetting out very little. Upon the _Moulures_ the _Flat-Crown_ was placed, with its little _Cymatium_, which jetted out the whole breadth above of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, with its Mould. The height of the _Ionick_ Gates was taken as those of the _Dorick_; but to have the right breadth, they divided the height into 2 parts and an half: To allow them one and an half below, it was straitned at the top, as the _Dorick_ Gate was; the breadth of the _Chambranle_ was the 14th. part of the height of the Opening of the Gate; this breadth of the _Chambranle_, or _Door-Case_, being divided into 6, one was allowed for the _Cymatium_, the rest being divided into 12, 3 were allowed to the 1st. Face comprising its _Astragal_, 4 to the 2d. and 5 to the 3d. The _Frise_ which is called _Hyperthyron_, was made with the same Proportions that are in the _Dorick Order_. The _Consoles_ or _Shouldering-Pieces_, descended directly to the bottom of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, without comprizing the _Foliage_ or _Leaf-work_ that they had at the bottom: The breadth above was the 3d. part of that of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_, and at the bottom they grew straiter by a 4th. part. The _Attick_ were like the _Dorick_, but their _Chambranles_ or _Door-Cases_ had only a _Plat-band_ under the _Cymatium_, and this _Plat-band_ or _Face_, had only the breadth of 2 parts in 7, into which was divided all the rest of the _Chambranle_ or _Door-Case_ with its _Mouldings_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The Proportion of the _Temples_ was so ordered, that they were twice as long as broad, but it is not to be understood precisely, but only of _Temples_ that were without _Pillars_, whose length was divided into 8, and 4 were allowed for the breadth. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 4._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 3._] The _Temples_ which had _Pillars_ round about, could not have this double Proportion; for as much as the length had only the double of the intercolumniations, and by consequence a _Pillar_ less than the double of the _Pillars_ before and behind. The _Aspect_ of the _Temples_ signifies two things in _Vitruvius_, _viz._ The Disposition of the parts of the _Temple_, in respect of one another, and the Disposition in respect of the Heavens. As to what regards the Disposition of the _Temple_ in respect of the Heavens, the Ancients always observed to turn them toward the Sun-rising, if the place were not ill-disposed for it, and that some great Street obliged them to turn it otherwise. As to what belongs to the Disposition of the parts, _viz._ of the _Porch_, _Porticum_, _Isles_ or _Oiles_ within the _Temple_ and the _Gates_, it was different in the _Temples_ which were without _Pillars_, and in those which had _Pillars_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 4. Chap. 4._] The _Temples_ without _Pillars_, were those that were not 20 Foot broad, the length of these _Temples_ being divided into 8, 4 were allowed for the breadth, 5 for the length of the _Temple_ within, and 3 for the _Porch_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 3. Chap. 1._] The _Temples_ which had _Pillars_ were of 8 sorts; The 1st. and the most Simple, was that which was called _Ad Antes_, because in this sort of _Temples_, there were only 2 _Pillars_ in the Face or Front before, betwixt 2 _Antes_. There was 3 sorts of these _Temples_. The First and the most Simple, had 2 _Pillars_ before the Face of the _Temple_, at whose Corners there were 2 _Antes_, and the 2 _Pillars_ supported a _Piedement_ or _Fronton_. The Second Sort had likewise but 2 _Pillars_, but they were between 2 _Antes_ upon the same Line with the _Antes_; and these _Antes_ with the 2 _Pillars_, made up the _Face_ of the _Porch_ of the _Temple_. The Third Sort was, when betwixt 2 _Pillars_ which were at the _Face_ before, which made up the _Porch_, there were likewise 2 others within the _Porch_; these _Pillars_ within, were not so thick as those without, although they were of an equal height; but to the end they might seem as thick as those without, they made more _Channellings_, for the most part 28 or 32, supposing those without had 24; this was done to get more room within the _Porch_. These _Temples_ had also this particular to themselves, that the Front of the _Porch_ was closed with Partitions of _Marble_ or _Joyner's-Work_, which ran from the _Ante_ of one of the Corners to its neighbouring _Pillar_, and from this _Ante_ to the other _Pillar_, and from this _Pillar_ to the other _Ante_. The second Sort of _Temples_, with _Pillars_, was called _Prostyle_; which differ'd not from the first, but in this, that besides the 2 _Pillars_ of the _Temple_, _Ad Antes_, there were two others directly on the Angular _Antes_. The Third Sort was called _Amphiprostyle_; because it had _Pillars_ as well behind as before. The Fourth Sort was the _Periptere_, which in the Front, as well as behind, had 6 _Pillars_, and 12 on every side, counting those of the Corners: the distance which was between the _Pillars_ and the _Walls_, was equal to that which was between the _Pillars_. The Fifth, the _Pseud-diptere_, viz. _False Diptere_, it had 8 _Pillars_ in the _Front_, and as many behind, and 15 on every side, counting those of the Corners: the _Pillars_ were distant from the Wall, the space of 2 Intercolumniations, and the thickness of a _Pillar_. The Sixth Sort was the _Diptere_, which had 8 _Pillars_ before and behind, and 2 rows round about. The Seventh Sort was called _Hypethre_, because the inner part of the _Temple_ was uncovered, it had 10 _Pillars_ before and behind; and as to the rest, it was like the _Diptere_, but in this particular to it self, that all about it had two Orders of _Pillars_, at a little distance from the Wall, to make _Portico's_, as in the _Peristyles_. The Eighth was called _Pseudo-Periptere_, or _False Periptere_; for the Disposition of the _Pillars_ was equal to that of the _Pillars_ of the _Periptere_: This _Temple_ having 6 _Pillars_ in the _Front_, and behind, and 11 in the _Isles_ or _Wings_; but the Disposition of the Walls of the _Temple_ was different in this, that they extended even to the _Pillars_, which made no _Portico_, for they were joyned to the Walls, except those of the _Porch_ which were insulated, or stood alone like Islands. The Round _Temples_ were of 2 sorts; The first were called _Monopteres_, because they had no Walls, having only an _Isle_ or _Wing_; viz. _Pillars_ which supported a _Coupe_. Their Proportion was, that dividing the whole _Temple_ into three, one part was allowed for the _Steps_ upon which the _Pillars_ were placed, which had their height equal to the distance that there was from one _Pillar_, to that which was Diametrically opposite to it. The Second Sort which was called _Periptere_, had _Pillars_ upon their _Basis_ round about the _Temple_, the space that was between the _Basis_ and the _Wall_ was the 5th. part of the whole _Temple_, and the Diameter of the _Temple_ within, was equal to the height of the _Pillar_. The _Temples_ after the _Tuscan_ fashion were square, having 5 parts in length and 4 in breadth; the _Porch_ which was as great as the rest of the _Temple_, had 4 _Pillars_ in the _Front_; the Sides were closed half by the Continuation of the Walls of the _Temple_, half by 2 _Angular Pillars_; and there were likewise 2 _Pillars_ in the middle of the _Porch_: The _Temple_ had 2 _Chappels_ within on each Side. We find that the Ancients had 14 Sorts of _Temples_, viz. 1. The Temple without _Pillars_. 2. The Temple _ad antes_ Simply. 3. The Temple _ad Antes_, with 2 _Pillars_ upon the same Line with the _Antes_. 4. The Temple _ad antes_, with _Pillars_ of an unequal Magnitude. 5. The _Prostyle_. 6. The _Amphiprostyle_. 7. The _Periptere_. 8. The _Pseudo-diptere_. 9. The _Diptere_. 10. The _Hypethre_. 11. The _Pseudo-Periptere_. 12. The _Monoptere_. 13. The _Round Periptere_. 14. The _Tuscan_. See the Tab. 2, 3, 4. ART. III. _Of Publick Places_, Basilica's, Theatres, Gates, Baths _and_ Academies. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 1._] The Third Sort of _Publick Fabricks_ are those which are Built for the Convenience and Use of all People; and there are Six Sorts of them, viz. _Market-Places_, _Basilica's_, _Theatres_, _Gates_, _Baths_ and _Academies_. The _Market-Places_ among the _Greeks_ were surrounded with Pillars close one against another. Among the _Romans_, the Pillars which environed the _Market-Places_, had larger Intercolumniations, for they made _Peristyles_, under which were Shops. The Proportion of the _Market-Places_ was so ordered, that having divided the length into three parts, they allowed two for the breadth; the _Basilica's_ had never less breadth than the third part of their length, nor more than the half. The Pillars were as high as the Isles or Wings were broad, and these Isles or Wings had a third part of the great Vault in the middle. There was likewise a Second rank of Pillars upon the Wings, which made high Galleries, and these Second rank of Pillars were placed upon a _Pedestal_ in the form of a Partition, high enough to hinder those that were in the high Galleries from being seen by those that were below. At the End of every _Basilica_, there was a high and great Hall called _Chalcidiques_, which were joyned one to another by high Galleries: they served the Spectators while Justice was distributed. The _Theaters_ were composed of three parts, _viz._ The Steps or Degrees, which were instead of Seats for the Spectators: they were disposed in a Semi-circle, and they closed a void space in the middle and at the bottom of the whole _Theater_, which was called the _Orchestra_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 6._] The _Orchestra_ was made in the _Græcian Theatre_, to Dance the Ballets. The Senators were placed in that of the _Romans_, because the Ballets were Danced upon the Scene. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 6._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 6._] Above and quite round the Steps or Degrees was a _Portico_ of Pillars, the Steps being separated by divers _Palliers_ or Landing and Resting places which went round, and by streight passages which went ascending from one _Palliere_ or Landing place to another; so that the ways which led from the second _Palliere_ to the third, parted betwixt those of the first, and ended betwixt those of the third. The Steps or Degrees were 14 or 15 Inches high, and from 28 to 30 broad. Under the Degrees, above every _Palliere_, there were in the great _Theaters_ 13 _Chambers_, in which were Vessels of Brass, set to several Tunes, or Tones; which by their Echo augmented the Voice of the Players. The Scene or Stage, was composed of the _Pulpit_, the _Proscenium_ and the _Parascenium_. The _Pulpit_ was the place where the Actors played: it was raised not above five Foot at the most above the _Orchestra_, or _Pit_. The _Proscenium_ was the Front of the Stage, which was adorned with Pillars of several sorts one above another. These Orders were so proportioned, that the second was a fourth part lesser than the first. The third diminishing according to the same Proportion. The Front had three Gates, that in the middle which was the greatest was called the _Royal Gate_, the two others were called the _Gates of Strangers_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5._] These three Gates were closed with Machines, made in a Triangle, and composed of three Fronts or Faces well Painted, to represent Buildings in Perspective; they served for the changing of the Scenes, when these Machines were turned. And the Paintings represented three sorts of Buildings, which made three sorts of Scenes, _viz._ The _Tragick_ by _Magnificent Pallaces_, the _Comick_ by _Private Houses_, the _Satyrical_ (_i. e._ the _Pastoral_) by _Fields_ and _Groves_. The _Parascenium_ or _Postscenium_ was the hinder part of the _Theater_, and the place whither the Actors retired and dressed themselves, and had their Rehearsals, and where the Machines were kept. Near the _Theaters_, were Publick Walks, in length a _Stadium_, which is about 90 _Perches_. There were Trees planted, and round about it were double _Porticos_, which were every one as broad as the Pillars on the out-side were high; for those within were higher by a fifth part, than those without, and they were likewise of a different _Order_; for those without were of the _Dorick Order_, and those within of the _Ionick_ or _Corinthian_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 13._] The Ancients built their _Ports_ in two manners; at those which were _Natural_, they only made _Portico's_ round about with _Magazines_ and _Towers_ at the Ends, for to shut the _Port_ with a Chain. Those which were _Artificial_, were built three several ways: The first was to make Partitions of Wood only, without emptying the Water which was within the Partitions, and they cast into the Partitions, Stone and Mortar made with _Pozzolana_, thrown in hand over head; for they were certain that this Mortar wou'd grow dry in the bottom of the Water. The second Way was by making Partitions with ordinary Clay, or fat Earth at the bottom of the Sea, after the Water had been emptied out by Pumps. The third Way was to build a Mole upon the Sea-Coast, and to cast it in when the _Mason's_ Work was sufficiently dry, which only required two Months time. That they might the better throw these Moles into the Sea, they built them half upon the Sea-Coast, and half upon an heap of Sand which they made close to the Sea-Coast; to the end, that this Sand which was stopped by nothing but by the Walls, built only to support it during the time that the Mole was a drying, might let it fall when the Sea came to carry away the Sand after that the Walls were beaten down. [Sidenote: _Lib. 5. Chap. 10._] The _Bathes_ of the Ancients consisted of many Chambers; some for Men, and some for Women. Some of the Chambers had a moderate Heat, to warm their Bodies insensibly, and prepare them for a stronger Heat to make them Sweat. The Chamber they were to Sweat in, was called _Laconicum_, and was round, and Vaulted like the ends of an Oven, pierced at the top with a round Opening, which was opened and shut with a Buckler of Brass, which hung at a Chain, by which means they augmented or diminished the Heat according to the Proportion that they pull'd up, or let down the Buckler. One and the same Furnace heated both the Air and the Water, according to the Disposition of the places which were nearer or further from the Furnace, whose heat was communicated to the Chambers from under the Flooring, which was made full of little holes. The Water was likewise diversly tempered by the different situation of three great Vessels of Brass, whose Water went from one into another, and there were Pipes that conveyed these three sorts of Water into the _Bath_. The _Academies_ of the Ancients, which they called _Palæstra_, was a place where the Youth learned Letters and their Exercises. They were composed of three parts, _viz._ Of a _Peristyle_, a _Xyste_, and a _Stadium_; the _Peristyle_ was a Court surrounded with _Portico's_, which were of two sorts; three of them were Simple, and one Double. The Simple stood in a row against three Bodies of Lodgings, composed of many great Halls, where the Philosophers had their Disputes and Conferences. The Bodies of the Lodgings, which was the length of the double _Portico_, and one part of the Bodies of Lodgings which turned in, were distributed into several parts, for the Studies and Exercises of Youth; for there they had their _Classes_, their _Baths_, their _Stoves_, and their _Tenis-Court_. The _Xyste_ was a place planted with Trees, and surrounded with _Portico's_ on every side: These _Portico's_ were of two sorts. There was one double which was set against the Bodies of the Lodgings, to which the double _Portico_ of the _Peristyle_ was joyned. The _Simple Portico's_ had two Wings, under these _Simple Portico's_ there were hollow Ways, where they performed their Exercises; the rest of the _Portico_ was raised to the right and the left, for those that had a mind to Walk while the rest performed their Exercises, in the hollow ways. The Place which was compassed with these three _Portico's_, was planted with Trees, which made Allies, where the Wrestlers exercised in Winter, when it was fair Weather. The _Stadium_ was on the Side of the _Peristyle_ and the _Xyste_. It was an Alley of 90 Perches; on each Side it had many Steps or Degrees, which made a sort of a long _Theater_ bending in at both ends; these Steps or Degrees were made for the convenience of seeing them that Run. CHAP. II. _Of Private Buildings._ ARTICLE I. _Of the Courts of Houses._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 3._] The Houses of the Ancients had five sorts of Courts, of which the greatest part were covered round about by the Jettings which supported the Water-Channel or Gutter, in which all the Water that fell from the Roof met together. These Courts made with Jettings, were of four sorts; The first was called the _Tuscan_, this Court was surrounded with a Jetting _en auvent_, which was laid upon four Beams, supported by other standing Beams placed in the Corners. The second Sort was called _Corinthian_; it had likewise Beams, but they were further from the Walls than in the _Tuscan_ Court, and they were laid upon Pillars. The third Sort was called _Tetrastyle_, because the Beams were supported with four Pillars which were in the place of the standing Beams that were made use of in the _Tuscan Court_. The fourth Sort was called the _Vaulted_; because the Jetting that it had round about, was supported by Vaults. The fifth Sort of _Court_ that had no Jetting, and which was called the _Uncovered_, had the _Water-Gutter_ directly upon the Wall, and was only covered with the Entablature. ART. II. _Of the_ Vestibulum _or_ Entry. The Houses of the Ancients had _Great_ and _Magnificent Entries_, they were sometimes 15 Perches long and 9 broad, and they were supported upon two ranks of Pillars, which made a Wing on each Side, the Proportion of their breadth and length was taken three Ways. The first was, when having divided the length into 5, 3 were allowed for the breadth. The second was, when having divided it into 3, 2 were allowed for the breadth. The third was, when having made an Equilateral Square, the Diagonal of this Square was taken for the length, and the Side for the breadth. The height was equal to the length, taken from the Pavement below, to the bottom of the _Plat-Fonds_ or _Flat-Roof_, which was hollowed on the other side the Beams, the seventh part of the whole height. The Proportion that the _Alley_ which was in the middle between the Pillars, had with the Wings, was different according to the Magnitude of the _Vestibule_ or _Entry_, for the greater they were or the lesser, the Wings had a proportionable breadth with the _Alley_ in the middle; So that if the _Vestibule_ or _Entry_ was 100 Foot long, the Wings had only for their breadth the 50th. part of the length; and when it was but 30 Foot long, they had only the 3d. part. ART. III. _Of_ Halls. The Ancients had three Sorts of _Halls_; _Viz._ The _Corinthian_, the _Ægyptian_, and the _Cyzican_. The _Corinthian_ had Pillars round about against the Wall, and these Pillars supported the Floor made in form of a Vault. _Surbaissee_. The _Ægyptian Halls_ had their Pillars distant from the Wall in the manner of the _Peristyle_, and they supported only an _Architrave_ without a _Frise_ and without a _Cornice_; upon this _Architrave_ there was another row of Pillars, between which were the Windows. The Floor which reached from the Pillars to the Wall, served for a _Terrasse_ without. [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 6._] The _Cyzican Halls_ had this in particular, that they were turned to the North, and had a Prospect of the Gardens; they were principally made use of by the _Greeks_; the Proportion of these _Halls_ was as follows, Their length was double their breadth, and as to their height, this Rule was observed to have the height of all Sorts of Apartments that are not so broad as long, they added their length to their breadth, and took half of the sum for their height. The Apartments which were no longer than broad, had in height their breadth, and half their breadth. ART. IV. _Of the Distribution of the Apartments among the Ancients._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 10._] [Sidenote: _Lib. 6. Chap. 3, 4._] The _Romans_ and the _Greeks_ ordered and distributed differently their _Apartments_; for the _Romans_ had their _Courts_ and _Entries_ magnificent: but the _Greeks_ had only a narrow Entrance, through which they passed into a _Peristyle_; this _Entry_ had of one Side a Porter's Lodge, on the other Side the Stables. The _Apartments_ of these two Nations differed in this, the _Apartments_ of the Women were separate from the _Apartments_ of the Men among the _Greeks_; insomuch that they Dined apart. They had likewise particular _Rooms_ reserved for Strangers apart, where they only gave them Lodging, and never treated them above one Day. CHAP. III. _Of things that equally appertain to Publick and Private Buildings._ ARTICLE I. _Of_ Aqueducts. [Sidenote: _Lib. 8. Chap. 6._] In Order to the bringing of Waters to Towns and Cities, the Level must be exactly taken; to the end, it may be known whether the Waters can be brought thither or no. The Ancients to this end made use of an Instrument called _Corobates_, which was directed by a Lead, and by Water, when the Wind hindered them from making use of the Lead. They brought their Water three several ways; _viz._ by _Aqueducts_, by Pipes of Lead, and Pipes baked in a _Potter's_ Furnace. They allowed for the _Channels_ or _Sewers_ of the _Aqueducts_, for every 100 Foot, half a Foot of Declination or Sloping; and if any Hills were in their way, they dug through them, making Vents to give Air at convenient Distances. The Pipes of Lead were at least 9 Foot long; they made them of bended Sheets or Plates, and of different thicknesses, according to the Proportion of the greatness of the Pipes; these Pipes had likewise their necessary Declination or Sloping, and if any Valley was in the way, they made it equal to the Level with a Wall; they likewise made many Vents, to give the Water Air, and to know where to mend the Pipes. The Pipes of _Potter's-Work_, were two Inches thick; they were joyned together with Mortar mixed with Oil, and when they had _Conde_ or _Joynt_ to make, they made use of a red Free Stone which they pierced through, to receive the two Ends of the Pipes. ART. II. _Of Wells and Cisterns._ It being remarkt oftentimes that the Water which is under the Earth hath many bad Qualities, and exhales vapours, which often stifles those which work in the _Wells_, after that they are dug, & the Water begins to gather together. The Ancients had this Precaution, to let a Lamp gently down into it, and if it extinguished it, they took it for an Infallible sign that the Water was bad. The _Cisterns_ were made to receive Rain Water in great Conservatories under Ground, whose Walls on all Sides, and at the bottom were built with Mortar of strong Lime, and Sand, and Pebbles, all well beaten together. They made several Conservatories, and the Water passed from one to another, to the end it might leave all the Dirt in the first and second; They likewise put Salt in their _Cistern-Water_ to make it more subtile. ART. III. _Of_ Machines _for carrying and lifting up great Stones and Burthens._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 6._] _Ctesiphon_ and his Son _Metagenes_, Architects of the Temple of _Ephesus_, invented _Machines_ to carry _great Stones_, out of which _Pillars_ and _Architraves_ were to be made. That which was made to draw the _Pillars_, was but a sort of a Frame as long as the _Pillars_, in the end of which were fastned Pins of Iron, which entred into the ends of the Frame, and served instead of an Axle-tree, the _Pillar_ it self serving for a Wheel: And this had the desired Effect, because of the disposition of the place through which these _Stones_ were to be drawn, which was a flat and level Country. The other _Machine_ for drawing of _Architraves_, was the same Frame which had two Wheels at each end, which supported the _Architrave_; which served instead of an Axle-tree. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 2._] For the raising of great Weights, they had three sorts of _Machines_. The first was composed of three pieces of Wood, which were joyned together at top by a Pin which went through them all; so that there were two of these pieces which were on one side, a little distance one from the other, and the third was opposite to them; The two which were together on the one side, had a Hand-Mill which drew a Rope, which passed within a Truckle with three Pullies, of which that part which had the two Pullies was fastned to the top of the _Machine_, and that which had but one, was fastned to the Weight to be drawn up. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 2._] The second _Machine_ was stronger than the first, because the _Moulin_ had more Pullies, and instead of a _Moulin_ or Hand-Mill, it had a great Wheel, whose Axle-tree drew a Rope which passed through these Pullies, and upon the Wheel there was another Rope twisted, which was drawn by a Wind-glass; sometimes the great Wheel was hollow, so that Men could walk within it, and so turn it. The third had but one long and strong piece of Wood, which was kept up and stayed by Shrowds, as the Mast of a Ship is. By the help of these Shrowds, they bended and turned this piece of Wood where they pleased, drawing the Shrowds fast on the one side, and loosening them on the other. The _Moufl's_ Crane as well those which were fastned to this piece of Wood, as those which were fastned to the VVeight which was to be drawn up, had each of them three ranks of Pullies, which had three in every rank, that three Ropes might go through them, which were not drawn by Hand-Mills, nor by VVheels, but by Men who pulled several at one time at the same Rope: And that this might be done with the more ease, the three Ropes or Cables after having passed the last Pullies of that part of the _Moufle_ which was at the top of the _Machine_; they descended down below, each upon one Pully, which vvas but the height of the Men: this _Machine_ quickly povverfully lifted up the greatest VVeights. ART. IV. _Of_ Machines _for Elevating of Waters._ These _Machines_ were of four sorts. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10._] The first was the _Tympan_, of which there were two sorts; The first elevated a great deal of Water, but not very high, for it only mounted to the Axle-tree of the _Tympan_, which was a great Wheel made of Planks which made two bottoms divided into eight from the Center to the Circumference, each Separation, having an opening half a Foot wide near the Circumference to draw the Water, which being elevated upon the Axle-tree, ran through the Cavities which were hollowed in each Separation. The Second _Machine_, was a Wheel which elevated the Water as high as its Circumference, by the help of several Boxes which were fastned round about, and which poured out the Water into a Reeve as the Wheel, having mounted, began to descend. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 2._] The Third _Machine_ was a Chain with Buckets, as the one mounted, the other descended, being drawn by the Axle-tree. The Fourth _Machine_ was the Vice or _Skrew_, which is attributed to _Archimedes_, though _Vitruvius_ makes no mention of the Inventor. This Vice was made of a piece of VVood, long sixteen times its Diameter: about this piece of Wood was put Obliquely a Hoop of Willow VVood besmeared with Pitch, and it was Conducted by turning from one end of the piece of the Wood to the other: Upon this Hoop others were put so that they were like the Vaulting of a Stair-Case whose ascent goes turning. This being done, this Vice was fastned and strengthned with Planks, which were pitched within, and covered with Iron Rings and Plates without: At the two ends of the piece of Wood, were Pins, which entring into the Suckets, made the _Machine_ capable of Motion. This Vice or Skrew was placed according to the bent or sloping of the Triangle Rectangle of _Pythagoras_. This _Machine_ elevated easily a great quantity of Water, but it could not carry it high. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 2._] The Fifth _Machine_, was the Pump of _Ctesibius_; it was composed of two Bodies of Pumps, in which the Suckets having drawn the VVater when they were pulled up, they both pressed it violently into a Pipe which was fastned at the bottom of the Body of the Pump when they went down. For the VVater by the Impulsion of the Sucket, was forced to enter into these Pipes, because it could not go out by the Openings by which it entred, because of the Suckets which stopped them, these two Pipes were joyned together in a _Tambour_, which had likewise its Suckets, which hindred the VVater from descending into the Bodies of the Pumps, after it had been pressed into the _Tambour_, or _Vase_, which had another Pipe, through which the VVater was forced as high as they pleased, by Impulsion of the Suckets. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 10._] All these _Machines_ were either _moved_ by Strength of Men, or by VVater-Mills, according to the convenience of the place. ART. V. _Of Water-Mills for Grinding of Corn._ [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 10._] _Water-Mills_ were moved by the help of a great VVheel which had many VVings, which were forced by the Current. The Axle-tree of this great VVheel, traversed another VVheel which had Cogs, which made the _Lanterne_ or _Trundle-head_ go, which was placed Horizontally, which was traversed by a Beam of Iron, which entred through above, into an Iron in form of a VVedge, which helped to fasten the Beam in the Mill-stone, above which was the Mill-Hopper, in form of a Funnel. ART. VI. _Of other Hydraulick Machines._ There were many other _Machines_ which moved by the help of the VVater, as _Hour-Glasses_, _Organs_, _Machines_ for Measuring the VVays, and knowing the swiftness or slowness of Sailing. The _Hour-Glasses_ marked the Hours by the help of VVater, which passing slowly, a little hole made at the bottom of a Vessel, and falling into another, in elevating it self insensibly in the Vessel which it filled, raised a piece of Cork, which hanging at one of the ends of a Chain wrapped about an Axle-tree, and which had at the other end a little Bag full of Sand, and a little lighter than the Cork: for this Chain turning, the Axle-tree likewise turned a Pin or Hand, which marked the Hours upon a Dial. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 12._] The _Organs_ played by help of two Suckets, which were pulled up or let down in the Bodies of the Pump. The Suckets pushed the Air with violence into a Funnel reversed in a Copper Coffer half full of VVater, and pressed the Water, and constrained it to ascend round about within the Coffer, which made that its weight in making it re-enter into the Funnel, pushed the Air into the Pipes, and made them Play, producing the same Effects that the Bellows did. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 14._] They measured the way that the Ships make by the help of a little Mill, which was fastned to the Ship, and which turned by the resistance that its VVings found in the VVater when the Ship went forward and the Axle-tree of this Mill had a little Rong or Tooth, which every round pushed forwards one of the Teeth of the great VVheel, which turned another, and that another which turned a Pin or Handle, which marked the number of turnings, that the Mill made, by which means it was easie to take an account of the Perches, and Leagues that the Ship sailed. They made use of the same _Machine_ on the Land, fixing to the Nave of the VVheel of a Coach, a Tooth which made many VVheels be turned as in the above-mentioned _Machine_, at the last of which, was fastned a Pin or Handle, which marked the number of Perches and Leagues. This _Machine_ had likewise a sort of a Counting VVheel, which at every Mile that the Coach went, let a Pibble fall into a Vessel of Brass, to give notice that they had gone a Mile. ART. VII. _Of Machines of War_. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 15._] The _Machines_ of VVar of the Ancients were of three Sorts, for they were made either to Lance, Arrows, such as were the _Scorpions_ or _Javelins_, such as were the _Catapulta's_, or Stones, such as were _Ballista's_ or fiery Darts, such as were the _Pyroboli_, or they were made to beat down the VValls, such as were the battering Rams, and the _Terebra_, or to come covered to the VValls, and so safely Mount the Ramparts, such as were the _Tortoises_ or _Testudo's_, and the Towers of VVood. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 18._] The _Scorpions_ were a sort of great Crossbows, which were made use of to defend the VValls, and which likewise the Assailants made use of in the wooden Towers, to annoy those that defended the VValls. The _Catapulta_, lanced Javelins or Javelots, from 12 to 15 Foot in length, they were made of two Trees, set one against another, like the Masts of a Ship, which were bended in drawing them with a Hand-Mill. These Trees being on a suddain unbent, furiously struck together, and forced violently the Javelin. They were bent the one after the other by the same Cord, which was made of Guts, to the end, that the Master who managed the Engine, might be assured, that the two Trees or Beams were equally bent. He knew it by sounding the Cord when both the Beams were bent, and when the End above was drawn even to the Capital of the _Machine_, where they were stayed by a Pin of Iron, which was driven out by a quick stroke of a Hammer when they unbent it. There was a Cylinder which traversed an excentrical piece, by the help of which they heightned, or let down the End of one of the Beams below, according as the Master of the _Machine_ judged it necessary, for the augmenting or diminishing their bent, which was known by the sound of the Cord, which was alike in both, when they were equally bent. See Table XI. The _Ballista's_ were bended and strung as the _Catapulta's_, but instead of Javelins, they cast great Stones. [Sidenote: _Lib._ 10. _Chap._ 22.] The _Pyroboli_ were _Machines_, which lanced or cast Darts, to vvhich vvas fixed combustible Matter, vvhich vvas kindled vvhen they darted it against _Machines_ of VVar or Shipping. The Ram vvas to beat dovvn Walls and make breaches. It vvas a great Beam headed with Iron; it vvas hung by the middle, and pushed by the Soldiery vvith great violence against the Walls. The _Terebra_ vvas something like the Ram, being a strong Beam pointed vvith Iron, but it vvas sharp pointed, and it made vvay for the Ram, splitting the Stones. [Sidenote: _Lib. 10. Chap. 20._] The _Testudo_ or _Tortoise_, vvere great large and low Towers of Wood, which were rowled upon six or eight Wheels, they were covered with raw Hides to defend them from fire. Their use was to cover them that approached the Walls to undermine them, or beat them with the battering Ram. The Towers of Wood were made to raise the Assailants as high as the Walls, to chace the Besieged away with Arrows and Scorpions, and to lay Bridges from the Towers to the Wall; they were sometimes Thirty Fathoms high, having Twenty Stages. They were covered, as the _Tortoises_ with raw Hides; they had each of them a Hundred Men, which were employed as well to move them, as to annoy the Besieged. _FINIS._ ADVERTISEMENT. _The Figures inserted here are those only which are chiefly necessary to the understanding of_ Vitruvius, _that is to say, those which serve for the comprehending the Rules that Architecture gives for Buildings, now in use. The Figures of other things, of which_ Vitruvius _treats, are omitted, it being enough to give One only, to serve as an Example of each kind_, viz. _one for all Temples, one for all Theatres, and one for all Machines._ THE EXPLICATION Of the FIRST TABLE. This Table contains the seven several sorts of Masonry; A is the first, which was called _Reticulatum_, because it was like the Mashes of Nets; BB is the second, it's called _Insertum_, that is to say, _bound Masonry_, because the Stones are one bound within another, every one being bound with four, two below, and two above: CC is the third sort, which was particular to the _Greeks_; it may be called double binding, for it's not only of Stones of the same course, but of two courses III. D is the fourth, called _Isodomum_, because the Beds or Lays are equal in height. E is the fifth, called _Pseudisodomum_, because they are of an equal heighth. FF, GG, H is the sixth, called _Emplecton_, because it was filled up any way in the middle. FF are the Stones which make the Courses. K is the seventh, which may be called _Compound_, because its Courses are of hewn Stone, and the middle filled up with Rubbish; and these Courses are fasten'd together with Cramp-irons. This Table refers to _pag._ 47. [Illustration: _Plate I._] THE EXPLICATION Of the SECOND TABLE. This Table contains the five sorts of Edifices: AA is the _Pycnostyle_; that is to say, where the Pillars are very close, the Intercolumniation being but of one Diameter, and a half of the Column: BB is the _Systyle_, _viz._ where the Pillars have two Diameters of Intercolumniation: CC is the _Diastyle_, _viz._ where the Pillars are at that distance, that they have for the Intercolumniation three Diameters: DD is the _Areostyle_, where the Pillars are far asunder. There is no certain Proportion; we have given in this Figure four Diameters of Intercolumniation, it may have more: The fifth sort called _Eustyle_, is in the third Table. This Table refers to _pag._ 80. [Illustration: _Plate. II._] THE EXPLICATION Of the THIRD TABLE. This Table contains the Plan and Elevation of the fifth sort of Edifices, called _Eustyle_, _viz._ where the Pillars are distant one from another by more convenient Proportion: Its Intercolumniations have all two Diameters and a quarter, except the Intercolumniations in the middle of the _Face_ before and behind, which have three Diameters. This plan shews the different parts of the ancient Temples: AA, AA, are the Isles or Wings which are _Portico's_, having a rang of Pillars on the one side, and the Wall of the Temple on the other. B is the part called the _Pronaos_ or Porch. C is the part called _Posticum_, _viz._ the hinder part of the Temple. D is that Part called _Cella_, or the Nave or Body of the Temple. This Table relates to _p._ 81, & 117. [Illustration: _Plate III_] THE EXPLICATION Of the FOURTH TABLE. This Table contains the Plan and perspective Elevation of a Temple, called _Hexastyle_ and _Pseudodyptere_, _viz._ Which has six Columns in the _Faces_, before and behind, and which has simple _Portico's_, but which are as large as the two _Portico's_ of the Temples which have them double. This Plan and this Elevation may serve for other Temples, which as to what concerns the essential parts explained in the precedent Table, are like to this here, as are the _Periptere_, the _Diptere_, and the _Hypethre_, which only differ in the number of Columns, or such-like circumstances. [Illustration: _Plate IV._] THE EXPLICATION Of the FIFTH TABLE. This contains the Proportions of the _Tuscan_ Order. AA is the Base of the Column, which has for its height the first Semidiameter of the Column: It's divided into two equal parts; that below is for the Plinth, marked I; that above, marked K, is for the _Thorus_, and for the _Congè_ or _Apophygis_. BB is the Capital, which height is equal to its Base: It's divided into three; the first marked L, is for the Gorge, with the Congè and the Astragal; the second, marked M, is for the _Echinus_ or _quarter-round_; the third, marked N, is for the _Plinthus_ or _Abacus_, called by the French _Tallor_. C is one of the _Faces_ of the _Sabliers_ which serve instead of an Architrave. EE is the under part of the _Sabliers_, which answers to the Diameter on the top of the Column, marked D. F is a Tenon shaped like a Swallows Tayl, which joyns the two _Sabliers_ together. G is the little Wall which serves for a Frize. H is the Cornice. This Table relates to _pag._ 93. [Illustration: _Plate V._] THE EXPLICATION Of the SIXTH TABLE. This contains the Proportion of the _Dorick_ Order; AB is the top of the Shaft of the Column; this top shews the Plan of the two sorts of Channelling or Fluting, which are particular to the _Dorick_ Order. The one half has Channelling or Fluting that is not hollowed, and make only _Flat Faces_ or _Pans_. B is the other half, which has Channelings a little hollowed, _viz._ one quarter of the Circle: They are formed by the help of a Square C, whose sides are equal to every one of the Pans. D E F is the Capital divided into three equal parts. D is for the Gorge; E is for the Echinus, and for the Anulets or Rings; F is for the Abacus; G is the Architrave; H is the Triglyph; I is the Metop; K is the Demi-metop; L is the Cornice; M are the six pendant Drops which are under the Triglyph; N, O are the Pendant Drops which are in the Platfond of the Cornice. This relates to _pag._ 96. [Illustration: _Plate VI._] THE EXPLICATION Of the SEVENTH TABLE. This contains the Proportions of the _Jonick_ Order and the _Attick_ Base: A is the Plinth of the _Attick_ Base, which is the third part of the whole Base, of which the upper part is the fourth part of what remains after the Plinth is taken; the inferiour part is half of what remains, and the other half is the _Scotia_. C D is the Plinth of the Jonick Base, which is the third part of the height of the whole Base. E is the Thorus which contains three parts of seven, into which is divided what remains, the other four being for the two _Scotia's_, and the two Astragals, which are betwixt the Thorns and the Plinth. F is the Capital, whose Proportion is explained in the eighth Table. G, H, I, K is the Architrave, which has four parts, _viz._ the Face marked G; the second marked H; the third marked I, and the _Cymatium_ or _Simaise_, marked K; L is the Frise. M, N, O, P, Q is the Cornice. M is the first _Cymatium_; N is the Dentil; O is the second _Cymatium_; P is the Crown with its little _Cymatium_ or _Simaise_. This Table relates to _pag._ 101. [Illustration: _Plate VII_] The EXPLICATION Of the EIGHTH TABLE. This contains the Proportions of the Ionick Capital, of which only half is seen here: A B is the half of the breadth of the Abacus, which is regulated according to the breadth of the bottom of the Column, of which one half is marked B 18; for the bottom of the Column being divided into 18, 19 are allowed to the Abacus: A C is the _Retreat_ which must be made of the Corner A, of the Abacus inwardly, to draw the Line C D, which must regulate the _Eye_ of the _Volute_ over which it must cross as it passes. To make this _Retreat_ we must take one part and a half of twelve, into which is divided the height or thickness, E F, of the whole Capital, which height is equal to half the breadth of the Abacus. This height, marked C D, is divided into nine parts and a half, of which one and a half is given to the _Abacus_, and four and a half from the Abacus to the middle of the _Eye_, which is traversed by the line G H; the Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, mark the four Centers of the first four quarters of the Volute; the four second quarters, and the four third (for the Volutte has twelve) are taken in the Diagonal 1, 3, and 2, 4. H, I, is the Astragal at the top of the Pillar which answers the _Eye_ of the Volute. K K is the Egg or _Echinus_; L is the Axis of the Volutes; M M is the ceinture of the lateral part of the Volutes. This relates to _pag._ 103. [Illustration: _Plate VIII._] THE EXPLICATION Of the NINTH TABLE. This contains the Proportions of the _Corinthian_ Capital, which makes all the distinction betwixt _Jonick_ and the _Corinthian Order_, all other Members, according to _Vitruvius_, being the same. A is the _Corinthian_ Capital, which has for its height only the Diameter of the bottom of the Column; B is the Capital of the Pantheon, which is higher by a seventh part, _viz._ the thickness of the Abacus; C D is the height of the Capital divided into seven, of which the Abacus has one, the Voluta's and Foliages and Stalks two, the Foliage in the Range above two, and that in the Range below two. To have the breadth of the Abacus, we must give to its Diagonal E F the double of its height C D. To have the greatness and just Proportion of its bending H, we must divide the breadth of the Abacus E G into nine parts, and give it one. At the bottom of this Table is represented the Herb _Branbursine_, which grows round about the Basket, which is covered with a Tile, from which _Vitruvius_ says the Sculptor _Callimachus_ took the first Model of the _Corinthian_ Capital. This Table relates to _p._ 108. [Illustration: _Plate IX._] THE EXPLICATION OF THE TENTH TABLE. This contains the Plan and Elevation of the Theatre of the _Romans_. AA is the Portico which went round the Theatre below. BB are the Entries through which they parted from the Portico's into the _Orchestra_ C. KDEDK the Pulpitum or Stage; MM the landing-place which separated the Degrees above from those below: LM the Stairs which are between the degrees. NN the Portico above in the Theatre. PP the Passage under the degrees. TT the Stairs by which they mount to the Portico's above. KIHIK the Scene. H the royal Gate. II the Gates of Strangers. KK the Gates in returning. OOO the Machines used in changing the Scenes. GG the part of the Theatre behind. This Table relates to _p._ 125. [Illustration: _Plate X._] THE EXPLICATION Of the ELEVENTH TABLE. This contains the Explication of the Catapulta, which was a Machine of War used by the Ancients to dart Javelins of an extraordinary bigness. A are the two Beams one against the other, and joyn'd, which after having been drawn, pushed the Javelin with great force when they were unbent. There is one of these Beams, which is represented as being joyned to the Capital of the Machine by an Iron Pin, the other ready to be joyned when the Master of the Machine sounds the Cord with his right Hand, shall have it heightned or let down, the end marked C, as much as is necessary, to give it an equal Bent to the other. This is done by the help of an excentrical piece, which is traversed by a Cylinder, which the Master turns with a Laver, which he holds in his left Hand. D, E E is the Capital of the Catapulta. EE are the holes through which the Rope passeth to draw the Beams. F is the end of one of the Beams represented in great. G is one of the Pins which travers'd a round Eye, by the help of which the Beam is joyned to the Capital. H is the Cylinder which traverses the excentrical piece I. This Plate relates to _pag._ 155. [Illustration: Plate XI.] _Explication of the Hardest Terms in_ Architecture. A _Abacus_, from [Greek: abax]; which signifies a square Trencher: In French it's called _Talloir_; it's that quadrangular Piece commonly accompanied with a _Cymatium_, and serves instead of a _Drip_ or _Corona_ to the Capital. It supports the nether _Face_ of the _Architrave_ and whole _Trabeation_. In the _Corinthian_ and the _Compound_ Orders, its Corners are called the _Horns_, the intermediate _Sweep_ and _Curvature_; the Arch, which has commonly a _Rose_ carved in the middle. _Acroteria_ or _Acroter's_ from [Greek: akron], _Summa pars_; they may be properly called _Pinnacles_, for _Pins_ and _Battlements_ were made sometimes more towring; but when they stood in _Ranges_ with _Rails_ and _Balisters_: Upon flat Building they still retained their Name, with this only difference, that such as were placed between the _Angular_ Points, were stiled the _Median_, or middle _Acroteria_. _Annulets_, are little square Parts turned round in the _Corinthian Capital_, under the _Quarter-Round_, called _Echinus_. _Ante_, is a square Pillaster, which the Ancients placed at the corners of the Walls of the Temples. _Amphiprostyle_ from [Greek: amphi], _Circa_, and [Greek: stylos]; _Columna_ was a sort of a Temple which had four Columns in the Front of the Temple, and four in the Face behind. _Architrave_, from a Mungril Compound of two Languages, [Greek: archê] _Principalis_, and _Trabs_; it's the first Member of that which we call _Entablature_; in Chimnies the _Architrave_ is the _mantle_; over the _Jambs_ of the Doors and Lintels of Windows, it's called the _Hyperthron_, from the Greek [Greek: hyper], _super_ and [Greek: thyra], _Janua_ or _Ostium_. _Astragal_, from the Greek word [Greek: astragalos] which signifies the _Vertebræ_, or little Joints in the Neck or Heel; hence the French call it _Talon_, or the Heel itself: It's a Member of _Architecture_ joyned to _Bases_, _Cornices_, _Architraves_, _&c._ it's round like a Ring, and therefore it's called by the Italians _Tondino_. _Attiq;_ signifies after the manner of the City of _Athens_. In _Vitruvius_ it's the Name of the _Basis_ which the Moderns have given to the _Dorick_ Pillar. We call _Attiq;_ in our Buildings, a little Order placed upon another much greater; for instead of Pillars, this little Order has commonly nothing but Pillasters of a particular Fashion and Order, which we call _Attiq;_ _Apophyges_, vide _Congé_. B _Basilica_, from the Greek word [Greek: Basileus] _Rex_ or King among the Ancients. It was a great Hall which had two Ranges of Pillars, and had two Isles or Wings, upon which were Galleries: These Halls, which at first were made for the Palaces of Kings, were afterwards turned into Courts of Justice, and after that into Churches; which Form has always been observed. _Ballustre_ is the lateral part of the _Jonick_ Capital. Our Workmen have given it that name, because it somewhat resembles a _Balluster_. C _Chanel_, in the _Ionick_ Capital, is that part which is under the _Abacus_, and lies upon _Echinus_ or Egg, and which has its _Contours_ or Turnings on every side to make the Voluta's. _Cariatides_ are Statues of Women, which serve instead of Pillars. _Cincture_ is that part which makes the middle of the _Ballustre_ of the _Ionick Voluta_. _Congé_ in French, in Latin _Apophyges_, from the Greek word [Greek: apophygê] because that part of the Pillar taking as it were a rise, seems to emerge and fly from the _Basis_ like the _Proceltus_ of a Bone in a mans Leg, In short, it's no more than the _Rings_ or _Ferils_ heretofore used at the Extremities of wooden Pillars, to preserve them from splitting, afterwards imitated in Stone-work. _Corona_ is properly that part of the Cornice which the French call _Larmer_ or _Drip_, because it defends the rest of the Work from Wind and Weather: It is often taken by _Vitruvius_ for all the Cornice. _Corona_, called the _Plat_ or _flat Crown_, is a particular Member in the _Dorick_ Gate; it's made by so extraordinary enlargement of the _Face_ of the _Corona_ or _Drip_, that it has six times more Breadth than Projecture. This sort of _Corona_ is no where found among the Ancients, but only in the Writings of _Vitruvius_. _Cymatium_, from [Greek: kymaton], which signifies a rouling _Wave_; is a Member of Architecture, of which the one half is _Convex_ and the other _Concave_, the one being hollow above, and the other below. There are two sorts of them, the one called the _Gola_ or _Throats_, or the _Doucine_, whose advanced part is _Concave_; and the other is called by the French the _Talon_ or Heel, whose advanced part is hollow below, as the first is above. D _Die_ is the middle of the Pedestals, _viz._ that which is between their _Basis_ and their _Cornice_. It's so called, because it's for the most part of a Cubit form, as _Die's_ are that are used in play. _Dentils_, or Teeth, is a Member of the _Jonick_ Cornice, which is square, and cut out at convenient distances, which gives it the form of a Set or Gang of Teeth. _Diastyle_, from [Greek: dia] and [Greek: stylos]: _Columna_ is a sort of Edifice where the Pillars are distanced one from another the breadth of 3 Diameters of the Pillar. _Diptere_, from [Greek: dis] and [Greek: pteron]: _Ala_ signifies that which has a double Isle or Wing; the Ancients called so the Temples, which were surrounded with two Ranges of Pillars, for there two _Ranges_ made two _Portico's_, which they called _Wings_, we _Isles_, from the French word _Ailes_, which signifies _Wings_, because as Wings are on the sides of Birds, so these of Edifices. E _Echinus_, from [Greek: apo tou echinou] a _Hedg-hog_; it is a Member of Architecture, which we call a _Quarter-round_; it has its name from the roughness of its Carving, resembling the prickly Rhind of the Chesnut, and not unlike the Hedg-hog; it's commonly next to the _Abacus_, and carved with Ovals and Darts, sometimes called Eggs and Anchors, because these pretended Chesnuts are cut in an Oval form. _Entablature_ signifies properly the Flooring or Lofting with Boards; it comes from the Latin word _Tabulatum_. In Architecture it's that part which is composed of the _Architrave_, _Frise_, and _Cornice_, for in effect this part is the extream part of the Flooring, which is supported by Pillars, or by a Wall if it have no Pillars. _Eye_ is the middle of the _Jonick_ Volute, which is cut in the form of a little Rose. _Eurythmie_, from [Greek: eu] _bene_, and [Greek: arithmos] _numera_: it signifies Proportion; it's taken in its general signification in _Architecture_; for in its particular signification it signifies the true measure that is observed in Dancing after Musick. _Eustyle_, from [Greek: _eu_] _bene_, and [Greek: stylos] a _Pillar_; its the Order where Pillars are rightly placed, the Intercolumniations being two Diameters and a quarter. F _Face_ is a Member of Architecture, which has a great Breadth and a small Projecture; it's in _Architraves_. _Filet_ is a little square streight Member. _Fresco_, and to paint in _Fresco_ or _Freth_, is an Italian Phrase, and it signifies the Painting which is made upon the Plaistering before it be dry. _Frise_ is that part which is between the _Architrave_ and the _Cornice_. G _Gnomonick_ is the Art of making Sun-dials; it's derived from the Greek [Greek: gnômôn], which signifies that which shews a thing, as the Cock or Pin of the Dyal shews what a clock it is. _Gorge_, or the _Gule_ or _Neck_, is the narrowest part of the _Dorick Capital_, which is between the _Astragal_, above the Shaft of the Pillar and the Annulets. _Gutte_, or _Drops_, are little parts, which to the number of six are put below every _Triglyph_ in the _Architrave_ of the _Dorick Order_. H _Hydraulick_, from the Greek [Greek: hydôr]; which signifies Water, is an Engine that plays by the help of Water, especially where there are Pipes and Flutes. _Hypethre_, from [Greek: hyposuo], and [Greek: aithêr] æther; signifies a Building whose inside is exposed to the Rain and open Air. The Ancients called so all Temples that had no Roof. _Hyperthyron_, for [Greek: hyper] _super_, and [Greek: thyra] _Janua_, a Gate or Door: It signifies that which is above the Gate; it's a large Table, which is upon the _Dorick_ Gates in the manner of a _Frise_. I _Ichnographie_, from [Greek: iknos] _vestigium_, and [Greek: grapha] _Scribo_, or _Insculpo_; which properly signifies the Figure that the Plane of the Foot impresses upon the Earth. By it in Architecture is understood that which is commonly called the _Plan_ of the _Edifice_. L _Lacuner_, or Platfond, is the _Flooring_ or _Planching_ above the _Portico's_. _Laconicum_ was a dry Stove to sweat in: It was so called, because it was much used by the _Lacedemonians_. _Larmier_ or _Drip_, vide _Corona_. M _Metope_, from [Greek: meti] and [Greek: hopê], _foramen_, _intervallum_. Signifies the Front; it's the Name of the empty spaces in _Freeze_ of the _Dorick Order_, between the Triglyphs. _Modillion_ signifies in _Italian_ a little Model, a little Measure: It's that part which is so often repeated in the _Corinthian_ and _Compound Cornice_, which supports the Projecture of the _Larmier_ or _Drip_. This part is called the little _Model_ in respect of the great Model, which is the Diameter of the Pillar; for as the Proportion of an Edifice depends on the _Diameter_ of the _Pillar_, so the greatness of the Modellians, their number, and their space or distances, must have a just Proportion or true Relation to the whole Fabrick. _Module_ or _Model_ is a measure that is made use of to regulate all the Proportion of the _Fabrick_: In the _Dorick Order_ it's half the _Diameter_ of the Pillar; in other Orders the Module is the whole _Diameter_. _Monoptere_, from [Greek: monos] _solus_, and [Greek: pteron] _ala_; is that which has but one Wing or Isle; it was a sort of a round Temple, whose Roof was supported by Pillars only. _Mutuli_, from [Greek: mytilos], which signifies defect, as being made thinner, and more abated above than below. It's a sort of a Modellion in the Cornice of the _Dorick_ Order. N _Noyan_ is the middle part of the Flooring of the Ancients. They made it with Ciment, which they put betwixt a Lay or Bed of Pibbles, cimented with Mortar made of Lime and Sand. O _Orchestra_, from [Greek: orcheomai] _salto_; signified the place where they danced; it was the lowest place in the Theatre, which was between the _scene_, _viz._ the place where the Players acted, and the Seats where the Spectators sate. It was in this place where the Greek Comedians were wont to dance. _Order_, those Fabricks are said to be of different Orders, when the Proportion which is between the thickness of the _Pillars_ and their height, with all other things which are required to this Proportion, are different. _Ornaments_, _Vitruvius_ so calls the _Architrave_, _Frise_, and _Cornice_. _Oval_, vide _Echinus_. P _Parascenium_, from [Greek: para] and [Greek: skenê] _tentonum_, is the back part of the Theatre or Scene. _Periptere_, from [Greek: peri] _circum_, and [Greek: pteron] _ala_, which has a Wing round about. This was a sort of a Temple, which had Pillars on all the four Parts, which was different from the _Prostyle_, which had only Pillars before, or In the _Front_, and from the _Amphiprostyle_, which had only Pillars before and behind, and none on the sides. _Peristyle_, from [Greek: peri] _circum_, and [Greek: stylos] _columna_; signifies that which has Pillars round about: It differs from the _Periptere_ in this, that the Pillars of the _Peristyle_ are within, as it were round about a Court, and those of the _Periptere_ are without, as in the Temples of the Ancients. _Pedestal_, is that part which supports the Pillar. _Pied-droit_ is a square Pillar, which is in part within the Wall. _Pillaster_ is the same, with this Difference; that the Pillaster has a _Base_ and a _Capital_, as a _Pillar_ hath, which the _Pied-droit_ has not. _Platt-band_ is a square Member, which terminates the _Architrave_ of the _Dorick Order_, and passes immediately under the Triglyphs. _Plinthus_ signifies a Brick or square Tile. It's in Architecture taken for that square Member which makes the Foundation of the Base of the Pillar. _Posticum_ is the back Gate of a Fabrick. _Portico_ is a long place covered with a Floor or Flatfond, supported by Pillars. _Proscenium_, from [Greek: pro] and [Greek: skeninê] _tentorium_; it signifies the forepart of the Scene; it was an Edifice as high as the last Portico of the Theatre, whose Face or Front was adorned with many Ranges of Pillars. _Prostyle_ from [Greek: pro] and [Greek: stylos], signifies that which has Pillars before only. This was one sort of the Temples of the Ancients. _Pseudodiptere_, [Greek: pseudês] _mendax_, [Greek: dis] _bis_, and [Greek: pteron] _ala_; signifies a _false Diptere_. This was a kind of a Temple among the Ancients, which had _Porticoes_ round about, which were every one as large as the double _Portico_ of the _Diptere_. _Pseudoperiptere_, from [Greek: pseudês] _mendax_, and [Greek: peri], and [Greek: pteron] _ala_, was a sort of a Temple, where the Side-Pillars were part in the Wall of the inner side of the Temple, which was enlarged sufficiently to enclose within the space which was allowed the Porticoes of the Periptere. _Pulpit_ was the place upon which the Comedians acted, which we now call the Stage. _Picnostyle_, from [Greek: pyknos] _dentus_, and [Greek: stylos] _columna_; signifies a Building where the Pillars were very close one to another; so that the _Intercolumniation_ had but a _Diameter_ and a half of the Pillar. R _Rudus_ was a sort of gross Mortar, which was made use of for smoothing, and equally filling and levelling the Superfices of the Walls, before the fine Plaister was laid on: It was likewise made use of for the second _Bed_ or _Lay_ of the Flooring. S _Scene_ signifies a Tabernacle, Tent, or Pavillion, from the Greek [Greek: skenê]. It was in the Theatre of the Ancients a great _Face_ or Front of Building, adjoyned with Pillars and Statues, which had three great Openings, in which were Pictures in Perspective, which represented the Lodgings where the Tragedians and Comedians dwelt. _Sabliere_ is a piece of Wood as long as a Beam, but not so thick. _Scotia_, from [Greek: skotos] _tenebræ_, _Darkness_, is a Member of Architecture, hollowed as a Demi-channel: It's particularly affected in the Bases where it's placed, between the Torus and the Astragals; it's sometimes put under the _Drip_, in the Cornice of the _Dorick_ Order. _Statumen_ signifies generally whatsoever is made use of to support any thing in Architecture; it is Mortar mixt with Pibbles, which served for the first Lay or Bed in Flooring. _Systyle_, from [Greek: syn] _con_, and [Greek: stylos] _columna_; signifies building where the Pillars seem to be joyned together, for the _Intercolumniation_ is but of two Diameters of the Pillars. T _Torus_ is a Member in the Base which is round, in the form of a great Ring; it comes from the Latin word _Torus_, which signifies a Bed. _Tringle_ is a little square Member, which is directly upon every _Triglyph_, under the Platt-band of the _Architrave_, from whence hang down the _Guttæ_, or pendant Drops in the _Dorick Order_. _Triglyph_, from [Greek: tris] _ter_, and [Greek: glyphos] _sculptura_; because it's divided into three parts, and engraved, it is a Member in the Freeze of the Dorick Order, directly upon every Pillar, and in certain spaces in the _Intercolumniations_. _Tympan_ signifies a Drum; it's that part of the bottom of the Frontons which answers the naked of the Freeze; it is triangular, and placed upon the Cornice of the Entablature, and covered over again with two other Cornices which slope a little. V _Volute_ signifies wreathed, and turned about from _Volvendo_; it's a part of the Capitals of the _Ionick_, _Corinthian_, and _Compound Orders_, which represents the bark of a Tree twisted and turned into a Spiral line. X _Xyste_, from the Greek [Greek: zytos], which signifies scraped; it was the place where the Wrestlers exercised; it was so called because they made their skins be scraped and rubbed smooth, to make the Sweat fall, and to make their Bodies more slippery, that their Adversaries might have the less hold of them when they closed. To the Reader. _Abridgments of_ Vitruvius _have been formerly printed, but none of them have followed the design which_ Philebert de l'Orme _has given in his Third Book: He desires that in abridging_ Vitruvius _the matters which this Author treats of confusedly should be put into order, and that the things belonging to the same Subject, which are found dispersed in divers places, should be collected together into one Chapter. This Method, which the most part of the eminent Writers have neglected, has been carefully observed in this Treatise, it serving very much to the better apprehending and retaining the things treated of. We have been exact to put in nothing that is not taken out of_ Vitruvius, _to which end the_ Book _and_ Chapter _of his Works_ are _all along quoted in the Margin; nothing being added, but some few lines here and there, to continue the Discourse, and render it more clear: Notwithstanding which precautions, some things may possibly still remain obscure, in which case the Reader must have Recourse to the whole Works of_ Vitruvius, _where he will find all necessary Explanation._ _This little Treatise is not only necessary for those who begin the study of Architecture, but will be also of great use to even Masters themselves; for it is not to be doubted, that_ Vitruvius _being so great a Master in this Art, his Authority, together with that of all the Ancients, which is included in his Works, must be capable of instructing the_ Apprentices, _and confirming the Masters, and thereby establish the good Maxims and certain Rules of Architecture._ _Advertisement concerning this Translation._ This Abridgment having been very well received in French, we have ventured to put it in English, and doubt not but it will be as acceptable to our Nation, who are allowed to be as competent Judges of this Art as any. The Translation is very exact; the Cutts altogether as well, if not better, than in the French; and in the Table of the Explication of the Terms used in Architecture, we have added the Etymology and Derivation of them, which is not in the French. 
29759	----	_ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY_ _OF ALL AGES_ ARCHITECTURE CLASSIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN BY PROFESSOR T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. AND JOHN SLATER, B.A., F.R.I.B.A. [Illustration: THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS, AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES, _circa_ B.C. 438.] _ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY_ ARCHITECTURE CLASSIC AND EARLY CHRISTIAN BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. _Professor of Architecture, University Coll. London_ AND JOHN SLATER, B.A., F.R.I.B.A. [Illustration: ATRIUM OF A ROMAN MANSION.] LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET 1882. [_All rights reserved._] LONDON. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. PREFACE. This handbook is intended to give such an outline of the Architecture of the Ancient World, and of that of Christendom down to the period of the Crusades, as, without attempting to supply the minute information required by the professional student, may give a general idea of the works of the great building nations of Antiquity and the Early Christian times. Its chief object has been to place information on the subject within the reach of those persons of literary or artistic education who desire to become in some degree acquainted with Architecture. All technicalities which could be dispensed with have been accordingly excluded; and when it has been unavoidable that a technical word or phrase should occur, an explanation has been added either in the text or in the glossary; but as this volume and the companion one on Gothic and Renaissance Architecture are, in effect, two divisions of the same work, it has not been thought necessary to repeat in the glossary given with this part the words explained in that prefixed to the other. In treating so very wide a field, it has been felt that the chief prominence should be given to that great sequence of architectural styles which form the links of a chain connecting the architecture of modern Europe with the earliest specimens of the art. Egypt, Assyria, and Persia combined to furnish the foundation upon which the splendid architecture of the Greeks was based. Roman architecture was founded on Greek models with the addition of Etruscan construction, and was for a time universally prevalent. The break-up of the Roman Empire was followed by the appearance of the Basilican, the Byzantine, and the Romanesque phases of Christian art; and, later on, by the Saracenic. These are the styles on which all mediæval and modern European architecture has been based, and these accordingly have furnished the subjects to which the reader's attention is chiefly directed. Such styles as those of India, China and Japan, which lie quite outside this series, are noticed much more briefly; and some matters--such, for example, as prehistoric architecture--which in a larger treatise it would have been desirable to include, have been entirely left out for want of room. In treating each style the object has not been to mention every phase of its development, still less every building, but rather to describe the more prominent buildings with some approach to completeness. It is true that much is left unnoticed, for which the student who wishes to pursue the subject further will have to refer to the writings specially devoted to the period or country. But it has been possible to describe a considerable number of typical examples, and to do so in such a manner as, it is hoped, may make some impression on the reader's mind. Had notices of a much greater number of buildings been compressed into the same space, each must have been so condensed that the volume, though useful as a catalogue for reference, would have, in all probability, become uninteresting, and consequently unserviceable to the class of readers for whom it is intended. As far as possible mere matters of opinion have been excluded from this handbook. A few of the topics which it has been necessary to approach are subjects on which high authorities still more or less disagree, and it has been impossible to avoid these in every instance; but, as far as practicable, controverted points have been left untouched. Controversy is unsuited to the province of such a manual as this, in which it is quite sufficient for the authors to deal with the ascertained facts of the history which they have to unfold. It is not proposed here to refer to the authorities for the various statements made in these pages, but to this rule it is impossible to avoid making one exception. The writers feel bound to acknowledge how much they, in common with all students of the art, are indebted to the patient research, the profound learning, and the admirable skill in marshalling facts displayed by Mr. Fergusson in his various writings. Had it been possible to devote a larger space to Eastern architecture, Pagan and Mohammedan, the indebtedness to him, in a field where he stands all but alone, must of necessity have been still greater. The earlier chapters of this volume were chiefly written by Mr. Slater, who very kindly consented to assist in the preparation of it; but I am of course, as editor, jointly responsible with him for the contents. The Introduction, Chapters V. to VII., and from Chapter X. to the end, have been written by myself: and if our work shall in any degree assist the reader to understand, and stimulate him to admire, the architecture of the far-off past; above all, if it enables him to appreciate our vast indebtedness to Greek art, and in a lesser degree to the art of other nations who have occupied the stage of the world, the aim which the writers have kept in view will not have been missed. T. ROGER SMITH. _University College, London._ _May, 1882._ [Illustration: FRIEZE FROM CHURCH AT DENKENDORF.] CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. Pyramids. Tombs. Temples. Analysis of Buildings. 14 CHAPTER III. WEST ASIATIC ARCHITECTURE. Babylonian. Assyrian. Persian. Analysis of Buildings. 43 CHAPTER IV. ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE. Hindu. Chinese and Japanese. 64 CHAPTER V. GREEK ARCHITECTURE. Buildings of the Doric Order. 80 CHAPTER VI. Buildings of the Ionic and Corinthian Orders. 102 CHAPTER VII. Analysis of Greek Architecture. The Plan. The Walls. The Roof. The Openings. The Columns. The Ornaments. Architectural Character. 117 CHAPTER VIII. ETRUSCAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. Historical and General Sketch. 138 CHAPTER IX. The Buildings of the Romans. Basilicas. Theatres and Amphitheatres. Baths (Thermæ). Bridges and Aqueducts. Commemorative Monuments. Domestic Architecture. 147 CHAPTER X. Analysis of Roman Architecture. The Plan. The Walls. The Roofs. The Openings. The Columns. The Ornaments. Architectural Character. 182 CHAPTER XI. EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. Basilicas in Rome and Italy. 198 CHAPTER XII. BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 210 CHAPTER XIII. ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 222 CHAPTER XIV. CHRISTIAN ROUND-ARCHED ARCHITECTURE. Analysis of Basilican, Byzantine, and Romanesque. 240 CHAPTER XV. MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE. Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Sicily and Spain, Persia and India. 252 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS, AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES, _circa_ B.C. 438. _Frontispiece_ ATRIUM OF A ROMAN MANSION. (_on title-page_) FRIEZE FROM CHURCH AT DENKENDORF. x ROCK-CUT TOMB AT MYRA, IN LYCIA. IMITATION OF TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN STONE. xviii THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. xxiv 1. OPENING SPANNED BY A LINTEL. ARCH OF THE GOLDSMITHS, ROME. 3 2. OPENING SPANNED BY A SEMICIRCULAR ARCH. ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT POLA. 4 3. OPENINGS SPANNED BY POINTED ARCHES. INTERIOR OF ST. FRONT, PÉRIGUEUX, FRANCE. 5 4. TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA. RESTORED ACCORDING TO ADLER. 8 5. PART OF THE EXTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM, ROME. 10 6. TIMBER ARCHITECTURE. CHURCH AT BORGUND. 12 7. AN EGYPTIAN CORNICE. 14 8. SECTION ACROSS THE GREAT PYRAMID (OF CHEOPS OR SUPHIS). 17 9. ASCENDING GALLERY IN THE GREAT PYRAMID. 19 10. THE SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF CEPHREN AT GIZEH. 19 11. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE KING'S CHAMBER IN THE GREAT PYRAMID. 19 12. IMITATION OF TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN STONE, FROM A TOMB AT MEMPHIS. 21 13. IMITATION OF TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN STONE, FROM A TOMB AT MEMPHIS. 21 14. PLAN AND SECTION OF THE TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN. 23 15. ROCK-CUT FAÇADE OF THE TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN. 24 16. GROUND-PLAN OF THE TEMPLE AT KARNAK. 26 17. THE HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK, SHOWING THE CLERESTORY. 27 18. ENTRANCE TO AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE, SHOWING THE PYLONS. 27 19. PLAN OF THE TEMPLE AT EDFOU. 30 20. EXAMPLE OF ONE OF THE MAMMISI AT EDFOU. 30 21. GROUND-PLAN OF THE ROCK-CUT TEMPLE AT IPSAMBOUL. 31 22. SECTION OF THE ROCK-CUT TEMPLE AT IPSAMBOUL. 31 23. EGYPTIAN COLUMN WITH LOTUS BUD CAPITAL. 33 24. EGYPTIAN COLUMN WITH LOTUS FLOWER CAPITAL. 33 25. PALM CAPITAL. 34 26. SCULPTURED CAPITAL. 34 27. ISIS CAPITAL FROM DENDERAH. 35 28. FANCIFUL COLUMN FROM PAINTED DECORATION AT THEBES. 35 29. CROWNING CORNICE AND BEAD. 36 30. PAINTED DECORATION FROM THEBES. 42 31. SCULPTURED ORNAMENT AT NINEVEH. 43 32. PALACE AT KHORSABAD. BUILT BY KING SARGON ABOUT 710 B.C. 48 33. PAVEMENT FROM KHOYUNJIK. 51 34. PROTO-IONIC COLUMN FROM ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE. 53 34a. PROTO-IONIC CAPITAL FROM ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE. 53 34b. PROTO-CORINTHIAN CAPITAL FROM ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE. 53 35. TOMB OF CYRUS. 54 35a. GENERAL PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS AT PERSEPOLIS. 56 35b. COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS--EAST AND WEST PORTICOES. 58 36. COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS--NORTH PORTICO. 58 37. THE ROCK-CUT TOMB OF DARIUS. 60 38. SCULPTURED ORNAMENT AT ALLAHABAD. 64 39. DAGOBA FROM CEYLON. 66 40. CHAITYA NEAR POONA. 68 41. THE KYLAS AT ELLORA. A ROCK-CUT MONUMENT. 69 42. PLAN OF THE KYLAS AT ELLORA. 70 43. VIMANA FROM MANASARA. 71 44. BRACKET CAPITAL. 73 45. COLUMN FROM AJUNTA. 73 46. COLUMN FROM ELLORA. 73 47. COLUMN FROM AJUNTA. 73 48. A SMALL PAGODA. 76 49. GREEK HONEYSUCKLE ORNAMENT. 80 50. PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE IN ANTIS. 82 50a. PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE. 83 51. ANCIENT GREEK WALL OF UNWROUGHT STONE FROM SAMOTHRACE. 86 52. PLAN OF THE TREASURY OF ATREUS AT MYCENÆ. 86 52a. SECTION OF THE TREASURY OF ATREUS AT MYCENÆ. 86 53. GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM SELINUS. 87 53a. GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM THE THESEUM. 87 53b. GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM SAMOTHRACE. 87 54. THE RUINS OF THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS. 89 55. PLAN OF THE PARTHENON. 90 56. THE ROOF OF A GREEK DORIC TEMPLE, SHOWING THE MARBLE TILES. 91 56a. SECTION OF THE GREEK DORIC TEMPLE AT PÆSTUM. AS RESTORED BY BÖTTICHER. 92 57. THE GREEK DORIC ORDER FROM THE THESEUM. 93 58. PLAN OF A GREEK DORIC COLUMN. 94 59. THE FILLETS UNDER A GREEK DORIC CAPITAL. 94 60. CAPITAL OF A GREEK DORIC COLUMN FROM ÆGINA, WITH COLOURED DECORATION. 95 61. SECTION OF THE ENTABLATURE OF THE GREEK DORIC ORDER. 96 62. PLAN, LOOKING UP, OF PART OF A GREEK DORIC PERISTYLE. 96 63. DETAILS OF THE TRIGLYPH. 97 64. DETAILS OF THE MUTULES. 97 65. ELEVATION AND SECTION OF THE CAPITAL OF A GREEK ANTA, WITH COLOURED DECORATION. 99 66. PALMETTE AND HONEYSUCKLE. 102 67. SHAFT OF AN IONIC COLUMN, SHOWING THE FLUTES. 103 68. IONIC CAPITAL. FRONT ELEVATION. 103 69. IONIC CAPITAL. SIDE ELEVATION. 103 70. THE IONIC ORDER. FROM PRIENE, ASIA MINOR. 105 71. THE IONIC ORDER. FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM, ATHENS. 106 72. NORTH-WEST VIEW OF THE ERECHTHEIUM, IN THE TIME OF PERICLES. 107 73. PLAN OF THE ERECHTHEIUM. 108 74. IONIC BASE FROM THE TEMPLE OF THE WINGLESS VICTORY (NIKÈ APTEROS). 108 75. IONIC BASE MOULDINGS FROM PRIENE. 108 76. THE CORINTHIAN ORDER. FROM THE MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES AT ATHENS. 111 77. CORINTHIAN CAPITAL FROM THE MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES. 112 78. MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES, AS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES. 113 79. CAPITAL OF AN ANTA FROM MILETUS. SIDE VIEW. 114 80. RESTORATION OF THE GREEK THEATRE OF SEGESTA. 115 81. CAPITAL OF AN ANTA FROM MILETUS. 117 82. GREEK DOORWAY, SHOWING CORNICE. 123 83. GREEK DOORWAY. FRONT VIEW. (FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM.) 123 84. THE ACANTHUS LEAF AND STALK. 128 85. THE ACANTHUS LEAF. 129 86. METOPE FROM THE PARTHENON. CONFLICT BETWEEN A CENTAUR AND ONE OF THE LAPITHÆ. 130 87. MOSAIC FROM THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS, OLYMPIA. 131 88. SECTION OF THE PORTICO OF THE ERECHTHEIUM. 132 89. PLAN OF THE PORTICO OF THE ERECHTHEIUM, LOOKING UP. 132 90. CAPITAL OF ANTÆ FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM. 133 91-96. GREEK ORNAMENTS IN RELIEF. 134 97-104. GREEK ORNAMENTS IN RELIEF. 135 105-110. GREEK ORNAMENTS IN COLOUR. 136 111-113. EXAMPLES OF HONEYSUCKLE ORNAMENT. 137 114. COMBINATION OF THE FRET, THE EGG AND DART, THE BEAD AND FILLET, AND THE HONEYSUCKLE. 137 116-120. EXAMPLES OF THE FRET. 137 121. ELEVATION OF AN ETRUSCAN TEMPLE (RESTORED FROM DESCRIPTIONS ONLY). 138 122. SEPULCHRE AT CORNETO. 140 123. THE CLOACA MAXIMA. 142 124. "INCANTADA" IN SALONICA. 147 125. THE IONIC ORDER FROM THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNA VIRILIS, ROME. 148 126. ROMAN-CORINTHIAN TEMPLE AT NÎMES (MAISON CARRÉE). PROBABLY OF THE TIME OF HADRIAN. 150 127. GROUND-PLAN OF THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. 151 128. THE CORINTHIAN ORDER FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. 152 129. THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. PLAN, LOOKING UP, AND SECTION OF PART OF THE PERISTYLE. 153 130. GROUND-PLAN OF THE BASILICA ULPIA, ROME. 155 131. PLAN OF THE COLOSSEUM, ROME. 157 132. THE COLOSSEUM. SECTION AND ELEVATION. 158 133. PLAN OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDING, BATHS OF CARACALLA, ROME. 163 134. INTERIOR OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI, ROME. 165 135. THE PANTHEON, ROME. GROUND-PLAN. 166 136. THE PANTHEON. EXTERIOR. 167 137. THE PANTHEON. INTERIOR. 168 138. THE CORINTHIAN ORDER FROM THE PANTHEON. 169 139. THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME. 172 140. GROUND-PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII. 176 141. GROUND-PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET, POMPEII. 177 142. THE ATRIUM OF A POMPEIAN HOUSE. 178 143. WALL DECORATION FROM POMPEII. 180 144. CARVING FROM THE FORUM OF NERVA, ROME. 182 145. ROMAN-CORINTHIAN CAPITAL AND BASE. FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. 188 145a. A ROMAN COMPOSITE CAPITAL. 188 146. PART OF THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, ROME. SHOWING THE COMBINATION OF COLUMNS AND ARCHED OPENINGS. 190 147. FROM THE RUINS OF THE FORUM OF NERVA, ROME. SHOWING THE USE OF AN ATTIC STORY. 191 148. FROM THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN, ROME. SHOWING A FRAGMENTARY ENTABLATURE AT THE STARTING OF PART OF A VAULT. 192 149. FROM THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN, SPALATRO. SHOWING AN ARCH SPRINGING FROM A COLUMN. 192 150. MOULDINGS AND ORNAMENTS FROM VARIOUS ROMAN BUILDINGS. 193 151. ROMAN CARVING. AN ACANTHUS LEAF. 194 152. THE EGG AND DART ENRICHMENT--ROMAN. 194 153. WALL-DECORATION OF (SO-CALLED) ARABESQUE CHARACTER FROM POMPEII. 195 154. DECORATION IN RELIEF AND COLOUR OF THE VAULT OF A TOMB IN THE VIA LATINA, NEAR ROME. 197 155. BASILICA CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO, FLORENCE. 198 156. INTERIOR OF A BASILICA AT POMPEII. RESTORED, FROM DESCRIPTIONS BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. 200 156a. BASILICA, OR EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH, OF SANT' AGNESE AT ROME. 202 157. SANT' APOLLINARE, RAVENNA. PART OF THE ARCADE AND APSE. 205 158. APSE OF THE BASILICA OF SAN PAOLO FUORI LE MURA, ROME. 207 158a. FRIEZE FROM THE MONASTERY AT FULDA. 210 159. CHURCH OF SANTA SOPHIA AT CONSTANTINOPLE. LONGITUDINAL SECTION. 212 160. PLAN OF SAN VITALE AT RAVENNA. 216 161. SAN VITALE AT RAVENNA. LONGITUDINAL SECTION. 216 162. PLAN OF ST. MARK'S AT VENICE. 217 163. SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM THE GOLDEN DOOR OF JERUSALEM. 219 164. CHURCH AT TURMANIN IN SYRIA. 220 165. TOWER OF A RUSSIAN CHURCH. 221 166. TOWER OF EARL'S BARTON CHURCH. 223 167. CATHEDRAL AT PIACENZA. 225 168. VAULTS OF THE EXCAVATED ROMAN BATHS IN THE MUSÉE DE CLUNY, PARIS. 227 169. CHURCH OF ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE. 228 170. NAVE ARCADE AT ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE. 229 171. ARCHES IN RECEDING PLANES AT ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE. 230 172. NORMAN ARCHES IN ST. PETER'S CHURCH, NORTHAMPTON. 234 173. NAVE ARCADE, PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. 236 174. DECORATIVE ARCADE FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. 237 175. HEDINGHAM CASTLE. 238 176. INTERIOR OF HEDINGHAM CASTLE. 239 177. ROUNDED ARCH OF CHURCH AT GELNHAUSEN. 240 178. PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES AT COLOGNE. 241 179. SPIRE OF SPIRES CATHEDRAL. 242 180. CHURCH AT ROSHEIM. UPPER PORTION OF FAÇADE. 244 181. CUBIC CAPITAL. 246 182. DOORWAY AT TIND, NORWAY. 247 183. MOULDINGS OF PORTAL OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH AT KOESFELD. 248 184. BYZANTINE BASKET WORK CAPITAL FROM SAN MICHELE IN AFFRICISCO AT RAVENNA. 251 185. ARABIAN CAPITAL. FROM THE ALHAMBRA. 252 186. HORSE-SHOE ARCH. 254 187. EXTERIOR OF SANTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE. SHOWING THE MINARETS ADDED AFTER ITS CONVERSION INTO A MOSQUE. 255 188. ALHAMBRA. HALL OF THE ABENCERRAGES. 257 189. MOSQUE "EL MOYED" AT CAIRO. 259 190. ARABIAN WALL DECORATION. 260 191. PLAN OF THE SAKHRA MOSQUE AT JERUSALEM. 261 192. SECTION OF THE SAKHRA MOSQUE AT JERUSALEM. 262 193. DOORWAY IN THE ALHAMBRA. 264 194. GRAND MOSQUE AT DELHI, BUILT BY SHAH JEHAN. 267 195. ENTRANCE TO A MOORISH BAZAAR. 269 [Illustration: ROCK-CUT TOMB AT MYRA, IN LYCIA. _Imitation of Timber Construction in Stone._] GLOSSARY. ABACUS, a square tablet which crowns the capital of the column. ACANTHUS, a plant, the foliage of which was imitated in the ornament of the Corinthian capital. AGORA, the place of general assembly in a Greek city. ALÆ (_Lat._ wings), recesses opening out of the atrium of a Roman house. ALHAMBRA, the palatial fortress of Granada (from _al hamra_--the red). AMBO, a fitting of early Christian churches, very similar to a pulpit. AMPHITHEATRE, a Roman place of public entertainment in which combats of gladiators, &c., were exhibited. ANTÆ, narrow piers used in connection with columns in Greek architecture, for the same purpose as pilasters in Roman. ARABESQUE, a style of very light ornamental decoration. ARCHAIC, primitive, so ancient as to be rude, or at least extremely simple. ARCHIVOLT, the series of mouldings which is carried round an arch. ARENA, the space in the centre of an amphitheatre where the combats, &c., took place. ARRIS, a sharp edge. ASTRAGAL, a small round moulding. ATRIUM, the main quadrangle in a Roman dwelling-house; also the enclosed court in front of an early Christian basilican church. BAPTISTERY, a building, or addition to a building, erected for the purposes of celebrating the rite of Christian baptism. BASEMENT, the lowest story of a building, applied also to the lowest part of an architectural design. BAS-RELIEF, a piece of sculpture in low relief. BIRD'S-BEAK, a moulding in Greek architecture, used in the capitals of Antæ. BYZANTINE, the style of Christian architecture which had its origin at Byzantium (Constantinople). CARCERES, in the ancient racecourses, goals and starting-points. CARTOUCHE, in Egyptian buildings, a hieroglyphic signifying the name of a king or other important person. CARYATIDÆ, human figures made to carry an entablature, in lieu of columns in some Classic buildings. CAVÆDIAM, another name for the atrium of a Roman house. CAVEA, the part of an ancient theatre occupied by the audience. CAVETTO, in Classic architecture, a hollow moulding. CELLA, the principal, often the only, apartment of a Greek or Roman temple. CHAITYA, an Indian temple, or hall of assembly. CIRCUS, a Roman racecourse. CLOACA, a sewer or drain. COLUMBARIUM, literally a pigeon-house--a Roman sepulchre built in many compartments. COLUMNAR, made with columns. COMPLUVIUM, the open space or the middle of the roof of a Roman atrium. CORONA, in the cornices of Greek and Roman architecture, the plain unmoulded feature which is supported by the lower part of the cornice, and on which the crowning mouldings rest. CORNICE, the horizontal series of mouldings crowning the top of a building or the walls of a room. CUNEIFORM, of letters in Assyrian inscriptions, wedge-shaped. CYCLOPEAN, applied to masonry constructed of vast stones, usually not hewn or squared. CYMA (recta, or reversa), a moulding, in Classic architecture, of an outline partly convex and partly concave. DAGOBA, an Indian tomb of conical shape. DENTIL BAND, in Classic architecture, a series of small blocks resembling square-shaped teeth. DOMUS (_Lat._), a house, applied usually to a detached residence. DWARF-WALL, a very low wall. ECHINUS, in Greek Doric architecture, the principal moulding of the capital placed immediately under the abacus. ENTABLATURE, the superstructure--comprising architrave, frieze and cornice--above the columns in Classic architecture. ENTASIS, in the shaft of a column, a curved outline. EPHEBEUM, the large hall in Roman baths in which youths practised gymnastic exercises. FACIA, in Classic architecture, a narrow flat band or face. FAUCES, the passage from the atrium to the peristyle in a Roman house. FLUTES, the small channels which run from top to bottom of the shaft of most columns in Classic architecture. FORUM, the place of general assembly in a Roman city, as the Agora was in a Greek. FRESCO, painting executed upon a plastered wall while the plaster is still wet. FRET, an ornament made up of squares and L-shaped lines, in use in Greek architecture. GARTH, the central space round which a cloister is carried. GIRDER, a beam. GROUTED, said of masonry or brickwork, treated with liquid mortar to fill up all crevices and interstices. GUTTÆ, small pendent features in Greek and Roman Doric cornices, resembling rows of wooden pegs. HEXASTYLE, of six columns. HONEYSUCKLE ORNAMENT, a decoration constantly introduced into Assyrian and Greek architecture, founded upon the flower of the honeysuckle. HORSE-SHOE ARCH, an arch more than a semicircle, and so wider above than at its springing. HYPOSTYLE, literally "under columns," but used to mean filled by columns. IMPLUVIUM, the space into which the rain fell in the centre of the atrium of a Roman house. INSULA, a block of building surrounded on all sides by streets, literally an island. INTERCOLUMNIATION, the space between two columns. KEYED, secured closely by interlocking. KIBLA, the most sacred part of a Mohammedan mosque. LÂTS, in Indian architecture, Buddhist inscribed pillars. MAMMISI, small Egyptian temples. MASTABA, the most usual form of Egyptian tomb. MAUSOLEUM, a magnificent sepulchral monument or tomb. From the tomb erected to Mausolus, by his wife Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, 379 B.C. METOPES, literally faces, the square spaces between triglyphs in Doric architecture; occasionally applied to the sculptures fitted into these spaces. MINARET, a slender lofty tower, a usual appendage of a Mohammedan mosque. MONOLITH, of one stone. MORTISE, a hollow in a stone or timber to receive a corresponding projection. MOSQUE, a Mohammedan place of worship. MUTULE, a feature in a Classic Doric cornice, somewhat resembling the end of a timber beam. NARTHEX, in an early Christian church, the space next the entrance. OBELISK, a tapering stone pillar, a feature of Egyptian architecture. OPUS ALEXANDRINUM, the mosaic work used for floors in Byzantine and Romanesque churches. OVOLO, a moulding, the profile of which resembles the outline of an egg, used in Classic architecture. PENDENTIVE, a feature in Byzantine and other domed buildings, employed to enable a circular dome to stand over a square space. PERISTYLAR, or PERIPTERAL, with columns all round. PERISTYLIUM, or PERISTYLE, in a Roman house, the inner courtyard; also any space or enclosure with columns all round it. PISCINA, a small basin usually executed in stone and placed within a sculptured niche, fixed at the side of an altar in a church, with a channel to convey away the water poured into it. POLYCHROMY, the use of decorative colours. PRECINCTS, the space round a church or religious house, usually enclosed with a wall. PRESBYTERY, the eastern part of a church, the chancel. PROFILE (of a moulding), the outline which it would present if cut across at right angles to its length. PRONAOS, the front portion or vestibule to a temple. PROPYLÆA, in Greek architecture, a grand portal or state entrance. PROTHYRUM, in a Roman house, the porch or entrance. PSEUDO-PERIPTERAL, resembling, but not really being peristylar. PYLON, or PRO-PYLON, the portal or front of an Egyptian temple. QUADRIGA, a four-horse chariot. ROMANESQUE, the style of Christian architecture which was founded on Roman work. ROTUNDA, a building circular in plan. SACRISTY, the part of a church where the treasures belonging to the church are preserved. SHINTO TEMPLES, temples (in Japan) devoted to the Shinto religion. SPAN, the space over which an arch or a roof extends. SPINA, the central wall of a Roman racecourse. STILTED, raised, usually applied to an arch when its centre is above the top of the jambs from which it springs. STRUTS, props. STUPA, in Indian architecture, a mound or tope. STYLOBATE, a series of steps, usually those leading up to a Classic temple. TAAS, a pagoda. TABLINUM, in a Roman house, the room between the atrium and the peristyle. TALAR, in Assyrian architecture, an open upper story. TENONED, fastened with a projection or tenon. TESSELATED, made of small squares of material, applied to coarse mosaic work. TETRASTYLE, with four columns. THERMÆ, the great bathing establishments of the Romans. TOPES, in Indian architecture, artificial mounds. TRABEATED, constructed with a beam or beams, a term usually employed in contrast to arches. TRICLINIUM, in a Roman house, the dining-room. TRIGLYPH, the channelled feature in the frieze of the Doric order. TUMULI, mounds, usually sepulchral. TYPHONIA, small Egyptian temples. VELARIUM, a great awning. VESTIBULE, the outer hall or ante-room. VOLUTES, in Classic architecture, the curled ornaments of the Ionic capital. VOUSSOIRS, the wedge-shaped stones of which arches are made. N.B. For the explanation of other technical words found in this volume, consult the Glossary given with the companion volume on Gothic and Renaissance Architecture. [Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI.] [Illustration] ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Architecture may be described as building at its best, and when we talk of the architecture of any city or country we mean its best, noblest, or most beautiful buildings; and we imply by the use of the word that these buildings possess merits which entitle them to rank as works of art. The architecture of the civilised world can be best understood by considering the great buildings of each important nation separately. The features, ornaments, and even forms of ancient buildings differed just as the speech, or at any rate the literature, differed. Each nation wrote in a different language, though the books may have been devoted to the same aims; and precisely in the same way each nation built in a style of its own, even if the buildings may have been similar in the purposes they had to serve. The division of the subject into the architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, &c., is therefore the most natural one to follow. But certain broad groups, rising out of peculiarities of a physical nature, either in the buildings themselves or in the conditions under which they were erected, can hardly fail to be suggested by a general view of the subject. Such, for example, is the fourfold division to which the reader's attention will now be directed. All buildings, it will be found, can be classed under one or other of four great divisions, each distinguished by a distinct mode of building, and each also occupying a distinct place in history. The first series embraces the buildings of the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks, and was brought to a pitch of the highest perfection in Greece during the age of Pericles. All the buildings erected in these countries during the many centuries which elapsed from the earliest Egyptian to the latest Greek works, however they may have differed in other respects, agree in this--that the openings, be they doors, or be they spaces between columns, were spanned by beams of wood or lintels of stone (Fig. 1). Hence this architecture is called architecture of the beam, or, in more formal language, trabeated architecture. This mode of covering spaces required that in buildings of solid masonry, where stone or marble lintels were employed, the supports should not be very far apart, and this circumstance led to the frequent use of rows of columns. The architecture of this period is accordingly sometimes called columnar, but it has no exclusive claim to the epithet; the column survived long after the exclusive use of the beam had been superseded, and the term columnar must accordingly be shared with buildings forming part of the succeeding series. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--OPENING SPANNED BY A LINTEL. ARCH OF THE GOLDSMITHS, ROME.] The second great group of buildings is that in which the semicircular arch is introduced into construction, and used either together with the beam, or, as mostly happened, instead of the beam, to span the openings (Fig. 2). This use of the arch began with the Assyrians, and it reappeared in the works of the early Etruscans. The round-arched series of styles embraces the buildings of the Romans from their earliest beginnings to their decay; it also includes the two great schools of Christian architecture which were founded by the Western and the Eastern Church respectively,--namely, the Romanesque, which, originating in Rome, extended itself through Western Europe, and lasted till the time of the Crusades, and the Byzantine, which spread from Constantinople over all the countries in which the Eastern (or Greek) Church flourished, and which continues to our own day. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--OPENING SPANNED BY A SEMICIRCULAR ARCH. ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT POLA.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.--OPENINGS SPANNED BY POINTED ARCHES. INTERIOR OF ST. FRONT, PÉRIGUEUX, FRANCE.] The third group of buildings is that in which the pointed arch is employed instead of the semicircular arch to span the openings (Fig. 3). It began with the rise of Mohammedan architecture in the East, and embraces all the buildings of Western Europe, from the time of the First Crusade to the revival of art in the fifteenth century. This great series of buildings constitutes what is known as Pointed, or, more commonly, as Gothic architecture. The fourth group consists of the buildings erected during or since the Renaissance (_i.e._ revival) period, and is marked by a return to the styles of past ages or distant countries for the architectural features and ornaments of buildings; and by that luxury, complexity, and ostentation which, with other qualities, are well comprehended under the epithet Modern. This group of buildings forms what is known as Renaissance architecture, and extends from the epoch of the revival of letters in the fifteenth century, to the present day. The first two of these styles--namely, the architecture of the beam, and that of the round arch--are treated of in this little volume. They occupy those remote times of pagan civilisation which may be conveniently included under the broad term Ancient; and the better known work of the Greeks and Romans--the classic nations--and they extend over the time of the establishment of Christianity down to the close of that dreary period not incorrectly termed the Dark ages. Ancient, Classic, and early Christian architecture is accordingly an appropriate title for the main subjects of this volume, though, for the sake of convenience, some notices of Oriental architecture have been added. Gothic and Renaissance architecture form the subjects of the companion volume. It may excite surprise that what appears to be so small a difference as that which exists between a beam, a round arch, or a pointed arch, should be employed in order to distinguish three of the four great divisions. But in reality this is no pedantic or arbitrary grouping. The mode in which spaces or openings are covered lies at the root of most of the essential differences between styles of architecture, and the distinction thus drawn is one of a real, not of a fanciful nature. Every building when reduced to its elements, as will be done in both these volumes, may be considered as made up of its (1) floor or plan, (2) walls, (3) roof, (4) openings, (5) columns, and (6) ornaments, and as marked by its distinctive (7) character, and the student must be prepared to find that the openings are by no means the least important of these elements. In fact, the moment the method of covering openings was changed, it would be easy to show, did space permit, that all the other elements, except the ornaments, were directly affected by the change, and the ornaments indirectly; and we thus find such a correspondence between this index feature and the entire structure as renders this primary division a scientific though a very broad one. The contrast between the trabeated style and the arched style may be well understood by comparing the illustration of the Parthenon which forms our frontispiece, or that of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia (Fig. 4), with the exterior of the Colosseum at Rome (Fig. 5), introduced here for the purposes of this comparison. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA. RESTORED ACCORDING TO ADLER.] A division of buildings into such great series as these cannot, however, supersede the more obvious historical and geographical divisions. The architecture of every ancient country was partly the growth of the soil, _i.e._ adapted to the climate of the country, and the materials found there, and partly the outcome of the national character of its inhabitants, and of such influences as race, colonisation, commerce, or conquest brought to bear upon them. These influences produced strong distinctions between the work of different peoples, especially before the era of the Roman Empire. Since that period of universal dominion all buildings and styles have been influenced more or less by Roman art. We accordingly find the buildings of the most ancient nations separated from each other by strongly marked lines of demarcation, but those since the era of the Empire showing a considerable resemblance to one another. The circumstance that the remains of those buildings only which received the greatest possible attention from their builders have come down to us from any remote antiquity, has perhaps served to accentuate the differences between different styles, for these foremost buildings were not intended to serve the same purpose in all countries. Nothing but tombs and temples have survived in Egypt. Palaces only have been rescued from the decay of Assyrian and Persian cities; and temples, theatres, and places of public assembly are the chief, almost the only remains of architecture in Greece. A strong contrast between the buildings of different ancient nations rises also from the differing point of view for which they were designed. Thus, in the tombs and, to a large extent, the temples of the Egyptians, we find structures chiefly planned for internal effect; that is to say, intended to be seen by those admitted to the sacred precincts, but only to a limited extent appealing to the admiration of those outside. The buildings of the Greeks, on the other hand, were chiefly designed to please those who examined them from without, and though no doubt some of them, the theatres especially, were from their very nature planned for interior effect, by far the greatest works which Greek art produced were the exteriors of the temples. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--PART OF THE EXTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM, ROME. (NOW IN RUINS.)] The works of the Romans, and, following them, those of almost all Western Christian nations, were designed to unite external and internal effect; but in many cases external was evidently most sought after, and, in the North of Europe, many expedients--such, for example, as towers, high-pitched roofs, and steeples--were introduced into architecture with the express intention of increasing external effect. On the other hand, the Eastern styles, both Mohammedan and Christian, especially when practised in sunny climates, show in many cases a comparative disregard of external effect, and that their architects lavished most of their resources on the interiors of their buildings. Passing allusions have been made to the influence of climate on architecture; and the student whose attention has been once called to this subject will find many interesting traces of this influence in the designs of buildings erected in various countries. Where the power of the sun is great, flat terraced roofs, which help to keep buildings cool, and thick walls are desirable. Sufficient light is admitted by small windows far apart. Overhanging eaves, or horizontal cornices, are in such a climate the most effective mode of obtaining architectural effect, and accordingly in the styles of all Southern peoples these peculiarities appear. The architecture of Egypt, for example, exhibited them markedly. Where the sun is still powerful, but not so extreme, the terraced roof is generally replaced by a sloping roof, steep enough to throw off water, and larger openings are made for light and air; but the horizontal cornice still remains the most appropriate means of gaining effects of light and shade. This description will apply to the architecture of Italy and Greece. When, however, we pass to Northern countries, where snow has to be encountered, where light is precious, and where the sun is low in the heavens for the greater part of the day, a complete change takes place. Roofs become much steeper, so as to throw off snow. The horizontal cornice is to a large extent disused, but the buttress, the turret, and other vertical features, from which a level sun will cast shadows, begin to appear; and windows are made numerous and spacious. This description applies to Gothic architecture generally--in other words, to the styles which rose in Northern Europe. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--TIMBER ARCHITECTURE. CHURCH AT BORGUND.] The influence of materials on architecture is also worth notice. Where granite, which is worked with difficulty, is the material obtainable, architecture has invariably been severe and simple; where soft stone is obtainable, exuberance of ornament makes its appearance, in consequence of the material lending itself readily to the carver's chisel. Where, on the other hand, marble is abundant and good, refinement is to be met with, for no other building material exists in which very delicate mouldings or very slight or slender projections may be employed with the certainty that they will be effective. Where stone is scarce, brick buildings, with many arches, roughly constructed cornices and pilasters, and other peculiarities both of structure and ornamentation, make their appearance, as, for example, in Lombardy and North Germany. Where materials of many colours abound, as is the case, for example, in the volcanic districts of France, polychromy is sought as a means of ornamentation. Lastly, where timber is available, and stone and brick are both scarce, the result is an architecture of which both the forms and the ornamentation are entirely dissimilar to those proper to buildings of stone, marble, or brick, as may be seen by a glance at our illustration of an early Scandinavian church built of timber (Fig. 6), which presents forms appropriate to a timber building as being easily constructed of wood, but which would hardly be suitable to any other material whatever. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--EGYPTIAN CORNICE.] CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. The origin of Egyptian architecture, like that of Egyptian history, is lost in the mists of antiquity. The remains of all, or almost all, other styles of architecture enable us to trace their rude beginnings, their development, their gradual progress up to a culminating point, and thence their slow but certain decline; but the earliest remains of the constructions of the Egyptians show their skill as builders at the height of its perfection, their architecture highly developed, and their sculpture at its very best, if not indeed at the commencement of its decadence; for some of the statuary of the age of the Pyramids was never surpassed in artistic effect by the work of a later era. It is impossible for us to conceive of such scientific skill as is evidenced in the construction of the great pyramids, or such artistic power as is displayed on the walls of tombs of the same date, or in the statues found in them, as other than the outcome of a vast accumulation of experience, the attainment of which must imply the lapse of very long periods of time since the nation which produced such works emerged from barbarism. It is natural, where so remote an antiquity is in question, that we should feel a great difficulty, if not an impossibility, in fixing exact dates, but the whole tendency of modern exploration and research is rather to push back than to advance the dates of Egyptian chronology, and it is by no means impossible that the dynasties of Manetho, after being derided as apocryphal for centuries, may in the end be accepted as substantially correct. Manetho was an Egyptian priest living in the third century B.C., who wrote a history of his country, which he compiled from the archives of the temples. His work itself is lost, but Josephus quotes extracts from it, and Eusebius and Julius Africanus reproduced his lists, in which the monarchs of Egypt are grouped into thirty-four dynasties. These, however, do not agree with one another, and in many cases it is difficult to reconcile them with the records displayed in the monuments themselves. The remains with which we are acquainted indicate four distinct periods of great architectural activity in Egyptian history, viz.: (1) the period of the fourth dynasty, when the Great Pyramids were erected (probably 3500 to 3000 B.C.); (2) the period of the twelfth dynasty, to which belong the remains at Beni-Hassan; (3) the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when Thebes was in its glory, which is attested by the ruins of Luxor and Karnak; and (4) the Ptolemaic period, of which there are the remains at Denderah, Edfou, and Philæ. The monuments that remain are almost exclusively tombs and temples. The tombs are, generally speaking, all met with on the east or right bank of the Nile: among them must be classed those grandest and oldest monuments of Egyptian skill, the Pyramids, which appear to have been all designed as royal burying-places. A large number of pyramids have been discovered, but those of Gizeh, near Cairo, are the largest and the best known, and also probably the oldest which can be authenticated.[1] The three largest pyramids are those of Cheops, Cephren, and Mycerinus at Gizeh (or, as the names are more correctly written, Suphis, Sensuphis, and Moscheris or Mencheris). These monarchs all belonged to the fourth dynasty, and the most probable date to be assigned to them is about 3000 B.C. The pyramid of Suphis is the largest, and is the one familiarly known as the Great Pyramid; it has a square base, the side of which is 760 feet long,[2] a height of 484 feet, and an area of 577,600 square feet. In this pyramid the angle of inclination of the sloping sides to the base is 51° 51', but in no two pyramids is this angle the same. There can be no doubt that these huge monuments were erected each as the tomb of an individual king, whose efforts were directed towards making it everlasting, and the greatest pains were taken to render the access to the burial chamber extremely hard to discover. This accounts for the vast disproportion between the lavish amount of material used for the pyramid and the smallness of the cavity enclosed in it (Fig. 8). The material employed was limestone cased with syenite (granite from Syene), and the internal passages were lined with granite. The granite of the casing has entirely disappeared, but that employed as linings is still in its place, and so skilfully worked that it would not be possible to introduce even a sheet of paper between the joints. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--SECTION ACROSS THE GREAT PYRAMID (OF CHEOPS OR SUPHIS).] The entrance D to this pyramid of Suphis was at a height of 47 ft. 6 in. above the base, and, as was almost invariably the case, on the north face; from the entrance a passage slopes downward at an angle of 26° 27' to a chamber cut in the rock at a depth of about 90 feet below the base of the pyramid. This chamber seems to have been intended as a blind, as it was not the place for the deposition of the corpse. From the point in the above described passage--marked A on our illustration of this pyramid--another gallery starts upwards, till it reaches the point C, from which a horizontal passage leads to another small chamber. This is called the Queen's Chamber, but no reason has been discovered for the name. From this point C the gallery continues upwards till, in the heart of the pyramid, the Royal Chamber, B, is reached. The walls of these chambers and passages are lined with masonry executed in the hardest stone (granite), and with an accuracy of fitting and a truth of surface that can hardly be surpassed. Extreme care seems to have been taken to prevent the great weight overhead from crushing in the galleries and the chamber. The gallery from C upwards is of the form shown in Fig. 9, where each layer of stones projects slightly beyond the one underneath it. Fig. 11 is a section of the chamber itself, and the succession of small chambers shown one above the other was evidently formed for the purpose of distributing the weight of the superincumbent mass. From the point C a narrow well leads almost perpendicularly downwards to a point nearly at the bottom of the first-mentioned gallery; and the purpose to be served by this well was long a subject of debate. The probability is that, after the corpse had been placed in its chamber, the workmen completely blocked up the passage from A to C by allowing large blocks of granite to slide down it, these blocks having been previously prepared and deposited in the larger gallery; the men then let themselves down the well, and by means of the lower gallery made their exit from the pyramid. The entrances to the chamber and to the pyramid itself were formed by huge blocks of stone which exactly fitted into grooves prepared for them with the most beautiful mathematical accuracy. The chief interest attaching to the pyramids lies in their extreme antiquity, and the scientific method of their construction; for their effect upon the spectator is by no means proportionate to their immense mass and the labour bestowed upon them. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--ASCENDING GALLERY IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.] [Illustration: FIG. 10.--THE SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF CEPHREN AT GIZEH.] [Illustration: FIG. 11.--THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE KING'S CHAMBER IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.] In the neighbourhood of the pyramids are found a large number of tombs which are supposed to be those of private persons. Their form is generally that of a _mastaba_ or truncated pyramid with sloping walls, and their construction is evidently copied from a fashion of wooden architecture previously existing. The same idea of making an everlasting habitation for the body prevailed as in the case of the pyramids, and stone was therefore the material employed; but the builders seem to have desired to indulge in a decorative style, and as they were totally unable to originate a legitimate stone architecture, we find carved in stone, rounded beams as lintels, grooved posts, and--most curious of all--roofs that are an almost exact copy of the early timber huts when unsquared baulks of timber were laid across side by side to form a covering. Figs. 12 and 13 show this kind of stone-work, which is peculiar to the old dynasties, and seems to have had little influence upon succeeding styles. A remarkable feature of these early private tombs consists in the paintings with which the walls are decorated, and which vividly portray the ordinary every-day occupations carried on during his lifetime by the person who was destined to be the inmate of the tomb. These paintings are of immense value in enabling us to form an accurate idea of the life of the people at this early age. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--IMITATION OF TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN STONE, FROM A TOMB AT MEMPHIS.] [Illustration: FIG. 13.--IMITATION OF TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN STONE, FROM A TOMB AT MEMPHIS.] It may possibly be open to doubt whether the dignified appellation of architecture should be applied to buildings of the kind we have just been describing; but when we come to the series of remains of the twelfth dynasty at Beni-Hassan, in middle Egypt, we meet with the earliest known examples of that most interesting feature of all subsequent styles--the column. Whether the idea of columnar architecture originated with the necessities of quarrying--square piers being left at intervals to support the superincumbent mass of rock as the quarry was gradually driven in--or whether the earliest stone piers were imitations of brickwork or of timber posts, we shall probably never be able to determine accurately, though the former supposition seems the more likely. We have here monuments of a date 1400 years anterior to the earliest known Greek examples, with splendid columns, both exterior and interior, which no reasonable person can doubt are the prototypes of the Greek Doric order. Fig. 14 is a plan with a section, and Fig. 15 an exterior view, of one of these tombs, which, it will be seen, consisted of a portico, a chamber with its roof supported by columns, and a small space at the farther end in which is formed the opening of a sloping passage or well, at the bottom of which the vault for the reception of the body was constructed. The walls of the large chamber are lavishly decorated with scenes of every-day life, and it has even been suggested that these places were not erected originally as tombs, but as dwelling-places, which after death were appropriated as sepulchres. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--PLAN AND SECTION OF THE TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN. SECTION.] The columns are surmounted by a small square slab, technically called an abacus, and heavy square beams or architraves span the spaces between the columns, while the roof between the architraves has a slightly segmental form. The tombs of the later period, viz. of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, are very different from those of the twelfth dynasty, and present few features of architectural interest, though they are remarkable for their vast extent and the variety of form of their various chambers and galleries. They consist of a series of chambers excavated in the rock, and it appears certain that the tomb was commenced on the accession of each monarch, and was driven farther and farther into the rock during the continuance of his reign till his death, when all work abruptly ceased. All the chambers are profusely decorated with paintings, but of a kind very different from those of the earlier dynasties. Instead of depicting scenes of ordinary life, all the paintings refer to the supposed life after death, and are thus of very great value as a means of determining the religious opinions of the Egyptians at this time. One of the most remarkable of these tombs is that of Manephthah or Sethi I., at Bab-el-Molouk, and known as Belzoni's tomb, as it was discovered by him; from it was taken the alabaster sarcophagus now in the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. To this relic a new interest is given by the announcement, while these pages are passing through the press, of the discovery of the mummy of this very Manephthah, with thirty-eight other royal mummies, in the neighbourhood of Thebes. [Illustration: FIG. 15.--ROCK-CUT FAÇADE OF TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN.] Of the Ptolemaic period no tombs, except perhaps a few at Alexandria, are known to exist. TEMPLES. It is very doubtful whether any remains of temples of the time of the fourth dynasty--_i.e._ contemporaneous with the pyramids--exist. One, constructed on a most extraordinary plan, was supposed to have been discovered about a quarter of a century ago, and it was described by Professor Donaldson at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1861, but later Egyptologists rather incline to the belief that this was a tomb and not a temple, as in one of the chambers of the interior a number of compartments were discovered one above the other which were apparently intended for the reception of bodies. This singular building is close to the Great Sphinx; its plan is cruciform, and there are in the interior a number of rectangular piers of granite supporting very simple architraves, but there are no means of determining what kind of roof covered it in. The walls seem to have been faced on the interior with polished slabs of granite or alabaster, but no sculpture or hieroglyphic inscriptions were found on them to explain the purpose of the building. Leaving this building--which is of a type quite unique--out of the question, Egyptian temples can be generally classed under two heads: (1) the large principal temples, and (2) the small subsidiary ones called Typhonia or Mammisi. Both kinds of temple vary little, if at all, in plan from the time of the twelfth dynasty down to the Roman dominion. [Illustration: FIG. 16.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE PALACE AT KARNAK.] The large temples consist almost invariably of an entrance gate flanked on either side by a large mass of masonry, called a pylon, in the shape of a truncated pyramid (Fig. 18). The axis of the ground-plan of these pylons is frequently obliquely inclined to the axis of the plan of the temple itself; and indeed one of the most striking features of Egyptian temples is the lack of regularity and symmetry in their construction. The entrance gives access to a large courtyard, generally ornamented with columns: beyond this, and occasionally approached by steps, is another court, smaller than the first, but much more splendidly adorned with columns and colossi; beyond this again, in the finest examples, occurs what is called the Hypostyle Hall, _i.e._ a hall with two rows of lofty columns down the centre, and at the sides other rows, more or less in number, of lower columns; the object of this arrangement being that the central portion might be lighted by a kind of clerestory above the roof of the side portions. Fig. 17 shows this arrangement. This hypostyle hall stood with its greatest length transverse to the general axis of the temple, so that it was entered from the side. Beyond it were other chambers, all of small size, the innermost being generally the sanctuary, while the others were probably used as residences by the priests. Homer's hundred-gated Thebes, which was for so long the capital of Egypt, offers at Karnak and Luxor the finest remains of temples; what is left of the former evidently showing that it must have been one of the most magnificent buildings ever erected in any country. Fig. 16 is a plan of the temple of Karnak, which was about 1200 feet long and 348 feet wide. A is the entrance between the two enormous pylons giving access to a large courtyard, in which is a small detached temple, and another larger one breaking into the courtyard obliquely. A gateway between a second pair of pylons admits to B, the grand Hypostyle Hall, 334 feet by 167 feet. Beyond this are additional gateways with pylons, separated by a sort of gallery, C, in which were two gigantic obelisks; D, another grand hall, is called the Hall of the Caryatides, and beyond is the Hall of the eighteen columns, through which access is gained to a number of smaller halls grouped round the central chamber E. Beyond this is a large courtyard, in the centre of which stood the original sanctuary, which has disappeared down to its foundations, nothing but some broken shafts of columns remaining. At the extreme east is another hall supported partly by columns and partly by square piers, and a second series of pillared courts and chambers. The pylons and buildings generally decrease in height as we proceed from the entrance eastwards. This is due to the fact that, the building grew by successive additions, each one more magnificent than the last, all being added on the side from which the temple was entered, leaving the original sanctuary unchanged and undisturbed. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--THE HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK, SHOWING THE CLERESTORY.] [Illustration: FIG. 18.--ENTRANCE TO AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE, SHOWING THE PYLONS.] Besides the buildings shown on the plan there were many other temples to the north, south, and east, entered by pylons and some of them connected together by avenues of sphinxes, obelisks, and colossi, which altogether made up the most wonderful agglomeration of buildings that can be conceived. It must not be imagined that this temple of Karnak, together with the series of connected temples is the result, of one clearly conceived plan; on the contrary, just as has been frequently the case with our own cathedrals and baronial halls, alterations were made here and additions there by successive kings one after the other without much regard to connection or congruity, the only feeling that probably influenced them being that of emulation to excel in size and grandeur the erections of their predecessors, as the largest buildings are almost always of latest date. The original sanctuary, or nucleus of the temple, was built by Usertesen I., the second or third king of the twelfth dynasty. Omenophis, the first king of the Shepherd dynasties, built a temple round the sanctuary, which has disappeared. Thothmes I. built the Hall of the Caryatides and commenced the next Hall of the eighteen columns, which was finished by Thothmes II. Thothmes III. built that portion surrounding the sanctuary, and he also built the courts on the extreme east. The pylon at C was built by Omenophis III., and formed the façade of the temple before the erection of the grand hall. Sethi I. built the Hypostyle Hall, which had probably been originated by Rhamses I., who commenced the pylon west of it. Sethi II. built the small detached temple, and Rhamses III. the intersecting temple. The Bubastites constructed the large front court by building walls round it, and the Ptolemies commenced the huge western pylon. The colonnade in the centre of the court was erected by Tahraka. Extensive remains of temples exist at Luxor, Edfou (Fig. 19), and Philæ, but it will not be necessary to give a detailed description of them, as, if smaller in size, they are very similar in arrangement to those already described. It should be noticed that all these large temples have the mastaba form, _i.e._ the outer walls are not perpendicular on the outside, but slope inwards as they rise, thus giving the buildings an air of great solidity. [Illustration: FIG. 19.--PLAN OF THE TEMPLE AT EDFOU.] [Illustration: FIG. 20.--PLAN OF ONE OF THE MAMMISI AT EDFOU.] The Mammisi exhibit quite a different form of temple from those previously described, and are generally found in close proximity to the large temples. They are generally erected on a raised terrace, rectangular on plan and nearly twice as long as it was wide, approached by a flight of steps opposite the entrance; they consist of oblong buildings, usually divided by a wall into two chambers, and surrounded on all sides by a colonnade composed of circular columns or square piers placed at intervals, and the whole is roofed in. A dwarf wall is frequently found between the piers and columns, about half the height of the shaft. These temples differ from the larger ones in having their outer walls perpendicular. Fig. 20 is a plan of one of these small temples, and no one can fail to remark the striking likeness to some of the Greek temples; there can indeed be little doubt that this nation borrowed the peristylar form of its temples from the Ancient Egyptians. [Illustration: FIG. 21.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE ROCK-CUT TEMPLE AT IPSAMBOUL.] [Illustration: FIG. 22.--SECTION OF THE ROCK-CUT TEMPLE AT IPSAMBOUL.] Although no rock-cut temples have been discovered in Egypt proper, Nubia is very rich in such remains. The arrangement of these temples hewn out of the rock is closely analogous to that of the detached ones. Figs. 21 and 22 show a plan and section of the largest of the rock-cut temples at Ipsamboul, which consists of two extensive courts, with smaller chambers beyond, all connected by galleries. The roof of the large court is supported by eight huge piers, the faces of which are sculptured into the form of standing colossi, and the entrance is adorned by four splendid seated colossi, 68 ft. 6 in. high. As was the case with the detached temples, it will be noticed that the height of the various chambers decreases towards the extremity of the excavation. [Illustration: FIG. 23.--EGYPTIAN COLUMN WITH LOTUS BUD CAPITAL. PLAN.] [Illustration: FIG. 24.--EGYPTIAN COLUMN WITH LOTUS FLOWER CAPITAL.] The constructional system pursued by the Egyptians, which consisted in roofing over spaces with large horizontal blocks of stone, led of necessity to a columnar arrangement in the interiors, as it was impossible to cover large areas without frequent upright supports. Hence the column became the chief means of obtaining effect, and the varieties of form which it exhibits are very numerous. The earliest form is that at Beni-Hassan, which has already been noticed as the prototype of the Doric order. Figs. 23 and 24 are views of two columns of a type more commonly employed. In these the sculptors appear to have imitated as closely as possible the forms of the plant-world around them, as is shown in Fig. 23, which represents a bundle of reeds or lotus stalks, and is the earliest type known of the lotus column, which was afterwards developed into a number of forms, one of which will be observed on turning to our section of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (Fig. 17), as employed for the lateral columns. The stalks are bound round with several belts, and the capital is formed by the slightly bulging unopened bud of the flower, above which is a small abacus with the architrave resting upon it: the base is nothing but a low circular plinth. The square piers also have frequently a lotus bud carved on them. At the bottom of the shaft is frequently found a decoration imitated from the sheath of leaves from which the plant springs. As a further development of this capital we have the opened lotus flower of a very graceful bell-like shape, ornamented with a similar sheath-like decoration to that at the base of the shaft (Fig. 24). This decoration was originally painted only, not sculptured, but at a later period we find these sheaths and buds worked in stone. Even more graceful is the palm capital, which also had its leading lines of decoration painted on it at first (Fig. 25), and afterwards sculptured (Fig. 26). At a later period of the style we find the plant forms abandoned, and capitals were formed of a fantastic combination of the head of Isis with a pylon resting upon it (Fig. 27). Considerable ingenuity was exercised in adapting the capitals of the columns to the positions in which they were placed: thus in the hypostyle halls, the lofty central row of columns generally had capitals of the form shown in Fig. 24, as the light here was sufficient to illuminate thoroughly the underside of the overhanging bell; but those columns which were farther removed from the light had their capitals of the unopened bud form, which was narrower at the top than at bottom. In one part of the temple at Karnak is found a very curious capital resembling the open lotus flower inverted. The proportion which the height of Egyptian columns bears to their diameter differs so much in various cases that there was evidently no regular standard adhered to, but as a general rule they have a heavy and massive character. The wall-paintings of the Egyptian buildings show many curious forms of columns (Fig. 28), but we have no reason for thinking that these fantastic shapes were really executed in stone. [Illustration: FIG. 25.--PALM CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 26.--SCULPTURED CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 27.--ISIS CAPITAL FROM DENDERAH.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.--FANCIFUL COLUMN FROM PAINTED DECORATION AT THEBES.] Almost the only sculptured ornaments worked on the exteriors of buildings were the curious astragal or bead at all the angles, and the cornice, which consisted of a very large cavetto, or hollow moulding, surmounted by a fillet. These features are almost invariable from the earliest to the latest period of the style. This cavetto was generally enriched, over the doorways, with an ornament representing a circular boss with a wing at each side of it (Fig. 29). One other feature of Egyptian architecture which was peculiar to it must be mentioned; namely, the obelisk. Obelisks were nearly always erected in pairs in front of the pylons of the temples, and added to the dignity of the entrance. They were invariably monoliths, slightly tapering in outline, carved with the most perfect accuracy; they must have existed originally in very large numbers. Not a few of these have been transported to Europe, and at least twelve are standing in Rome, one is in Paris, and one in London. [Illustration: FIG. 29.--CROWNING CORNICE AND BEAD.] The most striking features, and the most artistic, in the decoration of Egyptian buildings, are the mural paintings and sculptured pictures, which are found in the most lavish profusion, and which exhibit the highest skill in conventionalising the human figure and other objects.[3] Tombs and temples, columns and obelisks are completely covered with graphic representations of peaceful home pursuits, warlike expeditions and battle scenes, and--though not till a late period--descriptions of ritual and mythological delineations of the supposed spirit-world which the soul has entered after death. These pictures, together with the hieroglyphic inscriptions--which are in themselves a series of pictures--not only relieve the bare wall surface, but, what is far more important, enable us to realise the kind of existence which was led by this ancient people; and as in nearly every case the cartouche (or symbol representing the name) of the monarch under whose reign the building was erected was added, we should be able to fix the dates of the buildings with exactness, were the chronology of the kings made out beyond doubt. The following description of the manner in which the Egyptian paintings and sculptures were executed--from the pen of Owen Jones--will be read with interest:--"The wall was first chiselled as smooth as possible, the imperfections of the stone were filled up with cement or plaster, and the whole was rubbed smooth and covered with a coloured wash; lines were then ruled perpendicularly and horizontally with red colour, forming squares all over the wall corresponding with the proportions of the figure to be drawn upon it. The subjects of the painting and of the hieroglyphics were then drawn on the wall with a red line, most probably by the priest or chief scribe, or by some inferior artist, from a document divided into similar squares; then came the chief artist, who went over every figure and hieroglyphic with a black line, and a firm and steady hand, giving expression to each curve, deviating here and confirming there the red line. The line thus traced was then followed by the sculptor. The next process was to paint the figure in the prescribed colours." Although Egyptian architecture was essentially a trabeated style,--that is to say, a style in which beams or lintels were usually employed to cover openings,--there is strong ground for the belief that the builders of that time were acquainted with the nature of the arch. Dr. Birch mentions a rudimentary arch of the time of the fifth dynasty: at Abydos there are also remains of vaulted tombs of the sixth dynasty; and in a tomb in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids there is an elementary arch of three stones surmounted by a true arch constructed in four courses. The probability is that true brick arches were built at a very early period, but in the construction of their tombs, where heavy masses of superincumbent masonry or rock had to be supported, the Egyptians seem to have been afraid to risk even the remote possibility of their arches decaying; and hence, even when they preserved the form of the arch in masonry, they constructed it with horizontal courses of stones projecting one over the other, and then cut away the lower angles. One dominating idea seems to have influenced them in the whole of their work--_esto perpetua_ was their motto; and though they have been excelled by later peoples in grace and beauty, it is a question whether they have ever been surpassed in the skill with which they adapted their means to the end which they always kept in view. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ _Floor_ (technically _Plan_).--The early rock-cut tombs were, of course, only capable of producing internal effects; their floor presents a series of halls and galleries, varying in size and shape, leading one out of the other, and intended by their contrast or combination to produce architectural effect. To this was added in the later rock-cut tombs a façade to be seen directly in front. Much the same account can be given of the disposition of the built temples. They possess one front, which the spectator approaches, and they are disposed so as to produce varied and impressive interiors, but not to give rise to external display. The supports, such as walls, columns, piers, are all very massive and very close together, so that the only wide open spaces are courtyards. The circle, or octagon, or other polygonal forms do not appear in the plans of Egyptian buildings; but though all the lines are straight, there is a good deal of irregularity in spacing, walls which face one another are not always parallel, and angles which appear to be right angles very often are not so. The later buildings extend over much space. The adjuncts to these buildings, especially the avenues of sphinxes, are planned so as to produce an air of stately grandeur, and in them some degree of external effect is aimed at. _Walls._ The walls are uniformly thick, and often of granite or of stone, though brick is also met with; _e.g._ some of the smaller pyramids are built entirely of brick. In all probability the walls of domestic buildings were to a great extent of brick, and less thick than those of the temples; hence they have all disappeared. The surface of walls, even when of granite, was usually plastered with a thin fine plaster, which was covered by the profuse decoration in colour already alluded to. The walls of the propylons tapered from the base towards the top, and the same thing sometimes occurred in other walls. In almost all cases the stone walls are built of very large blocks, and they show an unrivalled skill in masonry. _Roofs._ The roofing which remains is executed entirely in stone, but not arched or vaulted. The rock-cut tombs, however, as has been stated, contain ceilings of an arched shape, and in some cases forms which seem to be an imitation of timber roofing. The roofing of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak provides an arrangement for admitting light very similar to the clerestory of Gothic cathedrals. _Openings._ The openings were all covered by a stone lintel, and consequently were uniformly square-headed. The interspaces between columns were similarly covered, and hence Egyptian architecture has been, and correctly, classed as the first among the styles of trabeated architecture. Window-openings seldom occur. _Columns._ The columns have been already described to some extent. They are almost always circular in plan, but the shaft is sometimes channelled. They are for the most part of sturdy proportions, but great grace and elegance are shown in the profile given to shafts and capitals. The design of the capitals especially is full of variety, and admirably adapts forms obtained from the vegetable kingdom. The general effect of the Egyptian column, wherever it is used, is that it appears to have, as it really has, a great deal more strength than is required. The fact that the abacus (the square block of stone introduced between the moulded part of the capital and what it carries) is often smaller in width than the diameter of the column aids very much to produce this effect. _Ornaments._ Mouldings are very rarely employed; in fact, the large bead running up the angles of the pylons, &c., and a heavy hollow moulding doing duty as a cornice, are all that are usually met with. Sculpture and carving occur occasionally, and are freely introduced in later works, where we sometimes find statues incorporated into the design of the fronts of temples. Decoration in colour, in the shape of hieroglyphic inscriptions and paintings of all sorts, was profusely employed (Figs. 27-30), and is executed with a truth of drawing and a beauty of colouring that have never been surpassed. As has been pointed out, almost every object drawn is partly conventionalised, in the most skilful manner, so as to make it fit its place as a piece of a decorative system. _Architectural Character._ This is gloomy, and to a certain extent forbidding, owing to the heavy walls and piers and columns, and the great masses supported by them; but when in its freshness and quite uninjured by decay or violence, the exquisite colouring of the walls and ceilings and columns must have added a great deal of beauty: this must have very much diminished the oppressive effect inseparable from such massive construction and from the gloomy darkness of many portions of the buildings. It is also noteworthy that the expenditure of materials and labour is greater in proportion to the effect attained than in any other style. The pyramids are the most conspicuous example of this prodigality. Before condemning this as a defect in the style, it must be remembered that a stability which should defy enemies, earthquakes, and the tooth of time, was far more aimed at than architectural character; and that, had any mode of construction less lavish of material, and less perfect in workmanship, been adopted, the buildings of Egypt might have all disappeared ere this. [Illustration: FIG. 30.--PAINTED DECORATION FROM THEBES.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Some Egyptologists incline to the opinion that the pyramid of Saqqára is the most ancient, while others think it much more recent than those of Gizeh. [2] Strictly speaking, the base is not an exact square, the four sides measuring, according to the Royal Engineers, north, 760 ft. 7·5 in.; south, 761 ft. 8·5 in.; east, 760 ft. 9·5 in.; and west, 764 ft. 1 in. [3] Conventionalising may be described as representing a part only of the visible qualities or features of an object, omitting the remainder or very slightly indicating them. A black silhouette portrait is an extreme instance of convention, as it displays absolutely nothing but the outline of a profile. For decorative purposes it is almost always necessary to conventionalise to a greater or less extent whatever is represented. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--SCULPTURED ORNAMENT AT NINEVEH.] CHAPTER III. WEST ASIATIC ARCHITECTURE. The architectural styles of the ancient nations which ruled over the countries of Western Asia watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates, from a period about 2200 B.C. down to 330 B.C., are so intimately connected one with another, and so dependent one upon the other, that it is almost impossible to attempt an accurate discrimination between the Babylonian, or ancient Chaldæan, the Assyrian and the Persian. A more intelligible idea of the architecture of this long period will be gained by regarding the three styles as modifications and developments of one original style, than by endeavouring to separate them.[4] Their sequence can, however, be accurately determined. First comes the old Chaldæan period, next the Assyrian, during which the great city of Nineveh was built, and finally the Persian, after Cyrus had subdued the older monarchies; and remains exist of all these periods. As to the origin of the Chaldæan Kingdom, however, all is obscure; and the earliest date which can be fixed with the slightest approach to probability is 2234 B.C., when Nimrod is supposed to have founded the old Chaldæan dynasty. This seems to have lasted about 700 years, and was then overthrown by a conquering nation of which no record or even tradition remains, the next two and a half centuries being a complete blank till the rise of the great Assyrian Monarchy about 1290 B.C., which lasted till its destruction by Cyrus about 538 B.C. The Persian Monarchy then endured till the death of Alexander the Great, in 333 B.C., after which great confusion arose, the empire being broken up among his generals and rapidly falling to pieces. It is only within a comparatively recent period that we have had any knowledge of the architecture of these countries; but the explorations of M. Botta, commenced in 1843 and continued by M. Place, and those of Mr. (now Sir A. H.) Layard in 1845, combined with the successful attempts of Prof. Grotefend, Prof. Lassen, and Col. Rawlinson at deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions, have disclosed a new world to the architectural student, without which some of the developments of Greek architecture must have remained obscure. The authentic remains of buildings of the early Chaldæan period are too few and in too ruinous a condition to allow of a reproduction of their architectural features with any certainty. The buildings, whether palaces or temples, appear to have been constructed on terraces, and to have been several storeys in height; and in one instance, at Mugheyr, the walls sloped inwards in a similar manner to those of Egyptian buildings, a peculiarity which is not met with in other examples of West Asiatic architecture. The materials employed were bricks, both sun-dried and kiln-burnt, which seem to have been coated with a vitreous enamel for purposes of interior decoration. Fragments of carved limestone were discovered by Sir A. H. Layard, but the fact that the fragments found have been so few ought not to lead us too hastily to the conclusion that stone was not used as facing for architectural purposes, as after the buildings became ruined the stone would eagerly be sought for and carried away before the brickwork was touched. Bitumen seems to have been employed as a cement. Although original buildings of this era cannot be found, it has been shown that in all probability we have, in a building of a later date--the Birs-i-Nimrud--a type of the old Babylonian temple. This in its general disposition must have resembled that of the Tomb of Cyrus, described and figured later on, though on a vastly larger scale. The lowest storey appears to have been an exact square of 272 ft.; each of the higher storeys was 42 ft. less horizontally than the one below it, and was placed 30 ft. back from the front of the storey below it, but equidistant from the two sides, where the platforms were 21 ft. wide. The three upper storeys were 45 ft. in height altogether, the two below these were 26 ft. each, and the height of the lowest is uncertain. The topmost storey probably had a tower on it which enclosed the shrine of the temple. This edifice was for a long time a bone of contention among savants, but Colonel Rawlinson's investigations have brought to light the fact that it was a temple dedicated to the seven heavenly spheres, viz. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, in the order given, starting from the bottom. Access to the various platforms was obtained by stairs, and the whole building was surrounded by a walled enclosure. From remains found at Wurkha we may gather that the walls of the buildings of this period were covered with elaborate plaster ornaments, and that a lavish use was made of colour in their decoration. Of the later Assyrian period several ruins of buildings believed to be palaces have been excavated, of which the large palace at Khorsabad, the old name of which was Hisir-Sargon, now a small village between 10 and 11 miles north-east of Nineveh, has been the most completely explored, and this consequently is the best adapted to explain the general plan of an Assyrian edifice. M. Botta, when French Consul at Mosul, and M. Victor Place conducted these explorations, and the following details are taken from their works. Like all other Assyrian palaces, this was reared on a huge artificial mound, the labour of forming which must have been enormous. The reason for the construction of these mounds is not far to seek. Just as the chiefs of a mountainous country choose the loftiest peaks for their castles, so in Assyria, which was a very flat country, the extra defensive strength of elevated buildings was clearly appreciated; and as these absolute monarchs ruled over a teeming population and had a very large number of slaves, and only had to direct their taskmasters to impress labour whenever they wanted it, no difficulty existed in forming elevated platforms for their palaces. These were frequently close to a river, and it is by no means improbable that this was turned into the excavation from which the earth for the mound was taken, and thus formed a lake or moat as an additional defence. A further reason for these terraces may be found in the fact that in a hot climate buildings erected some 20 or 30 ft. above the level of the plain catch the breezes much more quickly than lower edifices. In the case of Khorsabad the terrace was made of sun-dried bricks, about 15·7 in. square and 2 in. thick. These bricks were made of the most carefully prepared clay. The terrace was faced by a retaining wall of coursed masonry, nearly 10 ft. in thickness. On this terrace the palace was built, and it consisted of a series of open courts arranged unsymmetrically, surrounded by state or private apartments, storehouses, stables, &c. Great care seems to have been exercised in the accurate orientation of the building, but in rather a peculiar manner. Instead of any one façade of the building facing due north, the corners face exactly towards the four points of the compass. The courts were all entered by magnificent portals flanked by gigantic figures, and were approached by flights of steps. Fig. 32 is a plan of the palace of Khorsabad, which was placed close to the boundary of the city; in fact it was partly outside the city wall proper, though surrounded by a wall of its own. The grand south-east portals or propylæa were adorned with huge human-headed bulls and gigantic figures, and gave access to a large court, 315 ft. by 280 ft., on the east side of which are the stables and out-houses, and on the west side the metal stores. On the north of this court, though not approached directly from it, was the Seraglio (not to be confounded with the Harem), the grand entrance to which was from a second large court, access to which was obtained from a roadway sloping up from the city. The portals to this portion of the palace were also adorned with human-headed bulls. From the second court a vaulted passage gave access to the state apartments, which appear to have had a direct view across the open country, and were quite outside the city walls. The Harem has been excavated; it stood just outside the palace proper, behind the metal stores. The remains of an observatory exist, and the outlines of what is supposed to have been a temple have also been unearthed, so that we have here a complete plan of the palace. Altogether 31 courts and 198 chambers have been discovered. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--PALACE OF KHORSABAD. BUILT BY KING SARGON ABOUT 710 B.C. A, Steps. B, Chief portal. C, Chief entrance-court. D-H, Women's apartments (Harem). J, Centre court of building. K, Chief court of royal residence. L, Portal with carved bulls as guards. M, Centre court of royal residence. N, Temple (?). O, Pyramid of steps. S, Entrance to chief court. T, Plan of terraces with wall and towers.] It will be noticed that great disproportion exists between the length of the various apartments and their breadth, none being more than 40 ft. wide; and it is probable that this was owing to structural necessities, the Assyrian builders finding it impossible, with the materials at their disposal, to cover wider spaces than this. The walls of this palace vary from 5 to 15 ft. in thickness, and are composed of sun-dried bricks, faced in the principal courts and state apartments with slabs of alabaster or Mosul gypsum to a height of from 9 to 12 ft., above which kiln-burnt bricks were used. The alabaster slabs were held together by iron, copper, or wooden cramps or plugs, and were covered with sculptured pictures representing scenes of peace and war, from which, as was the case with the Egyptian remains, we are able to reconstruct for ourselves the daily life of the monarchs of those early times. Above the alabaster slabs plastered decorations were used; in some cases painted frescoes have been found, or mosaics formed with enamelled bricks of various colours. In the out-buildings and the more retired rooms of the palace, the alabaster slabs were omitted, and plaster decorations used, from the ground upwards. The researches of MM. Botta and Place have shown that colour was used with a lavishness quite foreign to our notions, as the alabaster statues as well as the plaster enrichments were coloured. M. Place says that in no case were the plain bricks allowed to face the walls of an apartment, the joint being always concealed either by colour or plaster: in fact, he remarks that after a time, if he found walls standing showing the brickwork joints, he invariably searched with success among the débris of the chamber for remains of the sculptured decorations which had been used to face the walls. Not the least interesting of these discoveries was that of the drains under the palace, portions of which were in very good preservation; and all were vaulted, so that there can be no doubt whatever that the Assyrians were acquainted with the use of the arch. This was further proved by the discovery by M. Place of the great arched gates of the city itself, with an archivolt of coloured enamelled bricks forming various patterns, with a semicircular arch springing from plain jambs. Extreme care was taken by the Assyrian builders in laying the pavements to ensure their being perfectly level: first a layer of kiln-burnt bricks was laid on the ordinary sun-dried bricks forming the terrace; then came a layer of fine sand, upon which the bricks or slabs of the pavement proper were laid, forming in many cases an elegant pattern (see Fig. 33). [Illustration: FIG. 33.--PAVEMENT FROM KHOYUNJIK.] Great difference of opinion exists as to the manner in which the various apartments of the palace were lighted. M. Place suggests that the rooms were all vaulted on the inside, and the spandrels filled in with earth afterwards to form perfectly flat roofs, and he gives a restoration of the building on such an arrangement; but if he is correct, it is impossible to see how any light at all can have penetrated into the interior of many of the apartments, and as these apartments are decorated with a profusion of paintings it is very difficult to believe that artificial light alone was used in them. M. Place thinks, however, that in some cylindrical terra-cotta vessels which he found he has hit upon a species of skylight which passed completely through the vault over the rooms, and thus admitted the light from above. This, however, can hardly be considered as settled yet. Mr. Fergusson, on the other hand, suggests that the thick main walls were carried to a height of about 18 or 19 ft., and that above this were two rows of dwarf columns, one on the inner and the other on the outer edge of the wall, these columns supporting a flat terrace roof, and the walls thus forming galleries all round the apartments. Then to cover the space occupied by the apartments themselves it is necessary to assume the existence of rows of columns, the capitals of which were at the same level as those of the dwarf columns on the walls. Where one apartment is surrounded on all sides by others, the roof over it may have been carried up to a higher level, forming a sort of clerestory. This theory no doubt accounts for many things which are very hard to explain otherwise, and derives very strong support from the analogy of Persepolis, where slender stone columns exist. Such columns of cedar wood would add enormously to the magnificence and grandeur of the building; and if, as seems likely, most of these Assyrian palaces were destroyed by fire, the absence of the remains of columns offers no difficulty. On the other hand, in many parts of the palace of Khorsabad no trace of fire remains, and yet here no suggestion of detached columns can be found, and, moreover, it is extremely difficult to arrange columns symmetrically in the various apartments so that doorways are not interfered with. There is also another difficulty, viz. that if the building called the Harem at Khorsabad was built in this way, the apartments would have been open to the view of any one ascending the lofty building called the observatory. It is quite possible that further explorations may tend to elucidate this difficult question of roofing, but at present all that can be said is that none of the theories that have been put forward is wholly satisfactory. As no columns at all exist, we cannot say what capitals were employed, but it is probable that those of Persepolis, which will be shortly described, were copied from an earlier wooden form, which may have been that used by the Assyrian builders. There is, however, capping the terrace on which the temple was erected at Khorsabad, a good example of an Assyrian cornice, which is very similar indeed to the forms found in Egypt, and some of the sculptured bas-reliefs which have been discovered depict rude copies of Assyrian buildings drawn by the people themselves; and it is most interesting to notice that just as we found in the Egyptian style the proto-Doric column, so in the Assyrian we find the proto-Ionic (Figs. 34, 34a), and possibly also the proto-Corinthian (Fig. 34b). [Illustration: FIG. 34.--PROTO-IONIC COLUMN.] [Illustration: FIG. 34a.--PROTO-IONIC CAPITAL FROM ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE.] [Illustration: FIG. 34b.--PROTO-CORINTHIAN CAPITAL FROM ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE.] The third branch of West Asiatic architecture is the Persian, which was developed after Cyrus had conquered the older monarchies, and which attained its greatest magnificence under Darius and Xerxes. The Persians were originally a brave and hardy race inhabiting the mountainous region south of Media, which slopes down to the Persian Gulf. Until the time of Cyrus, who was the founder of the great kingdom of Persia, they inhabited small towns, had no architecture, and were simple barbarians. But after Cyrus had vanquished the wealthy and luxurious Assyrian monarchs, and his warriors had seen and wondered at the opulence and splendour of the Assyrian palaces, it was natural that his successors should strive to emulate for themselves the display of their vassals. Therefore, having no indigenous style to fall back upon, the artisans who were summoned to build the tomb of the founder of the monarchy and the palaces of his successors, simply copied the forms with which they were acquainted. Fortunately, the sites for the new palaces were in a locality where building stone was good and abundant, and the presence of this material had a modifying effect upon the architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--TOMB OF CYRUS.] The best known of the remains which date as far back as the earlier Persian dynasties is the so-called tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadæ, near Murghab (Fig. 35). This may be looked upon as a model in white marble of an old Chaldæan temple, such as the Birs-i-Nimrud. There are the same platforms diminishing in area as the top is approached, and on the topmost platform is a small cella or temple with a gabled stone roof, which probably originally contained the sarcophagus. It is, however, at Persepolis, the real capital of the later Persian kings, whose grandeur and wealth were such that Alexander is said to have found there treasure to the amount of thirty millions of pounds sterling, that we find the most magnificent series of ruins. These were carefully measured and drawn by Baron Texier in 1835, and his work and that of MM. Flandrin and Coste are those from which the best information on this subject can be obtained. [Illustration: FIG. 35a.--GENERAL PLAN OF THE BUILDINGS AT PERSEPOLIS.] Persepolis is about 35 miles north-east of Shiraz, close to the main highway to Ispahan, at the foot of the mountain range which bounds the extensive plain of Nurdusht. The modern inhabitants of the district call the ruins Takht-i-Jamshid (or the building of Jamshid), but the inscriptions that have been deciphered prove that Darius and Xerxes were the chief builders. Just as was the case with the Assyrian ruins, these stand on an immense platform which rises perpendicularly from the plain and abuts in the rear against the mountain range. Instead, however, of this platform being raised artificially, it was cut out of the rock, and levelled into a series of terraces, on which the buildings were erected. The platform, whose length from north to south is about 1582 ft., and breadth from east to west about 938 ft., is approached from the plain by a magnificent double staircase of black marble, of very easy rise, not more than 4 in. each step. Its general height above the level of the plain was originally 34 ft. 9 in. The retaining wall of the platform is not straight, but has in it 40 breaks or set-offs of unequal dimensions. At the top of the staircase are the remains of a building with four columns in the centre and with large portals both back and front, each of which is adorned with gigantic bulls, strikingly resembling those found at Khorsabad. Those in the front have no wings, but those in the rear have wings and human heads. It has been suggested that these are the ruins of one of those large covered gates frequently mentioned in the Bible, under the shelter of which business was transacted, and which probably formed the entrance to the whole range of courts and buildings. After passing through this gateway and turning southwards, at a distance of 177 feet from it, another terrace is reached, 9 ft. 2 in. higher than the first one. This terrace also is approached by four flights of steps profusely decorated with sculptured bas-reliefs, and on it are the remains of the Chehil Minar, the grand hexastyle Hall of Xerxes, which must have been one of the most magnificent buildings of ancient times. This building is marked A on the general plan. It consisted of a central court, containing thirty-six columns, the distance from centre to centre of the outside columns being 142 ft. 8 in. This court was surrounded by walls, of which nothing now remains but the jambs of three of the doorways. On three sides of this court, to the north, east and west, were porticoes of twelve columns each, precisely in a line with those of the central court, the distance from centre to centre of the columns being 28 ft. 6 in. These columns, both in their proportions and shape, suggest an imitation of timber construction. On the south the court was probably terminated by a wall, and Mr. Fergusson suggests that the corners between the porticoes were filled up with small chambers. The most striking feature of this hall or palace must have been its loftiness, the height of the columns varying from 63 ft. 8 in. to 64 feet from bottom of base to top of capital. The shafts were slightly tapering and had 48 flutings, and were 4 ft. 6 in. in diameter in the upper part. The bases of the columns show hardly any variations, and consist of a series of mouldings such as is shown in Fig. 36; the lowest part of this moulded base is enriched with leaves, and rests on a low circular plinth at the bottom: the total height of the base averages 5 feet. The capitals show considerable variations. Those of the east and west porticoes represent the heads and fore part of the bodies of two bulls[5] placed directly on the shaft back to back, with their forelegs doubled under them, the feet resting on the shaft and the knees projecting; the total height of these capitals is 7 ft. 4 in. Between the necks of the bulls rested the wooden girder which supported the cross-bearers of the roof. In the north portico and, so far as can be ascertained, in the central court, the shaft of the column was much shorter, and supported a fantastic elongated capital, consisting of a sort of inverted cup, supporting an elegant shape much resembling the Egyptian palm-leaf capital, above which, on all the four sides, are double spirals resembling the ornaments of the Greek Ionic capital known as volutes, but placed perpendicularly, and not, as in the Ionic capital, horizontally. These volutes again may have supported double bulls, which would make the total height of the columns the same as those of the east and west porticoes. The doorways have cornices enriched with leaves, similar to those found at Khorsabad, which have already been noticed as bearing a decided resemblance to the Egyptian doorways. [Illustration: FIG. 35b.--COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS, EAST AND WEST PORTICOES.] [Illustration: FIG. 36.--COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS, NORTH PORTICO.] On other terraces, slightly raised above the main platform, exist the remains, in a more or less ruined condition, of numerous other courts and halls, one of which has no less than one hundred columns to support its roof, but the height of this building was much inferior to that of the Chehil Minar. The existence of these columns leaves no doubt that these buildings were covered with flat roofs; and that over part of them was a raised talar or prayer-platform is rendered probable from the introduction of such a feature into the sculptured representation of a palace façade which forms the entrance to the rock-tomb of Darius, which was cut out of the mountain at the back of the terrace of Persepolis. The position of this tomb on the general plan is marked B, and Fig. 37 is a view of the entrance, which was probably intended as a copy of one of the halls. All the walls of the palaces were profusely decorated with sculptured pictures, and various indications occur which induce the belief that painting was used to decorate those portions of the walls that were not faced with sculptured slabs. [Illustration: FIG. 37.--THE ROCK-CUT TOMB OF DARIUS.] The superior lightness and elegance of the Persepolitan ruins to those of an earlier epoch will not fail to be noticed, but there is still a certain amount of barbaric clumsiness discernible, and it is not till we come to Greek architecture that we see how an innate genius for art and beauty, such as was possessed by that people, could cull from previous styles everything capable of being used with effect, and discard or prune off all the unnecessary exuberances of those styles which offend a critically artistic taste. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ The floor-space of a great Assyrian or Medo-Persian building was laid out on a plan quite distinct from that of an Egyptian temple; for the rooms are almost always grouped round quadrangles. The buildings are also placed on terraces, and no doubt would secure external as well as internal effects, to which the imposing flights of stairs provided would largely contribute. We find in Assyrian palaces, halls comparatively narrow in proportion to their great length, but still so wide that the roofing of them must have been a serious business, and we find them arranged side by side, often three deep. In the Persian buildings, halls nearly square on plan, and filled by a multitude of columns, occur frequently. In the plan of detached buildings like the Birs-i-Nimrud, we are reminded of the pyramids of Egypt, which no doubt suggested the idea of pyramidal monuments to all subsequent building peoples. _Walls._ The magnificently worked granite and stones of Egypt give place to brick for the material of the walls, with the result that a far larger space could be covered with buildings by a given number of men in a given time, but of course the structures were far more liable to decay. Accordingly, sturdy as their walls are, we find them at the present day reduced to mere shapeless mounds, but of prodigious extent. _Roofs._ We can only judge of the roofs by inference, and it has already been stated that a difference of opinion exists respecting them. It appears most probable that a large proportion of the buildings must have been roofed by throwing timber beams from wall to wall and forming a thick platform of earth on them, and must have been lighted by some sort of clerestory. At any rate the stone roofs of the Egyptians seem to have been discarded, and with them the necessity for enormous columns and piers placed very close together. In some bas-reliefs, buildings with roofs of a domical shape are represented. _Openings._ Doorways are the openings chiefly met with, and it is not often that the superstructure, whether arch or lintel, remains, but it is clear that in some instances, at least, openings were arched. Great attention was paid to important doorways, and a large amount of magnificent sculpture was employed to enrich them. _Columns._ The columns most probably were of wood in Assyrian palaces. In some of the Persian ones they were of marble, but of a proportion and treatment which point to an imitation of forms suitable for wood. The bases and capitals of these slender shafts are beautiful in themselves, and very interesting as suggesting the source from which some of the forms in Greek architecture were derived, and on the bas-reliefs other architectural forms are represented which were afterwards used by the Greeks. _Ornaments._ Sculptured slabs, painted wall decorations, and terra-cotta ornamentation were used as enrichments of the walls. These slabs, which have become familiarly known through the attention roused by the discoveries of Sir A. H. Layard and the specimens sent by him to the British Museum, are objects of the deepest interest; so are the carved bulls from gateways. In the smaller and more purely ornamental decorations the honeysuckle, and other forms familiar to us from their subsequent adoption by Greek artists, are met with constantly, executed with great taste. _Architectural Character._ A character of lavish and ornate magnificence is the quality most strongly displayed by the architectural remains of Western Asia, and could we have beheld any one of the monuments before it was reduced to ruin, we should probably have seen this predominant to an extent of which it is almost impossible now to form an adequate idea. FOOTNOTES: [4] In any such endeavour we should be met by the further difficulty, that the writers of antiquity differ widely in the precise limits which they give to the Assyrian Kingdom. Some make it include Babylon, other writers say that it was bounded on the south by Babylon, and altogether the greatest confusion exists in the accounts that have come down to us. [5] As a matter of fact there is a marked distinction between the heads of the animals of the east and west porticoes: those of the west are undoubtedly bulls, but those of the east are grotesque mythological creatures somewhat resembling the fabled unicorn. [Illustration: FIG. 38.--SCULPTURED ORNAMENT AT ALLAHABAD.] CHAPTER IV. ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE. _Hindu Architecture._ Hindu architecture is not only unfamiliar but uncongenial to Western tastes; and as it has exercised no direct influence upon the later styles of Europe, it will be noticed in far less detail than the magnitude and importance of many Indian buildings which have been examined and measured during the last few years would otherwise claim, although the exuberant wealth of ornament exhibited in these buildings denotes an artistic genius of very high order, if somewhat uncultured and barbaric. As by far the largest number of Hindu buildings are of a date much later than the commencement of our era, a strict adherence to chronological sequence would scarcely allow the introduction of this style so early in the present volume; but we know that several centuries before Christ powerful kingdoms and wealthy cities existed in India; and as it seems clear also that in architecture and art, as well as in manners and customs, hardly any change[6] has occurred from remote antiquity, it appeared allowable, as well as convenient, that the short description we have to offer should precede rather than follow that of the classical styles properly so called. Here, as always when we attempt to penetrate farther back than a certain date, all is obscure and mythical. We find lists of kings and dynasties going back thousands of years before our era, but nothing at all to enable us to judge how much of this may be taken as solid fact. Mr. Fergusson believes he has discovered in one date, viz. 3101 B.C., the first Aryan settlement; but be this as it may, it is useless to look for any architectural remains until after the death of Gotama Buddha in 543 B.C.; in fact, it is very doubtful whether remains can be authenticated until the reign of King Asoka (B.C. 272 to B.C. 236), when Buddhism had spread over almost the whole of the country, where it remained the predominant cult until Brahmanism again asserted its supremacy in the 14th century A.D. The earliest, or among the earliest, architectural remains are the inscribed pillars called Lâts, which are found in numerous localities, but have been almost always overthrown. Many of these were erected by the above-named Asoka: they were ornamented with bands and mouldings separating the inscriptions, and crowned by a sort of capital, which was generally in the form of an animal. One very curious feature in these pillars is the constant occurrence of a precise imitation of the well-known honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks; this was probably derived from the same source whence the Greeks obtained it, namely Assyria. It is most probable that these pillars served to ornament the approaches to some kind of sacred enclosure or temple, of which, however, no remains have been found. [Illustration: FIG. 39.--DAGOBA FROM CEYLON.] Extremely early in date are some of the tumuli or topes which exist in large numbers in various parts of India. These are of two kinds,--the topes or stupas proper, which were erected to commemorate some striking event or to mark a sacred spot; and the dagobas, which were built to cover the relics of Buddha himself or some Buddhist saint. These topes consist of a slightly stilted hemispherical dome surmounting a substructure, circular in plan, which forms a sort of terrace, access to which is obtained by steps. The domical shape was, however, external only, as on the inside the masonry was almost solid, a few small cavities only being left for the protection of various jewels, &c. The dome was probably surmounted by a pinnacle, as shown in Fig. 39. In the neighbourhood of Bhilsa, in Central India, there are a large number of these topes, of which the largest, that of Sanchi, measures 121 ft. in diameter and 55 ft. in height; it was erected by King Asoka. Two kinds of edifices which are not tombs remain, the chaityas (temples or halls of assembly) and viharas or monasteries, which were generally attached to the chaityas. These erections were either detached or cut in the rock, and it is only the rock-cut ones of which remains exist of an earlier date than the commencement of the Christian era. The earliest specimen of a rock-cut chaitya is in the Nigope cave, near Behar, constructed about 200 B.C. This consists of two compartments, an outer rectangular one 32 ft. 9 in. by 19 ft. 1 in., and an inner circular one 19 ft. in diameter. The Lomas Rishi cave is of a slightly later date: both of these rock-cut temples exhibit in every detail a reproduction of wooden forms. In the doorway the stone piers slope inwards, just like raking wooden struts, and the upper part represents the ends of longitudinal rafters supporting a roof. Later on the builders emancipated themselves to a certain extent from this servile adhesion to older forms, and Fig. 40 gives a plan and section of a later chaitya at Karli, near Poona. This bears a striking resemblance to a Christian basilica:[7] there is first the forecourt; then a rectangular space divided by columns into nave and aisles, and terminated by a semicircular apse. The nave is 25 ft. 7 in. wide, and the aisles 10 ft. each, the total length is 126 ft. Fifteen columns separate the nave from the aisles, and these have bases, octagonal shafts, and rich capitals. Round the apse the columns are replaced by piers. The side aisles have flat roofs, and the central nave a stilted semicircular one, practically a vault, which at the apse becomes a semicircular dome, under which is the dagoba, the symbol of Buddhism. The screen separating the forecourt from the temple itself is richly ornamented with sculpture. [Illustration: FIG. 40.--CHAITYA NEAR POONA.] The older viharas or monasteries were also cut in the rock (Figs. 41, 42), and were divided into cells or chambers; they were several storeys in height, and it is probable that the cells were used by devout Buddhists as habitations for the purposes of meditation. [Illustration: FIG. 41.--THE KYLAS AT ELLORA. A ROCK-CUT MONUMENT.] [Illustration: FIG. 42.--PLAN OF THE KYLAS AT ELLORA. A ROCK-CUT MONUMENT.] Among the most remarkable, and in fact almost unique features of Hindu Architecture are the so-called rails which form enclosures sometimes round the topes and sometimes round sacred trees. Occasionally they are found standing alone, though when this is the case it is probably on account of the object which was the cause of their erection having perished. They are built of stone, carved so as to represent a succession of perpendicular and horizontal bands or rails, separated by a sort of pierced panels. The carving is of the most elaborate description, both human and animal forms being depicted with great fidelity, and representations occur of various forms of tree worship which have been of the greatest use in elucidating the history of this phase of religious belief. Occasionally the junctions of the rails are carved into a series of discs, separated by elaborate scroll-work. These rails are frequently of very large dimensions, that at Bharhut--which is one of the most recently discovered--measuring 275 ft. in circumference, with a height of 22 ft. 6 in. The date of these erections is frequently very difficult to determine, but the chief authorities generally concur in the opinion that none are found dating earlier than about 250 B.C., nor later than 500 A.D., so that it is pretty certain they must have been appropriated to some form of Buddhist worship. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--VIMANA FROM MANASARA.] All the buildings that we have mentioned were devoted to the worship of Buddha, but the Jain schism, Brahmanism, and other cults had their representative temples and buildings, a full description of which would require a volume many times larger than the present one. Many of the late detached buildings display rich ornamentation and elaborate workmanship. They are generally of a pyramidal shape, several storeys in height, covered with intricately cut mouldings and other fantastic embellishments. Columns are of all shapes and sizes, brackets frequently take the place of capitals, and where capitals exist almost every variety of fantastic form is found. It has been stated that no fixed laws govern the plan or details of Indian buildings, but there exists an essay on Indian Architecture by Ram Raz--himself a Hindoo--which tends to show that such a statement is erroneous, as he quotes original works of considerable antiquity which lay down stringent rules as to the planning of buildings, their height, and the details of the columns. It is probable that a more extended acquaintance with Hindu literature will throw further light on these rules. Of the various invasions which have occurred some have left traces in the architecture of India. None of these are more interesting than certain semi-Greek forms which are met with in the Northern Provinces, and which without doubt are referable to the influence of the invasion under Alexander the Great. A far more conspicuous and widespread series of changes followed in the wake of the Mohammedan invasions. We shall have an opportunity later on of recurring to this subject,[8] but it is one to which attention should be called at this early stage, lest it should be thought that a large and splendid part of Indian architecture had been overlooked. [Illustration: FIG. 44.--BRACKET CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 45.--COLUMN FROM AJUNTA.] [Illustration: FIG. 46.--COLUMN FROM ELLORA.] [Illustration: FIG. 47.--COLUMN FROM AJUNTA.] _Chinese and Japanese Architecture._ Although the Chinese have existed as a nation, continuously for between two and three thousand years, if not longer, and at a very early period had arrived at a high state of artistic and scientific cultivation, yet none of their buildings with which we are acquainted has any claim on our attention because of its antiquity. Several reasons may be assigned for this, the principal being that the Chinese seem to be as a race singularly unsusceptible to all emotions. Although they reverence their dead ancestors, yet this reverence never led them, as did that of the Egyptians, Etruscans, and other nations, to a lavish expenditure of labour or materials, to render their tombs almost as enduring as the everlasting hills. Though waves of religious zeal must have flowed over the country when Confucius inculcated his simple and practical morality and gained an influential following, and again when Buddhism was introduced and speedily became the religion of the greater portion of the people, their religious emotion never led them, as it did the Greeks and the Mediæval builders, to erect grand and lasting monuments of sacred art. When most of the Western nations were still barbarians, the Chinese had attained a settled system of government, and were acquainted with numerous scientific truths which we have prided ourselves on rediscovering within the last two centuries; but no thought ever seems to have occurred to them, as it did to the Romans, of commemorating any event connected with their life as a nation, or of handing down to posterity a record of their great achievements. Peaceful and prosperous, they have pursued the even tenor of their way at a high level of civilisation certainly, but at a most monotonous one. The Buddhist temples of China have a strong affinity to those of India. The largest is that at Honan, the southern suburb of Canton. This is 306 ft. long by 174 ft. wide, and consists of a series of courts surrounded by colonnades and cells for the _bonzes_ or priests. In the centre of the courtyard is a series of pavilions or temples connected by passages, and devoted to the worship of the idols contained in them. On each side of the main court, against the outer wall, is another court, with buildings round it, consisting of kitchen and refectories on the one side, and hospital wards on the other. It is almost certain that this is a reproduction of the earlier forms of chaityas and viharas which existed in India, and have been already referred to. The temple of Honan is two storeys in height, the building itself being of stone, but the colonnade surrounding it is of wood on marble bases. On the second storey the columns are placed on two sides only, and not all round. The columns have no capitals, but have projecting brackets. The roof of each storey projects over the columns, and has a curved section, which is, in fact, peculiar to Chinese roofs, and it is enriched at the corners with carved beasts and foliage. This is a very common form of temple throughout China. The Taas or Pagodas are the buildings of China best known to Europeans. These are nearly always octagonal in plan, and consist generally of nine storeys, diminishing both in height and breadth as they approach the top. Each storey has a cornice composed of a fillet and large hollow moulding, supporting a roof which is turned up at every corner and ornamented with leaves and bells. On the top of all is a long pole, forming a sort of spire, surrounded by iron hoops, and supported by eight chains attached to the summit and to each angle of the roof of the topmost storey. The best known pagoda is that of Nankin, which is 40 ft. in diameter at its base, and is faced inside and outside with white glazed porcelain slabs keyed into the brick core. The roof tiles are also of porcelain, in bands of green and yellow, and at each angle is a moulding of larger tiles, red and green alternately. The effect of the whole is wonderfully brilliant and dazzling. Apart from the coloured porcelain, nearly every portion of a Chinese temple or pagoda is painted, colour forming the chief means of producing effect; but as nearly everything is constructed of wood, there was and is no durability in these edifices. [Illustration: FIG. 48.--A SMALL PAGODA.] In public works of utility, such as roads, canals--one of which is nearly 700 miles in length--and boldly designed bridges, the Chinese seem to have shown a more enlightened mind; and the Great Wall, which was built to protect the northern boundary of the kingdom, about 200 B.C., is a wonderful example of engineering skill. This wall, which varies from 15 to 30 ft. in height, is about 25 ft. thick at the base, and slopes off to 20 ft. at the top. It is defended by bastions placed at stated intervals, which are 40 ft. square at the base, and about the same in height; the wall is carried altogether through a course of about 1400 miles, following all the sinuosities of the ground over which it passes. It is a most remarkable fact that a nation should have existed 2000 years ago capable of originating and completing so great a work; but it is still more remarkable that such a nation, possessing moreover, as it does, a great faculty in decorative art applied to small articles of use and fancy, should be still leading a populous and prosperous existence, and yet should have so little to show in the way of architecture, properly so termed, at the present time. Japan, like China, possesses an architecture, but one exclusively of wood; for although the use of stone for bridges, walls, &c., had been general, all houses and temples were invariably built of wood until the recent employment of foreigners led to the erection of brick and stone buildings. The consequence has been that nearly all the old temples have been burnt down and rebuilt several times; and though it is probable that the older forms were adhered to when the buildings were re-erected, it is only by inference that we can form an idea of the ancient architecture of the country. The heavy curved roofs which are so characteristic of Chinese buildings are found also in Japan, but only in the Buddhist temples, and this makes it probable that this form of roof is not of native origin, but was introduced with the Buddhist cult. The earlier Shinto temples have a different form of roof, which is without the upward curve, but which has nearly as much projection at the eaves as the curved roofs. Where the buildings are more than one storey in height the upper one is always set somewhat back, as we saw was the case in the Chinese pagodas, and considerable and pleasing variety is obtained by treating the two storeys differently. Very great skill in carving is shown, all the posts, brackets, beams, and projecting rafters being formed into elaborate representations of animals and plants, or quaintly conceived grotesques; and the flat surfaces have frequently a shallow incised arabesque pattern intertwined with foliage. The roofs are always covered with tiles, and a curious effect is produced by enriching the hips and ridges with several courses of tiles in cement, thus making them rise considerably above the other portions of the roof. A peculiar feature of Japanese houses is that the walls, whether external or internal, are not filled in with plaster, but are constructed of movable screens which slide in grooves formed in the framing of the partitions. Thus all the rooms can easily be thrown together or laid open to the outer air in hot weather. All travellers in Japan remark upon the impossibility of obtaining privacy in the hotels in consequence of this. The Shinto temples are approached through what might be termed an archway, only that the arch does not enter into its composition. This erection is called a Torii, and is thus described by Professor Conder:[9]--"It is composed of two upright posts of great thickness, each consisting of the whole trunk of a tree rounded, about 15 ft. high, and placed 12 ft. apart. Across the top of these is placed a wooden lintel, projecting considerably and curving upwards at the ends. Some few feet below this another horizontal piece is tenoned into the uprights, having a little post in the centre helping to support the upper lintel." These erections occasionally occur in front of a Buddhist temple, when they are built of stone, exactly imitating, however, the wooden originals. This is interesting, as offering another proof, were one needed, that the curious forms of masonry exhibited in much of the work of the early nations, some of which has been described, is the result of an imitation of earlier wooden forms. The chief effect in the buildings of the Japanese is intended to be produced by colour, which is profusely used; and they have attained to a height of perfection in the preparation of varnishes and lacquers that has never been equalled. Their lacquer is used all over their buildings, besides forming their chief means of decorating small objects. It is, however, beginning to be questioned whether the old art of lacquering is not becoming lost by the Japanese themselves, as the modern work appears by no means equal to the old. One curious form of decoration, of which the Japanese are much enamoured, consists in forming miniature representations of country scenes and landscapes; waterfalls, bridges, &c., being reproduced on the most diminutive scale. It is much to be feared that our small stock of knowledge of ancient Japanese art will never be greatly increased, as the whole country and the people are becoming modernised and Europeanised to such an extent that it appears probable there will soon be little indigenous art left in the country. * * * * * It has not been thought necessary to append to this chapter analyses of the Eastern styles similar to those which are given in the case of the great divisions of Western Architecture. The notice of these styles must unavoidably be condensed into very small space. FOOTNOTES: [6] It is not intended to imply that Hindustan has been without change in her ruling dynasties. These have been continually changing; but the remarkable fact is that, numerous as have been the nations that have poured across the Indus attracted by "the wealth of Ind," there has been no reflux, as it were: the various peoples, with their arts, religions, and manners, have been swallowed up and assimilated, leaving but here and there slight traces of their origin. [7] See Chap. X. for an illustration of a Christian Basilica. [8] See chapter on Saracenic Architecture. [9] Paper communicated to the Royal Institute of Architects. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--GREEK HONEYSUCKLE ORNAMENT.] CHAPTER V. GREEK ARCHITECTURE. _Buildings of the Doric Order._ The architecture of Greece has a value far higher than that attaching to any of the styles which preceded it, on account of the beauty of the buildings and the astonishing refinement which the best of them display. This architecture has a further claim on our attention, as being virtually the parent of that of all the nations of Western Europe. We cannot put a finger upon any features of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Persian architecture, the influence of which has survived to the present day, except such as were adopted by the Greeks. On the other hand, there is no feature, no ornament, nor even any principle of design which the Greek architects employed, that can be said to have now become obsolete. Not only do we find direct reproductions of Greek architecture forming part of the practice of every European country, but we are able to trace to Greek art the parentage of many of the forms and features of Roman, Byzantine, and Gothic architecture, especially those connected with the column and which grew out of its artistic use. Greek architecture did not include the arch and all the forms allied to it, such as the vault and the dome; and, so far as we know, the Greeks abstained from the use of the tower. Examples of both these features were, it is almost certain, as fully within the knowledge of the Greeks as were those features of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian buildings which they employed; consequently it is to deliberate selection that we must attribute this exclusion. Within the limits by which they confined themselves, the Greeks worked with such power, learning, taste, and skill that we may fairly claim for their highest achievement--the Parthenon--that it advanced as near to absolute perfection as any work of art ever has been or ever can be carried. Greek architecture seems to have begun to emerge from the stage of archaic simplicity about the beginning of the sixth century before the Christian era (600 B.C. is the reputed date of the old Doric Temple at Corinth). All the finest examples were erected between that date and the death of Alexander the Great (333 B.C.), after which period it declined and ultimately gave place to Roman. The domestic and palatial buildings of the Greeks have decayed or been destroyed, leaving but few vestiges. We know their architecture exclusively from ruins of public buildings, and to a limited extent of sepulchral monuments remaining in Greece and in Greek colonies. By far the most numerous and excellent among these buildings are temples. The Greek idea of a temple was different from that entertained by the Egyptians. The building was to a much greater extent designed for external effect than internal. A comparatively small sacred cell was provided for the reception of the image of the divinity, usually with one other cell behind it, which seems to have served as treasury or sacristy; but there were no surrounding chambers, gloomy halls, or enclosed courtyards, like those of the Egyptian temples, visible only to persons admitted within a jealously guarded outer wall. The temple, it is true, often stood within some sort of precinct, but it was accessible to all. It stood open to the sun and air; it invited the admiration of the passer-by; its most telling features and best sculpture were on the exterior. Whether this may have been, to some extent, the case with Persian buildings, we have few means of knowing, but certainly the attention paid by the Greeks to the outside of their temples offers a striking contrast to the practice of the Egyptians, and to what we know of that of the Assyrians. [Illustration: FIG. 50.--PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE IN ANTIS.] The temple, however grand, was always of simple form, with a gable at each end, and in this respect differed entirely from the series of halls, courts, and chambers of which a great Egyptian temple consisted. In the very smallest temple at least one of the gables was made into a portico by the help of columns and two pilasters (Fig. 50). More important temples had a larger number of columns, and often a portico at each end (Figs. 50a and 55). The most important had columns on the flanks as well as at the front and rear, the sacred cell being, in fact, surrounded by them. It will be apparent from this that the column, together with the superstructure which rested upon it, must have played a very important part in Greek temple-architecture, and an inspection of any representations of Greek buildings will at once confirm the impression. [Illustration: FIG. 50a.--PLAN OF A SMALL GREEK TEMPLE.] We find in Greece three distinct manners, distinguished largely by the mode in which the column is dealt with. These it would be quite consistent to call "styles," were it not that another name has been so thoroughly appropriated to them, that they would hardly now be recognised were they to be spoken of as anything else than "orders." The Greek orders are named the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. Each of them presents a different series of proportions, mouldings, features, and ornaments, though the main forms of the buildings are the same in all. The column and its entablature (the technical name for the frieze, architrave, and cornice, forming the usual superstructure) being the most prominent features in every such building, have come to be regarded as the index or characteristic from an inspection of which the order and the degree of its development can be recognised, just as a botanist recognises plants by their flowers. By reproducing the column and entablature, almost all the characteristics of either of the orders can be copied; and hence a technical and somewhat unfortunate use of the word "order" to signify these features only has crept in, and has overshadowed and to a large extent displaced its wider meaning. It is difficult in a book on architecture to avoid employing the word "order" when we have to speak of a column and its entablature, because it has so often been made use of in this sense. The student must, however, always bear in mind that this is a restricted and artificial sense of the word, and that the column belonging to any order is always accompanied by the use throughout the building of the appropriate proportions, ornaments, and mouldings belonging to that order. The origin of Greek architecture is a very interesting subject for inquiry, but, owing to the disappearance of almost all very early examples of the styles, it is necessarily obscure. Such information, however, as we possess, taken together with the internal evidence afforded by the features of the matured style, points to the influence of Egypt, to that of Assyria and Persia, and to an early manner of timber construction--the forms proper to which were retained in spite of the abandonment of timber for marble--as all contributing to the formation of Greek architecture. In Asia Minor a series of monuments, many of them rock-cut, has been discovered, which throw a curious light upon the early growth of architecture. We refer to tombs found in Lycia, and attributed to about the seventh century B.C. In these we obviously have the first work in stone of a nation of ship builders. A Lycian tomb--such as the one now to be seen, accurately restored, in the British Museum--represents a structure of beams of wood framed together, surmounted by a roof which closely resembles a boat turned upside down. The planks, the beams to which they were secured, and even a ridge similar to the keel of a vessel, all reappear here, showing that the material in use for building was so universally timber, that when the tomb was to be "graven in the rock for ever" the forms of a timber structure were those that presented themselves to the imagination of the sculptor. In other instances the resemblance to shipwrights' work disappears, and that of a carpenter is followed by that of the mason. Thus we find imitations of timber beams framed together and of overhanging low-pitched roofs, in some cases carried on unsquared rafters lying side by side, in several of these tombs. What happened on the Asiatic shore of the Egean must have occurred on the Greek shores, and though none of the very earliest specimens of reproduction in stone of timber structures has come down to us, there are abundant traces, as we shall presently see, of timber originals in buildings of the Doric order. Timber originals were not, however, the only sources from which the early inhabitants of Greece drew their inspiration. Constructions of extreme antiquity, and free from any appearance of imitating structures of timber, mark the sites of the oldest cities of Greece, Mycenæ and Orchomenos for example, the most ancient being Pelasgic city walls of unwrought stone (Fig. 51). The so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, a circular underground chamber 48 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and with a pointed vault, is a well-known specimen of more regular yet archaic building. Its vault is constructed of stones corbelling over one another, and is not a true arch (Figs. 52, 52a). The treatment of an ornamental column found here, and of the remains of sculptured ornaments over a neighbouring gateway called the Gate of the Lions, is of very Asiatic character, and seems to show that whatever influences had been brought to bear on their design were Oriental. [Illustration: FIG. 51.--ANCIENT GREEK WALL OF UNWROUGHT STONE FROM SAMOTHRACE.] [Illustration: FIG. 52.--PLAN OF THE TREASURY OF ATREUS AT MYCENÆ.] [Illustration: FIG. 52a.--SECTION OF THE TREASURY OF ATREUS AT MYCENÆ.] [Illustration: FIG. 53.--GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM SELINUS.] [Illustration: FIG. 53a.--GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM THE THESEUM.] [Illustration: FIG. 53b.--GREEK DORIC CAPITAL FROM SAMOTHRACE.] A wide interval of time and a great contrast in taste separate the early works of Pelasgic masonry and even the chamber at Mycenæ from even the rudest and most archaic of the remaining Hellenic works of Greece. The Doric temple at Corinth is attributed, as has been stated, to the seventh century B.C. This was a massive masonry structure with extremely short, stumpy columns, and strong mouldings, but presenting the main features of the Doric style, as we know it, in its earliest and rudest form. Successive examples (Figs. 53 to 53b) show increasing slenderness of proportions and refinement of treatment, and are accompanied by sculpture which approaches nearer and nearer to perfection; but in the later and best buildings, as in the earliest and rudest, certain forms are retained for which it seems impossible to account, except on the supposition that they are reproductions in stone or marble of a timber construction. These occur in the entablature, while the column is of a type which it is hard to believe is not copied from originals in use in Egypt many centuries earlier, and already described (chap. II.). We will now proceed to examine a fully-developed Greek Doric temple of the best period, and in doing so we shall be able to recognise the forms referred to in the preceding paragraph as we come to them. The most complete Greek Doric temple was the Parthenon, the work of the architect Ictinus, the temple of the Virgin Goddess Athene (Minerva) at Athens, and on many accounts this building will be the best to select for our purpose.[10] [Illustration: FIG. 54.--RUINS OF THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS.] The Parthenon at Athens stood on the summit of a lofty rock, and within an irregularly shaped enclosure, something like a cathedral close; entered through a noble gateway.[11] The temple itself was of perfectly regular plan, and stood quite free from dependencies of any sort. It consisted of a cella, or sacred cell, in which stood the statue of the goddess, with one chamber (the treasury) behind. In the cella, and also in the chamber behind, there were columns. A series of columns surrounded this building, and at either end was a portico, eight columns wide, and two deep. There were two pediments, or gables, of flat pitch, one at each end. The whole stood on a basement of steps; the building, exclusive of the steps, being 228 ft. long by 101 ft. wide, and 64 ft. high. The columns were each 34 ft. 3 in. high, and more than 6 ft. in diameter at the base; a portion of the shaft and of the capital of one is in the British Museum, and a magnificent reproduction, full size, of the column and its entablature may be seen at the École des Beaux Arts, Paris. The ornaments consisted almost exclusively of sculpture of the very finest quality, executed by or under the superintendence of Pheidias. Of this sculpture many specimens are now in the British Museum. [Illustration: FIG. 55.--PLAN OF THE PARTHENON AT ATHENS.] [Illustration: FIG. 56.--THE ROOF OF A GREEK DORIC TEMPLE, SHOWING THE MARBLE TILES.] The construction of this temple was of the most solid and durable kind, marble being the material used; and the workmanship was most careful in every part of which remains have come down to us. The roof was, no doubt, made of timber and covered with marble tiles (Fig. 56), carried on a timber framework, all traces of which have entirely perished; and the mode in which it was constructed is a subject upon which authorities differ, especially as to what provision was made for the admission of light. The internal columns, found in other temples as well as in the Parthenon, were no doubt employed to support this roof, as is shown in Bötticher's restoration of the Temple at Pæstum which we reproduce (Fig. 56a), though without pledging ourselves to its accuracy; for, indeed, it seems probable that something more or less like the clerestory of a Gothic church must have been employed to admit light to these buildings, as we know was the case in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. But this structure, if it existed, has entirely disappeared.[12] [Illustration: FIG. 56a.--SECTION OF THE GREEK DORIC TEMPLE AT PÆSTUM. AS RESTORED BY BÖTTICHER.] [Illustration: FIG. 57.--THE GREEK DORIC ORDER FROM THE THESEUM.] The order of the Parthenon was Doric, and the leading proportions were as follows:--The column was 5·56 diameters high; the whole height, including the stylobate or steps, might be divided into nine parts, of which two go to the stylobate, six to the column, and one to the entablature. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--PLAN OF A GREEK DORIC COLUMN.] [Illustration: FIG. 59.--THE FILLETS UNDER A GREEK DORIC CAPITAL.] The Greek Doric order is without a base; the shaft of the column springs from the top step and tapers towards the top, the outline being not, however, straight, but of a subtle curve, known technically as the entasis of the column. This shaft is channelled with twenty shallow channels,[13] the ridges separating one from another being very fine lines. A little below the moulding of the capital, fine sinkings, forming lines round the shaft, exist, and above these the channels of the flutes are stopped by or near the commencement of the projecting moulding of the capital. This moulding, which is of a section calculated to convey the idea of powerful support, is called the echinus, and its lower portion is encircled by a series of fillets (Fig. 59), which are cut into it. Above the echinus, which is circular, like the shaft, comes the highest member--the abacus, a square stout slab of marble, which completes the capital of the column. The whole is most skilfully designed to convey the idea of sturdy support, and yet to clothe the support with grace. The strong proportions of the shaft, the slight curve of its outline, the lines traced upon its surface by the channels, and even the vigorous uncompromising planting of it on the square step from which it springs, all contribute to make the column look strong. The check given to the vigorous upward lines of the channels on the shaft by the first sinkings, and their arrest at the point where the capital spreads out, intensified as it is by the series of horizontal lines drawn round the echinus by the fillets cut into it, all seem to convey the idea of spreading the supporting energy of the column outwards; and the abacus appears naturally fitted, itself inert, to receive a burden placed upon it and to transmit its pressure to the capital and shaft below. [Illustration: FIG. 60.--CAPITAL OF A GREEK DORIC COLUMN FROM ÆGINA, WITH COLOURED DECORATION.] [Illustration: FIG. 61.--SECTION OF THE ENTABLATURE OF THE GREEK DORIC ORDER.] [Illustration: FIG. 62.--PLAN LOOKING UP OF PART OF A GREEK DORIC PERISTYLE.] The entablature which formed the superstructure consisted first of a square marble beam--the architrave, which, it may be assumed, represents a square timber beam that occupied the same position in the primitive structures. On this rests a second member called the frieze, the prominent feature of which is a series of slightly projecting features, known as triglyphs (three channels) (Fig. 63), from the channels running down their face. These closely resemble, and no doubt actually represent, the ends of massive timber beams, which must have connected the colonnade to the wall of the cell in earlier buildings. At the bottom of each is a row of small pendants, known as guttæ, which closely resemble wooden pins, such as would be used to keep a timber beam in place. The panels between the triglyphs are usually as wide as they are high. They are termed metopes and sculpture commonly occupies them. The third division of the entablature, the cornice represents the overhanging eaves of the roof. [Illustration: FIG. 63.--DETAILS OF THE TRIGLYPH.] [Illustration: FIG. 64.--DETAILS OF THE MUTULES.] The cornices employed in classic architecture may be almost invariably subdivided into three parts: the supporting part, which is the lowest,--the projecting part, which is the middle,--and the crowning part, which is the highest division of the cornice. The supporting part in a Greek Doric cornice is extremely small. There are no mouldings, such as we shall find in almost every other cornice, calculated to convey the idea of contributing to sustain the projection of the cornice, but there are slabs of marble, called mutules (Fig. 64), dropping towards the outer end, of which one is placed over each triglyph and one between every two. These seem to recall, by their shape, their position, and their slope alike, the ends of the rafters of a timber roof; and their surface is covered with small projections which resemble the heads of wooden pins, similar to those already alluded to. The projecting part, in this as in almost all cornices, is a plain upright face of some height, called "the corona," and recalling probably a "facia" or flat narrow board such as a carpenter of the present day would use in a similar position, secured in the original structure to the ends of the rafters and supporting the eaves. Lastly, the crowning part is, in the Greek Doric, a single convex moulding, not very dissimilar in profile to the ovolo of the capital, and forming what we commonly call an eaves-gutter. At the ends of the building the two upper divisions of the cornice--namely, the projecting corona and the crowning ovolo--are made to follow the sloping line of the gable, a second corona being also carried across horizontally in a manner which can be best understood by inspecting a diagram of the corner of a Greek Doric building (Fig. 57); and the triangular space thus formed was termed a pediment, and was the position in which the finest of the sculpture with which the building was enriched was placed. In the Parthenon a continuous band of sculpture ran round the exterior of the cell, near the top of the wall. One other feature was employed in Greek temple-architecture. The _anta_ was a square pillar or pier of masonry attached to the wall, and corresponded very closely to our pilaster; but its capital always differed from that of the columns in the neighbourhood of which it was employed. The antæ of the Greek Doric order, as employed in the Parthenon, have a moulded base, which it will be remembered is not the case with the column, and their capital has for its principal feature an under-cut moulding, known as the bird's beak, quite dissimilar from the ovolo of the capital of the column (Fig. 65). Sometimes the portico of a temple consisted of the side walls prolonged, and ending in two antæ, with two or more columns standing between them. Such a portico is said to be in antis. [Illustration: FIG. 65.--ELEVATION AND SECTION OF THE CAPITAL OF A GREEK ANTA, WITH COLOURED DECORATION.] The Parthenon presents examples of the most extraordinary refinements in order to correct optical illusions. The delicacy and subtlety of these are extreme, but there can be no manner of doubt that they existed. The best known correction is the diminution in diameter or taper, and the _entasis_ or convex curve of the tapered outline of the shaft of the column. Without the taper, which is perceptible enough in the order of this building, and much more marked in the order of earlier buildings, the columns would look top-heavy; but the entasis is an additional optical correction to prevent their outline from appearing hollowed, which it would have done had there been no curve. The columns of the Parthenon have shafts that are over 34 ft. high, and diminish from a diameter of 6·15 ft. at the bottom to 4·81 ft. at the top. The outline between these points is convex, but so slightly so that the curve departs at the point of greatest curvature not more than ¾ in. from the straight line joining the top and bottom. This is, however, just sufficient to correct the tendency to look hollow in the middle. A second correction is intended to overcome the apparent tendency of a building to spread outwards towards the top. This is met by inclining the columns slightly inwards. So slight, however, is the inclination, that were the axes of two columns on opposite sides of the Parthenon continued upwards till they met, the meeting-point would be 1952 yards, or, in other words, more than one mile from the ground. Another optical correction is applied to the horizontal lines. In order to overcome a tendency which exists in all long lines to seem as though they droop in the middle, the lines of the architrave, of the top step, and of other horizontal features of the building, are all slightly curved. The difference between the outline of the top step of the Parthenon and a straight line joining its two ends is at the greatest only just over 2 inches. The last correction which it is necessary to name here was applied to the vertical proportions of the building. The principles upon which this correction rests have been demonstrated by Mr. John Pennethorne;[14] and it would hardly come within the scope of this volume to attempt to state them here: suffice it to say, that small additions, amounting in the entire height of the order to less than 5 inches, were made to the heights of the various members of the order, with a view to secure that from one definite point of view the effect of foreshortening should be exactly compensated, and so the building should appear to the spectator to be perfectly proportioned. The Parthenon, like many, if not all Greek buildings, was profusely decorated with coloured ornaments, of which nearly every trace has now disappeared, but which must have contributed largely to the splendid beauty of the building as a whole, and must have emphasised and set off its parts. The ornaments known as Doric frets were largely employed. They consist of patterns made entirely of straight lines interlacing, and, while preserving the severity which is characteristic of the style, they permit of the introduction of considerable richness. The principal remaining examples or fragments of Greek Doric may be enumerated as follows:-- IN GREECE. Temple of (?) Athena, at Corinth, ab. 650 B.C. Temple of (?) Zeus, in the island of Ægina, ab. 550 B.C. Temple of Theseus (Theseum), at Athens, 465 B.C. Temple of Athena (Parthenon), on the Acropolis at Athens, fin. 438 B.C. The Propylæa, on the Acropolis at Athens, 436-431 B.C. Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Temple of Apollo Epicurius, at Bassæ,[15] in Arcadia (designed by Ictinus). Temple of Apollo Epicurius, at Phigaleia, in Arcadia (built by Ictinus). Temple of Athena, on the rock of Sunium, in Attica. Temple of Nemesis, at Rhamnus, in Attica. Temple of Demeter (Ceres), at Eleusis, in Attica. IN SICILY AND SOUTH ITALY. Temple of (?) Zeus, at Agrigentum, in Sicily (begun B.C. 480). Temple at Ægesta (or Segesta), in Sicily. Temple of (?) Zeus, at Selinus, in Sicily (? ab. 410 B.C.). Temple of (?) Athena, at Syracuse, in Sicily. Temple of Poseidon, at Pæstum, in South of Italy (? ab. 550 B.C.). FOOTNOTES: [10] See Frontispiece and Figs. 54 and 55. [11] The Propylæa. [12] Mr. Fergusson's investigations, soon, it is understood, to be published in a complete form, clearly show that the clerestory and roof can be restored with the greatest probability. [13] In a few instances a smaller number is found. [14] 'Geometry and Optics of Ancient Architecture.' [15] ? Exterior Doric--Interior Ionic. [Illustration: FIG. 66.--PALMETTE AND HONEYSUCKLE.] CHAPTER VI. GREEK ARCHITECTURE. _Buildings of the Ionic and Corinthian Orders._ The Doric was the order in which the full strength and the complete refinement of the artistic character of the Greeks were most completely shown. There was a great deal of the spirit of severe dignity proper to Egyptian art in its aspect; but other nationalities contributed to the formation of the many-sided Greek nature, and we must look to some other country than Egypt for the spirit which inspired the Ionic order. This seems to have been brought into Greece by a distinct race, and shows marks of an Asiatic origin. The feature which is most distinctive is the one most distinctly Eastern--the capital of the column, ornamented always by volutes, _i.e._ scrolls, which bear a close resemblance to features similarly employed in the columns found at Persepolis. The same resemblance can be also detected in the moulded bases, and even the shafts of the columns, and in many of the ornaments employed throughout the buildings. [Illustration: FIG. 67.--SHAFT OF IONIC COLUMN SHOWING THE FLUTES.] [Illustration: FIG. 68.--IONIC CAPITAL. FRONT ELEVATION.] [Illustration: FIG. 69.--IONIC CAPITAL. SIDE ELEVATION.] In form and disposition an ordinary Ionic temple was similar to one of the Doric order, but the general proportions are more slender, and the mouldings of the order are more numerous and more profusely enriched. The column in the Ionic order had a base, often elaborately and sometimes singularly moulded (Figs. 74, 75). The shaft (Figs. 67, 70) is of more slender proportions than the Doric shaft. It was fluted, but its channels are more numerous, and are separated from one another by broader fillets than in the Doric. The distinctive feature, as in all the orders, is the capital (Figs. 68, 69), which is recognised at a glance by the two remarkable ornaments already alluded to as like scrolls, and known as volutes. These generally formed the faces of a pair of cushion-shaped features, which could be seen in a side view of the capital; but sometimes volutes stand in a diagonal position, and in almost every building they differ slightly. The abacus is less deep than in the Greek Doric, and it is always moulded at the edge, which was never the case with the Doric abacus. The entablature (Fig. 70) is, generally speaking, richer than that of the Doric order. The architrave, for example, has three facias instead of being plain. On the other hand, the frieze has no triglyphs, and but rarely sculpture. There are more members in the cornice, several mouldings being combined to fortify the supporting portion. These have sometimes been termed "the bed mouldings," and among them occurs one which is almost typical of the order, and is termed a dentil band. This moulding presents the appearance of a plain square band of stone, in which a series of cuts had been made dividing it into blocks somewhat resembling teeth, whence the name. Such an ornament is more naturally constructed in wood than in stone or marble, but if the real derivation of the Ionic order, as of the Doric, be in fact from timber structures, the dentil band is apparently the only feature in which that origin can now be traced. The crowning member of the cornice is a partly hollow moulding, technically called a "cyma recta," less vigorous than the convex ovolo, of the Doric: this moulding, and some of the bed mouldings, were commonly enriched with carving. Altogether more slenderness and less vigour, more carved enrichment and less painted decoration, more reliance on architectural ornament and less on the work of the sculptor, appear to distinguish those examples of Greek Ionic which have come down to us, as compared with Doric buildings. [Illustration: FIG. 70.--THE IONIC ORDER. FROM PRIENE, ASIA MINOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 71.--IONIC ORDER. FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM, ATHENS.] [Illustration: FIG. 72.--NORTH-WEST VIEW OF THE ERECHTHEIUM, IN THE TIME OF PERICLES.] The most numerous examples of the Ionic order of which remains exist are found in Asia Minor, but the most refined and complete is the Erechtheium at Athens (Figs. 72, 73), a composite structure containing three temples built in juxtaposition, but differing from one another in scale, levels, dimensions, and treatment. The principal order from the Erechtheium (Fig. 71) shows a large amount of enrichment introduced with the most refined and severe taste. Specially remarkable are the ornaments (borrowed from the Assyrian honeysuckle) which encircle the upper part of the shaft at the point where it passes into the capital, and the splendid spirals of the volutes (Figs. 68, 69). The bases of the columns in the Erechtheium example are models of elegance and beauty. Those of some of the examples from Asia Minor are overloaded with a vast number of mouldings, by no means always producing a pleasing effect (Figs. 74, 75). Some of them bear a close resemblance to the bases of the columns at Persepolis. [Illustration: FIG. 73.--PLAN OF THE ERECHTHEIUM.] [Illustration: FIG. 74.--IONIC BASE FROM THE TEMPLE OF THE WINGLESS VICTORY (NIKÈ APTEROS).] [Illustration: FIG. 75.--IONIC BASE MOULDINGS FROM PRIENE.] The most famous Greek building which was erected in the Ionic style was the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. This temple has been all but totally destroyed, and the very site of it had been for centuries lost and unknown till the energy and sagacity of an English architect (Mr. Wood) enabled him to discover and dig out the vestiges of the building. Fortunately sufficient traces of the foundation have remained to render it possible to recover the plan of the temple completely; and the discovery of fragments of the order, together with representations on ancient coins and a description by Pliny, have rendered it possible to make a restoration on paper, of the general appearance of this famous temple, which must be very nearly, if not absolutely, correct. The walls of this temple enclosed, as usual, a cella (in which was the statue of the goddess), with apparently a treasury behind it: they were entirely surrounded by a double series of columns, with a pediment at each end. The exterior of the building, including these columns, was about twice the width of the cella. The whole structure, which was of marble, was planted on a spacious platform with steps. The account of Pliny refers to thirty-six columns, which he describes as "_columnæ celatæ_" (sculptured columns), adding that one was by Scopas, a very celebrated artist. The fortunate discovery by Mr. Wood of a few fragments of these columns shows that the lower part of the shaft immediately above the base was enriched by a group of figures--about life-size--carved in the boldest relief and encircling the column. One of these groups has been brought to the British Museum, and its beauty and vigour enable the imagination partly to restore this splendid feature, which certainly was one of the most sumptuous modes of decorating a building by the aid of sculpture which has ever been attempted; and the effect must have been rich beyond description. It is worth remark that the Erechtheium, which has been already referred to, contains an example of a different, and perhaps a not less remarkable, mode of combining sculpture with architecture. In one of its three porticoes (Fig. 72) the columns are replaced by standing female figures, known as caryatidæ, and the entablature rests on their heads. This device has frequently been repeated in ancient and in modern architecture, but, except in some comparatively obscure examples, the sculptured columns of Ephesus do not appear to have been imitated. Another famous Greek work of art, the remains of which have been, like the Temple of Diana, disinterred by the energy and skill of a learned Englishman, belonged to the Ionic order. To Mr. Newton we owe the recovery of the site, and considerable fragments of the architectural features, of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the ancient wonders of the world. The general outline of this monument must have resembled other Greek tombs which have been preserved, such, for example, as the Lion Tomb at Cnidus; that is to say, the plan was square: there was a basement, above this an order, and above that a steep pyramidal roof rising in steps, not carried to a point, but stopping short to form a platform, on which was placed a quadriga (or four-horsed chariot). This building is known to have been richly sculptured, and many fragments of great beauty have been recovered. Indeed it was probably its elaboration, as well as its very unusual height (for the Greek buildings were seldom lofty), which led to its being so celebrated. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--THE CORINTHIAN ORDER. FROM THE MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES AT ATHENS.] [Illustration: FIG. 77.--CORINTHIAN CAPITAL FROM THE MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES AT ATHENS.] The Corinthian order, the last to make its appearance, was almost as much Roman as Greek, and is hardly found in any of the great temples of the best period of which remains exist in Greece, though we hear of its use. For example, Pausanias states that the Corinthian order was employed in the interior of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, built by Scopas, to which a date shortly after the year 394 B.C. is assigned. The examples which we possess are comparatively small works, and in them the order resembles the Ionic, but with the important exceptions that the capital of the column is quite different, that the proportions are altogether a little slenderer, and that the enrichments are somewhat more florid. [Illustration: FIG. 78.--MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES AT ATHENS, AS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES.] The capital of the Greek Corinthian order, as seen in the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates at Athens (Fig. 78)--a comparatively miniature example, but the most perfect we have--is a work of art of marvellous beauty (Fig. 77). It retains a feature resembling the Ionic volute, but reduced to a very small size, set obliquely and appearing to spring from the sides of a kind of long bell-shaped termination to the column. This bell is clothed with foliage, symmetrically arranged and much of it studied, but in a conventional manner, from the graceful foliage of the acanthus; between the two small volutes appears an Assyrian honeysuckle, and tendrils of honeysuckle, conventionally treated, occupy part of the upper portion of the capital. The abacus is moulded, and is curved on plan, and the base of the capital is marked by a very unusual turning-down of the flutes of the columns. The entire structure to which this belonged is a model of elegance, and the large sculptured mass of leaves and tendrils with which it is crowned is especially noteworthy. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--CAPITAL OF ANTÆ FROM MILETUS. SIDE VIEW.] A somewhat simpler Corinthian capital, and another of very rich design, are found in the Temple of Apollo Didymæus at Miletus, where also a very elegant capital for the antæ--or pilasters--is employed (Figs. 79, 81). A more ornamental design for a capital could hardly be adopted than that of the Lysicrates example, but there was room for more elaboration in the entablature, and accordingly large richly-sculptured brackets seem to have been introduced, and a profusion of ornament was employed. The examples of this treatment which remain are, however, of Roman origin rather than Greek. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--RESTORATION OF THE GREEK THEATRE OF SEGESTA.] The Greek cities must have included structures of great beauty and adapted to many purposes, of which in most cases few traces, if any, have been preserved. We have no remains of a Greek palace, or of Greek dwelling-houses, although those at Pompeii were probably erected and decorated by Greek artificers, for Roman occupation. The agora of a Greek city, which was a place of public assembly something like the Roman Forum, is known to us only by descriptions in ancient writers, but we possess some remains of Greek theatres; and from these, aided by Roman examples and written descriptions, can understand what these buildings were. The auditory was curved in plan, occupying rather more than a semicircle; the seats rose in tiers one behind another; a circular space was reserved for the chorus in the centre of the seats, and behind it was a raised stage, bounded by a wall forming its back and sides: a rough notion of the arrangement can be obtained from the lecture theatre of many modern colleges, and our illustration (Fig. 80) gives a general idea of what must have been the appearance of one of these structures. Much of the detail of these buildings is, however, a matter of pure speculation, and consequently does not enter into the scheme of this manual. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--CAPITAL OF ANTÆ FROM MILETUS.] CHAPTER VII. GREEK ARCHITECTURE. _Analysis._ The _Plan_ or floor-disposition of a Greek building was always simple however great its extent, was well judged for effect, and capable of being understood at once. The grandest results were obtained by simple means, and all confusion, uncertainty, or complication were scrupulously avoided. Refined precision, order, symmetry, and exactness mark the plan as well as every part of the work. The plan of a Greek temple may be said to present many of the same elements as that of an Egyptian temple, but, so to speak, turned inside out. Columns are relied on by the Greek artist, as they were by the Egyptian artist, as a means of giving effect; but they are placed by him outside the building instead of within its courts and halls. The Greek, starting with a comparatively small nucleus formed by the cell and the treasury, encircles them by a magnificent girdle of pillars, and so makes a grand structure, the first hint or suggestion being in all probability to be found in certain small Egyptian buildings to which reference has already been made. The disposition of these columns and of the great range of steps, or stylobate, is the most marked feature in Greek temple plans. Columns also existed, it is true, in the interior of the building, but these were of smaller size, and seem to have been introduced to aid in carrying the roof and the clerestory, if there was one. They have in several instances disappeared, and there is certainly no ground for supposing that in any Greek interior the grand but oppressive effect of a hypostyle hall was attempted to be reproduced. That was abandoned, together with the complication, seclusion, and gloom of the long series of chambers, cells, &c., placed one behind another, just as the contrasts and surprises of the series of courts and halls following in succession were abandoned for the one simple but grand mass built to be seen from without rather than from within. In the greater number of Greek buildings a degree of precision is exhibited, to which the Egyptians did not attain. All right angles are absolutely true; the setting-out (or spacing) of the different columns, piers, openings, &c., is perfectly exact; and, in the Parthenon, the patient investigations of Mr. Penrose and other skilled observers have disclosed a degree of accuracy as well as refinement which resembles the precision with which astronomical instruments are adjusted in Europe at the present day, rather than the rough-and-ready measurements of a modern mason or bricklayer. What the plans of Greek palaces might have exhibited, did any remains exist, is merely matter for inference and conjecture, and it is not proposed in this volume to pass far beyond ascertained and observed facts. There can be, however, little doubt that the palaces of the West Asiatic style must have at least contributed suggestions as to internal disposition of the later and more magnificent Greek mansions. The ordinary dwelling-houses of citizens, as described by ancient writers, resembled those now visible in the disinterred cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which will be referred to under Roman Architecture.[16] The chief characteristic of the plan of these is that they retain the disposition which in the temples was discarded; that is to say, all the doors and windows looked into an inner court, and the house was as far as possible secluded within an encircling wall. The contrast between the openness of the public life led by the men in Greek cities, and the seclusion of the women and the families when at home, is remarkably illustrated by this difference between the public and private buildings. The plan of the triple building called the Erechtheium (Fig. 72) deserves special mention, as an example of an exceptional arrangement which appears to set the ordinary laws of symmetry at defiance, and which is calculated to produce a result into which the picturesque enters at least as much as the beautiful. Though the central temple is symmetrical, the two attached porticoes are not so, and do not, in position, dimensions, or treatment, balance one another. The result is a charming group, and we cannot doubt that other examples of freedom of planning would have been found, had more remains of the architecture of the great cities of Greece come down to our own day. In public buildings other than temples--such as the theatre, the agora, and the basilica--the Greek architects seem to have had great scope for their genius; the planning of the theatres shows skilful and thoroughly complete provisions to meet the requirements of the case. A circular disposition was here introduced--not, it is true, for the first time, since it is rendered probable by the representations on sculptured slabs that some circular buildings existed in Assyria, and circular buildings remain in the archaic works at Mycenæ; but it was now elaborated with remarkable completeness, beauty, and mastery over all the difficulties involved. Could we see the great theatre of Athens as it was when perfect, we should probably find that as an interior it was almost unrivalled, alike for convenience and for beauty; and for these excellences it was mainly indebted to the elegance of its planning. The actual floor of many of the Greek temples appears to have been of marble of different colours. _The Walls._ The construction of the walls of the Greek temples rivalled that of the Egyptians in accuracy and beauty of workmanship, and resembled them in the use of solid materials. The Greeks had within reach quarries of marble, the most beautiful material which nature has provided for the use of the builder; and great fineness of surface and high finish were attained. Some interesting examples of hollow walling occur in the construction of the Parthenon. The wall was not an element of the building on which the Greek architect seemed to dwell with pleasure; much of it is almost invariably overshadowed by the lines of columns which form the main features of the building. The pediment (or gable) of a temple is a grand development of the walls, and perhaps the most striking of the additions which the Greeks made to the resources of the architect. It offers a fine field for sculpture, and adds real and apparent height beyond anything that the Egyptians ever attempted since the days of the Pyramid-builders; and it has remained in constant use to the present hour. We do not hear of towers being attached to buildings, and, although such monumental structures as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus approached the proportions of a tower, height does not seem to have commended itself to the mind of the Greek architect as necessary to the buildings which he designed. It was reserved for Roman and Christian art to introduce this element of architectural effect in all its power. On the other hand, the Greek, like the Persian architect, emphasised the base of his building in a remarkable manner, not only by base mouldings, but by planting the whole structure on a great range of steps which formed an essential part of the composition. _The Roof._ The construction of the roofs of Greek temples has been the subject of much debate. It is almost certain that they were in some way so made as to admit light. They were framed of timber and covered by tiles, often, if not always, of marble. Although all traces of the timber framing have disappeared, we can at least know that the pitch was not steep, by the slope of the outline of the pediments, which formed, as has already been said, perhaps the chief glory of a Greek temple. The flat stone roofs sometimes used by the Egyptians, and necessitating the placing of columns or other supports close together, seem to have become disused, with the exception that where a temple was surrounded by a range of columns the space between the main wall and the columns was so covered. The vaulted stone roofs of the archaic buildings, of which the treasury of Atreus (Figs. 52, 52a) was the type, do not seem to have prevailed in a later period, or, so far as we know, to have been succeeded by any similar covering or vault of a more scientific construction. It is hardly necessary to add that the Greek theatres were not roofed. The Romans shaded the spectators in their theatres and amphitheatres by means of a velarium or awning, but it is extremely doubtful whether even this expedient was in use in Greek theatres. _The Openings._ The most important characteristic of the openings in Greek buildings is that they were flat-topped,--covered by a lintel of stone or marble,--and never arched. We have already[17] shown that this circumstance is really of the first importance as determining the architectural character of buildings. Doors and window openings were often a little narrower at the top than the bottom, and were marked by a band of mouldings, known as the architrave, on the face of the wall, and, so to speak, framing in the opening. There was often also a small cornice over each (Figs. 82, 83). Openings were seldom advanced into prominence or employed as features in the exterior of a building; in fact, the same effects which windows produce in other styles were in Greek buildings created by the interspaces between the columns. _The Columns._ These features, together with the superstructure or entablature, which they customarily carried, were the prominent parts of Greek architecture, occupying as they did the entire height of the building. The development of the orders (which we have explained to be really decorative systems, each of which involved the use of one sort of column, though the term is constantly understood as meaning merely the column and entablature) is a very interesting subject, and illustrates the acuteness with which the Greeks selected from those models which were accessible to them, exactly what was suited to their purpose, and the skill with which they altered and refined, and almost redesigned, everything which they so selected. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--GREEK DOORWAY SHOWING CORNICE.] [Illustration: FIG. 83.--GREEK DOORWAY. FRONT VIEW. (FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM.)] During the whole period when Greek art was being developed, the ancient and polished civilisation of Egypt constituted a most powerful and most stable influence, always present,--always, comparatively speaking, within reach,--and always the same. Of all the forms of column and capital existing in Egypt, the Greeks, however, only selected that straight-sided fluted type of which the Beni-Hassan example is the best known, but by no means the only instance. We first meet with these fluted columns at Corinth, of very sturdy proportions, and having a wide, swelling, clumsy moulding under the abacus by way of a capital. By degrees the proportions of the shaft grew more slender, and the profile of the capital more elegant and less bold, till the perfected perfections of the Greek Doric column were attained. This column is the original to which all columns with moulded capitals that have been used in architecture, from the age of Pericles to our own, may be directly or indirectly referred; while the Egyptian types which the Greeks did not select--such, for example, as the lotus-columns at Karnak--have never been perpetuated. A different temper or taste, and partly a different history, led to the selection of the West Asiatic types of column by a section of the Greek people; but great alterations in proportion, in the treatment of the capital, and in the management of the moulded base from which the columns sprang, were made, even in the orders which occur in the Ionic buildings of Asia Minor. This was carried further when the Ionic order was made use of in Athens herself, and as a result the Attic base and the perfected Ionic capital are to be found at their best in the Erechtheium example. The Ionic order and the Corinthian, which soon followed it, are the parents,--not, it is true, of all, but of the greater part of the columns with foliated capitals that have been used in all styles and periods of architecture since. It will not be forgotten that rude types of both orders are found represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs, but still the Corinthian capital and order must be considered as the natural and, so to speak, inevitable development of the Ionic. From the Corinthian capital an unbroken series of foliated capitals can be traced down to our own day; almost the only new ornamented type ever devised since being that which takes its origin in the Romanesque block capital, known to us in England as the early Norman cushion capital: this was certainly the parent of a distinct series, though even these owe not a little to Greek originals. We have alluded to the Ionic base. It was derived from a very tall one in use at Persepolis, and we meet with it first in the rich but clumsy forms of the bases in the Asia Minor examples. In them we find the height of the feature as used in Persia compressed, while great, and to our eyes eccentric, elaboration marked the mouldings: these the refinement of Attic taste afterwards simplified, till the profile of the well-known Attic base was produced--a base which has had as wide and lasting an influence as either of the original forms of capital. The Corinthian order, as has been above remarked, is the natural sequel of the Ionic. Had Greek architecture continued till it fell into decadence, this order would have been the badge of it. As it was, the decadence of Greek art was Roman art, and the Corinthian order was the favourite order of the Romans; in fact all the important examples of it which remain are Roman work. If we remember how invariably use was made of one or other of the two great types of the Greek order in all the buildings of the best Greek time, with the addition towards its close of the Corinthian order, and that these orders, a little more subdivided and a good deal modified, have formed the substratum of Roman architecture and of that in use during the last three centuries; and if we also bear in mind that nearly all the columnar architecture of Early Christian, Byzantine, Saracenic, and Gothic times, owes its forms to the same great source, we may well admit that the invention and perfecting of the orders of Greek architecture has been--with one exception--the most important event in the architectural history of the world. That exception is, of course, the introduction of the Arch. _The Ornaments._ Greek Ornaments have exerted the same wide influence over the whole course of Western art as Greek columns; and in their origin they are equally interesting as specimens of Greek skill in adapting existing types, and of Greek invention where no existing types would serve. Few of the mouldings of Greek architecture are to be traced to anterior styles. There is nothing like them in Egyptian work, and little or nothing in Assyrian; and though a suggestion of some of them may no doubt be found in Persian examples, we must take them as having been substantially originated by Greek genius, which felt that they were wanted, designed them, and brought them far towards absolute perfection. They were of the most refined form, and when enriched were carved with consummate skill. They were executed, it must be remembered, in white marble,--a material having the finest surface, and capable of responding to the most delicate variations in contour by corresponding changes in shade or light in a manner and to a degree which no other material can equal. In the Doric, mouldings were few, and almost always convex; they became much more numerous in the later styles, and then included many of concave profile. The chief are the OVOLO, which formed the curved part of the Doric capital, and the crowning moulding of the Doric cornice; the CYMA; the BIRD'S BEAK, employed in the capitals of the antæ; the FILLETS under the Doric capital; the hollows and TORUS mouldings of the Ionic and Corinthian bases. The profiles of these mouldings were very rarely segments of circles, but lines of varying curvature, capable of producing the most delicate changes of light and shade, and contours of the most subtle grace. Many of them correspond to conic sections, but it seems probable that the outlines were drawn by hand, and not obtained by any mechanical or mathematical method. The mouldings were some of them enriched, to use the technical word, by having such ornaments cut into them or carved on them as, though simple in form, lent themselves well to repetition.[18] Where more room for ornament existed, and especially in the capitals of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, ornaments were freely and most gracefully carved, and very symmetrically arranged. Though these were very various, yet most of them can be classed under three heads. (1.) FRETS (Figs. 116 to 120). These were patterns made up of squares or L-shaped lines interlaced and made to seem intricate, though originally simple. Frequently these patterns are called Doric frets, from their having been most used in buildings of the Doric order. (2.) HONEYSUCKLE (Figs. 94 and 111 to 114). This ornament, admirably conventionalised, had been used freely by the Assyrians, and the Greeks only adopted what they found ready to their hand when they began to use it; but they refined it, at the same time losing no whit of its vigour or effectiveness, and the honeysuckle has come to be known as a typical Greek decorative _motif_. (3.) ACANTHUS (Figs. 84 and 85). This is a broad-leaved plant, the foliage and stems of which, treated in a conventional manner, though with but little departure from nature, were found admirably adapted for floral decorative work, and accordingly were made use of in the foliage of the Corinthian capital, and in such ornaments as, for example, the great finial which forms the summit of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. [Illustration: FIG. 84.--THE ACANTHUS LEAF AND STALK.] The beauty of the carving was, however, eclipsed by that highest of all ornaments--sculpture. In the Doric temples, as, for example, in the Parthenon, the architect contented himself with providing suitable spaces for the sculptor to occupy; and thus the great pediments, the metopes (Fig. 86) or square panels, and the frieze of the Parthenon were occupied by sculpture, in which there was no necessity for more conventionalism than the amount of artificial arrangement needed in order fitly to occupy spaces that were respectively triangular, square, or continuous. In the later and more voluptuous style of the Ionic temples we find sculpture made into an architectural feature, as in the famous statues, known as the Caryatides, which support the smallest portico of the Erechtheium, and in the enriched columns of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Sculpture had already been so employed in Egypt, and was often so used in later times; but the best opportunity for the display of the finest qualities of the sculptor's art is such an one as the pediments, &c., of the great Doric temples afforded. [Illustration: FIG. 85.--THE ACANTHUS LEAF.] There is little room for doubting that all the Greek temples were richly decorated in colours, but traces and indications are all that remain: these, however, are sufficient to prove that a very large amount of colour was employed, and that probably ornaments (Figs. 105 to 120) were painted upon many of those surfaces which were left plain by the mason, especially on the cornices, and that mosaics (Fig. 87) and coloured marbles, and even gilding, were freely used. There is also ground for believing that as the use of carved enrichments increased with the increasing adoption of the Ionic and Corinthian styles, less use was made of painted decorations. _Architectural Character._ Observations which have been made during the course of this and the previous chapters will have gone far to point out the characteristics of Greek art. An archaic and almost forbidding severity, with heavy proportions and more strength than grace, marks the earliest Greek buildings of which we have any fragments remaining. Dignity, sobriety, refinement, and beauty are the qualities of the works of the best period. The latest buildings were more rich, more ornate, and more slender in their proportions and to a certain extent less severe. [Illustration: FIG. 86.--METOPE FROM THE PARTHENON. CONFLICT BETWEEN A CENTAUR AND ONE OF THE LAPITHÆ.] [Illustration: FIG. 87.--MOSAIC FROM THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS, OLYMPIA.] Most carefully studied proportions prevailed, and were wrought out to a pitch of completeness and refinement which is truly astounding. Symmetry was the all but invariable law of composition. Yet in certain respects--as, for example, the spacing and position of the columns--a degree of freedom was enjoyed which Roman architecture did not possess. Repetition ruled to the almost entire suppression of variety. Disclosure of the arrangement and construction of the building was almost complete, and hardly a trace of concealment can be detected. Simplicity reigns in the earliest examples; the elaboration of even the most ornamental is very chaste and graceful; and the whole effect of Greek architecture is one of harmony, unity, and refined power. [Illustration: EXAMPLES OF GREEK ORNAMENT IN THE NORTHERN PORTICO OF THE ERECHTHEIUM--SHOWING THE ORNAMENTATION OF THE CEILING. FIG. 88.--SECTION OF THE PORTICO OF THE ERECHTHEIUM. FIG. 89.--PLAN OF THE PORTICO--LOOKING UP.] A general principle seldom pointed out which governs the application of enrichments to mouldings in Greek architecture may be cited as a good instance of the subtle yet admirable concord which existed between the different features: it is as follows. _The outline of each enrichment in relief was ordinarily described by the same line as the profile of the moulding to which it was applied._ The egg enrichment (Fig. 91) on the ovolo, the water-leaf on the cyma reversa (Figs. 92 and 97), the honeysuckle on the cyma recta (Fig. 94), and the guilloche (Fig. 100) on the torus, are examples of the application of this rule,--one which obviously tends to produce harmony. [Illustration: FIG. 90.--CAPITAL OF ANTÆ FROM THE ERECHTHEIUM.] [Illustration: EXAMPLES OF GREEK ORNAMENT IN RELIEF. FIG. 91.--EGG AND DART. FIG. 92.--LEAF AND DART. FIG. 93.--HONEYSUCKLE. FIG. 94.--HONEYSUCKLE. FIG. 95.--ACANTHUS. FIG. 96.--ACANTHUS. FIG. 97.--LEAF AND TONGUE. FIG. 98.--LEAF AND TONGUE. FIG. 99.--GARLAND. FIG. 100.--GUILLOCHE. FIG. 101.--BEAD AND FILLET. FIG. 102.--BEAD AND FILLET. FIG. 103.--TORUS MOULDING. FIG. 104.--TORUS MOULDING.] [Illustration: EXAMPLES OF GREEK ORNAMENT IN COLOUR. FIG. 105.--HONEYSUCKLE. FIGS. 106, 108.--FACIAS WITH BANDS OF FOLIAGE. FIG. 106. FIG. 107.--HONEYSUCKLE. FIG. 108. FIG. 109.--LEAF AND DART. FIG. 110.--EGG AND DART. FIGS. 111 TO 113.--EXAMPLES OF THE HONEYSUCKLE. FIG. 111. FIG. 112. FIG. 113. FIG. 114.--COMBINATION OF THE FRET, THE EGG AND DART, THE BEAD AND FILLET, AND THE HONEYSUCKLE. FIG. 114. FIG. 115.--GUILLOCHE. FIGS. 116 TO 120.--EXAMPLES OF THE FRET. FIG. 116. FIG. 117. FIG. 118. FIG. 119. FIG. 120.] FOOTNOTES: [16] See Chap. IX. [17] Chap. I. [18] For a statement of the general rule governing such enrichments, see page 133. [Illustration: FIG. 121.--ELEVATION OF AN ETRUSCAN TEMPLE (RESTORED FROM DESCRIPTIONS ONLY).] CHAPTER VIII. ETRUSCAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. _Historical and General Sketch._ The few grains of truth that we are able to sift from the mass of legend which has accumulated round the early history of Rome seem to indicate that at a very early period--which the generally received date of 753 B.C. may be taken to fix as nearly as is now possible--a small band of outcasts and marauders settled themselves on the Palatine Hill and commenced to carry on depredations against the various cities of the tribes whose territories were in the immediate neighbourhood, such as the Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, Latins, and Etruscans. A walled city was built, which from its admirable situation succeeded in attracting inhabitants in considerable numbers, and speedily began to exercise supremacy over its neighbours. The most important of the neighbouring nations were the Etruscans, who called themselves Rasena, and who must have settled on the west coast of Italy, between the rivers Arno and Tiber, at a very early period. Their origin is, however, very obscure, some authorities believing, upon apparently good grounds, that they came from Asia Minor, while others assert that they descended from the north over the Rhætian Alps. But whatever that origin may have been, they had at the time of the founding of Rome as a city attained a high degree of civilisation, and showed a considerable amount of architectural skill; and their arts exercised a very great influence upon Roman art. Considerable remains of the city walls of several Etruscan towns still exist. These show that the masonry was of what has been termed a Cyclopean character,--that is to say, the separate stones were of an enormous size; in the majority of examples these stones were of a polygonal shape, though in a few instances they were rectangular, while in all cases they were fitted together with the most consummate accuracy of workmanship, which, together with their great massiveness, has enabled much of this masonry to endure to the present day. Cortona, Volterra, Fiesole, and other towns exhibit instances of this walling. The temples, palaces, or dwelling-houses which went to make up the cities so fortified have all disappeared, and the only existing structural remains of Etruscan buildings are tombs. These are found in large numbers, and consist--as in the earlier instances which have already been described--both of rock-cut and detached erections. Of the former, the best known group is at Castel d'Asso, where we find not only chambers cut into the rock, each resembling an ordinary room with an entrance in the face of the rock, but also monuments cut completely out and standing clear all round; and we cannot fail to detect in the forms into which the rock has been cut, especially those of the roof, imitations of wooden buildings, heavy square piers being left at intervals supporting longitudinal beams which hold up the roof. Fig. 122 is an illustration of the interior of a chamber in the rock. Occasionally there were a cornice and pediment over the entrance. [Illustration: FIG. 122.--SEPULCHRE AT CORNETO.] The other class of tombs are circular tumuli, similar to the Pelasgic tombs of Asia Minor; of these large numbers exist, but not sufficiently uninjured to enable us to restore them completely. They generally consisted of a substructure of stone, upon which was raised a conical elevation. In the case of the Regulini Galeassi tomb there were an inner and an outer tumulus, the latter of which covered several small tombs, while the inner enclosed one only, which had fortunately never been opened till it was lately discovered. This tomb was vaulted on the horizontal system--that is to say, its vault was not a true arch, but was formed of courses of masonry, each overhanging the one below, as in the Treasury of Atreus, and it had a curious recess in the roof, in which were found numerous interesting examples of Etruscan pottery. It is, however, clear from the city gates, sewers, aqueducts, &c., that the Etruscans were acquainted with and extensively used the true radiating arch composed of wedge-shaped stones (voussoirs), and that they constructed it with great care and scientific skill. The gate at Perugia, and the Cloacæ or Sewers at Rome, constructed during the reign of the Tarquins,[19] at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., are examples of the true arch, and this makes it certain that it was from the Etruscans that the Romans learned the arched construction which, when combined with the trabeated or lintel mode of construction which they copied from the Greeks, formed the chief characteristic of Roman architecture. The Cloaca Maxima (Fig. 123), which is roofed over with three concentric semicircular rings of large stones, still exists in many places with not a stone displaced, as a proof of the skill of these early builders. There are remains of an aqueduct at Tusculum which are interesting from the fact of the horizontal being combined with the true arch in its construction. [Illustration: FIG. 123.--CLOACA MAXIMA.] No Etruscan temples remain now, but we know from Vitruvius that they consisted of three cells with one or more rows of columns in front, the intercolumniation or interval between the columns being excessive. The largest Etruscan temple of which any record remains was that of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome, which, under the Empire, became one of the most splendid temples of antiquity. It was commenced by Tarquinius Superbus, and is said to have derived its name from the fact of the builders, when excavating the foundations, coming upon a freshly bleeding head (_caput_), indicating that the place would eventually become the chief city of the world. Another form of Etruscan temple is described by Vitruvius, consisting of one circular cell only, with a porch. This form was probably the origin of the series of circular Roman buildings which includes such forms of temples as that at Tivoli, and many of the famous mausolea, _e.g._ that of Hadrian, and the culmination of which style is seen in the Pantheon. It is interesting to notice that the Romans never entirely gave up the circular form, one instance of its use in Britain at a late period of the Roman occupation having been discovered in the ruins of Silchester near Basingstoke; and we shall find that it was perpetuated in Christian baptisteries, tombs, and occasionally churches. We know from the traces of such buildings which exist, that the Etruscans must have constructed theatres and amphitheatres, and it is recorded that the first Tarquin laid out the Circus Maximus and instituted the great games held there. At Sutri there are ruins of an amphitheatre which is nearly a perfect circle, measuring 265 ft. in its greatest breadth and 295 ft. in length. There are no remains of other buildings which would enable us to form an opinion as to the civic architecture of the Etruscans: they must, however, have attained to a considerable skill in sculpture, as in some of the tombs figures are represented in high relief which show no small power of expression. They, too, like the Egyptians, embellished their tombs with mural paintings. These are generally in outline, and represent human figures and animals in scenes of every-day life, with conventionalised foliage, or mythological scenes such as the passage of the soul after death to the judgment-seat where its actions in life are to be adjudicated upon. In the plastic arts the Etruscans made great progress, many of their vases showing a delicacy and grace which have never been surpassed, and exhibiting in their decorations traces of both Greek and Egyptian influence. * * * * * We now reach the last of the classical styles of antiquity, the Roman,--a style which, however, is rather an adaptation or amalgamation of other styles than an original and independent creation or development. The contrast is very great between the "lively Grecian," imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree--who seemed to have an innate genius for art and beauty, and who was always eager to perpetuate in marble his ideal conception of the "hero from whose loins he sprung," or to immortalise with some splendid work of art the name of his mother-city--and the stern, practical Roman, realistic in his every pore, eager for conquest, and whose one dominant idea was to bring under his sway all the nations who were brought into contact with him, and to make his city--as had been foretold--the capital of the whole world. With this idea always before him, it is no wonder that such a typical Roman as M. Porcius Cato should look with disdain upon the fine arts in all their forms, and should regard a love for the beautiful, whether in literature or art, as synonymous with effeminacy. Mummius, also, who destroyed Corinth, is said to have been so little aware of the value of the artistic treasures which he carried away, as to stipulate with the carriers who undertook to transport them to Rome, that if any of the works of art were lost they should be replaced by others of equal value. When the most prominent statesmen displayed such indifference, it is not surprising that for nearly 500 years no single trace of any architectural building of any merit at all in Rome can now be discovered, and that history is silent as to the existence of any monuments worthy of being mentioned. Works of public utility of a very extensive nature were indeed carried out during this period; such, for example, as the Appian Way from Rome to Capua, which was the first paved road in Rome, and was constructed by the Censor Appius Claudius in B.C. 309. This was 14 ft. wide and 3 ft. thick, in three layers: 1st, of rough stones grouted together; 2nd, of gravel; and 3rd, of squared stones of various dimensions. The same Censor also brought water from Præneste to Rome by a subterranean channel 11 miles long. Several bridges were also erected, and Cato the Censor is said to have built a basilica. Until about 150 B.C. all the buildings of Rome were constructed either of brick or the local stone; and though we hear nothing of architecture as a fine art, we cannot hesitate to admit that during this period the Romans carried the art of construction, and especially that of employing materials of small dimensions and readily obtainable, in buildings of great size, to a remarkable pitch of perfection. It was not till after the fall of Carthage and the destruction of Corinth, when Greece became a Roman province under the name of Achaia--both which events occurred in the year 146 B.C.--that Rome became desirous of emulating, to a certain extent, the older civilisation which she had destroyed; and about this time she became so enormously wealthy that vast sums of money were expended, both publicly and privately, in the erection of monuments, many of which remain to the present day, more or less altered. The first marble temple in Rome was built by the Consul Q. Metellus Macedonicus, who died B.C. 115. Roman architecture from this period began to show a wonderful diversity in the objects to which it was directed,--a circumstance perhaps as interesting as its great scientific and structural advance upon all preceding styles. In the earlier styles temples, tombs, and palaces were the only buildings deemed worthy of architectural treatment; but under the Romans baths, theatres, amphitheatres, basilicas, aqueducts, triumphal arches, &c., were carried out just as elaborately as the temples of the gods. It was under the Emperors that the full magnificence of Roman architectural display was reached. The famous boast of Augustus, that he found Rome of brick and left her of marble, gives expression in a few words to what was the great feature of his reign. Succeeding emperors lavished vast sums on buildings and public works of all kinds; and thus it comes to pass that though the most destructive of all agencies, hostile invasions, conflagrations, and long periods of neglect, have each in turn done their utmost to destroy the vestiges of Imperial Rome, there still remain fragments, and in one or two instances whole monuments, enough to make Rome, after Athens, the richest store of classic architectural antiquities in the world. But it was not in Rome only that great buildings were erected. The whole known civilised world was under Roman dominion, and wherever a centre of government or even a flourishing town existed there sprang up the residences of the dominant race, and their places of business, public worship, and public amusement. Consequently, we find in our own country, and in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, North Africa, and Egypt--in short, in all the countries where Roman rule was established--examples of temples, amphitheatres, theatres, triumphal arches, and dwelling-houses, some of them of great interest and occasionally in admirable preservation. FOOTNOTE: [19] The story of the Tarquins probably points to a period when the chief supremacy at Rome was in the hands of an Etruscan family, and is interesting for this reason. [Illustration: FIG. 124.--"INCANTADA" IN SALONICA.] CHAPTER IX. THE BUILDINGS OF THE ROMANS. The temples in Rome were not, as in Greece and Egypt, the structures upon which the architect lavished all the resources of his art and his science. The general form of them was copied from that made use of by the Greeks, but the spirit in which the original idea was carried out was entirely different. In a word, the temples of Rome were by no means worthy of her size and position as the metropolis of the world, and very few remains of them exist. [Illustration: FIG. 125.--IONIC ORDER FROM THE TEMPLE OF FORTUNA VIRILIS, ROME.] Ten columns are still standing of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (now the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda): it occupied the site of a previous temple and was dedicated by Antoninus Pius to his wife Faustina. The Temple (supposed) of Fortuna Virilis, in the Ionic style (Fig. 125), still exists as the church of Santa Maria Egiziaca: this was tetrastyle, with half-columns all round it, and this was of the kind called by Vitruvius "pseudo-peripteral." A few fragmentary remains of other temples exist in Rome, but in some of the Roman provinces far finer specimens of temples remain, of which perhaps the best is the Maison Carrée at Nîmes (Fig. 126). Here we find the Roman plan of a single cell and a deep portico in front, while the sides and rear have the columns attached. The intercolumniations and the details of the capitals and entablature are, however, almost pure Greek. The date of this temple is uncertain, but it is most probable that it was erected during the reign of Hadrian. The same emperor is said to have completed the magnificent Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, which was 354 ft. long by 171 ft. wide. It consisted of a cell flanked on each side by a double row of detached columns; in front was one row of columns in antis, and three other rows in front of these, while there were also three rows in the rear: as the columns were of the Corinthian order, and nearly 60 ft. in height, it may be imagined that it was a splendid edifice. [Illustration: FIG. 126.--ROMAN-CORINTHIAN TEMPLE AT NÎMES (MAISON-CARRÉE). PROBABLY OF THE TIME OF HADRIAN.] The ruins of another magnificent provincial Roman temple exist at Baalbek--the ancient Heliopolis--in Syria, not far from Damascus. This building was erected during the time of the Antonines, probably by Antoninus Pius himself, and originally it must have been of very extensive dimensions, the portico alone being 180 ft. long and about 37 ft. deep. This gives access to a small hexagonal court, on the western side of which a triple gateway opens into the Great Court, which is a vast quadrangle about 450 ft. long by 400 ft. broad, with ranges of small chambers or niches on three sides, some of which evidently had at one time beautifully groined roofs. At the western end of this court, on an artificial elevation, stand the remains of what is called the Great Temple. This was originally 290 ft. long by 160 ft. wide, and had 54 columns supporting its roof, six only of which now remain erect. The height of these columns, including base and capital, is 75 ft., and their diameter is 7 ft. at base and about 6 ft. 6 in. at top; they are of the Corinthian order, and above them rises an elaborately moulded entablature, 14 ft. in height. Each of the columns is composed of three stones only, secured by strong iron cramps; and indeed one of the most striking features of this group of buildings is the colossal size of the stones used in their construction. The quarries from which these stones were hewn are close at hand, and in them is one stone surpassing all the others in magnitude, its dimensions being 68 ft. by 14 ft. 2 in. by 13 ft. 11 in. It is difficult to imagine what means can have existed for transporting so huge a mass, the weight of which has been calculated at 1100 tons. [Illustration: FIG. 127.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI.] [Illustration: FIG. 128.--CORINTHIAN ORDER FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI.] Other smaller temples exist in the vicinity, all of which are lavishly decorated, but on the whole the ornamentation shows an exuberance of detail which somewhat offends a critical artistic taste. [Illustration: FIG. 129.--THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. PLAN (LOOKING UP) AND SECTION OF PART OF THE PERISTYLE.] Circular temples were an elegant variety, which seems to have been originated by the Romans, and of which two well-known examples remain--the Temples of Vesta at Rome and at Tivoli. The columns of the temple at Tivoli (Fig. 128) form a well-known and pleasing variety of the Corinthian order, and the circular form of the building as shown on the plan (Fig. 127) gives excellent opportunities for good decorative treatment, as may be judged of by the enlarged diagram of part of the peristyle (Fig. 129). _Basilicas._ Among the most remarkable of the public buildings of Roman times, both in the mother-city and in the provinces, were the Basilicas or Halls of Justice, which were also used as commercial exchanges. It is also believed that Basilicas existed in some Greek cities, but no clue to their structural arrangements exists, and whence originated the idea of the plan of these buildings we are unable to state; their striking similarity to some of the rock-cut halls or temples of India has been already pointed out. They were generally (though not always) covered halls, oblong in shape, divided into three or five aisles by two or more rows of columns, the centre aisle being much wider than those at the sides: over the latter, galleries were frequently erected. At one end was a semicircular recess or apse, the floor of which was raised considerably above the level of the rest of the building, and here the presiding magistrate sat to hear causes tried. Four[20] of these buildings are mentioned by ancient writers as having existed in republican times, viz. the Basilica Portia, erected in B.C. 184, by Cato the Censor; the Basilica Emilia et Fulvia, erected in B.C. 179 by the censors M. Fulvius Nobilior and M. Æmilius Lepidus, and afterwards enlarged and called the Basilica Paulli; the Basilica Sempronia, erected in B.C. 169 by Tib. Sempronius Gracchus; and the Basilica Julia, erected by Julius Cæsar, B.C. 46. All these buildings had wooden roofs, and were of no great architectural merit, and they perished at a remote date. Under the Empire, basilicas of much greater size and magnificence were erected; and remains of that of Trajan, otherwise called the Basilica Ulpia, have been excavated in the Forum of Trajan. This was about 360 ft. long by 180 ft. wide, had four rows of columns inside, and it supposed to have been covered by a semicircular wooden roof. Apollodorus of Damascus was the architect of this building. Another basilica of which remains exist is that of Maxentius, which after his overthrow by Constantine in A.D. 312, was known as the Basilica Constantiniana. This structure was of stone, and had a vaulted roof; it was 195 ft. between the walls, and was divided into three aisles by piers with enormous columns standing in front of them. [Illustration: FIG. 130.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE BASILICA ULPIA, ROME.] One provincial basilica, that at Trèves, still stands; and although it must have been considerably altered, it is by far the best existing example of this kind of building. The internal columns do not exist here, and it is simply a rectangular hall about 175 ft. by 85 ft., with the usual semicircular apse. The chief interest attaching to these basilicas lies in the fact that they formed the first places of Christian assembly, and that they served as the model upon which the first Christian churches were built. _Theatres and Amphitheatres._ Although dramas and other plays were performed in Rome as early as 240 B.C., there seems to have been a strong prejudice against permanent buildings for their representation, as it is recorded that a decree was passed in B.C. 154 forbidding the construction of such buildings. Mummius, the conqueror of Corinth, obtained permission to erect a wooden theatre for the performance of dramas as one of the shows of his triumph, and after this many buildings of the kind were erected, but all of a temporary nature; and it was not till B.C. 61 that the first permanent theatre was built by Pompey. This, and the theatres of Balbus and Marcellus, appear to have been the only permanent theatres that were erected in Imperial Rome; and there are no remains of any but the last of these, and this is much altered. So that, were it not for the remains of theatres found at Pompeii, it would be almost impossible to tell how they were arranged; but from these we can see that the stage was raised and separated from the part appropriated to the spectators by a semicircular area, much like that which in Greek theatres was allotted to the chorus: in the Roman ones this was assigned for the use of the senators. The portion devoted to the spectators--called the Cavea--was also semicircular on plan, and consisted of tiers of steps rising one above the other, and divided at intervals by wide passages and converging staircases communicating with the porticoes, which ran round the whole theatre at every story. [Illustration: FIG. 131.--PLAN OF THE COLOSSEUM, ROME.] At Orange, in the South of France, are the remains of a very fine theatre, similar in plan to that described. The great wall which formed the back of the scene in this building is still standing, and is one of the most magnificent pieces of masonry existing. [Illustration: FIG. 132.--THE COLOSSEUM. SECTION AND ELEVATION.] Although the Romans were not particularly addicted to dramatic representations, yet they were passionately fond of shows and games of all kinds: hence, not only in Rome itself, but in almost every Roman settlement, from Silchester to Verona, are found traces of their amphitheatres, and the mother-city can claim the possession of the most stupendous fabric of the kind that was ever erected--the Colosseum or Flavian Amphitheatre, which was commenced by Vespasian and finished by his son Titus. An amphitheatre is really a double theatre without a stage, and with the space in the centre unoccupied by seats. This space, which was sunk several feet below the first row of seats, was called the arena, and was appropriated to the various exhibitions which took place in the building. The plan was elliptical or oval, and this shape seems to have been universal. The Colosseum, whose ruins still remain to attest its pristine magnificence-- "Arches on arches, as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line, Would build up all her triumphs in one dome"[21]-- was 620 ft. long and 513 wide, and the height was about 162 ft. It was situated in the hollow between the Esquiline and Cælian hills. The ranges of seats were admirably planned so as to enable all the audience to have a view of what was going on in the arena, and great skill was shown both in the arrangement of the approaches to the different tiers and in the structural means for supporting the seats, and double corridors ran completely round the building on each floor, affording ready means of exit. Various estimates have been made of the number of spectators that could be accommodated, and these range from 50,000 to 100,000, but probably 80,000 was the maximum. Recent excavations have brought to light the communications which existed between the arena and the dens where the wild animals and human slaves and prisoners were confined, and some of the water channels used when mimic sea-fights were exhibited. The external façade is composed of four stories, separated by entablatures that run completely round the building without a break. The three lower stories consist of a series of semicircular arched openings, eighty in number, separated by piers with attached columns in front of them, the Doric order being used in the lowest story, the Ionic in the second, and the Corinthian in the third; the piers and columns are elevated on stylobates; the entablatures have a comparatively slight projection, and there are no projecting keystones in the arches. In the lowest range these openings are 13 ft. 4 in. wide, except the four which are at the ends of the two axes of the ellipse, and these are 14 ft. 6 in. wide. The diameter of the columns is 2 ft. 8¾ in. The topmost story, which is considerably more lofty than either of the lower ones, was a nearly solid wall enriched by Corinthian pilasters. In this story occur two tiers of small square openings in the alternate spaces between the pilasters. These openings are placed accurately over the centres of the arches of the lower stories. Immediately above the higher range of square openings are a series of corbels--three between each pair of pilasters--which probably received the ends of the poles carrying the huge awning which protected the spectators from the sun's rays. The whole is surmounted by a heavy cornice, in which, at intervals immediately over each corbel, are worked square mortise holes, forming sockets through which the poles of the awning passed. The stone of which the façade of the Colosseum is built is a local stone, called travertine, the blocks of which are secured by iron cramps without cement. Nearly all the internal portion of the building is of brick, and the floors of the corridors, &c., are paved with flat bricks covered with hard stucco. These amphitheatres were occasionally the scene of imitations of marine conflicts, when the arena was flooded with water and mimic vessels of war engaged each other. Very complete arrangements were made, by means of small aqueducts, for leading the water into the arena and for carrying it off. Apart from theatrical representations and gladiatorial combats, the Romans had an inordinate passion for chariot races. For those the circi were constructed, of which class of buildings the Circus Maximus was the largest. This, originally laid out by Tarquinius Priscus, was reconstructed on a larger scale by Julius Cæsar. It was circular at one end and rectangular at the other, at which was the entrance. On both sides of the entrance were a number of small arched chambers, called _carceres_, from which the chariots started. The course was divided down the centre by a low wall, called the _spina_, which was adorned with various sculptures. The seats rose in a series of covered porticoes all round the course, except at the entrance. As the length of the Circus Maximus was nearly 700 yards, and the breadth about 135 yards, it is possible that Dionysius may not have formed an exaggerated notion of its capacity when he says it would accommodate 150,000 spectators. In the Roman provinces amphitheatres were often erected; and at Pola in Istria, Verona in Italy, and Nîmes and Arles in France, fine examples remain. A rude Roman amphitheatre, with seats cut in the turf of a hill-side, exists to this day at the old town of Dorchester in Dorset, which was anciently a Roman settlement. _Baths (Thermæ)._ Nothing can give us a more impressive idea of the grandeur and lavish display of Imperial Rome than the remains of the huge Thermæ, or bathing establishments, which still exist. Between the years 10 A.D., when Agrippa built the first public baths, and 324 A.D., when those of Constantine were erected, no less than twelve of these vast establishments were erected by various emperors, and bequeathed to the people. Of the whole number, the baths of Caracalla and of Diocletian are the only ones which remain in any state of preservation, and these were probably the most extensive and magnificent of all. All these splendid buildings were really nothing more than bribes to secure the favour of the populace; for it seems quite clear that the public had practically free entrance to them, the only charge mentioned by writers of the time being a quadrans, about a farthing of our money. Gibbon says, "The meanest Roman could purchase with a small copper coin the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might excite the envy of the kings of Asia." And this language is not exaggerated. Not only were there private bath-rooms, swimming-baths, hot baths, vapour-baths, and, in fact, all the appurtenances of the most approved Turkish baths of modern times, but there were also gymnasia, halls for various games, lecture-halls, libraries, and theatres in connection with the baths, all lavishly ornamented with the finest paintings and sculpture that could be obtained. Stone seems to have been but sparingly used in the construction of these buildings, which were almost entirely of brick faced with stucco: this served as the ground for an elaborate series of fresco paintings. [Illustration: FIG. 133.--PLAN OF THE PRINCIPAL BUILDING, BATHS OF CARACALLA, ROME.] The baths of Caracalla, at the foot of the Aventine hill, erected A.D. 217, comprised a quadrangular block of buildings of about 1150 ft. (about the fifth of a mile) each way. The side facing the street consisted of a portico the whole length of the façade, behind which were numerous ranges of private bath-rooms. The side and rear blocks contained numerous halls and porticoes, the precise object of which it is now very difficult to ascertain. As Byron says: "Temples, baths, or halls? Pronounce who can." This belt of buildings surrounded an open courtyard or garden, in which was placed the principal bathing establishment (Fig. 133), a building 730 ft. by 380 ft., which contained the large piscina, or swimming-bath, various hot baths, dressing-rooms, gymnasia, and other halls for athletic exercises. In the centre of one of the longer sides was a large semicircular projection, roofed with a dome, which was lined with brass: this rotunda was called the solar cell. From the ruins of these baths were taken some of the most splendid specimens of antique sculpture, such as the Farnese Hercules and the Flora in the Museum of Naples. The baths of Diocletian, erected just at the commencement of the fourth century A.D., were hardly inferior to those of Caracalla, but modern and ancient buildings are now intermingled to such an extent that the general plan of the buildings cannot now be traced with accuracy. There are said to have been over 3000 marble seats in these baths; the walls were covered with mosaics, and the columns were of Egyptian granite and green Numidian marble. The Ephebeum, or grand hall, still exists as the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, having been restored by Michelangelo. It is nearly 300 ft. long by 90 ft. wide, and is roofed by three magnificent cross vaults, supported on eight granite columns 45 ft. in height. (Fig. 134.) There is one ancient building in Rome more impressive than any other, not only because it is in a better state of preservation, but because of the dignity with which it has been designed, the perfection with which it has been constructed, and the effectiveness of the mode in which its interior is lighted. We allude to the Pantheon. Opinions differ as to whether this was a Hall attached to the thermæ of Agrippa, or whether it was a temple. Without attempting to determine this point, we may at any rate claim that the interior of this building admirably illustrates the boldness and telling power with which the large halls forming part of the thermæ were designed; and, whether it belonged to such a building or not, it is wonderfully well fitted to illustrate this subject. [Illustration: FIG. 134.--INTERIOR OF SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI, ROME.] [Illustration: FIG. 135.--THE PANTHEON, ROME. GROUND-PLAN.] [Illustration: FIG. 136.--THE PANTHEON, ROME. EXTERIOR.] The Pantheon is the finest example of a domed hall which we have left. The building, which forms the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres, has been considerably altered at various times since its erection, and now consists of a rotunda with a rectangular portico in front of it. The rotunda was most probably erected by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, in B.C. 27, and is a most remarkable instance of clever construction at so early a date. The diameter of the interior is 145 ft. 6 in., and the height to the top of the dome is 147 ft. In addition to the entrance, the walls are broken up by seven large niches, three of which are semicircular on plan, and the others, alternating with them, rectangular. The walls are divided into two stories by an entablature supported by columns and pilasters; but although this is now cut through by the arches of the niches, it is at least probable that originally this was not the case, and that the entablature ran continuously round the walls, as shown in Fig. 137, which is a restoration of the Pantheon by Adler. Above the attic story rises the huge hemispherical dome, which is pierced at its summit by a circular opening 27 ft. in diameter, through which a flood of light pours down and illuminates the whole of the interior. The dome is enriched by boldly recessed panels, and these were formerly covered with bronze ornaments, which have been removed for the sake of the metal. The marble enrichments of the attic have also disappeared, and their place has been taken by common and tawdry decorations more adapted to the stage of a theatre. But notwithstanding everything that has been done to detract from the imposing effect of the building by the alteration of its details, there is still, taking it as a whole, a simple grandeur in the design, a magnificence in the material employed, and a quiet harmony in the illumination, that impart to the interior a character of sublimity which nothing can impair. The rectangular portico was added at some subsequent period, and consists of sixteen splendid Corinthian columns (Fig. 138), eight in front supporting the pediment, and the other eight dividing the portico into three bays, in precisely the same way as if it formed the pronaos to the three cells of an Etruscan temple. [Illustration: FIG. 137.--THE PANTHEON, ROME. INTERIOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 138.--THE CORINTHIAN ORDER FROM THE PANTHEON, ROME.] _Bridges and Aqueducts._ The earliest Roman bridges were of wood, and the Pons Sublicius, though often rebuilt, continued to be of this material until the time of Pliny, but it was impossible for a people who made such use of the arch to avoid seeing the great advantage this form gave them in the construction of bridges, and several of these formed of stone spanned the Tiber even before the time of the Empire. The finest Roman bridges, however, were built in the provinces. Trajan constructed one over the Danube which was 150 ft. high and 60 ft. wide, and the arches of which were of no less than 170 ft. span. This splendid structure was destroyed by his successor, Hadrian, who was probably jealous of it. The bridge over the Tagus at Alcantara, which was constructed by Hadrian, is another very fine example. There were six arches here, of which the two centre ones had a span of 100 ft. The Roman aqueducts afford striking evidence of the building enterprise and architectural skill of the people. Pliny says of these works: "If any one will carefully consider the quantity of water used in the open air, in private baths, swimming-baths, houses, gardens, &c., and thinks of the arches that have been built, the hills that have been tunnelled, and the valleys that have been levelled for the purpose of conducting the water to its destination, he must confess that nothing has existed in the world more calculated to excite admiration." The same sentiment strikes an observer of to-day when looking at the ruins of these aqueducts. At the end of the first century A.D. we read of nine aqueducts in Rome, and in the time of Procopius (A.D. 550) there were fourteen in use. Of these, the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus were the grandest and most costly. Those were constructed about the year 48 A.D., and entered the city upon the same arches, though at different levels, the Aqua Claudia being the lower. The arches carrying the streams were over nine miles long, and in some cases 109 ft. high. They were purely works of utility, and had no architectural decorations; but they were most admirably adapted for their purpose, and were so solidly constructed, that portions of them are still in use. Some of the provincial aqueducts, such as those of Tarragona and Segovia in Spain, were more ornamental, and had a double tier of arches. The Pont du Gard, not far from Nîmes, in France, is a well-known and very picturesque structure of this character. _Commemorative Monuments._ These comprise triumphal arches, columns, and tombs. The former consisted of a rectangular mass of masonry having sculptured representations of the historical event to be commemorated, enriched with attached columns on pedestals, supporting an entablature crowned with a high attic, on which there was generally an inscription. In the centre was the wide and lofty arched opening. The Arch of Titus, recording the capture of Jerusalem, is one of the finest examples. Later on triumphal arches were on a more extended scale, and comprised a small arch on each side of the large one; examples of which may be seen in the arches of Septimius Severus and of Constantine (Fig. 139). The large arched gateways which are met with in various parts of Europe--such as the Porte d'Arroux at Autun, and the Porta Nigra at Trèves--are monuments very similar to triumphal arches. There remain also smaller monuments of the same character, such as the so-called Arch of the Goldsmiths in Rome (Fig. 1). [Illustration: FIG. 139.--THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME.] Columns were erected in great numbers during the time of the Emperors as memorials of victory. Of these the Column of Trajan and that of Marcus Aurelius are the finest. The former was erected in the centre of Trajan's Forum, in commemoration of the Emperor's victory over the Dacians. It is of the Doric order, 132 ft. 10 in. high, including the statue. The shaft is constructed of thirty-four pieces of marble joined with bronze cramps. The figures on the pedestal are very finely carved, and the entire shaft is encircled by a series of elaborate bas-reliefs winding round it in a spiral from its base to its capital. The beauty of the work on this shaft may be best appreciated by a visit to the cast of it set up--in two heights, unfortunately--at the South Kensington Museum. The Column of Marcus Aurelius, generally known as the Antonine Column, is similarly enriched, but is not equal to the Trajan Column. The survival of Etruscan habits is clearly seen in the construction of Roman tombs, which existed in enormous numbers outside the gates of the city. Merivale says: "The sepulchres of twenty generations lined the sides of the high-roads for several miles beyond the gates, and many had considerable architectural pretensions." That of Cecilia Metella is a typical example. Here we find a square basement surmounted by a circular tower-like structure, with a frieze and cornice. This was erected about B.C. 60, by Crassus. The mausoleum of Augustus was on a much more extensive scale, and consisted of four cylindrical stories, one above the other, decreasing in diameter as they ascended, and the topmost of all was crowned with a colossal statue of the Emperor. The tomb of Hadrian, on the banks of the Tiber--now known as the Castle of Sant' Angelo--was even more magnificent. This comprised a square base, 75 ft. high, the side of which measured about 340 ft.; above this was a cylindrical building surmounted by a circular peristyle of thirty-four Corinthian columns. On the top was a quadriga with a statue of the Emperor. These mausolea were occasionally octagonal or polygonal in plan, surmounted by a dome, and cannot fail to remind us of the Etruscan tumuli. Another kind of tomb, of less magnificence, was the columbarium, which was nothing more than a subterranean chamber, the walls of which had a number of small apertures in them for receiving the cinerary urns containing the ashes of the bodies which had been cremated. In the eastern portion of the Empire, in rocky districts, the tombs were cut in the rock, and the façade was elaborately decorated with columns and other architectural features. _Domestic Architecture._ Of all the palaces which the Roman emperors built for themselves, and which we know from historical records to have been of the most magnificent description, nothing now remains in Rome itself that is not too completely ruined to enable any one to restore its plan with accuracy, though considerable remains exist of the Palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill. In fact, the palace of Diocletian at Spalatro, in Dalmatia, is the only remaining example in the whole of the Roman empire of the dwelling-house of an emperor, and even this was not built till after Diocletian had resigned the imperial dignity, so that its date is the early part of the fourth century A.D. This palace is a rectangle, measuring about 700 ft. one way and 590 ft. the other, and covers an area of nearly 10 acres. It is surrounded by high walls, broken at intervals by square and octagonal towers, and contains temples, baths, and extensive galleries, besides the private apartments of the Emperor and dwellings for the principal officers of the household. The architect of this building broke away from classical traditions to a great extent; for example, the columns stand on corbels instead of pedestals, the entablatures being much broken, and the arches spring directly from the capitals of the columns (Fig. 149). The private houses in Borne were of two kinds: the _insula_ and the _domus_. The insula was a block of buildings several stories high, frequently let out to different families in flats. The ground-floor was generally given up to shops, which had no connection with the upper parts of the building; and one roof covered the whole. This kind of house was generally tenanted by the poorer class of tradesmen and artificers. The other kind of house, the domus, was a detached mansion. The excavations at Pompeii have done much to elucidate a number of points in connection with Roman dwellings which had been the subject of much discussion by scholars, but we must not too hastily assume that the Pompeian houses are the exact counterpart of those of ancient Rome, as Pompeii was what may be called a Romano-Greek city. [Illustration: FIG. 140.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII.] [Illustration: FIG. 141.--GROUND-PLAN OF THE HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET, POMPEII.] The general arrangements of a Roman house were as follows: next the street an open space was frequently left, with porticoes on each side of it provided with seats: this constituted the vestibule, and was entirely outside the house;[22] the entrance-door opened into a narrow passage, called the _prothyrum_, which led to the _atrium_,[23] which in the houses of Republican Rome was the principal apartment, though afterwards it served as a sort of waiting-room for the clients and retainers of the house; it was an open court, roofed in on all the four sides, but open to the sky in the centre. The simplest form was called the Tuscan atrium, where the roof was simply a lean-to sloping towards the centre, the rafters being supported on beams, two of which rested on the walls of the atrium, and had two other cross-beams trimmed into them. The centre opening was called the _impluvium_, and immediately under it a tank, called the _compluvium_, was formed in the pavement to collect the rain-water (Fig. 142). When the atrium became larger, and the roof had to be supported by columns, it was called a _cavædium_.[24] At the end of this apartment were three others, open in front, the largest, in the centre, called _tablinum_, and the two side ones _alæ_;[25] these were muniment-rooms, where all the family archives were kept, and their position is midway between the semi-public part of the house, which lay towards the front, and the strictly domestic and private part, which lay in the rear. At the sides of the atrium in the larger houses were placed small rooms, which served as sleeping chambers. [Illustration: FIG. 142.--THE ATRIUM OF A POMPEIAN HOUSE.] From the end of the atrium a passage, or sometimes two passages, called the _fauces_, running by the side of the tablinum, led to the _peristylium_,[26] which was the grand private reception-room; this also was a court open to the sky in the centre, and among the wealthy Romans its roof was supported by columns of the rarest marbles. Round the peristyle were grouped the various private rooms, which varied according to the size of the house and the taste of the owner. There was always one dining-room (_triclinium_), and frequently two or more, which were arranged with different aspects, for use in different seasons of the year. If several dining-rooms existed, they were of various sizes and decorated with various degrees of magnificence; and a story is told of one of the most luxurious Romans of Cicero's time, that he had simply to tell his slaves which room he would dine in for them to know what kind of banquet he wished to be prepared. In the largest houses there were saloons (_æci_), parlours (_exedræ_), picture galleries (_pinacothecæ_), chapels (_lararia_), and various other apartments. The kitchen, with scullery and bakehouse attached, was generally placed in one angle of the peristyle, round which various sleeping-chambers, according to the size of the house, were arranged. Most of the rooms appear to have been on the ground-floor, and probably depended for their light upon the doorway only; though in some instances at Pompeii small windows exist high up in the walls. [Illustration: FIG. 143.--WALL DECORATION FROM POMPEII.] In the extreme rear of the larger houses there was generally a garden; and in those which were without this, the dead walls in the rear were frequently painted so as to imitate a garden. The houses of the wealthy Romans were decorated with the utmost magnificence: marble columns, mosaic pavements, and charming pieces of sculpture adorned their apartments, and the walls were in all cases richly painted (Fig. 143), being divided into panels, in the centre of which were represented sometimes human figures, sometimes landscapes, and sometimes pictures of historical events. All the decoration of Roman houses was internal only: the largest and most sumptuous mansion had little to distinguish it, next the street, from a comparatively humble abode; and, with the exception of the space required for the vestibule and entrance doorway, nearly the whole of the side of the house next the street was most frequently appropriated to shops. All that we are able to learn of the architecture of Roman private houses, whether from contemporary descriptions or from the uncovered remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum,[27] points to the fact that it, even in a greater measure than the public architecture, was in no sense of indigenous growth, but was simply a copy of Greek arrangement and Greek decoration. FOOTNOTES: [20] The passage in Varro, which is the sole authority for the Basilica Opimia, is generally considered to be corrupt. [21] Byron. [22] This does not occur in the Pompeian houses. [23] Marked _a_, _a_, on the plans. [24] Vitruvius, however, seems to use the terms _atrium_ and _cavædium_ as quite synonymous. [25] Marked respectively _c_, and _f_, _f_, on the plan of the House of Pansa. [26] Marked _b_, _b_, on the plans. [27] At the Crystal Palace can be seen an interesting reproduction of a Pompeian house, which was designed by the late Sir Digby Wyatt. It gives a very faithful reproduction of the arrangement and the size of an average Pompeian house; and though every part is rather more fully covered with decoration than was usual in the originals, the decorations of each room faithfully reproduce the treatment of some original in Pompeii or Herculaneum. [Illustration: FIG. 144.--CARVING FROM THE FORUM OF NERVA, ROME.] CHAPTER X. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. _Analysis._ _The Plan_ (_or floor-disposition_).--The plans of Roman buildings are striking from their variety and the vast extent which in some cases they display, as well as from a certain freedom, mastery, and facility of handling which are not seen in earlier work. Their variety is partly due to the very various purposes which the buildings of the Romans were designed to serve: these comprised all to which Greek buildings had been appropriated, and many others, the product of the complex and luxurious civilisation of the Empire. But independent of this circumstance, the employment of such various forms in the plans of buildings as the ellipse, the circle, and the octagon, and their facile use, seem to denote a people who could build rapidly, and who looked carefully to the general masses and outlines of what they built, however carelessly they handled the minute details. The freedom with which these new forms were employed arises partly also from the fact that the Romans were in possession of a system of construction which rendered them practically independent of most of the restrictions which had fettered the genius of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Their vaulted roofs could be supported by a comparatively small number of piers of great solidity, placed far apart; and accordingly in the great halls of the Thermæ and elsewhere we find planning in which, a few stable points of support being secured, the outline of the spaces between them is varied at the pleasure of the architect in the most picturesque and pleasing manner. The actual floor received a good deal of attention from the Romans. It was generally covered with tesselated pavement, often with mosaic, and its treatment entered into the scheme of the design for most interiors. _The Walls._ The construction of these was essentially different from that adopted by most earlier nations. The Romans rather avoided than cultivated the use of large blocks of stone; they invented methods by which very small materials could be aggregated together into massive and solid walls. They used mortar of great cementing power, so much so that many specimens of Roman walling exist in this country as well as in Italy or France, where the mortar is as hard as the stones which it unites. They also employed a system of binding together the small materials so employed by introducing, at short distances apart, courses of flat stones or bricks, called "bond courses," and they further fortified such walls by bands of flat materials placed edgeways after the manner popularly known as herring-bone work. The result of these methods of construction was that the Roman architect could build anywhere, no matter how unpromising the materials which the locality afforded; that he could put the walls of his building together without its being requisite to employ exclusively the skilled labour of the mason, and that both time and expense were thus saved. This economy and speed were not pushed so far as to render the work anything but durable; they had, however, a bad effect in another direction, for these rough rubble walls were habitually encased in some more sightly material, in order to make them look as though they were something finer than they really were; and accordingly, the exterior was often faced with a thin skin of masonry, and not infrequently plastered. The interior was also almost invariably plastered, but to this little exception can be taken. This casing of the exteriors was, however, the beginning of a system of what may be called false architecture, and one which led to much that was degrading to the art. The walls were in many cases, it has been already observed, gathered into strong masses, such as it is customary to term piers, in order to support the vaulted roofs at the proper points. They were often carried to a much greater height than in Greek buildings, and they played altogether a far more important part in the design of Roman buildings than they had done in that of the Greeks. _The Roofs._ As has been already stated, the Romans, in their possession of a new system of construction, enjoyed a degree of freedom which was unknown before. This system was based upon the use of the arch, and arched roofs and domes, and it enabled the Romans to produce interiors unapproached before for size and splendour, and such as have hardly been surpassed since, except by the vaulted churches of the Middle Ages,--buildings which are themselves descended from Roman originals. The art of vaulting was, in short, the key to the whole system of Roman architecture, just as the Orders were to that of the Greeks. The well-known arch over the Cloaca Maxima at Rome (Fig. 123, p. 142) may be taken as an illustration of the most ancient and most simple kind of vault, the one which goes by the significant name of "barrel or waggon-head vault." This is simply a continuous arched vault springing from the top of two parallel walls; in fact, like the arch of a railway tunnel. Such a vault may be constructed of very great span, and affords a means of putting a permanent roof over a floor the outline of which is a parallelogram; but it is heavy and uninteresting in appearance. It was soon found to be possible to introduce a cross vault running at right angles to the original one; and where such an intersecting vault occurs the side walls of the original vault may be dispensed with, for so much of their length as the newly-added vault spans. The next step was to introduce a succession of such cross vaults close to one another, so that large portions of the original main wall might be dispensed with. What remained of the side walls was now only a series of oblong masses or piers, suitably fortified so as to carry the great weight resting upon them, but leaving the architect free to occupy the space between them as his fancy might dictate, or to leave it quite open. In this way were constructed the great halls of the Thermæ; and the finest halls of modern classic architecture--such, for example, as the Madeleine at Paris, or St. George's Hall at Liverpool--are only a reproduction of the splendid structures which such a system of vaulting rendered possible. When the floor of the space to be vaulted was circular, the result of covering it with an arched roof was the dome--a familiar feature of Roman architecture, and the noblest of all forms of roof. We possess in the dome of the Pantheon a specimen, in fairly good preservation, of this kind of roof on the grandest scale. We shall find that in later ages the dome and the vault were adopted by the Eastern and the Western schools of Christian architecture respectively. In Rome we have the origin of both. _The Openings._ These were both square-headed and arched; but the arched ones occur far more frequently than the others, and, when occasion required, could be far bolder. The openings became of much greater importance than in earlier styles, and soon disputed with the columns the dignity of being the feature of the building: this eventually led, as will be related under the next head, to various devices for the fusion of the two. The adoption of the arch by the Romans led to a great modification in classic architecture; for its influence was to be traced in every part of the structure where an opening of any sort had to be spanned. Formerly the width of such openings was very limited, owing to the difficulty of obtaining lintels of great length. Now their width and height were pure matters of choice, and doorways, windows, and arcades naturally became very prominent, and were often very spacious. _The Columns._ These necessarily took an altered place as soon as buildings were carried to such a height that one order could not, as in Greek temples, occupy the whole space from pavement to roof. The Greek orders were modified by the Romans in order to fit these altered circumstances, but columnar construction was by no means disused when the arch came to play so important a part in building. The Roman Doric order, and a very simple variety of it called Tuscan, were but rarely used. The chief alteration from the Greek Doric, in addition to a general degradation of all the mouldings and proportions, was the addition of a base, which sometimes consists of a square plinth and large torus, sometimes is a slightly modified Attic base; the capital has a small moulding round the top of the abacus, and under the ovolo are two or three small fillets with a necking below; the shaft was from 6 to 7 diameters in height, and was not fluted; the frieze was ornamented with triglyphs, and the metopes between these were frequently enriched with sculptured heads of bulls: the metopes were exact squares, and the triglyphs at the angles of buildings were placed precisely over the centre of the column. The Ionic order was but slightly modified by the Romans, the chief alteration being made in the capital. Instead of forming the angular volutes so that they exhibited a flat surface on the two opposite sides of the capital, the Romans appear to have desired to make the latter uniform on all the four sides; they therefore made the sides of the abacus concave on plan, and arranged the volutes so that they seemed to spring out of the mouldings under the abacus and faced anglewise. The capital altogether seems compressed and crowded up, and by no means elegant; in fact, both this and the Doric order were decidedly deteriorations from the fine forms of Greek architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 145.--ROMAN CORINTHIAN CAPITAL AND BASE FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI.] [Illustration: FIG. 145a.--THE ROMAN COMPOSITE CAPITAL.] The Corinthian order was much more in accordance with the later Roman taste for magnificence and display, and hence we find its use very general both in Rome and in other cities of the Empire. Its proportions did not greatly differ from those of the Greek Corinthian, but the mouldings in general were more elaborate. Numerous variations of the capital exist (Figs. 145, 145a), but the principal one was an amalgamation of the large Ionic volutes in the upper with the acanthus leaves of the lower portion of the capital: this is known as the Composite order, and the capital thus treated has a strength and vigour which was wanting to the Greek order (see Fig. 145a). The shafts of the columns were more often fluted than not, though sometimes the lower portion was left plain and the upper only fluted. The Attic base was generally used, but an example has been found of an adaptation of the graceful Persepolitan base to the Corinthian column. This was the happiest innovation that the Romans made; it seems, however, to have been but an individual attempt, and, as it was introduced very shortly before the fall of the Empire, the idea was not worked out. The orders thus changed were employed for the most part as mere decorative additions to the walls. In many cases they did not even carry the eaves of the roof, as they always did in a Greek temple; and it was not uncommon for two, three, or more orders to be used one above another, marking the different stories of a lofty building. The columns, or pilasters which took their place, being reduced to the humble function of ornaments added to the wall of a building, it became very usual to combine them with arched openings, and to put an arch in the interspace between two columns, or, in other words, to add a column to the pier between two arches (Fig. 146). These arched openings being often wide, a good deal of disproportion between the height of the columns and their distance apart was liable to occur; and, partly to correct this, the column was often mounted upon a pedestal, to which the name of "stylobate" has been given. It was also sometimes customary to place above the order, or the highest order where more than one was employed, what was termed an attic--a low story ornamented with piers or pilasters. The exterior of the Colosseum (Fig. 5), the triumphal arches of Constantine (Fig. 139) and Titus, and the fragments of the upper part of the Forum of Nerva (Fig. 147) may be consulted as illustrations of the combination of an order and an arched opening, and of the use of pedestals and attics. [Illustration: FIG. 146.--PART OF THE THEATRE OF MARCELLUS, ROME. SHOWING THE COMBINATION OF COLUMNS AND ARCHED OPENINGS.] [Illustration: FIG. 147.--FROM THE RUINS OF THE FORUM OF NERVA, ROME. SHOWING THE USE OF AN ATTIC STORY. WITH PLAN.] Another peculiarity, of which we give an illustration from the baths of Diocletian (Fig. 148), was the surmounting a column or pilaster with a square pillar of stone, moulded in the same way as an entablature, _i.e._ with the regular division into architrave, frieze, and cornice. This was a decided perversion of the use of the order; it occurs in examples of late date. So also do various other arrangements for making an arch spring from the capital of a column; one of these, from the palace of Diocletian at Spalatro, we are able to illustrate (Fig. 149). [Illustration: FIG. 148.--FROM THE BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN, ROME. SHOWING A FRAGMENTARY ENTABLATURE AT THE STARTING OF PART OF A VAULT.] [Illustration: FIG. 149.--FROM THE PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN, SPALATRO. SHOWING AN ARCH SPRINGING FROM A COLUMN.] In conclusion, it may be worth while to say that the Roman writers and architects recognised five orders: the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, the first and last in this list being, however, really only variations; and that when they placed the orders above one another, they invariably used those of them which they selected in the succession in which they have been named; that is to say, the Tuscan or Doric lowest, and so on in succession. [Illustration: FIG. 150.--MOULDINGS AND ORNAMENTS FROM VARIOUS ROMAN BUILDINGS.] _The Ornaments._ [Illustration: FIG. 151.--ROMAN CARVING. AN ACANTHUS LEAF.] [Illustration: FIG. 152.--THE EGG AND DART ENRICHMENT. ROMAN.] The mouldings with which Roman buildings are ornamented are all derived from Greek originals, but are often extremely rough and coarse. It is true that in some old Roman work, especially in those of the tombs which are executed in marble, mouldings of considerable delicacy and refinement of outline occur, but these are exceptional. The profiles of the mouldings are, as a rule, segments of circles, instead of being more subtle curves, and the result is that violent contrasts of light and shade are obtained, telling enough at a distance, but devoid of interest if the spectator come near. [Illustration: FIG. 153.--WALL DECORATION OF (SO-CALLED) ARABESQUE CHARACTER FROM POMPEII.] Carving is executed exactly on the same principles as those which govern the mouldings--that is to say, with much more coarseness than in Greek work; not lacking in vigour, or in a sort of ostentatious opulence of ornament, but often sadly deficient in refinement and grace. Statues, many of them copies of Greek originals, generally executed with a heavy hand, but sometimes clearly of Greek work, were employed, as well as bronzes, inlaid marbles, mosaics, and various devices to ornament the interiors of Greco-Roman buildings; and free use was made of ornamental plaster-work, both on walls and vaults. Coloured decoration was much in vogue, and, to judge from what has come down to us, must have been executed with great taste and much spirit. The walls of a Roman dwelling-house of importance seem to have been all painted, partly with that light kind of decoration to which the somewhat inappropriate name of arabesque has been given, and partly with groups or single figures, relieved by dark or black backgrounds. The remains of the Palace of the Cæsars in Rome, much of it not now accessible, and the decorations visible at Pompeii, give a high idea of the skill with which this mural ornamentation was executed; our illustration (Fig. 154) may be taken as affording a good example of the combined decorations in relief and colour often applied to vaulted ceilings. It is, however, characteristic of the lower level at which Roman art stood as compared with Greek that, though statues abounded, we find no traces of groups of sculpture designed to occupy the pediments of temples, or of bas-reliefs fitted to special localities in the buildings, such as were all but universal in the best Greek works. _Architectural Character._ The nature of this will have been to a large extent gathered from the observations already made. Daring, energy, readiness, structural skill, and a not too fastidious taste were characteristic of the Roman architect and his works. We find traces of vast spaces covered, bold construction successfully and solidly carried out, convenience studied, and a great deal of magnificence attained in those buildings the remains of which have come down to us; but we do not discover refinement or elegance, a fine feeling for proportion, or a close attention to details, to a degree at all approaching the extent to which these qualities are to be met with in Greek buildings. We are thus sometimes tempted to regret that it was not possible to combine a higher degree of refinement with the great excellence in construction and contrivance exhibited by Roman architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 154.--DECORATION IN RELIEF AND COLOUR OF THE VAULT OF A TOMB IN THE VIA LATINA, NEAR ROME.] [Illustration: FIG. 155.--BASILICA-CHURCH OF SAN MINIATO, FLORENCE.] CHAPTER XI. EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. _Basilicas in Rome and Italy._ During the first three centuries the Christian religion was discredited and persecuted; and though many interesting memorials of this time (some of them having an indirect bearing upon architectural questions) remain in the Catacombs, it is chiefly for their paintings that the touching records of the past which have been preserved to us in these secluded excavations should be studied. Early in the fourth century Constantine the Great became Emperor, and in the course of his reign (from A.D. 312 to 337) he recognised Christianity, and made it the religion of the State. It then, of course, became requisite to provide places of public worship. Probably the Christians would have been, in many cases, reluctant to make use of heathen temples, and few temples, if any, were adapted to the assembling of a large congregation. But the large halls of the baths and the basilicas were free from associations of an objectionable character, and well fitted for large assemblages of worshippers. These and other such places were accordingly, in the first instance, employed as Christian churches. The basilica, however, became the model which, at least in Italy, was followed, to the exclusion of all others, when new buildings were erected for the purpose of Christian worship; and during the fourth century, and several succeeding ones, the churches of the West were all of the basilica type. What occurred at Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern Empire and the centre of the Eastern Church, will be considered presently. There is probably no basilica actually standing which was built during the reign of Constantine, or near his time; but there are several basilica churches in Rome, such as that of San Clemente, which were founded near his time, and which, though they have been partially or wholly rebuilt, exhibit what is believed to be the ancient disposition without modification. [Illustration: FIG. 156.--INTERIOR OF A BASILICA AT POMPEII. _Restored, from descriptions by various authors._] Access is obtained to San Clemente through a forecourt to which the name of the atrium is given. This is very much like the atrium of a Roman house, being covered with a shed roof round all four sides and open in the centre, and so resembling a cloister. The side next the church was called the narthex or porch; and when an atrium did not exist, a narthex at least was usually provided. The basilica has always a central avenue, or nave, and sides or aisles, and was generally entered from the narthex by three doors, one to each division. The nave of San Clemente is lofty, and covered by a simple wooden roof; it is separated from the side aisles by arcades, the arches of which spring from the capitals of columns; and high up in its side walls we find windows. The side aisles, like the nave, have wooden roofs. The nave terminates in a semicircular recess called "the apse," the floor of which is higher than that of the general structure, and is approached by steps. A large arch divides this apse from the nave. A portion of the nave floor is occupied by an enclosed space for the choir, surrounded by marble screens, and having a pulpit on either side of it. These pulpits are termed "ambos." Below the Church of San Clemente is a vaulted structure or crypt extending under the greater part, but not the whole, of the floor of the main building. The description given above would apply, with very slight variations, to any one of the many ancient basilica churches in Rome, Milan, Ravenna, and the other older cities of Italy; the principal variations being that in many instances, including the very ancient basilica of St. Peter, now destroyed, the avenues all stopped short of the end wall of the basilica, and a wide and clear transverse space or transept ran athwart them in front of the apse. San Clemente indeed shows some faint traces of such a feature. In one or two very large churches five avenues occur,--that is to say, a nave and double aisles; and in Santa Agnese (Fig. 156a) and at least one other, we find a gallery over the side aisles opening into the nave, or, as Mr. Fergusson puts it, "the side aisles in two stories." In many instances we should find no atrium, but in all cases we meet with the nave and aisles, and the apse at the end of the nave, with its arch and its elevated floor; and the entrances are always at the end of the building farthest from the apse, with some sort of porch or portal. [Illustration: FIG. 156a.--BASILICA, OR EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF SANTA AGNESE AT ROME.] The interest of these buildings lies not so much in their venerable antiquity as in the fact that the arrangements of all Christian churches in Western Europe down to the Reformation, and of very many since, are directly derived from these originals. If the reader will refer to the description of a Gothic cathedral in the companion volume of this series,[28] it will not be difficult for him to trace the correspondence between its plan and its general structure and those of the primitive basilica. The atrium no longer forms the access to a cathedral, but it still survives in the cloister, though in a changed position. The narthex or porch is still more or less traceable in the great western portals, and in a kind of separation which often, but not always, exists between the westernmost bay of a cathedral and the rest of the structure. The division into nave and aisles remains, and in very large churches and cathedrals there are double aisles, as there were in the largest basilicas. The nave roof is still higher than the aisles--the arcade, in two stories, survives in the usual arcade and triforium; the windows placed high in the nave are the present clerestory. The apsidal termination of the central avenue is still retained in almost all Continental architecture, though in Great Britain, from an early date, it was abandoned for a square east end; but square-ended or apsidal, a recess with a raised floor and a conspicuous arch, marking it off from the nave, always occupies this end of the church; and the under church, or crypt, is commonly, though not always, met with. The enclosure for the choir has, generally speaking, been moved farther east than it was in the basilica churches; though in Westminster Abbey, and in most Spanish cathedrals, we have examples of its occupying a position closely analogous to that of the corresponding enclosure at the basilica of San Clemente. The cross passage to which we have referred as having existed in the old basilica of St. Peter, and many others, is the original of the transept which in later churches has been made more conspicuous than it was in the basilica by being lengthened so as to project beyond the side walls of the church, and by being moved more westward. Lastly, the two ambos, or pulpits, survive in two senses. They are represented by the reading desk and the pulpit, and their situation and purpose are continued in the epistle and gospel sides of the choir. The one point in which an essential difference occurs is the position of the altar, or communion table, and that of the Bishop's chair, or throne. In the classic basilica the apse was the tribunal, and a raised seat with a tesselated pavement occupied the central position in it, and was the justice-seat of the presiding judge; and in the sweep of the apse, seats right and left, at a lower elevation, were provided for assessors or assistant-judges. In front of the president was placed a small altar. The whole of these arrangements were copied in the basilica churches. The seat of the president became the bishop's throne, the seats for assessors were appropriated to the clergy, and the altar retained substantially its old position in front of the apse, generally with a canopy erected over it. This disposition continues in basilica churches to the present day. At St. Peter's in Rome, for example, the Pope occupies a throne in the middle of the apse, and says mass with his face turned towards the congregation at the high altar, which stands in front of his throne under a vast baldacchino or canopy; but in Western Christendom generally a change has been made,--the altar has been placed in the apse where the bishop's throne formerly stood, and the throne of the bishop and stalls of his clergy have been displaced, and are to be found at the sides of the choir or presbytery. [Illustration: FIG. 157.--SANT' APOLLINARE, RAVENNA. PART OF THE ARCADE AND APSE.] Many basilica churches were erected out of fragments taken from older buildings, and present a curious mixture of columns, capitals, &c.; others, especially those at Ravenna, exhibit more care, and are noble specimens of ancient and severe architectural work. The illustration which we give of part of the nave, arcade, and apse of one of these, Sant' Apollinare in Classe, shows the dignified yet ornate aspect of one of the most carefully executed of these buildings (Fig. 157). In some of these churches the decorations are chiefly in mosaic, and are extremely striking. Our illustration of the apse of the great basilica of St. Paul without the walls (Fig. 158) may be taken as a fair specimen of the general arrangement and treatment of the crowd of sacred figures and subjects which it is customary to represent in these situations; but it can of course convey no idea of the brilliant effect produced by powerful colouring executed in mosaic, the most luminous of all methods of enrichment. The floor of most of them was formed in the style of mosaic known as "opus Alexandrinum," and the large sweeping, curved bands of coloured material with which the main outlines of the patterns are defined, and the general harmony of colour among the porphyries and other hard stones with which these pavements were executed, combine to satisfy the eye. A splendid specimen of opus Alexandrinum, the finest north of the Alps, exists in the presbytery of Westminster Abbey. [Illustration: FIG. 158.--APSE OF THE BASILICA OF ST. PAUL WITHOUT THE WALLS, ROME.] Another description of building is customarily met with in connection with early Christian churches,--the baptistery. This is commonly a detached building, and almost always circular or polygonal. In some instances the baptistery adjoins the atrium or forecourt; but it soon became customary to erect detached baptisteries of considerable size. These generally have a high central portion carried by a ring of columns, and a low aisle running round, the receptacle for water being in the centre. The origin of these buildings is not so clear as that of the basilica churches; they bear some resemblance to the Roman circular temples; but it is more probable that the form was suggested by buildings similar in general arrangement, and forming part of a Roman bath. The octagonal building known as the baptistery of Constantine, and the circular building now used as a church and dedicated to Santa Costanza in Rome, and the celebrated baptistery of Ravenna, are early examples of this class of structure. Somewhat more recent, and very well known, are the great baptisteries of Florence and Pisa. A few ancient circular or polygonal churches remain which do not appear to have been built as baptisteries. One of these is at Rome, the church of San Stefano Rotondo; but another, more remarkable in every way, is at Ravenna, the church of San Vitale. This is an octagonal building, with a large vestibule and a small apsidal choir. The central portion, carried by eight arches springing from as many lofty and solid piers, and surmounted by a hemispherical dome, rises high above the aisle which surrounds it. Much elegance is produced by the arrangement of smaller columns so as to form a kind of apsidal recess in each of the interspaces between the eight main piers. Another feature which has become thoroughly identified with church architecture is the bell-tower, or campanile. This appendage, there can be no doubt, originated with the basilicas of Italy. The use of bells as a call to prayer is said to have been introduced not later, at any rate, than the sixth century, and to this era is attributed a circular campanile belonging to Sant' Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, a basilica already alluded to. The circular plan was, however, exceptional; the ancient campaniles remaining in Rome are all square; they are usually built of brick, many stories in height, and with a group of arched openings in each story, and are generally surmounted by a low conical roof. The type of church which we have described influenced church architecture in Italy down to the eleventh century, and such buildings as the beautiful church (Fig. 155) of San Miniato, near Florence (A.D. 1013), and the renowned group of Cathedral, Baptistery, Campanile, and Campo Santo (a kind of cloistered cemetery) at Pisa, bear a very strong resemblance in many respects to these originals; though they belong rather to the Romanesque than to the Basilican division of early Christian architecture. FOOTNOTE: [28] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' chap. ii. p. 6. [Illustration: FIG. 158a.--FRIEZE FROM THE MONASTERY AT FULDA.] CHAPTER XII. BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. Constantine the Great, who by establishing the Christian religion had encouraged the erection of basilicas for Christian worship in Rome and Italy, effected a great political change, and one destined to exert a marked influence upon Christian architecture, when he removed the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium, and called the new capital Constantinople,[29] after his own name. Byzantium had been an ancient place, but was almost in ruins when Constantine, probably attracted by the unrivalled advantages of its site,[30] rebuilt it, or at least re-established it as a city. The solemn inauguration of Constantinople as the new capital took place A.D. 330; and when, under Theodosius, the empire was divided, this city became the capital of the East. With a new point of departure among a people largely of Greek race, we might expect that a new development of the church from some other type than the basilica might be likely to show itself. This, in fact, is what occurred; for while the most ancient churches of Rome all present, as we have seen, an almost slavish copy of an existing type of building, and do not attempt the use of vaulted roofs, in Byzantium buildings of most original design sprang up, founded, it is true, on Roman originals, but by no means exact copies of them. In the erection of these churches the most difficult problems of construction were successfully encountered and solved. What may have been the course which architecture ran during the two centuries between the refounding of Byzantium and the building of Santa Sophia under Justinian, we can, however, only infer from its outcome. It is doubtful if any church older than the sixth century now remains in Constantinople; but it is certain that, to attain the power of designing and erecting so great a work as Santa Sophia, the architects of Constantinople must have continued and largely modified the Roman practice of building vaults and domes. There is every probability that if some of the early churches in Byzantium were domed structures others may have been vaulted basilicas; the more so as the very ancient churches in Syria, which owed their origin to Byzantium rather than to Rome, are most of them of the basilica type. [Illustration: FIG. 159.--CHURCH OF SANTA SOPHIA AT CONSTANTINOPLE. LONG SECTION. BUILT UNDER JUSTINIAN BY ANTHEMIOS AND ISIDOROS. COMPLETED A.D. 537.] A church which had been erected by Constantine, dedicated to Santa Sophia (holy wisdom), was burnt early in the reign of Justinian (A.D. 527 to 565); and in rebuilding it his architects, Anthemios of Thralles, and Isidoros of Miletus, succeeded in erecting one of the most famous buildings of the world, and one which is the typical and central embodiment of a distinct and very strongly marked well-defined style. The basis of this style may be said to be the adoption of the dome, in preference to the vault or the timber roof, as the covering of the space enclosed within the walls; with the result that the general disposition of the plan is circular or square, rather than oblong, and that the structure recalls the Pantheon more than the great Hall of the Thermæ of Diocletian, or the Basilica of St. Paul. In Santa Sophia one vast flattish dome dominates the central space. This dome is circular in plan, and the space over which it is placed is a square, the sides of which are occupied by four massive semicircular arches of 100 ft. span each, springing from four vast piers, one at each of the four corners. The four triangular spaces between the corners of the square so enclosed and the circle or ring resting upon it are filled by what are termed "pendentives"--features which may, perhaps, be best described as portions of a dome, each just sufficient to fit into one corner of the square, and the four uniting at their upper margin to form a ring. From this ring springs the main dome. It rises to a height of 46 ft., and is 107 ft. in clear diameter. East and west of the main dome are two half-domes, each springing from a wall apsidal (_i.e._ semicircular) in plan. Smaller apses again, domed over at a lower level, are introduced, and vaulted aisles two stories in height occupy the sides of the space within the outer walls till the outline of the building is brought to very nearly an exact square. Externally this church is uninteresting,[31] but its interior is of surpassing beauty, and can be better described in the eloquent language of Gilbert Scott[32] than in any other: "Simple as is the primary ideal, the actual effect is one of great intricacy, and of continuous gradation of parts, from the small arcades up to the stupendous dome, which hangs with little apparent support like a vast bubble over the centre, or as Procopius, who witnessed its erection, described it, 'as if suspended by a chain from heaven.' "The dome is lighted by forty small windows, which pierce it immediately above the cornice which crowns its pendentives, and which, by subdividing its lower part into narrow piers, increases the feeling of its being supported by its own buoyancy. "The interior thus generated, covered almost wholly by domes, or portions of them, each rising in succession higher and higher towards the floating hemisphere in the centre, and so arranged that one shall open out the view to others, and that nearly the entire system of vaulting may be viewed at a single glance, appears to me to be in some respects the noblest which has ever been designed, as it was certainly the most daring which, up to that time at least, if not absolutely, had ever been constructed." After pointing out how the smaller arcades and apsidal projections, and the vistas obtained through the various arched openings, introduced intricate effects of perspective and constant changes of aspect, Scott continues: "This union of the more palpable with the more mysterious, of the vast unbroken expanse with the intricately broken perspective, must, as it appears to me, and as I judge from representations, produce an impression more astounding than that of almost any other building: but when we consider the whole as clothed with the richest beauties of surface,--its piers encrusted with inlaid marbles of every hue, its arcades of marble gorgeously carved, its domes and vaultings resplendent with gold mosaic interspersed with solemn figures, and its wide-spreading floors rich with marble tesselation, over which the buoyant dome floats self-supported, and seems to sail over you as you move,--I cannot conceive of anything more astonishing, more solemn, and more magnificent." The type of church of which this magnificent cathedral was the great example has continued in Eastern Christendom to the present day, and has undergone surprisingly little variation. A certain distinctive character in the foliage (Fig. 163) employed in capitals and other decorative carving, and mosaics of splendid colour but somewhat gaunt and archaic design, though often solemn and dignified, were typical of the work of Justinian's day, and could long afterwards be recognised in Eastern Christian churches. Between Rome and Constantinople, and well situated for receiving influence from both those cities, stood Ravenna, and here a series of buildings, all more or less Byzantine, were erected. The most interesting of these is the church of San Vitale (Figs. 160, 161). This building is octagonal in plan, and thus belongs to the series of round and polygonal churches and baptisteries for which the circular buildings of the Romans furnished a model; but in its high central dome, lighted by windows placed high up, its many subsidiary arcades and apses, the latter roofed by half-domes, and its vaulted aisles in two stories, it recalls Santa Sophia; and its sculpture, carving, and mosaic decorations are hardly less famous and no less characteristic. [Illustration: FIG. 160.--PLAN OF SAN VITALE AT RAVENNA.] [Illustration: FIG. 161.--SAN VITALE AT RAVENNA. LONGITUDINAL SECTION.] One magnificent specimen of Byzantine architecture, more within the reach of ordinary travellers, and consequently better known than San Vitale or Santa Sophia, must not be omitted, and can be studied easily by means of numberless photographic illustrations--St. Mark's at Venice. This cathedral was built between the years 977-1071, and, it is said, according to a design obtained from Constantinople. It has since been altered in external appearance by the erection of bulbous domical roofs over its domes, and by additions of florid Gothic character; but, disregarding these, we have alike in plan, structure, and ornament, a Byzantine church of the first class. [Illustration: FIG. 162.--PLAN OF ST. MARK'S AT VENICE.] The ground-plan of St. Mark's (Fig. 162) presents a Greek cross, _i.e._ one in which all the arms are equal, and it is roofed by five principal domes, one at the crossing and one over each of the four limbs of the cross. Aisles at a low level, and covered by a series of small flat domes, in lieu of vaulting, fill up the angles between the arms of the cross, so as to make the outline of the plan nearly square. The rich colouring of St. Mark's, due to a profuse employment of mosaics and of the most costly marbles, and the splendid effects produced by the mode of introducing light, which is admitted much as at Santa Sophia, are perhaps its greatest charm; but there is beauty in every aspect of its interior which has furnished a fit theme for the pen of the most eloquent writer on art and architecture of the present or perhaps of any day. From Venice the influence of Byzantine art spread to a small extent in North Italy; in that city herself as well as in neighbouring towns, such as Padua, buildings and fragments of buildings exhibiting the characteristics of the style can be found. Remarkable traces of the influence of Byzantium as a centre, believed to be due to intercourse with Venice, can also be found in France. Direct communication with Constantinople by way of the Mediterranean has also introduced Byzantine taste into Sicily. One famous French church, St. Front in Périgueux, is identical (or nearly so) with St. Mark's in its plan; but all its constructive arches being pointed (Fig. 3, page 5), its general appearance differs a good deal from that of Eastern churches--a difference which is accentuated by the absence of the mosaics and other coloured ornaments which enrich the walls of St. Mark's. Many very old domed churches and much sculpture of the Byzantine type are moreover to be found in Central and Southern France--Anjou, Aquitaine, and Auvergne. These are, however, isolated examples of the style having taken root in spite of adverse circumstances; it is in those parts of Europe where the Greek Church prevails, or did prevail, that Byzantine architecture chiefly flourishes. In Greece and Asia Minor many ancient churches of Byzantine structure remain, while in Russia churches are built to the present day corresponding to the general type of those which have just been described. [Illustration: FIG. 163.--FROM THE GOLDEN DOOR OF JERUSALEM. TIME OF JUSTINIAN. A.D. 560.] [Illustration: FIG. 164.--CHURCH AT TURMANIN IN SYRIA. 4TH AND 5TH CENTURY.] In ancient buildings of Syria the influence of both the Roman and the Byzantine models can be traced. No more characteristic specimens of Byzantine foliage can be desired than some to be found in Palestine, as for example the Golden Gate at Jerusalem, which we illustrate (Fig. 163); but in the deserted cities of Central Syria a group of exceptional and most interesting buildings, both secular and sacred, exists, which, as described by De Vogüé,[33] seem to display a free and very original treatment based upon Roman more than Byzantine ideas. We illustrate the exterior of one of these, the church at Turmanin (Fig. 164). This is a building divided into a nave and aisles and with a vestibule. Two low towers flank the central gable, and it will be noticed that openings of depressed proportion, mostly semicircular headed, and with the arches usually springing from square piers, mark the building; while the use made of columns strongly resembles the manner in which in later times they were introduced by the Gothic architects. [Illustration: FIG. 165.--TOWER OF A RUSSIAN CHURCH.] FOOTNOTES: [29] _I.e._ the City of Constantine. [30] "The edge of the world: the knot which links together East and West; the centre in which all extremes combine," was the not overcharged description given of Constantinople by one of her own bishops. [31] For an illustration see Fig. 187. [32] 'Lectures on Mediæval Architecture.' [33] 'Syrie Centrale.' CHAPTER XIII. ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. The term Romanesque is here used to indicate a style of Christian architecture, founded on Roman art, which prevailed throughout Western Europe from the close of the period of basilican architecture to the rise of Gothic; except in those isolated districts where the influence of Byzantium is visible. By some writers the significance of the word is restricted within narrower limits; but excellent authorities can be adduced for the employment of it in the wide sense here indicated. Indeed some difficulty exists in deciding what shall and what shall not be termed Romanesque, if any more restricted definition of its meaning is adopted; while under this general term, if applied broadly, many closely allied local varieties--as, for example, Lombard, Rhenish, Romance, Saxon, and Norman--can be conveniently included. The spectacle which Europe presented after the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium and the incursions of the Northern tribes was melancholy in the extreme. Nothing but the church retained any semblance of organised existence; and when at last some kind of order began to emerge from a chaos of universal ruin, and churches and monastic buildings began to be built in Western Europe, all of them looked to Rome, and not to Constantinople, as their common ecclesiastical centre. It is not surprising that, as soon as differences between the ritual of the Eastern and the Western Church sprang up, a contrast between Eastern and Western architecture should establish itself, and that the early structures of the many countries where the Roman Church flourished never wandered far from the Roman type, with the exception of localities where circumstances favoured direct intercourse with the East. The architecture of the Eastern Church, on the other hand, adhered quite as closely to the models of Byzantium. [Illustration: FIG. 166.--TOWER OF EARL'S BARTON CHURCH.] The style, so far as is known, was for a long time almost, if not absolutely, the same over a very large part of Western Christendom, and it has received from Mr. Freeman the appropriate designation of Primitive Romanesque. It was not till the tenth century, or later, that distinctive varieties began to make their appearance; and though that which was built earlier than that date has, through rebuildings and enlargements as well as natural decay, been in many cases swept away, still enough may be met with to show us what the buildings of that remote time were like. The churches are usually small, and have an apsidal east end. The openings are rude, with round-headed arches and small single or two-light windows, and the outer walls are generally marked by flat pilasters of very slight projection. Towers are common, and the openings in them are often divided into two or more lights by rude columns. The plan of these churches was founded on the basilica type, but they do not exhibit the same internal arrangement; and it is very noteworthy that many of them show marks of having been vaulted, or at least partly vaulted; and not covered, as the basilicas usually were, by timber roofs. Even a country so remote as Great Britain possessed in the 10th century many buildings of Primitive Romanesque character; and in such Saxon churches as those of Worth, Brixworth, Dover, or Bradford, and such towers as those of Earl's Barton (Fig. 166), Trinity Church Colchester, Barnack, or Sompting, we have specimens of the style remaining to the present day. By degrees, as buildings of greater extent and more ornament were erected, the local varieties to which reference has been made began to develop themselves. In Lombardy and North Italy, for example, a Lombard Romanesque style can be recognised distinctly; here a series of churches were built, many of them vaulted, but not many of the largest size. Most of them were on substantially the same plan as the basilicas, though a considerable number of circular or polygonal churches were also built. Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, and some of the churches at Brescia, Pavia, and Lucca, may be cited as well-known examples of early date, and a little later the cathedrals of Parma, Modena, and Piacenza (Fig. 167), and San Zenone at Verona. These churches are all distinguished by the free use of small ornamental arches and narrow pilaster-strips externally, and the employment of piers with half-shafts attached to them, rather than columns, in the arcades; they have fine bell-towers; circular windows often occupy the gables, and very frequently the walls have been built of, or ornamented with, coloured materials. The sculpture--grotesque, vigorous, and full of rich variety--which distinguishes many of these buildings, and which is to be found specially enriching the doorways, is of great interest, and began early to develop a character that is quite distinctive. [Illustration: FIG. 167.--CATHEDRAL AT PIACENZA.] Turning to Germany, we find that a very strong resemblance existed between the Romanesque churches of that country and those of North Italy. At Aix-la-Chapelle a polygonal church exists, built by Charlemagne, and which tradition asserts was designed on the model of San Vitale at Ravenna. The resemblance is undoubted, but the German church is by no means an exact copy of Justinian's building. Early examples of German Romanesque exist in the cathedrals of Mayence, Worms, and Spires, and a steady advance was made till a point was reached (in the twelfth century) at which the style may be said to have attained the highest development which Romanesque architecture received in any country of Europe. The arcaded ornament (the arches being very frequently open so as to form a real arcade) which was noticed as occurring in Lombard churches, belongs also to German ones, though the secondary internal arcade (triforium) is absent from some of the early examples. Piers are used more frequently than columns in the interiors, and are often very plain. From an early date the use of a western as well as an eastern apse seems to have been common in Germany, and high western façades extending between two towers were features specially met with in that country. For a notice and some illustrations of the latest and best phase of German Romanesque, which may with propriety be termed "round-arched Gothic," the reader is referred to the companion volume of this series.[34] France exhibits more than one variety of Romanesque; for not only, as remarked in the chapter on Byzantine Art, is the influence of Greek or Venetian artists traceable in the buildings of certain districts, especially Périgueux, but it is clear that in others the existence of fine examples of Roman architecture (Fig. 168) affected the design of buildings down to and during the eleventh century. This influence may, for example, be detected in the use, in the churches at Autun, Valence, and Avignon, of capitals, pilasters, and other features closely resembling classic originals, and in the employment through a great part of Central and Northern France of vaulted roofs. [Illustration: FIG. 168.--VAULTS OF THE EXCAVATED ROMAN BATHS, IN THE MUSÉE DE CLUNY, PARIS.] A specially French feature is the chevet, a group of apsidal chapels which were built round the apse itself, and which combined with it to make of the east end of a great cathedral a singularly rich and ornate composition. This feature, originating in Romanesque churches, was retained in France through the whole of the Gothic period, and a good example of it may be seen in the large Romanesque church of St. Sernin at Toulouse, which we illustrate (Fig. 169). The transepts were usually well marked. The nave arcades generally sprang from piers (Fig. 170), more rarely from columns. Arches are constantly met with recessed, _i.e._ in receding planes,[35] the first stage of progress towards a Gothic treatment, and are occasionally slightly moulded (Fig. 171). Western doorways are often highly enriched with sculpture; and the carving and sculpture generally, though often rude, are full of vitality. Towers occur, usually square, more rarely octagonal. Window-lights are frequently grouped two or more under one arch. Capitals of a basket-shape, and with a square abacus, often richly sculptured, are employed. [Illustration: FIG. 169.--CHURCH OF ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE.] [Illustration: FIG. 170.--NAVE ARCADE AT ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE.] [Illustration: FIG. 171.--ARCHES IN RECEDING PLANES AT ST. SERNIN, TOULOUSE.] In Normandy, and generally in the North of France, round-arched architecture was excellently carried out, and churches remarkable both for their extent and their great dignity and solidity were erected. Generally speaking, however, Norman architecture, especially as met with in Normandy itself, is less ornate than the Romanesque of Southern France; in fact some of the best examples seem to suffer from a deficiency of ornament. The large and well-known churches at Caen, St. Etienne, otherwise the Abbaye aux Hommes--interesting to Englishmen as having been founded by William the Conqueror immediately after the Conquest--and the Trinité, or Abbaye aux Dames, are excellent examples of early Norman architecture, but the student must not forget that additions have been made to them, which, if they add to their beauty, at the same time alter their character. For example, in St. Etienne, the upper part of the western towers and the fine spires with which they are crowned were built subsequent to the original structure, as was also, in all probability, the chevet, or eastern limb. It seems probable also that the vaulting may not be what was contemplated in the original plan. St. Etienne is 364 ft. long, and is lofty in its proportions. It has a nave and aisles, arcades resting on piers, and strongly-marked transepts, and has two western towers with the gable of the nave between them. The west front is well designed in three stories, having strongly-marked vertical divisions in the buttresses of the towers, and equally distinct horizontal divisions in the three doorways below, and two ranges of windows, each of five lights, above. There is no circular west window. The nave and aisles are vaulted. Besides other cathedral churches, such for example as those of Bayeux and Evreux, in which considerable parts of the original structures remain, there exist throughout Normandy and Brittany many parochial churches and monastic buildings, exhibiting, at least in some portions of their structure, the same characteristics as those of St. Etienne; and it is clear that an immense number of buildings, the beauty and even refinement of which are conspicuous, must have been erected in Northern France during the eleventh and the early years of the twelfth centuries, the period to which Norman architecture in France may be said to belong. In Great Britain, as has been already pointed out, enough traces of Saxon--that is to say, Primitive Romanesque--architecture remain to show that many simple, though comparatively rude, buildings must have been erected previous to the Norman Conquest. Traces exist also of an influence which the rapid advance that had been made by the art of building as practised in Normandy was exerting in our island. The buildings at Westminster Abbey raised by Edward the Confessor, though they have been almost all rebuilt, have left just sufficient traces behind to enable us to recognise that they were of bold design. The plan of the Confessor's church was laid out upon a scale almost as large as that of the present structure. The monastic buildings were extensive. The details of the work were, some of them, refined and delicate, and resembled closely those employed in Norman buildings at that time. Thus it appears that, even had the Conquest not taken place, no small influence would have been exerted upon buildings in England by the advance then being made in France; but instead of a gradual improvement being so produced, a sudden and rapid revolution was effected by the complete conquest of the country and its occupation by nobles and ecclesiastics from Normandy, who, enriched by the plunder of the conquered country, were eager to establish themselves in permanent buildings. Shortly after the Conquest distinctive features began to show themselves. Norman architecture in England soon became essentially different from what it was in Normandy, and we possess in this country a large series of fine works showing the growth of this imported style, from the early simplicity of the chapel in the Tower of London to such elaboration as that of the later parts of Durham Cathedral. The number of churches founded or rebuilt soon after the Norman Conquest must have been enormous, for in examining churches of every date and in every part of England it is common to find some fragment of Norman work remaining from a former church: this is very frequently a doorway left standing or built into walls of later date: and, in addition to these fragments, no small number of churches, and more than one cathedral, together with numerous castles, remain in whole or in part as they were erected by the original builders. Norman architecture is considered to have prevailed in England for more than a century; that is to say, from the Conquest (1066) to the accession of Richard I. (1189). For some details of the marks by which Norman work can be recognised the reader is referred to the companion volume;[36] we propose here to give an account of the broader characteristics of the buildings erected during the prevalence of the style. * * * * * The oldest remaining parts of Canterbury Cathedral are specimens of Norman architecture executed in England immediately after the Conquest. This great church was rebuilt by Archbishop Lanfranc (whose episcopate lasted from 1070 to 1089), and in extent as laid out by him was very nearly identical with the existing structure; almost every portion has, however, been rebuilt, so that of his work only the towers forming transepts to the choir, and some other fragments, now remain. More complete and equally ancient is the chapel in the Tower of London, which consists of a small apsidal church with nave and aisles, vaulted throughout, and in excellent preservation. This building, though very charming, is almost destitute of ornament. A little more ornate, and still a good example of early Norman, is St. Peter's Church, Northampton (Fig. 172), the interior of which we illustrate. To these examples of early Norman we may add a large part of Rochester Cathedral, and the transepts of Winchester. The transepts of Exeter present a specimen of rather more advanced Norman work; and in the cathedrals of Peterborough and Durham the style can be seen at its best. [Illustration: FIG. 172.--NORMAN ARCHES IN ST. PETER'S CHURCH, NORTHAMPTON.] In most Norman buildings we find very excellent masonry and massive construction. The exteriors of west fronts, transepts, and towers show great skill and care in their composition, the openings being always well grouped, and contrasted with plain wall-spaces; and a keen sense of proportion is perceptible. The Norman architects had at command a rich, if perhaps a rather rude, ornamentation, which they generally confined to individual features, especially doorways; on these they lavished mouldings and sculpture, the elaboration of which was set off by the plainness of the general structure. In the interior of the churches we usually meet with piers of massive proportion, sometimes round, sometimes octagonal, sometimes rectangular, and a shaft is sometimes carried up the face of the piers; as, for example, in Peterborough Cathedral (Fig. 173). The capitals of the columns and piers have a square abacus, and, generally speaking, are of the cushion-shaped sort, commonly known as basket-capitals, and are profusely carved. The larger churches have the nave roofed with a timber roof, and at Peterborough there is a wooden ceiling; in these cases the aisles only are vaulted, but in some small churches the whole building has been so covered. Buttresses are seldom required, owing to the great mass of the walls; when employed they have a very slight projection, but the same strips or pilasters which are used in German Romanesque occur here also. Low towers were common, and have been not unfrequently preserved in cases where the rest of the building has been removed. As the style advanced, the proportions of arcades became more lofty, and shafts became more slender, decorative arcades (Fig. 174) became more common, and in these and many other changes the approaching transition to Gothic may be easily detected. We have already alluded to the many Norman doorways remaining in parish churches of which all other parts have been rebuilt. These doorways are generally very rich; they possess a series of mouldings sometimes springing from shafts, sometimes running not only round the arched head, but also up the jambs of the opening; and each moulding is richly carved, very often with a repetition of the same ornament on each voussoir of the arch. Occasionally, but not frequently, large portions of wall-surface are covered by a diaper; that is to say, an ornament constantly repeated so as to produce a general sense of enrichment. [Illustration: FIG. 173.--NAVE ARCADE, PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 174.--DECORATIVE ARCADE FROM CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL.] Norman castles, as well as churches, were built in great numbers shortly after the Conquest, and not a few remain. The stronghold which a follower of the Conqueror built in order to establish himself on the lands granted him was always a very sturdy massive square tower, low in proportion to its width, built very strongly, and with every provision for sustaining an attack or even a siege. Such a tower is called "a keep;" and in many famous castles, as for example the Tower of London, the keep forms the nucleus round which buildings and courtyards of later date have clustered. In some few instances, however, as for example at Colchester, the keep is the only part now standing, and it is probable that when originally built these Norman castles were not much encumbered with out-buildings. Rochester Castle is a fine example of a Norman keep, though it has suffered much from decay and injury. The very large Norman keep of the Tower of London, known as the White Tower, and containing the chapel already described, has been much modernised and altered, but retains the fine mass of its original construction. Perhaps the best (and best-preserved) example is Hedingham Castle in Essex, which we illustrate (Figs. 175 and 176). From the remains of this building some idea of the interior of the hall--the chief room within a Norman keep--may be obtained, as well as of the general external appearance of such a structure. [Illustration: FIG. 175.--HEDINGHAM CASTLE.] [Illustration: FIG. 176.--INTERIOR OF HEDINGHAM CASTLE.] FOOTNOTES: [34] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' chap. vii. [35] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' chap. v. p. 62. [36] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' chap. ii. p. 23. [Illustration: FIG. 177.--ROUNDED ARCH OF CHURCH AT GELNHAUSEN.] CHAPTER XIV. CHRISTIAN ROUND-ARCHED ARCHITECTURE. _Analysis._ Notwithstanding very wide differences which undoubtedly exist, there is a sufficient bond of union between the Basilican, the Byzantine, and the Romanesque styles, to render it possible for us to include the characteristics of the three in an analysis of Christian round-arched architecture. _The Plan or floor-disposition_ of the basilican churches, as has been pointed out, was distinctive. The atrium, or forecourt, the porch, the division into nave and aisles; the transept, the great arch, and the apse beyond it with the episcopal seat at the back behind the altar; the ambos; and the enclosure for the choir, were typical features. Detached towers sometimes occurred. The plan of Romanesque churches was based upon that of the basilica; the atrium was often omitted, so was the transept sometimes; but, when retained, the transept was generally made more prominent than in the basilica. The position of the altar and of the enclosure for the choir were changed, but in other respects the basilica plan was continued. In Germany, however, apsidal transepts (Fig. 178) were built. Towers were common, occasionally detached, but more frequently joined to the main building. [Illustration: FIG. 178.--PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES AT COLOGNE.] Circular and polygonal buildings for use as baptisteries, and sometimes as churches, existed both in the basilican and the Romanesque time. Byzantine church plans are all distinguished by their great central square space, covered by the central dome, flanked usually by four arms, comparatively short, and all of equal length; and the plan of the buildings is generally square, or nearly so, in outline. Circular and polygonal buildings sometimes occur. [Illustration: FIG. 179.--SPIRE OF SPIRES CATHEDRAL.] Few traces of the arrangement of military, secular, or domestic buildings earlier than the twelfth century remain, but some examples of a cloister at the side of the nave (generally the south side) of a church, giving or intended to give access to monastic buildings, still exist. _The Walls_ of such buildings as have come down to us are, it may be well understood, strong, since the most recent of this round-arched series of buildings must be about seven hundred years old. Fine masonry was not much employed till the time of the Normans, but the Roman plan of building with bricks or rubble and casing the face of the walls with marble or mosaic, or at least plaster, was generally followed. The walls are carried up as gables and towers to a considerable extent (Fig. 179), especially in Western countries. _The Roof._--In a basilica this was of timber, in a Byzantine church it consisted of a series of domes; in a Romanesque church it was sometimes of timber as in the basilica, but not unfrequently vaulted. As a general rule the vault prevailed in the West and the dome in the East; and such examples of either sort of roof as occur in those provinces where the other was usual, like the domed churches in parts of France, must be looked upon as exceptional. _The Openings_ are almost invariably arched, and seldom, if ever, covered by a lintel. It is hardly necessary to add that the arches are always round. Almost always they are semicircular, but instances of the employment of a segmental arch, or of one the outline of which is a little more than half a circle, may be occasionally met with. Door openings are often made important both by size and decoration. Window openings are usually small; and the grouping of two or more lights under one head, which was so conspicuous a feature in Gothic architecture, first appears in Byzantine buildings, and is met with also in Romanesque ones. The mode of introducing light is to a certain extent characteristic. The basilican churches always possess a clerestory, and usually side windows in the aisles; and this arrangement is generally followed in Romanesque buildings, though sometimes, in Germany, the clerestory is omitted. The gable ends of the nave and transepts are not usually pierced by many or large lights (Fig. 180); and when there is a central feature, as a tower, or even a dome, little or no light is introduced through it. On the other hand, the Byzantine churches depend largely for light upon the ring of windows which commonly encircles the base of the central dome, and sometimes that of the subsidiary domes; and the gables are pierced so as to supply any additional light required, so that windows are infrequent in the lower walls. Broadly speaking, therefore, the Western churches have side-lighting and the Eastern top-lighting. [Illustration: FIG. 180.--CHURCH AT ROSHEIM. UPPER PORTION OF FAÇADE.] The great arches which carry the main domes form a notable feature in Eastern churches, and are of very bold construction. In the basilican churches one great arch, called "the arch of triumph," occurs, and only one; this gives access to the apse: and a similar arch, which we now denominate "the chancel arch," usually occupies a corresponding position in all Romanesque churches. The arches of the arcade separating the nave from the aisles in all Western churches are usually of moderate span. In some ancient basilicas these arches are replaced by a horizontal beam. _The Columns._--In basilicas these were of antique type; very often they had actually been obtained by the demolition of older buildings, and when made purposely they were as a rule of the same general character. The same might be said of those introduced into Byzantine buildings, though a divergence from the classic type soon manifested itself, and small columns began to appear as decorative features. In Romanesque buildings the columns are very varied indeed, and shafts are frequently introduced into the decoration of other features. They occur in the jambs of doorways with mouldings or sub-arches springing from them; long shafts and short ones, frequently supporting ornamental arcades, are employed both internally and externally; and altogether that use of the column as a means of decoration, of which Gothic architecture presents so many examples, first began in the Romanesque style. The capitals employed in Romanesque buildings generally depart considerably from the classic type, being based on the primitive cube capital (Fig. 181), but, as a rule, in Eastern as well as in basilican churches, they bear a tolerably close resemblance to classic ones. [Illustration: FIG. 181.--CUBIC CAPITAL.] _The Ornaments_ throughout the whole of the Christian round-arched period are a very interesting subject of study, and will repay close attention. In the basilican style mouldings occur but seldom: where met with, they are all of the profiles common in Roman architecture, but often rudely and clumsily worked. Carving partakes also of classic character, though it is not difficult to detect the commencement of that metamorphosis which was effected in Byzantium, and which can hardly be better described than in the following paragraph from the pen of Sir Digby Wyatt:--"The foliage is founded on ancient Greek rather than on Roman traditions, and is characterised by a peculiarly sharp outline. All ornamental sculpture is in comparatively low relief, and the absence of human and other figures is very marked. Enrichments were almost invariably so carved, by sinking portions only of the surfaces and leaving the arrises and principal places untouched, as to preserve the original constructive forms given by the mason (Fig. 184). The employment of the drill instead of the chisel, so common in debased Roman work, was retained as a very general practice by the Greek carvers, and very often with excellent effect. The foliage of the acanthus, although imitated from the antique, quite changed its character, becoming more geometrical and conventional in its form. That which particularly distinguishes Lombard from Byzantine art is its sculpture abounding with grotesque imagery, with illustrations of every-day life, of a fanciful mythology not yet quite extinct, and allusions, no longer symbolic but direct, to the Christian creed; the latter quality a striking evidence of the triumph of the Roman Church over all iconoclastic adversaries in Greece." What is here asserted of Lombard carving is true of that in the Romanesque buildings in Germany, Scandinavia (Fig. 182), France, and to a certain extent in Great Britain, though in our own country a large proportion of the ornamental carving consists simply of decorative patterns, such as the chevron, billet, and zig-zag; and sculpture containing figures and animals is less common. [Illustration: FIG. 182.--DOORWAY AT TIND, NORWAY. (END OF 12TH CENTURY.)] The mouldings of Romanesque buildings are simple, and at first were few in number, but by degrees they become more conspicuous, and before the transition to Gothic they assumed considerable importance (Fig. 183) and added not a little to the architectural character of the buildings. [Illustration: FIG. 183.--MOULDINGS OF PORTAL OF ST. JAMES'S CHURCH AT KOESFELD.] Coloured decoration, especially in mosaic, was a conspicuous feature in basilican churches, and still more so in those of the Byzantine style; such decoration in Romanesque churches was not infrequent, but it was more commonly painted in fresco or tempera. The glass mosaic-work to be found on the walls of Early Christian churches, both basilican and Byzantine, but less frequently Romanesque, is most interesting and beautiful: "it was," says the high authority already quoted, "employed only to represent and reproduce the forms of existing objects, such as figures, architectural forms and conventional foliage, which were generally relieved with some slight indication of shading upon a gold ground--the whole being bedded in the cement covering the walls and vaults of the basilicas and churches." "The design of both figures and ornaments was, generally speaking, very rude, though not without an occasional rising in some of the figures to a certain sublimity, derivable principally from the great simplicity of the forms and draperies and the earnest grandiose expression depicted on their countenances. The pieces of glass employed in the formation of this work are very irregular in shapes and sizes, of all colours and tones of colour, and the ground tint almost invariably prevailing is gold. The manner of execution is always large and coarse, and rarely approaches in neatness of joint and regularity of bedding to the (ancient Roman) 'opus majus vermiculatus;' yet, notwithstanding these blemishes, the effect of gorgeous, luxurious, and at the same time solemn decoration produced is unattainable by any other means as yet employed as structural embellishment. How noble and truly ecclesiastical in character are the gold-clad interiors of Monreale Cathedral, of the Capella Palatina at Palermo, of St. Mark at Venice, San Miniato at Florence, or Santi Apollinare and Vitale at Ravenna, the concurrent testimony of all travellers attests." A finer kind of glass mosaic arranged in geometrical patterns was made use of to enrich the ambos, screens, episcopal chairs, sepulchral ornaments, and other similar fittings of churches, and was often of great beauty. A third sort of mosaic--the Alexandrine work (opus Alexandrinum)--used for pavements, has been already alluded to; this was extremely effective, but its use appears to have been less general than that of the glass mosaics for the walls. _The Architectural Character_ of the basilican churches may be briefly characterised as venerable and dignified, but yet cheerful and bright rather than forbidding; they are, as interiors, impressive but not oppressive, solemn but not gloomy. Comparatively little attention was paid to external effect, and there is not often much in them to strike the passer-by. The character of Byzantine interiors is far more rich, and even splendid; but it is more gloomy, and often is solemn and grand to the last degree. In many cases these churches possess fine exteriors; and for the level sky-line produced by the long straight roofs of the basilica, a more or less pyramidal composition, showing curved outlines rather than straight ones, is substituted. The architectural character of the Romanesque buildings varies extremely with the districts in which they are erected; but, generally speaking, it may be described as picturesque, and even sometimes romantic; the appearance of towers, prominent transepts, and many smaller decorative features serves to render the exteriors telling and varied, though often somewhat rude and primitive. A solid and somewhat heavy character distinguishes the interiors of some varieties of Romanesque buildings--such, for example, as our own Early Norman; but in our fully-developed and late Norman, and still more in the latest German Romanesque churches, this disappears almost entirely, and much beauty and even lightness of effect is obtained, without any loss of that richness which is characteristic of more ancient examples. [Illustration: FIG. 184.--BYZANTINE BASKET-WORK CAPITAL FROM SAN MICHELE IN AFFRICISCO AT RAVENNA.] [Illustration: FIG. 185.--ARABIAN CAPITAL. FROM THE ALHAMBRA.] CHAPTER XV. MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE. Few revolutions more sudden, more signal, and more widespread are recorded in history than that which covered not only the East but part of the West with the Mohammedan religion and dominion. Mohammed was born either in the year 569 or 570 of the Christian era, and died A.D. 652. The year of the Hegira, the era from which Mohammedans compute their chronology, is A.D. 622, and within little more than a century from this era the Prophet was acknowledged, and the suzerainty of the Caliph recognised eastwards, in Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia, and in India as far as to the Ganges; and westwards along the north coast of Africa, in Sicily, and in Spain. It was only to be expected that such a wonderful tide of conquest and such a widespread change of religion should before long leave its impress on the architecture of the continents thus revolutionised; and accordingly a Mohammedan style soon rose. This style did not displace or override the indigenous art of the various countries where it prevailed, as Roman architecture did in the age of universal dominion under the Empire; it assimilated the peculiarities of each country, and so transmuted them, that although wherever the religion of Mohammed prevails the architecture will at a glance confess the fact, still the local or national peculiarities of each country remain prominent. The Arabs, a nomadic race who lived in tents, do not seem to have been great builders even in their cities. We have no authentic accounts or existing remains of very early buildings even in Mecca or Medina, as the oldest mosques in those cities have been completely rebuilt. It is to Egypt and Syria that we must turn for the most ancient remaining examples of Saracenic architecture. These consist of mosques and tombs. _Egypt._ A mosque--or Mohammedan place of worship--has two forms. The earlier mosques are all of them of a type the arrangement of which is simplicity itself. A large open courtyard, resembling the garth of a cloister, with a fountain in it, is surrounded cloister-wise by arcades supporting timber roofs. On the side nearest Mecca the arcades are increased to several rows in depth, so as to cover a considerable space. This is the part in which the congregation chiefly assembles; here a niche or recess (termed Kibla), more or less enriched, is formed in which the Koran is to be kept, and hard by a pulpit is erected. For many centuries past, though not, it is believed, from the very earliest times, a minaret or high tower, from the top of which the call to prayer is given, has also been an indispensable adjunct to a mosque. The second sort of mosque is a domed, and sometimes vaulted building of a form chiefly suggested by the Byzantine domed churches, with a central space and four short arms. This sort of mosque became almost universal in Turkey and Egypt after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, and the appropriation to Moslem worship of Santa Sophia itself. The tombs are ornate and monumental buildings, or sanctuaries, of the same general character as the domed mosques, and often attached to them. [Illustration: FIG. 186.--HORSE-SHOE ARCH.] From very early times the arches, in the arcades which have been described as virtually constituting the whole structure of the simpler sort of mosque, were pointed. Lubke claims as the earliest known and dated example of the pointed arch in a Saracenic building, the Nilometer, a small structure on an island near Cairo, which contains pointed arches that must have been built either at the date of its original construction in A.D. 719, or at latest, when it was restored A.D. 821. The Mosque of Amrou, however, which was founded very soon after the conquest of Egypt in A.D. 643, and is largely made up of materials obtained from older buildings, exhibits pointed arches, not only in the arcades, which probably have been rebuilt since they were originally formed, but in the outer walls, which are likely, in part at least, to be original. [Illustration: FIG. 187.--EXTERIOR OF SANTA SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE. SHOWING THE MINARETS ADDED AFTER ITS CONVERSION INTO A MOSQUE.] Whatever uncertainty may rest upon these very remote specimens of pointed architecture, there is little if any about the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, also at Cairo, and built A.D. 885, or, according to another authority, A.D. 879. Here arcades of bold pointed arches spring from piers, and the effect of the whole structure is noble and full of character. From that time the pointed arch was constantly used in Saracenic buildings along with the semicircular and the horse-shoe arch (Fig. 186). From the ninth century, then, the pointed arch was in constant use. It prevailed in Palestine as well as in the adjacent countries for two centuries before it reached the West, and there can be no doubt that it was there seen by the Western Crusaders, and a knowledge of its use and an appreciation of its beauty and convenience were brought back to Western Europe by the returning ecclesiastics and others at the end of the First Crusade.[37] In the eleventh century the splendid Tombs of the Caliphs at Cairo were erected,--buildings crowned with domes of a graceful pointed form, and remarkable for the external decoration which usually covers the whole surface of those domes. By this time also, if not earlier, the minaret had become universal. This is a lofty tower of slender proportions, passing from a square base below to a circular form above (Fig. 187). A minaret is often divided into several stages. Each stage is then marked by a balcony, and is, generally speaking, a polygon of a greater number of sides than the stage below it. [Illustration: FIG. 188.--ALHAMBRA. HALL OF THE ABENCERRAGES.] In the interiors of Saracenic buildings what is generally known as honeycomb corbelling is constantly employed to fill up corners and effect a change of plan from a square below to a circle or octagon above. This ornament is formed by the use of a series of small brackets, each course of them overhanging those below, and produces an effect some idea of which may be gathered from our illustration (Fig. 188) of the Hall of the Abencerrages in the Alhambra. The interiors when not domed are often covered by wooden or plaster ceilings, more or less richly decorated, such as are shown in the view of one of the arcades of the Mosque "El Moyed," Cairo (Fig. 189), where the horse-shoe and pointed arches can both be seen. This illustration also shows timber ties, at the feet of the arches, such as were commonly used by the earlier Saracenic builders. The surfaces of the interiors of most Mohammedan buildings in all countries are covered with the most exquisite decorations in colour. Imitations of natural objects being forbidden by the Koran (a prohibition occasionally, but very rarely, infringed), the Saracenic artists, whose instincts as decorators seem to have been unrivalled, fell back upon geometrical and flowing patterns and inscriptions, and upon the use of tiles (Fig. 190), mosaics, inlays, patterns impressed on plaster, and every possible device for harmoniously enriching the surfaces with which they had to deal. Several of our illustrations give indications of the presence of these unrivalled decorations in the buildings which they represent (Fig. 195). Windows are commonly filled by tracery executed in stone or in plaster, and glazed with stained glass, and many of the open spaces in buildings are occupied by grilles, executed in wood, and most effective and rich in design. [Illustration: FIG. 189.--MOSQUE 'EL MOYED' AT CAIRO.] [Illustration: FIG. 190.--ARABIAN WALL DECORATION.] [Illustration: FIG. 191.--PLAN OF THE SAKHRA MOSQUE AT JERUSALEM.] _Syria and Palestine._ Syria was one of the countries earliest overrun by the Arab propaganda, and Jerusalem was taken by the Caliph Omar as early as A.D. 637. He there built a small mosque, though not the one which commonly goes by his name. Two mosques of great antiquity and importance, but the origin of which is a matter of dispute among authorities, stand in the Haram enclosure at Jerusalem. One of these is the octagonal building called the Sakhra (Figs. 191-2), known in the Moslem world as the Dome of the Rock, popularly called the Mosque of Omar, and occupying, as is all but universally admitted, part of the site of the Temple itself. Whether this is a "nearly unaltered Christian building of the fourth century," or a construction of Abd-el-Malek, the second Caliph, erected in the year 688, has been debated keenly; but what is beyond debate is that this structure is very Byzantine, or, to speak with more exactness, very like some of the buildings of Justinian in plan and section, and that from early times it was in the possession of the Saracens, and was regarded by them as the next most venerable and sacred spot in the world after Mecca. Much the same difference of opinion prevails as to the origin of the neighbouring mosque, El Aksah, which bears an undoubted general resemblance to an ancient basilica, though having no fewer than seven parallel avenues. This building has with equal confidence been attributed to the fourth and the seventh century. It is fortunately quite unnecessary here to do more than point out that these mosques, whatever their origin, were in use at least as early as the eighth century, and that the beautiful Dome of the Rock must have exercised a great influence on Mohammedan art, and, notwithstanding some differences of plan, may be fairly regarded as the prototype of many of the domed mosques and tombs to which allusion has been made. The decorations shown in our illustration of the Sakhra are, it is right to observe, most of them of a date centuries later than the time of the original construction of the building. [Illustration: FIG. 192.--SECTION OF THE SAKHRA MOSQUE AT JERUSALEM.] _Sicily and Spain._ The spread of Mohammedan architecture westward next claims our notice; but want of space will only permit us to mention a small though interesting group of Saracenic buildings which still remains in Sicily; the numerous specimens of the style which exist on the north coast of Africa; and the works erected by the Saracens during their long rule in Spain. The most celebrated Spanish example is the fortress and palace of the Alhambra, begun in 1248, and finished in 1314. This building (Fig. 188) has been measured, drawn, and fully illustrated in an elaborate monograph by our countryman Owen Jones, and has become popularly known by the beautiful reproduction of portions of it which he executed at the Crystal Palace, and of which he wrote an admirable description in his 'Guide-book to the Alhambra Court.' The Mohammedan architecture of Spain is here to be seen at its best; most of its features are those of Arab art, but with a distinguishing character (Fig. 193). [Illustration: FIG. 193.--DOORWAY IN THE ALHAMBRA.] Two other well-known examples are, the Giralda[38] at Seville, and the Mosque at Cordova. The Giralda is a square tower, in fact a minaret on a magnificent scale, divided into panels and richly decorated, and shows a masculine though beautiful treatment wholly different from that of the minarets in Cairo. The well-known Mosque at Cordova is of the simplest sort of plan, but of very great extent, and contains no less than nineteen parallel avenues separated from one another by arcades at two heights springing from 850 columns. The Kibla in this mosque is a picturesque domed structure higher than the rest of the building. The columns employed throughout are antique ones from other buildings, but the whole effect of the structure, which abounds with curiously cusped arches and coloured decoration, is described as most picturesque and fantastic. _Persia and India._ Turning eastwards, we find in Turkey, as has been said, a close adherence to the forms of Byzantine architecture. In Persia, where the people are now fire-worshippers, the Mohammedan buildings are mostly ruined, and probably many have disappeared, but enough remains to show that mosques and palaces of great grandeur were built. Lofty doorways are a somewhat distinctive feature of Persian buildings of this style; and the use of coloured tiles of singular beauty for linings to the walls, in the heads of these great portals, and in other situations to which such decoration is appropriate, is very common: these decorations afford opportunity for the Persian instinct for colour, probably the truest in the whole world, to make itself seen. In India the wealth of material is such that an almost unlimited series of fine buildings could be brought forward, were space and illustrations available. A large part of that vast country became Mohammedan, and in the buildings erected for mosques and tombs a complete blending of the decorative forms in use among Hindu and Jaina sculptors with the main lines of Mohammedan art is generally to be found. The great open quadrangle, the pointed arch, the dome, the minaret, all appear, but they are all made out of Indian materials. Perhaps not the least noteworthy feature of mosques and tombs in India is the introduction of perforated slabs of marble in the place of the bar-tracery which filled the heads of openings in Cairo or Damascus. These are works of the greatest and most refined beauty: sometimes panels of thin marble, each pierced with a different pattern, are fitted into a framework prepared for their reception; at others we meet with window-heads where upon a background of twining stems and leaves there grow up palms or banian-trees, their lithe branches and leaves wreathed into lines of admirable grace, and every part standing out, owing to the fine piercings of the marble, as distinctly as a tree of Jesse on a painted window in a Gothic cathedral. The dome at Bijapur, a tomb larger than the Pantheon at Rome, and the Kutub at Delhi, a tower not unfit to be compared with Giotto's campanile at Florence, are conspicuous among this series of monuments, and at Delhi one of the grandest mosques in India (Fig. 194) is also to be found. The series of mosques and tombs at Ahmedabad, however, form the most beautiful group of buildings in India, and are the only ones of which a complete series of illustrations has been published. These mosques are remarkable for the great skill with which they are roofed and lighted. This is done by means of a series of domes raised on columns sufficiently above the general level of the stone ceilings, which cover the intervening spaces, to admit light under the line of their springing. The beauty of the marble tracery and surface decoration is very great. Pointed arches occur here almost invariably, and in most cases the outline of the opening is very slightly turned upwards at the apex so as to give a slight increase of emphasis to the summit of the arch. The buildings are not as a rule lofty; and though plain walls and piers occur and contrast well with the arched features, pains have been taken to avoid anything like massive or heavy construction. Great extent, skilful distribution, extreme lightness, and admirably combined groupings of the features and masses, are among the fine qualities which lend to Mohammedan architecture in Ahmedabad a rare charm. [Illustration: FIG. 194.--GRAND MOSQUE AT DELHI, BUILT BY SHAH JEHAN.] The religion and the art of Islam seem destined to live and die together. Nothing (with the one exception of the suggestion of the pointed arch to Western Europe at the very moment when Romanesque art was ripe for a change) has developed itself or appears likely to grow out of Mohammedan architecture in any part of the wide field to which the attention of the reader has been directed; and in this respect the art of the Mohammedan is as exclusive, as intolerant, and as infertile as his religion. The interest which it must possess in the eyes of a Western student will rise less from its own charms than from the fact that it first employed the pointed arch--that feature from which sprang the glorious series of Western Christian styles to which we give the name of Gothic. This arch, indeed, appears to have been discovered by the very beginners of Mohammedan architecture, at a time when the style was still plastic and in course of growth, and the beauty of Saracenic art is due to no small extent to the use of it; but in the employment of this feature the Western architect advanced much further than the Saracen even at his best could go. The pointed architecture of the Middle Ages, with its daring construction, its comprehensive design, its elaborate mouldings, and its magnificent sculptures, is far more highly developed and more beautiful than that of the countries which we have been describing, though in its treatment of the walls it cannot surpass, and indeed did not often equal, the unrivalled decoration of plane surfaces which forms the chief glory of Mohammedan art. [Illustration: FIG. 195.--ENTRANCE TO A MOORISH BAZAAR.] FOOTNOTES: [37] The First Crusade lasted from A.D. 1095 to A.D. 1099. [38] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' p. 141. INDEX. Abbaye aux Dames, Caen, 231 " Hommes, Caen, 230 Abbey, Westminster, 204 Agora, 114 Alhambra, 258, 263 Amphitheatre at Arles, 161 " Nîmes, 161 " Pola, 161 " Rome (Coloss.), 158 " Sutri, 148 " Verona, 161 Anthemios of Thralles, _Architect_, 211 Appian Way, 145 Apollodorus of Damascus, _Architect_, 155 Aqueduct at Nîmes (Pont du Gard), 171 " from Præneste to Rome, 145 " at Rome (Aqua Claudia), 171 " " (Anio Novus), 171 " at Segovia, 171 " at Tarragona, 171 Arch at Autun (Porte d'Arroux), 172 " Jerusalem (Golden Gate), 220 " Rome (of Constantine), 172 " " (of the Goldsmiths), 173 " " (of Sept. Severus), 172 " " (of Titus), 172 " Trèves (Porta Nigra), 172 Asoka, 65 Baalbek, ruins at, 149 Basilica at Rome (Constantiniana), 155 " " (Emilia), 154 " " (Julia), 155 " " (Portia), 154 " " (Sempronia), 155 " " (Ulpia), 155 " Trèves, 155 Basilica-church at Florence (S. Miniato), 209 " " Ravenna (S. Apollinare in Classe), 206, 209 " " Rome (S. Agnese), 201 " " Rome (S. Clemente), 199 " " Rome (S. Paul without the walls), 205 " " Rome (S. Pietro), 201 Baths of Agrippa, 162 " Caracalla, 162 " Diocletian, 164, 191 Bharhut, 71 Birs-i-Nimrud, 45 Bridge over the Danube (Trajan's), 170 " Tagus (Hadrian's), 170 " Tiber (Pons Sublicius), 170 Campo Santo, Pisa, 209 Castle of S. Angelo, 174 Cathedral at Canterbury, 233 " Durham, 234 " Exeter, 234 " Monreale, 249 " Peterborough, 234, 235 " Piacenza, 224 " Pisa, 209 " Rochester, 234 " Rome (S. Peter's), 205 " Venice (S. Mark's), 217 " Winchester, 234 Chaitya, 67 Chapel in Tower of London, 232, 233 Chehil Minar, 56 Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, 112 Church at Aix-la-Chapelle, 225 " Caen (Abb. aux Hommes), 230 " " (Abb. aux Dames), 231 " Constantinople (S. Sophia), 211 " Earl's Barton, 224 " Milan (S. Ambrogio), 224 " Northampton (S. Peter's), 234 " Paris (Madeleine), 185 " Périgueux (S. Front), 218 " Ravenna (S. Vitale), 208, 215 " Rome (S. Maria degli Angeli), 164 " " (S. Maria ad Martyres), 166 " Rome (S. Stefano Rot.), 208 " Toulouse (S. Sernin), 227 " Turmanin, Syria, 221 " Verona (S. Zenone), 224 Circus Maximus, Rome, 143, 161 Cloaca Maxima, Rome, 141 Cnidus, Lion tomb at, 110 Colosseum, 158 Column of Marcus Aurelius, 173 " Trajan, 173 Decoration of Egyptian buildings, 37 Erechtheium, 107 Forum of Nerva, 191 Gate, Golden, at Jerusalem, 220 Gate at Perugia, 141 Giralda, 265 Hall, S. George's, Liverpool, 185 Ictinus, _Architect_, 88 Isidoros of Miletus, _Architect_, 211 Keep at Colchester, 237 " Hedingham Castle, 239 " Rochester Castle, 238 " Tower of London, 237, 239 Kutub, 266 Lâts, 65 Lotus Column, 32 Lysicrates, Choragic Monument of, 112 Maison Carrée, Nîmes, 149 Mammisi, 25 Manephthah, 24 Manetho, 15 Mastaba, 20 Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, 110 Mosque at Ahmedabad, 266 " Cairo (of Amrou), 254 " " ("El Moyed"), 258 " " (of Ibn Tulun), 256 " Cordova, 265 " Delhi, 266 " Jerusalem (El Aksah), 261 " " (Sakhra), 261 " (the Nilometer), 254 Mugheyr, buildings at, 44 Mycenæ, Treasury of Atreus, 85 " Gate of the Lions, 86 Obelisks, 36 Pagoda at Nankin, 76 Palace at Khorsabad, 46 " Rome (of the Cæsars), 174 " Spalatro (of Diocletian), 174, 192 Pantheon, 164 Parthenon, 88-91, 99-101 Persepolis, buildings at, 55 Persian columns, 57 Pheidias, _Sculptor_, 91 Pont du Gard, Nîmes, 171 Porta Nigra, Trèves, 172 Pylon, 25 Pyramid of Cephren, 16 " Cheops, 16 " Mycerinus, 16 Ram Raz, 72 Rome, Cloacæ at, 141 Scopas, _Sculptor and Architect_, 109, 112 Silchester, ruins at, 143 Sutri, ruins of an amphitheatre, 143 Temple at Athens (Erechtheium), 107 " " (Parthenon), 88-91, 99-101 " " (of Jupiter Olym.), 149 " Baalbek, 149 " Corinth, 81, 87 " Ephesus (of Diana), 109 " Honan, 75 " Ipsamboul, 31 " Karli (Chaitya), 67 " Karnak, 26 " Lomas Rishi cave, 67 " Nigope cave (Chaitya), 67 " Nîmes (Maison Carrée), 149 " Orange (ruins), 157 " Pæstum, 92 " Rome (of Jupiter Capitolinus), 142 " " (of Q. Metellus Macedonicus), 145 " " (of Antoninus and Faustina), 147 " " (of Fortuna Vir.), 147 " " (of Vesta), 153 " " (Pantheon), 164 " Sanchi (Tope), 67 " Tegea (of Athena Alea), 112 " Tivoli (of Vesta), 153 Temples, Egyptian, 25 " Shinto, 77 Theatre of Balbus, 156 " " Marcellus, 156 " " Mummius, 156 " at Orange, 157 " of Pompey, 156 Thermæ, _see_ Baths Tomb at Ahmedabad, 266 " " Bab-el-Molouk (Belzoni's), 24 " " Bijapur, 266 " " Castel d'Asso, 139 " of Cecilia Metella, 173 " " Cyrus, 54 " " Darius, 59 " " Hadrian, 174 " " Regulini Galeassi, 141 Tombs, Egyptian, 20 " Lycian, 85 " Cnidus (Lion), 110 Tope at Sanchi, 67 Tower at Delhi (Kutub), 266 " Seville (Giralda), 265 Treasury of Atreus, 85 Typhonia, 25 Usertesen I., 29 Wall of China, Great, 76 Way, Appian, 145 Westminster Abbey, 204 Wurkha, ruins at, 46 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOKS OF ART HISTORY OF ALL AGES Each Volume contains numerous Illustrations, and is strongly bound for the use of Students. Price 5_s._ _NOW READY._ BY PROFESSOR T. ROGER SMITH AND JOHN SLATER, B.A. ARCHITECTURE: CLASSIC and EARLY CHRISTIAN. Comprising the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Early Christian. Illustrated with upwards of 200 Engravings, including the Parthenon, the Erechtheium, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, the Colosseum, the Baths of Diocletian, &c. BY PROFESSOR T. ROGER SMITH AND EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A. ARCHITECTURE: GOTHIC and RENAISSANCE. Showing the progress of Gothic Architecture in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and of Renaissance Architecture in the same Countries. Illustrated with more than 100 Engravings, including many of the principal Cathedrals, Churches, Palaces, and Domestic Buildings in England, and on the Continent. BY GEORGE REDFORD, F.R.C.S. SCULPTURE: EGYPTIAN, ASSYRIAN, GREEK and ROMAN. With 160 Illustrations, including Examples of the Works of the most celebrated Greek Sculptors, a Map of Ancient Greece, and a Chronological List of Ancient Sculptors and their Works. BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A., AND PERCY R. HEAD, B.A. PAINTING: CLASSIC and ITALIAN. Including Painting in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Pompeii; the Renaissance in Italy; Schools of Florence, Siena, Rome, Padua, Venice, Perugia, Ferrara, Parma, Naples and Bologna. Illustrated with 80 Engravings of many of the finest Pictures of Italy. BY H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON, M.A., AND EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A. PAINTING: GERMAN, FLEMISH and DUTCH. Including an Account of the Works of Albrecht Dürer, Cranach, and Holbein; Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, and Memling; Rubens, Snyders, and Van Dyck; Rembrandt, Hals, and Jan Steen; Wynants, Ruisdael, and Hobbema; Cuyp, Potter, and Berchem; Bakhuisen, Van de Velde, Van Huysum, and many other celebrated painters. BY H. J. WILMOT-BUXTON, M.A. PAINTING: ENGLISH and AMERICAN. Including an account of the Earliest Paintings known in England; the works of Holbein, Antonio Moro, Lucas de Heere, Zuccaro, and Marc Garrard; the Hilliards and Olivers; Van Dyck, Lely, and Kneller; Hogarth, Reynolds, and Gainsborough; West, Romney, and Lawrence; Constable, Turner, and Wilkie; Maclise, Mulready, and Landseer, and many other celebrated painters. _Nearly ready._ BY GERARD SMITH, EXETER COLL. OXFORD. PAINTING: SPANISH and FRENCH. Including the Works of Ribera, Zurbaran, Velazquez, and Murillo; Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Le Sueur, Watteau, Chardin, Greuze, David, and Prud'hon; Ingres, Vernet, Delaroche, and Delacroix; Corot, Diaz, and Millet; Courbet, Regnault, Troyon, and many other celebrated artists. _In preparation._ Transcriber's Note Archaic spelling has been preserved as printed, for example, Egean instead of Ægean. Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. The following amendments have been made: Page 67, footnote--X. amended to XI.--"See Chap. XI. for an illustration of a Christian Basilica." Page 101--Theseium amended to Theseum--"Temple of Theseus (Theseum), at Athens, 465 B.C." Page 211--Isodoros amended to Isidoros--"... Anthemius of Thralles, and Isidoros of Miletus, ..." Page 270--114 amended to 116--"Agora, 116" Page 270--148 amended to 143--"Amphitheatre at Sutri, 143" Page 270--205 amended to 206--"Basilica-church at Rome (S. Paul without the walls), 206" Discrepancies between items in the List of Illustrations and actual captions have been preserved as printed. Figure 115--Guilloche is missing from the List of Illustrations in the original text. This omission has been preserved in this e-text. Figures 116 and 117 were out of sequence on page 136 (with Figures 105-110). They have been moved to their proper place in the sequence of Figures. Other illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. The advertising material has been moved to the end of the book. 
33249	----	ROMANESQUE ART IN SOUTHERN MANCHE: ALBUM MARIE LEBERT WITH PHOTOS BY ALAIN DERMIGNY AND CLAUDE RAYON [Author's note: Please forgive my mistakes in English, if any. My mother tongue is French. This album is also available in French, with the title "Art roman dans le Sud-Manche: Album (2)". Each paragraph ends with its associated image filename.] [Illustration] 001. In this album, there are no monuments described in all touristic guides. On the contrary, these twelve Romanesque churches are little known. They are located in Southern Manche, that is to say in the southern part of the department of Manche, in Normandy, along the coast or in the countryside. These churches were built in the 10th, 11th and 12th century by villagers and parishioners, with local stones--schist and granite--on the medieval roads used by pilgrims to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination after travelling for many months. [Illustration] 002. Southern Manche. The map of the region. From north to south, these blue spots show the churches of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, Bréville, Yquelon, Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, Angey, Saint-Jean-le-Thomas, Dragey, Genêts, Saint-Léonard-de-Vains, Saint-Loup and Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme, without forgetting the beautiful Romanesque gate in Sartilly. This map was digitized by Georges Cercel. [Illustration] 003. Southern Manche. An old map of the region. This region has belonged to Cotentin for its northern part and Avranchin for its southern part. The limit between Cotentin and Avranchin is the small river Thar, that flows into the Channel at the south of Granville. In the Middle Ages, this region was rich, with more people living on the coast than inside the land. The economic life was active, with fisheries, salines near Saint-Martin-de-Bréhal, Bréville and Saint-Léonard-de-Vains, pitch sand and kelp used as fertilizers, and a number of intensive cultures. This old map belongs to the collection of the city library in Granville. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-02] [Illustration] 004. Southern Manche. The deanery of Saint-Pair. The parishes of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, Bréville, Yquelon and Saint-Pair-sur-Mer were part of the deanery of Saint-Pair, one of the five deaneries of the archidiachoné of Coutances. The archidiachoné of Coutances was one of the four archidiachonés of the diocese of Coutances, the other ones being the archidiachonés of Cotentin, Bauptois and Val-de-Vire. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 005. Southern Manche. The deanery of Genêts. The parishes of Angey, Sartilly, Saint-Jean-le-Thomas, Dragey and Genêts were part of the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches, like the priory of Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The archidiachoné of Avranches included three other deaneries: the deanery of Avranches, the deanery of Tirepied (that included the parish of Saint-Loup) and the deanery of the Chrétienté (Christendom). The deanery of the Chrétienté included nine parishes around the episcopal town of Avranches, including the parish of Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 006. Southern Manche. The medieval roads going to Mont Saint-Michel. This region was crossed by several roads used by pilgrims to reach Mont Saint-Michel. At the north of Avranches, we had from west to east the shore road coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, the road coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer (with a different route), the road coming from Coutances, the road coming from Saint-Lô, and the road coming from Caen. At the south of Avranches, a medieval road was used by the pilgrims coming from Tinchebray, Condé-sur-Noireau, Falaise or Lisieux to reach Mont Saint-Michel. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 007. Southern Manche. Geological map. All these churches were built in granite and schist, which were the local stones. Sedimentary grounds formed by schist rocks surround two large granite grounds, those of Vire and Avranches. Laying down from east to west, the granite ground of Vire is around five kilometers large, and ends on the west with the cliffs of Carolles and Champeaux. Laying down from west to east, the granite ground of Avranches is narrower, and only from two to four kilometers large. These granite grounds are both surrounded by a metamorphic ring formed with schist rocks and grauwack (a kind of schist) rocks. The ground of Saint-Pair is a flysch (detritic ground) formed with grauwack rocks, siltit rocks et black argilit rocks with some schist inside. The ground of Granville is a flysch formed with grauwack rocks alternating with schist rocks. Map by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 008. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. Location. The village of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux is located between Bréhal and the sea, near the haven of the Venlée, 2 kilometers west of Bréhal and 9 kilometers north of Granville. The village was situated on the medieval road coming from Cherbourg and going to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer to reach Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 009. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The church, in ruins, stands on a hill. The church was under St Martin's patronage, and the second saint was St. Eutropius. The parish belonged to the deanery of St-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. Foulques Paynel, probably a relative of Guillaume Paynel, founder of the Abbey of Hambye in 1145, gave to the abbey part of the tithe of the parish of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux, a donation mentioned in the cartulary of the Abbey of Hambye. During the French Revolution, the church was used as an arsenal and all its furniture was sold. It became a church again in 1801 but, as it was threatening to collapse around 1804 or 1805, it was no longer used. Since that time, the parish of Saint-Martin-le-Vieux is part of the parish of Bréhal. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-01] [Illustration] 010. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The Romanesque ruins, with a double belfry added in the 16th century. The ruins were overgrown by vegetation for a while. The masonry is made of irregular blocks in schist and granite. The arches and abutments of the openings are in granite. The schist is the local stone. The granit could come from the granite ground of Vire a few miles south. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-002] [Illustration] 011. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The Romanesque ruins. Between the choir and the nave, a double belfry (double because intended for two bells) was added in the 16th century, and built in pink granite from Chausey (an island not far from Granville). Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-003] [Illustration] 012. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a flat apse choir. The whole building has an external length of 26,5 meters and an external width of 6,4 meters (width of the front). The double belfry added in the 16th century rises between nave and choir. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 013. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The south wall of the Romanesque nave. The large bay with a lowered centering was probably added in the 16th century, during the building of the double belfry. On the right of this large bay, the centering of the small Romanesque bay is carved in a granite block. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-004] [Illustration] 014. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The south wall of the Romanesque nave and its door, with its lowered centering and its abutments with chamfered edges. The small bay on the left is also Romanesque. The masonry of the walls is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite. Elements of opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) are visible, a proof the south wall is the oldest part of the church. Above the door, the little trefoil bay was probably added in the 16th century, during the building of the belfry. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-005] [Illustration] 015. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. The small Romanesque bay in the south wall of the nave, with its lowered centering and its abutments in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-04] [Illustration] 016. Saint-Martin-le-Vieux. Behind the old cross, the double belfry from the 16th century, built in granite from Chausey. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-05] [Illustration] 017. Bréville. Location. The village of Bréville is located on the coast, about 6 kilometers north of Granville. It was situated on a medieval road that came from Cherbourg to go to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 018. Bréville. The Romanesque church in front of the line of dunes. In the background, the tip of Granville stands on the left. But, In Medieval Ages, Granville was almost non-existent, and the main town was Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-11] [Illustration] 019. Bréville. The Romanesque church among the trees. In the 12th century, Bréville had an active economic life, with fisheries, salines, pitch sand and kelp used as fertilizers, and intensive crops. The territory of the parish was owned by Mont Saint-Michel since 1022, when Richard II, duke of Normandy, gave the barony of Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel. In the 13th century, the patronage was secular, with Guillelmus de Breinville as the lord between 1251 and 1279. The tithe was shared between the pastor and the abbot of Mont Saint-Michel. In the 16th century, Bréville, with its church and salines, was a prebend for the cathedral of Coutances. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-006] [Illustration] 020. Bréville. The Romanesque church was under the patronage of Our Lady (Notre Dame, in French), and the second saint was St. Helier. The parish belonged to the deanery of Saint-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-007] [Illustration] 021. Bréville. The Romanesque church is composed of a two-span nave followed by a two-span choir with a flat apse. The square tower rises between choir and nave. Most of the nave, the tower base and the side walls of the choir are Romanesque, and probably from the second half of the 12th century. The masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist. Granite is used for the buttresses, the abutments of openings, the attached piers, the columns and the arches. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-006] [Illustration] 022. Bréville. The sacristy is the five-sided small building located in the extension of the choir. It was added much later, in the 19th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-009] [Illustration] 023. Bréville. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a two-row nave and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 27,75 meters and an external width of 7,65 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. The small five-sided building in the extension of the choir houses the sacristy. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 024. Bréville. The church tower, between choir and nave, has a Romanesque base, while the floor in slight recess and the spire are from the late 15th or early 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-010] [Illustration] 025. Bréville. The church tower reaching the sky. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-07] [Illustration] 026. Bréville. The first floor and spire of the church tower. The first floor is opened on each side by a long narrow opening. The octagonal stone spire has angles rounded by tori, with a small gable with thin columns in the extension of each opening. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-011] [Illustration] 027. Bréville. The Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower, with a semi-circular arch formed by a grain molded by a torus followed by a chamfer carved with slightly visible saw-teeth. The archivolt is a thick band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. The archivolt rests on the right on a stone carved with a human head, while disappearing on the left into the masonry of the nave. The central keystone of the arch is adorned with a large human head carved in high relief. The capitals baskets of the attached columns are carved with two angle hooks. The two human heads, carved in a limestone, didn't resist well to the test of time, as well as the angle hooks. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-012] [Illustration] 028. Bréville. Sketch of the Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 029. Bréville. Above the Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower, a human head carved in a limestone didn't resist well to the test of time, unlike the heads carved in granite in the south gate of the church of Yquelon. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-013] [Illustration] 030. Bréville. The Romanesque gate in the south base of the tower. The archivolt topping the semi-circular arch rests on a granite stone carved with a human head. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-014] [Illustration] 031. Bréville. A Romanesque modillion carved with a human head, under the cornice. Most other modillions, more recent, are plain and only chamfered. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-015] [Illustration] 032. Bréville. A Romanesque modillion carved with a human head, under the cornice. This modillion is above the bay of the second row of the nave. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-016] [Illustration] 033. Bréville. The choir (inside). Its ribbed vault is from the late 15th or early 16th century. The tiles of the second row of the choir are from 1863. The floor of the first row is covered with schist pavings from Beauchamps laid in 1969. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-017] [Illustration] 034. Bréville. The nave (inside). Its wooden ceiling was replaced by a plaster ceiling in 1852. The door and the large bay visible in the back wall--which is the west wall of the front--doesn't have much character because of the rebuilding of the church front in 1783. The pegged oak door is from 1970. In 1969, the walls were covered with a lime plaster, and the floor with schist pavings from Beauchamps. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-018] [Illustration] 035. Bréville. The nave (inside). The plaster ceiling from 1852 was recently replaced by a wooden ceiling, like in old times. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-09] [Illustration] 036. Bréville. The tower base (inside), between choir and nave. In the foreground, an arch with chamfered edges rests on half-attached columns. This arch between the choir and the tower base was redone during the renovation of the choir in the 15th or 16th century. In the background, the arch between the nave and the tower base belongs to the original Romanesque building. This is a slightly triangular arch with irregular quoins, resting on two thick attached piers. The pier impost is molded with a chemfered band. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-019] [Illustration] 037. Bréville. The main altar, situated in the apse of the choir, with a statue of Our Lady on the left--the church is under her patronage--and a statue of St. Helier--the second saint--on the right. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-020] [Illustration] 038. Bréville. A detail of the main altar, in the apse of the choir. A statue of Our Lady, the patron saint of the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-021] [Illustration] 039. Bréville. A detail of the main altar, in the apse of the choir. The statue of St. Helier, second saint of the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-022] [Illustration] 040. Bréville. The fountain Saint-Hélier. This fountain was topped by the statue of St. Helier that is now in the background, on the right. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-10] [Illustration] 041. Yquelon. Location. The village of Yquelon is located 2 kilometers from Granville, between the villages of Donville-les-Bains and Saint-Nicolas, at the south of the river Boscq. The name "Yquelon" has Scandinavian roots and means "oak branch". Yquelon was situated on the medieval road coming from Cherbourg and going to Saint-Pair-sur-Mer before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 042. Yquelon. The Romanesque church. The territory of the parish was part of the barony of Saint-Pair, owned by Mont Saint-Michel since 1022, when Richard II, duke of Normandy, gave the barony to the Mont. The lord of Yquelon, Rogerius de Ikelun, affixed his signature to two main charters of the Abbey of the Lucerne in 1162. In the 13th century, the patronage was certainly secular. The tithe was shared between the pastor, who was receiving most of it, the Abbey of Montmorel (located in Poilley, near Ducey), and the leper hospital Saint-Blaise de Champeaux. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-023] [Illustration] 043. Yquelon. The Romanesque church is under St. Pair's patronage, and the second saint is St. Maur. The parish belonged to the deanery of Saint-Pair and the archidiachoné of Coutances. The churches of Yquelon and Bréville have similarities, because they are near by and were both built in the second half of the 12th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-024] [Illustration] 044. Yquelon. The Romanesque church is formed by a two-row nave followed by a two-row choir with a flat apse. The large square tower � with its three floors in slight recess and a saddleback roof--is adjacent to the first row on the north side of the choir. The rectangular openings show that the tower was partly rebuilt since the 12th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-12] [Illustration] 045. Yquelon. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building has a two-row nave followed by a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 21,75 meters and an external width of 7,6 meters (width of the front). The tower is adjacent to the first row of the north side of the choir. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 046. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. Its masonry is made from irregular blocks of schist and granite, that are local stones. The front wall is strengthened at each end by a flat buttress resting on a stone wall. The three semi-circular bays above the portal were opened in 1896, to replace a large rectangular bay, that had itself replaced the two small original Romanesque bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-025] [Illustration] 047. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. Its gable wall is topped by an antefix cross with bifid branches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-026] [Illustration] 048. Yquelon. The Romanesque church front. The oculus in the gable wall is original. Its band is adorned with billets, with a stone carved with two human heads in high relief in its lower part. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-027] [Illustration] 049. Yquelon. The Romanesque west gate. Its semi-circular arch is formed by a plain grain resting on plain abutments and surrounded by an archivolt. The archivolt is a prominent band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. Its two ends rest on a granite stone carved with a human head. The keystone of the arch is adorned with a human head in higher relief. The inside abutments are molded with a small column with a square abacus and base. These abutments support a tympanum in granite, which was restored and carved with a cross In Romanesque style in 1897. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-13] [Illustration] 050. Yquelon. Sketch of the Romanesque west gate. This gate has similarities with the south gate in the church of Bréville, located a few kilometers north-west. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 051. Yquelon. The Romanesque west gate. Detail of the semi-circular arch of the gate. Its archivolt rests at each end on a granite stone carved with a human head. These granite heads resisted more gracefully to the test of time than the limestone heads in the church of Bréville. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-029] [Illustration] 052. Yquelon. The Romanesque south gate. His semi-circular arch is formed of a grain molded with a torus and topped by a chamfer carved with a row of slightly visible saw-teeth. The arch is surrounded by an archivolt formed by a thick band with chamfered edges. The lower chamfer is also adorned with a row of slightly visible saw-teeth. The inner grain rests on two attached columns through capitals. Their basket, topped by a square abacus, is adorned with small angle hooks. The door certainly underwent an overhaul: both capitals, without an astragalus, are not well connected to the shaft of the columns and to the beginning of the arch, the torus of which is cut. The outer grain and archivolt disappear into the masonry of the nave to the left, whereas they rest on a slightly prominent and chamfered large stone on the right. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-14] [Illustration] 053. Yquelon. Sketch of the Romanesque south gate. This gate also has similarities with the south gate in the church of Bréville, located a few kilometers north-west. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 054. Yquelon. The Romanesque choir (inside). The nave opens on the choir with a very thick triumphal arch resting on two piers embedded into the thick wall. The two bays of the choir are separated by another very thick arch. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-030] [Illustration] 055. Yquelon. The Romanesque choir (inside). Each row is topped by a ribbed vault. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-031] [Illustration] 056. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The very large ribs are adorned with two thick angular tori surrounding a small triangular molding. This Romanesque ribbed vault was probably one of the first ribbed vaults in Normandy. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-032] [Illustration] 057. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The ceiling arches and ribs rest on reversed pyramid-shaped bases. Topped with a square abacus slightly chamfered, the central base supports both the fallout of a ceiling arch and the one of two ribs. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-033] [Illustration] 058. Yquelon. The Romanesque vault of the choir. The vault keystones are carved with geometric designs in low relief within a circle. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-16] [Illustration] 059. Yquelon. The enfeu and its tombstone. In the north wall of the nave, an enfeu (recess for a tombstone) with a lowered centering houses a 12th-century tombstone in soft limestone depicting a knight. Mr Lomas described it in a journal named Bulletin of the Society of Antiquaries in Normandy (Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie) dated 1886-1887: "The tombstone bears a knight in relief, depicted with his hands clasped, his head resting on a pillow, and his greyhound at his feet. (...) It bears no indication of his name or no indication of a year. It is therefore impossible to specify the person whose remains are covered. What we can say with certainty is that this person belongs to the powerful family of Yquelon, whose family member Roger Yquelon affixed his signature on two main charters of the Abbey of the Lucerne in 1162." Discovered in 1885 in the cemetery adjoining the north of the church, the tombstone was embedded in the enfeu in February 1893. At the length of the enfeu, 2.15 meters, is exactly the length of the tombstone, we can guess the tombstone was probably buried in the cemetery at the time of the French Revolution, before being discovered in 1885 and regaining its original location. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-17] [Illustration] 060. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Location. The village of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer is located on the coast, 3.5 kilometers south of Granville. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer was a prosperous town and the vital center of the region until the construction of Granville in the 15th century. Many people moved to Granville then, at the expense of Saint-Pair. Saint-Pair grew again in 1880 with the development of seaside resorts. Medieval roads--a coast road and a shore road--were used by pilgrims from Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel, and are still used today by "modern" pilgrims and visitors. [Illustration] 061. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church is under St. Pair's patronage, and the second saint is St. Gaud. The church is a place of pilgrimage dedicated to the worship of St. Gaud, whose sarcophagus was found in 1131 during the building of the Romanesque church. Much later, in 1880, the Romanesque nave was demolished to be replaced by a much larger nave and a transept to accommodate the many parishioners of this popular seaside resort. The enlarged church was consecrated on August 26, 1888. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-18] [Illustration] 062. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church is shown here from the north-east to get a view of the whole building. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-07] [Illustration] 063. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The old Romanesque church, after a drawing from E. Biguet published in the journal Le Pays de Granville dated 1934. The Romanesque nave was demolished in 1880 to be replaced by a much larger nave and a transept. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-034] [Illustration] 064. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The church plan before 1880, as we can imagine it. The total external length was 37,5 meters. The external width of the nave was 11,1 meters (this hasn't changed). Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 065. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The plan of the present church. Regulary oriented from west to east, the building has a two-row nave with a porch, a large transept and a three-row choir with a semi-circular apse. The external length of the whole building is 57,1 meters. The external width of the nave is 11,1 meters. The square tower rises at the crossing of the transept. The transept arms are opened by two apses on their eastern side. The choir opens north on two chapels, one towards the apse and one towards the tower. At the angle formed by the south transept arm and the choir, a rectangular building houses the sacristy. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 066. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. We can accurately give a date to the tower foundations, which is very seldom. We know that they date from 1131, thanks to a contemporary manuscript mentioning the discovery of St. Gaud's sarcophagus in the choir during the digging of the foundations. The same manuscript gives the name of the architect � Rogerius Altomansiunculo--who supervised the works. To know an architect's name is quite unusual too, because most architects of the time were remaining anonymous. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-19] [Illustration] 067. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower is square, and its two floors are topped by an octogonal spire. A group of two blind arches adorn the first floor, at the north and south. Large twin bays adorn the second floor on all four sides. Divided by a small column with a square abacus and a square base, these twin bays are topped by a semi-circular arch molded with a simple torus and resting on attached columns. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-035] [Illustration] 068. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. The two floors of the tower. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-20] [Illustration] 069. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The Romanesque tower. Inside, the tower rests on four massive symmetrical piers supporting four slightly triangular arches. These arches surround the groin vault beneath the tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-036] [Illustration] 070. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Sketch of the south-western pier of the tower. This pier is as follows: east, west and south, it is salient. North, an attached pier surrounded by two attached columns rests on a stoneboard. Molded as a champered band, the impost topping the pier forms the abacus of the capitals of the two columns. The capital baskets are carved, with a square base topped by a chamfer. The pier rests on a broader square base with chamfered edges. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 071. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Detail of the north pier of the tower. Resting on a stoneboard, an attached pier surrounded by two attached columns is topped by an impost molded as a chamfered band. The impost also forms the abacus of the capitals. The capital baskets, in granite, are carved with angle hooks. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-037] [Illustration] 072. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. A carved capital basket. Under the tower, a capital of the north-west pier has a granite basket roughly carved in low relief with the bust of a man whose head is big. His right arm is raised and his left arm is folded over his chest. An oak branch is visible on the right. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-038] [Illustration] 073. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. A carved capital basket. Under the tower, another granite basket is carved with an angle hook in low relief. The capital baskets of the north-west, north-east and south-east piers are all adorned with angle hooks of this kind. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-039] [Illustration] 074. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Pair's sarcophagus. A stone altar dating from the 19th century covers the shell limestone sarcophagus of St. Pair. St. Pair (482-565) founded a chapel with St. Scubilion, the foundations of which are still present underneath the choir of the present church. St. Pair also gave his name to the village previously known under the Roman name Scessiacus, or Scissy. St. Pair and St. Scubilion's sarcophagi were found in 1875, during the excavations made by abbot F. Baudry. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-040] [Illustration] 075. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The plan of the oratory sketched by abbot F. Baudry. In September 1875, during excavations in the church choir, abbot F. Baudry found part of the foundations of the 6th-century oratory and several shell limestone sarcophagi: the sarcophagi of St. Pair and St. Scubilion and, nearby, those of St. Senier and St. Aroaste. St. Gaud's sarcophagus was found in 1131 while digging the foundations of the Romanesque tower. This plan is included in the book of Chanoine Pigeon entitled "Vie des Saints du Diocèse de Coutances et d'Avranches" (Life of the Saints in the Diocese of Coutances and Avranches), published in Avranches in 1888. [Illustration] 076. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The foundations of the oratory. On the floor of the second row of the present choir, the double line of black tiles surrounded by a row of clear tiles shows the exact place of the foundations of the old oratory. The underneath foundations form a semi-circular apse going on as side walls that disappear in the Romanesque building. Fortunatus (530-600), bishop of Poitiers, wrote in his "Vie de Saint Pair" (St. Pair's Life) that the cells of the early monks were built beside the sea. Then monks move their dwellings on the banks of the river Saigue, at the site of the present church, attracting a population that settled around the oratory. In the foreground, a white gravestone shows the spot where St. Pair's sarcophagus was buried and discovered. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-042] [Illustration] 077. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Gaud's reliquary, on the altar covering his shell limestone sarcophagus. St. Gaud (400-491) has its own chapel, built in the 19th century in the north wall of the choir, the church being a place of pilgrimage dedicated to his worship. After fourty years as the second bishop of Evreux, St. Gaud resigned from office to come and retire in the solitude of Saint-Pair. St. Gaud's sarcophagus was found in 1131 while digging the foundations of the Romanesque tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-041] [Illustration] 078. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. St. Gaud's reliquary. In this photo dated 2009, the reliquary is adorned with both ex-votos and flowers. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-21] [Illustration] 079. Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. The baptismal font. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-24] [Illustration] 080. Angey. Location. The village of Angey is located 2,5 kilometers west of the village of Sartilly. The parish of Angey has been part of the parish of Sartilly since 1914. The church of Angey is used only very occasionally for weddings and funerals. [Illustration] 081. Angey. The church and its cemetery. The church is under St. Samson's patronage, and the second saint is St. John the Baptist. The parish of Angey belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. In 1162, the church of Angey and its dependencies were given to the Abbey of the Lucerne by William of St. Jean. The abbot of the Lucerne was the lord of the church from then on. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-12] [Illustration] 082. Angey. The church, with its Romanesque choir. The base of the tower may also be Romanesque, but from a later period, because its masonry is slightly different from the masonry of the choir. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-25] [Illustration] 083. Angey. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a one-row choir. The whole building has an external length of 26,85 meters and an external width of 7,5 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 084. Angey. The choir with a flat apse, and the tower rising between choir and nave. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-26] [Illustration] 085. Angey. The baptismal font, probably from the 14th century, is adorned with carved trefoil arches in low relief. The base of the font is carved with a rope, probably a symbol of the religious community. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-27] [Illustration] 086. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Location. The village of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas is located on the coast, 12 kilometers south of Granville and 9 kilometers north of Avranches. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas was situated on two medieval roads, the first one coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer and the second one coming from Coutances. Another shore road going from Saint-Pair to Mont Saint-Michel was crossing the dunes nearby. [Illustration] 087. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church is under St. John the Baptist's patronage. The parish of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. In 917, William Longsword, second duke of Normandy, gave to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel the village of Saint-Jean-at-the-end-of-the-sea with its church, mill, vineyards and meadows. In the 12th century, the duke Robert I gave again to Mont Saint-Michel the seigneury of Saint-Jean and its dependencies. In 1162, the local lord, William of St. John, second founder of the Abbey of the Lucerne, gave to the abbey the church of Saint-Jean-le-Thomas with its dependencies, including many properties around and in England. In the 15th century, the church was still owned by the Abbey of the Lucerne, the abbot of the Lucerne being the lord of the church. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-28] [Illustration] 088. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church. Its Romanesque nave is from the 11th century and early 12th century. The pre-Romanesque flat apse choir is probably from the 10th century. The Romanesque gate opened in the south wall of the nave has a large porch from the 15th century. The massive square tower is along the south wall of the nave, with two floors topped by a balustrade with an openwork design. The tower was built in 1895 to replace a timeworn tower, with granite stones from the Saint-James quarries. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-043] [Illustration] 089. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a long nave and a flat apse choir. The whole building has an external length of 31.2 meters and an external width of 8.1 meters (width of the front). The church gate is opened in the south wall of the nave, with a porch. Built along the nave, the tower rises south. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 090. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The church front and the tower. The wall of the church front is topped with a small glacis covered with schist plates, behind which rises the gable wall. In the middle of the front, a flat buttress ends with a glacis at the base of the gable wall. The two small Romanesque bays on both sides of the buttress were reopened in 1973, during the restoration of the church choir. The massive tower was rebuilt in 1895. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-044] [Illustration] 091. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its south wall. The choir has similarities with the church Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, present in the innards of Mont Saint-Michel and built by the Benedictines shortly after settling down on the Mont in 966. In both buildings, the bay centerings are made of brick quoins, and walls are made of fairly regular small blocks of granite joined with a thick mortar. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-045] [Illustration] 092. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir. On the left of the large central bay, a small Romanesque bay is clearly visible, with its centering and abutements in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon [Claude-31] [Illustration] 093. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its north wall. High in the wall, the centerings of the pre-Romanesque bays are made of brick quoins. The large semi-circular bay with a trefoil arch was pierced in 1895, when the tower was rebuilt. The pre-Romanesque bays were discovered and reopened during the restoration of the choir in 1965 by Yves-Marie Froidevaux, a chief architect at the (French) Historic Monuments. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-046] [Illustration] 094. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir and its north wall. The masonry is made of fairly regular small blocks of granite joined with a thick mortar. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-047] [Illustration] 095. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir. The centering of this small pre-Romanesque bay is made with brick quoins. The same bays are present in the church Notre-Dame-sous-Terre, built around the same time in the innards of Mont Saint-Michel. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-30] [Illustration] 096. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside) and its north wall. The fairly regular granite blocks of the walls and the brick quoins of the bays are also visible inside, following the restoration of the choir in 1965 by Yves-Marie Froideveaux, a chief architect at the (French) Historic Monuments. The five bays with centerings in brick quoins--three north and two south--were found and reopened at that time. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-048] [Illustration] 097. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside). The two large semi-circular bays on each side of the choir were added in 1895, during the construction of the new tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-049] [Illustration] 098. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The pre-Romanesque choir (inside). The wooden barrel vault was added in 1965 and completed in 1973. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-050] [Illustration] 099. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). This nave is probably from the 11th century and early 12th century. In the front wall in the background, the two Romanesque bays were reopened in 1973 after being found under the plaster. The upper bay--a median bay situated in the gable wall--was walled up at the same time, but its granite abutments remain clearly visible. The barrel vault of the nave is in plaster. The floor is covered with large pavings In granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-051] [Illustration] 100. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). Another view of the nave, this time towards the choir. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-32] [Illustration] 101. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque nave (inside). Romanesque murals were found on the south wall of the nave, a very interesting discovery because murals are almost non-existent in the region. The existence of such ancient wall paintings, probably from the 12th century, was unknown until 1974, until the plaster of the walls of the nave was redone. Colour spots attracted the attention of abbot Porée, pastor of the church, who then requested the visit of the fresco specialists of the (French) Fine Arts Department. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-052] [Illustration] 102. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. In this part restored in December 1974, there are three paintings: the struggle of a man against an angel, on the tympanum of the walled-up gate, then a fight between two figures, and finally a country scene. These paintings are surrounded by decorative borders. These murals may be the work of pilgrims going to Mont Saint-Michel on the medieval road along the coast. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-053] [Illustration] 103. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, on the south wall of the nave. On the tympanum of the walled-up gate, the battle of a man against an angel, "a fight that could be the one of Jacob against the angel sent by God, or God himself showed in a visible form", according to abbot Porée, pastor of the church at the time of the discovery of the murals in 1974. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-054] [Illustration] 104. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals. The same scene on the tympanum of the walled-up gate, taken with a different angle to show the two foliage borders. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-33] [Illustration] 105. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals. The same tympanum of the walled-up gate, seen from the outside. Above the gate, a small Romanesque bay with its centering and abutements in granite. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-29] [Illustration] 106. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. In this country scene, with wheat ears visible on the left, a figure wearing a large cloak holds a flask and pours wine in a cup held by another figure. On the right, a third figure holding a tillage tool is partly erased. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-055] [Illustration] 107. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. The third painting, of which much has disappeared, is the struggle between a figure with a cloack whose head is surrounded with a halo and another armored figure who seems to be on the ground. This could be St. Michael's struggle against the Devil, according to abbot Porée, pastor of the church at the time of the discovery of the murals in 1974. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-056] [Illustration] 108. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. Situated between the country scene and the fight scene, this detail shows that the mural was painted directly on the lime plaster, which explains the clear background. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-057] [Illustration] 109. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. This partial view of the fight scene shows that all contours were drawn in ocher paint, and inside surfaces were painted in ocher and buff. Only these two colors were used, directly on the lime plaster. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-058] [Illustration] 110. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque murals, in the south wall of the nave. The paintings are surrounded with a foliage border. The flourishes run between two horizontal stripes. The first stripe is ocher along the flourishes and the second stripe is buff along the ocher stripe, with a row of white dots at the junction of the two colours. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-059] [Illustration] 111. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque gate and its porch, in the south wall of the nave. Like often in the region, a porch was built later on--this one is from the 15th century--to offer to pilgrims and parishioners two stone benches and a shelter from rain and western winds coming from the sea. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-54] [Illustration] 112. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Romanesque gate, in the south wall of the nave. The semi-circular arch of the gate is formed of a grain adorned with a simple torus molding. The arch rests on two attached columns that seem an extension of the torus, with the same diameter. The columns are topped with capitals with a square abacus. The capital baskets are carved with barely visible small angle hooks. The square base is topped by a double torus. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-55] [Illustration] 113. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Sketch of the Romanesque gate, in the south wall of the nave. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 114. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The porch. The stone roof of this 15th century porch is made of irregular schiste plates joined with a thick mortar. The arch of the Romanesque portal is adorned with a torus. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-060] [Illustration] 115. Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The Virgin and Child. Situated under the 15th century porch, at the south of the nave, this stone statue stands above the Romanesque gate. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-061] [Illustration] 116. Dragey. Location. The village of Dragey is located on the current coastal road going from Granville to Avranches, 20 kilometers south of Granville and 13 kilometers north of Avranches. Dragey was on the route of three medieval roads, the first one coming from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, the second one coming from Coutances and the third one coming from Saint-Lô. The shore road coming from Saint-Pair was crossing the dunes of Dragey before reaching Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. [Illustration] 117. Dragey. Panorama. On the hill where the church stands, the silhouette of Mont Saint-Michel and Tombelaine emerge from the mist. For pilgrims, this view was announcing the end of a long quest. The church of Dragey was given to Mont Saint-Michel in the 11th century by Robert, duke of Normandy. Dragey and his church were among the dependencies of Saint-Jean-at-the-end-of-the-sea, that later became Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-34] [Illustration] 118. Dragey. The church, built on a hill, is isolated with its rectory at about one kilometer from the village. The church is placed under St. Medard's patronage, and the second saint is St. Eloi. The parish of Dragey belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The Romanesque nave is from the 11th or 12th century, whereas the tower and choir are from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-062] [Illustration] 119. Dragey. The church is not situated in the village, unlike the other churches in the region. Visible from far out at sea, the tower was a landmark for seamen. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-063] [Illustration] 120. Dragey. The church has a one-row choir and a three-row nave. The tower rises between choir and nave. Only the nave is Romanesque. The choir and the tower, more recent, are from the 13th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-35] [Illustration] 121. Dragey. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the rectangular building is formed by a three-row nave and a one-row choir. This whole building has an external length of 40,8 meters and an external width of 9,1 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 122. Dragey. The church front. Its masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite, which are local stones. The front is strengthened on each side by two thick buttresses that end with a glacis. The large twin bay with a slightly triangular arch is from the 13th century. In 1860, this bay was reopened and restored, and the original gate was replaced by a gate without much character. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-064] [Illustration] 123. Dragey. The south wall of the nave. The 16th century porch before the Romanesque gate was reopened en 1969. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-065] [Illustration] 124. Dragey. The tower base has a gate with a triangular arch from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-066] [Illustration] 125. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). The inner plaster of the side walls was scraped by the villagers to show the opus spicatum (fishbone masonry), at the request of abbot Pierre Danguy, pastor of the church between 1954 and 1974. The opus spicatum--with lines of schist plates arranged horizontally--attests the church was built in the 11th century and early 12th century. The long bay with a deep splay is from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-067] [Illustration] 126. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). Villagers patiently scraped the plaster to show the opus spicatum (fishbone masonry), a sign their church was early Romanesque. The inner plaster now only covers the last top quarter of the walls, probably too hard to reach. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-37] [Illustration] 127. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). The large trefoil bay is from the 13th century. A walled-up Romanesque bay with a deep splay is on the right, with an arch formed by a row of small granite quoins. This Romanesque bay is the only remaining original bay in the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-068] [Illustration] 128. Dragey. The north wall of the nave (inside). As the only remaining original bay, this walled-up Romanesque bay has a deep splay, with an arch formed by a row of small granite quoins. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-36] [Illustration] 129. Dragey. The church choir. The bays of the choir we guess on each side were enlarged in the 15th century. The choir was previously quite dark, with a feeble light coming from two small Romanesque bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-069] [Illustration] 130. Dragey. The old baptismal font supports a holy water font. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-38] [Illustration] 131. Dragey. The stained glass window of one large twin bay in the south wall of the nave. This window is an ex-voto recounting one of the many drownings occurring in the region. On 5 May 1921, Harry Iselin, the son of a family of landowners near Dragey, drowned with an American friend, back from walking back from Mont Saint-Michel while crossing its dangerous shores. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-39] [Illustration] 132. Dragey. Detail of the stained glass window. On the top, the Mont Saint-Michel, and below, a partial view of archangel St. Michael. This large twin bay with a trefoil arch replaced in 1860 a rectangular opening, that replaced itself a small Romanesque bay in 1790. This was also the case for the other twin bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-070] [Illustration] 133. Genêts. Location. The village of Genêts is located on the current coastal road between Granville and Avranches, 6 kilometers north of Avranches. The village is facing Mont Saint-Michel, around 4 kilometers far away. The medieval roads used by pilgrims to go to Mont Saint-Michel started from Saint-Pair-sur-Mer, Coutances, Saint-Lô and Caen to reach Genêts. Then they needed to cross dangerous shores to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination. In addition, the shore road between Saint-Pair and Mont Saint-Michel was crossing Bec d'Andaine, near Genêts. [Illustration] 134. Genêts. The village and its church. The church tower--with its saddleback roof, its balustrade and its gargoyles--emerges above the roofs of the village. Genêts is a very old place. It was the tidal port of Avranches, the capital of the region before its looting by the Norman pirates in the 9th century. The barony of Genêts was given in 1022 to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel by Richard II, duke of Normandy, as well as the baronies of Saint-Pair and Ardevon. The center of a barony and a deanery, Genêts became an active town under the early Norman dukes. In the early 14th century, there were nearly 3,000 inhabitants, and the church counted seven chapels and a full clergy. This was the most flourishing period. During the Hundred Years War, Genêts was looted, fleeced and burned by the British troops from 1356 on. During the Religion Wars between Catholics and Protestants, Genêts was again sacked in 1562 by the troops of the Protestant Montgomery. During the French Revolution, Genêts lost its juridiction of a seneschal, its sergentery, its deanery, its fairs and its markets, and went from being a town to being a village. The county town became Sartilly. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-083] [Illustration] 135. Genêts. The church, beautifully made, is the work of Robert Torigni, abbot of Mont Saint-Michel between 1154 and 1186, who built it on the site of an older timeworn church. The Romanesque church was consecrated in 1157 by Herbert, bishop of Avranches, along with Roger, abbot of Bec-Hellouin. The church and cemetery of Genêts were granted the title of (French) Historic Monument in 1959. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-40] [Illustration] 136. Genêts. The church is composed of a broad nave, a transept and a three-row choir with a flat apse. A massive tower topped by a saddleback roof rises at the transept crossing. The Romanesque parts are the transept crossings, part of the transept arms and two-thirds of the tower. The porch before the south gate in the nave is from the 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-071] [Illustration] 137. Genêts. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed by a wide nave, a transept and a three-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 53.7 meters. The external width of the nave is 10.8 meters (width of the front). The first row of the choir opens north and south on two flat apse chapels, that open themselves on the transept arms. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 138. Genêts. The north wall. The tower is Romanesque for two-thirds of its height. Its upper part was built in the early 16th century. The nave was completely rebuilt in the mid-18th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-072] [Illustration] 139. Genêts. The Romanesque transept, with its north part and its gable wall. The masonry is made from irregular blocks of schist and granite. The schist is the local stone. The granite probably came from the granite ground of Avranches a few miles south-east. The gable wall is opened by a large semi-circular bay. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-073] [Illustration] 140. Genêts. The tower is situated at the transept crossing, with two floors. It is Romanesque to two-thirds of his height, with blocks of granite of medium size, while the top is from the early 16th century, with much larger blocks of granite. The lower floor is blind. The upper floor is open to the north, south and west by walled-up Romanesque twin bays, that were extended by Gothic trefoil bays added in the early 16th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-074] [Illustration] 141. Genêts. The tower is topped by a saddleback roof, the base of which is hidden north and south by a balustrade with an openwork design. Its corners are adorned with Gothic gargoyles shaped as dogs, wolves and imaginary animals. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-075] [Illustration] 142. Genêts. A Gothic gargoyle at another angle of the balustrade hiding the base of the saddleback roof of the tower. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-41] [Illustration] 143. Genêts. A Gothic gargoyle at another angle of the balustrade hiding the base of the saddleback roof of the tower. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-076] [Illustration] 144. Genêts. The gate in the south transept. This heavy and simple gate is from 11th century, with semi-circular plain grains and thick columns. It probably belonged to the building that was prior to the Romanesque church consecrated in 1157. The semi-circular arch is formed of two thick non-molded grains. The external grain rests on two thick attached columns topped by a square chamfered abacus, which goes on as a chamfered band on the wall. The capital basket is carved with barely visible angle hooks. The outside ground level is now at the same level as the start of the column trunk. The square base is topped by a double torus is below ground level. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-077] [Illustration] 145. Genêts. Sketch of the gate in the south transept. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 146. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing is bounded by four strong square piers. The two west piers are attached to the transept and the nave. They receive four thick triangular arches that surround the groin vault above the transept crossing. The first row of the choir opens north and south on two flat apse chapels, that open themselves on the transept arms. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-078] [Illustration] 147. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. The piers support four thick slightly triangular arches that surround the groin vault above the transept crossing. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-079] [Illustration] 148. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. The four piers are perfectly symmetrical, with two flat non-molded sides and two other sides with two attached twin columns on a backwall, that support the triangular arches. On one angle of each pillar, an attached column supports the spring of one arris of the vault. Each pillar is topped by a large impost molded with a chamfered band. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-46] [Illustration] 149. Genêts. The Romanesque transept crossing. One of the tower piers. Two sides have a flat non-molded surface. On the other two sides, the arches are received by two attached twin columns on a backwall. In one corner, an attached column receives the spring of one arris of the vault. The carved basket capitals are topped by a thick square abacus. The square bases are topped by a double torus. The pier itself rests on a broader square base. The other three pillars are perfectly symmetrical to this one. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-45] [Illustration] 150. Genêts. Sketch of the south-east pier in the transept crossing. This pier is topped by an impost molded with a chamfered band. East and south, the pier has a flat non-molded surface. North and west, the arches are received by two attached twin columns on a backwall. At the north-west angle, an attached column receives the spring of one arris of the vault. The carved capital baskets are topped by a thick square abacus. The pier itself rests on a broader square base. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 151. Genêts. Detail of the north-west pier in the transept crossing. The capital baskets, carved in low relief, are adorned with plant designs such as chestnut leaves, oak leaves with acorns, and vine leaves. Other baskets are carved with grapes, animal designs--such as hares running around--or geometric designs--such as small arches and prominent bands. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-080] [Illustration] 152. Genêts. The porch. This large porch, from the 16th century, stands before the south gate of the nave, which is from the 13th century. The porch has offered pilgrims and parishioners two stone benches and a shelter from rain and western winds coming from the sea. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-44] [Illustration] 153. Genêts. The porch from the 16th century is topped by a wooden frame added in the 18th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-082] [Illustration] 154. Genêts. The porch. Detail of the wooden frame added in the 18th century. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-42] [Illustration] 155. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Location. The village of Saint-Léonard-de-Vains is located at the very end of the cape of Grouin du Sud, 2.5 kilometers from the village of Vains and 7 kilometers from the town of Avranches. The priory church stands in front of the bay of Mont Saint-Michel and the rock of Tombelaine. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains was the final village of the medieval road coming from Caen. Then the pilgrims needed to cross the dangerous shores to reach Mont Saint-Michel, their final destination. The priory church has become a private property since the French Revolution, and the village is now part of the parish of Vains. [Illustration] 156. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Winter panorama. The village and its priory church under the snow, at the end of the winter. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-084] [Illustration] 157. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Winter panorama. The village and its priory church, seen a little closer, at the end of the winter. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-085] [Illustration] 158. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Spring panorama taken from inside the priory. From there, the Mont Saint-Michel seems to open itself to pilgrims and travellers. Saint-Léonard is a very old village. St. Leonard lived there in the 6th century before being elected the eighth bishop of Avranches in 578. The village was then invaded by the Normans in the 9th century. After the Norman conquest, the village was part of the duke of Normandy's territory, and the fief of the lords of Vains. In 1087, shortly before his death, William the Conqueror gave the priory to the Abbey of Saint-Etienne in Caen. In 1158, Henry II confirmed this donation, which included a mansion, arable lands and vineyards, as well as salines with the right to fish and to collect kelp. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-47] [Illustration] 159. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. Spring panorama taken from inside the priory. The priory was a simple priory, that is to say a small monastery where some religious men detached from a main abbey were living under the direction of a prior, but without taking care of other souls (unlike a pastor for his parishoniers). The priory church was the property of the abbey of Saint-Etienne in Caen until the French Revolution. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-50] [Illustration] 160. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory was sold in 1793, during the French Revolution, and the buyer turned the church into a farm building. In an article from the periodical Le Pays de Granville dated December 1976, Jean Bindet recounted that, "after the nationalization of the church properties in November 1789 and the sale of national properties from 1791 on, the priory and dovecote were left abandoned, and their ruins, with the church that had not suffered too much, were sold in 1793 for the sum of 200 francs in banknotes ... The buyer, wanting its purchase to fructify, decided to transform the church into a farm building. The choir of the ancient church became a kitchen with a fireplace built in the apse; the nave became a barn and a stable; the tower itself was used: the base as a cellar, and the floor was divided into a room and an attic, and topped with a chimney." The priory remained a farm for a long time, as evidenced by the cow behind the fence. This old photo was digitized by Claude Rayon. [Claude-48] [Illustration] 161. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church is still a private property in the late 20th century, but no longer a farm. In cooperation with the (French) Historic Monuments, the owner has turned the nave into a house by opening rectangular windows and revamping the interior. In 1985, date of this photo, the tower and the choir are still in bad shape. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-086] [Illustration] 162. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. The nave has become the owner's house in the late 20th century, which explains the rectangular doors and windows. The building has retained its original form though, with a nave strengthened by buttresses and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The tower, between choir and nave, is topped by a saddleback roof. In 1985, the tower and the choir have not been restored yet. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-087] [Illustration] 163. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. On this Photo by the 1980s, we still see the stairs leading to the first floor of the tower (they doesn't exist any more), as well as the rectangular openings of the tower and the choir, and the chimney above the choir. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-19] [Illustration] 164. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The priory church. On this recent Photo by 2009, the large rectangular openings pierced in the choir and the tower have been replaced by small bays of Romanesque style. The stairs leading to the first floor of the tower were removed, like the chimney above the choir. The building is back to its former beauty. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-49] [Illustration] 165. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The plan of the priory church. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed of a nave and a two-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 32.75 meters and an external width of 9.65 meters (width of the front). The tower rises between choir and nave. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 166. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower is from the early 12th century. Situated in the extension of the choir, its square base is topped by two floors in slight recess. The first floor was probably blind originally, with openings pierced after the French Revolution. The second floor is opened north, east and south by two twin semi-circular arches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-088] [Illustration] 167. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. The masonry is made of irregular blocks of schist and granite, with a few rows of regular granite blocks. The saddleback roof rests north and south on a cornice supported by modillions. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-089] [Illustration] 168. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. On three sides--north, east and south--the second floor is adorned with two twin semi-circular arches, with a double grain formed by two rows of granite quoins. The arch rests on plain abutments through a square abacus, that goes on as an horizontal band along the wall. The cornice is supported by modillions carved with rough human heads or molded in quarter-round. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-090] [Illustration] 169. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The Romanesque tower. The second floor of the tower and its saddleback roof. Two birds are resting. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-51] [Illustration] 170. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower and its north wall. This wall is strengthened by a central buttress surrounded by two semi-circular bays with an arch formed by a row of granite quoins. The lowered arch and abutments of the door are made of large blocks of granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-091] [Illustration] 171. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower and its north wall. The lower part of the wall consists of an opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) characterizing the 11th or early 12th century. The masonry of the upper part of the wall is made of regular blocks of granite. A row of badly damaged modillions is still visible above the bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-092] [Illustration] 172. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower, and its gate with its semi-circular arch and abutments in granite. The opus spicatum (fishbone masonry) of the masonry is a sign the church is early Romanesque. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-52] [Illustration] 173. Saint-Léonard-de-Vains. The base of the Romanesque tower. Inside, the tower rests on massive piers. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-53] [Illustration] 174. Saint-Loup. Location. Saint-Loup (also called Saint-Loup-sous-Avranches) is located south-east of Avranches, only 6 kilometers from the town, in a hilly region close to the granite ground of Avranches, making granite stones easily accessible. [Illustration] 175. Saint-Loup. The church is the only entirely Romanesque building remaining in the region. Built by the lords of Saint-Loup, the church was under St. Loup's patronage. The second saint is St. Gilles. The parish belonged to the deanery of Tirepied and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The nave has three rows. The north and south walls are strenghtened by four buttresses on each side. Three small semi-circular bays are still visible, two in the south wall and one in the north wall. The other bays were opened or enlarged thereafter. The church was granted the title of (French) Historic Monument in 1921. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-093] [Illustration] 176. Saint-Loup. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed by a two-row nave and a three-row choir with a semi-circular apse. The whole building has an external length of 31 meters and an external width of 8.2 meters (width of the front). The tower rises above the first row of the choir. The north side chapel along the second row of the choir was added in 1602 by the lords of Saint-Loup. Plan by Marie Lebert and Bernard Beck. [Illustration] 177. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque west front. Strenghtened by two buttresses, the front wall is topped by a slight glacis behind which rises the gable wall. The bay with a triangular arch above the Romanesque gate is probably from the 13th century. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-094] [Illustration] 178. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque west gate. Its semi-circular arch is formed of two grains surrounded by a archivolt, which is a chamfered band. Each grain has the following moldings: a thick angle torus, a listel, a shallow cavetto and a row of carved hollow saw-teeth. The grains rest on four attached columns. Molded in quarter-round, the capital abaci go on as an horizontal band along the wall. The baskets are carved with rough sculptures: angle hooks or angle heads whose features were erased with the test of time. The square bases are adorned with a torus topping a chamfer carved with barely visible small claws. They rest on a small stone wall going on along the whole length of the front. The lintel is a big monolith block of granite, and it is topped by an opus reticulatum (diamond-shaped masonry) of diamond-shaped stones. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-095] [Illustration] 179. Saint-Loup. Sketch of the Romanesque west gate. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 180. Saint-Loup. The south wall of the choir. In the first row, the south gate is flanked by two flat buttresses. Between these buttresses, above the gate, the masonry is supported by a cornice with three large carved modillions. The first modillion is a grotesque human being putting his right hand to his mouth while folding his left arm. The second modillion is a human head. The third modillion is a crouched human being, with his hands on his knees. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-097] [Illustration] 181. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower rises above the first row of the choir. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-096] [Illustration] 182. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The masonry of its walls is made of regular granite blocks, that are smaller than for other parts of the church. The granite was extracted from the granite ground of Avranches, that is close to Saint-Loup. In the foreground, on the right, this buttress belongs to the north side chapel adjacent to the second row of the choir. This chapel was added in 1602 by the lords of Saint-Loup. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-098] [Illustration] 183. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. This square tower consists of two floors topped by a spire. The first floor is ornated north and south with large blind arcades. The second floor is opened by a bay on each side. The level between the two floors is underlined by a chamfered band. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-099] [Illustration] 184. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The upper floor is opened by a bay on each side. This bay is surrounded by a semi-circular arch formed by two grains surrounded by a chamfered band. Each grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a broad shallow cavetto. On both sides of the bay, the grains rest on four small attached columns. The basket capitals are carved with geometric designs--angle hooks, half-circles--or human heads. These baskets are topped with a square abacus going on as a square horizontal band along the wall. The square base of the small columns is topped by a double torus. These bays are similar to the west and south gates, with the same moldings for the grains and similar sculptures for the capital baskets. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-22] [Illustration] 185. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The lower floor is adorned north and south by a double blind semi-circular arch toped by a prominent band going on as an horizontal band on the bare wall and then on the east and west sides. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-100] [Illustration] 186. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. On the lower floor, a small opus reticulatum (diamond-shaped blocks) is present at the corner between the twin arches. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-101] [Illustration] 187. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The upper floor is opened by a similar bay on each side. The semi-circular arch of the bays is formed of two grains surrounded by a chamfered band and resting on four small attached columns. The capital baskets are carved with geometric designs such as angle hooks and half-circles, while other baskets are carved with human heads. These bays are similar to the west and south gates, with the same moldings for the grains and similar sculptures for the capital baskets. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-102] [Illustration] 188. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. The cornice rests on modillions carved with human heads or molded in quarter-round. Most of the cornice was rebuilt during the rebuilding of the octagon spire on a square base, with skylights. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-103] [Illustration] 189. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque tower. Detail of the cornice and its modillions carved with human heads. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-104] [Illustration] 190. Saint-Loup. The Romanesque south gate, in the first row of the choir. The semi-circular arch is formed of an grain surrounded by an archivolt made of a chamfered band. The grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a large shallow cavetto. The grain rests on two attached columns. The capital baskets carved with human heads are topped with abaci molded in quarter-round. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-21] [Illustration] 191. Saint-Loup. Sketch of the Romanesque south gate, in the first row of the choir. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 192. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Location. The village of Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme is located 5.5 kilometers south-east of the town of Avranches, in the hills of the river Sélune. Saint-Quentin was situated on the medieval road taken by pilgrims from Tinchebray, Condé-sur-Noireau, Falaise or Lisieux to reach Mont Saint-Michael. The parish of Saint-Quentin was one of the nine parishes around the episcopal church of Avranches, grouped in the deanery of Chrétienté (Christendom). This deanery was part of the archidiachoné of Avranches. [Illustration] 193. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large church has a rectangular narthex (wide porch) along the entire length of the front. The base of the tower and the nave are Romanesque--probably from the second half of the 12th century--and have similarities with the church of Saint-Loup. Several parts are from the 13th century: the narthex before the church front, the two floors of the tower, the three-row choir, and finally the south side chapel of the choir. The north side chapel was built later on, in the 15th or 16th century. The walls of the nave still bear the mark of the large bays that were opened in the 18th century to replace the small Romanesque bays. The present bays date from 1951, with a size similar to the original bays. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-105] [Illustration] 194. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The church plan. Regularly oriented from west to east, the building is formed of a three-row nave and a three-row choir with a flat apse. The whole building has an external length of 47 meters and an external width of 9.6 meters (width of the front). North and south, two large chapels are adjacent to the first two rows of the choir. They are so large that they look like transept arms. The tower is between choir and nave. The church front has a narthex (wide porch) on its entire length. Plan by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 195. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large tower, between choir and nave, rests on four thick piers that receive east and west two semi-circular arches with a double ring. The row between choir and nave is topped by a groin vault with an oblong plan. In the foreground, the wooden barrel vault of the nave was rebuilt in 1926 and 1927. The nave pavings were laid in 1929. The church walls were covered with lime plaster in 1953. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-24] [Illustration] 196. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The large tower has a Romanesque base and two floors from the 13th century, with a saddleback roof. In the foreground rises a Romanesque wayside cross. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-106] [Illustration] 197. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Detail of the Romanesque wayside cross situated near the church. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-107] [Illustration] 198. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The church front is adorned on its entire length with a rectangular narthex (wide porch) from the 13th century, topped by a balustrade with an openwork design. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-108] [Illustration] 199. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The Romanesque gate of the church front. This gate is surrounded by a semi-circular two-groin arch and an archivolt. The grains rest on four attached columns, with square bases adorned with a torus topped by a chamfer. The capitals baskets are carved with balls, heads with a prominent chin, and a human being on all fours. These rough sculptures are in high relief. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-109] [Illustration] 200. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. The tower base and its Romanesque gate. This walled-up gate is similar to the south gate of the church of Saint-Loup. His semi-circular arch is formed by a grain surrounded by an archivolt with a chamfered band. The grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a shallow cavetto. The grain rests on two thick columns through a band modled in quarter-round forming the abacus of the capitals and going on along the bare wall. The capital baskets are carved with a tree on the right and two human heads on the left. The bases are square. The left base is topped with a chamfer adorned with tiny triangular claws and a torus. The right base is topped by a double torus. The tympanum is formed by a large monolith block of granite resting on inside abutments through a band molded in quarter-round. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-110] [Illustration] 201. Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme. Sketch of the south gate, that is walled-up at the base of the tower. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 202. Sartilly. Location. The town of Sartilly is located on the road between Granville and Avranches, 15 kilometers south of Granville and 11 kilometers north of Avranches. Sartilly was on the medieval road going from Saint-Lô to Mont Saint-Michel, the final destination for many pilgrims. The parish of Sartilly belonged to the deanery of Genêts and the archidiachoné of Avranches. The church is under St. Pair's patronage. [Illustration] 203. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate was the west gate of the Romanesque church, and is now the south gate of the church that replaced it. The Romanesque church, which was ready to collapse, was demolished and replaced in 1858 by a much larger building of Gothic inspiration. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-10] [Illustration] 204. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The capital baskets are carved with various designs like oak leaves, acanthus leaves, scrolls framing an acanthus leaf at the corner, or corner curls. The sculptures, carved in high relief in granite, are much more elegant than in any other small church in the region. The square base of the columns is topped by a double torus. Photo by Marie Lebert. [Marie-11] [Illustration] 205. Sartilly. The old Romanesque church, demolished in 1858, in a drawing from the journal Revue de l'Avranchin dated 1924-1926. This church was described in the Minute Book of the City Council (Registre des Délibérations du Conseil Municipal) of Sartilly of 1837-1864: "The church we should replace is an old building (...) composed of: 1) a dark nave which is 19 meters and 60 centimeters long and 7 meters wide, with the lower part of its walls soaked with moisture and cracked in several places, and not standing straight anymore, particularly towards the end of the church; 2) a tower between the nave and the choir (...); 3) a choir which is 9 meters long and 6 meters wide (...)." Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-118] [Illustration] 206. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate is in granite, which is the local stone, Sartilly being located at the heart of the granite ground of Vire. This gate, probably from the second half of the 12th century, is the most beautiful Romanesque gate in the region. The moldings of the arch and archivolt are the result of meticulous work, as well as the sculptures of the capital baskets, with oak leaves, acanthus leaves and scrolls. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-111] [Illustration] 207. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. Sketch of the arch, the archivolt and a column. This gate, which was the west gate of the Romanesque church, is now the south gate of the church that replaced it. Sketch by Marie Lebert. [Illustration] 208. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The arch of the gate is formed of three grains: a grain with a lower centering, and two semi-circular grains surmounted by a archivolt. The first grain is molded with a thick angle torus followed by a listel and a large cavetto adorned with large and slightly rounded bezants. The second grain is molded with a thick angle torus. The third grain is molded with two tori surrounding a listel. The archivolt is a prominent cordon ornated with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a hollow row of triangular sticks. It rests on both sides on two carved heads with well designed features. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-112] [Illustration] 209. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left columns. On each side of the gate, the three grains rest on three attached columns through an impost molded with a cavetto. The square part of the impost is adorned with a small hollow molding. The impost goes on above the external pier supporting the archivolt. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-113] [Illustration] 210. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left side of the archivolt. The archivolt is formed by a band adorned with saw-teeth in high relief carved with a row of triangular sticks. On either side of the arch, it rests on a head carved in the granite. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-114] [Illustration] 211. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The left side of the archivolt. Detail showing the same carved head, in profile. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-115] [Illustration] 212. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The right side of the archivolt. Detail showing the second carved head on which the archivolt rests. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-116] [Illustration] 213. Sartilly. The Romanesque gate. The right side of the archivolt. Detail showing the same carved head, closer. Photo by Alain Dermigny. [Alain-117] [Illustration] 214. End of this album, with a cap and its angel holding a shield, in the church of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer. Special thanks to Alain Dermigny and Claude Rayon for their beautiful pictures. Many thanks to Bernard Beck, Danièle Cercel, Georges Cercel, Philippe Dartiguenave, Al Haines, Nicolas Pewny, Martine Valenti, Marie-Noëlle Vivier and Russon Wooldridge for their kind help over the years. Photo by Claude Rayon. [Claude-22] Copyright © 2010 Marie Lebert, Alain Dermigny, Claude Rayon. All rights reserved. 
25800	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 25800-h.htm or 25800-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/0/25800/25800-h/25800-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/0/25800/25800-h.zip) Transcriber's note Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of changes is found at the end of the book. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. A list of inconsistently spelled words is found at the end of the book. Text enclosed by equal signs was in bold face in the original (=bold text=). THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF RIPON A Short History of the Church & a Description of Its Fabric by CECIL HALLETT, B.A. Magdalen Coll., Oxford With 53 Illustrations [Illustration: RIPON CATHEDRAL FROM THE FOOTBRIDGE OVER THE SKELL.] [Illustration] London George Bell & Sons 1901 PREFACE. The original authorities for the history (both constitutional and architectural) of the Church of Ripon have been most ably edited for the Surtees Society by the Rev. Canon J. T. Fowler, F.S.A., in his _Memorials of Ripon_ and _The Ripon Chapter Acts_ (_Surtees Soc._, vols. 74, 78, 81, 64). These authorities range from the Saxon period to the times following the Reformation, but in the Introductions to vol. 81, and in the Rev. J. Ward's _Fasti Riponienses_, included in vol. 78, the story is virtually continued to our own day; while the aforesaid Introductions epitomise, in its constitutional and architectural aspects, the whole history of the church. To these volumes and to their Editor, who most kindly consented to revise the proofs of this book, the present writer is very deeply indebted. He has also had recourse to an article by Sir G. Gilbert Scott, R.A., in vol. xxxi. of the _Archæological Journal_; to the same Author's _Recollections_; to several articles on the Saxon Crypt, duly specified on pp. 76, 77; to the Guides, by J. R. Walbran, F.S.A., published by Mr. Harrison of Ripon; to Mr. Murray's _Cathedrals_; to the volume by the Ven. Archdeacon Danks in Messrs. Isbister's Cathedral Series; to _A Day in the City of Ripon_, by Mr. George Parker of Ripon; to the old Guides by Farrer and Gent respectively; and to other works of a more general character. His sincere thanks are also due to the Right Rev. the Bishop of Ripon for permission to consult the library at the Palace; to the Very Rev. the Dean for privileges granted in connection with the library in the Cathedral and with the Cathedral itself; to the Ven. the Archdeacon of Ripon and the Ven. the Archdeacon of Richmond for their courteous assistance on several occasions; to Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, V.P.S.A., Mr. W. H. St. John Hope, Mrs. Swire, the Rev. H. A. Wilson, Fellow of Magdalen College, the Rev. G. W. Garrod, and Mr. John Whitham for valuable information on various points, historical and architectural; to Mr. Ronald P. Jones for his excellent photographs, to the Archæological Institute and other learned Societies for various other illustrations, and to the Rev. E. H. Swann, the Rev. J. Beanland, Capt. E. J. Warre Slade, R.N., Mr. F. Forbes Glennie, Mr. T. Wall, Mr. Watson, and others for similar assistance. He desires also to express his thanks to Mr. E. W. Winser, Dean's Verger, for much valuable local information; to Mr. Henry Williams, Canons' Verger, for expert advice on points of masonry; and to both, as well as to the Sexton, for that general assistance which they so willingly rendered him throughout his investigation of the Fabric. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I.--HISTORY OF THE CHURCH 3 CHAPTER II.--THE EXTERIOR 39 CHAPTER III.--THE INTERIOR 65 CHAPTER IV.--OTHER OLD BUILDINGS IN RIPON 133 APPENDIX-- Abbots of the Monastery of Ripon 142 Canons of Stanwick 142 Deans of King James I. Foundation 143 Deans of the Cathedral Foundation 143 Bishops of Ripon 143 INDEX 145 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Ripon Cathedral from the Footbridge over the Skel _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title Page_ The Nave, South Side 2 View from the South-West 3 Early Apsidal Chapel with Later Chapel superimposed 13 The West Front before Restoration 17 Mediæval Seals (3) 20 Ripon Minster Anterior to 1660 (from an old Engraving) 32 The Cathedral from the South-East 38 The West Doorways 39 View from the North-West 42 Doorway, North Transept 47 Doorway, South Transept 52 Reconstructed Angle of the Great Tower 57 Flying Buttresses, South Side of Choir 59 The East End 61 The North-Western Portion of the Nave 64 Conjectural View of the Interior of Archbishop Roger's Nave (by Sir G. G. Scott) 65 Conjectural Plan of Archbishop Roger's Church (by Sir G. G. Scott) 67 The Nave, looking Westward 70 Plan of Saxon Crypt 72 The Saxon Crypt 73 Conjectural Plan of St. Wilfrid's Crypt and Presbytery (by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite) 77 The Two Fonts 79 Bas-Relief in the South Aisle of the Nave 80 The Western Arch of the Central Tower 83 The North Transept 87 Vault of North Transept Aisle 91 The Rood Screen 95 The Great East Window 97 Bay of Archbishop Roger's Choir (by Sir G. G. Scott) 98 Decorated Capital in the Choir 99 The North Side of the Choir 100 Bosses from the Choir-Vault (2) 103 The Sedilia 105 Choir Stalls 107 Misereres 108 Desk-End of Mayor's Stall 109 Finial in front of the Bishop's Throne 110 The West End of the Choir 112 The North Choir Aisle 113 Transitional Vaulting Corbel 114 The Norman Crypt 118 The Chapter-House 122 Ancient Sculptures in the Chapter-House 124 The Library 130 The Old Chapel, St. Mary Magdalene's Hospital 132 Chapel of St. Anne's Hospital 135 Seal of St. Mary Magdalene's Hospital 138 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL _at end_ [Illustration: THE NAVE--SOUTH SIDE. (Showing junction of Transitional and Perpendicular work in the Tower.)] [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.] RIPON CATHEDRAL. CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. There is evidence that the neighbourhood of Ripon was inhabited during, and perhaps before, the Roman occupation of Britain. Whether the place was a settlement of the Romans is uncertain; but it was assuredly in touch with their civilization, for several of their roads passed near it--notably Watling Street, on which, six miles to the east, was Isurium, the modern Aldborough; while imperial coins and other Roman objects have been dug up in Ripon itself. It is not known whether the Romans imparted to the local tribes of the Brigantes their own Christianity; but two centuries after the withdrawal of the legions the greater part of what is now Yorkshire was absorbed by the invading Angles into their kingdom of Deira, which had itself been united with the more northern kingdom of Bernicia to form the single realm of Northumbria. Deira, however, seems to have retained its own individuality. About the year 627 King Eadwine of Northumbria was converted to Christianity by Paulinus, and the majority of his Deiran subjects followed his example. =The Scottish Monastery.=--It is in the middle of the seventh century that the recorded history of Ripon begins. Deira was then ruled by Prince Alchfrith of Northumbria under his father, King Oswiu, nephew of Eadwine, and Bede, writing not eighty years after the event, relates that the prince chose Ripon for the site of a monastery. The date may be fixed in or just before the year 657. This monastery was one of those numerous religious colonies which were the result not only of the new Christian fervour, but also of a reaction from war toward social life and industry. It did not represent the Roman Christianity of Augustine which Paulinus had introduced into Deira from Canterbury, but the Christianity which had come from Ireland through St. Columba's missionary college at Iona, and which was now predominant throughout the north. The monks of Ripon were brought from Melrose Abbey on the Tweed. Like most monks of that early period, they probably followed no definite Rule. Their abbot was Eata, a pupil of St. Aidan, and previously Abbot of Melrose and Lindisfarne, while the guest-master was no less a person than Cuthbert, the legend of whose having entertained an angel unawares at Ripon added, no doubt, to the growing reputation of the house. Its tranquillity, however, was not to last. The Roman party in the Northumbrian Church, though inconsiderable, was gaining force, and Alchfrith, deserting his former convictions, gave the new monastery, with an endowment of thirty or forty hides of land, as Bede relates, to one who had visited Rome, and who regarded the Irish (or, as it was called by that time, the Scottish) Church as schismatical. The life of =St. Wilfrid of Ripon=--so full of adventure, misfortune, and lasting achievement--can only be related here in so far as it bears upon the story of this, his favourite monastery. It was in 661 that the transference from Eata to Wilfrid took place, and at once the Scottish monks, refusing to conform to Roman usages, left Ripon in a body. It is probable that Wilfrid imposed upon their successors the Benedictine Rule, which he had studied at Rome. The new Abbot was not yet in priest's orders, but was presently ordained at Ripon by Agilbert, the Frankish Bishop of Wessex. In 664 he took the action for which he is especially remembered in English history. Appearing at the Synod of Whitby, he prevailed upon King Oswiu to throw in his lot with the Roman party, and was thus the means indirectly of preventing the isolation of the England of that time from the Church and civilization of the Continent. Almost immediately afterwards Abbot Wilfrid became Bishop of Northumbria, and this tenure of the two offices by the same person was perhaps the origin of the subsequent connection of Ripon with the Archbishops of York.[1] Wilfrid insisted on going to be consecrated by Agilbert, who was now Bishop of Paris, and so long did he remain abroad that on his return in 666 he found another bishop, Chad (afterwards St. Chad of Lichfield), in possession of the see. He therefore retired to Ripon for three years, during which, however, he visited Mercia and also Kent, where he met Aedde, or Eddius, who became his chaplain and biographer. =The Saxon Monastery.=--In 669 Wilfrid was restored to his see by Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, and soon afterwards began to build at Ripon. The Scottish monastery, which was probably of wood, is thought to have occupied a site between Priest Lane, Stonebridgegate,[2] and a nameless road which connects them. Wilfrid now abandoned it, and erected upon a new site a more imposing monastery of stone.[3] The practice of building in stone seems to have become uncommon in Britain after the departure of the Romans, and Wilfrid is thought to have employed foreign workmen, perhaps Italians.[4] His church is described by Eddius, himself now a Ripon monk, as "of smoothed stone from base to summit, and supported on various columns and (?) arcades (_porticibus_)," and was doubtless of that Italian type which had become identified in Britain with the Roman party in the Church, as opposed to the Scottish mission. The Scottish type of church consisted of a small aisle-less nave and square chancel: the Italian type generally had aisles, and the altar was usually raised upon a platform, beneath which was a crypt called _confessio_. A little later than 670 A.D. Wilfrid's new minster was solemnly dedicated by him in honour of St. Peter, in the presence of a great concourse of clergy and nobles, headed by the King of Northumbria, Ecgfrith, the successor of Oswiu. The endowments seem to have included at this time certain lands round Ripon which had belonged to the British Church before the coming of the Angles, and to have been now increased by grants--some as far distant as Lancashire--made by the great men present at the ceremony. Wilfrid himself gave a splendid copy of the Gospels, written in gold upon purple vellum, the beginning perhaps of a library.[5] The feasting was kept up for three days--indeed, no monastery could have had for its church a more striking dedication. And for the next seven years Ripon must have shared the importance of the Abbot-Bishop, whose state rivalled that of the king. By persuading the queen to become a nun, however, he presently lost the royal favour; while the great size of the diocese, which extended at last from the Forth to the Wash, prevented the achievement of complete success in his episcopal work. As yet the see of Canterbury was the sole archbishopric, and in 678 Archbishop Theodore--already known as an organizer of the episcopate--was invited to the court of Northumbria. With Ecgfrith's approval, but without consulting Wilfrid, he divided the diocese into the three sees of Hexham, York, and Lindsey, answering respectively to the tribal divisions Bernicia, Deira, and the land of the Lindiswaras (Lincolnshire). Wise though this action was, it was naturally resented by Wilfrid, who appealed to the Pope--the first appeal of the kind ever made by an Englishman--and set out himself for Rome. He was destined not to return till 680, and even then to be kept out of his bishopric till 686. Ripon was now in the new diocese of York, but in 681 Theodore constituted yet another diocese, of which he made Ripon the cathedral town. Of =Eadhead, First Bishop of Ripon= (681-686), little is known. Originally a priest at the court of Oswiu, he had accompanied the intruded bishop, Chad, when the latter sought consecration at Canterbury during Wilfrid's absence for consecration in Gaul. Eadhead had afterwards been appointed by Theodore to the see of Lindsey, and was translated thence to Ripon when Lindsey was recovered by the Mercians. His tenure of his new office lasted for five years only, for in 686 Aldfrith, the successor of Ecgfrith, restored Wilfrid--not indeed to his original bishopric of Northumbria, but to a see which combined the lately-formed dioceses of Ripon and York[6]. Eadhead accordingly retired, and there were no more Bishops of Ripon for twelve centuries. To Wilfrid was restored not only his bishopric, but also his monastery of Ripon, which he retained in peace for the next five years. At the end of that time a long dispute arose with Aldfrith, who was veering back to the diocesan partition of Theodore, and Wilfrid, deprived of his see for the third time, crossed over into Mercia. In 703 a synod was held at Austerfield, the King and Berhtwald, Archbishop of Canterbury, being present, when Wilfrid was actually asked to promise that he would cease to act as bishop, that he would accept the partition of Theodore, and that he would retire to Ripon and not leave the monastery without the king's permission. Though he was now a man of seventy, he set out once more for Rome, and this time as before the Pope decided in his favour. Returning to Ripon in 705, he attempted to conciliate Aldfrith's successor Eadwulf, but in vain. In the same year, however, Eadwulf was succeeded by Osred, and presently another synod was held, this time at Nidd, seven miles south of Ripon, when it was decided, in the presence of Osred and the now relenting Berhtwald, that Wilfrid should have the monastery and see of Hexham (resigning York) and the monastery of Ripon, thus restored to him for the second time. In 709 he received a call to Mercia, which had already twice received him in his adversity, and in which he had accepted the bishopric of Leicester. Immediately before his departure he was at Ripon, where he kept his treasure, and having a presentiment that he would never return, he bequeathed a portion of his wealth to the monastery, appointed Tatberht to succeed him as Abbot, and took an affecting farewell of the whole community. Arriving at his monastery of Oundle, in Northamptonshire, he was seized with illness, and died there on October 12 in the seventy-sixth year of his age. The body was placed on a car and carried in solemn procession to Ripon, where it was buried on the south side of the high altar in his own minster. In 710 the anniversary of his death was kept at Ripon with great solemnity, and out of such commemorations, probably, arose the feast of his _Depositio_,[7] which was afterwards kept on every 12th of October. According to Eddius a remarkable phenomenon occurred on this occasion. In the evening the monastery was suddenly encircled with brilliant light, as of day, and whether this was a display of Northern Lights or not, it was regarded as a Divine testimony to the sanctity of Wilfrid. The story shows, at any rate, that he was already beginning to be regarded as a saint, and it was probably about this time that his name was coupled with St. Peter's in the dedication of the Church. Miracles were worked at his tomb, and it became an object of pilgrimage; but little is known of the period immediately succeeding his death, save that the dwellers around Ripon (as a twelfth century writer, Eadmer, represents) first encouraged the cult of the saint, then became disgusted at the crowds it drew, and finally endeavoured to check it altogether. Wilfrid was succeeded in the abbacy by Tatberht, and history has recorded the names of three more abbots who followed each other toward the end of the eighth century, Botwine, Alberht, Sigred; and of one of uncertain date, Uilden or Wildeng.[8] In 791 a noble named Eardwulf, who had plotted against Ethelred, then King of Northumbria, was put to death (as it was thought) at the monastery gate by the king's orders. The monks carried him 'with Gregorian chantings' to the precincts of the church, where they laid him out, but after midnight he was found within the building--a recovery which was regarded as miraculous. Ripon did not escape the violence of the Danes. It is thought that about the year 860 they burned the town and did some damage to the church, and the remarkable mound known as =Ailcy Hill=,[9] near the Canons' Residence, and due east of the Cathedral, is probably a relic of some battle of this period. In the street-names too, all ending in 'gate' (which in the sense of 'way' is a Danish word), another trace may perhaps be found of their presence, as well as of the existence of a town at this early period. The town probably grew up around the monastery. It has been believed that a civic charter was granted by King Alfred in 886; but this is impossible, even if such charters were ever granted at this time, for Alfred had resigned all this part of England (which since about 839 had owned the overlordship of Wessex) to the Danes in 878. One of the great events in Ripon history is the visit of Alfred's grandson =King Athelstan=. Yorkshire had lately been a separate Danish kingdom, but it passed under the direct rule of Wessex in 926, and it was either in that year that Athelstan came, or in 937, when he defeated the Scots and other northern rebels at Brunanburh. It was to this king that the church afterwards referred the grant of its most important privileges. Among these was that of =sanctuary=, by which homicides, thieves, debtors, etc., could flee to Ripon and live there under the protection of St. Wilfrid for a specified time. The area within which they were protected extended one mile from the church in every direction, and the limit was marked by eight crosses, the base of one of which is still to be seen on the Sharow Road. The penalties for molesting refugees were afterwards graduated as follows:--between the limit and the graveyard wall, £18; within the graveyard, £36; within the choir (where the pursued sought the last possible refuge at the 'grythstool,' or chair of sanctuary), confiscation of goods and possible death. Those who took sanctuary were called 'gyrthmen' or 'grythmen' (from the Anglo-Saxon 'gryth' 'peace'), and undertook, among other things, to carry the banners before the relics of St. Wilfrid in certain processions. They were under the spiritual charge of a 'gryth-priest.' The protection of the outer sanctuary can hardly have been extended to Ripon men, as theoretically the whole town could then have committed crimes with impunity, and practically the criminals would not have been safe from their fellow-townsmen. Ripon debtors did indeed enjoy protection here at Rogation-tide, but as a rule men of Ripon would seek sanctuary at Durham or Beverley. Athelstan is also said to have granted to the church a jurisdiction over its lands independent alike of the northern archbishop and of the king, with the right to inflict the ordeals of fire and water, and with exemption from taking oaths, from taxation, and from military service.[10] Of the two charters in which these grants are set forth, one is, indeed of the eleventh or twelfth, and the other of the thirteenth century, but Athelstan may at any rate have done something to give rise to the tradition, though it is impossible to tell exactly what. The story of his having given the manor to the see of York is doubtless misleading. The territorial sway of the Archbishop at Ripon must be of earlier origin, and it may even have arisen out of the grant of the monastery with its thirty or forty hides of land to Wilfrid and his retention of them after his elevation to the see of Northumbria. The connection of the monastery with the Archbishop is illustrated in the reign of Athelstan's brother Eadred, when Archbishop Wulfstan, by aiding a rebellion for the purpose of again setting up a Danish king at York, drew down the royal anger upon Ripon. In 948 (or 950, according to one authority) Eadred harried Northumbria, and then, says the Worcester Chronicle, "was that famed minster burned at Ripon, which St. Wilfrid built." Wulfstan himself was deprived and imprisoned. About two years later the half-ruined and deserted church was visited (the see of York being vacant) by Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury. There was a tradition in the sixteenth century that he rebuilt it, but his visit is also memorable for another tradition, namely, that he translated the bones of St. Wilfrid to Canterbury. Hence arose a fierce dispute between Canterbury and Ripon, each claiming that it possessed the body of the Saint. The claim of Canterbury, which is accepted to this day by the Church of Rome, is supported by the assertion of Oda himself, and by several subsequent chroniclers, one of whom, however, attributes the translation to St. Dunstan, while another goes so far as to concede that Oda left a portion of the bones behind. But Ripon always maintained that it possessed the whole, and that the relics removed had been those of Wilfrid II. (Archbishop of York, 718-732). According to the contemporary biographer of Oswald (Archbishop of York, 972-992) the bones of the Saint were at Ripon in the tenth century, and Oswald solemnly enshrined them--whence that feast of St. Wilfrid's translation which was afterwards kept on the 24th of April; and a later chronicler speaks of "the body of the blessed Wilfrid" as being at Ripon in the reign of Stephen. The claim of Canterbury was forgotten for a time in the glories of St. Thomas à Becket, while that of Ripon became more or less established in the north. In 1224 Archbishop de Gray, who translated the alleged relics at Ripon to a more splendid shrine, declared that he had found the skeleton complete. In the fifteenth century Henry V. himself writes to Ripon of his reverence for "St. Wilfrid, buried in the said church." In the sixteenth, Leland, while recording a common opinion that Oda rebuilt the minster, makes no mention of any removal of the relics. The controversy will perhaps never be decided definitely, but it is interesting in view of the cult of St. Wilfrid at Ripon in the middle ages. The account of the enshrinement of the relics by Oswald has been thought to imply that it was he who rebuilt the monastery, and that he filled it again with monks. Whether it was rebuilt by Oda or Oswald, the body of St. Cuthbert rested here in 995 on its way from Chester-le-Street to Durham. From this point onwards, however, no more is heard of monks at Ripon, and it may be interesting to recall here the part which this monastery had played in the history of the Church. Its first abbot, Eata, had become Bishop of Hexham and of Lindisfarne. It had been for a time the home of St. Cuthbert. Under Wilfrid, Ceolfrith, one of its monks, had become Abbot of Wearmouth, and another, Æthelwald, had carried on Cuthbert's work in the Farne Islands. In accepting and treasuring the staff of St. Columba, the Ripon of Wilfrid had forgotten something of its hostility to the Scottish mission. Through Wilfrid, Ripon had been connected with the founding of other monasteries, Hexham, Selsey, Lichfield, Oundle. Through his labours, again, and those of St. Willibrord, another of its monks, it had become known as a great centre of missionary work. Wilfrid had strengthened Christianity in Mercia and Kent, and may claim to have introduced it into Sussex and the Isle of Wight. Abroad he had carried the Gospel to the Frisians, and his work among them was splendidly completed by Willibrord, who became Archbishop of Utrecht.[11] =The College of Secular Canons.=--From 995 to the Conquest, the history of Ripon is almost a blank. During that time the monastery, by a reversal of the more usual process, became converted into a college of secular canons, but nothing is known of the manner in which the change was effected. The last Saxon Archbishop of York, Ealdred, who crowned both Harold and the Conqueror, is said to have founded prebends--perhaps giving lands out of his manor, and the Canons of Ripon duly appear in Domesday Book (1085-6). In 1070 the Conqueror, to whom the north had given much difficulty, ordered the Vale of York to be harried. Ripon suffered severely, and in Domesday Book the surrounding lands are recorded as "waste." The minster probably shared in the general wreck. What happened to it in the succeeding period is not definitely known. It may have been entirely rebuilt, as most great Saxon churches were after the Conquest, or it may have been rebuilt partially, or merely enlarged. That something was done is proved by the existence south of the choir of some Norman work which has been attributed to the first Norman Archbishop, Thomas of Bayeux (1070-1100), or to Archbishop Thurstan (1114-1141). [Illustration: EARLY APSIDAL CHAPEL WITH LATER CHAPEL SUPERIMPOSED.] The former died at Ripon. Indeed, the Archbishops had been in the habit of residing here since the end of the tenth century, and they duly appear in Domesday Book as lords of the manor, of which the canons' land is apparently treated as a part. It is worthy of note that Domesday Book records also the 'soc' jurisdiction and freedom from taxation which are mentioned in the 'Athelstan' charters. The exemption also from the king's officers which is set forth in the same charters, was proved in 1106, when an attempted invasion of the liberties of the Church by the Sheriff of York was successfully resisted by Archbishop Gerard before arbitrators appointed by Henry I. This king also exempted the lands of Ripon from castle-building, and granted to the Canons and the Archbishop a fair at the feast of St. Wilfrid's translation (April 24th). In the next century fairs were also claimed for the feast of his _Depositio_ (October 12th), and for the feasts of St. Michael and of the Finding of the Holy Cross. =Archbishop Thomas II.= (1109-1114) founded the =Hospital of St. John the Baptist=, and another Hospital, that =of St. Mary Magdalen=, of which the chapel remains, was founded by his successor, =Archbishop Thurstan= (1114-1141). Both these Hospitals were affiliated to the Church, and the masterships were in the gift of the Archbishop. St. John's afforded shelter to poor travellers who came in through the forest which then adjoined the town. When the forest was cleared, the endowment provided exhibitions for a few poor boys, who lived here while they pursued their studies in "grammar" (perhaps at the Grammar School), with a view to becoming clerks. The two hospitals, and a third which was founded later, were placed at three of the principal entrances to the town, with the express intention, perhaps, of assisting the pilgrims who resorted to the shrine of St. Wilfrid. Thurstan added one more canon to the staff by founding the prebend of Sharow. He may also be called the founder of Fountains Abbey, which was built on land assigned by him out of his domain of Ripon. In the troubles of the reign of Stephen, Ripon took no small share. When the Scots descended into Yorkshire, nominally to aid the Empress Maud, Thurstan sent against them all the levies which an archbishop, as a feudal baron, could muster, including doubtless the men of his manor of Ripon, and the victory which they won near Northallerton in 1138 is known as the Battle of the Standard, from the banners of the three mother-churches--Ripon, York, and Beverley--which waved over the English army. Ripon was soon to experience the anarchy which prevailed toward the end of the war. In 1140 Alan, Earl of Richmond, entrenched himself on a neighbouring hill and grievously oppressed the town and its inhabitants. Led by him, the large landholders in the neighbourhood broke open the storehouses and granaries of the archbishop, and in 1143 Earl Alan himself burst into the church with an armed band and attacked Archbishop William Fitzherbert (afterwards St. William of York), who was standing by St. Wilfrid's shrine. The Archbishop's offence may have been that he was the king's nephew. At any rate he was detested by the Cistercians, who were strongly represented here by Fountains Abbey, and Ripon seems to have sided with them, for in 1148, when Archbishop William was temporarily deprived of his office, it was to Ripon that his supplanter, Archbishop Murdac, retired when he durst not enter York. Stephen confirmed to the College all the privileges granted by his predecessors. =Building of the Present Church.=--The reign of Henry II. is marked by another rebuilding of the church. William was succeeded in 1154 (the year of the king's accession) by =Archbishop Roger de Pont l'Evêque= (1154-1181). This prelate is known in politics for his opposition to Thomas à Becket, and in art for his prominent share in the development of our national architecture. There is perhaps no more important example of the transition from the Norman to the Early English style than his work at Ripon. With the exception of the crypt under the present crossing, and of some Norman work south of the present choir, he rebuilt the whole church, and history has recorded the wording of a deed in which he gives "£1000 of the old coinage for the building of the basilica ... which we have begun afresh."[12] Roger's church was a cruciform building, and its nave had no aisles. A great portion of his work remains--the two transepts, half of the central tower, and portions of the nave and choir. The plan (see below, p. 67) was typical of the early history of the place and of its subsequent conversion from a monastery into a college of secular canons; for the aisleless cruciform arrangement in churches was developed from a combination of the Scottish type with the Roman or basilican, and the absence of aisles was, or rather had been at a slightly earlier period, the recognized mark of a secular as opposed to a monastic church. In giving aisles to the choir Roger's plan was singular, for it was not usual for a choir to have aisles when the nave had none. Except by the addition of nave-aisles, the dimensions of his plan (as Walbran remarked) have not been materially exceeded; and Ripon is an example of the size to which churches of canons often attained, in spite of the fact that their plan was generally that of a mere parish church. The next archbishop, Geoffrey Plantagenet, was often in disagreement with his brothers, Richard I. and John, but the manor of Ripon is said to have been the only portion of his temporalities of which the latter king did not deprive him. After Geoffrey's death the see was vacant for nine years until 1216, the year of the accession of Henry III., when it was given to =Archbishop Walter de Gray= (1216-1255). In the same year 'spiritual fraternity' was formally concluded between Ripon and Fountains; and a somewhat similar arrangement was made a little later with Southwell, which since Henry I. had shared with Ripon and Beverley the dignity of a mother-church or pro-cathedral in the diocese of York. In 1224, at the request of the Canons, Archbishop de Gray translated the relics of St. Wilfrid (if such they were) to a new shrine, enshrining the head separately in such a way that it was exposed to view. He also granted an indulgence of thirty days to all who should make pilgrimage to the saint's new resting-place. This second translation never became a feast, but it doubtless stimulated the cult of St. Wilfrid afresh, and probably brought considerable profit to the Church. A few years later, at any rate, an important alteration was made in the fabric, by the building of the present west front with its two flanking towers, and the tall wooden and lead-covered spires which once crowned the latter and the central tower were probably erected at this period. In 1230, the Archbishop founded a seventh prebend--that of Stanwick; and in 1241 sanctioned the addition of the parish of Nidd to the common property of the College. [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT BEFORE SIR G. G. SCOTT'S RESTORATION. (From an old print, by the kind permission of the Ripon Museum.)] As yet, most of the prebends were distinguished by the names of the Canons who held them, or of Saints; and it was not till 1301 that they were named after the principal hamlet or township in each--Stanwick, Monkton, Givendale, Sharow, Nunwick, Studley, Thorp. They were all in the neighbourhood except Stanwick, which was in the North Riding, near Richmond. The Church was (as it still is) parochial as well as collegiate. Each prebend carried with it a cure of souls, yet all (except Stanwick) were included in the huge parish of Ripon, which extended to Pateley Bridge, and in 1300 had a radius of nine or ten miles. Thus the collegiate establishment differed from the usual type in which each prebend was a separate parish with a church of its own. Moreover, there was neither Dean nor Chancellor. The Canons may at first have lived in common, but as early as 1301, and probably earlier, they were dwelling in separate prebendal houses round the Church. There is no evidence that they ever resided on their prebends, except in the case of the Canon of Sharow, whose residence was at that place. The canonries, having been founded by Archbishops of York, were in the gift of the see, or of the Crown when the see was vacant. The Canon of Stanwick was _ex officio_ Ruler of the Choir, whence his obligation to reside in Ripon in spite of the remoteness of his prebend, which was served by a vicar. Similarly the Canon of Monkton was always Treasurer, and had charge of the Chapter-house, the ornaments and plate, and the High Altar. The revenues of the church may be divided as usual under three heads. There was a Common Fund, arising from certain rents, tithes, fees, and oblations; a survival perhaps of a time when the Canons lived in common. Secondly, there were the revenues drawn by the Canons from their respective prebends, and consisting partly of rents, but chiefly of tithes. The prebend of Stanwick was worth about twice as much as any other. Thirdly, there was the Fabric Fund, arising from certain rents, oblations,[13] and licences, from the profits of St. Wilfrid's burning-iron (with which cattle were branded to keep off murrain),[14] and, in later days, of the pok-stone (which was probably regarded as in some way a preventive against the 'pokkes' of sheep and cattle); but especially from the farm of indulgences. When much building was in progress the Canons' incomes were afterwards specially taxed, and once or twice Peter's-pence were actually withheld from the Pope and devoted to architectural purposes. At the time of Archbishop de Gray, the old and somewhat vague jurisdictions in and about Ripon had become more distinct. The parish was a Peculiar,[15] and as such was exempt from the authority of the Archdeacon of Richmond, either by tradition from the days when the church was a monastery, or because of the presence here of the Archbishops. Over this Peculiar (the laity included) the Chapter exercised the spiritual jurisdiction of an archdeacon's court, assisted by the Rural Dean of Ripon, who sat as 'Dean of Christianity.' This 'Court Christian' dealt with testamentary and matrimonial cases, cases of defamation, immorality, neglect of religious duties, etc. Accused persons cleared themselves by compurgation, or underwent penalties (commutable, however), such as being beaten, walking barefoot in the processions, suspension _ab ingressu ecclesiæ_, or excommunication.[16] Lesser offences were dealt with by an archbishop's officer called _penitentiarius_, who heard confessions and enjoined penances. The Archbishop was Ordinary of the Peculiar. He held visitations in the Chapter-house, and could order repairs of buildings, make statutes (in consultation with the Chapter) for the College, and sequestrate its revenues. He also exercised authority over offending Canons and over the inferior clergy of the staff, though the correction of these belonged primarily to the Chapter and especially to the Canon of Stanwick. [Illustration: MEDIÆVAL SEALS. 1. Seal of the Mediæval Chapter. 2. Capitular Seal "ad causas." 3. Common Seal of the Vicars.] For purposes of secular jurisdiction Ripon, with the lands round it, was a Liberty, exempt, that is, from the authority of the Sheriff. The Liberty was almost co-extensive with the Peculiar. Within it were two secular jurisdictions, that of the Archbishop as lord of the manor, and that of the Chapter, which embraced the southern half of the town and many country districts, and which may have originated either with Ealdred's presumable gifts of land out of the manor to form prebends, or (as the charters pretend) from a grant of Athelstan, or perhaps from an original independence enjoyed by the church as a monastery. The Chapter claimed within their sphere the rights attributed to Athelstan's grant, and also assize of bread, ale, weights and measures; dues of fairs and markets; certain feudal dues; power over masterless goods, and to deal with cases of rent, wrongful detention of land, and theft; _cognitio de falso judicio_; execution of royal writs; 'sheriff-tourn'; coroners of their own; in fact the powers of a sheriff and of the justices-in-eyre, with a prison and the right of gaol-delivery, and even of inflicting capital punishment. In cases of homicide, however, a king's justice must sit as assessor. For civil suits there was a provision against 'wager of battle,' and the accused again cleared themselves by compurgation. Archbishop de Gray claimed similar privileges, but wished to exercise them over the whole Liberty, on the ground that the church and its appurtenances were part of his manor (as indeed they very possibly were, originally). Unlike Archbishop Gerard, who had supported the church's privilege against the sheriff, de Gray actually joined the sheriff in invading it. In 1228 the case came before the king's justices in the Chapter-house at Ripon, and the decision was for the Chapter. Thus the division of jurisdictions received from the State an undoubted sanction. Within his sphere the Archbishop appointed his own justices, but on arriving at the limits of that sphere, the king's justices sat with them there on the first day, and were afterwards admitted to sit with them in the town. The Archbishops claimed also that their commissioners should administer the oath of obedience at the mile-limit to those who sought sanctuary. The Archbishops are also said to have had a 'military court,' probably a feudal institution. The memory of de Gray was perhaps held in scant respect at Ripon. He is accused by Matthew Paris of having refused to distribute his corn during a famine, and it was through the erection of Bishopthorpe Palace by him that Ripon ceased to be a favourite provincial residence of the Archbishops. Nevertheless they still frequently visited the town, both for sport and duty. They had a park "six miles in compass," and the fishing in the Ure. The existence, moreover, of a prison here for criminous clerks made the minster a convenient place for the public degradations which the Archbishop was obliged to hold from time to time. On these occasions the offending clerks were brought across to the church, where the Archbishop in full pontificals would hear their avowal of guilt in the nave, and then solemnly divest them of their robes and of their office at the west door. In 1270 came the first echo from the outside world since the reign of Stephen. Prince Edward was setting out on a crusade, and Archbishop Giffard was compelled to exact from the Chapter a twentieth of their temporalities. The town had now attained to some importance, and sent two members to the Model Parliament of 1295. As yet the minster of Archbishop Roger had suffered no change in its main fabric save the rebuilding of the west front, but an alteration was now to be made at the other extremity also, and the eastern portion of the choir was rebuilt with all the elaboration of the Decorated style. Of this work the greater part was probably effected under =Archbishop John Romanus= (1286-1296). In 1293 the almost cathedral rank of the church was marked by the consecration within its walls of a bishop (of Galloway). It was, as has been said, the parish church of the huge parish of Ripon. Yet the town itself possessed at an early period a separate parish church of Allhallows, a memory of which survives in 'Allhallowgate.'[17] There was also an old chapel of the Virgin called the 'Lady-kirk,' in 'Stammergate,' and there were chapels at the two hospitals and the palace. But there were at first few if any places of worship in the surrounding country, and the most remote of the parishioners had been obliged to repair Ripon. This state of things led to the erection of district chapels by the larger landholders under the sanction of the Chapter, as early as the twelfth century, and of these chapels there were eventually at least sixteen. The parishioners, however, still assembled at Ripon on certain feasts, notably Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide, and the feasts of St. Wilfrid's death (October 12th) and translation (April 24th), to which was added later a feast of his nativity, observed on the Sunday after Lammas Day, and in the parish of Ripon only.[18] On St. Wilfrid's feasts the privilege of sanctuary was extended beyond the mile-limit to all who visited the mother-church, and the penalty for molestation without the limit was £6. On Easter Day all the parishioners received the Communion in the minster,[19] and on that day, on Christmas Day, and on the feast of St. Wilfrid's nativity, the district chaplains attended in their copes. Very picturesque, too, must have been the miracle-plays at Easter, Christmas, and Epiphany; the great fairs; the solemn processions, especially at Rogation-tide, when the relics of the Saint were borne in state by representatives of the greater tenants of the church, and attended by the sanctuary-men carrying staves with banners. It is probable that once a year (perhaps at Whitsuntide) the church was visited by clergy and laity from the whole of that division of the diocese to which Ripon was the mother-church. Such annual visitations were the especial privilege of mother-churches, and were a great source of profit. Underneath all this pageantry, however, there was much that was unsatisfactory in the internal affairs of the college. In the thirteenth century even more than afterwards, the great difficulty in the working of secular colleges was non-residence. The Canons were often pluralists, or foreigners appointed under pressure from the Pope or the king, who provided in this way for prominent civil servants. A canon would often leave his prebend in the spiritual charge of a vicar engaged by the year, or under the administration of a proctor, or would even farm it out--sometimes to a layman. Sometimes a canon was suspected of being a layman himself, or a married man. The proctors or lessees dismissed or appointed vicars at their pleasure. The prebendal houses fell into disrepair, and in some cases a plot had been assigned, but no house had been built. Some canons at this period resigned their stalls after an extremely short tenure, or changed from one stall to another. =Archbishop Thomas de Corbridge= (1299-1303) addressed himself to the reform of these evils. He ordered the Canons to look to their prebendal houses. He tried to control their acceptance of benefices in plurality. He forbade them to farm their prebends to any but brother-canons except with his licence. It was he who gave the prebends their territorial names. Most important of all, he decreed in 1303 that the cure of souls in each prebend was to be entrusted to a vicar-perpetual. The collegiate system was indeed breaking down, and the Vicars henceforth were almost as important a body as the Canons, whom they relieved of all responsibility for the parochial work and the performance of the services. Except the Vicar of Stanwick, they all lived at Ripon, and in 1304 one Nicholas de Bondgate provided them with a common residence, which became known as the Bedern[20] (whence 'Bedern Bank'). The office of _penitentiarius_ or of rural dean was often held by one of them. Besides the seven Canons and the six Vicars in Ripon, there were three deacons, three sub-deacons, six thuriblers, and six choristers, and the full officiating staff thus amounted to thirty-one, exclusive of the chantry priests, of whom, however, there were as yet but few. The successor of Archbishop de Corbridge was an ex-Canon of Ripon, =William Greenfield= (=Archbishop= 1304-1315). He rebuilt the chapel of the Palace and founded a chantry in it. It was at Ripon that he put forth, with additions of his own, certain rules against clerical abuses which he had borrowed from the diocese of Chichester. He found indeed much to reform. Already the vicariate was becoming demoralized. Vicars and inferior clergy were addicted to shows and sports, to dances and stage-plays. A chaplain invented a gambling game called "ding-thrifts." What wonder that the laity, then, begged at the altars under pretence of being proctors of absent canons, or intruded into the choir during service--a privilege reserved for the great? And another privilege of rank had been invaded also, for the Archbishop had to direct that only great persons and benefactors were to be buried within the minster. In 1310 two women fought in the graveyard so savagely that it had to be reconsecrated. In his last year the Archbishop had to restrain the proctors of absent canons from acting independently in the administration of the prebends, and from exercising capitular authority. These internal difficulties, however, were presently forgotten in a new danger from without. Already, in 1298, Archbishop de Newark had called upon the Chapter to assist in providing cavalry for Edward I.'s campaign against John Balliol, King of Scots. The King himself is said to have visited the town in 1300. In 1315 the Chapter had sent a representative to a council held by Archbishop Greenfield at Doncaster to consider the defence of the realm. Since Bannockburn the Scots had been raiding the northern counties, and in 1316 Edward II. ordered Ripon to provide maintenance for Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who was to pass through on his way to check the raids. In March 1318 the town sent a contingent to the King's forces, and the money, together with a banner of St. Wilfrid, was provided by =Archbishop William de Melton= (1317-1340). In May of the same year the Scots descended upon Ripon itself. They might have spared the place, for in 1297 it had been the temporary home of the mother of Robert Bruce, now King of Scotland, but no consideration was shown. As there were no town walls, the inhabitants fled to the minster and fortified it. For three days their homes were given over to plunder, and the enemy demanded one thousand marks as the price of a promise not to burn the town altogether. Even the Archbishop urged the townsmen to pay this blackmail lest further damage should be done, but such a sum could not be raised in a moment, and during either this or a subsequent visit the Scots did much damage to the church. The prebends suffered to the extent of over 150 marks, and the hospitals were much crippled. Nor was any satisfaction to be had, save by solemnly excommunicating the enemy on Sundays and festivals. It was probably in consequence of the havoc wrought that in 1322 Parliament, which had been summoned to meet at Ripon, met at York instead. Thrice again after 1318 were forces levied in the Liberty against the Scots--in 1327, in 1333, and in 1342, when Edward III. even offered pardon to the sanctuary-men if they would serve. Meanwhile Archbishop de Melton had been promoting the repair of the minster, a task which included probably the renewal of the spires, the roof, the stained glass, and the woodwork. In 1331-2 he issued some important statutes for the College. Hitherto each Canon (except the Canon of Stanwick) had received an annual dividend out of the Common Fund. Of this fund, a large portion which had always gone to furnish these dividends (or a part of them) was now appropriated exclusively to canons willing to reside. Thus a premium was put upon residence, which was fixed at twelve weeks in the year (not necessarily continuous), and a distinction was admitted between resident and non-resident canons. Again, the Common Fund was now to be charged with the salaries of the Vicars, who had hitherto been precariously paid by the Canons their masters. =Archbishop John de Thoresby= (1352-1373) added to the prebend of Studley the two districts of Dacre and Bewerley, and it was probably about this time that the Lady-chapel (now the Library) was built. In 1375 some part of the church was burnt, and in 1396-7 the central spire seems to have been rebuilt. The town had now recovered its prosperity, for in 1405 it became the residence of the Court, when King Henry IV. was driven from Westminster by a plague. The next reign is marked by an improvement in the status of the Vicars. They had been living dispersed over the town,--indeed, their common residence or Bedern is said to have been destroyed by the Scots. In 1415, therefore, =Archbishop Henry Bowet= (1407-1423), having obtained from Henry V. a charter with a dispensation of the Statute of Mortmain, gave a site out of his manor for a new Bedern; and the vicars themselves, who at this period are commended by both the Archbishop and the King, were at the same time formed into a corporate body having a common seal, and were allowed to elect from their number a Provost. Under this Archbishop there were several instances of canons exchanging their stalls for other benefices. The discipline of the staff seems to have become exceedingly lax by 1439. The church music was neglected. The Mass of Our Lady was not said regularly in the Lady-chapel. The inferior clergy did not study for their examinations, and wore daggers in the Choir. They and the vicars frequented taverns, walked about the nave during service, and absented themselves without leave. The Canons did not attend church in their habits, and the clergy generally indulged in field sports. =Archbishop John Kemp= (1426-1452) did what he could to reform these abuses, and effected some improvement (the nature of which is not clear) in the status of the Vicars, who had been badly treated by the Chapter in financial matters. Later in this century a chantry chaplain is found engaging in dishonest trade; priests fight; laymen assault one another in the minster during service. But mediæval morality in general must not be condemned, of course, for a few recorded crimes. About 1450 the south-east corner of the central tower gave way, and so unsafe was the church that service had to be held in the Lady-kirk. In consequence of this disaster the Canons were obliged to rebuild not only the south and east sides of the tower, but also the east side of the south transept, and eventually part of the south side of the Choir; and it is evident that they would have rebuilt the two remaining sides of the tower, had they not been prevented by the Dissolution. The present rood screen and canopied stalls were put in toward the close of the fifteenth century. In 1502 the Lady-kirk (in which a chantry had been founded in 1392) was handed over by the Chapter to Archbishop Savage, who in turn transferred it to Fountains Abbey. Abbot Huby, intending to make it a colony of Cistercians, rebuilt the east end of it, and enclosed part of its graveyard with a fine stone wall having a strongly-marked base. Of this wall a great part remains in St. Mary-gate. A large doorway in it has been built up. The Lady-kirk itself has vanished long ago. At this time was begun the greatest architectural enterprise that had been undertaken at Ripon since the twelfth century, namely, the rebuilding of the nave of the minster. The Transitional nave, it was said, had become ruinous through age and storms, but the real motive for its destruction was probably an ambition to enlarge the building. The enlargement of aisleless churches was usually begun by the addition of a single aisle, and that on the north side (since the south was usually the side of the graveyard); but at Ripon the south aisle was built first, perhaps because it was always intended that there should be two aisles--an arrangement which there were no cloisters here to prevent. The work was begun in 1502 or 1503. Delayed by a plague in 1506, it was almost complete, as Leland's _Itinerary_ shows,[21] when he visited the town about 1538, but the aisles had not yet been vaulted when the Dissolution came, and had wooden roofs until our own time. Irreparable as is the loss of Archbishop Roger's nave, its successor must surely be placed among the great naves of the Perpendicular period--and it is the latest of them. The work was furthered by =Archbishop Savage= (1501-1507) and by =Cardinal Archbishop Bainbridge= (1508-1514), and two canons must especially be mentioned in connection with it, Andrew Newman, appointed Master of the Fabric in 1502, and =Marmaduke Bradley=, who was paymaster, and who was connected with the repairs after the failure of the central tower, and gave up to the fabric a large portion of his fees for residence. The last work done before the Reformation was probably the rebuilding of the three westernmost bays on the south side of the choir, which had been weakened doubtless by the accident to the central tower. By this time the church contained nine chantries, namely, those of St. Andrew (founded 1234); of the Holy Trinity _supra summum altare_ (1345); of St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist (1364); of St. James (1407-8); of Our Lady 'in the Church' (1408); of St. Thomas of Canterbury (1418); of the Holy Trinity _subtus altare_ (1466); of Our Lady 'in the Lady-loft'; and of St. Wilfrid (? 1420). In some of these, other chantries had been merged. There were also four or five chantries in various chapels in the parish. The chantry-chaplains were not strictly on the staff, but helped on Sundays and festivals. As their chantries did not give them sufficient occupation, they sometimes held in addition such offices as that of Proctor of an absent canon, Curator of the Fabric, Sub-Precentor, Sub-Treasurer, or Chamberlain, the holder of this post being the chief financial officer of the community. On the eve of the Reformation the discipline of the staff was again very unsatisfactory, chiefly through the influence of the Treasurer, Canon Christopher Dragley, who employed the vestry clerks on his private business, disposed of chantries prematurely, and encouraged the Vicars, who were now living dispersed, to be insubordinate. It was the custom for choir and clergy to adjourn after Prime to the Chapter-house, where the martyrology for the day was read and notices were given out. Here, too, once a week sat the Chapter Court. But Dragley was able to hinder all this by keeping the door locked. From 1533 to 1539 he was Treasurer, Canon Residentiary, and President of the Chapter, and the general laxity was largely due to this concentration of authority in the hands of one bad man through non-residence. The case of Dragley drew several decrees from =Archbishop Edward Lee= (1531-1544):--that no vicar should be appointed without the consent of a majority in Chapter; that the Chapter seal must be kept by three people; that one canon must no longer form a quorum (as hitherto) in the Chapter Court, and as a question had arisen whether the powers of the Chapter were not entirely vested in the canons-resident,[22] it was laid down that the latter were indeed competent to dispose of certain chantries and other offices, and to exercise the Chapter's spiritual jurisdiction, but that in most other matters the whole body must be consulted. As most of them were always absent, this means, perhaps, that they were represented in Chapter by their proctors. There is an instance in 1546 of the Vicars, chantry priests, and deacons being allowed to take part in a Chapter meeting. An attack on relics was begun in 1538, and it was probably about this date that the shrine of St. Wilfrid was destroyed. In 1539 came the suppression of Fountains Abbey, the abbot who surrendered it being no other than Marmaduke Bradley. He had been Abbot since 1536, holding his canonry at Ripon at the same time, and after the suppression of the Abbey, he became once more a power at Ripon. As sole residentiary in 1544, 1545, and 1546, he appears to have used his influence well, and played a prominent part in the last architectural operations before the Dissolution. The old system of sanctuary, suited only to times when the State was weak, seems to have died out about this period. In 1545 came an Act for the dissolution of chantries and hospitals. As 'Supreme Head of the Church' Henry VIII. renewed the visitatorial authority of the Archbishops, and both he and Edward VI. confirmed the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Chapter. But the end was imminent. In 1547 the College was dissolved,[23] and its revenues were annexed to the Duchy of Lancaster. There had been attached to the church for centuries a =Grammar School=, for which the Chapter had claimed a monopoly of education within the Parish and Liberty, forbidding in 1468 the establishment of any other school without their special licence. This ancient seminary was apparently dissolved, and a new grammar school independent of the church was founded by Edward VI., whose benefaction was completed by Mary, the endowment being provided from the revenues of four of the late chantries. There had also been a Song-school, but it was perhaps merely a room in which boys of the Grammar School were trained to be choristers. Out of the confiscated revenues one or more clergy were paid to minister to the parish, but under Mary the old state of things was in some measure brought back. There was once more a Chamberlain, whose accounts show much the same items as do those of his mediæval predecessors, and the old religion was restored; indeed, there were six altars in the church. Under Elizabeth there was a return to the arrangement of Edward, the clergy (now as many as five in number) being denominated vicars. Archbishop Sandys (1577-1588), Lord Burleigh, Richard Hooker, Moses Fowler (afterwards the first Dean), and others tried to bring about the establishment of a theological college in the Bedern, and an increase of the endowments of the church, but in vain. The town must have lost all favour in 1569, by taking part in the Rising in the North. It was visited by the rebel earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, many of the townsmen and local gentry joining them, and for the last time the minster witnessed the celebration of the Mass. On the collapse of the rebellion, a number of those who had taken up arms were hanged at Ripon in sight of their homes, and the church suffered much damage from the Queen's soldiery, who stripped the lead from the roof. Like the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, this Rising was a protest against the Reformation, and the records of Archbishop Young (1561-1568), and of the Court of High Commission (1580), show that the people of Ripon still clung to the old religion. The pillage of Henry and Edward had no doubt destroyed most of the ornaments of the church, but some still remained or had been renewed under Mary, and the clergy displayed a marked reluctance in removing them; 'Images,' even when removed, were concealed in private houses. One vicar named Thomas Blackburne had continued the old practice of holding churchings in the Lady-chapel, and was ordered publicly to renounce this error, as well as that of having left "that olde, abhominable, and supersticious vawte called the Wilfride's nedle[24] and the alter therein" undefaced. One townsman is punished for having taken part in the Mass during the late Rising. The clergy generally were unclerical in dress and lax in their performance of the reformed services, which the parishioners showed a corresponding unwillingness to attend, while the old fasts and festivals were not wholly given up. [Illustration: RIPON MINSTER ANTERIOR TO 1660. _Note_.--This representation much resembles that engraved on the old communion plate. As a view of Ripon Minster, it affords an instance of the inaccuracy of old architectural drawings; but it shows, at any rate, the effect of the spires.] =The Chapter revived.=--On the accession of =James I.= a second futile attempt was made to obtain for Ripon a theological college.[25] The influence, however, of the queen, =Anne of Denmark=, gained from the king a greater boon, and in 1604 he re-established the Chapter. Under the new constitution there were six prebendaries, and for the first time a Dean. Much of the old endowments was restored, but the new stalls could not be identified with the old territorial prebends, and were therefore distinguished as 'the first stall,' 'the second stall,' and so on. After 1607 the Prebendaries were empowered to elect a Sub-Dean. The cure of souls was discharged by two vicars, and the choir was composed of six lay-clerks and six choristers. The parish remained a Peculiar. The spiritual jurisdiction of the Chapter and the Archbishop had been somewhat restricted by the Reformation, and the secular jurisdiction of the Liberty--especially in criminal cases--had been partly transferred to the king's itinerant justices. The Archbishop, however, still retained some criminal jurisdiction and also his 'Court Military,' which, strange to say, came to hear civil cases. During the latter half of the fifteenth century the secular cases heard by the Chapter had been chiefly cases of debt, and under the new constitution they were authorized to hold a court, which was called the Canon Fee Court, for cases of debt and other civil cases. Some obscurity exists as to the mediæval relation of the Archbishop to the town. There was, of course, a town council, and its president the Wakeman[26] (an official peculiar to Ripon) had charge of what would now be called the town police. The ancient town bridges (of which only one remains) were under the charge of the Archbishop. During the sixteenth century the borough constitution had been the subject of disputes, in which Cardinal Wolsey had been concerned in 1517 and Archbishop Hutton in 1598. James I. therefore now granted a new Charter, under which the Wakeman became a Mayor; and henceforth the borough had also an independent court of its own. The dissolution of the Chapter in 1547, coming as it did upon the decay of the manufacture of woollen cloth, had been a great blow to the prosperity of the inhabitants,[27] and it was no wonder that when James visited the town in 1617 he received an ovation. In 1625 a plague, such as had not occurred here since 1546, prevented the country folk from approaching the minster, and obliged them to have their children baptized in the fields. Several changes in the surroundings of the church took place at this time. The Bedern, with its quadrangle, hall, and chapel, had been demolished by 1625, in which year the Deanery was erected, perhaps upon its site. Of the old prebendal houses some had been sold, or let; others, perhaps, were occupied by the Prebendaries of the new foundation. In 1629 the ancient Palace, which stood to the north of the minster and west of the Deanery, was turned into a poor-house. The town (and doubtless the minster) was visited in 1633 by Charles I. on his way to his coronation at Edinburgh.[28] A few years later he was to pass through again, a captive on his way to Holmby House. Ripon had escaped the Wars of the Roses, but it was not unscathed by the Great Rebellion, for in 1643 it was occupied by Sir Thomas Mauleverer, a Parliamentary officer, whose soldiery broke into the minster and shattered the magnificent glass in the great east window, and doubtless much other glass besides. At the end of the war the manorial rights were sold to Lord Fairfax, and the Chapter was again dissolved, "one who called himself Dr. Richardson" being "appointed to preach in the minster by the Parliament, tho' in all probability he was never in any Orders, Presbyterian or Episcopal."[29] The Chapter was revived at the Restoration, but all its members were new save one. In the same year (1660) the central spire, which had been injured by lightning in 1593, fell through the roof, wrecking many of the beautiful canopies of the stalls. The damage to the choir and other parts of the church, estimated at £6000, was repaired with money raised under a brief from Charles II., but the spire was never rebuilt, and in 1664, to avoid any further catastrophe, the western spires, though sound, were deliberately removed.[30] The place of the spires was ill supplied by the erection of battlements and pinnacles, which were renewed in 1797. It was perhaps at this period that the west gate of the precincts was pulled down--a mediæval structure which contained at least seven rooms, and which stood at the bottom of Kirkgate. The graveyard in the middle ages contained a cross, at which a service was held on Palm Sunday; also, possibly, a mortuary chapel and a well associated with St. Wilfrid--(not, of course, the St. Wilfrid's well which now fills the public baths). Of these things there is now not a trace, save, perhaps, the stump of the cross, near the south wall of the nave. Nor are there any undoubted remains of the mediæval wall which enclosed the precincts, except the fragment with an archway in it, which still forms the southern entrance. The mediæval prisons, which belonged respectively to the Archbishop and the Chapter, have long vanished, as has also that which appertained to the Court of Canon Fee, but there is a Liberty prison of some age in 'Stammergate.' Most of the archiepiscopal palace had disappeared by 1830, but there was still a portion which was used as the court-house of the Liberty. In that year this was pulled down, and the present court-house was built upon the site. A memory of the Palace survives in 'Hall Yard,' and there still remains what is, perhaps, a remnant of the actual fabric, in the shape of an old cottage with an external staircase, which stands behind the wall to the west of the public garden that fronts the north side of the church. In the above-mentioned wall is an Early English doorway, with a dripstone adorned with the nailhead moulding. The door has a flat-arched wooden frame, the spandrels of which are carved with _fleurs-de-lys_, while the wooden tympanum above has Perpendicular panelling. This doorway is not, perhaps, a relic of the Palace. It is not in its original position, and indeed is said to have come originally from St. Mary Magdalene's Hospital. Several of the old houses adjoining the Cathedral on the south side, and along St. Agnes-gate, may possibly have been inhabited by the Prebendaries of the Second Collegiate foundation, but the stone-roofed house adjoining Bondgate Green Bridge is the only one in Ripon which can be identified with a mediæval prebend--that of Thorp, and even here the existing fabric can scarcely be pre-Reformation. St. John's Hospital,[31] whose inmates for several centuries have been women, was unfortunately rebuilt in 1869, but the modern chapel (served by one of the cathedral clergy) retains a bell of 1663. The old Grammar School,[32] which stood at the foot of the steps from St. Agnes-gate to the Minster, has been pulled down since 1872. Meanwhile the Minster itself had been undergoing restoration--in 1829 and the following years at the hands of Blore, when upwards of £3000 were spent, and from 1862 to 1870 at the hands of Sir G. Gilbert Scott, and at a cost of about £30,000. From the eighth century up to 1836 Ripon had been in the diocese of York. In that year was created the modern diocese of Ripon, and the church thus attained to cathedral rank. It had, however, always had some pretension to that rank, not merely as a mother-church but because (up to 1836) the Archbishops had their throne in the choir; indeed, it is styled a cathedral in documents of 1537 and 1546. The diocese is composed of parts of Yorkshire taken from the sees of York and Chester, and included Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford, Halifax and Huddersfield, until in 1888 a portion including Halifax and Huddersfield was taken away to form part of a new diocese of Wakefield. There are three archdeaconries: those of Richmond, Ripon, and Craven. The first is a survival, in a diminished form, of the ancient archdeaconry of the same name; the others are modern; the last is the only one which is held without a canonry. In accordance with the Act of 1840, the Sub-Deanery has been suppressed, the Prebendaries have been reduced to four, and their style has been changed to that of Canons. In 1841, provision was made for the appointment of Canons honorary. There is also a precentor, and three other clergy who act as minor canons, and assist him in discharging the cure of souls--for though the huge mediæval parish has been gradually divided into many, the greater portion of the city itself is still served from the cathedral church. The choir is composed of six lay-clerks and twelve choristers. There was as late as 1890 a Choir-school, but most of the present choristers come from Jepson's Hospital--a charity which was founded in 1672, in Water Skellgate, and the old buildings of which were pulled down in 1878. There are still some relics of the ancient jurisdictions of the Chapter and the Archbishop. Though the secular jurisdiction has been gradually reduced by legislation to the scope of Quarter and Petty Sessions, the Liberty has Quarter Sessions of its own, and its justices are still nominated by the Archbishop, while his Court Military survived at any rate into the nineteenth century. A copyhold court, called the Canon Fee Court, is also still held by the Chapter. As regards ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the mediæval right of the Chapter to hear testamentary and matrimonial cases (which were not taken away from the ecclesiastical courts till 1857) probably survived at least until the abolition of the Peculiar. Peculiars, with but one or two exceptions, had ceased to exist by 1850, and Ripon, once exempt from archidiaconal authority, is now itself an archdeaconry. The Bishop of Ripon has, of course, his Consistory court, which is held at the Cathedral. In ending this account of one of the most venerable of English churches, it is worth while to remark that, of the four mother-churches of the old diocese of York, Ripon is the only one besides York Cathedral itself which still has a collegiate foundation. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] FOOTNOTES: [1] The archbishopric of York arose out of the bishopric of Northumbria in the eighth century. [2] The name in this form is modern. In common speech the street is always 'Stammergate,' which is probably a corruption of 'Stanbriggate.' The latter is the original name of the street, and appears frequently in mediæval records. It has reference to a stone bridge over a brook where the gas-works now are. The continuation of this street toward the Cathedral is called St. Mary-gate, but this name again seems to be modern, and to have arisen from a notion that 'St. Mary-gate' is the origin of the word 'Stammergate'--a notion which would be rendered more plausible by the fact that this was the situation of the Lady-kirk. [3] The question whether his monastery church stood over the Saxon crypt which exists below the present Cathedral is reserved for Chap. III. [4] For the place of Ripon in the theory of the direct connection of Saxon architecture with the Comacine Guild of Italy, see _The Cathedral Builders_, by Leader Scott, p. 139 _sqq._ [5] An MS. which has been thought to be identical with Wilfrid's gift came into the market recently, and has passed to America. [6] The Saint's return after his long exile is still commemorated at Ripon, early in August, on the first Saturday after Lammas Day, when a man dressed as a Saxon bishop and riding a grey horse is escorted through the streets. [7] This liturgical term sometimes refers to the _burial_ of a saint, sometimes, as here, to the _death_. [8] There is also mention of an Abbot Tylberht, but he may be the same as Tatberht. [9] _I.e._, 'Elves-how'--'the hill of fairies.' Coins of Aella and other early kings have been found in the hill. [10] At a later period the Chapter claimed also that 'St. Wilfrid's men' need not pay tolls when travelling on business through the realm, and on one occasion they issued to a Ripon clerk a kind of passport. [11] Frisia's debt was remembered in the seventeenth century, when one of the Canons of Antwerp wrote an account of Ripon monastery for his countrymen. [12] Until Walbran drew attention to this passage, the rebuilding was attributed to Thurstan. [13] Especially at St. Wilfrid's shrine. [14] It has been suggested that this was the iron which in Saxon times had been used for the ordeal of fire. [15] A Peculiar is a district taken out of its geographical surroundings for purposes of ecclesiastical jurisdiction (_Sir W. Anson_). [16] In later times (at any rate) the Archbishop apparently had a spiritual court of his own. A Chapter minute of 1467 declares a certain person accused of a spiritual offence to be "non de foro Capituli sed de foro Archiepiscopi, unde litteræ correctionis emanârunt." [17] This church had disappeared, as Leland tells us, long before his visit to Ripon, which took place about 1538. The dates of its erection and demolition are both unknown. In the Chapter-house is preserved a key which has been assigned to the fifteenth century, and which has been thought to have belonged to Allhallows, but it is thought that the church disappeared at an early date. [18] This Sunday is still called Wilfrid Sunday at Ripon. The Saturday preceding it is the day on which the town commemorates the Saint's return from his first appeal to Rome. The season is regarded as a holiday, and another relic of the nativity festival survives in the fair held on the Thursday after August 2nd. [19] The Easter Communion has survived till our own day. Within living memory, and at a period when Early Celebrations were not usual, it was celebrated at 7 A.M., and people drove in from the outlying places. [20] This word is probably connected with the Anglo-Saxon 'béd,' a prayer (whence 'bedesmen'), and means a 'house of prayer.' In one passage of the records it is rendered in Latin by _proseucha_. [21] It was Walbran, again, who drew attention to Leland's phraseology here. [22] The Canon of Stanwick was always in Ripon, but was not considered technically a canon-resident. Perhaps he was not entitled to the special fees for residence. He had, however, full capitular rights. These had been denied to him by Dragley, but were now restored by the Archbishop. [23] If the Ripon hospitals were dissolved they were re-established, for they are still fulfilling their purpose. [24] _I.e._, the Saxon crypt. [25] The project is being realized in our own day. [26] _I.e._, the watchman, or setter of the watch. The town motto is, "Except the Lord keep the city, the _Wakeman_ waketh in vain." After 1598 a horn was blown every evening to denote the setting of the watch. If any house was robbed between horn-blowing and sunrise, compensation could be claimed from the town. To support this system a small tax was levied on each house-door, and if a house had two doors it paid more, as being more liable to be robbed. A relic of the system still survives. Every night a horn is blown thrice before the Mayor's door at 9 P.M. and thrice at the Market Cross afterwards. The ancient horn of the Wakeman (which appears on the city arms) is still worn by the Sergeant-at-mace in civic processions. [27] Since then, however, another industry had arisen--the manufacture of spurs, for which Ripon became famous, and James was presented with a pair. This industry did not die out till the end of the last century, and a spur is still the crest of the city. The manufacture of saddle-trees, which flourished here in the sixteenth century, is still carried on. [28] In 1640 he was at war with the Scots for their opposition to episcopacy, and it was at Ripon that the disgraceful negotiations were begun, by which a sum of £850 a day was to be paid to maintain their invading army, pending a more permanent settlement. The house in which the 'Treaty of Ripon' was negotiated stood near Ailcy Hill, and disappeared about the beginning of the century. Charles is said to have visited the town four times altogether. [29] Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy," quoted in _Surtees Soc._, Vol. 78. There is a tablet to Richardson's wife in the south Choir-aisle. [30] The following is probably the true version of a story that is told in connection with their demolition. One of the workmen had been hoisted by means of a pulley, and was being held aloft by his comrades below, when he spied some coursing in progress on Bondgate Green. Seeing the hare well away and the dogs straining in the leash, he shouted "Let go!" And his comrades below did. [31] For the other hospitals, the 'Thorp' house, and other old buildings still standing, see Chap. IV. [32] Ripon Grammar School has produced an Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton (one of the two of that name who held the office from 1595 to 1606 and from 1749 to 1757 respectively: the latter Hutton became Archbishop of Canterbury); also Beilby Porteous, Bishop of London (1776-1787), and Dr. William Stubbs, late Bishop of Oxford. [Illustration: THE WEST DOORWAYS.] CHAPTER II. THE EXTERIOR. Built upon the verge of a slope, along whose base the Skell hurries eastwards under many bridges to join the Ure among the meadows a half-mile below the town, Ripon Cathedral stands unusually well.[33] Of general views the two best, perhaps, are to be had from the wooden bridge by Bondgate Green, and from the south-east gate of the graveyard. Unfortunately lack of funds prevented Sir Gilbert Scott from raising the roofs of nave and transept to their original pitch; but what most injures the general effect is the lowness of the central tower, which is no higher than those at the west end. This fault, however, must have been far less noticeable when all three towers were crowned with lofty spires. And, even as it stands, the exterior of Ripon is dignified and not unworthy of its commanding site. The size of the clearstorey windows, the severity of the transept, the obvious variety of style and date throughout the building--these are the features that strike the observer most forcibly. Several kinds of material have been employed. Up to almost the end of the thirteenth century the builders used a coarse gritstone such as is found five miles to the south-west at Brimham Rocks, and also a finer gritstone or sandstone that may have come from Hackfall. After that date they built with magnesian limestone, brought partly, perhaps, from near York, but chiefly, it would seem, from Quarry Moor, a mile south of the city. At the last restoration the older parts were repaired with Hackfall stone, and the later parts with limestone from Quarry Moor and Monkton Moor, and so extensive were the repairs needed on the exterior, that the church somewhat belies, by its appearance, its real antiquity. The most picturesque approach is from High St. Agnes-gate by a flight of steps, which ascend through an old arch to an avenue of limes that leads up to the south door; but it is better, perhaps, that the survey should begin at the west end. =The West Front= was doubtless the object of two indulgences, issued respectively by Archbishop de Gray in 1233 and by Pope Alexander IV. in 1258, and was therefore erected just before or during the struggle between Henry III. and Simon de Montfort, in the best period of the Early English style. The height of the gable is said to be 103 feet, and that of the towers 110 feet, and the front is divided by the string-courses into four stages. In the central compartment the lowest stage is approached by three steps, and is filled by three doorways, set in a thickening of the wall, and surmounted by gables finished with crosses. The central entrance, higher, more widely splayed, and more deeply recessed than the others, has five orders and five triple shafts in the jamb, while they have three orders and three shafts, the innermost of which is triple and the others single. As usual in this style, the shafts are detached and not worked on the stones of the jamb. The mouldings of the capitals are carried through the jamb from end to end, and on the front of the piers between the archways is a curious moulding which resembles an undercut roll set up on end, and which has a capital as if it were a shaft. In the arches the mouldings are chiefly rounds and hollows: many of the former are filleted, and some of the latter are filled with the dog-tooth (an ornament peculiar to this style), which is more profusely employed in the central arch than in the others. The terminations of the dripstones are foliated and stand out detached. The central gable is adorned with a square panel of foliage, and either of the others with a sunk foliated quatrefoil, and between the gables are spouts issuing from the heads of animals. It is worthy of remark that all three doors open into the nave; for as a rule when a church has three west doors, two of them open into the aisles.[34] The wooden doors in these and all the doorways of the church are of considerable age, and those in the central archway here bear the date 1673 in nails. Above the doors is a tier of five lancet windows, and above these another tier, also of five, which diminish in height toward the sides, the last window at either end being, however, as high as the tier below. These tiers occupy the whole width of the compartment. Above them, again, is a group of three small lancets graduated to the gable and placed very high, with a string-course below them. These serve to light the space between the internal and external roofs. In all this work the detail is of the very best: the various arches are richly moulded and supported by clusters of engaged shafts, which in the two great tiers are banded at about half their height, and the dog-tooth ornament is everywhere employed profusely. The lower tier is the more elaborate--its mouldings more numerous, its shafts more richly clustered, its capitals covered with foliage; and between the second and third lancets from the right there is a small niche with a toothed edge and the remains of a figure. At either end of the two tiers an ornament not unlike the ball-flower of the Decorated style is carried up the jamb, and a bold corbel-table runs up the sides of the gable, under the apex of which there is a trefoil panel, while the whole is crowned by an elaborate cross. [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE NORTH-WEST.] In the towers the lowest of the four stages is relieved by a little arcade of six trefoiled arches, with detached shafts, fluted capitals, and dripstones not trefoiled and terminating in heads. Each of the three upper stages is occupied by three tall lancets, of which that in the centre, higher and broader than the others, is pierced and (except in the belfry) glazed. In their enrichment these arcades resemble the windows of the central compartment. The second stage is not quite so high here in the towers as it is there, and the level of the string-course above is consequently broken. The third stage, taller than the second, reaches to the springing of the gable. The fourth, taller than the third, rises somewhat above the gable cross, and the shafts of the lancets are twice banded, while above are two circular panels, which on the north tower are raised and contain quatrefoils, but on the south tower are sunk and contain trefoils. On the other faces of these towers the arches are not so richly moulded, and the shafts are single and also detached, except in the uppermost stage of the north tower, where they are engaged and filleted. As the second stage does not descend so low upon the western face as upon the other faces, the string-course below it, after passing round the corners of the façade, is stopped, and when it is resumed it passes above the sill of the arcade, being carried round the little plinths of the shafts. All the string-courses, it will be noticed, are enriched with the nailhead moulding. The buttresses rise to the parapets without diminishing in breadth or projection--an early feature, and three large rolls or beads are worked upon their edge. Those that flank the portal have each a large niche at the bottom, with engaged shafts, and the head and dripstone trefoiled. At the corners of the façade, where the staircases are, the buttresses are triple. The original corbel-table, surmounted by a row of dog-tooth ornament, remains at the top of the towers, but the battlements and pinnacles have been put up since the removal of the spires in 1664, and were renewed in 1797. The bells, ten in number, are in the south tower. Of the mediæval peal, which consisted of six bells, the largest, known as the _Klank Knoll_, was made in 1379 at York, and perhaps hung in the north tower; while some of the others seem to have been made in Ripon in 1391. They were all recast in 1761 by Lester & Pack of London, after which there were eight. Two of these (Nos. 4 and 7) were recast in 1866 by Warner of London, and two new bells (Nos. 1 and 2), by Shaw of Bradford, have been added since 1890. The ninth bell is rung every evening at nine for the curfew. The mediæval clock, mentioned in 1379, has long vanished; another was put up in 1723; the present clock (by Thwaites of Clerkenwell) dates from 1808. The whole front has been much restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, especially the doorways and the towers. The latter were badly cracked through settlement (due partly to the fact that in either tower one of the sides is older than the rest),[35] but, as Sir Gilbert himself declared, they are once more strong enough to bear spires, and it is to be hoped that the hint will some day be taken. The more the west front of Ripon is studied, the more it becomes apparent how much thought has been expended upon it. Yet as a work of art it is perplexing. To some it will appear beautiful as a design; to others its excellence of detail will be its only commendation, and they will complain that the tiers of windows are wider than the gable, that there is a disproportion between the little arcade in the lowest stage of the towers and the great lancets in the upper stages, that the height of the latter makes the towers appear top-heavy, that the whole façade lacks projection and depth of shade, and that there is too much glass. Some dissatisfaction was felt, as the Fabric Rolls indicate, in 1379, when masons were employed to divide each of the large windows into two lights with a quatrefoil above.[36] The mullions and quatrefoils remained till our own day, when they were removed by Sir Gilbert Scott, whose action the present state of expert opinion on restoration would severely condemn. =The Nave. North Side.=--By being rebuilt with the addition of aisles, the nave became as wide as the west front. Its width is 87 feet internally and nearly 100 feet externally, and it is the widest nave in England after York, Winchester, Chichester, and St. Paul's. The date of the rebuilding is indicated by a Chapter minute of 1502, which alludes to the _onus canonicis modo impositum super reædificationem navis_. The Fabric Rolls mention the purchase of stone in 1503, and the roofing of some "new work" in 1505, while a will of 1508 requires the testator's body to be buried in "the new work of the College Church." These are doubtless references to the south side, which is evidently the older and bears internally the arms of Archbishop Savage (1501-1507). Again, an indulgence of 1512, by Archbishop Bainbridge (1508-1514), alluding to the demolition of the old nave as then complete, suggests that the north wall had been left standing till then, and the laying of the foundation of the north aisle, which bears his arms, is mentioned in the Roll for 1512-13. It appears from the Rolls that the main roof was up by 1520-21. Lastly, Leland's allusion to "the body of the Chirch of late dayes made of a great Widnesse" shows that the main part of the work was finished at any rate by about 1538.[37] The nave is divided--east of the towers--into six bays, of which the easternmost is narrower than the rest, to answer to a fragment of the old nave preserved within. The plinth is considerably higher than that of the west front. On the north side, the six buttresses project 5 feet at the base and rise to the parapet in two stages, which are crowned by gables. These gables have their sides curved inwards and are adorned with crockets and finials, the latter being attached to the front of the gable, while grotesques project from the angles. The windows are of three lights, and are rather acutely jointed and deeply set for such late work, and their arches are well moulded, a broad hollow running up the sides. As is often the case in late work, there are no sub-arches in the tracery, and the mullions are carried up through the head. The easternmost of these windows is of two lights, and has a transom in the tracery, and the westernmost is shortened to allow of a doorway of four-centred form beneath. Below the sills runs a string-course, which rises to pass over the door. The parapet is battlemented, not for military purposes but for ornament, and at intervals are the beginnings of panelled pinnacles, set diagonally and partially embedded in the battlements. The clearstorey has no pilasters or buttresses, but where it joins the west tower a projecting strip of masonry may be seen half imbedded in the Early English work and half in the Perpendicular. This is, without doubt, the upper part of one of the buttresses of the old nave. The clearstorey windows are actually larger than those of the aisle below, and are again rather acutely pointed for late work. They are of five lights, and the two mullions in the middle are carried up through the head, but a sub-arch comprises the two outer lights on either side. The last window eastwards is of three lights, is shorter than the rest, and has several transoms in the tracery. In the parapet, the coping is not carried down the sides of the battlements as it is on the aisles, and the rudimentary pinnacles spring from grotesque corbels at the string-course, with a plain corbel at the side of each to carry the water-spout. =The Central Tower. North and West Sides.=--The central tower of Ripon is probably unique among towers in being divided vertically between two different styles of architecture. Its north and west sides are Archbishop Roger's work,[38] but the other sides are Perpendicular, having been rebuilt after the collapse of the south-east angle. Seen from the north-west, however, it presents much the same appearance now as in the twelfth century, and either side displays a pair of round-headed windows, with the weathering of the original roof rising high between them and (on the west face) cutting off their corners. The windows have a shaft in the jamb, and the abacus of the capitals is continued round the tower as a string, but interrupted by the buttresses and weatherings, as is also another string below the sills. In the windows of the north side there is a space or tympanum over the inner arch. Each corner of the tower was strengthened by a pair of flat buttresses, with one shaft at the corner itself and another at the inner side of either buttress, and with the shafts banded half way up and again near the top. These buttresses are received in an overhanging corbel-table, above which runs a hollow moulding, filled with dog-tooth ornament of a large size and continued round the projections that serve for gargoyles. The use of this Early English ornament in a scheme which might otherwise be pure Norman affords a good instance of the Transitional character of the work. The battlements are later. =The North Transept=, with the three adjacent bays of the choir, gives some idea of the external appearance of Archbishop Roger's church.[39] The date of the beginning of the work ascribed to him is placed within his lifetime (1154-1181) by his own words quoted in Chapter I. The transept is divided by the string-courses into four stages, and has a very massive plinth which is lower than that of the nave, thus expressing the slope of the ground. The west wall is shorter than the east and has two bays only, but south of the second bay, and separated from it by a flat pilaster, is a narrow space, along the top of which are the remains of a cornice: the two bays proper are separated by a recessed buttress of some projection. One round-headed window, divided by a mullion, appears in the second stage; and in the fourth stage are two plain, round-headed windows, not subdivided. The original corbel-table remains above, but it is surmounted by a (probably) fourteenth century battlemented parapet, which is returned over the central buttress, forming a square turret, which has a (renewed) gargoyle below it, and is pierced with a cross. The buttresses at the north-west corner of the transept, where is a staircase, are clustered and rise to the top of the wall, and like most Norman buttresses, and some of Early English date (as in the west front), they do not diminish as they ascend. The large buttress on the west side of this corner has two carved stones built into it at the height of about eighteen feet from the ground. They are covered with patterns resembling the knots so often found on ancient crosses, and are of especial interest as being possibly survivals of the church built by St. Wilfrid.[40] It is noticeable that the first string-course is the only one which is not carried round the buttresses at this corner. A recessed buttress of the same type separates the end of the transept from that of an aisle which is thrown out from its eastern side. [Illustration: DOORWAY, NORTH TRANSEPT.] The lowest stage of this north elevation is blank save for a rather interesting doorway set in a thickening of the wall near the western corner. In this doorway the innermost arch is of unusual form--a trefoil resting on corbels--and its edges are left square and plain. Over it is a semicircular arch of three orders with three detached shafts in either jamb, and as usual throughout almost all Archbishop Roger's work, the arch has the edge-roll between hollows (here on every order), the shafts are detached, their bases round upon square, and their capitals square-topped, with the edge of the abacus hollowed. The capitals here are enriched with good foliage of a rather classical type. In the stage above are three round-headed windows with a shaft in either jamb and foliage on the capitals. Each of these windows, like that on the west side, and several in the other transept, has been divided by a mullion into two lights, presumably in the fourteenth century.[41] The third stage, which corresponds to the triforium within, is blank here as on the west side, and in the fourth stage are three round-headed windows, plainly recessed and chamfered. The gable, on which stands a plain cross, has been lowered, as is shown by the weathering on the tower, and its sides, after descending, take an upward turn to meet the corners. It is flanked by two lofty square turrets, which have been compared with those on the west front of Tewkesbury. They have a shaft at each angle, are pierced on each face with two round-headed openings under a round arch, with a string below running round the turret, and are surmounted by pyramidal stone caps ending in pommels and having a rude pinnacle at each corner. The end of the aisle is set back, and displays a window like the three above the door, but without the dividing mullion; and above this a round-headed niche, doubtless once a window that lighted the space over the aisle-vault; while a round arch over this niche, and a little pointed arch on the buttress adjacent westwards, carry a curious thickening of the masonry above. The arrangement of the windows here breaks the continuity of the first string-course, which, after crossing the main elevation, has to be stopped and resumed at a lower level in order to pass beneath the windows of the aisle. At the corner of the latter are more clustered buttresses, terminating below the parapet, and above them rises a plain gabled pinnacle (an addition, probably, of the fourteenth century), while another buttress, rising from the inclined coping of the aisle-wall, runs up the clearstorey. The east side of the aisle has two more buttresses like those at the corner, and consists of two bays, each containing a window like that at the end. It is hard to say whether the moulded string or cornice below the parapet is original, but the gargoyle which juts from it and the parapet itself, with its cruciform piercings, are not earlier than the fourteenth century. The roofs of the aisles in both transepts and in the choir have been lowered, and it has been suggested that this was done at the time when the Minster was fortified against the Scots, in order to afford better standing-room for armed men,[42] and the various battlements on choir and transepts were probably erected for the same occasion. Here the round arches of the triforium have been built up, and the clearstorey harmonizes with the more elaborate scheme of the choir. The wall is divided into three bays by flat pilasters received in the cornice, and each bay contains a round arch, pierced and glazed, between two lower and narrower pointed arches, all resting on single detached shafts. Between the buttresses runs a corbel-table, supporting a battlemented parapet of Decorated character, in which the merlons are of great width in proportion to the embrasures--an early feature--and have the usual cruciform piercings, so splayed at the back as to leave no doubt that they were really intended for the use of archers. The three gargoyles below have been renewed, and none of the gargoyles on choir or transepts are earlier, perhaps, than the Decorated period. =The Choir. North Side.=--Here the three westernmost bays of the aisle and clearstorey respectively are Archbishop Roger's work. Two flat pilaster-buttresses rise out of the slope of the plinth and run up the aisle-wall, each terminating short of the parapet in two sets-off close together. The level of the window-sills was the same here as in the transept, but the string-course has been broken in the Decorated period by the insertion of three slender windows, each having two lights with a quatrefoil above. Above the windows comes the moulded string or cornice continued from the transept, and above this the pierced merlons of the Decorated battlement are again very broad in proportion to the embrasures. Instead of being built up, the exposed arches of the triforium have here been glazed. The clearstorey resembles that of the transept, but the corbel table is surmounted here by a slope, on which rest two large gargoyles (renewed), and instead of a Decorated battlement there is a plain coping. The last three bays of the clearstorey and the last two of the aisle are Decorated work, probably of the end of the thirteenth century, and here the level of the plinth is again lowered to suit the slope of the ground. In the aisle the two bays are separated from the rest and from each other by buttresses having a projection of 8 feet. Either of these buttresses is crowned by a gable having a finial, and is surmounted by a tall square pinnacle to receive the thrust of a flying buttress that spans the aisle; and either pinnacle has its sides panelled and gabled, a head at each corner, and five finials. The two last aisle-windows are larger than those in the western bays, but have much the same tracery. They have, however, a thick shaft worked on the stones of the jamb, and a large keeled round on the edge of the arch, and there is no dripstone. Below them is a small string-course, which is carried round the east end. The string or cornice above them is made to match that on the western portion of the aisle, but in the battlement the merlons are of merely ordinary width. In the clearstorey the wall is considerably set back from the Transitional bays, and the three windows are very elaborate. Their arches are richly moulded and acutely pointed, the springing-line being rather low down. Each window is divided into four lights, comprised under two sub-arches, either of which contains a circle enclosing a trefoil, while above, in the head of the window, is a large circle with five trefoils radiating from its centre. The dripstones end in heads. A moulded string-course, with gargoyles, runs below the parapet, which is a continuation of the plain coping on the western bays. From this point it will be best to return to the west front, and proceed along the south side of the Cathedral. =The Nave. South Side.=--This side is architecturally superior to the other, and differs from it greatly in detail. The plinth, which is very massive, rises even higher above that of the west front here than it does there, and the buttresses project over 8 feet at the base and are of three stages, and the gables on these have their sides straight, their eaves everywhere continued to the wall, and their corners enriched with heads, but on the second stage only. In the two easternmost buttresses the lowest stage has heads also, and in the last buttress eastwards this stage, for some unexplained reason, is twice as broad as the others, and has an ogee gable. On all gables the crockets are large, and the finials, which here stand upon the apex, are huge and very boldly executed; while the rudimentary pinnacles are thicker here than on the north side and more detached from the parapet. The wall is thickened up to the windows, below which there is a set-off, and the windows themselves are so moulded as to seem set in heavy frames, and are much less acutely pointed than in the other aisle, their arches approaching the 'drop' form. The rather clumsy mullions are carried up through the head, but branch out to form arches over the side lights, and are reduced in thickness above the branching point; and in the head there is a transom, except in the narrow easternmost window. Though the aisles differ so much, the clearstorey is much the same on this side as on the other, and again one of Archbishop Roger's buttresses is visible, imbedded between the Perpendicular walling and the west tower. The height of his roof is indicated by the weathering on the central tower and by the west gable, and the sixteenth century roof was probably not lower, for the central tower shows high weatherings of the latter period also; but the pitch had been lowered before the last restoration, and Sir Gilbert Scott was unable to raise it to the full height. It is to be hoped that the raising may yet be accomplished, and that lead may be substituted for slate. =The South Transept=, all but its eastern side, is mainly Archbishop Roger's work. The plinth is altogether lower not only than that of the nave, and even of the west front, but also than that of the other transept, and the architecture thus expresses the downward slope of the ground from north to south as well as from west to east. Here, as in the nave, the buttresses have a greater projection than on the north side of the church, as if the ground here were more liable to settle. As this transept bears a general resemblance to the other, it will be best to note only the points in which they differ. In the west wall the window in the second stage has no mullion, the innermost buttress is of the same type as its next neighbour, and the parapet is returned over all the buttresses, thus forming three 'turrets,' of which that nearest to the nave rests partially on a large corbel. The staircase at the south-west corner terminates at the top in a square turret with a pyramidal stone cap. In the south elevation the doorway is very elaborate. The opening is of the form sometimes called the shouldered arch, a square lintel (which, curiously enough, is not one stone) resting on corbels; and the semicircular arch over this is of four orders, the uppermost of which projects considerably from the wall. On either side there are five shafts, the outermost order having two, which are placed on the front of the jamb and share one abacus. These two shafts are worked on the stones of the jamb--a mode of construction not very common in such early doorways. The details resemble those of the less elaborate doorway in the other transept, but some of the foliage on the capitals here is almost Early English. This doorway is approached by five steps, and was once covered by a Renaissance porch. [Illustration: DOORWAY, SOUTH TRANSEPT.] In the windows of the second stage the abacus of the capitals is continued as a string from window to window. The two flanking buttresses have been crowned at some later period with gables ending in finials, and the great gable is pierced with a Perpendicular window of three lights, which has three transoms in the head, the mullions carried up to the archivolt, and a dripstone ending in foliage. The sides of the gable here do not take an upward turn to meet the corners, and there are no flanking turrets. In the end of the aisle the blocked upper window is pointed, and has a little trefoiled niche above and to the left of it, and there is no thickening of the masonry above to necessitate carrying-arches. The buttresses at the corner reach to the top of the parapet and have no surmounting pinnacle. The small portion of the east side of the aisle which is not concealed by the Chapter-house and Lady-loft displays in the lower stage a somewhat inexplicable blind arch, carrying an inclined thickening of the masonry that has been afterwards built up to a level, and below the parapet a moulded cornice like that on the north side of the church. This cornice is continued within the Lady-loft, and reappears over the last bay of the choir-aisle. =The Chapter-House.=--The south aisle of the choir is concealed by a wing of three storeys, of which the lowest, though exposed to view by the conditions of the site, is of the nature of a crypt, while the second comprises the Chapter-house and vestry, and the third, known as the Lady-loft, is an addition, probably of the fourteenth century. The first two storeys seem to have formed part of a church earlier than Archbishop Roger's,[43] and have been variously ascribed to Archbishops Thurstan (1114-1141)[44] and Thomas of Bayeux (1069-1100).[45] From the east wall of these two storeys an apse is thrown out, upon which rests a square projection from the Lady-loft, too short to be called a chancel. The two westernmost buttresses, up to the string above the crypt, are evidently additions by Archbishop Roger, while the third, which completely encases a three-sided apsidal projection at the corner of the vestry, is of much later date and will be examined presently. Adjoining it is a flat pilaster buttress, apparently original. The crypt has five unglazed windows along the south side, all round-headed and plainly splayed, and, where it joins the transept, there is a large rectangular squint which gives light to a staircase that leads up to the Chapter-house. A pointed doorway, made in later times, cuts into the fourth window from the west. In the second storey there are on this side only four windows, which are spaced without any regard to the position of those below. The two westernmost, which are circular and without tracery--a type of window that is somewhat rare--can hardly be later than the time of Archbishop Roger, and may be earlier: the next two are square and of much later date. Above the windows the eaves of the original roofs remain, supported on a corbel-table which is carried round the apsidal chamber at the corner and round the eastern apse. At the south side of the latter the builders have left a narrow recess which extends from the ground nearly to the top of the crypt. The apse displays in the lower storey a round-headed unglazed window like those along the south wall, and in the upper storey a small round-headed light at the south side and a larger window in the middle, of the same size as that below, but not so deeply splayed, and with the head rudely trefoiled. On either side of these central windows, a shaft, made in short joints, runs up the apse from base to eaves. The string between the two storeys is carried round these shafts, and their circular bases overhang the plinth and rest on small blocks, while the capitals are square-topped, as in Archbishop Roger's work. From the roof of this apse and of the apsidal chamber at the corner, and from the eaves that project along the south wall, it would seem that the whole structure was roofed with stone at a steep inclination. Where its wall joins the transept the stone-work seems to be of the same date on both sides of the corner, so that there may have been an original buttress or wall extending southwards from this point. The third storey is now the Cathedral library, but was originally the =Lady-chapel=, and was commonly called the Lady-loft. Such a position for a Lady-chapel--at the south side of the choir, and in an upper storey--is extremely unusual.[46] Authorities have differed widely as to its date. Some have assigned it to about 1482; but the Lady-loft is clearly mentioned in the Treasurers' Rolls in 1470, and its architecture, which is Decorated rather than Perpendicular, would be in favour of ascribing it to the middle of the previous century, were it not for a certain coarseness of execution which makes a suspension of judgment advisable.[47] To support this additional storey, the two western buttresses were carried up, diminishing both in projection and in width, to within a few feet of the upper string-course. The huge buttress at the corner was very possibly added later, to counteract a settlement which is evident to anyone so standing as to bring the shafts on the apse in line with the corner of the choir, and which was doubtless due to the weight of the Lady-loft. This buttress is of the same height as the others, but is broader, and has as many as seven stages, the fourth of which is crowned by a truncated hip roof and pierced with a slit to light the apsidal chamber within, from whose sloping top the upper stages spring. Traces of some external means of access to this apsidal chamber from below may be seen at the west side. Except one small lancet adjoining this buttress, the windows of the Lady-loft are square-headed, with mullions branching out into intersecting arches whose cusps spring from the soffit independently of the mouldings--an early feature; and the dripstones are square labels terminating in foliage, but with the ends not returned. Altogether these are more like the windows of a castle or manor-house than of a church. The four towards the south are of three lights, but the east window has five lights and is set higher in the wall, while its dripstone terminates at one end in a grotesque sitting figure. Various gargoyles project from the string-course, which rises to pass over the east window. The angles of the east end seem to rest upon the very edge of the cornice of the apse, and one wonders how the wall is supported along the chord of the curve. In reality, however, the apse is not so sharply curved internally as externally, and its walls are very thick, so that the square form could be imposed upon the round without much overlapping. The parapet shows the same wide merlons and cruciform piercings which characterize the other Decorated parapets of the church, and it may have been brought forward from the choir-aisle. The last bay of the latter displays a window like those on the north side, but having foliage on the capitals of the shafts; and below the parapet runs the cornice continued from the transept, with a curious gargoyle upon it. Part of the base of Archbishop Roger's choir-aisle is visible imbedded between this wall and the apse. Those parts of the church which were rebuilt after the collapse of the south-east corner of the tower can be best examined from the roof of the Lady-loft, which forms with the roofs of the aisles a level surface of considerable extent. =The East Side of the South Transept= has three buttresses, crowned by pinnacles of which the two nearest to the tower are modern. The central buttress is much shallower than the others and has a different termination. The clearstorey displays three well-arched windows of three lights (the innermost window a little smaller than the others) with tracery not unlike that in the south aisle of the nave. The parapet is probably old Decorated work that has been used again, for it has the wide merlons and cruciform piercings characteristic of early battlements, and the Perpendicular pinnacles, it will be noticed, are not in the middle of the merlons. The manner in which the corner of the tower has been reconstructed is extremely interesting. Up the angle formed by choir and transept runs a sort of excrescence of masonry that blossoms out, so to speak, into an extraordinary complication of corbelling near the top, and is itself corbelled away at the bottom. In this excrescence, as elsewhere, old materials have been used again, and in the projecting mass, at the level of both triforium and clearstorey, are the springings of arches curving eastwards and southwards, which suggest that the adjoining walls had at first been intended to be on a more advanced plane, and that the arches of the triforium were to have been round in the transept (where, by the way, they are recessed) as they are in the choir. This angle contains the tower staircase, which is lighted by a little window in the upper corbelling and is reached from the clearstorey gallery of the transept. On this side of the church the parapet walk has to be carried round the corners of the tower on squinches. [Illustration: RECONSTRUCTED ANGLE OF THE GREAT TOWER, (SOUTH TRANSEPT AND CHOIR.)] =The Central Tower. South and East Sides.=--The south and east faces are each divided by a central pilaster running up to the top of the parapet, but otherwise the general scheme is not unlike that of the older sides, save that the windows here are set higher in the wall. Each window has two lights, wide and low, with much tracery above them, in which the mullion branches into two sub-arches; and there are dripstones ending in heads. The high weathering on these sides indicates that it was not in the Perpendicular period that the roofs of the church were so unfortunately lowered. At either end of each of these sides a buttress rises to the base of the parapet in three stages, the second of which has on the front a panel with an ogee crocketed hood and is crowned by a gable with a grotesque at each corner, while the third is narrower, but is also panelled. Various gargoyles project from the uppermost string, which on the east side is not broken by the central pilaster. As this string is higher than the corbel-table of the older sides, the tower presents a very curious appearance when seen from the south-west or north-east.[48] The battlements and pinnacles were perhaps first added when the south and east sides were rebuilt, but in places they have been much renewed. The stair-turret is surmounted by a hexagonal stone cap, which is pierced with a spire-light and crowned by a finial; and there is also a wooden polygonal bell-cote at the north-west corner of the tower. At the north-east angle the Perpendicular masonry turns the corner and enfolds the Transitional buttresses, where it stops with a jagged edge. This unfinished work has a considerable projection from the Transitional walling, the intention having been, perhaps, to correct externally the obliquity in the ground plan of Roger's tower;[49] it is also corbelled away at the bottom, probably to afford freer passage along the parapet walk and to avoid the necessity of a squinch. Originally the tower had perhaps a low pyramidal roof without a parapet, and then came several successive spires. The last of these, which fell in 1660, is said to have been 120 feet high from the top of the tower, and its disappearance has surely done more than anything else to spoil the external effect of the building.[50] =The South Side of the Choir.=--Here the three westernmost bays are Perpendicular and the others Decorated. The westernmost window is smaller than the rest, and is of three lights, with the mullions carried up through the head. The next two windows imitate in curvature their Decorated neighbours, and are of four lights, with the central mullion branching out to form two sub-arches, between which a foliated circle, a feature not common in Perpendicular windows, is introduced into the head. In the fourth bay the Decorated arch has been filled with Perpendicular tracery, but the fifth and sixth windows remain in their original beauty as on the north side, save that in the easternmost the small circles have been mutilated and have lost their foliation. The two flying buttresses resemble those on the north side, but from the points where they meet the wall two pilasters run up into the parapet, which is flush with them and is crowned by a plain coping, while beneath it is a string, with gargoyles. Except at this end the wall, as in the clearstorey of the nave, is not buttressed, notwithstanding the size of the windows and their nearness together. [Illustration: FLYING BUTTRESSES, SOUTH SIDE OF CHOIR.] =The East End.=--The rebuilding of the east end of Archbishop Roger's choir was probably the object of an indulgence of 1284 by Archbishop Wickwaine, a brief of 1285 by Pope Celestine V., two indulgences issued in 1288 and 1300 respectively by Archbishops Romanus and Corbridge, and some credentials issued by the latter in 1302 for a collector of funds. And yet it is hard to fix the date of the work with any exactness. It had apparently not begun in 1286, for a mandate of Archbishop Romanus in that year begins _Cancellus Rypon' ruinosus reparetur_; but it may have been completed before the irruption of the Scots in 1318. Two indulgences of Archbishop Melton, one of which is dated 1328, do indeed allude to some "new work" as still unfinished, but this "new work" may have been the repairs necessitated by the violence of the Scots.[51] The east end of the Cathedral, then, recalls that period in our history when Edward I. was wrestling with the Scottish problem, and was also carrying into effect those lessons in representative government which he had learnt from Simon de Montfort. [Illustration: THE EAST END.] The well-marked plinth of this east end has been already noticed. Either corner of the choir contains a staircase, and is strengthened by a pair of massive buttresses and crowned by an octagonal turret with a conical stone cap and a finial. These buttresses have a projection of 8 feet, rise to the top of the aisles, and are surmounted by gables with finials, and at the north corner the gables and the coping of the aisle are crocketed. At the south corner the upper part of the turret has been used as a cell. It is lighted by a small slit and has a wooden floor with a trap in it, from which a ladder once descended to the head of the staircase; and at the west side, in the parapet of the aisle, there is a garderobe seat. It would be interesting to know whether this turret was a prison, or a place of penance, or whether it was occupied by a watchman or sentinel, or, as is not improbable, by one of those recluses who were so often attached to religious communities in the middle ages. The central compartment is flanked by two huge buttresses, which have a projection of 10 feet at the bottom and rise to the base of the gable, or rather a little above it, in two stages only, the lower stage reaching a little above the coping of the aisles, and both stages are crowned by gables with finials.[52] The three compartments of the front are on the same plane. Each aisle shows at the end a window of the same pattern with these in the sides, and that in the south aisle has foliage on the capitals of its shafts and is surmounted by a little window of trefoil form which lights a staircase within, for staircases ascend over these windows in the thickness of the wall and run up the angles of the clearstorey. The great window in the central compartment is one of the finest examples of Geometrical tracery, if not one of the largest windows, in England. It is over 50 feet high, is 25 feet wide, and has seven lights. Of these the three at either end are comprised under a sub-arch, in the head of which are three cinquefoiled circles, while the central light of the seven is surmounted by an arch, not so high as its neighbours, but impaling upon its acute point a huge circle which fills the head of the window and contains six trefoils radiating from its centre. The arch of this superb window is rather acutely pointed and richly moulded, and has two very slender shafts worked on the stones of either jamb, with foliage on their capitals. Just above the ground below this window there may be observed in the wall one of the many architectural puzzles in which the Cathedral abounds, a half-arch, rising toward the right and filled in with masonry, except at the right side, where is a narrow opening that runs in for a few feet.[53] A string-course continued from the sides of the aisles passes below the three windows and round the buttresses, which are further relieved at a little height above it by a set-off. The gable has been entirely rebuilt by Sir Gilbert Scott. It is slightly set back, and displays a lofty window of four lights with geometrical tracery not unlike that in the great window below. On either side of this window there is panelling graduated to suit the triangular space, and the gable is crowned by an elaborate cross and flanked by two pinnacles which resemble those of the flying buttresses but are larger and have foliage at the corners instead of heads. The original Decorated gable was probably very much of this pattern. Its height was indicated by the weathering on the tower, and it seems to have had flanking pinnacles and graduated panelling. It had, however, been lowered in pitch and had been altered also by the insertion of a rather debased Perpendicular window.[54] Whatever may be thought, therefore, of Sir Gilbert Scott's action in rebuilding it, he has surely improved the general effect of the front, and it is well that one of the roofs, at any rate, should have been raised to the original pitch. What is most to be regretted, perhaps, is the removal of all traces, if any there were, of the chantry of the Holy Trinity _supra summum altare_, which was situated, as its name implies, in the roof, behind the old gable. In Archbishop Roger's day the choir was probably as long as it is now, and Walbran (followed by Sir Gilbert Scott) believed that the aisles at that period were returned across the east end. If so, the clearstorey must have been a bay shorter than at present, with a pent roof projecting from below it on the east side to cover the returned portion of the aisle. The rebuilding of the east end in the Decorated period was the first operation in which limestone was employed, but much of the old gritstone has been used again. [Illustration: THE NORTH-WESTERN PORTION OF THE NAVE. (Junction of XIIth and XVIth Century work.)] FOOTNOTES: [33] The name Ripon comes probably from the Latin _ripa_, "a river's bank." Bede uses a form "Inrhypum," which arose perhaps out of _in ripis_. The derivation _Uri pons_ has been generally abandoned. [34] The reason of the peculiarity here is the unusual width of the nave. (_See below_, p. 44.) [35] This will be explained in Chapter III. [36] See illustration, p. 17. [37] This was pointed out by Walbran. [38] The Transitional or Transition-Norman work at Ripon probably was not all erected during Roger's lifetime, but all of it will, in these pages, be associated with his name. [39] Upon a modern Chapter seal there is what is possibly meant for a representation of Roger's church, with western towers, three spires, and no aisles. The seal is a reproduction of another of the time of James I., which may have been reproduced from a third of earlier date. [40] For the origin and meaning of this knotwork, so often found in these islands on ancient crosses, and for its value as an illustration of the possible connection of Saxon architecture with the Comacine Guild of Italy, see _The Cathedral Builders_, by Leader Scott, pp. 82-99, and p. 145. [41] This was the case with all the windows of both transepts--in the lower tier at any rate--until the last restoration. The reason why Sir Gilbert Scott has left or renewed the mullions in some of the windows is probably that he did not wish to disturb the memorial glass. [42] The suggestion was made by Mr. Francis Bond. [43] _I.e._, they were probably a Southern Chapel of the choir (_vid. inf._, Ch. III.). It is doubtful whether this earlier choir itself can have had a crypt. [44] By Sir Gilbert Scott. [45] By Walbran. [46] Lady-chapels are usually found at the extreme east end of the choir, unless that position was wanted for the resting-place of a local saint. [47] Walbran favoured 1482; Sir Gilbert Scott the middle of the fourteenth century. [48] See the illustration, p. 2. [49] _The Builder_, February 4th, 1893. [50] This last spire must have been erected after all intention of rebuilding the north and west sides of the tower had been given up, and therefore (perhaps) after the dissolution. The three spires are shown upon the seventeenth century communion plate and in several old prints (see the illustration, p. 32). They were wooden and covered with lead, and are represented as octagonal. The two at the west end are shown without parapets at the base, and all three are without those sloping spurs which so often connect an octagonal spire with the corners of the tower. [51] Dean Waddilove, in his monograph on the Cathedral, mentions that the date 1330 is to be found upon the choir, but he does not say where. Walbran believed the work to have been executed between 1280 and 1297, and is followed by Sir Gilbert Scott. [52] The buttresses of this east wall were formerly connected at the bottom by a debased battlemented wall, and the space within was used for sheds, the grooves for whose pent roofs can be seen on the sides of the buttresses. [53] The arch springs from the buttress (as an excavation in 1900 showed), and may perhaps be a relieving-arch, to take the weight off a weak place in the foundations. Yet it was not intended, apparently, to be filled up. The stones forming the right edge of the hole are coigns, and have mason-marks on their sides. At the back of the hole the masonry appears to be of some antiquity: may it be part of the foundation of the east end of Archbishop Roger's choir? [54] There are several prints of the Cathedral, as it was before restoration, in the Ripon Museum. [Illustration: CONJECTURAL VIEW OF INTERIOR OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER'S NAVE BY SIR G. G. SCOTT. (By the kind permission of the Archæological Institute.)] CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR. =The Nave.=--On entering through the west doors a perspective is disclosed of 133 feet to the end of the Nave, 170 feet to the Rood Screen, and 270 feet to the end of the Choir. The Early English builders have preserved two bays of Archbishop Roger's nave and have incorporated them into the west towers,[55] and the two great tower-arches which they have cut through the Transitional walling are very fine specimens of the Early English style. Each of the half-pillars that support them is a cluster of five large engaged shafts separated by very deep hollows, and upon every shaft there is a large fillet, which is carried up into the capital and down over the base. The base consists of two round mouldings separated by a hollow and fillets, and overhangs the plinth so much as to suggest that the floor just here has been lowered. The capitals and the arches themselves (which are of three orders) are moulded with rounds and hollows very strongly marked, and the hood of the southern arch terminates eastwards in a bunch of foliage. The interior of the towers is more richly treated than is usual. Over the tower-arch is a small arcade of four members with clustered shafts, and with a string below, while the other three walls are plain up to the windows, each of which is flanked, as on the exterior, by two blind lancets. The arcading thus formed has clustered and banded shafts (not detached), behind which ran a passage, now blocked, and below the sill, and a little distance apart, are two strings, to the lower of which the sills of all the windows save two descend in steps. The windows are not splayed, and those which now look into the aisles are unglazed, and their flanking lancets are of unequal width. All the arches are much moulded and ornamented with the dog-tooth, and the central shaft of each cluster has a fillet. In each corner a detached shaft springs from a round corbel above the lowest string and rises to the impost of the arches, being banded twice on the way; and from its capital another shaft runs up to the ceiling. The doors to the spiral staircases open into little square lobbies which have vaults with groin-ribs springing from corbels.[56] In the north tower is a modern stained window of some merit. The two bays of Archbishop Roger's work incorporated in the towers, taken together with another Transitional bay at the east end, make it possible to imagine the whole interior of what must have been the most remarkable nave in England. It was unusually broad. From the ground to the first string (about 16 feet) there was plain wall. Above this was a triforium (if it can be so called[57]) of the unusual height of about 28 feet, and there were thus no windows except in the clearstorey, and there only in alternate bays. According to Sir Gilbert Scott the triforium and clearstorey were probably continued across the west wall. The bays were alternately broad and narrow, and there is room for five of each sort. The westernmost bay shows in the triforium stage a round arch comprising four pointed arches. Of these the two in the middle are raised above the others on shafts of two stages, in the upper of which the capital is circular and its moulding is continued along the tympanum to the _apices_ of the two lower arches. The tympanum is relieved by a sunk quatrefoil in a serrated circle, and so is the space under either of the two central sub-arches. The passage in this bay has been built up, and the bay itself shortened, probably when the tower arches were made. [Illustration: CONJECTURAL PLAN OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER'S CHURCH BY SIR G. G. SCOTT. See _p._ 16. (By permission of the Archæological Institute.)] In the adjoining narrow bay, the comprising arch is pointed, there are only two sub-arches, and there are no quatrefoils, except in the tympanum on the north side. Doors have also been inserted in this bay to communicate with the passages behind the arcades in the towers. The shafts throughout are single, and (in the sub-arches) detached, and the details generally are the same as in all Archbishop Roger's work. It is worthy of remark that the tympanum over the sub-arches is flush with the lower part of the wall, and that the comprising arches, with all the walling above them, are a plane in advance. The more natural plan would have been to make the comprising arch flush with the wall below, and to have set back the sub-arches and tympanum. In consequence of Archbishop Roger's arrangement the shafts of the comprising arch stand, not upon the sill of the triforium, but upon corbels, each of which carries two of them and also a roof-shaft[58] which forms with them a cluster. The clearstorey shows in the broad bay a stilted round arch, pierced, between two small blind lancets, and in the narrow bay three small blind lancets. These arches are not recessed or moulded, and are without hoods, as usual. Their piers, behind which is a passage, are square, and the impost moulding is continued as a string. The roof-shafts have a curious break in them at the impost-level of the triforium, where a face is carved upon them with a band above it. They are banded also by the impost-moulding of either storey, and by the upper string-course, and end in square-topped capitals a little short of the present roof. Throughout Archbishop Roger's church the roof was probably flat, or slightly coved as at Peterborough. The corbels from which the roof-shafts spring are moulded and finished off with scrolls, and are placed at the level of the string-course, which is undercut; but on either side of the tower-arches the shafts have been shortened to a point above the string, which has been made continuous beneath them, and instead of corbels they have grotesque heads carved upon their ends. Beyond the westernmost roof-shaft there is a further shaft, which at first sight seems to have been the beginning of another bay, but the round moulding which rises from it runs up vertically instead of curving over to form an arch. The western wall is far more impressive from within the church than from without, and shows the Early English style at its best. The three doorways have stilted segmental arches moulded with rounds, and their hood-moulds are continuous. Their shafts are single and engaged, and in the jambs are holes for the great bars which no doubt held the doors against the Scots in 1318. But if the doorways are plainer, the great lancets above are much richer, on this side than on the other. Their arches have more mouldings, their hood-moulds as well as the string-courses are enriched with the nailhead, the dog-tooth is used more profusely, and the piers are clusters of seven engaged shafts instead of five, banded at half their height and having behind them in both tiers passages which formerly communicated with the towers. The glass, by Burlison and Grylls, is worthy of its framing. It was put up to the memory of the late Bishop in 1886. In the lower tier "the earthly type" is represented by the Parable of the Ten Virgins. In the upper tier, in which the various designs represent "the Heavenly type," the Bride is the Church, and Our Lord is seen enthroned and surrounded by choirs of angels. The yellow gritstone of the older work is contrasted curiously with the white limestone of the Perpendicular nave, and at the junction the later builders have left a jagged edge. Among very late Gothic buildings there are few indeed which are of so good a quality as this nave of Ripon, which, like the late church towers of Somerset, shows that mediæval art took long to die out in regions remote from London. It is, indeed, the architecture of the days of Agincourt rather than of the eve of the English Renaissance. The pillars are characteristic of the Perpendicular style, their section being a square with a semi-circle projecting from each side, and the corners hollowed. Their bases have complex plinths of considerable height and are polygonal, but follow roughly the form of the pillar, and the mouldings, as usual in this style, overhang the plinth. The capitals, with small mouldings and many angles, are of somewhat the same form as the bases. On the westernmost complete pillar of the north arcade are two shields, charged respectively with the arms of Ripon (a horn) and of Pigott of Clotherholme. The arches, instead of being of that depressed form which is so common in late work, are very beautifully proportioned, and their mouldings are bold, numerous and well-cut. There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower level than in Archbishop Roger's bays, runs below the great clearstorey windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain. The roof-shafts, which are in clusters of three and have fillets upon them, spring from semi-octagonal corbels, and where each cluster passes the string-course there is an angel holding a shield. A sign of decadence may be found, perhaps, in the way in which the hood-moulds of the windows intersect with these shafts. Though the two sides of the nave are not quite of the same date, they are almost alike, but for some slight differences in the capitals, the arch-mouldings, and the hollows on the pillars; the builders feeling doubtless that any marked variation would mar the general perspective--a consideration which, of course, could not bind them in designing the north aisle. The original Perpendicular roof may have resembled that which now covers the transepts. About 1829 Blore put up an almost flat ceiling of deal. The present oaken vault, by Sir Gilbert Scott, was copied from that of the transepts of York Minster, and is adapted to the old roof-shafts, between which have been added angel corbels of wood. As the ribs intersect near their springing, they weave a network over the whole vault, and the carved bosses at the intersections amount to 107. A passing notice is merited by the pulpit, which is Jacobean. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WESTWARDS.] East of the five Perpendicular bays remains the second fragment of the old nave, namely, a portion of a broad bay, partly encased by the later masonry, and one complete narrow bay. In the latter the tympanum on both sides is relieved by a quatrefoil, which here is pierced and not enclosed in a circle, and the last shaft eastwards (one of those of the comprising arch) runs to the ground. Affixed to the north wall is an eighteenth century monument to Hugh Ripley, last Wakeman and first Mayor of Ripon (d. 1637). The original monument was destroyed during the Civil War, but the altar-like erection below the present structure was probably part of it. The roof-shaft west of this bay, for some unknown reason, ends considerably short of the roof in a kind of corbel with rude foliage upon it. In the south wall is a triangular piscina, which, if it is of Roger's date, is among the oldest piscinæ in the country. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE SAXON CRYPT. (From drawings by Mr. W. H. St. John Hope and Mr. T. Wall.)] =The Saxon Crypt=, sometimes called =St. Wilfrid's Needle=.--From a trap-door in the pavement below the piscina a flight of twelve steps winds down into a flat-roofed and descending passage, 2-1/2 feet wide and slightly over 6 feet high, which, running a few feet northwards and bending at right angles round the south-west tower pier, extends eastward for about 10 yards, with a descent of one step near the end, and terminates in a blank wall. There is a square-headed niche at the turn and a round-headed niche at the end, both meant, doubtless, to hold lights. Three feet from the end a round-headed doorway, 2 feet wide and over 6 feet high, opens northwards, with a descent of two more steps, into a barrel-vaulted chamber, 11 feet 5 inches long from east to west, 7 feet 7 inches wide, and 9 feet 10 inches high. In the north wall of this chamber, and approached by three rude steps, is the celebrated St. Wilfrid's Needle, a round-headed aperture pierced through into a passage that runs behind. This aperture was connected with one of those superstitions that so often flourished before the Reformation in notable centres of religion, and ability to pass through it or 'thread the needle' was regarded as a test of female chastity; but it was, of course, in the later middle ages that this superstition arose, and the 'needle' (or rather needle's eye) is evidently only one of the original niches with the back knocked out. Of these niches (which again were doubtless for lights) there are four in the chamber besides the 'needle,'--one in each wall,--and, like the niche, at the end of the passage of entrance, they all have semicircular heads each cut in a single stone. That in the west wall has a hole or cup at the bottom, probably to hold oil in which a wick might float, while the others (except the 'needle') have a sort of funnel at the top, doubtless to catch the soot from lamps. In the east wall there is also a round-headed recess of larger size, the meaning of which will be discussed later. An excavation made in 1900 has lowered the earthen floor and revealed a set-off running round the chamber,[59] and upon the ground at the east end are traces of a later mediæval altar, namely, a long stone parallel with the east wall and having behind it a small rectangular enclosure bounded by other wrought stones. Some of the latter were only laid bare at the above-mentioned excavation, when, moreover, the enclosure was found to be a pit containing bones, some of which had belonged to a man, others to an ox, others to a bird. These were probably regarded as relics, and may have been buried here at the Reformation for safety,[60] but it is possible that they were placed here at an earlier period, and that this is an instance of a relic-pit. Two other deposits have been found in the crypt in modern times, one behind the niche in the south wall of this chamber, the other behind the niche at the end of the passage of entrance. Most of the bones in these deposits were human, but one had belonged to an ox, another to a bird, another to a sheep, while others could not be identified. These bones again were probably 'relics,' and had almost certainly been built up behind the niches at the Reformation[61] for concealment. From the west end of the chamber another doorway similar to the last opens, with an ascent of one step, into a second chamber, 12 feet long from north to south, 4 feet wide, 9 feet high, and roofed with a semi-vault rising eastwards, in which there has been a square opening, probably for ventilation. At the north end a flight of four steps, lighted doubtless from the square niche in the west wall, ascends eastwards to the passage behind the 'needle.' Of these steps the lowest occupies the whole width of the chamber, while the second, on being cleaned at the time of the excavation above-mentioned, was found to have its upper and western surfaces sunk in the middle and traversed at one end by two parallel raised bands, and to show traces of that yellow enamel-like substance with which, indeed, the whole crypt seems to have been originally overlaid. In roof, width and height the passage at the top of these steps resembles that by which the crypt was approached, but it is spanned at the entrance by a round arch, and gradually ascends, terminating in a staircase now blocked at the fourth step (or perhaps the fifth, since one seems to have been removed at the bottom), while in the roof may be traced the shape of the long opening (rounded at the western end) through which these stairs once led up into the church. From the point at which they are blocked the distance to the arch that spans the passage is about 18 feet. It will be noticed that the floor of this passage is level with the 'needle,' which on this side, moreover, has been broken through so as to open out like a funnel. [Illustration: THE SAXON CRYPT, EAST END OF THE CENTRAL CHAMBER. (St. Wilfrid's needle on the left.)] There is little doubt that this crypt is the work of Wilfrid. It strongly resembles another at Hexham in Northumberland, which is almost certainly his since it agrees with a description given by his contemporary Eddius, and (more fully) by Richard, Prior of Hexham in the twelfth century. As, therefore, Wilfrid is known to have built a church in either of these places, and as the crypts remaining resemble each other, and as that at Hexham is almost certainly his, it is natural to conclude that this at Ripon is his also.[62] And the subject has had fresh light thrown upon it as archæology has progressed. It is thought that the Romanizing party which prevailed at the Synod of Whitby affected for its churches the Italian type,[63] one of the characteristics of which was the _Confessio_, an underground chamber for relics[64] situated under the high altar, and surrounded, except toward the church, by a passage reached by steps from the body of the building, whence, moreover, there were generally steps leading up to the floor of the presbytery, and sometimes an incline stretching down to a window that looked into the chamber below. Now the present entrance to this crypt at Ripon is not original. To mention some of the evidences of this, there are in the roof of the passage several tombstones (one at the entrance and two beyond the bend) bearing incised crosses of the thirteenth century, and 15 feet west of the doorway into the central chamber there are signs that a cross-wall has been cut through. The only part of the work, then, which is original is that which extends eastwards of this point, and in Saxon times there was probably only one entrance to the crypt, namely by the north passage; indeed, it seems likely that the formation of an approach from the nave was contemporaneous with the blocking of that passage, and that both alterations were due to the incompatibility of the original disposition of the crypt with the subsequent arrangements of the church above. Now if that original disposition has been indicated correctly, the crypt presented all the more important characteristics of a _confessio_. There is the central chamber with a window looking into it (for this is the probable explanation of the arched recess in the east wall),[65] and there is the surrounding passage, which, however, is interrupted at the south-west corner of the crypt in such a way that it is necessary to pass through the chamber itself.[66] An excavation made in 1891[67] failed to reveal any traces of a staircase at the east end of the south passage, but as there are many instances in Italy of a _confessio_ without a second stair, this failure is of little importance. If, then, this crypt may be assumed to be a _confessio_, there follows a very interesting consequence. The fact that the surrounding passage was entered from the east, that it runs round the west and not the east end of the central chamber, and that the blocked window (if such it be) is in the east wall of the latter, indicates that the nave lay to the east,[68] in other words, that the presbytery was at the west end of the church. Such a position for the high altar is ultra-Roman, was already being discontinued in Wilfrid's day, and had probably never been seen in the north, unless here and at Hexham; all of which considerations, in the light of the known bias and character of Wilfrid, are in favour of the theory above propounded.[69] It is impossible to say with certainty whether Wilfrid's presbytery was apsidal or square; and whether his church had aisles or not.[70] [Illustration: CONJECTURAL PLAN OF THE CRYPT AND PRESBYTERY IN THE TIME OF WILFRID, BY MR. J. T. MICKLETHWAITE, V.P.S.A. (By permission of the Archæological Institute.)] There remains the question whether this crypt was or was not under the church of the monastery. In Leland's description of Ripon,[71] "the Old Abbay of Ripon" is certainly represented as having stood on the site which in Leland's time was occupied by the Lady-kirk, adjacent, that is, to the west side of the street now called St. Mary-gate;[72] and it has been argued with great ability[73] (on the supposition that "the Old Abbay" means the Saxon Monastery) that this crypt, though almost certainly Wilfrid's, was under a second church outside the monastery wall.[74] It is, however, still possible to suppose that the site in St. Mary-gate may have been that of the domestic buildings only, and that the monastery church stood over this crypt; or that "the Old Abbay" means the Scottish Monastery, the site of which was also probably not far from St. Mary-gate and may have been confused by Leland with that afterwards occupied by the Lady-kirk. Nor in any case, perhaps, are the mere statements of Leland a sufficient foundation for the argument that has been constructed upon them. Indeed, an elaborate _confessio_ like this would hardly have been made for any church other than that of the monastery. And if, after all, Wilfrid's monastery church stood above this crypt, there arises a very interesting probability in connection with that part of the south passage which extends 15 feet westward from the doorway opening into the central chamber, namely that it was the original burial-place of Wilfrid himself, whom Bede declares to have been laid _juxta altare ad austrum_.[75] The position of the crypt suggests the history of the ground plan of the Cathedral. After the destruction of Wilfrid's Church, the site of his nave became that of the choir, and a nave was added westwards. Thus it came about that the crypt is now in the centre of the building. The central line or axis of the church in all stages of its history has probably always passed over this crypt. =The Aisles of the Nave.=--As no aisles were contemplated when the west towers were built, the east side of the latter shows, of course, the same external decoration as the other sides. At the back of the surviving portions of the old nave there may be seen at the western end of either aisle one of Archbishop Roger's buttresses, and at the eastern end a roughened surface where another buttress has been removed. The two buttresses that remain have a large set-off near the bottom, and they do not diminish as they ascend; while from their upper portions, which are visible outside the church, it would seem that they rose to the very top of the walls. At a little over 16 feet from the ground there remains upon them a portion of an external string-course, which is not on a level with any of those on the exterior of the transepts. Either aisle opens into the transept with a massive arch resembling those of the north main arcade, and has along the foot of its wall a bench table, from which rise the vaulting-shafts. But though preparation had been made for stone vaulting, the roofs were of wood until the last restoration, when Sir Gilbert Scott put up the present stone groining. The effect is good, but would have been better had there been ridge-ribs and bosses. [Illustration: THE TWO FONTS, TWELFTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.] =The South Aisle= contains the font, which was probably among the latest additions to the church before the dissolution, and formerly stood at the west end of the nave. This font is raised upon two circular steps, and is octagonal and of blue marble, with the various surfaces of base, stem, and bowl slightly hollowed. The sides of the bowl and also of the base bear shields and lozenges alternately, and upon the base the lozenges are richly carved. In a corner hard by stands another and much older font--probably that of Archbishop Roger's church. It is a circular basin, adorned with an arcade of trefoil arches.[76] [Illustration: BAS-RELIEF IN THE SOUTH AISLE OF THE NAVE. (Reduced from a rubbing.)] Against the wall a little further eastwards is an altar-tomb of great interest. The marble slab at the top has at one end a bas-relief representing a grove, and in it a lion walking away from a man, who kneels in an attitude of supplication with his back to the lion, while between the two figures is a bird flying toward the man. Tradition says that this is the tomb of an Irish prince who brought back from Palestine a lion that had there become attached to him, but a story of this kind was popular in mediæval romances,[77] and the tradition, though of some age, is not, perhaps, very probable. It has been well suggested that the sculpture represents deliverance from a lion in answer to prayer; but as it is possibly only part of a larger composition, its full meaning must still be doubtful.[78] The work is rather Flemish in character, and may be assigned to the fourteenth century, with which date the costume of the man agrees. Thus the slab is considerably older than the wall to which it is now affixed, and it is doubtless older than the lower part of the tomb itself, which may be of the same date as the aisle. There is a black-letter inscription upon the front of the structure, but it is unfortunately quite illegible. An entry in the Chapter Acts[79] indicates that this tomb was used as a money-table in business transactions between the mediæval townsmen. The windows have their sides moulded, but somewhat clumsily. That above the font contains the only mediæval glass in the Cathedral, a collection of fragments chiefly of the fourteenth century. Most of these were originally in the great window of the choir, where, being in the upper tracery, they had escaped the violence of Sir Thomas Mauleverer's troopers. Among the figures in the medallions are St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and there is a fine shield of the arms of England, with a border or mantling of France, and surmounted by a label of three points azure.[80] The quality of the glass is exceedingly good, and the window, when the sun shines through it, resembles a screen of gems, and puts its neighbours to shame. The fourth window from the west, however, by Clayton & Bell, is of considerable merit. The vaulting-shafts are in clusters of three, and have overhanging bell-shaped bases with polygonal plinths, while upon the capitals are angels bearing shields, one angel to each cluster. The last two shields eastwards are charged respectively with the arms of Archbishop Savage (1501-1507), and with the three stars of St. Wilfrid. Where these shafts break the string-course under the windows they are encircled by a thin band. Upon the eastern fragment of the old nave there remains in this aisle another portion of Archbishop Roger's external string-course, and also (near the last capital of the arcade) some trace of a band of ornament. The western end of the =North Aisle= is the Consistory Court, and has been used as an ecclesiastical court since 1722, when Ripon was still in the diocese of York. Over the Chancellor's seat is a modern canopy of stained deal, which formerly surmounted the throne in the choir. The stone base of the railings, with its many projecting angles and its band of delicate quatrefoils, is thought to have formed part of the shrine of St. Wilfrid, and, having been found in fragments, was placed here by Sir Gilbert Scott. In this aisle the sides of the windows are partially panelled. The glass is of little interest, save that in the third window from the west, by Burlison & Grylls, and a few seventeenth century fragments. The vaulting-shafts here are single, and are half-octagons with their sides slightly hollowed, and they again break the string-course, which rises to pass over the doorway. Of the shields on their angel capitals the three easternmost are charged respectively with the arms of Fountains Abbey[81] (three horse-shoes), with those of Cardinal Archbishop Bainbridge (1508-1514) (supported by _two_ angels), and with the stars of St. Wilfrid. The arch opening into the transept is not so high as in the other aisle, and upon the space above it are portions of a once external string-course and buttress. =The Central Tower.=--It is from the interior of the church that the extent of the repairs necessitated by the partial fall of the tower can best be realized, and it is here that the documentary evidence for their dates may best be summed up. The catastrophe itself is described in an indulgence of 1450 by Archbishop Kemp, but the repairs had not advanced much by 1459, for in that year a testator bequeaths money to this object, "_cum fuerit in operando_." It would seem, however, from an indulgence of Archbishop George Neville that the tower had been partially repaired by 1465. After a bequest in 1466 (the last of a series beginning in 1454), it seems to be next mentioned in the Fabric Roll for 1541-2, and the Chapter Acts speak of the work that remained to be done as late as 1545. The order, therefore, of the larger operations in the Perpendicular period was probably as follows:--First the Canons remodelled the two ruinous sides of the tower and the east side of the south transept (where the work much resembles that in the tower), then they rebuilt the nave,[82] then the western bays on the south side of the choir (as the late character of the work itself would indicate),[83] and lastly they were about to remodel the two remaining sides of the tower when they were checked by the dissolution. [Illustration: THE WESTERN ARCH OF THE CENTRAL TOWER.] The planning of the Cathedral is remarkably irregular. Not only is the axis of the choir, as in so many churches, inclined (here toward the north) but the centre of the Rood Screen is south of the axis of the nave, and the north side of the tower is not parallel to the south side, the north-west angle being less than a right angle. This is the only angle which remains in its original condition, and here the responds of the two adjacent arches stand upon one circular plinth, their own bases being, however, rectangular, though following in the upper mouldings the forms of the shafts. The capitals of the latter are, as usual, square-topped. The respond of the western arch has a semicircular shaft upon the front, and a smaller shaft at the west side, where the pier is twice recessed. The arch itself springs from the level of the top of Archbishop Roger's triforium, is semicircular, and has more orders toward the west than toward the east, but the mouldings (chiefly rounds) are lacking in boldness, and the absence of a hood-mould (both in this arch and the other) is a disadvantage. The other respond is concealed by a huge Perpendicular casing, which, obtruding as it does into the arch, is a very conspicuous object in the view from the west doors. Upon the piers of this arch toward the nave are some curious brackets, which probably supported the original rood-beam.[84] The northern arch springs from a higher level, and is less richly decorated than the other, and its form is almost segmental. It has more orders toward the south than toward the north, and again the mouldings are chiefly rounds. Its western respond has a shaft on the front, and at the south side another, which is banded at the springing-level of the western arch and carried up to that of the northern arch, where it ends in a three-sided capital, upon which stands another and very short shaft, complete with base and capital, that carries the rim of the arch and an angle of masonry that projects from the corner. The lower portion of this respond is cased by a rectangular addition (almost as old as the pier itself), which has upon the front a massive detached shaft with a circular capital, on which stands a quaint figure of King James I., brought from the screen of York Minster. To support an image of some kind may, perhaps, have always been the purpose of this pillar. It has been suggested that there is a similar projection concealed behind the casing of the south-western pier. Over these two arches is a bold cornice, which possibly once supported a ceiling, and the blind storey above shows in each wall two pairs of plain lancets with the impost-moulding continued as a string, and with a passage behind. In the third storey, where again there is a passage, the two windows in each wall have a third arch (also round) between them, and alternating with these three arches are little lancets which have been blocked as far up as the imposts, their shafts having been first removed. A cornice supports the ceiling, and on the west side there are also some rather inexplicable corbels. The builders of this tower were certainly misguided in employing round arches to support it, at a time when (as the choir shows) pointed arches of considerable size were in common use, and it would seem that the superior strength of the latter form was not yet fully realized. No stronger specimens of that form are to be found, perhaps, than the arches that support the two remaining sides. Their giant piers are clusters of engaged cylindrical shafts with rounded hollows between, and at each remodelled angle of the tower the two adjacent responds are treated as one whole, presenting seven shafts almost on the same plane. The bases, with their complex plinths and overhanging upper mouldings, are over five feet high, and the capitals are polygonal, with small and shallow mouldings, of which the lowest follows the form of the pier. Slightly stilted, richly moulded, and of many orders, these arches are so lofty as to leave no room for a blind storey above. Though the windows here are set higher in the wall, their rear-arches reach down nearly to the Transitional sill-level. Between the two windows in either wall a shaft springs from an angel corbel at the string-course below the sills, and runs up in a kind of groove, and these two shafts, with another which springs from the junction of the two great arches, end short of the present ceiling in semi-octagonal capitals, while on the east wall, and at a lower level, there are more corbels. Indeed, from the various corbels and shafts in this storey it would seem that the level of the ceiling had been altered, possibly more than once, and perhaps that it was destined to be altered again when the remodelling should be complete. The present ceiling, flat and painted with good effect, was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott. =The Transepts.=--The length of either transept is 43 feet, and that of both together (including the crossing) is 134 feet, or about the same as the length of the nave. In the transepts and choir the relative proportion of the three storeys or stages to one another, which in the nave was so remarkable, becomes more ordinary, and the change in the level of the triforium passage--due to the heightening of the lowest stage to meet the exigencies of aisles--necessitates long staircases (now blocked) behind the western piers of the tower: and the same is the case (though in a less degree) with the clearstorey, which in this part of the church is loftier, instead of being shorter, than the triforium. In either transept a bench-table runs along the west wall, and the large lower windows are plainly splayed, but have their sills stepped. The glass in them is bad, except some seventeenth century pieces in the window over the north door. The roof, which is of oak, and Perpendicular, had been concealed in the time of Blore by sham Norman vaulting constructed of _papier maché_. Sir Gilbert Scott removed this abomination and exposed the old ceiling, which he repaired and partially renewed. It is almost flat, is raised on wooden figure-corbels, which prevent it from intersecting with the tower arches, and is adorned with judicious colour. =The North Transept=, which is 34 feet wide, or 52 feet if the 'aisle' be included, is almost as its builders left it, and is among the most famous examples of the architecture of the age of Henry II. and Thomas à Becket, when the early English style was being developed from the Norman. As the details are the same here as in all Archbishop Roger's work, they need no further description. To take the west and north walls first, the Perpendicular arch opening into the aisle of the nave cuts into two blocked round arches, of which that on the right was a window, while that on the left is backed by the old nave wall; and in this first bay (which is narrower than the others in both this and the opposite wall) the triforium arches are blocked up, as well as the first lancet in the clearstorey, where there is moreover no window. Each bay shows in the triforium two pointed arches with a pierced quatrefoil between them, and in the clearstorey a stilted round arch, pierced and glazed, between two smaller arches of lancet form, which on the north wall are very curiously barred across at the impost level, the _abaci_ of two shafts being formed by one slab. [Illustration: THE NORTH TRANSEPT.] The east wall is much more richly treated, and harmonizes in design with the choir. It might perhaps be more proper to describe the aisles of these transepts as a series of eastern chapels. Their floor is raised two steps above the body of the transept, from which they were evidently once railed off, and in either transept the two outer bays are walled off from that nearest to the tower. At any rate the arches here have the appearance of independent units rather than of a continuous arcade. Separated by roof-shafts of unusual bulk, their responds consist each of three engaged shafts with a fourth to carry the aisle-vault; and the bases, rectangular but with the upper mouldings following the pillar, are united with those of the roof-shafts, while the capitals as usual are square-topped. The actual arches are of two orders, each of which has the edge-roll, while under the soffit, which is flat, is another roll between two mouldings that are hook-shaped in section. The arch nearest to the tower has given way slightly and has been blocked up, apparently not very long after it was built, for in the blocking wall is an acutely-pointed and thrice-recessed doorway of decidedly early character, and the material throughout is gritstone. The wooden doors are probably Perpendicular work. Adjoining this doorway is a Perpendicular stone pulpit, which has a base but no stem, and is ascended by means of three steps only. It has five sides, and is covered with rich panelling, but the top has apparently been taken off. This may not indeed be its original position,[85] yet it was a mediæval custom to deliver the sermon just as the procession was about to enter the choir, and this pulpit is most conveniently placed for such a purpose. If this is not its original position, it may perhaps be identified with a nave pulpit mentioned in the Chapter Acts. On this east side the triforium shows in each bay a semicircular arch comprising two pierced lancets and flanked by two blind lancets, with a quatrefoil pierced through the tympanum under the comprising arch, an arrangement that is the germ of tracery. Here there is no passage in the thickness of the wall, as there was an open gallery over the aisle until the external roof was lowered and the back of the arches blocked. In the clearstorey the shafts of the round arch in each bay are doubled, each couple sharing a common plinth and capital, from which latter springs a tiny shaft that carries the edge-roll of the arch; and the lancet arches also, where they adjoin the solid piers between the bays, have a shaft in the jamb. On all three walls the shafts in this storey stand on a kind of kerb or parapet, which is interrupted in the middle of each bay, and the stilt of the round arch is treated almost like a classical entablature, and has a moulding or cornice above it, while the uppermost part of the wall is thickened, thereby necessitating over each bay a comprising arch, which on the north wall is round, but on the other walls follows the shape of the three sub-arches, and forms a kind of upper order to them. The roof-shafts, which do not break the string-courses, spring from very various levels: on the east side from the ground, and on the north side from the unusually high level of the second string, while on the west side one cluster rises from the first string and the other from above the second string (having perhaps been shortened in the last case to make way for the Perpendicular arch beneath). On the east and west walls these shafts are of a thickness which, besides being out of proportion to the other parts of the architecture, is structurally unnecessary, for they do not directly support the roof at all, but end at the top of the triforium in triple capitals, of which the central member is square and the others round. Upon each of these capitals, stand three detached and much thinner shafts--namely, that which really carried the roof-beams, and those (adjacent to it) of the arches that carry the above-mentioned thickening of the wall. Thus is afforded a striking instance of the tendency, so often exemplified in Archbishop Roger's work, to use two shafts, one on the top of the other, instead of prolonging one--a tendency which marks the organic development of the style as still incomplete. On the north wall the three shafts in each cluster are carried up from their corbel to the top in one piece, unbroken save by a band at the impost level of the triforium and another at the third string, and they seem detached throughout their height both from the wall and from each other. At each corner of the transept the thickening of the wall over the clearstorey arcade is carried by a shaft which rises from the bench-table or the ground. The roof is entirely modern, and the shields on its corbels bear the arms of the chief promoters of the last restoration. Against the north wall is a fifteenth century altar-tomb, covered with inferior panelling and shields of arms, and surmounted by the figures of Sir Thomas and Lady (Eleanor) Markenfield; and adjoining this tomb (which formerly stood within the aisle) is the lid of a thirteenth century stone coffin on the floor. In the aisle stands another altar-tomb, which has the sides panelled and adorned with shields of arms and bears the figure of an earlier Sir Thomas Markenfield, clad in armour of the period between Poitiers and Agincourt, and wearing a very curious collar of park palings with a stag couchant in front, possibly (as has been suggested) a badge of adherence to the party of Lancaster. The figure of Lady Markenfield has, unfortunately, been destroyed.[86] The aisle is often called the Markenfield Chapel, and doubtless contained the Markenfield family chantry, which seems to have become afterwards merged in another foundation.[87] The two bays were apparently once walled off from each other, the dividing wall having perhaps been removed to make way for this Markenfield tomb. At any rate, between the bays of the vaulting there is a plain cross-arch of remarkable thickness, whose eastern respond is cut off above the tomb, as are also the two adjacent vaulting-shafts, which have had heads carved upon their ends. The south wall is probably original, since (to mention one reason) part of the string-course upon it is worked on the same stone with the vaulting-shaft. The lower parts of the walls display traces of a design in red representing round arches interlaced. In the north wall there is a square aumbry, and in the south wall a large piscina, with trefoil head and projecting basin. If this piscina is original, it is a very fine specimen for so early a date. A huge eighteenth century monument to Sir Edward Blacket of Newby almost covers the southernmost window, but the remaining two contain glass of some merit, which in that facing east commemorates the recovery from fever of King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales. The vaulting springs from single cylindrical shafts, which rise from the ground and do not interrupt the string-course. Their bases have three-sided plinths, and their capitals are enriched with stiff foliage and are three-sided above. The vaulting, which is apparently original, deserves especial notice. Its bays are square, and the groin ribs consist each of three round mouldings, of which the most prominent is 'keeled';[88] but what is most remarkable is that there are also ridge-ribs, which are not usually found before the thirteenth century, and it has been suggested[89] that this is the earliest instance of their employment. There are also wall-ribs, and these and the ridge-ribs are much thinner than the groin-ribs, and consist of a single roll only. [Illustration: VAULT OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT AISLE, TWELFTH CENTURY.] =The South Transept= is narrower than the other by a yard, its width being 49 feet to the aisle wall (which, it should be noticed, has not been rebuilt). Without the aisle the width is only 30 feet, but this is partly due to the Perpendicular alterations. The end and west side of this transept, which remain more or less as they were in Archbishop Roger's day, resemble the corresponding walls of the other, yet with the following differences. The roof-shafts on the west side are thinner here than there, and are carried up to the required height in one piece, unbroken save by the string-courses. In connection with the attachment of shafts of any considerable height to wall-surfaces in Archbishop Roger's work, it will be observed that though the shafts (according to the general practice of masonry) are usually made in short joints built in at the back, yet (as here) their jointing sometimes does not harmonize with the coursing of the wall; again (as in the old nave and north transept) the shafts of a cluster are sometimes not worked all on the same stones. To return to the differences of this transept from the other, the roof-shafts over the inserted Perpendicular arch (which here obtrudes into the triforium) descend no lower than the sill of the clearstorey. Again, the thickening of the walls at the top is supported in the south-west angle not by one shaft but by two, one of which stands on a projecting strip of masonry that runs up the angle to the triforium. The design of the eighteenth century monument against the south wall, to Mr. Weddell of Newby, is taken from that of the choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens. On the east side, which has been entirely remodelled in the Perpendicular period, the bay next to the tower displays from the ground to the triforium a plain surface broken only by a pointed doorway surmounted by three cinquefoiled niches with ogee crocketed hoods. The doorway retains its original doors with an ornamental iron scutcheon over the keyhole. In their great strength, and in their treatment generally, the two arches opening into the aisle resemble the Perpendicular arches of the central tower. The triforium stage is exceedingly poor, and shows traces of more or less modern disfigurement. Each bay contains a single arch which does not occupy the whole space, and which is surmounted by a hood-mould and divided into two sub-arches, but without cusps. Here again the arches were once pierced through to a gallery over the aisle, as the exterior of the wall plainly shows; and this seems to indicate either that the external roof had not been lowered when these Perpendicular repairs took place, or that possibly the two lower storeys of Archbishop Roger's wall were left standing, and have been, not rebuilt, but cased. The appearance of the wall externally suggests that these arches may have once been round, and the unusual bulk of the two aisle-arches seems further to support the theory of a 'casing.' In the clearstorey the windows have hood-moulds, but otherwise are treated much as in the nave. The southernmost contains a fragment of old glass, bearing the words 'Jhesu mercy.' Along the sill of the passage may be seen the stumps of uprights which may perhaps have supported a rail. The roof-shafts are clustered and extremely thick, and appear the more awkward in that the wall and the shafts with it are set back at the base of the triforium. In this transept the ceiling is old, and among the heraldic devices carved upon it are those of the church itself, St. Wilfrid, the See of York, the Pigotts, the Nortons, and Fountains Abbey. The aisle, the walls of which have not been rebuilt, and which has a chequered pavement of uncertain date, was for some centuries the burial-place of the owners of Studley Royal, and is often called the Mallory Chapel. A curious recess in the south wall is concealed by the monument of John Aislabie of Studley, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of the South Sea Bubble, and against the north wall is a monument to that Sir John Mallory of Studley who defended Skipton Castle for Charles I., and delivered Ripon from Sir Thomas Mauleverer. There is a square aumbry to the right of this monument, and in the next bay another, divided by a stone shelf and having modern doors with ornamental iron-work. The northern bay is almost wholly occupied by a stone staircase leading up to two doors, one of which opens on the left into a chamber now containing the bellows of the organ, while the other opens into the Lady-loft or Library. Over the latter door and over the Mallory monument will be observed traces of two original windows, which, before the erection of the Lady-loft, admitted doubtless whatever light was not blocked out by the old roof of the Chapter-house. On this wall hangs a royal escutcheon bearing the motto of James I. The vaulting is Perpendicular, but two of the original supports remain on the east side. The shaft in the south-east corner resembles those in the Markenfield Chapel, save that its capital has no foliage; but between the two bays, instead of two shafts flanking the respond of a thick cross-arch, there is a cluster of three detached shafts, banded at the string-course, and sharing a common capital with a semi-octagonal top. It would seem, therefore, that the two bays here were never walled off from one another.[90] At the north-east corner the vaulting springs from a Perpendicular corbel. Its moulded ribs are exceedingly ponderous, and one of them, not having room to descend upon the pillar, is finished off with a head. The present Library staircase was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott in place of an older flight attached to the north wall, and upon the latter may be seen (behind the stairs) traces of mural paintings in red and green, representing the Adoration of the Magi and other subjects. The archaic character of these paintings indicates the age of the wall, which, nevertheless (unlike the corresponding wall in the Markenfield Chapel), seems to have been an afterthought, since it differs from the other walls in the coursing of the stone and in the pattern of the string-course, and, moreover, at its northern end there is a 'straight joint,' visible in the choir-aisle. =The Rood Screen=, according to Sir Gilbert Scott, is of a date a few years earlier than 1494, but, if so, it has taken the place of another, which is mentioned in the Fabric Rolls as early as 1408.[91] The general design is that of an arched doorway with four large niches on either side, and a tier of twenty-four small niches over all. The doorway, which retains its original panelled doors, has three shafts in either jamb, and is surmounted by a crocketed ogee hood, under which is a sculpture representing the First Person of the Trinity with attendant angels. A figure of the Saviour evidently once rested, as Walbran noticed, upon the knees of the central Figure; above whose head or shoulder, moreover, there was doubtless once a representation of the Holy Dove. The niches again have crocketed ogee hoods, and in the lower tier contain pedestals bearing shields charged with the arms of the Pigotts and other benefactors, while the sill of the last at either end of this tier is considerably raised, and the space below panelled. The niches contain ribbed vaults, and are cinquefoil, with feathered cusping, and their hoods are prolonged so as to divide the members of the upper tier into pairs; while from the sides of these hoods, from the buttresses, and from the curve of the doorway, thin strips of stone, adorned with knobs that distinctly add to the effect, are carried up to the cornice, along which runs a row of shields bearing traces of colour. In the lower part of the screen the spaces between the strips and under the hoods are filled with tracery. The screen is 12 feet thick, and in the passage through it are two doors, that on the right opening into a winding staircase to the loft above, and that on the left into a deep pit, which once communicated, it is thought, with the north passage of the Saxon crypt. [Illustration: THE ROOD SCREEN.] =The Choir.=--The choir extends 92 feet eastward from the screen. Its width is 33 feet between the columns, or 68 feet if the aisles be included. A notable peculiarity in it is, that after the lowering of the aisle-roofs externally, the triforium was glazed, so that there are two tiers of windows above the main arches.[92] Many styles meet here. The first three bays on the north side are Archbishop Roger's work, while the three opposite are Perpendicular, and lastly, the three easternmost bays on either side are chiefly Decorated. To begin with the north side. The arch in the first bay has been built up, probably to strengthen the tower, and by the twelfth-century builders themselves, for the abacus-moulding of the capital is continued across the blocking wall. In the latter the fifteenth-century builders have made a small pointed doorway, which is now blocked but apparently once gave access from the top of the screen to a staircase in the north aisle. This and the two next bays bear in all three stages a general resemblance to the east side of the north transept. The columns, however, are clusters of eight cylindrical shafts, and stand upon circular plinths, the base proper following, of course, the form of the pillar. The capitals, as usual, are compound and composed of plain inverted bells, and have square tops with the abacus hollowed and grooved. The arches differ from those in the transept only in that the large moulding under the soffit is 'keeled,' and that the mouldings which flank it are simple ridges. In the triforium the cusps visible in the glazed sub-arches belong to some tracery which has been applied to the back at a later period. [Illustration: THE GREAT EAST WINDOW.] The treatment of the vaulting-shafts is very remarkable; indeed, nothing is more instructive than the variety shown in the treatment of this feature throughout Archbishop Roger's church, the different parts of which are suggestive of nothing so much as of a series of architectural experiments. Here, upon the capital of each column, rests a sort of compound rectangular plinth, from which project three corbels, hollowed underneath and having little blocks beneath their overhanging edge. From this plinth and corbels springs a cluster of no less than five shafts, which, by their united width, conceal the springing of the upper order of the main arches. They are banded at the string-course below the triforium, and end at the sill of the clearstorey in a compound capital, of which the three central members are square, and the others round. Upon this capital, apparently, stand the two adjoining shafts that carry the thickening of the wall above the clearstorey, and here (but hidden by the vaulting) stands also the original roof-shaft, and these three are 'detached.' Thus the arrangement is in principle similar to that adopted in the north transept, while at the same time the clustered shafts are even more disproportionate here than there to the slight burden they have to carry; indeed the effect is that of five shafts diminishing to one. The vaulting hides a feature which is not found in the transept, namely, a little lancet arch whose apex comes exactly behind the roof-shaft in each bay. [Illustration: BAY OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER'S CHOIR (WITHOUT THE VAULTING). (From a drawing by Sir G. G. Scott, by permission of the Archæological Institute.)] [Illustration: DECORATED CAPITAL IN CHOIR.] Though the three eastern bays (still on the north side) are chiefly Decorated, portions of Archbishop Roger's work have been retained or used again. Thus the fourth column from the west is his, and perhaps the fifth up to the abacus, which is convex and of limestone. The respond against the east wall is of his pattern, but it has not the circular plinth, and the capital is of limestone, has the abacus moulded with rounds upon the edge, and is covered with delicate foliage in the Decorated manner. In these arches the lower order has exactly the same mouldings as in the western bays, and is of gritstone, while the upper order is of limestone, and has fillets upon the larger mouldings. It would seem, therefore, that the later builders have used the original archivolts again, and have merely added another order or orders over it. The plane of the wall above, indeed, is brought forward to the face of Archbishop Roger's vaulting-shafts: yet without being really thickened, since it is set back from his wall on the exterior. At the junction of the old vaulting-shafts with the additional order of the first Decorated arch the later builders have carved a group of grotesque faces. In each bay of the Decorated triforium there is a round arch filled with tracery consisting of three round-headed and trefoil lights with two circles enclosing trefoils above them; and on either side of this arch (but on one three only, in the first of the side bays) is a sunk lancet panel enclosing a pointed arch impaling a trefoil. The clearstorey has a second plane of tracery, a feature not very common in England. The vaulting-shafts are in clusters of three and are filleted, and the string-course below the triforium is not carried round them. Each cluster springs from a semicircular corbel resting on a head, and has its capitals enriched with foliage. The last pendentive of the vaulting rests on a single shaft springing directly from a head-corbel. The string-courses are not of the same pattern with those on the older bays. [Illustration: THE NORTH SIDE OF THE CHOIR. (Junction of Transitional and Decorated work.)] On the south side the westernmost Perpendicular bay, up to the triforium, is solid and covered with cinquefoil panelling. In the next two bays the mouldings of the arch, among which a broad hollow is conspicuous, are continued down the column, and there is no capital--a sign of decadence more common in the Flamboyant work of the Continent than here. There is, however, a debased half-capital on the east side of the last Perpendicular column, and on the west side of it are three small heads at the impost-level. These columns are lozenge-shaped in section, wider from north to south than from east to west, and though the mouldings end before they reach the bottom of the column, there is no proper base. Each column has a shaft at the front and another at the back, the former carrying the rim of the arch and having a stilted polygonal base but no capital, while the latter has capital as well as base (both polygonal), and helps to carry the aisle-vault. The spandrels of these arches are filled with panelling, in which are several shields (one bearing the arms of Pigott). The triforium again shows in each bay a round arch; indeed, no better example than this choir could be found of the truth that the form of the arch is not a safe guide to the date of a building, but was often dictated by convenience; for here in the triforium are round arches, of which some belong to the twelfth, others to the thirteenth, and others to the sixteenth century. The fact that the distance between the string-courses was already settled by the Transitional bays, compelled the later builders to make their arches round, as a pointed arch of the requisite width would have been too tall. Here the round arch, which is again flanked by two panels, comprises three cinquefoil lights, and the mullions are carried up through the head. The panels are pointed and divided each into two cinquefoil divisions. The Perpendicular clearstorey windows have their rims moulded, but are not splayed. The vaulting-shafts resemble those in the Decorated bays, but their corbels are polygonal and have the sides slightly hollowed, and the abacus of the capital is a half-lozenge. The string-courses have not been made to match either the Transitional or the Decorated. The whole of this Perpendicular work is of very late character, and justifies the belief that it was the last important alteration in the fabric before the dissolution. Moreover, where it meets the tower there seems to be a 'straight joint,' which indicates that these bays are at any rate later than the tower piers. East of the Perpendicular pillars the next column is Archbishop Roger's, and perhaps the next also, with the exception of its capital, which has two rings upon the necking, with the rectangular top imposed directly upon them and chamfered beneath, while the abacus (which is of limestone) is convex.[93] The respond against the east wall is again of the old pattern, but without the circular plinth, and its capital resembles that just described. In the westernmost of these southern Decorated bays three styles meet. The lower order of the arch seems again to be Transitional work, while in the triforium and clearstorey Decorated arches have been filled with Perpendicular tracery. In the two remaining bays the main arches are entirely Decorated, the lower order being of limestone and the large moulding under the soffit having a fillet. Over the last two complete columns there is a little foliage, and of the corbels of the vaulting-shafts one is enriched with foliage while the other consists of a head between two embracing figures. There is foliage upon the capitals of these vaulting-shafts, and upon the capital and base of that which supports the last pendentive of the vaulting. With the exceptions mentioned, these bays resemble those opposite. It has been remarked that the choir was probably as long in the twelfth century as it is now. The point is indeed proved if (as there seems no reason to doubt) the last complete column on either side is original and occupies its original position; but a further indication is to be found in the fact that the fragment of the original south wall, the end of which is visible on the exterior between the south aisle and the apse, extends well into the last bay of the present choir.[94] The huge east window, which is not splayed, has a deep rear-vault bounded by a massive rib, whose outer edge rests on slender engaged shafts with foliage on their capitals, while the inner edge ends in bunches of foliage. Between this rib and the tracery is another rib springing on the north side from a bunch of foliage and on the south from a grotesque corbel. The inner arch has slender shafts, and so has the moulding next to the tracery, but in the latter case the capitals are plain.[95] Few acts of vandalism are more to be regretted, probably, than the destruction in 1643 of the magnificent fourteenth century glass which once occupied this window. The present very poor glass, by Wailes of Newcastle, commemorates the revival of the see of Ripon in 1863. [Illustration: A Bishop and a King.] [Illustration: The Expulsion from Paradise. BOSSES FROM THE CHOIR-VAULT.] Over the window may be seen the mark of one of the earlier roofs. The choir is thought to have received a groined vault of oak after the rebuilding of the east end, but this vault was probably renewed more than once, especially after the accident to the tower about 1450, and the fall of the spire in 1660. Sir Gilbert Scott found a vault of lath and plaster (probably the work of Blore) for which he substituted the present roof, a groined wooden vault, admirable in its lofty pitch and judicious colouring. Its chief feature, however, is the splendid bosses along the ridge, which are survivals from either the Decorated or a subsequent Perpendicular vault. In some of these bosses the figures are five feet long. From west to east the subjects are as follows: (1) A head; (2) an angel, with foliage; (3) a head; (4) a man conducting a woman to a church door; (5) a bishop in benediction; (6) a king enthroned; (7) a bishop enthroned; (8) a king and a bishop enthroned together; (9) the Crucifixion (modern); (10) the Annunciation; (11) the expulsion from Paradise; (12)? the good Samaritan; (13) a head. There are also good foliage bosses against the walls between the pendentives. The westernmost pendentive on either side rests on a Perpendicular corbel carved with delicate foliage. The general arrangements of the presbytery have been much changed since the middle ages. The altar then stood against a screen one bay in advance of its present position, and the iron hooks upon the second complete column from the east end on either side held, it is supposed, the Lenten Veil. Before the last restoration the altar stood, as now, against the east wall (on a single step, however), but the Sanctuary still extended two bays westward and was three steps above the rest of the choir, which was all on one level. Since then the floor has been raised one step at the east end of the stalls, and the steps to the Sanctuary have been diminished by one, while there are now two steps to the altar, and the Sanctuary and the raised portion of the choir have received an inlaid marble pavement. The reredos, an arcading of slender arches each enclosing a trefoiled arch impaling a trefoil, is a restoration of the original Decorated work. The latter had been covered by a painted screen of wood--possibly of late mediæval workmanship--and this again by a huge oil-painting of the time of Charles II. Both were removed to make way for a high reredos by Blore, which in its turn was taken down by Sir Gilbert Scott.[96] On the pavement south of the altar is a piscina, which (if this be its original position) must have belonged to a chapel or chantry behind the high altar--possibly the chantry of the Holy Trinity _subtus altare_.[97] From its position it would seem that in those days the floor here was considerably lower than it is now. [Illustration: THE SEDILIA.] =The Sedilia.=--The last bay on the south side is now occupied by three sedilia and a piscina, which form one block. As might be expected from the mediæval position of the altar, they once stood in the second bay from the east, and they were not removed to their present position until the last restoration. Sir Gilbert Scott considered them late Decorated work, but they have rather the appearance of late Perpendicular. Over each seat is an ogee canopy, cinquefoil, crocketed, and surmounted by a huge finial. These canopies rest on square pillars, the sides of which are adorned with a sort of 'four-leaved flowers,' while the capitals are encircled with foliage in which are animals and monsters. Each pillar is surmounted by a pinnacle, and behind each canopy rises a crocketed gable, again crowned by a huge finial. The gables, the pinnacles, and the tops of the canopies are the work of Sir Gilbert Scott, who found the sedilia in a mutilated condition. Below the seats and the piscina runs a chamfer with 'four-leaved flowers' along it, and below this are panels enclosing trefoils containing faces. But the most curious feature of these sedilia is not perceived until a glance is given beneath the canopies. The carved ends of the cusps are in reality the heads of extraordinary grotesques whose bodies are curled up against the under surface of the arch. Some of these figures, in addition to their proper physiognomy, have faces carved on the crowns of their heads. The piscina, which has been converted into a credence table, has another ogee canopy, and is backed by a wall, along the top of which runs a band of foliage that is continued round the top of a square pillar at the end of the block. The fine oak chairs in the Sanctuary are of modern construction but of old material, while the rails, lectern and pulpit are all modern.[98] In the four easternmost bays the choir is separated from its aisles (except where the sedilia already block one arch) by elaborate oak screens of various designs, in the upper part of which the tracery is largely pendant--an arrangement characteristic of Yorkshire. These screens have been restored, but contain much of the old work, most of which is probably of the same date with the stalls.[99] Until the last restoration they were surmounted by seventeenth century galleries in the so-called Jacobean style. [Illustration: CHOIR STALLS, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] =The Stalls=--thirteen on either side and eight returned against the Rood Screen--are exquisite specimens of fifteenth century woodwork. They are surmounted by lofty canopies of elaborate tabernacle-work supported on slender shafts and rising into a forest of crocketed spirelets and pinnacles. There are ribbed vaults under the canopies, and upon the pendants in front are hovering angels. The canopies on the south side were wrecked by the fall of the spire in 1660, and those over the eight easternmost stalls were then reconstructed in the 'Jacobean' style with a gallery above, while of the canopies now over the other nine, eight are said to have been brought across from the eastern end of the north range, where more Jacobean canopies were erected in their place. Sir Gilbert Scott removed all this seventeenth century work and set up reproductions of the fifteenth century design. Thus the eight easternmost canopies on either side are modern. The misereres and arms of the stalls are exquisitely carved. [Illustration: Jonah emerging from the whale. Pelican feeding her young. MISERERES, FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] The subjects upon the former are as follows, beginning from the archway in the screen:-- _North side_:--(1) (CANON IN RESIDENCE) lion attacked by dogs; (2) dragon attacked by dogs; (3) angel with shield; (4) dragon and birds; (5) hart's-tongue ferns; (6) conventional flowers; (7) ape attacked by lion; (8) vine; (9) birds pecking fruit; (10) antelopes; (11) fox preaching to goose and cock; (12) fox running off with geese; (13) fox caught by dogs; (14) dragons fighting; (15) fruit and flowers issuing from inverted head; (16) man holding club with oak leaves and acorns; (17) (MAYOR'S STALL) griffin catching rabbit. _South side_:--(1) (DEAN) angel with book; (2) angel with shield bearing date 1489; (3) lion _versus_ griffin; (4) griffin devouring human leg; (5) owl; (6) mermaid with mirror and hair-brush; (7) two pigs dancing to bagpipe played by a third; (8) Jonah thrown to the whale; (9) man wheeling another who holds a reed and a bag; (10) fox caught carrying off goose by dog and by woman with distaff; (11) winged animal; (12) hart, gorged and chained; (13) pelican feeding young; (14) Jonah emerging from the whale; (15) Samson carrying the gates; (16) head (modern)[100]; (17) (BISHOP'S THRONE) Caleb and Joshua carrying the grapes and watched by Anakim. [Illustration: DESK-END OF MAYOR'S STALL.] Most of these misereres have exquisite conventional flowers (especially roses) cut upon them in addition to the figure-subjects. The desks in front of the stalls have rich finials, and their panelled fronts form the backs of a lower tier of seats, the arms of which are supported each on a square shaft set diamondwise. In front of these lower seats the desks again have carved finials and panelled fronts, and on those parallel with the Rood Screen the tracery is distinctly Flamboyant. The finial before the stall of the Canon in Residence has a griffin attached to it, and that in front of the Dean's stall a lion. Before both these stalls the ends of the two tiers of desks are richly carved. The Bishop's throne and Mayor's stall have each a canopied niche on the exterior toward the east,[101] and two small apertures in the east side to enable the occupant to see the altar, and in front of these two stalls the ends of the two tiers of desks are again richly carved. The Mayor's stall, which is wider than the others, was probably that of the Wakeman, and attached to the finial in front is a grotesque ape, beneath which the supporting shaft is of open work. The end of this desk displays a shield charged with two keys in saltire, for the see of York. [Illustration: FINIAL IN FRONT OF THE BISHOP'S THRONE.] The Bishop's throne was originally occupied by the Archbishops of York. The Jacobean canopy, which succeeded that of the fifteenth century, comprised the space of two stalls, as did also the modern structure by which it was itself succeeded and which is now in the Consistory Court. The present canopy resembles those of the other stalls but is higher and more elaborate. Upon the back of the throne inside is a small mitre. The finial in front consists of an elephant carrying a man in his trunk, and bearing on his back a castle filled with armed soldiery, and in front of the elephant is a centaur (renewed), the shaft under which is again of open-work. The end of this desk displays a large mitre above a shield charged with the three stars of St. Wilfrid and supported by two angels, between whom is a scroll with the date 1494. [Illustration: THE WEST END OF THE CHOIR.] =The Organ= occupied the top of the Rood Screen as early as 1408; but doubtless all traces of the mediæval instrument disappeared at the Reformation or in the Civil War. During the ascendancy of the Puritans organ-building became a lost art, and at the Restoration it had to be revived by foreigners, one of whom, Gerard Schmidt, nephew of 'Father Schmidt,' built an organ for Ripon. This instrument was remodelled in 1833 by Booth of Leeds, and about 1878 the organ was rebuilt by T. C. Lewis of Brixton, so that very little of Schmidt's work now remains. The present case was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Over the doorway in the screen is a projecting wooden gallery, in good imitation of the Perpendicular manner. This gallery, which dates probably from the time of Schmidt, was occupied until comparatively recently by the organist. From the front of it projects a well-carved hand, which, worked by a pedal, could be made to beat time--a very interesting piece of mechanism, which again probably dates from the time of Schmidt. [Illustration: THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE.] =The North Choir Aisle.=--The floor of the choir is now a step above that of the aisles, and it may be further remarked that in both of them the first bay is somewhat dark, being walled up on three sides; that in the second bay the archway toward the choir is occupied by organ-pipes; that a bench table runs along the side wall and the east end, and that the latter portion is adorned with panelling of the same design with the reredos. In the north aisle the first three bays and a portion of the fourth are Archbishop Roger's work, with the exception of the windows. The most notable feature, as usual, is the vaulting-shafts, which spring from above the string-course, and are in clusters of three. In each cluster the central shaft is even thicker than the others, and the capitals, which are carved with foliage of Norman character, share a common five-sided abacus, while the bases are circular and rest on radiating brackets smaller than themselves. These brackets, which are said to be unique, have square corners and are moulded, but only on the front, and their receding portion consists of a concave moulding containing a convex block. In the north-west corner there is but a single shaft, which rises from the bench-table, is banded at the string-course, and has a square-topped capital. The vaulting has wall-ribs, cross-springers, and groin-ribs, and is rather high-pitched. Upon the cross-springers the mouldings are a large keeled round having on either side a hollow between fillets, while the groin-ribs are moulded as in the Markenfield Chapel. In the westernmost bay the vault has shown signs of weakness (like so many other parts of the building adjacent to the ill-fated tower) and has been strengthened by a cross-arch with a half-arch abutting against it on the west side, both springing from corbels. The corbels are quite in Archbishop Roger's manner, and indicate that these strengthening arches, and therefore the blocking walls from which they spring, are of his period. Moreover, the abacus moulding of the first choir capital is continued as a string to the shaft (which it encircles) in the north-west corner. This string is interrupted by a rather inexplicable round arch in the west wall, and has also been broken by the obtrusion of the Perpendicular tower-pier, and by the blocked doorway which once opened from the Rood Screen. Below this doorway (adjoining which there is a recess in the obtruding masonry of the tower-pier) the wall shows traces of a gallery or staircase. On the north wall the string-course, which is rather undercut, is original as far as the end of the fourth bay, and marks the level to which the sills of the original windows descended in steps.[102] In the present windows, which descend to the old level, the mouldings of the arch are stopped upon a set-off and the jamb is left plain. [Illustration: TRANSITIONAL VAULTING CORBEL. CHOIR AISLE.] In the two easternmost bays the Decorated string-course is of a different pattern and at a slightly higher level; and here the jambs of the windows are moulded with a hollow continued from the arch; while the rim of the latter has upon it a large filleted round flanked by hollows and supported on shafts with polygonal plinths and circular bases and capitals, the latter enriched with foliage. The east window, however, is not splayed, and has a deep rear-vault and a flat sill, while its rim is more elaborately moulded and there are shafts to the inner as well as to the outer arch. Except in the two easternmost windows on the north side, the glass is very poor. The Decorated vaulting-shafts are again in clusters of three, but rise from the bench-table and break the string-course. They have polygonal plinths, and their capitals are adorned with rather ill-cut foliage. In the north-east corner there is a single shaft having a fillet, and adjoining it is a round-headed doorway, which once opened into the angle staircase. In this aisle the panelling is carried two bays westwards. It should be noticed that toward the aisle the choir arches have one more order in the three Decorated bays than they have in the rest. In the Decorated vaulting several chamfers are introduced among the mouldings of the cross-springers, and both in these and in the groin-ribs the most prominent moulding has a fillet. Otherwise the roof roughly matches that of the older bays. The older and the later period meet in the fourth bay from the west, where two of the groin-ribs have the fillet, while the other two are without it. In the two easternmost bays there are fine bosses at the crown of the vault. It is thought that the Shrine of St. Wilfrid was in the east end of this aisle.[103] Unfortunately Leland's words _S. Wilfridi reliquiae sub arcu prope magnum altare sepultae_ are too vague to decide its exact position. =The South Choir Aisle.=--This aisle, in some respects, has been altered more than the other, but the south wall is Archbishop Roger's work as far as the end of the fourth bay, if not farther. About 14 feet from the west end occurs that 'straight joint' in the masonry which shows the separation of this aisle from the Mallory Chapel to have been an afterthought; and a little further east a round-headed doorway, moulded with the edge-roll and retaining a panelled door of some age, opens into the Chapter-house. There was evidently a second and similar doorway a few yards further on, but it has been blocked (doubtless when the cross-wall was built at the back of it between the Chapter-house and vestry), and a square-headed doorway has been made to open into the latter. To the right of this entrance is a square-headed lavatory with a projecting rectangular basin and a hole knocked through into the lobby behind. This lavatory is of course an insertion, probably of the fifteenth century; indeed the whole of this part of the wall has been much repaired with limestone. The aisle is somewhat darkened by the fact that its first four windows look into the Lady-loft. Fortunately the three westernmost are original. They are as usual round-headed and plainly splayed, and their sills descend to the string-course in steps. Archbishop Roger's vaulting-shafts here are in better preservation than in the other aisle. The original vaulting itself must of course have been taken down when the three westernmost columns of the choir-arcade were rebuilt, but in the reconstruction the old ribs seem to have been used again. The groin-ribs have no room to descend upon the Perpendicular choir-capitals, and end prematurely upon corbels carved into faces. The westernmost bay of the aisle has been divided into two storeys, the upper of which now contains part of the mechanism of the organ, but is thought to have been once a chantry chapel. This curious chamber is reached through a pointed doorway at the top of the Library staircase in the south transept. Its roof is of course formed by the aisle-vault, which originally extended, doubtless, as far westwards in this aisle as in the other. The space, however, has been shortened by the great thickness of a Perpendicular cross-arch, which, though its southern respond obtrudes into the aisle below, is itself only visible from this chamber. When, therefore, the vaulting here was rebuilt, it had to be adapted to the shortened space, and the groin-ribs, which are very much of Archbishop Roger's pattern, spring from Perpendicular corbels carved into faces. The wall which separates this bay of the aisle from the choir was said above, quite truly, to be Perpendicular, but on this its southern face the masonry is apparently Archbishop Roger's. It is of gritstone, and behind the organ-bellows there remains a corbel like those of the cross-arch that props the vaulting in the corresponding bay of the north aisle. The presumption therefore is that the original vaulting was similarly propped here, and that the wall on which this corbel remains was built to block or strengthen the first choir-arch, and has survived the arch itself. To the west of the door a small square window looks into the Mallory Chapel. In its eastern portion this aisle resembles the other, but the bench-table here is only carried two bays westward, and the panelling only one bay. In the fifth bay from the west the window is shortened to about half the length of the others, and the string-course (which is of Archbishop Roger's pattern) is correspondingly raised, possibly because a longer window would have come below the springing of the vestry roof (in the period when there was no Lady-loft), or possibly (though this is less likely) to make room for the monument underneath, which, though placed here by Sir Gilbert Scott, who found it in pieces, may have occupied this position before. The monument is that of Moses Fowler, first Dean of Ripon (d. 1608), and the effigy is not a favourable example of English sculpture in the seventeenth century. Of the stained glass, that in the last window on the south side is of some merit. The capitals of the Decorated vaulting-shafts are better executed in this aisle than in the other. Here, as there, the Decorated vaulting begins in the middle of the fourth bay, where the fillet is again found upon the two eastern groins only. At the south-east corner of this aisle are the remains of a piscina--a fragment of a basin resting on a shaft--which probably belonged to one of the many chantries. The staircase at this corner affords the best access to the turret cell described in the last chapter, and to the attic over the choir, where the framing of the roof is a very remarkable specimen of modern joinery. On account of the alterations that have taken place at different periods in the part of the Cathedral south of the choir, it will be well to examine the crypt under the Chapter-house before examining either the latter itself or the Library. =The Norman Crypt.=--A round-headed doorway in the west wall of the Chapter-house admits to a staircase which, roofed with a sloping barrel-vault and descending southwards, turns eastwards, under another round arch, into the crypt. The age of this staircase is uncertain, but its west wall is of course the east wall of Archbishop Roger's transept, and its barrel-vault is under his buttresses which will be seen in the Library. The crypt is divided by a cross-wall with a round arch in it into two portions, each having the vaulting supported on pillars along the middle; but half of the first and third bays of the western portion has been walled up in modern times for burial-vaults. The width of the crypt is about 18 feet and the total length about 68 feet. [Illustration: THE NORMAN CRYPT.] This part of the church was assigned by Walbran to Thomas of Bayeux (1070-1100), and by Sir Gilbert Scott to Thurstan (1114-1141); but it is quite possible that both these Archbishops, if not Oda or Oswald before them, may have had a share in its construction. Much of the work at any rate belongs to a Norman church which preceded that of Archbishop Roger. In the vaulting (which by-the-way has had to be propped at some period by two rude pointed limestone arches at the west end) the chamfered groin-ribs seem to have been added later for strength, probably when the storey above was remodelled; but the vaulting itself, with its square pillars, its plain round arches from pillar to pillar and from pillar to walls, and without ribs upon the groins (such having been its original condition, apparently), seems pure Norman work.[104] The traces of painted decoration remaining upon both pillars and vaulting are probably original. Along the walls the arches spring, not from corbels, but from short strings of the same pattern with the impost-moulding on the pillars--a pattern not of very early character. The north and south walls must, perhaps, be as old at least as the vaulting which rests against them; nor does the former wall seem quite on the same plane with the portion of Archbishop Roger's choir foundations visible outside (between the present choir and the apse), he having perhaps built his wall against this one. The large limestone buttress against this wall, and another buttress which rises from the east wall but is hidden by the vaulting, were added in the Decorated period, and can be followed up through the two storeys above. They terminate in the pinnacles of the flying buttresses that span the choir-aisle. The south wall may perhaps be definitely placed somewhat early in the Norman period, since the windows are splayed both internally and externally.[105] Of equal age, probably, is the cross-wall (which, to judge from the mass of masonry that spans the present passage of communication between the two parts of the crypt, is very thick) since allowance is made for its thickness in the spacing of the windows.[106] It is at least as old as the vaulting, whose bays are arranged to suit it; and moreover the half-pillar against its eastern side has never been a whole pillar, as the capital plainly shows. This last remark applies also to the half-pillar against the extreme west wall, which therefore may perhaps be taken as marking the westward limit of the crypt at the time when the vaulting was constructed; while the east wall (excluding the apse) probably marks the contemporary eastward limit--if, that is to say, the eastern portion of the vaulting has not undergone alteration. That eastern portion is clearly planned for an apse or chancel of some kind. The arch that rises eastward from the last pillar is stopped half-way in its course by a cross-arch opening into the apse, and the two last groin-ribs are carried from the pillar to the abutments of the cross-arch, being obliged by this contraction of span to form the only pointed arches in the whole vaulting. Such an arrangement--a 'nave' terminating in an apse, and at the same time divided by a row of pillars along the middle--is somewhat unusual. The present apse is of uncertain date. Part of it may be Norman. Its window indeed is of early Norman type: yet its wall seems of softer stone than the rest of the crypt,[107] and the string which runs along the east wall of the latter and round the responds of the cross-arch is there broken off: moreover, the cross-arch itself is clearly not of the same date or construction with the two ribs of the apse-roof, which ribs may possibly be of the same date as the groin-ribs; and lastly, it will be remembered that the shafts on the exterior had something of the appearance of Archbishop Roger's work. The floor of the apse is raised on two steps, but there is no trace of an altar. It will be noticed that at the south-east corner there is no apsidal chamber to correspond to that in the storey above. There is, however, an unsavoury hole from which have been extracted a number of skulls. Indeed, this crypt formerly contained huge piles of bones, which had probably been brought here by the sixteenth century builders from the foundations of their new nave-aisles,[108] and which were removed in 1865 to a pit in the graveyard. Among the stone relics which have found a resting-place here, the most interesting are a sarcophagus, the head of a cross of Saxon character, and a group of coffin-lids near the north wall. Most of these last are perhaps of the thirteenth century.[109] At the west end of the crypt is preserved Blore's reredos. =The Chapter-house= is 22 feet wide from wall to wall and 35 feet long, but it was evidently once open to the vestry, and the dividing wall, which with its bench-table is of limestone, was erected in the Decorated or in the Perpendicular period. In both rooms, as also in the storey above, the original floor was perhaps of stone or tiles, but if so, it has been covered or superseded by wooden planking. The Chapter-house is marked as such by the stone benches which are carried in two tiers along the north and south walls. On the north side the upper tier is interrupted by the piers of an arcading of plainly chamfered round arches, the central bay of which contains a fine mediæval cupboard with iron scroll-work. The doorway into the choir is very curiously treated on this side. It is surmounted first by a lintel, the stones above which are wedges forming a 'flat arch,' and then by a round arch so high as to run up behind the westernmost arch of the arcading. The very fine vaulting, although some have ascribed it to the Early English period, belongs more probably to the time of Archbishop Roger. Unlike that over the choir-aisles and the Markenfield chapel, however, it has all its arches rounded, and is without wall-ribs. It springs from five-sided corbels which, like the corbels of the old nave, are finished off with scrolls, and which on the north side are placed against the piers of the arcading; and in the middle of the room it is supported on two cylindrical and monolithic pillars. The bases and capitals of these are circular, and the former are almost pure Early English, the plinth having a round moulding at the bottom, and the base proper consisting of two round mouldings separated by a hollow, with one or two beads or fillets. The capitals are less advanced in style, as the part just above the bell is not moulded and the abacus retains the square edge. All the eight ribs that rise from each pillar resemble the groin-ribs in the crypt. [Illustration: THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.] The arcade against the north wall is continued in the vestry, and it has been thought that it is Norman, and that its arches were once open.[110] But had this ever been the case the piers would surely have been narrower, and would have had capitals. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the arcade is Norman at all: for if it were, its bays might be expected to agree in span and number with the (presumably Norman) bays of the crypt, whereas there are five bays there and only four here occupying the same total length. Secondly, the set-off on which its piers stand is probably Archbishop Roger's work, as will appear later; and the piers themselves seem to be of the same construction with the wall behind them, which again is almost certainly his. Moreover, it is significant that the arches agree in span with those of his choir, and that their piers are back to back with his vaulting-shafts in the choir-aisle. Lastly, these piers correspond in width with his buttresses on the north side of the choir. In fact it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they are Archbishop Roger's south choir buttresses in disguise,[111] and that the arches between them were thrown across merely to form a straight boundary for the vaulting, and to carry a ledge which (when there was no storey above) might support the external roof. The piers indeed are carried up, with a 'straight joint' on either side, above the springing of the arches, and the latter are constructed as if they had been let into the piers as an after-thought.[112] As the bays of this arcade, to which the vaulting is adapted, do not agree with those of the crypt, it follows that the two cylindrical pillars here do not stand exactly over the pillars below--which strengthens the presumption that the vaulting there is of earlier date, and that its groin-ribs were added later for strength: nor does the dividing wall here stand exactly over the cross-wall below, so that the strain on the crypt roof must be considerable. The two round windows are very widely splayed, and the uppermost part of their rim has a different curvature from the rest, as if they had once been straight-sided and round-headed. In their present form they are of uncertain date. The most conspicuous instance of the employment of this rare type of window--viz., the nave of Southwell Cathedral--is pure Norman, but the received opinion ascribes these Ripon examples to the time of Archbishop Roger, and it will be observed that their position harmonizes with the bays of the vaulting, which is presumably his, but has no relation externally to the spacing of the windows of the crypt, which, moreover, have an external splay. The third window was once circular like the rest, for a portion of the rim may still be traced; but as it would otherwise have been bisected by the cross-wall, the later builders have blocked half of it and squared the rest, splaying it at the same time like a squint. The date of the south wall itself is doubtful. It is thinner here than in either the vestry or the crypt. [Illustration: The Resurrection. St. Wilfrid. The Coronation of the Virgin. ANCIENT SCULPTURES PRESERVED IN THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.] Near the modern hearth is a case of curiosities found about the church, among them several fourteenth or fifteenth century reliefs in alabaster, representing the Resurrection, the Coronation of the Virgin, the story of Herodias, and the figure of a bishop, probably St. Wilfrid, with a curious P-shaped implement on his arm. At the north end of the cross-wall it will be observed that the blocked doorway noticed in the choir-aisle was not round-headed on this side, but segmental. The square-headed doorway in the cross-wall itself is modern, and opens into a lobby, the opposite side of which is formed by the Decorated buttress whose lower portion was noticed in the crypt, while on the left is the doorway into the choir, and on the right another square-headed doorway, opening into the vestry. =The Vestry.=--Before the erection of the cross-wall the vaulting evidently extended eastward continuously to the apse, which still contains a fragment of it with two corbels, while further traces, including another corbel, may be seen upon the south wall. Its removal may have taken place either when the two Decorated buttresses were introduced, or at the erection of the Lady-loft, or possibly much later; but was doubtless contemporaneous with the building of the cross-wall, which was evidently intended not only as a partition, but as a 'stop' for the portion of the vaulting that was retained. The present ceiling was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott, who, it is said, would have restored the vaulting had funds allowed. Of the buttresses, that adjoining the doorway has in its front, as well as in the side toward the lobby, a small trefoiled and moulded recess. These two buttresses are built against the piers of the arcading, part of the last arch of which is visible behind the cupboard. In the same cupboard may be observed, scarcely above the floor, a wide stone ledge with a bold moulding worked along the front. If the floor can ever have been lower than it is now, this ledge may have been used as a bench. In itself, it is of course the set-off on which the piers of the arcading stand. Now it will be remembered that the portion of Archbishop Roger's wall-base visible from the graveyard (between the choir and the apse) has at the top a wide set-off or slope. This ledge in the vestry, then, seems to be level with the base of that slope, where moreover there is a moulding similar to that found here; also the front of the ledge here seems to be flush with Archbishop Roger's masonry there. If, then, the work there is his,[113] the above considerations afford some reason surely for the belief that this set-off on which the piers of the arcading stand, and perhaps also the uppermost courses of the wall beneath it, are Archbishop Roger's work. Nor is it improbable that this set-off once had a slope, of which that above-mentioned was the continuation, and out of which the buttresses (_i.e._, the arcade piers) rose after the manner of those on the other side of the choir--in fact, that Archbishop Roger intended to make this wall the exterior of his church by demolishing the crypt, vestry, and Chapter-house; and that it was only after some such idea had been conceived and abandoned, that the arches were thrown across from buttress to buttress, the vaulting constructed against them, this ledge formed (by cutting away the slope of the set-off), and the stone benches carried along the wall of the Chapter-house. The arch above the ledge has been mutilated to make way for a modern spiral staircase of wood leading to the Library. Half-way up this staircase there remain upon the wall and upon the buttress (if it may now be so called) portions of a string-course which may be taken perhaps as additional evidence for the theory that Archbishop Roger at first intended to demolish the vestry and Chapter-house.[114] It does not, however, match the external string on the other side of the choir, but resembles the internal string in the choir-aisles. The single window in the south wall is round-headed internally, and is partially splayed on one side and not at all on the other: indeed the wall here appears to have undergone some alteration. In this room this wall is of the same thickness with the corresponding wall of the crypt, which is not the case in the Chapter-house. East of the above window a square-headed doorway opens into the apsidal chamber enclosed by the corner buttress. This curious little chamber was probably a sacristy or treasury. It has a recess in the west side, and seems to have communicated directly with the graveyard. In the roof is a slab which has a small cross graven upon it, and which may have formed part of an altar. The projection at the south side of the apse was probably one of the responds of an arch against which the vaulting abutted, as in the crypt. Under the east window the curve of the wall has been flattened, probably to afford a better back for the altar, of which the step remains. On the north side is an aumbry, with a recess adjoining it in the side of the buttress; and on the south side is a smaller aumbry, and a piscina with a projecting basin and a semicircular head, the latter cut apparently in one stone. This again is probably one of the earliest piscinæ in existence. The curve of the apse is wider in this storey than below, which partly accounts for the fact that the adjoining Decorated buttress protrudes here into the room. There is also a difference in the stone used, and in several other particulars, _e.g._, the two windows here have very little external splay--all of which may or may not indicate a difference in date between the apse in this storey and in the crypt. The hand of Archbishop Roger seems traceable here not only in the external shafts and corbel-table, but also in the trefoiling (externally) of the east window. The two vaulting-corbels at any rate seem to be his, as well as the piscina. The upper part of the apse has lost its semicircular shape and been squared, and some masonry has been thrown across from its wall to the Decorated buttress, the motive having been perhaps to make a better support for the rectangular east end of the Lady-loft. The oak table in this room was probably the Communion-table of the church during the period following the Reformation. The question now arises how long the vestry and Chapter-house have served their present purpose. Of the arrangements in this storey before the time of Archbishop Roger nothing can be recovered with certainty, but the (presumably Norman) wall between the two parts of the crypt suggests by its thickness that it was intended to support a division of some kind above. After being remodelled in the time of Archbishop Roger, however, this upper storey was evidently open from end to end, and its apsidal termination, containing both piscina and altar-step, indicates that it was a chapel: indeed, as has been well suggested, it was probably the original Lady Chapel. Nevertheless, in an age when every action of life was invested with a religious character, the western part may have been used for capitular purposes even without a dividing wall, and the gritstone benches, so significant of those purposes, are doubtless of considerable age. The statement in the old Records that the trial of 1228[115] was held _apud Rypon in Aulâ Capituli_ is definite enough to show that there was a recognised place for Chapter meetings; nor is it improbable that the reference may be to the present building. Some doubt is thrown upon this conclusion by a proclamation of Archbishop Lee in 1537 sequestrating the Common Fund on the ground that "the Chapter-house is ruinous in walls, roof, and stonework generally, so that it is likely to fall." These words, it has been thought, can never have been applicable to the present Chapter-house, and it has been suggested therefore that there may have been another which has disappeared. Archbishop Lee's words, however, are perhaps not irreconcilable with the present building. They may refer to the serious settlement which necessitated the huge Perpendicular buttress at the corner of what is now the vestry. There is, it is true, some difficulty in the fact that it is not the vestry but the Chapter-house which is mentioned, and in the allusion to a dilapidated roof (_tectura_); but it is conceivable that there was as yet no dividing wall, that the vaulting of what is now the vestry was still standing, that it had been injured by the settlement above-mentioned--in fact that its removal and the erection of the dividing wall took place in the time of Archbishop Lee. His direction for repairs may also account for the presence of limestone in the north wall of the Chapter-house, and for the propping of the vault at the west end of the crypt.[116] As has already been shown, the history of the vestry is bound up with that of the Chapter-house. At what period services ceased to be held at the altar in the apse, it is difficult to say; perhaps on the completion of a Lady Chapel above, perhaps on the erection of the dividing wall,[117] perhaps through the advent of the Reformation. At any rate, it was probably not before this part of the church had ceased to be used for services that it began to be recognised as a robing-room. There is an allusion to a recognised vestry in Leland, and very possibly the present room is meant; if so, it would seem from his account to have been used also as a library. But the fact remains that the church possesses no vestry except what is obviously a disused chapel. =The Lady-chapel= or Lady-loft is 23 feet 3 inches wide, and 68 feet long.[118] Its west and north sides, being formed by what was once the exterior of the church, display not only windows and buttresses, but also a string-course with gargoyles. From the west wall projects one of Archbishop Roger's buttresses, terminating in a slope, between the two blocked windows of the Mallory Chapel, which resemble the aisle windows of the other transept. The window on the right, mutilated by the insertion of the doorway, has lost its shafts, and retains only their capitals. The other window is partly cut off by the south wall, and is now a cupboard. In the north wall, the first three bays are Archbishop Roger's, and the windows resemble in their treatment the two just described, and are separated from each other by two buttresses which terminate, like those on the opposite side of the choir, in two slopes one close below the other. There is a third buttress, terminating in a single slope, at the angle formed with the transept. The Decorated window in the fourth bay is treated in the same manner as the rest of those in the eastern portion of the choir-aisles, and the Decorated buttresses which flank it are those which have been followed up from the crypt. The rich string-course or cornice along the top of this and the west wall corresponds with that on the other side of the church. The gargoyles are of course Decorated, and so is the string-course itself, eastwards at any rate of the second gargoyle on the north wall, for here one of the mouldings has a fillet upon it. Whether the rest of the string is Archbishop Roger's work or not, it is difficult to decide. The large windows in the south and east walls are surmounted by square labels ending in heads. Above the modern fireplace is the defaced monument of Anthony Higgin, second Dean (d. 1624), the founder of the present library; and further east, under the small lancet window (which is filled with fragments of stained glass), is an arched recess of considerable size, and a trefoiled piscina, each surmounted by a gable moulding with a finial. The piscina probably belonged to the chantry of Our-Lady-in-the-Lady-loft. A large stone bracket, supported by a grotesque figure, projects from the east wall, and the east window is bright with armorial bearings of benefactors of the church. This glass, which is mostly of the eighteenth century, was once in the great window of the choir. The north side of the recess in which the east window is set, is partially splayed outwards to join the last Decorated buttress, which with its neighbour have been cut back in this storey to the plane of the pinnacles above--doubtless when this Lady-loft was added. The present pinewood ceiling was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott, but most of the carved angle-pieces in the panels came from an older roof of oak. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY.] The history of the library begins with the MS. of the Gospels given by St. Wilfrid; and the ascription to him of various other gifts, which occurs in the writings of Peter of Blois (a Canon of Ripon in the twelfth century), implies at any rate that there was a library when Peter wrote. In 1466 money was bequeathed by William Rodes, a chaplain, _ad fabricam cujusdam librarii in ecclesiâ construendi_, words which may refer to the screening off for books of a portion of this chapel; but in Leland's time books were apparently kept in the vestry, though it is not certain that the present vestry is meant.[119] Except a few MSS. of Chapter Acts, Fabric Rolls, etc., none of the books now here are known for certain to have belonged to the church before the Reformation;[120] indeed the present collection began with the bequest of his books by Dean Higgin in 1624. The books were in this chapel in 1817, but in 1859 they were at the Deanery. There are now over 5000 volumes, including seven MSS., of which one of the most notable is the Ripon Psalter (1418), containing the special offices for St. Wilfrid, and many printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, among them two fine Caxtons. Many of the books have beautiful old bindings in stamped leather. The most interesting items in the collection are exposed in a glass case at the east end of the room.[121] Near the opposite end is another case containing the bones recently dug up under the site of the mediæval altar in the Saxon crypt. [Illustration: THE OLD CHAPEL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE'S HOSPITAL. (From a pen-drawing by the author.)] FOOTNOTES: [55] This is what was meant by saying in Chapter II. that in each tower one side is older than the others. [56] In the interior of these towers the courses run level with those of Archbishop Roger's work--a fact which has been taken as indicating that the lowest portion of the towers internally (but not, of course, the tower arches) may be actually his work. The theory that his west front was flanked by towers or chambers of some kind is not improbable. [57] A triforium is properly a gallery, open to the church, between the internal and external roofs of the aisles, but here there were no aisles, and the gallery or passage is in the thickness of the wall. [58] This term will be used wherever the usual term 'vaulting-shaft' is inapplicable. [59] The earth here has apparently been brought in from outside. Can it have come from some sacred spot abroad? The original floor, if not earthen, may possibly have rested on the set-off. [60] It has been suggested, however, that they may be relics of a feast buried here to defile the site of the altar. The bones in question are now in the Lady-loft. [61] With one of the deposits was found a brass bodkin of the type used in the sixteenth century. [62] It was Walbran, again, who gave these reasons for assigning the crypt to Wilfrid. Before his time it was thought to have been built during the Roman Occupation. [63] See article by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, V.P.S.A., in _Archæol. Journ._, vol. xxxvii. p. 364. [64] A _confessio_, it need hardly be said, has nothing to do with a confessional. The word is probably to be explained as meaning the tomb of one who had been a witness or _confessor_ of the Faith. [65] In making excavations for laying the wind-trunk of the organ the exterior of this wall was laid bare and appeared extremely rough. This, however, does not prove that it had never been meant to be seen. It may have been faced with smooth stones, which, just because they were exposed, attracted attention, and were removed by later masons for use elsewhere.--_Mr. Micklethwaite._ [66] Among the five known Saxon crypts (all of the _confessio_ type) Ripon and Hexham alone show this peculiarity. [67] See _Proceedings Soc. Antiq._, 16th June 1892. [68] In making the above-mentioned excavation in 1891, Mr. Micklethwaite found what was presumably the floor of the body of Wilfrid's church. It was of plaster 3 inches thick, and was 1 foot 7 inches below the floor of the present Cathedral. [69] The explanation of the crypt as a _confessio_ is due to Mr. Micklethwaite, and is ably set forth, with its consequences, in _Archæol. Journ._, vol. xxxix. p. 347. [70] The square termination of the crypt is in favour of a square presbytery; while his Roman proclivities are perhaps slightly in favour of an apse, and of aisles. [71] _Surtees Soc._, vol. lxxiv. p. 83. [72] It is certainly true that numerous white _tesseræ_ of Italian character, such as Wilfrid might have used, have been dug up on this site (_Murray's Cathedrals_, Pt. 1, p. 172, n. 1). They may, however, mark the site of the domestic buildings and not of the church. Or they may be relics of the Roman Occupation. [73] By Walbran in _Proceedings Archæol. Inst._, York Vol. 1846 (pub. 1848). [74] There is an interesting suggestion in _Murray's Cathedrals_, Pt. 1, p. 172, n. 2, that the church of which the crypt formed a part was built not by Wilfrid but by Eadhead, who, as the supplanter of Wilfrid, would probably be excluded from Wilfrid's monastery, but who may, nevertheless, have employed his workmen. The western position of the altar, however, is against placing the work as late as the episcopate of Eadhead. [75] The suggestion is Mr. Micklethwaite's. _Altare_ would, of course, mean the high altar in the presbytery above. [76] A third font (modern) formerly stood in the north-west tower. [77] It is curious that the same story should be told of Roger de Mowbray, founder of Byland Abbey in this same county. (_Murray's Cathedrals._) [78] Another suggestion is that the subject has some connection with the history of the Disobedient Prophet. [79] _Surtees Soc._, vol. lxiv. p. 92. [80] But for the label, these arms resemble those of John of Eltham (brother of Edward III.), who died without issue in 1334. [81] It is pleasant to find in the church several indications of aid received from the other great ecclesiastical foundation in the neighbourhood. [82] Taken by itself, the coarseness of the work in the tower and transept would suggest that these parts were later, and not earlier, than the nave. But (not to mention documentary evidence), if they were later, then the Rood Screen must be later also, which can hardly be the case, the stalls against it being dated 1489. [83] Probably (as Walbran suggested) with money subscribed for the tower, the completion of which was perhaps the less pressing necessity. [84] In the large mediæval churches there was usually an altar at the east end of the nave. [85] It may have been put here at the time of the building of the present nave, than which it is perhaps slightly earlier. [86] The Markenfields were one of the principal families in the neighbourhood from the fourteenth century onwards, until in the reign of Elizabeth they ruined themselves by taking part in the Rising in the North. Their ancient moated Manor-house, in which both the knights sculptured on these altar tombs must have lived, is still standing, about three miles from Ripon, towards Harrogate. [87] This aisle was also the site of the chantry of St. Andrew. [88] In these pages this term is used to describe round mouldings which are brought to an edge without actually having a fillet upon them. [89] By Mr. Francis Bond. [90] In spite of Sir G. Scott's conjectural plan. (See p. 67.) [91] It is possible that the screen there mentioned may be the present structure, or may have been incorporated into it. In 1408 the accident to the tower had not yet occurred, and the piers that now flank the screen had therefore not yet been built. There is a not very credible story that the present screen came from Fountains Abbey. [92] This peculiarity is found at some other places--_e.g._, St. Cross, Winchester. [93] This column and that opposite to it on the north side have been regarded as entirely Decorated imitations of Archbishop Roger's columns, but surely without sufficient reason. [94] See also the account of the East End in Chapter II., pp. 60-63. [95] Two holes have been drilled through the rear-vault from the attic above, but for what purpose it is hard to say. [96] It appears from the Fabric Rolls that a new high altar was begun in 1522. The work seems to have lasted four years, and apparently included a carved wooden reredos. [97] _Subtus altare_ suggests a crypt, but there seems to have been no crypt under the choir. Perhaps the _altare_ meant may have stood over the Saxon or the Norman crypt. [98] Mention may be here made of the Communion plate, some of which is as old as 1676 and has upon it representations of the church, very incorrect but showing the spires; also of the mace which is now borne before the Dean, and which has been assigned to the fifteenth century and may possibly have been once borne before the Wakeman. Upon the top has been engraved an _Agnus Dei_, the cognizance of the church. [99] A piece of woodwork, however, which was in the north aisle at the time of the last restoration, is said to have borne the date 1397. [100] The old miserere was probably removed when the Throne was made to comprise two stalls. (_See_ p. 111.) [101] It has been supposed that these niches were for figures of St. Peter and St. Wilfrid, and that the same was the case with the two niches which form the ends of the lower tier in the Rood Screen, and also with those which flank the west doors. It may also have been the case with the two eastward projections (if there were two) from the western piers of the Central Tower. [102] Below the string-course there is a certain amount of limestone in the wall, but this hardly accounts for the language of a Chapter minute which records a meeting in 1546 to consider the repair of certain _defectus et ruinositates apertae tam campanilis quam muri lapidei insulae borealis_. [103] Above the shrine there hung, apparently, a gilded crescent like that above the site of St. Thomas's shrine at Canterbury. The bones were enclosed in a splendid coffer with poles attached, and on solemn occasions this 'feretory,' besides being carried in procession, was sometimes placed under a tent in the fields. It was also very elaborately renewed in 1520 (_Surtees Soc._, vol. lxxxi. p. 204, n., etc.). Portions of the shrine exist, perhaps, in the alabaster bas-reliefs in the Chapter-house, as well as in the base of the railing in the north aisle of the nave. [104] It may, however, be later than the main walls. [105] The lower portion of this wall seems to be of an even earlier type of masonry than the upper. A somewhat similar difference between the upper and lower portions may be observed in the east and north walls also. [106] The late doorway approached by four steps, east of the cross-wall, occupies the place of one of the windows. [107] Three kinds of stone occur in this crypt: a sandstone, a fine gritstone, and a coarser and harder gritstone. [108] There are numerous entries in the Fabric Rolls, from 1512 onwards, relating to expenses 'for the carriage of the bones.' [109] One has a sword graven upon it, another a pair of shears (closed), another a book and a chalice, the latter slightly tipped, while a gravestone lying in the apse has upon it a dagger, and a pair of shears open. [110] Since it is probable that the axis of the church has always, at all periods, passed over the Saxon crypt, the Chapter-house and vestry can hardly have been the south aisle of the choir before the time of Archbishop Roger (as Walbran supposed), for they are too far south; indeed, they would seem rather to have been a chapel thrown out from such an aisle. [111] In the storey above will be found certain buttresses which are clearly his, which stand exactly over these piers, and of which the latter are probably merely the lower portions. [112] The supposition that the arches were added afterwards would explain why the westernmost of them cuts off the top of the arch over the door. [113] That it is his can hardly be doubted. The moulding and slope at the top resemble those which characterize the wall-base throughout his work. [114] _Murray's Cathedrals_, Pt. 1, p. 180. [115] See Chapter I. [116] A view of the crypt as it was before the removal of the bones represents the vaulting as propped also by certain pillars of Perpendicular character. These may have been removed by Sir Gilbert Scott. [117] _I.e._, if that wall was not erected contemporaneously with the said Lady Chapel. [118] For its date see Chapters I. and II. [119] Can Leland mean that the books, then as now, were in the Lady-loft, and that part of it was used as a vestry? [120] In 1567 a number of books were found in 'a vawte' of the church, where they had been concealed for safety (_Surtees Soc._, vol. lxxxi. p. 344). [121] For a full account of this interesting library, see the monograph by the Rev. Canon Fowler, F.S.A., of Durham, by whom the books were arranged in 1872. A copy is kept in the room. CHAPTER IV. OTHER OLD BUILDINGS IN RIPON. =The Deanery=, a stone house with two gabled wings, stands opposite to the north transept. It was built in or about 1625. The front bears the royal arms, and the hall contains some paintings of the kings and queens of England, which are more curious than valuable, and are probably of no very great age. Before the house is an ancient stone wall with strongly-marked base, gable coping, and a doorway whose trefoil head was apparently not made for its present position. This may perhaps be part of Abbot Huby's wall, or of the boundary-wall of either the Palace or the Bedern. Near the south-west tower is a fine red-brick house which doubtless remembers the Georges, or even Queen Anne. It has all the air of a prebendal residence, but if it was ever connected with the church, that connection has long ceased. Another red-brick house of some age, adjoining the picturesque ascent from High St. Agnesgate to the south transept, was the Canons' Residence up to 1859, when was bought the present Residence near the north-east corner of the graveyard. High St. Agnesgate contains several interesting buildings, foremost among which is =St. Anne's Hospital=,[122] formerly called 'The Maidens' Due' (Maison de Dieu), with its interesting ruined chapel. This is the only one of the three hospitals which was never affiliated to the Collegiate Church. The date of its origin has been placed shortly before 1438, in which year a chantry was founded in its chapel. The hospital foundation was for four poor men and four poor women, and there were also two beds for 'casuals'; and the little community was under the charge of a priest. There was apparently no endowment. The domestic portion of the building was pulled down in 1869. Though it had been divided into cottages some time before that date, the original arrangements have been recovered from an old document and from certain indications that had survived in the fabric itself. Joined to the west end of the chapel was a sort of nave, divided down the middle by a partition, on one side of which were the beds for the men, on the other those for the women, while at the west end were two rooms for the priest. This 'nave' was probably open to the chapel, as the large size of the western arch of the latter seems to indicate, and possibly the infirmer inmates could attend the service without leaving their beds.[123] To pass to the chapel itself--a window in the north wall has been blocked with masonry, upon which is a shield of arms, thought to be those of Sir Solomon Swale of South Stainley, and surmounted by a Maltese cross with the letters S.S. and the date 1654 upon it. The west gable has once been crowned by a bell-cote, and attached to the south-west corner of the chapel are the remains of an arched doorway. The western arch of the building, curiously enough, is not in the middle of the wall. It is recessed and chamfered, and rests upon two semi-cylindrical responds, whose rather curious capitals do not follow the form of the shaft, but are triple and rectangular. The chapel internally is 20 feet 10 inches long and 11 feet 6 inches wide, and is not at right angles to its western wall, but inclines considerably toward the south. In the middle of the entrance is an octagonal basin, supported on a pedestal and having a shield on each of its sides. This is thought to have been a stoup for holy water. It is not, perhaps, in its original position, and the pedestal does not seem to belong to it. Opposite to the blocked window already mentioned, which has an aumbry east of it, there is a late square-headed window of two lights, whose arches do not reach quite up to the lintel, but are connected with it by short perpendiculars. East of this is a piscina with projecting semi-octagonal basin, trefoil head, and ogee hood, and with a small square window above and to the left of it. The stone slab on two stone supports against the east wall is probably the original altar, and tradition says that the ransom of a Scottish prince was paid down upon it. On either side of the altar is a stone bracket, that on the north side bearing a shield of arms.[124] The east window, which is blocked, is divided into two lights, and the head is almost filled by a large quatrefoil, of which the uppermost and lowermost foils are ogees. This window, and the piers and capitals of the western arch, give the impression that the chapel is of a date earlier than that usually assigned for the foundation of the hospital. The modern cottages are inhabited by eight women. [Illustration: THE CHAPEL OF ST. ANNE'S HOSPITAL. (From a pen-drawing by the author.)] Between St. Anne's Hospital and Bondgate Green Bridge stands the =Thorp Prebendal House=, now divided into several dwellings. Whether its existing fabric is as old as the Reformation or not, this was the site upon which dwelt the Canons of the mediæval prebend of Thorp. In 1391 the hall of the then existing house was used for casting several bells for the Minster, and here, in later days, as Canon of Thorp, lived Marmaduke Bradley. The house is said to have been sold by Edward VI. to the Earl of Cumberland, and to have subsequently sheltered Mary Queen of Scots, James I, and Charles I. It is best seen from the adjoining bridge, whence its plastered walls, irregular gables, and stone roof form a picturesque foreground to the Cathedral. Of the dwellings into which it is now divided, the third from the bridge contains the grand staircase, which has twisted skeleton balusters. East of St. Anne's Hospital, there are two more old houses, one of which, known as =St. Agnes' Lodge=,[125] is of considerable interest. The body of it, long and low, with a high-pitched roof and with a massive chimney-stack buttressing one end, is said to be of the time of Henry VII., but derives much of its 'character' from the comparatively modern windows, which resemble the portholes of a ship. A wing added in the seventeenth century, with quaint curvilinear gable, projects into the garden behind. Within the house is a square hall, having above the fireplace some carving and a painted panel of the burning of London in 1666. There is also a good oak staircase, and in the upper storey are several quaint features, including a cupboard that may have served for a hiding-place, and two 'powdering-closets' in which ladies' hair, or men's wigs, could be powdered in the eighteenth century. But the part of the house most interesting architecturally is the attics, where the framing of the king-post roof is extremely massive, while the floor is of _concrete_.[126] One of the roof-beams in the wing bears the date 1693. This house disputes with the Thorp Prebendal House the honour of having sheltered Mary Queen of Scots on her way from Bolton Castle to Tutbury, and it is said that it was during her sojourn at Ripon that she addressed an appeal to Queen Elizabeth and received an offer of marriage from the Duke of Norfolk. St. Agnes' Lodge claims also to have been a temporary home of Turner, at the time when he was illustrating Whitaker's _History of Craven_ and _History of Richmondshire_. Whether this house or its immediately western neighbour were ever prebendal residences it is now difficult to say. Two old gabled houses remain in the Market-place, and one of them, now a basket-shop, is said to have been the residence of Hugh Ripley, last Wakeman and first Mayor of Ripon. At the north end of Stonebridgegate, and not far from the Ure, stands the =Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene=, sometimes called 'The Maudlins.' It was founded by Archbishop Thurstan (1114-1141) for secular brethren and sisters, and one chaplain. The brethren and sisters were not merely to benefit by the charity themselves, but were to minister to lepers and blind priests born within the Liberty of Ripon, a certain number of whom were received into the Hospital. Lepers from outside the Liberty were entitled to a night's lodging: so also apparently were any other strangers or mendicant clergy who might be passing through the town. On St. Mary Magdalene's day there was a dole of food to the poor. A second chaplain was subsequently added by the benefaction of one William de Homelyn. At some period, apparently after 1241, the character of the foundation was changed by another Archbishop, whose name is not known. The brethren and sisters disappeared, and the staff consisted henceforth of a Master and one chaplain, or sometimes two. The Master was appointed by the Archbishop, and was generally a clerk, though sometimes only in acolyte's Orders. In 1334 one John Warrener, of Studley Roger, founded here a chantry of two if not three priests. Thus there may have been no less than six clergy attached to this small chapel; but the number was not kept up, and at the Reformation there were, besides the Master, only the two priests of Warrener's foundation. The Hospital continued to minister to blind priests, and also to lepers until leprosy died out. The lepers' portion of the building was demolished about 1350. In 1546-7 the inmates were 'five poor people.' All traces of the Master's house, the hall, the brewery, and the original dwellings have vanished. The dwellings were rebuilt in 1674, and again in 1875, since which date more cottages have been added, and a new chapel; and the hospital now accommodates twelve poor women. The Mastership, still in the gift of the Archbishop, is at present held with one of the canonries, and the cure of souls is discharged by a non-resident chaplain. [Illustration: SEAL OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE'S HOSPITAL] Fortunately the old chapel remains. The main fabric is apparently Thurstan's. It is of gritstone, but has been much altered and repaired at later periods, when limestone has been used. To the later work belong the set-off of the base, the coigns, the parapet, the east part of the south wall, the framing of most of the windows and doors, and the buttress and bell-cote at the west end. The west front is now divided by a large buttress of many stages terminating in a slope, but the plinth of this buttress is apparently original. To the right of the buttress is a long two-cusped lancet light; to the left may be traced, perhaps, the outline of an original round-arched window; while on both sides there are sloping lines in the masonry, as if there had been an acutely-pointed gable here. The north side of the chapel has been propped at a late period by three sloping buttresses. At its western end is a doorway, the jambs of which seem original, while the pointed head is later. About half-way along this side is one of those 'low side windows' through which, it is supposed, the Sacrament was administered to lepers--indeed, the leper-house stood on this side of the chapel.[127] Though of limestone, this small lancet window, with its arch and dripstone trefoiled, is apparently of the thirteenth century, and an early example of its class. East of it are, first a Perpendicular window of two lights--late in character, and second a partially-blocked and possibly original doorway, perhaps for the priest, (though priests' doors are usually on the south side). Its outer arch is rounded, while the inner is pointed and has perhaps been altered. The east window is broad, finely arched, and surmounted by a bold dripstone terminating in heads. Its four lights, partially blocked, are round-headed, with rather large cusps, and in the upper part of the window there is much tracery, in which perpendicular lines lead up to arches that intersect. Indeed it is difficult to say whether this fine window is an example of late Perpendicular, or of the transition to that style from the Decorated. It is on the south side that the irregularity in the size, spacing, and level of the windows in this chapel is most marked. Here toward the eastern end is a square-headed Perpendicular window of two lights, much resembling the south window at St. Anne's Hospital, and surmounted by a square label. Next comes a small lancet, probably Early English, with no limestone about it. The next window is tall, rectangular, and without tracery, but the stump of a mullion remains on the sill, which is of gritstone. West of this is the principal entrance, a Norman arch, beneath which a pointed arch has been inserted, the original imposts, however, remaining. The upper arch is enriched with the chevron, and its dripstone with two rows of the round billet arranged chequerwise and with a moulding composed of a series of little crosses, rather suggestive of the dog-tooth. The interior has up to this time escaped 'restoration.' There have been repairs, but enough only to arrest decay, and the plaster has not been removed from the walls.[128] The length internally is about 49 feet and the breadth just over 16 feet. The floor is of brick, and the roof, which is almost flat, has been much renovated, but retains its original massive cross beams and wooden corbels. Internally the two western doorways are rounded, and just east of them the chapel is crossed by a late Perpendicular screen, which retains its folding doors, and has an uncommon effect due to the great length of the mullions in the upper part. The lower portion was once closed. It is perhaps more probable that this is the original position of the screen than that it ever stretched across the Sanctuary. Against the north wall is a fine old chest raised on feet and bound with many iron clamps ending in scrolls. It has a double lock and a ring at either end, and inside it is kept a curious bell of wood painted to resemble metal, and said to have been hung in the bell-cote by an unscrupulous official who had caused the real bell to be sold. The 'low side window' internally has a depressed pointed arch, and is widely splayed, as are also the tall and the short window opposite. It is remarkable that although the windows differ so much externally, yet internally all except the 'low side window' and the east window are of the form known as the 'shouldered arch,' a form which, by-the-way, is more usually employed in doorways. In front of the Sanctuary are preserved two old Perpendicular pews or stalls, with carved finials. The Sanctuary itself is raised on two steps, and extends eight feet from the east wall. The blocked door noticed on the exterior would open into the chapel immediately west of the line of the lower step. This is among the very few churches in the country which retain the pre-Reformation stone altar, and if the instance at St. Anne's Hospital is genuine, Ripon thus possesses two examples of this rare feature. The altar here is 7 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 5 inches wide, 2 feet 11 inches high, and has no step. Two of the usual five incised crosses (the larger cross near the middle is probably spurious) may still be traced upon the slab, the lower edge of which is chamfered off. In the front of the substructure are two deep recesses. The altar is flanked by two stone brackets. On the north wall is a third, and in the south wall a piscina with two-cusped arch and projecting basin. In front of the altar is a tessellated pavement 11 feet long and nearly 4 feet wide. It is chiefly composed of red and blackish _tesseræ_; but in the centre is a circular medallion containing a large four-petalled white flower with a red centre and small red flowers between the petals, all upon a ground of black. It has been supposed that this pavement was taken from the neighbouring remains of some Roman building. As regards the central medallion this is probably the case, but the rest of the pavement seems to be later work, perhaps of the thirteenth century.[129] At the south end of the pavement is the slab of another and smaller altar, retaining three of its incised crosses. It appears from a document of 1306 that the chapel at that date contained certain 'relics' of St. Mary Magdalene. Of the mediæval bridges of Ripon =The North Bridge= alone survives.[130] It crosses the Ure on nine arches with bold buttresses, triangular in plan, between them, and is prolonged, with three smaller arches, over the low meadow which forms the southern shore. It is from this shore that the best view of it is to be obtained, a few yards down stream. The arches, some of them recessed, vary in height and span, but all are round save two, over one of which there is a corbel-table below the parapet. The other side of the bridge was remodelled some twenty years ago. FOOTNOTES: [122] In the mediæval records the street is almost invariably called Annesgate, and indeed was probably named after the hospital. The form 'Agnesgate' is, however, not modern, for it occurs in 1462. It may have arisen from a trisyllabic pronunciation of 'Annesgate.' [123] Thus far I am largely indebted to a paper on this hospital by the Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A. in the twelfth edition of Walbran's _Ripon_. [124] Possibly those of Boynton or Plumpton (_Parker_). [125] The house is not shown. [126] This latter peculiarity is found also in a house at Bishopton, a mile off. [127] Some archæologists, however, hold that the purpose of low side windows was to display a light to scare away demons. [128] It is probable that in the interior of many of our old churches the surface of the stone was never meant to be seen, and was covered with plaster at the time of building. The plaster was doubtless often adorned with designs in colour. [129] This view is held by Mr. Micklethwaite. The white _tesseræ_ in the medallion resemble some which were dug up in 1837 on the site assigned by Leland to the 'Old Abbay of Ripon' and which have been adduced to support the view that Wilfrid's Abbey Church stood on that site and not on the site of the present Cathedral (see p. 77 and n. 4 there). [130] The others were Bondgate Bridge (over the Skell), Bishopton Bridge (over the Laver), Hewick Bridge (over the Ure below the town), the Archer-bridge, and the 'Esgel-bridge.' The position of the two last is uncertain, and the rest have long been rebuilt. Bishopton Bridge had a chapel upon it with which was connected a hermit. In the middle ages the bridges were under the charge of the Archbishop. They were often the recipients of bequests, but were themselves made to contribute to the Common Fund of the Collegiate Church, by means of money-boxes which were placed upon them. APPENDIX. ABBOTS OF THE SAXON MONASTERY. ST. EATA _c._ 657-661. ST. WILFRID 661-709. TATBERHT 709. BOTWINE died 786. ALBERHT 786-787. SIGRED 787. UILDEN OR WILDENG ? CANONS OF STANWICK IN THE MEDIÆVAL COLLEGIATE CHURCH.[131] Geoffrey de Bockland _circa_ 1226. Laurence de Topcliffe _circa_ 1230. Eadmund de Maundevill resigned 1279. Anthony Beck[132] 1279. Roger Swayne _c._ 1285-_c._ 1311. Richard de Henney 1311-_c._ 1315. William de Seton 1316-_c._ 1320. Thomas de Cave 1320-_c._ 1322. Robert de Rypon 1322-_c._ 1333. Peter de Wetwang 1333. John de Crakhall _c._ 1344-_c._ 1378. John de Seggefield 1378-1384. John de Middleton 1384-1397. John de Dene[133] 1397-_c._ 1435. Simon Alcock 1435-_c._ 1436. Richard Morton 1436-? 1447. John Clere ? 1447-1478. Robert Symson 1479-1481. Thomas Bakehouse 1481-_c._ 1521. Richard Dean _c._ 1535-_c._ 1545. Christopher Seale _c._ 1545-? 1547. DEANS OF KING JAMES I.'S FOUNDATION. Moses Fowler, B.D. 1604-1608. Anthony Higgin, B.D. 1608-1624. John Wilson, D.D. 1624-1634. Thomas Dod, D.D.[134] 1635-_c._ 1645. John Wilkins, D.D., F.R.S.[135] 1660-1668. John Neile, D.D.[136] 1674-1675. Thomas Tullie, D.D. 1675. Thomas Cartwright, D.D.[137] 1675-1686. Christopher Wyvill, D.D.[138] 1686-1710. Heneage Dering, LL.D.[139] 1710-1750. Francis Wanley, D.D.[140] 1750-1791. Robert Darley Waddilove, LL.D., F.S.A.[141] 1792-1828. James Webber, D.D. 1828- DEANS OF THE CATHEDRAL FOUNDATION. James Webber, D.D.[142] -1847. The Hon. Henry David Erskine, D.D.[143] 1847-1859. Thomas Garnier, B.C.L. 1859-1860. William Goode, D.D., F.S.A. 1860-1868. Hugh M'Neile, D.D. 1868-1876. Sydney Turner, B.A. 1876. William Robert Fremantle, D.D. 1876-1895. The Hon. William Henry Fremantle, D.D. 1895. BISHOPS OF RIPON. EADHEAD 681-686. CHARLES THOMAS LONGLEY, D.D., F.S.A.[144] 1836-1856. ROBERT BICKERSTETH, D.D., F.R.S.[145] 1857-1884. WILLIAM BOYD-CARPENTER, D.D. 1884. FOOTNOTES: [131] The mediæval College of Canons had no official head, but the Prebendary of Stanwick, as Ruler of the Choir, was generally in residence, and was in some sense the most important of the Canons. He did not, however, preside, at least not if any other Canon was in residence. Thus Christopher Dragley (Prebendary of Monkton) was often _Praesidens Capituli_ from 1533 to 1539, and Marmaduke Bradley (Prebendary of Thorp) from 1544 to 1546. [132] Afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Durham, one of the most prominent personages at the court of Edward I. [133] A brass to him is preserved in the Cathedral. The inscription was probably cut in his lifetime, for the space for the date of his death is left blank. He helped to found the chantry of St. Wilfrid, and is buried in the Choir. [134] Deprived by the Parliament when they suppressed the Chapter. [135] One of the founders of the Royal Society: married Oliver Cromwell's sister: became Bishop of Chester. [136] Buried near the vestry door. [137] Became Bishop of Chester, and was a strong supporter of James II. [138] Buried within the Altar-rails (brass). [139] Buried in the north choir-aisle (tablet). [140] Buried in the Cathedral (formerly there was a tablet in the south aisle of the nave). [141] Tablet in the Chapter-house. [142] Buried within the Altar-rails. [143] Buried in the graveyard near the north-east corner of the choir (tomb by Sir Gilbert Scott). [144] Afterwards Bishop of Durham, then Archbishop of York, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury. The modern diocese of Ripon does not correspond in area with that over which Eadhead presided (_see Chap. I._) [145] Buried in the graveyard near the south-east corner of the choir. INDEX. ABBOTS, list of, 142. Ailcy Hill, 9. Aisles of the nave, 78; south aisle, 79; north aisle, 81; of the choir, (north) 113; (south) 115. Archbishops of York, 13 _et seq._ Athelstan, King, 9. BAS-RELIEF of lion, 80. Bedern, the, 24, 26, 34. Bells, the, 43. Bishops of Ripon, 143. Bridge, the North, 141. CANONS, irregularities of the, 23. Canons of Stanwick, list of, 142. Chantries, 28. Chapter, the, 29, 30; re-established, 31, 33, 34, 37. Chapter-house, the, 53, 122-125. Charles I., 34. Choir, the, 49, 58; interior, 96-117. College of Canons, the, 12, 17, 22, 30. Courts, ecclesiastical and secular, 19, 31, 37. Crypt, the Saxon, 71-78; the Norman, 117-120. Cuthbert, St., 4, 11, 12. DEANERY, the, 133. Deans, list of, 143. Dedication by Wilfrid, 6. Diocese of Ripon, 36. EADHEAD, Bishop of Ripon, 7. East End, the, 60. Eata, first Abbot, 4, 12. Edward I., 25. FONTS, the, 79. Grammar-School, Ripon, 14, 30-36. Gray, Archbishop Walter de, 11, 16, 21. HENRY IV., 26. Henry V., 11. JAMES I., 31, 33. LADY-KIRK, the, 22, 27. Lady-loft, the, 54, 129. Liberty of Ripon, 19-37. Library, the, 130. MALLORY Chapel, 93. Markenfield Chapel and tombs, 90. Monastery of Ripon, the (Scottish), 4; (Saxon), 5; end of, 12. NAVE, rebuilding of, 27, 69; north side, exterior, 44; south side, 50; interior, 65. ODA, Archbishop of Canterbury, 11. Organ, the, 111. Oswald, Archbishop, 11. PALACE, Archiepiscopal, 24, 35. Peculiar, the parish a, 19, 31, 37. Prebends, 12, 14, 17, 18, 23, 26. Presbytery, arrangement of the, 104. Pulpit (Old) in north transept, 88. Ripon Minster, foundation of the Scottish monastery, 4; original site of, 5; dedication of new church, 6; end of monastery, 12; as a collegiate church, 12, 22; as a parochial church, 18, 22; present church built, 15; central tower reconstructed, 27; nave rebuilt, 27. Rising in the North, the, 30. Roger de Pont l'Evêque, Archbishop, 15; his plan, 16, 67. Rood Screen, the, 94. ST. AGNES' Lodge, 136. St. Anne's Hospital, 133. St. John's Hospital, 36. St. Mary Magdalene's Hospital, 35, 137. Sanctuary, right of, 9, 23, 30. Saxon monastery, the, 5. Scots, incursion of, 25. Scottish monastery, the, 4. Sedilia, the, 104. Site, original, 5. Spires, fall and removal of the, 34. Stalls, the choir, 106. Stammergate, 5, 22, 35. Stanwick, Prebend, 17, 18, 29, 142. THEODORE, Archbishop of Canterbury, 6. Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop, 13. Thorp, prebendal house, 36, 136. Throne, the Bishop's, 111; the Archbishop's, 36. Thurstan, Archbishop, 73, 14. Tower, the central, 45, 56; interior, 82. Towers, western, 41. Transept, north, 46; south, 51, 56; interior, 85; north, 86; south, 91. VAULT-BOSSES in choir, 103. Vaulting, north transept, 91. Vestry, the, 125. WAKEMAN, the, 33. West front, the, 16, 40, 43; interior, 68. West Gate, the, demolished, 35. Wilfrid, St., 4, 6, 7, 8, 12, 75; relics of, 11, 16; translation of, 14; shrine of, 14, 29, 81; crypt of, 31, 71. William, St., of York (Archbishop Fitzherbert), 15. Window, east, 34, 62, 102. Wolsey, Archbishop, 33. Wulfstan, Archbishop, 10. [Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF RIPON CATHEDRAL.] DIMENSIONS (internal). Total Length, 270 feet Length of Nave, 133 " Width of Nave, 87 " Width of Transept, 52 " Height of Vault (Nave), 88 " Height of Towers, 110 " Area, 25,280 square feet. PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. * * * * * * Transcriber's Note The following obvious typographical errors were corrected: Page Error 2 the Tower. changed to the Tower.) 10, fn. 10 St Wilfrid's changed to St. Wilfrid's 111 ascendency changed to ascendancy 115, fn. 103 Surtee's changed to Surtees 118 anyrate changed to any rate 136 acolyte's Orders changed to acolyte's Orders. The following words were inconsistently spelled: afterthought / after-thought Agnesgate / Agnes-gate aisleless / aisle-less stonework / stone-work 
30290	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the numerous original illustrations. See 30290-h.htm or 30290-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30290/30290-h/30290-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30290/30290-h.zip) _The Homeland Handbooks_--No. 55. OUR HOMELAND CHURCHES AND HOW TO STUDY THEM. by SIDNEY HEATH (Author of "Some Dorset Manor Houses," etc.) Illustrated by the Author and Ethel M. Heath And by Photographs. Published under the General Editorship of Prescott Row and Arthur Henry Anderson, by the Homeland Association for the Encouragement of Touring in Great Britain. [Illustration: The Foundations of a Romano-British Church. Uncovered at Silchester. _Photograph S. Victor White & Co._] London: The Homeland Association Ltd., 22, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, E.C. First Edition. 1907. EDITORIAL NOTE. With a view to making future Editions of this Handbook as accurate and comprehensive as possible, suggestions for its improvement are cordially invited. If sent to THE EDITORS, The Homeland Association, Association House, 22, Bride Lane, Fleet Street, E.C., they will be gratefully acknowledged. COPYRIGHT. This Book as a whole, with its contents, both Literary and Pictorial, is Copyrighted in Great Britain. ADVERTISING. LOCAL.--Terms for Advertising in future issues of this Handbook will be forwarded on application to the General Manager of the Homeland Association, at the above address. GENERAL.--Contracts for the insertion of Advertisements through the whole series of Homeland Handbooks, more than fifty volumes, circulating through the country, can be arranged on application to the General Manager. _CONTENTS._ _Author's Preface_ 7 _Dedication_ 8 _Introduction_ 9 _I.--Early British Churches_ 19 _II.--Early Church Architecture_ 26 _III.--The Saxon and Norman Styles_ 31 _IV.--The Early English Style_ 47 _V.--The Decorated Style_ 57 _VI.--The Perpendicular Style_ 64 _VII.--The Renaissance and Later_ 74 _VIII.--Church Furniture and Ornaments_ 80 _IX.--Bells and Belfries_ 95 _X.--The Spire: Its Origin and Development_ 99 _XI.--Stained Glass_ 104 _XII.--Crypts_ 109 _XIII.--How to describe an Old Church_ 111 _Appendix--A Glossary of the Principal Terms used in Ecclesiastical Architecture_ 115 _Bibliography_ 123 _Index_ 124 _LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS._ PLATES. 1 _Foundations of a Romano-British Church_ _Frontispiece_ 2 _The Church of St. Margaret, Lynn_ 52 3 _A Fine Perpendicular Tower, St. Mary, Taunton_ 72 4 _Sedilia and Chantry, Luton_ 88 * * * * * _The Various Forms of Arches_ 10 _Plan of a Typical Gothic Cruciform Parish Church, Luton_ 12 _Examples of Gothic Windows_ 15 _Examples of Buttresses_ 17 _A Rood Screen, with a Restoration of the Rood_ 20 _The Church of S. Martin, Canterbury_ 22 _Window Built with Roman Brick, Swanscombe_ 24 _A Reputed Saxon Doorway, Bishopstone_ 30 _Tower of Earls' Barton Church_ 33 _An Example of Norman Tower, Bishopstone_ 34 _A Norman Pier Arcade, Abbots Langley_ 36 _Examples of Norman Mouldings_ 37 _A Late Norman Parish Church, Castle Rising_ 38 _West Doorway, Rochester Cathedral_ 40 _Tympanum of Norman Doorway, Fordington St. George_ 41 _Examples of Norman Capitals_ 42 _A Curious Norman Capital, Seaford_ 43 _Norman and Early English Doorways, Dunstable Priory Church_ 45 _Windows, Showing the Origin of Tracery_ 47 _An Early English Arch, Rochester Cathedral_ 48 _Wall Arcading, Showing Junction of Norman and Early English Masonry, Dunstable Priory Church_ 50 _An Early English Doorway, Huntingdon_ 51 _A Group of Thirteenth Century Lancet Windows, Ockham_ 53 _Salisbury Cathedral_ 55 _Examples of Early English Capitals and Ornament_ 56 _A Late Decorated Window in a Parish Church, East Sutton_ 59 _Examples of Decorated Ornament_ 61 _Examples of Perpendicular Ornament_ 64 _Early Perpendicular Parish Church, Yeovil_ 65 _A Fine Parish Church, Showing Rich Perpendicular Work, Terrington St. Clement, Norfolk_ 67 _A Perpendicular Doorway, Merton College_ 68 _A Perpendicular Porch, King's Lynn_ 71 _An English Renaissance Church, S. Stephen, Walbrook_ 78 _A Typical Cornish Font_ 80 _The Sanctuary Knocker, Durham Cathedral_ 82 _The Baptistery in Luton Church_ 83 _An Example of a Leaden Font of the Late Norman Period_ 85 _A Reputed Saxon Font, Shaldon_ 86 _A Detached Holy-Water Stoup of Unusual Design_ 87 _A Typical Somerset Bench-End, Spaxton_ 89 _A Richly-Carved Pulpit and Canopy, Edlesborough_ 91 _Screen with Rood Loft, Kenton_ 93 _The Carved Oak Balustrade in Compton Church_ 94 _Bell Turret for Three Bells, Radipole_ 98 _The Best Example of a Saxon Spire or Pyramidal Roof, Sompting_ 100 _Leighton Buzzard Church, with Early English Tower and Spire_ 102 _A Parish Church with a Shingle Broach Spire, Edenbridge_ 105 _Interior Elevation of a Bay of a Church_ 114 _STYLES OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE._ The following periods of architectural style may be of use for the purpose of reference, but it must be borne in mind that they are more or less approximate, as each style merged by slow degrees into the next. _Norman._--William I. to Stephen. 1066-1154. _Transition Norman._--Henry II. 1154-1189. _Early English Gothic._--Richard I. to Henry III. 1189-1272 _Decorated._--Edward I., II., III. 1272-1377. _Perpendicular._--Richard II. to Henry VII. 1377-1485. _Tudor._--Henry VIII. to Elizabeth. 1485-1600. Mr. Edmund Sharpe gives seven periods of English architecture up to the time of the Reformation, and dates them as follows:-- _ROMANESQUE._ I. _Saxon_ from ---- to 1066 II. _Norman_ " 1066 " 1145 79 years III. _Transitional_ " 1145 " 1190 45 " _GOTHIC._ IV. _Lancet_ from 1190 to 1245 55 years V. _Geometrical_ " 1245 " 1315 70 " VI. _Curvilinear_ " 1315 " 1360 45 " VII. _Rectilinear_ " 1360 " 1550 190 " PREFACE. It is a truism that the history of building is the history of the civilized world, for of all the arts practised by man, there is none which conveys to us a clearer conception of the religion, history, manners, customs, ideals and follies of past ages, than the art of building. This applies in a special sense to cathedrals and churches, which glorious relics reflect and perpetuate the noble aim, the delicate thought, the refined and exquisite taste, the patient and painstaking toil which have been expended upon them by the devout and earnest craftsmen of the past. There are very few of our ancient churches in village, town or city which do not offer some feature of interest to the visitor, and in the absence of anything more important, there is sure to be some door, window, font, screen, or other detail which will amply repay him for the small amount of time spent in seeing it. The aim of the author of this little volume has been to indicate the symbolism and meaning attaching to the various portions of our churches and cathedrals, and to endeavour briefly to describe, in language as simple as the subject will allow, the various styles of ecclesiastical architecture with their distinctive characteristics in such a way as will enable the reader to assign each portion and detail of a church to its respective period with an approximate degree of accuracy. He does not claim to be original, but endeavours to be useful and interesting. The best authorities have been consulted and freely drawn upon, but with the object in view of writing a book at once thus useful and interesting, no attempt has been made to deal with the subject in a strictly architectural, or a purely scientific manner. Weymouth, 1906. DEDICATION. To all those who love old buildings--cathedrals, abbeys, and village churches, which breathe the spirit of an age with which we have entirely broken--and who would fain hand down to posterity, unmutilated, the great building achievements of our forefathers, which we, with all our science, wealth, and means of curtailing labour, can no more imitate than we can reproduce the language of a Chaucer or a Shakespeare; this book is respectfully dedicated. S. H. "_Firm was their faith, the ancient bands, The wise of heart in wood and stone, Who reared with stern and trusting hands Those dark grey towers of days unknown; They filled the aisles with many a thought, They bade each nook some truth recall The pillared arch its legend brought, A doctrine came with roof and wall._" --HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW. OUR HOMELAND CHURCHES AND HOW TO STUDY THEM. INTRODUCTION. However much we may admire, considered purely as art, the Pagan temples of the Greeks and Romans, we must confess that they are lacking in those high ideals and those sustained and inspired motives which seem to penetrate and permeate the buildings and churches of the Christian era. Perfect as is Greek art within its somewhat narrow limits, it is, nevertheless, cold, precise and lifeless. The Gothic buildings on the contrary are pregnant with the very spirit of life. Prompted by a deep and fervent faith in their religion, the Gothic builders and sculptors unconsciously wove into the humblest of their architectural enrichments some portion of their daily life and personality. The slave-built temples of the Greeks offered no scope for the exercise of individual expression--such, in fact, would have been strongly resented--whereas the early Christian craftsman, revelling in his freedom, seized every opportunity of expressing in his work his joy, fear and hope of immortality. This is made apparent in the study of an old church, whereof every portion--door, window, bench-end, carving, gargoyle--has hidden about it some suggestion of beautiful thought, or some distinct and appropriate symbolism. The fact that symbolism underlies almost every such indication of mediæval thought is made abundantly manifest in the study of mediæval literature. Open any 12th century treatise on morals, science or history, and you become aware of the fact at once. The main-spring of this symbolism, of all Christian symbolism, turns on the parabolic meaning in the scheme of Creation. The early writers were far less concerned with recording the plain objective facts of history, than in pursuing the allegory and the love of the marvellous, and showing all those characteristics of what we now term an unscientific attitude of mind. [Illustration: The Various Forms of Arches. Norman. Stilted. Horse Shoe. Equilateral. Lancet. Drop. Trefoil. Trefoil. Cinquefoil. Ogee. Four Centered. Tudor.] In its widest sense, symbolism means the expression of belief, and if we would interpret history aright, we must grasp the fact that the key to the character and disposition of peoples of all ages lies in the knowledge of their beliefs; for out of the beliefs of one age most surely grow the beliefs of its successors, and in no work of man's hand are the beliefs held by various peoples in past ages more clearly defined than in our cathedrals and churches, which noble buildings in every civilized country indicate principles as well as facts, influences as well as results; and while presenting the finest materials for æsthetic study, are no less useful as indicating the psychological peculiarities of those builders of old to whose condition they bear witness. In our grand specimens of ecclesiastical architecture, we may read the world's later history, and to-day they breathe the sombre reverential influence of a faith which sought to satisfy itself with the visible symbolizing of those half-poetical, half-superstitious conceptions with which the religion of the Middle Ages was so deeply imbued. An early development of decorative symbolic art, known as Celtic, of which we have examples on old Irish crosses, and particularly on illuminated MSS. was wrought by the Christian monks of the 7th and 8th centuries, but what is generally understood as Christian symbolic art had its finest development about the 13th century. Gothic art is essentially symbolic and in many instances, its individual forms have specific significance. Thus the common equilateral triangle was used to symbolize the Holy Trinity, as are the two entwined triangles. Other symbols employed at this period setting forth the mystery of the Unity of the Trinity, without beginning and without end, are three interlaced circles, and a very curious one is that in which three faces are so combined as to form an ornamental figure. Baptism under the immediate sanction of the Divine Trinity was represented by three fishes placed together in the form of a triangle. So numerous, indeed were such Christian symbols after the 9th century that a mere enumeration of them would occupy considerable space. Every trefoil symbolized the Holy Trinity; every quatrefoil the four Evangelists; every cross the Crucifixion, or the martyrdom of some saint; and in Gothic ornament and decoration, we find the Chalice, the Crown of Thorns, the Dice, the Sop, the Hammer and Nails, the Flagellum and other symbols of our Lord's Passion. [Illustration: Plan of a Typical Gothic Cruciform Parish Church. (St. Mary, Luton, fully described in No. 47 of this Series). _Drawn by Ed. Craven Lee._] Although presenting the same characteristics in their external design, our town and village churches are very various. The simplest form, and the one most commonly found, is that of a nave and chancel, with a tower at the west end; to which plan may be added aisles and transepts, the latter often being wrongly called "cross-aisles." When the walls of the nave above the arcade rise above those of the aisles and are pierced with windows, the upper portion is called the clerestory, the meaning of which word is not free from obscurity; it seems probable that it indicates the clear story--the story which rises clear of the nave and aisles. In large buildings, they are important both for utility and beauty, but in small and early churches, they are of less importance. It is a well-known fact that the chancel and nave of a church generally stand east and west. This arrangement, called the orientation, is symbolic of the teaching that to the east we are to look for assistance and protection against the power of our enemy, and that as we pray we may look for the day-spring, symbolized to us in the rising sun that sheds light and warmth all over the earth. The public entrance to a church is generally at the west end (the priest usually had a door in the chancel for his own use). Through this door we enter the house of prayer, for as in the east we see the emblem of the Lord of Life and Light, so the west represents the seat of darkness and of the powers of evil. The earliest porches were those of the early Christian basilica churches; they were long and arcaded and were called "narthex." In later times, they assumed two forms, one the projecting erection, covering the entrance and divided into three or more doorways, and the other a kind of covered chamber open at the end and having small windows at the sides. These latter are generally found on the north and south sides of the nave. Formerly, when church government was more rigorous in discipline than is now the case, the porch was the appointed place for those who were under censure. Those also who were unbaptised, or who had not yet received the sacrament of regeneration, were not allowed beyond the porch, not quite excluded from the church and yet not permitted to enter fully. The porch also served as a path of admission for all Christians into the body of the church, so that they passed through the assembly of penitents and catechumens, who were wont to ask the prayers of the more highly privileged for their full restoration or admission to the communion of the faithful. With reference to our Lord's word, "I am the Door," we frequently find the tympana of church doors, particularly those of Norman date, adorned with representations of events from his life, but they often also depict the monsters, dragons and devils, that formed so strong an article in the faith of the early Christians. A more detailed account of these tympana will be found in a following chapter. Passing through the porch we enter the nave, which word is derived from the Latin _navis_, a ship. Its symbolic teaching is that of the Church riding triumphantly and buoyantly on the troubled and dark waters of the world. The first thing noticed on entering the nave is the font, which was formerly placed outside the church, in a separate building called the baptistery; a few of our churches have retained these little buildings which now form part of the churches proper. The reason in early days for placing the font outside the church was that the Christian was not admitted into the nave until he had been baptised and confirmed, the latter rite being administered immediately after baptism. From the western door there is a clear passage through the centre of the nave, called the aisle, signifying the straight and narrow way from the seat of darkness to immortal life. On each side of this aisle are seats for the laity, with room for standing and kneeling. The nave was usually divided from the chancel by an open screen of wood or stone, signifying that although the Christian might have some insight into the mysteries of the priest's office, at the same time these were to be partly concealed from his view. The rood screen was so called from the fact that the great Rood, or Crucifix, stood above it, not always on the screen itself, but on a separate beam, to which was often attached a rood loft or chamber. In early days, the lessons were read from the top of the rood screen, and in many of our churches the stairways leading thither have been retained. [Illustration: Examples of Gothic Windows. Early English. Decorated. Perpendicular. See also page 59.] In churches where the screen has vanished, the division of the nave from the rest of the church is plainly marked by the chancel arch. The chancel is emblematic of the Christian perfection, of the Church triumphant in heaven. In an old church, a piscina is nearly always found in the chancel, and here, too, were the sedilia or seats for the officiating clergy, the prior, sub-prior, and the deacon, the last-named occupying the lowest seat. Founders' tombs also nearly always occupy positions in the chancel, and these tombs differ from all others in that they form an integral part of the structure, and could not have been added after the church was completed. Another thing sometimes to be seen is the ambery, or aumbry, a small cupboard let into the chancel wall, in which were kept the communion vessels, the chalice, paten, etc. The great object of interest, however, in the chancel, is the altar, which Archbishop Laud directed should be enclosed by rails, so that although the people may draw near, they cannot touch the holy table, but must accept from the hands of the priest those gifts of which he is the minister from God. Altars are fully described in a following chapter, but we may here note that the reredos, so universally found in our cathedrals, abbeys, and in many of our churches, forms no part of the altar, and the Court of Arches has decided that there are no altars in the Church of England, but only communion tables. Prominent among the external enrichments of our churches is the gargoyle, a word derived from the French, "gargouille," which in its turn comes from the Latin "gurgulio"--a water-spout. The earliest gargoyles are merely orifices with a lip to shoot the water well away from the fabric. The true gargoyle, however, was quickly evolved from this primitive form, and consists of two parts, the lower one forming the channel, the upper one being the cover. The full significance of the skill displayed by the old masons in the rare opportunity the gargoyle afforded them of representing the dragons, serpents, etc., in which their fancy revelled, is made apparent when we view the futile attempts of modern architects to introduce this feature in their churches, for modern gargoyles are generally grotesque caricatures, and anything but happy appendages to the buildings to which they are attached. [Illustration: Examples of Buttresses. _Norman_ _Decorated_ _Flying Buttress_ _Early English_ _Perpendicular_ _Drawn by E. M. Heath._] The churchyard, so pleasing an adjunct to the House of God placed within it, is frequently approached through a lych-gate, which word is derived from the Saxon _lich_, a corpse. These gates in our country churchyards are often very picturesque little structures, and under them the corpse at a funeral awaited the officiating priest before being taken into the church. The churchyard is commonly regarded as a mere dependency of the church, and as having a history very inferior in interest to that of the temple to which it is the court. The truth is that many of our churchyards have an antiquity far greater than that of the churches, as many of them constituted the open-air meeting-places of our Saxon forefathers long before the erection of parish churches. In the common meeting-place a cross was set up, either of wood or stone, to mark and hallow the spot, and when a church was subsequently built it was usually in the immediate vicinity of the cross, which accounts for the fact that many churchyard crosses are of older date than the churches themselves. Wells of water are often found in old churchyards, and as the regulations of the Saxon church required immersion and not sprinkling, it is possible that these were the Saxon fonts. Such then is the necessarily brief attempt to describe the main lines on which our old churches were planned, and the motives and ideals which animated their builders, who, being impressed with the dignity and mystery of the works of God, made their churches symbolical of the portions of the Christian life; the porch signifying baptism, the nave the life militant on earth, and the chancel the life eternal; while every little ornament, piece of sculpture and enrichment was designed to remind the worshippers of their faith, of its hopes, blessed promises and rewards. CHAPTER I. EARLY BRITISH CHURCHES. In dealing with the introduction of church architecture into our own land, the task would be much simplified if one could state with certainty when the first church was built on British soil. Some historians assert that the Church of England as it is constituted to-day dates no further back than the moment when S. Augustine and his followers landed on the shores of Kent in the year 596, yet one is probably justified in assuming that a church existed in these islands for centuries previous to the arrival of the Roman missionaries. Unfortunately we have no records to guide us as to the date of this earlier settlement, and the name of the first Christian missionary to heathen Britain has still to be discovered. "We see," says the quaint old historian, Thomas Fuller, "the light of the word shined here, but see not who kindled it." The first Christian building of which we have any record was probably that erected at Glastonbury before the year 300, but that this was the first Christian settlement cannot be alleged with certainty. There are many traditions concerning the introduction of Christianity into Britain, some of which may probably have some bearing on the truth, but the whole subject is involved in considerable obscurity. One of these numerous traditions is to the effect that the British King Caradoc, after being taken prisoner to Rome, was allowed to return, on condition that several members of his family remained as hostages; and whilst serving in this capacity, his mother, son, and daughter are stated to have become converts to Christianity, the doctrines of which faith they spread in their native land on their return thereto. Another tradition is to the effect that S. Paul himself visited Britain and laid the foundation of the Christian faith. We are also told by eminent church historians that the father and grandfather of S. Patrick were Christians, in which case S. Patrick himself would from a very early age have been brought up in the tenets of their faith. He is said to have been seized by pirates in the Clyde and taken to the north of Ireland, and eventually to Gaul. He was subsequently restored to his friends, whom he wished to convert to the Christian faith, and for this purpose his father sent him to be taught in the schools of Tours, Auxerre and Lerins. Eventually he was consecrated Bishop of the Irish and organized an efficient ecclesiastical system in Ireland. [Illustration: A Rood Screen with a Restoration of the Rood. Kenn, Devon. _Photograph by Chapman._] Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons the church seems to have established a firm hold on the people, who held tenaciously to their possessions, both secular and religious, which were only wrested from them after a severe struggle. Their enthusiastic love of Christianity led them to make a heroic defence of the churches, rather than see them fall into the hands of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The historian Bede tells us that all their buildings were destroyed, the priests' blood was spilt upon the altars, prelates and people were slain with the sword, and all the cities and churches were burnt to the ground. When all was lost and there was no longer a church or home to defend, the Britons retired to the country of their fellow-Christians, the secluded and almost impenetrable hills and forests of the west. The Anglo-Saxon love of gold was quickly recognised by the people of West Wales who saved their property and bought the right of worshipping after the manner of their fathers by the payment of an annual tribute to their conquerors. [Side note: Church of S. Piran, Perranporth.] So ruthlessly indeed did the Anglo-Saxons rase to the ground the early churches, that, until a few years ago, but few traces of these early buildings were thought to exist. An accidental discovery, however, in the year 1835, brought to light an undoubted relic of an early British church in the west, this being the remains of a little church which had been until the date above mentioned completely buried in the sand on the sea coast near Perranporth in Cornwall. They are thought by ecclesiologists to be the remains of the original church erected to the memory of S. Piran, a Cornish missionary and a friend of S. Patrick, who was buried within its walls before the year 500 A.D. On removing the sand, the accumulated deposit of centuries, the church was found to have consisted of a nave and chancel containing a stone altar. [Illustration: The Church of S. Martin, Canterbury.] The building measured 29 feet in length, 16-1/3 feet in width and 19 feet from the floor to the roof, and probably shares with S. Mary's Church in Dover Castle, and S. Martin's, Canterbury, the honour of being one of the earliest links we possess with the ancient British Church. S. Mary's, Dover, appears to have been built of Roman bricks and cement, a combination which antiquaries consider is found only in those buildings which were erected during the Roman occupation. [Side note: S. Martin's Canterbury.] S. Martin's Church, Canterbury has many claims to be considered one of our most interesting churches, no less on account of its associations than for its structural interest. The date of its building has been a source of endless controversy, as it contains many features attributable to either Roman or Saxon architecture. It is thought that it may possibly have been used for worship by the Christian soldiers of the Roman army. Be this as it may, it is established beyond doubt that it was the oratory of Queen Bertha, the first English Christian queen, who here worshipped, with her chaplain Liudhard, long before the advent of S. Augustine, who himself in later times preached here; and within the walls of this cradle of English Christianity, Ethelbert, King of Kent, the husband of Queen Bertha was baptized. The Venerable Bede, writing within a hundred years of the death of S. Augustine states that there was in 597 A.D. in Canterbury, a church "dedicated to the honour of S. Martin and built while the Romans still occupied Britain." On the departure of the Romans it is probable that the church was still used by a small band of Christian worshippers until the heathen Jutes overran the Isle of Thanet in 449. Little is known of the progress of Christianity on this island from that date until the landing of S. Augustine in 597, and the first fruits of his mission, as we have seen, was the conversion and baptism of King Ethelbert. As one would naturally expect, the aspect of the structure to-day, though suggestive of antiquity, is lacking in uniformity of treatment. The brick courses in the nave are at irregular intervals, varying from nine to twenty inches apart, the spaces being filled with Kentish rag-stone and occasional blocks of chalk. The chancel extends eighteen or twenty feet east of the arch and is composed of Roman bricks, evenly laid and averaging four bricks to a foot. [Illustration: An Ancient Window built with Roman Brickwork. Swanscombe, Kent. _Photograph Mr. G. H. Smith._] The chancel was lengthened at the beginning of the thirteenth century and again at a more recent date, so that its architecture to-day is of three distinct periods. Outside may be seen five flat pilaster buttresses and one semi-circular one, a square-headed Roman doorway, a Saxon doorway and two Early English porches; and there is also a nearly circular panel on the south side of the nave, and a Norman squint at the west end. There are many other features of interest which bear evidences of a great antiquity, and the only question which is seriously disputed is whether the earliest portion of the present nave was built about the end of the Roman occupation of Britain or during the mission of S. Augustine. The Rev. Charles F. Routledge, M.A., F.S.A., Hon. Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, writes: "Whatever may finally be determined to be the date of the church's foundation, it can never lose its unique association with S. Augustine, King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha, nor its undisputed claim to be the oldest existing church in England. From it flowed the tiny spring of English Christianity, which has since widened out into a mighty river, and penetrated the remotest parts of the civilized and uncivilized world." [Side note: Other Early Churches.] Among other churches which show signs of having been built during the Roman occupation are those of Reculver, Richborough and Lyminge, while the foundations of an undoubted early church have been discovered in the old Roman city of Silchester, in Hampshire. _See frontispiece._ The old church at Reculver stood originally within the Roman castrum, the fortress which guarded the northern mouth of the Wantsume, now a small stream, but once an arm of the sea dividing the Isle of Thanet from the mainland. The greater part of this church was pulled down in 1809, but the western towers, known as "the sisters" were repaired by Trinity House, as they constitute a useful landmark for mariners, being visible at a great distance. Reculver church was built about A.D. 670, and from the existing walls and foundations it is clear that its plan was basilican. The church is now a ruin, but some stone pillars which supported the arches are preserved in the Cathedral Close at Canterbury. As Reculver guarded the northern mouth of the watercourse, so Richborough protected the south, and here traces of a chapel in the form of a cross are plainly discernible amongst ruins known to be of Roman workmanship. The old church at Lyminge in the same county is thus described by Canon Jenkyns, in his "_History of Lyminge_":--"The Roman foundations discoverable at the south-east angle of the chancel, together with the remarkable half-arch that intervenes, marked the site of the _aquilonalis porticus_--the title of basilica already given to it in the seventh century establishes its claim to great antiquity." We thus see that although remains of the actual buildings in which the British Christians worshipped are few in number, yet enough are left us to prove conclusively that there was a very active and zealous Christian community established in these islands during at least the period immediately preceding that in which Rome withdrew her legions from Britain in order to defend Italy against the Goths, and abandoned our island to the mercy of her foes. CHAPTER II. EARLY CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. In the early years of the Christian Church, when its members became sufficiently free from persecution to erect buildings for the purpose of worship, they were naturally anxious to avoid any of the forms peculiar to either heathen or Jewish temples. Some model, however, was necessary, and their choice being limited, they appear to have adopted the simple style of the Roman basilica, or court of justice. There was an adaptability about the general plan of such a building which rendered its selection natural and not inappropriate, while the dignified simplicity of its construction and the object for which it was primarily founded--the dispensation of justice--commended it no doubt in the first instance as a model for the primitive Christian church. These basilicæ were usually enclosures surrounded by a colonnade, sometimes roofed, but more often open to the air, and designedly built for the purpose of being accessible to all members of the community at all times of the day. They appear occasionally to have been used for the transaction of ordinary business in which they would closely resemble our exchanges. Be this as it may, this form of architecture has left its impress on many Christian buildings, and the name of basilica, for a church, is still used in many parts of Italy. The Roman basilica was usually in the form of a parallelogram, with a seat for the judges at one end, and in their adaptation of this form of building, the early Christians devoted this place to the purposes of an altar. This, by an easy and natural transition, is thought to have given rise to the formation of the semi-circular recess at one end of the building, known as the apse (from the Latin _apsis_, a bow or arch), which is still to be found in some of our older churches. Being thus Roman in the nature of their ground plan, it is not surprising to find that other portions of the early Christian buildings show decided characteristics of a Roman style. On the destruction of the Pagan temples by order of the Emperor Constantine about the year 330, much of their material was built into the earliest Christian churches, and the Roman character of their design being prevalent, they formed a style of architecture which has been designated Romanesque, of which the later styles, known here as Saxon and Norman were largely modifications. There is no reason to doubt that the earliest Christian churches were very unpretentious in form and that some time elapsed before there was anything which could be called a definite church architecture, beyond that to which we have alluded. Nevertheless, as the Church strengthened her position and grew in security, more attention was devoted to the subject of its edifices, and the departure in time from the original ground plan furnished an opportunity for the introduction of a more symbolical and appropriate design. The plan of the old basilica was abandoned for one in the form of the cross, the accepted symbol of the Christian religion, which departure, however, did not involve any very great alteration from the old ground plan. We come then to the time when one or other of the forms known as the Latin or the Greek cross--whichever was most convenient--was usually employed in a building designed for Christian worship, and these forms are universally found in the most elaborate structures of which the Christian Church can boast. As time passed, these cruciform churches were surmounted with a dome, steeple, or tower at the point where the members of the cross intersected each other. At first the most prominent of these external adornments was the dome; a characteristic of the architecture of Eastern Europe, which acquired the name Byzantine, from its having been carried to great perfection in Byzantium (Constantinople), the capital of the Eastern Empire. The church of S. Sophia, which was built, much as it now exists, early in the sixth century, and was afterwards converted into a mosque, is an almost perfect example of the Byzantine style. In this building we find the Roman arch used in a variety of ways, while the dome itself is formed entirely of this arch used as the crowning work of the edifice. Eastern churches in this style usually took the form of the Greek cross, this form being better calculated to support the weight of the cupola. In Western Europe, however, where the flat squat tower afterwards developed into the steeple, as we shall see in a later chapter, the Latin cross was mostly used, and this, with a few notable exceptions, is the plan of most western churches. With writers of about fifty years ago, it was a favourite theory that the Christians converted the old basilicæ into churches, and that the "Halls of Justice" erected by the Romans in this country were also converted into Christian churches, and some authorities point to the walls and arches of Brixworth church in confirmation of this theory. The late Mr. J. W. Brewer, however, stated that unfortunately for this theory, no single example of a basilica being converted into a church has been found in this country and he himself held the theory that the word basilica was used by the Romans to describe any building which was supported by internal columns, and in that way the name came to be applied to Christian churches. As we have seen, the early Christians, after a short time, became dissatisfied with these buildings adapted from Pagan types, and the Byzantine form of church arose, the first people who practised this style of building being the Greeks. The style spread with rapidity all over the East, the great church of S. Sophia being its largest example and the smaller, but more perfect, church of S. Mark at Venice giving us the best idea of this form of church architecture. Largely modelled on this style, also, are the circular baptisteries of Italy and the round churches of England, France and Germany, the modern Russian churches and all the Mohammedan mosques. The Latin churches did not greatly favour this style and their use of it was confined, with few exceptions, to baptisteries, monumental chapels and the like, but for parochial, cathedral and monastic churches, the oblong plan was retained and ultimately developed into the Gothic church with its nave, transepts and chancel. The changes which the Christian basilica at first underwent were simple, _viz._, the use of the arch instead of the straight lintel, or the placing of an entablature between the columns; a little later, about the tenth century, the old wooden roof of the basilica gave place to the arched roof or vaulting, so called from its being composed of a series of vaults. The styles called Romanesque and Lombardic are but geographical varieties of the same architecture and from these the Saxon and Norman styles were soon to be developed. The vaulted basilica church soon became common over the north of Europe, the two most important and practically unaltered examples being the cathedrals of Speyer and Worms, in Germany, although our Anglo-Saxon cathedrals of Peterborough, Ely and Norwich may, so far as regards their naves, be justly regarded as the offspring of the vaulted basilica style of building. When the old basilica style of church with its heavy beam roof and its innumerable columns had ceased to satisfy the lofty aspirations of Latin Christianity, and when the Greeks had inaugurated a new style of church architecture, only two courses were left to the Latins, either to adopt the Greek style in its entirety, or to improve upon the basilica type. Fortunately, although after considerable hesitation, they chose the latter alternative, the result being the genesis of our glorious cathedrals with their long naves and aisles, deep transepts and beautiful variety of form and outline. [Illustration: A Reputed Saxon Doorway. Bishopstone, Sussex. _Photograph Mr. W. Hodgson._] CHAPTER III. THE SAXON AND NORMAN STYLES. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the whole subject of pre-Saxon church building is still very obscure, and for some considerable time after the Anglo-Saxon invasion little is known concerning church architecture, nor has it yet been fully ascertained whether any buildings of this period exist. By the year 588 the Saxons were in complete possession of the land. Christianity was to all appearance wiped out and the Church, to the superficial observer was dead. In his "_History of English Church Architecture_," Scott expresses the opinion that the oldest English churches may be divided into three groups. First, those which preceded the Danish invasion; secondly, those from the above epoch to the invasion of Sweyn; and thirdly, those onward to the Norman Conquest. [Side note: Saxon Architecture.] What exactly constituted Saxon architecture has long been a controversial point and one which will probably never be definitely settled. Parker, in his "_Glossary of Architecture_," says:-- "For a considerable time, after they (the Anglo-Saxons) had established themselves in this country, their buildings were of wood, and this appears to have been the prevailing material employed at the time of the Conquest, although stone had been occasionally used several centuries earlier.... No timber-work of Saxon date can be in existence at the present time, but it is contended by some antiquaries that several of our churches exhibit specimens of Saxon masonry; the truth of this theory, however, is not fully established, nor has the subject of Saxon architecture been yet sufficiently investigated to clear away the obscurity in which it is involved." Probably few of our so-called Saxon churches were built earlier than thirty or forty years before the Norman Conquest, and it seems certain that for some years after they had settled in England, the Normans employed Saxon masons to build in the Saxon manner, as is seen by the tower of S. Michael's Church, Oxford, which, although showing all the characteristics of reputed Saxon masonry was built many years after the Battle of Hastings. Certain it is that these pre-Norman buildings in England were singularly rude and rough and show how much our Saxon ancestors were, at that period, behind the Italians, French and Germans in architectural skill. [Side note: Saxon Churches.] Our best examples containing Saxon work are possibly the churches at Sompting and Bishopstone, Sussex; Bradford-on-Avon; Wootton Wawen (sub-structure of tower); Wing; Brixworth, and Barnack, Northants; Greenstead in Essex; and S. Martin's at Wareham, Dorset. Of towers of this date the best are possibly those of S. Mary's and S. Peter's, Lincoln and S. Benet's, Cambridge. Of crypts, the finest examples are at Ripon Cathedral, York Minster (part) and S. Mary's Church, York. In addition to these, many other churches have chancel arches, doorways or some other less important features which are considered to be of Saxon origin. These early buildings generally show the semi-circular arch on the doorways, but the windows usually have a triangular head; at Sompting church, however, the windows have the semi-circular arch. It is necessary to say a few words in detail about the more important churches of this era. [Side note: S. Lawrence, Bradford-on-Avon.] The church of S. Lawrence at Bradford-on-Avon is one of the oldest unaltered churches in England, and it seems to be beyond question that it is the actual church built by Ealdhelm at the beginning of the eighth century and dedicated by him to S. Lawrence. It consists of a chancel, nave and north porch, and among its remarkable features is its great height and the extreme narrowness of the round-headed arch between the nave and the chancel, a feature it has in common with the Saxon church of S. Martin at Wareham; the ground-plan measurements of both these churches are identical. At S. Lawrence's church, an incised arcade is seen outside the walls, and on either side of the west aspect of the chancel arch are two sculptured figures of angels, which are thought to represent the earliest extant fragments of church carving in England. [Side note: Brixworth, Earls' Barton and Barnack.] Brixworth church is possibly older than S. Lawrence's and it is said to have been in continuous use for Divine Service ever since it was erected. The tower appears to be of rather later date than the nave and rests upon the walls of a "narthex" or portico, which may have extended along the whole breadth of the front, as is still to be seen in churches at Rome and Ravenna. The curious pile of masonry built up against the tower may have been added for defence, as it could hardly have formed part of the original design. [Illustration: Tower of Earls' Barton Church. Generally considered to show characteristics of Saxon masonry.] Earls' Barton and Barnack churches both have towers so covered with narrow projecting strips of stonework that the surface of the walls appears divided into rudely formed panels. The west doorways of both show primitive imitations of Roman mouldings in the imposts and architraves. The tower of Earls' Barton consists of four stages, each of which is slightly smaller than the one below. In that of Barnack church, the upper stages of the tower represent the period of transition from Norman to Early English. [Illustration: An Example of a Norman Tower. Bishopstone, Sussex. _Homeland Copyright._] S. Michael's, Oxford, has a massive tower of solid masonry, unpierced in its lowest stage by either door or window, the second stage shows but one window and the highest is pierced by several windows of more elaborate construction. [Side note: St. Michael's Church, Oxford.] Although generally consisting of rubble and stone, Saxon churches were sometimes built of wood as we see from the existing nave of the parish church of Greenstead, Essex. [Side note: Greenstead Church, Essex.] A brick chancel has been added at the east and a timber belfry at the west end, but the old Saxon portion is composed of large chestnut trees split asunder and set upright close to each other with the round side outwards. The ends are roughly hewn so as to fit into a sill at the bottom, and into a plate at the top, where they are fastened with wooden pins. There are 16 logs on the south side where are two doorposts, and on the north side twenty-one logs and two spaces now filled with rubble. There is a tradition that this church was erected to receive the body of S. Edmund, on its return from London to Bury, in 1013. The semi-circular arch has long been considered to be one of the most distinctive marks of Norman architecture, but Mr. Rickman, who made an exhaustive study of the early churches of France and England, says:-- "In various churches it has happened that a very plain arch between nave and chancel has been left as the only Norman feature, while both nave and chancel have been rebuilt at different times; but each leaving the chancel arch standing. I am disposed to think that some of these plain chancel arches, will, on minute examination, turn out to be of Saxon origin." It would be tedious to enter into any more minute account of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical remains, and the reader whose enquiries conduct him to the more elaborate works on the subject will be startled by the contrary opinions that he will surely encounter. In concluding these brief remarks on early buildings, we must again quote from Parker's work to which reference has already been made:-- "The class of buildings referred to as being considered to belong to this style contain some rather unusual features, and they require to be particularly described, both because they are in themselves remarkable, and because there is a probability that some of them may be Saxon." [Illustration: A Norman Pier Arcade. Abbots Langley, Herts. _Photograph Mr. A. W. Anderson._] The Norman style of church architecture with its varied forms of columns, moulded and recessed arches and vaulting, may be roughly stated to have been introduced into England at the time of the Conquest. The Saxon masons do not appear to have understood vaulting sufficiently well to have roofed over any large space with stone, and for this reason alone the Saxon form of building was bound to give way before the Norman, which of all the earlier styles was the most advanced in this respect. [Side note: Norman Architecture.] Generally speaking, Norman arches were semi-circular, but they were by no means universally so, for a form frequently found is one in which the spring of the arch does not take place from the abacus, or upper member of the capital, but at some distance above it and when it assumes this form it is called a "stilted" arch, suggested by some authorities to have been unintentional and the result of imperfect construction or planning. _See page 10._ [Illustration: Examples of Norman Mouldings. Chevron or Zig-zag. Star. Alternate Billet. Square Billet. Double Cone. Lozenge. Beak Head. Bird Head.] The main features in the ornamentation of this period are the sculptured bands worked round the arches, which, although generally called "mouldings," are more in the nature of decoration, and in some instances they appear to be additions carved on the originally unadorned surface of the masonry. [Side note: Ornament.] The earliest and most general ornament is the chevron or zig-zag, which is frequently found doubled, trebled and quadrupled. The next most common form is the beak-head, consisting of a hollow and large round. In the hollow are placed heads of beasts or birds whose tongues or beaks encircle the round. On the west doorway of Iffley church, Oxford, are many of these beak-heads extending the whole length of the jamb down to the base moulding. They also figure prominently among the ornamentations of the hospital church of S. Cross, near Winchester. The zig-zag moulding is very common on Norman churches and is so easily recognised that no further description is needed here. The less prominent decorations of Norman mouldings include the alternate billet, the double cone, and the lozenge, together with an immense number of others less commonly found. [Side note: Windows.] The Early Norman window was little better than a narrow slit finished with a plain semi-circular head, and was generally only a few inches wide. They were, it is believed, filled with oiled linen and the sides of the aperture were splayed towards the interior. Later in the period, the windows were enriched by the zig-zag and other mouldings and at a still later period an improvement was made by inserting nook-shafts in the jambs similar to those in doorways. [Illustration: A Late Norman Parish Church. Castle Rising, Norfolk. _Drawn by Gordon Home._] The towers of Norman churches often show windows of two lights separated by a central shaft, all enclosed under a large semi-circular arch, the spandrel of which is rarely pierced. Plain circular windows of small dimensions are sometimes found in other positions and in churches of later date, and occasionally in gable walls. Larger windows of the same form, with small shafts radiating from the centre and connected at the circumference by semi-circular or trefoiled arches, are also found as at Barfreston church, Kent, where there is a fine example. [Side note: Doorways.] Norman doorways are found in great numbers and variety, even in churches which present no other features in this style. The most usual form consists of a semi-circular-headed aperture with a hood-mould springing from plain square-edged jambs. Frequently, however, the doorways are recessed, having a nook-shaft in the angle formed by a recession from the capital, in which case it presents two soffits and two faces, besides the hood-moulds. The depth of these doorways is largely due to the great thickness of the walls usual in buildings of this period, but in many cases that portion of the wall in which the entrance is inserted is made to project forward beyond the general face, which projection is finished either with plain horizontal capping, or a high-pitched gable. [Illustration: _West Doorway Rochester Cathedral_ Duncan Moul.] Norman porches thus have generally but little projection, and are frequently so flat as to be little more than outer mouldings to the inner door. They are, however, often richly ornamented and have rooms above, which rooms are wrongly called "parvises." The shallow aperture often follows the form of the arch, but is frequently square-headed, having a semi-circular tympanum of masonry filling the space between the lintel of the door and the intrados of the arch. [Illustration: Tympanum of Norman Doorway. Fordington S. George, Dorset. _Drawn by E. M. Heath._] These tympana are usually sculptured in low relief with a representation of some scriptural or traditional event, while the assertion of the Apostle that "we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God," may account for the fondness of the Norman sculptors in representing different stages of martyrdom on the tympana of their doors. A very singular tympanum is that on the door of the church of Fordington S. George, at Dorchester, whereon is represented some incident in the life of S. George. The principal figure is on horseback with a discus round his head. The other figures are in hauberks and chausses, and generally bear, in point of costume, much resemblance to the figures on the famous Bayeux tapestry. Barfreston church, Kent, has an interesting tympanum, as also has Patrixbourne church in the same county, where the sculpture shows the Saviour with dragons and at his feet a dog. At Alveston church, Warwickshire, the sculpture shows two quadrupeds with enormous tails, fighting, with between them a small bird, possibly intended for a dove. Our best example of a Norman doorway and tympanum is generally considered to be the west doorway of Rochester Cathedral, where the sculpture is of a very advanced character for its date, which is probably about 1130-40. [Side note: Piers.] A distinctive feature of the Norman style are the massive pillars, usually circular, and with capitals either of the same form, or square; occasionally in plain buildings the pillars themselves are square with very little or no ornamentation. Towards the end of the period, an octagonal pillar was often used, having a much lighter appearance than the earlier forms. [Illustration: Examples of Capitals. Norman. Transitional. Norman. Crypt, Winchester. Christ Church, Oxford. Winchester Cathedral.] Besides these plain styles, compound or clustered piers are very numerous, differing considerably in plan; the simplest consists of a square having one or more rectangular recesses at each corner, but one more frequently met with has a small circular shaft in each of the recesses and a larger semi-circular one on each side of the square. [Side note: Capitals.] Norman capitals are very varied, having many different forms of ornamentation; the commonest is one which resembles a bowl with the sides truncated, reducing the upper part to a square; sometimes the lower part is cut into round mouldings and ornamented, but it is frequently left plain. The Norman capital in its earliest style was of short proportions, but afterwards it became longer, with lighter ornamentation, gradually merging into the Early English. [Illustration: A Curious Norman Capital. Seaford, Sussex.] The bishops and abbots of this period appear to have possessed considerable skill in architecture, for no fewer than fifteen of our English cathedrals contain some important Norman work, as the older portions of the cathedrals of Canterbury, Durham, Winchester, Gloucester, Peterborough, Ely, Norwich, Lincoln and Oxford. [Side note: Norman Buttresses.] The Norman buttress, better described by Mr. Sharpe as a pilaster strip, unlike those of the later period, projects but very little from the wall, and this is especially so in buildings of the earlier part of the period. They are usually quite plain and are more used for finish than actual support; the Norman builder relying principally upon the thickness and weight of his walls to sustain any roof thrust (_see page 17_). [Side note: The Round Churches.] There are in England a few round churches which are thought to have been built by the Knights Templars, a religious community banded together for the purpose of wresting the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem from the Saracens. Their object was to defend the Saviour's tomb and to guard Palestine, for which purpose they built numerous monasteries throughout the Holy Land and fortified them like castles. Another famous order which combined the religious instincts of the cloister with the military ardour of the warrior was that of the Knights of S. John Baptist or Knights Hospitallers, who, besides fighting, were to tend the sick and provide for the welfare of all Christian travellers. The churches belonging to the Templars were usually built in circular form in imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. They were capped with vaulted concave roofs said to be symbolical of the vast circuit and concave of the heavens. Our best example is the Temple Church, London, to which was added at a later period, a beautiful Early English Gothic extension. Other round churches are those of S. Sepulchre, Cambridge; S. Sepulchre, Northampton; Temple Balsall, Warwickshire, and of Little Maplestead, Essex, which last, although the smallest, is by no means the least interesting. It is attributed to the Hospitallers, an order founded about the year 1092, and introduced into England in the reign of Henry I. At Clerkenwell may still be seen the ancient gateway leading to their hospital. The order was suppressed in 1545. The church at Little Maplestead was built early in the 12th century, and in 1186 the adjoining manor was given by Juliana Doisnel to this order, which gift was confirmed by King John and Henry III. This church is thought to reproduce with more fidelity than the others the original church of the Holy Sepulchre. [Illustration: Norman and Early English Doorways. Showing the transition from one style to another. Dunstable Priory Church. _Drawn by Worthington G. Smith._] These famous Norman round-chancelled churches have much in common with the old basilica form. It must be pointed out that the arbitrary divisions into which architecture has been divided--Norman, Gothic, etc., are pure figures of the imagination, as by a series of easy transitions, one style became gradually merged into the next without any hard and fast dividing lines whatever. The periods during which one style became gradually blended into another are called the periods of transition. [Side note: The Transition.] Architecture being progressive, it was only by the gradual development of one style from another that the art was enabled to advance with social progress, the literature and other arts of the country. The transition from the Norman to the Early English style may be ascribed to a period somewhat earlier than the 12th century, when a great change in the construction of the arch began to manifest itself. Alone, however, the form of the arch is no real test, for many pure Norman works have pointed arches. The square abacus may be taken as the best test. In its incipient state the pointed arch exhibited a change of form only, whilst the accessories and details remained the same as before; and although this change gradually led to the Early Pointed style in a pure state, with mouldings and features altogether distinct from those of the Norman, and to the general disuse, in the 13th century, of the semi-circular arch, it was for a while so intermixed as, from its first appearance to the close of the 12th century, to constitute that state of transition called the semi-Norman. [Illustration: Windows showing the Origin of Tracery.] CHAPTER IV. THE EARLY ENGLISH STYLE. The origin of what is loosely called Gothic architecture--which is generally considered to include the styles, with their transitions, from Early English to late Perpendicular, or Tudor-Gothic--is not free from obscurity, but it is certain that it began to be employed in ecclesiastical edifices about the time that the Goths settled in Italy, although all the available evidence goes to prove that the style originated and underwent its earliest developments in the north-west of Europe, and penetrated by slow degrees to the south and east. England was somewhat later than France in introducing this style of architecture, our earliest purely Gothic building being Salisbury Cathedral, begun in 1220, although the choirs of Rievaulx and Fountains Abbey were commenced a few years earlier. The Early English style in its earliest developments is nowhere seen to better advantage than in Salisbury Cathedral, and in its very latest forms at Westminster Abbey, the period of time being chronologically measured by the reigns of Richard I., John and Henry III. [Illustration: An Early English Arch. Rochester Cathedral. _Photograph Eastmead._] Most of our Gothic buildings were carried out under the supervision of a master-mason, but the most subordinate workman was left plenty of scope within reasonable limits for whatever artistic individuality he possessed, and the enrichments and ornaments of the Gothic era point out the noble aim, the delicate and graceful thought, the refined and exquisite taste expended upon every portion of their buildings by these Gothic masons. [Side note: The Pointed Arch.] One of the chief differences between pure Gothic and Norman architecture is in the use of the pointed form of arch, yet in the study of the early buildings of this date it is curious to notice how evenly the balance is held between the pointed and the round arch, and how at one time it was quite an open question whether the Gothic style would be distinguished by a round or a pointed arch. In Germany and Italy the round arch held its own and continued to be used right through the Middle Ages. In England, however, the pointed arch soon gained a decided victory over its rival. Many theories have been put forward concerning the introduction of the pointed arch, one amongst them being that it was the result of the intersection of two circular arches such as is very commonly found in late Norman work; another theory is the poetical idea that it was copied from an avenue of trees. Whether or not either of these theories holds good, it is quite certain that this form of arch was known in the East for centuries before it reached Europe, being found in cisterns and tombs in Egypt and Arabia dating from long before the Christian era. It has also been suggested that it was introduced from the East by the Crusaders, in which case we should have found it making its first appearance in Hungary, Poland, Bohemia and Russia, but it so happens that these were the very last countries in Europe to adopt the pointed arch. [Side note: The Transitional Period.] The first form of the pointed arch, known as the Early English, was used from about 1180 to 1300, including part of the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., John, Henry III. and Edward I. "Nothing," says the Rev. J. M. Hutchinson, "could be more striking than the change from Norman to Early English. The two styles were the complete opposites of each other; the round arch was replaced by the pointed, often by the acute, lancet; the massive piers by graceful clustered shafts; the grotesque and rudely-sculptured capitals by foliage of the most exquisite character; and the heavy cylindrical mouldings by bands of deeply undercut members." [Illustration: Arcading showing the junction of the Norman and Early English Masonry. Dunstable Priory Church. _Photograph H. A. Strange._] Gothic architecture differs from all previous forms in the economical use of material, and the small size of the stones used. Whereas in both Roman and Norman buildings the arrangement of the materials depended upon their strength in masses, the Gothic masons employed stones of small size in the construction of edifices of equal strength and of far greater magnificence; while in constructive properties the Gothic style was a great advance on anything that had gone before, as the buildings in this style did not depend for their stability on the vertical pressure of columns, but on the correct adjustment of the bearings and thrusts of different arches operating in various directions. Owing to the fact, then, that each portion of a Gothic Church helps to support something besides itself, it is obvious that such buildings could be erected with a far smaller quantity of material than was previously necessary. The various little shafts or columns are so disposed as to distribute the weight of the superstructure and thus relieve the greater columns or piers of some portion of the superincumbent weight; the aisles help to support the nave; the walls of the side chapels act as abutments against the walls of the aisles, while the towers are generally placed so as to resist the accumulated thrust of all the arches along the sides of the nave. [Illustration: An Early English Doorway. Huntingdon.] The enrichments and little ornaments attached to mouldings, and particularly those placed in the hollows, are most characteristic of the various styles of Gothic architecture. The zig-zag is peculiar to the Norman, the nail head to the Transitional or semi-Norman, and the dog tooth to the Early English. [Side note: Early English Ornament.] This last ornament represents a flower, looking like four sweet almonds arranged pyramidically, and there is no other ornament so distinctive of this period. Early English foliage is known by reason of the stalks always being shown as growing upwards from the lower ring of the capital, called the astrigal. These stalks are generally grouped together and curve forward in a very graceful manner. The plants mostly represented are the wild parsley, seakale and celery, and this foliage, called stiff-leaved foliage, is found at no other period than the end of the 12th century. [Side note: Early English Mouldings.] Early English mouldings are very complicated and yet very beautiful, and consist of beads, keel and scroll patterns, separated by deep hollows giving a rich effect of light and shade round the arch. These deeply-cut hollows are also a distinctive mark of the style. [Side note: Early English Windows.] The earliest windows of this period are long and narrow, with acutely pointed heads, the exterior angle being merely chamfered and the interior widely splayed. Somewhat later the introduction of tracery gave a highly beautiful appearance to the windows and from the character of this feature the date of the window can be fairly accurately determined. Where the tracery is formed by ornamental apertures pierced through a plate of stone, it is called plate tracery, and is certain to be of not later date than the earlier part of the 13th century. If it is bar tracery, with the bars forming plain circles, the work is also Early English, but if, on the other hand, the bars form other shapes filled in with patterns, or consisting of a single trefoil or quatrefoil, they are of later date. [Illustration: The Church of St. Margaret, Lynn. West Front showing the Early English work in the base of the Tower. _Photograph Dexter & Son._] [Illustration: Example of Group of Thirteenth Century Lancet Windows. Ockham, Surrey. _Homeland Copyright._] The traceried window originated from the placing of a two-light narrow lancet window under one dripstone having a plain head, the introduction of tracery between the heads of the lancets and the dripstone becoming necessary for beauty and lightness of the form (_see page 47_). [Side note: Early English Porches.] Early English porches project much further from the main walls than do the Norman doorways, and in large and important buildings they frequently have a room above. The gables are usually bold and high pitched, and the interiors quite as rich in design as are the exteriors. [Side note: Early English Doorways.] The doorways of this period are usually pointed, though occasionally they have a semi-circular head. The mouldings are boldly cut and often enriched with dog tooth ornament. The jambs frequently contain a shaft or shafts with plain or foliated capitals (_see page 51_). [Side note: Early English Capitals and Piers.] Early English capitals are usually bell-shaped, and are, in the smaller examples, quite devoid of ornament, with the exception of a necking and one or two mouldings round the abacus. The bell is generally deeply undercut, which, as in the mouldings, is a strong characteristic of the style. The nail head and dog tooth ornaments sometimes appear in the hollows between the mouldings. In the large examples the bell is covered with foliage, which, springing direct from the necking, curls over most gracefully beneath the abacus. In clustered piers the capitals follow the form of the pier, and they also adopt the same form in the single shaft, with the exception that multiangular shafts have often circular capitals. The base consists of a series of mouldings and frequently stands upon a double or single plinth, which in the earlier examples is square, but in later examples assumes the form of the base, and is either circular or polygonal. At Stone church, Kent, is a good example of an Early English capital, decorated with stiff-leaved foliage, and the dog tooth ornament, which in this case is seen between the mouldings of the arch, and is of a perforated character. [Side note: Early English Buttresses.] The buttresses (_see page 17_) of this period are, as a rule, simple in form, and in small churches consist of two or more stages, each set-off or division being sloped at the top to carry off the rain. In larger buildings the buttress generally finishes with a triangular head or gable, and is frequently carried above the parapet, except where stone vaulting is used, in which case it is covered with a pinnacle either plain or ornamented. The edges are often chamfered or the angles ornamented with slender shafts. A niche to contain a statue is occasionally sunk in the face of the buttress, but this feature is more common in the next or Decorated period, although the change from one period to another was so gradual that the exact date of a niched buttress would be difficult to determine were there no other features to guide us. [Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral. Begun in 1220. The spire was added, 1350. _Drawn by Sidney Heath._] Flying buttresses were first introduced at this period, and are common in all large buildings with vaulted roofs. They are generally of simple design, with a plain capping and archivolt, and they spring from the wall buttress to the clerestory (_see page 17_). [Illustration: Examples of Early English Capitals and Ornament.] CHAPTER V. THE DECORATED STYLE. The best examples of Gothic architecture may be said to have been erected between the years 1180 and 1300, and from the latter year many writers date the commencement of its decline. In England we owe nearly the whole of such magnificent buildings as the cathedrals of Lincoln, Salisbury, Worcester, and the abbey of Westminster to the 13th century, and there is scarcely a cathedral or abbey that does not owe some beautiful portion of its structure to the builders of the same period, the transepts and lady chapel of Hereford Cathedral, the eastern transepts of Durham, the nave and transepts of Wells, the transepts of York, the choir presbytery, central and eastern transepts of Rochester, the eastern portion of the choir of Ely, the west front of Peterborough, the choir of Southwell, the nave and transepts of Lichfield, and the choir of S. David's being a few of our most characteristic examples of this period. The style which followed the Early English is known as the Geometric or Early Decorated style, and it embraces roughly the end of the 13th century and the first twenty or thirty years of the 14th century, and continued in its later or Curvilinear form to near the end of that century. Perhaps the most perfect example of the Geometric style in the world is the cathedral church at Amiens, which is usually called the _mother church_ of this style, and although she has many daughters, none of them can be said to equal their parent in beauty. In England the most perfect examples are not to be looked for in cathedrals and large churches, but in their chapels, and the most superb specimen we possessed, S. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, has been destroyed within comparatively recent years. Those left to us include the chapel of the palace of the bishops of Ely, in Ely Place, Holborn, now the Roman Catholic Church of S. Etheldreda, a building almost identical in plan with the vanished chapel of S. Stephen. Trinity Church, Ely, once Our Lady's Chapel, and Prior Crawden's Chapel, in the same city, are lovely examples of the latest development of the Curvilinear style, while the former is considered the most highly-wrought building in England. Belonging to this period, also, is the choir of Merton College Chapel, Oxford, and Luton Church. The Decorated style may be divided as regards its windows into two classes--Geometric and Curvilinear. The first has tracery evolved entirely from the circle. The Curvilinear style is distinguished by traceries formed by curved and flowing lines. _See pages 15 and 59._ [Side note: Decorated Windows.] Decorated windows are usually large and contain from two to seven lights, although one sometimes finds a window with a single light, but of less elongated form than those of the Early English period. As we have seen in a previous chapter, tracery originated from the necessity of piercing that portion of the wall which was left vacant when two lights were gathered under a single arched dripstone, and therefore elementary tracery consisted merely of apertures in a flat surface. As the possibilities of this ornamental feature became better understood, the mullions were recessed from the face of the wall and the fine effect thus produced was, as the art progressed, much enhanced by the introduction of various orders of mullions, and by recessing certain portions of the tracery from the face of the mullions and their corresponding bars. The geometrical tracery, as we have seen, consists of various combinations of the circle, as the trefoil, based on the triangle, the quatrefoil on the square, the cinquefoil on the pentagon, etc. [Illustration: A Late Decorated Window in a Parish Church. East Sutton, Kent. _Photograph Gardner Waterman._] In Curvilinear windows the tracery, although based on the same forms and figures, is yet so blended into an intricate pattern that each figure does not stand out with the same individuality as in the Geometric. Among our most beautiful Geometric windows are those of the Lady Chapel at Exeter, Ely Chapel, and Merton Chapel, Oxford, and of the Curvilinear our best example is probably the east window of Carlisle Cathedral. It must be noted that beautiful as are Curvilinear windows, yet they mark a certain decadence in Gothic architecture, in that it is an irrational treatment of stone, and conveys the idea that the material was bent and not cut into the required shape, it being a well-established canon in art that when strength is sacrificed to mere elegance it marks a decline in that art. [Side note: Decorated Capitals and Piers.] Decorated capitals as a rule follow the contour of the pier in clustered columns, and are either bell-shaped or octagonal. They are frequently only moulded, thus presenting rounds, ogees and hollows, on which the prevailing ornaments of the period, the ball and the square flower, are set. The foliated sculpture is most exquisite, and is gracefully wreathed around the bell, instead of rising from the astrigal or upper member of the capital, as in the earlier style. [Illustration: Examples of Decorated Ornament. Finial Capital Finial (Wimborne Minster). (York Minster). (York Minster). Square Flower. Ball Flower. Crocket Cornice Crockets (Hereford Cathedral). (Grantham). (York Minster). _Drawn by E. M. Heath._] Almost every variety of leaf and flower is represented, the oak, the vine and the rose being perhaps the most common, but the leaves of the maple, hazel, ivy and strawberry are all so beautifully rendered as to evidence their having been directly studied from nature. Plucked flowers too, are not uncommon, and sometimes the little stalks and foliage are accompanied by birds, lizards, squirrels and other creatures. The columns of this period are much more elaborate than those of the Early English style, and in plan have curved profiles with moulded members between the shafts. These mouldings are very varied, but the hollows not being so deeply undercut, the general effect is broader and less liney than in the Early English; while the Decorated arches are less sharply pointed than in the previous style. [Side note: Decorated Doorways.] The doorways of this style possess much the same features as the last, but the mouldings, jamb shafts, etc., are more slender, and generally of finer proportions, the hollows being often filled with the ball flower and square flower instead of the dog tooth. Sometimes the doorways have no pillars, being entirely composed of mouldings which are continuous with those in the architrave. The large single doorways of this period are nearly as large as the double ones of Early English date, and on the sides small buttresses or niches are sometimes placed, and often one finds a series of niches carried up like a hollow moulding, and filled with figures. The figures of this period are not so good as in the previous style, the heads seem too large for the bodies, and in the female figures the breasts are represented as quite flat. Where there are no figures double foliated tracery is often found hanging from one of the outer mouldings, giving an effect of great richness. [Side note: Decorated Buttresses.] The buttresses (_see page 17_) in the Decorated style are nearly always worked in stages, and a niche frequently figures on the face of the buttress. Crocketed canopies and other carved decorations are common, and in large buildings they usually terminate in pinnacles, which are sometimes of open work. A Gothic building attains its effect by the combination of numerous parts, each possessing an individual character of its own. In its loftiness, graceful outlines, and rich effect of light and shade, it speaks of noble aspirations, of freedom, of intellectual thought, of talent and skill, all generously given for a high purpose, the foundation of which was a strong religious enthusiasm, combined with an intense love of the work itself. [Side note: Characteristics of Gothic Architecture.] Having now arrived at the point where Gothic architecture reached its climax, we may briefly sum up its leading characteristics. It is essentially pointed or vertical; its details are mostly geometrical in its window traceries, clusters of shafts and bases, but this geometric quality is only one of construction and form and not of its inner spirit and motive, for plants copied directly from nature were used in beautiful profusion. If we compare a large Gothic church with a comparatively small one, we shall find the columns, windows, ornaments of the former are not so very much larger than those of the latter, but that there are double or three times the number of them. This is not the case in a classical building, where each feature has to be enlarged in proportion to the size of the building. It is the constant sub-division of a Gothic Church which adds so to its apparent size. Ornamentally, the Gothic is the geometrical and pointed elements repeated to their utmost and afterwards combined with the elaboration of natural objects, plants, flowers, etc., growing in the neighbourhood of the work. This is a great feature, but the most striking point in all good Gothic work is the wonderful elaboration of geometric tracery, vesicas, trefoils, quatrefoils and an immense variety of other ornament. In regard to the sizes of our great churches it may be of interest to note that our longest English cathedral is Winchester. York and Lincoln, although not so long as Winchester, are in superficial area very much larger. The largest English church of a non-cathedral rank is Westminster Abbey, which has, moreover, the distinction of being the loftiest internally; the nave being 104 ft. in height. The largest parish church is that of S. Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, which exceeds in superficial area no fewer than eight of our cathedrals. [Illustration: Examples of Perpendicular Ornament. Panel. Crocket. Tudor Rose. Portcullis. Fleur de Lys.] CHAPTER VI. THE PERPENDICULAR STYLE. Towards the close of the XIVth century a great change came over English Gothic architecture, a change which was to a certain extent a return to classical ideas. The curvilinear tracery gave place to a rigid vertical and horizontal form, with the result that windows and panels instead of being filled with curved bars of stone, were sub-divided by straight perpendicular bars and transoms or cross-bars. This style of architecture is popularly known as Perpendicular, but as the horizontal lines are quite as distinct a feature as are the vertical, it would perhaps be more correct to speak of it as Rectilinear. This change in architectural form made its appearance towards the close of the XIVth century, although it was by no means generally introduced at that period, for the old methods and styles were carried on side by side with the new for many years. For example, the eastern end of the choir of York Minster (1361-99) possesses a window the traceries of which contain both curvilinear and rectilinear lines, while Shottesbrook Church in Berkshire (1387), and Wimmington Church, Bedfordshire (1391) are examples of village churches neither of which has any feature of the Perpendicular style. [Illustration: Yeovil Parish Church (A.D. 1376). Early Perpendicular in style, without a clerestory, and called, for its large window area, the "Lantern of the West."] In its earlier stages the Perpendicular style presented an effect at once good and bold; the mouldings, though not equal to the best of the Decorated style, were well defined, the enrichments effective, and the details delicate without extravagant minuteness. Subsequently the style underwent a gradual debasement; the arches became depressed; the mouldings impoverished, the details crowded and coarsely executed, and the whole style became wanting in the chaste and elegant effects for which the Decorated stands unapproached and unapproachable. The flowing contours and curved lines of the previous style now gave place in the windows to mullions running straight up from the bottom to the top, and crossed by transoms. As the arch became more and more depressed the mouldings became shallower and less effective. In early buildings of this period the drop arch is very prevalent, but as the period advanced a form known as the Tudor arch began to be used. It is an arch in which, as a rule, the centres of the upper portion lie immediately below those of the lower, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the whole of the upper portion uniting the arcs of the ends is struck from one centre, in which case the arch becomes a three-centred one, being, in fact, half an ellipse. Towards the close of the style the curvature of the upper portion is so slight that it can hardly be distinguished from a straight line, and as the debasement progressed it became really straight. Ogee arches are also found at this period, and foiled arches are very frequent. When the Tudor arch was not used, we generally find the low drop arch, these three last being mostly used for small openings. [Illustration: A Fine Parish Church showing Rich Perpendicular Work. Terrington St. Clement, Norfolk. _Photograph Dexter & Son._] The peculiar characteristics of the windows--the perpendicular mullions and horizontal transoms--we have already alluded to. [Side note: Perpendicular Windows.] The window heads, instead of being filled with flowing tracery, have slender mullions running from the heads of the lights between each mullion, and these again have smaller transoms, until the whole surface of the window becomes divided into a series of panels, the heads of which being arched, are trefoiled or cinquefoiled. In the later windows the transoms at the top are often furnished with a small ornamental battlement, causing the mullions to present a concave outline. [Illustration: A Perpendicular Doorway. Merton College Chapel. _Drawn by E. M. Heath._] The plans of churches in this style differ from all others in that they are more spacious, the columns more slender and wider apart, the windows much larger, and the walls loftier and thinner. Panelling is used most abundantly on walls, both internally and externally, and also on vaulting, while some buildings, as Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, are almost entirely covered with it. Fan tracery vaulting, a feature peculiar to this style, is almost invariably covered with panelling. The mouldings of this period are essentially different from those which preceded them. As a general rule they are cut on a slanting or chamfer plane, the groups of mouldings being separated by a shallow oval-shaped hollow, entirely different from those of the Decorated period. [Side note: Perpendicular Doorways.] The doorways of the early portion of this period had two-centred arches, but the characteristic form is the four-centred, enclosed in a square head, formed by the outer mouldings with a hood mould of the same shape, the spandrels being filled with quatrefoils, roses, shields, etc. [Side note: Perpendicular Capitals.] Perpendicular capitals are either circular or octagonal, but the necking is usually of the former shape, and the upper members of the abacus of the latter form. The bell portion is mostly plain, but is often enriched with foliage of a very conventional character, shallow and formal, without either the freedom or the boldness of the Early English, or the exquisite grace of the Decorated periods. A distinguishing feature in the ornamentation of this period is that called panel-tracery, with which the walls and vaulted ceilings are covered. The patterns are found in a variety of forms, as circles, squares, quatrefoils, etc. [Side note: Fan Vaulting.] The rich vaulting called fan vaulting previously alluded to, is composed of pendant curved semi-cones, covered with foliated panel-work, which bears some resemblance to a fan spread open. [Side note: Perpendicular Ornament.] Another very characteristic ornament is the Tudor flower. It is formed by a series of flat leaves placed upright against the stalk. It was much used in late buildings as a crest or ornamental finishing to cornices, etc., to which it gave an embattled appearance. Cornices and brackets were frequently ornamented with busts of winged angels called angel-brackets, and angel-corbels. The portcullis and the Tudor rose--both badges of the house of Tudor--also figure prominently among the ornaments of the period. The crockets for the most part partake of the squareness which pervades all the foliage of this style. _See page 64._ [Side note: Perpendicular Buttresses.] The buttresses are very similar to those preceding them in their plainer forms, but, in richer examples the faces are covered with panel work and are finished with square pinnacles sometimes set diagonally and terminated with a crocketed spire, or finished with an animal or other ornament. Parapets with square battlements are very common at this period, but they too are frequently panelled or pierced with tracery, or with trefoils or quatrefoils inserted in square, circular or triangular compartments. [Side note: Perpendicular Roofs.] The roofs of this period, both in ecclesiastical and secular buildings, are very magnificent, and have the whole of the framing exposed to view; many of them are of high pitch, the spaces between the timbers being filled with tracery, and the beams arched, moulded and ornamented in various ways; and frequently pendants, figures of angels, and other carvings are introduced. The flatter roofs are sometimes lined with boards and divided into panels by ribs, or have the timbers open, and all enriched with mouldings and carvings, as at Cirencester church, Gloucestershire. The gradual decline of the Gothic style is very evident in late Perpendicular churches, especially in those erected at the beginning of the XVIth century. The elements of Gothic architecture became much degraded and led to that mixture of features called the Debased Gothic in which every real principle of art and of beauty was lost. [Illustration: A Perpendicular Porch. S. Nicholas, King's Lynn. _Photograph Dexter & Son._] The chief characteristics, then, of the Perpendicular style are the vertical mullions, and the general flattening of arches, mouldings and carvings. Should there be no other guide, a Perpendicular church carries its style and period stamped upon its carvings. The plants represented are, almost without exception, the vine with or without grapes, and the oak with or without acorns. The leaves are generally full blown and crumpled. The earliest building showing the Perpendicular style is the beautiful little priory church of Edington, in Wilts, erected by William Edington, Bishop of Winchester. The same style, but more fully developed, is seen in the nave of Winchester Cathedral, at New College, Oxford, and at Winchester College. It is generally admitted that the Perpendicular style was, to a certain extent, a return to classical ideas, for Gothic architecture in its aspiring grace and feeling for motion was becoming a little unsteady in construction, and although the movement was started by Bishop Edington, it was left to William of Wykeham to save our English Gothic architecture from developing into the flamboyant[1] style so characteristic of the late Gothic buildings of France and Germany. It is little less than astounding that William of Wykeham, at once Prime Minister, diplomatist, scholar and energetic churchman, should have found time to introduce such far-reaching reforms into the art of building, and whatever his fame may be in other directions he will always be remembered by posterity as one of the most remarkable geniuses of the Middle Ages, a man of giant mind and immense physical energy, who carried into all his work a large and dignified character, stamping it with the unmistakable personality of a master mind. [Side note: Perpendicular Towers.] As builders and designers of church towers the masons of the Perpendicular era have never been approached, and all our finest English towers are of this style and period. [Illustration: A Fine Perpendicular Tower. St. Mary, Taunton. _Photograph H. Montague Cooper._] Considerations of space will only allow a few of these towers to be mentioned, but among the finest are those at Boston, Lincolnshire; Wrexham, Denbighshire; Wymondham, Heigham and S. Clement's in Norfolk; Southwold Church in Suffolk; Manchester Cathedral, S. Nicholas' Church, Newcastle, and S. Mary's Church, Taunton. Of Perpendicular date and style, also, are the great lantern towers of Worcester, Bristol, Gloucester, York and Durham Cathedrals, in addition to the fine bell-tower of Evesham Abbey. [Side note: Perpendicular Spires.] The spire, although less commonly used than formerly, was by no means abandoned, and beautiful examples of Perpendicular spires are those at S. Michael's, Coventry, and Rotherham Church, Yorkshire. Although nearly all our cathedrals have some portion of their fabric in the Perpendicular style, chantries, chapels, cloisters, vaulting, screens, etc., it was in our parochial churches that Perpendicular architecture reached its highest and finest development. Just as the XIIIth century was the great age for cathedral building, so the latter end of the XIVth and earlier half of the XVth centuries was the period to which we owe some of the most beautiful of our parish churches, as S. Michael's, Coventry (fin. 1395); S. Nicholas, Lynn (fin. 1400); Manchester Cathedral (formerly a collegiate church), (1422); Fotheringay Church, Northants (fin. 1435); Southwold Church, Suffolk (1440), and S. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol (about 1442). A little later came, among others, Wakefield Church, Yorkshire (1470), S. Stephen's, Bristol (1470), S. Mary's, Oxford, and its namesake at Cambridge (both in 1478) and Long Melford Church, Suffolk (1481). Apart from the actual buildings the Perpendicular architects, masons and sculptors have left us some beautiful work in the form of timber roofs, screens, stalls and seats. Among the more notable roofs of this period are those at S. Peter's, S. Andrew's and S. Mary's, Norwich, the one at Morton Church in Somerset, those at Saffron Walden and Thaxted, Essex, and a particularly fine one at S. David's Cathedral in Wales. Among the remarkable domestic roofs in this style are those at Westminster Hall and Eltham Palace. CHAPTER VII. THE RENAISSANCE AND LATER. So far we have been considering Gothic churches, but we now come to the time when, from a variety of causes, the Italian architects, among them Palladio and Vitruvius, began to revive classical architecture, a movement which gradually spread over other parts of Europe. [Side note: The Classic Revival.] The various causes which led to this apparently retrograde movement are still involved in considerable obscurity. The commercial prosperity of the age produced a class who travelled abroad and cultivated the fine arts, with the result that they desired to see erected in England buildings such as they had seen in Rome, Florence, Genoa and Padua. It is generally admitted that the ramifications of Gothic architecture had reached their utmost limit, and the style was getting out of hand, as is seen by the flamboyant buildings on the continent. The revival of classical literature in western Europe gave an impetus to the movement which was largely intended to enfold art within the shelter of an enlightened taste, and protect it from the licence of unordered enthusiasm. How far it succeeded is not a question that can be discussed at length here, but, however good their intentions may have been, the architects used little discrimination in the selection of buildings which were to serve as models for Christian churches, and although subsequently considerable improvements were made, yet, most of the defects in the pagan buildings of the ancients were retained in such as were intended to be utilized for Christian worship, and even considered purely as exercises in architecture it was not until the more chaste remains of antiquity began to be studied that the spirit and harmony of the good examples were attained. A greater contrast than the methods employed by the Gothic mason and the Renaissance architect could not well be imagined. The former shaped his material with his own hands; the foster mother of his art was tradition and its cradle the craftsman's bench; whereas the latter, with no builder's training, worked out his flawless and precise plans in the exotic atmosphere of the office and the study. The practice of making working drawings for every detail of the building was the cause of the decline of ornamental sculpture, with the result that all life and growth in the building ceased. Some authorities are very severe on the Renaissance movement. Dr. Fergusson, in his "_Modern Styles of Architecture_," says: "During the Gothic era the art of building was evolved by the simple exercise of man's reason, with the result that the work of this period is the instinctive natural growth of man's mind. The buildings, on the other hand, which were designed in the imitative styles, and produced on a totally different principle, present us with an entirely different result, and one which frequently degrades architecture from its high position of a quasi-natural production to that of a mere imitative art." [Side note: Inigo Jones and Wren.] Be this as it may, the severe classical style introduced into England by Inigo Jones (who studied in Italy under Palladio), and continued by Sir Christopher Wren, soon swept everything before it. Our most remarkable church in this style is S. Paul's Cathedral, which in style has two very adverse circumstances to struggle against. In the first place, it bears so great a similarity to the great church of S. Peter, at Rome, that one cannot help comparing it with that fine example, and secondly, it is the only English cathedral which is not in the Gothic style. It must, of course, be acknowledged that S. Paul's falls far short of S. Peter's, especially in its lighting, but it does not deserve the condemnation of a great German critic, who said, "It is a building marked neither by elegance of form nor vigour of style." Although the interior of its dome and clerestory of the nave and choir are extremely gloomy when compared with those of S. Peter's, the church is generally acknowledged to be far superior to the latter in its architectural details, and few, if any, Italian churches can be said to surpass it, either in general composition or external effect, although it must be admitted that everything having been sacrificed to attain the latter quality, S. Paul's taken as a whole, is neither worthy of its fine situation nor of its great architect. Other churches which are excellent examples of this style are S. Stephen's, Walbrook, and S. Mary Abchurch, London. Both show remarkable skill. The former is divided into a nave and four aisles, transepts, and a shallow chancel, by four rows of Corinthian columns, with a small dome over the intersection. The interior is very beautiful, and this church is generally considered to be Wren's masterpiece. S. Mary Abchurch, is nearly square in plan, has no columns and is covered with a domical ceiling, but so skilfully treated that the effect is singularly pleasing. [Side note: Hawkesmore.] Of the Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings it is necessary to say little, as at best they are but clumsy imitations of the Flemish, French and Italian Renaissance, while the style which we now call Queen Anne came in towards the close of the XVIIth century, and belongs of right to the reign of Charles II. Hawkesmore, a pupil and follower of Wren, was a strong architect who has left us Christ Church, Spitalfields, and S. Mary Woolnoth. He also designed the western towers of Westminster Abbey, often wrongly ascribed to Wren, and the second quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford. This architect, like the majority of his contemporaries, misunderstood and despised the Gothic style, with which he had little real sympathy; he drew out designs, which still exist, for converting Westminster Abbey into an Italian church, just as Inigo Jones had done with the exterior of the nave of old S. Paul's, but we cannot be too thankful that this abominable suggestion was never carried out. [Illustration: An English Renaissance Church. S. Stephen's, Walbrook, London. Generally considered to be Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece. _From an Engraving dated 1806._] With King George III. on the throne our ancestors contented themselves with dull, but substantial, buildings of which some hard things have been written, but they were at least respectable and free from sham, while the churches, although not elegant, were well-built and occasionally picturesque, as we see by the perfect little building of this date at Billesley, Warwickshire. The eighteenth century pseudo-classical abominations and sham Gothic, so favoured by Horace Walpole and his admirers, can be briefly dismissed. A more rampant piece of absurdity than that of erecting imitations of portions of Greek temples and adapting them for Christian worship it is difficult to imagine, and in the Pavilion at Brighton, Marylebone Church, and the "Extinguisher" Church in Langham Place we even surpassed in bad taste and vulgarity all the absurdities of the Continental architecture produced by the French Revolution. [Side note: Barry and Pugin.] Two men now came on the scene who, united, were destined to bring some kind of order out of this chaos. Barry and Pugin were both scholars and architects, for while the former rather favoured the classical style he thoroughly understood the Gothic, while Pugin was a thorough mediævalist, a true artist, and a bold exponent in his "_Contrasts_" of a complete return to mediæval architecture as the only possible cure for the evils which had crept into the art of building. Barry's idea, which was perhaps the more practical, was to correct by careful study the errors into which the later exponents of both Classic and Gothic architecture had fallen, and endeavour by well thought out modifications to evolve a style more suitable to modern requirements. Pugin, however, would have none of the evil thing, and although he supplied his friend with designs for the details and woodwork of the Houses of Parliament which Barry was rebuilding, they did not collaborate in any further way, and both died before the Houses of Parliament were completed, in which, as a matter of fact, Barry's designs were completely ignored. The Reform Club is considered to be the best of Barry's classical buildings. Pugin's earlier works were mostly Roman Catholic churches, and they are acknowledged to be an immense advance on any Gothic work which had been seen for centuries. In the Roman Catholic Cathedral of S. Chad, at Birmingham, there is a dignity, loftiness and simplicity surpassed by few Gothic buildings when that style was at its zenith, and from the time Pugin designed this building, architecture--notwithstanding our exhaustive study of archæology, our immense resources of capital and labour, our science and labour-saving appliances, and the comparative accessibility of the finest materials--has neither developed nor advanced. The most erudite Gothic mason could have possessed but little art knowledge as compared with the modern architect, and yet with our learned societies, wonderful libraries, easily obtained photographs and plans of the best buildings in the world; with writers far superior in intellectual acquirements to those of the Middle Ages, our vast wealth, with our tools such as the mediæval craftsman could never have dreamed of, and with the experience of twenty centuries to guide us we have made no advance during more than half a century. Our best architects acknowledge that until we get a new method of building, originality in architecture is an impossibility, mainly because all the existing styles of architecture have been worked out to their legitimate conclusion, and have been perfected under circumstances and conditions with which we have entirely broken; the originality in detail which pervades and permeates our Gothic buildings and gives them the greater part of their charm, must, of necessity, be out of our reach until we blend the spirit of what we are pleased to call our practical age, with a certain amount of that spirit of poetry and romance, religious fervour and devoutness, which animated the builders and craftsmen of the past. [Illustration: A Typical Cornish Font. Probably of the late Norman period. Now at Maker, near Plymouth.] CHAPTER VIII. CHURCH FURNITURE AND ORNAMENTS. The most important part of the internal furniture of a church is the altar, a name derived from the Latin _altare_, a high place. The altar is a raised structure on which propitiatory offerings are placed. In the Christian church the altar is a table or slab on which the instruments of the Eucharist are displayed. [Side note: The Altar.] The early Christian altars were portable structures of wood, and the Church of Rome still allows the use of an altar of this description, although a consecrated stone, containing an authentic relic and regarded as the true altar, must be placed upon the wooden table. The slab forming the altar was sometimes supported on pillars, but more frequently on solid masonry, and previous to the Reformation it was marked with five crosses cut into the top, in allusion to the five wounds of Christ. From the period that stone altars were introduced it was usual to enclose within them the relics of saints, so that in some cases they were the actual tombs of saints. In England the altars were generally taken down about the year 1550, set up again in the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary, and again removed in the second year of Queen Elizabeth. In the church of Porlock, Somerset, the original high altar has been preserved, though not in use, being placed against the north wall of the chancel. In Dunster Church, in the same county, there is a solid stone altar, said to have been the original high altar, and in the ruined church of S. Mary Magdalene at Ripon, the high altar has escaped destruction. Of chantry altars we have several left, including those at Abbey Dore, Herefordshire; Grosmont, Monmouthshire; Chipping Norton, Oxon.; Warmington, Warwick; S. Giles's, Oxford; Lincoln Cathedral, and many others; and it is rare to find a Gothic church without some traces of altars in their various chapels, oratories or chantries. The altar is, of course, an adoption by the Christian church of a pagan aid to worship, and at S. Mary's church, Wareham, which is thought to stand on the site of a Roman temple, are some pieces of stone considered by antiquaries to be portions of a pagan altar, on which burnt offerings were placed. Above many Christian altars was placed a piece of sculpture or a painting representing some religious subject. These altar pieces sometimes consist of two pictures, when they are called "diptyches," and sometimes of three pictures, when they are called "triptyches," and both forms usually fold up or are provided with shutters. They are often rare examples of the Flemish and other schools of painting, and of great value. At the Reformation the stone altar was displaced by the communion table, which at first occupied the position vacated by the altar. This gave umbrage to the Puritan mind, and the communion table was then usually placed in the centre of the chancel, with seats all round for the communicants; which arrangement is still in vogue in some of our English churches and in Jersey, although at the Restoration the communion table was, as a general rule, replaced at the eastern wall of the Chancel. [Illustration: _Durham Sanctuary Knocker._] Long before the Christian era the altar was regarded as a place of refuge for those fleeing from justice or oppression, and this custom or privilege of sanctuary was sanctioned by the English bishops and was retained for many centuries by the Christian Church. Many of our parish churches claim to possess old sanctuary rings or knockers, but it is doubtful if any of these were ever used by fugitives, for the reason that although in early days every parish church had the right to grant sanctuary, few possessed the means of feeding and housing a refugee, save in the church itself, which was expressly forbidden. This is why we find records of fugitives travelling many miles at the risk of their lives and passing hundreds of parish churches in their endeavour to reach Bury St. Edmunds, Hexham, Durham or some other of the well-recognised sanctuaries. The only sanctuary knocker remaining to-day, which is above suspicion, is that at Durham Cathedral. It is made of bronze and represents the grotesque head of a dragon, the ring coming from the mouth. [Illustration: The Baptistery in Luton Church. _Photograph Fredk. Thurston, F.R.P.S._] Above the door is a small room in which attendants watched by day and night, and when a fugitive was admitted a bell was rung to announce that someone had taken sanctuary. [Side note: The Font.] The font, as we have seen, was originally placed in a separate building called the baptistery. The only known example of anything of the kind in England is that in S. Mary's Church, Luton, fully described in The Homeland Handbook, No. 47. It is in the Decorated style, dates from the time of Edward III., and is said to have been designed by William of Wykeham for Queen Philippa. It is composed of white stone with open panels, pierced by cinquefoils and quatrefoils, while the apex of each panel terminates in a foliated finial. The font inside is octagonal in form and of 13th century date, but it has been somewhat restored. Ancient fonts were always large enough to allow for total immersion, and our present custom of baptism by affusion, or sprinkling, is only permitted, not enjoined by the rubric. In early days the sacrament of baptism was only administered by the bishops at the great festivals of Pentecost and Easter, for the reason that this afforded the greater convenience for immediate confirmation, but with the increase in the number of churches the rite was administered by the priests in every village. The font was required by the canon to be of stone, but there are a few Norman fonts made of lead, among them those at S. Mary's Church, Wareham, Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, and at Edburton, Parham, and Pyecombe, Sussex. A remarkable font is that at Dolton Church, Devon, made up of fragments of the churchyard cross, and there is also a somewhat similar one at Melbury Bubb, Dorset. By a constitution of Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury (1236), fonts were required to be covered and locked, and at first these covers were little more than plain lids, but they afterwards became highly ornamental and were enriched with buttresses, pinnacles, crockets, etc. It is doubtful if any fonts exist which can reasonably be supposed to be Saxon, although a few, like that at Little Billing, Northants, may possibly be of that era. Of Norman fonts we have large numbers. They are sometimes plain hollow cylinders; others are massive squares with a large pillar in the centre, and small shafts at the corners. These fonts are generally ornamented with rudely executed carvings, consisting of foliage and grotesque animals. [Illustration: An Example of a Leaden Font of the late Norman period. Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey.] The one in Winchester Cathedral is a good example, and there are three other very similar ones in Hampshire. Early English fonts are very often circular, and sometimes square, and they are often supported in much the same way as the Norman ones. In the Decorated and Perpendicular styles they are, with few exceptions, octagonal, and the details generally partake of the character of those used in the other architectural features of the period. There are hexagonal fonts of Decorated date at Rolvenden, Kent, and Heckington, Lincs. The font is usually placed close to a pillar near the entrance, generally that nearest but one to the tower in the south arcade, or, in larger buildings, in the middle of the nave. [Side note: Stoups.] The holy-water stoups sometimes found in our old churches are generally small niches with stone basins formed in the wall either in or just outside the porch, or within the church close to the door, or in one of the pillars nearest to the door. These niches resemble piscinas, except that they differ in situation, are smaller and plainer, and rarely have a drain. A good example of an outside stoup is that at Broadmayne, Dorset, where there is also one inside the church. They are rarely found unmutilated, but there is one in perfect condition in the north porch of Thornham Church, Kent; and a rather elaborate example at Pylle Church, near Glastonbury. [Illustration: A Reputed Saxon Font. Shaldon, Devon.] The piscina is a water-drain formerly placed near the altar and consisting of a shallow stone basin, or sink, with a drain to carry off whatever is poured into it. [Side note: Piscinas.] It was used to receive the water in which the priest washed his hands, as well as for that with which the chalice was rinsed at the celebration of the mass. It was usually placed within a niche, although the basin often projects from the face of the wall, and is sometimes supported on a shaft rising from the floor. In the Early English and Decorated periods there are often two basins and two drains, and occasionally three. Within the niche a wooden or stone shelf is often found, called a credence-table, on which the sacred vessels were placed previous to their being required at the altar. [Illustration: A Detached Holy-water Stoup of unusual design. Wooton Courtenay, Som.] Piscinas are unknown in England of earlier date than the middle of the 12th century, and of that date they are extremely rare. Of thirteenth and succeeding centuries we have many examples, more or less mutilated. Their forms and decorations are very various, but the character of their architectural features will always decide their approximate date. [Side note: Sedilia.] The Sedilia, from the Latin _sedile_, a seat, has come to be applied in modern times to the seats used by the celebrants during the pauses in the mass. They were sometimes moveable, but more usually in this country were formed of masonry and recessed in the wall. They are generally three in number, for the priest, deacon and sub-deacon, while in a few rare instances they number four seats, as at Rothwell Church, Northants, and Furness Abbey; or even five, as at Southwell Minster. Sometimes a long single seat under one arch is found, and when three seats are used the two western ones are often on the same level and the eastern one raised above them. Numerous examples remain in our churches, some being as early as the latter part of the 12th century, but they are mostly later and extend to the end of the Perpendicular style. Some of them are separated by shafts, and profusely ornamented with panelling, niches, statues, pinnacles, tabernacle work, and crowned with canopies all more or less elaborately enriched. [Side note: Stalls.] Stalls are fixed seats in the choir, either wholly or partially enclosed and used by the clergy. Previous to the Reformation all large and many small churches had a range of wooden stalls on each side and at the west end of the choir. In cathedrals they were enclosed at the back with panelling, and surmounted by overhanging canopies of tabernacle work, generally of oak, of which those at Winchester, Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and Manchester Cathedral are possibly our finest examples. When the stalls occupied both sides of the choir, return seats were placed at the ends for the prior, dean, precentor, and other of the officiating clergy. [Illustration: Sedilia and Chantry. Luton, Beds. _Photograph Fredk. Thurston, F.R.P.S._] Mr. Parker, in his "_Glossary of Architecture_," gives the following definition of the miserere, patience or pretella. "The projecting bracket on the underside of the seats of stalls in churches; these, when perfect, are fixed with hinges so they may be turned up, and when this is done the projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a seat, to afford very considerable rest to anyone leaning upon it. They were allowed as a relief to the infirm during the long services that were required to be performed by ecclesiastics in a standing posture." It is in the carving of these that one is frequently struck by the curious mixture of the sacred and the profane, the refined and the vulgar, for which it is difficult to find any adequate explanation. Of so coarse a nature are some of these carvings that it has been necessary to entirely remove them from the stalls. They are usually attributed to the mendicant and wandering monks, and they undoubtedly reflect the licentiousness which at one time pervaded the monastic and conventual establishments. Among our best examples are those at Christchurch Priory, Hants, and in Henry VII.'s Chapel. There is a remarkably complete set in Exeter Cathedral. [Illustration: A Typical Somerset Bench-End. Showing a Fuller at work with the implements of his trade. Spaxton. _Photograph Mr. Page._] Of modern pews it is not necessary to say anything here, but previous to the Reformation the nave of a church was usually fitted with fixed seats, parted from each other by wainscoting, and partially enclosed at the ends by framed panelling, but more often by solid pieces of wood, either panelled or carved on the front. These bench-ends are very common in the West of England, in Somerset and Devon, and they are often very beautiful pieces of work and were in all probability executed by local craftsmen. They embrace a variety of subjects: figures, scrolls, dragons, serpents, etc., and frequently bear the arms of the family who owned the pew. Sometimes they terminate at the top with finials either in the form of heads, bunches of foliage, a chamfered _fleur-de-lys_ and a variety of other ornaments called Poppy-heads, from the French _Poupée_. No examples are known to exist earlier than the Decorated style, but of Perpendicular date specimens are very numerous, especially in our cathedrals and old abbey churches. [Side note: Pulpits.] Pulpits were formerly placed, not only in churches, but in the refectories and occasionally in the cloisters of monasteries, and there is one in the outer court of Magdalen College, Oxford, and another at Shrewsbury. In former times pulpits were placed in the nave attached to a wall, pillar or screen, usually against the second pier from the chancel arch. Some are of wood, others of stone; the former are mostly polygonal, with the panels enriched with foliation or tracery. Few exist of earlier date than the Perpendicular style, but stone pulpits of Decorated date are sometimes met with as at Beaulieu, Hants, a very early specimen. Wooden pulpits are usually hexagonal or octagonal; some stand on slender wooden stems, others on stone bases. A few have canopies or sounding boards, and their dates can be fixed by the character of their ornamentation. At Kenton, Devon, there is an early pulpit which has retained its original paintings. Jacobean pulpits are very numerous, and are frequently gilded and painted; the one at S. Saviour's Church, Dartmouth, being a most elaborate example. [Illustration: A Richly Carved Pulpit and Canopy. Edlesborough, Bucks. _Photograph H. A. Strange._] Open-air preaching is anything but a modern invention, for long before the erection of parish churches it was the recognised method of addressing the people. There is a print of some popular bishop preaching in a pulpit at Paul's Cross in S. Paul's Churchyard, and in mediæval days open-air pulpits were erected near the roads, on bridges and often on the steps of the market crosses, which are often still known as preaching crosses. [Side note: Squints.] In some of our churches is to be seen a squint, an opening in an oblique direction through a wall or pier for the purpose of enabling persons in the aisles or transepts to see the elevation of the Host at the high altar. They are of frequent occurrence in our churches and are very numerous in the neighbourhood of Tenby, South Wales, also in Devon and the West generally. They are usually without any ornament, but are sometimes arched and enriched with tracery. They are mostly found on one or both sides of the chancel arch, but they sometimes occur in rooms above porches, in side-chapels and the like; in every instance they were so situated that the altar could be seen. When they occur in porches or the rooms above they are thought to have been for the use of the acolyte appointed to ring the sanctus bell, who, viewing the performance of mass, would be thus able to sound the bell at the proper time. The name hagioscope has been used to describe these oblique openings. Cruciform marks are sometimes found on our churches, often on a stone in the porch; they are usually incised crosses or five dots in the form of a cross. They were, presumably, cut by the bishop when the building was consecrated, and are called consecration crosses. [Side note: Screens.] The rood-screens, separating the chancel or choir of a church from the nave, usually supported the great Rood or Crucifix, not actually on the screen itself, but on a beam called the rood-beam, or by a gallery called the rood-loft, which last was approached from the inside of the church, by a small stone staircase in the wall, as can be seen in many of our churches to-day. Although rood-lofts have been generally destroyed in England, some beautiful examples remain at Long Sutton, Barnwell, Dunster and Minehead, Somerset; Kemsing, Kent; Newark, Nottingham; Uffendon, Collumpton, Dartmouth, Kenton, Plymtree and Hartland, Devon. The general construction of wooden screens is close panelling below, from which rise tall slender balusters, or wooden mullions supporting tracery rich with cornices and crestings, frequently painted and gilded. The lower panels often depict saints and martyrs. From the top of the screen certain parts of the services and the lessons were read. They were occasionally close together and glazed, as we see by a most beautiful example at Charlton-on-Otmoor, in Oxfordshire. These screens, many of which have been over-restored, are very common, and in addition to those above mentioned, are found at S. Mary's, Stamford, Ottery S. Mary, Chudleigh, Bovey, and in nearly all the Devon parish churches. At Dunstable a screen of Queen Mary's time separates the vestry from the chancel. [Illustration: Screen with Rood Loft. Kenton, Devon. _Photograph by Chapman._] Of stone screens space will permit of only the briefest mention. They were used in various situations, to enclose tombs and to separate chapels, and occasionally the rood-screen was of stone. [Illustration: The Carved Oak Balustrade in Compton Church. Held to be the oldest existing piece of carved woodwork in England.] The oldest piece of screen work in this country is that at Compton Church, Surrey; it is of wood and shows the transition from the Norman to the Early English styles. Stone screens are often massive structures enriched with niches, statues, tabernacles, pinnacles, crestings, etc., as those at Canterbury, York and Gloucester. [Side note: The Reredos.] The reredos forms no part of the altar, and is often highly enriched with niches, buttresses, pinnacles, and other ornaments. Not infrequently it extends across the whole breadth of the church, and is sometimes carried nearly up to the roof, as at S. Alban's Abbey, Durham and Gloucester Cathedrals, S. Saviour's, Southwark and in that remarkably fine example at Christchurch, Hants. In village churches they are mostly very simple, and generally have no ornaments formed in the wall, though niches and corbels are sometimes provided to carry images, and that part of the wall immediately over the altar is panelled, as at S. Michael's, Oxford; Solihull, Warwickshire; Euston and Hanwell, Oxfordshire, etc. It is interesting to note that the open fire-hearth, once used in domestic halls, was also called a "reredos." CHAPTER IX. BELLS AND BELFRIES. The history of bells is lost in antiquity, and little is known about them previous to the XVth century. It is probable, however, that they were used in India and China centuries before they reached Europe. Bells were used by the Romans for many secular purposes, and although their use was sanctioned by the Christian Church about 400 A.D., they were not in general use in England until 650 A.D. The earliest bells were hand bells, quadrangular in shape, and made of thin plates of copper or iron riveted together, and their abominable sound when struck must have been one of their chief merits, as the early bells were much used for the purpose of frightening the devil and other evil spirits. Our oldest bells are hand bells, S. Patrick's bell at Belfast (1091) and S. Ninian's bell at Edinburgh, which is probably of even earlier date. From 1550 to 1750 was the golden age of production for bells, more especially so in Belgium and the Low Countries, where the bells of the towers and belfries were rung to arouse the country in times of danger and invasion. It is quite possible that the bells used for secular and religious purposes were kept distinct. Bells played a very important part in mediæval life, and next to cannon were regarded as the chief city guardians, for he who held the bells held the town, and the first thing done by the invader on taking a town was to melt the bells and thus destroy the means of communicating an alarm. In England our old towns, being almost entirely constructed of wood, were liable to periodic and devastating conflagrations, which fact suggested to that genius, William the Conqueror, the institution of Couvre-feu, or in its more popular form, Curfew, which rang at eight o'clock in the evening, when all lights were to be extinguished. The ringing of curfew has survived in many of our towns and villages to this day, but it is doubtful if the custom has been continuous from its first institution. The secular use of the bell is, however, only incidental, and it is in its connection with religious life that we are now concerned, for all church history, church doctrine and church custom and observances are set to bell music. Bells in fact may be said to sum up the short span of our mortal life, for the birthday, the wedding and the funeral, are all welded to religion by the church bell. Bells were used for ecclesiastical purposes in England long before the erection of our parish churches, for Bede, speaking of the death of S. Hilda, A.D. 680, says that "one of the sisters in the distant monastery of Hackness, thought she heard as she slept, the sound of the bell which called them to prayers," and Turketul gave to Croyland Abbey a great bell called Guthlac, and afterwards six others which he called Bartholomew and Betelin, Turketul and Tatwin, and Pega and Bega. S. Dunstan gave bells to many of the churches in Somerset, and he also seems to have introduced bell ringing into the monasteries. A few words may be of interest concerning the number and purposes of these monastic bells, with which the life of the monks must have been completely bound up. The _Signum_ woke up the whole community at day-break. The _Squilla_ announced the frugal meal in the refectory; but for those working in the gardens, the cloister-bell, or _Campanella_, was rung. The abbot's _Cordon_, or handbell, summoned the brothers and novices to their Superior; whilst the _Petasius_ was used to call in those working at a distance from the main building. At bed-time the _Tiniolum_ was sounded, and the _Noctula_ was rung at intervals throughout the night to call the monks to watch and pray. The _Corrigiumcula_ was the scourging bell, while the sweet-toned _Nota_, a choir bell, was rung at the consecration of the elements. The use of the bell-tower was recognised in the ancient Saxon law, which gave the title of thane to anyone who had a church with a bell-tower on his estate, and two of our most interesting Saxon churches, Brixworth and Brigstock, both in Northamptonshire, have each a semi-circular tower rising together with the bell-tower, and forming a staircase to it. One of the most beautiful campaniles or bell-towers still standing is that at Evesham, in Worcestershire, which is a good specimen of Perpendicular architecture. It was built by Abbot Lichfield, the last abbot but one of the abbey, and took six years in building, and was not quite completed when the famous abbey, of which it was a final ornament, was pulled down. In addition to this example at Evesham, detached bell-towers exist, or once existed, at Chichester, East Dereham, Glastonbury Abbey, Bruton, in Somerset, and in several other places. Markland, in his _Remarks on Churches_, says: "The great bell-tower which once formed part of the abbey church of S. Edmundsbury was commenced about 1436. From the year 1441 to 1500 legacies were still being given towards the building. In 1461 an individual, probably a benefactor, desired to be buried _in magno ostio novi campanilis_." In Protestant use church bells have been stripped of much of the former superstition and symbolism. They are no longer rung to announce the miracle of transubstantiation; neither are they called upon as of old for the purpose of scaring devils, demons, and other evil spirits which formed so prominent a feature in the faith of the early Christian communities. [Illustration: Bell Turret for 3 Bells. Radipole, Dorset.] Closely connected with the subject of bells and belfries are the bell-gables or bell-turrets, so frequently found at the west ends of our smaller churches which have no towers. They usually contain but one bell, but are sometimes found with two, and at Radipole Church, near Weymouth, the bell-turret was originally designed to carry three bells. They are generally most picturesque little features of which a few may be of Norman date, but by far the greater number of them are Early English, a style in which they are frequently found. In addition to these bell-turrets at the western ends of our churches one sometimes finds a similar, but smaller, erection at the eastern end of the roof of the nave, but used for a very different purpose, for while the bell at the western end was rung to summon the parishioners to service, that at the eastern end, known as the Sanctus or Mass-bell, was rung on the elevation of the Host during the celebration of mass; although usually placed on the apex of the roof, this bell sometimes occupied a position in the lantern or tower, or in a turret of larger dimensions. In churches where no turret existed it was carried in the hand, and such is now the prevailing practice on the continent. The turret for the Sanctus bell still exists at Barnstaple, Devon, and St. Peter Port, Guernsey. The Sanctus bell was generally made of silver, and occasionally a number of little bells were hung in the middle of the church, and by means of a wheel they were all made to ring at once. CHAPTER X. THE SPIRE; ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT. Probably the most beautiful feature of a Gothic church is the spire, raising its tapering form far above the town or village and forming a prominent landmark, denoting the location of the House of God. Although found occasionally in other styles, the spire is essentially Gothic, and one of the most marked characteristics of this period. Spires are generally of two kinds, those constructed of timber and covered with slates, lead, tiles or shingles, and those built of stone or brick. Examples of both kinds are very numerous on the continent and in England, while shingle spires are especially common in Sussex. The spire is generally acknowledged to have originated from the small pyramidal roof so frequently found on Saxon and Norman towers. This gradually became elongated, and the towers were sometimes gabled on each side, as is the case with the remarkable Saxon church at Sompting, Sussex. This shows us very clearly the angles of the spire resting upon the apex of each gable, so that the spire itself is set obliquely to the square of the tower. [Illustration: The best example of a Saxon Spire or Pyramidal Roof. Sompting, Sussex. _Drawn by George Pearl._] Saxon and Norman spires are very rare in England, Sompting being our best example of the former and those on the eastern transepts of Canterbury Cathedral of the latter. Of Early English spires we have, fortunately, some good examples, among which are those at Oxford Cathedral, Wilford and Wansted, in the same county, and a very graceful one at Leighton Buzzard. These 13th century spires are very common in France, as at Chartres and S. Pierre, Caen. [Illustration: Leighton Buzzard Church. With Early English Tower and Spire. _Photograph H. A. Strange._] Of fourteenth century, or Decorated, spires, we have many examples, of which perhaps the best is the beautiful spire of Salisbury Cathedral, although the equally fine one at S. Mary's, Oxford, runs it close for premier position. The triple group at Lichfield Cathedral belong to this period, as do the spires of Ross, Heckington, Grantham, S. Mary's, Newark, King's Sutton, Bloxham and Snettisham, Norfolk. A peculiarity of the Salisbury spire is that it never formed part of the original design of the cathedral, being added seventy years later. It is the loftiest spire in England--404 feet--about 40 ft. higher than the cross of S. Paul's. It speaks well for the Gothic builders that such a vast superstructure as this tower and spire could be imposed upon walls and piers never intended to bear it. At an early period it was found to have deflected twenty-three inches from the perpendicular, but there has been no sign of any further movement. Barnack Church, in Northamptonshire, has a curious spire showing the transition from Norman to Early English. It will be noticed that the sides of a church spire are slightly curved, so that they swell out a little in the centre. This is called the entasis of the spire, and belongs to the study of optics in architecture. Where the spire has no entasis the same effect is produced by the introduction of small projecting gables, bands of carving, or a little coronal of pinnacles. One of the most clearly marked differences between English and continental spires is that the latter are much shorter than the towers which support them, the towers, as a rule, being twice as high as the spires. In England, on the contrary, the spire is generally very much loftier than the tower. At Shottesbrook, Berks, and Ledbury, Herefordshire, the spires occupy as much as three-fifths of the total elevation, and the usual rule in England is for the tower to be a little less in height than the spire. The masons lavished an extraordinary amount of care and skill on their spires. So much is this the case that there is hardly a mediæval spire in the country which can be called ill-designed or displeasing. Church spires are very common in some counties and very rare in others. There are, of course, exceptions, but it is in the flat counties that spires are most frequent, the most beautiful ones being found in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire. The top of the spire is usually capped with a weather vane terminating in a cock. The custom of using a cock as the flag of the vane is of very early date, for Wolfstan, in his Life of S. Ethelwold, written towards the end of the 10th century, speaks of one which surmounted Winchester Cathedral. In the Bayeux Tapestry one is shown on the gable of Westminster Abbey, and one of the early Popes ordained that every church under the papal jurisdiction should be surmounted by a cock as emblematical of the sovereignty of the church over the whole world. CHAPTER XI. STAINED GLASS. The use of coloured glass in the windows of buildings devoted to religious purposes appears to have been employed as early as the ninth century, but no examples remain of anything like so old a date, and we have only illuminated missals and primitive drawings by members of the conventual bodies to guide us in determining the earliest styles of coloured glazing. It appears to have consisted of more or less primitive representations of the human form, with strong black lines to indicate the features and folds of the drapery. The backgrounds were generally masses of deep blue or red, and in the rare instances where landscapes were introduced positive colours only appear to have been used. Our oldest specimens in England are those in the choir aisles of Canterbury Cathedral, which appear to be of the 12th century, and it is thought that they are the remains of the original glazing that was put in when this part of the building was rebuilt after a fire in 1174. The general design is composed of panels of various forms, in which are depicted subjects from Holy Scripture, with backgrounds of deep blue or red; the spaces between the panels are filled with mosaic patterns in which blue and red colours predominate, and the whole design is framed in an elaborate border of leaves and scroll-work in brilliant colours. [Illustration: A Parish Church with a Shingle Broach Spire. (_See page 99_). Edenbridge, Kent. _Homeland Copyright._] Of thirteenth century windows we have some magnificent examples --unfortunately few unmutilated--as at York, where is the five-light lancet window situated in the north end of the transept, known as the Five Sisters of York. Of this date, also, are the large circular window of Lincoln Cathedral, and the windows at Chetwode, Bucks; Westwell, Kent; West Horsley, Surrey; and Beckett's Crown, Canterbury. A little later, in the Decorated period, we get the great east window of York Cathedral, 75 ft. high and 32 ft. broad; the east window of Gloucester Cathedral, 72 ft. high and 38 ft. broad; and other fine windows at Tewkesbury Abbey; Merton College, Oxford; Wroxhall Abbey, Warwickshire; and the churches of Chartham, Kent; Stanford, Leicestershire; Ashchurch, Glous.; Cranley, Surrey; Norbury, Derbyshire, and others. Salisbury Cathedral has retained portions, but very lovely portions, of the glazing of its west windows, and enough is left to show that it was little inferior to the great windows of York and Gloucester. Carlisle Cathedral, too, has preserved fragments of the original glass in the tracery of the great east window, but the lower part of the glazing is modern. Windows in the Decorated style continued to be arranged in panels, with the spaces between them filled with flowing patterns of foliage, in which the vine and ivy leaves predominate. Single figures are more common than in the previous style, and when used are generally shown beneath a simple pediment or canopy. In the early examples they only occupy a portion of the window light, but later they are found occupying nearly the whole of the surface and are surmounted by large and elaborate canopies. Quarries are much used in this style, sometimes quite plain, but more often with leaves or rosettes painted on them in black lines, or painted with the vine and ivy leaves so arranged that they form a repeating pattern over the whole window. At this period, too, heraldry began to be employed in the decoration of the windows to which it is always an appropriate and artistic adjunct, and many authentic and valuable examples of our national heraldry have thus been preserved for posterity. With the advent of the Perpendicular style the glazing became more uniform in character, the glass was thinner and lighter, the tints paler, and the whole effect more brilliant and transparent. The paintings for the most part consist of large figures under elaborate canopies, frequently occupying an entire light, and in the patterns and smaller decorations there is a greater freedom of design, and the whole treatment is more harmonious and artistic than in any other period. The use of heraldry became very common, and inscriptions on long narrow scrolls were frequently employed. Among the best examples of this period are the windows at S. Margaret's Church, Westminster; King's College Chapel, Cambridge; Fairford Church, Gloucestershire; and Morley Church, Derbyshire. The Reformation, with its vast social and political upheaval, was not conducive to the encouragement of the fine arts, and from this period the art of glazing in England declined beyond measure, and was not the only art that received its death-blow in the triumph of Puritanism. The art has, however, revived greatly during recent years, thanks, among other artists, to William Morris and Burne-Jones. A few words must be said about the "Jesse" window found in some of our cathedrals and churches. Strictly speaking, it is a representation of the genealogy of Christ, in which the different persons forming the descent are placed on scrolls of foliage branching out of each other, intended to represent a tree. It was also wrought into a branched candlestick, thence called a Jesse, a common piece of furniture in ancient churches. The subject is found on a window at Llanrhaiadr y Kinmerch, Denbighshire, on the stone work of one of the chancel windows at Dorchester Church, Oxfordshire, and in carved stone on the reredos of Christchurch Priory, Hants. It is not perhaps generally known that the actual colours used in early stained glass possessed each of them their own specific symbolism. Underlying the obvious story conveyed by the human figures or decorated devices, there was an inner story to be read with profit by those who understood the mystic symbolism concerning colours. Without entering at length into this interesting subject, it may yet be stated that green was the symbol of Regeneration, red of Divine Love, white of Divine Wisdom, yellow of Faith, and grey, or a mixture of black and white, the emblem of Terrestrial Death and Spiritual Immortality. These colours at different times or in different countries had other meanings as well, and ecclesiologists tell us that the colours chosen for depicting the robes of our Lord differ according to the period of His life which it was intended to represent. CHAPTER XII. CRYPTS. The crypts so generally found beneath our cathedrals and abbeys, and so frequently under our churches, rarely extend beyond the choir or chancel and its aisles, and are sometimes of very small dimensions. They are often coeval with the upper parts of the building, and although not so elaborate in ornamentation as the fabric they support, they are almost without exception well constructed and well finished pieces of building. In some cases the crypt is of much older date than any portion of the superstructure, as is the case at York, Worcester and Rochester cathedrals. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the roofs were often richly groined, and upheld by cylindrical columns or clustered piers, and furnished with handsome bases and decorated capitals. There is abundant evidence that crypts were at one time furnished with altars, piscinas, and the various fittings requisite for the celebration of the mass, and they were used as sepulchres, wherein the shrines of relics and martyrs were carefully preserved. Some authorities claim a purely Saxon origin for the crypts at Ripon Cathedral, Hexham Abbey, and Repton Church, Derbyshire. The Ripon example is a plain barrel-vaulted chamber, about 11 ft. long and 8 ft. wide, with no pillars or ornament of any kind. It is popularly known as S. Wilfrid's Needle, but the exact origin of the name is lost in obscurity. The Hexham crypt is very similar in character, but is somewhat longer, being more than 13 ft. long and 8 ft. wide. As at Ripon, there are hollows or shallow niches in the walls in which lamps may possibly have been placed. The third reputed Saxon crypt is that at Repton, but it has little in common with the other two, its superficial area being nearly twice as great and the roof is supported on four columns, with plain square capitals rudely carved, and bearing much similarity to early Norman work. The position of the crypt varies. At Beverley Minster it is on the south side of the south-west tower; in Hereford Cathedral it is under a side chapel, while at Lastingham, in Yorkshire, the crypt extends under the whole of the church, including the apse. At Wells the crypt is beneath the chapter-house, and Durham Cathedral has three crypts, one under what was the dormitory, another beneath the refectory, and the third under the prior's chapel. Of crypts of Norman date we have many examples, of which, perhaps, our best are those at Gloucester, Worcester, Canterbury and Winchester Cathedrals, while Canterbury is probably the largest of them all. Good crypts are also found at Wimborne Minster, Christchurch Priory, and in our smaller churches at Repton and S. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford. The Wimborne crypt is lighted by four windows. The vaulting is supported by two pairs of pillars which form three aisles, each of three bays. Mr. Perkins, in his book on Wimborne Minster, says, "On each side of the place where the altar stood there are two openings into the choir aisles. The exteriors of these are of the same form and size as the crypt windows, but they are deeply splayed inside, and probably were used as hagioscopes or squints, to allow those kneeling in the choir aisles to see the priest celebrating mass at the crypt altar." The crypt at Christchurch is of Norman date, and now serves as a vault for the Malmesbury family. The crypt of Canterbury Cathedral is claimed and justly claimed, perhaps, as the largest and most beautiful in England. It is thought to contain fragments of Roman and Saxon work, and much of it dates from the days of S. Anselm (1096-1100). It was here that the remains of S. Thomas à Becket lay from 1170 to 1220, and "here that Henry II., fasting and discrowned, with naked feet, bared back, and streaming tears, performed on July 12th, 1174, the memorable penance for his share in the murder of the great Archbishop." It was here too, in later times that the Walloons were granted, by Queen Elizabeth, the privilege of carrying on their silk-weaving, and it was also reserved as a place of worship for French Protestants. CHAPTER XIII. HOW TO DESCRIBE AN OLD CHURCH. Having carefully read the foregoing chapters, it should be possible for anyone interested in the subject to be able to write a fairly accurate description of any old church. The record should, if possible, be amplified with sketches or photographs. In course of time, decay, neglect and restoration will deprive our ancient buildings of every visible stone of original work which they possess, and careful records of this kind, written, photographed and sketched, may be of the highest possible value to future generations of historians and architects, long after the objects themselves have ceased to exist. The work in itself is of absorbing interest, and the more one studies these works of past ages the stronger becomes the conviction that our old buildings, whether cathedral, castle or simple village church, are the landmarks of the nation's history, and a priceless inheritance of beauty and art the conservation of which is the duty of all generations. The principal points to be noted are--1. The name of the church. 2. Its situation. 3. Its dedication. 4. General plan. 5. The style of architecture to which each portion belongs. 6. Any peculiarity of the architecture, blocked up windows, etc. 7. Any ancient furniture, screens, bench-ends, glass. 8. Any monuments, tablets, or mural paintings. 9. Church plate, bells, registers. 10. Any local traditions. The record should be made somewhat in the following manner. The church of ---- is prettily situated on rising ground some quarter of a mile north of the village, and on the main road to ---- . It is approached by a picturesque timber lych-gate, and consists of nave, aisles and chancel, having a side chapel to the north and a single transept to the south. At the west end is a Decorated tower and spire. There are two porches, one on the north side and the other on the west, which last has a niche for a figure over the doorway and seats on either side. The nave is Perpendicular, as is the greater part of the rest of the fabric. Above the nave rises a lofty and noble clerestory, divided from the aisles by five rather obtusely-pointed arches supported by richly moulded piers with small moulded capitals. Each bay of the clerestory contains two three-light windows of late Perpendicular date. The roof is flat pitched and is of oak, the principals are adorned with panelled tracery and show vestiges of ancient colour decoration. The windows of the aisles are late Decorated in style; they are of three lights, the traceries elegant and richly moulded. The east window is Perpendicular and is much sub-divided by mullions and transoms; in the upper portions are some heraldic coats of arms, which appear to have formed part of a much earlier window. The chancel is divided from the nave by a fine open oak screen, coeval with the larger part of the building. It is richly carved and gilded, and in the right-hand side of the chancel arch are the steps which formerly led up to the top of it. The chancel, together with its chapel, is vaulted in stone with well marked ribs and carved bosses. The transept, late Perpendicular, opens into the south side of the nave by a four-centred arch, and has a rich flat ceiling. In the chancel is a piscina of Early English date, together with a sedilia of the same period. On the north side of the chancel, resting on the floor, is a cross-legged effigy, in chain mail, surcoat, etc., and bearing on his left arm a shield, but all much mutilated. There is a local tradition that it represents Sir ----, but there is no evidence by which he can be identified. Features of the church are the many highly carved bench ends, all in oak, representing a great variety of subjects, such as dragons, serpents, etc., while a few bear the arms of local families who probably bore the cost of the work. The pulpit is Jacobean, and has no special feature. The font, which stands in the centre of the nave, is square in form and is supported by a modern round plinth. It is constructed of marble, the four sides being carved in low relief with intersecting patterns. It is possibly of Norman date, and is the only existing feature of a much earlier church. The tower and spire are Decorated; the latter is of stone with four pinnacles at the base, and has a little coronal of pinnacles. The belfry windows are arranged in pairs on each side of the tower. The tower or western window is of five lights, richly Decorated in style. Illustration: KEY TO DIAGRAM OF THE INTERIOR ELEVATION OF A BAY OF A CHURCH. CLERESTORY. 26 Boss. 25 Vaulting Rib. 24 Vault. 23 Vaulting Rib. 22 Tracery of C. Window. 21 Clerestory Window. 20 Sill of Clerestory Window. 19 Base of Jamb, C. Arch. 18 Jamb of C. Arch. 17 Clerestory String. BLIND STOREY (TRIFORIUM). 16 Capital of Vaulting Shaft. 15 Tracery of Triforium. 14 Triforium Arch. 13 Capital of T. Pier. 12 Pier of Triforium. 11 Triforium String. GROUND STOREY. 10 Tracery of Aisle Window. 9 Aisle Window. 8 Sill of Aisle Window. 7 Wall Arcade. 6 Vaulting Shaft. 5 Corbel. 4 Pier Arch. 3 Capital of Pier. 2 Pier. 1 Base of Pier. FOOTNOTES. 1: So called from its "flame"-like appearance, producing forms which resemble elongated tongues of flame. There is great beauty in much of this work, but it is constructionally weak. The finest example is Chartres Cathedral. APPENDIX. A GLOSSARY OF THE PRINCIPAL TERMS USED IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. ABACUS Derived from the Greek _Abax_--a tray or flat board, an essential feature of the Grecian and Roman orders, but now used to describe the slab forming the upper part of a column, pier, etc. ABBEY A term for a union of ecclesiastical buildings, for the housing of those conventual bodies presided over by an abbot or abbess, supposed to be derived from the Hebrew _ab_, "father." ACANTHUS A plant, the leaves of which are represented in the capitals of the Corinthian orders. AISLE French _aile_, a wing, the lateral division of a church. ALMONRY A room where alms were distributed. ALTAR An elevated table dedicated to the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, and usually called the Communion Table. ALMERY, AUMERY, and AUMBREY A recess or small cupboard in the wall of a church, used to contain the chalices, patens, etc., for the use of the priest. They are sometimes near the _piscina_, but are usually on the opposite side of the chancel. ANTE-CHAPEL The outer part of a chapel. APSE The semi-circular or polygonal recess at the east end of the choir or aisles of a church. ARCADE A series of arches, open or closed with masonry, and supported by columns or piers. ARCH A construction of bricks or stones so placed as by mutual pressure to support each other and a superincumbent weight. They may be semi-circular, segmental, elliptical, stilted, horse-shoe, pointed, trefoiled, cinquefoiled, or ogee. ARCHITRAVE In classical architecture, the lowest division of the entablature resting immediately on the abacus of the capital. In Gothic buildings the ornamental mouldings round the openings of doors, windows, etc. ARCHIVOLT The under surface of the curve of an arch, from impost to impost. ASHLAR Shaped or squared stone used in building, as distinguished from that in the rough. ASTRAGAL A small semi-circular bead or moulding. BALL FLOWER An ornament resembling a ball in a circular flower with three enclosing petals. Dec. BASE The lower member of a column, pier, or wall. BASILICA A Roman law-court. Early Christian churches when built on the same lines were called by the same name. BILLET An ornament much used in Norman work and formed by cutting a moulding in notches, so that the remaining parts resembled wooden billets or pieces of stick. BLIND STOREY See Triforium. BOSSES Ornamental projections usually of foliage and placed at the intersection of the ribs of vaults, ceilings, etc. BRACES Timbers which brace or support the main rafters. Also called _struts_. BROACH A spire, generally octagonal and springing from the square top of the tower, without a parapet. (_See page 105_). BUTTRESS A projection from a wall, giving it additional strength. CANOPY In Gothic architecture an ornamental hood or projection over doors, windows, niches, tombs, etc., and rarely found except in the Dec. and Perp. styles. CAPITAL The head of a column or pilaster, found in a great variety of shapes. CATHEDRAL A church presided over by a Bishop. The principal church of a diocese. CHALICE The cup used for the wine at the celebration of the Eucharist. CHAMFER The surface formed by cutting away the rectangular edge of wood or stone work. CHANCEL The choir or eastern part of a church, appropriated to the use of those who officiate in the performance of the services. CHANTRY A chapel often containing a tomb of the founder, and in which masses were said. CHAPEL A small building attached to cathedrals and large churches. CHAPTER-HOUSE The room where the Dean and Prebendaries meet for the transaction of business. CHEVRON An ornament characteristic of the Norman period and divided into several equal portions chevron-wise or zig-zag. CHOIR That part of a church to the east of the nave where the services are celebrated, also called chancel, and frequently separated from the nave by an open screen of stone or wood. CINQUEFOIL An ornamental foliation used in arches, tracery, etc., and composed of projecting points or cusps, so arranged that the opening resembles five leaves. CLERESTORY Possibly the _clear_ storey. An upper storey standing above or clear of the adjacent roofs, and pierced by windows to give increased light. CLOISTER A covered walk or ambulatory forming part of a cathedral or college quadrangle. CLUSTERED COLUMN A pier made up of several columns or shafts in a cluster. COLONNADE A row or rows of columns supporting a roof or building. CORBEL Usually a moulded or carved ornament projecting from the walls, acting as a bracket and capable of bearing a super-incumbent weight. CORNICE The horizontal termination of a building in the form of a moulded projection. COURSE A continuous and regular line of stones or bricks in the wall of a building. CROCKETS Projecting ornaments in the form of leaves, flowers, etc., used to embellish the angles of pinnacles, spires, gables, canopies, etc. CROSS The accepted symbol of the Christian religion and an architectural church ornament usually placed upon the apex of the gable. A large cross called a rood was at one time always placed over the entrance to the chancel. The cross was worn as a personal ornament ages before the Christian era by the Assyrians, and we are told that the Druids also used this symbol in very early times. CRYPT Sometimes called the Undercroft, a vaulted chamber, usually underground and, in churches, rarely extending beyond the area of the choir or chancel, and often of less dimensions. CUSPS Projecting points giving the foliated appearance to tracery, arches, panels, etc. DORMER A gabled window pierced through a sloping roof. DRIPSTONE A projecting ledge or narrow moulding over the heads of doorways, windows, etc., to carry off the rain. FAN-TRACERY Tracery in which the ribs form a fan-like appearance and diverge equally in every direction. (Peculiar to the late Perp.) FLAMBOYANT Tracery whereof the curves assume flame-like waves and shapes. FLYING BUTTRESS A buttress in the form of a bridge, usually transferring the thrust of the main roof from the clerestory walls to the main or aisle buttresses. FONT The vessel for holding the consecrated water used in baptism. GARGOYLE A projecting spout usually grotesquely carved and used to throw the water from the roof well away from the building. GROIN The line of intersection in vaulted roofs. IMPOST Horizontal mouldings, capping a column or pier, from which the arch springs. JAMB The side of a window or door. KEYSTONE The central stone at the top of an arch. The bosses in vaulted ceilings are frequently called keys. LADY CHAPEL A chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, called "Our Lady." LANTERN A small structure or erection surmounting a dome or tower to admit light. These towers are known as Lantern Towers. LOZENGE A name given in modern times to Norman mouldings which partake of a lozenge formation. LYCH-GATE From the Anglo-Saxon _lich_, a corpse. A small and often picturesque shelter at the entrance to a churchyard. MINSTER The church usually of a monastery or abbey or one to which such has been an appendant. York and Beverley, however, are exceptions to this rule. MISERERE A small bracket on the undersides of the seats of stalls. MOULDING A term generally applied to the contours given to angle projections or hollows of arches, doors, windows, etc. MULLION The dividing bars of stone or wood between the lights of windows, or the openings of screens. MÜNSTER has now lost its simple application. (MONASTERY) NAVE From _navis_, a ship, the main body of a church west of the chancel. NICHE An alcove or recess in a wall for holding a statue or ornament. OGEE A moulding or arch formed of a curve or curves somewhat like the letter S, the curve of contra-flexure, part being concave and part convex. ORDERS In Gothic architecture, the receding mouldings of an arch. PARCLOSE The screen or railings protecting a monument or chantry. PARVISE An open space or porch at the entrance to a church, and often wrongly applied to the room over a church porch. PATEN The small plate or salver used to hold the Consecrated Bread in the celebration of the Eucharist. PENDANT Ornaments which hang or _depend_ from a ceiling or roof. PENTHOUSE A covering projecting over a door, window, etc., as a protection from the weather. PIER The masses or clusters of masonry between doors, windows, etc.; the supports from which arches spring. PILLAR A term frequently confounded with column, but differing from it in not being subservient to the rules of classical architecture, and in not of necessity consisting of a single circular shaft. PINNACLE A small turreted ornament tapering towards the top, and used as a termination to many parts of Gothic architecture. PISCINA The stone basin or sink in the chancel used for cleansing the communion vessels. PLINTH The lower division of the base of a column, pier or wall. POPPY-HEAD An ornament boldly carved on the tops of bench ends, etc. PRESBYTERY A term sometimes used to include the whole of the choir, but more often meant to refer to the eastern end of the choir from which it is generally raised by several steps. QUARRIES or QUARRELS The small diamond, square or other the shaped panes used in plain glazing. QUATREFOIL The shape resembling four leaves formed in tracery or panels by cusps. QUOIN The external angle of a building, generally of ashlar. REREDOS The wall or screen at the back of an altar, often enriched with carving, niches, statues, etc. ROOD-BEAM or ROOD-LOFT The loft or beam which, previous to the Reformation, supported the Great Rood, or Crucifix. ROSE WINDOW A term often used to denote a circular window of several lights. ROTUNDA A term used to describe a church or other building which is of circular formation both within and without. SACRISTRY A room used in churches for storing the plate and valuables. SANCTUARY See Presbytery. SEDILIA A seat or seats, generally canopied and situated on the south side of the chancel and used in pre-Reformation days by the officiating clergy during the pauses in the mass. SHAFT The part of a column or pillar between the capital and the base. SHRINE Often called the feretory. The place where relics were deposited. SOFFIT The word means literally a ceiling, but is generally used to describe the flat under-surface of arches, cornices, stairways, etc. SPANDRELS The spaces between the arch of a doorway or window and the rectangular mouldings over it. Early tracery originated from the piercing of the spandrels of windows. SPIRE The acutely pointed termination of towers, etc., originating by the elongation of the early pyramidal roofs. SPLAY The slanting or sloped surface of a window opening in the thickness of the wall, also of doorways, etc.; the term is also applied to bevels and other sloped surfaces. SPRINGER See Voussoir. SQUINT An oblique opening or slit in the wall of a church, for the purpose of enabling persons in the aisles or transepts to see the elevation of the Host at the High Altar. They are mostly found on the sides of the chancel arch, and are frequently called _hagioscopes_. STOUP A vessel for consecrated water, at or near the entrance to a church. STRING or STRING COURSE. A horizontal projecting band of stone in the wall of a building. STRUT See Brace. TOOTH ORNAMENT An ornament used almost exclusively in the E.E. style, resembling a square four-leaved flower, and thought to be based on the dog-tooth violet. TRANSOM A horizontal cross-bar in a panel or window. TRACERY The ornamental stonework in the upper part of a window; when formed by the mullions it is called bar tracery and when the spandrel is pierced, plate tracery. Also used largely on tombs, screens, doorways, etc. TRANSEPTS The projecting arms of a cruciform church, often wrongly called "cross-aisles." TRANSITION A term used to describe the process of change from one style of architecture to another. The three great periods of transition are from the Romanesque and Norman to the Early English; the Early English to the Decorated, and the Decorated to the Perpendicular. TREFOIL An ornamental foliation in the heads of windows, panels, etc., in which the spaces formed by the cusps resemble three leaves. TRIFORIUM or Blind-Storey. An open gallery or arcade without windows immediately above the pier arcade and under the roof of the aisle. TYMPANUM The space between the top of a square-headed door and the arch above it; frequently sculptured. VAULT Roofing of stone constructed on the principle of the arch, the intersections of which are termed groins and are in the pointed styles usually ribbed. VAULTING SHAFTS Small shafts sometimes rising from the floor, sometimes from the capital of a pillar and sometimes from a corbel, and intended as supports for the ribs of a vault. VESICA PISCIS An oval shape or figure formed by two equal circles cutting each other in their centres. Very commonly found on episcopal and monastic seals. VOUSSOIR The wedge-shaped stones forming an arch, the centre one of which is the _keystone_ and those at the impost or starting point of the curve are the _springers_. ZIG-ZAG See Chevron. A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Adeline, J. Art Dictionary of Terms. Bland, W. Arches, Piers, Buttresses, etc. Blomfield, R. Short History of Renaissance Architecture. Bond, Francis English Cathedrals Illustrated. Bond, Francis Gothic Architecture in England. Bonney, T. G. Cathedrals, Abbeys, and Churches of England and Wales. Carter, J. The Ancient Architecture of England. Colling, J. K. Details of Gothic Architecture. Corroyer, E. Gothic Architecture. Cram, R. Adams Church Building. Davidson, E. A. Gothic Stonework. Fergusson, J. Handbook of Architecture. Fergusson, J. History of Architecture. Fairbairns, A. Portfolio of English Cathedrals. Garbett, E. L. Principles of Design in Architecture. Markland, J. H. Remarks on Churches. Moore, C. H. Development and Character of Gothic Architecture. Paley, F. A. Manual of Gothic Architecture. Paley, F. A. Manual of Gothic Mouldings. Parker, J. H. A.B.C. of Gothic Architecture. Parker, J. H. Concise Glossary of Architecture. Parker, J. H. Introduction to the Study of Gothic Architecture. Perkins, Rev. T. Handbook of Gothic Architecture. Prior, Ed. S. History of Gothic Art. Pugin, A. W. Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts. Rickman, Thos. Gothic Architecture. Rickman, Thos. Attempts to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England. Sharpe, Edmund The Seven Periods of English Architecture. Sharpe, Edmund Treatise on the Rise and Progress of Window Tracery. Scott, G. History of Church Architecture. Ruskin, John Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin, John Stones of Venice. Ruskin, John Poetry of Architecture. Ruskin, John Lectures on Architecture. Wall, J. C. Shrines of British Saints. Winkle British Cathedrals. Wilson, S. Romance of our Ancient Churches. Bell's Cathedral Series. "The Builder" Portfolio of English Cathedrals. Murray's Handbooks to the Cathedrals. S.P.C.K. Illustrated Notes on English Church History. Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. Notes on the Cathedrals. "Our English Minsters." Edited by Dean Farrar. This bibliography does not claim to be complete, but is a selection of the various books on the subject which should be studied by the student. Index All Souls' College, Oxford, 76 Altars, 80 Alveston Church, Warwickshire, 41 Amiens Cathedral, 57 Anne, Queen, 76 Apse, The, 27 Arches-- Saxon, 35 Norman, 37 Early English, 49 Decorated, 62 Perpendicular, 66 Ashchurch, Gloucestershire, 106 Baptistery, The, 84 Barfreston Church, Kent, 39, 41 Barnack Church, Northants 32, 33, 34, 101 Barnstaple, Devon, 98 Barnwell, 92 Barry, Sir C., 78, 79 Basilica, The, 26 Bayeux Tapestry, 41, 103 Beaulieu, Hants, 90 Beckett's Crown, Canterbury, 106 Bede (quoted), 21, 23, 96 Bells and Belfries, 95 Bench Ends, 89 Bertha, Queen, 23 Beverley Minster, 109 Billesley Church, Warwickshire, 78 Bishopstone, Sussex, 32 Bloxham Church, 101 Boston, Lincs, 72 Bovey Church, 92 Bradford-on-Avon, 32 Brewer, J. W. (quoted), 28 Brighton Pavilion, 78 Brigstock Church, Northants, 97 Bristol Cathedral, 70 British Churches, Early, 19 Brixworth Church, 28, 32, 33, 97 Broadmayne Church, 86 Bruton, Som., 97 Burne-Jones, Sir E., 107 Bury St. Edmunds, 82 Buttresses-- Norman, 43 Early English, 84 Decorated, 62 Perpendicular, 70 Byzantium, 27 Canterbury Cathedral, 43, 94, 101, 104, 110 Capitals-- Norman, 42 Early English, 54 Decorated, 60 Perpendicular, 69 Caradoc, King, 19 Carlisle Cathedral, 60, 106 Charles II., 76 Charlton-on-Otmoor, 92 Charlton Church, Kent, 106 Chartres Cathedral, 101 Chetwode, Bucks, 106 Chichester Cathedral, 97 Chipping Norton, Oxford, 81 Christchurch Priory, 88, 94, 107, 110 Christ Church, Spitalfields, 76 Chudleigh Church, Devon, 92 Church Furniture and Ornaments, 80 Cirencester Church, Glos., 70 Classic Reverse, The, 70 Clerkenwell, 44 Collumpton, Devon, 92 Compton Church, 94 Constantine, Emperor, 27 Constantinople, 27 Cranley, Surrey, 106 Crawden's Chapel, 58 Croyland Abbey, 96 Crypts, 109 Curfew, 96 Decorated Style, The, 57 Doisnel, Juliana, 44 Dolton Church, 84 Doorways-- Saxon, 30, 32 Norman, 39 Early English, 54 Decorated, 62 Perpendicular, 69 Dorchester Church, Oxford, 107 Dore Abbey, 81 Dunstable, 92 Dunster Church, 81, 92 Durham Cathedral, 43, 73, 82, 94, 112 Earl's Barton Church, 32, 33 Early English Style, The, 47 East Dereham, 97 Edburton Church, 84 Edington Church, Wilts, 72 Edington, Bp. William, 72 Edmund, Archbp. of Cant., 84 Edward I., 49 Edward III., 84 Elizabeth, Queen, 81, 110 Eltham Palace, 73 Ely Cathedral, 29, 43, 57 Ely Chapel, 60 Ethelbert, King of Kent, 23 Euston, Oxford, 94 Evesham Abbey, 73, 97 Exeter Cathedral, 89 Fairford Church, Glos., 107 Fan Vaulting, 69 Fergusson, Dr. (quoted), 75 Flying Buttresses, 56 Fonts, 84 Fordington S. George, Dorchester, 41 Fotheringay Church, Northants, 73 Fountains Abbey, 47 Fuller, Thos. (quoted), 19 Furness Abbey, 87 Furniture, Church, 80 Glass, Stained, 104 Glastonbury Abbey, 19, 97 Glossary, 115 Gloucester Cathedral, 43, 73, 94, 106, 110 Gothic Architecture, Leading Characteristics, 63 Gothic Styles, The, 47 Grantham, 101 Greenstead Church, Essex, 32, 34, 35 Grosmont, Monmouth, 81 Hackness, 96 Hanwell, Oxford, 94 Hartland Church, 92 Hawkesmore, 76 Heckington, 86, 101 Heigham, 72 Henry I., 44 Henry II., 49 Henry III., 44, 48, 49 Hereford Cathedral, 57, 110 Hexham, 82, 109 Hutchinson, Rev. J. M. (quoted), 49 Iffley Church, Oxford, 39 Jenkyns, Canon (quoted), 25 John, King, 44, 48, 49 Jones, Inigo, 75, 78 Kemsing, Kent, 92 Kenton Church, Devon, 90, 92 King's College Chapel, Cambridge, 107 King's Sutton, 101 Knights Hospitallers, 44 Knights Templars, 43 Lady Chapel, Exeter, 60 Langham Place, 78 Lastingham Church, York, 110 Laud, Archbishop, 16 Ledbury, Hereford, 103 Leighton Buzzard, 101 Lichfield, Abbot, 97 Lichfield, Cathedral, 57, 101 Lincoln Cathedral, 43, 52, 57, 63, 81, 106 Little Billing, 84 Little Maplestead, 44 Llanrhaiadr-y-Kinmerch, 107 Luidhard, Bishop, 23 Long Melford Church, Suffolk, 73 Long Sutton, 92 Luton Church, 58 Lyminge, 25 Magdalen College, Oxford, 90 Malmesbury (family), 110 Manchester Cathedral, 73, 88 Markland (quoted), 97 Mary, Queen, 81, 92 Marylebone Church, 78 Melbury Bubb, 84 Merton College, Oxford, 58, 60, 106 Minehead, 92 Morley Church, Derbyshire, 107 Morris, William, 107 Morton Church, Soms., 73 Mouldings-- Norman, 37 Early English, 52 Decorated, 62 Perpendicular, 69 Newark, Notts., 92 New College, Oxford, 72 Norbury, Derbyshire, 106 Norman Architecture, 35 Norwich Cathedral, 29, 43 Ornaments-- Norman, 37 Early English, 52 Decorated, 60, 62 Perpendicular, 68, 69, 70 Ornaments, Church, 80 Oxford Cathedral, 43, 101 Palladio, 74, 75 Parham, 84 Parker (quoted), 31, 35, 88 Parliament, Houses of, 78 Patrixbourne Church, Kent, 41 Perkins, Rev. T. (quoted), 110 Perpendicular Styles, 64 Perpendicular Towers, 72 Perpendicular Spires, 73 Peterborough Cathedral, 29, 43, 57 Philippa, Queen, 84 Piscinas, 87 Piers-- Norman, 42 Early English, 54 Decorated, 60 Perpendicular, 68 Plymtree, 92 Pointed Arch, The, 49 Porches, 53 Porlock Church, Somerset, 81 Pugin, 78, 79 Pulpits, 90 Pyecombe, 84 Pylle Church, 86 Radipole Church, Dorset, 98 Ravenna, 33 Reculver, 25 Reform Club, 79 Renaissance, The, 74 Repton Church, Derby, 109, 110 Reredos, The, 94 Richard I., 48, 49 Richborough, 25 Rickman (quoted), 35 Ripon Cathedral, 32, 109 Rievaulx, 47 Rochester Cathedral, 42, 57, 109 Rolvenden Church, Kent, 86 Romanesque Style, The, 27 Rome, 33 Ross, 101 Rotherham Church, Yorks., 70 Rothwell Church, 87 Round Churches, The, 44 Routledge, Rev. C. F., M.A., F.S.A., 24 Saffron Walden, 73 Saint Alban's Cathedral, 54, 94 Saint Andrew's, Norwich, 73 Saint Anselm, 110 Saint Augustine, 19 Saint Benet's, Cambridge, 32 Saint Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, 79 Saint Clement's, Norfolk, 73 Saint Cross, Winchester, 39 Saint David's, Cathedral, 57, 73 Saint Dunstan, 96 Saint Edmundsbury, 97 Saint Edmund, Martyr, 35 Saint Etheldreda, 58 Saint Ethelwold, 103 Saint Giles', Oxford, 81 Saint Hilda, 96 Saint Lawrence, Bradford-on-Avon, 32, 33 Saint Margaret's, Westminster, 107 Saint Mark's, Venice, 28 Saint Mary Abchurch, 76 Saint Mary Magdalene, Ripon, 81 Saint Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 73 Saint Mary's, Cambridge, 73 Saint Mary's, Dover, 22 Saint Mary's, Lincoln, 32 Saint Mary's, Luton, 84 Saint Mary's, Newark, 101 Saint Mary's, Norwich, 73 Saint Mary's, Ottery, 92 Saint Mary's, Oxford, 73, 101 Saint Mary's, Stamford, 92 Saint Mary's, Taunton, 73 Saint Mary's, Wareham, 81, 84 Saint Mary's, Woolnoth, 76 Saint Mary's, York, 32 Saint Martin's, Canterbury, 22 Saint Martin's, Wareham, 32 Saint Michael's, Coventry, 73 Saint Michael's, Oxford, 32, 34, 94 Saint Nicholas, Lynn, 73 Saint Nicholas, Newcastle, 73 Saint Nicholas, Yarmouth, 63 Saint Paul the Apostle, 19 Saint Paul's Cathedral, 75, 76, 101 Saint Paul's Churchyard, 90 Saint Patrick, 21 Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, 98 Saint Peter's in the East, Oxford 110 Saint Peter's, Lincoln, 32 Saint Peter's, Norwich, 73 Saint Peter's, Rome, 75, 76 Saint Pierre, Caen, 101 Saint Piran's, Perranporth, 21 Saint Saviour's, Dartmouth, 90, 92 Saint Saviour's Southwark, 94 Saint Sepulchre, Cambridge, 44 Saint Sepulchre, Northampton, 44 Saint Sophia, Constantinople, 28 Saint Stephen's, Bristol, 73 Saint Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, 58 Saint Stephen's, Walbrook, 76 Saint Thomas à Becket, 110 Saint Wilfrid's Needle, 109 Saint Wolfstan, 103 Salisbury Cathedral, 47, 57, 101, 106 Sanctuary Knockers, 82 Saxon Architecture, 31 Saxon Churches, 32 Scott (quoted), 31 Screens, 92 Sedilia, 87 Shottesbrook Church, Berks, 66, 103 Shrewsbury, 90 Silchester, 25 Snettisham, Norfolk, 101 Solihull, Warwickshire, 94 Sompting, Sussex, 32, 99 Southwell, 57, 87 Southwold Church, Suffolk, 73 Speyer Cathedral, 29 Spires, 73, 99 Squints, 90 Stalls, 88 Stanford, Leicester, 106 Stone Church, Kent, 54 Stoups, 86 Temple Balsall, 44 Temple Church, London, 44 Tenby, 90 Tewkesbury Abbey, 106 Thaxted Church, Essex, 73 Thornham Church, Kent, 86 Towers, 33, 72 Transom, The, 46, 49 Trinity Church, Ely, 58 Tympana, 41 Uffendon, Devon, 92 Vitruvius, 74 Wakefield Church, Yorkshire, 73 Walpole, Horace, 78 Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, 84 Wansted, Oxford, 101 Wantsume, 25 Warmington, Warwickshire, 81 Wells Cathedral, 53, 57, 110 West Horsley, Surrey, 106 Westminster Abbey, 48, 57, 63, 76, 78, 103 Westminster Hall, 73 Westminster, Henry's VII.'s Chapel, 68, 88, 89 Westwell, Kent, 106 Wilford Church, Oxford, 101 William the Conqueror, 96 Wimborne Minster, 110 Wimmington Church, Bedfordshire, 66 Winchester Cathedral, 43, 63, 72, 85, 88, 103, 110 Winchester College, 72 Windows-- Saxon, 32 Norman, 39 Early English, 52 Decorated, 58 Perpendicular, 68 Wing, 32 Wootton Wawen, 32 Worcester Cathedral, 57, 109, 110 Worms Cathedral, 29 Wren, Sir Christopher, 75, 76 Wrexham Church, 72 Wroxhall Abbey, 106 Wykeham, William of, 72, 84 Wymondham Church, 72 York Minster, 32, 57, 63, 66, 73, 94, 106, 109 THE HOMELAND HANDBOOKS Copiously Illustrated and provided with Ordnance Maps and Plans. 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32280	----	[Illustration: Wells Cathedral From St. Andrews Spring.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY THE REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. [Illustration: Arms of the See] WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1899 _First Published October 1898_ _Second Edition revised October 1899_ W.H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archaeological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE, E.F. STRANGE, _Editors of the Series_ AUTHOR'S PREFACE The writer about cathedrals nowadays is one who, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed, is indebted for most that he says to the patient labours of other and wiser men. Nowhere does one feel this more than at Wells. The admirable Somerset Archaeological Society has gone on accumulating information about the cathedral for more years than the present writer has lived. Professor Freeman produced twenty-eight years ago, in his "History of the Cathedral Church of Wells," a little book which has since been a model for all works of the kind, and of which one can still say that no one can understand all that is contained in the word "cathedral" unless he has read it. Yet since that book was written much fresh material has been discovered, and the theories then held as to the building of the cathedral have been in great measure disproved. To Canon C.M. Church, in his "Chapters in the Early History of Wells," and his papers read before the Somerset Society, we are indebted for most valuable statements of the new historical discoveries, and to his untiring kindness I am myself beholden to a greater extent than I can express. Wells so abounds in interesting detail, that the exigencies of space have made it necessary to curtail the last chapter, which contains the history of the diocese; a good deal of interesting matter has thus been cut from my original MS. of this chapter, and many bishops have been dismissed more summarily than they deserve. The need of dealing properly with the cathedral itself must be my apology for the baldness of this last chapter as it now stands. Those who desire a further acquaintance with the history of the diocese cannot do better than consult Mr Hunt's "Bath and Wells," in the excellent Diocesan Histories series of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. To many other writers on the Cathedral Church of Wells, acknowledgments and references will be found scattered throughout the present volume. I must also express my thanks to Mr Philips, and Messrs Dawkes & Partridge of Wells, for permission to reproduce their photographs, and to Mr W. Heywood and Mr H.P. Clifford for their drawings. P.D. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Church 3 CHAPTER II.--Exterior 20 West Front 21 Statuary, Central Doorway, the Tiers 30 Western Towers 44 Central Tower 47 North Porch 47 North Transept 51 Walls, Parapet 52 Chain Gate 52 Chapter-House 54 From the South-East 55 Cloister 58 Library 63 Museum 64 Vicar's Close 66 Bishop's Palace, Great Hall, Barn 67 Deanery, Archdeaconry, etc., St. Cuthbert's 70 CHAPTER III.--Interior 73 Nave, etc. 77 Capitals 79 Glass 84 Bubwith's Chapel 85 Sugar's Chapel 86 Pulpit, Lectern 87 Transepts 89 Capitals 89 Font, Monuments 95 Transepts Chapels--St. Martin, St. Calixtus, St. David, Holy Cross 98 Clock 105 Inverted Arches 107 Tower, Screen, Organ 110 Choir 113 Misericords, Glass 120 Choir Aisles, Monuments 123 Eastern Transepts, Monuments 124 Procession Path 128 Glass in Choir Aisles and Chapels 130 Lady Chapel, Glass 133 Chapter-House Staircase 134 Chapter-House 137 Undercroft 141 CHAPTER IV.--History of the Diocese and Foundation 147 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Wells Cathedral from St. Andrew's Spring _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title_ The Cathedral from the South-East 2 The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century 15 South Aisle of Nave 19 West Front--Bishop of Aethelhelm 22 The West Front 23 Ornaments in the West Front 28, 29 West Front--Christina 31 The Central Tower from the South-East 45 The North Porch 49 The Bishop's Eye 53 Doorway, South-East of Cloister 58 East Walk of Cloister 59 The Chain Gate, Entrance to Close, 1824 65 The Bishop's Palace 68 The Nave 75 A Capital--The Fruit-stealer's Punishment 79 A Capital--Toothache 81 Specimens of Capitals 82, 83, 84, 148, 149 View across Nave, showing Sugar's and Bubwith's Chapels 85 Sugar's Chapel--The Lectern and Pulpit 88 Section of North Transept, and Elevation of South Transept 90 Capitals in Transept 92 The South Transept, from North Side of Nave 93 The Font 95 The Annunciation--Husse's Tomb 101 Priest in Surplice--Husse's Tomb 102 The East End in 1823 103 The Inverted Arches 109 Choir, looking West 111 Choir, looking East 115 Procession Path and Lady Chapel 129 Steps Of Chapter-house Vestibule And Passage Over Chain Gate 135 Chapter-House--Doorway 138 Chapter-House--Interior 139 Chapter-House--Vault 141 Chapter-House--Undercroft 142, 143 Section of Chapter-House 145 PLAN 160 [Illustration: Wells From The South-East.] WELLS CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE CHURCH "The Gothic Cathedral," wrote Froude, an author who held no brief for the Gothic period, "is perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificent creation which the mind of man has as yet thrown out." The Cathedral Church of Wells, wrote Froude's predecessor in the same historical chair, is "the best example to be found in the whole world of a secular church, with its subordinate buildings." "There is no other place," Professor Freeman went on to say, "where you can see so many of the ancient buildings still standing, and still put to their own use." And surely there is no place better fitted to be their home than this beautiful old city of Wells, set in the midst of the fair western country, the land of Avalon and Camelot, of Athelney and Wedmore. This unique group of buildings does not, however, take us back earlier than the close of the Norman period. Of what existed before, we have but scant evidence. Tradition says that King Ina had, about the year 705, founded at Wells a college of secular priests, and therefore a church of some sort. And when King Eadward the Elder, taking advantage of the peace which his father Alfred had secured, fixed, in 909, the new Somersetshire see by the fountain of St. Andrew at Wells, he seems to have chosen that little city because there already existed therein a church, large enough to serve as a cathedral in those times, and tended already by a body of secular canons. Now that the ancient church of St. Andrew was raised to this new dignity, it was probably in the tenth century rebuilt in stone, with plain round-headed windows, and perhaps a small unbuttressed tower to hold the bells; for, when Giso became bishop in the next century (1061-1088), he erected a whole cluster of quasi-conventual buildings, but we are not told that he found it necessary to rebuild the church, although he complained that he found it mean and its revenues small. Indeed, the fact that Giso was buried under an arch in the wall on the north side of the high altar, as his predecessor Duduc had been buried on the south side, shows that he had not rebuilt the church. On Giso's death, John de Villula at once swept away his buildings, and set up a bishop's house on their site. John, however, made Bath his cathedral church, and suffered the church of Wells to fall into the decay from which it was rescued by the first "Maker of Wells," Bishop Robert of Lewes. The active episcopate of Robert of Lewes (1136-66) was as important an era in the history of the church as in that of the chapter. In spite of the anarchy of Stephen's reign, Robert set steadily to work; and, while the neighbouring barons were battering each other's castles, the bishop reared the first great cathedral church of Wells. How much of the old Saxon building he left we cannot tell; but it was in a ruinous condition, and he may have pulled it completely down, or he may have left one part for later builders to deal with. In 1148 his new Norman church was consecrated, a massive round-arched building, its nave perhaps as large as the present one, and its choir under the tower with a small presbytery beyond. This date may be taken as the beginning of the present cathedral; for all the succeeding reconstructions followed the lines of Bishop Robert's church. Yet the Norman work has disappeared almost as completely as the Saxon, and the font is the only object which can be claimed as undoubtedly Romanesque. Of distinctly Norman mouldings there are none in the church, and only a few fragments in other places. Seldom has one of those strong Norman buildings so utterly vanished from sight. But many stones dressed in the Norman fashion can still be traced by the expert in the eastern part of the church (p. 74), having been no doubt used up again by the later workmen; and there may be masses of undisturbed masonry hidden in the walls. Bishop Robert, as we know from one of his charters, did something also for the order of his church. Mammon had gradually encroached upon the sacred precincts, and the markets had come to be held in the "vestibule," and in the church itself; the busy hum of the buyers and sellers marred the quiet of God's house, and disturbed the people at their devotions. Strong measures were necessary, and the bishop ordered the market to be held at some distance from the church, while at the same time, as an act of grace, he remitted the tolls that were due to him as lord of the manor. Thus did he lay the foundation of the liberties of Wells city while securing the sanctity of Wells Cathedral. According to Bishop Godwin (1616), and the anonymous fifteenth century MSS., called in Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_ the "Canon of Wells," there was a blank in the history of the church between Bishop Robert, who consecrated the Norman building in 1148, and Bishop Jocelin, whose episcopate lasted from 1206 to 1242. Godwin, who exaggerated a passage from the "Canon of Wells" (which that writer had produced by exaggerating a single sentence of a preamble of Jocelin, p. 7), declared that Jocelin found the church "as ready to fall," and "pulled down the greatest part of it, to witte, the west ende, and built it anew from the very foundation." This became the accepted view. But the documents recently brought to light through the labours of those who unearthed and deciphered the MSS. in possession of the chapter, have proved that the energetic Bishop Reginald, so far from letting the church go into ruin during his episcopate (1174-1191), did in reality rebuild it himself. Much travelled, conversant with all kinds of churches and cities in an age of great building operations, he was not the sort of man to neglect his cathedral. And, as a matter of fact, he is proved to have begun the present church by a charter recently found, which is of a date prior to 1180, and therefore belongs to the early years of his episcopate. In this important document, recognising his duty to provide "that the honour due to God should not be tarnished by the squalor of His house," he arranges in full chapter for a munificent grant in support of the fabric, until the work be finished[1]. Another charter of Reginald's time, which conveys a private gift to the church, alludes to "the admirable structure of the rising church," thus testifying to the successful progress of the bishop's plan during his own lifetime. The part which he built, there can be little doubt, included the three western bays of the choir (which then formed the presbytery), the transepts, north porch, and the eastern bays of the nave. That is to say, on entering the church one is looking upon Reginald's work, and not Jocelin's; for, although the rest of the nave was completed by Jocelin, it was done in accordance with Reginald's original plan. It is of great importance to remember this fact, since until recently the nave, with the other parts just mentioned, was attributed by Professor Willis, Professor Freeman, and most authorities to Jocelin. Willis, indeed, bowed to what was then thought to be documentary evidence against his own judgment; for he declared the work to be of a style much earlier than that of Jocelin's time (p. 73). Now we know almost to a certainty that the bulk of the cathedral belongs neither to the late Norman period of Robert, nor to the Early English of Jocelin, but to the period just between the two, that of Reginald de Bohun. During the episcopate of Reginald's immediate successor Savaric (1192-1205), something further may have been done to the nave. But there was small opportunity for church building during this bishop's wandering and litigious life; and all we know for certain is that, owing no doubt to the civil war, the intolerable exactions of papal legates, and the quarrel with Glastonbury, the cathedral church of Wells had fallen into a state of dilapidation when Jocelin became bishop in 1206; and that it remained in this condition till King John was dead: for Jocelin was an exile abroad, the property of the see was confiscated, and its income paid yearly into the king's purse. From the year 1218, when the land was again at peace, and a profitable arrangement had been come to with the monks of Glastonbury, Jocelin devoted himself to the fabric and chapter of Wells, up to the year of his death in 1242. Grants of money and of timber, which are extant, show that by 1220 the work was recommenced, and that it was in progress in 1225. By 1239 the church was sufficiently advanced to be dedicated. Jocelin and his brother Hugh (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln) were natives of the city they loved so well. They had both lived through Reginald's episcopate--Jocelin as canon and Hugh as archdeacon of Wells. After, when they rose to high positions as judges, and became honourably rich, Hugh, who built much in Lincoln Cathedral, gave largely of his great wealth to Jocelin for Wells, and Jocelin himself spent all that he had upon the place where he had been brought up from infancy. Thus Jocelin was in a real sense a "maker of Wells." But he was not the only maker, for he must share the honour with two other master builders--Robert, whose work is entirely gone, and Reginald, whose work remains. He did not, as Godwin led us to suppose, pull down and rebuild the whole church. But he loyally carried on the work of his predecessor, and he executed the great work which has been always rightly attributed to him, the present west front; this he joined to Reginald's unfinished nave by building the three western bays in strict accordance with the earlier style. The front belongs to the fully-developed Early English style in which Salisbury is built, agreeing exactly with the date of the consecration of the church by Jocelin in 1239,--as was pointed out by Professor Willis, who was puzzled by the great difference in its style from that of the nave, which was then thought to belong to the same period. We know that Jocelin was a frequent visitor to Salisbury while Bishop Poore was building it; and thus all the lines of evidence combine to support the unshaken tradition that Jocelin was the author of the west front. A month before his death in 1242, Jocelin de Wells put forth a charter for the increased endowment of the cathedral staff; and it was because of a few chance words in the preamble that he came to be credited with the construction of the whole. Having found the church in danger of ruin, runs the passage, by reason of its age _aedificare coepimus et ampliare--in qua adeo profecimus--quod ipsam consecravimus_. This, which need mean nothing more than extensive building operations, is the sole foundation for the tradition that Jocelin pulled down the old church and built a new one. The condition of the church at the end of the thirteenth century is thus described by Professor Freeman[2]: "By the end of the thirteenth century we may look upon the church of Wells as at last finished. It still lacked much of that perfection of outline which now belongs to it, and which the next age was finally to give to it. Many among that matchless group of surrounding buildings which give Wells its chief charm, had not yet arisen. The church itself, with its unfinished towers, must have had a dwarfed and stunted look from every point. The Lady Chapel had not yet been reared, with its apse alike to contrast with the great window of the square presbytery above it, and to group in harmony with the more lofty chapter-house of its own form. The cloister was still of wood. The palace was still undefended by wall or moat. The Vicars' Close and its chain-bridge had not yet been dreamt of. Still, the church, alike in its fabric and its constitution, may be looked on as having by this time been brought to perfection ... The nave, recast in forms of art such as Ina and Eadward, such as Gisa and Robert, had never dreamed of, with the long range of its arcades and the soaring sweep of its newly-vaulted roof, stood, perfect from western door to rood-loft, ever ready, ever open, to welcome worshippers from city and village, from hill and combe and moor, in every corner of the land which looked to Saint Andrew's as its mother church. The choir, the stalls of the canons, the throne of the Bishop, were still confined within the narrow space of the crossing; but that narrow space itself gave them a dignity which they lost in later arrangements. For the central lantern, not yet driven to lean on ungainly props, with the rich arcades of its upper stages still open to view, still rose, in all the simple majesty of its four mighty arches, as the noblest of canopies over the choir below." "The eastern ending of the presbytery was," Mr Freeman proceeds, "rich with the best detail of the thirteenth century, as can be learnt from the fragments built up in the chapel of the Vicars' Close, and lying about in the undercroft of the chapter-house, which are in the full Early English style of the west front. The existing choir aisle walls prove that a procession-path ran behind the high altar, with most likely a chapel beyond it." "The thirteenth century," he concludes, "had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develop according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe, and for the world." The choir, however, was not so cramped as Mr Freeman thought, for it included one bay of the nave, as we now know from a notice of the making of Haselshaw's tomb, which was dug at the entrance to the choir; and, indeed, the marks where the screen was fixed are still visible on the piers at this point. From the top of the screen the great rood looked down the nave, and on each side of the doorway stood an altar, that on the north dedicated to Our Lady, that on the south to St. Andrew. The aisles of the choir were also screened off from the nave, and outside their gates were two more altars--St. Saviour's on the north, and St. Edmund's on the south. Thus the nave, where men were ever coming and going, walking and talking, and in laxer times buying and selling as well, was quite shut off from the more sacred places. Yet here, too, were altars and shrines, and here came the processions on Sundays and holidays. Within the choir the chapter said their offices, the dean and precentor facing east in their returned stalls, and the other dignitaries in their allotted places, with the junior canons, vicars, and those in minor orders below them, and the boys on the lowest forms of all. Just beyond these stalls was the bishop's throne; and east of the tower the presbytery stood open, with the tombs of the early bishops, on either side, under the arches. The rest of the space enclosed within the screen belonged more especially to the clergy; the north transept was probably used as a chapter-house, when the undercroft was yet unfinished, and its western aisle was used as the chapter library. The chamber leading to the undercroft was the vestry, and the stout walls of the octagon, when it was finished, protected the vestments and treasures of the cathedral. It is worth while to call to mind the kind of service for which the church was built, with its aisles and chapels and screen. The usual Sunday procession started from the north door of the presbytery, preceded by two thurifers with censers, went round behind the presbytery, the priest in his cope asperging the altars on his way, then down the south choir aisle, and through the south transept into the cloister. In the cloister-cemetery, the priest, with his ministers, said the prayers for the dead, and then rejoined the procession in the cloister Lady Chapel, where the first station was made. Thence the procession returned to the great rood in the nave, and there made the second station, the bidding-prayer being given out to the people from the rood-screen, after which it re-entered the choir. But on special occasions the ritual was increased; as, for instance, at the procession of palms on Palm Sunday, or the Corpus Christi Day procession, which is thus described by Mr J.D. Chambers[3]: "The procession, some time before the mass, should assemble in order at the step of the Choir (_i.e._ in the Presbytery), a priest in Albe and silk Cope carrying the Corpus Christi in a tabernacle or feretory under a canopy of silk raised over him and it on four staves, borne by four clerks in Albes and Tunicles, with lighted tapers. It should go out of the Choir down the Nave, and out at the West Door of the Church, round the Church and Cloisters as on Ascension Day"--_i.e._ round the outside of the whole church, beginning with the north side and returning round the east end, and through the cloister to the west door again, and thus back into the nave. The colours of the vestments at Wells followed in the main the custom of the neighbouring diocese of Sarum, but with some local variations, such as are set down in the _Consuetudinary_ which Archbishop Laud had copied from the late thirteenth-century MS. Indigo and white were used on St. John's Day and on the Dedication Festival; in Advent, indigo; at Passiontide, red, and on Palm Sunday, "except one cope of black for the part of Caiaphas" at the singing of the Passion; red, too, on Maunday Thursday, but with a banner of white. Red was also used for Easter, Pentecost, and throughout the Sundays after Trinity; while for Virgin Martyrs, red was mixed with white. This mixture of colours was probably effected by the cantors wearing different coloured copes; thus for confessors saffron _(croceus)_ was mixed with green, _sicut honestius et magis proprie possunt adaptari festo_; but St. Julian and some others had all saffron, while a few, like St. Benedict, had all indigo. White is comparatively little in evidence, but it was used at Christmas, and for commemorations of the Blessed Virgin. Black was used for the commemoration of the dead. To this vision of stately pomp, and changing colour, we must add in our mind's eye the many chapels with their woven tapestries of flowers and beasts and birds, their rich ornaments and sacred associations; the majestic rood upon the screen, and the rich altars that stood before it; the almost constant succession of services that went on behind it, where the canons (each with his own book and candle) and their vicars sat, and the pyx hung over the high altar; the sound of a little bell from one of the chapels where mass was being said, the glimmer of a hanging lamp, the gleam of a silver image, the shrines here and there, with their frequent visitors; and, as years went on, the subdued light from the gorgeous painted windows (that over the high altar glowed then from east to west without obstructing organ), the frescoes on some of the walls, the green and red and gold of the later monuments; and over all the trail of incense and the sound of prayer. After Jocelin's death the works came to a standstill, for the sufficient reason that the chapter was "overburdened with an intolerable debt," owing to the enormous expense of the litigation with Bath Abbey over Bishop Roger's election (p. 153). This, however, was the last attempt of the rival cathedral of St. Peter; and the debt, which was at its worst in 1248 (the year after Roger's death), was bravely met by a contribution of a fifth of the income of each prebend, as well as by gifts and obits; so that towards the end of William Bytton's episcopate the debt was nearly cleared, and in 1263 Bytton made over the sequestrations of vacant benefices to the fabric fund. In 1248 an earthquake had done much damage, shaking down the _tholus_ (either the vault, or the stone capping) of the central tower, as we learn from Matthew Paris _(Hist. Angl._ iii. 42). Accordingly, in 1263, preparations were made for further building; and in 1286 we hear of a chapter meeting, summoned by Dean Thomas Bytton, whereat the canons bind themselves to give one-tenth of their prebends for five years, "to the finishing of the works now a long time begun (_jam diu incepta_), and to repair what needed reparation in the old works." The reparation here mentioned refers in all probability to the roof and piers of the transepts and eastern part of nave, damaged by the fall of the _tholus_. The famous western capitals of the transepts, with their frequent representations of the miseries of toothache, must refer to the second William Bytton, who had died in 1274, and whose tomb became famous for its dental cures (p. 125). No doubt, the offerings at the shrine of this local saint helped considerably to swell the funds for the building operations. The works "now a long time begun" can hardly be anything else than the chapter-house undercroft, the outer walls of which may have been built some forty years before. Professor Willis, who had access to the document, decided, on architectural evidence, that the undercroft must have been already completed at this time, and his view may be safely accepted (_Arch. Inst._, "Bristol" vol., p. 28). The passage to the undercroft would seem to be the first result of the chapter's undertaking; its ornament is of a more advanced type than that of the undercroft itself, and one of its carved heads is swollen as by the toothache, and tied in a handkerchief. There can be little or no doubt that the "finishing" of the old works included also the building of the chapter-house staircase, and, when that was finished, the raising of the chapter-house itself (the _nova structura_ of the old documents) upon the undercroft. The full Decorated style of the chapter-house is separated by a considerable interval from the late Early English of the undercroft, while that of the staircase, which is geometrical Decorated of a character not very far removed from Early English, must have been built before the chapter-house itself was begun. The self-sacrificing spirit of the chapter was supplemented by the offerings which flowed in from the growing practice of endowing altars for requiem services, as well as from the shrine of St. William Bytton; and the building activity continued for the next fifty years till the church had been brought, in all save its western towers, to its final state of perfection. After the staircase to the chapter-house had been completed, about the year 1292, the walls of the chapter-house itself were built, probably by Bishop William de Marchia (1293-1302) who seems to have covered it in with a temporary roof. Dean John de Godelee (1306-1333) was the last great builder of the church of Wells. The power of the bishop in his own church is already declining, as that of the chapter rises, and it is the dean now who organises the works. In 1315 the central tower was raised, and by 1321 it was being roofed in. By 1319 the chapter-house was finished; Godelee, with William Joy, the master-mason, had probably worked out the old drawings and built the windows and vaulted roof. Next the Lady Chapel must have been begun, for by 1326 it was finished. Somewhere about this time the parapet, which adds so much to the external beauty of the church, was also made. But the raising of the central tower had, ere this, brought disaster. In 1321 there was a grant from the clergy of the Deanery of Taunton in aid of the roofing of the "new _campanile_"; in 1338 a convocation was summoned because the church of Wells was so _totaliter confracte et enormiter deformate_ that the instant and united action of its members was required to save it (_cf._ Willis in _Som. Proc._ 1863). The adding of the Decorated portion to the tower increased the weight so much that the four great piers sank into the ground, dragging the masonry with them and causing rents to appear at the apex of the arches. The situation was most dangerous: it was met by the careful repairing of the torn masonry and the construction of those inverted arches which are so familiar a feature of the church. Yet the work proceeded very rapidly under a great bishop, who for the time eclipsed the rising power of the deans. Ralph of Shrewsbury (1329-63) carried on the work of Dean Godelee, and in the early years of his episcopate entirely reconstructed the choir. The scheme seems to have been contemplated as early as 1325; for in that year each dignitary arranged to pay for his own stall in the refitting of the choir, because the old stalls had become "ruinous and misshapen." In any case, it was Ralph who added the three new bays of the presbytery which are so curiously joined to the old presbytery of Reginald, and with it form the present eastern limb of the church. He then constructed the beautiful retro-choir which connects the presbytery with the Lady Chapel. The vaulting of the choir and the construction of the great east window would appear to have been undertaken at a later period of his episcopate; for the ceiling is of a more advanced style than the lower work, and the tracery of the window is half Perpendicular. When Bishop Ralph died, in 1363, he was buried in the place of honour in front of the high altar, as the founder of the choir which he had finished. The finishing touches were given to the cathedral when Bishop Harewell (_ob._ 1386) gave two-thirds of the cost of the south-western or Harewell Tower, and when the executors of Bishop Bubwith (_ob._ 1424) finished the companion tower on the north-west. The other efforts of the fourteenth and fifteenth century builders were given to those subordinate buildings which are the peculiar glory of Wells. Even so magnificent a prelate as Beckington did nothing to the actual fabric of the Cathedral (unless his tomb be so considered), for the simple reason that there was really nothing for him to do. Ralph of Shrewsbury had, besides his work in the church, finished the palace (which Jocelin had begun and Burnell had enriched with the hall and chapel) by the moat, walls, and gate-house. He had also begun the Vicars' Close, of which the chapel was built by Bubwith, but the executors of Beckington recast it in its present form. After Beckington had employed his energies in erecting the beautiful gateways with which his name is always associated, Dean Gunthorpe (_ob._ 1498) built the deanery. The following interesting eulogy of Bishop Beckington and his church was written in the form of a Latin dialogue by Chaundler, who was Chancellor of Wells in 1454:-- "You might more properly call it a city than a town, as you would yourself understand more clearly than day if you could behold all its intrinsic splendour and beauty. For that most lovely church which we see at a distance, dedicated to the most blessed Apostle of the Almighty God, St. Andrew, contains the episcopal chair of the worthy Bishop. Adjoining it is the vast palace, adorned with wonderful splendour, girt on all sides by flowing waters, crowned by a delectable succession of walls and turrets, in which the most worthy and learned Bishop Thomas, the first of that name, bears rule. He has indeed at his own proper pains and charges conferred such a splendour on this city, as well by strongly fortifying the church with gates and towers and walls, as by constructing on the grandest scale the palace in which he resides and the other surrounding buildings, that he deserves to be called, not the founder merely, but rather the splendour and ornament of the church." [Illustration: The Cathedral. (From a Seventeenth Century Print.)] The Reformation period left the cathedral cold and barren within, but interfered little with its fabric; the only serious piece of destruction (p. 57) being that of the magnificent Lady Chapel by the Cloister, in 1552, by Sir John Gates, "a greate puritan, Episcopacie's common Enemy." In other respects it was what Freeman calls a period of systematic picking and stealing; as witness this passage from Nathaniel Chyles:--"The Great Duke of Somersett, Unkle to Edward the Sixt (whose title proved very fatall to this place and Bishopwrick) was not only contented to get most of the mannours Lands and possessions belonging to this Bishopwrick settled upon him and his posteritie, but at last even the palace itselfe also." But the palace and some of the property were recovered after Somerset's execution. The bishop's palace suffered the ruin of Burnell's magnificent hall through the prevalent lust for gain. Sir John Harrington writes in terms of pardonable indignation:--"I speak now only of the spoil made under this Bishop [Barlow]; scarce were five years past after Bath's ruins, but as fast went the axes and hammers to work at Wells. The goodly hall covered with lead ... was uncovered, and now this roof reaches to the sky. The Chapel of Our Lady, late repaired by Stillington, a place of reverence and antiquity, was likewise defaced, and such was their thirst after lead (I would they had drunk it scalding) that they took the dead bodies of bishops out of their leaden coffins, and cast abroad the carcases scarce thoroughly putrified." During the Commonwealth the choir was closed, and Dr Cornelius Burges, who was appointed "Preacher" at the cathedral, bought the bishop's palace and deanery for his private property. He, of course, despoiled the palace, "pulling off not only the Lead thereoff," says Chyles,[4] "but taking away also the Timber, and making what money he could of them, and what remained unsold he removed to the Deanery improving that out of the Ruins of the palace, leaving only bare Walls." At the Restoration Burges was ejected, after a good deal of litigation, and Bishop Piers returned to the ruins of his palace. Burges' sermons had never been popular with the people of Wells, who annoyed him by walking up and down the cloisters "all sermon time." When the trial for his ejectment came on he published his "Case," in which he justified his buying Church lands by alleging that he had lent the State £3490, and, having a wife and ten children to provide for, he took such land, etc. as the only means of repayment. Five of the canons' houses were also obtained from Cromwell's Commissioners by the Corporation of Wells, one or two of which were pulled down and sold for old stone. At the Restoration, the canons were at great expense to restore the church from the ruinous condition into which it had fallen in Puritan times, and they were liberally helped in their extremity by the clergy and laity of the diocese. Says Chyles (_c._ 1680): "Since his Majestie's and Churche's happy and blessed Restoration, what betweene the Bishopp, the Deane, and Deane and Chapter, our Church and Quire is once more in a beautifull and comely habitt (which God continue) such as neither the Church of Rome has reason to upbraid us with a slovenly or clownish Service, nor the Puritan and Nonconformist with a gaudy or Superstitious. The good old Bishopp [W. Piers], who weather'd out that Storme, and was restored to what was his Owne, gave those silk Hangings which beautifie the Altar within the Railes." Dean Creyghton gave the glass in the west window, the organ and the brass lectern, and Dr Busby, who was treasurer of Wells as well as head-master of Westminster, gave the silver-gilt alms dish and restored the library, lengthening it by the addition of the southern part. Chyles tells us, too, that there was morning and evening prayer in the "Vicars' Chapell in Close Hall," at six, forenoon and afternoon, in winter, and seven in summer, in addition to the cathedral services at the "canonical howers." Before his time there had been only a morning sermon on Sundays, and, in the afternoon, "the whole Cathedrall" had been in the habit of going to St. Cuthbert's, returning with the mayor and his brethren for the cathedral prayers at four; "but since his Majesty's Restoracion one likewise in the Afternoones here is preached by the said prebends _in theire turns_. Soe that here the Sermonizing people may have their Bellyfull of preaching and forbeare crying out, _They are starved for want of the Word_ and calling our clergy _Dumb Doggs_." This time of peace did not last long, for in 1685 the whole of Somerset was up in Monmouth's rebellion. The duke's followers came to Wells, turned the cathedral into a stable, tore the lead off the roof for bullets, pulled down several of the statues, broached a barrel of beer on the high altar, and would have destroyed the altar itself, had not Lord Grey, one of their leaders, defended it with his sword. Dr Conan Doyle's description of the scene in his novel, _Micah Clarke_ (p. 292), is so vivid that it is well worth referring to. The long and heavy peace which followed was marked by the gradual pewing up of the choir and presbytery, and the intrusion of pretentious monuments. Then, in our own times, came the revival, bringing evil as well as good in its train. In 1842 the restoration of the nave, transepts, and Lady Chapel was commenced at the instance of Dean Goodenough, by Mr Benjamin Ferrey. He removed the thick layers of whitewash which had been ingeniously applied to conceal the sculpture; and the long rows of marble tablets which had disfigured the aisles were shifted to the cloisters, whence, it may be hoped, they will one day make a further journey towards oblivion. The restoration of the choir by Mr Salvin, which lasted from 1848 to 1854, was unfortunately of a less blameless character. It was the period of the Great Exhibition, when art reached the lowest depths to which it has sunk in the history of the world. We need not dwell upon the result; few restorations are more marked with the complacent ignorance of that strange time. The old pews and galleries in the choir, which had hidden the very capitals of the piers, were indeed removed, but with them the medieval stalls were destroyed and replaced by work of indescribable imbecility. No real improvement in the choir of Wells is now possible till every trace of Dean Jenkyns' restoration is swept away; but, alas! what he destroyed can never be recovered. In 1868 the report of Mr Ferrey[5] upon the west front was presented, and shortly afterwards the work of repair was begun under his direction. The report showed how extensive was the decay, and how great the danger of complete ruin unless steps were taken to protect the old work; and the work of repair was carried out with care and reverence; though even here irreparable harm was done by the substitution of the modern "slate pencils" for the old blue lias shafts. Since then, many small matters have been attended to with varying success. The Lady Chapel has been decently furnished and the east end slightly improved. Much still remains to be done; but the best motto at the present day is _festina lente_, and the safest rule is to be progressive in all enrichment by removable furniture, and conservative, very conservative, in all structural alteration. If the hand of the restorer can now be stayed, the words will still be true of Wells, which M. Huysmans used of another church:--_Ces siècles s'ètaient reunis pour apporter aux pieds du Christ l'effort surhumain de leur art, et les dons de chacun étaient visibles encore._ FOOTNOTES: [1] _Somerset Proceedings_, 1888, ii. 5. [2] _History of the Cathedral_, p. 98. [3] _Divine Worship in England_, p. 195. [4] Book ii. c. 2. [5] _Inst. Arch._ 1870. [Illustration: South Aisle Of Nave. (See p. 83.)] CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR "In England," wrote Mr J.H. Parker, in his _Glossary_, "Wells affords the most perfect example of a cathedral with all its parts and appurtenances. It was," he continues, after an enumeration of the parts of the church, "a cathedral proper, and independent of any monastic foundation, but with a separate house for each of its officers, either in the Close or in the Liberty adjoining to it. The bishop's palace was enclosed by a separate moat and fortified, being on the south side of the cloister, from which it is separated by the moat; the houses for the dean and for the archdeacon are on the north side of the Close, with some of the canons' houses; the organist's house is at the west end, adjoining to the singing-school and the cloister; the precentor's house is at the east end, near the Lady Chapel. The vicars-choral have a close of their own adjoining to the north-east corner of the canons' close, with a bridge across through the gate-house into the north transept; they were a collegiate body, with their own chapel, library, and hall." One need only add that all these sentences can still, with one exception, be read in the present tense to show that Wells possesses a beauty and interest which gives it an unique place among cathedral foundations. There is no other cathedral city in which so many of the old ecclesiastical buildings remain, or on which the modern world has made so little impression. The church itself, in Fergusson's opinion perhaps the most beautiful, though one of the smallest in England, is but one part of a "group of buildings, which," wrote Professor Freeman, "as far as I know, has no rival, either in our own island or beyond the sea." The little city to which these buildings belong is itself worthy of them, almost a part of them, so quiet and venerable is it, so picturesque in its lovely setting of green hills. Were size the main distinction of a church, Wells would sink comfortably into the second class; even in some of its best features it has many rivals, but the peculiar charm and glory of Wells lies (to quote again from Freeman's _History_) "in the union and harmonious grouping of all. The church does not stand alone; it is neither crowded by incongruous buildings, nor yet isolated from those buildings which are its natural and necessary complement. Palace, cloister, Lady Chapel, choir, chapter-house, all join to form one indivisible whole. The series goes on uninterruptedly along that unique bridge, which, by a marvel of ingenuity, connects the church itself with the most perfect of buildings of its own class, the matchless vicars' close. Scattered around we see here and there an ancient house, its gable, its windows, or its turret, falling in with the style and group of greater buildings, and bearing its part in producing the general harmony of all." Thus, in the first place, the group of buildings must be looked at as a whole from the north, from the east, from the south-east; then the superb, unrivalled picture from the rising ground on the Shepton Mallet road,[1] outside the city, must be seen, and, when this little journey has been made, the most hurried visitor must find time at least to peep into the vicars' close, and walk round the moat of the palace. After some such general impression has been gained, the study of the exterior of the church will naturally begin with that part which is a peculiar distinction of Wells Cathedral--the west front. The WEST FRONT of Wells has been universally admired. Long ago, old Fuller wrote--"The west front of Wells is a masterpiece of art indeed, made of imagery in just proportion, so that we may call them _vera et spirantia signa_. England affordeth not the like." This verdict is but repeated by modern writers; the front is "quite unrivalled," says Fergusson, and comparable only to Rheims and Chartres. Mr Hughes, in Traill's _Social England_, goes farther and says[2] that "nothing fit to rank with it was then being done in Northern Europe--for the monumental porches of France, formerly supposed to be contemporary, are now recognised as of a later date." [Illustration: West Front. Bishop Aethelhelm (103). Drawn by H.P. Clifford.] But there has been a discordant note in the general chorus of praise. Professor Freeman, whose admiration for nearly everything in Wells was so intense, could find little to praise in the west front of the cathedral.[3] "It is doubtless," he wrote, "the finest display of sculpture in England; but it is thoroughly bad as a piece of architecture. I am always glad when I get round the corner, and can rest my eye on the massive and simple majesty of the nave and transepts. The west front is bad because it is a sham--because it is not the real ending of the nave and aisles, but a mere mask, devised, in order to gain greater room for the display of statues ... The front is not the natural finish of the nave and aisles; it is a blank wall built up in a shape which is not the shape which their endings would naturally assume. It is therefore a sham; it is a sin against the first law of architectural design, the law that enrichment should be sought in ornamenting the construction ... not in building up anything simply for the sake of effect." He then proceeds to criticise the way in which the windows and doorways "are stowed away as they best may be," as if they were felt to be mere interruptions to the lines of sculpture. [Illustration: The West Front.] This latter objection to the doorways had often been made before, only that the "rabbit-holes on a mountain side" of earlier critics became "mouse-holes" with Mr Freeman. Mr E.W. Godwin, in a lecture in 1862, had also found fault with the crowding in of the niches over the central doorway, which he declared to be in the highest degree clumsy; with the bald appearance given by the shallowness of the reveals in the principal windows; and with the way in which "the solid work of the base suddenly crops up at the very summit of the two central buttresses, not altogether unlike the dog-kennel of modern Gothic." Of these criticisms the most serious is Mr Freeman's general charge of unreality. But why should not a stone screen be erected for the display of statuary before the west end of a church, just as lawfully as behind the high altar? And, if a screen may be allowed as an end in itself, standing simply as a thing of beauty to glorify a building of which it is not a structural part, then the front of Wells may stand, like the reredos of Winchester, as the noblest example of its kind. It has no need to simulate lofty aisles which do not exist, for it covers, not the aisles, but the faces of the great towers themselves; and, as a consequence, the portion of really blank wall which stretches from them to the central gable is so small as to be more than justified by the cohesion it gives to the whole. The whole effect is singularly broad, but so is the space it covers within; for this breadth is legitimately attained by the happy device of planting the western towers beyond the aisles. The massive front of Wells stands, therefore, on its own merits as a west front, and not merely a west end--a great stone screen that, so far from pretending to be a regular termination of the nave and aisles, is actually carried, in all its sculptured magnificence, round the sides of the two towers upon which it so frankly depends. It is a screen built at a period different from, and, we may now safely assume, later than, that of the nave, and built for the exhibition of a noble legend in stone, which has ever since been the glory of a county famed for its splendid churches. Taking it then for what it is, and remembering that the lower tiers were once filled with statuary, can we regret that the doorways themselves were subordinated to the one grand design of accommodating this great multitude of silent teachers? The great doorways of French churches are magnificent in themselves, but that is surely no reason why we should make it an axiom that a front cannot be fine unless it have a great doorway. Striking as the effect of these foreign entrances may be, there is no structural reason why a door should be of an unwieldy size out of all proportion to the stature of the people who use it, so that a smaller door has to be cut for ordinary use out of the real door. It certainly, as even at Amiens, limits the sculptor's opportunities; and in a country like England, where doors can only be kept open for a few weeks in the year, great doorways would be as inappropriate as closed doors are forbidding. As a matter of fact, the usual entrance to Wells Cathedral in Jocelin's time was not from the west, but through the cloister and the south porch. And the central entrance of the west was made impressive, not by its size, but by the exquisite nature of its carving, and the blue and scarlet and gold with which it was coloured. It was not insignificant then. It had the prominence of a jewel. Moreover, in French churches, where the exterior is sacrificed to the internal effect, there is some wisdom in concentrating attention upon the doorway. But in English churches--and in Wells, perhaps, more than any other English church--the exteriors are perfect in themselves, and the visitor need not be tempted to hurry to their portals. After all, if the rabbit-holes on a mountain-side looked as large as quarries, the mountain would not look like a mountain. There are, moreover, three faults in the front as it now stands which cannot be attributed to its maker. In the first place, it is undoubtedly a little formal, a little square, and this defect is particularly marked in the photographs which one sees everywhere. Unfortunately this picture, which is too small to show the detail, gives no idea whatever of the general external effect of the church. It gives the impression that Wells Cathedral is a glorified wall, because the photograph cannot show the other parts upon which the front depends. The architect, no doubt, intended the towers to be carried higher or surmounted with spires, and though no trace of any stone erection has been found on the tops of the present towers, they may once have been crowned with wooden spires covered with lead or shingle. One need hardly say how vast a difference such lofty towers as exist at Laon Cathedral, or spires like those of Lichfield, would make in the effect of the front. They would also account for the great size of the buttresses, which seem to have been built with a view to sustaining a great weight. A disagreeable impression is also caused by the row of hip-knobs along the coping of the central gable, and the pinnacle in their midst. This collection of curiosities was probably added in the seventeenth century, and the pinnacle may have been taken from one of the denuded buttresses of the Lady Chapel to replace the gable cross which must have originally stood here: at all events it is a later addition, as was proved by an examination of the masonry. It would be an act of justice to the memory of Jocelin if these trivial excrescences were removed. Perhaps one is even more distressed on first seeing the front by a third fault--the weak and stringy effect of the long, thin, dark, marble shafts. For this the restorer, Mr Benjamin Ferrey, must bear the blame. He complained with justice that the original blue lias shafts, when they were decayed, had been replaced by the ordinary Doulting stone.[4] But, unhappily, he did not go back to the original material, but fitted the whole front with a complete set of shafts of Kilkenny marble, which is at once dark and cold. They absolutely refuse to blend with the old, warm, grey stone, and stand out, stark and stiff, like an array of gigantic slate pencils. Mr Ferrey was possessed with the idea that the blue lias shafts (having only lasted for a paltry half-dozen centuries) were not durable enough for the work. He therefore used this marble, which, doubtless, will stand in increased obtrusiveness when every stone of the cathedral has decayed. He further was impressed with the strange notion that the hideous Kilkenny marble is of the same colour as the exquisitely delicate grey of the blue lias. The result is a sad warning to all restorers not to be more clever than the original architect. Let us, then, try to imagine the west front with its empty lowest tier filled with graceful figures, its gable in its first simplicity and surmounted by a cross, its towers of Early English form crowned with lofty spires, its delicate shafts of their original material, and its ranges of figures "all gorgeous in their freshly-painted hues of blue and scarlet and purple and gold." Then we shall have some idea of the front of Wells as Jocelin meant it to be and to remain. [Illustration: Ornaments In The West Front.] As for the colour, its effect can be gathered from the traces which survive. There is ultramarine, gold, and scarlet in the tympanum of the central doorway, where there are also the marks of metal fittings. Ferrey found a deep maroon colour on the figures of the Apostles, and a dark colour painted with stars in the Resurrection tier. One of the chief glories of the front is the faithful care which is given throughout to the smaller features. The mouldings (a succession of rounds and hollows) are most bold and effective; the carving of the foliage in caps and canopies, tympana, pedestals, and terminals is singularly beautiful and free. This impression is deepened by a minute examination; indeed, it is almost a matter of regret that some of the finest work is at such a height as to be almost impossible to see; for in all the earlier work at Wells the Lamp of Sacrifice burns brightly. Mr Ferry pointed out an instance, which may be given here, of the care with which minor matters were thought out:--In order that the lowest tier might not look weak and yet might provide a sufficient shadow for the statues, the backs of the niches are set at a slightly recessed angle in the centre, and thus an effect of strength is given to the angular jambs. Indeed, there may be differences of opinion as to the general design of the west front, but there can be none as to the supreme excellence of its detail. It is beyond doubt the most rich example of Early English work to be found anywhere. The crown of its glories, the justification of its form, did it need justification, are the frail statues which line it, tier upon tier. [Illustration: Ornaments In The West Front.] Vertically the west front is divided into three main parts--the centre, containing the three lancet windows of the nave and the main doorway, is surmounted by a gable receding in stages with a pinnacle at either angle; and the two lateral towers, the lower portion of which form one continuous screen with the centre, broken only by the boldly projecting buttresses, of which each division possesses two. Horizontally the front divides itself naturally into four parts--the plain base, which is high enough to contain the full height of the small north and south doorways. One of the stones in this division, about the level of the eye, and near the middle, which has evidently been moved from some other place, bears the inscription, _Pur lalme Johan de Putenie priez et trieze jurs de_ ... Next is an arcade of niches interspersed with windows, the space above being pierced by quatrefoils. The third division contains the three lancet windows, the forms of which are repeated on the north and south, breaking the line of the two historical tiers of niches which, with the Resurrection tier, adorn this main division of the front. A bold string course marks it off firmly and decisively from the fourth and upper division, in which the three parts of the front become separate, the towers at each side and the stepped gable, flanked by two graceful Early English pinnacles, in the middle. The statuary is mainly confined to the arcading of the second division, to the buttresses of the third, with its continuous cornice of the Resurrection tier, and to the gable front of the fourth; but the amount of it is largely increased by the fact that the work is carried round three sides of the north-western tower, which only touches the church on one side. The niches on the sides of the south-western tower are almost empty. THE STATUARY.--The statuary is not only the finest collection of medieval sculpture to be found in England; but, separately, the figures are with few exceptions finer than any others in this country, while some of them are almost as beautiful as the greatest masterpieces in Italy or France. It is strange that here, at the outset of the Gothic period, the chief characteristics of the old Greek spirit should be so apparent, the same restraint, the same simplicity, the same exquisite appreciation of light and flowing drapery: in other things there is difference enough, the form is less perfect, the action is less free, though there is a deeper sentiment and a higher power of spiritual expression; but in the essentials of sublime statuary there is a singular agreement. And, strange though it seems, it may well be that in these statues one must look for the first signs of the influence of the Renaissance in England. Romanesque work has but just died out, and already the old spirit, destined in time to supplant the architecture which sprung from it, is at work again. While the statues were being cut at Wells, Niccola Pisano was reviving sculpture in Italy under the inspiration of classical examples; and there can be little doubt but that it was Italian sculptors who produced the statuary at Wells. Some of the figures on the northern part of the front have been found to be marked with Arabic numerals (_Somerset Proceedings_ 1888, i. 57, 62), and these numerals, which did not become common in England till the sixteenth century, were used in Italy long before, having been introduced by Bonacci of Pisa (a fellow-citizen of Niccola) in 1202. That they are found here before the middle of the century is a fairly conclusive proof that the workers were Italians, and very likely from Pisa itself. Jocelin, indeed, was English, but he had been in exile from 1208 to 1213, when he had ample opportunity of studying the work of the Italian artists. Pleasant as it would be to our national pride, we can hardly believe that Englishmen produced what seems to be the earliest example of such magnificent and varied sculpture in north-western Europe. At Jocelin's death, in 1242, when the work had been going on for some thirty years, Niccola Pisano was in his prime, Cimabue was two years old, and forty years had yet to elapse before the rival sculpture of Amiens Cathedral was executed. [Illustration: West Front: Christina (185). Drawn by H.P. Clifford.] Mr Ruskin, whose admiration of the work at Amiens is so intense, has given almost as high praise to the sculpture at Wells, and has presented sets of photographs of the statuary to various art schools. The verdict of enthusiastic approval is, in fact, unanimous. Flaxman, to his credit, in spite of his classicalism, was one of the first to draw attention to the work. Whoever was the general designer of the whole arrangement, he deserves as great praise as the sculptors themselves. There must have been several sculptors, both because no one man could have carved three hundred and fifty subjects (of which one hundred and fifty-two are life-size or colossal), and because a certain number of the figures in the fourth and fifth tiers are of obviously inferior design. But one master-mind must have conceived and directed the work. The height and lightness which is given to the gable by the tall row of the Apostles, the solemn prominence of the figure of our Lord above, the rich cornice-like effect of the small Resurrection tier, the difference in height between the fourth and fifth tiers, the concentration of the three lower tiers, the breadth which the seated figures give to the face of the buttresses, the arrangement of the statues and groups round the buttresses, which makes it impossible for them all to be seen at once, all show that one mind was busy, carefully subordinating the parts to the whole. It may well have been Jocelin himself who planned the subject-matter of the statuary with such admirable breadth and balance of mind. It is easy to produce sermons in stones, easy to sermonise in very many ways; but Jocelin did not preach. He just tried to embody the Christian spirit at work in the world: God made manifest in man, the great truth of the Incarnation; and this he did in what we should call the most modern manner, though in truth it is medieval as well as modern. He did not conceive of Christianity as confined within the covers of the Bible, but he took all history, as he knew it, the patient education of man in the Old Testament, the fulfilment of man's aspirations and God's purpose in the New, from the birth of our Lord to the founding of the Church, and the continuation of this church up to his own time, with especial regard to the heroes, saints and rulers of the Church of England. He made a "kalendar for unlearned men," which is both a _Biblia Pauperum_ and _Annales Angliae_, because the annals of England were to him a new Bible. "Slowly the Bible of the race is writ," a modern writer has said, "each age, each kindred, adds a word to it." That was the spirit of Jocelin's design; only that, through the pomp of mighty kings and fair women and honoured bishops, he looked to the naked truth of the judgment time, when mitres and crowns would remain but as signs of an awful responsibility, and the divine justice, so tried, so obscured on earth, would be vindicated before the angels who are quick to do God's will, and the twelve plain men who turned the mighty currents of the world. Such was the spirit of a man who lived in the days of St. Francis and St. Louis, Stephen Langton and Roger Bacon. Before commencing a detailed description of the statuary, one must refer to Professor Cockerell, R.A., whose enthusiastic love of the work led him to construct a theory which he published in 1851, as an _Iconography of the West Front_. There can be little doubt that he was right in his general idea; there can be equally little doubt that he was wrong in nearly every application of it. Everyone now, for instance, takes it for granted that the south side of the front is mainly "spiritual," devoted to ecclesiastics, while the north is "temporal"; and that the whole of the fourth and fifth tiers do represent certain leading historical figures. But when we read Cockerell's reasons for identifying these figures we recoil in dismay. His knowledge of history is superficial, of costume he knows practically nothing; his drawings are as inaccurate as his imagination is fertile, and he states as obvious facts the wildest conjectures. Further reference will be found to his book in our description of the fourth and fifth tiers. It was at least an honest labour of love, and Cockerell deserves the honour, as he had to endure the disadvantages, of being the first in the field. The CENTRAL DOORWAY may be taken before the lowest tier. Its soffit contains an evident addition, as if the architect felt that it needed emphasising by some enrichment. In the first of its four deeply-wrought mouldings a series of niches, five on each side, with small delicately-carved figures, has been inserted, evidently after the arch was made; they are cut from a different stone (white lias), and are skilfully fitted and grooved into the back of the large sunk moulding. They add considerably to the effect of the arch, although all the heads of the figures have been destroyed. It is characteristic of Cockerell's random method of conjecture, that he declared these figures to be representations of the Ten Commandments. 1. The tympanum under the arch and above the double opening of the doorway contains a quatrefoil, in which is a noble sculpture of the Madonna and Child. The head of the Mother and the upper half of the Child are gone, but the drapery that remains is of quite perfect grace and dignity. A serpent is under the feet of the Madonna, who is sitting on a throne; angels censing are on either side without the quatrefoil. A good deal of the old colour which once gave this central group a peculiar brilliancy can still be traced on this protected sculpture; the background was ultramarine, the mouldings red and gold. The figures were also gilded in part, and there are marks on the wall to show that a metal nimbus was once attached to it. 2. In a canopy above the arch is another sculpture of equal beauty, though, owing to its more exposed position, the treatment is a little broader. It represents the coronation of Our Lady; both the heads and all the hands are gone. The two figures are both seated on one long bench, and our Lord leans forward to place the crown upon his Mother's head. THE TIERS. In order to avoid any possible mistake I have taken each tier from right to left, specifying the gaps, windows, and buttresses, to facilitate identification, and commencing with the lowest tier. I have also numbered the figures afresh, because of the confusion which has hitherto caused great waste of time to every one who has attempted to identify them. Cockerell's numbers are the only ones that are at all accurate (and he omits the two figures on the extreme south of the fourth and fifth tiers); but, as he recommenced his enumeration with each series, they are not much use for purposes of identification. There are mistakes and omissions in the enumeration of the photographs, there are mistakes in the album in the cathedral library, the photographs in the South Kensington Museum are hopelessly muddled, and even the descriptions of the restorer, Mr Ferrey, are so arranged that it takes days to identify them, while some of them elude one's efforts altogether. I have, therefore, numbered the statues and groups in a continuous order from bottom to top, so that comparison with photographs will in the future be easy. In the case of work most of which can only be seen from a distance, the study of photographs is absolutely necessary for a full appreciation of their beauty, more especially as in very many cases the photographs reveal the form which the accidents of discoloration have partly concealed. Mr Phillips of 10 Market Place has an almost complete set of admirable photographs, which he was enabled to take when the scaffolding was up for the restoration of 1870-73: it is these which Mr Ruskin has so much admired. As there are so many statues, some of inferior interest and beauty, I have ventured to put an asterisk (*) to those which I think no one should fail to see; and, in almost every case, I have but echoed the general verdict. THE LOWEST TIER.--This tier contains sixty-two niches, forty-three of which are empty, so fatally convenient has their position been for the iconoclast. Of those which remain nearly all are on the north side of the tower, so that at first sight the tier seems to be quite empty. The loss here has been the greater because the figures were of the finest kind, as well as the most easily seen: those remaining are certainly of the most exquisite loveliness. Cockerell's theory that this tier represents the heralds of the gospel, prophets and missionaries, has nothing to support it. It seems to me not unlikely that the tier was devoted to some of the most popular saints in the calendar; the position, so near the passer-by, would have suited this arrangement, and the front must have been singularly deficient in saints if it were otherwise. The figures which remain, a group of deacons, a group of bearded figures holding books, and of women bearing religious attributes, might well stand for saints. 3. _South Tower._ Male figure, much decayed, held by metal clamps. 4. Male figure, much decayed, held by metal clamps. _Rest of figures missing along west front up to_-- 5. _North Tower._ Male figure, much decayed, holds book. 6. A similar figure. _Missing._ 7. _North Buttress._ Male figure, which held some drapery in front. 8. _North Buttress._ Male figure, holding a vessel in right hand covered with a cloth, the end of which was in left hand. [Cockerell calls this St. Augustine, erroneously supposing this cloth to be the pallium.] 9. Beautiful female figure,* drapery resembling a chasuble; hands gone. 10. Female figure with flowing hair; hands gone. 11. Female figure, wimple round head, in left hand holds a vessel, right hand is on the edge of the vessel, the fingers dipping in. 12. Female figure,* hood over head, holds in right hand the foot of a chalice, and with her left the fold of her dress in front. 13. Tall male figure, bearded, holding closed book; in good preservation. 14. Male figure, bearded; hands gone. 15. _Buttress._ Male figure, bearded, with flowing hair; hands gone. 16. _Buttress._ Male figure, bearded, holding open book in left hand; upper part moulding away. 17. Deacon* in dalmatic, alb, amice, holding open book in left hand, right hand gone; drapery is wonderfully fine. (This and the remaining figures are tonsured and shaven.) 18. Deacon,* a beautiful figure, (apparently in dalmatic), amice; left hand gone. 19. Deacon, in girded alb, ends of girdle hanging down, wears the folded chasuble (very rare in art) over left shoulder, maniple; holds book with both hands. _Missing._ 20. _Buttress._ Deacon, in girded alb, amice, stole over left shoulder, book in left hand. Besides ends of girdle, end of a stole is visible on left side, as if a crossed stole had first been carved and this end forgotten. 21. _Buttress._ Deacon,* stole worn over left shoulder, maniple, but no amice and no girdle; wears instead of alb a surplice with full sleeves--an unusual combination. SECOND TIER.--The next tier (22-53) consists of thirty-two quatrefoils, some of which are now empty. The rest contain half-length figures of angels, holding crowns, mitres, scrolls, or drapery in their hands. THIRD TIER.--This, which we may call the Bible Tier, consists of forty-eight quatrefoils, ranged close above the quatrefoils of the second tier, and broken in the centre by the larger sculpture of the Coronation of the Virgin (2). The subjects are all from the Bible, those on the south from the Old Testament, dealing with the first things, while those on the north and on the north and east sides of the northern tower are from the New Testament, and represent the life and mission of our Lord. The iconoclasts seem to have concentrated their attention on those earlier New Testament groups, which would contain the figure of our Lady, and they have made the Crucifixion almost unrecognisable. The figures are about two feet high. _Empty._ 54. The Death of Jacob. 55. Isaac blessing Jacob, who leans over him. 56. Meeting of Isaac and Rebecca, probably. 57. Noah sacrificing on Ararat. Very fine. 58. The Ark. A curious structure, raised pyramidally in four tiers, with open arcades, in which birds and beasts are seen. Below is the Flood. 59. Noah building the Ark.* He is in workman's dress, and wears a cap; he is working at a bench, beneath which are his tools. Behind is the ark, and an "Early English" tree. 60. God decreeing the Deluge.* In great wrath Jehovah approaches a man who sits pensively on a hill-side: from behind the man's head springs a demon. The figure of Jehovah is admirably expressed. _Empty._ 61. Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, who is bound on a bundle of wood. Cockerell called this the Sacrifice of Cain, which certainly suits its position better. 62. Adam delves and Eve spins. Fine. _Empty._ 63. Jehovah in the Garden. A draped figure, addressing two figures naked and ashamed. 64. The Temptation. The serpent's body is coiled round the tree near Adam, and his head hovers above with an apple in the mouth. Adam is already eating the fruit. 65. God placing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 66. The Creation of Eve. 67. The Creation of Adam. The figure of the Almighty in each of these three is magnificent, especially in the last. _Empty._ OVER CENTRAL DOORWAY. 2. Coronation of the Virgin (p. 34). _Here follow eighteen New Testament subjects._ 68. St. John the Evangelist*; he is winged. A book rests on the back of an eagle. The idea of inspiration could not be more finely expressed. _Empty._ (Perhaps the Annunciation was here.) _Empty._ (Perhaps the Visitation.) 69. The Nativity. Mutilated. _Empty._ _Empty._ _Empty._ _Empty._ _Empty._ _Empty._ 70. Christ among the Doctors: the Holy Child is a very small figure on a pedestal. A most expressive group. 71. St. John Baptist, clothed in camels' hair, in the wilderness. (An angel appearing from the clouds, broken off since 1862. The fragment is now in No. 72). 72. Figures in critical attitudes. Perhaps the Sermon on the Mount. _Empty._ 73. Christ in the Wilderness, probably. 74. Figures in intent attitudes. Perhaps the Mission of the Apostles. 75. Five figures seated at a table. Perhaps the Anointing of Christ's feet. 76. Figure on a Mount surrounded by many figures. Perhaps the Feeding of the Five Thousand. NORTH SIDE OF TOWER. 77. Christ, sitting, with other figures. Perhaps the Feeding of the Four Thousand. 78. The Transfiguration.* A fine composition, two of the Apostles crouching in the foreground. 79. The Entry into Jerusalem. Under the city gate two men strew clothes and branches: from the walls and tower many people are looking. 80. The Betrayal. Chief priest with mitred head-dress in centre: winged devil holds up the train of right figure. On left a figure holds open a money-box. 81. The Last Supper.* The Virgin kneels to receive the Communion from her Son: St. John's head rests on His bosom. The drapery is very fine. Underneath are a bottle and a basket. _Empty._ 82. Christ before Pilate. 83. Christ bearing the Cross. Mutilated. 84. The Elevation of the Cross. Much mutilated. 85. The Deposition. Much mutilated. _Empty._ 86. The Resurrection. An angel on either side, guards below. 87. Pentecost: the Birthday of Holy Church. A dignified group of figures. FOURTH AND FIFTH TIERS.--The fourth and fifth tiers contained at least 120 figures (about a dozen of which are gone), varying in height from 7 ft. 10 in. to 8 ft. 1 in., a few running as high as 8 ft. 10 in. They no doubt represent the kings, bishops, and heroes of English history from Egbert to Henry II. Cockerell was probably right in his general interpretation of the series, but it is easy to prove that he is wrong in many of the names he gives. It is not so easy to suggest any better, and therefore his names have stuck to the figures, since people naturally like to know them by something more interesting than a number. I shall therefore adopt his nomenclature, with the admission that equally good grounds could be given in almost every case for some other theory. Besides Mr Ferrey's account (_Inst. Brit. Arch._, 1870), quoted in inverted commas, Cockerell's descriptions, inaccurate as they are, have been consulted, and also Mr Planché's criticism of Cockerell. The word _Buttress_ means that the figure (generally a sitting one) is on the west face of the buttress in question. Bishops ("Bp."), unless otherwise stated, wear the usual vestments--mitre, chasuble, dalmatic, tunicle, stole, maniple, alb, and apparelled amice. Kings ("K.") and Queens ("Q.") wear crowns. A favourite attitude is described as "holding cord"; this cord being the lace or cord of the mantle, which crossed the chest and prevented that garment from falling off the shoulders. The mantle seems to have had an uncomfortable tendency to slip down, and thus it became a habit constantly to pull the cord forward, whence the frequency of this attitude. This cord was wrongly described by Cockerell as a necklace, with which it has, of course, no connection. The word "trampling" refers to another common feature in these tiers; kings are generally represented as trampling on a small figure under their feet, to signify their success over their enemies. The figures of the fifth tier are rather taller than those of the fourth. The first twenty figures on our list, those of the fourth tier up to King Ina, may represent the twenty bishops of the diocese from Athelm to Jocelin, in direct order, since the corresponding series of the fifth tier contains figures which cannot be those of bishops. I have, however, kept to Cockerell's names to avoid confusion. FOURTH TIER.--88. _South Tower_--_Buttress_--Sitting Bp.; much decayed, supported by metal clamps. 89. Bp. Savaric. Much defaced, head grotesquely so. 90. Bp. Robert. Much defaced, head grotesquely. _Missing._ 91. _Buttress._ Bp. Reginald de Bohun, sitting; somewhat decayed. 92. Bp. Ethelweard, good drapery, well--preserved; no hair or beard. 93. Sighelm, good drapery, well-preserved; ring of curly hair and beard. 94. Alfry, in hood; large curly beard. 95. Etheleage, monastic dress, cowl and scapular; large curly beard. 96. Bp. Asser. Short and stout figure, in attitude of benediction. 97. Bp. Heahmund. Short and stout figure, in attitude of benediction. 98. _Buttress._ Bp. Wolfhelm. Fine seated figure, in attitude of benediction. 99. Bp. Ealhstan. Stout common-place figure; rather mutilated. 100. Bp. Wilbert. Stout common-place figure; rather mutilated. 101. Bp. Denefrith. Stout common-place figure; better preserved. 102. Bp. Ethelnod. Stout common-place figure; better preserved. 103. _Buttress._ Bp. Aethelhelm, first Bishop of Wells* (reproduced on p. 22). Noble figure, sitting in attitude of benediction. 104. Bp. Herewald, in attitude of benediction. 105. Bp. Forthere, head bent slightly forward. 106. Bp. Ealdhelm. A fine figure. _Central Window (South)._ 107. K. Ina, looking over right shoulder, hand gone. (These central figures, Ina and Ethelburga, are supposed to be of later date than the rest.) _Central Window._ 108. Q. Ethelburga. Wears the long kirtle with girdle, from which are hung an ink-bottle and aulmoniere. _Central Window (North)._ 109. K. Egbert, trampling, bearded; cloak falls in a graceful sweep from right to left. 110. K. Ethelwulf, bearded. A very short figure, but raised on high stone (crouching figure?) higher than the others. 111. K. Ethelbald; decayed. 112. _Buttress._ K. Edgar, sitting, flat cap on head. 113. K. Ethelbert, smooth face, trampling; apparently holds fragment of sceptre in right hand, cord of mantle with left. 114. K. Ethelred I., smooth face, trampling, gracefully draped cloak, holds fragment of sceptre apparently in right, and something indistinct in left hand. 115. K. Edwy, left arm raised, holding cloak, which is over right shoulder. 116. K. Edward the Martyr, bearded, holding cup (his usual symbol) in left hand, trampling. This is one of the most likely ascriptions. 117. _Buttress._ K. Edmund, sitting, right arm uplifted, left resting on knee. Fast decaying. 118. K. Ethelred the Unready, bearded, short figure, trampling, but the trampled figure leans easily on its elbow. 119. K. Cnut, bearded, short figure, trampling, but the trampled figure is apparently still struggling. 120. Q. Osburga,* in long supertunic, with ample sleeves, falling in folds over the feet. The tight sleeve of her kirtle appears on left arm, which holds cord of mantle. Head and neck in the wimple which was not in thirteenth century distinctive of nun's dress. Book in right hand. 121. Q. Emma, in flowing supertunic with ample sleeves, and wimple; hands gone. 122. Harold I., no head covering, trampling; hands touching girdle. 123. Harthacnut, like II old, but hands and part of face gone. 124. _Buttress._ K. Edred, sitting, right hand on knee, left raised to cord, drapery crossed. 125. Q. Edgitha, mantle falls round over left foot. 126. Edmund Ironside.* Knight in surcoat over chain armour, hauberk but no helmet; right arm and left hand gone, but head turned to left and attitude is that of drawing or sheathing his sword. 127. Harold. Knight, hauberk and surcoat of mail, cylindrical helmet, shield on left side; delapidated. 128. _North Side of Tower. Buttress._ Edward the Confessor, in cap; sitting in attitude of judgment (Planché), left hand resting on right ankle, this leg being crossed over left knee. 129. Prince Richard.* Crowned figure of great beauty, bearded, head slightly bent to left with a melancholy expression; hands gone. 130. Robert Curthouse,* bearded, the right hand draws aside part of the surcoat, exposing right leg in curious hose; left leg covered by surcoat. 131. K. Rufus,* bearded, right hand holds cord of mantle, left holds border of mantle across his body. 132. Q. Matilda, flowing hair, holds mantle in left hand. 133. Emperor Henry, crowned, holds cord of mantle, with right hand fingering end of his girdle. 134. K. Stephen, right hand holds cord of mantle, left on girdle. 135. K. Henry II., end of cloak thrown over shoulder, holds the fold with both hands; in good preservation. 136. _Buttress._ K. William the Conqueror, sitting in menacing attitude, elbows projecting, and hands upon knees. 137. Prince Henry. A dignified figure; hands gone. 138. Prince Geoffrey. Beautiful figure, head gone, holds cord of mantle, loose sleeves, and good drapery. (Ferrey is wrong in calling this a female figure.) 139. Q. Maude the Good, flowing hair, left hand on girdle of supertunic, dress fastened at neck with "a beautiful jewel" (Ferrey). 140. Adelais. Graceful figure, with flowing hair. 141. _Buttress._ K. Henry I., sitting in defiant attitude, right arm akimbo, left knee raised, foot on pedestal. _Missing._ _Missing._ _Missing._ 142. K. John.* A beautiful figure. 143. Henry III., no crown, standing, but right knee raised to suit the weathering of aisle roof. FIFTH TIER.--144. _South Tower. Buttress on the south side._ Sitting Bp., supported by metal clamps. 145. Bp. J. de Villula; hands gone, much decayed, clamped. 146. Bp. Gisa; hands gone. 147. Bp. Duduc*; right hand gone, book in left. 148. _Buttress._ Bp. Lyfing; decayed. 149. Bp. Merewit; hands gone. 150. Bp. Brihtwine; hands gone. 151. Aethelwine. Fine figure with long wavy beard spreading at end, hood and mantle, aulmoniere at girdle. 152. Burwold, tall bearded figure in hood, satchel (?) hanging from girdle. 153. Bp. Aelfwine.* Beautiful figure in cowl, curly hair and beard, finely draped habit with loose sleeves. 154. Bp. Sigegar, book in left hand. 155. _Buttress._ Bp. Brithelm, head turned to right; decayed. 156. Bp. Cyneward. 157. Bp. Wulfhelm. A fine figure. 158. Bp. Elfege. A fine figure. 159. Edfleda, flowing hair, in supertunic or surcoat with long and wide sleeves, head covered with veil, which hangs behind, no wimple. Nothing conventual to suggest Edfleda. 160. _Buttress._ K. Edward the Elder. Fine figure, right hand on knees, left on cord of mantle. _Missing._ 161. Edgitha. Very tall figure, right hand on cord, left holds end of veil. _Missing._ _Central Window (South)._ 162. Q. Edgiva, kirtle only, with crown and veil, no wimple. _Central Window._ 163. Ethilda. Wears supertunic over her kirtle, veil and wimple. _Central Window (North)._ 164. Hugh. A sword hangs from his girdle on left side. 165. Elgiva. 166. Q. Edgiva; hands gone. 167. _Buttress._ K. Ethelstan, defiant attitude, right foot on stool, wears brooch. 168. K. Charles the Simple. A squat figure with very big head, trampling. 169. Otho, close-fitting tunic, over which is mantle with handsome fastening. _Missing._ 170. Guthrum. Knight in surcoat, mail hauberk and chausses, shield on left side. 171. _Buttress._ K. Alfred, seated; both hands gone, front decayed, and clamped. 172. Earl of Mercia.* Knight in helmet with cross-slit, holding right hand up and shield upon left arm; the surcoat turned over below the waist shows a suit of mail. Well preserved. 173. St. Neot (more probably St. Decuman, as St. Neot was not beheaded). Bp. holding with both hands the upper part of his head, which has been cut off across the brows. 174. Ethelfleda,* the Lady of the Mercians. A striking and beautiful figure with flowing hair, long veil hanging below the waist, supertunic held by brooch, but without sleeves, the tight sleeves of her kirtle being visible to the shoulders. 175. Ethelward. Woman with flowing hair, veil; hands gone. 176. Grimbald. Priest; hands gone. 177. St. Elfege, Archb.; hands gone; a noble figure. 178. _Buttress._ St. Dunstan, upper part decayed. 179. Turketul. Short figure, trampling, in very pointed cloak, big head in cap. 180. John Scotus.* A beautiful figure, with exquisitively fine drapery that looks as thin as gauze. _Missing._ 181. _North Side of Tower.--Buttress._ Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury, standing, holding book in right hand, left hand gone; no mitre. 182. Q. Elgiva, drapery falls from left shoulder, is folded over right arm; book in left hand. 183. Q. Edgitha. Tall, gaunt figure; veil falls in long folds to knee, right arm close to side, left hand holds cord. 184. Q. Edburga, circlet round head, brooch on her breast, holds drapery in right hand. _Missing._ _Missing._ 185. Christina, Abbess of Romsey.* Beautiful female figure, holding box in left hand: "her dress is peculiar": one end of veil is caught over right shoulder, the other falls down in front on right side (p. 31). 186. Wulston of Winchester, bearded, "with distended ears"; right hand gone. 187. _Buttress._ Archb. Aldred of York, sitting; "mitre modern," it is conical in shape. 188. Edgar Atheling. Knight, spurred, in surcoat only, with sword girded outside, no mail, but close-fitting cap and fillet on head: the fillet was used for the large cylindrical helmet to rest on. He carries what may be a palmer's hat (Cockerell points out that Edgar went on a pilgrimage); but Planché says it must be a small Saxon buckler, as pilgrims did not carry swords. It certainly looks like a hat. 189. Robert the Saxon. Knight in hauberk, without mail, but feet spurred, cap on head, shield and sword. 190. Falk of Anjou. Knight in hauberk and chausses of mail, hood of hauberk enclosing whole head except a portion of the face: on head is the thick fillet. He covers his body with a shield. His surcoat is deeply jagged. 191. Robert of Normandy. Knight, in hauberk and complete suit of mail, in good preservation, shield with boss on it held down: he wears cyclindrical helmet, his eyes and nose being visible through the slit. 192. _Buttress._ B. Roger of Salisbury, sitting, without mitre. _Missing._ _Missing._ 193. Female figure, holding drapery with right arm, left hand on side. 194. St. Nicholas, the patron saint of baptism, stands in water up to knees, holding a child in each arm. This ascription is approved by Planché. (He is commonly called by children "the pancake man," the conventional water suggesting round cakes). 195. Female figure, in good preservation, but clamped in a sloping position, drapery good. THE RESURRECTION TIER.--The sixth tier (195-283) consists of a series of small canopies which run continuously under the cornice that finishes the main division of the front. Above and around, the spandrels are filled with beautiful foliage most boldly undercut. Each of the eighty-eight canopies (of which thirty are on the north side) contains a figure, or group of figures, representing the Resurrection of the dead. In spite of a rather defective anatomy, these figures are singularly impressive, "startling in significance, pathos, and expression," are Cockerell's words. They are naked--crowns, mitres, and tonsures alone remaining to distinguish their office. They awaken by degrees, heave up the lids of their tombs, and draw themselves up slowly, as if scarcely yet awake. Some sit in a strange dreamy posture with folded arms, some seem expectant, others are in attitudes of fear, hope, defiance, and despair. There are none of the grotesque accessories which are too common in ancient representations of this subject, but the awful feeling of a great awakening shivers along this range of naked, grey, stone figures. It is probably the earliest representation of the subject in art; it is certainly the most profound and spiritual. THE ANGELS' TIER.--This is immediately above the Resurrection Tier, and occupies the lower part of the gable only. The angelic figures stand in nine low niches with well-moulded trefoil heads that rested on blue lias shafts; the two niches on the returns of the buttresses also contain angels, which are represented as blowing trumpets. In all probability the nine figures symbolise the nine orders of the heavenly hierarchy, and I have ventured to give the names which the attributes and position suggest to my mind as the most likely. Mr Ferrey's account is quoted in inverted commas: it must be remembered that he had the advantage of a close inspection from the scaffolding. 284. Thrones. "Angel holding an open book," two wings, long robe, facing to his right. 285. Cherubim. "Seraph," with four wings, "apparently holding a banner," decayed. 286. Seraphim. "Seraph," with four wings, "entirely feathered, with bare legs and feet," face gone. 287. Dominations. "Angel wearing a helmet," in vigorous attitude, two wings, "too dilapidated to make out what its attributes are." 288. (_Central Figure_). Powers. "Beautifully robed, holding a sceptre," two wings: the dress is very ample and majestic. 289. Virtues. "Robed in a short tunic, with an ornamental border, the legs are encased in armour," wears "a jewelled cap," two wings. 290. Principalities. "A Seraph, entirely feathered, holding a vessel shaped like a bowl," with flames issuing out of it, the legs and feet being also enveloped in "wavy lines of flames: probably the avenging angel"; four wings. 291. Archangels. "Apparently holding a crown in the right and left hands, close to his breast," long robe covering the feet; two wings. 292. Angels. "Carrying a regal or small hand organ," in left hand, four wings, decayed; apparently bearing a wand in right hand. THE APOSTLES' TIER.--The next tier, that of the Apostles, who are thus raised above the angels, contains twelve figures of imposing design, later in style than the rest of the statuary. The figures are hollowed out at the back so as to press less heavily on the tier beneath. The arrangement of these niches is very happily managed, so as to avoid any monotony in the range of twelve similar niches; for, besides the natural division formed by the small attached shafts between the figures, an additional projecting shaft in every third division forms the tier into four large bays with three figures in each. The capitals of these niches are remarkable, the graceful foliage being disposed in a very free manner, in some cases growing upwards, in others bent down, but always true to the outline of the capital. Of the figures themselves the central one, in the place of honour, and taller than the rest, is St. Andrew. The others are not all so easy to name, the attributes of some having disappeared; and, although Cockerell gave names to them all (some of which were certainly wrong), we may content ourselves with the following list, which at least is accurate so far as it goes:-- 293. No symbol in hand, which is covered with drapery. (Carter's drawing represents a staff or spear, but he is quite unreliable, though it is occasionally possible that the attributes he draws did exist when he saw the figures a century ago.) 294. Book (?) in right hand, a vessel or bag of cylindrical form is apparently suspended from the left arm. Perhaps St. Matthew with his purse. 295. Holds something, which may be the fuller's club, in which case the figure is that of St. James the Less; forked beard. 296. Club (?) in hand, long curly hair and beard. There is something near the knee, which may be a palmer's hat. (Carter drew this figure as St. Bartholomew with knife and skin.) 297. Carter drew this figure as St. Peter with the keys. 298. St. Andrew with his cross; he is so tall that his head fills the upper portion of the canopy. 299. St. John holding the chalice, which has large bowl and short stem; wavy hair. This is the only figure not bearded. 300. St. James the Greater. Staff in right hand, large satchel on left side hung from hand over right shoulder, book in left hand (the book of the Gospels with which St. James is always represented, in addition to the pilgrim's stiff and scrip). He wears a high cap. 301. Perhaps St. Paul (who is often represented among the Twelve), with sword and book. 302. St. Philip holds drapery in right hand. Ferrey says the five loaves can be distinguished. 303. Long hair and head-dress like a veil bound by a fillet round the brows, forked beard, book in left hand, girdle. 304. This figure occasioned much controversy, owing to Carter having drawn it with a crown. Cockerell therefore attributed it to St. Peter, and said that the crown showed Bishop Jocelin's papistical tendencies! Planché scoffed at this, remarking with truth that none of the Apostles are ever represented with crowns, but he caused even greater confusion by suggesting that the figure stood for a Saxon king, and that the tier, in spite of the Apostolic number, did not represent the twelve Apostles. If he had looked at the actual figures instead of Carter's drawings he would have seen that there is no crown at all. In the photographs this is still clearer, the Apostle's head being evidently covered by nothing more imposing than his own long hair or a veil like that of the preceding figure. THE UPPERMOST TIER.--The whole magnificent series was fitly crowned by this group (305), of which only the lower part of the central figure remains. That, however, sufficiently attests the noble character of the rest: it represents our Lord seated in glory within a vesica-shaped niche. The feet are pierced. It seems to have been mutilated by Monmouth's followers, for it still bears the marks of their bullets. The two figures in the niches on either side must also have been destroyed at this time, for they are shown in a print in Dugdale's _Monasticon_. Ferrey cannot have seen this print when he suggested that the figures were of angels censing, for they are there given as representing Our Lady (new covenant) and John Baptist (old covenant). THE WESTERN TOWERS.--The projection of these towers beyond the aisles of the nave gives its great breadth to the west front, which is 147 feet across, as against the 116 feet of the almost contemporary cathedral of Amiens, which is twice its height. It is an unusual arrangement, of which there is no exactly similar example except at Rouen. Above the screen the towers are Perpendicular, the southern tower having been completed towards the end of the fourteenth, and the northern at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They are thus later additions to the original design of the front, and make it more difficult for us to realise the effect that was first intended. These two towers are very nearly alike, but the southern, or Harewell, tower is some forty years the earlier of the two, and belongs to the earliest days of the Perpendicular style, Bishop Harewell having died in 1386. The northern tower was built with a sum of money left for the purpose by Bishop Bubwith, who died in 1424, and his arms are carved high up on a buttress upon the north side, those on the west being a modern copy. In one of its two western niches is a figure of the bishop in prayer. Both the towers have two belfry windows on each side, tiny battlements, and a stair-turret on the outer western angle; in both the buttresses are carried up, with but slight reduction in bulk, two-thirds of their height and then finished with small pinnacles. There are, however, certain slight differences between the two towers; their height is not exactly equal, and there are no niches on the earlier one. The south tower contains a peal of eight bells; that on the north is traditionally considered "rotten," but to all appearance it is sound enough. [Illustration: The Central Tower From The South-east.] THE CENTRAL TOWER is Early English to the level of the roof. The two upper stages are Decorated, but there is a curious inter-mixture of styles in them, owing to the repairs that were made after the settlements of 1321. The chapter seemed determined to allow no possibility of another accident, for besides the inverted arches and buttresses of the interior, the original high narrow windows of the upper part of the tower have been fortified by later insertions, by way of bonding and stiffening the structure, which had been so endangered by the sinking of its piers below. There are, however, no signs of any rents in the Decorated part. The tower has square angular turrets, and is divided vertically into three main compartments, each division being marked by a small pinnacle, and the turrets by large compound pinnacles. It is an interesting tower to ascend, the rents in the wall being plainly discernible; and from the summit there is a fine view of Wells and of the valley in which the city stands. The NORTH PORCH is perhaps the finest piece of architecture at Wells, though it generally receives far less attention than it deserves. It is certainly the oldest part of the church, and must have been the first work which Bishop Reginald undertook, about 1185; in style it retains much of the Norman influence. The mouldings of the noble entrance arch are numerous and bold, and twice the Norman zig-zag occurs, though enriched with leaves in a manner that suggests the coming Gothic. A weather moulding, exquisitely carved with deeply undercut foliage, covers the arch. Its capitals on the east side contain figures among their leaves representing the martyrdom of St. Edmund the King: the first three of the caps have the saint in the midst, crowned, and transfixed with a number of conventionally-arranged arrows, and his enemies, two on either side, drawing their bows; the fourth cap shows an executioner cutting off the saint's head; in the fifth the head is found by the wolf; the sixth has been partly cut away, but the body of the wolf and the heads of two figures remain. In the spandrels above are two square panels containing a cockatrice, and another strange beast. The gable is filled with an arcade, the central member of which is corbelled off to make room underneath for three little lancet windows which light the parvise chamber within. The buttresses of the porch have slender shafts at the angles, which are finished off with foliage of a remarkably free and graceful kind; it should be noticed as an example of those subtle touches that are so abundant in this porch. On the buttresses are pinnacles with an arcade, at the top of which little openings cast a shadow that gives a lightness to the whole effect. A smaller pinnacle is at the apex of the gable, and underneath it an ornament of twisted foliage. Nothing could well surpass the interior of this porch; the delicacy, and refinement which are shown in every detail are the more amazing when we consider that the architect and his masons had only just emerged from the large methods of Norman building. A range of three arcades on either side is divided in the midst by three shafts boldly detached from the pear-shaped moulding round which they are grouped. These shafts carry the ribs of the groined vault, and divide the porch into two square bays. Their capitals are very boldly undercut, and bear distinct traces of Romanesque influence; indeed, the volutes of the cap on the west side give it almost the appearance of a very freely-carved Corinthian capital. Those at the angles are of like fashion, except that on the north-east, which has fuller and freer foliage, wherein stands a man shooting with his bow at a bird, the whole most vigorously conceived. [Illustration: The North Porch.] In the uppermost arcade the little touch of foliage that is worked on to the junction of the mullions (which are made up of four pear-shaped mouldings) illustrates the love of delicate things that is so characteristic of this architect. Below is a projecting double arcade, behind which, against the wall, is a third row of arches: the outer mouldings intersect and the abaci of the outer caps are finished off in a carefully restrained curl of foliage; those on the soffit are deeply undercut, by means of which a very black shadow is secured. All the capitals are carved with the stiff-leafed foliage; and in the spandrels are grotesque beasts, full of character. The string-course below is finished with dragons who bend round and swallow the end of the string, their tails (on the west side) twisting right along the moulding. It is significant of the free way in which the masons were employed, that the carving varies very much on the two sides. The grotesques in the spandrels above mentioned are finest on the east side, but the dragons of the string course are best on the west side, where their expressions, as they bite the moulding, are full of life and humour. On this western side, too, the foliage which fills the spandrels of the lowest arcade is at its best; it is indeed the purest and truest piece of decorative work in the whole cathedral. Each moulding in this beautiful porch, from the filleted ribs of the groins to the bands round the shafts, and the moulded edge of the stone bench, is most carefully thought out, and adapted to its position, in a way that every architect will appreciate. The double doorway which leads into the church has an unusual and most effective moulding on its jambs, very large and simple, with slight projections worked upon it: the inner moulding of the enclosing arch, however, is a boldly projecting zig-zag, the supporting capitals of which have two figures, one in a cope, the other a bishop in a very pointed chasuble. The central pillar is of much later date. Above is a square recess filled with later masonry, where perhaps a figure was once inserted. Most happily, the North Porch has been spared from the restorer's hand. It is a unique and most beautiful example of early work; any restoration of it would practically destroy it, and would be an unpardonable crime. The hungry eye of the modern vandal is sure to seize on this piece of virgin work, sooner or later; for its very purity will tempt him. We only hope that when that day comes the Chapter will be faithful to their trust. The GABLE END of the north transept, which must be very near to the north porch in date, is a very similar example of the early work. It is flanked by turrets which are capped with pinnacles; both turrets, pinnacles and wall are rich with arcading, the effect of which is especially charming in the gable, where, by a happy device, the weather moulding is made to curve suddenly over the two topmost arches, filling the angle at the apex of the coping, and leaving a little space between it and the two arches to be occupied by foliage. The general character of the WALLS is distinctly Transitional; the buttresses are almost as low, broad, shallow and massive as in Norman work; and the windows, though now filled with Perpendicular tracery, are so broad that, were they but round-headed, they would look more Norman than much real Norman work. The richness of exterior effect is much increased by a most graceful Decorated PARAPET, which is carried all round the church on the wall of both nave and aisles. As for the masonry as a whole, with the exception of the west front nothing could be sounder and more skilfully executed. Mr Britton's opinion was that "perhaps there is not a church in the kingdom of the same age where the stone has been so well chosen, better put together, and where it remains in so perfect a state: this deserves the particular notice and study of architects."[5] The CHAIN GATE, one of the peculiar glories of Wells, is really a bridge over the roadway, built by Bishop Beckington and his executors, to connect the chapter-house staircase with the vicars' close. Freeman spoke of it as a "marvel of ingenuity," yet perhaps its excellence consists rather in its simplicity. A covered way was needed to the close, but the road lay between, and so a bridge was built; the bridge had to rest on something: three arches were therefore made, one large for carts, and two small for foot-passengers; a further space had to be spanned between the road and the staircase: the bridge was therefore continued on the same level, but, as the ground here was lower, the arch on this side was built on a lower level. Furthermore, the two ends of the bridge not being exactly opposite to one another, the bridge had to turn at a slight angle where it reaches the road. It is just such simple adaptation of means to an end that gave his chance to a medieval architect; it is this that gives what is called its picturesqueness to an ancient town, it is this that makes nature so picturesque. A modern architect would have built his bridge in a straight line across the road, and have pulled down something to avoid the irregularity; he would not have had the sense of proportion which alone was needed to make utility supremely beautiful. The builder of the Chain Gate just used his opportunities to their very best. He saw that but a small thing was wanted, that the close must not be dwarfed; so he kept the work little and delicate, rich and light: he made its chief beauty to lie in its _bijou_ character. Yet he preserved its dignity by the wide opening of the central arch, the height of which is emphasised by the smallness of the two arches on either side. But although the two small arches effect so much by their contrast with the large one, the harmony of the gateway is preserved by the panelling above them which marks this part of the bridge off from the rest. On the south of the gate is a blank wall, supported by a buttress which was wanted here, and so here was put. On the south of the buttress is the lower arch which is so admirable a foil both to the height of the main gateway and the delicacy of the windows. A correctly-minded architect would not have tolerated this blank wall and irregularly-placed arch; but substitute what you will for the wall, or alter the height of the arch, or replace both by an arcade, and the dignity of the little gateway is gone. It may further be noticed that the builder kept the upper and lower stages very distinct, and made the upper storey as clearly a bridge as the lower is a gateway: the charming little windows run in a continuous range over blank wall, gate, and all, but they are grouped closer together over the gate. A battlemented parapet finishes the top of the bridge. Niches are placed in the midst of the two windows over the gate; they contain graceful statues of St. Andrew and other saints. In the wide moulding of the string course there are angels, curiously placed in a horizontal position, as well as the stags' heads of Beckington's arms. [Illustration: The Bishop's Eye.] Passing under the Chain Bridge a good view of the CHAPTER-HOUSE is obtained. It is a massive, buttressed octagon, the lower stage marked by the small broad barred windows of the undercroft, the next by the rather squat traceried windows of the house itself, while under the cornice is an open arcade. The gargoyles are interesting. A parapet, different in design and inferior to that of the church itself, finishes the building. From this part of the road, there is a good view of the cathedral in one of its most characteristic aspects;--the Lady Chapel, the low buildings of the north-eastern transept and retro-choir, the chapter-house in the foreground, all lying on ground below the level of the road, and over the Chain Bridge a glimpse of the north transept gable and the north-west tower. A queer corner, hidden by a thick tree, is formed between the chapter-house and the choir aisle; in spite of the obscure position, a fine gargoyle of the head and shoulders of a man, carved in unusually colossal proportions, is placed here at a low altitude, to carry off the water that must gather at the junction of aisle with undercroft passage. Through the walls that rise high on either side a capital glimpse of the tower can be had. From the same road, opposite the prebendal house (now allotted to the Principal of the Theological College), which has a picturesque Perpendicular doorway with a window above, the grouping of the Lady Chapel with the rest of the church can be well seen. The rich and light appearance of the EAST END is due not only to the charm of its tracery, which contrasts so well with the network of the Lady Chapel windows, and to the parapet which rises slightly in the centre, but also to the three lights which pierce the gable; of these the upper is diamond-shaped, and thus the masonry that is left has the appearance of a stout Y cross. FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.--One of the most interesting views of the exterior is from the lovely grass-plot on the east of the cloisters, where once stood the cloister Lady Chapel, and where the vicars were formerly buried. It is being again used as a cemetery, which is unfortunate, since there are few things more irreligiously dismal than a modern burial-ground, and already a cluster of marble and granite monuments has arisen to spoil one of the most peaceful and unspoilt places in Wells. If monuments there must be (and why need we so advertise the dead?), let them at least be quiet and humble and beautiful: those ostentatious erections of hard and polished stone ruin the grey walls before which they stand; their frigid materials are too obtrusive for Christian modesty, too enduring for human memory. May we not yet hope that this spot will be spared the fate of the cloister garth? From here the Lady Chapel is well seen as quite a separate building, joined to the rest of the church only in its lower part, and with its own parapet round all its eight sides; its form harmonises most charmingly with the square presbytery behind it, and with the lofty chapter-house, like itself octagonal. A further beauty is added by the solitary flying buttress which stands out at the south-eastern corner; though certain rents in the southern wall show that the buttress was built for reasons of the gravest utility. On the south side of the chapel there is a little door, covered by what looks at first like a kind of porch, but it is really the passage of a small vestry (p. 132) which was built up against the wall; the roof of the vestry was a little higher than that of the passage, and must have leant against the wall just under the window, as is proved by its gargoyle near the passage door. This vestry was fatuously destroyed in the early part of this century by an official who did not even know that it was medieval work till the soundness of the masonry proved almost too much for his workmen. The junction between the earlier and the later presbytery is well seen from here--too well seen, in fact, for it is awkwardly managed. The later choir windows, with their crocketed ogee hood-moulds, are a good feature, and so are the flying buttresses; but the high-pitched roof of the earlier aisle is discontinued at the break in order to give room for these windows and buttresses; and the effect of this sudden termination of an aisle roof half-way along a building is not pleasant. In the earlier part, too, the later windows have been clumsily inserted some distance below the Early English dripstone, as if only the internal effect had been considered. The same may also be said of the window in the south transept gable: the gable, by the way, is a much plainer affair than that of the north transept. Here stood the two CLOISTER LADY CHAPELS, but unfortunately their sites were not marked on the grass after the excavations were finished three years ago. Thus nothing can be seen from here of the earlier chapel, and, of the later, only the doorway and the Perpendicular panelling against the cloister which marks its western end, and the commencement of the walls. A small quatrefoiled hagioscope may be noticed in the library above the cloister; it, no doubt, commanded a view of the high altar of the chapel. The earlier _Capella B.M.V. juxta claustrum_ is often referred to in the chapter documents, and was a favourite centre of devotion. It became a kind of family chapel for the numerous clan of Byttons, after the first bishop of that name was buried there; it was also sometimes used as a chapter-house. The Early English doorway which led to it can still be seen in the cloister wall, on the right of the present doorway; it is partly covered by an I.H.S. of later date, made with the instruments of the Passion. The excavations of 1894, when the foundations were laid bare under Mr Buckle's direction, showed that this chapel consisted originally of a plain oblong building, earlier even than the north porch in date (_i.e._ before 1185), which was afterwards (c. 1275) enlarged by the addition of an aisle on either side. The excavations showed that arches were used at this time to replace the western part of the older walls, and thus to throw the ancient chapel open to its new aisles. The original chapel, then, if it was not actually part of Bishop Gisa's buildings, spared when John de Villula destroyed Gisa's cloister, seems to have been built not long after Gisa's time, and at least on the site of Gisa's chapel. This would account for its orientation, which was in a more northerly direction than that of the cathedral, and probably was the same as that of the pre-Norman church. Excellent plans of the foundations both of this and the later chapel are to be found in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1894, where the whole matter is discussed in detail by Canon Church and Mr Edmund Buckle. The later chapel on this site was built by _Bishop Stillington_ (1466-91): it followed the orientation of the cathedral, and was of much larger size than the former building, being about 107 ft. in length. It consisted of a nave, transepts and choir, with fan-tracery vault, of which some fragments have been lately fixed in the cloister wall. Most profusely ornamented and panelled within, as can be seen by the west end against the cloister wall, it is considered to have been the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the Somerset Perpendicular, surpassing even Sherborne and St. Mary, Redcliffe. But its glory was not to be for long. Stillington was buried in this "goodly Lady Chapell in the Cloysters," says Godwin, "but rested not long there; for it is reported that divers olde men, who in their youth had not onely scene the celebration of his funeral, but also the building of his tombe, chapell, and all did also see tombe and chapell destroyed, and the bones of the Bishop that built them turned out of the lead in which they were interred." This was in 1552, when Bishop Barlow and the chapter made a grant to that barbarous scoundrel, Sir John Gates, of "the chappie, sett, lyinge and beynge by the cloyster on the south syde of the said Cathedral Church of Wells, commonly called the Ladye Chapple, with all the stones and stonework, ledde, glasse, tymbre, and iron ... the soyle that the sayd chappie standeth upon only excepted." The condition was that the rubble should be all cleared away, and the ground made "fayre and playn," within four years; but before this period had elapsed, Sir John's head had gone the way of the Lady Chapel. [Illustration: Doorway, South-east Of Cloister.] The CLOISTER in its more prominent features is Perpendicular, having been rebuilt in the fifteenth century. Nevertheless the outer walls are of Jocelin's date, together with the doorway leading into the palace (see illustration on this page); and the lower part of the east cloister wall, including the two small doorways therein, is said by Mr Buckle to be undoubtedly earlier than Jocelin's time, and contemporary with the north porch, _c._ 1185. Thus we have still the original plan at least of the thirteenth-century cloisters. This plan is characteristic of a non-monastic church, where the cloister is not the centre of a common life, but merely an ornamental convenience which might or might not be added, and when added might be of any fashion that was desired. There is no walk on the north side, no refectory or dormitory, and the plan is not square, as would be the case with a conventual building, but an irregular parallelogram, while the eastern walk is built up against the south end of the transept instead of against its western wall. [Illustration: East Walk Of Cloister.] The inner part of Jocelin's cloister was probably a wooden penthouse like that of Glastonbury. At all events, it has entirely disappeared. The eastern alley was built by the executors of Bishop Bubwith, who died in 1424. That on the west, with its rooms, was built by Beckington (1443-65) and his executors. That on the south was completed soon after by Thomas Henry, the treasurer. Beckington, by the way, showed a reckless disregard of the earlier work by carrying his cloister right up against the south-west tower, and completely concealing the beautiful arcading of that part. Beckington's executors, in the time of Bishop Stillington, also built the singing school over the western cloister. Bubwith's executors built the northern part of the library over the eastern cloister; but the southern part was added at a later date. The square windows were inserted later still by the famous Dr Busby, about 1670. The fourteen bays of lierned vaulting over the east alley, and one on the south, were executed in 1457-8 by John Turpyn Lathamo, at the cost, we find from the fabric roll, of ¾d. per foot, or £6, 11s. 3d. for the whole, though an additional ten shillings was presented to him for his diligence. Each alley consists of thirteen bays in the Perpendicular style; the windows are now all unglazed, of six lights, with transoms and tracery; between the windows are buttresses to support the rooms above, which extend, however, only over the east and west alleys. Turpyn's vaulting is of a curiously decadent character, which reminds one of the Jacobean Gothic of Oxford and Cambridge. The ribs spread at the start to enclose a trefoiled panel, and they curve into one another when they meet at the bosses. In the rest of the south walk, however, the bosses are square, and receive the ribs in the usual manner; in the west walk they are still square, and more varied in their ornament, bearing Beckington's initials, arms, and rebus, arranged in several different ways. Beckington's arms, which occur also on the gateways, are argent on a fess azure, between in chief three bucks' heads caboshed gules, and in base as many pheons sable, a bishop's mitre or. His rebus is a fire _beacon_ lighted, a _tun_ holding the fire. Two small stone pent-houses, of which the purpose is uncertain, are built up against the windows of the fourth and sixth bays of the eastern alley. The vault of this alley was built without reference to the fine Early English doorway into the transept, one side of which it hides, the weather moulding being cut away. This doorway is mentioned in an Act of the Chapter of 1297, but it was probably made by Jocelin before he built the cloister wall, which comes uncomfortably near to the door, as if it were an afterthought. The companion doorway from the western alley, which was the usual entrance to the cathedral in the thirteenth century, has been similarly defaced by the vault. Three annual fairs used to be held in the cemetery, till Bishop Reginald set apart for the purpose the new ground which is still the market-place. The traditional entrance to the church by this south-western porch may have been due to the fact that the citizens gathered for secular business on the south-western side. At the south end of the eastern alley is the Early English bishop's doorway, which no doubt led straight to the palace in the days when there was no moat to obstruct this route. The door was originally hung to open inwards; a beautiful moulding was destroyed to hang it in its present position. There is a bracket of later date over this doorway. The cloister-garth, which is hideous with modern tombstones, is traditionally called the _Palm Churchyard_, no doubt because of the yew which grows there. Yew trees, so common in churchyards, are still commonly called palms, because their branches were used for the procession on Palm Sunday. This churchyard was anciently the burial-place of the canons, the ground east of the cloister (now used again as a cemetery) being reserved for the vicars, while the space before the west front was the lay burial-ground. An admirably contrived _dipping-place_ was still standing in the Palm churchyard, near the second bay of the east cloister, within the memory of living persons, but now no trace of it remains above ground. A water-course, held within a channel of carefully-worked masonry, runs under the eastern cloister from St. Andrew's well, and passes on to fall ultimately into the old mill-stream. The oblong building over it that formed the dipping-place was entered at the south end, and a few steps (with aumbries for the linen at either side) led to the washing-place at the little stream. An arch covered this spot, where the water ran through two low arches on either side and was bridged in the midst by a pavement. The place was used for washing linen, and the water required for the cathedral was drawn here before the modern supply pipes were introduced. THE LIBRARY is over the east walk of the cloister, and is entered from the south transept. It is a charming old-world place, full of ancient volumes, many of which are of great interest. A passage runs from end to end, along the east side of the long room, the other side being mainly occupied by the old desks, benches and bookcases, which project at right angles to the wall, many of the book-chains still hanging on them. There are said to be over three thousand volumes, including the bulk of Bishop Ken's library, a collection of early editions of his works, and his copy of Bishop Andrewe's "Devotions." There are also several books (including one Aldine "Aristotle") with MS. notes and autograph of Erasmus. The collection of old charters, which have recently been made to throw so much light on the history of the cathedral, is also preserved here. Some of the most interesting charters are displayed in glass cases; one of them, Edgar's grant to Ealhstane, is specially venerable for the signature of St. Dunstan--_Ego Dunitan Ep._--which occurs third among the witnesses to the document. Two precious relics of medieval times are also kept here. One, which is generally called a lantern, was till lately hung in the undercroft. There is no trace of its ever having been used as a lantern, and it is probably the wooden _canopy of the pyx_ which hung before the high altar. The Blessed Sacrament was in medieval times reserved, not in a tabernacle, but in a hanging pyx of precious metal; and this graceful wooden canopy probably contained the pyx. There are only two other possible examples of the pyx-canopy (at Milton Abbas and Tewkesbury), and both are of later date than this, which is thirteenth century. Woodwork of this period is so rare that, even were it not a pyx-canopy, it would be of extreme interest. It is cylindrical in form, divided into three storeys of open tracery, and crowned with a cresting of three-lobed leaves. Its height is 3 ft. 11¼ in., its internal diameter 14½ inches. It is made of oak, certain parts of a later restoration being of deal. Mr St. John Hope (_Proc. of Soc. of Antiquaries_, 1897), thus enumerates the traces of colour: "The whole of the body and its upper and lower rings have been painted red, with gold flowers or other devices upon the transverse bands. The slender dividing shafts seem to have been coloured blue. The leaves of the cresting have apparently been painted white, but the circular boss in the middle of each leaf was entirely red." Two pairs of iron rods, with a ring and swivel hook, serve to suspend it in a steady position. The other relic is the thirteenth-century _crozier_ which was recently found in a tomb in the cathedral, and probably belongs to the time of Savaric, though there is no evidence, beyond its style, for describing it as his crozier. It was dug up in a stone coffin in the western burial-ground of the cathedral in the time of Dean Lukin (1799-1812). It is thus described in the _Catalogue_ of the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition of enamels, June 1897: "A complete crozier, [the staff] wooden (modern), with enamelled head one foot in length. Limoges, thirteenth century. The volute is a serpent with blue scales and serrated crest, enclosing a winged figure of St. Michael and a dragon studded with turquoises. The knop is encased in pierced repoussé open work formed of dragons, and the socket ornamented with thirteenth-century foliated scrolls in these slightly spiral bands, separated by jewelled dragons whose tails form three rings under the knop." St. Michael is represented in the act of attacking the dragon with his spear. A little MUSEUM has been formed in one of the rooms over the western cloister. It contains a collection of seals, Mr Buckle's plans of the cloisters and the Cloister Lady Chapel excavations, and many other objects of interest. The principal buildings in connection with the cathedral are the vicars' close, the bishop's palace, the deanery, the archdeaconry, and the canon's houses. There are also Beckington's fine gates,--the Chain Gate by the vicars' close, Brown's, or the Dean's Gate, near the deanery, the Penniless Porch, leading from the Market Place to the cathedral; and the Bishop's Eye, leading from the Market Place to the palace. [Illustration: The Chain Gate, Entrance To Close, 1824] Most deservedly famous is the unrivalled VICARS' CLOSE, which contains the houses built by Bishop Ralph and his successors for the vicars-choral. Passing through the gate, one sees the two long ranges of quiet and lovely houses, fronted by their little gardens, with a roadway betwixt them. Nothing can surpass this arrangement for its peaceful seclusion and constant charm, not even the square quadrangles and cloisters of Oxford, and yet, so convenient is it, that no better model could be chosen should there ever come any general return to the old collegiate life; for a settlement, for a model factory, one can imagine nothing better even now. There are forty-two houses, twenty-one on either side: each consisted originally of two rooms, one above the other, with a staircase; for the vicars were single men. Now that the vicars-choral are married, many of them live in the town, but all the theological students are lodged here, and there are always a few rooms to be let to those visitors who are wise enough to stay in this charming place. The tall chimneys rise up through the eaves of the little houses; octagonal at the top, they are perforated like a lantern, with two openings on each side. On them are shields bearing the arms of the see, of Bishop Beckington and his executors, Swan, Sugar, and Pope, sugar-loaves and swans abounding in the decoration. At the farther end of the close is the tiny chapel (finished by Bubwith, and finally consecrated in 1489, after Beckington had added the wooden ceiling and the chamber above), where compline is still said by the theological students. It is one of the most beautiful things in Wells--a jewel, like so much of its period--and it has been well decorated in sgraffitto and colour by Mr Heywood Sumner. An interesting feature of its exterior is that some of the old Early English carving was worked in with the masonry of the wall, by way of decoration, and very effective it is. A passage at the side leads to the Liberty, where are some of the prebendal houses. Over the entrance, and leading into the bridge of the Chain Gate, are the hall and its offices, which are approached by a fine staircase. In the hall is a painting of much interest, which represents Bishop Ralph seated on his throne, the vicars kneeling before him; the petition which he holds runs--_Per vicos positi villae, Pater alme rogamus, Ut simul uniti, te, Dante domos maneamus_; and the answer, which has the episcopal seal, is--_Vestra petunt merita, Quod sint concessu petita: Ut maneatis ita, Loca fecimus hic stabilita._ On the right are seventeen figures with ruffles, evidently added in Elizabethan times; corresponding inscription has also been added--_Quas primus struxit_, etc. There is also a pulpit over the fireplace, which is large, with good mouldings and an inscription, _In vestris prec[=i] habeat^s comedat[=u] do[=m] Ricard[=u] Pomroy quem salvet Ihs. Amen_. On the hearth are a pair of fine fire-dogs. Just outside the entrance to the vicars' close is a beautiful ORIEL WINDOW, which has been much copied in modern times. It springs from a corbelled head, from which foliate four cinquefoiled panels. The window now has only three square-headed lights, the centre one being large. Under its sills are rich panels, and it is capped by a slight crenelated cornice with a boldly-carved drip, from which springs a conical roof surmounted by a fleur-de-lys. The beautiful BISHOP'S PALACE was mainly built by Jocelin, who died in 1242. It consists of three sides of a quadrangle, the bishop's house being on the east, the chapel on the south, the kitchen and offices running alongside the moat on the north: on the west side there was formerly a gate-tower and a wall having a cloister within which led to chapel and hall. In addition to these buildings the great hall, now in ruins--forming, with the walls and outhouses, an outer court--was built to the south-west of the chapel. The whole group of buildings stands on a piece of ground, rich with trees, surrounded by a lovely old wall and moat, the single approach being by the bridge and the gate-house, which has Renaissance windows and retains the slit for the portcullis and the drawbridge-chains. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury constructed the gate-house and fortifications, which form an irregular pentagon, with a bastion at each angle, and an extra one in the south-east side. The bastion in the western angle (on the south of the gate-house) contains two storeys, of which the lower, called the cow-house or stock-house, was used as a prison for criminous clerks. The moat is fed by a stream from St. Andrew's well hard by. [Illustration: The Bishop's Palace.] The palace itself is a most interesting example of medieval architecture, and remains very much in its original condition. It is oblong in plan, and divided lengthwise by a solid wall, running through both storeys from end to end, at about one third of its width; the long outer chamber formed by this wall on the ground floor is divided into the entrance hall of three bays (containing a fireplace, _temp._ Henry VIII.), and the passages to staircase and to chapel at either end. The wider chamber within the wall is lighted by plain lancet windows, and has a row of slender Purbeck pillars down the middle, which, with the corbels on the wall, carry a groined vault: this, the "crypt," or undercroft, was probably used as a storage-room; it is now the dining-room. To the north of this hall is a square chamber with a pillar in the centre; and to the east of the chamber a small room projects beyond the ground plan of the building, with a space at one end (probably a closet) now walled up. On the first floor the great chamber (68 by 28 feet) stood over the undercroft, while on its north was the bishop's private room, both open to the roof, and to the east of this, his private chapel. The gallery above the entrance hall was formerly divided into three chambers, the two larger of which Mr Buckle thinks were used as a lobby and a wardrobe. The windows in the gallery were restored by Mr Ferrey in 1846, but nothing is new except the marble shafts and bases. The two windows at the north end of the great chamber are evidently later additions, as they have fully developed bar-tracery, while the other windows in the chamber consist of pairs of trefoil-headed windows with a quatrefoil in plate tracery above them. The GREAT HALL, which is now but a beautiful ruin, was built by Bishop Burnell, who died 1292. It was a magnificent chamber, 115 feet by 59½, with high traceried windows. It was divided into nave and aisles by rows of pillars to carry the roof and the passage at the west end led between buttery and pantry to the kitchen; over these rooms was a large solar, and on the north side a porch with staircase at the side leading to the solar. Both hall and palace are well and fully described by Mr Buckle in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1888. Bishop Barlow had the hall dismantled, employing Sir John Gates for the purpose; the walls, however, were left standing until Bishop Law's time, when they were partly demolished in order to make the ruin more "picturesque." The chapel is very similar in style to the hall, and was built very shortly afterwards; it is at present defaced by bad decoration and fittings. The carving is very fine and varied; some of the capitals retain the old stiff-leaf foliage, while in some the leaves grow freely round the bell in the Decorated manner. The vaulted ceiling is also an excellent example of the transitional work of the period. The west window is of later date, and has been twice restored--once by Bishop Montague (1608-16), and again in the present century. On the north side, at some height from the ground, are the indications of what may have been a gallery used as a private pew. Bishop Beckington (1443-66) added the northern block of buildings, now considerably altered, the kitchen and various offices, _le botrye, cellarium, le bakehous, ad lez stues ad nutriendos pisces_, in William of Worcester's words, as well as the gate now called the Bishop's Eye, _aliam portam ad introitum de le palays_, and the parlour (_parlurum_) and guest-chambers adjoining the kitchen. This block lies very prettily alongside the moat. Unfortunately the palace, which had so wonderfully escaped the brutal adaptations of the eighteenth-century architect, was restored in 1846 by Mr Ferrey, and its west front completely altered. The upper storey, the porch, the buttresses were all added by Mr Ferrey; not to mention the tower at the north and the turret at the south, and the conservatory. Bishop Bagot, at whose order the work was done, also rebuilt the kitchen and offices; in fact, he did what he could to destroy the unique character and beauty of a block of buildings without parallel anywhere. THE BISHOP'S BARN, which stands in a field near the palace is remarkable for its length (110 ft. by 25½) and the number of its buttresses. Simple in character, stately in proportions, it is a striking instance of the perfect sense of fitness which marked the medieval builders: in fact, it is the exact opposite to what a modern builder would erect if asked to provide a barn in the Gothic style. THE DEANERY, rebuilt by Dean Gunthorpe (1472-98), is an almost perfect specimen of a fifteenth-century house, in spite of the modern sash windows and other alterations which deface it. As at the palace, the principal apartments were on the first floor; and of these the chief is the hall, an excellent example of the more comfortable late medieval arrangement. Two handsome oriel windows with vaults of fan-tracery are at the upper end, not quite opposite to each other, where the sideboards used to stand; and at the lower end a stone arch carries a small music-gallery, with three small windows opening to the hall. Under this arch is the lavatory, a stone niche, in which a small cistern was suspended, with a drain at the bottom; so that the diners could put their hands under the tap of the little cistern as they passed into dinner. Over the hall are guest chambers with fine windows; and behind the partition at the back of the dais is another chamber with a large window, which Mr J.H. Parker thought to have been the chapel. Fuller description of the various ecclesiastical buildings can be found in Mr Parker's paper in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1863. THE ARCHDEACONRY was built in the time of Edward I., but the front of the house has been entirely modernised. The hall is larger than that of the deanery, and occupies the whole height of the building, having a very fine early fifteenth-century open timber roof. THE CHOIRMASTER'S HOUSE, at the east end of the cathedral, is a fairly perfect example of a fifteenth-century house, retaining its beautiful porch unspoiled. The roof and upper part of the windows of the hall remain, but are disguised and concealed by modern partitions. It is now the residence of the Principal of the Theological College. An organist's house once communicated with the singing-school, which is over the western cloister; it was much defaced in the eighteenth century, and entirely removed a few years ago. THE CANONS' HOUSES, which lie in the Liberty to the north of the cathedral, have been either entirely rebuilt, or much spoilt by alterations. THE SCHOOLHOUSE is partly of the fourteenth century, with wings added in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it retains some features of interest. BISHOP BUBWITH'S ALMSHOUSE is near St. Cuthbert's Church. It was much spoilt in the fifties: the original plan was a great hall, with a chapel at the end of it, and cells along the side for the almsmen. These cells were open at the top so that there was plenty of fresh air, and if an almsman became ill or infirm, he could hear the service chanted daily in the chapel without leaving his bed. At the west end of the hall is a building of two storeys built by the bishop's executors, given to the citizens of Wells as a Guildhall, and used for that purpose till about 1779. Here is preserved a very fine money chest of the fifteenth century, painted with a scroll pattern, and resting on a stand inscribed with curious doggerel of the date 1615. ST. CUTHBERT'S CHURCH, which is kept open during the daytime, is thus described by Mr J.H. Parker in the _Builder_ for 1862 (p. 655):-- "It was originally a cruciform church of the thirteenth century with a central tower, and with aisles to the nave; but of the church all that remains in the original state is a part of the north aisle. The central tower has been removed, the church entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The pillars and arches of the nave have been rebuilt in the fifteenth century also, and the pillars lengthened considerably. The arches, with their dripstones, preserved and used again on the taller pillars, and most of the capitals have had the foliage cut off. The aisle walls, the clerestory, and roof, are all Late Perpendicular, about the time of Henry VII.; but the beautiful west tower is evidently earlier than the clerestory and roof, and has the mark of the old roof on the east side of it, coming below the present clerestory. This fine tower, which is certainly one of the finest of its class, and which Mr Freeman considers, I believe, to rank only second to one other [Wrington], is said to have been built in the time of Bishop Bubwith, or about 1430; and this appears to me probable. The character of the work is rather Early Perpendicular, and the groined vault under the belfry appears to be an imitation of the Decorated vault of the cathedral." FOOTNOTES: [1] The road should be followed for about a quarter of a mile out of the town; at this point a path leads over a stile and through a coppice to the best point of view. [2] Vol. i. 421. [3] _History of the Cathedral_, 125. [4] The Doulting stone, of which the cathedral is built, comes from the St. Andrew's quarry at the little village of Doulting, where Bishop Ealdhelm died. It is inferior oolite, and very like Bath stone, which is the greater oolite. The exterior shafts were blue lias, and those within either blue lias or Purbeck marble, though there are one or two shafts of red Draycot stone in the western responds of the nave. [5] _Cathedrals_, iv. 98. CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR The earlier architecture of Wells Cathedral presents so many puzzles, that the most skilled experts have differed widely both from each other, and, as we know now, from the truth. There are four distinct varieties of Early English work, covering a period of about a century from the time of Bishop Reginald, whose episcopate began in 1174; and yet, until Mr Bennett deciphered the old charters, which have at length settled the problem, all the work was attributed to Jocelin, for nothing was known of Reginald's building, and some of the best judges were even convinced that the west front was built before the nave. The difficulty was mainly caused by the unusual character of the architecture of the nave; "unlike that of any ordinary English building, and belonging to a style on the whole fifty years earlier" than the west front, as Professor Willis said, who gave it a name of its own, and called it the Somerset style. Thus the theory came to be that two bodies of masons had been employed--an ordinary English company for the front, and a local Somerset company for the nave, transepts and choir, who worked in a local variation of the prevalent Early English style. In this way, an attempt was made to overcome the difficulty of attributing to Jocelin work which Mr Willis had himself pronounced to be "only a little removed from the early Norman style." Mr Freeman, too, had allowed that the north porch might be earlier than Jocelin; and, long before, Britton had said that there would be little hesitation in ascribing the church to the transitional period of Henry II. (1154-89) on architectural evidence, were it not for Godwin's assertion, that Jocelin had entirely pulled down the old church and built a fresh one. But now we have got behind Godwin, and have found from contemporary evidence that Bishop Reginald commenced the present church. Thus we are able to divide the Early English work into no less than four periods, (1) The three western arches of the choir, with the four western bays of its aisles, the transepts, and the four eastern bays of the nave, which are Reginald's work (1174-1191), and so early as to be still in a state of transition from the Norman. It is a unique example of transitional building, and Willis calls it "an improved Norman, worked with considerable lightness and richness, but distinguished from the Early English by greater massiveness and severity." The characteristics of this late twelfth-century work are bold round mouldings, square abaci, capitals, some with traces of the classical volute, others interwoven with fanciful imagery that reminds us of the Norman work of Glastonbury; while in the north porch, which must be the earliest of all, we even find the zig-zag Norman moulding. (2) The rest of the nave, which was finished in Jocelin's time--that is to say, in the first half of the thirteenth century--preserves the main characteristics of the earlier work, though the flowing sculptured foliage becomes more naturalistic, and lacks the quaint intermingling of figure subjects. (3) The west front, which is Jocelin's work, and alone can claim to be of pure Early English style. (4) The chapter-house crypt, which is so late as to be almost Transitional, though, curiously enough, it contains the characteristic Early English dog-tooth moulding which is found nowhere else except in the west window. From this, we reach the Early Decorated of the staircase, the full Decorated of the chapter-house itself, the later Decorated of the Lady Chapel, the transitional Decorated of the presbytery, and the full Perpendicular of the western towers. Much of the masonry in the transepts, choir, choir aisles, and even in the eastern transepts, bears the peculiar diagonal lines which are the marks of Norman tooling. This does not, of course, prove that any part of Bishop Robert's church is standing, for medieval builders were notoriously economical in using up old masonry, but it does show that there are more remains of his work in the building than was generally supposed. A characteristic feature in this Norman tooling is that if a rule be laid along its lines, they will be found to be very slightly curved, a feature which is due to the fact that Norman masons dressed their stones with the broad curved blade of an axe. [Illustration The Nave.] The plan of the church is remarkably complete, symmetrical, and well-proportioned. Nave, transepts, choir, each flanked with its aisles, combine to form with the Lady Chapel and chapter-house a cathedral church which, though not of the first magnitude, is the most complete and typical in England. The ground plan itself, as set out in all technical severity on page 160, possesses an unusual attraction for the eye. It is free both from mutilation and excrescences; and yet all the picturesque external grouping, and internal mystery, which the afterthoughts of Gothic architects so often lend to a building, are secured, in the case of Wells, by the carefully-placed chapter-house and the beautiful arrangement of the Lady Chapel. The transepts of the choir are very happily carried far enough east to be internally subordinate to this chapel, which arrangement, with the apsidal form of the chapel itself, adds much to the beautiful proportions of the church. A third transept is given to the west end of the nave by the two towers. The length of Wells Cathedral from east to west is 383 feet within the walls, and 415 without. The length of the nave is 161 feet, its breadth 82 feet, and its height 67 feet. The length of the choir is 117 feet, and its height 73 feet. The transepts are 135 feet within and 150 feet without. THE NAVE.--The general effect of the nave is that of length rather than height, and this is mainly due to the continuous arcade of the triforium which leads the eye from end to end of the building instead of from floor to roof. If this be compared with the older work in the transepts, it will be seen at once by how simple a device this radical change in the effect has been produced. Instead of being carried down right across the triforium, as in the transepts, the triple vaulting shafts are cut off above the arcade so as to be little more than corbels, and the space thus gained is used to give one additional opening to each bay of the triforium. In the transepts the triforium is composed of pairs of lancet arches separated by vaulting shafts, the triforium of each bay being a distinct composition over its pier arch; but by the time the architect had come to the nave, a new idea had occurred to him, and he made the triforium in one continuous arcade, unbroken from east to west, evidently with the deliberate intention of producing a horizontal rather than a vertical effect. The arrangement has undoubtedly a character of its own, and "there is no nave in which the eye is so irresistibly carried eastward as in that of Wells." In spite of this method of securing an effect of length, the builders managed to make the most of the small height of their church. The manner in which this was done forms an interesting example of the subtle feeling of proportion which early architects possessed. The clerestory was made unusually lofty, and the comparative lowness of the triforium both adds to the soaring effect and prevents the horizontal appearance being overmastering. This is increased by the bold vaulting of the ceiling, and the way in which the lantern arches fit into the vault. But, homogeneous as the nave appears, a little examination will clearly reveal the break which marks the separation between the late twelfth-century work of Reginald de Bohun and the thirteenth-century continuation of Jocelin. The earlier work, as we have seen, consisted of the four eastern bays, which, with the present ritual choir and transepts, formed Reginald's church; and, as a matter of fact, at the fifth bay (the next bay westward of the north porch) the marks of change are so evident that all writers upon the cathedral have based their theories upon it. The earlier masonry in the spandrels on the east of this point consists of small stones indifferently set: the later masonry is made up of larger blocks more carefully laid together; in the earlier part there are small heads at the angles of the pier arches, in the later there are none, while the small heads in the angles of the earlier triforium arcade give place to larger heads in the later; the tympana, which fill the heads of the lancets in this arcade, also are mainly ornamented in the earlier part with grotesque beasts, while in the later they contain foliage, with two exceptions. Again, the medallions which decorate the spaces above the triforium are sunk in the earlier masonry, but, in the later, they are flush with the surface and not so deeply carved. Even more noticeable is the difference in the capitals, those of the western bays being lighter, freer, and more undercut, though less interesting and hardly as beautiful as those of the earlier part. With the exception of these differences, however, which are doubtless due to the freedom enjoyed by medieval workmen, the original design of the nave was faithfully adhered to, the square abaci, even, being retained, though the circular abacus had become a leading characteristic of the true Early English of Jocelin's period. Certainly it is an unusual instance of an architect deliberately setting himself to complete the works of an earlier period in faithful accordance with the original plan; and we may well be grateful to him for his modesty. [Illustration: A Capital--the Fruit-stealer's Punishment.] All the carving is most interesting and beautiful: the caps and corbels of the vaulting-shafts; the little heads at the angles of the arches, which are vivid sketches of every type of contemporary character; and the carvings in the tympana, above referred to, which are best in the seventh, eighth, and ninth bays (counting from the west end), those on the north excelling in design and execution, while those on the south are more grotesque. But the CAPITALS of the piers are the best of all, and the most hurried visitor should spare some time for the study of these remarkable specimens of sculpture, vigorous and life-like, yet always subordinated to their architectural purpose. Those in the transepts are perhaps the best (p. 89), but the following in the nave should not be missed:-- _North Side, sixth Pier._--(By north porch) Birds pluming their wings: Beast licking himself: Ram: Bird with human head, holding knife (?). _Eighth Pier._--Fox stealing goose, peasant following with stick: Birds pruning their feathers: (Within Bubwith's chapel) Human monster with fish's tail, holding a fish: Bird holding frog in his beak, which is extremely long and delicate. _Ninth Pier._--Pedlar carrying his pack on his shoulders, a string of large beads in one hand. Toothless monster, with hands on knees. _South side, seventh Pier._--Birds with human heads, one wearing a mitre. _Eighth Pier._--Peasant, with club, seized by a lion: Bird with curious foliated tail: (Within St. Edmund's chapel) Owl: Peasant with mallet (?). The lofty clerestory windows are divided into two lights by Perpendicular tracery of late fourteenth or early fifteenth century date, which extends to the level of the passage, the lower part being filled with masonry. The windows were not, however, altered in shape when the tracery was inserted. In the tracery are very slight traces of the old glass. The triforium passage is capacious enough to form a large tunnel, which gives a good effect to its lancet openings. The small iron rings, which are prominent enough to be rather tiresome to the eye, were recently inserted for the use of those engaged in cleaning the walls. Within the passage additional arches may be seen, inserted to strengthen the arcade at the commencement of the later work and in other places. The groined ceiling has carved bosses at the intersection of its ribs. The red pattern is a restoration of the old design which was found on the removal of the whitewash, but the restorer seems to have missed the right tints. There is a music-gallery in the clerestory of the sixth bay on the south side; it is composed of three panels with quatrefoils containing plain shields, and is finished with an embattled cornice. Another gallery, perhaps for an organ, must have been supported by the two noticeable brackets on the spandrels of the fourth bay of the same side. One may conjecture that it was of wood, and was reached from the triforium. The brackets are carved in the shape of very large heads of a bishop and a king, both supported by smaller heads, and of an extremely benevolent expression. The hair of the king has that curious formal twist with which we are familiar on playing-cards. As some of the small heads in the chapter-house have the same style of hair, these two brackets probably belong to the end of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: A Capital--toothache.] Sir John Harrington in the _Nugae Antiquae_ (ii. 148) says of these two heads that "the old men of Wells had a tradition, that, when there should be such a king and such a bishop, then the church should be in danger of ruin." At the time of the Reformation it was noticed that the head of the king bore a certain resemblance to Henry VIII., and that the king held in his hands a child falling, who, it was said, could be none other than Edward VI. The peculiarity of the bishop's figure is that he has women and children about him. "This fruitful bishop, they affirmed, was Dr Barlow (p. 156), the first married bishop of Wells, and perhaps of England. This talk being rife in Wells in Queen Mary's time, made him rather affect Chichester at his return than Wells, where not only the things that were ruined but those that remained, served for records and remembrances of his sacrilege." The west end of the nave is covered in its lower portion by an arcade of five arches with Purbeck shafts, the middle one being wider than the rest, to contain the two smaller arches of the doorway. The three lancet windows were re-modelled in Perpendicular times by the insertion of the triple shafts, which have the casement mouldings and angular caps of the period; but the dog-tooth moulding of the arches, the medallions in the spandrels, and the little corbel heads of the Early English work remain. A Perpendicular parapet along the sill of the window marks the gallery which, pierced through the splays, carries the triforium passage round the end of the nave. A string course runs along the bottom of this gallery and forms the bases of the triple shafts; the bases are supported on corbels which die off upon the sloping wall below. This wall conceals a curious gallery, the purpose of which is not known; it is entered by steps from the triforium, and lighted by round openings which can be seen in the central quatrefoils of the west front; when these quatrefoils were filled with sculpture it would have been difficult to detect the existence of the dark gallery. [Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.] Two small transepts at the west end of the nave are formed by the western towers, which project in this church beyond the aisles. These transepts are connected with the aisles by an arch, the lower part of which is closed by wooden doors. That on the north was used as a chapel of the Holy Cross, and of late years as the consistory court: it is now the choir-boys' vestry; that on the south served as a porch in the days when the usual entrance to the church was by the Early English doorway which leads into it from the cloister; it is now appropriated to the bell-ringers. They are both of strikingly different style to the rest of the interior, as they were built in pure Early English style, at the same time as the west front, of which the towers form, of course, an integral part. Their shafts are of blue lias, the capitals richly carved; their groined vaults have a circular opening to admit to the upper storey of the tower, which has its corbels ornamented with foliage, although they cannot be seen. Over the doorway in the south chapel an arcade is curiously fitted into the available space beneath the vault. [Illustration: A Capital.] THE AISLES OF THE NAVE (see p. 19) are of the same character as the nave itself, the later part having been resumed at about the same time, and at the same place. Among the capitals the following in the north aisle may be specially mentioned:-- _Fifth Shaft._--Peasants carrying sheep, etc., a dog in the midst. _Ninth Shaft._--Man in rough coat, which falls before and behind rather like a chasuble, carrying foliage on his back. A very good figure. _Tenth Shaft._--(By arch of vestry) Man carrying what seems to be a hod of mortar and a mason's mallet. _Opposite side of arch_, at end of the string course: Peasant in hood carrying a staff. On the caps opposite are two heads with tongues on their teeth (see p. 92). The windows, both of these aisles and those of the transepts, were filled with Perpendicular tracery at about the same time as the clerestory windows. The date of this addition must have been before Bishop's Bubwith's time, for the library which that prelate built over the cloister blocks the south window of the west aisle of the south transept. A stone bench runs along all the aisles. [Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.] GLASS OF THE NAVE, TRANSEPTS, AND AISLES.--Most of the glass of the west window was collected abroad, during his exile, by Bishop Creyghton, while he was yet dean (1660-70). The main part of it is devoted to the life and death of St. John Baptist, and is of excellent early sixteenth-century work, for under the fantastic figure of the executioner is the inscription _Sancti Johannis Decollatio_ 1507. The two other lights containing the large figures of King Ina and Bishop Ralph are, however, of later date, and to judge by their costume they should belong to Creyghton's own time; moreover, on the southern one are Creyghton's arms. Apparently the compositions at the extreme top and bottom of the middle light are much later; a little handbook on the cathedral by Mr John Davies, the verger in 1814, states that the then dean and chapter re-arranged and restored the window in 1813; these additions must belong to that time, and according to him they were brought from Rouen. Their ugly reds and blues certainly do not blend with the earlier glass, as do the figures of Ina and Ralph, but considerably mar the mellow and delicate effect of the whole. There are only a few slight fragments of old glass in the other windows. There are also two modern windows at the west end of the aisles. [Illustration: View Across Nave, Shewing Sugar's And Bubwith's Chapels.] BISHOP BUBWITH'S CHANTRY CHAPEL.--Two chantry chapels stand opposite each other under the ninth pier-arches of the nave. They are alike in general characteristics, though there is an interval of sixty years between them. The chantry of Bishop Bubwith (_ob._ 1424), who built the north-west tower, is formed by a hexagonal screen between the piers, the three eastern sides being filled with a reredos that gives the chapel a square appearance within. The screen is composed of the most light and elaborate tracery, its corners surmounted by a crest; it is open above, but has a rather coarsely-carved canopy over where the altar stood. Doorways, whose jambs are too delicately carved to have ever carried doors, give free access and a clear view of the interior from either side. Altogether it was an ideal place for votive Celebrations, when but few worshippers were present. The niches over the altar have been hacked level with the wall, and the little pillar piscina is also defaced. The triple shafts of the pier at the western end are corbelled off, the corbel being carved with Bubwith's arms (argent, a fess engrailed sable between twelve holly leaves vert, 4, 4, 4, and 4, arranged in quadrangles) impaled with those of the see. The altar here was formerly dedicated to St. Saviour. SUGAR'S CHANTRY.--In the ninth bay of the nave, on the south side, is the chantry of Treasurer Hugh Sugar. Before its erection, the altar of St. Edmund of Canterbury, who was canonised in 1246, stood here; and perhaps, when it comes to be used again, it will be maintained in honour of that most attractive scholar saint. Speaking of these chantries, which were endowed in such profusion in the later Middle Ages, Canon Church (_Somerset Proceedings_, 1888, ii. 103) says: "The belief in the communion of saints, living and dead, and the desire for continued remembrance after death, and for the intercessions of the living, led practically to the endowment of chantries and obits, whereby not only was the church enriched, and the services of many priests provided for, but also attachment to the church of their fathers was greatly strengthened, as being the common home of the dead and the living." That attachment, one would think, is hardly likely to be revived by this beautiful chapel and its fellow being put to base uses. At present it serves as a kind of booking-office, where visitors deposit their sixpences and sign their names, while the other is stored with hassocks, and becomes the resting-place of any brooms, pails, and dustpans that are in use. St. Edmund's (or Sugar's) chapel is hexagonal, like that of Bishop Bubwith, but its tracery, frieze, and reredos are more elaborate. The canopy over the altar is vaulted with lace-like fan-tracery. Five niches, now empty of their figures, form the reredos; their sumptuous pedestals and canopies are in excellent condition. Attached to the frieze without, on either side, are six demi-angels, with delicate wings and extremely curly hair, bearing shields, with representations of the Five Wounds, the Lily of the Annunciation, between angels' wings; the arms of the see (a plain saltire surmounting a pastoral staff in pale between two keys addorsed, the bows interlaced on the dexter, and a sword erect on the sinister); the arms of Glastonbury Abbey (a cross flory, in dexter chief a demi-virgin with child proper), the arms of the vicars (a saltire), the initials H.S., and Sugar's arms, originally a "canting coat," three sugar-loaves, and in chief a doctor's cap. Sugar's initials and arms also occur under the canopy. It is the fashion to consider this chapel inferior to its fellow, merely because it is later in date, but a little impartial study will show that it is much the better of the two. The tracery, though less uncommon, is more graceful, that over the doorway especially being far better contrived; the cornice is better proportioned, and is not spoilt by the untidy trail of foliage which runs round that of Bubwith's chapel; the canopy, too, fits in with the curve of the tracery, while that of the others projects clumsily across it. THE PULPIT.--From the west end of this chapel steps lead into the stone pulpit which adjoins it. This pulpit was built in Henry VIII.'s reign, by Bishop Knight, who died in 1547. It is a low, but well-proportioned, structure, resting on a basement, and fronted with panelled pilasters; it is surmounted by an entablature. In front are the bishop's curious arms, which occur more distinctly in the glass of the north choir aisle--Per fess, in chief a demi-eagle with two heads and sans wings issuing from a demi-rose conjoined to a demi-sun in splendour in base. On the frieze is the inscription--_preache. thov. the. worde. be. fervent. in. season. and. ovt. of. season. reprove. rebvke. exhorte. w^t. all. longe. svfferyng. &. doctryne. 2. Tim[=o]._ A board along the top, covered with red baize, impairs its beauty at present. [Illustration: Sugar's Chapel--the Lectern And Pulpit.] THE LECTERN, which stands near, is composed of a massive double desk, surmounted by ornamental work, containing the arms of the see. It rests upon a ball and turned stem and base, and is entirely of brass. Bishop Creyghton, who had it made when he was yet dean, inscribed it on both desks with his arms and this legend:--_Dr. Rob^{t.} Creyghton upon his returne from fifteen years Exile, w^{th} o^r Soveraigne Lord Kinge Charles y^e 2^{d.} made Deane of wells, in y^e yeare 1660, gave this Brazen Deske, w^{th} God's holy worde thereon to the saide Cathedrall Church._ The Bible referred to still rests upon it, bearing the same date; it is bound up with the Prayer Book, and contains initial letters and a frontispiece, but it stops at the book of Job. Opposite the lectern are two sixteenth-century panelled wooden stalls, with round finials, all bearing the same device on both sides--a Tudor rose with _I.H.S._ in the centre, and the letters _m.d.l.i.i._ (1552) on the five petals. These excellent examples of simple and effective woodwork were found amongst some lumber in 1846, and now form part of the temporary choir stalls that are used for the nave services. On the south side of Bubwith's chapel, and partly covered by it, is a slab, 10 ft. long, covering the grave of Bishop Haselshaw, with the inscription, _Walterus de Haselshaw Ep. 1308_. On the west of Sugar's chapel, another slab bears the inscription, _Radulphus Erghum Ep. 1401_. In a slab near the entrance to the choir there is the matrix for a brass of a lady, with mitred head-dress of the period, _c._ 1460, beneath a canopy. The style suggests that it may belong to Lady Lisle, whose tomb possibly stood here. THE TRANSEPTS are both of the same architectural character, and were evidently built before the nave. They have less ornament, the medallions and the carved tympana of the nave being alike absent, although there are the same small heads at the angles of the pier arches. The triforium, too, is different; each bay consists of two large openings, devoid of ornament, instead of three narrower ones, and is separated from the next bay by the vaulting-shaft which reaches down to the string-course of the pier arch (see p. 77). Some of the carved work, however, of the capitals and corbels is of a later date than that of the nave, which may be due to the capitals having been left uncut till after the nave was finished, or to damage done by the fall of the _tholus_ in 1248. Apparently the corbels of the vaulting shafts are later than those of the nave, they are certainly more elaborate. Of the capitals those on the west side of both transepts are of one style and abound in representations of the toothache. The capitals on the east side are different from those on the west of the third pier on this side of the south transept, and that is of a style that suggests the Decorated period. Those on the west are certainly the best, and some of the following are the finest in the church, and perhaps in England:-- NORTH TRANSEPT, _first Pier._--(Inside the Priest Vicars' vestry) A prophet (?) with scroll on which there is no name: Man carrying goose. (Outside) Head with tongue on teeth. _Second Pier._--Aaron, writing his name on a scroll: Moses with the tables of stone. _Third Pier._--Woman with a bandage across her face. Above this cap the corbel consists of a seated figure, naked, with distorted mouth and an agonised expression. [Illustration: Section of North Transept, and Elevation of South Transept.] SOUTH TRANSEPT, _second Pier_ (from the south end).--Two men are stealing grapes, one holds the basket full, the other plucks grapes, holding a knife in his other hand: The farmers in pursuit, one carries a spade and the other a pitchfork: The man with the fork, a vigorous figure, catches one thief: The man with the spade hits the other (whose face is most woe-begone) on the head (illust. p. 79). _Third Pier._--Woman pulling thorn out of her foot: Man with one eye, finger in his mouth: Baboon head: Cobbler; this figure shows very plainly the method of shoemaking at this time; the cobbler, in his apron, sits with the shoe on one knee, his strap passes over the knee and round the other foot, his foot is turned over so as to present the side and not the sole to the strap: Woman's head with long hair. _Fourth Pier._--Head perfectly hairless: "Elias P." (the prophet) with hand on cheek as if he too has the toothache: Head in hood, with tongue on the one remaining tooth. It may be well here to say a word about the general classification of these earlier capitals, since their date is a matter of great architectural interest. I would venture to divide them into five groups-- 1. Those of the three western bays of the choir: simple carved foliage of distinctly Norman character, as in the north porch: these belong to the time of Reginald (1174-1191). 2. The four eastern bays of the nave and its aisles. Some of these may belong to the first period, though later than the choir: they are more advanced in the foliage, and teem with grotesque birds and beasts. Some, however, of the caps in these bays are of quite different character (p. 80); they contain _genre_ subjects of perfectly naturalistic treatment, very different to the St. Edmund of the north porch capital, but exactly similar to the figure caps of the transepts. They must therefore have been carved later than the death of Saint William Bytton. 3. The western bays of the nave. These, which are of much less interest, belong to the period of Jocelin's reconstruction (1220-1242). They are characteristic examples of rich stiff-leaf foliage, freer than that of the earlier work, but much less varied and without either human figures or grotesques. 4. On the eastern range of transept piers. These would seem also to come within Jocelin's period, with the exception of the third pier of the south transept. 5. On the western range of transept piers (p. 89), with which must be classed those later caps already referred to in the nave under group 2. Their date is settled by the fact that they abound in unmistakable representations of the toothache. Now Saint William Bytton died in 1274, and his tomb became immediately famous for cures of this malady. In 1286 the chapter decided to repair the old work, no doubt because the offerings at his tomb had brought money to the church; this part of the church had been damaged ever since the fall of the _tholus_ in 1248. The caps must therefore have been carved during the episcopate of Burnell (1275-1292). Mr Irvine, indeed, suggests that the figure of the woman taking a thorn ("bur") from her foot may contain a reference to Bishop Burnell. The undercroft passage, with its curious corbels and bosses, was probably also a part of the old work then completed, as it contains one "toothache" head. Although the introduction of such finished figure-subjects into the capitals suggests this lateness of date, they are still completely Early English in style, and a great gulf is fixed between them and the Decorated caps of the chapter-house begun by Burnell's successor, William de Marchia (1293-1302). [Illustration: The South Transept From North Side Of Nave.] [Illustration: Capitals In Transept] THE FONT is of peculiar interest as the one surviving relic of Bishop Robert's Norman church. Whether it also stood in the still earlier Saxon church is still an open question: it is as likely to be of pre-Norman as of Norman date, and the fact that whatever ornament there may have been in the spandrels of its shallow arcades has been hacked off, makes conjecture unsafe. Its unusual position in the south transept may be due to the Bishop Giso's quasi-conventual buildings on the south of the church, which would have made this transept the most common entrance to the cathedral at the time of the Conquest. A Jacobean cover rests upon the font, and with it forms a charming combination of pre-Gothic and post-Gothic Romanesque design. [Illustration: The Font. (Drawn by W. Heywood.)] At the south end of the south transept is the tomb of Bishop _de Marchia_ (_ob._ 1302). The effigy lies in a recess, and is covered with a canopy of three bays, the ogival arches, finished in sumptuous crockets and finials, painted red and gold, the spandrels being alternately green and red, powdered with a little pattern, the cusps and mouldings scarlet and crimson and green and gold, with a dark colour in the shadows. The effigy of the bishop is one of the best in the cathedral, but even more lovely are the three little figures so charmingly supported on foliage at the back of the tomb--two angels and a bishop between them. The heads of these three figures have been wickedly destroyed, but parts of the chains of the angels' censers remain. Of the two beautiful angels which hold the cushion the heads fortunately remain. Along the plinth of the tomb are six heads which are quite unique in their treatment; three are bearded (one of these is bald); one is shaven, tonsured, and turned half round in a strangely naturalistic manner; another is also shaven, and the remaining head is that of a woman in a veil. Two large faces are carved on the east and west ends of the tomb, both with long wavy hair--one of a woman, the other with a wavy beard. The central boss of the vaulting is carved with five roses, which are coloured green, their foliage, like all the foliage in this tomb, being gilt on a red ground with the red edges showing. The little angels at the back had gilded robes with red lining, and blue wings; the little bishop wore a red chasuble with green (or blue) dalmatic, and red tunicle over his white alb; the lappets of his mitre, which have survived, were red, and traces of dark blue are on his shoes: there seem to have been patterns on the various vestments, and the colours can still be seen where their sleeves overlapped. Modern lettering has been cut across the back of the tomb and coloured, by way of contrast to the ancient work. Under the battlemented cornice of the curtain-wall to the west a row of heads is painted in fresco on a red ground, which seems to be part of the same scheme with the curious heads on the plinth of de Marchia's tomb: one of these, a woman in a dark-coloured hood, is especially distinct. No doubt, the whole wall was originally painted. The sill of the window over the tomb seems to have been used for some special purpose: there is a passage cut through the splay of the window, through which the sill may be reached, which is not the case with the corresponding window of the north transept. The passage is reached from a staircase concealed behind the curtain-wall, which is reached by an ogee-headed doorway (with cusps in the head, finial, and two small heads to its very beautiful mouldings). This staircase also leads to a chamber on the level of the passage, but on the west side: the interior of the chamber can be seen from the ground, as its old wooden door is kept open. It is supposed by some to have been a watching chamber in connection with the tomb. There can, indeed, be little doubt that these arrangements had something to do with de Marchia's tomb, or that the ornamented doorway in the curtain wall of the same date as the tomb, together with the frescoes on the wall, were connected with the strong efforts that were made at this time for his canonisation. Perhaps the sill was used for the display of his relics, and the chamber was the ordinary resting-place of the reliquary, for which purpose the door and the absence of windows would have fitted it. Next to de Marchia's tomb on the other side, the monument of Joan Viscountess _Lisle_ (_ob._ 1463) gives a good illustration of the change of architecture in a hundred and fifty years. The crockets are less free, and straight lines and square members abound; the fine ogee curve of its single arch is weakened by the rather weedy cusps, its shafts have become tiny mouldings, and their capitals mere knops. It is coloured, too, all over, in green and red and yellow, but heavily in comparison with its neighbour. The colour has been unusually well preserved, owing to the fact that the tomb was plastered over, and not discovered till 1809. There is no effigy, but a brass of apparently recent date bears this inscription:--_Hic jacet Joanna Vicecomitilla de Lisle una filiarum et haeredum Thomae Chedder, armiger quae fuit uxor Joannis Vicecomitis de Lisle, filii et haeredis Joannis Comitis Salopiæ et Margaretæ u[=x] ejus unius filiarum et haeredum Ricardi comitis Warwici et Elizabethae uxoris ejus filiæ et haeredis Thomæ de Berkley militis, domini de Berkeley, quæ obiit xv^{mo} die mensis Julii A[=n][=n] D^i MCCCCLXIII._ Lady Lisle's husband was killed at the battle of Chastillon (1453), when he was serving under his father, the famous Earl of Shrewsbury. The painted designs above the three niches should be noticed, and also those of the moulding and fleurs-de-lys at the side. The monument was evidently used as a chantry chapel; but it did not originally stand here. The brass by the north side of the screen (p. 89) may mark the site. The eastern aisles of the transepts are divided off into chapels by two Perpendicular stone screens, that of the south transept having a doorway in it for each chapel. These chapels are thus dedicated, beginning from the south--St. Martin, St. Calixtus, St. David, Holy Cross. From the last-named chapel the chapter-house is reached through an Early English doorway, and a similar doorway (now partly blocked by Biconyll's tomb) led from St. Martin's to a small building, supposed to have been a vestry, which once stood outside. In the south transept there are also--a small door to the tower, a small door with ogee head (p. 96), a rather larger doorway with modern lintel leading to the library (two shafts just above this door have been cut off, and faces very roughly cut on their extremities by way of corbel), and the large doorway leading to the cloister. The principal windows belong to the original work, having been merely filled with Perpendicular tracery. The windows of the south-east aisle contain Decorated tracery, but the tracery of the north-east aisle is not good. The western aisle of the south transept is open; that of the north transept is cut off by a Perpendicular stone screen, which is solid in the southern bay, and through carved in the northern. The latter is, however, boarded up, and used as the vestry of the priest-vicars, the other being the vestry of the vicars-choral. From the priest-vicars' vestry a door leads into a small chamber now used for the water supply, and over the doorway there is a small and pretty figure of a woman under a little niche. There are a very few fragments of Early Perpendicular glass in some of the upper lights of the nave and transept windows. There are also two modern windows at the west end of the nave, and one in the south transept, of which I have been unable to discover the actual designers' names. TRANSEPT CHAPELS.--ST. MARTIN'S, where the obits of Savaric and Jocelin were celebrated, is separated by a solid Perpendicular screen from the adjoining chapel of St. Calixtus. It is now used as the canons' vestry. Partly blocking the old Early English doorway is the tomb of _Biconyll_, who was chancellor in 1454. His will, with a good deal of information about him, is given in the _Somerset Proceedings_ for 1894, by Mr A.S. Bicknell, a descendant. The name was originally Bykenhulle (A.S. for Beacon Hill), and has been spelt in forty-seven different ways. His effigy lies on the tomb, dressed in cassock, long surplice, and _cappa nigra_ or choral cope. The ends of the almuce can be seen in the opening of the cope, and its hood hangs over the shoulders. ST. CALIXTUS' chapel is enclosed on the side of the choir aisle by part of the beautiful ironwork from Beckington's tomb. The doors of this and St. Martin's chapel are also made from the same iron screen. Within the chapel, and near the screen, in strange contrast to it, stands one of those indescribable stoves which disfigure the church, its chimney, as usual, driven through the vault. The east end of the chapel is occupied by the canopy which formed part of Bishop _Beckington's_ tomb till the restoration of 1850, when it was, by an inexcusable act of vandalism, taken down and fixed up in this place (p. 125). This canopy did not cover the tomb, but stood at its foot so as to form the eastern part of a chantry chapel, the tomb being on its south side and the iron screen enclosing it where it jutted into the choir on the north side. It will be noticed that its northern angle was sloped off so as not to present an awkward corner on the side of the choir. The reredos, for such it really is, is a most elaborate and charming piece of work; "pretty" is perhaps the word that describes it best, if "pretty" be taken in its very best sense. Here there is nothing of the suave grace of de Marchia's tomb, nothing of the vigour and truth of the transept capitals, nothing of the noble delicacy of the north porch, which was a delicacy of intellect, while this is a delicacy of execution. It is certainly decadent; even by the side of Sugar's chapel it is over-refined and a thought effeminate, but, with the colour that still covers it fresh and bright, it must have had all the fascination of a splendid piece of jewellery, where profusion of ornament is more desired than structural grace. The cornice is particularly rich with a finely-carved vine ornament, and with two angels, their long outstretched wings minutely feathered, who bear shields having representations of the sacred wounds. The tabernacle work behind the altar is gone, like the altar itself, with the exception of the small niches which formed the sides of the central composition, but the little canopy of the central niche remains to give us a slight idea of its workmanship. The short wings of the reredos have panels and traceried openings, and, on the south, a piscina which looks almost too tiny to be real. The top has a toy-like vault of fan-tracery with little pendants. On the south side of St. Calixtus' chapel is _Dean Husse's_ alabaster tomb (_ob._ 1305), which bears some of the best carved work in the cathedral. The effigy itself is good: it represents the Dean clad in the same choir vestments as the figures on the panels below. These panels should on no account be missed. The first on the left represents the Annunciation with a grace that is not less delightful for the strain of exaggeration which pervades it. The Blessed Virgin (see illustration on p. 101), a lovely figure in long, close-fitting kirtle and mantle thrown gracefully over her shoulders, turns round from the desk at which she is kneeling, and throws out her arms with a quaint gesture of surprise; her crown and nimbus are both of enormous size. A very small Gabriel dashes down from the top corner, bearing a scroll which takes up the whole of the panel; he is preceded by a Dove with very long rays. The next three panels (passing over these with shields) contain three figures of clergy, two of which hold books, and all their short staves. They wear the cassock, long surplice, and a long, graceful choral cope, somewhat like the modern academic gown in shape, the rounded ends of the hooded almuce reach to the knee and are held at the chest by a cord with tassels. There is no better representation of medieval choir vestments in existence than these three figures. The last panel is a curious representation of the Eternal Father holding the crucifix; this remarkable figure has a _very_ long face, great masses of curly hair, a huge crown, and _very_ long hands. The two chapels of the north transept can only be reached through the choir aisle, no doubt because the way to the chapter-house was through them. The first was probably ST DAVID'S chapel. Here should be noticed the capital of the easternmost shaft of the second transept pier--a head with curly hair and handsome smiling face. This shaft is corbelled off, and the corbel through carved in the shape of a lizard eating the leaves of a plant with berries thereon; it is a charming study. The tomb of Bishop _Still_ (1543-1607) in this chapel is under a handsome canopy of warm-coloured marbles, with black columns and red, blue, and gold decoration. The effigy is dressed in rochet and chimere, over which is a red robe lined with white fur; a ruff is round the neck, a close-fitting black cap covers the head and part of the ears, and the rochet is finished at the wrists with a plain black band. In the chapel of the HOLY CROSS the monument of the intruding Bishop _Kidder_, Ken's successor (p. 158, _ob._ 1703), stands on the site of the altar, whither it has been removed from its original position on the south side of the choir. Standing in all its chilly pretentiousness so near to Still's tomb, it well illustrates the immense decline in monumental art which took place during the seventeenth century. The bishop's daughter, who erected the monument, is represented reclining, as, with one arm outstretched, she looks at two urns which are supposed to contain the ashes of her father and mother; underneath is a very long Latin inscription. [Illustration: The Annunciation--Husse's Tomb.] Against the north wall and close to the entrance to the chapter-house stands the tomb of Bishop _Cornish_ (_ob._ 1513). He was chancellor and precentor of Wells, and suffragan bishop under Bishop Fox of Bath and Wells and Bishop Oldham of Exeter, his title being Bishop of Tenos. Part of the inscription remains:--_Obiit supradictus d[)u]s Thomas Tinensis Ep[)u]s tercio die mensis Julii anno ... MCCCCCXIII Cujus Anime p_[_ropitietur Deus A_]_men_. The three panels on the front bear shields--T with a sheaf of corn, Cornish's arms (on a chevron between three birds' heads erased a mitre) and C with a sheaf of corn; on the side panel are the arms of the chapter, the arms, that is, of the see without the pastoral staff. Against the wall within the canopy are some matrices of small brasses, in which the kneeling figure of a bishop, a scroll, and two plates for inscriptions can be traced. [Illustration: Priest In Surplice--Husse's Tomb.] From several peculiarities in Cornish's tomb, I am convinced that it was also used as the _Easter Sepulchre_, where the Host was laid during the concluding days of Holy Week. These sepulchres were often made in connection with a tomb, and the usual place for them was somewhere on the north side of the choir. The position here in the chapel of the Holy Cross (which is an appropriate dedication) would be particularly convenient for the purpose. The chapel was easily reached by the clergy without their having to go into the public part of the church; it was thus as safe a place as the choir itself, and at the same time was much more open to the people, who could pay their devotions from the transept, and through the open stone screen could see the candles burning round the sepulchre. [Illustration: The East End In 1823.] Just where it could be best seen from the transept, on the eastern end of the upper storey of the tomb under the canopy, is a carving of the Resurrection. A wide arch is cut in the stone; within this is carved a square opening, not through-cut, but farther recessed, to represent the mouth of the sepulchre; in front of the square recess is the figure of Christ, issuing from the tomb, clad only in a long mantle, which He holds across His body; the hair is long, the face mutilated, and the hands gone. At the left is the kneeling figure of a bishop, the head gone, but part of the staff remaining in the hands. There is a great crack (now filled with mortar) round these two figures, as if the attack of the iconoclasts had been made with heavy tools. A pedestal at the right-hand corner of the square recess seems a later insertion, as it is loose and does not exactly fit; probably it was added soon after the tomb was made, to hold a small silver figure of an angel, or of a soldier, as there is a little hole (now filled with mortar) at a height above it convenient for rivetting a metal figure. The Sepulchre proper would have consisted of a small coped chest, in shape like a reliquary, round which would be painted the incidents of the Passion. The slab of the tomb, being without the usual recumbent effigy, would have formed the place on which this "coffer" rested, this being the usual method when a tomb was used for the purpose. On Good Friday, the Host, often in a specially-made pyx, was with much ceremony laid in the coffer, together with the altar-cross, and there was kept, surrounded by candles and guarded by watchers, till Easter Day. We know that there was a special provision at Wells for one candle to burn continuously within the Sepulchre "_I cereus in sepulchro cum corpori Dominico qui continue ardebit donec Matutinae cantentur in die Paschae_" (_MS. Harl._ 1682, _fo._ 5). There is a small hole in the east wall of this chapel, close to the tomb and a little below the level of of the slab whereon the coffer would have rested; this may have held a sconce or some ornament. But the _cereus in sepulchro_ was probably a large candle within the chapel, and in accordance with general usage, there would have been other candles burning upon cressets. There are two other holes in the north wall, a few inches to the east of the top of the tomb, which may have held rods for the curtains that were used in much profusion for the adornment of Easter sepulchres. While the coffer stood on the slab it would have hidden the carving of the Resurrection; but on its removal on Easter Day, the carving would have stood in full view of the people, bright, no doubt, with colour and surrounded by lights. It will further be noticed that the tomb stands eighteen inches away from the east wall, the space being now filled with modern masonry; this was probably in order to leave ample room for the sacred ministers in their vestments; had it stood close against the wall the ceremonial could not have been conveniently carried out. Near the tomb is the doorway, with a fine old oak door, which leads into the chapter-house; and above the tomb is a window which was blocked up when the vestibule was built, and a bracket set in the masonry. THE CLOCK is a great favourite with visitors, who generally congregate in the north transept at the striking of the hour and laugh gently to one another when the quaint performance is over. "Jack Blandiver" (this is the name given him by the country people for some undiscovered reason) kicks his bell at each quarter in the most life-like manner, his feet trembling afterwards with the exertion; but at the hour, after Jack has sounded his four quarters, as the big bell begins to toll, the four "knights" above the clock rush round in contrary directions, and charge each other with so much ferocity that one unfortunate is felled at each encounter, and has barely time to recover his upright position before he is again and again knocked down with resounding clatter upon his horse's back. The other three fight twenty-four times a day unscathed. The clock was thus described by Mr Octavius Morgan, F.R.S., in the _Archaeological Journal_ for 1883: "In the Cathedral of Wells is what remains of the ancient clock which once belonged to Glastonbury Abbey. This very curious timepiece is said to have been originally executed by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of the abbey, but at the cost of Adam de Sodbury, who was promoted to the abbacy in 1322. It appears to have been originally placed in the south transept of Glastonbury Abbey Church, where it continued till the Dissolution, when, tradition says, it was carried to Wells and placed in the north transept of the cathedral with all its belongings--viz. the figure which strikes the quarters with his heels on two little bells within the church, and the two "knights" which perform the same service with their battle axes on the outside. The inside figure strikes the hour on a bell before him with a battle-axe in his hands. The face of the dial is 6 feet in diameter, contained in a square frame, the spandrels of which are filled with angels holding in their hands the head of a man; the outer circle is painted blue, with gilt stars scattered over it, and is divided into twenty-four parts, corresponding with the twenty-four hours; the horary numbers are in black-letter characters on circular tablets, and mark the hours from twelve at noon to midnight, and from thence to midnight again (noon and midnight being marked by a cross instead of a numeral). The hour index, a large gilt star or sun, is attached to the machinery behind a second circle which conceals all except the index. On the second circle are marked the minutes, indicated by a smaller star; a third and lesser circle contains the numbers of the days of the month, which is marked by a point attached to a small circular opening in the plate, through which the phases of the moon are shown. On the opposite side is a female figure, with the motto _Semper peragrat Phoebe_. "An arched pediment surmounts the whole, with an octagonal projection from its base like a gallery, capped with a row of battlements, forming a cornice to the face of the clock. A panelled and battlemented turret is fixed in the centre, round which four figures mounted on horses revolve in opposite directions, as if charging at a tournament, when set in motion by a communication with the clockwork, to be made at pleasure; these are commonly called _knights_, but their costume is only that of ordinary persons. The movement is at a distance from the dial, and connected with it by a long horizontal rod; the dial work was close at the back of the dial. The revolving figures on horseback are moved by a separate weight, and are set in motion by the freeing of a detent. The old boarding at the back [in the vestry of the vicars-choral] is painted black, with a diaper scroll of foliage with red and white roses. The female figure on the dial, representing the moon, is always kept upright by a balance weight; the quarter-boys inside, who strike the quarters, are much later, having _knee-breeches_. "The outside dial has now two hands; it was once like a star with only one hand. The bells outside are struck by two figures in armour, _temp._ Henry VIII., probably put up when it was removed from Glastonbury. "The clock seems to have remained without alteration after it was then put up, till the present modern movement, made by Thwaites & Reed of Clerkenwell, was, in the time of Dean Goodenough, substituted for it, and the old original movement was taken and deposited in the crypt under the chapter-house, where it remained uncared for, for many years, during which time, 1853, I visited and examined it, made notes of it, and took drawings of it. The great wheel has ninety teeth, and the pinion, a lantern-pinion, had nine leaves, or rather bars; the second wheel had sixty teeth; the remainder of the works were all disjointed and bent, and remained unheeded." The whole is now fitted together, and in a going condition, in the mechanical museum at South Kensington. The _Antiquary_ for August 1897 ("Some Mediaeval Mechanicians") reminds us that, as the clock was in constant use at Glastonbury for about 250 years, and then at Wells for another 250 years, and as the old movement is now still working at the South Kensington, "as though its life were interminable"--it is probably the oldest piece of working mechanism extant. The same article says of these old works: "It will give an idea of the labour involved, when it is stated the mechanism of the clock occupies a space of about 5 feet cube (125 cubic feet), that the structure is wholly of forged iron; that the numerous wrought-iron wheels, some of which are nearly 2 feet in diameter and about ½ inch thick, besides having to be made truly circular and concentric, had all their teeth cut out and trimmed to workable shape by hand; and that the heavy wrought-iron frames, etc., are fastened entirely by means of mortise, tenon, and colter, no screws being used in the whole structure. The pinions are of the lantern form, with octagonal cheek-plates on square spindles, and the pendulum of modern form beats seconds." THE INVERTED ARCHES.--Undoubtedly the first thing that the stranger notices in Wells Cathedral, and the last that he is likely to forget, is the curious contrivance by which the central tower is supported. Of the three pairs of arches (the upper arch resting inverted upon the lower) which stretch across the nave and each of the transepts, that in the nave is seen at once, and lends a unique character to the whole church. At first these arches give one something of a shock, so unnecessarily frank are they, so excessively sturdy, so very English, we may think. They carry their burden as a great-limbed labourer will carry a child in a crowd, to the great advantage of the burden, and the natural dissatisfaction of the crowd. In fact, they seem to block up the view, and to deform what they do not hide. That is the first impression, but it does not last for long. Familiarity breeds respect for this simple, strong device, which arrested the fall of the tower in the fourteenth century, and has kept its walls ever since in perfect security, so that the great structure has stood like a rock upon the watery soil of Wells for nearly seven centuries, with its rents and breaks just as they were when the damage was first repaired. The ingenuity, too, of these strange flying buttresses becomes more and more evident; the "ungainly props" are seen to be so worked into the tower they support, that they almost seem like part of the original design of the first builders. One discovers that it is the organ, and not the arches, that really blocks the view, and one marvels that so huge a mass of masonry can look so light as to present, with the great circles in the spandrels where the arches meet, "a kind of pattern of gigantic geometrical tracery." Indeed, I think no one who has been in Wells a week could wish to see the inverted arches removed. Professor Willis, who had made a most careful investigation of the masonry, thus describes the cause and the construction of the inverted arches (_Somerset Proceedings, 1863, i. 21_): "It is evident that the weight of the upper storey of the tower completed in 1321 had produced fearful settlements, the effects of which may still be seen in the triforium arches of the nave, and transepts next to the tower, which are dragged downwards and deformed, partly rebuilt, filled up, and otherwise exhibiting the signs so often seen under central towers, of a thorough repair. The great piers of the tower are cased and connected by a stone framework, which is placed under the north, south, and west tower-arches, but not under the east. This framework consists of a low pointed arch, upon which rests an inverted arch of the same form, so as to produce a figure somewhat resembling a St. Andrew's cross, to use the happy phrase applied by Leland to a similar contrivance introduced for a similar reason [but at a later date] into the central tower arches of Glastonbury." To this description there only needs to be added a mention of the circles which occupy the spandrels, and help to prevent the whole structure from seeming a mere inert mass of masonry. To appreciate the work fully, it should be looked at from some spot, such as the north-east corner of the north transept, whence the three great pairs of arches can be seen together. The effect from here is very fine, especially when the nave is lighted up, and strong shadows are cast. The extreme boldness of the mouldings, the absence of shafts and capitals and of all ornament, give them a primitive vigour, and their great intermingling curves, which contrast so magnificently with the little shafts of the piers beyond, seem more like a part of some great mountain cavern than a mere device of architectural utility. [Illustration: The Inverted Arches, From The North Transept.] At the same time as the arches were built, flying buttresses were inserted further to secure the tower, and they can be seen blocking up the triforium and clerestory of those bays, in nave, choir, and transepts, which adjoin it. Other repairs were necessary, for the pier-arches of the same bays in nave and transepts were completely shattered, and had to be replaced by the present ones, the queer-looking capitals of which contrast so oddly with the earlier work. It is instructive, also, to compare the lightness of these fourteenth-century mouldings with the boldness of those, wrought at exactly the same time, of the great inverted arches. THE TOWER.--Besides its inverted arches and other signs of repair, the tower is mainly noticeable for its Perpendicular fan-tracery vault of fifteenth-century date. This vault hides the lantern with its arcades, and thus destroys one of the elements of distance and mystery which, before the advent of the more prosaic Perpendicular period, had been a characteristic of Gothic architecture. Nothing else but the desire for uniformity can account for this unjustifiable addition; for there can have been no intention of hanging bells in the lantern when there were already two western bell-towers. The lantern, with its cracked masonry, can be seen during the ascent of the tower (p. 47). The shafts of the eastern tower arches were corbelled off at some height from the ground, in order to allow the stalls of the first ritual choir to be set flat against the wall. This shows that Bishop Reginald, when he rebuilt the church, kept to the old Romanesque arrangement and made his choir under the tower, reserving his three bays of what is now the choir for the presbytery--a very dignified arrangement. The square holes for fixing the wooden screen of this earlier choir can still be traced on the aisle walls in a line with the ninth piers of the nave. THE SCREEN was built in the fourteenth century; but Salvin altered and spoilt it by bringing forward the middle portion to carry the unsightly organ. Mr Freeman objected very strongly to the choir being shut off from the nave by this screen, and urged the authorities to pull it down and throw the whole church open from end to end. The remedy suggested by Mr St. John Hope, on the other hand, is that a second screen should be erected under the western arch of the tower, against which the nave or rood altar should stand, with seats for the choir on either side. Such a screen as this was certainly used in conventual churches, and would be more in accord with the spirit of medieval architecture, which was content to sacrifice the grandeur of great space in order to gain the qualities of seclusion and mystery, and inexhaustible variety. Two things, at least, are certain. The long-established custom of crowding the Sunday congregation into the choir should be abolished, and the organ should be modified or removed. Magnificent Sunday services could be held in the nave, either with a second screen and altar or without a screen at all; but, as the former plan could be tried without any destruction of old work, it should be tried first. [Illustration: Choir, Looking West.] As for the organ, the cathedral will always be defaced while it remains as a whole in the midst of the screen. Musical experts could no doubt distribute it so that it would no longer be an offence to the eye, and yet would sound more effectively than at present. Perhaps galleries for the swell, pedal, and great organs might be built above the pier-arches in the western bay of the choir on either side, and the consol, with the choir organ, might remain on the screen. Some fragments of tabernacle work on the triforium level would thus be hidden, but it is unremarkable work, exactly similar to that of the adjoining bays, and, moreover, it was so blocked and patched when the tower was strengthened that it would not be a disadvantage to hide it. As it is, the organ, unsightly in shape, and garishly painted, blocks up the view of the splendid east window, and makes the nave a mere vestibule to the choir. The inverted arches are generally thought to block up the church, but were the organ removed it would be found that they do not. THE ORGAN is a modern instrument by Willis. Dean Creyghton, a musician whose services are still sung in the cathedral, built the old organ in 1664, and S. Green of London repaired it in 1786, but only one diapason remains of the old stops. The case also disappeared, the present one being among the ugliest in England. There are three manuals; thirteen speaking stops on the great organ, ten on the swell, nine on the choir, and eight on the pedal organ. The swell organ is rather small, but has been recently improved; the pedal organ is the best feature of the instrument. The wind is supplied by hydraulic machinery. There are four pneumatic pistons, six couplers, and seven composition pedals. The organist now sits on the south side, so that he can see his choristers, whether they sing in the choir or the nave. THE CHOIR.--The western part of the choir should be particularly noticed. For, while the three eastern bays which form the presbytery are Late Decorated, the three western bays of the choir are twelfth-century work of Bishop Reginald's time, being, in fact, the oldest part of the interior. That they were finished before Reginald's other work in the transepts and nave is not only likely from the general custom of medieval architects, but is made probable by the carving of the capitals, which is less advanced than that in any other part of the church. It will be noticed, however, that, though the three arches remain of the earlier bays, the two easternmost _piers_ of the old part are Decorated, like those in the three later bays; and some of their arch mouldings have been cut away in order to fit the new capitals. The reason for this peculiar combination of a new pier with an old arch is an interesting one. The original pier marked the east end of Reginald's church, and it was taken from under its arch because, being at the junction of the east wall with the side walls, it was a large compound pier quite unfitted to stand as one of an arcade. The three bays then formed the presbytery of the church, and the choir was placed, Norman fashion, under the tower. A further evidence of this being the original east end of the church is presented by the two early buttresses outside at this point, which are much wider than any of the others. But there must have been an ambulatory beyond the east end of the old church, since Reginald's work is carried a bay farther east in the choir aisles. There may, too, have been a small chapel beyond. Speaking of the contrast between the three early bays and the later work, Freeman says: "The new work, though exceedingly graceful, is perhaps too graceful; it has a refinement and minuteness of detail which is thoroughly in place in a small building like the Lady Chapel, but which gives a sort of feeling of weakness when it is transferred to a principal part of the church of the full height of the building. The three elder arches are all masculine vigour; the three newer arches are all feminine elegance; but it strikes me that feminine elegance, thoroughly in its place in the small chapels, is hardly in its place in the presbytery." Certainly, the mouldings of the later arches will not bear comparison with those of the earlier. The suave strength of the transitional mouldings forms a most instructive contrast to the less effective minuteness of the decadent work. The same is true of the capitals: those of the later period have little architectural significance, and many of them are further weakened by the fact that not the capital only, but the adjoining part of the shaft as well, is cut out of white stone. With the exception, however, of the three pier-arches themselves, there are few signs of the twelfth-century work. For, when the new presbytery was finished, the clerestory over the old arches was altered, and the triforium cased with tabernacle work (though not in quite so rich a style), so as to bring them into harmony with the fourteenth-century work, and to fit them to carry the new vault. The tabernacle work of the presbytery must have been completed first; for no attempt was made to keep it at the same level with the old part, which, when the builders determined to adapt it to the new, caused a very marked break at the juncture. [Illustration: CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. PROCESSION PATH AND LADY PATH BEYOND.] There is, strictly speaking, no triforium, the space being occupied by the rather florid tabernacle work, the effect of which is, of course, considerably impaired by the absence of statuary. The niches in the presbytery are deeper than those in the choir; they spring direct from the pier-arches, having no spandrel, and they contain richly-foliated brackets, which rest on triple shafts. This part is also marked by triple vaulting shafts of Purbeck, which are carried down to the floor. The clerestory windows contain flowing tracery of an advanced and not very good type. In some the plain mullions are carried on through the head of the window and intersect each other. Above the tabernacle work of the east end is the east window of seven lights, the last bit of the fourteenth-century reconstruction, the last flicker of Decorated freedom. Its curious tracery is still beautiful, doubly so for the glass it enshrines, but the rule and square of Perpendicular domination have already set their mark upon it; the two principal mullions run straight up to the window-head, and part of the tracery between them is rectangular. The inhabitants of Wells are, or were, exceedingly proud of the "vista" into the procession-path and Lady Chapel, which is afforded by the three dainty pointed arches of the east end. So proud were they that they would suffer nothing to stand behind the high altar but a low stone wall, barely higher than the altar itself, an arrangement which, it is hardly necessary to point out, defeated its own end by reducing the whole effect to absolute baldness. Mr Freeman wisely pointed out the need of a respectable reredos, remarking that the original founders never dreamed of the Lady Chapel acting as a "peep-show to the choir." A Lady Chapel, he added, was built specially not to be peeped into, but to be a thing apart from the great whole of the church, from the high altar westward. After a while, a reredos was offered to the church, and approved by Mr J.D. Sedding, who was then the cathedral architect; but there was much opposition, and the scheme was dropped. Dean Plumptre, with characteristic temerity, went so far as to appeal to the witness of the _vox populi_ that the open view was the best. Since then, wiser counsels have prevailed, and a curtain (small and dingy, it is true, but still a curtain) now hangs behind the altar. While giving a measure of dignity to the east end, it, of course, emphasises, as every architect must have known that it would, the charm of the "peep" into the chapels beyond. A larger reredos would further enhance the peculiar charm of the east end. There can, indeed, be little doubt that the ancient reredos was of tabernacle work, so as to carry on the effect of niches of the triforium storey. Their present disconnectedness can be no part of the original plan, and a reredos full of statues, which was high enough to group adequately with the rich canopies above could have been the only way to secure dignity and unity of effect. Till an architect is found capable of mastering so delicate a problem of proportion as such a reredos must present, we may well be content with a larger and brighter curtain. The low east wall, with its ugly cresting, warns us not to embark too rashly upon modern stonework. The lierned stone vault, with its heavy, angular ribs, is of a very unusual kind. Mr Freeman described it as "a coved roof, such as we are used to in woodwork in this part of England, only with cells cut in it for the clerestory windows." The restorers have gilded the bosses, but the space between the ribs is smoothed in a way that gives the appearance of there being no masonry in the construction. One can hardly judge the ceiling, therefore, by its present appearance, which is not further improved by the green wash with which some of the clerestory windows are covered. The general appearance of the choir suffers pitiably from the ill-advised restoration of 1848 and the following years. Before that time its aspect must have been curious and encumbered; but the judicious removal of the pews and galleries, and the restoration of the truncated oak canopies of the stalls, would have made matters right at a small cost, and without the destruction of any old woodwork. As it was, everything was ruthlessly swept away. The tabernacled stalls, which eighteenth-century vandalism had respected, vanished utterly before the restoring mania of the Gothic revivalist, even their traditional position and order being changed. The result is just what might have been expected. The place has been completely modernised. Chilly stone canopies cover the stalls; they are of the kind of workmanship which forty years ago was considered excellent. That is to say, they are covered with frigid, ungainly, and pompous ornament, cut with mechanical regularity, and without one trace of feeling or one line of beauty from beginning to end. Below, and between them, the choir is encumbered, much as it was before 1848, with rows of stalls, which are continued in the presbytery almost up to the tawdry brass altar-rails. Two more pale ghosts of medieval art front each other in complacent parody of the work their makers could not even copy--the pulpit and the bishop's throne. The former is Early Victorian; the latter is worse, it is a restoration of Perpendicular work so relentless that not a sign of the original conception remains. Plate-glass fills the tracery at the sides, and the door is a piece of solid swinging stone. On the completion of this terrible work, the restorers seem to have felt dimly the want of colour, which previously had been so abundant. They therefore proceeded to furnish with that peculiar musty red which used to cast a gloom over our childhood--red cushions on the seats, red cushions on the desks, red hassocks on the floor, red edges to the books, hot red in the bishop's throne, dull red on the altar, before the altar, and behind the altar, it is all red but the chilly white stone, and the all-pervading woodwork of the seats, which adds the muddy gloom of oak that has been stained and varnished to the miserable poverty of the whole. The cause of all this desolation was just the ignorance of its promoters as to the functions of a cathedral. The choir was looked upon as a select church for the leading families of the town, and the seats in it were appropriated; the nave was a vast empty space that was never used for worship at all. Hence the organ on the screen, hence the setting back of the stalls, so that the choir might be widened, and more seats "rammed, jammed, crammed," to use Freeman's indignant words, into the space. Instead of the long continuous range of stalls which formerly existed, there are now groups of five under each arch, with the result that ten of the prebendaries are without accommodation. Such is the heavy legacy of blunders with which the dean and chapter are burdened. It will take many a year before the choir can be redeemed from its unfortunate state; but the present arrangement of the altar is a great improvement on its position only a few years ago, and no doubt similar measures will in time completely efface the traces of 1850. Of the old woodwork the MISERICORDS have alone escaped destruction. Sixty-four of these remain, fifty of which belonged to the prebendal stalls of the upper row, though they were removed from their proper position at the restoration. Sixty of the seats are now in the lower rows of the stalls, the other four are preserved in the library. It is enough to say of them that no finer examples of wood-carving can be seen in England. The following description of the wonderfully fresh and varied subjects was supplied by Mr St. John Hope for a paper read by Canon Church before the _Society of Antiquaries_ in March 1896:-- _South side, first row._--1, a goat (broken); 2, a griffin fighting with a lion(?); 3, a man in hood and drawers riding with his face to the tail of a barebacked horse; 4, a hawk preying on a rabbit; 5, a mermaid (unfinished); 6, two popinjays in a fruit tree; 7, an ape carrying a basket of fruit on his back (broken); 8, a double-bodied monster; 9, a dog-headed griffin; 10, two goats butting (unfinished); 11, a monkey holding an owl (unfinished); 12, two dragons interlocked and biting each other's tails; 13, an ewe suckling a lamb (unfinished); 14, a wyvern and a horse fighting. _South side, second row._--15, a mermaid suckling a lion; 16, a man holding a cup? (broken), sitting on the ground, and disputing with another man holding a pouch; 17, a cat preying on a mouse (unfinished); 18, a monster with bat's wings; 19, a griffin devouring a lamb; 20, a puppy biting a cat; 21, a man in a contorted position upholding the seat; 22, a serious-looking dog; 23, a cat playing a fiddle; 24, a man seated on the ground and thrusting a dagger through the head of a dragon with feathered wings; 25, bust of a bishop, in amice, chasuble, and mitre (unfinished); 26, a peacock in his pride; 27, a fox preaching to four geese, one of which has fallen asleep (broken); 28, a cock crowing. _North side, first row._--29, a lion dormant; 30, a dragon with expanded wings, asleep; 31, a man with his left eye closed, wearing a cloak and squatting on the ground with his hands on his knees; 32, a fox running off with a goose in his mouth; 33, head of a man with donkey's ears; 34, two monsters with male and female human heads, caressing (unfinished); 35, a man on his back upholding the seat with his right hand and right foot; 36, a lion with the ears of an ass; 37, a hawk scratching its head; 38, a sleeping cat (unfinished); 39, a woman with dishevelled hair and agonised expression, crouching on the ground with the right hand on her shoulder, the other extended; 40, a dragon with hairy belly biting his back; 41, two ducks addorsed, one with his beak open; 42, two dragons fighting (unfinished); 43, a bat's head (unfinished). _North side, second row._--44, head of a man with bushy hair and beard, with a lion's leg growing out of each side; 45, a man in tunic and hood, lying on his side and clasping his hands; 46, a man in girded tunic, with his head downwards, upholding the seat with his back and left hand; 47, head of a lady with hair in a caul on each side, covered with a veil confined by an ornate fillet; 48, a gentle-looking lion; 49, a bat displayed; 50, head of an angel, with amice round neck and expanded wings; 51, a lion; 52, two doves about to drink from a ewer standing in a basin (unfinished); 53, a squirrel with a collar round his neck, trying to escape from a monkey who holds him by a cord; 54, a wood-pigeon feeding; 55, a man riding on a lion, to whose buttocks he is applying a whip; 56, a boar and a cat with cloven feet, walking in opposite directions; 57, an eagle displayed (unfinished); 58, head and shoulders of a man who upholds the seat with his hands; 59, a rabbit regardant; 60, a two-legged beast regarding its tail, which is formed of three oak-leaves on one stem. _In the Library._--61, a man in hood and loose tunic, kneeling on the ground and thrusting a spear down the throat of a dragon; 62, a boy in gown, with long, wavy hair, lying on his side and drawing a thorn out of his left foot (of coarse late seventeenth-century work); 63, a dove or pigeon feeding her young; 64, a sorrowful-looking king sitting cross-legged on a cushion between two rampant griffins, who are secured by straps buckled round their necks. GLASS IN THE CHOIR.--Over the high altar is a superb specimen of the Jesse window. It is so intricate, that at first nothing can be distinguished in the glow of jewelled colour but the twining branches of the vine, and a little time is needed to enter into the spirit of a window that is all the more enduring for not being very obvious. The following excellent description by Canon Church (in a sermon preached in the cathedral on May Day 1890) will make the legend easy to decipher:-- "In the central light are the foremost figures of the Bible story. At the base is the recumbent figure of Jesse with name inscribed, with head resting on hand as in meditation. From that figure, as from the vine stem, issues upward the leading shoot, bearing upon it the figures of the Virgin Mother crowned with ruby nimbus, and the Holy Child with gold nimbus, both under a golden canopy. Above, in line, is the Crucifixion. On either side, the waving tendrils of the vine shoots intertwine themselves in rings of light round figures of those who prepared the way for the advent of the Word Incarnate. On the lower tier, in line with Jesse, are, we may believe, the ancestors of Jesse. Amminadab and Obed are inscribed on two of the pedestals--others are nameless. Stately figures they are in face and form, in flowing mantles of green, and ruby and gold, like Arab chiefs, some with the Arab head-covering such as is worn to-day--figures such as some artist in the last crusading host might have seen and designed, so different from the conventional portraiture of Bible characters. "In the second tier are the Kings and Prophets chosen to represent the heralds of the Babe of Bethlehem, the Word Incarnate. Three kings--David with his 'immortal harp of golden wires'; Solomon, with Temple model in his hand, in robes of emerald, and ruby, and gold, are on either side of the central Figures; and Jechonias, the link in the pedigree between the royal David and the captive exile. Three Prophets--Abraham, misplaced indeed in order of time, but most fitly in place as 'the father of the faithful, unto whom and through whom the gospel was before preached to the Gentiles' (Gal. iii. 8); Hosea, and Daniel. All these are clad in the magnificence of Oriental drapery, the colours of each pair on either side of the central light answering like to like. Some are looking upward, some are pointing with outstretched hand towards The Child, towards the Crucified One. "There in central light in the mid-panel of the window is the Virgin Mother and the Holy Child, The Child born in Bethlehem the home of Jesse, not in David's royal Palace, the flowering shoot of the stem of Jesse. Now from His throne on His Mother's knee He looks out over the world and as with outstretched arms to embrace. A ray of white light on the Mother's head gives a natural halo of purity to Her 'the highly favoured' 'with grace replete,' whom all generations have called 'blessed,' as she looks down wondering on the Holy Child. "A subdued and sadder colour seems to veil the subject of the highest panel in the central light. There is the green Cross in the background, and upon it are affixed the attenuated arms and the bent form of the Crucified--the head drooping on the breast. On either side of the Cross stand, the sorrowing Mother on the right, in attitude of calm resignation, very different from the conventional garb of mourning, and the exaggerated expression of grief in so many paintings; on the other hand St. John, in sadder colours and the gloom of grief. Again above, in two of the smaller six-cusped lights, are figures rising from the tomb, and in the two at the side are angels blowing trumpets calling to judgment. At the head and apex of the window are outstretched wings as of the Holy Spirit like the Dove brooding over the world re-created by the Word made Flesh, giving Himself for our redemption." The clerestory windows contained a figure under a canopy in each of the lower lights. Four of these old windows remain. One light in the north-east window contains a St. George, thus described by Mr C. Winston (_Arch. Soc., Bristol vol._): "He is clad in a surcoat which reaches to the knee. He wears a helmet, avant and rerebras, shin-pieces and sollerets of plate, or rather cuir boulli; the rest of his person is defended with mail, on his shoulders are aiglettes." In the next window are St. Egidias with very distended ears, and St. Gregory in a tiara. There are also two modern windows; a glaring one by Willement has St. Dunstan and St. Benignus, who were both abbots of Glastonbury and St. Honorius; another, by Bell, has Augustine, Ambrose, and Athanasius. THE AISLES OF THE CHOIR are entered from the transepts by ogee arches, which have crockets and finials, and are flanked by a pair of pinnacles on either side. The aisles are of the same character as the choir itself, as they were vaulted when the choir vault was made, and new windows of the Decorated style were inserted in the western bays as well as in the newer part. There is a stone bench along the aisles on both sides, and on the north side some very fine specimens of Early English carving lie on the bench. The vaulting is lierned with four bosses at each intersection. The foliage of the third group of capitals on the north side consists of a single leaf which runs horizontally round the caps. Two old wooden doors, with fine hinges, close the entrance to the presbytery on the north and south sides. The body of Bishop Jocelin lies buried in the midst of the choir, where he was laid in the place of honour as a founder. Bishop Godwin relates that the tomb was "monstrously defaced" in his time, and all traces of the burying-place were lost until, in 1874, an ancient freestone coffin was found under the pavement in the midst of the choir. Its covering stone had been broken, and the bones within disturbed; but on its discovery the stone was renewed, and the inscription _Jocelinus de Welles, Ep._ 1242 cut on it. THE SOUTH-EAST TRANSEPT is the chapel of St. John the Evangelist, but it is mainly occupied by a stove, one of those characterised by Mr Freeman as "the most hideous stoves with which human perversity ever disfigured an ancient building." Odds and ends are also kept here, in accordance with the extraordinary idea, not yet quite extinct, that a chapel is a place where rubbish may be shot. There is, nevertheless, a decorated piscina in the east wall to remind one of its former purpose. Against the south wall is the tomb of the learned _Dean Gunthorpe_ (1472-98), who built the present Deanery, and gave to the cathedral a silver image of our Lady, 158 oz. in weight. His initials occur on the panels, I.G. on a blue ground, and also his arms, which include guns, in allusion to his name. There are traces of colour, especially a strong light blue on the panels. Unless one has good nerves, it is advisable not to look at the window, which was given by the students of the Theological College under Canon Pindar, its first Principal. The middle of this unfortunate chapel is encumbered with a monument to _Dean Jenkyns_ (_ob._ 1854), the ornamentation of which may be taken as marking the lowest point to which the debasement of Gothic design has descended. A row of tiles round it serves to make it more conspicuous, and its unhappy prominence is further secured by a low brass railing of unutterably bad workmanship. It was Dean Jenkyns who restored the choir, and Professor Freeman remarks that on his tomb "is written, with an unconscious sarcasm, _Multum ei debet ecclesia Wellensis_," words which, he slily points out, seem to be borrowed from Lucan's address to Nero, the destroyer of Rome, _Multum Roma tamen debet_, etc. MONUMENTS IN THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.--Besides two of the thirteenth-century effigies of earlier bishops, there are in this aisle two ancient monuments of great interest. In the second bay is the tomb of _Saint William Bytton_ (1267-1274), a low slab of Purbeck marble, with the figure of a bearded and fully-vested bishop, in the act of benediction, cut upon it. This is the oldest incised slab in England; and it was at this tomb that the offerings were made which helped to finish the church. Godwin says that "many superstitious people (especially such as were troubled with the tooth-ake) were wont (even of late yeeres) to frequent much the place of his buriall, being without the North [a mistake for south] side of the Quier, where we see a Marble stone, having a pontificall image graven upon it." It may have once been more raised than now, and four small plugged holes in the masonry of the wall opposite suggest the existence of some arrangement in connection with the devotions here. In the restoration of 1848 the tomb was discovered between the second and third piers of the south choir aisle. It is thus described by Mr J.R. Clayton, an eye-witness on the occasion: "On the coffin being opened in the presence of Dean Jenkyns, it contained a skeleton laid out in perfect order, every bone in its right place; an iron ring, and a small wooden pastoral staff in two fragments; a leaden tablet, 10 in. by 3-1/3, with inscription most beautifully rendered in Lombardic characters. _Hie jacet Willelmus de Button secundus Bathoniensis et Wellensis episcopus sepultus XII. die Decembris anno domini MCCLXXIIII_." It was noted at the same time that "the teeth were absolutely perfect in number, shape, and order, and without a trace of decay, and hardly any discoloration." From this one would infer that the saint was famous in his lifetime for his beautiful teeth, and that it was for this reason that his aid came to be invoked after his death by those suffering from toothache. It is certainly curious that men now living should have discovered his teeth to be still in such perfect preservation. His contemporaries would, no doubt, have called it a miracle. A little farther east is the remarkable tomb of _Bishop Beckington_, surrounded by an exquisite iron screen of the same period. Its canopy formerly projected into the choir, being large enough to form a small chantry; but, when the choir was so stupidly restored, the canopy was dragged from its place, and set up in St. Calixtus' chapel, where it still is (p. 99,) a hard-looking stone screen being built between the tomb and the choir in its stead. The tomb is divided into two parts, the arcade which forms the canopy of the lower effigy supporting the slab on which rests the figure of the bishop. The carving is very beautiful, and the delicately-wrought wings of the angels, which spread over the arches so as to fill the spandrels, are especially fine. Traces of colour are strong on the tomb, as they are on the canopy from which it has been divorced, so that one can form some little idea of what the whole must have been like in its first magnificence. The effigy of the bishop rests upon it, the old and wrinkled face (best seen from within the choir) bearing deep traces of that active public life which did so much for the city and the church. Below, in strange contrast to the gorgeous vestments, which have still the remnants of the painted pattern on them, lies a corpse, almost a skeleton, in its open shroud. At first one's feeling is that of repulsion, but it is lessened when we remember that Beckington himself had the tomb made, and consecrated it before a vast concourse of people, saying mass for his own soul, for those of his parents, and of all the faithful departed in the January of 1452. Thus for thirteen years did this great and famous prelate live with his tomb standing as a witness to all that, under those sumptuous robes of office which we are told he wore at its consecration, he knew himself to be but as other men, and could wait humbly for his end. A little farther east is a large and rather clumsy effigy of _Bishop Harewell_ (_ob._ 1386), whose name and arms are suggested, in the playful fashion of the time, by two hares at his feet. Harewell is known to have been a portly man. To the west of Beckington's monument an altar tomb in reddish alabaster has been placed in memory of _Lord Arthur Hervey,_ the late bishop, with an effigy by Mr Brock. It may be hoped that it is the last of its kind, since there is little room for more tombs, and great need of other and more useful forms of memorial. _Bishop Drokensford's_ tomb, at the entrance to the south-east transept, is of unusual design, the ogee heads of its panels being through-cut from side to side. Only the bases remain of its canopy, which was taken down in 1758, as it was thought to be in danger of falling. There is a good deal of colour on the tomb; the chasuble is red with green lining, its orphreys are painted on the stone. The apparel is also painted on the alb, the orphreys and ornaments on the mitre, and a lozenge-shaped pattern on the cushion. Two shields are emblazoned over and over again on the spandrels, the ground being alternately red and green with white sprays of foliage; the coat with four swans' heads, couped and addorsed, is Drokensford's. He was bishop when Dean Godelee's great works were going on, and he gave money towards building the central tower. MONUMENTS OF THE NORTH CHOIR AISLE.--One of the Early English effigies, which were made probably by Bishop Jocelin, lies here, with a modern inscription, to _Bishop Giso_. There are four others, to _Æthelwyn, Leofric, Duduc_, and _Burwold_, all having the same characteristics, in the ambulatory chapels and opposite aisle. Graceful and solemn as they are, they seem rough in outline, as if they were carved by a hand used to calculating for the distant views of the west front, and almost weather-worn, by the side of the more highly-finished effigies in marble and alabaster which are near them. In the year 1848, when these monuments were set back and placed on their present ugly bases, they were found to contain boxes with bones therein, and leaden tablets with the name of each bishop inscribed upon them. A different monument is that of _Ralph of Shrewsbury_ (_ob._ 1363), whose marble effigy, scored by the names of long-departed vandals, affords a good example of the episcopal ornaments, the mitre, gloves, maniple, the apparel round the neck, and the vexillum round the crozier. The tomb formerly stood surrounded by a grating, in the midst of the presbytery, for Ralph was the "finisher" of the church. But it was afterwards moved, and, says Godwin, it "lost his grates by the way." At the entrance to the little transept is the tomb of _Dean Forrest_ (_ob._ 1446), similar to that of Drokensford in the opposite aisle, but more mutilated. The canopy is gone, but fragments of it are in the undercroft of the chapter-house. THE NORTH-EAST TRANSEPT is the chapel of St. John Baptist, and contains a Decorated piscina. On its east wall is a sculpture of the Ascension, which formerly was fixed in the east cloister above the I.H.S. in the fourth bay. St. Andrew with his cross may be noticed among the Apostles. There are traces of blue in the background, and of red in one of the cloaks. Most noticeable among its monuments is the handsome marble sarcophagus and effigy _of Bishop Creyghton_, who gave the lectern. The figure is vested in cope, mitre, and alb, a fact which is worth noting, as the bishop lived in the reign of Charles II. There is also an effigy of _John de Myddleton_ or Milton, who, after being chancellor for a very short time, became a friar and died in 1337. The plain tomb of _Bishop Berkele_ (_ob._ 1581) bears a curious inscription, which assumes more than the character of its subject would seem to warrant: _Spiritvs, ervpto, salvvs, gilberte novembre, carcere principis en(c) aethere barkle, crepat. añ: dãt ista salutis._ Which may thus be translated, "Thy soul is safe, Gilbert Barkley, having broken from its prison in the beginning of November, it speaks from the sky. These words give the year of its safety," The words referred to are in the middle part of the tomb-- _Vixi, videtis præmium: 83 Lvxi, redux quieascibus. Pro, captua gendo præsulis Septem per annos triplices_ The figures 83 at the side of _Vixi_ and _Lvxi_ suggested to Mr J. Parker that the letters stood also for figures thus--vi (6) xi (11) lv (55) xi (11), the total being 83, which was the age at which Berkeley died. The quatrain may be translated-- "I have lived, you see my reward: I have shone, returning to my rest. Having held the office of bishop For seven times three years." The east end of the north aisle forms a roomy chapel which is dedicated to St. Stephen, and contains a piscina of the same type as those in the neighbouring chapels. Its east window has five lights, and that in the side wall has three, with good reticulated tracery; the principal mouldings are already assuming the large flat hollow form which was to become characteristic of the Perpendicular style. The chapel of St. Catherine on the south side corresponds to it exactly. [Illustration: Procession Path And Lady Chapel.] THE PROCESSION PATH, or, to use the uglier and more accurate word, the Retro-choir, is a rectangular space between these chapels and the transepts, on the north and south, and the Lady Chapel and presbytery on the east and west. This space is vaulted; and the vault is carried by four slender piers of Purbeck marble, with attached shafts, in the midst, by a group of Purbeck shafts on each of the two piers which lead into the Lady Chapel, and by the light blue Purbeck shafts of the eastern arches of the presbytery. As two of the middle piers (which are set diagonally from north-east to south-west, and from south-east to north-west) are in a line with the pier-arches of the choir, while the other two, though in a line with those of the Lady Chapel (which themselves project into the Path), are without those of the choir, a complicated system of vaulting and a charming arrangement of piers is the result. Indeed, this exquisite group of piers has never been surpassed, and nothing can be found that better illustrates the subtlety and extreme refinement of the last stages of Gothic architecture at their best. At whichever point one stands fresh beauty is apparent. It is merely a device for connecting Lady Chapel with choir, while leaving a wide path free for processions, yet what a gem of perfection has been drawn from the need! As one sits at the corner near the south wall of the Lady Chapel, one can best appreciate the range of vaulting, which, though it is doubled here, is of the same height as that of the aisles, running faithfully round to cover the ambulatory which encircles the choir, while on either side the pillars soar upward to the higher vault of the Lady Chapel and the yet higher ceiling of the choir. Opposite are the painted fragments of glass in the north choir aisle, seen through the arches of the presbytery, and the windows over the range of tabernacle work in the choir itself. On the left the south aisle can be seen stretching onwards, across the bright break of the transept, to the west end, and on the right are the gorgeous windows of the Lady Chapel. Everywhere the slender pillars stand, and the mouldings branch away from their rich capitals, each doing its appointed work, calculated and exact, in what would seem at first but a lavish profusion of marble shaft and moulded stone. Yet we can hardly now imagine what it all was like before the richly-decked altars were torn down, the painted windows knocked to fragments, the canopies, tombs, and images defaced or destroyed. The vault is lierned with richly-carved bosses still warm with the marks of gilding; both on the bosses and the capitals the foliage is of the crumpled character suggestive of the oak-leaf. Unlike the piers of the Lady Chapel, the bases here are of marble, though the plinths are of stone. Two grotesque heads, lower than the bosses, at the north and south-western angles, hold three ribs in their mouths, the ribs, which end there in seeming futility, being used to cover an awkward corner of the vaulting. GLASS IN THE CHOIR AISLES AND CHAPELS.--A good deal of glass in a more or less fragmentary condition survives in the eastern portion of the church. It is fine work of the first half of the fourteenth century. In the south aisles there is good glass in all the upper lights; the third window has later glass in the lower lights, which bears the date 1607, and consists of coats of arms and a series of small square pictures of foreign type. The east window of St. Catherine's chapel is composed of fragments fitted together at random; in the upper lights of the south window are rather coarse heads of St. Aldhelm, St. Erkenwald, and other saints: two of them should be noticed for the early form of papal tiara. In the corresponding chapel of St. Stephen both the east and north windows are the same, the north window even containing a second head of St. Erkenwald; the other saints are inscribed--"St. Stephanas Papa" (the Pope Stephen, who died 257), "S. Blasii Epi" (St. Blaise), and "S. Marcellus Papa"; in the topmost light of both windows is a small figure of Our Lord. In the north aisle, the first window (counting from the east) contains a St. Michael; the next a crucifix and a figure of St. Mary Magdalen, with some sixteenth-century coats (including the curious arms of Bishop Knight, p. 87) in the lower lights. Similar coats are in the third window, which has a figure of St. John Baptist. The fourth window contains modern glass erected in honour of Bishop Ken (p. 157), as a memorial to Dean Plumptre, who died in 1891. In the centre Ken is represented in full pontifical vestments, below him angels are supporting his arms impaled with those of the see; over his head is the favourite superscription of his letters, "All glory be to God," and at his feet his rule of life "_Et tu quæris tibi grandia? Noli quærere_" (Jer. xlv. 5). The left-hand panels represent St. Paul teaching Timothy (because Ken wrote the "Manual for Winchester Scholars," and the "Exposition of the Catechism"), Christ's charge to St. Peter; the right panels represent St. Paul before Agrippa and St. Peter in prison (because Ken was one of the seven bishops imprisoned by James II.). The two lower panels represent labourers going to their work singing _Benedicite_, and a priest and choristers chanting _Nunc Dimittis,_ in allusion to Ken's morning and evening hymns. THE LADY CHAPEL was finished in 1326, before the presbytery was added to the present choir, and thus it belongs to the middle of the Decorated period. In plan it is octagonal, the three western sides consisting of the three arches by which it is opened to the rest of the church. It could, in fact, stand perfectly well as a detached building like the Lady Chapel at Gloucester, and doubtless it did so stand while the presbytery was a-building; but its connection with the church itself allows its apsidal west end to be cunningly combined with the beautiful pillars which support the vault of the ambulatory. The arrangement by which these three western sides project into the ambulatory is more easy to see than to describe; from the west side of the piers which support them spring the vaulting ribs of the retro-choir, while on the east side of the piers the shafts rise much higher up to carry the loftier vault of the Lady Chapel. As the chapel is not a perfect octagon like the chapter-house, but is elongated from east to west, this vault was difficult to manage, and its lines are somewhat distorted in consequence. The vault springs from triple shafts between fine traceried windows of five lights, and its ribs meet in a boss containing a beautiful figure of our Lord seated on a throne with outstretched arms; the colour and gilding are well restored. Professor Willis said that "the polygonal Lady Chapel and the vaulted work which connects it with the presbytery is a most original and unique piece of architecture, of pure and beautiful design." As to the first part of this sentence there can be no difference of opinion, and all will agree as to the fineness of the general effect of the chapel; yet there may well be two opinions as to the purity of the work. I confess that the following criticism (_Builder_, Aug. 1862) from a lecture of Mr E.W. Godwin seems to me to be not entirely without justification:--"With the single exception of the way in which the vaulting is managed, I look upon this Lady Chapel as no better than the other work of the same date. There is a weakness about the constant recurrence of the same form in the tracery of the windows; the lines of the vault are, in some cases, clumsy to a degree; and the capitals have lost their constructional character altogether. The growth and vitality, the change and joyfulness, so visible in the earlier caps, especially those with figures, are no longer to be seen. Leaves are now stuck on; or, at the best, wreathed round the bell of the capital; and so the _function_ of the capital--the upbearing principle--is lost." So much for its defects. The peculiar excellence of the chapel is that it gives that apsidal ending to the church which adds so much to its beauty both within and without, and yet does not interfere with the square end of the presbytery. The Lady Chapel has been fitted up for the use of the Theological College, and its furniture contrasts favourably with that of the choir. A litany desk, stalls, and credence-table in oak have recently been given, and a retable carved by Miss Neville; the altar cross, however, is too stunted for its position. The eagle lectern, in spite of its dark appearance, is modern, of Dean Goodenough's time. The doorway on the south side led to the old vestry, so wantonly destroyed in the present century: now that the chapel is in daily use the need of the vestry is much felt, and a cupboard in St. John's chapel has to serve for a makeshift. The gas-brackets are of later and more pleasant work than those elsewhere. Mr Ferrey discovered fragments of a reredos at the east end of the chapel, and set them up as best he could to form the present reredos: the original arrangement seems to be lost, for some of the pedestals are on the level of the floor, while some of the niches at the top are cut in half. Mr Ferrey restored the whole chapel at the same time, and paved it with tiles. GLASS IN LADY CHAPEL.--The large windows of this chapel are all filled with beautiful fourteenth-century glass, but alas! in a marred condition. The side windows contain fragments packed together anyhow. The eastern window was made up out of old pieces by Willement at Dean Goodenough's restoration, and its colour almost completely spoilt by modern insertions. The harm, however, is not irreparable, for the figures are almost entirely genuine, and the bad effect is mainly due to Willement's blue background. A careful examination would easily separate the new from the old, and it would be quite easy at the present day to remove the bad work and replace it by glass that would carry out the old harmony of colour. The lower lights are filled with two tiers of figures in canopies, David and other patriarchs in the upper tier, and the following well-chosen series in the lower:--The Madonna in the midst, on her right the Serpent and Eve, on her left the Brazen Serpent and Moses. The upper lights of this window contain angels bearing the instruments of the Passion, which are unspoilt, as are also the busts of patriarchs in the north-east window, and of bishops in that on the south-east. Three of the topmost lights contain emblems of the Evangelists, the fourth is lost. One inscription remains, _Ista capella constructa est_ ... but the date is gone. A tall and light monument stands between the Lady Chapel and St. Catherine's; its crocketed finials, filled with tracery, rise almost to the ceiling. The canopy is open at the sides and western end, but the eastern end forms a niche; this part has been restored in colour and gilding, it is powdered with _fleurs-de-lys,_ and bears a shield containing the _Agnus Dei_. No other part shows any trace of colour. The base is much higher than that of an ordinary tomb, and the canopy seems to have been somewhat altered at Ferrey's restoration. The spot where the altar of St. Catherine and All Virgins stood is now "Sacred to the memory of John Phelips Of Montacute in this county esquire. Descended from a line of ancestors, Whose names for two centuries and a half abound in the annals of the county, He succeeded at an early age to the paternal estates, And sustained the wonted hospitality of his house. He soon became a most active and intelligent magistrate," etc., etc. THE CHAPTER-HOUSE STAIRCASE is entered by the doorway in the eastern aisle of the north transept. There are few things in English architecture that can be compared with it for strange impressive beauty; the staircase goes upward for eighteen steps and then part of it sweeps off to the chapter-house on the right, while the other part goes on and up till it reaches the chain-bridge; thus the steps lie, worn here and there by the tread of many feet, like fallen leaves, the last of them lost in the brighter light of the bridge. Here one is still almost within the cathedral, and yet the carts are passing underneath, and their rattle mixes with the sound of the organ within. The date of the staircase is clearly somewhere between that of the chapter-house and that of the church itself. It is later than the church, for it is built up against the transept buttresses, and it contains some of the best examples of simple geometrical tracery, while there are nothing but lancet windows in the church of Reginald and Jocelin. But the simple geometrical tracery of its two four-light windows prove that it was finished before the chapter-house was begun. The arches of these windows are rampant, to follow the level of the stairs; their beautiful circular tracery is massive, deeply-moulded, and filled with remnants of rich glass; their shafts of blue lias have naturalistic capitals which are in striking contrast both to the Early English carving in the church and the full Decorated of the chapter-house itself. Below the windows is a stone bench rising in steps with a foot-pace of similar construction; this arrangement adds much to the effect of the staircase, though it is marred by a modern hand-rail. Before the Chain Gate was made, the vestibule ended with a graceful window of four lights similar to those at the side. The upper part of the window remains, but the lower part is occupied by a Perpendicular doorway, and the whole now forms a screen which, by breaking the light, adds considerably to the charm of the staircase. Through this doorway, where they are cut away to allow the door to open, the steps continue for two stages, but in a narrower flight. Here the windows are Perpendicular, and the vaulted ceiling has given place to a wooden roof, for this is the Chain Gate, as light and pretty within as without. It was only an after-thought, a matter of convenience, thus to connect the chapter-house with the Vicars' Close, and the screen that now breaks the light had for a century and a half been the outside window, just as the blocked window of the transept had been the outer light for the fifty years before the staircase itself was thought of. It was just a practical matter-of-fact device; but what magnificent utilitarianism, what an inspired after-thought! [Illustration: Steps Of Chapter-house Vestibule And Passage Over Chain Gate.] The main gallery of the Chain Gate is shut off by a door which, if it were kept open, would make the prospect even more beautiful than it is. Two corbels which support the vaulting-shafts of the lower staircase should be noticed; they both represent figures thrusting their staves into the mouth of a dragon, but that on the east (wearing a hood and a leathern girdle round his surcoat) is as vigorous in action as the figure on the west side is feeble. A small barred opening in the top of the east wall lights a curious little chamber, which is reached from the staircase that leads to the roof. THE CHAPTER-HOUSE is entered by a double-arched doorway, the small vault between the arches having an odd boss composed of four bearded heads. There are marks in the wall which lead one to think that the doors were hung in a wooden screen under this vault. The old doors are now used in the house of the Principal of the College, where they were identified by Canon Church. They have little slits in them, through which those in the chapter-house could speak with those without, who no doubt waited for admittance on the stepped stone bench of the staircase. Grooves in the two inner shafts of the doorway seem to have been made for the insertion of some light screen, by which the entrance was divided into two passages for ingress and egress. The absence of doors certainly adds to the rather cold unfurnished appearance of the chapter-house in its present condition. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Doorway.] The room itself ("a glorious development of window and vault" it has been called) is one of the best examples of that type of chapter-house which belongs mainly to the thirteenth century, and is a peculiar glory of English architecture. Of octagonal plan, its vaulting ribs branch out from sixteen Purbeck shafts which cluster round the central pillar, typifying the diocesan church with all its members gathered round its common father, the bishop. Each of the eight sides of the room is occupied by a window of four lights, with graceful tracery of an advanced geometrical type. These windows, which are among the finest examples of the period, have no shafts, but their arch mouldings are enriched with a continuous series of the ball-flower ornament. Most of the old glass, in which ruby and white are the predominant colours, remains in the upper lights. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Interior.] Under the windows runs an arcade which forms fifty-one stalls, separated into groups of seven by the blue lias vaulting-shafts at the angles, but in the side which is occupied by the doorway there are only two stalls, one on either side of the entrance. Two rows of stone benches are under the stalls, and there is a bench of Purbeck round the base of the central pier. The arcade strikes one as too shallow: its canopies, which rest on blue lias shafts, are ornamented with feathering, crockets, finials, and an interesting series of small heads. Some of the heads wear crowns, mitres, hoods, and square caps; others are grotesque, though I cannot detect the "jesters" to which some writers refer. Some of the heads have the same formal twist in the hair as those of the large corbels in the nave (p. 81). The heads on the side opposite the door are all (with the exception of one modern head in plaster) covered with the early form of papal tiara, a conical hat with a crown round its rim. On this side, in the middle stall, is the bishop's seat, and here are traces of colour; the little heads are still pretty with pink cheeks and painted eyes and hair, and above the canopy the saltire of St. Andrew is discernible. Thus the bishop still retained, at least in theory, the head-ship of the chapter. The dean sat on one side of him, the precentor on the other, and the rest in due order from the archdeacons and officers down to those in minor orders. Even the boys of the school were admitted to part of the meetings, and they stood on the floor round a desk which was in front of the chief pastor. "There every morning," says Canon Church (_Chapters in Hist, of Wells_, p. 333), "after the prayers of the third hour and the morning mass, the chapter of the whole body was held for the daily lection and commemoration of brethren departed, for maintaining discipline, hearing complaints, passing judgment, inflicting punishment; for ordering the services of the day and of the week--for sitting in council and drawing up statutes." Beautiful as is the general effect of the chapter-house, it must be admitted that its detail is inferior to that of the staircase, which is just one stage earlier in the development of architecture. Nor can its capitals be compared for a moment with those in the nave; the lighter form of structure doubtless calls for a lighter cap, but these are distinctly untidy in their decoration. The crockets are very near having that wholesale look which has caused nineteenth-century architects to make so much of this easily debased ornament. The arrangement, too, by which the fine doorway rises into a window of unmodified pattern seems a rather awkward compromise, especially as the line of the staircase roof cuts slantwise across the lights. One cannot help thinking that an earlier architect would have departed from his uniform pattern at this point, and have inserted a window or arcade better adapted to the position, with the addition, perhaps, of sculpture in the vacant space. Between the roof and the vault there is a curious chamber which reminds one of the crater of a volcano, and the impression is increased by the sponge-like stone, which has some resemblance to tufa. The open arcade under the roof has served to keep the woodwork in remarkably sound condition. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Vault.] THE UNDERCROFT.--Much of the external beauty of the chapter-house, as well as the charm of its staircase, is due to its unusual height above the ground. It rests upon a vaulted chamber or undercroft, which is popularly called the crypt, though that term is not very accurate, as the chamber is not sunk underground, but stands almost on a level with the floor of the church. The innumerable springs in the soil of Wells do not, indeed, admit of a subterranean building. The undercroft was finished before the chapter-house staircase was begun; perhaps its walls were built at the end of Jocelin's episcopate; at any rate it was finished by 1286, and represents the last development of the Early English style. It was used as the treasury, where the vestments, ornaments, registers, and other precious things, both of the bishop and chapter, were kept, and, to increase the security of its massive walls, the sacristan had to sleep within them every night. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Undercroft.] It is reached by a dimly-lit, impressive passage, which is entered from the north choir aisle through a doorway with deeply-sunk mouldings and carved capitals. Two heads, slanting inwards in a rather awkward manner, support the curious pediment-shaped canopy over the doorway. At the commencement of this fine passage, just within the doorway, is a small vault supported on extremely odd corbels, as if the mason had taken advantage of the obscurity to wanton with his craft. One is a large head with enormous cheeks, apparently suffering from acute neuralgia; a handkerchief, under which a few comically-stiff curls escape, covers the head and is tied under the chin; another represents two dragons biting each other, with a head upside down beneath them; another, which reminds one of the worst eccentricities of modern crockery, is formed by a hand holding a foliated capital. I suppose that the head with swollen cheeks is really another testimony to St. William Bytton's power over the toothache. The undercroft itself was finished before 1286, perhaps some time before; but the more advanced sculpture of the passage looks as if that part were built in the "toothache" period--that is to say, some ten years or so after Bytton's death in 1274. [Illustration: Chapter-House--Undercroft.] Certainly the bosses of the vault in the passage beyond the doorway are of a character that suggests the transition to Decorated which was in progress at this time. They are elaborate, and, with one exception, through-carved. The first from the door represents a head, the next an _Agnus Dei_, the next two grotesque heads joined together, then apparently the Serpent tempting Eve, then an ox, dragons, two small grinning heads, with animals apparently biting them on one side. The corbels are carved into heads, some crowned, others reversed with the shaft in their mouths. On the right-hand side, as one enters the undercroft, a pretty stone lantern projects from the wall; of the little mullions which form its face, one is set far enough from the wall to admit of the insertion of a lamp. Two heavy wooden doors at the entrance leave no doubt as to the purpose for which the undercroft was built. The outer door is the most massive; it is studded with nails, and has two great bolts and a huge lock: on the outer side a kind of escutcheon is formed round the keyhole by a heart-shaped piece of iron, surmounted by a cross; on the same side there is an iron bar, and the hook to hold it across the doorway. A deep hole has been worn in the pavement by the feet of those who pulled open the door. The inner door is lighter, and ornamented with beautiful elaborate hinges: on this side are deep sockets in the wall, into which the inner bars were run. In the undercroft itself the walls are impregnably thick, the windows narrow, with wide splays. The vaulting, somewhat later in style than the walls, is an admirable piece of construction, well-fitted to bear the weight of the lofty chamber above. It is also remarkable, Professor Willis points out, for the way in which the arches are disposed without the introduction of ribs. From the round shafts which are grouped about the octagonal pier in the centre spring the vaulting ribs, the extremities of which rest upon eight round pillars; and another set of vaulting ribs spans the space between these pillars and the eight walls, where they rest upon twelve shafts between the lancet windows. Could anything be more simple and secure in construction, and more varied in effect? Here, on one of the capitals and on a moulding near the door, we meet with the dog-tooth moulding usually so characteristic of the Early English style. The piscina in the doorway should be noticed for its carving of a dog gnawing a bone. [Illustration: Section Of Chapter-house.] A large aumbry is formed by a recess in the thickness of the wall. The parapeted structure opposite is a modern coal-hole, for which some other place might surely be found. There are several stone coffins in the undercroft, and a good many fragments of carved stone, some of which are very fine. Here also is a cope-chest of the usual shape, which allows the copes to be put away with only one fold. Near it there is a large oblong chest covered with iron bands. An iron door which is also kept here is thus described by Mr H. Longden (_Archaeological Journal_, 1890, p. 132): "It is made of slabs of iron nailed to an oak frame-work, and liberally braced across with hinges and diagonal cross-straps, stiffening the door in the best way known at the time. This is not an iron-plated door, but an iron door; it is, in fact, a 'safe' door of the time, and is an uncommon instance. It must be remembered that the slabs of which this door is formed were all beaten out of lumps of iron, and that iron was not then made, as now, in plates, bars, or rods, but ... The lump of iron had to be heated and drawn out on the anvil at a great expenditure of time and labour. Much of the charm of old work arises from the irregularity of the shapes, never quite round, or square, or flat, which the iron took, and we miss this in the neat and mechanically-finished work of the present time." CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE. Legend, which in every ancient city is raised to the dignity of an article of faith, places the origin of Wells diocese in the remote past; and the visitor is required to believe that Ina, King of Wessex, the first great West Saxon lawgiver, the ruler who finally established the English supremacy in the south-west, was also the founder of the see of Wells. He is said to have planted a bishopric at Congresbury, and in 721 to have removed the see to Wells with the help of Daniel, the last British bishop. The story, however, rests upon no good foundation. Before the middle of the seventh century the heathen invaders were converted by St Birinus, and by the time of Ina Wessex was divided into the dioceses of Winchester and Sherborne, the latter including Somerset, Dorset, and part of Wiltshire. This was all that Ina did towards establishing the diocese of Wells; and it did not go very far, for the special boast of the diocese is that it consists of one county, Somerset, and of nothing else. And so it is that the honour of possessing Ealdhelm, the first bishop of Sherborne, who tramped about, an open-air preacher, in his diocese, belongs to Salisbury and not to Wells; although Doulting, where Ealdhelm fell sick and died sitting in the little wooden village church, is the very place whence afterwards the stone was quarried for the building of Wells Cathedral. It was under that great warrior, Edward the Elder, that the diocese of Sherborne was divided, and the Sumorsaetas received a bishop of their own, whose stool was placed in the church of St. Andrew at Wells. It is quite probable that the above tradition grew around Ina's name owing to his having really established a church with a body of priests attached to it; since we find in a charter of Cynewulf, dated 766, a mention of "the minister near the great spring at Wells for the better service of God in the church of St. Andrew." This charter is probably spurious, but it may for all that enshrine an historical fact, especially as it does not pretend to the existence of a bishopric. If this be the case, then Edward, who wanted a fairly central church for a diocese which had no important town, must have found Wells very convenient for his purpose. For while Glastonbury, besides being in those days an island, had an abbot of its own, this little body of secular priests would be ready to receive the bishop as their chief, and to become his chapter. At all events, the year 909 saw Wells with a bishop of its own. [Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.] AETHELHELM or ATHELM, _Bishop of Somerset, or Wells_ (909-914), a monk of Glastonbury according to tradition, was the first Somersetshire bishop; he is said to have been an uncle of St. Dunstan: he was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 914. It will be convenient to weave the history of the foundation of Wells with that of the bishops. So here, at the outset, the reader must bear in mind that from the beginning the cathedral church was served by "secular" clergy, by priests, that is, who were bound by no vows other than those of their ordination, who did not live a community life, but had each his own house, and generally at this time his own wife and family. Wells Cathedral was not "built by the monks," and its chapter was never composed of monks; though some of the bishops belonged to religious orders, it kept up a pretty constant rivalry with the "regular" clergy of Glastonbury and Bath. It belongs in fact, to the cathedrals of the old foundation, whose constitutions were not changed at the Reformation; and its chapter has continued in unbroken succession, from the days when Aethelhelm first presided over his little body of clergy in the church of St. Andrew, down to our own time. But at first that chapter was informal enough, nor was it finally incorporated and officered till the time of Bishop Robert in the twelfth century. The number of canons does not seem to have been fixed, though in the next century we hear of there being only four or five. [Illustration: Specimens Of Capitals.] The next five bishops are all little more than names to us. WULFHELM succeeded Aethelhelm in 914: also translated to Canterbury; AELFHEAH (923), WULFHELM (938), BRITHHELM (956-973), and CYNEWARD (973-975). SIGEGAR (975-977), a pupil of St. Dunstan, and abbot of Glastonbury, was succeeded, or perhaps supplanted, by AELFWINE, in 997-999. AETHELSTAN, or LYFING; translated to Canterbury 1013. AETHELWINE and BRIHTWINE shared the episcopate, either as rivals or coadjutors. Brihtwine was last in possession. MEREWIT, also called Brihtwine, succeeded in 1026. DUDUC (1033-1060), a German Saxon. Cnut had given him the estates of Congresbury and Banwell, which he left to the church of Wells; but Harold took possession of them. GISA (1060-1088), a Belgian from Lorraine, found his see in a sad condition: the church was mean, its revenues small, and its four or five canons were forced, he says, to beg their bread. He at once set to work to increase the revenues; and from Edward the Confessor, from his queen, Edith, then from Harold, and afterwards from William the Conqueror, he obtained various estates for the support of his canons. He also changed the way of living of the canons, and built a cloister, dormitory, and refectory, thereby forcing them to live a common life, much as if they were monks--an unpopular innovation which was supported by the appointment in the foreign fashion of a provost to be chief officer, the canons choosing for this post one Isaac of Wells. JOHN DE VILLULA, _Bishop of Bath_ (1088-1122), a rich physician of Tours. He put an end to the semi-monastic discipline of Gisa by pulling down his community buildings and erecting a private house of his own on the site. And he removed the see of Somersetshire from Wells to the Abbey of Bath. GODFREY (1123-1135). ROBERT OF LEWES (1136-1166), the second founder of the cathedral; he made the constitution of the chapter, he rebuilt the old Saxon church, and he started Wells as a borough by the grant of its first charter of freedom. Of a Fleming family, though born in England, he was a monk from the Cluniac house of St. Pancras at Lewes; and to another and more famous Cluniac monk, Bishop Henry of Winchester, King Stephen's brother, he owed his advancement. In the very year of his consecration he began the recovery of Wells from the low estate in which John de Villula and his rapacious relatives had left it. He restored their property to the canons, and, in order to secure it, he divided it off from the property of the see by a charter of incorporation. He assisted at Henry II.'s coronation in 1154, and at the consecration of Thomas à Becket in 1162. Bishop Robert arranged the quarrel with Bath by settling that Bath should take precedence of Wells, but that the bishop should have his throne in both churches, and be elected by the two chapters conjointly. By the charter which incorporated the chapter of Wells, Robert also settled portions of the estate, or prebends, on the twenty-two canons, and founded the offices of dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, sub-dean, provost, and sub-chanter, all of which, except the two last, still exist. After an interval of eight years, REGINALD DE BOHUN or FITZ-JOCELIN, the Archdeacon of Sarum, was consecrated Bishop of Bath (1174-1191). Immediately afterwards he induced the monk who was soon to become famous as St. Hugh of Lincoln, to leave the Grande Chartreuse, and to come to England as prior of the first English charter-house. He built the greater part of the present nave transepts and choir; for this end he made large gifts to the fabric fund, and collected gifts from others. He also extended the privileges of the town, and increased both the endowment and the number of the prebends. SAVARIC, _Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury_ (1192-1205), a relation of the Emperor Henry VI. In 1191 he started with Richard I. for the Holy Land. At Messina, though not yet in priest's orders, he obtained private letters from the king sanctioning his appointment to any bishopric to which he might be elected. Bishop Reginald was a kinsman of his, and, on his election to Canterbury, he obtained the vote of the convent of Bath for Savaric. The Justiciar gave at once the royal sanction, in spite of the protests of the canons of Wells, who had not been consulted. Savaric had meanwhile wisely established himself at Rome, and was able to obtain the Pope's consent. He was consecrated priest one day and bishop the next, but he still remained abroad. Savaric, supported by the authority of King John, broke into Glastonbury with soldiers, starved and beat the monks, and, with great violence, established himself in possession. His biography was compressed in a clever epigram:-- "_Hospes erat mundo per mundum semper eundo, Sic suprema dies fit sibi prima quies,_" admirably translated by Canon Bernard: "Through the world travelling, all the world's guest, His last day of life was his first day of rest." Yet he was the first to institute the daily mass of Our Lady, as well as that for the faithful departed, in Wells Cathedral. JOCELIN TROTEMAN DE WELLES, _Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury,_ and after 1219 _Bishop of Bath_ (1206-1242), is, after Ken, the most famous of Wells worthies. He came from a local stock, and spent all his time and money on the cathedral church, first as canon, then as bishop for thirty-six years. In 1208, when Pope Innocent III. laid England under an interdict, the bishop published it in his own diocese, and then fled the country, leaving his estates to be seized by John. On John's submission to the Pope in 1213, he returned, and two years later stood by Stephen Langton at Runnymede, putting his name as Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury to _Magna Charta_. When John was dead it was Jocelin who administered the oath to Henry III. at his coronation. In 1219 Jocelin made terms with Glastonbury, which Savaric had seized, giving up the abbacy and the title in return for four manors. He founded a hospital, re-endowed the Lady mass which Savaric had instituted, increased the number of prebends (the estates, that is, which each maintained a canon) from thirty-five to fifty, provided houses for the canons, and a regular endowment for the vicars-choral, started a grammar school in addition to the choristers' school, and enclosed the bishop's park. But most of all is he famous for having rebuilt the church which Savaric's vagaries had let fall into dilapidation, and for having added to it the noble west front. So extensive were his repairs that in 1239 a reconsecration was necessary; and three years later he died, "God," says old Fuller, "to square his great undertakings, giving him a long life to his large heart." He was buried in the midst of the choir as a founder of the church; and as this interment marked out Wells as the chief church in the diocese, the monks of Bath were not told of his death till after he had been buried. ROGER, _first Bishop of Bath and Wells_ (1244-1247). On Jocelin's death in 1242, the monks of Bath made a last effort to recover the supremacy which had drifted from them. Contrary to the agreement which had been made, they pushed through their own candidate, Roger, without consulting with the Wells chapter, and snatched the regal sanction and papal confirmation for their nominee before the chapter of Wells could make a move. At last, the Pope, after much litigation, decreed that, in order to avoid any further vacancy, Roger's election should be confirmed, but that henceforth the chapter of Wells should have an equal voice in the election of the bishop, who was to use the title of Bath and Wells. Roger was buried in his old abbey of Bath; he was, however, the last bishop to be there interred. The words of Peter Heylin are henceforward true of the see:--"The diocese of Bath and Wells, though it hath a double name, is one single bishopric. The bishop's seat was originally at Wells, where it still continues. The style of Bath came in but upon the bye." WILLIAM BUTTON or BYTTON (1248-1264). WALTER GIFFARD (1265-1266), a statesman-bishop, took the king's side, and, after the victory of Evesham, was rewarded with the chancellorship and the archbishopric of York. WILLIAM BYTTON (THE SAINT) (1267-1274). When Robert of Kilwardy, provincial of the Dominicans, was made archbishop, he chose Bytton, on account of his saintliness, to consecrate him; and so great was the impression made by his holy life that he became the object of popular canonisation at his death. Miracles were worked at his tomb, and crowds flocked to it with offerings, especially such as were afflicted with toothache. ROBERT BURNELL (1275-1292), the greatest lawyer of his day, chancellor of Edward I.; built the hall of the episcopal palace. WILLIAM OF MARCH OR DE MARCHIA (1293-1302), had been treasurer in 1290. Two unsuccessful efforts were made to obtain his canonisation. WALTER DE HASELSHAW (1302-1308), successively canon, dean, and bishop. Under JOHN OF DROKENSFORD (1309-1329) the chapter obtained a strong confirmation of their rights as the result of a violent quarrel with the bishop, who had claimed the power of visiting the churches under capitular jurisdiction. RALPH OF SHREWSBURY (1329-1363), Chancellor of Oxford, put the finishing stroke to the constitution of the cathedral by founding the College of Vicars. He was a great supporter of the friars, and left them a third of his property. Among his good deeds he disafforested the royal hunting ground of Mendip, and thus did great service to the people, "beef," as Fuller has it, "being better pleasing to the husbandman's palate than venison." At his death he was buried in the place of honour before the high altar, for it was under him that the last great building operations in the church of Wells were completed. JOHN BARNET (1363-66), translated from Worcester, was soon again moved to Ely. After JOHN HAREWELL (1367-86), who helped to build the south-west tower, and WALTER SKIRLAW (1386-88), RALPH ERGHUM (1388-1400) was translated from Salisbury, and founded at Wells the much-needed college for the fourteen chantry priests, which was destroyed under Edward VI., and of which the memory is preserved in "College Lane." There were now, therefore, three distinct corporations at Wells--the Chapter, the College of Vicars, and the College of Chantry Priests. HENRY BOWETT (1401-1407) was promoted to York. NICHOLAS BUBWITH (1407-1424) is remembered by the almshouses at Wells which he endowed, by his provision for building the north-west tower, and by his chantry chapel. There was at this time another hospital called the Priory, which has now disappeared. He was one of the English envoys at the Council of Constance. Mandates were sent him by the archbishop for the prosecution of the Lollards, but there is no record of any proceedings having been taken, till JOHN STAFFORD (1425-43) had succeeded him, when one William Curayn was compelled to abjure and receive absolution for some very reasonable heresies. Stafford was translated to Canterbury. THOMAS BECKINGTON, or Bekynton (1443-65), was first tutor, then private secretary to Henry VI., and Keeper of the Privy Seal. His many works at Wells are noticed in our other chapters; in his will he states that he spent 6000 marks in repairing and adorning his palaces. After his death, the mayor and corporation showed their gratitude by going annually to his tomb (p. 125) to pray for his soul. ROBERT STILLINGTON (1466-91) was a minister of Edward IV., and one of Richard III.'s supporters. Accused in 1487 of helping Lambert Simnel, he was imprisoned at Windsor for the rest of his life. RICHARD FOX (1492-94), Keeper of the Privy Seal, translated to Durham. OLIVER KING (1495-1503), Chief Secretary of Henry VII. A dream moved Bishop Oliver in 1500, to rebuild Bath abbey in the debased Perpendicular style with which we are now familiar. The celebrated ADRIAN DE CASTELLO (1504-1518) obtained first Hereford and then Wells, as a reward for political services. As he never visited his diocese, his affairs were managed by another famous man, Polydore Vergil, who was archdeacon, and furnished the choir of Wells with hangings, "flourished," says Fuller, "with the laurel tree," and bearing an inscription, _Sunt Polydori munera Vergilii_. Adrian, who was born of humble parents at Cornuto in Tuscany, had been made a cardinal in 1503 by the infamous Pope Alexander VI., and both his archdeacon and himself are prominent figures in Italian history of the period. CARDINAL WOLSEY (1518-23) was appointed to the see, which he held together with the archbishopric of York; he was therefore Bishop of Bath and Wells only in name, and was soon put in the enjoyment of the richer sees successively of Durham and Winchester. He was followed by JOHN CLERK (1523-41) and WILLIAM KNIGHT (1541-47). The abbey of Bath was now suppressed, so that the bishop's seat was now at Wells alone, and (excepting that the style "Bath and Wells" remained) the see was restored to its original condition before John de Villula migrated to Bath. WILLIAM BARLOW (1549-54) was translated from St. David's without even the form of a _conge d'elire_. In return for this and certain money payments he made over a large portion of the episcopal property to the greedy Duke of Somerset; he also secured the episcopal manor of Wookey for his own family. The other cathedral estates were similarly treated. Barlow fled at the accession of Mary, but was caught and imprisoned in 1554. He had in Henry's time recanted some Lollard tracts which he had written, and now under Mary he recanted once more. On the accession of Elizabeth, he (p. 81) accepted the poorer see of Chichester. GILBERT BOURNE (1554-59) had been Bonner's chaplain. At Elizabeth's accession he was deprived and imprisoned in the Tower. After 1562 he was kept in nominal custody, and died in 1569. GILBERT BERKELEY (1560-1581) succeeded him. THOMAS GODWIN (1584-90), the historian of Wells, succeeded Berkeley. Another three years' vacancy was followed by the appointment of JOHN STILL (1593-1607). He and his successors, JAMES MONTAGUE (1608-16), translated to Winchester, ARTHUR LAKE (1616-26), a wise man and "most blessed saint," were mostly occupied in the fight with Puritanism. William Laud was bishop here for two years (1626-28), but his history belongs to London and Canterbury, whither he was translated. LEONARD MAWE (1628-29), WALTER CURLL (1629-32), translated to Winchester, and WILLIAM PIERS (1632-70) followed. The latter, who put down the Puritan "lectures," and ordered all the altars in his diocese to be set against the east wall and railed in, lived to see all his work undone and then restored again at the accession of Charles II. ROBERT CREYGHTON (1670-72), who had been dean, succeeded him. He was a great musician (p. 113), and his gifts of ornaments to the cathedral have been already mentioned. PETER MEWS (1673-1684) was translated to Winchester. THOMAS KEN (1685-90), the best and most famous of all the Somerset bishops, has left so great a name in the see, and figured in so many stirring events, that one can hardly believe that he was only given five years in which to use his influence upon history. Before he was made bishop, however, he had already given proof of that quiet courage which was more than once to thwart the will of princes. In 1679 he went to the Hague as chaplain to Mary, the wife of William of Orange. Here he expressed himself "horribly unsatisfied" with William's unkindness to his wife, and he incurred the Prince's anger by persuading Count Zulestein to marry a lady whom he had seduced. Soon after, when he was living at Winchester, he refused to allow the royal harbinger to use his prebendal house for the lodging of Nell Gwynn, on the occasion of Charles II.'s visit there in 1683. Charles, with characteristic generosity, thought all the more highly of him, and when he was told of the vacant bishopric, said no one should have the see but "the little black fellow who refused his lodging to poor Nelly." Before the year was over, Charles was on his death-bed, and summoned Ken to his side. The bishop persuaded the king to send the Duchess of Portsmouth from the room and to call in the Queen. He then absolved him, although Charles would not receive the communion. After the Monmouth rebellion (p. 17) he, with the Bishop of Ely, was sent to tell the Duke of his fate; he remained with the wretched man all through the night before his execution, and accompanied him on the scaffold. He then returned to his see, used all his influence on behalf of the unhappy peasants, and by his personal intervention, saved a hundred prisoners from death. He strongly opposed the Romanising policy of James II., and preached several sermons which had a large share in the formation of public opinion. He was one of the seven bishops who were committed to the Tower for petitioning the king against the order to the clergy to read the second Declaration of Indulgence. The incidents of that wonderful trial are familiar to all Englishmen, and it is notable that one of the richest dissenters in the city begged to have the special honour of giving security for the high church bishop of Bath and Wells. But when the revolution came, Ken was found among those who were called non-jurors, because they regarded their oath of allegiance to James as still binding. He was consequently, in 1690, deprived of his see. He made a public protest in the cathedral against his deprivation, and continued to sign himself _T. Bath and Wells_, but he had to live in retirement, and with an income of only £20 a year. He died in 1710, and was buried in Frome Church at sunrise, in allusion to his morning hymn ("Awake, my soul, and with the sun"), and to his habit of rising with the sun. Ken was in every way a great saint, and, like all the saints, he was distinguished by his love for the poor, and his care for their education. Among his customs it is recorded that he used to have twelve poor men to dine with him on Sundays, and that he was wont to go afoot in London when the other bishops rode in their coaches. He wrote many books, among them his "Manual of Prayers for the Use of Winchester Scholars." "His elaborate works," says Macaulay, "have long been forgotten; but his morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in thousands of dwellings." RICHARD KIDDER (1691-1703) became bishop on the deprivation of Ken, Dr Beveridge having declined the offer of a see, the rightful ruler of which had been unjustly removed. Kidder did not, however, long enjoy his usurped position; for, on the night of November 26th, 1703, a great storm--the same that destroyed Winstanley in his lighthouse on the Eddystone--blew down a stack of chimneys in the palace, and thus killed both the bishop and his wife as they lay abed. GEORGE HOOPER (1704-27), an old friend of Ken, was next offered the see, but he urged the reinstatement of the rightful pastor. Queen Anne offered to restore Ken to his bishopric, but he importuned Hooper to accept, and from that time ceased to sign himself by his diocesan title. Hooper had preceded Ken, in 1677, as Princess Mary's spiritual adviser at the Hague, where he had won her back to the services of the church, and he had also been with Ken at Monmouth's execution. Almost as lovable and holy, he was more learned than his friend. Hooper was succeeded by JOHN WYNNE (1727-43), EDWARD WILLES (1743-73), and CHARLES MOSS (1774-1802); all three were typical eighteenth-century prelates, rich and mostly non-resident. RICHARD BEADON (1802-24), was translated from Gloucester. GEORGE HENRY LAW (1824-45), a son of the Bishop of Carlisle, and brother of Lord Chief-Justice Ellenborough, was translated from Chester, and is said to have been an active prelate till his latter years. Hon. RICHARD BAGOT (1845-54) came to Wells as a place of retirement after the worries which he had gone through, as Bishop of Oxford, during the Tractarian movement. ROBERT JOHN, LORD AUCKLAND, was translated from Sodor and Man in 1854. At his death in 1869, he was succeeded by LORD ARTHUR CHARLES HERVEY, who died in 1894. The present bishop is DR G.W. KENNION, who was translated hither from the Australian diocese of Adelaide. [Illustration: PLAN OF WELLS CATHEDRAL.] TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Words and phrases which were italicized in the original have been surrounded by underscores ('_') in this version. Words or phrases which were bolded have been rendered in ALL CAPITALS. 2. Obvious printer's errors have been corrected without note. 3. Inconsistencies in hyphenation or the spelling of proper names, and dialect or obsolete word spelling, have been maintained as in the original. 4. The original of this text contains characters not available in the Latin-1 character set. These occur only in quotations from monumental inscriptions. The characters have been coded as follows. The notation [=x] means "letter x with a macron above." There are instances of macrons over i, u, m, n, o and x. The notation [)u] means "letter u with a breve"; it occurs twice. 5. The caret is used to show the superscript for abbreviations (i.e. Rob^t is Rob with a superscript small t in the original text, an abbreviation for Robert). If multiple letters are superscripted, they are surrounded by curly braces (i.e. w^{th}). 
25842	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 25842-h.htm or 25842-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/4/25842/25842-h/25842-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/5/8/4/25842/25842-h.zip) ROYAL PALACES AND PARKS OF FRANCE * * * * * _WORKS OF FRANCIS MILTOUN_ _Rambles on the Riviera_ $2.50 _Rambles in Normandy_ 2.50 _Rambles in Brittany_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Northern France_ 2.50 _The Cathedrals of Southern France_ 2.50 _In the Land of Mosques and Minarets_ 3.00 _Royal Palaces and Parks of France_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine and the Loire Country_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces_ 3.00 _Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy and the Border Provinces_ 3.00 _Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car_ 3.00 _The Automobilist Abroad_ net 3.00 (_Postage Extra_) _L. C. Page and Company_ _53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass._ * * * * * [Illustration: _Terrace of Henri IV, Saint Germain_ (_See page 286_)] [Illustration] ROYAL PALACES AND PARKS OF FRANCE by FRANCIS MILTOUN Author of "Castles and Chateaux of Old Touraine," "Castles and Chateaux of Old Burgundy," "Rambles in Normandy," "Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor-Car," etc. With Many Illustrations Reproduced from paintings made on the spot by Blanche Mcmanus Boston L. C. Page & Company 1910 Copyright, 1910. by L. C. Page & Company. (Incorporated) All rights reserved First Impression, November, 1910 Printed by The Colonial Press C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A. Preface "A thousand years ago, by the rim of a tiny spring, a monk who had avowed himself to the cult of Saint Saturnin, robed, cowled and sandalled, knelt down to say a prayer to his beloved patron saint. Again he came, this time followed by more of his kind, and a wooden cross was planted by the side of the "Fontaine Belle Eau," by this time become a place of pious pilgrimage. After the monk came a king, the latter to hunt in the neighbouring forest." It was this old account of fact, or legend, that led the author and illustrator of this book to a full realization of the wealth of historic and romantic incidents connected with the French royal parks and palaces, incidents which the makers of guidebooks have passed over in favour of the, presumably, more important, well authenticated facts of history which are often the bare recitals of political rises and falls and dull chronologies of building up and tearing down. Much of the history of France was made in the great national forests and the royal country-houses of the kingdom, but usually it has been only the events of the capital which have been passed in review. To a great extent this history was of the gallant, daring kind, often written in blood, the sword replacing the pen. At times gayety reigned supreme, and at times it was sadness; but always the pageant was imposing. The day of pageants has passed, the day when lords and ladies moved through stately halls, when royal equipages hunted deer or boar on royal preserves, when gay cavalcades of solemn cortèges thronged the great French highways to the uttermost frontiers and ofttimes beyond. Those days have passed; but, to one who knows the real France, a ready-made setting is ever at hand if he would depart a little from the beaten paths worn smooth by railway and automobile tourists who follow only the lines of conventional travel. France, even to-day, the city and the country alike, is the paradise of European monarchs on a holiday. One may be met at Biarritz on the shores of the Gascon gulf; another may be taking the waters at Aix or Vichy, shooting pigeons under the shadow of the Tete de Chien, or hunting at Rambouillet. This is modern France, the most cosmopolitan meeting place and playground of royalty in the world. French royal parks and palaces, those of the kings and queens of mediæval, as well as later, times, differ greatly from those of other lands. This is perhaps not so much in their degree of splendour and luxury as in the sentiment which attaches itself to them. In France there has ever been a spirit of gayety and spontaneity unknown elsewhere. It was this which inspired the construction and maintenance of such magnificent royal residences as the palaces of Saint Germain-en-Laye, Fontainebleau, Versailles, Compiègne, Rambouillet, etc., quite different from the motives which caused the erection of the Louvre, the Tuileries or the Palais Cardinal at Paris. Nowhere else does there exist the equal of these inspired royal country-houses of France, and, when it comes to a consideration of their surrounding parks and gardens, or those royal hunting preserves in the vicinity of the Ile de France, or of those still further afield, at Rambouillet or in the Loire country, their superiority to similar domains beyond the frontiers is even more marked. In plan this book is a series of itineraries, at least the chapters are arranged, to a great extent in a topographical sequence; and, if the scope is not as wide as all France, it is because of the prominence already given to the parks and palaces of Touraine and elsewhere in the old French provinces in other works in which the artist and author have collaborated. It is for this reason that so little consideration has been given to Chambord, Amboise or Chenonceaux, which were as truly royal as any of that magnificent group of suburban Paris palaces which begins with Conflans and ends with Marly and Versailles. Going still further afield, there is in the Pyrenees that chateau, royal from all points of view, in which was born the gallant Henri of France and Navarre, but a consideration of that, too, has already been included in another volume. The present survey includes the royal dwellings of the capital, those of the faubourgs and the outlying districts far enough from town to be recognized as in the country, and still others as remote as Rambouillet, Chantilly and Compiègne. All, however, were intimately connected with the life of the capital in the mediæval and Renaissance days, and together form a class distinct from any other monumental edifices which exist, or ever have existed, in France. Mere historic fact has been subordinated as far as possible to a recital of such picturesque incidents of the life of contemporary times as the old writers have handed down to us, and a complete chronological review has in no manner been attempted. Contents CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 13 II. THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH GARDENS 14 III. THE ROYAL HUNT IN FRANCE 43 IV. THE PALAIS DE LA CITÉ AND TOURNELLES 61 V. THE OLD LOUVRE AND ITS HISTORY 75 VI. THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS 85 VII. THE TUILERIES AND ITS GARDENS 106 VIII. THE PALAIS CARDINAL AND THE PALAIS ROYAL 131 IX. THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSÉE AND THE PALAIS BOURBON 151 X. VINCENNES AND CONFLANS 168 XI. FONTAINEBLEAU AND ITS FOREST 180 XII. BY THE BANKS OF THE SEINE 203 XIII. MALMAISON AND MARLY 215 XIV. SAINT CLOUD AND ITS PARK 229 XV. VERSAILLES: THE GLORY OF FRANCE 244 XVI. THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES AND THE TRIANONS 260 XVII. SAINT GERMAIN-EN-LAYE 279 XVIII. MAINTENON 296 XIX. RAMBOUILLET AND ITS FOREST 309 XX. CHANTILLY 324 XXI. COMPIÈGNE AND ITS FOREST 342 INDEX 363 [Illustration: List of Illustrations] PAGE TERRACE OF HENRI IV, SAINT GERMAIN (_see page 286_) _Frontispiece_ THE LOUVRE, THE TUILERIES AND THE PALAIS ROYAL OF TO-DAY _facing_ 12 "JARDIN FRANÇAIS--JARDIN ANGLAIS" 15 HENRI IV IN AN OLD FRENCH GARDEN _facing_ 20 PARTERRE DE DIANE, CHENONCEAUX 27 PLAN OF SUNKEN GARDEN (JARDIN CREUX) 30 A PARTERRE _facing_ 32 BASSIN DE LA COURONNE, VAUX-LE-VICOMTE _facing_ 42 A "CURÉE AUX FLAMBEAUX" _facing_ 46 AN IMPERIAL HUNT AT FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 52 RENDEZVOUS DE CHASSE, RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 56 BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARIS (Map) _facing_ 74 THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE _facing_ 82 THE LOUVRE _facing_ 90 ORIGINAL PLAN OF THE TUILERIES (Diagram) 106 SALLE DES MARECHAUX, TUILERIES _facing_ 116 THE GALLERIES OF THE PALAIS ROYAL 146 BOURBON-ORLEANS DESCENDANTS OF LOUIS PHILIPPE (Diagram) _facing_ 146 PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG _facing_ 154 DOOR IN THRONE ROOM, LUXEMBOURG 156 THE PETIT LUXEMBOURG _facing_ 156 THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS _facing_ 158 THE THRONE OF THE PALAIS BOURBON 161 VINCENNES UNDER CHARLES V 168 CHATEAU DE VINCENNES _facing_ 172 A HUNT UNDER THE WALLS OF VINCENNES _facing_ 174 CONFLANS 176 ORIGINAL PLAN OF FONTAINEBLEAU 180 FROM PARIS TO FONTAINEBLEAU (Map) _facing_ 180 PALAIS DE FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 186 SALLE DU THRONE, FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 190 FRAGMENTS FROM FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 192 CHEMINÉE DE LA REINE, FONTAINEBLEAU _facing_ 194 MONUMENT TO ROUSSEAU AND MILLET AT BARBISON _facing_ 200 CHATEAU DE BAGATELLE 204 CHATEAU DE MALMAISON _facing_ 218 THE GARDENS OF SAINT CLOUD _facing_ 236 THE CASCADES AT SAINT CLOUD _facing_ 240 COUR DE MARBRE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 264 THE POTAGER DU ROY, VERSAILLES _facing_ 270 THE BASSIN DE LATONE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 272 THE FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE, VERSAILLES _facing_ 274 PETIT TRIANON _facing_ 276 LAITERIE DE LA REINE, PETIT TRIANON 277 SAINT GERMAIN (Diagram) 280 THE VALLEY OF THE SEINE, FROM THE TERRACE AT SAINT GERMAIN _facing_ 288 FAUTEUIL OF MME. DE MAINTENON 297 CHATEAU DE MAINTENON _facing_ 300 AQUEDUCT OF LOUIS XIV AT MAINTENON _facing_ 306 CHATEAU DE RAMBOUILLET (Diagram) 309 LAITERIE DE LA REINE, RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 312 CHATEAU DE RAMBOUILLET _facing_ 316 CHANTILLY (Diagram) 325 STATUE OF LE NOTRE, CHANTILLY _facing_ 326 CHATEAU DE CHANTILLY _facing_ 336 COMPIÈGNE (Diagram) 343 NAPOLEON'S BEDCHAMBER, COMPIÈGNE _facing_ 352 COURS DE COMPIÈGNE _facing_ 356 Royal Palaces and Parks of France CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The modern traveller sees something beyond mere facts. Historical material as identified with the life of some great architectural glory is something more than a mere repetition of chronologies; the sidelights and the co-related incidents, though indeed many of them may be but hearsay, are quite as interesting, quite as necessary, in fact, for the proper appreciation of a famous palace or chateau as long columns of dates, or an evolved genealogical tree which attempts to make plain that which could be better left unexplained. The glamour of history would be considerably dimmed if everything was explained, and a very seamy block of marble may be chiselled into a very acceptable statue if the workman but knows how to avoid the doubtful parts. An itinerary that follows not only the ridges, but occasionally plunges down into the hollows and turns up or down such crossroads as may have chanced to look inviting, is perhaps more interesting than one laid out on conventional lines. A shadowy something, which for a better name may be called sentiment, if given full play encourages these side-steps, and since they are generally found fruitful, and often not too fatiguing, the procedure should be given every encouragement. Not all the interesting royal palaces and chateaux of France are those with the best known names. Not all front on Paris streets and quays, no more than the best glimpses of ancient or modern France are to be had from the benches of a sight-seeing automobile. Versailles, and even Fontainebleau, are too frequently considered as but the end of a half-day pilgrimage for the tripper. It were better that one should approach them more slowly, and by easy stages, and leave them less hurriedly. As for those architectural monuments of kings, which were tuned in a minor key, they, at all events, need to be hunted down on the spot, the enthusiast being forearmed with such scraps of historic fact as he can gather beforehand, otherwise he will see nothing at Conflans, Marly or Bourg-la-Reine which will suggest that royalty ever had the slightest concern therewith. Dealing first with Paris it is evident it is there that the pilgrim to French shrines must make his most profound obeisance. This applies as well to palaces as to churches. In all cases one goes back into the past to make a start, and old Paris, what there is left of it, is still old Paris, though one has to leave the grand boulevards to find this out. Colberts and Haussmanns do not live to-day, or if they do they have become so "practical" that a drainage canal or an overhead or underground railway is more of a civic improvement than the laying out of a public park, like the gardens of the Tuileries, or the building and embellishment of a public edifice--at least with due regard for the best traditions. When the monarchs of old called in men of taste and culture instead of "business men" they builded in the most agreeable fashion. We have not improved things with our "systems" and our committees of "_hommes d'affaires_." It is the fashion to-day to decry the cavaliers and the wearers of "love-locks," but they had a pretty taste in art and an eye for artistic surroundings, those old fellows of the sword and cloak; a much more pretty taste than their descendants, the steam-heat and running-water partisans of to-day. Louis XV and Empire drawing and dining-rooms are everywhere advertised as the attractions of the great palace hotels, and some of them are very good copies of their predecessors, though one cannot help but feel that the clientele as a whole is more insistent on telephones in the bedrooms and auto-taxis always on tap than with regard to the sentiment of good taste and good cheer which is to be evoked by eating even a hurried meal in a room which reproduces some historically famous Salle des Gardes or the Chambre of the OEil de Boeuf of the Louvre, if, indeed, most of the hungry folk know what their surroundings are supposed to represent. Any chronicle which attempts to set down a record of the comings and goings of French monarchs is saved from being a mere dull chronology of dates and résumé of facts by its obligatory references to the architects and builders who made possible the splendid settings amid which these picturesque rulers passed their lives. The castle builders of France, the garden designers, the architects, decorators and craftsmen of all ranks produced not a medley, but a coherent, cohesive whole, which stands apart from, and far ahead of, most of the contemporary work of its kind in other lands. Castles and keeps were of one sort in England and Scotland, of still another along the Rhine, and if the Renaissance palaces and chateaux first came into being in Italy it is certain they never grew to the flowering luxuriance there that they did in France. Thus does France establish itself as leader in new movements once again. It was so in the olden time with the arts of the architect, the landscape gardener and the painter; it is so to-day with respect to such mundane, less sentimental things as automobiles and aeroplanes. Another chapter, in a story long since started, is a repetition, or review, of the outdoor life of the French monarchs and their followers. Not only did Frenchmen of Gothic and Renaissance times have a taste for travelling far afield, pursuing the arts of peace or war as their conscience or conditions dictated; but they loved, too, the open country and the open road at home; they loved also _la chasse_, as they did tournaments, _fêtes-champêtres_ and outdoor spectacles of all kinds. Add these stage settings to the splendid costuming and the flamboyant architectural accessories of Renaissance times in France and we have what is assuredly not to be found in other lands, a spectacular and imposing pageant of mediæval and Renaissance life and manners which is superlative from all points of view. This is perhaps hard, sometimes, to reconcile with the French attitude towards outdoor life to-day, when _la chasse_ means the hunting of tame foxes (a sport which has been imported from across the channel), "_sport_" means a prize fight, and a garden party or a _fête-champêtre_ a mere gossiping rendezvous over a cup of badly made tea. In the France of the olden time they did things differently--and better. Not all French history was made, or written, within palace walls; much of it came into being in the open air, like the two famous meetings by the Bidassoa, Napoleon's first sight of Marie Louise on the highroad leading out from Senlis, or his making the Pope a prisoner at the Croix de Saint Héram, in the Forest of Fontainebleau. It is this change of scene that makes French history so appealing to those who might otherwise let it remain in shut-up and dry-as-dust books on library shelves. The French monarchs of old were indeed great travellers, and it is by virtue of the fact that affairs of state were often promulgated and consummated _en voyage_ that a royal stamp came to be acquired by many a chateau or country-house which to-day would hardly otherwise be considered as of royal rank. Throughout France, notably in the neighbourhood of Paris, are certain chateaux--palaces only by lack of name--of the nobility where royalties were often as much at home as under their own royal standards. One cannot attempt to confine the limits where these chateaux are to be found, for they actually covered the length and breadth of France. Journeying afield in those romantic times was probably as comfortably accomplished, by monarchs at least, as it is to-day. What was lacking was speed, but they lodged at night under roofs as hospitable as those of the white and gold caravanserai (and some more humble) which perforce come to be temporary abiding places of royalties _en tour_ to-day. The writer has seen the Dowager Queen of Italy lunching at a neighbouring table at a roadside _trattoria_ in Piedmont which would have no class distinction whatever as compared with the average suburban road-house across the Atlantic. At Biarritz, too, the automobiling monarch, Alphonse XIII, has been known to take "tea" on the terrace of the great tourist-peopled hotel in company with mere be-goggled commoners. _Le temps va!_ Were monarchs so democratic in the olden time, one wonders. The court chronicles of all ages, and all ranks, have proved a gold mine for the makers of books of all sorts and conditions. Not only court chroniclers but pamphleteers, even troubadours and players, have contributed much to the records of the life of mediæval France. All history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal of it was born of the gentler passions, and a chap-book maker would put often into print many accounts which the recorder of mere history did not dare use. History is often enough sorry stuff when it comes to human interest, and it needs editing only too often. Courtiers and the fashionable world of France, ever since the days of the poetry-making and ballad-singing Francis and Marguerite, and before, for that matter, made of literature--at least the written and spoken chronicle of some sort--a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or official patronage given these mediæval story-tellers did not always produce the truest tales. Then, as now, writer folk were wont to exaggerate, but most of their work made interesting reading. These courtiers of the itching pen did not often write for money. Royal favour, or that of some fair lady, or ladies, was their chief return in many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by mere dross. It is in the work of such chroniclers as these that one finds a fund of unrepeated historic lore. The dramatists came on the scene with their plots ready-made (and have been coming ever since, if one recalls the large number of French costume plays of recent years), and whether they introduced errors of fact, or not, there was usually so much truth about their work that the very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France, as in England, were their golden days. The mere literary man, or chronicler, was often flayed alive, but the dramatist, even though he dished up the foibles of a king, and without any dressing at that, was fêted and made as much of as a record piano player of to-day. One hears a lot about the deathbed scribblers in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there was not much of that sort of thing in France. No one here penned bitter jibes and lascivious verses merely to keep out of jail, as did Nash and Marlowe in England. In short, one must give due credit to the court chroniclers and ballad-singers of France as being something more than mere pilfering, blackmailing hacks. All the French court and its followers in the sixteenth century shouted epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen and courtly attachés of all ranks with the literary bee humming in their bonnets. They, too, left behind them an imposing record, which has been very useful to others coming after who were concerned with getting a local colour of a brand which should look natural. It is with such guiding lights as are suggested by the foregoing résumé that one seeks his clues for the repicturing of the circumstances under which French royal palaces were erected, as well as for the truthful repetition of the ceremonies and functions of the times, for the court life of old, whether in city palace or country chateau, was a very different thing from that of the Republican régime of to-day. Not only were the royal Paris dwellings, from the earliest times, of a profound luxuriance of design and execution, but the private hotels, the palaces, one may well say, of the nobility were of the same superlative order, and kings and queens alike did not disdain to lodge therein on such occasions as suited their convenience. The suggestive comparison is made because of the close liens with which royalty and the higher nobility were bound. It is sufficient to recall, among others of this class, the celebrated Hotel de Beauvais which will illustrate the reference. Not only was this magnificent town house of palatial dimensions, but it was the envy of the monarchs themselves, because of its refined elegance of construction. This edifice exists to-day, in part, at No. 68 Rue François Miron, and the visitor may judge for himself as to its former elegance. Loret, in his "Gazette" in verse, recounts a visit made to the Hotel de Beauvais in 1663 by Marie Thérèse, the Queen of Louis XIV. Mercredi, notre auguste Reine, Cette charmante souveraine, Fut chez Madame de Beauvais Pour de son amiable palais Voir les merveilles étonnantes Et les raretés surprenantes. Times have changed, for the worse or for the better. The sedan-chair and the coach have given way to the automobile and the engine, and the wood fire to a stale calorifer, or perhaps a gas-log. The comparisons _are_ odious; there is no question as to this; but it is by contrast that the subject is made the more interesting. From the old Palais des Thermes (now a part of the Musée de Cluny) of the Roman emperors down through the Palais de la Cité (where lodged the kings of the first and second races) to the modern installations of the Louvre is a matter of twelve centuries. The record is by no means a consecutive one, but a record exists which embraces a dozen, at least, of the Paris abodes of royalty, where indeed they lived according to many varying scales of comfort and luxury. Not all the succeeding French monarchs had the abilities or the inclinations that enabled them to keep up to the traditions of the art-loving Francis I, but almost all of their number did something creditable in building or decoration, or commanded it to be done. Louis XIV, though he delayed the adjustment of Europe for two centuries, was the first real beautifier of Paris since Philippe Auguste. Privately his taste in art and architecture was rather ridiculous, but publicly he and his architects achieved great things in the general scheme. [Illustration: _The_ Louvre _The_ Tuileries & _The_ Palais Royal _of_ To-Day] Napoleon I, in turn, caught up with things in a political sense, in truth he ran ahead of them, but he in no way neglected the embellishments of the capital, and added a new wing to the Louvre, and filled Musées with stolen loot, which remorse, or popular clamour, induced him, for the most part, to return at a later day. In a decade Napoleon made much history, and he likewise did much for the royal palaces of France. After him a gap supervened until the advent of Napoleon III, who, weakling that he was, had the perspicacity to give the Baron Haussmann a chance to play his part in the making of modern Paris, and if the Tuileries and Saint Cloud had not disappeared as a result of his indiscretion the period of the Second Empire would not have been at all discreditable, as far as the impress it left on Paris was concerned. CHAPTER II THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH GARDENS The French garden was a creation of all epochs from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and, for the most part, those of to-day and of later decades of the nineteenth century, are adaptations and restorations of the classic accepted forms. From the modest _jardinet_ of the moyen-age to the ample gardens and _parterres_ of the Renaissance was a wide range. In their highest expression these early French gardens, with their _broderies_ and _carreaux_ may well be compared as works of art with contemporary structures in stone or wood or stuffs in woven tapestries, which latter they greatly resembled. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the elaborateness of the French garden was even more an accentuated epitome of the tastes of the period. Near the end of the eighteenth century a marked deterioration was noticeable and a separation of the tastes which ordained the arrangement of contemporary dwellings and their gardens was very apparent. Under the Empire the antique style of furniture and decoration was used too, but there was no contemporary expression with regard to garden making. [Illustration: JARDIN FRANÇAIS JARDIN ANGLAIS] In the second half of the nineteenth century, under the Second Empire, the symmetrical lines of the old-time _parterres_ came again into being, and to them were attached composite elements or motives, which more closely resembled details of the conventional English garden than anything distinctly French. The English garden was, for the most part, pure affectation in France, or, at best, it was treated as a frank exotic. Even to-day, in modern France, where an old dwelling of the period of Henri IV, François I, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, or Louis XV still exists with its garden, the latter is more often than not on the classically pure French lines, while that of a modern cottage, villa or chateau is often a poor, variegated thing, fantastic to distraction. Turning back the pages of history one finds that each people, each century, possessed its own specious variety of garden; a species which responded sufficiently to the tastes and necessities of the people, to their habits and their aspirations. Garden-making, like the art of the architect, differed greatly in succeeding centuries, and it is for this reason that the garden of the moyen-age, of the epoch of the Crusades, for example, did not bear the least resemblance to the more ample _parterres_ of the Renaissance. Civilization was making great progress, and it was necessary that the gardens should be in keeping with a less restrained, more luxurious method of life. If the gardens of the Renaissance marked a progress over the _preaux_ and _jardinets_ of mediævalism, those of Le Notre were a blossoming forth of the Renaissance seed. Regretfully, one cannot say as much for the garden plots of the eighteenth century, and it was only with the mid-nineteenth century that the general outlines took on a real charm and attractiveness again, and this was only achieved by going back to original principles. The first gardens were the _vergers_ and _preaux_, little checker-board squares of a painful primitiveness as compared with later standards. These squares, or _carreaux_, were often laid out in foliage and blossoming plants as suggestive as possible of their being made of carpeting or marble. When these miniature enclosures came to be surrounded with trellises and walls the Renaissance in garden-making may be considered as having been in full sway. Under Louis XIV a certain affluence was noticeable in garden plots, and with Louis XV an even more notable symmetry was apparent in the disposition of the general outlines. By this time, the garden in France had become a frame which set off the architectural charms of the dwelling rather than remaining a mere accessory, but it was only with the replacing of the castle-fortress by the more domesticated chateau that a really generous garden space became a definite attribute of a great house. The first gardens surrounding the French chateaux were developments, or adaptations, of Italian gardens, such as were designed across the Alps by Mercogliano, during the feudal period. Later, and during the time of the Crusades, the garden question hardly entered into French life. Gardens, like all other luxuries, were given little thought when the graver questions of peace and security were to be considered, and, for this reason, there is little or nothing to say of French gardens previous to the twelfth century. An important species of the gardens of the moyen-age was that which was found as an adjunct to the great monastic institutions, the _preaux_, which were usually surrounded by the cloister colonnade. One of the most important of these, of which history makes mention, was that of the Abbaye de Saint Gall, of which Charlemagne was capitular. It was he who selected the plants and vegetables which the dwellers therein should cultivate. Of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there is an abundant literary record, and, in a way, a pictorial record as well. From these one can make a very good deduction of what the garden of that day was like; still restrained, but yet something more than rudimentary. From now on French gardens were divided specifically into the _potager_ and _verger_. The _potager_ was virtually a vegetable garden within the walls which surrounded the seigneurial dwelling, and was of necessity of very limited extent, chiefly laid out in tiny _carreaux_, or beds, bordered by tiles or bricks, much as a small city garden is arranged to-day. Here were cultivated the commonest vegetables, a few flowers and a liberal assortment of herbs, such as rue, mint, parsley, sage, lavender, etc. The _verger_, or _viridarium_, was practically a fruit garden, as it is to-day, with perhaps a generous sprinkling of flowers and aromatic plants. The _verger_ was always outside the walls, but not far from the entrance or the drawbridge crossing the moat and leading to the chateau. It was to the _verger_, or orchard, curiously enough, that in times of peace the seigneur and his family retired after luncheon for diversion or repose. "D illocques vieng en cest vergier Eascuns jour pour s'esbanoier." Thus ran a couplet of the "Roman de Thèbes"; and of the hundred or more tales of chivalry in verse, which are recognized as classic, nearly all make mention of the _verger_. It was here that young men and maidens came in springtime for the fête of flowers, when they wove chaplets and garlands, for the moyen-age had preserved the antique custom of the coiffure of flowers, that is to say hats of natural flowers, as we might call them to-day, except that modern hats seemingly call for most of the products of the barnyard and the farm in their decoration, as well as the flowers of the field. The rose was queen among all these flowers and then came the lily and the carnation, chiefly in their simple, savage state, not the highly cultivated product of to-day. From the ballads and the love songs, one gathers that there were also violets, eglantine, daisies, pansies, forget-me-nots, and the marguerite, or _consoude_, was one of the most loved of all. The carnation, or _oeillet_, was called _armerie_; the pansy was particularly in favour with the ladies, who embroidered it on their handkerchiefs and their girdles. Still other flowers found a place in this early horticultural catalogue, the marigold, gladiolus, stocks, lily-of-the-valley and buttercups. Frequently the _verger_ was surrounded by a protecting wall, of more or less architectural pretense, with towers and accessories conforming to the style of the period, and decorative and utilitarian fountains, benches and seats were also common accessories. [Illustration: _Henri IV in an Old French Garden_] The old prints, which reproduced these early French gardens, are most curious to study, amusing even; but their point of view was often distorted as to perspective. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, perspective was almost wholly ignored in pictorial records. There was often no scale, and no depth; everything was out of proportion with everything else, and for this reason it is difficult to judge of the exact proportions of many of these early French gardens. The origin of garden-making in France, in the best accepted sense of the term, properly began with the later years of the thirteenth century and the early years of the fourteenth; continuing the tradition, remained distinctly French until the mid-fifteenth century, for the Italian influence did not begin to make itself felt until after the Italian wars and travels of Charles VIII, Louis XI and Francis I. The earliest traces of the work of the first two of these monarchs are to be seen at Blois and, for a time henceforth, it is to be presumed that all royal gardens in France were largely conceived under the inspiration of Italian influences. Before, as there were primitives in the art of painting in France, there were certainly French gardeners in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One of these, whoever he may have been, was the designer of the _preaux_ and the _treilles_ of the Louvre of Charles V, of which a pictorial record exists, and he, or they, did work of a like nature for the powerful house of Bourgogne, and for René d'Anjou, whom we know was a great amateur gardener. The archives of these princely houses often recount the expenses in detail, and so numerous are certain of them that it would not be difficult to picture anew as to just what they referred. Debanes, the gardener of the Chateau d'Angers, on a certain occasion, gave an accounting for "X Sols" for repairing the grass-plots and for making a _petit preau_. Again: "XI Sols" for the employ of six gardeners to trim the vines and clean up the alleys of the _grand_ and _petit jardin_. Luxury in all things settled down upon all France to a greater degree than hitherto in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and almost without exception princely houses set out to rival one another in the splendour of their surroundings. Now came in the ornamental garden as distinct from the _verger_, and the _preau_ became a greensward accessory, at once practical and decorative, the precursor of the _pelouse_ and the _parterre_ of Le Notre. The _preau_ (in old French _prael_) was a symmetrical square or rectangular grass-grown garden plot. From the Latin _pratum_, or _pratellum_, the words _preau_, _pré_ and _prairie_ were evolved naturally enough, and came thus early to be applied in France to that portion of the pleasure garden set out as a grassy lawn. The word is very ancient, and has come down to us through the monkish vocabulary of the cloister. Some celebrated verse of Christine de Pisan, who wrote "The Life of Charles V," thus describes the cloister at Poissy. "Du cloistre grand large et especieux Que est carré, et, afin qu'il soit mieulx A un prael, ou milieu, gracieux Vert sans grappin Ou a planté en my un très hault pin." It was at this period, that of Saint Louis and the apotheosis of Gothic architecture, that France was at the head of European civilization, therefore in no way can her preëminence in garden-making be questioned. The gardens of the Gothic era seldom surpassed the _enclos_ with a rivulet passing through it, a spring, a pine tree giving a welcome shade, some simple flowers and a _verger_ of fruit trees. The neighbours of France were often warring among themselves but the Grand Seigneur here was settling down to beautifying his surroundings and framing his chateaux, manors and country-seats in dignified and most appealing pictures. Grass-plots appeared in dooryards, flowers climbed up along castle walls and shrubs and trees came to play a genuinely esthetic rôle in the life of the times. An illustrious stranger, banished from Italy, one Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, who had sought a refuge in France, wrote his views on the matter, which in substance were as above. About this time originated the progenitors of the _gloriettes_, which became so greatly the vogue in the eighteenth century. Practically the _gloriette_, a word in common use in northern France and in Flanders, was a _logette de plaisance_. The Spaniards, too, in their _glorietta_, a pavilion in a garden, had practically the same signification of the word. In the fourteenth century French garden the _gloriette_ was a sort of arbour, or trellis-like summer-house, garnished with vines and often perched upon a natural or artificial eminence. Other fast developing details of the French garden were tree-bordered alleys and the planting of more or less regularly set-out beds of flowering plants. Vine trellises and vine-clad pavilions and groves were a speedy development of these details, and played parts of considerable importance in gardening under the French Renaissance. In this same connection there is a very precise record in an account of the gardens of the Louvre under Charles V concerning the contribution of one, Jean Baril, maker of Arlors, to this form of the landscape architect's art. "Ornamental birds--peacocks, pheasants and swans now came in as adjuncts to the French land and water garden." This was the way a certain pertinent comment was made by a writer of the fifteenth century. From the "Ménagier de Paris," a work of the end of the fourteenth century, one learns that behind a dwelling of a prince or noble of the time was usually to be found a "_beau jardin tout planté d'arbres à fruits, de legumes, de rosiers, orné de volières et tapisé de gazon sur lesquels se promènent les paons_." French gardens of various epochs are readily distinguished by the width of their alleys. In the moyen-age the paths which separated the garden plots were very narrow; in the early Renaissance period they were somewhat wider, taking on a supreme maximum in the gardens of Le Notre. Trimmed trees entered into the general scheme in France towards the end of the fifteenth century. Under Henri IV and under Louis XII trees were often trimmed in ungainly, fantastic forms, but with the advent of Le Notre the good taste which he propagated so widely promptly rejected these grotesques, which, for a fact, were an importation from Flanders, like the _gloriettes_. Not by the remotest suggestion could a clipped yew in the form of a peacock or a giraffe be called French. Le Notre eliminated the menagerie and the aviary, but kept certain geometrical forms, particularly with respect to hedges, where niches were frequently trimmed out for the placing of statues, columns surmounted with golden balls, etc. The most famous of the frankly Renaissance gardens developed as a result of the migrations of the French monarchs in Italy were those surrounding such palaces and chateaux as Fontainebleau, Amboise, and Blois. Often these manifestly French gardens, though of Italian inspiration in the first instance, were actually the work of Italian craftsmen. Pucello Marceliano at four hundred _livres_ and Edme Marceliano at two hundred _livres_ were in the employ of Henri II. It was the former who laid out the magnificent _Parterre de Diane_ at Chenonceaux, where Catherine de Médici later, being smitten with the skill of the Florentines, gave the further commission of the _Jardin Vert_, which was intended to complete this _parterre_, to Henri le Calabrese and Jean Collo. The later Renaissance gardens divided themselves into various classes, _jardins de plaisir_, _jardins de plaisance_, _jardins de propreté_, etc. _Parterres_ now became of two sorts, _parterres à compartiments_ and _parterres de broderies_, names sufficiently explicit not to need further comment. [Illustration: _"Parterre de Diane," Chenonceaux_] It is difficult to determine just how garden _broderies_ came into being. They may have been indirectly due to woman's love of embroidery and the garden alike. The making of these garden _broderies_ was a highly cultivated art. Pierre Vallet, embroiderer to Henri IV, created much in his line of distinction and note, and acquired an extensive clientele for his flowers and models. Often these gardens, with their _parterres_ and _broderies_ were mere additions to an already existing architectural scheme, but with respect to the gardens of the Luxembourg and Saint Germain-en-Laye they came into being with the edifices themselves, or at least those portions which they were supposed to embellish. Harmony was then first struck between the works of the horticulturist--the garden-maker--and those of the architect--the builder in stone and wood. This was the prelude to those majestic ensembles of which Le Notre was to be the composer. Of the celebrated French palace and chateau gardens which are not centered upon the actual edifices with which they are more or less intimately connected, but are distinct and apart from the gardens which in most cases actually surround a dwelling, may be mentioned those of Montargis, Saint Germain, Amboise, Villers-Cotterets and Fontainebleau. These are rather parks, like the "home-parks," so called, in England, which, while adjuncts to the dwellings, are complete in themselves and are possessed of a separate identity, or reason for being. Chiefly these, and indeed most French gardens of the same epoch, differ greatly from contemporary works in Italy in that the latter were often built and terraced up and down the hillsides, whereas the French garden was laid out, in the majority of instances, on the level, though each made use of interpolated architectural accessories such as balustrades, statuary, fountains, etc. Mollet was one of the most famous gardeners of the time of Louis XIV. He was the gardener of the Duc d'Aumale, who built the gardens of the Chateau d'Anet while it was occupied by Diane de Poitiers, and for their time they were considered the most celebrated in France for their upkeep and the profusion and variety of their flowers. This was the highest development of the French garden up to this time. It is possible that this Claude Mollet was the creator of the _parterres_ and _broderies_ so largely used in his time, and after. Mollet's formula was derived chiefly from flower and plant forms, resembling in design oriental embroideries. He made equal use of the labyrinth and the sunken garden. His idea was to develop the simple _parquet_ into the elaborate _parterre_. He began his career under Henri III and ultimately became the gardener of Henri IV. His elaborate work "Theatre des Plans et Jardinage" was written towards 1610-1612, but was only published a half a century later. It was only in the sixteenth century that gardens in Paris were planned and developed on a scale which was the equal of many which had previously been designed in the provinces. [Illustration: PLAN of SUNKEN GARDEN (_JARDIN CREUX_)] The chief names in French gardening--before the days of Le Notre--were those of the two Mollets, the brothers Boyceau, de la Barauderie and Jacques de Menours, and all successively held the post of Superintendent of the Garden of the King. In these royal gardens there was always a distinctly notable feature, the _grand roiales_, the principal avenues, or alleys, which were here found on a more ambitious scale than in any of the private gardens of the nobility. The central avenue was always of the most generous proportions, the nomenclature coming from royal--the _grand roial_ being the equivalent of _Allée Royale_, that is, Avenue Royal. By the end of the sixteenth century the Garden of the Tuileries, which was later to be entirely transformed by Le Notre, offered an interesting aspect of the _parquet_ at its best. In "_Paris à Travers les Ages_" one reads that from the windows of the palace the garden resembled a great checker-board containing more than a hundred uniform _carreaux_. There were six wide longitudinal alleys or avenues cut across by eight or ten smaller alleys which produced this rectangular effect. Within some of the squares were single, or grouped trees; in others the conventional _quincunx_; others were mere expanses of lawn, and still others had flowers arranged in symmetrical patterns. In one of these squares was a design which showed the escutcheons of the arms of France and those of the Médici. These gardens of the Tuileries were first modified by a project of Bernard Palissy, the porcelainiste. He let his fancy have full sway and the criss-cross alleys and avenues were set out at their junctures with moulded ornaments, enamelled miniatures, turtles in faience and frogs in porcelain. It was this, perhaps, which gave the impetus to the French for their fondness to-day for similar effects, but Bernard Palissy doubtless never went so far as plaster cats on a ridgepole, as one may see to-day on many a pretty villa in northern France. This certainly lent an element of picturesqueness to the Renaissance Garden of the Louvre, a development of the same spirit which inspired this artist in his collaboration at Chenonceaux. This was the formula which produced the _jardin délectable_, an exaggeration of the taste of the epoch, but still critical of its time. The gardens of the Renaissance readily divided themselves into two classes, those of the _parterres à compartiments_ and those of the _parterres de broderies_. The former, under Francis I and Henri II, were divided into geometrical compartments thoroughly in the taste of the Renaissance, but bordered frequently with representations of designs taken from Venetian lace and various other contemporary stuffs. There were other _parterres_, where the compartments were planned on a more utilitarian scale; in other words, they were the _potagers_ which rendered the garden, said Olivier de Serres, one of "profitable beauty." Some of the compartments were devoted entirely to herbs and medicinal plants while others were entirely given over to flowers. In general the compartments were renewed twice a year, in May and August. [Illustration: _A Parterre_] The _Grand Parterre_ at Fontainebleau, called in other days the _Parterre de Tiber_, offered as remarkable an example of the terrace garden as was to be found in France, the terraces rising a metre or more above the actual garden plot and enclosing a sort of horticultural arena. It was in the sixteenth century that architectural motives came to be incorporated into the gardens in the form of square, round or octagonal pavilions, and here and there were added considerable areas of tiled pavements, features which were found at their best in the gardens of the Chateau de Gaillon and at Langeais. One special and distinct feature of the French Renaissance garden was the labyrinth, of which three forms were known. The first was composed of merely low borders, the second of hedges shoulder high, or even taller, and the third was practically a roofed-over grove. The latter invention was due, it is said, to the discreet Louis XIV. In the Tuileries garden, in the time of Catherine de Médici, there was a labyrinth greatly in vogue with the Parisian nobles who "found much pleasure in amusing themselves therein." In that garden the labyrinth was sometimes called the "Road of Jerusalem" and it was presumably of eastern origin. In the seventeenth century grottos came to be added to the garden, though this is seemingly an Italian tradition of much earlier date. Among the notable grottos of this time were that of the _Jardin des Pins_ at Fontainebleau, and that of the Chateau de Meudon, built by Philibert Delorme, of which Ronsard celebrated its beauties in verse. The art was not confined to the gardens of royalties and the nobility, for the _bourgeoisie_ speedily took up with the puerile idea (said to have come from Holland, by the way), and built themselves grottos of shells, plaster and boulders. It was then that the _chiens de faience_, which the smug Paris suburbanite of to-day so loves, were born. By the seventeenth century the equalized _carreaux_ of the early geometrically disposed gardens were often replaced with the oblongs, circles and, somewhat timidly introduced, more bizarre forms, the idea being to give variety to the ensemble. There was less fear for the artistic effect of great open spaces than had formerly existed, and the avenues and alleys were considerably enlarged, and such architectural and sculptural accessories as fountains, balustrades and perrons were designed on a more extensive scale. Basins and canals and other restrained surfaces of water began to appear on a larger scale, and greater insistence was put upon their proportions with regard to the decorative part which they were to play in the ensemble. This was the preparatory period of the coming into being of the works of Le Notre and Mansart. The _Grand Siècle_ lent a profound majesty to royal and noble dwellings, and its effect is no less to be remarked upon than the character of their gardens. The moving spirit which ordained all these things was the will of the _Roi Soleil_. _Parterres_ and _broderies_ were designed on even a grander scale than before. They were frequently grouped into four equal parts with a circular basin in the centre, and mirror-like basins of water sprang up on all sides. Close to the royal dwelling was the fore-court, as often dressed out with flowers and lawn as with tiles and flags. From it radiated long alleys and avenues, stretching out almost to infinity. At this time the grass-plots were developed to high order, and there were groves, rest-houses, bowers, and _theatres de verdure_ at each turning. Tennis-courts came to be a regularly installed accessory, and the basins and "mirrors" of water were frequently supplemented by cascades, and some of the canals were so large that barges of state floated thereon. Over some of the canals bridges were built as fantastic in design as those of the Japanese, and again others as monumental as the Pont Neuf. In their majestic regularity the French gardens of the seventeenth century possessed an admirable solemnity, albeit their amplitude and majesty give rise to justifiable criticism. It is this criticism that qualifies the values of such gardens as those of Versailles and Vaux, but one must admit that the scale on which they were planned has much to do with this, and certainly if they had been attached to less majestic edifices the comment would have been even more justifiable. As it is, the criticism must be qualified. The aspect of the garden by this time had been greatly modified. Aside from such great ensembles as those of Versailles was now to be considered a taste for something smaller, but often overcrowded with accessories of the same nature, which compared so well with the vastness of Versailles, but which, on the other hand, looked so out of place in miniature. It was not long now before the "style pompadour" began to make itself shown with regard to garden design--the exaggeration of an undeniable grace by an affected mannerism. All the rococco details which had been applied to architecture now began to find their duplication in the garden rockeries--weird fantasies built of plaster and even shells of the sea. By later years of the eighteenth century there came on the scene as a designer of gardens one, De Neufforge. His work was a prelude to the classicism of the style of Louis XVI which was to come. There was, too, at this time a disposition towards the English garden, but only a slight tendency, though towards 1780 the conventional French garden had been practically abandoned. The revolution in the art of garden-making therefore preceded that of the world of politics by some years. There are three or four works which give specific details on these questions. They are "_De la Distribution des Maisons de Plaisance_," by Blondel (1773), his "_Cours d'Architecture_" of the same date, and Panseron's volume entitled "_Recueil de Jardinage_," published in 1783. The following brief résumé shows the various steps through which the French formal garden passed. In the moyen-age the garden was a thing quite apart from the dwelling, and was but a diminutive dooryard sort of a garden. The garden of the Renaissance amplified the regular lines which existed in the moyen-age, but was often quite as little in accord with the dwelling that it surrounded as its predecessor. The union of the garden and the dwelling and its dependencies was clearly marked under Louis XIV, while the gardens of Louis XV tended somewhat to modify the grand lines and the majestic presence of those of his elder. These gardens of Louis XV were more fantastic, and followed less the lines of traditional good taste. Shapes and forms were complicated and indeed inexplicably mixed into a mélange that one could hardly recognize for one thing or another, certainly not as examples of any well-meaning styles which have lasted until to-day. The straight line now disappeared in favour of the most dissolute and irrational curves imaginable, and the sober majesty of the gardens of Louis XIV became a tangle of warring elements, fine in parts and not uninteresting, effective, even, here and there, but as a whole an aggravation. Finally the reaction came for something more simple and more in harmony with rational taste. The best example remaining of the Louis XV garden is that which surrounds the _Pavillon de Musique_ of the Petit Trianon, an addition to the garden which Louis XIV had given to the Grand Trianon. By comparison with the big garden of Le Notre this latter conception is as a boudoir to a reception hall. The garden of Louis XVI was a composite, with interpolations from across the Rhine, from Holland and Belgium and from England even; features which got no great hold, however, but which, for a time, gave it an air less French than anything which had gone before. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the formal garden was practically abandoned in France. It was the period of the real decadence of the formal garden. This came not from one cause alone but from many. To the straight lines and gentle curves of former generations upon generations of French gardens were added sinuosities as varied and complicated as those of the Vale of Cashmere, and again, with tiny stars and crescents and what not, the ground resembled an ornamental ceiling more than it did a garden. The sentimentalism of the epoch did its part, and accentuated the desire to carry out personal tastes rather than build on traditionally accepted lines. The taste for the English garden grew apace in France, and many a noble plantation was remodelled on these lines, or rooted up altogether. Immediately neighbouring upon the dwelling the garden still bore some resemblance to its former outlines, but, as it drew farther away, it became a park, a wildwood or a preserve. Isabey Père, a miniaturist, under Napoleonic stimulus, designed a number of French gardens in the early years of the nineteenth century, following more or less the conventional lines of the best work of the seventeenth century, and succeeded admirably in a small way in resuscitating the fallen taste. Isabey's gardens may have lacked much that was remarkable in the best work of Le Notre, but they were considerably better than anything of a similar nature, so far as indicating a commendable desire to return to better ideals. Under the Second Empire a great impulse was given to garden design and making in Paris itself. It was then that the parks and squares came really to enter into the artistic conception of what a city beautiful should be. Leaving the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg out of the question, the Parc Monceau and that of the Buttes Chaumont of to-day, the descendants of these first Paris gardens show plainly how thoroughly good they were in design and execution. The majority of professional gardeners of renown in France made their first successes with the gardens of the city of Paris, reproducing the best of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century work, which had endured without the competition of later years having dulled its beauty, though perhaps the _parterres_ of to-day are rather more warm in colouring, even cruder, than those of a former time. The _jardin fleuriste_ and the _parterre horticole_ of the nineteenth century appealed however quite as much in their general arrangement and the modification of their details and their rainbow colours, as any since the time of Louis XVI. According to the expert definition the _jardin fleuriste_ was a "garden reserved exclusively to the culture and ornamental disposition of plants giving forth rich leaves and beautiful flowers." The above quoted description is decidedly apt. The seventeenth century French garden formed a superb framing for the animated fêtes and reunions in which took part such a brilliant array of lords and ladies of the court as may have been invited to taste the delicacies of a fête amid such luxurious appointments. The fashionable and courtly life of the day, so far as its open-air aspect was concerned, centered around these gardens and parks of the great houses of royalty and the nobility. The costume of the folk of the time, with cloak and sword and robes of silk and velvet and gilded carriages and _chaises-à-porteurs_, had little in common with the out-of-door garden-party life of to-day, where the guests arrive in automobiles, be-rugged and be-goggled and somewhat the worse for a dusty journey. It is for this reason that Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, in spite of the suggestion of sumptuousness which they still retain, are, from all points of view, more or less out of scale with the life of our times. The modern garden, whether laid out in regular lines, or on an ornamental scale, as a flower garden purely, or in a composite style, is usually but an adjunct to the modern chateau, villa or cottage. It is more intimate than the vast, more theatrically disposed area of old, and is more nearly an indication of the personal tastes of the owner because of its restrained proportions. [Illustration: _Bassin de la Couronne, Vaux-le-Vicomte_] CHAPTER III THE ROYAL HUNT IN FRANCE Just how great a part the royal hunt played in the open-air life of the French court all who know their French history and have any familiarity with the great forests of France well recognize. The echo of French country architecture as evinced in the "_maisons de plaisance_" and "_rendezvous de chasse_" scattered up and down the France of monarchial times lives until to-day, scarcely fainter than when the note was originally sounded. Often these establishments were something more than a mere hunting-lodge, or shooting-box, indeed they generally aspired to the proportions of what may readily be accepted as a country-house. They established a specious type of architecture which in many cases grew, in later years, into a chateau or palace of manifestly magnificent appointments. At the great hunting exposition recently held at Vienna the _clou_ of the display was a French royal hunting-lodge in the style of Louis XVI, hung with veritable Gobelin tapestries, loaned by the French government and picturing "The Hunt in France." It was called by the critics a unique painting in a beautiful frame. In the days of Francis I and his sons, the royal hunt was given a great impetus by Catherine de Médici, wife of Henri II. Francis, in company with his sons, had gone to Marseilles to meet the Médici bride, who was on her way to make her home at the Paris Louvre, and when he found her possessed of so lively manners and such great intelligence he became so charmed with her that, it is said, he danced with her all of the first evening. What pleased the monarch even more, and perhaps not less his sons, was that she shot with an arquebuse like a sharpshooter, and could ride to hounds like a natural-born Amazon. She was more than a rival, as it afterwards proved, of that arch-huntress, Diane de Poitiers. History recounts in detail that last royal hunt of Francis I at Rambouillet, when he was lying near to death, the guest of his old friend, d'Angennes. The old manor, half hunting-lodge, half fortress, and very nearly royal in all its appointments, proved a comfortable enough rest-house, and on the day after his arrival, in March, 1547, the monarch commanded the preparations for a royal hunt to commence at daybreak in the neighbouring forest. The equipage started forth in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered the king's breast, courage born of the excitement around him, the baying of the hounds and the tramping and neighing of impatient horses. He had forced himself from his bed and on horseback and started off with the rest, defying the better counsel of his retainers. His strength proved to be born of a fictitious enthusiasm, and, speedily losing interest, he was brought back to the manor where he had his apartments, and put speechless and half dead to bed, actually dying the next day from this last over-exertion, scarce half a century of the span of his life accomplished. Henri de Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in _Jarnet_ house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurançon than the finest _cru_ in Paris cellars. He hated the parade of courts, was dirty, unkempt and careless, a genuine son of the soil, heedless of fate, and an excellent huntsman. Up to the seventeenth century the ladies of the French court showed a keener interest for falconry than for the hunt by horse and hounds. The heroines of the Fronde, and the generation which followed, seemed to lose interest in this form of sport, and gave their favour to packs of hounds, and followed with equal interest the hunt for deer, wolves, boars, foxes and hares as they were tracked through forests and over arid wastes. The old hunting horn, the winding horn of romance, still exists at the hunts of France, a relic of the days of Louis XIV. It sounds the conventional comings and goings of the huntsmen in the same classic phraseology as of old--the _lancer_, the _bien allée_, the _vue_, the _changement de forêt_, the _accompagné_, the _bat l'eau_, the _hallali par terre_, and the _curée_. The "_Curée aux Flambeaux_" was one of the most picturesque ceremonies connected with the royal hunt in France. It began in the gallant days, and lived even until the time of the Second Empire. [Illustration: _A "Curée aux Flambeaux"_] The _curée_, that is the giving up to the hounds the remains of an animal slain in chase, does not always take place at night, but when it does the torches play the part of impressive and picturesque accessories. When a _curée_ takes place at the spot where the animal is actually killed the French sporting term for the ceremony is "_forcé et abattu_." This, however, is usually preceded by another called "_le pied_," which consists in cutting off one of the feet of the dead animal and offering it to the person in whose honor the hunt was held. When the _curée_ takes place by torchlight the body of the animal is carried beneath the windows of the chateau, a circle is formed by the "_piqueurs_," or head hunters, and all who have participated in the pursuit; and, to the sound of a trumpet, loaned by the sportsmen, one of the _valets de venérie_ cuts up the stag. The _meutes_, that is to say, the hounds which are let slip last of all, and which terminates the chase--are then brought by the _valet des chiens_, who has great difficulty in keeping them from breaking loose. When the entrails have been cut away the valet sits astride the animal, holding up the _nappe_, or head and neck, shaking it at the already furious hounds. It is the care of the valet during this interval to conceal the pieces of flesh which are still under the body. The hounds are then loosened, but are kept within bounds by the whips of the _piqueurs_ and the _valet des chiens_. When the dogs are sufficiently exasperated the brutes are allowed to rush upon the remains of their victim; only, however, to be driven back again by whipping. When their docility has thus been proven the definite signal, "_lachez tout_," is given, and the hounds rush towards the stag. The _curée_ then presents a savage spectacle: the air is filled with growling, barking and yelling, while the ground is covered with scrambling dogs, their mouths reeking with blood. The feminine costume for the hunt in the time of Louis XIII was of broadcloth or velvet, with a great feather-ornamented "picture" hat. Only now and again a lady on horseback after 1650 dared borrow doublet and jacket, and mount astride. The ladies followed the hunt of Louis XIV on horseback, seldom, if ever, in the older manner of sitting behind their cavalier on the same steed. From the time of Catherine de Médici, indeed, the Italian side-saddle had become the fashion for women. Under Louis XV the ladies sought a little more comfort, and followed the equipage sitting in a sort of hamper-like, diminutive basket, hung from the broad back of a sturdy quadruped. Dresses became more fanciful, both in materials and colours. From this it was but a step to even more elaborate toilettes which necessitated a conveyance of some sort on wheels, but the most intrepid still clung to the traditionally classic methods. Marie Antoinette had her _equipage de chasse_, and Madame Durfort was constantly abroad in the forests of Montmorency and Boissy, directing the operation of eight or ten professional huntsmen. Among her guests were frequently the ambassadors of Prussia, Russia and Austria. In the time of Louis XIV the Comtesse de Lude devoted herself to the hunt with a frenzy born of an inordinate enthusiasm. At the head of a pack of hounds she knew no obstacle, and, on one occasion, penetrated on horseback, followed by her dogs, into the oratory of the nuns of the Convent of Estival. By the end of the seventeenth century the hunt in France had become no more a sport for ladies. Hunting was still a noble sport, but it was more for men than for women. The court hunted not only in royal company, but accepted invitations from any seigneur who possessed an ample preserve and who could put up a good kill; magistrates, financiers and bishops, indeed all classes, became followers of the hunt. Montgaillard tells of a hunt in which he took part on the feast day of Saint Bernard, with the monks of the Bernardin Convent in Languedoc. In the episcopal domain of Saverne six hundred beaters were employed on one occasion to provide sport for an assembled company of lords and ladies. These were the days when the bishops were in truth _Grand Seigneurs_. The women of the court, while they played the game, ceded nothing to the men in bravery. Neither rain, hail nor snow frightened them. On the 28th of June, 1713, Louis XIV was hunting the deer at Rambouillet when a terrific, cyclonic storm fell upon the equipage, but not a man nor woman in the monarch's party quit. The Duchesse de Berry was "wet to the skin," but her ardour for the hunt was not in the least cooled. To-day at Fontainebleau or Rambouillet the echo is sounded from the hunting horn of Labaudy, the sugar-king, who pulls off at least two "hunts," with his spectacular equipage, each year, and it is a sight too; a French hunting party was ever picturesque, and if to-day not as practical as the more blood-loving Englishman's hunt, is at least traditionally sentimental, even artificial to the extent, at any rate, that it seems stagy, even to the inclusion of the automobiles which bring and carry away the participants. "Other days, other ways" never had a more strict application than to _la chasse a courre_ in France. Two accounts are here given of two comparatively modern figures in the French hunting field, which show the great store set by the sport in France. In the annals of the Chateau de Grosbois, belonging to-day to the Prince de Wagram, are the accounts of an early nineteenth century hunt, which shows that the game cost dear. The "Grand Veneur" of the Napoleonic reign was a master sportsman, indeed, and to-day, in a gallery of the chateau, are preserved the guns of the master, his hunting crop and saddle, his "colours" and his hunting horn. From the registers of the chateau, under date of December 10, 1809, the following, which concerned a hunting party given by the chatelain, is extracted verbatim. Note of the Maitre d'Hotel for collations for the guests 8,226 francs Illuminations 1,080 francs Gratifications to the beaters 1,000 francs Eau de Cologne for the ladies 30 francs Gun-bearers 148 francs Helpers (150) 600 francs Aids (200) 315 francs Another hunt was given in 1811, in honour of Napoleon, when such items as three thousand francs for an orchestra, a like sum for bouquets for the ladies, a thousand or two for bonbons and fans, and twelve thousand for hired furniture, etc., to say nothing of the expenses of the hunt itself, made the bag somewhat costly. It was not always easy for the master of the hunt to get justice when it came to paying for his supplies, and in these same records a mention of a dozen leather breeches at a hundred and forty francs each was crossed off and a marginal note, _Non_, added in the hand of Maréchal Berthier, Prince de Wagram, himself. The chief figure in the French hunting world of to-day is another descendant of the Napoleonic portrait gallery, Prince Murat. At the age of twelve the young Prince Joachim had already followed the hounds at Fontainebleau and Compiègne. In his double quality of relative and companion of the Prince Imperial he was one of the chiefs of the equipment of the Imperial Hunt. To-day, though well past the span of life, he is as active and as enduring in his participation in the strenuous sport as many a younger man and his knowledge of the grand art of _vénerie_, and his ardour for being always ahead with the hounds, is noted by all who may happen to see him while jaunting through the Fôret de Compiègne, keeping well up with the traditions of his worthy elder, the "Premier Cavalier" of the First Empire, the King of Naples. [Illustration: _An Imperial Hunt at Fontainebleau_] He won his first stripes in the hunting field at Compiègne in 1868, at a hunt given in honour of the Prince de Hohenzollern and the Princesse, who was the sister of the King of Portugal. It was a most moving event, so much so that it just escaped being turned into a drama, for one of the ladies of the court had a leg broken, and the minister, Fould, was almost mortally injured. A "_dix cors_," a stag with antlers of ten branches, had been run down at the Rond Royal where it had taken refuge in a near-by copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most confused melée ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and the cows of the farmer, and the stag fell to the carabine of Prince de la Moskowa, with the young Prince Murat on his pony in the very front rank. Thus early initiated in the chivalrous sport of the hunt the young man followed every hunt, big or little, which was held in the environs of Paris for many years, and by the time that he came to possess the epaulettes of an Officier de Cuirassiers he was known to all the hunts from the Ardennes to Anjou. For the past generation he has been retired to civil life by a Republican decree, and since that time has lived in his suburban Paris property, devoting himself to the raising of hunters. Here he lives almost on the borders of that great extent of forest which occupies the northern section of the Ile de France, occasionally organizing a hunt, which takes on not a little of the noble aspect of a former time, the prince following always within sound of the hunting horn and the baying of the hounds, if not actually always within sight of the quarry. It is here, in his Villa Normande, near which Saint Ouen gave Dagobert that famous counsel which has gone down in history, that the Prince and Princesse Murat come to pass two or three months each year with their children, their allied parents and the "great guns" of the old régime who still gather about the master of the hunt as courtiers gather around their king. At Chamblay there have been held magnificent gun shoots under the organization of the prince and his equipage. His kennels contain forty-eight of the finest bred hounds in France, and are guarded by three caretakers, the goader, Carl, whose fame has reached every hunting court of Europe and a couple of _valets des chiens_. The prince's colours are distributed as follows: a huzzar jacket of blue, with collar, plaquettes, and vest of grenadine and breeches of a darker blue. Formerly Prince Murat hunted the roe-deer in the valley of the Oise, but many enclosures of private property having made this exceedingly difficult in later years he is to-day obliged to go farther afield. In the spring the equipage goes to Rosny, near Mantes, and perhaps during the same season occasionally to Rambouillet. The hunts at Chamblay are the perfection of the practice of the art. Seldom is the quarry wanting. The refrain of the Ode to Saint Hubert lauds the prowess of this great "Maitre d'Equipage." "Par Saint Hubert mon patron C'est quelque due de haut renom * * * Sonnez: écuyers et piqueux Un Murat vien en ces lieux." Chamblay fortunately being neither populous nor near a great town there is no throng of curious spectators hovering about to get in the way and scare the game and the hounds and their followers out of their wits. The Chasse de Chamblay is the devotion of the _vrais veneurs_; the Prince Murat and his son, the Prince Joachim, (to-day at the military school at Saint Cyr), the Prince Eugene Murat, the Comte de Vallon, the Baron de Neuflize and a few famous _veneurs_ in gay uniforms come from afar to give éclat to the hunt of the master. And the ladies: the following names are of those devoted to the prowess of the Prince Murat--Madame la Princesse, la Princesse Marguerite Murat, Mademoiselle d'Elchingen, the Duchesse and the Marquise d'Albufera, the Duchesse de Camestra, and Madame Kraft. From this one sees that romance is not all smouldering. If other proof were wanting a perusal of that most complete and interesting account of the hunt in France in modern times, "_Les Chasses de Rambouillet_" (_Ouvrage offert par Monsieur Felix Faure_) would soon establish it. This was not a work destined for the public at large. The hunt was ever a sport of kings in France, and though France has become Republican its _Chasse Nationale_ at Rambouillet partakes not a little of the aspect of those courtly days when there was less up-to-dateness and more sentiment. [Illustration: _Rendezvous de Chasse, Rambouillet_] There were but one hundred copies of this work printed for the friends of the late president of the Republic--"Other Sovereigns," as the dedication reads, "Princes, Grand Dukes, Ambassadors." Rambouillet was the theatre of the most splendid hunts of the sixteenth century, and down through the ages it has ever held a preëminent place; holds it to-day even. Louis XVI in the Revolutionary torment even regretted the cutting off of his prerogative of the royal hunt, but he had no choice in the matter. In his journal of 1789 one reads: "the cerf runs alone in the Parc en Bas" (Rambouillet), and again in 1790: "Séance of the National Assembly at noon; Audience of a deputation in the afternoon. The deer plentiful at Gambayseuil." The Revolution felled many French institutions; low, great, ecclesiastical and monarchial monuments, the trees of the forest, and the royal game, by a system of poaching, had become greatly diminished in quantity. The nineteenth century, so frankly democratic in its latter years, was less favourable to the hunt than the monarchial days which had gone before. It had a considerable prominence under Charles X, more perhaps than it ever had under Napoleon, who in his infancy and laborious adolescence had few opportunities of following it; and in the later years of his life he was too busy. Napoleon III was not really a "good hunter," though he was something of a marksman and took a considerable pride in his skill in that accomplishment. Entering the democratic era, Jules Grévy seems to have been only a pot-hunter of the _bourgeoisie_, who practiced the art only because he wanted a jugged hare for his dinner, or again simply to kill time. Sadi-Carnot was still less a hunter of the romantic school, but assisted frequently at the ceremonial shootings which were arranged for visiting monarchs. On one occasion he was put down on the record-sheet of a hunt at Rambouillet as responsible only for the death of eighteen heads, whilst a visiting Grand Duke pulled down a hundred and fifty. It was notably during the presidency of Felix Faure that Rambouillet again took on its animation of former times. The chateau had been furbished up once more after a long sleep, and, to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants of the town, there were more comings and goings than there had been for a quarter of a century. In the summer and autumn the president made Rambouillet his preferred residence, and there received many visiting sovereigns and notables of all ranks. In one year a score of "Official Hunts" were held, to which all the members of the diplomatic corps were invited, while there were two or three affairs of an "International" character in honour of visiting sovereigns. All was under the control of the Grand Veneur of the Third Republic, the Comte de Girardin, and while a truly royal flavour may have been lacking the general aspect was much the same as it might have been in the days of the monarchy. The Captain of the Hunt under Felix Faure was the Inspector of Forests, Leddet, and the Premier Veneur was the Commandant Lagarenne. The president himself was a marksman of the first rank, and never was there a reckoning up of the _tableau_ but that he was near the head of the list. So accomplished was he with the rifle that on more than one occasion he was obliged to practically efface himself in favour of some visiting monarch, as it was said he did in the case of the King of Portugal in 1895, the Grand Ducs Vladimir and Nicolas in 1896. Huntsmen not royal by virtue of title, or alliance, the Republican president beat to a stand-still. He had no pity nor favour for a mere ambassador, whether he hailed from England or Germany, nor for members of the Institute, Senators nor Deputies. With Prince Albert of Monaco he held himself equal, and for every bird shot on the wing by the head of the house of Grimaldi the "longshoreman" of Havre brought down another. _La chasse à courre_ before the law in France to-day may be practiced only under strictly laid down conditions. The huntsman must legally have his dogs under such control, and keep sufficiently close to them, as to be able to recover the quarry immediately after it has been closed in upon by the hounds. Like shooting, since the Decrée of 1844, hunting with hounds may only be undertaken under authority of a _permis de chasse_, and in open season, during the daytime, and with the consent of the owners over whose properties the hunt is to be held. The ceremony of the hunt in France now follows the traditions of the classic hunt of the monarchy. The _veneur_ decides on the rendezvous, whether the quarry be stag or chevreuil, fox or hare. The _piqueur_ follows close up with the dogs, sets them on or calls them off, and recalls them if they go off on a false scent. CHAPTER IV THE PALAIS DE LA CITÉ AND TOURNELLES Not every one assumes the Paris Palais de Justice to ever have been the home of kings and queens. It has not, however, always been a tilting ground for lawyers and criminals, though, no doubt, when one comes to think of it, it is in that rôle that it has acted its most thrilling episodes. The Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie and the great clock of the Tour de l'Horloge mark the Palais de Justice down in the books of most folk as one of the chief Paris "sights," but it was as a royal residence that it first came into prominence. This palace, not the conglomerate half-secular, half-religious pile of to-day, but an edifice of some considerable importance, existed from the earliest days of the Frankish invasion, and when occupied by Clotilde, the wife of Clovis, was known as the Palais de la Cité. Under the last of the kings of the First Race this palace took on really splendid proportions. When Hugues Capet arrived on the throne he abandoned the kingly residence formerly occupied by the Frankish rulers, the Palais des Thermes, and installed his goods and chattels in this Palais de la Cité, which his son Robert had rebuilt under the direction of Enguerrand de Marigny. Up to the time of Francis I it remained the preferred residence of the French monarchs, regardless of the grander, more luxuriously disposed Louvre, which had come into being. Philippe Auguste, by a contrary caprice, would transact no kingly business elsewhere, and it was within the walls of this palace that he married Denmark's daughter. His successors, Saint Louis, Philippe-le-Hardi, and Philippe-le-Bel did their part in enlarging and beautifying the structure, and Saint Louis laid the foundations of that peerless Gothic gem--La Saint Chapelle. From the windows of the Palais de la Cité another Charles assisted at an official massacre, differing little from that of Saint Bartholemew's, which was conducted from the Louvre. On the first floor of the Palais de Justice of to-day is the apartment paved in a mosaic of black and white marble, with a painted and gilded wooden vaulting, where Charles V received the Emperor Charles IV and the "Roi des Romains." The three monarchs, accompanied by their families, here supped together around a great round marble table, a secret supper prolific of an _entente cordiale_ which must have been the forerunner of recent ceremonies of a similar nature in France. Known as the Salle de Marbre, this great chamber came later to be the Tribunal where the courts sat. It was only after the death of Charles VI, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, that the Palais de la Cité was given over wholly to the disciples of Saint Yves, the judges, advocates and notaries. It became also the definite seat of the Parliament and took the nomenclature of Palais de Justice, though still inhabited at intermittent intervals by French royalties. One such notable occasion was that when Henry V of England was here married to Catherine de France, and when Henry VI of England took up his temporary residence here as king to the French. In the fourteenth century the precincts of the Palais de la Cité--the open courtyard one assumes is meant--were invaded by the stalls of small shopkeepers, some of which actually took root in wood and stone and became fixtures to such an extent that the courtyard was known as the Galerie des Merciers. The great marble chamber after becoming the meeting place of the Tribunal played a part at times dignified and at others banal. An incident is recorded where the clerks and minor court officials danced on the famous marble table and "played farces" with the judicial bench serving as a stage. It was said that, on account of the immoralities which they represented, the authorities were obliged to suppress the performances by law, as they have in recent years the flagrant freedom of the "Quat'z Arts." Up to the times of Francis I but few events of importance unrolled themselves within the Palais de la Cité, but in 1618 a violent conflagration broke out leaving only the round towers of the Conciergerie, the tower and the church, and that part of the main structure which housed the great Salle de Marbre, unharmed. Apropos of this, a joyous rhymester of the time made the following quatrain: "Certes ce fut un triste jeu Quand a Paris Dame Justice Pour avoir mangé trop d'épice Se mit le Palais tout en feu." Jacques Debrosse was charged with rebuilding the edifice after the fire and refitted first the Grand Salle, to-day the famous Salle des Pas Perdus, crowded with the shuffling coming and going crowd of men and women whose business, or no business at all, brings them to this central point for the dissemination of legal gossip. It is a magnificent apartment, and, to no great extent, differs from what it was before the conflagration. This Salle consists of two parallel naves separated by a range of arcades and lighted by two great circular openings with four round-headed windows at either end. Its attributes are practically the same as they were in 1622. The structure, take it as a whole, may be said to date only from the seventeenth century, but certain it is that the old Palais de la Cité is incorporated therein, every stone of it, and if its career was humdrum that was the fault of circumstances rather than from any inherent faults of its own. The Conciergerie, that inelegant, inconsistent architectural mixture of the ancient and modern, considered apart, though it properly enough is usually considered with the Palais de Justice, was formerly the dwelling or guardhouse of the Concierge of the Palais de la Cité. His post was not merely that of the keeper of the gates; he was a personage at court and was as autocratic as his more plebeian contemporaries of to-day, for the Paris concierge, as we, who have for years lived under their despotism well know, is a very dreadful person. In addition to being the governor of the royal dwelling this concierge was the guardian of the royal prisoners. In 1348 he was further invested with the official title of Bailli and the post was, at times, occupied by the highest and the most noble in the land, among others Philippe de Savoie, the friend of Charles VI, and Juvenal des Oursins, the historian of this prince. The first to combine the two functions, that of Bailli and Concierge, was Jacques Coictier, the doctor of Louis XI. As a virtual prison the Conciergerie only came to be transformed when Charles V quitted the residence of the Palais de la Cité, and the Conciergerie, as such, only figures on the Tournelles registers under date of 1391. The fire of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed a large part of the building, but enough remained to patch together the most serviceable of Revolutionary prisons, for at one time it held at least twelve hundred poor souls, of whom two hundred and eighty-eight were killed off at one fell blow. But one woman among them all actually came to her death within the prison walls. This was La Belle Bouquetière of the Palais Royal who, in an access of jealous furor, horribly mutilated a royal guardsman, and for this met a most cruel death by being transfixed to a post and submitting to a trial of "_le fer et le feu_." In just what manner the punishment was applied one can best imagine for himself. The Revolutionary rôle of the Conciergerie is a thing apart from the purport of this book, hence is not further referred to. Going back to the time of Francis I, among the famous prisoners of state were Louis de Berquin, the Comte de Mongomere, the regicides Ravaillac and Damiens, the Maréchal d'Ancre, Cartouche, Mandrin and others. To-day, as a prison, the Conciergerie still performs its functions acceptably, safeguarding those up for the assizes, and those condemned to death before being sent on their long journey. The three great flanking towers of the Conciergerie are its chief architectural distinction to-day. That of the left, the largest, is the Tour d'Argent, that of the middle, the Tour Bonchet, and the third, the Tour de César or the Tour de l'Horloge. This last is the only one which has preserved its mediæval crenulated battlements aloft. The great clock has been commonly considered the largest timepiece of its kind extant, but it is doubtful if this now holds good with railways and insurance companies vying with each other to furnish the hour so legibly that he who runs may read. Across the Pont au Change, from the Palais de la Cité, by the Louvre and out into the Faubourg Saint Antoine, one comes to the Place des Vosges, the old Place Royale, which occupies almost the same area as was covered by the courtyard of the Palais des Tournelles, so called from its many towers. All around the Palais des Tournelles was located a series of splendid _hotels privés_ of the nobility. In one of these, the Hotel de Saint Pol, the king once lodged twenty-two visiting princes of the quality of Dauphin (the eldest son of a ruling monarch), their suites and domestics. Charles V in his time amalgamated with his royal palace three of these magnificent private dwellings, the Hotel du Petit Musc, the Hotel de l'Abbé de Saint Maur and the Hotel du Comte d'Étampes. The palace proper really faced on what is now the Rue Saint Antoine, opposite the Hotel Saint Pol. Its historic and romantic memories of the sword and cloak period of gallantry were many, but the edifice was demolished by the order of Catherine de Médici. In the palace Charles VI was confined, during the period of his insanity, by order of the cruel Isabeau de Bavière. The Duke of Bedford, when regent for the minor Henry VI, lodged here, and upon the expulsion of the English it became the residence of Charles VII. Louis XI and Louis XII each inhabited it, and the latter died within its walls. The Palais des Tournelles will go down to history chiefly because of that celebrated jousting bout held in its courtyard on the marriage day of the two princesses, Elizabeth and Marguerite. Henri II and the elder princes, his sons, were to ride forth in tournament and break lances, if possible, with all comers. The court, including Catherine de Médici and the princess Elizabeth, wife of Philippe II, the late husband of Mary Tudor, the two Marguerites and other high personages were seated on a dais upholstered in damascened silk and ornamented with many-coloured streamers. The time was July and the morning. At a signal from Catherine music burst forth and the bouts began. The king rode forth at the head of his chevaliers, wearing a suit of golden armour, his sword handle set with jewels, and, in spite of the presence of his wife, his lance flying black and white streamers, the colours of Diane de Poitiers, who had lately turned her affections from father unto son. A herald proclaimed the opening of the combat, and before night the king had broken the lances of the Ducs de Ferrare, de Guise, and de Nemours, and was just about disarming when a masked knight approached from the Faubourg Saint Antoine and challenged the king, who, in spite of being implored to desist by his queen, entered the lists again and was ultimately wounded unto death by the sable knight. Henri II expired the same night in a bedchamber of the Palais des Tournelles, whither he had been carried, at the age of forty-one, the victim of chance, or the wile of the Sieur de Montgomeri, the ancestor of England's present Earl of Eglinton. The captain of the Scotch Guards, Montgomeri, was not immediately pursued (he meantime had fled the court), but Catherine de Médici harboured for him a most bitter rancour. Pro and con ran his cause, for he had his partisans, but the Maréchal de Matignon finally caught up with him in Normandy and he was tortured and condemned to death for the crime of _lèse majesté_--beating the king at his own game. The widowed queen angrily ordered Diane de Poitiers from the court, and caused the Palais des Tournelles to be razed. This was her only means of showing her contempt for the woman who had played her royal spouse to his death as the Romans played the gladiators of old; and Tournelles, as a palatial monument of its time, blotted out the rest when it disappeared from view. A forest of spirelets soared aloft from the gables and rooftrees of the Palais des Tournelles. There was no spectacle of the time more imposing than this sky-line silhouette of a Paris palace; not at Chambord nor Chenonceaux was the spectacle more fine. It was like a fairy castle, albeit that it was in the heart of a great city. To the right of the Palais des Tournelles, beyond the Porte Saint Antoine, was the ink-black, frowning donjon of the Bastille, its severity in strong contrast with the more luxurious palaces of the princes which surrounded it not far away. The charming Place des Vosges, which occupies the site of Tournelles to-day, is another of Paris's breathing spaces. Well may it be called a royal garden--a park virtually on a diminutive scale--since it was originally known as the Place Royale, under Henri IV. With the advent of the gascon Henri de Béarn this delightful little unspoiled corner of old Paris took on the aspect which it now has. Within this enclosure were the usual garden or park attributes, more or less artificially disposed, but making an ideal open-air playground for the court, shut in from outside surroundings by the outlines of the old palace walls, and not too far away from the royal palace of the Louvre. The first and greatest historic souvenir of this garden was a Carrousel given in 1612, by Marie de Médici, two years after the tragic death of Henri IV, celebrating the alliance between France and Spain. Under Richelieu the square became known as the Place des Vosges, and, in spite of the law against duelling, which had by this time come into force, it became a celebrated meeting place for duellists like Ivry, the "Grand' Roué" or the "Vel' Hiver" of to-day. It was on May 12, 1627, that the Comte des Chappell killed Bussy d'Amboise on this spot, and left a bloody souvenir, which was only forgotten by the historians when they had to recount another meeting, this time between the Catholic Duc de Guise and the Protestant Coligny d'Andelot. "Monsieur," said the duke, "we will now proceed to settle that little account between our illustrious houses," and with that he drew his sword and killed Coligny, as if he were but stamping the life out of a caterpillar. Now, with all this bloody memory behind, the Place became one of the most elegant residential quarters of the capital, preferred above all by the nobility, the Rohans, the Alègres and Rotroux. At No. 21 lived Victor Hugo, just before the Coup d'État, in the house first made famous as the habitation of the somewhat infamous Marion Delorme. Among other illustrious names who have given a brilliance to these alleyed walks and corridors are to be recalled Corneille, Condé, Saint Vincent de Paul, Molière, Turenne, Madame de Longueville, De Thou, Cinq-Mars, Richelieu, D'Ormesson, the Prince de Talmon, the Marquis de Tessé and the Comte de Chabanne. It is possible that this charming Paris square will remain as ever it has been, for a recent attempt of the owner of one of the houses which borders upon it to change the disposition of the façade brought about a law-suit which compelled him to respect the procedure which obtained in 1605 when it was ordained the Place Royale. To prove their rights the civic authorities had recourse to the original plans still preserved in the national archives. This is a demonstration of how carefully European nations preserve the written records of their pasts. The decision finally arrived at by the courts--that the Place des Vosges must be kept intact as originally planned--gave joy to the hearts of all true Parisians and archeologists alike. [Illustration: BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF OLD PARIS] CHAPTER V THE OLD LOUVRE AND ITS HISTORY A stroll by the banks of the Seine will review much of the history of the capital, as much of it as was bound up with Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Palais de la Cité (now the Palais de Justice), and that was a great deal, even in mediæval and Renaissance times. The life of the Louvre was Paris; the life of Paris that of the nation; and the life of the nation that of the people. This even the Parisians of to-day will tell you. It is scant acknowledgment of the provinces to be sure, but what would you? The French capital is much more the capital of France than London is of England, or Washington of America--leaving politics out of the question. Paris before the conquest by the Franks was practically only the Seine-surrounded isle known as Lutetia, and later as "La Cité," and the slight overflow which crept up the slopes of the Montagne de la Sainte Genevieve. From the Chatelet to the Louvre was a damp, murky swamp called, even in the moyen-age, Les Champeaux, meaning the Little Fields, but swampy ones, as inferred by studying the evolution of the name still further. A rapid rivulet descended from Menilmontant and mingled with the Seine somewhere near the Garden of the Tuileries. Clovis and his Franks attacked the city opposite the isle, and, upon the actual achievement of their conquest, threw up an entrenched camp on the approved Roman plan in what is now the courtyard of the old Louvre, and filled the moat with the waters of this rivulet. The ensemble was, according to certain authorities, baptized the Louvre, or Lower, meaning a fortified camp. This entrenchment was made necessary in order that the Franks might sustain themselves against the Gallo-Roman occupants of Lutetia, and in time enabled them to acquire the whole surrounding region for their own dominion. This the Lower, or Louvre, made possible, and it is well deserved that its name should be thus perpetuated, though actually the origin of the name is in debate, as will be seen by a further explanation which follows. Little by little this half-barbaric camp--in contradistinction to the more solid works of the Romans--became a _placefort_, then a château, then a palace and, finally, as the young lady tourist said, an art museum. Well, at any rate, it was a dignified evolution. Two Louvres disappeared before the crystallization of the present rather irregularly cut gem. From the Merovingians dates the Louvre des Champs, the hostile, militant Louvre, with its high wood and stone tower, familiar only in old engravings. After this the moyen-age Louvre, attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition. Nothing remains of the old Louverie (to which the name had become corrupted) which Philippe Auguste early in the thirteenth century caused to be turned into an ambitious quadrangular castle from a somewhat more humble establishment which had evolved itself on the site of the Frankish camp, save the white marble outline sunken in the pavement of the courtyard of the palace of to-day. By destiny this palace, set down in the very heart of Paris, was to dominate everything round about. From the date of its birth, and since that time, it has had no rivals among Paris or suburban palaces. Its very situation compelled the playing of an auspicious part, and the Seine flowing swiftly by its ramparts added no small charm to the fêtes and ceremonies of both the Louvre and the Tuileries. Never was a great river so allied with the life of a royal capital; never a stream so in harmony with other civic beauties as is the Seine with Paris. When Henri II entered Paris after his Sacrament he contemplated a water-festival on the Seine, which was to extend from the walls of the Louvre to the towers of Notre Dame, a festival with such elaborate decorations as had never been known in the French capital. The kings of France after their Sacrament entered the Louvre by the quay-side entrance, followed by their cortège of gayly caparisoned cavaliers and gilded coaches with personages of all ranks in doublet and robe, cape and doublet. The scintillating of gold lace and burnished coats gave a brilliance which rivalled that of the sun. No sooner had the cavalcade entered the gates of the Louvre than it came out again to participate in the day and night festival, which had the bosom of the Seine for its stage and its bridges and banks for the act drop and the wings. The receptions of Ambassadors, the baptisms of royalties, royal marriages and celebrations of victories, or treaties, were all fêted in the same manner. Napoleon glorified the Peace of Amiens under similar conditions, and there is scarce a chronicler of any reign but that recounts the part played by the Seine in the ceremonies of the court of the New and Old Louvre. It was amid a setting which lent itself so readily to all this that the Old Louvre, which was rebuilt by Francis I, first came to its glory. The origin of the name Louvre has still other interpretation from that previously given. It seems to be a question of grave doubt among the savants, but because the note is an interesting one it is here reproduced. The name may have been derived as well from the word _oeuvre_, from the Latin _opus_; it may have been evolved from _lupara_, or _louverie_ (place of wolves), which seems improbable. It may have had its evolution from either one of these origins, or it may not. Anglo-Saxons may be proud of the fact that certain French savants have acknowledged that the name of the most celebrated of all Paris palaces is a derivation from a word belonging to their tongue and meaning habitation. This, then, is another version and one may choose that which is most to his liking, or may go back and show his preference for _lower_, meaning a fortified place. A palace--something more elaborate than a mere habitation--stood on the same site in the twelfth century, a work which, under the energies of Philippe Auguste, in 1204 began to grow to still more splendid proportions, though infinitesimal one may well conclude as compared with the mass which all Paris knows to-day under the inclusive appellation of "The Louvre." The Paris of Philippe Auguste was already a city of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, with mean houses on every side and little pretense at even primitive comforts or conveniences. This far-seeing monarch laid hand first on the great citadel tower of the fortified _lower_, added to its flanking walls and built a circling rampart around the capital itself. It is recounted that the rumbling carts, sinking deep in mud and plowing through foot-deep dust beneath the palace windows, annoyed the monarch so much that he instituted what must have been the first city paving work on record, and commanded that all the chief thoroughfares passing near the Louvre should be paved with cobbles. This was real municipal improvement. He was a Solon among his kind for, since that day, it has been a _sine qua non_ that for the well-keeping of city streets they must be paved, and, though cobblestones have since gone out of fashion, it was this monarch who first showed us how to do it. The Louvre of Philippe Auguste was the most imposing edifice of the Paris of its time. To no little extent was this imposing outline due to its great central tower, the _maitresse_, which was surrounded by twenty-three _dames d'honneur_, without counting numberless _tourelles_. This hydra-towered giant palace was the real guardian of the Paris of mediævalism, as its successor is indeed the real centre of the Paris of to-day. The city was but an immense mass of low-lying gable-roofed houses, whose crowning apex was the sky-line of the Louvre, with that of Tournelles only less prominent to the north, and that of La Cité hard by on the island where the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame now stand. Before the hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated stronghold--a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impassable. Philippe Auguste built well and made of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place of defence, and a defence it was, and not much more. For its time it was of great proportions and of an ideal situation from a strategic point of view; far more so than the isolated Palais de la Cité in the middle of the Seine. Four gates led out from the inner courtyard of the Old Louvre: one to the Seine; one to the south, facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; another towards the site of the later Tuileries; and the other to about where the Rue Marengo cuts the Rue de Rivoli of to-day. With the endorsement given it by Philippe Auguste the Louvre now became the official residence of the kings of the Capetian race, whereas previously they had dwelt but intermittently at Paris, chiefly in the Palais de la Cité. The monarch, as if to test the efficiency of his new residence as a stronghold, made a dungeon tower, his greatest constructive achievement until he built the castle of Gisors, and in the tower imprisoned the Comte de Flandre, whom he had taken prisoner at Bouvines. Louis IX (Saint Louis), in his turn, built a spacious annex to Philippe Auguste's Louvre, to which he attached his name. [Illustration: THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE] Charles V totally changed the aspect of the palace from what it had formerly been--half-fortress, half-residence--and made of it a veritable palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous dependencies. Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called the Tour de la Librairie, he assembled his royal bibelots and founded what was afterwards known as the Bibliothèque du Louvre, the egg from which was hatched the present magnificently endowed _Bibliothèque Nationale_ in the Rue Richelieu. It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and four devotional books as his entire literary treasure. This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has hitherto been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of the work upon which he spent his talents and energies. From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latter epoch the ambitious, art-loving Francis I conceived the idea that here was a wealth of scaffolding upon which to graft some of his Renaissance luxuries and, by a process of "restoration" (perhaps an unfortunate word for him to have employed, since it meant the razing of the fine tower built by Charles V), added somewhat to the splendours thereof, though in a fickle moment, as was his wont, allowed a gap of a dozen years to intervene between the outlining of his project and the terrifically earnest work which finally resulted in the magnificent structure accredited to him, though indeed it meant the demolition of the original edifice. It was at this period that Charles V entered into the ambitious part which Francis was to henceforth play in the Louvre, so perhaps the interruption was pardonable. CHAPTER VI THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various combinations of circumstances the actual work of reconstruction was put off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of Henri II as to that of his father. Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed, before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was for building--when it was not for affairs of the heart--and so daring was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream palace in the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his workmen ready at hand. Francis's repairs and embellishments to the Old Louvre were by no means perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, or _donjon_, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which should bear the same name. One has read of the monarch's thoughts when he was awaiting the coming to Paris of his old enemy in the peninsula; how he regretted the moment when he should sally out to meet him and leave his new-found friend, the Duchesse d'Étampes, in spite of her pleadings for him to remain by her. All this is mere historic incident, and has little to do with Francis's art instincts and ambitions. He probably thought this very thing himself when he replied to the importunate lady: "Duchesse, I must tear myself away without more ado; I go to meet my brother monarch at Amboise on the Loire." It was Francis I, the passionate lover of art, who collected the first pictures which formed the foundation of the present collections of the Musée National du Louvre. He bought many in foreign parts, and many others were brought from Italy by Italian artists, whom he had commanded to the capital: Primaticcio brought with him, upon his arrival, more than a hundred antique statues. These art objects were first assembled at Fontainebleau and ornamented the apartments of the king. Among them were Da Vinci's "La Joconde" and Raphael's "Holy Family and Saint Michael." Henri II, Henri IV, and Louis XIII did little to enrich the art collections of the palace, but Louis XIV charged his minister, Colbert, with numerous purchases. In 1661 he bought the fine collection left by Cardinal Mazarin, and ten years later purchased the contents of the celebrated gallery belonging to the banker Jacob of Cologne. The state expended for these acquisitions nearly six hundred thousand _livres_, and received for this sum six hundred paintings and six thousand drawings. It was at this period that the royal collections were transferred to Paris, a little before the death of Colbert, when they were placed in the galleries of the Louvre; though it was a hundred years later that a national museum was actually created. This was virtually brought about from the fact that the royal collections were transported in a great part to Versailles, only to be returned to Paris in 1750, transferred again to Versailles, and ultimately to be returned to Paris under the sheltering wing of the grand old Louvre. The Museum of the Louvre, the Museum National et Central des Arts, is the outgrowth of a Decree of the Convention, dated July 27, 1793. It was aided and enriched considerably under Napoleon I, that passionate lover of the beautiful, who, none too scrupulously, would even seek to "make a campaign" in order to acquire art works for the museum of his capital. Many of these abducted art treasures (like the horses of Saint Marc, for instance) were afterwards returned to their original owners, but the nucleus of this unrivaled art museum was chiefly due to the consul and emperor. As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan was adopted. The work can in no way be said to have suffered by the change of plans, for though Pierre Lescot was as yet a name unknown in the world of architecture his talents were sufficiently great, magistrate and parliamentary counsellor though he was, to give to Paris what has ever been accounted its chief Renaissance glory. Work was begun at once, a work which was not interrupted by intrigues of court, of love, of war, nor by the deaths of Francis I nor his successor, Henri II. Although the work was begun in an energetic manner it was 1555 before the western wing was ready for the hand of the sculptors, but from this time on, judging from the interpolated monograms of Charles IX and Henri IV on the south wing, work progressed less hurriedly. The two other constructions, which were to enclose the quadrangle to the north and east, were completed under such circumstances that there has never been a question as to their period. For fifteen years the work went on, when suddenly it was abandoned as were the plans of Lescot. A sole wing, that following the Seine and abutting at right angles against the Pavilion de l'Horloge, had resulted. The sculptures of its south façade, as well as certain of its interior decorations, were entrusted to Jean Goujon (1520-1572), who became a victim of the horrible night of Saint Bartholomew, planned in the same Louvre by the wily Médici. Henri II often dwelt over Lescot's plans and devices, and, on one occasion, when the poet Ronsard was present, demanded of the architect the meaning of the decorations surrounding a great _oeil-de-boeuf_ window, two kneeling figures, one blowing a trumpet, and the other extending a palm branch. "Victory and Fame," replied Lescot. And, in honour of the architect and his sentiment, Ronsard composed his "Franciade." The detail was actually by Goujon, whose design it was, under the oversight of the master architect. One may see this _chef d'oeuvre_ to-day just above the courtyard portal to the west. At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Médici came here to live alone, and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its preservation. [Illustration: _The Louvre_] It is in this Catherine de Médici portion of the Louvre (1578) that the present Galerie des Antiques is installed, and which is usually thronged, in season and out, with globe-trotting sight-seers who give seldom a thought to its constructive elegance and its association with the Médici. With the first years of the reign of Charles IX, there is to be remarked a notable slowness of procedure with regard to the construction of the New Louvre. This was brought about chiefly by the conception of the Tuileries and the work which was actually begun thereon. Soon a gigantic idea radiated from the ambitious mind of Catherine de Médici. In this connection it must be remembered, however, that Catherine, so commonly reviled as "the Italian," was not all Italian; French blood flowed through her veins through that of her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. She came first to France, landing at Marseilles, whence she arrived from Leghorn, and forthwith commenced her journey Parisward, arriving finally at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henri in the guise of a simple, clever girl, though indeed she was twenty years the elder. Now she dreamed of uniting her chateau of the Tuileries with that of the king by a long, connecting gallery. She put action to the thought and under Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Petite Galerie, a mere means of communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between 1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to carry it on a stage further under Henri IV. This architect introduced the notorious mezzanine, which has so intrigued historians of the Louvre because of the unequal elevations of the various floors, a procedure which was unavoidable save by recourse to a substitution less to be objected to than the existing fault. Actually the connection with the Tuileries was made by the prolongation of this gallery by the Ducerceau brothers in 1595. The work existing to-day, but only in its reconstructed form, is the same as that completed by Napoleon III (1863-1868). Charles IX and Henri III, though making the Louvre their residence, practically had no hand in its embellishment. The former gave his energies and ideals full play in the Saint Bartholomew massacres and shot at poor unfortunates who fled beneath the windows of his apartments on the quay-side of the Louvre. This, if not the chief incident of his association with the fabric, is at least the best remembered one. Henri III, too, led a scandalous life within the walls of the Louvre and fled on horseback, smuggled out a back door, as it were, on a certain May evening in 1588, never more to return, for the Dominican monk Jacques Clément killed him with a knife-thrust before he had got beyond Saint Cloud. The accepted tale of the part played by the famous window of the Louvre in the drama of Saint Bartholomew's night is as follows: As the signal tolled from the belfry of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois it was answered by another peal from the great bell of the Palais de Justice, where, within a small apartment over the watergate of the Louvre, the queen and her two sons were huddled together not knowing what might happen next. The multitude streamed by on the quay before the palace, and, finally, amid all the horror of Coligny's murder, and the throwing of his body from a window of the Louvre to the street below, Charles IX stood at his window regarding the fleeing Huguenots as so much small game, shooting away at them with an arquebuse as they went by, and with an unholy glee, even boasting that he had killed a score of heretics in a quarter of an hour. Historians of those exciting times were perhaps none too faithful chroniclers and Charles's "excellent shots" in his "royal hunt," and hideous oaths and threats such as: "We'll have them all, even the women and children," are not details as well authenticated as we would like to have them. Like Rizzio's blood stains they lack conviction. The ambitious white-plumed Henri de Navarre, when he became Henri IV of France, set about to connect the tentacle which stretched southward from the Old Louvre with the Tuileries (a continuation of the project of Catherine de Médici), and, by the end of the sixteenth century, had built a long façade under the advice of the brothers Ducerceau. This work was added to on the courtyard side under the Second Empire, when a reconstruction, more likely a strengthening of underpinning and walls because of their proximity to the swift-flowing waters of the Seine, of the work of Henri IV was undertaken. Joining the Tuileries and this work of Ducerceau was the celebrated Pavilion de Flore, a work of the Henri IV period rather than that of Catherine de Médici. From the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Lesdiguières ran this long gallery of the Ducerceau and numerous interstices and unfinished vaults and arches leading towards the Old Louvre were, at this epoch, completed by Metezeau and Dupaira. The chief apartment of this structure became known as the _Galerie Henri IV_, and was completed in 1608. At the death of Henri IV, Richelieu, who at times builded so well, and who at others was a base destroyer of monuments, demolished that portion which remained of the edifice of Charles V. The work of Pierre Lescot was preserved, however, and to give symmetry and an additional extent of available space the rectangle facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to-day was completed, thus enclosing in one corner of its ample courtyard the foundations of the earlier work whose outlines are plainly traced in the pavement that those who view may build anew--if they can--the old structure of Philippe Auguste. In mere magnitude the present quadrangle is something more than four times the extent of the Louvre of the time of Charles V. This courtyard of the Louvre is perhaps that spot in all Paris which presents the greatest array of Renaissance art treasures. From ground to sky-line the façades are embroidered by the works from the magic hand of the _Siècle Italien_. Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and colonnades. Enthusiasm and devotion knew no bounds among those old craftsmen, but all is well-ordered, regular and correct. "He who mentions the Louvre to a Frenchman gives a greater pleasure than that of Méhémet-Ali when one praises the pyramids." In a way the Louvre is the most magnificent edifice in the universe; "four palaces one piled up on another, _une ville entière_." And when the Louvre was linked with the Tuileries in the real, what a splendour it must have been for former generations to marvel at! "_La plus belle et la plus grande chose sous le soleil._" This work of aggrandizement of the quadrangle was carried out by the architect Lemercier on the basis of a project adopted in 1642, and, to a great extent, completed before the arrival of Anne d'Autriche, twenty years later. This queenly personage had ideas of her own as to what sort of a residence she would have in Paris, and beyond her personal needs little was done for the moment towards actually linking up the various loose ends, each more or less complete in itself, which now composed the Paris palace of the French monarchs. Her son, the king in person if not in power, was not likely to be endowed with instincts which would put him in the rank of the traditional castle or palace builders of his race; it was literature, music and painting which more particularly flourished during his reign, and so the Austrian contented herself at first with merely putting the former apartments of Catherine de Médici into condition for her personal use and building a Salle-de-Spectacle, and--happy thought--a Salle-des-Bains. Louis XIV, as he found time, after the war of the Fronde, actually did bethink himself of completing, in a way, the work of his elders, and charged the architect Levau to finish off the north wing, which was done in 1660. A year later the Galerie Henri IV was practically destroyed by fire and rebuilt by Levau, who gave the commission for its interior decoration to Lebrun. Soon the south wing was completed, leaving only the gap for the eastern façade which was intended to be the chief entrance to the mass of buildings, which still bore the comprehensive name of "The Louvre." For the accomplishment of this façade, the demolition of certain dwellings of the nobility which had clustered around the royal fabric was necessary, and the Hotels du Petit Bourbon, de Villequier, de Chaumont, La Force, De Créquy, de Longueville, and de Choisy fell before the picks of the house-breakers. Levau commenced work on the façade at once, and made rapid progress until 1664, when an abrupt order came for him to stop all work. Political conspiracy, graft, if you like, was at work, and Colbert, little favourable towards Levau, made a proposition to the king to open a competition for the design and execution of the façade. Willingly enough, his mind doubtless more occupied with other things, Louis XIV agreed, and a general call was sent out to all French architects to enter the lists. Confusion reigned, and Levau was about to be recalled when Colbert spied an unrolled parchment in the corner and pounced upon it eagerly as the means of saving him from the dubious efforts of the former incumbent. It was the "non-professional" plan submitted by a doctor in medicine, one Charles Perrault. Jealous competitors made all sorts of criticisms and objections, the chief contention being that if by any chance an architectural design by a "pill-roller" proved pleasing to the eye it was bound to be impracticable from an economic or constructive point of view, or both. This is often enough true, and it proved to be so in this case, for in spite of a certain amount of advice from an expert Italian builder, who had come to Paris to help the good doctor with his difficult task (for he actually received a commission for the work and completed it in 1674), the façade did not fit the rest of the fabric with which it was intended to join up, and to-day it may be observed by the curious as being several feet out of line with the structure which faces on the Rue de Rivoli. Louis XIV practically had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles, shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their time in the more ample country-house behind the Meudon hills. By 1750 the Louvre had become little more than an immense ruin, humbled and desecrated; a veritable orphan. The Marquis de Marigny, Surintendant des Batiments Royaux, obtained the authorization to chase out the parasites and clean up the Augean stable and put things in order as best pleased his esthetic fancy, but only with the early years of the nineteenth century did the Louvre become a real palace again and worthy of its traditions. From 1803 to 1813 the architects Fontaine and Percier were constantly engaged in the work of repairs and additions, and built (for Napoleon I) the gallery which extends from what is now the Place Jeanne d'Arc to the Pavillon de Rohan, along the Rue de Rivoli. This detached portion (bound only to the Tuileries) was finally joined to the seventeenth century work of Lemercier under Louis Napoleon in 1852. This gallery, the work of "moderns," is no mean example of palace-building, either. It was the work of Visconti and Lefuel, and with the adoption of this plan was finally accomplished the interpolation of that range of pavilions which gives the architecture of the Louvre one of its principal distinctions. Named after the principal ministers of former administrations--Donon, Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated façades. The inauguration of this last built portion of the palace was held on August 14, 1857, the occasion being celebrated by a banquet given by Napoleon III to all the architects, artists and labourers who had been engaged upon the work. In the same Salle, two years later, which took the name of Salle des États, the emperor gave a _diner de gala_ to the generals returning from the Italian campaign. Still further résumé of fact with regard to the main body of the Louvre, as well as with respect to its individual components, will open never-ending vistas and pageants. It is not possible in a chapter, a book or a five-foot shelf to limn all that is even of cursory interest. The well-known, the little-known and the comparatively unknown mingle in varying proportions, according to the individual mood or attitude. To some the appeal will lie in the vastness of the fabric, to others in the varied casts of characters which have played upon its stage, still others will be impressed with the dramatic incidents, and many more will retain only present-day memories of what they have themselves seen. The Louvre is a study of a lifetime. To resume a none too complete chronology, it is easy to recall the following important events which have taken place in the Louvre since the days of Henri III, the period at which only the barest beginnings of the present structure had been projected. In 1591 a ghastly procedure took place when four members of the Conseil des Seize were hung in the Salle des Caryatides by orders of the Duc de Mayenne. Like the horoscope which foretold the death of Henri III, another royal prophecy was cast in 1610 that reminds one of that which perhaps had not a little to do with the making away with the last of the Valois princes. The Duc de Vendome, the son of Henri IV by Gabrielle d'Estrées, handed the king a documentary horoscope signed by an astrologer calling himself La Brosse, which warned the king that he would run a great danger on May 14 in case he went abroad. "La Brosse is an ass," cried the king, and crumpled the paper beneath his feet. On the day in question the king started out to visit his minister, Sully, at the Arsenal. It was then in turning from the Rue Saint Honoré into the Rue de la Ferronière that the royal coach, frequently blocked by crowds, offered the opportunity to the assassin Ravaillac, who, jumping upon the footboard, stabbed the king twice in the breast. After having been wounded the king was brought dying to the Louvre. His royal coach drew up beneath the vault through which throngs all Paris to-day searching for a "short cut" from the river to Saint Honoré. It was but a short, brief journey to the royal apartments above in the Pavilion de l'Horloge, but it must have been an interminable calvary to the gallant Henri de Navarre. The body was received by Marie de Médici in tears, and the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon clattered out the courtyard on horseback to spread the false news that the king had suffered no harm. Fearing the results of too precipitate publishing of the disaster no other course was open. A gruesome memory is that the Swiss Guard at the Louvre surreptitiously acquired a "_quartier_" of the dismembered body of the regicide and roasted it in a fire set alight beneath the balcony of Marie de Médici as an indication of their faithfulness and loyalty. It was Sully, the king's minister, who ran first up the stairs to acquaint the queen of the tragedy--faithful ever to the interests of his royal master. In spite of this, one of the first acts of Marie de Médici as regent was to drive the Baron de Rosny and Duc de Sully away. Such is virtue's reward--sometimes. * * * * * "Lying on his bed, his face uncovered, clad in white satin and a bonnet of red velvet embroidered with gold, was all that remained of Henri IV of France and Navarre. Around the bed were nuns and monks from all the monasteries of Paris to keep vigil of his soul." So ends the chronicle closing the chapter of the relations of Henri IV with his Paris palace. No particularly tragic event took place here for some years. Henriette de France, widow of Charles I of England, taking refuge in France from the troublous revolt at home, lived in the Louvre in 1644. She had at first been graciously received by Mazarin, but was finally accorded only the most strict necessities of life, a mere lodging in the Louvre, a modest budget and a restricted entourage. In 1662, under Louis XIV, Molière and his troup, in a theatre installed in the Salle des Caryatides, gave the first "command" performance on record. The plays produced were, "Nicodeme" and "Le Docteur Amoureux." An "art note" of interest is that Sylvain Bailly, the first curator of the Musée du Louvre, was born within its precincts in 1736. In the dark days of July, 1830, the populace attempted to pillage and sack the palace, but after a bloody reprisal retired, leaving hundreds of dead on the field. The _parterre_ beneath the famous colonnade was their burial place, though a decade later the bodies were exhumed and again interred under the Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille. Le Notre, the gardener of kings, laid out the first horticultural embellishments of the palace surroundings under Louis XIV, and with little change his scheme of decoration lasted until the time of Louis Philippe, who made away with much that was distinctive and excellent. Napoleon III came to the front with an improved decorative scheme, but the hard flags of to-day, the dusty gravel and the too sparse architectural embellishments do not mark the gardens of the Louvre as being anything remarkable save as a desirable breathing spot for Paris nursemaids and their charges. The iron gates of the north, south and east sides were put into place only in 1855, and at the Commune served their purpose fairly well in holding the rabble at bay, a rabble to whose credit is the fact that it respected the artistic inheritance enclosed by the Louvre's walls. No work of art in the museums was stolen or destroyed, though the library disappeared. CHAPTER VII THE TUILERIES AND ITS GARDENS [Illustration: ORIGINAL PLAN of the TUILERIES] No more sentimental interest ever attached itself to a royal French palace than that which surrounded the Tuileries from its inception by Charles IX in the mid-sixteenth century to its extinction by the Commune in 1871. The Palace of the Tuileries is no more, the Commune did for it as it did for the Hotel de Ville and many another noble monument of the capital, and all that remains are the gardens set about with a few marble columns and gilt balls--themselves fragments of former decorative elements of the palace--to suggest what once was the heritage bequeathed the French by the Médici who was the queen of Saint Bartholomew's night. It was a palace of giddy gayety that drew its devotees to it only to destroy them. "Crowned fools who wished to be called kings, and others." Even its stones were chiselled as if with a certain malignancy and fatalism, for they have all disappeared, and their history, even, has not been written as large as that of those of many contemporary structures. Of the last five kings to which the Tuileries gave shelter--not counting the Second Emperor--only one went straightway to the tomb; one went to the scaffold and three others to exile. A sorry dowry, this, for an inheritor of a palace at once so noble and admirable in spite of its unluckiness. With the court followers and the nobility of the last days of the monarchy it was the same thing; the Tuileries was but a temporary shelter. The scaffold accounted for many and banishment engulfed others to forgetfulness. It was a commonplace at the time to repeat the warning: "O! Tuileries! O! Tuileries! Mad indeed are those who enter thy walls, for like Louis XVI, Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe you shall make your exit by another door." The origin of the name Tuileries is somewhat ignominiously traced from that of a tile factory which existed here in the heart of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, in the sixteenth century. The property, which comprised a manor-house as well as the tile fields, was known by the name of La Sablonnière, and came to the Marquis Neuville de Villeroy, Superintendent of Finances, who built on the spot a sort of fortified chateau, which, if not of palatial dimensions, was of a palatial prodigality of luxury. Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis I, acquired the property in 1518 and nine years later gave it to Jean Tiercelin, the Maitre d'Hotel of the dauphin, who later was to become Henri II. The lodge, or manor-house, had, by 1564, fallen into so ruinous a state that Catherine de Médici, the widow of Henri II, set about to lay the foundations of a new royal palace. Catherine never resided in her projected palace, and in 1566 Charles IX, her son, gave the commission to Philibert Delorme to build a palace, "neighbouring upon the Louvre, but not to be connected therewith, on the site of the Tuileries." On July 11, work was begun, and the central pavilion and the two extremes were carried up two stories within a year. The central structure was a great circular-domed edifice, enclosing a marvellous Escalier d'Honneur. The façade, preceded by two terraced porticos, was on the courtyard, or garden, between the edifice and the Louvre. It sat back to the present Rue des Tuileries. The Tuileries did not become a royal residence for some time after its completion, for Charles IX clung tenaciously to his well-guarded apartments in the Louvre; for the central structure of the Tuileries, because of its lack of comparative height, was hardly as much of a stronghold as he would have liked. A contemporary note in connection with Charles IX and the Tuileries is found in Ronsard's "_Épitre à Charles IX_." "J'ay veu trop de maçons Bastir les Tuileries, Et en trop de façons Faire les momeries." Work on the edifice so auspiciously planned by Delorme was practically discontinued during the reign of Henri III, owing to lack of funds. The Renaissance of Delorme, Bullant, Lescot, each of whom had a hand in the building of the Tuileries, expressed certain characteristic phases of architectural art in the reigns of Francis I and Henri II. The reign of Charles IX was only another phase of that long reign of Catherine de Médici, and architectural influences continued to follow along the same reminiscent Italian lines, particularly with reference to such edifices as the Médici herself caused to be built. In the dedication of Philibert Delorme's "_Traite d'Architecture_" he expressed himself thus with regard to the Tuileries: "Madame, I see from day to day with an increasing pleasure the interest that your Majesty takes in architecture. The palace which you have built at Paris near the Pont Neuf and the Louvre is, according to its disposition, excellent and admirable to the extent that it pleases me beyond measure." After Delorme considerable changes were made and successfully carried out under the architects Ducerceau, Duperac, Levau and Dorbay. A distinct feature of the work of Delorme was his use of the column ornamented throughout its length, which, as he says in his written works, he first employed in the "_Palais de la Majesté de la Royne-Mere à Paris_." Of the ability of Delorme there is no diversity of opinion to-day, nor was there in his time. Besides the Tuileries he has to his credit the Chateau d'Anet, the Chateau de Saint Maur, that of Meudon--built for the Cardinal de Lorraine,--and his important additions to the Chateau de la Muette and the Chateaux of Saint Germain, Madrid and Fontainebleau. As might be supposed Catherine de Médici professed a great admiration for Delorme and recompensed his talents with a royal generosity, even nominating him as Abbé of the Convent of Saint Eloi de Noyon, a fact which caused the poet Ronsard to evolve a political satire: "La Truelle Crossée." At the same time that she was building the Tuileries Catherine de Médici caused additions to be made to the Louvre; at least she undertook the completion of the unfinished portion, which had been left for other hands to do. The first historic souvenir which stands out prominently with regard to the Palais des Tuileries is the fête given four days before the fateful Saint Bartholomew's night. It was the marriage fête of the gallant Henri de Béarn, King of Navarre, and the wise and witty Marguerite de Valois. Henri IV, coming to the throne a quarter of a century after the admirable first year's work on the Tuileries had been completed, found that little had been done towards making it a really habitable place. It had been hurriedly finished off to the second story, and had served well enough for a temporary residence, or as an overflow establishment where balls and fêtes might be given without crowding, but to the ambitious Henri IV nothing would do but that the pavilions should be bound together with a more imposing ligature, and that the Pavillon de Flore should in turn be linked up with the Louvre by a gallery. Under Louis XIII this latter really came to a conclusion according to the plans of the architect Ducerceau, but the inspiration of making the Louvre and the Tuileries one was due to Henri IV. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV the palace in its still attenuated form was scarcely more than a rambling lodging, utterly lacking any of the noble apartments with which it was afterwards endowed. The court at this time practically made Versailles its headquarters. Neither of the above-mentioned monarchs made aught but cursory visits to the Tuileries and left its occupancy to officers of the household and ministers of state. It was in the reign of Louis XV that the Florentine artist, Servandoni, who was at the same time an eminent architect, a remarkable painter and a _maestro_ of a musician, organized in the Palais des Tuileries the Theatre des Machines, the first installed at Paris, and there came the Comédie Française, the Opera and the Bouffes (the _Comédie Italienne_) and gave command performances before the court. When the French resolved that Louis XVI should live in Paris, the Palais des Tuileries was actually offered him, but it was a rather shabby place of royal residence so far as its interior appointments were concerned, though in all ways appealing when viewed from without. Considerable repairs and embellishments were made, but warring factions did much to make difficult any real artistic progress. With the advent of Louis XVI there came a contrast to gayety and freedom from care in royal hearts and heads. On October 5 Louis XVI and the royal family hid themselves behind barred doors, the convention taking up its sittings under the same roof and forthwith passing an act which allowed the completion of the palace according to the plans of Vignon at an expense of three hundred thousand _livres_. An almost entire transformation took place, the money being seemingly well spent, and the structure now first took its proper place among the monumental art treasures of the capital. A dramatic incident took place at the great gate of the Tuileries, which faced the courtyard, when, on May 28, 1795, the populace surged in waves against its sturdy barrier. The Deputy Féraud met them at the steps. "You may enter only over my dead body," he said. No reply was made but to crack his skull, behead the trunk and carry the head aloft on a pike to the very Tribune where Boissy d'Anglas was presiding. The Salle de Spectacle of the Tuileries was, even at this period, the largest auditorium of its kind in Europe, having eight thousand stalls and boxes, which gave a seating capacity of considerably more than that number of persons. In 1793 this playhouse, of which the parquet occupied the ground floor of the Pavillon de Marsan, underwent a strange metamorphosis when it became the legislative hall for the National Convention. All the names and emblems showing forth in its decorations and indicative of its ancient rule were changed into Republican devices and symbols. The Pavillon de Marsan was called the Pavillon de l'Egalité, the Pavillon du Centre became the Pavillon de l'Unité and the Pavillon de Flore the Pavillon de la Liberté, where was lodged the Committee of Public Safety. The Hall of the Convention, according to reports of the time, was an appalling mixture of grandeur and effeminacy with respect to its architectural lines. Surrounding that portion where the legislators actually sat was the great amphitheatre which for three years was occupied by a curious, vociferous public, more demonstrative, even, than those that had attended the former theatrical representations in the same apartment. From the opening of the National Convention to the reaction of "Thermidor" it is estimated that more than three million people assisted at what they rightly, or wrongly, considered as a "spectacle" staged only for their amusement. By the time Napoleon had come into power the Tuileries was hardly habitable, and before taking up his residence he was obliged to make immediate and extensive transformations. On February 19, 1800, Napoleon, still First Consul, left the Palais de Luxembourg and took up his residence in the Tuileries, the Third Consul, Lebrun, being lodged in the Pavillon de Flore, in the "Petite Appartement," which Marie Antoinette had fitted up for her temporary accommodation when in town. Lebrun, however, gave up his lodging to the Pope when the Pontiff came to Paris at Napoleon's orders. Consul Cambacères, however, refused to shelter himself beneath the roof of the Tuileries, and indicated a preference for the magnificent Hotel d'Elboeuf, which was accommodatingly put at his disposition. Napoleon entered the Tuileries in state, preceded and followed by an imposing cortège. At the gate of the Carrousel the consuls alighted from their carriages, and were received by the Consular Guard. On their arrival the consuls read the following inscription posted at the entrance: "On August 10th monarchy in France was forever abolished; it will never be restored." By the 20th of February the inscription had disappeared. Besides, orders were given to cut down the two liberty trees which had been planted in the courtyard. On August 10 a large quantity of cannon shot had been lodged in the façade of the Tuileries, and around the shot were written these words: "Tenth of August." The cannon balls disappeared, as well as the inscriptions, when the Arc de Triomphe was erected on the Place du Carrousel. This alteration gave great satisfaction. It was important for the tranquillity of France that the new government should inherit rather the sword of Charlemagne than the guillotine of Marat. [Illustration: _Salle des Marechaux, Tuileries_] The imperial court soon displayed its splendour and magnificence in the Palais des Tuileries, as a foregone conclusion anticipated. In a gorgeous and imposing Salle du Trone one might have seen in the deep casement of the central window, standing up, their hats off, the group of the Corps Diplomatique, the members of which, loaded with decorations, ensigns, and diamonds, trembled in the presence of the Little Corporal of other days; on the other side, the host of the Princes of the Rhine Confederation--all the personages that Germany, Russia, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Spain, all Europe, in one word, England excepted, had sent to Paris. It is needless to say that the wedding reception of Napoleon and Marie Louise at the Tuileries was celebrated with unusual magnificence. Another event, on account of its peculiar moment, strongly excited the enthusiasm of the French. On March 20, 1811, at seven o'clock in the morning, the first salute of cannon announced that the empress had given birth to a child, the future Aiglon, the King of Rome. After Napoleon's occupancy of the Tuileries it again served the monarch under the Empire, the Restoration, under Louis Philippe and under the Second Empire. The palace of unhappy memory saw successively the fall of Napoleon, the entry of Louis XVIII, the file-by of the Allies, the flight of Louis XVIII, of Charles X, Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. Up to the time of the Second Empire the Tuileries preserved, more or less, its original interior arrangement, and, to a great extent, the decorations with which it had been embellished under Louis XIV, Louis XVI, and Napoleon I. The Pavilion de Flore, at the juncture of the Tuileries and the Louvre of Henri IV, was practically rebuilt during the Second Empire, but it followed closely the contemporary designs of the adjoining building. Here are quartered executive offices of the Préfecture de la Seine. That portion facing the Pont Royal contains a series of fine sculptures by Carpeaux, the sole modern embellishments of this nature to be seen in or on a Paris palace. As the Commune mob was fleeing before the army of Versailles a conflagration broke out in the Tuileries and soon the whole edifice was in flames. Within what may have been the briefest interval on record for a conflagration of its size the Tuileries was but a smoking pile of half-calcined stones. The Tuileries had another brief day of glory when the Prince President, Louis Napoleon, entered its gates, coming straight from his inauguration at Notre Dame. The cannon at the Hotel des Invalides blazed out a welcome and every patriot Republican shouted: "Vive Napoleon!" They little knew, little cared perhaps, that he would some day become the Second Emperor. The throng poured forth from the cathedral after the _Domine Salvum_ and the benediction, the clergy leading the way, followed by the president and his attendants. The orchestra played a lively march, and the great bell in the tower boomed forth a glorious peal. * * * * * The president's carriage drew up before the gates of the Tuileries and he entered the great apartment where a reception was given to various public and military bodies. Between seven and eight thousand naval and military officers paid their respects, and about half a battalion of the army saluted, among them two Mamelukes. While this ceremony was going on, the Place du Carrousel was occupied by several squadrons of cavalry and the inner courtyards were practically infantry camps. The government was taking no chances at the beginning of its career. The reception lasted until well on towards evening, when a banquet of four hundred covers was laid and partaken of by the invited guests. The last days of the Tuileries may be said to have commenced with that eventful September 3, 1870, at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the Empress Eugenie received a telegraphic despatch from Napoleon III announcing his captivity and the defeat of Sedan. It was the overthrow. The evening and the night were calm; the masses, as yet, were unaware of the fatal news the journals would publish on the morrow. The following day was Sunday; the weather superb; the disaster was finally announced and the masses thronged from all parts to the Place de la Concorde, where a squadron of Cuirassiers barred the bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon where the deputies were in session. On the arrival of the news the empress had called in General Trochu, the Military Governor of Paris, and asked him if he could guarantee order. He replied in the affirmative. Some hours later a group of deputies came to the empress and counselled her to sign, not an abdication, but a momentary renunciation of her powers as regent. Eugenie refused point-blank. The throng, passing by the left bank, had arrived at the Chamber of Deputies, and the formal sitting became a revolutionary one. At three o'clock the imperial dynasty was proclaimed as at an end, and a provisionary government installed. Henri Rochefort, the present editor of the "_Intransingeant_," was delivered from the prison of Sainte Pélagie and made a member of the government. By this time the mob which had invaded the Place de la Concorde became menacing. The cry, "Aux Tuileries," first launched by the street gamins, soon became the slogan of the crowd. To say it was to do it; the great iron gates were closed, but in default of a protecting force of arms it was an easy matter to scale them. Behind the curtained windows of the palace the empress witnessed the assault and murmured to her ladies-in-waiting: "It is then finished." She turned towards the Prince de Metternich and the Chevalier Nigra, and, in the voice of a suppliant, demanded: "_Que me consillez vous?_" "You must leave at once, Madame; in a moment the palace will be invaded." The empress became resigned and accompanied by Madame Le Breton, Metternich and Nigra started for the Pavilion de Flore, passing through the Galerie de Musée and the Galerie d'Apollon, finally leaving by the gate of the Louvre, which is opposite Saint Germain l'Auxerrois. The empress was at last out of the palace, but not yet out of danger. A band of manifestants, making for the Hotel de Ville and shouting; "Vive la Republique," recognized the empress, but she mounted an empty fiacre with Madame Le Breton, and giving the driver the first address that entered her mind thus escaped further indignities, and perhaps danger. Finally she found a refuge with Doctor Evans, the American dentist living in the Avenue Malakoff, from whose house she left for England on the following day. This is the Frenchman's point of view of one of the picturesque incidents of history. It disposes of the legend that the empress left the Tuileries in the carriage of Doctor Evans, but this cannot be helped, with due regard for the consensus of French opinion. Doctor Evans was a family friend, besides being the dentist who cared for the imperial teeth, and it is not going beyond the truth to state that the fortunate American acquired not a little of his vogue and wealth by his association with Napoleon III and his family. By this time the populace had invaded the palace and cursed with indignities unmentionable the marble halls, and the furnishings in general, and pillaged such portable property as pleased the individual fancies of the spoilsmen. After the signing of the Peace Treaty by the Bordeaux Assembly, which now represented the governmental head, and Thiers had become president, that worthy would do away with the cannon of which the National Guard still held possession in their garrison on the Butte of Montmartre. The orders which he sent forth came to be the signal for another outbreak on the part of the populace. On March 18 the Commune was proclaimed and Citoyen Dardelle, an old African hunter, was appointed military governor of the Tuileries. Whatever this individual's military qualifications may have been, he delivered himself to the enjoyment of a high and dissolute life in his luxurious apartments in the palace; a fact which was speedily made note of by the still restless populace. The Citoyen Rousselle, a member of the Communal Government, had the idea of organizing a series of popular concerts in the gardens of the Tuileries for the profit of the wounded in the late friction. Hung on the walls, at the entrance of each apartment was a placard which read: "Fellow men, the gold with which these walls were built was earned by your sweat." "To-day you are coming to your own." "Remain faithful to your trust and see to it that the tyrants enter never more." During one of these public concerts a poem of Hégésippe Moreau was read which terminated as follows, and set the populace aflame. * * * "Et moi j'applaudirai; ma jeuneusse engourdie Se réchauffera a ce grand incendie." He referred to the burning of the former abode of emperors and kings as a sort of sacrifice to the common good. The public had held itself in hand very well up to this moment, but applauded the verses vociferously. The last of the concerts was held on May 21, the same day as the Army of Versailles entered Paris. Night came, and with it the raging, red flames springing skywards from the roof of the Tuileries. In a few moments the flames had enveloped the entire building. All the forces that it was possible to gather had been ordered upon the scene, but they were unable to save the old palace, and by one o'clock in the morning it was but a mass of smoking ruins. The Communards had done their work well. Before leaving its precincts they had sprinkled coal oil over every square metre of carpet, window-hangings and tapestries, and the slow-match was not long in passing the fire to its inflammable timber. The library of the Louvre was destroyed, but the museums, galleries and their famous collections fortunately escaped. For a dozen years the lamentable ruins of the old palace of the Tuileries reared their singed walls, a witness and a reproach to the tempestuosity of a people. Finally, in 1882, Monsieur Achille Picard undertook their removal for thirty-three thousand francs, and within a year not a vestige, not an unturned stone remained in its original place as a witness to this chapter of Paris history. Two porticos of the Pavillon de l'Horloge, originally forming a part of the Tuileries, have been re-erected on the terrace of the Orangerie, facing the Place de la Concorde. There remain but two survivors of the late imperial sway in France, the Empress Eugenie who lives in England, and Emile Olivier, "_l'homme au coeur lèger_," who lives at Saint Tropez in the Midi. A Paris journalist a year or more ago, while sitting among a little coterie of literary and artistic folk at Lavenue's famous terrace-café, recounted the following incident clothed in most discreet language, and since it bears upon the Tuileries and its last occupants it is repeated here. "Last night beneath the glamour of a September moon I saw a black shadow silently creep out from beneath the gloom of the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli just below the Hotel Continental. It crossed the pavement and passed within the railings of the gardens opposite, one of the gates to which, by chance or prearranged design, was still open. It moved slowly here and there upon the gravelled walks and seated itself upon a solitary bench as if it were meditating upon the splendid though sad hours that had passed. Was it a wraith; was it Eugenie, late empress of the French?" To have remembered such a dream of fancy for forty long years one must have been endowed with superhuman courage, or an inexplicable conscience. The Rue des Pyramides, which has been prolonged to the banks of the Seine, will give those of the present generation who have never seen the Tuileries an exact idea of its location. If it still existed the façade of the palace would front upon this street. The most moving history of the detailed horrors of the Commune, particularly with reference to the part played by the Tuileries therein, is to be found in Maxime Ducamp's "_Les Derniers Convulsions de Paris_." One relic of the Tuileries left unharmed found a purchaser in a Roumanian prince, at a public sale held as late as 1889. This was the ornately beautiful iron gate which separated the Cour du Carrousel from the Cour des Tuileries. Roumanian by birth, French at heart and Parisian by adoption, this wealthy amateur, for a trifle over eight thousand francs, became the owner of a royal souvenir which must have cost five hundred times that sum. The eastern front of the Tuileries opened into a courtyard formed under the direction of the first Napoleon. It was separated from the Place du Carrousel by a handsome iron railing with gilt spear-heads extending the whole range of the palace. From this court there were three entrances into the Place du Carrousel, the central gate corresponding with the central pavilion of the palace, the other two having their piers surmounted by colossal figures of victory, peace, history and France. A gateway under each of the lateral galleries also communicated on the north with the Rue de Rivoli, and on the south with the Quai du Louvre. The Place du Carrousel was named in honour of a tournament held upon the spot by Louis XIV in 1662. It communicated on the north with the Rue Richelieu and the Rue de l'Echelle, and on the south with the Pont Royal and the Pont du Carrousel. To-day in the square stands the triumphal arch erected by Napoleon in 1806, after the designs of Percier and Fontaine. The newly laid-out and furbished-up gardens make the Place du Carrousel even more attractive than it was when set about with flagged areas, gravelled walks and paved road ways, and, while the monumental and architectural accessories excel the horticultural embellishments in quantity, the general effect is incomparably finer at present than anything known before. Plans for rebuilding the Place du Carrousel provide for a division into three distinct parts, three grand _pelouses_, _à boulingrins à la Français_, or lawns of a circumscribed area, according to the best traditions of Le Notre, a border of flowers and a few decoratively disposed clumps of flowering shrubs, the whole combined in such a way that the perspective and vista down the Champs Elysées will in no manner suffer. The architect-landscapist, M. Redon, who has been charged with the work, has drawn his inspiration from a series of unexecuted designs of Le Notre which have recently been brought to light from the innermost depths of the national archives. It was a safe way of avoiding an anachronism, and this time a government architect has chosen well his plan of execution. In later years the question of the reëmbellishment of the Garden of the Tuileries has ever been before the public, but little has actually been changed save the remaking of certain garden plots, the planting of a few shrubs or the placing of a few statues. The Garden of the Tuileries has a superficial area of 232,632 square metres. It is the most popular of all open spaces in the capital to the Parisian who would take his walks abroad not too far from the centre of things. The chief curiosity of the garden is the celebrated chestnut tree which burst into flower on the day of Napoleon's arrival from Elba--March 20. The precocious tree has ever been revered by the Bonapartists since, though the tree has never performed the trick the second time. Statues innumerable are scattered here and there through the garden and give a certain sense of liveliness to the area. Some are by famous names, others by those less renowned, but as a whole they make little impression on one, chiefly, perhaps, because one does not come to the Garden of the Tuileries to see statues. To the left and right are the terraces, first laid out by the celebrated Le Notre. Like the hanging gardens of Babylon, they overlook a lower level of _parterres_, gravelled walks and ornamental waters. Along the Rue de Rivoli is the Terrasse de l'Orangerie, and on the side of the river is the Terrasse de la Marine. According to the original plans of Le Notre the garden was set down as five hundred _toises_ in length, and one hundred and sixty-eight _toises_ in width, the latter dimension corresponding to that of the façade of the palace. Along the shady avenues of this admirable city garden of to-day an enterprising _concessionaire_ has won a fortune by renting out rush-bottomed chairs to nursemaids, retired old gentlemen with red ribbons in their buttonholes, and trippers from across the channel. It is a perfectly legitimate enterprise and a profitable one it would seem, and has been in operation considerably more than half a century. It was from the Gardens of the Tuileries in 1784 that took place Blanchard's celebrated ascension in Montgolfier's balloon and brought forth the encomium from the British Royal Society that the body was not in the least surprised that a Frenchman should have solved the problem of "volatability." The French monarch, more practical, was so mightily pleased with the success of the experiment that he bestowed upon the author the sum of four hundred thousand francs from his treasury to be used for the perfection of the art. CHAPTER VIII THE PALAIS CARDINAL AND THE PALAIS ROYAL With the Louvre and the Tuileries the Palais Royal shares the popular interest of the traveller among all the monuments of Paris. No other edifice evokes more vivid souvenirs of its historic past than this hybrid palace of Richelieu. One dreams even to-day, of its sumptuousness, its legends, its amusing and extravagant incidents which cast a halo of romantic interest over so many illustrious personages. So thoroughly Parisian is the Palais Royal in all things that it has been called "the Capital of Paris." Not far from the walled and turreted stronghold of the old Louvre rose the private palaces, only a little less royal, of the Rambouillets, the Mercoeurs and other nobles of the courtly train. They lived, too, in almost regal state until Armand du Plessis de Richelieu came to humble their pride, by fair means or foul, by buying up or destroying their sumptuous dwellings, levelling off a vast area of land, and, in 1629, commencing work on that imposing pile which was first known as the Palais Cardinal, later the Palais d'Orleans, then as the Palais de la Revolution and finally as the Palais Royal. It was near, yet far enough away from the royal residence of the Louvre not to be overshadowed by it. The edifice enclosed a great square of ground laid out with symmetrically planted trees and adorned with fountains and statues. From the great central square four smaller courts opened out to each of the principal points of the compass; there were also, besides the living rooms, a chapel, two theatres, ballrooms, boudoirs and picture galleries, all of a luxury never before dreamed of but by kings. The main entrance was in the Rue Saint Honoré, and over its portal were the graven arms of Richelieu, surmounted by the cardinal's hat and the inscription: "Palais Cardinal." Like his English compeer, Wolsey, Richelieu's ardour for building knew no restraint. He added block upon block of buildings and yard upon yard to garden walls until all was a veritable labyrinth. Finally the usually subservient Louis saw the condition of things; he liked it not that his minister should dwell in marble halls more gorgeous than his own. As a matter of policy the Cardinal ceased to build more and at his death, as if to atone, willed the entire property to his king. As the Palais Cardinal, the edifice was subjected to many impertinent railleries from the public which, as a whole, was ever antagonistic to the "_Homme Rouge_." They did not admit the right of an apostolic prelate of the church to lodge himself so luxuriously when the very precepts of his religion recommended modesty and humility. Richelieu's contemporaries did not hesitate to admire wonderingly all this luxury of life and its accessories, and Corneille, in the "_Menteur_" (1642), makes one of the principal characters say: "Non, l'univers ne peut rien voir d'égal Aux superbes dehors du Palais Cardinal; Toute une ville entière avec pompe bâtie, Semble d'un vieux fossé par miracle sortie, Et nous fais présumer à ses superbes toits Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois." The ground plan of the Palais Cardinal was something unique among city palaces. In the beginning ground values were not what they are to-day in Paris. There were acres upon acres of greensward set about and cut up with gravelled walks, great alleyed rows of trees, groves without number and galleries and colonnades innumerable. Without roared the traffic of a great city, a less noisy traffic than that of to-day, perhaps, but still a contrasting maelstrom of bustle and furor as compared with the tranquillity within. After the edifice was finished it actually fell into disuse, except for the periodical intervals when the Cardinal visited the capital. At other times it was as quiet as a cemetery. Moss grew on the flags, grass on the gravelled walks and tangled shrubbery killed off the budding flowers of the gardens. Richelieu's last home-coming, after the execution of Cinq-Mars at Lyons, was a tragic one. The despot of France, once again under his own rooftree, threw himself upon his bed surrounded by his choicest pictures and tapestries, and paid the price of his merciless arrogance towards all men--and women--by folding his wan hands upon his breast and exclaiming, somewhat unconvincingly: "Thus do I give myself to God." As if recalling himself to the stern reality of things he added: "I have no enemies but those of State." In a robe of purple silk, supported by pillows of the finest down and covered with the rarest of laces, he rigidly straightened himself out and expired without a shudder, with the feeling that he was well beyond the reach of invisible foes. But before he died Richelieu received a visit from his king in person. This was another token of his invincible power. Thus the Palais Royal was evolved from the Palais Cardinal of Richelieu. Richelieu gave the orders for its construction to Jacques Lemercier immediately after he had dispossessed the Rambouillets and the Mercoeurs, intending at first to erect only a comparatively modest town dwelling with an ample garden. Vanity, or some other passion, finally caused to grow up the magnificently proportioned edifice which was called the Palais Cardinal instead of that which was to be known more modestly as the Hotel de Richelieu. Vast and imposing, but not without a certain graceful symmetry, the Palais Royal of to-day is a composition of many separate edifices divided by a series of courts and gardens and connected by arcaded galleries. The right wing enclosed an elaborate Salle de Spectacle while that to the left enclosed an equally imposing chamber with a ceiling by Philippe de Champaigne, known as the Galerie des Hommes Illustrés, and further ornamented with portraits of most of the court favourites of both sexes of the time. The architectural ornamentation of this gallery was of the Doric order, most daringly interspersed with moulded ships' prows, anchors, cables and what not of a marine significance. In 1636, divining the attitude of envy of many of the nobility who frequented his palace, Richelieu--great man of politics that he was--made a present of the entire lot of curios to Louis XIII, but undertaking to house them for him, which he did until his death in 1642. At the death of Louis XIII the Palais Cardinal, which had been left to him in its entirety by the will of Richelieu, came to Anne d'Autriche, the regent, who, with the infant Louis XIV and the royal family, installed herself therein, and from now on (October 7, 1642), the edifice became known as the Palais Royal. Now commenced the political rôle of this sumptuous palace which hitherto had been but the Cardinal's caprice. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu, and to escape the anger of the Frondeurs, he, with the regent and the two princes, Louis XIV and the Duc d'Anjou, fled to the refuge of Saint Germain-en-Laye. In company with Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who had been rudely awakened from her slumbers in the Luxembourg, they took a coach in the dead of night for Saint Germain. It was a long and weary ride; the _Pavi du Roi_ was then, as now, the most execrable suburban highroad in existence. When calm was reëstablished Mazarin refused to allow the regent to take up her residence again in the old abode of Richelieu and turned it over to Henriette de France, the widow of Charles I, who had been banished from England by Cromwell. Thirty odd years later Louis XIV, when he was dreaming of his Versailles project, made a gift of the property to his nephew, Philippe d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres. Important reconstructions and rearrangements had been carried on from time to time, but nothing so radical as to change the specious aspect of the palace of the Cardinal's time, though it had been considerably enlarged by extending it rearward and annexing the Hotel Danville in the present Rue Richelieu. Mansart on one occasion was called in and built a new gallery that Coypel decorated with fourteen compositions after the Ænid of Virgil. Under the regency the Salon d'Entrée was redecorated by Oppenard, and a series of magnificent fêtes was organized by the pleasure-loving queen from the Austrian court. Richelieu's theatre was made into an opera-house, and masked balls of an unparalleled magnificence were frequently given, not forgetting to mention--without emphasis however--suppers of a Pantagruelian opulence and lavish orgies at which the chronicles only hint. In 1661, Monsieur, brother of the king, took up his official residence in the palace, enlarged it in various directions and in many ways transformed and improved it. Having become the sole proprietor of the edifice and its gardens, by Letters Patent of February, 1692, the Duc d'Orleans left this superb property, in 1701, to his son the too famous regent, Philippe d'Orleans, whose orgies and extravagances rendered the Palais Royal notorious to the utmost corners of Europe. The first years of the eighteenth century were indeed notorious. It was then that Palais Royal became the head-centre for debauch and abandon. It is from this epoch, too, that date the actual structures which to-day form this vast square of buildings, at all events their general outline is little changed to-day from what it was at that time. If the regent's policy was to carry the freedom and luxury of Richelieu's time to excess, replacing even the edifices of the Cardinal with more elaborate structures, his son Louis (1723-1752) sought in his turn to surround them with an atmosphere more austere. A disastrous fire in 1763 caused the Palais Royal to be rebuilt by order of Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the future Philippe-Egalité, by the architect Moreau, who carried out the old traditions as to form and outline, and considerably increased the extent and number of the arcades from one hundred and eighty to two hundred and seven. These the astute duke immediately rented out to shopkeepers at an annual rental of more than ten millions. This section was known characteristically enough as the Palais Marchand, and thus the garden came to be surrounded by a monumental and classic arcade of shops which has ever remained a distinct feature of the palace. A second fire burned out the National Opera, which now sought shelter in the Palais Royal, and in 1781 the Theatre des Varietés Amusantes was constructed, and which has since been made over into the home of the Comédie Française. The transformations imposed by Philippe-Egalité were considerable, and the famous chestnut trees, which had been planted within the courtyard in the seventeenth century by Richelieu, were cut down. He built also the three transverse galleries which have cut the gardens of to-day into much smaller plots than they were in Richelieu's time. In spite of this there is still that pleasurable tranquillity to be had therein to-day, scarcely a stone's throw from the rush and turmoil of the whirlpool of wheeled traffic which centres around the junction of the Rue Richelieu with the Avenue de l'Opera. It is as an oasis in a turbulent sandstorm, a beneficent shelf of rock in a whirlpool of rapids. The only thing to be feared therein is that a toy aeroplane of some child will put an eye out, or that the more devilish _diabolo_ will crack one's skull. Under the regency of the Duc Philippe d'Orleans the various apartments of the palace were the scenes of scandalous goings-on, which were related at great length in the chronicles of the time. It was a very mixed world which now frequented the _purlieus_ of the Palais Royal. Men and women about town jostled with men of affairs, financiers, speculators and agitators of all ranks and of questionable respectability. Milords, as strangers from across the Manche came first to be known here, delivered themselves to questionable society and still more questionable pleasures. It was at a little later period that the Duc de Chartres authorized the establishment of the cafés and restaurants which for a couple of generations became the most celebrated rendezvous in Paris--the Café de Foy, the Café de la Paix, the Café Carrazzo and various other places of reunion whose very names, to say nothing of the incidents connected therewith, have come down to history. It was the establishment of these public rendezvous which contributed so largely to the events which unrolled themselves in the Palais Royal in 1789. This "Eden de l'Enfer," as it was known, has in late years been entirely reconstructed; the old haunts of the Empire have gone and nothing has come to take their place. Then came another class of establishments which burned brilliantly in the second rank and were, in a way, political rendezvous also--the Café de Chartres and the Café de Valois. Of all these Palais Royal cafés of the early nineteenth century the most gorgeous and brilliant was the Café des Mille Colonnes, though its popularity was seemingly due to the charms of the _maitresse de la maison_, a Madame Romain, whose husband was a dried-up, dwarfed little man of no account whatever. Madame Romain, however, lived well up to her reputation as being "_incontestablement la plus jolie femme de Paris_." By 1824 the fame of the establishment had begun to wane and in 1826 it expired, though the "_Almanach des Gourmands_" of the latter year said that the proprietor was the Véry of _limonadiers_, that his ices were superb, his salons magnificent--and his prices exorbitant. Perhaps it was the latter that did it! Another establishment, founded in 1817, was domiciled here, the clients being served by "_odalisques en costume oriental, très seduisantes_." This is quoted from the advertisements of the day. The café was called the Café des Circassiennes, and there was a _sultane_, who was the presiding genius of the place. It met with but an indifferent success and soon closed its doors despite its supposedly all-compelling attractions. In the mid-nineteenth century a revolution came over the cafés of Paris. Tobacco had invaded their precincts; previously one smoked only in the _estaminets_. Three cafés of the Palais Royal resisted the innovation, the Café de la Galerie d'Orleans, the Café de Foy and the Café de la Rotonde. To-day, well, to-day things are different. The Theatre du Palais Royal of to-day was the Theatre des Marionettes of the Comte de Beaujolais, which had for contemporaries the Fantoches Italiens, the Ombres Chinoises and the Musée Curtius, perhaps the first of the wax-works shows that in later generations became so popular. The Palais Royal had now become a vast amusement enterprise, with side-shows of all sorts, theatres, concerts, cafés, restaurants, clubs, gambling-houses and what not--all paying rents, and high ones, to the proprietor. In the centre of the garden, where is now the fountain and its basin, was a circus, half underground and half above, and there were innumerable booths and kiosks for the sale of foolish trifles, all paying tribute to the ground landlord. Gaming at the Palais Royal was not wholly confined to the public gambling houses. During the carnival season of 1777 the gambling which went on in the royal apartments became notorious for even that profligate time: in one night the Duc de Chartres lost eight thousand _livres_. Louis XVI, honest man, took all due precautions to reduce this extravagance, but was impotent. Between the courtyard fountain and the northern arcade of the inner palace was placed the famous Cannon du Palais Royal, which, by an ingenious disposition, was fired each day at midday by the action of the sun's rays. All the world stood around awaiting the moment when watches might be regulated for another twenty-four hours. The celebrated Abbé Delille, to whom the beauties of the gardens were being shown, deplored the lack of good manners on the part of the habitués and delivered himself of the following appropriate quatrain: "Dans ce jardin tout se rencontrée Exceptê l'ombrage et les fleurs; Si l'on y dêregle ses moeurs Du moins on y règle sa montre." The Galerie de Bois was perhaps the most disreputable of all the palace confines. It was a long, double row of booths which only disappeared when Louis-Philippe built the glass-covered Galerie d'Orleans. Up to the eve of the Revolution the Palais Royal enjoyed the same privileges as the Temple and the Luxembourg, and became a sort of refuge whereby those who sought to escape from the police might lose themselves in the throng. The monarch himself was obliged to ask permission of the Duc d'Orleans that his officials might pursue their police methods within the outer walls. It was July 12, 1789. The evening before, Louis XVI had dismissed his minister, Neckar, but only on Sunday, the 12th, did the news get abroad. At the same time it was learned that the regiment known as the Royal Allemand, under the orders of the Prince de Lambesc, had charged the multitude gathered before the gates of the Tuileries. Cries of "A Mort!" "Aux Armes!" "Vengeance!" were hurled in air from all sides. At high noon in the gardens of the Palais Royal, on the 13th, as the midday sun was scorching the flagstones to a grilling temperature, the sound of a tiny cannon shot smote the still summer air with an echo which did not cease reverberating for months. The careless, unthinking promenaders suddenly grew grave, then violently agitated and finally raving, heedlessly mad. A young unknown limb of the law, Camille Desmoulins, rushed bareheaded and shrieking out of the Café de Foy, parted the crowd as a ship parts the waves, sprang upon a chair and harangued the multitude with such a vehemence and conviction that they were with him as one man. "Citizens," he said, "I come from Versailles * * * It only remains for us to choose our colours. _Quelle couleur voulez vous?_ Green, the colour of hope; or the blue of Cincinnati, the colour of American liberty and democracy." _"Nous avons assez déliberé!_ Deliberate further with our hands not our hearts! We are the party the most numerous: To arms!" On the morrow, the now famous 14th of July, the Frenchman's "glorious fourteenth," the people rose and the Bastille fell. Revolutionary decree, in 1793, converted the palace and its garden into the Palais et Jardin de la Révolution, and appropriated them as national property. Napoleon granted the palace to the Tribunal for its seat, and during the Hundred Days Lucien Bonaparte took up his residence there. In 1830 Louis Philippe d'Orleans gave a great fête here in honour of the King of Naples who had come to the capital to pay his respects to the French king. Charles X, assisting at the ceremony as an invited guest, was also present and a month later came again to actually inhabit the palace and make it royal once more. [Illustration: The Galleries of the Palais-Royal under Napoleon First.] The table herewith showing the ramifications of the Bourbon Orleans family in modern times is interesting--all collateral branches of the genealogical tree sprouting from that of Louis Philippe. The heraldic embellishments of this family tree offer a particular interest in that the armorial blazonings are in accord with a decree of the French Tribunal, handed down a few years since, which establishes the right to the head of the house to bear the _écu plein de France--d'azur a trois fleurs de lys d'or_, thus establishing the Orleans legitimacy. [Illustration] The Republic of 1848 made the palace the headquarters of the Cour des Comptes and of the État Major of the National Guard. Under Napoleon III the Palais Royal became the dwelling of Prince Jerome, the uncle of the emperor. Later it served the same purpose for the son of Prince Napoleon. It was at this epoch that the desecration of scraping out the blazoned _lys_ and the chipping off the graven Bourbon _armoiries_ took place. Whenever one or the other hated Bourbon symbol was found, eagles, phoenix-like, sprang up in their place, only in their turn to disappear when the Republican device of '48 (now brought to light again), _Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité_--replaced them. During the Commune of 1870 a part of the left wing and the central pavilion suffered by fire, but restorations under the architect, Chabrol, brought them back again to much their original outlines. Through all its changes of tenure and political vicissitudes little transformation took place as to the ground plan, or sky-line silhouette, of the chameleon palace of cardinal, king and emperor, and while in no sense is it architecturally imposing or luxurious, it is now, as ever in the past, one of the most distinctive of Paris's public monuments. To-day the Palais Royal proper may be said to face on Place du Palais Royal, with its principal entrance at the end of a shallow courtyard separated from the street by an iron grille and flanked by two unimposing pavilions. The principal façade hides the lodging of the Conseil d'État and is composed of but the ground floor, a story above and an attic. The Aile Montpensier, which follows on from the edifice which houses the Comédie Française, was, until recently, occupied by the Cour des Comptes. The Aile de Valois fronts the street of that name, and here the Princes d'Orleans and King Jerome made their residence. To-day the same wing is devoted to the uses of the Under Secretary for the Beaux Arts. It is not necessary to insist on, nor reiterate, the decadence of the Palais Royal. It is no longer the "capitol of Paris," and whatever its charms may be they are mostly equivocal. It is more a desert than an oasis or a _temple de la volupté_, and it was each of these things in other days. Its priestesses and its gambling houses are gone, and who shall say this of itself is not a good thing in spite of the admitted void. The mediocrity of the Palais Royal is apparent to all who have the slightest acquaintance with the architectural orders, but for all that its transition from the Palais du Cardinal, Palais Egalité, Palais de la Revolution and Palais du Tribunat to the Palais Royal lends to it an interest that many more gloriously artistic Paris edifices quite lack. There is a movement on foot to-day to resurrect the Palais Royal to some approach to its former distinction, which is decidedly what it has not been for the past quarter of a century. Satirical persons have demanded as to what should be made of it, a _vélodrome_ or a skating-rink, but this is apart from a real consideration of the question for certain it is that much of its former charm can be restored to it without turning it into a Luna Park. It is one of the too few Paris breathing-spots, and as such should be made more attractive than it is at the present time. It was sixty years ago, when Louis Philippe was the legitimate owner of the Palais Royal, its galleries, its shops, its theatre and its gardens, that it came to its first debasement. "One went there on tip-toe, and spoke in a whisper," said a writer of the time, and one does not need to be particularly astute to see the significance of the remark. It was Alphonse Karr, the _écrivain-jardinier_, who set the new vogue for the Palais Royal, but his interest and enthusiasm was not enough to resurrect it, and so in later years it has sunk lower and lower. The solitude of the Palais Royal has become a mockery and a solecism. It is virtually a _campo santo_, or could readily be made one, and this in spite of the fact that it occupies one of the busiest and noisiest quarters of the capital, a quadrangle bounded by the Rues Valois, Beaujolais, Montpensier and the Place du Palais Royal. The moment one enters its portal the simile accentuates and the hybrid shops which sell such equivocal bric-a-brac to clients of no taste and worse affectations carry out the idea of a cloister still further, for actually the clients are few, and those mostly strangers. One holds his breath and ambles through the corridors glad enough to escape the bustle of the narrow streets which surround it, but, on the other hand, glad enough to get out into the open again. CHAPTER IX THE LUXEMBOURG, THE ELYSÉE AND THE PALAIS BOURBON The kings and queens of France were not only rulers of the nation, but they dominated the life of the capital as well. Upon their crowning or entry into Paris it was the custom to command a gift by right from the inhabitants. In 1389 Isabeau de Bavière, of dire memory, got sixty thousand _couronnes d'or_, and in 1501, and again in 1504, was presented with six thousand and ten thousand _livres parisis_ respectively. The king levied personal taxes on the inhabitants, who were thus forced to pay for the privilege of having him live among them, those of the professions and craftsmen, who might from time to time serve the royal household, paying the highest fees. It was during the period of Richelieu's ministry that Paris flowered the most profusely. The constructions of this epoch were so numerous and imposing that Corneille in his comedy "Le Menteur," first produced in 1642, made his characters speak thus: Dorante: Paris semble à mes yeux un pays de roman * * * En superbes palais a changé ses buissons * * * Aux superbes dehors du palais Cardinal Tout la ville entière, avec pomp bâtie * * * In 1701, Louis XIV divided the capital into twenty _quartiers_, or wards, and in 1726-1728 Louis XV built a new city wall; but it was only with Louis XVI that the faubourgs were at last brought within the city limits. Under the Empire and the Restoration but few changes were made, and with the piercing of the new boulevards under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann the city came to be of much the same general plan that it is to-day. In the olden time, between the Palais de la Cité and the Louvre and the Palais des Tournelles, extending even to the walls of Charenton, was a gigantic garden, a carpet embroidered with as varied a colouring as the _tapis d'orient_ of the poets, and cut here and there by alleys which separated it into little checker-board squares. Within this maze was the celebrated Jardin Dedalus that Louis XI gave to Coictier, and above it rose the observatory of the savant like a signal tower of the Romans. This centered upon what is now the Place des Vosges, formerly the Place Royale. To-day, how changed is all this "intermediate, indeterminate" region! How changed, indeed! There is nothing vague and indeterminate about it to-day. The earliest of the little known Paris palaces was the Palais des Thermes. It may be dismissed almost in a word from any consideration of the royal dwellings of Paris, though it was the residence of several Roman emperors and two queens of France. A single apartment of the old palace of the Romans exists to-day--the old Roman Baths--but nothing of the days of the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, who founded the palace in honour of Julian who was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers in 360 A.D. The Frankish monarchs, if they ever resided here at all, soon transferred their headquarters to the Palais de la Cité, the ruins falling into the possession of the monks of Cluny, who built the present Hotel de Cluny on the site. Of all the minor French palaces the Luxembourg and the Elysée are the most often heard of in connection with the life of modern times. The first is something a good deal more than an art museum, and the latter more than the residence for the Republican president, though the guide-book makers hardly think it worth while to write down the facts. The Palais du Luxembourg has been called an imitation of the Pitti Palace at Florence, but, beyond the fact that it was an Italian conception of Marie de Médici's, it is difficult to follow the suggestion, as the architect, Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest of Frenchmen in his line, simply carried out the work on the general plan of the time of its building, the early seventeenth century. Its three not very extensive pavilions are joined together by a colonnade which encloses a rather foreboding flagged courtyard, a conception, or elaboration, of the original edifice by Chalgrin, in 1804, under the orders of Napoleon. The garden front, though a restoration of Louis Philippe, is more in keeping with the original Médici plan; that, at any rate, is to its credit. To-day the Luxembourg, the Republican Palais du Sénat, is but an echo of the four centuries of aristocratic existence which upheld the name and fame of its first proprietor, the Duc de Piney-Luxembourg, Prince de Tigry, who built it in the sixteenth century. From 1733 to 1736 the palace underwent important restorations and the last persons to inhabit it before the Revolution were the Duchesse de Brunswick, the Queen Dowager of Spain and the Comte de Provence, brother of Louis XVI, to whom it had been given by Letters Patent in 1779. [Illustration: _Palais du Luxembourg_] In 1791 the Convention thought so little of it that they made it a prison, and a few years later it was called again the Palais du Directoire, and, before the end of the century, the Palais du Consulat. This was but a brief glory, as Napoleon transferred his residence in accordance with his augmenting ambitions, to the Tuileries in the following year. By 1870 the edifice had become known as the Palais du Sénat, then as the headquarters of the Préfecture of the Seine, and finally, as to-day, the Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of the French Senate and the residence of the president of that body. The principal public apartments are the Library, the "Salle des Séances," the "Buvette"--formerly Napoleon's "Cabinet de Travail," the "Salle des Pas Perdus"--formerly the "Salle du Trone," the Grand Gallery and the apartments of Marie de Médici. The chapel is modern and dates only from 1844. The Palais du Petit Luxembourg is the official residence of the president of the Senate and dates also from the time of Marie de Médici. The picture gallery is housed in a modern structure to the west of the Petit Luxembourg. [Illustration] The façade of the Palais du Sénat is not altogether lovely and has little suggestion of the daintiness of the Petit Luxembourg, but, for all that, it presents a certain dignified pose and the edifice serves its purpose well as the legislative hall of the upper house. [Illustration: _The Petit Luxembourg_] The gardens of the Luxembourg form another of those favourite Paris playgrounds for nursemaids and their charges. It is claimed that the children are all little Legitimists in the Luxembourg gardens, whereas they are all Red Republicans at the Tuileries. One has no means of knowing this with certainty, but it is assumed; at any rate the Legitimists are a very numerous class in the neighbourhood. Another class of childhood to be seen here is that composed of the offsprings of artists and professors of the Latin quarter, and of the active tradesmen of the neighbourhood. They come here, like the others, for the fresh air, to see a bit of greenery, to hear the band play, to sail their boats in the basins of the great fountain and enjoy themselves generally. One notes a distinct difference in the dress and manners of the children of the gardens of the Luxembourg from those of the Tuileries and wonders if the breach will be widened further as they grow up. The Jardin du Luxembourg is all that a great city garden should be, ample, commodious, decorative and as thoroughly typical of Paris as the Pont Neuf. Innumerable, but rather mediocre, statues are posed here and there between the palace and the observatory at the end of the long, tree-lined avenue which stretches off to the south, the only really historical monument of this nature being the celebrated Fontaine de Médicis by Debrosse, the architect of the palace. It was a memorial to Marie de Médici. While one is in this quarter of Paris he has an opportunity to recall a royal memory now somewhat dimmed by time, but still in evidence if one would delve deep. As a matter of fact, royalty never had much to do with this hybrid quarter of Paris, though, indeed, its past was romantic enough, bordering as it does upon the real Latin Quarter of the students. Bounded on one side by the immense domain of the Luxembourg, it stretched away indefinitely beyond Vaugiraud, almost to Clamart and Sceaux. [Illustration: _The Luxembourg Gardens_] At No. 27 Boulevard Montparnasse is an elaborate seventeenth house-front half hidden by the "modern style" flats of twentieth century Paris. This relic of the _grand siècle_, with its profusion of sculptured details, was the house bought by Louis XIV about 1672 and given to the "widow Scarron," the "young and beautiful widow of the court," as a recompense for the devotion with which she had educated the three children of the Marquise de Montespan, who, in 1673, were legitimatized as princes of the royal house--the Duc de Maine, the Comte de Vexin and Mademoiselle de Mantes. Madame Scarron, who became in time Madame de Maintenon, the "_vraie reine du roi_," died in 1719, and the house passed to La Tour d'Auvergne. On this same side of the river are the Palais de l'Institut and the Palais Bourbon. The Palais de l'Institut, or Palais Mazarin, is hardly to be considered one of the domestic establishments, the dwellings of kings, with which contemporary Paris was graced. It was but a creation of Mazarin, the minister, on the site of the Hôtel de Nesle, and was first known as the Palais des Quatre Nations, where were educated, at the expense of the Cardinal, sixty young men of various nationalities. The old chapel has since been transformed into the "Salle des Séances" of the Institut de France, the Five French Academies. The black, gloomy façade of the edifice, to-day, in spite of the cupola which gives a certain inspiring dignity, is not lovely, and tradition and sentiment alone give it its present interest, though it is undeniably picturesque. An inscription used to be on the pedestal of one of the fountains opposite the entrance which read: "Superbe habitant du desert En ce lieu, dis moi, que fais tu --Tu le vois à mon habit vert Je suis membre de l'institut." If the inscription were still there it would save the asking of a lot of silly questions by strangers who pass this way for the first time. The Palais de l'Institut is one of the sights of Paris, and its functions are notable, though hardly belonging to the romantic school of past days, for at present poets often make their entrée via Montmartre's "Chat Noir," or are elected simply because some other candidate has been "_blackbouled_." Still following along the left bank of the Seine one comes to the Palais Bourbon, the Chambre des Deputés, as it is better known. This edifice, where now sit the French deputies, was built by Girardini for the Dowager Duchesse de Bourbon in 1722, and, though much changed during various successive eras, is still a unique variety of architectural embellishment which is not uncouth, nor yet wholly appealing. Napoleon remade the heavily imposing façade, so familiar to all who cross the river by the Pont de la Concorde, but its grimness is its charm rather than its grace. The structure cost its first proprietor twenty million or more francs, and since it has become national property the outlay has been constant. Everything considered it makes a poor showing; but its pseudo-Greek façade, were it removed, would certainly be missed in this section of Paris. The principal apartments are the "Salle des Pas Perdus," the "Salle des Séances," and the "Salle des Conferences"--where, in 1830, the Duc d'Orleans took the oath as king of France. A recent discovery has been made in the lumber room of this old Palais Bourbon, where deputies howl and shout and make laws as noisily as in any other of the world's parliaments. [Illustration: The THRONE of the PALAIS-BOURBON] This particular "find" was the throne constructed in 1816 for Louis XVIII, with its upholstering of velvet embroidered with the golden fleur-de-lis. The records tell that this throne also served Louis Philippe under the Second Empire, and also was used under the Monarchy of July. It was after the momentous "Quatre Setembre" that it was finally relegated to the garret, but now, as a historical souvenir of the first rank, it has been placed prominently where all who visit the Palais Bourbon may see it. The history of the Palais de l'Elysée has not been particularly vivid, though for two centuries it has played a most important part in the life of the capital. In later years it has served well enough the presidential dignity of the chief magistrate of the French Republic and is thus classed as a national property. Actually, since its construction, it has changed its name as often as it has changed its occupants. Its first occupant was its builder, Louis d'Auvergne, Comte d'Evreux, who built himself this great town house on a plot of land which had been given him by Louis XV. Apparently the young man had no means of his own for the construction of his luxurious city dwelling, for he refilled his coffers by marriage with the rich daughter of the financier Crozat. The new-made countess's mother-in-law apparently never had much respect for her son's choice as she forever referred to her as "the little gold ingot." "The ingot" served to construct the palace, however, though at the death of its builder, soon after, it came into the proprietorship of La Pompadour, who spent the sum of six hundred and fifty thousand _livres_ in aggrandizing it. It became her town house, whither she removed when she grew tired of Versailles or Bagatelle. History tells of an incident in connection with a fête given at the Palais de l'Elysée by La Pompadour. It was at the epoch of the "_bergeries à la Watteau_." The blond Pompadour had the idea of introducing into the salons a troop of living, sad-eyed sheep, combed and curled like the poodles in the carriages of the fashionables in the Bois to-day. The quadrupeds, greatly frightened by the flood of light, fell into a panic, and the largest ram among them, seeing his duplicate in a mirror, made for it in the traditional ram-like manner. He raged for an hour or more from one apartment to another, followed by the whole flock, which committed incalculable damage before it could be turned into the gardens. Such was one of the costly caprices of La Pompadour. She had many. La Pompadour's brother, the Marquis de Menars et de Marigny, continued the work of embellishment of the property up to the day when Louis XV bought it as a dwelling for the ambassadors to his court. Its somewhat restricted park, ornamented with a grotto and a cascade, was at this time one of the curiosities of the capital. In 1773, the financier Beaujon bought the property from the king and added considerably to it under the direction of the architect Boullée, who also re-designed the gardens. Thanks to Beaujon, the wonderful Gobelins of to-day were hung upon the walls, and many paintings by Rubens, Poissin, Van Loo, Von Ostade, Murillo, Paul Potter and Joseph Vernet were added. The death of the financier brought the property into the hands of the Duchesse de Bourbon, the sister of Louis Philippe, and the mother of the Duc d' Enghien, who died so tragically at Vincennes a short time after. The duchess renamed her new possession Elysée-Bourbon and there led a very retired and sad life among surroundings so splendid that they merited a more gay existence. At the Revolution the palace became a national property, and, under the Consulate, was the scene of many popular fêtes, it having been rented to a concern which arranged balls and other entertainments for the pleasure of all who could afford to pay. Its name was now the Hameau de Chantilly, and, considering that the entrance tickets cost but fifteen sous--including a drink--it must have proved a cheap, satisfying and splendid amusement for the people. This state of affairs lasted until 1805, when Murat bought it and here held his little court up to his departure for Naples, when, in gratefulness for past favours, he gave it to Napoleon. The emperor greatly loved this new abode, which he rechristened the Elysée-Napoleon. After his defeat at Waterloo Napoleon, limping lamely Parisward, down through the Forests of Compiègne and Villers-Cotterets, sought in the Elysée-Napoleon the repose and rest which he so much needed, the throng meanwhile promenading before the palace windows, shouting at the tops of their voices "Vive l'Empereur!" though, as the world well knew, his power had waned forever; the eagle's wings were broken. The throng still crowded the precincts of the palace, but the emperor fled secretly by the garden gate. On the return of the Duchesse de Bourbon from Spain the magnificent structure became again the Elysée-Bourbon. The duchess ceded the palace to the Duc and Duchesse de Berry but, at the duke's death, in 1820, his widow abandoned it. Some time after it was occupied by the Duc de Bordeaux, and, in 1830, it became one of the long list of establishments whose maintenance devolved upon the Civil List, though it remained practically uninhabited all through the reign of Louis Philippe. In 1848, the National Assembly designated the palace as the official residence for the presidents of the French Republic. Three years after, on the night of the first of December, as the last preparations were being made by Louis Bonaparte for the Coup d' État and the final strangling of the young republic, the residence of the president was transferred to the Tuileries, and the palace of the Faubourg Saint Honoré was again left without a tenant, and served only to give hospitality from time to time to passing notables. After the burning of the Tuileries, and the coming of the Third Republic, the Elysée Palace again became the presidential residence, and so it remains to-day. One of the most notable of modern events connected with the Elysée Palace was the _diner de ceremonie_ offered by the president of the Republic and Madame Fallières to Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt in April, 1910. The dinner was served in the "Grand Salle des Fêtes" and the music which accompanied the repast was furnished by the band of the _Garde Republicain_, beginning with the national anthem of America and finishing with that of France. Never had a private citizen, a foreigner, been so received by the first magistrate of France. The toast of President Fallières was as follows: "Before this repast terminates I wish to profit by the occasion offered to drink the health of Monsieur Theodore Roosevelt, an illustrious man, a great citizen and a good friend of France and the cause of peace. I raise my glass to Madame Roosevelt who may be assured of our respectful and sympathetic homage, and I am very glad to be able to say to our guests that we count ourselves very fortunate in being allowed to meet them in person and show them this mark of respect." CHAPTER X VINCENNES AND CONFLANS [Illustration: VINCENNES UNDER CHARLES V] Vincennes is to-day little more than a dull, dirty Paris suburb; if anything its complexion is a deeper drab than that of Saint Denis, and to call the Bois de Vincennes a park "somewhat resembling the Bois de Boulogne," as do the guidebooks, is ridiculous. In reality Vincennes is nothing at all except a memory. There is to-day little suggestion of royal origin about the smug and murky surroundings of the Chateau de Vincennes; but nevertheless, it once was a royal residence, and the drama which unrolled itself within its walls was most vividly presented. A book might be written upon it, with the following as the chapter headings: "The Royal Residence," "The Minimes of the Bois de Vincennes," "Mazarin at Vincennes," "The Prisoners of the Donjon," "The Fêtes of the Revolution," "The Death of the Duc d'Enghien," "The Transformation of the Chateau and the Bois." Its plots are ready-made, but one has to take them on hearsay, for the old chateau does not open its doors readily to the stranger for the reason that it to-day ranks only as a military fortress, and an artillery camp is laid out in the quadrangle, intended, if need be, to aid in the defence of Paris. This is one of the things one hears about, but of which one may not have any personal knowledge. The first reference to the name of Vincennes is in a ninth century charter, where it appears as _Vilcenna_. The foundation of the original chateau-fort on the present site is attributed to Louis VII, who, in 1164, having alienated a part of the neighbouring forest in favour of a body of monks, built himself a suburban rest-house under shelter of the pious walls of their convent. Philippe Auguste, too, has been credited with being the founder of Vincennes; but, at all events, the chateau took on no royal importance until the reign of Saint Louis, who acquired the habit of dispensing justice to all comers seated beneath an oak in the near-by Forest of Joinville. The erection of the later chateau was begun by Charles, Comte de Valois, brother of Philippe-le-Bel; and it was completed by Philippe VI of Valois, and his successor, Jean-le-Bon, between the years 1337 and 1370, when it became an entirely new manner of edifice from what it had been before. It was in this chateau that was born Charles V, to whom indeed it owes its completion in the form best known. To-day, the outlines of the mass of the Chateau de Vincennes are considerably abbreviated from their former state. Originally it was quite regular in outline, its walls forming a rectangle flanked by nine towers, the great donjon which one sees to-day occupying the centre of one side. The chapel was begun in the reign of François I and terminated in that of Henri II. Its coloured glass, painted by Jean Cousin from the designs of Raphael, is notable. The chapel at Vincennes, with the Saint Chapelle of the Palais de Justice at Paris, ranks as one of the most exquisite examples extant of French Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1379, but chiefly it is of the sixteenth century, since it was only completed in 1552. This chapel of the sixteenth century, and the two side wings flanking the tower of the reign of Louis XIV, make the Chateau de Vincennes a most precious specimen of mediæval ecclesiastical and military architecture. If Napoleon had not cut down the height of the surrounding walls the comparison would be still more favourable. In the reproduction of the miniature from the Book of Hours of the Duc de Berry given herein one sees the perfect outlines of the fourteenth century edifice. In later years, Louis XIII added considerably to the existing structure, but little is now to be seen of that edifice save the great tower and the chapel. Charles IX, whose royal edict brought forth the bloody night of Saint Bartholomew in 1572, fell sick two years later in the Chateau de Vincennes. Calling his surgeon, Ambroise Paré, to his side he exclaimed: "My body burns with fever; I see the mangled Huguenots all about me; Holy Virgin, how they mock me; I wish, Paré, I had spared them." And thus he died, abhorring the mother who had counselled him to commit this horrible deed. The donjon of Vincennes was carried to its comparatively great height that it might serve as a tower of observation as well as a place of last retreat if in an attack the outer walls of the fortress should give way. Here at Vincennes a certain massiveness is noted in connection with the donjon, though the actual ground area which it covers is not very great; it was not like many donjons of the time, which were virtually smaller chateaux or fortresses enclosed within a greater. Vincennes, in comparison with many other contemporary edifices, possessed a certain regularity of outline which was made possible by its favourable situation. When others were of fantastic form, they were usually so built because of the configuration of the land, or the nature of the soil. But here the land was flat, and, though the edifice and its dependencies covered no very extended area, they followed rectangular lines with absolute precision. As its walls were of a thickness of three metres, it was a work easy of accomplishment for Louis XI to turn the chateau into a Prison of State, a use to which the first chateau had actually been put by the shutting up in it of Enguerrand de Marigny. Henri IV, in 1574, passed some solitary hours and days within its walls, and Mirabeau did the same in 1777. The Duc d'Enghien, under the First Empire, before his actual death by shooting, suffered sorely herein, while resting under an unjust suspicion. [Illustration: _Chateau de Vincennes_] In 1814-1815 the chateau became a great arsenal and general storehouse for the army. It was attacked by the Allies and besieged twice, but in vain. It was defended against the armies of Blucher by the Baron Daumesnil. Summoned to surrender his charge, "Jambe de Bois" (so called because he had lost a leg the year before) replied: "I will surrender when you surrender to me my leg." A statue to this brave warrior is within the chateau, and commemorates further the fact that he capitulated only on terms laid down by himself out of his humane regard for the lives of friends and foes. The ministers of Charles X, in 1830, had cause to regret the strength of the chateau walls; and Barbés, Blanqui and Raspail, in 1848, and various Republicans, who had been seized as dangerous elements of society after the Coup d'État of 1851, also here found an enforced hospitality. The Chateau de Vincennes had become a second Bastille. The incident of the arrest and death of the Duc d'Enghien is one of the most dramatic in Napoleonic history. The scene was Vincennes. Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, son of the Prince de Condé, born at Chantilly in 1772, became, without just reason, suspected in connection with the Cadoudal-Pichegreu plot, and was seized by a squadron of cavalry at the Schloss Ettenheim in the Duchy of Baden and conducted to Vincennes. Here, after a summary judgment, he was shot at night in the moat behind the guardhouse. The obscurity of the night was so great that a lighted lantern was hung around the neck of the unfortunate man that the soldiers might the better see the mark at which they were to shoot. Napoleon confided to Josephine, who repeated the secret to Madame de Remusat, that his political future demanded a _coup d'État_. On the morning of the execution, the emperor, awakening at five o'clock, said to Josephine: "By this time the Duc d'Enghien has passed from this life." The rest is history--of that apologetic kind which is not often recorded. In the chapel at Vincennes a commemorative tablet was placed, by the orders of Louis XVIII, in 1816, to mark the death of the young duke. The Bois de Vincennes is not the fashionable parade ground of the Bois de Boulogne. On the whole it is a sad sort of a public park, and not at all fashionable, and not particularly attractive, though of a vast extent and possessed of a profoundly historic past of far more significance than that of its sweet sister by the opposite gates of Paris. [Illustration: _A Hunt under the Walls of Vincennes_ _From a Fourteenth Century Print_] It contains ten hundred and sixty-nine hectares and was due originally to Louis XV, who sought to have a sylvan gateway to the city from the east. Under the Second Empire the park was considerably transformed, new roads and alleys traced, and an effort made to have it equal more nearly the beauty of the more popular Bois de Boulogne. It occupies the plateau lying between the Seine and the bend in the Marne, just above the junction of the two rivers. There are some forty kilometres of roadway within the limits of the Bois de Vincennes, and a dozen kilometres or more of footpaths; but, since the military authorities have taken a portion for their own uses as a training ground, a shooting range and for the Batteries of La Faisanderie and Gravelle, it has been bereft of no small part of its former charm. There are three lakes in the Bois, the Lac de Sainte Mandé, the Lac Daumesnil and the Lac de Gravelle. A near neighbour of Vincennes is Conflans, another poor, rent relic of monarchial majesty. The Chateau de Conflans was situated at the juncture of the Seine and Marne, but, to-day, the immediate neighbourhood is so very unlovely and depressing that one can hardly believe that it ever pleased any one's fancy, least of all that of a kingly castle builder. Banal dwellings on all sides are Conflans' chief characteristics to-day; but the old royal abode still lifts a long length of roof and wall to mark the spot where once stood the Chateau de Conflans in all its glory. Conflans was at first the country residence of the Archbishops of Paris, and Saint Louis frequently went into retreat here. When Philippe-le-Bel acquired the property, he promptly gave it to the Comtesse d'Artois who made of it one of the "_plus beaux castels du temps_." She decorated its long gallery, the portion of the edifice which exists to-day in the humble, emasculated form of a warehouse of some sort, in memory of her husband Othon. Here the countess held many historic receptions and ceremonies during which kings and princes frequently partook of her hospitality. [Illustration: CONFLANS from an OLD PRINT.] After the death of the countess, the French king made his residence at Conflans, and Charles VI, when dauphin, was also lodged here that he might be near the capital in case of events which might require his presence. A contemporary account mentions the fact that his _valet de chambre_ was killed by lightning at Conflans while serving his royal master. Conflans was the preferred suburban residence of the Princes and the Ducs de Bourgogne, and Philippe-le-Hardi there organized his tourneys and his _passes d'armes_ with great éclat, on one occasion alone offering one hundred and fifteen thousand _livres_ in prizes to the participants. This castle, for it was more castle than palace, was reputed one of the most magnificent in the neighbourhood of the Paris of its time, surrounded as it was with a resplendent garden and a forest in miniature, really a part of the Bois de Vincennes of to-day, where roamed wild boar and wolves which furnished sport of a kingly kind. The view from the terrace of the chateau must have been wonderfully fine, the towers and roof-tops of old Paris being silhouetted against the setting sun, its windows dominating the swift-flowing current of the two rivers at the foot of the fortress walls. The greatest event of history enacted under the walls of Conflans was the battle and the treaty which followed after, between Louis XI and the Comte de Charolais, in 1405. Commynes recounts the battle as follows: "Four thousand archers were sent out from Paris by the king, who fired upon the castle from the river bank on both sides." Bows and arrows were hardly effective weapons with which to shoot down castle walls, but stragglers who left themselves unprotected were from time to time picked off on both sides and much carnage actually ensued. Finally a treaty of peace was arranged, by which, at the death of Charles-le-Téméraire, according to usage, Louis XI absorbed the proprietary rights in the castle and made it a _Maison Royale_, bestowing it upon one of his favourites, Dame Gillette Hennequin. The kings of France about this time developed a predilection for the chateaux on the banks of the Loire, and Conflans was offered for sale in 1554. Divers personages occupied it from that time on, the Maréchal de Villeroy, the Connetable de Montmorency and, for a brief time, Cardinal Richelieu. It was in the Chateau de Conflans that was planned the foundation of the French Academy; here Molière and his players first presented "La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes"; and here, also, was held the marriage of La Grande Mademoiselle with the unhappy Lauzan. At the end of the reign of Louis XIV Fr. de Harlay-Chauvallon, Archbishop of Paris, bought the property of Richelieu, and, with the aid of Mansart and Le Notre, considerably embellished it within and without. Madame de Sévigné, in one of her many published letters, writes of the splendours which she saw at Conflans at this epoch. Saint-Simon, the court chronicler, mentions that the gardens were so immaculately kept that when the Archbishop and "La Belle" Duchesse de Lesdiguières used to promenade therein they were followed by a gardener who, with a rake, sought to remove the traces of each footprint as soon as made. Later, the Cardinal de Beaumont, the persecutor of the Jansenists, resided here. "Notre archeveque est à Conflans C'est un grand solitaire C'est un grand so C'est un grand so C'est un grand solitaire." The above verse is certainly banal enough, but the cardinal himself was a _drôle_, so perhaps it is appropriate. At any rate it is contemporary with the churchman's sojourn at Conflans. CHAPTER XI FONTAINEBLEAU AND ITS FOREST [Illustration: ORIGINAL PLAN OF FONTAINEBLEAU] Of all the French royal palaces Fontainebleau is certainly the most interesting, despite the popularity and accessibility of Versailles. It is moreover the cradle of the French Renaissance. Napoleon called it the Maison des Siècles, and the simile was just. After Versailles, Fontainebleau has ever held the first place among the suburban royal palaces. The celebrated "Route de Fontainebleau" of history was as much a _Chemin du Roi_ as that which led from the capital to Versailles. Versailles was gorgeous, even splendid, if you will; but it had not the unique characteristics, nor winsomeness of Fontainebleau, nor ever will have, in the minds of those who know and love the France of monarchial days. [Illustration: From Paris to Fontainebleau] Not the least of the charm of Fontainebleau is the neighbouring forest so close at hand, a few garden railings, not more, separating the palace from one of the wildest forest tracts of modern France. The Forest of Fontainebleau is full of memories of royal rendezvous, the carnage of wild beasts, the "_vraie image de la guerre_," of which the Renaissance kings were so inordinately fond. It was from the Palace of Fontainebleau, too, that bloomed forth the best and most wholesome of the French Renaissance architecture. It was the model of all other later residences of its kind. It took the best that Italy had to offer and developed something so very French that even the Italian workmen, under the orders of François I, all but lost their nationality. Vasari said of it that it "rivalled the best work to be found in the Rome of its time." A charter of Louis-le-Jeune (Louis VII), dated at Fontainebleau in 1169, attests that the spot was already occupied by a _maison royale_ which, according to the Latin name given in the document was called Fontene Bleaudi, an etymology not difficult to trace when what we know of its earlier and later history is considered. Actually this _fontaine belle eau_ is found to-day in the centre of the Jardin Anglais, its basin and outlet being surrounded by the conventional stone rim or border. After its discovery, according to legend, this fountain became the rendezvous of the gallants and the poets and painters and the "sweet ladies" so often referred to in the chronicles of the Renaissance. Rosso, the painter, perpetuated one of the most celebrated of these reunions in his decorations in the Galerie François I in the palace, and Cellini represented the fair huntress Diana, amid the same surroundings. Under Louis-le-Jeune in 1169 was erected, in the Cour du Donjon, the chapel Saint-Saturnin, which was consecrated by Saint Thomas à Becket, then a refugee in France. Philippe Auguste and Saint Louis inhabited the palace and Philippe-le-Bel died here in 1314. From a letter of Charles VII it appears that Isabeau de Bavière had the intention of greatly adding to the existing chateau because of the extreme healthfulness of the neighbourhood. The work was actually begun but seemingly not carried to any great length. Such was the state of things when François I came into his own and, because of the supreme beauty of the site, became enamoured of it and began to erect an edifice which was to outrank all others of its class. The king and court made of Fontainebleau a second capital. It was a model residence of its kind, and gave the first great impetus to the Renaissance wave which rose so rapidly that it speedily engulfed all France. Aside from its palace and its forest, Fontainebleau early became a noble and a gracious town, thanks to the proximity of the royal dwelling. In spite of the mighty scenes enacted within its walls, the palace has ever posed as one of the most placid and tranquil places of royal residence in the kingdom. All this is true to-day, in spite of the coming of tourists in automobiles, and the recent establishment of a golf club with the usual appurtenances. Fontainebleau, the town, has a complexion quite its own. Its garrison and its little court of officialdom give it a character which even to-day marks it as one of the principal places where the stranger may observe the French dragoon, with _casque_ and breastplate and boots and spurs, at quite his romantic best, though it is apparent to all that the cumbersome, if picturesque, uniform is an unwieldy fighting costume. There was talk long ago of suppressing the corps, but all Fontainebleau rose up in protest. As the popular _chanson_ has it: "_Laissez les dragons a leur Maire_." This has become the battle cry and so they remain at Fontainebleau to-day, the envy of their fellows in the service, and the glory of the young misses of the boarding schools, who each Saturday are brought out in droves to see the sights. Many descriptions of Fontainebleau have been written, but the works of Poirson, Pfnor and Champollion-Figèac are generally followed by most makers of guidebooks, and, though useful, they have perpetuated many errors which were known to have been doubtful even before their day. The best account of Fontainebleau under François I is given in the manuscript memoir of Abbé Guilbert. Apparently an error crept into this admirable work, too, for it gives the date of the commencement of the constructions of François as 1514, whereas that monarch only ascended the throne in 1515. The date of the first works under this monarch was 1528, according to a letter of the king himself, which began: "We, the court, intend to live in this palace and hunt the _'betes rousses et noirs qui sont dans la forêt.'_" An account of François I and his "young Italian friends" makes mention of the visit of the king, in company with the Duchesse d'Étampes, to the studio of Serlio who was working desperately on the portico of the Cour Ovale. He found the artist producing a "melody of plastic beauty, garbed as a simple workman, his hair matted with pasty clay." He was standing on a scaffolding high above the ground when the monarch mounted the ladder. Up aloft François held a conference with his beloved workman and, descending, shouted back the words: "You understand, Maître Serlio; let it be as you suggest." After the porticos, Serlio decorated the Galerie d'Ulysse which has since disappeared owing to the indifference of Louis XV and the imbecility of his friends; and always it was with François: "You understand, Maître Serlio; it is as you wish." The _motif_ may have been Italian, but the impetus for the work was given by the _esprit_ of the French. The defeated monarch was not able to bring away from Padua any trophies of war; but he brought plans of chateaux, and gardens as well. He did more: he took the very artists and craftsmen who had produced many of the Italian masterpieces of the time. The tracing of the gardens at Fontainebleau, practically as they exist to-day, was one of François I's greatest pleasures. In their midst, on the shores of the Étang aux Carpes, was erected a tiny rest-house where the royal mistresses might come to repose and laugh at the jests of Triboulet. The edifice of François I is of modest proportions and of perfect unity; but it is with difficulty that it presents its best appearance, overpowered as it is by the heavier masses of the time of Henri IV, and suffering as it does because of the eliminations of Louis XIV and Louis XV when they made their additions to the palace. Under the Convention, later on, Fontainebleau's palace again suffered. Under the Consulate it became a barracks and a prison, and finally, not less terrible, were the restorations of Napoleon and Louis Philippe. A castle may sometimes suffer less from a siege than from a restoration. From every point of view, however, Fontainebleau remains an architectural document of the most profound interest and value, and, from the tourists' point of view, it is the most appealing of all European palaces of this or any other age. The expert, the artist and the mere curiosity-seeker all unite in their admiration in spite of the fact that the fabric has been denuded of many of its original beauties. [Illustration: _Palais de Fontainebleau_] First, this royal dwelling is of the most ample and effective proportions; second, it possesses a remarkable series of luxurious apartments; third, it still contains some of the finest examples of furniture and furnishings of Renaissance and Napoleonic times; and, in addition, there is also to be seen that admirable series of paintings which represent the School of Fontainebleau. With such an array of charms what does it matter if the unity of the Renaissance masterpiece of François I is qualified by later interpolations? General impression is the standard by which one judges the workmanship of a noble monument, and here it is good to an extraordinary degree. The palace of to-day sits at one end of the aristocratic little town of Fontainebleau. Beyond is the forest and opposite are many hotels which depend upon the palace as the source from which they draw their livelihood. The principal entrance to the palace opens out from the Place Solferino and gives access immediately to the Cour du Cheval Blanc of Chambiges, which, since that eventful day in Napoleonic history nearly a hundred years ago, has become better known as the Cour des Adieux. At the rear rises the famous horseshoe stair, certainly much better expressed in French as the _Escalier en Fer à Cheval_, from which the emperor took his farewell of his "Vieux Grognards" lined up before him, biting savagely at their moustaches to keep down their emotions. This Cour du Cheval Blanc acquired its name from a plaster cast of Marcus Aurelius's celebrated steed which was originally placed here under a canopy or baldaquin held aloft by colonnettes. The moulds for this work were brought from Venice by Primaticcio and Vignole, but it was never cast in bronze and the statue itself disappeared in 1626. The courtyard, however, still kept the name until the last of Napoleonic days. As a Napoleonic memory this Cour des Adieux shares popularity with the famous Cabinet of the Empire suite of apartments where Napoleon signed his abdication. Certainly most visitors will carry away the memory of these words as among the most vivid souvenirs of Fontainebleau. "_Le 5 Avril, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte signa son abdication sur cette table dans le cabinet de travail du Roi, le deuxieme après la chambre à coucher à Fontainebleau._" The abdication itself (the document) is now exposed in the Galerie de Diane, transformed lately into the Library. On the right is the Aile Neuf, built by Louis XV, for the housing of his officers, on the site of the Galerie de Ulysse, originally one of the most notable features of the palace of François I. Opposite is the sober alignment of the Aile des Ministres, and still farther to the rear are the Pavillon des Aumoniers, or de l'Horloge; the Chapelle de la Trinité; the Pavillon des Armes; the Pavillon des Peintres; the Pavillon des Poëls; the Galerie des Fresques; and, finally, the Pavillon des Reines-Meres. All of these details are of the period of François I save the last, which was an interpolation of Louis XIV. The Fer à Cheval stairway, however, most curious because of the difficulties of its construction, dates from the time of Louis XIII, and replaces the stairs built by Philibert Delorme. The tennis court, just before the Pavillon de l'Horloge, dates only from Louis XV. The imposing entrance court is a hundred and twelve metres in width by a hundred and fifty-two metres in length, and to see it as it was originally, before the destruction of the Galerie d'Ulysse, one must imagine it as closed in by a series of small pavilions with their frontons of colonnettes preceded only by a staircase and two drawbridges crossing the moat, which at that time surrounded the entire confines of the palace. The moat is to-day surrounded, where it still exists, by a balustrade, due to the rather shabby taste of Louis XV. An inner courtyard, known as the Cour de la Fontaine, is incomparably of finer general design than the entrance court, and the Cour Ovale, absolutely as Henri IV left it, is finer still. At the foot of this latter court is the Baptistry where were baptised, in 1606, the three "Enfants de France," the dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII; the Princesse Elizabeth, afterwards the Queen of Spain; and the Princesse de Savoie. The Cour Ovale is practically of the proportions of the ancient Manor of Fontaine Belle Eau, built by Robert le Pieux. There, too, Philippe Auguste, Saint Louis, Philippe-le-Bel, Charles V and Charles VII frequently resided. François I had no wish that this old manor should entirely disappear and preserved its old donjon, a relic which has since gone the way of many another noble fane. There are several other notable courts or gardens, the Cour des Offices, the Jardin de Diane, the Orangerie, the Cour des Princes, etc. All the original gardens were laid out anew by Louis XIV, and that of Diane underwent a considerable change at the hands of Napoleon, who also laid out a Jardin Anglais on the site of the ancient Jardin des Pins, where originally sprang into being the rippling Fontaine Beleau, or Belle Eau, which gave its name to the palace, the forest and the town. [Illustration: _Salle du Throne, Fontainebleau_] The park, as distinct from the great expanse of surrounding forest, is a finely shaded range of alleys, due chiefly to Henri IV, who cut the great canal of ornamental water and ordained the general arrangement of its details. The principal curiosity of the park is the famous Treille du Roy, or the King's Grape Vine, which, good seasons and bad, can be counted on to give three thousand kilos of authentic _chasselas_, grapes of the finest quality. One wonders who gets them: _Ou s'en vont les raisins du roi?_ This is an interrogation that has been raised more than once in the French parliament. In general, the aspect of the exterior of the Palais de Fontainebleau, the walls themselves, the Cours, the alleyed walks are chiefly reminiscent of the early art of the Renaissance. François I is, after all, more in evidence than the Henris or the Napoleons. Within, the same is true in general, though to a less degree. The Renaissance is _maitresse_ within and without; the other moods are wholly subservient to her grace. There is hardly an apartment in all the world of palaces in France, or beyond the frontiers, to rank with the great Galerie François I at Fontainebleau, though indeed its proportions are modest and its lighting defective to-day, for Louis XV blocked up all the windows on one side. It remains, however, one of the richest examples of the Franco-Italian decoration of its era, though somewhat tarnished by the heedlessness of Charles X. Never were there before, nor since, its era such mythological wall-paintings as are here to be seen. The aspirants for the Prix de Rome protest each year against such subjects being set them for their _concours_, but their judges, recalling how effective such examples are, are insistent. The best examples of the School of Fontainebleau are a distinct variety of French painting. The veriest dabbler in art can say with Michelet: "There is no reminiscence of anything Italian therein." Frankly, these works were the product of secondary artists and their pupils. Leonardo da Vinci, too old to do anything more than direct, saw himself succeeded by Del Sarto, Rosso and Primaticcio. Cellini may have contributed, too, but his labours were doubtless blotted out to a great extent by the orders of the all-powerful Duchesse d'Étampes who feared his competition with her protegé, Primaticcio. One of the masters of this coterie was Nicolo dell' Abbate, better known, perhaps, for his works painted at Bologna than for his frescoes at Fontainebleau. [Illustration] The Galerie Henri II is notable also for its decorations, the harmonious juxtaposition of sculpture and painting, and, although "restored" in late years, presents an astonishing pristine vigour. This apartment ranks with the Galerie François I, all things considered, as one of the chief show apartments of the palace. Its length is thirty metres, its breadth ten, with five ample round-headed windows letting in a flood of light on either side, one set giving on the Cour Ovale, and the other on the Parterre and the magnificent façade of the Porte Dorée. The ceiling is broken up into octagonal _caissons_, their depths alternately laid with gold or silver, bearing the monogram of the monarch and his _devise_. The parquet is laid in divisions reproducing the design of the ceiling. On either side the walls are wainscoted in oak similarly emblazoned in gold and silver, with the initials of Diane de Poitiers, and of her admirer, Henri, everywhere interlaced. Again, a colossal monogram reproduces itself in the chimney-piece with the frescoes of Nicolo dell' Abbate, and fifty figures of mythological gods and heroes decorate the window casings. The chapel dates chiefly from the time of Henri IV, the altar and numerous embellishments belonging to later reigns. A certain sentiment, not a little real beauty, and much unauthenticated history attach themselves to the Salon Louis XIII, the Salle du Trone, the Apartment of Madame de Maintenon, those of Napoleon I, of Pope Pius VII and of Marie Antoinette. The Galerie de Diane is little reminiscent of the day of the huntress, being a reconstitution under the First Empire, though its decorations date from the Restoration, and the ceiling, and furniture, apparently of the best of Renaissance times, are merely copies made by Louis Philippe, who did not hesitate, on another occasion, to blue-wash the Salon de Saint Louis, and who hung worthless third-rate paintings, which even provincial museums of the meanest rank have since refused to house, in the admirably decorated apartments of the period of François and Henri. Fontainebleau, to-day, is but a memory of what it was, a memory by no means fragmentary, by no means complete; but all sufficient. Of later years there is actually little to single out in the way of remarkable additions or restorations. Under the Second Empire the Galerie François I was repainted, some false antiquities added as furnishings, and various ranges of books were stored away in the Galerie de Diane, having been brought from the chapel which had ceased to serve as the Library. This apartment was now refitted as a chapel, and, to supplant six wall paintings which had been removed, Napoleon III ordered seven canvases from the painter Schopin, illustrating the life of Saint Saturnin. [Illustration] Finally, the Salle de Spectacle completes the modern additions, and, while gaudily striking, is scarcely above the taste of a gilded café in some pompous Préfecture. Henri IV was the creator of the park of the palace, which extended as far as the village of Avon and absorbed all the Seigneurie de Montceau, of which Mi-Voie (the dairy of Catherine de Médici) occupied a part. The acquisition of the Seigneurie was made in 1609. Across it was cut a "grand canal" in imitation of that already possessed by the Chateau de Fleury. It was a great rarity as a garden accessory, and was more than a quarter of a league long and forty metres wide. Bassompierre said in his memoirs that Henri IV made him a wager that it could be filled with water in two days. It actually took eight. To the north of the park, Henri IV built, under the name of La Menagerie, what he called a _maison de plaisance_, but which was really the forerunner of the animal house at Versailles. To all these works of Henri IV in the gardens at Fontainebleau is attached the name of Francine. There were two brothers of the name, Thomas and Alexandre, and it was the latter who chiefly occupied himself with the Parterre, the Chaussée and the Grand Canal at Fontainebleau. In the Jardin de la Reine he erected the celebrated Fontaine de Diane which finally gave its name to the garden itself. The fountain was designed by Barthélemy Prieur, and was cast in 1603. The original bronzes are now in the Louvre, those seen at Fontainebleau to-day being later works (1684). The Forest of Fontainebleau is a dozen leagues in circumference, and of an area of nearly thirty-five thousand acres. Its beauty, its natural beauty, is unrivalled. Rocks, ravines, valleys, patriarchal oaks and beeches, plains, woods, glades, meadows, lawns and cliffs, all are here. Its population of stag and deer was practically exterminated during the Revolution of 1830, but nevertheless it sustained its reputation as a great hunting-ground for long afterwards. The Royal Hunt invariably centered at La Croix du Grand Veneur, a notable landmark of the forest even now, at the intersection of four magnificent forest roads. Its name comes from a legend of a spectral black huntsman who was supposed to haunt the forest, and who appeared for the last time, in reality or imagination, to Henri IV shortly before his assassination. In 1854, one of the last and most gorgeous of Fontainebleau hunts was given by Louis Napoleon. The emperor spent lavishly for the equipment of the hunt, and granted liberal stipends to the attendants that they might caparison themselves with some semblance of picturesque dignity; horses and dogs were furnished and cared for on the same liberal scale. The costuming of a hunting party under such conditions was not the least appealing of its picturesque elements. Three-cornered hats, gold lace, knee breeches, silk stockings and other costly properties, when provided for a single special occasion, as they were in this case, were apt to suggest the life of centuries long gone by rather than that of modern times. The Forest of Fontainebleau can best be briefly described as a rendezvous for tourists and "trippers," and as a vast open-air studio for the youthful emulators of "the men of Barbison." Historic, romantic and artistic memories and realities are on every hand; the march of time and progress has not dimmed them, nor thinned them out; the Forest of Fontainebleau remains to-day the best known and most delightful extent of wildwood in all the world. The chief of the well-known names associated with the Forest of Fontainebleau, and one which will never die, is that of Denecourt, called also the "Sylvain de la Forêt," a mythological appellation which came from his abounding knowledge of its devious ways and byways. It was in 1841 that Denecourt began his original studies and catalogued its every stone and tree. He invented names and gave a historical setting to many a picturesque and romantic site which might not have been known at all had it not been for his enthusiasm. After the vogue of Denecourt all the world followed in his footsteps until the Parisian knew as well the Longue Rocher, the Gorges d'Apremont and the Gorge de Franchard as he did the Rue de la Paix or the Champs Elysées. Denecourt's great work, "_Promenades dans la Forêt de Fontainebleau_" appeared in 1845, and if he is to be criticised for letting his fancy run away with him now and then, and for the opera bouffe nomenclature of many of the _caves_ and _mares_ and _chènes_ and "fairy-bowers" and "tables of kings," he at least has enabled a curious public to become better acquainted with this great forest. The flora of the Forest of Fontainebleau is remarkably varied; Denecourt gives seventy varieties of plants and flowers which grow and propagate here naturally, to which are to be added a great number of nondescript vines, lichens and vegetable mosses. Of the trees the list extends from the imposing and sometimes gigantic oaks, elms, beeches, and willows to shrubs and heather growth of the most humble species. A score or more of the most commonly known feathered tribes people the forest to-day with almost the same freedom of life and abundance as in monarchial times. The songsters are all there, from the robin to the nightingale; as well as the partridge and the celebrated indigenous grouse. Previous to 1830 the forest was well supplied with big game, deer and wild boar without number; but, in later times, as was but natural, these have been greatly thinned out. Rabbits and hares, to say nothing of foxes and the like, were formerly so abundant that, under Louis Philippe, it was necessary to carry out what was practically a war of extermination. To-day they exist, of course, but in no great numbers. Another sort of publicity has been given the Forest of Fontainebleau by its association with the painters of the thirties. Theodore Rousseau, in 1836, lived at Barbison, which at that time was but a hamlet of a few houses, with no encumbering hotels, garages and merry-go-rounds as to-day. A certain Père Ganne kept a sort of a lodging house where artists were made welcome at an exceedingly modest price. Not only the really famous and much exploited painters of the time gained fortunes here, but those of a more conservative school, who never rose to really great distinction, also drew much of their inspiration from the neighbourhood, among them Hamon, Boulanger and Célestin Nanteuil. Without having to go far to hunt up their subjects, the Forest of Fontainebleau lying near Barbison offered to painters much that was not available within so small a radius elsewhere. Diaz was here already when, in 1849, Jacque and Millet arrived upon the scene, and at more or less frequent intervals, and for more or less lengthy stays, there came Corot, Dupré and Daubigny. Just what the Barbison school produced in the way of painting all the world knows to-day, but these men were originally the target of every prejudiced critic of the Boulevards and the Faubourgs. The present day has brought its reward and appreciation, though it is the dealers who have profited--the men are dead. [Illustration: _Monument to Rousseau and Millet at Barbison_] In memory of the fame brought to this little corner of the forest in general, and to Barbison in particular, there was placed (in 1894), at the entrance to the village, a bronze medallion showing the heads of Millet and Rousseau. It was a delicate way of showing appreciation for the talents of those two great men who actually founded a new school of painting. At the other end of the forest is the little village of Marlotte, also a haven for many painters of a former day, and no less so for those of to-day. The old forest in three quarters of a century has seen itself reproduced on canvas in all its moods. No painter ever lived, nor could all the painters that ever lived, exhaust its infinite variety. Hebert in his "_Dictionnaire de la Forêt de Fontainebleau_" says, rightly enough, that, with the coming of the men of Fontainebleau and its "_artist-villages_" the classic type of "Paysage d'Italie" has disappeared from the Salon Catalogues. Art amateurs and the common people alike made the reputation of Fontainebleau; the mere "trippers" were brought thither by Denecourt, but the real forest lovers were those who were attracted by the masterpieces of the painters. The town of Fontainebleau has changed somewhat under this double influence. At Fontainebleau itself are two monuments in memory of painters who have passed away. One of these is to the memory of Decamps, who was killed by a fall from his horse while riding in the forest; it is a simple bust, the work of Carrier-Belleuse. The other is of Rosa Bonheur who died at Thomery, a little village on the southern border of the forest, in 1902; it is an almost life-size bull from a small model by the artist herself and surmounts a pedestal which also bears a medallion of the artist. CHAPTER XII BY THE BANKS OF THE SEINE On the highroad to Saint Germain one passes innumerable historic monuments which suggest the generous part that many minor chateaux played in the court life of the capital of old. To-day, Maisons, La Muette and Bagatelle are mere names which serve the tram lines for roof signs and scarcely one in a thousand strangers gives them a thought. The famous Bois de Boulogne and its immediate environment have for centuries formed a delicious verdant framing for a species of French country-house which could not have existed within the fortifications. These luxurious, bijou dwellings, some of them, at least, the caprices of kings, others the property of the new nobility, and still others of mere plebeian kings of finance, are in a class quite by themselves. Perhaps the most famous of these is the celebrated Bagatelle, within the confines of the Bois itself. The Chateau de Bagatelle was built in a month, thus meriting its name, by the Comte d'Artois, the future Charles X, as a result of a wager with Marie Antoinette. On its façade it originally bore the inscription: "_Parva sed apta_"--"small but convenient." [Illustration] Bagatelle occupied a corner of the royal domain and, after its completion, was sold to the Marquise de Monconseil, in 1747, who gave to this princely suburban residence a dignity worthy of its origin. Then came La Pompadour on the scene, the _petite bourgeoise_ who, by the nobility acquired by the donning of a court costume and marriage with the Sieur Normand d'Étioles, usurped the right to sit beside duchesses and be presented to the queen, if not as an equal, at least as the _maitresse_ of her spouse, the king. There is a legend about a meeting between La Pompadour and the king at Bagatelle, a meeting in which she established herself so firmly in the graces of the monarch that on the morrow she formed a part of the entourage at Versailles. After having come into the possession of the heirs of Sir Richard Wallace, Bagatelle finally became the property of the State. It is in the Chateau de Bagatelle that is to be installed the "Musée de la Parole"--"The Museum of Speech." The French, innovators ever, plan that Bagatelle shall become a sort of conservatory of the human voice, and here will be classed methodically the cylinders and disks which have recorded the spoken words of all sorts and conditions of men. In this Musée de la Parole will be kept phonographic records of all current dialects in France, the argot of the Parisian lower classes, etc., etc. Up to the present the evolution of the speech of man has ever been an enigma. No one knows to-day how Homer or Virgil pronounced their words, and Racine and Corneille, though of a time less remote, have left no tangible record of their speech. Monsieur Got of the Comédie Française believes that Louis XIV pronounced "_Moi_," "_le Roi_" as "_Moué_" "_le Roué_"; and thus he pronounced it in a speech which has been recorded in wax and is to form a part of the collection at Bagatelle. The Polo Grounds of Bagatelle, between the chateau and the Seine as it swirls around the Ile de la Folie, are to-day better known than this dainty little Paris palace; but Bagatelle will some day come to its own again. Neuilly bounds the Bois de Boulogne on the north, and has little of a royal appearance to-day, save its straight, broad streets. There is a royal incident connected with the Pont de Neuilly which should not be forgotten. It came about in connection with the return of Henri IV from Saint Germain in company with the queen and the Duc de Vendome. They were in a great coach drawn by four horses which insisted on drinking from the river in spite of the efforts of the coachman to prevent them. The carriage was overturned and the royal party barely escaped being drowned. One of the aids who accompanied them recounted the fact that the impromptu bath had cured the king's toothache which he had acquired over a rather hasty meal just before leaving the palace. "Had I witnessed the adventure," said the Marquis de Verneuil, "I should have proposed the toast: 'Le Roi Boit!" As a result of this incident a new bridge was constructed, though it was afterwards replaced by the present stone structure over which a ceaseless traffic rushes in and out of Paris to-day. It was this present bridge over which Louis XV was the first to pass on September 22, 1772. The Chateau de Neuilly was a favourite suburban residence of Louis Philippe. It was here that a delegation came to offer him the crown, and, after he had become king, he was pleased to still inhabit it and actually spent considerable sums upon its maintenance. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out, the sovereign took refuge at Neuilly and, when besieged by the multitude, took flight in the night of February 26 and left his chateau in the hands of a band of ruffians who pillaged it from cellar to garret, finally setting it on fire. It burned like a pile of brushwood, and it is said that more than a hundred drunken desperados perished when its walls fell in. This was the tragic end of the Chateau de Neuilly. By a decree of the president of the later Republic the Orleans princes were obliged to sell all their French properties and the park of the Chateau de Neuilly was cut up into morsels and lots were sold to all comers. Thus was born that delightful Paris suburb, with the broad, shady avenues and comfortable houses, with which one is familiar to-day. The aristocratic Parc de Neuilly, with Saint James, is the only tract near Paris where one finds such lovely gardens and such fresh, shady avenues. Another quarter of Neuilly possesses a history worthy of being recounted. The district known as Saint James derived its name from a great suburban property which in 1775 belonged to Baudart de Saint James. He created a property almost royal in its appointments, its gardens having acquired an extraordinary renown. When he became a bankrupt a throng of persons visited the property not so much with a view to purchase as out of curiosity. A writer of the time says of this Lucullus that he was the envy of all Paris. He died soon after his ruin, from chagrin, and in apparent poverty, which seemingly established his good faith with his creditors. Under the First Empire the domain was bought by, or for, the Princesse Borghese, who here gave many brilliant fêtes at which the emperor himself frequently assisted. On the occasion of the marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise a series of fêtes took place here which evoked the especially expressed encomiums of the emperor. In 1815 Wellington made it his headquarters and here had his first conference with Blucher. Upon Wellington quitting Saint James the property was pillaged by the Iron Duke's own troops and actually demolished by the picks and axes of the soldiery. Near the Passy entrance of the Bois is La Muette, a relic of a royal hunting-lodge which took its name from the royal pack of hounds (_meute_) which was formerly kept here. The Chateau de la Muette was the caprice of François I, who, when he came to Paris, wished to have his pleasures near at hand, and, being the chief partisan of the hunt among French monarchs, built La Muette for this purpose. The Chateau de la Muette is thus classed as one of the royal dwellings of France though hardly ever is it mentioned in the annals of to-day. Rebuilt by Charles IX, from his father's more modest shooting box, La Muette became the centre of the court of Marguerite de Navarre, the first wife of Henri IV; after which it served as the habitation of the dauphin, who became Louis XIII. During the regency, Philippe d'Orleans took possession of the chateau until the enthronement of Louis XV. The latter here established a little court within a court, best described by the French as: "_ses plaisirs privés_." It was this monarch who rebuilt, or at least restored, the chateau, and brought it to the state in which one sees it to-day. In 1783 Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the court took up a brief residence here to assist at the aerostatic experiences of De Rosier, and in 1787, ceasing to be a royal residence, La Muette was offered for sale after first having been stripped of its precious wainscotings, its marbles and the artistic curiosities of all sorts with which it had been decorated. The chateau itself now became the property of Sebastian Erard, who bought it for the modest price of two hundred and sixty thousand francs. Somewhat farther from Paris, crossing the peninsula formed by the first of the great bends of the Seine below the capital, is Chatou which has a royal reminder in its Pavilion Henri IV, or Pavillon Gabrielle, which the gallant, love-making monarch built for Gabrielle d'Estrées. Formerly it was surrounded by a vast park and must have been almost ideal, but to-day it is surrounded by stucco, doll-house villas, and unappealing apartments, until only a Gothic portal, jutting from a row of dull house fronts, suggests the once cosy little retreat of the lovely Gabrielle. The height of Louveciennes, above Bougival, closes the neck of the peninsula and from it a vast panorama of the silvery Seine and its _coteaux_ stretches out from the towers of Notre Dame on one hand to the dense forest of Saint Germain on the other. The original Chateau de Louveciennes was the property of Madame la Princesse de Conti, but popular interest lies entirely with the Pavilion du Barry, built by the architect Ledoux under the orders of Louis XV. Du Barry, having received the chateau as a gift from the king, sought to decorate it and reëmbellish it anew. Through the ministrations of a certain Drouais, Fragonard was commissioned to decorate a special pavilion outside the chateau proper, destined for the "_collations du Roi_." The subject chosen was the "Progres de l'Amour dans le Coeur des Jeunes Filles." Just where these panels are to-day no one seems to know, but sooner or later they will doubtless be discovered. Fragonard's famous "Escalade," or "Rendezvous," the first of the series of five proposed panels, depicted the passion of Louis XV for du Barry. The shepherdess had the form and features of that none too scrupulous feminine beauty, and the "_berger gallant_" was manifestly a portrait of the king. Perhaps these decorations at Louveciennes were elaborations of these smaller canvases. It seems quite probable. Sheltered snugly against the banked-up Forest of Saint Germain, on the banks of the Seine, is Maisons-Laffitte. Maisons is scarcely ever mentioned by Parisians save as they comment on the sporting columns of the newspapers, for horse-racing now gives its distinction to the neighbourhood, and the old Chateau de Maisons (with its later suffix of Laffitte) is all but forgotten. François Mansart built the first Chateau de Maisons on a magnificent scale for René de Longueil, the Superintendent of Finance. In a later century it made a most effectual appeal to another financier, Laffitte, the banker, who parcelled out the park and stripped the chateau. For a century, though, the chateau belonged to the family of its founder, and in 1658 the surrounding lands were made into a Marquisate. In 1671, on the day of the death of Philippe, Duc d'Anjou, Maisons may be said to have become royal for the court there took up its residence. Later, the Marquis de Soyecourt became the owner and Voltaire stayed here for a time; in fact he nearly died here from an attack of smallpox. In 1778 the property was acquired by the Comte d'Artois and the royal family of the time were frequent guests. The king, the queen and each of the princes all had their special apartments, and if Louis XVI had not been too busy with other projects, more ambitious ones, there is little doubt but that he would have given Maisons an éclat which during all of its career it had just missed. At the Revolution it was sold as National Property and the proceeds turned into public coffers. With the Empire the chateau became more royalist than ever. Maréchal Lannes became its proprietor, then the Maréchal de Montebello, who here received Napoleon on many occasions. With the invasion of 1815 the village was devastated, but the chateau escaped, owing to its having been made the headquarters of the invading allies. After this, in 1818, the banker Laffitte came into possession. He exercised a great hospitality and lived the life of an opulent bourgeois, but he destroyed most of the outbuildings and the stables built by Mansart, and cut up the great expanse of park which originally consisted of five hundred hectares. His ideas were purely commercial, not the least esthetic. The scheme of decoration within, as without, is distinctly unique. Doric pilasters and columns support massive cornices and round-cornered ceilings, with here and there antique motives and even Napoleonic eagles as decorative features. To-day all the apartments are deserted and sad. The finest, from all points of view, is that of the Salle-à-Manger, though indeed some of the motives are but plaster reproductions of the originals. The chimney-piece, however, is left, a pure bijou, a model of grace, more like a pagan altar than a comparatively modern mantel. The oratory is in the pure style of the Empire, and the stairway, lighted up by a curiously arranged dome-lantern, gives a most startling effect to the entrance vestibule. In general the design of Maisons is gracious, not at all outré, though undeniably grandiose; too much so for a structure covering so small an area. The Cour d'Honneur gives it its chief exterior distinction and the two pavilions have a certain grace of charm, when considered separately, which the ensemble somewhat lacks. The surroundings, had they not been ruthlessly cut up into building lots for over-ambitious Paris shopkeepers, would have added greatly to the present appearance of the property. As it is, the near-by race-course absorbed the orchard, the _pelouse_ and many of the garden plots. CHAPTER XIII MALMAISON AND MARLY Out from Paris, by the cobbly Pavé du Roi, which a parental administration is only just now digging up and burying under, just beyond the little suburban townlet of Rueil (where the Empress Josephine and her daughter Hortense lie buried in the parish church), one comes to Malmaison of unhappy memory. It is not imposing, palatial, nor, architecturally, very worthy, but it is one of the most sentimentally historic of all French monuments of its class. Since no very definite outlines remain of any royal historical monument at Rueil to-day the tourist bound towards Versailles by train, tram or road, gives little thought to the snug little suburb through which he shuffles along, hoping every minute to leave the noise, bustle and cobblestones of Paris behind. Rueil is deserving of more consideration than this. According to Gregory of Tours the first race of kings had a "pleasure house" here, and called the neighbourhood Rotolajum. Not always did these old kings stay cooped up in a fortress in the Isle of Lutetia. Sometimes they went afield for a day in the country like the rest of us, and to them, with their slow means of communication and the bad roads of their day, Rueil, scarce a dozen miles from Notre Dame, seemed far away. Childerbert I, son of Clovis, is mentioned as having made a protracted sojourn at Rueil, and whatever may have existed then in the way of a royal residence soon after passed to the monks of Saint Denis, who here fished and hunted and lived a life of comfort and ease such as they could hardly do in their fortress-abbey. They, too, required change and rest from time to time, and, apparently, when they could, took it. The Black Prince burned the town and all its dependencies in 1346, and only an unimportant village existed when Richelieu thought to build a country-house here on this same charming site which had so pleased the first French monarchs. Richelieu did his work well, as always, and built an immense chateau, surrounded by a deep moat into which were turned the swift-flowing waters of the Seine. A vast park was laid out, in part in the formal manner and in part as a natural preserve, and the neighbourhood once more became frequented by royalty and the nobles of the court. Richelieu bequeathed the property to his niece, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Louis XIV became a frequent dweller there--as a visitor, but he did not mind that. Louis XIV was sometimes a monarch, sometimes a master, and sometimes a "family friend," to put it in a noncommittal manner. The Revolution nearly made way with the property and the Duc de Massena, a few years afterwards, reëstablished it after a fashion, but speculating land-boomers came along in turn and royal memories meaning nothing to them the property was cut up into streets, avenues and house lots. The Chateau de Malmaison, which is very near Rueil, is in quite a different class. Its history comes very nearly down to modern times. The memory of Malmaison is purely Napoleonic. Its historical souvenirs are many, but its actual ruins have taken on a plebeian aspect of little appeal in these later days. In 1792 Malmaison was sold as a piece of national merchandise to be turned into _écus_, and a certain Monsieur Lecouteux de Canteleu, having the ready cash and a disposition to live under its roof, took over the proprietorship for a time. It was he who sold it to Josephine Beauharnais, and it was she who gave it a glory and splendour which it had never before possessed, gave it its complete fame, in fact. Napoleon himself, as First Consul, was passionately fond of the place, but by the time he had become emperor, because of unhappy memories, perhaps, for he had them at times, came rarely to this charming suburban chateau. It was at Malmaison that began the good fortune of Josephine, and it was at Malmaison that it flickered out like the dying flame of a candle. In a beating rain, on Saturday, December 16, 1809, Josephine quitted the Tuileries, her eyes still red with the tears from that last brief interview. She arrived at Malmaison at the end of a lugubrious day, when the whole place was enveloped in a thick fog. She passed the night almost alone in this great house where she had previously been so happy. She could hardly, however, have been more sad than Napoleon was that same night. He had shut himself up in his cabinet, remorseful and alone. The Sunday following was hardly less melancholy, for it was then Josephine learned that Malmaison had been endowed with an income of two millions for its upkeep, and that her personal belongings and the furnishings of her favourite apartments were already on the way thither from the Tuileries. The wound was not even then allowed to heal, for she learned that Napoleon had ordained that she was to receive the visits of the court as if she were still empress. [Illustration: _Chateau de Malmaison_] Napoleon had already written his former spouse to the effect that he would give much to see her, but that he did not feel sufficiently sure of himself to permit of it. This historic letter closed thus; "_Adieu, Josephine, bonne nuit, si tu doutais de moi, tout sera bien indigne_." On the 17th of December Napoleon actually did come to Malmaison to see her from whom he was officially separated. Josephine had confided to Madame de Remusat, her lady-in-waiting, "It almost seems as if I were dead, and only possessed of the faculty of remembering the past." In this Malmaison, so full of souvenirs of other days, Josephine was obliged to content herself, for on January 12, 1810, the religious marriage of Josephine and Napoleon was annulled automatically because, as was claimed, it had not been celebrated with the necessary formalities. Here at Malmaison Josephine even surrounded herself with the most intimate souvenirs of Napoleon: a lounging chair that he was wont to occupy stood in its accustomed place; his bed was always made; his sword hung upon the wall; his pen was in his inkwell; a book was open on his desk and his geographical globe--his famous _mappemond_--was in its accustomed place. Princes passing through Paris came to Malmaison to salute the former empress, and she allowed herself to become absorbed in her greenhouses and her dairy, the direction of her house, her receptions and her _petite cour_. In time all came to an end. When Napoleon returned to Paris in 1815 he interrogated the doctor who had cared for Josephine during the illness which terminated in her death the year before and asked him: "Did she speak of me at the last?" The doctor replied: "Often, very often." With emotion Napoleon replied simply: "_Bonne femme: bonne Josephine elle m'aimeit vraiment_." After Waterloo Napoleon himself retired to Malmaison, which had become the property of Josephine's children, Eugene and Hortense, and closed himself up in the room where she died, the library which he occupied when triumphant First Consul. Here he lived five mortal days of anguish preceding his departure for Rochefort on that agonizing exile from which he never returned. After the divorce Josephine preserved the property as her own particular residence, and in 1814 received there the celebrated visit of the allied sovereigns. History tells of a certain boat ride which she took on a neighbouring lake in company with the Emperor Alexander which is fraught with much historic sentiment. It was this imprudent excursion, in the cool of a May evening, that caused the death of the former empress three days later. It was from this bijou of a once royal abode that Napoleon launched his famous proclamation to the army which the arrogant Fouché refused to have printed in the "_Moniteur Officiel_." Upon this Napoleon sent the Duc de Rovigo to Paris for his passports and the necessary orders which would enable him to depart in peace. The next moment he had changed his mind, and he changed it again a few moments afterwards. As the result of the Prussians' advance on Paris by the left bank of the Seine Napoleon was obliged to accept the inevitable, and with the words of General Becker ringing in his ears: "_Sire, tout est pret_," he crossed the vestibule and entered the gardens amid a painful calm on his part, and an audible weeping by his former fellows in arms who were lined up to do him honour. He embraced Hortense passionately, and saluted all the personages of his party with a sympathy and emotion unbelievable. With an eternal adieu and a rapid step down the garden walk to the driveway, he at last entered the carriage which was awaiting him and was driven rapidly away. Some days after the Allies pillaged and sacked Malmaison. Its chief glory may be said to have departed with the Corsican. Under the Restoration, Prince Eugene had a sort of "rag sale" of what was left. The lands which Josephine had bought of Lecouteaux were sold to the highest bidder and the exotic shrubs and plants to any who would buy, the pictures to such connoisseurs as had the price, those that were left being sent to Munich. A Swedish banker now came on the scene (1826) and bought the property--the chateau and the park--which he preserved until his death twenty years later. Then it went to Queen Christina, and was ultimately purchased by Napoleon III. In October, 1870, during the siege of Paris, General Ducrot sought to make a reconnaissance by way of Malmaison, and so weak was his project that the equipages of the King of Prussia and his État Major invested the environs and made the property their official headquarters. Near by is a fine property called "Les Bruyeres," a royal estate of Napoleon III. It was created and developed by the emperor and was always referred to as a Parc Impérial. Perhaps the most banal of all the royal souvenirs around Paris is that gigantic mill-wheel known as the Machine de Marly, down by the Seine a few miles beyond Malmaison, just where that awful cobblestoned roadway begins to climb up to the plateau on which sits the chateau of Saint Germain and its park. Because it is of unesthetic aspect is no reason for ignoring the famous Machine de Marly, the great water-hoisting apparatus first established in the reign of Louis XIV to carry the waters of the Seine to the ponds and fountains of Versailles. It was a creation of a Liègois, named Rennequin Sualem, who knew not how to read or write, but who had a very clear idea of what was wanted to perform the work which Louis XIV demanded. For a fact the expense of the erection of the "Machine," and the cost of keeping its great wheels turning, were so great that it is doubtful if it was ever a paying proposition, but that was not a _sine qua non_ so far as the king's command was concerned. It had cost millions of _livres_ before its wheels first turned in 1682, and, if the carpenter Brunet had not come to the rescue to considerably augment the volume of water raised (by means of compressed air), it is doubtful if there would ever have been enough water for the fountains of Versailles to play even one day a year, as they do now every happy Sunday, to the delight of the middle-class Parisian and the droves of Cookites who gaze on them with wonder-opened eyes. The water was led from the Machine de Marly to Versailles by a conduit of thirty-six arches where, upon reaching a higher level than the gardens, it flowed by gravity to the fountains and basins below. This aqueduct was six hundred and forty-three metres long, and twenty-three metres high. It was a work which would have done credit to the Romans. A far greater romantic sentiment attaches itself to the royal chateau of Marly-le-Roi than to the utilitarian "Machine," by which the suburb is best known to-day. The history of Marly-le-Roi appears from the chronicles the most complicated to unravel of that of any of the kingly suburbs of old Paris, though in the days of the old locomotion a townlet twenty-six kilometres from the capital was hardly to be thought of as a suburb. Marly-le-Roi, at any rate, with Marly-le-Bourg and Marly-le-Chatel, was a royal dwelling from the days of Thierry III (678). The neighbouring region had been made into a countship by the early seventeenth century, and Louis XIV acquired it as his right in exchange for Neuphle-le-Chateau in 1693, incorporating it into the domain of Versailles. By this time it had become known as Marly-le-Roi, in distinction to the other bourgs, and the king built a chateau-royal, variously known as the Palais and the Ermitage. For a fact it was neither one thing nor the other, according to accepted definition, but rather a group of a dozen dependent pavilions distributed around a central edifice, the whole straggling off into infinite and manifestly unlovely proportions. It was as the sun surrounded by the zodiac. Isolated on a monticule by the river bank the chateau overlooked its brood of small pavilions, which in a way formed an _entresol_, or foyer, leading to the Pavilion Royal. All were connected by iron trellises, _en berceau_, and the effect must have been exceedingly bizarre; certainly theatrical. The four faces of these pavilions were frescoed, and balustrades and vases at the corners were the chief architectural decorations. The royal pavilion consisted within of four vestibules on the ground floor, each leading to a grand apartment in the centre. In each of the four angles was a "self-contained" apartment of three or four rooms. What this royal abode lacked in beauty it made up for in convenience. Each of the satellite pavilions was occupied by a high personage at court. The Chapel and the Corps de Garde were detached from the chateau proper, and occupied two flanking wings. The plans of the "Palais-Chateau-Ermitage" of Marly-le-Roi were from the fertile brain of Mansart, and were arranged with considerable ingenuity, if not taste, generously interspersed with lindens and truly magnificent garden plots. There was even a cascade, or rather a tumbling river (according to the French expression), for it fell softly over sixty-three marble steps, forming a sort of wrinkled sheet of water, which must indeed have been a very charming feature. It cost a hundred thousand _écus_ to merely lead the water up to it. The expenses of the Pavilion de Marly, in the ten years from 1680 to 1690, amounted to 4501279 _livres_, 12 _sols_, 3 _deniers_. From this one may well judge that it was no mean thing. The honour of being accounted a person of Marly in those times was accredited as a great distinction, for it went without saying in that case one had something to do with affairs of court, though one might only have been a "furnisher." To be a courtier of Louis XIV, or to be a _pensionnaire_ at Versailles, could hardly have carried more distinction. The court usually resided at Marly from Wednesday until Saturday, and as "the game" was the thing it is obvious that the stakes were high. The vogue of the day was gaming at table, and Marly, of all other suburban Paris palaces, was an ideal and discreet place for it. "High play and midnight suppers were the rule at Marly." This, one reads in the court chronicle, and further that: "The royal family usually lost a hundred thousand _écus_ at play at each visit." One "gentleman croupier" gained as much as three thousand _louis_ at a single sitting. Madame de Maintenon was the real ruler of Marly in those days; she had appropriated the apartments originally intended for the queen, from which there was a private means of communication to the apartments of the king, and another forming a sort of private box, overlooking the royal chapel. Little frequented by Louis XV, and practically abandoned by Louis XVI, the palace at Marly was sold during the Revolution, after which it was stripped of its art treasures, many of which adorn the gardens of the Tuileries to-day; the great group of horses at the entrance to the Champs Elysées came from the watering place of Marly. Actually, the royal pavilion at Marly has been destroyed, and there remain but the most fragmentary, unformed heaps of stones to tell the tale of its ample proportions in the days of Louis XIV and de Maintenon. The park is to-day the chief attraction of the neighbourhood, like the one at Saint Cloud, which it greatly resembles. Across the park lies the great highway from the capital to Versailles, over which so many joyous cavalcades were wont to amble or gallop in the days of gallantry. The pace is not more sober to-day, but gaily caparisoned horses and gaudy coaches have given way to red and yellow "Rois des Belges," the balance lying distinctly in favour of the former mode of conveyance, so far as picturesqueness is concerned. The Forêt de Marly is very picturesque, but of no great extent. Formerly it enclosed many shooting-boxes belonging to the nobles of the court, of which those of Montjoie and Desert de Retz were perhaps the most splendid. On the Versailles road was the Chateau de Clagny, a royal _maison de plaisance_, of an attractive, but trivial, aspect, though its architecture was actually of a certain massiveness. Its gardens and the disposition of its apartments pleased the king's fancy when he chose to pass this way, which was often. He is said to have personally spent over two million francs on the property. It must have been of some pretensions, this little heard of Chateau de Clagny, for in a single year ten thousand _livres_ were expended on keeping the gardens. To-day it is non-existent. CHAPTER XIV SAINT CLOUD AND ITS PARK The historic souvenirs of Saint Cloud and its royal palace are many and varied, though scarcely anything tangible remains to-day of the fabric so loved by Francis I and Henri II, and which was, for a fact, but a magnificent country-house, originally belonging to the Archbishops of Paris. To-day the rapid slopes of the hillsides of Saint Cloud are peopled with a heterogeneous mass of villas of what the Parisian calls the "coquette" order, but which breathe little of the spirit of romance and gallantry of Renaissance times. Saint Cloud is simply a "discreet" Paris suburb, and the least said about it, its villas and their occupants to-day, the better. The little village of Saint Cloud which is half-hidden in the Forest of Rouvray, was sacked and burned by the English after the battle of Poitiers, and then built up anew and occupied by the French monarchs in the reign of Charles VI. It was he who built the first _chateau de plaisance_ here in which the royal family might live near Paris and yet amid a sylvan environment. After this came the country-house of the Archbishops of Paris that Henri II, when he tired of it, tore down and erected a villa in the pseudo-Italian manner of the day, and built a fourteen-arch stone bridge across the Seine, which was a wonder of its time. The banker Gondi, after huddling close to royalty, turned over an establishment which he had built to Catherine de Médici, who made use of it whenever she wished to give a country fête or garden party. By this time the whole aspect of Saint Cloud was royal. It was within this house that the unhappy, and equally unpopular, Henri III was cut down by the three-bladed knife of the monk Jacques Clément. The incident is worth recounting briefly here because of the rapidity with which history was made by a mere fanatical knife-thrust. With the death of Henri III came the extinction of the House of Valois. As the king sat in the long gallery of the palace playing at cards, on August 1, 1589, his cloak hanging over his shoulder, a little cap with a flower stuck in it perched over one ear, and suspended from his neck by a broad blue ribbon a basketful of puppies, an astrologer by the name of Osman was introduced to amuse the royal party. "They tell me you draw horoscopes," remarked the king. "Sire, I will tell yours, if you will, but the heavens are unpropitious." * * * * * "Just over Meudon is a star which shines very brightly," continued the astrologer, "it is that of Henri de Navarre. But look, your Majesty, another star burns brilliantly for a moment and then disappears, mayhap it is your own." "If ever a man had a voice hoarse with blood it is that astrologer," said the king. "Away with him." "If the Valois Henri doesn't die before the setting of another sun, I'll never cast horoscope more," said the astrologer as he was hustled across the courtyard and out into the highroad. As he left, a man in a monk's garb begged to be admitted to the king's presence. It was Jacques Clément, the murderous monk, a wily Dominican, bent on a mission which had for its object the extinction of the Valois race. While the king was reading a letter which the monk had presented the latter stabbed him deep in the stomach. Swooning, the king had just time to cry out: "_Ha! le mechant moine: Il m'a tué, qu'on le tue._" The murderer in turn was struck down forthwith and his body, thrown from the windows of the palace, was _écartelé_ by four white horses, which is the neat French way of saying "drawn and quartered." It was an imposing cortège which wound down from the heights of Saint Cloud and followed the river bank to Saint Germain, Poissy and thence to Compiègne, conveying all that was mortal of Henri III, the least popular of all the race of Valois. Following close behind the bier were Henri IV and his suite, the favourites d'Epernon, Laschant, Dugastz and an impressive soldiery. After the death of Henri III, Henri de Navarre, who played a not unpicturesque part in the funeral ceremonies, installed himself in a neighbouring property known as the Maison du Tillet. Thus it is seen that the royal stamp of the little bourg of Saint Cloud was never wanting--not until the later palace and most of the town were drenched with kerosene and set on fire by the Prussians in 1871. The "Maison de Gondi" came, by a process of acquisition, and development, in time, to be the royal palace of Saint Cloud. Its overloaded details of Italian architecture were brightened up a bit by the surroundings planned and executed by the landscapist Le Notre and the life of the court in its suburban retreat took on a real and genuine brilliance which under the restraint of the gloomy walls of the Louvre and Paris streets could hardly have been. The brightest light shining over Saint Cloud at this time was the radiance shed by the brilliant Henriette d'Angleterre. Her reign as a social and witty queen of the court was brief. She died at the age of twenty-six, poisoned at the instigation of the Chevalier de Lorraine whom she had caused to be exiled. This was the common supposition, but Louis XIV was afterwards able to prove (?) his brother innocent of the crime. The gazettes of the seventeenth century recount many of the fêtes given at Saint Cloud by Monsieur on the occasion of his marriage to the Princesse Palatine in 1671. One of the most notable of these was that given for Louis XIV, wherein the celebrated cascades--an innovation of Le Notre--were first brought to view. Mansart was called in and a great gallery intended for fêtes and ceremonies was constructed, and Mignard was given the commission for its decorations. Monsieur died within the walls of the palace to which he had added so many embellishments, as also did his second wife. Three royalties dead of ambition, one might well say, for their lives were neither tranquil nor healthful. They went the pace. The regent journeyed out from Paris to this riverside retreat to receive the Tzar Peter in 1717, and in 1752 Louis Philippe d'Orleans set about to give a fête which should obscure the memory of all former events of a like nature into oblivion. How well he succeeded may be a matter of varying opinion, for the French have ever been prodigally lavish in the conduct of such affairs. At all events the occasion was a notable one. The predilection of royalty for Saint Cloud was perhaps not remarkable, all things considered, for it was, and is, delightfully environed, and about this time the Duc d'Orleans secretly married the Marquise de Montesson and installed her in a habitation the "_plus simple_," a mere shack, one fancies, costing six millions. The _nouveau riche_ of to-day could scarcely do the thing with more _éclat_. The Revolution took over the park of Saint Cloud and its appurtenances and donated them to the democracy--"for the pleasure of the people," read the decree. On the eighteenth Brumaire, the First Republic blinked itself out in the Palais de Saint Cloud, and the Conseil de Cinq Cents installed itself therein under the Directoire. Bonaparte, returning from Egypt, arrived at Saint Cloud just as Lemercier was dissolving the Conseil. Seeing trouble ahead he commanded Murat to clear the chamber by drawn bayonets. He kept his light shining just a bit ahead of the others, did Napoleon. His watchword was initiative. Deputies clambered over each other in their haste to escape by stairway, door and window, and Bonaparte saw himself Consul without opposition--for ten years--for life. The royal residences were put at Napoleon's disposition and he wisely chose Saint Cloud for summer; Saint Cloud the cradle of his powers. As a restorer and rebuilder of crumbling monuments Napoleon was a master, as he was in the destructive sense when he was in the mood, and changes and additions were made at Saint Cloud which for comfort and convenience put it in the very front rank of French royal residences. In March, 1805, Pope Pius VII baptised, amid a grand pomp and ceremony, in the chapel of the palace, the son of Louis Bonaparte, and five years afterwards (April 1, 1810), the same edifice saw the religious marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise. On March 31, 1810, a strange animation dominated all the confines of the palace. It was the occasion of the celebration of Napoleon's civil marriage with Marie Louise. They did not enter the capital until three days later for the ceremonial which united the daughter of the emperors who were descendants of the Roman Cæsars, to the "Usurper," who was now for the first time to rank with the other crowned heads of Europe. The cortège which accompanied their majesties from Saint Cloud to Paris was a pageant which would take pages to describe. The reader of these lines is referred to the impassioned pages of the works of Frederic Masson for ample details. A hundred thousand curiosity seekers had come out from Paris and filled the alleys of the park to overflowing. Music and dancing were on every hand. Mingled with the crowd were soldiers of all ranks brilliantly clad in red, blue and gold. "These warriors were a picturesque, obtrusive lot," said a chronicler; "after having invaded Austria they acclaim the Austrian." In 1815 the capitulation of Paris was signed at Saint Cloud. The gardens were invaded by a throng which gave them more the aspect of an intrenched camp than a playground of princes. A brutal victor had climbed booted and spurred into the bed of the great Napoleon and on arising pulled the bee-embroidered draperies down with him and trampled them under foot. Was this a proper manifestation of victory? [Illustration: _The Gardens of Saint Cloud_] At this period another great fête was given in the leafy park of Saint Cloud, a fête which French historians have chiefly passed over silently. The host on this occasion was the Prince of Schwartzenburg; the principal guests the foreign sovereigns, gloating over the downfall of the capital. Louis XVIII, after removing the traces of this desolate invasion, took up his residence here on June 18, 1817, and in the following year built the stables and the lodgings of the Gardes du Corps. In 1820 the chapel begun by Marie Antoinette was finished and the Jardin du Trocadero constructed. Charles X in his brief reign built, on the site of an old Ursulin convent, further quarters intended for the personnel of the court. The ensemble ever took on an increasing importance. At this time were laid out the gardens between the cascades and the river, which, to some slight extent, to-day, suggest the former ample magnificence of the park as it faced upon the river. Leading through this lower garden was the Avenue Royale extending to the chateau. Saint Cloud for Charles X, in spite of his first interest therein, could have been but an unhappy memory for here he signed the abdication which brought about his fall. He left his palace at Saint Cloud on July 30, 1830, at three o'clock in the morning, just as day was breaking through the mists of the valley. He succumbed, the last of the Bourbons, on the same spot on which Henri IV, as chief of the house, had first been saluted as king. Louis Philippe divided his time between Neuilly and Saint Cloud, and lent his purse and his enthusiasm to elaborating to a very considerable extent both the palace and its surroundings. Napoleon III made Saint Cloud his preferred summer residence, and was actually beneath the palace roof when the Prussian horde commenced its march on the capital of Clovis. He left Saint Cloud on July 27, to take personal command of the Army of the Rhine at Metz. As did Charles X, Napoleon III ceased to be sovereign of the French by enacting the final scene in his royal career in the Palais de Saint Cloud. Never again was the palace to give shelter to a French monarch. The empress left precipitately after the disaster of Woerth, and two months after the torch of arson made a ruin of all the splendour of the palace and its dependencies. The inhabitants of the little city, which had grown up around the confines of the palace, fled in refuge to Versailles during the armistice. Scarcely an old house was preserved in all the town. Among the _chefs d'oeuvres_ of art which perished in the flames were the fine works of Mignard--above all, the magnificent Galerie d'Apollon--the paintings of LeMoyne, Nacret, Leloir, the marines of Joseph Vernet and innumerable objects of art which had been gathered together for the embellishment of Saint Cloud by the later monarchs. Some few treasures were saved by the care of the Crown Prince of Prussia, and some vases, chairs and statues were appropriated and packed off across the Rhine as the plunder of war. The park of Saint Cloud to-day contains nearly four hundred hectares, the public park and the "preserve." From it spreads out one of the loveliest panoramas in the neighbourhood of Paris, alleyed vistas leading seemingly to infinity, with a sprinkling of statues still flanking the Jardin du Trocadero. From the town one enters the park through a great iron gate from the Place Royale, or by the Avenue du Chateau, which lands one on the terraces where once stood the royal palace. From Ville d'Avray and from Sevres there are also entrances to the great park, while to the latter runs an avenue connecting the "preserve" of Saint Cloud with the wilder, more rugged Bois de Meudon. Actually the surroundings of Saint Cloud's great park are the least bit tawdry. Here and there are booths and tents selling trashy souvenirs, and even more unpleasant-looking articles of food and drink, while fringing the river, and some of the principal avenues approaching the cascade, are more pretentious restaurants and eating houses which are royal in name and their prices if nothing else. The cascades are for the masses the chief sight of Saint Cloud to-day. Historical souvenir plays little part in the minds of those who only visit a monumental shrine to be amused, and so the falling waters of Saint Cloud's cascade, like the gushing torrents of Versailles' fountains, are the chief incentives to a holiday for tens of thousands of small Paris shopkeepers who do not know that a royal palace was ever here, much less that it had a history. There is an upper and a lower cascade, an artificial water ingeniously tumbled about according to the conception of one Lepaute, an architect of the time of the reign of Louis XIV. [Illustration: _The Cascades at Saint Cloud_] Mansart designed the architectural attributes of the lower cascade and scores considerably over his colleague. Circular basins and canals finally lead the water off to a still larger basin lower down where it spouts up into the air to a height of some forty odd metres at a high pressure. This is the official description, but it is hard to get up any sympathy or enthusiasm over the thing, either considered as a work of art or as a diversion. Frankly, then, Saint Cloud's chief charm is its site and its dead and half-forgotten history. The "Tramp Abroad" and "Rollo" and "Uncle George" knew it better than we, because in those days the palace existed in the real, whereas we take it all on faith and regret (sometimes) that we did not live a couple of generations ago. Bellevue, on the banks of the Seine, just before reaching Saint Cloud, owes its origin (a fact which the great restaurant of the Pavillon Bleu has made the most of in its advertisements), to a caprice of Madame de Pompadour. She liked the point of view (as do so many diners on the restaurant terrace to-day), and built a "_rendezvous-chateau_" on the hillside, a half-way house, as it were, where Louis XV might be at his ease on his journeyings to and from the capital. The Pompadour was able to borrow a force of eight hundred workmen from the king for as long as was necessary to carry out her ambitious projects at Bellevue and on November 25, 1750, she had a house-warming in her modest villa (demolished in 1794) and _pendit la cremaillère_ with a ceremony whose chief entertainment was the dancing of a ballet significantly entitled "L'Amour Architect." Neighbouring upon Saint Cloud is a whole battery of hallowed, historical spots associated with the more or less royal dwellings of the French monarchs and their favourites. It was but a comparatively short distance to Versailles, to Saint Germain, to Maintenon and to Rambouillet, and the near-by Louveciennes was literally strewn with the most charming country-houses, which, in many cases, kings paid for and made free use of, though indeed the accounts for the same may not have appeared in the public budgets, at least not under their proper names. At the summit of the hill which gives the town its name was a chateau belonging originally to Madame la Princesse de Conti, and opposite the railway station of to-day, with its prosaic and unlovely surroundings, was a magnificent property belonging to Maréchal Magnan, and the Pavillon du Barry, built by the architect Ledoux to the orders of Louis XV, who would provide a convenient nest in the neighbourhood of Saint Cloud for his latest favourite. To-day the pavilion exists in name, somewhat disfigured to be sure, but still reminiscent of its former rather garish outlines, so on the whole it cannot be said to have suffered greatly from an esthetic point of view. The property came finally to be included as a part of the estate of Pierre Laffitte, though still known, as it always has been, as the Pavillon du Barry. CHAPTER XV VERSAILLES: THE GLORY OF FRANCE "_Glorieuse, monumentale et monotone La façade de pierre effrite, au vent qui passe Son chapiteau friable et sa guirlande lasse En face du parc jaune ou s'accoude l'automne._ * * * _Mais le soleil, aux vitres d'or qu'il incendie Y semble rallumer interieurement Le sursaut, chaque soir de la Gloire engourdi._" These lines of Henri de Régnier explain the aspect of the Versailles of to-day better than any others ever written. Versailles is a medley of verdure, a hierarchy of bronze and a forest of marble. This is an expression full of anomalies, but it is strictly applicable to Versailles. Its waters, jets and cascades, its monsters, its Tritons and Valhalla of marble statues set off the artificial background in a manner only to be compared to a stage setting--a magnificent stage setting, but still palpably unreal. Yes, Versailles is sad and grim to-day; one hardly knows why, for its memories still live, and the tangible evidences of most of its great splendour still stand. "_Voici tes ifs en cone et tes tritons joufflus Tes jardins composés où Louis ne vient plus, Et ta pompe arborant les plumes et les casques._" It is not possible to give here either an architectural review or a historical chronology of Versailles; either could be made the _raison d'être_ for a weighty volume. The writer has confined himself merely to a more or less correlated series of patent facts and incidents which, of itself, shows well the futility of any other treatment being given of a subject so vast within the single chapter of a book. The history of Versailles is a story of the people and events that reflected the glory and grandeur of the Grand Monarque of the Bourbons and made his palace and its environs a more sublime expression of earthly pomp than anything which had gone before, or has come to pass since. Versailles, after its completion, became the perfect expression of the decadence and demoralization of the old régime. It can only be compared to the relations between du Barry and the young Marie Antoinette, who was all that was contrary to all for which the former stood. That the court of Louis XV was artificially brilliant there is no doubt. It was this that made it stand out from the sombre background of the masses of the time. It was a dazzling, human spectacle, and Versailles, with its extravagant, superficial charms, carried it very near to the brink of ruin, though even in its most banal vulgarities there was a certain sense of ambitious sincerity. The people of the peasant class lived as animals, "black, livid and scorched by the sun." The sense of all this penetrated readily even to Versailles, so that La Pompadour or Louis, one or the other of them, or was it both together, cried out instinctively: "_Apres nous le deluge._" The intricacies of the etiquette of the daily life of the king, his follies and fancies, made the history of Versailles the most brilliant of that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--certainly it was the most opulent. The manners of the time were better than the morals, and if good taste in art and architecture had somewhat fallen there is no doubt but that a charming fantasy often made up for a lack of estheticism. The story of the palace, the park, the king and his court are so interwoven that no _résumé_ of the story of one can ignore that of any of the others. The king and court present themselves against this background with an intimacy and a clearness which is remarkable for its appeal to one's curiosity. It is a long, long day of life which begins with the _petit lever_ and only ends with the _grand coucher_. If there was ever a Castle of Indolence and Profligacy it was Versailles, though indeed it is regarded as the monarchy's brilliant zenith. The picture is an unforgetable one to any who have ever read its history or seen its stones. In the year 1650, Martial de Lomenci, one of the ministers of Charles IX, was the Seigneur of Versailles, but at the will of Catherine de Médici he was summarily strangled that she might get possession of the property and make a present of it to her favourite, Albert de Gondi, Maréchal de Retz. About 1625 Louis XIII had caused a small hunting pavilion to be built near by and, by degrees, acquiring more land took it into his head to erect something more magnificent in the way of a country-house, though the real conception of a suburban Paris palace only came with Louis XIV. Levau, the latter's architect, made the necessary alterations to the structure already existing, and little by little the more magnificent project known in its completed form to-day was evolved. War not being actually in progress, or imminent, great bodies of soldiery were set at work with pick and shovel, and at one time thirty thousand had laid aside their sabres and muskets for the more peaceful art of garden-making under the direction of Le Notre. In three decades the sum total of the chief roll of expenses of the palace and its dependencies reached eighty-one million, one hundred and fifty-one thousand, four hundred and fourteen _livres_, nine _sols_ and two _deniers_. It is perhaps even more interesting to know that of this vast sum more than three millions went for marble, twenty-one millions for masonry, two and a half millions for the rougher woodwork and a like sum for marquetry. Other additional "trifling" embellishments of Versailles and the Trianon during the same period counted up another six million and a half. The expense of these works was enormous on all sides. Water being required for the purpose of supplying the fountains it was proposed that the waters of the Eure should be turned from their original bed and made to pass through Versailles, and the enterprise was actually begun. Beyond the gardens was formed the Little Park, about four leagues around, and beyond this lay the Great Park, measuring twenty leagues around and enclosing several forest villages. The total expenses of these works may never have been exactly known, but they must have been immense, that is certain, and have even been estimated at as much as one billion francs. The works were so far completed in 1664 that the first Versailles fête was given to consecrate the palace. In honour of this event Molière composed "La Princesse d'Elide." The improvements, however, were continued, and in 1670, Levau, dying, was succeeded by his nephew, Jules Hardouin Mansart, who wished to destroy the chateau of Louis XIII and erect one uniform building. Louis XIV, out of respect to his father, would not allow Mansart's project to be carried out and therefore alterations were only made in the court by surrounding it on the western side with the magnificent buildings now forming the garden front. The southern wing was subsequently added for the accommodation of the younger members of the royal family. In 1685 the northern wing was erected to meet the requirements of the attachés of the court. The chapel was commenced in 1699 and finished in 1710. Louis XIV took up his residence in the palace in 1681 with Madame de Montespan, and, thirty-five years afterwards, died there, the reigning favourite then being Madame de Maintenon. During this time Versailles was the theatre of many extraordinary scenes. Louis XV was born here but did not take up his residence here until after he was of age. Here it was that his favourites Madame de Chateauroux, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry found themselves most at home. It was under the direction of this monarch that the theatre was built in the northern wing, and was formally opened on the occasion of the marriage of the dauphin, Louis XVI, in 1770. Towards the end of the reign of Louis XV a new wing and pavilion were added on the northern side of the principal court, and it was proposed to build across the court a new front in the same uniform style. The idea could not be carried out in consequence of the troublous times of Louis XVI and the enormous estimated expense. The Revolution intervened and Versailles remained closed until it was reopened by the first Napoleon, who, however, was unable to take up his residence in it on account of his frequent campaigns afield. At the Restoration Louis XVIII, as the representative of the ancient monarchy, wished to make Versailles the seat of the court, but was deterred from doing so by the appalling previous expense. During the reigns of both Napoleon and Louis XVIII considerable sums were expended in its refurbishing so that it was not wholly a bygone when finally the French authorities made of it, if not the chief, at least the most popular _monument historique_ of all France. And yet the aspect of Versailles is sadly wearying. To-day Versailles is lonely; one is haunted by the silence and the bareness, if not actual emptiness. Only once in seven years does the old palace take on any air of the official life of the Republic, and that is when the two legislative bodies join forces and come to Versailles to vote for the new president. For the rest of the time it is deserted, save for the guardians and visitors, a memory only of the splendours imagined and ordained by Louis XIV. For nearly a century the master craftsmen of a nation conspired to its beatification, and certainly for gorgeousness and extravagance Versailles has merited any encomiums which have ever been expended upon it. It was made and remade by five generations of the cleverest workers who ever lived, until it took supreme rank as the greatest storehouse of luxurious trifles in all the world. One wearies though of the straight lines and long vistas of Versailles, the endless repetition of classical motives, which, while excellent, each in its way, do pall upon one in an inexplicable fashion. It possesses, however, a certain dignity and grace in every line. This is a fact which one can not deny. It is expressive of--well, of nothing but Versailles, and the part it played in the life of its time. The millions for Versailles were obtained in ways too devious and lengthy to follow up here. Even Louis XIV began to see before the end the condition into which he had led the nation, though he punished every one who so much as hinted at his follies. Vauban, "the hero of a hundred sieges," published a book on the relations between the king and court and the tax-paying masses and was disgraced forever after, dying within a few months of a broken heart that he should have been so impotent in attempting to bring about a reform. The life of the king at Versailles had little of privacy in it. From his rising to his going to bed he was constantly in the hands of his valets and courtiers, even receiving ambassadors of state while he was still half hidden by the heavy curtains of his great four-poster. They had probably been waiting hours in the Salon de l'OEl de Boeuf before being admitted to the kingly presence. It was at this period that Michael Chamillard, the Minister of War, introduced billiards into France by the way of Versailles. He played with Louis XIV and pleased him greatly, but Chamillard was no statesman, as history and the following lines from his epitaph point out. "_Ci git le fameux Chamillard De son Roy le pronotaire Qui fut un heros au billard Un zero dans le Ministère._" This apartment of the OEil de Boeuf was the ancient Cabi du Conseil. It is a wonderfully decorated apartment, and its furnishings, beyond those which are actually built into the fabric, are likewise of a splendour and good taste which it is to be regretted is not everywhere to be noted in the vast palace of Louis XIV. The garnishings of the chimney-piece alone would make any great room interesting and well furnished, and the great golden clock, finely chiselled and brilliantly burnished, is about the most satisfactory French clock one ever saw, marking, as it does, in its style, the transition between that of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Versailles, in many respects, falls far short to-day of the ideal; its very bigness and bareness greatly detract from the value of the historic souvenir which has come down to us. Changes could undoubtedly be made to advantage, and to this point much agitation has lately been directed, particularly in cutting out some of the recently grown up trees which have spoiled the classic vistas of the park, and the removal of those ugly equestrian statues which the Monarchy of July erected. Versailles only came under Napoleon's cursory regard for a brief moment. He hardly knew whether he would care to make his home here or not, but ordered his architects to make estimates for certain projects which he had conceived and when he got them was so staggered at their magnitude that he at once threw over any idea that he may have had of making it his dwelling. The Revolution had stripped the palace quite bare; no wonder that the emperor balked at the cost of putting it in order. Napoleon may have had his regrets for he made various allusions to Versailles while exiled at Saint Helena, but then it was too late. Louis Philippe took a matter-of-fact view of the possible service that the vast pile might render to his family and accordingly spent much money in a great expanse of gaudy wall decorations which are there to-day, thinking to make of it a show place over which might preside the genius of his sons. These acres of meaningless battle-pieces, Algerian warfare and what not are characteristic of the "Citizen-King" whose fondness for red plush, green repp and horsehair sofas was notable. What he did at Versailles was almost as great a vandalism against art as that wrought by the Revolution. Last scene of all:--Under Lebrun's magnificent canopied ceiling, where the effigy of Louis XIV is being crowned by the Goddess of Glory, and the German eagle sits on a denuded tree trunk screaming in agony and beating his wings in despair, William of Prussia was proclaimed Emperor of United Germany. It was almost as great an indignity as France ever suffered; the only greater was when the Prussians marched through the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. That was, and is, the Frenchman's--the Parisian's, at all events--culminating grief. The apartment referred to is the Grand Galerie des Glaces (or Galerie Louis XIV), which is accredited as one of the most magnificently appointed rooms of its class in all the world. It is nearly two hundred and fifty feet in length, nearly forty feet in width, and forty-three feet in height. It is lighted by seventeen large arched windows, which correspond with arched niches on the opposite wall filled with mirrors--hence the name. Sixty Corinthian columns of red marble with bases and capitals of gilt bronze fill up the intervening wall spaces. The vaulted ceiling by Lebrun is divided into eighteen small compartments and nine of much larger dimensions, in which are allegorically represented the principal events in the history of Louis XIV, from the Peace of the Pyrenees to that of Nymeguen. It was in this splendid apartment that Louis XIV displayed the grandeur of royalty in its highest phase and such was the luxury of the times, such the splendour of the court, that its immense size could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that pressed around the monarch. Several splendid fêtes took place in this great room, of which those of the marriage of the Duc de Bourgogne in 1697 and that given on the arrival of Marie Antoinette were the most brilliant. Following are three pen-pictures of this historic palace. THE VERSAILLES OF LONG AGO. It was to Versailles that the _Grand Roi_ repaired after his stern chase of the Spaniards across Flanders; through the wood of Saint Germain and over those awful cobblestones which Parisians know so well to-day rolled the gilded _carrosse_ of the king. He had already been announced by a runner who had also brought news of the latest victory. Courtiers and populace alike crowded the streets of the town in an effort to acquire a good place from which to see the arrival of the king. Intendants and servitors were giving orders on all sides, frequently contradictory, and gardeners were furbishing up the alleyed walks and flower beds in readiness for _Sa Majesté Louis Quatorze_ and all his little world of satellites. A majestic effervescence bubbled over all, and the _bourgeoisie_ enjoyed itself hugely, climbing even on roof-tops and gables in the town without the palace gates. The _Roi Soleil_ came at last to his "well-beloved city of Versailles." "He arrived in a cloud of golden dust," said a writer of the time, and any who have seen Versailles blazing and treeless in the middle of a long, hot summer, will know what it was like on that occasion. Cannons roared, and the sound of revelry and welcoming joy was everywhere to be heard. THE VERSAILLES OF YESTERDAY. The lugubrious booming of cannons came rolling over the meanderings of the Seine from the capital. The hard-heads of Paris would understand nothing; they would make flow never-ceasing rivers of blood. The national troops were well-nigh impotent; it was difficult to shoot down your own flesh and blood at any time; doubly so when your native land has not yet been evacuated by a venturesome enemy. It was the time of the Commune. Traffic at Versailles was of that intensity that circulation was almost impossible. In spite of a dismal April rain the town was full of all sorts and conditions of men. The animation of the crowd was feverish, but it was without joy. A convoy of prisoners passed between two lines of soldiers with drawn bayonets. They were Frenchmen, but they were Communards. It was but a moment before they were behind the barred doors of the barracks which was to be their prison, packed like a troop of sheep for the slaughter. Versailles itself, the palace and the town, were still sad. The rain still fell in torrents. THE VERSAILLES OF TO-DAY. Roses, begonias, geraniums, the last of a long hot summer, still shed their fragrant memories over the park of Versailles. In the long, sober alleys a few leaves had already dropped from the trees above, marking the greensward and the gravel like a _tapis d'orient_, red and green and gold. Flora and Bacchus in their fountains seemed less real than ever before, more sombre under the pale, trickling light through the trees. A few scattered visitors were about, sidling furtively around the Trianon, the Colonnade and the _Bosquet d'Apollon_; and the birds of the wood were even now bethinking of their winter pilgrimage. Versailles was still sad. The last rays of the setting sun shot forth reflected gold from the windows of the chateau and soon the silver blue veil of a September twilight came down like a curtain of gauze. Versailles, the Versailles of other days, is gone forever. Who will awaken its echoes in after years? When will the Trianon again awake with the coquetries of a queen? When will the city of the _Roi Soleil_ come again into its own proud splendour? The sun has set, the great iron gates of the courtyard are closed, the palace and all therein sleeps. "_Allon nous en d'ici: laissons la place aux ombres._" CHAPTER XVI THE GARDENS OF VERSAILLES AND THE TRIANONS Versailles without its court of marble, its fountains, its gardens and its park, and the attendant Grand and Petit Trianons, would hardly have the attraction that it has to-day. The ensemble is something of more vast and varied extent than is to be seen elsewhere, though its aspect has somewhat changed from what it was of old, and the crowds of Sunday and holiday visitors give the courts and alleyed walks somewhat the aspect of a modern amusement resort. The gardens of Versailles were but the framing of a princely dwelling created to respond to the requirements of a court which was attempting to do things on a grand scale. Everything was designed with most magnificent outlines; everything was royal, in all verity--architecture, garden-making, fêtes, receptions and promenades. What setting, then, could have been more appropriate to the life of the times? Versailles, the town, had never prospered, and has never proved sufficiently attractive to become a popular suburb; and, though to-day it passed the mark of half a hundred thousand population, it never would have existed at all had it not been for the palace of Louis XIV. Were it not for the palace and its attributes, Versailles would have absolutely no memories for visitors, except such as may have lunched well at the Hotel des Reservoirs or the Hotel du Trianon. That is not everything, to be sure; but it is something, even when one is on an historic pilgrimage. Even in the day of Louis XVI the popular taste was changing and Versailles was contemptuously referred to as a world of automota, of cold, unfeeling statuary and of Noah's Ark trees and forests. There was always a certain air of self-satisfaction about it, as there is, to-day, when the Parisian hordes come out to see the waters play, and the sight-seers marvel at the mock splendour and the scraps of history doled out for their delectation by none-too-painstaking guardians. In spite of all this, no sober-minded student of art or history will ever consider Versailles, the palace and the park, as other than a superb and a spectacular demonstration of the taste of the times in which it was planned, built and lived in. Versailles was begun in 1624 by Louis XIII, who built here a humble hunting-lodge for the disciples of Saint Hubert of whom he was the royal head. So humble an erection was it that the monarch referred to it simply as a "_petite maison_" and paid for it out of his own pocket, a rare enough proceeding at that epoch. The critical Bassompierre called it a "_chetif chateau_," and Saint-Simon referred to it as a "house of cards." Manifestly, then, it was no great thing. It was, however, a comfortable country-house, surrounded by a garden and a more ample park. It was not Lemercier, the presiding genius of the Louvre at this time, but an unknown by the name of Le Roy, whom Louis XIII chose as his architect. Boyceau traced the original _parterres_ with a central basin at a crossroads of two wide avenues. Each of the four compartments thus made was ornamented with _broderies_ and trimmed hedges, and the open spaces were ingeniously filled with parti-coloured sands, or earth. A _parterre_ of flowers immediately adjoined the palace and rudimentary alleys and avenues stretched off towards the wood. Although designed by Boyceau, this work was actually executed by his nephew, Jacques de Menours, who, with difficulty, collected his pay. His books of account showed that in five years, from 1631 to 1636, he had drawn but once a year a sum varying from fifteen hundred to four thousand _livres_ while in the same period the king had spent on the rest of the work at Versailles two hundred and thirty-eight thousand _livres_, thirty-two _sols_, six _deniers_, nearly one million one hundred thousand francs of the money of to-day. The first of the outdoor embellishments of the palace at Versailles is the great Cour Royale, or the Cour d'Honneur, which opens out behind the long range of iron gates facing upon the Place d'Armes. At the foot of this entrance court is an extension called the Cour de Marbre. This Cour de Marbre, on January 5, 1757, was the scene of the infamous attack on Louis XV by Damiens, just as the king was starting out for the Trianon. A thick redingote saved the king's life; but for "this mere pin-prick," according to Voltaire, the monarch went immediately to bed, and five times in succession sought absolution for his sins. Sins lay heavy even on royal heads in those days. Damiens was but a thick-witted, superstitious valet, who, more or less persecuted by the noble employers with whom he had been in service at various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king, as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy. Louis, heretofore known as the "Bien Aimé," had become suddenly unpopular because of the disastrous war against England and Germany, and his prodigal dissipation of public moneys. Stretching out behind the palace are the famous gardens, the _parterres_, the _tapis vert_, the fountains and the grand canal, with the park of the Trianons off to the right. Good fortune came to Louis XIV when he found André Le Notre, for it was he and no other who traced the general lines of the garden of the Versailles which was to be. He laid a generous hand upon the park and forest which had surrounded the manor of Louis XIII, and extended the garden to the furthermost limits of his ingenuity. Modifications were rapid, and from 1664 the _parterres_ and the greensward took on entirely new forms and effects. The Parterre des Reservoirs became the Parterre du Nord, and an alley of four rows of lindens enclosed the park on all sides. The Parterre à Fleurs, or the Jardin du Roy, between the chateau and the Orangerie, was laid out anew. By the following year the park began to take on the homogeneity which it had hitherto lacked. The great Rondeau, as it was called, and which became later the Bassin du Dragon, was excavated, and the Jardin Bas, or the Nouveau Parterre, with an oval depression, was also planned. [Illustration: _Cour de Marbre, Versailles_] At one end of the park was the celebrated Menagerie du Roy, where the rare and exotic animals collected by the monarch had "a palace more magnificent than the home of any other dumb animals in the world." This was the first period of formal garden construction at Versailles, and it was also the period when the first great impetus was given to sculptural decoration. In 1679, following a journey in Italy, Le Notre took up again the work on the gardens at Versailles, devoting himself to the region south of the palace which hitherto had been ignored. This was Le Notre's most prolific period. The creations at Versailles can be divided into two distinct epochs, that before 1670 and that coming after. After Le Notre's generous design, the king and queen were seemingly never satisfied with the endless plotting and planting which was carried on beneath the windows of the palace, and in many instances changed the colour schemes and even the outlines of Le Notre's original conceptions. The Versailles of to-day is no longer the Versailles of Louis XIII, so far as the actual disposition of details goes. Then there was very little green grass and much sand and gravel, a scheme of decoration which entered largely into the seventeenth century garden. This refers principally to the general effect, for Le Notre made much use of the enclosing battery of lindens, chestnuts and elms of a majestic and patriarchal grandeur which have since been cut and replaced by smaller species of trees, or not replaced at all. No sooner were the ornamental gardens planned at Versailles than the Potager du Roy, or fruit and vegetable garden, was created. This same garden exists to-day with almost its former outlines. Here a soil sufficiently humid, and yet sufficiently well drained, contributed not a little towards the success of this most celebrated of all kitchen gardens the world has known. The work of installing a further system of artificial drainage was immediately begun, and the Eaux des Suisses was created, to take the place of a former stagnant pool near by. Undoubtedly it was a stupendous work, like all the projects launched with regard to Versailles, but, like the others, it was brought to a speedy and successful conclusion. The details of the history of this royal vegetable garden are fully set forth in a work published in 1690 by the son of the designer, the Abbé Michel de la Quintinye, in two bulky volumes. "It was meet that a royal vegetable garden should have been designed by a 'Gentleman Gardener,'" said the faithful biographer in his foreword, and as such the man and the work are to be considered here. The work was accomplished by the combined efforts of a gracious talent and the expenditure of much money, put at La Quintinye's disposition by his royal master, who had but to put his hand deep into the coffers of the royal treasury to draw it forth filled with gold. Critics have said that La Quintinye's ability stopped with the preparation of the soil, and with the design of the garden, rather than with the actual cultivation, but at all events it was he who made the garden possible. La Quintinye adopted Arnauld d'Andilly's method of planting fruit trees _en espalier_ by training them against a wall-like background, and to accomplish this divided the garden plot, which covered an area of eight hectares (twenty acres), into a great number of subdivisions enclosed by walls, in order to multiply to as great an extent as possible the available space to be used for the _espaliers_. Again, these same walls served to shelter certain varieties which were planted close against them. If this Potager du Roy was not actually the first garden of its class so laid out, it was certainly one of the most extensive and the most successful up to that time. The great terraces of at least two metres in width surrounded the central garden, leaving a free area for the latter which approximated three hectares. These terraces were divided into twenty-eight compartments, forming nine distinct varieties of gardens. The celebrated gardener of Louis XIV sought not only to obtain fruits and vegetables of a superior quality and an abundant quantity, but was the first among his kind to produce early vegetables, or _primeurs_, in any considerable quantity, and, by a process of forced culture, he was able to put upon the table of the monarch asparagus in December, lettuce in January, cauliflower in March and strawberries in April. All these may be found at the Paris markets to-day, and at these seasons, but the growing of _primeurs_ for the Paris markets has become a great industry since the time it was first begun at Versailles. Of asparagus La Quintinye said, "It is a vegetable that only kings can ever hope to eat." The Potager du Roy was begun in 1678, and completed in 1683. It cost, all told, one million one hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and eighty-three _livres_ of which four hundred and sixty-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-four went for constructions in brick and stone, walls, enclosures and drains. Its annual maintenance (1685) amounted to twenty thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine _livres_. The effort proved one of great benefit to its creator, for La Quintinye, at the completion of this work, received further commissions of a like nature from the Prince de Condé, the Duc de Montansier, Colbert, Fouquet and others. So great a marvel was this vegetable garden at Versailles that it was the object of a pilgrimage of the Doge of Venice in 1685, and of the Siamese ambassadors in the following year. The garden has been preserved as an adjunct to Versailles up to the present day. For two centuries its product went to the "Service de Bouche" of the chief of state, that is, the royal dinner table; but in 1875 the Minister of Agriculture installed there the French National Horticultural College, which to-day, with a widened scope, has admitted ornamental plants and trees to this famous garden. Nevertheless the general outlines have been preserved, though certain of the terraces have disappeared, as well as many of the walls of the original enclosure, thus reducing the number of garden plots; in fact but sixteen distinctly defined gardens remain, including the Clos aux Asperges. The general lines of the garden design of Le Notre and Boyceau at Versailles are to be noted to-day, but if anything the maintenance of the gardens is hardly the equal of what it was in the time of Louis XIV and a seeming disaster has fallen upon Versailles as these lines are being written. The military authorities have set aside, as a site for an aerostation camp, some twenty-five acres of the park near Rocquencourt. This is one of the loveliest parts, shaded by magnificent trees which, presumably, will have to be sacrificed, since, if left standing, they would certainly interfere with maneuvering with military aeroplanes, dirigibles and balloons. At a time when deforestation is recognized to be one of the greatest dangers that menace a country's prosperity, one of its consequences being such inundations as those which recently devastated Paris and the Seine valley, it is regrettable that the forest surrounding Versailles should be depleted. [Illustration: _The Potager du Roy, Versailles_] Furthermore, the realization of the project means a loss of revenue to the state which at present derives some sixty thousand francs a year from the farming lease of this portion of the park. Therefore, for material considerations, as well as because Versailles and its surroundings should be preserved intact as a noble relic of one of the grandest periods of French history, one of the most beautiful creations of French genius, the project attributed to the military authorities is short-sighted. To diminish the attractions of Versailles would certainly prove an unwise policy, as the stream of tourists, which is the chief source of profit to Versailles and its population, would inevitably be diverted to some other channel. Only a short time ago a Société des Amis de Versailles was created for the purpose of safeguarding its artistic and natural beauties. The government gave the organization its approbation and there is something delightfully ironical in the fact that the military authorities of the same government are planning to destroy what the society, fathered by the Ministère des Beaux Arts, was formed to preserve. Another modern aspect of the park of Versailles was noted during the late winter when, after a sharp freeze, all the youth of Paris had seemingly gone out to Versailles for the skating only to be met by a freshly-posted notice which read: Defense De Patiner Par Arrêté du 17 Decembre, 1849 These signs were posted here and there about the park, in the courtyard, on the postern gate, on trees, everywhere. The authorities were bound that there should be no flagrant violation of the order of 1849. "You see," said one of the park guardians, "_c'est defendu_; but as we are only two and the crowd is very large we can do nothing." This was evident. Thousands overran the Grand Canal, which at its greatest depth was scarcely more than a yard to the bottom, and so, despite of monarchial decree, Republican France still skates on the ornamental waters of Versailles when occasion offers. "_N'oubliez pas le petit balayeur, s'il vous plait_," was as often heard as "_Allez vous-en_." On the whole it was rather a picturesque sight. A thick haze hung over the now white "Tapis Vert," and the nude figures of the Bassin d'Apollon were clothed in a mantle of snow, while the white-robed statues of the Allée Royale, one could well believe, shivered as one passed. [Illustration: _The Bassin de Latone, Versailles_] The fountains of Versailles, the "Grands Eaux" and "Petits Eaux," which shoot their jets in air "semi-occasionally" for the benefit of Paris's "good papas" and their children, are distinctly popular features, and of an artistic worth neither less nor greater than most garden accessories of the artificial order. The fact that it costs something like ten thousand francs to "play" these fountains seems to be the chief memory which one retains of them in operation, unless it be the crowds which make the going and coming so uncomfortable. The Orangerie lies just below the terrace of the Parterre du Midi, and a thousand or more non-bearing orange trees are scattered about. They are descendants of fifteenth century ancestors, it is claimed--but doubtfully. The great basin of water known as the Eaux des Suisses was excavated by the Swiss Guard of Louis XIV to serve the useful purpose of irrigating the Potager du Roy, and as a decorative effect of great value to that part of the garden upon which faces the fourteen-hundred-foot front of the palace. Still farther off towards the Bois de Satory, after crossing the Tapis Vert, lie the famous Bassins de Latone and Apollon, the Bassin du Miroir and, finally, the Grand Canal, with one transverse branch leading to the Menagerie (now the government stud-farm) and the other to the Trianons. The satellite palaces known as the Grand and Petit Trianons are, like the Palace of Versailles itself, of such an abounding historical interest that it were futile to attempt more than a mere intimation of their comparative rank and aspect. The rather sprawling, one-story, horseshoe-shaped villa built by Louis XIV for Madame de Maintenon, and known as the Grand Trianon, was an architectural conception of Mansart's. It is worth remarking that the Grand Trianon, to-day, is in a more nearly perfect state than it has been for long past, for the restorations lately made have removed certain interpolations manifestly out of place. It is due to M. de Nolhac, the Conservateur du Musée de Versailles, that this happy amelioration has been brought about and that Mansart's admirable work is again as it was in the days of Madame de Maintenon and those of the later Napoleon I. [Illustration: _The Fountain of Neptune, Versailles_] In spite of all this the Trianon of to-day is not what it was in the eighteenth century. "Madame de Maintenon," said de Musset, "made of Versailles an oratory, but La Pompadour turned it into a boudoir." He also called the Trianon: "a tiny chateau of porcelain." It was, too, the boudoir of Madame de Montespan. Louis XV, too, built, or furnished, discreet boudoirs of this order on every hand. More than one great gallery in which his elders had done big things he divided and subdivided into minute apartments and papered the walls, or painted them, all colours of the rainbow, or hung them with silks or velvets. "Don't you think my little apartment shows good taste," he asked one day of the Comtesse de Séran at Versailles. "Not at all," she replied, "I would much rather that the walls were hung in blue." That particular apartment was in rose, but, since blue was the favourite colour of the monarch, the reply was but flattering. The next time that his friend, the Comtesse, appeared on the scene the apartment had all been done over in blue. The monarch soon began to turn his attention to the gardens. Bowers, labyrinths and vases and statues were inexplicably mixed as in a maze. He began to have the "_gout pastoral_," his biographer has said, a vogue that Madame du Barry and Marie Antoinette came in time to push to its limits. The king was too ready to admire all that was suggested, all that was offered, and the ultimate effect was--well, it was the opposite of what he hoped it to be, though doubtless he did not realize it. In the garden of the Grand Trianon is a great basin with a cascade flowing down over a sort of a high altar arrangement in red and white marble called the Buffet de l'Architecture, and evolved by Mansart. This architect certainly succeeded much better with his purely architectural conceptions than he did with interpolated decorative elements intended to relieve a formal landscape. The Petit Trianon, the pride of Louis XV, was designed by the architect Gabriel, and its reigning goddess was Marie Antoinette. Souvenirs of the unhappy queen are many, but the caretakers are evidently bored with their duties and hustle you through the apartments with scant ceremony that they may doze again undisturbed in their corners. [Illustration: _Petit Trianon_] The garden of the Petit Trianon is a veritable _Jardin Anglais_, that is, the decorative portion, where sweeps and curves, as meaningless as those one sees on banknotes and no more decorative, are found in place of the majestic lines of the formal garden when laid out after the French manner. [Illustration: _La Laiterie de la Reine PETIT TRIANON_] The _Hameau_, where is the dairy where the queen played housewife and shepherdess, is just to the rear of this bijou palace and looks stagy and unreal enough to be the wings and back-drop of a pastoral play. Near Versailles was the Chateau de Clagny, with a garden laid out by Le Notre, quite the rival of many better known. Of it Madame de Sévigné wrote: "It is the Palais d'Armide; you know the manner of Le Notre; here he has done his best." The Couvent des Recollettes, just across the Bois de Satory, was built by Louis XIV out of regard for the _religieux_ whom he displaced from an edifice which stood upon a plot which was actually needed for the palace gardens. The Chateaux of Noisy and Molineaux were also affiliated with Versailles. The rest of the surroundings and accessories of Versailles are mere adjunctive details of those chief features here mentioned. To catalogue them even would be useless since they are all set down in the guidebooks. CHAPTER XVII SAINT GERMAIN-EN-LAYE Saint Germain has not the popularity of Versailles, nor the charm of Fontainebleau, but it is more accessible than either, and, if less known and less visited by the general mass of tourists, it is all the more delightful for that. Saint Germain, the chateau, the town and the forest, possess a magnificent site. Behind is a wooded background, and before one are the meanderings of the Seine which in the summer sunlight is a panorama which is to be likened to no other on earth. Across the river bottom run the great tree-lined roadways, straight as the proverbial flight of the arrow, while on the horizon, looking from the celebrated terrace, one sees to-day the silhouetted outline of Paris with the Tour Eiffel and the dome of the Sacré Coeur as the culminating points. The town itself is ugly and ill-paved, and heavy-booted dragoons make a hideous noise as they clank along to and from the cavalry barracks all through the day and night. Neither are scorching automobiles making their ways to Trouville and Dieppe over the "Route des Quarante Sous" a pleasant feature. One can ignore all these things, however, for what is left is of a superlative charm. [Illustration: SAINT GERMAIN] Saint Germain-en-Laye in the first stages of French history was but a vast extent of forest which under Charlemagne came to the possession of the monks of the Abbaye de Saint Germain-des-Prés. The first royal palace here was built by King Robert in the tenth century, practically upon the site of the present edifice. In the eleventh century there came into being another royal dwelling, and in the twelfth century Louis-le-Gros built a chateau-fort as a protection to the royal residence and monastery. This did not prevent the Black Prince from very nearly burning them down on one of his bold raids, but by 1367, Charles V re-erected the "_castel_" of Saint Germain-en-Laye. The English, by coercion, induced a monk of a neighbouring establishment at Nanterre to deliver up a set of false keys by which the great gates of the castle were surreptitiously opened, and, for a time, the descendants of the Conqueror held possession. The establishment of Charles V in no way satisfying the artistic ambitions of Francis I, that monarch gave the task of reconstruction to the architect Pierre Chambiges, in 1539, preserving only the Saint Chapelle of Saint Louis and the donjon. The building must have gone forward with an extreme rapidity for at the architect's death, in 1544, it had reached nearly the level of the rooftop. Chambiges' successor was his son-in-law, Guillaume Guillain, who, without changing the primitive plan, completed the work in 1548. Saint Germain, above the first story, is essentially a construction of bricks, but the effect is even now, as Chambiges originally intended, an edifice with its main constructive elements of lower sustaining walls and buttresses of stone binding together the slighter fabric, or filling, above. Although it is Renaissance through and through, Saint Germain shows not the slightest reminiscence of anything Italian and must be considered entirely as an achievement of French genius. This edifice of Francis I was more a fortress than a palace in spite of its decorative features, and Henri II, desiring something more of a luxurious royal residence, began what the historians and savants know as the Chateau Neuf--the palace of to-day which stands high on the hill overlooking the winding Seine, to which seducing stream the gardens originally descended in terraces. Chiefly it is to Henri IV that this structure owes its distinction, for previously work went on but intermittently, and very slowly. Henri IV brought the work to completion and made the chateau his preferred and most prolonged place of residence, as indeed did his successor. It is the Chateau Neuf of the time of Henri IV which is to-day known as the Palais de Saint Germain-en-Laye. Of the Vieux Chateau only some fragmentary walls and piles of débris, the Pavillon Henri IV, and, in part, the old royal chapel remain. Actually the structure of to-day includes that part of the Hotel du Pavillon Henri IV which is used as a restaurant. Henri IV and Louis XIII gave Saint Germain its first great _éclat_ as a suburban place of sojourn, and from the comings and goings of the court of that time there gradually grew up the present city of twenty thousand inhabitants; not all of them of courtly manners, as one learns from a recollection of certain facts of contemporary modern history. During the days when Mazarin actually held the reins of state the court was frequently at Saint Germain. Louis XIV was born here, and until Versailles and Marly came into being he made it his principal dwelling. It was in one of the magnificent apartments, too, midway between the angle turrets of the façade, Louis XIII ended his unhappy existence in 1642. His own private band of musicians played a "De Profundis" of his own composition to waft his soul on its long journey. The chroniclers describe one of the monarch's last conversations as follows: "When they transport my body to Paris after my soul has flown, Laporte, remember that place where the road turns under the hill; it is a rough road, Laporte, and will surely shake my bones sadly if the driver does not go slowly." Those who have journeyed out from Paris to Saint Germain by road in this later century will appreciate the necessity for the admonition. Louis XIV, unlike Louis XIII, detested Saint Germain beyond words, because the towers of the Abbaye de Saint Denis, where he was destined one day to be buried, were visible from the terrace. Louis XV was not so particular for he was so morbid that he even loved, as he claimed himself, the scent of new-made graves. The arrival of Anne d'Autriche and the royal family at Saint Germain during the war of the Fronde was one of the most dramatic incidents of the period. They had travelled half the night, coming from the Palais Royal only to find a palace awaiting them which was unheated and unfurnished though the time was mid-January. Always drear and gaunt it was immeasurably so on this occasion. Mazarin had made no provision for the queen's arrival; there, were neither beds, tables nor linen in their proper places, no servants, no attendants of any kind, only the guardians of the palace. The queen was obliged to take rest from her fatigue on a folding camp bedstead, without covering of any kind. The princes fared no better, actually sleeping on the floor. There were plenty of mirrors and much gold gingerbread on the walls and ceilings, but no furniture. The personal belongings which the court had brought with them were few. No one had a change of clothing even; those worn one day were washed the next. However the queen good-naturedly smiled through it all. She called it "an escapade which can hardly last a week." All Paris was by this time crying "_Vive la Fronde_": "_Mort à Mazarin_": but it proved to be something more than a little affair of a week, as we now know. At this period, when Anne d'Autriche was practically a prisoner at Saint Germain, the picture made by the old chateau against its forest background was undeniably more imposing than that which one sees to-day. The glorious forest was not then hidden by rows of banal roof-tops, and the dull drabs of barracks and prisons. In the warm spring mornings the glittering façade of the chateau was brilliant as a diamond against its setting, and the radiating avenues of the park leading from the famous terrace stretched out into infinite vistas that were most alluring. This effect, fortunately, is not wholly lost to-day. At night things were as idyllic as by day. The queen and her ladies, relieved of the dreary presence of the king who still remained at Paris, revelled in an unwonted freedom. Concerts, suppers and dances were the rule and moonlight cavalcades to the heart of the forest, or promenades on foot the length of the terrace, and by some romantically disposed couples far beyond, gave a genuine "begone, dull care" aspect to court life which was not at all possible in the capital. The following picture, taken from a court chronicle, might apply as well to-day if one makes due allowance for a refulgence of myriad lamps gleaming out Parisward as night draws in. "It is a rare moonlight night. The queen and her ladies have emerged late on the stately terrace of Henri IV which borders upon the forest and extends for nearly a league along the edge of the height upon which stands the chateau. "The queen and her brother-in-law, Gaston, Duc d'Orleans, have seated themselves somewhat apart from the rest beside the stone balustrade which overlooks the steep descent to the plain below. Vineyards line the hillside and the Seine flows far beneath, the fertile river-bottom rich with groves and orchards, villas and gardens. Still more distant sweeps away the great plain wrapped in dark shadows punctuated here and there with great splotches of moonlight. Of the great city beyond (the Paris of to-day, whose myriad glow-worm lights actually do lend an additional charm) not a vestige is to be seen. Scarcely a lantern marks the existence of a living soul in the vast expanse below, but the moon, high in the heavens, plots out the entire landscape with a wonderful impressiveness, and the stars topping the forest trees to the rear and the heights which rise on the distant horizon lend their quota of romanticism, and, as if by their scintillations, mark the almost indiscernible towers of the old Abbey of Saint Denis to the left. "'Oh, what a lovely night,' said the queen to her companion. Again it is the old chronicler who speaks. 'Can the world ever appear so calm and peaceful elsewhere?'" This Terrasse de Henri IV, so called, is one of the most splendid and best-known terraces in Europe, and is noted for its extent as well as for its marvellous point of view, the whole panorama Parisward being spread out before one as if on a map, a view which extends from the Chateau de Maisons on the left to the Aqueduct de Marly and the heights of Louveciennes on the right, including the Bois de Vesinet, Mont Valerian, Montmartre and the whole Parisian panorama as far as the Coteaux de Montmorency. This terrace, too, was the project and construction of Le Notre in 1672. It is two and a half kilometres in length and thirty metres in width, upheld by a stone retaining wall which is surmounted by a balustrade. It extends from the Pavillon Henri IV to a gun battery well within the confines of the forest. Entrance from the precincts of the palace is by the great ornamental iron gateway known as the Grille Royale, from which an alleyed row of lindens leads to the heart of the forest. The record of another merry party at Saint Germain is that which recounts that summer evening when the king and court scuttled about the park enjoying themselves as only royalty can--when some one else pays the bills. The terrace, the gravelled walks and the alleyed paths of the forest all led to charming and discreet rendezvous. [Illustration: _The Valley of the Seine, from the Terrace at Saint Germain_] So preoccupied was every one on this particular occasion that the merry-makers had hardly a thought for their king, who, left to his own devices, sought out four maids of honour gossiping in a bower, and, taking the mischief-loving Lauzan into his confidence, pried upon them in the ambush of the night. They were gossiping over the dancers at the ball of the night before when one of them proclaimed her fancy for the agility and grace of the king above all others. It was the first expression of "La Vallière" since she had come timidly to court. The rest is an idyll which is found set forth in all the history books at considerable length, and at this particular moment it was a genuine idyll, for the king had not then become the debauched roué that he was in later life. After Anne d'Autriche, Henriette, the widow of Charles I of England, found at Saint Germain a comfortable and luxurious refuge. From 1661 onward Louis XIV made frequent visits to Saint Germain and was so taken with the charms of the neighbourhood and the immediate site that he conjured six and a half million francs out of his Civil List, in addition to his regular stipend, for the upkeep of this palace alone. This was robbery: modern graft pales before this; candelabra by the pound and writing tables by the square yard were known before the days of machine politicians. James II of England, in 1688, found a hospitable refuge at Saint Germain, thanks to Louis XIV, and died within the palace walls in 1701, as did his wife, Maria d'Este, in 1718. Louis XV and Louis XVI gave Saint Germain scarce a thought, and under the Empire it became a cavalry school, and later, under the Restoration, sinking lower still, it merited only the denomination of a barracks. Its culminating fall arrived when it was turned into a penitentiary. Napoleon III, with finer instincts, here installed a museum, and restorations and rebuilding having gone on intermittently since that time the palace has now taken on a certain pretence to glory. Practically the palace in its present form is a restoration, not entirely a new building, but a rebuilding of an old one, first begun under the competent efforts of the architect Eugene Millet, who sought to reëstablish the edifice as it was under Francis I. The great tower has been preserved but the corner pavilions of the period of Louis XIV have been demolished in accord with the carrying out of this plan. For forty years Saint Germain has been in a state of restoration, and like the restoration of Pierrefonds it has swallowed up fantastic sums. The western façade has been rebuilt from the chapel to the entrance portal and the last of Mansart's pavilions, which he built to please either his own fancy or that of Louis XIV, have been demolished. Mansart himself made way with the old _tourelles_ and the balustrade which rounded off the angles of the walls of the main buildings and substituted a series of heavy, ugly _maisonettes_, more like the bastions of a fortress than any adjunct to a princely dwelling. The courtyard of the chateau is curiously disposed; "so that it may receive the sun at all times," was the claim of its designer. It, too, has been brought back to the state in which it was originally conceived and shorn of its encumbering outhouses and odds and ends which served their purposes well enough when it was a barracks or a prison, but which were a desecration to anything called by so dignified a name as a chateau or a palace. This courtyard is to-day as it was when the lords and ladies in the train of Charles IX strolled and even gambolled therein. The Chapelle de Saint Louis (1240) is in every way remarkable, especially with respect to its great rose-window, which was found by Millet to have been walled up by Louis XIV. The military museum of to-day, which is enclosed by the palace walls, possesses a remarkable collection of its kind, but has no intimate lien upon the history of the palace. The _parterre_ before the palace is cut off from the forest of Saint Germain by three ornate iron gates. It was relaid, a transformation from designs originally conceived in 1676, by Le Notre, modified in 1750 and much reduced in size and beauty in the nineteenth century, though later enlarged by taking three hectares of ground from the forest and turning them into the accepted form of an English garden. A peninsula of a superficial area of over ten thousand acres snugly enfolded in one of the great horseshoe bends of the Seine contains the Forêt de Saint Germain. A line drawn across the neck of the peninsula from Saint Germain to Poissy, following the Route de Poissy, completely cuts off this tongue of land which is as wild and wooded to-day as in the times of Francis, the Henris and the Louis. The _routes_ and _allées_ of the forest are traced with regularity and precision, and historians have written them down as of a length of nearly four hundred leagues, a statement which a glance at any map of the forest will well substantiate. High upon its plateau sits this historic wildwood, for the most part of a soil dry and sandy, with here and there some great _mamelon_ (Druidical or Pagan, as the case may be) rising somewhat above the average level. Francis I, huntsman and lover of art and nature, did much to preserve this great forest, and Louis XIV in his time developed its system of roads and paths, "chiefly to make hunting easy," says history, though it is difficult to follow this. At all events the forest remains to-day the most extensive unspoiled breathing-spot of its class near Paris. Within this maze of paths and alleys are many famed historic spots, the Chêne Saint Fiacre, the Croix de Noailles, the Croix Saint Simon, the Croix du Main (erected in 1709 in honour of the son of Louis XIV), the Étoile des Amazones, the Patte d'Oie, the Chêne du Capitaine and many more which are continually referred to in the history of the palace, the forest of Saint Germain-en-Laye, and of the Abbaye de Poissy. The forest is not wholly separated from the mundane world for occasionally a faint echo of the Rouen railway is heard, a toot from a river tug-boat bringing coal up-river to Paris, the strident notes of automobile horns, or that of a hooting steam-tram which scorches along the principal roadway over which state coaches of kings and courtiers formerly rolled. The contrast is not particularly offensive, but the railway threatens to make further inroads, so one hardly knows the future that may be in store for the patriarch oaks and elms and chestnuts which make up this secular wildwood. Their ages may not in all cases approach those of the great Fontainebleau trees, and in point of fact the forest is by no means as solitary, nor ever was. One of the most celebrated, certainly one of the most spectacular, duels of history took place in the park at Saint Germain-en-Laye. Gui Chabot de Jarnac lived a prodigal and profligate life at the expense--it was said--of the favours of the Duchesse d'Étampes. The dauphin, Henri, making an accusation, deemed wholly uncalled for, a "_duel judiciaire_" took place, with La Châtaigneraie as the dauphin's substitute as adversary of de Jarnac who sought no apology but combat. It was because Henri meantime had become king and issued his first Letters Patent to his council concerning the "_duel judiciaire_," whereby he absolved himself of the right to partake, that he appointed his dear friend François de Vivonne, "Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie," to play the rôle for him. Unfortunately the young man could not justify by victory the honour of his king and before the monarch and the assembled court he was laid low by his adversary. This was one of the last of the "_duels judiciaires_" in France. What Saint Louis and Philippe-le-Bel had vainly sought to suppress, the procedure having cost at least a hundred thousand _livres_, was practically accomplished by Henri II by a stroke of the pen. CHAPTER XVIII MAINTENON Out from Paris, on the old Route d'Espagne, running from the capital to the frontier, down which rolled the royal cortèges of old, lie Maintenon and its famous chateau, some sixty odd kilometres from Paris and twenty from Rambouillet. Just beyond Versailles, on the road to Maintenon, lies the trim little townlet of Saint Cyr, known to-day as the West Point of France, the military school founded by Napoleon I giving it its chief distinction. Going back into the remote past one learns that the village grew up from a foundation of Louis XIV, who bought for ninety-one thousand _livres_ "a chateau and a convent for women," that Madame de Maintenon might establish a girls' school therein. She reserved an apartment for herself, and one suspects indeed that it was simply another project of the Widow Scarron to have a place of rendezvous near the capital. Certainly under the circumstances, taking into consideration the good that she was doing for orphaned girls, she might at least have been allowed the right of a roof to shelter her when she wished. She was absolutely dominant within, though never actually in residence for any length of time. It was here that "Esther" and "Athalie," which Racine had composed expressly for Madame de Maintenon's pensionnaires, were produced for the first time. [Illustration: Fauteuil _of_ Mme. _de_ Maintenon _Worked by the_ Demoiselles _of_ Saint Cyr] When not actually living at Saint Cyr it was Madame de Maintenon's custom to come hither from Paris each day, arriving between seven and eight in the morning, passing the day and returning to town for the evening, much as a celebrated American millionaire journalist, whose country-house overlooks the famous convent garden, does to-day. Madame de Maintenon actually went into retirement at Saint Cyr upon the death of Louis XIV, and for four years, until her death, never left it. She died from old age, rather than from any grave malady, in this "Maison d'Education," which she had inaugurated, and was buried in the chapel, beneath an elaborate tomb which the Duc de Noailles, who married her niece, caused to be erected. The tomb was destroyed during the Revolution and the "Maison Royale de Saint Cyr," of which nothing had been changed since its foundation, was suppressed, the edifice itself being pillaged and the remains of Madame de Maintenon sadly profaned, finally to be recovered and deposited again in the chapel where a simple black marble slab marks them in these graven words: Cy-Git Madame De Maintenon 1635-1719-1836 Napoleon I established the École Militaire at Saint Cyr, from which are graduated each year more than four hundred subaltern officers. The ancient gardens of Madame de Maintenon's time now form the "Champs de Mars," or drill ground, of the military school. South from Saint Cyr runs the great international highroad, the old Route Royale of the monarchy. It rises and falls, but mostly straight as the flight of the crow, until it crosses the great National Forest of Rambouillet. Following the valley of the Eure almost to its headwaters it finally comes to Maintenon, a town of a couple of thousand souls, whose most illustrious inhabitant was that granddaughter of Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, named Françoise, and who came in time to be the Marquise de Maintenon. The Chateau de Maintenon was royal in all but name. The Tresorier des Finances under Louis XI, Jean Cottereau (a public official who made good it seems, since he also served in the same capacity for Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I), had a single daughter, Isabeau, who, in 1526, married Jacques d'Angennes, who at the time was already Seigneur de Rambouillet. As a dot this daughter acquired the lands of Maintenon. The property was afterwards sold to the Marquis de Villeray, from whom Louis XIV bought it in 1674 and disposed of it as a royal gift to Françoise d'Aubigné, the fascinator of kings, who was afterwards to become (in 1688) Madame La Marquise de Maintenon. This ambitious woman subsequently married her niece to the Duc d'Ayen, son of the Maréchal de Noailles, and as a marriage portion--or possibly to avoid unpleasant consequences--turned over the property of Maintenon to the young bride and her husband to whose family, the Noailles, it has ever since belonged. To-day the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles make lengthy stays in this delightful seigneurial dwelling, and since the apartments are full to overflowing of historical souvenirs of their family it may be truly said that their twentieth century life is to some considerable extent in accord with the traditions of other days. The existence of this princely residence is an agreeable reminder of the life of luxury of the olden time albeit certain modernities which we to-day think necessities are lacking. Maintenon is certainly one of the most beautiful so-called royal chateaux of France, if not by its actual importance at least by many of the attributes of its architecture, the extent of the domain and the history connected therewith. It bridges the span between the private chateau and those which may properly be called royal. In the moyen-age Maintenon was a veritable chateau-fort, forming a quadrilateral edifice flanked by round towers at three of its angles, and at the fourth by a great square mass of a donjon, all of which was united by a vast expanse of solidly built wall which possessed all the classic attributes of the best military architecture of its time. Entrance was only over a deep moat spanned by a drawbridge. [Illustration: _Chateau de Maintenon_] Jean Cottereau made his acquisition of the domain towards 1490 and immediately planned a new scheme of being for the old fortress which, according to a more esthetic conception, would thus be brought into the class of a luxurious residential chateau. He destroyed the _courtines_ which attached the great donjon to the rest of the building, and opened up the courtyard so that it faced directly upon the park. He ornamented sumptuously the window framings, the dormer windows, and the turrets, and framed in the entrance portal with a series of sculptured motives which he also added to the entrance to the great inner stairway. In short it was an enlargement and embellishment that was undertaken, but so thoroughly was it done that the edifice quite lost its original character in the process. Like all the chateaux built at this epoch Maintenon was no longer a mere fortress, but a palatial retreat, luxurious in all its appointments, and shorn of all the manifest militant attributes which it had formerly possessed. The shell was there, following closely the original outlines, but the added ornamentation had effectually disguised its primordial existence. Living rooms needed light and air, while a fortress or quarters for troops might well be ordained on other lines. The Renaissance livened up considerably the severe lines of the Gothic chateaux of France, and though invariably the marks of the transition are visible to the expert eye it is also true, as in the case of Maintenon, that there is frequently a homogeneousness which is sufficiently pleasing to effectually cover up any discrepancies which might otherwise be apparent. The warrior aspect is invariably lost in the transition, and thus a Renaissance residential chateau enters at once into a different class from that of the feudal fortress regardless of the fact that such may have been its original status. The armorial device of Jean Cottereau--three unlovely lizards blazoned on a field of silver--is still to be seen sculptured on the two towers flanking the entrance portal which to-day lacks its old drawbridge before mentioned. Surrounding the edifice is a deep, unhealthful, mosquito-breeding moat which is all a mediæval moat should be, but which is actually no great attribute to the place considering its disadvantages. One wonders that it is allowed to exist in so stagnant a condition, as the running waters of the near-by Eure might readily be made use of to change all this. The site of the chateau at the confluence of the Eure and the Voise is altogether charming. Madame de Maintenon did much to make the property more commodious and convenient and built the great right wing which binds the donjon to the main _corps de logis_. Her own apartments were situated in the new part of the palace. She also built the gallery which leads from the Tour de Machicoulis to the pointed chapel, which was a construction of the time of Cottereau, an accessory which every self-respecting country-house of the time was bound to have. It was by this gallery that the open tribune in the little chapel was reached, thus enabling Louis XIV to pass readily to mass while he was so frequent a visitor at that period when, at Maintenon, he was overseeing the construction of his famous aqueduct. Maintenon has had the honour, too, to count among its illustrious guests Racine, who came at the request of Madame de Maintenon, and here wrote "Esther" and "Athalie" which were later produced at Saint Cyr by Madame de Maintenon's celebrated band of "Demoiselles." Louis XIV was not the last of royal race to accept the Chateau de Maintenon's hospitality for the unhappy Charles X was obliged to ask shelter of its chatelain for himself and fleeing family. They arrived a little after midnight of a hot August night, slept as well as possible in the former apartments of Madame de Maintenon, and attended mass in the chapel on the following morning. The monarch then discharged the royal guard and the "hundred Swiss" and gave up, defeated at the game of playing monarch against the will of the people. One enters the _Cour d'Honneur_ by a great portal of the time of Louis XIV. Immediately before one is the principal façade, with its towers of brick and its slender little turrets framing in so admirably the entrance door. This façade is of the fifteenth century and on the tympan of the dormer windows one may still see the monogram of its builder, Cottereau. The drawbridge has been made way with, and the turrets over the portal have been bound together by a diminutive balcony of stone, which, while a manifest superfluity, is in no way objectionable. Under the entrance vault are doors on either side giving access to the living apartments of the _rez-de-chaussée_. In the inner courtyard is to be found the most exquisite architectural detail of the whole fabric, the tower which encloses the monumental stairway, to which entrance is had by a portal which is a veritable Gothic jewel. In the tympan of this portal, as in the dormer windows, is the device of Jean Cottereau, except in this case it is much more elaborate--a Saint Michel and the dragon, surrounded by a "_semis de coquilles_" bearing the escutcheons of the chatelain--_d'argent à lezards de sable_. At the left of this stairway tower is the principal courtyard façade, supported by four arcades, pierced with great windows and surmounted by two fine dormer windows, all in the style of Louis XII, of which the same effects to be observed at Blois and in the Hotel d'Alluye are contemporary. At the left of the inner court is the wing built by Cottereau which terminates in a great round tower, while to the right is that erected by Madame de Maintenon ending at the donjon. Directly opposite is a magnificent vista over the canal of ornamental water framed on either side by patriarchal trees and having as a background the silhouette of the arches of the famous aqueduct which was to lead the waters of the Eure to Versailles. The interior of the chateau is not less remarkable than the exterior. Entering by the tower portal one comes at once to that magnificent _grand escalier_ which is accounted one of the wonders of the French Renaissance. The Salle à Manger of to-day was the old-time Salle des Gardes. It is garnished with a fine wainscoting and panels of Cordovan leather. The Chambre à Coucher of Louis XIV, to the left, is to-day the Salon, and here are to be seen portraits of Louis XIV, Louis XII, Francis I, Henri IV, and Louis XIII. A tiny rotunda contains a statue of Henri IV as a child, and portraits of Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV in their youth. A portrait gallery of restrained proportions contains effigies of Madame de Maintenon and her niece Mademoiselle d'Aubigné, the Duc de Penthièvre, the Comtesse de Toulouse, the Duc de Noailles, the Duchesse de Villars and the Duchesse de Chaumont. The show-piece of the chateau, albeit of recent construction, is known variously as the "Grand Galerie" and the "Longue Galerie." Its decorations are due to the Duc de Noailles, the father of the present proprietor. Virtually it is a portrait gallery of the Noailles family, going back to the times of the Crusaders and coming down to the twentieth century. The apartments of Madame de Maintenon form that portion of the chateau which has the chief sentimental interest. In an ante-chamber is a _chaise à porteurs_ once having belonged to the Marquise, and her portrait by Mignard. Cordovan leather is hung upon the walls, and the restored sleeping-room is hung with a canopy and separated from the rest of the apartment by a balustrade in _bois doré_. Above the chimney-piece is a portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigaud, and, finally, the oratory is ornamented by a series of elegant sculptures in wood and a magnificent Boule coffer. [Illustration: _Aqueduct of Louis XIV at Maintenon_] In the left wing is found a beautiful chapel of the fifteenth century, which is very pure in style. It is decorated with a series of Renaissance wood panels of the finest workmanship. The coloured glass of the windows is of the sixteenth century. The rebuilt monumental stairway connects directly with a passage leading to the entrance portico which opens on the garden terrace before the _parterre_. The park of Maintenon is in every way admirable, with its _pelouse_, its great border of trees, its waterways and more than thirty bridges. Jean Cottereau himself planned the first vegetable and fruit garden, or _potager_, the same whose successor is the delight of the dwellers at Maintenon to-day. The _parterre_, the Grand Canal and the two avenues of majestic trees were due to the conception of Le Notre, and their effect, as set off by the alleyed forest background and the pillars of the aqueduct of Louis XIV, is something unique. The gardens at Maintenon were perhaps not Le Notre's most famous work but they followed the best traditions of their time, and because of their vast expanse of ornamental water were, in a way, quite unequalled. Ambling off towards the forest is a great avenue flanked with high overhanging shade trees known as the Allée Racine. It gets its name from the fact that the dramatist was wont to take his walks abroad in this direction and woo the muse while he was a guest of Madame de Maintenon. CHAPTER XIX RAMBOUILLET AND ITS FOREST [Illustration: Château de Rambouillet] Rambouillet is one of the most famous of the minor royal chateaux of France. Built under the first of the monarchies, in the midst of the vast forest of Yveline, it has always formed a part of the national domain. Even now, under Republican France, it is still the scene of the hunts organized for visiting monarchs, and, within the last half dozen years alone, the monarchs of Spain and Belgium, Italy and England have shot hares and stags and pheasants in company with a Republican president. The occasions have lacked the picturesque costumes of the disciples of Saint Hubert in other times; but the huntsman still winds his horn to the same traditional tune and the banquets given in the chateau on such occasions are, in no small measure, an echo of what has gone before. It was in the old chateau of Rambouillet that Francis I died. In the month of March, 1547, Francis, coming from Chambord in the south, crossed the "accursed bridge" and arrived at the foot of the ivy-grown donjon which one sees to-day, the last remaining relic of the mediæval fortress. For a year the monarch had led a wandering life, revisiting all the favourite haunts of his kingdom, and, though scarce turned fifty, was prematurely aged and gray. He was lifted tenderly from his royal coach, and by the winding stair, carried slowly to his apartments on the second floor, overlooking the three canals and the "accursed bridge" and the tangled forest beyond. Jacques d'Angennes, to whose ancestors Rambouillet one day belonged, acted as host to his royal master and cared for him as a brother, but Francis was dispirited, and growing weaker every moment. He complained bitterly of the death of his favourite son from the plague, and of that of the gay monarch across the channel, his old friend, Henry VIII of England. He was restless and wished to move on to Saint Germain, but his condition made that impossible. After a feeble attempt to rouse himself for a hunt in the forest, he took to his bed again, with the admonition to his friend d'Angennes, who never left him: "I am dying, send for my son, Henri." The prince joined the mourners around the royal bedside and heard his father's confession thus: "My son, I have sinned greatly; I have been led away by my passions; follow that which I have done that is accredited good, and ignore the evil; above all, cherish France; be good to my people." That was all except the final counsel to "beware of the Guises; they are traitors." After that he spoke no more. Francis I, the gallant, art-loving monarch, the father of the Renaissance in France, was dead. In 1562, Catherine de Médici, accompanied by her son Charles IX, here awaited the results of the momentous battle of Dreux. In 1588, Henri III, fleeing Paris after the "_journée des barricades_" came here to rest, and so fatigued was he on his arrival that he went to bed "_tout botté_." The son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan came into possession of "the palace and lands" and in his honour the property was made, in spite of its limited area, a Duché-Pairie. Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, as was but natural, because of its proximity to Maintenon and to Paris, frequently honoured Rambouillet with their presence; and, a little later, Louis XV and the beautiful Comtesse de Toulouse followed suit. The Duc de Penthièvre, to whom the property had by this time descended, at the instance of Louis XVI, ceded to that monarch the domain of Rambouillet. Louis XVI built vast commons and outbuildings, all with some architectural pretence, to house the appanage of the royal hunt, and also built the Laiterie de la Reine and the model farm where, in 1786, he established the first national sheepfold. [Illustration: _Laiterie de la Reine, Rambouillet_] To-day this is the famous École de Bergers, where is quartered the largest flock of _moutons à laine_ (merino sheep) in France, they having been brought chiefly from Spain. The Laiterie de la Reine was a tiny sandstone temple with interior fittings chiefly of white marble, and with a great, round centre-table, and smaller tables in each corner, equally of marble, as becomes a hygienically fitted dairy. It was restored by Louis Napoleon during the Second Empire, and is still to be seen in all its pristine glory. In addition, Louis XVI had at Rambouillet a private domain of a considerable extent which only the Constitution of 1791 united to the Civil List. This property, except the palace, the park and the forest, was sold later by the State. The Imperial Civil List, formed in 1805 by Napoleon, included these dependencies specifically, and the emperor frequently hunted in the neighbouring forest, though, compared to his predecessors, he had little time to devote to that form of sport. Here, too, was signed, in 1810, the decree which united Holland with the Empire. Rambouillet has fallen sadly since the Revolution. A decree of the _Representants du Peuple_, of October 14, 1793, provided that "the furnishings of this palace, heretofore royal, shall be sold." Under the Consulate and Empire a certain citizen, Trepsat by name, received an injury in protecting Napoleon in an attack and, as recompense, was made the official Architect and Conservator of the Palace of Rambouillet. Hardly had Trepsat entered upon his functions when he suggested the demolition of the chateau. Napoleon hesitated, but finally partially agreed, insisting, however, that enough should be left to form a comfortable hunting-lodge. Trepsat would have torn down all and rebuilt anew. Napoleon made an appointment with his architect to visit the property and discuss the matter in detail the following year (1805), but at that moment he was campaigning in Austria, so the interview was not held. This was Trepsat's chance, and he found a pretext to overthrow the entire east wing, but was stopped before he was able to further carry out his ignorant act of vandalism. Trepsat was severely reprimanded by the emperor himself, and was ordered to put things back as he found them. "Even the most battered and sickly architect who ever lived could hardly have had a worse inspiration," said Napoleon. Trepsat, be it recalled, had lost a leg. The restoration was commenced, but Trepsat, committing one fault after another, and finally juggling with the accounts, was obliged to take on a collaborator by the name of Famin, a young _pensionnaire_ of the Académie des Beaux Arts, recently returned from Rome. It was he who saved Rambouillet from utter destruction. The apartments of Napoleon, which were those given over to public functions in the time of the Comte de Toulouse, had been, and were, most luxuriously appointed. That which shows most clearly the imprint of the imperial régime is the curious Salle de Bains which was in direct communication with the study, or Cabinet de Travail. It might have been a room in a Pompeian house so classic were its lines and decorations. There was a series of medallions painted on the wall representing portraits of members of the imperial family. These were chiefly portraits of the female sex, and Napoleon, the first time he entered his bath, in an excess of modesty and fury cried out: "Who is the ass that did this thing?" Immediately they were painted out, and, for the sum of nine hundred and fifty francs, another artist was found who filled the frames of the medallions with sights and scenes associated less intimately with Napoleonic history. Under the Empire the architect Famin was commissioned to furnish a series of architectural embellishments to the gardens of Rambouillet. Various stone statues were added and an octagon pavilion on the Ile des Roches was restored and redecorated. Two great avenues were cut through the _parterre_, and, as if fearing indiscretions on the part of his entourage, the emperor caused to be planted long rows of lindens and tulip trees, which were again masked by two rows of poplars. The _peloux_ of the Jardin Français were reëstablished and the curves and sweeps of the paths of the Jardin Anglais laid out anew. This ancient government property, arisen anew from its ruins, now bore the name of the Pavillon du Roi de Rome, after the son of Napoleon. The Écuries, or stables, which had been built by Louis XVI, were transformed into kennels, and various "posts," or miniature shooting-boxes, were distributed here and there through the park. Under the Restoration the transformation of the chateau, which had been projected ever since the time of Louis XVI, undertaken and then abandoned by Napoleon, was again commenced, but on a less ambitious scale than formerly. Chiefly this transformation consisted of opening up windows, thus making practically a new façade. It was not wholly a happy thought, and the spirit of economy of Louis XVIII, no less, perhaps, than other motives, arrested this mutilation and the architect was discharged from his functions. [Illustration: _Chateau de Rambouillet_] Again the hand of fate fell hard upon Rambouillet and its definite eclipse as a royal abode came with the abdication of Charles X. The abdication was actually signed at Rambouillet, and here, in the same Salle du Conseil, the dauphin renounced the throne in favour of the young Duc de Bordeaux. It was at Rambouillet that Charles X passed those solemn last days before the abdication. He had been unmercifully harassed at Paris and sought a quiet retreat, "not too far from the Tuileries," where he might repose a moment and take counsel. In view of later events this was significant; perhaps it was significant at the time, for the king speedily repented his abdication. It was too late, for he had classed as rebels all the royalists who would have accepted the "infant king" as their monarch, even though the following Revolution prevented this. It was on the third of August that the commissioners, deputies of the Provisionary Government, were brought before the king at Rambouillet. They announced that twenty-five thousand armed Parisians were marching on the chateau to compel him to quit his kingdom. It was not a matter for debate, and at nine o'clock on the same night the monarch gave assent to being conducted to Cherbourg, where he embarked upon his fatal exile. After 1830, with a business-like instinct, the authorities rented the property for twelve years to the Baron Schickler, and, at the end of the Revolution of 1848, its career became more plebeian still; it was rented to a man who converted the palace into an elaborately appointed road-house, and the lawns and groves into open-air restaurants and dancing places. Under the Gouvernement du Juillet the chateau, the park and the forest were removed from the Civil List, and entered upon the inventory of the Administration des Domaines. Under the Second Empire Rambouillet appeared again on the monarchial Civil List. Napoleon III came here at times to hunt, but not to live, and of his rare appearances at the chateau but little record exists. Since 1870 Rambouillet has belonged to the Republican Government, and, since royalties no longer exist in France, Republican chiefs of state now take the lead in Rambouillet's national hunts. The property, as it stands to-day, is divided readily into four distinct parts, the palace, the _parterre_, the _Jardin Anglais_ and the park. The grove of lindens is remarkable in every respect, the ornamental waters are gracious and of vast extent, and the _Laiterie_ and the _Ferme_ are decidedly models of their kind; but the Chaumière des Coquillages, a rustic summer-house of rocks and shells and questionable débris of all sorts, is hideous and unworthy. Not the least of the charming features of the park is the great alley of Louisiana cypresses, one of the real sights, indeed, perfecting the charm of the great body of water to the left of the chateau. Of the structure which existed in the fourteenth century, the chateau of Rambouillet retains to-day only a great battlemented tower, and some low-lying buildings attached to it. Successive enlargements, restorations and mutilations have changed much of the original aspect of the edifice, and modern structures flank and half envelop that which, to all eyes, is manifestly ancient. The débris of the old fortress, which was the foundation of all, adds its bit to the conglomerate mass of which the chief and most imposing elements are the two tall _corps de logis_ in the centre. Within, a rather banal Salle de Bal is shown as the chief feature, but it is conventionally unlovely enough to be passed without emotion, save that its easterly portion takes in the _cabinet_, or private apartment, where Charles X signed his abdication. Adjoining this is the bedroom occupied by that monarch, and a dining-room which also served His Majesty, and which is still used by the head of the government on ceremonious occasions. Its decorative scheme is of the period of Louis XV. The Salle de Conseil is of the period of Charles X, and has some fairly imposing carved wainscotings showing in places the monograms of Marie Sophie and the Comtesse de Toulouse. A great map, or plan, of the Forest of Rambouillet covers the end wall, and, if not esthetically beautiful, is at least useful and very interesting. It was executed under Louis XVI and doubtless served its purpose well when the hunters gathered after a day afield and recounted anecdotes of their adventures. There is another apartment on the ground floor which is known as the _Salle à Manger des Rendezvous de Chasse_, whose very name explains well its functions. The Cabinet de Travail of Marie Antoinette and the Salle de Bain of Napoleon have something more than a mere sentimental interest; they were decidedly practical adjuncts to the royal palace. Napoleon's bath took the form of a rather short, deep pool. Its fresco decorations, as seen to-day--replacing that family portrait gallery which Napoleon caused to be painted out--are after the pseudo-antique manner and represent bird's-eye views of various French cities and towns, while a series of painted armorial trophies decorates the ceiling. On the second floor are the apartments occupied by the Duchesse de Berry and those of the Duchesse d'Angouleme. In the great round tower is the circular apartment where Francis I breathed his last. It is this great truss-vaulted room that most interests the visitor to Rambouillet. On the ground floor is another Salle de Bain, quite as theatrically disposed as that of Napoleon. Its construction was due to the Comte de Toulouse whose taste ran to Delft tiles and polychrome panels, framing two imposing marines, also worked out in tiles. The _parterre_, extending before the main building, is of an ampleness scarcely conceivable until once viewed. It is purely French in design and is of the epoch of the tenancy of the Comte de Toulouse. Before the admirably grouped lindens was a boathouse, and off in every direction ran alleys of acacias, while here and there tulip beds, rose gardens and hedges of rhododendrons flanked the very considerable ornamental waters. This body of water, in the form of a trapezoid, is divided by four grass-grown islets and separates the Jardin Anglais from the Jardin Français. One of the islets is known as the Ile des Roches and contains the Grotte de Rabelais, so named in honour of the Curé of Meudon, when he was presented at Rambouillet by the Cardinal du Bellay. It was on this isle that were given those famous fêtes in honour of the "_beaux esprits_" who formed the assiduous cortège of Catherine de Vivonne, mythological, pagan and _outré_. The Jardin Anglais at Rambouillet is the final expression of the species in France. Designed under the Duc de Penthièvre, it was restored and considerably enlarged by Napoleon and, following the contours of an artificial rivulet, it fulfils the description that its name implies. More remote, and half hidden from the precincts of the chateau, are the Chaumière and the Ermitage and they recall the background of a Fragonard or a Watteau. It is all very "stagy"--but, since it exists, can hardly be called unreal. The park proper, containing more than twelve hundred hectares, is one of the largest and most thickly wooded in France. Between the _parterre_ and the French and English garden and the park lie the Farm and the Laiterie de la Reine, the caprice of Louis XVI when he would content Marie Antoinette and give her something to think about besides her troubles. Napoleon stripped it of its furnishings to install them, for a great part, at Malmaison, for that other unhappy woman--Josephine. Later, to give pleasure to Marie Louise, he ordered them brought back again to Rambouillet, but it was to Napoleon III that the restoration of this charming conceit was due. In the neighbourhood of Rambouillet was the famous Chateau de Chasse, or royal shooting-box, which Louis XV was fond of making a place of rendezvous. On the banks of the Étang de Pourras stood this Chateau de Saint Hubert, named for the patron saint of huntsmen, and within its walls was passed many a happy evening by king and courtiers after a busy day with stag and hound. The hunt in France was perhaps at the most picturesque phase of its existence at this time. The hunt of to-day is but a pale, though bloody, imitation of the real sport of the days when monarchs and their seigneurs in slashed doublet and hose and velvet cloaks pursued the deer of the forest to his death, and knew not the _maitre d'equipage_ of to-day. CHAPTER XX CHANTILLY Chantilly, because of its royal associations, properly finds its place in every traveller's French itinerary. Not only did Chantilly come to its great glory through royal favour, but in later years the French government has taken it under its wing, the chateau, the stables and the vast park and forest, until the ensemble is to-day as much of a national show place as Versailles or Saint Germain. It is here in the marble halls, where once dwelt the Condés and the Montmorencys, that are held each year the examinations of the French Académie des Beaux Arts. And besides this it is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of tourists who, as a class, for a couple of generations previously, never got farther away from the capital than Saint Cloud. Many charters of the tenth century make mention of the estates of Chantilly, which at that time belonged to the Seigneurs of Senlis. The chateau was an evolution from a block-house, or fortress, erected by Catulus in Gallo-Roman times and four centuries later it remained practically of the same rank. In the fourteenth century the chateau was chiefly a vast fortress surrounded by a water defence in the form of an enlarged moat by means of which it was able to resist the Bourguignons and never actually fell until after the taking of Meaux by the English king, Henry V. [Illustration: CHANTILLY] Jean II de Montmorency, by his marriage with Marguerite d'Orgemont, came to be the possessor of the domain, their son, in turn, becoming the heir. It was this son, Guillaume, who became one of the most brilliant servitors of the monarchs Louis XI, Louis XII, and Francis I, and it was through these friends at court that Chantilly first took on its regal aspect. In turn the celebrated Anne de Montmorency, Connetable de France, came into the succession and finding the old fortress, albeit somewhat enlarged and furbished up by his predecessor, less of a palatial residence than he would have, separated the ancient chateau-fort from an added structure by an ornamental moat, or canal, and laid out the _pelouse_, _parterres_ and the alleys of greensward leading to the forest which make one of the great charms of Chantilly to-day. Here resided, as visitors to be sure, but for more or less extended periods, and at various times, Charles V, Charles IX and Henri IV, each of them guests of the hospitable and ambitious Montmorencys. [Illustration: _Statue of Le Notre, Chantilly_] Chantilly passed in 1632 to Charlotte, the sister of the last Maréchal de Montmorency, the wife of Henri II, Prince de Condé, the mother of the Grand Condé, the Prince de Conti and the Duchesse de Longueville. With the Grand Condé came the greatest fame, the apotheosis, of Chantilly. This noble was so enamoured of this admirable residence that he never left it from his thoughts and decorated it throughout in the most lavish taste of his time, destroying at this epoch the chateau of the moyen-age and the fortress. These were the days of gallant warriors with a taste for pretty things in art, not mere bloodthirsty slaughterers. On the foundations of the older structures there now rose an admirable pile (not that which one sees to-day, however), embellished by the surroundings which were evolved from the brain of the landscape gardener, Le Notre. The Revolution made way with this lavish structure and with the exception of the Chatelet, or the Petit Chateau (designed by Jean Bullant in 1560, and remodelled within by Mansart) the present-day work is a creation of the Duc d'Aumale, the heir to the Condés' name and fame, to whom the National Assembly gave back his ancestral estates which had in the meantime come into the inventory of royal belongings through the claims established by the might of the Second Empire. Back to the days of the Grand Condé one reads of an extended visit made by Louis XIV to his principal courtier. It was at an expense of two hundred thousand _écus_ that the welcoming fête was accomplished. Madame de Sévigné has recounted the event more graphically than any other chronicler, and it would be presumption to review it here at length. The incident of Vatel alone has become classic. To the coterie of poets at Rambouillet must be added those of Chantilly; their sojourn here added much of moment to the careers and reputations of Boileau, Racine, Bourdaloue and Bossuet. It was the latter, who, in the funeral oration which he delivered on the death of the Prince de Condé, said: "Here under his own roof one saw the Grand Condé as if he were at the head of his armies, a noble always great, as well in action as in repose. Here you have seen him surrounded by his friends in this magnificent dwelling, in the shady alleys of the forest or beside the purling waters of the brooks which are silent neither day nor night." The Grand Condé died, however, at Fontainebleau. The heir, Henri-Jules de Bourbon, did his share towards keeping up and embellishing the property, and to him was due that charming wildwood retreat known as the Parc de Sylvie. Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Minister of Louis XV at the commencement of his reign, had gained a fabulous sum of money in the notorious "Law's Bank" affair, and, with a profligate and prodigal taste in spending, lived a life of the grandest of grand seigneurs at Chantilly, to which, as his donation to its architectural importance, he contributed the famous Écuries, or stables. To show that he was _persona grata_ at court he gave a great fête here for Louis XV and the Duchesse du Barry. The last Prince de Condé but one before the Revolution built the Chateau d'Enghien in the neighbourhood, and sought to people the Parc de Sylvie with a rustic colony of thatched _maisonettes_ and install his favourites therein in a weak imitation of what had been done in the Petit Trianon. The note was manifestly a false one and did not endure, not even is its echo plainly audible for all is hearsay to-day and no very definite record of the circumstance exists. Chantilly in later times has been a favourite abode with modern monarchs. The King of Denmark, the Emperor Joseph II and the King of Sweden were given hospitality here, and much money was spent for their entertainment, and much red and green fire burned for their amusement and that of their suites. The Revolution's fell blow carried off the principal parts of the Condé's admirable constructions and it is fortunate that the Petit Chateau escaped the talons of the "Bande Noire." Immediately afterwards the Chateau d'Enghien and the Écuries were turned over to the uses of the Minister of War, and the authorities of the Jardin des Plantes were given permission to transplant and transport anything which pleased their fancy among the exotics which had been set out by Le Notre in Chantilly's famous _parterres_. Under the imperial régime the Forêt de Chantilly was given in fee simple to Queen Hortense, though all was ultimately returned to the Condé heirs after the Restoration. It was at this period that Chantilly received the visit of Alexander, Emperor of Russia, and the historian's account of that visit makes prominent the fact that during the periods of rain it was necessary that an umbrella be carried over the imperial head as he passed through the corridors of the palace from one apartment to another. The host of the emperor died here in 1818 and his son, spending perhaps half of his time here, cared little for restoration and spent all his waking hours hunting in the forest, returning to the Petit Chateau only to eat and sleep. The Duc de Bourbon added to the flanking wings of the Petit Chateau and cleaned up the débris which was fast becoming moss-grown, weed encumbered and altogether disgraceful. The moats were cleaned out of their miasmatic growth and certain of the grass-carpeted _parterres_ resown and given a semblance of their former selves. Some days after the Revolution of 1830 the Prince de Condé died in a most dramatic fashion, and his son, the Duc d'Enghien, having been shot at Vincennes under the Empire, he willed the Duc d'Aumale and his issue his legal descendants forever. Towards 1840 the Duc d'Aumale sought to reconstruct the splendours of Chantilly, but a decree of January 22, 1852, banished the entire Orleans family and interrupted the work when the property was sold to the English bankers, Coutts and Company, for the good round sum of eleven million francs, not by any means an extravagant price for this estate of royal aspect and proportions. The National Assembly of 1872 did the only thing it could do in justice to tradition--bought the property in and decreed that it be restored to its legitimate proprietor. It was as late as 1876 that the Duc d'Aumale undertook the restoration of the Chatelet and the rebuilding of the new chateau which is seen to-day. The latter is from the designs of Henri Daumet, member of the Institut de France. In general the structure of to-day occupies the site of the moyen-age chateau but is of quite a different aspect. The Duc d'Aumale made a present of the chateau and all that was contained therein to the Institut de France. From a purely sordid point of view it was a gift valued at something like thirty-five million francs, not so great as many new-world public legacies of to-day, but in certain respects of a great deal more artistic worth. The mass is manifestly imposing, made up as it is, of four distinct parts, the Eglise, dating from 1692, the Écuries, the Chatelet--or Petit Chateau, and the Chateau proper--the modern edifice. Before the celebrated Écuries is a green, velvety _pelouse_ which gives an admirable approach. The architecture of the Écuries is of a heavy order and the sculptured decorations actually of little esthetic worth, representing as they do hunting trophies and the like. Before the great fountain one deciphers a graven plaque which reads as follows: Louis Henri de Bourbon Prince de Condé Fut Construire Cette Écurie 1701-1784. Within the two wings may be stabled nearly two hundred horses. The Grand Écuries at Chantilly are assuredly one of the finest examples extant of that luxuriant art of the eighteenth century French builder. Luxurious, excessively ornate and overpowering it is, and, for that reason, open to question. The work of the period knew not the discreet middle road. It was of Chantilly that it was said that the live stock was better lodged than its masters. The architect of this portion of the chateau was Jean Aubert, one of the collaborators of Jules Hardouin Mansart. The characteristics of Chantilly, take it as a whole, the chateau, the park and the forest, are chiefly theatrical, but with an all-abiding regard for the proprieties, for beyond a certain heaviness of architectural style in parts of the chateau everything is of the finely focussed relative order of which the French architect and landscape gardener have for ages been past masters. The real French garden is here to be seen almost at its best, its squares and ovals of grassy green apportioned off from the mass by gravelled walks and ornamented waters. The "_tapis d'orient_" effect, so frequently quoted by the French in writing of such works, is hardly excelled elsewhere. All this shocked the mid-eighteenth century English traveller, but it was because he did not, perhaps could not, understand. Rigby, "the Norwich alderman" as the French rather contemptuously referred to this fine old English gentleman, said frankly of Chantilly: "All this has cost dear and produced a result far from pleasing." He would have been better pleased doubtless with a privet or box hedge and an imitation plaster rockery, things which have never agreed with French taste, but which were the rule in pretentious English gardens of the same period. Rigby must indeed have been a "_grincheau_," as the French called him, for this same up-country gentleman said of Versailles: "Lovely surrounding country but palace and park badly designed." Versailles is not that, whatever else its faults may be. Chantilly is more than a palace, it is a museum of nature, a hermitage of art and of history. The fantasy of its _tourelles_, its _lucarnes_ and its _pignons_ are something one may hardly see elsewhere in such profusion, and the fact that they are modern is forgotten in the impression of the general silhouette. The adventurer who first built a donjon on the Rocher de Chantilly little knew with what seigneurial splendour the site was ultimately to be graced. From a bare outpost it was transformed, as if by magic, into a Renaissance palace of a supreme beauty. The Duc d'Aumale said in his "Acte de Donation de Chantilly": "It stands complete and varied, a monument of French art in all its branches, a history of the best epochs of our glory." Among all the palatial riches neighbouring upon Paris, not forgetting Versailles, Compiègne, Fontainebleau, Pierrefonds and Rambouillet, Chantilly, by the remarkable splendour of its surroundings, its situation and the artistic treasures which it possesses, is in a class by itself. It is a class more clearly defined by the historic souvenirs which surround it than any other contemporary structure of this part of France. Its corridors and gravelled walks and the long alleys of the park and forest may not take on the fête-like aspect which they knew in the eighteenth century, but they are not solitary like those of Fontainebleau and Rambouillet, nor noisily overrun like those of Versailles or Saint Germain. The ornamental waters which surround the Chateau de Chantilly are of a grand and nearly unique beauty. It is a question if they are not finer than the waters of Versailles, indeed they preceded them and may even have inspired them. The Chatelet, the chateau proper and the chapel form a group quite distinct from the Écuries. The Cour d'Honneur is really splendid and one hardly realizes the juxtaposition of modernity. The pavilion attributed to Jean Bullant, the western façade, the ancient Petit Chateau, the Grand Vestibule, the Grand Escalier and the Gallerie des Cerfs and a dozen other apartments are of a rare and imposing beauty, though losing somewhat their distinctive aspect by reason of the _objets de musée_ distributed about their walls and floors. One of the landscape gems of Chantilly is the _Pelouse_, a vast esplanade of greensward now forming, in part, the celebrated race track of Chantilly. Sport ever formed a part of the outdoor program at Chantilly, but that of to-day is just a bit more horsey than that of old, a good deal less picturesque and assuredly more vulgarly banal as to its _cachet_ than the hunts, the tourneys and courses of the romantic age. [Illustration: _Chateau de Chantilly_] Thousands come to Chantilly to wager their coin on scrubs and dark horses ridden by third-rate "warned-off" jockeys from other lands, but probably not ten in ten thousand of the lookers on at the Grand Prix du Jockey Club in May ever make the occasion of the spring meeting an opportunity for visiting the fine old historic monument of the Condés. The "Races" of Chantilly may be given a further word in that they are an outgrowth of a foundation by the Duc d'Orleans in 1832. The track forms a circuit of two thousand metres, and occupies quite the best half of the Pelouse, closed in on one side by the thick-grown Forêt de Chantilly and flanked, in part, on the other by the historic Écuries, with the Tribune, or grand stand, just to the south. Many tourists arrive at Chantilly by auto, stop brusquely before the Grande Grille, rush through the galleries of the chateau, do "_cent pas_" in the park, give a cursory glance at the stables and are off; but more, many more, with slower steps and saner minds, drink in the charms which are offered on all sides and consider the time well spent even if they have paid "Boulevard Prices" at the Restaurant du Grand Condé for their _dejeuner_. It has been said that a museum is a reunion of _objets d'art_ brought about by a methodical grouping, either chronologically or categorically. The Duc d'Aumale's Musée de Chantilly is more an expression of personal taste. He collected what he wished and he arranged his collections as suited his fancy. The famous Musée de Chantilly, which is the lodestone which draws most folk thither, so admirably housed, was a gift of the Duc d'Aumale who, for the glory of his ancestors, and the admiration of the world, to say nothing of his own personal satisfaction, here gathered together an eclectic collection of curious and artistic treasures, certainly not the least interesting or valuable among the great public collections in France. The effect produced is sometimes startling, a Messonier is cheek by jowl with a Baron Gros, a Decamps _vis à vis_ to a Veronese, and a Lancret is bolstered on either hand by a Poussin and a Nattier. Amid all this disorder there is, however, an undeniable, inexplicable charm. There are three distinct apartments worth, more than all the others, the glance of the hurried visitor to the Musée Condé at Chantilly. In the first, the Santuario, is the Livre d'Heures of Etienne Chevalier, by Jean Fouquet, considered as the most important relic of primitive French art extant. The Cabinet des Gemmes comes second, and here is the celebrated "Diamant Rose," called the Grand Condé. Finally there is the Galerie de Psyche, with forty-four coloured glass windows, executed for the Connetable de Montmorency in 1541-1542. The great collection of historical and artistic treasures stowed away within the walls of Chantilly the Duc d'Aumale selected himself in order to associate his own name with the glorious memory of the Condés, who were so intimately connected with the chateau. The Duc sought to recover such of the former furnishings of the chateau as had been dissipated during the Revolution whenever they could be heard of and could be had at public or private sale. In this connection a word on Chantilly lace may not be found inapropos. The Chantilly lace of to-day, it is well to recall, is a mechanically produced article of commerce, turned out by the running mile from Nottingham, England, though in the days when Chantilly's porcelains rivalled those of Sevres it was purely a local product. One may well argue therefore that the bulk of the Chantilly lace sold in the shops of Chantilly to-day is not on a par with the admirable examples to be seen in the glass cases of the museum. A wooded alley leading to the great park runs between the main edifice and the Chateau d'Enghien, a gentle incline descending again to the sunken gardens in a monumental stairway of easy slope, the whole a quintessence of much that is best of the art of the landscape gardener of the time. To the left extends the vast Jardin Anglais--a veritable French Jardin Anglais. Let not one overlook the distinction: On conventional lines it is pretty, dainty and pleasing, but the species lacks the dignified formality of the Italian garden or the ingenious arrangement of the French. Its curves and ovals and circles are annoying after the _lignes droites_ and the right angles and the _broderies_ of the French variety. The Forêt de Chantilly covers two thousand four hundred and forty-nine hectares and extends from the Bois de Hérivaux on one side to the Forêt de Senlis on the other. The _rendezvous-de-chasse_ was, in the old days, and is to-day on rare occasions, at the Rond Point, to which a dozen magnificent forest roads lead from all directions, that from the town being paved with Belgian blocks, the dread of automobilists, but delightful to ride over in muddy weather. The Route de Connetable, so called, is well-nigh ideal of its kind. It launches forth opposite the chateau and at its entrance are two flanking stone lions. It is of a soft soil suitable for horseback riding, but entirely unsuited for wheeled traffic of any kind. Another of the great forest roads leads to the Chateau de la Reine Blanche, a diminutive edifice in the pointed style, with a pair of svelte towers coiffed candle-snuffer fashion. Tradition, and very ancient and somewhat dubious tradition, attributes the edifice as having belonged to Blanche de Navarre, the wife of Philippe de Valois. Again it is thought to have been a sort of royal attachment to the Abbaye de Royaumont, built near by, by Saint Louis. This quaintly charming manor of minute dimensions was a tangible, habitable abode in 1333, but for generations after appears to have fallen into desuetude. A mill grew up on the site, and again the walls of a chateau obliterated the more mundane, work-a-day mill. The Duc de Bourbon restored the whole place in 1826 that it might serve him and his noble friends as a hunting-lodge. CHAPTER XXI COMPIÉGNE AND ITS FOREST One of the most talked of and the least visited of the minor French palaces is that of Compiègne. The archeologists coming to Compiègne first notice that all its churches are "_malorientées_." It is a minor point with most folk, but when one notes that its five churches have their high altars turned to all points of the compass, instead of to the east, it is assuredly a fact to be noticed, even if one is more romantically inclined than devout. Through and through, Compiègne, its palace, its hotel-de-ville, its forest, is delightful. Old and new huddle close together, and the _art nouveau_ decorations of a branch of a great Parisian department store flank a butcher's stall which looks as though it might have come down from the times when all trading was done in the open air. Compiègne's origin goes back to the antique. It was originally Compendium, a Roman station situated on the highway between Soissons and Beauvais. A square tower, Cæsar's Tower, gave a military aspect to the walled and fortified station, and evidences are not wanting to-day to suggest with what strength its fortifications were endowed. [Illustration: Compiègne] It was here that the first Frankish kings built their dwelling, and here that Pepin-le-Bref received the gracious gift of an organ from the Emperor Constantine, and here, in 833, that an assembly of bishops and nobles deposed Louis-le-Débonnaire. Charles-le-Chauve received Pope Jean VIII in great pomp in the palace at Compiègne, and it was this Pope who gave absolution to Louis-le-Begue, who died here but a year after, 879. The last of the Carlovingians, Louis V (le-Faineant), died also at Compiègne in 987. The city is thus shown to have been a favourite place of sojourn for the kings of the Franks, and those of the first and second races. As was but obvious many churchly councils were held here, fourteen were recorded in five centuries, but none of great ecclesiastical or civil purport. The city first got its charter in 1153, but the Merovingian city having fallen into a sort of galloping decay Saint Louis gave it to the Dominicans in 1260, who here founded, by the orders of the king, a Hotel Dieu which, in part, is the same edifice which performs its original functions to-day. The first great love of Compiègne was expressed by Charles V, who rebuilt the palace of Charles-le-Chauve in a manner which was far from making it a monumental or artistically disposed edifice. It was originally called the Louvre, from the Latin word _opus_ (_l'oeuvre_), a word which was applied to all the chateaux-forts of these parts. The same monarch did better with the country-houses which he afterwards built at Saint Germain and Vincennes; perhaps by this time he had grown wise in his dealings with architects. Like all the little towns of the Valois, Compiègne abounds in souvenirs of the Guerre de Cent Ans, Jeanne d'Arc, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Napoleon I and Napoleon III, and as its monuments attest this glory, so its forest, one of the finest in France, awakens almost as many historical memories. Wars and rumors of war kept Compiègne in a turmoil for centuries, but the most theatrical episode was the famous "_sortie_" made by Jeanne d'Arc when she was attempting to defend the city against the combined English and Burgundian troops. It was an episode in which faint heart, perhaps treason, played an unwelcome part, for while the gallant maid was taking all manner of chances outside the gates the military governor, Guillaume de Flavy, ordered the barriers of the great portal closed behind her and her men. Near the end of the Pont de Saint Louis Jeanne d'Arc fell into the hands of the besiegers. An archer from Picardy captured her single handed, and, for a round sum in silver or in kind, turned her over to her torturer, Jean de Luxembourg. A statue of the maid is found on the public "Place," and the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, a great circular donjon of the thirteenth century, is near by. Another souvenir is to be found in the ancient Hotel de Boeuf, at No. 9 Rue de Paris, where the maid lodged from the eighteenth to the twenty-third of August, 1429, awaiting the entry of Charles VII. With the era of Francis I that gallant and fastidious monarch came to take up his residence at Compiègne. He here received his "friend and enemy," Charles V, but strangely enough there is no monument in Compiègne to-day which is intimately associated with the stay here of the art-loving Francis. He preferred, after all, his royal manor at Villers-Cotterets near by. There was more privacy there, and it formed an admirable retreat for such moments when the king did not wish to bask in publicity, and these moments were many, though one might not at first think so when reading of his affairs of state. There were also affairs of the heart which, to him, in many instances, were quite as important. This should not be forgotten. In 1624 a treaty was signed at Compiègne which assured the alliance of Louis XIII with the United Provinces, and during this reign the court was frequently in residence here. In 1631 Marie de Médici, then a prisoner in the palace, made a notable escape and fled, doomed ever afterwards to a vagabond existence, a terrible fall for her once proud glory, to her death in a Cologne garret ten years later. In 1635 the Grand Chancellor of Sweden signed a treaty here which enabled France to mingle in the affairs of the Thirty Years' War. During the Fronde, that "Woman's War," which was so entirely unnecessary, Anne d'Autriche held her court in the Palace of Compiègne and received Christine de Suede on certain occasions when that royal lady's costume was of such a grotesque nature, and her speech so _chevaleresque_, that she caused even a scandal in a profligate court. Anne d'Autriche, too, left Compiègne practically a prisoner; another _ménage à trois_ had been broken up. The most imposing event in the history of Compiègne of which the chronicles tell was the assembling of sixty thousand men beneath the walls by Louis XIV, in order to give Madame de Maintenon a realistic exhibition of "playing soldiers." At all events the demonstration was a bloodless one, and an immortal page in Saint-Simon's "Memoires" consecrates this gallantry of a king in a most subtle manner. Another fair lady, a royal favourite, too, came on the scene at Compiègne in 1769 when Madame du Barry was the principal _artiste_ in the great fête given in her honour by Louis XV. She was lodged in a tiny chateau (built originally for Madame de Pompadour) a short way out of town on the Soissons road. Du Barry must have been a good fairy to Compiègne for Louis XV lavished an abounding care on the chateau and, rather than allow the architect, Jacques Ange Gabriel, have the free hand that his counsellors advised, sought to have the ancient outlines of the former structure on the site preserved and thus present to posterity through the newer work the two monumental façades which are to be seen to-day. The effort was not wholly successful, for the architect actually did carry out his fancy with respect to the decoration in the same manner in which he had designed the École Militaire at Paris and the two colonnaded edifices facing upon the Place de la Concorde. This work was entirely achieved when Louis XVI took possession. This monarch, in 1780, caused to be fitted up a most elaborate apartment for the queen (his marriage with Marie Antoinette was consecrated here), but that indeed was all the hand he had in the work of building at Compiègne, which has practically endured as his predecessor left it. The Revolution and Consulate used the chateau as their fancy willed, and rather harshly, but in 1806 its restoration was begun and Charles IV of Spain, upon his dethronement by Napoleon, was installed therein a couple of years later. The palace, the park and the forest now became a sort of royal appanage of this Spanish monarch, which Napoleon, in a generous spirit, could well afford to will him. He lived here some months and then left precipitately for Marseilles. Napoleon affected a certain regard for this palatial property, though only occupying it at odd moments. He embellished its surroundings, above all its gardens, in a most lavish manner. Virtually, all things considered, Compiègne is a _Palais Napoleonien_, and if one would study the style of the Empire at its best the thing may be done at Compiègne. On July 30, 1814, Louis XVIII and Alexander of Russia met at Compiègne amid a throng of Paris notabilities who had come thither for the occasion. Charles X loved to hunt in the forest of Compiègne. In 1832, one of the daughters of Louis-Philippe, the Princesse Louise, was married to the King of the Belgians in this palace. From 1852 to 1870 the palace and its grounds were the scenes of many imperial fêtes. Napoleon III had for Compiègne a particular predilection. The prince-president, in 1852, installed himself here for the autumn season, and among his guests was that exquisite blond beauty, Eugenie Montijo, who, the year after, was to become the empress of the French. Faithful to the memory of his uncle, by reason of a romantic sentiment, the Third Napoleon came frequently to Compiègne; or perhaps it was because of the near-by hunt, for he was a passionate disciple of Saint Hubert. It was his Versailles! The palace of Compiègne as seen to-day presents all the classic coldness of construction of the reign of Louis XV. Its lines were severe and that the building was inspired by a genius is hard to believe, though in general it is undeniably impressive. Frankly, it is a mocking, decadent eighteenth century architecture that presents itself, but of such vast proportions that one sets it down as something grand if not actually of surpassing good taste. In general the architecture of the palace presents at first glance a coherent unit, though in reality it is of several epochs. Its furnishings within are of different styles and periods, not all of them of the best. Slender gold chairs, false reproductions of those of the time of Louis XV, and some deplorable tapestries huddle close upon elegant "_bergères_" of Louis XVI, and sofas, tables and bronzes of master artists and craftsmen are mingled with cheap castings unworthy of a stage setting in a music hall. A process of adroit eviction will some day be necessary to bring these furnishings up to a consistent plane of excellence. One of the façades is nearly six hundred feet in length, with forty-nine windows stretching out in a single range. It might be the front of an automobile factory if it were less ornate, or that of an exposition building were it more beautiful. In some respects it is reminiscent of the Palais Royal at Paris, particularly as to the entrance colonnade and gallery facing the Louvre. The chief beauty within is undoubtedly the magnificent stairway, with its balustrade of wrought iron of the period of Louis XVI. The Salle de Spectacle is of a certain Third Empire-Louis Napoleon distinction, which is saying that it is neither very lovely nor particularly plain, simply ordinary, or, to give it a French turn of phrase, vulgar. One of the most remarkable apartments is the Salle des Cartes, the old salon of the Aides de Camp, whose walls are ornamented with three great plans showing the roads and by-paths of the forest, and other decorative panels representing the hunt of the time of Louis XV. The Chambre à Coucher of the great Napoleon is perhaps the most interesting of all the smaller apartments, with its strange bed, which in form more nearly resembles an oriental divan than anything European. Doubtless it is not uncomfortable as a bed, but it looks more like a tent, or camp, in the open, than anything essentially intended for domestic use within doors. After the great Napoleon, his nephew Napoleon III was its most notable occupant, though it was last slept in by the Tzar Nicholas II, when he visited France in 1901. The sleeping-room of the Empress Eugenie is fitted up after the style of the early Empire with certain interpolations of the mid-nineteenth century. The most distinct feature here is the battery of linen coffers which Marie Louise had had especially designed and built. The Salon des Dames d'Honneur, with its double rank of nine "scissors chairs," the famous _tabourets de cour_, lined up rigidly before the _canapé_ on which the empress rested, is certainly a remarkable apartment. This was the _decor_ of convention that Madame Sans Gene rendered classic. [Illustration: _Napoleon's Bedchamber, Compiègne_] Like all the French national palaces Compiègne has a too abundant collection of Sevres vases set about in awkward corners which could not otherwise be filled, and, beginning with the vestibule, this thing is painfully apparent. The apartments showing best the Napoleonic style in decorations and furnishings are the Salon des Huissiers, the Salle des Gardes, the Escalier d'Apollon, the Salle de Don Quichotte--which contains a series of designs destined to have served for a series of tapestries intended to depict scenes in the life of the windmill knight--the Galerie des Fêtes, the Galerie des Cerfs, the Salle Coypel, the Salle des Stucs and the Salon des Fleurs, through which latter one approaches the royal apartments. In the sixteenth century, or, more exactly, between 1502 and 1510, was constructed Compiègne's handsome Hotel de Ville, one of the most delightful architectural mixtures of Gothic and Renaissance extant. It is an architectural monument of the same class as the Palais de Justice at Rouen or the Hotel Cluny at Paris. Its frontispiece is marvellous, the _rez-de-chaussée_ less gracious than the rest perhaps, but with the first story blooming forth as a gem of magnificent proportions and setting. Between the four windows of this first story are posed statuesque effigies of Charles VII, Jeanne d'Arc, Saint Rémy and Louis IX. In the centre, in a niche, is an equestrian statue of Louis XII, who reigned when this monument was being built. A _balustrade à jour_ finishes off this story, which, in turn, is overhung with a high, peaked gable, and above rise the belfry and its spire, of which the great clock dates from 1303, though only put into place in 1536. The only false note is sounded by the two insignificant, cold and unlovely wings which flank the main structure on either side. It is a sixteenth century construction unrivalled of its kind in all France, more like a Belgian town-hall belfry than anything elsewhere to be seen outside Flanders, but it is not of the low Spanish-Renaissance order as are so many of the imposing edifices of occidental and oriental Flanders. It is a blend of Gothic and Renaissance, and, what is still more rare, the best of Gothic and the best of Renaissance. Above its façade is a civic belfry, flanked by two slender towers. Within the portal-vestibule rises a monumental stairway which must have been the inspiration of many a builder of modern opera-houses. Opposite the Hotel Dieu is the poor, rent relic of the Tour de Jeanne d'Arc, originally a cylindrical donjon of the twelfth century, wherein "La Pucelle" was imprisoned in 1430. Between the palace and the river are to be seen many vestiges of the mediæval ramparts of the town, and here and there a well-defined base of a gateway or tower. Mediævalism is rampant throughout Compiègne. The park surrounding the palace is quite distinct from the wider radius of the Fôret de Compiègne. It is of the secular, conventional order, and its perspectives, looking towards the forest from the terrace and vice versa, are in all ways satisfying to the eye. One of the most striking of these alleyed vistas was laid out under the orders of the first Napoleon in 1810. It loses itself in infinity, almost, its horizon blending with that of the far distant Beaux Monts in the heart of the forest. In the immediate neighbourhood of the palace are innumerable statues, none of great beauty, value or distinction. On the south side runs a Cours, or Prado, as it would be called in Catalonia. The word Cours is of Provençal origin, and how it ever came to be transplanted here is a mystery. Still here it is, a great tree-shaded promenade running to the river. The climate of Compiègne is never so blazing hot as to make this Cours so highly appreciated as its namesakes in the Midi, but as an exotic accessory to the park it is quite a unique delight. Within the park may still be traced the outlines of the moat which surrounded the palace of Charles V, as well as some scanty remains of the same period. Another distinctive feature is the famous _Berceau en Fer_, an iron trellis several thousands of feet in length, which was built by Napoleon I as a reminder to Marie Louise of a similar, but smaller, garden accessory which she had known at Schoenbrunn. It was a caprice, if you like, and rather a futile one since it was before the time when artistically worthless things were the rage just because of their gigantic proportions. Napoleon III cut it down in part, and pruned it to more esthetic proportions, and what there is left, vine and flower grown, is really charming. The Forêt de Compiègne as a historic wildwood goes back to the Druids who practiced their mysterious rites under its antique shade centuries before the coming of the kings, who later called it their own special hunting preserve. Stone hatchets, not unlike the tomahawks of the red man, have been found and traced back--well, definitely to the Stone Age, and supposedly to the time when they served the Druids for their sacrifices. [Illustration: _Cours de Compiègne_] The soldiers of Cæsar came later and their axes were of iron or copper, and though on the warpath, too, their way was one which was supposed to lead civilization into the wilderness. Innumerable traces of the Roman occupation are to be found in the forest by those who know how to read the signs; twenty-five different localities have been marked down by the archeologists as having been stations on the path blazed by the Legions of Rome. After the Romans came the first of the kings as proprietors of the forest, and in the moyen-age the monks, the barons and the crown itself shared equally the rights of the forest. Legends of most weird purport are connected with various points scattered here and there throughout the forest, as at the Fosse Dupuis and the Table Ronde, where a sort of "trial by fire" was held by the barons whenever a seigneur among them had conspired against another. Ariosto, gathering many of his legends from the works of the old French chroniclers, did not disdain to make use of the Forêt de Compiègne as a stage setting. During the reign of Clothaire the forest was known as the Forêt de Cuise, because of a royal palace hidden away among the Druid oaks which bore the name of Cotia, or Cusia. Until 1346 the palace existed in some form or other, though shorn of royal dignities. It was at this period that Philippe VI divided the forests of the Valois into three distinct parts in order to better regulate their exploitation. The Frankish kings being, it would seem, inordinately fond of _la chasse_ the Forêt de Compiègne, in the spring and autumn, became their favorite rendezvous. Alcuin, the historian, noted this fact in the eighth century, and described this earliest of royal hunts in some detail. In 715 the forest was the witness of a great battle between the Austrasians and the Neustrians. Before Francis I with his habitual initiative had pierced the eight great forest roads which come together at the octagon called the Puits du Roi, the forest was not crossed by any thoroughfare; the nearest thing thereto was the Chaussée de Brunhaut, a Roman way which bounded it on the south and east. Louis XIV and Louis XV, in turn, cut numerous roads and paths, and to the latter were due the crossroads known as the Grand Octagone and the Petit Octagone. It was over one of these great forest roads, that leading to Soissons, that Marie Louise, accompanied by a cortège of three hundred persons, eighty conveyances and four hundred and fifty horses, journeyed in a torrential rain, in March 1807, when she came to France to found a dynasty. A marriage had been consummated by procuration at Vienna, and she set out to actually meet her future spouse for the first time at Soissons. At the little village of Courcelles, on the edge of the forest between Soissons and Compiègne, two men enveloped in great protecting cloaks had arrived post-haste from Compiègne. At the parish church they stopped a moment and took shelter under the porch, impatiently scanning the horizon. Finally a lumbering _berlin de voyage_ lurched into view, drawn by eight white horses. In its depths were ensconced two women richly dressed, one a beautiful woman of mature years, the other a young girl scarce eighteen years. The most agitated of the men, he who was clad in a gray redingote, sprang hastily to the carriage door. He was introduced by the older woman as "_Sa Majesté l'Empereur des Françaises, mon frere_." The speaker was one of the sisters of Napoleon, Caroline, Queen of Naples; the other was the Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of Franz II, Emperor of Austria. An imposing ceremonial had been planned for Soissons and the court had been ordered to set out from Compiègne with the emperor, in order to arrive at Soissons in due time. When the actual signal for the departure was given the emperor was nowhere to be found. As usual he had anticipated things. For weeks before the arrival of the empress to be Napoleon had passed the majority of his waking hours at Paris in the apartments which he had caused to be prepared for Marie Louise. He selected the colour of the furnishings, and superintended the very placing of the furniture. Among other things he had planned a boudoir which alone represented an expenditure of nearly half a million francs. Lejeune, who had accompanied Maréchal Berthier to Vienna to arrange the marriage, had returned and given his imperial master a glowing description of the charms of the young archduchess who was to be his bride. The emperor compared his ideal with her effigy on medals and miniatures and then worked even more ardently than before that her apartments should be worthy of her when she arrived. It was just following upon this fever of excitement that Napoleon and the court had repaired to Compiègne. So restless was the emperor that he could hardly bide the time when the archduchess should arrive, and it was thus that he set out with Murat to meet the approaching cortège. The pavilion which had been erected for the meeting was left to the citizens of the neighbourhood, and the marvellous banquet which had been prepared by Bausset was likewise abandoned. Napoleon had no time to think of dining. All the roadside villages between Soissons and Compiègne were hung with banners, and the populace appeared to be as highly excited as the contracting parties. It still rained a deluge, but this made no difference. Two couriers at full gallop came first to Compiègne, crying: "Place": "Place": The eight white horses and the _berlin de voyage_ followed. Before one had hardly time to realize what was passing, Napoleon and his bride whisked by in a twinkling. At nine o'clock an outpost in the park at Compiègne announced the arrival of the emperor and his train. At ten o'clock a cannon shot rang out over the park and the emperor and empress passed into the chateau to proceed with certain indispensable presentations; then to souper, a _petite souper intime_, we are assured. On the morrow all the world of the assembled court met the empress and avowed that she had that specious _beauté du diable_ which has ever pleased the French connoisseur of beautiful women. They went further, however, and stated that in spite of this ravishing beauty she lacked the elegance which should be the possession of an empress of the French. The faithful Berthier silenced them with the obvious statement that since she pleased the emperor there was nothing more to be said, or thought. Flying northward on the great highroad leading out from Paris to Chantilly and Compiègne gadabout travellers have never a thought that just beyond Pont Saint Maxence, almost in plain view from the doorway of the Inn of the Lion d'Argent of that sleepy little town, is a gabled wall which represents all that remains of the "Maison de Philippe de Beaumanoir," called the Cour Basse. THE END INDEX _Aiguillon_, Duchesse d', 217 _Alcuin_, 358 _Alexander_, Emperor, 221, 330, 349 _Alphonse XIII of Spain_, 7 Amboise, 26, 28, 86 _Amboise, Bussy d'_, 72 _Ancre, Maréchal d'_, 67 _Andelot, Coligny d'_, 72-73 _Andilly, Arnauld d'_, 267 Anet, Chateau d', 29, 111 _Angennes, Jacques d'_, 44, 299, 311 Angers, Chateau d', 22 _Anglas, Boissy d'_, 114 _Angouleme, Duchesse d'_, 321 _Anjou, Ducs d'_, 22, 136, 212 _Anne of Austria_, 96-97, 136-137, 284-287, 289, 347 _Arc, Jeanne d'_, 345-346, 354 Ardennes, 54 Arlors, 25 _Artois, Comtesse d'_, 176 _Aubert, Jean_, 333 _Aubigné, D'_, 299 _Aumale, Duc d'_, 29, 327, 331-332, 335, 338, 339 _Auvergne, Louis d'_, 162-163 _Ayen, Duc d'_, 299 Bagatelle, Chateau de, 163, 203-206 _Bailly, Sylvain_, 104 _Barbés_, 173 Barbison, 200-201 _Baril, Jean_, 25 _Barry, Mme. du_, 211, 242-243, 245, 250, 275, 329, 348 _Bassompierre_, 195, 262 Bastille, 71, 145, 173 _Bausset_, 361 _Bavière, Isabeau de_, 69, 151, 182 _Beauharnais, Eugene_, 220, 222 _Beauharnais, Hortense_, 215, 220, 221 _Beaujon_, 164 _Beaumont, Cardinal de_, 179 Beauvais, Hotel de, 11 _Becker, General_, 221 _Becket, Thomas à_, 182 _Bedford, Duke of_, 69 _Belleveu_, 241-242 _Berquin, Louis de_, 67 _Berry, Duc de_, 165 _Berry, Duchesse de_, 50, 321 _Berthier, Maréchal_ (see _Wagram, Prince de_) _Blanchard_, 130 _Blanqui_, 173 _Blois_, 21, 26, 305 _Blondel_, 37 _Blucher_, 173, 209 _Boileau_, 328 Boissy, Forest of, 49 _Bonaparte, Caroline_, 359 _Bonaparte, Jerome_, 147 _Bonaparte, Louis_, 235 _Bonaparte, Lucien_, 145 _Bonheur, Rosa_, 202 _Bordeaux, Duc de_, 166 _Borghese, Princesse_, 208 _Bossuet_, 328 _Boulanger_, 200 _Boullée_, 164 Boulogne, Bois de, 168, 174, 175, 203, 206, 209 _Bourbon Family_, 164-165, 329, 331, 341 Bourbon, Palais, 120, 159-161 _Bourdaloue_, 328 Bourg-la-Reine, 3 _Boyceau_, 30, 262, 270 _Breton, Mme. de_, 121-122 _Brunet_, 223 _Brunswick, Duchesse de_, 154 _Bullant, Jean_, 109, 327, 336 _Cadoudal_, 173 _Cambacères, Consul_, 115-116 Cardinal, Palais (_see_ Royal, Palais) _Carpeaux_, 118 _Carrier-Belleuse_, 202 _Cartouche_, 67 _Cellini_, 182, 192 _Chabanne, Comte de_, 73 _Chabrol_, 147 _Chalgrin_, 154 _Chambiges, Pierre_, 91, 281-282 Chamblay, 54-56 Chambord, 71, 86, 310 _Chamillard, Michael_, 252-253 _Champaigne, Philippe de_, 135 _Champollion-Figèac_, 184 Chantilly, Chateau and Forest of, 324-340, 362 _Chappell, Comte des_, 72 Charenton, 152 _Charlemagne_, 18, 116, 281 _Charles II_, 344 _Charles V_, 22, 23, 25, 62-63, 66, 68, 77, 82-84, 170, 190, 247, 281, 327, 344, 356 _Charles VI_, 63, 66, 69, 176-177, 229 _Charles VII_, 69, 182, 190, 346, 354 _Charles VIII_, 21, 299 _Charles IX_, 89, 91-94, 106, 108-110, 171, 209, 291, 312, 327 _Charles X_, 57, 108, 118, 146, 173, 192, 204, 212, 237-238, 303, 317, 319-320, 349 _Charles IV, Emperor_, 63 _Charles V, Emperor_, 85, 88, 346 _Charles I, of England_, 104, 137, 289 _Charles the Bold of Burgundy_ (see _Charolais, Comte de_) _Charolais, Comte de_, 177-178 _Chartres, Ducs de_ (see _Orleans, Ducs de_) _Chateauroux, Mme. de_, 250 _Chatou_, 210 Chenonceaux, 26, 32, 71 _Chevalier, Etienne_, 339 _Childerbert I_, 216 _Christina, Queen_, 222 _Cinq-Mars_, 73, 134 _Clagny, Chateau de_, 228, 277 _Clément, Jacques_, 93, 230-232 _Clothaire_, 357 _Clotilde_, 61 _Clovis_, 61, 76, 216 _Coictier, Jacques_, 66, 152 _Colbert_, 3, 87, 98, 100, 269 _Coligny, Admiral_, 93 _Collo, Jean_, 27 _Commynes_, 177 Compiègne, Palace and Forest of, 52-53, 165, 232, 335, 342-362 Conciergerie, 61, 65-68 _Condé Family_, 73, 269, 324, 327-331, 333, 337, 339 Conflans, Chateau de, 2, 175-179 _Constantine, Emperor_, 344 Consulat, Palais du (_see_ Luxembourg, Palais du) _Conti Family_, 211, 242, 327 _Corneille_, 73, 133, 151 _Corot_, 200 _Cottereau, Jean_, 299, 300-305, 307 Courcelles, 359 _Cousin, Jean_, 170 _Coypel_, 137 _Cromwell_, 137 _Crozat_, 162 _Dagobert_, 54 _Damiens_, 67, 263-264 _Dante_, 24 _Dardelle_, 123 _Daru_, 100 _Daubigny_, 200 _Daumesnil, Baron_, 173 _Daumet, Henri_, 332 _Debanes_, 22 _Debrosse, Jacques_, 64, 154, 158 _Decamps_, 202, 338 _Delille, Abbé_, 143 _Delorme, Marion_, 73 _Delorme, Philibert_, 34, 108-111, 189 _Denecourt_, 198-199, 201 Deputés, Chambre des (_see_ Bourbon, Palais) _Desmoulins, Camille_, 145 _Diaz_, 200 Directoire, Palais du (_see_ Luxembourg, Palais du) _Donon_, 100 _Dorbay_, 110 _Drouais_, 211 _Ducamp, Maxine_, 126 _Ducerceau_, 92, 94, 110, 112 _Ducrot, General_, 222 _Dugastz_, 232 _Dupaira_, 95 _Duperac_, 110 _Dupré_, 200 _Durfort, Madame_, 49 Egalité, Palais (_see_ Royal, Palais) Enghien, Chateau d', 340 _Enghien, Duc d'_, 169, 172-174, 331 _Epernon, Ducs d'_, 103, 232 _Erard, Sebastian_, 210 _Este, Maria d'_, 290 Estival, Convent of, 49 _Estrées, Gabrielle d'_, 102, 210 _Étampes, Duchesse d'_, 86, 185, 192, 294 _Étoiles, Normand d'_, 204 _Eugenie, Empress_, 120-122, 125-126, 238, 350, 352 _Evans, Dr._, 122 _Fallières, President_, 166-167 _Famin_, 314-315 _Faure, Felix_, 56, 58-59 _Féraud_, 114 _Ferrare, Duc de_, 70 _Flandre, Comte de_, 82 _Flavy, Guillaume de_, 345 Fleury, Chateau de, 195 _Fontaine_, 99, 127 Fontainebleau, Forest of, 6, 50, 52, 181, 183, 196-202, 279, 294 Fontainebleau, Palais de, 2, 26, 28, 33, 34, 87, 91, 111, 180-196, 329, 335, 336 _Fouché_, 221 _Fould_, 53 _Fouquet, Jean_, 339 _Fouquet, Nicolas_, 269 _Fragonard_, 211 _Francine, Thomas and Alexandre_, 196 _Francis I_, 8, 10, 12, 16, 21, 32, 44-45, 62, 64, 67, 77, 79, 81, 84-89, 108, 110, 170, 181, 183-187, 189-191, 194, 209, 229, 281-282, 290, 292, 299, 306, 310-311, 321, 326, 346, 358 _Franz II_, 359 _Gabriel_, 276, 348 Gaillon, Chateau de, 33 _Ganne, Père_, 200 _Girardini_, 160 Gisors, Castle of, 82 _Gondi_, 230, 232 _Goujon, Jean_, 89, 90 Grand Trianon, 39, 248, 258, 259, 260, 263, 264, 274-276 _Gregory of Tours_, 215 _Grévy, Jules_, 58 _Gros, Baron_, 338 Grosbois, Chateau de, 51 _Guilbert, Abbé_, 184 _Guillain, Guillaume_, 282 _Guise, Ducs de_, 70, 72-73, 103 _Hamon_, 200 _Harlay-Crauvallon, Archbishop De_, 178-179 _Haussmann, Baron_, 3, 13, 152 _Hebert_, 201 _Hennequin, Dame Gillette_, 178 _Henri II_, 26, 32, 44, 69-70, 78, 85, 87, 89, 90, 91, 108, 110, 170, 193, 229, 230, 282, 294-295, 311, 327 _Henri III_, 29, 92-93, 101, 109, 230-232, 312 _Henri IV_, 16, 26, 27, 29, 45-46, 71-72, 87, 89, 92, 94-95, 102-103, 111-112, 118, 172, 186, 190, 191, 194-197, 206, 209, 210, 231, 232, 238, 282-283, 306, 327 _Henrietta of England_, 233, 289 _Henriette de France_, 104, 137 _Henry V of England_, 63, 326 _Henry VI of England_, 63, 69 _Henry VIII of England_, 311 Hérivaux, Bois de, 340 _Hohenzollern, Prince de_, 53 _Hortense, Queen_, 330 _Hugo, Victor_, 73 _Hugues Capet_, 62 Institut, Palais de l', 159-160 _Isabey_ (_Père_), 40 _Jacob of Cologne_, 87 _Jacque_, 200 _James II of England_, 290 _Jarnac, Gui Chabot de_, 294 _Joachim, Prince_, 52, 56 _John II of France_, 83, 170 _John VIII, Pope_, 344 Joinville, Forest of, 169 _Josephine, Empress_, 174, 215, 217-222, 323 Justice, Palais de (_see_ La Cité, Palais de) _Karr, Alphonse_, 149 _La Barauderie, De_, 30 _Labaudy_, 50 _La Brosse_, 102 La Cité, Palais de, 12, 61-68, 75, 81, 82, 93, 152, 153, 170 _La Châtaigneraie_, 294 _Laffitte, Pierre_, 212, 213, 243 _Lambesc, Prince de_, 144 La Muette, Chateau de, 111, 203, 209-210 _Lancret_, 338 Langeais, 33 _Lannes, Maréchal_, 213 _Laporte_, 284 _La Quintinye_, 267-269 La Reine Blanche, Chateau de, 341 _Laschant_, 232 _Latini, Brunetto_, 24 _Lauzan_, 178, 289 _La Vallière, Louise de_, 289 _Lebrun, Charles_, 97, 255, 256 _Lebrun, Consul_, 115 _Le Calabrese, Henri_, 27 _Lecouteux de Canteleu_, 217, 222 _Ledoux_, 211, 243 _Lefuel_, 100 _Lejeune_, 360 _Leloir_, 239 L'Elysée, Palais de, 153, 162-167 _Lemercier, Jacques_, 96, 100, 135, 262 _Le Moyne_, 239 _Le Notre_, 16, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 31, 35, 39, 40, 104, 128, 129-130, 179, 233, 248, 264-266, 270, 277, 288, 292, 307-308, 327, 330 _Lepaute_, 240 _Le Roy_, 262 Les Bruyeres, 222 _Lescot, Pierre_, 88-90, 109 _Lesdiguières, Duchesse de_, 179 _Levau_, 97-98, 110, 247, 249 _Lomenci, Martial de_, 247 _Longueil, René de_, 212 _Longueville, Mme. de_, 73, 327 _Loret_, 11 _Lorraine, Cardinal de_, 111 _Lorraine, Chevalier de_, 233 _Louis I_, 344 _Louis V_, 344 _Louis VI_, 281 _Louis VII_, 169, 181, 182 _Louis IX_, 23, 62, 77, 169, 176, 182, 190, 281, 295, 341, 344, 354 _Louis XI_, 21, 66, 69, 152, 172, 177-178, 299, 326 _Louis XII_, 26, 69, 299, 305, 306, 326, 354 _Louis XIII_, 16, 48, 87, 96, 112, 132, 134, 136, 171, 189, 190, 194, 209, 247, 249, 262, 266, 283-284, 306, 347 _Louis XIV_, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 29, 33, 38, 39, 46, 48, 49, 50, 85, 87, 97-99, 104, 112, 118, 127, 136-137, 152, 158, 170, 178, 186, 189, 190, 206, 217, 223-224, 226, 233, 240, 245, 247, 249, 251-253, 255-257, 261, 264, 268, 270, 273, 274, 277, 283, 284, 288-290, 291, 293, 296, 297, 299, 303-307, 312, 328, 345, 347, 358 _Louis XV_, 4, 14, 16, 17, 38, 48, 112, 152, 162, 163, 174, 185, 186, 189, 190, 192, 205, 207, 209, 211, 227, 241, 243, 246, 250, 253, 263-264, 275-276, 284, 290, 312, 320, 323, 329, 345, 348, 350-352, 358 _Louis XVI_, 37, 39, 41, 43, 57, 108, 113, 118, 143, 144, 152, 154, 210, 213, 227, 250, 261, 235-236, 352, 356, 358-362, 290, 312-313, 316, 320, 322, 348, 351 _Louis XVIII_, 118, 161, 174, 237, 250, 316, 349 _Louis Philippe_, 105, 108, 117-118, 146, 149, 154, 162, 166, 186, 194, 199, 207, 238, 254-255, 350 (_see also Orleans Family_) Louveciennes, Chateau de, 210-212, 242, 288 Louvre, 4, 12, 13, 22, 25, 32, 44, 62, 68, 75-105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 118, 124, 131, 132, 152, 233, 351 _Lude, Comtesse de_, 49 _Luxembourg, Jean de_, 346 Luxembourg, Palais de, 28, 40, 115, 136, 144, 153-158 Machine de Marly, 223-224 Madrid, Chateau de, 111 _Magnan, Maréchal_, 242 _Maine, Duc de_, 159 Maintenon, Chateau de, 242, 296-308, 312 _Maintenon, Mme. de_, 158-159, 194, 227, 249, 274, 296-299, 302-303, 305-308, 312, 347 Maisons-Laffitte, Chateau de, 203, 212-214, 288 Malmaison, Chateau de, 215-223, 323 _Mandrin_, 67 _Mansart, François_, 212-213 _Mansart, Jules Hardouin_, 35, 137, 179, 226, 233, 241, 249, 274, 276, 291, 327, 333 Mantes, 55 _Mantes, Mlle. de_, 159 _Marat_, 116 _Marceliano, Pucello and Edme_, 26 _Marie Antoinette_, 49, 115, 194, 204, 210, 237, 245, 256, 276-277, 320, 322, 349 _Marie Louise_, 6, 117, 208 _Marie Sophie_, 320 _Marie Thérèse_, 11 _Marigny, Enguerrand de_, 62, 172 _Marigny, Marquis de_, 99 Marlotte, 201 Marly-le-Roi (_or_ -le-Bourg _or_ -le-Chatel), 2, 224-228, 283, 288 _Mary Tudor, of England_, 69 Marseilles, 91 _Massena, Duc de_, 217 _Masson, Frederic_, 236 _Matignon, Maréchal de_, 70 _Mayenne, Duc de_, 101 _Mazarin, Cardinal_, 87, 104, 136, 159, 169, 283-285 Mazarin, Palais (_see_ Institut, Palais de l') _Médici, Catherine de_, 26, 31, 33, 44, 48, 68, 69-71, 90-91, 93-94, 97, 107, 108, 110, 111, 171, 195, 230, 247, 311 _Médici, Marie de_, 72, 103, 154, 155, 158, 206, 347 _Menars et de Marigny, Marquis de_, 163 _Menours, Jacques de_, 30, 262-263 _Mercogliano_, 18 _Messonier_, 338 _Metezeau, Thibaut_, 92, 94 _Metternich, Prince de_, 121 Meudon, Bois de, 240 Meudon, Chateau de, 34, 111 _Michelet_, 192 _Mignard_, 233, 239, 306 _Millet, Eugene_, 290, 291 _Millet, Jean François_, 200, 201 _Mirabeau_, 172 _Molière_, 73, 104, 178, 249 Molineaux, Chateau de, 278 _Mollet, Claude_, 29, 30 _Mollien_, 100 _Monconseil, Marquise de_, 204 _Mongomere, Comte de_, 67 _Montansier, Duc de_, 269 Montargis, 28 _Montebello, Maréchal de_, 213 _Montespan, Marquise de_, 159, 249, 275, 312 _Montesson, Marquise de_, 234 Montgaillard, 50 _Montgolfier_, 130 _Montgomeri, Sieur de_, 70 Montmartre, 288 _Montmorency Family_, 178, 324, 326-327, 339 Montmorency, Forest of, 49, 288 _Montpensier, Mlle. de_, 136 _Moreau, Architect_, 138 _Moreau, Hégésippe_, 123-124 _Moskowa, Prince de la_, 53 _Muette, Chateau de la_, 111 _Murat, Princes de_, 52-56, 165, 235, 361 _Murillo_, 164 Musée de Cluny, 12 _Musset, De_, 274 _Nacret_, 239 Nanterre, 281 _Nanteuil, Célestin_, 200 _Napoleon I_, 6, 13, 40, 51-52, 57, 79, 88, 100, 108, 115-118, 127, 129, 145, 154, 155, 160, 165, 171, 173-174, 180, 186, 187-188, 190, 194, 208, 213, 217-222, 235-237, 250, 254, 274, 296, 298, 313-316, 320, 321, 322, 345, 349, 352, 355-356, 359-362 _Napoleon III_, 13, 58, 92, 100, 105, 118-122, 147, 152, 166, 195, 197, 222, 238, 290, 313, 318, 323, 345, 350-352, 356 _Nattier_, 338 _Neckar_, 144 _Nemours, Duc de_, 70 _Neufforge, De_, 37 Neuilly and its Chateau, 206-209, 238 _Nicholas II_, 352 _Nicolo dell' abbate_, 193 _Nigra, Chevalier_, 121 _Noailles, Ducs de_, 298-300, 306 Noisy, Chateau de, 278 _Nolhac, M. de_, 274 _Olivier, Emile_, 125 _Oppenard_, 137 _Orgemont, Marguerite d'_, 326 _Orleans, Ducs d'_, 137-140, 143, 144-149, 161, 209, 233, 234, 286-287, 337 Orleans, Palais d' (_see_ Royal, Palais) _Ormesson, D'_, 73 _Osman_, 230-231 _Oursins, Juvenal des_, 66 _Palatine, Princesse_, 233 _Palissy, Bernard_, 31-32 _Panseron_, 37 _Paré, Ambroise_, 171 _Paul, Saint Vincent de_, 73 _Penthièvre, Duc de_, 306, 312, 322 _Pepin-le-Bref_, 343 _Percier_, 100, 127 _Perrault, Charles_, 98-99 Petit Luxembourg, Palais du, 155, 157 Petit Trianon, 39, 260, 264, 274, 276-277, 329 _Pfnor_, 184 _Philippe Auguste_, 12, 62, 77, 80-82, 169, 182, 190 _Philippe III_, 62, 177 _Philippe IV_, 62, 170, 176, 182, 190, 295 _Philippe VI_, 170, 358 _Philippe II, of Spain_, 69 _Philippe-Egalité_, 138-139 _Picard, Achille_, 125 _Pichegreu_, 173 Pierrefonds, 290, 335 _Pisan, Christine de_, 23 _Pius VII_, 6, 115, 194, 235 _Poirson_, 184 _Poissin_, 164 Poissy, 23, 232, 292, 293 _Poitiers, Diane de_, 29, 44, 70-71, 193 _Pompadour, Mme. de_, 163, 204-205, 241-242, 246, 250, 275, 348 _Potter, Paul_, 164 _Poussin_, 338 _Prieur, Barthélemy_, 196 _Primaticcio_, 87, 188, 192, 193 _Provence, Comte de_, 154 Quatre Nations, Palais des (_see_ Institut, Palais de l') _Rabelais_, 322 _Racine_, 297, 303, 308, 328 Rambouillet, Chateau and Forest of, 44-45, 50, 55-59, 242, 296, 298, 309-323, 328, 335, 336 _Rambouillet, Seigneur de_, 299 _Raphael_, 87, 170 _Raspail_, 173 _Ravaillac_, 67, 102 _Redon_, 128 _Régnier, Henri de_, 244 _Remusat, Mme. de_, 174, 219 _Retz, Maréchal de_, 247 Revolution, Palais de la (_see_ Royal, Palais) _Richelieu, Cardinal_, 72, 73, 95, 100, 131-139, 151, 178, 179, 216-217 _Rigaud_, 307 _Rigby_, 334 _Robert II_, 62, 190, 281 _Rochefort, Henri_, 120-121 _Romain, Mme._, 141 _Ronsard_, 34, 90, 109, 111 _Roosevelt, Theodore_, 166-167 _Rosier, De_, 210 _Rosny_, 55 _Rosso_, 182, 192 _Rousseau, Theodore_, 200, 201 _Rousselle_, 123 Rouvray, Forest of, 229 _Rovigo, Duc de_, 221 Royal, Palais, 131-150, 284, 351 Royale, Place (_see_ Vosges, Place des) _Rubens_, 164 Rueil (_see_ Malmaison) _Sadi-Carnot_, 58 Saint Cloud, Palais de, 13, 93, 228, 229-243 Saint Cyr, 296-298, 303 Saint Germain-en-Laye, 28, 91, 111, 136, 203, 206, 223, 232, 242, 256, 279-295, 311, 324, 336, 345 Saint Germain, Forest of, 212, 292-295 _Saint James, Baudart de_, 208 _Saint Louis_ (see _Louis IX_) Saint Maur, Chateau de, 111 _Saint Ouen_, 54 _Saint-Simon_, 179, 262, 348 _Sarto, Del_, 192 _Savoie, Louise de_, 108 _Savoie, Philippe de_, 66 _Scarron, Mme._ (see _Maintenon, Mme. de_) _Schickler, Baron_, 318 _Schopin_, 195 Sénat, Palais du (_see_ Luxembourg, Palais du) Senlis, 6 Senlis, Forêt de, 340 _Senlis, Seigneurs de_, 324 _Séran, Comtesse de_, 275 _Serlio_, 88, 185 _Serres, Olivier de_, 33 _Servandoni_, 112 _Sévigné, Mme. de_, 179, 277, 328 Soissons, 359-361 _Soyecourt, Marquis de_, 212 _Sualem, Rennequin_, 223 _Sully, Duc de_, 102, 103 _Talmon, Prince de_, 73 _Tessé, Marquis de_, 73 Thermes, Palais des, 12, 62, 153 _Thierry III_, 224 _Thiers, President_, 122-123 Thomery, 202 _Thou, De_, 73 Temple, The, 144 _Tiercelin, Jean_, 108 Tillet, Maison du, 232 _Toulouse, Comte de_, 321 _Toulouse, Comtesse de_, 312, 320 Tournelles, Palais des, 66, 68-71, 81, 152 _Trepsat_, 313-314 Trianon (_see_ Grand Trianon) _Triboulet_, 186 Tribunat, Palais du (_see_ Royal, Palais) _Trochu, General_, 120 Tuileries, Palace and Gardens of the, 3, 13, 31, 33-34, 40, 76, 78, 82, 91, 92, 94, 106-130, 131, 155, 157, 166, 218, 227, 317 _Turenne_, 73 _Turgot_, 100 Valerian, Mont, 288 _Vallet, Pierre_, 27 _Valois, Charles, Comte de_, 170 _Valois, Elizabeth de_, 69 _Valois, Marguerite de_ (1492-1549), 8, 10 _Valois, Marguerite de_ (1553-1615), 10, 69, 111, 209 _Van Loo_, 164 _Vasari_, 181 _Vauban_, 252 Vaux-le-Vicomte, 36, 42 _Vendome, Duc de_, 102, 206 _Vernet, Joseph_, 164, 239 _Verneuil, Marquis de_, 207 _Veronese_, 338 Versailles, 2, 36, 42, 85, 88, 99, 112, 118, 145, 163, 180, 196, 205, 215, 223-224, 226, 228, 239, 240, 242, 244-278, 279, 283, 296, 305, 324, 334, 335, 336, 350 Vesinet, Bois de, 288 _Vexin, Comte de_, 159 _Vignole_, 188 _Vignon_, 113 Villa Normande, 54 _Villeray, Marquis de_, 299 _Villeroy, Marquis Neuville de_, 108 _Villeroy, Maréchal de_, 178 Villers-Cotterets, 28, 165, 346 Vincennes, Chateau de, 168-175, 331, 345 Vincennes, Bois de, 168, 174-175, 177 _Vinci, Leonardo da_, 87, 192 _Visconti_, 100 _Vivonne, François de_, 294 _Voltaire_, 263 _Von Ostade_, 164 Vosges, Place des, 71-74, 152. _Wagram, Prince de_, 51, 52, 360, 362 _Wallace, Sir Richard_, 205 _Wellington_, 208-209 _William I, Emperor_, 255 _Wolsey_, 132 
29334	----	produced from images generously made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries.) _The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia_ Nine hundred and seventy-five copies of =The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia=, of which nine hundred and fifty are for sale, have been printed from type and the type distributed. This copy is Number 201 [Illustration: PLATE I.--Doorway, Cliveden, Germantown.] _The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia_ _By_ _Frank Cousins and Phil M. Riley_ _Illustrated_ [Illustration] _Boston_ _Little, Brown, and Company_ _1920_ _Copyright, 1920,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. _All rights reserved_ _Foreword_ So many books have been published which are devoted wholly or in part to the fine old Colonial residences and public buildings of Philadelphia, including Germantown, that it might seem almost the part of temerity to suppose there could be a place for another one. A survey of the entire list, however, discloses the fact that almost without exception these books are devoted primarily to a picture of the city in Colonial times, to the stories of its old houses and other buildings now remaining, or to an account of the activities of those who peopled them from one to two centuries ago. Some more or less complete description of the structures mentioned has occasionally been included, to be sure, but almost invariably this has been subordinate to the main theme. The narrative has been woven upon a historical rather than an architectural background, so that these books appeal to the tourist, historian and antiquary rather than to the architect, student and prospective home builder. Interesting as was the provincial life of this community; absorbing as are the reminiscences attaching to its well-known early buildings; important as were the activities of those who made them part and parcel of our national life, the Colonial architecture of this vicinity is in itself a priceless heritage--extensive, meritorious, substantial, distinctive. It is a heritage not only of local but of national interest, deserving detailed description, analysis and comparison in a book which includes historic facts only to lend true local color and impart human interest to the narrative, to indicate the sources of affluence and culture which aided so materially in developing this architecture, and to describe the life and manners of the time which determined its design and arrangement. Such a book the authors have sought to make the present volume, and both Mr. Riley in writing the text and Mr. Cousins in illustrating it have been actuated primarily by architectural rather than historic values, although in most instances worthy of inclusion the two are inseparable. For much of the historic data the authors acknowledge their indebtedness to the authors of previous Philadelphia books, notably "Philadelphia, the City and Its People" and "The Literary History of Philadelphia", Ellis Paxon Oberholtzer; "Old Roads Out of Philadelphia" and "The Romance of Old Philadelphia", John Thomson Faris; "The History of Philadelphia" and "Historic Mansions of Philadelphia", T. Westcott; "The Colonial Homes of Philadelphia and Its Neighborhood", Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Horace Mather Lippincott; "Colonial Mansions ", Thomas Allen Glenn; "The Guide Book to Historic Germantown", Charles Francis Jenkens; "Germantown Road and Its Associations", Townsend Ward. Ph. B. Wallace, of Philadelphia, photographed some of the best subjects. The original boundaries of Philadelphia remained unchanged for one hundred and seventy-five years after the founding of the city, the adjoining territory, as it became populated, being erected into corporated districts in the following order: Southwark, 1762; Northern Liberties, 1771; Moyamensing, 1812; Spring Garden, 1813; Kensington, 1820; Penn, 1844; Richmond, 1847; West Philadelphia, 1851; and Belmont, 1853. In 1854 all these districts, together with the boroughs of Germantown, Frankford, Manayunk, White Hall, Bridesburg and Aramingo, and the townships of Passyunk, Blockley, Kingsessing, Roxborough, Germantown, Bristol, Oxford, Lower Dublin, Moreland, Byberry, Delaware and Penn were abolished by an act of the State legislature, and the boundaries of the city of Philadelphia were extended to the Philadelphia county lines. Such of these outlying communities as had been settled prior to the Revolution were closely related to Philadelphia by common interests, a common provincial government and a common architecture. For these reasons, therefore, it seems more logical that this treatise devoted to the Colonial architecture of the first capitol of the United States should embrace the greater city of the present day rather than confine itself to the city proper of Colonial times. Otherwise it would be a problem where to draw the line, and much of value would be omitted. The wealth of material thus comprehended is so great, however, that it is impossible in a single book of ordinary size to include more than a fractional part of it. An attempt has therefore been made to present an adequate number of representative types chosen with careful regard, first, to their architectural merit, and second, to their historic interest. Exigencies of space are thus the only reason for the omission of numerous excellent houses without historic association and others rich in history but deficient in architecture. FRANK COUSINS AND PHIL M. RILEY. APRIL 1, 1920 _Contents_ CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD v I. PHILADELPHIA ARCHITECTURE 1 II. GEORGIAN COUNTRY HOUSES OF BRICK 16 III. CITY RESIDENCES OF BRICK 38 IV. LEDGE-STONE COUNTRY HOUSES 53 V. PLASTERED STONE COUNTRY HOUSES 69 VI. HEWN STONE COUNTRY HOUSES 86 VII. DOORWAYS AND PORCHES 101 VIII. WINDOWS AND SHUTTERS 134 IX. HALLS AND STAIRCASES 153 X. MANTELS AND CHIMNEY PIECES 169 XI. INTERIOR WOOD FINISH 185 XII. PUBLIC BUILDINGS 196 INDEX 227 _List of Plates_ I. Doorway, Cliveden, Germantown _Frontispiece_ PAGE II. Old Mermaid Inn, Mount Airy; Old Red Lion Inn 6 III. Camac Street, "The Street of Little Clubs"; Woodford, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected by William Coleman in 1756 7 IV. Stenton, Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected by James Logan in 1727 12 V. Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh Valley. Erected by Samuel Morris in 1723; Home of Stephen Girard 13 VI. Port Royal House, Frankford. Erected in 1762 by Edward Stiles 16 VII. Blackwell House, 224 Pine Street. Erected about 1765 by John Stamper; Wharton House, 336 Spruce Street. Erected prior to 1796 by Samuel Pancoast 17 VIII. Morris House, 225 South Eighth Street. Erected in 1786 by John Reynolds 20 IX. Wistar House, Fourth and Locust Streets. Erected about 1750; Betsy Ross House, 239 Arch Street 21 X. Glen Fern, on Wissahickon Creek, Germantown. Erected about 1747 by Thomas Shoemaker; Grumblethorpe, 5261 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1744 by John Wister 24 XI. Upsala, Germantown Avenue and Upsala Streets, Germantown. Erected in 1798 by John Johnson; End Perspective of Upsala 25 XII. The Woodlands, Blockley Township, West Philadelphia. Erected in 1770 by William Hamilton; Stable at The Woodlands 28 XIII. Wyck, Germantown Avenue and Walnut Lane, Germantown. Erected by Hans Millan about 1690; Hall and Entrance Doorways, Wyck 29 XIV. Mount Pleasant, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected in 1761 by Captain James Macpherson; The Main House, Mount Pleasant 32 XV. Deschler-Perot-Morris House, 5442 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1772 by Daniel Deschler; Vernon, Vernon Park, Germantown. Erected in 1803 by James Matthews 33 XVI. Loudoun, Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street, Germantown. Erected in 1801 by Thomas Armat; Solitude, Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. Erected in 1785 by John Penn 34 XVII. Cliveden, Germantown Avenue and Johnson Street, Germantown. Erected in 1781 by Benjamin Chew 35 XVIII. Detail of Cliveden Façade; Detail of Bartram House Façade 40 XIX. The Highlands, Skippack Pike, Whitemarsh. Erected in 1796 by Anthony Morris 41 XX. Bartram House, Kingsessing, West Philadelphia. Erected in 1730-31 by John Bartram; Old Green Tree Inn, 6019 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1748 46 XXI. Johnson House, 6306 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1765-68 by Dirck Jansen; Billmeyer House, Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1727 47 XXII. Hooded Doorway, Johnson House, Germantown; Hooded Doorway, Green Tree Inn 52 XXIII. Pedimental Doorway, 114 League Street; Pedimental Doorway, 5933 Germantown Avenue 53 XXIV. Doorway, 5011 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, Morris House, 225 South Eighth Street 56 XXV. Doorway, 6504 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 709 Spruce Street 57 XXVI. Doorway, 5200 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 4927 Frankford Avenue 60 XXVII. Doorway, Powel House, 244 South Third Street; Doorway, Wharton House, 336 Spruce Street 61 XXVIII. Doorway, 301 South Seventh Street 64 XXIX. Doorway, Grumblethorpe, 5621 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 6105 Germantown Avenue 65 XXX. Doorway, Doctor Denton's House, Germantown 68 XXXI. West Entrance, Mount Pleasant, Fairmount Park; East Entrance, Mount Pleasant 69 XXXII. Doorway, Solitude, Fairmount Park; Doorway, Perot-Morris House, 5442 Germantown Avenue 72 XXXIII. Entrance Porch and Doorway, Upsala, Germantown; Elliptical Porch and Doorway, 39 Fisher's Lane, Wayne Junction 73 XXXIV. Doorway, 224 South Eighth Street; Doorway, Stenton 78 XXXV. Doorway and Ironwork, Southeast Corner of Eighth and Spruce Streets 79 XXXVI. Doorway and Ironwork, Northeast Corner of Third and Pine Streets; Stoop with Curved Stairs and Iron Handrail, 316 South Third Street 84 XXXVII. Stoop and Balustrade, Wistar House; Stoop and Balustrade, 130 Race Street 85 XXXVIII. Detail of Iron Balustrade, 216 South Ninth Street; Stoop with Wing Flights, 207 La Grange Alley 88 XXXIX. Iron Newel, Fourth and Liberty Streets; Iron Newel, 1107 Walnut Street 89 XL. Footscraper, Wyck; Old Philadelphia Footscraper; Footscraper, Third and Spruce Streets; Footscraper, Dirck-Keyser House, Germantown 92 XLI. Footscraper, 320 South Third Street; Footscraper, South Third Street; Footscraper, Vernon, Germantown; Footscraper, 239 Pine Street 93 XLII. Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, South Seventh Street (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, South Fourth Street (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, Seventh and Locust Streets (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, Seventh and Locust Streets (section) 98 XLIII. Detail of Window and Shutters, Morris House 99 XLIV. Window and Shutters, Free Quakers' Meeting House, Fifth and Arch Streets; Second Story Window, Free Quakers' Meeting House 102 XLV. Detail of Window, Combes Alley; Window and Shutters, Cliveden; Window, Bartram House 103 XLVI. Window, Stenton; Window and Shutters, 128 Race Street 106 XLVII. Dormer, Witherill House, 130 North Front Street; Dormer, 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown; Foreshortened Window, Morris House; Dormer, Stenton; Window and Shutters, Witherill House; Window and Blinds, 6105 Germantown Avenue 107 XLVIII. Shutter Fastener, Cliveden; Shutter Fastener, Wyck; Shutter Fastener, Perot-Morris House; Shutter Fastener, 6043 Germantown Avenue 110 XLIX. Detail of Round Headed Window, Congress Hall; Detail of Round Headed Window, Christ Church 111 L. Fenestration, Chancel End, St. Peter's Church 114 LI. Details of Round Headed Windows, Christ Church 115 LII. Chancel Window, Christ Church; Palladian Window and Doorway, Independence Hall 118 LIII. Palladian Window, The Woodlands 119 LIV. Great Hall and Staircase, Stenton 122 LV. Hall and Staircase, Whitby Hall; Detail of Staircase, Whitby Hall 123 LVI. Hall and Staircase, Mount Pleasant; Second Floor Hall Archway and Palladian Window, Mount Pleasant 126 LVII. Hall and Staircase, Cliveden; Staircase Detail, Cliveden 127 LVIII. Detail of Staircase Balustrade and Newel, Upsala; Staircase Balustrade, Roxborough 130 LIX. Staircase Detail, Upsala; Staircase Balustrade, Gowen House, Mount Airy 131 LX. Detail of Stair Ends, Carpenter House, Third and Spruce Streets; Detail of Stair Ends, Independence Hall (horizontal section) 134 LXI. Chimney Piece in the Hall, Stenton; Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall, Great Chamber, Mount Pleasant 135 LXII. Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall, Parlor, Whitby Hall 138 LXIII. Chimney Piece, Parlor, Mount Pleasant; Chimney Piece, Parlor, Cliveden 139 LXIV. Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall on the Second Floor of an Old Spruce Street House; Detail of Mantel, 312 Cypress Street 142 LXV. Parlor Mantel, Upsala; Detail of Parlor Mantel, Upsala 143 LXVI. Mantel at Upsala; Mantel at Third and DeLancy Streets 144 LXVII. Mantel, Rex House, Mount Airy; Mantel at 729 Walnut Street 145 LXVIII. Parlor, Stenton; Reception Room, Stenton 148 LXIX. Dining Room, Stenton; Library, Stenton 149 LXX. Pedimental Doorway, First Floor, Mount Pleasant; Pedimental Doorway, Second Floor, Mount Pleasant 152 LXXI. Doorways, Second Floor Hall, Mount Pleasant; Doorway Detail, Whitby Hall 153 LXXII. Inside of Front Door, Whitby Hall; Palladian Window on Stair Landing, Whitby Hall 156 LXXIII. Window Detail, Parlor, Whitby Hall; Window Detail, Dining Room, Whitby Hall 157 LXXIV. Ceiling Detail, Solitude; Cornice and Frieze Detail, Solitude 160 LXXV. Independence Hall, Independence Square Side. Begun in 1731 161 LXXVI. Independence Hall, Chestnut Street Side 164 LXXVII. Independence Hall, Stairway; Liberty Bell, Independence Hall 165 LXXVIII. Stairway Landing, Independence Hall; Palladian Window at Stairway Landing 170 LXXIX. Declaration Chamber, Independence Hall 171 LXXX. Judge's Bench, Supreme Court Room, Independence Hall; Arcade at Opposite End of Court Room 174 LXXXI. Banquet Hall, Second Floor, Independence Hall; Entrance to Banquet Hall 175 LXXXII. Congress Hall, Sixth and Chestnut Streets. Completed in 1790; Congress Hall from Independence Square 180 LXXXIII. Stair Hall Details, Congress Hall 181 LXXXIV. Interior Detail of Main Entrance, Congress Hall; President's Dais, Senate Chamber, Congress Hall 190 LXXXV. Gallery, Senate Chamber, Congress Hall 191 LXXXVI. Carpenters' Hall, off Chestnut Street between South Third and South Fourth Streets. Erected in 1770; Old Market House, Second and Pine Streets 196 LXXXVII. Main Building, Pennsylvania Hospital. Erected in 1755 197 LXXXVIII. Main Hall and Double Staircase, Pennsylvania Hospital 206 LXXXIX. Custom House, Fifth and Chestnut Streets. Completed in 1824; Main Building, Girard College. Begun in 1833 207 XC. Old Stock Exchange, Walnut and Dock Streets; Girard National Bank, 116 South Third Street 210 XCI. Christ Church, North Second Street near Market Street. Erected in 1727-44; Old Swedes' Church, Swanson and Christian Streets. Erected in 1698-1700 211 XCII. St. Peter's Church, South Third and Pine Streets. Erected in 1761; Lectern, St. Peter's Church 216 XCIII. Interior and Chancel, Christ Church; Interior and Lectern, St. Peter's Church 217 XCIV. Interior and Chancel, Old Swedes' Church; St. Paul's Church, South Third Street near Walnut Street 220 XCV. Mennonite Meeting House, Germantown. Erected in 1770; Holy Trinity Church, South Twenty-first and Walnut Streets 221 _The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia_ CHAPTER I PHILADELPHIA ARCHITECTURE Philadelphia occupies a unique position in American architecture. Few of the early settled cities of the United States can boast so extensive or so notable a collection of dwellings and public buildings in the so-called Colonial style, many of them under auspices that insure their indefinite perpetuation. These beautiful old structures are almost exclusively of brick and stone and of a more elaborate and substantial character than any contemporary work to be found above the Mason and Dixon line which later became in part the boundary between the North and the South. Erected and occupied by the leading men of substance of the Province of Pennsylvania, the fine old countryseats, town residences and public buildings of the "City of Brotherly Love" not only comprise a priceless architectural inheritance, but the glamour of their historic association renders them almost national monuments, and so object lessons of material assistance in keeping alive the spirit and ideals of true Americanism. Much of the best Colonial domestic architecture in America is to be found in this vicinity, a great deal of it still standing in virtually its pristine condition as enduring memorials of the most elegant period in Colonial life. Just as men have personality, so houses have individuality. And as the latter is but a reflection of the former, a study of the architecture of any neighborhood gives us a more intimate knowledge of contemporary life and manners, while the history of the homes of prominent personages is usually the history of the community. Such a study is the more interesting in the present instance, however, in that not merely local but national history was enacted within the Colonial residences and public buildings of old Philadelphia. Men prominent in historic incidents of Colonial times which profoundly affected the destiny of the country lived in Philadelphia. The fathers of the American nation were familiar figures on the streets of the city, and Philadelphians in their native city wrote their names large in American history. Philadelphia was not settled until approximately half a century later than the other early centers of the North,--Plymouth, New York, Salem, Boston and Providence. Georgian architecture had completely won the approval of the English people, and so it was that few if any buildings showing Elizabethan and Jacobean influences were erected here as in New England. Although several other nationalities were from the first represented in the population, notably the Swedish, Dutch and German, the British were always in the majority, and while a few old houses, especially those with plastered walls, have a slightly Continental atmosphere, all are essentially Georgian or pure Colonial in design and detail. To understand how this remarkable collection of Colonial architecture came into being, and to appreciate what it means to us, it is necessary briefly to review the early history of Philadelphia. Although some small trading posts had been established by the Swedes and Dutch in the lower valley of the Delaware River from 1623 onward, it was not until 1682 that Philadelphia was settled under a charter which William Penn obtained from Charles II the previous year, providing a place of refuge for Quakers who were suffering persecution in England under the "Clarendon Code." The site was chosen by Penn's commission, consisting of Nathaniel Allen, John Bezan and William Heage, assisted by Penn's cousin, Captain William Markham, as deputy governor, and Thomas Holme as surveyor-general. The Swedes had established a settlement at the mouth of the Schuylkill River not later than 1643, and the site selected by the commissioners was held by three brothers of the Swaenson family. They agreed, however, to take in exchange land in what is now known as the Northern Liberties, and in the summer of 1682, Holme laid out the city extending from the Delaware River on the east to the Schuylkill River on the west--a distance of about two miles--and from Vine Street on the north to Cedar, now South Street, on the south,--a distance of about one mile. Penn landed at New Castle on the Delaware, October 27, 1682, and probably came to his newly founded city soon afterward. A meeting of the Provincial Council was held March 10, 1683, and from that time Philadelphia was the capital of Pennsylvania until 1799, when Lancaster was chosen. Not only did Penn obtain a grant of land possessed of rare and diversified natural beauty, extreme fertility, mineral wealth and richness of all kinds, but he showed great sagacity in encouraging ambitious men of education and affluence, and artisans of skill and taste in many lines, to colonize it. To these facts are due the quick prosperity which came to Philadelphia and which has made it to this day one of the foremost manufacturing centers in the United States. Textile, foundry and many other industries soon sprang up to supply the wants of these diligent people three thousand miles from the mother country and to provide a basis of trade with the rest of the world. Shipyards were established and a merchant marine built up which soon brought to Philadelphia a foreign and coastwise commerce second to none in the American colonies. Local merchants engaged in trade with Europe and the West Indies, and these profitable ventures soon brought great affluence and a high degree of culture. By the time of the Revolution Philadelphia had become the largest, richest, most extravagant and fashionable city of the American colonies. Society was gayer, more polished and distinguished than anywhere else this side of the Atlantic. Among the skilled artisans attracted by the promise of Penn's "Sylvania" were numerous carpenters and builders. Penn induced James Portius to come to the new world to design and execute his proprietary buildings, and Portius was accompanied and followed by others of more or less skill in the same and allied trades. While some of the building materials and parts of the finished woodwork were for a time brought from England, local skill and resources were soon equal to the demands, as much of their handiwork still existing amply shows. As early as 1724 the master carpenters of the city organized the Carpenters' Company, a guild patterned after the Worshipful Company of Carpenters of London, founded in 1477. Portius was one of the leading members, and on his death in 1736 laid the foundation of a valuable builders' library by giving his rare collection of early architectural books to the company. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century American carpenters and builders everywhere, Philadelphia included, were materially aided by the appearance of handy little ready reference books of directions for joinery containing measured drawings with excellent Georgian detail. Such publications became the fountainhead of Colonial design. They taught our local craftsmen the technique of building and the art of proportion; instilled in their minds an appreciation of classic motives and the desire to adapt the spirit of the Renaissance to their own needs and purposes. In those days some knowledge of architecture was considered essential to every gentleman's education, and with the aid of these builders' reference books many men in other professions throughout the country became amateur architects of no mean ability as a pastime. In and about Philadelphia their Georgian adaptations, often tempered to a degree by the Quaker preference for the simple and practical, contributed much to the charm and distinction of local architecture. To such amateur architects we owe Independence Hall, designed by Andrew Hamilton, speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and Christ Church, designed mainly by Doctor John Kearsley. [Illustration: PLATE II. --Old Mermaid Inn, Mount Airy; Old Red Lion Inn.] [Illustration: PLATE III.--Camac Street, "The Street of Little Clubs"; Woodford, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected by William Coleman in 1756.] During the whole of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was the most important city commercially, politically and socially in the American colonies. For this there were several reasons. Owing to its liberal government and its policy of religious toleration, Philadelphia and the outlying districts gradually became a refuge for European immigrants of various persecuted sects. Nowhere else in America was such a heterogeneous mixture of races and religions to be found. There were Swedes, Dutch, English, Germans, Welsh, Irish and Scotch-Irish; Quakers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, Reformed Lutherans, Mennonites, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders and Moravians. Until the Seven Years' War between France and England from 1756 to 1763 the Quakers dominated the Pennsylvania government, and Quaker influence remained strong in Philadelphia long after it had given way to that of the more belligerent Scotch-Irish, mostly Presbyterians, in the rest of Pennsylvania, until the failure of the Whiskey Insurrection in 1794. This Scotch-Irish ascendancy was due not only to their increasing numbers, but to the increasing general dissatisfaction with the Quaker failure to provide for the defense of the province. The Penns lost their governmental rights in 1776 and three years later had their territorial rights vested in the commonwealth. Its central location among the American colonies, and the fact that it was the largest and most successful of the proprietary provinces, rendered Pennsylvania's attitude in the struggle with the mother country during the Revolution of vital importance. The British party was made strong by the loyalty of the large Church of England element, the policy of neutrality adopted by the Quakers, Dunkers and Mennonites, and the general satisfaction felt toward the free and liberal government of the province, which had been won gradually without such reverses as had embittered the people of Massachusetts and some of the other British provinces. The Whig party was successful, however, and Pennsylvania contributed very materially to the success of the War of Independence, by the important services of her statesmen, by her efficient troops and by the financial aid rendered by Robert Morris, founder of the Bank of North America, the oldest financial institution in the United States. Meanwhile Philadelphia became the very center of the new republic in embryo. The first Continental Congress met in Carpenters' Hall on September 5, 1774; the second Continental Congress in the old State House, now known as Independence Hall, on May 10, 1775; and throughout the Revolution, except from September 26, 1777, to June 18, 1778, when it was occupied by the British, and the Congress met in Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania, and then in Princeton, New Jersey, Philadelphia was virtually the capital of the American colonies and socially the most brilliant city in the country. In Philadelphia the second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which the whole Pennsylvania delegation except Franklin regarded as premature, but which was afterward well supported by the State. The national convention which framed the constitution of the United States sat in Philadelphia in 1787, and from 1790 to 1800, when the seat of government was moved to Washington, Philadelphia was the national capital. Here the first bank in the colonies, the Bank of North America, was opened in 1781, and here the first mint for the coinage of United States money was established in 1792. Here Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse made their great contributions to science, and here on September 19, 1796, Washington delivered his farewell address to the people of the United States. Here lived Robert Morris, who managed the finances of the Revolution, Stephen Girard of the War of 1812 and Jay Cooke of the Civil War. Not only in politics, but in art, science, the drama and most fields of progress Philadelphia took the lead in America for more than a century and a half after its founding. Here was established the first public school in 1689; the first paper mill in 1690; the first botanical garden in 1728; the first Masonic Lodge in 1730; the first subscription library in 1731; the first volunteer fire company in 1736; the first magazine published by Franklin in 1741; the first American philosophical society in 1743; the first religious magazine in 1746; the first medical school in 1751; the first fire insurance company in 1752; the first theater in 1759; the first school of anatomy in 1762; the first American dispensary in 1786; the first water works in 1799; the first zoölogical museum in 1802; the first American art school in 1805; the first academy of natural sciences in 1812; the first school for training teachers in 1818; the first American building and loan association in 1831; the first American numismatic society in 1858. From the Germantown Friends' Meeting, headed by Francis Daniel Pastorius, came in 1688 the first protest against slavery in this country. In Philadelphia was published the first American medical book in 1740; here was given the first Shakespearean performance in this country in 1749; the first lightning rod was erected here in 1752; from Philadelphia the first American Arctic expedition set forth in 1755; on the Schuylkill River in 1773 were made the first steamboat experiments; the earliest abolition society in the world was organized here in 1774; the first American piano was built here in 1775; here in 1789 the Protestant Episcopal Church was formally established in the United States; the first carriage in the world propelled by steam was built here in 1804; the oldest American playhouse now in existence was built here in 1808; the first American locomotive, "Ironsides", was built here in 1827; and the first daguerreotype of the human face was made here in 1839. The Bible and Testament, Shakespeare, Milton and Blackstone were printed for the first time in America in Philadelphia, and Thackeray's first book originally appeared here. During the latter half of the eighteenth century Philadelphia became noted throughout the American colonies for its generous hospitality of every sort, and this trait was reflected in the domestic architecture of the period, which was usually designed with that object in view. For the brilliance of its social life there were several reasons. Above all, it was the character of an ever-increasing number of inhabitants asserting itself. Moreover, the tendency was aided by the fact that as the largest, most important and most central city in the colonies, it became the meeting place for delegates from all the colonies to discuss common problems, and therefore it was incumbent upon Philadelphians to entertain the visitors. And this they did with a lavish hand. From the visit of the Virginia Commissioners in 1744 until the seat of the United States Government was moved to Washington in 1790, every meeting of men prominent in political life was the occasion of much eating, drinking and conviviality in the best Philadelphia homes and also in the inns, where it was the custom of that day to entertain considerably. The old Red Lion Inn at North Second and Noble streets, a picturesque gambrel-roof structure of brick with a lean-to porch along the front, is an interesting survival of the inns and taverns of Colonial days, as was also the old Mermaid Inn in Mount Airy, until torn down not long ago. At such gatherings were represented the most brilliant minds this side of the Atlantic, and scintillating wit and humor enlivened the festive board, as contrasted with the bitter religious discussions which had characterized American gatherings in the preceding century when tolerance had not been so broad. [Illustration: PLATE IV.--Stenton, Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected by James Logan in 1727.] [Illustration: PLATE V.--Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh Valley. Erected by Samuel Morris in 1723; Home of Stephen Girard.] But the brilliancy of social life in Philadelphia was by no means confined to the entertainment of visitors. Despite its importance, Philadelphia was a relatively small place in those days. Everybody knew everybody else of consequence, and social exchanges were inevitable among people of wealth and culture, prominent in public life and successful in commerce, of whom there were a larger number than in any other American city. While there were two separate and distinct social sets, the staid and sober Quakers and the gay "World's People", they were ever being drawn more closely together. The early severity of the Quakers had been greatly tempered by the increasing worldly influences about them. They were among the richest inhabitants and prominent in the government, holding the majority in the House of Assembly. This brought them into constant association with and under the influence of men in public life elsewhere, demonstrating the fact that, like the "World's People", they dearly loved eating and drinking. One has but to peruse some of the old diaries of prominent Friends which are still in existence to see that they occasionally "gormandized to the verge of gluttony", and even got "decently drunk." Toward the outbreak of the Revolution, life among most Quakers had ceased to be as strict and monotonous as many have supposed. There were fox hunting, horse racing, assembly dances, barbecues, cider frolics, turtle and other dinners, tea parties and punch drinking, both under private auspices and among the activities of such clubs as the Colony in Schuylkill and the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club, in which the First City Troop originated. At the time of monthly, quarterly and yearly meetings whole families of Friends often visited other families for several days at a time, a custom which became an important element in the social intercourse of the province. Cock fighting and bull baiting were among the frequent pastimes of Philadelphians, although frowned upon by the strict Quaker element. The same was true of theatrical entertainments, which began in 1754 and continued occasionally thereafter. Following the first Shakespearean performance in America at Philadelphia in 1749, a storehouse on Water Street near Pine Street, belonging to William Plumstead, was fitted up as a theater, and in April, 1754, the drama was really introduced to Philadelphia by a series of plays given by William Hallam's old American Company. In 1759 the first theater in Philadelphia purposely erected for the exhibition of plays was built at the southwest corner of Vernon and South (then Cedar) streets, and was opened by David Douglass, the manager of the company started by Hallam. A few years later, in 1766, was built the old Southwark or South Street Theater in South Street above Fourth, where Major John André and Captain John Peter De Lancy acted during the British occupation of the city, and which after twenty years of illegal existence was opened "by authority" in 1789. None of these now remains, but the Walnut Street Theater, erected in 1808, is said to be the oldest playhouse in the United States. Taking all these facts into consideration, it is not surprising that, except for some of the earliest houses now remaining and others built with less ample fortunes, little difference is distinguishable between the homes of Quakers and "World's People", and that the distinctive characteristics of the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia are more or less common to all buildings of the period. Shortly after the Revolution the built-up portion of the city was bounded by the Delaware River on the east and Seventh Street on the west, and by Poplar Street on the north and Christian Street on the south. While houses in blocks were the rule, numerous unoccupied lots made many trees and gardens in the rear and at the sides of detached houses quite common. This was regarded as not entirely sufficient by the wealthier families, which considered country living essential to health, comfort and pleasure, and so maintained two establishments,--a town house for winter occupancy and a countryseat as a summer retreat. Others desiring to live more nearly in the manner of their English forbears in the mother country chose to make an elaborate countryseat their year-round place of residence. Thus the surrounding countryside--but especially to the northwestward along the high, wooded banks of the Schuylkill River and Wissahickon Creek--became a community of great estates with elegant country houses which have no parallel in America other than the manorial estates along the James River in Virginia. The Philadelphia of to-day, therefore, has not only a distinctive architecture in its brick, stone and woodwork, but a diversified architecture embracing both the city and country types of design and construction. CHAPTER II GEORGIAN COUNTRY HOUSES OF BRICK Throughout the Colonial period, and to a degree during the early years of the American nation, Philadelphia clung to the manners and customs of the mother country as did few other communities in the new world. In architecture, therefore, it is not surprising to find the oldest houses and public buildings of the American metropolis of those days reflecting the tendencies of the times across the water. Wood had already ceased to be a cheap building material in England, and although it was abundantly available in America, brick and stone were thought necessary for the better homes, despite the fact that for some years, until sources of clay and limestone were found, bricks and lime for making mortar had to be brought at great expense from overseas. So we find that in 1683, the year following the founding of the "City of Brotherly Love", William Penn erected for his daughter Letitia the first brick house in the town, which was for several years occupied by Penn and his family. It was located in Letitia Court, a small street running from Market to Chestnut streets between Front and Second streets. Although of little architectural value, it was of great historic interest, and when in 1883 the encroachments of the wholesale district threatened to destroy it, the house was removed to Fairmount Park by the city and rebuilt on Lansdowne Drive west of the Girard Avenue bridge. It is open to the public and contains numerous Penn relics. [Illustration: PLATE VI.--Port Royal House, Frankford. Erected in 1762 by Edward Stiles.] [Illustration: PLATE VII.--Blackwell House, 224 Pine Street. Erected about 1765 by John Stamper; Wharton House, 336 Spruce Street. Erected prior to 1796 by Samuel Pancoast.] Thus from the very outset brick construction has been favored in preference to wood in Philadelphia. Homes in the city proper were built of it chiefly, and likewise many of the elegant countryseats in the neighboring townships, now part of the greater Philadelphia of to-day. The wealthier residents very early set the fashion of both city and country living, following in this custom the example of William Penn, the founder, who not only had his house in town, but a country place, a veritable mansion, long since gone, on an island in the Delaware River above Bristol. British builders had forsaken the Jacobean manner of the early Renaissance and come completely under the spell of the English Classic or so-called Georgian style. Correspondingly, American men of means were erecting country houses of brick, with ornamental trim classic in detail, and of marble and white-painted wood. Marked by solidity, spaciousness and quiet dignity, they are thoroughly Georgian in conception, and as such reminiscent of the manorial seats of Virginia, yet less stately and in various respects peculiar to this section of the colonies. Like the bricks, the elaborate interior woodwork was at first brought from overseas, but later produced by resident artisans of whom there was an ever increasing number of no mean order. Almost without exception the Colonial brickwork of Philadelphia was laid up with wide mortar joints in Flemish bond, red stretcher and black header bricks alternating in the same course. The arrangement not only imparts a delightful warmth and pleasing texture, but the headers provide frequent transverse ties, giving great strength to the wall. With this rich background the enlivening contrast of marble lintels and sills and white-painted wood trim, in which paneled shutters play a prominent part, form a picture of rare charm, rendered all the more satisfying by an appearance of obvious comfort, permanence and intrinsic worth which wood construction, however good, cannot convey. Many of the splendid old pre-Revolutionary country houses of brick no longer remain to us. Some are gone altogether; others are remodeled almost beyond recognition; a few, hedged around by the growing city, have been allowed to fall into a state of hopeless decay. Woodford, however, located in the Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park, at York and Thirty-third streets, is fairly representative of the type of Georgian countryseat of brick, so many of which were erected in the suburbs of Philadelphia about the middle of the eighteenth century. It is a large square structure, two and a half stories in height, with a hipped roof rising above a handsome cornice with prominent modillions and surmounted by a balustraded belvedere. Two large chimneys, much nearer together than is ordinarily the case, emerge within the inclosed area of the belvedere deck. A heavy pediment springs from the cornice above the pedimental doorway, and this repetition of the motive imparts a pleasing interest and emphasis to the façade. The subordinate cornice at the second-floor level is most unusual and may perhaps reflect the influence of the penthouse roof which became such a characteristic feature of the ledge stone work of the neighborhood. Few houses have the brick pilaster treatment at the corners with corresponding cornice projections which enrich the ornamental trim. Six broad soapstone steps with a simple wrought-iron handrail at either side lead up to a fine doorway, Tuscan in spirit, with high narrow doors. Above, a beautiful Palladian window is one of the best features of the façade. An interesting fenestration scheme, with paneled shutters at the lower windows only, is enhanced by the pleasing scale of twelve-paned upper and lower window sashes having broad white muntins throughout. Opening the front door, one finds himself in a wide hall with doorways giving entrance to large front rooms on each side. Beyond, a beautifully detailed arch supported by pilasters spans the hall. The stairway is located near the center of the house in a hall to one side of the main hall and reached from it through a side door. Interior woodwork of good design and workmanship everywhere greets the eye, especially noticeable features being the rounding cornices, heavy wainscots and the floors an inch and a half in thickness and doweled together. Each room has a fireplace with ornamental iron back, a hearth of square bricks and a well-designed wood mantel. In the south front room blue tiles depicting Elizabethan knights and their ladies surround the fireplace opening. Brass handles instead of door knobs lend distinction to the hardware. Woodford was erected in 1766 by William Coleman, a successful merchant, eminent jurist and a friend of Franklin. He was a member of the Common Council in 1739, justice of the peace and judge of the county courts in 1751 and judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 1759 until his death ten years later. Coleman's executors sold the place to Alexander Barclay, comptroller of His Majesty's Customs at Philadelphia, and the grandson of Robert Barclay of Ury, the noted Quaker theologian and "Apologist." [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--Morris House, 225 South Eighth Street. Erected in 1786 by John Reynolds.] [Illustration: PLATE IX.--Wistar House, Fourth and Locust Streets. Erected about 1750; Betsy Ross House, 239 Arch Street.] On Barclay's death in 1771, Woodford became the home of David Franks, a wealthy Jewish merchant and one of the signers of the Non-Importation Resolutions of 1765 by which a large body of leading American merchants agreed "not to have any goods shipped from Great Britain until after the repeal of the Stamp Act." He was prominent both socially and politically, a member of the Provincial Assembly in 1748 and the register of wills. Prior to the outbreak of the Revolution, he was the agent of the Crown in Philadelphia and was then made commissary of the British prisoners in the American lines. In 1778, however, he was arrested by General Benedict Arnold for attempting to transmit a letter harmful to the American cause, deprived of his commission and property, and obliged to remove to New York two years later. One of Franks' daughters, Abigail, married Andrew Hamilton of The Woodlands, afterwards attorney-general of Pennsylvania. Another daughter, Rebecca, married General Sir Henry Johnson, who was defeated and captured by General Anthony Wayne at Stony Point. Rebecca Franks was one of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her day. Well educated, a gifted writer and fascinating conversationalist, witty and winsome, she was popular in society and one of the belles of the celebrated "Mischianza", which was given May 18, 1778, by the British officers in honor of General Lord Howe upon his departure for England. This was a feast of gayety with a tournament somewhat like those common in the age of chivalry, and was planned largely by Major John André, who was later hanged by order of an American military commission for his connection with the treason of General Benedict Arnold. Following the confiscation of Franks' property in 1780, Woodford was sold to Thomas Paschall, a friend of Franklin. Later it was occupied for a time by William Lewis, a noted advocate, and in 1793 was bought by Isaac Wharton, son of Joseph Wharton, owner of Walnut Grove in Southwark at about Fifth Street and Walnut Avenue, where the "Mischianza" was held. A son, Francis Rawle Wharton, inherited the place on his father's death in 1798 and was the last private owner. In 1868 the estate was made part of Fairmount Park, and since 1887 it has been used as a guardhouse. A country house typical of the time, though unlike most other contemporary buildings in the details of its construction, is Hope Lodge in Whitemarsh Valley on the Bethlehem Pike just north of its junction with the Skippack Pike. It is thoroughly Georgian in conception, and most of the materials, including all of the wood finish, were brought from England. The place reached a deplorable state of decay several years ago, yet the accompanying photograph shows enough remaining to be of considerable architectural interest. It is a large, square house two and a half stories high, its hipped roof broken by handsome pedimental dormers with round-topped windows. The front is of brick laid up in characteristic Flemish bond, while the other walls are of plastered rubble stone masonry, the brickwork and stonework being quoined together at the front corners. A broad plaster coving is the principal feature of the simple molded cornice, and one notes the much used double belt formed by two projecting courses of brick at the second-floor level. The fenestration differs in several respects from that of similar houses erected a quarter century later. The arrangement of the ranging windows is quite conventional, but instead of marble lintels above them there are nicely gauged flat brick arches, while the basement windows are set in openings beneath segmental relieving arches with brick cores. The latter are reflected in effect by the recessed elliptical arches above all the windows in the walls of plastered rubble masonry. The windows themselves, with nine-paned upper and lower sashes having unusually heavy muntins, likewise the shutters on the lower story and the heavy paneled doors, are higher and narrower than was the rule a few years later. The entrance, with its characteristic double doors, is reached by a porch and four stone steps, its low hip roof with molded cornice being supported by two curious, square, tapering columns. Porches were an unusual circumstance in the neighborhood, and this one is so unlike any others of Colonial times which are worthy of note as to suggest its having been a subsequent addition. Above, a round-arched recess with projecting brick sill replaces the conventional Palladian window. Indoors, an exceptionally wide hall extends entirely through the house from front to back, opening into spacious rooms on both sides through round-topped doorways with narrow double doors heavily paneled. An elliptical arch supported by fluted pilasters spans the hall about midway of its length, and a handsome staircase ascends laterally from the rear part after the common English manner of that day. Throughout the house the woodwork is of good design and execution, the paneled wainscots, molded cornices, door and window casings all being very heavy, and the broad fireplaces and massive chimney pieces in complete accord. Deep paneled window seats, very common in contemporary houses, are a feature of the first-floor rooms. The kitchens and the servants' quarters are located in a separate building to the rear, a brick-paved porch connecting the two. This custom, as in the South, was characteristic of the locality and period. [Illustration: PLATE X.--Glen Fern, on Wissahickon Creek, Germantown. Erected about 1747 by Thomas Shoemaker; Grumblethorpe, 5261 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1744 by John Wister.] [Illustration: PLATE XI.--Upsala, Germantown Avenue and Upsala Streets, Germantown. Erected in 1798 by John Johnson; End Perspective of Upsala.] Hope Lodge was erected in 1723 by Samuel Morris, a Quaker of Welsh descent, who was a justice of the peace in Whitemarsh and an overseer of Plymouth Meeting. Morris built it expecting to marry a young Englishwoman to whom he had become affianced while on a visit to England with his mother, Susanna Heath, who was a prominent minister among the Friends. The wedding did not occur, however, and Samuel Morris died a bachelor in 1772, leaving his estate to his brother Joshua, who sold Hope Lodge in 1776 to William West. In 1784 West's executors conveyed it to the life interest of Colonel James Horatio Watmough with a reversion to his guardian, Henry Hope, a banker. It was Colonel Watmough who named the place Hope Lodge as a compliment to his guardian. One of his daughters married Joseph Reed, son of General Joseph Reed, and another married John Sargent, the famous lawyer. Both the Reeds and Sargents occupied Hope Lodge at various times, and it eventually passed into the Wentz family. No other Colonial country house of brick that now remains holds an interest, either architectural or historic, quite equal to that of Stenton, which stands among fine old oaks, pines and hemlocks in a six-acre park, all that now remains of an estate of five hundred acres located on Germantown Avenue on the outskirts of Germantown near the Wayne Junction railroad station. One of the earliest and most pretentious countryseats of the neighborhood, it combines heavy construction and substantial appearance with a picturesque charm that is rare in buildings of such early origin. This is due in part to the brightening effect of the fenestration, with many small-paned windows set in white-painted molded frames, and quite as much to the slender trellises between the lower-story windows supporting vines which have spread over the brickwork above in the most fascinating manner. Both features impart a lighter sense of scale, while the profusion of white wood trim emphasizes more noticeably the delightful color and texture of the brickwork. The house is a great, square, hip-roofed structure two and a half stories high with two large square chimneys and severely plain pedimental dormers. Servants' quarters, kitchens and greenhouses are located in a separate gable-roof structure a story and a half high, extending back more than a hundred feet from the main house, and connected with it by a covered porch along the back. In the kitchen the brick oven, the copper boiler and the fireplace with its crane still remain. The walls of the house consist of characteristic brickwork of red stretchers and black headers laid up in Flemish bond, with square piers at the front corners and on each side of the entrance, and there is the more or less customary projecting belt at the second-floor level. On the second story the windows are set close up under the heavy overhanging cornice, with its prominent modillions, while on the lower story there are relieving arches with cores of brick instead of stone lintels so common on houses a few decades later. There are similar arches over the barred basement windows set in brick-lined areaways. Interesting indeed is the scheme of fenestration. Although formal and symmetrical on the front, the windows piercing the other walls frankly correspond to the interior floor plan, although ranging for the most part. Unlike the usual arrangement, there are two widely spaced windows above the entrance, while the narrow flanking windows either side of the doorway may be regarded as one of the earliest instances of side lights in American architecture. The severely simple entrance with its high narrow paneled doors without either knob or latch is reached from a brick-paved walk about the house by three semicircular stone steps such as were common in England at the time, the various nicely hewn pieces fastened securely together with iron bands. The front door opens into a large square hall with a brick-paved floor and walls wainscoted to the ceiling with white-painted wood paneling. There is a fireplace on the right, and beyond an archway in the rear a staircase ascends to the second floor. To the right of the hall is the parlor, also with paneled walls, and a fireplace surrounded by pink tiles. In the wainscoted room back of this the sliding top of a closet offers opportunity for a person to conceal himself and listen through a small hole to the conversation in the adjoining hall. To the left of the hall is the dining room, beautifully wainscoted and having a built-in cupboard for china and a fireplace faced with blue tiles. The iron fireback bears the inscription "J. L. 1728." Back of this through a passageway is a small breakfast room, whence an underground passage for use during storms or sieges leads from a trap door in the floor to the barns. The second-story floor plan is most unusual. The library, a great long room, extends entirely across the front of the house, with its range of six windows and two fireplaces on the opposite wall, one faced with blue tiles and the other with white. Here, with the finest private collection of books in America at that time, the scholarly owner spent his declining years, the library going to the city of Philadelphia on his death. Two small bedrooms, each with a fireplace, were occupied by his daughters. A little back staircase leads to the third floor, where the woodwork of the chambers was unpainted. [Illustration: PLATE XII.--The Woodlands, Blockley Township, West Philadelphia. Erected in 1770 by William Hamilton; Stable at The Woodlands.] [Illustration: PLATE XIII.--Wyck, Germantown Avenue and Walnut Lane, Germantown. Erected by Hans Millan about 1690; Hall and Entrance Doorways, Wyck.] Stenton was erected in 1728 by James Logan, a scholar, philosopher, man of affairs, the secretary and later the personal representative of William Penn, the founder, and afterwards chief justice of the colony. Descended from a noble Scottish family, his father a clergyman and teacher who joined the Society of Friends in 1761, James Logan himself was for a time a teacher in London, but soon engaged in the shipping trade. In 1699 he came to America with William Penn as his secretary, and on Penn's return to England he was left in charge of the province. Thereafter Logan became a very important personage, much liked and fully trusted by all who knew him, including the Indians, with whom he maintained friendly relations. For half a century he was a mighty factor in provincial affairs, and to read his life is to read the history of Pennsylvania for that period, for he was chief justice, provincial secretary, commissioner of property, surveyor-general and president of the council. His ample fortune, amassed in commerce with Edward Shippen, in trade with the Indians, and by the purchase and sale of lands, enabled him to live and entertain at Stenton in a princely manner many distinguished American and European personages of that day. When Logan died in 1751, he was succeeded by his son William, who continued faithful to the proprietary interests and carried on the Indian work. His son, Doctor George Logan, was the next proprietor during the Revolutionary period. Educated in England and Scotland, he traveled extensively in Europe; after his return to America he became a member of the Agricultural and Philosophical Societies and was elected a senator from Pennsylvania from 1801 to 1807. During Doctor Logan's occupancy Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and many other distinguished American and European personages were entertained at Stenton. It was Washington's headquarters on August 23, 1777, while he was on his way to the Brandywine from Hartsville. Ten years later, on July 8, 1787, he came again as President of the Constitutional Convention, then sitting in Philadelphia, to see a demonstration of land plaster on grass land that had been made by Doctor Logan. Sir William Howe occupied Stenton as his headquarters during the battle of Germantown, October 4, 1777, and on November 22 ordered it destroyed, along with the homes of other "obnoxious persons." The story of its narrow escape is interesting. Two dragoons came to fire it. Meeting a negro woman on their way to the barn for straw, they told her she might remove the bedding and clothing. Meanwhile a British officer and several men happened along, inquiring for deserters, whereupon the negro servant with ready wit said that two were hiding in the barn. Despite their protests, the men were carried away and the house was saved, as the order to fire it was not repeated. After Doctor Logan's death in 1821, Stenton was occupied by his widow, Deborah Logan, until her death in 1839, when it passed to her son Albanus, an agriculturalist and sportsman. His son Gustavus was the last private owner, as the house was acquired by the city and occupied as their headquarters by the Colonial Dames, the descendants of the Logan family removing to Loudoun near by. No account of the Colonial houses of Philadelphia would be reasonably complete which failed to include the home of Stephen Girard. Although of scant architectural distinction, it is of interest through its association with one of the chief outstanding figures of a city noted for its celebrated residents. It is a two-story hip-roofed structure, rather narrow but of exceptional length, taking the form of two plaster-walled wings on opposite sides of a central portion of brick having a pediment springing from the main cornice and a circular, ornamental window. As at Hope Lodge a broad plaster coving is the principal feature of the simple cornice. The windows and chimneys differ in various parts of the house, and the doors are strangely located, all suggesting alterations and additions. The central part of the house has casement sashes with blinds as contrasted with Georgian sashes with paneled shutters elsewhere, and all second-story windows are foreshortened. Stephen Girard, a wealthy and eccentric Philadelphia merchant, financier, philanthropist and the founder of Girard College, was born near Bordeaux, France, in 1750, the son of a sea captain. He lost the sight of his right eye when eight years old and had only a meager education. Beginning a seafaring life as a cabin boy, he in time became master and part owner of a small vessel trading between New York, New Orleans and Port au Prince. In May, 1776, he was driven into the port of Philadelphia by a British fleet and settled there as a merchant. Gradually he built up a fleet of vessels trading with New Orleans and the West Indies, and by the close of the Revolution, Girard was one of the richest men of his time, and he used his wealth in numerous ways to benefit the nation and humanity. In 1810 he utilized about a million dollars deposited with the Barings of London to purchase shares of the much depreciated stock of the Bank of the United States, which materially assisted the government in bolstering European confidence in its securities. When the bank was not rechartered, Girard bought the building and cashier's house for a third of their original cost, and in May, 1812, established the Bank of Stephen Girard. In 1814, when the government needed money to bring the second conflict with England to a successful conclusion, he subscribed for about ninety-five per cent of the war loan of five million dollars, of which only twenty thousand dollars besides had been taken, and he generously offered to the public at par shares which, following his purchase, had gone to a premium. [Illustration: PLATE XIV.--Mount Pleasant, Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Erected in 1761 by Captain James Macpherson; The Main House, Mount Pleasant.] [Illustration: PLATE XV.--Deschler-Perot-Morris House, 5442 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1772 by Daniel Deschler; Vernon, Vernon Park, Germantown. Erected in 1803 by James Matthews.] Girard showed his public spirit personally as well as financially. During the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 and in 1797-1798 he took the lead in relieving the poor and caring for the sick. He volunteered to act as manager of the hospital at Bush Hill and with the assistance of Peter Helm he cleansed the place and systemized the work. On his death in 1831, Girard's estate, the greatest private fortune in America, was valued at about seven and a half million dollars, and his philanthropy was again shown in his disposition of it. Being without heirs, as his child had died soon after its birth and his beautiful wife had died after many years in an insane asylum, his heart went out to poor and orphan children. In his will he bequeathed $116,000 to various Philadelphia charities; $500,000 to the city for improvement of the Delaware River front, streets and buildings; $300,000 to Pennsylvania for internal improvements, especially canals, and the bulk of the estate to Philadelphia, chiefly for founding and maintaining a non-sectarian school or college, but also for providing a better police system, making municipal improvements and lessening taxation. The college was given for the support and education of poor white male orphans, of legitimate birth and character, between the ages of six and ten; and it was specified that no boy was to be permitted to stay after his eighteenth year, and that as regards admission, preference was to be shown, first to orphans born in Philadelphia, second to orphans born in any other part of Pennsylvania, third to orphans born in New York City, and fourth to orphans born in New Orleans. Work upon the buildings was begun in 1833, and the college was opened with five buildings in 1848. The central one, an imposing structure in the Corinthian style of architecture designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, has been called "the most perfect Greek temple in existence." To it in 1851 were removed the remains of Stephen Girard and placed in a sarcophagus in the south vestibule. The college fund, originally $5,260,000, has grown to more than thirty-five million dollars; likewise the college has become virtually a village in itself. Some twenty handsome buildings and residences, valued at about three and a half million dollars, and more than forty acres of land accommodate about two thousand students, teachers and employes. Under the provisions of the Girard trust fund nearly five hundred dwelling houses have been erected by the city in South Philadelphia, all heated and lighted by a central plant operated by the trustees, and more than seventy million tons of coal have been mined on property belonging to his estate. Few philanthropists have left their money so wisely or with such thoughtful provisions to meet changing conditions. [Illustration: PLATE XVI.--Loudoun, Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street, Germantown. Erected in 1801 by Thomas Armat; Solitude, Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. Erected in 1785 by John Penn.] [Illustration: PLATE XVII.--Cliveden, Germantown Avenue and Johnson Street, Germantown. Erected in 1781 by Benjamin Chew.] Perhaps the brick mansion most thoroughly representative of the type of Georgian country house, of which so many sprang up about Philadelphia from 1760 to 1770, is Port Royal House on Tacony Street between Church and Duncan streets in Frankford. This great square, hip-roofed structure with its quoined corners and projecting stone belt at the second-floor level; its surmounting belvedere, ornamental dormers and great chimney stacks; its central pediment springing from a heavy cornice above a projecting central portion of the façade in which are located a handsome Palladian window and characteristic Doric doorway; its large, ranging, twenty-four-paned windows with keyed stone lintels and blinds on the lower story, is in brick substantially what Mount Pleasant is in plastered stone, as will be seen in Chapter V. As in the latter, a broad central hall extends entirely through the house, and the staircase is located in a small side hall. The rooms throughout are large and contain excellent woodwork and chimney pieces. Port Royal House was erected in 1762 by Edward Stiles, a wealthy merchant and shipowner, who like many others emigrated from Bermuda to the Bahama island of New Providence and thence to Philadelphia about the middle of the eighteenth century, to engage in American commerce. He was the great-grandson of John Stiles, one of the first settlers of Bermuda in 1635, and the son of Daniel Stiles, of Port Royal Parish, a vestryman and warden of Port Royal Church and a member of the Assembly of Bermuda in 1723. Commerce between the American colonies and Bermuda and the West Indies was extensive, and Stiles' business prospered. He had a store in Front Street between Market and Arch streets, and a town house in Walnut Street between Third and Fourth streets. In summer, like other men of his station and affluence, he lived at his countryseat, surrounded by many slaves, on an extensive plantation in Oxford township, near Frankford, that he had purchased from the Waln family. To it he gave the name Port Royal after his birthplace in Bermuda. To Edward Stiles in 1775 befell the opportunity to carry relief to the people of Bermuda, then in dire distress because their supplies from America had been cut off by the Non-Importation Agreement among the American colonies. In response to their petition to the Continental Congress, permission was granted to send Stiles' ship, the _Sea Nymph_ (Samuel Stobel, master), laden with provisions to be paid for by the people of Bermuda either in gold or arms, ammunition, saltpeter, sulphur and fieldpieces. During the occupation of Philadelphia by the British in 1777 and 1778, Frankford became the middle ground between the opposing armies and subject to the depredations of both. Port Royal House, like many other estates of the vicinity, was robbed of its fine furniture, horses, slaves and provisions. Under the will of Edward Stiles his slaves were freed and educated at the expense of his estate. In 1853 the Lukens family bought Port Royal House and for several years a boarding school was conducted there. As the manufacturing about Frankford grew, the locality lost its desirability as a place of residence. The house was abandoned to chance tenants and allowed to fall into an exceedingly delapidated condition. The accompanying photograph, however, depicts enough of its former state to indicate that in its day it was among the best brick country residences of the vicinity. CHAPTER III CITY RESIDENCES OF BRICK As the city of Philadelphia grew and became more densely populated, land values increased greatly, and the custom developed of building brick residences in blocks fronting directly on the street, the party walls being located on the side property lines. Like the country houses already described, these were laid up in Flemish bond with alternating red stretcher and black header bricks, and thus an entire block presented a straight, continuous wall, broken only by a remarkably regular scheme of doorways and fenestration, and varied only by slight differences in the detail of doors and windows, lintels, cornices and dormers. These plain two-or three-story brick dwellings in long rows, in street after street, with white marble steps and trimmings, green or white shutters, each intended for one family, have been perpetuated through the intervening years, and now as then form the dominant feature of the domestic architecture of the city proper. For the most part these were single-front houses, that is to say, the doorway was located to the right or left with two windows at one side, while on the stories above windows ranged with the doorway, making three windows across each story. There were exceptions, however, the so-called Morris house at Number 225 South Eighth Street being a notable example of a characteristic double-front house of the locality and period. They were gable-roof structures with high chimneys in the party walls, foreshortened, third-story windows and from one to three dormers piercing the roof. At the end of the block the wall was often carried up above the ridge between a pair of chimneys and terminated in a horizontal line, imparting greater stability to the chimney construction and lending an air of distinction to the whole house, which was further enhanced by locating the entrance directly beneath in the end wall rather than in the side of the building. The famous old Wistar house at the southeast corner of Fourth and Locust streets is a case in point. Pedimental dormers were the rule, sometimes with round-headed windows. Elaborate molded wood cornices were a feature, often with prominent, even hand-tooled modillions. Slightly projecting belts of brick courses, marble or other stone marked the floor levels, and keyed stone lintels were customary, although in some of the plainer houses the window frames were set between ordinary courses of brickwork, without decoration of any sort. Most of the windows had either six-or nine-paned upper and lower sashes with third-story windows foreshortened in various ways. There were paneled shutters at the first-story windows and often on the second story as well, although blinds were sometimes used on the second story and rarely on the third. The high, deeply recessed doorways, with engaged columns or fluted pilasters supporting handsome entablatures or pediments, and beautifully paneled doors, often with a semicircular fanlight above, were characteristic of most Philadelphia entrances. Before them, occupying part of the sidewalk, was a single broad stone step, or at times a stoop consisting of a flight of three or four steps with a simple wrought-iron handrail, sometimes on both sides, but often on only one side. Other common obstructions in the sidewalk were areaways at one or two basement windows and a rolling way with inclined double doors giving entrance from the street to the basement. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--Detail of Cliveden Façade; Detail of Bartram House Façade.] [Illustration: PLATE XIX.--The Highlands, Skippack Pike, Whitemarsh. Erected in 1796 by Anthony Morris.] Many of these city residences were of almost palatial character, built by wealthy merchants and men in political life who thought it expedient to live near their wharves and countinghouses or within easy distance of the seats of city, provincial and later of national government. Beautiful gardens occupied the backyards of many such dwellings, affording veritable oases in a desert of bricks and mortar, yet many of the more affluent citizens maintained countryseats along the Schuylkill or elsewhere in addition to their town houses. The location of many of these early city dwellings of brick was such that as the city grew they became undesirable as places of residence. Business encroached upon them more and more, so that, except for houses which have remained for generations in the same family or have historic interest sufficient to have brought about their preservation by the city, relatively few still remain in anything like their original condition. Of the quaint two-and three-story dwellings of modest though delightfully distinctive character, which once lined the narrow streets and alleys, most have become squalid tenements and small alien stores, or else have been utilized for commercial purposes. To walk through Combes Alley and Elfret Alley is to sense what once was and to realize the trend of the times, but there is much material for study in these rapidly decaying old sections that repay a visit by the architect and student. Happily, however, one of these typical little streets is to be perpetuated in something like its pristine condition. Camac Street, "the street of little clubs", has become one of the unique features of the city,--a typically American "Latin Quarter." To enter this little, narrow, rough-paved alley, running south from Walnut Street between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, is like stepping back a century or more. The squatty little two and a half story houses with picturesque doorways and dormer windows have become the homes of numerous clubs representing the best art interests of the city. Poor Richard Club, Plastic Club, Sketch Club, Coin d'Or and Franklin Inn are among the names to be seen painted on the signs beside the doors. The houses and their gardens in the rear have been restored and provide excellent club, exhibition and lecture rooms, at the same time preserving some fine examples of a rapidly passing type of early American architecture. Would that a similar course might be taken by local societies in every large American city where a wealth of Colonial architecture exists! Among the fine old single-front houses of particular interest which have suffered through the encroachment of business upon the former residential sections of the city are the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street, and the Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street. The former was in many respects the most elegant residence in Philadelphia, built almost without regard to cost by a man of great wealth, whose taste and refinement called for luxurious living and a beautiful home. The interior woodwork surpassed in design and execution anything to be found elsewhere in the city. Many of the doorways had fluted pilasters, heavily molded casings and carved broken pediments. The doors were of mahogany as was likewise the wainscoting of the staircases. The sides of the rooms where fireplaces were located were completely paneled to the ceiling, and above the fireplace openings were narrow panels on which were hunting scenes done in mastic. Some years ago much of this beautiful woodwork was removed, and to-day, despoiled of its former architectural splendor, dingy and dilapidated, the shell of the building is used as a cigar factory. The house was built about 1765 by John Stamper, a wealthy English merchant, who had been successively councilman, alderman and finally mayor of Philadelphia in 1759. He bought the whole south side of Pine Street from Second to Third from the Penns in 1761, and for many years the house was surrounded by a garden containing flowers, shrubs and fruit trees. Later the house passed into the hands of Stamper's son-in-law, William Bingham, Senior, and afterwards to Bingham's son-in-law, the Reverend Doctor Robert Blackwell. Doctor Blackwell was the son of Colonel Jacob Blackwell, of New York, who owned extensive estates on Long Island along the East River, Blackwell's Island being included. After graduating from Princeton, Robert Blackwell studied first medicine and then theology. After several years of tutoring at Philipse Manor, he was ordained to the ministry and served the missions at Gloucester and St. Mary's, Colestown, New Jersey. When both congregations were scattered by the Revolution, he joined the Continental Army at Valley Forge as both chaplain and surgeon. In 1870 he married Hannah Bingham, whose considerable fortune, added to the estate of his father which he soon after inherited, made him the richest clergyman in America and one of the richest men in Philadelphia. The following year he was called to assist Doctor White, the rector of Christ Church and St. Peter's, and to the latter Doctor Blackwell chiefly devoted himself until his resignation in 1811 due to failing health. It was the services of these united parishes which Washington, his Cabinet and members of Congress attended frequently. On Doctor Blackwell's death in 1831 the house passed into the Willing family and has since changed owners many times. The Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street, was built in 1796 by Samuel Pancoast, a house carpenter, who sold it to Mordecai Lewis, a prominent merchant in the East India trade, shipowner, importer and one-time partner of William Bingham, the brother-in-law of Doctor Blackwell, and whose palatial mansion in Third Street above Spruce was one of the most exclusive social centers of the city. Mordecai Lewis was a director of the Bank of North America, the Philadelphia Contributorship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, the Philadelphia Library, and the treasurer of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Much of the currency issued by the Continental Congress of 1776 bore his name. Although a member of the volunteer military company, he was never in active service. Following his death in 1799 the house was sold by his executors in 1809 to his son, Samuel N. Lewis, also a successful merchant of great public spirit. In 1817 the younger Lewis sold the house to Samuel Fisher, another merchant and prominent Friend noted for his hospitality and his charity, especially toward negroes and Indians. Because of his neutrality during the Revolution, he was exiled to Virginia from 1777 until 1779, when he was arrested because of a business letter to his partner in New York which was regarded as antagonistic to the government. He was committed to the "Old Gaol", and after refusing bail was tried and because of the clamor of the mob was sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war. Soon afterward, however, a pardon was offered him, which he refused, and two years later he left prison by invitation without terms, his health broken. His wedding gift to his daughter, Deborah, on her marriage to William Wharton in 1817, was the Spruce Street house, which has ever since borne Wharton's name. William Wharton was the son of Charles Wharton, who, with his wife, Hannah, devoted themselves to a religious life among the Friends. Deborah Wharton, William Wharton's wife, became a prominent minister of the Society of Friends, traveling extensively in the interests of Indian welfare and giving generously of her ample means to various philanthropic causes. She was one of the early managers of Swarthmore College, as has been a descendant in each generation of the family since that time. Of her ten children, Joseph Wharton, also a prominent Friend, was owner of the Bethlehem Steel Works and one of the most successful ironmasters in the country. A liberal philanthropist, he founded the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania and was for many years president of the board of managers of Swarthmore College. On his mother's death in 1888 the Spruce Street house came into his possession and is still owned by his estate. Although rented as a rooming house, it remains in a fair state of preservation. [Illustration: PLATE XX.--Bartram House, Kingsessing, West Philadelphia. Erected in 1730-31 by John Bartram; Old Green Tree Inn, 6019 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1748.] [Illustration: PLATE XXI.--Johnson House, 6306 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1765-68 by Dirck Jansen; Billmeyer House, Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Erected in 1727.] The Wistar house, at the southwest corner of Fourth and Locust streets, to which architectural reference has previously been made, was built about 1750 and for nearly three quarters of a century thereafter was the scene of constant hospitality and lavish entertainment. Here lived Doctor William Shippen, whose marriage to Alice, the daughter of Thomas Lee, of Virginia, and the sister of Richard Henry and Arthur Lee, was one of the numerous alliances which drew the county families of Virginia and Maryland into close relationship with Philadelphia families. Doctor Shippen's home quickly became the resort of the Virginia aristocracy when visiting the national capital, and in consequence there was a constant succession of balls and dinners during the winter season. In 1799 the house was occupied by Doctor Caspar Wistar, the eminent anatomist, known to the élite of the city and nation for his brilliant social gatherings and as the man for whom that beautiful climbing plant, the _Wistaria_, was named. Doctor Wistar's geniality, magnetism, intellectual leadership and generous hospitality made his home a gathering place for the most distinguished personages of his day in the professions, arts, sciences, letters and politics. Since he held a chair at the University of Pennsylvania and carried on an extensive private practice, the demands upon his time were great, but Sunday evenings, and later on Saturday evenings, he was at home to his friends, who formed the habit of calling regularly in numbers from ten to fifty and often bringing new-found friends, sure of a hearty welcome, brilliant conversation and choice refreshments. And so began one of the cherished institutions of Philadelphia, the Wistar Parties, which were continued after the doctor's death in 1818 by Wistar's friends and their descendants. The Civil War brought an interruption, but in 1886 the gatherings were again resumed; few of the distinguished visitors to the city failed to be invited to attend, and, having attended, to praise most highly the exceptional hospitality shown them. During Doctor Wistar's lifetime the personnel of the parties gradually became substantially the membership of that world-famous scientific organization, the Philosophical Society, and later membership in that society became requisite to eligibility for the Wistar Parties. By far the handsomest old city residence of brick that remains in anything like its original condition is the so-called Morris house at Number 225 South Eighth Street between Walnut and Spruce streets. Although not built until very shortly after the struggle for American independence had been won, it is pre-Revolutionary in character and Colonial in style throughout. In elegance and distinction the façade is unexcelled in early American city architecture. Unlike most houses of the time and locality, it has a double front with two windows each side of a central doorway, a range of five windows on the second and third floors and three simple dormers in the gable roof above. The windows have twelve-paned upper and lower sashes with paneled shutters on the first and second stories, and foreshortened eight-paned upper and lower sashes without shutters on the third story. The brickwork is of characteristic Flemish bond with alternating red stretcher and black header bricks. Two slightly projecting courses, two courses apart, form horizontal belts at the second-and third-floor levels, while the first thirteen courses above the sidewalk level project somewhat beyond the wall above and are laid up in running bond, every sixth course being a tie course of headers. Beautifully tooled, light stone lintels with fine-scale radial scorings greatly enhance the beauty of the fenestration. Each lintel appears to consist of seven gauged or keyed pieces each, but is in reality a single stone, the effect being secured by deep scorings. A heavy molded cornice and handsome gutter spouts complete the decorative features apart from the chaste pedimental doorway with its fluted pilasters and dainty fanlight, which is mentioned again in another chapter. A rolling way and areaways at the basement windows pierce the wall at the sidewalk level after the manner of the time. Indoors, the hall extends entirely through the house to a door in the rear opening upon a box-bordered garden with rose trees and old-fashioned flowers. There is a parlor on the right of the hall and a library on the left. Back of the latter is the dining room, while the kitchen and service portion of the house are located in an L extension to the rear. As indicated by two marble date stones set in the third-story front wall just below the cornice, this house was begun in 1786 and finished in 1787 by John Reynolds. Some years later it was purchased at a sheriff's sale by Ann Dunkin, who sold it in 1817 to Luke Wistar Morris, the son of Captain Samuel Morris. Since that time it has remained in the Morris family, and its occupants have maintained it in splendid condition. Much beautiful old furniture, silver and china adorn the interior, most of the pieces having individual histories of interest; in fact, the place has become a veritable museum of Morris and Wistar heirlooms. Within a few years the two old buildings that formerly adjoined the house to the right and left were removed so that the house now stands alone with a garden space at each side behind a handsome wrought-iron fence. An enthusiastic horseman and sportsman, Samuel Morris was until his death in 1812 president of the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club in which originated in November, 1774, the Philadelphia Troop of Light Horse, better known as the City Troop, the oldest military organization in the United States. In 1775 Morris was a member of the Committee of Safety, and throughout the Revolution he served as captain of the City Troop and as a special agent for Washington, in whose esteem he stood high. Later he was a justice of the peace and a member of the Pennsylvania assembly from 1781 to 1783. A handsome china punch bowl presented to Captain Samuel Morris by the members of the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club is one of the most prized possessions in the Morris house. Any book devoted to the Colonial houses of Philadelphia might perhaps be considered incomplete that failed to include the quaint little two and a half story building at Number 229 Arch Street, with its tiny store on the street floor and dwelling on the floors above. Devoid of all architectural pretension and showing the decay of passing years, it is nevertheless typical of the modest shop and house of its day, and it interests the visitor still more as the home of Betsy Ross, who for many years was popularly supposed to have made the first American flag. Betsy Ross was the widow of John Ross, a nephew of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who had conducted an upholsterer's business in the little shop. For a time after his death she supported herself as a lace cleaner and by continuing the business of her husband. The romantic tradition goes, unsupported by official record, that, Congress having voted in June, 1777, for a flag of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, with thirteen white stars in a blue field, the committee in charge consulted with Washington, then in Philadelphia, concerning the matter. Knowing Mrs. Ross, Washington led the way to her house and explained their mission. In her little shop under their eyes she cut and stitched together cloths of the three colors we love so well and soon produced the first version of the Stars and Stripes. The tale is a pretty one, and it is a pity that it should not be based on some good foundation, especially as the records show that subsequently Betsy Ross did make numerous flags for the government. How the story started is unknown, but none of the historians who have given the matter any attention believe it. John H. Flow in "The True Story of the American Flag" condemns it utterly, and the United States Government refused to adopt the Betsy Ross house as a national monument after a thorough investigation. Notwithstanding the facts, however, this ancient little building still continues to be a place of interest to many tourists every year. [Illustration: PLATE XXII.--Hooded Doorway, Johnson House, Germantown; Hooded Doorway, Green Tree Inn.] [Illustration: PLATE XXIII. Pedimental Doorway, 114 League Street; Pedimental Doorway, 5933 Germantown Avenue.] CHAPTER IV LEDGE-STONE COUNTRY HOUSES The use of natural building materials available on or near the site, when they are suitable or can be made so, always elicits hearty commendation; it gives local color and distinctive character. And so we look with particular admiration at the fine old countryseats of local rock-face and surfaced stone which abound in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, especially at Germantown, finding among them the most homelike and picturesque stone dwellings of the past and the best prototypes for present-day adaptation. Nowhere can one discover better inspiration for rock-face stonework, and nowhere have the architects of to-day more successfully preserved and developed the best local traditions of Colonial times. Wherein lies the superlative picturesque appeal of the typical ledge stonework of Germantown? As distinguished from surfaced stonework, it possesses that flexibility in use so essential to the many and varied requirements of domestic architecture imposed by the personality and mode of living of the owner. In a measure this ready adaptability is due to the irregular lines and rock face of the stone itself, so pleasing in scale, color and texture, and so completely in harmony with the natural landscape. But to a far greater extent it is due to the fact that its predominant lines are horizontal, the line of repose and stability. Ledge stone, long and narrow, laid up in broken range, with the top and bottom beds approximately level, but with end joints as the stone works naturally, has an even more marked horizontal effect than brick, clap-boarded or shingled walls that tends to a surprising degree to simulate the impression of greater breadth of the entire mass. Such matters as color, surface texture and the bond or pattern formed by the shape of the stones and their arrangement in the wall are the refinements of stonework; the essentials are strength and durability of the stone itself and stability of the wall. And this stability should be apparent as well as actual. The integrity of stonework depends upon its ability to stand alone, and nothing except high-cost surfaced stone is so readily conducive to handsome, honest masonry as the natural ledge stone of greater Philadelphia. A consistent wall should be of sound construction without the aid of mortar, the mission of which is to chink the joints and make the structure weather-tight. Many different examples of stonework, both the pointed and unpointed, stand virtually side by side for comparison about Philadelphia. Several methods of pointing have been employed. There is the flush pointing and the ridge or weathered type commonly known as Colonial or "barn" pointing. Of them all, however, a method of laying and pointing generally referred to as the Germantown type has been most widely favored. It lends itself particularly well to the Colonial style of house now so popular, the broad lines of the white pointing bringing the gray stone into pleasing harmony with the white woodwork. The pointing itself is much like the Colonial or "barn" pointing already referred to,--the wide open joints being filled with mortar brought well to the surface of the stones and smoothed off by the flat of the trowel with little regard to definiteness of line, after which about one-fourth of the width of the pointing is cut sharply away at the bottom so as to leave a sloping weathered edge considerably below the center of the joint. This is sometimes left as cut, in order to preserve a difference in texture, or is gone over with a trowel, either free hand or along a straightedge, to give a more finished appearance or more pronounced horizontal line effect. Generally gray in effect, a ledge-stone wall provides a delightful neutral background against which trellises of roses, wistaria, honeysuckle and other flowering climbers delight the eye, and to which the spreading English ivy clings in the most charming intimacy. White-painted woodwork, however, furnishes its prime embellishment,--doors, windows, porches, dormers and such necessary appurtenances of comfortable living punctuating its various parts with high lights which brighten the effect, balance the form and mass and lend distinctive character. One has but to examine the accompanying illustrations of a few notable homes of the Colonial period to appreciate the undeniable charm of white-painted woodwork in a setting of ledge stone. In the midst of virgin forest at the end of Livezey's Lane in Germantown on the banks of Wissahickon Creek, stands Glen Fern, more commonly known as the Livezey house, with numerous old buildings near by which in years past were mills, granaries and cooper shops. The house is of typically picturesque ledge-stone construction and interesting arrangement, consisting of three adjoining gable-roof structures in diminishing order, each with a single shed-roof dormer in its roof. It is located on a garden terrace with ledge-stone embankment wall and steps leading up to the door, which originally had seats at each side, while a balcony above was reached by the door in the second story. Two and a half stories high and having a chimney at each end, the main house attracts attention chiefly for its quaint fenestration, with two windows on one side of the door and one on the other, the foreshortened twelve-paned windows of the second story placed well up under the eaves, the first-story windows having six-paned upper and nine-paned lower sashes. As usual, there are shutters for the first-and blinds for the second-story windows. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV.--Doorway, 5011 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, Morris House, 225 South Eighth Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XXV.--Doorway, 6504 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 709 Spruce Street.] A winding stairway leads upward from a rather small hall. White-paneled wainscots and fireplaces surrounded by dark marble adorn each of the principal rooms, while the great kitchen fireplace, in an inglenook with a window beside a seat large enough to accommodate several persons, was the "courtin' corner" of three generations of the Livezey family. The old grist mill on Wissahickon Creek, originally a considerable stream, was built by Thomas Shoemaker, and in 1747 conveyed by him to Thomas Livezey, Junior, who operated it the rest of his life and lived at Glen Fern near by. The builder's father, Jacob Shoemaker, who gave the land upon which the Germantown Friends' Meeting House stands at Coulter and Main streets, came to this country with Pastorius in the ship _America_ in 1682 and became sheriff of the town in 1690. Thomas Livezey, the progenitor of the Livezey family, and the great-grandfather of Thomas, Junior, came from England in 1680, and the records show that he served on the first grand jury of the first court held in the province, January 2, 1681. Thomas Livezey, Junior, the miller, was a public-spirited and many-sided man. Something of a wag and given to writing letters in verse, his life also had its more serious side. Besides being one of the founders and a trustee of the Union Schoolhouse of Germantown, now Germantown Academy, he was a justice of the peace and a provincial commissioner in 1765. Being a Friend, he took no part in the struggle for independence, although his provocation was great. For safety's sake the girls of the family, with the eatables and drinkables, were often locked up in the cellars during the occupancy of Germantown by the British. On one occasion British soldiers came to the house and demanded food, and being told by one of the women that after cooking all day she was too weary to prepare it, one of the soldiers struck off the woman's ear with his sword. An officer appeared presently, however, demanded to know who had done so dastardly a thing and instantly split the culprit's head with his saber. Livezey cultivated a large farm on the adjoining hillsides, and a dozen bottles of wine from his vineyard, forwarded by his friend Robert Wharton, elicited praise from Benjamin Franklin. Farmers brought their grain hither for miles around, and the mill prospered. Gradually a large West Indian trade was built up in flour contaminated with garlic and unmarketable in Philadelphia, the ships returning with silk, crêpes and beautiful china, so that Livezey's son John became a prominent Philadelphia merchant. Another son, Thomas, continued to run the mill, which about the time of the Civil War was converted to the manufacture of linseed oil. In 1869 the entire property was purchased for Fairmount Park, and Glen Fern is now occupied by the Valley Green Canoe Club, which has restored it under the direction of John Livezey. Opposite the famous Chew house on Germantown Avenue, amid a luxurious setting of splendid trees, clinging ivy and box-bordered gardens, stands Upsala, one of the finest examples of the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia. A great, square two and a half story house with a gable roof, three handsome dormers in front, a goodly sized chimney toward either end, and an L in the rear, it speaks eloquently of substantial comfort. Like many houses of the time and place, the façade is of faced stone carefully pointed, while the other walls are of exceptionally pleasing ledge stone, the two kinds of masonry being quoined together at the corners. The pointing of the stonework is a very informal variation of the modern Germantown type,--flat-trowel pointed with little regard to definiteness of line. The wide joints are more appropriate in scale and taste than the ridge or weathered type, in that they harmonize better with the generally broad effect of the house and the white-painted wood trim of numerous windows and doors. Keyed lintels and window sills of marble accentuate the fenestration, and the façade is further enriched by a handsome cornice and marble belt at the second-floor level. Four marble steps give approach to the high, pedimental porch before a door of delightful grace and dignity. As was often the case, there are white-painted shutters at the lower windows and green-painted blinds at the upper. The gable ends of the house are interesting in their fenestration, with a fanlight of delightful pattern above and between two ordinary windows; one notices with interest that the returns of the eaves are carried entirely across the ends of the house from front to back, after the manner of the characteristic penthouse roof. Within, a broad hall extends through the house, an archway at the foot of the winding staircase being its most striking feature. Two rooms on each side contain handsome mantels, paneled wainscots and other beautiful wood finish. As indicated by the date stone in one of the gables, Upsala was begun in 1798 by John Johnson, Junior, who inherited the land from his grandfather, also named John Johnson, and was some three years in the building. It is located near the corner of Upsal Street on part of a tract of land that originally extended from Germantown Avenue, then Germantown Road, to the township line at Wissahickon Avenue. The house stands on the spot where the Fortieth Regiment of the British Army was encamped, and where later General Maxwell's cannon were planted to assail the Chew house at the Battle of Germantown. It has been successively occupied by Norton Johnson, Doctor William N. Johnson and Miss Sallie W. Johnson, all descendants of the builder. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--Doorway, 5200 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 4927 Frankford Avenue.] [Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--Doorway, Powel House, 244 South Third Street; Doorway, Wharton House, 336 Spruce Street.] Like Upsala, Grumblethorpe, at Number 526 Main Street, Germantown, opposite Indian Queen Lane, displays ledge-stone walls except for its façade, which is plastered, and it has the same returns of the eaves like a penthouse roof across the gables. This large two and a half story house stands directly on the sidewalk and has areaways at the sunken basement windows like many modern houses. A sturdy chimney at either end and two dormers with segmental topped windows are the features of the roof. The high recessed doorway, with its broad marble lower step in the brick sidewalk, is located so that there are three windows to the left and only two to the right. An interesting feature of the fenestration is the use of wide twelve-paned windows on the first story and of narrower and higher eighteen-paned windows on the second. Again there are shutters on the lower story and blinds above. This variation in the windows of different stories is by no means an uncommon feature of Philadelphia houses, and, as in this instance, often came about as the result of alterations. Grumblethorpe was built in 1744 by John Wister, who came to Philadelphia from Germany in 1727 and developed a large business in cultivating blackberries, making and importing wine in Market Street west of Third. "Wister's Big House" was the first countryseat in Germantown. Originally it differed materially from its present outward appearance. There were no dormers, and the garret was lighted only at the ends. Across the front and sides of the house the second-floor level was marked by a penthouse roof, broken over the entrance by a balcony reached by a door from the second story. To the right of the entrance there were two windows, as at present; to the left there was a smaller door with a window at each side of it. Both doors were divided into upper and lower sections and had side-long seats outside. In the course of repairs and alterations in 1808 the penthouse roof and balcony, also the front seats, were removed, the upper and smaller lower doors were replaced by windows, and the front of the house was pebble dashed. A long wing extends back from the main house, and beyond is a workshop with many old tools and a numerous collection of interesting clocks in various stages of completion. Still farther back is an observatory with its telescope, also a box-bordered formal garden in which still stands a quaint rain gauge. Indoors, the hall and principal rooms are spacious but low studded, with simple white-painted woodwork, and in the kitchen a primitive crane supporting ancient iron pots still remains in the great fireplace. Much fine old furniture, many rare books and numerous curios enhance the interest and beauty of the interiors. Many men illustrious in art, science and literature shared Wister's hospitality. His frequent visitors included Gilbert Stuart, the artist; Christopher Sower, one of the most versatile men in the colonies; Thomas Say, the eminent entomologist and president of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences; Parker Cleveland, author of the first book on American mineralogy; James Nichol, the celebrated geologist and writer, and many other famous personages. Quite as many unknown persons came to Grumblethorpe, however, for bread was baked every Saturday for distribution to the poor. During the Battle of Germantown, Grumblethorpe was the headquarters of General Agnew of the British Army, and in the northwest parlor he died of wounds, staining the floor with his blood, the marks of which are still visible. In the same room Major Lenox, who occupied the house in 1779, was married. Major Lenox was at various times marshal of the United States for the District of Pennsylvania, director and president of the United States Bank, and the representative of the United States at the Court of St. James. John Wister's eldest son, Daniel, a prosperous merchant, inherited the property, and it was his daughter who wrote Sally Wister's well-known and charming "Journal", the original manuscript of which is among the many treasures of this charming old house. It was Daniel Wister's son, Charles J. Wister, who built the observatory and developed the beautiful formal garden back of the house. Upon retiring from business in 1819 he devoted himself to science, notably botany and mineralogy, upon which subjects he lectured at the Germantown Academy, of which he was secretary of the board of trustees for thirty years. In 1865 the place came into the hands of Charles J. Wister, Junior, an artist, writer and Friend of high repute, who, like his father, was for many years identified with Germantown Academy. On his death in 1910 Grumblethorpe was shared by his nephews, Owen Wister, the novelist, and Alexander W. Wister, neither of whom resides there. [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.--Doorway, 301 South Seventh Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XXIX.--Doorway, Grumblethorpe, 5621 Germantown Avenue; Doorway, 6105 Germantown Avenue.] One of the noblest old ledge-stone mansions of the vicinity is The Woodlands, located on high ground along the bank of the Schuylkill River in Blockley Township, West Philadelphia. It was formerly the countryseat of the Hamilton family, from which a district of West Philadelphia east of Fortieth Street and south of Market Street took the name of Hamilton Village. Many years ago the grounds of The Woodlands became a cemetery, and the house is now occupied by the superintendent and contains the cemetery offices. While the gay society of a century and a quarter ago is lacking the place still retains much of its former beauty and state. Of essentially Georgian character, the house is still more strongly reminiscent of many plantation mansions of the South. It has an entrance front to the north and a river or garden front to the south, while the kitchen arrangements are well concealed. Between two semicircular bays that project from the ends of the building on the entrance front, six Ionic pilasters support a broad and elaborately ornamented pediment, its chief features being the notching of the shingles, the circular window and the frieze with groups of vertical flutings in alternation with large round flower ornaments. A broad paved terrace three steps above the drive extends across the front from one bay to the other and gives approach to a round-arched central doorway with handsome leaded fanlight beneath a segmental hood supported by round engaged Ionic columns. This doorway leads into the hall. On the river front a lofty pedimental-roofed portico centrally located and supported by six great smooth pillars is of distinctly southern aspect. Another round-arched doorway flanked by two round-topped windows opens directly into an oval-shaped ballroom. The beautiful Palladian windows on either side of this façade and recessed within an arch in the masonry are among the chief distinctions of the house. An examination of them indicates as convincingly as any modern work the delightful accord that may exist between gray stone and white woodwork, and draws attention to the masonry itself. The use of relatively small stones has resulted in an unconventional though pleasing wall effect, due to the prominence and rough character of the pointing which has been brought well out to the edges of the stones. A word may well be said in passing in regard to the stable at The Woodlands, which, while rightly unassuming, lives in complete accord with the house, as every outbuilding should. A hip-roofed structure with lean-to wings, it is essentially a Georgian conception. Its walls are of ledge stone like the house, broken by a symmetrical arrangement of recessed arches in which the various doors and windows are set, and further embellished by a four-course belt of brick at the second-floor level. The Woodlands was built in 1770 by William Hamilton on an estate purchased in 1735 by his grandfather, Andrew Hamilton, the first of that name in America. It is the second house on the site, the first having made way for the present spacious structure which was designed to give expression to the tastes and desires of its builder. William Hamilton was one of the wealthiest men of his day and loved display and the rôle of a lavish host. Maintaining a large retinue of servants and living in a style surpassing that of most of his neighbors, his dinner parties and other social gatherings were attended by the most eminent personages of the time. A man of culture and refinement, he accumulated many valuable paintings and rare books, and his gardens, greenhouse and grounds were his particular pride and joy. To a large collection of native American plants and shrubs he added many exotic trees and plants. To him is credited the introduction of the Ginkgo tree and the Lombardy poplar to America. William Hamilton was a nephew of Governor James Hamilton, by whose permission, granted to William Hallam and his Old American Company of strolling players, the drama was established in Philadelphia in 1754, despite the strong opposition of the Friends. William Hamilton raised a regiment in his neighborhood to assist in the Revolution, but being opposed to a complete break with the mother country, resigned his commission upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Following the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British he was arrested, charged with assisting the British forces and tried for high treason, but was acquitted and allowed to retain possession of his estates, which were duly inherited by his family on his death in 1811. These charming old ledge-stone mansions, and others of lesser architectural merit and historical association, too numerous for description here, constitute the chief distinction of Philadelphia architecture. Whereas the city residences of brick differ little from those of several other not far distant places, and the country houses of that material recall many similar ones in Delaware, Maryland and even Virginia, the ledge-stone house of greater Philadelphia is a thing unto itself. It has no parallel in America. Of substantial character and possessed of rare local color, it combines with picturesque appearance those highly desirable qualities of permanence and non-inflammability. It is the ideal construction for suburban Philadelphia where the necessary building material abounds and new homes can live in accord with the old. [Illustration: PLATE XXX.--Doorway, Doctor Denton's House, Germantown.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXI.--West Entrance, Mount Pleasant, Fairmount Park; East Entrance, Mount Pleasant.] CHAPTER V PLASTERED STONE COUNTRY HOUSES It is quite possible to preserve random shapes and rock faces in stonework that is structurally good, yet still fail in a measure to please the eye and satisfy the artistic sense. A house built of stones which, although irregular and of variable size, are generally cubical in shape and set with obvious painstaking to simulate a casual yet remarkably systematic arrangement, never fails to be clumsy and patchy. A case in point is Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Chester County, erected in 1724 by Captain Isaac Wayne. Greame Park, erected in Horsham Township, Montgomery County, by Sir William Keith five years after he was appointed governor of Penn's Colony in 1717, instances another unsuccessful use of stonework and effectively explodes the pet notion of the indiscriminate that everything which is old is therefore good. The promiscuous use of rough, long, quarried stones, square blocks and narrow strips on end results in an utterly irrational effect, a confusing medley of short lines. Going to the other extreme, the use of stones so small and irregular as to suggest a "crazy-quilt" mosaic rather than structural stonework is equally displeasing. This scheme unquestionably lends texture to the wall, but it attracts too much attention to itself to the detriment of such architectural features as doors, windows and other wood trim intended to provide suitable embellishment as well as to fulfill the practical requirements of daily use. Inasmuch as rubble used in this manner becomes merely an aggregate in a concrete wall, the consistent thing to do is to consider it as such and give the wall an outside finish or veneer of rough plaster. This fact was recognized and often acted upon by the early Philadelphia builders wherever the stone readily available did not make an attractive wall. A few of the best examples extant serve to indicate that houses of this sort have all the charm of the modern stucco structure built over hollow tile. Perhaps the most picturesque of the old houses of this type is Wyck at Germantown Avenue and Walnut Lane, Germantown, a long, rambling structure of rubble masonry with an outside veneer of rough white plaster standing end to the street. Although Colonial in detail and partaking to a degree of the general character of its neighbors, the ensemble presents a rare blending of European influences with American construction. Vine-clad trellises on the entrance front, a long arbor on the garden front, box-bordered flower beds and a profusion of shade trees and shrubs all help to compose a picture of rare charm in which leading American architects have often found inspiration for modern work. Wyck is probably the oldest building in Germantown and certainly quaint of appearance, considering its age, for it has been preserved as nearly as possible in its early condition. The oldest part was built about 1690 by Hans Millan. Later another house was built near by on the opposite side of an old Indian trail, and subsequently the two were joined together, a wide, brick-paved wagon way running beneath the connecting structure. This passage has since been closed in to form a spacious hallway with wide double doors and a long transom above, the outer doors being wood paneled and the inner ones glazed. Of romantic interest is the use of this great hall of Wyck as a hospital and operating room after the Battle of Germantown, and later, in 1825, as the scene of a reception tendered to La Fayette, following his breakfast at Cliveden, when the townspeople were presented to him by Charles J. Wister. The doorway to the right, with its molded jambs, plain, four-paned transom and paneled door divided in the middle like many of the neighborhood, is of the most modest order, yet its simple lines and good proportions, together with the green of the climbing vines about it, in contrast with the white plaster walls, makes a strong appeal to everybody of artistic appreciation. The position of the knob indicates the size of the great rim lock within, while the graceful design of the brass knocker is justly one of the most popular to-day. Wyck has never been sold, but has passed from one owner to another by inheritance through the Jansen and Wistar families to the Haines family, in which it has since remained. One of its owners, Caspar Wistar, in 1740 established the first glassworks in America at Salem, New Jersey. The most notable house of plastered stone masonry, and one of the noblest countryseats in the vicinity of Philadelphia, is Clunie, later and better known as Mount Pleasant, located in the Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River only a little north of the Girard Avenue bridge. To see it is to appreciate more fully the princely mode of country living in which some of the most distinguished citizens of the early metropolis of the colonies indulged. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII.--Doorway, Solitude, Fairmount Park; Doorway Perot-Morris House, 5442 Germantown Avenue.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.--Entrance Porch and Doorway, Upsala, Germantown; Elliptical Porch and Doorway, 39 Fisher's Lane, Wayne Junction.] Standing on high ground and commanding broad views both up and down the stream, the house is of truly baronial mien and Georgian character. Two flanking outbuildings, two and a half stories high, hip-roofed and dormered, some forty feet from each end of the main house and corresponding with it in character and construction, provide the servants' quarters and various domestic offices. Beyond the circle formed by the drive on the east or entrance front of the house and at some distance to either side are two barns. Thus the house becomes the central feature in a strikingly picturesque group of buildings having all the manorial impressiveness of the old Virginia mansions along the James River. The main house rises two and a half stories above a high foundation of hewn stone with iron-barred basement windows set in stone frames. It is of massive rubble-stone masonry, coated with yellowish-gray rough-cast and having heavy quoined corners of red brick, also a horizontal belt of the same material at the second-floor level, the keyed lintels of the large ranging windows, however, being of faced stone. Above a heavy cornice with prominent modillions springs the hipped roof, pierced on both sides by two handsome dormers and surmounted by a long, beautifully balustraded belvedere. Two great brick chimney stacks, one at each end of the building, with four arched openings near the top, lend an aspect of added dignity and solidity. The principal feature of the façade on both the east and west or river front is the slightly projecting central portion with its quoined corners, surmounting corniced pediment springing from the eaves, ornate Palladian windows in the second story and superb pedimental doorway in harmony with the pedimental motive above. Although the detail is heavy, and free use has been made of the orders, the work is American Georgian at its best and altogether admirable. The doorways of the two sides are similar but not the same, and a comparison, as found in another chapter, is most interesting. Within, a broad hall extends entirely through the house from one front to the other, as likewise does a spacious drawing-room on the north side with an elaborate chimney piece in the middle of the outside wall. The dining room occupies the west front, and back of it, in an L extension from the hall, a handsome staircase with gracefully turned balustrade leads to the bedrooms on the second floor. Throughout the interior the wood finish is worthy of the exterior trim. Beautifully tooled cornices, graceful pilasters, nicely molded door and window casings, heavy pedimental doorheads,--all are of excellent design and more carefully wrought than in average Colonial work. Finest of all, perhaps, is a chamber on the second floor overlooking the river that must, according to the very nature of things, have been the boudoir of the mistress of Mount Pleasant. The architectural treatment of the fireplace end of this room, with exquisite carving above the overmantel panel and above the closet doors at each side, is greatly admired by all who see it. The erection of Mount Pleasant was begun late in 1761 by John Macpherson, a sea captain of Clunie, Scotland, who amassed a fortune and lost an arm in the adventurous practice of privateering. Here he lived in manorial splendor, entertaining the most eminent personages of the day with munificent hospitality and employing himself with numerous ingenious inventions, notably a practical device for moving brick and stone houses intact. He wrote on moral philosophy, lectured on astronomy and published the first city directory in 1785, a unique volume giving the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such notations as, "I won't tell you", "What you please", and "Cross woman" against street numbers where he found the occupants suspicious or unresponsive to his queries. Meeting reverses in some of his financial affairs and longing for further adventures at sea, Macpherson sought the chief command of the American Navy at the outbreak of the Revolution. This being denied him he leased Mount Pleasant to Don Juan de Merailles, the Spanish ambassador. But to be near General Washington, Merailles had to remove to Morristown and there he soon died. In the spring of 1779 Macpherson sold Mount Pleasant to General Benedict Arnold, of unhappy memory, whose remarkable and traitorous career is known to every American. Arnold had been placed in command of Philadelphia by Washington, following its evacuation by the British, and in acquiring the most palatial countryseat in the vicinity he gratified his fondness for display and apparently saw in it a means of retaining or increasing his influence and power. It was his marriage gift to his bride, Peggy Shippen, the daughter of Edward Shippen, a moderate Loyalist, who eventually became reconciled to the new order and was chief justice of the State from 1799 to 1805. At Mount Pleasant Arnold and his wife remained for more than a year, living extravagantly and entertaining lavishly. Arnold's financial embarrassments and bitter contentions with persistent enemies became ever more deeply involved. Here in bitterness, and not without some provocation, he conceived the dastardly plan of obtaining from Washington command of West Point, the key to the Hudson River Valley, in order that he might betray it to the British. Following the discovery of the plot and Arnold's flight to the British lines, his property was confiscated, and Mount Pleasant was leased for a short period to Baron von Steuben, after which it passed through several hands to General Jonathan Williams, of Boston, in whose family the place remained until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was acquired by the city as a part of Fairmount Park. At Number 5442 Germantown Avenue, standing directly on the sidewalk as was often the case, and with a beautiful box-bordered garden of old-fashioned flowers about one hundred by four hundred feet along the south end, is one of the most interesting old plastered houses in Philadelphia. Well known in history, it is no less notable architecturally. In general arrangement it differs little from numerous other gable-roof structures of the vicinity, two and a half stories high with chimneys at each end and handsome pedimental dormers with round-topped windows between. It is in the excellent detail and nice proportion of the wood trim, both without and within, that this house excels. Interest focuses upon the deeply recessed doorway with its sturdy Tuscan columns and pediment, and the great, attractively paneled door. The fenestration is admirable with twenty-four-paned windows set in handsome frames with architrave casings and beautifully molded sills, the lower windows having shutters and the upper ones blinds. A notable feature is the heavy cornice with large modillions, and beneath a relatively fine-scale, double denticulated molding or Grecian fret. Within, a wide hall extends through the middle of the house, widening at the back where a handsome winding staircase with landings ascends to the floor above. Opposite the staircase is a breakfast room overlooking the garden. The parlor and dining room on opposite sides of the hall, the bedrooms above and also the halls all have beautifully paneled wainscots. There are handsome chimney pieces in each room with dark Pennsylvania marble facings about the fireplaces and ornamental panels so nicely made that no joints are visible. Throughout the house the woodwork is of unusual beauty and unexcelled in workmanship. The house was built in 1772 by David Deschler, a wealthy West India merchant, the son of an aide-de-camp to the reigning Prince of Baden, and Margaret, a sister of John Wister and Caspar Wistar. After the retreat of the American forces at the conclusion of the Battle of Germantown, Sir William Howe, the British commander, moved his headquarters from Stenton to the Deschler house. While there he is said to have been visited by Prince William Henry, then a midshipman in the Royal Navy, but afterward King William IV of England. Upon Deschler's death in 1792 the house was bought by Colonel Isaac Franks, a New Yorker who had served his country well in the Continental Army and filled several civil commissions after the conclusion of peace with England. He it was who rented the house to Washington for a short period in the early winter of 1793 and again for six weeks in the following summer because of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Here met the President's cabinet--Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox and Randolph--to discuss the President's message to Congress and the difficulties with England, France and Spain. Aside from Mount Vernon, it is the only dwelling now standing in which Washington lived for any considerable time. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--Doorway, 224 South Eighth Street; Doorway, Stenton.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--Doorway and Ironwork, Southeast Corner of Eighth and Spruce Streets] In 1804 the property was purchased by Elliston and John Perot, two Frenchmen who conducted a prosperous mercantile business in Philadelphia. On the death of the former in 1834, the place was purchased by his son-in-law, Samuel B. Morris, of the shipping firm of Waln and Morris, in whose family it has since remained. The interiors remain as in Washington's time, and much of the furniture, silver and china used by him are still preserved, together with his letter thanking Captain Samuel Morris for the valuable services of the First City Troop during the Revolution. Although not erected until a few years after the treaty of peace following the Revolution, Vernon is so thoroughly Colonial in architecture and of such merit as to warrant mention here. It stands in extensive grounds on the west side of Germantown Avenue, Germantown, above Chelton Avenue. The main house is a hip-roofed structure two and a half stories in height of rubble masonry, the front being plastered and lined off to simulate dressed stone and the other walls being pebble dashed. A wing in the rear connects the main house with a semi-detached gable-roof structure in which were located the kitchen and servants' rooms. The principal features of the symmetrical façade with its ranging twelve-paned windows, shuttered on the lower story, are the central pediment with exquisite fanlight between flanking chimneys and handsomely detailed dormers, and a splendid doorway alluded to later in these pages. A fine-scale denticulated molding in the cornice, repeated elsewhere in the exterior wood trim, lends an air of exceptional richness and refinement. Vernon was built in 1803 by James Matthews, a whipmaker of the firm of McAllister and Matthews. In 1812 it was purchased by John Wistar, son of Daniel Wistar, and a member of the countinghouse of his uncle, William Wistar. Upon his uncle's death he conducted the business with his brother Charles and became well known in mercantile circles and prominent in the Society of Friends. A bronze statue of him in Quaker garb has been erected in front of the house. Some years after his death in 1862 the place passed under the control of the city for a park and was occupied for a time by the Free Library. Since the erection of a building near by for this latter purpose, it has housed the museum of the Site and Relic Society, and contains much of interest to the student of early Germantown. Another house in the Colonial spirit erected shortly after the close of the Revolution is Loudoun, at Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street, Germantown, its grounds embracing the summit of Neglee's Hill. The house is two and a half stories high with additions which have somewhat altered its original appearance; it has a gambrel roof, hipped at one end after the Mansard manner with excellent dormers on both the front and end just mentioned. Its plastered rubble masonry walls are clothed with clinging ivy. The architectural interest centers chiefly in the fenestration and the pillared portico reminiscent of plantation mansions farther south. This portico, with its simple pediment and wooden columns surmounted by pleasingly unusual capitals of acanthus-leaf motive, was added some thirty years after the house was erected. The great twenty-four-paned ranging windows have heavy paneled shutters on the first floor and blinds on the second. Tall, slender, engaged columns supporting a nicely detailed entablature frame a typical Philadelphia doorway, the paneled door itself being single with a handsome leaded fanlight above. Loudoun was built in 1801 by Thomas Armat as a countryseat for his son, Thomas Wright Armat. The elder Armat originally settled in Loudoun County, Virginia, and hence the name of the estate. Coming to Philadelphia about the time of the Revolution, his family moved to Germantown during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and found it such a pleasing place of residence that the building of Loudoun some years later came as a natural consequence. It stands at the very outskirts of Germantown, now the twenty-second ward of Philadelphia, where Germantown Avenue starts its winding course toward Chestnut Hill. At the original lottery distribution of the land of the Frankford Company in the cave of Francis Daniel Pastorius, there being no permanent houses at that time, the site fell to Thomas Kunders, in whose house at Number 5109 Germantown Avenue the first meeting of Friends was held in Germantown. After the Battle of Germantown the hill was used as a hospital, and many dead were buried there. From 1820 to 1835 Loudoun was rented to Madam Greland as a summer school for young women, and it was during this period, probably about 1830, that the pillared portico was added. A successful Philadelphia merchant and well-known philanthropist, Thomas Armat, gave the site for St. Luke's Church in Germantown and assisted in its erection, also setting aside a chamber at Loudoun which was known as the minister's room. He was among the first to suggest the use of coal for heating, and one of the early patentees of a hay scales. Armat's daughter married Gustavus Logan, great-great-grandson of James Logan and grandson of John Dickinson, whose "Farmer's Letters", addressed to the people of England, are said to have brought about the repeal of the Stamp Act. Loudoun still remains in the Logan family. No stranger house can be found in all Philadelphia than Solitude on the west bank of the Schuylkill in Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. It is a boxlike structure of plastered rubble masonry twenty-six feet square and two and a half stories high, with a hip roof having simple pedimental dormers and two oppositely disposed chimneys. The wood trim is severely simple throughout, from the heavy molded cornice under the eaves to the pedimental recessed doorway with its Ionic columns and entablature. Two slightly projecting courses of brick, one some ten inches or so above the other, form an unusual belt at the second-floor level, while a distinctive feature of the fenestration is seen in the fact that most of the windows have nine-paned upper and six-paned lower sashes. Within, the entrance doorway leads into a hall some nine feet wide and extending entirely across the house from side to side. The remainder of the first floor consists of a large parlor with windows opening on a portico overlooking the river. A beautiful stucco cornice and ceiling and a carved wood surbase are its best features. In one corner a staircase with wrought-iron railing rises to the second floor, where there is a library about fifteen feet square with built-in bookcases, two connecting bedrooms, one with an alcove and secret door where the owner might shut himself away from intrusive visitors, and a staircase leading to more bedrooms on the third floor. The cellar is deep and roomy, with provision for wine storage, and an underground passage communicates with the kitchen located in a separate building about twenty-five feet distant. Solitude was built in 1785 by John Penn, a grandson of William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, and a son of Thomas Penn, whose wife was a daughter of the Earl of Pomfret. A much traveled, scholarly man, poet, idealist and art patron, he came to Philadelphia in 1783 to look after proprietary interests in Pennsylvania and intending to become an American. But his claims were made under hereditary rights, and as the State was not disposed to honor them he concluded to remain an Englishman. Vexed with the perversity of human nature, he built Solitude and named it for a lodge belonging to the Duke of Württemburg. There he lived somewhat the life of a recluse with his books and trees for three years. He was on friendly terms with his neighbors, however, who included his cousin, Governor John Penn, and Judge Richard Peters. Gay week-end parties also came in boats to enjoy his hospitality, and Washington once spent a day with him during the sitting of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. In 1788 Penn suddenly returned to England, built a handsome residence at Stoke and embarked on a notable career in public life, becoming sheriff of Bucks in 1798, a member of Parliament in 1802, and royal governor of the island of Portland in Dorset for many years after 1805. The University of Cambridge made him an LL.D. in 1811, and he won promotion to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Royal Bucks Yeomanry. Later in his declining years he formed the Outinian Society to encourage young men and women to marry, although he inconsistently died a bachelor in 1834. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--Doorway and Ironwork, Northeast Corner of Third and Pine Streets; Stoop with Curved Stairs and Iron Handrail, 316 South Third Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--Stoop and Balustrade, Wistar House; Stoop and Balustrade, 130 Race Street.] Solitude then passed by inheritance to Penn's youngest brother, Granville, and on his death ten years later to a nephew, Granville John Penn, great-grandson of William Penn, and the last Penn at Solitude. Coming to Philadelphia in middle life about 1851 he was lionized by society and in acknowledgment gave a grand "Fête Champêtre" and collation. Following his death in 1867, Solitude and its grounds were made part of Fairmount Park, and after several years without tenancy the house in its original condition was made the administration building of the Zoölogical Society. The fine old plastered stone houses of Philadelphia comprise one of the distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are being built in this manner. CHAPTER VI HEWN STONE COUNTRY HOUSES Cost was not an object in building many of the larger old countryseats about Philadelphia, for their owners were men of wealth and station, prominent in the affairs of the province and sharing its prosperity. Influenced by the builders of the Georgian period in England, and often under their personal supervision, the buildings on numerous great estates about the early metropolis of the American colonies were constructed of quarried stone, whether sawed in the form of "brick" stone or hammered to a relatively smooth surface. Surfaced stone, however, especially when cut into rectangular blocks, is to be recommended only for public work or for very large and pretentious residences of formal character and arrangement. In small buildings, and unless handled with skill and discretion in larger work, its psychological effect upon the mind is that of uncompromising and somewhat repellent austerity; it suggests the prison-like palace rather than the domestic atmosphere of a true home,--an atmosphere to be had in stone only by preserving the greater spontaneity of irregular shapes and rock faces characteristic of Germantown ledge stone. That the early builders of this vicinity were skilled stone masons and employed this form of building construction with sympathy and intelligence is indicated by the splendid old mansions that still remain as monuments to their genius,--stately, elegant, enduring, yet withal pleasing, comfortable and eminently livable. The use of "brick" stone for several of them has given a lighter scale, and by repetition of many closely related and prominent horizontals has simulated a greater breadth of façade and a lesser total height, both beneficial to the general appearance. As in ordinary brickwork, the vertical pointing is as wide as the horizontal, but the joints break, whereas the course lines are continuous, thus emphasizing the horizontals of light mortar. Unquestionably the most notable mansion of hewn stone in Greater Philadelphia is Cliveden, the countryseat of the Chew family, located in extensive grounds at Germantown Avenue and Johnson streets, Germantown. One of the most substantial and elaborate residences of that day, it is two and a half stories in height and built of heavy masonry, the front illustrating well the pleasing use of surfaced Germantown stone, flush pointed, the other walls being of rubble masonry, plastered and marked off to simulate dressed stone. Two wings, one semi-detached and the other entirely so, extend back from the main house and contain the kitchen, servants' quarters and laundry. The classic front entrance opens into a large hall with small rooms on each side which were originally used as offices. Beyond and above are many spacious rooms with excellent woodwork and handsome chimney pieces. No handsomer Colonial façade is to be found in America. Classic in feeling and symmetrical in arrangement, it is excellently detailed in every particular. Above a slightly projecting water table the repeated horizontals of the limestone belt at the second-floor level, the heavy cornice with prominent modillions and the roof line impart a feeling of repose and stability quite apart from the character of the building material itself. The ranging windows, shuttered on the lower floor, are distinguished by their keyed limestone lintels and twelve-paned upper and lower sashes, while the roof is elaborated by two great chimney stacks, a like number of well-designed dormers with round-topped windows, and five handsome stone urns mounted on brick piers at the corners and over the entrance. The central portion of the façade projects slightly under a pediment in harmony with the splendid Doric doorway beneath, of which more elsewhere. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.--Detail of Iron Balustrade, 216 South Ninth Street; Stoop with Wing Flights, 207 La Grange Alley.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.--Iron Newel, Fourth and Liberty Streets; Iron Newel, 1107 Walnut Street.] Cliveden was erected in 1761 by Benjamin Chew, a friend of Washington and a descendant of one of the oldest and most distinguished Virginia families, his great-grandfather, John Chew, having settled at James Citie about 1621, and, like Benjamin Chew's grandfather and father, who resided in Maryland, having been prominent in the courts and public affairs generally. Benjamin Chew studied law with Andrew Hamilton, and at the age of nineteen entered the Middle Temple, London, the same year as Sir William Blackstone. Removing to Philadelphia in 1754, he was provincial counselor in 1755, attorney general from 1755 to 1764, recorder of the city from 1755 to 1774, a member of the Pennsylvania-Maryland Boundary Commission in 1761, register general of the province in 1765, and in 1774 succeeded William Allen as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Following the Revolution he served as a judge and president of the High Court of Errours and Appeals until it was abolished in 1808. Justice Chew was brought up a Quaker and his attitude coincided with that of many others who manifested sympathy for the American cause, yet hesitated at complete independence. In defining high treason to the April Grand Jury of 1776, the last held under the Crown, he stated that "an opposition by force of arms to the lawful authority of the King or his Ministry is high treason, but in the moment when the King, or his Ministers, shall exceed the authority vested in them by the Constitution, submission to their mandate becomes treason." It is not surprising, therefore, that in August, 1777, Judge Chew and John Penn, the late proprietary, were arrested by the City Troop and on refusing parole were imprisoned at the Union Iron Works until sometime in 1778. With fourteen attractive and accomplished children, two sons and twelve daughters, things were always lively at Cliveden, and it was the scene of lavish entertainment of Washington, Adams and other members of the first Continental Congress. Around its classic doorway the Battle of Germantown raged most fiercely. The house had been occupied by the British under Colonel Musgrave, the Chew family being away at the time; and so effective a fortress did it prove that the center of Washington's advance was checked and the day lost to the American arms. Great damage was done inside and out by cannon balls, some of it being still visible, although several workmen spent the entire following winter putting the house in order. During his triumphal farewell tour of the twenty-four American States in 1825, a breakfast was tendered to La Fayette at Cliveden on the day of his reception at Wyck. In 1779, Justice Chew sold Cliveden to Blair McClenahan, a director of the Bank of Pennsylvania, for nine thousand dollars, but bought it back again in 1787 for twenty-five thousand dollars. Since that time it has remained in the family and is still occupied part of the year. Chew's Woods, formerly part of the estate, have been presented to the city as a public park, but the stable behind the house, and connected with it by an underground passage, still remains much as ever; and therein reposes the curious old family coach. Second only to Cliveden in architectural interest is The Highlands, located on the Skippack Pike overlooking the Whitemarsh Valley from a lofty site among giant old oaks, pines and sycamores. It is a splendid example of American architecture after the late Georgian manner, and although not built until after the Revolution, its character is such that it deserves to be included among the Colonial houses of the vicinity. The south or entrance front is built of squared and nicely surfaced stones laid up with joints breaking much like brickwork, the pointing being of the ridge or weathered type. The sides are of ordinary rubble but plastered and lined off to simulate hewn stone. The central section of the façade projects slightly, two Ionic pilasters of white marble supporting a pediment within which a semicircular fanlight ventilates and lights the attic. Marble belts at the first-and second-floor levels, marble window sills and keystones in the lintels relieve and brighten the effect, while an unusual diamond fret lends distinction to the cornice. The windows have six-paned upper and lower sashes with blinds on all stories, as in the case of most of the later Colonial houses. Ornamental wrought-iron fire balconies at the second-story windows are a picturesque feature. The entrance porch, one of the few of consequence in Philadelphia, is characterized by its chaste simplicity, the fine-scale reeded columns and wrought-iron balustrade of the marble steps being its chief features. But for the double doors characteristic of Philadelphia, the doorway itself, of excellent proportions and having a handsome elliptical fanlight and side lights with leaded glass, would suggest Salem design. Within, a great hall extends through the house to a wide cross hall at the rear, where a broad and handsome staircase with wing flights above a gallery landing is located. A beautiful Palladian window in the west end of the house lights this landing and the entire cross hall. Much excellent woodwork adorns the spacious rooms, but the splendid Adam mantels with their delicate applied stucco designs were long ago replaced by less pleasing creations of black marble. [Illustration: PLATE XL.--Footscraper, Wyck; Old Philadelphia Footscraper; Footscraper, Third and Spruce Streets; Footscraper, Dirck-Keyser House, Germantown.] [Illustration: PLATE XLI.--Footscraper, 320 South Third Street; Footscraper, South Third Street; Footscraper, Vernon, Germantown; Footscraper, 239 Pine Street.] The Highlands was completed in 1796 by Anthony Morris, son of Captain Samuel Morris, and a friend of Jefferson, Monroe and Madison, and was some two years in the building. Morris was admitted to the bar in 1787 and soon went into politics, later engaging extensively in the East India trade. Representing the city of Philadelphia in the State Senate, he was in 1793, at the age of twenty-seven, elected speaker, succeeding Samuel Powel. In this capacity he signed a bill providing for troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, for which act he was disowned by the Friends' Meeting of which he was a member. Dolly Madison makes friendly references to Morris in her memoirs and letters, and for nearly two years during Madison's administration Morris represented the United States at the Court of Spain. Through his efforts an adjustment was effected in the boundary dispute over the Florida cession. In 1808 Morris sold The Highlands to one Hitner, who conveyed it in 1813 to George Sheaff, in whose family it has since remained. Nothing quite like Bartram House is to be found anywhere in America. Situated on the Schuylkill River at Kingsessing, West Philadelphia, just to the south of what was once the lower or Gray's Ferry, this curious structure was begun in 1730, and the main part of it was completed the following year, as indicated by a stone in one of the gables bearing the inscription in Greek, "May God save", followed in English by "John and Ann Bartram, 1731." Successive additions and alterations have changed the inside arrangement more than the exterior appearance, and it can hardly be said that the house now has any particular floor plan. Probably the latest important changes were made when a stone bearing the following inscription was placed over the study window: It is God above almyty Lord The holy One by me ador'd. John Bartram, 1770. In outward appearance Bartram House is a simple gable-roof structure two and a half stories in height, of large, roughly hewn stones with east and west fronts and three dormers lighting the attic. The east or entrance front has a characteristic trellis-shaded doorway with quaint Dutch seats at each side, while the west front has an odd, recessed porch between rude Ionic columns of native stone, the same as the walls and built up like them. Crudely chiseled, elaborately ornamental window casings, lintels and sills form a curious feature of this façade. Clothed as it is with clinging ivy and climbing roses, the house suggests an effect of both stateliness and rusticity. Bartram was a farmer, but his interest in plants, shrubs and trees was such that he became one of the greatest botanists of his day. In autumn, when his farm labors were finished for the year, he journeyed extensively about the colonies, gathering specimens with which to beautify his grounds. His greatest enjoyment in life was to make his collection of rare species ever more complete, and his remarkable accomplishments in this direction, despite many handicaps, entitle him to be known as the father of American botanists. After Bartram's death his son William, also an eminent botanist, carried on the work, and later his son-in-law, Colonel Carr, did likewise until the place became one of the most interesting botanical gardens in the country. In 1851 the estate was purchased by Andrew Eastwick, a railway builder just returned from an extended commission in Russia, who erected a large residence in another part of the grounds. In 1893 the city bought Bartram House and its immediate grounds and in 1897 acquired the balance of the estate, the whole being converted into a public park and the old house being furnished and put in excellent condition by the descendants of the Bartram family. Undoubtedly the most notable instance of the use of "brick" stone with the so-called Colonial or "barn" pointing is the Johnson house at Number 6306 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Typical of the first homes that lined the street of this historic old town for nearly two miles, it is solidly built of dark native ledge stone, the front being of dressed rectangular blocks considerably smaller, somewhat rougher and hence less formal than the surfaced blocks of Cliveden, for example. It is a single gable-roofed structure two and a half stories high with ranging windows throughout, a large chimney at each end and two dormers in the front between them. Like many others of the time it had a small penthouse roof at the second-floor level which, with the overhanging eaves of the roof above, afforded protection from rainy weather for the joints of the stonework which was at first laid up in clay. Lime for making more permanent mortar was far from plentiful for many years after America was first settled, and numerous makeshifts had to be resorted to unless the builder could afford to import lime from England at great expense. Over the doorway, with its simple flanking seats, there is the familiar pedimental and slightly projecting hood, while the door itself is of the quaint divided type, permitting the upper half to be opened while the lower half is closed. On the first floor the windows have nine-paned sashes, both upper and lower, together with nicely paneled shutters, while on the second floor the upper sashes are foreshortened to six panes, and there are neither shutters nor blinds. This excellent example of the Pennsylvania farmhouse type was built by Dirck Jansen, one of the original settlers of Germantown, for his son John Johnson at the time of his marriage to Rachael Livezey. The work was begun in 1765 and completed in 1768, as indicated by a date stone in the peak of one of the gables. It was one of the largest and most substantial residences in the town and for that reason gave much concern to the Society of Friends of which the Johnsons were members. During the Battle of Germantown it was in the thick of the fight, and following the warning of an officer John Johnson and his entire family took refuge in the cellar. Bullet holes through three doors are still visible, also the damage done to the northwest wall by a cannon ball. The backyard fence, riddled with bullets, was removed in 1906 to the Museum of the Site and Relic Society at Vernon. Since the death of John Johnson in 1805, the house has passed through many hands, all descendants of the builder, however. During the Civil War it became a station of the "underground railway" for conducting fugitive slaves to Canada, and Mrs. Josiah Reeve, a great-great-granddaughter of the builder, used to tell how, when a child, she often wondered why so many colored people lived in the attic, staying only a day or so, when others would appear. Generally similar to the Johnson house is the old Green Tree Inn, Number 6019 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, erected in 1748. Its principal distinctions lie in the three small, plain dormers with segmental topped windows; the coved cornice; the elliptical carving in the pediment of the hood over the door; the enriched ovolo molding of the penthouse roof, consisting of a ball and disk in alternation, and the arched openings of the basement windows. In this building on December 6, 1759, then the home of Daniel Mackinett, the public school of Germantown, the Germantown Academy, was organized, its building being erected the following year. In Revolutionary times this old house was known as "Widow Mackinett's Tavern", and it was a famous resort for driving parties from the city. Many persons of note were entertained at the Green Tree Inn, and when La Fayette visited Germantown in 1825 it was the intention to tender him a dinner there. It was concluded, however, that the tavern could not accommodate the party, and a breakfast at Cliveden was given instead, to which reference has already been made. The old Billmeyer house, also on Germantown Avenue, Germantown, interests the student of architecture primarily as a rare instance of the early Germantown two-family house. Apart from its two front entrance doorways and the absence of a hood in the penthouse roof, it is much like the Johnson house in general arrangement. The "brick" stones are larger and less pleasing, however, and the high elevation of the structure is evidently due to a subsequent change in the grade of the street. This, however, has given opportunity for a quaint double flight of wing steps with simple wrought-iron balustrades in the characteristic Philadelphia manner. The seats, back to back, one for each doorway, recall those of the Johnson house. One notices with admiration the beautifully detailed pedimental dormers with their round-topped windows, and with interest the unusual use of shutters on both the first and second stories. Both upper and lower sashes on the first floor are twelve-paned, as are also the upper sashes on the second floor, the foreshortening of these upper windows being accomplished by means of eight-paned lower sashes. [Illustration: PLATE XLII.--Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, South Seventh Street (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, South Fourth Street (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, Seventh and Locust Streets (section); Iron Stair Rail and Footscraper, Seventh and Locust Streets (section).] [Illustration: PLATE XLIII.--Detail of Window and Shutters, Morris House.] Erected in 1727 as a single dwelling, this house was occupied during the battle by the widow Deshler and her family. At that time there was no building of any sort between the Billmeyer and Chew houses. It was in front of this house that Washington stopped in his march down Germantown Avenue on October 4, 1777, having discovered that the Chew house was occupied by the British. There he conferred with his officers, ordered the attack and directed the battle. The tradition is that Washington stood on a horse block, telescope in hand, trying in vain to penetrate the smoke and fog and discover the force of the enemy intrenched within the Chew mansion. The stone cap of the horse block is still preserved, and the telescope is in the possession of Germantown Academy. The house suffered greatly at the hands of the British soldiers who were quartered there, and its woodwork still bears the marks of bullets and attempts to set it on fire. In 1789 it became the home of Michael Billmeyer, a celebrated German printer who carried on his trade there. Homes such as the Johnson and Billmeyer houses and numerous similar ones, two and a half stories high with gable roofs, dormer windows and a penthouse roof at the second-floor level, are characteristic examples of the best Pennsylvania farmhouse type which architects of the present day are perpetuating to a considerable extent. Whether of dressed local or ledge stone, they are distinct from anything else anywhere that comes within the Colonial category. In their design and construction sincerity of purpose is manifest; their sturdy simplicity and frank practicability give them a rare charm which appeals strongly to all lovers of the Colonial style in architecture. CHAPTER VII DOORWAYS AND PORCHES Invariably one associates a house with its front entrance, for the doorway is the dominant feature of the façade, the keynote so to speak. Truly utilitarian in purpose, and so lending itself more logically to elaboration for the sake of decorative effect, the doorway became the principal single feature of a Colonial exterior. When designed in complete accord with the house it lends distinction and charm to the building as a whole. Like men, doorways have character and individuality. Indeed, in their individuality they reflect the character of those who built them. They symbolize the house as a whole and usually the mien of its occupants; they create the first impressions which the guest has of his host, and foretell more or less accurately the sort of welcome to be expected. The houses of Philadelphia and vicinity, perhaps more than those of any other American city, possess the charm of architectural merit combined with historic interest. To appreciate more fully the important part played by Philadelphians in early American affairs, we study their houses and home life, and as the primary index to the domestic architecture of the vicinity we direct our attention to the doorways and porches. Like the houses, the doorways range in architectural pretension from the unaffected simplicity of Wyck to the stately elaboration of Cliveden and Mount Pleasant, and possess distinctive characteristics not seen elsewhere. Wealth made Philadelphia the most fashionable American city of the time, with all the attendant rivalries and jealousies of such a condition. Desiring to put the best foot foremost, elaboration of the doorway provided a ready means to display the self-esteem, affluence and social position of the owner. Naturally the Quaker severity of former years was reflected in many of these outward manifestations of home life, and it is a study of absorbing interest to note the proportions and resulting spirit, so unlike New England doorways, which the local builders gave to their adaptations from the same Renaissance motives. Summed up in a sentence, the high, narrow doorways of Philadelphia, for the most part without the welcoming side lights of New England, speak truly of Quaker severity and the exclusiveness of the old aristocratic families. [Illustration: PLATE XLIV.--Window and Shutters, Free Quakers' Meeting House, Fifth and Arch Streets; Second Story Window, Free Quakers' Meeting House.] [Illustration: PLATE XLV.--Detail of Windows, Combes Alley; Window and Shutters, Cliveden; Window, Bartram House.] As to the doors themselves, four distinct types were common throughout the Colonial period. Single and double doors were equally popular, high, narrow double doors being favored for the more pretentious houses, although instances are not lacking of single doors in the mansions of Colonial times. With very few exceptions molded and raised panels with broad bevels were used in all, and it is according to the arrangement of these panels that the different types of doors are best classified. One of the earliest and simplest was the six-panel single door with three stiles of about equal width, top and frieze rail about the same, bottom rail somewhat wider and lock rail about double the width of the frieze rail. The upper pair of panels were not quite high enough to be square, while the middle and lower pairs were oblong in shape, the middle one being higher than the lower. Rarely this relation was reversed, and the lower pair was higher than the middle pair, the door at Number 6504 Germantown Avenue being an example. As found in the farmhouses of Germantown and thereabouts, notably Wyck, Glen Fern, the Green Tree Inn and the Johnson and Billmeyer houses, these six-panel doors were split horizontally through the lock rail, dividing them into an upper and lower part. This arrangement made it possible to open the upper part for ventilation while keeping the lower part closed to prevent stray animals and fowls from entering the house. Numerous examples of undivided six-panel doors are shown by accompanying illustrations and referred to in detail in succeeding paragraphs. Of these the door of Grumblethorpe is unique in having a double stile in the middle, giving almost the appearance of double doors. Three-panel double doors, such as those of Mount Pleasant, Solitude and Port Royal House, were less common than any of the four principal types mentioned, and were little used except for a few decades after the middle of the eighteenth century. Like six-panel single doors, the upper panel was often almost square, and the middle oblong panel higher than the bottom one of the same shape. At Mount Pleasant the middle and lower panels were of the same size. Eight-panel single doors were employed extensively throughout the eighteenth century, and this is one of the most picturesque and distinctive of Philadelphia types. For the most part the panels were arranged as shown by the doors of the Perot-Morris, Powel and Wharton houses with a pair of small and large panels in alternation. Other notable instances are to be seen at Loudoun, Chalkley Hall and the Blackwell house. The top or first and third pairs were about half as high as their width, while the second and fourth pairs were oblong and usually of the same size, their height about one and one-half times their width. The door at Upsala is a rare instance of the fourth pair of panels lower than the second, whereas that at Number 301 South Seventh Street shows this type with molded flat panels. As is well shown by the door of the Perot-Morris house, the fourth rail was the broad lock rail, and as in those days the latch was often separate, it was frequently placed on the rail above, and hence often referred to as the latch rail. Another less common type of eight-panel single door is shown in accompanying illustrations by doors at Number 4908 Germantown Avenue, Number 39 Fisher's Lane, Wayne Junction and Number 224 South Eighth Street. The panel arrangement consisted of three pairs of nearly square panels above the lock rail and one pair twice as high below. Of the doors mentioned, that at Wayne Junction is unique in its flat molded panels. A corresponding panel arrangement of double doors is to be seen at The Highlands. Usually, however, four-panel double doors took the alternate small and large panel arrangement and were virtually halves of the more common type of eight-panel single door. Such doors at Stenton, Cliveden and the Morris house are illustrated in detail, and similar ones gave entrance to Hope Lodge, Woodford and Vernon. The Woodford doors are interesting for their glazed quatrefoil openings in the top pair of panels, the Vernon doors for a handsome brass knocker on the second panel of each one. For the most part Philadelphia doorways were deeply recessed in connection with stone construction because of the great thickness of the walls. Paneled jambs were let into the reveals of the opening, and whatever the panel arrangement of the door, a corresponding arrangement was followed in paneling the jambs and the soffit of the arch or flat lintel above. Such a distinctive and pleasing feature did this become that it was widely adapted to brick construction, the outward projection of pilasters and engaged columns, often both, supporting pediments and entablatures which had the effect of increasing the depth of brick walls. The simplest type of Philadelphia doorway is that common to the ledge and "brick" stone farmhouses of Germantown, of which the doorway of the Johnson house is perhaps the best example. These houses usually had a penthouse roof along the second-floor level, and as in this instance a pediment springing from this roof usually formed a hood above the doorway. Although this doorway with its molded casings, four-paned horizontal transom and single door with six molded and raised panels is of the most modest character, its simple lines and good proportions present an effect of picturesque charm. The door is divided horizontally into two parts, after the Dutch manner, like many farmhouse doors of the neighborhood. The position of the drop handle replacing the usual knob indicates the size of the great rim lock within, and the graceful design of the brass knocker is justly one of the most popular to-day. The seats flanking the entrance are unique and unlike any others in Philadelphia, although those between the two doors of the Billmeyer house near by are similar. [Illustration: PLATE XLVI.--Window, Stenton; Window and Shutters, 128 Race Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XLVII.--Dormer, Witherill House, 130 North Front Street; Dormer, 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown; Foreshortened Window, Morris House; Dormer, Stenton; Window and Shutters, Witherill House; Window and Blinds, 6105 Germantown Avenue.] Substantially the same sort of doorway without the seats is to be seen at the old Green Tree Inn, Number 6019 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, erected in 1748. Here, however, the effect is slightly enriched by a nicely hand-tooled ovolo molding in the cornice of the penthouse roof that is repeated with an elliptical fan design in the pediment of the hood. Another type of Philadelphia doorway only a little more elaborate than the foregoing is well illustrated at Number 114 League Street and Number 5933 Germantown Avenue. Above the architrave casing across the lintel of these deeply recessed doorways a frieze and pediment form an effective doorhead. The pedimental League Street doorhead is supported by hand-carved consoles at opposite ends, that of the Germantown Avenue doorhead by fluted pilasters. An oval shell pattern adorns the frieze of the former, while a denticulated molding enriches the latter. As contrasted with the plain cased frame of the former, the latter has paneled jambs and soffit, the spacing corresponding with that of the door. Both doors are of the popular six-panel type with nicely molded and raised panels, and both doorheads are elaborated by short, broader sections of the vertical casings near the top. In refinement of detail and proportion, and in precision of workmanship the Germantown Avenue doorway surpasses that on League Street. But the characteristic type of pedimental door trim in Philadelphia takes a different form. About the middle of the eighteenth century the plain horizontal transom above outside doors was generally replaced by the more graceful semicircular fanlight, the glass area of which was divided by sash bars or leaded lines into numerous radiating patterns of more or less grace and beauty. By omitting the entablature of the common horizontal doorhead and breaking the base of the pediment, the round arch of the fanlight was made to fit very nicely within the sloping sides of the pediment, the keystone of the arched casing occupying the upper angle beneath the peak of the gable. Pilasters or engaged columns support the pediment, their upper molded portion above the necking being carried across the horizontal lintel of the door frame. From the capitals up to the short cornice returns, replacing the usual base of the pediment, the spirit of the entablature is retained by pilaster projections molded after the manner of cornice, frieze and architrave. Excellent doorways such as this with fluted pilaster casings, single doors with six molded and raised panels of familiar arrangement and paneled jambs and soffit to correspond are to be seen at Number 5011 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, and Number 247 Pine Street. The former is of considerable breadth, as Philadelphia doorways go, and the fanlight is of rather too intricate pattern and heavy scale. The latter is exceptionally narrow, with pilasters in accord and a fanlight of chaste simplicity. Like many others the door itself is dark painted and in striking contrast to the other white wood trim. One notices at once the strange placing of the knob at the top rather than in the middle of the lock rail, and the footscraper in a separate block of marble in the sidewalk at one side of the marble steps, the inference being that one should scrupulously wipe his feet before approaching the door. Similar to these, but showing better proportion and greater refinement of detail, is the entrance to the Morris house, one of the best known doorways in Philadelphia and notable as one of the relatively few pedimental doorways of this type having the high four-panel double doors. The pediment framing the simple but very graceful fanlight is enriched by cornice moldings, hand-tooled to fine scale, the soffit of the corona being fluted, the bed-molding reeded and the dentil course being a familiar Grecian fret. Flutings also adorn the short architraves each side of the fanlight, and the abacus of the pilaster columns which is carried across a supplementary lintel in front of the lintel proper, the latter being several inches to the rear because of the deeply recessed arrangement of the door. The detail combines Doric and Ionic inspiration. An attractive knocker, simple brass knob and exceptionally large key plate indicating the great rim lock within, lend a quaint charm to a doorway distinctly pleasing in its entirety. Two excellent doorways of this general type having paneled instead of fluted pilaster casings may be seen at Number 6504 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, and Number 701 South Seventh Street. The former is broad and has a six-panel door much like that at Number 5011 Germantown Avenue, but the fanlight is of simpler pattern and withal more pleasing. A fine-scale dentil course lends interest to the pedimental cornice, while the frieze portions of the entablature section of the pilasters are elaborated by flutings and drillings, the latter suggestive of a festoon. A knocker of slender grace is the best feature of the hardware. The South Seventh Street entrance, higher and narrower, presents another example of the dark-painted door rendered the more interesting by reason of its eight-panel arrangement, the spacing being that usually employed for double doors. The wood trim, molded but nowhere carved, commends itself for effective simplicity. Two marble steps, the upper one very deep, with an attractive iron rail on the buttresses at each side, complete a doorway picture that is typically Philadelphian. [Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.--Shutter Fastener, Cliveden; Shutter Fastener, Wyck; Shutter Fastener, Perot-Morris House; Shutter Fastener, 6043 Germantown Avenue.] [Illustration: PLATE XLIX.--Detail of Round Headed Window, Congress Hall; Detail of Round Headed Window, Christ Church.] Surpassing both of the foregoing, however, is the doorway at Number 709 Spruce Street. Indeed, it is among the best of its type in the city. It has the simple excellence in detail of the South Seventh Street doorway, with better proportion, less height of pediment and greater apparent breadth, owing to the six-panel arrangement of the door and the fact that it is white like the wood trim about it. The only carved molding is the Grecian fret of the dentil course in the pedimental cornice. Here again another favorite knocker pattern greets the eye. Engaged round columns, usually smooth and standing in front of wide pilasters, were often pleasing features of these pedimental doorways. In such instances the projection was so great that the entablature sections above the columns were square, and the soffit of the corona in the pediment was paneled. Two notable instances may be cited at Number 5200 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, and Number 4927 Frankford Avenue. Both have the familiar six-panel doors with corresponding paneled jambs and arch soffit, attractively simple fanlights and much fine-scale hand carving in the pedimental cornice and architrave casing of the keyed arch. The former displays better taste. Effective use is made of a reeded ovolo, and the fascia of the architrave bears a pleasing hand-tooled band of vertical flutes with a festooned flat fillet running through it. The most distinctive feature, however, is the double denticulated molding of the pedimental cornice with prominent drilled holes in each dentil alternately at top and bottom. Although representing a high degree of the wood-carvers' art, the other doorway is rather over-ornate in its detail. The reeded ovolo is again prominent, and the fascia of the architrave of the arch bears a familiar decorative motive consisting of groups of five flutes in alternation with a conventionalized flower. The dentil course of the pedimental cornice takes the form of a peculiar reeded H pattern which is repeated in much finer scale on the edge of the corona, the abacus of the capitals and its continuation across the lintel of the door. Least pleasing of all is the fluting of the frieze portion of the entablature sections with three sets of drillings suggestive of festoons. Another admirable type of doorway, of which there are many examples in Philadelphia, frames the high, round-headed arch of the doorway with tall, slender engaged columns supporting a massive entablature above the semicircular fanlight over the door. Almost without exception the entablature is some variation of the Ionic order with denticulated bed-mold in the cornice, plain flat frieze and molded architrave, the latter sometimes enriched by incised decorative bands. The columns are Doric and smooth. They stand in front of more widely spaced pilasters, which are virtually a broadening of the casings of the door frame, and which support a second entablature back of the first and somewhat wider. The two combined form a doorhead with projection almost equal to a hood, but the effect is far more stately. Such a doorway in its simplest form, with columns tapering considerably toward the top, in accordance with a prevalent local custom of the time, is to be seen on the Powel house, Number 244 South Third Street. The sash divisions of the fanlight are unique, suggesting both Gothic tracery and the lotus flower. The single, high eight-panel door recalls many having a similar arrangement of molded and raised panels, but differs from most of them in that the lock rail is about double the width of the two rails above. Narrower, with more slender columns, and thus seemingly higher, is the doorway of the Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street. While the entablature is generally similar, the moldings adhere less closely to the classic order, and the same is true of the exceptionally slender columns. An enriched ovolo suggesting a quarter section of a cylinder and two disks in alternation lends added refinement to the paneled jambs and the architrave casing of the arch with its hand-carved keystone. The fanlight is of simple but pleasing pattern, and the eight-panel door is of characteristic design. At Number 301 South Seventh Street the doorway itself strongly resembles that of the Powel house, except that it is higher, narrower and rather lighter in scale. However, the wing flights of stone steps on the sidewalk leading to a broad landing before the door and the handsome wrought-iron rail lend individuality and rare charm to this notable example of a familiar type. The doorway of Grumblethorpe, Number 5621 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, differs little in general appearance, if considerably in detail, from that of the Powel house. One notices first how deeply recessed it is because of the thickness of the stone walls. With the projecting entablature it affords almost as much shelter as a porch. The single door next attracts attention. Of six-panel and familiar arrangement, it differs from most of this sort in having a double stile in the middle, the effect simulating double doors. A simple, hand-tooled ovolo ornaments the jambs and architrave casings of the keyed arch. It is also repeated above the double denticulated member of the cornice, the latter enriched by a hole drilled in each dentil alternately above and below. Daintiness and simplicity characterize the fanlight pattern set in lead lines. The doorway at Number 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, may be regarded as one of the best of the more ornate examples of this type. [Illustration: PLATE L.--Fenestration, Chancel End, St. Peter's Church.] [Illustration: PLATE LI.--Details of Round Headed Windows, Christ Church.] It has fluted columns, an intricately hand-tooled dentil course in the cornice, richly incised architraves and carved ovolo moldings. The denticulated molding has fluted dentils with horizontal connecting members forming a sort of continuous H pattern. An incised band of dainty grace adorns the architrave of the entablature. It consists of groups of five vertical flutes in alternation with drillings forming upward and downward arcs or double festoons. The architrave of the arch and lintel has a slightly different incised pattern. There are the same fluted groups with oval ornaments composed of drillings between. The door itself is of the regulation six-panel arrangement. Few doorways in the Corinthian order are to be found in what may properly be termed the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia, for this order was little used by American builders until early in the nineteenth century. The doorway of Doctor Denton's house in Germantown instances its employment in a somewhat original manner. The entablature follows the classic order closely, except for the tiny consoles of the dentil course and the incised decoration of the upper fascia of the architrave, consisting of a band of elongated hexagons which is repeated across the lintel of the door and the imposts of the arch. A Latin quotation, "Procuc este profans", meaning "Be far from here that which is unholy", is carved in the architrave casing over the fanlight. The columns are fluted, but have the Doric rather than the usual Corinthian capitals. Double blind doors such as are a feature of this entrance were the predecessor of the modern screen door. Arbor vitæ trees in square wooden tubs on the broad top step each side of the doorway complete a formal treatment of dignity and attractiveness. Rarely occurred a doorway having a complete entablature above a fanlight surmounted by a pediment. The east and west entrances of Mount Pleasant offer two splendid examples, massive and dignified. While much alike in several respects, they differ sufficiently in detail to afford an interesting comparison. In size and general arrangement in their double three-panel doors and smooth columns, they greatly resemble each other. Although not pure, the doorway of the west or river front is essentially Tuscan and of the utmost simplicity. Its chief distinction lies in the rustication of the casings, jambs and soffit, simulating stonework, and the heavy fanlight sash with its openings combining the keystone and arch in outline. The doorway of the east front, which is the entrance from the drive, is Doric and has the customary triglyphs, mutules and guttæ. There is the same rustication of casings and jambs up to the height of the doors, but molded spandrils occupy the spaces each side of the round arch with its wide ornate keystone. Exceptionally broad tapering and fluted mullions lend distinction to the heavy fanlight sash with its round-ended openings. Neither of these doorways has the double projection of those previously described. The background pilasters are omitted, and the engaged columns stand directly against the stone masonry. A beautiful Palladian window in the second-story wall above each doorway forms a closely related feature, the two being virtually parts of the same effect. Oftener, where an entablature supported by engaged columns was surmounted by a pediment, the fanlight over the door was omitted. Of the several instances in Philadelphia, the best known is undoubtedly the classic doorway of Cliveden, about which the Battle of Germantown raged most fiercely. The damage done by cannon balls to the stone steps may still be plainly seen. This doorway is one of the finest specimens of pure mutulary Doric in America, very stately and somewhat severe. Every detail is well-nigh perfect, and the proportions could hardly be better. A similar arrangement of the high, narrow, four-panel double doors is found elsewhere in Philadelphia, while the blinds used instead of screen doors recall those of Doctor Denton's house, although divided by two rails respectively toward the top and bottom into three sections, the middle section being the largest. Two small drop handles with pendant rings comprise the entire visible complement of hardware on the doors. As compared with the east entrance of Mount Pleasant, the Cliveden detail is richer in the paneled soffits of the corona and the paneled metopes in alternation with the triglyphs of the frieze. One notices also that it is not deeply recessed according to the prevailing custom in the case of stone houses. Another doorway of this general character and having double doors is the entrance to Solitude. Conventionally Ionic in detail, with smooth columns and voluted capitals, it pleases the eye but lacks the impressiveness of the doorway at Cliveden. The three-panel double doors are narrower, and this fact is emphasized by the deep recess with paneled jambs. There is but one broad step, which also serves as the threshold. The doorway of the Perot-Morris house, deeply recessed because of the thick stone walls, presents at its best another variation of this sturdiest of Philadelphia types with a single, eight-panel, dark-painted door and a very broad top stone step before it. Virtually a pure Tuscan adaptation, it differs in a few particulars from others of similar character, notably in the pronounced tapering of the columns toward the top and the recessing of the entablature above the door to form pilaster projections above the columns. In other words, the recessed entablature of this doorhead replaces the fanlight of another type already referred to and of which the doorways at Number 5200 Germantown Avenue and Number 4927 Frankford Avenue are examples. The brass knob, the heavy iron latch and fastenings inside are the ones Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox and Randolph handled in passing in and out during Washington's occupancy. [Illustration: PLATE LII.--Chancel Window, Christ Church; Palladian Window and Doorway, Independence Hall.] [Illustration: PLATE LIII.--Palladian Window, The Woodlands.] Above the pediment is to be plainly seen the picturesque, cast-iron, hand-in-hand fire mark about a foot high, consisting of four clasped hands crossed in the unbreakable grasp of "My Lady Goes to London" of childhood days. This ancient design, to be seen on the Morris, Betsy Ross and numerous other houses, was that of the oldest fire insurance company in the United States, organized in 1752 under Franklin's leadership. This and other designs, such as the green tree, eagle, hand fire engine and hose and hydrant still remain on many old Philadelphia buildings, indicating in earlier years which company held the policy. For a long time it was the custom to place these emblems on all insured houses, the principal reason for doing so being that certain volunteer fire companies were financed or assisted by certain insurance companies and consequently made special efforts to save burning houses insured by the company concerned. Porches were the exception rather than the rule in the early architecture of Philadelphia. Only a few old Colonial houses now remaining have them, and for the most part they are entrances to countryseats in the present suburbs rather than to residences in the city proper. The Highlands and Hope Lodge have such porches to which reference has already been made in connection with the houses themselves. Of scant architectural merit, the porch at Hope Lodge may possibly be of more recent origin than the house. Except for the narrow double doors the entrance to The Highlands is strongly reminiscent of New England doorways and porches. Both have hipped roofs so low as to be almost flat. A splendid example of the gable roof or pedimental porch more typical of Philadelphia architecture is that at Upsala. Although displaying free use of the orders, it is regarded as one of the best in America. On a square stone platform reached by three broad stone steps, slender, fluted Doric columns, with engaged columns each side of the doorway, support a roof in the form of a pediment of generally Ionic character, the architrave and cornice being notable for fine-scale hand tooling. It will be noticed that the motive of the cornice with its jig-sawed modillions, rope molding and enriched dentil course suggests Ionic influence; that of the architrave, with its groups of five vertical flutings in alternation with an incised conventionalized flower, Doric. The same entablature is carried about the inside of the roof, projecting over the doorway to form a much favored Philadelphia doorhead supported by flanking engaged columns. The doorway itself is distinctly of Philadelphia type, high, relatively narrow, and deeply recessed, with the soffit of the arch and the cheeks of the jambs beautifully paneled and a handsome semicircular fanlight above the single eight-panel door but with no side lights. The effect of the keystone and imposts, also the enrichment of the semicircular architrave casings are characteristic. The paneling of the door consists of pairs of small and large panels in alternation, the upper pair of large panels being noticeably higher than the lower pair. Of far more modest character is the porch of the old Henry house, Number 4908 Germantown Avenue, long occupied by Doctor W. S. Ambler. It is much smaller, extremely simple in its detail and of generally less pleasing proportions. Two slender, smooth columns and corresponding pilasters on the wall of the house support a pediment rather too flat for good appearance. Except for the Ionic capitals, the detail is rather nondescript as to its order. The round-arched, deeply recessed doorway has the usual paneled jambs and soffit, but the reeded casings and square impost blocks are of the sort that came into vogue about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The single door with its eight molded and raised panels is of that type, having three pairs of small panels of uniform size above a single pair of high panels, the lock rail being more than double the width of the rails above and wider than the bottom rail. Unlike the usual fanlight, this one is patterned after a much used Palladian window with sash bar divisions suggested by Gothic tracery. At Number 39 Fisher's Lane, Wayne Junction, in connection with a doorway much like the above, is an elliptical porch much like those of Salem, Massachusetts, although devoid of their excellent proportion and nicety of detail. Both the porch platform and steps are of wood, but the slender, smooth columns supporting the roof, which takes the form of an entablature, stand on high stone bases. Only simple moldings have been employed, and the detail can hardly be said to belong to any particular order of architecture. The door itself is unusual in having molded flat rather than raised panels, while the fanlight is of more conventional pattern than that of the Henry house. Side lights and elliptical fanlights, so characteristic of New England doorways, are as rare as porches in the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia. The entrance of The Highlands is thus unique in combining the three. The doorway at Number 224 South Eighth Street has the New England spirit in its breadth and general proportion; in the beauty of its leaded side lights and fanlight, but the broad stone steps on the sidewalk and the iron rails are typically Philadelphian. So, too, is the paneling of the wide single door. The ornate woodwork of the frame and casings, however, especially the frieze across the lintel, with its oval and elliptical fluted designs elaborately hand-tooled, suggests the Dutch influence of New York and New Jersey. The iron rails of the steps present an interesting instance of the adaptation of Gothic tracery, arches and quatrefoils. [Illustration: PLATE LIV.--Great Hall and Staircase, Stenton.] [Illustration: PLATE LV.--Hall and Staircase, Whitby Hall; Detail of Staircase, Whitby Hall.] The front doorway at Stenton may be regarded as the earliest instance of side lights in Philadelphia, and one of the earliest in America. The width of the brick piers or munions is such, however, that there are virtually two high narrow windows rather than side lights in the commonly accepted sense of the term. Indeed, they are treated as such, being divided into upper and lower sashes like those of the other windows, only narrower. Neither door nor windows have casings, the molded frames being let into the reveals of the brickwork and the openings, as in most early Colonial structures, having relieving arches with brick cores. A six-paned, horizontal toplight above the doors corresponds in scale with the windows. This simple entrance, with its high, narrow, four-panel doors having neither knob or latch, is reached from a brick-paved walk about the house by three semicircular stone steps, such as were common in England at the time, the various nicely hewn pieces being fastened securely together with iron bands. Severity is written in every line, yet there is a picturesque charm about this quaint doorway that attracts all who see it. In this the warmth and texture of the brickwork play a large part, but much is also due to the flanking slender trellises supporting vines which have spread over the brickwork above in the most fascinating manner. Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century and for a few decades thereafter, under the influence of the Greek revival, a new type of round-arched doorway was developed in Philadelphia,--broader, simpler, heavier in treatment than most of the foregoing. There were no ornamental casings, the only woodwork being the heavy frame let into the reveals of the brick wall. Above a horizontal lintel treated after the manner of an architrave the semicircular fanlight was set in highly ornamental lead lines forming a decorative geometrical pattern. Double doors were the rule, most of them four-panel with a small and large panel in alternation like many earlier doors, but the panels were molded and sunken rather than raised. In a few instances there was a single vertical panel to each door, sometimes round-topped as on the doors of the Randolph house, Number 321 South Fourth Street. The most distinctive of these doorways is that at the southeast corner of Eighth and Spruce streets, where elliptical winding flights lead to a landing before the door. The ironwork is undoubtedly among the most graceful and best preserved in the city. This low, broad entrance resembles Southern doorways rather than the Philadelphia type, although there are a few others of similar character near by. The wide, flat casings and single-panel doors seem severe indeed by comparison with most of the earlier doorways with their greater flexibility of line. Generally similar, the doorway of the old Shippen mansion, Number 1109 Walnut Street, with its straight flight of stone steps unadorned in any way, is less attractive except in the paneling of the doors. It lacks the grace of the winding stairs and the charm of the iron balustrade so much admired in the former. The fanlight pattern, good as it is, fails to make as strong an appeal as that of the other doorway. At the northeast corner of Third and Pine streets is to be found a very narrow doorway of this character, its double doors paneled like those of the Shippen mansion and its graceful fanlight pattern more like that of the doorway at Eighth and Spruce streets, though differing considerably in detail. Like many others in Philadelphia this doorway is reached by four stone steps leading to a square stone platform, the entire construction being on the brick-paved sidewalk. The simple, slender rail of wrought iron, its chief decoration a repeated spiral, is the best feature. Philadelphia, perhaps more than any other American city, is famous for the profusion and beauty of its ironwork, wrought and cast. For the most part it took the form of stair rails or balustrades, fences and foot scrapers, and many are the doorways of little or no architectural merit which are rendered beautiful by the accompanying ironwork. On the other hand, accompanying illustrations already discussed show the rare beauty of architecturally notable doorways enriched by the addition of good ironwork. Fences were the exception rather than the rule in Colonial times, although rarely employed along the front of a house to prevent passers from accidentally stepping into areaways in the sidewalk in front of basement windows. The danger of such a catastrophe was remote, however, for Philadelphia sidewalks were very broad in order to make room for the customary stoop before the doorway and the frequent rolling way or basement entrance. These sidewalk obstructions being the rule, people formed the habit of walking near the curb, and accidents were thus avoided. It was not until late in the nineteenth century, when basement entrances with an open stairway along the front of the house began to be provided, that fences came into vogue, except in the suburbs, where a small front yard was sometimes surrounded by an iron fence. [Illustration: PLATE LVI.--Hall and Staircase, Mount Pleasant; Second Floor Hall Archway and Palladian Window, Mount Pleasant.] [Illustration: PLATE LVII.--Hall and Staircase, Cliveden; Staircase Detail, Cliveden.] Stoops divide themselves into four principal classes, of which the first, consisting only of a single broad stone step before the doorway, perhaps hardly warrants the term. As at Grumblethorpe and the Morris house, these broad stone steps often had no ironwork other than a foot scraper set in one end or in the sidewalk near by. Again, as at the entrance to the Wistar house, there were iron handrails or balustrades at both sides. Less common, though by no means infrequent, were the stoops of this sort with a single handrail at one side. These handrails or balustrades, replacing the stone parapets so common in other American cities, are patterned after the cathedral grilles and screens of the Middle Ages and consist of both Gothic and Classic detail utilized with ingenuity and good taste. Most of the earlier designs are hand wrought. Later, cast iron came into use, and much of the most interesting ironwork combines the two. The balustrade at the Wistar house just referred to is a typical example of excellent cast-iron work, the design consisting of a diaper pattern of Gothic tracery with harmonious decorative bands above and below. The Germantown farmhouse presents another variant of this first and simplest type of stoop with a hooded penthouse roof above and quaint side seats flanking the doorway. As at the Johnson house, the broad stone step was sometimes flush with the sidewalk pavement. The second type of stoop consists of a broad stone step or platform before the door with a straight flight of stone steps leading up to it. Cliveden, Mount Pleasant and Doctor Denton's house are notable instances of such stoops without handrails of any sort. The Powel house stoop of this type has one of the simplest wrought-iron rails in the city, while that of the house at Number 224 South Eighth Street, with its effective Gothic detail, combines wrought and cast iron. Two very effective wrought-iron handrails for stoops of this type, depending almost entirely upon scroll work at the top and bottom for their elaboration, are to be seen at Number 130 Race Street and Number 216 South Ninth Street, the handsome scroll pattern of the latter being the same as at the southeast corner of Seventh and Spruce streets, already referred to, and the former being given a distinctive touch by two large balls used as newels. Sometimes, as at Number 701 South Seventh Street, there was only one step between the platform of the stoop and the sidewalk, when its appearance was essentially the same as a stoop of the first type such as that of the Wistar house. The third type of stoop has the same broad platform before the door, but the flight of steps is along the front of the house at one side rather than directly in front. While these were oftener straight, as in the case of the doorway at the northeast corner of Third and Pine streets, already referred to, they were frequently curved, as at Number 316 South Third Street. Both have a wrought-iron rail with the same scroll pattern of effective simplicity, a pattern much favored in modern adaptation. Another stoop of this type at Number 272 South American Street is high enough to permit a basement entrance beneath the platform. The ironwork is beautifully hand-wrought in the Florentine manner, its elaborate scroll pattern beneath an evolute spiral band combining round ball spindles with flat bent fillets, and the curved newel treatment at each side adding materially to the grace of the whole. The fourth type of stoop has double or wing flights each side of the platform before the door. The doorway at Number 301 South Seventh Street, already referred to, is the most notable instance of straight flights in Philadelphia, while that at the southeast corner of Eighth and Spruce streets occupies the same position in respect to curved flights. The wrought ironwork of the latter is superb. Rich in effect, yet essentially simple in design, it has grace in every line, is not too ornate and displays splendid workmanship. Again a spiral design is conspicuous in the stair balustrades, and the curved newel treatment recalls that of the foregoing stoop. The balustrade of the platform consists of a simple diaper pattern of intersecting arcs with the familiar evolute band above and below. The wing flight was a convenient arrangement for double houses, as instanced by the old Billmeyer house in Germantown, with its exceedingly plain iron handrail and straight spindles. Of more interest is the balustrade at Number 207 La Grange Alley with its evolute spiral band and slender ball spindles beneath. During the nineteenth century more attention was given to newels in ironwork, and elaborate square posts combining cast and wrought pieces were constructed, such as that at Fourth and Liberty streets. In the accompanying balustrade are to be seen motives much employed in the other examples here illustrated. Scroll work is conspicuous, as are rosettes, but a touch of individuality is given by a Grecian band instead of the more common evolute spiral above the diaper pattern. The pineapple, emblem of hospitality, was attractive in cast iron and as utilized at Number 1107 Walnut Street provided a distinctive newel. [Illustration: PLATE LVIII.--Detail of Staircase Balustrade and Newel, Upsala; Staircase Balustrade, Roxborough.] [Illustration: PLATE LIX.--Staircase Detail, Upsala; Staircase Balustrade, Gowen House, Mount Airy.] The roads on the outskirts of all Colonial cities were very bad, and many of the less important streets of Philadelphia had neither pavements nor sidewalks. After rains shoes were bemired in walking, and as rubbers were then unknown it was necessary to remove the mud from the shoes before entering a house. Foot scrapers on the doorstep or at the foot of the front steps were a necessity and became ornamental adjuncts of the doorways of early Colonial homes. For the most part of wrought iron, some of the later ones were cast in molds, that at Wyck being a particularly interesting example. It consists of two grotesque griffins back to back, their wings joined tip to tip forming the scraper edge, and the whole being mounted in a large tray with turned-up edges. This scraper can thus be moved about as desired, and the tray catches the scrapings, which can be emptied occasionally without sweeping the entire doorstep. Some of the earlier and simpler scrapers, such as that at Third and Spruce streets, consisted merely of two upright standards with a sharp-edged horizontal bar between them to provide the scraper proper. This horizontal part was made quite broad to take care of anticipated wear, which in this particular instance has been great during the intervening years. Similar to this, except for the well-wrought tops of the standards and the curved supplementary supports, is the scraper of the Dirck Keyser doorway, Number 6205 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Regarded as a whole this design suggests nothing so much as the back and arms of an early English armchair. On the same page with these is shown another strange Philadelphia scraper. Apart from its outline it has no decoration, and what the origin of the design may be it is difficult to determine. To a degree, however, it resembles two crude, ancient battle-axes, the handles forming the scraper bar. A favorite design consisted of a sort of inverted oxbow with the curved part at the top and the scraper bar taking some ornamental pattern across the bottom from side to side. At the top, both outside and inside the bow, and sometimes down the sides, spiral ornaments were applied in the Florentine manner. Accompanying illustrations show two scrapers of this type at Number 320 South Third Street and another one elsewhere on the same street. The use of a little urn-shaped ornament at the top of the latter scraper is most effective. At Number 239 Pine Street is seen a scraper employing two large spirals themselves as supports for the scraper bar. The turn of the spiral is here outward as contrasted with the inward turn of the scrapers at Upsala. A scraper of quaint simplicity standing on one central standard at Vernon, Germantown, suggests the heart as its motive, although having outward as well as inward curling spirals at the top. Another clever device of Philadelphia ironworkers was to make the foot scraper a part of the iron stair rail. Usually in such a scheme it was also made part of the newel treatment on the lower step of the stoop, but at Seventh and Locust streets, for example, it stands on the second step beside and above the ornate round newel with its surmounting pineapple. Here, as in the case of the simpler handrail in South Seventh Street, one of the iron spindles of the rail is split about a foot from the bottom, and the two halves bent respectively to the right and left until they meet the next spindle on each side, the scraper bar of ornamental outline being fastened across from one to the other of these spindles below. The principal charm of the South Seventh Street rail lies in its extreme simplicity, the twisted section of the spindles near the bottom being a clever expedient. The pleasing effect of the design at Seventh and Locust streets is largely due to appropriate use of the evolute spiral band. Only a little more ornate than the South Seventh Street stair rail is that in South Fourth Street. A special spiral design above the foot scraper, however, virtually becomes a newel in this instance. The same is true of another much more elaborate stair rail at Seventh and Locust streets with its attractive diaper pattern between an upper and lower Grecian band, the whole grille being supported by a graceful three-point bracket. CHAPTER VIII WINDOWS AND SHUTTERS Philadelphia windows and window frames during the Colonial period were not so much a development as a perpetuation of the initial types, although of course some minor changes and improvements were made with passing years. From the very beginning sliding Georgian sashes were the rule. Penn's house has them and so have all the other historic homes and buildings of this vicinity now remaining. There are none of the diamond paned casement sashes, such as were employed in the first New England homes half a century earlier, for builders in both the mother country and the colonies had ceased to work in the Elizabethan and Jacobean manner and were completely under the influence of the Renaissance. In the earlier houses the upper sash was let into the frame permanently, only the lower sash being movable and sliding upward, but in later years double-hung sashes with weights began to be adopted. Stiles, rails and sash bars were all put together with mortise and tenon joints and even the sash bars were pegged together with wood. The glass was set in rabbeted edges and held in place by putty according to the method still in use. [Illustration: PLATE LX.--Detail of Stair Ends, Carpenter House, Third and Spruce Streets; Detail of Stair Ends, Independence Hall (horizontal section).] [Illustration: PLATE LXI.--Chimney Piece in the Hall, Stenton; Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall, Great Chamber, Mount Pleasant.] At first the panes were very small, and many were required in large windows, but as glass making advanced, the prevailing size was successively enlarged from about five by seven inches to six by eight, seven by nine, eight by ten, and nine by twelve. As the size of individual panes of glass was increased, their number in each sash was in some instances correspondingly decreased, although oftener larger sashes with the same number of panes resulted. Philadelphia architects always manifested a keen appreciation of the value of scale imparted by the sash bar divisions of their windows, and for that reason small-paned sashes never ceased to be popular. Although numerous variations exist, the custom of having an equal number of panes in both upper and lower sashes predominated. Six, nine and twelve-paned sashes forming twelve, eighteen and twenty-four paned windows were all common throughout the Colonial period. Twelve-paned sashes were used chiefly in public buildings and the larger private mansions, six-paned sashes in houses of moderate size. While there are several notable instances of nine-paned upper and lower sashes, particularly Hope Lodge, Cedar Grove in Harrowgate, Northern Liberties, and the Wharton house at Number 336 Spruce Street, this arrangement frequently, although not always, resulted in a window rather too high and narrow to be pleasing in proportion. A comparison of the accompanying photographs of the window of a Combes Alley house with that of a house at Number 128 Race Street well illustrates the point. Sometimes, where used on the lower story, six-paned upper and lower sashes are found in the windows of the second story. Waynesborough, in Easttown Township, Chester County, not far from Philadelphia, is a well-known case in point. Grumblethorpe presents the anomalous reverse arrangement of six-paned sashes on the first story and nine-paned sashes on the second story. Still oftener six-and nine-paned sashes were combined in the same window, the larger sash being sometimes the upper and again the lower. Bartram House and the Johnson house are instances of nine-paned upper and lower sashes on the first story and nine-paned lower and six-paned upper sashes on the second story. Greame Park in Horsham, Montgomery County, not far from Philadelphia, has nine-paned upper and lower sashes on the lower story and twelve-paned lower and nine-paned upper on the second floor. Penn's house in Fairmount Park and Glen Fern are instances of nine-paned lower and six-paned upper sashes on the first story and six-paned upper and lower sashes on the second story. Solitude and the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street, exemplify the reverse arrangement of nine-paned upper and six-paned lower sashes on both stories. Six-paned upper and lower sashes on both the first and second floors were, perhaps, more common on houses of moderate size and some large mansions throughout the Colonial period than any other window arrangement. Notable instances are The Highlands; Upsala; Vernon; Wynnestay in Wynnefield, West Philadelphia; Carlton in Germantown; the Powell house, Number 244 South Third Street; the Evans house, Number 322 De Lancy Street; and the Wistar house, Fourth and Locust streets. Among the more pretentious countryseats and city residences having twelve-paned upper and lower sashes on both the first and second stories may be mentioned Cliveden, Stenton, Loudoun, Woodford, Whitby Hall, the Morris house, the Perot-Morris house, Chalkley Hall and Port Royal House in Frankford. Twelve-paned sashes were also used in various ways in combination with six, eight and nine paned sashes. For example, the Waln house, Number 254 South Second Street, has twelve-paned upper and lower sashes on the first story with six-paned upper and lower sashes on the second story, whereas Mount Pleasant has the reverse arrangement. Laurel Hill, in the Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park, has twelve-paned upper and lower sashes on the first story and eight-paned upper and lower sashes on the second story, whereas the Billmeyer house has all twelve-paned sashes except the lower ones on the second story, which are eight-paned. Wyck, consisting as it does of two buildings joined together, probably has the most heterogeneous fenestration of any house in Philadelphia. On the first floor are windows having nine-paned lower and six-paned upper sashes, while on the second story are windows having twelve-paned lower and eight-paned upper sashes and others having six-paned upper and lower sashes. The Free Quakers' Meeting House at Fifth and Arch streets has twelve-paned upper and lower sashes on the first story and eight-paned upper and twelve-paned lower sashes on the second floor. [Illustration: PLATE LXII.--Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall, Parlor, Whitby Hall.] [Illustration: PLATE LXIII.--Chimney Piece, Parlor, Mount Pleasant; Chimney Piece, Parlor, Cliveden.] To reduce their apparent height, three-story houses were foreshortened with square windows. Two-piece sashes were used, and the number of panes differed considerably. While a like number in both upper and lower sashes was the rule, the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street, and the Powel house, Number 244 South Third Street, are notable instances of foreshortened windows having three-paned upper and six-paned lower sashes. The Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street, and the Evans house, Number 322 De Lancy Street, have foreshortened windows with six-paned upper and lower sashes. The Waln house, Number 254 South Second Street, the Stocker house, Number 404 South Front Street, and Pen Rhyn in Bensalem Township, Bucks County, have foreshortened windows with three-paned upper and lower sashes. Such foreshortened windows as all the above were usually employed with six-and nine-paned sashes on the stories below. Where eight-and twelve-paned sashes were used for the principal windows of the house, the foreshortened windows of the third story usually had eight-paned upper and lower sashes, as on the Morris house, the Wistar house at Fourth and Locust streets, Whitby Hall and Chalkley Hall in Frankford. Most Philadelphia houses, whether gable or hip-roofed, have dormers to light the attic. Two or three on a side were the rule, although a few small houses have only one. For the most part they were pedimental or gable-roofed. Segmental topped dormers were rare, although a row of them is to be seen in Camac Street, "the street of little clubs", and occasional individual instances are to be found elsewhere. Lean-to or shed-roof dormers never found favor, the only notable instances about Philadelphia being at Glen Fern, Cedar Grove in Harrowgate, Northern Liberties, and Greame Park in Horsham, Montgomery County. An accompanying illustration of a dormer on the Witherill house, Number 130 North Front Street, shows the simplest type of gable-roof dormer with square-headed window and six-paned upper and lower sashes. Similar dormers, differing chiefly in the detail of the moldings employed, are features of the Morris house; Wistar house, Fourth and Locust streets; Wynnestay, Wynnefield, West Philadelphia; Wyck; the Johnson house; Carlton, Germantown; and Chalkley Hall, Frankford. Grumblethorpe and Bartram House have dormers of this sort with a segmental topped upper window sash. Solitude has this sort of dormer with three-paned upper and six-paned lower sashes, while Stenton and the Evans house, Number 322 De Lancy Street, have eight-paned upper and lower sashes. Houses usually of somewhat later date and notable for greater refinement of detail had gable-roof dormers with round-headed Palladian windows extending up into the pediment. As in the accompanying illustration showing a dormer on the house at Number 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, the casings usually take the form of fluted pilasters, supporting the pediment with its nicely molded cornice, often, as in this instance, with a prominent denticulated molding. Narrower supplementary pilasters supported a molded and keyed arch, forming the frame within which the window is set. The lower sash is six-paned, while the upper one has six rectangular panes above which six ornamental shaped panes form a semicircle. Similar dormers, differing chiefly in ornamental detail, are features of Loudoun, Vernon, Upsala, Hope Lodge, Port Royal House, the Perot-Morris house, the Billmeyer house, the Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street; the Powel house, Number 244 South Third Street; and the Stocker house, Number 404 South Front Street. The dormers of Cliveden and Mount Pleasant are of this type but further elaborated by projecting ornamental scrolls at the sides. As the architecture of Philadelphia is almost exclusively in brick and stone, there were none of the architrave casings and ornamental heads consisting of a cornice above the architrave and often of a complete entablature which characterized much contemporary New England work in wood. Brick and stone construction require solid rather than cased wood frames let into the reveals of the brick wall and have no projections other than a molded sill, as on the Morris house, while a stone lintel or brick arch must replace the ornamental head, often such a pleasing feature of wood construction. The frames were of heavy construction held together at the corners by large dowel pins and were ornamented by suitable moldings broken around the reveals of the masonry and by molded sash guides in the frame. In the earlier brick houses the square-headed window openings had either gauged arches, as at Hope Lodge, or relieving arches of alternate headers and stretchers with a brick core, as at Stenton. Later, as in the case of hewn stonework, prominent stone lintels and window sills were adopted. Marble was much favored for this purpose because it harmonizes with the white-painted woodwork, brightens the façade and emphasizes the fenestration. Most of the lintels take the shape of a flat, gauged arch with flutings simulating mortar joints that radiate from an imaginary center below and mark off voussoirs and a keystone. Usually there is no surface ornamentation, the shape of the parts being depended upon to form a decorative pattern, the shallow vertical and horizontal scorings on the lintels of the Morris house being exceptional. These, the lintels of Cliveden and of the Free Quakers' Meeting House, exemplify the three most common types. [Illustration: PLATE LXIV.--Chimney Piece and Paneled Wall on the Second Floor of an old Spruce Street House; Detail of Mantel, 312 Cypress Street.] [Illustration: PLATE LXV.--Parlor Mantel, Upsala; Detail of Parlor Mantel, Upsala.] Unquestionably the most distinctive feature of the window treatment of this neighborhood was the outside shutters. Colonial times were troublous, and glass was expensive. In the city, protection was wanted against lawlessness at night, and in the country there was for many years the ever-present possibility of an Indian attack, despite the generally friendly relations of the Quakers with the tribes of the vicinity. There were also some British soldiers not above making improper use of unshuttered windows at night. Except for a relatively few country houses which had neither outside shutters nor blinds--notably Stenton, Solitude, Mount Pleasant, Bartram House and The Woodlands--the use of shutters on the first story was the rule. Above that the custom varied greatly. Where outside shutters were totally absent, inside hinged, folding and sometimes boxed shutters were almost invariably present. Only a few important instances of old Colonial houses having blinds on the lower story now remain. Port Royal House, for example, two and a half stories high, has blinds on the first story and none above. The Highlands has blinds on both the first and second stories, while Chalkley Hall in Frankford has blinds on all three of its stories. Often there are shutters on the lower story and none above. Three-story instances of this are the Waln house, Number 254 South Second Street; the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street; and the Wistar house, Fourth and Locust streets. Two and a half story instances are Cliveden, Hope Lodge, Vernon, Woodford, the Johnson house and Laurel Hill in the Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park. Less common are three-story houses having shutters on the first and second stories and none on the third. Whitby Hall, the Morris house and the Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street, are examples. Rare are two and a half story houses having shutters on both the principal stories. Wyck, Cedar Grove in Harrowgate, Northern Liberties, and Wynnestay in Wynnefield, West Philadelphia, are good examples. Most two and a half story houses have shutters on the first story and blinds on the second, as instanced by Upsala, Grumblethorpe, Loudoun, Glen Fern and the Perot-Morris house. The Powel house, Number 244 South Third Street, is a rare instance of shutters on all three stories, while the Evans house, Number 322 De Lancy Street, and Pen Rhyn in Bensalem Township, Bucks County, are rare instances of shutters on the first story and blinds on the second and third stories. [Illustration: PLATE LXVI.--Mantel at Upsala; Mantel at Third and De Lancey Streets.] [Illustration: PLATE LXVII.--Mantel, Rex House, Mount Airy; Mantel at 729 Walnut Street.] These outside shutters are of heavy construction like doors, the stiles and rails having mortise and tenon joints held together by dowel pins and the panels being molded and raised. Usually frieze and lock rails divide the shutter into three panels, the two lower ones being the same height and the upper one square. Accompanying illustrations show eighteen-paned windows having shutters arranged in this manner at Number 128 Race Street and in Combes Alley. At Cliveden the upper panel is not quite high enough to be square, and the same is true of the Morris house shutters, which are also notable for the fact that the lower panel is not quite so high as the middle one. Sometimes an opening of ornamental shape was cut through the top panel to admit a little light, as for instance the crescent in the shutters at Wynnestay, Wynnefield, West Philadelphia. On a relatively few houses the shutters had four panels, the most common arrangement being a small and a large panel in alternation from the top downward. Such shutters were features of Loudoun, the Wistar house, Fourth and Locust streets; the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street; the Powel house, Number 244 South Third Street; the Evans house, Number 322 Spruce Street; and the Wharton house, Number 336 Spruce Street. An accompanying illustration shows an unusual four-panel arrangement on the Witherill house, Number 130 North Front Street, the three upper almost square panels being of the same size and the lowest one being about twice as high as one of the small ones. Top, frieze and lock rails are usually the same width as the stiles, and the bottom rail is about double width. The meeting stiles and sometimes those on the opposite side have rabbeted joints, the latter fitting the jambs of the window frame. As indicated by an accompanying illustration showing the typical treatment of a second-floor twelve-paned window at Number 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, most blinds were strengthened by a lock rail about midway of the height, or slightly below, dividing the blind into an upper and lower section. Blinds of this sort are to be seen at Loudoun, Grumblethorpe, Upsala, The Highlands and Port Royal House. At Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Chester County, this division is considerably below the middle, making the upper section much the larger. Less common are blinds divided into three sections by two lock rails, such as those of the Perot-Morris house. The Evans house, Number 322 De Lancy Street, has two-section blinds on the third story and three-section blinds on the second story. Unusual indeed are blinds having only top and bottom rails. They are found now and then on small upper windows, as at Glen Fern. Chalkley Hall in Frankford is a rare instance of such blinds on all three stories of a large countryseat. All of these blinds are of heavy construction, having top and lock rails about the same width as the stiles, and bottom rails about double width. Except for heavy louvers instead of panels, they are much like shutters. The frame is of the same thickness, with mortise and tenon joints doweled together. A picturesque feature of Philadelphia window treatment is the quaint wrought-iron fixtures with which shutters and blinds are hung and fastened. As clearly shown by the accompanying detail photograph of a window of the Morris house, outside shutters are generally hung by means of hinges to the frame of the window. As these frames are set back in the reveal of the masonry, these hinges are necessarily of special shape, being of large projection to enable the shutters to fold back against the face of the wall. They were strap hinges tapering slightly in width, corresponding in length to the width of the shutter and fastened to it by means of two or three bolts. Small pendant rings on the inside of the meeting stiles were provided for pulling the shutters together and closing them. They were fastened together by a long wrought-iron strap, usually bolted to the left-hand shutter, that projects to overlap the opposite shutter five or six inches when the shutters are closed. Near the projecting end of the strap a pin at right angles to it sticks through a hole in an escutcheon plate in the lock rail of the opposite shutter, and an iron pin, suspended by a short length of chain to prevent loss, is inserted through a vertical drilling in the pin. Later, sliding bolts were used, as seen on the shutters at Number 128 Race Street and the blinds at Number 6105 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. Shutters and blinds were held back against the face of the wall in an open position by quaint wrought-iron turn buckles or gravitating catches and other simple fasteners. That on the shutters of the Perot-Morris house is the most prevalent pattern. The scroll at the bottom is longer and heavier than the round, flattened, upper portion, so that the fixture is kept in position by gravity. In this instance it is placed in the masonry wall near the meeting stile of the shutter. A similar fastener on the Chew house is placed in the window sill near the outer stile of the shutter. Another type of turning fastener that was quite popular is seen at Number 6043 Germantown Avenue, Germantown. It is held in place by a long iron strap screwed to the window sill, and the weight of the gravitating catch consists of a casting representing a bunch of grapes. More primitive and less satisfactory in use and appearance is the spring fastener bearing against the edge of the shutter seen at Wyck. Crude as these fixtures were, they have hardly been improved upon in principle, and similar designs of more finished workmanship are still used in modern work. Twelve appears to be the largest number of panes employed in a sliding sash in Philadelphia architecture, even in public buildings, except a few churches. There are such sashes in Independence Hall, Congress Hall, Carpenters' Hall, the Free Quakers' Meeting House at Fifth and Arch streets and the main building of the Pennsylvania Hospital. In Congress Hall and Carpenters' Hall there are also round-topped windows with twelve-paned lower sashes and upper sashes having ten small ornamental panes to make up the semicircle above twelve rectangular panes. A few similar windows with seven ornamental panes in the round top are to be seen in Christ Church. [Illustration: PLATE LXVIII.--- Parlor, Stenton; Reception Room, Stenton.] [Illustration: PLATE LXIX.--Dining Room, Stenton; Library, Stenton.] The Old Swedes' Church has a few rectangular windows with fifteen-and sixteen-paned upper and lower sashes, while over the front entrance there is a window having a twelve-paned upper and a sixteen-paned lower sash. In Christ Church are to be seen two windows having ten-paned upper and fifteen-paned lower sashes set in a recessed round brick arch. For the most part, however, the church windows of this period were round-topped, the upper sash being higher than the lower. Most of the windows of St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church have fifteen-paned lower sashes, the upper sashes consisting of twenty rectangular panes above which twelve keystone-shaped panes and one semicircular pane form the round top. The windows of Christ Church are larger still and particularly interesting because of the heavy central muntin to strengthen the sash. On the first story the lower sashes have twenty-four panes and the upper ones eighteen rectangular panes with sixteen keystone-shaped and two quarter-round panes to form the semicircular top. On the second floor the windows are the same except for the eighteen-paned lower sashes. Each side of the steeple on the lower story is a window of this size, notable for the ornamental spacing of twenty-one sash bar divisions, the sweeping curves of which form spaces for glass reminiscent of the Gothic arch. These windows slide in molded frames set in the reveals of the brickwork under plain arches with marble or other stone imposts, keystone and sill. The imposts and keystone were often molded and otherwise hand-tooled, as on Christ's Church, and the sills were sometimes supported by a console at each end, as on St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church. Some of the windows of both of these churches illustrate the frequent employment of slightly projecting brick arches and pilaster casings at the sides. The great Palladian chancel windows of Renaissance churches were often much larger. Usually they were stationary, especially the central section, although sometimes, as in Christ's Church, the two side windows had sliding sashes. The central section of this window has ninety-six rectangular panes with twenty-four keystone-shaped and two quarter-round panes forming the round top. The narrow side windows have fifteen-paned upper and twelve-paned lower sashes. The treatment of this chancel end with heavy brick piers and pilasters, stone entablature, projecting brick spandrels and the bust of George II, King of England, between them, above the arch of the Palladian window, is most interesting. The chancel window of St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church has one hundred and eight rectangular panes in its central section with twenty-eight keystone-shaped panes and a semicircular pane forming the round top. Each side of this end of the church, with four smaller round-headed windows ranged about the chancel window and a circular window in the pediment above, is a superb example of symmetrical arrangement. Although large and more ornate, the Palladian window above the entrance to Independence Hall on the Independence Square side is more like that found in domestic architecture. All three of its lower sashes are sliding. The central window consists of a twenty-four-paned lower sash and an upper sash with twenty-one ornamental-shaped panes forming the round top above twenty-four rectangular panes. The narrow side windows have six-paned upper and twelve-paned lower sashes. Owing to its good proportion, the chaste simplicity of the detail and the pleasing combination of brick pilasters with wood trim, this has been referred to by architects as the best Palladian window in America. The use of such a window in the Ionic order above a Doric doorway adds another to the many notable instances of free use of the orders by Colonial builders. In domestic architecture Palladian windows were employed chiefly to light the stairway landing, as at Whitby Hall; to light the upper hall, as at Mount Pleasant; and rarely to light the principal rooms each side of the front entrance, as at The Woodlands. They not only charm the eye as interior features, but when viewed outdoors relieve the severity of many ranging square-headed windows and provide a center of interest in the fenestration, lending grace and distinction to the entire façade. No Palladian windows in Philadelphia so thoroughly please the eye or so convincingly indicate the delightful accord that may exist between gray ledge-stone masonry and white woodwork as those set within recessed arches at The Woodlands. The proportion and simple, clean-cut detail throughout are exquisite. The engaged colonnettes of the mullions contrast pleasingly with the pilasters of the frame, each of the two supporting an entablature notable for its fine-scale dentil course, and these two in turn supporting a keyed, molded arch. The central window has twelve-paned upper and lower sliding sashes with an attractively spaced fanlight above. The narrow ten-paned side windows are stationary. Unusual as is the use of these Palladian windows, their charm is undeniable, and they are among the chief distinctions of the house. [Illustration: PLATE LXX.--Pedimental Doorway, First Floor, Mount Pleasant; Pedimental Doorway, Second Floor, Mount Pleasant.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXI.--Doorways, Second Floor Hall, Mount Pleasant; Doorway Detail, Whitby Hall.] CHAPTER IX HALLS AND STAIRCASES The hall is of particular moment in the design of a house. There guests are welcomed to the fireside, and there their first impressions of the home are formed. The architectural treatment of the hall sets the keynote of the entire home interior, so to speak. Its doorways and open arches frame vistas of the principal adjoining rooms, and its staircase, usually winding, affords a more or less complete survey of the whole house from various altitudes and angles. It is the place where the master puts his best foot foremost, as the expression goes, and happily the recognized utilitarian features of the typical Colonial hall permit a notable degree of elaboration at once consistent and beautiful. Throughout the feudal period of the Middle Ages the hall was the main and often the only living, reception and banquet room of castles, palaces and manor houses. It was the common center of home activities. There the lord and family retainers, servants and visitors were accommodated, and all the common life of the household was carried on. In early times there were, besides the hall, only a few sleeping rooms, even in the greatest establishments. Later, more retired rooms were added, and gradually the hall became more and more an entranceway or passageway in the house, communicating with its different parts. When houses began to be built more than a single story in height, the staircase became an important feature of the hall, and balconies were also introduced overlooking this great room, which was often the full height of the building. In fact, balconies were for a time more conspicuous than staircases, which were frequently located in any convenient secluded place. However, as builders came to appreciate more fully the attractiveness of this utilitarian structure, when embellished with suitable ornament, the staircase was accorded a more prominent position. Eventually it became the most important architectural feature of the hall, for the most part supplanting the balcony, which was in a measure replaced by the broad landings of broken, winding and wing flights. Throughout the Georgian period of English architecture, the hall of the better houses retained something of the size and aspect of the great halls of feudal days, while at the same time accommodating the staircase and serving as a passageway leading to the principal rooms on the various floors. In the more pretentious houses of the period they were the scene of dancing and banqueting on special occasions, and for that reason were of spacious size, often running entirely through the building from front to back with the staircase located in a smaller side hall adjoining. Where space or expense were considerations, or where spacious parlors and drawing-rooms rendered the use of the hall for social purposes unnecessary, the staircase ascended in various ways at the rear of the main hall, usually beyond a flat or elliptical arch, where it added very materially to the effectiveness of the apartment without detracting at all from the use of the front portion as a reception room. Such halls as the latter are as typical of the better Provincial mansions of Philadelphia, especially its countryseats, as of the plantation houses of Virginia and the early settled communities farther south. In the city residences of Philadelphia, built in blocks as elsewhere, the halls were of necessity narrower, mere passageways notable chiefly for their well-designed staircases, which consisted for the most part of a long straight run along one side with a single turn near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country houses there are, however, halls reminiscent of medieval times, for the influences of the mother country were very strong in Philadelphia, and its Colonial architecture displays marked Georgian tendencies, some of it the very earliest Georgian characteristics still somewhat influenced by the life and manners of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. At Stenton, the countryseat of James Logan, to which detailed reference has been made in a previous chapter, there is a hall and staircase arrangement such as can be found only in some of the earliest eighteenth-century country houses. This great brick-paved room wainscoted to the ceiling, with a fireplace across the right-hand corner, reflects the hall of the English manor house, which was a gathering place for the family and for the reception of guests, as instanced by the reception tendered to LaFayette in the great hall at Wyck on July 20, 1825. [Illustration: PLATE LXXII.--Inside of Front Door, Whitby Hall; Palladian Window on Stair Landing, Whitby Hall.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIII.--Window Detail, Parlor, Whitby Hall; Window Detail, Dining Room, Whitby Hall.] Admirable bolection molded wood paneling of the dado and wall space above, a heavy molded cornice and high, fluted and slightly tapering pilasters standing on pedestals flanking the entrances on all four sides indicate more eloquently than words the charm of white-painted interior woodwork. As in many houses of equally early date, the absence of a mantel over the fireplace is characteristic, yet it seems a distinct omission in beauty and usefulness. Through the high arched opening in the rear, with its narrow double doors, is seen the winding staircase in a smaller stair hall beyond. In this hallway stands an iron chest to hold the family silver, the cumbrous old lock having fourteen tumblers. Above there are wooden pegs in the wall on which to hang hats. The broad staircase with its plain rectangular box stair ends is one of unusually simple stateliness, yet typical of the sturdy lines of Philadelphia construction, the window with its built-in seat on the landing being an ever pleasing arrangement. Severely plain square newels support an exceptionally broad and heavy handrail capped with dark wood, while attractive turned balusters of distinctive pattern complete a balustrade of more than ordinarily substantial character. A nicely paneled dado with dark-capped surbase along the opposite wall greatly enriches the effect. About the middle of the eighteenth century wide halls leading entirely through the center of the house from front to back were common in large American houses. Where country houses had entrance and garden fronts of almost equal importance, with a large doorway at each end of the hall, the staircase was usually located in a small stair hall to one side of the main hall and at the front or back, as happened to be most convenient with respect to the desired floor plan. Where a small door at the rear opened into a secluded garden, the staircase was located at the rear of the main hall with the door under the staircase. In either case the staircase took the form of a broken flight, with a straight run along one wall rising about two-thirds of the total height to a broad landing across the hall where the direction of the flight reversed. The landing was usually lighted by a large round-topped Palladian window which provided one of the most charming features of the interior as well as the exterior of the house. Inside it was often graced by the "clock on the stairs", a handsome mahogany chair or a tip-table with candlesticks for lighting guests to their rooms. Whitby Hall at Fifty-eighth Street and Florence Avenue, Kingsessing, West Philadelphia, offers a notable instance of this latter type of hall and staircase. The wide hall extends entirely through the western wing, the main entrance being on the flag-paved piazza of the south front. On the north front there is a tower-like projection in which the staircase ascends with a broad landing across the rear wall and a low outside door beneath. This unusual arrangement permits side windows on the landing in addition to the great Palladian window in the middle, so that both the upper and lower halls are flooded with light. A great beam architecturally embellished with a complete entablature with pulvinated frieze, the soffit of the architrave consisting of small square molded panels, spans the hall over the foot of the stairs along the line of the rear wall of the western wing. It is supported on opposite sides by well-proportioned fluted pilasters with nicely tooled Ionic capitals and heavy molded bases. Thus the staircase vista from the front end of the hall is framed by an architectural setting of rare beauty. The heavy cornice of the beam, with its molded and jig-sawed modillions, continues all around the hall ceiling, the turned and molded drops of the newels on the floor above tying into it very pleasingly over the stairs. A molded surbase and skirting, with a broad expanse of plastered wall between, provides an effective dado all around the hall. Where it follows up the stairs, it corresponds to the handrail of the balustrade opposite. The molding is the same; there is the same upward sweep of the ramped rail, and it is also capped with dark wood. On the landing dainty little fluted pilasters support the surbase, their fine scale lending much grace and refinement. One notices there also the beautiful beveled paneling of the window embrasures, the paneled soffit of the Palladian window and its built-in seat. The balustrade is of sturdy conventional type characteristic of the period. Two attractively turned balusters grace each stair, their bases alike and otherwise differing only in the length of their tapering shafts. The newel treatment is especially appropriate, inasmuch as it reflects the Ionic order, the balustrade winding scroll-fashion about a slender fluted colonnette, and the first stair tread taking the outline of the rail above. Graceful scroll brackets adorn the stair ends beneath the molded projections of the treads. Altogether this is one of the most notable halls of this type in Philadelphia. The oldest part of Whitby Hall as it now stands was erected in 1754 by James Coultas, wealthy merchant, shipowner, soldier and enthusiastic promoter of many public and philanthropic enterprises. In 1741 he established himself in a house then existing on the plantation that corresponds to the present east wing, which was reconstructed with rare fidelity in 1842 to match the western wing erected by Colonel Coultas. The walls of the entire present house all around are of nicely squared and dressed native gray stone, and to afford extra protection against prevailing winds a penthouse with coved cornice runs along the northern and western ends at the second-floor level. The gables of the west wing face north and south with quaint oval windows to light the attic. A flag-paved piazza extends across the south front, forming part of the main entrance, while in a tower projection on the north front is located the staircase already described. Both the hall doorway and windows in this tower have brick trim, an unusual feature, while the bull's-eye light in the tower pediment, also set in brick trim, was a porthole glass from one of Colonel Coultas' ships. [Illustration: PLATE LXXIV.--Ceiling Detail, Solitude; Cornice and Frieze Detail, Solitude.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXV.--Independence Hall, Independence Square Side. Begun in 1731.] As a merchant and in numerous other private enterprises, Colonel Coultas amassed a substantial fortune. From 1744 to 1755 he was the lessee of the Middle Ferry, where Market Street bridge now stands, and it was chiefly due to his initiative that steps were first taken to make the Schuylkill River navigable. He was one of the commissioners who surveyed the stream and the first to demonstrate that large boats could be taken above the falls. In 1748 he was a captain of the Associates, a battery for the defense of Philadelphia against French insolence, and in 1756 during the Indian uprisings he became lieutenant-colonel of the county regiment. He was repeatedly justice of the peace, high sheriff of the county from 1755 to 1758, and in 1765 was appointed judge of the Orphans' Court, Quarter Sessions, and Common Pleas. He carried on a farm in Blockley, operated a sawmill on Cobb's Creek north of the Blue Bell Inn, was a devout vestryman and enthusiastic huntsman. He it was who laid the corner stone of the Church of St. James in 1762, and as a member of the Colony in Schuylkill and the Gloucester Fox Hunting Club he was also prominently identified with the more convivial activities of the community. On Colonel Coultas' death in 1768, Whitby Hall was inherited by his niece, Martha Ibbetson Gray, and later passed by inheritance to her great-great-grandchildren in the Thomas family, in whose hands it still remains. Eloquently typical of the broad hall running entirely through the house from front to back, with the staircase located in a smaller side hall, is the arrangement at Mount Pleasant to which reference has already been made in a previous chapter. It is one which affords delightful vistas through the outside doorways at each end and an ample open space for dancing on occasion. Handsome doorways along the sides open into the principal rooms and are notable for their beautifully molded architrave casings and nicely worked pedimental doorheads. In fact, the woodwork here, as well as that throughout the house, is heavier and richer in elaboration of detail than usual in Georgian houses of the North, the classic details of the fluted pilasters and heavy, intricately carved complete entablature being pure mutulary Doric and more ornate than the Ionic detail of Whitby Hall. However, this was quite in keeping with the larger and more pretentious character of the former. The entablature is a positive triumph in cornice, frieze and architrave. The moldings are of good design and carefully worked; the guttæ of the mutules, the triglyphs with paneled metopes between, and the guttæ of the architrave all closely follow the classic order and exemplify the finest hand tooling of the period. So similar as a whole yet so different in detail are the staircase hall of Mount Pleasant and the staircase end of the main hall at Whitby Hall that they invite comparison. In general arrangement they are much the same, except that the staircases are reversed, left for right. As at Whitby Hall a flat arch frames the staircase vista, a great beam bearing the entablature surrounds the hall at the ceiling, spanning the entrance to the staircase hall and being supported by square, fluted columns. In this smaller hall a simple, though only a molded cornice in harmony with that of the main hall suffices. Unlike the plain dado of the main hall, however, elaborated only by a molded surbase and skirting, a handsome paneled wainscot runs around the staircase hall and up the stairs. The spacing and workmanship displayed in this heavily beveled and molded paneling could hardly be better. At the foot of the flight, on the landing and at the head of the stairs, the ramped surbase with its dark wood cap, corresponding to the handrail opposite, is supported by slender fluted pilasters which materially enrich the effect. The space under the lower run of the staircase is entirely paneled up with a small diagonal topped door opening into the little closet thus afforded. The scroll-pattern stair ends, balustrade and spiral newel treatment are much the same as at Whitby Hall. Although similar in pattern the balusters are more slender and placed three instead of two on each stair. On the second floor, as below, the hall extends entirely through the house, and following a frequent custom of the time was finished in a different order of architecture, the pulvinated Ionic being chosen, no doubt, for its lighter grace and greater propriety adjoining bedchambers. In furtherance of this thought, only the cornice with its jig-sawed modillions was employed at the ceiling and the flat dado was paneled off by the application of moldings to give it a lighter scale. The complete entablature was used only over the archway at the head of the stairs, where it was supported by square, fluted columns with beautifully carved capitals. Another mannerism of the time is the variation in the treatment of the doorways, the pedimental doorheads on one side being broken, whereas the others are not. But the handsomest features of this upper hall are the Palladian windows, admitting a flood of light at each end, with their rectangular sashes each side of a higher, round-arched central window and a delightful arrangement of curved sash bars at the top. The many small panes lend a pleasing sense of scale, while the architectural treatment of the frames adds to the charm of the interior woodwork quite as materially as to the exterior façade. In working out the scheme, the entire Ionic order is utilized on a small scale. Both the casings and the mullions take the form of fluted square columns with typical carved capitals. These support two complete entablatures forming the lintels of the rectangular windows and being carried around into the embrasure of the central window, the keyed arch of which springs from the entablatures. It is a design which has never been improved upon. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVI.--Independence Hall, Chestnut Street Side.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXVII.--Independence Hall, Stairway; Liberty Bell, Independence Hall.] The hall and staircase at Cliveden combine distinctive characteristics of the halls at Stenton and Mount Pleasant. As at Stenton, the hall itself consists of a large reception room centrally located, and about which the other principal rooms of the house are grouped. Through an archway at the rear is a slightly narrower though spacious staircase hall extending through to the back of the house, where the broken staircase rises to a broad landing and the direction of the run reverses. The architecture is as pure Doric as at Mount Pleasant, but of the denticulated rather than the mutulary order, and altogether more satisfactory for interior trim in wood. The cornice only is carried around the room at the ceiling, and in the staircase hall only the cymatium and corona of the cornice; but over the archway, supported by a colonnade of four fluted round columns, a complete entablature with nicely worked classic detail is employed and given added emphasis by several inches' projection into the reception hall. The columns are spaced so as to form a wide central archway flanked by two narrow ones, the effect being a staircase vista unexcelled in the domestic architecture of Philadelphia. The picture is enriched by a heavily paneled wainscot and handsome, deeply embrasured doorways with architrave casings, paneled jambs and soffits. Except for the single, simple turned newel, the staircase is much like that at Mount Pleasant. There is the similar ramped balustrade and paneled wainscot with ramped surbase and dark wood cap rail along the wall opposite. Little pilasters likewise support this rail, but they are paneled rather than fluted. There are similar scroll-pattern stair ends and paneling under the stairs. In this instance the under side of the upper run is paneled in wood rather than plastered. The turned balusters are slightly more elaborate than at Mount Pleasant, but are used in the same manner, three to the stair. Not built until nearly the dawn of the nineteenth century, Upsala belongs to a later period than most of the notable houses in Philadelphia. The lighter grace of Adam design had begun to dominate American building and is to be seen in the staircase as well as in the mantels and other interior woodwork at Upsala. The staircase combines features of the broken flight with a midway landing, such as the foregoing examples, and of the later development in long halls where the direction of the flight was reversed by a curved portion of the run instead of a landing. The breadth and length of the hall made landings possible and desirable, but instead of one wide midway landing between the upper and lower runs of the flight, there were two square landings separated by three steps, the stair stringers, balustrade and wainscot swinging upward in broad-sweeping curves. The wainscot consists of a charmingly varied paneling, while the balustrade is lighter in treatment than was usually the case. A simple dark wood handrail, slender, square molded balusters and stairs having a low rise and broad treads lend grace of appearance rarely equaled. Jig-sawed outline brackets of unusually harmonious scroll pattern placed under the molded overhang of the treads provide additional ornamentation of a refined character. The spiral newel is but a simpler form of those already alluded to. Altogether it is a staircase that charms the eye through its unaffected simplicity, a quality that never loses its power of appeal whether found inside the house or out. Two other stairways with balustrades of slender grace are worthy of note, especially as instances of a single, small turned newel on the lower step, the handrail terminating in a round cap on the top. The simpler of these is at Roxborough and has balusters of unique contour standing not on the stair treads but on the cased-up stair stringer. The staircase in the Gowen house, Mount Airy, has a balustrade with three slender, but more or less conventional, balusters on each step, the treads, like the handrail and newel, being painted dark. A graceful jig-sawed bracket of scroll pattern adorns each stair end under the overhang of the tread, and the space under the stairs is closed in by well-spaced molded and raised paneling. Another distinctive scroll outline bracket for stair ends forms the principal feature of a graceful staircase in the Carpenter house, Third and Spruce streets. The pattern manifests great refinement and has excellent proportion. In contrast with these lighter designs for domestic architecture, it is interesting to examine the stair-end treatment in Independence Hall, which is equally pleasing as an example of heavier, richer detail for public work. The brackets are solid, of evolute spiral outline and beautifully hand carved. CHAPTER X MANTELS AND CHIMNEY PIECES In Colonial times fireplaces were a necessity. They supplied the only means of heating the house, and much of the cooking was done by them also. Indeed, the hanging of the crane was regarded as a signal event in establishing a new home, and often a cast-iron fireback bore the date of erection of the house and the name or initials of its owner. Each of the principal rooms had its fireplace and often a large parlor, drawing-room or library had two fireplaces, usually at opposite ends or sides, though rarely on the same side, as in the library at Stenton. The hearthstone was the center of family life, and architects, therefore, very properly made the mantels and chimney pieces with which they embellished the fireplace the architectural center of each room,--the gem in a setting of nicely wrought interior woodwork. Then came the Franklin stove, throwing more heat out into the room and less up the chimney. Fireplaces were accordingly bricked up to accommodate it, a pipe was run into it, and presently the air-tight stove supplanted Franklin's open grate. Later central heating plants for hot air, steam and hot water were developed in the basement and connected by pipes with registers and radiators in the various rooms above. They gave greater and more even heat, consumed less fuel and were more easily taken care of than several fires in various parts of the house. For a time houses were built for the most part without fireplaces, but gradually a sense of loss began to be generally felt. These registers and radiators warmed the flesh, but they left the spirit cold; there was no poetry or sentiment whatever about them. The outcome was obvious. The central heating plant has of course remained, but recent years have witnessed the general reopening of bricked-up fireplaces in old houses large and small, and to-day few new houses are built without a fireplace in the living room at least. To a degree it is a luxury, perhaps, though not a very expensive one, yet it is something for which all able to do so are very glad to pay. Besides, on chilly spring and autumn days and rainy summer evenings it provides a cheap and convenient auxiliary heating plant. But an open fire warms more than the hands and feet; it reaches the heart. Its appeal goes back to the tribal camp-fire and stirs some primitive instinct in man. "Hearth and home" are synonymous; there is a whole ritual of domestic worship which centers around an open fire. A blaze on a hearth is more than a luxury, more than a comfort; it is an altar fire. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVIII.--Stairway Landing, Independence Hall; Palladian Window at Stairway Landing.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIX.--Declaration Chamber, Independence Hall.] And so in building the modern Colonial home we find ourselves ever going back to study the creations of the master builders of provincial times in America, when fireplaces meant even more than they do to-day, and finding in their achievements ideas and inspiration of great beauty and practical value. The neighborhood of Philadelphia is as rich in its collection of fine old mantels and chimney pieces as in its splendid interior woodwork generally. Like the latter they are for the most part of the early Georgian period, mostly chimney pieces, many without shelves, and usually somewhat heavy in scale and detail. As in other important architectural features the development of mantels and chimney pieces in America followed to a degree the prevailing mode in the mother country. For many years after the Italian classic orders were brought to England by Inigo Jones, early in the seventeenth century, chimney pieces usually consisted merely of a mantel shelf and classic architraves or bolection moldings about the fireplace opening, the chimney breast above being paneled like the rest of the room. Toward the end of that century, and for several decades following, the shelf was omitted and the paneling on the chimney breast took the form of two horizontally disposed oblongs, the upper broader than the lower. Such an arrangement in its simplest form is to be seen in the great hall at Stenton, where a fireplace is located across one corner. The elliptical arch of the white pilastered brickwork and the height of the horizontal architrave above this arch impart a touch of quaint distinction. One notices with admiration the beautiful brass andirons and fire set, and with interest the floreated cast-iron fireback. Going to the other extreme we find in the parlor at Whitby Hall a magnificently ornate example of the chimney piece without a mantel shelf which, as in many Colonial houses, has been made the central feature of one side of the room, symmetrically arranged and architecturally treated with wood paneling throughout. A heavy cornice with prominent double denticulated string course or crenelated molding runs entirely around the room, tying the fireplace end of the room into the general scheme. The chimney piece projects slightly, lending greater emphasis, and at each side the wall space is given over to high round-topped double doors of closets divided into upper and lower parts, beautifully flush-paneled and hung with quaint iron H hinges. Like those of the other doors and windows, the casings are of architrave pattern and in the center of the round arch is a keystone-shaped ornament hand-tooled in wood. The fireplace opening is faced beautifully with cut black marble brought from Scotland and outlined with a nicely chiseled ovolo molding in wood similar to the familiar egg and dart pattern, but incorporating the richer Lesbian leaf instead of the dart, a closely related reed-like motive replacing the conventional bead and reel. Two handsomely carved consoles resting on the fillet of this ovolo molding support the superb molded panel of the overmantel some three by five feet, in which to this day not a joint is to be seen. A band of exquisite floreated carving in high relief fills the long, narrow, horizontal panel between the consoles. The precision of the tooling in this intricate tracery is indeed remarkable. Nicely worked but simple parallel moldings with the favorite Grecian fret sharply delineated between them and Lesbian leaf ornaments in the square projections at the corners compose a frame of exceptional grace of detail and proportion. Rarely is an ensemble so elaborate accompanied by such a marked degree of good taste and restraint. In the great chamber on the second floor, which is believed to have been the boudoir of the mistress of Mount Vernon, there is a very similar, though even more elaborate, architectural treatment of the fireplace and of the room. Closets with round-topped doors again occupy the spaces each side of the fireplace; the cornice surrounding the entire room with its conspicuous Grecian fret motive again ties the paneled end of the room into the general scheme, and in this instance the relation is made closer by the paneled wainscot which is carried about all four walls. In this wainscot two panel sections under each closet are hung as double doors opening into small supplementary closets. Owing to the loftiness of the room, the closet doors have been elaborated by ornate broken pedimental heads repeating the cornice on a smaller scale, and which are supported by paneled pilasters and large consoles superbly carved with an acanthus leaf decoration. Beautiful as these doorways are in themselves, they are so much heavier in treatment than the overmantel as to detract from it; they do not occupy an unobtrusive subordinate position, as do the closet doors of the parlor at Whitby Hall. Moreover, the trim of each door occupies such a breadth of wall space that the fireplace and overmantel are narrowed, the latter taking the form of a vertical rather than a horizontal oblong. In fact, the dominant lines throughout are here vertical as contrasted with the dominant horizontal lines at Whitby Hall. The loftiness and stateliness of the room are thereby emphasized, but the effect is less restful. [Illustration: PLATE LXXX.--Judge's Bench, Supreme Court Room, Independence Hall; Arcade at Opposite End of Court Room.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXI.--Banquet Hall, Second Floor, Independence Hall; Entrance to Banquet Hall.] In architectural detail the fireplace and overmantel recall that of the Whitby Hall chimney piece. There are similar black marble facings about the fireplace opening outlined by a hand-tooled molding, and similar elaborately carved consoles supporting a handsomely molded panel with projecting ornamental corners, but in this instance the panel is surmounted by a highly ornamental top, consisting of a swag or broken pediment with an exquisitely hand-carved floreated design in high relief between the volutes which imparts a charming lightness and grace to the ensemble. Pilaster projections bearing nicely delineated leaf ornaments above the corners of the overmantel panel tie into corresponding projections in the cornice and unify the whole construction. Otherwise the chimney piece differs from that of Whitby Hall chiefly in its moldings, in which the Lesbian leaf is prominent. The ovolo about the marble facings of the fireplace bears the conventional bead and reel and egg and dart motives, the latter having a leaf design in alternation with the egg. The ogee molding outlining the overmantel panel is enriched with a larger and a smaller leaf motive in alternation, while the torus of the inner molding of this panel bears a little conventionalized flower in alternation with crossed flat fillets. Altogether more pleasing is the chimney piece in the parlor at Mount Pleasant. In fact, it is regarded as one of the handsomest chimney pieces without a mantel shelf in America. Its excellence is due not to superiority of detail, but to better proportion, the breadth of the chimney breast being sufficient to make the overmantel panel practically square. This great fireplace construction for burning four-foot logs projects into the room some eighteen inches, with wood-paneled sides, the adjoining walls being plastered. Around it are carried the chaste Ionic cornice with its prominent dentil course; and the paneled wainscot below corresponds to the pedestal of the order. In the general arrangement of the design, this chimney piece follows closely that of the one above, except that top, sides and bottom of the overmantel panel frame are alike. As at Whitby Hall the familiar Grecian fret very acceptably occupies the space between the inner and outer moldings of this frame and obviates the need of any elaborate carved decoration above the panel. Contrasting pleasingly with this fret and on opposite sides of it are a plain molded ovolo outlining the panel and a small floreated torus supplemented by a molded cymatium within. The pilaster projections tying the panel treatment to the cornice bear three nicely tooled vertical flower designs in a row, an unusual conception. An ovolo of conventional egg and dart motive with the customary bead and reel astragal outlines the black marble facings of the fireplace opening. The console ornamentation is strongly reminiscent of that at Whitby Hall. The mantel shelf proper was far too practical and attractive a feature of the fireplace to be long abandoned, however. It furnished a convenient place for clocks, candlesticks, china and other ornaments, and it appealed to the eye because of the homelike, livable appearance these articles of decoration gave to the room. About the middle of the eighteenth century the shelf of former times was reinstated and the overmantel was developed into a single large and elaborately framed panel over the chimney breast in which often hung a family portrait, a gilt-framed mirror or girandole. Such a chimney piece is to be seen in the parlor at Cliveden, its fireplace opening partly closed up to convert it for use with the coal grate shown by the accompanying illustration. In this instance the carved consoles support the shelf rather than the panel of the overmantel, which engages neither the shelf nor the cornice with its prominent double denticulated molding. Otherwise, the chimney piece is essentially the same in arrangement as that in the parlor at Mount Pleasant. It has the same pleasing breadth and generally good proportions, but is severely simple in detail, the conventional ovolo of egg and dart motive without the astragal which outlines the black marble fireplace facings being the only enriched molding. As was customary, the shelf takes the form of a cymatium, and the projections above the consoles and central panel are characteristic details. Much like this, though simpler in the absence of any enriched moldings and having less projection, is the chimney piece on the second floor of an old Spruce Street house shown by an accompanying illustration. It has substantially the same overmantel frame and mantel treatment. Incidentally it furnishes an excellent example of the complete paneling of one end of a room with the familiar six-panel ordinary inside doors each side of the fireplace. The architrave casings of the doors with their horizontal projections over the lintel are in pleasing accord with the corresponding projections of the overmantel frame and of the facing of the fireplace opening. Toward the end of the eighteenth century and for some years thereafter, mantels with a shelf, but without any overmantel treatment of the chimney breast, became the rule. The whole construction was usually projected from twelve to eighteen inches into the room, however, and as the surbase and skirting or a paneled wainscot and the cornice above was carried around it, the effect was much like that of a chimney piece, especially when a large, ornamental framed mantel mirror occupied the space over the chimney breast. The mantel itself took the form of a complete entablature above the fireplace opening, supported by pilasters at each side, the pilasters usually being carried up through the entablature by projections in architrave, frieze and cornice respectively, and the cymatium of the cornice forming the mantel shelf. The classic orders supplied much of the ornamental detail with which these mantels were embellished, and the work gave full scope to the genius of English and American wood-carvers, of whom there were many of marked ability in America. The thriving condition of the ship-building industry in the colonies was instrumental in attracting and developing skilled wood-carvers. Many of them became apt students of architecture and proficient in executing hand-tooled enriched moldings and other ornament for mantels and chimney pieces. Not content with the conventional detail of the classic orders, they varied it considerably to suit their purposes, using familiar motives in new ways, securing classic effects with detail of their own conception, and at times departing far from all precedent. For the most part their achievements displayed that good taste and restraint combined with a novelty and an ingenuity which have given our best Colonial architecture its principal charm and distinction. Numerous examples of this sort of hand-carved mantels are to be found in Philadelphia, but none elicits greater admiration than those in two rooms at Upsala which are shown by accompanying illustrations. Enriched with a wealth of intricate, fine-scale hand-tooling of daintiness and precision, they indicate the influence of Adam design and detail, although quite unlike the typical Adam mantel. They form an especially interesting study for comparison because of the marked similarity of the general scheme in all three and the difference in effect resulting from variations in detail. The simplest of the three is a mantel for an iron hob grate with dark marble facings outlined by simple moldings. Familiar fluted pilasters support a mantel board entablature of rare beauty. Beneath a conventional cymatium and corona, with projections above the pilasters and central panel of the frieze, is a nicely worked dentil course,--a band of vertical flutes with a drilled tooth in the upper half of each alternate flute. The pilaster projections of the frieze are fluted in dots and dashes arranged in vertical lines, while a similar treatment of the central panel is so arranged that a pattern suggesting four festoons and five straight hanging garlands is produced. The upper fascia is enriched with groups of five vertical flutes in alternation with an incised conventionalized flower. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXII.--Congress Hall, Sixth and Chestnut Streets. Completed in 1790; Congress Hall from Independence Square.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIII.--Stair Hall Details, Congress Hall.] Resembling the foregoing, but more elaborate, is the mantel in the parlor with its richer moldings and intricate carving. An astragal with the customary bead and reel separates the cymatium and the corona, while a drilled rope supplies the bed molding above the dentil course. The latter consists of a continuous pattern of vertical and shorter horizontal flutes, the alternate vertical half spaces above and below the cross line of the H being cut out flat and deeper. The pilaster projections of the frieze, the central panel and the pilasters at each side of the fireplace opening supporting the entablature are vertical fluted in short sections which break joints like running bond in brickwork. In both the pilaster projections and the central panel the carving has been done in such a manner as to leave four-sided decorative figures with segmental sides in slender outline flush with the surface. The upper fascia of the architrave is adorned by shallow drillings suggesting tiny festoons and straight hanging garlands with a conventionalized flower above each festoon. A cavetto molding, enriched with a bead and reel astragal and another drilled rope torus, outlines the dark marble facings about the fireplace opening. Handsome brass andirons, fender and fire set, together with the large gilt-framed mirror above, combine with the mantel to make this one of the most beautiful fireplaces in Philadelphia. The third example in another room at Upsala is virtually the same as the mantel just described, except for the greater elaboration of the pilasters, pilaster projections of the frieze and central panel. Apart from these three features, the only essential differences are a dentil course in the cornice like that of the first Upsala mantel described and a vertical fluted belt in the capital of the pilasters and associated moldings. In the pilaster projections of the frieze there are flush outline ornaments taking the form of a shield, while other graceful outline patterns running through the flutings adorn the upper half of the pilasters proper. The lower half is fluted in the short running bond sections. The central panel of the frieze retains and elaborates the motive of festoons and straight hanging garlands, the space above the festoons in this instance being left flush except for an incised conventionalized flower design in each of the three sections. Rarely are three mantels of such attractive design, good proportion, distinctive detail and dainty appearance to be found in a single house. Seldom are three mantels to be found which are so similar and yet so different. They present an eloquent illustration of the infinite possibilities of minor variation in architectural design. The same influences were at work elsewhere, however, and two other mantels shown by accompanying illustrations, one in a house at Third and DeLancy streets and another in the Rex house, Mount Airy, show numerous variations of similar motives. In both, vertical flutings are depended upon chiefly for decoration, ornamental patterns being formed by flush sections where the cutting of the flutes is interrupted. In both instances the original fireplace opening has been partially closed up, in one case for a Franklin stove, and in the other for a hob grate, both for burning coal. The mantel at Number 312 Cypress Street, with its well-proportioned entablature and paneled pilasters, displays a central panel in the frieze similar to the foregoing examples, but possesses a more distinct Adam character in the human figures in composition applied to the pilaster projections of the frieze, and in the drillings of the upper fascia of the architrave, simulating festoons. A reeded ovolo and deeply cut and drilled denticulated member lend sufficient emphasis to the string course of the cornice. At Number 729 Walnut Street is to be seen a typically Adam mantel of exceptional grace and beauty. Instead of the usual pilasters the entablature is supported by two pairs of slender reeded colonnettes, and the fireplace opening is framed by moldings in which a torus enriched with a rope motive is prominent. The shelf or cymatium of the entablature has round corners and is supported by pilaster projections above the colonnettes at each end and by a projecting central panel, all of these projections being vertical fluted in the frieze portion. Both the central panel and the sunken panels each side of it bear graceful festoons and straight hanging garlands suspended from flower ornaments, the central space of both sunken panels being occupied by a small, sharply delineated medallion in white, suggestive of wedgewood. This composition work was nicely detailed and is still well preserved. Below, the upper fascia of the architrave is enriched in accord with the Adam spirit. Drillings forming festoons with a tiny ornament above alternate with groups of seven vertical dotted lines. The fireplace opening has been closed up with stone slabs to inclose a Franklin stove for burning coal, the effect being much the same as a hob grate. In terms of dainty grace and chaste simplicity this is one of the best mantels in Philadelphia. CHAPTER XI INTERIOR WOOD FINISH Mantels and staircases, the most important architectural features of interiors, were very properly elaborated considerably beyond the somewhat negative character of background accessories by the builders of Colonial times. Virtually furnishings as well as necessary parts of the house, the application of tasteful ornamentation to them seems amply justified. Each is a subject in itself, as indicated by the fact that stair building and mantel construction still remain independent trades quite apart from ordinary joinery. For that reason two separate chapters of this book have been devoted to these important subjects, the present chapter being devoted to interior woodwork in general. What the interior wood trim of the average eighteenth-century Philadelphia house consists of is shown by accompanying photographs, especially those in Stenton, Mount Pleasant and Whitby Hall. It is found that the principal rooms of pretentious mansions, such as the hall, parlor and reception room at Stenton, were sometimes entirely paneled up on all sides. About this time, however, hand-blocked wall paper began to be brought to America, and a favorite treatment of Colonial interiors, including halls, parlors, dining rooms and even the principal bedrooms of large houses, combined a cornice, or often a cornice and frieze, and sometimes a complete entablature, with a paneled wainscot or a flat dado with surbase and skirting, the wall between being papered. Sometimes a dado effect was secured by means of a surbase above the skirting, the plaster space between being left white as in the parlor at Cliveden or in the hall and dining room at Whitby Hall, or papered like the wall above, as in the parlor at Whitby Hall and in some of the chambers at Upsala. Later the skirting only was frequently employed with a simple cornice or picture mold, even in the principal rooms of the better houses, as in the dining room at Whitby Hall. Several accompanying illustrations show it with the dado, while a few interiors of Mount Pleasant, Upsala and Cliveden show it with the paneled wainscot. This general scheme constitutes a pleasing and consistent application of the classic orders to interior walls, the dado, the wall above it and whatever portion of the entablature happens to be employed corresponding to the pedestal, shaft and entablature of the complete order respectively. In a room so treated the dado becomes virtually a continuous pedestal with a base or skirting and a surbase above the die or plane face of the pedestal. Usually this surbase is molded to resemble the upper fascia or the complete architrave of the various orders. Again it may be hand-carved with vertical flutings, continuous, as in the parlor at Upsala, or in groups of three or more in alternation with an incised flower pattern, as in the Rex house. For the most part the surmounting cornice and frieze of the room was of wood, beautifully molded and often hand-carved, the architrave usually being omitted. In the library at Solitude, however, is to be seen a handsome cornice and frieze entirely of plaster or composition work in the Adam manner, including familiar classic detail in which enriched cavetto and ogee moldings, festoons, flower ornaments and draped human figures are prominent. When chandeliers for candles began to be used in private houses they were hung from ornamental centerpieces of plaster on the ceiling, the motives usually being circles, ovals, festooned garlands and acanthus leaves. Such a centerpiece and ornamental treatment of the ceiling is also a feature of this room. In most of the better houses during the Provincial period, important rooms had paneled wainscots, papered walls and molded cornices, as in the parlor and second-story hall at Mount Pleasant and in the parlor at Upsala. Sometimes the plaster walls were left white or painted, as in the hall at Cliveden and the library at Stenton. A fireplace with paneled chimney piece was an important feature of most rooms, and the entire wall including it was often completely paneled up, closely relating the fireplace, doors or windows in a definite architectural scheme, as already shown by examples in Stenton, Whitby Hall and Mount Pleasant. Embrasured windows with two-part paneled folding shutters and seats jutting somewhat into the room were customary in early brick and stone houses, as at Stenton. These were fastened by bars of wood thrust across from side to side and fitting into slots in the jambs. Later, outside shutters came into vogue, and the jambs and soffit of the embrasures were paneled, as at Whitby Hall, the treatment of the Palladian window on the staircase landing in this house being an especially fine example. The parlor at Stenton is among the most notable instances in Philadelphia of this architectural treatment of the fireplace in a room with wood paneling throughout. Along Georgian lines and decidedly substantial in character, it is essentially simple in conception and graceful in form and proportion, the spacing of the large bolection molded raised panels being excellent. First attention properly goes to the wide chimney piece with its unusual, but attractive overmantel paneling, low arched and marble-faced fireplace opening, beautiful brass fender and andirons. The symmetrical arrangement of two flanking china closets, with round-headed double doors recalling those shown at Whitby Hall and Mount Pleasant, is most effective. The work is executed in a masterly manner, the proportions being well calculated and the precision of the hand tooling remarkably well maintained. Both the doors and embrasured windows of this room merit careful study. Of more modest, but generally similar treatment, is the paneling of the reception room at Stenton, the fireplace opening here having been closed for installation of a Franklin stove. At Whitby Hall there are two interesting and characteristic examples of embrasured windows with paneled jambs and soffits, and molded architrave casings. In the dining room the embrasures are cased down to the window seats, while in the parlor the casings with their broader sections at top and bottom do not extend below the surbase, although the embrasure continues to the floor. In this latter room one of the Colonial builder's favorite motives, ever recurring with minor variations throughout many houses, occupies the string course of the cornice. This double denticulated member or Grecian fret band is formed by vertical cross cuttings, alternately from top and bottom of a square molding, the plain ogee molding beneath giving it just the proper emphasis. Conforming to the characteristic panel arrangement of the time, most of the inside doors of Philadelphia have six panels, the upper pair being not quite square and the two lower pairs being oblong, the middle pair being longer than the lower. Like outside doors they were for the most part molded and raised with broad bevels, although occasionally, as on the second floor at Mount Pleasant, they were flat and bolection molded, giving the door a considerably different aspect. Generally speaking, the workmanship was excellent, the beveling of the panels and the molding of the stiles and rails manifesting the utmost painstaking. A simple knob and key-plate, usually of brass, completed the complement of hardware, apart from the H hinges of early years and the butts which soon followed. It will be noted that all of these six-panel doors have stiles and muntins of virtually equal width, any variation being slightly wider stiles. Top and frieze rails are alike and about the same width as the muntin, but the bottom rail is somewhat broader and the lock rail the broadest of the four. Moldings are very simple and confined to the edge of the panels, with the splayed or beveled panels of earlier years gradually being abandoned in favor of plain, flat surfaces. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIV.--Interior Detail of Main Entrance, Congress Hall; President's Dais, Senate Chamber, Congress Hall.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV.--Gallery, Senate Chamber, Congress Hall.] Architrave casings were the rule, sometimes extending to the floor and often standing on heavy, square plinth blocks the height of the skirting beneath its molding. There are instances of both types at Mount Pleasant and Whitby Hall. The thickness of the walls in houses of brick and stone encouraged the custom of paneling the jambs and soffit of doorway openings to correspond with the paneling of the doors, the effect being rich and very pleasing. Generally the architrave casing was miter-joined across the lintel, as at Upsala, but in many of the better houses this horizontal part of the casing was given an overhang of an inch or two to form the doorhead. How pleasing this simple device was, especially when a rosette of stucco was applied to each jog of the casing, is well exemplified by the doors on the first floor at Whitby Hall. Very similar door trim without the rosette is to be seen at Cliveden and in numerous other houses. At Mount Pleasant, and in several of the more pretentious old Colonial mansions of Philadelphia, this type of door trim was elaborated by a surmounting frieze and heavy pediment above the architrave casing. The first floor hall at Mount Pleasant presents the interesting combination of a pulvinated Ionic pediment with a mutulary Doric cornice and frieze about the ceiling. Here one notices the flat dado and doors with raised and molded panels as contrasted with the paneled wainscot and bolection-molded, flat-paneled doors of the second-story hall. In this latter, also, some of the pediments are complete, others broken, illustrating another whim of the early American builders. Here the cornice is also Ionic with jig-sawed modillions, and the ensemble is generally more pleasing. In proportion and precision of workmanship this woodwork is hardly excelled in Philadelphia. The simple, carefully wrought dentil course of the doorheads lends a refining influence and pleasing sense of scale that seems to lighten the design very materially. Philadelphia has no handsomer example of the enriched pedimental doorhead than the interior treatment of the entrance doorway of the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street. Above the horizontal overhang of the architrave casing across the lintel two beautifully carved consoles, the width of the frieze in height, support a cornice which is the base of a broken pediment. The familiar Grecian band or double denticulated molding in the string course gives character to the cornice, while an attractive leaf decoration in applied composition adorns the recessed frieze panel. Projections of the cornice above the consoles lend an added touch of refinement. This elaboration of the white wood trim is further emphasized by the dark red-brown painting of the door to simulate old mahogany, which became a frequent feature of the houses of this period. Round-headed doorways here and there, not only at the front entrance, but elsewhere, as in the hall at Hope Lodge, provided a welcome variation from the customary square-headed types and have been a pleasing feature of Colonial interiors since early times. As framing the glazed doorways of china closets already referred to, they were a charming feature of the interior wood finish. At the front entrance the round-headed doorway was utilized to provide an ornamental yet practical fanlight transom over the door which admitted considerable light to brighten the hall. As contrasted with this more graceful arrangement, the broad front entrance to Whitby Hall, with its severely plain unmolded four-panel double doors and wrought-iron strap hinges, bolts, latch and great rim lock, is of quaint interest. The accompanying photograph shows well the dado effect secured by a surbase and skirting, and one notes with interest the cornice with its prominent modillions and the heavy plinth blocks on which the architrave casings of the doors stand. Round-headed windows were employed for landing windows in stair halls, as at Whitby Hall, and in the central part of the Palladian windows over entrances, as at Mount Pleasant, where they became decorative interior features of the front end of the second-floor halls. Elliptical-headed openings are rare in Philadelphia, and in most instances were arches across the main hall, as at Hope Lodge. Sometimes they framed the staircase vista at the head or foot of the flight, where they became one of the most charming features of the best Colonial interiors. The illustrations of interiors at Stenton accompanying this chapter, serve, as might many others, to show that white-painted interior woodwork, although one of the greatest charms of the Colonial house, finds its principal mission in providing the only architectural background that sets off satisfactorily the warmth of color and grace of line possessed by eighteenth-century furniture in mahogany and other dark woods. Bright and cheerful, chaste and beautiful, it emphasizes the beauties of everything before it, yet seldom forces itself into undue prominence. It is a scheme of interior treatment which has stood the test of time and indicates what excellent taste the Colonial builders manifested in resorting to its subtle influence to display their rare pieces of furniture brought from England and the Continent. The admirable work of Philadelphia joiners indicates conclusively the many possibilities of white-painted soft woods. Unlike hardwood finish, the natural grain of the wood is concealed by painting, so that broad flat surfaces and simple moldings would be monotonous. Beauty of form is therefore substituted for the beauty of wood grain. Classic motives and detail are brought to bear upon the interior woodwork in such a manner as to delight the eye, yet not to detract unduly from the furnishings of the room. And the charm of much of the resulting woodwork indicates an early realization by American craftsmen of the fact that a nice balance between plain surface and decoration is as important as the decoration itself. It was by their facility in the design and execution of this woodwork that skilled wood-carvers were able to impart that lightness, grace and ingenuity of adaptation to which the Colonial style chiefly owes its charm. CHAPTER XII PUBLIC BUILDINGS As in its domestic architecture of Colonial times, Philadelphia is so rich in its fine old public buildings that a readable and instructive book could be made about them alone. Intended for religious, political and commercial purposes, erected from one to two centuries ago and ranging from the frugal simplicity of the Mennonite Meeting House in Germantown to the stately beauty of Independence Hall, these noble edifices of bygone days were the scenes of momentous events in the most glorious and troublous period of the world's first republic. Their histories are inspiring and likewise their architecture. Exigencies of space in a book of this sort render it impossible to include all worthy examples, but an effort has been made to present a representative collection that does justice to the annals and building genius of this remarkable city. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVI.--Carpenter's Hall, off Chestnut Street, between South Third and South Fourth Streets. Erected in 1770; Old Market House, Second and Pine Streets.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVII.--Main Building, Pennsylvania Hospital. Erected in 1755.] Probably the most famous historical monument in the United States is Independence Hall, on Chestnut Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. Here the American nation really came into being and began to function, and here come thousands of visitors annually to view in awed admiration the greatest patriotic shrine of a free people. The building, designed by Andrew Hamilton, speaker of the Assembly, and built under his direction for the State House, was used for that purpose until 1799. The foundations were laid in 1731, and the main building was ready for occupancy in 1735, although the wings and steeple were not completed until 1751. The steeple was taken down in 1781, but was restored to its original condition by William Strickland in 1828, and further restorations of the building to its original condition were effected later by the city government. The east, or "Declaration" chamber, still appears substantially as it did when that famous document was signed, but the restoration of certain other rooms has been less satisfactory. The building has been set apart by the city, which purchased it from the State in 1816, as a museum of historical relics, and during the past century has been used by various public offices and societies. Many famous buildings of Colonial times were the work of amateur architects, but this is without exception the finest contemporary administrative building in America; a noble building rich in glorious memories; nobler even than the Bulfinch State House at Boston or the Maryland State House at Annapolis. It is an enduring monument to Hamilton's versatility, showing that with his genius he might have won distinction as an architect no less than as a barrister. His sense of design, mass and proportion, his appreciation of the relative value and most effective uses of classic detail and his ability to harmonize the exigencies of the floor plan with attractive appearance were second to those of no professional architect of his time. Independence Hall is a stately structure of exceptionally well-balanced symmetrical arrangement, beautiful alike in its general mass and minutest details, and presenting a delightful appearance from whatever viewpoint it is seen,--dignified, spacious and picturesque, a building that seems to typify the serenity of mind and steadfastness of purpose of those sturdy patriots who made it famous. The structure comprises three parts; a large central building with hip-roofed wings for offices connected with the main building by open arcaded loggias. The present wings are restorations. Beyond the wings are two buildings erected after the close of the Revolution, but forming part of the group. That at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets was erected as the Philadelphia County Court House, while that at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets was the City Hall. The entire group is of characteristic Philadelphia brick construction, delightfully mellowed by age, with marble and white-painted wood trim. The main building is two stories high with a decked gable roof, heavily balustraded between large, arched quadruple chimney stacks at each end, corners heavily quoined with marble and ends without fenestration other than a round bull's-eye window in each. Across the one hundred and seven feet of the Chestnut Street façade there is a range of nine broad, high, twenty-four-paned windows with flat gauged brick arches and high marble keystones, the central window being replaced by a simple, very high and deeply recessed doorway with a broad stone stoop before it. Tying into the keystones is a horizontal belt of marble across the entire front. A similar belt is located immediately beneath the window sills of the second story, and between the two belts and ranging with the windows are nine oblong marble panels set into the brickwork. On the Independence Square façade everything is subordinated to the great square steeple-like clock tower, centrally located, which stands its entire height outside but adjoining the walls of the main building. In construction the lower two stories of the tower correspond to those of the building itself, and the cornice of the latter is effectively carried around the tower. Above, the tower rises two more stories of brick with pedimented and pilastered walls in the Ionic order and surmounted with classic urns and flame motives. Above this level the construction of the clock tower is of white-painted wood, one story with Corinthian pilasters and another balustraded, rising in four-sided diminutions to the octagonal, open arched belfry and superstructure, above which is a tapering pinnacle and gilt weathervane. It is a tower of grace, dignity and repose, a tower suggestive of ecclesiastical work, perhaps, yet withal in complete harmony with its situation and purpose. In the base of this tower is the main entrance, a simple and dignified pillared doorway in the mutulary Doric order with double four-panel doors, and a magnificent Palladian window in the Ionic order above, to which reference was made in a previous chapter. Thus three distinct orders of architecture are used in this tower alone, presenting another instance of the great freedom with which early American architects utilized their favorite motives. Entering this doorway one comes into a great, square, lofty, brick-paved hall in the base of the tower where now reposes the Liberty Bell at the foot of what has often been called the finest staircase in America. And where, indeed, is to be found a more splendid combination of nicely worked white wood trim with touches of mahogany and dark green stairs? Done in the Ionic order, with a heavy cornice having carved modillions and a prominent dentil course, deeply embrasured windows with paneled jambs and broad sills supported by beautifully hand-tooled consoles, and a nicely spaced paneled wainscot, this entrance is a fitting frame for the broad winding staircase. Rising ramp after ramp by broad treads and low risers, it leads first to a broad landing in front lighted by the Palladian window over the entrance, and thence upward and around to a gallery across the opposite wall, where a broad double doorway with delightful fanlight above leads into the main hall of the second floor. To the right a narrow staircase rises to the belfry. The classic balustrade, with its mahogany-capped rail and simple landing newels is heavy but well proportioned; the paneled wainscot along the wall follows the contour of the ramped rail opposite, and the under side of the landings, gallery and upper runs are nicely paneled. Elaborately carved scroll brackets adorn the stair ends, and a harmonious floreated volute spiral band runs along the edge of the gallery; while the pilaster casings of the upper doorway and of the Palladian window are enriched with straight hanging garlands. At the foot of the staircase the newel treatment takes the scroll form of the Ionic volute, the rail and balusters on the circular end of the broad lower step winding around a central column like the landing newels. Hanging from its original beam, but within an ornamental frame erected in the center of this staircase hall, is the best-known relic of the building, the famous Liberty Bell, which is supposed, without adequate evidence, to have been the first bell to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. It was cast in England early in 1752 and bears the following inscription: "By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania for the State House in Philadelphia, 1752", and underneath: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, Lev. XXV, V, X." In August, 1752, the bell was received in Philadelphia, but was cracked by a stroke of the clapper the following month. It was recast, but the work being unsatisfactory, it was again recast with more copper, in Philadelphia during May, 1753, and in June was hung in the State House steeple, where it remained until taken to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1777, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the British. In 1781 the bell was lowered and the steeple removed. In 1828 a new steeple was erected, and a new bell put in place, the Liberty Bell being given a place in an upper story of the tower to be rung only on occasions of great importance. On July 8, 1835, it suddenly cracked again while being tolled in memory of Chief Justice John Marshall, and on February 22, 1843, this crack was so increased as nearly to destroy its sound. In 1864 it was placed in the east or Declaration room, but in 1876, the Centennial year, it was again hung in the tower by a chain of thirteen links. From the time of its second recasting in 1753, until it lost its sound in 1843, the Liberty Bell was sounded on all important occasions, both grave and gay. It convened town meetings and the Assembly, proclaimed the national anniversary, ushered in the new year, welcomed distinguished men, tolled for the honored dead, and on several occasions was muffled and tolled as an expression of public disapproval of various acts of British tyranny. Passing through a high, round-headed arch with paneled jambs and soffit one enters the central hall, a magnificent apartment in the mutulary Doric order, extending through the building to the Chestnut Street entrance. Fluted columns standing on a high, broad pedestal which runs about the walls like a wainscot, support a heavy complete entablature enriched with beautifully hand-carved moldings, notably an egg and dart ovolo between cornice and frieze and foliated moldings about the mutules and the panels of the soffit and metopes. It is a hall of charming vistas in a noble architectural frame,--straight ahead to the Chestnut Street entrance; back through the great single arch to the staircase; to the left through an arcade of three pilastered arches into the west or Supreme Court chamber; to the right through a broad, double doorway into the east or "Declaration" room, the original Assembly chamber. The treatment of the latter wall of the hall is most elaborate. Three cased arches correspond to the open arches opposite. On the wall within the two end ones are handsome, pedimental-topped, inscribed tablets, while in the middle one is located the doorway with an ornate, broken, pedimental doorhead taking the form of a swag. Like the hall, the Supreme Court chamber is Doric with fluted pilasters instead of engaged columns, and walls entirely paneled up. There are three windows at each end and two back of the judge's bench with its paneled platform and rail, and balustraded staircases at each end. In this room the convention to form a new constitution for Pennsylvania met July 15, 1776, and unanimously approved the Declaration of Independence, and pledged the support of the State. Delegates to Congress were elected who were signers of the Declaration. In this room now stands the statue of Washington carved out of a single block of wood by Colonel William Rush, after Stuart. Across the hall is the Declaration chamber, forty feet and two inches long, thirty-nine feet and six inches wide and nineteen feet and eight inches high. As in size, its architecture is substantially the same as the chamber opposite, and like it the two corners near the hall are rounding. Also it is of spacious appearance, light, beautiful and cheerful, a room to inspire noble deeds. Instead of the high judge's bench at the side opposite the entrance, there is a relatively small platform or dais of two steps on which stands the presiding officer's desk in front of a large, elaborate, pedimental-topped frame with exquisitely enriched carved moldings, within which is a smaller frame containing a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. To either side, between fluted pilasters, are segmental arched fireplaces with heavy mantel shelves above, supported by carved consoles, while beyond these are single doors with pedimental heads. Otherwise the room is substantially like that across the hall. They are regarded as the best of the restored rooms of the building, and of the two the courtroom is perhaps rather the better in its greater simplicity. In the east or so-called Declaration chamber, the second Continental Congress met May 10, 1775; George Washington was chosen commander in chief of the Continental Army June 15, 1775; and the Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776. The American officers taken prisoners at the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, and of Germantown, October 4, 1777, were held here as prisoners of war, and on July 9, 1778, the Articles of Confederation and perpetual union between the States were signed here by representatives of eight States. The room contains much of the furniture of those days. The table and high-backed Chippendale chair of mahogany used by the presidents of the Continental Congress and occupied by John Hancock at the signing still remain, and on the table is to be seen the silver ink-stand with its quill box and sand shaker, in which the delegates dipped their pens in autographing the famous document. There are also fourteen of the original chairs used by delegates. On the walls hang portraits of forty-five of the fifty-six signers, also a portrait of Washington by Rembrandt Peale. In fact, the collection of portraits is largely based on canvases secured from the famous Peale Museum which at one time occupied the upper floors of the building. There are also valuable paintings by Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Edgar Pine, Thomas Sully and Allan Ramsay. The bronze statue of Washington standing in front of Independence Hall on Chestnut Street is a replica of the original one in white marble by Bailey, which was removed on account of its disintegration. Forty-five crayons and pastels by John Sharpless, purchased by the city in 1876, form a notable collection estimated to be worth half a million dollars. What is supposed to be the earliest exhibition of paintings ever held in America was that of Robert Edge Pine, which occurred in Independence Hall in 1784. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVIII.--Main Hall and Double Staircase, Pennsylvania Hospital.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIX.--Custom House, Fifth and Chestnut Streets. Completed in 1824; Main Building, Girard College. Begun in 1833.] On the second floor the principal room is a great banqueting hall extending across the entire building on the Chestnut Street side with its range of nine windows and having a fireplace at each end. There are smaller rooms on each side of the broad entrance corridor; its wide, flat arch has four fluted columns supporting a heavy pedimental head with elliptical fanlight. Architecturally the restoration of the second floor is less happy than that of the first. It is not in the spirit of the work below; nor does it accord with typical Colonial work of pre-Revolutionary days. It lacks that simple, straight-forward dignity of design; that fine sense of proportion; that refinement and appropriateness of detail. The spacing of the paneling of both the wainscot and the fireplace mantels is not characteristic; the detail of the latter is poorly chosen and assembled, and the whole aspect, especially the entrance arch, suggests a studied effort to achieve picturesque effect. On the northwest corner of Independence Square, which is the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, is old Congress Hall, erected in 1787, in which Congress sat from 1790 to 1800, and in which Washington was inaugurated in 1793 for a second term with Adams as vice-president, and in which Adams, in 1797, was inaugurated president with Jefferson as vice-president. Here Washington presented his famous message concerning Jay's treaty with England; here, toward the close of his second administration, he pronounced his farewell address, which is still regarded as a model of dignity and farsightedness. Here, too, was officially announced the death of Washington, when John Marshall offered a resolution that a joint committee of the House and Senate consider "the most suitable manner of paying honor to the memory of the man first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen", thus originating a phrase never to be forgotten in America. For some years after 1800 the building was occupied by the criminal courts, now located in the City Hall. Were it not so near the more pretentious Independence Hall, this demure little building would receive much more attention, for it is architecturally a gem of the Colonial period, and such of its interior woodwork as has been restored has been more happily treated than is often the case. It is an oblong structure of brick, with marble and white wood trim, two stories high, hip-roofed and surmounted in the center by a well-proportioned, octagonal open cupola. On the front a pediment springs from the cornice over a slightly projecting central section of the façade, while a three-sided bay breaks the rear wall and enlarges the building. The stoop and doorway are of simple dignity, the double doors having the appearance of being four separate, very narrow four-panel doors, and the graceful fanlight above being in accord with the round-headed windows of the lower story. These windows are set effectively in brick arches with marble sills, keystones and imposts. On the upper story the windows are twenty-four-paned and square-headed with gauged brick arches and marble keystones. Under the central front window over the entrance there is a handsome wrought-iron fire balcony. The best exterior feature of the building is the beautifully hand-tooled cornice with its coved member having a series of recessed arches and the well-known Grecian band or double denticulated molding beneath. At the second-floor level a white marble belt accords well with the general scheme. No less interesting than the outward appearance of the entrance is its inward aspect, with its deeply paneled embrasures and soffit, its quaint strap hinges and rim lock. The arrangement of the double staircases with a halfway landing in this lofty, airy stair hall compels admiration for effective simplicity. The stair ends are unadorned, but the spaces under the lower run of both flights are nicely paneled up. The balusters are of good, though familiar pattern, and the lines of the dark ramped rail gracefully drawn. Interest centers in the Senate chamber with its barrel ceiling and panel-fronted galleries along both sides supported by slender round columns. Here momentous business was transacted during the early years of the American nation, and many relics of those troublous times are here preserved. In the bay at the rear end the President's dais has been restored from remains found beneath an old platform. It is of graceful design with free-flowing curves and an elliptical swell front where the balustrade has a solid three-panel insert. The turned balusters are of slender grace, while the paneled pilasters or newels at the ends and corners are adorned with straight hanging garlands in applied work. There is also a festooned border in applied work above the opening into the bay that is carried about the room above the galleries. The central decoration of the ceiling and the eagle over the President's dais furnish excellent examples of eighteenth-century frescoes. A short distance east of Independence Square, in a narrow court off Chestnut Street, between South Third and South Fourth streets, hedged about by high modern office buildings that dwarf its size, is Carpenters' Hall, in which the first Continental Congress assembled, September 5, 1774, and in which the National Convention, in 1787, framed the present Constitution of the United States. The building was also the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Committee of Correspondence; the basement was used as a magazine for ammunition during the Revolution, and from 1791 to 1797 the whole of it was occupied by the first United States Bank. [Illustration: PLATE XC.--Old Stock Exchange, Walnut and Dock Streets; Girard National Bank, 116 South Third Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XCI.--Christ Church, North Second Street near Market Street. Erected in 1727-44; Old Swedes' Church, Swanson and Christian Streets. Erected in 1698-1700.] The Carpenters' Company, established in 1724, was patterned after the Worshipful Company of Carpenters of London, which dates back to 1477, and the early organization of such a guild in America indicates the large number and high character of the Colonial builders of Philadelphia and explains the excellence of the architecture in this neighborhood. The present building was begun in 1770, but was not completed until 1792, so that throughout the Revolutionary period it was used in a partly finished condition. Since 1857 it has been preserved wholly for its historic associations. Here was conceived that liberty which had its birth in Independence Hall, so that its claim to fame is second only to the latter. Like it, too, there are many interesting relics of those glorious days to be seen within. An inscription on a tablet outside very properly reads, "Within these walls, Henry, Hancock, and Adams inspired the delegates of the Colonies with nerve and sinew for the toils of war." The building is in the form of a Greek cross with four projecting gable ends and an octagonal cupola of graceful design and proportions at the center of the roof. It is of characteristic Philadelphia brickwork, with handsomely cased twenty-four-paned windows shuttered on the lower floor. The entrance façade, with its broad, high stoop and pedimental doorway, double doors and fanlight above; its pleasing fenestration, especially the round-headed, Palladian windows of the second floor, above balustrade sections resting on a horizontal belt of white at the second-floor level, and its pediment with a handsome hand-tooled cornice in which an always pleasing Grecian band is prominent, does credit to its design, and altogether the structure was worthy of its purpose. Within, the meeting room is of surprisingly generous size, considering the small impression given by the exterior aspect of the building. The restored woodwork is unfortunate, yet the general effect of bygone years remains. For two centuries Philadelphia has been justly famous for its public markets, numerous and readily accessible to the entire community. Marketing has ever been one of the duties of the thrifty housewife, to which Philadelphia women have given particular attention, and everything possible has been done to make the task easy and satisfactory to them. When the city was first laid out its few wide streets, with the exception of Broad Street, were laid out for the convenience of markets, which in those days were placed in their center. A few of these old-time markets still remain, notably that at Second and Pine streets, its market house or central building of quaintly interesting design embracing features such as the octagonal cupola, marble lintels, sills and belt, and the elliptical and semicircular fanlights which are typically Colonial. To Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia is largely indebted for the Pennsylvania Hospital fronting on Pine Street between South Eighth and South Ninth streets, the first hospital in the United States, which was projected in 1751, erected in 1755 and still continues to be the foremost of some one hundred institutions in the city. The main building was designed by Samuel Rhodes, mayor of Philadelphia, and in architectural excellence is regarded as second only to Independence Hall. Individuals gave funds freely for its erection; the British Parliament turned over to it some funds unclaimed by a land company; Bishop Whitefield gave a considerable sum; Benjamin West painted a replica of his famous work, "Christ Healing the Sick", now in the entrance hall, which was exhibited and earned four thousand pounds sterling in admissions; some players gave "Hamlet" for the benefit of the hospital, and money was raised in numerous other ways. The building is a large and beautiful one of noble appearance, three stories high, having long, balanced wings two and a half stories high, with dormers and an octagon tower over the cross wings at each end. The total frontage is some two hundred and seventy-five feet. It is of reddish-brown brick, faced on the front of the first story of the main building with gray marble, and pierced by two large round-topped windows each side of a central doorway with a balustraded stoop and handsome semicircular fanlight and side lights. Above, six Corinthian pilasters support a beautifully detailed entablature at the eaves, from which springs a pediment with ornamental oval window. Surmounting the hip roof is a square superstructure of wood, paneled and painted white, above which is a low octagonal belvedere platform with a huge, round balustrade. Brick walls and an ornamental wistaria-clad iron fence surround the grounds, and no visitor has entered the central gate since La Fayette. Within the building there is much splendid interior wood finish. Its best feature, however, is the high, broad hall, with fluted Ionic columns supporting a mutulary Doric entablature, leading back to a double winding staircase, which is a marvelous work of art, combining the simplicity and purity as well as the beauty of the middle Georgian period. There are two landings on each flight, and from the spiral newels at the bottom the balustrades with ramped rails and heavy, turned balusters swing upward, as do the staircases, to the third floor. One notes with interest the unusual outline of the brackets under the overhang of the stair treads. A few important public buildings of Philadelphia that were not erected until early in the nineteenth century had their inception directly or indirectly in the outgrowth of the War of Independence, and their omission would render any treatise of the public buildings of the city noticeably incomplete. Their inclusion here finds still further justification in the fact that they are of classic architecture and so to a degree in accord with Colonial traditions. The Custom House, a classic stone structure, on the south side of Chestnut Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, was built for the second United States Bank, authorized by Congress in April, 1816, because of the bad financial condition into which the government had fallen during the War of 1812. The building was designed by William Strickland, in his day the leading American architect, being modeled after the Parthenon of Athens. It was completed in 1824 and was put to its present use in 1845. The main building of Girard College on Girard Avenue between North 19th and North 25th streets, of which Thomas Ustick Walter, a pupil of Strickland's, was the architect, is one of the finest specimens of pure Greek architecture in America. Indeed, this imposing Corinthian structure of stone has been called "the most perfect Greek temple in existence." Work upon it was begun in 1833, and the college was opened January 1, 1848. To a sarcophagus in this main building were removed the remains of Stephen Girard in 1851. The building is 111 feet wide and 169 feet long, and is surrounded by thirty-four fluted columns fifty-six feet high and seven feet in diameter at the base, which cost thirteen thousand dollars each. The total height of the building is ninety-seven feet, and it is arched throughout with brick and stone, and roofed with marble tiles. The weight of the roof is estimated at nearly one thousand tons. The old Stock Exchange at Third and Walnut and Dock streets, facing a broad open space once an old-time market, is also the work of William Strickland, who likewise designed St. Paul's Church, St. Stephen's Church, the almshouse and the United States Naval Asylum. It is an impressive round-fronted classic structure of gray stone in the Corinthian order, with a semicircular colonnade above the first story supporting a handsomely executed entablature with conspicuous antefixes about the cornice. Instead of a central flight of steps leading to a main entrance, there were two well-designed flights at each side. Surmounting the whole is a daring, tall, round cupola, its roof supported by engaged columns and the spaces between pierced by classic grilles. The structure is notable throughout for excellence in mass and detail. [Illustration: PLATE XCII.--St. Peter's Church, South Third and Pine Streets. Erected in 1761; Lectern, St. Peter's Church.] [Illustration: PLATE XCIII.--Interior and Chancel, Christ Church; Interior and Lectern, St. Peter's Church.] At Number 116 South Third Street stands the oldest banking building in America, and withal one of the handsomest of such buildings. Erected in 1795 by the first Bank of the United States, this beautiful stone and brick structure in the Corinthian order, with its fine pedimental portico bearing in high relief a modification of the seal of the United States, was owned and occupied by Stephen Girard from 1812 to 1831, and since 1832 by the Girard Bank and the Girard National Bank. It is one of those classic structures which by reason of nicety in proportion and precision in detail still compares favorably with the best modern buildings of the city. The high, fluted columns and pilasters with their nicely wrought capitals lend an imposing nobility that immediately arrests attention, while the refinement of detail throughout well repays careful scrutiny. In this latter respect its best features are the cornice with its beautifully enriched moldings and modillions, the balustrade above, the window heads supported by hand-tooled consoles and the insert panels under the portico. The first Bank of the United States was incorporated in 1791 with a capital of ten million dollars. It was the first national bank of issue essential to the system of banking built up by Alexander Hamilton in organizing the finances of the Federal Government under the constitution of 1789. It issued circulating notes, discounted commercial paper and aided the government in its financial operations. Although the government subscribed one-fifth of the capital, it was paid for by a roundabout process which actually resulted in the loan of the amount by the bank to the treasury. Other loans were made by the bank to the government, until by the end of 1795 its obligations had reached $6,200,000. In order to meet these obligations, the government gradually disposed of its bank stock and by 1802 had sold its entire holdings at a profit of $671,860. A statement submitted to Congress January 24, 1811, by Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, showed resources of $24,183,046, of which $14,578,294 was in loans and discounts, $2,750,000 in United States stock and $5,009,567 in specie. The expiration of the charter of the bank, in 1811, was the occasion for a party contest which prevented renewal and added greatly to the financial difficulties of the government during the War of 1812. Although foreign stockholders were not permitted to vote by proxy, and the twenty-five directors were required to be citizens of the United States, the bank was attacked on the ground of foreign ownership, and it was also claimed that Congress had no constitutional power to create such an institution. Thereupon the bank building and the cashier's house in Philadelphia were purchased at a third of the original cost by Girard, who, in May, 1812, established the Bank of Stephen Girard and thereafter assisted the government very materially. He was, in fact, the financier of the War of 1812. No less interesting than the governmental and commercial public buildings of Philadelphia are its churches, of which several of noble architecture date back to the Colonial period. On North Second Street, just north of Market, is located Christ Church, Protestant Episcopal, the first diocesan church of Pennsylvania. It is a fine old building designed mainly by Doctor John Kearsley, a vestryman and physician. The corner stone was laid in 1727, and the building was completed in 1744, but the steeple, in part designed by Benjamin Franklin and containing a famous chime of eight bells, was not erected until 1754. Franklin was one of the managers of a lottery in 1753 for raising funds for the steeple and bells, the latter being imported at a cost of five hundred pounds sterling. On July 4, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence had been read, these bells "rang out a merry chime." This imposing edifice eloquently indicates what architectural triumphs can be achieved in brickwork in the Colonial style. Apart from the spire, interest centers in the fenestration, which has already been treated in Chapter VIII, and in the wood trim. As in much contemporary architecture, the woodwork is conspicuous for the free use of the orders. For example, one immediately notes the mutulary Doric cornice and frieze along the sides, and the pulvinated Ionic entablature across the chancel gable above the Palladian window. The roof is heavily balustraded in white-painted wood with the urns on the several pedestals holding torches with carved flames. A brick belfry rises square and sturdy above the roof and then continues upward in diminishing construction of wood, first virtually four-sided, then octagonal and finally in a low, tapering spire surmounted by a weather-vane. A distinctive feature is the simple iron fence along the street with two wrought-iron arched gates, as beautiful as any in America, hung from high, ball-topped stone posts. Imposing in its simplicity, the interior is generally Doric in character, but the Ionic entablatures over the side sections of the beautiful Palladian chancel window reflect the treatment outside. Fluted columns standing on high pedestals, with square, Doric entablature sections above, support graceful, elliptical arches, which separate the nave from the aisles in which are panel-fronted galleries. The organ loft over the main entrance is bow-fronted and highly ornate. [Illustration: PLATE XCIV.--Interior and Chancel, Old Swedes' Church; St. Paul's Church, South Third Street near Walnut Street.] [Illustration: PLATE XCV.--Mennonite Meeting House, Germantown. Erected in 1770; Holy Trinity Church, South Twenty-first and Walnut Streets.] Certain alterations to the interior were made in 1836, and in 1882 it was restored to its ancient character, but the high old-fashioned wineglass pulpit of 1770 remains, as does the font. A silver bowl, weighing more than five pounds, presented in 1712 by Colonel Quarry of the British Army, is still in use, while a set of communion plate presented by Queen Anne in 1708 is brought forth on special occasions. The brass chandelier for candles has hung in its central position since 1749. Bishop White officiated as rector during Revolutionary days, and his body lies under the altar. Many well-known figures of American history worshiped here, both Washington and Franklin maintaining pews which are still preserved. That in which Washington sat was placed in Independence Hall in 1836. In the churchyard adjoining are buried a number of noted patriots, including Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, James Wilson, the first justice of the State and a signer of the Declaration and Constitution, Brigadier General John Forbes, John Penn, Peyton Randolph, Francis Hopkinson, Doctor Benjamin Rush, Generals Lambert, Cadwalader, Charles Lee and Jacob Morgan of the Continental Army, and Commodores Truxton, Bainbridge and Dale of the Navy. In the southeast part of the city, at Swanson and Christian streets, just east of Front Street, is located the ivy-clad Old Swedes' Church, one of the most venerable buildings in America. It stands on the site of a blockhouse erected by the Swedish settlers in 1677. The present structure of brick was begun in 1698 and finished two years later. For one hundred and forty-three years it remained a worshiping place of the Swedish Lutherans, and for one hundred and thirty years it was in charge of ministers sent over from Sweden. The baptismal font is the original one brought from Sweden, and the communion service has been in use since 1773. In the adjoining churchyard the oldest tombstone bearing a legible epitaph is dated 1708. Here Alexander Wilson, the celebrated naturalist, was buried at his own request, saying that the "birds would be apt to come and sing over my grave." Although generally Colonial in external appearance, and frankly so in the detail of its wood trim, the arrangement of the structure and its proportions, especially the peaked gable over the entrance and the small, low and square wooden belfry, give it a somewhat foreign aspect which is by no means surprising in the circumstances. Indeed, it may be said to have decided Norse suggestion. The interior, with its severely simple galleries, straight-backed wooden pews and high pulpit under the chancel window, has that quaintness to be seen in the earliest country churches of America. Two big-eyed, winged cherubim on the organ loft are interesting examples of early Swedish wood carving probably taken from an old Swedish ship. St. Peter's at South Third and Pine streets, the second Protestant Episcopal Church in the city, was an offshoot of Christ Church, and for many years both were under the same rectorship. Washington, during his various sojourns in Philadelphia, attended sometimes one and again the other, and Pew Number 41 in St. Peter's is pointed out as his. The building was erected in 1761 and still retains its Colonial characteristics. It is a brick structure two and a half stories in height, having pedimental ends and corners quoined with stone. The fenestration with many round-headed windows is excellent and has already been alluded to in Chapter VIII. At one end a massive, square, vine-clad belfry tower of brick rises to a height of six stories, above which there is a tall, slender wooden spire surmounted by a ball and cross. Within are the original square box pews with doors, and seats facing both ways, those of the galleries being similarly arranged. The whole aspect is one of great plainness and simple dignity, yet withal pleasing. A unique feature is the location of the organ and altar at the eastern end and the reading desk and lofty wineglass pulpit, with sounding board overhead, at the western end. This compels the rector to conduct part of the service at each end of the church and obliges the congregation to change to the other seat of the pews in order to face in the opposite direction. In the adjoining churchyard are buried many distinguished early residents of the city, including Commodore Stephen Decatur. Trinity Church, Oxford, stands on the site of a log meetinghouse where Church of England services were held as early as 1698. The present brick structure was erected in 1711. Standing among fine old trees in the midst of a picturesque churchyard, it has an appearance rather English than American. The detail of the wood trim is obviously Colonial, however, and the brickwork corresponds to the best in Philadelphia. The influence of Flemish brickwork is seen in the large diamond patterns each side of the semicircular marble inscription tablet above the principal doorway. St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, South Third and Walnut streets, was designed by William Strickland and built some years later than St. Peter's. The exterior remains the same, but the interior has been considerably altered. It is a simple gable-roof structure of plastered rubble masonry, and its façade with broad pilasters, handsome round-topped windows and simple doorway is heavily vine-clad. A handsome fence with highly ornamental wrought-iron gates and large ball-topped posts lends a touch of added refinement to the picture. Edwin Forrest, the eminent American actor, is buried in one of the vaults of the church. Although the Friends were the first sect to erect a meetinghouse of their own in Germantown, about 1693, the Mennonites built a log meetinghouse in 1709, the first of this sect in America, and their present stone church on Germantown Avenue, near Herman Street, in 1770, a modest one-story gable-roof structure of ledge stone. It would be impossible to conceive anything simpler than the tall, narrow, double doors with the little hood above a stone stoop with plain, iron handrail on one side. In the churchyard in front of it lie the remains of the man who shot and mortally wounded General Agnew during the Battle of Germantown. INDEX Abacus, 109, 112 Acanthus leaf, 81, 164 Adam, mantels, 92, 179, 183; design, in American building, 166; cornice and frieze, 187 Agnew, General, 63 Allen, Nathaniel, 3 Ambler, Doctor W. S., 121 American flag, the first, tradition concerning the making of, 51, 52 Andirons, 172, 181 André, Major John, 14, 22 Arch Street, house at No. 229 (Ross house), 51, 52 Arches, detailed, 20; flat brick, 23; elliptical, 24, 172; with cores of brick, 26, 27; at foot of stairway, 60; Palladian window recessed within, 66; recessed, 66; gauged, 141; relieving, 141; flanked by two narrow arches, 165; across main hall, 193 Architects, amateur, 6 Architecture, advantage of study of, 2; a part of gentleman's education in Colonial times, 6 Architrave casings, of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; fine-scale hand carving in, 111; of Wharton house, 113; molded, 162; of old Spruce Street house, 178; were the rule, 190; miter-joined, 191 Architraves, fluted, 109; molded, 112; incised, 115; of Upsala, 120; horizontal, 172 Areaways, 40, 49, 61 Armat, Thomas, 81, 82 Armat, Thomas Wright, 81 Arnold, Benedict, 75, 76 Articles of Confederation, signing of, 205 Astragal, 176, 177, 180, 181 Bainbridge, Commodore, 221 Balconies, hall, 154 Ball and cross, 223 Ball and disk, 97 Balusters, of Stenton, 157; of Whitby Hall, 159; of Upsala, 167; in Congress Hall, 209, 210 Balustraded, belvederes, 19, 73; roof, 199; clock-tower, 200 Balustrades, of stairway, 74, 157, 159, 167; of porch, 92; of wing steps, 98; patterned after cathedral grilles and screens, 127; of cast iron, of Wistar house, spiral design in, 129; of house No. 207 La Grange Alley, 130; of Independence Hall, 201 Bank of North America, 8, 9 Bank of Stephen Girard, 218 Bank of the United States, the first, and the building it occupied, 216-218 Barclay, Alexander, 20 "Barn" pointing, 55, 95 Bartram, John, 94 Bartram, William, 95 Bartram House, 93-95; windows of, 136; dormers of, 140; with neither outside shutters nor blinds, 142 Bead and reel, 175, 176, 180, 181 Bed-molding, reeded, 109; denticulated, 112 Belfry, 219 Belting, of Stenton, 26; of Port Royal House, 35; of city blocks, 39; of Morris house, 49; of Upsala, 60; of The Woodlands stable, 66; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of Solitude, 83; of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 91; of Independence Hall, 199 Belvedere platform, 214 Belvederes, of Woodford, 19; of Port Royal House, 35; of Mount Pleasant, 73 Bezan, John, 3 Billmeyer, Michael, 99 Billmeyer house, description of, 98, 99; history of, 99; six-panel door of, 103; seats of entrance of, 107; stoop of, 129; windows of, 138; dormers of, 141 Bingham, Hannah, 44 Bingham, William, 43, 44 Blackwell, Colonel Jacob, 43 Blackwell, Rev. Doctor Robert, 43, 44 Blackwell house, description of, 42, 43; history of, 43, 44; eight-panel door of, 104; windows of, 136, 138; shutters of, 143, 145; doorhead of, 192 Blinds, of Girard house, 31; of Port Royal House, 35; of city blocks, 40; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Loudoun, 81; of The Highlands, 92; use of, 143, 144; structure of, 145, 146; methods of hanging and fastening, 146-148 Blocks, houses in, 15, 38; characteristics of, 38, 39; many of them palatial, 40; decay of, 41; of Camac Street, 41, 42 Bolts, 147 Bonding, 18, 23, 38, 48, 49 Books on joinery, 6 Botanical garden of John Bartram, 94, 95 Brackets, 167, 168, 214 Brandywine, Battle of, 205 Brick, favored from the outset in preference to wood, 16, 17; Georgian country houses of, 17-37; city residences of, 38-52 "Brick" stone, 86, 87, 95, 98 Brick trim, 170 Brickwork, how laid up, 18; of Morris house, 48, 49 Builders, attracted to Philadelphia at an early time, 5 Bull baiting, 13 Bull's-eye, light, 160; window, 199 Cadwalader, General, 221 Camac Street, 41, 42 Capitals, of acanthus-leaf motive, 81; Corinthian, 116; Ionic, 121, 159 Carlton, windows of, 137; dormers of, 140 Carpenter house, 168 Carpenters, attracted to Philadelphia at an early time, 5 Carpenters' Company, the, 5, 210 Carpenters' Hall, 8; windows of, 148; description and history of, 210-212 Carr, Colonel, 95 Carving, elliptical, 97; floreated, 173 Casement sashes, 31 Casings. _See_ DOOR-CASINGS, WINDOW-CASINGS Cedar Grove, windows of, 135; dormers of, 139; shutters of, 143 Chalkley Hall, eight-panel door of, 104; windows of, 137, 139; dormers of, 140; blinds of, 143, 146 Chandeliers, 187 Chew, Benjamin, 88-90 Chew, John, 89 Chew house, shutters of, 147 Chew's Woods, 91 Chimney breast, 171, 175 Chimney-pieces, of Hope Lodge, 24; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Cliveden, 88; development of, 171; of Whitby Hall, 172, 173; of Mount Pleasant, 175, 176; of Cliveden, 177; of old house on Spruce Street, 178; paneled, 188; of Stenton, 188 Chimney stacks, of Port Royal House, 35; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of Cliveden, 88; of Independence Hall, 199 Chimneys, of Woodford, 19; of Stenton, 26; of Girard house, 31; of city blocks, 39; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of Vernon, 79; of Solitude, 83 China closets, 189 Christ church, designed by Doctor John Kearsley, 6; windows of, 148-150; history and description of, 219-221 Churches, 218-225 City Troop, the, 50 Clarendon Code, the, 3 Classic, façade, 88; moldings, 113; entablature, 115; detail, 127, 165, 178, 179, 187, 194, 198; orders, application of, to walls, etc., 186; urns, 199; three orders used in tower of Independence Hall, 200; balustrade, 201; Custom House, 215; Girard College, 215; Stock Exchange, 216; Bank Building, 217 Clay, makeshift for lime, 96 Cleveland, Parker, 63 Cliveden, description of, 87, 88; history of, 88-91, 98, 99; door of, 105; doorway of, 117, 118; stoop of, 127, 128; windows of, 137; dormers of, 141; lintels of, 142; shutters of, 143, 144; hall and staircase of, 165, 166; chimney piece of, 177; parlor of, 186; interior finish of, 188, 191 Clock tower, 199 Closets, with sliding top, 27; fireplace, 172-174 Clunie. _See_ MOUNT PLEASANT Coach, old family, 91 Cock fighting, 13 Coin d'Or, 42 Coleman, William, 20 Colonial domestic architecture, much of best, to be found in neighborhood of Philadelphia, 2 Colonial pointing, 55 Colonial style of architecture, in Philadelphia, 3; reference books on joinery the fountainhead of, 6; more or less common to all buildings of the period in Philadelphia, 14 Colonnettes, 152, 183 Columns, of Hope Lodge, 23; of city blocks, 40; engaged Ionic, of The Woodlands, 65; Tuscan, of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Loudoun, 81; Ionic, of Solitude, 83; reeded, of The Highlands, 92; of Bartram House, 94; engaged, supporting pediment, 108; engaged, supporting massive entablature, 112; of Wharton house, 113; fluted, of house No. 6105 Germantown Avenue, 115; fluted, of Dr. Denton's house, 116; of Upsala, 120; fluted, in Independence Hall, 203; engaged, in Independence Hall, 204 Combes Alley, 41 Combes Alley house, windows of, 136; shutters of, 144 Congress Hall, windows of, 148; history and description of, 207-210 Consoles, hand-carved, 107, 173, 174, 177, 192, 200; of dental course, 115; of Mount Pleasant, 176; of Independence Hall, 200 Constitution of United States, setting of convention which framed, 9 Continental Congresses in Philadelphia, 8, 9, 205 Corinthian, doorways, 115; capitals, 116; pilasters, 200, 213, 214; Girard College, 215; Stock Exchange, 216 Cornices, of Woodford, 19, 20; of Hope Lodge, 23, 24; of Girard house, 31; of Port Royal House, 35; of city blocks, 39; of Morris house, 49; of Upsala, 60; of Mount Pleasant, 73, 74, 163, 176, 192; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 80; of Solitude, 83; of Cliveden, 88, 165; of The Highlands, 91; of Green Tree Inn, 97; of house No. 6504 Germantown Avenue, 110; of house No. 709 Spruce Street, 111; of house No. 5200 Germantown Avenue, 111; of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 111; of Grumblethorpe, 114; of Stenton, 156; of Whitby Hall, 159, 172; of Mount Vernon, 173; as usually used, 186, 187; of house No. 224 Pine Street, 192; with prominent modillions, 193; of Independence Hall, 199, 200; of Congress Hall, 208; in Girard National Bank building, 217 Corona, 180 Coultas, Colonel, 160, 161 Coultas, James, 160 Country houses, Georgian, of brick, 17-37; ledge-stone, 53-68 Coving, of Hope Lodge, 23; of Girard house, 31; of Green Tree Inn, 97 Cupolas, 208, 211 Custom House, 215 Cymatium, 176, 177, 180, 183 Cypress Street, house No. 312, mantel of, 182 Dado, 157, 159, 164, 186, 191 Dais, President's, in Congress Hall, 209, 210 Dale, Commodore, 221 Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 223 Declaration of Independence, signing of, 9, 205 De Lancy, Captain John Peter, 14 Dentil course, of Morris house, 109; of house No. 6504 Germantown Avenue, 110; of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 112; of house No. 6105 Germantown Avenue, 115; of Dr. Denton's house, 115; of Upsala, 120; of The Woodlands, 152; of Mount Pleasant, 176, 192; and mantel, 180, 181; of Independence Hall, 200 Denton, Dr., his house, 115, 128 Deschler, David, 78 Deschler, Widow, 99 Dickinson, John, 82 Dirck, Keyser house, footscraper of, 131 Door-casings, of Hope Lodge, 24; of Blackwell house, 42; of Mount Pleasant, 74; molded, 106; of houses No. 114 League Street and No. 5933 Germantown Avenue, 107; rusticated, 116; of Whitby Hall, 172 Doorheads, pedimental, 74, 162, 164, 192; elaborated, 107 Door trim, 191 Doors, paneled, of Hope Lodge, 23, 24; paneled, of Stenton, 27; of Girard house, 31; paneled, of city blocks, 40; of Blackwell house, 43; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 62; of Wyck, 71; paneled, of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; paneled, of Loudoun, 81; of The Highlands, 92; of Johnson house, 96; four types common in Colonial period, 102; single and double, 102; types classified according to arrangement of panels 103; six-panel, 103, 104, 107, 108; three-panel, 104; four-panel, 200; eight-panel, 104, 105; of Morris house, 109; of house No. 701 South Seventh Street, 110; of house No. 709 Spruce Street, 111; of house No. 5200 Germantown Avenue, 111; of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 111; of Powel house, 113; of Wharton house, 113; of Grumblethorpe, 114; of house No. 6105 Germantown Avenue, 115; double blind, 116; of Mount Pleasant, 116; of Cliveden, 116; of Solitude, 118; of Perot-Morris house, 118; of Upsala, 121; with molded flat panels, 122; in round-arched doorways, 124, 125; closet, 174; by the side of the fireplace, 178 Doorways, of Woodford, 19; Doric, of Port Royal house, 35; of city blocks, 40; of Blackwell house, 42; pedimental, of Morris house, 49; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of The Woodlands, 65; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 80; of Loudoun, 81; of Solitude, 83; Doric, of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 92; of Bartram House, 94; the dominating feature of façade, 101; have character and individuality, 101; broad range of, in Philadelphia houses, 102; unlike those of New England, 102; high and narrow, and speak of Quaker severity, 102; recessed, 105; the simplest type of, 106, 107; of houses No. 114 League Street and No. 5933 Germantown Avenue, 107; the characteristic type of pedimental door trim, 108; of houses No. 5011 Germantown Avenue and No. 247 Pine Street, 108, 109; of Morris house, 109; of houses No. 6504 Germantown Avenue and No. 701 South Seventh Street, 110; of house No. 709 Spruce Street, 111; of house No. 5200 Germantown Avenue, 111; of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 111, 112; of the Powel house, 112, 113; of house No. 301 South Seventh Street, 114; of Grumblethorpe, 114; of house No. 6105 Germantown Avenue, 114, 115; of Corinthian order, 115; of Dr. Denton's house, 115; of Mount Pleasant, 116; having complete entablature above fanlight surmounted by pediment, 116; Tuscan, 116; Doric, 116; of Cliveden, 117, 118; fine specimen of mutulary Doric, 117; of Solitude, 118; of Perot-Morris house, 118, 119; of Upsala, 121; of Henry house, 121; of house No. 224 South Eighth Street, 122, 123; of Stenton, earliest instance of side lights in Philadelphia, 123, 124; round-arched, 124; examples of round-arched, 124, 125; of Mount Vernon, 174; round-headed, 192, 193; of Congress Hall, 208 Doric, doorway, 35, 88, 116, 117, 151, 200; inspiration, in Morris house, 110; columns, 112, 120; capitals, 116; architrave, 120; entablature, 162, 214; cornice, 191, 219; apartment, 203, 204; frieze, 219; mutulary, 117, 162, 200, 203, 214, 219 Dormers of Hope Lodge, 23; of Stenton, 26; of Port Royal House, 35; pedimental, of city blocks, 39; of Morris house, 48; shed-roof, of Livezey house, 56; of Upsala, 59; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 80; of Loudoun, 81; of Solitude, 83; of Cliveden, 88; of Bartram House, 94; of the Johnson house, 95; of Green Tree Inn, 97; of the Billmeyer house, 99; pedimental or gable-roofed, segmental topped, lean-to or shed-roofed, 139-141 Dots and dashes, 180 Douglass, David, 14 Drama, introduced into Philadelphia, 14 Drilled rope, 180, 181 Drop handles, 106, 117 Drops, 159 Dunkin, Ann, 49 Dutch seats, 94 Eastwick, Andrew, 95 Eaves, 60, 61, 96 Egg and dart motive, 175, 176, 177, 203 Eighth and Spruce streets, house at, doorway of, 124; stoop of, 129 Elfret Alley, 41 English Classic style of architecture. _See_ GEORGIAN Entablature, 40; of Loudoun, 81; Ionic, 112, 113; Corinthian, 115; above fanlight, 116; recessed, 118; Doric, 120, 214; of Mount Pleasant, 162, 164; at Cliveden, 165; at Upsala, 180; at house No. 729 Walnut Street, 183; at Independence Hall, 203 Entrances, of Hope Lodge, 23; of Stenton, 27; characteristic, 40; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 62; of The Woodlands, 65; of the Billmeyer house, 98; house associated with, 101; of the Morris house, 109. _See_ DOORWAYS, PORCHES. Estates of the countryside of Philadelphia, 15 Evans house, windows of, 137, 138; dormers of, 140; shutters and blinds of, 144, 145, 146 Façade, of Woodford, 19; of Hope Lodge, 23; of Morris house, 48; of Upsala, 59, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of Vernon, 79; of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 91; of Bartram House, 94; of Independence Hall, 199 Fanlights, used in Philadelphia entrances, 40; of house No. 225 South Eighth Street, 49; of Upsala, 60, 120; of The Woodlands, 65, 152; of Vernon, 79; of Loudoun, 81; of The Highlands, 91, 92; transom replaced by, 108; of house No. 5011 Germantown Avenue, 108; of house No. 247 Pine Street, 109; of house No. 6504 Germantown Avenue, 110; of house No. 5200 Germantown Avenue, 111; of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 111; a frequent type of doorway with, 112; of the Wharton house, 113; of Grumblethorpe, 114; a rare type of, 116; patterned after a much-used Palladian window, 122; of house No. 39 Fisher's Lane, 122; of house No. 224 South Eighth Street, 122; in round-headed doorways, 193; of Independence Hall, 201, 207; of Congress Hall, 208; of the Pennsylvania Hospital, 213 Farmhouse type, Pennsylvania, characteristic examples of, 100 Farmhouses, 127 Fascia, 111, 112, 115, 180, 181, 183 Fences, 50, 126, 220, 224 Fenestration. _See_ WINDOWS Festoons, 180, 183, 184, 187 "Fête Champêtre", 85 Firebacks, 28, 169, 172 Fire balconies, 92, 208 Fire marks, 119 Fireplaces, of Woodford, 20; of Hope Lodge, 24; of Livezey house, 57; of Mount Pleasant, 74; the significance and the history of, 169-171; segmental arched, 205 Fisher, Deborah, 45. _See_ WHARTON, DEBORAH Fisher, Samuel, 45 Fisher's Lane, house No. 39, eight-panel door of, 105; porch of, 122 Fixtures, wrought-iron, for hanging and fastening shutters and blinds, 146 Flemish bond, 18, 23, 26, 38, 48 Floors, of Woodford, 20 Florentine manner, iron work wrought in, 129 Florida cession, the, 93 Flow, John H., and the tradition of the first American flag, 52 Flush pointing, 55 Flutings, 65, 180-183 Footscrapers, 109, 127, 130-133 Forbes, Brigadier General John, 221 Foreshortening, of windows, of Girard house, 31; of city blocks, 39, 40; of Morris house, 48; of Livezey house, 57; of Johnson house, 96; of the Billmeyer house, 99; in three-story houses, 138, 139 Forrest, Edwin, 224 Fourth and Liberty streets, house at, 130 Frankford, 36 Frankford Avenue, house No. 4927, doorway of, 111 Franklin, Benjamin, 9, 58, 212, 219, 221 Franklin Inn, 42 Franks, Abigail, 21 Franks, David, 21 Franks, Isaac, 78 Franks, Rebecca, 21 Free Quakers' Meeting House, windows of, 138, 148; lintels of, 142 Frieze, of The Woodlands, 65; of house No. 114 League Street, 107; of house No. 6504 Germantown Avenue, 110; of Whitby Hall, 158; of house No. 312 Cypress Street, 183; of house No. 729 Walnut Street, 158; of Solitude, 187 Front, double, of Morris house, 39, 48 Furniture, old, 63, 79, 205, 206 Gable ends, 60 Gable roofs, 39; of Livezey house, 56; of Upsala, 59, 120; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 79; of Bartram House, 94; of the Johnson house, 95; of Independence Hall, 199; of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal church, 224 Gambrel roof, 80 Gardens, of city houses, 40; of Morris house, 49; of Grumblethorpe, 62, 64; of The Woodlands, 65, 67; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 76; of John Bartram, 94, 95 Gates, 220 Georgian countryhouses of brick, 16-37 Georgian fireplace, 188 Georgian sashes, 31, 134 Georgian style, 3, 17, 156; of brick houses, 17; Woodford, 19; Hope Lodge, 22; The Woodlands, 65, 66; Clunie, 72, 74; of brick houses, 86; The Highlands, 91 Germantown, Battle of, 61, 63, 71, 78, 90, 97, 99, 205 Germantown, ledge-stone houses at, 53 Germantown Academy, the, 98, 99 Germantown Avenue, house No. 5442, description of, 76-78; history of, 78, 79; six-panel door of house No. 5442, 103; eight-panel door of house No. 4908, 105; house No. 1748, doorway of, 107; house No. 5011, doorway of, 108; house No. 6504, doorway of, 110; house No. 5200, doorway of, 111; house No. 6105, doorway of, 114, 115; house No. 6105, dormers of, 140; house No. 6105, blinds of, 145, 147; house No. 6043, shutter fasteners of, 148 Germantown stone, 87 Germantown type of pointing, 55 Ginkgo tree, the, 67 Girard, Stephen, 31-33; his will, 33, 34 Girard College, 31, 33, 34, 215 Girard (Stephen) house, 31 Glass, 134 Glen Fern. _See_ LIVEZEY HOUSE Gothic, tracery, 123, 127; detail, 128; arch, curves reminiscent of, 149 Gowen house, 167 Gravitating catches, 147 Gray, Martha Ibbetson, 161 Greame Park, 69; windows of, 136; dormers of, 139 Grecian band, 130, 133, 192, 209 Grecian fret, 77, 91, 109, 111, 173, 176, 189 Greek architecture, Girard College a fine specimen of, 215 Green Tree Inn, 97, 98; six-panel door of, 103; doorway of, 107 Haines family, 72 Hallam's (William) Old American Company, 14, 67 Halls, of Wyck, 71; an important interior feature, 153; in early times, 153; development of, 154; staircases and balconies introduced into, 154; in the Georgian period of English architecture, 154, 155; in Provincial mansions of Philadelphia, 155; of Stenton, 156, 157; from back to front of the house, 157; of Whitby Hall, 158-160, 162-164; of Mount Pleasant, 161-164; of Cliveden, 165, 166; of Upsala, 166, 167 Hamilton, Alexander, 78 Hamilton, Andrew, designer of Independence Hall, 6, 197, 198; married Abigail Franks, 21; the first of the name in America, 66; Benjamin Chew studied law with, 89 Hamilton, Governor James, 67 Hamilton, William, 66-68 Hancock, John, 206 Handles, brass, of Woodford, 20 Handrail, wrought-iron, of Woodford, 19; wrought-iron, of city blocks, 40; of Wistar house, 127; patterned after cathedral grilles and screens, 127; other examples of, 128-130, 157, 167 Headers, 18, 26, 38, 48 Heage, William, 3 Heath, Susanna, 25 Heating, methods of, 169-171 Henry house, 121 Hewn stone country houses, 86-100 Highlands, The, description of, 91, 92; history of, 92, 93; door of, 105; porch of, 120; unique in having porch, side-lights, and elliptical fanlight, 122; windows of, 137; blinds of, 145 Hinges, 146, 172, 209 Hipped roof, of Woodford, 18; of Hope Lodge, 23, 120; of Stenton, 26; of Girard house, 31; of Port Royal House, 35; of the stable of The Woodlands, 66; of Mount Pleasant, 72, 73; of Vernon, 79; of Loudoun, 80; of Solitude, 83; of The Highlands, 120; of Congress Hall, 208 Hitner, purchaser of The Highlands, 93 Holme, Thomas, 3, 4 Hoods, 96, 97, 106 Hope, Henry, 25 Hope Lodge, description of, 22-24; history of, 24, 25; door of, 105; porch of, 120; windows of, 135, 141; dormers of, 141; shutters of, 143; round-headed doorway of, 193; arch across main hall of, 193 Hopkinson, Francis, 221 Horse block, 99 Howe, Sir William, 21, 30, 78 Independence Hall, designed by Andrew Hamilton, 6; meeting of second Continental Congress in, 8; windows of, 148, 151; stair-end treatment of, 168; history and description of, 196-207 Inns and taverns of Colonial days, 11, 12 Interior wood-finish, of the average eighteenth-century Philadelphia house, 185-187; in the better houses of the Provincial period, 187, 188; of Stenton, 188, 189; of Whitby Hall, 189; doors and doorways, 189-194; white-painted, 194, 195; of Congress Hall, 208; of Carpenters' Hall, 214 Interiors, Colonial, a favorite treatment of, 186 Ionic, pilasters, 65, 91; columns, 83, 94; entablature, 112, 219, 220; doorway, 118; pediments, 120, 191; window, 151; newel, 159; pulvinated, 163, 219; cornice, 192; walls of tower, 199; Palladian window, 200; hall in Independence Hall, 200; volute, 201 Ironwork, 124-133 Jambs, molded, 71; paneled, 106, 107, 108, 111, 113, 121, 191, 200, 203; rusticated, 116 Jansen, Dirck, 96 Jansen family, 72 Jefferson, Thomas, 78 Johnson house, description of, 95, 96; history of, 96, 97; six-paneled door of, 103; doorway of, 106; windows of, 136; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143 Johnson, General Sir Henry, 21 Johnson, John, 60, 90 Johnson, John, Jr., 60 Johnson, Norton, 61 Johnson, Sallie W., 61 Johnson, Doctor William N., 61 Joinery, reference books on, 6 Jones, Inigo, 171 Kearsley, Doctor John, 6, 219 Keith, Sir William, 69 Key plate, 110 Keyed arch, 111 Keyed lintels, 39, 60, 73, 88 Keystones, 91, 113, 199 Kitchen, of Stenton, 26; of Grumblethorpe, 63 Knobs, 72, 109, 110 Knockers, 72, 105, 106, 110, 111 Knox, Henry, 78 Kunders, Thomas, 82 La Fayette, 71, 90, 98 La Grange Alley, house No. 207, balustrade of, 130 Lambert, General, 221 Landings, staircase, 154, 158, 163, 165, 166, 167 Laurel Hill, windows of, 137; shutters of, 143 Leaded glass, 92 League Street, house No. 114, doorway of, 107 Ledge-stone country houses, 53-68 Ledge stonework, of Germantown, its picturesque appeal, 53; its adaptability, 53, 54; has marked horizontal effect, 54; is conducive to handsome, honest masonry, 54; in combination with white-painted woodwork, 55, 56, 66; mansions, the chief distinction of Philadelphia architecture, 68 Lee, Alice, 46 Lee, Arthur, 46 Lee, General Charles, 221 Lee, Richard Henry, 46 Lee, Thomas, 46 Lenox, General, 63 Lesbian leaf ornaments, 173, 175 Lewis, Mordecai, 44, 45 Lewis, Samuel N., 45 Lewis, William, 22 Liberty Bell, 200-203 Library, of Stenton, 28 Lime, makeshift for, 96 Lintels, of Port Royal House, 35; keyed, of city blocks, 39; of Morris house, 49; keyed, of Upsala, 60; keyed, of Mount Pleasant, 73; keyed, of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 91; of Bartram House, 94; stone, 142 Livezey, John, 59 Livezey, Rachael, 96 Livezey, Thomas, 57 Livezey, Thomas, Jr., 57, 58 Livezey, Thomas, son of Thomas, Jr., 59 Livezey house, description of, 56, 57; history of, 57-59; six-panel door of, 103; windows of, 136; dormers of, 139; shutters and blinds of, 144, 146 Logan, Albanus, 30 Logan, Deborah, 30 Logan, Doctor George, 29 Logan, Gustavus, 30, 82 Logan, James, 28, 29, 82 Logan, William, 29 Lombardy poplar, the, 67 Loudoun, description of, 80, 81; history of, 81, 82; eight-panel door of, 104; windows of, 137; dormers, 140; shutters and blinds of, 144, 145 Lukens family, 37 Mackinett, Daniel, 98 Macpherson, John, 74, 75 Madison, Dolly, 93 Mahogany, 43 Mansard roof, 80 Mantel shelves, 171, 176-178 Mantels, of Woodford, 20; of Upsala, 60, 179-182; of The Highlands, 92; development of, 171; of Stenton, 172; of Whitby Hall, 172, 173; of Mount Vernon, 173-175; of Mount Pleasant, 175, 176; of Cliveden, 177; of old Spruce Street house, 178; with shelf, 178; of form of complete entablature, 178; hand-carved ornaments for, 179; for hob grate, 180; elaborate, 180, 181; of house at Third and DeLancy streets, 182; of the Rex house, 182; of house No. 312 Cypress Street, 182; of house No. 729 Walnut Street, 183 Marble, houses of, 17; Pennsylvania, of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; use of, in trimmings, 142, 173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 198, 199, 208, 209 Markets, 212 Markham, Captain William, 3 Marshall, Chief Justice John, 202, 208 Mastic, 43 Matthews, James, 80 McClenahan, Blair, 90 Medallion, 183 Mennonites, church of, 224, 225 Merailles, Don Juan de, 75 Mermaid Inn, in Mount Airy, 12 Metopes, 118, 162 Millan, Hans, 71 "Mischianza", 21 Modillions, of Woodford, 19; of Stenton, 26; hand-tooled, of city blocks, 39; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Cliveden, 88; of Upsala, 120; of Whitby Hall, 159; of Mount Pleasant, 164, 192; of Independence Hall, 200; of the Girard National Bank building, 217 Molding, denticulated, 77, 80, 107, 112, 115, 140, 177, 192, 209; ovolo, 97, 107, 115, 173, 176; cornice, 109, 217; of classic order, 113; rope, 120; bolection, 156, 171, 188, 190, 191; of Mount Pleasant, 162; crenelated, 172; of panel, 175; bed, 180; cavetto, 181, 187; ogee, 187, 189; of inside doors, 190 Morgan, General Jacob, 221 Morris, Anthony, 92 Morris, Joshua, 25 Morris, Luke Wistar, 50 Morris, Robert, services of, 8; lived in Philadelphia, 9; grave of, 221 Morris, Samuel, 24, 25 Morris, Captain Samuel, 50, 92 Morris, Samuel B., 79 Morris house, description of, 39, 48, 49; history of, 49, 50; door of, 105; doorway of, 109, 110; windows of, 137, 139, 141, 142; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143, 144, 146 Mount Pleasant, description of, 72-74; history of, 74-76; three-panel door of, 104; doorway of, 116; stoop of, 128; windows of, 137; dormers of, 141; with neither outside shutters nor blinds, 142; Palladian window of, 151; hall of, 161-165; chimney-piece of, 175, 176; interior wood finish of, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192; round-headed windows of, 193 Mount Vernon, 173-175 Mullions, fluted, 116 Muntins, of Woodford, 19; of Hope Lodge, 23; of Christ Church, 149; of six-panel doors, 190 Musgrave, Colonel, 90 Mutules, 116 Newels, 130, 132, 133, 157, 159, 167, 201 Nichol, James, 63 Northern Liberties, the, 4 Observatory, 62, 64 Ogee, 175 Old Swedes' Church, 148, 149, 221, 222 Openings, elliptical-headed, 193 Outinian Society, 85 Oval shell pattern, 107 Overmantel, 173, 174, 177 Ovolo, reeded, 111, 183; enriched, 113; hand-tooled, 114; with bead and reel and egg and dart motive, 175; molded, 176; with egg and dart motive, 177, 203 Paintings, first exhibition of, 206 Palladian window, of Woodford, 19; of Port Royal House, 35; of The Woodlands, 66; of Mount Pleasant, 73, 117, 164; of The Highlands, 92; gable-roof dormers with, 140; chancel, 150; of Independence Hall, 151; in domestic architecture, 151, 152; on landing, 158; of Whitby Hall, 151, 158, 188; of Independence Hall, 200; of Carpenters' Hall, 211; of Christ Church, 219, 220 Pancoast, Samuel, 44 Paneling, in shutters of Woodford, 19; in doors of Hope Lodge, 23; in wainscots of Hope Lodge, 24; of window-seats of Hope Lodge, 24; of doors of Stenton, 27; of wainscoting of Stenton, 27; of walls of Stenton, 27; in shutters of Girard house, 31; of shutters of city blocks, 40; of doors of city blocks, 40; of sides of rooms and fireplace openings, 43; of shutters of Morris house, 48; of wainscots of Upsala, 60, 167; of doors of Wyck, 71; of door and wainscots of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of shutters of Loudoun, 81; of door of Loudoun, 81; of shutters of Johnson house, 96; doors classified according to, 103; six-panel doors, 103, 104, 107, 108; three-panel doors, 104; eight-panel doors, 104, 105; of jambs, 106, 107, 108, 111; of door of Morris house, 109; of door of house No. 701 South Seventh Street, 110; of door of house No. 709 Spruce Street, 111; of door of house No. 5200 Germantown Avenue, 111; of door of house No. 4927 Frankford Avenue, 111; of door of Powel house, 113; of jambs of Wharton House, 113; of door of Wharton house, 113; of door of Grumblethorpe, 114; of door of house No. 6105 Germantown Avenue, 115; of door of Mount Pleasant, 116; of doors of Cliveden, 117; of soffits, 118; of doors of Solitude, 118; of door of Perot-Morris house, 118; of door of Upsala, 121; of jambs and soffit of Henry house, 121; molded flat, 122; of doors in round-arched doorways, 124, 125; of shutters, 144, 145; of dado of Stenton, 157; of wainscot of Cliveden, 165; of wainscot of Mount Vernon, 174; of wainscot of Mount Pleasant, 176; of mantels, with shelf, 178; of hall, parlor, and reception room, 186; of wainscot, 186; of chimney-piece, 188; of overmantel, 188; of reception room at Stenton, 189; of inside doors, 190; of jambs and soffits, 191; of door of Independence Hall, 200; in Independence Hall, 200, 201, 203 Panes, size, 135, 164; number, 135-140, 148-152; rectangular, 149; keystone-shaped, 149; quarter-round, 149 Paschall, Thomas, 22 Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 82 Peale, Rembrandt, 206 Peale Museum, 206 Pediments, of Woodford, 19; of Port Royal House, 35; of city blocks, 40; of Blackwell house, 43; of The Woodlands, 65; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 79; of Loudoun, 81; of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 91; forming hood above doorway, 106; of doorhead, 107; of Morris house, 109; Ionic, 191 Pen Rhyn house, windows of, 139 Penn, Granville, 85 Penn, Granville John, 85 Penn, John, 83-85, 90, 221 Penn, Governor John, 84 Penn, Letitia, 16, 17 Penn, Thomas, 84 Penn, William, 3, 4, 16, 17, 84, 85 Penn's house, windows of, 136 Pennsylvania, importance of attitude of, in the Revolution, 8 Pennsylvania Hospital, 148, 212-214 Penthouse roof, influence of, 19, 60, 61; characteristic feature of ledge stonework, 19, 106; of Grumblethorpe, 62; of house No. 6306 Germantown Avenue, 96; of Green Tree Inn, 97, 107; of Billmeyer, 98; of Whitby Hall, 160 Perot, Elliston, 79 Perot, John, 79 Perot-Morris house, eight-panel door of, 104, 105; doorway of, 118, 119; windows of, 137; dormers of, 141; shutters and blinds of, 144, 146, 147 Peters, Judge Richard, 84 Philadelphia, unique position of, in American architecture, 1; old buildings of, of brick and stone, and substantial in character, 1; much of best Colonial domestic architecture to be found in neighborhood of, 2; history enacted in buildings of, 2; Georgian and pure Colonial styles in, 3; review of early history of, 3; laid out by Thomas Holme, 4; character of early settlers of, 4; early commerce of, 5; at the time of the Revolution, 5; importance of, in eighteenth century, 6; a refuge for immigrants of persecuted sects, 7; Quaker influence in, 7; Scotch-Irish ascendancy in, 7; center of the new republic in embryo, 8; the meeting of the Continental Congresses in, 8, 9; the sitting of the convention for framing the Constitution in, 9; the national capital, 9; famous men associated with, 9; list of first things established or done at, 9-11; noted for its generous hospitality, 11; brilliancy of its social life, 11-14; theaters in, 14; estates of the countryside, 15; has distinctive architecture in brick, stone, and woodwork, and diversified architecture of city and country types, 15; clung to the manners and customs of the mother country, 16; brick favored in, 16, 17; the dominant feature of the domestic architecture of the city proper, 38; houses of, possess charm of architectural merit combined with historic interest, 101 Philosophical Society, the, 48 Piers, of Stenton, 26; of Cliveden, 88 Pilasters, of Woodford, 20; of Hope Lodge, 24; fluted, of city blocks, 40; fluted, of Blackwell house, 42; fluted, of Morris house, 49; of The Woodlands, 65; of Mount Pleasant, 74; of The Highlands, 91; supporting pediment, 108; of house No. 6019 Germantown Avenue, 107; fluted, of Whitby Hall, 158, 159; of Mount Vernon, 174; of Upsala, 180, 181, 182; paneled, of house No. 312 Cypress Street, 182, 183; fluted, of Independence Hall, 204, 205 Pillars, 81 Pine, Edgar, 206 Pine, Robert Edge, 206 Pine Street, house No. 239, footscraper of, 132 Pine Street, house No. 247, doorway of, 109 Pineapple, the, 130 Plastered stone country houses, 69-85; one of the distinctive types of Philadelphia architecture, 85 Plastic Club, 42 Pointing, methods of, 55; of Upsala, 59; of The Woodlands, 66; of hewn stone houses, 87; flush, of Cliveden, 87; of The Highlands, 91 Pomfret, Earl of, 84 Poor Richard Club, 42 Porch, to servants' quarters and kitchen, of Hope Lodge, 24; of Stenton, 26 Porches, of Hope Lodge, 23, 120; pedimental, of Upsala, 60, 120; of The Highlands, 92; not common, 119; of The Highlands, 120; of the Henry house, 121; elliptical, of house No. 39 Fisher's Lane, 122 Port Royal House, description of, 34, 35; history of, 35-37; three-panel door of, 104; windows of, 137; dormers of, 141; blinds of, 143, 145 Portico, 65, 81, 82 Portius, James, induced by Penn to come to the New World, 5; a leading member of the Carpenters' Company, 5; laid foundation of builders' library, 6 Ports, 220 Powel house, eight-panel door of, 104; doorway of, 113; stoop of, 128; windows of, 137, 138; dormers of, 141; shutters of, 144, 145 Public buildings, of Philadelphia, historically and architecturally inspiring, 196; discussion of, 196-225 Quakers, Philadelphia a place of refuge for, 3; influence of, in Philadelphia, 7; loved eating and drinking, 12, 13; other distractions of, 13; little difference between homes of "World's People" and, 14 Quoining, 23, 35, 59, 73, 199, 223 Race Street, house No. 128, windows of, 136; shutters of, 144, 147 Race Street, house No. 130, stoop of, 128 Railing, wrought iron, 83, 114; adaptation of Gothic tracery, 123 Rails, of blinds, 145, 146; of doors, 103, 190; of shutters, 144, 145; of windows, 134 Rain gauge, 62 Ramsey, Allan, 206 Randolph, Edmund, 78 Randolph, Peyton, 221 Randolph house, doorway of, 124 Red Lion Inn, survival of inns of Colonial days, 12 Reed, General Joseph, 25 Reed, Joseph, 25 Reeded casings, 121 Reeded ovolo, 111, 183 Reeve, Mrs. Josiah, 97 Rex house, mantel of, 182; interior wood finish of, 187 Reynolds, John, 49 Rhodes, Samuel, 213 Ridge or weathered pointing, 55 Rim lock, 106, 110, 209 Rittenhouse, David, 9 Rock-face stonework, 53 Rolling ways, 40, 49 Roofs, balustraded, 219; gable, 39, 56 (Livezey house), 59, 120 (Upsala), 77 (No. 5442 Germantown Avenue), 79 (Vernon), 94 (Bartram house), 95 (Johnson house), 199 (Independence Hall), 124 (St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal church); gambrel, 80; hipped, 19 (Woodford), 23 (Hope Lodge), 26 (Stenton), 31 (home of Stephen Girard), 35 (Port Royal House), 66 (stable of The Woodlands), 72, 73 (Mount Pleasant), 80 (Loudoun), 83 (Solitude), 198 (Independence Hall); mansard, 80 Rosettes, 130 Ross, Betsy, 51, 52 Ross, John, 51 Roxborough, 167 Rubble masonry, 70, 73, 79, 81, 82, 87, 91, 224 Rush, Doctor Benjamin, 221 Rush, Colonel William, 204 St. Luke's Church, 82 St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, 224 St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church, 149, 150, 222, 223 Sargent, John, 25 Sash bars, 134 Sashes, three-paned, 138, 140; six-paned, 40, 57, 83, 91, 96, 135-140, 151; seven-paned, 148; eight-paned, 48, 99, 137, 138, 140; nine-paned, 23, 40, 57, 83, 96, 135-138; ten-paned, 148, 149; twelve-paned, 19, 48, 88, 99, 135-138, 148-152; fifteen-paned, 148, 149; sixteen-paned, 148, 149; eighteen-paned, 149; twenty-paned, 149; twenty-four-paned, 151; with blinds, 31; sliding Georgian, 134; upper and lower, adjustment of, 134; double-hung, 134; sliding, 148 Say, Thomas, 63 Scotch-Irish, in Philadelphia, 7 Scroll work, 130, 147, 159, 201 _Sea Nymph_, the, 36 Seats, doorway, 94, 96, 98, 107; window, 24, 157, 188 Seventh and Locust Streets, house at, footscraper of, 132; handrail of, 133 Sharpless, John, 206 Sheaff, George, 93 Shingles, 65 Shippen, Edward, 76 Shippen, Peggy, 76 Shippen, Doctor William, 46 Shippen house, 125 Shoemaker, Jacob, 57 Shoemaker, Thomas, 57 Shutters, paneled, 18; of Woodford, 19; of Hope Lodge, 23; paneled, of Girard house, 31; paneled, of city blocks, 40; paneled, of Morris house, 48; of Livezey house, 57; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 79; paneled, of Loudoun, 81; of Cliveden, 88; paneled, of Johnson house, 96; of the Billmeyer house, 99; use of, 142-144; boxed, 143; paneling of, 144, 145; methods of hanging and fastening, 146-148 Side lights, of Stenton, 27, 123; of The Highlands, 92; rare, 122; earliest instance of, in Philadelphia, 123; of Pennsylvania Hospital, 213 Site and Relic Society, 80, 97 Sketch Club, 42 Skirting, 186 Soffits, paneled, 107, 108, 111, 118, 158, 159, 191, 203; fluted, 109; rusticated, 116 Solitude, description of, 82, 83; history of, 83-85; three-paneled door of, 104; doorway of, 118; windows of, 136; dormers of, 140; with neither outside shutters nor blinds, 142; interior finish of, 187 South American Street, house No. 272, stoop of, 129 South Eighth Street, house No. 224, eight-paneled door of, 105; doorway of, 122, 123; stoop of, 128 South Ninth Street, house No. 216, stoop of, 128 South Seventh Street, house No. 301, eight-paneled door of, 104, 105; doorway of, 114; stoop of, 129; handrail of, 132, 133 South Seventh Street, house No. 701, doorway of, 110; stoop of, 128 South Third Street, house No. 316, porch of, 128 South Third Street, house No. 320, footscrapers of, 132 Southwark, or South Street, Theater, 111 Sower, Christopher, 63 Spandrils, molded, 116 Spindles, 130 Spruce Street, house No. 709, doorway of, 111 Spruce Street, old house on, chimney-piece of, 178 Stable, of The Woodlands, 66 Staircases, wainscoted, 43; hall, 154, 155, 157, 158; of Stenton, 156, 157; of Whitby Hall, 159-160, 162-164; of Mount Pleasant, 161-164; of Cliveden, 165, 166; of Upsala, 166, 167; of Independence Hall, 200; of Pennsylvania Hospital, 214 Stair rail, footscraper combined with, 132, 133 Stairway, of Hope Lodge, 24; balustraded, of Mount Pleasant, 74; of The Highlands, 92 Stamper, John, 43 State House, the old (Independence Hall), 8, 197 Steeples, 197, 219, 220, 223 Stenton, description of, 25-28; history of, 28-31; door of, 105; doorway of, 123, 124; windows of, 137, 141; with neither outside shutters nor blinds, 142; hall of, 156, 157; fireplace of, 172; interior wood finish of, 185, 186, 188, 189 Steps, of Woodford, 19; of Hope Lodge, 23; of Stenton, 27; single, of city blocks, 40; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 61; of The Highlands, 92; of house No. 701 South Seventh Street, 110; on various classes of stoops, 126-130 Steuben, Baron von, 76 Stiles, of doors, 103, 190; of doors, double, 114; of windows, 134; of shutters, 144, 145; of blinds, 146 Stiles, Daniel, 35 Stiles, Edward, 35-37 Stiles, John, 35 Stocker house, windows of, 138; dormers of, 141 Stonework, surfaced and ledge, 53; the refinements and the essentials of, 54; pointed and unpointed, 55; not always pleasing, 69, 70; plastered, 69-85; surfaced, to be recommended only for large and pretentious residences or for public work, 86. _See_ LEDGE-STONE Stoops, 40, 126-130, 208 Stretchers, of blocks, 18, 38; of Stenton, 26; of Morris house, 48 Strickland, William, 197, 215 String course, 172 Stuart, Gilbert, 63, 206 Sully, Thomas, 206 Surbase, 83, 157, 159, 163, 186, 187 Swaenson family, 4 Swag, 175 Swedes, at the mouth of the Schuylkill River, 3 Theaters, in Philadelphia, 14 Third and DeLancy streets, house at, mantel of, 182 Third and Pine streets, house at, doorway of, 125; porch of, 128 Third and Spruce streets, house at, footscraper of, 131 Tiles, of Woodford, 20; of Stenton, 27, 28 Torus, 175, 176, 183 Tower, 199, 200, 223 Transom, four-paned, 71, 106 Triglyphs, 116, 118, 162 Trinity Church, 223, 224 Truxton, Commodore, 221 Turn buckles, 147 Tuscan, doorway, 19, 116, 118; columns, 77 Two-family house, 98 Underground passage, 28, 83 "Underground railway", 97 Upsala, description of, 59, 60; history of, 60, 61; eight-panel door of, 104; porch and doorway of, 120, 121; footscraper of, 132; windows of, 137; dormers of, 140; shutters and blinds of, 144, 145; hall and staircase of, 166, 167; mantels of, 179-182; chambers of, 186, 187; interior woodwork of, 194 Urns, 88 Vernon, description of, 79, 80; history of, 80; door of, 105; footscraper of, 132; windows of, 137; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143 Wainscots, of Woodford, 20; of Hope Lodge, 24; of Stenton, 27, 28; of Blackwell house, 43; of Livezey house, 57; of Upsala, 60, 167; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Cliveden, 165; of Mount Vernon, 174; of Mount Pleasant, 176; paneled, 186, 187; of Independence Hall, 201 Wall paper, hand-blocked, 186 Walls, of city blocks, 38, 39 Waln house, windows of, 137; shutters of, 143 Walnut Street, house No. 1107, 130 Walnut Street Theater, 14 Walter, Thomas Ustick, 34, 215 Washington, George, his farewell address in Philadelphia, 9; at Stenton, 30; at house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 78; at Billmeyer house, 99; statues of, 204, 206; portrait of, 206; associations of Congress Hall with, 207, 208; at St. Peter's Church, 222 Water table, 88 Watmough, Colonel James Horatio, 25 Wayne, Captain Isaac, 69 Waynesborough, 69; windows of, 136; blinds of, 145 Wentz family, 25 West, Benjamin, 206, 213 West, William, 25 Wharton, Charles, 45 Wharton, Deborah (Fisher), 45, 46 Wharton, Francis Rawle, 22 Wharton, Hannah, 45 Wharton, Isaac, 22 Wharton, Joseph, 22, 45 Wharton, Robert, 58 Wharton, William, 45 Wharton house, 42, 44-46; eight-panel door of, 104; doorway of, 113; windows of, 135, 138; dormers of, 141; shutters of, 143, 145 Whiskey Rebellion, the, 93 Whitby Hall, windows of, 137, 139; shutters of, 143; Palladian window of, 151, 158; hall and stairway of, 158-160, 162-165; history of, 160, 161; chimney-piece of, 172, 173; interior wood finish of, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191; round-headed windows of, 193 White, Bishop, 220 White, Doctor, 44 Whitefield, Bishop, 213 "Widow Mackinett's Tavern", 98 William IV, King, 78 William Henry, Prince, 78 Williams, Jonathan, 76 Willing family, 44 Wilson, Alexander, 222 Wilson, James, 221 Window-casings, 24, 74, 94 Window embrasures, 159, 188, 189, 200 Window frames, of Stenton, 26; of city blocks, 39; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; during the Colonial period, a perpetuation of the initial types, 134; of heavy type, 141; molded, 149 Window seats, 24, 157, 188 Window sills, of Upsala, 60; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of The Highlands, 91; of Bartram House, 94; stone, 142; in Independence Hall, 200 Windows, 19; of Hope Lodge, 23; of Stenton, 26, 27; of the Girard house, 31; of Port Royal House, 35; of city blocks, 39, 40; of Morris house, 48, 49; of Livezey house, 56, 57; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 61, 62; of The Woodlands, 65; of Mount Pleasant, 73; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77; of Vernon, 79; of Loudoun, 81; of Solitude, 83; of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 91, 92; of the Johnson house, 95, 96; of Green Tree Inn, 97; of the Billmeyer house, 99; during the Colonial period, a perpetuation of the initial types, 134; treatment of, 141, 142; of Independence Hall, 199; of Congress Hall, 208; of Carpenters' Hall, 211; of Pennsylvania Hospital, 215, 216; ten-paned, 152; twelve-paned, 57, 61, 79, 135; eighteen-paned, 61, 135; twenty-four-paned, 35, 77, 81, 135, 199, 209, 211; ranging, 23, 27, 35, 48, 73, 81, 88, 95, 206; round-topped, 35, 39, 65, 77, 88, 99, 148, 149, 208, 223, 224; square-headed, 209; segmental-topped, 61, 97. _See_ DORMERS, PALLADIAN, SASHES Wing steps, 98, 114, 129 Wissahickon Creek, mill on, 57-59 Wistar, Doctor Caspar, 47, 72, 78 Wistar, Daniel, 80 Wistar, John, 80 Wistar, William, 80 Wistar house, 39, 46-48; balustrade of, 127; windows of, 137, 139; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143, 145 Wistar Parties, 47, 48 _Wistaria_, 47 Wister, Alexander W., 64 Wister, Charles J., 64, 71 Wister, Charles J., Jr., 64 Wister, Daniel, 63 Wister, John, 62, 63, 78 Wister, Margaret, 78 Wister, Owen, 64 Wister, Sally, 64 "Wister's Big House." _See_ GRUMBLETHORPE Witherill house, dormers of, 139; shutters of, 145 Wood, white-painted, houses of, 17 Wood carvers, 179 Wood finish. _See_ INTERIOR Woodford, description of, 18-20; history of, 20-22; door of, 105; windows of, 137; shutters of, 143 Woodlands, The, description of, 64-66; history of, 66-68; with neither outside shutters nor blinds, 142; Palladian windows of, 151, 152 Woods, white-painted soft, the possibilities of, 194 Woodwork brought from overseas, but later produced in the colonies, 18; interior, of Woodford, 20; of Hope Lodge, 24; of Stenton, 26, 156; of Blackwell house, 42, 43; white-painted, in combination with ledge stone, 55, 56, 66; of Upsala, 60; of Grumblethorpe, 62, 63; of Mount Pleasant, 74; of house No. 5442 Germantown Avenue, 77, 78; of Vernon, 80; of Solitude, 83; of Cliveden, 88; of The Highlands, 92; of the Billmeyer house, 99; of house No. 701 South Seventh Street, 110; suggesting Dutch influence, 123; of Mount Vernon, 174; of Christ Church, 219 "World's People", the, 12, 13, 14 Wyck, 70-72; door of, 103; footscraper of, 130; windows of, 138; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143, 148 Wynnestay, windows of, 137; dormers of, 140; shutters of, 143, 144 
30172	----	file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr.) ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY, BY JOHN SELL COTMAN; ACCOMPANIED BY HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTICES BY DAWSON TURNER, ESQ. F.R. AND A.S. VOLUME THE FIRST. [Illustration: Coat of arms of the Duchy of Normandy. Emblems of the towns of Rouen and Caen.] LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN AND ARTHUR ARCH, CORNHILL; AND J. S. COTMAN, YARMOUTH. MDCCCXXII. [Illustration] PREFACE. An artist, engaged in the illustration of the Architectural Antiquities of England, could scarcely do otherwise than often cast a wistful look towards the opposite shores of Normandy; and such would particularly be the case, if, like Mr. Cotman, to a strong attachment to his profession and the subject, he should chance to add a residence in Norfolk. This portion of the kingdom of the East-Angles, in its language and in its customs, but especially in the remains of its ancient ecclesiastical architecture, abounds in vestiges of its Teutonic colonists. The richly ornamented door-ways of its village churches have, in particular, long been the theme of admiration among antiquaries. Bred up in the midst of these, and warmly partaking in the admiration of them, Mr. Cotman devoted his pencil and his graver to the diffusion of their fame. Common report, aided by the suffrages of the learned, and in some degree by locality, designated them as Saxon: at the same time, when they were compared with what is left in Britain, of workmanship avowedly Norman, the points of dissimilarity appeared trifling or altogether vanished. Was it then to be inferred that, between Norman and Saxon architecture, there was really no difference; and, carrying the inference one step farther, that the hordes of barbarians denominated by these different appellations, although they might not have embarked at the same port, were only cognate tribes of one common origin, if not in reality the same? The solution of the first of these questions, the only one immediately in view, seemed best to be sought in that province of France, where the Norman power had been most permanently established, and where it was therefore reasonably to be expected, that genuine productions of Norman art might, if any where, be found. With this view, Mr. Cotman crossed the channel; and the result of three successive journies, in the years 1817, 1818, and 1820, is here submitted to the public. Those who find pleasure in inquiries of this description, will join in the regret, that an undertaking like the present was so long delayed. Incalculable had been the advantages, had it but commenced previously to the period of the French revolution. That fearful storm burst with tremendous violence upon the castles of barons, the palaces of kings, and the temples of religion. Many of the most sumptuous edifices, which had mocked the hand of time, and had been respected amidst the ravages of foreign or domestic warfare, were then swept from the face of the earth. Others, degraded, deserted, neglected, and dilapidated, are at this moment hastening fast to their decay. Yet no small portion of what is valuable has been happily left. The two royal abbeys of Caen, though shorn of much of their former grandeur, are still nearly entire. Château Gaillard, the pride of Richard's lion heart, and the noble castles of Arques and of Falaise, retain sufficient of their ancient magnificence, to testify what they must have been in the days of their splendor: the towns and châteaus, which were the cradles of the Harcourts, Vernons, Tancarvilles, Gurneys, Bruces, Bohuns, Grenvilles, St. Johns, and many others of the most illustrious English families, are still in existence; and, of more modern date, when the British Edwards and Henrys resumed the Norman sceptre, numerous buildings of the highest beauty are every where to be met with. In his researches after these, Mr. Cotman had the advantage of being assisted by the kindness of three of the most distinguished antiquaries of the present day, M. le Prevost, M. Rondeau, and M. de Gerville, but particularly by the last, whose friendly help has likewise extended towards the preparing of the letter-press for many of the articles from the western part of the province. It were ungrateful not to acknowledge the assistance derived from Mr. Cohen, in the same department. The value of his aid, which has been most freely contributed, can be duly appreciated by those alone who have had opportunities of judging of the accuracy and extent of his knowledge. In the selection of subjects for engraving, attention has been principally paid to two points, excellence in the objects themselves, and certainty as to dates; but the greatest stress has been laid upon the latter. The author of a work which professes to be in any degree didactic, can never impress too strongly upon his mind the value of the Roman precept, "prodesse quàm delectare;" and an artist, accustomed by his habits to the contemplation of the beautiful and the picturesque, requires above all men to be warned on this head. Many of the buildings here represented, might easily have been exchanged for others, more perfect, more elegant, or more ornamented; but it is hoped that they could not have been exchanged for those that would have been more instructive. The main object of the publication has been to exhibit a series of specimens of Norman architecture, as they actually exist in Normandy itself; and, by taking those whose dates are best defined, to enable the antiquary and the amateur of other countries, not only to know the state of this extraordinary people, as to their arts, at the epoch of their greatest glory, but also to compare what is in Normandy with what they find at home. Another volume, devoted to the illustration of the same description of architecture, in the south of France, in Italy, and in Sicily, would fill a hiatus, whose existence has long been regretted. In Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, it is to be feared that little remains; and, thanks to the spirit of English artists and to the patronage of the English public, what is in this country is already in a great measure recorded. To an Englishman, it is hoped it may be a source of venial self-congratulation, that the first publication upon Norman architecture originates in his own island: he will likewise probably not be displeased to find, that this collection of the finest remaining specimens of Norman art upon the continent, contains nothing which he cannot rival, indeed surpass, at home. But, at the same time that the principal end proposed in this work has been to set before the public those edifices, whether sacred, military, or domestic, which were erected during the age most properly designated as Norman, the æra anterior to the union of the ducal coronet with the crown of France, it has been felt that, in whatever light the publication might be regarded, it would be incomplete without the addition of other buildings of a subsequent period. A farther number of specimens has therefore been admitted, conducting the series through the style of architecture, commonly termed Gothic, down to the time when that style finally disappeared before an Italian model, more or less debased. In the descriptive portion of these volumes, attention has been almost exclusively directed to two points, the historical and the architectural. On the latter of these, so much has been said under each separate article, that whatever might be added in this place could be little more than repetition; and the history of Normandy, from the establishment of the dukedom to the beginning of the thirteenth century, is so interwoven with that of England, that it has been considered needless here to insert an epitome of it, as had at first been intended. In lieu of this, a Table is subjoined, exhibiting the succession, marriages and progeny of the Norman Princes, copied from Du Moulin; and such Table can scarcely be regarded otherwise than useful, as bringing the whole under the eye in a single point of view: a Chronological Index, it is hoped, may in a great measure answer the same purpose as to architecture. It is only justice, however, to add, that, in this Index, much has necessarily been left to conjecture; and, where it is so, the author naturally expects that others will occasionally differ from him in opinion; especially as no opportunity is afforded him of detailing the grounds whereby he has formed his own. Upon the subject most likely to create doubts and difficulties, the very early date assigned to the employment of the pointed arch, he begs the attention of the reader to those authorities, which, in his judgment, warrant the conclusion he has drawn. If mistaken in this, or in any other point, he will be most thankful for correction; and, in the language of that author, who is, as he long has been and probably always will be, more than any other the object of quotation, he takes leave, with the well-known valedictory lines, "Vive, vale; si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum." [Illustration: CHURCH OF QUERQUEVILLE NEAR CHERBOURG] SUBJECTS CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. In the following list, an Obelisk is affixed to the dates which depend upon conjecture. Those preceded by an Asterisk denote the year of the dedication of the building. NO. OF PLATES. DATE. 53. _Rouen_, Crypt in the Church of St. Gervais before + 1000 13. _St. Sauveur le Vicomte_, Castle before + 1000 69. _Lillebonne_, Castle + 1000 48. _Caen_, Chapel in the Castle + 1000 89, 90. _Falaise_, Castle--Keep of + 1000 83. _St. Sanson sur Rille_, Church + 1020 67. _Anisy_, Church + 1030 68. _Perriers_, Church--Nave of + 1030 97. _Cerisy_, Abbey Church 1040 95. _Mount St. Michael_, Abbey Church--Nave of 1048 87, 88. _St. Lo_, Church of the Holy Cross--(some of the sculpture probably of the ninth century) + 1050 1. _Arques_, Castle + 1050 84. _Foullebec_, Western door-way of the Church + 1050 70. _Briquebec_, Castle--(the multangular tower probably of the fourteenth century) + 1050 5-10. _St. Georges de Bocherville_, Abbey Church 1050 92-94. _Coutances_, Cathedral * 1056 17. _Tamerville_, Church + 1060 44-46. _Léry_, Church + 1060 54. _Rouen_, Church of St. Paul + 1060 73-75. _Lisieux_, Church of St. Peter 1060 55, 56. _Caen_, Church of St. Nicholas 1066 24-33. _Ditto_, Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity * 1066 82. _Montivilliers_, Abbey Church--Towers and door-way + 1066 2, 3. _Jumieges_, Abbey Church * 1067 60, 61. _Fontaine-le-Henri_, Church + 1070 21-23. _Caen_, Abbey Church of St. Stephen * 1077 57. _Cheux_, Church + 1080 98. _Oyestraham_, Church + 1080 58, 59. _Bieville_, Church + 1080 * 33. _Caen_, Tombstone of Queen Matilda 1083 37. _Haute Allemagne_, Tower of Church + 1100 16. _Than_, Church + 1100 18. _Caen_, Tower of the Church of St. Michel de Vaucelles + 1100 12. _Grâville_, Church 1100 99, 100. _Séez_, Cathedral * 1126 14. _St. Sauveur le Vicomte_, Abbey Church + 1130 96. _Mount St. Michael_, Knights' Hall 1130 39-41. _Gournay_, Church of St. Hildebert--Interior of the nave, and capitals of columns + 1140 20. _Statue of William the Conqueror_ + 1150 91. _Creully_, Church + 1150 11. _St. Georges de Bocherville_, Sculpture in the Chapter House 1170 42, 43. _Rouen_, Chapel of the Hospital of St. Julien + 1190 80, 81. _Château Gaillard_ 1195 51, 52. _Rouen Cathedral_, West front--Northern Tower 1200 47. _Colomby_, Church + 1200 68. _Perriers_, Church--Choir + 1230 38. _Gournay_, Church of St. Hildebert--West front + 1250 4. _Jumieges_, Entrance to the Knights' Hall + 1280 76. _Rouen_, Church of St. Ouen 1340 71. _Fécamp_, Southern entrance of the Church of St. Stephen + 1340 35. _Dieppe_, Church of St. Jacques--Western front--(the tower probably fifty years earlier) + 1350 72. _Eu_, Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence + 1360 66. _Tréport_, Church 1370 19. _Caen_, South Porch of the Church of St. Michel de Vaucelles + 1380 82. _Montivilliers_, Abbey Church--Chapter-House 1390 36. _Dieppe_, Eastern end of the Church of St. Jacques + 1400 79. _Louviers_, South porch of the Church + 1420 85, 86. _Tancarville_, Castle + 1420 89, 90. _Falaise_, Castle--Talbot's Tower 1430 34. _Dieppe_, Castle + 1450 51, 52. _Rouen Cathedral_, Western front--Southern Tower 1485 95. _Mount St. Michael_, Abbey Church--Choir 1500 78. _Rouen_, Palace of Justice 1500 77. _Ditto_, Fountain of the Stone Cross 1500 68. _Caen_, House in the Rue St. Jean + 1500 62, 63. _Fontaine-le-Henri_, Château + 1500 49, 50. _Rouen Cathedral_, Southern Transept 1500 51, 52. _Ditto_, Western Front--Porch 1509 15. _Andelys_, Great House + 1530 64. _Rouen_, House in the Place de la Pucelle + 1540 PLATES IN THE FIRST VOLUME. PLATE. 1. Castle of Arques to face page 1 2. Abbey Church of Jumieges, West Front 2 3. -- -- -- -- Parts of the Nave 3 4. -- -- -- -- Arch on the West Front 3 5. Abbey Church of St. Georges de Bocherville, West Front 4 6. -- -- -- -- -- -- General View 4 7. -- -- -- -- -- -- West Entrance 5 8. -- -- -- -- -- -- South Transept 5 9. -- -- -- -- -- -- Sculptured Capitals 5 10. -- -- -- -- -- -- Ditto 6 11. -- -- -- -- -- -- Sculptures in the Cloisters 6 12. Church of Grâville 7 13. Castle of St. Sauveur le Vicomte 8 14. Abbey Church of St. Sauveur le Vicomte 11 15. Great House at Andelys 13 16. Church of Than 16 17. Church of Tamerville 17 18. Tower of the Church of St. Michel de Vaucelles, Caen 18 19. North Porch of Ditto 18 20. Statue of William, Duke of Normandy 20 21. \ Abbey Church of St. Etienne, Caen, West Front 21 22. / 23. -- -- -- -- Compartments of the Nave 24 24. Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity, Caen 27 25. -- -- -- -- East End 32 26. -- -- -- -- East End of Interior 32 27. -- -- -- -- North Side of the Choir 32 28. -- -- -- -- Arches under the central Tower 33 29. -- -- -- -- East Side of South Transept 33 30. -- -- -- -- Interior of the Nave 33 31. -- -- -- -- South Side of the Nave 34 32. -- -- -- -- Crypt 34 33. -- -- -- -- Capitals 34 33.* Inscription on the Tomb of Queen Matilda 35 34. Castle of Dieppe 35 35. Church of St. Jacques, at Dieppe, West Front 38 36. -- -- -- -- East End 38 37. Tower of the Church of Haute Allemagne, near Caen 39 38. Collegiate Church of St. Hildebert, at Gournay, West Front 39 39. -- -- -- -- -- -- View across the Nave 41 40. -- -- -- -- -- -- Capitals 42 41. -- -- -- -- -- -- Capitals 42 42. Chapel in the Hospital of St. Julien, near Rouen, South Side 43 43. -- -- -- -- -- -- Interior 44 44. Church of Léry, near Pont de l'Arche, General View 45 45. -- -- -- -- -- West Front 46 46. -- -- -- -- -- Interior 46 47. Elevation of the Church of Colomby, near Valognes 47 48. Chapel in the Castle at Caen 48 49. \ Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, of Rouen, South Transept 50 50. / 51. \ -- -- -- -- -- -- West Front 51 52. / 53. Crypt in the Church of St. Gervais, at Rouen 56 54. Church of St. Paul, at Rouen, East End 57 GENEALOGY OF THE NORMAN DUKES. =============== N. PRINCE OF LOWER DENMARK. | | +----------+-----------+ | | | GOURIN, killed | in Denmark. | 2nd wife, POPPEIA, ROLLO, 1st Duke = 1st wife, GISLA, daughter daughter of Berenger, = of Normandy. of Charles the Simple, Count of the Bessin. | A.D. 911. King of France. | +---+-----------------------+ | | SPROTE, daughter of = WILLIAM, LONGA-SPATHA, GERLOC, wife to the Count of Senlis. | 2nd Duke of Normandy. William, Count of | A.D. 917. Poitiers. +--------+ | 1st wife, EMMA, daughter = RICHARD I. 3rd = 2nd wife, GONNOR, of Hugues le Grand, Duke Duke of Normandy. | originally his of France. A.D. 944. | concubine. | +-----+-----------------+-----------+------+------+-------------+ | | | | | | | ROBERT, MAUGER, EMMA, HAVOISE, MATILDA, | Archbishop of Count of Queen of wife of wife of | Rouen, Count Corbeil. England. Geoffrey, Eudes, | of Evreux. Duke of Count of +---------------------+ Brittany. Chartres. | 2nd wife, = RICHARD II. called = 1st wife, JUDITH, da. PAPHIE, or | THE GOOD, 4th | of Geoffrey, Duke of POPPEA. | Duke of Normandy. | Brittany. | A.D. 996. | +------------+-+ | | | | MAUGER, WILLIAM OF ARQUES, | Archbishop Count of Talou. | of Rouen. | +------------+---------+--------+---+--------+--------+--+ | | | | | | | RICHARD III. WILLIAM, ALICE, ELEANOR, PAPIE, | N. died 5th Duke of Monk at wife of wife of wife | unmarried. Normandy. Fécamp. Rinaldo, Baldwin, of Guibert | A.D. 1026. Count of Count of of St. | | Burgundy. Flanders. Vallery. | | | NICOLAS, Abbot of St. Ouen: and two daughters, one | of them married to Walter of St. Vallery, the other | to the Viscount of Bayeux:--all illegitimate. | +----------------------------+ | ROBERT, 6th = ARLETTE, Duke of | daughter Normandy. | of Foubert, A.D. 1028. | citizen of | Falaise. | WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, = MATILDA, daughter 7th Duke of Normandy, | of Baldwin, Count and King of England. | of Flanders. A.D. 1035. | +-------+-------------+--------------+----+--+------+------+------+-----+ | | | | | | | | | | RICHARD, WILLIAM RUFUS, | CECILIA. | | | | | killed in King of England. | CONSTANCE. | | | | the New | ALICE. | | | Forest. +---------------+ AGATHA. | | | | | N. his = ROBERT, COURT-HOSE, = SIBILLA, | | MISTRESS. | 8th Duke of | daughter | | | Normandy. | of William, | | | A.D. 1087. | Count of | | | | Conversans. | | +--------+------+--------+ +----------------------------+ | | | | | | | | RICHARD, WILLIAM, N. wife to N. da. of Marquis = WILLIAM, | | died from a killed in Hélie de Renier, and sister Count of | | surfeit, in the St. Saen. to the Queen of Flanders. | | hunting. Crusades. France. +------------+ | | | ADELA. = STEPHEN, | | Count of | | Blois. | +------------+----------+---------------------+--+ | | | | | | WILLIAM. THEOBALD, HENRY, STEPHEN, = MATILDA of | Earl of Bishop of King of | Boulogne. | Blois. Winchester. England. | | +---------------+ | | | EUSTACE, 10th Duke of | Normandy. A.D. 1135. | +------------------------------------+ | 1st wife, = HENRY I. King = 2nd wife, MATILDA, da. | of England, ADELIZA, of Malcolm, | and 9th Duke daughter of King of | of Normandy. the Duke of Scotland. | A.D. 1107. Louvain. +---------+-----------------+ | | WILLIAM ADELIN, 1st hus. = MATILDA. = 2nd hus. drowned after his HENRY V. | GEOFFREY, marriage. Emperor. | Count of | Anjou, and | 11th Duke of | Normandy. | A.D. 1143. +-------------------+------------+ | | | ELEANOR, = HENRY PLANTAGENET, GEOFFREY, WILLIAM. Countess of | 12th Count of Poitiers and | Duke of Normandy. Nantes. Duchess of | A.D. 1150: Aquitaine. | Count of Anjou, | Touraine, | and Maine, and King | of England. +-----------++--------------+----------------+-----------+ | | | | | WILLIAM. | RICHARD COEUR- | JOHN LACKLAND, King | DE-LION, King of | of England, 14th MARGARET, = HENRY THE England, and 13th | and last Duke of of France. YOUNG, Duke of Normandy. | Normandy. A.D. 1199. crowned King A.D. 1189. | of England. +-----+ | GEOFFREY, Count = CONSTANCE, of Brittany. | daughter of +----------+ Conan, Duke of | Brittany. | ARTHUR, Duke of Brittany, killed by his uncle John. THE ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY. PLATE I. CASTLE OF ARQUES. [Illustration: Plate 1. CASTLE OF ARQUES.] The town of Arques, situated in the immediate vicinity of Dieppe, is a spot consecrated by the historical muse, and one upon which a Frenchman always dwells with pleasure, as the place that fixed the sceptre in the hands of the most popular monarch of the nation, Henry IV. The sovereign, fleeing from the superior forces of the league, here, in the very confines of his kingdom, finally resolved to make his last stand; urged to the measure by the Marshal de Biron, but doubtful in his own mind, whether it would not be the wisest as well as the safest plan, to seek refuge in the friendly ports of England. Reduced to the utmost extremity, "a king without a kingdom, a husband without a wife, and a warrior without money," he stopped at Arques, in a state bordering upon despair; and yet, when the Count de Belin, who was brought in prisoner shortly before the battle, assured his majesty, that, in two hours, an army of forty thousand men would be upon him, and that he saw no forces there to resist them, the king replied, with that gaity of mind that never forsook him, "You see not all, M. Belin, for you reckon not God, and my just claim, who fight for me." Henry's whole army consisted of only three thousand infantry and six hundred cavalry: the hostile forces amounted to more than thirty thousand, commanded by the Duke of Mayenne, one of the ablest leaders of the league, but the Fabius rather than the Marcellus of the party. The occasion, however, needed the sword rather than the buckler: Henry's soldiers fought with the courage of desperation; but every thing seemed lost, when, according to the account given by Sully, the fog, which had been very thick all the morning, cleared suddenly away, and afforded the garrison in the castle of Arques a full view of the enemy's army, against which they discharged four pieces of artillery with such effect, as to kill great numbers of them. Their progress was thus effectually stopped; and the guns from the castle continuing to play upon them, they were soon thrown into disorder, and retreated to their original position. From this time, the aspect of the king's affairs changed: his well-known laconic epistle to Crillon, "hang thyself, brave Crillon, for we have fought at Arques without thee," shewed his own sense of the important results that might be expected from the battle. The most important of all was, that he was immediately joined by an auxiliary force of four thousand English and Scotch, sent by Queen Elizabeth to his aid; and that, almost immediately afterwards, another, still more considerable reinforcement, was brought him by the Count of Soissons, Henry of Orleans, Duke of Longueville, D'Aumont, and Biron; so that the Duke of Mayenne was obliged to retreat in his turn, and Henry saw himself within a few days under the walls of the capital; in a situation to dictate terms to his rebellious subjects. The castle of Arques had on this occasion essentially served the royal cause; but it seems to have been suffered from that time forwards to fall into decay. All mouldering, however, and ruined as it is, its walls and towers may yet for many centuries bid defiance to wind and weather, unless active measures are used for their demolition. At the revolution the castle became national property, and as such was sold: it has now fallen into the hands of a lady who resides in the neighbouring town. The present plate, which represents the principal entrance, will serve to convey some idea of the general character of the building, as well as of the immense size of the massy towers, and of the crumbling appearance of their surface. Two piers only remain of the draw-bridge, by which they were approached; and the three successive arches of the gateway are torn into little more than shapeless rents. It would be very difficult to convey, by means of any engraving, an adequate idea of the grand character of the whole ruin, or of its imposing situation. Still more difficult would be the attempt to represent its masonry. The walls have certainly been in most places, and probably in all, covered with a facing of brick, of comparatively modern date; and in some parts this facing still remains, or, where it is torn off, nothing but rubble is visible. In other places they appear to have been constructed of alternate layers of brick and flint, disposed with the same regularity as in Roman buildings; and the thin form of these bricks leads also to the impression that they are of Roman workmanship. If such a supposition may be allowed to be well founded, the first establishment of a fortress in this situation is probably but little posterior to the Christian æra; and many antiquarians are disposed to believe that such was really the case. At the same time, even allowing the truth of this surmise in its fullest extent, it is most probable that the Roman castle had fallen into ruin and disuse long before the Norman conquest. Both William of Jumieges and the chronicle of St. Wandrille expressly mention, that William, son to Duke Richard II. received from his nephew, the conqueror, the earldom of Arques, and built a castle there. Other writers ascribe the origin of the fortress to the eighth century, and others to the latter part of the twelfth. Nothing is now left sufficiently perfect to determine the point, nor any thing that can justly be considered decisive of the style of its architecture. The situation of the castle is very bold: it crowns the extremity of a ridge of chalk hills of considerable height, which commencing to the west of Dieppe, and terminating at this spot, have full command of the valley below. The fosse which surrounds the walls is wide and deep. The outline of the fortress is oval, but not regularly so; and it is varied by towers of uncertain shape, placed at unequal distances. The two entrance towers, and those nearest to them to the north and south, are considerably larger than the rest. One of these larger lateral towers[1] is of a most unusual form. It appears as if the original intention of the architect had been to make it circular; but that, changing his design in the middle of his work, he had attached to it a triangular appendage, probably by way of a bastion. Three others adjoining this are square, and indeed appear to partake as much of the character of buttresses as of towers. The castle is internally divided into two wards, the first of which, on entering, is every where rough with the remains of foundations: the inner, which is by far the largest, is approached by a square gate-house with high embattled walls, and contains towards its farther end the quadrangular keep, whose shell alone is standing. The walls of this are of great height: in their perfect state they were carefully faced with large square stones, but these are principally torn away. The crypts beneath the castle are spacious, and may still be traversed for a considerable length. NOTES: [1] See _Account of a Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 37, t. 3. PLATES II. III. IV. ABBEY CHURCH OF JUMIEGES. Before the revolution despoiled France of her monastic institutions, the right bank of the Seine, from Rouen to the British Channel, displayed an almost uninterrupted line of establishments of this nature. Within a space of little more than forty miles, were included the abbeys of St. Wandrille, Jumieges, Ducler, and St. Georges de Bocherville. [Illustration: Plate 2. ABBEY CHURCH OF JUMIEGES. _West Front._] The most illustrious of these was Jumieges; it occupied a delightful situation in a peninsula, formed by the curvature of the stream, where the convent had existed from the reign of Clovis II. and had, with only a temporary interruption, caused by the invasion of the Normans, maintained, for eleven centuries, an even course of renown; celebrated alike for the beauty of its buildings, the extent of its possessions, and the number and sanctity of its inmates. Philibert, second abbot of Rebais, in the diocese of Meaux, was the founder of this monastery. He migrated hither with only a handfull of monks; but the community increased with such surprising rapidity, that in the time of Alcadrus, his immediate successor, the number was already swelled to nine hundred, and, except upon the occasion just mentioned, this amount never appears to have experienced any sensible diminution. The monastery of Jumieges reckoned among its abbots men of the most illustrious families of France. In early times, Hugh, the grandson of Charlemagne, held the pastoral staff: it afterwards passed through the hands of Louis d'Amboise, brother to the cardinal, and of different members of the houses of Clermont, Luxembourg, d'Este, and Bourbon. The abbatial church, as it now stands, (if indeed it does now stand, for in 1818, when drawings were made for these plates, its demolition was proceeding with rapidity,) was chiefly built in the eleventh century, by Robert the Abbot, who was translated from Jumieges to the bishopric of London, and thence to the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury. The western front (_see plate 2_) is supposed to be certainly of that period, and all very nearly of the same æra, though the southern tower is known to be somewhat the most modern. The striking difference in the plan of these towers, might justly lead to the inference, that there was also a material difference in their dates, and that they were not both of them part of the original plan; but there do not appear to be any grounds for such a supposition. On the other hand, the contrary seems to be well established; and those who are best acquainted with the productions of Norman architects, will scarcely be surprised at anomalies of this nature. [Illustration: Plate 3. ABBEY CHURCH OF JUMIEGES. _Parts of the Nave._] The interior of the nave (_plate 3_) is also a work of the same period, except the lofty pillars that support the cornice, and the symbols of the evangelists that are placed near the windows of the clerestory. These were additions made towards the latter end of the seventeenth century. The pillars were rendered necessary by the bad state of the roof: the symbols were added only by way of ornament. They are of beautiful sculpture, and, as such, have lately been engraved upon a larger scale, in an _Account of a Tour in Normandy, in 1818_, (II. p. 27) which work also contains a general view of the ruins of Jumieges, and a representation of some ancient trefoil arches that are very remarkable. Of the square central tower one side only is now remaining. This tower was despoiled of its spire in 1557. The Choir and Lady-Chapel are almost entirely gone. They were of pointed architecture; and it appears that they were erected during some of the latter years of the thirteenth century, or at the commencement of the fourteenth. In the Lady-Chapel lay the heart of Agnes Sorel, who died at the neighbouring village of Mesnil, on the ninth of February, 1450, while her royal lover, Charles VII. was residing at Jumieges, intent upon the siege of Honfleur. Her body was interred in the collegiate church of Loches in Touraine. Upon her monument at Jumieges was originally placed her effigy, in the act of offering her heart to the Virgin. But this statue was destroyed by the Huguenots, who are said to have been guilty of the most culpable excesses in this monastery. Agnes' tomb remained till the revolution, when it was swept away with all the rest, and, among others, with one of great historical curiosity in the neighbouring church dedicated to St. Peter; for the convent of Jumieges contained two churches, the larger under the invocation of the Holy Virgin, and a smaller by its side, sacred to the chief of the apostles. The tomb here alluded to was called by the name of _le tombeau des Enerves_, or _de Gemellis_; and so much importance was attached to it, that it has even been supposed that the Latin name of Jumieges, _Gemeticum_, was a corruption from the word _gemellis_. Upon the monument were figures of two young noblemen, intended, as it is said, to represent twin sons of Clovis and Bathilda, who, for sedition, were punished by being hamstrung and confined in this monastery. [Illustration: Plate 4. ABBEY OF JUMIEGES. _Arch on the West Front._] The third plate of Jumieges, which is copied from a drawing by Miss Elizabeth Turner, represents a noble arch-way, the entrance to a porch that leads to a gallery adjoining the former cloisters, and known by the name of the _Knight's Hall_. It is a remarkably fine specimen of a very early pointed arch, still preserving all the ornaments of the semi-circular style, and displaying them in great richness and beauty. There is no authority for the date of this gallery: nor does it appear that any historical record is preserved respecting it. The style of the architecture would lead to the referring of it, without much hesitation, to the latter part of the thirteenth century. PLATES V.-XI. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. [Illustration: Plate 5. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _West Front._] In a work like the present, devoted expressly to the elucidation of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, and more particularly intended to illustrate that style of architecture which prevailed during the time when the province was governed by its own Dukes, it has appeared desirable to select one or two objects, and to exhibit them, as far as possible, in their various details. Under this idea, the abbey church of St. Georges de Bocherville has been taken from the upper division of the province, and that of the Holy Trinity at Caen from the lower. Both of these are noble edifices; both are in nearly the same state in which they were left by the Norman architects; and both of them are buildings whose dates may be cited with positive certainty. The abbey of St. Georges was situated upon an eminence on the right bank of the Seine, two leagues below Rouen. It owed its origin to Ralph de Tancarville, lord of the village, about the year 1050. A rage for the building and endowing of monastic establishments prevailed at that period throughout Normandy; and this nobleman, who had been the preceptor to Duke William in his youth, and was afterwards his chamberlain, unwilling to be outdone by his compeers in deeds of piety and magnificence, founded this monastery and built the church in honor of the Virgin and St. George. Both the conqueror and his queen assisted the pious labour by endowments to the convent; and Ordericus Vitalis relates how, upon the decease of the monarch, the monks of St. Gervais, at Rouen, where he died, made a solemn procession to the church of St. Georges de Bocherville, there to offer up their prayers for the soul of their departed sovereign. At the revolution the abbatial church was fortunate enough to become parochial, and it thus escaped the ruin in which nearly the whole of the monastic buildings throughout France were at that time involved. Its previous good fortune in having been so very little exposed to injury or to alteration, is even more to be wondered at. [Illustration: Plate 6. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _General view._] The general view of the church, (_plate 6_) for the drawing of which the author is indebted to Miss Elizabeth Turner, is calculated to convey a faithful idea of the effect of the whole. Whatever is here seen is purely Norman, except the spire; and upon the subject of spires antiquaries are far from being agreed: some regarding them as a comparatively modern invention, while others, on the contrary, believe that the use of them may be traced to a very remote period. The semi-circular east end, with a roof of high pitch, the windows separated by shallow buttresses, or by slender cylindrical pillars, and the grotesque corbel-table, are, all of them, characteristics of the early Norman style: a greater peculiarity of the present building, and one indeed that is found in but few others, lies in the small semi-circular chapels attached to the sides of the transepts. The west front (_plate 5_) exhibits a deviation from the general style of the church, in the two towers with which it is flanked. The shape of the arches in these plainly indicates a later æra; but they are early instances of pointed architecture. The grand entrance is displayed upon a larger scale in the seventh plate. The ornaments to this door-way are rich and varied, and there are but few finer portals in Normandy. But in specimens of this description the duchy is far from being able to bear a comparison with England. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to assign a satisfactory reason for this circumstance; and yet the fact is so obvious, that it cannot fail to have occurred to every one who has paid any attention to the architecture of the two countries. In the interior of the church there is scarcely an architectural anomaly to be discovered. The only alterations are those which were rendered necessary by the injuries done to the building in the religious wars, during the sixteenth century; and the repairs on that occasion extended only to a portion of the roof, and of the upper part of the wall on the south side of the nave. As a satisfactory specimen of the character of the whole of the inside, the south transept has been selected for the subject of the eighth plate. In this, however, as well as in the opposite one, there is a peculiarity which requires to be noticed; that, within the church, at the distance of a few feet from the end wall, is placed a column, from which an arch springs on either side, occupying the whole width of the transept, and thus forming an open screen. The screen terminates, above, in a plain flat wall, which is carried to but a very short distance higher than the arches, so as to be nearly on a line with the triforium. The same arrangement exists also in some other churches in Normandy; as in that of the royal abbey of St. Stephen at Caen, in the abbey church at Cerisy, in the abbey church at Fécamp, and in the cathedral at Séez. In the two last mentioned buildings, it is found connected with the pointed architecture. At Cerisy, a church, erected A.D. 1030, by Robert, father to the Conqueror, the screen is surmounted by a row of seventeen semi-circular arches, which rise to about half the height of the columns of the triforium, and form an elegant parapet. It is possible that there may have been originally some decoration of the same kind at St. Georges. At Fécamp, the screen is carried up to the roof by three tiers, each consisting of three arches; and the recess thus made, is still used as a chapel, having an altar at the east end, and, in the centre, an ancient font. Such may have been originally the case at St. Georges; and thus we may account for the small semi-circular additions to the transepts, one of which is visible in the general view of the church. Mr. Cotman, however, suggests another idea, which may have entered into the mind of the architect of St. Georges; that, by means of this screen at the end of the transepts, the aisles of the nave would receive apparent length; from the columns, which form the screen, ranging in a line with those of the outer walls of the church. Among our English ecclesiastical buildings, there are similar screens in the transepts of Winchester cathedral[2], where the portion of the church that remains in its original state, greatly resembles, in its architecture, the church of St. Georges de Bocherville, and is known to have been erected at nearly the same date[3]. [Illustration: Plate 7. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _West entrance._] [Illustration: Plate 8. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _South Transept._] [Illustration: Plate 9. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _Sculptured Capitals._] Within the spandrils of the arches, just mentioned, are two highly curious bas-reliefs, figured here in the _tenth plate_, and marked A and B. They are on square tablets, cut out of the solid stone, in the same manner as the blocks of a stone engraving; the rims being left elevated, so as to form rude frames. One of them represents a prelate, who holds a crozier in his left hand, while the first two fingers of the right are elevated in the action of giving the blessing. Below him are two small heads; but it would be as difficult to conjecture what they are intended to typify, or why they are placed there, as it would be to state the meaning of the artist, in having represented the whole of his vestment as composed of parallel diagonal lines. In the opposite bas-relief, are seen two knights on horseback, in the act of jousting; as rude a piece of sculpture, especially with respect to the size and form of the steeds, as can well be imagined; and yet it possesses a degree of spirit, worthy of a better age. The shields of the riders are oblong; their tilting spears pointless; their conical helmets terminate in a nasal below, like the figures in the Bayeux tapestry. "This coincidence," as has been observed elsewhere[4], "is interesting, as deciding a point of some moment towards establishing the antiquity of that celebrated relic, by setting it beyond a doubt, that such helmets were used anterior to the conquest; for it is certain, that these basso-relievos are coeval with the building that contains them." The nave of the church of St. Georges is, in its height, divided into three compartments: the lowest consists of a row of square, massy piers, varied only by a few small columns attached to their angles, and connected by wide arches, which are generally without any other ornament than plain fluted mouldings; the second compartment, or triforium, is composed of a uniform series of small arches, broken, at intervals, by the truncated columns; which, supporting the groinings of the roof above, terminate abruptly below, nearly upon a level with the capitals of the lowest arches; in the clerestory, the arches are also simple and unornamented; their size nearly intermediate between those of the first and second tiers. It is almost needless to mention, that, in a perfect building, of such a date, the whole of the arches are semi-circular. The same is equally the case in the choir; but this part of the edifice is considerably richer in its architectural decorations; and the noble arch, which separates it from the nave, is surrounded with a broad band of the embattled moulding, inclosing two others of the chevron moulding. A string-course, of unusual size, formed of what is called the cable ornament, goes round the whole interior of the building. The general effect of the semi-circular east end, shews a striking resemblance between the church of St. Georges and Norwich cathedral; and those who take pleasure in researches of this description, will do well to trace the points of similarity through other parts of the edifices. The two kingdoms can scarcely boast more noble, or more perfect buildings, of the Norman style; and there is the farther advantage, that the difference between the periods of their respective erection is but small. Our English cathedral rose in the early part of the reign of William Rufus, when his follower, Herbert de Losinga, who, not content with having purchased the bishopric for £1900, bought also the abbacy of Winchester for his father, for £1000, was cited before the Pope for this double act of simony, and, with difficulty, retained his mitre, upon the condition of building sundry churches and monasteries. Norwich has, indeed, a superiority in its tower, in regard to which, it may safely be put in competition with any edifice of the same style, in Normandy or in England. For beauty, richness, variety, and purity of ornament, there is nothing like it. On the other hand, Norwich has undergone various alterations, as well in its interior, as its exterior[5], and it has no decoration of the same description comparable with the capitals in the church of St. Georges. These are so curious, that it has been thought right to devote to them the _ninth_ and _tenth plates_ of this work[6]. The capitals near the west end of the church, are comparatively simple: they become considerably more elaborate on advancing towards the choir; and it is most interesting to observe in them, how the Norman architects appear, in some instances, to have been intent upon copying the Roman model, or even adding to it a luxury of ornament, which it never knew, yet still preserving a classical feeling and a style of beauty, of which the proudest ages of architecture need not be ashamed; while, in other cases, the rudeness of the design and execution is such, that it can scarcely be conceived, but that they were executed by a barbarous people, just emerged from their hyperborean woods, and equally strangers to the cultivation of art, and the finer feelings of humanity. And yet, even in some of those of the latter description, attentive observation may lead to traces of classical fables, or representations of the holy mysteries of Christianity. Thus, one of the capitals[7] seems designed to portray the good Shepherd and the Lamb; another[8] appears to allude to the battle between the followers of Æneas and the Harpies. It would not, perhaps, be going too far, to say, that many of the others have reference to the northern mythology, and some of them, probably, to Scandinavian history. [Illustration: Plate 10. CAPITALS IN THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE.] [Illustration: Plate 11. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. GEORGES DE BOCHERVILLE. _Sculpture in the Cloisters._] In the chapter-house, which stands between the church and the monastic buildings, the capitals are decidedly historical, and exhibit an apparent connection very unusual in similar cases. The _eleventh plate_ contains some of these[9]. Another, and of the greatest curiosity, now lost, has been etched in Mr. Turner's _Tour in Normandy_, from a drawing by M. Langlois, a very able and indefatigable artist of Rouen. It represents a series of royal minstrels, playing upon different musical instruments. This part of the building is known to have been erected towards the close of the twelfth century, and is consequently an hundred years posterior to the church. It is now extremely dilapidated, and employed as a mill. The capitals here figured, are taken from three arches that formed the western front. The sculpture in the upper line, and in a portion of the second, most probably refers to some of the legends of Norman story: the remainder seems intended to represent the miraculous passage of Jordan and the capture of Jericho, by the Israelites, under the command of Joshua. The detached moulding on the same plate, is copied from the archivolt of one of these arches: the style of its ornament is altogether peculiar. To the pillars that support the same arches, are attached whole-length figures, in high relief, of less than the natural size. Two of them represent females; the third, a man; and one of the former has her hair disposed in long braided tresses, that reach on either side to a girdle. All of them hold labels with inscriptions, which fall down to their feet in front. The braided locks, and the general style of sculpture, shew a resemblance between these statues and those on the portals of the churches of St. Denys and Chartres, as well as those which stood formerly at the entrance of St. Germain des Prés, at Paris, all which are figured by Montfaucon, in his _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_, and by him referred to the sovereigns of the Merovingian dynasty; but have been believed, by subsequent writers, to be the productions of the eleventh or twelfth century, an opinion which the statues at St. Georges may be considered to confirm. NOTES: [2] See _Britton's Winchester Cathedral_, ground plan and plate 12. [3] _Milner's Winchester_, I. p. 194.--Other authors, I am well aware, and those of great weight, have said much with regard to the _Saxon work_ at Winchester; but, though I have examined the building itself, and the various publications respecting it, with some care, I confess I have met with no portion that did not appear to me to be truly Norman. [4] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 10. [5] The complete uniformity of style throughout the church of St. Georges, joined to the absence of all screens or other objects whatever, that might intercept the sight from west to east, produces an effect, not only grand, but altogether deceptive. It is impossible not to admit the superior judgment of the French, in thus keeping their religious edifices free from incumbrances; it is scarcely possible, too, not to feel persuaded, that the Norman church is larger than the English, though their respective dimensions are in reality as follows: NORWICH. ST. GEORGES. Length of nave 200 feet 135 feet -------- choir 183 92 -------- transepts 180 102 Width of the nave with aisles 70 64-1/2 [6] In the former of these plates, the capitals, marked Nos. 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 12, are taken from the exterior of the east end; Nos. 2, 6, and 7, from the nave; and Nos. 3, 4, and 11, from the door-way. In the latter plate, the exterior of the east end has supplied Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10; the nave, Nos. 4 and 9; and the door-way, No. 5. [7] Plate 10, No. 8. [8] Plate 10, No. 5. [9] It may be well to remark, that this plate contains five capitals, the extent of each of which may be distinguished by the small crosses above. PLATE XII. CHURCH OF GRÂVILLE. (END OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT.) [Illustration: Plate 12. CHURCH OF GRÂVILLE.] The church of Grâville, like that of St. Georges de Bocherville, though now parochial, was, before the revolution, monastic, being attached to the priory of the same name, beautifully situated on an eminence near the mouth of the Seine, at the distance of half a league from Havre de Grâce. The origin of this monastery is referred, in the _Neustria Pia_[10], to about the year 1100; but nothing is known with certainty respecting it till 1203, when Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, confirmed, by his approbation, the foundation of regular canons established here by William Malet, lord of the village, which is called in the Latin of those times, _Girardi Villa_, or _Geraldi Villa_. The modern name of Grâville is supposed to be an abbreviation of these. The canons thus fixed here, had been brought from St. Barbe in Auge, and were endowed by the founder with all the lands he possessed in Normandy and England. By subsequent deeds, one of them dated as late as the end of the fifteenth century, different members of the same family continued their donations to the priory. The last mentioned was Louis Malet, admiral of France, whose name is also to be found among the benefactors to Rouen cathedral, as having given a great bell of six hundred and sixty-six pounds weight, which, previously to the revolution, hung in the central tower. William Malet, the founder of Grâville, was one of the Norman chieftains who fought under the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings[11]; and he is said to have been selected by his prince, on that occasion, to take charge of the body of Harold, and see it decently interred. Writers, however, are not agreed upon this point: Knighton, on the authority of Giraldus Cambrensis, asserts that, though Harold fell in the battle, he was not slain; but, escaping, retired to a cell near St. John's church, in Chester, and died there an anchoret, as was owned by himself in his last confession, when he lay dying; in memory whereof, they shewed his tomb when Knighton wrote. Rapin, on the other hand, in his _History of England_ observes, that an ancient manuscript in the Cottonian library, relates, "that the king's body was hard to be known, by reason of its being covered with wounds; but that, it was at last discovered by one who had been his mistress, by means of certain private marks, known only to herself; whereupon the duke sent the body to his mother without ransom, though she is said to have offered him its weight in gold." Nearly the same story is told in the _Gesta Gulielmi Ductis_[12], written by William, archdeacon of Lisieux, a contemporary author. Ordericus Vitalis[13] mentions William Malet two years afterwards, as commanding the Conqueror's forces in York, when besieged by the Danes and a large body of confederates, under the command of Edgar Atheling and other chieftains; and we find that his son, Robert, received from the same king, the honor of Eye, in Suffolk, together with two hundred and twenty-one lordships in the same county; and many others in Hampshire, Essex, Lincoln, Nottingham, and York. This Robert held the office of great chamberlain of England, in the beginning of the reign of Henry I; but, only in the second year of it, he attached himself to the cause of Robert Curthose, for which he was disinherited and banished. With him appears to have ended the greatness of the family, in England. The church of Grâville was dedicated to St. Honorina, a virgin martyr, whose relics were preserved there in the times anterior to the Norman invasion; but were then transported to Conflans upon the Marne. Peter de Natalibus, copious as he is in his Hagiology, has no notice of Honorina, whose influence was nevertheless most extraordinary in releasing prisoners from fetters; and whose altars were accordingly hung round with an abundance of chains and instruments of torture. The author of the _Neustria Pia_, who attests many of her miracles of this description, relates, that her sanctity extended even to the horse which she rode, insomuch, that, when the body of the beast was thrown, after its death, as carrion to the dogs, they all refused to touch it; and the monks, in commemoration of the miracle, employed the skin for a covering to the church door, where it remained till the middle of the seventeenth century. Except towards the west end, which is in ruins, and has quite lost the portal and towers that flanked it, the church of Grâville still continues tolerably entire: in its style and general outline, but particularly in its central tower and spire, it bears a considerable resemblance to that of St. Georges de Bocherville. Architecturally regarded, however, it is very inferior to that noble edifice; but the end of the north transept, selected for the subject of the present plate, will, in point of interest, scarcely yield to any other building in Normandy. The row of sculptures immediately above the windows, is probably unique: among them is the Sagittary, very distinctly portrayed; and near him, an animal, probably designed for a horse, whose tail ends in a decided fleur-de-lys, while he holds in his mouth what appears intended to represent another. The figure of the Sagittary is also repeated upon one of the capitals of the nave, which are altogether of the same style of art, as the most barbarous at St. Georges, and not less fanciful. The interlaced arches, with flat surfaces, that inclose the windows immediately beneath the sculptures, may be matched by similar rows in the exterior of the abbey church of St. Stephen, at Caen, and on the end of the north transept of Norwich cathedral. It appears likewise, from Mr. Carter's work on _Early English Architecture_, (_plate 23_) that others, resembling them, line the lowest story of the east end of Tickencote church, in Rutlandshire. This circumstance is the rather mentioned here, as that able antiquary regards the church as a specimen of true Saxon architecture; whereas it may safely be affirmed, that there is no part of it, as figured by him, but may be exactly paralleled from Normandy. The same may also be said of almost every individual instance that he has produced as illustrations of the style in use among our Saxon progenitors. In Grâville, a series of similar arches is continued along the west side of the north transept; and, judging from the general appearance of the church, it may be believed that it is of a prior date to any of the others just mentioned. A considerable portion of the monastic buildings is still remaining; but they are comparatively modern.--A lithographic plate of this monastery was published at Paris, by Bourgeois, in 1818. NOTES: [10] P. 861. [11] _Bankes' Extinct Peerage_, I. p. 126. [12] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 204. [13] Ibid. p. 512. PLATE XIII. CASTLE OF ST. SAUVEUR LE VICOMTE.[14] The origin of the castle, here figured, is coeval with the establishment of the Normans, in the province which now bears their name. The inventory of the ancient barony of St. Sauveur, shews that, in 912, the year when Charles the Simple ceded Normandy to Rollo, the new duke granted this great lordship, under the common obligations of feudal tenure, to Richard, one of the principal chieftains who had attended him from Norway. In 913, Richard founded in his castle a chapel, which, in the following year, was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, by Herbert, Bishop of Coutances. Many of the descendants of Richard bore the name of Néel; and it was upon the first of those so called, that Duke William Longue Epée conferred the title of viscount, about the year 938. In 998, Richard, the second of that name, established in his castle of St. Sauveur, with the sanction of Hugh, Bishop of Coutances, a collegiate church, consisting of four prebends. At the beginning of the reign of William the Conqueror, Néel de St. Sauveur took up arms against the disputed title of that sovereign, in consequence of which, his lands were confiscated, and he himself compelled to seek an asylum in Brittany. This is supposed to have happened in 1047; but the anger of the offended duke was short-lived; for the very next year, there is an account of William's restoring to Néel the lordship of St. Sauveur, "in consideration of the services he had rendered him." The same lenity, however, was not shewn with regard to Néel's lordship of Nehou; for this was permanently alienated, and was granted to the family of Riviers, or Redvers, who, some years afterwards, became powerful in England, where they had a grant of the Isle of Wight, in fee, and were created, by Henry I. Earls of Devonshire. The collegiate church, founded in the castle of St. Sauveur during the preceding century, was suppressed in 1048, on account of some umbrage taken by the chieftain at the conduct of the canons; and he established, in their room, a convent of Benedictines, whose successors, removing without the precincts of the fortress, erected the abbey, the subject of the following plate. [Illustration: Plate 13. CASTLE OF ST. SAUVEUR LE VICOMTE.] The name of St. Sauveur is to be found in the list of officers who accompanied the Conqueror to England; and the records of those times also preserve the remembrance of one Néel, who was slain at Cardiff, in 1078. The troops, however, of the Côtentin, were at the conquest, commanded by Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother to the duke, who, most probably, was indebted to this near degree of relationship for so proud a mark of distinction. The family of Néel did not retain much longer possession of St. Sauveur: the lord of the castle died in 1092, leaving only a daughter, named Lætitia, who married Jourdain Taisson, or Tesson, and brought to him these possessions as her dowry. After the expiration of about a century, a similar event deprived the Taissons of St. Sauveur. Jane, the last of that family, formed an alliance with the Harcourts, and with them the lordship remained till the middle of the fourteenth century, when the domains of Géoffroy d'Harcourt were confiscated for felony, and the castle would have passed into the hands of a new master, had not the successes of our sovereign, Edward III. interfered, and stopped the effects of the confiscation. History, from this time forward, speaks more decidedly as to the strength of the fortress: at the time of the battle of Poitiers, Géoffroy d'Harcourt maintained himself here, at the head of a numerous garrison, composed of troops from England and Navarre, and, not only bade defiance to the superior force of the French generals, but extended his ravages over the whole of Lower Normandy. The abbey of Lessay, and cathedral of Coutances, particularly suffered from his attacks. To the latter, he had actually laid siege, when a detachment sent against him, by the regent and the states of the kingdom, obliged him to turn his attention homeward; and his forces were defeated, and himself slain. The castle, on this occasion, afforded safe shelter to the fugitives; and, in consequence of Harcourt's death, passing into the hands of the King of England, was, by him, supplied with a garrison of four hundred men, under the command of Jehan Lisle, and was almost immediately afterwards bestowed, by Edward, upon Sir John Chandos, as a reward for his eminent services. The fortifications, under the care of this able captain, underwent a thorough repair in the year 1360; and it is believed that, upon this occasion, the keep was principally, if not altogether, rebuilt; the same broad square tower, which is now standing, and is the principal feature in the ruins. The labor thus bestowed upon St. Sauveur, rendered it one of the principal posts of the duchy. Rymer, by whom it is repeatedly mentioned, expressly states, that our countrymen maintained in it a numerous garrison, who, after the battle of Auray, lorded it without restraint over the neighboring parts, and were guilty of such excesses, that, in 1374, Charles V. then King of France, was induced to send against them a powerful armament, both by sea and land, under Sir John of Vienne, admiral of the kingdom, assisted by all the barons and knights of Brittany and Normandy. St. Sauveur was, at that time, in the hands of Sir Aleyne Boxhull, to whom Edward had given it, after the death of Sir John Chandos; but he, himself, was then in England; and, according to Froissart[15], he had left there as governor a squire, called Carenton, or Katrington, with Sir Thomas Cornet, John de Burgh, and the three brothers Maulevriers, with whom there might be about six score companions, all armed, and ready for defence. This handful of men made a long and obstinate resistance, which, at length, terminated in a truce for six weeks, accompanied with a stipulation, that, unless previously relieved, the fortress should be surrendered upon a certain day of July, 1375. The time came; no relief arrived; and the French took possession of St. Sauveur; though not without many remonstrances on the part of the besieged, who contended, that the treaty of Bruges, which had been signed in the interim by the two sovereigns, and had established a general truce, ought also to have the effect of superseding all partial treaties. Mention is made, upon this occasion, of a considerable sum of money, which was to be paid to the garrison, upon their evacuating the castle. The fact, though unnoticed by Froissart and Holinshed, could not but have been notorious; for it appears, that John of Vienne assembled the three states of the province at Bayeux, for the purpose of raising the money; and Rymer tells us, that the papal legates were appointed by the respective parties, as depositaries, both of the money and the castle, till all the stipulations should be fulfilled. In this circumstance, we find an explanation of the death of Katrington, on which Holinshed dwells at considerable length, giving a most curious and interesting account of the circumstances attending it[16]. Sir John Anneslie, who had married the niece of Sir John Chandos, and, on that account, claimed the inheritance of St. Sauveur, with the lands appertaining to the castle, charged Katrington with treason, in the matter of the surrender; and, after considerable difficulties, prevailed upon King Richard II in the third year of his reign, to suffer the point to be established by single combat. The event of the contest was considered to make good the charge. According to Holinshed, Katrington, who was a very strong man, while his adversary was much the contrary, was so grievously wounded in the fight, that he died the following day. Dugdale and Fabian, however, state, that he was dragged to Tyburn, and there hanged for his treason. The King of France, upon recovering possession of St. Sauveur, conferred the lordship upon Bureau de la Riviere, his chamberlain: from him, it passed, in 1392, into the hands of John Charles, Lord of Evry, who still held it in 1417, when our King Henry once more brought it under the sway of the English sceptre. During the succeeding unfortunate reign, this castle shared, in 1450, the fate of all the other British possessions in Normandy; and, like most of the rest, it offered but a feeble resistance to the victorious arms of France. A few days' siege was sufficient to induce its garrison, of two hundred men, to surrender, what the contemporary historians admit to have been one of the finest and strongest places in the duchy. St. Sauveur, from this time, is no longer celebrated in history, as a fortress; nor, indeed, does it even appear to be mentioned as such, except in the Memoirs of Marshal de Matignon, where a demand is stated to have been made for thirty men to garrison it. In all probability, the change produced in the art of warfare, by the introduction of cannon, caused it silently to pass into insignificance, and then gradually to sink into its present wretched state of dilapidation. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, an hospital was established within its walls; and the same still subsists, but in great poverty, in consequence of the funds having been alienated, or lost, during the revolution. Of the ancient fortifications of the castle, the greater part exists, either entire, or sufficiently so to be traced. The most important of all, the keep, is perfect in its exterior, but has been so completely gutted within, that the original situation of the floors and beams is not to be discovered without difficulty. The two ballia likewise remain: the larger, which defended the keep; the lesser, in the form of a crescent, designed to oppose the approach of an enemy on the side of the town. Towards the north, the small river, the Ouve, formed a natural defence. On the south, are still to be seen two gates, of which, that leading to the dungeon was considerably the stronger. It was defended by the works, commonly employed from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, for the protection of the entrances to fortresses; and, under it, there yet remain, on either side, freestone seats, designed for the guard, capable of containing from fifteen to twenty persons. The rest of the outworks, which were many, have now disappeared; but people are still living in the town, who remember to have seen the fosses filled with water. At present they are obliterated; and their site is occupied by houses and gardens. The following is a list of the lords of St. Sauveur, from the year 1450, to the revolution.--Charles VII. when first he wrested the castle from the English, conferred it, together with its extensive domain, upon Andrew de Villequier, and his heirs male; and it remained in this family till 1536, when, from default of such heirs, it reverted to the crown, and was kept in the hands of Francis I. and his successors, till 1572. At that time Charles IX. granted it to Christopher de Bassompierre, from whom it passed to Francis de Bassompierre, Marshal of France. In 1612, it again returned to the throne, then filled by Mary of Medicis, widow of Henry IV. whose son, Louis XIII. alienated it in 1620, to John Phélipeaux de Villesavey, and he held it till 1631. After him, the families of De la Guiche and Géran were, for thirty-eight years, possessors of St. Sauveur. At the expiration of this term, the lordship became once more incorporated in the royal domain, till Louis XIV. in 1698, conferred it upon his natural son, the Count of Toulouse, whose son, Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duc de Penthievre, succeeded to it, by inheritance, in 1727. He shortly after gave it, in part of her portion, to his daughter, who married Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres; and it thenceforward continued in the possession of the Orleans family, till the period of the revolution. NOTES: [14] The author has to express his acknowledgments, and he begs to do it in the strongest terms, to the kindness of M. de Gerville of Valognes, for very many communications towards the furtherance of this work; but particularly for those relating to the church and abbey of St. Sauveur le Vicomte, which have been so copious, that little has been necessary, but to translate them into English. [15] _Johnes' Translation_, octavo edit. IV. p. 268. [16] Quarto edit. II. p. 726. PLATE XIV. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. SAUVEUR LE VICOMTE. (NORTH-EAST VIEW.) [Illustration: Plate 14. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. SAUVEUR LE VICOMTE.] The remains of the abbey of St. Sauveur le Vicomte, are situated within a very short distance of the castle of the same name, in the department of La Manche, near the western extremity of Normandy, about eighteen miles south of Valognes, and fifty north of Coutances. The addition of the term _Vicomte_, to the appellation of this domain, may have been owing to a two-fold cause;--to denote the importance of its possessor, and to distinguish the monastery from other religious establishments in the duchy, also dedicated to the Holy Savior, especially from the nunnery of St. Sauveur, at Evreux. It has been necessary, under the preceding article, briefly to allude to the establishment of this convent, which took its rise from the collegiate church, founded in the year 998, in the castle of St. Sauveur, by Richard Néel, the second viscount; a foundation, which, only fifty years afterwards, was suppressed, and replaced by a society of Benedictines from Jumieges. Changes of this description were by no means unfrequent in those unsettled times: indeed, regarding the character of the chieftains and the clergy, it is rather matter of surprise, that they did not occur more commonly; and greater astonishment may be entertained at the Viscount of St. Sauveur having suffered a body of men, naturally imperious, and necessarily guided by interests different from his own, to remain about a century under his roof, than to find him afterwards removing them to the spot which they subsequently continued to occupy. The original charter, granted by Néel to the monks from Jumieges, is preserved among the documents in the _Gallia Christiana_. His brother, Roger, is said to have superintended the erection of the new monastery, in which pious task, he was assisted by Lætitia, his niece, sole heiress of Néel, and now married to Jourdain Taisson, who had, in her right, become lord of St. Sauveur. This Jourdain, with his wife, and their three sons, was present at the dedication of the church; so that the building of it may safely be referred to the early part of the twelfth century. M. de Gerville, upon the authority of the Memoirs of the Harcourt Family, states, that some of these latter also assisted in the construction; and yet he is unwilling to admit that any portion of it was erected in the following century, when the Harcourts became possessed of the domain. He contends, that "the whole style of the building indicates a period approaching the year 1100; at which time the struggle existed between the pointed and the semi-circular architecture." Setting aside the long-contested question concerning the date of the introduction of the pointed arch, I cannot help, for my own part, suspecting, that the Lady-Chapel was a subsequent erection, and, probably, of the æra of the Harcourts. Its narrow trefoil-headed windows above, and the plainer ones below, seem decisively to indicate such a period; and the deep buttresses afford another, not less positive, mark. The lower part of this portion of the church, exhibits an architectural peculiarity deserving of notice: the wall is considerably widest, where it unites with the ground; after which, it gradually decreases in size, by successive tiers, for a few feet upwards, and then it rises perpendicularly. What remains of the western portal, is of the earlier style. It was entered by a semi-circular arch, bordered by a fillet of the nail-head moulding. In the nave, the lower arches, with the columns and their capitals, as well as the false row of arches in the triforium, are wholly Norman; while the windows of the clerestory and their accompanying ornaments, are as completely gothic. The transepts and the choir shew a similar medley. The Harcourts, who held St. Sauveur till the middle of the fourteenth century, bestowed much pains upon the preservation of the abbey; but the last of this noble family was scarcely dead, when the convent was exposed to all the calamities of war. It was repeatedly pillaged by the contending parties, and was finally almost destroyed by the orders of King Edward III. who foreseeing, from the unfortunate complexion of affairs, that the French would be likely soon to besiege the castle, was desirous at least to deprive them of the advantage they might derive from having possession of the monastery. The heterogeneous character of the architecture of the church, is attributable to the injuries received on this occasion, and to those inflicted during the wars in the following century. The lower portion of the building, most probably, remained for a considerable length of time in the same ruined and neglected state in which it had been left after the execution of the orders of Edward III.; the clerestory and arches above, were not added till the return of a tranquil æra. Indeed, it is matter of historical notoriety, that the finances of the monastery were, at this period, in the same state of dilapidation as the walls; insomuch, that Thomas du Bigard, who was elected abbot in 1376, and held the post for fourteen years, lay all that time under a papal interdict for the non-payment of his annats; nor did his successor, Denis Loquet, venture to accept the crozier, till he had made a journey to Avignon, and obtained, from Clement VII. the remission of what was due, as well on the election of his predecessor, as on his own. In 1422, the official of Valognes was charged by the three states of Normandy, assembled at Vernon, with the consent of the Duke of Bedford, to make inquiry into the losses sustained by the abbey. His report upon the subject is a curious historical document, little known, and, unfortunately, nearly twenty feet long. M. de Gerville has kindly supplied the following extracts from it. "Sylvester de la Cervelle, Yvon de Galles, and Bertrand de Glesquin, were, with the admiral, John de Vienne, in command of the army, at the siege of the castle of St. Sauveur, A.D. 1375.--The English had, previously to the siege, destroyed the abbey and the adjacent buildings, lest their enemies should establish themselves there, and annoy them.--The monks of St. Sauveur had, at first, taken refuge in the abbey of the Vow, near Cherbourg, and afterwards in Jersey, where the convent had some property: certain among them had also retired to foreign monasteries, there to seek a subsistence, which their own could no longer afford them.--At their return, the abbot and the clergy found their buildings destroyed; and, at the period of the inquisition, notwithstanding all their efforts and the money they could raise, they were still obliged to celebrate divine service in the refectory.--The monks and abbot, who had sought shelter at Jersey, had been obliged to quit that retreat, because the King of England put their property there under sequestration.--Those who returned first to the monastery, built themselves sheds against a wall, and there made a fire to dress, their victuals, while, for lodging-places, they had recourse to some vaults that were still left.--So great was their poverty, that it is stated by one of the witnesses, in his deposition, that they had not wherewithal to buy _peciam mutonis vel aliarum carnium_.--Another deposes that, during the siege, the French fired with such violence at one of the towers, that it was destroyed, _fueruntque combustæ novæ campanæ, quarum una habebat octo buccellos ad mensuram Sti. Salvatoris_." After the final expulsion of the English, John Caillot, who was appointed abbot in 1451, "rebuilt," to use the words of the _Gallia Christiana_, the monastery destroyed by our countrymen; and the credit must be given him of having endeavoured to make his additions in a style conformable to the original. But the difference in the workmanship is obvious to the eye; and various ornaments have been added, inconsistent with the simplicity of early times. The length of the church was about two hundred French feet.--A list of forty-three abbots is given in the _Gallia Christiana_;[17] and, from the time of the publication of that work, till the breaking out of the revolution, there were two others, of whom M. de Nicolai was the last. NOTES: [17] XI. p. 923. PLATE XV. HOUSE AT GREAT ANDELYS. [Illustration: Plate 15. GREAT HOUSE. _Andelys._] About forty miles, in a south-westerly direction from Rouen, upon the right bank of the Seine, and on the western frontiers of the ancient duchy of Normandy, stands the town of Great Andelys, so called, not by reason of its own positive magnitude, but to distinguish it from a village of the same name, situated in its immediate vicinity. In early times, few places could boast to a greater degree than Andelys, "the odor of sanctity." It was indebted for its celebrity, and, probably also, for its existence, to a nunnery, founded here by St. Clotilda, which, in the seventh century, the time of the venerable Bede, enjoyed the highest reputation. But its fame was short-lived: it fell during the incursions of the Normans, and, unlike most others, seems to have possessed none of the phoenix-power of reviviscence. In its place, arose afterwards, a collegiate church, which M. de Harlay, Archbishop of Rouen, by a formal act, dated 1634, honored with the title of first collegiate church of the diocese. The distinction, thus obtained, was due not only to its antiquity, but to the unusual number of its ecclesiastics, particularly those who composed its chapter. Though St. Clotilda's convent, however, was destroyed, the inhabitants of Andelys continued to enjoy her especial protection. The church was under her invocation; but her favor was more eminently vouchsafed to an ancient chapel and an adjacent fountain, both of which bore her name. The latter was, from the earliest times, celebrated for its miraculous qualities in the cure of various disorders; and it continues to be so to the present day. St. Clotilda, at the period of the erection of the monastery, turned its waters into wine, for the benefit of the fainting workmen. The clergy of Andelys, in commemoration of the miracle, used annually, before the revolution, upon the return of her festival, to pour large pitchers of wine into the spring. During the revolutionary fervor, St. Clotilda, together with the rest of the Romish hierarchy, lost her credit in France. She is now rapidly recovering it: miracles are again wrought at her shrine; and, in all probability, the time is not far distant, when the belief will be as strong, the processions as splendid, the throng of votaries as great, and the cures as certain, as ever. It is only to be hoped, that the good sense and the superior morality of the age, may prevent the recurrence of those indecent and scandalous scenes, which, we are told by eye-witnesses, were formerly too often practised on the occasion. Human nature must be strangely altered, before the mind of man will cease to prefer the surfeit of superstition, to the wholesome diet of sound religion: no one, but a fool or a rogue, would ever advise it to have recourse to the starvation of infidelity. At the close of the eleventh century, Andelys appears with some historical notoriety, in the well-known exchange made between Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Walter, Archbishop of Rouen; when the king, desirous, as he states, to prevent the incursions of the enemy into his duchy, purchased of the prelate the town and manor of Andelys, by the cession of the towns of Dieppe, Bouteilles and Louviers, together with the forest of Aliermont, and the mills of Rouen. The bargain was a hard one; but the erection of Château Gaillard, in the immediate vicinity of Andelys, proved the correctness of the monarch's views. A subsequent treaty,[18] executed in the year 1200, between King John and the same archbishop, confirmed the exchange. In modern times, Andelys has been celebrated on no other account, than as the birth-place of Poussin and Adrian Turnebus, and as the burial-place of Corneille. The _Great House_ at Andelys, the subject of the plate, existed in 1818, as it is here represented, shorn, indeed, of much of its ancient splendor, reduced from the residence of a nobleman to a granary, and most probably curtailed of full two-thirds of its size, as retaining apparently little more than that portion of the square which fronted the court-yard, together with a small part of one of its wings. It can now (in 1821) only be spoken of as a building that did exist: last year saw it levelled with the ground. The following description of it is transcribed from Mr. Turner's _Tour in Normandy_:[19] "Andelys possesses a valuable specimen of ancient domestic architecture. The _Great House_ is a most sumptuous mansion, evidently of the age of Francis I.; but I could gain no account of its former occupants or history. I must again borrow from my friend's vocabulary, and say, that it is built in the 'Burgundian style.' In its general outline and character, it resembles the house in the _Place de la Pucelle_, at Rouen. Its walls, indeed, are not covered with the same profusion of sculpture: yet, perhaps, its simplicity is accompanied by greater elegance.--The windows are disposed in three divisions, formed by slender buttresses, which run up to the roof. They are square-headed, and divided by a mullion and transom.--The portal is in the centre: it is formed by a Tudor arch, enriched with deep mouldings, and surmounted by a lofty ogee, ending with a crocketed pinnacle, which transfixes the cornice immediately above, as well as in the sill of the window, and then unites with the mullion of the latter.--The roof takes a very high pitch.--A figured cornice, upon which it rests, is boldly sculptured with foliage.--The chimneys are ornamented by angular buttresses.--All these portions of the building assimilate more or less to our Gothic architecture of the sixteenth century; but a most magnificent oriel window, which fills the whole of the space between the centre and the left-hand divisions, is a specimen of pointed architecture in its best and purest style. The arches are lofty and acute. Each angle is formed by a double buttress, and the tabernacles affixed to these are filled with statues. The basement of the oriel, which projects from the flat wall of the house, after the fashion of a bartizan, is divided into compartments, studded with medallions, and intermixed with tracery of great variety and beauty. On either side of the bay, there are flying buttresses of elaborate sculpture, spreading along the wall.--As, comparatively speaking, good models of ancient domestic architecture are very rare, I would particularly recommend this at Andelys to the notice of every architect, whom chance may conduct to Normandy.--This building, like too many others of the same class in our own counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, is degraded from its station. The _great house_ is used merely as a granary, though, by a very small expense, it might be put into habitable repair. The stone retains its clear and polished surface; and the massy timbers are undecayed.--The inside corresponds with the exterior, in decorations and grandeur: the chimney pieces are large and elaborate, and there is abundance of sculpture on the ceilings and other parts which admit of ornament." NOTES: [18] Copies of both these instruments are preserved in the _Gallia Christiana_, XI. _Inst._ pp. 27 and 30. [19] II. p. 55.--In a note to this passage, Mr. Turner states an intention, on the part of Mr. Cotman, to devote a second plate to this building, for the purpose of doing more justice to the beauty and elaborate decorations of the oriel window; and it is very much to be desired that such should be the case; but it is feared that the number and importance of other subjects, will prevent the intention from being realized. PLATE XVI. CHURCH OF THAN. (ELEVATION AND DETAILS.) [Illustration: Plate 16. CHURCH OF THAN. _Elevation and details._] The small village of Than lies about ten miles distant from Caen, in a north-easterly direction, in a valley washed by the diminutive stream, the Meu, a little to the north of the road which leads to Bayeux. Of its "short and simple annals," few have come to the knowledge of the writer of this article; and for those few, he is wholly indebted to the kindness of M. de Gerville, who, last year, discovered at Mortain the book containing the charters of the abbey of Savigny, many of which make mention of the church of Than. The following is an extract from the most important among them: the deed itself is without a date, but is clearly of the time of Henry I. Its being anterior to 1135, is distinctly proved by the title of Earl of Mortain, which it gives to Stephen of Blois.--"In nomine Ste et individue trinitatis, notum sit universis tam presentibus quam futuris, qd. ego Guillelmus de Sto Claro, concedente Hamone fratre meo et cis, dono et concedo in perpetuam elimosinam ecclie Ste trinitatis de Savigneio et monachis ibidem Deo servientibus totam possessionem de Thaun, quam ego et antecessores mei, sive in terra dominica sive in hominibus sive in quibuslibet aliis rebus, unquam habuimus omnino quietam, ab omni consuetudine absolutam, perpetuo jure ab eadem ecclesia possidendam. Predictam autem donacionem concessit et ab omnib. consuetudinibus absolutam confirmavit Stephanus Comes Moritonii, ad cujus feodum predicta possessio pertinet, &c."--In addition to the information contained in the above charter, there is only to be added, that Cardinal Le Moine, when dean of Bayeux, at the close of the thirteenth century, founded here a chapel, dedicated to St. John; and that a lord of Than was among the companions of the Conqueror in his descent upon England. The church has been selected by Mr. Cotman as a specimen of a religious edifice in the true Norman style, unaltered, and also uninjured, except by the loss of the southern aisle; and the removal of this is so far fortunate, as it affords an opportunity of shewing the form and disposition of the columns and arches of the nave, seen, as they are, in the lower part of the left-hand side of the plate, imbedded in the modern wall, which now constitutes the exterior of the building. Subjects like this, however necessary for a work expressly devoted to architectural antiquities, obviously afford no room for picturesque beauty, or for an attempt, on the part of the artist, to produce what is called _effect_. Horace's line is altogether applicable to them, that "Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri." The great hope to be entertained is, that they may be rendered intelligible; and this, it is trusted, will be effected by means of the following references; though the multitude of parts that it seemed necessary to introduce, may have given rise to an appearance of confusion, which the author could only have avoided, by subjecting his subscribers to the expense of an additional plate. * * * * * A.A.A. _Elevation of the tower, nave, and chancel._ The roof of the tower is of stone; and the angles are faced with slender cylindrical columns, as in the part below, terminating, in both instances, in little hooks, beneath which, the pillars are banded to the part adjoining. This kind of termination, or, as it might almost be denominated, decoration, is in itself remarkable, and perhaps unique; but it is rendered considerably more interesting, if regarded as the probable origin of the crocket, one of the most distinguished ornaments in the decorated style of pointed architecture. The date of the introduction of the crocket, and the source whence it sprung, have been the subject of many inquiries among antiquaries: neither Mr Cotman, nor the writer of these remarks, recollects to have seen any other approach to it in Norman buildings; though the towers of many churches in Lower Normandy are capped with stone roofs of similar form, and of undoubted antiquity. Such, in particular, are those of Haute Allemagne, of Basse Allemagne, and of St. Michel de Vaucelles, at Caen: such also is the roof at the east end of the church of St. Nicholas, in the same town; and, in the three last-mentioned specimens, the angles are edged with the same small pillars by way of moulding. It is farther to be observed of this church, that the windows of the tower are simple, bold, and, for the elegance of their proportions, scarcely to be surpassed by those of any other Norman building; that the capitals of the pillars throughout the church are destitute of sculpture; and that the walls of the clerestory are altogether without buttresses. This last peculiarity is likewise observable in the nave of the church at Tollevast, an edifice of the plainest and earliest architecture. At Than, the clerestory is externally decorated with twenty-nine arches, of which every sixth (reckoning from the westward,) is narrower than the rest, and is pierced with a window. The surface of the blank ones is cut into squares, which are alternately depressed. On the corbels are not only represented grotesque heads, but some of the simplest heraldic charges, as the chief, chief indented, pale, bend, bendlets undy, fess, saltier, crosses of various kinds, chevron, &c. Such ordinaries occasionally occur in similar situations on other Norman religious edifices, but only on the most ancient. They are to be seen at Tollevast, Martinvast, the church of St. Croix at St. Lo, St. Matthieu, and Octeville. At St. Matthieu, they are found in conjunction with other sculptures, fit only for a temple dedicated to Priapus; and at Octeville, with what is probably the earliest representation of the Lord's Supper, that is known to exist from the hand of a Norman artist. B. _Elevation of the west front._ The lower part of the door-way is considerably sunk in the ground. C. _Elevation of the east end._ The irregularity of the architecture of this part of the building requires to be noticed. In the two lower compartments, the southern portion is left quite plain, while the northern is decorated with a double tier of arches, very much resembling those which still exist in the outer wall of the chancel, and which, most probably, were originally continued along the wall of the nave that is now destroyed. The broad shallow buttress which divides the east end into two parts, is not placed in the centre. Here, and indeed throughout the building, each small arch is hewn out of a single block of stone. One of the upper ones in this front, is surmounted with a broad square band, made in the imitation of a drip-stone, composed of quatrefoils, of a form not known to exist in Norman architecture, though of common occurrence in the succeeding style. D. _Portion of the clerestory in the nave._ E. _Portion of the clerestory in the chancel._ F. _Capital and part of the arch of the western door-way._ G.G.G. _String-mouldings._ PLATE XVII. CHURCH OF TAMERVILLE. [Illustration: Plate 17. CHURCH OF TAMERVILLE.] This church is situated at the distance of half a league from the town of Valognes, near the road which leads to Barfleur and La Hougue. The whole building is ancient, with the exception of the western portal and a chapel to the north of the choir. Its general style of architecture, the columns which support the tower, the buttresses, the corbels, and the small windows of the nave, especially those fronting the north, are all indicative of a production of the early days of Norman rule, and, probably, of the period immediately preceding the descent upon England. This period of comparative peace and tranquillity was a time, when, to use the language of two nearly contemporary historians, "the noblemen of Normandy emulated each other in erecting churches upon their domains: they thus filled their continental territory; and they shortly afterwards did the same in England." The steeple represented in the plate is in excellent preservation: it is of beautiful proportions; and, to an architect, is peculiarly interesting for the cylindrical buttress, which runs nearly to the top of the first story on the southern side, and is probably the only instance of the kind known to exist.[20] To an English antiquary, however, it may be allowed to have a claim to greater interest, on account of its general shape and proportions. In these respects it forcibly recalls the round-towered churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, most of them surmounted by octagonal lanterns. Two of the churches of the former county, those at Toft-Monks, and at Bokenham,[21] preserve the octagonal shape down to the ground; but, in both instances, it is in conjunction with early pointed architecture; and the church of Tamerville, it is feared, would not be of itself sufficient, as being an insulated specimen, to justify the assigning of a Norman origin to those just mentioned. No churches with round towers have yet come under the author's knowledge in Normandy; and yet they might certainly have been expected in the duchy, if there be any truth in the tradition which ascribes those in England to the Danes. On the other hand, supposing such report to be altogether void of foundation, it seems quite unaccountable that not one of them probably exists, which does not retain some traces of Norman architecture. In early times, the barons of this great province seldom, if ever, used a family name. Like the chieftains of the Scottish clans of our own days, they generally adopted for their surname, that of their parish or fief. The fief or manor of Tamerville had, from before the conquest, borne the appellation of Cyfrevast, or Sifrevast, (Sifredi Vassum;) and down to the period of the revolution, the possessors of that fief were patrons of the advowson of the parochial church. One of them, and, probably, the very one who built the church now standing, followed the Conqueror into England, and obtained from him considerable grants in Oxfordshire and in Dorsetshire. In the latter county, the family continued long to flourish. Hutchins states, that the branch of them, established at More-Crichel, bore for their arms, _argent, three bars gemels azure_; and he quotes the epitaph of one of them, who died in 1581, from which the following is an extract:-- "Intombed here one Cyfrevast does lie, Whom nature caused by death to yealde his due. . . . . . . . Lord of More-Crichel was he by ---- _Three hundred yeares possessed by line and descent._" Another of the same family, named John Cyfrevast, represented Dorsetshire in parliament, during the seventh, sixteenth, and eighteenth years of Edward II.; and Robert Cyfrevast had the same honor in the eighteenth and twentieth years of the following reign. About 1424, the fief of Chiffrevast at Tamerville, passed, by marriage, into the house of Anneville, which had also supplied a companion to the Conqueror; and this family continued to possess it till the moment of the revolution, the epoch of the abolition of all feudal rights. In the burial-ground at Tamerville, have been found many coffins made of volcanic tuff: similar ones are by no means of unfrequent occurrence throughout the diocese of Coutances; but they are never met with, except in places which were formerly held in particular veneration. NOTES: [20] The reader will observe, that this pillar is probably imperfect; for that there seems reason to believe, that it was originally surmounted by a capital, which united with the moulding above. [21] See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk_, plate 37. PLATES XVIII. AND XIX. CHURCH OF ST. MICHEL DE VAUCELLES, AT CAEN. (CENTRAL TOWER AND NORTH PORCH.) [Illustration: Plate 18. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF ST. MICHEL DE VAUCELLES, CAEN.] The Abbé De la Rue, in his excellent publication upon the town of Caen,[22] does not furnish the satisfactory information which might have been hoped, relative to the date of the erection of the church of St. Michael, in the suburb of Vaucelles. He contents himself with observing,[23] that it is a work of different æras: that the tower and its supporting pillars belong to a primitive church, of which no account remains; that a part of the nave may be seen, from the circular form of the arches having been obviously altered into pointed, to have belonged to the same church; that the choir was raised and increased during the sixteenth century; that the aisles are partly of the same century, and partly of the preceding; and that the other portion of the nave and the new tower, are productions of our own days. In all this there is nothing definite; and, unfortunately, our knowledge of Norman architecture is not such as will justify us in attempting to fix precise æras to the different specimens which are left us of it. As far, however, as it may be allowed to judge from corresponding edifices, Mr. Turner seems correct in his opinion, that "the circular-headed arches in the short square tower, and in a small round turret which is attached to it, are _early Norman_."[24] He subjoins the observation, that "they are remarkable for their proportions, being as long and as narrow as the lancet-windows of the following æra." The conical stone-roofed pyramid is, with the exception of its lucarne windows, most probably of the same date. With regard to the porch,[25] the subject of the _nineteenth plate_, its general resemblance in style to the southern porch of the church of St. Ouen, and its having, like that, its inner archivolt fringed with pendant trefoils, are circumstances that have likewise been pointed out in the work just referred to. Both porches may probably be of nearly the same date, the latter part of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century. Caen, but a short time before the revolution, contained another very similar architectural specimen in the western portal of the church of St. Sauveur du Marché,[26] now replaced by an entrance altogether modern. The nave of the church of St. Sauveur was built, according to De la Rue, in the fourteenth century; and it may fairly be inferred, that the portal was also of the same date; but this porch wanted the pendant trefoils, and was altogether less ornamented than that of St. Michael, as the latter was than that at Rouen. Both those at Caen, however, agreed in the wall above the arch rising into a triangular gable covered with waving tracery, a very peculiar, and a very beautiful style of decoration. [Illustration: Plate 19. CHURCH OF ST. MICHEL DE VAUCELLES, CAEN. _North Porch._] Vaucelles is at this time the largest of the five parishes that compose the suburbs of Caen. It is separated from the town by the great canal of the Orne, the formation of which has somewhat circumscribed its limits; for these formerly extended into the Rue St. Jean, and included the hospital, called the Hôtel Dieu, as well as that which derives its name from the Conqueror. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the presentation to the living of Vaucelles lay alternately between the two royal abbeys of Caen. Queen Matilda, previously to the year 1066, purchased a moiety of the patronage and of the tythes, together with a mill at Montaigu, and gave them to her abbey of the Trinity; and about eleven years afterwards, Ralph, the curate of Vaucelles, the hereditary proprietor of the other half, ceded his share to the abbey of St. Stephen, on condition of being himself received into that monastery. The latter establishment, within less than one hundred and fifty years, obtained the exclusive patronage, upon the consideration of their making the nuns an annual payment of twenty sols, and ninety-six bushels of barley. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the parish of Vaucelles was in the hands of lords of its own; among whom, the most conspicuous were the Fitz-Herberts. An illegitimate son of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry I. by a daughter of Robert Corbet, was the origin of this family. To his own name, Herbert, he added that of Fitz-Henry: his sons became Fitz-Herberts; and each of their descendants, in every successive generation, commonly adopted the baptismal appellation of his respective father, by way of a family name; till, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the whole of them agreed upon Fitz-Herbert as a patronymic. Their possessions were extensive in Caen and the neighborhood; and the records of those early times make frequent mention of their riches and liberality. Thus, according to the Abbé De la Rue, from whom these historical particulars are derived, this noble family, still represented in our own country by the Earls of Pembroke, was not only derived from the town of Caen, but had an origin different from what is assigned to it by Dugdale, Collins, and Edmondson.[27] The first of the family noticed in England, appears to have lived in the time of King Stephen. In 1302, Vaucelles seems to have become exempt from all feudal conditions. It was in that year, that Philip le Bel sent William de Gilly to Caen, to liberate his own vassals and those of the lords, and to grant them all the privileges of burghers. Among the ministers of this parish, was Roger, one of the most distinguished of our British prelates in the time of Norman rule. The tradition relates, that, during the wars for the succession among the Conqueror's sons, Henry, chancing to enter Caen with his small army upon a Sunday, stopped to hear mass at the church of Vaucelles; and that Roger performed the service with such spirit and rapidity, that the officers were unanimous in their wish that he should accompany the army. The invitation was accordingly given, and the priest consented; and he so completely gained the confidence of the prince, by recommending economy as the surest means of carrying his point, that he was soon appointed superintendant of the finances; and, in 1102, was honored with the mitre of Salisbury. At a subsequent period, he was created Chancellor of England; and, during the absence of the king in Normandy, constantly filled the high office of regent of the kingdom. William of Malmesbury, who dwells at much length, and with equal satisfaction, upon his history, states, that many of our noblest edifices arose from his munificence. In this respect, his greatest works were at Salisbury and Malmesbury: the former, long since levelled with the ground; the latter, still lovely and venerable in its ruins, and exhibiting, even in our days, one of the most noble remains of Norman architecture. NOTES: [22] _Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen et son arrondissement. Caen, 1820._ In 2 vols. 8vo. [23] I. p. 279. [24] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 181. [25] Over the door-way within this porch is sculptured a figure of St. Michael, in high relief, of apparently the same date as the porch. [26] Engraved in _Ducorel's Tour in Normandy_, p. 74. [27] See _Bankes' Extinct Baronage_, I. p. 301. PLATE XX. STATUE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. The statue here figured, has been introduced into this work altogether as an historical curiosity; and, though it may seem to be somewhat misplaced in a publication devoted to the elucidation of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, it is hoped, that a single deviation, and in favor of such a subject, may not only be deemed admissible, but may also be acceptable to the reader. At the time when De Bourgueville wrote his _Antiquités de la Ville de Caen_, near the close of the sixteenth century, this statue was attached to the gate adjoining the church of St. Stephen: it has since been transferred to the wall of the church itself. The worthy old magistrate says of it, that "it represented William the Conqueror on horseback, as if in the act of entering the town, having under the feet of his horse the figure of the body of a young man; while, before him, are kneeling a man and woman, apparently in the act of demanding explanation respecting the death of their son." He adds, that "it is a remarkable piece of antiquity; but that he can tell nothing more of its history, than is represented by the figures." From the above account, the only one apparently left us, it is plain how much the statue, or rather group, has suffered in modern times; but at what particular period, or on what occasion, is unknown. It is equally plain, that the supposing of it to be intended to represent the greatest of the dukes who swayed the Norman sceptre, is by no means a fiction of the present day. This circumstance, however, and its age likewise, have of late been much disputed. The leading opinions upon these subjects, have been collected by Mr. Turner,[28] who inclines to think that it is really of the period of Norman dominion, and was actually designed for Duke William. He parallels it with a very similar piece of sculpture from the chapter-house of the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville,[29] a performance of unquestionable antiquity. His remarks upon the subject are as follows:--"One of the most learned antiquaries of the present time has found a prototype for the supposed figure of the Duke among the sculptures of the Trajan column. But this, with all due deference, is far from a decisive proof that the statue in question was not intended for William. Similar adaptations of the antique model, 'mutato nomine,' frequently occur among the works of the artists of the middle ages; and there is at least a possibility that, had the face been left us, we might have traced some attempt at a portrait of the Norman duke. Upon the date of the sculpture, or the style of the workmanship, I dare not venture an opinion. There are antiquaries, I know, (and men well qualified to judge,) who believe it Roman: I have heard it pronounced from high authority, that it is of the eleventh century; others suspect that it is Italian, of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; while M. Le Prevost and M. De Gerville maintain most strenuously that it is not anterior to the fifteenth. De Bourgueville certainly calls it 'une antiquité de grand remarque;' but we all know that any object which is above an hundred years old, becomes a piece of antiquity in the eye of an uncritical observer; and such was the good magistrate." [Illustration: Plate 20. STATUE OF WILLIAM DUKE OF NORMANDY. _South side of the Parish Church of St. Etienne at Caen._] The parish of St. Stephen, at Caen, is generally distinguished by the epithet of _the old_, whence an opinion has commonly prevailed, that its church was one of those founded by St. Regnobert, in the middle of the fourth century; and that the present edifice, if not actually in part the same, is at least raised upon its foundations, and is certainly one of the most ancient in Caen. This belief has been, in a measure, countenanced by De Bourgueville and Huet, relying upon what appears to have been an inaccurate translation from Robert Cenalis[30] But, on the contrary, it appears from the Abbé De la Rue, that the author in question makes no mention whatever of this parish, and that the appellation was first given it by the Conqueror, by way of distinguishing its church from the more sumptuous one erected by himself, and also dedicated to the protomartyr; a circumstance, from which the Abbé justly observes, that nothing more is to be deduced, than that a church existed here anterior to his time; but by no means necessarily of great antiquity. The present building is of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; a medley of debased Gothic and corrupted Roman. NOTES: [28] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 174. [29] See plate 11, of this work, right-hand figures in the upper line; see also _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 11, with a figure. [30] _Essais Historiques sur Caen_, I. p. 225. PLATES XXI.--XXIII. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN. (WEST FRONT, AND ELEVATION OF COMPARTMENTS OF THE NAVE.) [Illustration: Plates 21-22. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE, CAEN.] The two royal Abbeys of Caen, long the pride of the town, while France, not yet revolutionized, suffered them to exist in their glory, and while her sons felt honored by the monuments of the piety and greatness of their ancestors, are still, in their present state of degradation, among the most interesting edifices which the province or the kingdom can boast The building and the endowment of them are often mentioned with admiration by the monastic historians of Normandy, one of whom, William of Jumieges, gives the following account of their origin. The marriage of Duke William with Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, the son of his father's sister,[31] was within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, and greatly scandalized the clergy of the duchy. They frequently remonstrated with their sovereign upon the subject, and at length they succeeded so far, that he was induced to dispatch ambassadors to Rome, to consult the Pope upon the steps necessary to be adopted. His Holiness, prudently considering that a divorce would in all probability be followed by war between the Flemings and Normans, determined to have recourse to a more pacific expedient; and consented to grant them absolution, upon condition of their performing penance. The penance enjoined upon the occasion was the erection of two monasteries; one for the religious of either sex.--Gratefully, we are told, did the noble pair accept the proffered terms; and instantly did they apply themselves to the fulfilment of their task. The abbey, undertaken by the Duke, the subject of these plates, is stated by Huet, and authors in general, to have been completed in 1064, two years prior to the conquest of England:[32] according to Ordericus Vitalis, it was not dedicated till 1077. But upon this latter point authors are not agreed: some say that the dedication took place in 1073; and others, in 1081. However this may be, it seems certain that the foundation-charter was granted subsequently to the year 1066; for in it William takes the title of king, and among his many princely donations are enumerated various properties and privileges in different parts of Britain; decisive proofs that he was at that time in possession of the island, and considered himself firmly fixed upon its throne. The abbey thus raised, was, during the whole of the monarch's life, honored with his especial favor; and at his death, he bequeathed it other lands, together with his sceptre, the crown he wore upon occasions of the highest solemnity, his hand of justice, a cup made of precious stone, his golden candlesticks, and all the royal ornaments which usually appertain to the crown. Still further to manifest his gracious regard, he directed that the abbatial church should be the depository of his mortal remains; and that a foundation, so rich in worldly wealth, might not lack the more precious possessions of sanctity, he bought, as we are told by the early writers,[33] _at no small price_, a portion of the relics of the proto-martyr, consisting of a part of his arm, which was preserved in the city of Besançon, and a small phial containing some drops of blood, averred to have flowed from the same limb. At a subsequent time, the King added to these a lock of the Saint's hair, together with a portion of the skin of his head, and the stone with which he was killed.[34] The hair was white, and as fresh as if it had only then been severed; and it was kept in a beautiful crystal vessel; so that, to use the words of a contemporary manuscript, "totum fuit pulchrum: capilli albi et pulchri; lapis etiam unde percussus fuit albus; vas pulchrum et album; et aspicientibus rem adeo pulchram magnam faciunt admirationem." The first abbot of the convent was Lanfranc, a native of Italy, who had established himself in the neighboring monastery of Bec, where the fame of his talents had acquired him a most extensive celebrity; and the zeal with which he had applied himself to the task of education,[35] had increased it to a degree, of which, in these days, we have little idea. But he held the pastoral staff only a very short time, for he was, as early as the year 1070, translated to the more important post of Archbishop of Canterbury; and it was reserved to his successor, William de Bonne Ame, to have the honor of presiding over the community, at the period when John of Avranches, Archbishop of Rouen, assisted by his suffragan bishops, as well as by Lanfranc himself, with Thomas, his brother metropolitan, and many abbots, and a wonderful throng of people, performed the ceremony of the dedication.[36] The Conqueror's sons confirmed the various donations made to the abbey by their parent. The eldest of them, Robert, his successor in the dukedom, added the privilege of a fair and a weekly market at Cheux. William Rufus, the second, entered into a negociation with the monks, to re-purchase his father's royal ornaments, in exchange for the parish of Coker, in Somersetshire; but he died before the completion of the treaty; and this was finally carried into effect by Henry I. with one only difference, that Brideton, (now called Burton) in Dorsetshire, was substituted for Coker. It was Henry, according to the Abbé De la Rue,[37] who raised the superb monument over his father's remains; but Ordericus Vitalis expressly attributes the work to William Rufus.[38] Respecting its splendor, all writers are unanimous: the shrine placed upon the mausoleum, was a "mirificum memoriale, quod ex auro et argento et gemmis competentèr splenduit." The care of building the tomb was committed to a goldsmith at Caen, of the name of Otto, who had received from the Conqueror a grant of land in Essex; and whose descendants, under the name of Fitz-Othon, had the principal direction of the English mint, till the death of Thomas Fitz-Othon, the last of the family, in 1282. Henry II. in a very long charter, confirmed the various endowments and privileges previously bestowed upon the convent, and added others of his own. From this time forward, it continued to increase in wealth and power. In the year 1250, its revenues, in Normandy, amounted to four thousand livres, a sum equivalent to eighty-two thousand and sixteen livres of the present day. In 1668, when money in France was of about half its present value, the abbot and monks divided an income of sixty-four thousand and four livres: and in 1774, this income had swelled to one hundred and ninety-two thousand livres, notwithstanding the immense losses suffered by the suppression of the alien priories in England. Thus an increase had taken place of nearly one hundred and ten thousand livres, in about five hundred and twenty years. The ecclesiastical patronage of the abbey, at the time of the revolution, extended over twelve churches. Its monks, who were of the order of St. Benedict, continued till the year 1663 to belong to the class of Benedictines, called _unreformed_; but the Duchess of Longueville, wife of the then abbot, introduced at that period the brethren of the congregation of St. Maur. The privileges and immunities granted to the convent of St. Stephen, are detailed at considerable length by Du Moustier,[39] who has also carefully collected the particulars of the life of Lanfranc, and has given a catalogue, accompanied with short biographical notices, of the rest of the abbots. By far the greater number of these were men eminent for their rank or talents; and some of them were subsequently promoted to higher dignities. William de Bonne Ame, the second abbot, succeeded John de Bayeux in the metropolitan throne of Rouen; Hugh de Coilly, grandson of King Stephen, after being elected to preside over this monastery, was almost immediately transferred to the archbishopric of York;[40] and Charles de Martigni, abbot of St. Stephen's in the fifteenth century, was successively honored with two episcopal mitres. It was by him that the prelacy was first held _in commendam_, an example too tempting not to be followed; and the abbey, thus constantly gaining in the dignity of its superiors, as constantly lost in their real value. Seven cardinals, (among whom were the celebrated Cardinals of Richelieu, Mazarine and Fleury,) a natural son of King Henry IV. an archbishop of Lyons, two of Aix, and one of Rouen, were among its most modern abbots. Another of them, John Le Got,[41] was present at the abjuration of Henry IV. in the church of St. Denys, on the twenty-fifth of July, 1593; and by virtue of his office as apostolical prothonotary, subscribed his name to the letter from the bishops to the Pope, declaring that nothing had taken place in the transaction, inconsistent with the reverence due to his holiness. A list of considerable length might also be made from among the monks of the convent, of those who have been ennobled by their talents or dignities. The monastic buildings appertaining to the Abbey of St. Stephen were begun in 1704, and completed after a period of twenty-two years. They are now attached to the royal College of Caen, to which establishment they were appropriated at the revolution; and, provided as they were with noble gardens, they were an accession of the utmost importance to the institution. But the value of the gift has, within the ten last years, been considerably lessened, by the municipality having robbed the college of the greater part of the gardens, for the purpose of converting them into an open square. The plan of the buildings was furnished by a lay-brother of the Benedictine order, named William De la Tremblaye, who also erected those of the sister Convent of the Trinity, at Caen; and those of the Abbey of St. Denis. During the storms of the revolution, the abbatial church happily suffered but little. Fallen, though it be, from its dignity, and degraded to parochial, it still stands nearly entire. Not indeed as it came from the hands of the Norman architect, but as it was left by the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, when, with the violence which marked the transactions of that æra, doors, windows, floors, wood-work, lead, iron, marble, manuscripts, and books, were given up to indiscriminate destruction: bells were broken, roofs stripped, altars profaned, the very tombs opened; and, as if no point had been gained, so long as aught was suffered to remain, the central tower was undermined, in the hope that its fall would involve the ruin of the whole edifice. And fall, indeed, it did; but happily only carried away with it a portion of the eastern end. From this circumstance, however, have arisen discrepancies of style, for which it would be difficult, without such knowledge, to account. The nave and the transepts are the only pure remains of the original building: the choir and aisles are of pointed architecture, and are, consequently, not of equal antiquity. Even the western front partakes, in a measure, of the same mixture. All, to the top of the towers, is genuine Norman, and of the eleventh century: the spires, with their surrounding turrets, are of a later æra.[42] At the same time it may reasonably be doubted how far the Abbé De la Rue is right in ascribing them to the fourteenth century. To differ from so able an antiquary and so competent a judge in matters of this description, is always hazardous; but the author of this article must, nevertheless, be allowed to hesitate before he gives a full assent. It is known that the choir was enlarged, and the apsis built as it now exists, during the prelacy of Simon de Trevieres, which extended from the year 1316 to 1344; but history is silent as to any other additions made at that period to the church; and the style of the architecture of the spires does certainly appear to be earlier than that of the parts just mentioned. No argument is to be drawn from the general aspect of the building; for such is the great excellence of the Caen stone, and so little has it suffered in an atmosphere untainted by coal smoke, and in a climate probably superior to our own, that all the parts appear to be in equally good preservation, and the whole looks as fresh as if but yesterday hewn from the quarry. An opinion has commonly prevailed, that an epitaph, still visible on the exterior of the apsis, is that of the builder of the church. Facsimiles of it have been given by Ducarel[43] and Gough,[44] the former of whom seems to have no doubt of the fact. Such, however, cannot be the case; the very shape of the characters sufficiently disproves it: they are altogether unlike those used on Queen Matilda's tomb, a relic, whose authenticity was never called in question. The character of the architecture of the chapel affords a still more decisive contradiction. Indeed, after what has already been said, it needs scarcely be added, that the building itself did not exist at the period assigned by Ducarel to the epitaph, which is most probably that of the person who erected the apsis, and made the other alterations in the fourteenth century. The western front of the church exhibits two different characters: below, all is simple, almost to meanness: the upper part abounds in ornament; and here the good sense of the architect, who added the pinnacles and spires, merits commendation, in having made them correspond so well in their decorations with the towers. The plate sufficiently explains all that is to be said of this part of the building, excepting as to the more minute ornaments of the door-ways, which deserve to be exhibited in detail. The architrave is composed of several bands of the simplest moulding, inclosed within three of a different style; the two outermost being formed of the chevron ornament, with its angles unusually acute; the inner, of the billet moulding. The capitals of the pillars are studded with small heads, placed under the Ionic volute, exhibiting a mixture of classical and barbarous taste, which is likewise to be found at Cérisy, and upon one of the capitals in the abbey church of the Trinity. Along the exterior of the upper part of the nave, runs a row of twenty-four semi-circular arches, with imposts and bases, and all uniform, except that eight of them are pierced for windows. This portion of the building is entirely without buttresses. Upon the extremity of the north transept are three very shallow buttresses, which rise from the ground to the bottom of the clerestory windows, unbroken by any interruption whatever, but here meet with a string-course, beyond which the two outer ones are continued, unchanged in form and appearance, to the summit of the ends of the gable, while the centre one, though it is raised to an equal height, loses more than half its width, and is also much reduced in depth. Over this latter buttress is a window; and between the buttresses are six others, arranged in a double row. Each pair differs in size from the rest: those nearest the ground are the largest, and those immediately above them the least. The lowest pair on each side is inclosed within a spacious arch, which occupies nearly two-thirds of the gable. Eastward of the transepts is a series of blank intersecting arches, remarkable for their mouldings, which consist of a flat, wide, and very shallow band;[45] and here the mixture of the pointed with the semi-circular architecture commences. This portion of the building altogether resembles the cathedral of Coutances in the disposition of its parts. [Illustration: Plate 23. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. ETIENNE, CAEN. _Elevation of compartment of the Nave._] It would be difficult to describe the interior of the church in clearer or more comprehensive terms, than has been done by Mr. Cohen in Mr. Turner's Tour,[46] from which work the following account is, therefore, extracted.--"Without doubt, the architect was conversant with Roman buildings, though he has Normanized their features, and adapted the lines of the basilica to a _barbaric_ temple. The Coliseum furnished the elevation of the nave;--semi-circular arches surmounted by another tier of equal span, and springing at nearly an equal height from the basis of the supporting pillars. The architraves connecting the lower rows of pillars are distinctly enounced. The arches which rise from them have plain bold mouldings. The piers between each arch are of considerable width. In the centre of each pier is a column, which ascends as usual to the vault. These columns are alternately simple and compound. The latter are square pilasters, each fronted by a cylindrical column, which of course projects farther into the nave than the simple columns; and thus the nave is divided into bays. This system is imitated in the gothic cathedral at Sens. The square pilaster ceases at about four-fifths of its height: then two cylindrical pillars rise from it, so that, from that point, the column becomes clustered. Angular brackets, sculptured with knots, grotesque heads, and foliage, are affixed to the base of these derivative pillars. A bold double-billeted moulding is continued below the clerestory, whose windows adapt themselves to the binary arrangement of the bays. A taller arch is flanked by a smaller one on the right or the left side, as its situation requires. These are supported by short massy pillars: an embattled moulding runs round the windows.--In the choir the arches become pointed, but with Norman mouldings: the apsis is a reconstruction. In that portion of the choir which seems original, there are pointed windows formed by the interlacing of circular arches: these light the gallery.--The effect produced by the perspective of the interior is lofty and palatial. The ancient masonry of the exterior is worthy of notice. The stones are all small, perhaps not exceeding nine or twelve inches: the joints are about three-quarters of an inch." To this description, it may be well to add the following particulars concerning the dimensions of the church, taken from the exterior:-- FEET. Length from east to west 871 Height of western towers 145 ----------------------- with their spires 262 -------- nave on the western front, to the point of the gable 98 -------- northern transepts 84 Width of ditto 42 It may also not be amiss to observe, that the nave is on either side divided into nine compartments, the second and third of which, reckoning from the west, on the south side, form the subject of the _twenty-third plate_. The rest, though diversified in their ornaments, are uniform in their plan, except only the one on either side, immediately adjoining the entrance: each of these contains a slender shallow arch, not pierced to the transepts, and rising from the pavement nearly to the top of the upper windows. In that part of the church, two peculiarities will not fail to be remarked: the greater width of the arches of the triforium, than that of those below; and the balustrade of quatrefoils, which is continued throughout this portion of the building. Immediately upon entering the church, a doubt involuntarily suggests itself, how far this balustrade may not be an addition of comparatively modern date. But, upon the whole, there seems no reason to consider it so. Precisely the same ornament is found upon the tomb of Berengaria, wife to Richard Coeur-de-Lion, which Mr. Stothard has lately figured, and believes to be coeval with the queen whom it commemorates. The monument raised to William the Conqueror, in the middle of the choir of this church, was violated and broken to pieces by the Calvinists, and its contents wantonly destroyed, towards the close of the sixteenth century. The account of the outrages then committed are given at length, and with great naïveté, as well as feeling, by De Bourgueville,[47] who was present on the occasion; and they have lately been translated into English,[48] with the addition of some interesting details that accompanied the death and funeral of the monarch. Nearly a hundred years before that time, a cardinal, upon a visit to Caen, had opened the tomb through curiosity. After the tumults caused by the Huguenots had subsided, the monks of the convent, who had gotten possession of one of the thigh-bones that had been preserved by the Viscount of Falaise, re-interred it, and, out of gratitude to their founder, raised, in 1642, a new monument of black marble, at great expense. One side of it bore the original metrical epitaph, composed by Thomas, Archbishop of York, beginning with the following line:-- "Qui rexit rigidos Normannos atque Britannos;" on the other side, was an inscription[49] commemorative of the circumstances attendant on the tomb; but this second tomb was also taken away in 1742, by virtue of an order from Louis XV. empowering the governor of Caen to remove the monarch's remains into the sanctuary, as interfering, in their original position, with the ceremonies of the church. A flat stone, in front of the high altar, succeeded to the monument; and even this, the democrats of 1793 tore up. It was, however, replaced by General Dugua, while Prefect of Caen, and it still holds its situation.[50] There are no other monuments of any kind in the church. Extensive buildings were attached to the abbey of St. Stephen; and, among the rest, what was generally supposed to have been a royal palace, and passed commonly under the name of the Palace of the Conqueror. As every thing connected with the abbey was naturally referred by the public to that sovereign, it will not appear surprising that this edifice was so likewise, however little ground there may have been for the appellation. Its having been called a palace, arose probably from the circumstance of the French monarchs always residing in this monastery, during their visits to Caen. The names of St. Louis, of John, of Henry V. and of Francis I. are to be found in the list of those who honored it with their presence. The greater part of the palatial buildings were destroyed by the Huguenots; but portions of them were standing in 1752, when Ducarel made his tour in Normandy; and he has figured them. Among these was the most interesting part of the whole, the great hall, the place in which the States of Normandy used to assemble, as often as they were convened at Caen; and where the Exchequer repeatedly held its sittings, after the recapture of Normandy, by the kings of France, from its ancient dukes. This hall even escaped the fury of revolutionists as well as Calvinists; but it was in the year 1802 altered by General Caffarelli, the then prefect, into rooms for the college; and its superb painted windows were destroyed, together with its pavement of glazed tiles, charged with heraldic bearings. The tiles have long afforded scope for the learning and ingenuity of antiquaries, some of whom have believed them coeval with the Conqueror; while others, who hesitate about going quite so far, have regarded them as bearing the arms of his companions. In the _Gallia Christiana_, the placing of them is attributed to Robert de Chambray, who is there stated to have been abbot from 1385 to 1393, a fact which the Abbé De la Rue utterly disbelieves. He, however, is of opinion, that the tiles are of nearly the same date, or a little earlier; and he considers them as belonging to the families who had supplied abbots and monks to the convent. NOTES: [31] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, pp. 277 and 282. [32] So says Huet, in his _Origines de Caen_, p. 175, upon the authority of the Chronicle of the _Abbey of Bec_; and no attempt was made to controvert this fact, till the recent publication of the Abbé De la Rue's _Essais Historiques_, in which it is attempted to be proved, from various indirect testimonies, that the building could not have been finished till after the year 1070; indeed, that it could not even have been begun at the time fixed by Huet for its completion, inasmuch as the foundation charter, which must be of a date posterior to 1066, uses the following expression.--"Ego Guillelmus, Anglorum Rex, Normannorum et Coenomanorum princeps, Coenobium in honorem Dei ac Beatissimi prothomartyris Stephani, intra Burgum, quem vulgari nomine vocant, Cadomum, pro salute animæ meæ, uxoris, filiorum ac parentum meorum, _disposui construendum_." [33] See _Neustria Pia_, p. 639. [34] Dom Blanchard, a Benedictine Monk, who left an unpublished history of this monastery, says, "that the Conqueror obtained about the same time from Constantinople, St. Stephen's skull; and that the translation of it into the abbatial church was celebrated by an annual festival on the eighth of October." The Cathedral of Soissons boasted of the possession of the same relic; and of having also procured it from Constantinople.--"Too much confidence," it is prudently observed by a catholic writer on this subject, "must not be placed in the authenticity of those relics, which cannot be traced to the date of St. Gregory of Tours, the sixth century!" [35] Lanfranc, after having for some time directed at Bec the first school ever established in Normandy, upon his translation to Caen, opened another in that town. In the _Lives of the Abbots of Bec_, written in latin verse, in the twelfth century, by Peter, a monk of the convent of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, particular honor is given to Lanfranc on the subject of his school at Caen, which had produced many men eminent for their proficiency in sacred and secular literature, and was at that time flourishing. The Abbé De la Rue gives a long list of them. _Essais Historiques_, II. p. 70. [36] _Ordericus Vitalis_, in _Duchesne's Scriptores Normanni_, p. 549. [37] _Essais Historiques_, II. p. 64. [38] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 663. [39] _Neustria Pia_, p. 640. [40] _Gallia Christiana_, II. p. 425. [41] His name is not to be found in the list of abbots given in the _Neustria Pia_; but the authors of the _Gallia Christiana_ say, (XI. p. 480,) "that he was nominated to the prelacy upon the resignation of the thirty-fourth abbot, Charles d'O, and was confirmed in it by the States of Blois. It is admitted, however, that, notwithstanding his appointment in 1596, his predecessor continued to receive the emoluments of the office, till 1624, and enjoyed a large pension arising from them, till his death, in 1627." [42] In speaking of these, the Abbé De la Rue takes occasion to lay down a general rule, (_Essais Historiques_, II. p. 61) that "on ne trouve ordinairement en Normandie, que des arcades semi-circulaires dans les Xe. XIe. et XIIe. siècles; au contraire, les arcades en pointes des nefs, des fenêtres et des portes des églises, autrement les arcades en ogive, n'ont eu lieu chez nous que dans le XIIIe. siècle et les suivans. On trouve également ces deux styles en Angleterre et aux mêmes époques, et leur différence est une des principales règles qui servent aux antiquaires Anglois, pour discerner les constructions Normandes et Anglo-Normandes, des constructions d'un autre genre."--But Mr. Turner, in his inquiries respecting the former cathedral of Lisieux, (_Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 131) appears to have proved that the pointed arch must have had existence at a considerably earlier period in France; and it is expected, that some instances which will be adduced in the sequel of the work, will have the effect of confirming his opinion. [43] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 57. [44] _Sepulchral Monuments_, I. p. 247, t. 30.--The epitaph, which, in the original, is full of contractions, it is supposed by the Abbé De la Rue, should be read as follows:-- "Guillelmus jacet hic, petrarum summus in arte: Iste novum perfecit opus; det premia Christus. Amen." [45] A similar row of arches is found on the north transept of Norwich Cathedral, between the first and second tier of windows.--See _Britton's Norwich Cathedral_, plate 10. [46] II. p. 195. [47] _Antiquités de Caen_, p. 171. [48] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 203. [49] See _Neustria Pia_, p. 656. [50] The inscription upon it, which details the various events that had befallen the tomb, is given in _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 197. PLATES XXIV.--XXXIII. ABBEY OF THE HOLY TRINITY, AT CAEN. [Illustration: Plate 24. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY, CAEN. _West front._] Mention has already been made, under the preceding subject, of the origin of the convent of the Holy Trinity, whose church, though not an equally extensive building as that of the monastery of St. Stephen, is infinitely more rich in its decorations, and has been left almost entirely in its original form. A more perfect example of a Norman abbatial church, is perhaps no where to be found; and, as this edifice had the farther advantage of having been raised at the period when the province was at the acme of its power, of having been erected by an individual of the highest rank, and of having owed its existence to an occasion peculiarly calculated to call forth the exercise of the utmost liberality and splendor, it has been conceived that the object of a work like the present, could not be better answered, than by exhibiting such a building in its fullest details. With the churches of the Trinity and of St. Georges before him, the reader will best be enabled to judge what Norman architecture really was: no difficulty or doubt can arise as to the history or the date of either; and he may rest satisfied, that whatever has been selected from them, is, as far as human observation can decide, exactly in the state in which it was left by the original builder. The abbey of the Holy Trinity was founded in 1066, by Matilda of Flanders, wife to William II. Duke of Normandy; and its church was dedicated on the eighteenth of June of the same year, by Maurilius, Archbishop of Rouen, assisted by the bishops and abbots of the province, and in the presence of the duke and duchess, together with their principal barons. The sovereign, upon the same day, presented at the altar his infant daughter, Cecilia, devoting her to the service of God in this monastery, in which she was accordingly educated, and was its first nun and second abbess. History has recorded the name of the first abbess, Matilda, and relates that she was of one of the most noble families of the duchy; but no farther particulars are known respecting her. The foundation-charters of this convent, which bear date in the years 1066 and 1082, are full of donations in every respect princely; and these, not only on the part of the sovereign, but also of his nobles, whose signatures are likewise attached to the instruments. The queen, also, at her decease, left the monastery her crown, sceptre, and ornaments of state;[51] thus setting the example, which was shortly afterwards followed by her royal consort, with regard to the abbey of St. Stephen. Robert, the Conqueror's successor in the dukedom, was not behind-hand with his father in his liberality to the convent of the Trinity. The latter, in his charter, dated 1083, had reserved to himself the right of the fishery of the Orne, together with sundry possessions outside the walls of the town, in the direction of the suburb of Vaugeux. All these were ceded by the new duke to his sister; and out of the various grants, on the part of the father and son, was formed what was denominated the _Bourg l'Abbesse_, or _Barony of St. Giles_. Duke Robert did yet more; for, after having distinguished himself at the capture of Jerusalem, and refused the crown of the Holy Land, he brought home with him, on his return to France, and deposited in the abbatial church founded by his mother, the great standard of the Saracens, wrested from them by his valor in the field of Ascalon. Among the privileges conferred upon the abbey of the Trinity, by the Norman princes, was the right of holding a fair upon Trinity-Sunday and the days that immediately preceded and followed it. The abbess, during these days, was entitled to all the town dues; and, to leave no doubt of her right, she was in the habit of sending some of her officers at vespers time on the Friday, to affix her armorial bearings to every entrance of the town. The same officers also attached their own boxes for the receipt of customs to the gates, in lieu of those of the farmer-general. Water alone could be brought in without payment of toll. As long as the fair lasted, the abbess was likewise treated with military honors; the commandant of the garrison, whatever his rank, was bound to apply to her, in person, for the parole of the day. The Abbé De la Rue, from whose work most of the historical facts concerning this convent are extracted, states, that he has himself seen the Maréchal de Harcourt, while governor of Normandy, wait upon the abbess for the purpose; and he is of opinion, that the custom existed from the very foundation of the monastery. It will not be matter of surprise, that an establishment, thus gifted and distinguished, should have been tenanted by the children of those who had contributed to the endowment. The names of the daughters and nieces of the chief Norman barons, will be found in the catalogue of the first nuns. Such, however, was at that period the state of society, that even an abbey, so founded, endowed, and occupied, was doomed to afford a remarkable instance of the capricious barbarity of the times. No sooner was the death of the Conqueror known, than the very nobles, who, but a few years previously, had been foremost as benefactors to the convent, assumed the opposite character, and did every thing in their power to despoil, and to destroy it. They had themselves subscribed the following denunciation:--"Si quis verò horum omnium, quæ prædictæ S. Trinitatis ecclesiæ data ostensa sunt, temerariâ præsumptione aliquando, (quod absit) violator effectus, in suâ impudenti obstinatione perstiterit: Noverit ille se anathema factum a Domino, sanctâ ac beatâ fidelium omnium communione privatum Divino judicio, perpetualitèr esse plectendum."--But no consideration, human or divine, could restrain their rapacity: they pillaged the lands; seized the corn and cattle belonging to the monastery; imprisoned some of the tenants and vassals, and put others to the sword. These, and many other facts, most curiously illustrative of the manners of the age, are to be found in the collection of the charters of the abbey. They prove indisputably, (if such a fact needs proof) that the days of chivalry were far from being days of honesty. But they also shew, what the reader may not be equally prepared to see, that among these plunderers was Henry himself, the Conqueror's youngest son, who did not scruple to lay waste the lands given to the abbey by his mother; and who, as the Abbé de la Rue remarks, had probably, even at that early period, conceived the intention of seizing upon his paternal territory, and might be engaged in the amassing of those pecuniary resources, by the aid of which he ultimately succeeded in his usurpation of the throne. Among the possessions of the abbey of the Holy Trinity, were several estates[52] and advowsons in England; for the better administration of which, the presence of the abbess was occasionally required on this side of the water. The names of more than one of the holy ladies are on record, who honored our island with their presence. The journal of the tour of the abbess, Georgette du Molley Bacon, states her to have embarked at Caen, on the sixteenth of August, 1570, with fifteen persons in her suite, and to have landed in London, and proceeded to her manor-house at Felsted, in Essex, from which she did not return to Normandy till Trinity-Sunday in the following year. Hence it may be easily inferred, that the rules of the convent were not of the strictest description. The establishment indeed was, from its origin, under the regulation of the order of St. Benedict, but the nuns, though they lived under the same roof, were not bound by vows: they were accustomed to receive their friends in their own apartments; and many of them had nieces or other relations with them, whom they brought up. The refectory was common; and they ate meat several days in the week. There were also stated times, on which it was allowable for them to take the air in a garden at a short distance from the convent. The abbess herself had her Country-house at Oistreham, where she frequently resided; and upon the occasion of those festivals which are distinguished by public processions, the whole body of the community used to go in procession to each of the different churches of Caen. Sometimes too the abbess attended with a party of her nuns at the performance of any mystery or similar scenical representation. The account of the revenues of the monastery in 1423, shews how Nicole de Rupalley, then abbess, was present at the acting of the _Miracle of St. Vincent_, and rewarded the performers with a gratuity of ten sols, a sum equivalent, at that time, to ten bushels of wheat. About the year 1515, an attempt was made by the superior, Isabel of Bourbon, to curtail the indulgences of the sisterhood, by keeping them more closely confined, increasing the number of fast-days, and generally introducing a system of greater rigor. But the nuns remonstrated against the innovation, and had recourse to the Bishop of Bayeux, alledging the injustice of their being called upon to submit themselves to regulations, to which they had not originally subscribed. The prelate, who felt the point to be a delicate one, refused to decide; and the matter ended in an appeal to the Pope, who, finally, allowed the nuns to retire into other convents, where they might enjoy the freedom they claimed. When, after the capture of Caen by Edward, in 1346, the inhabitants resolved upon fortifying the town anew, the abbeys of St. Stephen and of the Trinity, both of which lay in the suburbs, were excluded from the line of circumvallation; and the consequence was their exposure to insults and pillage. The monks and nuns were therefore obliged to look to their own defence; and, upon King John's coming to Caen, eight years afterwards, they obtained from him letters patent, authorizing them to encircle their convents with walls, towers, and fosses of their own. Hence originated the strange anomaly of a fortress and nunnery within the same precincts. The sisterhood, alarmed at their situation, sold their plate, and even the shrines of their relics, to provide for their safety; and permission was afterwards granted them to levy contributions upon their vassals, for the purpose of expediting and completing the task.--In the reign of Henry VI. during the wane of the British power in France, orders were issued by the monarch for the dismantling of the fort of the Trinity, lest it should be seized by the inhabitants of the neighborhood, who were endeavoring to get possession of Caen. But the abbess resisted the royal edict; and, under an apprehension, lest the attempt to carry it into effect should induce her to open the gates to the insurgents, her resistance was allowed to be effectual.--King Charles repeatedly took up his quarters in this monastery, while his army was laying siege to Caen, in 1450, and mention continues to be made of the fortress till the commencement of the following century; but after that time, it appears to have been suffered to go to ruin. M. De la Rue rejects, as unfounded, the statement of the Bishop of Avranches, which has obtained general credence, that the spires of the western towers of the abbey were destroyed in 1360, by Charles the Bad, on account of their use for the detecting of the approach of an enemy. His principal argument against the fact is, that the King of Navarre was at that very time at peace with France; and therefore, supposing it to be certain that they were taken down by that prince, he is of opinion, that their demolition must have been ordered to prevent them from serving as landmarks to the English. At the same time, he is evidently inclined to think that the towers were never surmounted by spires at all; and he observes, with much apparent justice, that, if there really were any, and if they were really destroyed at the period alledged, the towers must have been left for a long time in a ruined state, as their present termination is known to be the work of the eighteenth century. The original charters and title-deeds of the abbey of the Trinity were lost during the revolution. They perished in consequence of the extreme care of the last abbess, who, full of anxiety for their preservation, secured them in trunks, and hid them in the ceiling of the church. But, in those disastrous times, the lead that covered the churches was among the earliest objects of plunder; and the consequence was, that the roof was stripped; the boxes exposed to the rain; the wood and paper wholly destroyed; and the tin cases that held the charters so eaten by rust, that their contents were rendered illegible. It was in this state that they were found by the Abbé De la Rue, who was in possession of the secret, and who, on his return to France, after the cessation of the troubles and the death of the abbess, obtained permission from the prefect for the search to be made. The church of the abbey of the Trinity had its own peculiar rites; and, till the period of the revolution, the community were in the habit of printing their liturgy annually in latin. A very beautiful quarto volume, containing the ritual, was published at Caen, in 1622, by the order of Laurence de Budos, then abbess. It was probably from pride at a privilege of this nature, and from a confidence in their strength, that the nuns persisted in celebrating the ridiculous, or, it might almost be called, blasphemous _Fête des Fous_, for a hundred years after the Council of Basle had decreed the suppression of it throughout Christendom. In imitation too of the Boy-Bishops of Bayeux, Salisbury, and other churches, the nuns of the Holy Trinity had their Girl-Abbesses. The ancient rolls of the monastery make mention, under the head of expenses in 1423, of six sols given, by way of offering, on Innocents'-Day, "_aux petites Abbesses_." This was the day on which the Girl-Abbess was elected: the superior of the convent resigned to her the abbatial stall and crozier at vespers, as soon as they came to the verse of the _Magnificat_, beginning "_Deposuit potentes de sede_;" and the farce was kept up till the same hour the succeeding evening. The Abbé De la Rue, who mentions this fact, observes with justice, that another circumstance, which appears from these accounts, is still more extraordinary;--that, even as late as 1546, the abbess was in the habit of making an annual payment of five sols to the cathedral of Bayeux, for its Boy-Bishop. The entry is in the following terms: "_Au petit évêque de Bayeux, pour sa pension, ainsi qu'il est accoutumé, V. sous._" During the early part of the preceding century, the abbot of St. Stephen was also accustomed to pay twenty sols per annum, on the same account; but his payment was probably discontinued immediately after the edict of the Council of Basle, though the ceremony of the Boy-Bishop was not suppressed at Bayeux till 1482. Indeed, only six years before that time, the inventory of the sacristy of the cathedral enumerated, among its other valuables, "Two mitres for the Boy-Bishop, The crozier belonging to the Boy-Bishop, The Boy-Bishop's mittens, And four small copes of scarlet satin, for the use of the singing-boys on Innocents'-Day." The abbess of Caen, through the medium of her official, exercised spiritual jurisdiction over the parishes of St. Giles, Carpiquet, Oistreham, and St. Aubin-d'Arquenay, by virtue of a privilege granted by the bishops of Bayeux, as well for herself and her nuns, as for the vassals of the several parishes. This privilege, however, extended no farther than to an exemption from certain pecuniary fines, which the diocesans, in the middle ages, exacted from their flocks; and even in this confined acceptation, it was more than once the subject of litigation between the convent and the see. In like manner, the civil and criminal jurisdiction claimed by the abbess over the same parishes, brought her occasionally into disputes with the bailiff and viscount of Caen: her rights were repeatedly called in question, and she was obliged to have recourse to legal tribunals to establish them. The following very extraordinary suit is at once illustrative of the fact, and of the character of the times:--In the year 1480, an infant was eaten up in its cradle, by a _bestia porcina_, within the precincts of the parish of St. Giles. The abbess' officers seized the delinquent, and instituted a process for its condemnation before the seneschal of the convent. During the time, however, that the question was pending, the king's attorney-general interfered. He summoned the abbess before the high-bailiff, and, maintaining that the crime had been committed within the cognizance of the bailiwick, he claimed the beast, and demanded that its trial should take place before one of the royal tribunals. Debates immediately arose as to the limits of their respective jurisdictions: inquiries were set on foot; memorials and counter-memorials were presented; and the abbess finally succeeded in carrying her point, only by dint of proving that she had, some years previously, burned a young woman in the _Place aux Campions_, for having murdered a man in the self-same house where the hog devoured the child. Among the obligations originally imposed upon this convent, was that of giving a dinner annually, on Trinity Sunday, to such of the inhabitants of the parish of Vaux-sur-Saulles and their domestics, as had resided there a year and a day. The repast was served up within the abbey walls, and in the following manner:--After the guests had washed their hands in a tub of water, they seated themselves on the ground, and a cloth was spread before them. A loaf, of the weight of twenty-one ounces, was then given to each individual, and with it a slice of boiled bacon, six inches square. To this was added a rasher of bacon, fried; and the feast concluded with a basin of bread and milk for every person, all of them having likewise as much beer and cider as they could drink. The dinner, as may naturally be supposed, lasted from three to four hours; and it will also not be difficult to imagine, that the entertaining of such a motley throng on such a day, could not fail to be attended with great annoyance to the nuns, and with various inconveniences. The convent had therefore, from a very early date, endeavored to free themselves from the obligation, by the payment of a sum of money; and, in times of war, the town of Caen had occasionally interposed, and forced the people to accept the composition, from an apprehension, lest the enemy should gain possession of the fort of the Trinity, by introducing themselves into it among the authorized guests. It appears that, in 1429, the abbess purchased an exemption at the price of thirty livres, a sum equivalent to thirty-seven and a half quarters of corn, at a time when wheat sold for two sols the bushel; and twenty-two years subsequently, Charles VII. then King of France, granted his letters patent, abolishing the dinner altogether, upon condition of a like sum being annually paid to the parochial chest. To the abbey church of the Trinity were attached several chapels, as well without as within its walls: the most remarkable of these was that of St. Thomas, generally known by the name of _St. Thomas l'Abattu_, in the suburb of St. Giles. It was, in its original state, an hospital, and was called the Hospital of St. Thomas the Martyr in the fields, whence De la Rue infers that it was built in commemoration of Thomas-à-Becket, and was probably erected immediately after his canonization in 1173. Huet, on the contrary, tells us, that it had existed "from time immemorial;" and Ducarel, who has described and figured it,[53] appears to have also regarded it as of very high antiquity. The gradual disappearance of leprosy had caused it to be long since diverted from its original purpose. In 1569, it was pillaged by the Huguenots; and, as no pains were taken to repair the injuries then done, it continued in a state of dilapidation, imperceptibly wasting away, till the period of the revolution, when it was sold, together with the other national property; and even its ruins have now disappeared. Happily, the abbatial church of the Trinity was at that time more fortunate: it was suffered to continue unappropriated, till, upon the institution of the Legion of Honor, Napoléon applied it to some purposes connected with that body, by whom it was a few years ago ceded for its present object, that of a workhouse for the department. The choir alone is now used as a church: the nave serves for work-rooms; and, to render it the better applicable to this purpose, a floor has been thrown across, which divides it into two stories. It has been observed in a recent publication,[54] that "a finer specimen of the solid grandeur of Norman architecture, is scarcely to be found any where than in the west front of this church," (the subject of the _twenty-fourth plate_.) "The corresponding part of the rival abbey of St. Stephen, is poor when compared to it; and Jumieges and St. Georges equally fail in the comparison. In all these, there is some architectural anomaly: in the Trinity none, excepting indeed the balustrade at the top of the towers; and this is so obviously an addition of modern times, that no one can be misled by it.[55] This balustrade was erected towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the oval apertures and scrolls, seen in Ducarel's print,[56] were introduced."--It may be well to take the present opportunity of making a general observation, that though, in speaking of this and of other churches, the term, _west front_, may commonly be applied to the part containing the principal entrance; yet that this term must be received with a certain degree of latitude. The Norman religious edifices are far from being equally regular in their position as the English. With a general inclination to the west, they vary to every point of the compass.[57] The church of the abbey of the Trinity fronts the north-west--The architrave of the central door-way is composed of many surfaces of great depth: two-thirds of them are flat and plain, and recede so little, as to afford but small opportunity for light and shade. Its decorations are few and simple, consisting almost wholly of the billet and chevron moulding, the former occupying the exterior, the latter the interior, circles. In the outermost band, the billets form a single row, and take the curve of the arch; the succeeding circle exhibits them with an unusual arrangement, placed compound, and all pointing to the centre of the door. These, with the addition of quatrefoils, and of some grotesque heads, which serve as key-stones to the mouldings over the windows of the triforium, are the only ornaments which this front can boast. The capitals throughout it are of the simplest forms, being in general little more than inverted cones, slightly truncated, for the purpose of making them correspond with the columns below. Some few of them have the addition of small projecting knobs immediately below the angles of the impost; while those in the square towers are formed by a short cylinder, whose diameter exceeds that of the shaft, surmounted by a square block, by way of abacus. The towers and buttresses decrease in size upwards.--An architectural peculiarity deserving of notice in this front, lies in the triangular mouldings, observable in the spandrils of the arches of the clerestory. The same are occasionally, though rarely, found in other buildings of unquestionably Norman origin, as in the church at Falaise, and in Norwich Cathedral[58] in our own country. They are here more particularly noticed, as serving to illustrate what has been considered an anomaly in the architecture of some of the round-towered churches in Norfolk and Suffolk,[59] where the windows are formed with heads of this shape. Antiquaries, unwilling to admit that the _flat-sided arch_, as it has been called by a perversion of terms, was introduced into England prior to the fourteenth century, have labored to prove that such windows were alterations of that period, contrary to the evidence of every part of the building. [Illustration: Plate 25. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY, CAEN. _East End._] The east-end of the choir (_plate twenty-five_) presents a bold termination, pierced with ten spacious windows, that give light to the choir, each of them encircled with a broad band, composed of the same ornaments as are found in the rest of the exterior of the edifice. This part of the church is divided in its elevation into three compartments, the lower containing a row of small blank arches, while in each of the upper two is a window of an unusual size for a Norman building, but still without mullions or tracery. The windows ore separated by thick cylindrical pillars, which rise from immediately above a row of windows that give light to the crypt. The heads of these windows are level with the surface of the ground; and the wall, in this subterranean part of the building, is considerably thicker than it is above. The balustrade of quatrefoils above appears coeval with the rest, and may be regarded as tending to establish the originality of that in the nave of the abbey church of St. Stephen.[60] [Illustration: Plate 26. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _East end, interior._] [Illustration: Plate 27. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _North side of the Choir, upper compartment._] The _twenty-sixth_ and _twenty-seventh plates_ shew the interior of the choir, as the _thirty-third_ does the most remarkable of its capitals. This part of the church, in its general arrangement, very much resembles the same portion in St. Georges and in Norwich Cathedral. The second, however, of these buildings, retains the original groinings of the roof, which in our English church have been sacrificed, to make room for large pointed windows; while in the church of the Trinity they have given place to a spacious dome, painted with a representation of the Assumption. In the foreground of this picture, is seen the royal foundress of the abbey; and, according to common tradition, the portrait of a female dressed in the habit of a nun, on the north side of the high altar, is also intended for her. But traditions of this nature are too vague for much reliance to be placed upon them. The altar-piece itself is an _Adoration of the Shepherds_, not devoid of merit.--The plain arches, with their truncated columns, seen in the upper part of _plate 26_, near the front on either side, and repeated in the following plate, are those which terminate the flat part of the choir. The wide unvaried extent of blank surface beneath them is attributable to modern masons, who have filled up and covered arches without mercy or discretion, and have pierced the walls anew with plain mean door-ways. The windows are lofty, and of fine proportions. Their glazing is probably of the time of Louis XIV. when the gorgeous splendor of painted glass gave way to the less beautiful and less appropriate ornaments, supplied by the fancy of the plumbers.[61] The narrow passage formed in the thickness of the wall, with its small arches variously decorated, surrounds the whole building; choir, nave, and transepts. In the architectural arrangement of this portion of the edifice, where every large arch of the windows is flanked by two lesser ones of the triforium, the church of the Trinity agrees with the cathedral at Oxford, as figured in Mr. Carter's work on ancient architecture[62] and there treated as a genuine Saxon building, erected by King Ethelred, after the destruction of the monastery by the Danes in 1004. But the capitals of the columns in the two churches bear only a slight resemblance to each other. Those at Oxford[63] are among the most beautiful left us by early architects, consisting chiefly of foliage; and, in one instance, of a very elegant imitation of a coronet. In the abbatial church at Caen, they display the same mixture of Grecian and barbarous taste, the same beauties, the same monstrosities, and the same apparent aim at fabulous or emblematic history, as has been previously remarked at St. Georges. On the angles of one, which contains four storks, arranged in pairs, will be found an obvious representation of the heraldic fleur-de-lys. In that, figured below it on the plate, is a head placed over two lions, commonly believed to be intended for a portrait of the Conqueror. [Illustration: Plate 28. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _Arches under the central Tower looking from the South Transept._] [Illustration: Plate 29. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _East side of the South Transept._] The _twenty-eighth_ and _twenty-ninth plates_ are devoted to the transepts: the first of them exhibits two of the arches which support the central tower. Finer specimens of the kind are scarcely to be seen in Normandy; and the decoration of them is very peculiar, consisting altogether of numerous bands of quatrefoils in bas-relief. The sculpture of the capitals is likewise remarkable: that of one of them represents entire rams; while the opposite one has only the heads of the same animal at its angles, accompanied with an ornament, which the writer of this article does not remember to have met with elsewhere. The arch that separates the tower from the nave,[64] rises higher than any of the rest, and is obtusely pointed; but its decorations correspond with those of the others, and it appears to be of the same date.[65] For the purpose of more effectually marking the connection of the _twenty-eighth plate_ with the preceding, it may be well to observe, that the string-course, seen in the former through the first arch and adjoining the base of the truncated column, is the same which, in _plate twenty-seven_, forms the base-line of the windows. The same string-course in the choir runs immediately below the gallery; but in the transepts, this gallery is upon a different line, being elevated by the interposition of a very beautiful range of small blank arches, between the larger arches below and the windows of the clerestory; and these latter, in conjunction with the small arches, only occupy the same space as the windows of the choir. The southern transept has been here selected for publication, as being the most perfect. Had the opposite one been equally so, it would have been preferable, from the curious character of its capitals, many of which are taken from scripture-history. But these are, unfortunately, much mutilated. [Illustration: Plate 30. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _Interior of the Nave looking west._] In the _thirtieth plate_ is given a general view of the upper half of the interior of the nave, shewing the western extremity, with the three compartments nearest to it on either side; and here, as in the two preceding plates, it is impossible not to regret the existence of the floor, which, by dividing the church into different stories, greatly injures the effect of the whole. Neither in this nor in any other part of the building, are there side-chapels or aisles. The architecture of the nave, in its general arrangement, resembles that of the transepts; except as to the arches of the second row, which are peculiar. Upon an attentive examination too, it will be found that, notwithstanding the apparent uniformity, no two compartments are precisely alike, while the capitals are infinitely varied. This playfulness of ornament is remarkable in a building, whose architect appears, at first view, to have contemplated only grandeur and solidity. At the farther end of the nave, are seen the five windows of the principal front, together with a portion of the great arch of entrance. The remaining part of this arch, as well as of the others of the lower tier, with the pillars that support them, are concealed by the floor. The gallery, it will be remarked, sinks at the western end, as in the choir, and is connected with the sides by a staircase. The roof is only of lath and plaster, painted in imitation of masonry. [Illustration: Plate 31. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _South side of the Nave, exterior._] The _thirty-first plate_ exhibits three of the eight compartments of the clerestory, on the south side of the nave, as seen externally. The cloisters and conventual buildings hide the whole of the opposite side of the church; and, perfect as is the part here represented, there is nothing to be seen below; for a range of work-shops and of sheds has obstructed the view of the exterior, as effectually as the floor has of the corresponding portion within. The corbel-table, with its monsters of all descriptions, affords a curious specimen of the sculpture of the age. The string-course above it is rich and beautiful. The same is also the case with the decorations of the windows, as well as of the blank arches with which they are flanked, while the intervening flat buttresses, edged by slender cylindrical pilasters, likewise indicate a degree of care and of taste which is very pleasing, and which is the more remarkable, when considered in union with the architecture of the exterior of the contemporary abbey of St. Stephen. [Illustration: Plate 32. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _Crypt._] The crypt (_plate thirty-two_) occupies the space under the choir. The Abbé De la Rue, who terms it "_une jolie chapelle_," says that, in the fifteenth century, it was denominated the subterranean chapel of St. Nicholas; but previously to the revolution, had assumed the name of the chapel of the Holy Trinity. It was originally entered by two narrow staircases from the transepts. Its length from east to west is about thirty feet: its width, about twenty-seven. The simple vaulted roof is supported by thirty-two slender columns, sixteen of them half imbedded in the wall, and rising from a stone bench, with which this crypt is surrounded, in the same manner as that of the church of St. Gervais, at Rouen. This chapel was, till lately, paved with highly-polished vitrified bricks, each about two inches square, diversified with very vivid colors, but of a description altogether unlike those in the Conqueror's palace. It is lighted by narrow windows, which widen considerably inwards, the wall being here of great thickness; and, according to all probability, there were originally eleven of them, though the greater part are now closed. One of them was lately filled with bones, and bricked up. Upon the place it occupied is to be seen the following inscription, placed between a couple of vases of antique form:--"_Ossemens trouvés dans l'ancien chapitre des dames de la Trinité, et déposés dans ce lieu le IV. Mars, MDCCCXVIII._" [Illustration: Plate 33. ABBEY CHURCH OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAEN. _Capitals in the Choir._] In the same year, at the time when these drawings were made, no tombs whatever existed in the church of the Trinity. There had formerly been many here; but the revolution had swept them all away.[66] Among the rest were those of the royal foundress, of her daughter Cæcilia, the first abbess, and of two other daughters of English kings, who likewise wore the ducal coronet of Normandy. The most celebrated of all was that of Matilda: according to Ordericus Vitalis, it was of exquisite workmanship, and richly ornamented with gold and precious stones. But the Calvinists demolished it in 1562; and, not content with plundering the monument of all that was valuable, tore open the Queen's coffin, and dispersed her remains. Towards the close of the same century, Anne de Montmorenci, then abbess, caused the royal bones to be collected, and again to be deposited in the original stone coffin; and things continued in this state till the year 1708, when the abbess, Gabrielle Françoise Fronlay de Tessé, raised a second altar-tomb of black marble, a representation of which has been preserved by Ducarel. In addition to this, she inclosed the bones of the princess for greater security in a leaden box, which she laid in the coffin; and these happily escaped violation in 1793, when the revolutionists destroyed the monument, because the arms of Normandy, with which it was ornamented, sinned against the doctrines of the liberty and equality of man. France being once more settled under a monarchical form of government, a fresh search was instituted in March, 1819, by the prefect of the department, in the presence of the bishop of the diocese and Mr. Spencer Smythe, for the discovery of Matilda's remains; and they were found and verified, and re-interred in their original situation.--Another tomb, similar to that which was destroyed at the revolution, is also raised over them. The engraved stone in _plate twenty-six_, marks the place which it occupies. Upon it is laid the original slab with the epitaph, which, by great good fortune, escaped unhurt from the hands both of democrats and Huguenots; and, as many of the subscribers to this work have expressed a desire that a fac-simile of it should be inserted, as illustrative of the form of the letters, as well as of the manner of writing in use at that period, Mr. Cotman has had a pleasure in meeting their wishes, at the same time, that he has not considered it as sufficiently belonging to the publication, to justify him in making it an object of charge. The inscription, divided into lines, and written in modern characters, is as follows:-- "Egregie pulchri tegit hec structura sepulcri Moribus insigne germen regale Matildem Dux Flandrita pater huic extitit Adala mater Francor gentis Rotberti filia regis Et soror Henrici regali sede potiti Regi magnifico Wlllelmo juncta marito Presentem sedem presente fecit et edem Tam multis terris quam multis rebus honestis A se ditatam se procurante dicatam Hec consolatrix inopum pietatis amatrix Gazis dispersis pauper sibi dives egenis Sic infinite petiit consortia vite In prima mensis post primam luce Novembris." [Illustration: Plate 33*. _A fac simile of the inscription upon the tomb of Queen Matilda in the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen._] NOTES: [51] The will of the Queen has been printed by the Abbé De la Rue, (_Essais Historiques_ II. p. 437) from a manuscript in the royal library at Paris; but the writer of the present article is not aware that it has ever yet appeared in any English publication; and he therefore considers it desirable here to reprint it, for the antiquaries of his own country.--"Ego Mathildis Regina do Sanctæ Trinitati Cadomi casulam quam apud Wintoniam [Winchester] operatur uxor Aldereti, et clamidem operatam ex auro quæ est in camera mea ad cappam faciendam, atque de duabus ligaturis meis aureis in quibus cruces sunt, illam quæ emblematibus est insculpta, ad lampadem suspendendam coram Sancto altare, candelabraque maxima quæ fabricantur apud Sanctum Laudum, coronam quoque et sceptrum, calicesque ac vestimentum, atque aliud vestimentum quod operatur in Anglia, et cum omnibus ornamentis equi, atque omnia vasa mea, exceptis illis quæ antea dedero alicubi in vita mea; et Chetehulmum [Quetehou en Cotentin] in Normannia, et duas mansiones in Anglia do Sanctæ Trinitati Cadomi. Hæc omnia concessu domini mei Regis facio. "Ex cartulario Sanctæ Trin. Bibl. Reg. Paris. no. 5650." [52] The annual income arising from these, is stated by Odon Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, in the _procés-verbal_ of his visit to this abbey in 1250, to have amounted to one hundred and sixty pounds sterling; a sum nearly equivalent to eighty thousand livres of the present day. [53] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 75, t. 7.--In this figure, which represents the south side of the building, a striking resemblance will be observed with the architecture of the church of Than, figured in this work, _pl. 16_.--Ducarel, in speaking of the pillars in the inside of the chapel, says they are of a peculiar construction, and widely different from all others that have fallen under his consideration; but he has unfortunately furnished no engraving of them, and has even omitted to mention wherein their peculiarity lay. [54] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 184. [55] Still less can any one be so by the alteration of the arches of entrance into modern windows, which Mr. Turner did not think it worth while to mention. [56] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, plate 5. [57] See _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 171. [58] See _Britton's Norwich Cathedral_, plate 4, F. p. 32. [59] Hadisco church, figured in _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk_, plate 38, affords an excellent specimen of these windows. [60] See plate 23. [61] See _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 252, under the head of Bayeux Cathedral, the windows of which are remarkable for the complicated patterns of the lead-work.--See also _Carter's Ancient Architecture_, I. plate 79, p. 54, where this laborious author states himself to have collected nearly all the remains of this description of art in England. He is inclined to refer it to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.--In the second volume of the same work, plate 27, fig. F. 2, is represented one of the borders of the west window of the nave in York Cathedral, which almost exactly resembles one of these at Caen. [62] I. plate 28, fig. A. [63] See _Britton's Oxford Cathedral_, plate 4. [64] In Mr. Turner's _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 186, this arch is, by a _lapsus calami_, called the _eastern_, instead of the _western_. [65] Mr. Cotman thought that he could discover visible traces of its having been originally semi-circular, and subsequently raised and pointed: and it is certainly most probable that such has been the case. [66] Drawings of them all are fortunately preserved by the Abbé De la Rue; and it is hoped some French antiquary will be found sufficiently patriotic to cause them to be engraved. PLATES XXXIV.--XXXVI. CASTLE AND CHURCH OF ST. JAMES, AT DIEPPE. [Illustration: Plate 34. CASTLE AT DIEPPE.] The anonymous author of the _History of Dieppe_,[67] published towards the close of the last century, traces the origin of the town as high as the year 809, when Charlemagne visited this part of the coast of his empire, and, observing how much it was exposed to hostile attacks, ordered the construction of a fort upon the beach. The fort was honored with the name of the emperor's daughter, Bertha; and as the protection thus afforded, joined to the advantageous nature of the position, caused the fortress, within a short time, to be surrounded by the cottages of the neighboring fishermen, an establishment insensibly grew up, which acquired the appellation of Bertheville. But the irruptions of the Normans, towards the close of the same, or the commencement of the succeeding, century, gave a new color to affairs in Neustria: places changed their names with their masters; and, no respect being paid to the emperor or his descendants, Bertheville ceased to be known under any other denomination than that of _Dyppe_, a Norman word, expressive of the depth of water in its harbor. Under Rollo, we are told that Dieppe became the principal port in the duchy. That politic sovereign was too well versed in nautical affairs, not to be aware of the importance of such a station; and he had the interest of his newly-acquired territory too much at heart, not to labor at the improving of it. It was at Dieppe that he embarked the troops, which he dispatched, in 913, for the assistance of his countrymen, the Danes, in their attempts to conquer England; and the town flourished under his sway, and then laid the foundation for that maritime greatness to which it has subsequently risen. From this time forward, Dieppe is frequently mentioned in history: William the Conqueror honored it with his presence in 1047, and received in person the homage of its inhabitants, on his return from Arques, when the surrender of that important fortress by his uncle, Telo, put an end to the troubles occasioned by the illegitimacy of his birth. The same monarch, during the preparations for his descent upon Britain, made a particular call on the people of Dieppe, to arm their vessels for the transport of his troops. They obeyed the summons; and they boast that their ships were the first that arrived at the place of rendezvous. No port in Normandy derived equal advantage from the conquest: the intercourse between the sister countries was naturally conducted through this channel; and such continued the case till 1194, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion, defeated under the walls of Arques, was compelled to leave this part of the province a prey to the victorious arms of Philip-Augustus. Upon this occasion, the French monarch appears to have singled out Dieppe as an object of particular vengeance, and he conducted himself towards it with a cruelty for which it would be difficult to assign an adequate reason. Not content with burning the town and its shipping, he transported the inhabitants into the ulterior parts of France, that they might never re-assemble and raise it from its ashes. Brito, at the same time that he glosses over the more flagrant part of the transaction, tells enough to leave no doubt of its truth; and his passage upon the subject deserves attention, particularly as being decisive with regard to the state of Dieppe at that period: "Haud procul hinc portus famâ celeberrimus atque Villa potens opibus florebat nomine _Deppen_. Hanc primùm Franci sub eodem tempore gazis Omnibus expoliant, spoliatam denique totam In cinerem redigunt; et sic ditatus abivit Coetus ovans, quòd tot villâ non esse vel urbe Divitias aut tam pretiosas diceret unquam."-- In the course of the succeeding year, the treaty of Gaillon restored Dieppe and Arques, with their dependencies, to Richard, who almost immediately afterwards surrendered the former town to Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, as one of the articles of compensation for the injury done to that prelate, by the erection of Château Gaillard upon his territory. Dieppe appears to have recovered itself with surprising rapidity: a new church, under the invocation of St. James, was erected in 1250, that of St. Remi being no longer sufficient for the accommodation of its inhabitants; and these, however cruelly they had been injured by Philip-Augustus, were among the foremost in their demonstrations of loyalty to him as their sovereign, when the cold-blooded tyranny of John had bereft him of the Norman diadem. In one of the first years of the succeeding century, John Baliol, more properly called De Bailleul, a fugitive from Scotland, sought refuge in Dieppe, and finally retired to his paternal domain in the valley of the Yaulne, five leagues distant from the port. The remainder of his days were spent here in the village that bears his name; and the parochial church, which still contains his ashes, was, till lately, ornamented with his tomb, charged with an inscription, reciting the various events of his life. During the wars of Edward III. the ships from Dieppe took the lead in the great naval engagement in 1337; and their admiral, Béhuchet, so distinguished himself, as to draw down upon him the marked resentment of that prince. He was himself made prisoner and hanged; and a detachment of English and Flemings was dispatched to destroy the harbor. The injuries, however, now sustained, were repaired with the same rapidity as before: Philip shewed himself no less ready to reward services, than his opponent had been to resent offences. His letters patent, bearing date in February, 1345, exempted the inhabitants from the payment of all taxes and dues, for the purpose of enabling them to rebuild their walls.--Dieppe, in 1412, was again attacked by the English, and, on this occasion, both by land and sea; but the inhabitants made a gallant and an effectual resistance. Their opposition, though unavailing, was not at all less spirited in the following reign, when they were compelled, in common with the rest of France, to acknowledge the power of the fifth Henry. But they again disengaged themselves from the English crown in 1431, after having remained in subjugation to it for eleven years; and the subsequent siege, conducted by Talbot himself in person, in 1442, only added to their military character. During this siege, which was of great length, the English general erected the formidable fortress, known by the name of the Bastille, in the suburb of Pollet. The following year saw the French become in their turn the assailants: Louis II. then dauphin, joined the troops of the Comte de Dunois in Dieppe, and the Bastille fell, after a most murderous attack. It was afterwards levelled with the ground in 1689, though, at a period of one hundred and twenty years after it was originally taken and dismantled, it had again been made a place of strength by the Huguenots, and was still farther fortified under Henry IV. The pious dauphin, who ascribed the capture of this almost impregnable castle to the especial grace of the Virgin Mary, would not quit Dieppe without leaving behind him an equally signal mark of gratitude on his part. He accordingly repaired in person to the church of St. James, there to place the town under her especial protection; and, not content with this, he instituted the Guild of the Assumption, charging the members annually to commemorate the day of their deliverance by a solemn festival.[68] After this time, Dieppe appears to have been exposed to no farther calamities from warfare, except what it suffered, in common with a great part of France, during the religious troubles, and also excepting the bombardment by the English fleet in 1694. From the earliest rise of Calvinism in France, the inhabitants of Dieppe had distinguished themselves in favor of the reformation; and they were already prepared to go to the utmost lengths in its support, when John Knox, one of the most devoted apostles of the new faith, landed there in 1560, on his way from Scotland to Geneva. The presence of such a man produced the effect which might naturally be expected, of kindling the spark into a flame; and Dieppe continued for two years in open rebellion to the court. The inhabitants, in 1562, alarmed by the capture of Rouen, consented to receive a garrison from our Queen Elizabeth, rather than submit to renounce their creed; but they were obliged, in the course of the same year, to surrender to the royal troops. Notwithstanding all this, the Protestants of Dieppe, through the wisdom and moderation of the governor, escaped unhurt from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The town was nevertheless one of the first in France to declare, in 1589, for Henry IV. when, pursued by the victorious forces of the league, he sought shelter in these walls, and here collected the handful of troops, with which he almost immediately afterwards gained the important victory of Arques. The same prince also retired hither three years subsequently, and remained ten days in the midst of _ses bons Dieppois_, as he was in the habit of styling them, to be cured of the wounds received in the battle of Aumale. Among the various royal personages, with whose presence Dieppe has been honored on different occasions, were Mary of Guise, widow of James V. of Scotland, and mother to the unfortunate princess of the same name, who succeeded her on the Scottish throne. She landed here in 1549, and was immediately joined by Henry II. who was at that time at Rouen. In 1564, Catherine of Médicis came hither, attended by her son, Charles IX. with a view of healing the wounds occasioned by the religious dissentions; and, in 1618, Louis XIII. after holding an assembly of the states of Normandy at the capital of the duchy, repaired to Dieppe, to visit one of the most important sea-ports of his kingdom. The same attention was shewn to the town twenty-nine years subsequently, by Louis XIV. then in his minority, accompanied by the Queen Regent; and, in our own days, it has been equally distinguished by Napoléon. In this short outline of the principal events connected with the history of Dieppe, no notice has been taken of the honor acquired by its sailors, who have, however, on all occasions, distinguished themselves. They did so particularly in the year 1555, when, unassisted by their king, or by any other part of France, they armed their merchant vessels, and attacked and defeated, and nearly destroyed, the Flemish fleet, consisting of twenty-four sail of ships of war. At all times they have been considered as supplying some of the best men to the French navy, so that the President de Thou pronounced them to be entitled to the highest glory in nautical affairs. They lay claim to the honor of having first planted the standard of Christianity upon the coast of Guinea, where they established a settlement in the fourteenth century; of having been the first who discovered the great river of the Amazons; and also the first who sailed up that of St. Lawrence. Even to the present day, they carry on a considerable traffic in small ornaments made of ivory, a humiliating memento of their connection with Senegal: but all the rest of their commerce is dwindled into the fishery, and a small portion of coasting-trade. The castle, (the subject of _plate thirty-four_,) stands upon a steep hill; and, on approaching the town from the sea, has a grand and imposing appearance. Its walls, flanked with towers and bastions, cause it to retain the look of strength, the reality of which has long since departed. The earliest portion of the building is probably a high quadrangular tower, with lofty pointed pannels, in the four walls. Even this, however, cannot have been erected anterior to the year 1443; for it is upon record that the Sieur des Marêts, the first governor of the place, then began to build a castle here, to protect the town from any farther attacks on the part of the English army. The inhabitants, during the reign of Henry IV. obtained permission to add to it a citadel; but the whole was suffered almost immediately afterwards to fell into decay. [Illustration: Plate 35. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE. _West front._] [Illustration: Plate 36. CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, AT DIEPPE. _East end._] The church of St. Jacques, figured in the _thirty-fifth_ and _thirty-sixth plates_, is the largest, and considerably the most interesting of the two parochial churches of the place. It had the singular good fortune of escaping, together with the castle, nearly uninjured from the bombardment, during the reign of our third William, which laid the town in ashes. It was begun about the year 1260, but was little advanced at the commencement of the following century; nor were its nineteen chapels, the works of the piety of individuals, completed before 1350. The roof of the choir remained imperfect till ninety years afterwards; while that of the transept is as recent as 1628. Thus it is a valuable specimen of the ecclesiastical architecture of successive ages. In the lines of the transepts are traces of the early pointed style, apparently coeval with the church at Eu: the friezes are ornamented with small pierced quatrefoils, as in that building; and the portals, now mutilated, are in the same style.--The nave is of much later date; and the vaulting, though Gothic, is intermixed with Grecian members and scrolls.--The triforium in the choir is filled with elegant perpendicular tracery. The Lady-Chapel is perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but still very pure, except in some of the smaller members, such as the niches in the tabernacles, which end in scallop-shells, instead of terminating with a groined canopy. The bosses of the groined roof are of the most delicate filagree work, and the vaulting is also ornamented with knots pendant from the ribs.--The pannel-work round the chapel takes circular terminations in each pannel; but filled within with an elegant tracery, terminating with the acanthus.--The windows of the chapel are acutely pointed.--The horizontal mullions, (an unusual feature in French architecture,) are ornamented on the outside with the ovolo. The nave is supported by flying buttresses, each filled with tracery of eight mullions.--The tower at the south angle of the west front is lofty, and in the _perpendicular style_. In the north aisle of the choir is an elegant screen, which probably incloses a chantry-chapel, and, like the lady-chapel, exhibits a singular mixture of pointed forms, interspersed with Roman members: parts of it resemble the tomb of Bishop Fox, at Winchester. NOTES: [67] _Mémoires Chronologiques pour servir à l'Histoire de Dieppe et à celle de la Navigation Française, Paris, 1785._--(2 vols. 8vo.) [68] This festival was attended with ceremonies of the most absurd description, which were continued till the time of the revolution. They are detailed at length in the _Histoire de Dieppe_ I. p. 68; and a brief account has lately been given of them in English, in _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 24. PLATE XXXVII. TOWER OF THE CHURCH AT HAUTE ALLEMAGNE, NEAR CAEN. The village of Haute Allemagne is situated at the distance of about a league to the south of Caen. Mention of it is to be found in the latin charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the appellation of _Alamannia_, or _Alemannia_; and the older historians contend that it derived this name from having been the site of a colony of the _Alani_, a Scythian tribe, who ravaged a portion of Gaul in the early years of the fifth century, and afterwards, with the consent of the Roman emperors, established themselves in various parts of the country. This opinion, in the judgment of the Abbé De la Rue, receives confirmation from the circumstance of there being another village called _Allemagne_, in the vicinity of Valence, where it is known that a body of the same people was fixed; and it may perhaps be adduced as a still farther proof of its correctness, that the village of Allemagne, near Caen, formerly embraced a considerably greater extent of country. [Illustration: Plate 37. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF HAUTE ALLEMAGNE NEAR CAEN.] Allemagne was one of the domains granted by the Conqueror to his abbey of St. Stephen; and in the charter, he states that he cedes it "with its dependencies." The meaning of this latter term is explained in the subsequent charter from his son Henry, in which four neighboring villages are expressly said to be _dependent upon Allemagne_. Allemagne was itself also divided into two parishes, the _upper_ and _lower_. At present it is only remarkable for its quarries, from which the stones are dug, known in France by the name of _Carreaux d'Allemagne_, and commonly used for floors to rooms, not only in the province of Normandy, but throughout the whole kingdom. There is also a considerable export of them for the same purpose. It was in these quarries that the fossil crocodile was discovered in 1817; which, as being extraordinarily perfect, and the first specimen ever found with scales, has excited an uncommon degree of interest among naturalists. Of the history of the parish of Allemagne, nothing is known. The portion of its church here figured, has been selected for engraving, as an instance of a Norman tower of unquestionable antiquity, and in the highest preservation. The pyramidal stone roof, similar to that of the church of St. Michel de Vaucelles, at Caen, appears to be quite in its original state. Even the small lucarne window in it looks coeval with the rest. The row of intersecting arches below is beautiful and peculiar. PLATES XXXVIII.--XLI. CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT, AT GOURNAY. [Illustration: Plate 38. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _West front._] The town of Gournay is generally supposed to rival, in point of antiquity, almost any other in this part of France. Tradition refers its origin to the days of Julius Cæsar, during the latter part of whose government in Gaul, a dangerous conspiracy broke out among the Bellovaci, the Caletes, and the Velliocasses, assisted by the inhabitants of other neighboring districts. This confederacy is supposed to have given rise to Gournay. The situation of the town is upon the frontiers of the territories of the two first tribes just mentioned, the present inhabitants of the Pays de Caux and of the Beauvaisis, in a marshy spot, subject to frequent inundations from two small rivers, the Epte and the St. Aubin, whose waters flow beneath the walls of the place. Hence, an inference has naturally arisen, that the necessity for communication between people so near in point of position, and yet so effectually separated, first suggested the advantages to be derived from a bridge over the Epte, in a place otherwise impassable; and that the bridge was shortly afterwards followed by a cause-way, which, in its turn, held out inducements to settlers, so that the town imperceptibly grew out of the traffic thus occasioned. The historical celebrity acquired by Gournay, far exceeds what might have been expected from its size or importance, and has altogether arisen from the power and the high military character of its Norman lords. Rollo, at the time that he parcelled out the lands of his newly-acquired sovereignty, amongst his companions in arms, bestowed Gournay, together with the whole of the Norman division of the Pays de Brai, upon a chieftain of the name of Eudes, to be held as a fief of the duchy, under the usual military tenure; binding him and his successors to furnish to the prince, in times of war, twelve of their vassals, and to arm all their dependents for the defence of the adjacent frontier. Eudes had a son of the name of Hugh; and he it is who is reported to have first directed his attention towards making Gournay a place of strength. The ancient records ascribe to him the erection of a citadel in the immediate vicinity of the church of St. Hildebert, surrounded with a triple wall and double fosse; and farther secured by a tower, which was called after his name, _la Tour Hue_, and which continued in existence till the beginning of the seventeenth century. Such was the reported strength of this fortress, that Brito, a chronicler, but, it must be remembered, a poetical one, declares that it was able to resist an hostile attack, even without a single soldier within the walls! His whole account of the place, in the time of Philip-Augustus, and of its capture by that monarch, in the sixth book of his _Philippiad_, is curious and interesting. A second Hugh de Gournay, born after a lapse of about a century from the death of the son of Eudes, is usually accounted the head of the family, because it is from him that the regular series of their descent is to be traced. He was a man of whose military prowess many instances are recorded: among his other exploits, he is supposed to have been the chieftain, who, carrying his arms into the district of Beauvais, made himself master of the four villages there, which, from their subjection to him, have retained the name of _Les Conquêts_ and which continued for many centuries under the administration of the lords of Gournay. He also attended the Conqueror to England, where he was rewarded for his services by a grant of land which he held from that prince _in capite_. Upon a former occasion, he had been employed by him in a place of high trust, having been appointed to command, in conjunction with Taillefer, half-brother to the duke, and three other Norman nobles, the fleet sent to the protection of Edward the Confessor, against the claims of Harold. His name is also found in 1059, among the leaders of the Norman army, which defeated the French forces at Couppegueule, near Mortimer. At last, disgusted with earthly affairs, he retired to the abbey of Bec, and there, in the monastic robe, ended a life which had been devoted to pursuits of the most opposite tendency.--This Hugh de Gournay had a son of the name of Girald, who married the sister of William, Earl Warren, and accompanied Robert, Duke of Normandy, to the Holy Land.--The third, and last Hugh de Gournay, grandson of Girald, was in the number of those who followed Richard Coeur-de-Lion in a similar expedition, and was appointed his commissioner to receive the English share of the spoil after the battle of Acre. He was also among the barons who rose against King John. But his attachment to the English cause ultimately lost him his possessions in Normandy; for no sooner was Philip-Augustus master of Gournay, than he declared him a traitor, and banished him from France. Philip added to the fortifications a new castle, in the direction of Ferrieres. This, however, has been long since destroyed; and indeed the probability is, that the walls and towers of Gournay were neglected and suffered to fall into decay, shortly after the annexation of the duchy to France. There can be little doubt but that the town originally owed its importance, as a fortress, to its position upon the frontiers of France and Normandy; and the consequence would therefore naturally follow, that, as soon as the ducal and regal crowns were united on the same head, it would cease to be maintained as a place of strength.--About a hundred years after the capture of Gournay by Philip-Augustus, Philip the Bold, great grandson of that monarch, bestowed the town and lordship upon his youngest son, Charles of Valois, at whose death it became a part of the dower of his widow, Matilda of Chatillon. Again, in like manner, on the decease of Philip of Valois, in 1350, Gournay was separated from the Crown, and assigned to the widowed queen, Blanche of Navarre. By this princess it was held for forty-eight years, when it once more reverted to the royal domains. But early in the succeeding century, the town fell, together with the rest of France, under the victorious arms of our sovereign Henry V. and upon his demise, it was a third time selected as a portion of the dower of the royal widow, Catherine, daughter of the French monarch, Charles VI. Her death, in 1438, restored it to England: but only to be held for the short term of eleven years, at which time, the reverses sustained by the British troops, occasioned the expulsion of our monarchs from their continental dominions.--From that period to the revolution, the lordship of Gournay, with the title of count, was constantly added by the French kings to the dignities of some one of the principal families of the realm; and in this manner, it successively passed through different branches of the houses of Harcourt, Orléans, Longueville, and Montmorenci. [Illustration: Plate 39. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _View across the Nave into the North transept._] The church of St. Hildebert,[69] the subject of these plates, was, previously to the revolution, both parochial and collegiate. Its foundation is supposed to be of very high antiquity. There is, however, no proof of the precise period of the establishment of the chapter here. The earliest records upon the subject, bear date in the year 1180, and merely mention it as being then in existence; but, according to tradition, it was first fixed at the neighboring village of Brefmoutier, and was removed to Gournay by Hugh, the last of the Norman counts. The same Hugh is generally reported to have commenced the erection of the present church; but it is sufficiently known with how little accuracy the early historians are wont to express themselves on these subjects. The term, "to rebuild," often means no more than to repair; so that it is in many cases more safe to judge from the style of a building itself, than from the records preserved to us respecting it. The architecture of the church of St. Hildebert would lead to the supposition, that a considerable portion of it was standing in its present state, at least one hundred years anterior to the time of Hugh; and, even admitting such to have been the case, there is still sufficient discrepancy in the rest of the edifice to account for the well attested circumstance, that, at the close of the thirteenth century, the church yet remained incomplete. The imperfect state of the building did not prevent its receiving the honor of a dedication: this ceremony was performed in one of the last years of the twelfth century, by Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, in person, attended, as commonly happened, by a great concourse of the nobles and clergy of the province; and, in the first year of the following century, Herbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, passed over from England for the express purpose of doing honor by his presence to the translation of the reliques of St. Hildebert. The banishment of Hugh de Gournay and confiscation of his property, which took place shortly after these events, deprived the canons of their liberal and powerful benefactor. Poverty caused the progress of the building to be suspended; and it was only by the aid of repeated indulgences, granted by the popes and archbishops,[70] that it was finally brought to a state of completion. The two western towers are of a considerably more recent period: they were erected in their present state, of wood, roofed with slate, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The timber was supplied by the Duchess of Longueville, whose husband was at that time Count of Gournay; and the rest of the charge was defrayed by the sale of the materials of a ruined chapel, dedicated to St. Julian, and of a small central tower, the only one originally attached to the building. The church is in the form of a cross; consisting of a nave with aisles, choir, and transepts. The west front (_plate thirty-eight_) is in the earliest style of pointed architecture, and evidently of the period of the same Hugh de Gournay, by whom the whole edifice is said to be raised. If compared with the same portion of the churches known to have been erected at a similar period in England, the closest resemblance will be traced between them. That of Salisbury cathedral, the most noble instance of the kind in Britain, is later, and infinitely more richly ornamented. But in this at Gournay, the windows are the only portion that have altogether escaped mutilation or alteration. The side portals were evidently, in their original state, fronted with porches, which have now disappeared. Such has likewise been the case with the arches of entrance; and mention has already been made of the posterior date of the tower. The _thirty-ninth plate_ exhibits a portion of the older part of the interior of the church, and displays a style of architecture considerably prior to the period assigned for its rebuilding; so that no one can well doubt but that, as has been hinted above, though it may be said to owe its existence to Hugh de Gournay, this assertion is to be taken only in a qualified sense. This plate contains the last compartment of the north side of the nave, and also admits a portion of the transept. Flanking the nave, on either hand, is a row of seven columns, supporting six arches. It is scarcely possible for the most casual observer not to be struck, immediately upon entering the building, with the extreme massiveness and solidity of the piers. They are for the most part square, and only varied with a semi-cylindrical shaft attached to each of the four sides. Similar piers are to be found in many of the village churches upon the coasts of Sussex and Surrey, the part of our island which, from its situation nearest to Normandy, is most likely to retain genuine specimens of the earliest and purest Norman architecture. But the most remarkable character attending the piers at Gournay is, that the sculpture upon them, instead of being confined as usual to the capitals of the pillars, is also continued over the flat intermediate surface of the piers, extending to the same depth as the capitals, as if intended, by forming a band round the whole, to connect it more closely in a kind of architectural unity. The pattern, however, in general varies as applied to the flat or circular sides. The arches of the nave of the church are of a shape between what is generally termed the semi-circular and the horse-shoe arch; their centre being somewhat higher than the spring, but not remarkably so. The clerestory windows above are all Norman; and the same is the case with the great arches, originally intended to support the central tower; excepting, indeed, in that to the north, which has evidently undergone an alteration. [Illustration: Plate 40. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _Capitals._] [Illustration: Plate 41. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. HILDEBERT AT GOURNAY. _Capitals._] _Plates forty_ and _forty-one_[71] are devoted to the capitals, the most characteristic feature of the building. A more remarkable or a more interesting set, is not to be seen in any church throughout Normandy. Their character is by no means altogether the same as that of those at St. Georges, or in the abbatial church of the Trinity at Caen. There are indeed monsters among them, but they are of unfrequent occurrence; and, if the expression may be allowed, they are not equally monstrous. Nor are they of a description to appear to bear any reference to mythology, or to history. On the contrary, the sculpture on them is for the most part of great beauty; and the patterns display a fertile, and an elegant, if not a classical, taste on the part of the architects. The greatest peculiarity among them, and one that is believed to be wholly confined to this church, is, that seven or eight of the pillars have, by way of capitals, a narrow projecting rim, carved with undulating lines. So frequent a repetition of the same ornament, and of an ornament so very singular, removes the idea of accident. It has therefore been supposed, that the intention of the sculptor was to exhibit a kind of hieroglyphical representation of water. "Perhaps," as has been observed elsewhere,[72] "it is the chamber of Sagittarius; or, perhaps, it is a _fess-wavy_, to which the same signification has been assigned by heralds.--If this interpretation be correct, the symbol is allusive to the ancient situation of the town, built in a marsh, intersected by two streams." The aisles of the church are in all parts ancient: their vaulting resembles that of Norwich cathedral, an arch springing from each capital.--Large windows of the decorated English style, and consequently comparatively modern, have been inserted, at the east end of the church, and at the extremity of the south transept; but, in both these parts, sufficient is left to shew the original design of the architect. In the latter, it is evident that there once were, as there still remain in the opposite transept, four semi-circular-headed windows, disposed, to speak in heraldic language, 1, 2, and 1; while, in the former, were seven, placed 1, 2, and 4. Of the four lowest of these, the two outermost gave light to the aisles. Each window was separated from the rest by a shallow undivided Norman buttress, built of squared freestone, and interrupting the herring-bone masonry, which occupies the rest of the east end, to the height of about five feet from the ground. NOTES: [69] St. Hildebert is a name of rare occurrence in hagiology. He was bishop of Meaux in the seventh century, but was not honored with a place in the calendar, till about three hundred years after his decease; at which time his reliques were carried to different parts of France, and finally interred at Gournay. The church, on this occasion, changed its patron, an event which commonly happened in those ages, and placed itself under the protection of the new saint, instead of the proto-martyr, to whom it had been originally dedicated.--Peter de Natalibus, in his _Catalogus Sanctorum_, says, that St. Hildebert ended his life as Archbishop of Tours; and that he died in that city, and was there buried, "_ibique jacens in miraculis vivit_." He speaks of him likewise as an elegant scholar, and the author of a work, _de contemptu hujus vitæ_, written partly in verse, and partly in prose. [70] Of the last of these, which bears date in 1278, a copy, translated from the Archiepiscopal Archives, is printed in the _Concilia Normannica_, (II. p. 85,) and is here inserted, not only on account of the information it affords concerning the church, but as a curious specimen of similar compositions:-- "GUILLELMUS DE FLAVACURIA INDULGENTIAS ECCLESIÆ GORNACENSI CONCEDIT ANNO CHRISTI MCCLXXVIII. "Guillelmus permissione divinâ Rotomagensis Archiepiscopus, universis præsentes literas inspecturis, salutem in Domino Jesu Christo. Cum, sicut accepimus, Ecclesia de Gournayo nostræ Diocesis, in qua Corpus B. Hildeverti requiescit, ita graviter sit oppressa, quòd ad sustentationem pauperum Clericorum ibi deservientium, necnon et ad reædificationem dictæ Ecclesiæ propriæ facultates non suppetant nisi fidelium subventionibus adjuvetur, maximè cùm prædicta Ecclesia amiserit redditus quos in Anglia solebat percipere annuatim. Nos de omnipotentis Dei misericordia et B. Mariæ semper Virginis genitricis ejus, beatorum Petri et Pauli, ac beatorum Confessorum Romani et Audoëni, et omnium Sanctorum meritis et intercessione confisi: Omnibus verè poenitentibus et confessis, qui ad dictam Ecclesiam causâ peregrinationis Dominicâ in qua canitur: _Isti sunt dies_, et die Sabbathi et die Veneris immediatè præcedentibus accesserint, vel prænominatæ Ecclesiæ manum suam porrexerint, adjutorium dictis diebus vel aliis eleemosynas largiendo, 40 dies de injunctis sibi poenitentiis misericorditer relaxamus. Datum Gournaii anno Domini 1278, die Veneris ante Festum B. Dionysii." [71] The capitals in the former of these plates are all selected from the nave; in the latter, those marked E, H, M, are taken from the columns placed at the intersection of the transepts; and G, I, K, and O, from the choir. L and N represent consols to ribs in the aisles. [72] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 44. PLATES XLII. AND XLIII. CHAPEL OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JULIEN, NEAR ROUEN. [Illustration: Plate 42. CHAPEL OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JULIEN, NEAR ROUEN. _South side._] The chapel figured in these plates is all that now remains of a monastery, which, at the period of the revolution, was one of the most magnificent in the vicinity of Rouen. It was then likewise almost altogether new: Farin, in his history of the city, printed in 1731, states that, at the time when he wrote, the monks of the order of the Chartreux, the then occupants of the priory, had just began to rebuild the great cloister, according to a very simple and magnificent design.[73] But the revolutionary commotions levelled the whole with the ground, sparing only the unassuming chapel, which has since served as a wood-house for the neighboring farmer. The convent itself underwent many changes of owners. It was originally founded in 1183, by Henry II. King of England and Duke of Normandy, as a priory, under the invocation of St. Julien, for the reception of unmarried females of rank, who, having the misfortune to be affected with leprosy, devoted themselves to a religious life. That terrible disease, happily almost unknown except by tradition, in our days, was in those times of so frequent occurrence, that legislative enactments were repeatedly necessary to restrain its ravages. In the history of the councils of the Norman church, allusions to the subject are often to be found. Lepers were forbidden to migrate, even from one lazar-house to another; they were not allowed to set their foot in any city or fortress; and, in the event of their transgressing this order, and being ill-treated in consequence of such disobedience, no redress was to be afforded them. They could take rest in no inn, even for necessary refreshment.[74] By an especial order of the church of Bayeux, no one could give alms to a leper, under pain of excommunication;[75] and the church of Coutances went still further, enjoining them never to appear without a particular kind of cope, by way of distinction, and never to attempt to dispose of the hogs which they were in the habit of fatting, except to such as labored under the same disease. Disobedience to this last order, exposed both buyer and seller to a punishment, which sounds rather strange at this time, being _ad boni viri arbitrium_.[76] In another case, and nearly at the time of the foundation of the priory of St. Julien, it is upon record, that lepers were charged as engaged in a horrible communion of crime with Jews. The latter were expelled from France in 1321, upon the plea of their having been guilty of administering to the people potions of a poisonous quality; and the lepers were accused of having lent themselves as instruments in aiding and abetting.[77] In the foundation-charter of the priory of St. Julien, Henry endows it with an annual rental of two hundred livres, for the clothing and maintenance of the nuns; and he gives them, in addition, the meadow of Quevilli, in which parish the convent was situated, together with the privilege of cutting their fire-wood, and feeding their cattle, in the forest there. Hence the monastery was indiscriminately known by the name of _Salle du Roi_, _Salle des Pucelles_, _Notre Dame du Quevilli_, and _St. Julien du Parc_. In the year 1366, Charles V. King of France, being then at Rouen, transferred, by his letters patent, the convent of St. Julien, with all its appurtenances, which had by that time considerably increased, to the great hospital of the city, called the Magdalen. The prior of the latter establishment was enjoined to take charge of the nuns, and to visit them daily, for the purpose of recommending the soul of the king to their prayers, in commemoration of the great benefits bestowed by him upon the monastery. Even down to the time of the revolution, this custom was to a certain degree maintained. The priest on duty during the week was bound to pronounce daily, with a loud voice, at the close of the evening service, "_Ames dévotes priez pour Charles V. Roi de France, et pour nos autres bienfaiteurs_;" and this was followed by the one hundred and twenty-ninth psalm, and an appropriate prayer. The same ceremony was at the same time performed by one of the nuns, among the females. After the union of the convent of St. Julien to the Magdalen, the superior of the hospital was in the habit of keeping a monk at the priory, as a superintendant over the religious duties of the occupants and temporal possessions of the foundation; and this state of things continued till 1600, when, upon the destruction of the abbey upon Mont Ste Catherine, the friars of the latter establishment obtained from the hospital the cession of the deserted monastery, and occupied it for sixty-seven years. They then also in their turn resigned it, and it fell into the hands of the Carthusians of Gaillon, who, uniting with their brethren of the same order at Rouen, formed a very opulent community, and resided here till the period when all monastic institutions ceased throughout France. Architecturally considered, the chapel is a building of great interest.[78] A more pure, or more perfect specimen of the Norman æra, is perhaps no where to be found. Without spire or tower, and divided into three parts of unequal length and height, the nave, the choir, and the circular apsis, it resembles one of the meanest of our parish churches in England. In its design, it is externally quite regular, being divided throughout its whole length, into small compartments, by a row of shallow buttresses, which rise from the ground to the eaves of the roof, without any partition into splays. Those on the south side, (see _plate forty-two_) are all, except the most eastern, still in their primeval state; but a buttress of a subsequent, though not very recent, date, has been built up against almost every one of the original buttresses on the north side, by way of support to the edifice. Each division contains a single narrow circular-headed window; beneath which is a plain moulding, continued uninterruptedly over the buttresses as well as the wall. Another plain moulding runs nearly on a level with the tops of the windows, and takes the same circular form; but it is confined to the spaces between the buttresses. There are no others.--The entrance was by circular-headed doors, at the west end and south side, both of them very plain; but particularly the latter. The few ornaments of the western are as perfect and as sharp, as if the whole were the work of yesterday. This part of the church has, however, been exposed to considerable injury, owing to its having joined the conventual buildings. [Illustration: Plate 43. CHAPEL OF THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JULIEN, NEAR ROUEN. _Interior. Choir and part of the Nave._] The interior of the chapel, however degraded from its original purpose, continues, like the exterior, almost perfect; but it is much more rich, uniting to the common ornaments of Norman architecture capitals of great labor. The ceiling is covered with paintings of scriptural subjects, which still remain. This discrepance of style between the outside of the building and the inside, might lead to a suspicion that they had been erected at different times; but there really seems to be no sufficient ground for such an opinion. Those who attempt to decide upon the dates of Norman edifices, judging from the character of their ornaments, or the comparative profusion of their decorations, will do well to reflect, that almost every building contains in itself a medley of what is barbarous and classical, while no two can well vary more in the quantity of their ornaments, than the two abbatial churches of Caen; and yet they were both of them, beyond dispute, productions of the self-same æra.--It deserves remark likewise, that two theories of directly opposite tendency, both of them perhaps equally plausible, have been started upon this point. The partisans of one of these maintain, that the Normans, on their arrival in the more southern parts of Europe, found highly ornamented buildings, and, being themselves altogether ignorant of art, were content with copying what already existed; so that their progress in art was in a retrograde direction, from a classical style, to one comparatively barbarous. On the other hand, it is averred, that these reputed savages really imported with them the kind of architecture now generally known by their name; and, in proportion as they improved in wealth, luxury, and refinement, drew nearer and nearer to the Roman model, either by dint of their own observations, or by the importation of Italian artists. The balance of probability appears at the first glance to incline in favor of the latter of these opinions, as most consonant to the general march of human affairs. Perhaps, however, upon a more attentive consideration, the former may appear nearer to the truth: it is certain, that the style in architecture, which immediately succeeded what is commonly called Norman, is still farther removed from the Roman or the Greek; and it is equally certain, that the Norman itself has different characters in different parts of Europe. That of England varies to a certain degree from what is seen in Normandy: the latter still more so from the German, and the German from that of the south of France; while, in the north of Italy, and in Sicily, it is again found with features unlike those of other countries, and equally unlike those of each other. In all, the discrepancies most probably arise from the styles peculiar to the several nations, previously to the irruptions of the northern hordes. The subject is, at all events, deserving of investigation and reflection. NOTES: [73] Vol. V. p. 370. [74] _Concilia Normannica_, II. p. 72. [75] _Ibidem_, p. 239. [76] _Ibidem_, p. 545. [77] _Ibidem_, I. p. 175. [78] The greater part of what follows is borrowed from _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 128. PLATES XLIV.--XLVI. CHURCH OF LÉRY. [Illustration: Plate 44. CHURCH OF LÉRY, NEAR PONT-DE-L'ARCHE. _General view looking south east._] It is not in the vicinity of Rouen, nor indeed in any portion of the district formerly known under the denomination of _Upper Normandy_, that the curious traveller must seek for the most interesting remains of early ecclesiastical architecture in the province. The village churches, throughout this portion of the duchy, are for the most part small and insignificant, and of comparatively modern erection; while, in the vicinity of Caen, and indeed in the whole of the departments of Calvados and of La Manche, a large proportion of them are unquestionably referable to the times of Norman dominion, and exhibit some of the purest specimens of real Norman art. The solution of this question must in all probability be sought for in the political state of the province; and no more obvious answer seems to present itself, than is afforded by a reference to the local character of its two great divisions, of which, Upper Normandy, consisting greatly of a border country, exposed to the continual ravages of warfare from its more powerful neighbor, with difficulty preserved such of its public buildings as were defended by the walls of the fortresses; and often gladly compounded for the secure existence of these, by the sacrifice of the harvest, the cottage, and the parochial church. Yet, even here, some of the ecclesiastical buildings have escaped the hand of time and violence; and among these, few, if any, more completely than that of Léry, a village situated upon the right bank of the Eure, at a distance of about two miles from Pont de l'Arche, and nearly the same from Louviers. Léry gives its name to the adjoining _commune_; and it may reasonably be inferred, that it was in former times a place of more importance, than would be imagined from its present appearance. The ingenious and estimable M. Langlois, of Rouen, in a work[79] which he commenced upon the antiquities of Normandy, and in which he has figured the west front of this church, tells us, that but a few years since, Léry could boast of several specimens of domestic architecture of unusual size and embellishment. Of one of these, an engraving has lately been given by M. Willemin, in his exquisite _Monumens Inédits de la France_. It was known by the name of the Palace of Queen Blanche; and if, by the Blanche in question, is to be understood the Princess of Navarre, consort of Philip VI. who died in 1350, there is nothing in the exterior of the building to prevent its being ascribed to that æra. It was entered by a flat door-way, under a wide, pointed, crocketed arch; the transom-stone enriched with a trefoil-headed moulding; and the whole portal surmounted with a balustrade of quatrefoils. But, unfortunately, nothing more can now be said of the building, than is supplied by the plate in question. It had, in its earlier time, repeatedly suffered from the effects of fire; and a similar calamity completed its ruin, during the month of June, 1814. The lower part of the walls and the gothic portal are all that are left standing, to attest the original size and magnificence of the palace. The church of Léry is referred by M. Langlois to the æra of the Carlovingian dynasty, a period that extended from the middle of the seventh century, to the concluding years of the tenth. Its claim to so extraordinarily high a degree of antiquity, is founded, in his opinion, upon the resemblance borne by the columns and capitals of the west front, particularly those of the windows, to the same parts in the crypt of the abbey of St. Denis, generally supposed to be the joint work of Pepin and of Charlemagne. But these latter decidedly partake more of the character of the classical model,[80] while every member throughout the whole front of Léry, (_see plate forty-five_) may find a parallel in other Norman churches; or, if an exception is to be made to so sweeping an assertion, it can only be in favor of the second and largest moulding in the archivolt of the portal, which is very peculiar. The two lateral pointed windows are obviously an introduction of a subsequent period; and a doubt may likewise perhaps be entertained with regard to the buttresses. This front is small indeed, but elegant: it is more richly ornamented than that of the chapel in the castle at Caen;[81] and, though less so than that of the abbey church of St. Georges de Bocherville, yet can it scarcely be said to be inferior in beauty. A recent tourist[82] has remarked, with much apparent probability, that the churches of St. Georges and of Léry may, from the general conformity in the style of both, reasonably be regarded as of nearly the same æra,--the time of the Norman conquest; and he goes on to add that, through these, the English antiquary may be enabled to fix the date to a specimen of ancient architecture in his own country, more splendid than either,--the church of Castle-Rising,[83] in Norfolk, whose west front is so much on the same plan, that it can scarcely have been erected at a very different period. The church of Léry (_see plate forty-four_) is built in the form of a cross, having in the centre a short square tower, to which has been attached, in modern times, a wretched wooden spire. This Mr. Cotman has very judiciously omitted, as adding nothing to the interest of the plate, and merely tending to deform what is otherwise seen in nearly the same state in which it left the hands of the original builders. The corbel-table, observable immediately under the top of the tower, and in some parts of the choir and transepts, exhibits the same description of monsters, as in the church of St. Paul at Rouen, of the Holy Trinity at Caen, and other Norman religious buildings.--Two peculiarities attending upon the exterior of the church are, that the east end is flat, and that the transepts are altogether without buttresses. [Illustration: Plate 45. CHURCH OF LÉRY, NEAR PONT-DE-L'ARCHE. _West Front._] [Illustration: Plate 46. CHURCH OF LÉRY, NEAR PONT-DE-L'ARCHE. _Interior._] In the interior (_plate forty-six_) it is impossible not to be struck with the extraordinary simplicity and solidity of the whole. The only aim of the architect appears to have been to erect an edifice that should last for ever. A double row of pillars and arches separates the nave into three parts of unequal width; and another arch, of greater span, divides it from the chancel. The arches are in every instance devoid of mouldings; the capitals are altogether without ornamental sculpture of any description; and the pillars are even unsupported by bases. Indeed, the pillars are nothing more than rounded piers; and they are not less remarkable for their proportions, than for their simplicity, their diameter being equal to full two-thirds of their height. Hence it is scarcely possible not to entertain the suspicion that the floor may have been raised; but there is nothing in the appearance of the church to justify such an idea. It is scarcely necessary to mention, that the figures of saints placed upon brackets against the spandrils of the arches, are all modern. Their execution is wretched; and its imperfection is rendered but the more apparent, by their having been painted in imitation of living nature. The string-course, which runs immediately above their heads, is placed in a very uncommon situation. It is composed of the nail-head ornament, in itself a sufficient proof of its antiquity; and also, as is observed by Mr. Cotman, of such rarity in Normandy, that he does not recollect to have met with another instance of it. The windows of the church of Léry were formerly filled with painted glass, representing very curious subjects, taken from the life of St. Louis; but every vestige of the kind has now disappeared. From the church-yard, which stands upon a considerable elevation, immediately above the banks of the Eure, are seen, upon an opposite hill beyond the river, the ruins of the once celebrated convent, known by the name of the _Priory of the Two Lovers_. NOTES: [79] _Recueil de quelques vues de sites et Monumens de la France, spécialement de Normandie, et des divers Costumes des Habitans de cette Province._--Of this work, the first number, containing eight plates, appeared in Rouen, in 1816; but, unfortunately, it did not meet with sufficient encouragement to be ever followed by a second. [80] See _Howlett's Plan and Views of the Abbey Royal of St. Denis_, plate 6. [81] See plate 48. [82] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 188. [83] _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Norfolk_, plate 35. PLATE XLVII. CHURCH OF COLOMBY. [Illustration: Plate 47. ELEVATIONS OF THE CHURCH OF COLOMBY NEAR VALOGNES.] The church of Colomby, to use the language of M. de Gerville, is one of the last of the religious edifices built by those powerful barons, whose sway extended equally over Normandy and England. No records, indeed, are left either as to the actual time of its erection, or the name of its founder. With respect, however, to the former, the style of the architecture is sufficiently decisive; and there is as little cause for hesitation in referring its origin to a nobleman allied to the family of the Conqueror. Baldwin de Brionis, or de Molis, who accompanied that monarch in his expedition against England, and was afterwards married to his niece, was rewarded by him for his services, with the barony of Okehampton, where he resided, as well as with the custody of the county of Devon, and the government of Exeter castle, in fee. The earldom of the same county, together with a grant of the Isle of Wight, was conferred by Henry I. upon the son of Baldwin, Richard de Redvers; and, either in the same or the following generation, this powerful family obtained a still farther accession to its riches and honors, in the possession of Néhou, a considerable portion of the barony of St. Sauveur le Vicomte, which Néel, Viscount of the Cotentin, had forfeited in 1047. The domain of Néhou included a collegiate church; and one of the prebends of this was attached to the second portion of the church of Colomby. It appears from three inquiries instituted at different times by the bishops of Coutances, with a view to ascertain the value of the livings in their diocese, that, in the years 1255, 1666, and 1737, Colomby was under two separate ministers; one of them nominated by the lord, the other by the abbey of Montbourg.[84] Almost all the noblemen of the family of Redvers, who, after the conquest of England, commonly assumed the additional name of Vernon, were distinguished by the baptismal appellation of Baldwin, William, or Richard. The first of the Richards laid the foundation of the monastery of Montbourg. He died there in 1107, after having enriched his rising convent with numerous donations, and, among others, with the second portion of Colomby. Baldwin, his son and successor, confirmed the donations: he took arms against King Stephen, and was forced by that monarch to flee from England in 1136; shortly after which time he completed the abbey begun by his father, and caused it to be dedicated in 1152: three years subsequently, he died. A second Richard, who succeeded him in his honors, as Earl of Devonshire and Lord of Néhou, died in 1162; and a third of the same name, in 1184. This last, not content with merely confirming the donations made by his ancestors to Montbourg, materially increased them: he also added to the collegiate church of Néhou, a fifth prebend, which he conferred upon one of the ministers of Colomby; and it was by him, according to the opinion of M. de Gerville, that the church, the subject of the present article, was built. A few years only elapsed after the decease of this chieftain, before Normandy became re-united to the crown of France; and one of the first acts of Philip-Augustus, who then sat upon the throne, was to register the fiefs of his new province, their several possessors, and the service owed by each. This took place in the year 1207; and Néhou, which was bound to furnish the monarch with five horse-soldiers, was at that time in the possession of Richard of Vernon, a nobleman of whom no notice is to be found in the genealogy of the lords of the Isle of Wight. The register records the fact in the following terms:--"Ric. de Vernon tenet baroniam de Neahou per servicium quimque militum. Guillelmus de Vernon tenet inde duo feoda et dimidium."-- The church of Colomby is in perfect preservation, unspoiled and undefaced by modern alterations or additions, saving only that of a porch at the western extremity. For simplicity and uniformity it cannot be surpassed; nor can any building be better qualified to afford a specimen of the religious architecture of the times. Though destitute both of transept and aisles, the tower is central: the east end terminates in a flat wall. The columns within are clustered and light; formed of stone, which unites, in an eminent degree, the advantage of great strength with that of yielding easily to the chisel, and which is dug from the quarries of Yvetot, near Valognes. The same quarries also furnished the principal part of the stone employed in the construction of the cathedral of Coutances. The plate exhibits at C. the elevation of the south side of the church; to which have been added, for the more complete understanding of the subject, A. _The west front._ B. _East end._ D. _South door-way to the chancel._ E. _A single window._ NOTES: [84] The words used upon this subject in the Inquisition of 1255, made by Jean d'Essey, then bishop of Coutances, are as follows:--"Eccliæ de Colombeo patronus Abbas Montisburgi pro medietate et percipit duas garbas de portione sua. Rector percipit terciam cum altalagio. Gulielmus de Rivers patronus pro alia medietate. Rector percipit omnia."--The two following inquisitions state in express terms, that the first portion was under the patronage of the lord. PLATE XLVIII. CHAPEL IN THE CASTLE AT CAEN. The Castle at Caen was built by William the Conqueror, whose son, Henry I. though commonly reputed its founder, in reality confined himself to raising the walls and adding the keep, which latter was levelled with the ground, by virtue of a decree of the National Convention, dated 6th August, 1793. By the same decree, it was still farther enacted, that the castle itself should be demolished; but the wisdom of the representatives of the sovereign people failed in this, as in many other instances, by not duly appreciating the difficulties attendant upon the execution of their edict: these proved to be so great, that the workmen were compelled to desist, when comparatively but little progress had been made in the work of destruction. It is expressly stated in the _Norman Chronicle_, that a castle, though of smaller size, previously existed upon the same spot. In opposition, however, to this assertion, we are told by Robert Wace, that at the time when Henry I. of France, in his expedition against the Conqueror, in 1054, advanced with his army as far as the banks of the Seville, he traversed the town of Caen without resistance: "it being _sans chastel_, and the Duke not having yet surrounded it with walls." But may not this apparent contradiction be reconciled, by admitting that the words of the historian are only to be taken in a comparative sense? It is possible, that Wace intended to convey no farther meaning than that the town was not then fortified, as in his time; and such a supposition would cause every difficulty to vanish. The Castle, as early as the eleventh century, was placed under the superintendance of a constable; and the office was, in 1106, made hereditary in the family of Robert Fitz-Hamon, Lord of Creuly, by whom, and his heirs, it continued to be held till the closing year of the same century. Under the reign of the last of the Norman Dukes, the keep had a governor of its own, distinct from that of the castle; and he was dignified with the title of _Constable of the Tower of Caen_; but, upon the reduction of the province by Philip-Augustus, Caen itself, together with the castle and its dungeon, was all committed to the charge of a single officer, denominated the _Captain_. Such also appears to have continued the case, except during the reign of Louis XI. when one Raymond d'Argeau is recorded to have been the _Garde particulier du Donjon_. The timid policy of a suspicious prince might naturally suggest the idea of greater safety, in not allowing the power over so important a fortress to be vested in any single hand. [Illustration: Plate 48. CHAPEL IN THE CASTLE AT CAEN.] The Castle at Caen was the place on which the different lordships, attached to the dignity of Viscount of Caen, directly or indirectly, depended. Almost all of them were held upon the condition of some annual contribution, consisting either of arrows, or quivers, or bows, or swords, or cuirasses, or other description of ancient armor. In time of war, the vassals of these different lords were likewise bound to mount guard at the castle; but most of the parishes purchased an exemption from this service, by means of a pecuniary payment. Thus it is upon record that, in the year 1383, the parish of Méry compounded for fifty-six livres annually, and that of Cléville for thirty-two livres ten sols. By the tenure of others among the dependencies of the bailiwick, it was stipulated, according to M. de Bourgueville, that they should supply the castle with provisions, in the event of war. The sums arising from these various contributions, were employed for the pay and maintenance of the garrison: in 1369, the salary of the governor of Caen was fixed at one thousand livres annually; half of it arising from the revenues of the Viscounty of Caen, the other moiety from those of the Viscounty of Bayeux. The garrison, during the fourteenth century, was limited in time of peace to six esquires and ten crossbow-men. Even during the short period of English power, the governor was allowed for the defence of the place only thirty heavy-armed soldiers and ninety archers, half of their number being mounted. Upon the capture of Caen by Charles VII. in 1450, that monarch left in the castle a garrison amounting to nearly three hundred soldiers; and this number was not reduced below one hundred and forty, upon the conclusion of the peace. The above particulars, translated almost verbatim from the Abbé De la Rue's recent publication upon Caen,[85] do not place the castle, as a fortress, in the important light which might reasonably have been expected, considering its reputed strength and its great extent. Monstrelet,[86] speaking of it in his own time, says, "it is the strongest in all Normandy, fortified with high and great bulwarks of a very hard stone, situated upon a rock, and containing in extent as much as the whole town of Corbeil." De Bourgueville[87] enters, as might be expected, more at large into the subject. His description is full and interesting.[88] A short time previously to the revolution, when Caen was visited by Ducarel,[89] the greater part of the castle was much out of order, having been altogether neglected; but the dungeon had then lately undergone a thorough repair, and was used as a place of confinement for state prisoners, and for such others, as by _lettres de cachet_, obtained at the joint request of their family, were deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent their incurring the disgrace, after having been exposed to the misfortune, of poverty. On the subject of its present condition, we learn from Mr. Turner,[90] that, "degraded as it is in its character by modern innovation, it is more deserving of notice as an historical, than as an architectural, relic; but that it still claims to be reckoned as a place of defence, though it retains but few of its original features. The spacious, lofty circular towers, which flanked its ramparts, known by the names of the black, the white, the red, and the grey horse, have been brought down to the level of the platform. The dungeon-tower is destroyed; and all the grandeur of the Norman castle is lost, though the width of its ditches, and the thickness of its walls, still testify its ancient strength."--The same author proceeds to state, that "there are reasons for supposing that Caen, when first founded, only occupied the site of the present castle; and that, when it became advisable to convert the old town into a fortress, the inhabitants migrated into the valley below."--He adds, upon the authority of De Bourgueville, that "six thousand infantry could be drawn up in battle array, within the outer ballium; and that so great was the number of houses and of inhabitants, inclosed within the area, that it was thought expedient to build in it a parochial church, dedicated to St. George, besides two chapels." One of these chapels has been supposed to be the subject of the present plate; but the high authority of the Abbé De la Rue[91] seems to render such a supposition at least doubtful. Indeed, the reverend author enumerates no fewer than six chapels within the precincts of the castle, without, however, entering upon a description of the remains of any one of them. At the same time, he particularly notices the religious building here figured, evidently regarding it as having served formerly for a parochial church. At present, it is desecrated, and is devoted to the office of a military storehouse. M. De la Rue regards it as being not only the oldest architectural relic in Caen, but as an erection of the tenth century. He founds this opinion upon its construction, destitute of any tower; upon the circular arches of its door and windows; upon its zig-zag mouldings; upon the monsters of its corbel-table; and, above all, upon the peculiarity of its position; the choir being turned to the west, and the front to the east. It was, according to him, in the eleventh century, that the practice, now uniformly adopted, of placing churches in an opposite direction, was first introduced. The irregularity of the early Norman religious edifices, in this latter respect, has already been noticed under a preceding article.[92] NOTES: [85] _Essais Historiques_, II. p. 272. [86] _Chronicles_, (Johnes' Translation) III. p. 472. [87] _Recherches et Antiquitez de la Ville de Caen_, p. 19. [88] Indeed, so detailed and curious is this account, that, though rather long, it appears desirable here to insert it.--"Reste à present à descrire la situation de ce superbe chasteau, lequel est apparent et haut eslevé comme une couronne et propugnacle à ceste grande ville, il a esté de tout tems l'un des premiers de ce royaume en beauté, grandeur, et forteresse pour estre assis sur un roc naturel, venteux, non sujet à la mine, ny escalade, accompaigné de son donjon, au mitan duquel est eslevee une tour carree d'une admirable grosseur et hauteur, circuye de fortes murailles, et aux coings quatre grosses et hautes tours rondes à plate forme à plusieurs estages, que l'on a nommees, l'une le cheval blanc, l'autre le cheval noir, la tierce le cheval rouge, et la quatre le cheval grix, lesquelles seruent par aucunes fois pour enfermer les plus insignes voleurs, les fossez de ce donion sont à fonds de cuue comme ceux de ce chasteau d'une epouuantable profondeur, tellement qu'ils ne sont suiets à l'escalade, le belle ou basse court de ce chasteau est de si ample estendue qu'on y peut mettre en ordre de bataille pour combatre cinq ou six mil hommes de pied, et y peut on loger nombre de caualerie pour faire des saillies sur un camp adversaire, les croniques contiennent qu'il y a plusieurs villes en France moindres que ce chasteau, comme Corbeil et Mont Ferant, i'y aiousterai Quarantan en basse Normandie, il y a si bon nombre de maisons et habitans, qu'il contient une eglise parrochiale en son circuit fondee de saint George, et deux chapeles, l'une de saint Gabriel, et l'autre de saint Agnen, son contour contient un bon nombre de carneaux de visieres et de tours, et l'enclos du donion contient aussi nombre de carneaux, et quatre grosses tours sans celle du parmy, il y a encores au de là du donjon une grande terrasse, qu'on appele la Roqueste d'une admirable forteresse de rampars, puis une grande place que l'on appele la garenne à connins, où l'on peut mettre en seureté un bon nombre de bestaux pour la fourniture de viures de ce chasteau durant un siege. Et à la verité les grands seigneurs et chefs de guerre qui ont veu cette place, la remarquent, et tiennent comme inexpugnables, d'autant même qu'elle est fortifiee de rampars de trente ou quarante pieds de largeur, et ne se peut vaincre sans trahison, faute de coeur ou de viures, aussi noz Rois y ont tousiours pourueus de vaillans seigneurs et capitaines." [89] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 49. [90] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 170. [91] _Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen_, I. p. 83. [92] See the Description of the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen, p. 30. PLATES XLIX.--LII. CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN. [Illustration: Plates 49-50. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT ROUEN. _South transept from the Place de la Calende._] The merit of first introducing the light of Christianity into that part of France, which has subsequently been known by the different appellations of Westria, Neustria, and Normandy, is commonly attributed to St. Nicaise; whose name is therefore generally permitted to stand at the head of the prelates of the archiepiscopal see of Rouen. St. Nicaise, according to the traditions of the Norman church, lived about the middle of the third century, and was dispatched from Rome, in company with the more illustrious St. Denis, upon an express mission from Pope Clement, to preach the gospel at Rouen, then the capital of the gallic tribe, the Velocasses. But it is admitted on all hands, that he never reached the place of his destination. The many miracles he wrought by the way, consisting principally of the destruction of dragons[93] and conversion of pagan priests, had rendered him obnoxious to Fescenninus, the Roman governor of the province; and the saint was consequently doomed to suffer the pains, not without receiving the palm, of martyrdom. [Illustration: Plates 51-52. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT ROUEN. _West front from the Place Notre Dame._] To Nicaise, succeeded St. Mello, a native of England, who, in the performance of his duty, to carry the annual tribute from Britain to the Roman emperor, was converted by the pontiff; and, if credit may be given to the legends recounted by Pommeraye,[94] was, in the presence of the Pope, invested by an angel from heaven with the pastoral staff; and, at the same time, enjoined to take upon himself the spiritual jurisdiction over Rouen and its vicinity. A mission thus constituted, and still farther verified by the gift of miracles, could not fail of the desired end. St. Mello not only succeeded in converting the lower class of the pagans, but he likewise reckoned many of the principal citizens among his disciples; and one of these, of the name of Precordius, ceded to him his house, on the site of which was built the first Christian place of worship known in Rouen. Hence, in the following distich, Ordericus Vitalis, entirely passing over Nicaise, places St. Mello at the head of the line of the Norman prelates:-- "Antistes sanctus Mellonus, in ordine _primus_, Excoluit plebem doctrinâ Rothomagensem."-- Of the duration or history of the church thus erected, nothing is known; but it is certain that, from that time forward, Christianity continued to gain ground in Normandy, and the annals of the see have preserved an uninterrupted catalogue of the bishops. Indeed, the conversion of Constantine, which happened only a few years after the death of St. Mello, necessarily gave a new aspect to the religion of the Roman empire. Succeeding prelates are stated in general terms to have manifested their zeal, in building new churches, as well as in enlarging and ornamenting that of the capital; and Pommeraye suggests,[95] but only as a matter of great probability, that a second cathedral was raised by Victrice, or some one of his immediate successors, in the fifth century. With an equal, or still stronger degree of probability, it has been inferred that, admitting a new church had been erected, it could not fail to have been destroyed during the incursions of the heathen Normans, whose track throughout Neustria was ever marked by fire and sword, and whose avarice prompted them, no less powerfully than their superstition, to make the religious edifices the principal objects of their vengeance. Prior to the arrival of these barbarians, the archiepiscopal chair had been filled by four prelates, eminent for their sanctity, St. Godard, St. Pretextat, St. Romain, and St. Ouen. The second of these, assassinated before the altar, at the instigation of Fredegond, queen of Chilperic, holds nearly the same place in the martyrology of the Gallican church, as Thomas-à-Becket in that of England. St. Ouen was a prelate who had few rivals in munificence and splendor. Numerous monasteries throughout the province, and, above all, the splendid one that bore his name, testify the greatness of his mind, as well as the extent of his power: his sovereign, Dagobert, honored him with his friendship, and conferred upon him the dignity of chancellor of the realm. But the fame of St. Ouen, and of all the others, was eclipsed by that of St. Romain, by virtue of whose _privilege_, as it was generally called, the chapter of the cathedral continued till the revolution annually to exercise the right of delivering a criminal, whatever his offence, except treason, from the hand of the secular power. This singular privilege, according to general tradition, had been earned by the destruction of a dragon, called the _Gargouille_, which was long the terror of the adjacent country; and in his expedition the saint had been unable to procure himself any other aid than that of a murderer, already under sentence of death. Hence, the prelate has commonly been regarded as little less than the tutelar divinity of the city. Portraits of him, all of them designated by the attendant dragon and criminal, were to be seen on the celebrated windows of stained glass in the church of St. Godard, as well as at the entrance of the town by the _porte Bouvreuil_, and probably in many other places: a building at the top of the staircase, leading into the cloth-hall, was called his chapel; another chapel is to the present day consecrated to him in the cathedral itself; the northern tower of the same building bears his name; his shrine is still preserved among the choicest treasures of the sacristy; and even the bases of some of the pillars of the nave are carved into a fanciful resemblance of the fabulous _Gargouille_. Dom Pommeraye, than whom no author was ever more superstitious and more credulous, at the same time that he terms this privilege one of the most valuable and most noble rights of the church of Rouen,[96] admits that the origin of it is lost in obscurity. He adduces, however, an historical document, to prove its existence during the reign of the Norman Dukes; and, while he candidly states the difference of opinion among learned men on the subject, some of them treating the story as allegorical, others setting it wholly aside, and regarding the privilege merely as a special act of grace conceded to the church, in honor of the Ascension, on the anniversary of which festival it was exercised, he takes care to record his own firm belief in the miracle, and he calls upon all pious Christians to unite with him in supporting its authenticity. Upon the conversion of Rollo to Christianity, and the consequent erection of Normandy into a distinct dukedom, Rouen, as the metropolis of the new state, necessarily acquired additional importance, and its church additional lustre. Questions have arisen as to the spot where the first church was built, but no doubt is to be entertained of the existence of the cathedral, during the reign of Rollo, on the same site which it occupies at present; for that prince himself was buried in it, as was his son, William Longue-Epée, and their remains continue there till this time[97]. Richard I. the son of William, and his successor on the ducal throne, is expressly stated by Dudo of St. Quintin, to have made great additions, both in length, width, and height, to the "admirable church" (_mirabile monasterium_) at Rouen, dedicated to the Holy Virgin.[98] The same author says, in terms which admit of no misconstruction, that Robert, the son to this Duke, who was archbishop of Rouen, and by the splendor of his works won to himself the epithet of the _magnificent_, "completed the church, by the addition of the whole choir, and by the work on the eastern side." The church, raised by Robert, was dedicated by Archbishop Maurilius, in 1063; but its term of duration appears to have been unaccountably short; for it is recorded that, after the lapse of less than a century, the clergy of the cathedral directed their attention towards the building of a new one; and that the year 1200 had not arrived before some progress was already made in the execution of their plan. All precise dates, however, connected with this subject, are lost: the various wars that have ravaged this part of France; the numerous sieges to which the city of Rouen itself has been exposed; and the repeated changes of masters it has undergone;--these, with the addition of occasional injuries from fire and pillage, have effectually destroyed the archives of the town and cathedral. Authors have differed strangely regarding the remains of the church erected by the Norman Dukes. Some of them, and indeed the greater number, assert that no small part of the structure now in existence belonged to the building consecrated by Maurilius: others maintain, that not one stone of this latter has been left upon another. The truth seems to be, that a small portion of the eastern side of the present northern tower, known by the name of the tower of St. Romain, is really of Norman workmanship, but that nothing else throughout the cathedral is so, excepting, possibly, the lateral doorways in the western front. The whole of the tower just mentioned, up to its highest tier of windows, is evidently the most ancient part of the building, and is apparently of the architecture of the latter part of the twelfth century. The church, considered collectively, is so obviously the work of different æras, that there can be little risk in hazarding the assertion, that it has been raised by piece-meal, on various occasions, as may either have been suggested by the piety of potentates and prelates, or may have been required by the state of religion or of the edifice itself. What is known as to the dates of the building is, that the southern tower was begun in 1485, and completed in 1507; that the first stone of the central portal was laid in 1509; and that the Lady-Chapel, though commenced during some of the earliest years of the fourteenth century, and finished in the middle of the fifteenth, contains work of the year 1538. At this last period, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise restored the roof of the choir, which had been injured in 1514, by the destruction of the spire. The square short central tower was erected A.D. 1200: it replaced one that had been damaged eighty years before, when the original stone spire of the church was struck by lightning. From that time forward, no attempt had been made to rebuild the spire, except with wood, of which material, that now in existence is the second. The first was destroyed by a fire, occasioned by the negligence of plumbers, in the beginning of the sixteenth century; the present suffered material injury from a similar accident, in 1713, and narrowly escaped entire destruction. The western front of the cathedral, represented in plate _fifty-one_, offers a _tout-ensemble_ of the most imposing character. The very discrepancy in the different parts, by increasing the variety, adds to the effect of the whole. All, with the exception of the northern tower, is rich, even to exuberance; and the simplicity of this, at the same time that it appears to lay claim to a certain dignity for itself, places in a stronger light the gorgeous splendor of the rest. The opposite tower, the work of the celebrated Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, and formerly the receptacle of the great bell that bore his name, commonly passes by the appellation of the _Tour de Beurre_. Tradition tells, or, to use the words of Dom Pommeraye, "every body knows" that it obtained this name from its being built with the money raised from the indulgence granted by the Cardinal, William d'Estouteville, to the pious catholics throughout the dioceses of Rouen and Evreux, allowing them to make use of milk and butter during Lent, when oil only could otherwise have been employed by way of sauce to vegetables and fish. The bull issued upon the occasion, by Pope Innocent VIII. is stated to be still in existence.[99] The architecture of this tower may almost be regarded as the perfection of what has been called the decorated English style: it is copiously enriched with pinnacles and statues, and terminates in a beautiful octagonal crown of open stone-work. Its height is two hundred and thirty French feet.[100] The central portal, for the erection of which the cathedral is likewise indebted to its great benefactor, Georges d'Amboise, projects beautifully and boldly, like a porch, before the rest: every side of it is filled with niches, tier over tier, all crowded with endless figures of saints and martyrs. In the middle of it rises a pyramidal canopy of open stone-work; and upon the wide transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the _tombesteres_ of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in which it is said, that she _tumbled_ before King Herod."[101] Four turrets flank the central portal: one of them only is now capped by a spire: the pinnacles of the remaining three were swept away by a storm which traversed Normandy for a considerable extent, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1683, marking its progress with a devastation that is scarcely to be conceived.[102] The spire of the central tower, however vaunted and admired by the French themselves, looks to an unprejudiced eye mean and shabby; and principally from its being made of wood, which ill accords with the apparent solidity of the rest of the building. The entrances to the transepts, however inferior in splendor to the grand western front, are still not such as to disgrace it; and, considered attentively as to their sculptured medallions, they are even more curious. The northern one is approached through a passage lined with rows of the meanest houses, formerly the shops of transcribers and calligraphists; and hence the singular gate-way that incloses the court, passes commonly under the name of _Le Portail des Libraires_. The opposite transept, (see _plate forty-nine_,) is called _Le Portail de la Calende_, an appellation borrowed from the _Place de la Calende_, upon which it opens; and which, though in reality far from spacious, appears altogether so by comparison. On each side of the entrances to both the transepts, is a lofty square tower, "such as are usually seen only in the western front of a cathedral; the upper story perforated by a gigantic window, divided by a single mullion or central pillar, not exceeding one foot in circumference, and nearly sixty feet in height. These windows are entirely open; and the architect never intended they should be glazed. An extraordinary play of light and shade results from this construction."[103] The rose windows, which are placed as well over the entrances of the transepts, as over the greater one to the west, are no less magnificent in their dimensions, than beautiful in their patterns, and gorgeous in their colors. Much of the stained glass of the cathedral is also very rich. Mr. Dibdin, in his splendidly-illustrated Tour,[104] remarks with much justice, that "a person, on entering the church by the western door, cannot fail to be struck with the length and loftiness of the nave, and with the lightness of the gallery which runs along the upper part of it, and which is continued also throughout the choir." He goes on to add, "perhaps the nave is too narrow for its length. The lantern of the central large tower is beautifully light and striking. It is supported by four massive clustered pillars, about forty feet in circumference; but the eye, on looking downwards, is shocked at the tasteless division of the choir from the nave, by what is called a _Grecian screen_; and the interior of the transepts has also undergone a like tasteless restoration." The cathedral at Rouen was the burial-place of many men of eminence and distinction. Rollo and William Longue Epée have already been mentioned as interred here. The church also contained the lion-heart of the first English Richard, and the remains of his elder brother, Henry; together with those of William, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet; of the Regent Duke of Bedford; and of Charles V. of France. The tombs of these, and of various other individuals of high rank, are described at length by Pommeraye; but the outrages of the Calvinists and the democrats, added to the removals occasioned by the alterations made at various times in the building, have now destroyed nearly the whole of them, excepting those raised to the two Cardinals D'Amboise, both of them archbishops of Rouen, and that which commemorates Louis de Brezé, Grand Seneschal of Normandy. These monuments are placed on opposite sides of the Lady-Chapel; the former as conspicuous for its many sumptuous ornaments, as the latter for its chaste simplicity. The archbishop of Rouen, prior to the revolution, took the title of _Primate of Neustria_; and his spiritual jurisdiction then extended over six suffragans, the bishops of Bayeux, Avranches, Evreux, Séez, Lisieux, and Coutances. Not many years previously, it had also embraced the Canadian churches, together with the whole of French North-America; but the appointment of a bishop at Quebec, deprived it of its trans-atlantic sway; and the concordat, in the time of Napoléon, reduced the number of the suffragan prelates to four, taking the mitres from Avranches and Lisieux. A still more important alteration has been occasioned by modern times, in the archiepiscopal revenues. It had been customary throughout France, before the recent changes, in speaking of the see of Rouen, to designate it by the epithet, _rich_; an appellation that would now be wofully misapplied. The archbishop then possessed, in addition to the usual sources of ecclesiastical income, a peculiar privilege, entitled the right of _Déport_; by virtue of which, he claimed the receipt of the first year's proceeds of every benefice which might become vacant in his diocese, whether by the resignation or death of the incumbent.[105] A station so enviable as that of archbishop of Rouen, has been at almost all times in the hands of some individual belonging to one of the principal families of the kingdom. Among others, those of Luxembourg, Bourbon, D'Estouteville, D'Amboise, Joyeuse, Harlay, Colbert, and Tressan, have successively held it. To sum up the catalogue, in the words of Pommeraye, "the cathedral has furnished many saints for heaven, one pope for the apostolic chair, and thirteen cardinals to the church; nine of its prelates have belonged to the royal family of France; and many others, eminent for their birth, have been still more so for their own merit, and for the services they have rendered to the catholic church and the state." NOTES: [93] The destroying of dragons, or fiery serpents, or similar monsters, appears to have been the most common of all miracles, in the early ages of Christianity. After the exploits of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. George, ecclesiastical history abounds in similar legends. St. Romain, St. Marcel, St. Julian, St. Martial, St. Bertrand, St. Martha, and St. Clement, make but a small proportion of the saints who distinguished themselves by these acts of pious heroism. The dragons of Rouen and of Metz were of sufficient celebrity to acquire the distinct names of the _Gargouille_, and the _Graouilli_.--It has been commonly supposed, that these various miracles were allegorical, and intended to typify the confining of rivers within their channels, or the limiting of the incursions of the sea. Other authors have been inclined to account for their prevalence, as having reference to the sun, or to astronomical phænomena; but surely the most simple and satisfactory mode of explaining them, lies in considering the dragon as the emblem of evil, and the various victories gained over dragons, as so many conquests obtained by virtue over vice.--A considerable fund of curious information, on this subject, will be found in the _Magasin Encyclopédique_ for _January, 1812_, p. 1-24, in a paper by M. Eusèbe Salverte, entitled _Légendes du Moyen Age_. [94] _Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen_, p. 40. [95] _Histoire de la Cathédrale de Rouen_, p. 19. [96] _Histoire de la Cathédrale de Rouen_, p. 625. [97] Not, however, in the identical spot in which they were originally deposited: they were at first laid in the immediate vicinity of the high altar, but were, before the close of the eleventh century, removed to the situations they now occupy, in chapels on opposite sides of the upper end of the nave. The following account of their tombs, with the statues and inscriptions, is transcribed from _Gilbert's Description Historique de l'Eglise de Notre Dame de Rouen_, p. 57:--"Le tombeau de Rollon est placé dans un enfoncement cintré, pratiqué dans le mur de la chapelle; il consiste en un sarcophage de stuc, marbre de Portor, sur lequel se voit la statue couchée de ce prince, dont la tête est appuyée sur un coussin. Rollon est vêtu d'une longue tunique, par-dessus laquelle est un manteau couleur de pourpre, ou espèce de chlamyde attachée à l'épaule droite; il porte sur sa tête une couronne. Cette statue a été un peu mutilée. Au-dessus de l'arcade dans laquelle est le tombeau, on lit l'inscription suivante, gravée en lettres d'or sur un marbre noir: HIC POSITUS EST ROLLO NORMANNIÆ A SE TERRITAE VASTATÆ RESTITUTÆ PRIMUS DUX CONDITOR PATER A FRANCONE ARCHIEP. ROTOM. BAPTIZATUS ANNO DCCCCXIII OBIIT ANNO DCCCCXVII OSSA IPSIUS IN VETERI SANCTUARIO NUNC CAPITE NAVIS PRIMUM CONDITA, TRANSLATO ALTARI, COLLOCATA SUNT A B. MAURILIO ARCHIEP. ROTOM. AN. MLXIII. Au-dessus de cette inscription est une urne en stuc, marbre de Portor. L'archivolte de l'arcade est en stuc blanc veiné de gris, ainsi que le lambris qui décore le pourtour de la chapelle. Tous ces ouvrages sont modernes, à l'exception de la statue du duc Rollon, qui paroit avoir été exécutée dans le treizième siècle. Dans la chapelle de Saint-Anne, située de l'autre côté de la nef, se voit le tombeau de Guillaume _Longue-Epée_, fils de Rollon, et second duc de Normandie, mort victime de la plus infâme trahison, dans l'entrevue qu'il eut à Pecquigny, le 18 Décembre, 944, avec Arnoul, comte de Flandres. Le corps du duc Guillaume fut apporté à Rouen et inhumé dans la cathédrale. [Voyez Servin, _Hist. de Rouen_, tom. I. p. 118 et 119.] Sur le sarcophage en stuc, marbre de Portor, est placée la statue du duc, vêtu d'une longue tunique, et tenant à la main un sceptre qui a été mutilé. Au-dessus de l'arcade enfoncée, dans laquelle est la sépulture du prince, on lit l'inscription suivante, gravée en lettres d'or sur un marbre noir: HIC POSITUS EST GUILLELMUS DICTUS LONGA SPATA ROLLONIS FILIUS DUX NORMANNIÆ PRODITORIE OCCISUS DCCCCXXXXIV OSSA IPSIUS IN VETERI SANCTUARIO, UBI NUNC EST CAPUT NAVIS PRIMUM CONDITA, TRANSLATO ALTARI, HIC COLLOCATA SUNT A B. MAURILIO ARCHIEPISC. ROTOM. ANNO MLXIII." [98] "Rotomagensi namque urbe in honore genetricis Dei ampliavit mirabile monasterium, longitudinis, latitudinisque, atque altitudinis honorificæ exspatiatum incremento."--_Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 153. [99] _Pommeraye, Histoire de l'Eglise Cathédrale de Rouen_, p. 36. [100] The following are the dimensions of the principal parts of the cathedral, in French measure, copied from Mr. Turner's _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 147:-- FEET. Length of the interior 408 Width of ditto 88 Length of nave 210 Width of ditto 27 Ditto of aisles 15 Length of choir 110 Width of ditto 35-1/2 Ditto of transept 25-1/2 Length of ditto 164 Ditto of Lady-Chapel 88 Width of ditto 28 Height of spire 380 Ditto of towers at the west end 230 Ditto of nave 84 Ditto of aisles and chapels 42 Ditto of interior of central tower 152 Depth of chapels 10 [101] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 139.--The mention of this sculpture affords an opportunity of pointing out what appears a singular error on the part of the late M. Millin, in his _Voyage dans les Départemens du Midi de la France_. He has figured, in the atlas to that work, _plate twelve_, a bas-relief of the eleventh century, representing the assassination of Count Dalmace, by the hands of his son-in-law, Robert I. Duke of Burgundy; and, in the lower compartment, containing a banquet, he explains one of the figures (I. p. 190) to be the Earl falling from the table; whereas, a comparison with the sculpture at Rouen will scarcely leave a doubt, that it was designed for a dancing-girl, introduced for the amusement of the company. [102] _Pommeraye, Histoire de l'Eglise Cathédrale de Rouen_, p. 33. [103] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 144. [104] _Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany_, I. p. 50. [105] _Pommeraye, Histoire des Archevêques de Rouen_, p. 22. PLATE LIII. CRYPT IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS, AT ROUEN. It has been inferred, and with much apparent probability, from the silence of Julius Cæsar, that the proud capital of Normandy had either no existence in the time of that general, or was at most only a place of small importance. There have not, however, been wanting, among the historians of Rouen, some, who, jealous, as usual, for the honor of their city, ascribe to it an antiquity beyond the deluge, and trust to the latter half of its classical name, for bearing them out in the assertion, that its foundations were laid by Magus, the son and successor of Samothes, first king of Gaul. Others, more moderate, have contented themselves with the belief, that, although Cæsar does not make mention of Rothomagus, there is still no reason to question its existence before the Christian æra, or to doubt that it was then the chief town of the Velocasses, as Lillebonne was of the neighboring tribe of the Caletes, the inhabitants of the present _Pays de Caux_. It is at least known with certainty, that, in the division of Gaul, which took place not very long afterwards, into seventeen provinces, Rouen became the metropolis of the _Lugdunensis Secunda_; and that, from that time forwards, it continued gradually to rise in consequence, till the establishment of Neustria into an independent sovereignty stamped it with the title of the capital of a nation. At the present time, Rouen can shew scarcely any remains of Roman antiquity: "the wide waste of all-devouring years," has effaced those vestiges which that powerful people seldom failed to have impressed, wherever their dominion had once been firmly established. The small church of St. Gervais, derives therefore a peculiar interest, as exhibiting proofs, sufficiently decided, though far from important, of a connection with Italy. These proofs rest principally upon the Roman bricks and other _débris_, some of them rudely sculptured, which have been employed in the construction of the piers of the crypt, and upon the sculpture of the capitals of some columns on the exterior of the apsis. The church of St. Gervais is situated at a short distance without the walls of Rouen, upon a slight eminence, adjoining the Roman road to Lillebonne, and near a rising ground, commonly called the _Mont aux Malades_, as having been, in the eleventh century, the site of a monastery, destined for the reception of lepers. According to Farin,[106] the church was originally an abbey, and is expressly recognized as such in a charter of Duke Richard II. dated A.D. 1020; in which, among other donations to his favorite monastery at Fécamp, he enumerates, "item _Abbatiam_ Sancti Gervasii, quæ est juxta civitatem Rothomagum, et quicquid ad ipsam pertinet." The authors of the _Gallia Christiana_[107] add that, "at the time when this abbey was conferred upon Fécamp, it was taken from the monks of St. Peter at Chartres." Two centuries subsequently, St. Gervais appears to have sunk into the rank of a simple priory, under the immediate control of the monks of Fécamp, who assumed the title of its priors. In process of time, the still humbler name and dignity of a parochial church were alone left; but the period at which this last change took place, is not recorded. The abbot of Fécamp continued, however, till the period of the revolution, to exercise spiritual jurisdiction over what was termed the barony of St. Gervais; including not only this single parish; but some others dependent upon it. He nominated to the livings, directed the religious establishments, had entire control over the prisons, and was entitled to all privileges arising from the fair of St. Gervais, which was annually held at Rouen, in the Fauxbourg Cauchoise, on the twentieth of June. It is even on record, that in the year 1400, the abbot ventured upon the bold experiment of forbidding William de Vienne, then archbishop of Rouen, either to carry his cross, or to give his benediction within the precincts of his jurisdiction; but so daring an assumption of power was not to be tolerated, and the matter was accordingly referred to the parliament of Paris, who decided in this instance against the abbot. [Illustration: Plate 53. CRYPT IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GERVAIS AT ROUEN.] Adjoining to the church of St. Gervais, stood originally one of the palaces of the Norman Dukes and it was to this[108] that William the Conqueror caused himself to be conveyed, when attacked with his mortal illness, after having wantonly reduced the town of Mantes to ashes. Here, too, that mighty monarch breathed his last, and left a sad warning to future conquerors; deserted by his friends and physicians, the moment he was no more; while his menials plundered his property, and his body lay naked and deserted in the hall. The ducal palace, and the monastic buildings, are now wholly destroyed. Fortunately, however, the church still remains, and preserves some portions of the original structure, more interesting from their features than their extent. The exterior of the apsis is very curious: it is obtusely angular, and faced at the corners with large rude columns, of whose capitals, some are Doric and Corinthian, others as wild as the fancies of the Norman lords of the country. None reach so high as the cornice of the roof; it having been the design of the original architect, that a portion of work should intervene between the summits of the capitals and this member. A capital to the north is remarkable for the eagles carved upon it, as if with some allusion to Roman power. But the most singular part of this church is the crypt under the apsis, represented in the plate; a room about thirty feet long, by fourteen wide, and sixteen high, of extreme simplicity, and remote antiquity. Round it runs a plain stone bench; and it is divided into two unequal parts by a circular arch, devoid of columns or of any ornament whatever. Here, according to Ordericus Vitalis,[109] was interred the body of St. Mello, the first archbishop of Rouen, and one of the apostles of Neustria; and here his tomb, and that of his successor, Avitien, are shewn to this day, in plain niches, on opposite sides of the wall. St. Mello's remains, however, were not suffered to rest in peace; for, about five hundred and seventy years after his death, which happened in the year 314, they were removed to the castle of Pontoise, lest the canonized corpse should be violated by the heathen Normans. The existence of these tombs, and the antiquity of the crypt, recorded as it is by history, and confirmed by the style of its architecture, have given currency to the tradition, which points it out as the only temple where the primitive Christians of Neustria dared to assemble for the performance of divine service. Many stone coffins have also been discovered in the vicinity of the church. These sarcophagi serve to confirm the general tradition; they are of the simplest form, and apparently as ancient as the crypt; and they were so placed in the ground, that the heads of the corpses were turned to the east, a position denoting that the dead received Christian burial. NOTES: [106] _Histoire de la Ville de Rouen_, v. p. 1. [107] XI. p. 124. A. [108] The whole of the remainder of this article is transcribed from _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 125. [109] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 558. PLATE LIV. CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, AT ROUEN. [Illustration: Plate 54. CHURCH OF ST. PAUL, AT ROUEN. _East End._] Next to the church of St. Gervais, that of St. Paul is the most interesting relic of ancient architecture among the ecclesiastical buildings at Rouen. Indeed, it may be considered as the only other of an early date; the round tower attached to the abbatial church of St. Ouen[110] being altogether inconsiderable, and indebted for its principal interest to its connection with an abbey endowed with such extensive possessions, and gifted with so much reported sanctity. The foundation of the church of St. Paul is of very remote antiquity: it is said to have been laid by St. Romain, in memory of his great victory over heathenism, when, triumphant, he erected the banner of the cross upon the ashes of the temple of Venus. Impure was the goddess, and most impure were her rites; so that, to use the words of Taillepied, in speaking of this same temple, "là dedans la jeunesse, à bride avallée, souloit se souiller et polluer par ordre luxure et paillardise abominable, ne ayant égard qu'auprès de ce lieu y avoit un repaire de malins esprits qui faisoyent sortir une fumée tant puante et infecte que la mortalité s'en ensuyvoit par après." This very remark concerning the infectious vapor, seems decisive as to the feet of the church of St. Paul occupying the site of the pagan fane. It stands without the walls of the town, upon elevated ground, at a very short distance to the right of the barrier below Mont St. Catherine, on the road to Paris, in the immediate vicinity of some mineral springs, strongly impregnated with iron. Prior to the revolution, the church was under the jurisdiction of the monastery of Montivilliers. The abbess had the right of nomination to the vacant benefice; and, till the middle of the seventeenth century, she was in the habit of regarding St. Paul's as a priory, and fixing there a colony of her nuns. But they were all recalled in 1650, and were never afterwards succeeded by a fresh establishment. Respecting the various changes of the edifice, Farin contents himself with the brief remark, "that it was repeatedly destroyed during the wars, and rebuilt by the liberality of the Norman Dukes."[111] The eastern part of what is now standing is evidently of Norman time; and, architecturally considered, it is a most curious specimen, being probably the only church in existence which terminates to the east in three semi-circular compartments. Of these, the central division is considerably the most lofty, as well as the most prominent; and the arrangement of the corbel-table, which is carried equally round them all, proves that it must always have been so. The sculpture of this corbel-table is viewed by the Norman antiquaries with peculiar interest: some of the heads, with widely distended jaws, beset with teeth of enormous size, represent wolves; others, with human features and whiskered upper lips, are supposed to be intended for the Saxon foe, who, at the time of the Norman invasion, were induced, we are told, by the smooth faces of their opponents, to entertain the erroneous belief, that the approaching host was but an army of priests. Mr. Cotman, who has observed in similar situations, in many other parts of Normandy, faces equally shadowed with whiskers, has been led to the suspicion, that they were intended in derision of the Saxons. Internally, the triple circular ending of the church is no longer observable. Both of the lateral divisions are parted off at the extremity, and formed into distinct apartments: the southern is applied to the purpose of a sacristy, while the northern serves merely as a lumber-room. The nave, which is thrice the width of the chancel, and is clearly of a date comparatively modern, is separated from the more eastern portion of the building by a semi-circular arch. The sculpture upon the capitals appears of Roman design: that on one of them, exhibits a row of graceful figures in a pure classical taste, intent upon some action, but so much mutilated, that it would be now no easy task to conjecture the object of the artist. The aisles of the chancel are divided from the central compartment by double arches, a larger and a smaller being united together, all of them semi-circular, and all of the Norman style of architecture. Attached to the eastern end of the church, within the lumber-room just mentioned, stands a piece of Roman sculpture, supposed by M. Le Prevost to have served originally for an altar. Mr. Turner has given a figure of it in his Tour; and he conjectures, that it was of the workmanship of the fourth century; a supposition founded upon the resemblance borne by its ornaments, to those upon the pedestal of the obelisk raised by Theodosius, in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, as represented in the elaborate publication of the late M. Seroux d'Agincourt.[112] NOTES: [110] Figured in _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 127. [111] _Histoire de la Ville de Rouen_, v. p. 8. [112] _Histoire de la décadence de l'Art_, pl. 10, _Sculpture_, fig. 4-7. ARCHITECTURAL ANTIQUITIES OF NORMANDY, BY JOHN SELL COTMAN; ACCOMPANIED BY HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTICES BY DAWSON TURNER, ESQ. F.R. AND A.S. VOLUME THE SECOND. [Illustration: Coat of arms of the Duchy of Normandy. Emblems of the towns of Rouen and Caen.] LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN AND ARTHUR ARCH, CORNHILL; AND J. S. COTMAN, YARMOUTH. MDCCCXXII. PLATES IN THE SECOND VOLUME. PLATE. 55. Church of St. Nicholas, at Caen, West End to face page 59 56. -- -- -- -- East End 60 57. Church at Cheux, near Caen, from the North-East 62 58. Church at Bieville, from the North-West 63 59. -- -- Elevations and Details 64 60. Church at Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen, North Side of Chancel 65 61. -- -- -- -- -- Elevations 66 62. Château at Fontaine-le-Henri, near Caen 67 63. -- -- -- -- -- Elevation of central Compartment 68 64. House in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen 69 65. House in the Rue St. Jean, at Caen 70 66. Tower of the Church at Tréport, near Caen 71 67. Church of Anisy, near Caen 73 68. Church of Perriers, near Caen 74 69. Castle of Lillebonne 75 70. Castle of Briquebec 77 71. Church of St. Stephen's, at Fécamp 79 72. Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence, at Eu 81 73. \ Church of St. Peter, at Lisieux, West Front 83 74. / 75. -- -- -- -- South Transept 86 76. Abbey Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen 87 77. Fountain of the Stone Cross, at Rouen 90 78. Palace of Justice, at Rouen 91 79. Church of Louviers, South Porch 93 80. Château Gaillard, North-East View 95 81. -- -- South-West View 96 82. Abbey Church of Montivilliers, West End 97 83. Church of St. Sanson sur Rille 99 84. Church of Foullebec, West Door-way 100 85. Castle at Tancarville 101 86. Entrance to the Castle at Tancarville 103 87. Church of the Holy Cross, at St. Lo, West Door-way 104 88. -- -- -- -- -- Sculpture 106 89. Castle of Falaise, North-West View 107 90. -- -- North View 109 91. Interior of the Church of Creully 110 92. \ Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Coutances, West Front 111 93. / 94. -- -- -- -- -- -- Elevation of the Nave 115 95. Mount St. Michael, on the Approach from Pontorson 116 96. -- -- Interior of the Knights' Hall 120 97. Abbey Church of Cerisy, Interior of the Choir 121 98. Church at Oyestraham, West Front 122 99. Cathedral Church of Notre Dame, at Séez, West Front 123 100. -- -- -- -- -- Elevation of the Nave 125 The Figure referred to in the Note, p. 117, is inserted at the beginning of the Preface.--As a Vignette, at the end of the Preface, is introduced a View of the Church of Querqueville, near Cherbourg, a building of unquestionable antiquity, and here figured, as the only instance in Normandy, or possibly in existence, of a church whose transepts, as well as the chancel, terminate in a semi-circular form. In these parts, the walls are formed of herring-bone masonry, which is not the case with the tower or nave, which are more modern. The tower is, however, probably of the Norman æra; and the peculiar masonry which distinguishes the chancel, is still observable for a few feet above its junction with the nave. Its ornaments may be compared with those of St. Peter's church, at Barton-upon-Humber, and Earl's-Barton church, Northamptonshire, both of them figured in the _fifth_ volume of _Britton's Architectural Antiquities_, and both evidently Norman. The church of Querqueville has no buttresses. Its length, from east to west, is forty-eight feet and six inches; from north to south, forty-three feet and four inches; the width of the nave is nine feet and nine inches. PLATES LV. AND LVI. CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN. [Illustration: Plate 55. CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN. _West end._] The Abbé De la Rue, in his _Historical Essays upon Caen_, contents himself with remarking, with regard to the church of St. Nicholas, that it is the only specimen of real Norman architecture now left entire in the town; for that the abbatial church of the Holy Trinity, a building of the same period and style, has been so disguised by the alterations made with the view of adapting it to its present purpose, that, considered as a whole, it is no longer to be recognized as a type of the religious edifices of the Normans. Such being the case, it is the more to be lamented that the church here figured, should not only have been degraded from its original application, but should have been appropriated to an object eminently liable to expose it to injury. It is now used as a stable for cavalry; but, fortunately, it has still been suffered to remain entire; and hopes are entertained, that it may yet be one day again employed as a place of worship. The exterior of the building has not altogether escaped uninjured or unaltered. In the western front, (see _plate fifty-five_,) both the lateral towers have lost their original terminations, and have been reduced to a level with the roof of the nave. One of them still remains in a state of dilapidation: to the other has been added a square tower, of rather elegant proportions, surmounted by a small crocketed pinnacle, the workmanship probably of the fourteenth century. The rest of this part of the church is as it was first built, except that the great arches of entrance are entirely blocked up. The whole is of extreme simplicity, and vies in that respect with the same portion of the adjoining church of the abbey of St. Stephen; the different members of the two being nearly the same, though disposed in a dissimilar manner. The central tower of the church of St. Nicholas is square and small, and so low as to admit only a single tier of semi-circular-headed windows, four on each side. It terminates in a ridged roof, and apparently, never was higher; though, as far as may be judged from analogy, a greater elevation was probably designed by the architect. Along the sides of the church, immediately beneath the roof, runs a bold projecting cornice, of antique pattern, formed of numerous horizontal mouldings; and, under this, the corbel-table presents only a row of plain knobs, instead of the monsters commonly found in Norman buildings. The clerestory, throughout both the nave and choir, is filled with narrow arches, alternately pierced for windows, and left blank. All these arches, as well as the windows of the transepts and of the projecting aisles below, are without the accompaniment of pillars or ornaments of any description, excepting a broad flat moulding of the simplest kind, which wholly encircles them. The disposition of the windows in the lower part of the nave, differs from that of those above, in their being separated from each other by shallow buttresses, which hold the place of the blank arches. A plain string-course also is continued the whole length of the church beneath the windows, as in the west front. On the south side is a door, the only one now in use in the church, which is entered by a very noble Norman arch, composed of a great number of cylindrical mouldings, arranged in three broad bands, but without pillars or capitals, and with no other variation than that of size, and of the addition of the billet-moulding to the outer row. The transome-stone of this arch is unquestionably coeval with the arch itself, the sculpture of the masonry being interwoven with it. Attached to the eastern side of both the transepts, is a circular chapel, as in the churches of St. Georges, of St. Taurin at Evreux, of Fécamp, of Cerisy, and in several other ancient religious buildings in Normandy. Nor is England altogether without specimens of the same kind: a similar chapel, now in a ruinous state, and called by Blomefield, "the sexterie or ancient vestry," is joined to the north transept of Norwich cathedral; and near the eastern extremity of the same church, are four others. But the principal characteristic of those at St. Nicholas', is the extremely high pitch of the stone roof, a peculiarity equally observable in the roof of the choir; and hence the following remarks on the part of Mr. Turner[113]:--"Here we have the exact counterpart of the Irish stone-roofed chapels, the most celebrated of which, that of Cormac in Cashel cathedral, appears, from all the drawings and descriptions I have seen of it, to be altogether a Norman building. Ledwich asserts that 'this chapel is truly Saxon, and was erected prior to the introduction of the Norman and Gothic styles.'[114] If we agree with him, we only obtain a proof, that there is no essential difference between Norman and Saxon architecture; and this proposition I believe, will soon be universally admitted. We now know what is really Norman; and a little attention to the buildings in the north of Germany, may terminate the long-debated questions relative to Saxon architecture, and the stone-roofed chapels in the sister isle." [Illustration: Plate 56. CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AT CAEN. _East end._] In the east end of the church of St. Nicholas, (see _plate fifty-six_,) may be remarked a sensible approximation in point of style, to the same part in the church of the Trinity. The circular apsis is divided into compartments by slender cylindrical pillars; and each intercolumniation is filled by a couple of windows of comparatively large size, placed one above the other, while a row of narrow blank arches occupies the lower part. The head of each of these smaller arches is hewn out of a single stone. The height of the roof, in this part of the church, is so much greater than in the choir, as almost to justify the suspicion that it was no part of the original plan, but was an addition of a subsequent, though certainly not of a remote, æra. Were the line of it continued to the central tower, it would wholly block up and conceal the windows there. The discrepancy observable in the style of its architecture, may also possibly be regarded as enforcing the same opinion. But, indeed, as has already been more than once observed in this work, no inferences drawn from style must be admitted without the utmost hesitation. A very sensible discussion upon this point, as illustrated by the church of St. Nicholas itself, and the two adjoining churches of the Trinity and of St. Stephen, has lately appeared in one of the most popular English periodical publications, from the pen of a writer possessed of the deepest knowledge of the subject, and gifted with the most comprehensive and clearest views[115]. It were an injustice to the readers of this work, not to extract it upon the present occasion. It will supersede the necessity of any labored description of the interior of the building.-- "When a distinct gradation of style is observable, it is natural to conclude, that these architectural varieties, emanating from one prototype, each clearly to be discriminated, yet dying into another by imperceptible shades, were successively developed at certain intervals of time. This reasoning, though it advances upon legitimate premises, may be fallacious, as is proved at Caen, where three coeval churches, probably erected by the same architect, are distinguished by such remarkable modifications of the Norman Romanesque style, that were we not acquainted with the facts, we might well suppose that they marked the progress of architecture during three half centuries.--St. Nicholas, the first of these edifices, was built by the monks of St. Stephen's Abbey some time between the years 1066 and 1083. The original lines are characterized by simplicity and regularity. All the capitals of the columns, embedded in the side walls, are of one order; and the capitals of the pier-columns, which nearly resemble the others, are equally uniform. The east end terminates by an apsis, of which the elevation resembles the exterior of the cathedral of Pisa. Three circular arches, supported by Corinthianizing pilasters, form the western portal. The original cross-vaulting of the side-aisles still remains: it is without groins, and of Roman construction, and the whole interior shews that the architect was endeavoring to recollect the models of the great city.--If we pass from hence to the adjacent abbey church of St. Stephen, erected at the same period, we shall observe that the conception of the architect is more Norman than in the church which we have quitted. The nave is divided into bays by piers, alternating with circular pillars of smaller diameter. The pier consists of a pilaster fronted by a cylindrical column, continuing to about four-fifths of the height of the roof. Two cylindrical columns then rise from it; so that from this point upwards, the pier becomes a clustered column: angular brackets sculptured into knots, grotesque heads, and foliage, are affixed to the bases of the derivative pillars. A bold double-billeted moulding is continued below the clerestory, whose windows adapt themselves to the binary arrangement of the bays of the nave; that is to say, a taller arch is flanked by a smaller one, on its right side, or on its left side, as the situation requires; these are supported by short massy pillars; and an embattled moulding runs round the windows. These features are Norman; but in other portions of the church, the architect Romanises again, as in St. Nicholas. The piers of the aisle-arches are of considerable width: the pillars at each angle are connected by an architrave, distinctly enounced, running along the front of the pier, and interposed between the capitals and the springing of the well-turned semi-circular arch. The triforium is composed of a tier of semi-circular arches, nearly of equal span with those below. The perspective of the building is grand and palatial. In the evening, when it is illuminated only by a few faintly-burning tapers, the effect of the gleams of light, reflected from the returns of the arches and pillars, is particularly fine. Beyond the central arch which supports the tower, all is lost in gloom, except that at the extremity of the choir, the star-light just breaks through the topmost windows above the altar.--In the church of St. Stephen, the leading ideas of the architect were still influenced by the Roman basilica; a third and more fanciful modification is to be observed in the coeval church of the Holy Trinity. Here the piers are narrower; the columns supporting the aisle-arches are consequently brought closer together, and the architrave is less prominent than at St. Stephen's: there the embattled moulding is confined to the clerestory; in the present church, it runs round the principal arches; and, instead of the lofty triforium which there surmounts the side-aisles, the walls which we now describe are threaded by a gallery supported by misproportioned pillars, whose capitals exhibit every possible variety of grotesque invention. The bold archivolts beneath the central tower are chased with the Norman lozenge: they are circular; but the eastern arch, which runs higher than the others, is obtusely pointed, though it is evidently of the same date with its companions." The parish of St. Nicholas is placed without the walls of Caen, in that portion of the suburbs known by the name of _Le Bourg-l'Abbé_, as having been, before the revolution, under the jurisdiction of the abbot of St. Stephen. In the same quarter was also included the parish of St. Ouen, as was a portion of those of St. Stephen and St. Martin. The two last-mentioned churches were ceded, in the earliest period of the history of Caen, by the Chapter of the Cathedral of Bayeux, to Queen Matilda, in exchange for some other preferment, and were by her bestowed upon the nuns of her new convent of the Trinity. But the increasing power of the rival monastery, built by her husband, naturally caused its occupants to turn a wistful eye towards churches so immediately in their vicinity. Disputes succeeded; and the monks of St. Stephen erected the church of St. Nicholas, that their suburb might no longer be without a religious building which depended wholly upon themselves. Peace was at length restored by means of a charter from the Duke, dated in the year 1083, whereby St. Nicholas was recognized as parochial, an equivalent was given to the abbess by the extension of her power in her own quarter of St. Giles, and the respective parishes of St. Stephen and St. Martin were allowed to retain all they possessed in the Bourg-l'Abbé, except five families expressly designated in the charter. These five were transferred to St. Nicholas; and, to secure to the saint a certain increase of votaries hereafter, a proviso was added, enacting that every house which might be built in future, in that suburb, should belong to his parish. Hence, the two other saints retained nothing more than the ground covered by the tenements then standing, sixty-seven in number; and the necessary consequence was, that from that period till the year 1790, when the whole was remodelled, the limits of the several parishes were confused and irregular in the extreme. Not only did adjoining dwellings belong to different parishes, but the line frequently ran between the various apartments of the same house, or even separated the apartment themselves. The church of St. Nicholas, as indebted for its existence to the monks of the abbey of St. Stephen, continued for some time to receive its pastors from among the brethren of that convent. At a subsequent period, the monks, after they had transferred to substitutes the performance of their religious duties, still endeavored to preserve their supremacy; but they were finally obliged to relinquish it; and the ministers of St. Nicholas enjoyed the same rights as the other clergy of Caen, though the ecclesiastical privileges of the abbot remained inviolate. To the church of St. Nicholas was attached a guild, in the early lists of whose members were included names of the greatest distinction in the town and neighborhood. St. Nicholas was in remote times an object of especial devotion; and the company incorporated under his patronage, naturally partook of his celebrity. The Abbé De la Rue also states, that it was from within this church, that what were termed the _Apostolic decrees_, were delivered in the twelfth century. They derived their name from being pronounced by commissioners delegated by the Pope, to decide in matters touching the canon law; and the numerous appeals to the court of Rome, at that period, rendered the necessity for such decisions of frequent occurrence. NOTES: [113] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 176. [114] _Antiquities of Ireland_, p. 151. [115] _Quarterly Review for June_, 1821, p. 120. PLATE LVII. CHURCH OF CHEUX. [Illustration: Plate 57. CHURCH OF CHEUX NEAR CAEN. _From the North East._] The earliest mention which occurs of Cheux, a small country town, about nine miles to the west of Caen, is to be found in the charter, granted about the year 1077, by the Conqueror, for the foundation of his abbey of St. Stephen. The king, in this instrument, after a pious proem, reciting that he has been led to the holy task by the expectation of obtaining remission for his sins and a hundred-fold reward in heaven, places, as the very first of the gifts destined for the endowment of the rising monastery, the town of Cheux. He also expressly designates Cheux, and the four places immediately following, as _villas juris mei_, thereby meaning, as M. de Gerville justly remarks, to draw a distinction between those donations which came immediately from himself, and those which originated with any of his subjects, and stood in need of nothing more than a ratification on his part. Another remark may, perhaps, not impertinently be made upon this part of the charter, as curiously illustrative of the manners of the times as to the nature of feudal tenures, and the mode of recruiting the army. In the very next paragraph, a distinction is drawn between the rights of two different classes of men, the _coloni_ and _conditionarii_, the latter being explained by the words of the charter itself, to mean _free men_ ("_liberos homines_.") The Duke assigns to the abbey, the towns themselves, together with their inhabitants, mills, waters, meadows, pastures, and woods; and also with all the revenues and customs derivable from them, as they have been enjoyed by himself, or any of his predecessors. He likewise expressly stipulates, that such of the people of Cheux and Rotz, as do not hold _frank-tenements_, ("_qui francam terram non tenent_,") should be exclusively devoted to the service of the church and the monks, so as not to be subject to any call arising from military expeditions, or other cause, unless the Prince himself should personally, or by letter, direct the abbot to send them. Even in the latter case, he binds himself to summon each by name, and never to call them out, except the province should be invaded by a foreign foe; nor on any account to require their services beyond the limits of the duchy. At the same time that the Conqueror's children confirmed all the donations made by their father to the abbey of St. Stephen, Robert, his successor upon the ducal throne, added the privilege of an annual fair at Cheux, and a weekly market: the latter was held upon a Sunday, during the twelfth century, but was afterwards, by an order from King John, changed to a Tuesday. Upon the accession of Henry II. to the dukedom, another charter of great length was granted in favor of the royal abbey; and in this, Cheux is again mentioned. The King not only follows the example of his predecessors, in renouncing all right to it, but he gives his royal assent, in the following terms, to two purchases which had been made in it:--"Concedo emptionem, quam fecit Willelmus Abbas, Joanni, filii Conani, Canonico Bajocensi, scilicet, totam terram suam de Ceusio, quæ est de feudo S. Stephani; 23 libr. annual; et emptionem quam fecit Willelmus Abbas, a Radulpho, fratre Vitalis, scilicet, sex acras terræ, quam tenebat in feodu de prædicto sancto in Ceusio, pro quibus faciebat serraturas portarum Ceusii, pro C. solid. census." From that time to the revolution, Cheux continued to be one of the principal domains of the abbot of St. Stephen. According to the territorial division of ancient France, it formed a part of what was termed the _Election_ of Caen, and was included in the archdeaconry of Bayeux, and the deanery of Fontenay. The revolution, introducing a new arrangement, together with a new set of terms, has placed it in the _arrondissement_ of Caen, and in the _canton_ of Tilly. The church is a fine specimen of Norman architecture; remarkable as to its plan, in having the choir of considerably greater width than the nave. The portion east of the tower is composed of three distinct parts, unequal in size, the central being the narrowest, as is strikingly the case in the church at Great Yarmouth; but all of the same height, and each of the lateral ones exactly equalling in its width the length of the transept to which it is attached; and thus, also, the choir and transepts, taken collectively, form nearly a square, except that, to the end of the middle compartment, is attached a circular apsis, of an unusually small size; and, seen from the inside of the church, this disproportion becomes even more conspicuous: the great thickness of the wall necessarily subtracting much from the space. It even strikes the eye as being less than it really is, from being subdivided into a number of small arches; which, with the vaulted roof, lighted by the extremely narrow windows below, and the larger ones above, give this end of the church a very peculiar appearance. PLATE LVIII. AND LIX. CHURCH OF BIEVILLE. [Illustration: Plate 58. CHURCH OF BIEVILLE NEAR CAEN. _From the North West._] It is only when considered as a curious relic of ancient ecclesiastical architecture, that the church of Bieville can lay claim to any attention whatever. History, even in its lowest department, topography, is altogether silent with regard both, to the building and the parish, except so far as to record that the church was among the dependencies of the royal abbey of St. Stephen, at Caen; though even in this character, it does not appear till the middle of the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned in one of the registers of the diocese of Bayeux. Its situation is about four miles north of Caen. Taken as a whole, the church of Bieville has probably no parallel in Normandy or in England. The upper story of the tower alone is of a subsequent æra, and _that_, the earliest style of pointed architecture: all the rest of the structure is purely Norman, and of extreme simplicity. The church of St. Peter, at Northampton, said to have been erected by Simon de St. Liz, during the reign of William the Conqueror, is encircled at the height of the clerestory by a row of small arches, similar in their proportions and decorations to those at Bieville; but they are there continued in an uninterrupted line round the building, while at Bieville they occupy only a comparatively small portion of it. In the nave of this latter church, they are disposed regularly in triplets, the central one only pierced for a window, and each three separated by a flat Norman buttress. The western front, represented in _plate fifty-eight_, is divided by plain string-courses into three stories of irregular height: the basement contains only the door, which is entered by a richly-ornamented arch, (see _plate fifty-nine, fig. B_.) surmounted by a broad drip-stone, decorated with quatrefoils, and terminating at each end in a human head of classical character. The lowest moulding of this arch is considerably more flattened than the upper, a peculiarity that is likewise observable in the interior arch to the great door-way at Castle-Acre Priory, in Norfolk.[116] In the second story are six arches, supported by eight pillars, with capitals and bases of ordinary character: even these, contiguous as they stand, are divided into two equal sets, by the intervention of a flat space in the centre, so narrow, as to wear the appearance of a pilaster. Here, too, as in the nave, the central arch of each compartment is alone pierced for a window.--The upper story has only a single window, precisely resembling those below, but flanked on each side by a circular one, similar to that in the front of the neighboring chapel of the _Délivrande_:[117] or, if a comparison be sought among Norman edifices in England, to those in the tower of Norwich cathedral;[118] in the same part of the church of St. James, at Bury St. Edmunds;[119] and in the east end of the church of the Hospital of St. Cross.[120] In point of general character, the western front of the church of Bieville may not unaptly be compared with that of the chapel of the _Délivrande_, or of the hospital of St. Leonard, at Stamford, as figured by Carter.[121] The tower of the church at Bieville is well calculated to serve as a specimen of the towers of the village churches, comprized in a circuit of twenty miles round Caen. Among others, those of Soumont, Ifs, Soulangy, Potigny, and the Lower Allemagne, to the south, and of Lyons, Oyestraham, and several more, to the north, greatly resemble it. [Illustration: Plate 59. CHURCH OF BIEVILLE NEAR CAEN. _Elevation and Details._] _Plate fifty-nine_, as being altogether architectural, will best be understood by a set of regular references to the different subjects it embraces. A. _Door-way on the north side of the nave_, remarkable for its lintel or transom-stone in the figure of a pediment, from which the arch rises, encircled with a single, wide, plain, flat moulding. There is a similar instance in the church of Martinvast, near Cherbourg; but the pediment there assumes a form more decidedly conical.[122] Transom-stones occur frequently in Normandy, and are variously sculptured; from the rude cross, either alone or encompassed with the cable-moulding, to the elaborate representations of the crucified Saviour, or other subjects from holy writ. Profane subjects, which are of so frequent occurrence on transom-stones in England, are very seldom found in the duchy: the writer of the present article never recollects to have met with any; and Mr. Cotman's more extensive researches have brought him acquainted only with a single instance, a centaur, in the act of discharging his arrow at a stag, in the church of Urville, near Valognes. B. _Great western entrance_, (already described.) C. _First compartment of the nave from the west_, showing the structure and disposition of the arches, and the very flat buttresses with a double projection, the first only equalling that of the corbels. The square-headed door is modern. Several of the sculptures on the corbels are close imitations of those upon the church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen. D. and E. _Portions of other compartments of the nave_, to obtain a complete idea of which, it is only necessary to produce the dotted lines below, to the same length as that at C; the parts and their disposition being precisely the same, with the exception of the door. F. _Elevation of the choir_, which is divided into two equal portions by a flat buttress, flanked on each side by a slender cylindrical column. Of these parts, one is quite plain, except only the corbel-table and ornamented frieze below. The other has two arches, recently blocked up, similar to those of the nave, but with a richer exterior moulding. The door below these has the same peculiarity, in the drip-stone rising from sculptured heads, as in the western entrance. The frieze beneath the corbels very much resembles that in the same situation in the church of the Holy Trinity, (see _plate thirty-one_,) and is likewise continued over the buttresses, as well as along the receding part between. NOTES: [116] Figured in _Britton's Architectural Antiquities_, III. pl. 2. [117] Figured in _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 295. [118] _Britton's Norwich Cathedral_, p. 33, pl. 6. [119] _Britton's Architectural Antiquities_, III. p. 80. [120] _Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet_, V. [121] _Ancient Architecture_, pl. 24.--In the description of this building, page 33, Mr. Carter speaks of it as being of _Saxon_ origin; and, in the chronological table attached to his work, he classes it in the third of the four æras into which he divides his specimens of _Saxon_ architecture. [122] A still more remarkable example occurs in Essington church, Gloucestershire, figured by Carter, in his _Ancient Architecture_, pl. XV. fig. X. The transom-stone is there formed of part of an octagon, rising from an horizontal torus moulding, which finishes in a spiral direction round two heads. A lion and a griffin fill the space within. PLATE LX. AND LXI. CHURCH OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI, NEAR CAEN. [Illustration: Plate 60. CHURCH OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI NEAR CAEN. _North side of the Chancel._] The parish of Fontaine-le-Henri lies about eight miles north of Caen, immediately adjoining Than, whose church has already been figured in this work. The register of the livings appertaining to the diocese of Bayeux, made about the year 1350, and commonly known by the name of the _livre pelut_, (_liber pelutus_, or the _parchment book_,) contains only the following brief notice of it:--"Ecclesia de Fontibus Henrici LX Libras.--Dnus dicte ville.--Archidiaconatus de Cadomo.--Decanatus de Dovra." In the _Gallia Christiana_, and other similar works, no mention whatever is made of this parish. According to the modern division of France, Fontaine-le-Henri is included in the canton of Creüilly: the name of the village, to whose deanery it formerly appertained, cannot fail to strike the ear of an Englishman, as being the same with that of the celebrated harbor in his own island, the common landing-place from Calais. But the English Dover, from having been originally a Roman station, is generally supposed to have derived its appellation from the Romans; and Darell, in his History of the castle, published by Grose,[123] gives it as his opinion that, among the ancient Britons, it was called _Rupecester_, but, on the Roman invasion, got the new name of _Dofris_, _Dobris_, or _Doris_, "in consequence of the filling or damming up of the harbor;" "Doafer," as he observes a few pages before, "signifying, in the language of those times, a harbor shut up, or of difficult access." A still higher authority, the learned Bishop Huet,[124] classes the word, Douvres, among those whose origin is to be sought in the ancient language of Gaul, and proposes two derivations: one from _Dufyrrha_, a rising ground; the other from _Dvvr_, the term for water. Thus, without giving any opinion of his own, he leaves the matter to his reader, with a "utrum horum mavis elige." The Norman village of Douvres is celebrated upon more than one account: it was the birth-place of Thomas of Dover, almoner to the Conqueror, and by him created archbishop of York in 1070; of Sampson of Dover, his brother, made bishop of Worcester in 1097; and of a second Thomas of Dover, nephew to the first of the name, who, in 1109, had the singular honor of being elected at once to the episcopal throne of London, and the archiepiscopal throne of York; the latter of which he accepted. His brother, Richard, wore at the same time the mitre of Bayeux.--Douvres was the principal place of one of the seven baronies, which formed the episcopal manse of the bishops of Bayeux. During the thirteenth, and the two following centuries, it was also selected for their country-seat. Within its limits stands the chapel of the _Délivrande_,[125] said to have been founded by St. Regnobert, the second bishop of the diocese, and still held in the highest repute for its sanctity. Of the church of Fontaine-le-Henri, the architecture is decidedly Norman, and is distinguished by a bold and noble style, resembling in its general character, as well as in its individual features, the abbatial churches of St. George, and of the Trinity. Hence, though no record is left of the actual founder, there is little room for doubt as to the æra of the foundation. It may be observed on this occasion, that in Normandy, as in England, it very seldom happens that information is to be obtained on these particulars, when the same individual united in his person the characters of lord of the village and patron of the living. It was only where benefices were in the hands of religious houses, that events so generally unimportant as the building and repairing of village churches, were considered deserving of being recorded. With regard to the various proprietors of Fontaine-le-Henri, much information is to be gleaned from Laroque's History of the House of Harcourt. The laborious author, after having completed his general account of the Norman nobility, in a single folio volume, devoted four others to the genealogy and fortunes of this one illustrious family. From him it appears that, during the period when Normandy was under the sway of its own Dukes, the parish of Fontaine-le-Henri was in the hands of the family of Tilly, one of whom is to be found among the companions of the Conqueror, in his descent upon England. Early in the thirteenth century, during the reign of King John, they held the lordship of Fontaine-le-Henri conjointly with the castellany of Tilly. Mention of them occurs repeatedly in the Ecclesiastical History of Ordericus Vitalis, as well as in the annals of the abbeys of St. Stephen and of Ardennes, near Caen; and it was from the baptismal name of Henry, commonly borne by that branch of them, who were possessors of Fontaine, that the parish took its present distinctive appellation; a distinction not a little needed, considering that there are fifteen other places in Normandy, called by the general name of Fontaine. John de Tilly, the last of the male line of the family, who were lords of Fontaine-le-Henri, died about the year 1380: he was succeeded in the inheritance by his sister, Jane, who, in 1382, married Philip D'Harcourt, and thus added the property to the immense domains of the Harcourts. The first of the plates appropriated to this building, embraces only a portion of the western compartment of the south side of the chancel, drawn in rapid perspective, the view being taken from immediately beneath the corbel-table, for the sake of embracing the soffit of the arches, and the projecting mouldings. Here, as at Bieville, the lintel or transom-stone of the arch of entrance[126] assumes the form of a pediment, but rests upon the jambs of the door-way, on a level with the capitals. To the instances of a similar formation, adduced under the preceding article, should be added the very remarkable one at Pen church, in Somersetshire, figured in the _Antiquarian and Topographical Cabinet_. On the lintel is sculptured the Lamb bearing the Cross, enclosed within a circle, flanked on either side by a nondescript animal; the whole supported by two crowned heads placed in niches in the jambs. [Illustration: Plate 61. CHURCH OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI NEAR CAEN. _Elevations of the East end of the South side of the Chancel._] The following is a description of the different parts of _plate sixty-one_:[127]-- A. _East end of the chancel._--The central buttress, flanked, like the two lateral ones, with cylindrical pillars, divides this portion of the church into two equal portions. The general appearance of these buttresses, and the circumstance of their being supported upon a fillet and plinth, would almost warrant the calling of them pilasters; and those upon the northern side of the chancel, _Figure_ B, assume that character even more decidedly, having no projection beyond the cornice, which they support as an entablature.--It will be remarked, that the whole building is raised upon a plinth of a bold character; and Mr. Cotman justly observes, that the chancel may be regarded as a model for beautiful proportions and exquisite finishing. As respecting Norman buttresses, he is of opinion, that the edifices of highest antiquity will be found to be altogether without any; and that they were first added merely by way of ornament, to break the monotonous appearance of a long uninterrupted space of level wall. Indeed, the Norman walls, commonly from six to ten feet in thickness, could scarcely require any additional strength from extrinsic objects; and least of all, could they receive it from a projection of not more than the same number of inches. Even where buttress has been added to buttress, as in the north side of the chapel of the hospital of St. Julien, near Rouen,[128] and in some other instances, it may almost be questioned, if support was the only circumstance contemplated by the architect. The double buttresses at St. Julien's, could scarcely fail to be coeval with the building, as appears from the string-course being continued in an unbroken line over them, a fact that was omitted to be noticed in the description of the chapel. NOTES: [123] _History of Dover Castle_, p. 8. [124] _Origines de Caen_, p. 315. [125] See _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 295; where this chapel is described and figured. [126] Mr. Cotman observes, that much might be said in connection with this door-way, upon the subject of the decorations of the semi-circular-headed arches in Normandy and in England. But, confining himself to heads of the peculiar grotesque character, sculptured upon the arch at Fontaine-le-Henri, he remarks, that such, though far from being very uncommon in Britain, are of extremely rare occurrence in the duchy; insomuch, that he can recal no other specimens of them, than those upon a large arch which separates the nave from the chancel, in the church of Berigny, near St. Lo, and upon another on the south side of the church of Bracheville près le Grand. The heads, in this last instance, are precisely like those at Iffley church, in Oxfordshire, (see _Britton's Chronological and Historical Illustrations of Ancient Architectures_;) but they are confined to the archivolt alone, while, at Iffley, they are disposed in a double row, and form broad bands, that encircle the pillars as well as the top of the arch. In England are the following instances, most of them figured in the works of Britton and Carter:-- South door-way of St. Peter's church, Oxford. ---------------- St. Peter's church, at Rasen, in Lincolnshire. ---------------- Earls-Barton church, Northamptonshire. North door-way of Lullington church, Somersetshire. Architrave on the east side of the cemetery-gate, Canterbury cathedral. West door-way of Kenilworth church. South door-way of Moorvinstowe church, Cornwall. Arches in the nave of ditto. -------------------- Wymondham church, Norfolk. West door-way of the church of Barton St. Mary, ditto. [127] In the title of this plate, it is unfortunately stated to represent the _East end_ OF _the_ SOUTH _side of the chancel_, instead of the _East end_ AND _the_ NORTH _side of the chancel_. [128] See p. 44. PLATES LXII.-LXV. CHATEÂU OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI. CENTRAL COMPARTMENT OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI. HOUSE IN THE PLACE DE LA PUCELLE, AT ROUEN. HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. JEAN, AT CAEN. [Illustration: Plate 62. CHÂTEAU AT FONTAINE-LE-HENRI, NEAR CAEN.] It neither falls within the scope of this work to attempt any thing in the form of a dissertation upon the ancient domestic architecture of Normandy, nor, supposing such an object to be desirable, would the present state of the duchy afford materials for the purpose. The lover of researches into architectural antiquity no sooner directs his attention to that branch of his subject, which, as tending to elucidate the habits of his forefathers, would be peculiarly interesting, than he finds an insuperable obstacle opposed to his progress. The zeal of churchmen and the pride of barons, have preserved us many noble relics of ecclesiastical and castellated buildings; but the private residence of the more humble individual has, in no portion of the globe, been able to secure to itself any thing approaching to a durable existence. What was raised for comfort alone, was not in itself designed for perpetuity; and the varying tastes of successive occupants, the changes of fashions, or, what operate even more powerfully than all, the changes of fortune, have conspired to subject this portion of human labor, in an eminent degree, to that mutability which is the general lot of human undertakings. In early times, also, the state of society operated powerfully towards the production of the same destructive effect. When even the monarch could no otherwise provide for the safety of his palace, than by encircling it with the fortifications of the castle, a life of continual alarm afforded his subjects no encouragement for the cultivation of the arts of peace. Society knew no other classes than the lord and his vassals: the former, enthroned in military state; the latter, too poor to raise his aim beyond the necessaries of life; or, where riches existed, too depressed by servitude to dare to let them appear. Hence, during the prevalence of the feudal system, very little, if any thing, more is known of domestic architecture, than is to be collected from the rude illuminations of missals, or the unsatisfactory descriptions of chroniclers. The monuments themselves have disappeared from the face of the earth; or, if any instances can be adduced, tending to disprove so comprehensive an assertion, they are few in number, and worthless in quality. The utmost to be hoped for are such mutilated remains, as Winwal-House, in Norfolk, lately figured by Mr. Britton, in his _Chronological and Historical Illustrations of the Ancient Architecture of Great-Britain_; remains that are calculated to excite no other emotions than regret, and to awaken, without being by any means able to satisfy, curiosity.--Nor indeed have Mr. Cotman's extensive researches enabled him to meet with any of this description, all poor as they are, within the limits of Normandy. At the same time it has appeared right, conformably with the plan that has been adopted in this work, as to ecclesiastical edifices, to lay before the reader some specimens of the domestic architecture of the duchy, which, though far removed from Norman times, are almost equally so from our own days. Even these are rapidly disappearing; it is more than possible, that the three subjects here selected for publication may, in the course of a few years, be recorded only in these plates. One of them is already levelled with the ground;[129] while the more interesting house in the Place de la Pucelle, at Rouen, though it has been suffered to continue in existence, has been so much injured in its exterior, and is degraded to so mean a purpose, that its demolition would at no time be matter for surprise.--Specimens, like these, are curious in the history of the arts: they shew the progress which architecture had made in Normandy, at one of the most interesting epochs in French history; they also shew its relative state, as respectively applied to civil and religious purposes. And, if they be all three productions of nearly the same æra, they are sufficiently characterised each from the other, by marks of distinction. "A history of the civil and domestic architecture of the middle ages, is yet a desideratum; and unless this task is soon accomplished in England, the opportunity will be lost for ever." The very sensible author, from whom this sentence is quoted, goes on to say, "The halls of Elizabeth's days are almost worn out. The mansions of the time of Charles I. are falling apace, and in every quarter of a century a class must disappear, by the conjoined operations of repair and decay. The towns of England perhaps afford the worst and poorest specimens of the dwelling houses: the best and richest are found in the Netherlands. We can hardly qualify this assertion by recollecting the magnificent range of palaces which bordered the Strand, in the reign of Henry VIII. Our own dwelling-houses are usually composed of timber frames filled in with plaster. Troyes, in Champagne, is built entirely in this fashion, every street is the perfect 'counterfeit' of old Cheapside. Beauvais is built in the same manner, but the houses are profusely varied with carving, and a good artist might employ himself there for a twelvemonth. Many of the ancient houses at Caen are of chesnut timber. The Abbé De la Rue supposes that they were built by the English, after the place was taken by Henry V. in 1417. His 'bombards' destroyed a great part of the town during the siege; and after he had regained possession, he granted the sites of the demolished tenements to his English subjects. In choosing this material, they may have been guided partly by choice, as being a domestic fashion, and partly by necessity; for the use of stone was restricted by Henry, to the building and repairing of 'eglises, chasteaulx, et forteresses.' The king, by letters-patent, declared that the 'quarries of white stone' were to remain to him and his heirs for ever: this monopoly proves the value in which the Caen stone was held." [Illustration: Plate 63. CHÂTEAU OF FONTAINE-LE-HENRI, NEAR CAEN. _Elevation of Central Compartment._] Some account has already been given, under the preceding article, of the changes of proprietors which the domain of Fontaine-le-Henri underwent, during the reigns of the Norman Dukes, and down to the conclusion of the fourteenth century. The estate then passed into the possession of the Harcourts, in whose hands it continued a considerable length of time: it has since been subject to various owners, and has now finally become the property of the Viscount de Canisy. The _Château_ (see _plates sixty-two_ and _sixty-three_) is a noble building, and a very characteristic specimen of the residences of the French noblesse, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, at which period there is no doubt of its having been erected, although no records whatever are left upon the subject. Fontaine-le-Henri was then still in the possession of the family of Harcourt, whose fortune and consequence might naturally be expected to give rise to a similar building.--As compared with the mansions of the English nobility, the château at Fontaine-le-Henri may be advantageously viewed in conjunction with Longleat, in Wiltshire,[130] the noble seat of the Marquess of Bath. The erection of the latter was not commenced till the year 1567, thus leaving an interval of at least half a century between them; a period, probably, much the same as may be presumed from other documents to have intervened between the introduction of the Italian style of architecture in France and in England. Longleat was built by John of Padua, who is stated by Mr. Britton, "to have been an architect of some note at the time; as is evinced by his being termed _Devizor of his Majesty's buildings_, and by the grant made him by Henry VIII. and renewed in the third year of Edward VI." Fontaine-le-Henri was also the production of trans-alpine architects. Both of them bear decided marks of the nation to which they owe their origin; but in the English mansion, the Italian features are most decidedly enounced; while, in the French, they are strikingly modified by the peculiarities of their adopted country. The central compartment (_plate sixty-three_) has been selected by Mr. Cotman for publication, as being the portion of the structure which is in the purest taste. This also most resembles Longleat. But it is on the other hand by far the least ornamented. The rest of the front of the building is covered with the richest profusion of medallions, scrolls, friezes, canopies, statues, and arabesques, in bas-relief, worked with extraordinary care, and of great beauty. Their style is that of the _Loggie_ of Raphael; or, to compare them with another Norman subject of the same æra, of the sculptures upon the mausoleum raised to the Cardinal d'Amboise, in Rouen cathedral: indeed, for delicacy of workmanship, they may almost compete with the ornaments upon this far-famed monument.[131] [Illustration: Plate 64. HOUSE IN THE PLACE DE LA PUCELLE, AT ROUEN.] For the drawing of the second of the houses here figured, that in the _Place de la Pucelle_, at Rouen, (see _plate sixty-four_,) Mr. Cotman has to acknowledge himself indebted to the pencil of Miss Mary Turner. Rouen abounds in buildings, whose fronts are ornamented in a somewhat similar manner, but none among them will bear a comparison with this for the sumptuousness of its decorations.[132] In another and more important point of view, the house in question stands still more decidedly unrivalled; for a wing of it, which is not shewn in the present plate, exhibits a series of representations, illustrative of different events connected with the chivalrous meeting _in the field of cloth of gold_. These figures have been already engraved: they were first published by Montfaucon; then copied by Ducarel; and, very recently, two of them have again appeared in the publications of Mr. Dibdin[133] and Mr. Turner.[134] The latter of these gentlemen has been copious in his description of this building; and the following account of it is borrowed nearly verbatim from his pages:-- "In the square which has acquired an ill-omened celebrity by the barbarous execution of the Maid of Arc, stands a house within a court, now occupied as a school for girls, of the same æra as the _Palais de Justice_, and in the same _Burgundian style_, but far richer in its sculptures. The entire front is divided into compartments by slender and lengthened buttresses and pilasters. The intervening spaces are filled with basso relievos, evidently executed at one period, though by different masters. A banquet beneath a window in the first floor, is in a good _cinque-cento_ style. Others of the basso-relievos represent the labors of the field and the vineyard; rich and fanciful in their costume, but rather wooden in their design: the salamander, the emblem of Francis I. appears several times amongst the ornaments, and very conspicuously. I believe there is not a single square foot of this extraordinary building, which has not been sculptured.--On the north side extends a spacious gallery. Here the architecture is rather in Holbein's manner: foliaged and swelling pilasters, like antique candelabra, bound the arched windows. Beneath, is the well-known series of bas-reliefs, executed on marble tablets, representing the interview between Francis I. of France, and Henry VIII. of England, in the _Champ du Drap d'or_, between Guisnes and Ardres. They were first discovered by the venerable father Montfaucon, who engraved them in his _Monumens de la Monarchie Française_; but to the greater part of our antiquaries at home, they are, perhaps, more commonly known by the miserable copies inserted in Ducarel's work, who has borrowed most of his plates from the Benedictine.--These sculptures are much mutilated, and so obscured by smoke and dirt, that the details cannot be understood without great difficulty. The corresponding tablets above the windows are even in a worse condition; and they appear to have been almost unintelligible in the time of Montfaucon, who conjectures that they were allegorical, and probably intended to represent the triumph of religion. Each tablet contains a triumphal car, drawn by different animals--one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.--A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either _taken_ from the triumphs of Petrarch, or _imitated_ from the triumphs introduced in the _Polifilo_. Graphic representations of allegories are susceptible of so many variations, that an artist, embodying the ideas of the poet, might produce a representation bearing a close resemblance to the mythological processions of the 'mystic dream.'--The interior of the house has been modernized: so that a beam covered with small carvings is the only remaining object of curiosity. On the top, a bunch of leaden thistles has been a sad puzzle to antiquaries, who would fain find some connection between the building and Scotland; but neither record nor tradition throw any light upon their researches. Montfaucon, copying from a manuscript written by the Abbé Noel, says, 'I have more than once been told, that Francis I. on his way through Rouen, lodged at this house; and it is most probable, that the bas-reliefs in question were made upon some of these occasions, to gratify the king by the representation of a festival, in which he particularly delighted.' The gallery-sculptures are very fine, and the upper tier is much in the style of Jean Goujon. It is not generally known that Goujon re-drew the embellishments of Beroald de Verville's translation of the Polifilo; and that these, beautiful as they are in the Aldine edition, acquired new graces from the French artist--I have remarked, that the allegorical tablets appear to coincide with the designs of the Polifilo: a more accurate examination might, perhaps, prove the fact; and then little doubt would remain. The building is much dilapidated; and, unless speedily repaired, these basso-relievos, which would adorn any museum, will utterly perish. In spite of neglect and degradations, the aspect of the mansion is still such that, as my friend observed, one would expect to see a fair and stately matron standing in the porch, attired in velvet, waiting to receive her lord." [Illustration: Plate 65. HOUSE IN THE RUE ST. JEAN, AT CAEN.] To the house at Caen[135] (figured in _plate sixty-five_) are attached no historical mementos; nor is any record preserved as to its founder or possessor. It is not even honored by the slightest mention in the Abbé De la Rue's recent publication, or in those of De Bourgueville or Huet. In all probability it owes its existence to some wealthy citizen, during the reigns of Charles VIII. or Louis XII. as "it was principally at that period, that the practice prevailed in France, of ornamenting the fronts of the houses with medallions. The custom died away under Francis I."[136]--According to this theory, the houses at Caen and at Fontaine-le-Henri may be placed in exactly the same æra, and about forty years anterior to that at Rouen. Caen can show another remarkable instance of domestic architecture, a castellated building, which, it has been remarked, might easily mislead the studious antiquary. This building, commonly known by the name of the _Château de la Gendarmerie_, but more properly called the _Château de Calix_, is generally believed by the inhabitants of the town to have been erected for the purpose of commanding the river, while it flowed in its ancient, but now deserted, bed. According, however, to the Abbé De la Rue, no fortification of any description ever existed in the same place; but the structure, however martial in its appearance, was in its character altogether pacific, and was built during some of the latest years of the fifteenth, or earliest of the sixteenth, century, by Girard de Nollent, then owner of the property.[137] Two statues, apparently intended to represent heathen divinities, but now absurdly called _Gendarmes_, frown over its battlements, which, like those of the adjacent wall, and like the face of the principal tower, are still charged with medallions, though the ebullition of revolutionary enthusiasm has destroyed the arms of the Nollents. Previously to dismissing this subject, it may be worth while to remark, that the ogee canopy, surmounting the window placed between the two medallions in the house in the Rue St. Jean, at Caen, is nearly a fac-simile of that which is still seen over the door that led to what was once the great hall in the Conqueror's palace, adjoining the abbey of St. Stephen. The resemblance between them is so great, that it would be difficult to believe that they are of very different dates. But the palace was unquestionably the production of more than one æra; and in the scarcity of materials for the forming of a correct opinion upon the subject, it is impossible to say, whether the door in question may not have been inserted some time after its erection, or even whether the ornamental part may not have been added to it at a period subsequent to its formation. NOTES: [129] The house at Caen, is that which is here alluded to.--It has already been mentioned, that the _Great House_ at Andelys has suffered the same fate. Since the account of that circumstance was written, the author of the present article has been favored with the following extract from a letter from Lord Compton, dated in August last:--"The noble _grande maison d'Andelys_, is now, alas, no more! We made a _détour_ by a horrible road, for the purpose of visiting it; but great was our mortification to find only a small piece of unornamented wall, the sole vestige which the barbarians had left standing; and _that_ is now probably destroyed--and 'green grass grows where Troy-town stood.' I need hardly say, that I derived a great deal of pleasure from a three-days' stay at Rouen; after which we made an excursion to St. Georges de Bocherville and Jumieges, and were highly interested and pleased by both.--Oh! that the Vandals would leave the abbey of Jumieges, even in its present state of dilapidation! In a few years, with the mellowing tints of time, and the ornament of a little ivy and vegetation, it would be one of the most picturesque and beautiful ruins in Europe; but, alas! it is in vain to hope it. Cotman's representations of Jumieges and Andelys will now be doubly valuable." [130] Figured and described in _Britton's Architectural Antiquities_, II. p. 105. [131] See _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 157. [132] One of the most curious buildings of this description, the ancient abbey of St. Amand, was not only rich to the greatest degree of profusion in its decorations, but derived a peculiar interest from their being almost wholly carved in wood. This building is now nearly destroyed; but, fortunately, some of its principal features are recorded in four of the plates of M. de Jolimont's _Monumens de la Normandie_. [133] _Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour through France_, &c. I. p. 101. [134] _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 200. [135] On the front of the new house, which has lately been erected upon the spot that was occupied by this, have been fastened the two medallions here represented: these alone were saved from the general destruction. [136] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 170. [137] _Essais Historiques sur la Ville de Caen_, I. p. 310. PLATE LXVI. CHURCH OF TRÉPORT. [Illustration: Plate 66. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF TRÉPORT, NEAR EU.] Tréport is an insignificant fishing-town, situated at the mouth of the small river, the Bresle, near the western extremity of Normandy. But, however unimportant its present state, most writers agree in regarding it as venerable for antiquity, assigning to it an existence coeval with the days of Julius Cæsar. That illustrious general speaks of a harbor, opening into the British Channel, under the denomination of _Ulterior Portus_; and by this name he is supposed to have intended to designate Tréport. The modern Latin historians of France apply the title without scruple: it is even so used in the charter for the foundation of the abbey, dated in the middle of the eleventh century. The very sensible author of the _Description of Upper Normandy_, is, however, of opinion, that such application is not warranted; and, after discussing the subject at some length, he inclines to think it more probable that Tréport may have been termed by the Romans, _Citerior Portus_; though he candidly admits that he finds no mention of a place so called among their writers.[138] The modern name of the town he derives from the Celtic word, _Treiz_; or, as it is sometimes spelt, _Traiz_, _Trais_, or _Treaz_; a word still in use in Lower Brittany, to signify "_the passage of an arm of the sea, or of a river towards its mouth_." According to the same author, there is no reason to believe that Tréport was a place of note, either during the period of the dominion of the Gauls, or of the Romans. From the beginning of the twelfth century, however, it has excited, at different times, a greater or less degree of interest. Various attempts have been made to raise it into commercial importance; and, sunk as it is at present, "it once could boast rows of handsome, well-built streets, a considerable number of inhabitants, and as many as a hundred vessels, fishing-boats included, belonging to the port."--Henry I. one of the earliest Counts of Eu, turned in 1101, the course of the Bresle, so as to bring it more immediately under the walls of Tréport: it was he also who dug the first harbor. Another of the same line of Counts, Charles of Artois, repaired this harbor in 1475, and undertook the greater work of cutting a navigable canal as far as Eu. The task, however, was suspended long before its completion; but the vestiges still remain, and even to the present day pass under the name of the _Canal d'Artois_. In 1154, a fresh attempt was made, and by a far greater man, to raise the prosperity of Tréport. Henry, Duke of Guise, caused a basin to be formed here, capable of containing ships of three hundred tons burthen; and added to it a jetty, defended by strong palisades. The whole was shortly after swept away; nor did better success attend the labors of the celebrated Vauban, who, admiring the situation of the town, undertook, after a lapse of one hundred and thirty-four years, to repair the works of the Duke of Guise. But the sea is not the only enemy with which Tréport has had to contend: its misfortunes have also been in great measure attributable to its defenceless state, situated as it is, in the immediate vicinity of England. The British fleet effected a landing in 1330, and destroyed the town with fire and the sword. In the course of the succeeding year, they returned with the same design; and again in 1413; on which last occasion, not content with burning Tréport itself, they likewise set fire to many neighboring villages. The religious wars during the following century were the source of almost equal calamities; but neither the sea nor warfare have inflicted such fatal wounds upon Tréport, as causes emanating immediately from the prosperity of France. Its proximity to the flourishing harbor of Dieppe, has naturally diverted its trade to that quarter: the restoration of Calais to the French monarchy, caused it a yet more irreparable injury; for, previously to that time, Tréport was the principal place in the channel, for the baking of biscuit, and for the landing and curing of the herrings caught by the fishermen of France in the German Ocean. Tréport was one of the first French towns that afforded a residence for the Knights Templars. A colony of them established themselves here in 1141. In the middle of the preceding century, its abbey of Benedictines, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, had been founded by Robert, Earl of Eu. The foundation-charter is preserved, both in the _Neustria Pia_ and _Gallia Christiana_; and a very curious document it is, as illustrative of the manners of the times. Robert appears in it in the light of a most liberal, and a most wealthy, benefactor. Not the least extraordinary of his donations, is the permission which he bestows upon the monks, of "getting whatever they can in the towns of Eu and of Tréport:" immediately after this, succeed particular grants relative to sturgeons and grampuses, fish that are now of extremely rare occurrence in the channel, but which would scarcely have there been noticed, had not the case in those times been far different; and had they not also been held in high estimation.[139] Just one hundred years subsequently to the foundation of the monastery, John, Count of Eu, confirmed to it whatever donations it had previously received; in doing which, he makes use of this singular expression, "that he places them all with his own hands upon the altar." His piety, however, appears to have been but short-lived. A few years only elapsed before the same nobleman was guilty of flagrant sacrilege in the very abbey that he had sworn to protect. His crime and his penitence are together recorded in an instrument printed in the _Neustria Pia_.[140] What is further known relative to the convent, is little and unimportant. The most remarkable circumstance, is the extreme poverty to which the monks were reduced in 1384; when, on being called upon to pay the sum of forty-six shillings and eight-pence, they pleaded their utter inability, and presented to the king the following piteous remonstrance:--"Cette Abbaïe, étant frontiere de l'Anglois, n'aïant ni château ni défense, a été arse et mise en un si chetif point, qu'il y a peu de lieux où nous puissions habiter, si ce n'est ès demeurans des anciens edifices, et ès vieilles masures.......... Notre grande Eglise est arse depuis trente ans, et une autre petite Eglise qu'avions depuis refaite, à grand meschief est ruinée et chue jusqu'en terre, avec la closture et tout le dortoir ars, ensemble nos biens et nos lits.... De plus sommes endettez en Cour de Rome pour les finances dez Abbez qu'avons eus en brief temps; et devons encore à plusieurs persones de grosses sommes de deniers que n'avons pu, et ne pouvons encore acquitter; dont c'est pitié.... finalement pour païer 10 livres sur les 56 livres demandées par le Receveur, avons engagé nos Calices sans les pouvoir retirer." NOTES: [138] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 13. [139] The whole of the passage is curious.--"Item in _Ulteriori Portu_ et in _Auco_ oppido; decimam denariorum de Vice-comitatibus, et in utrâque villâ _quicquid abbas et monachi acquirere poterunt_. Quod si homines Abbatis piscem, qui vocatur _Turium_, capiunt, totus erit S. Michaelis: crassus piscis si captus fuerit, ala una et medietas caudæ erit monachis."--From this passage, it is plain what importance was attached to the _crassus piscis_, under which denomination were probably included the porpesse, the dolphin, and all kinds of cetaceous animals, as well as the grampus. Ducange, with his usual ability and learning, has brought together a considerable quantity of curious matter upon the subject, under the word, _Craspiscis_. From him it appears that, in the year 1271, the question was argued before the Norman parliament, to whom such fish belonged, in the event of its being thrown upon the shore; and the decision was in the following words.--"Quod consuetudo generalis est in Normanniâ, quod, quando talis piscis invenitur in littore maris, nec Baro, nec Miles, nec alius, qui a Rege teneat, talem piscem habet, si valeat ultra 50 libras, _nisi per cartam eum habeat_."--See also _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 21, respecting the existence of a whale-fishery near Jumieges, upon the authority of the writer of the _Gesta Sancti Philiberti_. [140] P. 589.--"Notum sit universis Ecclesiæ Dei filiis, quod ego Joannes, Comes Auci, pro stipendio militum et servientium, quos tenui per guerram Regis, invadiavi maximam partem et optimam Thesauri Ecclesiæ S. Michaëlis de Ulterior-Portu, duos videlicet Textus prætiosos, et duo Thuribula prætiosa, unum calicem argenteum, et optimè deauratum; cappas caras viginti quatuor: casulam peratam et bonam: Præterea, tot et tantis gravaminibus præfatam Ecclesiam tam sæpè gravavi, quàm vices gravaminum numerare non possem: quare pro multis pauca, pro magnis parua, rependens, concedo, et in perpetuum do prædictæ Ecclesiæ, avenam et frumentum de Verleio, quæ pertinet ad Forestagium. Diligenter autem hæredes exoro, ne Ecclesias terræ suæ gravent, sed honorent et protegant. Et si quid eis pro salute animæ meæ et parentum meorum dedi, vel pro ablatis reddidi, in pace stabiliter tenere faciant: recordantes, quod ipsi morituri sunt: Sicut prædecessores nostri mortui sunt." PLATE LXVII. CHURCH OF ANISY. [Illustration: Plate 67. CHURCH OF ANISY, NEAR CAEN.] The present plate has been introduced into this work, with the view of exhibiting a Norman village church of unquestionable antiquity, having its walls, on either side, built of a coarse dark stone, fashioned like Roman bricks, and disposed in a zig-zag, or, as it is more commonly termed, a herring-bone direction. A similar disposition of the masonry is observable in a portion of the church of Perriers, the subject of the following plate: it is still more conspicuous at the neighboring church of St. Matthieu, already mentioned in this work.[141] The old church of St. Croix, at St. Lo, and the lower part of the east end of the church of St. Hildebert, at Gournai, exhibit the same peculiarity, which, according to Mr. Turner, likewise exists in portions of the outer walls of the castle at Arques, as well as in the keep of the castle at Falaise.[142] These various instances, all of them taken from structures which are beyond a doubt of Norman origin, will remove any hesitation as to the Normans having practised this mode of building. Still farther confirmation will be found in the English castles of Tamworth and Colchester, both of the same early æra:[143] the stones, in the latter, are disposed precisely as here figured: in the former, horizontal strata regularly alternate with the inclined, as if in imitation of various Roman remains.[144] And, indeed, that they were really constructed with such an intention, appears highly probable; as, according to Sir Henry Englefield, whose authority is unquestionable, the same style of masonry is seen at Silchester, which is most certainly a pure Roman relic: it is even stated, that the old walls of the city of Rome were so built.[145] Abstracted from the peculiarity just noticed, there is little in the church of Anisy to excite interest. A flat moulding, not less wide than a buttress, and surmounted by a narrow string-course of the plainest character, is continued round the whole nave, and divides it into two stories of equal height; while four Norman buttresses, on either side, separate it into three compartments. In the original state of the church, the windows were confined to the upper portion alone, and alternated with the buttresses: they rose from the string-course, narrow, circular-headed, surrounded with squared freestone, and having no other ornament than a slender cylindrical moulding above. In succeeding times, either the want of a sufficient quantity of light, or a desire for improvement, led to the introduction of larger cinquefoil-headed windows, occupying equal portions of the upper and lower stories. Throughout the whole of this part of the church, the apertures made by the scaffolding are left; and, what is remarkable, are edged with freestone. The corbels are grotesque; and the subjects of some indecent.--In the west front there is nothing remarkable: the door-way and window above are of the most common character of Norman architecture: neither in this part of the church, nor in the chancel, is the herring-bone masonry continued; nor does the horizontal moulding extend over either of them. NOTES: [141] P. 16. [142] _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 37. [143] It is hoped, that this assertion is not too bold.--The accounts of Tamworth castle, as a building, are indeed particularly unsatisfactory: neither Leland, in his _Itinerary_, nor Shaw, in his _History of Staffordshire_, throw any light upon the æra of its construction. Yet, even from the wretched plate given in the latter work, the castle, all altered as it is, appears to preserve somewhat of the character of its Norman origin; while the fact of its having belonged to the powerful family of Marmion, immediately after the conquest, adds historical probability to the opinion. With regard to Colchester, no one who has seen it will feel hesitation on the subject, although the quantity of Roman bricks visible in every part, very naturally lead to the conclusion, that it was raised upon the ruins of a far earlier edifice. [144] _Carter's Ancient Architecture_, p. 36, pl. 42, fig. E. [145] _Strutt's Manners and Customs of the Anglo-Saxons_, &c. I. p. 28. PLATE LXVIII. CHURCH OF PERRIERS. [Illustration: Plate 68. CHURCH OF PERRIERS, NEAR CAEN.] The upper half of this plate exhibits a north-west view of the church of Perriers: the lower represents it in the opposite direction. From both it will be observed, that the different parts of the building are the productions of two different æras, the nave having been erected during the prevalence of the semi-circular architecture, while the chancel exhibits a specimen of probably the very earliest period of the pointed style. In reference to the preceding plate, it is not uninteresting to remark, that the herring-bone masonry is, in this instance, altogether confined to the more early portion of the structure, the whole of which is composed of it, with the exception of the buttresses. The great western door-way to the church of Perriers is very peculiar. Mr. Cotman regards it as the only instance, in the duchy, of a real Norman building having its principal entrance square-headed. Its massive lintel, shaped, as at Bieville, into a pediment, and surmounted by an arch, which is rather the segment of an ellipsis than of a circle, is likewise remarkable. But the very large arch on the northern side of the nave, adjoining the west end, is by far the most striking architectural feature of the building. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to assign any satisfactory reason for its existence. Its situation precludes the idea of its having been placed there by way of support to the tower: its size forbids the supposition, that it ever served as an entrance. Had there been an aisle or chapel beyond, it certainly might have been the medium of their communication with the main building; but the buttress contiguous to it, proves that the wall in which it is inserted, was the outer wall of the church. As it is, it appears a perfect anomaly, and must remain as a _crux_ for the ingenuity of future antiquaries. The similar arch, now blocked up, at the western extremity of the chancel, places it almost beyond a doubt that the church had a central tower. The windows of the chancel far exceed, in point of length and narrowness, any others that have yet appeared in this work. They are wholly destitute of mouldings or decoration of any description; but, like those at Anisy, are edged with freestone, as are the apertures left by the scaffolding, which in this building are disposed with unusual regularity, as if with the intention of their being ornamental. This introduction of white smooth stone, assorts ill with the dull reddish-brown mass all around it, and produces a glaring and disagreeable effect. The indented cornice is similar to that observed by Mr. Turner upon the gate-tower, leading to the monastery of the Holy Trinity, at Caen.[146] NOTES: [146] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 183. PLATE LXIX. CASTLE OF LILLEBONNE. [Illustration: Plate 69. CASTLE OF LILLEBONNE.] Julius Cæsar, the principal source of information respecting ancient Gaul, at the same time that he mentions the Caletes, the inhabitants of the modern Pays de Caux, is altogether silent with regard to the principal city of their territory. From Ptolemy, however, and the Itinerary of Antoninus, it appears, that such city was called _Juliobona_;[147] and, notwithstanding the attempts of Cluvier and Adrien de Valois to establish Dieppe as the site of this Caletian metropolis,[148] the learned of the present day seem unanimously agreed to fix it at Lillebonne; and there are but few who are not also of opinion, that the present French name is a corruption of the ancient Roman one. Some Latin writers of the twelfth century make mention of _Insula Bona_; and the word, _Lillebonne_, spelt, as it not uncommonly is, _L'Ilebonne_, might be regarded as originating from that appellation, of which, indeed, it is a literal translation. But the point is not worth arguing: it is equally possible, that _Insula Bona_ may be no other than _Lillebonne_ latinized. Leaving all discussions of this kind, and equally passing by the attempts which have been made to derive the name of Lillebonne from Celtic roots,[149] it is at least certain, that the place was a Roman settlement; and the undoubted fact of no fewer than five Roman roads branching from it, to different parts of the country,[150] justifies the inference, that it was likewise a settlement of some importance. The subterraneous passages and foundations of ancient buildings, scattered over a wide extent of ground, attest a place of no small size. The remains of a theatre,[151] added to abundance of vases, cinerary urns, sepulchral lamps, and coins and medals, both of the upper and lower empire, which have been from time to time dug up here, prove it to have been occupied by the Romans during a considerable period. But no records remain, either of its greatness or overthrow. It fell, in all probability, in consequence of the irruptions of the northern hordes, and was swept away, like other neighboring towns, "Unknown their arts, and lost their chroniclers." In the midst of the general destruction, it is possible that some remains of the city may have been left, that attracted the notice of the new lords of the country: or, possibly, their choice was fixed by the lovely situation of Lillebonne, in a valley upon the eastern bank of the Seine, not far from the mouth of that majestic stream. While Normandy was ruled by its own princes, Lillebonne was the seat of a ducal palace; and tradition, whose accuracy in this instance there is no reason to impugn, teaches that the actual remains of such palace are to be seen in the building here figured. It even goes farther, and maintains that this hall is the very spot in which William assembled his barons, for the purpose of hearing their counsel, and marshalling their forces, preparatory to his descent upon England.[152] His actual residence at Lillebonne at various times is clear, from a number of charters which bear date from this place. In one of these, granted in the year 1074, for the sake of establishing[153] harmony between the Abbot of St. Wandrille and the Count of Evreux, the sovereign styles himself _gloriosus rex Anglorum_ and he dates it a _Castro Julio-Bona_. At another time, in consequence of a dispute respecting the succession to the abbacy of St. Evroul, Ordericus Vitalis relates, that one of the rival competitors repaired to the Duke, "who was then holding his court at Lillebonne" and who, incensed at the interference of the Pope on the occasion, exhibited a strong trait of his natural character, by swearing, that if any monk belonging to his territory, should dare to calumniate him abroad, he would hang him by his cowl upon the highest tree in the neighboring wood.[154] This happened in the year 1063: in 1080, there was held here, by order of the same prince, a provincial synod, which passes in the annals of the Norman churches, under the name of the _Concilium Julio-Bonense_. Its canons are preserved, and are reported at length by Bessin, "with the intention," as he remarks, "of enabling posterity to judge of the character of the laws in Normandy, during the reign of Duke William."[155] Lillebonne is at present a poor small country town, whose inhabitants carry on an inconsiderable trade in tanning, and in the manufacturing of cotton. The ruins of the castle, however, are far from unimportant. Not only is the whole plan of the structure still distinctly to be traced; but there remain, in addition to the great hall, here figured, extensive portions of other buildings, some of which are altered into a modern farm-house. A noble circular tower, surrounded by a deep moat, and approached by a draw-bridge, appears at first view to be the great character of the ruin; but it is obviously an addition of a subsequent period, and, indeed, of a time considerably posterior to the hall. The pointed arches of its windows, and the elegant bosses of its ceiling, denote an æra when the arts had arrived at a high state of perfection.--Of the date, or cause of the decay of the castle, nothing is recorded. The hall has the appearance of having been erected by Italian architects. Its features are distinctly Roman; and it may be regarded as holding, in this respect, the same place among the castellated buildings of Normandy, as the church of St. Stephen, at Caen, occupies among the ecclesiastical. The broken cornice at the top of the walls, is a decided imitation of that upon the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, the arch of Constantine, and the colosseum at Rome; and the windows may be likened to those of Mæcenas' villa at Tivoli, in which there is the same arrangement of arch within arch. But the Norman architect has introduced a peculiarity, scarcely to be paralleled, in the transom, which, placed upon a line with the capitals, divides each window into two unequal parts, and at once supports, and is supported by, the central pillar, that subdivides the lower moiety. The Church at Lillebonne is also an object deserving of observation, especially in the principal entrance: the great arch is flanked by two square massy projections, in the form of buttresses, each of them faced by a row of small cylindrical pillars in high relief, broken towards the centre, to give place for canopied saints, and ending at the top in ornaments, apparently intended to convey the idea of a series of antique candelabra. NOTES: [147] Ordericus Vitalis, on the other hand, says, but he is borne out by no classical authority, that Lillebonne occupies the site of an old Belgic town, called _Caletus_ which was destroyed by Julius Cæsar; who built on its foundation a new one, and named it _Julio-bona_, after himself. The passage, which is curious, is as follows:--"Antiqua urbs fuit, quæ Caletus ab incolis dicta est. Hanc (ut in antiquis Romanorum legitur gestis) Caius Julius Cæsar obsedit, et pro nimia bellatorum obstinatione intus acerrimè repugnantium subvertit. Deinde postquam hostes ibidem ad libitum compressit, considerata opportunitate loci, præsidium Romanorum providè constituit, et a nomine suo Juliam-bonam (quam barbari nunc corrupto nomine Ille-bonam nuncupant) appellavit."--_Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 554. [148] These authors were led to this opinion by the difficulty of reconciling the distances, as stated by Antoninus, between Julio-bona and the adjacent towns, with the actual distance of the same places from the modern Lillebonne. [149] See _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 6, where it is suggested, that the word, _L'Ilebonne_, may be derived from the two Celtic words, _Ile_, signifying a current of water, and _Bonne_, which denotes the termination of any thing. The towns of Bonne, upon the Rhine, and of Libourne, are supposed to have taken their names from these words. [150] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, II. p. 126. [151] Figured in the _Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques dans l'Ancienne France, par Nodier, Taylor, et De Cailleux_.--In the section of this publication, comprising Normandy, the authors have devoted nine plates to the illustration of Lillebonne. [152] In the _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 31, it is said on this subject, in speaking of Maurilius, archbishop of Rouen, that "adfuit Juliobonensibus Comitiis pro expeditione Anglicana, in 1066." [153] See _Neustria Pia_, p. 168. [154] _Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni_, p. 488. [155] _Concilia Normannica_, I. p. 67. PLATE LXX. CASTLE OF BRIQUEBEC.[156] [Illustration: Plate 70. CASTLE OF BRIQUEBEC, NEAR VALOGNES.] Briquebec is an extensive parish, situated about seven miles to the south of Valognes, with a population of four thousand five hundred inhabitants, a weekly market on Mondays, and several considerable fairs. Its castle claims an antiquity, nearly, if not altogether, coeval with the days of Rollo. When that Duke, on gaining peaceable possession of Normandy, parcelled out the land among his companions in arms, the portion that included Briquebec was one of the most considerable. The lord of Briquebec held in the Norman exchequer the third place among the barons of the Cotentin, the present department of La Manche.[157] His services and his rank, to which may probably also be added, his relationship to Rollo, entitled him to this proud distinction. After the assassination of William Longue Epée, second Duke of Normandy, in 942, Amlech, or, as he is sometimes called, Lancelot, of Briquebec, was appointed one of the council of regency, during the minority of the young prince, Richard, the son to the deceased, and heir to the throne. In this capacity he was also one of those deputed to receive Louis d'Outremer, King of France, at Rouen.--Amlech had a son, named Turstin of Bastenburg, and he left two sons, one of whom, William, was lord of Briquebec.--The other, Hugh, commonly called _the bearded_, was the head of the family of Montfort, which produced the famous Count, Pierre, slain at the battle of Evesham, while commanding the barons in revolt against Henry III.--The line of the lords of Briquebec was continued in the posterity of William, whose son, of the same name, attended the Conqueror into England. Seven of his descendants successively bore the name of Robert Bertrand, and successively possessed the barony of Briquebec. The last died in the middle of the fourteenth century, leaving his extensive domains, including this castle, to his eldest daughter, Jane, with whom it passed in marriage to William Paisnel, baron of Hambye.[158] The name of Paisnel will be found, as well as that of Bertrand, in the roll of chieftains engaged in the conquest of England. Duke William recompensed the services of Ralph Paisnel, his companion in arms, with various domains in different counties of his newly-acquired kingdom, and particularly in Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Somersetshire. His descendants, who were numerous in Great Britain, possessed, among other distinguished lordships, those of Huntley and of Dudley.--In the Cotentin, their family was equally extensive and powerful. William, son of Jane Bertrand and of William Paisnel, succeeded his parents as lord of Briquebec and of Hambye.--He, in his turn, was followed by another William, who, by a marriage with his cousin, daughter of Oliver Paisnel, lord of Moyon, united that great barony to a property, which was previously immense. Upon the death of William, without children, Fulk Paisnel, his brother, became his heir; and, as he likewise died childless, the fortune devolved upon a younger brother, Nicholas. This Nicholas, who was previously lord of Chanteleu, married Jane de la Champagne, baroness of Gaie, and left an only daughter, by whose marriage with Louis d'Estouteville, in 1413, the baronies of Gaie, Moyon, Hambye, and Briquebec, passed at once from the family of Paisnel. Briquebec, at the same time that it thus again changed masters, was still possessed by a descendant of one of those powerful barons, who had shared in the glory of the conquest of England.--Robert de Huteville, one of the Conqueror's companions in arms, had received from that sovereign a princely recompense, particularly in the county of York. But after the death of William Rufus, he espoused the party of the eldest brother, against Henry I. and was taken prisoner at the battle of Tinchbray, when his property was confiscated, and given to Néel d'Aubigny.--The name of his son, Robert, is to be found among the Yorkshire barons, who defeated the Scotch army at North Allerton; and it again occurs in the twentieth year of the reign of Henry II. at the battle of Alnwick, where he made the King of Scotland prisoner. To return to the possessor of Briquebec, who was destined to afford a striking example of the mutability of fortune--scarcely had he become by his marriage the most powerful lord in the Cotentin, or possibly in Normandy, when Henry V. of England, invaded the duchy, gained the battle of Agincourt, and shortly afterwards made himself master of the whole province, except Mount St. Michael. In this trying emergency, Louis d'Estouteville remained faithful to his sovereign, and was, consequently, deprived of his possessions. Henry immediately bestowed Hambye and Briquebec upon one of his favorite generals, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk,[159] who, in 1427, still continued lord of Briquebec, in which capacity he confirmed to the abbey of Cherbourg, a rent of fifty sols, that had been given by his predecessor, Robert Bertrand, in 1329. The act of confirmation yet exists: it is dated in the year just mentioned; two years after which, the Earl of Suffolk, who had always previously been victorious, experienced a reverse of fortune, and was made prisoner at Gageau, together with his brothers, Alexander and John de la Pole. The consequence was, that he was compelled to sell his lands in the Cotentin to pay his ransom. They were purchased by Sir Bertyn Entwyssle, a knight of the county of Lancaster, who, in the archives of the castle of Briquebec, dated about the year 1440, is styled Admiral of England; as his brother, Henry Entwyssle, in the same documents, bears the title of the King of England's Lieutenant-General in Normandy. In the hands of this nobleman, Briquebec continued, till the battle of Formigny compelled the British to evacuate Normandy. Sir Bertyn afterwards took part with Henry VI. against the Duke of York, and was slain at the battle of St. Albans, in 1455. Upon the restoration of the province to the crown of France, the family of D'Estouteville were replaced in the lordship of Briquebec. They had deserved eminently well of the French King, for whom Louis D'Estouteville had continued to hold possession of Mount St. Michael, the only fortress that offered an availing resistance to the English. In succeeding times, Briquebec and Hambye passed, by different marriages, into the families of Bourbon St. Pol, and of Orleans Longueville; but at the close of the sixteenth century, Mary of Orleans, Duchess of Nemours, sold this property to Jaques Gougon de Matignon, Marshal of France.--The descendants of the marshal continued lords of Briquebec till the revolution. It had shortly before that event fallen into the hands of a female, the only survivor of that family, and she had married the eldest son of the Duke de Montmorency. But the revolution swept away the whole of their fortune. A few detached fragments of the property, which had not been alienated, have recently been restored to them: the rest has long since been sold, including the castle, the only habitable part of which now serves for an ale-house. All the remainder is hastening fast to decay. The walls of the castle inclose a considerable space of ground; and, at the time when they were perfect, they comprised eight towers, of different sizes and forms, including the multangular keep, the principal feature of the plate. This tower, which is a hundred French feet in height, is still nearly perfect. The sides towards the west and south-west, from which Mr. Cotman has made his drawing, are entirely so.--In an architectural point of view, Briquebec offers specimens of the workmanship of many different epochs.--The case is widely different between fortresses and churches: the latter, whatever the date of their construction, commonly exhibit a certain degree of unity in their plan: in castles, on the other hand, the means provided for defence have usually had reference to those employed in attack. Both the one and the other are found to vary _ad infinitum_, according to time and localities. Briquebec shews some traces of the architecture of the eleventh century, but many more of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth. The chapel, the magazines, the stables, and the present dwelling-house, were the parts last built. Of these, the two first have been for some years destroyed: the others are in a state of extreme neglect; and, neither in the dwelling-house, nor in the apartments over the great gate, does there now remain any thing curious. NOTES: [156] For the whole of this article, the author has to express his acknowledgments to his friend, M. de Gerville, from whose manuscript it is almost verbatim translated. [157] _Masseville, Histoire de Normandie_, III. p. 46. [158] While one branch of the Bertrand family continued in possession of the barony of Briquebec, another branch established itself in Northumberland, where it received from the Conqueror many manors. Under the reign of Henry I. William Bertrand, or, as he is called by Tanner, Bertram, founded the priory of Brinkburn. Roger, one of his descendants, was conspicuous among the barons who revolted against King John; at the death of which prince, he espoused the party of Henry III.; but his son, Roger, took arms against this latter monarch, and was made prisoner at Northampton. A third Roger succeeded him, and was the last baron of Brinkburn.--Richard Bertram, who lived under Henry II. had a son called Robert, baron of Bothal, whose son Richard joined the confederate barons against King John. A descendant of his, of the name of Robert, lived under Edward III. and enjoyed the title of Lord Bothal, and was sheriff of Northumberland, and governor of Newcastle. He was present at the battle of Durham, where he made William Douglas prisoner. His only daughter, the heiress to his property, married Sir Robert Ogle; and thus the family of Bertram became extinct both in France and England nearly at the same time. [159] The instrument, which is curious, is still in existence, and is as follows:--"Henricus dei gracia rex Francie et Anglie et dnus hybernie oibus ad quos psentes littere puenerint salutem. Sciatis qd de gracia nostra speciali et ob grata et laudabilia obsequia nobis per carissimum consanguineum nostrum Guillelmum, Comitem de Suffolk, huc usque mirabiliter impensa dedimus et concessimus eidem comiti castra et dominia de Hambye et de Briquebec cum ptinenciis suis una cum oibus feodis, aliis hereditatibus et possessionibus quibuscumque quas tenuit fouques Paisnel chevalier defunctus intra ducatum meum Normannie habendis et tenendis prefato comiti et heredibus suis masculis de corpore suo nascentibus ad valorem 3500 scutorum per annum, cum omnibus dignitatibus, libertatibus, franchesiis, juribus, donationibus, reversionibus, forisfacturis, etallis, proficiis, commoditatibus et emolumentis quibuscumq. ad pdicta castra et dominia vel altera eorum seu ad feoda hereditates et possessiones predictas aliqualiter ptinentibus seu spectantibus intra ducatum nostrum Normannie adeo plene perfecte et integre et eodem modo sicut pdictus fouques vel aliquis alius tenebat et possidebat per homagium nobis et heredibus nostris faciendum et reddendo unum scutum de Armis Sci Georgii ad festum suum apud castrum nostrum de Cherbourg, singulis annis in perpetuum reservata tamen nobis et heredib. nostris alta et summa justicia et omni alio jure quod ad nos poterit pertinere proviso semper qd idem comes et heredes sui predicti sex homines ad arma et 12 sagittarios ad equitandum nobiscum seu heredibus nostris vel locum tenente nostro durante presenti guerra qui ad sumptus suos servire tenebuntur funtaque presenti guerra hujus modi et servicia in parte debita faciet et supportabit, et ulterius de uberiori gracia dedimus et concessimus...... in cujus rei testimonium has litteras nostras fieri fecimus patentes.--Teste meipso apd civitatem nram de Bayeux, XIII. die Martii, anno regni nri quinto. L. S. Per ipsum regem STORGEON." PLATE LXXI. CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN, AT FÉCAMP. [Illustration: Plate 71. CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN, AT FÉCAMP. _Southern entrance._] Fécamp, like many other towns in Normandy, has fallen from its original greatness to a state of extreme poverty. The sun of its prosperity has set, to rise no more. Neglect immediately followed upon the removal of the ducal throne to England: the annexation of Normandy to the crown of France, completed the ruin of the town; and the great change in the habits of mankind, from warlike to commercial, leaves no hopes for the restoration of the importance of a place, whose situation holds out no advantages for trade. Hence, Fécamp at present appears desolate and decayed; and, though the official account of the population of France still allows the number of its inhabitants to amount to seven thousand, the great quantity of deserted houses, calculated to amount to more than a third of all those in the town, impress the beholder with a strong feeling of depopulation and ruin.[160] But, in the earliest periods of French history, long before the foundation of the Norman throne, Fécamp was honored as a regal residence. The palace is said to have been rebuilt by William Longue-Epée, with extraordinary magnificence. That prince took great pleasure in the chace; and he and his immediate successors frequently lived here. He also selected the castle as a place of retirement for his duchess, during her pregnancy with Richard. His choice, in this respect, was probably not altogether guided by his partiality for the place; but, threatened at that time with a dangerous war, he was desirous of fixing his wife and infant heir in a situation, whence they might, in case of necessity, be with ease removed to the friendly shores of England.--Richard, born at Fécamp, preserved through life an attachment to the town, and omitted no opportunity of benefiting it. He rebuilt, endowed, and enriched the abbatial church at vast expense; and he finally ordered it to be the resting-place for his bones, which, however, he would not permit to be interred in any spot whatever within the structure, but, with his dying breath, expressly enjoined his son to deposit them on the outside, immediately beneath the eaves, in order that, to use the words put by the monastic historians into his mouth upon the occasion, "stillantium guttarum sacro tecto diffluens infusio abluat jacentis ossa, quæ omnium peccatorum tabe foedavit et maculavit negligens et neglecta vita mea."--A curious question might be raised, whether the monarch, in this injunction, was solely impressed with the feeling of his own unworthiness, or whether he had also in view, the mystic doctrine of the efficacy of water towards the ablution of sins. Richard II. and the succeeding dukes, appear to have regarded Fécamp with an equally friendly eye; till, in process of time, the increasing splendor of its monastery altogether eclipsed the waning honors of the town; and Henry II. of England, finally sealed its downfall, by making a regular donation of the town to the abbey, from which period till the revolution, the latter was every thing, the former nothing. "Fécamp," as it is remarked by Nodier, "was to the Dukes of Normandy, what the pyramids were to the Egyptian monarchs,--a city of tombs: Richard II. rested there by the side of Richard I. and, near him, his brother Robert, his wife Judith, and his son William."[161]--The list might be lengthened by the addition of many other scarcely less noble names. "The abbey of Fécamp is said to have been founded in the year 664 or 666, for a community of nuns, by Waning, the count or governor of the Pays de Caux, a nobleman who had already contributed to the endowment of the monastery of St. Wandrille. St. Ouen, Bishop of Rouen, dedicated the church in the presence of King Clotaire; and so rapidly did the fame of the sanctity of the abbey extend, that the number of its inmates amounted, in a very short period, to more than three hundred. The arrival, however, of the Normans, under Hastings, in 841, caused the dispersion of the nuns; and the same story is related of the few who remained at Fécamp, as of many others under similar circumstances, that they voluntarily cut off their noses and their lips, rather than be an object of attraction to their conquerors. The abbey, in return for their heroism, was levelled with the ground; and it did not rise from its ashes till the year 988, when the piety of Duke Richard I. built the church anew, under the auspices of his son, Robert, archbishop of Rouen. Departing, however, from the original foundation, he established therein a chapter of regular canons, who soon proved so irregular in their conduct, that within ten years they were doomed to give way to a body of Benedictine monks, headed by an abbot, named William, from a convent at Dijon. From his time the monastery continued to increase in splendor. Three suffragan abbeys, that of Notre Dame at Bernay, of St. Taurin at Evreux, and of Ste. Berthe de Blangi, in the diocese of Boullogne, owned the superior power of the abbot of Fécamp, and supplied the three mitres, which he proudly bore on his abbatial shield. Kings and princes, in former ages, frequently paid the abbey the homage of their worship and their gifts; and, in a more recent period, Casimir of Poland, after his voluntary abdication of the throne, selected it as the spot in which he sought for repose, when wearied with the cares of royalty. The English possessions of Fécamp do not appear to have been large; but, according to the author of the _History of Alien Priories_, the abbot presented to one hundred and thirty benefices, some in the diocese of Rouen, others in those of Bayeux, Lisieux, Coutances, Chartres, and Beauvais; and it enjoyed so many estates, that its income was said to be forty thousand crowns per annum."[162] The work, from which this account of the abbey of Fécamp has been extracted, also contains some details relative to a few of the principal miracles connected with the convent, and relative to the _precious blood_, to the possession of which Fécamp was indebted for no small portion of its celebrity. But the reader must be referred for all these to the _Neustria Pia_, where he will find them recorded at great length. The author of that most curious volume, appears to have treated no subject more entirely _con amore_ than Fécamp; and if the more enlightened progeny of the present day incline, in the plentitude of their wisdom, to "think their fathers fools" for listening to such tales, let it at least be recollected, that even these tales, with all their absurdity, are most interesting documents of the progress of the human mind; and, above all, let it never be forgotten, that books of this description contain a mass of materials for the elucidation of the manners and customs of the age, which would in vain be sought for in any other quarter. The abbatial church of Fécamp is still standing uninjured, and is a work of various ages. Some circular chapels attached to the sides of the choir, are probably remains of the building erected by Duke Richard: the rest is all of the pointed style of architecture; and the earliest part is scarcely anterior to the end of the twelfth century.--The church of St. Stephen, selected here for publication, is undeserving of notice, except for its southern portal, which is an elegant specimen of what is called by Mr. Rickman, the decorated English architecture. NOTES: [160] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 60. [161] _Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques dans l'Ancienne France_, I. p. 110.--Seven plates in this work are devoted to the illustration of the religious buildings at Fécamp. [162] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 62. PLATE LXXII. SCREEN IN THE CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE, AT EU. [Illustration: Plate 72. SCREEN IN THE CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE, AT EU.] The town of Eu has, by some writers, been supposed to have been the capital of the Gallic tribe mentioned in Cæsar's Commentaries, under the name of the Essui; but a conjecture of this description, founded altogether upon the similarity of the name, and unsupported by any collateral testimony, must be allowed to be at best only problematical; and ancient geography presents so wide a field for the display of ingenuity and learning, that it is in no department of science more necessary to be upon the guard against plausible theories.--There are others who contend for the Teutonic origin of the town, and refer to etymology with equal zeal, and with greater plausibility. The word _Eu_, otherwise spelt _Ou_ or _Au_ signifies a meadow, in Saxon; and the same name was likewise originally applied to the river Bresle,[163] which washes the walls of Eu, within a distance of two miles from its confluence with the ocean at Tréport.[164] The first mention that occurs of Eu in history, is in the pages of Flodoard, according to whom, the town was in existence in the year 925; but, whether the Roman or the Saxon derivation of its name be preferred, in either case etymology would fairly allow the inference, that its foundation was considerably more ancient. During the reign of Louis XI. Eu obtained a melancholy celebrity: a report was circulated in the summer of 1475, that it was the intention of the English to make a descent upon the coast of France, and to establish themselves there for the winter. At the same time, this town was confidently mentioned as the place where they proposed to fix their quarters. To deprive them of such an advantage, the French monarch had recourse to a measure which could only be justified by the most urgent necessity: he ordered the Maréchal de Gamaches to enter the place with four hundred soldiers, on the eighteenth of July, and to set fire to the houses of the citizens, together with the castle. His commands were executed; and the whole was reduced to a heap of ashes, with the exception of the churches. The neighboring towns of Dieppe, St. Valeri, and Abbeville, profited from the misfortunes of Eu, which has never recovered its prosperity, notwithstanding the various privileges subsequently granted to it.--The present population consists of about three thousand four hundred inhabitants, whose only trade is a trifling manufactory of lace. From as early a period as the year 1102, the title of Count was bestowed by Richard I. Duke of Normandy, upon the lords of Eu, who, in 1458, received the additional dignity of _Comtes et Pairs_; probably as some recompense for the misery inflicted upon the place three years before. In the number of these counts, was the celebrated Duc de Guise, commonly known by the name of _Le Balafré_. His monument of black and white marble, in the church of the Jesuits at Eu, was executed by Genoese artists; as was that of his wife, the Duchess of Cleves. Both of them have long been subjects of admiration.[165] The last of the line of counts of Eu, was the Duc de Penthièvre, a nobleman of the most estimable character: the title was his at the breaking out of the revolution; and it is not a little to his honor, that a writer of the most decidedly republican principles could be found, in the midst of that stormy period, to bear the following testimony in his favor:--"Né au milieu d'une cour, oú la corruption et les vices avoient pris le nom de la sagesse et des vertus, il dédaigna leurs délices funestes; il repoussa l'air empesté de Versailles; supérieur à leurs prestiges, il oublia sa naissance; il prouva enfin, par de longues années consacrées à faire le bien, qu'il étoit digne d'être né simple citoyen.[166]"--The castle, the residence of the counts, is now converted into a military hospital. The abbey of Eu is said to have been founded in 1002,[167] by William, first count of the place, natural son of Richard _Sans-peur_, Duke of Normandy. It was at its origin dedicated to the Virgin; but, after a lapse of somewhat more than two hundred years, was placed under the invocation of St. Lawrence, archbishop of Dublin. That prelate had, in the year 1181, crossed into Normandy, with the view of restoring a friendly understanding between the King of Ireland, his brother, and the King of England; and, at the moment of his approaching Eu, and beholding the lofty towers of the abbey, he is said to have exclaimed in strains of pious fervor, "Hæc requies mea in seculum seculi: hic habitabo, quoniam elegi eam." Having accomplished the object of his mission, he died shortly after at the convent, and was there interred; and the fame of his sanctity attracting crowds of devotees to his tomb, he was canonized by a papal bull, dated the 11th of December, 1218, since which time the monastery has borne his name. The church of St. Lawrence, though no longer abbatial, has been suffered to exist; even before the revolution, it served at once as the church to the convent and to the first parish of Eu. The screen here figured, a beautiful specimen of the decorated English architecture, is placed at the entrance of one of the chapels. Another chapel contains a _Holy Sepulchre_, said to be superior, in point of the execution of the figures, to any other in France. In the south transept is a spirally-banded column of extraordinary elegance. The church stands upon the foundations of an earlier building, erected at the close of the twelfth century, and destroyed by lightning in 1426. According to the records of the monastery, it was either wholly, or in great measure, rebuilt by John de Vallier, the twenty-fourth abbot, in 1464.[168]--The following description of the building is borrowed from the journal of a very able friend of the writer of this article, who visited Eu in September, 1819:--"The abbey church of Eu is plain and massy on the outside of the nave and transepts. The east end of the choir is highly enriched with flying buttresses, &c. The windows of the nave are lancet-headed, and very tall: on the outside is a circular arch, which may be a restoration. The west window has been in three lancet divisions, which have been filled up with more modern tracery. The nave is singularly elegant: the triforium, or rather the upper tier of arches, is new in design, and most extraordinary. In the choir, the triforium is composed of tracery. The north transept is something like Winchester, only the arches are pointed: there are two arches. This arrangement is probably general; as I saw it at Troyes and other places. In a side-chapel is an entombment: the figures as large as life, or nearly so, and richly painted; quite perfect. Inscriptions on the hems of the garments. The _culs de lampe_ are of the most elegant reticulated work. In the north transept is a circular window filled with late tracery. No towers at the west end. East end, a polygon, as usual.--This church, which is well worthy of an attentive study, is quite distinct in character from the churches in the east of France: it has no marigold window; no row of niches over the portal; no massed door-way; so that the general outline of the front agrees wholly with the earliest pointed style. But the exterior is more chaste than any thing we have in England; and its architectural unity is better preserved. On the other hand, its parts are less elaborate." NOTES: [163] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 45. [164] "Le païs d'Auge a tiré son nom de ses prairies. Au, Avv, Avve, et Ou, en Allemand, signifient un Pré.... Aventin est mon témoin dans son explication des noms Allemans. La ville d'Eu, située dans des prairies, a tiré son nom de la même origine. Elle est nommée dans les vieux Ecrivains, _Auga_, _Augam_, et _Aucum_; et dans les auteurs Anglois _Ou_, d'où est formé le nom d'Eu. De cette même origine vient le nom d'_Au_, qu'on a depuis écrit et prononcé _O_, et que portent plusieurs Seigneuries de Normandie et d'ailleurs, et qui est le même que celui d'_Ou_. _Ou_ est une Comté qui a appartenue à ce Robert, que Robert du Mont qualifie Comte d'_Ou_. Ces mots d'_Eu_, d'_Au_, et d'_Ou_, se trouvent encore dans la composition de plusieurs noms de terres et de Seigneuries. _Eu_, dans le nom d'_Eucourt_, d'_Eumesnil_, et d'_Eulande_, terre dans le païs d'Auge, entre le Mare-Aupoix et Angerville, et ce nom est le même, sans aucune différence, que celui d'_Oelande_, isle de la mer Baltique, du domaine de la couronne de Suede. Les Suedois et les Danois prononcent _Oelande_ ce que nous prononçons _Eulande_. _Au_ dans _Aubeuf_, _Aubose_, _Aumesnil_, _Aumont_, _Auvillers_. _Ou_ dans _Ouville_. Pour _Auge_ on a dit _Alge_ en quelques lieux; et c'est de là que vient le nom d'une terre au païs de Bray, qui ne consiste presque qu'en prairies. Le même nom d'_Auge_, que portent quelques familles, montre assez qu'il a été appellatif. Mais la chartre de confirmation de la fondation de l'Abbaye de St. Etienne, donnée par Henry II. Roy d'Angleterre, le montre incontestablement par ces paroles, "_cum sylvâ et algiâ et cum terris_"."--_Huet, Origines de Caen_, p. 294. [165] The church of St. Lawrence likewise contained the monuments of several distinguished personages, as appears by the following extract from the _Description de la Haute Normandie_, I. p. 72.--"Là sont inhumez Jean d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, fils de Robert d'Artois, Comte de Beaumont le Roger, et de Jean de Valois, mort le 6 Avril, 1386: Isabelle de Melun, son epouse: Isabelle d'Artois, leur fille, dans la chapelle de Saint Denys, sous une belle table de marbre noir, qui sert de table d'autel: Charles d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, sous l'autel de la chapelle de Saint Laurent: Jeanne de Saveuse, sa premiere femme: Helène de Melun, sa seconde femme, dans la chapelle de Saint Antoine, dite aujourd'hui de Saint Crepin: le Coeur de Catherine de Cleves, Comtesse d'Eu, au bas du Sanctuaire, sous une magnifique colonne de marbre noir: N.... de Bourbon, dit le Duc d'Aumale, fils de Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, legitimé de France, Duc de Maine, mort le 8 Septembre, 1708: enfin Philippe d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, et Connétable de France, mort selon son epitaphe à _Micalice_ en Turquie, c'est-à-dire Nicopoli, le 16 Juin, 1397. Le Mausolée de celui-ci, qui est de marbre, est enfermé dans une espece de Cage de fer, dont les barreaux n'empêchent point qu'on ne puisse en approcher et y porter la main. Le Prince y est representé armé, mais sans casque et sans gantelets, pour marquer, dit-on, qu'il est mort à la guerre, mais non dans le combat: il a deux petits chiens à ses pieds, pour signifier, ajoute-t-on, qu'il est mort dans son lit: enfin la grille qui l'environne represente, dit-on encore, qu'il est mort en prison. Le monument, selon l'Ecrivain de qui j'emprunte ces conjectures, n'a coûté que 100 livres." [166] _Noel, Essais sur le Département de la Seine Inférieure_, I. p. 84. [167] _Neustria Pia_, p. 694. [168] _Neustria Pia_, p. 700. PLATE LXXIII.-LXXV. CHURCH OF ST. PETER, AT LISIEUX. [Illustration: Plates 73-74. CHURCH OF ST. PETER AT LISIEUX.] The effects produced by the French revolution upon the religious state of the country, were scarcely less important than upon the political. In both cases, the nation hurried, with the blindest fury, from extreme to extreme; in both, they followed phantoms of ideal perfection through an unexampled series of excesses and sufferings; in both, they rested at length from exhaustion much more than from conviction; and, happily for mankind and for themselves, they finally attained in both nearly the same end, reverting indeed to their original constitutions, but tempering them with a most seasonable mixture of civil and ecclesiastical liberty. The _concordat_ effected for the church, what the charter did for the state. The former of these was one of the master-pieces of Napoleon's policy, and was likewise one of the earliest acts of his power. It was established in the year 1801, while France yet retained the name of a republic, and the ambition of its ruler had not ventured to grasp, at more than the consular dignity. By this instrument, the whole ecclesiastical constitution was changed; and not only was all the power placed in the hands of the chief of the state, but the provinces and dioceses were entirely remodelled; and, instead of twenty-three archbishoprics and one hundred and thirty-four bishoprics, the number of the former, notwithstanding the vast extension of the French territory, was reduced to ten, and that of the latter to fifty. The archbishop of Rouen was one of those who suffered least upon the occasion. His dignity was curtailed only by the suppression of two of his suffragans, the bishops of Avranches and of Lisieux.[169] The church, here figured, then resigned the mitre, which it had conferred from the middle of the sixth century, upon an illustrious, though not an uninterrupted, line of prelates. It is admitted, in the annals of the cathedral, that either the see must have been vacant for the space of four hundred years, or at least that the names of those who filled it during that period, are lost. Ordericus Vitalis, who resided fifty-six years in the diocese, and has collected, in the sixth book of his _Ecclesiastical History_, whatever was to be found in his time, relative to its early state, acknowledges the chasm, and accounts for it by the following general remarks.--"Piratæ de Daniâ egressi sunt, in Neustriam venerunt, et christianæ fidei divinique cultûs penitùs ignari, super fidelem populum immanitèr debacchati sunt. Antiquorum scripta cum basilicis et ædibus incendio deperierunt, quæ fervida juniorum studia, quamvis insatiabilitèr sitiant, recuperare nequiverunt. Nonnulla verò, quæ per diligentiam priscorum manibus barbarorum solertèr erepta sunt, damnabili subsequentium negligentiâ interierunt." The city of Lisieux represents the capital of the Gallic tribe, mentioned by Cæsar, and other almost contemporary writers, under the name of _Lexovii_; and it is supposed by modern geographers, that the territory occupied by these latter, was nearly co-extensive with the late bishopric of Lisieux. On this subject it has been observed, that "it is to be remarked, that the bounds of the ancient bishoprics of France were usually conterminal with the Roman provinces and prefectures."[170] _Neomagus_ or _Noviomagus Lexoviorum_, the capital of the Lexovii, had always been supposed to have occupied the site of the present town, till some excavations made in the year 1770, for the purpose of forming a _chaussée_ between Lisieux and Caen, proved the ancient and the modern city to have been placed at the distance of about three quarters of a mile from each other. Extensive ruins of buildings, situated in a field, called _Les Tourettes_, were then brought to light; and among them were dug up various specimens of ancient art. The researches of more modern times, principally conducted by M. Louis Dubois, a very able antiquary of Lisieux, have materially added to the number as well as the value of these discoveries; and the quantity of Roman coins and medals that have rewarded his researches, would have left little doubt as to the real site of Neomagus, even if the circumstance had not within a very few years been established almost beyond a question, by the detection of a Roman amphitheatre in a state of great perfection. Tradition, which there is in this instance no reason to impugn, relates that the Gallo-Roman capital disappeared during the incursions of the Saxons, about the middle of the fourth century. In farther confirmation of such opinion, it is to be observed, that none of the medals dug up within the ruins, or in their vicinity, bear a later date than the reign of Constantine; and that, though the city is recorded in the _Itinerary of Antoninus_, no mention of it is to be found in the curious chart, known by the name of the _Tabula Peutingeriana_, formed under the reign of Theodosius the Great; so that it then appears to have been completely swept away and forgotten. Modern Lisieux is supposed to have risen at no distant period of time after the destruction of Neomagus. In the writings of the monkish historians, it is indifferently called _Lexovium_, _Lexobium_, _Luxovium__, Lixovium_, and _Lizovium_, names obviously borrowed from the classical appellation of the tribe, as the French word _Lisieux_ is clearly derived from them. In the early portion of Norman history, Lisieux is mentioned as having felt the vengeance of these invaders, during one of their predatory excursions from the Bessin, about the year 877. It was shortly afterwards sacked by Rollo himself, when that conqueror, elated with the capture of Bayeux, was on his march to take possession of the capital of Neustria. But the territory of Lisieux was still the last part of the duchy which owned Rollo as its lord: it was not ceded to him by Charles the Simple, till 923, at which time he had for eleven years been the undisputed sovereign of the rest of Normandy. Neither under the Norman dukes, nor at a subsequent period, does Lisieux appear to have taken any prominent part in political transactions. Its central situation, by securing it against the attacks of the French in former times, and more recently of the English, also prevented it from obtaining that historical celebrity, which, from its size and opulence, it could scarcely have failed to have otherwise gained. The principal events connected with it, upon record, are the following:--It was the focus of the civil war in 1101, when Ralph Flambart, bishop of Durham, escaping from the prison to which he had been committed by his sovereign, fled hither, and raised the standard of rebellion against Henry, in favor of his brother.--In 1136, Lisieux was attacked by the forces of Anjou, under the command of Geoffrey Plantagenet, husband of the Empress Maude, joined by those of William, Duke of Poitiers; and the garrison, composed of Bretons, seeing no hope of resistance or of rescue, burned the town.--Thirty-three years subsequently, the city was honored by being selected by Thomas-à-Becket, as the place of his retirement during his temporary disgrace. Arnulf, then bishop of Lisieux, had labored diligently, though ineffectually, to restore amity between the sovereign and the prelate, espousing, indeed, decidedly the cause of the latter, but at the same time never forfeiting the friendship of the former, for whom, after the murder of Becket, he wrote a letter of excuse to the supreme pontiff, in the joint names of all the bishops of England.--Lisieux, in 1213, passed from under the dominion of the Norman dukes, to the sway of the French monarch. It opened its gates to Philip-Augustus, immediately after the fall of Caen and Bayeux; and its surrender was accompanied with that of Coutances and Séez, all of them without a blow, as the king's poetical chronicler, Brito, relates in the following lines:-- "Cumque diocesibus tribus illi tres sine bello Sese sponte suâ præclari nominis urbes Subjiciunt, Sagium, Constantia, Lexoviumque." In subsequent times, Lisieux suffered severely, when taken by the English army under Henry V. in 1417. Its recapture by Charles VII. thirty-two years afterwards, was unstained by bloodshed. A great part of the preceding account of Lisieux has been borrowed from Mr. Turner's Tour in Normandy: what follows, relative to the church here figured, will be entirely so:--"The cathedral, now the parish church of St. Peter, derived one advantage from the revolution. Another church, dedicated to St. Germain, which had previously stood immediately before it, so as almost to block up the approach, was taken down, and the west front of the cathedral was made to open upon a spacious square.--Solid, simple grandeur are the characters of this front, which, notwithstanding some slight anomalies, is, upon the whole, a noble specimen of early pointed architecture.--It consists of three equal compartments, the lateral ones rising into short square towers of similar height. The southern tower is surmounted by a lofty stone spire, probably of a date posterior to the part below. The spire of the opposite tower fell in 1553, at which time much injury was done to the building, and particularly to the central door-way, which, even to the present day, has never been repaired.--Contrary to the usual elevation of French cathedrals, the great window over the principal entrance is not circular, but pointed: it is divided into three compartments by broad mullions, enriched with many mouldings. The compartments end in acute pointed arches. In the north tower, the whole of the space from the basement story is occupied by only two tiers of windows. Each tier contains two windows, extremely narrow, considering their height; and yet, narrow as they are, each of them is parted by a circular mullion or central pillar. You will better understand how high they must be, when told that, in the southern tower, the space of the upper row is divided into three distinct tiers; and still the windows do not appear disproportionately short. They also are double, and the interior arches are pointed; but the arches, within which they are placed, are circular. In this circumstance lies the principal anomaly in the front of the cathedral; but there is no appearance of any disparity in point of dates; for the circular arches are supported on the same slender mullions, with rude foliaged capitals, of great projection, which are the most distinguishing characteristics of this style of architecture. "The date of the building establishes the fact of the pointed arch being in use, not only as an occasional variation, but in the entire construction of churches upon a grand scale, as early as the eleventh century.--Sammarthanus tells us that Bishop Herbert, who died in 1049, began to build this church, but did not live to see it completed; and Ordericus Vitalis expressly adds, that Hugh, the successor to Herbert, upon his death-bed, in 1077, while retracing his past life, made use of these words:--'Ecclesiam Sancti Petri, principis apostolorum, quam venerabilis Herbertus, prædecessor meus, coepit, perfeci, studiosè adornavi, honorificè dedicavi, et cultoribus necessariisque divino servitio vasis aliisque apparatibus copiosè ditavi.'--Language of this kind appears too explicit to leave room for ambiguity, but an opinion has still prevailed, founded probably upon the style of the architecture, that the cathedral was not finished till near the expiration of the thirteenth century. Admitting, however, such to be the fact, I do not see how it will materially help those who favor the opinion; for the building is far from being, as commonly happens in great churches, a medley of incongruous parts; but it is upon one fixed plan; and, as it was begun, so it was ended.--The exterior of the extremity of the south transept (see _plate seventy-five_,) is a still more complete example of the early pointed style than the west front; this style, which was the most chaste, and, if I may be allowed to use the expression, the most severe of all, scarcely any where displays itself to greater advantage. The central window is composed of five lancet divisions, supported upon slender pillars: massy buttresses of several splays bound it on either side. [Illustration: Plate 75. CHURCH OF ST. PETER AT LISIEUX. _South Transept._] "The same character of uniformity extends over the interior of the building. On each side of the nave is a side-aisle; and, beyond the aisles, chapels. The pillars of the nave are cylindrical, solid, and plain. Their bases end with foliage at each corner, and foliage is also sculptured upon the capitals. The arches which they support are acute.--The triforium is similar in plan to the part below; but the capitals of the columns are considerably more enriched, with an obvious imitation of the antique model, and every arch encircles two smaller ones. In the clerestory the windows are modern.--The transepts appear the oldest parts of the cathedral, as is not unfrequently the case; whether they were really built before the rest, or that, from being less used in the services of the church, they were less commonly the objects of subsequent alterations. They are large; and each of them has an aisle on the eastern side. The architecture of the choir resembles that of the nave, except that the five pillars, which form the apsis, are slender, and the intervening arches more narrow and more acute.--The Lady-Chapel, which is long and narrow, was built towards the middle of the fifteenth century, by Peter Cauchon, thirty-sixth bishop of Lisieux, who, for his steady attachment to the Anglo-Norman cause, was translated to this see, in 1429, when Beauvais, of which he had previously been bishop, fell into the hands of the French. He was selected, in 1431, for the invidious office of presiding at the trial of the Maid of Orleans. Repentance followed; and, as an atonement for his unrighteous conduct, according to Ducarel, he erected this chapel, and therein founded a high mass to the Holy Virgin, which was duly sung by the choristers; in order, as is expressed in his endowment-charter, to expiate the false judgment which he pronounced.[171]--The two windows by the side of the altar in this chapel have been painted of a crimson color, to add to the effect produced upon entering the church; and, seen as they are, through the long perspective of the nave and the distant arches of the choir, the glowing tint is by no means unpleasing.--The central tower is open within the church to a considerable height: it is supported by four arches of unusual boldness, above which runs a row of small arches, of the same character as the rest of the building; and still higher, on each side, are two lancet-windows.--The vaulting of the roof is very plain, with bosses slightly pendant and carved. "At the extremity of the north transept is an ancient stone sarcophagus, so built into the wall, that it appears to have been incorporated with the edifice, at the period when it was raised. The character of the heads, the crowns, and the disposition of the foliage, may be considered as indicating that it is a production, at least of the Carlovingian period, if it be not indeed of earlier date. I believe it is traditionally supposed to have been the tomb of a saint, perhaps St. Candidus; but I am not quite certain whether I am accurate in the recollection of the name.--Above are two armed statues, probably of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. These have been engraved by Willemin, in his useful work, _Les Monumens Français_, under the title of _Two Armed Warriors, in the Nave of the Cathedral, at Lisieux_; and both are there figured as if in all respects perfect, and with a great many details which do not exist, and never could have existed; though at the same time the draftsman has omitted the animals at the feet of the statues, one of which is yet nearly entire.--This may be reckoned among the innumerable proofs of the total disregard of accuracy which pervades the work of French antiquaries. A French designer never scruples to sacrifice correctness to what he considers effect.--Willemin describes the monuments as being in the nave of the church. I suspect that he has availed himself of the unpublished collection of Gaignat, in this and many other instances. It is evident that, originally, the statues were recumbent; but I cannot ascertain when their position was changed.--No other tombs now exist in the cathedral: the brazen monument raised to Hannuier, an Englishman, the marble that commemorated the bishop, William d'Estouteville; founder of the _Collège de Lisieux_ at Paris, that of Peter Cauchon in the Lady-Chapel, and all the rest, were destroyed during the revolution." NOTES: [169] The following account of the bishopric of Lisieux, is extracted from the _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 762, to enable the reader to form an opinion of its extent and importance.--"Ecclesia hæc cæteris Neustriæ episcopatibus facultatibus haud impar, patronum agnoscit S. Petrum Apostolorum principem. Episcopus, qui et episcopus est capituli, comes est et civitatis. Hunc comitatum septem componunt baroniæ, de Nonanto in Bajocassino, de Thibervilla, de _Glos_ et Courthona, de Gaceio, de Touqua, de Canapvilla et de Bonnavilla _la Louvet_, omnes in dioecesi. Episcopus præterea conservator est privilegiorum academiæ Cadomensis. Dignitates omnes et præbendas ecclesiæ Lexoviensis confert, excepto decano qui eligitur a capitulo, nec a quoquam confirmatur. Præter decanum, capitulum octo constat dignitatibus, cantore, qui residere tenetur, thesaurario, capicerio, magistro scholarum et quatuor archidiaconis; 1. de Lievino cui subsunt quatuor decanatus rurales, _Moyaux, Cormeilles, Bernai, et Orbec_, in quibus 139 parochiæ, rectoriæ vero seu curæ 148; 2. de Algia, cui subsunt tres decanatus, _Mesnil-Mauger, Beuvron et Beaumont_, in quibus 128 parochiæ, rectoriæ vero 137; 3. de Ponte Audomaro, cui subsunt tres decanatus, _Touques, Honfleur, et Pontaudemer_, in quibus 89 parochiæ, rectoriæ 93; 4. denique de Gaceio, cui subsunt quatuor decanatus, _Gacey, Livarot, Montreul, et Vimontier_, in quibus 111 parochiæ, et 117 rectoriæ. Post dignitates sunt 31 præbendæ integræ cum duabus semipræbendis, e quibus undecim antiquæ fundationis, quas qui tenent barones vocantur. Sunt et aliæ sex præbendæ _Volantes_ dictæ, quæ quotidianis non gaudent distributionibus. Sunt adhuc in eadem ecclesia 4 vicarii, quorum tres revocabiles, et 30 capellani, quorum septem episcopus, et 23 instituit capitulum. Præter parochias supra memoratas, sunt et aliæ undecim in urbe et baleuca Lexoviensi, rectoriæ duodecim: quatuor in exemtione de Nonanto prope Bajocas, quarum sex rectores, et quinque in exemtione S. Candidi senioris in urbe et dioecesi Rotomagensi, quarum unam, scilicet S. Candidi senioris collegiatam simul et parochialem administrant quatuor canonici, qui alternis vicibus parochialia obeunt munia; decanatus enim annexus est episcopo Lexoviensi qui jurisdictionem exercet in quinque illas ecclesias. Tota denique dioecesis Lexoviensis 487 parochias continet, rectorias 520." [170] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 139. [171] _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 47. PLATE LXXVI. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, AT ROUEN. [Illustration: Plate 76. ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. OUEN, AT ROUEN. _North East View._] The beauty of the church of St. Ouen has been a frequent theme of admiration among the lovers of ancient ecclesiastical architecture. The excellencies of the building have been denied by none, while some have gone so far as to consider it as the very perfection of that style, which has generally, however improperly, obtained the name of _Gothic_. A recent English traveller, whose attention was expressly directed to the different departments of the arts, bears the following testimony in its favor: "Beyond all comparison, the finest specimen of Gothic architecture which we have met with in France, is _Saint Ouen_, the secondary church at Rouen. Contrasted with Salisbury cathedral, it is small; but it does not, I think, yield to that or any other structure I have ever seen, in elegance, lightness, or graceful uniformity."[172] Previously to the suppression of monasteries in France, the church of St. Ouen made part of the abbey of the same name, one of the most celebrated and most ancient in Normandy. It is now a parochial church, and is happily in nearly a perfect state, having suffered comparatively but little from the mad folly of the Calvinists of the sixteenth century, or the democrats of the eighteenth; though every studied insult was offered to it by the former, and in the fury of the revolution it was despoiled and desecrated--degraded at one time to a manufactory for the forging of arms, and at another to a magazine for forage.--Different accounts are given of the foundation of the convent: some writers contend for its having taken place as early as the last year of the fourth century, and having been the work of the piety of Saint Victrice, then bishop of Rouen; others, and these the greater number, are content with tracing it from the reign of Clothair. Those who adopt the latter opinion are again divided, as to whether that prince himself was the actual founder, or only ratified by his royal sanction what was really the establishment of Archbishop Flavius. In either case, however, they agree in dating the origin of the abbey from the year 535. An historian, who lived as early as the middle of the tenth century, speaks of the original church of St. Ouen, as an edifice deserving of admiration:--"..... miro opere, quadris lapidibus, manu Gothicâ,.... olim nobilitèr constructa."[173]--The abbey was at first placed under the invocation of the Holy Apostles generally: it was afterwards dedicated to St. Peter alone; but, from the year 692, it has owned no other patron than St. Ouen,[174] whose body was three years before interred in the church, which he had protected with his especial favor while living, and which derived still greater benefits from him after his death, owing to the concourse of pilgrims attracted by the miracles that were wrought at his tomb. Upon the irruption of the Normans in the ninth century, this abbey shared the common fate of the Neustrian convents; and, like the rest, it rose from its ashes with greater magnificence, after the conversion of these barbarians to Christianity. Nicholas, the fourth abbot of the convent, son of Duke Richard II. and of Judith of Brittany, is said by Ordericus Vitalis to have commenced "a new church of wonderful size and elegance." But though he presided over the fraternity nearly sixty years, he did not live to see the building finished: the bringing of the task to perfection was reserved for William Balot, the next but one to him in the succession; and even he died in the very year of the dedication, which did not take place till 1126. This church, which it had cost eighty years to build, was suffered to exist but a short time after its completion: only ten years had elapsed from its dedication, when it fell a prey to a conflagration, which was at the same time destructive to the greater part of the city: another church, built shortly after, and chiefly by the munificence of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, shared the same fate in 1248. But even these repeated disasters in no wise abated the spirit of the monks: they had retired with the wreck of their property to one of their estates near Rouen, and there, by economy on their own part, and liberality on that of others, they soon found themselves in a state to undertake the erection of a fourth convent, of greater extent than any of the former, and to inclose it with high walls. The honor of laying the first stone of the new church, the same that is now standing, is attributed to one of the most celebrated of the abbots, John Roussel, more commonly known by the name of _Marcdargent_.[175] He had been elected to the prelacy in 1303; and, fifteen years afterwards, he commenced the structure. He presided over the monastery thirty-seven years, and was buried in the Lady-Chapel of the church, which he had completed as far westward as the transepts. The pomp with which his funeral was conducted, is recorded at length in the _Neustria Pia_; and the same work has also preserved the following inscription, engraved upon his coffin, which describes, with great precision, the progress made by him in the building:-- "HIC JACET FRATER JOANNES MARCDARGENT ALIAS ROUSSEL, QUONDAM ABBAS ISTIUS MONASTERII, QUI COEPIT ÆDIFICARE ISTAM ECCLESIAM DE NOVO; ET FECIT CHORUM ET CAPELLAS, ET PILLIARIA TURRIS, ET MAGNAM PARTEM TURRIS S. AUDOENI, MONASTERII DICTI." The remaining parts of the church were not finished till the beginning of the sixteenth century, when it was brought to its present state by the thirty-fourth abbot, Anthony Bohier, who, in the annals of the convent, bears the character of having been "a magnificent restorer and repairer of ancient monasteries." Admirable as is the structure, the original design of the architect was never completed. The western front remains imperfect; and this is the more to be regretted, as that part is naturally the first that meets the eye of the stranger, who thus receives an unfavorable impression, which it is afterwards difficult wholly to banish. The intention was, that the portal should have been flanked by magnificent towers, ending in a combination of open arches and tracery, corresponding with the outline and fashion of the central tower. An engraving, though a wretched one, of this intended front, is given in Pommeraye's History of the Abbey, from a sketch preserved among the records of the convent. The view of this church, etched by Mr. Cotman, is copied from a drawing made by Miss Elizabeth Turner. It represents the building, as seen from a seat in the gardens formerly belonging to the monastery, but now open to the public; and it is well calculated to convey a general idea of the character of the exterior of the building, including the central tower, which is wholly composed of open arches and tracery, and terminates, like the south tower of the cathedral, with an octangular crown of fleurs-de-lys. The plate also exhibits a portion of a circular chapel, now commonly known by the name of _la Chambre des Clercs_, the only remaining part of the church built by William Balot, in the beginning of the twelfth century. This chapel, the south porch, the central tower, and a specimen of ancient sculpture in the church, have been engraved by Mr. Turner, in his _Tour in Normandy_. The two first, of the same subjects, together with the western front, a general view of the church from the south, the curious bas-relief over the southern entrance, and a representation of the interior, have since been lithographized in M. Jolimont's _Monumens de la Normandie_. Considerable pains have been devoted in both these works, to the description and the history of the building; and to them the reader must be referred, who is unwilling to engage with the ponderous folio of Pommeraye. NOTES: [172] _Milton's Letters on the Fine Arts, written from Paris in the year 1815._ p. 183. [173] Jolimont, from whom this quotation is borrowed, states, that it is to be found in the chronicle of an author of the name of Fridegode; and he proceeds with the following observations:--"The expression appears remarkable, as warranting the inference, that the style of architecture, which Fridegode calls _Gothic_, was in use in France as early as the commencement of the sixth century, the time assigned by him for the building of the first church of St. Ouen. But it is equally to be inferred, from the manner in which he notices it, that this style was not then common; and his subjoining, that it was made of square stones, (in opposition, most probably, to rubble) serves to point out that such an edifice was an extraordinary building for Rouen at that period. This idea receives confirmation, from the reflection, that the materials for forming the city were originally supplied out of the forests that inclosed it; so that, not only the houses of individuals, but the public edifices, were merely of wood. St. Gregory of Tours, speaking, in his fifth book, of a church at Rouen, dedicated to St. Martin, uses the following expression:--'_Quæ super muros civitatis ligneis tabulis fabricata est._'--Indeed, the few stone-buildings then at Rouen, were almost exclusively devoted to the purposes of fortification, and were of flint or sand-stone, rather than of free-stone. Every thing too tends to prove that architecture was then in its infancy in the capital of Neustria; or, if it ever had been more advanced there, which could have been only under the Roman sway, that it had retrograded into a barbarous state.--Moreover, the _Gothic style_, mentioned by Fridegode, was no other than a degeneration of the Roman, or, more properly, of the Lombardic architecture, distinguished by the circular arch, by insulated columns, by a paucity of ornaments, and by a general massiveness. It is by no means to be confounded with the style which has since passed under the same name, a style introduced about the beginning of the twelfth century, immediately after the crusades, with its ogee forms, slender clustered columns, and every portion of the building characterized by extreme lightness, yet still loaded with a profusion of crowded ornaments. If, however, this Lombardic style was practised as early as the fifth or sixth century, in a town so backward in the science of architecture as Rouen, what date is to be assigned for its introduction into other parts of France, where the knowledge of the fine arts disappeared for a much shorter period?--It must be left to the decision of antiquaries, whom this passage in Fridegode seems to have escaped, to determine how far the foregoing observations are just, and may serve to throw light upon the history of the style of architecture called _Gothic_, the origin of which in France has always been attended with great obscurity." [174] St. Ouen was born A.D. 600, at the village of Sanci, near Soissons. He was of a noble family, and was educated in the abbey of St. Médar, at Soissons, whence he was removed, at an early age, to the court of Clothair II. At the court, he contracted an intimate friendship with St. Eloi; and, under Dagobert, became the favorite of the monarch, as well as his chancellor and minister of state. During the whole of his life, his strong turn to religion rendered him a warm patron of monastic establishments; and, among others, he founded the celebrated abbey of Rebais en Brie. He was still young when he renounced the world, embraced the ecclesiastical state, and devoted himself to the preaching of the gospel; shortly after which, at the request of the inhabitants of Rouen, he was appointed to succeed St. Romain, as their pastor. His consecration took place in 646, and was performed in the church of the monastery of St. Peter, since-called St. Ouen. It was also at his own particular desire, that he was there interred. His name occurs among those of the prelates who were present at the council of Châlons, in 650; he was likewise entrusted by the king with various important negociations; and, after an earthly career, passed, according to his historians, in the practice of every civil and apostolic virtue, he died at Clichy, near Paris, in the year 689. [175] The following extract from the _Neustria Pia_, p. 35, bears witness at once to the merits of the abbot, and the light in which the building was regarded throughout France.--"Hic Abbatiam reperit bonis omnibus sufficienter munitam, pecunia et commeatu haud indigentem: quam et ipse sapienter ac religiosè gubernavit, locupletavit, et vehementer adauxit; tum possessionibus et redditibus, tum ædificiis ac reparationibus: Basilicam iliam admirabili structura compositam, totiusque Galliæ speciosissimam, construere coepit, anno 1318, die festo S. _Urbani_; quam continuavit ad ann. usque 1339, in festo Apostolorum SS. _Petri_ et _Pauli_: quo in opere expendit 63036 libras argenti, et quinque solidos Turonensis: (quæ nunc haud posset compleri ædificio pro 663036 libris, etiam aureis) quorum omnium tesserem vetera hujusce domus inclytæ monimenta nunc usque accuratè continent. De hujusmodi celeberrima æde, sic quidam neotericus verè locutus est. _Nunc est S._ Audoeni: _cujus mirabilis structura, hodieque dubium relinquit, si alia per Galliam splendidior et elegantior: Monasterium est tota quidem Europa, celeberrimum, sed Patroni sui sanctitate magis æstimandum._ cui alii adstipulantur. Et hoc, consilio et auxilio D. Caroli, Comitis _Valesii_: cui operi Carolus Valesius VI. Rex ann. 1380, dono dedit tria millia librarum ad instantiam Burgundiæ Ducis, sui patruelis." PLATE LXXVII. FOUNTAIN OF THE STONE CROSS, AT ROUEN.[176] [Illustration: Plate 77. FOUNTAIN OF THE STONE CROSS AT ROUEN.] Rouen has long boasted a pre-eminence over the greater part of the cities of France, with respect to its public fountains. The chalk hills, with which it is surrounded, furnish an abundant supply of excellent springs; and the waters of these, led into different parts of the town, contribute in no less a degree to the embellishment of the city, than to the comfort of the inhabitants. The form of some, and the ornaments of others, are well deserving of attention, notwithstanding the injuries that have inevitably occurred from time, or the more cruel ones that have been caused by wanton mutilation. It is upon historical record, that there were several fountains at Rouen, as early as the twelfth century, but their number, which now exceeds thirty, received its principal increase towards the beginning of the sixteenth century; and it was then also that the idea seems first to have been conceived of making, what was originally designed only for convenience, subservient to beauty. For this new supply of ornamental fountains, Rouen is indebted to its great benefactor, the Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, who, uniting the Norman archiepiscopal mitre to the office of prime minister, under Louis XII. was no less able than he was willing, to render the most essential services to the seat of his spiritual jurisdiction. It was under the auspices of this archbishop, that the fountain here figured, one of the earliest of that period, was erected. He caused it to be built in the year 1500. The spot which it occupies, is the cross-way formed by the union of the streets, called St. Vivien, St. Hilaire, and Coqueraumont, a spot which, previously to the reign of St. Louis, was not included within the walls of the town, and which, even at the distance of one hundred years after that time, had not begun to be inhabited. So ancient is the practice of placing stone crosses at the junction of roads in the vicinity of cities, that it would be difficult to assign any probable time for the erection of that which was replaced by the fountain that still bears its name. The waters of this fountain have their origin in a spring, which flows at the foot of a hill near the village of St. Léger, at some distance from Rouen. The execution of the structure unites a happy mixture of boldness in outline, and delicacy in details: its pyramidal form is graceful. It consists of three stories, gradually diminishing in height and diameter as they rise, and terminating in a cross, whose clumsy shape only renders the destruction of that which it replaces the more to be regretted. The form is octagon throughout; and upon every compartment in each of the stories, is carved, at a short distance from its base, a narrow cinquefoil-headed arch, surmounted by a triangular crocketed canopy. But the crockets and finials have been in most instances destroyed. The water issues from four pipes in the basement. Each of the arches of the lower tier serves as a tabernacle for a wooden statue of a Madonna, or saint, of wretched execution, a poor substitute for those that occupied the same niches previously to the troubles of 1792, at which time the religious character of the fountain marked it out as an object of popular vengeance. It was suffered to continue in its mutilated and degraded state, from that period till the year 1816, when the inhabitants of this part of the town undertook to restore it at their own expense. Their labors have hitherto proceeded no farther than filling the niches afresh with images, and doing such repairs as were absolutely necessary to keep the whole structure from falling into ruin. Even by this, however, they have secured themselves the good will of the archbishop, who consecrated the fountain with great pomp anew, on the 24th of August, 1816. The resemblance between the _Fountain of the Stone Cross_, at Rouen, and the monumental crosses erected in England by King Edward I. to perpetuate the memory of his consort, Eleanor of Castillo, will not fail to strike the British antiquary. It is more than probable, that the idea of the former was borrowed from the latter, to which, however, it is very inferior in point of richness of ornaments, or beauty of execution. NOTES: [176] It is right to observe, that the accounts here given of this and the following article, are little more than a translation, in the second instance materially abridged, of what is published upon the same subjects, in _Jolimont, Monumens de la Normandie_. PLATE LXXVIII. PALACE OF JUSTICE, AT ROUEN. [Illustration: Plate 78. PALACE OF JUSTICE, AT ROUEN.] The building here figured was, from its foundation, devoted to the purpose of the administration of justice; and, notwithstanding the many mutilations to which it has at different times been exposed, it still remains an interesting, and, in the city of Rouen, almost a unique specimen of the sumptuous architectural taste of the age in which it was erected. Down to as late a period as the year 1499, there existed in Normandy no stationary court of judicature; but the execution of the laws was confided to an ambulatory tribunal, established, according to the chroniclers, by Rollo himself, and known by the name of the _Exchequer_. The sittings of this Norman exchequer were commonly held twice a year, in spring and autumn, after the manner of the ancient parliaments of the French kings; the places of session depending upon the pleasure of the sovereign, or being determined in general, like the English _Aula Regia_, by his presence. The inconveniences attendant upon such a mode of administering justice, became of course the more heavily felt, in proportion as the country increased in population and civilization. Accordingly, the states-general of the province, assembled in the last year of the fifteenth century, under the presidency of the Cardinal d'Amboise, petitioned Louis XII. who was then upon the throne, to appoint in the metropolis of the duchy a permanent judicature, in the same manner as had been previously done in others of the principal cities of the realm. The king was graciously pleased to accede to their request; and, by the words of the royal edict, not only was the exchequer rendered permanent in the good city of Rouen, but permission was also granted to the members to hold their sittings in the great hall of the castle, till such time as a suitable place should be prepared for their reception. It was on this occasion that the _Palace of Justice_ was built; a piece of ground was selected for the purpose, that had been known by the name of the Jews' Close, from the time when Philip-Augustus expelled the children of Israel from France; and the foundations of the new structure were laid within a few months after the obtaining of the royal sanction. The progress, however, of the work, was not commensurate, in point of rapidity, with the haste with which it was undertaken; even in 1506 the labors were not brought to a conclusion, though, in that year, the exchequer was installed by the king in person, with great pomp, in the new palace. The sitting will long be memorable in the Norman annals, not only as being the first, but as having been selected by the sovereign, as an opportunity for bestowing various important favors upon the city and duchy. The palace, in its present state, is composed of three distinct buildings, erected at different times, and forming collectively three sides of a parallelogram, whose fourth side is merely a wall. The court thus enclosed is spacious. One of these buildings, the front in the plate, goes by the name of the _Salle des Procureurs_. Its erection was six years anterior to that of the right-hand building, more properly called the _Palace of Justice_; and the object in raising it was, according to the edict of the bailiff upon the occasion, to serve as an exchange to the merchants, and put a stop to the impious practice of assembling, even upon feast-days, in the cathedral, for purposes of business. At a subsequent time, this hall was added to the Palace of Justice, and there was then built to it a chapel, now destroyed, in which mass was regularly celebrated twice a year,--upon the anniversary of the feast of St. Martin, the day of the meeting of parliament, and upon Ascension-Day. The service on the first of these days, went by the name of _la messe rouge_, because the members always attended in their scarlet robes: on the second, and more important occasion, it was called _la messe de la fierte_, being performed in commemoration of the deliverance of the prisoner, by virtue of the privilege of St. Romain.[177]--The exterior of the _Salle des Procureurs_ is comparatively simple: the most highly decorated part of it is the gable, which is flanked by two octangular turrets, ornamented with crocketed pinnacles and flying buttresses. Within, it consists of a noble hall, one hundred and sixty French feet in length, and fifty in width, with a coved roof of timber, plain and bold, and destitute either of the open tie-beams and arches, or the knot-work and cross-timber that usually adorn the old English roofs. Below the hall is a prison. The southern building, erected exclusively for the sittings of the exchequer, is far more sumptuous in its decorations, both without and within. The lucarne windows may even vie with those in the house in the Place de la Pucelle.[178] Those below them find almost exact counterparts in the _château_ at Fontaine-le-Henri, also figured in this work.[179] To use the language of the French critics, this front, which is more than two hundred feet in width, "est decorée de tout ce que l'architecture de ce temps-là présente de plus délicat et de plus riche." The oriel or tower of enriched workmanship, which, by projecting into the court, breaks the uniformity of the elevation, is perhaps the part that more than any other merits such encomium. But it is only half the front that has been allowed to continue in its original state: the other half has been degraded by alterations, or stripped of its ornaments.--The room in which the parliament formerly met, and which is now employed for the trial of criminal causes, still remains comparatively uninjured. Its ceiling of oak, nearly as black as ebony, divided into numerous compartments, and covered with a profusion of carving and of gilt ornaments, not only affords a gorgeous example of the taste of the time, but immediately strikes the stranger as well suited to the dignity of the purpose to which the apartment was appropriated. But the open-work bosses of this ceiling are gone, as are the doors enriched with sculpture, and the ancient chimney, and the escutcheons charged with sacred devices, and the great painting, by which, before the revolution, witnesses were made to swear.[180] The building that fronts the _Salle des Procureurs_, and forms the third side of the court, was not erected till after the year 1700. Its front is an imitation of the Ionic order, a style which harmonizes so ill with the rest of the quadrangle, as to produce an unfavorable effect An accident which happened to the wood-work of the upper part of this front, on the 1st of April, 1812, unfortunately involved the destruction of a painting held in the highest estimation; the representation of Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts at Vice, executed by Jouvenet, upon the ceiling of an apartment called _la seconde Chambre des Enquêtes_. Jouvenet, who commonly passes under the name of the Michelagnolo of France, was born at Rouen, in 1664; and, in conjunction with Fontenelle and the great Corneille, forms the triumvirate, of which the city has most reason to feel proud. The painting in the Palace of Justice was regarded as one of the happiest efforts of his pencil, and was not the less remarkable for having been executed with his left hand, after a paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other. NOTES: [177] See p. 51. [178] See plate 64. [179] Plate 63. [180] Upon this subject Mr. Turner is in error: it appears, from his _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 193, that he was informed that the painting, now actually over the judges' bench, is the same by which it was originally customary to take the oath; but M. Jolimont, who is, unquestionably, better authority, states the contrary in the following note:--"Le tableau, sur lequel on faisait jurer les témoins, et qui avait près de douze pieds d'élévation, consistait en trois portions ou bandes horizontales réunies dans un grand cadre sculpté à la manière du temps. La première, et la plus élevée, présentait quatre écussons aux armes de France, parsemés de fleurs de lis d'or; celle du milieu offrait, sous cinq arcades en ogives avec fleurons, un Christ entre la Vierge et saint Jean, et les quatre Evangelistes; au-dessous, un Moyse, et les tables de la loi: il existait encore au moment de la révolution; on l'a remplacé, au mois de janvier 1816, par un autre, d'environ quatre pieds de hauteur, donné (dit l'inscription moderne mise au bas) par Louis XII à l'Echiquier, lorsqu'il l'établit au palais. Ce second tableau, recueilli pendant la révolution par les soins de M. Gouel, graveur, et dont il a bien voulu faire hommage à la Cour royale (voir, à ce sujet, le Journal de Rouen, du 30 janvier 1816), est composé de deux parties: l'une renferme un Christ entre saint Jean et la Vierge; l'autre, en forme de couronnement, présente deux figures à mi-corps, avec des légendes; mais ces deux parties hétérogènes ne sont que deux fragmens ajustés ensemble. Le premier, qui représente le Christ, est évidemment la portion qui remplissait une des cinq arcades du grand tableau dont nous venons de parler, et l'autre est une partie seulement du tableau donné par Louis XII, et qui orna, pendant plus de deux siècles, le manteau de la belle cheminée de la chambre du Conseil que nous citons ci-après. Les deux figures, aujourd'hui mutilées, étaient en pied, et représentaient le Roi Louis XII et le Cardinal d'Amboise, avec ces mots écrits sur des bandelettes, que les deux personnages semblent s'adresser: _Pontifices, agite: Magistrats, agissez;--et vos Reges, dicite justa: et vous Rois, soyez justes_. Ces fragmens de deux tableaux différens, réunis, avec assez d'art, et qui paraissent être seuls échappés à la destruction, sont encore fort curieux, et l'on doit savoir gré à M. Gouel de leur conservation, et de la générosité avec laquelle il les a rendus à leur destination primitive." PLATE LXXIX. SOUTH PORCH OF THE CHURCH, AT LOUVIERS. [Illustration: Plate 79. CHURCH OF LOUVIERS. _South Porch._] Louviers is one of the most considerable of the numerous manufacturing towns which surround Rouen in every direction, depending altogether for their prosperity upon the state of commerce in the provincial capital. Its population consists of about seven thousand inhabitants. Its position is beautiful, in a small island formed by the Eure, which divides, in the immediate vicinity of the town, into two streams, flowing through a valley of the most luxuriant fertility, enclosed by hills covered for the greater part with extensive forests. The name of Louviers, in Latin _Locoveris_, occurs upon more than one occasion, in the early Norman chronicles; and the town, though never fortified, has obtained a considerable degree of historical celebrity. When Richard Coeur-de-Lion, escaped from his captivity in the east, hastened to punish the perfidy with which he had been on all sides assailed during his absence, and Normandy became the theatre of a most bloody warfare, Louviers had the honor of being selected as the place in which these differences were composed. The treaty signed upon this occasion, in 1195, prescribed new bounds to the duchy; and the old historians, who always delight in consecrating the recital of any memorable event by a mixture of the marvellous, tell how, at the moment when the kings were engaged in the conference which led to this treaty, a serpent of enormous size darted from the foot of the tree beneath which they were standing, and approached them with marks of great fury, hissing violently at both, as if in the act to attack them. The monarchs, who were alone, instantly laid their hands upon their swords; and the armies, who stood at a short distance on either side arranged in battle array, alarmed at such hostile demonstrations, had well nigh joined in a fresh combat.--Only the following year, Louviers was one of the towns ceded by Richard to Walter, archbishop of Rouen, by way of compensation for the infringement of the rights of the see, of which he had been guilty in the erection of Château Gaillard. The possession of Louviers was peculiarly acceptable to the prelate, as being in the immediate vicinity of the village of Pinterville, where the archbishops of Rouen then had their country seat: they continued to occupy the same till the reign of St. Louis, when that monarch conferred upon them the castle of Gaillon, which they held till the revolution. Louviers was taken in 1345, by the English army under King Edward III. then on his march for Paris, after the battle of Caen; and Froissart, in relating the circumstance, takes occasion to mention the importance of the place, stating that the town was then a great one, and "the chief town of all Normandy for drapery and riches, and full of merchandize. But, not being closed, the hostile army soon entered it." He goes on to add, not much to the credit of the invading host, that "they overran, and spoiled and robbed without mercy; and that they won there great riches."--In 1360, Louviers was once more chosen as the spot where peace was signed: the treaty that had been concluded at Bretigny, was confirmed at Paris by the Regent, and was finally ratified by the Black Prince in this town.--During the subsequent wars, under Henry V. and VI. Louviers is repeatedly mentioned; but principally for opposing a resistance of twenty-six days to the English in 1418.--In the time of the league, it distinguished itself most unfortunately by its devoted attachment to the Catholic cause; in consequence of which, it was pillaged by the royalists shortly after the battle of Ivry.[181] The church of Louviers is an imposing structure: though materially injured, and reduced to no more than a nave with its four aisles, it is still a spacious and handsome building. The great western door is closed, and the front defaced: the eastern end is likewise altogether modern. The central tower is handsome, though square and short. Two windows, very similar to those of the tower of St. Romain, in Rouen cathedral, light it on either side; and saints, placed under canopies, ornament the angles behind the buttresses. A second tower, to the west, is surmounted with a truncated cone. The south porch,[182] here figured, is the great feature of the exterior; and, for beauty and elegance in the formation or disposition of its parts, it may safely be put in competition with any similar portion of an ecclesiastical building, either in Normandy or in England. Yet, even here, the saints have been torn from their pedestals by the wanton violence of Calvinists or of democrats. Internally, the church is a fine specimen of the pointed architecture of the thirteenth century;[183] but, to use the words of Mr. Turner, from whose Tour[184] a great part of the preceding description has been borrowed, "the whole is so concealed and degraded by ornaments in the worst of taste, and by painted saints in the most tawdry dresses, that the effect is disgusting." In the windows of the church there still remains a considerable quantity of painted glass; and a bas-relief on the right of the choir is well deserving of attention. It is placed under a niche, which in all probability was originally filled with a statue of St. Hubert; as the sculpture pourtrays a well-known legend, recorded in his history--the miraculous stag with a cross between his antlers, seen by the hunter-knight.--The foliage at the base of the niche is executed with particular elegance and skill. In the town of Louviers is an old house, said to have belonged to the Knights Templars. Its gable, pierced with numerous windows, generally in the form of flatly pointed arches, each of them containing a couple of arches with trefoil-heads, has given currency to the tale of its original destination. It was figured some time since by M. Langlois, in a work commenced to illustrate the Antiquities of Normandy, but of which the first number only appeared; and it has recently been lithographized by M. Nodier. But, from the style of its architecture, it does not appear to have been erected anterior to the fourteenth century, however confidently it is referred by M. Langlois to the twelfth or thirteenth. NOTES: [181] Sully, in his _Memoirs_, I. p. 254, (_English translation_) gives the following account of its capture:--"The King succeeded better at Louviers: this town kept a priest in its pay; who, from the top of a belfry, which he never left, played the part of a spy with great exactness. If he saw but a single person in the field, he rung a certain bell, and hung out at the same side a great flag. We did not despair of being able to corrupt his fidelity, which two hundred crowns, and a promise of a benefice worth three thousand livres a year, effected. There remained only to gain some of the garrison; the Sieur du Rollet took this upon himself, and succeeded. He addressed himself to a corporal and two soldiers, who easily prevailed upon the rest of the garrison to trust the guard of one of the gates to them only. Every thing being thus arranged, the King presented himself before Louviers, at twelve o'clock in the night. No one rung the bell, nor was there the least motion in the garrison. Du Rollet entered, and opened the gate, through which the King passed, without the smallest resistance, into the centre of the town. Fontaine Martel made some ineffectual efforts to draw the garrison together: as for the citizens, they were employed in concealing their wives and daughters. The town, whose chief riches consisted in its magazines of linen and leather, was wholly pillaged: I had a gentleman with me, called Beaugrard, a native of Louviers, who was of great use to us in discovering where these sort of goods were concealed, and a prodigious quantity of them was amassed together. The produce of my share amounted to three thousand livres. The King consigned to Du Rollet the government of Louviers." [182] Mr. Cotman very much regrets that it was not in his power to do this porch the justice it deserved, in consequence of the continual interruptions to which he was exposed from the lower class of the inhabitants. [183] M. Nodier, in his _Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques_, has figured the interior of this church, the erection of which he refers (p. 18) to the time of the first crusades; but a comparison of the building with others of that æra, would scarcely warrant such a conclusion. [184] Vol. II. p. 287. PLATE LXXX. AND LXXXI. CHÂTEAU GAILLARD. [Illustration: Plate 80. CHÂTEAU GAILLARD. _North East View._] On the building of Château Gaillard, the following account is given by Masseville, in his _History of Normandy_:[185]--"In the year 1196, a few months after the treaty of Louviers had been concluded between Philip-Augustus and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, the Norman Duke, considering how frequently inroads had been made into his territories, by the way of Andelys, resolved to strengthen himself by means of a formidable barrier in that quarter. With this view, he built a fortress upon an island in the Seine, opposite the village of Lesser Andelys; and, at the same time, erected upon the brow of the rock that overhung the river, a castle of the greatest possible strength, without, however, reflecting how far these works were likely to affect the rights, or to diminish the revenues, of the see of Rouen, to whom the ground belonged. But Walter, who then wore the archiepiscopal mitre, was by no means of a character patiently to submit to an invasion of his privileges. He complained loudly during the progress of the works, menaced the artificers, and even the prince himself, with the vengeance of the church; and, finally, finding his threats and his remonstrances equally disregarded, had recourse to the bold measure of laying the whole of Normandy under a spiritual interdict. The king, alarmed at so decisive a step, appealed to the papal see, and sent the bishops of Durham and of Lisieux, as his ambassadors to Rome. The archbishop also repaired thither to plead his own cause; and the affair was finally compromised by an exchange, in virtue of which, the castles were allowed to stand, and the secular seigniory of Andelys was ceded to the duke, who, in return for this acquisition, and to obtain his reconciliation to the church, gave up to the primate the towns and lordships of Dieppe and Louviers, the land and forest of Alihermont, the land and lordship of Bouteilles, and the mills of Rouen."--The contract was considered of so much importance, that the archbishop of Canterbury, together with several other English prelates, as well as almost all those of Normandy, and many of the principal abbots and noblemen of the province, were summoned to sanction the execution of it by their presence. Such were the benefits it was supposed to bestow upon the church, that it has passed in ecclesiastical history, under the significant appellation of the _celebris permutatio_. But the king also congratulated himself, and not without reason, upon having opposed an impregnable barrier to the inroads of his more powerful, and scarcely less active, neighbor. He delighted in Château Gaillard, the very name of which is said to have had its origin in proud mockery and defiance; and he himself, in his public acts, designated it his "_beautiful castle of the rock_." Many of his charters bear date from this fortress; so that, though only begun three years before the death of the monarch, it is plain that it was already habitable in his life-time. It may likewise safely be inferred, that it was then quite finished; for his dastardly successor, engaged either in distant wars, or in intrigues at home, from the moment of his mounting the throne, had bestowed no thought upon the strengthening of his hereditary continental dominions, till he found himself, in the year 1202, attacked by Philip-Augustus at the head of an overwhelming army, while his own subjects were but little disposed to assist a prince, whose hands were reeking with his nephew's blood. It was at this time that Château Gaillard supported the siege which will render its name for ever memorable in history. Long, and curious, and interesting details of the occurrences connected with the capture of the castle, are given by Father Daniel: Du Moulin also briefly enumerates a few of the many stratagems to which the French king was obliged to have recourse. But those who delight in narratives of this kind, or who desire to obtain full information relative to the attacks and defence, combined with a lively picture of the strength of the fortress, must be referred to Brito, the poetical chronicler of the exploits of Philip-Augustus. The whole of the seventh book of the _Philippiad_ of that author, containing no fewer than eight hundred and forty-one lines, are devoted to this single subject; so eventful was the history of the siege, and so great the importance attached to the capture of the place. The fall of Château Gaillard was almost immediately followed by the total subversion of the power of the Norman Dukes; but, as to the fortress itself, though its situation was no longer such as to give it importance, Brito expressly states, that Philip bestowed great pains upon the restoring of its damaged works, and upon augmenting its strength by the addition of new ones:-- "Rex ita Gaillardo per prælia multa potitus, Cuncta reædificat vel ab ipso diruta, vel quæ Improbus appositis destruxerat ignibus hostis, In triplo meliùs et fortiùs intùs et extrà, Antea quàm fuerint muros et cætera firmans." Fortunately for France, the subsequent state of the kingdom rendered precautions of this description unnecessary; Château Gaillard appears no more in history as a formidable fortress, except upon the occasion of the occupation of the Gallic throne by Henry V. and of the expulsion of his successor. In the former case, the castle did not surrender to the English army, till after a vigorous resistance of sixteen months;[186] and even then its garrison, though composed of only one hundred and twenty men, would not have yielded, had not the ropes of their water-buckets been worn out and destroyed: in the latter instance, it was one of the last of the strong holds of Normandy that held out for the successors of its ancient dukes; and the siege of six weeks, sustained by a dispirited army, was scarcely less honorable to its defenders, than the far longer resistance opposed on former occasions. Even after the final re-union of the duchy, Château Gaillard was neither purposely destroyed, nor suffered to fall through neglect into decay, like the greater number of the Norman fortresses. During the religious wars, it still continued to be a military post, as well as a royal palace; and it was honored with the residence of Henry IV. whose father, Anthony of Bourbon, died here in 1562. Its importance ceased in the following reign. The inhabitants of the adjacent country petitioned the King to give orders that the castle should be dismantled. They dreaded, lest its towers should serve as an asylum to some of the numerous bands of marauders, by whom France was then infested. It was consequently undermined, and reduced to its present state of ruin. If the name of this castle is to be found at other times, in "the historian's ample page," it is only in the comparatively unimportant character of a place of safe confinement for state prisoners, or, on one occasion, as a temporary residence for a fugitive monarch. In the latter capacity, it opened its gates to David Bruce, in 1331, when the Scottish prince, received by Philip de Valois, with all the honours due to an exiled sovereign, had this palace assigned him as a regal residence, and was permitted to maintain here, for a while, the pageantry of a court. As a prison, Château Gaillard was frequently employed: it was in particular distinguished with an unenviable preference in one of the most disgraceful æras of the history of France. Margaret of Burgundy, the Queen of Louis X. and Blanche, the consort of his brother, Charles le Bel, were both of them confined here, after having been tried and convicted of adultery; together with Jane, another princess of the house of Burgundy, the wife to Philip, brother to Louis and Charles. Margaret was shortly after murdered in this castle; when Louis, intent upon a fresh marriage with the princess Clementia of Hungary, found an obstacle to his wishes in the protracted existence of his former queen. [Illustration: Plate 81. CHÂTEAU GAILLARD. _South West View._] Of the extent, the magnificence, the commanding situation, or the imposing appearance of Château Gaillard, it is almost equally difficult to convey an adequate idea by the pencil or by the pen. "The faithful eye" can alone give satisfaction upon such subjects. Mr. Turner's account of the present state of the ruin, has the merit of being the most copious that has yet appeared; and the following extract from it shall therefore conclude this article:--"Our expectations respecting Château Gaillard were more than answered. Considered as to its dimensions and its situation, it is by far the finest castellated ruin I ever saw. Conway, indeed, has more beauty; but Château Gaillard is infinitely superior in dignity. Its ruins crown the summit of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle are broken into hills of romantic form, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on the opposite side. "The circular keep is of extraordinary strength, and in its construction differs wholly from any of our English dungeon-towers. It may be described as a cylinder, placed upon a truncated cone. The massy perpendicular buttresses, which are ranged round the upper wall, whence they project considerably, lose themselves at their bases in the cone from which they arise. The building, therefore, appears to be divided into two stories. The wall of the second story is upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The base of the conical portion is perhaps twice as thick. It seldom happens that the military buildings of the middle ages have such a _talus_ or slope, on the exterior face, agreeing with the principles of modern fortification; and it is difficult to guess why the architect of Château Gaillard thought fit to vary from the established model of his age. The masonry is regular and good. The pointed windows are evidently insertions of a period long subsequent to the original erection. "The inner ballium is surrounded by a high circular wall, which consists of an uninterrupted line of bastions, some semi-circular and others square. The whole of this part of the castle remains nearly perfect. There are also traces of extensive foundations in various directions, and of great out-works. Château Gaillard was, in fact, a citadel, supported by numerous smaller fortresses, all of them communicating with the strong central hold, and disposed so as to secure every defensible post in the neighborhood. The wall of the outer ballium, which was built of a compact white and grey stone, is in most places standing, though in ruins. The original facing only remains in those parts which are too elevated to admit of its being removed with ease.--Beneath the castle, the cliff is excavated into a series of subterraneous caverns, not intended for mere passages or vaults, as at Arques and in most other places, but forming spacious crypts supported by pillars roughly hewn out of the living rock, and still retaining every mark of the workman's chisel. "The keep cannot be ascended without difficulty. We ventured to scale it; and we were fully repaid for our labor by the prospect which we gained. The Seine, full of green willowy islands, flows beneath the rock in large lazy windings: the peninsula below is flat, fertile, and well wooded: on the opposite shores, the fantastic chalky cliffs rise boldly, crowned with dark forests." NOTES: [185] Vol. II. p. 113. [186] So says Monstrelet; and he has generally been followed; but, according to Masseville, (_Histoire de Normandie_, IV. p. 84) the Norman Chronicle limits the duration of the siege to only seven months. PLATE LXXXII. CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS. [Illustration: Plate 82. ABBEY CHURCH OF MONTIVILLIERS. _West End._] Montivilliers is a town of about four thousand inhabitants, situated in a beautiful valley upon a small stream, called the _Lezarde_, near the western extremity of the Pays de Caux, within the distance of six leagues from Fécamp, and two from Havre de Grace. Its fortifications, now in ruins, were erected near the close of the fourteenth century, till which time it was altogether defenceless; but the state of France, just recovered from one English invasion and threatened with another, turned the thoughts of the government towards the securing of all vulnerable points on the northern frontier; and the trade of the place, though at present trifling, was at that period far otherwise. The cloths of Montivilliers were then considered to rival those of Flanders; and the preservation of the manufacture was regarded of so much consequence, that sundry regulations respecting it are to be found in the royal ordinances. The two circular towers of one of the gates now standing, afford a good specimen of the military architecture of the time. Montivilliers is called in Latin, _Monasterium villare_; and in old French, _Monstier Vieil_: the present name of the town is obviously a corruption of these; and the same fact also denotes that the place derived its importance, if not its existence, from the monastery. Among the Norman historians, the foundation of Montivilliers is referred to the seventh century; during the latter half of which, St. Philibert, abbot of Jumieges, built a convent here for a community of nuns. The monastery was richly endowed; but no records are left of its history previously to the incursions of the Normans, under whose hands it at first suffered the same destruction as the other religious houses in Neustria, and afterwards rose, like them, from its ashes, with increased splendor and opulence. The immediate successors of Rollo rebuilt the abbey, but without restoring it to its original destination. Richard II. conferred it, with all its dependencies, upon the more favored monks of Fécamp; and, in the donation, he makes use of the strong expression, "ut ex eo facerent quicquid vellent, tamquam ex proprio alodo." The union of the two establishments was, however, but short lived: either under the same prince, or, as some authors say, under his son Robert, Montivilliers once more resumed a state of independence, and became once more the retreat of holy virgins. The duke was moved to this step by the solicitation of his aunt Beatrice, who retired hither, and took the veil, and presided over the sisterhood; and the monastery of St. Taurin at Evreux was, on this occasion, ceded to Fécamp, in exchange for Montivilliers. A portion of the charter is preserved in the _Neustria Pia_; and, according to this work, the instrument was subsequently ratified by the signatures of William the Conqueror, and of Philip le Bel. At different times, various papal bulls were issued, for the purpose of placing the abbey of Montivilliers under the especial protection of the holy see, and of granting it sundry privileges and immunities. These are also recorded in the same publication. One of them, originating in a dispute between the archbishop of Rouen and the abbess of Montivilliers, is but little to the credit of either party. It represents the lady-abbess as by no means free from irregularities in the performance of her office; it charges one of her nuns with dissolute life; and it arraigns the primate himself of being the cause, if not the immediate instrument, of scandal:--"Siquidem, ex parte abbatissæ fuit propositum et probatum, quòd quidam, qui cum eodem archiepiscopo et suis prædecessoribus venerant ad monasterium memoratum, turpia quædam et illicita commiserunt contra honestatem observantiæ regularis, in scandalum plurimorum: volumus et mandamus, ut, cùm archiepiscopus Rothomagensis ad monasterium ipsum, causâ visitationis, accesserit, ab ingressu claustri aliarumque domorum, in quibus habitant moniales, familiam suam talitèr studeat coercere, quòd de cætero similia non contingant. Ipse quoque archiepiscopus, ejusdem monasterii claustrum vel capitulum intraturus, non nisi cum moderatâ societate accedat, quæ vitâ et moribus sit honesta; ut per officium visitationis ejusdem, non dissolutionis vel scandali, sed ædificationis potiùs materia ministretur."--The instrument, which is of considerable length, goes on to accuse the prelate of affording protection to some refractory nuns, and enjoins him never to suffer his clergy to frequent the abbey upon any pretext, or upon any occasion. The church of Montivilliers, represented in the present plate, is the same as before the revolution belonged to the abbey. The portion to the north is the chapter-house, and is the work of the fourteenth century. The greater part of the rest of the building, though altered in some places, may safely be referred to the eleventh; at which time it is upon record, that Elizabeth, who succeeded Beatrice as abbess, nearly, if not altogether, rebuilt the whole. At subsequent periods, the church underwent many considerable repairs and alterations. A sum of seven hundred florins was expended upon it in 1370, the proceeds of a fine imposed upon the town, for some injuries done to the nuns; and Toussaints Varrin, archbishop of Thessalonica, dedicated the edifice, in 1513, under the invocation of the Holy Virgin. Five years subsequently, the abbess, Jane Mustel, repaired the ceiling and painted windows, and made the stalls in the choir.[187]--The exterior of the Lady-Chapel affords a fine example of early pointed architecture; its lofty narrow windows are separated by slender cylindrical pillars, as in the church of the Holy Trinity, at Caen. The embattled ornament round the southern door of the western front, is far from commonly seen in such situations. In the interior of the nave, the same massive semi-circular architecture prevails as in the towers; but it is mixed with some peculiarities that will scarcely be found elsewhere, particularly a flat band in the form of a pilaster, enriched with losenges, which is attached to the front of one of the columns, and is continued over the roof, and again down the pillar on the opposite side. Mr. Turner noticed a small gallery, or pulpit, of elegant filigree stone-work, at the west end, near the roof;[188] and, upon the authority of the well-known antiquary, John Carter, he supposed it most probably intended to receive a band of singers on high festivals. But some corresponding erections in England would make it seem more likely that this gallery communicated with the apartments of the superior, and was placed here for the purpose of affording her the means of paying her devotions in private, when, either from the weather, or any other cause, she might not wish to occupy her throne in the choir. Mr. Turner has also remarked upon the capitals of the columns at Montivilliers, which are very peculiar. Some of them are obvious imitations of the antique pattern, and of great beauty. Others are as rude and wild as any of those already figured in this work, from the churches of St. Georges or Gournay. The mysteries of Christianity, and the fables and allegories of heathenism, the latter, as well in its most refined as its most barbarous forms, occur in endless variety in almost every part of the edifice. One of the capitals contains a representation of the fabulous Sphynx, with her tail ending in a fleur-de-lys: upon another, is sculptured a figure of Christ in the act of destroying the Dragon, by thrusting the end of a crosier into its mouth. Two others, figured in the _Tour in Normandy_, exhibit a group of Centaurs, and the allegorical _psychostasia_: the remarks of the author of that publication, upon the latter of these, shall close the present article:--"In this you observe an angel weighing the good works of the deceased against his evil deeds; and, as the former are far exceeding the avoirdupois upon which Satan is to found his claim, he is endeavoring most unfairly to depress the scale with his two-pronged fork.--This allegory is of frequent occurrence in the monkish legends.--The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.--He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.--The devil pulled out an assignation with some fair mortal Madonna, who had ceased to be immaculate.--The saint laid in the scale the sackcloth and ashes of the penitent of Lenten-time.--Satan answered the deposit by the vizard and leafy robe of the masker of the carnival. Thus did they still continue equally interchanging the sorrows of godliness with the sweets of sin; and still the saint was distressed beyond compare, by observing that the scale of the wicked thing (wise men call him the correcting principle,) always seemed the heaviest. Almost did he despair of his client's salvation, when he luckily saw eight little jetty black claws just hooking and clenching over the rim of the golden basin. The claws at once betrayed the craft of the cloven foot. Old Nick had put a little cunning young devil under the balance, who, following the dictates of his senior, kept clinging to the scale, and swaying it down with all his might and main. The saint sent the imp to his proper place in a moment; and instantly the burthen of transgression was seen to kick the beam.--Painters and sculptors also often introduced this ancient allegory of the balance of good and evil, in their representations of the last judgment: it was even employed by Lucas Kranach." NOTES: [187] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 108. [188] _Tour in Normandy_, I. p. 69. PLATE LXXXIII. CHURCH OF ST. SANSON SUR RILLE. [Illustration: Plate 83. CHURCH OF ST. SANSON SUR RILLE. _Remains of & capitals._] Normandy, throughout the whole of its extent, can scarcely boast a lovelier stream than the Rille. Originating in the southern part of the duchy, this little river advances in a northerly direction, rolling its sparkling waters in rapid course, through a valley of the most brilliant verdure, till they mingle with the British Channel, at a very short distance from the west of the mouth of the Seine. The Rille, in every part of its current, is varied by an infinity of islands, formed by the division of its waters. Hence its principal beauty, and hence also considerable benefit for the purpose of manufacture; but the same circumstance is fatal to the more important objects of commerce; for it is in a great measure owing to this multiplicity of channels, that the river is navigable to only a very short way above Pont Audemer; a distance scarcely exceeding ten miles from its confluence with the ocean. The small village of St. Sanson is situated upon the right bank of the Rille, within a league of its mouth. Its church, the same most probably as is figured in this plate, is enumerated among the possessions confirmed to the Benedictine monastery of St. Martin, at Troarn, by a bull of Pope Innocent III. dated in the year 1210. In after-times, the presentation to the living was in the hands of the bishops of Dol, in Brittany, who likewise continued till the revolution to be both temporal and spiritual lords of the parish, in right, as they alledged, of the ancient barony of St. Sanson, which was annexed to their see.[189] Other writers asserted, that the bishops held their authority here, as successors to the superiors of an abbey, founded upon this spot in the middle of the sixth century, by Childebert I. in favor of St. Sanson, then bishop of Dol. But the monastery fell during the earliest incursions of the Normans, and never rose again. Old traditions state it to have been called in French, _Pentale_; and in Latin, _Monasterium Pentaliense_: a corruption, as it is supposed, of _Poenitentiale_. A neighboring chapel, under the invocation of _Notre Dame de Pentale_, gives color to the report. Of the church of St. Sanson, nothing more is now left than is exhibited in the plate: the remains consist only of the chancel, and the arch which separated it from the nave. But even these, inconsiderable as they appear, have been judged deserving of a place among the more remarkable of the architectural antiquities of Normandy: the peculiar character of the capitals, and the small size of the whole, have entitled them to this distinction. Upon regarding the arch, it is scarcely possible but to be struck with the impression, that, though in its present state its height is barely sufficient to allow of a man walking upright through it, there must originally have been an inner member, which has now disappeared. The capitals differ materially from any others ever seen by Mr. Cotman in Normandy; but Mr. Joseph Woods, whose authority is unquestionable, says that similar ones are to be found in the Temple of Bacchus, at Teos. There are also several, which in shape resemble these at St. Sanson, in the very remarkable church of St. Vitalis, at Ravenna,[190] and in the cloisters of the monastery of St. Scolastica,[191] at Subiaco: the latter also exhibit a certain degree of similarity in the sculpture. NOTES: [189] _Description de la Haute Normandie_, II. p. 777. [190] _Seroux d'Agincourt, Histoire de la Décadence de l'Art. Architecture_, t. 23. f. 7, 8; _and_ t. 69. f. 14. [191] _Ibid._ t. 29. f. 3, 4. PLATE LXXXIV. WESTERN DOOR-WAY OF THE CHURCH OF FOULLEBEC. [Illustration: Plate 84. CHURCH OF FOULLEBEC. _West Door-way._] The church of Foullebec, a small village situated upon the Rille, nearly opposite to St. Sanson, is a building of Norman times; but the only portion of it particularly calculated to recommend it to attention, is the arch figured in this plate. This arch exhibits two peculiarities, which it would be difficult, if not impossible, to parallel in Normandy; the ornamented shafts of the pillars, and the extraordinary width of the southern capital, which is more than double that of the column below. The same was also, in all probability, the case with the capital, now destroyed, on the opposite side of the door-way; and as it is plain that there never was a second pillar, either on the one side or the other, the only satisfactory mode of accounting for this singularity, is upon the supposition, that it was the original intention of the architect to have placed such, but that circumstances occurred which induced him to leave his design unfinished.--Ornamented shafts of columns, however unfrequently found in Normandy, are far from being of very uncommon occurrence in the specimens that are left of genuine Norman art in Great-Britain. Mr. Carter, in his elaborate work upon ancient English architecture, has collected a variety of similar enrichments in his thirty-third plate; and some of them extremely beautiful. Several others are to be found in the more splendid volumes of Mr. Britton.--The sculpture upon the archivolt is also deserving of observation: upon one of the central stones, is represented the bannered lamb; upon the other, a figure, probably intended for a representation of our Savior entering Jerusalem upon an ass. The heads on either side are of an unusual character. The church at Foullebec, as well in its nave as chancel, is externally divided by plain Norman buttresses into a series of regular compartments, each containing a single circular-headed window. In the nave are four; in the chancel only two. The tower is square and low: it is placed at the west end, which is only pierced for the door-way, and is otherwise quite plain, except a buttress at each corner. Internally, the only object to be noticed is an ancient cylindrical font; its sides sculptured with semi-circular arches, and a narrow moulding round the rim. PLATE LXXXV. AND LXXXVI. CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE. [Illustration: Plate 85. CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE.] M. Nodier, who, in his _Voyages Pittoresques_, has devoted six plates to the illustration of the noble ruins of the castle at Tancarville, remarks with great justice, that, magnificent as the building must have been, "it is one that recals but few historical recollections." At the same time he gives the following quotation from the old _Norman Chronicle_:--"During the reign of King Philip le Bel, after the knight of the green lion had conquered the King of Arragon, a great dissention arose between two powerful barons in Normandy, the Lord of Harecourt and the Chamberlain of Tancarville. The cause of their strife was a mill, of which the Dwarf of Harecourt, assisted by forty of his people in arms, had taken forcible possession, mistreating the vassals of the Chamberlain. The latter, incensed at the outrage, summoned his friends and attendants; and, having collected them to the number of two hundred, marched upon Lillebonne, where the Lord of Harecourt and the Dwarf, his brother, were at that time residing. Many and bitter were the reproaches uttered on either side; and severe was the contest that followed; for the Lord of Harecourt issued from the barriers with all his forces, and they defended themselves valiantly; and several lives were lost. The king, on receiving the tidings, was greatly discomforted, and bade the Sieur Enguerrand de Marigni summon the offending parties to appear before him. It chanced most untowardly, that they met as they were travelling towards the court; and the Lord of Harecourt attacked the Chamberlain, and with his gauntlet put out his left eye, and then returned to his own people. No sooner was he of Tancarville healed, than he repaired to the royal presence, and defied the Lord of Harecourt to single combat. The pledge was accepted by M. Charles de Valois, brother of the king, on behalf of his friend. On the other hand, M. Enguerrand de Marigny, privy counsellor of the monarch, maintained that Harecourt had been guilty of treason. This was denied by M. Charles, to whom Enguerrand in consequence gave the lie; and the former took the affront so cruelly to heart, that Enguerrand, brave man as he was, was afterwards hanged in consequence of it. When the conditions of battle were arranged, the Lord of Harecourt came into the field with his armor emblazoned with fleurs-de-lys; and the combatants fought with the utmost valor, till the Kings of England and of Navarre, who were present, besought the monarch of France to stay the fight; for that it would be great pity that two so valiant chiefs should fall by each other's hand. Upon this, the king cried 'Ho!' and both parties were satisfied; and peace was made between them by the foreign sovereigns, in the year 1300." The same circumstance is related, though with some trifling variations in the details, by Masseville, in his _History of Normandy_, a work of which almost every volume bears frequent testimony to the greatness of the house of Tancarville. This family enjoyed the hereditary dignity of chamberlain to the Norman dukes; but at what period it was conferred upon them, is lost in the obscurity of early history. Ralph de Tancarville, who founded the abbey of St. Georges de Bocherville, about the year 1050,[192] is styled in the _Neustria Pia_, under the account of that monastry, as "Tancardi-Villæ Toparcha, præfectus hæreditarius cubiculo Guillelmi secundi." In 1066, the name of the _Count of Tancarville_[193] is enumerated among those who attended the Conqueror into England. The chamberlain of Tancarville is recorded both by Ordericus Vitalis and Masseville, in the list of Norman knights that distinguished themselves in the wars of Philip-Augustus. William of Tancarville, the same chieftain, probably, or his immediate predecessor, had previously suffered himself to be seduced by the arts of Eleanor, queen of Henry II. to join in the conspiracy of the sons of that monarch, against their father: he subsequently signalized his valor, when the banners of the lion-hearted Richard were unfurled upon the plains of Palestine. In 1197, Ralph of Tancarville was one of the witnesses to the treaty of exchange, already more than once mentioned in this work, made between the sovereign and the archbishop of Rouen, in consequence of the building of Château Gaillard; and when, eight years afterwards, Philip, having become undisputed master of Normandy, conciliated the favor of the clergy by important concessions, the signature and seal of the chamberlain of Tancarville were attached to the instrument.--The task were easy, by multiplying quotations from Masseville and the early chroniclers, to extend to a great length the instances in which the noblemen of the house of Tancarville acted a prominent part in Norman history. It will be sufficient, upon the present occasion, to adduce two circumstances, as indisputable proofs of their importance. The name of Tancarville is found among the seventy-two members of the nobility, who, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, were summoned to the Norman exchequer; and, in the same century, in the year 1320, after Philip VI. upon his accession to the throne of France, had received at Amiens the homage of Edward III. for the dukedom of Aquitaine and earldom of Ponthieu, the Count of Tancarville was selected for the important office of ambassador to England, in conjunction with the Duke of Bourbon and the Earl of Harcourt, to obtain from the monarch some explanations that were considered indispensable for the dignity of the crown of France. As late as the year 1451, the Lord of Tancarville appears as one of the generals of the French forces, which, under the command of the Count of Longueville, finally succeeded in expelling the English from Normandy. From that time forward, Masseville makes no mention of the family. Respecting the castle, he is altogether silent, except upon the occasion of its capture by the French in 1435, and its surrender to them again in 1449. It may have been observed in the preceding brief enumeration of a few principal facts connected with the family of Tancarville, that the Lords of that house have, on more than one occasion, been designated as Counts: the author of the _Description de la Haute Normandie_, however, expressly states that this property was not raised into an earldom till the reign of King John of France, who ennobled it with that dignity in 1351; at which time it was composed of all the fiefs, castellanies, baronies, and other lands of every description, in the duchy of Normandy, occupied by John de Melun, and Jane Crepin his wife. From the house of Melun, this same earldom passed into that of Harcourt, by the union of Jane of Melun with William of Harcourt--their daughter, who inherited the property, afterwards carried it in dower to John, Count of Dunois and of Longueville. In the year 1505, when Louis XII. added to the earls of Longueville the higher honor of the dukedom, Tancarville was comprised among the dependencies of the new dignity; and when, shortly afterwards, the duchy of Longueville escheated to the crown, the earldom of Tancarville, remaining united to Longueville, shared the same fate. Mary of Orleans, duchess of Nemours and Estouteville, having become possessed of Tancarville, sold it in September, 1706, to Anthony Crozat, the king's secretary; and, at the same time, the monarch conferred all the rights and privileges attached to the domain, upon Louis de la Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Evreux. Twelve years subsequently, the king, by his letters patent, separated Tancarville from Longueville, and ordered that the Lords of Tancarville should thenceforth be summoned to the parliament at Rouen. The title of Earl of Tankerville is at the present day to be found in the English peerage. It is borne by a descendant of Charles Bennet, second Lord of Ossulston, upon whom it was conferred by George I. in 1714, after he had married the daughter and heiress of Ford, Lord Grey of Wark, Earl of Tankerville. One of the family of this Lord Grey, Sir John Grey, Knight, Captain of Maunt, in Normandy, had originally been rewarded with the title by King Henry V. for his eminent services in the French wars. But his grandson, Richard, Earl of Tankerville, was attainted in the thirty-eighth year of the succeeding reign; and the title remained dormant till re-granted by King William III. to Ford, Lord Grey, just mentioned, who was lineally descended from the brother of the first earl. [Illustration: Plate 86. ENTRANCE TO THE CASTLE AT TANCARVILLE.] Different opinions have prevailed with respect to the origin of the name of Tancarville. Ordericus Vitalis calls it Tanchardi Villa: M. de Valois, in his _Notitia Galliæ_, is disposed to claim for it the more imposing appellation of Tancredi Villa. The point will in all probability never be settled: it is more to be regretted, that no account is to be found of the building of the castle, whose lofty towers still frown in the pride of old baronial grandeur, from the summit of a steep cliff upon the right bank of the Seine, which here, so near its mouth, rather assumes the character of an estuary than a river. The wide extent of the ruins sufficiently bespeaks the importance of its former possessors: at present, nothing can be more forlorn and desolate. Mr. Dibdin, who visited the remains in 1819, has traced the following animated sketch of their present appearance with his lively pencil; and Mr. Lewis, who accompanied him, has enriched his splendid Tour with a lovely view of the buildings and surrounding scenery:-- "We ascended to the castle: the day grew soft, and bright, and exhilarating.... but, alas; for the changes and chances of this transitory world. Where was the warder? He had ceased to blow his horn for many a long year. Where was the harp of the minstrel? It had perished two centuries ago, with the hand that had struck its chords. Where was the attendant guard?--or pursuivants?--or men at arms? They have been swept from human existence, like the leaves of the old limes and beech trees, by which the lower part of the building was surrounded. The moat was dry; the rampart was a ruin:--the rank grass grew within the area.... nor can I tell you how many vast relics of halls, banqueting rooms, and bed rooms, with all the magnificent appurtenances of old castellated architecture, struck the eager eye with mixed melancholy and surprise! The singular half-circular, and half-square, corner towers, hanging over the ever-restless wave, interested us exceedingly. The guide shewed us where the prisoners used to be kept--in a dungeon, apparently impervious to every glimmer of day-light, and every breath of air. I cannot pretend to say at what period even the oldest part of the castle of Montmorenci[194] was built: but I saw nothing that seemed to be more ancient than the latter end of the fifteenth century. Perhaps the greater portion may be of the beginning of the sixteenth; but, amidst unroofed rooms, I could not help admiring the painted borders, chiefly of a red color, which run along the upper part of the walls, or wainscots--giving indication not only of a good, but of a splendid, taste. Did I tell you that this sort of ornament was to be seen in some part of the eastern end of the abbey of Jumieges? _Here_, indeed, they afforded evidence--an evidence mingled with melancholy sensations on conviction--of the probable state of magnificence which once reigned throughout the castle. Between the corner towers, upon that part which runs immediately parallel with the Seine, there is a noble terrace, now converted into garden ground, which commands an immediate and extensive view of the embouchure of the river. It is the property of a speculator residing at Havre. Parallel with this terrace, runs the more modernised part of the castle, which the last residing owner inhabited. It may have been built about fifty years ago, and is--or rather the remains of it are--quite in the modern style of domestic architecture. The rooms are large, lofty, and commodious;--yet nothing but the shells of them remain. The revolutionary patriots completely gutted them of every useful and every valuable piece of furniture; and even the bare walls are beginning to grow damp, and threaten immediate decay. I made several memoranda upon the spot, which have been unluckily, and I fear irretrievably, misplaced; so that, of this once vast, and yet commanding and interesting edifice, I regret that I am compelled to send you so short and so meagre an account. Farewell--a long and perhaps perpetual farewell--to the Castle of Montmorenci!" NOTES: [192] According to Masseville, (_Histoire de Normandie_, II. p. 192,) this abbey was not founded till the year 1114; but such a statement is irreconcileable with the fact of the dead body of the Conqueror having been carried there in 1087; and, moreover, both the _Gallia Christiana_ and _Neustria Pia_ expressly state that it was in 1114 that William, fifth son of the founder, and himself also hereditary chamberlain of Normandy, removed from St. Georges the canons established there by his father, and replaced them with monks from St. Evroul. [193] So called by Masseville, I. p. 205. [194] Mr. Dibdin uniformly calls this castle, the Castle of Montmorenci; but on no occasion does he state his authority for so doing; the author of these remarks never heard it so styled in Normandy, nor can he find it mentioned under that name by Nodier, or any other author. If, as appears probable, the people of the neighborhood are in the habit of so designating it, the probability is, that the modern part (see _plate eighty-five_) was erected at a period when Tancarville belonged to some member of the noble family of Montmorenci. PLATE LXXXVII. AND LXXXVIII. CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS, AT ST. LO. (WESTERN DOOR-WAY, AND VARIOUS SPECIMENS OF SCULPTURE.) [Illustration: Plate 87. CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS AT ST. LO. _Western Entrance._] The town of St. Lo is said to owe its origin to the Emperor Charlemagne, and to have been founded by him in the fifth year of the ninth century. It is situated in the western part of Normandy, upon the small river, Vire, about five leagues to the east of Coutances; and at this time it contains nearly seven thousand inhabitants. Old chroniclers relate that the name originally given to the place was Ste Croix; but that, soon after its foundation, it exchanged that appellation for the present, upon being selected as the spot to be honored with the reception of the relics of St. Lo, or, as he is called in Latin, St. Laudus, who was the fifth bishop of Coutances, and presided over that see the greater part of the sixth century. Of the merits of the saint, the miracles he performed both living and dead, and the various places that have, at different times, received his mortal remains, a copious account is given by M. Rouault, in his History of the Bishops of Coutances. It is sufficient, in the present instance, to state, that, upon the translation of the body of St. Lo to the spot now dignified with his name, a magnificent church was built under his invocation; and the town was encompassed with fortifications of great strength, to defend it against the inroads of the Normans. These heathen plunderers had at this time just begun their ravages in Neustria, when, notwithstanding its new walls, St. Lo was soon obliged, in common with the rest of the province, to submit to their sway; and they emptied upon the Christian city the full phials of pagan wrath, by burning it to the ground. In subsequent, and probably not distant, times, St. Lo was again converted into a place of defence; and mention of it as such repeatedly occurs in the various unquiet periods of French history. Even at the present day, when fortifications in that part of the kingdom have long been neglected, there remain sufficient vestiges of them at St. Lo, to convey the most imposing idea of their original strength, aided as they must have been, by their situation upon the summit of a lofty and inaccessible rock.--St. Lo was one of the last towns in Lower Normandy that opened their gates to the victorious arms of the Empress Maude: it remained unshaken in its allegiance till 1142, only two years before the death of the English monarch.--In the third year of the following century, it surrendered without bloodshed to Philip-Augustus, then on his march towards the capture of Mount St. Michael; nor does it appear to have offered more than a trifling resistance to Edward III. by whom it was taken in 1346. Froissart, upon that occasion, gives the following details relative to the English army, as well as to the state of the town and its capture:--"The King of England and Prince of Wales had, in their battalion, about three thousand men at arms, six thousand archers, and ten thousand infantry, without counting those that were under the marshals; and they marched in the manner I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but without breaking their line of battle. They did not turn towards Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which, in those days, was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count eight or nine score that were engaged in commerce. When the King of England was come near the town, he encamped: he would not lodge in it for fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who soon conquered it at a trifling loss, and completely plundered it. No one can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it, nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers, they might have bought them at a cheap rate." In 1379, when the English arms, during the minority of the second Richard, obtained in France an ephemeral superiority, St. Lo was the only town in the Côtentin, except Carentan, which the French monarch considered of sufficient strength to justify him in entrusting it with a garrison.--It was taken by the English, under Henry V. in 1418; and was again restored to the French, by capitulation, thirty-one years subsequently.--In the beginning of the following tumultuous reign, St. Lo and Valognes were appointed as the places of residence for Clarence and Warwick, and the other leaders of the Lancastrian party; after their short-lived success, in favor of the deposed Henry, had been followed by their own utter defeat, and the final discomfiture of their hopes. During the religious wars of the sixteenth century, St. Lo was once more so unfortunate as to act a prominent part. Early in the troubles, it distinguished itself by a decided devotion to the cause of Protestantism; and, though often obliged, by the current of affairs, to yield a reluctant submission to the opposite party, it continued throughout the whole of the struggle, unshaken in its attachment to the Huguenots. Hence, when finally summoned to surrender to the Catholics, in 1574, it rather chose to expose itself to all the miseries of a siege, as well as to the still greater one of being taken by assault; and the severity of its sufferings is recorded by the historians of the conquering party, who themselves admit, that "it was sacked with a horrible carnage."[195] Its Protestant places of worship were not, however, finally rased, till 1685, the period of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. St. Lo was the seat of an abbey of Augustine friars, said to have been founded in the middle of the twelfth century, and to have been of such celebrity, that, according to Quercetanus, the bishops of Coutances were contented for a time to be styled bishops of St. Lo.[196]The principal church in the place, that of Notre Dame, greatly resembles the cathedral of Coutances, of which it is even said to be a copy. It was not begun to be built till the period of English rule in Normandy, during the fifteenth century. The older, or clock-tower, was erected in 1430: the opposite tower and western entrance, in 1464. Other parts of it were not completed till the following century; and the northern spire is a work of as late a period as 1685. The very ancient church of Ste Croix, (the subject of these plates,) was connected with the abbey, of which little now remains. There is a tradition in the town, that it was once a temple of Ceres; and such traditions, however uncritical or even absurd, deserve to be noticed, as generally originating in a confused knowledge of the remote date of the building to which they are attached. In the opinion of M. de Gerville, a portion, at least, of the church, belongs to the edifice raised by Charlemagne, in 805. The actual erection of such an edifice, and its dedication to the holy cross, are facts distinctly stated in the _Neustria Pia_: its identity with the present church does not appear to be doubted, either by Du Monstier, or the Abbé de Billy, the historian of St. Lo. At the same time, neither the one nor the other of these writers was ignorant of the positive assertion in the _Gesta Normannorum_, that, under those successful invaders--"Sancti Laudi castrum, interfectis habitatoribus, terræ æquatum est." But, in opposition to this, M. de Gerville contends that, either this strong assertion is to be received with a certain degree of latitude, or that, by the word _castrum_, is to be understood only the citadel; so that, while that was destroyed, the domestic and religious edifices were suffered to escape. He even thinks that the parts of the building ascribable to the period of the Carlovingian dynasty, may be distinguished by a practised eye, from the reparations of the eleventh century. He traces them especially in the western front, in its door-way, (_plate eighty-seven_) and in some herring-bone masonry, observable over a narrow circular-headed window towards the south. But he founds his opinion still more upon the bas-relief, representing the Deity attended by angels, (_plate eighty-eight, fig. B._) now built into the wall at the end of the nave, on the south side. The character of the sculpture and the form of the letters appear to him to be almost decisive. With regard to the latter, he observes;--"it is well known that the Roman characters were restored by Charlemagne, especially after he had been proclaimed emperor. This fact is sufficiently attested by the various monuments still left us of his time, as well as by the coins which were struck in the latter part of his reign, and during that of Louis le Débonnaire. Elegance and simplicity in the shape of the letters, characterized the writing of this epoch; and the latter, at least, of these qualities, is eminently to be found in the inscription at St. Lo. On the other hand, correct orthography was not equally one of the excellencies of the age." [Illustration: Plate 88. CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS AT ST. LO. _Sculpture._] Pursuing the subject yet farther, M. de Gerville gives it as his opinion, that the different epochs in the architecture, commonly designated as Norman, may be determined with some degree of precision; and he thinks he can trace, in several churches of the vicinity, an evident imitation of this at St. Lo; while he regards the superior antiquity of the latter decisively established by the sculpture over the western entrance; by the medallion of the Deity, already noticed; and by several of the capitals of the interior; particularly those that have reference to the legends of St. Eloy, (_plate eighty-eight, fig. F._) and St. Hubert, (_fig. D._), both at that period quite recent; and two of the others, (_fig C. and E._) in the latter of which, the devil is roasting unfortunate sinners, while the former, exhibiting the _psychostasia_, affords a graphic illustration of two lines of the well-known hymn of the Roman Catholic church:-- "Statera facta corporis, Prædamque tulit Tartari." In the western front of the church of Ste Croix have been inserted, above the door-way, three windows of the earliest pointed style. The whole of the sculpture over the architraves of the arch, is, both in its design and execution, curious. The knotted serpents, terminating at either end in heads of devils; the two men tugging at rings, attached to a chain twisted round the neck of a decapitated demon, whom, two dogs are baying; and the structure of the chain itself, are all peculiar; and scarcely less so is the medallion below.[197]--The church ends at the east with a large circular arch, which is now closed, and has always been so since the memory of man; but probably, at some former time, it led into a chancel or sanctuary. There is a south transept, which terminates in a similar arch: the arches of the nave, which are likewise circular, are each of them surrounded with a double architrave of the zig-zag moulding: the capitals to the pillars supporting these arches, Mr. Cotman considers as being for the greater part of the best class of Norman sculpture. He has selected for engraving those that are most rude: the others commonly exhibit broad interlaced bands, foliage, and fruits. The abaci, too, though they are in general plain, are in some instances enriched with similar sculpture, as in the churches of Grâville, of Cerisy, and of the Holy Trinity at Caen. In the clerestory, over every arch below, were originally two smaller semi-circular-headed arches; but these are now closed, and their place is occupied by a single, narrow, pointed window, that opens into a large recess. The corbels without, (_plate eighty-eight, fig. A._) may bear a comparison, in point of singularity, with those of any other Norman church. The sacred emblem of the Christian faith, the wimpled nun, the whiskered Saxon, and the wolf, the scourge of Neustria, are found among them, side by side with the Atlas and Cyclops of heathen mythology; and, as if the legends of Rome and Greece could not furnish sufficient subjects for the sculptor's chisel, he appears to have extended his researches into the more remote regions, bordering upon the Nile, and thence to have imported a rude imitation of the Egyptian head, and one still more rude, of the mystic Scarabæus. NOTES: [195] St. Lo was then commanded by M. Colombieres, who was so resolute in the cause, that, rather than surrender, he placed himself in the middle of the breach, with his two young sons, on either side of him, each holding a javelin in his hand, and then awaited the attack, exhorting his children to perish bravely, rather than be left to infidels and apostates. The Catholic army was headed by M. de Matignon, who had, on a former occasion, distinguished himself by his lenity towards the inhabitants of the place. The lordship of St. Lo, with the title of a barony, continued in his family as late as the year 1722, when Masseville published his History of Normandy. [196] For the following details, and indeed the greater part of the remainder of this article, the author has to express his obligations to M. de Gerville, whose kind assistance, throughout the whole of the work, cannot be too often, or too distinctly, acknowledged. [197] The bas-relief upon this medallion represents the most impressive of the miracles connected with the history of St. Lo, and one that was performed at the very moment when he was about to enter upon the duties of his episcopacy, to which, by a manifest interposition of the Deity, he had been elected at the early age of twelve years. _Rouault_, in his _Abrégé de la Vie des Evêques de Coutances_, p. 81, gives the following details respecting it; and his account, which is curious, is here inserted, as adding probability to the opinion of M. de Gerville, that this medallion at least belonged to the original structure, whatever may be thought of the rest of the church.--"Comme l'élection et la consécration de S. Lo avoient été miraculeuses, Dieu fit voir par des signes qui n'étoient pas moins surprenants que tout s'étoit fait selon sa volonté: car à la première entrée que le jeune Prélat fit dans son Eglise, la divine Puissance voulut prouver à St. Gildard, aux autres Prélats qui étoient encore presents, et à toute l'Eglise de Coûtances, que tout ce qu'ils avoient fait lui étoit très-agréable. Ce qui fut confirmé par un Miracle des plus éclatans dans la personne d'une Femme aveugle née, qui s'étant faite conduire à la porte de la Cathédrale, y attendoit le nouvel Evêque, dans l'esperance de recevoir la vüe par son intercession. En effet, lorsqu'elle apprit qu'il approchoit, elle le conjura à haute voix de lui faire voir la lumiere. Le Saint frappé d'une telle demande en rougit, et crut que c'étoit tenter Dieu que d'attendre de lui des Miracles. Mais cette pauvre femme ne cessant de crier comme l'Aveugle de l'Evangile, le Saint poussa un profond soupir, et ayant plus d'égard à la foi de la suppliante qu'à son propre mérite, il invoqua le secours du saint Esprit, fit avec confiance le signe de la croix sur les yeux de l'Aveugle, et au même instant la vüe lui fut renduë à la grande admiration de tous les assistans, qui bénirent et remerciérent Dieu de leur avoir donné un Pasteur qui prouvoit sa vocation par un si grand Miracle, en reconnoissance duquel on éleva au même lieu deux Statuës, l'une de Saint Lo, et l'autre de la femme guérie, telles qu'on les voit encore aujourd'hui au Portail de l'Eglise, où on a aussi conservé fort soigneusement la Pierre sur laquelle étoit Saint Lo lorsqu'il opera ce Miracle. C'est encore sur elle que les Seigneurs Evêques de Coûtances s'arrêtent à leur premiere entrée, pour faire les sermens et promesses accoutumées en pareille Céremonie, et qu'ils y reçoivent les complimens et applaudissemens de la Ville, pour conserver la mémoire d'un si grand Miracle." PLATE LXXXIX. AND XC. CASTLE OF FALAISE. [Illustration: Plate 89. CASTLE OF FALAISE. _North West View._] Whoever can take pleasure in the wildest extravagancies of absurd fiction, displayed in theories destitute of even the slender basis of tradition, yet raised with plausibility, connected with ingenuity, and supported by learning, may find abundant gratification in the early history of Falaise. The town, as stated in a manuscript gazetteer of Normandy, written in the seventeenth century, was not only among the most ancient in Gaul, but was founded by one of the grandsons of Noah. According to another yet more grave authority, its antiquity soars still higher, and mounts to the period of the deluge itself. It so far exceeds that of the Roman empire, that, long before the building of the immortal city, colonies were sent from Falaise into Italy, where they were known by the Aborigines, under the names of _Falisci_, or _Falerii_. A third writer, M. Langevin, author of the _Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_, assures his readers that Falaise was, from time immemorial, a station consecrated to religion; and, in a dissertation full of the most recondite information relative to the worship of Belenus and Abrasax, Isis and Felé, he so connects and intermingles the rites of those deities with the place and its vicinity, that he can scarcely be said to do it less honor than his predecessors. To turn from historians of this sanguine complexion to those of a more sober temperament, there will appear no reason for believing that the town of Falaise had existence prior to the incursions of the Saxons, or the establishment of the Normans, in Neustria. No mention of it whatever is to be found previous to the latter of these times; and its very name, obviously derived from the German word for a rock, _fels_, whence the French subsequently borrowed their appellation for cliffs, _falaise_, seems decisive as to the foundation of the town by some people of Teutonic origin. It is at the same time altogether characteristic of its situation. That Falaise was built by the Saxons, may probably, with justice, be inferred from the fact of its being casually mentioned during the reign of Rollo, as one of the places through which he passed in the year 912, while visiting the different parts of his duchy. The town cannot but have been of importance in the time of his son, William Longue-Epée; as that prince is stated to have received great assistance from the inhabitants of Falaise, and the district of the Hiémois, when engaged in a war with the people of Brittany. It is more than possible that the fortifications were added, and the castle erected, by one or the other of these sovereigns.[198] Their immediate successor, Richard Sans-Peur, is stated to have made considerable additions to the works of the place, which, in the early part of the following century, under Richard III. the fifth of the Norman dukes, was unquestionably one of the strongest holds of the province. Not long afterwards, Falaise rose into new importance, as the residence of Robert, father to the Conqueror, and the birth-place of that sovereign himself, to whom it rendered acceptable service during his youth, upon the occasion of the formidable conspiracy of the Norman barons, headed by Guy de Bourgogne, in 1046. The prince, then at Valognes, escaped with difficulty from the poniards of the assassins to Falaise, where he was received with open arms. Falaise was at that time the capital of the Hiémois. In the reign of Henry II. of England, the castle was used as a state prison, and was selected as the place of confinement of Robert, Earl of Leicester, when taken prisoner in 1173, commanding the French forces in England. At a subsequent, but not far distant period, Brito, the poetical chronicler of the deeds of Philip-Augustus, in speaking of the final subjection of Normandy to that king, mentions the town of Falaise and its capture, in the following verses:-- "Vicus erat scabrâ circumdatus undique rupe, Ipsius asperitate loci Falæsa vocatus, Normannæ in medio regionis, cujus in altâ Turres rupe sedent et moenia, sic ut ad illam Jactus nemo putet aliquos contingere posse. Hunc rex innumeris circumdedit undique signis, Perque dies septem varia instrumenta parabat, Moenibus ut fractis villâ potiatur et arcâ: Verùm burgenses et præcipue Lupicarus, Cui patriæ curam dederat rex Anglicus omnem, Elegere magis illæsum reddere castrum, Omni re salvâ cum libertatis honore, Quàm belli tentare vices et denique vinci." The foregoing was the fourth of the nine sieges that have rendered the name of Falaise memorable in Norman history. The first of them had taken place in 1027, when Falaise presumed to shelter Robert, the father of the Conqueror, during his rebellion against his brother, Duke Richard III. In point of importance, none of the sieges were equal to those of 1417 and 1589. Upon the former of those occasions, Henry V. flushed by the success that had unremittingly attended his arms, since his glorious victory at Agincourt, led his troops in person against the town, which he expected would fall an easy prey. But it resisted an incessant bombardment for three months, and did not finally surrender, till the fortifications had sustained such essential injuries, that the repairing of them by the besieged, at their own charge, was made one of the leading articles of the capitulation. It was upon this occasion, that the lofty circular tower, one of the principal objects in both these plates, was added to the castle. Tradition ascribes its erection to the celebrated English general, Talbot, then governor of the town; and, even to the present day, it bears his name.[199] The last siege of Falaise, that of December, 1589, was occasioned by the devoted adherence of the inhabitants to the League, and their consequent refusal to recognize Henry IV. as their sovereign, on account of his attachment to the Protestant faith. In defence of their creed, they had already sustained one siege in the month of July of the same year; and, headed by the Count de Brissac, governor of the castle, had repulsed the royal troops under the command of the Duke de Montpensier. But the new sovereign was not a man to be trifled with; and when Brissac, upon being summoned to surrender, replied, according to the words of De Thou, "religione se prohiberi; sumpto quippe Dominici corporis sacramento, fidem suis obligâsse de deditione se prorsùs non acturum;" the king is reported, by the same noble historian, to have returned in answer, "se menses ad totidem dies contracturum, intra quos illum, sed magno suo cum damno, religione soluturus esset." The garrison, notwithstanding these threats, did not relax in their opposition, and the town was finally taken by assault, the frost enabling the assailants to cross the moat. On this, the Count de Brissac retired to the castle, which he surrendered about a month afterwards. Falaise appears in the religious annals of Normandy, as the seat of an abbey, founded in 1127, and first occupied by regular canons of the order of St. Augustine, and placed under the invocation of St. Michael, the Archangel; but shortly afterwards transferred to the Præmonstratensian friars, and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The monastery is said to have taken its rise from an hospital, established by a wealthy inhabitant, in consequence of a beggar having died of cold and hunger in his barn. A bull from Pope Sextus IV. dated in 1475, conferred upon the abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre, ring, and pontifical insignia, together with various other honorary distinctions. The revolution deprived Falaise of its abbey and eight churches. It now retains only four; two within the walls, and two in the suburbs. Its population is estimated at about ten thousand inhabitants. [Illustration: Plate 90. CASTLE OF FALAISE. _North View._] The castle of Falaise is with justice regarded by Mr. Turner, as one of the proudest relics of Norman antiquity. The following description of it, as more copious than any other that has yet appeared, is transcribed verbatim from the Tour[200] of that author:--"It is situated on a very bold and lofty rock, broken into singular and fantastic masses, and covered with luxurious vegetation. The keep which towers above it is of excellent masonry: the stones are accurately squared, and put together with great neatness, and the joints are small; and the arches are turned clearly and distinctly, with the key-stone or wedge accurately placed in all of them. Some parts of the wall, towards the interior ballium, are not built of squared freestone; but of the dark stone of the country, disposed in a zig-zag, or, as it is more commonly called, in a herring-bone direction, with a great deal of mortar in the interstices: the buttresses, or rather piers, are of small projection, but great width. The upper story, destroyed about forty years since, was of a different style of architecture. According to an old print,[201] it terminated with a large battlement, and bartizan towers at the angles. This dungeon was formerly divided into several apartments, in one of the lower of which was found, about half a century ago, a very ancient tomb, of good workmanship, ornamented with a sphynx at each end, but bearing no inscription whatever. Common report ascribed the coffin to Talbot, who was for many years governor of the castle; and at length an individual engraved upon it an epitaph to his honor: but the fraud was discovered, and the sarcophagus put aside, as of no account. The second, or principal, story of the keep, now forms a single square room, about fifty feet wide, lighted by circular-headed windows, each divided into two by a short and massy central pillar, whose capital is altogether Norman. On one of the capitals is sculptured a child leading a lamb,[202] a representation, as it is foolishly said, of the Conqueror, whom tradition alledges to have been born in the apartment to which this window belonged: another pillar has an elegant capital, composed of interlaced bands.--Connected with the dungeon by a stone staircase is a small apartment, very much dilapidated, but still retaining a portion of its original facing of Caen stone. It was from the window of this apartment, as the story commonly goes, that Duke Robert first saw the beautiful Arlette, drawing water from the streamlet below, and was enamoured of her charms, and took her to his bed.--According to another version of the tale, the earliest interview between the prince and his fair mistress, took place as Robert was returning from the chace, with his mind full of anger against the inhabitants of Falaise, for having presumed to kill the deer which he had commanded should be preserved for his royal pastime. In this offence the curriers of the town had borne the principal share, and they were therefore principally marked out for punishment. But, fortunately for them, Arlette, the daughter of one Verpray, the most culpable of the number, met the offended Duke while riding through the street, and with her beauty so fascinated him, that she not only obtained the pardon of her father and his associates, but became his mistress, and continued so as long as he lived. From her, if we may give credence to the old chroniclers, is derived our English word, _harlot_. The fruit of their union was William the Conqueror, whose illegitimate birth, and the low extraction of his mother, served on more than one occasion as a pretext for conspiracies against his throne, and were frequently the subject of personal mortification to himself.--The walls in this part of the castle are from eight to nine feet thick. A portion of them has been hollowed out, so as to form a couple of small rooms. The old door-way of the keep is at the angle; the returns are reeded, ending in a square impost; the arch above is destroyed.--Talbot's tower, thus called from having been built by that general, in 1430 and the two subsequent years, is connected with the keep by means of a long passage with lancet windows, that widen greatly inwards. It is more than one hundred feet high, and is a beautiful piece of masonry, as perfect, apparently, as on the day when it was erected, and as firm as the rock on which it stands. This tower is ascended by a staircase concealed within the substance of the walls, whose thickness is full fifteen feet towards the base, and does not decrease more than three feet near the summit. Another aperture in them serves for a well, which thus communicates with every apartment in the tower. Most of the arches in this tower have circular heads: the windows are square.--The walls and towers which encircle the keep are of much later date; the principal gate-way is pointed. Immediately on entering, is seen the very ancient chapel, dedicated to St. Priscus, or, as he is called in French, St. Prix. The east end with three circular-headed windows, retains its original lines: the masonry is firm and good. Fantastic corbels surround the summit of the lateral walls. Within, a semi-circular arch resting upon short pillars with sculptured capitals, divides the choir from the nave. In other respects the building has been much altered. Henry V. repaired it in 1418, and it has been since dilapidated and restored. A pile of buildings beyond, wholly modern in the exterior, is now inhabited as a seminary, or college. There are some circular arches within, which shew that these buildings belonged to the original structure.--Altogether the castle is a noble ruin. Though the keep is destitute of the enrichments of Norwich or Castle-Rising, it possesses an impressive character of strength, which is much increased by the extraordinary freshness of the masonry. The fosses of the castle are planted with lofty trees, which shade and intermingle with the towers and ramparts; and on every side they groupe themselves with picturesque beauty. It is said that the municipality intend to _restore_ Talbot's tower and the keep, by replacing the demolished battlements; but I should hope that no other repairs may take place, except such as may be necessary for the preservation of the edifice; and I do not think it needs any, except the insertion of clamps in the central columns of two of the windows, which are much shattered." NOTES: [198] At the same time that no record whatever has been preserved relative to the date of the building of the castle at Falaise, the Norman chroniclers have carefully recorded the æras of the erection of the other castles in the neighborhood. That of Domfront, according to them, was built A.D. 1011 and 1014, by the Counts of Alençon; that of Caen, by William the Conqueror, but much increased by his son, Henry I.; that of Vignats, a league and a half from Falaise, about the year 1096, during the dukedom of Robert, by Robert of Montgomery, Count of Alençon, and Viscount of Hiêmes and of Falaise; and that of Argentan, by Henry I. King of England, by way of protection against his son-in-law, Geoffrey Plantagenet.--_Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_, p. 22. [199] According to Langevin, p. 30, Talbot likewise added to the castle, some noble apartments, ornamented with paintings, which also passed under his name, and of which some portions were still standing a few years ago. [200] Vol. II. p. 266. [201] This print has lately been copied into _Mr. Dibdin's Tour_, vol. II. p. 11. [202] Mr. Turner appears to be in error with regard to this capital: Mr. Cotman, who examined it more attentively, found the child to be holding _two animals_ in a leash; and he supposes them to be greyhounds, comparing them with a very similar piece of sculpture upon one of the capitals in the bishop's palace, in the castle at Durham, erected by the Conqueror.--See _Carter's Ancient Architecture_, I. pl. 17, fig. P. PLATE XCI. INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF CREULLY. [Illustration: Plate 91. INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF CREULLY.] Creully, whose church has been here selected for publication, as a favorable specimen of genuine Norman architecture, is a small market-town of the diocese of Bayeux, situated about six miles to the east of the city of that name, and fifteen miles north-west of Caen. It is an ancient barony, having been honored with that distinction by Henry I. in favor of his natural son, the Earl of Glocester, many of whose descendants, according to Masseville, were still living in Normandy in the eighteenth century, and bore the name of Creully. The same author makes mention of the Lords of Creully, on more than one occasion, in the course of his Norman history.--They are to be found in the list of the barons that accompanied Duke Robert to the Holy Land, in 1099; and when the Genoese, in 1390, called upon the King of France for succours against the infidels of the coast of Barbary, and the pious monarch sent an army to their relief, under the command of the Duke of Bourbon, the name of the Seigneur de Creully stands prominent among those who embarked upon that unfortunate expedition. Again, in 1302, the Baron of Creully held the fifth place among the nine lords from the bailiwick of Caen, who were summoned to sit in the Norman exchequer. From the days of the Earl of Glocester to the breaking out of the French revolution, the barony of Creully continued to be held by different noble families. In the early part of the eighteenth century, when Masseville published his work, it was in the hands of the heirs of M. de Seigneley-Colbert, who likewise possessed other considerable domains in Normandy. The last that had the title was a member of the family of Montmorenci.--His emigration caused the estate to be confiscated, and sold as national property; but the baronial castle is now standing, and displays, in two of its towers, and in a chimney of unusual form, a portion of its ancient character. The rest of the building is modernized into a spruce, comfortable residence, which, in 1818, was occupied by an English general of the name of Hodgson.[203] The writer of this article has met with no records connected with the church of Creully.--Externally, it is wholly modernized; but within, the nave, side-aisles, and choir, are all purely Norman, except at the extremities. The piers are very massy; the arches wide and low; the capitals covered with rude, but remarkable sculpture, which is varied on every pillar; and the walls are of extraordinary thickness. NOTES: [203] _Turner's Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 264. PLATES XCII.--XCIV. CATHEDRAL AT COUTANCES. [Illustration: Plates 92-93. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT COUTANCES. _West Front._] The diocese of Coutances, embracing the north-western portion of Celtic Gaul, appears to have been the last part of the country that was visited by the light of Christianity; but its historians boast that the tardy approach of the rays of gospel-truth has been more than compensated by their subsequent brilliancy; for that in no other of the Norman dioceses has the sun of revelation blazed with equal splendor, or given birth to fruits of equal excellence. Thus, according to Rouault,[204] as early as the fifth century, and during the whole of the two following, and a portion of the eighth, the Côtentin was so celebrated, by reason of the great number of saints, who were either natives of the country, or had retired thither as to a place of safe retreat, that it was regarded as being honored with the divine favor, beyond any other district in France. No fewer than fifteen holy men, enshrined in the Roman calendar, are said to have resided there at or near the same period; and, while their lustre irradiated the episcopal mitre, its beams extended to the remote fastnesses of the desert of Scycy, near Granville, then celebrated for the sanctity of its hermits. At a time not long subsequent, St. Algeronde and Theodoric, both of them bishops of Coutances, and the martyrs, Leo, Philip, and Gervais, three natives of Carentan, became principal instruments towards the conversion of the heathen Normans. History also records, that it was in the house of St. Clair, one of the protectors of this diocese, that the treaty was finally concluded, in conformity with which, the chief of the infidels was, with his followers, admitted within the pale of the church. The foundation of the see of Coutances is commonly supposed to have taken place about the middle of the fifth century, during the latter years of the papacy of Celestine I. and of the reign of Pharamond, in France. The see lays claim to the proud distinction of having enriched the beatified calendar with the names of at least fifteen of its bishops; of having added one to the list of the successors of St. Peter; of having supplied six cardinals to the holy college; and of having produced an equal number of martyrs. And if to this catalogue, already great, be joined the many anchorites of Scycy and of Nanteuil, who have been promoted to the episcopal dignity, _a whole legend_, to use the words of a pious author, may be filled with the lives and the miracles of the holy men of Coutances. In turning from the ecclesiastical to the secular annals of the diocese, the barons of the Côtentin scarcely occupy a less distinguished place. The histories of the Crusades, in particular, abound with their exploits. Hauteville, near Coutances, boasts to have given birth and title to Tancred, of immortal memory; who, either himself, or by his descendants, founded the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and reigned over almost the whole of Italy; while, with their victorious forces, they exterminated the Saracens, protected the holy see, supported the Cretans in the east, and carried their conquering arms to the utmost confines of the Greek empire. To them, also, the chivalrous institution of the Golden Fleece owes its origin; and so extraordinary were their exploits, that they might pass for fabulous, had they occurred in a more remote age, and did not the concurring testimony of historians unite to stamp them with the seal of truth. According to the ecclesiastical division of France before the revolution, the diocese of Coutances was bounded to the south by that of Avranches, and to the east by that of Bayeux, while, in the two remaining divisions, its limits were circumscribed by the ocean.[205] At present, it includes the whole department of La Manche; the suppression of the bishopric of Avranches having added considerably to its extent.--In Roman Gaul, Coutances was included in the province called the _Lugdunensis secunda_: but, on the subject of the foundation or early history of the city, authors are, as commonly happens, much at variance, ascribing to it, according to their fancies or their prejudices, very different degrees of antiquity. Those who are most disposed to do it honor in this respect, contend that it was the capital of the tribe mentioned by Cæsar, in his _Commentaries_, under the name of _Unelli_; and called by Pliny, _Venelli_; and by Ptolemy, _Veneli_. They are guided in this opinion exclusively by locality. Others, with a greater appearance of probability, at least as far as any reliance may be placed upon etymology, maintain that Coutances had no existence before the days of the Emperor, Constantius Chlorus, father to Constantine the Great. There have also not been wanting writers who have referred its origin to Constantine himself, or who have maintained that it was indebted for its name to its _constant_ and vigorous opposition to the Roman power. The second of these opinions appears to have obtained general credence in the time of Ordericus Vitalis, who, in speaking of Constantius, expressly says, "Hic in Neustriâ civitatem condidit, quam a nomine suo _Constantiam_ nominavit." Ammianus Marcellinus adds strength to the same belief, when he calls Coutances, _Constantia castra_. It is probable that the city was in reality the seat of the Emperor's camp, at the time when he was about to lead his forces into Britain. Of the future progress of the town, and the steps by which it rose to its present eminence, no account whatever is left. History, so profuse in details respecting many other places in Normandy, far inferior in size and in distinction, has done little more with regard to the capital of the Côtentin, than record the bare facts,--that it was pillaged by the Normans in 888; was sold by Duke Robert to his brother, Henry I. in 1087; was taken by the Count of Anjou, in the twelfth year of the following century; was, thirty years subsequently, surrendered to the Empress Maude; was wrested from John, by Philip-Augustus, in 1202; in 1418, opened its gates to the victorious arms of Henry V.; and, after remaining for thirty-one years in the hands of the English, was finally re-united to the crown of France. In 1465, Coutances lost its military character: its walls were then destroyed, and the fortifications rased, by order of Louis XI. as a punishment upon the inhabitants for their conduct, in aiding the treasonable attempt of Charles, the brother of the monarch, to obtain forcible possession of the dukedom of Normandy.[206] Not long subsequently, Francis I. gladdened the city with the royal presence, on his return from his pilgrimage to Mont St. Michel, in 1487; and his grandson, Henry III. bestowed upon it the distinction of being the capital of the bailiwick; soon after which, it suffered severely during the religious wars, especially when it fell into the power of the Calvinists, in 1562. Those merciless religionists pillaged it with an unsparing hand, even consigning a portion of it to the flames: they sacked the churches, and carried off the prelate, whom they forced to accompany them upon an ass, with his face turned to its tail. Of the bishops of Coutances, it will be sufficient here to mention three--Richard de Longueuil, who was nominated in 1455, one of the four commissioners to revise the process of the Maid of Arc, and declared her innocent; Nicholas de Briroy, who, at the end of the following century, obtained from the Pope, Paul V. in return for his extensive charities, the enviable title of _Father of the Poor_; and Geoffrey de Montbray, a prelate honored with the especial favor of the Conqueror, to whom he frequently rendered the most essential service, as well in arms as in peace. He it was, who performed mass in the Norman camp, preparatory to the battle of Hastings, and who preached at the coronation of the monarch, from whom he is said, by Ordericus Vitalis, to have received no fewer than two hundred and eighty manors in England. The present population of Coutances amounts to between eight and nine thousand inhabitants. The remains of the noble aqueduct in the neighborhood, though commonly ascribed to the times of Roman power, are said to be with more justice referable to a nobleman of the family of Haye-Paisnel, and to have been erected in the thirteenth century. The principal feature and great ornament of the city is its noble cathedral, which, regarded as a whole, may, in the opinion of M. de Gerville, challenge a comparison with any other in France. Its architecture, according to the same able antiquary, affords a satisfactory proof that the pointed arch was really used in France, full half a century before the epoch generally assigned to its introduction. Upon this latter subject, there has already been an opportunity of speaking in the present work, while treating of the Church of Lisieux; and the opinion there stated by Mr. Turner, must be allowed to derive the strongest confirmation from the cathedral of Coutances. The point is one that has frequently exercised the ingenuity of architects, and of the learned: the concluding portion, therefore, of this article, will be principally devoted to that subject.[207] It was, in the twelfth century, according to Mr. Whittington, that "the pointed arch began to shew itself in the edifices of France and the neighboring countries;" and, having originated in the east, naturally followed this direction in its course towards England. On the other hand, the sentiments of another, at least equally learned, author, the reverend Dr. Milner, have been given on more than one occasion, that the architecture, commonly denominated Gothic, really commenced in England, but did not appear till after the year 1130; the pointed arches in the church of St. Cross, erected by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, and brother of King Stephen, being probably the earliest specimen of the kind that is any where to be found. M. de Gerville combats this latter opinion, by adducing the churches of Mortain and of Coutances; the first of them, like St. Cross, an example of the mixed style, its upper arches being semi-circular, its lower pointed; the other, wholly of the latter description. The church of Mortain was founded in 1082, and must have been sufficiently finished for the performance of divine worship, within nine years after that period; as it is expressly recorded that Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, who died in 1093, was present at the ceremony of the consecration. With regard to the cathedral of Coutances, there is fortunately in existence a highly-curious document, written by an eye-witness to the building of the church, and printed in the _Gallia Christiana_[208] from the black book or chartulary of the diocese, which was compiled by order of John d'Essey, who wore the mitre in the middle of the thirteenth century. The memoir commences by reciting a portion of the hardships undergone by the see of Coutances, in common with other parts of the north of France, from the Norman invasion; and then tells how Herbert II. who succeeded to the episcopal throne in 1020, expelled, _as useless and illiterate_, the canons in possession of the church of Coutances, and took the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues into his own hands, because "_sibi minùs urbani minùsque faceti videbantur!_" It goes on to state, that his successor, Robert, far from restoring what had been seized under so extraordinary a plea, alienated the property by parcelling it out among his kindred; but that, notwithstanding this, a beginning was made in his time towards the erection of the church, which was founded by the Countess Gonora, widow of Duke Richard II. with the aid of contributions from various quarters.[209] To Robert, in the year of our Lord, 1048, succeeded the celebrated Geoffrey de Montbray, who finally completed the great work commenced by his predecessor. The first stone of the cathedral had been laid in 1030; the dedication took place in 1056, and was performed in the presence of the Duke himself, the archbishop, his suffragans, and a large proportion of the Norman nobility. Some English barons likewise crossed the sea to attend upon the occasion. The vigor of Geoffrey's character was never more strikingly exemplified, than in connection with this fabric.[210] In the earliest years of his prelacy, he undertook a voyage to Apulia, for the express purpose of obtaining from Robert Guischard, and his companions in arms, pecuniary assistance towards the building; and, during the whole course of a long life, he appears to have been unremitting in his endeavors to add whatever might contribute to its dignity, its splendour, and its utility.[211] The following lines, traced by his dying hand, well mark the man himself, and the temper of the age, and the prevalence of the ruling passion:--"Gaufridus, misericordia Dei, Constantiensis episcopus, omnibus sub christiana regeneratione degentibus, tam clericis quam laïcis, salutem, prosperitatem et pacem. Constantiensem ecclesiam quam hucusque licet indigne tenueram, tamen miserante Deo, populo meæ pravitatis augmentum et honorare studui, et extrema...... eam amplius factis adjuvare nequeo verbis quantum tutari et defensare cupio. Quicumque igitur qui sub christiana professione vocatus, præfatam ecclesiam honorare, consolari et defensare voluerit, auctoritate Domini nostri Jesu Christi ejusque sanctissimæ genetricis, in apostolica nostraque confirmatione benedictus, ab eodem Domino nostro Jesu Christo omnium bonorum retributore mercedem recipiat in futuro, et anima ejus inter choros angelorum et archangelorum, apostolorum et martyrum, confessorum et virginum requiem possideat in paradiso. Quod si aliquis irreverens et contumeliosus, avaritiæ vel cupiditatis stimulis agitatus, eam de terris suis, sive legibus et consuetudinibus, sive ornamentis absque justa et necessaria eidem ecclesiæ ratione et clericorum assensione, minorari et decurtare præsumpserit, ab his omnibus suprascriptis ordinibus maledictus, et perpetuæ damnationis anathemate circumseptus, priusquam vita decedat terribilissimi divini examinis judicio prosequente, omnibus in commune tanti sacrilegii violator appareat, et in perpetuum cum Juda traditore, et Herode, Pilato et Caipha, cunctisque sanctæ ecclesiæ adversariis ignem æternum possideat, semperque cum diabolo et angelis ejus crucietur, nec ullam in secula seculorum misericordiæ scintillam mereatur, nisi priusquam anima illa tenebrosa de corpore exierit resipuerit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. Fiat, amen." And the clergy were not wanting in their endeavors to do honor to the memory of so noble a benefactor. As the Roman historians and the Mantuan bard concur in attesting the various prodigies that foretold the approaching end of Julius Cæsar, so the monkish chroniclers relate that earth and sky united in presaging the death of Geoffrey; and, though they could not succeed in obtaining for his name admission into the calendar, they would allow of no doubt as to his reception into heaven; the details of which were communicated in a vision to one of the monks of Cerisy.--"There appeared to me," said the monk, "a palace of transcendent magnificence, in which a queen was seated, of more than earthly beauty, surrounded by a numerous court; and, while each in his turn was making his obeisance, suddenly a messenger arrived, exclaiming aloud, 'Madam, Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, is here, and is at this moment mounting the steps of the palace.' No sooner were the tidings heard, than she descended from her seat to meet the prelate; and, having welcomed him with a most gracious salutation, caused her attendants to disrobe him of his cope and boots, and then, taking the veil from her own head, wiped the wounds upon his body, and, leading him by the hand, conducted him to her room of state, and placed him near to herself upon the throne." The decease of the prelate, which took place on the following day, left no doubt as to the interpretation or the inspiration of the vision. Of the identity of the church built by Geoffrey with that now standing, it is impossible to entertain a reasonable doubt. The details, and they are many, contained in the document above quoted, all correspond with the present building. A still more decisive proof is afforded by the silence of succeeding historians, who could never have passed unnoticed so important a fact as the rebuilding of a cathedral, the repairs of which they have recorded on various occasions. The principal of these took place during the prelacy of Sylvester de la Corvelle, and were occasioned by the wars of Edward III. in the course of which, the edifice incurred the most imminent danger, and would probably have been destroyed in 1356, had not the timely arrival of the French troops caused the invading army to raise the siege of the city. A battering ram, used upon that occasion, was still shewed in Coutances, in the beginning of the last century. The king of France bestowed upon the chapter, in 1372, a sum of six hundred livres, in gold, for the express purpose of repairing the church, "_bellis attritâ et imminutâ_." At that time the Lady-Chapel was added; the great windows were inserted in the aisles; the exterior part of the choir towards the palace was built; and a portion of the work of the western front, between the towers, was repaired, and probably altered. This last has in particular tended to mislead the antiquary;--but to sum up the account, in the words of M. de Gerville,--"En y regardant plus attentivement, un antiquaire exercé facilement démêlera l'ancienne partie de l'édifice, qui est encore de beaucoup la plus considérable. Cette ancienne partie offre un modèle bien caractérisé de fenêtres en lancettes. C'est surtout aux deux tours occidentales qu'on en voit des plus étroites. Celles de la tour, ou lanterne, sont géminées. Ces lancettes, que les antiquaires Anglois rapportent au regne de Henry II. se montrent ici dans un édifice antérieur à ce prince de prés d'un siècle; et, ce qui est encore plus surprénant, elles y sont sans aucun mélange d'architecture Romane ou Saxonne."[212] [Illustration: Plate 94. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT COUTANCES. _Elevation of the Nave._] In the interior of the building, (_plate ninety-four_) the same uniformity of style prevails as in the exterior; and if, in conjunction with the cathedral of Coutances, be considered that of Lisieux, a contemporary building, and so much alike in character, that it may reasonably be doubted if they were not the production of the same architect, it will scarcely be assuming too much, to say that the date of the introduction of the pointed architecture in France, may safely be placed as early as the middle of the eleventh century. NOTES: [204] _Abrégé de l'Histoire des Evêques de Coutances_, p. 48. [205] At that time, its length was twenty-five leagues, and its width ten, without comprising the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, over which it still held a titular sway. In it were included the district of the Côtentin; the city of Coutances; the towns of St. Lo, Granville, Carentan, Vallognes, and Cherbourg; twenty-four smaller market towns; four archdeaconries; twenty-two rural deaneries; ten abbeys; twenty-four other convents; and five hundred and fifty parishes. The chapter consisted of twenty-six canons and eight dignitaries. [206] The following are the words of Robertus Cenalis upon this subject:--"Carolo, Ludovici XI. germano, quorundam procerum principumque suggestione ducatum Normanniæ non precario, sed vi impense ambiente, cum via sibi per posticum episcopalis domus aperta esset, rex idcirco indignatus incolis qui a fide defecerant, cavit decreto suo in poenam criminis, quod funditus a solo everterentur civitatis moenia, quæ nulla vel pretii, vel precum sollicitatione restitui potuerunt."--Cenalis then proceeds to say,--"Habet in templi sui meditullio merito suspiciendum spectaculum miræ architecturæ contextum, e cujus abside si quis lapillum dejecerit, nunquam a puncto designato ultra citrave dimovebitur instar laternæ vitreæ in sublime erectum: vitream arcem merito dixeris, opus sane venustum et elegans. Urbem præterea insigniter ornat aquæductus ad milliaris semissem, ingenti impensa et opera arcuatim suppositis fornicibus longo ductu protensus, cujus artificii ope civitas alluitur et rigatur. Denique si moenibus conclusa foret, quis vetet civitatem illam Constantinopolim Neustriæ maritimæ appellari!"--_Gallia Christiana_, p. 863. [207] In the following part of the description of the church of Coutances, considerable use has been made of a manuscript dissertation, kindly communicated by M. de Gerville to the author, who only laments that the limits of this publication would not allow him to insert it entire. [208] Among the _Instrumenta Ecclesiæ Constantiensis_, p. 218. [209] "Hujus tamen temporibus incoepta et ex parte constructa est Constantiensis ecclesia, fundante et coadjuvante Gonorra comitissa, auxiliantibus etiam canonicis, reditibus medietatis altaris ad tempus operi concessis, cooperantibus quoque baronibus et parochianis fidelibus, quod usque hodie contestantur aliquot ipsorum nomina insculpta lapidibus in ecclesiæ arcubus."--_Gallia Christiana, Inst._ p. 218. [210] "Anno igitur Dominicæ Incarnationis, MXLVIII. duodecim tantum diebus ipsius anni restantibus, id est IV idus Aprilis, indictione II, venerandus Gaufridus post Robertum Constantiensis episcopus Rotomagi consecratur, nobilium baronum prosapia ortus, statura procerus, vultu decorus, prudentia consilioque providus, quanquam sæpissime curialibus negotiis regiisque obsecundationibus irretitus, tamen ad ædificationem et incrementum ecclesiæ suæ omni nisu et voluntate per noctem erat et per diem, qui ut eandem ecclesiam celebrem gloriosamque restitueret, in Apuliam et Calabriam adire Robertum cognomine Guischardum parochianum suum, aliosque barones consanguineos suos, et alumnos, et notos peregre profectus, multum in auro, et argento, et gemmis, et palliis variisque divitiarum donariis acquisivit, tresque asportavit phialas plenas puro opobalsamo, aliaque pretiosissima quibus postea præfatam ecclesiam intus et extus locupletavit, majoremque crucifixum largis sumtibus et tempore longo construxit. Cum autem non haberet in civitate, sive in suburbio tantum possessionis ecclesia, ubi maneret episcopus, vel proprius equus ejus posset stabulari, sed neque propriam domum, nisi quoddam appendicium humile, quod pendebat de parietibus ecclesiæ, ipse prudentia sua et probitate valentiorem medietatem civitatis, suburbii, et telonei, et vectigalis, cum molendinis et multa Grimoldi viaca a Guillelmo invictissimo duce Normannorum, postea quoque glorioso rege Anglorum trecentis libris comparavit et acquietavit. Postea vero episcopalem aulam et reliquas officinas construxit, virgultum et vineam non modicam plantavit, capitium navis ecclesiæ cum area, et hinc inde duo majora capitia nobiliora et ampliora construxit. Duas turres posteriores a fundamentis, tertiamque supra chorum opere spectabili sublimavit, in quibus classicum consonans et pretiosum imposuit, et hæc omnia plumbo cooperuit."--_Gallia Christiana, Inst._ p. 218. [211] The instrument, above quoted, abounds in examples of this spirit. Among the rest, after detailing at length various estates which he had purchased or obtained as presents for the enriching of his church, it proceeds to say,--"Cæterum ornamenta ecclesiastica et ustencilia, calices, cruces, capsas, phylacteria, candelabra, thuribula, bacinos, siculam et ampullas aurea contulit et argentea, casulas quoque, dalmaticas, tunicas, planetas, albas, cappas mirifici operis, necnon dorsalia serica et lanea, cortinas et tapeta, sed et bibliothecas, passionales, omeliares, missales aureis litteris duos sufficientesque et competentes libros subrogavit: super hæc omnia pretiosum famosumque clerum, quo nihil pretiosius in ecclesia et utilius in officium et servitium divini cultus delegavit, septemque canonicos quos episcopus Hugo Rotomagi in ecclesia S. Laudi irregulariter constituerat, apostolica auctoritate ecclesiæ matri revocavit, itemque duos alios adjecit. Cantorem quoque, et succentorem, et rectorem scholarum, et custodes ecclesiæ, clericos quoque præbendarios, aurifabros, fabrumque ferrarium, carpentarios et magistrum coementarium in opus ecclesiæ constituit. O virum prudentem et domui suæ bene præsidentem, qui de vivis et electis lapidibus domum suam composuit, et mirabilibus columnis eam sustentavit!"--_Gallia Christiana, Inst._ p. 219. [212] The following remarks upon the architecture of the cathedral of Coutances, transcribed from the journal of a most able friend of the author's, cannot fail to be acceptable to the reader:--"The cathedral is most singular in its aspect. It is pointed throughout, except the circular arches in the vaulting over the side-chapels, and one or two segments of circles which form the door-ways, within the porches on the north and south sides. It is really a difficult task to come at any conclusion respecting the æra of the building, from an inspection of it. If it is of the Norman age, then the pointed style arose at once from a transfusion of Arabian or Tartarian architecture. The whole is of a piece, complete in conception and execution; and there are no intersecting arches from which a pointed arch may have arisen. The circles in the spandrils are in the same oriental style as at Bayeux. The peculiarities of the cathedral are--the side-porches close behind the towers; the screens of mullioned tracery, which divide the side-chapels; and the excessive height of the choir, which, having no triforium, has only a balustrade just before the clerestory windows. The centre tower is wonderfully fine in the exterior: it is apparently an expansion of the plain Norman lantern, as at Caen; but most airy and graceful. There is a double aisle round the ambit and altars are placed in the bays, as if they were distinct chapels, for which purpose they were originally intended; but the line continues unbroken. The perspective of these aisles, and also of the choir, seen from the Lady-Chapel, is very fine. The round pillars of the choir are double, as at Canterbury and Senlis. The apsis is half a duodecagon. The pointed windows above are in two lancet divisions, surmounted by a trefoil; but the dividing masonry is not a mullion: it is the unperforated part of the wall. This perhaps is arabesque. There is a second arch within, which is really divided by a mullion or small pillar. A curious leaf projects above. Some of the painted glass is in the oldest style: dispersed patterns in a black outline, on a grey ground. In a side-chapel are painted tiles, brown and yellow as usual, displaying knots and armorial bearings. In the same chapel are fresco paintings: many more are on the east side of the wall that divides the last choir-aisle from the south transept. They represent St. Michael and the Devil, the Deity between angels, &c. In all of them, the outline is formed by a thick black line." PLATE XCV. AND XCVI. MOUNT ST. MICHAEL. [Illustration: Plate 95. MOUNT ST. MICHAEL. _On the approach from Pontorson._] Religion, history, poetry, and painting, have all united in giving celebrity to St. Michael's Mount. The extraordinary sanctity of its monastery, the striking peculiarities of its form and situation, and the importance acquired by the many sieges it supported, or the almost endless pilgrimages it received, have so endeared it to the man of taste and the philosopher, that scarcely a spot is to be found in Europe, more generally known, or more universally interesting. The legendary mist with which St. Michael's Mount is now densely involved, has continued, from a period of remote antiquity, to float around its summit. Tradition delights in relating how, in times prior to the Christian æra, it was devoted to the worship of the great luminary of heaven, under his Gallic name of Belenus,[213] a title probably derived from the Hebrew Baal, and the Assyrian Belus. The same tradition recounts how, at a more recent epoch, it reared its majestic head, embosomed in a spacious tract of woods and thickets, while the hermits who had fixed themselves upon its summits, received their daily bread from the charity of the priest of the neighboring parish of Beauvoir; an ass spontaneously undertaking the office of conveying it to them, till on the road he fell a prey to a wolf, who was then constrained by Providence to devote himself to the same pious labor. At length, about the year 709, it was decreed that the rock should at once change its designation and its patron. To the clouds of Paganism, succeeded the sun of Christianity; and the original heathen appellation, _Tumba_, was replaced by one of the most elevated names of holy writ. St. Michael, "the chief of the angels and of the host of heaven, the protector of the Hebrew synagogue of yore, as now of the Catholic church, the conqueror of the old serpent, and the leader of souls to heaven," condescended to be worshipped here upon the western coast, as on Mount Garganus in the east, and with this view appeared to St. Aubert, then bishop of Avranches, commanding him to erect a church to his honor upon the mount. Another legend relates, how there had previously existed upon the same spot, a religious edifice, which had passed under the name of the _Monasterium ad duas Tumbas_, being equally appropriated to the adjoining rock of Tombeleine. However this may have been, it is admitted on all sides that a church was built, and that the hill knew thenceforth no other name than that of St. Michael's Mount; though Aubert, tardy in his belief, had refused to obey the injunction, till it had been repeated three several times, upon the last of which, the archangel touched the head of the saint, and left imprinted in his skull the marks of his fingers, which the author, here quoted, relates that he himself saw, to his great delight, in the years 1612 and 1641. To the miraculous vision, succeeded other occurrences of similar import. A tethered bull pointed out the spot where the holy edifice should be erected, and at the same time circumscribed its limits; a rock, that opposed the progress of the workmen, and was immoveable by human art, spontaneously withdrew at the touch of an infant's foot; and the earth opening, on being struck with St. Aubert's staff, gave birth to a spring of water, at once of the utmost use to the inhabitants, and gifted with the most sanative powers. At about the same period also, the sea ingulphed the neighboring forests,[214] insulating the rock; so that three messengers, who had been dispatched to Mount Garganus, thence to bring a portion of red cloth, the gift of St. Michael, together with a fragment of the stone on which he himself had sate, found on their return the aspect of things so changed, that "they thought they must have entered into a new world." History, from this period, assumes a character of comparative authenticity. The Norman conquest threatened for awhile the extinction of Christianity: the baptism of Rollo, rekindling its dying embers, made them blaze forth with a light and warmth unknown before. The duke himself, on the fourth day after he had presented himself at the holy font, endowed the monastery of St. Michael, then styled "_ecclesiam in periculo maris supra montem positam_."--No further mention occurs of the convent, during the reign of this monarch, or of his son, William Longue-Epée; but their immediate successor, Richard I. amply atoned for any neglect on their part. He built, according to Dudo of St. Quentin, a church of wondrous size, together with spacious buildings, for a body of monks of the Benedictine order, whom he established there in 988, displacing the regular canons, whose irregular lives had been the subject of much scandal. This munificence on the part of Richard, has even caused him to be regarded by some writers as the founder of the convent.--His son and successor, of the same name, selected St. Michael's Mount, as the favored spot, where, in the beginning of his reign, he received the hand of the fair Judith, sister to Geoffrey, one of the principal counts of Brittany. An opportunity was almost immediately afterwards afforded him of testifying at once his liberality and his devotion, as well as his love; for, on the first year of the eleventh century, the church, which had then been completed only five years, was burned to the ground. The prince, however, appears to have been somewhat tardy on the occasion; no attempt was made towards replacing the loss, till Hildebert II. succeeded as abbot. During his prelacy, in 1022, the foundations of a new church were laid, upon a still more extensive scale.--Twenty-six years more were suffered to elapse, and the abbatial mitre had adorned the brows of four successive abbots, when Ralph de Beaumont witnessed the completion of the work. The church then built is expressly stated by the authors of the _Gallia Christiana_, to be the same as was in existence at the time of the publication of that work;[215] and M. de Gerville confirms their remark by his own personal observation, at least as far as relates to the nave. This indeed has been shortened of late; but he is persuaded, that whatever still remains is really of the architecture of the days of Duke Richard.--Robert, the following duke, repaired to St. Michael's Mount, to superintend his forces, upon the occasion of the revolt of Alain, Count of Dol; and it was hither, also, that the archbishop of Rouen brought the humbled count, to make his peace with his offended sovereign.--At the period of the conquest, the monks of St. Michael furnished six transports towards that eventful expedition; and when, after the death of William, the dominion over the mount passed by purchase from Robert to Henry, they distinguished themselves by their attachment to their new sovereign, who here supported a siege on the part of his two elder brothers, and was finally driven to surrender only by famine. The elder of these brothers, at an advanced period of his life, re-visited the church in a far different guise; and, to discharge his vows to the archangel for his safe return from the crusade, prostrated himself before the shrine which he had erst assaulted with the fury of his arms.--The year 1158 was, almost above every other, memorable in the history of St. Michael's Mount. Henry Plantagenet, who, two years before, had there received the homage of his subjects of Brittany, then returned in pilgrim weeds, accompanied by Louis VII. whose repudiated wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, he had married; and the two monarchs, attended by a numerous throng of secular nobility, as well as by several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, kneeled in amity at the holy altar. During the reign of the ill-starred John, St. Michael's Mount passed, in common with the rest of Normandy, under the sceptre of France, and suffered severely upon the occasion. Guy of Thouars, then in alliance with Philip-Augustus, advanced against it at the head of an army of Britons; and, experiencing on the part of the inhabitants but a feeble resistance, set fire to the palisades, the principal defence of the place. The flames communicated to the houses; and the church also fell a prey to them. To use the words of Brito, "vis ignea sursùm Scandit, et ecclesiæ decus omne, locumque sacratum, Resque monasterii cremat insatiabilis omnes." Philip lamented the injury, and did all in his power to repair it; but, considering that one great source of the misfortunes of the holy place had sprung from the impiety of the Anglo-Norman monarchs, in placing their trust in ramparts made by human hands, rather than in the protection of the archangel, he levelled with the ground the few works of defence that remained.[216] His pious successor, the sainted Louis, was far from entertaining a similar feeling. On the other hand, when his devotion led him to the shrine of St. Michael, after returning from his unfortunate expedition to Damietta, the chronicles expressly state, that he placed, with his own hand, a considerable sum of money upon the altar, for the purpose of repairing the fortifications. And it appears probable that, at a period not very distant, the money thus expended stood the crown of France in good stead; for, during the war at the beginning of the fifteenth century, St. Michael's Mount was the only place that successfully resisted the English arms. The siege it supported upon that occasion, is one of the few brilliant events that give lustre to a period of French history, generally dark and gloomy. Two cannon, of prodigious size, constructed for the discharge of stone balls, above a foot in diameter, testify to the present moment the heroic defence of the garrison, and the defeat of the assailants. At a subsequent period of French history, during the times when party, under the mask of pious zeal, deluged the kingdom with blood, and virtuous men of every creed joined in the lamentation, that "tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum," the Huguenots made many and most brave and memorable, though vain, attempts to render themselves masters of St. Michael's Mount. From that time forward, the rock has been suffered to continue in tranquillity, though still retaining its character as a fortification. Its designation of late has been a departmental prison: during the reign of terror, it was applied to the disgraceful purpose of serving as a receptacle for three hundred ecclesiastics, whose age or infirmities would not allow of their being transported; and who, with cruel mockery, were incarcerated within the walls, long gladdened with the comforts, dignified with the pomp, and sanctified with the holiness of religion. Prisoners of importance, especially those charged with crimes against the state, were chiefly confined here before the revolution, when the iron cage, and the vaults, known by the ominous names of the _Oubliettes_, or the _In Pace_, gave the mount a melancholy notoriety. In this short outline of the history of St. Michael's Mount, mention has been repeatedly made of French sovereigns who have proceeded thither in pilgrimage. The task were long to enumerate all those princes and monarchs who distinguished it with this mark of their veneration. But there is one other instance too important in its consequences to be passed over in silence. Louis XI. after having expelled the rebellious Britons from Normandy in 1463, not content with paying his devotions to the archangel at his shrine, and bestowing upon the monks a donation of six hundred crowns of gold, sent them the image of St. Michael, together with the golden chain that he had himself worn upon his neck; and directed that the three escalop shells, formerly borne upon the abbatial shield, should be enriched by the addition of four others, and three lilies. Nor satisfied with this, he, six years afterwards, still further testified his devotion, by various privileges granted to the community, and by the institution of the noble military order of St. Michael,[217] whose collar was composed of silver escalop shells, while the medal bore a representation of the archangel trampling upon the dragon, with the legend, "Immensi tremor oceani."--Even in this enlightened age, the concourse of pilgrims to the mount is by no means at an end: they are still to be seen repairing to the church; and, if the female Druids have ceased for many a century to sell to the sailors their enchanted arrows, of power to still the angry ocean, when hurled into its waves by a maiden hand, the Pythonesses of the present day find a no less plentiful source of emolument in their chaplets, and rosaries, and crosses, and medals, of St. Michael. The annals of the world abound in details of the changes of form and feature which superstition has assumed in different ages; but it is humiliating to human nature to reflect, that the conquests obtained by philosophy over her great adversary, are in reality very small. Superstition, like the fabled Proteus, appears under an endless variety of forms; but she is also, like the god, still one and the same. The list of abbots of St. Michael's Mount, contains names of the highest consequence in France: the Cardinal d'Estouteville, and the still more illustrious Cardinal de Joyeuse, Henry of Lorraine, son of the Duke de Guise, and Charles Maurice, of the noble family of Broglio, have, in times comparatively modern, presided over the community. The privileges and honorary distinctions attached to the office, were also considerable. The names of the superiors of the monastery stand recorded on various occasions, as men selected for important trusts; and they were formally empowered, by a bull of Pope Clement VII. dated from Avignon, to bestow the benediction, even in the church of Avranches, and in the presence of the bishop or the metropolitan himself, and to wear the mitre, and all other episcopal insignia. The powers and immunities of the convent were likewise extensive and important. Its annual income was estimated by the author of the _Alien Priories_, in the middle of the last century, at forty thousand livres; but it is at the same time stated in that work, that, at an earlier period, it was far more considerable. Among the transmarine possessions of the abbey, was its namesake in Cornwall, which was annexed to it by Robert, Earl of Moreton and Cornwall, before the year 1085, and was also renowned for its sanctity at a very remote epoch. The coincidence in form and situation between the two is most remarkable. St. Michael's Mount, in Normandy, is situated near the extremity of the province, towards Brittany; to the south of Granville, the south-west of Avranches, and the north of Pontorson and Dol. It is a conical mass of granite, which, from a base of about one-fourth of a league in circumference, towers to the height of above four hundred feet, including the buildings that crown its summit. It stands insulated and alone, except the neighboring rock of Tombeleine, in the midst of a dreary level of white sand, that presents a surface of more than twelve square leagues, extending on all sides, almost as far as the eye can reach, and unvaried, unless where it is intersected with branches of different rivers. The whole of this space is at high water entirely covered with the sea, while the receding tide leaves it bare; yet still so, that it is difficult and dangerous to traverse it without a guide. The base of the mount is surrounded with high thick walls, flanked with semi-circular towers all machicolated, and bastions. Towards the west and north, its sides present only steep, black, bare, pointed rocks: the portions that lie in an opposite direction, incline in a comparatively easy slope, and are covered with houses that follow in successive lines, leaving but a scanty space for some small gardens, in which the vine, the fig-tree, and the almond, flourish in great luxuriance. The walls of the castellated abbey impend, and jut out in bold decided masses; and the whole is crowned by the florid choir of the abbey church. The architects of the latter time seemed to have wished to adapt this glorious building to its site. All its divisions of parts, windows, and pinnacles, are narrower and more lofty than usual; and the projections are bolder, so as to be distinctly visible from below. The stranger is admitted to the mount by a gate, of the time of Louis XII. or Francis I. He proceeds along the walls, which continue leading upwards; and, traversing desolate towers, and staircases above staircases, hanging on the sides of the rock, all forlorn, grassy, and mouldering, he is conducted to the gate of the abbey. The outside of the first gate-way has round towers: the second has a pointed arch. One pile of buildings has a row of small arches round the top. The present population of the town amounts to about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, who derive their chief support from the fishery. Of the church itself, a view is given in the Bayeux tapestry; rude indeed, but curious, as coeval.--The following is a short chronological summary of the principal events connected with the building:-- In 1103, the roof fell in, and involved in its ruins a portion of the dormitory. Ten years afterwards, on the twenty-third of April, 1113, the lightning set fire to the abbey, which was wholly consumed, except the crypt and the great columns of the nave, and some other parts of the church. Roger, then abbot, repaired the injury, rebuilding the refectory and the dormitory, and the splendid apartment, called the Knights' Hall. [Illustration: Plate 96. MOUNT ST. MICHAEL. _Interior of the Knights' Hall._] Bernard, who was abbot from 1135 to 1140, rebuilt the north part of the church, and erected the tower between the nave and the choir. Of the works done at the beginning of the thirteenth century, in consequence of the injuries received by the church during the wars of Philip-Augustus, no particulars are preserved. It is only said in general terms, that they were considerable. Richard Turstin, abbot in 1275, began buildings upon an extensive scale, between the extremity of the cloisters and the barracks. On the thirteenth of July, 1300, the lightning again struck the church, and great part of it was burned, and the bells melted, and many houses in the town reduced to ashes. The chapel of St. John the Evangelist was added by John De la Porte, the twenty-seventh abbot, who died in 1334. In 1350, a fresh injury was sustained from a tempest; but so great was the zeal employed in repairing it, that the monastery is said to have been, a very short time subsequently, in a better state than it had almost ever been before: it raised its head, however, above these misfortunes, only to experience new ones, and from the same source, in 1370. The damage was then greater, but was soon repaired; and the chapel of St. Catherine was erected. This happened during the prelacy of Geoffrey de Servin. Peter le Roy, the following abbot, is ranked among the greatest benefactors to the convent: no one contributed more to the diffusion of its fame, or the increase of learning within its precincts; but he does not appear to have done any thing to its buildings. His successor, Robert Jolivet, surrounded the mount with the walls and towers that now remain, with the view of defending it against the English, whom he afterwards joined. In 1421, the whole roof of the choir fell in. The foundations of the new choir, the remains of which are now standing, were laid by the Cardinal d'Estouteville, in 1452; and he continued the work till his death, which happened thirty years afterwards. During his prelacy, the chapels of the choir were completed, and roofed with lead; and the choir and the columns that surround the high altar, were raised to the height of the chapels. In 1509, another accident arose from lightning: the steeple, and the bells, and the wood-work of the nave, were destroyed; but the damage was soon repaired by William de Lamps, then abbot, who also built the abbatial palace and alms-house, and raised the part of the church that was unfinished, as high as the second tier of windows.--The choir was completed under the prelacy of his brother, John de Lamps, who was next but one to him in the succession, and wore the mitre from 1513 to 1523. From that time forward, till the period of the revolution, the abbacy of St. Michael's Mount was held in commendam; and the abbots, regardless of a charge in which they did not feel themselves personally concerned, ceased to bestow care or expense upon the buildings. Some of them even refused to do the necessary repairs; and more than one instance is on record, where they resisted the decrees of the Norman parliament to that effect. From the preceding details, it will easily be imagined, that the church upon St. Michael's Mount can scarcely fail to present a medley of different kinds of architecture. Two, however, predominate: in the choir, which was finished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, all is pointed and lofty: the naves and transepts are Norman. Beneath are crypts, which extend under every part of the church, supported upon short columns with capitals of foliage, &c. the arches mostly ribbed, and circular. The shortening of the nave has destroyed the western front. The cloister, according to the observations of a friend of the author, is strangely moresque in its appearance. The position of the pillars in it he regards as quite unique. The Knights' Hall, (see _plate ninety-six_,) is an arched chamber, ninety-eight feet in length, by sixty-eight in width, noble and church-like in its aspect. Its groined stone roof rests upon eighteen cylindrical columns, with bases and capitals; the latter, in very high relief, of beautiful design and delicate execution. NOTES: [213] It may be allowed, that this idea receives a certain degree of confirmation from the present name of the neighboring rock, _Tombeleine_, the natural derivation of which appears to be _Tumba Beleni_. [214] The tradition of the mount speaks of the monster that haunted the drowned forest; and when the author's friend, Mr. Cohen, visited St. Michael's Mount in 1819, his guide, Jacques Du Pont, referred to the subject, and called the beast "a monster of a Turk that ate the Christians." The figure represented on the wrapper of this work, was pointed out as a figure of the _identical_ monster. It was formerly on the outside of the wall in a niche; it is now just within the gate. "There," said Jacques, "look at his teeth and his claws; how savage he is."--The tradition is certain; but the image is nothing more than a griffin grasping a shield charged with an armorial bearing; its date 15.. [215] A. D. 1759. [216] Of old, says Brito, the place ...... "satis angelicis gaudebat tutus haberi Præsidiis, nullo dispendia tempore passus; At simul ædificans muros ibi cura Johannis Prætulit humanas vires coelestibus armis, Quemque tuebatur coelesti milite Christus, Munivit sacrum humano munimine montem, Ex tunc causa loco pereundi inventa sacrato." The author goes on to add, that the king ...... "ne fiat eis deinceps injuria talis, Præcipit ut pereat munitio toto Johannis; Et sua militiæ coelesti castra resignans, Humanis bonus excubiis locra sacra resignat, Largifluâque manu monachos juvat in renovando Sarta tecta, libros, et cætera quæ furor ignis Solverat in cinerem, quæ nobiliore paratu Quàm priùs extiterant jam restaurata videmus." _Phillip._ lib. 8, l. 114. [217] In the preamble of the statutes of this order, the monarch expresses himself in the following terms--"Nous, à la gloire de Dieu, notre créateur Tout-puissant, et revérence de glorieuse Vierge Marie, et en l'honneur de Monseigneur St.-Michel Archange, premier Chevalier, qui pour la querelle de Dieu, d'estoc et de taille, se battit contre l'ennemi dangereux de l'humain lignage, et du Ciel le trébucha, et qui en son lieu et oratoire appellé Mont-St. Michel a toujours particulièrement gardé, préservé et défendu, sans être pris, subjugué, ni mis ès mains des anciens ennemis de notre royaume, et afin que tous bons et nobles courages soient excités et plus particulièrement émus à toutes vertueuses oeuvres; le 1er. jour d'Août de l'an 1469 avons créé, institué et ordonné, et par ces présentes créons, constituons et ordonnons un Ordre de fraternité ou amiable compagnie de certain nombre de Chevaliers, jusqu'à trente six, lequel nous voulons être nommé l'Ordre de Saint-Michel." PLATE XCVII. ABBEY CHURCH OF CERISY. [Illustration: Plate 97. ABBEY CHURCH OF CERISY. _Interior of the Choir._] Cerisy, a small market-town, upon the road leading from Bayeux to St. Lo, and equally distant about four leagues from each of those places, is wholly indebted to its abbey for the celebrity it has enjoyed. In the secular history of the duchy, its name occurs upon only two occasions. The lord of Cerisy is enumerated among the companions in arms of Robert, son of the Conqueror, in his expedition to the Holy Land, in 1009; and the abbot of Cerisy was one of the twenty-one ecclesiastics from the bailiwick of Caen, cited by Philip le Bel to the Norman exchequer, in the beginning of the fourteenth century. The convent, which was at all times of the Benedictine order, is said to have been founded as early as the year 560. It was under the invocation of St. Vigor, ninth bishop of Bayeux; and, according to some authors, was established by that saint himself. Du Monstier, in the _Neustria Pia_, recites the history of its origin at great length: how the prelate, moved by the entreaties of a rich man, of the name of Volusian, destroyed, by virtue of the sign of the cross, a monstrous serpent that ravaged the country; and how Volusian, in gratitude, ceded to him the domain of Cerisy, upon which he immediately erected a monastery, and endowed it with the revenues of the property. The annals of the convent being lost, what is recorded of its history is very short. After the general destruction of religious establishments by the Saxons and Normans, that of Cerisy appears to have been left in its ruins far longer than most others. No hand is said to have been lifted towards its restoration, till the reign of Robert, father of the Conqueror. By him the monastic writers all agree that a beginning was made towards the rebuilding of this monastery; and one of them, William of Jumieges, adds, that his care of it suffered no diminution from time or distance; for that, during his wars in the Holy Land, when the patriarch of Jerusalem rewarded his pious zeal with a present of some precious relics, he immediately directed them to be here deposited. His more illustrious successor, in one of the first years of his reign, completed and richly endowed the convent begun by his father, whose remains he commanded should be brought from Palestine, for the express purpose of their being interred at Cerisy. But they were allowed to proceed no further than Apulia. In the _Neustria Pia_ is preserved a charter of King Charles VI. dated 1398, in which the various donations conferred upon the abbey of Cerisy, by the Norman Dukes, Robert, William, and Henry, are enumerated and confirmed. Its annual income, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was estimated by De Masseville at twenty thousand livres. The only property it appears ever to have possessed in England, was a priory of Benedictine monks at West Shirburne, in Hampshire. Architecturally considered, the church of Cerisy is an interesting relic of Norman workmanship. The certainty of its date, not far removed from the year 1032, and the comparatively few alterations it has undergone, render it one of those landmarks, by the aid of which the observer of the present day can alone attain to any certainty in his inquiries into ancient art. And yet, in the portion here selected for engraving, the upper row of windows is of an æra posterior to the rest; and the great arch in front has evidently changed its semi-circular form for a pointed one. Its height is unusual and impressive. Both taken collectively and in its parts, the church bears a strong resemblance to that nearly coeval at St. Georges; like which, it is now appropriated to parochial purposes, and is still of great size,[218] though the whole of the portion originally parochial, and which extended one hundred and twenty-four feet beyond what remains of the nave, has been recently pulled down. The principal front of the building, which faced the north, its position being north and south, has been consequently destroyed. The style of the edifice is characterized by a noble and severe simplicity: the capitals of the columns are, indeed, enriched with sculptured foliage or animals, or occasionally with small heads placed in the middle of a surface otherwise plain; but elsewhere the decorations are very sparingly distributed. They are confined to the chevron and billet mouldings; the latter the most ancient and most rare among the Norman ornaments. Both the transepts are parted off, as at St. Georges, by screens near the extremities: these screens at Cerisy are surmounted by an elegant parapet of semi-circular arches, a singular and very beautiful addition. NOTES: [218] The following are the dimensions of the church, according to Mr. Cotman. FEET. Length of the nave 98 Ditto of choir 64 Ditto of transepts and intervening part of the nave 118 Width of nave 73 Ditto of transepts 31 Ditto of choir, without the side-chapels 28 Height of nave 70 Before the demolition of the western extremity, the nave was two hundred and twenty-six feet long, and the total length of the building two hundred and ninety feet. PLATE XCVIII. CHURCH AT OYESTRAHAM. [Illustration: Plate 98. CHURCH OF OYESTRAHAM. _West Front._] Oyestraham, or, as it is more commonly written, Estreham, is a village situated upon the left bank of the Orne, near its confluence with the channel. Its name, derived from the Saxon,[219] seems to point it out as a settlement made by those daring invaders: its church, one of the first objects that presents itself to the English traveller, on his entering France in the direction of Caen, is well calculated to impress him with a forcible idea of the magnificence of the Norman lords of the duchy. That it was built in the time of their sway, is a fact which cannot be doubted; but, in an architectural point of view, it is so full of anomalies, that opinions would be likely to vary considerably with regard to the actual date of its erection. And here, unfortunately, no records remain to guide the judgment. In the western front, indeed! (_the subject of the plate_) the whole is of the semi-circular style, and uniform. The upper tier of arches will find a parallel in the towers of the abbey of Jumieges, built during the reign of the Conqueror; and most of the other members and decorations are of frequent occurrence in erections of the same æra. A peculiarity is alone observable in the smaller arches of the second row, in which the artist has indulged himself in what may be termed an architectural conceit, lengthening, to a very disproportionate degree, and almost in the moorish fashion, the part above the capital, in order that the whole might range in a line with the larger arch in the centre. The truncated appearance of the wall on either side, leads to the obvious inference, that either this front had originally towers, like the church of St. Nicholas, at Caen, or that it was intended there should have been such. A central tower now alone remains, of square form, with massive buttresses of unusual size, projecting towards the south. This tower, as well as the portion of the church to the east of it, exhibits the Norman and Gothic architecture mixed in a very uncommon manner. Of three rows of arches, the lowest and highest belong to the latter style; the central one only to the former. In the nave, all is Norman, excepting only two lancet windows of the upper tier, placed near the west end, on the south side, and excepting also the flying buttresses that extend from between the windows of the clerestory to the projecting aisles below. Within the choir, the trefoil-headed arch takes, in some instances, the place of the pointed in the lower row, which is wholly blank; and the capitals of the pillars, according to Mr. Cotman, shew an extraordinary playfulness of design. The arches above them are pierced for windows. Both the semi-circular ones of the second tier, and the pointed ones above, are extremely narrow, seen from without, but widen greatly within; the wall being of more than ordinary thickness. The piers of the nave are six feet five inches in diameter, while the intervening spaces scarcely exceed ten feet. NOTES: [219] On this subject, see _Huet, Origines de Caen_, p. 299.--"Estreham est le nom d'un bourg situé à l'embouchure de l'Orne, et d'un autre dans le Bessin. Mr. Bochart le faisoit, venir d'_Easter_, Déesse des anciens Saxons. Et comme il avoit entrepris de rapporter les anciennes origines à la langue et à la doctrine des Phéniciens il prétendoit que cette Easter étoit la même qu'Astarté. Ses sacrifices se faisoient au commencement du printems; et de la vient que les Saxons appellerent Easter le mois auquel se célebre la Pâque. Skinnerus ne s'éloigne pas beaucoup de ce sentiment dans son Etymologique de la langue Angloise. Mr. Valois tire le nom d'Estreham du Latin _Strata_, et de l'Allemand _Hamum_, pour marquer une Demeure bâtie sur un chemin public, ou au bout d'un chemin public, comme si le bourg d'Estreham étoit sur un grand chemin, ou au bout d'un chemin public: et qu'il ne fût pas sur une extrêmité de terre qui ne mene à rien, ayant la mer d'un côté, et l'embouchure de la riviere d'Orne de l'autre: ou comme si tous les villages du monde ne pouvoient pas être censez terminer des grand chemins. Mais ces opinions sont détruites par l'ancienne orthographe du nom d'Estreham, qui est constamment écrit dans les vieux Titres, et par Mr. de Bras, Oistreham, pour Westerham, c'est-à-dire, Village Occidental: car il se trouve placé à l'West de l'embouchure de l'Orne." PLATE XCIX. AND C. CATHEDRAL CHURCH AT SÉEZ. [Illustration: Plate 99. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT SÉEZ. _West Front._] The city of Séez, though dignified by being the seat of a bishopric, is in itself small and unimportant, its population not exceeding five thousand five hundred inhabitants. Of the early history of either the town or the diocese, little is known with certainty; and authors have scarcely felt it worth their while to exercise their ingenuity, or to display their learning, upon a subject ill calculated to add dignity to their researches. Those who have entered upon the inquiry, have given it as their opinion, that the _Civitas Sagiorum_, mentioned in the earliest _Notitia Galliæ_, as the fifth in rank among the cities of the province, _Lugdunensis Secunda_, was no other than the modern Séez; and, carrying their conjecture one step farther, they have inferred from locality, that the _Sagii_, otherwise called _Saii_, must have been the _Sesuvii_ of Cæsar's Commentaries. Hence, in more modern _Latinity_, Séez has generally acquired the name of _Sagium_; though Ordericus Vitalis occasionally calls it _Salarium_, and Magno, _Saius_. In some maps it is likewise styled _Saxia_, whence an idea has arisen that it owed its origin to the Saxons; and that the words, _Saii_ and _Sagii_, were in reality nothing more than a corruption of _Saxones_ or _Sassones_. The favorers of this opinion have brought Séez within the limits of the _Otlingua Saxonia_, a district in Normandy, whose situation and extent has been the subject of much literary controversy. The learned Huet, alluding to this very point,[220] observes, with great justice, that "it is more easy to tell what is not, than what is; and that, though the limits of bishoprics serve in general to mark the divisions of the ancient Gallic tribes, yet length of time has introduced many alterations. Able men," he adds, "have been of opinion, that Hiesmes was originally an episcopal see, and that its diocese was afterwards dismembered into three archdeaconries; one of them fixed at Séez, a second at Lisieux, and a third at Bayeux." Such, however, he says, is not his own belief; but he thinks that Hiesmes was originally the seat of the bishopric of Séez. A report to the same effect will be found in the _Concilia Normannica_; and it is adopted by Rouault,[221] who argues in its favor; first, that Séez was too insignificant, at the time of the preaching of the gospel in Neustria, to be dignified with the presence of a bishop; the apostles and earliest popes having directed that bishops should only be appointed to considerable towns: and, secondly, that Hiesmes was really then a place of importance, and probably continued so till the nineteenth year of the reign of King Henry I. of England, when that prince destroyed it, as a punishment upon the inhabitants for their revolt. Ecclesiastical history refers the establishment of the bishopric of Séez to the fourth or fifth century. The earliest, however, of the prelates, of whom any certain mention is to be found, is Litaredus, whose name appears, under the title of _Oximensis Episcopus_, subscribed to the council of Orleans in 511. Azo, who succeeded to the mitre in one of the last years of the tenth century, erected the first cathedral that is upon record at Séez. William of Jumieges relates of him, that he destroyed the walls of the city, and with their stones built a church in honor of St. Gervais, the martyr, "ubi sedes episcopalis longo post tempore fuerat." The same author tells that, in consequence of this church having been turned into a place of refuge by some rebels, about fifty years afterwards, Ivo, the third from Azo upon the episcopal throne, set fire to the adjoining houses for the purpose of dislodging them, and the church fell a victim to the flames. The act, though unintentional, brought upon the prelate a severe reprimand from the pope; and Ivo, to repair his fault, undertook a journey to his relatives and friends in Apulia and Constantinople, whence he returned, loaded with rich presents, by the aid of which he undertook the erection of a new church upon so large a scale, that "his successors, Robert, Gerard, and Serlo, were unable to complete it in fifty years." The cathedral then raised is said to be the same as is now standing; and, according to what has already been recorded of the cathedrals of Lisieux and Coutances, there is nothing in its architecture to discredit such an opinion. The first stone was laid about the year 1053: the dedication took place in 1126. Godfrey, archbishop of Rouen, performed the ceremony in the presence of Henry, then duke, who, at the same time, endowed the church with an annual income of ten pounds. The diocese of Séez is surrounded by those of Lisieux, Evreux, Mans, and Bayeux. According to De Masseville,[222] it extended, before the revolution, twenty-five leagues in length, and from eight to ten in width, comprising the districts of _le Houme_, _les Marches_, and a part of _le Perche_. The towns of Séez, Alençon, Argentan, Falaise, Hiesmes, Mortagne, and Bellême, together with several smaller towns, and five hundred villages, were also included in its limits; as were five archdeaconries, six rural deaneries, and many abbeys and other religious houses. The episcopal revenue was estimated at only ten thousand livres. The late concordat, by reducing the number of the Norman dioceses, has of course added to the extent of those that remained. Seven of the early bishops of Séez are inscribed among the saints of the Roman calendar: in later times, no names appear of greater eminence than those of Frogerius and John de Bertaut. The first of these prelates was much in the confidence of Henry II. to whom he rendered acceptable service in his unfortunate disputes with Thomas-à-Becket. He was not only one of the very few bishops who then preserved their fidelity to their sovereign inviolate, but he undertook a mission to the French king, for the purpose of remonstrating upon the favorable reception given to the primate, on which occasion he received the following memorable answer:--"Tell your master, that if he cannot submit to the abolition of the ordinances, which he designates as the customs of his ancestors, because he thinks it would compromise the dignity of his crown, although, as it is reported, they are but little conformable to the will of God, still less can I consent to sacrifice a right that has always been enjoyed by the kings of France. I mean the right of giving shelter to all persons in affliction, but principally to those who are exiled for justice sake, and of affording them, during their persecution, all manner of protection and assistance."--John de Bertaut lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century: he was principal almoner to Mary de Medicis, and was afterwards in high favor with Henry IV. to whose conversion he is said to have mainly contributed. He likewise distinguished himself as a poet.--A third bishop of Séez, Serlo, already mentioned, was a man of such commanding eloquence, that, when he had the honor of preaching before Henry I. and his court, at Carentan, in 1106, he declaimed with so much effect against the effeminate custom of wearing long beards and long hair, that the sovereign declared himself a convert, and the bishop, "_extractis e manticâ forcipibus, primo regem tum cæteros optimates attondit_."[223] [Illustration: Plate 100. CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF NOTRE DAME, AT SÉEZ. _Elevation of the Nave._] The church of Séez may be compared in its architecture with those of Coutances and of Lisieux: they are unlike, indeed, but by no means different. The points of resemblance exceed those of a contrary description. "facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen, qualem decet esse sororum." Severe simplicity characterizes Lisieux: Coutances is distinguished by elegance, abounding in decoration: Séez, at the same time that it unites the excellencies of both, can rival neither in those which are peculiarly its own. On the first view of the church, its mean and insignificant western tower strikes the spectator with an unfavorable impression, which, on a nearer approach, the mutilated and encumbered state of the western front is by no means calculated to remove. And yet this western front, all degraded as it is, cannot fail to derive importance from the great depth of the central door-way, which is no less than forty-seven feet,[224] a projection exceeding that of the galilee of Peterborough cathedral. It is in the interior that the beauty of the church of Séez is conspicuous. The noble lofty arches below; the moresque ornament, like those at Bayeux and at Coutances, in the spandrils; the double lancet arches of the triforium placed in triplets; and the larger pointed arches above, arranged two or three together, and encircled with arches of the Norman form, though not of the Norman style;--all these beauties, added to the enrichments of the sculptured walls and windows of the aisles, render the cathedral, if not the first of Norman religious buildings, at least in the number of those of the first class, "Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores." NOTES: [220] _Origines de Caen_, p. 5. [221] _Abrégé de la Vie des Evêques de Coutances_, p. 40. [222] _Etat Géographique de Normandie_, p. 304. [223] _Gallia Christiana_, XI. p. 684. [224] The following are the dimensions of the other parts of the building. FEET. Length of nave (including a space of sixty-four feet under the towers) 218 Ditto of choir 57 Ditto of aisle behind the choir 14 Ditto of Lady-Chapel 25 Ditto of each transept 39 Width of nave and choir, including aisles 72 Ditto of Lady-Chapel 20 Ditto of transepts 30 Height of nave and choir 80 Ditto of north-west spire 232 Ditto of south-west ditto 210 THE END. LEICESTER: PRINTED BY THOMAS COMBE, JUNIOR. INDEX OF PLATES. NO. OF PLATE. _Andelys_, Great House 15 _Anisy_, Church 67 _Arques_, Castle 1 _Bieville_, Church 58, 59 _Bocherville, St. Georges de_, Church 5-11 _Briquebec_, Castle 70 _Caen_, Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity 24-33 ------ Abbey Church of St. Stephen 21-23 ------ Chapel in the Castle 48 ------ Church of St. Nicholas 55, 56 ------ Church of St. Michel de Vaucelles 18, 19 ------ House in the Rue St. Jean 65 _Cerisy_, Abbey Church 97 _Château Gaillard_ 80, 81 _Cheux_, Church 57 _Colomby_, Church 47 _Coutances_, Cathedral 92-94 _Creully_, Church 91 _Dieppe_, Castle 34 -------- Church of St. Jacques 35, 36 _Eu_, Screen in the Church of St. Lawrence 72 _Falaise_, Castle 89, 90 _Fécamp_, Church of St. Stephen 71 _Fontaine-le-Henri_, Château 62, 63 ------------------- Church 60, 61 _Foullebec_, Western door-way of Church 84 _Gournay_, Church of St. Hildebert 38-41 _Grâville_, Church 12 _Haute Allemagne_, Tower of Church 37 _Jumieges_, Abbey Church 2-4 _Léry_, Church 44-46 _Lillebonne_, Castle 69 _Lisieux_, Church of St. Peter 73-75 _Louviers_, South porch of Church 79 _Matilda, Queen_, Tombstone of 33* _Montivilliers_, Abbey Church 82 _Mount St. Michael_ 95, 96 _Oyestraham_, Church 98 _Perriers_, Church 68 _Rouen_, Cathedral 49-52 ------- Chapel in the Hospital of St. Julien 42, 43 ------- Church of St. Ouen 76 ------- Church of St. Paul 54 ------- Crypt in the Church of St. Gervais 53 ------- Fountain of the Stone Cross 77 ------- House in the Place de la Pucelle 64 ------- Palace of Justice 78 _St. Lo_, Church of the Holy Cross 87, 88 _St. Sanson sur Rille_, Ruins of the Church 83 _St. Sauveur le Vicomte_, Abbey Church 14 ------------------------ Castle 13 _Séez_, Cathedral 99, 100 _Tamerville_, Church 17 _Tancarville_, Castle 85, 86 _Than_, Church 16 _Tréport_, Church 66 _William the Conqueror_, Statue of 20 TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE Original spelling, even where inconsistent, and punctuation have been preserved. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. In the list of SUBJECTS--CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, a + has been used in place of the original obelisk. Typographical errors corrected in the text (in brackets the original): 17. Church of Tamerville [Tancarville] in the _tenth [ninth] plate_, and marked A and B daughters and nieces [neices] of the chief Norman barons marking the connection of the _twenty-eighth [twentieth] plate_ rendered the necessity for such decisions [dicisions] 
29077	----	file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Million Book Project) BYZANTINE CHURCHES IN CONSTANTINOPLE MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO [Illustration: PLATE I. MEDIAEVAL MAP OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY BONDELMONTIUS. _Frontispiece._] NOTE ON THE MAP OF CONSTANTINOPLE For the map forming the frontispiece and the following note I am greatly indebted to Mr. F. W. Hasluck, of the British School at Athens. The map is taken from the unpublished _Insularium Henrici Martelli Germani_ (_B.M. Add. MSS._ 15,760) f. 40. A short note on the MS., which may be dated approximately 1490, is given in the _Annual of the British School at Athens_, xii. 199. The map of Constantinople is a derivative of the Buondelmontius series, which dates from 1420, and forms the base of all known maps prior to the Conquest. Buondelmontius' map of Constantinople has been published from several MSS., varying considerably in legend and other details:[1] the best account of these publications is to be found in E. Oberhummer's _Konstantinopel unter Suleiman dem Grossen_, pp. 18 ff. The map in B.M. _Arundel_, 93, has since been published in _Annual B.S.A._ xii. pl. i. In the present map the legends are as follows. Those marked with a dagger do not occur on hitherto published maps. Reference is made below to the Paris MS. (best published by Oberhummer, _loc. cit._), the Venetian (Mordtmann, _Esquisse_, p. 45, Sathas, [Greek: Mnêmeia], iii., frontispiece), and the Vatican (Mordtmann, _loc. cit._ p. 73). TRACIE PARS--GALATHA OLIM NVNC PERA--Pera--S. Dominicus--Arcena--Introitus Euxini Maris. ASIE MINORIS PARS NVNC TVRCHIA.--TVRCHIA. Tracie pars--Porta Vlacherne--[Symbol: cross] Ab hec (_sic_) porta Vlacherne usque ad portam Sancti Demetri 6 M.P. et centum et decem turres--[Symbol: cross] Porta S. Iohannis[1]--Porta Chamici[2]--Porta Crescu--Porta Crescea--[Symbol: cross] Ab hec (_sic_) porta que dicitur Crescea usque ad portam Sancti Demetri septem M. passuum et turres centum nonaginta octo. Et ad portam Vlacherne 5 M. passuum et turres nonaginta sex--Receptaculum Conticasii[3]-Porta olim palacii Imperatoris--Porta S. Dimitri--Iudee[4]--Pistarie p.[5]--Messi p.--Cheone p.[6]--S. Andreas--S. Iohannes de Petra--Hic Constantinus genuflexus--[Symbol: cross] Ad S. Salvatorem--[Symbol: cross] Columna Co(n)s?--Hic Iustinianus in equo[7]--Sancta Sophia--Hippodromus--S. Demetrius--S. Georgius-S. Lazarus--Domus Pape--Domus S. Constantini--Sanctorum Apostolorum--Porta antiquissima mire (_sic_) arte constructa[8]--S. Marta[9]--S. Andreas--S. Iohannes de Studio--Perleftos. F. W. H. [1] S. Romani? [2] Porta Camidi, _Vat._ [3] Receptaculum fustarum dein Condoscalli, _Par._ [4] Porta Judea, _Par._ [5] Porta Piscarii, _Par._ [6] Porta Lacherne, _Par._, delle Corne, Vat., del Chinigo (i.e. [Greek: Kynêgiou]) in the xvi. cent. Venetian maps. [7] Theodosius in aequo eneo, _Ven._ In hoc visus imp. Teod. equo sedens, _Vat._ [8] Porta antiquissima pulcra, _Par._ [9] St. Ma[=m] (as?) _Ven._ Sts. Marcus, _Vat._ BYZANTINE CHURCHES IN CONSTANTINOPLE THEIR HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE BY ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN, M.A., D.D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, ROBERT COLLEGE, CONSTANTINOPLE AUTHOR OF 'BYZANTINE CONSTANTINOPLE,' 'CONSTANTINOPLE' ASSISTED BY RAMSAY TRAQUAIR, A.R.I.B.A. LECTURER ON ARCHITECTURE, COLLEGE OF ART, EDINBURGH W. S. GEORGE, A.R.C.A., AND A. E. HENDERSON, F.S.A. WITH MAPS, PLANS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1912 COPYRIGHT PREFACE This volume is a sequel to the work I published, several years ago, under the title, _Byzantine Constantinople: the Walls of the City, and adjoining Historical Sites_. In that work the city was viewed, mainly, as the citadel of the Roman Empire in the East, and the bulwark of civilization for more than a thousand years. But the city of Constantine was not only a mighty fortress. It was, moreover, the centre of a great religious community, which elaborated dogmas, fostered forms of piety, and controlled an ecclesiastical administration that have left a profound impression upon the thought and life of mankind. New Rome was a Holy City. It was crowded with churches, hallowed, it was believed, by the remains of the apostles, prophets, saints, and martyrs of the Catholic Church; shrines at which men gathered to worship, from near and far, as before the gates of heaven. These sanctuaries were, furthermore, constructed and beautified after a fashion which marks a distinct and important period in the history of art, and have much to interest the artist and the architect. We have, consequently, reasons enough to justify our study of the churches of Byzantine Constantinople. Of the immense number of the churches which once filled the city but a small remnant survives. Earthquakes, fires, pillage, neglect, not to speak of the facility with which a Byzantine structure could be shorn of its glory, have swept the vast majority off the face of the earth, leaving not a rack behind. In most cases even the sites on which they stood cannot be identified. The places which knew them know them no more. Scarcely a score of the old churches of the city are left to us, all with one exception converted into mosques and sadly altered. The visitor must, therefore, be prepared for disappointment. Age is not always a crown of glory; nor does change of ownership and adaptation to different ideas and tastes necessarily conduce to improvement. We are not looking at flowers in their native clime or in full bloom, but at flowers in a herbarium so to speak, or left to wither and decay. As we look upon them we have need of imagination to see in faded colours the graceful forms and brilliant hues which charmed and delighted the eyes of men in other days. In the preparation of this work I have availed myself of the aid afforded by previous students in the same field of research, and I have gratefully acknowledged my debt to them whenever there has been occasion to do so. At the same time this is a fresh study of the subject, and has been made with the hope of confirming what is true, correcting mistakes, and gathering additional information. Attention has been given to both the history and the architecture of these buildings. The materials for the former are, unfortunately, all too scanty. No continuous records of any of these churches exist. A few incidents scattered over wide tracts of time constitute all that can be known. Still, disconnected incidents though they be, they give us glimpses of the characteristic thoughts and feelings of a large mass of our humanity during a long period of history. The student of the architecture of these churches likewise labours under serious disadvantages. Turkish colour-wash frequently conceals what is necessary for a complete survey; while access to the higher parts of a building by means of scaffolding or ladders is often impossible under present circumstances. Hence the architect cannot always speak positively, and must leave many an interesting point in suspense. Care has been taken to distinguish the original parts of a building from alterations made in Byzantine days or since the Turkish conquest; while, by the prominence given to the variety of type which the churches present, the life and movement observable in Byzantine ecclesiastical art has been made clear, and the common idea that it was a stereotyped art has been proved to be without foundation. Numerous references to the church of S. Sophia occur in the course of this volume, but the reader will not find that great monument of Byzantine architectural genius dealt with in the studies here offered. The obstacles in the way of a proper treatment of that subject proved insuperable, while the writings of Salzenberg, Lethaby, and Swainson, and especially the splendid and exhaustive monograph of my friend Mr. E. M. Antoniadi, seemed to make any attempt of mine in the same direction superfluous if not presumptuous. The omission will, however, secure one advantage: the churches actually studied will not be overshadowed by the grandeur of the 'Great Church,' but will stand clear before the view in all the light that beats upon them. I recall gratefully my obligations to the Sultan's Government and to the late Sir Nicholas O'Conor, British Ambassador at Constantinople, for permission to make a scientific examination of the churches of the city. To the present British Ambassador, Sir Gerard Lowther, best thanks are due for the facilities enjoyed in the study of the church of S. Irene. I have been exceedingly fortunate in the architects who have given me the benefit of their professional knowledge and skill in the execution of my task, and I beg that their share in this work should be recognized and appreciated as fully as it deserves. To the generosity of the British School at Athens I am indebted for being able to secure the services of Mr. Ramsay Traquair, Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects and Lecturer on Architecture at the College of Art in Edinburgh. Mr. Traquair spent three months in Constantinople for the express purpose of collecting the materials for the plans, illustrations, and notes he has contributed to this work. The chapter on Byzantine Architecture is entirely from his pen. He has also described the architectural features of most of the churches; but I have occasionally introduced information from other sources, or given my own personal observations. I am likewise under deep obligation to Mr. A. E. Henderson, F.S.A., for the generous kindness with which he has allowed me to reproduce his masterly plans of the churches of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, S. Mary Panachrantos, and many of his photographs and drawings of other churches in the city. I am, moreover, indebted to the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund for courteous permission to present here some of the results of the splendid work done by Mr. W. S. George, F.S.A., under unique circumstances, in the study of the church of S. Irene, and I thank Mr. George personally for the cordial readiness with which he consented to allow me even to anticipate his own monograph on that very interesting fabric. It is impossible to thank Professor Baldwin Brown, of the University of Edinburgh, enough, for his unfailing kindness whenever I consulted him in connection with my work. Nor do I forget how much I owe to J. Meade Falkner, Esq., for kindly undertaking the irksome task of revising the proofs of the book while going through the press. I cannot close without calling attention to the brighter day which has dawned on the students of the antiquities of Constantinople since constitutional government has been introduced in the Ottoman Empire. Permission to carry on excavations in the city has been promised me. The archaeology of New Rome only waits for wealthy patrons to enable it to reach a position similar to that occupied by archaeological research in other centres of ancient and mediaeval civilizations. But the monuments of the olden time are perishable. Of the churches described by Paspates in his _Byzantine Studies_, published in 1877, nine have either entirely disappeared or lost more of their original features. It was no part of wisdom to let the books of the cunning Sibyl become rarer and knowledge poorer by neglecting to secure all that was obtainable when she made her first or even her second offer. ALEXANDER VAN MILLINGEN. ROBERT COLLEGE, CONSTANTINOPLE. [Greek: Polis ekklêsiôn galouche, pisteôs archêge, orthodoxias podêge.] NICETAS CHONIATES. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE 1 CHAPTER II CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST OF THE STUDION 35 CHAPTER III CHURCH OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS 62 CHAPTER IV CHURCH OF S. IRENE 84 CHAPTER V CHURCH OF S. ANDREW IN KRISEI 106 CHAPTER VI CHURCH OF S. MARY PANACHRANTOS 122 CHAPTER VII CHURCH OF S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS 138 CHAPTER VIII CHURCH OF S. THEODOSIA 164 CHAPTER IX CHURCH OF S. MARY DIACONISSA 183 CHAPTER X CHURCH OF SS. PETER AND MARK 191 CHAPTER XI CHURCH OF THE MYRELAION 196 CHAPTER XII CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN TRULLO 201 CHAPTER XIII CHURCH OF S. THEKLA 207 CHAPTER XIV CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES 212 CHAPTER XV CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR 219 CHAPTER XVI CHURCH OF S. THEODORE 243 CHAPTER XVII MONASTERY OF MANUEL 253 CHAPTER XVIII MONASTIR MESJEDI 262 CHAPTER XIX BALABAN AGA MESJEDI 265 CHAPTER XX CHURCH OF THE GASTRIA 268 CHAPTER XXI CHURCH OF S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS 272 CHAPTER XXII BOGDAN SERAI 280 CHAPTER XXIII CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA 288 CHAPTER XXIV MOSAICS AND FRESCOES IN THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA 321 CHAPTER XXV DATING AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE CHURCHES 332 BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 LIST OF EMPERORS 341 INDEX 343 PLANS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE 1. Kasr Ibn Wardan 4 2. Deré Aghsy 6 3. Deré Aghsy (Section) 6 4. S. Nicholas, Myra 7 5. Church of the Koimesis, Nicaea 8 6. Church of the Koimesis, Nicaea (Section) 9 7. Map of Byzantine Constantinople _facing_ 15 8. The Saucer Dome or Dome-Vault 16 9. The Dome on Pendentives 16 10. The Drum Dome 17 11. Diagram of Vaulting in Outer Narthex of S. Saviour in the Chora. 22 CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST OF THE STUDION 12. Plan of the Church 56 13. Long Section 57 14. Cross Section, looking east 58 15. Cross Section, looking west 58 16. Elevation of the Narthex 59 17. Longitudinal Section of western portion of the Nave--Half-cross Section of the Nave 59 18. Details of the Narthex, Colonnade, Doors, Windows 60 19. Details of Doors; Details from Church of S. Theodore; Details from S. Saviour in the Chora 61 CHURCH OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS 20. Inscription on the Frieze in the Church 74 21. Exterior View of the Dome 77 22. Brick Stamps in the Church 79 23. Ground Plan (looking up) 80 24. Gynaeceum Plan (looking up) 80 25. Plan at base of Dome (Cross Section) 81 26. Transverse Section 81 27. Section through South Aisle 81 28. Constructive Section of the Interior Arrangement, showing Gynaeceum Floor, Vaulting, Roof, and Springing of Dome 82 29. Constructive Section of the Rear, with Gynaeceum, Floor, and Roof removed 82 30. Sections of Mouldings 83 CHURCH OF S. IRENE 31. Ground Plan of the Atrium and Church _facing_ 104 32. Gallery Plan " 104 33. Longitudinal Section " 104 34. South Elevation " 104 35. West Elevation " 105 CHURCH OF S. ANDREW IN KRISEI 36. Plan of the Church (restored) 118 37. Plan of the Church 119 38, 39. Longitudinal Sections 120 40. Isometrical Section (restored) 121 CHURCH OF S. MARY PANACHRANTOS 41. Details of the Shafts in East Windows of South Church 124 42. Inscription on Apse of North Church 131 43. Plan of the Church (conjectural) 135 44. Plan of the Church 135 45. Section through the North Church 135 46. Section through the South Church 135 CHURCH OF S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS 47. Plan of the Church (conjectural) 152 48. Brick Details from the Parecclesion 154 49. Inscribed String-course on Apse of the Parecclesion 157 50. Plan of the Church--Plan of the Parecclesion--Plan of the Gynaeceum in the Parecclesion _facing_ 160 51. Cross Section of the Church, looking east 161 52. The Parecclesion, east end of south side 162 53. Sections in the Parecclesion--Plan of Dome in the Gynaeceum 163 CHURCH OF S. THEODOSIA 54. Interior of the Church, looking west 171 55. Details from the Church--Details from Church of S. Theodore--Capital and Shaft found near Unkapan Gate 174 56. Ground Plan 179 57. Plan of the Gynaeceum 180 58. Section in the Gynaeceum 181 59. Longitudinal Section of the Church 181 60. Isometrical Section, showing scheme 182 CHURCH OF S. MARY DIACONISSA 61. Plan of the Church 189 62. Longitudinal Section 190 CHURCH OF SS. PETER AND MARK 63. Font in the street to the west of the Church--A Window in S. Saviour in the Chora 194 64. Plan of the Church 195 65. Longitudinal Section 195 CHURCH OF THE MYRELAION 66. Plan of the Church 200 67. Longitudinal Section 200 CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN TRULLO 68. Details from the Church--Details from the Pammakaristos--Details from the Pantepoptes 203 69. Details from S. Andrew in Krisei--Details from the Chora 204 70. Plan of S. John in Trullo--Longitudinal Section--Plan of the Dome 206 CHURCH OF S. THEKLA 71. Plan of the Church--Cross Section 206 CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES 72. Sketches from the Church 213 73. Plan of the Church--Longitudinal Section 217 74. Details from the Church 218 CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR 75. Details from the Church--Details from S. Saviour Pantepoptes 225 76. Inlaid Marble Pavement in the Pantokrator--Tile Pavement in the Gallery of S. Theodosia 234 77. Plan of the Pantokrator _facing_ 240 78. Longitudinal Section through the North Church 241 79. Longitudinal Section through the Central Church 241 80. Longitudinal Section through the South Church 242 CHURCH OF S. THEODORE 81. Details from the Church 245 82. Plan of the Church by Texier 249 83. Part of South Elevation showing the Side Chapel by Texier 249 84. Plan of the Church 251 85. Longitudinal Section 251 86. Front Elevation--Half-Plan of Central Dome in the Narthex 252 87. South Elevation and Section through Vaulted Bay of Narthex--Half-Plan of Central Dome 252 MONASTERY OF MANUEL 88. Plan of the Refectory 261 MONASTIR MESJEDI 89. Plan of the Church--Cross Section 261 BALABAN MESJEDI 90. Plan of the Building 267 91. Section 267 CHURCH OF THE GASTRIA 92. Plan of the Church 267 CHURCH OF S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS 93. Exterior View 273 94. Interior View 274 95. The Dome (Interior View) 276 96. Plan of Church 279 97. Plan of S. Nicholas Methana 279 BOGDAN SERAI 98. Plan of Upper Chapel--Half-Section of Apse--Half-Section of East End--Longitudinal Section 287 CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA 99. Details from the Church 305 100. Details of a Window in the Gallery 309 101. Plan of S. Sophia, Salonica 313 102. Plan of the Chora (restored) 314 103. Bay in the Chora (restored) 315 104. Plan of Church of the Archangels, Sygé 316 105. Plan of the Chora and the Parecclesion 317 106. Cross Section, looking west 318 107. Plan of Upper Gallery 318 108. Section through Church 319 109. Section through Chapel 319 110. Plan of Dome 320 111. Section through Inner Narthex 320 112. Plan of Gallery between the Church and the Parecclesion 320 113. Section of North Gallery 320 114. Plan of the Narthexes, indicating the positions of their Mosaics 321 115. Model of the Church in the Mosaic over Main Door in the Inner Narthex 326 116. Plan of the Parecclesion, indicating positions of its Frescoes 328 PLATES I. Mediaeval Map of Constantinople by Bondelmontius _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE II. The Myrelaion (since it was burned). (1) From the north-west. (2) From the south-east 20 III. (1) The Myrelaion (since it was burned). The Interior, looking east. (2) Suleiman Aga Mesjedi 24 IV. (1) Bracket in S. Saviour in the Chora. (2) Sculptured Slab in S. Theodore. (3) S. Mary Diaconissa. Heads of Windows in south arm. (4) Sculptured Slab on the West Wall 28 CHURCH OF S. JOHN OF THE STUDION V. (1) The Ruined Interior, seen from the minaret of the mosque. (2) The West Side of the Church 36 VI. (1) Façade of the Narthex. (2) The Ruined Interior, at the West End of the North Side 40 VII. (1) Entablature and Anta Capital in the Narthex. (2) Cornice in the Narthex, looking up 44 VIII. The Church from the south-east 48 IX. (1) The East End of the Church. (2) East End of the North Side of the Church 52 X. (1) The Cistern beside the Church. (2) Another View of the same 54 THE CHURCH OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS XI. The Interior of the Church, looking north-west 62 XII. (1) A Capital in the Church. (2) A Capital in the Narthex of S. John of the Studion 66 XIII. (1) The Church from the south-east. (2) View in the Gallery over the Narthex 70 XIV. (1) The Interior of the Church, looking north-east. (2) Portion of the Entablature in the Church 74 XV. The Baptistery of the Church of S. Sophia. (1) The Exterior from the north-east. (2) The Interior of the Dome, showing Continuous Pendentives 76 THE CHURCH OF S. IRENE XVI. The Church from the south-east 84 XVII. (1) The South Side. (2) The North Side 86 XVIII. The Interior, looking east 90 XIX. (1) Vaulting at the north-western Corner of the Atrium. (2) The Northern Arch of the Main Dome, seen from the South Gallery 92 XX. (1) Mosaic in the Soffit of an Arch. (2) Portion of the Mosaic Inscription on the Outer Arch of the Apse 96 XXI. (1) The Interior, looking west. (2) The Door at the East End of the North Aisle 98 XXII. (1) Vaulting over the South Aisle. (2) A Compartment of Vaulting in South Aisle, looking up 100 XXIII. (1) A Capital in the South Arcade. (2) Base of a Column in the South Aisle 102 THE CHURCH OF S. ANDREW IN KRISEI XXIV. The East End of the Church 106 XXV. (1) The Church from the south-west. (2) The Interior, looking south 108 XXVI. (1) A Capital in the Inner Narthex. (2) A Capital in the Arcade under the West Dome Arch 110 XXVII. (1) A Capital in the Outer Narthex. (2) A Capital in the Outer Narthex 112 XXVIII. (1) View in the Outer Narthex. (2) View in the Inner Narthex, looking south 114 XXIX. (1) View in the Cloister. (2) View in the Courtyard 116 XXX. (1, 2, 3) Three Views of the Decorated Doorway in the Cloister 118 THE CHURCH OF S. MARY PANACHRANTOS XXXI. (1) Vault of the Passage on the West of the Dome in the South Church. (2) The Interior of the North Church, looking north 122 XXXII. (1) The North Church, looking east. (2) The North Church, looking west 126 XXXIII. (1) The Diaconicon, looking east. (2) The Western Dome Arch in the South Church 128 XXXIV. (1) The East Window of the South Church. (2) The Outer Narthex, looking south 130 XXXV. (1) The East End of the South Church. (2) The East End of the North Church 132 CHURCH OF S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS XXXVI. (1) The Church from the south-east. (2) The Church from the west 138 XXXVII. (1) The Inner Narthex, looking south. (2) The Dome, looking west 142 XXXVIII. The Parecclesion from the south-east 144 XXXIX. (1) The East End of the Parecclesion. (2) The West Column in the Parecclesion 148 XL. (1) The East Column in the Parecclesion. (2) The Column flanking the East Window in the Apse of the Parecclesion. (3) The West Column in the Parecclesion 150 XLI. (1) Interior View of the Dome in the Parecclesion. (2) Mosaic in the Dome of the Parecclesion 154 XLII. South Side of the Parecclesion 156 CHURCH OF S. THEODOSIA XLIII. (1) The East End of the Church. (2) The Church from the south-east 164 XLIV. (1) The Interior, looking north-east. (2) The Eastern Dome Arch 168 XLV. (1) The Dome over the Stairway to the Galleries. (2) The Narthex, looking north, and the Stairway to the Galleries 172 CHURCH OF S. MARY DIACONISSA XLVI. (1) The North-west Side, seen from the Aqueduct of Valens. (2) The North Arm, looking east 182 XLVII. (1) The Interior, looking north-east. (2) The Interior, looking south-east 184 XLVIII. (1) The Lower Part of the North Side of the East End. (2) The Upper Part of the North Side of the East End 186 XLIX. (1) South Eikon Frame. (2) Detail in the South Eikon Frame 188 L. (1) The Interior, looking west. (2) A Capital on the Column at the Entrance to the Church 190 CHURCH OF SS. PETER AND MARK LI. (1) The Church from the south-east. (2) Font outside the Church 192 LII. (1) The Dome, looking north. (2) Looking across the Dome, from the south-west 194 CHURCH OF THE MYRELAION LIII. (1) The South Side of the Church. (2) The Narthex, looking north 196 LIV. (1) The Interior, looking east. (2) The south-west Angle of the Cross 198 LV. (1) S. John in Trullo from the south-west. (2) The Interior of Balaban Mesjedi 202 LVI. The Church of S. Thekla. (1) From the north-west. (2) The East End 208 THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES LVII. (1) Door leading from the Outer to the Inner Narthex. (2) The Dome, looking west 212 LVIII. (1) Decoration in Brick on the Exterior of the South Wall. (2) Bracket in the Parecclesion of S. Mary Pammakaristos 214 CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR LIX. The Church from the west 220 LX. (1) The Church from the north-west. (2) Fragments of Sculptured Marbles found in the Church 222 LXI. (1) Interior of the South Church, looking east. (2) The Southern Arm of the Church 224 LXII. (1) Entrance from the Narthex to the South Church. (2) Interior, looking from the South Church through into the North Church 226 LXIII. (1) The Gallery in the North Church, looking south. (2) Interior of the North Church, looking east 228 LXIV. (1) Arch in the North Wall of the South Church, seen from the South Church, looking north. (2) Arch in the North Wall of the South Church, seen from the Central Church, looking south 230 LXV. (1) Narthex of the North Church, looking north. (2) Outer Narthex of the South Church, looking north 232 LXVI. (1) South Bay in the Gallery of the South Church. (2) View in the North Church, looking south 234 LXVII. (1) The Pulpit in the South Church. (2) West Side of the Central Bay in the Gallery of the South Church 236 LXVIII. (1) Interior of the East Dome in the Central Church. (2) Interior of the Dome in the South Church, looking north 238 LXIX. (1) The East End from the south. (2) East Window of the Central Church. (3) The East End from the north 242 CHURCH OF S. THEODORE LXX. (1) The North End of the Western Façade. (2) The Church from the north-west 244 LXXI. (1) The Central Dome from the south. (2) The Western Façade from the south 246 LXXII. (1) The South Cross Arm (exterior) from the south-east. (2) The East End from the south 248 LXXIII. (1) The Capital on the Southernmost Column in the Façade. (2) Capital in the Façade 250 LXXIV. (1) The Outer Narthex, looking north. (2) Capital on the North Side of the Door leading from the Outer to the Inner Narthex 254 LXXV. (1) The Interior, looking east. (2) The Interior (upper part), looking east 256 THE REFECTORY OF THE MONASTERY OF MANUEL LXXVI. (1) From the west. (2) From the south-east 258 LXXVII. Cistern of Aetius 262 CHURCH OF THE GASTRIA LXXVIII. (1) The Church from the east. (2) The Entrance 268 LXXIX. (1) The Church from the west. (2) The Interior 270 BOGDAN SERAI LXXX. (1) The Apse in the Upper Chapel. (2) A Pendentive of the Dome. (3) The Chapel, from the north-west 280 CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA LXXXI. (1) The Church from the west. (2) The Church from the south-east 288 LXXXII. (1) The Church from the north-east. (2) The North Side of the Church 292 LXXXIII. (1) The Inner Narthex, looking south. (2) Another View of the same 296 LXXXIV. (1) A Capital in the Outer Narthex. (2) Another Capital in the Outer Narthex 300 LXXXV. (1) The Interior, looking north-west. (2) The Outer Narthex, looking south 304 LXXXVI. (1) The Eikon Frame on the South-eastern Pier. (2) The Interior, looking east 308 LXXXVII. (1) The Cornice above the Main Door (on the Interior). (2) The Archivolt on the North Wall of the Parecclesion. (3) Window Heads in the Central Apse 310 LXXXVIII. (1) The East End of the Parecclesion. (2) A Capital at the Entrance to the Parecclesion 314 LXXXIX. (1) The Parecclesion, looking south-east. (2) The Parecclesion, looking west 316 XC. (1) Mosaic representing the Miracle of Water turned into Wine. (2) Mosaic representing Mary caressed by her parents, and blessed by priests seated at a banquet 322 XCI. (1) Mosaic representing the Registration of Mary and Joseph at Bethlehem. (2) Mosaic representing Theodore Metochites offering the Church to Christ 326 XCII. The Archivolt on the South Wall of the Parecclesion, with the Epitaph in honour of Tornikes 330 CHAPTER I BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE I. PLANNING At the beginning of the fifth century, which is a suitable point from which to date the rise of Byzantine architecture, three principal types of church plan prevailed in the Roman world:-- I. The Basilica: an oblong hall divided into nave and aisles, and roofed in wood, as in the Italian and Salonican examples, or with stone barrel-vaults, as in Asia Minor and Central Syria. II. The Octagonal or Circular plan covered with a stone or brick dome, a type which may be subdivided according as (1) the dome rests upon the outer walls of the building, or (2) on columns or piers surrounded by an ambulatory. The Pantheon and the so-called Temple of Minerva Medica at Rome are early examples of the first variety, the first circular, the second a decagon in plan. S. George at Salonica is a later circular example. An early instance of the second variety is found in S. Constanza at Rome, and a considerable number of similar churches occur in Asia Minor, dating from the time of Constantine the Great or a little later. III. The Cross plan. Here we have a square central area covered by a dome, from which extend four vaulted arms constituting a cross. This type also assumes two distinct forms: (1) Buildings in which the ground plan is cruciform, so that the cross shows externally at the ground level. Churches of this class are usually small, and were probably sepulchral chapels rather than churches for public worship. A good example is the tomb of Galla Placidia at Ravenna. (2) In the second form of the Cross church the cross is enclosed within a square, and appears only above the roofs of the angle chambers. An example is seen in the late Roman tomb at Kusr en Nûeijîs in Eastern Palestine. In this instance the central square area is covered with a dome on continuous pendentives; the four arms have barrel-vaults, and the angles of the cross are occupied by small chambers, which bring the ground-plan to the square. The building is assigned to the second century, and shows that true though continuous pendentives were known at an early date[10] (Fig. 8). Another example is the Praetorium at Musmiyeh, in Syria,[11] which probably dates from between 160 and 169 A.D. At some later time it was altered to a church, and by a curious foreshadowing of the late Byzantine plan the walls of the internal cross have entirely disappeared from the ground-plan. The dome rests on four columns placed at the inner angles of the cross, and the vaulted cross arms rest on lintels spanning the space between the columns and the outer walls. From these three types of building are derived the various schemes on which the churches of the Byzantine Empire were planned. Of the basilican form the only example in Constantinople that retains its original plan is S. John the Baptist of the Studion (p. 56), erected _c._ 463 A.D. The church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus (p. 70) and the baptistery of S. Sophia (p. 78) represent respectively the two varieties of the octagonal plan. In the former the dome rests on piers surrounded by an ambulatory; in the latter the dome rests upon the outer walls of the buildings. Both are foundations of Justinian the Great. Of the Cross church plan showing the cross externally at the ground level no example survives in the city. But at least one church of that form was seen at Constantinople in the case of the church of the Holy Apostles. This was essentially a mausoleum, built originally by Constantine the Great and reconstructed by Justinian to contain the sarcophagi of the sovereigns and the patriarchs of New Rome.[12] The church of S. Mark at Venice was built on the plan of the Holy Apostles. It is a cruciform church with aisles, but the galleries which might have been expected above them are omitted. The central dome rests on four piers, and four smaller domes cover the arms. Professor Strzygowski gives examples of cross-planned cells in the catacombs of Palmyra,[13] and in many Eastern rock tombs.[14] Such cross plans are found also in the Roman catacombs. These subterranean chapels, of course, do not show the external treatment, yet there can be little doubt that the external cross plan was originally sepulchral, and owes its peculiar system of planning to that fact. On the other hand, it was adopted in such churches as S. Mark's at Venice and in the French examples of Périgord for aesthetic or traditional reasons. In passing now to a consideration of the distinct forms developed from these pre-Byzantine types of church building, the classification adopted by Professor Strzygowski may be followed. In his _Kleinasien_ he has brought forward a series of buildings which show the manner in which a dome was fitted to the oblong basilica, producing the domed basilica (_Kuppelbasilica_), an evolution which he regards as Hellenistic and Eastern. In contrast to this, Strzygowski distinguishes the domed cross church (_Kreuzkuppelkirche_), of which S. Theodosia in Constantinople (p. 170) is the typical example and which is a Western development. A comparison of the two forms is of great importance for the study of certain Constantinople churches. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--KASR IBN WARDAN (Strzygowski).] The domed basilica, as the name indicates, is a basilica with nave and aisles, in which a square bay in the centre of the nave is covered by a dome on pendentives. To north and south, within the arches supporting the dome, appear the nave and gallery arcades of the basilica; and as the galleried basilica is a usual Eastern form galleries are usual in the domed basilica. As seen from the central area, therefore, the north and south dome arches are filled in with arcades in two stories, and the side aisles and galleries are covered with barrel vaults running parallel to the axis of the church. At the west end a gallery over the narthex may unite the two side galleries. At Kasr ibn Wardan, instanced by Strzygowski as a typical domed basilica,[15] there is such a western gallery (Fig. 1). According to Strzygowski the domed basilica is older than the fifth century. The domed basilica remains always an oblong building, and whilst the two sides to north and south are symmetrical, the western end retains the basilican characteristics--it has no gallery or arcade communicating with the central area. The narthex communicates with the nave by doors, and if a gallery is placed above it, both narthex and gallery are covered by barrel vaults. In the domed cross church (_Kreutzküppelkirche_) the central dome rests on barrel vaults which extend to the outer walls of the building and form the arms of the cross, the eastern arm forming the bema. The lighting of the church is by windows in the gable walls which terminate the north, south, and west cross arms. The prothesis and diaconicon open off the side arms, and two small chambers in the western angles of the cross bring the plan externally to the usual rectangular form. The domed cross church may have galleries, as in S. Theodosia (p. 170), or may be without them, as in SS. Peter and Mark (p. 193). Where galleries are present they are placed in the cross arms and are supported by arcades at the ground level. The vaults beneath the galleries are cross-groined. The domed cross church is a centrally planned church, in contrast to the domed basilica, which is oblong, and therefore we should expect that where galleries are used they will be formed in all three arms of the cross, as is the case in S. Theodosia. There are a number of churches which vary from these types, but which can generally be placed in one class or the other by the consideration of two main characteristics: if the dome arches extend to the outer walls the building is a domed cross church; if the galleries are screened off from the central area by arcades the building is a domed basilica. The church at Derè Aghsy,[16] for instance, if we had only the plan to guide us, would appear to be a typical domed basilica (Fig. 2), but on examining the section we find that the north and south dome arches extend over the galleries to the outer walls and form cross arms (Fig. 3). The building is, in fact, a domed cross church with no gallery in the western arm. Above the narthex at the west end, and separated from the western cross arm, is a gallery of the type usual in the domed basilica, so that Derè Aghsy may be regarded as a domed cross church with features derived from the domed basilica. S. Sophia at Constantinople, the highest development of the domed basilica, has a very similar western gallery. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--DERÉ AGHSY (Rott).] The church of S. Nicholas at Myra[17] (Fig. 4) has a gallery at the west end, but the cross arms do not appear to be carried over the galleries. The plan is oblong and the cross-groined vault is not used. The church, therefore, takes its place as a domed basilica. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--DERÉ AGHSY--SECTION (Rott).] The church of the Koimesis at Nicaea[18] (Figs. 5 and 6) has no galleries to the sides. The aisles open into the central area by arcades, above which are triple windows over the aisle vaults. At the western end is a gallery above the narthex. The aisles are barrel-vaulted, and as the church is planned on an axis from east to west, and is not symmetrical on all three sides, it is regarded as a domed basilica. It is such a form as might be developed from a basilica without galleries. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--S. NICHOLAS, MYRA (Rott).] In Constantinople there are three churches which seem to constitute a type apart, though resembling in many ways the types just considered. They are S. Andrew in Krisei, (p. 117), S. Mary Pammakaristos (p. 150), and S. Mary Panachrantos (p. 130). In these churches, as originally built, the central dome is carried on four arches which rise above a one-storied aisle or ambulatory, allowing of windows in the dome arches on three sides--the eastern dome arch being prolonged to form the bema. The dome arches have arcades communicating with the ambulatory on the north, south, and west. The vaulting is executed either with barrel or with cross-groined vaults. These churches are evidently planned from a centre, not, like the domed basilicas, from a longitudinal axis. At the same time the absence of any cross arms differentiates them from the domed cross churches. S. Andrew, which still retains its western arcade, dates from at least the sixth century, so that the type was in use during the great period of Byzantine architecture. Indeed, we should be inclined to regard S. Andrew as a square form of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, but without galleries. The type is a natural development from the octagonal domed church with its surrounding ambulatory. [Illustration: FIG. 5.--THE CHURCH OF THE KOIMESIS, NICAEA (Wulf).] The typical late Byzantine church is a development from the domed cross plan. In three examples in Constantinople, S. Theodosia (pp. 170, 172), S. Mary Diaconissa (p. 185), and SS. Peter and Mark (p. 193), we can trace the gradual disappearance of the galleries. S. Theodosia, as has already been mentioned, has galleries in all three cross arms. In S. Mary Diaconissa they are confined to the four angles between the cross arms; SS. Peter and Mark is a simple cross plan without galleries. In later times it became customary to build many small churches, with the result that the chambers at the angles of the cross, of little account even in a large church, were now too diminutive to be of any value, and the question how to provide as much room as possible for the worshippers became paramount. Accordingly the dome piers were reduced to mere columns connected with the outer walls of the building by arches; and thus was produced the typical late Byzantine plan--at the ground level a square, enclosing four columns; above, a Greek cross with a dome on the centre. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE CHURCH OF THE KOIMESIS, NICAEA (Rott).] From its distinguishing feature this type has been styled the 'four column' plan. It appears in many Constantinopolitan churches, as, for example, S. Theodore (p. 248) and S. Saviour Pantepoptes (p. 214). The cross arms are not always equal, and may be covered with barrel vaults (p. 214) or with cross-groined vaults (p. 198). The bema is usually a bay added to the eastern arm. The angle chambers have either cross-groined vaults or flat dome vaults. In general the churches of this type in Constantinople do not differ from the numerous churches of the same class in the provinces.[19] A lobed cruciform plan is found in only one church in Constantinople, that of S. Mary of the Mongols (p. 277). Here the central dome is supported on four piers set across the angles of the square, so that the pendentives do not come to a point as usual, but spring from the face of the piers. Against each side of the square a semi-dome is set, thus producing a quatrefoil plan at the vaulting level. Both trefoiled and quatrefoiled churches are not uncommon in Armenia, such as the cathedral at Etschmiadzin;[20] trefoiled churches of a later date are found in the western provinces, and examples have been published from Servia,[21] Salonica,[22] and Greece.[23] An unusual form of the cross plan is seen in the building known as Sanjakdar Mesjedi (p. 267), where a cross is placed within an octagon. Probably the building was not originally a church. It resembles the octagon near the Pantokrator (p. 270), and may, like it, have been a library. _Single Hall Churches._--The plans hitherto considered have all been characterised by the presence of aisles, galleries, or other spaces adjoining the central area. The churches of the present class consist simply of an oblong hall, terminating in an apse, and either roofed in wood, or covered with domes placed longitudinally, and resting to north and south on wall arches. Examples of this plan are found in Monastir Mesjedi (p. 264), S. Thekla (p. 211), Bogdan Serai (p. 284), and in the memorial chapels attached to the Pantokrator (p. 235), and the Chora (p. 309). In the case of these two memorial chapels, their narrow, long-stretched plan is evidently due to the desire to keep their eastern apses in line with the east end of the churches they adjoin, and at the same time to bring the western end to the narthex from which they were entered. They are covered with two domes, a system perhaps derived from S. Irene (p. 94). Kefelé Mesjedi (p. 257), which at first sight resembles a single hall church roofed, in wood, was a refectory. Its plan may be compared with that of the refectory at the monastery of S. Luke at Stiris.[24] II. ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES AND DETAILS _Apses._--A fully developed Byzantine church terminated in three apses: a large apse, with the bema or presbytery, in the centre; on the right, the apse of the prothesis where the sacrament was prepared; on the left, the apse of the diaconicon, where the sacred vessels were kept. Although there is proof that the prothesis and the diaconicon were in use at a very early period, yet many churches of the great period, as for example S. John of the Studion, SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and S. Sophia, dispensed with these chambers as distinct parts of the building. They were also omitted in small churches of a late date, where they were replaced by niches on either side of the bema. The three apses usually project from the east wall of the church, but occasionally (p. 248) the two lateral apses are sunk in the wall, and only the central apse shows on the exterior. As a rule the apses are circular within and polygonal without. It is rare to find them circular on both the interior and the exterior (p. 203), and in Greece such a feature is generally an indication of late date. An octagonal plan, in which three sides of the octagon appear, sometimes with short returns to the wall, is the most common; but in later churches polygons of more sides are used, especially for the central apse, and these are often very irregularly set out. Some of the churches of Constantinople show five, and even seven sides. _Bema._--The bema is rectangular, and sometimes has concave niches on each side (p. 130). It is covered either with a barrel or with a cross-groined vault, and communicates with the prothesis and the diaconicon. _Prothesis and Diaconicon._--These chambers are either square (p. 214) or have a long limb to the east resembling a miniature bema (p. 214). They are lower than the central apse and the cross arms, so that the cruciform figure of the church shows clearly above them on the exterior,[25] though in some churches with galleries small chapels overlooking the bema are placed above them at the gallery level (S. Theodosia). They have usually a niche on three sides, and are either dome vaulted or have cross-groined vaults. The combination of a cross-groined vault with four niches springing from the vaulting level is particularly effective. In S. Saviour in the Chora (p. 307) these chambers are covered with drum domes, pierced with windows, but this treatment is quite exceptional. _The Gynecaeum._--In the development of church building, the gynecaeum, or gallery for women, tends to become less and less important. In S. Sophia, S. Irene, and S. Theodosia, the gallery is a part of the structure. In S. Mary Diaconissa (p. 185) it is reduced to four boxes at the angles of the cross, while in S. Mary Pammakaristos and SS. Peter and Mark it is absent (pp. 149, 193). But though no longer a structural part of the church, a gynecaeum appears over the narthex in the latest type of church (p. 215). It is generally vaulted in three bays, corresponding to the three bays of the narthex below, and opens by three arches into the centre cross arm of the church and into the aisles. _The Narthex._--Unlike the gynecaeum, the narthex tends in later times to become of greater importance, and to add a narthex was a favourite method of increasing the size of a church. In basilican churches, like S. John of the Studion, the narthex was a long hall in three bays annexed to the west side of the building, and formed the east side of the atrium. In domed cross churches with galleries the passage under the western gallery was used as a narthex, being cut off from the central area by the screen arcade which supported the gallery. Such a narthex has been styled a 'structural narthex,' as forming an essential part of the central building. It occurs in several of the churches of the city (p. 114). In domed cross churches without galleries, and in churches of the 'four column' type, neither narthex nor gallery was possible within the cross, and accordingly the narthex was added to the west end. It is usually in three bays and opens into the aisles and central area. Frequently the ends of the narthex terminate in shallow niches (p. 198). In many churches a second narthex was added (p. 166) to the first, sometimes projecting an additional bay at each end, and communicating with halls or chapels on the north or south, or on both sides of the church (p. 128). S. Mark's at Venice presents a fine example of such an extension of the narthex. When a church could not be sufficiently enlarged by additional narthexes, a second church was built alongside the first, and both churches were joined by a narthex which extended along the front of the two buildings. S. Mary Panachrantos (p. 128) is a good example of how a church could be thus enlarged from a simple square building into a maze of passages and domes. _The Interior._--The natural division, in height, of an early church, whether basilican or domical, was into three stories--the ground level, the gallery level, and the clearstory or vault level. In the West these structural divisions were developed into the triple composition of nave-arcade, triforium, and clearstory. In the East, in conjunction with the dome, these divisions survive in many examples of the later period. Still, Byzantine architecture was more concerned with spaces than with lines. Large surfaces for marble, painting, or mosaic were of prime importance, and with the disappearance of the gallery the string-course marking the level of the gallery also tended to disappear. In churches with galleries, like S. Theodosia (p. 170) and S. Mary Diaconissa (p. 185), the string-courses fulfil their function, the first marking the gallery level, the second the springing of the vault. In SS. Peter and Mark (p. 193), which has no gallery, there is only one string-course, corresponding in level to the original gallery string-course; accordingly the main arches are highly stilted above it. The absence of the second string-course is a faulty development, for a string-course at the vault level would be a functional member, whereas at the gallery level it is meaningless. In the Panachrantos (p. 130), as well as in other churches without a gallery, the gallery string-course is omitted by a more logical development, and the string-course at the springing of the vault is retained. Openings which do not cut into the vault are then frankly arched, without impost moulding of any kind. Simple vaulted halls, narthexes, and passages have usually a string-course at the vaulting level, broken round shallow pilasters as at the Chora, S. Theodosia, and the Myrelaion. Sometimes the string-courses or the pilasters or both are omitted, and their places are respectively taken by horizontal and vertical bands. Decorative pilasters flush with the wall are employed in the marble incrustation of S. Sophia. In churches of the 'four column' type the full triple division is common but with a change in purpose. A gallery in a church of this character is not possible, for the piers between which the gallery was placed have dwindled into single shafts. Hence the first string-course ceases to mark a gallery level and becomes the abacus level of the dome columns, as in the north and in the south churches of the Pantokrator. It is then carried round the building, and forms the impost moulding of the side arches in the bema and of the east window. Sometimes, however, it does not extend round the bema and apse but is confined to the central part of the church, as in the Myrelaion, S. Theodore, and the Pantepoptes. On the other hand, in at least one case, the parecclesion of the Pammakaristos, the central part of the chapel is designed in the usual three tiers, but the apse and bema vaults spring from the lower or abacus string-course, leaving a lunette in the dome arch above pierced by a large window. A corresponding lunette at the west end opens into the gynecaeum of the chapel. In S. John in Trullo the two string-courses coalesce and the arches connecting the columns with the walls cut into the stilted part of the dome arches, with the result that all the structural arches and vaults spring from the same level. [Illustration: FIG. 7. (Map of BYZANTINE CONSTANTINOPLE)] _Arches._--Though the pointed arch was known and employed in cisterns, as in the Cistern of the One Thousand and One Columns, Bin-bir-derek, the circular arch is invariably found in work meant to be seen. The difficulty attending this form, in which arches of unequal breadth do not rise to the same height, was overcome, as in the West, by stilting, that is, by raising the smaller arches on straight 'legs' to the required height. The stilted arch, indeed, seems to have been admired for its own sake, as we find it used almost universally both in vaulting and in decorative arches even where it was not structurally required. In windows and in the arches connecting the dome columns to the wall stilting is sometimes carried to extremes. _Domes._--The eastern dome of S. Irene, erected about 740 A.D., is generally considered to be the first example of a dome built on a high drum, though S. Sophia of Salonica, an earlier structure, has a low imperfect drum. After this date the characteristics of the Byzantine dome are the high drum divided by ribs or hollow segments on the interior, polygonal on the exterior, and crowned by a cornice which is arched over the windows.[26] Drumless domes are sometimes found in the later churches, as in the narthexes of the Panachrantos and S. Andrew, the angle domes of S. Theodosia, and in Bogdan Serai. These are ribless hemispherical domes of the type shown in Fig. 8, and are in all cases without windows. The earlier system of piercing windows through the dome does not occur in the later churches, though characteristic of Turkish work. The three diagrams (Figs. 8, 9, and 10) illustrate the development of the dome: firstly, the low saucer dome or dome-vault in which dome and pendentives are part of the same spherical surface; secondly, the hemispherical dome on pendentives; and thirdly, the hemispherical dome with a drum interposed between it and the pendentives. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--THE SAUCER DOME OR DOME-VAULT.] Flat external cornices on the dome are not uncommon in the later churches of Byzantine Greece, as in S. Sophia at Monemvasia.[27] In Constantinople only one dome with a flat cornice can be regarded as original, that of S. John in Trullo, a church which is exceptional also in other respects. The many other domes in the churches of Constantinople on high drums and with flat cornices are Turkish either in whole or in part. The high ribless domes of the Panachrantos, for instance, circular in plan within and without, with square-headed windows, plain stone sill, and flat cornice in moulded plaster, may be regarded as typical Turkish drum-domes. As will appear in the sequel, the dome over the north church of the Pantokrator and the domes of SS. Peter and Mark, the Diaconissa, and S. Theodosia, are also Turkish. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--THE DOME ON PENDENTIVES.] It is most unfortunate that the domes of these three domed cross churches have been altered, especially as the domes of S. Mary Diaconissa and S. Theodosia are larger than any of the later domes except the large oval dome on the central church of the Pantokrator which is almost of the same size. It is therefore now difficult to say what was the precise form of the original domes. Most probably they were polygonal drum-domes, and their collapse owing to their size may well have led to the small drum-domes of later times. Though not strictly Byzantine these Turkish domes are of interest as showing the development of Byzantine forms under Turkish rule, and that reversion to the earlier drumless dome which is so marked a feature of the imperial mosques of the city. [Illustration: FIG. 10.--THE DRUM DOME.] Domes are either eight, twelve, or sixteen sided, and usually have a window in each side. These numbers arise naturally from setting a window at each of the cardinal points and then placing one, two, or three windows between, according to the size of the dome. Internally the compartments are separated by broad, flat ribs, or are concave and form a series of ridges on the dome which die out towards the crown. In sixteen-sided domes of the latter type the alternate sides sometimes correspond to the piers outside, so that the dome which has sixteen sides within shows only eight sides without, as in the narthex of S. Theodore (p. 246). The octagonal dome of the Myrelaion (p. 198) seems to have had only four windows from the beginning. The ribs of a Byzantine dome are not constructive in the same way as are the ribs of a Gothic vault. They were built along with the rest of the dome and of the same material, and are in no way separate from the infilling, though they no doubt strengthened the shell of the dome by their form[28]. On the outside a circular shaft with a very simple cap is often placed at the angles of the piers, and from these shafts the brick cornice springs in a series of arches over the windows. Sometimes the angle is formed by a point between two half-shafts, as in the domes of the narthex in S. Theodore (p. 246). _External Treatment._--In the older churches the exterior seems to have been left in simple masses of brickwork, impressive only by their size and proportion. Probably even this effect was not considered of great importance. In later times a very beautiful system of decoration with slender shallow niches was introduced and was applied in particular to the east end and to the apses. The finest examples of this system on a large scale are seen at the Pantokrator (p. 235) and S. Theodosia (p. 173). Carefully considered or elaborate external compositions are rare, and the only examples in Constantinople are the side chapel of the Pammakaristos (p. 154) and the narthex of S. Theodore (p. 246). _External Marble and Mosaic._--Marble and mosaic, we have reason to know, were occasionally used on the exterior of churches,[29] though no fragments remain. On the south side of the Pantepoptes (p. 216) the string-course does not correspond to the line of the walls, but projects in a manner which shows that marble must have been employed to line the large windows. A similar projection of the string-course or cornice is not uncommon elsewhere, though not so evident as in the Pantepoptes, and may have been made to receive a marble or mosaic lining. _Doors and Windows._--It is a primary rule in Byzantine architecture that all constructive openings are arched. Whatever may be the eventual form of a door or window the opening is first built in brick with a semicircular head, and into this opening the marble jambs and lining are fitted leaving a semicircular lunette above. Doors are square-headed, with heavily moulded architraves and cornice, and the lintel is mitred into the jambs instead of having the more constructive horizontal joint used in the West. The doors made of wood or of wood lined with bronze, swing on top and bottom pivots which turned in bronze-lined sockets in lintel and threshold. They closed with a rebate in the jambs and against the raised threshold. Windows were sometimes filled in a similar manner, as in the palace of the Porphyrogenitus and in the north gallery of S. Saviour in the Chora (Fig. 100). In the latter double windows or shutters were employed, opening inwards in the same way as did the doors. These shutters may perhaps be regarded as domestic, for in the churches, as is still seen in S. Sophia though the arrangement has vanished elsewhere, the entire arched opening was usually filled in with a pierced marble grille. In addition to the simple round-headed windows double and triple windows are found. Double windows were naturally formed by dividing the single arch by a central pier. This method presented two varieties: either the pier was continued up to the containing arch, thus giving two pointed lights, or the two lights were covered by separate arches within the main arch. Both methods are used in the narthex of S. Theodore (p. 247). Another variety was produced by placing two single lights together, with a shaft between them instead of the central pier. But as double windows are not very satisfactory, triple windows are more common. In this case both the methods just described of forming the windows were adopted. A large semicircular opening divided by two piers will give an arched light between two pointed lights, or three arched lights, as in the narthex of S. Theodore. In the former case, if shafts are substituted for the piers, a little adjustment will produce the beautiful form found in the side-chapels of the Pammakaristos (p. 152), and of S. Saviour in the Chora (p. 310), where the two side lights are covered by half-arches whose crowns abut on the capitals of the shafts, while between and above them rises the semicircular head of the central light. The method of grouping three arched windows of the same height is adopted in apse windows, each of them occupying one side of the exterior. As the deep, narrow mullions are set radiating, the arch is narrower inside than outside. But this difficulty was overcome, partly by lowering the inner crowns, so that the arch is conical, partly by winding the surface. In the Pantokrator (p. 238), instead of radiating to the centre of the apse, the side and mullions are placed parallel to the axis of the church, thus obviating all difficulty. Generally the centre to which the mullions radiate is considerably beyond the apse, so that any necessary little adjustment of the arch could easily be made. Triple windows supported on circular columns are not infrequent in the north and south cross arms. Sometimes the central light is larger than the lateral lights, at other times, as in the Pantepoptes, the three lights are equal. The lower part of these windows was probably filled in with a breastwork of carved slabs, as in S. Sophia, while the upper part was filled by a pierced grille. At present the existing examples of these windows have been built up to the abaci of the capitals, but in the church of S. Mary Diaconissa (p. 186) the columns still show the original form on the inside. _Vaulting._--All Byzantine churches of any importance are vaulted in brick. The only exception to this rule in Constantinople is the little church known as Monastir Mesjedi (p. 264). The different systems of Byzantine vaulting have been so fully treated by Choisy and other authorities, that in the absence of any large amount of new material it is not necessary to give here more than a few notes on the application of these systems in Constantinople. It should always be kept in view that, as these vaults were constructed with the lightest of centering, the surfaces and curves must have been largely determined by the mason as he built, and would not necessarily follow any definite geometrical development. "Il serait illusoire," remarks Choisy, "d'attribuer à toutes les voutes byzantines un trace géométrique rigoureusement défini."[30] [Illustration: PLATE II. (1) THE MYRELAION (SINCE IT WAS BURNED), FROM THE NORTH-WEST. (2) THE MYRELAION (SINCE IT WAS BURNED), FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. (By kind permission of H. M. Dwight, Esq.) _To face page 20._] The vaults commonly found are the barrel vault, the cross-groined vault, and the dome-vault. The first is frequently used over the cross arms and the bema, and sometimes over the narthex in conjunction with the groined vault (Diaconissa). It is the simplest method of covering an oblong space, but it does not easily admit of side windows above the springing. A very beautiful form of cross-groined vault is found in S. Sophia and in SS. Sergius and Bacchus, in which the crown is considerably domed, and the groins, accordingly, lose themselves in the vaulting surface. This form is found in Greek churches of late date, but does not occur in the later churches of Constantinople. A full description of the form and construction is given by Choisy[31] and by Lethaby and Swainson.[32] The cross-groined vault as found in the Myrelaion and many other churches of the city is level in the crown, with clearly marked groins. It is sometimes used with transverse arches resting on pilasters, or without these adjuncts. One of the most interesting of the vault forms is the dome-vault, a shallow dome with continuous pendentives. It is distinguished in appearance from the groined vault, as found in S. Sophia, by the absence of any groin line, and is completely different in construction. The geometrical construction is that of the pendentives of all domes. The four supporting arches intersect a hemispherical surface whose diameter is equal to the diagonal of the supporting square. The pendentives produce at the crown line of the arches a circular plan which is filled in by a saucer dome of the same radius as the pendentives, constructed of circular brick rings, the joints of which radiate to the centre. If the space to be covered is not square the broader arches intersect at a higher level, while the narrow arches are not stilted, but kept down so as to receive the dome surface, and in this case the narrow arches are not semicircular, but segmental. Where the difference in size between the two sides was not great, the difficulty presented was easily overcome by the Byzantine builder, who in the later buildings, at any rate, rarely built anything within four inches of its geometrical position. Where the difference was too great it was frankly accepted, and we find segmental arches at the narrow ends. [Illustration: FIG. 11.] The vaulting of the outer narthex of S. Saviour in the Chora illustrates this fully (Fig. 11). Though some of the bays of that narthex are oblong and others almost square all are covered with dome vaults. The almost square bays, although their sides vary considerably, are covered precisely as if their sides were exactly equal. But in two of the oblong bays, which are nearly three times as long as they are broad, such a method could not be applied. Longitudinal arches (AA) were accordingly thrown between the transverse arches (CC) and made to rest on their spandrils. The oblong form of the intervening space was thus very much reduced, and over it flat domes are thrown. Their rings are true circles, and as the space they cover is still somewhat oblong they descend lower, with additional segments of rings (BB), at the ends than at the sides. In the remaining two oblong bays of the narthex, the result of introducing the longitudinal arches is to convert a decidedly oblong space in one direction into a slightly oblong space in the opposite direction, an additional proof, if any were needed, that the exact shape of plan with this form of vault was a matter of comparative indifference to the builder. In S. Sophia the vault springs from the intrados of the transverse arches, that is, from the lower edge. In SS. Sergius and Bacchus it springs from a point so slightly raised as to be hardly noticeable. In the later vaults, however, the transverse arches, when present, are boldly shown, and the vault springs from the extrados or outer edge (_e.g._ S. Saviour in the Chora, S. Theodore). _Construction._--Most of the churches of the city are covered with thick coats of plaster and whitewash, both within and without. Only in a few cases, where these coatings have fallen away through neglect, or in some remote corner of a building to which these coatings were never applied, can the construction and the laying of the brickwork be studied. The two-storied chapel, known as Bogdan Serai (p. 283), is almost denuded of plaster, and is therefore of importance in this connection. The bricks of the wall arches on which its dome rests are laid considerably flatter than the true radiating line, leaving a triangular piece to be filled in at the crown. On the other hand, the bricks of the transverse arches under the dome radiate to the centre. It has been supposed that the method followed in the wall arches was employed in order to economise centering, since bricks could gradually be worked out over the space, each course simply sticking to the one below. This is undoubtedly the case in some examples. But here centering could not have been of any service in the wall arches, and the transverse arches are laid without flattening of the courses, though that arrangement might have been useful in their case. It is therefore more probable that the flattening of the courses in the wall arches is simply a piece of careless workmanship. The pendentives, like all pendentives that could be examined, were formed of horizontal courses corbelled out to the circle. The dome, bema, and the barrel vault in the lower story (p. 285) seem to be laid with true radiating joints. The springing of the barrel vault is formed of four courses of stone laid horizontally and cut to the circle, and above them the entire barrel is of brick. The dome arches of the Sanjakdar Mesjedi (p. 270) are formed of three distinct rings, not bonded into one another. They radiate to the true centre, and the pendentives are, as usual, in horizontal courses. The transverse arches of the outer narthex in S. Saviour in the Chora are also built with true radiating courses. The gynecaeum of the side-chapel of the Pammakaristos (p. 153) has never been plastered, and consequently the laying of the brickwork can be seen there to advantage. The little stair leading up to the gallery is covered with a sloping barrel vault built in segments perpendicular to the slope of the stair and could easily have been built without centering. The same remark applies to the cross vault at the head of the stair, which is similarly constructed in 'slices' parallel to each side (p. 154). The arches of the gynecaeum itself, the vaults, and the two little domes, seem to have true radiating joints. The ribs of the domes are formed in the brickwork, and are not structurally separate. In these last examples, and in all door and window openings, in which the joints invariably radiate from the centre, a certain amount of centering was inevitable. [Illustration: PLATE III. (1) THE MYRELAION (SINCE IT WAS BURNT). INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST. (By kind permission of H. M. Dwight, Esq.) (2) SULEIMAN AGA MESJEDI, BESIDE S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. _To face page 24._] On the other hand a little passage in S. Saviour in the Chora between the church and the parecclesion (p. 311), is covered with a barrel vault evidently built without centering. The space is first narrowed by two corbelled courses of stone and, above them, by three projecting courses of brick. From this springs the vault, built from each end in strongly inclined segments. These segments meet in the middle, leaving a diamond-shaped space filled in with longitudinal courses. Like the stairs in the Pammakaristos, this passage is very narrow, some 85 cm., yet the builders thought it necessary to corbel out five courses before venturing to throw a vault without centering. Near the Pantokrator is an octagonal building, now Suleiman Aga Mesjedi but generally regarded as a Byzantine library, which has on each side a large wall arch strongly elliptical in form (p. 270). Two arches of somewhat similar form and apparently original are found in the south end of the gynecaeum of the Pantokrator (p. 237). These arches may have been built in this manner to economise centering. Still, in the library they are wall arches easily constructed without centering. Failing the examination of a larger number of buildings in Constantinople we can hardly judge of the later methods of vault and arch construction, but one point may be further noticed. The wall internally is often set back slightly at each spring course, so that with the projection of the course a considerable ledge or shelf is left. On this ledge centering could easily be supported and would have required no further framework to the ground. Centering seems to have been used for dorm, arches, vaults, and door and window openings. It was not used in small vaults. But it is difficult to imagine any method of constructing such groined vaults as those found in the narthexes of the Pantokrator without a very considerable amount of centering. _Ties._--As a general rule tie rods or beams were used, either of iron or wood. In the latter case they were painted with leaf or fret ornaments, and were evidently considered as natural features. But large vaults are often found without such ties as in the narthex of the Pantokrator. Many churches have ties to the dome-arches, and none to the main vault; but it is difficult to lay down a fixed rule. The enormous amount of mortar in the walls must have made them yield to a certain degree when newly built, and some of the larger vaults would have been the better for rods. _Abutments._--The system of abutments in the Byzantine churches of the great period has been carefully studied by M. Choisy.[33] In early examples the dome springs directly from the pendentives on the inside, but is thickened externally over the haunches, producing a double curve and an apparent drum. This is seen very clearly in SS. Sergius and Bacchus. In S. Sophia the numerous windows are cut through this drum, so that it resembles rather a series of small abutments. The object was to support the crown of the dome by adding weight over the haunches. In both these churches the thrust of the dome and its supporting arches is taken by the two-storied galleries, which form, in fact, flying buttresses within the buildings, and are adapted to their architectural requirements. The square plan and the enormous size of the dome in S. Sophia demanded the great buttresses on the sides; while in SS. Sergius and Bacchus the eight buttresses show only on the outside of the dome and are not carried over the aisles as they are in S. Sophia. Below the roof the arches and piers of the galleries and aisles are arranged so as to carry the thrust to the external walls, and following the tradition of Roman vaulting all buttressing is internal. In S. Irene, where the true drum dome first appears, the buttresses between the windows of the dome still remain, though much reduced in size. A dome raised on a drum can evidently no longer exercise a thrust against the dome-arches; its thrust must be taken by the drum, and only its weight can rest on the arches. The weight of the drum and dome rests on the pendentives and dome-arches. Their thrust is neutralized by the use of ties and by the barrel vaults of the cross arms, and these in their turn depend on the thickness of the walls. The lower buildings attached to the church in the form of side-chapels and the narthex also helped to stiffen and buttress the cross walls. The system is by no means perfect in these late churches. It was apparently found impossible to construct drum domes of any size, except at the extreme risk of their falling in, and probably it is for this reason that many of the larger domes in late churches, like SS. Peter and Mark, S. Theodosia, the Chora, have fallen. No system of chainage appears to have been used for domes in Constantinople. Flying buttresses probably of the ninth century are used at the west end of S. Sophia. The double-flying buttress to the apse of the Chora does not bond with the building and is certainly not original. It may be set down as part of the Byzantine restoration of the church in the fourteenth century. In any case, such external flying abutments are alien to the spirit of Byzantine architecture, and may be regarded as an importation from the West. Flying buttresses, it may here be noted, are not uncommon in the great mosques of the city. They are found in Sultan Bayazid, Rustem Pasha, Sultan Selim, the Suleimanieh, and the Shahzadé. But they are generally trifling in size, and are rather ornaments than serious attempts to buttress the dome. _Walls._--The walls of the earlier churches are built of large thin bricks laid with mortar joints at least as thick as the bricks, and often of greater thickness. Stone is used only in special cases, as in the main piers of S. Sophia, but monolithic marble columns are an important part of the structure. In the later churches stone is used in courses with the bricks to give a banded effect, and herring-bone, diamond, and radiating patterns are frequently introduced. The palace of the Porphyrogenitus, the parecclesion of the Pammakaristos, and Bogdan Serai, exhibit this style of work. As illustrations of the method adopted in the construction of walls the following measurements may be given, the sizes being in centimetres: +---------------------------------------+----------+--------------+ | | Brick. | Joint. | +---------------------------------------+----------+--------------+ | Parecclesion of the Pammakaristos | .08 | .04 | | 4 courses brick, 5 joints | .46 | --- | | S. John in Trullo | .03 | .07 to .09 | | Refectory of the Monastery of Manuel | .04 | .04 to .06 | | 4 course stone, 3 joints | .78 | --- | | 4 courses brick, 5 joints | .30 | --- | | | { .0375 | .052 | | Bogdan Serai | { .035 | .035 | | | { .04 | .04 | | 4 courses stone, 8 joints | --- | .55 to .60 | | 4 courses brick, 5 joints | --- | .43 to .47 | | Sanjakdar, brick | .045 | --- | +---------------------------------------+----------+--------------+ _Building Procedure._--The first step in the erection of a building was to obtain the necessary marble columns with their capitals and bases. These seem to have been largely supplied ready made, and Constantinople was a great centre for the manufacture and export of stock architectural features. Then the main walls were built in brick, the columns were inserted as required, the vaults were thrown, and the whole building was left to settle down. Owing to the enormous amount of mortar used this settling must have been very considerable, and explains why hardly a plumb wall exists in Constantinople, and why so many vaults show a pronounced sinking in at the crown or have fallen in and have been rebuilt. After the walls had set the marble facings, mosaic, and colour were applied and could be easily adapted to the irregular lines of the walls. Byzantine architecture made little use of mouldings. The great extension of flat and spacious decoration rendered unnecessary, or even objectionable, any strong line composition. External cornices are in coursed brick, the alternate courses being laid diagonally so as to form the characteristic dentil. The richest form is that found in the Pammakaristos, S. Theodosia, and S. Thekla, where the small dentil cornice is supported on long tapering corbels, a design suggested by military machicolations. [Illustration: PLATE IV. (1) S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. BRACKET IN THE INNER NARTHEX. (2) S. THEODORE. SCULPTURED MARBLE SLAB BUILT INTO THE MINARET OF THE MOSQUE. (3) S. MARY DIACONISSA. HEADS OF WINDOWS IN SOUTH ARM. (4) S. MARY DIACONISSA. SCULPTURED SLAB ON THE WEST WALL. _To face page 28._] The stone ogee, cavetto, or cavetto and bead cornice is common, but seems in every case to be Turkish work and is very common in Turkish buildings. Internal cornices and string-courses are in marble, and are all of the same type, a splay and fillet. The splayed face is decorated with upright leaves or with a guilloche band, either carved (in the Pantepoptes) or painted (in the Chora), the carving as in classic work, serving only to emphasise the colour. The splay is sometimes slightly hollowed, sometimes, as in the Chora, worked to an ogee. _Doors._--Doors often have elaborately moulded architraves and cornice. In S. John of the Studion (p. 61), the oldest example, the jamb-moulding has a large half-round on the face, with small ogees and fillets, all on a somewhat massive scale. The doors of S. Sophia are very similar. The later mouldings are lighter but the half-round on the face remains a prominent feature. It is now undercut and reduced in size, and resembles the Gothic moulding known as the bowtell. This is combined with series of fillets, small ogees, and cavettos into jamb-moulds of considerable richness. The cornices are often simply splayed or are formed of a series of ogees, fillets, and cavettos. The jamb-mouldings are cut partly on a square and partly on a steep splayed line. In some, the portion forming the ingo seems to have been regarded as a separated piece though cut from the solid. If in the doors of the Pantokrator or the Pantepoptes the line of the inner jamb be continued through the rebate, it will correspond on the outside with the bowtell moulding, as though the inner and outer architrave had been cut from one square-edged block, placing the bowtell at the angle and adding the rebate. This formation is not followed in S. John of the Studion. _Carving._--Carving is slight, and is confined to capitals, string-courses, and the slabs which filled in the lower parts of screens and windows. Fragments of such slabs are found everywhere. They are carved with geometrical interlacing and floral patterns, often encircling a cross or sacred monogram, or with simply a large cross. Such slabs may be seen still in position in S. Sophia and in the narthex of S. Theodore. In the latter they are of verd antique, and are finely carved on both sides. In later times the embargo on figure sculpture was considerably relaxed. Little figures are introduced in the cornices of the eikon frames in the Diaconissa (p. 186), and both in the parecclesion and the outer narthex of the Chora are found many small busts of angels, saints, and warriors carved with great delicacy. The carving in the Chora is the finest work of the kind excepting that in S. Sophia. _Capitals._--The development of the capital from the Roman form, which was suitable only for the lintel, to the impost capital shaped to receive an arch has been well explained by Lethaby and Swainson. According to these authors Byzantine capitals exhibit seven types. I. The Impost capital.--It is found in SS. Sergius and Bacchus, the outer narthex of the Chora, the inner narthex of S. Andrew and elsewhere. A modification of this type is used in windows. It was employed throughout the style but especially in early times up to the sixth century, and again in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. II. The Melon type.--This is seen on the columns of the lower order in SS. Sergius and Bacchus and on the columns of the narthex of S. Theodore, where they have been taken from an older building. The melon capital was probably not in use after the sixth century. III. The Bowl capital.--This type is used in the great order of S. Sophia at Constantinople. It has been thought peculiar to this church, but the capitals from S. Stephen at Triglia in Bithynia resemble those of S. Sophia closely. Only the peculiar volutes of the S. Sophia capitals are absent.[34] IV. The Byzantine or 'Pseudo-Ionic.'--This is found in the upper order of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and in the narthex of S. Andrew. It is an early type, not used after the sixth century, and its occurrence in S. Andrew favours the early date assigned to that church. V. The Bird and Basket.--Found in Constantinople, only in S. Sophia. VI. The Byzantine Corinthian.--This is the commonest form of capital in the later churches, and must have been in continuous use from the earliest date. It occurs in S. John of the Studion, the Diaconissa, the Chora, and in many other churches. Here the classic form is accurately adhered to, but, as the curved abacus was unsuitable to the arch, a large splayed abacus or impost block is placed above the capital. It is a general feature of the Byzantine capital that it projects at no point beyond the impost line of the arch, thus differing both from the classic and the Gothic forms. VII. The Windblown Acanthus.--This is found in the churches of Salonica and Ravenna. Three examples are mentioned as seen in Constantinople, two near the Diaconissa, forming bases for the posts of a wooden porch to a house; one is the cistern commonly known as the cistern of Pulcheria. _Window Capitals._--In shafted window of several lights, the impost piers between the arches are of the full thickness of the wall, but are very narrow from side to side. Similarly the shafts are almost slabs placed across the wall, and sometimes, as in the Pammakaristos, are carved on their narrow faces. The capitals are cubical, of slight projection at the sides, but spreading widely at the ends, while the bases closely resemble capitals turned upside down. As with columns, the joints at base and necking are bedded in sheet lead. _Floors._--The floors are usually of thick red brick tiles, some .31 cm. square, or, as in S. Theodore, hexagonal, .34 cm. across by 45 cm. from point to point. Marble floors were used when possible, inlaid with patterns, or in slabs surrounded by borders of coloured marbles, as is still seen in a portion of the floor in the Pantokrator (Fig. 76). _Decoration._--Of the churches of Constantinople only S. Sophia, S. Mary Diaconissa, the South Church of the Pantokrator, and the Chora, retain any considerable part of their original decoration. The first is beyond our present scope, but from the general tone and atmosphere which still linger there we are able to appreciate the effect of the same style of decoration where it survives in less complete form. The accepted method, as may be observed in the Chora and the Diaconissa, was to split marble slabs so as to form patterns in the veining, and then to place them upright on the wall. It is probable that the finest slabs were first placed in the centre points of the wall, and that other slabs or borders were then arranged round them. The centre slabs in the Chora are of exceptional beauty. The usual design consists of a dado of upright slabs surmounted by panelling to the cornice level, the panels being outlined with plain or carved beads. In the Diaconissa the notched dentil form is used for the beads; in the Chora, a 'bead and reel.' The arches have radiating voussoirs, or, in the Diaconissa, a zigzag embattled design, found also in S. Demetrius of Salonica, though two hundred years must have separated the buildings. In the Chora the arch spandrils and cornice are inlaid with scroll and geometrical designs in black, white, and coloured marbles. The surfaces above the cornice and the interior of the domes gleamed with mosaic, representing, as seen in the Chora, figures on a gold background. The mosaic cubes are small, measuring 5 mm. to 7 mm., and are closely set. This is about the same size as the mosaic cubes in S. Sophia, but smaller than those at Ravenna, which measure about 10 mm. _Painting._--In the majority of churches this full decoration with marble and mosaic must have been rendered impossible by the expense, and accordingly we find examples like the parecclesion at the Chora decorated with painting, following exactly the tradition of marble and mosaic. This painting is in tempera on the plaster, and is executed with a free and bold touch. _Conclusion._--Byzantine architecture is essentially an art of spaces. 'Architectural' forms, as we are accustomed to think of them, are noticeably absent, but as compensation, colour was an essential and inseparable part of the architecture. The builder provided great uninterrupted spaces broken only by such lines and features as were structurally necessary--capitals, columns, string-courses, and over these spaces the artist spread a glittering robe of marble or mosaic. No school has ever expressed its structure more simply, or given fuller scope to the artist, whether architect or painter. Byzantine architecture is not only a school of construction, it is also a school of painting. Most of the churches of Constantinople have unfortunately lost the latter part of their personality. They are mere ghosts, their skeletons wrapped in a shroud of whitewash. Still the Greek artist retained his skill to the last, and the decorative work of S. Saviour in the Chora will stand comparison even with the similar work in S. Sophia. In Byzantine times the greatness of S. Sophia tended to crush competition. No other ecclesiastical building approached the 'Great Church.' But structural ability was only latent, and displayed its old power again in the erection of the imperial mosques of the early Turkish Sultans, for they too are monuments of Greek architectural genius. The origins of Byzantine architecture have been discussed at great length by Strzygowski, Rivoira, and many other able writers. Much work still remains to be done in the investigation of the later Roman and early Byzantine work; nor does it seem probable that the difficult questions of the Eastern or the Western origin of Byzantine art will ever be finally settled. The beginnings of Byzantine architecture have never been satisfactorily accounted for. With S. Sophia it springs almost at once into full glory; after S. Sophia comes the long decline. It may, however, be noted that the 'endings' of Roman architecture are similarly obscure. Such buildings as the Colosseum, in which the order is applied to an arched building, are evidently transitional, the Roman construction and the Greek decoration, though joined, not being merged into one perfect style. Even in the baths and other great buildings of Imperial Rome the decoration is still Greek in form and not yet fully adapted to the arched construction. At Spalatro, in such parts as the Porta Aurea, a developed style seems to be on the point of emerging, but it is not too much to say that in no great Roman building do we find a perfect and homogeneous style. There is nothing in either the planning or the construction of S. Sophia which cannot be derived from the buildings of the Roman Imperial period, with the exception of the pendentive, a feature which had to be evolved before the dome could be used with freedom on any building plan on a square. The great brick-concrete vaulted construction is that of the Roman baths, and with this is united a system of decoration founded on the classic models, but showing no trace of the Greek beam tradition which had ruled in Rome. S. Sophia then may be regarded as the culminating point of one great Roman-Byzantine school, of which the art of classic Rome shows the rise, and the later Byzantine art the decline. This view is in accord with history, for Constantinople was New Rome, and here, if anywhere, we should expect to find preserved the traditions of Old Rome. The division of Western Mediaeval Architecture into the two schools of Romanesque and Gothic presents a parallel case. It is now realised that no logical separation can be made between the two so-called styles. Similarly we may continue to speak of the Classic Roman style and of the Byzantine style, although the two really belong to one great era in the history of art. [10] _Eastern Palestine Memoirs_, p. 172. A similar dome is given by Choisy, _L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins_, Plate XV. [11] De Vogüé, _Syrie centrale_, i. p. 45, Plate VII. [12] Dürm, _Handbuch_, Part II. vol. iii. pp. 115, 149. A restored plan is given in Lethaby's _Mediaeval Art_, p. 47. [13] _Orient oder Rom_, p. 19. [14] _Kleinasien_, p. 152. [15] _Kleinasien_, p. 121 _et seq._ [16] Oskar Wulf, _Die Koimesiskirche in Nikaea_, p. 71. [17] H. Rott, _Kleinasiensche Denkmäler_, p. 329. [18] Wulf, _op. cit._ p. 23. [19] For local variations in late churches in Greece, see Traquair's 'Churches of Western Mani,' _Annual of British School at Athens_, xv. 1908. [20] Strzygowski, 'Das Etschmiadzin Evangeliar,' _Byzant. Denkmäler_, i., 1891. [21] Ravanica, F. Kanitz, _Serbiens byzantische Monumente_, Wien, 1862. [22] Pullan and Texier, _S. Elias._ [23] G. Lampakis, _Les Antiquités chrétiennes de la Grèce_, Athens, 1902. [24] Schultz and Barnsley, _The Monastery of S. Luke at Stiris_, p. 13, fig. 6. [25] See, however, North Church in S. Mary, Panachrantos, p. 128. [26] Strzygowski's views as to the early date of the drum-dome are not universally accepted. The examples he produces seem rather octagons carried up from the ground to give a clearstory under the dome than true drums interposed between the dome and its pendentives. [27] _Annual B.S.A._ xii. 1905-6. See also Schultz and Barnsley, _Monastery of S. Luke at Stiris_. [28] See p. 154. [29] Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem. S. Mary Peribleptos; see _Vida de Gran Tamorlan y itinerario del Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo_, p. 52. [30] _L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins_, p. 57. [31] _Ibid._ p. 99. [32] _Sancta Sophia_, p. 219. [33] _L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins_, p. 135. [34] Hasluck, 'Bithynica,' _Annual B.S.A._ XIII. 1906-7. CHAPTER II THE CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST OF THE STUDION, EMIR AHOR JAMISSI The mosque Emir Ahor Jamissi, situated in the quarter of Psamathia, near the modern Greek church of S. Constantine, and at short distance from the Golden Gate (Yedi Koulé), is the old church of S. John the Baptist, which was associated with the celebrated monastery of Studius, [Greek: hê monê tou Stoudiou]. It may be reached by taking the train from Sirkiji Iskelessi to Psamathia or Yedi Koulé.[35] In favour of the identification of the building, there is, first, the authority of tradition,[36] which in the case of a church so famous may be confidently accepted as decisive. In the next place, all indications of the character and position of the Studion, however vague, point to Emir Ahor Jamissi as the representative of that church. For the mosque presents the characteristic features which belonged to the Studion as a basilica of the fifth century, and stands where that sanctuary stood, in the district at the south-western angle of the city,[37] and on the left hand of the street leading from S. Mary Peribleptos (Soulou Monastir) to the Golden Gate.[38] Furthermore, as held true of the Studion, the mosque is in the vicinity of the Golden Gate,[39] and readily accessible from a gate and landing (Narli Kapou) on the shore of the Sea of Marmora.[40] According to the historian Theophanes,[41] the church was erected in the year 463 by the patrician Studius, after whom the church and the monastery attached to it were named. He is described as a Roman of noble birth and large means who devoted his wealth to the service of God,[42] and may safely be identified with Studius who held the consulship in 454 during the reign of Marcian.[43] If we may trust the Anonymus,[44] the church erected by Studius replaced a sanctuary which stood at one time, like the Chora, outside the city. Seeing the territory immediately beyond the Constantinian fortifications was well peopled before its inclusion within the city limits by Theodosius II., there is nothing improbable in the existence of such extra-mural sanctuaries, and as most, if not all, of them would be small buildings, they would naturally require enlargement or reconstruction when brought within the wider bounds of the capital. According to Suidas,[45] the building was at first a parochial church; its attachment to a monastery was an after-thought of its founder. The monastery was large and richly endowed, capable of accommodating one thousand monks.[46] Its first inmates were taken from a fraternity known as the Akoimeti, 'the sleepless'; so named because in successive companies they celebrated divine service in their chapels day and night without ceasing, like the worshippers in the courts of heaven. [Illustration: PLATE V. (1) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. RUINED INTERIOR, SEEN FROM THE MINARET OF THE MOSQUE. (2) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION, FROM THE WEST. _To face page 36._] 'Even thus of old Our ancestors, within the still domain Of vast cathedral or conventual church Their vigils kept: where tapers day and night On the dim altar burned continually. In token that the House was ever more Watching to God. Religious men were they; Nor would their reason, tutored to aspire Above this transitory world, allow That there should pass a moment of the year When in their land the Almighty's service ceased.' But this devout practice does not seem to have been long continued at the Studion; for we never hear of it in any account of the discipline of the House. The monks of the Studion should therefore not be identified with the Akoimeti who took up such a determined and independent attitude in the theological conflicts under Zeno, Basiliscus, and Justinian the Great.[47] In the course of its history the church underwent noteworthy repairs on two occasions. It was first taken in hand for that purpose, soon after the middle of the eleventh century,[48] by the Emperor Isaac Comnenus (1057-58), who was interested in the House because he and his brother had received part of their education in that 'illustrious and glorious school of virtue.'[49] What the repairs then made exactly involved is unfortunately not stated. But, according to Scylitzes, they were so extensive that 'to tell in detail what the emperor and empress did for the embellishment of the church would surpass the labour of Hercules.'[50] Probably they concerned chiefly the decoration of the edifice. The next repairs on record were made about the year 1290, in the reign of Andronicus II., by his unfortunate brother Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Owing to the neglect of the building during the Latin occupation the roof had fallen in, the cells of the monks had disappeared, and sheep grazed undisturbed on the grass which covered the grounds. Constantine, rich, generous, fond of popularity, did all in his power to restore the former glory of the venerated shrine. The new roof was a remarkable piece of work; large sums were spent upon the proper accommodation of the monks, and the grounds were enclosed within strong walls.[51] Like other monastic institutions, the Studion suffered greatly at the hands of the iconoclast emperors. Under Constantine Copronymus, indeed, the fraternity was scattered to the winds and practically suppressed, so that only twelve old members of the House were able to take advantage of the permission to return to their former home, upon the first restoration of eikons in 787 by the Empress Irene. Under these circumstances a company of monks, with the famous abbot Theodore at their head, were eventually brought from the monastery of Saccudio to repeople the Studion, and with their advent in 799 the great era in the history of the House began, the number of the monks rising to seven hundred, if not one thousand.[52] Theodore had already established a great reputation for sanctity and moral courage. For when Constantine VI. repudiated the Empress Maria and married Theodote, one of her maids of honour, Theodore, though the new empress was his relative, denounced the marriage and the priest who had celebrated it, insisting that moral principles should govern the highest and lowest alike, and for this action he had gladly endured scourging and exile. The Studion had, therefore, a master who feared the face of no man, and who counted the most terrible sufferings as the small dust of the balance when weighed against righteousness, and under him the House became illustrious for its resistance to the tyranny of the civil power in matters affecting faith and morals. When the Emperor Nicephorus ordered the restoration of the priest who had celebrated the marriage of Constantine VI. with Theodote, not only did Theodore and his brother Joseph, bishop of Thessalonica, and their venerable uncle Plato, endure imprisonment and exile, but every monk in the Studion defied the emperor. Summoning the fraternity into his presence, Nicephorus bade all who would obey his order go to the right, and all who dared to disobey him go to the left. Not a single man went to the right. Under the very eyes of the despot all went to the left, and in his wrath Nicephorus broke up the community and distributed the monks among various monasteries. Upon the accession of Michael I. the exiled monks and Theodore were allowed indeed to return to the Studion, peace being restored by the degradation of the priest who had celebrated the obnoxious marriage. But another storm darkened the sky, when Leo V., the Armenian, in 813, renewed the war against eikons. Theodore threw himself into the struggle with all the force of his being as their defender. He challenged the right of the imperial power to interfere with religious questions; he refused to keep silence on the subject; and on Palm Sunday, in 815, led a procession of his monks carrying eikons in their hands in triumph round the monastery grounds. Again he was scourged and banished. But he could not be subdued. By means of a large and active correspondence he continued an incessant and powerful agitation against the iconoclasts of the day. Nor would he come to terms with Michael II., who had married a nun, and who allowed the use of eikons only outside the capital. So Theodore retired, apparently a defeated man, to the monastery of Acritas[53]; and there, 'on Sunday, 11 November 826, and about noon, feeling his strength fail, he bade them light candles and sing the 119th psalm, which seems to have been sung at funerals. At the words: "I will never forget Thy commandments, for with them Thou hast quickened me," he passed away.' He was buried on the island of Prinkipo, but eighteen years later, when eikons were finally restored in the worship of the Orthodox Church, his body was transferred to the Studion, and laid with great ceremony in the presence of the Empress Theodora beside the graves of his uncle Plato and his brother Joseph, in sign that after all he had conquered.[54] _Tandem hic quiescit._ NOTE His remains were interred at the east end of the southern aisle, where his uncle Plato and his brother Joseph had been buried before him, and where Naucratius and Nicholas, his successors as abbots of the Studion, were laid to rest after him. [Greek: pros tô dexiô merei en tô kat' anatolas tou Prodromikou temenous pandoxô kai hierô tôn martyrôn sêkô, entha dê kai tou hosiou patros hêmôn Theodôrou hê paneukleês kai pansebastos timia thêkê kathidrytai] (_Vita S. Nicolai Studitae_, Migne, _P.G._ tome 105). There, in fact, during the recent Russian exploration of the church, three coffins were discovered: one containing a single body, another four bodies, and another three bodies. The grave had evidently been disturbed at some time, for some of the bodies had no head, and all the coffins lay under the same bed of mortar. No marks were found by which to identify the persons whose remains were thus brought to view. But there can be no doubt that five of the bodies belonged to the five persons mentioned above. To whom the three other bodies belonged is a matter of pure conjecture. They might be the remains of three intimate friends of Theodore, viz. Athanasius, Euthemius, Timotheus, or more probably of the abbots, Sophronius (851-55), Achilles (858-63), Theodosius (863-64). Cf. _Itin. russes_, p. 100. It would be a mistake, however, to think of Theodore only as a controversalist and defier of the civil authority. He was a deeply religious man, a pastor of souls, and he revived the religious and moral life of men, far and wide, not only in his own day, but long after his life on earth had closed. He made the Studion the centre of a great spiritual influence, which never wholly lost the impulse of his personality or the loftiness of his ideal. The forms of mediæval piety have become antiquated, and they were often empty and vain, but we must not be blind to the fact that they were frequently filled with a passion for holy living, and gave scope for the creation of characters which, notwithstanding their limitations, produced great and good men. [Illustration: PLATE VI. (1) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. FAÇADE OF THE NARTHEX. (2) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. THE RUINED INTERIOR: WEST END OF THE NORTH SIDE. _To face page 40._] Speaking of Eastern monks and abbots, especially during the eighth and ninth centuries, Mr. Finlay, the historian, justly remarks that 'the manners, the extensive charity, and the pure morality of these abbots, secured them the love and admiration of the people, and tended to disseminate a higher standard of morality than had previously prevailed in Constantinople. This fact must not be overlooked in estimating the various causes which led to the regeneration of the Eastern Empire under the iconoclast emperors. While the Pope winked at the disorders in the palace of Charlemagne, the monks of the East prepared the public mind for the dethronement of Constantine VI. because he obtained an illegal divorce and formed a second marriage. The corruption of monks and the irregularities prevalent in the monasteries of the West contrast strongly with the condition of the Eastern monks.' Certainly to no one is this tribute of praise due more than to the brotherhood in the monastery of Studius. The monks of the Studion, like most Greek monks, lived under the rules prescribed by S. Basil for the discipline of men who aspired to reach 'the angelic life.' Theodore, however, quickened the spirit which found expression in those rules, and while inculcating asceticism in its extremest form, showed greater consideration for the weakness of human nature. The penalties he assigned for transgressions were on the whole less Draconian than those inflicted before his time. According to the moral ideal cherished in the monastery, the true life of man was to regard oneself but dust and ashes, and, like the angels, to be ever giving God thanks. If a monk repined at such a lot, he was to castigate himself by eating only dry bread for a week and performing 500 acts of penance. The prospect of death was always to be held in view. Often did the corridors of the monastery resound with the cry, 'We shall die, we shall die!' The valley of the shadow of death was considered the road to life eternal. A monk could not call even a needle his own. Nor were the clothes he wore his personal property. They were from time to time thrown into a heap with the clothes of the other members of the House, and every monk then took from the pile the garment most convenient to his hand. Female animals were forbidden the monastery. A monk was not allowed to kiss his mother, not even at Easter, under penalty of excommunication for fifty days. Daily he attended seven services, and had often to keep vigil all night long. There was only one set meal a day; anything more in the way of food consisted of the fragments which a monk laid aside from that meal. No meat was eaten unless by special permission for reasons of health. If a brother ate meat without permission he went without fish, eggs, and cheese for forty days. The ordinary food consisted of vegetables cooked in oil. Fish, cheese, and eggs were luxuries. Two, sometimes three, cups of wine were permitted. If a brother was so unfortunate as to break a dish, he had to stand before the assembled monks at dinner time with covered head, and hold the broken article in view of all in the refectory.[55] It was forbidden to a monk to feel sad. Melancholy was a sin, and was to be overcome by prayer, one hundred and fifty genuflexions, and five hundred Kyrie Eleisons a day. The monks were required to read regularly in the monastery library.[56] The task of copying manuscripts occupied a place of honour, and was under strict regulations. Fifty genuflexions were the penalty prescribed for not keeping one's copy clean; one hundred and fifty such acts of penance for omitting an accent or mark of punctuation; thirty, for losing one's temper and breaking his pen; fasting on dry bread was the fate of the copyist guilty of leaving out any part of the original, and three days' seclusion for daring to trust his memory instead of following closely the text before him.[57] Ignatius of Smolensk[58] found Russian monks in the monastery employed in transcribing books for circulation in Russia. Stephen of Novgorod[59] met two old friends from his town busy copying the Scriptures. A good monastic scriptorium rendered an immense service; it did the work of the printing-press. Yet, notwithstanding all restrictions, men could be happy at the Studion. One of its inmates for instance congratulates himself thus on his lot there, 'No barbarian looks upon my face; no woman hears my voice. For a thousand years no useless ([Greek: apraktos]) man has entered the monastery of Studius; none of the female sex has trodden its court. I dwell in a cell that is like a palace; a garden, an oliveyard, and a vineyard surround me. Before me are graceful and luxuriant cypress trees. On one hand is the city with its market-place; on the other, the mother of churches and the empire of the world.'[60] Hymnology was likewise cultivated at the Studion, many hymns of the Greek Church being composed by Theodore and his brother Joseph. Two abbots of the monastery became patriarchs: Antony (975),[61] and Alexius (1025),[62] the latter on the occasion when he carried the great relic of the Studion, the head of John the Baptist, to Basil II. lying at the point of death.[63] At least as early as the reign of Alexius I. Comnenus, the abbot of the Studion held the first place among his fellow-abbots in the city. His precedence is distinctly recognised in a Patriarchal Act of 1381 as a right of old standing.[64] The spirit of independence which characterized the monastery did not die with the abbot Theodore. The monks of the Studion were the most stubborn opponents of the famous Photius who had been elevated to the patriarchal throne directly from the ranks of the laity, and in the course of the conflict between him and the monks during the first tenure of his office for ten years, the abbots of the House were changed five times. Indeed, when Photius appointed Santabarenus as the abbot, a man accused of being a Manichaean, and who professed to be able to communicate with departed spirits, many of the monks, if not all of them, left their home. Nor was this the last assertion of the freedom of conscience for which this monastery was distinguished, and which makes it memorable in history. Like other monasteries the Studion often served as a place of correction for offenders whom it was expedient to render harmless without recourse to the extreme rigour of the law. Santabarenus, who has just been mentioned, was sent in his wild youth, after narrowly escaping a sentence of death at the hands of the Caesar Bardas, to this monastery in the hope of being reformed in the orthodox atmosphere of the House. In the reign of Leo VI. (826-912), an official named Mousikos was sent hither to be cured of the propensity to accept bribes.[65] In 912, Gregoras and Choirosphacta were obliged to join the brotherhood to repent at leisure for having favoured the attempt of Constantine Ducas, domestic of the Scholae, to usurp the throne of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus when seven years of age.[66] [Illustration: PLATE VII. (1) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. ENTABLATURE AND ANTA CAPITAL IN THE NARTHEX. (2) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. CORNICE IN THE NARTHEX, LOOKING UP. _To face page 44._] Several emperors sought the shelter of the Studion as a refuge from danger, or as a retreat from the vanity of the world. Thither, in 1041, Michael V. and his uncle Constantine fled from the popular fury excited by their deposition of the Empress Zoe and the slaughter of three thousand persons in the defence of the palace. The two fugitives made for the monastery by boat, and betook themselves to the church for sanctuary. But as soon as the place of their concealment became known, an angry crowd forced a way into the building to wreak vengeance upon them, and created a scene of which Psellus has left us a graphic account. Upon hearing the news of what was going on, he and an officer of the imperial guard mounted horse and galloped to the Studion. A fierce mob was madly attempting to pull down the structure, and it was with the utmost difficulty that the two friends managed to enter the church and make their way to the altar. The building seemed full of wild animals, glaring with eyes on fire at their victims, and making the air resound with the most terrible cries. Michael was on his knees clasping the holy table; Constantine stood on the right; both were dressed like monks, and their features were so transformed by terror as to be almost beyond recognition. The spectacle of greatness thus brought low was so pathetic that Psellus burst into tears and sobbed aloud. But the crowd only grew more fierce, and drew nearer and nearer to the fugitives as though to rend them in pieces. Only a superstitious dread restrained it from laying hands upon them in a shrine so sacred and venerated. The uproar lasted for hours, the mob content meanwhile with striking terror and making flight impossible. At length, late in the afternoon, the prefect of the city appeared upon the scene, accompanied by soldiers and followed by large crowds of citizens. He came with instructions to bring Michael and Constantine out of the church. In vain did he try the effect of mild words and promises of a gentle fate. The fallen emperor and his uncle clung to the altar more desperately. The prefect then gave orders that the two wretched men should be dragged forth by main force. They gripped the altar yet more tightly, and in piteous tones invoked the aid of all the eikons in the building. The scene became so heartrending that most of the spectators interfered on behalf of the victims of misfortune, and only by giving solemn assurance that they would not be put to death was the prefect allowed to proceed to their arrest. Michael and Constantine were then dragged by the feet as far as the Sigma, above S. Mary Peribleptos (Soulou Monastir), and after having their eyes burnt out were banished to different monasteries, to muse on the vanity of human greatness and repent of their misdeeds.[67] The Studion appears in the final rupture of the Eastern and Western Churches.[68] The immediate occasion was a letter sent by the Archbishop of Achrida, in 1053, to the Bishop of Trani, condemning the Church of Rome for the use of unleavened bread in the administration of the Holy Communion, and for allowing a fast on Saturday. Nicetas Stethetos (Pectoratus), a member of the House renowned for his asceticism, and for his courage in reproving the scandalous connection of Constantine IX. with Sklerena, wrote a pamphlet, in Latin, in which, in addition to the charges against Rome made by the Archbishop of Achrida, the enforced celibacy of the clergy was denounced. The pamphlet was widely circulated by the Patriarch Kerularios, who wished to bring the dispute between the Churches to an issue. But the emperor not being prepared to go so far, invited the Pope to send three legates to Constantinople to settle the differences which disturbed the Christian world. Cardinal Humbert, one of the legates, replied to Nicetas in the most violent language of theological controversy, and to bring matters to a conclusion an assembly, which was attended by the Emperor Constantine, his court, and the Papal legates, met at the Studion on the 24th of June 1054. A Greek translation of the pamphlet composed by Nicetas was then read, and after the discussion of the subject, Nicetas retracted his charges and condemned all opponents of the Roman Church. His pamphlet was, moreover, thrown into the fire by the emperor's orders, and on the following day he called upon the Papal legates, who were lodged at the palace of the Pegé (Baloukli), and was received into the communion of the Church he had lately denounced. But the patriarch was not so fickle or pliant. He would not yield an iota, and on the 15th of July 1054 Cardinal Humbert laid on the altar of S. Sophia the bull of excommunication against Kerularios and all his followers, which has kept Western and Eastern Christendom divided to this day. When Michael VII. (1067-78) saw that the tide of popular feeling had turned against him in favour of Nicephorus Botoniates, he meekly retired to this House, declining to purchase a crown with cruelty by calling upon the Varangian guards to defend his throne with their battle-axes. Michael was appointed bishop of Ephesus, but after paying one visit to his diocese he returned to Constantinople and took up his abode in the monastery of Manuel (p. 257).[69] To the Studion, where he had studied in his youth and which he had embellished, the Emperor Isaac Comnenus retired, when pleurisy and the injuries he received while boar-hunting made him realize that he had but a short time to live. In fact, he survived his abdication for one year only, but during that period he proved a most exemplary monk, showing the greatest deference to his abbot, and besides performing other lowly duties acted as keeper of the monastery gate. How thoroughly he was reconciled to the exchange of a throne for a cell appears in the remark made to his wife, who had meantime taken the veil at the Myrelaion, 'Acknowledge that when I gave you the crown I made you a slave, and that when I took it away I set you free.' His widow commemorated his death annually at the Studion, and on the last occasion surprised the abbot by making a double offering, saying, 'I may not live another year,' a presentiment which proved true. According to her dying request, Aecatherina was buried in the cemetery of the Studion, 'as a simple nun, without any sign to indicate that she was born a Bulgarian princess and had been a Roman empress.'[70] On the occasion of the triumphal entry of Michael Palaeologus into the city in 1261, the emperor followed the eikon of the Theotokos Hodegetria, to whom the recovery of the Empire was attributed, on foot as far as the Studion; and there, having placed the eikon in the church, he mounted horse to proceed to S. Sophia.[71] One of the sons of Sultan Bajazet was buried at the Studion.[72] The prince had been sent by the Sultan as a hostage to the Byzantine Court, and being very young attended school in Constantinople with John, the son of the Emperor Manuel. There he acquired a taste for Greek letters, and became a convert to the Christian faith; but for fear of the Sultan's displeasure he was long refused permission to be baptized. Only when the young man lay at the point of death, in 1417, a victim to the plague raging in the city, was the rite administered, his schoolmate and friend acting as sponsor. A tombstone from the cemetery of the monastery is built into the Turkish wall at the north-eastern corner of the church. It bears an epitaph to the following effect:--'In the month of September of the year 1387, fell asleep the servant of God, Dionysius the Russian, on the sixth day of the month.' The patrician Bonus, who defended the city against the Avars in 627, while the Emperor Heraclius was absent dealing with the Persians, was buried at the Studion.[73] On the festival of the Decapitation of S. John the Baptist, the emperor attended service at the Studion in great state. Early in the morning the members of the senate assembled therefore at the monastery, while dignitaries of an inferior rank took their place outside the gate (Narli Kapou) in the city walls below the monastery, and at the pier at the foot of the steep path that descends from that gate to the shore of the Sea of Marmora, all awaiting the arrival of the imperial barge from the Great Palace. Both sides of the path were lined by monks of the House, holding lighted tapers, and as soon as the emperor disembarked, the officials at the pier and the crowd of monks, with the abbot at their head, swinging his silver censer of fragrant smoke, led the way up to the gate. There a halt was made for the magistri, patricians, and omphikialioi ([Greek: omphikialioi]) to do homage to the sovereign and join the procession, and then the long train wended its way through the open grounds attached to the monastery ([Greek: dia tou exaerou]), and through covered passages ([Greek: dia tôn ekeise diabatikôn]),[74] until it reached the south-eastern end of the narthex ([Greek: eiserchontai dia tou pros anatolikên dexiou merous tou narthêkos]). Before the entrance at that point, the emperor put on richly embroidered robes, lighted tapers, and then followed the clergy into the church, to take his stand at the east end of the south aisle. The most important act he performed during the service was to incense the head of John the Baptist enshrined on the right hand of the bema. At the conclusion of the Office of the day, he was served by the monks with refreshments under the shade of the trees in the monastery grounds ([Greek: anadendradion]); and, after a short rest, proceeded to his barge with the same ceremonial as attended his arrival, and returned to the palace.[75] [Illustration: PLATE VIII. S. JOHN OF THE STUDION, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 48._] The church was converted into a mosque in the reign of Bajazet II. (1481-1512) by the Sultan's equerry, after whom it is now named. _Architectural Features_ The church of S. John the Baptist of the Studion is a basilica, and is of special interest because the only surviving example of that type in Constantinople, built while the basilica was the dominant form of ecclesiastical architecture in the Christian world. It has suffered severely since the Turkish conquest, especially from the fire which, in 1782, devastated the quarter in which it stands, and from the fall of its roof, a few winters ago, under an unusual weight of snow. Still, what of it remains and the descriptions of its earlier state given by Gyllius, Gerlach, and other visitors, enable us to form a fair idea of its original appearance. The recent explorations conducted by the Russian Institute at Constantinople have also added much to our knowledge of the building. It is the oldest church fabric in the city, and within its precincts we stand amid the surroundings of early Christian congregations. For, partly in original forms, partly in imitations, we still find here a basilica's characteristic features: _the atrium_, or quadrangular court before the church; on three of its sides surrounded by _cloisters_; in its centre, the marble _phialé_ or fountain, for the purification of the gathering worshippers; the _narthex_, a pillared porch along the western façade, where catechumens and penitents, unworthy to enter the sanctuary itself, stood afar off; the interior area divided into _nave_ and _aisles_ by lines of columns; the semicircular _apse_ at the eastern extremity of the nave for altar and clergy; and _galleries_ on the other sides of the building to provide ample accommodation for large assemblies of faithful people. NOTE Gyllius (_De Top. Constant._ l. iv. c. 9) describes the church as follows: 'Quod (monasterium) nunc non extat; aedes extat, translata in religionem Mametanam; in cujus vestibulo sunt quatuor columnae cum trabeatione egregie elaborata; in interiore parte aedium utrinque columnae sunt septem virides, nigris maculis velut fragmentis alterius generis lapidum insertis distinctae, quarum perimeter est sex pedum et sex digitorum. Denique earum ratio capitulorum, epistyliorum opere Corinthio elaborata, eadem est quae columnarum vestibuli. Supra illas sex existunt totidem columnae in parte aedis superiore. In area aedis Studianae est cisterna, cujus lateritias cameras sustinent viginti tres columnae excelsae Corinthiae.' Gerlach (_Tagebuch_, p. 217; cf. pp. 359, 406) describes it under the style of the church of S. Theodore, for he confounds the monastery of Studius with that of the Peribleptos at Soulou Monastir: 'Das ist eine sehr hohe und weite Kirche (wie die unsern); hat zwei Reyhen Marmel-steiner Säulen mit Corinthischen Knäufen (capitellis), auff einer jeden Seiten sieben; auff deren jeden wieder ein andere Säule stehet. Der Boden ist mit lauter buntem von Vögeln und anderen Thieren gezierten Marmel auff das schönste gepflästert.' (This is a very lofty and broad church (like our churches). It has two rows of marble columns with Corinthian capitals, on either side seven; over each of which stands again another column. The floor is paved in the most beautiful fashion entirely with variegated marble, adorned with figures of birds and other animals.) Choiseul Gouffier (_Voyage pittoresque en Grèce_, ii. p. 477), French ambassador to the Sublime Porte (1779-92), speaks of the church in the following terms: 'Dans l'intérieur sont de chaque côté sept colonnes de vert antique, surmontées d'une frise de marbre blanc parfaitement sculptée, qui contient un ordre plus petit et très bien proportionné avec le premier. Je ne sais de quel marbre sont ces secondes colonnes, parce que les Turcs qui défigurent tout ont imaginé de les couvrir de chaux.' Ph. Bruun (_Constantinople, ses sanctuaires et ses reliques au commencement du XVe siècle_, Odessa, 1883) identifies with the Studion one of the churches dedicated to S. John, which Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo visited in Constantinople when on his way to the Court of Tamerlane. But that church was 'a round church without corners,' 'una quadra redonda sin esquinas,' and had forty-eight columns of verd antique, 'veinte é quatro marmoles de jaspe verde, ... é otros veinte é quatro marmoles de jaspe verde.' What church the Spanish ambassador had in view, if his description is correct, it is impossible to say. No other writer describes such a church in Constantinople. See the Note at the end of this chapter for the full text of the ambassador's description. The northern wall of the atrium is original, as the crosses in brick formed in its brickwork show. The trees which shade the court, the Turkish tombstones beneath them, and the fountain in the centre, combine to form a very beautiful approach to the church, and reproduce the general features and atmosphere of its earlier days. The narthex is divided into three bays, separated by heavy arches. It is covered by a modern wooden roof, but shows no signs of ever having been vaulted. The centre bay contains in its external wall a beautiful colonnade of four marble columns, disposed, to use a classical term, 'in antis.' They stand on comparatively poor bases, but their Corinthian capitals are exceptionally fine, showing the richest Byzantine form of that type of capital. The little birds under the angles of the abaci should not be overlooked. The entablature above the columns, with its architrave, frieze, and cornice, follows the classic form very closely, and is enriched in every member. Particularly interesting are the birds, the crosses, and other figures in the spaces between the modillions and the heavy scroll of the frieze. The drill has been very freely used throughout, and gives a pleasant sparkle to the work. In the second and fourth intercolumniations there are doorways with moulded jambs, lintels, and cornices, but only the upper parts of these doorways are now left open to serve as windows. The cornice of the entablature returns westwards at its northern and southern ends, indicating that a colonnade, with a smaller cornice, ran along the northern and southern sides of the atrium, if not also along its western side. The cloisters behind the colonnades, were connected at their west end with the narthex by two large and elaborately moulded doorways still in position. Five doors lead from the narthex into the church; three opening into the nave, the others into the aisles. The interior of the church, now almost a total ruin, was divided into nave and two aisles by colonnades of seven columns of verd antique marble. But only six of the original columns have survived the injuries which the building has sustained; the other columns are Turkish, and are constructed of wood with painted plaster covering. The colonnades supported an entablature of late Corinthian type, which, as the fall of the Turkish plaster that once covered it has revealed, had the same moulding as the entablature in the narthex. The architrave was in three faces, with a small bead ornament to the upper two, and finished above with a small projecting moulding. The frieze was an ogee, bellied in the lower part. Of the cornice only the bed mould, carved with a leaf and tongue, remains. Above each colonnade stood another range of seven[76] columns connected, probably, by arches. Along the northern, southern, and western sides of the church were galleries constructed of wood. Those to the north and south still exist in a ruined condition, and many of the stone corbels which supported the beams remain in the walls. Only scanty vestiges of the gallery above the narthex can be now distinguished. Its western wall, the original outer wall of the upper part of the church, has totally disappeared. Its eastern arcade has been replaced by the Turkish wall which constitutes the present outer wall of that part of the church. But beyond either end of that wall are visible, though built up, the old openings by which the gallery communicated with its companion galleries; while to the west of the wall project the ragged ends of the Byzantine walls which formed the gallery's northern and southern sides. The nave rose probably to a greater height than it does now, and had a roof at a higher level than the roofing of the aisles. It doubtless resembled the basilican churches at Salonica, either with clearstory windows, as in S. Demetrius, or without such windows, as in Eski Juma Jamissi. [Illustration: PLATE IX. (1) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. EAST END. _E. M. Antoniadi._ (2) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION, NORTH SIDE, EAST END. _To face page 52._] The nave terminates in a large apse, semicircular within and showing three sides on the exterior. Only the lower part is original; the Turkish superstructure is lower and on a smaller scale than the Byzantine portion it has replaced. There are no side chapels. Under the bema the Russian explorers discovered a small cruciform crypt. The large quantity of mosaic cubes found in the church during the recent Russian excavations proves that the church was decorated with mosaics, while the remains of iron plugs in the western wall for holding marble slabs show that the building had the customary marble revetment. But what is curious is to find the mortar pressed over the face of the stones, and broad decorative joints formed by ruled incised lines and colour. Mr. W. S. George suggests that this was a temporary decoration executed pending some delay in the covering of the walls with marble. He also thinks that the importance given to the joint in late Byzantine work and in Turkish work may be a development from such early treatment of mortar. The floor of the church was paved with pieces of marble arranged in beautiful patterns, in which figures of animals and scenes from classic mythology were inlaid. Gerlach[77] noticed the beauty of the pavement, and Salzenberg[78] represents a portion of it in his work on S. Sophia. But the members of the Russian Institute of Constantinople have had the good fortune to bring the whole pavement to light. A noticeable feature is the number of doors to the church, as in S. Irene. Besides the five doors already mentioned, leading into the interior from the narthex, there is a door at the eastern end of each aisle, and close to each of these doors is found both in the southern and northern walls of the building an additional door surmounted by a window. The latter doors and their windows have been walled up. The exterior is in two stories, corresponding to the ground floor and the galleries. It has two ranges of eight large semicircular-headed windows in the northern and southern walls, some of them modified, others built up, since the building became a mosque. The five windows in the gable of the western wall are, like the wall itself, Turkish. Pilasters are placed at the angles and at the apse. On the south side of the church is a cistern, the roof of which rests on twenty-three columns crowned by beautiful Corinthian capitals. NOTE The full text of the description given of the church of S. John, mentioned by Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, reads as follows:-- É la primera parte (puerta?) de la Iglesia es muy alta é de obra rica, é delante desta puerta está un grand corral y luego al cuerpo de la Iglesia, é el qual cuerpo es una quadra redonda sin esquinas muy alta, é es cerrada al derredor de tres grandes naves, que son cubiertas da un cielo ellas y la quadra. É ha en ella siete altares, é el cielo desta quadra é naves é las paredés es de obra de musayca muy ricamente labrada, é en ello muchas historias, é la quadra está armada sobre veinte é quatro marmoles de jaspe verde, é las dichas naves son sobradadas, é los sobrados dellas salen al cuerpo de la Iglesia, é alli avia otros veinte é quatro marmoles de jaspe verde, é il cielo de la quadra é las paredes e de obra musayca, é los andamios de las naves salen sobre el cuerpo de la Iglesia, é alli do avia de aver verjas avia marmoles pequenos de jaspe.[79] With the kind help of Professor Cossio of Madrid, the Spanish text may be roughly translated as follows:-- And the first part (door?) of the church is very lofty and richly worked. And before this door is a large court beside the body of the church; and the said body is a round hall without corners (or angles), very lofty, and enclosed round about by three large naves, which are covered, they and the hall, by one roof. And it (the church) has in it seven altars; and the roof of the hall and naves and the walls are of mosaic work very richly wrought, in which are (depicted) many histories. And the (roof of the) hall is placed on twenty-four marble columns of green jasper (verd antique). And the said naves have galleries, and the galleries open on the body of the church, and these have other twenty-four marble columns of green jasper; and the roof of the hall and the walls are of mosaic work. And the elevated walks of the naves open over the body of the church,[80] and where a balustrade should be found there are small marble columns of jasper. Outside the church, adds the ambassador, was a beautiful chapel dedicated to S. Mary, remarkable for its mosaics. [Illustration: PLATE X. S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. CISTERN. _To face page 51._] [Illustration: FIG. 12.] [Illustration: FIG. 13.] [Illustration: FIGS. 14. AND 15.] [Illustration: FIGS. 16 AND 17.] [Illustration: FIG. 18.] [Illustration: FIG. 19.] [35] The Latin thesis of Eugenius Marin, _De Studio coenobio Constantinopolitano_, Paris, 1897, is a most useful work. [36] Gyllius, _De top._ C.P. p. 313. [37] _Itinéraires russes en Orient_, p. 306, _traduits pour la Société de l'Orient Latin par Mdme. B. de Khitrovo_. [38] _Ibid._ p. 231. For all questions concerning the walls of the city I refer, once for all, to my work, _Byzantine Constantinople: the Walls and adjoining Historical Sites_, published in 1889 by John Murray, London. [39] _Paschal Chronicle_, p. 726. [40] Constantine Porphyrogenitus, _De ceremoniis_, pp. 462-3. [41] P. 175. But according to Epigram 4 in the _Anthologia Graeca epigrammatum_ (Stadt-Mueller, 1894) Studius became consul after the erection of the church and as a reward for its erection. Under the heading [Greek: eis ton naon tou Prodromou en tois Stoudiou] it says [Greek: touton Iôannê, Christou megalô theraponti, Stoudios aglaon oikon edeimato. karpalimôs de tôn kamôn heureto misthon helôn hypatêida rhabdon.] In Suidas is a similar epigram in honour of the erection by Studius of another church; [Greek: tou archistratêgou Nakôleias] in Phrygia. [42] _Theodori Studitae vita_, Migne, _Patrologia Graeca_, tome 99. [43] _Pasch. Chron._ p. 591. [44] Banduri, i. p. 54. In the recent excavations carried on in the Studion by the Russian Archaeological Institute of Constantinople, the foundations of an earlier building were discovered below the floor of the church. The line of the foundations ran through the church from north-east to south-west, parallel to the wall of the cistern to the south-west of the church. Perhaps it is too soon to determine the character of the earlier building. [45] S.V.: [Greek: hê tôn Stouditôn monê proteron kai katholikês ekklêsias ên, hysteron de metêlthen eis monên.] The reading is doubtful. A proposed emendation is, [Greek: tôn katholikôn ekklêsia ên.] [46] Codinus, _De aed._ p. 102. [47] Theophanes, pp. 187, 218; Evagrius, cc. 18, 19, 21. In the list of the abbots who subscribed one of the documents connected with the Synod held at Constantinople in 536, the two establishments are clearly distinguished. They are distinguished also by Antony of Novgorod in 1200, _Itin. russes_, pp. 97, 100. [48] Seylitzes, p. 650. [49] Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 181. [50] Cedrenus, ii. p. 650. [51] Nicephorus Gregoras, i. p. 190; Stephen of Novgorod, who saw the church in 1350, refers to its 'very lofty roof,' _Itin. russes_, p. 123. [52] Theoph. p. 747; _Life of S. Theodore_, Migne, P.G. tome 99. [53] The modern Touzla at the northern head of the gulf of Nicomedia. See the articles by Mr. Siderides and Mr. Meliopoulos in the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of Constantinople_, vol. xxxi., 1907-8. [54] The English reader should consult the _Life of Theodore of Studium_, by Miss Alice Gardner, for an excellent presentation of the man and his work. [55] According to Stephen of Novgorod (_Itin. russes_, p. 121) the refectory was an unusually fine hall, situated near the sea. [56] At a short distance beyond the north-eastern end of the church are some ruined vaults which the Turks have named Kietab Hané, the library. See Plate III. [57] For the Constitution and _Epitamia_ of the Studion, see Migne, _P.G._ tome 99. [58] _Itin. russes_, p. 136. [59] _Ibid._ p. 122 'on envoyait beaucoup de livres de ce couvent en Russie, des règlements, des triodions et autres livres.' Many members of the Studion were Russians. [60] Marin, _De Studio_, p. 11. See Marin, _Les Moines de Constantinople_, for the monastic institutions of the city in general. [61] Cedren. ii. p. 147. [62] _Ibid._ p. 212. [63] _Ibid._ p. 479. [64] _Acta et diplomata patriarchatus Constantinop._ t. ii. p. 12 [Greek: en tais hierais te kai synodikais syneleusesi; prôton men gar pantôn ton archimandritên tôn Stoudiou kai ho chronos katestêse kai to dikaion auto.] [65] Theoph. Cont. p. 362. [66] _Ibid._ p. 384. [67] Glycas, p. 592; Cedrenus, ii. p. 539; Psellus, pp. 87-93; _Byzantine Texts_, edited by Prof. Bury; cf. Schlumberger, _Épopée byzantine à la fin du dixième siècle_, p. 372. [68] See Cedrenus, ii. p. 555; Will, _Commemoratio brevis_, p. 150; Schlumberger, _op. cit._ chapitre viii. [69] Attaliotes, pp. 304, 306; Glycas, p. 617; Scylitzes, pp. 738-39. [70] Scylitzes, pp. 649-51; Bryennius, p. 20. [71] Acropolita, p. 197. [72] Ducas, p. 99 [Greek: plêsion tou naou entos tês pylês]. [73] _Pasch. Chron._ pp. 726-27. [74] Mr. Pantchenko of the Russian Institute at Constantinople has found evidence that cloisters stood along the east and south sides of the great cistern to the south-west of the church. [75] Constant. Porphyr. _De cer._ ii. pp. 562-3. [76] Gyllius says six. [77] See passage from his _Tagebuch_ quoted on page 50. [78] _Altchristliche Baudenkmäler von Konstantinopel_, Blatt iv. [79] _Vida del Gran Tamorlan y itinerario_, pp. 55-56 (Madrid, 1782). [80] _I.e._ From the elevated floors of the galleries one could look over the church. CHAPTER III THE CHURCH OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS, KUTCHUK AYA SOFIA On the level tract beside the Sea of Marmora, to the south of the Hippodrome, and a few paces to the north-west of Tchatlady Kapou, stands the ancient church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. It is commonly known as the mosque Kutchuk Aya Sofia, Little S. Sophia, to denote at once its likeness and its unlikeness to the great church of that name. It can be reached by either of the two streets descending from the Hippodrome to the sea, or by taking train to Koum Kapou, and then walking eastwards for a short distance along the railroad. There can be no doubt in regard to its identity. For the inscription on the entablature of the lower colonnade in the church proclaims the building to be a sanctuary erected by the Emperor Justinian and his Empress Theodora to the honour of the martyr Sergius. The building stands, moreover, as SS. Sergius and Bacchus stood, close to the site of the palace and the harbour of Hormisdas.[81] When Gyllius visited the city the Greek community still spoke of the building as the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus--'Templum Sergii et Bacchi adhuc superest, cujus nomen duntaxat Graeci etiam nunc retinent.'[82] [Illustration: PLATE XI. SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-WEST. _To face page 62._] The foundations of the church were laid in 527, the year of Justinian's accession,[83] and its erection must have been completed before 536, since it is mentioned in the proceedings of the Synod held at Constantinople in that year.[84] According to the Anonymus, indeed, the church and the neighbouring church of SS. Peter and Paul were founded after the massacre in the Hippodrome which suppressed the Nika Riot. But the Anonymus is not a reliable historian.[85] The church did not stand alone. Beside it and united with it, Justinian built also a church dedicated to the Apostles Peter and Paul,[86] so that the two buildings formed a double sanctuary, having a common court and a continuous narthex. They were equal in size and in the richness of the materials employed in their construction, and together formed one of the chief ornaments of the palace and the city. There was, however, one striking difference between them; SS. Sergius and Bacchus was a domical church, while SS. Peter and Paul was a basilica. Styles of ecclesiastical architecture destined soon to blend together in the grandeur and beauty of S. Sophia were here seen converging towards the point of their union, like two streams about to mingle their waters in a common tide. A similar combination of these styles occurs at Kalat-Semân in the church of S. Symeon Stylites, erected towards the end of the fifth century, where four basilicas forming the arms of a cross are built on four sides of an octagonal court.[87] The saints to whom the church was dedicated were brother officers in the Roman army, who suffered death in the reign of Maximianus,[88] and Justinian's particular veneration for them was due, it is said, to their interposition in his behalf at a critical moment in his career. Having been implicated, along with his uncle, afterwards Justin I., in a plot against the Emperor Anastasius, he lay under sentence of death for high treason; but on the eve of his execution, a formidable figure, as some authorities maintain,[89] or as others affirm, the saints Sergius and Bacchus, appeared to the sovereign in a vision and commanded him to spare the conspirators. Thus Justinian lived to reach the throne, and when the full significance of his preservation from death became clear in the lustre of the imperial diadem, he made his deliverers the object of his devout regard. Indeed, in his devotion to them he erected other sanctuaries to their honour also in other places of the Empire.[90] Still this church, founded early in his reign, situated beside his residence while heir-apparent, and at the gates of the Great Palace, and withal a gem of art, must be considered as Justinian's special thankoffering for his crown. With the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus was associated a large monastery known, after the locality in which it stood, as the monastery of Hormisdas, [Greek: en tois Hormisdou]. It was richly endowed by Justinian.[91] NOTE There is some obscurity in regard to the church of SS. Peter and Paul. According to Theophanes,[92] the first church in Constantinople built in honour of those apostles was built at the suggestion of a Roman senator Festus, who on visiting the eastern capital, in 499, was astonished to find no sanctuary there dedicated to saints so eminent in Christian history, and so highly venerated by the Church of the West. As appears from a letter addressed in 519 to Pope Hormisdas by the papal representative at the court of Constantinople, a church of that dedication had been recently erected by Justinian while holding the office of Comes Domesticorum under his uncle Justin I. 'Your son,' says the writer, 'the magnificent Justinian, acting as becomes his faith, has erected a basilica of the Holy Apostles, in which he wishes relics of the martyr S. Laurentius should be placed.' 'Filius vester magnificus vir Justinianus, res convenientes fidei suae faciens, basilicam sanctorum Apostolorum in qua desiderat Sancti Laurentii martyris reliquias esse, constituit.'[93] We have also a letter to the Pope from Justinian himself, in which the writer, in order to glorify the basilica which he had built in honour of the apostles in his palace, begs for some links of the chains which had bound the apostles Peter and Paul, and for a portion of the gridiron upon which S. Laurentius was burnt to death.[94] The request was readily granted in the same year. The description of the basilica, as situated in the palace then occupied by Justinian, leaves no room for doubt that the sanctuary to which the letters just quoted refer was the church of SS. Peter and Paul which Procopius describes as near ([Greek: para]) the palace of Hormisdas. In that case the church of SS. Peter and Paul was built before the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, for the inscription on the entablature in the latter church, not to mention Cedrenus, distinctly assigns the building to the time when Justinian and Theodora occupied the throne. This agrees with the fact that Procopius[95] records the foundation of SS. Peter and Paul before that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and if this were all he did the matter would be clear. But, unfortunately, this is not all Procopius has done. For after recording the erection of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, he proceeds to say that Justinian subsequently ([Greek: epeita]) joined another ([Greek: allo]) church,[96] a basilica, to the sanctuary dedicated to those martyrs, thus leaving upon the reader's mind the impression that the basilica was a later construction. To whom that basilica was consecrated Procopius does not say. Was that basilica the church of SS. Peter and Paul which Procopius mentioned before recording the erection of SS. Sergius and Bacchus? Is he speaking of two or of three churches? The reply to this question must take into account two facts as beyond dispute: first, that the church of SS. Peter and Paul, as the letters cited above make clear, was earlier than the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus; secondly, that the basilica united to the latter sanctuary was dedicated to the two great apostles; for scenes which, according to one authority,[97] occurred in S. Peter's took place, according to another authority,[98] in the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. In the face of these facts, Procopius is either mistaken in regard to the relative age of the two sanctuaries, or he has not expressed his meaning as clearly as he might have done. To suppose that two sanctuaries dedicated to the great apostles were built by Justinian within a short time of each other in the same district, one within the palace, the other outside the palace, is a very improbable hypothesis. The question on which side of SS. Sergius and Bacchus the basilica of SS. Peter and Paul stood, seems decided by the fact that there is more room for a second building on the north than on the south of Kutchuk Agia Sofia. Furthermore, there are traces of openings in the north wall of the church which could serve as means of communication between the two adjoining buildings. Ebersolt, however, places SS. Peter and Paul on the south side of SS. Sergius and Bacchus.[99] A remarkable scene was witnessed in the church in the course of the controversy which raged around the writings known in ecclesiastical history as 'The Three Chapters,' the work of three theologians tainted, it was alleged, with the heretical opinions of Nestorius. Justinian associated himself with the party which condemned those writings, and prevailed upon the majority of the bishops in the East to subscribe the imperial decree to that effect. But Vigilius, the Pope of the day, and the bishops in the West, dissented from that judgment, because the authors of the writings in question had been acquitted from the charge of heresy by the Council of Chalcedon. To condemn them after that acquittal was to censure the Council and reflect upon its authority. Under these circumstances Justinian summoned Vigilius to Constantinople in the hope of winning him over by the blandishments or the terrors of the court of New Rome. Vigilius reached the city on the 25th of January 547, and was detained in the East for seven years in connection with the settlement of the dispute. He found to his cost that to decide an intricate theological question, and above all to assert 'the authority of S. Peter vested in him' against an imperious sovereign and the jealousy of Eastern Christendom, was no slight undertaking. Pope and Emperor soon came into violent collision, and fearing the consequences Vigilius sought sanctuary in the church of S. Peter[100] as he styles it, but which Byzantine writers[101] who record the scene name S. Sergius. [Illustration: PLATE XII. (1) SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. CAPITAL. (2) S. JOHN OF THE STUDION. CAPITAL IN THE NARTHEX. _To face page 66._] Justinian was not the man to stand the affront. He ordered the praetor of the city to arrest the Pope and conduct him to prison. But when that officer appeared, Vigilius grasped the pillars of the altar and refused to surrender. Thereupon the praetor ordered his men to drag the Pope out by main force. Seizing Vigilius by his feet, holding him by his beard and the hair of his head, the men pulled with all their might, but they had to deal with a powerful man, and he clung fast to the altar with an iron grip. In this tug-of-war the altar at length came crashing to the ground, the Pope's strong hands still holding it tight. At this point, however, the indignation and sympathy of the spectators could not be restrained; the assailants of the prostrate prelate were put to flight, and he was left master of the situation. Next day a deputation, including Belisarius and Justin, the heir-apparent, waited upon Vigilius, and in the emperor's name assured him that resistance to the imperial will was useless, while compliance with it would save him from further ill-treatment. Yielding to the counsels of prudence, the Pope returned to the palace of Placidia,[102] the residence assigned to him during his stay in the capital. Probably at this time arose the custom of placing the churches of SS. Peter and Paul, and SS. Sergius and Bacchus at the service of the Latin clergy in Constantinople, especially when a representative of the Pope, or the Pope himself, visited the city. The fact that the church was dedicated to apostles closely associated with Rome and held in highest honour there, would make it a sanctuary peculiarly acceptable to clergy from Western Europe. This, however, did not confer upon Roman priests an exclusive right to the use of the building, and the custom of allowing them to officiate there was often more conspicuous in the breach than in the observance. Still the Roman See always claimed the use of the church, for in the letter addressed in 880 by Pope Julius VIII. to Basil I., that emperor is thanked for permitting Roman clergy to officiate again in SS. Sergius and Bacchus according to ancient custom: 'monasterium Sancti Sergii intra vestram regiam urbem constitutum, quod sancta Romana Ecclesia jure proprio quondam retinuit, divina inspiratione repleti pro honore Principis Apostolorum nostro praesulatui reddidistis.'[103] The most distinguished hegoumenos of the monastery was John Hylilas, better known, on account of his learning, as the Grammarian, and nicknamed Lecanomantis, the Basin-Diviner, because versed in the art of divination by means of a basin of polished brass. He belonged to a noble family of Armenian extraction, and became prominent during the reigns of Leo V., Michael II., and Theophilus as a determined iconoclast. His enemies styled him Jannes, after one of the magicians who withstood Moses, to denote his character as a sorcerer and an opponent of the truth. Having occasion, when conducting service in the imperial chapel to read the lesson in which the prophet Isaiah taunts idolaters with the question, 'To whom then will ye liken God, or to what likeness will ye compare him?' John, it is said, turned to Leo V., and whispered the significant comment, 'Hearest thou, my lord, the words of the prophet? They give thee counsel.' He was a member of the Commission charged by that emperor to collect passages from the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church that condemned the use of images in worship. Prominent iconodules were interned in the monastery of Hormisdas in the hope that he would turn them from the error of their ways by his arguments and influence. He directed the education of Theophilus and supported the iconoclastic policy pursued by that pupil when upon the throne. Theophilus appointed his tutor syncellus to the Patriarch Antony, employed him in diplomatic missions,[104] and finally, upon the death of Antony, created him patriarch. The name of John can still be deciphered under somewhat curious circumstances, in the litany which is inscribed on the bronze doors of the Beautiful Gate at the south end of the inner narthex of S. Sophia. When those doors were set up in 838, Theophilus and his empress had no son, and accordingly, in the threefold prayer inscribed upon the doors, the name of John was associated with the names of the sovereigns as a mark of gratitude and esteem. But in the course of time a little prince, to be known in history as Michael III., was born and proclaimed the colleague of his parents. It then became necessary to insert the name of the imperial infant in the litany graven on the Beautiful Gate of the Great Church, and to indicate the date of his accession. To add another name to the list of names already there was, however, impossible for lack of room; nor, even had there been room, could the name of an emperor follow that of a subject, though that subject was a patriarch. The only way out of the difficulty, therefore, was to erase John's name, and to substitute the name of the little prince with the date of his coming to the throne; the lesser light must pale before the greater. This was done, but the bronze proved too stubborn to yield completely to the wishes of courtiers, and underneath Michael's name has kept fast hold of the name John to this day. The original date on the gate also remains in spite of the attempt to obliterate it. SS. Sergius and Bacchus was one of the sanctuaries of the city to which the emperor paid an annual visit in state.[105] Upon his arrival at the church he proceeded to the gallery and lighted tapers at an oratory which stood in the western part of the gallery, immediately above the Royal Gates, or principal entrance to the church. He went next to the chapel dedicated to the Theotokos, also in the gallery, and after attending to his private devotions there, took his place in the parakypticon ([Greek: en tô parakyptikô tou thysiastêriou)], at the north-eastern or south-eastern end of the gallery, whence he could overlook the bema and follow the public service at the altar.[106] In due course the Communion elements were brought and administered to him in the chapel of the Theotokos; he then retired to the metatorion (a portion of the gallery screened off with curtains), while the members of his suite also partook of the Communion in that chapel. At the close of the service he and his guests partook of some light refreshments, biscuits and wine, in a part of the gallery fitted up for that purpose, and thereafter returned to the palace. _Architectural Features_ In the description of the architectural features of the church and for the plans and most of the illustrations in this chapter I am under deep obligation to Mr. A. E. Henderson, F.S.A. The information gained from him in my frequent visits to the church in his company, and from his masterly article on the church which appeared in the _Builder_ of January 1906, has been invaluable. In design the church is an octagonal building roofed with a dome and enclosed by a rectangle, with a narthex along the west side. This was a favourite type of ecclesiastical architecture, and is seen also in another church of the same period, San Vitale of Ravenna, in which Justinian and Theodora were interested. There, however, the octagonal interior is placed within an octagonal enclosure. The adoption of a rectangular exterior in the Constantinopolitan sanctuary is a characteristic Byzantine feature.[107] S. Vitale was founded in 526, a year before SS. Sergius and Bacchus. [Illustration: PLATE XIII. (1) SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. (2) SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. IN THE GALLERY OVER THE NARTHEX. _To face page 70._] As an examination of the plan will show, the architect's design has not been followed with strict accuracy, and the result is that both the enclosing square and the interior octagon are very irregular figures. Furthermore, the two portions of the building have not the same orientation, so that the octagon stands askew within its rectangular frame. How this lack of symmetry should be explained, whether due to sloven work or the result of the effort to adapt the church to the lines of the earlier church of SS. Peter and Paul, with which it was united, is difficult to decide. The court which stands before the Turkish portico in front of the west side of the building represents the old atrium of the church, and to the rear of the portico is still found the ancient narthex. At the south end of the narthex is a stone staircase leading to the gallery. The arch at the foot of the staircase is built of fragments from the old ciborium or eikonostasis of the church. The great height (0.24 metre or 9 inches) of the steps is found, according to Mr. Antoniadi, also in S. Sophia. The exterior walls, which are mostly in brick and rubble masonry, exhibit poor workmanship, and have undergone considerable repair, especially on the east. On the south there are two thicknesses of walling. The outer thickness has arched recesses at intervals along its length, corresponding to openings in the inner thickness, and thus while buttressing the latter also enlarges slightly the area of the church. The length of the rectangular enclosure from west to east is 101 feet, with an average breadth of 772-1/2 feet from north to south, excluding the recesses in the latter direction. All the windows of the church have been altered by Turkish hands, and are rectangular instead of showing semicircular heads. The passage intervening between the rectangular enclosure and the octagon is divided into two stories, thus providing the church with an ambulatory below and a gallery above. The domed octagon which forms the core of the building stands at a distance of some 18-1/2 feet from the rectangle within which it is placed. It measures 53-1/2 feet by 50-1/2 feet. The eight piers at its angles rise to a height of 33-1/2 feet from the floor to the springing of the dome arches. The archways thus formed, except the bema arch, are filled in with two pairs of columns in two stories set on the outer plane of the piers. The lower colonnade is surmounted, after the classic fashion, by a horizontal entablature profusely carved while the upper columns are bound by arches, thus making seven sides of the octagon a beautiful open screen of fourteen columns and as many triple arcades, resplendent with marbles of various hues and rich with carved work. The mass of the piers is relieved by their polygonal form, a fluted cymatium along their summit, and a repeating design of a flower between two broad leaves below the entablature. Though the flower points upwards it has been mistaken for a cluster of grapes.[108] At the four diagonal points the sides of the octagon are semicircular, forming exhedrae, an arrangement which gives variety to the lines of the figure, widens the central area, secures more frontage for the gallery, and helps to buttress the dome. The same feature appears in S. Sophia, whereas in San Vitale all the sides of the octagon, excepting the eastern side, are semicircular. The extension of the interior area of a building (square or octagonal) by means of niches at the angles or in the sides, or both at the angles and in the sides, was a common practice.[109] There is considerable difference in the size of the piers and the dome arches. The eastern piers stand farther apart than their companions, and consequently the arch over them, the triumphal arch of the sanctuary, is wider and loftier than the other arches. The bays to the north-east and the south-east are also wider than the bays at the opposite angles. The apse is semicircular within, and shows three sides on the exterior. As in S. Sophia and S. Irene, there is no prothesis or diaconicon. The pairs of columns, both below and above, are alternately verd antique and red Synnada marble, resting on bases of the blue-veined white marble from the island of Marmora. The capitals on the lower order are of the beautiful type known as the 'melon capital,' a form found also in San Vitale at Ravenna and in the porch of S. Theodore in Constantinople (p. 246). The neckings are worked with the capitals, and enriched by 'egg-and-dart' pointing upwards. In the centre of the capitals was carved the monogram of Justinian or that of Theodora. Most of the monograms have been effaced, but the name of the empress still appears on the capital of the western column in the south bay, while that of Justinian is found on the first capital in the south-western bay; on both capitals in the north-western bay, accompanied by the title Basileus; and, partially, on the last capital in the north-eastern bay. In the soffit of the architrave are sunk panels of various patterns, the six-armed cross occurring twice. The beadings of the fasciae are enriched with the designs commonly known as 'rope,' 'bead-and-reel,' 'egg-and-dart,' and again 'bead-and-reel.' The frieze is in two heights. The lower portion is a semicircular pulvinar adorned with acanthus leaves, deeply undercut; the upper portion is occupied by a long inscription in raised ornamental letters to the honour of Justinian, Theodora, and S. Sergius. The cornice is decorated with dentils, 'bead-and-reel,' projecting consols, 'egg-and-dart,' and leaves of acanthus. The inscription (Fig. 20) may be rendered thus: Other sovereigns, indeed, have honoured dead men whose labour was useless. But our sceptred Justinian, fostering piety, honours with a splendid abode the servant of Christ, Creator of all things, Sergius; whom nor the burning breath of fire, nor the sword, nor other constraints of trials disturbed; but who endured for the sake of God Christ to be slain, gaining by his blood heaven as his home. May he in all things guard the rule of the ever-vigilant sovereign, and increase the power of the God-crowned Theodora whose mind is bright with piety, whose toil ever is unsparing efforts to nourish the destitute. The inscription is not mere flattery to the founders of the church. Justinian and Theodora were devout after the fashion of their day, and took a deep interest in the poor. The empress erected an asylum for fallen women, hostels for strangers, hospitals for the sick, and homes for the destitute. 'On the splendid piece of tapestry embroidered in gold which formed the altar cloth of S. Sophia, she was represented with Justinian as visiting hospitals and churches.'[110] [Illustration: FIG. 20. INSCRIPTION ON THE FRIEZE.] To the rear of the southern straight side of the octagon two columns stand under the gallery, with wide fillets worked on both sides of their bases, shafts, and capitals, showing that a frame of stone or wood was once affixed to them. The capitals are of the ordinary cushion type and bear on opposite faces the monograms Justinian, Basileus. [Illustration: PLATE XIV. (1) SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-EAST. (2) SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. PORTION OF THE ENTABLATURE. _To face page 74._] Two feet above the cornice, or twenty feet from the floor of the church, the level of the gallery is reached.[111] Here the columns are smaller than those below, and are bound together by arches instead of by an architrave. Their capitals represent the type known as the 'Pseudo-Ionic' or cushion capital, in view of its broad head. It appears appropriately here as the form of capital required to carry the impost of an arch upon a capital. At one time, indeed, that demand was met by placing upon the capital a distinct block of stone, a fragment, so to speak, of the horizontal architrave. It is the device adopted in San Vitale at Ravenna, S. Demetrius of Salonica, and elsewhere, but never it would seem in Constantinople, except in the underground cisterns of the city. It was, however, too inartistic to endure, and eventually was superseded by capitals with a broad flattened head on which the wide impost of an arch could rest securely.[112] A free form of acanthus, deeply undercut on the face towards the central area of the church, covers the capitals, and in the centre of that face, on all the capitals except the eighth (counting from the north-east) is carved the monogram of the title Basileus, or of Justinian, or of Theodora. In the south side of the gallery stand two columns corresponding to the two columns in the aisle below. They are poor in design and not original. The western capital is 'Pseudo-Ionic,'[113] with a plain cross on the northern face. The eastern capital is in the basket form with roundels on the four faces. Two additional columns are found in the western portion of the gallery. They are of verd antique and larger than the other columns in this story of the church, and have sunk crosses in them. The splendour of the interior decoration has certainly been dimmed, for the walls of the edifice once gleamed with marbles and glittered with mosaics. 'By the sheen of its marbles,' says Procopius,[114] 'it was more resplendent than the sun, and everywhere it was filled profusely with gold.' When Ferguson examined the building, remains of frescoes or of mosaics, which have disappeared since his time, could be distinguished in the narthex. The soffit, both of the upper and of the lower cymatium on the piers, projects sufficiently to admit the application of the customary marble incrustation. The proportions of the building are marred by the boarded floor which rises seventeen centimeters above the original pavement, disguising the real elevation of the dome and of the columns in the lower colonnade. But notwithstanding all changes for the worse the building is still a beautiful structure. Very effective especially is the happy combination of the various lines and forms here brought together--the rectilinear and the semicircular sides of the octagon, the octagonal fabric and the round dome that crowns it, the horizontal entablature stretched along the summit of the lower story of columns and the arches that leap from column to column in the gallery. This harmonious variety of form has also a historical significance. An old order in architecture and a new order here meet and embrace before the earlier, having served its age, passes away and the later comes triumphant to fill another era of the world with fresh beauties. Here in the tide of time we look before and after. To the student of architecture the dome of this church is specially interesting. In the application of the dome to the octagon no pendentives are employed. The octagon is carried up to the base of the dome, which is built in sixteen longitudinal compartments that impinge upon one another and form groins giving to the dome its strength and sweep. On the groins is a plaster moulding, probably Byzantine. The eight compartments directly above the dome arches are flat, and flush with the inner face of the octagon, and in each of them is a semicircular-headed window. They rise perpendicular to a point a little above the windows, and then curve with a radius to the centre of the dome. [Illustration: PLATE XV. THE BAPTISTERY, S. SOPHIA, FROM THE EAST. THE BAPTISTERY, S. SOPHIA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING WEST. _To face page 76._] [Illustration: FIG. 21.--VIEW OF THE EXTERIOR OF THE DOME OF SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS.] On the other hand the eight compartments directly above the angles of the octagon are narrower than the preceding compartments; they have no windows, and, what is of special importance to note, they are deeply concave.[115] Such marked hollowness is found in later domes as a decorative feature, but here it is primarily and supremely a constructive device. By its means the concave compartments are set slightly back from the octagon's inner face, leaving, at the springing line, portions of the wall-head to appear as little flat ledges on each side of the angles. This is a most skilful expedient, and compares favourably with the methods employed elsewhere to apply the dome to the octagon.[116] In the octagonal church of S. Lorenzo at Milan the octagon is turned into the circle by the introduction of squinches. In San Vitale a considerable walling is built between the line of the octagon and the springing line of the dome, while the bed for the dome is formed by introducing, in the space over the angles of the octagon, niches which are worked above to the circle on plan. On the other hand, it is interesting to compare with these methods the method employed in the baptistery of S. Sophia, now a Sultan's Turbé, near the southern entrance to the inner narthex. Although the walls of the building describe a square on the exterior, they form an octagon on the interior with semicircular bays at the diagonals, as in SS. Sergius and Bacchus. But in the application of the dome the true pendentive is used. The baptistery was erected shortly before S. Sophia, and in view of the erection of the great church. The curvature of the dome of SS. Sergius and Bacchus has three zones, which have respectively a radius of m. 8, (drawn from the centre of the octagon), m. 3-1/4, and m. 9-1/2, (centre about m. 2, below the springing of the dome). The first extends to a point a little above the heads of the dome windows; the second about m. 2 higher; the third to the crown of the dome. The groins stop short a little below the dome's apex, where they are arched into one another, leaving a saucer-shaped crown now capped by a Turkish finial. The dome is covered with lead, and presents an undulating surface owing to the protuberance of its eight concave compartments.[117] The system of weighting and buttressing the dome displays great skill, and will be best understood by studying Mr. Henderson's geometrical and constructive sections of the systems (Figs. 28, 29). [Illustration: FIG. 22.--BRICK STAMPS IN SS. SERGIUS AND BACCHUS. (From rubbings by Mr. A. E. Henderson.) _At east end of south aisle._ _In the gallery._] [Illustration: FIG. 23.] [Illustration: FIG. 24.] [Illustration: FIGS. 25, 26, AND 27.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.] [Illustration: FIG. 29.] [Illustration: FIG. 30.] [81] Procop. _De aed._ i. c. 4; Banduri, iii. p. 45. [82] _De top._ ii. c. 14. [83] Cedren. ii. pp. 642-43. [84] Mansi, viii. col. 1010. [85] Banduri, iii. p. 45. The church was visited by Russian pilgrims in 1200, 1350, 1393.--_Itin. russes_, pp. 160, 120, 164. [86] Procop. _De aed._ i. p. 186. S. Peter 'near the palace' is mentioned in the list of abbots at the Synod of C.P. in 536. Mansi, viii. col. 930, col. 939. Another document of the same Synod, col. 1010, is signed by Peter, hegoumenos of SS. Peter and Paul and of the holy martyrs SS. Sergius and Bacchus. [87] Diehl, _Manuel d'art byzantin_, p. 31. Antoniadi has drawn my attention to the junction of a basilica and a hexagonal building in a baptistery at Tivoli. See Dehio und Bezold, _Atlas_, plate i. fig. 10. [88] Synax, Oct. 7. [89] Du Cange, iv. p. 135. [90] Cedren. i. p. 635; Procop. _Secret History_, c. 6; Procop. _De aed._ ii. p. 234; Theoph. p. 339; Theoph. Cont. p. 154. [91] Cedren. i. pp. 642-43. The Synaxaria (Sirmondi) speak of three churches of S. Sergius, in or near Constantinople; [Greek: en tais Sophiais], Oct. 7; [Greek: plêsion tês Aetiou kinsternês, Nov. 9 (near Monastery of Manuel, p. 258); [Greek: peran en Rhouphinianais], May 29 (near Kadikeui).] [92] Page 220. [93] Baronius, _Annales ecclesiastici_, tom. ix. p. 253, Luccae, 1741: 'quam basilicam eorum hic in domo nostra sub nomine praedictorum venerabilium constructam, illustrare et illuminare large dignemini.' [94] _Ibid._ p. 254. [95] _De aed._ i. p. 186. [96] _Ut supra_, [Greek: kai epeita kai temenos allo ek plagiou toutô parakeimenon] (i.e. SS. Sergius and Bacchus). [97] Baronius, x. p. 43. [98] Theoph. p. 349; Malalas, p. 485. [99] Le Grand Palais. Epigram 8 in the _Anthologia Graeca epigrammatum_ (vol. i. Stadt-Mueller) celebrates the erection by Justinian of SS. Peter and Paul, [Greek: eis ton naon tôn hagiôn apostolôn plêsion tou hagiou Sergiou eis ta Hormisdou]. [100] Baronius, x. p. 43 'ex domo Placidiana, ubi degebat, confugit ad ibi proxime junctam ecclesiam S. Petri'; cf. Vigilius' letter, _Ep._ vii. t. i. _Ep. Rom. pont._ [101] Theoph. p. 349; Malalas, p. 485. [102] _Notitia_. Two palaces bearing similar names stood in the First Region of the city, the _Palatium Placidianum_ and the _Domus Placidiae Augustae_. Vigilius refers to the palace in his circular letter, giving an account of his treatment at Constantinople. There also the legates of Pope Agatho were lodged in 680, on the occasion of the First Council in Trullo, and there likewise Pope Constantine in 710, when he came to the East at the command of Justinian II., took up his abode.--Anastasius Bibliothecarius, pp. 54, 65. [103] Epistola ccli. See Du Cange, _Const. Christ._ iv. p. 116. [104] 'Under the microscope of modern historical criticism, ... it is not surprising to find that the famous embassy of John the Grammarian to the court of Baghdad must be rejected as a fiction irreconcilable with fact.'--Prof. Bury in the _English Historical Review_, April 1909. But he was sent on other embassies. [105] Constant. Porphyr. pp. 87-88. [106] Similar to the parakypticon at the east end of the southern gallery in S. Sophia. Reiske (_Comment. ad Constant. Porphyr._ p. 195) defines it as 'Fenestra, quae in sacrificatorium despicit e catechumeniis.' Cf. on the whole subject, Antoniadi, [Greek: Ekphrasis tês Hagias Sophias], vol. ii. p. 291, note 101; p. 331, note 190; p. 332. [107] The plan of SS. Sergius and Bacchus is similar to that of the cathedral of Bosra (511-12), which was also dedicated to the same saints. Fergusson, _History of Ancient and Mediaeval Architecture_, vol. i. p. 432. [108] Gyllius, _De Top. C.P._ ii. c. 16. If the design represented vine leaves and grapes, it surely did not allude to the god Bacchus, but to the vine in the gospel of S. John. The small columns on the piers are Turkish. [109] Antoniadi, _S. Sophia_, vol. ii, pp. 7-9, draws attention to the development of buildings with sides turned into exhedrae, from their simplest form to their culmination in S. Sophia. He refers for illustrations to plans in Dehio und Bezold, _Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes_, vol. i. pp. 23-31; _Atlas_, vol. i. plate i. figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 7; plate iii. figures 1, 2, 7. [110] C. Diehl, _Theodora_, pp. 242, 342. [111] The ratio of the height of the gallery above the floor of the church to the height of the summit of the dome is, according to Antoniadi, 1/3.5, the same as in S. Sophia as built by Anthemius. [112] 'Pulvins,' says Rivoira (_Lombardic Architecture_, p. 11, English translation), 'serve the purpose of providing the springers of the arches with a base corresponding to the wall which they carry, while allowing the support beneath to be much slighter without injuring the stability of the structure.' [113] Rivoira, _ut supra_, p. 62: 'The volutes in the Pseudo-Ionic capital intended to conceal the abruptness of the transition from the square of the pulvin to the round.' [114] _De aed._ i. p. 187. [115] 'The centres of the radii of these concave compartments are formed by having three points given the groins on either side and the angle of the octagon in the centre. With these points for each compartment the radius is given, and an arc turned giving the concavity required for each web at its springing.'--A. E. Henderson in the _Builder_, January 1906, p. 4. [116] In S. George of Ezra in Syria (515), as Mr. E. M. Antoniadi informs me, the dome overhangs or oversails the angles of the octagon. [117] 'The dome stands within a polygon of sixteen sides, that rises four metres above the springing line, keeping the dome taut and weighting the haunches. Against this polygonal casing are set buttresses formed by the extension of the piers of the octagon to within m. 1-1/2 from the cornice of the dome. These buttresses are in their turn respectively strengthened, on the rear, by two small buttresses; of which those on the north, south, east, and west sides rest on an arch of the gynecaeum, and carry the thrust to the outer walls of the church, while the others rest on the exhedrae and the vaulting of the gynecaeum. Furthermore, from the summit of the buttresses formed by the piers of the octagon a small buttress is set against the cupola itself up to the cornice.' This marshalling of the buttresses around the dome in three tiers, while securing the stability of the structure, is moreover strikingly artistic. See Fig. 21. CHAPTER IV THE CHURCH OF S. IRENE 118-143 The church of S. Irene stands at a short distance to the north-east of S. Sophia, in the first court of the Seraglio. Its identity has never been questioned, for the building was too much in the public eye and too near the centre of the ecclesiastical affairs of the city to render possible any mistake concerning its real character. It is always described as close to S. Sophia.[118] According to the historian Socrates,[119] it was originally one of the Christian sanctuaries of the old town of Byzantium, a statement we may well believe, seeing Byzantium was the seat of a bishop before the foundation of Constantinople. The designation of the church as 'the Ancient' or 'the Old Church,' Ecclesia Antiqua, [Greek: hê palaia],[120] and the special regard cherished for the church during the earlier history of the city, are also thus best explained. The original sanctuary was small,[121] but when Byzantium became the capital of the East the old fabric was enlarged and beautified by Constantine the Great to harmonize with its grander surroundings, and was dedicated to Peace, in honour of the rest and quiet which settled upon the Roman world when the founder of the city had vanquished all his rivals after eighteen years of civil war.[122] [Illustration: PLATE XVI. _Abdullah Frères._ S. IRENE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 84._] NOTE Other churches of the same name were found in Constantinople: S. Irene in the Seventh Region, according to the _Notitia_. S. Irene in Sykai (Galata), [Greek: peran en Sykais]; Theophanes, p. 353. S. Irene by the Sea, [Greek: pros thalassan]; Nicetas Choniates, p. 269; Synax., Jan. 10. The last was also known as the New, [Greek: Nea]; Synax., Jan. 23. Erected in the reign of the Emperor Marcian, it was partially restored by the Emperor Manuel Comnenus after its destruction by fire; Nicet. Chon. _ut supra_. It was styled likewise 'at the Ferry,' [Greek: to perama]; Codinus, _De aed._ p. 89; Banduri, ii. p. 31. Until the year 360, when the church of S. Sophia was opened to public worship by the Emperor Constantius, S. Irene appears to have been the cathedral of the city. Hence, probably, the name sometimes given to it, the Patriarchate, [Greek: to patriarcheion].[123] Nor did the church lose its primacy altogether even after the erection of S. Sophia. On the contrary, the two churches were regarded as forming one sanctuary; they were enclosed within the same court, served by the same clergy, and known by the same name, 'the Great Church,' [Greek: hê Megalê Ekklêsia].[124] S. Irene was again the sole cathedral building, while S. Sophia lay in ruins for eleven years after being set on fire in 404, on the occasion of the final banishment of John Chrysostom. S. Irene comes prominently into view during the fierce struggle between the adherents of the Nicene Creed and the Arians, in the half-century which followed the inauguration of New Rome. Having been persuaded that the point at issue between the two theological parties was not essential, and that the agitation of the question was due to love of disputation, Constantine the Great, who valued peace at almost any price, attempted to suppress the controversy by his authority, and accordingly ordered the Patriarch Alexander to admit Arius, then present in the city, to the Holy Communion. With this order Alexander, a champion of the Nicene Creed, refused to comply. Whereupon the followers of Arius decided to have recourse to violence. But on the very eve of the day fixed to carry out their purpose, Arius was taken suddenly ill in the Forum of Constantine and died on the spot. The historian Socrates regards the event as the act of God, for when the patriarch heard what the heretics intended to do, he retired to the church of S. Irene, and there for many days and nights, with fasting and tears, and with his lips pressed to the altar, implored divine succour in his terrible extremity. 'If the opinions of Arius be true,' the patriarch prayed, 'let me die; but if they are false let him be judged.' The tragic end of Arius was considered the answer to that prayer. Upon the death of Alexander in 343, at the age of ninety-eight, the two parties came into collision in regard to the question of his successor. The deceased prelate had recommended two persons as suitable to fill his place: the presbyter Paul, because of his abilities; the deacon Macedonius, on account of his age and venerable appearance. The Arians favoured Macedonius, as more in sympathy with their opinions; the orthodox, however, carried the election and installed Paul in S. Irene. The defeated party seems to have submitted, but the Emperor Constantius, a violent Arian, quashed the election, and appointed Eusebius of Nicomedia, a prominent upholder of the views of Arius, bishop of the capital. Upon the death of Eusebius in 346 the theological combatants again seized the opportunity to try their strength. The orthodox recalled Paul; the Arians consecrated Macedonius. Incensed by these proceedings, Constantius, then at Antioch, ordered Hermogenes, the magister militum in Thrace, to proceed to Constantinople and drive Paul from the city. But no sooner did Hermogenes attempt to execute his instructions than the populace rose, burnt his house to the ground, and after dragging him along the streets, killed him. The emperor was furious. He hurried back to Constantinople, banished Paul, and reduced by one-half the amount of free bread daily distributed among the citizens. Nor did he fully recognize Macedonius as bishop. Under these circumstances Paul made his way to Rome, and, having secured the support of the Pope, reappeared in Constantinople as the rightful bishop of the see. But the emperor, again in Syria, was not to be baffled. More angry than ever, he sent peremptory orders to Philip, the prefect of Constantinople, to expel Paul and to recognize Macedonius. By skilful arrangements Paul was quietly removed from the scene. But to install Macedonius was a more difficult undertaking. The prefect, however, ordered his chariot, and with Macedonius seated by his side made for S. Irene, under an escort of troops carrying drawn swords. The sharp, naked weapons alarmed the crowds in the streets, and without distinction of sect or class men rushed for the church, everybody trying to outstrip his neighbour in the race to get there first. Soon all the approaches to the building were packed to suffocation; no one stirred backwards or forwards, and the prefect's chariot was unable to advance. What seemed a hostile barricade of human beings welded together obstructed his path. In vain did the soldiers brandish their swords in the hope of frightening the crowd to disperse. The crowd stood stock still, not because it would not, but because it could not move. The soldiers grew angry, resorted to their weapons, and cut a way to the church through that compact mass of humanity at the cost of 3150 lives; some of the victims being crushed to death, others killed at the point of the sword. So was Macedonius conducted to his throne in the temple of Peace.[125] But the conflict between the opposite parties continued, and after six years spent in efforts to recover his position, Paul was restored to office through the intervention of the Pope of Rome, of the Emperor Constans, and of the Synod of Sardica. It was a brief triumph. In 350 Paul was exiled for life to Cucusus, and Macedonius ruled once more in his stead.[126] For the next thirty years S. Irene with the other churches of the capital remained in the hands of the Arians. [Illustration: PLATE XVII. (1) S. IRENE, SOUTH SIDE. (2) S. IRENE, NORTH SIDE. IN THE DISTANCE, S. SOPHIA. _To face page 86._] During that period the Nicene faith was preached by Gregory of Nazianzus only in a small chapel, subsequently dedicated to S. Anastasia.[127] But with the accession of Theodosius the Great the adherents of the Creed of Nicaea prevailed, and the Second General Council, held in Constantinople in 381, adopted that creed as the true faith of the Christian Church. According to the biographer of S. Stephen the Younger, who enumerates the six ecumenical councils, and indicates, in most cases, where each met, that famous Council met in the church of S. Irene.[128] But Theodore Lector[129] says the Council assembled in the church of Homonoia, and explains the name of that church as commemorative of the harmony which prevailed among the bishops who gathered there on that occasion. As a matter of fact, one of the churches of the city bore the name Homonoia.[130] Possibly the discrepancy between the statements of the authors just mentioned may be due to a confusion arising from a similar meaning of the names of the two churches. According to the Anonymus,[131] the usurper Basiliscus took refuge with his wife and children in S. Irene, when he was overthrown in 477, and the Emperor Zeno recovered the throne. But, according to the _Paschal Chronicle_,[132] Basiliscus fled on that occasion to the great baptistery of S. Sophia. As that baptistery stood between S. Irene and S. Sophia and may have served both churches, the difference between the two statements is not serious. After standing for two centuries the Constantinian edifice was burnt to the ground by the fire which the rebel factions in the Nika Riot set to the offices of the prefect on Friday, the 16th of January 532. The building had narrowly escaped the same fate in the fire which destroyed S. Sophia earlier in the course of the riot, and might have survived also the conflagration in which it actually perished, but for the strong wind which carried the flames from the praetorium to the church, devouring on their way the bath of Alexander, a part of the hospice of Eubulus, and the hospital of Sampson with its patients. The restoration of the church was included in the magnificent scheme of Justinian the Great to build on the wilderness of ashes created by his rebel subjects the finest monuments of his empire. And so S. Irene rose from its ruins, the largest sanctuary in Constantinople, except S. Sophia.[133] The bricks bearing the mark 'the Great Church,' [Greek: Megalê 'Ekklêsia], which are built into a raised bank against the northern wall of the atrium, afford no indication of the date when S. Irene was rebuilt. The bank is of comparatively recent origin.[134] In the month of December 564, the thirty-seventh year of Justinian's reign, another great fire threatened to destroy the buildings which that emperor had erected in the quarter of the city beside S. Sophia. The hospital of Sampson was again burnt down; the atrium of the Great Church, known as the Garsonostasion, suffered; two monasteries close to S. Irene perished, and, what most concerns us, the atrium and part of the narthex of S. Irene itself were consumed.[135] How soon these injuries were repaired is not recorded. During the 176 years that followed the reconstruction of the church by Justinian, S. Irene does not appear in history. But in 740 it was injured by the earthquake which shook Constantinople in the last year of the reign of Leo III. the Isaurian.[136] Theophanes[137] is very precise in regard to the time when the disaster occurred; it was on the 26th of October, the ninth indiction, on a Wednesday, at eight o'clock. The damage done both in the city and in the towns of Thrace and Bithynia was terrible. In Nicaea only one church was left standing, while Constantinople deplored the ruin of large portions of the landward fortifications and the loss of many churches, monasteries, and public monuments. S. Irene was then shaken, and, as the examination of the building by Mr. George has proved, sustained most serious injuries. The Emperor Leo died about six months after the disaster, and it is therefore uncertain whether the church was rebuilt before his death. His first attention was naturally directed to the reconstruction of the fortifications of the city, where his name still appears, with that of his son and successor Constantine Copronymus, as the rebuilder of the fallen bulwarks. But although there is no record of the precise date at which the ruined church was repaired, we may safely assume that if the work was not commenced while Leo III. sat upon the throne, it was undertaken soon after the accession of Constantine Copronymus. S. Irene was too important to be long neglected, and was probably rebuilt during the ascendancy of the iconoclasts. The church reappears for a moment in 857 during the dispute which raged around the persons of Ignatius and Photius as to which of them was the lawful patriarch. While the partisans of the latter met in the church of the Holy Apostles to depose Ignatius, the few bishops who upheld the claims of Ignatius assembled in S. Irene to condemn and depose Photius with equal vehemence.[138] The church comes into view once more in connection with the settlement of the quarrel caused in 907 by the fourth marriage of Leo VI. the Wise. As the union was uncanonical, the Patriarch Nicholas deposed the priest who had celebrated the marriage; he, moreover, refused the Communion to the emperor, and treated Zoe, the emperor's fourth wife, as an outcast. For such conduct Nicholas lost his office, and a more pliant ecclesiastic was appointed in his place. The inevitable result followed. The religious world was torn by a schism which disturbed Church and State for fifteen years. At length Romanus I. summoned a council of divines to compose the agitation, and peace was restored in 921, by a decree which condemned a fourth marriage, but allowed a third marriage under very strict limitations. So important was this decision regarded that it was read annually, in July, from the pulpit, and on that occasion the emperor, with the patriarch, attended service in S. Irene, and at its close took part in a procession from S. Irene to S. Sophia, on the way back to the Great Palace.[139] [Illustration: PLATE XVIII. S. IRENE. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST. (With the kind permission of Professor C. Gurlitt, from his work _Die Baukunst Konstantinopels_, Berlin, E. Wasmûth.) _To face page 90._] On Good Friday the patriarch held a service for catechumens ([Greek: katêchêsis]) in S. Irene, which the patricians were required to attend.[140] The church of S. Irene has never been used as a mosque. After its enclosure within the precincts of the Seraglio soon after the Turkish conquest, it was converted into an armoury, probably because it stood in the court occupied by the body of Janissaries who formed the palace guard, and it has served that military purpose, in contradiction to its name, for the most part ever since. For several years it contained the first collection of antiquities made by the Turkish Government, and some of the objects in that collection still remain to recall the use of the building as a museum; the most interesting of them being the chain stretched across the mouth of the Golden Horn during the siege of 1453, the monument to the charioteer Porphyrios, and the pedestal of the silver statue of the Empress Eudocia, which played a fatal part in the relations of that empress to the great bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom. Since the establishment of the constitutional régime in the Ottoman Empire the building has been turned into a Museum of Arms. _Architectural Features_ Until the recent establishment of constitutional government in Turkey it was impossible to obtain permission to study this church in a satisfactory manner, so jealously was even entrance into the building guarded. The nearest approach to anything like a proper examination of the building was when Salzenberg was allowed to visit the church in 1848, while the church of S. Sophia was undergoing repairs under the superintendence of the Italian architect Fossati. But the liberty accorded to Salzenberg was not complete, and, consequently, his plan of the church published in his _Altchristliche Baudenkmäler von Konstantinopel_ is marred by serious mistakes. Happily the new Government of the Empire is animated by an enlightened and liberal spirit, and at the request of His Excellency Sir Gerard Lowther, H.B.M. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, permission was granted to the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund to have the church examined as thoroughly as its condition allowed, and to make all the plans, drawings, and photographs required in the interests of a scientific knowledge of its architectural character. The Byzantine Research and Publication Fund was fortunate in having as its president, Edwin Freshfield, LL.D., so long distinguished for his devotion to Byzantine archaeology, and it is mainly due to his generosity that the means necessary for carrying on the study of the church were provided. The society was, moreover, most happy in being able to secure the services of an architect in Mr. W. S. George, who already possessed considerable experience in the investigation of Byzantine buildings at Salonica and elsewhere. Fortunately, also, the building was at the same time placed under repair, in view of its conversion into a museum of arms, thus affording exceptional facilities for the erection of scaffolding and the removal of plaster and other obstructions. Mr. George gave nearly five months to the study of the church, and the results of his careful investigations will appear in a monograph to be published by the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund. But with great courtesy, in view of the fact that I was engaged on the present work, and also because I waived my own application for leave to study S. Irene in favour of the application made by the Byzantine Fund, I have been allowed to anticipate that monograph by making use of some of the results of Mr. George's investigations. For this permission I am very grateful, as it will add much to the value of this volume. I visited the church frequently while Mr. George was at work upon it, and my account of its architectural features is based entirely upon the information he then kindly supplied, and upon the notes he has communicated to me since his return to England. [Illustration: PLATE XIX. (1) S. IRENE. VAULTING AT THE NORTH-WEST CORNER OF THE ATRIUM. (2) S. IRENE. THE NORTHERN ARCH OF THE MAIN DOME, SEEN FROM THE SOUTH GALLERY. _To face page 92._] The architectural feature which gives to this building a peculiar interest, in the study of the development of planning and construction, is the more complete fusion of the basilican type of plan with a domical system of roofing which it presents than is found in any other example of a similar combination. On the west, where the ground retains its original level, stands the old atrium, though much modified by Turkish repairs and alterations. It had covered arcades on the north, south, and west sides, but only the outer walls of the northern and southern arcades, with some portions of their inner walls, and three complete vaulted bays at the northern end of the western arcade, are Byzantine. The walls, vaults, and piers in other parts of the arcades are Turkish. There is no trace of the west door which, under ordinary circumstances, would form the main entrance to the atrium, but a Byzantine doorway, now built up, is found close to the narthex, in the outer wall of the south arcade. The area of the atrium has been, moreover, greatly reduced by the erection, on its four sides, of an inner range of Turkish vaulting. Five doors led from the atrium to the narthex, but only the central and the northernmost of these doors are now open, the latter entrance still retaining its original architrave and cornice of white marble, with the usual mouldings and a cross worked on the crowning member of the cornice. The present entrance to the church, however, is on the north side of the building, through a porch that leads down a sloping Turkish passage to the western end of the north aisle. The narthex is in five bays, the two terminal bays having cross-groined vaults, the three central, vaults of a domical character with blunt rounded groins at the springing. The whole vaulting surface of the narthex was once covered with mosaics exhibiting mainly a geometrical pattern. From the narthex three tall arched openings conducted to the nave, and one opening to each aisle. But the direct communication between the narthex and the northern aisle is now cut off by the insertion of the Turkish entrance to the church, although the old doorway to the aisle remains complete. The nave is divided into two large bays of equal breadth but unequal length, the western bay being the shorter. In the latter the arches which support its roof are, to the east and west, semicircular, while those to north and south are roughly elliptical, springing from the same level and rising to the same height as the semicircular arches, but being of shorter span. These elliptical arches extend to the outer walls of the church, thus partaking of the character of short barrel vaults. Upon these arches is raised what has been called an elliptical dome. But in no part has it the character of a true ellipse, nor does it spring from its supporting arches in the simple regular manner of a dome, but in the complex manner of a vault built upon arches of unequal curvature. It should therefore rather be called a domical vault. Where it shows above the roof it has the appearance of a modified and very low cone covering an irregular elliptical drum. The eastern bay of the nave is square on plan, bounded by semicircular arches, all extended so as to form short barrel vaults. The western arch is joined to the eastern arch of the western bay, thus forming a short barrel vault common to both bays. The vault to the east runs to the semi-dome of the apse; whilst the vaults to north and south, like the corresponding vaults in the western bay, extend to the outer walls and cover the eastern portions of the aisles and galleries. Above the supporting arches regular pendentives are formed, and above these there is a drum carrying a dome. The apse to the east of the nave is semicircular within and covered by a semi-dome. Between that semi-dome and the eastern barrel vault of the nave a break is interposed, giving the bema arch two orders or faces, with their external and internal angles rounded off, and the whole surface of the semi-dome and of the bema arch is covered with mosaic. At one time the mosaic extended also over the surface of the barrel vault. The decoration in the semi-dome consists of a large cross in black outline upon a gold ground; below the cross there are three steps set upon a double band of green that runs round the base of the semi-dome. A geometrical border bounds the semi-dome, and then comes the following inscription, an extract from Psalm lxv. verses 5, 6 (the lxiv. in the Septuagint version), on the inner face of the arch: [Greek: (DEUT EI)SOMETHA EN TOIS AGATHOIS TOU OIKOU SOU, HAGIOS O NAOS SOU THAUMASTOS EN DIKAIOSYNÊ EPAKOUSON HÊMÔN O TH[EO]S O S[ÔT]ÊR HÊMÔN HÊ ELPIS PANTÔN TÔN PERATÔN TÊS GÊS KAI TÔN EN THALASSÊ MAK(RA)[N]]. (Come we will go?) in the good things of thy house. Holy is thy temple. Thou art wonderful in righteousness. Hear us, O God our Saviour; the hope of all the ends of the earth and of them who are afar off upon the sea. The letters enclosed within curved brackets and the accents[141] above them are paint only; the letters within square brackets are not in the inscription, but are supplied where evident contractions render that course necessary. The remaining letters are in unrestored mosaic. Probably [Greek:(Deut ei) sometha] is a mistake of the restorer for the word [Greek: plêsthêsometha] in the original text. 'We shall be filled with the goodness (or the good things) of thy house.' Three other geometrical patterns in mosaic succeed, after which follows a broad wreath of foliage on the outer face of the bema arch and the words: [Greek:(HO O)IKODOMÔN EIS T(ON OIKON SOU KAI) ANABASIN AUTOU, KAI TÊN EPANGELIAN (TOU HAGIOU PNEUMATOS EU HÊMAS ÊLPEISAMEN EIS TO O)NOMA A(UTOU)]. The mosaic above the crown of the semi-dome has been injured and restored imperfectly in plaster, paint, and gilt. Hence the large black patch in it which includes the upper arm of the cross. The letters enclosed within curved brackets are in paint and are manifestly the work of a restorer who has spoiled the grammatical construction of the words and obscured the meaning of the inscription. The remaining letters are in unrestored mosaic. I venture to suggest that the original text was a quotation from Amos ix. 6, with possibly some variations: [Greek: ho oikodomôn eis ton ouranon anabasin autou kai tên epangelian autou epi tês gês themeliôn]. 'He who builds his ascent up to the heaven and his command on the foundations of the earth.' The words, [Greek: êlpeisamen eis to onoma autou], 'we have hoped in his name,' may be original (Psalm xxxii. 21; Isaiah xxvi. 8). With these inscriptions may be compared the beautiful collect used at the consecration of a church: [Greek: Akolouthia eis enkainia naou. Nai Despota Kyrie ho Theos ho Sôtêr hêmôn, hê elpis pantôn tôn peratôn tês gês, epakouson hêmôn tôn hamartôlôn deomenôn sou kai katapempson to panagion sou Pneuma to proskynêton kai pantodynamenon kai hagiason ton oikon touton]. 'Yea, Lord God Almighty our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth, hear us sinners when we call upon thee, and send thy Holy Spirit, the worshipful and all powerful, and sanctify this house.' Below the windows of the apse are ranges of seats for the clergy, forming a sloping gallery, and consisting of eleven risers and eleven treads, so that, according to the method of seating adopted, there are five or six or eleven rows of seats. There is no vestige of a special episcopal seat in the centre, but the stonework has been disturbed; for some of the seats are built with portions of the moulded base of the marble revetment of the building. Underneath the seats runs a narrow semicircular passage originally well lighted through openings[142] in the riser of one range of seats, and having a doorway at each end. [Illustration: PLATE XX. (1) S. IRENE. MOSAIC ON SOFFIT OF AN ARCH BETWEEN THE NARTHEX AND THE ATRIUM. (2) S. IRENE. PORTION OF THE MOSAIC INSCRIPTION ON THE OUTER ARCH OF THE APSE. _To face page 96._] On either side of the nave, towards the eastern end of each aisle, there is an approximately square compartment covered with a domical vault, and having an opening communicating with the nave immediately to the west of the bema. To the east of these compartments stands what was the original eastern wall of the church, and in it, in the north aisle, a large doorway retaining its architrave and cornice, is still found. Of the corresponding doorway in the south aisle only the threshold is left. These doorways must have communicated with the outer world to the east of the church, like the doorways which occupy a similar position in the Studion (p. 53). The northern compartment had an opening, which is still surmounted by architrave and cornice, also in its north wall. There are, moreover, four other openings or recesses in the northern wall of the church, and two in the southern. The main portions of the aisles are divided from the nave by light screens of columns, the eastern and western portions being connected by passages driven through the dome piers. In the eastern nave bay there are four columns, giving five aisle bays on each side. The columns are very slender, without any base moulding, and stand upon square pedestals, now framed round with Turkish woodwork. On opening one of these frames the pedestal was found to be a mutilated and imperfectly squared block of stone. Such blocks may have served as the core of a marble lining, or may be damaged material re-used. The capitals are of the 'Pseudo-Ionic' type, with roughly cut Ionic volutes. The sinking on their lower bed is too large for the necks of the columns. Towards the aisles they bear the monograms of Justinian and Theodora, identical with the monograms of these sovereigns in S. Sophia, while on the side towards the nave they have a cross in low relief. Usually monograms are placed in the more conspicuous position. Above the capitals the vaulting that covers the aisles and supports the galleries is of an uncommon type. Towards the nave the arches are narrow and raised upon very high stilts; from each capital a semicircular arch is thrown across to the outer wall, where is a range of windows, each of which has an extrados at a slightly higher level than the extrados of the corresponding nave arch; and thus a long narrow space is left between the four arches of each vault compartment that could be filled, wholly or in part, without the use of centering. The result is a narrow, irregularly curved vault, shaped to the backs of each of its surrounding arches, and having, in the main, the character of a spherical fragment. The western portion of each aisle is divided from the nave by an irregular arcade supported by a pier and one column, and, consequently, there are three aisle bays to the western nave bay, and not four as shown by Salzenburg. The whole interior surfaces of the walls, up to the level of the springing of the gallery vaulting, and the nave walls, up to the gallery level, were once faced with marble. This is proved by the presence in the walls of many marble plugs and some iron holdfasts, as well as by remains of the moulded base of the facing. At the eastern extremity of the aisles there are chambers formed by walls built, as the vertical straight joints and difference of materials employed indicate, at various periods. The chamber at the end of the northern aisle has an archway, now built up, in its eastern wall, and seems to have served as a vestibule. It is in these chambers that Salzenberg supposes the staircases leading to the galleries stood, but it is evident from the character of the walls and vaulting that no such staircases could ever have existed there. The galleries extend over the narthex and over the whole length of the aisles. Access to them is now obtained by a wooden staircase and landing of Turkish construction, but how they were reached in Byzantine times is not evident. Possibly the fragments of wall on the exterior face of the south wall of the narthex and the traces of vaulting beside them may be the remains of a staircase. Or a staircase may have stood to the west of the narthex over the vaulting of the atrium, where projecting spurs of walls appear. The vaulting of the gallery over the narthex was originally similar to that of the narthex itself, but only the cross-groined vaults at the corners are Byzantine; the three central compartments are Turkish. Five windows in the western wall looked into the atrium, and as many openings in the eastern wall into the nave and side galleries. Below the former range is a string-course corresponding to that which runs round the interior of the building at gallery level. The gallery over each aisle consists of two open portions under the dome arches, divided from each other by the dome piers, which are pierced to connect the different parts of the gallery with each other, and with the gallery over the narthex. In the side walls there is a range of windows at gallery level; five on each side of the eastern nave bay, three in the south wall of the western nave bay, but none, at present, in its northern wall. Above these windows are two ranges of windows in each lunette under the dome arches, a system of five and three in the eastern bay, and of four and two in the western bay. All these windows, now square-headed, had originally semicircular heads. The lunette filling the western dome arch had doubtless a similar window arrangement, though at present it has only one window. [Illustration: PLATE XXI. (1) S. IRENE. INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-WEST. (2) S. IRENE. DOOR AT THE EAST END OF THE NORTH AISLE. _To face page 98._] The eastern ends of the side galleries have been formed into separate chambers since the Turkish occupation. Of the additions beyond the original east wall of the church, that to the north was connected with the gallery by a tall wide arch, while that to the south was divided off from the gallery with only a small door as a means of communication. The southern addition was divided into two chambers as on the ground floor. The walls above gallery level and the large vaulting surfaces of the building are now covered with plaster, but a close examination proves that if any mosaic or marble revetment ever existed above gallery level, none of it, excepting the mosaic in the apse, remains. Looking next at the exterior of the building, it is to be observed that the ground on the north, south, and east has been raised as much as fifteen feet. In many places the walls have undergone Turkish repair. The apse shows three sides. The drum of the dome is pierced by twenty semicircular-headed windows (of which only five are now open), and as their arches and the dome spring at about the same level the heads of the windows impinge upon the dome's surface. Two low shoulders cover the eastern pendentives. The plan of the drum is peculiar. From the shoulders, just mentioned, to the windows, it is a square with rounded corners, one side of the square being joined with and buried in the drum of the western dome vault; but upon reaching the base of the windows it becomes an accurate circle in plan, and at the springing of the window arches is set back, leaving a portion of the piers to appear as buttresses. The upper portion of the drum is carried well up above the springing of the dome, leaving a large mass of material properly disposed so as to take the thrusts produced. The careful examination of the building by Mr. George has proved that the fabric is not the work of one age, but consists of parts constructed at different periods. For the full evidence on the subject we must await the forthcoming monograph on the church. Here, only the main results of Mr. George's survey can be presented. Up to the level of the springing of the aisle vaults, the walls of the main body of the building, excepting the narthex and the additions at the east end of the church, are built of large well-squared stones laid in regular courses, and are homogeneous throughout. Above that level the walls are built in alternate bands of brick and stone, five courses of brick to five courses of stone being the normal arrangement. The stones in this portion of the walls are smaller and much more roughly squared than those below the springing of the aisle vaults. This brick and stone walling is, so far as could be ascertained, homogeneous right up to the domical vault and the dome. As usual the arches and vaults are in brick. A point to be noted is that the recesses or openings in the lower part of the north and south walls of the church do not centre with the windows and vaulting above them; sometimes, indeed, the head of an opening comes immediately below a vaulting arch or rib. Again, at the north-eastern external angle of the apse the wall up to the level of the springing of the aisle vaulting is in stone, but above that level in brick, and the two portions differ in the angle which they subtend. Evidently there has been rebuilding from a level coinciding with the springing of the aisle vaulting. Projecting above the ground at the same place is a square mass of stonework that was left unbuilt upon when that rebuilding took place. The narthex is built of brick, with bands of large stone at wide intervals, and is separated by distinct joints from the upper and lower walls of the body of the church. Furthermore, while the two eastern bays on each side of the western portion of the nave continue and belong to the unusual system of vaulting followed in the aisles, the bay on each side immediately adjoining the narthex belongs to the vaulting system found in the narthex, and has, towards the nave, an arch precisely similar to the arches between the nave and the narthex. The division between the two systems is well marked, both in the nave and in the aisles, and points clearly to the fact that the narthex and the body of the church are of different dates. [Illustration: PLATE XXII. (1) S. IRENE. VAULTING OVER THE SOUTH AISLE. (2) S. IRENE. A COMPARTMENT OF SOUTH AISLE VAULTING (2) (LOOKING DIRECTLY UPWARD). _To face page 100._] Thus the architectural survey of the building shows that the principal parts of the fabric represent work done upon it on three great occasions, a conclusion in striking accord with the information already derived from history. For we have seen (p. 89) that after the destruction of the original Constantinian church by fire in the Nika Riot, Justinian the Great erected a new sanctuary upon the old foundations; that later in his reign another fire occurred which necessitated the reconstruction of the narthex of that sanctuary; and that some two centuries later, towards the close of the reign of Leo the Isaurian, the church was shaken by one of the most violent earthquakes known in Constantinople, and subsequently restored probably by that emperor or by his son and successor Constantine Copronymus. Accordingly, leaving minor changes out of account, it is safe to suggest that the walls of the body of the church, up to the springing of the aisle vaults, belong to the new church built by Justinian after the Nika Riot in 532; while the narthex, the aisle vaults immediately adjoining it, and the upper portion of the western end of the south wall, represent the repairs made probably by the same emperor after the injuries to the fabric caused by the fire of 564. The earthquake of 740 must therefore have shaken down or rendered unstable all the upper part of the building, but left standing the narthex, the gallery above it, and the lower part of the walls of the church. Consequently, the upper part of the building, the apse, the dome-arches, the dome-vault, and the dome with its drum, belong to the reconstruction of the church after that earthquake. The buttresses to the apse where it joins the main eastern wall are later additions, and still later, but before Turkish times, are the short walls at the north and south-eastern corners forming the small eastern chambers. Of the building erected by Constantine the Great the only possible vestige is the square projection at the north-eastern angle of the apse, but that is an opinion upon which much stress should not be laid. In harmony with these conclusions is the evidence afforded by the mosaics found in the church. Those of the narthex are of the same character as the mosaics in S. Sophia, Constantinople, and may well have been executed under Justinian. On the other hand, the mosaics in the apse are characteristic of the iconoclastic period, the chief decoration there being a simple cross. For, as Finlay[143] has remarked, Leo the Isaurian 'placed the cross on the reverse of many of his gold, silver, and copper coins, and over the gates of his palace, as a symbol for universal adoration.' A similar iconoclastic decoration and a portion of the same verses from Psalm lxv. formed the original decoration of the apse in S. Sophia, Salonica. Thus also is the presence of capitals bearing the monograms of Justinian and Theodora explained, seeing those sovereigns were intimately connected with the church. And thus also is a reason suggested why those monograms face the aisles instead of the nave; it was a position which would be assigned to them by a later restorer of the church who was obliged to use old material, and at the same time felt anxious to conceal the fact as much as possible, lest the glory of the previous benefactors of the church should eclipse his own renown. [Illustration: PLATE XXIII. (1) S. IRENE. CAPITAL IN SOUTH ARCADE, SEEN FROM THE SOUTH AISLE. (2) S. IRENE. BASE OF COLUMN IN THE SOUTH AISLE, SEEN FROM THE SOUTH AISLE. _To face page 102._] The conclusion that in the present building we have parts representing different periods solves also the problem of the elliptical domical vault. For it is difficult to imagine that a Byzantine architect with a free hand would choose to build such a vault. But given the supports Mr. George believes were left standing after the earthquake of 740, and given also the narthex on the west, the architect's liberty was limited, and he would be forced to cover the space thus bounded in the best way the circumstances allowed. How the western portion of the church was roofed in Justinian's time it is impossible to say with certainty. There are buttress slips in the south wall at gallery level and in the nave below, where the break occurs in the arcade, that suggest the existence, in the church as originally built by Justinian, of a narthex carrying a gallery. In that case the length of the barrel vault over the western part of the church would be about the length of the barrel vault over the eastern part, and the church would then show in plan a regular cross with a dome at the centre, two lateral doors, one of which is now built up, giving access to the ends of the narthex. The dates here assigned to the different parts of the building simplify the problem of the tall drum below the main dome. That this could have been built by Justinian, as has been supposed, is difficult of belief if the large domes which are known to have been built by him are carefully examined. It is true that the drum dome of S. Sophia, Salonica, has also been claimed for Justinian, but that drum is low and only partially developed, and although its date is not known, the consensus of opinion is against its being so early. The whole question of the development of the drum still awaits treatment at the hands of an investigator who has thoroughly studied the buildings themselves, and perhaps the publication of the results obtained by Mr. George at S. Sophia, Salonica, and S. Irene, Constantinople, two crucial examples, will throw some light on the subject. For the present the date here given for the drum of S. Irene (_i.e._ towards the middle of the eighth century) is an inherently probable one. In the foregoing description of S. Irene there is no pretence to an exhaustive statement of facts, or any claim that the conclusions reached are final. There is still too much plaster on the walls to permit a complete examination of the building. But the conclusions here suggested are those which agree best with the evidence which has been brought to light by Mr. George under present circumstances. [Illustration: FIG. 31.] [Illustration: FIG. 32.] [Illustration: FIG. 33.] [Illustration: FIG. 34.] [Illustration: FIG. 35.] [118] Socrates, ii. c. 6; _Corpus juris civilis_, Nov. iii. c. 3. 2; _Itin. russes_, p. 119. [119] Socrates, ii. c. 16. So also the author of the _Vita Pauli Patr. C.P._ The Church of S. Irene, which the Anonymus (Banduri, ii. p. 31) says had once been a heathen temple, was the church of S. Irene, [Greek: to perama]. [120] _Notitia, regia secunda_; Codin. _De aed._ p. 73. [121] Socrates, _loc. cit._ [122] _Ibid._ [123] Banduri, ii. p. 52. [124] Socrates, ii. c. 16. [125] Socrates, ii. c. 16. [126] _Ibid._ ii. 13, 15, 16. [127] _Ibid._ v. 7. [128] _Vita S. Stephani Junioris_, Migne, P.G. 100, col. 1144, [Greek: hê deutera en Kplei en tô naô tês agias Eirênês]. [129] Theodore Lector, ed. Valesius (1748), p. 533. Eutychius afflicted by the divine anger went [Greek: en tô euagei euktêriô entha pepisteutai anapauesthai meros hierôn leipsanôn tôn thespesiôn Pantaleontos kai Marinou, epikaloumenou tou topou Homonoia ek tou ekei sunelthontas tous hekaton pentêkonta episkopous epi Theodosiou tou megalou basileôs]. The passage is preserved in John Damascene, _De imaginibus_, book iii. [130] _Notitia, Regio nona_, 'continet in se ecclesias duas, Cenopolim et Omonaeam.' [131] Banduri, ii. p. 25. [132] _Ad annum_ 478. [133] Procop. _De aed._ i. c. 2; _Pasch. Chron._ p. 622. [134] For this information I am indebted to Mr. W. S. George. [135] Theoph. p. 371. [136] Patr. Nicephorus, _in Breviario_. [137] Theoph. p. 634. [138] Mansi, xv. 211; xvi. p. 18. See _Basile I._ par Albert Vogt, p. 206. [139] Const. Porphyr. _De cer._ p. 186; Cedren. ii. pp. 265, 275, 297. Readers of Russian are referred to D. Belaev. 'The Church of S. Irene and the Earthquake in C.P. 28 June 1894,' _Vizantisky Vreinennik_, i., St. Petersburg, 1894, parts iii.-iv. section iii. pp. 769-798, and the article by the same author on the 'Interior and Exterior View of S. Irene' in the same periodical, 1895, parts i, ii. section i. pp. 177-183. For the references to these articles I am indebted to Mr. Norman E. Baynes, one of our younger Byzantine scholars. [140] Const. Porphyr. _De Cer._ p. 179. [141] Only some of the accents are indicated in the transcription. [142] These openings are now covered with Turkish wooden staging, and the passage is therefore quite dark. [143] _History of the Byzantine Empire_, p. 34, Everyman Edition. CHAPTER V THE CHURCH OF S. ANDREW IN KRISEI, HOJA MUSTAPHA PASHA MESJEDI That the old Byzantine church now converted into the mosque styled Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi, in the quarter of Juma Bazaar, at a short distance to the east of the Gate of Selivria was the church of S. Andrew in Krisei ([Greek: Monê tou Hagiou Andreou en Krisei])[144] can be established, by the indications which Byzantine writers have given of the site of that famous church, and by the legend which is still associated with the mosque. According to Stephen of Novgorod[145] (c. 1350) the church dedicated to S. Andrew of Crete, who was buried, as other authorities[146] inform us, in the district named Krisis, stood at a short distance to the north of the monastery of the Peribleptos. It lay, therefore, to the north of the Armenian church of S. George (Soulou Monastir) in the quarter of Psamathia, which represents the church of S. Mary Peribleptos. The mosque Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi lies in the same direction. Again, according to Pachymeres,[147] the church of S. Andrew in Krisei was near the monastery of Aristina. That monastery, another authority states,[148] was opposite the church of S. Mamas. The church of S. Mamas was on the road between the Studion and the church of S. Andrew.[149] Hence the church of S. Andrew stood to the north of the Studion, the situation occupied by Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi. Once more, the site of the mosque corresponds to the position assigned to the church of S. Andrew on the map of Bondelmontius (1420), to the east of the Gate of Selivria. Finally, the old church is more definitely identified by the legend of the judicial procedure which clings to the building. In the picturesque courtyard of the mosque, where the colour of the East is still rich and vivid, there stands an old cypress tree around whose bare and withered branches a slender iron chain is entwined like the skeleton of some extinct serpent. As tradition would have it, the chain was once endowed with the gift of judgment, and in cases of dispute could indicate which of the parties concerned told the truth. One day a Jew who had borrowed money from a Turk, on being summoned to pay his debt, replied that he had done so already. To that statement the Turk gave the lie direct, and accordingly, debtor and creditor were brought to the chain for the settlement of the question at issue. Before submitting to the ordeal, however, the Jew placed a cane into the hands of the Turk, and then stood under the cypress confident that his honour for truthfulness and honesty would be vindicated. His expectation proved correct, for the chain touched his head to intimate that he had returned the money he owed. Whereupon taking back his cane he left the scene in triumph. Literally, the verdict accorded with fact; for the cane which the Jew had handed to his creditor was hollow and contained the sum due to the latter. But the verdict displayed such a lack of insight, and involved so gross a miscarriage of justice, that from that day forth the chain lost its reputation and has hung ever since a dishonoured oracle on the dead arms of the cypress, like a criminal on a gibbet. Although this tale cannot be traced to its Byzantine source, it is manifestly an echo of the renown which the precincts of the mosque once enjoyed as a throne of judgment before Turkish times, and serves to prove that Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi is indeed the old church of S. Andrew in Krisei. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV. S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. EAST END. (From a Photograph by A. E. Henderson, Esq.) _To face page 106._] The earliest reference to the locality known as Krisis occurs in the narrative of the martyrdom of S. Andrew of Crete given by Symeon Metaphrastes,[150] who flourished in the latter part of the ninth century. A devoted iconodule, S. Andrew, came from his native island to Constantinople, in the reign of Constantine Copronymus (740-775), expressly to rebuke the emperor for opposing the use of eikons in religious worship. As might have been anticipated, the zeal and courage of the saint only incurred cruel and insulting treatment, and at length a martyr's death. For, while his persecutors were dragging him one day along the streets of the city in derision, a half-witted fisherman stabbed him dead with a knife. So strong was the feeling prevalent at the time against the champion of the cause of eikons that his body was flung among the corpses of murderers and thieves; but eventually his admirers succeeded in removing it from its foul surroundings and buried it 'in a sacred place which was named Krisis' ([Greek: eis hena hieron topon ho hopoios epônomazeto Krisis]).[151] It is evident from this statement that the name Krisis was applied to the locality before the interment of S. Andrew there; how long before, it is impossible to say, but probably from early times. The body of the martyr was laid in or beside one of the two churches dedicated to saints also named S. Andrew, which stood on the Seventh Hill of the city already in the sixth century.[152] [Illustration: PLATE XXV. (1) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. (2) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 108._] NOTE One of these churches was dedicated to S. Andrew the Apostle, and stood 'near the column,' [Greek: plêsion tou stylou];[153] the other to S. Andrew, not otherwise identified, was near the Gate of Saturninus, [Greek: plêsion tês portas tou Satourninou].[154] It is difficult to decide which church is represented by the mosque. For there were two columns on the Seventh Hill of the city: the Column of Constantine the Great, which stood outside the city bounds, giving name to the extra-mural district of the Exokionion now Alti Mermer; and the Column of Arcadius now Avret Tash. Nor can the position of the Gate of Saturninus be determined more accurately than that it was an entrance in the portion of the Constantinian Walls which traversed the Seventh Hill, the Xerolophos of Byzantine days. On the whole, however, the indications favour the view that Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi represents the church of S. Andrew near the Gate of Saturninus. A church in that position, though outside the Constantinian fortification, was still so near them that it could be, very appropriately, described as near one of the city gates. Again the Russian pilgrims[155] who visited the shrines of Constantinople in the second quarter of the fifteenth century found two churches dedicated to S. Andrew in this part of the city, one to S. Andrew the Strategos, the other to S. Andrew 'mad with the love of God' ('God-intoxicated'). In proceeding northwards from the church of S. Diomed, which stood near the Golden Gate (Yedi Koulé), the Russian visitor reached first the sanctuary dedicated to S. Andrew the Strategos, and then the church dedicated to S. Andrew the 'God-intoxicated,' which lay still farther to the north. But this order in the positions of the two churches implies that Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi represents the church of S. Andrew the Strategos, a martyr of the fourth century, viz. the church which the documents of the sixth century describe as near the Gate of Saturninus, without specifying by what title its patron saint was distinguished. This agrees, moreover, with what is known regarding the site of the church of S. Andrew the Apostle. It stood to the west of the cistern of Mokius,[156] the large ruined Byzantine reservoir, now Tchoukour Bostan, to the north of Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi. The church does not appear again in history, under the designation [Greek: en krisei], until the reign of Andronicus II. (1282-1328), when it was found, like so many other churches which survived the Latin occupation of the city, in a state demanding extensive repair. It was then embellished and enlarged by the protovestiarissa Theodora,[157] a lady who occupied a prominent position in the society of the day, both as the emperor's cousin, and on account of her accomplishments and character. In her early youth she was married to George Muzalon,[158] the favourite counsellor and trusted friend of Theodore II. Ducas of Nicaea. What confidence Muzalon enjoyed may be inferred from the fact that he was associated with the Patriarch Arsenius as guardian of the emperor's son, John Lascaris, when left the heir to the throne of Nicaea, as a child eight years old.[159] Had Muzalon not met with an untimely end he might have become the colleague of his ward, and Theodora might have worn the imperial crown. The tragic murder of her husband by his political opponents, while celebrating the obsequies of the Emperor Theodore, provoked a terrible outburst of indignation and grief on her part,[160] and so vehement was her condemnation of the criminals that her uncle, the treacherous Michael Palaeologus, threatened she would share her husband's fate if she did not control her feelings.[161] After the accession of Michael Palaeologus to the throne, her hand was bestowed on the protovestiarius Raoul, and hence she is generally known by his name and title as Raoulaina the protovestiarissa ([Greek: hê Rhaoulaina prôtobestiarissa]). One of her beautiful daughters became the wife of Constantine Palaeologus, the ill-fated brother of Andronicus II. But, as already stated, Theodora was not only highly connected. Like many noble ladies in Byzantine society, she cultivated learning,[162] and took a deep interest in the theological discussions and ecclesiastical affairs of her day. She was a devoted adherent of the party attached to the person and memory of the Patriarch Arsenius; the party that never forgave Michael Palaeologus for blinding the young John Lascaris and robbing him of the throne, the party that opposed the subjection of the Eastern Church to the Papal See, and which maintained the freedom of the Church from the political interference of the emperor. Whatever its faults, that party certainly represented the best moral life of the period. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI. (1) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. CAPITAL IN THE INNER NARTHEX. (2) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. CAPITAL IN THE ARCADE UNDER THE WEST DOME ARCH. _To face page 110._] To heal the schism caused by the attitude of the Arsenites 'was the serious labour of the Church and State' for half a century. And in pursuance of the policy of conciliation, Andronicus II. allowed the body of Arsenius to be brought to Constantinople from the island of Proconessus, where he had died in exile and been buried. The whole city gathered to welcome the remains of the venerated prelate, and saw them borne in solemn and stately procession from the landing at the Gate of Eugenius (Yali Kiosk) to the church of S. Sophia. There, robed in pontifical vestments, the body was first seated upon the patriarchal throne, then laid before the altar, while the funeral service was intoned, and finally placed on the right hand of the bema in a chest locked and sealed for safe keeping. Once a week, however, the body was exposed to public view, and all strife seemed hushed in a common devotion to the memory of the saint. It was soon after this event that Theodora restored the church and monastery of S. Andrew, and upon the completion of the work she besought the emperor to allow the remains of Arsenius to be transferred to that shrine. The request was granted, and the body was carried to the church of St. Andrew with as great pomp and ceremony as attended its arrival in the capital. There it was kept until the patriarchate of Niphon (1311-1314), when it was again taken to S. Sophia to appear in the final conclusion of peace between the friends and foes of the deceased.[163] Standing beside the remains, Niphon pronounced, in the name and by the authority of the dead man, a general absolution for all offences committed in connection with the quarrels which had raged around the name of Arsenius; and so long as S. Sophia continued to be a Christian sanctuary the remains were counted among the great treasures of the cathedral. 'There,' to quote the words of a devout visitor shortly before the Turkish conquest, 'is found the body of the holy patriarch Arsenius, whose body, still intact, performs many miracles.'[164] During the closing years of her life Theodora made the monastery or convent of S. Andrew in Krisei her home.[165] To retire thus from the troubled sea of secular life to the haven of a monastery, and there prepare for the voyage beyond earthly scenes, was a common practice in the fashionable world of the men and women of Byzantine days. And it was natural for a wealthy traveller to leave at the port of call some splendid token of devotion and gratitude. The protovestiarissa was still an inmate of the monastery in 1289, when her friend the Patriarch Gregory, to whom she was bound by many ties, was compelled to resign.[166] He was one of the most learned men of his time and took an active part in the efforts to reconcile the Arsenites. It was during his tenure of office that the body of Arsenius was brought to the capital, and subsequently transferred from S. Sophia to the church of S. Andrew; he also opposed the union of the Churches, and in the controversy regarding the 'Procession of the Holy Ghost' which divided Christendom, he vigorously defended the doctrine of the Greek Communion against Veccus, who championed the Latin Creed. Strongly attached to her friends, and quick to resent any injustice to them, Theodora came forward in the hour of the patriarch's disgrace and offered him a refuge in the monastery of Aristina, which stood, as we have seen, near the church of S. Andrew and in the immediate neighbourhood of her own residence.[167] It was a fortunate arrangement, for Gregory soon fell seriously ill and required all the sympathy and generous kindness which Theodora was able to extend to him.[168] Upon his death, ten short months after his retirement, Theodora determined to show again her admiration for the man and his work by honouring his memory with a funeral befitting the position he had held in the Church. She was prevented from carrying out her intention only by the peremptory and reiterated commands of the emperor, that Gregory should be buried as a private person.[169] [Illustration: PLATE XXVII. (1) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. CAPITAL IN THE OUTER NARTHEX. (2) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. CAPITAL IN THE OUTER NARTHEX. (From a Photograph by A. E. Henderson., Esq.) _To face page 112._] After the death of Theodora we have only occasional glimpses of the church and monastery. In 1350 Stephen of Novgorod came 'to kiss' the relics of S. Andrew of Crete, and describes the convent as 'very beautiful.'[170] Once, at least, a sister proved too frail for her vocation;[171] sometimes a devout and wealthy inmate, such as Theognosia,[172] would provide an endowment to enable poor girls to become her heirs in religion; or the sisterhood was vexed by the dishonesty of parties who had rented the lands from which the convent derived its revenues.[173] Towards the end of its Byzantine period another Russian pilgrim[174] came to honour the remains of S. Andrew the Strategos, and bring the Christian history of the church to a close. It was converted into a mosque by Mustapha Pasha, Grand Vizier in the reign of Selim I. (1512-1520).[175] The custom of illuminating the minarets of the mosques on the eve of the Prophet's birthday was introduced first at this mosque.[176] _Architectural Features_ On account of the serious changes made in the building and its surroundings when it became a mosque, and after the earthquake of 1765, its real character is not immediately apparent. The present entrance is in the northern side, where a fine Turkish arcade has been erected. The mihrab is on the south side, a greater change for the correct orientation of a mosque than is usually necessary in the adaptation of a church to the requirements of a sanctuary in which the worshippers turn towards Mecca. To the east a hall has been added for the accommodation of women who attend the services; while on the west is another hall, where the dervishes of the Teké attached to the mosque hold their meetings. The north aisle also has been much altered and is covered with Turkish domes. The first impression produced by the interior of the building is that we have here a church on the trefoil plan, similar to S. Mary of the Mongols (p. 272) or S. Elias of Salonica, for the central area is flanked by two semi-domes, which with the eastern apse form a lobed plan at the vaulting level. A closer examination of the building, however, will prove that we are dealing with a structure whose original features have been concealed by extensive Turkish alterations, and that the trefoil form is a superficial disguise. The arches supporting the central dome on the north and south sides are filled in with semi-domes which rest on arches thrown diagonally across the 'aisles' on each side of the central dome. These arches are very clumsily set to the sides of an irregular hexagon, with the central wall arch much larger than the side arches. They have no responds, and have every appearance of being makeshifts. The eastern dome arch is prolonged into a barrel-vaulted bema, flanked by shallow niches leading to the prothesis and diaconicon, and beyond the bema is the semicircular apse. Only the diaconicon now remains, covered by a cross-groined vault, and its apse pierced by a door leading to the hall of the Teké. The place of the prothesis has been taken by a similar door and a small Turkish dome. The western dome arch is filled in with a triple arcade resting on two marble columns with finely carved cubical capitals. Above the arcade is a group of three windows whose heads are circular on the inside, but pointed on the outside. To the west of this arcade is an oblong passage corresponding to the 'inner narthex' of S. Theodosia. It is in three bays. The central long bay is barrel-vaulted; the two outer bays open into the north and south 'aisles'; the bay to the north is covered by a Turkish dome, while that to the south has a cross-groined vault which seems to be original. Beyond this to the west is the outer narthex, a fine piece of work, and, from the character of its details, of the same period as the western dome arcade. It is in five bays. The three central bays correspond to the 'inner narthex'; the middle bay is covered by a low saucer dome on pendentives, and is separated from the two side bays by columns set against flat pilasters. The latter bays are covered by groined vaults springing from the imposts of the capitals, which are of the Byzantine Ionic type, with high carved imposts. They resemble the capitals in the gallery of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and are worthy of particular notice. [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII. (1) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. OUTER NARTHEX. (2) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. INNER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 114._] The two outer bays are separated from the central compartment of three bays by strongly projecting pilasters. They are covered by low saucer domes similar to the dome over the central bay, and communicate on the east with the 'aisles.' Both outer and inner narthexes are in one story, above which rise the windows of the western dome arch and the semi-domes on north and south. Turning now to the exterior, the south wall is the only outer wall which is exposed at the ground level. It is faced with finely dressed and polished stone, with thin joints, no tiles, and a stone-moulded cornice. The windows are covered with four centred Turkish arches and are evident insertions. Above the stone cornice rise the low drums of the semi-domes. These, as well as the square base of the dome and the dome itself, are faced with polished stone alternating with courses of three bricks set in thick beds of mortar. The angles are plain, without shafts, and the drums, dome base, and dome are crowned with stone cornices moulded to a reversed ogee. The north and south semi-domes are each pierced by three large windows, which on the interior cut through the curved surface of the domes, and on the exterior appear as dormers in the roof above the cornice. Accordingly they are double glazed, with one glazed frame on the inside corresponding to the curved dome surface, and a second upright glazed frame on the outside. The roofs are covered with lead. The central dome is circular inside, with a high drum pierced by eight windows. On the outside it is octagonal, with a window on each side. These have circular arched heads, but have no moulding, shaft, or inset to either arches or sides. The dome is crowned by a moulded stone cornice of the same type as that of the other walls. In attempting to reconstruct the original form of the church we may first note those features which are evidently Turkish. None of the exterior masonry is Byzantine, as the use of polished ashlar with fine joints, of pointed arches, and of moulded stone cornices clearly proves. The absence of shafts at the angles of the dome drums and the unrecessed windows are additional proofs of this fact, and we may conclude that the entire exterior was refaced in Turkish times. The diagonal arches under the north and south semi-domes are peculiar. Furthermore, in lobed Byzantine churches the lateral apses project beyond the square outer walls. Here they are contained within the walls.[177] Nor are the semi-domes themselves Byzantine in character. The large windows in the dome surface and the lead-covered dormers placed above the flat moulded cornice betray a Turkish hand; for windows in the dome are universal in the great Turkish mosques, and the method of protecting them on the exterior with wooden dormers is quite foreign to Byzantine ideas. The form of the drums and cornices should be compared with the minor domes of the mosque of Sultan Bayazid. A careful examination of the building has led to the following conclusions. The lateral semi-domes with their supporting arches are a Turkish addition. The central dome, including the drum, is probably entirely Turkish, and takes the place of an original ribbed dome. The two easternmost domes in the north 'aisle' and those over the inner narthex and the prothesis are also Turkish, and, as already stated, the exterior of the entire building. On the other hand, the eastern apse, the dome arches, the arcade, and the windows above it on the west side of the dome, the inner narthex with the ground vault to the south of it, and the entire outer narthex, are parts of the original building, dating probably from the sixth or seventh century. It should be particularly noticed that the windows over the western dome arcade are circular-headed inside, though they have been provided with pointed heads on the outside in the process of refacing. [Illustration: PLATE XXIX. (1) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. IN THE CLOISTER ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHURCH, LOOKING EAST. (2) S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. THE CHAIN ON THE WITHERED TREE IN THE COURT ON THE WEST OF THE CHURCH. _To face page 116._] If we stand in the northern lateral apse and face the mihrab the reason for the alterations is evident. The original Christian orientation is ignored, and the apses, in place of being lateral, are terminal. To the left is the old apse left unaltered; to the right, the original filling of the dome arch forms a 'nave-arcade' similar to that of the mosque of Sultan Bayazid; while by means of the additional apses the building has been converted into a miniature imperial mosque of the S. Sophia type, a distinctly clever piece of Turkish alteration. In its original form the central dome was surrounded by an 'ambulatory' of one story formed by the aisles and 'inner narthex.' Such a plan is common to both the domed basilica type and the domed cross type, the difference depending upon the treatment of the cross arms above. In both types, however, the side dome arches are invariably filled in with arcades similar to that filling in the western arch of S. Andrew. We are therefore justified in restoring such arcades here. The type thus restored differs from the domed cross church in that the cross arms do not extend to the outer walls, and from the domed basilica in that the western dome arch is treated in a similar manner to the lateral arches. To this type the term 'ambulatory church' may be applied. Adjoining the west end of the church is the fine cloister of the Teké of dervishes, probably on the lines of the old monastery. All the columns around the court are Byzantine, and one of them bears the inscription: the (column) of, Theophane--[Greek: hê tês Theôphanês] (Fig. 69). In the south wall is built a beautiful Byzantine doorway having jambs and lintel decorated on the face with a broad undercut scroll of flat leaves and four-petalled flowers, running between two rows of egg and dart, while on the intrados are two bands of floral ornaments separated by a bead moulding. One of the bands is clearly a vine scroll. The method employed here, of joining leaves to a centre so as to form spiral rosettes, is found also on some of the small capitals in S. Sophia. Similar rosettes appear in the decoration of the doorway to the Holy Sepulchre on the ivory in the Trivulce collection at Milan.[178] [Illustration: Fig. 36.--THE CHURCH OF S. ANDREW IN KRISEI (RESTORED PLAN).] [Illustration: PLATE XXX. S. ANDREW IN KRISEI. THE DECORATED DOORWAY IN THE CLOISTER. _To face page 118._] [Illustration: FIG. 37.] [Illustration: FIGS. 38 AND 39.] [Illustration: Fig. 40.] [144] Pachym. ii. pp. 35, 123. [145] _Itin. russes_, p. 122. [146] Synax., October 17. [147] Pachym. ii. p. 133. [148] Typicon of George Kappodokes, quoted by the late lamented Père J. Pargoire in his masterly article on the 'Suburb and the Churches of S. Mamas,' published in the _Proceedings of the Institut archéologique russe à Constantinople_, vol. ix. fasc. 1, 32, 1904. In that article the writer demonstrates the erroneousness of the commonly received opinion, maintained, I regret, also in _Byzantine Constantinople_, pp. 89-90, that the suburb of S. Mamas was situated near Eyoub to the west of the Blachernae quarter. Père Pargoire proves that the suburb stood on the European shore of the Bosporus near Beshiktash. He also shows that the church of S. Mamas, near the Gate Xylokerkou, stood within the landward walls, somewhere between the Studion and S. Andrew in Krisei. Cf. _Itinéraires russes_, p. 102. [149] The Anonymus (Banduri, iii. p. 54.) places S. Mamas, [Greek: ta Xylokerkou], within the city, between the monastery of Gastria and that of S. Saviour in the Chora. The suburb of S. Mamas he places (_ut supra_, pp. 57-58) outside the city between Galata and the Diplokionion (Beshiktash). This is only one proof of the correctness of Père Pargoire's position. See Pargoire, _ut supra_. [150] Migne, _Patr. Graec._ tom. 115, Mensis Octobr. p. 1128. [151] Synax., October 17. [152] Mansi, _Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio_, viii. p. 882. [153] Mansi, _Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio_, viii. p. 906. [154] _Itin. russes_, p. 232. [155] _Ibid._ [156] Theoph. Cont. p. 323. [157] Pachym. ii. p. 85; Niceph. Greg. i. pp. 167, 178. [158] Niceph. Greg. i. pp. 167, 168. [159] Pachym. i. p. 39. [160] _Ibid._ pp. 55-63. [161] _Ibid._ i. p. 108. [162] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 178. [163] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 262. [164] _Itin. russes_, p. 226; cf. pp. 117, 135, 161, 201. [165] Pachym. ii. p. 132. [166] _Ibid. ut supra._ [167] Pachym. ii. p. 133; Niceph. Greg. p. 178. According to the latter historian, Theodora erected a special residence for Gregory near her monastery. [168] Pachym. _ut supra_. [169] Pachym. _ut supra_, p. 152. [170] _Itin. russes_, p. 122. [171] Miklosich et Müller, i. p. 548, year 1371. [172] _Ibid._ ii. p. 353, year 1400. [173] _Ibid._ ii. p. 506, year 1401. [174] _Itin. russes_, p. 232. [175] Paspates, [Greek: Byzantinai Meletai], p. 319. [176] _Ibid._ p. 320. [177] _E.g._ S. Elias, Salonica; Churches on Mt. Athos; S. Mary of the Mongols, Constantinople. See plan, p. 279. [178] See figure 26 in Diehl's _Manuel d'art byzantin_, p. 74. That author (pp. 313-14) assigns the church of S. Andrew to the seventh century, but recognizes in it also features of the sixth century. CHAPTER VI THE CHURCH OF S. MARY (PANACHRANTOS) OF LIPS, PHENERÉ ISA MESJEDI The old Byzantine church, now Pheneré Isa Mesjedi, in the valley of the Lycus, to the south of the mosque of Sultan Mehemed, should be identified as the church of the Theotokos of Lips, although the Patriarch Constantius,[179] Scarlatus Byzantius and Paspates[180] identify that church with Demirjilar Mesjedi, a building which lay to the east of the mosque of Sultan Mehemed, but fell in the earthquake of 1904. According to the writers just cited, Pheneré Isa Mesjedi is the church of the Theotokos Panachrantos which appears in connection with certain incidents in the history of the Patriarch Veccus. In this view there is a curious mingling of truth and error. For, as a matter of fact, Constantinople did possess a church dedicated to the Panachrantos which had no connection with the monastery of Lips. But that church was not the building in the valley of the Lycus; it stood in the immediate vicinity of S. Sophia. Furthermore, while it is certain that there was in the city a church of the Panachrantos which had nothing whatever to do with the monastery of Lips, it is equally true that the sanctuary attached to that monastery was also dedicated to the Theotokos under the same style. In other words, Pheneré Isa Mesjedi was the sanctuary attached to the monastery of Lips and was dedicated to the Theotokos Panachrantos, but was not the church of that name with which it has been identified by the authorities above mentioned.[181] [Illustration: PLATE XXXI. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. VAULT OF THE AMBULATORY PASSAGE ON THE WEST OF THE DOME IN THE SOUTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTH. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE INTERIOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTH. _To face page 122._] The correctness of these positions can be readily established. First, that a monastery of the Panachrantos and the monastery of Lips were different Houses is evident from the express statements of the pilgrim Zosimus to that effect. For, according to that visitor to the shrines of the city, a monastery, 'de Panakhran,'[182] stood near S. Sophia, 'non loin de Sainte Sophie.' Stephen of Novgorod refers to the monastery of the 'Panacrante'[183] also in the same connection. And the proximity of the House to the great cathedral may be inferred likewise from the statements of the pilgrim Alexander[184] and of the anonymous pilgrim.[185] On the other hand, Zosimus speaks of the monastery of Lips, 'couvent de femmes Lipesi,'[186] as situated in another part of the city. It was closely connected with the monastery of Kyra Martha,[187] from which to S. Sophia was a far cry. The distinction of the two monasteries is, moreover, confirmed by the historians Pachymeres[188] and Nicephorus Gregoras,[189] who employ the terms Panachrantos and Lips to designate two distinct monastic establishments situated in different quarters of the capital. [Illustration: FIG. 41. S. MARY PARACHRANTOS. DETAILS OF THE SHAFTS IN THE EAST WINDOWS OF THE SOUTH CHURCH.] In the next place, the monastery of Lips did not stand at the point marked by Demirjilar Mesjedi. The argument urged in favour of its position at that point is the fact that the monastery is described as near the church of the Holy Apostles ([Greek: plêsion tôn hagiôn apostolôn]). But while proximity to the Holy Apostles must mark any edifice claiming to be the monastery of Lips, that proximity alone is not sufficient to identify the building. Pheneré[190] Isa Mesjedi satisfies that condition equally well. But what turns the balance of evidence in its favour is that it satisfies also every other condition that held true of the monastery of Lips. That House was closely associated with the monastery of Kyra Martha, as Phrantzes[191] expressly declares, and as may be inferred from the narratives of the Russian pilgrims.[192] That being so, the position of Kyra Martha will determine likewise that of the monastery of Lips. Now, Kyra Martha lay to the south of the Holy Apostles. For it was reached, says the anonymous pilgrim of the fifteenth century[193] 'en descendent (du couvent) des Apôtres _dans la direction du midi_'; while Stephen of Novgorod[194] reached the Holy Apostles in proceeding northwards from the Kyra Martha. Hence the monastery of Lips lay to the south of the Holy Apostles, as Pheneré Isa Mesjedi stands to the south of the mosque of Sultan Mehemed, which has replaced that famous church. With this conclusion agrees, moreover, the description given of the district in which the monastery of Lips stood. It was a remote and quiet part of the city, like the district in which Pheneré Isa Mesjedi is situated to-day; [Greek: pros ta tou Liba merê, topon apokismenon kai hêsychon].[194] Furthermore, the monastery of Lips borrowed its name from its founder or restorer, Constantine Lips;[196] and in harmony with that fact we find on the apse of one of the two churches which combine to form Pheneré Isa Mesjedi an inscription in honour of a certain Constantine.[197] Unfortunately the inscription is mutilated, and there were many Constantines besides the one surnamed Lips. Still, the presence of the principal name of the builder of the monastery of Lips on a church, which we have also other reasons to believe belonged to that monastery, adds greatly to the cumulative force of the argument in favour of the view that Constantine Lips is the person intended. But, if necessary, the argument can be still further strengthened. The church attached to the monastery of Lips was dedicated to the Theotokos, as may be inferred from the circumstance that the annual state visit of the emperor to that shrine took place on the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin.[198] So likewise was the sanctuary which Pheneré Isa Mesjedi represents, for the inscription it bears invokes her blessing upon the building and its builder (Fig. 42). Would that the identity of all the churches in Constantinople could be as strongly established. It remains to add in this connection that while the monastery of Lips and that of the Panachrantos associated with Veccus were different Houses, the churches of both monasteries were dedicated to the Theotokos under the same attribute--Panachrantos, the Immaculate. The invocation inscribed on Pheneré Isa Mesjedi addresses the Theotokos by that epithet. But to identify different churches because of the same dedication is only another instance of the liability to allow similarity of names to conceal the difference between things. The distinction thus established between the two monasteries is important not only in the interests of accuracy; it also throws light on the following historical incidents. In 1245 permission was granted for the transference of the relics of S. Philip the Apostle from the church of the Panachrantos to Western Europe. The document authorising that act was signed by the dean of the church and by the treasurer of S. Sophia.[199] The intervention of the latter official becomes more intelligible when we know that the monastery of the Panachrantos stood near S. Sophia, and not, as Paspates maintains, at Pheneré Isa Mesjedi. Again, the Patriarch Veccus took refuge on two occasions in the monastery of the Panachrantos, once in 1279 and again in 1282. He could do so readily and without observation, as the case demanded, when the shelter he sought stood in the immediate vicinity of his cathedral and official residence. To escape to a monastery situated in the valley of the Lycus was, under the circumstances, impracticable. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING EAST. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING WEST. _To face page 126._] Constantine Lips was an important personage during the reign of Leo the Wise (886-912) and of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (912-956). Under the former emperor he held the offices of protospatharius and domestic of the household. He also went on several missions to the Prince of Taron, in the course of which romance mingled with politics, with the result that the daughter of Lips became engaged to the son of the prince.[200] Upon the accession of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Lips came under a cloud, on suspicion of being implicated in the plot to raise Constantine Ducas to the throne, and was obliged to flee the capital.[201] Eventually he was restored to favour, and enjoyed the dignities of patrician, proconsul, commander of the foreign guard, and drungarius of the fleet.[202] He fell in battle in the war of 917 between the Empire and the Bulgarians under Symeon.[203] The monastery of Lips was restored in the reign of Leo the Wise; the festival of the dedication of the church being celebrated in the year 908, in the month of June.[204] The emperor honoured the occasion with his presence, and attended a banquet in the refectory of the monastery. But the happy proceedings had not gone far, when they were suddenly interrupted by a furious south-west wind which burst upon the city and shook houses and churches with such violence that people feared to remain under cover and imagined that the end of the world had come, until the storm was allayed by a heavy downpour of rain. As the south-west wind was named Lips, it is not clear whether the historians who mention this incident intend to explain thereby the origin of Constantine's surname, or simply point to a curious coincidence. Near the church Lips erected also a xenodocheion for the reception of strangers.[204] The monastery is mentioned by the Anonymus of the eleventh century,[206] but does not appear again until the recovery of the Empire from the Latins in 1261. In the efforts then made to restore all things, it underwent repairs at the instance of the Empress Theodora,[207] the consort of Michael Palaeologus, and from that time acquired greater importance than it had previously enjoyed. Within its precincts, on the 16th of February 1304, a cold winter day, Theodora herself was laid to rest with great pomp, and amid the tears of the poor to whom she had been a good friend.[208] There, two years later, a splendid service was celebrated for the benefit of the soul of her son Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[209] as some compensation for the cruel treatment he had suffered at the hands of his jealous brother Andronicus. There, that emperor himself became a monk two years before his death,[210] and there he was buried on the 13th of February 1332. The monastery contained also the tomb of the Empress Irene,[211] first wife of Andronicus III., and the tomb of the Russian Princess Anna[212] who married John VII. Palaeologus while crown prince, but died before she could ascend the throne, a victim of the great plague which raged in Constantinople in 1417. The monastery appears once more as the scene of a great religious revival, when a certain nun Thomais, who enjoyed a great reputation for sanctity, took up her residence in the neighbourhood. So large were the crowds of women who flocked to place themselves under her rule that 'the monastery of Lips and Martha' was filled to overflowing.[213] The church was converted into a mosque by Pheneré Isa, who died in 1496, and has undergone serious alterations since that time.[214] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE DIACONICON, LOOKING EAST. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE ARCH UNDER WEST SIDE OF THE CENTRAL DOME IN THE SOUTH CHURCH. _To face page 128._] _Architectural Features_ The building comprises two churches, which, while differing in date and type, stand side by side, and communicate with each other through an archway in their common wall, and through a passage in the common wall of their narthexes. As if to keep the two churches more closely together, they are bound by an exonarthex, which, after running along their western front, returns eastwards along the southern wall of the south church as a closed cloister or gallery. _The North Church._--The north church is of the normal 'four column' type. The four columns which originally supported the dome were, however, removed when the building was converted into a mosque in Turkish times, and have been replaced by two large pointed arches which span the entire length of the church. But the old wall arches of the dome-columns are still visible as arched piercings in the spandrils of the Turkish arches. A similar Turkish 'improvement' in the substitution of an arch for the original pair of columns is found in the north side of the parecclesion attached to the Pammakaristos (p. 152). The dome with its eight windows is likewise Turkish. The windows are lintelled and the cornice is of the typical Turkish form. The bema is almost square and is covered by a barrel vault formed by a prolongation of the eastern dome arch; the apse is lighted by a lofty triple window. By what is an exceptional arrangement, the lateral chapels are as lofty both on the interior and on the exterior as is the central apse, but they are entered by low doors. In the normal arrangement, as, for instance, in the Myrelaion, the lateral chapels are low and are entered by vaults rising to the same height as those of the angle chambers, between which the central apse rises higher both externally and internally. The chapels have niches arched above the cornice on three sides, and are covered by cross-groined vaults which combine with the semicircular heads of the niches to produce a very beautiful effect. To the east they have long bema arches flanked by two small semicircular niches, and are lighted by small single windows. The church is preceded by a narthex in three bays covered by cross-groined vaults supported on strong transverse arches. At either end it terminates in a large semicircular niche. The northern one is intact, but of the southern niche only the arched head remains. The lower part of the niche has been cut away to afford access to the narthex of the south church. This would suggest that, at least, the narthex of the south church is of later date than the north church. Considered as a whole the north church is a good example of its type, lofty and delicate in its proportions. _The South Church._--The narthex is unsymmetrical to the church and in its present form must be the result of extensive alteration. It is in two very dissimilar bays. That to the north is covered with a cross-groined vault of lath and plaster, probably on the model of an original vault constructed of brick. A door in the eastern wall leads to the north aisle of the church. The southern bay is separated from its companion by a broad arch. It is an oblong chamber reduced to a figure approaching a square by throwing broad arches across its ends and setting back the wall arches from the cornice. This arrangement allows the bay to be covered by a low drumless dome. Two openings, separated by a pier, lead respectively to the nave and the southern aisle of the church. The interior of the church has undergone serious alterations since it has become a mosque, but enough of the original building has survived to show that the plan was that of an 'ambulatory church.' Each side of the ambulatory is divided into three bays, covered with cross-groined vaults whose springings to the central area correspond exactly to the columns of such an arcade as that which occupies the west dome bay of S. Andrew (p. 114). We may therefore safely assume that triple arcades originally separated the ambulatory from the central area and filled in the lower part of the dome arches. The tympana of these arches above were pierced to north, south, and west by three windows now built up but whose outlines are still visible beneath the whitewash which has been daubed over them. The angles of the ambulatory are covered by cross vaults. The pointed arches at present opening from the ambulatory to the central area were formed to make the church more suitable for Moslem worship, as were those of the north church. In fact we have here a repetition of the treatment of the Pammakaristos (p. 151), when converted into a mosque. The use of cross-groined vaults in the ambulatory is a feature which distinguishes this church from the other ambulatory churches of Constantinople and connects it more closely with the domed-cross church. The vaults in the northern portion of the ambulatory have been partially defaced in the course of Turkish repairs. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIV. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. EAST WINDOW OF THE SOUTH CHURCH. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. THE OUTER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 130._] The central apse is lighted by a large triple window. It is covered by a cross-groined vault and has on each side a tall shallow segmental niche whose head rises above the springing cornice. Below this the niches have been much hacked away. The passages leading to the lateral chapels are remarkably low, not more than 1.90 m. high to the crown of the arch. The southern chapel is similar to the central apse, and is lighted by a large triple window. The northern chapel is very different. It is much broader; broader indeed than the ambulatory which leads to it, and is covered by barrel vaults. The niches in the bema only rise to a short distance above the floor, not, as on the opposite side, to above the cornice. It is lighted by a large triple window similar to those of the other two apses. [Illustration: FIG. 42. S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. INSCRIPTION ON THE APSE OF THE NORTH CHURCH.] From love for the mother of God ... beautiful temple ... Constantine; which splendid work ... of the shining heaven an inhabitant and citizen him show O Immaculate One; friendliness recompensing ... the temple ... the gift. The outer narthex on the west of the two churches and the gallery on the south of the south church are covered with cross-groined vaults without transverse arches. The wall of the south church, which shows in the south gallery, formed the original external wall of the building. It is divided into bays with arches in two and three orders of brick reveals, and with shallow niches on the broader piers. The exterior of the two churches is very plain. On the west are shallow wall arcades in one order, on the south similar arcades in two orders. The northern side is inaccessible owing to the Turkish houses built against it. On the east all the apses project boldly. The central apse of the south church has seven sides and shows the remains of a decoration of niches in two stories similar to that of the Pantokrator (p. 235); the other apses present three sides. The carved work on the window shafts is throughout good. An inscription commemorating the erection of the northern church is cut on a marble string-course which, when complete, ran across the whole eastern end, following the projecting sides of the apses. The letters are sunk and marked with drill holes. Wulff is of opinion that the letters were originally filled in with lead, and, from the evidence of this lead infilling, dates the church as late as the fifteenth century. But it is equally possible that the letters were marked out by drill holes which were then connected with the chisel, and that the carver, pleased by the effect given by the sharp points of shadow in the drill holes, deliberately left them. The grooves do not seem suitable for retaining lead. In the course of their history both churches were altered, even in Byzantine days. The south church is the earlier structure, but shows signs of several rebuildings. The irregular narthex and unsymmetrical eastern side chapels are evidently not parts of an original design. In the wall between the two churches there are indications which appear to show the character of these alterations and the order in which the different buildings were erected. [Illustration: PLATE XXXV. (1) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. EAST END OF THE SOUTH CHURCH. (2) S. MARY PANACHRANTOS. EAST END OF THE NORTH CHURCH. _To face page 132._] As has already been pointed out, the north side of the ambulatory in the south church, which for two-thirds of its length is of practically the same width as the southern and western sides, suddenly widens out at the eastern end and opens into a side chapel broader than that on the opposite side. The two large piers separating the ambulatory from the central part of the north church are evidently formed by building the wall of one church against the pre-existing wall of the other. The easternmost pier is smaller and, as can be seen from the plan, is a continuation of the wall of the north church. Clearly the north church was already built when the north-eastern chapel of the south church was erected, and the existing wall was utilised. As the external architectural style of the three apses of the south church is identical, it is reasonable to conclude that this part of the south church also is later in date than the north church. For if the entire south church had been built at the same time as the apses, we should expect to find the lateral chapels similar. But they are not. The vaulting of the central apse and of the southern lateral chapel are similar, while that of the northern chapel is different. On the same supposition we should also expect to find a similar use of the wall of the north church throughout, but we have seen that two piers representing the old wall of the south church still remain. The narthex of the south church, however, is carried up to the line of the north church wall. The four column type is not found previous to the tenth century. The date of the north church was originally given on the inscription, but is now obliterated. Kondakoff dates it in the eleventh or twelfth century. Wulff would put it as late as the fifteenth. But if the view that this church was attached to the monastery of Lips is correct, the building must belong to the tenth century. The ambulatory type appears to be early, and the examples in Constantinople seem to date from the sixth to the ninth century. It may therefore be concluded that, unless there is proof to the contrary, the south church is the earlier. In that case the southernmost parts of the two large piers which separate the two churches represent the old outer wall of the original south church, whose eastern chapels were then symmetrical. To this the north church was added, but at some subsequent date the apses of the south church demanded repair and when they were rebuilt, the north-eastern chapel was enlarged by the cutting away of the old outer wall. To this period also belongs the present inner narthex. The fact that the head of the terminal niche at the south end of the north narthex remains above the communicating door shows that the south narthex is later. The outer narthex and south gallery are a still later addition. [Illustration: FIG. 43.] [Illustration: FIG. 44.] [Illustration: FIGS. 45 AND 46.] [179] _Ancient and Modern C.P._ pp. 70, 79. [180] Pp. 322, 325. [181] To Mühlmann and Mordtmann, _Esq. top._ paragraph 127, belongs the credit of the identification of Pheneré Isa Mesjedi with the monastery of Lips. But I have not seen any full statement of their reasons for that opinion. [182] _Itin. russes_, p. 202. [183] _Ibid._ p. 119. [184] _Ibid._ p. 162. [185] _Ibid._ p. 230. [186] _Ibid._ p. 205. [187] Phrantzes, pp. 141; _Itin. russes_, pp. 205, 122, 234. [188] i. p. 455; ii. p. 19. [189] i. p. 160. [190] Theoph. Cont. p. 371. [191] Page 141. [192] _Itin. russes_, pp. 205, 234. [193] _Ibid._ p. 234. [194] _Ibid._ p. 122. [195] Du Cange, iv. p. 93, quoting the Life of Nicholas of the Studion. The district was named [Greek: Merdosagarê], Leo Gramm. p. 280. [196] Theoph. Cont. p. 371. [197] See inscription, p. 131. [198] Codinus, _De officiis_, p. 80. [199] Du Cange, iv. p. 93. [200] Const. Porphyr. _De adm. imp._ c. 43. [201] Theoph. Cont. p. 384. [202] Const. Porphyr. _ut supra_. [203] Theoph. Cont. p. 389. [204] _Ibid._ p. 371. [205] Banduri, iii. p. 52. [206] _Ut supra_. [207] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 162. [208] Pachym. i. p. 378. [209] _Ibid._ p. 425. [210] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 461. [211] Cantacuz. i. p. 193. [212] Phrantzes, p. 110. [213] _Ibid._ p. 141. [214] Paspates, p. 325. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCH OF THE THEOTOKOS PAMMAKARISTOS, FETIYEH JAMISSI The Byzantine church, now Fetiyeh Jamissi, overlooking the Golden Horn from the heights of the Fifth Hill, was the church of the Theotokos Pammakaristos (the All Blessed), attached to the monastery known by that name. Regarding the identity of the church there can be no manner of doubt, as the building remained in the hands of the Greek community for 138 years after the conquest, and was during that period the patriarchal cathedral. The questions when and by whom the church was founded cannot be so readily determined. According to a manuscript in the library of the Greek theological college on the island of Halki (one of the small group of islands known as the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmora), an inscription in the bema of the church ascribed the foundation of the building to John Comnenus and his wife Anna.[215] The manuscript perished in the earthquake which reduced the college to a heap of ruins in 1894, but the inscription had fortunately been copied in the catalogue of the library before that disaster occurred. It read as follows: [Greek: Iôannou phrontisma Komnênou tode Annês te rhizês Doukikês tês syzygou. hois antidousa plousian, hagnê, charin taxais en oikô tou theou monotropous].[216] [Illustration: PLATE XXXVI. (1) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. (2) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS, FROM THE WEST. _To face page 138._] The legend cannot refer to the Emperor John Comnenus (1118-1143), for his consort was neither named Anna nor related to the family of Ducas. She was a Hungarian princess, who, on becoming the emperor's bride, assumed the name Irene. Mr. Siderides, therefore, suggests that the persons mentioned in the inscription were that emperor's grandparents, the curopalates and grand domestic John Comnenus and his wife, the celebrated Anna Dalassena, who bore likewise the title of Ducaena. In that case, as the curopalates and grand domestic died in 1067, the foundation of the church cannot be much later than the middle of the eleventh century. But whether the term [Greek: phrontisma] should be understood to mean that the church was founded by the illustrious persons above mentioned, or was an object already in existence upon which they bestowed their thought and care, is not quite certain. Mr. Siderides is prepared to adopt the latter meaning, and the architecture of the church allows us to assign the foundation of the building to an earlier date than the age of the grandparents of the Emperor John Comnenus. But while the connection of the church with those personages must not be overlooked, the building underwent such extensive repairs in the thirteenth century that the honour of being its founder was transferred to its restorer at that period. Pachymeres[217] speaks of the monastery as the monastery of Michael Glabas Tarchaniotes ([Greek: tên idian monên]). While the poet Philes (1275-1346), referring to a figure portrayed on the walls of the church, asks the spectator, Seest thou, O stranger, this great man? He is none other than the protostrator, the builder of this monastery, the wonder of the world, the noble Glabas. [Greek: horas ton andra ton polyn touton, xene; ekeinos houtos estin ho prôtostratôr, ho dêmiourgos tês monês tês enthade, to thauma tês gês, ho Glabas ho gennadas].[218] In accordance with these statements, Gerlach[219] saw depicted on the walls of the church two figures in archducal attire, representing the founder of the church and his wife, with this legend beside them: Michael Ducas Glabas Tarchaniotes, protostrator and founder; Maria Ducaena Comnena Palaeologina Blachena,[219] protostratorissa and foundress. [Greek: Michaêl Doukas Glabas Tarchaniôtês, ho prôtostratôr kai ktêtôr; Maria Doukaina Komnênê Palaiologina Blakaina,[220] hê prôtostratorissa kai ktêtôrissa]. Michael Glabas was created protostrator in 1292, and acquired the right to appoint the abbot of the monastery before 1295. Consequently the completion of the repair of the church at his instance must be assigned to the interval between these dates. The protostrator Michael Glabas Ducas Tarchaniotes, who must not be confounded with his namesake the protovestiarius Michael Palaeologus Tarchaniotes,[221] enjoyed the reputation of an able general and wise counsellor in the reign of Andronicus II., although, being a victim to gout, he was often unable to serve his country in the former capacity. He was noted also for his piety and his interest in the poor, as may be inferred from his restoration of the Pammakaristos and the erection of a xenodocheion.[222] His wife was a niece of the Emperor Michael Palaeologus, and related, as her titles imply, to other great families in the country. A pious woman, and devoted to her husband, she proved the sincerity of her affection by erecting to his memory, as will appear in the sequel, the beautiful chapel at the south-east end of the church. Before her death she retired from the world and assumed the name Martha in religion.[223] In addition to the figures of the restorers of the church, portraits in mosaic of the Emperor Andronicus and his Empress Anna, as the legends beside the portraits declared, stood on the right of the main entrance to the patriarchate.[224] [Symbol: Cross][Greek: Andronikos en Chô tô thô pistos basileus kai autokratôr Rhômeôn ho palaiologos]. [Symbol: Cross][Greek: Anna en Chô tô thô pistê augousta hê palaiologina]. As both Andronicus II. and his grandson Andronicus III. were married to ladies named Anna, it is not clear which of these imperial couples was here portrayed. The fact that the consort of the former emperor died before the restoration of the church by the protostrator Michael is certainly in favour of the view supported by Mr. Siderides that the portraits represented the latter emperor and empress.[224] Why these personages were thus honoured is not explained. Having restored the monastery, Michael Glabas entrusted the direction of its affairs to a certain monk named Cosmas, whom he had met and learned to admire during an official tour in the provinces. In due time Cosmas was introduced to Andronicus II., and won the imperial esteem to such an extent as to be appointed patriarch.[226] The new prelate was advanced in years, modest, conciliatory, but, withal, could take a firm stand for what he considered right. On the other hand, the piety of Andronicus was not of the kind that adheres tenaciously to a principle or ignores worldly considerations. Hence occasions for serious differences between the two men on public questions were inevitable, and in the course of their disputes the monastery of the Pammakaristos, owing to its association with Cosmas, became the scene of conflicts between Church and State. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVII. (1) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. INNER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. (2) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. THE DOME, LOOKING WEST. _To face page 142._] No act of Andronicus shocked the public sentiment or his day more painfully than the political alliance he cemented by giving his daughter Simonis, a mere child of six years, as a bride to the Kraal of Servia, who was forty years her senior, and had been already married three times, not always, it was alleged, in the most regular manner.[227] Cosmas did everything in his power to prevent the unnatural union, and when his last desperate effort to have an audience of the emperor on the subject was repelled, he left the patriarchal residence and retired to his old home at the Pammakaristos. There, during the absence of the emperor in Thessalonica, where the objectionable marriage was celebrated, Cosmas remained for two years, attending only to the most urgent business of the diocese.[228] Upon the return of Andronicus to the capital, Cosmas was conspicuous by his refusal to take part in the loyal demonstrations which welcomed the emperor back. Andronicus might well have seized the opportunity to remove the patriarch from office for discourtesy so marked and offensive, but, instead of doing so, he sent a friendly message to the Pammakaristos, asking Cosmas to forget all differences and resume his public duties. Achilles in his tent was not to be conciliated so easily. To the imperial request Cosmas replied by inviting Andronicus to come to the Pammakaristos, and submit the points at issue between the emperor and himself to a tribunal of bishops and other ecclesiastics specially convened for the purpose. He furthermore declared that he would return to the patriarchal residence only if the verdict of the court was in his favour, otherwise he would resign office. The public feeling against Andronicus was so strong that he deemed it expedient to comply with this strange demand, going to the monastery late at night to escape notice. The tribunal having been called to order, Cosmas produced his charges against the emperor: the Servian marriage; oppressive taxes upon salt and other necessaries of life, whereby a heavy burden was laid upon the poor, on one hand, and imperial prodigality was encouraged on the other; failure to treat the petitions addressed to him by Cosmas with the consideration which they deserved. The defence of Andronicus was skilful. He maintained that no marriage of the Kraal had violated Canon Law as some persons claimed. He touched the feelings of his audience by dwelling upon the sacrifice he had made as a father in bestowing the hand of a beloved daughter on such a man as the Servian Prince; only reasons of State had constrained him to sanction a union so painful to his heart. The taxes to which objection had been taken were not imposed, he pleaded, to gratify any personal love of money, but were demanded by the needs of the Empire. As to love of money, he had reasons to believe that it was a weakness of which his accuser was guilty, and to prove that statement, he there and then sent two members of the court to the treasurer of the palace for evidence in support of the charge. In regard to the accusation that he did not always favour the petitions addressed to him by the patriarch, he remarked that it was not an emperor's duty to grant all the petitions he received, but to discriminate between them according to their merits. At the same time he expressed his readiness to be more indulgent in the future. Moved by these explanations, as well as by the entreaties of the emperor and the bishops present at this strange scene, held in the dead of night in the secrecy of the monastery, Cosmas relented, and returned next day to the patriarchate.[229] But peace between the two parties was not of long duration. Only a few weeks later Andronicus restored to office a bishop of Ephesus who had been canonically deposed. Cosmas protested, and when his remonstrances were disregarded, he withdrew again to the Pammakaristos,[230] and refused to allow his seclusion to be disturbed on any pretext. To the surprise of everybody, however, he suddenly resumed his functions--in obedience, he claimed, to a Voice which said to him, 'If thou lovest Me, feed My sheep.'[231] But such conduct weakened his position. His enemies brought a foul charge against him. His demand for a thorough investigation of the libel was refused. And in his vexation he once more sought the shelter of the Pammakaristos, abdicated the patriarchal throne, and threw the ecclesiastical world into a turmoil.[232] Even then there were still some, including the emperor, who thought order and peace would be more speedily restored by recalling Cosmas to the office he had laid down. But the opposition to him had become too powerful, and he was compelled to bid farewell to the retreat he loved, and to end his days in his native city of Sozopolis, a man worsted in battle.[233] [Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII. S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. THE PARECCLESION FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 144._] Of the life at the Pammakaristos during the remainder of the period before the Turkish conquest only a few incidents are recorded. One abbot of the monastery, Niphon, was promoted in 1397 to the bishopric of Old Patras, and another named Theophanes was made bishop of the important See of Heraclea. An instance of the fickleness of fortune was brought home to the monks of the establishment by the disgrace of the logothetes Gabalas and his confinement in one of their cells, under the following circumstances:--In the struggle between John Cantacuzene and Apocaucus for ascendancy at the court of the Dowager Empress Anna of Savoy and her son, John VI. Palaeologus, Gabalas[234] had been persuaded to join the party of the latter politician by the offer, among other inducements, of the hand of Apocaucus' daughter in marriage. But when Gabalas urged the fulfilment of the promise, he was informed that the young lady and her mother had meantime taken a violent aversion to him on account of his corpulent figure. Thereupon Gabalas, like a true lover, had recourse to a method of banting recommended by an Italian quack. But the treatment failed to reduce the flesh of the unfortunate suitor; it only ruined his health, and made him even less attractive than before. Another promise by which his political support had been gained was the hope that he would share the power which Apocaucus should win. But this Apocaucus was unwilling to permit, alleging as an excuse that his inconvenient partisan had become obnoxious to the empress. The disappointment and anxiety caused by this information wore so upon the mind of the logothetes as to alter his whole appearance. He now became thin indeed, as if suffering from consumption, and in his dread of the storm gathering about him he removed his valuable possessions to safe hiding. Whereupon the wily Apocaucus drew the attention of the empress to this strange behaviour, and aroused her suspicions that Gabalas was engaged in some dark intrigue against her. No wonder that the logothetes observed in consequence a marked change in the empress's manner towards him, and in his despair he took sanctuary in S. Sophia, and assumed the garb of a monk. The perfidy of Apocaucus might have stopped at this point, and allowed events to follow their natural course. But though willing to act a villain's part, he wished to act it under the mask of a friend, to betray with a kiss. Accordingly he went to S. Sophia to express his sympathy with Gabalas, and played the part of a man overwhelmed with sorrow at a friend's misfortune so well that Gabalas forgot for a while his own griefs, and undertook the task of consoling the hypocritical mourner. Soon an imperial messenger appeared upon the scene with the order for Gabalas to leave the church and proceed to the monastery of the Pammakaristos. And there he remained until, on the charge of attempting to escape, he was confined in a stronger prison. Another person detained at the Pammakaristos was a Turkish rebel named Zinet, who in company with a pretender to the throne of Mehemed I., had fled in 1418 to Constantinople for protection. He was welcomed by the Byzantine Government, which was always glad to receive refugees whom it could use either to gratify or to embarrass the Ottoman Court, as the varying relations between the two empires might dictate. It was a policy that proved fatal at last, but meanwhile it often afforded some advantage to Byzantine diplomats. On this occasion it was thought advisable to please the Sultan, and while the pretender was confined elsewhere, Zinet, with a suite of ten persons, was detained in the Pammakaristos. Upon the accession of Murad II., however, the Government of Constantinople thought proper to take the opposite course. Accordingly the pretender was liberated, and Zinet sent to support the Turkish party which disputed Murad's claims. But life at the Pammakaristos had not won the refugee's heart to the cause of the Byzantines. The fanatical monks with whom he was associated there had insulted his faith; his Greek companions in arms did not afford him all the satisfaction he desired, and so Zinet returned at last to his natural allegiance. The conduct of the Byzantine Government on this occasion led to the first siege of Constantinople, in 1422, by the Turks. The most important event in the history of the monastery occurred after the city had fallen into Turkish hands. The church then became the cathedral of the patriarchs of Constantinople. It is true that, in the first instance, the conqueror had given the church of the Holy Apostles to the Patriarch Gennadius as a substitute for the church of S. Sophia. But the native population did not affect the central quarters of the city, preferring to reside near the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmora. Furthermore, the body of a murdered Turk was discovered one morning in the court of the Holy Apostles, and excited among his countrymen the suspicion that the murder had been committed by a Christian hand.[235] The few Greeks settled in the neighbourhood were therefore in danger of retaliation, and Gennadius begged permission to withdraw to the Pammakaristos, around which a large colony of Greeks, who came from other cities to repeople the capital, had settled.[236] The objection that nuns occupied the monastery at that moment was easily overcome by removing the sisterhood to the small monastery attached to the church of S. John in Trullo (Achmed Pasha Mesjedi) in the immediate vicinity,[237] and for 138 years thereafter the throne of seventeen patriarchs of Constantinople stood in the church of the Pammakaristos, with the adjoining monastery as their official residence.[238] As the chief sanctuary of the Greek community, the building was maintained, it would appear, in good order and displayed considerable beauty. 'Even at night,' to quote extravagant praise, 'when no lamp was burning, it shone like the sun.' But even sober European visitors in the sixteenth century agree in describing the interior of the church as resplendent with eikons and imperial portraits. It was also rich in relics, some of them brought by Gennadius from the church of the Holy Apostles and from other sanctuaries lost to the Greeks. Among the interesting objects shown to visitors was a small rude sarcophagus inscribed with the imperial eagle and the name of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus.[239] It was so plain and rough that Schweigger speaks of it as too mean to contain the dust of a German peasant.[240] But that any sarcophagus professing to hold the remains of Alexius Comnenus should be found at the Pammakaristos is certainly surprising. That emperor was buried, according to the historian Nicetas Choniates, in the church of S. Saviour the Philanthropist,[241] near the palace of Mangana, on the east shore of the city. Nor could the body of a Byzantine autocrator have been laid originally in a sarcophagus such as Breüning and Schweigger describe. These difficulties in the way of regarding the monument as genuine are met by the suggestion made by Mr. Siderides, that when the church of Christ the Philanthropist was appropriated by the Turks in connection with the building of the Seraglio, some patriotic hand removed the remains of Alexius Comnenus from the splendid coffin in which they were first entombed, and, placing them in what proved a convenient receptacle, carried them for safe keeping to the Pammakaristos. The statement that Anna Comnena, the celebrated daughter of Alexius Comnenus, was also buried in this church rests upon the misunderstanding of a passage in the work of M. Crusius, where, speaking of that princess, the author says: 'Quae (Anna) anno Domini 1117 vixit; filia Alexii Comneni Imp. cujus sepulchrum adhuc exstat in templo patriarchatus Constantinopli a D. Steph. Gerlachio visum.'[242] But _cujus_ (whose) refers, not to Anna, but to Alexius. This rendering is put beyond dispute by the statement made by Gerlach in a letter to Crusius, that he found, in the Pammakaristos, 'sepulchrum Alexii Comneni [Greek: autokratoros],' the tomb of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus.[243] The church was converted into a mosque under Murad III. (1574-1592), and bears the style Fetiyeh, 'of the conqueror,' in honour of the conquest of Georgia and Azerbaijan during his reign. According to Gerlach, the change had been feared for some time, if for no other reason, because of the fine position occupied by the church. But quarrels between different factions of the Greek clergy and between them and Government officials had also something to do with the confiscation of the building.[244] When the cross, which glittered above the dome and gleamed far and wide, indicating the seat of the chief prelate of the Orthodox Communion, was taken down, 'a great sorrow befell the Christians.'[244] The humble church of S. Demetrius Kanabou, in the district of Balat, then became the patriarchal seat until 1614, when that honour was conferred upon the church which still retains it, the church of S. George in the quarter of Phanar. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIX. (1) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. EAST END OF THE PARECCLESION. (2) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. THE WEST COLUMN IN THE PARECCLESION. _To face page 148._] _Architectural Features_ Owing to the numerous additions and alterations introduced into the original fabric, both before and since the Turkish conquest, the original plan of the building is not immediately apparent. Nor does the interior, with its heavy piers, raised floor, and naked walls correspond to the accounts given of its former splendour and beauty. A careful study will, however, unravel the tangled scheme which the actual condition of the church presents, and detect some traces of the beauty which has faded and passed away. The building might be mistaken for a domed church with four aisles, two narthexes, and a parecclesion. But notwithstanding all the disguises due to the changes it has undergone, the original church was unquestionably an 'ambulatory' church. It had, moreover, at one time a third narthex, of which now only the foundations remain on the west side of the church. The present outer narthex is in five bays, covered by dome vaults on transverse arches, and is paved with hexagonal tiles. The centre bay is marked by transverse arches of greater breadth and projects slightly on the outside, forming a plain central feature. At the north end a door led to the third narthex, but has now been built up; at the south end is a door inserted in Turkish times. To the south of the central bay the exterior is treated with plain arcades in two orders of brick; to the north these are absent, probably on account of some alterations. At the south end the narthex returns round the church in two bays, leading to the parecclesion. The inner narthex is in four bays covered with cross-groined vaults without transverse arches, and is at present separated from the body of the church by three clumsy hexagonal piers, on to which, as may be seen in the photograph (Plate XXXVII.), the groins descend in a very irregular manner. In the inner part of the church is a square central area covered by a lofty drum-dome of twenty-four concave compartments, alternately pierced by windows. The intermediate compartments correspond to the piers, and the dome is therefore twelve-sided on the exterior with angle half columns and arches in two orders. Internally the dome arches are recessed back from the lower wall face and spring from a heavy string-course. They were originally pierced on the north, south, and west sides by three windows similar to those in the west dome arch of S. Andrew (p. 114). The west side is now occupied by the wooden balcony of a Turkish house built over the narthex, but there are no indications of any gallery in that position. Below the dome arches the central area communicates with the surrounding ambulatory on the north, west, and south sides by large semicircular arches corbelled slightly out from the piers. On the east side the dome arch is open from floor to vault, and leads by a short bema to a five-sided space covered by a dome and forming a kind of triangular apse, on the south-eastern side of which is the mihrab. As is clearly shown by the character of its dome windows and masonry, this structure is a Turkish addition taking the place of the original three eastern apses, and is a clever piece of planning to alter the orientation of the building. The ambulatory on the three sides of the central square is covered by barrel vaults on the sides and with cross-groined vaults at the angles. To the east it opened into the eastern lateral chapels, now swept away, though the passage from the prothesis to the central apse still remains. On the north side of the church is a passage in three bays covered by dome vaults on transverse arches, communicating at the west end with the inner narthex, and at the east terminating in a small chapel covered by an octagonal drum dome. The upper part of the apse of the chapel is still visible on the exterior, but the lower part has been destroyed and its place taken by a Turkish window. The floor of the eastern part of the church is raised a step above the general level, this step being carried diagonally across the floor in the centre part so as to line with the side of the apse containing the mihrab. [Illustration: PLATE XL. (1) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. THE EAST COLUMN IN THE PARECCLESION. (2) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. COLUMN FLANKING THE EAST WINDOW OF THE APSE OF THE PARECCLESION. (3) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. THE WEST COLUMN IN THE PARECCLESION. _To face page 150._] In considering the original form of the church there is yet another important point to be noted. It will be seen from the plan that at the ground level the central area is not cruciform, but is rather an oblong from east to west with large arches on the north and south sides. This oblong is, however, reduced to a square at the dome level by arches thrown across the east and west ends, and this, in conjunction with the setting back of the dome arches already mentioned, produces a cruciform plan at the springing level. The oblong character of the central area is characteristic of the domed basilica and distinguishes this church from S. Andrew or S. Mary Panachrantos. The employment of barrel vaults in the ambulatory is also a point of resemblance to the domed basilica type, though the cross groin is used on the angles.[246] In this feature S. Mary Pammakaristos resembles S. Andrew and differs from S. Mary Panachrantos. We are probably justified in restoring triple arcades in all the three lower arches similar to the triple arcade which still remains in S. Andrew. The present arches do not fit, and are evidently later alterations for the purpose of gaining internal space as at the Panachrantos. The hexagonal piers between the ambulatory and the inner narthex are not original, as is evident from the clumsy manner in which the vaulting descends on to them. They are the remains of the old western external wall of the church left over when it was pierced through, probably in Turkish times, to include the narthex in the interior area of the building. The piers between the ambulatory and the gallery on the north side of the church also seem to be due to openings made for a similar reason in the old northern wall of the church when that gallery was added in Byzantine days. The dotted lines on the plan show the original form of the piers and wall, as shown by the outline of the vault springings above. The inner narthex is later than the central church and is of inferior workmanship. The restored plan shows the probable form of the church at that date. The outer narthex was added at a subsequent period. _The Parecclesion._--The parecclesion forms a complete church of the 'four column' type with a narthex and gynecaeum on the west. On the north side the two columns supporting the dome arches have been removed, and their place is taken by a large pointed Turkish arch which spans the chapel from east to west as is done in the north church of the Panachrantos (p. 129). The southern columns are of green marble with bases of a darker marble and finely carved capitals both bedded in lead. One of these columns, that to the east, has been partly built into the mihrab wall. The arms of the cross and the western angle compartments are covered with cross-groined vaults, while the eastern angle compartments have dome vaults. The bema and the two lateral chapels have cross-groined vaults. As usual the apse is semicircular within and shows to the exterior seven sides, the three centre sides being filled with a triple window with carved oblong shafts and cubical capitals. [Illustration: S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS PROBABLE ORIGINAL PLAN FIG. 47.] Internally the church is divided by string-courses at the abacus level of the columns and at the springing level of the vaults into three stories. The lowest story is now pierced by Turkish windows but was originally plain; the middle story is pierced by single-light windows in each of the angle compartments, and in the cross arm by a three-light window of two quarter arches and a central high semicircular arch, similar to those in the narthex of the Chora. The highest story has a single large window in the cross arm. To the east the bema arch springs from the abacus level and all three apses have low vaults, a somewhat unusual arrangement. This allows of an east window in the tympanum of the dome arch above the bema. The dome is in twelve bays, each pierced by a window and separated by flat projecting ribs. It retains its mosaics, representing Christ in the centre surrounded by twelve prophets. Each prophet holds in his hand a scroll inscribed with a characteristic quotation from his writings. The drawing, for which I am indebted to the skill and kindness of Mr. Arthur E. Henderson, gives an excellent idea of the scheme of the mosaics. Speaking of these mosaics, Diehl remarks that we have here, as in the Chora, indications of the Revival of Art in the fourteenth century. The Christ in the centre of the dome is no longer represented as the stern and hard Pantokrator, but shows a countenance of infinite benignity and sweetness. The twelve prophets grouped around Him in the flutings of the dome reveal, in the variety of their expressions, in their different attitudes, in the harmonious colours and elegant draping of their robes, an artist who seeks to escape from traditional types and create a living work of his own.[247] The narthex is in three bays covered by cross-groined vaults without transverse arches. The lower window is a Turkish insertion, and above it, rising from the vaulting string-course at the level of the abacus course in the church, is a triple window of the type already described. [Illustration: FIG. 48. (For other details see Fig. 68.)] Above the narthex and approached by a narrow stair in the thickness of the west wall is the small gynecaeum. It is in three bays, separated by strong transverse arches resting on pilasters, each bay having a deep recess to east and west. The centre bay is covered by a cross-groined vault, and overlooks the church by a small window pierced in the west cross arm. Each of the side bays is covered by a drum dome of sixteen concave bays pierced with eight windows and externally octagonal. The plaster has fallen away from these bays, allowing us to see that they are built in regular courses of brick with thick mortar joints and without any special strengthening at the lines of juncture or ribs between the compartments. Such domes, therefore, are not strictly ribbed domes but rather domes in compartments. The 'ribs' no doubt do, by their extra thickness, add to the strength of the vault, but here, as in most Byzantine domes, their purpose is primarily ornamental. [Illustration: PLATE XLI. (1) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. INTERIOR VIEW OF THE DOME OF THE PARECCLESION. (2) S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. MOSAIC IN THE DOME OF THE PARECCLESION. _To face page 154._] The exterior of the chapel, like the façade of S. Theodore (p. 247), presents a carefully considered scheme of decoration, characteristic of the later Byzantine school both here and in the later schools outside Constantinople. The southern wall is divided externally as it is also internally, into three stories, and forms two main compartments corresponding to the narthex and to the cross arm. They are marked by high arches of two orders, which enclose two triple windows in the upper story of the narthex and of the cross arm. The clue to the composition is given by the middle story, which contains the two large triple windows of the narthex and of the cross arm, and the two single lights of the angle compartment, one on each side of the cross arm triple light. These windows are enclosed in brick arches of two orders and linked together by semicircular arched niches, of which those flanking the narthex window are slightly larger than the rest, thus giving a continuous arcade of a very pleasant rhythmic quality. In the lower story the piers of the arches round the triple windows are alone carried down through the inscribed string-course which separates the stories and forms the window-sill. The system of niches is repeated, flat niches being substituted for the angle compartment windows above. The highest story contains the large single windows which light the cross arm and the gynecaeum, the former flanked by two semicircular niches, the latter by two brick roundels with radiating joints. Between them, above the west angle compartment window, is a flat niche with a Turkish arch. It is possible that there was originally a break here extending to the cornice, and that this was filled up during Turkish repairs. The cornice has two ranges of brick dentils and is arched over the two large windows. The domes on the building have flat angle pilasters supporting an arched cornice. The masonry is in stripes of brick and stone courses, with radiating joints to the arched niches and a zigzag pattern in the spandrils of the first-story arches. At this level are four carved stone corbels with notches on the upper side, evidently to take a wooden beam. These must have supported the roof of an external wood cloister. The inscribed string-course already mentioned between the ground and first stories bears a long epitaph in honour of Michael Glabas Tarchaniotes.[248] (Fig. 49.) The three apses at the east end are of equal height. The side ones are much worn but were apparently plain. The centre apse is in three stories with alternately flat and circular niches in each side. It is crowned by a machicolated cornice similar to that on the east end of S. Theodosia. The general composition, as will be seen from the description, arises very directly from the internal arrangements of the chapel and is extremely satisfactory. The ranges of arches, varying in a manner at first irregular, but presently seen to be perfectly symmetrical, give a rhythmic swing to the design. The walls are now heavily plastered and the effect of the horizontal bands of brick and stone is lost; but even in its present state the building is a very delightful example of Byzantine external architecture. Evidently the foundress of the chapel wished the monument she reared to her husband's memory to be as beautiful both within and without as the taste and skill of the times could make it. [Illustration: PLATE XLII. S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. SOUTH SIDE OF THE PARECCLESION. _To face page 156._] What information we have in regard to the chapel is little, but clear and definite, resting as it does on the authority of the two epitaphs which the poet Philes composed to be inscribed on the interior and exterior walls of the building. One of the epitaphs, if ever placed in position, has been destroyed or lies concealed under Turkish plaster. Of the other only fragments remain, forming part of the scheme of decoration which adorns the south wall of the chapel. But fortunately the complete text of both epitaphs is preserved in the extant writings of their author, and affords all the information they were meant to record. The chapel was dedicated to Christ as the Logos[249] and was built after the death of the protostrator by his wife Maria, or Martha in religion, for a mausoleum in which to place his tomb.[250] As the protostrator died about 1315, the chapel was erected soon after that date. An interesting incident occurred in this chapel soon after the Turkish conquest. One day when the Sultan was riding through his newly acquired capital he came to the Pammakaristos, and upon being informed that it was the church assigned to the Patriarch Gennadius, alighted to honour the prelate with a visit. The meeting took place in this parecclesion, and the conversation, of which a summary account was afterwards sent to the Sultan, dwelt on the dogmas of the Christian Faith.[251] [Illustration: FIG. 49.] The text of the epitaph, portions of which appear on the exterior face of the south wall of the parecclesion of the church of the Pammakaristos (_Carmina Philae_, ccxxiii. ed. Miller, vol. i. pp. 117-18) reads as follows:-- [Greek: Aner, to phôs, to pneuma, to prosphthegma mou, kai touto soi to dôron ek tês syzygou; sy men gar hôs agrypnos en machais leôn hypnois, hypelthôn anti lochmês ton taphon; egô de soi teteucha petraian stegên, 5 mê palin heurôn ho stratos se syncheê, kan deuro ton choun ektinaxas ekrybês, ê tou pachous rheusantos hêrpagês anô, pan hoplon apheis ekkremes tô pattalô; tas gar epi gês ebdelyxô pastadas 10 en eutelei tribôni phygôn bion kai pros noêtous antetaxô satrapas, sterrhan metendys ek theou panteuchian. hôs ostreon goun organô soi ton taphon, ê kochlon ê kalyka kentrôdous batou; 15 margare mou, porphyra, gês allês rhodon, ei kai trygêthen ekpiezê tois lithois hôs kai stalagmous proxenein moi dakryôn, autos de kai zôn kai Theon zônta blepôn hôs nous katharos tôn pathôn tôn ex hylês 20 ton son palin thalamon eutrepize moi; hê syzygos prin tauta soi Martha graphei, prôtostrator kalliste kai tethammenôn].[252] O my husband, my light, my breath, whom I now greet. This gift to thee also is from thy wife. For thou indeed who wast like a sleepless lion in battles Sleepest, having to endure the grave, instead (of occupying) thy lair. But I have erected for thee a dwelling of stone, Lest the army finding thee again, should trouble thee, Although here thou art hidden, having cast off thy (body of) clay, Or, the gross flesh having dropped off, thou hast been transported above, Leaving every weapon hung up on its peg. For thou didst abhor the mansions in the world,[253] Having fled from life in the cheap cloak (of a monk), And didst confront invisible potentates, Having received instead (of thine own armour) a strong panoply from God. Therefore I will construct for thee this tomb as a pearl oyster shell, Or shell of the purple dye, or bud on a thorny brier. O my pearl, my purple, rose of another clime, Even though being plucked thou art pressed by the stones So as to cause me sheddings of tears. Yet thou thyself, both living and beholding the living God, As a mind pure from material passions, Prepare for me again thy home. Martha,[254] thy wife formerly, writes these things to thee, O protostrator, fairest also of the dead! The following epitaph in honour of the protostrator Glabas[254] was to be placed in the parecclesion of the church of the Pammakaristos (_Carmina Philae_, ccxix., ed. Miller, vol. i. pp. 115-16):-- [Greek: Epigramma eis ton naon hon ôkodomêsen hê tou prôtostratoros symbios apothanonti tô andri autês. hê men dia sou pasa tôn ontôn physis ou dynatai chôrein se tên prôtên physin; plêrois gar autên alla kai pleiôn meneis, Theou Loge zôn kai draki to pan pherôn, kan sarx alêthês heuretheis perigraphê, 5 psychais de pistais mystikôs enidryê monên seautô pêgnyôn athanaton; oukoun dechou ton oikon hon teteucha soi deiknynta saphôs tês psychês mou tên schesin; ton syzygon de pheu teleutêsanta moi 10 kai tês choikês apanastanta stegês, oikison eis aphtharton autos pastada, kantautha têrôn tên soron tou leipsanou, mê tis enechthê syntribê tois osteois. 15 prôtostrator kai tauta sên dêpou charin hê syzygos prin, alla nyn Martha graphei.] The whole nature of existing things which thou hast made Cannot contain Thee, the primordial nature, For Thou fillest it, and yet remainest more than it; O Logos of God, living and holding all in the hollow of Thy hand, Although as true flesh Thou art circumscribed, And dwellest, mystically, in faithful souls, Establishing for Thyself an immortal habitation, Yet accept the house which I have built for Thee, Which shows clearly the disposition of my soul. My husband who, alas! has died to me And gone forth from his house of clay, Do Thou Thyself settle in an incorruptible mansion, Guarding also here the shrine of his remains, Lest any injury should befall his bones. O protostrator, these things, too, for thy sake I trow, Writes she who erewhile was thy wife, but now is Martha.[256] [Illustration: FIG. 50.] _To face page 160._ [Illustration: FIG. 51.] [Illustration: FIG. 52.] [Illustration: FIG. 53.] [215] See the masterly articles of Mr. Siderides in the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._; supplement to vols. xx.-xxii. pp. 19-32; vol. xxix. pp. 265-73. I beg to acknowledge my great indebtedness to their learned author. [216] 'This is the thoughtful deed of John Comnenus and of his consort Anna of the family Ducas. Grant to them, O Pure One, rich grace and appoint them dwellers in the house of God.' [217] Vol. ii, p. 183. [218] _Carmina Philae_, vol. i. ode 237, lines 21-23. Codex Paris, p. 241. [219] M. Crusius, _Turcograecia_, p. 189. [220] It should read, [Greek: Branaina]. See Siderides, in the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ vol. xxix. p. 267. [221] For the protovestiarius, see Pachym. i. pp. 205, 469; ii. pp. 68, 72, 210; for the protostrator, see Pachym. ii. pp. 12, 445. The former died in 1284, the latter about 1315. Cf. Siderides, _ut supra_. See on this subject the article of A. E. Martini in _Atti della R. Academia di archeologia, lettere e belle arti_, vol. xx., Napoli, 1900. [222] _Carmina Philae_, vol. i. Codex Florent. ode 95, lines 280-82. [223] See _Carmina Philae_, edited by E. Miller, odes 54, 57, 59, 92, 164, 165, 219, 237, for references to the protostrator, or to his wife, or to the Pammakaristos. [224] Hans Jacob Breüning, _Orientalische Reyss_, chap. xvii. p. 66. He visited Constantinople 1579-80. The portraits stood 'Im Eingang auff der rechten Seiten,' or, as another authority has it, 'in patriarchica porta exteriore, in pariete dextero ab ingredientibus conspiciuntur,' _Turcograecia_, p. 75. [225] Gerlach refers to these portraits, but without mentioning the names of the persons they represented. The legends were communicated to M. Crusius (_Turcograecia_, p. 75) by Theodosius Zygomalas, the protonotarius of the patriarch in the time of Gerlach. [226] Pachym. ii. pp. 182-89. When Cosmas was appointed patriarch a curious incident occurred. A monk of the monastery of the Pantepoptes protested against the nomination, because it had been revealed to him that the person who should fill the vacant office would bear the name John. Such was the impression made by this prediction that matters were so arranged that somehow Cosmas was able to claim that name also. Whereupon the monk went on to predict how many years Cosmas would hold office, and that he would lose that position before his death. [227] Pachym. ii. pp. 271-77. [228] _Ibid._ pp. 278-84. [229] Pachym. ii. pp. 292-98. [230] Pachym. ii. pp. 298-300. [231] _Ibid._ ii. p. 303. [232] _Ibid._ pp. 341-43. [233] _Ibid._ 347-85. [234] Cantacuzene, ii. pp. 442-48; Niceph. Greg. pp. 701, 710, 726. [235] Ducas, pp. 117-21, 134, 139-42, 148-52, 176. [236] _Historia politica_, p. 16. [237] Phrantzes, p. 307. [238] See Gerlach's description in _Turcograecia_, pp. 189-90. [239] Breüning, _Orientalische Reyss_, p. 68, 'zur rechten an der Mauren Imp. Alexii Comneni monumentum von Steinwerck auffs einfältigste and schlechteste.' [240] Salomon Schweigger, _Ein newe Reyssbeschreibung auss Deutschland nach Constantinopel_ pp. 119-20, Chaplain for more than three years in Constantinople, at the Legation of the Holy Roman Empire, 1581. He gives the inscription on the sarcophagus: [Greek: Alexios autokratôr tôn Rhômaiôn]. There is an eagle to the right of the legend. [241] P. 12, [Greek: eis hên ekeinos edeimato Christô tô philanthrôpô monên]. [242] _Turcograecia_, p. 46, where the tomb is further described; 'est id lapideum, non insistens 4 basibus, sed integro lapide a terra surgens, altius quam mensa, ad parietem templi.' [243] _Turcograecia_, p. 189. [244] Patr. Constantius, p. 72. [245] _Historia politica_, p. 178. [246] A barrel vault is, however, used under the west gallery of S. Theodosia though cross-groined vaults are used in the side 'aisles.' [247] _Manuel d'art byzantin_, p. 742. [248] The bands of marble on which the inscription is found were cut from marble slabs which once formed part of a balustrade, for the upper side of the bands is covered with carved work. [249] _Carmina Philae_, i. pp. 115-16, lines 4, 7. [250] _Ibid._ Heading to poem, and lines 10, 13-16. Second epitaph p. 117, lines 2, 5, 14. [251] _Turcograecia_, pp. 16, 109, [Greek: endon tês mikras ekklêsias kai hôraias tou parekklêsion]. [252] [Greek: tethammene] (Cod. Mon. fol. 102). [253] Alludes to the retirement of Glabas from the world as a monk. [254] Her name as a nun. [255] In the superscription to this epigram in the Florentine and Munich MSS. the name [Greek: Glabas] is given. [256] In these translations I have been assisted chiefly by Sir W. M. Ramsay, Professor Bury, and Mr. E. M. Antoniadi. CHAPTER VIII CHURCH OF S. THEODOSIA, GUL JAMISSI There can be no doubt that the mosque Gul Jamissi (mosque of the Rose), that stands within the Gate Aya Kapou, near the Golden Horn, was the Byzantine church of S. Theodosia. For Aya Kapou is the entrance styled in Byzantine days the Gate of S. Theodosia ([Greek: pylê tês hagias Theodosias]), because in the immediate vicinity of the church of that dedication.[257] This was also the view current on the subject when Gyllius[258] and Gerlach[259] visited the city in the sixteenth century. The Turkish epithet of the gate 'Aya,' Holy, is thus explained. Du Cange,[260] contrary to all evidence, places the church of S. Theodosia on the northern side of the harbour, or at its head, _ultra sinum_. The saint is celebrated in ecclesiastical history for her opposition to the iconoclastic policy of Leo the Isaurian. For when that emperor commanded the eikon of Christ over the Bronze Gate of the Great Palace to be removed, Theodosia, at the head of a band of women, rushed to the spot and overthrew the ladder up which the officer, charged with the execution of the imperial order, was climbing to reach the image. In the fall the officer was killed. Whereupon a rough soldier seized Theodosia, and dragging her to the forum of the Bous (Ak Serai), struck her dead by driving a ram's horn through her neck. Naturally, when the cause for which she sacrificed her life triumphed, she was honoured as a martyr, and men said, 'The ram's horn, in killing thee, O Theodosia, appeared to thee a new Horn of Amalthea.'[261] [Illustration: PLATE XLIII. (1) S. THEODOSIA. THE EAST END. (_E. M. Antoniadi._) (2) S. THEODOSIA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 164._] The remains of the martyred heroine were taken for burial to the monastery of Dexiocrates ([Greek: to monastêrion to onomazomenon Dexiokratous]), so named either after its founder or after the district in which it was situated.[262] This explains why the Gate of S. Theodosia was also designated the Gate of Dexiocrates ([Greek: Porta Dexiokratous]).[263] The earliest reference to the church of S. Theodosia occurs in the account of the pilgrimage made by Anthony, Archbishop of Novgorod,[264] to Constantinople in 1200. Alluding to that shrine he says: 'Dans un couvent,' to quote the French translation of his narrative, 'de femmes se trouvent les reliques de sainte Théodosie, dans une châsse ouverte en argent.' Another Russian pilgrim from Novgorod,[265] Stephen, who was in Constantinople in 1350, refers to the convent expressly as the convent of S. Theodosia: 'Nous allâmes vénérer la sainte vierge Théodosie, que (pécheurs) nous baisâmes; il y a là un couvent en son nom au bord de la mer.' The convent is again mentioned in the description of Constantinople by the Russian pilgrim[266] who visited the city shortly before the Turkish conquest (1424-53). 'De là (Blachernae) nous nous dirigeâmes vers l'est et atteignîmes le couvent de Sainte Théodosie; la sainte vierge Théodosie y repose dans une châsse découverte.' Two other Russian pilgrims, Alexander the scribe (1395), and the deacon Zosimus (1419-21), likewise refer to the relics of the saint, but they do so in terms which create some difficulty. Alexander saw the relics in the church of the Pantokrator,[267] while Zosimus found them in the convent of the 'Everghetis.'[268] The discrepancy between these statements may indeed be explained as one of the mistakes very easily committed by strangers who spend only a short time in a city, visit a multitude of similar objects during that brief stay, and write the account of their travels at hurried moments, or after returning home. It is on this principle that Mordtmann[269] deals with the statement that the relics of S. Theodosia were kept in the monastery of the 'Everghetis.' In his opinion Zosimus confused the monastery of S. Saviour Euergetes[270] with the church of S. Theodosia,[271] because of the proximity of the two sanctuaries. Lapses of memory are of course possible, but, on the other hand, the trustworthiness of a document must not be brushed aside too readily. But the differences in the statements of the Russian pilgrims, as to the particular church in which the relics of S. Theodosia were enshrined, may be explained without charging any of the good men with a mistake, if we remember that relics of the same saint might be preserved in several sanctuaries; that the calendar of the Greek church celebrates four saints bearing the name Theodosia;[272] and, lastly, that churches of the same dedication stood in different quarters of the city. In fact, a church dedicated to the Theotokos Euergetes stood on the Xerolophos above the quarter of Psamathia.[273] Stephen of Novgorod[274] makes it perfectly clear that he venerated the relics of S. Theodosia in two different sanctuaries of the city, one of them being a church beside the Golden Horn, the other standing on the heights above Psamathia. So does the anonymous pilgrim.[274] The scribe Alexander[276] found the relics of S. Theodosia both in the Pantokrator and in the church of Kirmarta, above the quarter of Psamathia. It is clear, therefore, that Zosimus,[277] who places the relics of S. Theodosia in the monastery of 'Everghetis,' has in mind the church of the Theotokos Euergetes above Psamathia, and not the church of S. Saviour Euergetes which stood near S. Theodosia beside the Golden Horn. NOTE While Zosimus and Alexander agree in placing the relics of S. Theodosia in a church in the region of Psamathia, they differ as to the name of that church, the former naming it Everghetis, while the latter styles it Kirmarta. As appears from statements found on pages 108, 163, 205 of the _Itinéraires russes_, the two sanctuaries were closely connected. But however this discrepancy should be treated, there can be no doubt that relics of S. Theodosia were exhibited, not only in the church dedicated to her beside the Golden Horn, but also in a church in the south-western part of the city. Nor can it be doubted that a church in the latter quarter was dedicated to the Theotokos Euergetes. That several churches should have claimed to possess the relics of the heroine who championed the cause of eikons, assuming that all the Russian pilgrims had one and the same S. Theodosia in mind, is not strange. Many other popular saints were honoured in a similar fashion. The shrine of S. Theodosia was famed for miraculous cures. Her horn of plenty was filled with gifts of healing. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, according to Stephen of Novgorod, or on Mondays and Fridays, according to another pilgrim, the relics of the saint were carried in procession and laid upon sick and impotent folk.[278] Those were days of high festival. All the approaches to the church were packed with men and women eager to witness the wonders performed. Patients representing almost every complaint to which human flesh is heir filled the court. Gifts of oil and money poured into the treasury; the church was a blaze of lighted tapers; the prayers were long; the chanting was loud. Meanwhile the sufferers were borne one after another to the sacred relics, 'and whoever was sick,' says the devout Stephen, 'was healed.' So profound was the impression caused by one of these cures in 1306, that Pachymeres[279] considered it his duty, as the historian of his day, to record the wonder; and his example may be followed to furnish an illustration of the beliefs and usages which bulked largely in the religious life witnessed in the churches of Byzantine Constantinople. At the time referred to there dwelt in the city a deaf-mute, a well-known object of charity who supported himself by petty services in benevolent households. While thus employed by a family that resided near the church of the Holy Apostles, the poor man one night saw S. Theodosia in a dream, and heard her command to repair with tapers and incense to the church dedicated to her honour. Next morning the deaf-mute made his friends understand what had occurred during his sleep, and with their help found his way to the designated shrine. There he was anointed with the holy oil of the lamp before the saint's eikon, and bowed long in humble adoration at her feet. Nothing remarkable happened at the time. But on his homeward way the devout man felt a strange pain in his ear, and upon putting his hand to the sore place, what seemed a winged insect flew out and vanished from view. Wondering what this might mean, he entered the house in which he served, and set himself to prepare the oven in which the bread for the family was to be baked that day. But all his efforts to kindle the fire were in vain; the wood only smoked. This went on so long that, like most persons under the same circumstances, the much-tried man lost his temper and gave way to the impulse to use bad language. Whereupon sonorous imprecations on the obstinate fuel shook the air. The bystanders could not believe their ears. They thought the sounds proceeded from some mysterious voice in the oven. But the deaf-mute protested that he heard his friends talking, and assured them that the words they heard were his own; S. Theodosia had opened his ears and loosed his tongue. The news of the marvel spread far and wide and reached even the court. Andronicus II. sent for the young man, interrogated him, and was so deeply impressed by the recital of what had happened that he determined to proceed to the church of S. Theodosia in state, and went thither with the patriarch and the senate, humbly on foot, and spent the whole night before the wonder-working shrine in prayer and thanksgiving. [Illustration: PLATE XLIV. (1) S. THEODOSIA. INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-EAST. (2) S. THEODOSIA. THE EASTERN DOME ARCH. _To face page 168._] The last scene witnessed in this church as a Christian sanctuary was pathetic in the extreme. It was the vigil of the day sacred to the memory of the saint, May 29, 1453. The siege of the city by the Turks had reached its crisis. The morning light would see the Queen of Cities saved or lost. All hearts were torn with anxiety, and the religious fervour of the population rose to the highest pitch. Already, in the course of the previous day, a great procession had gone through the streets of the city, invoking the aid of God and of all His saints. The emperor and the leading personages of his court were in S. Sophia, praying, weeping, embracing one another, forgiving one another, all feeling oppressed by a sense of doom. In the terrible darkness the church of S. Theodosia, ablaze with lighted tapers, gleamed like a beacon of hope. An immense congregation, including many women, filled the building, and prayers ascended to Heaven with unwonted earnestness--when suddenly the tramp of soldiers and strange shouts were heard. Had the city indeed fallen? The entrance of Turkish troops into the church removed all doubt, and the men and women who had gathered to pray for deliverance were carried off as prisoners of war.[280] According to the _Belgic Chronicle_, the body of the saint and other relics were thrown into the mire and cast to the dogs.[281] _Architectural Features_ As the building has undergone extensive repairs since it became a mosque, care must be taken to distinguish between the original features of the fabric and Turkish changes and restorations. The pointed dome arches rest on pilasters built against the internal angles of the cross. The dome is windowless, has no internal drum, and externally is octagonal with a low drum and a flat cornice. Dome, arches, and pilasters are all evidently Turkish reconstructions. The gable walls of the transepts and the western wall are also Turkish. As the central apse coincided with the orientation of the mosque, it has retained its original form and some portions of its Byzantine walls, but it also has suffered Turkish alterations. The cross arches in the south gallery and in the narthex are pointed, and, in their present form, unquestionably Turkish; but as the vault above them is Byzantine, their form may be due to cutting away in order to secure a freer passage round the galleries for the convenience of Moslem worshippers. The outer narthex is Turkish, but the old wall which forms its foundation and traces of an old pavement imply the former existence of a Byzantine narthex. In spite, however, of these serious changes the building preserves its original characteristic features, and is a good example of a domed-cross church, with galleries on three sides and domes over the four angle-chambers. The galleries rest on a triple arcade supported by square piers. On the north and south the aisles are covered with cross-groined vaults on oblong compartments, while the passage or narthex under the western gallery has a barrel vault. The chambers at the north-eastern and south-eastern angles of the cross are thrown into the side chapels, which thus consist of two bays covered with cross-groined vaults. Communication between the chapels and the bema was maintained by passages opening in the ordinary fashion into the eastern bays. In the thickness of each of the eastern dome piers, and at a short distance above the floor, is a small chamber. The chamber in the north-eastern pier is lighted by a small opening looking southwards, and was reached by a door in the east side of the passage leading from the bema to the north-eastern chapel. The door has been walled up, and the chamber is consequently inaccessible. The chamber in the south-eastern pier is lighted by a window looking northwards, and has a door in the east side of the passage from the bema to the south-eastern chapel. Over the door is a Turkish inscription[282] in gilt letters to this effect, 'Tomb of the Apostles, disciples of Jesus. Peace to him.' The chamber is reached by a short spiral stairway of nine stone steps, and contains a small marble tomb, which is covered with shawls, and has a turban around its headstone. On a bracket in the wall is a lamp ready to be lighted in honour of the deceased. The roof of the chamber is perforated by an opening that runs into the floor at the east end of the southern gallery, and over the opening is an iron grating. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--S. THEODOSIA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING WEST. (From a Photograph.)] Access to the galleries is gained by means of a staircase in the northern bay of the passage under the western gallery. For some distance from the floor of the church the staircase has wooden steps, but from the first landing, where a door in the northern wall stands on a level with the ground outside the church, stone steps are employed for the remainder of the way up. The wooden steps are Turkish, but may replace Byzantine steps of the same material. The stone steps are Byzantine, and could be reached directly from outside the church through the door situated beside the landing from which they start. Probably in Byzantine days the stone staircase could not be reached from the floor of the church, and furnished the only means of access to the galleries. The galleries are covered by the barrel vaults of the cross arms. At the east end of the northern and the southern gallery are chapels covered with domes and placed above the prothesis and the diaconicon. As stated already, the aperture in the roof of the chamber in the south-eastern dome pier opens into the floor of the southern chapel, and probably a similar aperture in the roof of the corresponding chamber in the north-eastern pier opened into the floor of the chapel at the east end of the northern gallery. The presence of chapels in such an unusual position is explained by the desire to celebrate special services in honour of the saints whose remains were buried in the chambers in the piers, as though in crypts. The domes over the chapels are hemispherical and rest directly on the pendentives. They are ribless and without drums. The arches on which they rest are semicircular and, with their infilling of triple windows, are Byzantine. We may safely set down all four angle domes as belonging to the original design, though the arches by which they communicate with the galleries are pointed, and are therefore Turkish insertions or enlargements. On the exterior the eastern wall of the church is fairly well preserved. The three apses project boldly; the central apse in seven sides, the lateral apses in three sides. Although the central apse is unquestionably a piece of Byzantine work it does not appear to be the original apse of the building, but a substitute inserted in the course of repairs before the Turkish conquest. This accounts for its plain appearance as compared with the lateral apses, which are decorated with four tiers of five niches, corresponding to the window height and the vaulting-level within the church. As on the apses of the Pantokrator (p. 235) the niches are shallow segments in plan, set back in one brick order, and without impost moulding. In the lowest tier three arches are introduced between pilasters, with a window in the central arch. Above the four tiers of niches is a boldly corbelled cornice, like that in the chapel attached to the Pammakaristos. One cannot help admiring how an effect so decidedly rich and beautiful was produced by very simple means. [Illustration: PLATE XLV. (1) S. THEODOSIA. DOME OVER THE STAIRCASE TO THE GALLERIES. (2) S. THEODOSIA. THE NARTHEX, LOOKING NORTH. _To face page 172._] Details of the tiled floor and of several carved fragments are given in Fig. 76. For some time after the conquest the building was used as a naval store.[283] It was converted into a mosque in the reign of Sultan Selim II. (1566-74) by a wealthy courtier, Hassan Pasha, and was known as Hassan Pasha Mesjedi.[284] Its title, the mosque of the Rose, doubtless refers to its beauty, just as another mosque is, for a similar reason, styled Laleli Jamissi, the mosque of the Tulip. Before leaving the church we may consider the claims of the tradition that the chamber in the south-eastern dome pier contains the tomb of the last Byzantine emperor. The tradition was first announced to the general public by the Patriarch Constantius in a letter which he addressed in 1852 to Mr. Scarlatus Byzantius, his fellow-student in all pertaining to the antiquities and history of Constantinople.[285] According to the patriarch, the tradition was accepted by the Turkish ecclesiastical authorities of the city, and was current among the old men of the Greek community resident in the quarter of Phanar; he himself knew the tradition even in his boyhood. Furthermore, distinguished European visitors who inquired for Byzantine imperial tombs were directed by Turkish officials to the church of S. Theodosia, as the resting-place of the emperor who died with the Empire; and the inscription over the door of the chamber referred to that champion of the Greek cause. Strangely enough, the patriarch said nothing about this tradition when treating of the church of S. Theodosia in his book on _Ancient and Modern Constantinople_, published in 1844. In that work, indeed, he assigns the tomb in question to some martyr who suffered during the iconoclastic period.[286] This strange silence he explains in his letter written in 1852 as due to prudence; he had reason then to 'put the seal of Alexander upon his lips.' [Illustration: FIG. 55. (For other details in the church see Fig. 76.)] The tradition has recently received the honour of being supported by Mr. Siderides, to whom students of Byzantine archaeology are so deeply indebted. But while accepting it in general, Mr. Siderides thinks it is open to correction on two points of detail. In his opinion the church of S. Theodosia was not the first sanctuary to guard the mortal remains of Constantine Palaeologus, but the second. Nor was the body of the fallen hero, when ultimately brought to this church, placed, as the patriarch supposed, in the chamber in the south-eastern pier, but in the chamber in the pier to the north-east. The reasons urged in favour of these modifications of the tradition, as reported by the Patriarch Constantius, are substantially the following:--In the first place, the body of the last Constantine, after its decapitation, was, at the express order of the victorious Sultan, buried with royal honours, [Greek: meta basilikês timês],[287] and therefore, so Mr. Siderides maintains, must have been interred in the church which then enjoyed the highest rank in the Greek community of the city, viz. the church of the Holy Apostles, the patriarchal cathedral after the appropriation of S. Sophia by the Turks. The church of the Holy Apostles, however, soon lost that distinction, and was torn down to make room for the mosque which bears the name of the conqueror of the city. Under these circumstances what more natural, asks Mr. Siderides, than that pious and patriotic hands should remove as many objects of historical or religious value as possible from the doomed shrine, and deposit them where men might still do them reverence--especially when there was every facility for the removal of such objects, owing to the fact that a Christian architect, Christoboulos, had charge of the destruction of the church and of the erection of the mosque. Some of those objects were doubtless transferred to the church of the Pammakaristos,[288] where the Patriarch Gennadius placed his throne after abandoning the church of the Holy Apostles; but others may have been taken elsewhere. And for proof that the church of S. Theodosia had the honour of being entrusted with the care of some of the relics removed from the Holy Apostles, Mr. Siderides points to the inscription over the doorway leading to the chamber in the south-eastern dome pier. According to the inscription that chamber is consecrated by the remains of Christ's apostles, _i.e._ the relics which formed the peculiar treasure of the church of the Holy Apostles. This being so, Mr. Siderides argues, on the strength of the tradition under review, that the remains of the last Constantine also were brought from the church of the Holy Apostles to S. Theodosia under the circumstances described. As to the position of the imperial tomb when thus transferred to the church of S. Theodosia, Mr. Siderides insists that it cannot be in the chamber in the south-eastern dome pier: first, because the religious veneration cherished by Moslems for the grave in that chamber is inconsistent with the idea that the grave contains the ashes of the enemy who, in 1453, resisted the Sultan's attack upon the city; secondly, because the inscription over the doorway leading to the chamber expressly declares the chamber to be the resting-place of Christ's apostles. Hence Mr. Siderides concludes that if the tradition before us has any value, the tomb of the last Byzantine emperor was placed in the chamber in the north-eastern pier, and finds confirmation of that view in the absence of any respect for the remains deposited there. To enter into a minute criticism of this tradition and of the arguments urged in its support would carry us far beyond our scope. Nor does such criticism seem necessary. The fact that the last Constantine was buried with royal honours affords no proof whatever that he was laid to rest in the church of the Holy Apostles. If he was ever buried in S. Theodosia, he may have been buried there from the first. The lateness of the date when the tradition became public makes the whole story it tells untrustworthy. Before a statement published in the early part of the nineteenth century in regard to the interment of the last Byzantine emperor can have any value, it must be shown to rest on information furnished nearer the time at which the alleged event occurred. No information of that kind has been produced. On the contrary, the only contemporary historian of the siege of 1453 who refers to the site of the emperor's grave informs us that the head of the last Constantine was interred in S. Sophia, and his mutilated body in Galata.[289] The patriarchal authorities of the sixteenth century, as Mr. Siderides admits, while professing to point out the exact spot where Constantine Palaeologus fell, were ignorant of the place where he was buried. In his work on the mosques of the city, written in 1620, Evlia Effendi not only knows nothing of the tradition we are considering, but says expressly that the emperor was buried elsewhere--in the church of the monastery of S. Mary Peribleptos, known by the Turks as Soulou Monastir, in the quarter of Psamathia. In 1852 a story prevailed that the grave of the last Constantine was in the quarter of Vefa Meidan.[290] From all these discrepancies it is evident that in the confusion attending the Turkish capture of the city, the real site of the imperial grave was soon forgotten, and that all subsequent indications of its position are mere conjectures, the offspring of the propensity to find in nameless graves local habitations for popular heroes. NOTE The first edition of _Ancient and Modern Constantinople_ was published in 1824. In it there is no mention of any tomb in the church of S. Theodosia. The second edition of that work appeared in 1844, and there the author speaks of a tomb in the church, and suggests that it was the tomb of some martyr in the iconoclastic persecution. The patriarch's letter to Scarlatus Byzantius was written in 1852, and published by the latter in 1862. In that letter the patriarch reports for the first time the tradition that the tomb in S. Theodosia was the tomb of Constantine Palaeologus. In 1851 a Russian visitor to Constantinople, Andrew Mouravieff, who published an account of his travels, says that in the church of S. Theodosia he was shown a tomb which the officials of the mosque assured him was the tomb of the last Christian emperor of the city.[291] Lastly, but not least, in 1832 the church of S. Theodosia underwent repairs at the Sultan's orders, and then a neglected tomb was discovered in the church by the Christian architect who had charge of the work of restoration, Haji Stephen Gaitanaki Maditenou (see letter of the patriarch).[292] It is difficult to resist the impression that the discovery of the tomb at that time gave occasion for the fanciful conjectures current among Turks and Greeks in regard to the body interred in the tomb. See the article of Mr. Siderides, who gives the facts just mentioned, without drawing the inference I have suggested. [Illustration: FIG. 56.] [Illustration: FIG. 57.] [Illustration: FIGS. 58 AND 59.] [Illustration: FIG. 60.] [257] Phrantzes, p. 254; Pusculus, iv. 190. [258] _De Bospora Thracio_, vi. c. 2. [259] _Türkisches Tagebuch_, pp. 358, 454; Patr. Constantius, p. 13. [260] Constant. Christ. iv. 190. [261] Synax., May 29.-- [Greek: Keras kriou kteinon se, Theodosia, ôphthê neon soi tes Amaltheias keras]. [262] Banduri, ii. p. 34. [263] Codinus, _De S. Sophia_, p. 147. [264] _Itin. russes_, p. 104. [265] _Ibid._ p. 125. [266] _Ibid._ p. 233. [267] _Ibid._ p. 162. [268] _Itin. russes_, p. 205. [269] _Esq. top._ parags. 68, 69. [270] Pachym. vol. i. p. 365; _Chroniques græco-romaines_, pp. 96, 97. [271] Nicet. Chon. p. 752. [272] Synax. March 25, May 29 (a day sacred to two saints named Theodosia), July 8. [273] _Itin. russes_, p. 205. Not far from the church and cistern of S. Mokius. [274] _Ibid._ cf. pp. 122, 125. [275] _Ibid._ pp. 233, 234. [276] _Ibid._ pp. 162, 163. [277] _Ibid._ p. 205. [278] _Itin. russes_, pp. 225, 233. [279] Pachym. i. p. 365. [280] Ducas, p. 293. [281] Du Cange, iv. p. 190. [282] Merkadi havariyoun eshabi Issa alaihusselam. [283] Paspates, p. 322. [284] Leunclavius, _Pand. Turc._ c. 128. [285] [Greek: Syngraphai hai Elassones]. [286] "[Greek: Meletês]," Athens, 1908: [Greek: Kônstantinou Palaiologou thanatos, taphos, kai spathê]. [287] Phrantzes, pp. 290-91, [Greek: kai prostaxei autou hoi heurethentes Christianoi ethapsan to basilikon ptôma meta basilikês timês]. [288] _E.g._, the column at which Christ was scourged stood in the church of the Holy Apostles before the conquest. It was found by Gerlach after the conquest in the Pammakaristos.--_Turcograecia_, p. 189. [289] See the Muscovite's account in Dethier's _Collection of Documents relating to the Siege of 1453_, vol. ii. p. 1117. [290] Achmed Mouktar Pasha, a recent Turkish historian of the siege of 1453, maintains that the emperor was buried in the church of the Pegé (Baloukli), outside the walls of the city. There is no persistency in the tradition that associates Constantine's tomb with the church of S. Theodosia. [291] _Letters from the East_ (in Russian), vol. ii. pp. 342-43, quoted by Mr. Siderides. [292] [Greek: Syngraphai hai Elassones.] CHAPTER IX THE CHURCH OF S. MARY DIACONISSA, KALENDER HANEH JAMISSI Close to the eastern end of the aqueduct of Valens, and to the south of it, in the quarter of the mosque Shahzadé, is a beautiful Byzantine church, now known as Kalender Haneh Jamissi. It was visited by Gyllius,[293] who refers to its beautiful marble revetment--_vestita crustis varii marmoris_--but has, unfortunately, nothing to say concerning its dedication. Since that traveller's time the very existence of the church was forgotten by the Greek community of Constantinople until Paspates[294] discovered the building in 1877. But even that indefatigable explorer of the ancient remains of the city could not get access to the interior, and it was reserved for Dr. Freshfield in 1880 to be the first European visitor since Gyllius to enter the building, and make its interest and beauty known to the general public.[295] [Illustration: PLATE XLVI. (1) S. MARY DIACONISSA. VIEW OF THE NORTH-WEST SIDE, TAKEN FROM THE AQUEDUCT OF VALENS. (2) S. MARY DIACONISSA. THE NORTH ARM, LOOKING EAST. _To face page 182._] The identity of the church is a matter of pure conjecture, for we have no tradition or documentary evidence on that point. Paspates[296] suggests that it may have been the sanctuary connected either with the 'monastery of Valens and Daudatus,' or with the 'monastery near the aqueduct,' establishments in existence before the age of Justinian the Great.[297] It cannot be the former, because the monastery of Valens and Daudatus, which was dedicated to S. John the Baptist, stood near the church of the Holy Apostles close to the western end of the aqueduct of Valens. It might, so far as the indication 'near the aqueduct' gives any clue, be the sanctuary of the latter House, in which case the church was dedicated to S. Anastasius.[298] But the architectural features of Kalender Haneh Jamissi do not belong to the period before Justinian. Mordtmann[299] identifies the building with the church of the Theotokos in the district of the Deaconess ([Greek: naos tês theotokou ta Diakonissês]), and in favour of this view there is the fact that the site of the mosque corresponds, speaking broadly, to the position which that church is known to have occupied somewhere between the forum of Taurus (now represented by the Turkish War Office) and the Philadelphium (the area about the mosque of Shahzadé), and not far off the street leading to the Holy Apostles. Furthermore, the rich and beautiful decoration of the church implies its importance, so that it may very well be the church of the Theotokos Diaconissa, at which imperial processions from the Great Palace to the Holy Apostles stopped to allow the emperor to place a lighted taper upon the altar of the shrine.[300] Theophanes,[301] the earliest writer to mention the church of the Diaconissa, ascribes its foundation to the Patriarch Kyriakos (593-605) in the fourth year of his patriarchate, during the reign of the Emperor Maurice. According to the historical evidence at our command, that church was therefore erected towards the close of the sixth century. Dr. Freshfield,[302] however, judging by the form of the church and the character of the dome, thinks that Kalender Haneh Jamissi is 'not earlier than the eighth century, and not later than the tenth.' Lethaby[303] places it in the period between Justinian the Great and the eleventh century. 'The church, now the Kalender mosque of Constantinople, probably belongs to the intermediate period. The similar small cruciform church of Protaton, Mount Athos, is dated c. 950.' Hence if Theophanes and his followers are not to clash with these authorities on architecture, either Kalender Haneh Jamissi is not the church of the Diaconissa, or it is a reconstruction of the original fabric of that sanctuary. To restore an old church was not an uncommon practice in Constantinople, and Kalender Haneh Jamissi has undoubtedly seen changes in the course of its history. On the other hand, Diehl is of the opinion that the building cannot be later than the seventh century and may be earlier.[304] [Illustration: PLATE XLVII. (1) S. MARY DIACONISSA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-EAST. (2) S. MARY DIACONISSA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 184._] _Architectural Features_ The church belongs to the domed-cross type. The central area is cruciform, with barrel vaults over the arms and a dome on the centre. As the arms are not filled in with galleries this cruciform plan is very marked internally. Four small chambers, in two stories, in the arm angles bring the building to the square form externally. The upper stories are inaccessible except by ladders, but the supposition that they ever formed, like the similar stories in the dome piers of S. Sophia, portions of continuous galleries along the northern, western, and southern walls of the church is precluded by the character of the revetment on the walls. In the development of the domed-cross type, the church stands logically intermediate between the varieties of that type found respectively in the church of S. Theodosia and in that of SS. Peter and Mark. The lower story of the north-western pier is covered with a flat circular roof resting on four pendentives, while the upper story is open to the timbers, and rises higher than the roof of the church, as though it were the base of some kind of tower. It presents no indications of pendentives or of a start in vaulting. The original eastern wall of the church has been almost totally torn down and replaced by a straight wall of Turkish construction. Traces of three apses at that end of the building can, however, still be discerned; for the points at which the curve of the central apse started are visible on either side of the Turkish wall, and the northern apse shows on the exterior. The northern and southern walls are lighted by large triple windows, divided by shafts and descending to a marble parapet near the floor (Plate IV.). The dome, which is large in proportion to the church, is a polygon of sixteen sides. It rests directly on pendentives, but has a comparatively high external drum above the roof. It is pierced by sixteen windows which follow the curve of the dome. The flat, straight external cornice above them is Turkish, and there is good reason to suspect that the dome, taken as a whole, is Turkish work, for it strongly resembles the Turkish domes found in S. Theodosia, SS. Peter and Mark, and S. Andrew in Krisei. The vaults, moreover, below the dome are very much distorted; and the pointed eastern arch like the eastern wall appears to be Turkish. When portions of the building so closely connected with the dome have undergone Turkish repairs, it is not strange that the dome itself should also have received similar treatment. In the western faces of the piers that carry the eastern arch large marble frames of considerable beauty are inserted. The sills are carved and rest on two short columns; two slender pilasters of verd antique form the sides; and above them is a flat cornice enriched with overhanging leaves of acanthus and a small bust in the centre. Within the frames is a large marble slab. Dr. Freshfield thinks these frames formed part of the eikonostasis, but on that view the bema would have been unusually large. The more probable position of the eikonostasis was across the arch nearer the apse. In that case the frames just described formed part of the general decoration of the building, although, at the same time, they may have enclosed isolated eikons. Eikons in a similar position are found in S. Saviour in the Chora (Plate LXXXVI.). The marble casing of the church is remarkably fine. Worthy of special notice is the careful manner in which the colours and veinings of the marble slabs are made to correspond and match. The zigzag inlaid pattern around the arches also deserves particular attention. High up in the western wall, and reached by the wooden stairs leading to a Turkish wooden gallery on that side of the church, are two marble slabs with a door carved in bas-relief upon them. They may be symbols of Christ as the door of His fold (Plate IV.). [Illustration: PLATE XLVIII. (1) S. MARY DIACONISSA. EAST END, NORTH SIDE (LOWER PART). (2) S. MARY DIACONISSA. EAST END, NORTH SIDE (UPPER PART). _To face page 186._] The church has a double narthex. As the ground outside the building has been raised enormously (it rises 15-20 feet above the floor at the east end) the actual entrance to the outer narthex is through a cutting in its vault or through a window, and the floor is reached by a steep flight of stone steps. The narthex is a long narrow vestibule, covered with barrel vaults, and has a Turkish wooden ceiling at the southern end. The esonarthex is covered with a barrel vault between two cross vaults. The entrance into the church stands between two Corinthian columns, but they belong to different periods, and do not correspond to any structure in the building. In fact, both narthexes have been much altered in their day, presenting many irregularities and containing useless pilasters. Professor Goodyear refers to this church in support of the theory that in Byzantine buildings there is an intentional widening of the structure from the ground upwards. 'It will also be observed,' he says, 'that the cornice is horizontal, whereas the marble casing above and below the cornice is cut and fitted in oblique lines.... The outward bend on the right side of the choir is 11-1/2 inches in 33 feet. The masonry surfaces step back above the middle string-course. That these bends are not due to thrust is abundantly apparent from the fact that they are continuous and uniform in inclination up to the solid rear wall of the choir.' But in regard to the existence of an intentional widening upwards in this building, it should be observed: First, that as the eastern wall of the church, 'the rear wall of the choir,' is Turkish, nothing can be legitimately inferred from the features of that wall about the character of Byzantine construction. Secondly, the set back above the middle string-course on the other walls of the church is an ordinary arrangement in a Byzantine church, and if this were all 'the widening' for which Professor Goodyear contended there would be no room for difference of opinion. The ledge formed by that set back may have served to support scaffolding. In the next place, due weight must be given to the distortion which would inevitably occur in Byzantine buildings. They were fabrics of mortar with brick rather than of brick with mortar, and consequently too elastic not to settle to a large extent in the course of erection. Hence is it that no measurements of a Byzantine structure, even on the ground floor, are accurate within more than 5 cm., while above the ground they vary to a much greater degree, rendering minute measurements quite valueless. Lastly, as the marble panelling was fitted after the completion of the body of the building, it had to be adapted to any divergence that had previously occurred in the settling of the walls or the spreading of the vaults. The marble panelling, it should also be observed, is here cut to the diagonal at one angle, and not at the other. Apart from the set back of the masonry at the middle string-course, this church, therefore, supplies no evidence for an intentional widening of the structure from the ground upwards. Any further widening than that at the middle string-course was accidental, due to the nature of the materials employed, not to the device of the builder, and was allowed by the architect because unavoidable. Such irregularities are inherent in the Byzantine methods of building. [Illustration: PLATE XLIX. (1) S. MARY DIACONISSA. SOUTH EIKON FRAME. (2) S. MARY DIACONISSA. DETAIL IN THE SOUTH EIKON FRAME. _To face page 188._] [Illustration: FIG. 61.] [Illustration: FIG. 62.] [Illustration: PLATE L. (1) S. MARY DIACONISSA, LOOKING WEST. (2) S. MARY DIACONISSA. CAPITAL ON COLUMN AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHURCH. _To face page 190._] [293] _De top. C.P._ iii. c. 6. [294] P. 351. [295] _Archaeologia_, vol. lv. part 2, p. 431. [296] P. 352. [297] Their names appear in the Letter addressed to Menas, by the monks of the city, at the Synod of 536. [298] In the Epistle to Pope Agapetus the monastery 'near the aqueduct' is described as 'Anastasii prope Agogum,' Mansi, viii. p. 907. [299] _Esquisses top._ p. 70. [300] Const. Porphr. _De cer._ i. p. 75. [301] P. 428; Banduri, i. p. 18; viii. pp. 697-98. [302] _Archaeologia_, vol. lv. part 2, p. 438. [303] _Mediaeval Art_, p. 66. [304] _Manuel d'art byzantin_, p. 312. CHAPTER X THE CHURCH OF SS. PETER AND MARK, HOJA ATIK MUSTAPHA JAMISSI The Byzantine church, now Hoja Atik Mustapha Jamissi, situated in the Aivan Serai quarter, close to the Golden Horn, is commonly regarded as the church of SS. Peter and Mark, because it stands where the church dedicated to the chief of the apostles and his companion stood, in the district of Blachernae (Aivan Serai) and near the Golden Horn.[305] Such indications are too vague for a positive opinion on the subject, but perhaps the Patriarch Constantius, who is responsible for the identification, may have relied upon some tradition in favour of the view he has made current.[306] NOTE Tafferner, chaplain to the embassy from Leopold I. of Austria to the Ottoman Court, speaking of the patriarchal church in his day (the present patriarchal church of S. George in the Phanar quarter), says, 'Aedes haec in patriarchatum erecta est, postquam Sultan Mehemet basilicam Petri et Pauli exceptam Graecis in moscheam defoedavit' (_Caesarea legatio_, p. 89, Vien. 1668). Probably by the church of SS. Peter and Paul he means this church of SS. Peter and Mark. If so, the traditional name of the building is carried back to the seventeenth century. The church of SS. Peter and Mark, it is true, never served as a patriarchal church. That honour belonged to the church of S. Demetrius of Kanabos, which is in the immediate vicinity, and has always remained a Christian sanctuary. Tafferner seems to have confused the two churches owing to their proximity to each other. Or his language may mean that the patriarchal seat was removed from S. Demetrius when SS. Peter and Paul was converted into a mosque, because too near a building which had become a Moslem place of worship. The church of SS. Peter and Mark was founded, it is said, by two patricians of Constantinople, named Galbius and Candidus, in 458, early in the reign of Leo I. (457-474). But the present building cannot be so old. It is a fair question to ask whether it may not be the church of S. Anastasia referred to in a chrysoboullon of John Palaeologus (1342), and mentioned by the Russian pilgrim who visited Constantinople in the fifteenth century (1424-53).[307] The church of SS. Peter and Mark was erected as a shrine for the supposed tunic of the Theotokos, a relic which played an important part in the fortunes of Constantinople on several occasions, as 'the palladium of the city and the chaser away of all diseases and warlike foes.' As often happened in the acquisition of relics, the garment had been secured by a pious fraud--a fact which only enhanced the merit of the purloiners, and gave to the achievement the colour of a romantic adventure. In the course of their pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Galbius and Candidus discovered, in the house of a devout Hebrew lady who entertained them, a small room fitted up like a chapel, fragrant with incense, illuminated with lamps, and crowded with worshippers. Being informed that the room was consecrated by the presence of a chest containing the robe of the mother of their Lord, the pious men begged leave to spend the night in prayer beside the relic, and while thus engaged were seized by an uncontrollable longing to gain possession of the sacred garment. Accordingly they took careful measurements of the chest before them, and at Jerusalem ordered an exact facsimile of it to be made. Thus equipped they lodged again, on their homeward journey, at the house of their Galilean hostess, and once more obtained leave to worship in its chapel. Watching their opportunity they exchanged the chests, and forthwith despatched the chest containing the coveted treasure straight to Constantinople. They themselves tarried behind, as though loth to quit a spot still hallowed by the sacred robe. Upon their return to the capital the pious thieves erected a shrine for their prize on land which they owned in the district of Blachernae, and dedicated the building to SS. Peter and Mark instead of to the Theotokos, as would have been more appropriate, in the hope that they would thus conceal the precious relic from the public eye, and retain it for their special benefit. But the secret leaked out. Whereupon the emperor obliged the two patricians to surrender their treasure, and, after renovating the neighbouring church of the Theotokos of Blachernae, deposited the relic in that sanctuary as its proper home. [Illustration: PLATE LI. (1) SS. PETER AND MARK, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. (2) SS. PETER AND MARK. FONT OUTSIDE THE CHURCH. _To face page 192._] The site of that celebrated church lies at a short distance to the west of Hoja Atik Mustapha Jamissi, and is marked by the Holy Well which was attached to it. The well, in whose waters emperors and empresses were wont to bathe, is now enclosed by a modern Greek chapel, and is still the resort of the faithful. _Architectural Features_ The plan of the church presents the simplest form of the domed-cross type without galleries. The dome, without drum, ribs, or windows, is almost certainly a Turkish reconstruction, but the dome arches and piers are original. The arms of the cross and the small chambers at its angles are covered with barrel vaults, and communicate with one another through lofty, narrow arches. In the treatment of the northern and southern walls of the building considerable architectural elaboration was displayed. At the floor level is a triple arcade; higher up are three windows resting on the string-course; and still higher a window divided into three lights. The arches in the church are enormously stilted, a feature due to the fact that the only string-course in the building, though structurally corresponding to the vaulting spring, has been placed at the height of what would properly be the column string-course. The three apses, much altered by repairs, project boldly, all of them showing three sides on the exterior. The roof and the cornice are Turkish, and the modern wooden narthex has probably replaced a Byzantine narthex. On the opposite side of the street lies a cruciform font that belonged to the baptistery of the church. [Illustration: FIG. 63.] From a church of this type to the later four-columned plan is but a step. The dome piers of SS. Peter and Mark are still [Symbol: L]-shaped, and form the internal angles of the cross. As the arches between such piers and the external walls increased in size, the piers became smaller, until eventually they were reduced to the typical four columns of the late churches. [Illustration: PLATE LII. (1) SS. PETER AND MARK. INTERIOR OF THE DOME, LOOKING NORTH. (2) SS. PETER AND MARK. LOOKING ACROSS THE DOME FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. _To face page 194._] [Illustration: FIGS. 64 AND 65.] [305] Synax., July 2. [306] _Ancient and Modern Constantinople_, p. 83. [307] [Greek: Neologou hebdomadiaia epitheôrêsis], January 3, 1893, p. 205; _Itin. russes_, p. 233. CHAPTER XI THE CHURCH OF THE MYRELAION, BODROUM JAMISSI The identification of Bodroum Jamissi as the church attached to the monastery styled the Myrelaion rests upon the tradition current in the Greek community when Gyllius visited the city. According to that traveller, the church on the hill rising to the north of the eastern end of the gardens of Vlanga, the site of the ancient harbour of Theodosius, was known as the Myrelaion--'Supra locum hortorum Blanchae nuncupatorum, olim Portum Theodosianum continentium, extremam partem ad ortum solis pertinentem, clivus a Septentrione eminet, in quo est templum vulgo nominatum Myreleos.'[308] This agrees, so far, with the statement of the Anonymus[309] of the eleventh century, that the Myrelaion stood on the side of the city looking towards the Sea of Marmora. There is no record of the date when the monastery was founded. But the House must have been in existence before the eighth century, for Constantine Copronymus (740-775), the bitter iconoclast, displayed his contempt for monks and all their ways by scattering the fraternity, and changing the fragrant name of the establishment, Myrelaion, the place of myrrh-oil, into the offensive designation, Psarelaion, the place of fish-oil.[310] The monastery was restored by the Emperor Romanus I. Lecapenus (919-945), who devoted his residence in this district to that object.[311] Hence the monastery was sometimes described as 'in the palace of the Myrelaion,'[312] [Greek: en tois palatiois tou Myrelaiou], and as 'the monastery of the Emperor Romanus,'[313] [Greek: Monê tou basileôs Rhômanou]. It was strictly speaking a convent, and became noteworthy for the distinguished rank of some of its inmates, and as the mausoleum in which the founder and many members of his family were laid to rest. Here Romanus II. sent his sister Agatha to take the veil, when he was obliged to dismiss her from the court to soothe the jealousy of his beautiful but wicked consort Theophano.[314] Upon the abdication of Isaac Comnenus, his wife Aecatherina and her daughter Maria retired to the Myrelaion, and there learned that a crown may be a badge of slavery and the loss of it liberty.[315] Here were buried Theodora,[316] the wife of Romanus Lecapenus, in 923, and, eight years later, his beloved son Christopher,[317] for whom he mourned, says the historian of the event, with a sorrow 'greater than the grievous mourning of the Egyptians.' Here also Helena, the daughter of Romanus Lecapenus, and wife of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus, was laid to rest, in 981, after an imposing funeral, in which the body was carried to the grave on a bier of gold adorned with pearls and other precious stones.[318] To this monastery were transferred, from the monastery of S. Mamas, near the Gate of the Xylokerkou, the three sarcophagi, one of them a fine piece of work, containing the ashes of the Emperor Maurice and his children. And here also Romanus Lecapenus himself was interred in 948, his remains being brought from the island of Proté, where his unfilial sons, Stephen and Constantine, had obliged him to spend the last years of his life as a monk.[319] [Illustration: PLATE LIII. MYRELAION. THE SOUTH SIDE.] [Illustration: MYRELAION. THE NARTHEX, LOOKING NORTH. _To face page 196._] _Architectural Features_ The building is on the 'four column' plan. The dome, placed on a circular drum, is supported on four piers, and divided into eight concave compartments, with windows in the alternate compartments. The arms of the cross, the chambers at the angles, and the bema are all covered with cross-groined vaults that spring, like those in the chapel of the Pammakaristos (p. 151), from the vaulting level. The apsidal chambers have dome vaults, a niche on the east recessed in an arch to form the apse, and a niche both on the north and the south rising above the vaulting string-course. In the lowest division of the south wall stood originally a triple arcade with a door between the columns. The arcade has been built up, but the moulded jambs and cornices of the door, and the arch above it, now contracted into a window, still show on the exterior, while the columns appear within the church. Above the column string-course is a range of three windows, the central window being larger than its companions; higher up in the gable is a single light. The interior of the church has been much pulled about and cut away. The narthex is in three bays, separated by strong transverse arches, and terminates at either end in a high concave niche that shows on the outside. The central bay has a dome vault; the other bays have cross-groined vaults. The church had no gynecaeum, although Pulgher indicates one in his plan. A striking feature of the exterior are the large semicircular buttresses that show beyond the walls of the church--six on the south side, one on either side of the entrance on the west, and two on the east, supporting the apsidal chambers. In the last case, however, where entire buttresses would have been at once too large and too close together, the buttresses are only half semi-circles. The apses project with three sides. The northern side of the church and the roof are modern, for the building suffered severely in 1784 from fire.[320] The church stands on a platform, built over a small cistern, the roof of which is supported by four columns crowned by beautiful capitals. Hence the Turkish name of the mosque, Bodroum, signifying a subterranean hollow. Gyllius[321] is mistaken in associating this church with the large underground cistern situated lower down the slope of the hill close to the bath Kyzlar Aghassi Hamam. [Illustration: PLATE LIV. MYRELAION. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: MYRELAION. THE SOUTH-WEST CROSS ANGLE. _To face page 198._] Since the above was in print, the church has, unfortunately, been burnt in the great fire which destroyed a large part of Stamboul on the 23rd July 1912 (see Plates II., III.). NOTE Gyllius (_De top. C.P._ iii. c. 8) places the Horreum, the statue of Maimas, the house of Craterus, the Modius, and the arch bearing the two bronze hands, after passing which a criminal on the way to punishment lost all hope of reprieve, near this church; basing that opinion on the statement of Suidas that these buildings stood near the Myrelaion. But there was a Myrelaion also (Codinus, _De aed._ p. 108) in the district in which the Shahzadé mosque is situated. The buildings above mentioned were near this second Myrelaion. On the other hand, the Chrysocamaron near the Myrelaion mentioned by Codinus (_De signis_, pp. 65-66) stood near the church under our consideration, for it was close to the church of S. Acacius in the Heptascalon. So also, doubtless, did the xenodocheion Myrelaion (Du Cange, iv. p. 160), possibly one of the many philanthropic institutions supported by Helena (Theoph. Cont. p. 458), the daughter of Romanus Lecapenus and wife of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus. [Illustration: FIGS. 66 AND 67.] [308] _De top. C.P._ iii. c. 8. [309] Banduri, iii. p. 48. [310] _Ibid. ut supra._ [311] Theoph. Cont. p. 402. [312] Scylitzes, in Cedrenus, ii. p. 649. [313] Theoph. Cont. p. 404. [314] _Ibid._ pp. 461, 757. [315] Scylitzes, _ut supra_, pp. 648-49. [316] Theoph. Cont. p. 402. [317] _Ibid._ p. 420. [318] _Ibid._ p. 473. [319] _Ibid._ pp. 403-4. [320] Chevalier, _Voyage de la Propontide et du Pont Euxin_, vol. i. p. 108. [321] _De top. C.P._ iii. c. 8, 'habens inter se cisternam, cujus camera lateritia sustinetur columnis marmoreis circiter sexaginta'; cf. _Die byzant. Wasserbehälter_, pp. 59, 222-23. The bath of Kyzlar Aghassi Hamam may represent the bath built by the eunuch Nicetas, in the reign of Theophilus, and was probably supplied with water from the cistern beside it (Banduri, vi. p. 133). CHAPTER XII THE CHURCH OF S. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN TRULLO, ACHMED PASHA MESJEDI The identification of the church of S. John the Baptist in Trullo ([Greek: Monê tou hagiou prophêtou prodromou Iôannou tou en tô Troullô]) with the mosque of Achmed Pasha Mesjedi is based on two reasons: first, because of their common proximity to the church of the Pammakaristos,[322] now Fetiyeh Jamissi; secondly, on the ground of the tradition current in the Greek community on that point. The latter reason is in this case particularly strong, seeing the church of the Pammakaristos was the patriarchal cathedral almost immediately after the Turkish conquest, and retained that honour until 1591.[323] The highest Greek ecclesiastical authorities were therefore in a position to be thoroughly acquainted with the dedication of a church in their close vicinity. In 1578 the protonotarius of the patriarch showed Gerlach the site of the Trullus close to Achmed Pasha Mesjedi.[324] The church is mentioned in history only by Phrantzes,[325] who informs us that when the Patriarch Gennadius transferred the patriarchal seat to the monastery and church of the Pammakaristos, certain nuns previously accommodated in that House were removed to the neighbouring monastery of S. John Baptist in Trullo. Phrantzes explains the designation of the church, 'in Trullo,' as derived from a palace named Trullus which once stood in the vicinity to the north of the Pammakaristos. It was the palace, adds the historian,[326] in which the Council of Constantinople, known as the Concilium Quinisextum ([Greek: Penthektê]), or the second Concilium Trullanum, assembled in 692, in the reign of Justinian II. But the palace Trullus, in which the first Concilium Trullanum met in 680, was one of the group of buildings forming the Great Palace[327] beside the Hippodrome, and there the second Concilium Trullanum also held its meetings.[328] Phrantzes is therefore mistaken in associating the Council of 692 with a palace in the vicinity of the Pammakaristos and Achmed Pasha Mesjedi. But his mistake on that particular point does not preclude the existence of a palace named Trullus in the neighbourhood of the Pammakaristos. In fact, the existence of such a palace in that district is the only possible explanation of the attachment of the style 'in Trullo' to a church on the site of Achmed Pasha Mesjedi. Nor is it strange to find a name pertaining primarily to a building in the Great Palace transferred to a similar building situated elsewhere. The imperial residence at the Hebdomon, for example, was named Magnaura after one of the halls in the Great Palace.[329] There was an Oaton or Trullus in the palace of Blachernae,[330] and in the palace at Nicaea.[331] Consequently, a palace known as the Oaton or the Trullus might also be situated near the Pammakaristos, to command the fine view from that point of the city. Mordtmann,[332] indeed, maintains that the building to which Phrantzes refers was the palace at Bogdan Serai, the subsequent residence of the Moldavian hospodar in Turkish days, and that the church of S. John in Trullo was not Achmed Pasha Mesjedi, but the church of S. John in Petra (Kesmé Kaya) beside that palace. This opinion, however, is at variance with the statements of Phrantzes and Gerlach. Furthermore, the designation 'in Petra' was so distinctive a mark of the church of S. John near Kesmé Kaya, that the church could scarcely have been recognised under another style. [Illustration: PLATE LV. S. JOHN IN TRULLO, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.] [Illustration: BALABAN MESJEDI (page 265). INTERIOR VIEW. _To face page 202._] [Illustration: FIG. 68.] _Architectural Features_ S. John in Trullo belongs to the ordinary 'four column' type of church building, and has a narthex. Its three apses are semicircular both within and without, presenting the only instance in Constantinople of apses semicircular on the exterior. The central apse projects m. 3 beyond the body of the building, and was lighted by a large but low window, divided into three lights by two pilasters crowned with carved capitals (for details see Fig. 68); the diaconicon has been built up to form the mihrab of the mosque; the prothesis, to the north, has a barrel vault. [Illustration: FIG. 69.] The drum dome is octagonal, with eight ribs and as many windows. It seems large for the size of the church, and is lower than usual inside. The windows do not cut into the exterior cornice of the dome. Originally the dome arches rested on four piers or columns, but these have been removed in the course of Turkish repairs, and the dome arches are now supported by beams running across the church, under the impost of the arches. The arms of the cross to the north and south have barrel vaults, and the walls are pierced by triple windows. Two capitals built into the exterior face of the northern wall, and marked with a cross, were doubtless the capitals of the shafts which divided the northern window into three lights. The western arm of the cross is covered by the roof of the narthex, and lighted by a small round-headed window above it. The small narthex is in three bays, covered with cross-groined vaults. It is not probable that the church was converted into a mosque before 1591, when the patriarchal seat was removed from the Pammakaristos to S. Demetrius beside the Xyloporta. Nor could the conversion have been later than 1598, the year in which Achmed Pasha--who converted the building into a mosque--died.[333] [Illustration: FIGS. 70 AND 71.] [322] Phrantzes, p. 307. [323] Patr. Constantius, p. 80. [324] _Tagebuch_, p. 456. On the way eastwards from the residence of the Moldavian agent (Bogdan Serai), says Gerlach, 'Auf diesem Spazier-weg hat mir Theodosius auch den Trullum auf der Seiten des Patriarchats gegen dem Sultan Selim gewiesen. Welches vor diesen ein sehr weiter Platz gewesen, nun aber nichts mehr da als ein rundes getäffeltes Haus, wie ein kleines Kirchlein ist.' Cf. his statement reported by Crusius in _Turcograecia_, p. 189: 'Patriarchatui contiguum est monasteriolum Joannis Baptistae a Graecis sanctimonalibus inhabitatum.' [325] Phrantzes, p. 307; cf. _Turcograecia_, p. 189. [326] It was also styled [Greek: Ôaton], 'the Oval,' after the form of its roof or of the body of the building itself (Synax., Sept. 14). _Vita Stephani._ For the [Greek: Ôaton], see Labarte, _Le Palais impérial de Cons'ple_, pp. 62, 121, 122, 186. [327] _Vita Stephani Junioris_, Migne, _P.G._ tom. 100, col. 1144 [Greek: en tô hierô palatiô, entha epilegetai ho Troullos hoper hêmeis Ôaton kaloumen]. [328] Balsamon, vol. i. col. 501 [Greek: en tô Troullô tou basilikou palatiou]. [329] Theoph. p. 541. [330] Pachym. i. p. 405. [331] _Acta et diplomata Graeca_, iii. p. 65; cf. Paspates, _Great Palace_, p. 248, Metcalfe's translation. [332] _Proceedings of Greek Syllogos of C.P._, Archaeological Supplement to vol. xvii. p. 8. His principal reason seems to be the fact that a company of nuns occupied some of the cells in the old monastery of S. John in Petra when Gerlach visited the city. But, according to Gerlach, another sisterhood was at the same time accommodated in the small convent of S. John the Baptist near the patriarchate.--_Turcograecia_, p. 189. [333] Cf. Paspates, p. 304. CHAPTER XIII THE CHURCH OF S. THEKLA, TOKLOU IBRAHIM DEDÉ MESJEDI In the quarter of Aivan Serai, a few paces to the rear of the Heraclian Wall, stands a small mosque known as Toklou Ibrahim Dedé Mesjedi, the architectural features of which proclaim it at once to be an old Byzantine chapel. There is no decisive tradition in regard to the identity of the building. The Patriarch Constantius is uncertain whether it should be recognised as the church of S. Nicholas or as the church of S. Thekla, two sanctuaries situated in the quarter of Blachernae. It cannot have been the former, inasmuch as the site of that church was near the Holy Well, still venerated by Christians and Moslems,[334] in the area enclosed between the Wall of Heraclius and the Wall of Leo the Armenian, now a picturesque Turkish cemetery. One argument for regarding the building as the church of S. Thekla, in this part of the city, is the striking similarity of its Turkish name Toklou to the Greek name Thekla, rendering it exceedingly probable that the former is a corruption of the latter, and a reminiscence of the original designation of the edifice.[335] Turkish authorities, however, have their own explanation of the name Toklou. In the _Historical and Geographical Dictionary_ of Achmed Rifaat Effendi, we are told that a certain Toklou Dedé was the guardian of the tombs of the companions of Khaled, who took part in the first siege of Constantinople (673) by the Saracens. 'His real name was Ghazi Ismail; Dogulu was his nickname. Now Dogh is the Persian for a drink named Airan (a mixture of curds and water), and he was called Dogulu Dedé because during the siege his business was to distribute that drink to the troops. At his request a Christian church near Aivan Serai was converted into a mosque. The church was formerly named after its founder, Isakias.'[336] Another Turkish explanation of Toklou derives the epithet from the rare Turkish term for a yearling lamb, and accounts for its bestowal upon Ibrahim Dedé as a pet name given in gratitude for his services to the thirsty soldiers engaged in the siege of the city.[337] In keeping with these stories is the tradition that the cemetery in the area between the Walls of Heraclius and Leo V. the Armenian, is the resting-place of Saracen warriors who fell in the siege of 673. But have we not here the fancy-bred tales which Oriental imagination weaves to veil its ignorance of real facts? When etymology or history fails, romance is substituted. We may as well believe the tradition that the body of Eyoub, the standard-bearer of Mahomet, lies buried at the head of the Golden Horn, in the mosque of Eyoub, where the Sultan girds the sword on his accession to the throne. No Moslem graves could have been tolerated between the lines of the city's fortification in Byzantine days. The cemetery between the old walls near Toklou Ibrahim Dedé Mesjedi must therefore be later than the Turkish conquest. And as soon as Moslems were laid there, it was almost inevitable that a church in the immediate neighbourhood should either be destroyed or converted into a mosque. By what name that mosque would thenceforth become known was, of course, an open question. The new name might be purely Turkish. But when it sounds like the echo of a name which we know belonged to a Byzantine building in this quarter of the city before Turkish times, it is more reasonable to regard the new name as a transformation of the earlier Greek term, than to derive it from fine-spun etymological fancies and historical blunders. The identification, therefore, of Toklou Ibrahim Dedé Mesjedi with the church of S. Thekla, on the ground of the similarity of the two names, has a strong presumption in its favour. [Illustration: PLATE LVI. S. THEKLA. NORTH SIDE, FROM THE NORTH-WEST.] [Illustration: S. THEKLA. EAST END. _To face page 208._] NOTE ON THE CHURCH OF S. THEKLA (CHAPTER XIII.) On page 209, note 3, I have said that if the mosque Aivas Effendi (more correctly Ivaz Effendi), which is situated behind the Tower of Isaac Angelus within the old area of the palace of Blachernae, could be proved to stand on the site of a church, the argument in favour of the identification of the Church of S. Thekla with Toklou Dedé Mesjedi would be weakened. Since this book went to the press, my learned friend Mr. X. A. Siderides has shown me a passage in the historical work of Mustapha Effendi of Salonica, published in 1865, where the mosque of Ivaz Effendi is described as a church converted into a mosque by a certain Ivaz Effendi who died in 1586, at the age of ninety. In that case we should have a Christian sanctuary whose position corresponded strictly with the position occupied by the Church of S. Thekla "in the palace of Blachernae," an indication not exactly accurate in regard to Toklou Dedé Mesjedi. In view of the late date of Mustapha Effendi's work, and the absence, so far as I can judge, of Byzantine features in the structure of the mosque, it is difficult to decide if the arguments in favour of the identification of the Church of S. Thekla with Toklou Dedé Mesjedi are entirely overthrown by the statement of Mustapha Effendi. A second consideration in support of this identification is the statement made by Achmed Rifaat Effendi, that before the church became a mosque it was known by the name of its founder, 'Isakias.' For it is a matter of history that the church of S. Thekla was restored by the Emperor Isaac Comnenus[338] in the eleventh century. The association of his name with the building was therefore perfectly natural, if the building is indeed the old church of S. Thekla, otherwise it is difficult to account for that association. There is, however, one objection to this identification that must not be overlooked. According to Byzantine authorities, the church of S. Thekla stood in the palace of Blachernae ([Greek: entos tôn basileiôn; en tô palatiô tôn Blachernôn][339]). That palace occupied the heights above Aivan Serai, on which the quarter of Egri Kapou and the mosque of Aivas Effendi now stand, within the walls that enclose the western spur of the Sixth Hill. Toklou Ibrahim Dedé Mesjedi, however, does not stand within that enclosure, but immediately to the north of it, on the level tract that stretches from the foot of the Sixth Hill to the Golden Horn. If the reasons in favour of regarding the mosque as S. Thekla were less strong, this objection would, perhaps, be fatal. But the strip of land between the northern wall of the palace enclosure and the sea is so narrow, and was so closely connected with the life of the imperial residence, that a building on that tract might with pardonable inaccuracy be described, as 'in the palace.'[340] The church is mentioned for the first time in the earlier half of the eighth century as a chapel ([Greek: euktêrion]) which Thekla, the eldest daughter of the Emperor Theophilus, restored and attached to her residence at Blachernae.[341] The princess was an invalid, and doubtless retired to this part of the city for the sake of its mild climate. To dedicate the chapel to her patron saint was only natural. As already intimated, the church was rebuilt from the foundations, in the eleventh century, by Isaac Comnenus, in devout gratitude for his escape from imminent death[342] in the course of his campaign against the barbarous tribes beside the Danube, when he was overtaken at the foot of the Lovitz mountain by a furious tempest of rain and snow. The plain on which his army was encamped soon became a sheet of water, and many of his men and animals were drowned or frozen to death. Thunder, lightning, and hurricane combined to produce an awful scene, and there were moments when the whole world seemed on fire. The emperor took shelter under a large oak, but, fearing the tree might be thrown down by the furious wind, he soon made for open ground. Scarcely had he done so when the oak was torn up by the roots and hurled to the earth. A few moments later the emperor would have been killed. This narrow escape occurred on the 24th September, the festival day of S. Thekla, and, therefore, attributing his deliverance to her intervention, Isaac rebuilt and greatly beautified the old sanctuary dedicated to her in Blachernae, and frequently attended services there in her honour. Anna Comnena[343] speaks of the restored church in the highest terms. According to her it was built at great cost, displayed rare art, and was in every way worthy of the occasion which led to its erection. Zonaras[344] is not so complimentary. He describes the church as a monument of the niggardliness of Isaac Comnenus. In any case, it was pulled down and rebuilt in the following century by the Emperor John Comnenus in splendid style, and dedicated to the Saviour.[345] As the beauty and wealth of a Byzantine sanctuary were exhibited in the lavish adornment of the interior, it is possible that the church of S. Thekla, though small and outwardly plain, may have been a beautiful and rich building in its latest Christian character. It had then the honour of seeing among the worshippers before its altar Anna Dalassena, the mother of the Comneni. For, when charged with the government of the Empire during the absence of Alexius Comnenus from the capital, that able woman came often to pray in this church, 'lest she should be immersed in merely secular affairs.'[346] _Architectural Features_ (For Plan see p. 206) The building is an oblong hall, m. 13.55 by m. 5.4, divided into three compartments. It is now covered with a wooden roof, but the arrangements of the breaks or pilasters on the walls indicate that it had originally a dome. At the east end is a single apse, the usual side-apses being represented by two niches. The western compartment served as a narthex. During the repairs of the mosque in 1890, frescoes of the eikons which once decorated the walls were brought to view. On the exterior the apse shows three sides, crowned with a corbelled cornice. The central side is pierced by a window of good workmanship, divided by a shaft into two lights, and above the window are two short blind concave niches. High blind concave niches indent the other sides of the apse. In the northern wall are the remains of a triple window, divided by shafts built in courses. Above this is a row of three small windows. [334] _Ancient and Modern C.P._ p. 46. [335] Paspates, p. 359. [336] For this information I am indebted to Rev. H. O. Dwight, LL.D., late of the American Board of Missions in Constantinople. [337] Paspates, p. 357, note. [338] Anna Comnena, vol. i. p. 168. [339] Scylitzes, p. 647 (Cedrenus, vol. ii.); Zonaras, iii. p. 672. [340] If the mosque Aivas Effendi could be proved to stand on the site of a church, the argument against the identification of Toklou Dedé Mesjedi with the church of S. Thekla would be stronger. [341] Theoph. Cont. p. 147. [342] Anna Comnena, vol. i. p. 168. [343] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 168. [344] Zonaras, iii. p. 672. [345] _Ibid. ut supra._ [346] Anna Comnena, vol. i. p. 169. CHAPTER XIV THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES, ESKI IMARET MESJEDI The reasons which favour the identification of the mosque Eski Imaret Mesjedi, which is situated on the heights above Aya Kapou (Gate of S. Theodosia), with the church of S. Saviour Pantepoptes, the All-Seeing ([Greek: pantepoptês]), are the following: first, the tradition to that effect,[347] which in the case of a building so conspicuous can scarcely be mistaken; secondly, the correspondence of its position to that of the Pantepoptes, on a hill commanding an extensive view of the Golden Horn;[348] and finally, the architectural features which mark it to be what the church of the Pantepoptes was, a building of the Comnenian period. The church of the Pantepoptes was founded or restored by Anna Dalassena,[349] the mother of Alexius I. Comnenus (1081-1118), one of the most remarkable women in Byzantine history, combining to a rare degree domestic virtues with great political ambition and administrative ability. For twenty years she was associated with her son in the government of the Empire, and was the power behind the throne which he owed largely to her energy and devotion. About the year 1100 she laid aside the cares of state, and without renouncing altogether her royal style retired to rest in the monastery she had built, until her death, five years later, at an advanced age.[350] There is nothing of special importance to record in the annals of the House. Its inmates were occasionally disturbed by the confinement among them of some dignitary who had offended the Government, or by the theological disputes that agitated the ecclesiastical circles of the capital.[351] But for the most part life at Pantepoptes was quiet and peaceful. Only once does the monastery stand out conspicuous before the eyes of the world. When the Venetian ships under Henrico Dandolo, with the army of the Fourth Crusade on board, lined the shore of the Golden Horn from Ispigas and the church of S. Saviour the Benefactor to Blachernae (_i.e._ from Jubali Kapoussi to Aivan Serai) on Easter Monday, 12th April 1204, the Emperor Alexius Murtzuphlus established his headquarters beside the Pantepoptes. There he pitched his vermilion tent, marshalled his best troops, and watched the operations of the enemy. And thence he fled when he saw the walls on the shore below him carried by storm, and Flemish knights mounted on horses, which had been landed from the hostile fleet, advancing to assault his position. So hurried was his flight that he left his tent standing, and under its shelter Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault slept away the fatigue of that day's victory.[352] During the Latin occupation the church passed into the hands of the Venetians, and was robbed of many of its relics for the benefit of churches in the West.[353] Upon the Turkish conquest it served for some time as an imaret or refectory for the students and teachers of the _medressé_,[354] then in course of construction beside the great mosque of Sultan Mehemed. Hence its Turkish name. After serving that purpose it was converted into a mosque later in the reign of the conqueror. [Illustration: PLATE LVII. S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES. DOOR LEADING FROM THE OUTER TO THE INNER NARTHEX. VIEW LOOKING NORTH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES. THE DOME, LOOKING WEST.] _To face page 212._ [Illustration: FIG. 72.] _Architectural Features_ In plan the church belongs to the 'four column' type, and has two narthexes. The dome, placed on a drum, circular within and twelve-sided without, is carried on four piers which the Turks have reduced to an irregular octagonal form. It is divided into twelve bays by square ribs, and is lighted by twelve semicircular-headed windows. The cornice-string is adorned with a running leaf spray of a pleasing and uncommon design. The arms of the cross have barrel vaults, while the chambers at its angles are covered with cross-groined vaults. The apsidal chambers are small, with shallow niches on the north, south, and west, and a somewhat deeper niche on the east where the apse stands. These niches are carried up through a vaulting string-course, carved with a repeating leaf ornament, and combine with the groined vault above them to produce a charming canopy. The southern transept gable, though much built up, still displays the design which occurs so frequently in Byzantine churches, namely, three windows in the lunette of the arch (the central light rising higher than the sidelights), and three stilted arches below the vaulting string-course, resting on two columns and containing three windows which are carried down to a breastwork of carved marble slabs between the columns. The floor of the church is paved with square red bricks, except in the apses, where marble is employed. The gynecaeum, above the inner narthex, is divided into three bays separated by broad transverse arches. The central bay, which is larger than its companions, is covered with a dome vault, and looks into the body of the church through a fine triple arcade in the lunette of the western arm of the cross. The smaller bays are covered with cross-groined vaults. As elsewhere, the vaulting-string in the gynecaeum is decorated with carved work. The inner narthex, like the gynecaeum above it, is divided into three bays covered with cross-groined vaults, and communicates with the church, as usual, by three doors. Its walls seem to have been formerly revetted with marble. In the northern wall is a door, now closed, which gave access to a building beyond that side of the church. The exonarthex is also divided in three bays, separated by transverse arches, and communicates with the inner narthex by three doors and with the outer world by a single door situated in the central bay. That bay has a low dome without windows, while the lateral bays have groined vaults. Turkish repairs show in the pilasters and the pointed arches which support the original transverse arches. The doors throughout the building are framed in marble jambs and lintels, adorned in most cases with a running ornament and crosses. In the case of the doors of the exonarthex a red marble, _brèche rouge_, is employed, as in the exonarthex of the Pantokrator, another erection of the Comnenian period. On the exterior the building is much damaged, but nevertheless preserves traces of considerable elaboration. The walls are of brick, intermixed with courses of stone, and on the three sides of the central apse there are remains of patterned brickwork. On the buttresses to the southern wall are roundels with radiating voussoirs in stone and brick, and if one may judge from the fact that the string-course does not fit the face of the wall, parts of the exterior of the church were incrusted with marble. The round-headed windows of the dome cut into its cornice. Under the church is a cistern[355] which Bondelmontius deemed worthy of mention.[356] Until some twenty years ago extensive substructures were visible on the north-east of the church, affording homes for poor Greek families.[357] They were probably the foundations of the lofty monastery buildings whose windows commanded the magnificent view of the Golden Horn that doubtless suggested the epithet Pantepoptes, under which the Saviour was worshipped in this sanctuary. [Illustration: PLATE LVIII. S. SAVIOUR PANTEPOPTES. EXTERIOR DECORATION IN BRICK, ON SOUTH SIDE.] [Illustration: S. MARY PAMMAKARISTOS. BRACKET AT THE SOUTH-EAST ANGLE OF THE EXTERIOR WALL OF THE PARECCLESION.] _To face page 214._ S. Saviour Pantepoptes is the most carefully built of the later churches of Constantinople. The little irregularities of setting out so common in the other churches of the city are here almost entirely absent. This accuracy of building, the carving of the string-courses, and the remains of marble decoration both within and on the exterior, prove exceptional care. For details see Figs. 68, 72, 75. [Illustration: FIG. 73.] [Illustration: FIG. 74.] [347] Patr. Constantius, pp. 70-80. [348] Nicet. Chon. p. 752. [349] Glycas, p. 622. [350] _Ibid._ For the career of this distinguished woman, see Diehl, _Figures byzantines_. [351] Nicet. Chon. pp. 315-16; Pachym. i. pp. 314-15, ii. p. 185. [352] Villehardouin, _La Conquête de C.P._ pp. 141-44; _Chroniques gréco-romaines_, pp. 96, 97. [353] Riant, _Exuviae sacrae_, p. 178. [354] Paspates, p. 314. [355] _Die byzantinischen Wasserbehälter von K.P._, von Dr. P. Forcheimer und Dr. J. Strzygowski, pp. 106-7. [356] _Librum insularum Archipelagi_, 65. [357] Paspates, p. 314. CHAPTER XV THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR, ZEÏREK KILISSI JAMISSI According to the tradition current in the city when Gyllius[358] and Gerlach[359] explored the antiquities of Constantinople, the large Byzantine church, now the mosque Zeïrek Kilissi Jamissi, overlooking the Golden Horn from the heights above Oun Kapan, was the famous church of S. Saviour Pantokrator. There is no reason for doubting the accuracy of this identification. The church was so important, and so closely associated with events which occurred late in the history of the city, that its identity could not be forgotten by the Greek ecclesiastical authorities soon after the Turkish conquest. Moreover, all indications of the position of the church, although too vague to determine its precise site, are in harmony with the tradition on the subject. For, according to Russian pilgrims to the shrines of Constantinople, the Pantokrator could be reached most readily from the side of the city on the Golden Horn,[360] and stood in the vicinity of the church of the Holy Apostles[361]--particulars that agree with the situation of Zeïrek Kilissi Jamissi. The church was founded by the Empress Irene,[362] the consort of John II. Comnenus (1118-1143), and daughter of Ladislas, King of Hungary. She came to Constantinople shortly before 1105 as the Princess Pyrisca, a beautiful girl, 'a plant covered with blossoms, promising rich fruit,' to marry John Comnenus, then heir-apparent to the crown of Alexius Comnenus, and adorned eight years of her husband's reign by the simplicity of her tastes and her great liberality to the poor. The monastic institutions of the city also enjoyed her favour, and not long before her death in 1126 she assumed the veil under the name of Xené. The foundations of the church were, probably, laid soon after her husband's accession to the throne, and to the church she attached a monastery capable of accommodating seven hundred monks;[363] a xenodocheion, a home for aged men, and a hospital.[364] But the pious and charitable lady had undertaken more than she could perform, and was obliged to turn to the emperor for sympathy and assistance. Accordingly she took him, one day, to see the edifice while in course of erection, and falling suddenly at his feet, implored him with tears to complete her work. The beauty of the building and the devotion of his wife appealed so strongly to John Comnenus that he forthwith vowed to make the church and monastery the finest in the city, and altogether worthy of the Pantokrator to whom they were dedicated;[365] and so well did he keep his promise, that the honour of being the founder of the church has been bestowed on him by the historian Nicetas Choniates.[366] The imperial typicon or charter of the monastery,[367] granted in 1136, made the monastery an autonomous institution, independent of the patriarch or the prefect of the city, and exempt from taxes of every description. At the same time it was provided with vineyards and richly endowed. According to Scarlatus Byzantius[368] and the Patriarch Constantius,[369] a mosaic in the building portrayed the Emperor Manuel Comnenus (1141-1180) in the act of presenting the model of the church to Christ. If that was the case the church was completed by that emperor. As will immediately appear, Manuel certainly enriched the church with relics. [Illustration: PLATE LIX. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR, FROM THE WEST. _To face page 220._] The history of the Pantokrator may be conveniently divided into three periods: the period of the Comneni; the period of the Latin Empire; and the period of the Palaeologi. During the first the following incidents occurred: Here, as was most fitting, the founders of the church and monastery were laid to rest, the Empress Irene in 1126,[370] the Emperor John Comnenus[371] seventeen years later. Here their elder son Isaac was confined, until the succession to the throne had been settled in favour of his younger brother Manuel. That change in the natural order of things had been decided upon by John Comnenus while he lay dying in Cilicia from the effects of a wound inflicted by the fall of a poisoned arrow out of his own quiver, when boar-hunting in the forests of the Taurus Mountains, and was explained as due to Manuel's special fitness to assume the care of the Empire, and not merely to the fact that he was a father's favourite son. But when the appointment was made Manuel was with his father in Cilicia, while Isaac was in Constantinople, in a position to mount the throne as soon as the tidings of John's death reached the capital. The prospect that Manuel would wear the crown seemed therefore very remote. But Axuch, an intimate friend and counsellor of the dying emperor, started for Constantinople the moment Manuel was nominated, and travelled so fast, that he reached the city before the news of the emperor's death and of Manuel's nomination was known there. Then, wasting no time, Axuch made sure of the person of Isaac, removed him from the palace, and put him in charge of the monks of the Pantokrator, who had every reason to be loyal to the wishes of the deceased sovereign. The wily courtier then set himself to win the leading men in the capital over to the cause of the younger brother, and, by the time Manuel was prepared to enter Constantinople, had secured for him a popular welcome and the surrender of Isaac's claims.[372] In 1147, the famous eikon of S. Demetrius of Thessalonia was transferred from the magnificent basilica dedicated to the saint in that city to the Pantokrator. This was done by the order of Manuel Comnenus, at the request of Joseph, then abbot of the monastery, and in accordance with the wishes of the emperor's parents, the founders of the House.[373] It was a great sacrifice to demand of the Macedonian shrine, and by way of compensation a larger and more artistic eikon of S. Demetrius, in silver and gold, was hung beside his tomb. But Constantinople rejoiced in the greater sanctity and virtue of the earlier picture, and when tidings of its approach were received, the whole fraternity of the Pantokrator, with the senate and an immense crowd of devout persons, went seven miles out from the city to hail the arrival of the image, and to bear it in triumph to its new abode, with psalms and hymns, lighted tapers, fragrant incense, and the gleam of soldiers' spears. Thus, it was believed, the monastery gained more beauty and security, the dynasty of the Comneni more strength, the Roman Empire and the Queen of cities an invisible but mighty power to keep enemies afar off. In 1158 Bertha, the first wife of Manuel Comnenus, and sister-in-law of the Emperor Conrad of Germany, was buried in the church.[374] Twenty-two years later, Manuel Comnenus himself was laid in its heroön in a splendid sarcophagus of black marble with a cover cut in seven protuberances.[375] Beside the tomb was placed the porphyry slab upon which the body of Christ was supposed to have been laid after His deposition from the cross. The slab was placed there in commemoration of the fact that when it was brought from Ephesus to Constantinople, Manuel carried it on his broad shoulders all the way up the hill from the harbour of the Bucoleon (at Tchatlady Kapou), to the private chapel of the imperial residence near S. Sophia.[376] Nicetas Choniates thought the aspect of the tomb and of its surroundings very significant. The seven protuberances on its cover represented the seven-hilled city which had been the emperor's throne; the porphyry slab recalled the mighty deeds which he whose form lay so still and silent in the grave had wrought in the days of his strength; while the black marble told the grief evoked by his death. Robert of Clari, who saw the tomb in 1203, extols its magnificence. 'Never,' says he, 'was born on this earth a holy man or a holy woman who is buried in so rich and splendid a fashion as this emperor in this abbey. There is found the marble table on which Our Lord was laid when taken down from the cross, and there are still seen the tears which Our Lady shed upon it.'[377] Some seven months after Manuel's death a strange spectacle was witnessed at his tomb. His cousin, Andronicus Comnenus, the torment of his life and one of the worst characters in Byzantine history, taking advantage of the intrigues and disturbances which attended the minority of Manuel's son and successor, Alexius II. Comnenus, left his place of exile in Paphlagonia and appeared in Constantinople at the head of an army, as though the champion of the young sovereign's cause. No sooner had he reached the city than he proceeded to visit Manuel's tomb, to show the regard he professed to feel for a relative and sovereign. At the sight of the dark sarcophagus Andronicus gave way to the most violent paroxysms of grief. So deep and prolonged, indeed, did his distress seem, that his attendants implored him to control his feelings and leave the sad spot. But the mourner protested that he could not quit so hastily a place hallowed by such sacred and tender associations. Moreover, he had not yet said all he had to tell the dead. Bending, therefore, again over the grave, Andronicus continued to address the deceased. The words were inaudible, but they seemed a fresh outpouring of sorrow, and deeply affected many of the spectators, for, as the mourner had not lived on the best terms with his imperial cousin, his grief appeared to be the victory of a man's better nature. But those who knew Andronicus well interpreted his conduct as the performance of a consummate actor, and understood his whispers to mean curses and vows of vengeance upon his dead and helpless relative. Events justified this interpretation. For Andronicus ere long usurped the throne, murdered Alexius, insulted his remains, ordered his head to be cut off, and cast the mutilated corpse into the Sea of Marmora to the strains of music.[378] During the Latin occupation the church was appropriated for worship according to the ritual of the Roman Communion, and many of its relics, its vessels of gold and silver, its jewels and vestments, were carried off to enrich S. Mark's at Venice, and other shrines of Western Christendom. How great a value was set upon such trophies, and by what strange methods they were secured, is seen in the account which Guntherus,[379] a contemporary historian, gives of the way in which some of the relics of the church were acquired. As soon as the Crusaders captured the city in 1204 and gave it over to pillage, a numerous band of looters made for the Pantokrator in search of spoil, having heard that many valuables had been deposited for safe keeping within the strong walls around the monastery. Among the crowd hastening thither was Martin, abbot of the Cistercian Abbey of Parisis in Alsace, who accompanied the Crusade as chaplain and chronicler. The fever of plunder raging about him was too infectious for the good man to escape. When everybody else was getting rich he could not consent to remain poor. His only scruple was not to defile his holy hands with the filthy lucre which worldlings coveted. To purloin sacred relics, however, was lawful booty. Entering, therefore, the Pantokrator with his chaplain, Martin accosted a venerable, white-bearded man who seemed familiar with the building, and in stentorian tones demanded where the relics of the church were to be found. The person addressed was, in fact, a priest, though Martin had mistaken him for a layman on account of the strangeness of the Greek clerical garb. The priest did not understand Latin any more than the abbot understood Greek, and the situation became awkward, for the pitch of Martin's voice made it evident that he was not a person to be trifled with. The old man therefore tried what the Romance patois, which he had picked up from foreign residents in the city, could do to establish intelligible intercourse with the rough visitor. Fortunately the crusader also knew something of that patois, and made the purpose of his visit sufficiently clear. As soon as the iron safe containing the coveted relics was opened, abbot and chaplain plunged four greedy hands into the hoard and stowed relic after relic under the ample folds of their robes until there was no room for more. Thus laden, the pious thieves made as fast as they could for the ship in which they had come to Constantinople, not stopping to converse with friends on the way, and giving to all curious inquiries the brief and enigmatical reply, 'We have done well.' Upon reaching the ship Martin found himself the happy possessor of no less than sixty-two relics, including a piece of the Holy Cross, and drops of 'the blood shed for man's redemption.' Martin wished to start immediately for Alsace, but circumstances obliged him to remain in Constantinople for several months. Thanks, however, to the priest of the Pantokrator, whom the abbot had treated generously, Martin secured a small chapel where to conceal his spoils until an opportunity to return home should occur. A fellow-countryman, indeed, the only other person let into the secret, advised him to secure by means of the relics an abbotship, if not a bishopric, in the Holy Land. But Martin was above personal ambition, and notwithstanding all the difficulties involved in the attempt to carry the relics to the West, waited patiently till he could smuggle them out of the city. At length his chance came; whereupon he embarked for Venice, and after a hard and tedious journey of eight months reached home safely. Again and again on the way he had narrowly escaped the loss of his treasures at the hands of pirates on the sea and of brigands upon land. But all toils and dangers were forgotten when, on the 24th of June 1205, at the head of the brotherhood of which he was the chief, Martin placed the relics purloined from the Pantokrator of Constantinople upon the high altar of the church of Parisis with a conqueror's pride and joy, while the people shouted, 'Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things.' There is archaeology even in morals. [Illustration: PLATE LXI. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. INTERIOR OF THE SOUTH CHURCH, LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE SOUTHERN ARM OF THE SOUTH CHURCH.] _To face page 224._ [Illustration: FIG. 75.] But while called thus to deplore the removal of many of its valued relics, the Pantokrator came during the Latin period into possession of a sacred object which compensated the house abundantly for all losses of that kind. The church became the shrine of the eikon of the Theotokos Hodegetria. No relic was held in higher estimation. It was considered to be the portrait of the mother of our Lord painted by S. Luke, and was brought from Jerusalem to Constantinople by the Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II., as a present to her sister-in-law Pulcheria. It led the hosts of the Empire to victory, and shared the honours of their triumphal entry into the capital. When enemies besieged the city, the eikon was carried in procession through the streets and around the fortifications, or was placed near the post of danger. After the capture of the city by the Latins the picture was first taken to S. Sophia, then the cathedral of the Venetian patriarchs of Constantinople. But the Venetian clergy of the Pantokrator claimed the sacred picture as their own, in virtue of a promise made to them by the Emperor Henry; and when their claim was ignored, they persuaded the podesta of the Venetian community to break into S. Sophia and seize the eikon by force. In vain did the patriarch appear upon the scene with candle and bell to excommunicate the podesta, his council, and his agents for the sacrilegious act. The coveted prize was borne off in triumph to the Pantokrator. In vain did the Papal Legate in the city confirm the excommunication of the guilty parties, and lay their churches under interdict. In vain were those penalties confirmed by the Pope himself.[380] The eikon kept its place in the Pantokrator notwithstanding all anathemas until the fall of the Latin Empire, when it was removed from the church to lead the procession which came through the Golden Gate on the 15th August 1261, to celebrate the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks.[381] [Illustration: PLATE LXII. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. ENTRANCE FROM THE NARTHEX TO THE SOUTH CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING FROM THE SOUTH CHURCH THROUGH INTO THE NORTH CHURCH. _To face page 226._] Towards the close of the Latin occupation the monastery became the residence of the Latin emperor, probably because the condition of the public exchequer made it impossible to keep either the Great Palace or the palace of Blachernae in proper repair. Money was not plentiful in Constantinople when Baldwin II., the last Latin ruler of the city, was compelled to sell the lead on the roof of his palace for a paltry sum, and to use the beams of his outhouses for fuel, nor when he had to leave his son and heir in the hands of the Capelli at Venice as security for a loan. Still, the selection of the monastery for the emperor's abode, even under these trying circumstances, implies the importance and comparative splendour of the building. Here Baldwin was in residence when the forces of Michael Palaeologus, under the command of Alexius Strategopoulos, approached the city, and here he received the intelligence, early in the morning of the 25th of July 1261, that the Greeks had entered the city by the Gate of the Pegé[382] (Selivri Kapoussi), and set fire to the capital at four points. Baldwin's first impulse was to make a brave stand. But his fleet and the greater part of his army were absent from the city, engaged in the siege of Daphnusium on the coast of the Black Sea. Meantime the fires kindled by the Greeks were spreading and drawing nearer and nearer to the Pantokrator itself. So casting off sword and helmet and every other mark of his station, Baldwin took ship and led the flight of the Latin masters of Constantinople back to their homes in the West.[383] The first incident in the history of the Pantokrator after the restoration of the Greek Empire was not fortunate. The monastery then became the object upon which the Genoese, who had favoured that event, and been rewarded with the grant of Galata as a trading post, saw fit to vent the grudge they bore against certain Venetians who, in the course of the feud between the two republics, as competitors for the commerce of the East, had injured a church and a tower belonging to the Genoese colony at Acre. To destroy some building in Constantinople associated with Venice was thought to be the best way to settle the outstanding account, and so a band of Genoese made for the Pantokrator, over which the banner of S. Mark had recently floated, and tore the monastery down to the ground, making it a greater ruin than the Venetians had made of the Genoese buildings in Syria. Then, not only to deprive the enemy of his property but to turn it also to one's own advantage, the scattered stones were collected and shipped to Genoa for the construction of the church of S. George in that city.[384] [Illustration: PLATE LXIII. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. GALLERY OF THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING SOUTH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE INTERIOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING EAST. _To face page 228._] In the reign of Michael Palaeologus, a member of the noble family of the princes of the Peloponnesus became abbot of the Pantokrator, and acquired great influence. He led, as we shall see, the mission which conducted the emperor's daughter Maria to the Mongolian court, and when the patriarchal seat was vacant in 1275, a strong party favoured his appointment to that position instead of Veccus.[385] During the period of the Palaeologi the church frequently served as a mausoleum for members of the imperial family. Here in 1317 was buried Irene, the second wife of Andronicus II., a Spanish princess and daughter of the Marquis of Monferrat. She came to Constantinople in 1285, when only eleven years old, a beautiful girl, Yolande by name, distinguished for the elegance of her manners, and for a time was the idol of the court. But what with the desire which she developed to amass wealth, and to see her sons share in the government of the Empire, she ultimately proved the cause of much unhappiness to her husband.[386] She deserves to be remembered for bequeathing the funds which enabled Andronicus II. to build the buttresses supporting the walls of S. Sophia on the north and east.[387] Here, in 1425, Manuel II. was laid to rest after his long and troubled reign.[388] Beside him were buried his wife Irene (1450)[389] and his three sons, Andronicus (1429),[390] Theodore (1448),[391] John VI. Palaeologus (1448).[392] Here also was placed the tomb of the Empress Maria of the house of Trebizond, the fourth wife of John VII. Palaeologus;[393] and not far off was the grave of Eugenia, the wife of the despot Demetrius and daughter of the Genoese Gatulazzo, who had helped to overthrow John Cantacuzene and to recover the throne for the Palaeologi.[394] As we follow to the grave this procession of personages so closely associated with the fall of Constantinople, one seems to be watching the slow ebbing away of the life-blood of the Empire which they could not save. In 1407 John Palaeologus, then heir-apparent, added to the endowments of the church by giving it a share in the revenues of the imperial domains at Cassandra.[395] It would appear that the affairs of the monastery about this time were not in a satisfactory state, for on the advice of the historian Phrantzes they were put for settlement into the hands of Macarius, a monk from Mt. Athos.[396] A protosyngellos and abbot of the Pantokrator was one of the ambassadors sent by John VII. Palaeologus to Pope Martin V. to negotiate the union of the Churches.[397] [Illustration: PLATE LXIV. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. ARCH IN THE NORTH WALL OF THE SOUTH CHURCH, SEEN FROM THE SOUTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTHWARDS.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. ARCH IN THE NORTH WALL OF THE SOUTH CHURCH, SEEN FROM THE CENTRAL CHURCH, LOOKING SOUTHWARDS. _To face page 230._] The most famous inmate of the Pantokrator was George Scholarius, better known as Gennadius, the first patriarch of Constantinople after the Turkish conquest. On account of his learning and legal attainments he accompanied the Emperor John VII. Palaeologus and the Patriarch Joseph to the Council of Ferrara and Florence in 1438, to take part in the negotiations for the union of Christendom. As submission to the Papal demands was the only hope of obtaining the aid of the West for the Roman Empire in the East, the emperor, with most of the Greek clergy in attendance at the council, subscribed the decrees of that assembly, and on the 8th July 1438 the two Churches were officially reconciled and bound to common action. But it was a union without sufficient religious motive on the one side and without strong political interest on the other. Instead of improving the situation it made matters worse. But drowning men clutch even unsubstantial objects, and accordingly the Emperor Constantine Dragases, a few years later, implored again the assistance of the Pope, begging him to send a commission of Roman ecclesiastics to Constantinople to confer once more with Greek theologians with the hope of making the union more effective. In response to that request a Commission was appointed, having at its head Cardinal Isidore, a Greek ecclesiastic, who at the Council of Florence had cast in his lot with the Latins and been created cardinal and titular archbishop of Kiev. Isidore and his colleagues were welcomed with great demonstrations of joy, and after several meetings with representatives of the Eastern Church terms of union were once more devised. The event was celebrated by a religious service in S. Sophia, according to Roman rite, in the presence of the emperor, the senate, and a large body of ecclesiastics. In the order of the prayers offered that day in the cathedral of the East the name of the Pope was mentioned first. But these proceedings only exasperated the opponents of the union, who had the advantage in numbers and in passionate convictions. Seeking for a leader they flocked to the monastery of the Pantokrator to consult Gennadius. It was a critical moment. Gennadius retired to his cell. Then opening the door he affixed his answer in writing upon it, and again shut himself in. The oracle had spoken: 'Wretched Romans, whither have ye strayed, and gone far from hope in God to put your trust in the Franks? Your city and your religion will perish together. You abandon the faith of your fathers and embrace impiety. Woe unto you in the day of judgment.' The words spread like wildfire and enflamed the excited crowd within and around the monastery. Anathemas, cursing all supporters of the union in the past, in the present, and in the future resounded on every hand. The answer of Gennadius was carried through the city and found an echo among all classes of the population. Men ran to the taverns to drink undiluted wine, in derision of the Roman practice of mixing water with the wine of the Holy Communion; they shouted themselves hoarse with maledictions on the unionists; they drank to the honour of the Theotokos, invoking her aid as in the days of old, when she delivered the city out of the hands of the Persians, the Avars, and the Saracens. Far and wide rose the cry, 'Away with the help and the worship of the Latin eaters of unleavened bread.'[398] The two scenes witnessed, on the 12th December 1452, in S. Sophia and at the Pantokrator displayed a discord that hastened the downfall of New Rome. That day the party with the watchword, 'Better the turban of the Turk than the tiara of the Pope,' gained the victory. Upon the capture of the city, the Greek community, owing to the recent death of the Patriarch Athanasius, found itself without an ecclesiastical chief. The conqueror, anxious to conciliate his Greek subjects, proclaimed complete religious toleration, and gave orders that they should forthwith proceed to the free election of a new patriarch. Under the circumstances there could be no question as to the right man for the place. Gennadius, who had opposed the unprofitable Latin alliance, and saved the national Church notwithstanding the ruin of the Empire, was unanimously chosen to be the first guide of his people along the strange and difficult path they were now to follow. The choice being confirmed by the Sultan, Gennadius left the Pantokrator to do homage to the new master of the realm. Every mark of honour was paid to the prelate. He was invited to the royal table and granted a long audience, at which, following the practice of Byzantine emperors, the Sultan presented him with a magnificent pastoral staff, and promised to respect all the ancient privileges of the patriarchal see. When Gennadius took leave, the Sultan accompanied him to the foot of the stairs of the palace, saw him mounted on a fine and richly caparisoned horse, and ordered the notables of the court to escort him to the church of the Holy Apostles, which was to replace S. Sophia as the cathedral of the Greek Communion.[399] It was certainly fortunate for the Orthodox Church at that cruel moment in its history to find in one of the cells of the Pantokrator a man able to win the goodwill of the Empire's conqueror. When nothing could save the State, Gennadius saved the nation's Church, and with the Church many forms of national life. Muralt, looking at these transactions from another standpoint, says, 'C'est ainsi que les Grecs virent accompli leur voeu d'être délivrés de l'union avec les Latins.'[400] [Illustration: PLATE LXV. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. NARTHEX OF THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. OUTER NARTHEX OF THE SOUTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTH. _To face page 232._] It would appear that the Pantokrator was abandoned by its Christian owners very soon after the conquest. The great decrease of the Greek population that followed the downfall of the city left several quarters of Constantinople with few if any Christian inhabitants, and so brought to an end the native religious service in many churches of the capital. For some time thereafter the deserted building was used by fullers and workers in leather as a workshop and dwelling.[401] But the edifice was too grand to be allowed to suffer permanent degradation, and some twenty years later it was consecrated to Moslem worship by a certain Zeïrek Mehemed Effendi.[402] Its actual name, Zeïrek Kilissi Jamissi, recalls the double service the building has rendered, and the person who diverted it from its earlier to its later use. _Architectural Features_ As it stands the Pantokrator is a combination of three churches, placed side by side, and communicating with one another through arched openings in their common walls. The three buildings are not of the same date, and opinions differ in regard to their relative age. On the whole, however, the northern church may be safely considered the earliest structure; the central church is somewhat later; the southern church is the latest. [Illustration: FIG. 76.] [Illustration: PLATE LXVI. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. SOUTH BAY IN THE GALLERY OF THE SOUTH CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. IN THE NORTH CHURCH, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 234._] _The Northern Church._--This is a simple and dignified building of the domed 'four column' type, with a gynaeceum above the narthex. The narthex is in four bays covered with cross-groined vaults on transverse arches. Its southern bay, however, is a later extension, running about half-way in front of the central church to give access to a door into that building. Only two bays of the original narthex have doors opening into the north church; the third door which once existed in the northern bay has been partly built up. The narthex is very much out of repair, and the western wall threatens to fall outwards. The dome, pierced by eight windows, shows so many Turkish features that it may be pronounced as mostly, if not wholly, a Turkish construction. The four square piers which support it are manifestly Turkish. When Gyllius visited the church in the sixteenth century the dome arches rested on four columns of Theban granite, 'hemispherium sustentatur quatuor arcubus, quos fulciunt quatuor columnae marmoris Thebaici.'[403] Barrel vaults cover the arms of the cross, which, as usual in churches of this type, appears distinctly above the roof on the exterior. The southern arm extends to the central church and its vault is pierced by two windows, inserted, probably, to compensate for the loss of light occasioned by the erection of that building. These windows furnish one indication of the earlier date of the north church. The gynaeceum, like the narthex below it, is covered with cross-groined vaults and contains a small fireplace. The prothesis and diaconicon have barrel vaults and apses with three sides projecting slightly on the exterior. The main apse has a very lofty triple window, and shows five sides. All the apses are decorated with high shallow blind niches, a simple but effective ornament.[404] _The Central Church._--The central church is an oblong hall covered by two domes, and terminates in a large apse. It is extremely irregular in plan, and does not lie parallel to either of the churches between which it stands. The domes are separated by a transverse arch. The western dome, though flattened somewhat on the four sides, is approximately circular, and divided into sixteen shallow concave compartments, each pierced by a window. Some of these windows must have been always blocked by the roof of the north church. The eastern dome is a pronounced oval, notwithstanding the attempt to form a square base for it by building a subsidiary arch both on the south and on the north. It is divided into twenty-four concave compartments, twelve of which have windows. The drums of the domes adjoin each other above the transverse arch, so that the central west window of the eastern dome is pierced through to the western dome. The two windows on either side of that window are blind, and must always have been so. The floor in the archway leading into the south church is paved with inlaid marbles forming a beautiful design (Fig. 76). If the whole floor of the church was thus decorated the effect must have been extremely rich. On the exterior the apse shows seven sides, decorated with shallow blind niches. Like the church it is very irregularly set out. (Plate LXIX.) The central church probably served as a mausoleum for the tombs of the imperial personages interred at the Pantokrator. In its form and in the arrangement of its domes, as well as in its position on the south of the church to which it strictly belongs, it resembles the parecclesion of S. Saviour in the Chora (p. 310). [Illustration: PLATE LXVII. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE PULPIT IN THE SOUTH CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. WEST SIDE OF THE CENTRAL BAY IN THE GALLERY OF THE SOUTH CHURCH. _To face page 236._] _The South Church._--The south church is of the same plan as the north church, but is larger and more richly decorated. It has two narthexes, which extend to both the north and south beyond the body of the building. The outer narthex, entered by a single door placed in the centre, is in five bays, covered with cross-groined vaults resting on pilasters. Its floor is paved with large slabs of Proconnesian marble surrounded by a border of red marble. Five doors lead to the esonarthex--the three central doors being framed in red marble, the other two in verd antique. On either side of the central door is a window also framed in verd antique, the jambs of the windows being cut from old columns, and retaining the circular form on their faces. Over the central door and the windows beside it is a large arch between two smaller arches--all three, as well as their bracket capitals, now partially built up. There is a door framed in verd antique in each end bay of the narthex. Like the outer narthex the esonarthex is in five bays, and was paved with marble in a similar fashion. But while its other bays are covered with cross-groined vaults the central bay is open to the gallery above, and is overhung by a drum dome. The gallery was thus divided into two parts by the open central bay, and both gallery and narthex were lighted by the dome. The exterior of this dome is twelve-sided, with flat angle pilasters and level moulded plaster cornice. It has evidently been repaired by the Turks. The inside, however, preserves the Byzantine work. It is in twenty-four concave apartments pierced by twelve windows, of which those facing the west cross arm of the church are blind. As the original west window still shows from the inside, though built up, it would appear that the gynecaeum dome was added after the completion of the main church. At present the open bay is ceiled by the woodwork that forms the floor of the tribune occupied by the Sultan when he attends worship in the mosque.[405] A door in the northern wall of the north bay communicates with the narthex of the north church, while a door in the eastern wall of the bay gives access to the central church. Two doors in similar positions in the bay at the south end of the narthex led to buildings which have disappeared. The three doors leading from the narthex into the church are framed in red marble, the other doors in white marble. The main dome of the church is in sixteen compartments, and is pierced by as many windows. Its arches rest on four shafted columns, somewhat Gothic in character, and crowned with capitals distinctly Turkish. These columns have replaced the columns of porphyry, seven feet in circumference, which Gyllius saw bearing the arches of the dome when he visited the church: 'maximum (tectum) sustentatur quatuor columnis pyrrhopoecilis, quarum perimeter habet septem pedes.'[406] The southern wall is lighted by a triple window in the gable and a row of three windows below the string-course. The northern wall was treated on the same plan, but with the modifications rendered necessary by the union of the church with the earlier central church. The triple windows in the gable of that wall are therefore almost blocked by the roof of the central church against which it is built; while the three windows below the string-course are blind and are cut short by the arch opening into the central church, as that arch rises higher than the string-course. As explained, the gynaeceum above the inner narthex is divided by the open central bay of that narthex into two compartments, each consisting of two bays. The bays to the south are narrow, with transverse arches of decidedly elliptical form. A window divided by shafts in three lights, now built up, stood in the bay at the extreme south, and similar windows looked down into the open bay of the narthex from the bays on either hand. The northern compartment of the gynaeceum connects with the gynaeceum of the north church. In the interior the apse retains a large portion of its revetment of variously coloured marbles, and gives some idea of the original splendour of the decoration. Fragments of fine carving have been built into the pulpit of the mosque, and over it is a Byzantine canopy supported on twin columns looped together, like the twin columns on the façade of S. Mark's at Venice. The lateral apses are covered with cross-groined vaults, and project in three sides externally, while the central apse shows seven sides. All are lighted by triple windows, and decorated on the exterior with niches, like the other apses in this group of buildings, and those of S. Theodosia. In the brickwork found in the fabric of the Pantokrator, as Mr. W. S. George has pointed out, two sizes of brick are employed, a larger and a smaller size laid in alternate courses. The larger bricks look like old material used again. [Illustration: PLATE LXVIII. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. INTERIOR OF THE EAST DOME IN THE CENTRAL CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. INTERIOR OF THE DOME IN THE SOUTH CHURCH, LOOKING NORTH. _To face page 238._] As already intimated, the monastery was autonomous ([Greek; autodespotos, autexousios]), and its abbot was elected by the brotherhood in the following manner:--On some suitable occasion the abbot for the time being placed secretly in a box the names of three members of the fraternity whom he considered fit to succeed him after his death, and having sealed the box deposited it in the sacristy of the church. Upon that abbot's death the box was opened in the presence of the whole fraternity, and the names recommended by the late chief were then put to the vote. If the votes were unanimous the person thus chosen became the new abbot without further delay. But in case of disagreement, a brother who could neither read nor write placed the same names upon the altar of the church; there they remained for three days; and then, after the celebration of a solemn service, another illiterate monk drew one name off the altar, and in doing so decided the question who should fill the vacant office. The church was served by eighty priests and fifty assistants, who were divided into two sets, officiating on alternate weeks. In connection with the monastery there was a bath, capable of containing six persons, in which the monks were required to bathe twice a month, except during Lent, when the bath was used only in cases of illness. The home for old men supported by the House accommodated twenty-four persons, providing them with bread, wine, oil, cheese, fuel, medical attendance, and small gifts of money. The hospital had fifty beds for the poor. It was divided into five wards: a ward of ten beds for surgical cases; another, of eight beds, for grave cases; a third, of ten beds, for less serious complaints; the fourth ward had twelve beds for women; the fifth contained ten beds for what seemed light cases. Each ward was in charge of two physicians, three medical assistants, and four servitors. A lady physician, six lady medical assistants, and two female nurses, took charge of the female patients. The sick were visited daily by a house doctor, who inquired whether they were satisfied with their treatment, examined their diet, and saw to the cleanliness of the beds. The ordinary diet consisted of bread, beans, onions, oil, and wine.[407] Throughout their history the monasteries of Constantinople remembered the poor. (See Plate III.) [Illustration: FIG. 77.] [Illustration: FIGS. 78 AND 79.] [Illustration: FIG. 80.] [Illustration: PLATE LXIX. S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE EAST END, FROM THE SOUTH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE EAST WINDOW OF THE CENTRAL CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR PANTOKRATOR. THE EAST END, FROM THE NORTH. _To face page 242._] [358] _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 2, p. 283, 'in supercilio quarti collis vergente ad solis ortum visitur templum Pantocratoris, illustre memoria recentium scriptorum.' [359] _Tagebuch_, p. 157. [360] _Itin. russes_, pp. 105, 233-34. [361] Du Cange, _Const. Christ._ iv. p. 81; _Itin. russes_, pp. 123, 203-4. [362] Synax., August 13; Cinnamus, p. 9; Phrantzes, p. 210. [363] Du Cange, _C.P. Christ._ iv. p. 81, quoting Anselm, bishop of Havelsberg, who was in Constantinople as the ambassador of Lothair the Great to the Emperor John in 1145. [364] MS. No. 85, in the Library of the Theological Seminary at Halki. [365] Synax., 13th August. [366] Pp. 66, 151. [367] MS. No. 85, in the Library of the Theological Seminary at Halki. [368] Vol. i. p. 555. [369] _Ancient and Modern C.P._ p. 69. [370] Cinnamus, p. 14; Guntherus Parisiensis in Riant's _Exuviae sacrae_, p. 105. The sarcophagus that forms part of a Turkish fountain to the west of the church is usually, but without any proof, considered to be the tomb of Irene. A long flight of steps near it leads to the cistern below the church. [371] Cinnamus, p. 31. [372] Nicet. Chon. pp. 53, 56, 66. [373] Synax., October 26th. [374] Nicet. Chon. p. 151. [375] _Ibid._ p. 289. [376] Nicet. Chon. p. 151. [377] Riant, _Exuviae sacrae_, ii. p. 232. [378] Nicet. Chon. pp. 332-33, 354-55. [379] Riant, _Exuviae sacrae_, i. pp. 104 _seq._ [380] Belin, _Histoire de la latinité de Constantinople_, pp. 73-74, 113-14. [381] Pachym. i. p. 160; Niceph. Greg. p. 87; G. Acropolita, pp. 196-97. The last writer says the eikon was taken from the monastery of the Hodegon, which was its proper shrine. The eikon may have been removed from the Pantokrator to the church of Hodegetria on the eve of the triumphal entry. [382] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 85. Cf. Canale, _Nuova Storia_, ii. p. 153, quoted by Belin, _Latinité de C.P._ p. 22, 'ov'erano la chiesa, la loggia, il palazzo dei Veneziani,' cf. Belin, p. 92. [383] George Acropolita, p. 195. On the contrary, Pachymeres represents Baldwin as taking flight from the palace of Blachernae, and embarking at the Great Palace. See vol. i. of that historian's works, pp. 132-48. [384] Belin, _Histoire de la latinité de C.P._ pp. 22-23, quoting Canale, _Nuova Storia_, ii. p. 153; cf. Sauli, i. p. 55. According to Fanucci, the Venetians themselves removed their national emblems from the Pantokrator and tore down the monastery.--Belin, _ut supra_, pp. 88, 92. [385] Pachym. i. p. 402. [386] _Ibid._ ii. pp. 87-88; Niceph. Greg. i. p. 167. [387] _Ibid._ i. pp. 273, 233-34. [388] Phrantzes, p. 121. [389] _Ibid._ p. 210. [390] _Ibid._ p. 134. [391] _Ibid._ p. 203. [392] _Ibid._ p. 203. [393] _Ibid._ p. 191. [394] _Ibid._ p. 191. [395] Muralt, ad annum. [396] Phrantzes, p. 156. [397] _Ibid._ p. 156. [398] Ducas, pp. 252-60. [399] Phrantzes, pp. 304-7. [400] _Essai de chronographie byzantine_, ii. p. 889. [401] Ducas, p. 318. [402] Chadekat, vol. i. p. 118, quoted by Paspates, p. 312. [403] _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 2. [404] 'The breaking of wall surfaces by pilasters and blind niches is a custom immemorial in Oriental brickwork.'--_The Thousand and One Churches_, by Sir W. Ramsay and Miss Lothian Bell, p. 448. [405] It is reached by an inclined plane built against the exterior of the south wall of the church. [406] _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 2. [407] For these particulars we are indebted to MS. 85, formerly in the library of the theological seminary at Halki. According to the same authority, near the Pantokrator stood a church dedicated to the Theotokos Eleousa, and between the two buildings was the chapel of S. Michael that contained the tombs of the Emperor John Comnenus and the Empress Irene. But according to Cinnamus (pp. 14, 31), as we have seen (p. 221), those tombs were in the Pantokrator. Is it possible that of the three buildings commonly styled the church of the Pantokrator, one of the lateral churches was dedicated specially to the Theotokos Eleousa, and that the central building which served as a mausoleum was dedicated to the archangel Michael? The parecclesion of the Chora where Tornikes was buried (p. 310) was associated, as the frescoes in its western dome prove, with the angelic host. CHAPTER XVI THE CHURCH OF S. THEODORE, KILISSI MESJEDI High up the western slope of the Third Hill, in a quiet Turkish quarter reached by a narrow street leading off Vefa Meidan, stands a small but graceful Byzantine church, known since its use as a mosque by the style Kilissi Mesjedi. Authorities differ in regard to its dedication. Gyllius[408] was told that the church had been dedicated to S. Theodore. On the other hand, Le Noir, on the strength of information furnished by Greek friends, and after him Bayet, Fergusson, Salzenberg, claim it as the church of the Theotokos of Lips. But the church of that dedication was certainly elsewhere (p. 123). Mordtmann[409] suggests that we have here the church of S. Anastasia Pharmacolytria ([Greek: tês pharmakolytrias]),[410] and supports his view by the following argument. In the first place the church of S. Theodore the Tiro was situated in the quarter of Sphorakius,[411] which was in the immediate vicinity of S. Sophia,[412] and therefore not near Vefa Meidan. Secondly, the indications given by Antony of Novgorod and by the Anonymus of the eleventh century respecting the position of S. Anastasia point to the site of Kilissi Mesjedi. The fact that the church was ever supposed to be dedicated to S. Theodore is, in Mordtmann's opinion, a mistake occasioned by the circumstance that both S. Theodore and S. Anastasia were credited with the power of exposing sorcery and frauds, so that a church associated with one of these saints might readily be transferred to the other, especially in the confusion which followed the Turkish conquest. In reply to this line of argument, it may be urged, first, that the presence of a church of S. Theodore in the district of Sphorakius does not prevent the existence of a church with a similar dedication in another part of the city. S. Theodore was a popular saint. There was a church named after him in the district of Claudius ([Greek: ta Klaudiou]);[413] another church built in his honour stood in the district Carbounaria ([Greek: ta Karbounaria]);[414] the private chapel of the emperors in the Great Palace was dedicated to S. Theodore;[415] and according to Phrantzes,[416] a church dedicated at once to S. Theodore the Tiro and S. Theodore the General, as at Athens, was erected in Constantinople in his day. As to the indications supposed to favour the view that the church of S. Anastasia stood at Kilissi Mesjedi, they are, to say the least, exceedingly vague and inconclusive. According to Antony of Novgorod[417] the shrine of S. Anastasia was found near the church of the Pantokrator, on the Fourth Hill, whereas Kilissi Mesjedi stands on the Third Hill. Furthermore, the order in which the Anonymus[418] refers to the church of S. Anastasia Pharmacolytria, immediately before the Leomacellum, which Mordtmann identifies with the Et Meidan, would allow us to place S. Anastasia in the valley of the Lycus. Under these circumstances it is wiser to accept the information given to Gyllius as correct; for while the Greeks of his day were not infallible in their identification of the buildings of the city, there is no evidence that they were mistaken in this particular case. [Illustration: PLATE LXX. S. THEODORE. NORTH END OF THE WESTERN FAÇADE.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. THE CHURCH, FROM THE NORTH-WEST. _To face page 244._] Paspates[419] agrees so far with this view, but maintains, at the same time, that the building was the church of S. Theodore 'in the district of Sphorakius.' That identification is inadmissible, for beyond all dispute the district of Sphorakius stood close to S. Sophia and not at Vefa Meidan. Mühlmann[420] likewise regards Kilissi Mesjedi as a church of S. Theodore, and identifies it with the church dedicated to that saint in the district of Carbounaria. This is possible, although the Anonymus[421] mentions the Carbounaria before the Anemodoulion and the forum of Taurus (the region of the Turkish War Office), and consequently suggests a position for the Carbounaria much farther to the east than Vefa Meidan. Still the order in which the Anonymus mentions places and monuments cannot be confidently appealed to as coincident with their relative positions. [Illustration: FIG. 81.] (For other details see Figs. 19, 54.) To which of the many saints named Theodore in the Greek Calendar this church was actually dedicated is a point open to discussion, but we cannot go far wrong in ascribing it to one of the two most prominent saints of that name, or, as sometimes was the case, to both of them, S. Theodore the Tiro and S. Theodore the General. The former was a young soldier in the Roman army who was tortured and put to death in 306 for not taking part in the persecution of Christians under Maximian. The latter was a general in the army of Licinius, and won the martyr's crown for refusing to sacrifice to false gods, and for breaking their images in pieces. He was the titular saint of the great church in Venice before that honour was bestowed upon S. Mark the Evangelist. His relics were carried to Venice from Constantinople in 1260, and his figure still stands on one of the columns in the Piazzetta of S. Mark, with the attribute of a dragon or a crocodile, symbolic of the false gods he destroyed.[422] _Architectural Features_ The church is a good example of the 'four column' type, with an outer and an inner narthex. The former is in five bays, and extends to the north and south, by one bay, beyond the inner narthex and the body of the church. The terminal bays, it would seem, led to cloisters built against the exterior of the northern and southern sides of the building. Le Noir and Salzenberg[423] show a cloister along the south side of the church, with four columns and an apse at its end. The central bay and the two terminal bays are covered with domes on high drums, without windows. The dome of the central bay has sixteen lobed bays, while its companions have each eight flat ribs. All traces of the mosaics which Salzenberg saw in the central dome have disappeared. On the exterior the three domes are octagonal, decorated with flat niches and angle shafts supporting an arched cornice. The exonarthex deserves special attentions on account of its façade. It is a fine composition of two triple arcades, separated by a solid piece of masonry containing the door. On either side of the door, and on the piers at each end of the façade, are slender flat niches, similar to those which occur in S. Mark's, Venice. The finely carved capitals of the columns differ in type, the two northern being a variant of the 'melon type,' the pair to the south being Corinthian. They are probably old capitals re-used. Throughout the building are traces of stones from some older building recut or adapted to the present church. Between the columns is a breastwork of carved marble slabs similar in style to those seen in S. Mark's and in S. Fosca, Torcello.[424] The upper part of the façade does not correspond to the composition below it, but follows the divisions of the internal vaulting. It is in five circular-arched bays, each containing an arched window. The infilling is of brick in various patterns. The cornice looks Turkish. While the masonry of the lower portion of the arcade is in alternate courses of one stone and two bricks, that of the upper portion has alternate courses of one stone and three bricks. Moreover, while the design of the upper portion is determined by the vaulting of the narthex, the lower portion takes a more independent line. These differences may indicate different periods of construction, but we find a similar type of design in other Byzantine buildings, as, for example, in the walls of the palace of the Porphyrogenitus, where the different stories are distinct in design, and do not closely correspond to one another. The outer narthex of S. Theodore may have been built entirely at one time, or its upper story, vaults, and domes may have been added to an already existing lower story. But in any case, notwithstanding all possible adverse criticism, the total effect produced by the façade is pleasing. It presents a noteworthy and successful attempt to relieve the ordinary plainness and heaviness of a Byzantine church exterior, and to give that exterior some grace and beauty. The effect is the more impressive because the narthex is raised considerably above the level of the ground and reached by a flight of steps. 'Taking it altogether,' says Fergusson,[425] 'it is perhaps the most complete and elegant church of its class now known to exist in or near the capital, and many of its details are of great beauty and perfection.' [Illustration: PLATE LXXI. S. THEODORE. THE CENTRAL DOME, FROM THE SOUTH.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. THE WESTERN FAÇADE, FROM THE SOUTH. _To face page 246._] The esonarthex is in three bays covered with barrel vaults, and terminates at both ends in a shallow niche. The outer arches spring from square buttresses. From each bay a door conducts into the church, the central door being set in a marble frame and flanked by two Corinthian columns, which support a bold wall arcade. The drum of the dome is a polygon of twelve sides, and was lighted by the same number of windows. It rests on four columns, which were originally square, but now have large champs at the angles, dying out at top and bottom. Barrel vaults cover the arms of the cross, and dome vaults surmount the chambers at its angles. As in the Pantokrator (p. 235), the eastern arm is pierced by two windows in the vaulting surface. The central apse is lighted by a triple window, having oblong shafts, circular on their inner and outer faces, and bearing capitals now badly injured. A niche indents the northern, eastern, and southern interior walls of the apsidal chapels. The windows in the northern and southern walls of the church have been built up almost to their full height, leaving only small openings for light at the top. There can be little doubt that they were triple windows with a parapet of carved marble slabs between the shafts. On the exterior the apse shows five sides, and is decorated by an arcade of five arches and an upper tier of five niches. The lateral apses do not project beyond the face of the eastern wall, but are slightly marked out by cutting back the sides and forming angular grooves. Bayet[426] assigns the church to the ninth or tenth century, the age of Leo the Wise and Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Fergusson[427] is of the same opinion so far as the earlier portions of the building are concerned. But that date is based on the mistaken view that the building is the church of the Theotokos erected by Constantine Lips. Diehl[428] assigns the church to the second half of the eleventh century. [Illustration: PLATE LXXII. S. THEODORE. SOUTH CROSS ARM (EXTERIOR), FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. THE EAST END, FROM THE SOUTH. _To face page 248._] [Illustration: FIG. 82.--S. THEODORE. PLAN AS GIVEN BY TEXIER.] [Illustration: FIG. 83.--S. THEODORE. PART OF SOUTH ELEVATION SHOWING THE SIDE CHAPEL AS GIVEN BY TEXIER.] In the library of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in London, are four volumes of Texier's sketches and drawings of buildings in or near Constantinople. In that collection is found a complete set of drawings of this church, showing a chapel on both the north and south sides of the building, and even giving measurements on the south side. Texier's drawings are unfortunately very inaccurate, so that little trust can be placed in any of them. In addition to the plan of the church an elevation is given, and two sketches covered with indications of elaborate decoration, but evidently quite imaginary. The chapel on the north side is noticed by no other writer, and was probably added by Texier for the sake of symmetry. That on the south side, as shown by him, differs in some respects from Salzenberg. The only thing certain is that a side chapel did exist here. This church presents a good example of the greater interest taken during the later Byzantine period in the external appearance of a church. To the exterior of the walls and the apses some decoration is now applied. The dome is raised on a polygonal drum, with shafts at its angles, and an arched cornice over its windows; the roof gains more diversity of form and elevation by the multiplication of domes, by the protrusion of the vaults of the cross arms and of the apses, thus making the outward garb, so to speak, of the building correspond more closely to the figure and proportions of its inner body. In all this we have not yet reached the animation and grace of a Gothic cathedral, nor the stateliness that crowns an imperial mosque; but there is, at all events, a decided advance towards a fuller expression of artistic feeling. (See Plates LXXIV., LXXV.) [Illustration: PLATE LXXIII. S. THEODORE. CAPITAL ON THE SOUTHERNMOST COLUMN IN THE FAÇADE.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. CAPITAL IN THE FAÇADE OF THE NARTHEX. _To face page 250._] [Illustration: FIGS. 84 AND 85.] [Illustration: FIGS. 86 AND 87.] [408] _De top. C.P._ iii. c. 6. [409] _Esq. top._ paragraphs 110, 114, 124, 125. [410] Banduri, ii. p. 38. [411] _Ibid._ i. p. 10. [412] Const. Porphyr, _De cer._ p. 623. [413] Banduri, iii. pp. 16, 48. [414] _Ibid._ i. p. 17. [415] Const. Porphyr, _De cer._ p. 640. [416] P. 140. [417] _Itin. russes_, pp. 105-6. [418] Banduri, i. p. 16; ii. p. 38. [419] P. 314. [420] See his paper in the _Mitteilungen des deutschen Excursions-Club, Konstantinopel_, Erstes Heft, 1888. [421] Banduri, p. 16. [422] See _The Monastery of St. Luke of Stiris_, p. 61. [423] _Altchristliche Baudenkmäler von K.P._ plates 34, 35. [424] Pulgher, _Les Anciennes Églises de C.P._ p. 23. [425] _History of Architecture_, i. 458. [426] _L'Art byzantin_, p. 126. [427] _History of Architecture_, vol. i. p. 458. [428] _Manuel d'art byzantin_, p. 414. CHAPTER XVII THE MONASTERY OF MANUEL, KEFELÉ MESJEDI The mosque known as Kefelé Mesjedi, in the quarter of Salma Tomruk, is commonly supposed to represent the monastery founded by Manuel,[429] a distinguished general in the wars with the Saracens during the reign of Theophilus (823-842). This opinion is doubtless based upon the circumstance that the monastery in question stood in the vicinity of the cistern of Aspar,[430] [Greek: synengys tê kisternê tou Asparos] (the large open reservoir to the east of the Gate of Adrianople), near which Kefelé Mesjedi is also situated. But that circumstance alone cannot be regarded as sufficient ground for the identification of the two buildings. There are at least five other monasteries mentioned in Byzantine history, all distinguished by the mark of their proximity to the cistern of Aspar.[431] And at a short distance to the west of Kefelé Mesjedi, and nearer to the cistern of Aspar, we find the remains of an old church, now Odalar Mesjedi, which might with equal force claim to represent the monastery of Manuel. The commonly received identification may, however, be correct as a happy conjecture. Mr. Siderides,[432] indeed, considers the identification of the monastery of Manuel with Kefelé Mesjedi a mistake. According to him, that monastery was a reconstruction or enlargement of the ancient monastery of SS. Manuel, Sabel, and Ishmael, which stood on the heights above the Phanar, now crowned by the mosque of Sultan Selim. To the objection that there it would not be near the cistern of Aspar, Mr. Siderides replies by denying the correctness of the identification of that cistern with the open reservoir (Tchoukour Bostan) to the east of the gate of Adrianople, and in the vicinity of Kefelé Mesjedi. In Mr. Siderides' opinion the cistern of Aspar is the beautiful covered cistern, generally known as the cistern of Puicheria, to the south-west of the mosque of Sultan Selim.[433] But the dimensions of the cistern ascribed to the famous sister of Theodosius II. do not accord with the size of the cistern of Aspar. The latter was 'a very large cistern,' [Greek: tên megistên kinsternan],[434] while the former is only m. 29.1 long by m. 18 wide, with a roof supported on four rows of seven columns[435]--not a large cistern as works of that class went in Constantinople. But if the cistern of Aspar was not situated in the district now marked by the mosque of Sultan Selim, neither could the monastery of Manuel have been there. Mr. Siderides,[436] moreover, identifies the monastery of Manuel with that of Manoueliou [Greek: tou Manouêliou] which appears in the Proceedings of the Synod held at Constantinople in 536 under Justinian.[437] This, however, does not agree with the statement that the monastery of Manuel was originally the private residence of the well-known general of that name in the ninth century. Furthermore, it is always dangerous to assume that the same name could not belong to different buildings, especially when the name occurs at distant intervals in the history of the city. Many mistakes in the topography of Constantinople are due to this false method of identification. As a matter of fact, the monastery of Manuel near the cistern of Aspar was not the only House of that name in the capital of the East. Another monastery of Manuel stood beside the Golden Horn, in the Genoese quarter, between the gate of the Neorion (Bagtché Kapoussi) and the gate of Eugenius (Yali Kiosk Kapoussi). It had a pier, known as the pier of the venerable monastery of Manuel, [Greek: skala tês sebasmias monês tou Manouêl].[438] Paspates is consequently wrong in associating that pier with Kefelé Mesjedi.[439] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIV. S. THEODORE. THE OUTER NARTHEX, LOOKING NORTH.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. CAPITAL TO THE NORTH OF THE DOOR LEADING FROM THE OUTER TO THE INNER NARTHEX. _To face page 254._] Mordtmann[440] accepts the identification of Kefelé Mesjedi with the monastery of Manuel as correct, but he identifies it also with the church and monastery which Gerlach found in this neighbourhood, and describes under the name of Aetius ([Greek: tou Aetiou]).[441] When visited by Gerlach in 1573, the church had been converted into a mosque, and was a beautiful building in excellent preservation. If all that remains of it is the bare structure of Kefelé Mesjedi, the city has to mourn a great loss.[442] (Plate LXXVII.) Manuel, the founder of the monastery, was the uncle of the Empress Theodora, wife of the Emperor Theophilus, and proved a loyal and devoted servant of the imperial family. Twice at the peril of his own life he saved the emperor from capture, if not from death, during the wars with the Saracens. Nevertheless, being accused of treason he fled to the court of Baghdad and took service under the Caliph Mutasim, until assured that Constantinople would welcome him back. He was one of the three counsellors appointed by Theophilus to assist Theodora during the minority of Michael III., and so highly was he esteemed, that he was acclaimed emperor by the populace in the Hippodrome, and might have worn the crown but for his fidelity to the little prince. Silencing the shouts raised in his favour, he exclaimed, 'You have an emperor; my duty and highest honour is to defend his infancy and to secure for him, even at the price of my blood, the heritage of his father.' In the iconoclastic controversy Manuel supported the policy of Theophilus, and therefore found himself in a difficult position when Theodora decided to restore the use of eikons. The story is, that while he lay dangerously ill at the time, monks of the Studion assured him that recovery was certain if he vowed to uphold the orthodox cause. The vow was taken, and upon his restoration to health Manuel favoured the measures of Theodora. Probably he felt that the current of public feeling on the subject was too strong for him to oppose. But the task of working in harmony with his colleagues in the regency, Theoctistus and Bardas, was soon found impossible, and rumours of a plot to blind him and remove him from the administration of affairs led him to retire to his house near the cistern of Aspar. For some time, indeed, he continued to appear occasionally at the palace, but at last he quitted for ever that scene of intrigue, and converted his residence into a monastery, where he might spend the closing days of his life in peace and finally be laid in a quiet grave.[443] [Illustration: PLATE LXXV. S. THEODORE. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: S. THEODORE. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST (UPPER PART). _To face page 256._] The building which Manuel bequeathed was reconstructed almost from the foundations, a large and beautiful edifice, by the celebrated Patriarch Photius.[444] It underwent extensive restoration again at the command of the Emperor Romanus Lecapenus (919-945),[445] in token of his friendship for Sergius, the abbot of the monastery, a nephew of Photius, and eventually an occupant of the patriarchal throne for twenty years (999-1019). In it the Emperor Romanus Argyrus (1028-1034) confined Prussianus, a relative of the Bulgarian royal family, on a charge of treason;[446] and there Michael VII., nicknamed Parapinakes (the peck-filcher), because he sold wheat at one-fourth of its proper weight, and then at an exorbitant price, ultimately retired after his deposition.[447] The connection of so many prominent persons with the monastery implies the importance of the House. _Architectural Features_ Kefelé Mesjedi is a large oblong hall, m. 22.6 long by m. 7.22 wide, with walls constructed in alternate courses of four bricks and four stones, and covered with a lofty timber roof. It terminates to the north in an arch and a semicircular apse in brick. Two niches, with a window between them, indent the walls of the apse, and there is a niche in each pier of the arch. The building is entered by a door situated in the middle of the western wall. Originally the eastern and western walls, which form the long sides of the building, were lighted by two ranges of round-headed windows, somewhat irregularly spaced. The upper range is situated a little below the ceiling, and forms a sort of clearstory of ten lights; the lower range has five windows, except in the western wall, where the place of one window is occupied by the entrance. The southern wall is also lighted by two ranges of windows, the lower windows being much larger than the higher. At some time buttresses were built against the eastern wall. Under the west side is a cistern, the roof of which rests on three columns. In view of all these features it is impossible to believe that the building was a church. Its orientation, the absence of lateral apses in a structure of such dimensions, the position of the entrance, are all incompatible with that character. We have here, undoubtedly, the refectory and not the sanctuary of the monastic establishment. It resembles the refectory of the Laura on Mt. Athos,[448] and that of Daphni near Athens. It recalls the 'long and lofty building,' adorned with pictures of saints, which formed the refectory of the Peribleptos at Psamathia.[449] There is a tradition that the use of the building was granted at the conquest to the Armenian colony which was brought from Kaffa in 1475 to repeople the capital, Hence the Turkish name of the building.[450] [Illustration: PLATE LXXVI. THE REFECTORY OF THE MONASTERY OF MANUEL, FROM THE WEST.] [Illustration: THE REFECTORY OF THE MONASTERY OF MANUEL, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 258._] NOTE As Gerlach's work is rare, the reader may wish to see his description of the church of Aetius in the original (_Tagebuch_, pp. 455-56):--Nicht weit hiervon [the church of S. John in Petra] ist eine sehr schöne Kirche, [Greek: tês Aetiou], da vor Zeiten ein sehr gross und weites Closter gewesen seyn und viel Häuser der Lehrer und Lernenden in sich gehabt haben solle. Jetzt wird nichts mehr davon gesehen als das zerfallene Gemäuer einer herrlichen Pforten und eine trockene Ziternen, darinnen die Juden die Seiden spinnen, zwirnen und bereiten (_serica nectunt fila_). Vor der Kirchen ist ein weiter Hoff, rings aber umb denselbe herumb ein bedeckter Gang (_porticus_), welcher mit schönen auff vergüldten viereckichten gläsern Taffeln künstlich gemahlten Figuren auss dem Alten und Neuen Testament, und mit griechischen Überschrifften gezieret ist, aber alte Gesichter derselben aussgekratzet sind. Die Wände dieser Umbgänge sind mit Marmel von allerhand Farben bekleidet. Hat auch 3 oder 4 hohe Crepidines oder Absätze mit der Propheten, Apostel und Christi Bildnüssen von Gold. Der Hauss- oder vielmehr Bau- herr oder auch der Stiffter ([Greek: ho ktêtôr]), und sein Weib, sind da auch gemahlet in einem Habit, fast wie man heut zu Tage gehet, aber mit einer ganz fremden Hauptzierde (_capellitii genere_), class man darauss abnehmen kan, er sey einer aus den vornehmsten Käyserlich Bedienten gewesen, dann diese Zierde siehet auss fast wie ein Hertzogs Bareht von Seiden and Beltzwerck, der Bund oder das Umgewundene (_cinctura_) von mancherley Farben, wie heut zu Tage die Juden und Armenier weiss und blau durcheinander tragen. Sein Weib hat einen Schleyer (_peplum_) fast wie die Griechinnen. Der bedecte Gang und die Kirche sind ein Gebäu (_porticus muro etiam templi continetur_), und gehet man durch zwey hohe Pforten hinein, welche 4 Theil in sich begreifft, oder in 4 Theil abgetheilet ist. 1. der bedeckte (_Porticus_) Gang, dessen Wände mit Marmelstein biss auff die Helffte bekleidet sind. Der Obertheil, da die Schwibbögen (_Laquearia_) anheben, hat er wie auch die Schwibbögen selber die Gemählde. In diesem Gang oder Halle (_porticu_) stehen die Weiber, und kommen nicht in die Kirchen hinein, wie auch in andere Kirchen nicht, als wann sie zum Abendmahl gehen. 2. ist die Kirche für sich so mit Türckischen Deppichen (_aoreis_) beleget und hat nur ein Thor. Ist ein hohes Gewölb (_laquearia_) und wie auch die überige 2 Gewölbe (_laquearia_) ganz vergüldet und übermahlet, und die Wände von unten an biss an die Schwibbögen mit dem schönsten Marmelstein bekleidet. Auss diesem gehet man 3. durch einen niedern Crepidinem in dem dritten Theil der Kirchen, da der Bauherr oder Stiffter mit andern sehr schönen Bildnüssen mit Gold gemahlet stehen, mit einem etwas niedern als der vorige Schwibbögen (_laquearia_). Auss diesem gehet man in den 4ten gewölbten auch gemahlten aber etwas finstern und viel kleine Fenster in sich haltenden Ort. Aussen an der Kirchmauren stehet diese Schrift. [Illustration: Monogram in Greek.] Vor dem Vorhoff (_vestibulo_, [Greek: propiliô]) dieser Kirchen [Greek: tês 'Aetiou] zeigte mir Theodosius den Ort, da der letzte Christliche Käyser Constantinus als er bey der Türckischen Eroberung der Stadt fliehen wollen, von Pferde gestürtzet, und tod gefunden seyn solle. 'Not far from here is a very beautiful church where there is said to have been in times past a very large monastery with many houses for teachers and scholars within its walls. Nothing of all that is to be seen now except the ruins of a splendid gate and a dry cistern in which the Jews spin, throw, and prepare silk. In front of the church there is a large court surrounded by a covered passage (_porticus_), which is adorned with beautiful figures from the Old and New Testaments painted on gilded quadrangular glass cubes with Greek inscriptions; but the ancient faces of these (figures) are scratched out. The walls of this passage are covered with marble of different colours. It has also three or four high crepidines[451] or vaulted compartments (?) with the pictures of the prophets, of the apostles, and of Christ in gold. The master of the house, or rather the builder, or perhaps the founder, [Greek: ho ktêtôr], and his wife are also painted there in a costume very much the same as is worn to-day, but with a very strange head-ornament, from which we may conclude that he was one of the most distinguished of the imperial staff, for this ornament looks almost like a duke's biretta of silk and fur; the belt (_cinctura_) is of different colours, such as nowadays the Jews or Armenians wear, white and blue mixed. His wife has a veil (_peplum_) almost like that which Greek women have. The covered passage and the church form one building (_porticus muro etiam templi continetur_), entered by two high gates, and comprising four parts, or divided into four parts. 1. The covered passage (_porticus_), the walls of which as far as half their height are covered with marble. On the upper part, where the arches begin, and on the arches themselves are the paintings. In this passage or hall stand the women, and do not enter the church as they do not enter other churches, unless they go to the Lord's supper. 2. Is the church, as such, covered with Turkish rugs, and has only one gate. It has a high dome, which, like the remaining two domes, is entirely gilded and painted, and the walls up to the arches are covered with the most beautiful marble. From this one enters 3. through a low vaulted compartment, with a somewhat lower arch than the foresaid arches, the third part of the church, where the founder with other very beautiful portraits (pictures) is painted in gold. From this one enters 4. a vaulted and also painted, but rather dark place, with many small windows. On the outside of the walls of the church there is this inscription[452]-- [Illustration: Monogram in Greek.] In front of the porch, vestibulo, [Greek: propiliô] of this church Theodosius showed me the place where the last Christian emperor Constantine, intending to flee at the Turkish conquest of the city, is said to have fallen from his horse and to have been found dead.' [Illustration: FIGS. 88 AND 89.] [429] Scarlatus Byzantius, p. 369; Patr. Constantius, p. 81; Paspates, p. 304. [430] Leo Gramm. pp. 218, 222. [431] Siderides, in _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ vol. xxviii. p. 265. [432] _Ibid._ p. 263. [433] _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._, _ut supra_, p. 258. [434] _Pasch. Chron._ p. 593. [435] _Die byzantinischen Wasserbehälter von Konstantinopel_, von Dr. Forscheimer und Dr. Strzygowski, pp. 62-63, 175-176. [436] _Ut supra._ [437] Mansi, viii. col. 990, col. 1054. [438] Miklosich et Müller, pp. 28, 50, 53, 54. [439] P. 305. On p. 163 he places the pier in its proper position. [440] _Esq. top._ p. 76; Archaeological Supplement to vol. xviii. of the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ p. 9. [441] _Türkisches Tagebuch_, pp. 455-56; cf. Crusius, _Turcograecia_ p. 190. [442] The question thus raised presents serious difficulties. That some building[A] in the neighbourhood of Kefelé Mesjedi was known by the name of Aetius[B] is undoubted. It was a cistern (Du Cange, i. p. 96), and formed one of the landmarks by which the church of S. John in Petra, situated in this quarter of the city, was distinguished (Du Cange, iv. p. 152 [Greek: engista tou Aetiou]). But while that is the case, Gyllius (_De top. C.P._ iv.), who explored this part of the city in 1550, does not mention any Byzantine church that answers at all to Gerlach's description of the church of Aetius, unless it be the Chora. That Gyllius should have overlooked so beautiful a monument of Byzantine days as the church of Aetius, if different from the Chora, is certainly very strange. But it is not less strange to find that Gerlach does not speak of the Chora. Can the difficulty thus presented be removed by the supposition that Gerlach refers to the Chora under the name of Aetius? The position he assigns to the church of Aetius in relation to the church of S. John in Petra and to the palace of Constantine (Tekfour Serai) favours that view, for he places the church of Aetius between S. John and the palace, exactly where the Chora would stand in that series of buildings. Looking towards the north-west from the windows of a house a little to the east of the Pammakaristos, Gerlach says 'Ad Occasum, Boream versus, Prodromi [Greek: monê] est, olim [Greek: petra]; longius inde, Aetii [Greek: monê]; postea, Palatium Constantini' (_Turcograecia_, p. 190). On the other hand, Gerlach's description of the church of Aetius differs in so many particulars from what holds true of the Chora, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that in that description he had the latter church in mind. Unless, then, we are prepared to admit grave mistakes in Gerlach's description, we must either assume an extraordinary failure on his part and on the part of Gyllius to notice a most interesting Byzantine monument, directly on the path of both explorers in this quarter of the city, or regret the disappearance of an ancient sanctuary that rivalled the Chora in splendour. [A] It was probably the ruined cistern with twenty-four columns arranged in four rows of seven pillars each, near the mosque Kassim Aga, a short distance above Kefelé Mesjedi. Gerlach associates it with the church of Aetius. [B] _Tagebuch_, pp. 455-56; cf. Crusius, _Turcograecia_, p. 190. In the documents associated with the Synod of 536 in Constantinople the cistern of Aetius serves to identify the monastery of Mara (Mansi, viii. cols. 910, 930, 990). Cf. Banduri, iii. p. 49; v. p. 106. [443] There is some uncertainty as to the identity of Manuel. Some authorities distinguish Manuel the general from Manuel the uncle of Theodora, on the ground that the former is said to have died of wounds received in battle during the reign of Theophilus (see Leo Gramm. p. 222). But it would be strange for different Manuels to reside near the cistern of Aspar, and to convert their residences into the monastery of Manuel in that vicinity. For other reasons for the identification see Bury, _Eastern Roman Empire_, Appendix viii. p. 476. [444] Theodore Balsamon, vol. i. p. 1041; Canon VII. of the Synod of Constantinople held under Photius. [445] Theoph. Cont. p. 433, [Greek: monê tou Manouêlou]. [446] Cedrenus, ii. p. 487. [447] Scylitzes, in Cedrenus, ii, p. 738. [448] H. Brockhaus, _Die Kunst in den Athos-Klöstern_, p. 34; G. Millet, _Le Monastère de Daphné_. [449] Gerlach, _Tagebuch_, p. 337. [450] Paspates, p. 395. [451] In Parker's _Glossary of Architecture_, p. 506, the term is defined 'quae vulgariter a volta dicitur' (Matt. Par. 1056). Du Cange defines the word 'caverna ubi viae conveniunt.' [452] According to the Patriarch Constantius (_Ancient and Modern Constantinople_, p. 76), the monogram-- [Illustration: Monogram in Greek.] was to be seen in his day on the exterior western wall of the Chora. CHAPTER XVIII MONASTIR MESJEDI At a short distance within Top Kapoussi (Gate of S. Romanus) that pierces the landward walls of the city, and a little to the south of the street leading to that entrance, in the quarter of Tash Mektep, Mustapha Tchaoush, stands a lonely Byzantine chapel which now goes by the name Monastir Mesjedi, the Chapel of the Monastery. Its present designation tells us all that is certain in regard to the history of the edifice; it was originally a chapel attached to a Christian monastery, and after the Turkish conquest became a Moslem place of worshp. Paspates[453] is disposed to identify the building with the chapel of the Theotokos erected in this vicinity, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, by Phocas Maroules[454] on the site of the ancient church dedicated to the three martyr sisters Menodora, Metrodora, and Nymphodora.[455] The chapel built by Maroules in fact belonged to a convent, and owing to its comparatively recent date might well be standing to this day. But the evidence in favour of the proposed identification is slight. In a city crowded with sanctuaries more than one small chapel could be situated near the gate of S. Romanus. An old font, turned upside down and made to serve as a well-head by having its bottom knocked out, lies on a vacant lot on the same side of the street as Monastir Mesjedi, but nearer the gate of S. Romanus, and seems to mark the site of another sanctuary. So likewise do the four columns crowned with ancient capitals which form the porch of the mosque Kurkju Jamissi, on the north side of the street. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVII. THE CISTERN OF AETIUS. With the kind permission of Sir Benjamin Stone. _To face page 262._] Phocas Maroules was domestic of the imperial table under Andronicus II. Palaeologus (1282-1328). He appears also as the commander of the guards on the city walls that screened the palace of Blachernae, when Andronicus III. Palaeologus, accompanied by John Cantacuzene, the protostrator Synadenus, and an escort of thirty soldiers, stood before the gate of Gyrolimné to parley with the elder emperor. The domestic was the bearer of the messages exchanged between the imperial relatives on that occasion. It was a thankless task. But what troubled the mind of Maroules most was how to avoid giving offence to both sovereigns and succeed in serving two masters. To salute the grandson as became his rank and pretensions would incur the grandfather's displeasure; to treat rudely the young prince, who had come on a friendly errand, and addressed the domestic in gracious terms, was an impropriety which the reputation of Maroules as a paragon of politeness would not allow him to commit. Furthermore, fortune being fickle, he felt bound as a prudent man to consult her caprices. Accordingly, allowing less discreet officials beside him to insult the younger emperor as much as they pleased, he himself refrained both from all taunts and from all courteous speech. In response to the greetings of Andronicus III. he said nothing, but at the same time made a respectful bow, thus maintaining his good manners and yet guarding his interests whatever turn the dispute between the two emperors might take. John Cantacuzene, a kindred spirit, extols the behaviour of Maroules in this dilemma as beyond all praise.[456] After the death of Maroules his widow and son attempted to turn the convent into a monastery. But the patriarchal court, before which the case came in 1341, decided in favour of the claims of the nuns, on the principle that the intention of the founder should in such matters be always respected. Hence convents were not allowed to be changed into monasteries, nor monasteries into convents.[457] _Architectural Features_ (For Plan see p. 261.) The building is a small oblong hall roofed in wood, and terminates at its eastern end in three semicircular apses. It is divided into two unequal compartments by a triple arcade placed near the western end. The side apses are shallow recesses, scarcely separated from the central apse, and show three sides on the exterior. The central apse projects six sides, and is now lighted by a large Turkish window. The western compartment, forming the narthex, is in three bays covered with cross-groined vaults. The cushion capitals on the columns of the arcade are decorated, on the east and west, with a rudely cut leaf; and on the north and south with a cross in a circle. Along the exterior of the south wall are traces of a string-course, of a cloister, and of a door leading to the western compartment. On the same wall Paspates[458] saw, as late as 1877, eikons painted in fresco. The western entrance stands between two pilasters, and near it is an upright shaft, buried for the most part in the ground, probably the vestige of a narthex. In the drawing of the church given by Paspates,[459] three additional shafts are shown beside the building. [453] P. 376. [454] Miklosich et Müller, i. 221. [455] For lives of these saints, see Synax., September 10; Symeon Metaphrastes, ii. p. 653. [456] Cantacuzene, i. p. 255; Niceph. Greg. ix. pp. 407, 409. [457] Miklosich et Müller, i. p. 221. [458] P. 376. [459] _Ut supra._ CHAPTER XIX BALABAN AGA MESJEDI A small Byzantine building, now used for Moslem worship under the name of Balaban Aga Mesjedi, is situated in the quarter of Shahzadé, off the south side of the street leading to the mosque of Sultan Mehemed and the gate Edirne Kapoussi. Mordtmann[460] proposes to identify it with the church of the Theotokos in the district of the Curator ([Greek: tou Kouratoros]), the foundation of which is ascribed to Verina, the consort of Leo Macellus (457-474).[461] The only reason for this conjecture is that the church in question stood where Balaban Aga Mesjedi stands, in the neighbourhood of the forum of Taurus,[462] now represented by the open area beside the War Office and the mosque of Sultan Bajazet. But the plan of the building does not correspond to the description given of the Theotokos in the district of the Curator. The latter resembled the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem,[463] and was therefore circular, whereas Balaban Aga Mesjedi is a hexagon. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the building was ever a church, seeing it has no room for either a berm, or an apse, or an eikonostosis. It may have been the library of a monastic establishment. _Architectural Features_ (For Plans see p. 267.) Internally the building is an accurate hexagon, with a deeply arched recess in each side. Five recesses have a window, while in the sixth recess, instead of a window, there is a door. The cornice and wooden ceiling are Turkish. Externally the edifice shows four sides, two circular and two flat projecting bays, arranged in alternate order. In each of the circular sides are two windows, while the fifth window and the entrance are respectively in the flat sides. A Turkish narthex fronts one-half of the building. (Plate LV.) [Illustration: FIGS. 90, 91, AND 92.] [460] _Esq. top._ p. 70. [461] Banduri, i. p. 18. [462] Synax., July 22nd, December 7th. [463] Banduri, _ut supra_. CHAPTER XX THE CHURCH OF THE GASTRIA, SANJAKDAR MESJEDI This mosque is situated in the quarter of Psamathia, at a short distance to the north of the Armenian church of S. George (Soulou Monastir), which stands on the site of the Byzantine church of S. Mary Peribleptos. Paspates,[464] who first recognized the Byzantine character of the edifice, regards it as the chapel attached to the convent of the Gastria ([Greek: Monê tôn Gastriôn, ta Gastria], _i.e._ in the district of the Flower-pots). His reasons for that opinion are: first, the building is situated in the district of Psamathia, where the convent of the Gastria stood; secondly, it is in the neighbourhood of the Studion, with which the convent of the Gastria was closely associated during the iconoclastic controversy; thirdly, the copious and perennial stream of water that flows through the grounds below the mosque would favour the existence of a flower-garden in this part of the city, and thus give occasion for the bestowal of the name Gastria upon the locality. The argument is by no means conclusive. A more fanciful explanation of the name of the district is given by Byzantine etymologists after their wont. According to them the name was due to the circumstance that the Empress Helena, upon her return from Jerusalem with her great discovery of the Holy Cross, disembarked at Psamathia, and having founded a convent there, adorned its garden with the pots ([Greek: ta gastria]) of fragrant shrubs which accompanied the sacred tree on the voyage from Palestine.[465] More sober historians ascribe the foundation of the convent to Euphrosyne, the step-mother of the Emperor Theophilus,[466] or to his mother-in-law Theoctista.[467] Both ladies, it is certain, were interested in the House, the former taking the veil there,[468] while the latter resided in the immediate neighbourhood.[469] Probably the convent was indebted to both those pious women for benefactions, and it was unquestionably in their day that the monastery acquired its greatest fame as the centre of female influence in support of the cause of eikons. Theoctista was especially active in that cause, and through her connection with the court not only strengthened the opposition to the policy of her son-in-law, but also disturbed the domestic peace of the imperial family. Whenever the daughters of Theophilus visited her she took the opportunity to condemn their father's views, and would press her eikons on the girls' lips for adoration. One day, after such a visit, Pulcheria, the youngest princess, a mere child, in giving an account of what had transpired, innocently told her father that she had seen and kissed some very beautiful dolls at her grandmother's house. Whereupon Theophilus, suspecting the real facts, forbade his daughter to visit Theoctista again. On another occasion the court fool, Denderis, surprised the Empress Theodora in her private chamber kissing eikons and placing them over her eyes. 'What are these things?' he inquired. 'My beautiful dolls which I love,' she replied. Not long afterwards the jester was summoned to amuse Theophilus while sitting at table. 'What is the latest news?' asked the emperor. 'When I last visited "mamma" (the jester's familiar name for the empress) I saw most beautiful dolls in her room.' Instantly the emperor rose, beside himself with rage, and rushing to his wife's apartments violently denounced her as a heathen and idolater. 'Not at all,' answered Theodora, in her softest accents, 'that fool of yours saw me and my maidens looking into a mirror and mistook the faces reflected there for dolls.' The emperor did not press the case, but a few days later the servants of Theodora caught Denderis and gave him a sound thrashing for telling tales, dismissing him with the advice to let dolls alone in the future. In consequence of this experience, whenever the jester was afterwards asked whether he had seen his 'mamma's' dolls recently, he put one hand to his mouth and the other far down his back and whispered, 'Don't speak to me about dolls.'[470] Such were the pleasantries that relieved the stern warfare against eikons. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVIII. GASTRIA (SANJAKAR, MESJEDI). EAST END.] [Illustration: GASTRIA (SANJAKAR, MESJEDI). THE ENTRANCE. _To face page 268._] On the occasion of the breach between Theodora and her son Michael III., on account of the murder of her friend and counsellor Theoctistos at Michael's order, she and her four daughters, Thekla, Anastasia, Anna, and Pulcheria, were confined in the Gastria, and there, with the exception of Anna, they were eventually buried.[471] At the Gastria were shown also the tombs of Theoctista, her son Petronas, Irene the daughter of Bardas, and a small chest containing the lower jaw of Bardas[472] himself. It is this connection with the family of Theophilus, in life and in death, that lends chief interest to the Gastria. _Architectural Features_ (For Plan see p. 267.) Although the building is now almost a complete ruin, it still preserves some architectural interest. On the exterior it is an octagonal structure, with a large arch on each side rising to the cornice, and thus presents a strong likeness to the Byzantine building known as Sheik Suleiman Mesjedi, near the Pantokrator (p. 25). The northern, southern, and western arches are pierced by windows. The entrance is in the western arch. The interior presents the form of an equal-armed cross, the arms being deep recesses covered with semicircular vaults. The dome over the central area has fallen in. The apse, semicircular within and showing five sides on the exterior, is attached to the eastern arm. Its three central sides are occupied by a triple-shafted window. Two shallow niches represent the usual apsidal chambers. A similar niche is found also on both sides of the entrance and on the eastern side of the northern arm of the cross. In the wall to the west of the southern arch is a small chamber. The joint between the apse and the body of the building is straight, with no bond in the masonry; nor is the masonry of the two parts of the same character. In the former it is in alternate courses of brick and stone, while in the latter we find many brick courses and only an occasional stone band. Evidently the apse is a later addition. In view of these facts, the probable conclusion is that the building was originally not a church but a library, and that it was transformed into a church at some subsequent period in its history to meet some special demand. [Illustration: PLATE LXXIX. GASTRIA (SANJAKAR). FROM THE WEST.] [Illustration: GASTRIA (SANJAKAR). THE INTERIOR. _To face page 270._] [464] P. 304. [465] Banduri, iii. p. 54. [466] Leo Gram. p. 214. [467] Zonaras, iii. p. 358. [468] Theoph. Cont. pp. 625, 628, 790. [469] _Ibid._ p. 90. [470] Theoph. Cont. pp. 91-92. [471] _Ibid._ pp. 174, 658, 823; Codinus, p. 208. The Anonymus (Banduri, iii. p. 52) and Codinus (_De aed._ p. 97) say that Theodora and her daughters were confined in the convent of Euphrosyne at the Libadia, [Greek: ta Libadia]. Their mistake is due to the fact that the convent at Gastria and the convent at Libadia were both connected with ladies named Euphrosyne. Cf. Codinus, p. 207. [472] Constant. Porphyr. p. 647. CHAPTER XXI THE CHURCH OF S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS The church of S. Mary of the Mongols ([Greek: tôn Mongoliôn, tôn Mougouliôn, tou Mouchliou, Mouchliôtissa]), which stands on the heights above the quarter of Phanar, a short distance to the west of the Greek Communal School, was founded in the thirteenth century by Maria Palaeologina, a natural daughter of the Emperor Michael Palaeologus (1261-1282). As the church has been in Greek hands ever since its foundation its identity cannot be disputed. The epithet given to the Theotokos in association with this sanctuary alludes to the fact that Maria Palaeologina married a Khan of the Mongols,[473] and bore the title of Despoina of the Mongols ([Greek: Despoina tôn Mougouliôn]).[474] The marriage was prompted by no romantic sentiment, but formed part of the policy by which her father hoped to secure the goodwill of the world for the newly restored Empire of Constantinople. While endeavouring to disarm the hostility of Western Europe by promoting the union of the Latin and Greek Churches, he sought to conciliate the people nearer his dominion by matrimonial alliances with their rulers. It was in this way that he courted, with greater or less success, the friendship of Servia, Bulgaria, the Duchy of Thebes, and the Empire of Trebizond. And by the same method he tried to win the friendship of the formidable Mongols settled in Russia and Persia. Accordingly he bestowed the hand of one natural daughter, Euphrosyne, upon Nogaya,[475] who had established a Mongolian principality near the Black Sea, while the hand of Maria was intended for Holagu, famous in history as the destroyer in 1258 of the caliphate of Baghdad. Maria left Constantinople for her future home in 1265 with a great retinue, conducted by Theodosius de Villehardouin, abbot of the monastery of the Pantokrator, who was styled the 'Prince,' because related to the princes of Achaia and the Peloponnesus. A rich trousseau accompanied the bride-elect, and a tent of silk for a chapel, furnished with eikons of gold affixed to crosses, and with costly vessels for the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. When the mission reached Caesarea news came that Holagu was dead, but since reasons of state inspired the proposed marriage, the bridal party continued its journey to the Mongolian court, and there in due time Maria was wedded to Abaga, the son and successor of Holagu, after the bridegroom had received, it is said, Christian baptism.[476] [Illustration: FIG. 93.--S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS. EXTERIOR. (From a Photograph.)] [Illustration: FIG. 94.--S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS. INTERIOR.] In 1281 Abaga was poisoned by his brother Achmed,[477] and Maria deemed it prudent, and doubtless welcome, after an absence of sixteen years, to return to Constantinople. She appears again in history during the reign of her brother Andronicus II. Palaeologus, when for the second time she was offered as a bride to the Mongolian prince, Charbanda, who then ruled in Persia,[478] the object of this new matrimonial alliance being to obtain the aid of the Mongols against the Turks, who under Othman had become a dangerous foe and were threatening Nicaea. With this purpose in view Maria proceeded to that city, both to encourage the defence of an important strategic position and to press forward the negotiations with Charbanda. The Despoina of the Mongols, however, did not comprehend the character of the enemy with whom she had to deal. Her contemptuous demeanour towards Othman, and her threats to bring the Mongols against him, only roused the spirit of the Turkish chieftain, and before the Greeks could derive any advantage from the 30,000 Mongolian troops sent to their aid, Othman stormed the fortress of Tricocca, an outpost of Nicaea, and made it the base of his subsequent operations.[479] The church was built for the use of a convent which the Despoina of the Mongols, like many other ladies in Byzantine times, erected as a haven of refuge for souls who had dedicated their lives to the service of God ([Greek: limena psychôn kata theon prosthemenôn bioun]). She also endowed it with property in the immediate neighbourhood ([Greek: peri tên topothesian tou Phanari]), as well as with other lands both within and beyond the city, and while Maria lived the nuns had no reason for complaint. But after her death the property of the House passed into the hands of Isaac Palaeologus Asanes, the husband of a certain Theodora, whom Maria had treated as a daughter, and to whom she bequeathed a share in the convent's revenues. He, as soon as Theodora died, appropriated the property for the benefit of his family, with the result that the sisterhood fell into debt and was threatened with extinction. In their distress the nuns appealed to Andronicus III. Palaeologus for protection, and by the decision of the patriarchal court, to which the case was referred as the proper tribunal in such disputes, the convent in 1351 regained its rights.[480] [Illustration: FIG. 95.--S. MARY OF THE MONGOLS. THE DOME.] As already intimated, to this church belongs the interest of having always preserved its original character as a sanctuary of the Greek Orthodox Communion. This distinction it owes to the fact that the church was given to Christoboulos, the Greek architect of the mosque of Sultan Mehemed, as his private property, to mark the conqueror's satisfaction with the builder's work. The grant was confirmed by Bajazet II. in recognition of the services of the nephew of Christoboulos in the construction of the mosque which bears that Sultan's name. Twice, indeed, attempts were subsequently made to deprive the Greek community of the church, once under Selim I. and again under Achmed III. But, like the law of the Medes and Persians, a Sultan's decree altereth not, and by presenting the hatti sheriff of Sultan Mehemed the efforts to expropriate the building were frustrated.[481] Among the Turks the building is known as Kan Kilisse, the church of Blood, and the adjoining street goes by the name Sanjakdar Youkousou, the ascent of the standard-bearer,[482] terms which refer to the desperate struggle between Greeks and Turks at this point on the morning of the capture of the city.[483] _Architectural Features_ Although the building has always been in Christian hands it has suffered alterations almost more drastic than any undergone by churches converted into mosques. The interior has been stripped of its original decoration, and is so blocked by eikons, chandeliers, and other ornaments as to render a proper examination of the church extremely difficult. In plan the church is a domed quatrefoil building, the only example of that type found in Constantinople. The central dome rests on a cross formed by four semi-domes, which are further enlarged below the vaulting level by three large semicircular niches. It is placed on a drum of eight concave compartments pierced by windows to the outside circular and crowned with a flat cornice. Externally the semi-domes and apse are five-sided. From the interior face of the apse and on its northern wall projects a capital, adorned with acanthus leaves, which, as it could never have stood free in this position, probably formed part of an eikonostasis in stone. The narthex is in three bays, the central bay being covered by a barrel vault, while the lateral bays have low drumless domes on pendentives. The entrance is by a door in the central bay, and from that bay the church is entered through a passage cut in the central niche of the western semi-dome, and slightly wider than the niche. The end bays open, respectively, into the northern and southern semi-domes by passages or aisles terminating in a diagonal arch. The arches between these aisles and the western semi-dome are pierced, and thus isolate the western dome piers. On the south the church has been greatly altered; for the entire southern semi-dome and the southern bay of the narthex have been removed and replaced by three aisles of two bays each. These bays are equal in height, and are covered by cross-groined vaults with strong transverse pointed arches supported on square piers, the whole forming a large hall held up by two piers, and showing the distinct influence of Italian Gothic work. This part of the building is modern. On the eastern wall is a large picture of the Last Judgment. The plan of this church may be compared with that of S. Nicholas Methana (Fig. 97). [Illustration: FIG. 96.] [Illustration: FIG. 97. S. NICHOLAS METHANA (Lampakes).] [473] Pachym. i. pp. 174-75. [474] _Ibid._ ii. pp. 620-37. [475] _Ibid._ i. p. 231 [476] Pachym. ii. pp. 174-75. [477] Muralt, _Essai de chronographie byzantine_, vol. ii. ad annum. [478] Pachym. ii. pp. 620-21. [479] _Ibid._ pp. 637-38. [480] Miklosich et Müller, i. pp. 312, 317. [481] Patr. Constantius, pp. 84-86. The Greek community retains also other churches founded before the Turkish conquest, but they are wholly modern buildings. [482] _Ibid._ pp. 85-86. [483] N. Barbaro, p. 818. CHAPTER XXII BOGDAN SERAI In a vacant lot of ground on the eastern declivity of the hill above the quarter of Balat, and at a short distance to the east of a mass of rock known as Kesmé Kaya, stands a Byzantine chapel to which the name Bogdan Serai clings. Although now degraded to the uses of a cow-house it retains considerable interest. Its name recalls the fact that the building once formed the private chapel attached to the residence of the envoys of the hospodars of Moldavia (in Turkish Bogdan) at the Sublime Porte; just as the style Vlach Serai given to the church of the Virgin, lower down the hill and nearer the Golden Horn, is derived from the residence of the envoys of the Wallachian hospodars with which that church was connected. According to Hypselantes,[484] the Moldavian residence was erected early in the sixteenth century by Teutal Longophetes, the envoy who presented the submission of his country to Suleiman the Magnificent at Buda in 1516, when the Sultan was on his way to the siege of Vienna. Upon the return of Suleiman to Constantinople the hospodar of the principality came in person to the capital to pay tribute, and to be invested in his office with the insignia of two horse-tails, a fur coat, and the head-dress of a commander in the corps of janissaries. Gerlach[485] gives another account of the matter. According to his informants, the mansion belonged originally to a certain Raoul, who had emigrated to Russia in 1518, and after his death was purchased by Michael Cantacuzene as a home for the Moldavian envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to exist. The chapel stood at the north-western end of the residence and formed an integral part of the structure. For high up in the exterior side of the south-eastern wall are the mortises which held the beams supporting the floor of the upper story of the residence; while lower down in the same wall is a doorway which communicated with the residence on that level. Some of the substructures of the residence are still visible. It is not impossible that the house, or at least some portion of it, was an old Byzantine mansion. Mordtmann,[487] indeed, suggests that it was the palace to which Phrantzes refers under the name Trullus ([Greek: en tô Troulô]).[488] But that palace stood to the north of the church of the Pammakaristos (Fetiyeh Jamissi), and had disappeared when Phrantzes wrote. Gerlach,[489] moreover, following the opinion of his Greek friends, distinguishes between the Trullus and the Moldavian residence, and places the site of the former near the Byzantine chapel now converted into Achmed Pasha Mesjedi, to the south of the church of the Pammakaristos.[490] [Illustration: PLATE LXXX. BOGDAN SERAI. APSE OF THE UPPER CHAPEL.] [Illustration: BOGDAN SERAI. A PENDENTIVE OF THE DOME.] [Illustration: BOGDAN SERAI. THE CHAPEL FROM THE NORTH-WEST. _To face page 280._] Opinions differ in regard to the dedication of the chapel. Paspates,[491] following the view current among the gardeners who cultivated the market-gardens in the neighbourhood, maintained that the chapel was dedicated to S. Nicholas. Hence the late Canon Curtis, of the Crimean Memorial Church in Constantinople, believed that this was the church of SS. Nicholas and Augustine of Canterbury, founded by a Saxon noble who fled to Constantinople after the Norman conquest of England. What is certain is that in the seventeenth century the chapel was dedicated to the Theotokos. Du Cange mentions it under the name, Ecclesia Deiparae Serai Bogdaniae.[492] Mordtmann has proved[493] that Bogdan Serai marks the site of the celebrated monastery and church of S. John the Baptist in Petra,--the title 'in Petra' being derived from the neighbouring mass of rock, which the Byzantines knew as [Greek: Palaia Petra], and which the Turks style Kesmé Kaya, the Chopped Rock. According to a member of the monastery, who flourished in the eleventh century, the House was founded by a monk named Bara in the reign of Anastasius I. (491-518) near an old half-ruined chapel dedicated to S. John the Baptist, in what was then a lonely quarter of the city, between the Gate of S. Romanus (Top Kapoussi) and Blachernae. The monastery becomes conspicuous in the narratives of the Russian pilgrims to the shrines of the city, under the designation, the monastery of S. John, Rich-in-God, because the institution was unendowed and dependent upon the freewill offerings of the faithful, which 'by the grace of God and the care and prayers of John' were generous. Thrice a year, on the festivals of the Baptist and at Easter, the public was admitted to the monastery and hospitably entertained. It seems to have suffered during the Latin occupation, for it is described in the reign of Andronicus II. as standing abandoned in a vineyard. But it was restored, and attracted visitors by the beauty of its mosaics and the sanctity of its relics.[494] In 1381 a patriarchal decision conferred upon the abbot the titles of archimandrite and protosyngellos, and gave him the third place in the order of precedence among the chiefs of the monasteries of the city, 'that thus the outward honours of the house might reflect the virtue and piety which adorned its inner life.'[495] Owing to the proximity of the house to the landward walls, it was one of the first shrines[496] to become the spoil of the Turks on the 29th of May 1453, and was soon used as a quarry to furnish materials for new buildings after the conquest. Gyllius visited the ruins, and mistaking the fabric for the church of S. John the Baptist at the Hebdomon, gave rise to the serious error of placing that suburb in this part of the city instead of at Makrikeui beside the Sea of Marmora.[497] Gerlach[498] describes the church as closed because near a mosque. Portions, however, of the monastic buildings and of the strong wall around them still survived, and eikons of celebrated saints still decorated the porch. On an eikon of Christ the title of the monastery, Petra, was inscribed. Some of the old cells were then occupied by nuns, who were maintained by the charitable gifts of wealthy members of the Greek community. _Architectural Features_ The building is in two stories, and may be described as a chapel over a crypt. It points north-east, a peculiar orientation probably due to the adaptation of the chapel to the position of the residence with which it was associated. The masonry is very fine and regular, built in courses of squared stone alternating with four courses of brick, all laid in thick mortar joints, and pierced with numerous putlog holes running through the walls. It presents a striking likeness to the masonry in the fortifications of the city. The lower story is an oblong hall covered with a barrel vault, and terminates in an arch and apse. In the west side of one of the jambs of the arch is a small niche. The vault for one-third of its height is formed by three courses of stone laid horizontally and cut to the circle; above this it is of brick with radiating joints. Here cows are kept. The upper story is m. 3.75 above the present level of the ground. It is a single hall m. 8.80 in length and m. 3.70 wide, terminating in a bema and a circular apse in brick. Over the bema is a barrel vault. A dome, without drum or windows, resting on two shallow flat arches in the lateral walls and two deep transverse arches strengthened by a second order of arches, covers the building. In the wall towards the north-west there is a window between two low niches; and a similar arrangement is seen in the opposite wall, except that the door which communicated with the residence occupies the place of the window. The apsidal chambers, usual in a church, are here represented by two niches in the bema. Externally the apse shows five sides, and is decorated by a flat niche pierced by a single light in the central side, and a blind concave niche, with head of patterned brickwork, in the two adjacent sides. The dome, apse, vaults, and transverse arches are in brick, laid in true radiating courses. The absence of windows in the dome is an unusual feature, which occurs also in the angle domes of S. Theodosia. The pendentives are in horizontal courses, corbelled out to the centre, and at each angle of the pendentives is embedded an earthenware jar, either for the sake of lightness, or to improve, as some think, the acoustics of the building. This story of the chapel is used as a hayloft. A careful survey of the building shows clearly that the domical character of the chapel is not original, and that the structure when first erected was a simple hall covered with a wooden roof. Both the shallow wall arches and the deep transverse arches under the dome are insertions in the walls of an older fabric. They are not supported on pilasters, as is the practice elsewhere, but rest on corbels, and, in order to accommodate these corbels, the lateral niches, originally of the same height as the central window, have been reduced in height. A fragment of the original arch still remains, cut into by the wall arch of the dome. The flat secondary arches crossing the chapel at each end are similarly supported on corbels. This view is confirmed by the examination of the plaster left upon the walls. That plaster has four distinct coats or layers, upon all of which eikons in tempera are painted.[499] The innermost coat is laid between the transverse dome arches and the walls against which they are built. Those arches, therefore, could not have formed parts of the building when the first coat of plaster was laid, but must be later additions. In keeping with this fact, the second coat of painted plaster is found laid both on the arches and on those portions of the old work which the arches did not cover. The secondary arches under the transverse arches at each end belong to a yet later period, for where they have separated from the arches above them, decorated plaster, which at one time formed part of the general ornamentation of the building, is exposed to view. At this stage in the history of the chapel the third coat of plaster was spread over the walls, thus giving three coats on the oldest parts where unaltered--two coats on the first alterations, and one coat on the second alterations. The fourth coat of plaster is still later, marking some less serious repair of the chapel. The _voussoirs_ of the lateral dome arches should be noticed. They do not radiate to the centre, but are laid flatter and radiate to a point above the centre. This form of construction, occurring frequently in Byzantine arches, is regarded by some authorities as a method of forming an arch without centering. But in the case of the lateral wall arches before us it occurs where centering could never have been required; while the apse arch, where centering would have had structural value, is formed with true radiating _voussoirs_. The failure of the _voussoirs_ to radiate to the centre therefore seems to be simply the result of using untapered _voussoirs_ in which the arch form must be obtained by wedge-shaped joints. For if these joints are carelessly formed, the crown may very well be reached before the requisite amount of radiation has been obtained. On the other hand, if full centering had been used, we should expect to find marks of the centering boards on the mortar in the enormously thick joints. But neither here nor in any instance where the jointing was visible have such marks been found. Still, when we consider the large amount of mortar employed in Byzantine work, it seems impossible that greater distortions than we actually meet with in Byzantine edifices would not have occurred, even during the building, had no support whatever been given. It seems, therefore, safe to assume the use of at any rate light scaffolding and centering to all Byzantine arches.[500] [Illustration: FIG. 98.] [484] [Greek: Meta tên halôsin], p. 61; cf. Paspates, p. 361. [485] _Tagebuch_, p. 456. [486] Hypselantes, _ut supra_, p. 638. [487] Archaeological Supplement to the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ vol. xviii. p. 8. [488] Phrantzes, p. 307. [489] _Tagebuch_, p. 456. [490] See Chap. XII. [491] P. 360. [492] Constant. Christ. iv. p. 162. [493] See Archaeological Supplement to the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ vol. xviii. p. 8. [494] Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo in 1403, _Vida de Gran Tamorlan y itinerario_, p. 50 (Madrid, 1782): 'San Juan del a Piedra está cerca del palacio del Emperador' (_i.e._ near the palace of Blachernae). [495] Miklosich et Müller, i. ii. pp. 21-23. [496] Ducas, p. 288. [497] _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 4. [498] _Tagebuch_, p. 455. [499] When Paspates (p. 360) visited the chapel, the eikons were more distinctly visible than at present, although they bore marks of deliberate injury by Moslem iconoclasts. [500] See p. 23. CHAPTER XXIII THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA, KAHRIÉ JAMISSI According to the historian Nicephorus Gregoras,[501] who was long and closely connected with the church, the Chora was founded by Justinian the Great, and then presented the form of a basilica. But there is reason to believe that the edifice erected by that emperor was the reconstruction of an older shrine. The fame of a restorer often eclipsed the memory of the founder of a sanctuary, especially when the restorer was the superior in rank and reared a larger and more beautiful building. According to Symeon Metaphrastes,[502] the site of the Chora was first consecrated by the interment of S. Babylas and his eighty-four disciples, who were martyred in 298 during the reign of Maximianus. The scene of their execution, indeed, was Nicomedia; but friendly hands obtained possession of the bodies of the champions of the faith, and taking them to Constantinople, buried them outside the walls of the city, towards the north, in the place subsequently occupied by the monastery of the Chora. As will appear, the relics of S. Babylas and his disciples formed part of the treasures of the Chora in the ninth century.[503] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXI. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA, FROM THE WEST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _To face page 288._] The settlement of the approximate date of the foundation of the church depends, ultimately, upon the meaning to be attached to the term Chora ([Greek: Chôra]). There are some writers who incline to the idea that in this connection that term was employed from the first in a mystical sense, to denote the attribute of Christ as the sphere of man's highest life; and there can be no doubt that the word was used in that sense in the fourteenth century. That is unquestionably its meaning in the legends inscribed on mosaics which adorn the walls of the building. [Greek: IC XC MÊR THY HÊ CHÔRA HÊ CHÔRA TOU TÔN ZÔNTÔN ACHÔRÊTOU] And it is in that sense that the term is employed by Cantacuzene[504] and Phrantzes.[505] On this view the description of the church as 'in the Chora' throws no light on the date of the church's foundation. Other authorities,[506] however, maintain that the term Chora was originally associated with the church in the obvious topographical signification of the word, to denote territory outside the city limits, and that its religious reference came into vogue only when changes in the boundaries of Constantinople made the literal meaning of Chora no longer applicable. According to this opinion the church was, therefore, founded while its site lay beyond the city walls, and consequently before the year 413, after which the site was included within the capital by the erection of the Theodosian wall. Hence, the phrase 'in the Chora' had the same signification as the style 'in the fields' which is attached to the church of S. Martin in London, or the style _fuore le mura_ which belongs to the basilica of S. Paul and other churches beyond the walls of Rome to this day. It is certainly in this topographical sense that the term Chora is understood by the Byzantine writers in whose works it first appears. That is how the term is used by Simeon Metaphrastes[507] in his description of the site of the monastery in his day, and that is how the Anonymus[508] of the eleventh century and his follower Codinus[509] understand the term; for they take special care to explain how a building which lay within the city in their day could be styled 'Chora'; because, say they, it once stood without the walls, on territory, therefore, called by the Byzantines, [Greek: chôrion], the country. The literal meaning of a word is earlier than its artificial and poetical signification. And one can easily conceive how, when the style Chora was no longer literally correct, men abandoned the sober ground of common-sense and history to invent recondite meanings inspired by imagination and sentiment. This conclusion is confirmed by the history of the Chora given in the Life of S. Theodore,[510] an abbot of the monastery, which Mr. Gedeon discovered in the library of the Pantokrator on Mount Athos. According to that biography, S. Theodore was a relative of Theodora, the wife of Justinian the Great, and after serving with distinction in the Persian wars, and winning greater renown as a monk near Antioch, came to Constantinople about the year 530, at the invitation of his imperial relatives, to assist in the settlement of the theological controversies of the day. Once there he was induced to make the capital his permanent abode by permission to build a monastery, where he could follow his high calling as fully as in his Syrian retreat. For that purpose he selected a site on the property of a certain Charisius, situated, as the Chora is, on the slope of a hill, descending on the one hand steeply to the sea, and rising, on the other, to the highest point in the line of the Theodosian walls, the point marked by the gate named after Charisius (now Edirné Kapoussi). The site was already hallowed, says the biographer of S. Theodore, by the presence of a humble monastic retreat and a small chapel. The edifice erected by S. Theodore was, however, soon overthrown by the severe earthquake which shook the city in 558, and all the hopes of the good man would also have been dashed to the ground had the disaster not called forth the sympathy and aid of Justinian. In the room of the ruined buildings the emperor erected a magnificent establishment, with chapels dedicated to the Theotokos, the Archangel Michael, S. Anthimus of Nicomedia, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. There also stood a hostel for the special accommodation of Syrian monks on a visit to Constantinople, and a hospital for diseases of the eye.[511] In this account of the early history of the Chora, there may be, as Schmitt[512] thinks, many inaccuracies. It was easy, even for a member of the House who aspired to authorship, to confuse persons, to err in the matter of dates, and to overlook the changes which the buildings with which he was familiar had undergone before his day. But surely the biographer of S. Theodore can be trusted where his statements are supported by more reliable authorities, and we may therefore accept his testimony on the following points: that the original church of the Chora was earlier than the reign of Justinian; that under Justinian the old sanctuary was replaced by a new and statelier building; that the Chora maintained intimate relations with monasteries in Syria; and that with it was associated a church dedicated to the Archangel Michael. NOTE The association of a church dedicated to S. Michael with the Chora, and the fact that the Chora stood on the property of Charisius, raise an interesting question. For among the subscriptions to the letter of the monks to Pope Hormisdas in 518, and the subscriptions to the Acts of the Synod held in Constantinople in 536, stands the name of the abbot of the monastery of the Archangel Michael of Charisius.[513] Was that monastery identical with the Chora? If it was, that fact would be additional evidence that the Chora was earlier than Justinian's time. On the other hand, it is always dangerous to identify buildings because they were situated in the same quarter of the city and dedicated to the same saint. The absence of all reference to the monastery of S. Michael of Charisius after the reign of Justinian, and yet the association of a church of S. Michael with the Chora after his reign, may be due either to the ruin of that monastery in the earthquake of 558, or to the subsequent union of the two establishments on account of their proximity. The next important event in the history of the House was the confinement there of the celebrated general Priscus, Count of the Excubiti, at the command of the Emperor Heraclius (610-641).[514] Priscus had taken a leading part in the revolution which overthrew his father-in-law, the infamous Phocas, and placed Heraclius upon the throne. But notwithstanding that service, the attitude of the general towards the new régime was not considered satisfactory, and with the cruel taunt, 'Wretch, thou didst not make a good son-in-law; how canst thou be a true friend?' Heraclius relegated him to political nonentity by forcing him to become a monk at the Chora. The new brother did not live long, but his wealth furnished the fraternity with the means for the erection of a large and beautiful church. Schmitt, indeed, thinks that the biographer of S. Theodore, already cited, failed to recognise the identity of the person concerning whom he wrote, and assigned events which occurred in the time of Heraclius to the reign of Justinian. According to Schmitt, S. Theodore is really Priscus under his name in religion, and to him, and not to Justinian, was the Chora indebted for its first great era of prosperity. One thing is certain, the splendid church with which the biographer of S. Theodore was acquainted, and the wealth and beauty of which he extols in extravagant terms, was not the church erected by Justinian at the Chora. The latter was a basilica;[515] while the church alluded to in the biography of S. Theodore was a domical building.[516] Probably the fame of Justinian veiled not only what others had done for the Chora before him, but also the services performed by others after his day. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXII. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA, FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE NORTH SIDE. _To face page 292._] In 712 the Patriarch Kyros was confined in the Chora by the Emperor Philippicus for adherence to the tenets of the Sixth General Council (680),[517] which condemned the attribution of a single will to the person of Christ. The fidelity of the patriarch to orthodox opinion was commemorated annually in the services held at the Chora, as well as in S. Sophia, on the 8th of January. The monastery was also honoured by the burial there, in 740, of the Patriarch Germanus (714-730), famous for his piety, his learning, and above all for his opposition to Leo the Isaurian, when that emperor commenced the crusade against eikons. The tomb of the patriarch was reputed to perform wonderful cures.[518] Another notable personage buried at the Chora was the patrician Bactagius, an associate of Artavasdos in the effort, made in 743, to drive Constantine Copronymus from the throne. Upon the failure of that attempt Bactagius was captured, beheaded in the Kynegion, and while his head was displayed to public view in the Milion for three days, his mutilated body was taken to the Chora. This might have seemed sufficient revenge. But the rebel's offence so rankled in the emperor's memory, that even after the lapse of some thirty years his resentment was not allayed. The widow of Bactagius was then forced to proceed to the Chora to disinter the bones of her husband from their resting-place in holy earth, and carry them in her cloak to the dreary burial-ground of Pelagion, where the corpses of persons who committed suicide were thrown.[519] Like similar institutions the Chora suffered severely during the iconoclastic period. Because of its connection with the Patriarch Germanus it became the special object of the hatred of Constantine Copronymus for monks and was almost ruined. What he left of it was turned into a secular residence, and devoted to the confinement of Artavasdos and his family. There also that rebel, and his nine children and his wife, Constantine's sister, were eventually buried.[520] With the triumph of the iconodules, in 842, under Michael III. and his mother the Empress Theodora, happier days dawned upon the Chora. It was then fortunate in the appointment of Michael Syncellus as its abbot, and under his rule it rapidly recovered from poverty and desolation. The new abbot was a Syrian monk distinguished for his ability, his sanctity, and his devotion to eikons. He came to Constantinople in 814, to remonstrate against the religious policy of Leo the Armenian, and, according to the custom of monks from Palestine on a visit to the capital, lodged at the Chora. But so far from succeeding in the object of his visit, Michael was imprisoned and then banished to one of the monasteries on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. Accordingly, when the cause for which he suffered proved victorious, no honour seemed too great to bestow upon the martyr. It was even proposed to create him patriarch, but he declined the office, and supported the appointment of his friend Methodius to that position. Methodius, in return, made Michael his syncellus and abbot of the Chora.[521] Under these circumstances it is not surprising that funds were secured for the restoration of the monastery, and that the brotherhood soon gained great influence in the religious circles of the capital. There is, however, no mention now of the church of the Archangel Michael or of the church dedicated to the Theotokos. Possibly the death of the abbot in 846 and lack of money prevented the reconstruction of those sanctuaries. The only churches attached to the Chora noticed in the biography of Michael Syncellus are the church of S. Anthimus, containing the relics of S. Babylas and his eighty-four disciples, the dependent chapel of S. Ignatius, and the church of the Forty Martyrs.[522] Let it also be noted that there is yet no mention of a church specially consecrated to the Saviour. After its restoration in the 9th century the Chora does not appear again in history until the reign of Alexius I. Comnenus (1081-1118), when, owing to its great age, it was found in a state of almost complete ruin.[523] If for no other reason, the proximity of the church to the palace or Blachernae, which had become the favourite residence of the court, brought the dilapidated pile into notice, and its restoration was undertaken by the emperor's mother-in-law, Maria, the beautiful and talented granddaughter of Samuel, the famous king of Bulgaria, and niece of Aecatherina, the consort of Isaac I. Comnenus. Maria had married Andronicus Ducas, a son of Michael VII., and the marriage of her daughter Irene Ducaena to Alexius was designed to unite the rival pretensions of the families of the Comneni and the Ducas to the throne. It had been strenuously opposed by Anna Dalassena, the mother of Alexius, and its accomplishment in 1077, notwithstanding such formidable opposition, is no slight proof of the diplomatic skill and determination of the mother of the bride. Nor can it be doubted that Irene's mother acted a considerable part in persuading Alexius, when he mounted the throne, not to repudiate his young wife, as he was tempted to do in favour of a fairer face. Perhaps the restoration of the Chora was a token of gratitude for the triumph of her maternal devotion. The church was rebuilt on the plan which it presents to-day, for in the account of the repairs made in the fourteenth century it is distinctly stated that they concerned chiefly the outer portion of the edifice.[524] To Alexius' mother-in-law, therefore, may be assigned the central part of the structure, a cruciform hall; the dome, so far as it is not Turkish, the beautiful marble incrustation upon the walls, the mosaic eikons of the Saviour and of the Theotokos on the piers of the eastern dome-arch, and the exquisite marble carving above the latter eikon--all eloquent in praise of the taste and munificence that characterised the eleventh century in Constantinople. Probably the church was then dedicated to the Saviour, like the three other Comnenian churches in the city, the Pantepoptes, the Pantokrator, and S. Thekla. The mother-in-law of Alexius I. was, however, not alone in her interest in the Chora. Her devotion to the monastery was shared also by her grandson the sebastocrator Isaac. Tall, handsome, brave, but ambitious and wayward, Isaac was gifted with the artistic temperament, as his splendid manuscript of the first eight books of the Old Testament, embellished with miniatures by his own hand, makes clear.[525] If the inscription on the mosaic representing the Deesis found in the inner narthex really refers to him, it proves that his influence was felt in the decoration of the building.[526] He certainly erected a magnificent mausoleum for himself in the church. Later in his life, indeed, he became interested in the restoration of the monastery of Theotokos Kosmosoteira at Viros, and ordered that mausoleum to be dismantled, and the marbles, bronze railing, and portraits of his parents which adorned it to be transported to Viros; but he still allowed his own portrait 'made in the days of his youthful vanity' to remain in the Chora.[527] NOTE Uspenski has identified Viros with Ferejik, a village situated 30 kilometres from Dedeagatch, and 20-25 kilometres from Enos, 'aux embouchures désertées et marécageuses de la Maritza.' The church is now the mosque of the village. It has five domes and three apses. The central apse is pierced by a modern door. The exonarthex has disappeared and the old principal entrance is walled up. The plan of the church is almost identical with the plan of the Chora. While the architectural details are poor and indicate haste, the dimensions of the building imply considerable expense and the wealth of the restorer. There are traces of painting on the walls of the interior, especially in the domes (the Virgin) and in the two lateral apses. An epitaph of seven lines in the middle of the mosque contains the title 'despotes.' According to Uspenski, the sebastocrator died soon after 1182, the year during which he was engaged on the Typicon of the monastery at Viros. The monastery was visited by the Emperor Andronicus Comnenus in 1185, by Isaac Angelus in 1195, and by Villehardouin in 1205. Early in the fourteenth century it was converted into a fortress, and the country round it was ravaged in 1322 by the Bulgarians. It was attacked in vain by John Cantucuzene, but was captured in 1355 by John VI. Palaeologus. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIII. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE INNER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE INNER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 296._] Another name associated with the Chora at this period is that of the Patriarch Cosmas, who was commemorated annually in the church on the 2nd of January. He had occupied the patriarchal seat in days troubled by the intrigues and conflicts which drove first Michael VII. Ducas, and then Nicephorus Botoniates from the throne, and invested Alexius Comnenus with the purple. They were not days most suitable to a man who, though highly esteemed for his virtues, was without education or experience in public affairs, and nearly ninety years old. Still, to his honour be it said, it was at his earnest request that Botoniates finally agreed to forego a bloody contest with the Comneni, and to withdraw quietly to the monastery of the Peribleptos. Moreover, when it seemed uncertain whether the victorious Alexius would remain faithful to Irene Ducaena and raise her to the throne, Cosmas, notwithstanding all the efforts of Anna Dalassena (who was ill-disposed towards Irene) to persuade him to lay down his office, firmly refused to resign until he had placed the imperial crown upon the emperor's lawful wife. Soon after that event, on the 7th of May 1081, the festival of S. John the Evangelist, Cosmas, having celebrated service in the church dedicated to that apostle at the Hebdomon (Makrikeui), turned to his deacon, saying, 'Take my Psalter and come with me; we have nothing more to do here,' and retired to the monastery of Kallou. His strength for battle was spent. After its restoration under the Comneni, the Chora again disappears from view until the reign of Michael Palaeologus (1261-1282). In the interval the fortunes of the Empire had suffered serious reverses, what with domestic strifes and foreign wars. Bulgaria had reasserted her independence and established the capital of a new kingdom at Tirnovo, while Constantinople itself had been captured by the forces of the Fourth Crusade and made the seat of a Latin kingdom. Consequently, it is not surprising to find that the Chora, like other churches of the ravaged city, was in a deplorable condition at the close of those calamitous days. Nothing seemed to have been done for the repair of the church immediately upon the recovery of the capital in 1261. The ruin which the Latin occupants of Constantinople left behind them was too great to be removed at once. The first reference to the Chora at this period occurs some fourteen years after the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, when the monastery, owing to its proximity to the palace of Blachernae, was assigned to the Patriarch Veccus as the house in which to lodge on the occasion of his audiences with Michael Palaeologus, on Tuesdays, to present petitions for the exercise of imperial generosity or justice. But the decay into which the establishment had fallen could not be long ignored, and a wealthy, talented, and influential citizen who resided in the neighbourhood, Theodore Metochites,[528] decided to restore the edifice as a monument of the artistic revival of his own day. Theodore Metochites was one of the most remarkable men of his day. His tall, large, well-proportioned figure, his bright countenance, commanded attention wherever he appeared. He was, moreover, a great student of ancient Greek literature and of the literature of later times, and although never a master of style, became an author and attempted verse. He was much interested in astronomy, and one of his pupils, the historian Nicephorus Gregoras, recognised the true length of the year and proposed the reform of the calendar centuries before Pope Gregory. Theodore's memory was so retentive that he could converse on any topic with which he was familiar, as if reading from a book, and there was scarcely a subject on which he was not able to speak with the authority of an expert. He seemed a living library, 'walking encyclopaedia.' In fact, he belonged to the class of brilliant Greek scholars who might have regenerated the East had not the unfortunate political situation of their country driven them to Italy to herald and promote the Renaissance in Western Europe. Theodore Metochites was, moreover, a politician. He took an active part in the administration of affairs during the reign of Andronicus II., holding the office of Grand Logothetes of the Treasury; and such was his devotion to politics, that when acting as a statesman it might be forgotten that he was a scholar. The unhappy strife between Andronicus II. and Andronicus III. caused Theodore Metochites the profoundest anxiety, and it was not his fault if the feud between the grandfather and the grandson refused to be healed. His efforts to bring that disgraceful and disastrous quarrel to an end involved great self-sacrifice and wrecked his career. For the counsels he addressed to Andronicus III. gave mortal offence, and when the young emperor entered the capital and took up his quarters in the palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfour Serai), his troops sacked and demolished Theodore's mansion in that vicinity. The beautiful marbles which adorned the residence were sent as an imperial present to a Scythian prince, while the fallen statesman was banished to Didymotica for two years. Upon his return from exile Theodore found a shelter in the monastery which he had restored in his prosperous days. But there also, for some two years longer, the cup of sorrow was pressed to his lips. A malady from which he suffered caused him excruciating pain; his sons were implicated in a political plot and thrown into prison; Andronicus II., between whom and himself all communication had been forbidden, died; and so the worn-out man assumed the habit of a monk, and lay down to die on the 13th of March 1331, a month after his imperial friend. His one consolation was the beautiful church he bequeathed to succeeding generations for the worship of God. To the renovation of the church Theodore Metochites devoted himself heart and soul, and spent money for that object on a lavish scale. As the central portion of the building was comparatively well preserved,[529] it was to the outer part of the edifice that he directed his chief attention--the two narthexes and the parecclesion. These were to a large extent rebuilt and decorated with the marbles and mosaics, which after six centuries, and notwithstanding the neglect and injuries they have suffered during the greater part of that period, still excite the admiration they awakened when fresh from the artist's hand. The connection of Theodore Metochites with this splendid work is immortalised not only by historians of his day and by himself,[530] but also by the mosaic which surmounts the main entrance to the church from the inner narthex. There the restorer of the building, arrayed in his official robes, and on bended knees, holds a model of the church in his hands and offers it to the Saviour seated on a throne. Beside the kneeling figure is the legend, [Greek: ho ktêtôr logothetês tou gennikou Theodôros ho Metochitês], 'The builder, Logothetes of the Treasury, Theodore the Metochites' (Plate XCI.). The restoration of the church must have been completed before the year 1321, for in that year Nicephorus Gregoras[531] describes it as then recently ([Greek: arti]) renovated, and in use for the celebration of divine service. How long before 1321 the work of repair precisely commenced cannot be determined, but it was in process as early as 1303, for that date is inscribed in Arabic numerals on the mosaic depicting the miracle at Cana, which stands to the right of the figure of Christ over the door leading from the outer to the inner narthex. But to have reached the stage at which mosaics could be applied the work of restoration must have been commenced sometime before 1303. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIV. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. CAPITAL IN THE OUTER NARTHEX.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. CAPITAL IN THE OUTER NARTHEX. _To face page 300._] One of the most distinguished members of the Chora was the historian Nicephorus Gregoras, who learned to know the monastery through his friendship with Theodore Metochites. The two men met first when Nicephorus came from his native town Heraclea on the Black Sea to Constantinople, a youth eager to acquire the knowledge that flourished in the capital. Being specially interested in the science of astronomy, the student placed himself under the instruction of Theodore, then the greatest authority on the subject, and won the esteem and confidence of his master to a degree that ripened into the warmest friendship and the most unreserved intellectual intercourse. In his turn, Nicephorus Gregoras became the instructor of the children of the grand logothetes, and was treated as a member of the family. He was also associated with the restoration of the Chora, attending particularly to the collection of the costly materials required for the embellishment of the church. Thus the monastery became his home from youth to old age, and after Theodore's death was entrusted to his care.[532] During the fierce controversy which raged around the question whether the light beheld at the Transfiguration formed part of the divine essence, and could be seen again after prolonged fasting and gazing upon one's navel, as the monks of Mount Athos and their supporters maintained, Nicephorus Gregoras, who rejected that idea, retired from public life to defend what he deemed the cause of truth more effectively. But to contend with a master of legions is ever an unequal struggle. The Emperor John Cantacuzene, taking the side of the monks, condemned their opponent to silence in the Chora, and there for some three years Nicephorus Gregoras discovered how scenes of happiness can be turned into a veritable hell by imperial disfavour and theological odium. Notwithstanding his age, his physical infirmities, his services to the monastery, his intellectual eminence, he was treated by the fraternity in a manner so inhuman that he would have preferred to be exposed on the mountains to wild beasts. He was obliged to fetch water for himself from the monastery well, and when, on one occasion, he was laid up for several days by an injury to his foot, none of the brothers ever thought of bringing him water. In winter he was allowed no fire, and he had often to wait till the frozen water in his cell was melted by the sun before he could wash or drink. The vision of the light of the Transfiguration did not transfigure the character of its beholders. During this trying period of his life one ray of comfort wandered into the cell of the persecuted man. On the 13th December 1351, in the dead of night, while the precincts of the monastery were crowded with worshippers attending the vigil of the festival of the Conception of the Theotokos, a strange figure climbed into the prisoner's room through an open window. It proved to be an old friend and former pupil named Agathangelus, who had not been seen for ten years owing to his absence from the city. Taking advantage of the darkness and of the absorption of the monks in the services of the festival, he had made this attempt to visit his revered master. Eagerly and hurriedly, for the time at their command was short, the two friends recounted the story of their lives while separated. Rapidly Agathangelus sketched the course of affairs in State and Church since the seclusion of Nicephorus Gregoras; and the brief visit ended and seemed a dream. But the devoted disciple was not satisfied with a single interview. Six months later he contrived to see his master again, and, encouraged by success, saw him again three times, though at long intervals, during the three years that Nicephorus Gregoras was detained in the Chora. One great object of these visits was to keep the prisoner informed of events in the world beyond the walls of his cell, and on the basis of the information thus supplied Nicephorus Gregoras wrote part of his important history. When at length, in 1354, John Cantucuzene was driven from the throne, and John Palaeologus reigned in his stead, Nicephorus was liberated,[533] and to the last defended the opinions for which he had suffered. Another name associated with the Chora at this time is that of Michael Tornikes, Grand Constable in the reign of Andronicus II. He was related, on his mother's side, to the emperor, and stood in high favour at court not only on account of that kinship, but because of the talents, character, and administrative ability which he displayed. He was, moreover, a friend of Theodore Metochites, and his political supporter in the efforts made to end the strife between Andronicus II. and Andronicus III.[534] Upon his death, Tornikes was buried in the parecclesion of the Chora, and the epitaph composed in his honour has kept its place there to this day (Plate XCII.). In 1342, Sabbas, a monk of the monastery of Vatopedi, who came to Constantinople as a member of a deputation from Mount Athos to reconcile the Regent Anna of Savoy with Cantacuzene, was confined in the Chora on the failure of that mission.[535] In view of its proximity to the landward walls, the Chora acquired great importance during the fatal siege of 1453. For the inhabitants of the beleagured capital placed their hope for deliverance more upon the saints they worshipped than upon their own prowess; the spiritual host enshrined in their churches was deemed mightier than the warriors who manned the towers of the fortifications. The sanctuaries beside the walls constituted the strongest bulwarks from which the 'God protected city' was to be defended, not with earthly, but with heavenly weapons. The eikon of the Theotokos Hodegetria was, therefore, taken to the Chora to guard the post of danger. It represented the Theotokos as the Leader of God's people in war, and around it gathered memories of wonderful deliverances and glorious triumphs, making it seem the banner of wingless victory. When the Saracens besieged the city the eikon was carried round the fortifications, and the enemy had fled. It led Zimisces in his victorious campaign against the Russians; it was borne round the fortifications when Branas assailed the capital in the reign of Isaac Angelus, and the foe disappeared; and when Constantinople was recovered from the Latins, Michael Palaeologus only expressed the general sentiment in placing the eikon on a triumphal car, and causing it to enter the city before him, while he humbly followed on foot as far as the Studion. But the glory of the days of old had departed, and no sooner did the troops of Sultan Mehemed force the Gate of Charisius (Edirné Kapoussi) than they made for the Chora, and cut the image to pieces. The church of S. Saviour in the Chora was the first Christian sanctuary to fall into the hands of the Moslem masters of Constantinople. The building was converted into a mosque by Ali Atik Pasha, Grand Vizier, between 1495 and 1511, in the reign of Bajazet II. Gyllius visited the church in 1580, and expatiates upon the beauty of its marble revetment, but makes no reference to its mosaics and frescoes.[536] This, some authorities think, proves that these decorations were then concealed from view, because objectionable in a place consecrated to Moslem worship. But the silence of the traveller may be due to the brevity of his description of the church. There is evidence that the building has suffered much since the Turkish conquest from earthquake and from fire, but the precise dates of these disasters cannot be accurately determined. The mosque disappeared from general view until 1860, when it was discovered by a Greek architect, the late Pelopidas D. Kouppas. Mr. Carlton Cumberbatch, then the British Consul at Constantinople, was informed of the fact and spread the news of the fortunate find. The building was in a pitiful condition. The principal dome and the dome of the diaconicon had fallen in; the walls and vaults were cracked in many places and black with smoke; wind, and rain, and snow had long had free course to do what mischief they pleased. Happily there still remained too much beauty to be ignored, and the Government was persuaded to take the work of restoration in hand. The building now takes rank with the most interesting sights of the capital, presenting one of the finest embodiments of the ideal which inspired Byzantine art. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING NORTH-WEST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE OUTER NARTHEX, LOOKING SOUTH. _To face page 304._] _Architectural Features_ As the history of the church prepares us to expect, the building presents a very irregular plan. The central area is a short-armed Greek cross surmounted by a dome, and terminating to the east in a large apse flanked by side chapels now disconnected from it. To the west are two narthexes, on the south a parecclesion, and on the north a gallery in two stories. [Illustration: FIG. 99.] As the central part of the church is the oldest and of the greatest interest, the description will begin with the interior, and deal afterwards with the later exterior accretions. Only two doors lead from the inner narthex to the church, one of them in the centre of the axis and the other to the north. The absence of the corresponding and customary third door, for which there is space on the south side, should be noticed, as it throws light on the original plan of the building. The doors are beautifully treated with marble mouldings and panelled ingoes; the door to the north recalls the sculptured door in the south gallery of S. Sophia, but, unfortunately, the carved work of the panels has been destroyed. Above the central door, on the interior, is a porphyry cornice carved with peacocks drinking at fountains (Plate LXXXVII.). Large portions of the beautiful marble revetment on the walls of the church happily remain intact, and nowhere else in Constantinople, except in S. Sophia, can this splendid method of colour decoration be studied to greater advantage. Slabs of various marbles have been split and placed on the walls so as to form patterns in the veining. The lower part is designed as a dado in Proconessian striped marble, with upright posts of dark red at the angles and at intervals on the longer stretches of wall, and rests on a moulded marble base. Above the dado are two bands, red and green, separated from the dado and from each other by white fillets. The upper part is filled in with large panels, especially fine slabs of brown, green, or purple having been selected to form the centre panels. The plainer slabs of the side panels are framed in red or green borders, and outlined with fillets of white marble either plain or carved with the 'bead and reel.' The arches have radiating voussoirs, and the arch spandrils and the frieze under the cornice are inlaid with scroll and geometrical designs in black, white, and coloured marbles. The cornice is of grey marble with a 'cyma recta' section, and is carved with an upright leaf.[537] On the eastern walls of the north and south cross arms, and flanking the apse, eikon frames similar to those in the Diaconissa (p. 186) are inserted. The northern frame encloses a mosaic figure of Christ holding in His hands an open book, on which are the words, 'Come unto Me all ye who labour and are heavy laden.'[538] In the corresponding frame to the south is the figure of the Virgin, and, above it, an arch of overhanging acanthus leaves enclosed within a square frame with half figures of angels in the spandrils. The arch encloses a medallion bust, the head of which is defaced, but which represented the Saviour, as is proved by the indication of a cross on the aureola. The spaces at the sides of the medallion are filled in with a pierced scroll showing a dark slab of porphyry behind it, making a very beautiful arrangement. These frames are distant from the eikonostasis, which stretched across the front of the bema arch, nearer to the apse. On the south side are two doors leading to the parecclesion, and on the north side above the cornice is a small window from the north gallery. The dome rests on a ribbed drum of sixteen concave segments, and is pierced by eight windows corresponding to the octagonal form of the exterior. The original crown has fallen and been replaced by the present plain Turkish dome. The prothesis and the diaconicon are represented by chapels to north and south of the apse. As already stated, they do not now communicate with the bema, although the position of the old passages between them and the bema is marked by niches in the marble revetment. From the fact that the Byzantine marble work is continued across these passages it is evident that the chapels were cut off from the apse in Byzantine days. The north chapel is covered by a drum dome of eight concave sections, and is entered from the lower story of the gallery on the north side of the church. It should be noticed that the chapel is not placed axially to this gallery. The south chapel is covered by a plain drum dome, and is now entered from the parecclesion, evidently as the result of the alterations made when the parecclesion was added. The exterior is very simply treated. The side apses show three sides of an octagon. The central apse has five sides of a very flat polygon, and is decorated with hollow niches on each side of a large triple window. It was at one time supported by a large double flying buttress, but the lower arch has fallen in. As the buttress does not bond with the wall it was evidently a later addition. The inner narthex is entered from the outer narthex by a door to the west. It is with its resplendent marble revetment and brilliant mosaics a singularly perfect and beautiful piece of work, one of the finest gems of Byzantine Art. It is divided into four bays, and is not symmetrically placed to the church. The door stands opposite to the large door of the church and is in the central axis of the building. The bay which it occupies and that immediately to the north are covered by dome vaults resting on strong transverse arches and shallow segmental wall arches.[539] The northern end bay is covered with a drum dome of sixteen hollow segments pierced by eight windows. The bay to the south of the door is considerably larger than the other bays, and is covered by a dome similar in character to that over the northern end bay but of greater diameter. At the south end of the narthex a small door leads to the return bay of the outer narthex in front of the parecclesion. The double-storied annex or gallery on the north of the building is entered by a door in the north bay of the inner narthex. The lower story is covered by a barrel vault with strong transverse arches at intervals. Its door to the outside at the west end is now built up. At the east end a door, unsymmetrically placed, leads to the small chapel which was originally the prothesis. This story of the gallery seems never to have had windows. The upper story, reached by a stone stair at the west end in the thickness of the external wall, is paved in red tiles, covered with a barrel vault, and lighted by two small windows in the north wall and one at the east end. These windows still show grooves and bolt holes for casement windows or shutters opening inwards in two leaves (Figs. 19, 100). In the south wall is the little window overlooking the church. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVI. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. EIKON FRAME ON THE SOUTH-EASTERN PIER.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE INTERIOR, LOOKING EAST. _To face page 308._] The outer narthex has a single door to the exterior, placed on the central axial line, and is planned symmetrically. The central bay is larger than the others, and is covered by a dome vault resting on shallow wall arches. On each side are two bays covered by similar dome vaults, but as the bays are oblong, the wall arches are brought forward strongly so as to give a form more approaching the square as a base for the dome. The transverse arches are strongly pronounced and have wooden tie beams. At the south end two bays are returned to form an entrance to the parecclesion. In these the transverse arches are even more strongly marked and rest on marble columns set against shallow pilasters. The cubical capitals are of white marble and very beautifully carved with figures of angels and acanthus wreaths. Any marble revetment which may once have covered the walls has disappeared, but mosaics depicting scenes in the Saviour's life still decorate the vaulting and the lunettes of the arches, whilst figures of saints appear upon the soffits. The mosaics are damaged and have lost some of their brilliancy; the background is of gold, and the mosaic cubes are small, averaging about 1/8 to 3/16 of an inch. [Illustration: FIG. 100.] The parecclesion is entered from the return bays of the outer narthex through a triple arcade, now partly built up. The capitals of the columns are Byzantine Corinthian, and retain sufficient traces of their former decoration in dark blue, gold, and red to give some idea of the effect of colour on marble in Byzantine churches. The parecclesion is in two bays. The western bay is covered by a high twelve-sided drum dome, with windows in each side separated by flat ribs. In the compartments are figures of the archangels in tempera, with the legend, 'Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God.' The eastern bay is covered by a dome vault, and terminates in an apse semicircular within and lighted by a triple window. It has neither prothesis nor diaconicon of its own, but communicates with the original diaconicon of the main church. The three transverse arches in the bay are tied with wooden tie beams carved with arabesques and retaining traces of gilding. On the north and south walls of the western bay are large arches enclosed in square frames and with finely carved archivolts. Above the south arch is a slab inscribed with the epitaph to the memory of the celebrated general Tornikes. There are no indications of an entrance under the arch. It may have covered a niche, now built up, intended to receive a tomb, possibly the tomb of the sebastocrator Isaac. The archivolt of the arch in the north wall is formed of acanthus leaves turned over at the points; the spandrils are filled with the figures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel, bearing appropriate emblems, and above the crown of the arch is a small bust of Christ. In both arches the carved work is exactly like that of the eikon frame in the south-eastern pier of the church, and closely resembles the work on the lintel of the eikon frames in the church of the Diaconissa. Both archivolts were originally coloured, the background blue, the carved ornament gilt. The use of figures in the decoration of the church is remarkable. They are in bold relief and executed freely, but shown only from the waist up. The windows, like those in the outer narthex, have a central arch between two semi-circles (Fig. 63). [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVII. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. INTERIOR CORNICE OVER MAIN DOOR OF THE CHURCH.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. ARCHIVOLT ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE PARECCLESION.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. WINDOW HEADS IN THE CENTRAL APSE. _To face page 310._] Two passages, which cut through the north wall, lead from the parecclesion to the church. Off the passage to the west is a small chamber whose use is not apparent. It may be simply a space left over when the chapel was added. Higher up, in the thickness of the wall, about ten feet from the floor, and a little above the springing level of the vaulting in the parecclesion, is a long, narrow passage, lighted by a window at the east end, and covered by a small barrel vault, corbelled at the springing, on two courses of stone and three courses of brick laid horizontally, thus narrowing the space to a considerable degree. From this corbelling spring the vaulting courses, which are steeply inclined and run from both ends to the centre, where the resultant diamond-shaped opening is filled in with horizontal courses (Fig. 48). On the north side of the passage is a broad opening roughly built up, but which seems originally to have communicated with the south cross arm. The opening is almost central to the cross-arm, and is directly above the doors leading from the church to the parecclesion. The exterior of the parecclesion and the outer narthex are treated with arcades in two orders of the usual type. On the piers of the arcades are semicircular shafts which in the parecclesion rise to the cornice, but on the west front stop at the springing course. Here they may have supported the wooden roof of a cloister or porch. The apse of the parecclesion has five sides with angle shafts and niches, alternately flat and concave in three stories. The north wall is a fine example of simple masonry in stripes of brick and stone, and with small archings and zigzag patterns in the spandrils of the arches. Below the parecclesion are two long narrow cisterns having their entrance on the outside of the apse.[540] _The original plan of the church_ (Fig. 102). The greater part of the alterations made in the church date from Byzantine times, and the marble coverings then placed upon the walls have effectually covered up any traces which might have given a clue to the original form of the building. In consequence any attempt at restoration must be of a very tentative character. It is evident that there has been a serious movement in the structure due to the weight of the dome and the thrust of the dome arches, for the walls below the dome are bent outwards in a very pronounced manner. It was in order to check this movement that the flying buttress was applied to the apse, and in all probability the enormous thickness of the walls surrounding the central cross is due to the same cause. Had the walls originally been as thick as at present it is hard to imagine that movement could have taken place. The axial line from east to west, passing through the doors of both narthexes, divides the present building into two dissimilar parts. We know that the parecclesion is a later addition, and if it be removed and the plan of the north side repeated to the south the resulting plan bears a striking resemblance to S. Sophia at Salonica (Fig. 101). The position of the prothesis and diaconicon in particular is identical in the two churches. Some proof that this was the original form of the building is given by the small chamber in the wall thickness between the church and the parecclesion. For it corresponds to the angle of the south 'aisle,' and on its west wall is a vertical break in the masonry which may be the jamb of the old door to the narthex. This plan gives a narthex in five bays--the three centre ones low, the two outer covered by domes and leading to the 'aisles.' When the parecclesion was added, the south gallery and two bays of the inner narthex were swept away. The third door leading into the church was built up, and the present large domed bay added to the shortened narthex. [Illustration: FIG. 101.--S. SOPHIA, SALONICA.] Traces of the older structure remain in the wall between the church and the parecclesion. The space already described, which originally opened from the passage at the higher level to the south cross-arm, corresponds in width both to the window above and to the space occupied by the doors below. At S. Sophia, Salonica, the side-arms are filled in with arcades in two stories forming an aisle and gallery. This is the normal domed basilica construction. Here, if we regard the floor of the upper passage (B on plan, p. 318) as the remains of the old gallery floor,--and no other view seems to account for its existence,--the internal elevation was in three stories, an aisle at the ground level, above it a gallery, and above that, in the arch tympanum, a triple window. Such an arrangement is, so far as we know, unique in a small church, but it is the arrangement used in S. Sophia, Constantinople, and may well have been derived from that church. The opening is only about one-half of the space, leaving a broad pier at each side. In this it differs from S. Sophia, Salonica, but such side piers are present in S. Sophia, Constantinople. The diagrams show a restoration of the plan and internal bay based on these conclusions (Figs. 102, 103). [Illustration: FIG. 102.--S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA (restored plan).] The gallery on the north side is an addition. The character of the brickwork and of the windows is later than the central church, but the lack of windows on the ground floor suggests that the 'aisle' was originally lighted from the body of the church. The vaulting gives no clue, nor are there traces of an opening in the wall between the 'aisle' and the church. The floor level is much higher than that of the passage 'B' (p. 318) on the opposite side, and seems to be a new level introduced when the addition was made and the wall thickened. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVIII. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. EAST END OF THE PARECCLESION.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. CAPITAL AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE PARECCLESION. _To face page 314._] If these conclusions are correct the church was originally a domed basilica resembling S. Sophia, Salonica, in plan and S. Sophia, Constantinople, in elevation. The side dome arches had double arcades in two stories, and above them windows in the dome arches. There are at present no traces of a western gallery, but such may have existed below the present west windows. Later in the history of the church came alterations, which included the ribbed domes and the gallery on the north side. The side aisles still communicated with the church and the lateral chapels with the bema. [Illustration: FIG. 103.--S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA (restored bay).] The filling up of the arcades, the thickening of the walls, the isolation of the lateral chapels, the removal of the southern aisle, the alteration of the narthex, the building of the parecclesion and outer narthex, and most of the decoration which forms the glory of the church, belong to the great work of restoration by Theodore Metochites early in the fourteenth century. The representation of the church in the mosaic panel above the large door to the church shows a building with a central dome, a narthex terminating in domed bays, and a window in the west dome arch. It seems to represent the church as the artist was accustomed to see it previous to the additions (Fig. 115). Plain cross plans, or cross plans with only one lateral gallery, are not unknown. The church of the Archangels, Sygé,[541] shows such a plan and is here reproduced for purposes of comparison. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIX. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE PARECCLESION, LOOKING SOUTH-EAST.] [Illustration: S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. THE PARECCLESION, LOOKING WEST. _To face page 316._] [Illustration: FIG. 104.--CHURCH OF THE ARCHANGELS AT SYGÉ.] [Illustration: FIG. 105.] [Illustration: FIGS. 106 AND 107.] [Illustration: FIGS. 108 AND 109.] [Illustration: FIGS. 110, 111, 112, AND 113.] [501] Vol. i. p. 459. [502] Synax., Sept. 4, [Greek: pistoi de tines eusebeis nyktos elthontes kai ta leipsana en akatiô embalontes eis to Byzantion diakomizousi kai en tô boreiô merei exô teicheôn en trisi larnaxi katathentes, entha esti monê Chôra eponomazomenê, doxan kai eucharistian tô Theô anepempsan]. [503] _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos_ of C.P. vol. xxiv., 1896, Supplement, p. 33. [504] Vol. iii. p. 172. [505] P. 36. [506] Paspates, p. 326. [507] Synax., Sept. 4. [508] Banduri, iii. p. 54, [Greek: chôrion ên ekeise exô tou Byzantiou.] [509] De aed. p. 121, [Greek: eklêthê de chôra dioti tôn Byzantiôn chôrion ên ekei, katha kai hê tou Stoudiou monê, exô tês poleôs hypêrchen.] [510] Written in the second quarter of the ninth century. [511] Supplement to vol. xxiv. of the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._ p. 23. Cf. Schmitt, p. 28. [512] In his great monograph on Kahrié Jamissi published by the Russian Institute of Constantinople, 1906. [513] Mansi, _Sacrorum Conciliorum Collectio_, tomus viii. col. 906, col. 882, [Greek: tou hagiou Michaêl tôn Charisiou: tês epiklên tôn Charisiou]. [514] Banduri, iii. p. 54; Codinus. De aed. p. 121 [Greek: hê chôra prôton men euktêrion ên, Priskos ho eparchos kai gambros tou Phôka tou tyrannou perioristheis ekei para tou idiou ektise tautên monên eis kallos kai megethos, apocharisamenos kai ktêmata polla]. [515] Niceph. Greg. iii. p. 459. [516] Schmitt, p. 28. [517] Theoph. pp. 554, 556; Synax. _ad diem_; Cedrenus, i. p. 784. [518] Theoph. pp. 626-680; Synax., May 12. [519] Theoph. pp. 647-8. [520] _Life of Michael Syncellus_, p. 31, in supplement to vol. xxiv. of the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of C.P._; cf. Schmitt, p. 251. [521] _Life of Michael Syncellus_, _ut supra_, pp. 30, 31. [522] See supplement to vol. xxiv. of the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of Constantinople_, p. 33; cf. Schmitt, pp. 257-8. [523] Niceph. Greg. iii. p. 459. [524] _Ibid._ i. p. 459. [525] The manuscript was discovered in the Seraglio Library by Professor T. Uspenski, and has been photographically reproduced by the Russian Institute of Constantinople. [526] The inscription has been injured. It now reads:-- [Symbol: cross.][Greek: ho .. os tou psêlo .. tou ... sileôs ... ... xiou ... .. ou ...] See Schmitt, pp. 38-39, who restores the inscription thus: [Greek: ho hyios tou hypsêlotatou basileôs Alexiou tou Komnênou]. [527] See Schmitt, pp. 39-40. [528] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 459. [529] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 459. [Greek: houtos habrotera chrêsamenos dexia, plên tou mesaitatou neô panta kalôs epeskeuase], cf. ii. p. 1045. [530] _Theodori Metochitae carmina_, ed. Treu. A 1004, _et passim_. [531] Niceph. Greg. i. p. 303 [Greek: arti tou neourgein epepauto tên tês Chôras monên, hopsos ho endon etynchane kosmos]. [532] Niceph. Greg. ii. pp. 1045-6. [533] Niceph. Greg. iii. p. 243. [534] Cantacuzene, i. p. 54. [535] Cantacuzene, ii. p. 209. [536] _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 4:--Inter palatium Constantini et portam urbis Adrianopolitanam extat ædes in septimo (?) colle, quæ etsi jam tot secula sit intra urbem tamen etiamnum [Greek: christos chôras] appellatur, ex eo, quod olim esset extra urbem. Ex tribus partibus, ut mos est Græcorum ædium sacrarum, porticu cingitur. Parietes ejus intrinsecus vestiti crustis marmoris varii quadratis, ita inter se conjunctis ut distinguantur ab immo sursum versus modulis astragalorum, aliorum baccatorum, aliorum ter etiam sine baccis. Supra quadratas crustas discurrunt tres fasciæ et tres velut astragali, quorum duo teretes, supremus quadratus velut regula. Supra fasciam, denticuli; supra denticulos, folia Corinthia. Denique marmor sic mensulis distinguitur ut in commissuris eluceat labor Corinthicus. Sed is plenior apparet in æde Sophiæ. [537] Cf. description by Gyllius, _De top. C.P._ iv. c. 4. [538] [Greek: deute pros me pantes hoi kopiôntes kai pephortismenoi kagô]....--Matt. xi. 28. [539] For the description of these vaults see p. 22. [540] Schmitt (_op. cit._ pp. 92-94) maintains that the parecclesion was originally the refectory of the monastery. But a refectory there would occupy a very unusual position. Nor do the frescoes on the walls of the parecclesion correspond to the decoration of the refectory with representations of flowers and of Christ's miracles, as described by Theodore Metochites: ... [Greek: kekosmêatai anthesi poikiloi i te poulychrouoisi te baphôn ... kai te diaperes apêgeatai mystêria thôymata Christou]. [541] F. W. Hasluck. Bithynica, _B.S.A. Annual XIII._, 1906-7. CHAPTER XXIV THE MOSAICS IN S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA As stated already, the mosaics on the vaults and lunettes of the arches in the outer narthex of the church portray scenes from the life of Christ, as recorded in the canonical and the apocryphal Gospels, while on the faces and soffits of the arches are depicted the figures of saints 'who desired to look into these things.' Scenes from the Saviour's life are also portrayed in the two bays to the west of the parecclesion, and in the domes and southern bay of the inner narthex. Inscriptions on the mosaics explain the subjects depicted. The scenes will be described according to the groups they form in the compartments of the narthex. [Illustration: FIG. 114.--PLAN OF THE NARTHEXES OF THE CHURCH, INDICATING POSITION OF THEIR MOSAICS.] [Illustration: PLATE XC. (1) S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. MOSAIC REPRESENTING THE MIRACLE OF WATER TURNED INTO WINE. THE DATE 6811 (A.D. 1303), IN ARABIC NUMERALS, IS ABOVE THE LAST FIGURE ON THE RIGHT. _Sebah and Joaillier._ (2) S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. MOSAIC REPRESENTING THE CARESSING OF MARY BY HER PARENTS, AND THE BLESSING OF MARY BY PRIESTS AT A BANQUET. _To face page 322._] OUTER NARTHEX _First Bay (at the north end)._ 1. In the northern lunette.--The angel announcing to Joseph, in a dream, the birth of Jesus. To the right, journey of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Simon the son of Joseph walks ahead, carrying a bundle. In the background, meeting of Mary and Elizabeth. 2. In the eastern lunette.--The registration of Joseph and Mary at Bethlehem before Cyrenius. (Said to be unique in the East.[542]) On the arch over the eastern lunette.--Busts (in medallions) of SS. Mardarius, Auxentius (only one letter of the name remains), SS. Eustratius, Orestes. 3. On the western lunette.--The Holy Family on the way to the first passover of Jesus at Jerusalem. On the arch over the western lunette.--The busts (in medallions) of SS. Anempodistus, Elpidephorus, Akindynus, Aphthonius, Pegasius. 4. In the vault.--The scene has disappeared. Possibly it represented Jesus among the doctors in the temple. 5. On the soffit of the transverse arch, between the first and second bays.--To the east, S. Andronicus; to the west, S. Tarachus. _Second Bay_ 6. In the eastern lunette.--The birth of Jesus. In the background, to left, the angel appearing to the shepherds; to right, the magi beholding the star shining over the manger in which lies the Holy Child, while an ox and an ass feed in it. In the centre, Mary on a couch. In the foreground, to left, two women bathing the Holy Child; to the right, Joseph seated on the ground and gazing at the Holy Child. On the arch above the eastern lunette.--The busts (in medallions) of SS. Philemon, Leukius, Kallinikus, Thyrsus, Apollonius. 7. In the western lunette.--Return of the Holy Family from Egypt to Nazareth. In the arch above the western lunette.--The busts (in medallions) of SS. Engraphus (?), Menas, Hermogenes, Laurus, Florus, Menas, Victor, Vikentius. 8. In the vault.--The baptism of Jesus; the scenes in the temptation of Jesus. 9. On the second transverse arch.--To the east, S. George; to the west, S. Demetrius. _The Third or Central Bay_ 10. In the eastern lunette, over the door leading to the inner narthex.--Christ in the act of benediction. 11. In the western lunette.--The Theotokos, in the attitude of prayer, with the Holy Child, in a nimbus, on her breast; the legend [Greek: MR THY HÊ CHÔRA TOU ACHÔRETOU] (the country of the Infinite); on the right and left, an angel. 12. In the vault.--In the north-eastern corner, the miracle of water turned into wine. The date 1303, in Arabic numerals, is on this mosaic. In the south-eastern corner, the miracle of the loaves. These mosaics, placed on either side of the figure of Christ, are emblems of His character as the Giver of Life. In the north-western corner.--The sacrifice of a white bullock. In the south-eastern corner.--The second miracle of the loaves. 13. On the third transverse arch.--Two saints, not named. _The Fourth Bay_ 14. In the eastern lunette.--To the left, the magi, on horseback, guided by a star, on their way to Jerusalem; to the right, the magi before Herod. On the arch above.--The busts (in medallions) of SS. Abibus, Ghourias, Samonas. 15. In the western lunette.--Elizabeth fleeing with her child John from a soldier who pursues her with a drawn sword in his hand. The scenes in the vault have disappeared. 16. On the fourth transverse arch.--Two saints, not named. _The Fifth Bay_ 17. In the eastern lunette.--Herod inquiring of the priests where the Christ should be born. The busts of three saints on the arch above have disappeared. 18. In the western lunette.--Mothers at Bethlehem seated on the ground, and mourning the death of their infant children. The mosaics in other parts of this bay have disappeared. _The Outer Bay fronting the parecclesion_ In the eastern pendentive.--To the left (19) the healing of a paralytic; to the right (20) the healing of the man sick of the dropsy. 21. In the western pendentive.--To the left, the healing of another paralytic; to the right, Christ with the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar; in the lunette, the massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem. 22. In the southern lunette.--To the left, Herod orders the massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem; to the right, the massacre of the Innocents. The other mosaics in this bay have disappeared. _The Inner Bay fronting the parecclesion_ 23. In the vault.--In the south-western corner. Uncertain. Possibly, the fall of the idols in Egypt at the presence of the Holy Child; to the south of that scene, Zacchaeus on the sycamore tree. INNER NARTHEX _First Bay (at the south end of the narthex)_ 24. On the soffit of the first transverse arch.--To the east, the healing of the man with a withered arm; to the west, the healing of a leper. _South Dome_ 25. In the crown.--Christ the Pantokrator. In the flutings, thirty-nine figures, arranged in two tiers, representing the ancestors of Christ from Adam to Esrom, Japhet, and the eleven sons of Jacob not in the line of ancestry. 26. On the south-eastern pendentive.--The healing of the woman with a bloody issue. 27. On the north-eastern pendentive.--The healing of Peter's mother-in-law. 28. On the south-western pendentive.--The healing of a deaf and dumb man. 29. On the north-western pendentive.--The healing of two blind men at Jericho. 30. On the eastern wall below the dome, colossal figures of Mary and Christ, technically named the Deësis. 31. On the opposite wall.--Christ healing divers diseases. The mosaics in the three other bays of this narthex depict scenes in the life of Mary as described in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of S. James and other apocryphal Gospels.[543] _First Bay (at northern end).--The North Dome_ 32. In the centre.--The Theotokos; in the flutings, twenty-seven figures arranged in two tiers representing sixteen royal ancestors of Christ, from David to Salathiel, and Melchisedec, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Daniel, Joshua, Moses, Aaron, Ur, Samuel, Job. 33. In the north-eastern pendentive.--The scene has disappeared. 34. In the south-eastern pendentive.--S. Joachim (Mary's father) with his sheep in the desert, praying and mourning that his offerings have been rejected because he was childless. 35. In the north-western pendentive.--The High Priest judging Mary. 36. In the south-western pendentive.--The Annunciation to Mary. 37. In the eastern lunette below the dome.--The Annunciation to S. Anna, the mother of Mary. 38. On the soffit of the transverse arch between the first and second bays.--To the east, the meeting of S. Anna and S. Joachim; to the west, Joseph taking leave of Mary before his home, and proceeding to his work in another part of the country, accompanied by a servant. _Second Bay_ 39. In the eastern lunette.--The birth of Mary. 40. In the western lunette.--Joseph receiving the rod which marks him the successful suitor for Mary's hand, and taking her as his bride-elect. 41. In the vault.--To the east, Mary held in the arms of S. Joachim, receiving the blessing of three priests seated at a banquet; to the west, the child Mary caressed by her parents. This scene shows much feeling. 42. On the soffit of the transverse arch.--To the east, Mary taking her first seven steps [Greek: hê heptabêmatizousa]; to the west, the high priest praying before the rods, one of which, by blossoming, will designate the future husband of Mary. 43. On the eastern wall, to the north of the main entrance into the church.--The Apostle Peter with the keys in his hand. _The Third Bay_ 44. In the lunette over the main entrance to the church.--Theodore Metochites on his knees offering the church to Christ seated on a throne. The legend [Greek: ho ktêtôr logothetês tou gennikou Theodôros ho Metochitês].[544] [Illustration: PLATE XCI. _Sebah and Joaillier._ (1) S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. MOSAIC REPRESENTING THE REGISTRATION OF JOSEPH AND MARY AT BETHLEHEM. _Sebah and Joaillier._ (2) S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. MOSAIC REPRESENTING THEODORE METOCHITES OFFERING THE CHURCH TO CHRIST. _To face page 326._] 45. In the western lunette.--Mary receiving purple and scarlet wool to weave in the veil of the temple. 46. In the vault.--On the east, Mary admitted to the Holy of Holies when three years of age, lest she should go back to the world; on the west, the procession of maidens escorting Mary to the temple. 47. The third transverse arch.--To the east, Mary in the temple receiving bread from the archangel Gabriel; to the west, Mary in the temple receiving instruction. 48. On the eastern wall, to the south side of the main entrance to the church.--The Apostle Paul. [Illustration: FIG. 115.--MODEL OF THE CHURCH OF S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA.] The scenes represented on these mosaics are not peculiar to this church, but are a selection from cycles of subjects which from the eleventh century became favourite themes for pictorial treatment on the walls of important churches in the Byzantine world. Several of these scenes are found portrayed also at Daphni, Mistra, S. Sophia at Kiev, in the churches of Mt. Athos, on diptychs and manuscripts,[545] as well as in the chapel of the arena at Padua. The cycle of subjects taken from the life of Mary was developed mainly in Syria, and Schmitt[546] goes so far as to maintain that the mosaics of the Chora are copies of Syrian mosaics executed by a Syrian artist, when the church was restored in the ninth century by Michael Syncellus, who, it will be remembered, came from Syria. Kondakoff assigns most of the mosaics to the Comnenian restoration of the church by Maria Ducaena in the eleventh or twelfth century. One of them at least, the Deësis, has survived; and there may be others of that period, for, as that mosaic proves, the narthex of the church was decorated when the church was restored by that benefactress of the Chora. But the testimony of Nicephorus Gregoras,[547] of Theodore Metochites,[548] and the date marked on the scene representing the miracle of the wine at Cana, on the right of the figure of Christ over the door leading from the outer to the inner narthex, prove these mosaics to be as a whole the production of the fourteenth century. And this conclusion is confirmed by their unlikeness to mosaic work in the twelfth century, and by their affinity to other work of the same character done in the fourteenth century.[549] In fact, the mosaics in the Chora represent a remarkable revival in the history of Byzantine art. They are characterised by a comparative freedom from tradition, by closer approximation to reality and nature, by a charm and a sympathetic quality, and by a scheme of colour that indicate the coming of a new age and spirit. Curiously enough, they are contemporary with the frescoes of Giotto at Padua (1303-1306). But whatever points of similarity may be detected between them and the work of the Italian artist, or between them and the Italian school before Giotto, should be explained as due to a common stock of traditions and to the simultaneous awakening of a new intellectual and artistic life in the East and the West, rather than to any direct influence of one school of art upon another. The mosaics of the Chora are thoroughly Byzantine.[550] The Frescoes in the Parecclesion:-- 1. Round the apse: Six Fathers of the Church (only one figure remains, and that badly damaged. No names are inscribed). 2. In the vault of the apse: a full-length figure of Christ in a vesica dotted with stars. On either side are groups of figures. 3. In the crown of the apse-arch: an angel in a medallion. 4. In the northern wall, next the apse: Christ with two attendants; in the background a walled city. The Eastern Bay. On the northern wall: 5. Above the arched recess: two medallion heads of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. 6. Portions of the figure of a warrior. 7. In the arch above Nos. 5 and 6: the Gate of Paradise. 8. In the centre, one of the cherubims on a pillar. On the left hand, a multitude, painted on black background outside Paradise; on the right, Paradise, a garden full of trees on a white background. Here also are John the Baptist and a figure, probably the Virgin and Child, on a throne, attended by two angels. [Illustration: FIG. 116.--PLAN OF THE PARECCLESION, INDICATING POSITIONS OF ITS FRESCOES.] On the southern wall: 8. A portion of the figure of an armed angel. Above No. 8 and at the side of the window: 9. Two men carrying a bier or platform. In front of them a third person giving directions. 10. In the arched recess: full-length figures of Andronicus II. and his family. In the soffit of the arch, the head of Christ in a medallion, with rays issuing from behind the aureola. 11. and 12. In the spandrils above the recess: two heads in medallions. 13. In the dome vault: the Last Judgment. Christ in judgment fills the centre; behind Him are the twenty-four elders seated on a long throne; farther back is gathered the heavenly host. [Illustration: PLATE XCII. S. SAVIOUR IN THE CHORA. ARCHIVOLT ON THE SOUTH WALL OF THE PARECCLESION, WITH THE EPITAPH IN HONOUR OF TORNIKES. _To face page 330._] 14. On the north-eastern pendentive: the Virgin and Child in a Paradise, with trees on a white background. 15. On the south-eastern pendentive: the Mouth of Hell. 16. On the south pilaster of the dome: an armed angel. 17. Above that angel, on the arch: a man bearing the Seven-Branched Candlestick, and beside him another man bearing with both hands some object above his head, perhaps the Table of Shew Bread. 18. On the northern pilaster: a warrior. 19. In the centre of the arch: the Head of Christ in a medallion. The Western Bay. 20. At the south-western corner where the wall is much damaged, a saint. 21. Above No. 20, to the west of the window: Christ appearing to His disciples. 22. To the east of the window, an indistinct scene, perhaps the Entombment. 23. At the north-western corner: S. Samona. 24. A saint, not named. 25. Over the door two saints, one of whom holds a cross. 26. The northern archway: In the centre is the door to the narrow passage between the parecclesion and the church. To the left, Jacob's Ladder; to the right, Moses at the Burning Bush. In the bush is a medallion of the Virgin and Child, and from the bush an angel addresses Moses, who holds his veil in his hand. 27, 28, 29, 30. In the pendentives of the dome: the Four Evangelists sitting at desks. 31. The dome is divided into twelve segments by ribs, and is pierced by twelve windows. Above each window is an angel holding a spear, and below him is the legend 'Holy.' In the crown are the Virgin and Child in a medallion. 32. A saint holding a small cross; below, in the south wall, the archivolt with the epitaph to Tornikes above it. 33. A warrior saint with his sword and shield. 34. Above Nos. 32 and 33 on the arch, a figure, clad in a white mantle and blue robe with a scroll in his hand, points to an angel, who holds his drawn sword in the right hand and the scabbard in the left hand, and seems to be attacking several persons in the right-hand corner. Behind him is a walled and fortified city, probably Jericho. 35. On the north wall: S. Eutadius. 36. The Adoration by the magi. 37, 38. On the west wall: the figures of two saints, not named. Epitaph in honour of Tornikes:-- [Greek: hosous an hathroizoi tis enthade krotous nekrous ho tapheis exelenxei Tornikês, ho tris aristeus ê konstaulos megas, hôsper mimous, beltiste, pithêkous leon. hos, basilikôn apotechtheis haimatôn, 5 pareschen autois prosphyê kai ton tropon. poion gar ouk ên aretês eidos pherôn, hôs ho prepôn hekaston ezêtei chronos? boulêphoros d' oun, kai pro tês hêlikias kai dêmagôgos, kai kritês ên anchinous. 10 kai pros men echthrous taktikên epnei phloga, keraunos ôn aphyktos autois athroois, tê de stratia patrikôs epestatei, phrourôn ta koina, mê klapê to sympheron. kêdous de tychôn eugenous kai kosmiou 15 kai basilikon proslabôn authis genos kai lampron hypodeigma pareis ton bion, keitai monastês eutelês en osteois. hêlie kai gê kai teleutaioi krotoi. penthei de mikrou pan to Rhômaiôn genos, 20 hoson per auton agnooun ou tynchanei. all' ô mone, zôn kai methistôn tas physeis, ei pou ti kai peprachen autô mê prepon lysin paraschôn tên Eden klêron didou.] In line 7 the inscription reads *[Greek: phcrôn]* instead of [Greek: pherôn]; in line 23 *[Greek: propon]* for [Greek: prepon]. Good Friend! However many dead applauses (celebrities) One may collect here, The entombed Tornikes, who was thrice a foremost man or Grand Constable, Will put them to shame as a lion will put to shame mimicking apes. He who was by birth of royal blood, Presented also a manner of life conformed to that descent. For what form of virtue did he not possess Such as the fitting occasion demanded each? Therefore he was a councillor before the usual age, And a popular leader and an acute judge, And upon enemies he breathed a strategic flame (such as military rules required), And was an irresistible thunderbolt upon their serried ranks. He presided over the army like a father, Guarding the commonweal lest any advantage to it should be stolen. Contracting a highly-born and seemly marriage connection, And securing thus again royal affinity,[551] And leaving his life as a splendid example, He lies a poor monk among bones! O sun, O earth, O final applauses! Well-nigh the whole Roman race laments him, As much of it as is not ignorant of him. But O only living One and transformer of natures, If perchance he did aught that was not fitting for him, Granting him pardon, give him Eden as his inheritance.[552] [542] Diehl, _Études byzantines: Les mosaïques de Kahrié Djami_. [543] An English translation of the Protoevangelium is found in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xvi. [544] The remarkable head-dress he wears was given him as a special distinction by the Emperor Andronicus II. Palaeologus. The poet Philes (ode 41 in the appendix to vol. ii. of his works, lines 117-19) says [Greek: phorounta chrysên erythran tên kalyptran hên dôron autô synanechonti kratos Anax ho lampros Andronikos paresche]. [545] A work reproducing, under the Pope's authority, the eighty-two miniatures illustrating the _Life of the Madonna_, which was composed by a monk James in the twelfth century (_Cod. Vatic. Gr._ 1162), is announced (Danesi, Editore, Roma, 1911), with a preface and descriptions of the miniatures by Cosimo Stornajolo. The miniatures are said to rival those of the Greek Codex 1028 in the National Library in Paris. [546] _Op. cit._ pp. 134-41. [547] i. p. 303. [548] _Carmina_ (ed. Treu), A. 1004, 1039-1042; B. 322-334. [549] Diehl, _Études byzantines: Les mosaïques de Kahrié Djami_. [550] See on the whole subject, C. Diehl, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, troisième période, tome 33, and in his _Manuel d'art byzantin_, pp. 732-41; Schmitt in his monograph on the Chora; Mühlmann, _Archiv für christliche Kunst_, 1886-87. [551] Alludes to his marriage with a relative of the imperial family. [552] In the translation I have been assisted by Sir W. M. Ramsay, Professor Bury, and Mr. E. M. Antoniadi. The meaning of [Greek: teleutaioi krotoi] is not clear. Various interpretations have been suggested; to read [Greek: brotoi], mortals, instead of [Greek: krotoi], and to construe [Greek: teleutaioi] adverbially, 'finally, O mortals!'; to understand a reference to the judgment day, 'O applauses given at the final judgment'; to take the phrase as equivalent to, 'O celebrities at (or to) the very end of time'; to understand it as signifying the eulogies actually given to the deceased by the poet. Professor Tendès, of Athens, whom I thank for his courtesy in this connection, suggests that the meaning is similar to that of the phrase [Greek: ta teleutaia] in the modern Greek form of eulogy, [Greek: ekame polla, alla ta teleutaia tou].... 'He did many things, but his last performances!' (surpassed all his previous deeds). Here the meaning would therefore be, 'O grandest achievements that men praise!' CHAPTER XXV THE DATING AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE CHURCHES The dating of the Constantinople churches is a problem of great difficulty, and, in the absence of documentary evidence, we must often be contented with very indefinite suggestions. Many churches are known to have been founded at dates which are evidently earlier than the existing buildings, and have apparently been rebuilt at some later date of which the record has been lost. Other churches are known to have been 'repaired,' and here the question of how far 'repair' means 'rebuilding' is sometimes insoluble. Repair may mean simply a fresh coat of paint. The architectural characteristics afford a certain clue, and the following chronological scheme has been drawn up by their guidance:-- The pre-Justinian period is characterised by simple construction and detail of a late Roman type. Of this we have one example--the basilica of S. John of the Studion, founded about 463. The existing building appears to be original. The Justinian period commences with the beginning of the sixth century. It is characterised by the development of the drumless dome on pendentives. The plan is complicated, and the buildings are large in comparison with those of later date. To this period belong SS. Sergius and Bacchus (527 A.D.), the baptistery of S. Sophia, and the 'Great Church' of S. Sophia itself. S. Andrew in Krisei and S. Saviour in the Chora probably date from this period. The carved detail of the former closely resembles that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, and the plan of the latter connects it with S. Sophia, Salonica (sixth century). The Justinian period roughly includes the seventh century, and is followed by a long decline, marked by the great iconoclastic controversy which lasted almost until the middle of the ninth century. To this period belongs S. Irene (740 A.D.). In plan it is a double-domed cross church. In the arrangement of the dome-arches and galleries it resembles S. Theodosia, whilst in the presence of a western gallery over the narthex and in the number of columns in the 'nave arcade' it is like S. Sophia. The accession of Basil the Macedonian (867 A.D.) marks the beginning of the second great period--the 'Basilian Renaissance.' We know that this was a period of great religious activity, and though we have, unfortunately, no known dates to guide us, the development of plan leads us to place a group of churches in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. These are S. Mary Pammakaristos, S. Mary Panachrantos, S. Theodosia, S. Mary Diaconissa, and SS. Peter and Mark. They are all churches of considerable size; S. Mary Diaconissa and S. Theodosia being indeed large. They are characterised by the use of the ambulatory and domed cross plans. The carving is coarse and the capitals are of the clumsy Byzantine Corinthian type. The dome is raised on a high drum in S. Mary Pammakaristos and S. Mary Panachrantos, though this may be a later addition. The domes of the other three churches seem to be Turkish. S. Mary Pammakaristos and the south church in S. Mary Panachrantos are identical in plan with S. Andrew in Krisei, and it would be possible to date them earlier had we any evidence whatsoever. Unfortunately both have been very much altered. S. Theodosia, S. Mary Diaconissa, and SS. Peter and Mark, taken in this order, form a series showing the gradual disappearance of the galleries and the evolution of the domed cross church into the 'four columned' church of the next period. The Myrelaion (919-945), if the present church is of that date, is an unusually early example of this four-columned type. It is generally considered that this plan type dates at the earliest from the eleventh century. There is, however, no reason to believe that the church was rebuilt later; it is a perfectly normal example of its class, and nowhere is an early example more probable than in Constantinople. The Myrelaion may accordingly be taken as marking the commencement of the late Byzantine period in Constantinople. The churches are now smaller; the gynecaeum, where present, is placed over the narthex; the use of patterning in the brickwork of the exterior, which occurs in some of the Basilian churches (_e.g._ the cornice of S. Theodosia), now becomes important, and alternate coursing in brick and stone is used with great effect. From this time onwards narthexes were frequently added to the existing churches. S. Saviour Pantokrator (1118-1143 A.D.) is the largest late church in Constantinople, and is an unusually large church of its type. S. Saviour Pantepoptes (1081-1118), S. Theodore, and S. John in Trullo, belong to the same class. The last, with its circular dome and apse, is probably the latest of the three. S. Thekla (1057-1059) and Bogdan Serai are examples of hall churches of the same period. The monastery of Manuel was founded in 829-842 A.D., but the building believed to be the refectory is probably much later. As part of the monastery it might, of course, have been built at any date subsequent to the foundation of the House. The architecture of the Sanjakdar does not correspond to the date of the foundation of the monastery of the Gastria in the ninth century. The building is certainly of late date, subsequent to the eleventh century. Of the Balaban Mesjedi it is impossible to say anything. It is the remnant of some Byzantine structure. From 1204 to 1261, during the Latin Empire, we need not look for much building in the Greek Church. Soon after the fall of that empire comes the erection of S. Mary of the Mongols (1261-1282) and Monastir Jamissi (1282-1328). In both cases the architectural character is what we should expect. Following on this we have, in the fourteenth century, the alterations made in S. Saviour in the Chora (_c._ 1300), and the parecclesion of the Pammakaristos (_c._ 1315). This was the last effort of pure Byzantine architecture in Constantinople. During the hundred years preceding the Turkish conquest in 1453 the gradually increasing pressure from the East put a stop to all architectural schemes; the craftsmen and artists fled to Italy, and there took their part in the great revival known as 'The Renaissance.' SUGGESTED CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE Century. V. S. John of the Studion, 463. VI. SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 527-36. S. Sophia, 532-37. S. Saviour in the Chora (the Justinian foundation). S. Andrew in Krisei. VIII. S. Irene, 740. S. Mary Panachrantos (South Church); possibly earlier. S. Mary Pammakaristos; possibly earlier. IX. S. Theodosia. S. Mary Diaconissa. SS. Peter and Mark. X. The Myrelaion. S. Mary Panachrantos (South Church). XI. S. Thekla. S. Saviour in the Chora (restoration in the reign of Alexius I. Comnenus). S. Saviour Pantepoptes. S. Saviour Pantokrator. XII. S. Theodore. S. John in Trullo. Refectory of the monastery of Manuel? Bogdan Serai? XIII. S. Mary of the Mongols. Monastir Jamissi. XIV. S. Saviour in the Chora, 1306. Final restoration by Theodore Metochites. Parecclesion of the church of S. Mary Pammakaristos, _c._ 1315. Sanjakdar Mesjedi (Gastria)? Balaban Mesjedi? CLASSIFICATION OF THE CHURCHES ACCORDING TO THEIR TYPE _Basilica._--S. John of the Studion. _Octagon._--SS. Sergius and Bacchus. _Domed Basilica._--S. Saviour in the Chora. _Ambulatory._--S. Andrew in Krisei; S. Mary Panachrantos (South Church); S. Mary Pammakaristos. _Domed Cross Church._--S. Irene; S. Theodosia; S. Mary Diaconissa; SS. Peter and Mark. _Four Column Church._--Myrelaion; S. Saviour Pantepoptes; S. Saviour Pantokrator; S. John in Trullo; S. Mary Panachrantos (North Church); Parecclesion of S. Mary Pammakaristos. _Foiled Plan._--S. Mary of the Mongols. _Halls._--Bogdan Serai; Central Church of the Pantokrator; Monastir Mesjedi; Refectory of the monastery of Manuel; Parecclesion of S. Saviour in the Chora; S. Thekla. _Irregular._--Sanjakdar Mesjedi; Balaban Mesjedi. BOOKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Anthologia Graeca epigrammatum, Stadt-Mueller, 1894. ANTONIADI, E. M. [Greek: Ekphrasis tês Hagias Sophias]. BANDURI, ANSELMI. Imperium Orientale, sive Antiquitates Constantinopolitanae. Paris, 1711. BARONIUS. Annales ecclesiastici. Luccae, 1741. BELIN, M. A. Histoire de la Latinité de Constantinople. 2me édition. BELL, Miss LOTHIAN. Notes on a Journey through Cilicia and Lycaonia. BONDELMONTIUS. Librum insularum Archipelagi. BROCKHAUS. Die Kunst in den Athosklöstern. Leipzig, 1891. BRUNN, PH. Constantinople, ses sanctuaires et ses réliques au commencement du XV siècle. Odessa, 1883. BUTLER. Architecture and other Arts, II. Syria. New York, 1903. CHEVALIER, J. B. Voyage de la Propontide et du Pont-Euxin. Paris, 1800. CHOISY. L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins. Paris, 1883. CHOISEUL-GOUFFIER. Voyage pittoresque en Grèce. CLAVIJO, RUY GONZALEZ DE. Vida de Gran Tamorlan y itinerario. Madrid, 1782. CONSTANTIUS, Patriarch. [Greek: Konstantinias Palaia te kai Neôtera], Ancient and Modern Constantinople, Translation by J. P. Brown. London, 1868; [Greek: Syngraphai hai Elassones. Kônstantinoupolis], 1866. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae. Bonn. CRUSIUS, M. Turcograecia. DEHIO und Bezold. Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. DETHIER, PH. A. Siège de Constantinople. DIDRON. Christian Iconography (Translation from the French). London, 1910. DIEHL, C. Manuel d'art byzantin; Figures byzantines. DU CANGE, C. Historia Byzantina, Pars II. Constantinopolis Christiana. Paris, 1680.[poss. typo for 1860?] DÜRM. Handbuch. Eastern Palestine Memoirs. EBERSOLT. Le Grand Palais de Constantinople. FERGUSSON, JAMES. History of Ancient and Mediaeval Architecture. FINLAY, G. History of the Byzantine Empire. FRESHFIELD, EDWIN. Archaeologia. GARDNER, MISS ALICE. Theodore of Studium. GERLACH. Tagebuch der Gesandtshaft an die Ottomanische Pforte durch David Ungnad, 1573-78. GOODYEAR, W. H. Catalogue of an Exhibition of Architectural Refinements. Edinburgh, 1905. GYLLIUS, P. De Constantinopoleos Topographia. Elzevir ed. 1632. " De Bosporo Thracio. Elzevir ed. 1632. HASLUCK, F. W. Bithynica. HENDERSON, A. E. Builder, January 1906. KANITZ. Serbiens byzantinische Monumente. KHITROVO, Madame de. Itinéraires russes (Translation from Russian). LABARTE, JULES. Le Palais impérial de Constantinople. LAMPAKIS, Professor. Les Antiquités chrétiennes de la Grèce. Athens, 1902. LENOIR. Architecture monastique au moyen âge. LETHABY. Mediaeval Art. LETHABY and Swainson. Sancta Sophia. LEUNCLAVIUS. Pandectes historiae Turcicae. (Migne, vol. clix.) MANSI. Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio. MARIN, Abbé. Les Moines de Constantinople. MIGNE. Patrologia Graeca. MIKLOSICH et MÜLLER. Acta et diplomata Graeca. Vienna, 1865. MILLINGEN, A. VAN. Byzantine Constantinople. MORDTMANN. Esquisse topographique de Constantinople. MÜHLMANN. Archiv für christliche Kunst, 1886-87. MURALT, ÉDOUARD DE. Essai de chronographie byzantine. Geneva, 1873. NOTITIA DIGNITATUM. Ed. Seeck. PARGOIRE, Père J. Les Mamas de Constantinople. PARKER. Glossary of Architecture. PASPATES, A. [Greek: Meletai Byzantinai]. " The Great Palace. Translation from the Greek by Mr. Metcalfe. PHILES. Carmina. PULGHER, D. Les Églises byzantines de Constantinople. Vienna, 1878. RAMSAY, Sir William, and Miss Lothian Bell. The Thousand and One Churches. RIANT, Conte de. Exuviae sacrae. RIVOIRA, T. G. Lombardic Architecture. (Translation from Italian.) London, 1910. ROTT, H. Kleinasiatische Denkmäler. Leipzig, 1908. SALZENBERG. Altchristliche Baudenkmäler Constantinopels. SCARLATUS BYZANTIUS. [Greek: Hê Kônstantinoupolis]. Athens, 1862. SCHLUMBERGER, G. L'Épopée byzantine à la fin du sixième siècle. SCHMITT, F. G. Kahrié Djamissi. SCHULTZ and Barnsley. The Monastery of S. Luke of Stiris. London, 1901. SCHWEIGGER, SOLOMON. Ein neue Reyssbeschreibung auss Deutschland nach Constantinopel, 1581. SIDERIDES. Articles in the _Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of Constantinople_. SOCRATES. Ecclesiastical History. STRZYGOWSKI, J. Orient oder Rom. Leipzig, 1901. " Kleinasien, Die byzantinischen Wasserbehälter von. Dr. P. Forcheimer and Dr. J. Strzygowski. TEXIER. Four volumes of Sketches in the Library of the Royal Institute of British Architects. London. TEXIER AND PULLAN. Byzantine Architecture. USPENSKI, T. Articles in the _Journal of the Russian Institute at Constantinople_. VILLEHARDOUIN. La Conquête de Constantinople. VOGÜÉ DE. La Syrie centrale. WULFF, O. Die Koimisiskirche in Nikaia. Strasburg, 1903. PERIODICALS Atti della R. Accademia di archeologia, lettere, e belle arte, vol. xx. Napoli, 1900. Revue Archéologique. Byzantinische Zeitschrift. Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Annual of the British School at Athens. Proceedings of the Greek Syllogos of Constantinople. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Excursions-Club, Konstantinopel. English Historical Review. LIST OF EMPERORS Constantine I. the Great 306-337 Constantius II. 337-361 Julian 361-363 Jovian 363-364 Valens 364-378 Theodosius I. the Great 378-395 Arcadius 395-408 Theodosius II. 408-450 Marcian 450-457 Leo I. 457-474 Leo II. 474-474 Zeno 474-491 Anastasius I. 491-518 Justin I. 518-527 Justinian I. the Great 527-565 Justin II. 565-578 Tiberius 578-582 Maurice 582-602 Phocas 602-610 Heraclius 610-641 Heraclius Constantine III. and Heracleonas 641-642 Constans II. 642-668 Constantine IV. 668-685 Justinian II. 685-695 Leontius 695-697 Tiberius III. 697-705 Justinian II. (restored) 705-711 Philippicus 711-713 Anastasius II. 713-715 Theodosius III. 715-717 Leo III. the Isaurian 717-740 Constantine V. Copronymus 740-775 Leo IV. 775-779 Constantine VI. 779-797 Irene 797-802 Nicephorus I. 802-811 Stauracius 811 Michael I. Rhangabe 811-813 Leo V. the Armenian 813-820 Michael II. the Amorian 820-829 Theophilus 829-842 Michael III. 842-867 Basil I. 867-886 Leo VI. the Wise 886-912 Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus 912-958 Co-Emperors Alexander 912-913 Romanus I. Lecapenus 919-945 Constantine VIII. and Stephanus, sons of Romanus I. reigned five weeks in 944 Romanus II. 958-963 Basil II. Bulgaroktonos 963-1025 Co-Emperors Nicephorus II. Phocas 965-969 John I. Zimisces 969-976 Constantine IX. 976-1025 Constantine IX. (sole Emperor) 1025-1028 Romanus III. Argyrus 1028-1034 Michael IV. 1034-1042 Michael V. 1042 Zoe and Theodora 1042 Constantine X. Monomachus 1042-1054 Theodora (restored) 1054-1056 Michael VI. Stratioticus 1056-1057 Isaac I. Comnenus 1057-1059 Constantine XI. Ducas 1059-1067 Michael VII. Ducas 1067-1078 Co-Emperor Romanus IV. Diogenes 1067-1078 Nicephorus III. Botoniates 1078-1081 Alexius I. Comnenus 1081-1118 John II. Comnenus 1118-1143 Manuel I. Comnenus 1143-1180 Alexius II. Comnenus 1180-1183 Andronicus I. Comnenus 1183-1185 Isaac II. Angelus 1185-1195 Alexius III. Angelus 1195-1203 Isaac II. Angelus (restored), Alexius IV. Angelus 1203-1204 Nicolas Canabus 1204 Alexius V. Ducas Murtzuphlus 1204 LATIN EMPERORS OF CONSTANTINOPLE Baldwin I. 1204-1205 Henry 1205-1216 Peter 1217-1219 Robert 1219-1228 John of Brienne 1228-1237 Baldwin II. 1227-1361 BYZANTINE EMPERORS AT NICAEA Theodore I. Lascaris 1204-1222 John III. Ducas 1222-1254 Theodore II. Ducas 1254-1259 John IV. Ducas 1259-1260 UNDER THE RESTORED BYZANTINE EMPIRE Michael VIII. Palaeologus 1260-1282 Andronicus II. Palaeologus 1282-1328 Co-Emperor Michael IX. 1295-1320 Andronicus III. Palaeologus 1328-1341 John V. Palaeologus 1341-1391 Co-Emperor John VI. Cantacuzene 1341-1355 Manuel II. Palaeologus 1391-1425 John VII. Palaeologus 1425-1448 Constantine XII. Palaeologus 1448-1453 INDEX Abaga, 274 Achaia, 273 Achilles, Abbot of the Studion, 40 Achmed, Mongolian Khan, 274 Achmed Pasha, 205 Achmed III., Sultan, 276 Achrida, 46 Acre, 228 Acritas, 39 Adrianople. _See_ Gate Aecatherina, Empress, 47, 197, 295 Aetius. _See_ Church, Cistern Agapetus, Pope, 184 Agatha, 197 Agathangelus, 302 Agatho, Pope, 67 Aivan Serai, 191, 207, 208, 209, 213 Akoimeti, 36, 37 Ak Serai. _See_ Forum of the Bous Alexander, bath of, 88 Alexander, Patriarch, 85, 86 Alexius, Patriarch, 43 Alexius Strategopoulos, 228 Ali Atik Mustapha Pasha, 304 Alsace, 224, 226 Alti Mermer. _See_ Exokionion Anastasia, daughter of Emperor Theophilus, 270 Andrew of Crete, 108 Andronicus Ducas, 295 Andronicus, son of Manuel II., 229 Anemodoulion, 245 Anna Comnena, 147 Anna Dalassena, 138, 139, 211, 212, 295, 297 Anna, wife of Andronicus II., 141 Anna of Savoy, wife of Andronicus III., 144, 303 Anna, wife of John VII. Palaeologus, 128 Anna, daughter of Emperor Theophilus, 270 Anselm, Bishop of Havalsberg, 220 Anthemius, 74 Anthimus, Saint, 291, 294 Antioch, 86, 290 Antony, Patriarch, 43, 69 Apocaucus, 144, 145 Aqueduct of Valens, 183, 184. Arian, Arius, 85, 86 Armenia, Armenian, 10, 39, 258, 268 Arsenius, Patriarch, 110, 111, 112 Artavasdos, 293 Asia Minor, 1 Aspar. _See_ Cistern Athanasius, Patriarch, 232 Athens, 258 Athos, Mount, 116, 185, 230, 258, 290, 301, 303, 326 Avars, 48, 232 Avret Tash. _See_ Column of Arcadius Axuch, 221 Azerbaijan, 148 Babylas, Saint, 288, 294 Bactagius, 293 Baghdad, 69, 255, 272 Bagtché Kapoussi. _See_ Gate of the Neorion Bajazet I., Sultan, 47 Bajazet II., Sultan, 49, 276, 304. _See_ Mosque Balat, 148, 280 Baldwin, Count, 214 Baloukli. _See_ Pegé Baptistery of S. Sophia, 2, 78, 332 Bara, monk, 282 Bardas, Caesar, 44, 256, 270 Basil, Saint, 41 Belisarius, 67 Bertha, wife of Manuel I. Comnenus, 222 Beshiktash, 107 Bithynia, 30, 89, 294 Blachernae, district of, 106, 165, 191, 193, 209, 210, 213, 282. _See_ Palace Black Sea, 228, 272, 300 Bogdan Serai. _See_ Church Bonus, 48 Branas, 303 Bucoleon. _See_ Harbour, Palace Buda, 280 Bulgaria, Bulgarian, 257, 272, 295, 297 Byzantium, 84 Caesarea, 273 Cana, 327 Candidus, 192 Cantacuzene, Michael, 280 Capelli, 228 Carbounaria, district of, 244, 245 Cassandra, 230 Chalcedon. _See_ Council Charabanda, 275 Charisius, 290, 291. _See_ Gate Choirosphacta, 44 Christoboulos, 276 Christopher, son of Romanus I., 197 Chrysocameron, 199 Chrysostom, S. John, 91 Church, Chapel, Monastery, of-- _Note._--Under this head the references indicate only the passages in which a church is mentioned outside the special chapter devoted to it. S. Acacius, 199 Acritas, 40 Aetius, 255, 256, 259 S. Anastasia Pharmacolytria, 243 S. Anastasius, 184 S. Andrew the Apostle, 109 S. Andrew, near the Gate of Saturninus, 109 S. Andrew 'God-Intoxicated,' 109 S. Andrew in Krisei, 7, 8, 15, 30, 130, 150, 151, 186, 332, 333, 335, 336 S. Andrew Strategos, 109 S. Anthimus, 291, 294 Apostles, Holy, 3, 64, 90, 123, 124, 146, 147, 168, 175, 176, 184, 219, 233 Archangels, Sygè, 316 S. Aristina, 106, 112 Balaban Aga Mesjedi, 334, 335, 336 Bogdan Serai, 10, 15, 23, 27, 28, 201, 282, 334, 335, 336 Bosra, 70 Cenopolis, 88 Crimean Memorial Church, 281 S. Constantine, 35 S. Constanza, 1 Daudatus, 183 S. Demetrius, Salonica, 32, 53, 75, 222 S. Demetrius, Kanabou, 148, 191, 192, 205 Deré Aghsy, 5 Dexiocrates, 165 S. Diomed, 109 S. Elias, Salonica, 10, 114, 116 Etschmiadzin, 10 Euphrosynè, Libadia, 270 Forty Martyrs of Sebasté, 291, 294 S. Fosca, Torcello, 247 Gastria (Sanjakdar Mesjedi), 10, 24, 28, 107, 334, 335, 336 S. George, Ezra, 78 S. George, Genoa, 229 S. George, Phanar, 149, 191 S. George, Psamathia (Soulou Monastir), 106, 177, 268 S. George, Salonica, 1 Homonia, 88 Hormisdas, 64, 68 S. Ignatius, 294 S. Irene, 11, 12, 15, 26, 53, 72, 84, 85, 333, 335, 336 S. John the Baptist, Hebdomon, 283 S. John the Baptist in Petra, 203, 255, 282 S. John Baptist of the Studion, 2, 11, 12, 29, 31, 107, 256, 258, 268, 303, 332, 335, 336 S. John the Baptist in Trullo, 15, 16, 28, 147, 281, 334, 335, 336 S. John Evangelist, Hebdomon, 297 Kallou, 297 Kefelé Mesjedi. _See_ Manuel S. Lorenzo, Milan, 78 S. Luke, Stiris, 11, 16 S. Mamas, 106, 107, 197 Manoueliou, 254 Manuel, 11, 28, 47, 64, 254, 334, 335 SS. Manuel, Sabel, Ishmael, 253 Mara, 255 S. Mark's, Venice, 3, 13, 224, 238, 246, 247 Kyra Martha, 123, 124, 128, 166, 167 S. Martin's, London, 289 S. Mary (Theotokos) of Blachernae, 193 S. Mary, Curator, 265 S. Mary Diaconissa, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 20, 26, 30, 31, 32, 306, 310, 333, 335, 336 S. Mary Eleoussa, 240 S. Mary Euergetes, 164, 165, 166, 167 S. Mary Hodegetria, 227. _See_ Eikon S. Mary Koimesis, Nicaea, 7 S. Mary Kosmosoteria, 296 S. Mary of the Mongols, 10, 114, 116, 334, 335, 336 S. Mary Pammakaristos, 7, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 129, 130, 173, 175, 198, 201, 202, 205, 255, 281, 333, 335, 336 S. Mary Panachrantos, of Lips, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 151, 152, 243, 248, 333, 335, 336 S. Mary Panachrantos, near S. Sophia, 123, 125, 126 S. Mary, Pegé, 177 S. Mary Peribleptos, 18, 35, 45, 50, 106, 177, 258, 268, 297 S. Mary of Vlach Serai, 280 S. Mary, Chapel, in SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 69, 70 S. Mary, 55 S. Michael the Archangel, 239, 291, 292, 294 S. Mokius, 166 Monastir Mesjedi, 10, 20, 262, 334, 335 Myrelaion, 14, 17, 47, 129, 333, 334, 335, 336 S. Nicholas, 207 SS. Nicholas and Augustine, 281 S. Nicholas, Methana, 278 S. Nicholas, Myra, 6 S. Paul, Rome, 289 SS. Peter and Mark, 5, 9, 12, 13, 16, 27, 185, 186, 333, 335, 336 SS. Peter and Paul, 63, 64, 65, 66, 191, 192 Protaton, Mt. Athos, 185 Saccudio, 38 Sanjakdar Mesjedi. _See_ Gastria S. Saviour in the Chora, 10, 12, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 107, 153, 186, 236, 240, 255, 256, 332, 335, 336 S. Saviour Euergetes, 1, 166, 167, 213 S. Saviour Pantepoptes, 9, 14, 18, 29, 141, 295, 334, 335, 336 S. Saviour Pantokrator, Mt. Athos, 290 S. Saviour Pantokrator, Constantinople, 10, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 25, 26, 29, 31, 132, 153, 165, 166, 173, 215, 219, 244, 247, 270, 273, 295, 334, 335, 336 S. Saviour Philanthropos, 147, 148 Sepulchre, Holy, 118, 265 SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 2, 8, 11, 21, 23, 26, 30, 115, 332, 333, 335, 336 S. Sophia, Constantinople, 2, 5, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 46, 47, 62, 63, 69, 71, 72, 74, 78, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 102, 111, 112, 117, 118, 122, 123, 126, 145, 146, 169, 175, 176, 185, 223, 227, 229, 231, 233, 243, 244, 293, 305, 306, 313, 314, 315, 332, 333, 335 S. Sophia, Kiev, 326 S. Sophia, Monemvasia, 18 S. Sophia, Salonica, 15, 102, 103, 310, 314, 315, 333 Soulou Monastir. _See_ S. George, Psamathia S. Stephen, Triglia, 30 S. Symeon Stylites, 63 S. Thekla, 10, 28, 295, 334, 335, 336 S. Theodore, Athens, 244 S. Theodore the General, 244 S. Theodore (Vefa Meidan), 9, 14, 17, 19, 29, 31, 50, 73, 155, 334, 335 S. Theodore, Carbounaria, 244 S. Theodore, district of Claudius, 244 S. Theodore, in the Great Palace, 244 S. Theodore, district of Sphorakius, 244 S. Theodosia, 3, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 27, 28, 30, 114, 151, 156, 185, 186, 238, 283, 333, 334, 335, 336 Valens and Daudatus, 183 Vatopedi, 303 S. Vitale, 70, 72, 73, 75, 78 Cilicia, 221 Cistercian Abbey, 224 Cistern-- Aetius, 64, 255. _See_ Plate LXXVII. facing p. 262 Aspar, 253, 254, 256, 257 Bin-bin-derek (One Thousand and One Columns), 15 Mokius, 109, 166 Pulcheria, 131, 254 Studion, 48, 50, 54. _See_ Plate X. facing p. 54 Claudius, district of, 244 Colosseum, 33 Column of-- Arcadius, 109 Constantine the Great (Exokionion), 109 Constantine Ducas, 44, 126 Constantine Lips, 125, 126, 127 Constantine, Nobilissimus, 44, 45 Constantine Porphyrogenitus (son of Michael VIII.), 38, 110, 127 Constantine, son of Romanus I., 197 Constantine, Pope, 67 Cosmas, Patriarchs, 140, 141, 142, 143, 297 Council-- The Second Council, 87 Chalcedon, 66 Ferrara, 230 Florence, 230 First Concilium Trullanum, 67, 202, 293 Second Concilium Trullanum (Quinisextum), 202 Craterus, House of, 199 Crete, 108 Crusade, Fourth, 213, 224, 298 Cucusus, 87 Curator, district of, 264 Dandolo, Henrico, 213 Danube, 209 Daphni, 258, 326 Daphnusium, 228 Dedeagatch, 296 S. Demetrius, Eikon of, 222 Denderis, 269 Derè Aghsy, 4 Dexiocrates, district of, 165 Didymotica, 299 Dionysius, Monk, 48 Diplokionion, 107 Edirnè Kapoussi. _See_ Gate of Charisius Egri Kapou, district of, 209 Emperor-- Alexius I. Comnenus, 43, 146, 147, 211, 212, 220, 294, 295, 297, 335 Alexius II. Comnenus, 223, 224 Alexius V. Ducas Murtzuphlus, 213 Anastasius I., 63, 282 Andronicus I. Comnenus, 223, 224, 297 Andronicus II. Palaeologus, 37, 109, 110, 111, 128, 140, 141, 142, 143, 168, 230, 263, 275, 282, 299, 302, 303, 324 Andronicus III. Palaeologus, 128, 141, 263, 275, 299, 303 Baldwin I., 214 Baldwin II., 227, 228 Basil I., 68, 335 Basil II., 43 Basiliscus, 37, 88 Charlemagne, 41 Conrad of Germany, 222 Constans, 87 Constantine the Great, 1, 3, 84, 85, 101 Constantine V. Copronymus, 38, 90, 101, 108, 196, 293 Constantine VI., 38, 39, 41 Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus, 44, 126, 197, 199, 247 Constantine IX., 46 Constantine Palaeologus or Dragases, 174, 176, 177, 230, 259, 260 Constantius II., 85, 86 Henry, 227 Heraclius, 48, 292 Isaac II. Angelus, 297, 303 Isaac I. Comnenus, 37, 47, 197, 209, 210, 295 John I. Zimisces, 303 John II. Comnenus, 138, 210, 219, 220, 221, 239 John V. Cantacuzene, 144, 229, 263, 297, 301, 302, 303 John VI. Palaeologus, 144, 192, 229, 297, 302 John VII. Palaeologus, 47, 128, 229, 230 Justin I., 63, 64, 67 Justinian I., the Great, 3, 37, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 73, 74, 75, 89, 97, 101, 102, 103, 184, 254, 288, 290, 291, 292, 332, 333 Justinian II., 67 Leo I. Macellus, 265 Leo III., the Isaurian, 89, 90, 101, 102, 164, 293 Leo V., the Armenian, 39, 68, 294 Leo VI., the Wise, 44, 90, 126, 247 Leopold I. of Austria, 191 Licinius, 246 Lothair the Great, 220 Manuel I. Comnenus, 85, 221, 222, 223 Manuel II. Palaeologus, 47, 229 Marcian, 36, 85 Maurice, 184, 197 Maximianus, 63, 246, 288 Michael I., 39 Michael II., 39, 68 Michael III., 69, 256, 269, 294 Michael V., 44, 45 Michael VII., 46, 47, 257, 295, 297 Michael VIII. Palaeologus, 47, 110, 127, 140, 228, 229, 272, 297, 298, 303 Nicephorus Botoniates, 46, 297 Nicephorus I., 39 Philippicus, 293 Phocas, 292 Romanus I. Lecapenus, 90, 196, 197, 199, 257 Romanus II., 197 Romanus III. Argyrus, 257 Theodore II. of Nicaea, 110 Theodosius I., the Great, 87, 196 Theodosius II., 36, 226 Theophilus, 68, 69, 199, 209, 253, 255, 256, 257, 269, 270 Valens, 183, 184 Zeno, 37, 88 Enos, 296 Ephesus, 47, 143, 222 Et Meidan, 244 Etschmiadzin, 10 Eubulus Hospice, 88 Eudocia, 91, 227 Eugenia, 230 Euphrosyné, daughter of Michael VIII. Palaeologus, 272 Euphrosyné, step-mother of Emperor Theophilus, 269 Euphrosyné, 270 Eusebius, Patriarch, 86 Excubiti, 292 Exokionion, 109 Eyoub, 106, 208 Ezra, 78 Factions, 88 Ferejik, 296 Ferrara, 230 Festus, 64 Fifth Hill, 137 Florence, 230 Forum of-- Bous, 164 Constantine the Great, 85 Philadelphium, 184 Tarus, 184, 245, 265 Fourth Hill, 244 Gabalas, 144, 145 Galata, 85, 107, 176, 228 Galbius, 192 Galla Placidia, 2 Garsonostasion, 89 Gate-- Adrianople (Edirné Kapoussi), 253, 254 Aurea. _See_ Golden Gate Aurea, Porta, Spalato, 33 Aya Kapou. _See_ Gate of S. Theodosia Beautiful Gate of S. Sophia, 69 Chalké (Bronze Gate), 164 Charisius, 265, 290, 304, 305 Dexiocrates, 165 Edirné Kapoussi. _See_ Gate of Charisius Egri Kapou, 209 Eugenius, 111, 254 Golden Gate, 35, 109, 227 Gyrolimné, 263 Ispigas, 213 Jubali Kapoussi, 213 Koum Kapoussi, 62 Narli Kapoussi, 36, 48 Neorion, 254 Pegé (Selivri Kapoussi), 106, 107, 228 Royal Gates of S. Sophia, 69 S. Romanus (Top Kapoussi), 262, 282 Saturninus, 109 Selivria. _See_ Pegé S. Theodosia (Aya Kapou), 164, 165, 212 Tchatlady Kapou, 62, 223 Xylokerkou, 107, 197 Xyloporta, 205 Yali Kiosk Kapoussi. _See_ Gate of Eugenius Gatulazzo, 229 Gennadius, Patriarch, 146, 147, 158, 175, 201, 230, 231, 232 Genoa, Genoese, 228, 254 George Scholarius. _See_ Gennadius Georgia, 148 Germanus, Patriarch, 293 Giotto, 327 Golden Horn, 91, 138, 146, 164, 166, 167, 191, 208, 209, 212, 213, 216, 219, 254, 280, 281 Goths, Gothic, 18, 29, 31, 34 Grammarian. _See_ John the Grammarian Greece, 10, 11, 16 Gregoras, 44 Gregory of Nazianzus, 87 Gregory, Patriarch, 112, 113 Gregory, Pope, 298 Halki, Island of, 138, 220, 240 Harbour-- Bucoleon, 223 Heptascalon, 199 Hormisdas, 62 Hassan Pasha, 173 Hebdomon, 297 Helena, Empress, 268 Helena, wife of Constantine VII., 197 Heraclea, 144, 300 Hermogenes, 86 Hippodrome, 62, 63, 256 Hodegetria, Eikon of, 47, 227, 303 Holagu, 273, 274 Holy Well of Blachernae, 193 Holy Well of S. Nicholas, 207 Hormisdas, district of, 62. _See_ Harbour Hormisdas, Pope, 64, 291 Horreum, 199 Humbert, Cardinal, 46 Hylilas, John. _See_ John the Grammarian Ignatius, Patriarch, 90 Irene, Empress (mother of Constantine VI.), 38 Irene, daughter of Bardas, 270 Irene Ducaena, wife of Alexius I. Comnenus, 295, 297 Irene, wife of John II. Comnenus, 139, 219, 221, 239 Irene, wife of Andronicus II., 229 Irene, wife of Andronicus III., 128 Irene, wife of Manuel II., 230 Isaac, son of John II. Comnenus, 221 Isaac Sebastocrator, 295, 296, 297, 310 Isaac Palaeologus Asanes, 275 Isidore, Cardinal, 231 Ispigas. _See_ Gate Janissaries, 91 Jannes, 68 Jerusalem, 265, 268 John Comnenus, Curopalates and Grand Domestic, 138, 139 John the Grammarian, Patriarch, 68, 69 Joseph, Abbot of S. Saviour Pantokrator, 222 Joseph, Bishop of Thessalonica, 39, 40, 43 Joseph, Patriarch, 230 Jubali Kapoussi. _See_ Gate Julius VIII., Pope, 68 Juma Bazaar, 106 Kadikeui, 64 Kaffa, 258 Kalat-Semân, 63 Kan Kilissi. _See_ Church of S. Mary of the Mongols Kasr ibn Wardan, 4 Kerularios, Patriarch, 46 Kesmé Kaya, 203, 280, 282 Khaled, 207 Kiev, 231, 326 Kraal of Servia, 142, 143 Krisis, district, 6, 108 Kusr en Nûeijîs, 2 Kynegion, 293 Kyriakos, Patriarch, 184 Kyros, Patriarch, 293 Kyzlar Aghassi Hamam, Bath of, 199 Ladislas, King of Hungary, 219 Lascaris, John, 110 Latin, 38 Laura, Mount Athos, 258 S. Laurentius, 65 Lecanomantis, 68 Leomacellum, 244 Libadia, 270 Longophetes, Teutal, 280 Lovitz, 210 S. Luke, 227 Lycus, 122, 126, 244 Macarius, 230 Macedonius, Patriarch, 86, 87 Mahomet, 208 Maimas, 199 Makrikeui, 283, 297 S. Mamas, suburb of. _See_ Church Manuel, General, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257 Maria, wife of Constantine VI., 38 Maria, wife of John VII. Palaeologus, 230 Maria Despoina of the Mongols, 229, 272, 273, 274, 275 Maria Ducaena, 295, 326 Maria Palaeologina, wife of Michael Ducas Glabas Tarchaniotes, 140 Maria, daughter of Isaac I. Comnenus, 197 Maritza, 296 S. Mark, Evangelist, 246 Marmora, Island of, 73 Marmora, Sea of, 36, 48, 62, 138, 146, 196, 224, 283 Maroulas, Phocas, 262, 263 Martin V., Pope, 230 Martin, Abbot, 224, 225, 226 Mecca, 113 Mehemed I., Sultan, 145 Mehemed the Conqueror, Sultan, 158, 175, 214, 232, 276, 277, 304 Menodora, 262 Methodius, Patriarch, 294 Metrodora, 262 Michael Glabas Tarchaniotes, 139, 140, 141, 155, 156, 157, 158 Michael Palaeologus Tarchaniotes, 140 Michael, Syncellus, 294, 326 Milan, 78, 118 Milion, 293 Minerva Medica, Temple, 1 Mistra, 326 Modius, 199 Moldavia, 203, 280, 281 Monemvasia, 16 Monferrat, Marquis of, 229 Mongols, Mongolian, 272, 274, 275, 334, 335 Moses, 68 Mosque, Achmed Pasha Mesjedi. _See_ S. John in Trullo Aivas Effendi, 209 Mosque, Atik Mustapha Pasha Jamissi. _See_ S. Andrew in Krisei Atik Mustapha Pasha. _See_ Church of SS. Peter and Mark Balaban Aga Mesjedi. _See_ Church Boudrom Jamissi. _See_ Myrelaion Demirjilar Mesjedi, 122 Emir Ahor Jamissi. _See_ Studion Eski Imaret Jamissi. _See_ Church of the Pantepoptes Eski Jumah, Salonica, 53 Eyoub, 208 Fetiyeh. _See_ Church of the Pammakaristos Gul Jamissi. _See_ Church of S. Theodosia Hassan Pasha Mesjedi. _See_ Church of S. Theodosia Hoja Mustapha Pasha Mesjedi. _See_ Church of S. Andrew in Krisei Kalender Haneh Jamissi. _See_ S. Mary Diaconissa Kahriyeh Jamissi. _See_ Church of S. Saviour in the Chora Kassim Aga Mesjedi, 255 Kefelé Mesjedi. _See_ Monastery of Manuel Kurku Jamissi, 263 Kutchuk Aya Sofia. _See_ Church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus Laleli Jamissi, 173 Monastir Mesjedi. _See_ Church Odalar Mesjedi, 253 Pheneré Isa Mesjedi. _See_ S. Mary Panachrantos Rustem Pasha Jamissi, 27 Sanjakdar Mesjedi. _See_ Gastria Shahzadé Jamissi, 27, 183, 184, 199, 265 Sultan Bajazid, 27, 116, 117, 265 Sultan Mehemed the Conqueror, 122, 125, 265 Sultan Selim I., 27, 253, 254 Sultan Suleiman, 27 Sheik Suleiman Aga Mesjedi, 25, 270 Toklou Dedè. _See_ Church of S. Thekla Zeirek Kilissi Jamissi. _See_ Church of the Pantokrator Mousikos, 44 Murad II., Sultan, 146 Murad III., Sultan, 148 Musmiyeh, 2 Mustapha Pasha, 113 Mustapha Tchaoush, 262 Mutasim, Caliph, 256 Myra, 6 Muzalon, 110 Naucratius, Abbot of the Studion, 40 Nestorius, Patriarch, 66 Nicaea, 7, 89, 110, 275 Nicene Creed, 85, 87 Nicephoras Gregoras, historian, 300, 301, 302 Nicetas, Eunuch, 199 Nicetas Stethetos, 46 Nicholas, Abbot of the Studion, 40 Nicholas, Patriarch, 90 Nicomedia, 86, 288, 291 Nika Riot, 63, 88, 101 Niphon, Bishop of Old Patras, 144 Niphon, Patriarch, 111 Nogaya, 272 Nymphodora, 262 Oaton, 202 Olympus, Mount, 294 Othman, 275 Oun Kapan, 219 Padua, 326, 327 Palace of-- Blachernae, 202, 209, 227, 228, 263, 282, 295, 298 Bogdan Serai, 203 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 19, 27, 247, 256, 299, 305 Great Palace, 48, 64, 90, 164, 184, 201, 227, 228, 244 Hebdomon, 202 Hormisdas, 62, 65 Magnaura, 202 Mangana, 147 Myrelaion, 196 Nicaea, 202 Pegé, 46 Placidiae Augustae, 67 Placidianum, 67 Tekfour Serai. _See_ Palace of Constantine Porphyrogenitus Trullus, 202, 281 Palestine, 2, 268, 294 Palmyra, 3 Pantheon, 1 Parisis, 224, 226 Paphlagonia, 223 Patras, Old, 144 Paul, Patriarch, 86, 87 Pegé, 46, 177 Pelagion, 293 Peloponessus, 229, 273 Perama, 85 Perigord, 3 Persia, Persians, 48, 232, 272, 275, 290 Petra, Palaia Petra, 282, 283 Petronas, 270 Phanar, 149, 173, 191, 253, 272 Philip, the Apostle, 126 Philip, Prefect, 87 Phocas Maroules, 262, 263 Photius, Patriarch, 43, 44, 90, 257 Piazzetta of S. Mark, 246 Plato, Abbot, 39, 40 Porphyrius, charioteer, 91 Praetorium, at Musmiyeh, 2 Praetorium, 88 Prince's Islands, 138 Prinkipo, 39 Priscus, 292 Proconessus, Island of, 111 Proté, Island of, 197 Prussianus, 257 Psamathia, 35, 106, 166, 167, 177, 258, 268 Pulcheria, Empress, 227 Pulcheria, daughter of Emperor Theophilus, 269, 270 Pulcheria. _See_ Cistern Pyrisca, 220 Raoul, Protovestarius, 110 Raoulaina, Protovestiarissa, 110. _See_ Theodora Raoul, 280 Ravenna, 2, 31, 32, 73, 75 Region I., 67 Region VII., 85 Rome, 1, 33, 34, 289 Rufinianai, 64 Russia, Russian, 40, 42, 48, 53, 272, 280, 303 Sabbas, 303 Salma Tomruk, district of, 253 Salonica, 1, 10, 15, 31, 32, 39, 53, 75, 92, 114, 116, 142, 312, 313, 314, 315, 333 Sampson, hospital of, 88, 89 Samuel, King of Bulgaria, 295 Sanjakdar Youkoussou, 277 Santabarenus, 44 Saracens, 207, 208, 232, 253, 255, 303 Saturninus. _See_ Gate Scholarius. _See_ Gennadius Scythicus, 299 Sebasté, 291 Selim I., Sultan, 113, 276 Selim II., Sultan, 173 Seraglio, 84, 91, 148, 296 Sergius, Patriarch, 257 Servia, 10, 272 Seventh Hill. _See_ Xerolophos Sigma, 45 Simonis, daughter of Andronicus II., 142 Sirkiji Iskelessi, 35 Sixth Hill, 209 Sklerena, 46 Sophiai, 64 Sophronius, Abbot of the Studion, 40 Soulou Monastir. _See_ S. Mary Peribleptos Sozopolis, 144 Spalato, 33 Sphorakius, 243, 244 Stephen, son of Romanus I., 197 Strategopoulos, Alexius, 228 Stiris, 11, 16 Studius, 35, 36 Suleiman, Sultan, 280 Sygé, 316 Sykai, 85 Symeon, King of Bulgaria, 127 Synadenus, 263 Synnada, 72 Synod of Constantinople (in 536), 291 Synod of Constantinople (under Photius), 257 Synod of Sardica (in 347), 87 Syria, Syrian, 1, 2, 86, 290, 291, 326 Tamerlane, 51 Tarchaniotes. _See_ Michael Taron, Prince of, 126 Tash Mektep, 262 Taurus Mountains, 221 Tchoukour Bostan, 109, 254 Tekfour Sarai. _See_ Palace Teutal Lougophetes, 280 Thebes, Duchy of, 272 Thekla, daughter of Emperor Theophilus, 209, 270 Theoctista, 269, 270 Theoctistos, 256, 270 Theodora-- Empress of Justinian the Great, 62, 70, 73, 74, 75, 97, 102, 290 Empress of Emperor Theophilus, 40, 69, 255, 256, 269, 270, 294 Empress of Michael VIII. Palaeologus, 127 wife of Romanus I. Lecapenus, 197 Protovestiarissa, 110, 111, 112, 113 nun, 275 Theodore-- Abbot of S. Saviour in the Chora, 290, 291, 292 Abbot of the Studion, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43 son of Manuel II., 229 Theodore Metochites, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301 Theodosia, Saint, 164 Theodosius, Abbot of the Studion, 40 Theodosius de Villehardouin, Abbot of the Pantokrator, 229, 273 Theodote, 38, 39 Theognosia, 113 Theophane, 117 Theophanes, Bishop of Heraclea, 144 Theophano, wife of Romanus II. and Nicephorus Phocas, 197 Third Hill, 243, 244 Thomais, nun, 128 Thrace, 86, 89 Timotheus, 40 Timovo, 298 Tivoli, 63 Toklou Dedè. _See_ Church of S. Thekla Top Kapou. _See_ Gate S. Romanus Torcello, 247 Tornikes, 239, 302, 303, 310, 330 Trani, 46 Trebizond, 229, 272 Tricocca, 275 Triglia, 30 Trivulce, 118 Trullus. _See_ Council, Palace Turks, 275, 283 Varangians, 46 Vatopedi, 303 Veecus, Patriarch, 112, 122, 125, 126, 229, 297 Vefa Meidan, 177, 243, 244, 245 Venetian, 213, 214, 227, 228 Venice, 3, 224, 226, 227, 228, 238, 246 Verina, Empress, 265 Vienna, 280 Vigilius, Pope, 66, 67 Villehardouin, 297 Viros, 296, 297 Vlach Serai, 280 Vlanga, 196 Wallachian, 280 Wall of Constantine, 109 Wall of Heraclius, 207, 208 Wall of Leo, 207, 208 Walls of Theodosius II., 289, 290 War Office, 244, 265 Xené, 220 Xerolophos, 108, 109 Yali Kiosk Kapoussi. _See_ Gate of Eugenius Yedi Koulé. _See_ Golden Gate Yolande, 229 Zeirek Mehemed Effendi, 233 Zinet, 144, 145 Zoe-- Empress of Leo VI., 90 Empress, daughter of Constantine VIII., 44 THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, Limited, _Edinburgh_. [Transcriber's note: * is used around words to mark bold text.] 
29370	----	produced from images generously made available by the Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries.) [Note of transcriber: $ is used to indicate the cifrão, symbol for escudos. Where [= ] surrounds a letter it indicates that the letter was written with a line above it.] [Illustration: FROM THE MARVILLA, SANTAREM.] [Illustration: FROM THE MARVILLA, SANTAREM; ALSO IN THE MATRIZ, ALVITO, AND ELSEWHERE.] PORTUGUESE ARCHITECTURE BY WALTER CRUM WATSON _ILLUSTRATED_ LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED 1908 Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty AOS MEUS QUERIDOS PARENTES E AMIGOS A ILL^{MA} E EX^{MA} SN^{RA} M. L. DOS PRADOS LARGOS E OS ILL^{MOS} E EX^{MOS} SNR^{ES} BARONEZA E BARÃO DE SOUTELLINHO COMO RECONHECIMENTO PELAS AMABILIDADES E ATTENÇÕES QUE ME DISPENSARAM NOS BELLOS DIAS QUE PASSEI NA SUA COMPANHIA COMO HOMENAGEM RESPEITOSA O.D.C. O AUCTOR PREFACE The buildings of Portugal, with one or two exceptions, cannot be said to excel or even to come up to those of other countries. To a large extent the churches are without the splendid furniture which makes those of Spain the most romantic in the world, nor are they in themselves so large or so beautiful. Some apology, then, may seem wanted for imposing on the public a book whose subject-matter is not of first-class importance. The present book is the outcome of visits to Portugal in April or May of three successive years; and during these visits the writer became so fond of the country and of its people, so deeply interested in the history of its glorious achievements in the past, and in the buildings which commemorate these great deeds, that it seemed worth while to try and interest others in them. Another reason for writing about Portugal instead of about Spain is that the country is so much smaller that it is no very difficult task to visit every part and see the various buildings with one's own eyes: besides, in no language does there exist any book dealing with the architecture of the country as a whole. There are some interesting monographs in Portuguese about such buildings as the palace at Cintra, or Batalha, while the Renaissance has been fully treated by Albrecht Haupt, but no one deals at all adequately with what came before the time of Dom Manoel. Most of the plans in the book were drawn from rough measurements taken on the spot and do not pretend to minute accuracy. For the use of that of the Palace at Cintra the thanks of the writer are due to Conde de Sabugosa, who allowed it to be copied from his book, while the plan of Mafra was found in an old magazine. Thanks are also due to Senhor Joaquim de Vasconcellos for much valuable information, to his wife, Senhora Michaelis de Vasconcellos, for her paper about the puzzling inscriptions at Batalha, and above all the Baron and the Baroneza de Soutellinho, for their repeated welcome to Oporto and for the trouble they have taken in getting books and photographs. That the book may be more complete there has been added a short account of some of the church plate and paintings which still survive, as well as of the tile work which is so universal and so characteristic. As for the buildings, hardly any of any consequence have escaped notice. EDINBURGH, 1907. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE Portugal separated from Spain by no natural division geographical or linguistic; does not correspond with Roman Lusitania, nor with the later Suevic kingdom--Traces of early Celtic inhabitants; Citania, Sabrosa--Roman Occupation; Temple at Evora--Barbarian Invasions--Arab Conquest--Beginnings of Christian re-conquest--Sesnando, first Count of Oporto--Christians defeated at Zalaca--Count Henry of Burgundy and Dona Theresa--Beginnings of Portuguese Independence--Affonso Henriques, King of Portugal--Growth of Portugal--Victory of Aljubarrota--Prince Henry the Navigator--The Spanish Usurpation--The Great Earthquake--The Peninsular War--The Miguelite War--The suppression of the Monasteries--Differences between Portugal and Spain, etc. 1-10 PAINTING IN PORTUGAL Not very many examples of Portuguese paintings left--Early connection with Burgundy; and with Antwerp--Great influence of Flemish school--The myth of Grão Vasco--Pictures at Evora, at Thomar, at Setubal, in Santa Cruz, Coimbra--'The Fountain of Mercy' at Oporto--The pictures at Vizeu: 'St. Peter'--Antonio de Hollanda 10-17 CHURCH PLATE Much plate lost during the Peninsular War--Treasuries of Braga, Coimbra, and Evora, and of Guimarães--Early chalices, etc., at Braga, Coimbra, and Guimarães--Crosses at Guimarães and at Coimbra--Relics of St. Isabel--Flemish influence seen in later work--Tomb of St. Isabel, and coffins of sainted abbesses of Lorvão 17-20 TILES Due to Arab influence--The word _azulejo_ and its origin--The different stages in the development of tile making--Early tiles at Cintra Moorish in pattern and in technique--Tiles at Bacalhôa Moorish in technique but Renaissance in pattern--Later tiles without Moorish technique, _e.g._ at Santarem and elsewhere--Della Robbia ware at Bacalhôa--Pictures in blue and white tiles very common 20-28 CHAPTER I THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH The oldest buildings are in the North--Very rude and simple--Three types--Villarinho--São Miguel, Guimarães--Cedo Feita, Oporto--Gandara, Boelhe, etc., are examples of the simplest--Aguas Santas, Rio Mau, etc., of the second; and of the third Villar de Frades, etc.--Legend of Villar--Sé, Braga--Sé, Oporto--Paço de Souza--Method of roofing--Tomb of Egas Moniz--Pombeiro--Castle and Church, Guimarães 29-43 CHAPTER II THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE SOUTH Growth of Christian kingdom under Affonso Henriques--His vow--Capture of Santarem, of Lisbon--Cathedral, Lisbon, related to Church of S. Sernin, Toulouse--Ruined by Great Earthquake, and badly restored--Sé Velha, Coimbra, general scheme copied from Santiago and so from S. Sernin, Toulouse--Other churches at Coimbra--Evora, its capture--Cathedral founded--Similar in scheme to Lisbon, but with pointed arches; central lantern; cloister--Thomar founded by Gualdim Paes; besieged by Moors--Templar Church--Santarem, Church of São João de Alporão--Alcobaça; great wealth of Abbey--Designed by French monks--Same plan as Clairvaux--Has but little influence on later buildings 44-63 CHAPTER III THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA The thirteenth century poor in buildings--The Franciscans--São Francisco Guimarães--Santarem--Santa Maria dos Olivaes at Thomar--_Cf._ aisle windows at Leça do Balio--Inactivity and deposition of Dom Sancho II. by Dom Affonso III.--Conquest of Algarve--Sé, Silves--Dom Diniz and the castles at Beja and at Leiria--Cloisters, Cellas, Coimbra, Alcobaça, Lisbon, and Oporto--St. Isabel and Sta. Clara at Coimbra--Leça do Balio--The choir of the cathedral, Lisbon, with tombs--Alcobaça, royal tombs--Dom Pedro I. and Inez de Castro; her murder, his sorrow--Their tombs 64-78 CHAPTER IV BATALHA AND THE DELIVERANCE OF PORTUGAL Dom Fernando and Dona Leonor Telles--Her wickedness and unpopularity--Their daughter, Dona Brites, wife of Don Juan of Castile, rejected--Dom João I. elected king--Battle of Aljubarrota--Dom João's vow--Marriage of Dom João and Philippa of Lancaster--Batalha founded; its plan national, not foreign; some details seem English, some French, some even German--Huguet the builder did not copy York or Canterbury--Tracery very curious--Inside very plain--Capella do Fundador, with the royal tombs--Capellas Imperfeitas 79-92 CHAPTER V THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY Nossa Senhora da Oliveira Guimarães rebuilt as a thankoffering--Silver reredos captured at Aljubarrota--The cathedral, Guarda--Its likeness to Batalha--Nave later--Nuno Alvarez Pereira, the Grand Constable, and the Carmo, Lisbon--João Vicente and Villar de Frades--Alvito, Matriz--Capture of Ceuta--Tombs in the Graça, Santarem--Dom Pedro de Menezes and his 'Aleo'--Tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes in São João de Alporão--Tombs at Abrantes cloister--Thomar 93-103 CHAPTER VI LATER GOTHIC Graça, Santarem--Parish churches, Thomar, Villa do Conde, Azurara and Caminha, all similar in plan--Cathedrals: Funchal, Lamego, and Vizeu--Porch and chancel of cathedral, Braga--Conceição, Braga 104-115 CHAPTER VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS Few buildings older than the re-conquest--But many built for Christians by Moors--The Palace, Cintra--Originally country house of the Walis--Rebuilt by Dom João I.--Plan and details Moorish--Entrance court--Sala dos Cysnes, why so called, its windows; Sala do Conselho; Sala das Pegas, its name, chimney-piece; Sala das Sereias; dining-room; Pateo, baths; Sala dos Arabes; Pateo de Diana; chapel; kitchen--Castles at Guimarães and at Barcellos--Villa de Feira 116-128 CHAPTER VIII OTHER MOORISH BUILDINGS Commoner in Alemtejo--Castle, Alvito--Not Sansovino's Palace--Evora, Paços Reaes, Cordovis, Sempre Nova, São João Evangelista, São Francisco, São Braz 129-135 CHAPTER IX MOORISH CARPENTRY Examples found all over the country--At Aguas Santas, Azurara, Caminha and Funchal--Cintra, Sala dos Cysnes, Sala dos Escudos--Coimbra, Misericordia, hall of University--Ville do Conde Santa Clara, Aveiro convent 136-142 CHAPTER X EARLY MANOELINO João II. continues the policy of Prince Henry the Navigator--Bartholomeu Diaz, Vasco da Gama--Accession of Dom Manoel--Discovery of route to India, and of Brazil--Great wealth of King--Fails to unite all the kingdoms of the Peninsula--Characteristic features of Manoelino--House of Garcia de Resende, Evora--Caldas da Rainha--Setubal, Jesus--Beja, Conceição, Castle, etc.--Cintra, Palace--Gollegã, Church--Elvas, Cathedral--Santarem, Marvilla--Lisbon, Madre de Deus--Coimbra, University Chapel--Setubal, São Julião 143-156 CHAPTER XI THOMAR AND THE CONQUEST OF INDIA Vasco da Gama's successful voyage to Calicut, 1497--Other expeditions lead to discovery of Brazil--Titles conferred on Dom Manoel by Pope Alexander VI.--Ormuz taken--Strange forms at Thomar not Indian--Templars suppressed and Order of Christ founded instead--Prince Henry Grand Master--Spiritual supremacy of Thomar over all conquests, made or to be made--Templar church added to by Prince Henry, and more extensively by Dom Manoel--João de Castilho builds Coro--Stalls burnt by French--South door, chapter-house and its windows--Much of the detail emblematic of the discoveries, etc., made in the East and in the West 157-170 CHAPTER XII THE ADDITIONS TO BATALHA Dom Duarte's tomb-house unfinished--Work resumed by Dom Manoel--The two Matheus Fernandes, architects--The Pateo--The great entrance--Meaning of 'Tanyas Erey'--Piers in Octagon--How was the Octagon to be roofed?--The great Cloister, with its tracery--Whence derived 171-180 CHAPTER XIII BELEM Torre de São Viente built to defend Lisbon--Turrets and balconies not Indian--Vasco da Gama sails from Belem--The great monastery built as a thankoffering for the success of his voyage--Begun by Boutaca, succeeded by Lourenço Fernandes, and then by João de Castilho--Plan due to Boutaca--Master Nicolas, the Frenchman, the first renaissance artist in Portugal--Plan: exterior; interior superior to exterior; stalls; cloister, lower and upper--Lisbon, Conceição Velha, also by João de Castilho 181-195 CHAPTER XIV THE COMING OF THE FOREIGN ARTISTS Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, founded by Dom Affonso Henriques, rebuilt by Dom Manoel, first architect Marcos Pires--Gregorio Lourenço clerk of the works--Diogo de Castilho succeeds Marcos Pires--West front, Master Nicolas--Cloister, inferior to that of Belem--Royal tombs--Other French carvers--Pulpit, reredoses in cloister, stalls--Sé Velha reredos, doors--Chapel of São Pedro 196-210 CHAPTER XV THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREIGNERS Tomb at Thomar of the Bishop of Funchal--Tomb in Graça, Santarem--São Marcos, founded by Dona Brites de Menezes--Tomb of Fernão Telles--Rebuilt by Ayres da Silva, her grandson--Tombs in chancel--Reredos, by Master Nicolas--Reredos at Cintra--Pena Chapel by same--São Marcos, Chapel of the Reyes Magos--Sansovino's door, Cintra--Evora, São Domingos--Portalegre, Tavira, Lagos, Goes, Trofa, Caminha, Moncorvo 211-221 CHAPTER XVI LATER WORK OF JOÃO DE CASTILHO AND EARLIER CLASSIC João III. cared more for the Church than for anything else--Decay begins--Later additions to Alcobaça--Batalha, Sta. Cruz--Thomar, Order of Christ reformed--Knights become regulars--Great additions, cloisters, dormitory, etc., by João de Castilho--His difficulties, letters to the King--His addition to Batalha--Builds Conceição at Thomar like Milagre, Santarem--Marvilla, _ibid._; Elvas, São Domingos--Cintra, Penha Longa and Penha Verde--Vizeu, Cloister--Lamego, Cloister--Coimbra, São Thomaz--Carmo--Faro--Lorvão--Amarante--Santarem, Santa Clara, and Guarda, reredos 222-239 CHAPTER XVII THE LATER RENAISSANCE AND THE SPANISH USURPATION Diogo de Torralva and Claustro dos Filippes, Thomar--Miranda de Douro--Reigns of Dom Sebastião and of the Cardinal King Henry not noted for much building--Evora, Graça and University--Fatal expedition by Dom Sebastião to Morocco--His death and defeat--Feeble reign of his grand-uncle--Election of Philip--Union with Spain and consequent loss of trade--Lisbon, São Roque; coming of Terzi--Lisbon, São Vicente de Fora; first use of very long Doric pilasters--Santo Antão, Santa Maria do Desterro, and Torreão do Paço--Sé Nova, Coimbra, like Santo Antão--Oporto, Collegio Novo--Coimbra, Misericordia, Bishop's palace; Sacristy of Sé Velha, São Domingos, Carmo, Graça, São Bento by Alvares--Lisbon, São Bento--Oporto, São Bento 240-253 CHAPTER XVIII OTHER BUILDINGS OF THE LATER RENAISSANCE, TILL THE EXPULSION OF THE SPANIARDS Vianna do Castello, Misericordia--Beja, São Thiago--Azeitão, São Simão--Evora, Cartuxa--Beja, Misericordia--Oporto, Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar--Sheltered Wellington before he crossed the Douro--Besieged by Dom Miguel--Very original plan--Coimbra, Sacristy of Santa Cruz--Lisbon, Santa Engracia never finished--Doric pilasters too tall--Coimbra, Santa Clara, great abuse of Doric pilasters 254-260 CHAPTER XIX THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The expulsion of the Spaniards--Long war: final success of Portugal and recovered prosperity--Mafra founded by Dom João V.--Compared with the Escorial--Designed by a German--Palace, church, library, etc.--Evora, Capella Mor--Great Earthquake--The Marques de Pombal--Lisbon, Estrella--Oporto, Torre dos Clerigos--Oporto, Quinta do Freixo--Queluz--Quinta at Guimarães--Oporto, hospital and factory--Defeat of Dom Miguel and suppression of monasteries 261-271 BOOKS CONSULTED 272 INDEX 273 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS _To face page_ 1. Guimarães, House from Sabrosa } 4 2. Evora, Temple of 'Diana' } 3. Oporto, Fountain of Mercy 14 4. Vizeu, St. Peter, in Sacristy of Cathedral 16 5. Coimbra, Cross in Cathedral Treasury } 6. " Chalice " " } 20 7. " Monstrance " " } 8. Cintra, Palace, Sala dos Arabes } 24 9. " " Dining-room } 10. Santarem, Marvilla, coloured wall tiles } _frontispiece_. 11. " " } 12. Vallarinho, Parish Church } 32 13. Villar de Frades, West Door } 14. Paço de Souza, Interior of Church } 40 15. " " Tomb of Egas Moniz } 16. Guimarães, N. S. da Oliveira, Chapter-house Entrance } 42 17. Leça do Balio, Cloister } 18. Coimbra, Sé Velha, Interior } 50 19. " " West Front } 20. Evora, Cathedral, Interior } 54 21. " " Central Lantern } 22. Evora, Cloister } 56 23. Thomar, Templar Church } 24. Santarem, São João de Alporão } 58 25. Alcobaça, South Transept } 26. Santarem, São Francisco, West Door } 66 27. Silves, Cathedral, Interior } 28. Alcobaça Cloister } 72 29. Lisbon, Cathedral Cloister } 30. Coimbra, Sta. Clara 74 31. Alcobaça, Chapel with Royal Tombs } 78 32. " Tomb of Dom Pedro I. } 33. Batalha, West Front 86 34. Batalha, Interior } 88 35. " Capella do Fundador } 36. Batalha, Capellas Imperfeitas 92 37. Guimarães, Capella of D. Juan I. of Castile } 94 38. Guarda, North Side of Cathedral } 39. Santarem, Tomb of Dom Pedro de Menezes } 102 40. " Tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes } 41. Villa do Conde, West Front of Parish Church 108 42. Vizeu, Interior of Cathedral } 112 43. Braga, Cathedral Porch } 44. Cintra, Palace, Main Front } 120 45. " " Window in 'Sala das Sereias' } 46. Cintra, Palace, Ceiling of Chapel 126 47. Alvito, Castle } 132 48. Evora, São João Evangelista, Door to Chapter-house } 49. Caminha, Roof of Matriz } 138 50. Cintra, Palace, Ceiling of Sala dos Cysnes } 51. Coimbra, University, Ceiling of Sala dos Capellos 142 52. Cintra, Palace, additions by D. Manoel 152 53. Santarem, Marvilla, West Door } 154 54. Coimbra, University Chapel Door } 55. Thomar, Convent of Christ, South Door } 166 56. " " " Chapter-house Window } 57. Batalha, Entrance to Capellas Imperfeitas 174 58. Batalha, Window of Pateo } 178 59. " Upper part of Capellas Imperfeitas } 60. Batalha, Claustro Real } 180 61. Batalha, Lavatory in Claustro Real } 62. Belem, Torre de São Vicente } 184 63. Belem, Sacristy } 64. Belem, South side of Nave } 190 65. " Interior, looking west } 66. Belem, Cloister } 194 67. " Interior of Lower Cloister } 68. Lisbon, Conceição Velha 196 69. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, West Front } 200 70. " " Cloister } 71. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Tomb of D. Sancho I. } 202 72. " " Pulpit } 73. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Reredos in Cloister } 206 74. " " Choir Stalls } 75. Coimbra, Sé Velha, Reredos } 209 76. " " Reredos in Chapel of São Pedro} 77. Thomar, Sta. Maria dos Olivaes, Tomb of the Bishop of Funchal } 212 78. São Marcos, Tomb of D. João da Silva } 79. São Marcos, Chancel } 218 80. " Chapel of the 'Reyes Magos' } 81. Cintra, Palace, Door by Sansovino } 220 82. Caminha, West Door of Church } 83. Alcobaça, Sacristy Door } 224 84. Batalha, Door of Sta. Cruz } 85. Thomar, Claustro da Hospedaria } 228 86. " Chapel in Dormitory Passage } 87. Thomar, Stair in Claustro dos Filippes } 230 88. " Chapel of the Conceição } 89. Santarem, Marvilla, Interior } 236 90. Vizeu, Cathedral Cloister } 91. Guarda, Cathedral Reredos } 240 92. Thomar, Claustro dos Filippes } 93. Lisbon, São Vicente de Fora } 246 94. " " " Interior } 95. Coimbra, Sé Nova } 250 96. " Misericordia } 97. Vianna do Castello, Misericordia 254 98. Oporto, N. S. da Serra do Pilar, Cloister} 258 99. Coimbra, Sta. Cruz, Sacristy } 100. Mafra, West Front } 266 101. " Interior of Church } [Illustration: map of Portugal] INTRODUCTION No one can look at a map of the Iberian Peninsula without being struck by the curious way in which it is unequally divided between two independent countries. Spain occupies by far the larger part of the Peninsula, leaving to Portugal only a narrow strip on the western seaboard some one hundred miles wide and three hundred and forty long. Besides, the two countries are separated the one from the other by merely artificial boundaries. The two largest rivers of the Peninsula, the Douro and the Tagus, rise in Spain, but finish their course in Portugal, and the Guadiana runs for some eighty miles through Portuguese territory before acting for a second time as a boundary between the two countries. The same, to a lesser degree, is true of the mountains. The Gerez and the Marão are only offshoots of the Cantabrian mountains, and the Serra da Estrella in Beira is but a continuation of the Sierra de Gata which separates Leon from Spanish Estremadura. Indeed the only natural frontiers are formed by the last thirty miles of the Minho in the north, by about eighty miles of the Douro, which in its deep and narrow gorge really separates Traz os Montes from Leon; by a few miles of the Tagus, and by the Guadiana both before and after it runs through a part of Alemtejo. If the languages of the two countries were radically unlike this curious division would be more easy to understand, but in reality Castilian differs from Portuguese rather in pronunciation than in anything else; indeed differs less from Portuguese than it does from Cataluñan.[1] During the Roman dominion none of the divisions of the Peninsula corresponded exactly with Portugal. Lusitania, which the poets of the Renaissance took to be the Roman name of their country, only reached up to the Douro, and took in a large part of Leon and the whole of Spanish Estremadura. In the time of the Visigoths, a Suevic kingdom occupied most of Portugal to the north of the Tagus, but included also all Galicia and part of Leon; and during the Moorish occupation there was nothing which at all corresponded with the modern divisions. It was, indeed, only by the gradual Christian re-conquest of the country from the Moors that Portugal came into existence, and only owing to the repeated failure of the attempt to unite the two crowns of Portugal and Castile by marriage that they have remained separated to the present day. Of the original inhabitants of what is now Portugal little is known, but that they were more Celtic than Iberian seems probable from a few Celtic words which have survived, such as _Mor_ meaning _great_ as applied to the _Capella Mor_ of a church or to the title of a court official. The name too of the Douro has probably nothing to do with gold but is connected with a Celtic word for water. The Tua may mean the 'gushing' river, and the Ave recalls the many Avons. _Ebora_, now Evora, is very like the Roman name of York, Eboracum. _Briga_, too, the common termination of town names in Roman times as in Conimbriga--Condeixa a Velha--or Cetobriga, near Setubal--in Celtic means _height_ or _fortification_. All over the country great rude stone monuments are to be found, like those erected by primitive peoples in almost every part of Europe, and the most interesting, the curious buildings found at various places near Guimarães, seem to belong to a purely Celtic civilisation. The best-known of these places, now called Citania--from a name of a native town mentioned by ancient writers--occupies the summit of a hill about nine hundred feet above the road and nearly half-way between Guimarães and Braga. The top of this hill is covered with a number of structures, some round from fifteen to twenty feet across, and some square, carefully built of well-cut blocks of granite. The only opening is a door which is often surrounded by an architrave adorned with rough carving; the roofs seem to have been of wood and tiles. Some, not noticing the three encircling walls and the well-cut water-channels, and thinking that the round buildings far exceeded the rectangular in number, have thought that they might have been intended for granaries where corn might be stored against a time of war. But it seems far more likely that Citania was a town placed on this high hill for safety. Though the remains show no other trace of Roman civilisation, one or two of the houses are inscribed with their owner's names in Roman character, and from coins found there they seem to have been inhabited long after the surrounding valleys had been subdued by the Roman arms, perhaps even after the great baths had been built not far off at the hot springs of Taipas. Uninfluenced by Rome, Citania was also untouched by Christianity, though it may have been inhabited after St. James--if indeed he ever preached in Bracara Augusta, now Braga--and his disciple São Pedro de Rates had begun their mission. But if Citania knew nothing of Christianity there still remains one remarkable monument of the native religion. Among the ruins there long lay a huge thin slab of granite, now in the museum of Guimarães, which certainly has the appearance of having been a sacrificial stone. It is a rough pentagon with each side measuring about five feet. On one side, in the middle, a semicircular hollow has been cut out as if to leave room for the sacrificing priest, while on the surface of the stone a series of grooves has been cut, all draining to a hole near this hollow and arranged as if for a human body with outstretched legs and arms. The rest of the surface is covered with an intricate pattern like what may often be found on Celtic stones in Scotland. Besides this so-called Citania similar buildings have been found elsewhere, as at Sabrosa, also near Guimarães, but there the Roman influence seems usually to have been greater. (Fig. 1.) The Romans began to occupy the Peninsula after the second Punic war, but the conquest of the west and north was not completed till the reign of Augustus more than two hundred years later. The Roman dominion over what is now Portugal lasted for over four hundred years, and the chief monument of their occupation is found in the language. More material memorials are the milestones which still stand in the Gerez, some tombstones, and some pavements and other remains at Condeixa a Velha, once Conimbriga, near Coimbra and at the place now called Troya, perhaps the original Cetobriga, on a sandbank opposite Setubal, a town whose founders were probably Phoenicians. But more important than any of these is the temple at Evora, now without any reason called the temple of Diana. During the middle ages, crowned with battlements, with the spaces between the columns built up, it was later degraded by being turned into a slaughter-house, and was only cleared of such additions a few years since. Situated near the cathedral, almost on the highest part of the town, it stands on a terrace whose great retaining wall still shows the massiveness of Roman work. Of the temple itself there remains about half of the podium, some eleven feet high, fourteen granite columns, twelve of which still retain their beautiful Corinthian capitals, and the architrave and part of the frieze resting on these twelve capitals. Everything is of granite except the capitals and bases which are of white marble; but instead of the orthodox twenty-four flutes each column has only twelve, with a distinctly unpleasing result. The temple seems to have been hexastyle peripteral, but all trace of the cella has disappeared. Nothing is known of the temple or who it was that built it, but in Roman times Evora was one of the chief cities of Lusitania; nothing else is left but the temple, for the aqueduct has been rebuilt and the so-called Tower of Sertorius was mediæval. Yet, although it may have less to show than Merida, once Augusta Emerita and the capital of the province, this temple is the best-preserved in the whole peninsula. (Fig. 2.) Before the Roman dominion came to an end, in the first quarter of the fifth century, Christianity had been for some time firmly established. Religious intolerance also, which nearly a thousand years later made Spain the first home of the Inquisition, had already made itself manifest in the burning of the heretical Priscillianists by Idacius, whose see was at or near Lamego. Soon, however, the orthodox were themselves to suffer, for the Vandals, the Goths, and the Suevi, who swept across the country from 417 A.D., were Arians, and it was only after many years had passed that the ruling Goths and Suevi were converted to the Catholic faith. The Vandals soon passed on to Africa, leaving their name in Andalucia and the whole land to the Goths and Suevi, the [Illustration: FIG. 1. HOUSE FROM SABROSA. NOW IN MUSEUM, GUIMARÃES. ] [Illustration: FIG. 2. EVORA. TEMPLE OF "DIANA." ] Suevi at first occupying the whole of Portugal north of the Tagus as well as Galicia and part of Leon. Later they were expelled from the southern part of their dominion, but they as well as the Goths have left practically no mark on the country, for the church built at Oporto by the Suevic king, Theodomir, on his conversion to orthodoxy in 559, has been rebuilt in the eleventh or twelfth century. These Germanic rulers seem never to have been popular with those they governed, so that when the great Moslem invasion crossed from Morocco in 711 and, defeating King Roderick at Guadalete near Cadiz, swept in an incredibly short time right up to the northern mountains, the whole country submitted with scarcely a struggle. A few only of the Gothic nobles took refuge on the seaward slopes of the Cantabrian mountains in the Asturias and there made a successful stand, electing Don Pelayo as their king. As time went on, Pelayo's descendants crossed the mountains, and taking Leon gradually extended their small kingdom southwards. Meanwhile other independent counties or principalities further east were gradually spreading downwards. The nearest was Castile, so called from its border castles, then Navarre, then Aragon, and lastly the county of Barcelona or Cataluña. Galicia, in the north-west corner, never having been thoroughly conquered by the invaders, was soon united with the Asturias and then with Leon. So all these Christian realms, Leon--including Galicia and Asturias--Castile, and Aragon, which was soon united to Cataluña, spread southwards, faster when the Moslems were weakened by division, slower when they had been united and strengthened by a fresh wave of fanaticism from Africa. Navarre alone was unable to grow, for the lower Ebro valley was won by the kings of Aragon, while Castile as she grew barred the way to the south-west. At last in 1037 Fernando I. united Castile and Leon into one kingdom, extending from the sea in the north to the lower course of the Douro and to the mountains dividing the upper Douro from the Tagus valley in the south. Before Fernando died in 1065 he had extended his frontier on the west as far south as the Mondego, making Sesnando, a converted Moslem, count of this important marchland. Then followed a new division, for Castile went to King Sancho, Leon to Alfonso VI., and Galicia, including the two counties of Porto and of Coimbra, to Garcia. Before long, however, Alfonso turned out his brothers and also extended his borders even to the Tagus by taking Toledo in 1085. But his successes roused the Moslem powers to fresh fanaticism. A new and stricter dynasty, the Almoravides,[2] arose in Africa and crossing the straits inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christians at Zalaca. In despair at this disaster and at the loss of Santarem and of Lisbon, Alfonso appealed to Christendom for help. Among those who came were Count Raymond of Toulouse, who was rewarded with the kingdom of Galicia and the hand of his daughter and heiress Urraca, and Count Henry of Burgundy, who was granted the counties of Porto and of Coimbra and who married another daughter of Alfonso's, Theresa. This was really the first beginning of Portugal as an independent state; for Portugal, derived from two towns Portus and Cales, which lie opposite each other near the mouth of the Douro, was the name given to Henry's county. Henry did but little to make himself independent as he was usually away fighting elsewhere, but his widow Theresa refused to acknowledge her sister Urraca, now queen of Castile, Leon and Galicia, as her superior, called herself Infanta and behaved as if she was no one's vassal. Fortunately for her and her aims, Urraca was far too busy fighting with her second husband, the king of Aragon, to pay much attention to what was happening in the west, so that she had time to consolidate her power and to accustom her people to think of themselves as being not Galicians but Portuguese. The breach with Galicia was increased by the favour which Theresa, after a time, began to show to her lover, Don Fernando Peres de Trava, a Galician noble, and by the grants of lands and of honours she made to him. This made her so unpopular that when Alfonso Raimundes, Urraca's son, attacked Theresa in 1127, made her acknowledge him as suzerain, and give up Tuy and Orense, Galician towns she had taken, the people rose against her and declared her son Affonso Henriques old enough to reign. Then took place the famous submission of Egas Moniz, Affonso's governor, who induced the king to retire from the siege of Guimarães by promising that his pupil would agree to the terms forced on his mother. This, though but seventeen, Affonso refused to do, and next year raising an army he expelled his mother and Don Fernando, and after four wars with his cousin of Castile finally succeeded in maintaining his independence, and even in assuming the title of King. These wars with Castile taught him at last that the true way to increase his realm was to leave Christian territory alone and to direct his energies southwards, gaining land only at the expense of the Moors. So did the kingdom of Portugal come into existence, almost accidentally and without there being any division of race or of language between its inhabitants and those of Galicia. The youngest of all the Peninsular kingdoms, it is the only one which still remains separate from the rest of the Spains, for when in 1580 union was forced on her by Philip II., Portugal had had too glorious a past, and had become too different in language and in custom easily to submit to so undesired a union, while Spain, already suffering from coming weakness and decay, was not able long to hold her in such hated bondage. It is not necessary here to tell the story of each of Affonso Henriques' descendants. He himself permanently extended the borders of his kingdom as far as the Tagus, and even raided the Moslem lands of the south as far as Ourique, beyond Beja. His son, Sancho I., finding the Moors too strong to make any permanent conquests beyond the Tagus, devoted himself chiefly--when not fighting with the king of Castile and Leon--to rebuilding and restoring the towns in Beira, and it was not till the reign of his grandson, Affonso III., that the southern sea was reached by the taking of the Algarve in the middle of the thirteenth century. Dom Diniz, Affonso III.'s son, carried on the work of settling the country, building castles and planting pine-trees to stay the blowing sands along the west coast. From that time on Portugal was able to hold her own, and was strong enough in 1387 to defeat the king of Castile at Aljubarrota when he tried to seize the throne in right of his wife, only child of the late Portuguese king, Fernando. Under the House of Aviz, whose first king, João I., had been elected to repel this invasion, Portugal rose to the greatest heights of power and of wealth to which the country was ever to attain. The ceaseless efforts of Dom Henrique, the Navigator, the third son of Dom João, were crowned with success when Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in May 1498, and when Pedro Alvares Cabral first saw the coasts of Brazil in 1500. To-day one is too ready to forget that Portugal was the pioneer in geographical discovery, that the Portuguese were the first Westerns to reach Japan, and that, had João II. listened to Columbus, it would have been to Portugal and not to Spain that he would have given a new world. It was, too, under the House of Aviz that the greatest development in architecture took place, and that the only original and distinctive style of architecture was formed. That was also the time when the few good pictures which the country possesses were painted, and when much of the splendid church plate which still exists was wrought. The sixty years of the Spanish captivity, as it was called, from 1580 to 1640, were naturally comparatively barren of all good work. After the restoration of peace and a revival of the Brazilian trade had brought back some of the wealth which the country had lost, the art of building had fallen so low that of the many churches rebuilt or altered during the eighteenth century there is scarcely one possessed of the slightest merit. The most important events of the eighteenth century were the great earthquakes of 1755 and the ministry of the Marques de Pombal. Soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century came the invasion led by Junot, 1807, the flight of the royal family to Brazil, and the Peninsular War. Terrible damage was done by the invaders, cart-loads of church plate were carried off, and many a monastery was sacked and burned. Peace had not long been restored when the struggle broke out between the constitutional party under Pedro of Brazil, who had resigned the throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria da Gloria, and the absolutists under Dom Miguel, his brother. The civil war lasted for several years, from May 1828, when Dom Miguel, then regent for his niece, summoned the Cortes and caused himself to be elected king, till May 1834, when he was finally defeated at Evora Monte and forced to leave the country. The chief events of his usurpation were the siege of Oporto and the defeat of his fleet off Cape St. Vincent in 1833 by Captain Charles Napier, who fought for Dona Maria under the name of Carlos de Ponza. One of the first acts of the constitutional Cortes was to suppress all the monasteries in the kingdom in 1834. At the same time the nunneries were forbidden to receive any new nuns, with the result that in many places the buildings have gradually fallen into decay, till the last surviving sister has died, solitary and old, and so at length set free her home to be turned to some public use.[3] Since then the history of Portugal has been quiet and uneventful. Good roads have been made--but not always well kept up--railways have been built, and Lisbon, once known as the dirtiest of towns, has become one of the cleanest, with fine streets, electric lighting, a splendidly managed system of electric tramways, and with funiculars and lifts to connect the higher parts of the town with its busy centre. It is not uninteresting to notice in how many small matters Portugal now differs from Spain. Portugal drinks tea, Spain chocolate or coffee; it lunches and dines early, Spain very late; its beds and pillows are very hard, in Spain they are much softer. Travelling too in Portugal is much pleasanter; as the country is so much smaller, trains leave at much more reasonable hours, run more frequently, and go more quickly. The inns also, even in small places, are, if not luxurious, usually quite clean with good food, and the landlord treats his guests with something more pleasing than that lofty condescension which is so noticeable in Spain. Of the more distant countries of Europe, Portugal is now one of the easiest to reach. Forty-eight hours from Southampton in a boat bound for South America lands the traveller at Vigo, or three days at Lisbon, where the brilliant sun and blue sky, the judas-trees in the Avenida, the roses, the palms, and the sheets of bougainvillia, are such an unimaginable change from the cold March winds and pinched buds of England. There is perhaps no country in Europe which has so interesting a flora, especially in spring. In March in the granite north the ground under the pine-trees is covered with the exquisite flowers of the narcissus triandrus,[4] while the wet water meadows are yellow with petticoat daffodils. Other daffodils too abound, but these are the commonest. Later the granite rocks are hidden by great trees of white broom, while from north to south every wild piece of land is starred with the brilliant blue flowers of the lithospermum. There are also endless varieties of cistus, from the small yellow annual with rich brown heart to the large gum cistus that covers so much of the poor soil in the Alemtejo. These plains of the Alemtejo are supposed to be the least beautiful part of the country, but no one can cross them in April without being almost overcome with the beauty of the flowers, cistus, white, yellow, or red, tall white heaths, red heaths, blue lithospermum, yellow whin, and most brilliant of all the large pimpernel, whose blue flowers almost surpass the gentian. A little further on where there is less heath and cistus, tall yellow and blue Spanish irises stand up out of the grass, or there may be great heads of blue scilla peruviana or sheets of small iris of the brightest blue. Indeed, sheets of brilliant colour are everywhere most wonderful. There may be acres of rich purple where the bugloss hides the grass, or of brilliant yellow where the large golden daisies grow thickly together, or of sky-blue where the convolvulus has smothered a field of oats. PAINTING IN PORTUGAL.[5] From various causes Portugal is far less rich in buildings of interest than is Spain. The earthquake has destroyed many, but more have perished through tasteless rebuilding during the eighteenth century when the country again regained a small part of the trade and wealth lost during the Spanish usurpation. But if this is true of architecture, it is far more true of painting. During the most flourishing period of Spanish painting, the age of Velasquez and of Murillo, Portugal was, before 1640, a despised part of the kingdom, treated as a conquered province, while after the rebellion the long struggle, which lasted for twenty-eight years, was enough to prevent any of the arts from flourishing. Besides, many good pictures which once adorned the royal palaces of Portugal were carried off to Madrid by Philip or his successors. And yet there are scattered about the country not a few paintings of considerable merit. Most of them have been terribly neglected, are very dirty, or hang where they can scarcely be seen, while little is really known about their painters. From the time of Dom João I., whose daughter, Isabel, married Duke Philip early in the fifteenth century, the two courts of Portugal and of Burgundy had been closely united. Isabel sent an alabaster monument for the tomb of her father's great friend and companion, the Holy Constable, and one of bronze for that of her eldest brother; while as a member of the embassy which came to demand her hand, was J. van Eyck himself. However, if he painted anything in Portugal, it has now vanished. There was also a great deal of trade with Antwerp where the Portuguese merchants had a _lonja_ or exchange as early as 1386, and where a factory was established in 1503. With the heads of this factory, Francisco Brandão and Rodrigo Ruy de Almada, Albert Dürer was on friendly terms, sending them etchings and paintings in return for wine and southern rarities. He also drew the portrait of Damião de Goes, Dom Manoel's friend and chronicler. It is natural enough, therefore, that Flanders should have had a great influence on Portuguese painting, and indeed practically all the pictures in the country are either by Netherland masters, painted at home and imported, or painted in Portugal by artists who had been attracted there by the fame of Dom Manoel's wealth and generosity, or else by Portuguese pupils sent to study in Flanders. During the seventeenth century all memory of these painters had vanished. Looking at their work, the writers of that date were struck by what seemed to them, in their natural ignorance of Flemish art, a strange and peculiar style, and so attributed them all to a certain half-mythical painter of Vizeu called Vasco, or Grão Vasco, who is first mentioned in 1630. Raczynski,[6] in his letters to the Berlin Academy, says that he had found Grão Vasco's birth in a register of Vizeu; but Vasco is not an uncommon name, and besides this child, Vasco Fernandes, was born in 1552--far too late to have painted any of the so-called Grão Vasco's pictures. It is of course possible that some of the pictures now at Vizeu were the work of a man called Vasco, and one of those at Coimbra, in the sacristy of Santa Cruz, is signed Velascus--which is only the Spanish form of Vasco--so that the legendary personage may have been evolved from either or both of these, for it is scarcely possible that they can have been the same. Turning now to some of the pictures themselves, there are thirteen representing scenes from the life of the Virgin in the archbishop's palace at Evora, which are said by Justi, a German critic, to be by Gerhard David. Twelve of these are in a very bad state of preservation, but one is still worthy of some admiration. In the centre sits the Virgin with the Child on her knee: four angels are in the air above her holding a wreath. On her right three angels are singing, and on her left one plays an organ while another behind blows the bellows. Below there are six other angels, three on each side with a lily between them, playing, those on the right on a violin, a flute, and a zither, those on the left on a harp, a triangle, and a guitar. Once part of the cathedral reredos, it was taken down when the new Capella Mor was built in the eighteenth century. Another Netherlander who painted at Evora was Frey Carlos, who came to Espinheiro close by in 1507. Several of his works are in the Museum at Lisbon.[7] When Dom Manoel was enriching the old Templar church at Thomar with gilding and with statues of saints, he also caused large paintings to be placed round the outer wall. Several still remain, but most have perished, either during the French invasion or during the eleven years after the expulsion of the monks in 1834 when the church stood open for any one to go in and do what harm he liked. Some also, including the 'Raising of Lazarus,' the 'Entry into Jerusalem,' the 'Resurrection,' and the 'Centurion,' are now in Lisbon. Four--the 'Nativity,' the 'Visit of the Magi,' the 'Annunciation,' and a 'Virgin and Child'--are known to have been given by Dom Manoel; twenty others, including the four now at Lisbon, are spoken of by Raczynski in 1843,[8] and some at least of these, as well as the angels holding the emblems of the Passion, who stand above the small arches of the inner octagon, may have been painted by Johannes Dralia of Bruges, who died and was buried at Thomar in 1504.[9] Also at Thomar, but in the parish church of São João Baptista, are some pictures ascribed by Justi to a pupil of Quentin Matsys. Now it is known that a Portuguese called _Eduard_ became a pupil of Matsys in 1504, and four years later a Vrejmeester of the guild. So perhaps they may be by this Eduard or by some fellow-pupil. The Jesus Church at Setubal, built by Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's nurse, has fifteen paintings in incongruous gilt frames and hung high up on the north wall of the church, which also have something of the same style.[10] More interesting than these are two pictures in the sacristy of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, an 'Ecce Homo' and the 'Day of Pentecost.' It is the 'Pentecost' which is signed Velascus, and in it the Apostles in an inner room are seen through an arcade of three arches like a chapter-house entrance. Perhaps once part of the great reredos, this picture has suffered terribly from neglect; but it must once have been a fine work, and the way in which the Apostles in the inner room are separated by the arcade from the two spectators is particularly successful. In Oporto there exists at least one good picture, 'The Fountain of Mercy,' now in the board-room of the Misericordia,[11] but painted to be the reredos of the chapel of São Thiago in the Sé where the brotherhood was founded by Dom Manoel in 1499. (Fig. 3.) In the centre above, between St. John and the Virgin, stands a crucifix from which blood flows down to fill a white marble well. Below, on one side there kneels Dom Manoel with his six sons--João, afterwards king; Luis, duke of Beja; Fernando, duke of Guarda; Affonso, afterwards archbishop of Lisbon, with his cardinal's hat; Henrique, later cardinal archbishop of Evora, and then king; and Duarte, duke of Guimarães and ancestor of the present ruling house of Braganza. On the other side are Queen Dona Leonor,[12] granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Dom Manoel's third wife[13] and her two stepdaughters, Dona Isabel, the wife of Charles V. and mother of Philip II., who through her claimed and won the throne of Portugal when his uncle, the cardinal king, died in 1580, and Dona Beatriz, who married Charles III.. of Savoy. The date of the picture is fixed as between 1518 when Dom Affonso, then aged nine, received his cardinal's hat, and 1521 when Dom Manoel died.[14] Unfortunately the picture has been somewhat spoiled by restoration, but it is undoubtedly a very fine piece of work--especially the portraits below--and would be worthy of admiration anywhere, even in a country much richer in works of art. It has of course been attributed to Grão Vasco, but it is quite different from either the Velascus pictures at Coimbra or the paintings at Vizeu; besides, some of the beautifully painted flowers, such as the columbines, which enrich the grass on which the royal persons kneel, are not Portuguese flowers, so that it is much more likely to have been the work of some one from Flanders. Equally Flemish are the pictures at Vizeu, whether any of them be by the Grão Vasco or not. Tradition has it that he was born at a mill not far off, still called _Moinho do Pintor_, the _Painter's Mill_, and that Dom Manoel sent him to study in Italy. Now, wherever the painter of the Vizeu pictures had [Illustration: FIG. 3. THE FOUNTAIN OF MERCY. MISERICORDIA, OPORTO. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] studied it can scarcely have been in Italy, as they are all surely much nearer to the Flemish than to any Italian school. There are still in the precincts of the cathedral some thirty-one pictures of very varied merit, and not all by the same hand. Of these there are fourteen in the chapter-house, a room opening off the upper cloister. They are all scenes from the life of Our Lord from the Annunciation to the day of Pentecost. Larger than any of these is a damaged 'Crucifixion' in the Jesus Chapel under the chapter-house. The painting is full, perhaps too full, of movement and of figures. Besides the scenes usually portrayed in a picture of the Crucifixion, others are shown in the background, Judas hanging himself on one side, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus on the other, coming out from Jerusalem with their spices. Lastly, in the sacristy there are twelve small paintings of the Apostles and other saints of no great merit, and four large pictures, 'St. Sebastian,' the 'Day of Pentecost,' where the room is divided by three arches, with the Virgin and another saint in the centre, and six of the Apostles on each side; the 'Baptism of Our Lord,' and lastly 'St. Peter.' The first three are not very remarkable, but the 'St. Peter' is certainly one of the finest pictures in the country, and is indeed worthy of ranking among the great pictures of the world.[15] (Fig. 4.) As in the 'Day of Pentecost' there is a triple division; St. Peter's throne being in the middle with an arch on each side open to show distant scenes. The throne seems to be of stone, with small boys and griffins holding shields charged with the Cross Keys on the arms. On the canopy two other shields supporting triple crowns flank an arch whose classic ornaments and large shell are more Italian than is any other part of the painting. On the throne sits St. Peter pontifically robed, and with the triple crown on his head. His right hand is raised in blessing, and in his left he holds one very long key while he keeps a book open upon his knee. The cope is of splendid gold brocade of a fine Gothic pattern, with orfreys or borders richly embroidered with figures of saints, and is fastened in front by a great square gold and jewelled morse. All the draperies are very finely modelled and richly coloured, but finest of all is St. Peter's face, solemn and stern and yet kindly, without any of that pride and arrogance which would seem but natural to the wearer of such vestments; it is, with its grey hair and short grey beard, rather the face of the fisherman of Galilee than that of a Pope. Through the arches to the right and left above a low wall are seen the beginning and the end of his ministry. On the one side he is leaving his boat and his nets to become a fisher of men, and on the other he kneels before the vision of Our Lord, when fleeing from Rome he met Him at the place now called 'Quo Vadis' on the Appian way, and so was turned back to meet his martyrdom. Fortunately this painting has suffered from no restoration, and is still wonderfully clean, but the wood on which it is painted has split rather badly in places, one large crack running from top to bottom just beyond the throne on St. Peter's right. This 'St. Peter,' then, is entirely Flemish in the painting of the drapery and of the scenes behind; especially of the turreted Gothic walls of Rome. The details of the throne may be classic, but French renaissance forms were first introduced into the country at Belem in 1517, just the time when the cathedral here was being built by Bishop Dom Diogo Ortiz de Vilhegas. This, and the other pictures in the sacristy, were doubtless once parts of the great reredos, which would not be put up till the church was quite finished, and so may not have been painted till some time after 1520, or even later. Already in 1522 much renaissance work was being done at Coimbra, not far off, so it is possible that the painter of these pictures may have adopted his classic detail from what he may have seen there. It is worth noting, too, that preserved in the sacristy at Vizeu there is, or was,[16] a cope so like that worn by St. Peter, that the painting must almost certainly have been copied from it. We may therefore conclude that these pictures are the work of some one who had indeed studied abroad, probably at Antwerp, but who worked at home. Not only to paint religious pictures and portraits did Flemish artists come to Portugal. One at least, Antonio de [Illustration: FIG. 4. ST. PETER. IN THE CATHEDRAL SACRISTY. VIZEU. ] Hollanda, was famous for his illuminations. He lived and worked at Evora, and is said by his son Francisco to have been the first in Portugal 'to make known a pleasing manner of painting in black and white, superior to all processes known in other countries.'[17] When the convent of Thomar was being finished by Dom João III., some large books were in November 1533 sent on a mule to Antonio at Evora to be illuminated. Two of these books were finished and paid for in February 1535, when he received 63$795 or about £15. The books were bound at Evora for 4$000 or sixteen shillings. By the end of the next year a Psalter was finished which cost 54$605 or £12, at the rate of 6$000, £1, 6s. 8d. for each of four large headings, forty illuminated letters with vignettes at 2s. 2d. each, a hundred and fifteen without vignettes at fivepence-halfpenny, two hundred and three in red, gold, and blue at fourpence-farthing, eighty-four drawn in black at twopence, and 2846 small letters at the beginning of each verse at less than one farthing. Next March this Psalter was brought back to Thomar on a mule whose hire was two shillings and twopence--a sum small enough for a journey of well over a hundred miles,[18] but which may help us the better to estimate the value of the money paid to Antonio.[19] CHURCH PLATE. A very great part of the church plate of Portugal has long since disappeared, for few chapters had the foresight to hide all that was most valuable when Soult began his devastating march from the north, and so he and his men were able to encumber their retreat with cart-loads of the most beautiful gold and silver ornaments. Yet a good deal has survived, either because it was hidden away as at Guimarães or at Coimbra--where it is said to have been only found lately--or because, as at Evora, it lay apart from the course of this famous plunderer. The richest treasuries at the present day are those of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira at Guimarães, and of the Sés at Braga, at Coimbra, and at Evora. A silver-gilt chalice and a pastoral staff of the twelfth century in the sacristy at Braga are among the oldest pieces of plate in the country. The chalice is about five inches high. The cup, ornamented with animals and leaves, stands on a plain base inscribed, 'In n[=m]e D[=m]i Menendus Gundisaluis de Tuda domna sum.' It is called the chalice of São Giraldo, and is supposed to have belonged to that saint, who as archbishop of Braga baptized Affonso Henriques. The staff of copper-gilt is in the form of a snake with a cross in its mouth, and though almost certainly of the twelfth century is said to have been found in the tomb of Santo Ovidio, the third archbishop of the see. Another very fine chalice of the same date is in the treasury at Coimbra. Here the round cup is enriched by an arcade, under each arch of which stands a saint, while on the base are leaves and medallions with angels. It is inscribed, 'Geda Menendis me fecit in onore sci. Michaelis e. MCLXXXX.', that is A.D. 1152. It was no doubt given by Dom Miguel, who ruled the see from 1162 to 1176 and who spent so much on the old cathedral and on its furniture. For him Master Ptolomeu made silver altar fronts, and the goldsmith Felix a jug and basin for the service of the altar. He also had a gold chalice made weighing 4 marks, probably the one made by Geda Menendis, and a gold cross to enclose some pieces of the Holy Sepulchre and two pieces of the True Cross. At Guimarães the chalice of São Torquato is of the thirteenth century. The cup is quite plain and small, but on the wide-spreading base are eight enamels of Our Lady and of seven of the Apostles. The finest of all the objects in the Guimarães treasury is the reredos, taken by Dom João I. from the Spanish king's tent after the victory of Aljubarrota, and one of the angels which once went with it. The same king also gave to the small church of São Miguel a silver processional cross, all embossed with oak leaves, and ending in fleurs-de-lys, which rises from two superimposed octagons, covered with Gothic ornament. Another beautiful cross now at Coimbra has a 'Virgin and Child' in the centre under a rich canopy, and enamels of the four Evangelists on the arms, while the rest of the surface including the foliated ends is covered with exquisitely pierced flowing tracery. (Fig. 5.) Earlier are the treasures which once belonged the Queen St. Isabel who died in 1327, and which are still preserved at Coimbra. These include a beautiful and simple cross of agate and silver, a curious reliquary made of a branch of coral with silver mountings, her staff as abbess of St. Clara, shaped like the cross of an Eastern bishop, and with heads of animals at the ends of the arms, and a small ark-shaped reliquary of silver and coral now set on a high renaissance base. But nearly all the surviving church plate dates from the time of Dom Manoel or his son. To Braga Archbishop Diogo de Souza gave a splendid silver-gilt chalice in 1509. Here the cup is adorned above by six angels holding emblems of the Passion, and below by six others holding bells. Above them runs an inscription, _Hic est calix sanguinis mei novi et eter_. The stem is entirely covered with most elaborate canopy work, with six Apostles in niches, while on the base are five other Apostles in relief, the archbishop's arms, and six pieces of enamel. Very similar is a splendid chalice in the Misericordia at Oporto, probably of about the same date, and two at Coimbra. In both of these the cup is embossed with angels and leafage--in one the angels hold bells--and the stem is covered with tabernacle work. On the base of the one is a _pietà_ with mourning angels and other emblems of the Passion in relief, while that of the other is enriched with filigree work. (Fig. 6.) Another at Guimarães given by Fernando Alvares is less well proportioned and less beautiful. So far the architectural details of the chalices mentioned have been entirely national, but there is a custodia at Evora, whose interlacing canopy work seems to betray the influence of the Netherlands. The base of this custodia[20] or monstrance, in the shape of a chalice seems later than the upper part, which is surmounted by a rounded canopy whose hanging cusps and traceried panels strongly recall the Flemish work of the great reredos in the old cathedral at Coimbra. Even more Flemish are a pastoral staff made for Cardinal Henrique, son of Dom Manoel and afterwards king, a monstrance or reliquary at Coimbra,[21] and another at Guimarães.[22] Much splendid plate was also given to Santa Cruz at Coimbra by Dom Manoel, but all--candlesticks, lamps, crosses and a monstrance--have since vanished, sent to Gôa in India when the canons in the eighteenth century wanted something more fashionable. Belem also possessed splendid treasures, among them a cross of silver filigree and jewels which is still preserved. Much filigree work is still done in the north, where the young women invest their savings in great golden hearts or in beautiful earrings, though now bunches of coloured flowers on huge lockets of coppery gold are much more sought after. Curiously, many of the most famous goldsmiths of the sixteenth century were Jews. Among them was the Vicente family, a member of which made a fine monstrance for Belem in 1505, and which, like other families, was expelled from Coimbra to Guimarães between the years 1532 and 1537, and doubtless wrought some of the beautiful plate for which the treasury of Nossa Senhora is famous. The seventeenth century, besides smaller works, has left the great silver tomb of the Holy Queen St. Isabel in the new church of Santa Clara. Made by order of Bishop Dom Affonso de Castello Branco in 1614, it weighs over 170 lbs., has at the sides and ends Corinthian columns, leaving panels between them with beautifully chased framing, and a sloping top. Later and less worthy of notice are the coffins of the two first sainted abbesses of the convent of Lorvão, near Coimbra, in which elaborate acanthus scrolls in silver are laid over red velvet. TILE WORK OR AZULEJOS. The Moors occupied most of what is now Portugal for a considerable length of time. The extreme north they held for rather less than two hundred years, the extreme south for more than five hundred. This occupation by a governing class, so different in religion, in race, and in customs from [Illustration: FIG. 5. CROSS AT COIMBRA.] [Illustration: FIG. 6. CHALICE AT COIMBRA.] [Illustration: FIG. 7. MONSTRANCE AT COIMBRA.] those they ruled, has naturally had a strong influence, not only on the language of Portugal, but also on the art. Though there survive no important Moorish buildings dating from before the re-conquest--for the so-called mosque at Cintra is certainly a small Christian church--many were built after it for Christians by Moorish workmen. These, as well as the Arab ceilings, or those derived therefrom, will be described later, but here must be mentioned the tilework, the most universally distributed legacy of the Eastern people who once held the land. There is scarcely a church, certainly scarcely one of any size or importance which even in the far north has not some lining or dado of tiles, while others are entirely covered with them from floor to ceiling or vault. The word _azulejo_ applied to these tiles is derived from the Arabic _azzallaja_ or _azulaich_, meaning _smooth_, or else through the Arabic from a Low Latin word _azuroticus_ used by a Gaulish writer of the fifth century to describe mosaic[23] and not from the word _azul_ or _blue_. At first each different piece or colour in a geometric pattern was cut before firing to the shape required, and the many different pieces when coloured and fired were put together so as to form a regular mosaic. This method of making tiles, though soon given up in most places as being too troublesome, is still employed at Tetuan in Morocco, where in caves near the town the whole process may still be seen; for there the mixing of the clay, the cutting out of the small pieces, the colouring and the firing are still carried on in the old primitive and traditional manner.[24] Elsewhere, though similar designs long continued to be used in Spain and Portugal, and are still used in Morocco, the tiles were all made square, each tile usually forming one quarter of the pattern. In them the pattern was formed by lines slightly raised above the surface of the tile so that there was no danger during the firing of the colour running beyond the place it was intended to occupy. For a long time, indeed right up to the end of the fifteenth century, scarcely anything but Moorish geometric patterns seem to have been used. Then with the renaissance their place was taken by other patterns of infinite variety; some have octagons with classic mouldings represented in colour, surrounding radiating green and blue leaves;[25] some more strictly classical are not unlike Italian patterns; some again are more naturalistic, while in others the pattern, though not of the old geometric form, is still Moorish in design. Together with the older tiles of Moorish pattern plain tiles were often made in which each separate tile, usually square, but at times rhomboidal or oblong, was of one colour, and such tiles were often used from quite early times down at least to the end of the seventeenth century. More restricted in use were the beautiful embossed tiles found in the palace at Cintra, in which each has on it a raised green vine-leaf and tendril, or more rarely a dark bunch of grapes. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century the Moorish technique of tilemaking, with its patterns marked off by raised edges, began to go out of fashion, and instead the patterns were outlined in dark blue and painted on to flat tiles. About the same time large pictures painted on tiles came into use, at first, as in the work of Francisco de Mattos, with scenes more or less in their natural colours, and later in the second half of the seventeenth century, and in the beginning of the eighteenth in blue on a white ground. Towards the end of the eighteenth century blue seems to have usurped the place of all other colours, and from that time, especially in or near Oporto, tiles were used to mask all the exterior rubble walls of houses and churches, even spires or bulbous domes being sometimes so covered. Now in Oporto nearly all the houses are so covered, usually with blue-and-white tiles, though on the more modern they may be embossed and pale green or yellow, sometimes even brown. But all the tiles from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day are marked by the poverty of the colour and of the pattern, and still more by the hard shiny glaze, which may be technically more perfect, but is infinitely inferior in beauty to the duller and softer glaze of the previous centuries. When square tiles were used they were throughout singularly uniform in size, being a little below or a little above five inches square. The ground is always white with a slightly blueish tinge. In the earlier tiles of Arab pattern the colours are blue, green, and brown; very rarely, and that in some of the oldest tiles, the pattern may be in black; yellow is scarcely ever seen. In those of Moorish technique but Western pattern, the most usual colours are blue, green, yellow and, more rarely, brown. Later still in the flat tiles scarcely anything but blue and yellow are used, though the blue and the yellow may be of two shades, light and dark, golden and orange. Brown and green have almost disappeared, and, as was said above, so did yellow at last, leaving nothing but blue and white. Although there are few buildings which do not possess some tiles, the oldest, those of Moorish design, are rare, and, the best collection is to be found in the old palace at Cintra, of which the greater part was built by Dom João I. towards the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. Formerly all the piers of the old cathedral of Coimbra were covered with such tiles, but they have lately been swept away, and only those left which line the aisle walls. At Cintra there are a few which it is supposed may have belonged to the palace of the Walis, or perhaps it would be safer to say to the palace before it was rebuilt by Dom João. These are found round a door leading out of a small room, called from the mermaids on the ceiling the _Sala das Sereias_. The pointed door is enclosed in a square frame by a band of narrow dark and light tiles with white squares between, arranged in checks, while in the spandrels is a very beautiful arabesque pattern in black on a white ground. Of slightly later date are the azulejos of the so-called _Sala dos Arabes_, where the walls to a height of about six feet are lined with blue, green, and white tiles, the green being square and the other rhomboidal. Over the doors, which are pointed, a square framing is carried up, with tiles of various patterns in the spandrels, and above these frames, as round the whole walls, runs a very beautiful cresting two tiles high. On the lower row are interlacing semicircles in high relief forming foliated cusps and painted blue. In the spandrels formed by the interlacing of the semicircles are three green leaves growing out from a brown flower; in short the design is exactly like a Gothic corbel table such as was used on Dom João's church at Batalha turned upside down, and so probably dates from his time. On the second row of tiles there are alternately a tall blue fleur-de-lys with a yellow centre, and a lower bunch of leaves, three blue at the top and one yellow on each side; the ground throughout is white. (Fig. 8.) Also of Dom João's time are the tiles in the _Sala das Pegas_, where they are of the regular Moorish pattern--blue, green and brown on a white ground, and where four go to make up the pattern. The cresting of green scrolls and vases is much later. Judging from the cresting in the dining-room or _Sala de Jantar_, where, except that the ground is brown relieved by large white stars, and that the cusps are green and not blue, the design is exactly the same as in the _Sala dos Arabes_, the tiles there must be at least as old as these crestings; for though older tiles might be given a more modern cresting, the reverse is hardly likely to occur, and if as old as the crestings they may possibly belong to Dom João's time, or at least to the middle of the fifteenth century. (Fig. 9.) These dining-room tiles, and also those in the neighbouring _Sala das Sereias_, are among the most beautiful in the palace. The ground is as usual white, and on each is embossed a beautiful green vine-leaf with branches and tendril. Tiles similar, but with a bunch of grapes added, line part of the stair in the picturesque little _Pateo de Diana_ near at hand, and form the top of the back of the tiled bench and throne in the _Sala do Conselho_, once an open veranda. Most of this bench is covered with tiles of Moorish design, but on the front each is stamped with an armillary sphere in which the axis is yellow, the lines of the equator and tropics green, and the rest blue. These one would certainly take to be of Dom Manoel's time, for the armillary sphere was his emblem, but they are said to be older. Most of the floor tiles are of unglazed red, except some in the chapel, which are supposed to have formed the paving of the original mosque, and some in an upper room, worn smooth by the feet of Dom Affonso VI., who was imprisoned there for many a year in the seventeenth century. When Dom Manoel was making his great addition to the palace in the early years of the sixteenth century he lined the walls of the _Sala dos Cysnes_ with tiles forming a check of green [Illustration: FIG. 8. SALA DOS ARABES. PALACE, CINTRA. _From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._] [Illustration: FIG. 9. DINING-ROOM, OLD PALACE. CINTRA. _From a photograph by L. Oram, Cintra._] and white. These are carried up over the doors and windows, and in places have a curious cresting of green cones like Moorish battlements, and of castles. Much older are the tiles in the central _Pateo_, also green and white, but forming a very curious pattern. Of later tiles the palace also has some good examples, such as the hunting scenes with which the walls of the _Sala dos Brazões_ were covered probably at the end of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Dom Pedro II. The palace at Cintra may possess the finest collection of tiles, Moorish both in technique and in pattern, but it has few or none of the second class where the technique remains Moorish but the design is Western. To see such tiles in their greatest quantity and variety one must cross the Tagus and visit the Quinta de Bacalhôa not far from Setubal. There a country house had been built in the last quarter of the fifteenth century by Dona Brites, the mother of Dom Manoel.[26] The house, with melon-roofed corner turrets, simple square windows and two loggias, has an almost classic appearance, and if built in its present shape in the time of Dona Brites, must be one of the earliest examples of the renaissance in the country. It has therefore been thought that Bacalhôa may be the mysterious palace built for Dom João II. by Andrea da Sansovino, which is mentioned by Vasari, but of which all trace has been lost. However, it seems more likely that it owes its classic windows to the younger Affonso de Albuquerque, son of the great Indian Viceroy, who bought the property in 1528. The house occupies one corner of a square garden enclosure, while opposite it is a large square tank with a long pavilion at its southern side. A path runs along the southern wall of the garden leading from the house to the tank, and all the way along this wall are tiled seats and tubs for orange-trees. It is on these tubs and seats that the greatest variety of tiles are found. It would be quite impossible to give any detailed description of these tiles, the patterns are so numerous and so varied. In some the pattern is quite classical, in others it still shows traces of Moorish influence, while in some again the design is entirely naturalistic. This is especially the case in a pattern used in the lake pavilion, where eight large green leaves are arranged pointing to one centre, and four smaller brown ones to another, and in a still more beautiful pattern used on an orange tub in the garden, where yellow and dark flowers, green and blue leaves are arranged in a circle round eight beautiful fruits shaped like golden pomegranates with blue seeds set among green leaves and stalks. But these thirty or more patterns do not exhaust the interest of the Quinta. There are also some very fine tile pictures, especially one of 'Susanna and the Elders,' and a fragment of the 'Quarrel of the Lapithæ and Centaurs' in the pavilion overlooking the tank. 'Susanna and the Elders' is particularly good, and is interesting in that on a small temple in the background is the date 1565.[27] Rather later seem the five river gods in the garden loggia of the house, for their strapwork frames of blue and yellow can hardly be as early as 1565; besides, a fragment with similar details has on it the letters TOS, no doubt the end of the signature 'Francisco Mattos,' who also signed some beautiful tiles in the church of São Roque at Lisbon in 1584. It is known that the entrance to the convent of the Madre de Deus at Lisbon was ornamented by Dom Manoel with some della Robbia reliefs, two of which are now in the Museum. On the west side of the tank at Bacalhôa is a wall nearly a hundred feet long, and framed with tiles. In the centre the water flows into the tank from a dolphin above which is an empty niche. There are two other empty niches, one inscribed _Tempora labuntur more fluentis aquae_, and the other _Vivite victuri moneo mors omnibus instat_. These niches stand between four medallions of della Robbia ware, some eighteen inches across. Two are heads of men and two of women, only one of each being glazed. The glazed woman's head is white, with yellow hair, a sky-blue veil, and a loose reddish garment all on a blue ground. All are beautifully modelled and are surrounded by glazed wreaths of fruit and leaves. These four must certainly have come from the della Robbia factory in Florence, for they, and especially the surrounding wreaths, are exactly like what may be seen so often in North Italy. Much less good are six smaller medallions, four of which are much destroyed, on the wall leading north from the tank to a pavilion named the _Casa da India_, so called from the beautiful Indian hangings with which its walls were covered by Albuquerque. In them the modelling is less good and the wreaths are more conventional. Lastly, between the tank and the house are twelve others, one under each of the globes, which, flanked by obelisks, crown the wall. They are all of the same size, but in some the head and the blue backing are not in one place. The wreaths also are inferior even to those of the last six, though the actual heads are rather better. They all represent famous men of old, from Alexander the Great to Nero. Two are broken; that of Augustus is signed with what may perhaps be read Doñus Vilhelmus, 'Master William,' who unfortunately is otherwise unknown. It seems impossible now to tell where these were made, but they were certainly inspired by the four genuine Florentine medallions on the tank wall, and if by a native artist are of great interest as showing how men so skilled in making beautiful tiles could also copy the work of a great Italian school with considerable success. Of the third class of tiles, those where the patterns are merely painted and not raised, there are few examples at Bacalhôa--except when some restoration has been done--for this manner of tile-painting did not become common till the next century, but there are a few with very good patterns in the house itself, and close by, the walls of the church of São Simão are covered with excellent examples. These were put up by the heads of a brotherhood in 1648, and are almost exactly the same as those in the church of Alvito; even the small saintly figures over the arches occur in both. The pattern of Alvito is one of the finest, and is found again at Santarem in the church of the Marvilla, where the lower tiles are all of singular beauty and splendid colouring, blue and yellow on a white ground. Other beautiful tiled interiors are those of the Matriz at Caldas da Rainha, and at Caminha on the Minho. Without seeing these tiled churches it is impossible to realise how beautiful they really are, and how different are these tiles from all modern ones, whose hard smooth glaze and mechanical perfection make them cold and anything but pleasing. (Figs. 10 and 11, _frontispiece_.) Besides the picture-tiles at Bacalhôa there are some very good examples of similar work in the semicircular porch which surrounds the small round chapel of Sant' Amaro at Alcantara close to Lisbon. The chapel was built in 1549, and the tiles added about thirty years later. Here, as in the Dominican nunnery at Elvas, and in some exquisite framings and steps at Bacalhôa, the pattern and architectural details are spread all over the tiles, often making a rich framing to a bishop or saint. Some are not at all unlike Francisco Mattos' work in São Roque, which is also well worthy of notice. Of the latest pictorial tiles, the finest are perhaps those in the church of São João Evangelista at Evora, which tell of the life of San Lorenzo Giustiniani, Venetian Patriarch, and which are signed and dated 'Antoninus ab Oliva fecit 1711.'[28] But these blue picture-tiles are almost the commonest of all, and were made and used up to the end of the century.[29] Now although some of the patterns used are found also in Spain, as at Seville or at Valencia, and although tiles from Seville were used at Thomar by João de Castilho, still it is certain that many were of home manufacture. As might be expected from the patterns and technique of the oldest tiles, the first mentioned tilers are Moors.[30] Later there were as many as thirteen tilemakers in Lisbon, and many were made in the twenty-eight ovens of _louça de Veneza_, 'Venetian faience.' The tiles used by Dom Manoel at Cintra came from Belem, while as for the picture tiles the novices of the order of São Thiago at Palmella formed a school famous for such work. Indeed it may be said that tilework is the most characteristic feature of Portuguese buildings, and that to it many a church, otherwise poor and even mean, owes whatever interest or beauty it possesses. Without tiles, rooms like the _Sala das Sereias_ or the _Sala dos Arabes_ would be plain whitewashed featureless apartments, with them they have a charm and a romance not easy to find anywhere but in the East. CHAPTER I THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE NORTH Portugal, like all the other Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula, having begun in the north, first as a county or march land subject to the king of Galicia or of Leon, and later, since 1139, as an independent kingdom, it is but natural to find nearly all the oldest buildings in those parts of the country which, earliest freed from the Moslem dominion, formed the original county. The province of Entre Minho-e-Douro has always been held by the Portuguese to be the most beautiful part of their country, and it would be difficult to find anywhere valleys more beautiful than those of the Lima, the Cavado, or the Ave. Except the mountain range of the Marão which divides this province from the wilder and drier Tras-os-Montes, or the Gerez which separates the upper waters of the Cavado and of the Lima, and at the same time forms part of the northern frontier of Portugal, the hills are nowhere of great height. They are all well covered with woods, mostly of pine, and wherever a piece of tolerably level ground can be found they are cultivated with the care of a garden. All along the valleys, and even high up the hillsides among the huge granite boulders, there is a continuous succession of small villages. Many of these, lying far from railway or highroad, can only be reached by narrow and uneven paths, along which no carriage can pass except the heavy creaking carts drawn by the beautiful large long-horned oxen whose broad and splendidly carved yokes are so remarkable a feature of the country lying between the Vouga and the Cavado.[31] In many of these villages may still be seen churches built soon after the expulsion of the Moors, and long before the establishment of the Monarchy. Many of them originally belonged to some monastic body. Of these the larger part have been altered and spoiled during the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, when, after the expulsion of the Spaniards, the country began again to grow rich from trade with the recovered colony of Brazil. Still enough remains to show that these old romanesque churches differed in no very striking way from the general romanesque introduced into Northern Spain from France, except that as a rule they were smaller and ruder, and were but seldom vaulted. That these early churches should be rude is not surprising. They are built of hard grey granite. When they were built the land was still liable to incursions, and raids from the south, such as the famous foray of Almansor, who harried and burned the whole land not sparing even the shrine of Santiago far north in Galicia. Their builders were still little more than a race of hardy soldiers with no great skill in the working of stone. Only towards the end of the twelfth century, long after the border had been advanced beyond the Mondego and after Coimbra had become the capital of a new county, did the greater security as well as the very fine limestone of the lower Mondego valley make it possible for churches to be built at Coimbra which show a marked advance in construction as well as in elaboration of detail. Between the Mondego and the Tagus there are only four or five churches which can be called romanesque, and south of the Tagus only the cathedral of Evora, begun about 1186 and consecrated some eighteen years later, is romanesque, constructively at least, though all its arches have become pointed. But to return north to Entre Minho-e-Douro, where the oldest and most numerous romanesque churches exist and where three types may be seen. Of these the simplest and probably the oldest is that of an aisleless nave with simple square chancel. In the second the nave has one or two aisles, and at the end of these aisles a semicircular apse, but with the chancel still square: while in the third and latest the plan has been further developed and enlarged, though even here the main chancel generally still remains square. [Sidenote: Villarinho.] There yet exist, not far from Oporto, a considerable number of examples of the first type, though several by their pointed doorways show that they actually belong, in part at least, to the period of the Transition. One of the best-preserved is the small church of Villarinho, not far from Vizella in the valley of the Ave. Originally the church of a small monastery, it has long been the parish church of a mountain hamlet, and till it was lately whitewashed inside had scarcely been touched since the day it was finished some time before the end of the twelfth century. It consists of a rather high and narrow nave, a square-ended chancel, and to the west a lower narthex nearly as large as the chancel. The church is lit by very small windows which are indeed mere slits, and by a small round opening in the gable above the narthex.[32] The narthex is entered by a perfectly plain round-headed door with strong impost and drip-mould, while above the corbels which once carried the roof of a lean-to porch, a small circle enclosing a rude unglazed quatrefoil serves as the only window. The door leading from the narthex to the nave is much more elaborate; of four orders of mouldings, the two inner are plain, the two outer have a big roll at the angle, and all are slightly pointed. Except the outermost, which springs from square jambs, they all stand on the good romanesque capitals of six shafts, four round and two octagonal. (Fig. 12.) [Sidenote: São Miguel, Guimarães.] Exactly similar in plan but without a narthex is the church of São Miguel at Guimarães, famous as being the church in which Affonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, was baptized in 1111. It claims to have been the _Primaz_ or chief church of the whole archdiocese of Braga. It is, like Villarinho, a small and very plain church built of great blocks of granite, with a nave and square chancel lit by narrow window slits. On the north side there are a plain square-headed doorway and two bold round arches let into the outer wall over the graves of some great men of these distant times. The drip-mould of one of these arches is carved with a shallow zigzag ornament which is repeated on the western door, a door whose slightly pointed arch may mean a rather later date than the rest of the church. The wooden roof, as at Villarinho, has a very gentle slope with eaves of considerable projection resting on very large plain corbels, while other corbels lower down the wall seem to show that at one time a veranda or cloister ran round three sides of the building. The whole is even ruder and simpler than Villarinho, but has a certain amount of dignity due to the great size of the stones of which it is built and to the severe plainness of the walling. [Sidenote: Cedo Feita, Oporto.] Only one other church of this type need be described, and that because it is the only one which is vaulted throughout. This is the small church of São Martim de Cedo Feita or 'Early made' at Oporto itself. It is so called because it claims, wrongly indeed, to be the very church which Theodomir, king of the Suevi, who then occupied the north-west of the Peninsula, hurriedly built in 559 A.D. This he did in order that, having been converted from the Arian beliefs he shared with all the Germanic invaders of the Empire, he might there be baptized into the Catholic faith, and also that he might provide a suitable resting-place for some relic of St. Martin of Tours which had been sent to him as a mark of Orthodox approval. This story[33] is set forth in a long inscription on the tympanum of the west door stating that it was put there in 1767, a copy taken in 1557 from an old stone having then been found in the archives of the church. As a matter of fact no part of the church can be older than the twelfth century, and it has been much altered, probably at the date when the inscription was cut. It is a small building, a barrel-vaulted nave and chancel, with a door on the north side and a larger one to the west now covered by a large porch. The six capitals of this door are very like those at Villarinho, but the moulded arches are round and not as there pointed. Other churches of this type are Gandara and Boelhe near Penafiel, and Eja not far off--a building of rather later date with a fine pointed chancel arch elaborately carved with foliage--São Thiago d'Antas, near Familicão, a slightly larger church with good capitals to the chancel arch, a good south door and another later west door with traceried round window above; [Illustration: FIG. 12. CHURCH AT VILLARINHO.] [Illustration: FIG. 13. VILLAR DE FRADES. W. DOOR.] and São Torquato, near Guimarães, rather larger, having once had transepts of which one survives, with square chancel and square chapels to the east; one of the simplest of all having no ornament beyond the corbel table and the small slitlike windows. South of the Douro, but still built of granite, are a group of three or four small churches at Trancoso. Another close to Guarda has a much richer corbel table with a large ball ornament on the cornice and a round window filled with curiously built-up tracery above the plain, round-arched west door, while further south on the castle hill at Leiria are the ruins of the small church of São Pedro built of fine limestone with a good west door. [Sidenote: Aguas Santas.] Of the second and rather larger type there are fewer examples still remaining, and of these perhaps the best is the church of Aguas Santas some seven miles north-east of Oporto. Originally the church consisted of a nave with rectangular chancel and a north aisle with an eastern apse roofed with a semi-dome. Later a tower with battlemented top and low square spire was built at the west end of the aisle, and some thirty years ago another aisle was added on the south side. As in most of the smaller churches the chancel is lower than the nave, leaving room above its roof for a large round window, now filled up except for a small traceried circle in the centre. The most highly decorated part is the chancel, which like all the rest of the church has a good corbel table, and about two-thirds of the way up a string course richly covered with billet moulding. Interrupting this on the south side are two round-headed windows, still small but much larger than the slits found in the older churches. In each case, in a round-headed opening there stand two small shafts with bases and elaborately carved capitals but without any abaci, supporting a large roll moulding, and these are all repeated inside at the inner face of a deep splay. In one of these windows not only are the capitals covered with intertwined ribbon-work, but each shaft is covered with interknotted circles enclosing flowers, and there is a band of interlacing work round the head of the actual window opening. Inside the church has been more altered. Formerly the aisle was separated from the nave by two arches, but when the south aisle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are those of São Christovão do Rio Mau not far from Villo do Conde, and São Pedro de Rates, a little further up the Ave at the birthplace of the first bishop of Braga and earliest martyr of Portugal. São Pedro is a little later, as the aisle arches are all pointed, and is a small basilica of nave and aisles with short transepts, chancel and eastern chapels. [Sidenote: Villar de Frades.] The two earliest examples of the third and most highly developed type, the church of Villar de Frades and the cathedral of Braga, have unfortunately both suffered so terribly, the one from destruction and the other from rebuilding, that not much has been left to show what they were originally like--barely enough to make it clear that they were much more elaborately decorated, and that their carved work was much better wrought than in any of the smaller churches already mentioned. A short distance to the south of the river Cavado and about half-way between Braga and Barcellos, in a well-watered and well-wooded region, there existed from very early Christian times a monastery called Villar, and later Villar de Frades. During the troubles and disorders which followed the Moslem invasion, this Benedictine monastery had fallen into complete decay and so remained till it was restored in 1070 by Godinho Viegas. Although again deserted some centuries later and refounded in 1425 as the mother house of a new order--the Loyos--the fifteenth-century church was so built as to leave at least a part of the front of the old ruined church standing between itself and the monastic building, as well as the ruins of an apse behind. Probably this old west front was the last part of Godinho's church to be built, but it is certainly more or less contemporary with some portions of the cathedral of Braga. At some period, which the legend leaves quite uncertain, one of the monks of this monastery was one day in the choir at matins, when they came to that Psalm where it is said that 'a thousand years in the sight of God are but as yesterday when it is gone,' and the old monk wondered greatly and began to think what that could mean. When matins were over he remained praying as was his wont, and begged Our Lord to give him some understanding of that verse. Then there appeared to him a little bird which, singing most sweetly, flew this way and that, and so little by little drew him towards a wood which grew near the monastery, and there rested on a tree while the servant of God stood below to listen. After what seemed to the monk a short time it took flight, to the great sorrow of God's servant, who said, 'Bird of my Soul, where art thou gone so soon?' He waited, and when he saw that it did not return he went back to the monastery thinking it still that same morning on which he had come out after matins. When he arrived he found the door, through which he had come, built up and a new one opened in another place. The porter asked who he was and what he wanted, and he answered, 'I am the sacristan who a few hours ago went out, and now returning find all changed.' He gave too the names of the Abbot and of the Prior, and wondered much that the porter still would not let him in, and seemed not to remember these names. At last he was led to the Abbot, but they did not know one another, so that the good monk was all confused and amazed at so strange an event. Then the Abbot, enlightened of God, sent for the annals and histories of the order, found there the names the old man had given, so making it clear that more than three hundred years had passed since he had gone out. He told them all that had happened to him, was received as a brother; and after praising God for the great marvel which had befallen him, asked for the sacraments and soon passed from this life in great peace.[34] Whether the ruined west front of the older church be that which existed when the bird flew out through the door or not, it is or has been of very considerable beauty. Built, like everything else in the north, of granite, all that is now left is a high wall of carefully wrought stone. Below is a fine round arched door of considerable size, now roughly blocked up. It has three square orders covered with carving and a plain inner one. First is a wide drip-mould carved on the outer side with a zigzag threefold ribbon, and on the inner with three rows of what looks like a rude attempt to copy the classic bead-moulding; then the first order, of thirteen voussoirs, each with the curious figure of a strangely dressed man or with a distorted monster. This with the drip-mould springs from a billet-moulded abacus resting on broad square piers. Of the two inner carved orders, the outer is covered on both faces with innumerable animals and birds, and the other with a delicate pattern of interlacing bands. These two spring from strange square abaci resting on the carved capitals of round shafts, two on each side. A few feet above the door runs a billet-moulded string course, and two or three feet higher another and slighter course. On this stands a large window of two orders. Of these the outer covered with animals springs from shafts and capitals very like those of the doorway, and the inner has a billet-moulded edge and an almost Celtic ornament on the face. Now whether Villar be older than the smaller buildings in the neighbourhood or not, it is undoubtedly quite different not only in style but in execution. It is not only much larger and higher, but it is better built and the carving is finer and more carefully wrought. (Fig. 13.) It is known that the great cathedral of Santiago in Galicia was begun in 1078, just about the time Villar must have been building, and Santiago is an almost exact copy in granite of what the great abbey church of S. Sernin at Toulouse was intended to be, so that it may be assumed that Bernardo who built the cathedral was, if not a native of Toulouse, at any rate very well acquainted with what was being done there. If, then, a native of Languedoc was called in to plan so important a church in Galicia, it is not unlikely that other foreigners were also employed in the county of Portugal--at that time still a part of Galicia; and in fact many churches in the south-west of what is now France have doorways and windows whose general design is very like that at Villar de Frades, if allowance be made for the difference of material, granite here, fine limestone there, and for a comparative want of skill in the workmen.[35] [Sidenote: Sé, Braga.] Probably these foreigners were not invited to Portugal for the sake of the church of a remote abbey like Villar, but to work at the metropolitan cathedral of Braga. The see of Braga is said to have been founded by São Pedro de Rates, a disciple of St. James himself, and in consequence of so distinguished an origin its archbishops claim the primacy not only of all Portugal, but even of all the Spains, a claim which is of course disputed by the patriarch of Lisbon, not to speak of the archbishops of Toledo and of Tarragona. However that may be, the cathedral of Braga is not now, and can never have been, quite worthy of such high pretensions. It is now a church with a nave and aisles of six bays, a transept with four square chapels to the east, a chancel projecting beyond the chapels, and at the west two towers with the main door between and a fine porch beyond. Count Henry of Burgundy married Dona Theresa and received the earldom of Portugal from his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon, in 1095, and he and his wife rebuilt the cathedral--where they now lie buried--before the end of the century. By that time it may well have become usual, if the churches were important, to call in a foreigner to oversee its erection. Of the original building little now remains but the plan and two doorways, the chancel having been rebuilt and the porch added in the sixteenth, and the whole interior beplastered and bepainted in the worst possible style in the seventeenth, century. Of the two doors the western has been very like that at Villar. It has only two orders left, of which the outer, though under a deep arch, has a billet-moulded drip-mould, and its voussoirs each carved with a figure on the outer and delicate flutings on the under side, while the inner has on both faces animals and monsters which, better wrought than those at Villar, are even more like so many in the south-west of France. The other doorway, on the south side next the south-west tower, is far better preserved. It has three shafts on each side, all with good capitals and abaci, from which spring two carved and one plain arch. The outer has a rich drip-mould covered with a curious triple arrangement of circles, has flutings on the one face and a twisting ribbon on the other, while the next has leaf flutings on both faces, and both a roll-moulding on the angle. The inner order is quite plain, but the tympanum has in the centre a circle enclosing a cross with expanding arms, the spaces between the arms and the circle being pierced and the whole surrounded with intertwining ribbons. [Sidenote: Sé, Oporto.] Another foundation of Count Henry's was the cathedral of Oporto, which, judging from its plan, must have been very like that of Braga, but it has been so horribly transformed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that nothing now remains of the original building but part of the walls; for the fine western rose window must have been inserted about the middle of the thirteenth century. [Sidenote: Paço de Souza.] Except the tragedy of Inez de Castro, there is no story in Portuguese history more popular or more often represented in the engravings which adorn a country inn dining-room than that of the surrender of Egas Moniz to Alfonso VII. of Castile and Leon, when his pupil Affonso Henriques, beginning to govern for himself, refused to fulfil the agreement[36] whereby Egas had induced Alfonso to raise the siege of the castle of Guimarães. And it is the fact that the church of São Salvador at Paço de Souza contains his tomb, which adds not a little to the interest of the best-preserved of the churches of the third type. Egas Moniz died in 1144, and at least the eastern part of the church may have existed before then. The chancel, where the tomb first stood, is rather long and has as usual a square east end while the two flanking chapels are apsidal. The rest of the church, which may be a little later, as all the larger arches are pointed, consists of a nave and aisles of three bays, a transept, and a later tower standing on the westernmost bay of the south aisle. The constructive scheme of the inside is interesting, though a modern boarded vault has done its best to hide what it formerly was. The piers are cross-shaped with a big semicircular shaft on each face, and a large roll-moulding on each angle which is continued up above the abacus to form an outer order for both the aisle and the main arches, for large arches are carried across the nave and aisles from north to south as if it had been intended to roof the church with an ordinary groined vault. However, it is clear that this was not really the case, and indeed it could hardly have been so as practically no vaults had yet been built in the country except a few small barrels. Indeed, though later the Portuguese became very skilful at vaulting, they were at no time fond of a nave with high groined vault upheld by flying buttresses, and low aisles, for there seems to have been never more than three or four in the country, one of which, the choir of Lisbon Cathedral, fell in 1755. Instead of groined vaults, barrel vaults continued to be used where a stone roof was wanted, even till the middle of the fourteenth century and later, long after they had been given up elsewhere, but usually a roof of wood was thought sufficient, sometimes resting, as was formerly the case here, on transverse arches thrown across the nave and aisles. This was the system adopted in the cathedrals of Braga and of Oporto before they were altered, in this church and in that of Pombeiro not far off, and in that of Bayona near Vigo in Galicia.[37] (Fig. 14.) All the details are extremely refined--almost Byzantine in their delicacy--especially the capitals, and the abaci against the walls, which are carried along as a beautiful string course from pier to pier. The bases too are all carved, some with animals' heads and some with small seated figures at the angles, while the faces of the square blocks below are covered with beautiful leaf ornament. But the most curious thing in the whole church is the tomb of Egas Moniz himself.[38] (Fig. 15.) Till the eighteenth century it stood in the middle of the chancel, then it was cut in two and put half against the wall of the south aisle, and half against that of the north. It has on it three bands of ornament. Of these the lowest is a rudely carved chevron with what are meant for leaves between, the next, a band of small figures including Egas on his deathbed and what is supposed to be three of his children riding side by side on an elongated horse with a camel-like head, and that on the top, larger figures showing him starting on his fateful journey to the court of Alfonso of Castile and Leon and parting from his weeping wife. Although very rude,--all the horses except that of Egas himself having most unhorselike heads and legs,--some of the figures are carved with a certain not unpleasing vigour, especially that of a spear-bearing attendant who marches with swinging skirts behind his master's horse. Outside the most remarkable feature is the fine west door, with its eight shafts, four on each side, some round and some octagonal, the octagonal being enriched with an ornament like the English dog-tooth, with their finely carved cubical capitals and rich abaci, and with the four orders of mouldings, two of which are enriched with ball ornament. Outside, instead of a drip-mould, runs a broad band covered with plaited ribbon. On the tympanum, which rests on corbels supported on one side by the head of an ox and on the other by that of a man, are a large circle enclosing a modern inscription, and two smaller circles in which are the symbols of the Sun and Moon upheld by curious little half-figures. The two apses east of the transept are of the pattern universal in Southern Europe, being divided into three equal parts by half-shafts with capitals and crowned with an overhanging corbel table. [Sidenote: Pombeiro.] The abbey church of Pombeiro, near Guimarães, must once have been very similar to São Salvador at Paço de Souza, except that the nave is a good deal longer, and that it once had a large narthex, destroyed about a hundred and fifty years ago by an abbot who wished to add to the west front the two towers and square spires which still exist. So full was this narthex of tombs that from the arms on them it had become a sort of Heralds' College for the whole of the north of Portugal, but now only two remain in the shallow renaissance porch between the towers. As at Paço de Souza, the oldest part of the church is the east end, where the two apses flanking the square chancel remain unaltered. They are divided as usual by semicircular shafts bearing good romanesque capitals, and crowned by a cornice of three small arches to each division, each cut out of one stone, and resting on corbels and on the capitals. Of the west front only the fine doorway is left unchanged; pointed in shape, but romanesque in detail; having three of the five orders, carved one with grotesque animals and two with leafage. Above the shallow porch is a large round window with renaissance tracery, but retaining its original framing of a round arch resting on tall shafts with romanesque capitals. Everything else has been altered, the inside being covered with elaborate rococo painted and gilt plaster-work, and the outside disfigured by shapeless rococo windows. Although some, and especially the last two of the buildings described above belong, in part at least, to the time of transition from romanesque to first pointed, and although the group of churches at Coimbra are wholly romanesque, it would be better to have done with all that can be ascribed to a period older than the beginning of the Portuguese monarchy before following Affonso Henriques in his successful efforts to extend his kingdom southwards to the Tagus. Although Braga was the ecclesiastical capital of their fief, [Illustration: FIG. 14. CHURCH, PAÇO DE SOUZA. NAVE.] [Illustration: FIG. 15. PAÇO DE SOUZA. TOMB OF EGAS MONIZ.] [Sidenote: Guimarães, Castle.] Count Henry and his wife lived usually at Guimarães, a small town some fifteen miles to the south. Towards the beginning of the tenth century there died D. Hermengildo Gonçalves Mendes, count of Tuy and Porto, who by his will left Vimaranes, as it was then called, to his widow, Mumadona. About 927 she there founded a monastery and built a castle for its defence, and this castle, which had twice suffered from Moslem invaders, was restored or rebuilt by Count Henry, and there in 1111 was born his son Affonso Henriques, who was later to become the first king of the new and independent kingdom of Portugal. Henry died soon after, in 1114, at Astorga, perhaps poisoned by his sister-in-law, Urraca, queen of Castile and Leon, and for several years his widow governed his lands as guardian for their son. Thirteen years after Count Henry's death, in 1127, the castle was the scene of the famous submission of Egas Moniz to the Spanish king, and this, together with the fact that Affonso Henriques was born there, has given it a place in the romantic history of Portugal which is rather higher than what would seem due to a not very important building. The castle stands to the north of the town on a height which commands all the surrounding country. Its walls, defended at intervals by square towers, are built among and on the top of enormous granite boulders, and enclose an irregular space in which stands the keep. The inhabited part of the castle ran along the north-western wall where it stood highest above the land below, but it has mostly perished, leaving only a few windows which are too large to date from the beginning of the twelfth century. The square keep stands within a few feet of the western wall, rises high above it, and was reached by a drawbridge from the walk on the top of the castle walls. Its wooden floors are gone, its windows are mere slits, and like the rest of the castle it owes its distinctive appearance to the battlements which crown the whole building, and whose merlons are plain blocks of stone brought to a sharp point at the top. This feature, which is found in all the oldest Portuguese castles such as that of Almourol on an island in the Tagus near Abrantes, and even on some churches such as the old cathedral at Coimbra and the later church at Leça de Balio, is one of the most distinct legacies left by the Moors: here the front of each merlon is perpendicular to the top, but more usually it is finished in a small sharp pyramid. [Sidenote: Church.] The other foundation of Mumadona, the monastery of Nossa Senhora and São Salvador in the town of Guimarães, had since her day twice suffered destruction at the hands of the Moors, once in 967 when the castle was taken by Al-Coraxi, emir of Seville, and thirty years later when Almansor[39] in 998 swept northwards towards Galicia, sacking and burning as he went. At the time when Count Henry and Dona Teresa were living in the castle, the double Benedictine monastery for men and women had fallen into decay, and in 1109 Count Henry got a Papal Bull changing the foundation into a royal collegiate church under a Dom Prior, and at once began to rebuild it, a restoration which was not finished till 1172. Since then the church has been wholly and the cloisters partly rebuilt by João I. at the end of the fourteenth century, but some arches of the cloister and the entrance to the chapter-house may very likely date from Count Henry's time. These cloisters occupy a very unusual position. Starting from the north transept they run round the back of the chancel, along the south side of the church outside the transept, and finally join the church again near the west front. The large round arches have chamfered edges; the columns are monoliths of granite about eighteen inches thick; the bases and the abaci all romanesque in form, though many of the capitals, as can be seen from their shape and carving, are of the fourteenth or even fifteenth century, showing how Juan Garcia de Toledo, who rebuilt the church for Dom João I., tried, in restoring the cloister, to copy the already existing features and as usual betrayed the real date by his later details. A few of the old capitals still remain, and are of good romanesque form such as may be seen in any part of southern France or in Spain.[40] To the chapter-house, a plain oblong room with a panelled wood ceiling, there leads, from the east cloister walk, an unaltered archway, flanked as usual by two openings, one on either side. The doorway arch is plain, slightly horseshoe in shape, and is carried by short strong half-columns whose capitals are elaborately carved with animals and twisting branches, the animals, as is often the case, [Illustration: FIG. 16. DOOR OF CHAPTER HOUSE, N.S. DA OLIVEIRA. GUIMARÃES.] [Illustration: FIG. 17. CLOISTER. LEÇA DO BALIO.] being set back to back at the angles so that one head does duty for each pair. Above is a large hollow hood-mould exactly similar to those which enclose the side windows. The two lights of these windows are separated by short coupled shafts whose capitals, derived from the Corinthian or Composite, have stiff leaves covering the change from the round to the square, and between them broad tendrils which end in very carefully cut volutes at the angles. The heads themselves are markedly horseshoe in shape, which at first sight suggests some Moorish influence, but in everything else the details are so thoroughly Western, and by 1109 such a long time, over a hundred years, had passed since the Moors had been permanently expelled from that part of the country, that it were better to see in these horseshoes an unskilled attempt at stilting, rather than the work of some one familiar with Eastern forms. (Fig. 16.) CHAPTER II THE EARLY BUILDINGS IN THE SOUTH In 1057 Fernando, king of Castile, Leon and Galicia crossed the Douro, took Lamego, where the lower part of the tower is all that is left of the romanesque cathedral, and is indeed the only romanesque tower in the country. Vizeu fell soon after, and seven years later he advanced his borders to the Mondego by the capture of Coimbra. The Mondego, the only large river whose source and mouth are both in Portugal, long remained the limit of the Christian dominion, and nearly a hundred years were to pass before any further advance was made. In 1147 Affonso Henriques, who had but lately assumed the title of king, convinced at last that he was wasting his strength in trying to seize part of his cousin's dominions of Galicia, determined to turn south and extend his new kingdom in that direction. Accordingly in March of that year he secretly led his army against Santarem, one of the strongest of the Moorish cities standing high above the Tagus on an isolated hill. The vezir, Abu-Zakariah, was surprised before he could provision the town, so that the garrison were able to offer but a feeble resistance, and the Christians entered after the attack had lasted only a few days. Before starting the king had vowed that if successful he would found a monastery in token of his gratitude, and though its vast domestic buildings are now but barracks and court-houses, the great Cistercian abbey of Alcobaça still stands to show how well his vow was fulfilled. Although Santarem was taken in 1147, the first stone of Alcobaça was not laid till 1153, and the building was carried out very slowly and in a style, imported directly from France, quite foreign to any previous work in Portugal. It were better, therefore, before coming to this, the largest church and the richest foundation in the whole country, to have done with the other churches which though contemporary with Alcobaça are not the work of French but of native workmen, or at least of such as had not gone further than to Galicia for their models. [Sidenote: Sé, Lisbon.] The same year that saw the fall of Santarem saw also the more important capture of Lisbon. Taken by the Moors in 714, it had long been their capital, and although thrice captured by the Christians had always been recovered. In this enterprise Affonso Henriques was helped by a body of Crusaders, mostly English, who sailing from Dartmouth were persuaded by the bishop of Oporto to begin their Holy War in Portugal, and when Lisbon fell, one of them, Gilbert of Hastings, was rewarded by being made its first bishop. Of the cathedral, begun three years later, in 1150, little but the plan of the nave and transept has survived. Much injured by an earthquake in 1344, the whole choir was rebuilt on a French model by Affonso IV. only to be again destroyed in 1755. The original plan must have been very like that of Braga, an aisleless transept, a nave and aisles of six bays, and two square towers beyond with a porch between. The two towers are now very plain with large belfry windows near the top, but there are traces here and there of old built-up round-headed openings which show that the walls at least are really old. The outer arch of the porch has been rebuilt since the earthquake, but the original door remains inside, with a carved hood-mould, rich abacus, and four orders of mouldings enriched with small balls in their hollows. The eight plain shafts stand on unusually high pedestals and have rather long capitals, some carved with flat acanthus leaves and some with small figures of men and animals. Like that of the cathedral of Coimbra, which was being built about the same time, the inside is clearly founded on the great cathedral of Santiago, itself a copy of S. Sernin at Toulouse, and quite uninfluenced by the French design of Alcobaça. The piers are square with a half-shaft on each face, the arches are round, and the aisles covered with plain unribbed fourpart vaulting, while the main aisle is roofed with a round barrel. Instead of the large open gallery, which at Santiago allows the quadrant vault supporting the central barrel to be seen, there is here a low blind arcade of small round arches. Unfortunately, when restored after the disaster of 1755 the whole inside was plastered, all the capitals both of the main [Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, LISBON] piers and of the gallery were converted into a semblance of gilt Corinthian capitals, and large skylights were cut through the vault. Only the inside of the low octagonal lantern remains to show that the church must have been at least as interesting, if not more so, than the Sé Velha or old cathedral at Coimbra. If the nave has suffered such a transformation the fourteenth-century choir has been even worse treated. The whole upper part, which once was as high as the top of the lantern, fell and was re-roofed in a most miserable manner, having only the ambulatory and its chapels uninjured. But these, the cloister and a rather fine chapel to the north-west of the nave, had better be left for another chapter.[41] [Sidenote: Sé Velha, Coimbra.] [Illustration: PLAN OF CATHEDRAL, COIMBRA] Smaller but much better preserved than Lisbon Cathedral is the Sé Velha or old cathedral of Coimbra. According to the local tradition, the cathedral is but a mosque turned into a church after the Christian conquest, and it may well be that in the time of Dom Sesnando, the first governor of Coimbra--a Moor who, becoming a Christian, was made count of Coimbra by King Fernando, and whose tomb, broken open by the French, may still be seen outside the north wall of the church--the chief mosque of the town was used as the cathedral. But although an Arab inscription[42] is built into the outer wall of the nave, there can be no doubt that the present building is as Christian in plan and design as any church can be. If the nave of the cathedral of Lisbon is like Santiago in construction, the nave here is, on a reduced scale, undoubtedly a copy of Santiago not only constructively but also in its general details. The piers are shorter but of the same plan, the great triforium gallery looks towards the nave, as at Santiago and at Toulouse, by a double opening whose arches spring from single shafts at the sides to rest on double shafts in the centre, both being enclosed under one larger arch, while the barrel vault and the supporting vaults of the gallery are exactly similar. Now Santiago was practically finished in 1128, and there still exists a book called the _Livro Preto_ in which is given a list of the gifts made by Dom Miguel, who ruled the see of Coimbra from 1162 to 1176, towards the building and adorning of the church. Nothing is said as to when the church was begun, but we are told that Dom Miguel gave 124 morabitinos to Master Bernardo[43] who had directed the building for ten years; the presents too of bread and wine made to his successor Soeiro are also mentioned, so that it seems probable that the church may have been begun soon after Dom Miguel became bishop, and that it was finished some time before the end of his episcopate. Though the nave is like that of Santiago, the transepts and choir are much simpler. There the transept is long and has an aisle on each side; here it is short and aisleless. There the choir is deep with a surrounding aisle and radiating chapels, here it is a simple apse flanked by two smaller apses. Indeed throughout the whole of the Peninsula the French east end was seldom used except in churches of a distinctly foreign origin, such as Santiago, Leon or Toledo in Spain, or Alcobaça in Portugal, and so it is natural here to find Bernardo rejecting the elaboration and difficult construction of his model, and returning to the simpler plan which had already been so often used in the north. (Fig. 18.) Inside the piers are square with four half-shafts, one of which runs up in front to carry the barrel vault, which is about sixty feet high. All the capitals are well carved, and a moulded string which runs along under the gallery is curiously returned against the vaulting shafts as if it had once been carried round them and had afterwards been cut off. Almost the only light in the nave comes from small openings in the galleries, the aisle windows being nearly all blocked up by later altars, and from a large window at the west end. The transept on the other hand is very light, with several windows at either end, and eight in the square lantern, so that the effect is extremely good of the dark nave followed by the brilliant transept and ending in a great carved and gilt reredos. This reredos, reaching up to the blue-and-gold apse vault, was given to the cathedral in 1508 by Bishop D. Jorge d'Almeida, and was the work of 'Master Vlimer a Framengo,' that is, a Fleming, and of his partner, João D'ipri, or of Ypres, two of the many foreigners who at that time worked for King D. Manoel. There are several picturesque tombs in the church, especially two in the north-east corner of the transept, whose recesses still retain their original tile decoration. Later tiles still cover the aisle walls and altar recesses, but beautiful examples of the Mozárabe or Moorish style which once covered the piers of the nave, as well as the wooden choir gallery with its finely panelled under side, have been swept away by a recent well-meaning if mistaken restoration. The outside of the church is more unusual than the inside. The two remaining original apses are much hidden by the sacristy, built probably by Bishop Jorge de Castello Branco in 1593, but in their details they are greatly like those of the church of San Isidoro at Leon, and being like it built of fine limestone, are much more delicately ornamented than are those of any of the granite churches further north. The side aisles are but little lower than the central aisle or than the transepts, and are all crowned with battlements very like those on the castle of Guimarães. The buttresses are only shallow strips, which in the transepts are united by round arches, but in the aisles end among the battlements in a larger merlon. The west front is the most striking and original part of the whole church. Below, at the sides, a perfectly plain window lights the aisles, some feet above it runs a string course, on which stands a small two-light window for the gallery, flanked by larger blind arches, and then many feet of blank walling ending in battlements. Between these two aisle ends there projects about ten feet a large doorway or porch. This doorway is of considerable size; some of its eight shafts are curiously twisted and carved, its capitals are very refined and elaborate, and its arches well moulded with, as at Lisbon, small bosses in the hollows. The abacus is plain, and the broad pilasters which carry the outermost order are beautifully carved on the broader face with a small running pattern of leaves. The same 'black book' which tells of the bishop's gifts to the church, tells how a certain Master Robert came four times from Lisbon to perfect the work of the door, and how each time he received seven morabitinos, besides ten for his expenses, as well as bread, wine and meat for his four apprentices and food for his four asses. It is not often that the name of a man who worked on a mediæval church has been so preserved, and it is worth noticing that the west door at Lisbon has on it exactly the same ball ornament as that with which Master Robert and his four helpers enriched the archway here. Above the door runs an arched corbel table on which stands the one large window which the church possesses. This window,[44] which is much more like a door than a window, is deeply recessed within four orders of mouldings, resting on shafts and capitals, four on each side, all very like the door below. Above, the whole projection is carried up higher than the battlements in an oblong embattled belfry, having two arched openings in front and one at the side, added in 1837 to take the place of a detached belfry which once stood to the south of the church, and to hold some bells brought from Thomar after that rich convent had been suppressed. (Fig. 19.) Of the two other doorways, that at the end of the north transept, which has a simple archway on either side, and is surmounted by an arcade of five arches, has been altered in the early sixteenth century with good details of the first French renaissance, while the larger doorway in the third bay of the nave has at the same time been rebuilt as a beautiful three-storied porch, reaching right up to the battlements. To the south lie the cloisters, added about the end of the thirteenth century, but now very much mutilated. They are of the usual Portuguese type of vaulted cloister, a large arch, here pointed, enclosing two round arches below with a circular opening above. The central lantern--the only romanesque example surviving except that of Lisbon Cathedral--is square, and not as there octagonal. It has two round-headed windows on each side whose sills are but little above the level of the flat roof--for, like almost all vaulted churches in Portugal, the roofs are flat and paved--and is now crowned by a picturesque dome covered with many-coloured tiles. Somewhat older than the cathedral, but not unlike it, was the church of São Christovão now destroyed, while São Thiago still has a west door whose shafts are even more elaborately carved and twisted than are those at the Sé Velha.[45] There is more than one building, such as the Templar [Illustration: FIG. 18. COIMBRA. SÉ VELHA.] [Illustration: FIG. 19. COIMBRA. WEST FRONT OF SÉ VELHA.] church at Thomar, older than the cathedral of Evora, and indeed older than the Sé Velha at Coimbra; but Evora, except that its arches are pointed instead of round, is so clearly derived directly from the Sé at Lisbon that it must be mentioned next in order. [Sidenote: Sé, Evora.] Although the great province of Alemtejo, which reaches from the south bank of the Tagus to within about twenty-five or thirty miles of the Southern Sea, had more than once been entered by the victorious Portuguese king Affonso Henriques, it was not till after his death in 1185, indeed not till the beginning of the thirteenth century, that it could be called a part of Portugal. As early as 1139 Affonso Henriques had met and defeated five kings at Ourique not far from Beja, a victory which was long supposed to have secured his country's independence, and which was therefore believed to have been much greater and more important than was really the case.[46] Evora, the Roman capital of the district, did not fall into the hands of the Christians till 1166, when it is said to have been taken by stratagem by Giraldo Sem Pavor, or 'the Fearless,' an outlaw who by this capture regained the favour of the king. But soon the Moors returned, first in 1174 when they won back the whole of the province, and again in 1184 when Dom Sancho, Affonso's son, utterly defeated and killed their leader, Yusuf. Yusuf's son, Yakub, returned to meet defeat in 1188 and 1190 when he was repulsed from Thomar, but when he led a third army across the Straits in 1192 he found that the Crusaders who had formerly helped Dom Sancho had sailed on to Palestine, and with his huge army was able to drive the Christians back beyond the Tagus and compel the king to come to terms, nor did the Christian borders advance again for several years. It is said that the cathedral begun in 1185 or 1186[47] was dedicated in 1204, so it must have been still incomplete when Yakub's successful invasion took place, and only finished after the Christians had again recovered the town, though it is difficult to see how the church can have been dedicated in that year as the town remained in Moorish power till after Dom Sancho's death in 1211. Except the Sé Velha at Coimbra, Evora is the best-preserved of all the older Portuguese cathedrals, and must always have been one of the largest. The plan is evidently founded on those of the cathedrals of Lisbon and Braga; a nave of eight bays 155 feet long by 75 wide, leads to an aisleless transept 125 by 30, with lantern at the crossing, to the east of which were five chapels. Unfortunately in 1718 the Capella Mor or main chancel was pulled down as being too small for the dignity of an archiepiscopal see, and a new one of many-coloured marbles built in its stead, measuring 75 feet by 30.[48] [Illustration: PLAN OF SÉ, EVORA] To the west are two large square towers; to the south a cloister added in 1376; and at the end of the north transept a chapel built at the end of the fifteenth century and entered by a large archway well carved with rich early renaissance ornament. If there is no advance from the romanesque plan of older churches, there is none in construction. All the arches are pointed, but that is the only direction in which any change has been made. The piers are all cross-shaped with a large half-shaft on each of the four main faces and a smaller round shaft in each angle. The capitals have square moulded abaci, and are rather rudely carved with budlike curled leaves; the pointed arches of the arcade are well moulded, and above them runs a continuous triforium gallery like that in the nave at Lisbon, but with small pointed arches. The main vault is a pointed barrel with bold ribs; it is held up by a half-barrel over the aisles, which have groined vaults with very large transverse arches. The galleries over the aisles are lit by small pointed windows of two lights with a cusped circle between, but except in the lantern which has similar windows, in the transept ends and the west front, these are the only original openings which survive. (Fig. 20.) Both transepts have large rose windows, the northern filled with tracery, like that, common in Champagne, radiating towards and not from the centre. The southern is more interesting. The whole, well moulded, is enclosed in a curious square framing. In the centre a doubly cusped circle is surrounded by twelve radiating openings, whose trefoiled heads abut against twelve other broad trefoils, which are rather curiously run into the mouldings of the containing circle. Over the west porch is a curious eight-light window. There are four equal two-light openings below; on the two in the centre rests a large plain circle, and the space between it and the enclosing arch is very clumsily filled by a rib which, springing from the apex of either light, runs concentrically with the enclosing arch till it meets the larger circle. The whole building is surmounted by brick battlements, everything else being of granite, resting on a good trefoil corbel table, and, as the roofs are perfectly flat, there are no gables. The two western towers are very picturesque. The northern, without buttresses, has its several windows arranged without any regard to symmetry, and finishes in a round spire covered with green and white glazed tiles. In the southern plain buttresses run up to the belfry stage which has round-headed openings, and above it is a low octagonal spire set diagonally and surrounded by eight pinnacles. The most unusual feature of the whole cathedral is the fine octagonal lantern at the crossing. Each face has a two-light window, pointed outside, with a round-headed arch within, leaving a passage between the two walls. At each angle are plain buttresses, weathered back a few feet below the corbel table, above which stand eight octagonal pinnacles each with eight smaller pinnacles surrounding a conical stone spire. The whole lantern is covered by a steep stone roof which, passing imperceptibly from the octagonal to the round, is covered, as are all the other pinnacles, with scales carved in imitation of tiles. Inside the well-moulded vaulting ribs do not rise higher than the windows, leaving therefore a large space between the vault and the outer stone capping. (Fig. 21.) Lanterns, especially octagonal lanterns, are particularly common in Spain, and at Salamanca and its neighbourhood were very early developed and attained to a remarkable degree of perfection before the end of the twelfth century. It is strange, therefore, that they should be so rare in Portugal where there seem now to be only three: one, square, at Coimbra, an octagonal at Lisbon, and one here, where however there is nothing of the internal dome which is so striking at Salamanca. Probably this lantern was one of the enrichments added to the church by Bishop Durando who died in 1283, for the capitals of the west door look considerably later. This door is built entirely of white marble with shafts which look, as do those of the south transept door, almost like Cipollino, taken perhaps from some Roman building. It has well-moulded arches and abaci; capitals richly carved with realistic foliage, and on each side six of the apostles, all very like each other, large-headed, long-bearded, and long-haired, with rather good drapery but bodies and legs which look far too short. St. Peter alone, with short curly hair and beard, has any individuality, but is even less prepossessing than his companions. They are, however, among the earliest specimens of large figure sculpture which survive, and by their want of grace make it easier to understand why Dom Manoel employed so many foreign artists in the early years of the sixteenth century. [Illustration: FIG. 20. EVORA. SÉ. INTERIOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 21. EVORA. SÉ. FROM CLOISTERS. SHEWING CENTRAL LANTERN.] The large cloister to the south must once have been one of the best in the country. Here the main arches alone survive, having lost whatever subsidiary arches or tracery they may once have contained, but higher up under the corbel table are large open circles, not as everywhere else enclosed under the large arch, but quite independent of it. Many of these circles are still filled with thin slabs of granite all pierced with most beautiful patterns, some quite Gothic, but the majority almost Moorish in design, not unlike the slabs in the circles over the cloister arcades at Alcobaça, but though this is probably only a coincidence, still more like those at Tarragona in Cataluña. (Fig. 22.) [Sidenote: Templar Church, Thomar.] Like the cathedral at Evora, some of the arches in the Templar Church at Thomar are pointed, yet like it again, it is entirely romanesque both in construction and in detail. The Knights Templars were already established in Portugal in 1126. With their headquarters at Soure, a little to the south of Coimbra, they had been foremost in helping Affonso Henriques in his attacks on the Moors, and when Santerem was taken in 1147 they were given the ecclesiastical superiority of the town. This led to a quarrel with Dom Gilberto, the English bishop of Lisbon, which was settled in 1150, when Dom Gualdim Paes, the most famous member the order ever produced in Portugal, was chosen to be Grand Master. He at once gave up all Santarem to the bishop, except the church of São Thiago, and received instead the territory of Cêras some forty or fifty miles to the north-east. There on the banks of the river Nabão, on a site famous for the martyrdom under Roman rule of Sant' Iria or Irene, Dom Gualdim built a church, and began a castle which was soon abandoned for a far stronger position on a steep hill some few hundred yards to the west across the river. This second castle, begun in 1160, still survives in part but in a very ruinous condition; the walls and the keep alike have lost their battlements and their original openings, though a little further west, and once forming part of the fortified enclosure, the church, begun in 1162, still remains as a high tower-like bastion crowned with battlements. Dom Gualdim had the laudable habit of carving inscriptions telling of any striking event, so that we may still read, not only how the castle was founded, but how 'In the year of the Era of Cæsar, 1228 (that is 1190 A.D., on the 3rd of July), came the King of Morocco, leading four hundred thousand horsemen and five hundred thousand foot and besieged this castle for six days, destroying everything he found outside the walls. God delivered from his hands the castle, the aforesaid Master and his brethren. The same king returned to his country with innumerable loss of men and of animals.'[49] Doubtless the size of Yakub the Almohade leader's army is here much exaggerated, but that he was forced to retire from Thomar, and by pestilence from Santarem is certain, and though he made a more successful invasion two years later the Moors never again gained a footing to the north of the Tagus. Dom Gualdim's church, since then enlarged by the addition of a nave to the west, was originally a polygon of sixteen sides with a circular barrel-vaulted aisle surrounding a small octagon, which with its two stories of slightly pointed arches contains the high altar.[50] (Fig. 23.) The round-headed windows come up high, and till it was so richly adorned by Dom Manoel during his grand mastership of the Order of Christ more than three hundred years later, the church must have been extremely simple. Outside the most noticeable feature is the picturesque grouping of the bell-towers and gable, added probably in the seventeenth century, which now rise on the eastern side of the polygon, and which, seen above the orange and medlar trees of a garden reaching eastwards towards the castle, forms one of the most pleasing views in the whole country. [Sidenote: São João de Alporão, Santarem.] If Evora and the Templar church at Thomar show one form of transition, where the arches are pointed, but the construction and detail is romanseque, São João de Alporão at Santarem shows another, where the construction is Gothic but the arches are still all round. [Illustration: FIG. 22. EVORA. SÉ. CLOISTER.] [Illustration: FIG. 23. THOMAR. TEMPLARS' CHURCH.] This church is said to stand on the site of a mosque and to have been at first called Al Koran, since corrupted into Alporão, but the present building can hardly have been begun till the early years of the thirteenth century. The church consists of an aisleless nave with good groined vaulting and a five-sided apsidal chancel. The round-arched west door stands under a pointed gable, but seems to have lost by decay and consequent restoration whatever ornament its rather flat mouldings may once have had. Above is a good wheel window, with a cusped circle in the centre, surrounded by eight radiating two-arched lights separated by eight radiating columns. The two arches of each light spring from a detached capital which seems to have lost its shaft, but as there is no trace of bases for these missing shafts on the central circle they probably never existed. All the other nave windows are mere slits; and above them runs a rich corbel table of slightly stilted arches with their edges covered with ball ornament resting on projecting corbels. In the apse the five windows are tall and narrow with square heads, and the corbel table of a form common in Portugal but rare elsewhere, where each corbel is something like the bows of a boat.[51] The inside, now turned into a museum, is much more interesting. The chancel is entered, under a circular cusped window, by a wide round arch, whose outer moulding is curiously carried by shafts with capitals set across the angle as if to carry a vaulting rib; in the chancel itself the walls are double, the outer having the plain square-headed windows seen outside, and the inner very elegant two-light round-headed openings resting on very thin and delicate shafts, with a doubly cusped circle above. The vault, whose wall arches are stilted and slightly pointed, has strong well-moulded ribs springing from the well-wrought capitals of tall angle shafts. It will be seen that this is a very great advance on any older vaulting, since previously, except in the French Church at Alcobaça, groined vaults had only been attempted over square spaces. The finest of the many objects preserved in the museum is the tomb of Dom Duarte de Menezes, who was killed in Africa in 1464 and buried in the church of São Francisco, whence, São Francisco having become a cavalry stable, it was brought here not many years ago. (Fig. 24.) Such are, except for the church at Idanha a Velha and that of Castro de Avelans near Braganza, nearly all the early buildings in the country. Castro de Avelans is interesting and unique as having on the outside brick arcades, like those on the many Mozarabic churches at Toledo, a form of decoration not found elsewhere in Portugal. The church of Alcobaça is of course, in part, a good deal older than are some of those mentioned above; but the whole, the romanesque choir as well as the early pointed nave, is so unlike anything that has come before or anything that has come after, that it seemed better to take it by itself without regard to strict chronological order. [Illustration: PLAN OF ALCOBAÇA] [Illustration: FIG. 24. SANTAREM. APSE, SÃO JOÃO DE ALPORÃO.] [Illustration: FIG. 25. TRANSEPT. ALCOBAÇA.] [Sidenote: Alcobaça.] The first stone was laid in 1158, but the church was barely finished when King Sancho I. died in 1211 and was not dedicated till 1220, while the monastic buildings were not ready till 1223, when the monks migrated from Sta. Maria a Velha, their temporary home. The abbey was immensely wealthy: it had complete jurisdiction over fourteen villages whose inhabitants were in fact its serfs: it or its abbot was visitor to all Benedictine abbeys in the country and was, for over three hundred years, till the reign of Cardinal King Henry, the superior of the great military Order of Christ. It early became one of the first centres of learning in Portugal, having begun to teach in 1269. It helped Dom Diniz to found the University of Lisbon, now finally settled at Coimbra, with presents of books and of money, and it only acknowledged the king in so far as to give him a pair of boots or shoes when he chanced to come to Alcobaça. All these possessions and privileges of the monks were confirmed by Dom João IV. (1640-56) after the supremacy of the Spaniards had come to an end, and were still theirs when Beckford paid them his memorable visit near the end of the eighteenth century and was so splendidly entertained with feastings and even with plays and operas performed by some of the younger brothers. Much harm was of course done by the French invasion, and at last in 1834 the brothers were turned out, their house made into barracks, and their church and cloister left to fall into decay--a decay from which they are only being slowly rescued at the present time. The first abbot, Ranulph, was sent by St. Bernard of Clairvaux himself at the king's special request, and he must have brought with him the plan of the abbey or at least of the church. Nearly all Cistercian churches, which have not been altered, are of two types which resemble each other in being very simple, having no towers and very little ornament of any kind. In the simpler of these forms, the one which prevailed in England, the transept is aisleless, with five or more chapels, usually square, to the east, of which the largest, in the centre, contains the main altar. Such are Fontenay near Monbart and Furness in Lancashire, and even Melrose, though there the church has been rebuilt more or less on the old plan but with a wealth of detail and size of window quite foreign to the original rule. In the other, a more complex type, the transept may have a western aisle, and instead of a plain square chancel there is an apse with surrounding aisle and beyond it a series of four-sided chapels. Pontigny, famous for the shelter it gave to Thomas-à-Becket, and begun in 1114, is of this type, and so was Clairvaux itself, begun in 1115 and rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Now this is the type followed by Alcobaça, and it is worthy of notice that, as far as the plan of choir and transept goes, Alcobaça and Clairvaux are practically identical. Pontigny has a choir of three bays between the transept and the apse and seven encircling chapels; Clairvaux had, and Alcobaça still has, a choir of but one bay and nine instead of seven chapels. Both had long naves, Clairvaux of eleven and Alcobaça of thirteen bays, but at the west end there is a change, due probably to the length of time which passed before it was reached, for there is no trace of the large porch or narthex found in most early Cistercian churches. The church is by far the largest in Portugal. It is altogether about 365 feet long, the nave alone being about 250 feet by 75, while the transept measures about 155 feet from north to south. Except in the choir all the aisles are of the same height, about 68 feet. The east end is naturally the oldest part and most closely resembled its French original; the eight round columns of the apse have good plain capitals like those found in so many early Cistercian churches, even in Italy;[52] the round-headed clerestory windows are high and narrow, and there are well-developed flying buttresses. Unfortunately all else has been changed: in the apse itself everything up to the clerestory level has been hidden by two rows of classic columns and a huge reredos, and all the choir chapels have been filled with rococo woodwork and gilding, the work of an Englishman, William Elsden, who was employed to beautify the church in 1770.[53] Why except for the choir aisle, and the chapels in choir and transept, the whole church should be of the same height, it is difficult to say, for such a method of building was unknown in France and equally unknown in Spain or Portugal. Possibly by the time the nave was reached the Frenchmen who had planned the church were dead, and the native workmen, being quite unused to such a method of construction, for all the older vaulted churches have their central barrel upheld by the half-barrel vault of the galleries, could think of no other way of supporting the groining of the main aisle. They had of course the flying buttresses of the choir apse to guide them, but there the points of support come so much closer together, and the weight to be upheld is consequently so much less than could be the case in the nave, that they may well have thought that to copy them was too dangerous an experiment as well as being too foreign to their traditional manner of construction.[54] Whatever may be the reason, the west aisle of the transept and the side aisles of the nave rise to the full height of the building. Their arches are naturally very much stilted, and with the main vault rest on piers of quite unusual size and strength. The transverse arches are so large as almost to hide the diagonal ribs and to give the impression that the nave has, after all, a pointed barrel vault. The piers are throughout cross-shaped with a half-shaft on each cardinal face: at the crossing there is also a shaft in the angle, but elsewhere this shaft is replaced by a kind of corbel capital[55] at the very top which carries the diagonal ribs--another proof, as is the size of the transverse arches, that such a ribbed vault was still a half-understood novelty. The most peculiar point about nave piers is the way in which not only the front vaulting shafts but even that portion of the piers to which they are attached is, except in the two western bays, cut off at varying heights from the ground. In the six eastern bays, where the corbels are all at the same level, this was done to leave room for the monks' stalls,[56] but it is difficult to see why, in the case of the following five piers, against which, as at Clairvaux, stood the stalls of the lay brothers, the level of the corbels should vary so much. Now all stalls are gone and the church is very bare and desolate, with nothing but the horrible reredos to detract from that severity and sternness which was what St. Bernard wished to see in all churches of the Order. (Fig. 25.) The small chapel to the west of the south transept is the only part of the church, except the later sixteenth-century sacristy, where there is any richness of detail, and there it is confined to the tombs of some of the earlier kings and queens, and especially to those of D. Pedro and the unfortunate Inez de Castro which belongs of course to a much later date. The windows which are high up the aisle walls are large, round-headed, and perfectly plain. At the transept ends are large round windows filled with plain uncusped circles, and there is another over the west door filled with a rococo attempt at Gothic tracery, which agrees well with the two domed western towers whose details are not even good rococo. Between these towers still opens the huge west door, a very plainly moulded pointed arch of seven orders, resting on the simple capitals of sixteen shafts: a form of door which became very common throughout the fourteenth century. The great cloister was rebuilt later in the time of Dom Diniz, leaving only the chapter-house entrance, which seems even older than the nave. As usual there is one door in the centre, with a large two-light opening on each side: all the arches are round and well moulded, and the capitals simply carved with stiff foliage showing a gradual transition from the earlier romanesque. In the monastery itself, now a barrack, there are still a few vaulted passages which must belong to the original building, but nearly all else has been rebuilt, the main cloister in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries and the greater part of the domestic buildings in the eighteenth, so that except for the cloister and sacristy, which will be spoken of later on, there is little worthy of attention.[57] Now none of these buildings may show any very great originality or differ to any marked degree from contemporary buildings in Spain or even in the south of France, yet to a great extent they fixed a type which in many ways was followed down to the end of the Gothic period. The plan of Braga, Pombeiro, Evora or Coimbra is reproduced with but little change at Guarda, and if the western towers be omitted, at Batalha, some two hundred years later, and the flat paved roofs of Evora occur again at Batalha and at Guarda. The barrel-vaulted nave also long survived, being found as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century in the church of Santa Clara at Coimbra, and even about seventy years later in the church of the Knights of São Thiago at Palmella. The battlements also of the castle at Guimarães are found not only at Coimbra, but as late as 1336 in the church of Leça do Balio near Oporto, and, modified in shape by the renaissance even in the sixteenth-century churches of Villa do Conde and of Azurara. Although the distinctively French features of Alcobaça seem to have had but little influence on the further development of building in Portugal, a few peculiarities are found there which are repeated again. For example, the unusually large transverse arches of the nave occur at Batalha, and the large plain western door is clearly related to such later doors as those at Leça do Balio or of São Francisco at Oporto. Again the vaulting of the apse in São João de Alporão is arranged very much in the way which was almost universal during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the chancels and side chapels of many a church, such as Santa Maria do Olival at Thomar, or the Graça at Santarem itself, and the curious boat-like corbels of São João are found more than once, as in the choir of the old church, formerly the cathedral of Silves, far south in the Algarve. The large round windows at Evora do not seem to be related to the window at São João, but to be of some independent origin; probably, like the similar windows at Leça and at Oporto, they too belong to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. CHAPTER III THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA In Portugal the twelfth century is marked by a very considerable activity in building, but the thirteenth, which in France and England saw Gothic architecture rise to a height of perfection both in construction and in ornament which was never afterwards excelled, when more great churches and cathedrals were built than almost ever before or since, seems here to have been the least productive period in the whole history of the country. In the thirteenth century, indeed, Portugal reached its widest European limits, but the energies, alike of the kings and of the people, seem to have been expended rather in consolidating their conquests and in cultivating and inhabiting the large regions of land left waste by the long-continued struggle. Although Dom Sancho's kingdom only extended from the Minho to the Tagus, in the early years of the thirteenth century the rich provinces of Beira, and still more of Estremadura, were very thinly peopled: the inhabitants lived only in walled towns, and their one occupation was fighting, and plunder almost their only way of gaining a living. It is natural then that so few buildings should remain which date from the reigns of Dom Sancho's successors, Affonso II. (1211-1223), Sancho II. (1223-1248), and Affonso III. (1248-1279): the necessary churches and castles had been built at once after the conquest, and the people had neither the leisure nor the means to replace them by larger and more refined structures as was being done elsewhere. Of course some churches described in the last chapter may be actually of that period though belonging artistically and constructionally to an earlier time, as for instance a large part of the cathedral of Evora or the church of São João at Santarem. [Sidenote: São Francisco, Guimarães.] The Franciscans had been introduced into Portugal by Dona Sancha, the daughter of Dom Sancho I., and houses were built for them by Dona Urraca, the wife of Dom Affonso II., at Lisbon and at Guimarães. Their church at Guimarães has been very much altered at different times, mostly in the eighteenth century, but the west door may very well belong to Dona Urraca's building. It has a drip-mould covered with closely set balls, and four orders of mouldings of which the second is a broad chamfer with a row of flat four-leaved flowers; the abacus is well moulded, but the capitals, which are somewhat bell-shaped, have the bell covered with rude animals or foliage which are still very romanesque in design. The entrance to the chapter-house is probably not much later in date: from the south walk of the simple but picturesque renaissance cloister a plain pointed doorway leads into the chapter-house, with, on either side, an opening of about equal size and shape. In these openings there stand three pairs of round coupled shafts with plain bases, rudely carved capitals and large square overhanging abaci, from which spring two pointed arches moulded only on the under side: resting on these, but connected with them or with the enclosing arch by no moulding or fillet, is a small circle, moulded like the arches only on one side and containing a small quatrefoil.[58] This is one of the earliest attempts at window tracery in the country, for the west window at Evora seems later, but like it, it shows that tracery was not really understood in the country, and that the Portuguese builders were not yet able so to unite the different parts as to make such a window one complete and beautiful whole. Indeed so unsuccessful are their attempts throughout that whenever, as at Batalha, a better result is seen, it may be put down to foreign influence. Much better as a rule are the round windows, mostly of the fourteenth century, but they are all very like one another, and are probably mostly derived from the same source, perhaps from one of the transept windows at Evora, or from the now empty circle over the west door at Lisbon. [Sidenote: São Francisco, Santarem.] Much more refined than this granite church at Guimarães has been São Francisco at Santarem, now unfortunately degraded into being the stable of a cavalry barracks. There the best-preserved and most interesting part is the west door, which does not lead directly into the church but into a low porch or narthex. The narthex itself has central and side aisles, all of the same height, is two bays in length and is covered by a fine strong vault resting on short clustered piers.[59] The doorway itself, which is not acutely pointed, stands under a gable which reaches up to the plain battlemented parapet of the flat narthex roof. There are four shafts on each side with a ring-moulding rather less than half-way up, which at once distinguishes them from any romanesque predecessors; the capitals are round with a projecting moulding half-way up and another one at the top with a curious projection or claw to unite the round cap and the square moulded abacus. Of the different orders of the arch, all well moulded, the outer has a hood with billet-mould; the second a well-developed chevron or zigzag; and the innermost a series of small horseshoes, which like the chevron stretch across the hollow so as to hold in the large roll at the angle.[60] (Fig. 26.) [Sidenote: Santa Maria dos Olivaes, Thomar.] In a previous chapter the building of a church at Thomar by Dom Gualdim Paes, Grand Master of the Templars, has been mentioned. Of this church and the castle built at the same time, both of which stood on the east or flat bank of the river Nabão, nothing now remains except perhaps the lower part of the detached bell-tower. This church, Santa Maria dos Olivaes, was the Matriz or mother church of all those held, first by the Templars and later by their successors, the Order of Christ, not only in Portugal but even in Africa, Brazil, and in India. Of so high a dignity it is scarcely worthy, being but a very simple building neither large nor richly ornamented. A nave and aisles of five bays, three polygonal apses to the east and later square chapels beyond the aisles, make up the whole building. The roofs are all of panelled wood of the sixteenth century except in the three vaulted apses, of which the central is entered by an arch, which, rising no higher than the aisle arches, leaves room for a large window under the roof. All the arches of the aisle arcade spring from the simple moulded capitals of piers whose section is that of four half-octagons placed together. In the [Illustration: FIG. 26. SANTAREM. W. DOOR, SÃO FRANCISCO.] [Illustration: FIG. 27. SÉ SILVES.] clerestory are windows of one small light, in the aisles of two larger lights, and in the apses single lancets. The great simplicity of the building notwithstanding it can scarcely be as old as the thirteenth century: the curious way in which the two lancet lights of the aisle windows are enclosed under one larger trefoiled arch recalls the similar windows in the church at Leça do Balio near Oporto begun in 1336, though there the elliptical head of the enclosing arch is much less satisfactory than the trefoiled head here used. The only part of the church which can possibly have been built in the thirteenth century is the central part of the west front. The pointed door below stands under a projecting gable like that at São Francisco Santarem, except that there is a five-foiled circle above the arch containing a pentalpha, put there perhaps to keep out witches. The door itself has three large shafts on each side with good but much-decayed capitals of foliage, and a moulded jamb next the door. The arch itself is terribly decayed, but one of its orders still has the remains of a series of large cusps, arranged like the horseshoe cusps at Santarem but much larger. Above the door gable is a circular window of almost disproportionate size. It has twelve trefoil-headed lights radiating from a small circle, and curiously crossing a larger circle some distance from the smaller. Unfortunately the spaces between the trefoils and the outer mouldings have been filled up with plaster and the lights themselves subdivided with meaningless wood tracery to hold the horrible blue-and-red glass now so popular in Portugal. Though Santa Maria dos Olivaes cannot be nearly as old as has usually been believed, it is one of the earliest churches built on the plan derived perhaps first from Braga Cathedral or from the Franciscan and Dominican churches in Galicia, of a wooden roofed basilica with or without transept, and with three or more apses to the east; a form which to the end of the Gothic period was the most common and which is found even in cathedrals as at Silves or at Funchal in Madeira. Dom Sancho II., whose reign had begun with brilliant attacks on the Moors, had, because of his connection with Dona Mencia de Haro, the widow of a Castilian nobleman, and his consequent inactivity, become extremely unpopular, so was supplanted in 1246 by his brother Dom Affonso III. The first care of the new king was to carry on the conquest [Sidenote: Silves.] of the Algarve, which his brother had given up when he fell under the evil influence of Dona Mencia, and by about 1260 he had overrun the whole country. At first Alfonso x., the Wise, king of Castile and Leon, was much displeased at this extension of Portuguese power, but on Dom Affonso agreeing to marry his daughter Beatriz de Guzman, the Spanish king allowed his son-in-law to retain his conquests and to assume the title of King of the Algarve, a title which his descendants still bear. The countess of Boulogne, Affonso's first wife, was indeed still alive, but that seems to have troubled neither Dona Beatriz nor her father. At Silves or Chelb, for so the Moorish capital had been called, a bishopric was soon founded, but the cathedral,[61] though many of its details seem to proclaim an early origin, was probably not begun till the early, and certainly not finished till near the later, years of the fourteenth century. It is a church of the same type as Santa Maria at Thomar but with a transept. The west door, a smaller edition of that at Alcobaça, leads to a nave and aisles of four bays, with plain octagonal columns, whose bases exactly resemble the capitals reversed--an octagon brought to a square by a curved chamfer. The nave has a wooden roof, transepts a pointed barrel vault, and the crossing and chancel with its side chapels a ribbed vault. Though some of the capitals at the east end look almost romanesque, the really late date is shown by the cusped fringing of the chancel arch, a feature very common at Batalha, which was begun at the end of the fourteenth century, and by the window tracery, where in the two-light windows the head is filled by a flat pierced slab. Outside, the chancel has good buttresses at the angles, and is crowned by that curious boat-like corbel table seen at Santarem and by a row of pyramidal battlements. The church is only about 150 feet long, but with its two picturesque and dilapidated towers, and the wonderful deep purple of its sandstone walls rising above the whitewashed houses and palms of the older Silves and backed by the Moorish citadel, it makes a most picturesque and even striking centre to the town, which, standing high above the river, preserves the memory of its Moslem builders in its remarkable and many-towered city walls.[62] (Fig. 27.) [Sidenote: Beja.] King Diniz the Labourer, so called for his energy in settling and reclaiming the land and in fixing the moving sands along the west coast by plantations of pine-trees, and the son of Dom Affonso and Dona Beatriz, was a more active builder than any of his immediate predecessors. Of the many castles built by him the best preserved is that of Beja, the second town of Alemtejo and the Pax Julia of Roman times. The keep, built about 1310, is a great square tower over a hundred feet high. Some distance from the top it becomes octagonal, with the square fortified by corbelled balconies projecting far out over the corners. Inside are several stories of square halls finely vaulted with massive octagonal vaults; below, the windows are little more than slits, but on one floor there are larger two-light pointed openings.[63] [Sidenote: Leiria.] Far finer and larger has been the castle of Leiria, some fifty miles south of Coimbra: it or the keep was begun by Dom Diniz in 1324.[64] The rock on which it stands, in steepness and in height recalls that of Edinburgh Castle, but without the long slope of the old town leading nearly to the summit: towering high above Leiria it is further defended on the only accessible quarter by the river Lis which runs round two sides not far from the bottom of the steep descent. Unfortunately all is ruined, only enough remaining to show that on the steepest edge of the rock there stood a palace with large pointed windows looking out over the town to the green wooded hills beyond. On the highest part stands what is left of the keep, and a little lower the castle-church whose bell-tower, built over the gate, served to defend the only access to the inner fortification. This church, built about the same time, with a now roofless nave which was never vaulted, is entered by a door on the south, and has a polygonal vaulted apse. The mouldings of the door as well as the apse vault and its tall two-light windows show a greater delicacy and refinement than is seen in almost any earlier building, and some of the carving has once been of great beauty, especially of the boss at the centre of the apse.[65] But besides those two castles there is another building of this period which had a greater and more lasting effect on the work of this fourteenth century. In England the arrival of the Cistercians and the new style introduced or rather developed by them seems almost more than anything else to have determined the direction of the change from what is usually, perhaps wrongly,[66] called Norman to Early English, but in Portugal the great foundation of Alcobaça was apparently powerless to have any such marked effect except in the one case of cloisters. Now with the exception of the anomalous and much later Claustro Real at Batalha, all cloisters in Portugal, before the renaissance, follow two types: one, which is clearly only a modification of the continuous romanesque arcades resting on coupled shafts, has usually a wooden roof, and consists of a row of coupled shafts bearing pointed arches, and sometimes interrupted at intervals by square piers; this form of cloister is found at Santo Thyrso near Guimarães, at São Domingos in Guimarães itself, and in the Cemetery cloister built by Prince Henry the Navigator at Thomar in the fifteenth century. [Sidenote: Cloister, Cellas.] The most remarkable of all the cloisters of the first type is that of the nunnery of Cellas near Coimbra. Founded in 1210 by Dona Sancha, daughter of Sancho I., the nunnery is now a blind asylum. The cloister, with round arches and coupled columns, seems thoroughly romanesque in character, as are also the capitals. It is only on looking closer that the real date is seen, for the figures on the capitals, which are carved with scenes such as the beheading of St. John the Baptist, are all dressed in the fashion that prevailed under Dom Diniz--about 1300--while the foliage on others, though still romanesque in arrangement, is much later in detail. More than half of the arcades were rebuilt in the seventeenth century, but enough remains to make the cloister of Cellas one of the most striking examples of the survival of old forms and methods of building which in less remote countries had been given up more than a hundred years before. The church, though small, is not without interest. It has a round nave of Dom Manoel's time with a nuns' choir to the west and a chancel to the east, and is entered by a picturesque door of the later sixteenth century. [Sidenote: Cloister, Coimbra.] [Sidenote: Cloister, Alcobaça.] More interesting is the second type which was commonly used when a cloister with a vault was wanted; and of it there are still examples to be seen at the Sé Velha Coimbra, at Alcobaça, Lisbon Cathedral, Evora, and Oporto. None of these five examples are exactly alike, but they resemble each other sufficiently to make it probable that they are all, ultimately at least, derived from one common source, and there can be no doubt that that source was Cistercian. In France what was perhaps its very first beginnings may be seen in the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay near Monbart, where in each bay there are two round arches enclosed under one larger round arch. This was further developed at Fontfroide near Narbonne, where an arcade of four small round arches under a large pointed arch carries a thin wall pierced by a large round circle. Of the different Portuguese examples the oldest may very well be that at Coimbra which differs only from Fontfroide in having an arcade of two arches in each bay instead of one of four, but even though it may be a little older than the large cloister of Alcobaça, it must have been due to Cistercian influence. The great Claustro do Silencio at Alcobaça was, as an inscription tells, begun in the year 1310,[67] when on April 13th the first stone was laid by the abbot in the presence of the master builder Domingo Domingues.[68] In this case each bay has an arcade of two or three pointed arches resting on coupled columns with strong buttresses between each bay, but the enclosing arch is not pointed as at Coimbra or Fontfroide but segmental and springs from square jambs at the level of the top of the buttresses, and the circles have been all filled with pierced slabs, some of which have ordinary quatrefoils and some much more intricate patterns, though in no case do they show the Moorish influence which is so noticeable at Evora. On the north side projects the lavatory, an apsidal building with two stories of windows and with what in France would be regarded as details of the thirteenth century and not, as is really the case, of the fourteenth. A few bays on the west walk seem rather later than the rest, as the arches of the arcade are trefoil-headed, while the upper part of a small projection on the south side which now contains a stair, as well as the upper cloister to which it leads, were added by João de Castilho for Cardinal Prince Henry, son of Dom Manoel, and commendator of the abbey in 1518. (Fig. 28.) [Sidenote: Cloister, Lisbon.] In the cloister at Lisbon which seems to be of about the same date, and which, owing to the nature of the site, runs round the back of the choir, there is no outer containing arch, and in some bays there are two large circles instead of one, but in every other respect, except that some of the round openings are adorned with a ring of dog-tooth moulding, the details are very similar, the capitals and bases being all of good thirteenth-century French form.[69] (Fig. 29.) [Sidenote: Cloister, Oporto.] If the cloister at Evora, which was built in 1376 and has already been described, is the one which departs furthest from the original type, retaining only the round opening, that of the cathedral of Oporto, built in 1385, comes nearer to Fontfroide than any of the others. Here each bay is designed exactly like the French example except that the small arches are pointed, that the large openings are chamfered instead of moulded, and that there are buttresses between each bay. The capitals which are rather tall are carved with rather shallow leaves, but the most noticeable features are the huge square moulded abaci which are so large as to be more like those of the romanesque cloisters at Moissac or of Sta. Maria del Sar at Santiago than any fourteenth-century work. [Sidenote: Sta. Clara, Coimbra.] The most important church of the time of Dom Diniz is, or rather was, that of the convent of Poor Clares founded at Coimbra by his wife St. Isabel. Although a good king, Diniz had not been a good husband, and the queen's sorrows had been still further increased by the rebellion of [Illustration: FIG 28. ALCOBAÇA. CLOISTER OF DOM DINIZ, OR DO SILENCIO.] [Illustration: FIG. 29. LISBON. CATHEDRAL CLOISTER.] her son, afterwards Affonso IV., a rebellion to which Isabel was able to put an end by interposing between her husband and her son. When St. Isabel died in 1327, two years after her husband, the church was not yet quite finished, but it must have been so soon after. Unfortunately the annual floods of the Mondego and the sands which they bring down led to the abandonment of the church in the seventeenth century, and have so buried it that the floor of the barn--for that is the use to which it is now put--is almost level with the springing of the aisle arches, but enough is left to show what the church was like, and were not its date well assured no one would believe it to be later than the end of the twelfth century. The chancel, which was aisleless and lower than the rest of the church, is gone, but the nave and its aisles are still in a tolerable state of preservation, though outside all the detail has been destroyed except one round window on the south side filled in with white marble tracery of a distinctly Italian type, and the corbel table of the boat-keel shape. The inside is most unusual for a church of the fourteenth century. The central aisle has a pointed barrel vault springing from a little above the aisle arches, while the aisles themselves have an ordinary cross vault. All the capitals too look early, and the buttresses broad and rather shallow. (Fig. 30.) [Sidenote: Leça do Balio.] A few miles north of Oporto on the banks of the clear stream of the Leça a monastery for men and women had been founded in 986. In the course of the next hundred years it had several times fallen into decay and been restored, till about the year 1115 when it was handed over to the Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem and so became their headquarters in Portugal. The church had been rebuilt by Abbot Guntino some years before the transfer took place, and had in time become ruinous, so that in 1336 it was rebuilt by Dom Frei Estevão Vasques Pimentel, the head of the Order. This church still stands but little altered since the fourteenth century, and though not a large or splendid building it is the most complete and unaltered example of that thoroughly national plan and style which, developed in the previous century, was seen at Thomar and will be seen again in many later examples. The church consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, transepts higher than the side but lower than the centre aisle of the nave, three vaulted apses to the east, and at the south-west corner a square tower. Like many Portuguese buildings Sta. Maria de Leça do Balio looks at first sight a good deal earlier than is really the case. The west and the south doors, which are almost exactly alike, except that the south door is surmounted by a gable, have three shafts on each side with early-looking capitals and plain moulded archivolts, and within these, jambs moulded at the angles bearing an inner order whose flat face is carved with a series of circles enclosing four and five-leaved flowers. Above the west door runs a projecting gallery whose parapet, like all the other parapets of the church, is defended by a close-set row of pointed battlements. Above the gallery is a large rose-window in which twelve spokes radiate from a cusped circle in the middle to the circumference, where the lights so formed are further enriched by cusped semicircles. The aisle and clerestory windows show an unusual attempt to include two lancets into one window by carrying on the outer framing of the window till it meets above the mullion in a kind of pendant arch.[70] The square tower is exceedingly plain, without string course or buttress to mitigate its severity. Half-way up on the west side is a small window with a battlemented balcony in front projecting out on three great corbels; higher up are plain belfry windows. At the top, square balconies or bartizans project diagonally from the corners; the whole, though there are but three pyramidal battlements on each side, being even more strongly fortified than the rest of the church. Now in the fourteenth century such fortification of a church can hardly have been necessary, and they were probably built rather to show that the church belonged to a military order than with any idea of defence. The inside is less interesting, the pointed arches are rather thin and the capitals poor, the only thing much worthy of notice being the font, belonging to the time of change from Gothic to Renaissance, and given in 1512.[71] [Sidenote: Chancel, Sé, Lisbon.] Of the other buildings of the time of Dom Affonso IV. who succeeded his father Diniz in 1328 the most important [Illustration: FIG. 30. COIMBRA. STA. CLARA.] has been the choir of the cathedral at Lisbon; the church had been much injured by an earthquake in 1344 and the whole east end was at once rebuilt on the French plan, otherwise unexampled in Portugal except by the twelfth-century choir at Alcobaça. Unfortunately the later and more terrible earthquake of 1755 so ruined the whole building that of Dom Affonso's work only the surrounding aisle and its chapels remain. The only point which calls for notice is that the chapels are considerably lower than the aisle so as to admit of a window between the chapel arch and the aisle vault. All the chapels have good vaulting and simple two-light windows, and capitals well carved with naturalistic foliage. In one chapel, that of SS. Cosmo and Damião, screened off by a very good early wrought-iron grill, are the tombs of Lopo Fernandes Pacheco and of his second wife Maria Rodrigues. Dona Maria, lying on a stone sarcophagus, which stands on four short columns, and whose sides are adorned with four shields with the arms of her father, Ruy di Villa Lobos, has her head protected by a carved canopy and holds up in her hands an open book which, from her position, she could scarcely hope to read.[72] [Sidenote: Royal tombs, Alcobaça. (Fig. 31.)] Far more interesting both historically and artistically than these memorials at Lisbon are the royal tombs in the small chapel opening off the south transepts of the abbey church at Alcobaça. This vaulted chapel, two bays deep and three wide, was probably built about the same time as the cloister, and has good clustered piers and well-carved capitals. On the floor stand three large royal tombs and two smaller for royal children, and in deep recesses in the north and south walls, four others. Only the three larger standing clear of the walls call for notice; and of these one is that of Dona Beatriz, the wife of Dom Affonso III., who died in 1279, the same lady who married Dom Affonso while his wife the countess of Boulogne was still alive. Her tomb, which stands high above the ground on square columns with circular ringed shafts at the corners, was clearly not made for Dona Beatriz herself, but for some one else at least a hundred years before. It is of a white marble, sadly mutilated at one corner by French treasure-seekers, and has on each side a romanesque arcade with an apostle, in quite archaic style, seated under each arch; at the ends are large groups of seated figures, and on the sloping lid Dona Beatriz herself, in very shallow relief, evidently carved out of the old roof-shaped cover, which not being very thick did not admit of any deep cutting. Far richer, indeed more elaborate than almost any other fourteenth-century tombs, are those of Dom Pedro I. who died in 1367, and of Inez de Castro who was murdered in 1355. When only sixteen years old Dom Pedro, to strengthen his father Affonso the Fourth's alliance with Castile, had been married to Dona Costança, daughter of the duke of Penafiel. In her train there came as a lady-in-waiting Dona Inez de Castro, the daughter of the high chamberlain of Castile, and with her Dom Pedro soon fell in love. As long as his wife, who was the mother of King Fernando, lived no one thought much of his connection with Dona Inez, or of that with Dona Thereza Lourenço, whose son afterwards became the great liberator, King João I., but after Dona Costança's death it was soon seen that he loved Dona Inez more than any one had imagined, and he was believed even to have married her. This, and his refusal to accept any of the royal princesses chosen by his father, so enraged Dom Affonso that he determined to have Dona Inez killed, and this was done by three knights on 7th January 1355 in the Quinta das Lagrimas--that is, the Garden of Tears--near Coimbra. Dom Pedro, who was away hunting in the south, would have rebelled against his father, but was persuaded by the queen to submit after he had devastated all the province of Minho. Two years later Dom Affonso died, and after Dom Pedro had caught and tortured to death two of the murderers--the third escaped to Castile--he in 1361 had Dona Inez's body removed from its grave, dressed in the royal robes and crowned, and swearing that he had really married her, he compelled all the court to pay her homage and to kiss her hand: then the body was placed on a bier and carried by night to the place prepared for it at Alcobaça, some seventy miles away. When six years later, in 1367, he came to die himself he left directions that they should be buried with their feet towards one another, that at the resurrection the first thing he should see should be Dona Inez rising from her tomb. Unfortunately the French soldiers in 1810 broke open both tombs, smashing away much fine carved work and scattering their bones.[73] The two tombs are much alike in design and differ only in detail; both rest on four lions; the sides, above a narrow border of sunk quatrefoils, are divided by tiny buttresses rising from behind the gables of small niches into six parts, each of which has an arch under a gable whose tympanum is filled with the most minute tracery. Each of these arches is cusped and foliated differently according to the nature of the figure subject it contains. Behind the tops of the gables and pinnacles of the buttresses runs a small arcade with beautiful little figures only a few inches high: above this a still more delicate arcade runs round the whole tomb, interrupted at regular intervals by shields, charged on Dom Pedro's tomb with the arms of Portugal and on that of Dona Inez with the same and with those of the Castros alternately. At the foot of Dom Pedro's is represented the Crucifixion, and facing it on that of Dona Inez the Last Judgment. Nothing can exceed the delicacy and beauty of the figure sculpture, the drapery is all good, and the smallest heads and hands are worked with a care not to be surpassed in any country. (Fig. 32.) On the top of one lies King Pedro with his head to the north, on the other Dona Inez with hers to the south; both are life size and are as well wrought as are the smaller details below. Both have on each side three angels who seem to be just about to lift them from where they lie or to have just laid them down. These angels, especially those near Dom Pedro's head, are perhaps the finest parts of either tomb, with their beautiful drapery, their well-modelled wings, and above all with the outstretching of their arms towards the king and Dona Inez. There seems to be no record as to who worked or designed these tombs, but there can be little or no doubt that he was a Frenchman, the whole feeling, alike of the architectural detail and the figures themselves, is absolutely French; there had been no previous figure sculpture in the country in any way good enough to lead up to the skill in design and in execution here shown, nor, with regard to the mere architectural detail, had Gothic tracery and ornament yet been sufficiently developed for a native workman to have invented the elaborate cuspings, mouldings, and other enrichments which make both tombs so pre-eminent above all that came before them.[74] These tombs, as indeed the whole church, as well as the neighbouring convent of Batalha, are constructed of a wonderfully fine limestone, which seems to be practically the same as Caen Stone, and which, soft and easy to cut when first quarried, grows harder with exposure and in time, when not in a too shady or damp position, where it gets black, takes on a most beautiful rich yellow colour. These tombs, beautiful as they are, do not seem to have any very direct influence on the work of the next century: it is true that a distinct advance was made in modelling the effigies of those who lay below, but apart from that the decoration of these high tombs is in no case even remotely related to that of the later monuments at Batalha; nor, except that the national method of church planning was more firmly established than ever, and that some occasional features such as the cuspings on the arch-mould of the door of São Francisco Santarem, which are copied on an archaistic door at Batalha, are found in later work, is there much to point to the great advance that was soon to be made alike in detail and in construction. [Illustration: FIG. 31. ALCOBAÇA. CHAPEL WITH ROYAL TOMBS. (DOM PEDRO AND DONA BEATRIZ.)] [Illustration: FIG. 32. ALCOBAÇA. TOMB OF DOM PEDRO I.] CHAPTER IV BATALHA AND THE DELIVERANCE OF PORTUGAL Towards the end of the fourteenth century came the most important and critical years that Portugal had yet known. Dom Pedro, dying after a reign of only ten years, was succeeded by his only legitimate son, Fernando, in 1367. Unfortunately the new king at his sister's wedding saw and fell in love with the wife of a northern nobleman, and soon openly married this Dona Leonor Telles de Menezes, though he was himself already betrothed to a Castilian princess, and though her own husband was still alive. At the first court or Beja Manos held by Dona Leonor at Leça near Oporto, all the Portuguese nobility except Dom Diniz, the king's half-brother and a son of Inez de Castro, acknowledged her as queen. But soon the evil influence she exercised over the king and the stories of her cruelty made her extremely unpopular and even hated by the whole nation. The memory of the vengeance she took on her own sister, Dona Maria Telles, is preserved by an interesting old house in Coimbra which has indeed been rebuilt since, in the early sixteenth century, but is still called the House of the Telles. To the dislike Queen Leonor felt for the sons of Inez de Castro, owing to Dom Diniz's refusal to kiss her hand, was added the hatred she had borne her sister, who was married to Dom João, another son of Dona Inez, ever since this sister Dona Maria had warned her to have nothing to do with the king; she was also jealous because Dona Maria had had a son while her own two eldest children had died. So plotting to be rid of them both, she at last persuaded Dom João that his wife was not faithful to him, and sent him full of anger to that house at Coimbra where Dona Maria was living and where, without even giving his wife time to speak, he stabbed her to death. Soon after Dona Leonor came in and laughed at him for having believed her lies so as to kill his own wife. Failing to kill the queen, Dom João fled to Castile. When Dom Fernando himself died in 1383 he left his widow as regent of the kingdom on behalf of their only daughter, Dona Brites, whom they had married to Don Juan I. of Castile. It was of course bad enough for the nation to find itself under the regency of such a woman, but to be absorbed by Castile and Leon was more than could be endured. So a great Cortes was held at Coimbra, and Dom João, grand master of the Order of Aviz, and the son of Dom Pedro and Dona Thereza Lourenço, was elected king. The new king at once led his people against the invaders, and after twice defeating them met them for the final struggle at Aljubarrota, near Alcobaça, on 14th August 1385. The battle raged all day till at last the Castilian king fled with all his army, leaving his tent with its rich furniture and all his baggage. Before the enemy had been driven from the little town of Aljubarrota, the wife of the village baker made herself famous by killing nine Spaniards with her wooden baking shovel--a shovel which may still be seen on the town arms. When all was over Dom João dedicated the spoil he had taken in the Castilian king's tent to Our Lady of the Olive Tree at Guimarães where may still be seen, with many other treasures, a large silver-gilt triptych of the Nativity and one of the silver angels from off the royal altar.[75] Besides this, he had promised if victorious to rebuild the church at Guimarães and to found where the victory had been won a monastery as a thankoffering for his success. [Sidenote: Batalha.] This vow was fulfilled two years later in 1387 by building the great convent of Sta. Maria da Victoria or Batalha, that is Battle, at a place then called Pinhal[76] in a narrow valley some nine or ten miles north of Aljubarrota and seven south of Leiria. Meanwhile John of Gaunt had landed in Galicia with a large army to try and win Castile and Leon, which he claimed for his wife Constance, elder daughter of Pedro the Cruel; marching through Galicia he met Dom João at Oporto in February 1387, and then the Treaty of Windsor, which had been signed the year before and which had declared the closest union of friendship and alliance to exist between England and Portugal, was further strengthened by the marriage of King João to Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt and of his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. Soon after, the peace of the Peninsula was assured by the marriage of Catherine, the only child of John of Gaunt and of Constance of Castile, to Enrique, Prince of the Asturias and heir to the throne of Castile. [Illustration: PLAN OF BATALHA] But it is time now to turn from the history of the foundation of Batalha to the buildings themselves, and surely no more puzzling building than the church is to be found anywhere. The plan, indeed, of the church, omitting the Capella do Fundador and the great Capellas Imperfeitas, presents no difficulty as it is only a repetition of the already well-known and national arrangement of nave with aisles, an aisleless transept, with in this case five apsidal chapels to the east. Now in all this there is nothing the least unusual or different from what might be expected, except perhaps that the nave, of eight bays, is rather longer than in any previous example. But the church was built to commemorate a great national deliverance, and by a king who had just won immense booty from his defeated enemy, and so was naturally built on a great and imposing scale.[77] The first architect, Affonso Domingues, perhaps a grandson of the Domingo Domingues who built the cloister at Alcobaça, is said to have been born at Lisbon and so, as might have been expected, his plan shows no trace at all of foreign influence. And yet even this ordinary plan has been compared by a German writer to that of the nave and transepts of Canterbury Cathedral, a most unlikely model to be followed, as Chillenden, who there carried out the transformation of Lanfranc's nave, did not become prior till 1390, three years after Batalha had been begun.[78] But though it is easy enough to show that the plan is not English but quite national and Portuguese, it is not so easy to say what the building itself is. Affonso Domingues died in 1402, and was succeeded by a man whose name is spelt in a great variety of ways, Ouguet, Huguet, or Huet, and to whom most of the building apart from the plan must have been due. His name sounds more French than anything else, but the building is not at all French except in a few details. Altogether it is not at all easy to say whence those peculiarities of tracery and detail which make Batalha so strange and unusual a building were derived, except that there had been in Portugal nothing to lead up to such tracery or to such elaboration of detail, or to the constructive skill needed to build the high groined vaults of the nave or the enormous span required to cover the chapter-house. Perhaps it may be better to describe the church first outside and then in, and then see if it is possible to discover from the details themselves whence they can have come. The five eastern apses, of which the largest in the centre is also twice as high as the other four, are probably the oldest part of the building, but all, except the two outer apses and the upper part of the central, have been concealed by the Pateo built by Dom Manoel to unite the church with the Capellas Imperfeitas, or unfinished chapels, beyond. Here there is nothing very unusual: the smaller chapels all end in three-sided apses, at whose angles are buttresses, remarkable only for the great number of string courses, five in all, which divide them horizontally; these buttresses are finished by two offsets just below a plain corbel table which is now crowned by an elaborately pierced and cusped parapet which may well have been added later. Each side of the apse has one tall narrow single-light window which, filled at some later date from top to bottom with elaborate stone tracery, has two thin shafts at each side and a rather bluntly-pointed head. The central apse has been much the same but with five sides, and two stories of similar windows one above the other. So far there is nothing unexpected or what could not easily have been developed from already existing buildings, such as the church at Thomar or the Franciscan and Dominican churches no further away than Pontevedra in Galicia. Coming to the south transept, there is a large doorway below under a crocketed gable flanked by a tall pinnacle on either side. This door with its thirteenth-century mouldings is one of the most curious and unexpected features of the whole building. Excepting that the capitals are well carved with leaves, it is a close copy of the west door of São Francisco at Santarem. Here the horseshoe cuspings are on the out-most of the five orders of mouldings, and the chevron on the fourth, while there is also a series of pointed cusps on the second. Only the innermost betrays its really late origin by the curious crossing and interpenetrating of the mouldings of its large trefoiled head. All this is thoroughly Portuguese and clearly derived from what had gone before; but the same cannot be said for the crockets or for the pinnacles with their square and gabled spirelets. These crockets are of the common vine-leaf shape such as was used in England and also in France early in the fourteenth century, while the two-storied pinnacles with shallow traceried panels on each face, and still more the square spirelets with rather large crockets and a large bunchy finial, are not at all French, but a not bad imitation of contemporary English work. On the gable above the door are two square panels, each containing a coat-of-arms set in a cusped quatrefoil, while the vine-leaves which fill in the surface between the quatrefoils and the outer mouldings of the square, as also those on the crowns which surmount the coats, are also quite English. The elaborate many-sided canopies above are not so much so in form though they might well have been evolved from English detail. Above the gable comes another English feature, a very large three-light window running up to the very vault; at the top the mullions of each light are carried up so as to intersect, with cusped circles filling in each space, while the whole window to the top is filled with a veil of small reticulated tracery. Above the top of the large window there is a band of reticulated panelling whose shafts run down till they reach the crocketed hood-mould of the window: and above this an elaborately pierced and foliated parapet between the square pinnacles of the angle buttresses, which like these of the apses are remarkable for the extraordinary number (ten) of offsets and string courses. The next five bays of the nave as well as the whole north side (which has no buttresses) above the cloister are all practically alike; the buttresses, pinnacles and parapet are just the same as those of the transept: the windows tall, standing pretty high above the ground, are all of three lights with tracery evidently founded on that of the large transept window, but set very far back in the wall with as many as three shafts on each side, and with each light now filled in with horrid wood or plaster work. The clerestory windows, also of three lights with somewhat similar tracery, are separated by narrow buttresses bearing square pinnacles, between which runs on a pointed corbel table the usual pierced parapet, and by strong flying buttresses, which at least in the western bays are doubly cusped, and are, between the arch and the straight part, pierced with a large foliated circle and other tracery. The last three bays on the south side are taken up by the Founder's Chapel (Capella do Fundador), in which are buried King João, Queen Philippa, and four of their sons. This chapel, which must have been begun a good deal later than the church, as the church was finished in 1415 when the queen died and was temporarily buried before the high altar, while the chapel was not yet ready when Dom João made his will in 1426, though it was so in 1434 when he and the queen were there buried, is an exact square of about 80 feet externally, within which an octagon of about 38 feet in diameter rises above the flat roof of the square, rather higher than to the top of the aisles. Each exposed side of the square is divided into three bays, one wider in the centre with one narrower on each side. The buttresses, pinnacles and corbel table are much the same as before, but the parapet is much more elaborate and more like French flamboyant. Of the windows the smaller are of four lights with very elaborate and unusual flowing tracery in their heads; small parts of which, such as the tracery at the top of the smaller lights, is curiously English, while the whole is neither English nor French nor belonging to any other national school. The same may be said of the larger eight-light window in the central bay, but that there the tracery is even more elaborate and extravagant. The octagon above has buttresses with ordinary pinnacles at each corner, a parapet like that below, and flying buttresses, all pierced, cusped and crocketed like those at the west front. On each face is a tall two-light window with flowing tracery packed in rather tightly at the top. As for the west front itself, which has actually been compared to that of York Minster, the ends of the aisles are much like the sides, with similar buttresses, pinnacles and parapet, but with the windows not set back quite so far. On each side of the large central door are square buttresses, running up to above the level of the aisle roof in six stories, the four upper of which are panelled with what looks like English decorated tracery, and ending in large square crocketed and gabled pinnacles. The door itself between these buttresses is another strange mixture. In general design and in size it is entirely French: on either side six large statues stand on corbels and under elaborate many-sided canopies, while on the arches themselves is the usual French arrangement of different canopied figures: the tympanum is upheld by a richly cusped segmental arch, and has on it a curiously archaistic carving of Our Lord under a canopy surrounded by the four Evangelists. Above, the crocketed drip-mould is carried up in an ogee leaving room for the coronation of the Virgin over the apex of the arch. So far all might be French, but on examining the detail, a great deal of it is found to be not French but English: the half octagonal corbels with their panelled and traceried sides, and still more the strips of panelling on the jambs with their arched heads, are quite English and might be found in almost any early perpendicular reredos or tomb, nor are the larger canopies quite French. (Fig. 33.) Above the finial of the ogee runs a corbel table supporting a pierced and crested parapet, a little different in design from the rest. Above this parapeted gallery is a large window lighting the upper part of the nave, a window which for extravagance and exuberance of tracery exceeds all others here or elsewhere. The lower part is evidently founded on the larger windows of the Capella do Fundador. Like them it has two larger pointed lights under a big ogee which reaches to the apex of a pointed arch spanning the whole window, the space between this ogee and the enclosing arch being filled in with more or less ordinary flowing tracery. These two main lights are again much subdivided: at the top is a circle with spiral tracery; below it an arch enclosing an ogee exactly similar to the larger one above, springing from two sub-lights which are again subdivided in exactly the same manner, into circle, sub-arch, ogee and two small lights, so that the whole lower part of the window is really built up from the one motive repeated three times. The space between the large arch and the window head is taken up by a large circle completely filled with minute spiral tracery and two vesicae also filled in with smaller vesicae and circles. Now such a window could not have been designed in England, in France, or anywhere else; not only is it ill arranged, but it is entirely covered from top to bottom with tracery, which shows that an attempt was being made to adapt forms suitable in a northern climate to the brilliant summer sun of Portugal, a sun which a native builder would rather try to keep out than to let in. Above the window is a band of reticulated tracery like that below, and the front is finished with a straight line of parapet pierced and foliated like that below, joining the picturesque clusters of corner pinnacles. The only other part of the church which calls for notice is the bell-tower which stands at the north end of a very thick wall separating the sacristy from the cloister; it is now an octagon springing strangely from the square below, with a rich parapet, inside which stands a tall spire; this spire, which has a sort of coronet rather more than half-way up, consists of eight massive crocketed ribs ending in a huge finial, and with the space between filled in with very fine pierced work.[79] From such of the original detail which has [Illustration: FIG. 33. BATALHA. WEST FRONT OF CHURCH. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] survived the beautiful alterations of Dom Manoel, the details of the cloister must have been very like those of the church. The refectory to the west of the cloister is a plain room roofed with a pointed barrel-vault; but the chapter-house is constructively the most remarkable part of the whole convent. It is a great room over sixty feet square, opening off the east cloister walk by a large pointed door with a two-light window each side. This great space is covered by an immense vault, upheld by no central shaft; arches are thrown across the corners bringing the square to an octagon, and though not very high, it is one of the boldest Gothic vaults ever attempted; there is nowhere else a room of such a size vaulted without supporting piers, and probably none where the buttresses outside, with their small projection, look so unequal to the work they have to do, yet this vault has successfully withstood more than one earthquake. The inside of the church is in singular contrast to the floridness of the outside. The clustered piers are exceptionally large and tall; there is no triforium, and the side windows are set so far back as to be scarcely seen. The capitals have elaborate Gothic foliage, but are so square as to look at a distance almost romanesque. In front of each pier triple vaulting shafts run up, but instead of the side shafts carrying the diagonal ribs as they should have done, all three carry bold transverse arches, leaving the vaulting ribs to spring as best they can. Each bay has horizontal ridge ribs, though their effect is lost by the too great strength of the transverse arches. The chancel, a little lower than the nave and transepts, is entered by an acutely pointed and richly cusped arch, and has a regular Welsh groined vault, with a well-developed ridge rib. Unfortunately almost all the church furniture was destroyed during the French retreat, and of the stained glass only that in the windows of the main apse survives, save in the three-light window of the chapter-house, a window which can be exactly dated as it displays the arms of Portugal and Castile quartered. This could only have been done during the life of Dom Manoel's first wife, Isabel, eldest daughter and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella. Dom Manoel married her in 1497, and she died in 1498 leaving a son who, had he lived, would have inherited the whole Peninsula and so saved Spain from the fatal connection with the Netherlands inherited by Charles V. from his own father. (Fig. 34.) The most elaborate part of the interior is not unnaturally the Capella do Fundador: though even there, the four beautiful carved and painted altars and retables on the east side, and the elaborate carved presses on the west, have all vanished from their places, burned for firewood by the invaders in 1810. In the centre under the lantern, lie King João who died in 1433, and on the right Queen Philippa of Lancaster who died seventeen years before. The high tomb itself is a plain square block of stone from which on each side there project four lions: at the head are the royal arms surrounded by the Garter, and on the sides long inscriptions in honour of the king and queen. The figures of the king and queen lie side by side with very elaborate canopies at their heads. King João is in armour, holding a sword in his left hand and with his other clasping the queen's right hand. The figures are not nearly so well carved as are those of Dom Pedro and Inez de Castro at Alcobaça, nor is the tomb nearly as elaborate. On the south wall are the recessed tombs of four of their younger sons. The eldest, Dom Duarte, intended to be buried in the great unfinished chapel at the east, but still lies with his wife before the high altar. Each recess has a pointed arch richly moulded, and with broad bands of very unusual leaves, while above it rises a tall ogee canopy, crocketed and ending in a large finial. The space between arch and canopy and the sills of the windows is covered with reticulated panelling like that on the west front, and the tombs are divided by tall pinnacles. The four sons here buried are, beginning at the west: first, Dom Pedro, duke of Coimbra; next him Dom Henrique, duke of Vizeu and master of the Order of Christ, famous as Prince Henry the Navigator; then Dom João, Constable of Portugal; and last, Dom Fernando, master of the Order of Aviz, who died an unhappy captive in Morocco. During the reign of his brother Dom Duarte he had taken part in an expedition to that country, and being taken prisoner was offered his freedom if the Portuguese would give up Ceuta, captured by King João in the year in which Queen Philippa died. These terms he indignantly refused and died after some years of misery. On the front of each tomb is a large panel on which are two or three shields--one on that of Dom Henrique being surrounded with the Garter--while all the surface is covered with beautifully carved foliage. Dom Henrique alone has an [Illustration: FIG. 34. CHURCH, BATALHA. INTERIOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 35. BATALHA. CAPELLA DO FUNDADOR AND TOMB OF DOM JOÃO I AND DONA FILIPPA.] effigy, the others having only covers raised and panelled, while the back of the Constable's monument has on it scenes from the Passion. The eight piers of the lantern are made up of a great number of shafts with a moulded angle between each. The capitals are covered with two tiers of conventional vine-leaves and have octagonal, not as in the church square abaci, while the arches are highly stilted and are enriched with most elaborate cusping, each cusp ending in a square vine-leaf. (Fig. 35.) Such then are the main features of the church, the design of which, according to most writers, was brought straight from England by the English queen, an opinion which no one who knows English contemporary buildings can hold for a moment. First, to take the entirely native features. The plan is only an elaboration of that of many already existing churches. The south transept door is a copy of a door at Santarem. The heavy transverse arches and the curious way the diagonal vaulting ribs are left to take care of themselves have been seen no further away than at Alcobaça; the flat-paved terraced roofs, whose origin the Visconde di Condeixa in his monograph on the convent, sought even as far off as in Cyprus, existed already at Evora and elsewhere. Secondly, from France might have come the general design of the west door, and the great height of the nave, though the proportion between the aisle arcade and the clerestory, and the entire absence of any kind of triforium, is not at all French. Thirdly, several details, as has been seen, appear to be more English than anything else, but they are none of them very important; the ridge ribs in the nave, the Welsh groining of the chancel vault, the general look of the pinnacles, a few pieces of stone panelling on buttresses or door, a small part of a few of the windows, the moulding of the chapter-house door, the leaves on the capitals of the Capella do Fundador, and the shape of the vine-leaves at the ends of the cuspings of the arches. From a distance the appearance of the church is certainly more English than anything else, but that is due chiefly to the flat roof--a thoroughly Portuguese feature--and to the upstanding pinnacles, which suggest a long perpendicular building such as one of the college chapels at Oxford. Lastly, if the open-work spire is a real copy of that destroyed in 1755, and if there ever was another like it on the Capella do Fundador,[80] they suggest German influence, although the earliest Spanish examples of such German work were not begun at Burgos till 1442, by which time the church here must have been nearly if not quite finished. It is then not difficult to assign a great many details, with perhaps a certain amount of truth, to the influence of several foreign countries, yet as a whole the church is unlike any building existing in any of these countries or even in Spain, and it remains as difficult, or indeed as impossible, to discover whence these characteristics came. So far there had been scarcely any development of window tracery to lead up to the elaborate and curious examples which are found here; still less had any such constructive skill been shown in former buildings as to make so great a vault as that of the chapter-house at all likely, for such a vault is to be found perhaps nowhere else. Probably the plan of the church, and perhaps the eastern chapel and lower part of the transept, are the work of Affonso Domingues, and all the peculiarities, the strange windows, the cusped arches, the English-looking pinnacles, as well as all the constructive skill, are due to Huguet his successor, who may perhaps have travelled in France and England, and had come back to Portugal with increased knowledge of how to build, but with a rather confused idea of the ornamental detail he had seen abroad. When Dom João died in 1433 his eldest son, Dom Duarte or Edward, determined to build for himself a more splendid tomb-house than his father's, and so was begun the great octagon to the east. Unfortunately Dom Duarte's reign was short; he died in 1438, partly it is said of distress at the ill success of his expedition to Morocco and at the captivity there of his youngest brother, so that he had no time to finish his chapel, and his son Affonso V., the African, was too much engaged in campaigning against the Moors to be able to give either money or attention to his father's work; and it was still quite unfinished when Dom Manoel came to the throne in 1495, and though he did much towards carrying on the work it was unfinished when he died in 1521 and so remains to the present day. It is in designing this chapel that Huguet showed his greatest originality and constructive daring: a few feet behind the central apse he planned a great octagon about seventy-two feet in diameter, surrounded by seven apsidal chapels, one on each side except that next the church, while between these chapels are small low chambers where were to be the tombs themselves. There is nothing to show how this chapel was to be united to the church, as the great doorway and vaulted hall were added by Dom Manoel some seventy years later. When Dom Duarte died in 1438, or when Huguet himself died not long after,[81] the work had only been carried out as far as the tops of the surrounding chapels, and so remained all through his son's and his grandson's reigns, although in his will the king had specially asked that the building should be carried on. In all this original part of the Capellas Imperfeitas there is little that differs from Huguet's work in the church. The buttresses and corbel table are very similar (the pinnacles and parapets have been added since 1834), and the apses quite like those of the church. (Fig. 36.) The tracery of the chief windows too is not unlike that of the lantern windows of the founder's chapel except that there is a well-marked transome half-way up--a feature which has been attributed to English influence--while the single windows of the tomb chambers are completely filled with geometric tracery. Inside, the capitals of the chapel arches as well as their rich cuspings are very like those of the founder's chapel; the capitals having octagonal abaci and stiff vine-leaves, and the trefoiled cusps ending in square vine-leaves, while the arch mouldings are, as in King João's chapel, more English than French in section. There is nothing now to show how the great central octagon was to be roofed--for the eight great piers which now rise high above the chapel were not built till the time of Dom Manoel--but it seems likely that the vault was meant to be low, and not to rise much above the chapel roofs, finishing, as everywhere else in the church, in a flat, paved terrace. The only important addition made during the reigns of Dom Affonso V. and of Dom João II. was that of a second cloister, north of the Claustro Real, and still called the Cloister of Affonso. This cloister is as plain and wanting in ornament as everything else about the monastery is rich and elaborate, and it was probably built under the direction of Fernão d'Evora, who succeeded his uncle Martim Vasques as master of the works before 1448, and held that position for nearly thirty years. Unlike the great cloister, whose large openings must, from the first, have been meant for tracery, the cloister of Affonso V. is so very plain and simple, that if its date were not known it would readily be attributed to a period older even than the foundation of the monastery. On each side are seven square bays separated by perfectly plain buttresses, each bay consisting of two very plain pointed arches resting on the moulded capitals of coupled shafts. Except for the buttresses and the vault the cloister differs in no marked way from those at Guimarães and elsewhere whose continuous pointed arcades show so little advance from the usual romanesque manner of cloister-building. Above is a second story of later date, in which the tiled roof rests on short columns placed rather far apart, and with no regard to the spacing of the bays below. Round this are the kitchens and various domestic offices of the convent, and behind it lay another cloister, now utterly gone, having been burned by the French in 1810. Such are the church and monastery of Batalha as planned by Dom João and added to by his son and grandson, and though it is not possible to say whence Huguet drew his inspiration, it remains, with all the peculiarities of tracery and detail which make it seem strange and ungrammatical--if one may so speak--to eyes accustomed to northern Gothic, one of the most remarkable examples of original planning and daring construction to be found anywhere. Of the later additions which give character to the cloister and to the Capellas Imperfeitas nothing can be said till the time of Dom Manoel is reached. [Illustration: FIG. 36. BATALHA. CAPELLAS IMPERFEITAS. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] CHAPTER V THE EARLIER FIFTEENTH CENTURY [Sidenote: Guimarães.] Besides building Batalha, King João dedicated the spoils he had taken at Aljubarrota to the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliviera at Guimarães, which he rebuilt from the designs of Juan Garcia of Toledo. The most important of these spoils is the silver-gilt reredos taken in the Spanish king's travelling chapel. It is in the shape of a triptych about four feet high. In the centre is represented the Virgin with the Infant Christ on a bed, with Joseph seated and leaning wearily on his staff at the foot, the figures being about fourteen inches high; above two angels swing censers, and the heads of an ox and an ass appear feeding from a manger. All the background is richly diapered, and above are four cusped arches, separated by angels under canopies, while above the arches to the top there rises a rich mass of tabernacle work, with the window-like spaces filled in with red or green enamel. At the top are two half-angels holding the arms of Portugal, added when the reredos was dedicated to Our Lady by Dom João. The two leaves, each about twenty inches wide, are divided into two equal stories, each of which has two cusped and canopied arches enclosing, those on the left above, the Annunciation, and below the Presentation, and those on the right, the Angel appearing to the Shepherds above, and the Wise Men below. All the tabernacle work is most beautifully wrought in silver, but the figures are less good, that of the Virgin Mary being distinctly too large.[82] (Fig. 37.) Of the other things taken from the defeated king's tent, only one silver angel now remains of the twelve which were sent to Guimarães. Of the church rebuilt in commemoration of this great victory, only the west front has escaped a terrible transformation carried out not so long ago, and which has made it impossible to see what the inside was once like. If the builder was a Spaniard, as his name, Juan Garcia de Toledo, seems to imply, there is nothing Spanish about his design. The door is like many another door of about the same period, with simple mouldings ornamented with small bosses, but the deeply recessed window above is most unusual. The tracery is gone, but the framing of the window remains, and is far more like that of a French door than of a window. On either jamb are two stories of three canopied niches, containing figures, while the arches are covered with small figures under canopies; all is rather rude, but the whole is most picturesque and original. To the left rises the tower, standing forward from the church front: it is of three stories, with cable moulding at the corners, a picturesque cornice and battlements at the top; a bell gable in front, and a low octagonal spire. On the ground floor are two large windows defended by simple but good iron grilles, and in the upper part are large belfry windows. This is not the original tower, for that was pulled down in 1515, when the present one was built in its stead by Pedro Esteves Cogominho. Though of so late a date it is quite uninfluenced, not only by those numerous buildings of Dom Manoel's time, which are noted for their fantastic detail, but by the early renaissance which had already begun to show itself here and there, and it is one of the most picturesque church towers in the country. A few feet to the west of the church there is a small open shrine or chapel, a square vault resting on four pointed arches which are well moulded, enriched with dog-tooth and surmounted by gables. This chapel was built soon after 1342 to commemorate the miracle to which the church owes its name. Early in the fourteenth century there grew at São Torquato, a few miles off, an olive-tree which provided the oil for that saint's lamp. It was transported to Guimarães to fulfil a like office there for the altar of Our Lady. It naturally died, and so remained for many years till 1342, when one Pedro Esteves placed on it a cross which his brother had bought in Normandy. This was the 8th of September, and three days after the dead olive-tree broke into leaf, a miracle [Illustration: FIG. 37. CAPELLA OF D. JUAN OF CASTILLE. TAKEN AT THE BATTLE OF ALJUBARROTA BY JOÃO I, 1385, AND NOW IN THE TREASURY OF N.S. DA OLIVEIRA GUIMARÃES.] [Illustration: FIG. 38. GUARDA. N. SIDE OF CATHEDRAL.] greatly to the advantage and wealth of the church and of the town. From that day the church was called Our Lady of the Olive Tree. [Sidenote: Guarda.] Far more interesting than this church, because much better preserved and because it is clearly derived, in part at least, from Batalha, is the cathedral of Guarda, begun by João I. Guarda is a small town, not far from the Spanish border, built on a hill rising high above the bleak surrounding tableland to a height of nearly four thousand feet, and was founded by Dom Sancho I. in 1197 to guard his frontier against the Spaniards and the Moors. Begun by João I. the plan and general design of the whole church must belong to the beginning of the fifteenth century, though the finishing of the nave, and the insertion of larger transept windows, were carried out under Dom Manoel, and though the great reredos is of the time of Dom João III. Yet the few chapels between the nave buttresses are almost the only real additions made to the church. Though of but moderate dimensions, it is one of the largest of Portuguese cathedrals, being 175 feet long by 70 feet wide and 110 feet across the transepts. It is also unique among the aisled and vaulted churches in copying Batalha by having a well-developed clerestory and flying buttresses. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL. GUARDA.] The plan consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, a transept projecting one bay beyond the aisles, and three apses to the east. At the crossing the vault is slightly raised so as to admit of four small round windows opening above the flat roofs of the central aisle and transepts. The only peculiarity about the plan lies in the two western towers, which near the ground are squares set diagonally to the front of the church and higher up change to octagons, and so rise a few feet above the flat roof. About the end of the fifteenth century two small chapels were added to the north of the nave, and later still the spaces between the buttresses were filled in with shallow altar recesses. The likeness to Batalha is best seen in the Capella Mor. As the apse has only three instead of five sides, the windows are rather wider, and there are none below, but otherwise the resemblance is as great as may be, when the model is of fine limestone and the copy of granite. The buttresses have offset string courses, and square crocketed pinnacles just as at Batalha; there has even been an attempt to copy the parapet, though only the trefoil corbel table is really like the model, for the parapet itself is solid with a cresting of rather clumsy fleurs-de-lis. These pinnacles and this crested parapet are found everywhere all round the church, though the pinnacles on the aisle walls from which the plain flying buttresses spring are quite different, being of a Manoelino design. Again the north transept door has evidently been inspired by the richness of Batalha. Here the door itself is plain, but well moulded, with above it an elaborately crocketed ogee drip-mould, which ends in a large finial; above this rises to a considerable height some arcaded panelling, ending at the top in a straight band of quatrefoil, and interrupted by a steep gable. (Fig. 38.) No other part of the outside calls for much notice except the boat-keel corbels of the smaller apses, the straight gable-less ends to transept and nave which show that the roofs are flat and paved, and the western towers. These are of three stories. The lowest is square at the bottom and octagonal above, the change being effected by a curved offset at two corners, while at the third or western corner the curve has been cut down so as to leave room for an eighteenth-century window, lighting the small polygonal chapel inside, a chapel originally lit by two narrow round-headed windows on the diagonal sides. In the second story there are again windows on the same diagonal sides, but they have been built up: while on the third or highest division--where the octagon is complete on all sides--are four belfry windows. The whole is finished by a crested parapet. The west front between these towers is very plain. At the top a cresting, simpler than that elsewhere, below a round window without tracery, lower still two picturesque square rococo windows, and at the bottom a rather elaborate Manoelino doorway, built not many years ago to replace one of the same date as the windows above. Throughout the clerestory windows are not large. They are round-headed of two lights, with simple tracery, and deep splays both inside and out. The large transept windows with half octagonal heads under a large trefoil were inserted about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Inside the resemblance to Batalha is less noticeable. The ribs of the chancel vault are well moulded, as are the arches of the lantern, but in the nave, which cannot have been finished till the end of the fifteenth century, the design is quite different. The piers are all a hollow square set diagonally with a large round shaft at each corner. In the aisle arches the hollows of the diagonal sides are carried round without capitals, with which the round shafts alone are provided; while the shaft in front runs up to a round Manoelino capital with octagonal abacus from which springs the vaulting at a level higher than the sills of the clerestory windows.[83] The most unusual part of the nave is the vaulting of all three aisles, where all the ribs, diagonal as well as transverse, are of exactly the same section and size as is the round shaft from which they spring, even the wall rib being of the same shape though a little smaller. At the crossing there are triple shafts on each side, those of the nave being twisted, which is another Manoelino feature. The nave then must be about a hundred years later than the eastern parts of the church, where the capitals are rather long and are carved with foliage and have square abaci, while those of the nave are all of the time of King João II. or of King Manoel. At about the same time some small and picturesque windows were inserted above the smaller apses on the east side of the transept, and rather later was built the chapel to the north-east of the nave, which is entered through a segmental arch whose jambs and head are well carved with early renaissance foliage and figures, and which contains the simple tomb of a bishop. The pulpits, organs, and stalls, both in the chancel and in the western choir gallery, are fantastic and late, but the great reredos which rises in three divisions to the springing of the vault is the largest and one of the finest in the country, but belonging as it does to a totally different period and school must be left for another chapter. [Sidenote: Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo, Lisbon.] Much need not be said about the Carmo at Lisbon, another church of the same date, as it has been almost entirely wrecked by the earthquake of 1755. The victory of Aljubarrota was due perhaps even more to the grand Constable of Portugal, Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira, than to the king himself, and, like the king, the Constable commemorated the victory by founding a monastery, a great Carmelite house in Lisbon. The church of Nossa Senhora do Vencimento do Monte do Carmo stands high up above the central valley of Lisbon on the very verge of the steep hill. Begun in July 1389 the foundations twice gave way, and it was only after the Constable had dismissed his first master and called in three men of the same name, Affonso, Gonçalo, and Rodrigo Eannes, that a real beginning could be made, and it was not finished till 1423, when it was consecrated; at the same time the founder assumed the habit of a Carmelite and entered his own monastery to die eight years later, and to become an object of veneration to the whole people. In plan the church was almost exactly like that of Batalha, though with a shorter nave of only five bays.[84] To the east of the transept are still five apses--the best preserved part of the whole building--having windows and buttresses like those at Batalha. The only other part of the church which has escaped destruction is the west door, a large simple opening of six moulded arches springing from twelve shafts whose capitals are carved with foliage. From what is left it seems that the church was more like what Batalha was planned to be, rather than what it became under the direction of Huguet: but the downfall of the nave has been so complete that it is only possible to make out that there must have been a well-developed clerestory and a high vaulted central aisle. What makes this destruction all the more regrettable is the fact that the church was full of splendid tombs, especially that of the Holy Constable himself: a magnificent piece of carving in alabaster sent from Flanders by Dom João's daughter, Isabel, duchess of Flanders.[85] After this catastrophe an attempt was made to rebuild the church, but little was done, and it still remains a complete ruin, having been used since the suppression of all monasteries in 1834 as an Archæological Museum where many tombs and other architectural fragments may still be seen. [Sidenote: Villar de Frades.] Towards the end of King João's reign a man named João Vicente, noting the corruption into which the religious orders were falling, determined to do what he could by preaching and example to bring back a better state of things. He first began his work in Lisbon, but was driven from there by the bishop to find a refuge at Braga. There he so impressed the archbishop that he was given the decayed and ruined monastery of Villar de Frades in 1425. Soon he had gathered round him a considerable body of followers, to whom he gave a set of rules and who, after receiving the papal sanction, were known as the Canons Secular of St. John the Evangelist or, popularly, Loyos, because their first settlement in Lisbon was in a monastery formerly dedicated to St. Eloy. The church at Villar, which is of considerable size, was probably long of building, as the elliptical-headed west door with its naturalistic treelike posts has details which did not become common till at least the very end of the century. Inside the church consists of a nave of five bays, flanked with chapels but not aisles, transepts which are really only enlarged chapels, and a chancel like the nave but without chapels. The chief feature of the inside is the very elaborate vaulting, which with the number and intricacy of its ribs, is not at all unlike an English Perpendicular vault, and indeed would need but little change to develop into a fan vault. Here then there has been a considerable advance from the imperfect vaulting of the central aisle at Batalha, where the diagonal ribs had to be squeezed in wherever they could go, although there are at Villar no side aisles so that the construction of supporting buttresses was of course easier than at Batalha: and it is well worth noticing how from so imperfect a beginning as the nave at Batalha the Portuguese masters soon learned to build elaborate and even wide vaults, without, as a rule, covering them with innumerable and meaningless twisting ribs as was usually done in Spain. In the north-westernmost chapel stands the font, an elaborate work of the early renaissance; an octagonal bowl with twisted sides resting on a short twisted base. [Sidenote: Matriz, Alvito.] Not unlike the vaulting at Villar is that of the Matriz or mother church of Alvito, a small town in the Alemtejo, nor can it be very much later in date. Outside it is only remarkable for its west door, an interesting example of an attempt to use the details of the early French renaissance, without understanding how to do so--as in the pediment all the entablature except the architrave has been left out--and for the short twisted pinnacles which somehow give to it, as to many other buildings in the Alemtejo, so Oriental a look, and which are seen again at Belem. Inside, the aisles are divided from the nave by round chamfered arches springing from rather short octagonal piers, which have picturesque octagonal capitals and a moulded band half-way up. Only is the easternmost bay, opening to large transeptal chapels, pointed and moulded. The vaulting springs from corbels, and although the ribs are but simply chamfered they are well developed. Curiously, though the central is so much higher than the side aisles, there is no clerestory, nor any signs of there ever having been one, while the whole wall surface is entirely covered with those beautiful tiles which came to be so much used during the seventeenth century. In the year 1415 her five sons had sailed straight from the deathbed of Queen Philippa to the coast of Morocco and had there captured the town of Ceuta, a town which remained in the hands of the Portuguese till after their ill-fated union with Spain; for in 1668 it was ceded to Spain in return for an acknowledgment of Portuguese independence, thus won after twenty-seven years' more or less continuous fighting. This was the first time any attempt had been made to carry the Portuguese arms across the Straits, and to attack their old enemies the Moors in their own land, where some hundred and seventy years later King João's descendant, Dom Sebastião, was to lose his life and his country's freedom. [Sidenote: Tomb in Graça, Santarem.] The first governor of Ceuta was Dom Pedro de Menezes, count of Viana. There he died in 1437, after having for twenty-two years bravely defended and governed the city--then, as is inscribed on his tomb, the only place in Africa possessed by Christians. This tomb, which was made at the command of his daughter Dona Leonor, stands in the church of the Graça at Santarem, a church which had been founded by his grandfather the count of Ourem in 1376 for canons regular of St. Augustine. Inside the church itself is not very remarkable,[86] having a nave and aisles with transepts and three vaulted chapels to the east, built very much in the same style as is the church at Leça do Balio, except that it has a fine west front, to be mentioned later, that the roof of the nave was knocked down by the Devil in 1548 in anger at the extreme piety of Frey Martinho de Santarem, one of the canons, and that many famous people, including Pedro Alvares Cabral, the discoverer of Brazil, are therein buried. In general outline the tomb of the count of Viana is not unlike that of his master Dom João, but it is much more highly decorated. On eight crouching lions rests a large altar-tomb. It has a well-moulded and carved base and an elaborately carved cornice, rich with deeply undercut foliage, while on the top lie Pedro de Menezes and his wife Dona Beatriz Coutinho, with elaborately carved canopies at their heads, and pedestals covered with figures and foliage at their feet. Beneath the cornice on each of the longer sides is cut in Gothic letters a long inscription telling of Dom Pedro's life, and lower down and on all four sides there is in the middle a shield, now much damaged, with the Menezes arms. On each side of these shields are carved spreading branches, knotted round a circle in the centre in which is cut the word 'Aleo.' Once, when playing with King João at a game in which some kind of club or mallet was used, the news came that the Moors were collecting in great numbers to attack Ceuta. The king, turning to Dom Pedro, asked him what reinforcements he would need to withstand the attack; the governor answered: 'This "Aleo," or club, will be enough,' and in fact, returning at once to his command, he was able without further help to drive back the enemy. So this word has been carved on his tomb to recall how well he did his duty.[87] (Fig. 39.) [Sidenote: Tomb in São João de Alporão.] Not far from the Graça church is that of São João de Alporão, of which something has already been said, and in it now stands the tomb of another Menezes, who a generation later also died in Africa, fighting to save the life of his king, Dom Affonso V., grandson of King João. Notwithstanding the ill-success of the expedition of his father, Dom Duarte, to Tangier, Dom Affonso, after having got rid of his uncle the duke of Coimbra, who had governed the country during his minority, and who fell in battle defending himself against the charge of treason, led several expeditions to Morocco, taking first Alcazar es Seghir or Alcacer Seguer, and later Tangier and Arzilla, thereby uselessly exhausting the strength of the people, and hindering the spread of maritime exploration which Dom Henrique had done so much to extend. This Dom Duarte de Menezes, third count of Viana, was, as an inscription tells, first governor of Alcacer Seguer, which with five hundred soldiers he successfully defended against a hundred thousand Moors, dying at last in the mountains of Bonacofú in defence of his king in 1464.[88] The monument was built by his widow, Dona Isabel de Castro, but so terribly had Dom Duarte been cut to pieces by the Moors, that only one finger could be found to be buried there.[89] Though much more elaborate, the tomb is not altogether unlike those of the royal princes at Batalha. The count lies, armed, with a sword drawn in his right hand, on an altar-tomb on whose front, between richly traceried panels, are carved an inscription above, upheld by small figures, and below, in the middle a flaming cresset, probably a memorial of his watchfulness in Africa, and on each side a shield. Surmounting the altar-tomb is a deeply moulded ogee arch subdivided into two hanging arches which spring from a pendant in the middle, while the space between these sub-arches and the ogee above is filled with a canopied carving of the Crucifixion. At about the level of the pendant the open space is crossed by a cusped segmental arch supporting elaborate flowing tracery. The outer sides of the ogee, which ends in a large finial, are enriched with large vine-leaf crockets. On either side of the arch is a square pier, moulded at the angles, and with each face covered with elaborate tracery. Each pier, which ends in a square crocketed and gabled pinnacle, has half-way [Illustration: FIG. 39. SANTAREM. CHURCH OF THE GRAÇA. TOMB OF D. PEDRO DE MENEZES.] [Illustration: FIG. 40. SANTAREM. TOMB OF DOM DUARTE DE MENEZES IN S. JOÃO DE ALPORÃO.] up a small figure standing on an octagonal corbel under an elaborate canopy. The whole at the top is finished with a cornice running straight across from pier to pier, and crested with interlacing and cusped semicircles, while the flat field below the cornice and above the outer moulding of the great arch is covered with flaming cressets. (Fig. 40.) This is perhaps one of the finest of the tombs of the fifteenth century, and like those at Alcobaça is made of that very fine limestone which is found in more than one place in Portugal. [Sidenote: At Abrantes.] Farther up the Tagus at Abrantes, in the church of Santa Maria do Castello, are some more tombs of the same date, more than one of which is an almost exact copy of the princes' tombs at Batalha, though there is one whose arch is fringed with curious reversed cusping, almost Moorish in appearance. [Sidenote: Cloister at Thomar.] Before turning to the many churches built towards the end of the fifteenth century, one of the cloisters of the great convent at Thomar must be mentioned. It is that called 'do Cemiterio,' and was built by Prince Henry the Navigator, duke of Vizeu, during his grandmastership of the Order of Christ about the year 1440. Unlike those at Alcobaça or at Lisbon, which were derived from a Cistercian plan, and were always intended to be vaulted, this small cloister followed the plan, handed down from romanesque times, where on each side there is a continuous arcade resting on coupled shafts. Such cloisters, differing only from the romanesque in having pointed arches and capitals carved with fourteenth-century foliage, may still be seen at Santo Thyrso and at São Domingos, Guimarães, in the north. Here at Thomar the only difference is that the arches are very much wider, there being but five on each side, and that the bell-shaped capitals are covered with finely carved conventional vine-leaves arranged in two rows round the bells. As in the older cloisters one long abacus unites the two capitals, but the arches are different, each being moulded as one deep arch instead of two similar arches set side by side. CHAPTER VI LATER GOTHIC During the last ten or fifteen years of the fifteenth century there was great activity in building throughout almost the whole country, but it now becomes almost impossible to take the different buildings in chronological order, because at this time so many different schools began to struggle for supremacy. There was first the Gothic school which, though increasing in elaboration of detail, went on in some places almost uninfluenced by any breath of the renaissance, as for instance in the porch and chancel of Braga Cathedral, not built till about 1532. Elsewhere this Gothic was affected partly by Spanish and partly by Moorish influence, and gradually grew into that most curious and characteristic of styles, commonly called Manoelino, from Dom Manoel under whom Portugal reached the summit of its prosperity. In other places, again, Gothic forms and renaissance details came gradually to be used together, as at Belem. To take then first those buildings in which Gothic detail was but little influenced by the approaching renaissance. [Sidenote: Graça, Santarem.] One of the earliest of these is the west front, added towards the end of the fifteenth century to that Augustinian church of the Graça at Santarem whose roof the Devil knocked down in 1548. Here the ends of the side aisles are, now at any rate, quite plain, but in the centre there is a very elaborate doorway with a large rose-window above. It is easy to see that this doorway has not been uninfluenced by Batalha. From well-moulded jambs, each of which has four shafts, there springs a large pointed arch, richly fringed with cusping on its inner side. Two of its many mouldings are enriched with smaller cuspings, and one, the outermost, with a line of wavy tracery, while the whole ends in a crocketed ogee. Above the arch is a strip of shallow panelling, enclosed, as is the whole doorway, in a square moulded frame. May it not be that this square frame is due to the almost universal Moorish habit of setting an archway in a square frame, as may be seen at Cordoba and in the palace windows at Cintra? The rest of the gable is perfectly plain but for the round window, filled with elaborate spiral flowing tracery. Here, though the details are more French than national, there is a good example of the excellent result so often reached by later Portuguese--and Spanish--builders, who concentrated all their elaborate ornament on one part of the building while leaving the rest absolutely plain--often as here plastered and whitewashed. [Sidenote: São João Baptista, Thomar.] Not long after this front was built, Dom Manoel in 1494 began a new parish church at Thomar, that of São João Baptista. The plan of this church is that which has already become so familiar: a nave and aisles with wooden roof and vaulted chancel and chapels to the east, with here, the addition of a tower and spire to the north of the west front. The inside calls for little notice: the arches are pointed, and the capitals carved with not very good foliage, but the west front is far more interesting. As at the Graça it is plastered and whitewashed, but ends not in a gable but in a straight line of cresting like Batalha, though here there is no flat terrace behind, but a sloping tile roof. At the bottom is a large ogee doorway whose tympanum is pierced with tracery and whose mouldings are covered with most beautiful and deeply undercut foliage. The outside of the arch is crocketed, and ends in a tall finial thrust through the horizontal and crested moulding which, as at the Graça, sets the whole in a square frame. There are also doorways in the same style half-way along the north and south sides of the church. The only other openings on the west front are a plain untraceried circle above the door, and a simple ogee-headed window at the end of each aisle. The tower, which is not whitewashed, rises as a plain unadorned square to a little above the aisle roof, then turns to an octagon with, at the top, a plain belfry window on each face. Above these runs a corbelled gallery within which springs an octagonal spire cut into three by two bands of ornament, and ending in a large armillary sphere, that emblem of all the discoveries made during his reign, which Dom Manoel put on to every building with which he had anything to do. Inside the chapels are as usual overloaded with huge reredoses of heavily carved and gilt wood, but the original pulpit still survives, a most beautiful example of the finest late Gothic carving. It consists of four sides of an octagon, and stands on ribs which curve outwards from a central shaft. Round the bottom runs a band of foliage most marvellously undercut, above this are panels separated the one from the other by slender pinnacles, and the whole ends in a cornice even more delicately carved than is the base. At the top of each panel is some intricate tabernacle work, below which there is on one the Cross of the Order of Christ, on another the royal arms, with a coronet above which stands out quite clear of the panel, and on a third there has been the armillary sphere, now unfortunately quite broken off. But even more interesting than this pulpit itself is the comparison between its details and those of the nave or Coro added about the same time to the Templar church on the hill behind. Here all is purely Gothic, there there is a mixture of Gothic and renaissance details, and towards the west front an exuberance of carving which cannot be called either Gothic or anything else, so strange and unusual is it. [Sidenote: Villa do Conde.] Another church of almost exactly the same date is that of São João Baptista, the Matriz of Villa do Conde. The plan shows a nave and aisles of five bays, large transeptal chapels, and an apsidal chancel projecting beyond the two square chapels by which it is flanked. As usual the nave and aisles have a wooden roof, only the chancel and chapels being vaulted. There is also a later tower at the west end of the north aisle, and a choir gallery across the west end of the church. Throughout the original windows are very narrow and round-headed, and there is in the north-western bay a pointed door, differing only from those of about a hundred years earlier in having twisted shafts. One curious feature is the parapet of the central aisle, which is like a row of small classical pedestals, each bearing a stumpy obelisk. By far the finest feature of the outside is the great west door. On each side are clusters of square pinnacles ending in square crocketed spirelets, and running up to a horizontal moulding which, as so often, gives the whole design a rectangular form. Within comes the doorway itself; a large trefoiled arch of many mouldings of which the outermost, richly crocketed, turns up as an ogee, to pierce the horizontal line above with its finial. Every moulding is filled with foliage, most elaborately and finely cut, considering that it is worked in granite. Across the trefoil at its springing there runs a horizontal moulding resting on the flat elliptical arch of the door itself. On the tympanum is a figure of St. John under a very elaborate canopy with, on his right, a queer carving of a naked man, and on his left a dragon. The space between the arch and the top moulding is filled with intricate but shallow panelling, among which, between two armillary spheres, are set, on the right, a blank shield crowned--probably prepared for the royal arms--and on the left the town arms--a galley with all sails set. Lastly, as a cresting to the horizontal moulding, there is a row of urnlike objects, the only renaissance features about the whole door. (Fig. 41.) [Illustration: SÃO JOÃO BAPTISTA VILLA DO CONDE S^TA MARIA DOS ANJOS CAMINHA] Inside, all the piers are octagonal with a slender shaft at each angle; these shafts alone having small capitals, while their bases stand on, and interpenetrate with, the base of the whole pier. All the arches are round--as are those leading to the chancel and transept chapels--and are moulded exactly as are the piers. All the vaults have a network of well-moulded ribs. The tower has been added some fifty years later and is very picturesque. It is of four stories: of these the lowest has rusticated masonry; the second, on its western face, a square-headed window opening beneath a small curly and broken pediment on to a balcony with very fine balusters all upheld by three large corbels. The third story has only a clock, and the fourth two plain round-headed belfry windows on each face. The whole--above a shallow cornice which is no bigger than the mouldings dividing the different stories--ends in a low stone dome, with a bell gable in front, square below, and arched above, holding two bells. [Sidenote: Azurara.] Scarcely a mile away, across the river Ave, lies Azurara, which was made a separate parish in 1457 and whose church was built by Dom Manoel in 1498. In plan it is almost exactly the same as Villa do Conde, except that there are no transept chapels nor any flanking the chancel. Outside almost the only difference lies in the parapet which is of the usual shape with regular merlons; and in the west door which is an interesting example of the change to the early renaissance. The door itself is round-headed, and has Gothic mouldings separated by a broad band covered with shallow renaissance carving. On each side are twisted shafts which run up some way above the door to a sort of horizontal entablature, whose frieze is well carved, and which is cut into by a curious ogee moulding springing from the door arch. Above this entablature the shafts are carried up square for some way, and end in Gothic pinnacles. Between them is a niche surmounted by a large half-Gothic canopy and united to the side shafts by a broken and twisted treelike moulding. What adds to the strangeness of this door is that the blank spaces are plastered and whitewashed, while all the rest of the church is of grey granite. Higher up there is a round window--heavily moulded--and the whole gable ends in a queer little round pediment set between two armillary spheres. Inside the piers are eight-sided with octagonal bases and caps, and with a band of ornament half-way up the shaft. The arches are simply chamfered but are each crossed by three carved voussoirs. The tower is exactly like that at Villa do Conde except that the bottom story is not rusticated, and that instead of a dome there is an octagonal spire covered with yellow and white tiles. [Illustration: FIG. 41. VILLA DO CONDE. SÃO JOÃO BAPTISTA.] [Sidenote: Caminha.] As at Azurara, the parish church of Santa Maria dos Anjos at Caminha is in plan very like the Matriz at Villa do Conde. Caminha lies on the Portuguese side of the estuary of the Minho, close to its mouth, and the church was begun in 1488, but was not finished till the next century, the tower indeed not being built till 1556. Like the others, the plan shows a nave and rather narrow aisles of five bays, and two square vaulted chapels with an apsidal chancel between to the east. Three large vaulted chapels and the tower have been added, opening from the north aisle. Probably the oldest part is the chancel with its flanking chapels, which are very much more elaborate than any portion of the churches already described. There are at the angles deep square buttresses which end in groups of square spire-capped pinnacles all elaborately crocketed, and not at all unlike those at Batalha. Between these, in the chancel are narrow round-headed windows, whose mouldings are enriched with large four-leaved flowers, and on all the walls from buttress to buttress there runs a rich projecting cornice crowned by a wonderfully pierced and crested parapet; also not unlike those at Batalha, but more wonderful in that it is made of granite instead of fine limestone. The rest of the outside is much plainer, except for the two doorways, and two tall buttresses at the west end. These two doorways--which are among the most interesting in the country--must be a good deal later than the rest of the church, indeed could not have been designed till after the work of that foreign school of renaissance carvers at Coimbra had become well known, and so really belong to a later chapter. Inside the columns are round, with caps and bases partly round and partly eight-sided, the hollow octagons interpenetrating with the circular mouldings. The arches of the arcade are also round, though those of the chancel and eastern chapels are pointed. Attached to one of the piers is a small eight-sided pulpit, at whose angles are Gothic pinnacles, but whose sides and base are covered with cherubs' heads, vases, and foliage of early renaissance. But the chief glory of the interior are the splendid tiles with which its walls are entirely covered, and still more the wonderful wooden roof, one of the finest examples of Moorish carpentry to be found anywhere, and which, like the doorways, can now only be merely mentioned. The tower, added by Diogo Eannes in 1556, is quite plain with one belfry opening in each face close to the top and just below the low parapet which, resting on corbels, ends in a row of curious half-classic battlements.[90] [Sidenote: Funchal.] This plan was not confined only to parish churches, for about 1514 we find it used by Dom Manoel at Funchal for the cathedral of the newly founded diocese of Madeira. The only difference of importance is that there is a well-developed transept entered by arches of the same height as that of the chancel. Here the piers are clustered, and with rather poorly carved capitals, the arches pointed and moulded, but rather thin. As in the other churches of this date, the round-headed clerestory windows come over the piers, not over the arches. The chancel, which is rather deeper than usual, is entered by a wide foliated arch, and like the apsidal chapels is vaulted. As at Caminha, the nave roof is of Moorish design, but of even greater interest are the reredos and the choir-stalls. This reredos is three divisions in height and five in width--each division, except the two lower in the centre where there is a niche for the image of the Virgin, containing a large picture. The divisions are separated perpendicularly by a series of Gothic pinnacles, and horizontally by a band of Gothic tabernacle work at the bottom, and above by beautifully carved early renaissance friezes. The whole ends in a projecting canopy, divided into five bays, each bay enriched with vaulting ribs, and in front with very delicately carved hanging tracery. Above the horizontal cornice is a most elaborate cresting of interlacing trefoils and leaves having in the middle the royal arms with on each side an armillary sphere. Some of the detail of the cresting is not all unlike that of the great reredos in the Sé Velha at Coimbra, and like it has a Flemish look, so that it may have been made perhaps, if not by Master Vlimer, who finished his work at Coimbra in 1508, at any rate by one of his pupils. The stalls, which at the back are separated by Gothic pilasters and pinnacles, have also a continuous canopy, and a high and splendid cresting, which though Gothic in general appearance, is quite renaissance in detail. Outside, the smaller eastern chapels have an elaborate cresting, and tall twisted pinnacles. The large plain tower which rises east of the north transept has a top crowned with battlements, within which stands a square tile-covered spire. [Sidenote: Sé, Lamego.] Before going on to discuss the long-continued influence of the Moors, three buildings in which Gothic finally came to an end must be discussed. These are the west front of Lamego, the cathedral of Vizeu, and the porch and chancel of the Sé at Braga. Except for its romanesque tower and its west front the cathedral of Lamego has been entirely rebuilt; and of the west front only the lower part remains uninjured. This front is divided by rather elaborate buttresses into three nearly equal parts--for the side aisles are nearly as wide as the central. In each of these is a large pointed doorway, that in the centre being at once wider and considerably higher than those of the aisles. The central door has six moulded shafts on either side, all with elaborately carved capitals and with deeply undercut foliage in the hollows between, this foliage being carried round the whole arch between the mouldings. Above the top of the arch runs a band of flat, early renaissance carving with a rich Gothic cresting above. The side-doors are exactly similar, except that they have fewer shafts, four instead of six, and that in the hollows between the mouldings the carving is early renaissance in character and is also flatter than in the central door. Above runs the same band of carving--but lower down--and a similar but simpler cresting. [Sidenote: Sé, Vizeu.] Unlike Lamego, while the cathedral of Vizeu has been but little altered within, scarcely any of the original work is to be seen outside. The present cathedral was built by Bishop Dom Diego Ortiz de Vilhegas about the year 1513, and his arms as well as those of Dom Manoel and of two of his sons are found on the vault. The church is not large, having a nave and aisles of four bays measuring about 105 feet by 62; square transept chapels, and a seventeenth-century chancel with flanking chapels. To the west are two towers, built between the years 1641 and 1671, and on the south a very fine renaissance cloister of two stories, the lower having been built, it is said, in 1524,[91] and the upper about 1730. A choir gallery too, with an elaborate Gothic vault below and a fine renaissance balustrade, crosses the whole west end and extends over the porch between the two western towers. But if the cathedral in its plan follows the ordinary type, in design and in construction it is quite unique. Instead of there being a wooden roof as is usual in churches of this period, the whole is vaulted, and that too in a very unusual and original manner. Throughout the piers consist of twelve rounded shafts set together. Of these the five towards the central aisle are several feet higher than the other seven from which spring the aisle arches as well as the ribs of the aisle vault. Consequently the vault of the central aisle is considerably lower at the sides than it is in the middle, and in this ingenious way its thrust is counteracted by the vaults of the side aisles; and at the same time these side vaults are not highly stilted as they would of necessity have been, had the three aisles been of exactly the same height. All the ribs are of considerable projection and well moulded, and of all, except the diagonal ribs, the lowest moulding is twisted like a rope. This rope-moulding is repeated on all the ridge ribs, and in each it is tied in a knot half-way along, a knot which is so much admired that the whole vault is called 'a abobada dos nós' or vault of the knots. The capitals are more curious than beautiful; the lower have clumsy, early-looking foliage and a large and curious abacus. First each capital has a square abacus of some depth, then comes a large flat circle, one for each three caps, and at the top a star-shaped moulding of hollow curves, the points projecting beyond the middle of the square abaci below. The higher capitals are better. They are carved with more elaborate foliage and gilt, and the abaci follow more exactly the line of the caps below and are carved and gilded in the same way. (Fig. 42.) Perhaps, however, the chief interest of the cathedral is found in the sacristy, a fine large room opening from the north transept chapel. On its tiled walls there hang several large and some smaller paintings, of which the finest is that of St. Peter. Other pictures are found in the chapter-house, and a fine one of the crucifixion in the Jesus Chapel below it; but this is not the place to enter into the very difficult question of Portuguese painting, a question on which popular tradition throws only a misleading light by attributing everything to a more or less mythical painter, Grão Vasco, and on which all authorities differ, agreeing only in considering this St. Peter one of the finest paintings in the country. [Sidenote: Sé, Braga.] Perhaps the chancel of the cathedral at Braga ought rather [Illustration: FIG. 42. SÉ, VIZEU.] [Illustration: FIG. 43. BRAGA. W. PORCH OF CATHEDRAL.] to be left to a chapter dealing with what is usually called the Manoelino style--that strange last development of Gothic which is found only in Portugal--but it is in many respects so like the choir chapels of the church at Caminha, and has so little of the usual Manoelino peculiarities, that it were better to describe it now. Whatever may be thought of the chancel, there is no doubt about the large western porch, which is quite free of any Manoelino fantasies. Both porch and chancel were built by Archbishop Dom Diego de Souza about the year 1530--a most remarkable date when the purely Gothic work here is compared with buildings further south, where Manoelino had already been succeeded by various forms of the classic renaissance. The porch stretches right across the west end of the church, and is of three bays. That in the centre, considerably wider than those at the side, is entered from the west by a round-headed arch, while the arches of the others are pointed. The bays are separated by buttresses of considerable projection, and all the arches, which have good late mouldings, are enriched with a fine feathering of cusps, which stands out well against the dark interior. Unfortunately the original parapet is gone, only the elaborate canopies of the niches, of which there are two to each bay, rise above the level of the flat paved roof. Inside there is a good vault with many well-moulded ribs, but the finest feature of it all is the wrought-iron railing which crosses each opening. This, almost the only piece of wrought-iron work worthy of notice in the whole country, is very like contemporary screens in Spain. It is made of upright bars, some larger, twisted from top to bottom, some smaller twisted at the top, and plain below, alternating with others plain above and twisted below. At the top runs a frieze of most elaborate hammered and pierced work--early renaissance in detail in the centre, Gothic in the side arches, above which comes in the centre a wonderful cresting. In the middle, over the gate which rises as high as the top of the cresting, is a large trefoil made of a flat hammered band intertwined with a similar band after the manner of a Manoelino doorway.[92] (Fig. 43.) Of the chancel little has been left inside but the vault and the tombs of Dona Theresa (the first independent ruler of Portugal) and of her husband Count Henry of Burgundy--very poor work of about the same date as the chancel. The outside, however, has been unaltered. Below it is square in plan, becoming at about twenty feet from the ground a half-octagon having the eastern a good deal wider than the diagonal sides. On the angles of the lower square stand tall clustered buttresses, rising independently of the wall as far as the projecting cornice, across which their highest pinnacles cut, and united to the chancel at about a third of the height, by small but elaborate flying buttresses. On the eastern face there is a simple pointed window, and there is nothing else to relieve the perfectly plain walls below except two string courses, and the elaborate side buttresses with their tall pinnacles and twisted shafts. But if the walling is plain the cornice is most elaborate. It is of great depth and of considerable projection, the hollows of the mouldings being filled with square flowers below and intricate carving above. On this stands a high parapet of traceried quatrefoils, bearing a horizontal moulding from which springs an elaborate cresting; all being almost exactly like the cornice and parapet at Caminha, but larger and richer, and like it, a marvellous example of carving in granite. At the angles are tall pinnacles, and the pinnacles of the corner buttresses are united to the parapet by a curious contorted moulding. [Sidenote: Conceiçao, Braga.] Opposite the east end of the cathedral there stands a small tower built in 1512 by Archdeacon João de Coimbra as a chapel. It is of two stories, with a vaulted chapel below and a belfrey above, lit by round-headed windows, only one of which retains its tracery. Just above the string which divides the two stories are statues[93] under canopies, one projecting on a corbel from each corner, and one from the middle, while above a cornice, on which stand short pinnacles, six to each side, the tower ends in a low square tile roof. The chapel on the ground floor is entered by a porch, whose flat lintel rests on moulded piers at the angles and on two tall round columns in the centre, while its three openings are filled with plain iron screens, the upper part of which blossoms out into large iron flowers and leaves. Inside there is on the east wall a reredos of early renaissance date, and on the south a large half-classical arch flanked by pilasters under which there is a life-size group of the Entombment made seemingly of terra cotta and painted. So, rather later than in most other lands, and many years after the renaissance had made itself felt in other parts of the country, Gothic comes to an end, curiously enough not far from where the oldest Christian buildings are found. CHAPTER VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOORS It is now time to turn back for a century and a half and to speak of the traces left by the Moors of their long occupation of the country. Although they held what is now the northern half of Portugal for over a hundred years, and part of the south for about five hundred, there is hardly a single building anywhere of which we can be sure that it was built by them before the Christian re-conquest of the country. Perhaps almost the only exceptions are the fortifications at Cintra, known as the Castello dos Mouros, the city walls at Silves, and possibly the church at Mertola. In Spain very many of their buildings still exist, such as the small mosque, now the church of Christo de la Luz, and the city walls at Toledo, and of course the mosque at Cordoba and the Alcazar at Seville, not to speak of the Alhambra. Yet it must not be forgotten that, while Portugal reached its furthest limits by the capture of the Algarve under Affonso III. about the middle of the thirteenth century, in Spain the progress was slower. Toledo indeed fell in 1085, but Cordoba and Seville were only taken a few years before the capture of the Algarve, and Granada was able to hold out till 1492. Besides, in what is now Portugal there had been no great capital like Cordoba. And yet, though this is so, hardly a town or a village exists in which some slight trace of their art cannot be found, even if it be but a tile-lining to the walls of church or house. In such towns as Toledo, Moorish builders were employed not only in the many parish churches but even in the cathedral, and in Portugal we find Moors at Thomar even as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, when such names as Omar, Mafamedi, Bugimaa, and Bebedim occur in the list of workmen. It is chiefly in three directions that Moorish influence made itself felt, in actual design, in carpentry, and in tiling, and of these the last two, and especially tiling, are the most general, and long survived the disappearance of Arab detail. [Sidenote: Cintra.] Some eighteen miles from Lisbon, several sharp granite peaks rise high above an undulating tableland. Two of these are encircled by the old Moorish fortification which climbs up and down over huge granite boulders, and on a projecting spur near their foot, and to the north, there stands the old palace of Cintra. As long as the Walis ruled at Lisbon, it was to Cintra that they came in summer for hunting and cool air, and some part at least of their palace seems to have survived till to-day. Cintra was first taken by Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon in 1093--to be soon lost and retaken by Count Henry of Burgundy sixteen years later, but was not permanently held by the Christians till Affonso Henriques expelled the Moors in 1147. The Palace of the Walis was soon granted by him to Gualdim Paes, the famous grand master of the Templars, and was held by his successors till it was given to Dom Diniz's queen, St. Isabel. She died in 1336, when the palace returned to the Order of Christ--which had meanwhile been formed out of the suppressed Order of the Temple--only to be granted to Dona Beatriz, the wife of D. Affonso IV., in exchange for her possessions at Ega and at Torre de Murta. Dom João I. granted the palace in 1385 to Dom Henrique de Vilhena, but he soon sided with the Spaniards, for he was of Spanish birth, his possessions were confiscated and Cintra returned to the Crown. Some of the previous kings may have done something to the palace, but it was King João who first made it one of the chief royal residences, and who built a very large part of it. A few of the walls have been examined by taking off the plaster, and have been found to be built in the usual Arab manner, courses of rubble bonded at intervals with bands of thin bricks two or three courses deep. Such are the back wall of the entrance hall and a thick wall near the kitchen. Outside all the walls are plastered, all the older windows, of one or two lights, are enclosed in square frames--for the later windows of Dom Manoel's time are far more elaborate and fantastic--and most of the walls end in typical Moorish battlements. High above the dark tile roofs there tower the two strange kitchen chimneys, huge conical spires ending in round funnels, now all plastered, but once covered with a pattern of green and white tiles. [Illustration: 1. _Entrance Court._ 2. _Sala dos Cysnes._ 3. _Central Pateo._ 4. _Sala das Pegas._ 5. " " _Sereias._ 5ª. " _do Conselho._ 6. _Sala da Jantar._ 7. _Servery._ 8. _Sala dos Arabes._ 9. _Chapel._ 10. _Kitchen._ 11. _Sala dos Brazões._ 12. _Pateo de Diana._ 13. _Wing or Dom Manoel._ PLAN OF PAÇO, CINTRA] The whole is so extremely complicated that without a plan it would be almost useless to attempt a description. Speaking roughly, all that lies to the west of the Porte Cochère which leads from the entrance court through to the kitchen court and stables beyond is, with certain alterations and additions, the work of Dom João, and all that lies to the east is the work of Dom Manoel, added during the first years of the sixteenth century. Entering through a pointed gateway, one finds oneself in a long and irregular courtyard, having on the right hand a long low building in which live the various lesser palace officials, and on the left, first a comparatively modern projecting building in which live the ladies-in-waiting, then somewhat further back the rooms of the controller of the palace and his office. From the front wall of this office, which itself juts out some feet into the courtyard, there runs eastwards a high balustraded terrace reaching as far as another slightly projecting wing, and approached by a great flight of steps at its western end. Not far beyond the east end of the terrace an inclined road leads to the Porte Cochère, and beyond it are the large additions made by Dom Manoel. (Fig. 44.) On this terrace stands the main front of the palace. Below are four large pointed arches, and above five beautiful windows lighting the great Sala dos Cysnes or Swan Hall. Originally these four arches were open and led into a large vaulted hall; now they are all built up--perhaps by Dona Maria I. after the great earthquake--three having small two-light windows, and one a large door, the chief entrance to the palace. In the back wall of this hall may still be seen three windows which must have existed before it was built, for what is now their inner side was evidently at first their outer; and this wall is one of those found to be built in the Arab manner, so that clearly Dom João's hall was built in front of a part of the Walis' palace, a part which has quite disappeared except for this wall. From the east end of this lower hall a straight stair, which looks as if it had once been an outside stair, leads up to a winding stair by which another hall is reached, whose floor lies at a level of about 26 feet above the terrace.[94] From this hall, which may be of later date than Dom João's time, a door leads down to the central pateo or courtyard, or else going up a few steps the way goes through a smaller square room, once an open verandah, through a wide doorway inserted by Dom Manoel into the great Swan Hall. This hall, the largest room in the palace, measuring about 80 feet long by 25 wide, is so called from the swans painted in the eight-sided panels of its wonderful roof. The story is that while the palace was still building ambassadors came to the king from the duke of Burgundy asking for the hand of his daughter Isabel. Among other presents they brought some swans, which so pleased the young princess that she made them collars of red velvet and persuaded her father to build for them a long narrow tank in the central court just under the north windows of this hall. Here she used to feed them till she went away to Flanders, and from love of his daughter King João had the swans with their collars painted on the ceiling of the hall. The swans may still be seen, but not those painted for Dom João, for all the mouldings clearly show that the present ceiling was reconstructed some centuries later. The hall is lit by five windows looking south across the entrance court to the Moorish castle on the hill beyond, and by three looking over the swan tank into the central pateo. These windows, and indeed all those in Dom João's part of the palace, are very like each other. They are nearly all of two lights--never of more--and are made of white marble. In every case there is a square-headed moulded frame enclosing the whole window, the outer mouldings of this frame resting on small semicircular corbels, and having Gothic bases. Inside this framework stand three slender shafts, with simple bases and carved capitals. These capitals are not at all unlike French capitals of the thirteenth century, but are really of a common Moorish pattern often found elsewhere, as in the Alhambra. On them, moulded at the ends, but not in front or behind, rest abaci, from which spring stilted arches. (Fig. 45.) Each arch is delicately moulded and elaborately cusped, but, though in some cases--for the shape varies in almost every window--each individual cusp may have the look of a Gothic trefoil, the arrangement is not Gothic at all. There are far more than are ever found in a Gothic window, sometimes as many as eleven, and they usually begin at the bottom with a whole instead of a half cusp. From the centre of each abacus, cutting across the arch mouldings, another moulding runs up, which being returned across the top encloses the upper part of each light in a smaller square frame. It is this square frame which more than anything else gives these windows their Eastern look, and it has been shown how often, and indeed almost universally a square framing was put round doorways all through the last Gothic [Illustration: FIG. 44. PALACE, CINTRA. ENTRANCE COURT.] [Illustration: FIG. 45. PALACE, CINTRA. WINDOW OF SALA DAS SEREIAS.] period. In only one instance are the shafts anything but plain, and that is in the central window overlooking the entrance court, where they are elaborately twisted, and where also they start at the level of the floor within instead of standing on a low parapet. In the room itself the walls up to a certain height are covered with tiles, diamonds of white and a beautiful olive green which are much later than Dom João's time. There is also near the west end of the north side a large fireplace projecting slightly from the wall; at either end stands a shaft with cap and base like those of the windows, bearing a long flat moulded lintel, while on the hearth there rest two very fine wrought-iron Gothic fire-dogs. East of the fireplace a door having a wide flat ogee head leads into a small porch built in the corner of the pateo to protect the passage to the Sala das Pegas, the first of the rooms to the south of this pateo. In the angle formed by the end wall of the Sala dos Cysnes and the side of the Sala das Pegas there is a small low room now called the Sala de Dom Sebastião or do Conselho. It is entered from the west end of the Swan Hall through a door, which was at first a window just like all the rest. This Hall of Dom Sebastião or of the Council is so called from the tradition that it was there that in 1578 that unhappy king held the council in which it was decided to invade Morocco, an expedition which cost the king his life and his country her independence. In reality the final solemn council was held in Lisbon, but some informal meeting may well have been held there. Now the room is low and rather dark, being lit only by two small windows opening above the roof of the controller's office. It is divided into two unequal parts by an arcade of three arches, the smaller part between the arches and the south wall being raised a step above the rest. When first built by Dom João this raised part formed a covered verandah, the rest being, till about the time of Maria I., open to the sky and forming a charming and cool retreat during the heat of summer. The floor is of tiles and marble, and all along the south wall runs a bench entirely covered with beautiful tiles. At the eastern end is a large seat, rather higher than the bench and provided with arms, doubtless for the king, and tiled like the rest. Passing again from the Swan Hall the way leads through the porch into the Sala das Pegas or of the magpies. The door from the porch to the room is one of the most beautiful parts of Dom João's work. It is framed as are the windows, and has shafts, capitals, abaci, and bases just like those already described; but the arch is different. It is beautifully moulded, but is--if one may so speak--made up of nine reversed cusps, whose convex sides form the arch: the inner square moulding too is enriched with ball ornament. Inside the walls are covered to half their height with exquisite tiles of Moorish pattern, blue, green and brown on a white ground. On the north wall is a great white marble chimney-piece, once a present from Pope Leo X. to Dom Manoel and brought by the great Marques de Pombal from the ruined palace of Almeirim opposite Santarem. Two other doors, with simple pointed heads, lead one into the dining-room, and one into the Sala das Sereias. The Sala das Pegas, like the Swan Hall, is called after its ceiling, for on it are painted in 136 triangular compartments, 136 magpies, each holding in one foot a red rose and in its beak a scroll inscribed 'Por Bem.' Possibly this ceiling, which on each side slopes up to a flat parallelogram, is more like that painted for Dom João than is that of the Swan Hall, but even here some of the mouldings are clearly renaissance, and the painting has been touched up, but anyhow it was already called Camera das Pegas in the time of Dom Duarte; further, tradition tells that the magpies were painted there by Dom João's orders, and why. It seems that once during the hour of the midday siesta the king, wandering about his unfinished house, found in this room one of the maids of honour. Her he kissed, when another maid immediately went and told the queen, Philippa of Lancaster. She was angry, but Dom João only said 'Por bem,' meaning much what his queen's grandfather had meant when he said 'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' and to remind the maids of honour, whose waiting-room this was, that they must not tell tales, he had the magpies painted on the ceiling. The two windows, one looking west and one into the pateo, are exactly like those already described. From the Sala das Pegas one door leads up a few steps into the Sala das Sereias, and another to the dining-room. This Sala das Sereias, so called from the mermaids painted on the ceiling, is a small room some eighteen feet square. It is lit by a two-light window opening towards the courtyard, a window just like those of the Sala das Pegas and of the Sala dos Cysnes. Some of its walls, especially that between it and the Sala das Pegas, are very thick and seem to be older than the time of Dom João. As usual, the walls are partly covered with beautiful tiles, mostly embossed with green vine-leaves, but round the door leading to the long narrow room, used as a servery, is an interlacing pattern of green and blue tiles, while the spandrils between this and the pointed doorhead are filled with a true Arabesque pattern, dark on a light ground, which is said to belong to the Palace of the Walis. There are altogether four doors, one leading to the servery, one to the Sala das Pegas, one to a spiral stair in the corner of the pateo, and one to the dining-room. This dining-room projects somewhat to the west so as to leave space for a window looking south to the mountains, and one looking north across a small court, as well as one looking west. Of these, the two which look south and west are like each other, and like the other of Dom João's time except that the arches are not cusped; that the outer frame is omitted and that the abaci are moulded in front as well as at the ends; but the third window looking north is rather different. The framing has regular late Gothic bases, the capitals of the shafts are quite unlike the rest, having one large curly leaf at each angle, and the moulding running up the centre between the arches--which are not cusped--is plaited instead of being plain. Altogether it looks as if it were later than Dom João's time, for it is the only window where the capitals are not of the usual Arab form, and they are not at all like some in the castle of Sempre Noiva built about the beginning of the sixteenth century. The wall-tiles of the dining-room are like those of the Sala das Sereias, but end in a splendid cresting. The ceiling is modern and uninteresting. Next to the north comes the servery, a room without interest but for its window which looks west, and is like the two older dining-room windows. Returning to the Sala das Sereias, a spiral stair leads down to the central pateo, which can also be reached from the porch in the south-west corner. All along the south side runs the tank made by Dom João for his daughter's swans, and on three sides are beautiful white marble windows. At the east end of the north side three open arches lead to the bathroom. As is the case with the windows, the three arches are enclosed in a square frame. The capitals, however, are different, having an eight-sided bell on which rests a square block with a bud carved at each angle, and above an abacus, moulded all round. The arches are cusped like the windows, but are stilted and segmental. Inside is a recess framed in an arch of Dom Manoel's time, and from all over the tiled walls and the ceiling jets of water squirt out, so that the whole becomes a great shower-bath, delightful and cooling on a hot day but rather public. In the middle of the pateo there stands a curious column--not at all unlike the 'pelourinho'[95] of Cintra--which stands in a basin just before the entrance gate. This column is formed of three twisted shafts on whose capitals sit a group of boys holding three shields charged with the royal arms. All round the court is a dado of white and green tiles arranged in an Arab pattern. In the north-west corner and reached by the same spiral stair, but at a higher level than the Sala das Sereias, is the Sala dos Arabes, so called because it is commonly believed to be a part of the original building. The walls may be so, but of the rest, nothing, but perhaps the shallow round fountain basin in the middle and the square of tiles which surrounds it, now so worn that little of their glazed surface is left. The walls half-way up are lined with tiles, squares and parallelograms, blue, white and green. The doors are framed in different tiles, and all are finished with an elaborate cresting. The most interesting thing in the room is the circular basin in the middle--a basin which gives it a truly Eastern look. Inside a round shallow hollow there stands a many-sided block of marble about six inches high. The sides are concave as in a small section of a Doric column, and within it is hollowed into a beautiful cup, shaped somewhat like a flower of many petals. In the middle there now is a strange object of gilt metal through which the water once poured. On a short stem stands a carefully modelled dish on which rest first leaves, like long acanthus leaves, then between them birds on whose backs sit small figures of boys. Between the boys and above the leaves are more figures exactly like seated Indian gods, and the whole ends in a cone. It is so completely Indian in appearance that there can be little doubt but that it is really of Indian origin, and perhaps it is not too much to see in it part of the spoils brought to Dom Manoel by Vasco da Gama after he had in 1498 made his way round Africa to Calicut and back. Returning to the Sala das Sereias and passing through the servery and another room an open court is reached called the Pateo de Diana, from a fountain over which Diana presides, and on to which one of the dining-room windows looks. A beautifully tiled stair--these tiles are embossed like those of the dining-room, but besides vine-leaves some have on them bunches of grapes--goes down from the Court of Diana to the Court of the Lion, the Pateo do Leão, where a lion spouts into a long tank. But the chief beauty of these two courts is a small window which overlooks them. This window is only of one light, and like the dining-room window near it its framing has Gothic bases. The capitals are smaller than in the other windows, and the framing partly covers the outer moulding of the window arch, making it look like a segment of a circle. But the cusps are the most curious part. They form four more or less trefoiled spaces with wavy outlines, and two of them--not the remaining one at the top--end in large well-carved vine-leaves, very like those at the ends of the cusps on the arches in the Capella do Fundador at Batalha. To add to the charm of the window, the space between the top of the arch and the framing is filled in with those beautiful tiles embossed with vine-leaves. Going up again to the Sala dos Arabes, a door in the northern wall leads to a passage running northwards to the chapel. About half-way along the passage another branches off to the right towards the great kitchen. The chapel stands at the northern edge of the palace buildings, having beyond it a terrace called the Terreiro da Meca or of Mecca; partly from this name, and partly from the tiles which still cover the middle of the floor it is believed that the chapel stands exactly on the site of the Walis' private mosque, with perhaps the chancel added. The middle of the nave--the chapel consists of a nave and chancel, two small transeptal recesses, and two galleries one above the other at the west end--is paved with tiles once glazed and of varying colours, but now nearly all worn down till the natural red shows through. The pattern has been elaborate; a broad border of diagonal checks surrounding a narrow oblong in which the checks are crossed by darker lines so as to form octagons, and between the outer border and the octagons a band of lighter ground down which in the middle runs a coloured line having on each side cones of the common Arab pattern exactly like the palace battlements. Now the walls are bare and white, but were once covered with frescoes of the fifteenth century; the reredos is a clumsy addition of the eighteenth century. The cornice and the long pilasters at the entrance to the chancel seem to have been added at the same time, but the windows and ceiling are still those of Dom João's time. The windows--there are now three, a fourth in the chancel having been turned into a royal pew--are of two or three lights, have commonplace tracery, and are only interesting as being one of the few wholly Gothic features in the palace. Far more interesting is the ceiling, which is entirely Arab in construction and in design. In the nave it is an irregular polygon in section, and in the chancel is nearly a semicircle, having nine equal sides. The whole of the boarded surface is entirely covered with an intricate design formed of strips of wood crossing each other in every direction so as to form stars, triangles, octagons, and figures of every conceivable shape. The whole still retains its original colouring. At the centres of the main figures are gilt bosses--the one over the high altar being a shield with the royal arms--the wooden strips are black with a white groove down the centre of each, and the ground is either dark red or light blue. (Fig. 46.) The whole is of great interest not only for its own sake, but because it is the only ceiling in the palace which has remained unchanged since the end of the fourteenth century, and because it is, as it were, the parent of the splendid roofs in the Sala dos Cysnes and of the still more wonderful one in the Sala dos Escudos. The kitchen lies at the back of the chapel and at right angles to it. It is a building about 58 feet long by 25 wide, and is divided into two equal parts by a large arch. Each of these two parts is covered by a huge conical chimney so that the inside is more like the nave of St. Ours at Loches than anything else, while outside these chimneys rise high above all the rest of the palace. It is lit by small two-light Gothic windows, and has lately been lined with white tiles. Now the [Illustration: FIG. 46. PALACE CHAPEL ROOF. CINTRA.] chimneys serve only as ventilators, as ordinary iron ranges have been put in. There seems to be nothing in the country at all like these chimneys--for the kitchen at Alcobaça, although it has a stream running through it, is but a poor affair compared with this one, nor is its chimney in any way remarkable outside.[96] The rest of the palace towards the west, between the west end of the chapel and the great square tower in which is the Sala dos Escudos, was probably also built about the time of Dom João I., but except for a few windows there is little of interest left which belongs to his time. The great tower of the Sala dos Escudos was built by Dom Manoel on the top of an older building then called the Casa da Meca, in which Affonso V. was born in 1432--the year before his grandfather Dom João died--and where he himself died forty-nine years later. In another room on a higher floor--where his feet, as he walked up and down day after day, have quite worn away the tiles--Affonso VI. was imprisoned. Affonso had by his wildness proved himself quite unable to govern, and had also made himself hated by his queen, a French princess. She fell in love with his brother, so Affonso was deposed, divorced, and banished to the Azores. After some years it was found that he was there trying to form a party, so he was brought to Cintra and imprisoned in this room from 1674 till his death in 1683. These worn-out tiles are worthy of notice for their own sake since tiles with Moorish patterns, as are these here and those in the chapel, are very seldom used for flooring, and they are probably among the oldest in the palace. [Sidenote: Castles, Guimarães and Barcellos.] Such was the palace from the time of João I. to that of Dom Manoel, a building thoroughly Eastern in plan as in detail, and absolutely unlike such contemporary buildings as the palaces of the dukes of Braganza at Guimarães or at Barcellos, or the castle at Villa da Feira between Oporto and Aveiro. The Braganza palaces are both in ruins, but their details are all such as might be found almost anywhere in Christian Europe. Large pointed doors, traceried windows and tall chimneys--these last round and of brick--differ only from similar features found elsewhere, as one dialect may differ from another, whereas Cintra is, as it were, built in a [Sidenote: Villa da Feira.] totally different language. The castle at Villa da Feira is even more unlike anything at Cintra. A huge keep of granite, the square turrets projecting slightly from the corners give it the look of a Norman castle, for the curious spires of brick now on those turrets were added later, perhaps under Dom Manoel. Inside there is now but one vast hall with pointed barrel roof, for all the wooden floors are gone, leaving only the beam holes in the walls, the Gothic fireplaces, and the small windows to show where they once were. It is then no wonder that Cintra has been called the Alhambra of Portugal, and it is curious that the same names are found given to different parts of the two buildings. The Alhambra has a Mirador de Lindaraxa, Cintra a Jardim de Lindaraya; the Alhambra a Torre de las dos Hermanas, Cintra a Sala das Irmãs or of the Sisters--the part under the Sala dos Escudos where Affonso V. was born; while both at the Alhambra and here there is a garden called de las or das Damas. CHAPTER VIII OTHER MOORISH BUILDINGS The old palace at Cintra is perhaps the only complete building to the north of the Tagus designed and carried out by Moorish workmen scarcely, if at all, influenced by what the conquering Christians were doing round them. Further south in the province of Alemtejo Moorish buildings are more common, and there are many in which, though the design and plan as well as most of the detail may be Western, yet there is something, the whitewashed walls, the round conical pinnacles, or the flat roofs which give them an Eastern look. And this is natural. Alemtejo was conquered after the country north of the Tagus had been for some time Christian, and no large immigration of Christians ever came to take the place of the Moors, so that those few who remained continued for long in their own Eastern ways of building and of agriculture. It is especially in and about the town of Evora that this is seen, and that too although the cathedral built at the end of the twelfth century is, except for a few unimportant details, a Western building. [Sidenote: Alvito.] But more completely Eastern than any one building at Evora is the castle at Alvito, a small town some thirty or forty miles to the south-west. The town stands at the end of a long low hill and looks south over an endless plain across to Beja, one of the most extensive and, in its way, beautiful views in the country. At one end of the town on the slope of the hill stands the castle, and not far off in one of the streets is the town hall whose tower is too characteristic of the Alemtejo not to be noticed. The building is whitewashed and perfectly plain, with ordinary square windows. An outside stair leads to the upper story, and behind it rises the tower. It, like the building, is absolutely plain with semicircular openings near the top irregularly divided by a square pier. Close above these openings is a simple cornice on which stand rather high and narrow battlements; within them rises a short eight-sided spire, and at each corner a short round turret capped by a conical roof. The whole from top to bottom is plastered and whitewashed, and it is this glaring whiteness more than anything else which gives to the whole so Eastern a look. As to the castle, Haupt in his most interesting book, _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Portugal_, says that, though he had never seen it, yet from descriptions of its plan he had come to the conclusion that it was the castle which, according to Vasari, was built by Andrea da Sansovino for Dom João II. Now it is well known that Sansovino was for nine years in Portugal and did much work there, but none of it can now be found except perhaps a beautiful Italian door in the palace at Cintra; Vasari also states that he did some work in the heavy and native style which the king liked. Is it possible that the castle of Alvito is one of his works in this native style? Vasari says that Sansovino built for Dom João a beautiful palace with four towers, and that part of it was decorated by him with paintings, and it was because Haupt believed that this castle was built round an arcaded court--a regular Italian feature, but one quite unknown in Portugal--that he thought it must be Sansovino's lost palace. As a matter of fact the court is not arcaded--there is only a row of rough plastered arches along one side; there are five and not four towers; there is no trace now of any fine painted decoration inside; and, in short, it is inconceivable that, even to please a king, an architect of the Italian renaissance could ever have designed such a building. The plan of the castle is roughly square with a round tower at three of the corners, and at the fourth or southern corner a much larger tower, rounded in front and projecting further from the walls. The main front is turned to the south-west, and on that side, as well as on the south-eastern, are the habitable parts of the castle. Farm buildings run along inside and outside the north-western, while the north-eastern side is bounded only by a high wall. Half-way along the main front is the entrance gate, a plain pointed arch surmounted by two shields, that on the right charged with the royal arms, and that on the left with those of the Barão d'Alvito, to whose descendant, the Marques d'Alvito, the castle still belongs. There is also an inscription stating that the castle, begun in 1494 by the orders of Dom João II. and finished in the time of Dom Manoel, was built by Dom Diogo Lobo, Barão d'Alvito.[97] In the court a stair, carried on arches, goes up to the third floor where are the chief rooms in the house. None of them, which open one from the other or from a passage leading to the chapel in the westernmost corner, are in any way remarkable except for their windows. The ceilings of the principal rooms are of wood and panelled, but are clearly of much later date than the building and are not to be compared with those at Cintra. Most of the original windows--for those on the main front have been replaced by plain square openings--are even more Eastern than those at Cintra. They are nearly all of two lights--there is one of a single light in the passage--but are without the square framing. Each window has three very slender white marble shafts, with capitals and with abaci moulded on each side. On some of the capitals are carved twisted ropes, while others, as in a window in the large southern tower, are like those at Cintra. As the shafts stand a little way back from the face of the wall the arches are of two orders, of which only the inner comes down to the central shaft. (Fig. 47.) These arches, all horseshoe in shape, are built of red brick with very wide mortar joints, and each brick, in both orders, is beautifully moulded or cut at the ends so as to form a series of small trefoiled cusps, each arch having as many as twenty-seven or more. The whole building is plastered and washed yellow, so that the contrast between the bare walls and the elaborate red arches and white shafts is singularly pleasing. All the outer walls are fortified, but the space between each embrasure is far longer than usual; the four corner towers rise a good deal above the rest of the buildings, but in none, except the southern, are there windows above the main roof. It has one, shaped like the rest, but now all plastered and framed in an ogee moulding. Half-way along the north-west wall, outside it, stands the keep, which curiously is not Arab at all. It is a large square tower of no great height, absolutely plain, and built of unplastered stone or marble. It has scarcely any windows, and walls of great thickness which, like those of the smaller round towers, have a slight batter. It seems to be older than the rest, and now its chief ornament is a large fig-tree growing near the top on the south side.[98] [Sidenote: Evora.] [Sidenote: Paços Reaes.] Of all the towns in the Alemtejo Evora is the one where Eastern influence is most strongly marked. Indeed the Roman temple and the cathedral are perhaps the only old buildings which seem to be distinctly Western, and even the cathedral has some trace of the East in its two western spires, one round and tiled, and the other eight-sided and plastered. For long Evora was one of the chief towns of the kingdom, and was one of those oftenest visited by the kings. Their palace stood close to the church of São Francisco, and must once have been a beautiful building. Unfortunately most of it has disappeared, and what is left, a large hall partly of the time of Dom Manoel, has been so horribly restored in order to turn it into a museum as to have lost all character. A porch still stands at the south end, but scraped and pointed out of all beauty. It has in front four square stone piers bearing large horseshoe brick arches, and these arches are moulded and cusped exactly like those at Alvito. [Sidenote: Morgado de Cordovis.] There are no other examples of Moorish brickwork in the town, but there is more than one marble window resembling those at Alvito in shape. Of these the most charming are found in the garden of a house belonging to a 'morgado' or entailed estate called Cordovis. These windows form two sides of a small square summer-house; their shafts have capitals like those of the dining-room windows at Cintra, and the horseshoe arches are, as usual, cusped. A new feature, showing how the pure Arab details were being gradually combined with Gothic, is an ogee moulding which, uniting the two arches, ends in a large Gothic finial; other mouldings run up the cornice at the angles, and the whole, crowned with battlements, ends in a short round whitewashed spire. Some miles from Evora among the mountains, Affonso of [Illustration: FIG. 47. CASTLE, ALVITO. COURTYARD.] [Illustration: FIG. 48. EVORA. CHAPTER HOUSE DOOR OF SÃO JOÃO, EVANGELISTA.] [Sidenote: Sempre Noiva.] Portugal, archbishop of Evora, built himself a small country house which he called Sempre Noiva, or 'Ever New,' about the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is now a ruin having lost all its woodwork, but the walls are still well preserved. The plan is simple; a rectangle with a chapel projecting from the eastern side, and a small wing from the west end of the south side. All the ground floor is vaulted, as is the chapel, but the main rooms on the first floor had wooden roofs, except the one next the chapel which forms the middle floor of a three-storied tower, which, rising above the rest of the building, has a battlemented flat roof reached by a spiral stair. This stair, like the round buttresses of the chapel, is capped by a high conical plastered roof. As usual the whole, except the windows and the angles, is plastered and has a sgraffito frieze running round under the cornice. There is a large porch on the north side covering a stair leading to the upper floor, where most of the windows are of two lights and very like those of the pavilion at Evora. Two like them have the ogee moulding, and at the sides a rounded moulding carried on corbels and finished above the window with a carved finial. The capitals are again carved with leaves, but the horseshoe arches have no cusps, and the mouldings, like the capitals, are entirely Gothic; the union between the two styles, Gothic and Arab, was already becoming closer. Naturally Moorish details are more often found in secular than in religious buildings: yet there are churches where such details exist even if the general plan and design is Christian. [Sidenote: São João Evangelista, Evora.] Just to the north of the cathedral of Evora, Rodrigo Affonso de Mello, count of Olivença, in 1485 founded a monastery for the Loyos, or Canons Secular of St. John the Evangelist. The church itself is in no way notable; the large west door opening under a flat arched porch is one of these with plain moulded arches and simple shafts which are so common over all the country, and is only interesting for its late date. At the left side is a small monument to the founder's memory; on a corbel stands a short column bearing an inscribed slab, and above the slab is a shield under a carved curtain. Inside are some tombs--two of them being Flemish brasses--and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give the life of São Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the Loyos had been kindly received and whence he drew the rules of his order, and are interesting as being signed and dated 'Antonius ab oliva fecit 1711.' The cloisters are also Gothic with vine-covered capitals, but the entrance to the chapter-house and refectory is quite different. In general design it is like the windows at Sempre Noiva, two horseshoe arches springing from the capitals of thin marble shafts and an ogee moulding above. The three shafts are twisted, the capitals are very strange; they are round with several mouldings, some fluted, some carved with leaves, some like pieces of rope: the moulded abaci also have four curious corbels on two sides. The capitals are carried across the jambs and the outer moulding, which is of granite, as is the whole except the three shafts and their caps, and between the shafts and this moulding there is a broad band of carved foliage. The ogee and the side finials or pinnacles, which are of the same section as the outer moulding from which they spring, are made of a bundle of small rolls held together by a broad twisted ribbon. Lastly, between the arches and the ogee there is a flat marble disk on which is carved a curious representation of a stockaded enclosure, supposed to be memorial of the gallant attack made by Affonso de Mello on Azila in Morocco.[99] The whole is a very curious piece of work, the capitals and bases being, with the exception of some details at Thomar and at Batalha, the most strange of the details of that period, though, were the small corbels left out, they would differ but little from other Manoelino capitals, while the bases may be only an attempt of a Moorish workman to copy the interpenetration of late Gothic. (Fig. 48.) [Sidenote: São Francisco, Evora.] Not much need be said here of the church of São Francisco or of the chapel of São Braz, both begun at about the same time. São Francisco was long in building, for it was begun by Affonso V. in 1460 and not finished till 1501. It is a large church close to the ruins of the palace at Evora, and has a wide nave without aisles, six chapels on each side, larger transept chapels, and a chancel narrower than the nave. It is, like most of Evora, built of granite, has a pointed barrel vault cut into by small groins at the sides and scarcely any windows, for the outer walls of the side chapels are carried up so as to leave a narrow space between them and the nave wall. This was probably done to support the main vault, but the result is that almost the only window is a large one over the west porch. It is this porch that most strongly shows the hand of Moorish workmen. It is five bays long and one deep, and most of the five arches in front, separated by Gothic buttresses and springing from late Gothic capitals, are horseshoe in shape. The white marble doorway has two arches springing from a thin central shaft, which like the arches and the two heavy mouldings, which forming the outer part of the jambs are curved over them, is made of a number of small rounds partly straight and partly twisted. At the corners of the church are large round spiral pinnacles with a continuous row of battlements between; these battlements interspersed with round pinnacles are even set all along the ridge of the vault. The reredos and the stalls made by Olivel of Ghent in 1508 are gone; so are Francisco Henriques' stained windows, but there are still some good tiles, and in a large square opening looking into the chancel there is a shaft with a beautiful early renaissance capital. [Sidenote: São Braz, Evora.] São Braz stands outside the town near the railway station. It was built as a pilgrimage chapel soon after 1482, when the saint had been invoked to stay a terrible plague. It is not large, has an aisleless nave of four bays, a large porch with three wide pointed arches at the west, and a sort of domed chancel. Most of the details are indeed Gothic, but there is little detail, and the whole is entirely Eastern in aspect. It is all plastered, the buttresses are great rounded projections capped with conical plastered roofs; there are battlements on the west gable and on the three sides of the porch, which also has great round conical-topped buttresses or turrets at the angles. Inside there are still fine tiles, but the sgraffito frieze has nearly disappeared from the outer cornice. There is also an interesting church somewhat in the same style as São Braz, but with aisles and brick flying buttresses at Vianna d'Alemtejo near Alvito. CHAPTER IX MOORISH CARPENTRY If it was only in the south that Moorish masons built in stone or brick, their carpenters had a much wider range. The wooden ceilings of as late as the middle of the seventeenth century may show no Eastern detail, yet in the method of their construction they are all ultimately descended from Moorish models. Such ceilings are found all over the country, but curiously enough the finest examples of truly Eastern work are found in the far north at Caminha and in the island of Madeira at Funchal. [Sidenote: Aguas Santas.] The old romanesque church at Aguas Santas near Oporto has a roof, simple and unadorned, the tie-beams of which are coupled in the Moorish manner. The two beams about a foot apart are joined in the centre by four short pieces of wood set diagonally so as to form a kind of knot. This is very common in Moorish roofs, and may be seen at Seville and elsewhere. The rest of the roof is boarded inside, boards being also fastened to the underside of the collar beams. [Sidenote: Azurara.] At Azurara the ties are single, but the whole is boarded as at Aguas Santas, and this is also the case at Villa do Conde and elsewhere. In the palace chapel at Cintra, already described, the boarding is covered with a pattern of interlacing strips, but later on panelling was used, usually with simple mouldings. Such is the roof in the nave of the church of Nossa Senhora do Olival at Thomar, probably of the seventeenth century, and in many houses, as for instance in the largest hall in the castle at Alvito. From such simple panelled ceilings the splendid elaboration of those in the palace at Cintra was derived. [Sidenote: Caminha.] The roofs at Caminha and at Funchal are rather different. At Caminha the roof is divided into bays of such a size that each of the three divisions, the two sloping sides and the flat centre under the collar ties, is cut into squares. In the sloping sides these squares are divided from each other by a strip of boarding covering the space occupied by three rafters. On this boarding are two bands of ornament separated by a carved chain, while one band, with the chain, is returned round the top and bottom of the square. Between each strip of boarding are six exposed rafters, and these are united alternately by small knots in the middle and at the ends, and by larger and more elaborate knots at the ends. In the flat centre under the collar ties each square is again surrounded by the band of ornament and by the chains, but here band and chain are also carried across the corners, leaving a large octagon in the centre with four triangles in the angles. Each octagon has a plain border about a foot wide, and within it a plain moulding surrounding an eight-sided hollow space. All these spaces are of some depth; each has in the centre a pendant, and in each the opening is fringed with tracery or foliation. In some are elaborate Gothic cuspings, in others long carved leaves curved at the ends; and in one which happens to come exactly over an iron tie-rod--for the rods are placed quite irregularly--the pendant is much longer and is joined to the tie by a small iron bar. At the sides the roof starts from a cornice of some depth whose mouldings and ornamentation are more classic than Gothic. (Fig. 49.) In the side aisles the cornice is similar, but of greater projection, and the rafters are joined to each other in much the same way, but more simply. [Sidenote: Funchal.] At Funchal the roof is on a larger scale: there is no division into squares, but the rafters are knotted together with much greater elaboration, and the flat part is like the chapel roof at Cintra, entirely covered with interlacing strips forming an intricate pattern round hollow octagons. [Sidenote: Sala dos Cysnes, Cintra.] The simple boarding of the earlier roofs may well have led to the two wonderful ceilings at Cintra, those in the Sala dos Cysnes, and in the Sala dos Brazões or dos Escudos, but the idea of the many octagons in the Sala dos Cysnes may have come from some such roof as that at Caminha, when the octagons are so important a feature of the design. In that hall swans may have first been painted for Dom João, but the roof has clearly been remade since then, possibly under Dom Manoel. The gilt ornament on the mouldings seem even later, but may of course have been added afterwards, though it is not very unlike some of the carving on the roof at Caminha, an undoubted work of Dom Manoel's time. This great roof in the Swan Hall has a deep and projecting classical cornice; it is divided into three equal parts, two sloping and one flat, with the slopes returned at the ends. The whole is made up of twenty-three large octagons and of four other rather distorted ones in the corners, all surrounded with elaborate mouldings, carved and gilt like the cornice. From the square or three-sided spaces left between the octagons there project from among acanthus leaves richly carved and gilt pendants. In each of the twenty-seven octagons there is painted on a flat-boarded ground a large swan, each wearing on its neck the red velvet and gold collar made by Dona Isabel for the real swans in the tank outside. These paintings, which are very well done, certainly seem to belong to the seventeenth century, for the trees and water are not at all like the work of an artist of Dom Manoel's time. (Fig. 50.) [Sidenote: Sala dos Escudos, Cintra.] Even more remarkable is the roof of the Sala dos Brazões or dos Escudos--that is 'of the shields'--also built by Dom Manoel, and also retouched at the same time as that in the Sala dos Cysnes. This other hall is a large room over forty feet square. The cornice begins about twelve feet from the ground, the walls being covered with hunting scenes on blue and white tiles of about the end of the seventeenth century. The cornice, about three feet deep and of considerable projection, is, like all the mouldings, painted blue and enriched with elaborate gilt carving. On the frieze is the following inscription in large gilt letters: Pois com esforços leais Serviços foram ganhadas Com estas e outras tais Devem de ser comservadas.[100] The inscription is interrupted by brackets, round which the cornice is returned, and on which rest round arches thrown across the four corners, bringing the whole to an equal-sided [Illustration: FIG. 49. CAMINHA. ROOF OF MATRIZ.] [Illustration: FIG. 50. PALACE, CINTRA. SALA DOS CYSNES.] [Illustration: CINTRA. Portugal. Old Palace. Sala dos Brazões.] octagon. These triangular spaces are roofed with elaborate wooden vaults, with carved and gilt ribs leaving spaces painted blue and covered with gilt ornament. Above the cornice the panelling rises perpendicularly for about eleven feet; there being on each cardinal side eight panels, in two rows of four, one above the other, and over each arch four more--forty-eight panels in all. Above this begins an octagonal dome with elaborately carved and gilt mouldings, like those round the panels, in each angle and round the large octagon which comes in the middle of each side. The next stage is similar, but set at a different angle, and with smaller and unequal-sided octagons, while the dome ends in one large flat eight-sided panel forty-five feet above the floor. All the space between the mouldings and the octagons is filled with most elaborate gilt carving on a blue ground. Nor does the decoration stop here, for the whole is a veritable Heralds' College for all the noblest families of Portugal in the early years of the sixteenth century. The large flat panel at the top is filled with the royal arms carved and painted, with a crown above and rich gilt mantling all round. In the eight panels below are the arms of Dom Manoel's eight children, and in the eight large octagons lower down are painted large stags with scrolls between their horns; lastly, in each of the forty-eight panels at the bottom, and of the six spaces which occur under each of the vaults in the four corners; in each of these seventy-two panels or spaces there is painted a stag. Every stag has round its neck a shield charged with the arms of a noble family, between its horns a crest, and behind it a scroll on which is written the name of the family.[101] The whole of this is of wood, and for beauty and originality of design, as well as for richness of colour, cannot be surpassed anywhere. In any northern country the seven small windows would not let in enough light, and the whole dome would be in darkness, but the sky and air of Portugal are clear enough for every detail to be seen, and for the gold on every moulding and piece of carving to gleam brightly from the blue background. None of the ceilings of later date are in any way to be compared in beauty or richness with those of these two halls, for in all others the mouldings are shallower and the panels flatter. [Sidenote: Coimbra Misericordia.] In Coimbra there are two, both good examples of a simpler form of such ceilings. They are, one in the Misericordia--the headquarters of a corporation which owns and looks after all the hospitals, asylums and orphanages in the town--and one in the great hall of the University. The Misericordia, built by bishop Affonso de Castello Branco about the end of the sixteenth century, has a good cloister of the later renaissance, and opening off it two rooms of considerable size with panelled ceilings, of which only one has its original painting. A cornice of some size, with brackets projecting from the frieze to carry the upper mouldings, goes round the room, and is carried across the corners so that at the ends of the room the ceiling has one longer and two quite short sides. The lower sloping part of the ceiling all round is divided into square panels with three-sided panels next the squares on the short canted sides; the upper slope is divided in exactly the same way so that the flat centre-piece consists of three squares set diagonally and of four triangles. All the panels are painted with a variety of emblems, but the colours are dark and the ceiling now looks rather dingy. [Sidenote: Sala dos Capellos University.] The great hall of the University built by the rector, Manoel de Saldanha, in 1655 is a very much larger and finer room. A raised seat runs round the whole room, the lower part of the walls are covered with tiles, and the upper with red silk brocade on which hang portraits of all the kings of Portugal, many doubtless as authentic as the early kings of Scotland at Holyrood. Here only the upper part of the cornice is carried across the corners, and the three sides at either end are equal, each being two panels wide. As in the Misericordia the section of the roof is five-sided, each two panels wide. All the panels are square except at the half-octagonal ends where they diminish in breadth towards the top: they are separated by a large cable moulding and are painted alternately red and blue with an elaborate design in darker colour on each. (Fig. 51.) The effect is surprisingly good, for each panel with its beautiful design of curling and twisting acanthus, of birds, of mermaids and of vases has almost the look of beautiful old brocade, for the blues and reds have grown soft with age. [Sidenote: Santa Clara, Villa do Conde.] Before finally leaving wood ceilings it were better to speak of another form or style which was sometimes used for their decoration although they are even freer from Moorish detail than are those at Coimbra, though probably like them ultimately derived from the same source. One of the finest of these ceilings is found in the upper Nuns' Choir in the church of Santa Clara at Villa do Conde. The church consists of a short nave with transepts and chancel all roofed with panelled wooden ceilings, painted grey as is often the case, and in no way remarkable. The church was founded in 1318, but the ceilings and stalls of both Nuns' Choirs, which, [Sidenote: Convent, Aveiro.] one above the other take up much the greater part of the nave, cannot be earlier than the first half of the seventeenth century. Like the other ceilings it is polygonal in section, but unlike all Moorish ones is not returned round the ends. Above a finely carved cornice with elaborate frieze, the whole ceiling is divided into deeply set panels, large and small squares with narrow rectangles between: all alike covered with elaborate carving, as are also the mouldings and the flat surfaces of the dividing bands. Here the wood is left in its natural colour, but in the nave of the church of a large convent at Aveiro, where the general design of the ceiling is almost the same, pictures are painted in the larger panels, and all the rest is heavily gilt, making the whole most gorgeous. As time went on wooden roofs became less common, stone barrel vaults taking their place, but where they were used they were designed with a mass of meaningless ornament, lavished over the whole surface, which was usually gilt. One of the most remarkable examples of such a roof is found in the chancel of that same church at Aveiro. It is semicircular in shape and is all covered with greater and smaller carved and gilt circles, from the smallest of which in the middle large pendants hang down. These circles are so arranged as to make the roof almost like that of Henry VII. Chapel, though the two really only resemble each other in their extreme richness and elaboration. This same extravagance of gilding and of carving also overtook altar and reredos. Now almost every church is full of huge masses of gilt wood, in which hardly one square inch has been left uncarved; sometimes, if there is nothing else, and the whole church--walls and ceiling alike--is a mass of gilding and painting, the effect is not bad, but sometimes the contrast is terrible between the plain grey walls of some old and simple building and the exuberance behind the high altar. [Illustration: FIG. 51. COIMBRA. HALL OF UNIVERSITY.] CHAPTER X EARLY MANOELINO Affonso V., the African, had died and been succeeded by his son João II. in 1487. João tried, not without success, to play the part of Louis XI. of France and by a judicious choice of victims (he had the duke of Braganza, the richest noble in the country, arrested by a Cortes at Evora and executed, and he murdered his cousin the duke of Vizeu with his own hand) he destroyed the power of the feudal nobility. Enriched by the confiscation of his victims' possessions, the king was enabled to do without the help of the Cortes, and so to establish himself as a despotic ruler. Yet he governed for the benefit of the people at large, and reversing the policy of his father Affonso directed the energies of his people towards maritime commerce and exploration instead of wasting them in quarrelling with Castile or in attempting the conquest of Morocco. It was he who, following the example of his grand-uncle Prince Henry, sent out ship after ship to find a way to India round the continent of Africa. Much had already been done, for in 1471 Fernando Po had reached the mouth of the Niger, and all the coast southward from Morocco was well known and visited annually, for slaves used to cultivate the vast estates in the Alemtejo; but it was not till 1484 that Diogo Cão, sent out by the king, discovered the mouth of the Congo, or till 1486 that Bartholomeu Diaz doubled the Cabo Tormentoso, an ill-omened name which Dom João changed to Good Hope. Dom João II. did not live to greet Vasco da Gama on his return from India, for he died in 1495, but he had already done so much that Dom Manoel had only to reap the reward of his predecessor's labours. The one great mistake he made was that in 1493 he dismissed Columbus as a dreamer, and so left the glory of the discovery of America to Ferdinand and Isabella. Besides doing so much for the trade of his country, Dom João did what he could to promote literature and art. Andrea da Sansovino worked for him for nine years from 1491 to 1499, and although scarcely anything done by him can now be found, he here too set an example to Dom Manoel, who summoned so many foreign artists to the country and who sent so many of his own people to study in Italy and in Flanders. Four years before Dom João died, his only son Affonso, riding down from Almerim to the Tagus to meet his father, who had been bathing, fell from his horse and was killed. In 1495 he himself died, and was succeeded by his cousin, Manoel the Fortunate. Dom Manoel indeed deserved the name of 'Venturoso.' He succeeded his cousin just in time to see Vasco da Gama start on his great voyage which ended in 1497 at Calicut. Three years later Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in Brazil, and before the king died, Gôa--the great Portuguese capital of the East--had become the centre of a vast trade with India, Ormuz[102] in the Persian Gulf of trade with Persia, while all the spices[103] of the East flowed into Lisbon and even Pekin[104] had been reached. From all these lands, from Africa, from Brazil, and from the East, endless wealth poured into Lisbon, nearly all of it into the royal treasury, so that Dom Manoel became the richest sovereign of his time. In some other ways he was less happy. To please the Catholic Kings, for he wished to marry their daughter Isabel, widow of the young Prince Affonso, he expelled the Jews and many Moors from the country. As they went they cursed him and his house, and Miguel, the only child born to him and Queen Isabel, and heir not only to Portugal but to all the Spains, died when a baby. Isabel had died at her son's birth, and Manoel, still anxious that the whole peninsula should be united under his descendants, married her sister Maria. His wish was realised--but not as he had hoped--for his daughter Isabel married her cousin Charles V. and so was the mother of Philip II., who, when Cardinal King Henry died in 1580, was strong enough to usurp the throne of Portugal. Being so immensely rich, Dom Manoel was able to cover the whole land with buildings. Damião de Goes, who died in 1570, gives a list of sixty-two works paid for by him. These include cathedrals, monasteries, churches, palaces, town walls, fortifications, bridges, arsenals, and the draining of marshes, and this long list does not take in nearly all that Dom Manoel is known to have built. Nearly all these churches and palaces were built or added to in that peculiar style now called Manoelino. Some have seen in Manoelino only a development of the latest phase of Spanish Gothic, but that is not likely, for in Spain that latest phase lasted for but a short time, and the two were really almost contemporaneous. Manoelino does not always show the same characteristics. Sometimes it is exuberant Gothic mixed with something else, something peculiar, and this phase seems to have grown out of a union of late Gothic and Moorish. Sometimes it is frankly naturalistic, and this seems to have been developed out of the first; and sometimes Gothic and renaissance are used together. In this phase, the composition is still always Gothic, though the details may be renaissance. At times, of course, all phases are found together, but those which most distinctly deserve the name, Manoelino, are the first and second. The shape of the arches, whether of window or of door, is one of the most characteristic features of Manoelino. After it had been well established they were rarely pointed. Some are round, some trefoils; some have a long line of wavy curves, others a line of sharp angles and curves together.[105] In others, like the door to the Sala das Pegas at Cintra, and so probably derived from Moorish sources, the arch is made of three or more convex curves, and in others again the arch is half of a straight-sided polygon, while in many of the more elaborate all or many of these may be used together to make one complicated whole of interlacing mouldings and hanging cusps. The capitals too are different from any that have come before. Some are round, but they are more commonly eight-sided, or have at least an eight-sided abacus, often with the sides hollow forming a star. If ornamented with leaves, the leaves do not grow out of the bell but are laid round it like a wreath. But leaf carving is not common; usually the caps are merely moulded, one or two of the mouldings being often like a rope; or branches may be set round them sometimes bound together with a broad ribbon like a bent faggot. The bases too are usually octagonal with an ogee section. Another feature common to all phases is the use of round mouldings, either one by itself--often forming a kind of twisting broken hood-mould--or of several together, when they usually form a spiral. Such a round moulding has already been seen forming an ogee over the windows at Sempre Noiva and over the chapter-house door at São João Evangelista, Evora, and there are at Evora two windows side by side, in one of which this round moulding forms a simple ogee, while in the other it forms a series of reversed curves after the true Manoelino manner. [Sidenote: House of Resende, Evora.] They are in the house of Garcia de Resende, a man of many accomplishments whose services were much valued both by Dom João and by Dom Manoel. He seems too to have been an architect of some distinction, if, as is said, he designed the Torre de São Vicente at Belem. This second window in his house is one of the best examples of the complete union between Gothic and Moorish. It has three shafts, one (in the centre) with a Moorish capital, and two whose caps are bound round with a piece of rope. The semicircular arches consist of one round moulding with round cusps. A hollow mould runs down the two jambs and over the two arches, turning up as an ogee at the top. Beyond this hollow are two tall round shafts ending in large crocketed finials, while tied to them with carved cords is a curious hood-mould, forming three reversed cusps ending in large finials, one in the centre and one over each of the arches, and at the two ends curling across the hollow like a cut-off branch. Here then we have an example not only of the use of the round moulding, but also of naturalistic treatment which was afterwards sometimes carried to excess. Probably this window may be rather later in date than at least the foundation of the churches of Nossa Senhora do Popolo at Caldas da Rainha or of the Jesus Convent at Setubal; but it is in itself so good an example of the change from the simple ogee to the round broken moulding and of the use of naturalistic features, that it has been taken first. In 1485 Queen Leonor, wife of Dom João II., began a [Sidenote: Caldas da Rainha.] hospital for poor bathers at the place now called after her, Caldas da Rainha, or Queen's hot baths. Beside the hospital was built a small church, now a good deal altered, with simple round-headed windows, and a curious cresting. Attached to it is a tower, interesting as being the only Manoelino church tower now existing. The lower part is square and plain, but the upper is very curious. On one side are two belfry windows, with depressed trefoil heads--that is the top of the trefoil has a double curve, exactly like the end of a clover leaf. On the outer side of each window is a twisted shaft with another between them, and from the top of these shafts grow round branches forming an arch over each window, and twining up above them in interlacing curves. The window on the east side has a very fantastic head of broken curves and straight lines. A short way above the windows the square is changed to an octagon by curved offsets. There are clock faces under small gables on each cardinal side, and at the top of it all rises a short eight-sided spire. Probably this was the last part of the church to be built, and so would not be finished till about the year 1502, when the whole was dedicated. [Sidenote: Jesus, Setubal.] More interesting than this is the Jesus College at Setubal. Founded by Justa Rodrigues, Dom Manoel's nurse, in 1487 or 1488 and designed by one Boutaca or Boitaca,[106] it was probably finished sooner than the church at Caldas, and is the best example in the country of a late Gothic church modified by the addition of certain Manoelino details. Unfortunately it was a good deal injured by the great earthquake in 1755, when it lost all pinnacles and parapets. The church consists of a nave and aisles of three and a half bays and of a square chancel. Inside, the side aisles are vaulted with a half barrel and the central with a simple vault having large plain chamfered ribs. The columns, trefoils in section, are twisted, and have simple moulded caps. The chancel which is higher than the nave is entered by a large pointed arch, which like its jambs has one of its mouldings twisted. The chancel vault has many ribs, most of which are also twisted. All the piers and jambs as well as the windows are built of Arrabida marble, a red breccia found in the mountains to the west of Setubal; the rest is all whitewashed except the arches and vaulting ribs which are painted in imitation of the marble piers. Outside, the main door, also of Arrabida marble, is large and pointed, with many mouldings and two empty niches on each side. It has little trace of Manoelino except in the bent curves of the upturned drip-mould, and in the broken lines of the two smaller doors which open under the plain tympanum. The nave window is of two lights with simple tracery, but in the chancel, which was ready by 1495, the window shows more Manoelino tendencies. It is of three lights, with flowing tracery at the head, and with small cusped and crocketed arches thrown across each light at varying levels. There are niches on the jambs, and the outer moulding is carried round the window head in broken curves, after the manner of Resende's house at Evora. Though the chancel is square inside, the corners outside are cut off by a very broad chamfer, and a very curious ogee curve unites the two. The cloisters to the north are more usual. The arches are round or slightly pointed, and like the short round columns with their moulded eight-sided caps and sides, are of Arrabida marble. Half-way along each walk two of the columns are set more closely together, and between them is a small round arch, with below it a Manoelino trefoil; there is too in the north-west corner a lavatory with a good flat vault. [Sidenote: Beja, Conceição.] At Beja the church of the Conceição, founded by Dom Manoel's father, has been very much pulled about, but the cornice and parapet with Gothic details, rope mouldings, and twisted pinnacles still show that it also was built when the new Manoelino style was first coming into use. [Sidenote: Castle.] In the ruins of the Castle there is a very picturesque window where two horseshoe arches are set so close together that the arches meet in such a way that the cusps at their meeting form a pendant, while another window in the Rua dos Mercadores, though very like the one in Resende's house in Evora, is more naturalistic. The outer shafts of the jambs are carved like tree trunks, and the hood moulding like a thick branch is bent and interlaced with other branches. [Sidenote: Paço, Cintra.] The additions made to the palace at Cintra by Dom Manoel are a complete treasury of Manoelino detail in its earlier phases. The works were already begun in 1508, and in January of the previous year André Gonsalves, who was in charge, bought two notebooks for 240 reis in which to set down expenses, as well as paper for his office and four bottles of ink. From these books we learn what wages the different workmen received. Pero de Carnide, the head mason, got 50 reis or about twopence-halfpenny a day, and his helper only 35 reis. The chief carpenter, Johan Cordeiro, had 60 reis a day, and so had Gonçalo Gomes, the head painter. All the workmen are recorded from Pero de Torres, who was paid 3500 reis, about 14 shillings, for each of the windows he carved and set up, down to the man who got 35 reis a day for digging holes for planting orange-trees and for clearing out the place where the rabbits were kept. André Gonsalves also speaks of a Boitaca, master mason. He was doubtless the Boitaca or Boutaca of the Jesus Church at Setubal and afterwards at Belem, though none of his work at Setubal in any way resembles anything he may have done here. The carriage entry which runs under the palace between Dom Manoel's addition and the earlier part of the palace, has in it some very characteristic capitals, two which support the entrance arch, while one belongs to the central column of an arcade which forms a sort of aisle on the west side. They are all round, though one belongs to an octagonal shaft. They have no abacus proper, but instead two branches are bent round, bound together by a wide ribbon. Below these branches are several short pieces of rope turned in just above the neck-mould, and between them carved balls, something like two artichokes stuck together face to face. On the east side of the entry a large doorway leads into the newer part of the palace, in which are now the queen-dowager's private rooms. This doorhead is most typical of the style. In the centre two flat convex curves meet at an obtuse angle. At the end of about two feet on either side of the centre the moulding forming these curves is bent sharply down for a few inches to a point, and is then united to the jambs by a curve rather longer than a semicircle. Outside the round moulding forming these curves and bends is a hollow following the same lines and filled with branch-work, curved, twisted, and intertwined. Outside the hollow are shafts, resting on octagonal and interpenetrating bases. These shafts are half-octagon in section with hollow--not as usual rounded--sides, ornamented with four-leafed flowers, and are twisted. Their capitals are formed by three carved wreaths, from which the shafts rise to curious half-Gothic pinnacles; they are also curved over to form a hood-mould. Above the central curves this moulding is broken and turned up to end in most curious cone-shaped horns, while from the middle there grows a large and elaborate finial. In the front of the new part overlooking the entrance court there are six windows, three in each floor. They are all, except for a slight variation in detail, exactly alike, and are evidently derived from the Moorish windows in the other parts of the palace. Like them each has two round-headed lights, and a framing standing on corbelled-out bases at the sides. The capitals are various, most are mere wreaths of foliage, but one belonging to the centre shaft of the middle window on the lower floor has twisted round it two branches out of which grow the cusps. While at the sides there is no distinct abacus, in the centre it is always square and moulded. The cusps end in knobs like thistle-heads, and are themselves rather branchlike. In the hollow between the shafts and the framing there are sometimes square or round flowers, sometimes twisting branches. Branches too form the framing of all, they are intertwined up the sides, and form above the arches a straight-topped mass of interlacing twigs, out of which grow three large finials. Originally the three windows of the upper floor belonged to a large hall whose ceiling was like that of the Sala dos Cysnes. Unfortunately the ceiling was destroyed, and the hall cut up into small rooms some time ago. (Fig. 52.) Inside are several Manoelino doorways. One at the end of a passage has a half-octagonal head, with curved sides. Beyond a hollow moulding enriched with square flowers are thick twisted shafts, which are carried up to form a hood-mould following the curves of the opening below, and having at each angle a large radiating finial. Besides these additions Dom Manoel made not a few changes in the older part of the palace. The main door leading into the Sala dos Cysnes is of his time, as is too a window in the upper passage leading to the chapel gallery. Though the walls of the Sala das Duas Irmãs are probably older, he altered it inside and built the two rows of columns and arches which support the floor of the Sala dos Brazões above. The arches are round and unmoulded. The thin columns are also round, but the bases are eight-sided; so are the capitals, but with a round abacus of boughs and twisted ribbons. The great hall above is also Dom Manoel's work, though the ceiling may probably have been retouched since. His also are the two-light windows, with slender shafts and heads more or less trefoil in shape, but with many small convex curves in the middle. The lower part of the outer cornice too is interesting, and made of brick plastered. At the bottom is a large rope moulding, then three courses of tilelike bricks set diagonally. Above them is a broad frieze divided into squares by a round moulding; there are two rows of these squares, and in each is an opening with a triangular head like a pigeon-hole, which has given rise to the belief that it was added by the Marquez de Pombal after the great earthquake. Pombal means 'dovecot,' and so it is supposed that the marquis added a pigeon-house wherever he could. He may have built the upper part of the cornice, which might belong to the eighteenth century, but the lower part is certainly older. The white marble door leading to the Sala dos Brazões from the upper passage is part of Dom Manoel's work. It has a flat ogee head with round projections which give it a roughly trefoil shape, and is framed in rope mouldings of great size, which end above in three curious finials. [Sidenote: Gollegã.] There are not very many churches built entirely in this style, though to many a door or a window may have been added or even a nave, as was done to the church of the Order of Christ at Thomar and perhaps to the cathedral of Guarda. Santa Cruz at Coimbra is entirely Manoelino, but is too large and too full of the work of the foreigners who brought in the most beautiful features of the French renaissance to be spoken of now. Another is the church at Gollegã, not far from the Tagus and about half-way between Santarem and Thomar. It is a small church, with nave and aisles of five bays and a square chancel. The piers consist of four half-round shafts round a square. In front the capitals are round next the neck moulding and square next the moulded abacus, while at the sides they become eight-sided. The arches are of two orders and only chamfered. The bases are curious, as each part belonging to a different member of the pier begins at a different level. That of the shaft at the side begins highest, and of the shaft in front lowest, and both becoming eight-sided, envelop the base of the square centre. These eight-sided bases interpenetrate with the mouldings of a lower round base, and all stand on a large splayed octagon, formed from a square by curious ogee curves at the corners. The nave is roofed in wood, but the chancel is vaulted, having ribs enriched like the chancel arch with cable moulding. The west front has a plain tower at the end of the south aisle, buttresses with Gothic pinnacles, a large door below and a round window above. The doorhead is a depressed trefoil, or quatrefoil, as the central leaf is of two curves. Between the inner and outer round moulding is as usual a hollow filled with branches. The outer moulding, on its upper side, throws out the most fantastic curves and cusps, which with their finials nearly encircle two little round windows, and then in wilder curves push up through the square framing at the top to a finial just below the window. At the sides two large twisted shafts standing on very elaborate bases end in twisted pinnacles. The round window is surrounded by large rope moulding, out of which grow two little arms, to support armillary spheres. [Sidenote: Sé, Elvas.] Dom Manoel also built the cathedral at Elvas, but it has been very much pulled about. Only the nave--in part at least--and an earlier west tower survive. Outside the buttresses are square below and three-cornered above; all the walls are battlemented; the aisle windows are tall and round-headed. On the north side a good trefoil-headed door leads to the interior, where the arches are round, the piers clustered with cable-moulded capitals and starry eight-sided abaci. There is a good vault springing from corbels, but the clerestory windows have been replaced by large semicircles. [Sidenote: Marvilla, Santarem.] All the body of the church of Santa Maria da Marvilla at Santarem is built in the style of Dom João III., that is, the nave arcade has tall Ionic columns and round arches. The rebuilding of the church was ordered by Dom Manoel, but the style called after him is only found in the chancel and in the west door. The chancel, square and vaulted, is entered by a wide and high arch, consisting, like the door to the Sala das Pegas at Cintra, of a series of moulded convex curves. The west door is not unlike that at Gollegã. It has a trefoiled head; with a round moulding at the angle resting on the [Illustration: FIG. 52. PALACE, CINTRA. PARTS ADDED BY D. MANOEL.] capitals of thin shafts. Beyond a broad hollow over which straggles a very realistic and thick-stemmed plant is a large round moulding springing from larger shafts and concentric with the inner. As at Gollegã from the outer side of this moulding large cusps project, one on each side, while in the middle it rises up in two curves forming an irregular pentagon with curved sides. Each outward projection of this round moulding ends in a large finial, so that there are five in all, one to each cusp and three to the pentagon. Beyond this moulding a plain flat band runs up the jambs and round the top cutting across the base of the cusps and of the pentagon. The bases of the shafts rest on a moulded plinth and are eight-sided, as are the capitals round which run small wreaths of leaves. Here the upright shafts at the sides are not twisted but run up in three divisions to Gothic pinnacles. (Fig. 53.) [Sidenote: Madre de Deus.] Almost exactly the same is a door in the Franciscan nunnery called Madre de Deus, founded to the east of Lisbon in 1509 by Dona Leonor, the widow of Dom João II. and sister of Dom Manoel. The only difference is that the shafts at the sides are both twisted, that the pentagon at the top is a good deal larger and has in it the royal arms, and that at the sides are shields, one on the right with the arms of Lisbon--the ship guided by ravens in which St. Vincent's body floated from the east of Spain to the cape called after him--and one on the left with a pelican vulning her breast.[107] The proportions of this door are rather better than those of the door at Santarem, and it looks less clumsy, but it is impossible to admire either the design or the execution. The fat round outer moulding with its projecting curves and cusps is very unpleasing, the shafts at the sides are singularly purposeless, and the carving is coarse. At Gollegã the design was even more outrageous, but there it was pulled together and made into a not displeasing whole by the square framing. [Sidenote: University Chapel, Coimbra.] What has been since 1540 the university at Coimbra was originally the royal palace, and the master of the works there till the time of his death in 1524 was Marcos Pires, who also planned and carried out most of the great church of Santa Cruz. Probably the university chapel is his work, for the windows are not at all unlike those at Santa Cruz. The door in many ways resembles the three last described, but the detail is smaller and all the proportions better. The door is double with a triple shaft in the middle; the two openings have very flat trefoil heads with a small ogee curve to the central leaf. The jambs have on each side two slender shafts between which there is a delicate twisted branch, and beyond them is a band of finely carved foliage and then another shaft. From these side shafts there springs a large trefoil, encompassing both openings. It is crocketed on the outside and has the two usual ogee cusps or projections on the outer side; but, instead of a large curved pentagon in the middle, the mouldings of the projections and of the trefoil then intertwine and rise up to some height forming a kind of wide-spreading cross with hollow curves between the arms. The arms of the cross end in finials, as do the ogee projections; there is a shield on each side below the cross arms, another crowned and charged with the royal arms above the central shaft, and on one side of it the Cross of the Order of Christ, and on the other an armillary sphere. On either side, as usual, on an octagonal base are tall twisted shafts, with a crown round the base of the twisted pinnacles which rise just to the level of the spreading arms of the cross. Like the door at Santarem the whole would be sprawling and ill-composed but that here the white-wash of the wall comes down only to the arms of the cross, so as to give it--built as it is of grey limestone--a simple square outline, broken only by the upper arm and finial of the cross. The heads of the two windows, one on either side of the door, are half-irregular octagons with convex sides. They are surrounded by a broad hollow splay framed by thin shafts resting on corbels and bearing a head, a flat ogee in shape, but broken by two hanging points; one of the most common shapes for a Manoelino window. (Fig. 54.) One more doorway before ending this chapter, already too long. [Sidenote: São Julião, Setubal.] The parish church of São Julião at Setubal was built during the early years of the sixteenth century, but was so shattered by the great earthquake of 1755 that only two of the doorways survive of the original building. The western is not of much interest, but that on the north--probably the work of João Fenacho who is mentioned as being a well-known carver working at Setubal in 1513--is one of the most elaborate doorways of that period. The northern side of the church is now a featureless expanse [Illustration: FIG. 53. SANTAREM. W. DOOR, MARVILLA.] [Illustration: FIG. 54. COIMBRA. UNIVERSITY CHAPEL.] of whitewashed plaster, scarcely relieved by a few simple square windows up near the cornice; but near the west end, in almost incongruous contrast, the plainness of the plaster is emphasised by the exuberant mouldings and carving of the door. Though in some features related to the doors at Santarem or the Madre de Deus the door here is much more elaborate and even barbaric, but at the same time, being contained within a simple gable-shaped moulding under a plain round arch, with no sprawling projections, the whole design--as is the case with the university chapel at Coimbra--is much more pleasing, and if the large outer twisted shafts with their ogee trefoiled head had been omitted, would even have been really beautiful. The opening of the door itself has a trefoiled head, whose hollow moulding is enriched with small well-carved roses and flowers. This trefoiled head opens under a round arch, springing from delicate round shafts, shafts and arch-mould being alike enriched with several finely carved rings, while from ring to ring the rounded surface is beautifully wrought with wonderful minutely carved spirals. The bases and caps of these, as of the other larger shafts, are of the usual Manoelino type, round with a hollow eight-sided abacus. Beyond these shafts and their arch, rather larger shafts, ringed in the same way and carved with a delicate diaper, support a larger arch, half-octagonal in shape and with convex sides, all ornamented like its supports, while all round this and outside it there runs a broad band of foliage, half Gothic, half renaissance in character. Beyond these again are the large shafts with their ogee trefoiled arch, which though they spoil the beauty of the design, at the same time do more than all the rest to give that strange character which it possesses. These shafts are much larger than the others, indeed they are made up of several round mouldings twisted together each of the same size as the shaft next them. Base and capital are of course also much larger, and there is only one ring ornament, above which the twisting is reversed. All the mouldings are carved, some with spirals, some with bundles of leaves bound round by a rope, with bunches of grape-like fruit between. The twisted mouldings are carried up beyond the capitals to form a huge trefoil turning up at the top to a large and rather clumsy finial. In this case the upright shafts at the sides are not twisted as in the other doors; they are square in plan, interrupted by a moulding at the level of the capitals, below which they are carved on each face with large square flowers, while above they have a round moulding at the angles. At the top are plain Gothic pinnacles; behind which rises the enclosing arch, due doubtless to the restoration after the earthquake. The gable-shaped moulding runs from the base of these pinnacles to the top of the ogee, and forms the boundary between the stonework and the plaster. Such then is the Manoelino in its earlier forms, and there can be little doubt that it was gradually evolved from a union of late Gothic and Moorish, owing some peculiarities such as twisted shafts, rounded mouldings, and coupled windows to Moorish, and to Gothic others such as its flowery finials. The curious outlines of its openings may have been derived, the simpler from Gothic, the more complex from Moorish. Steps are wanting to show whence came the sudden growth of naturalism, but it too probably came from late Gothic, which had already provided crockets, finials and carved bands of foliage so that it needed but little change to connect these into one growing plant. Sometimes these Manoelino designs, as in the palace at Cintra, are really beautiful when the parts are small and do not straggle all over the surface, but sometimes as in the Marvilla door at Santarem, or in that of the convent of the Madre de Deus at Lisbon, the mouldings are so clumsy and the design so sprawling and ill-connected, that they can only be looked on as curiosities of architectural aberration. CHAPTER XI THOMAR AND THE CONQUEST OF INDIA Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon in July 1497 with a small fleet to try and make his way to India by sea, and he arrived at Calicut on the Malabar coast nearly a year later, in May 1598. He and his men were well received by the zamorim or ruler of the town--then the most important trade centre in India--and were much helped in their intercourse by a renegade native of Seville who acted as interpreter. After a stay of about two months he started for home with his ships laden with spices, and with a letter to Dom Manoel in which the zamorim said:-- 'Vasco da Gama, a nobleman of thy household, has visited my kingdom, and has given me great pleasure. In my kingdom is abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones; what I seek from thy country is gold, silver, coral and scarlet.'[108] Arriving at Lisbon in July 1499, Vasco da Gama met with a splendid reception from king and people; was given 20,000 gold cruzados, a pension of 500 cruzados a year, and the title of Dom; while provision was also made for the families of those who had perished during the voyage; for out of one hundred and forty-eight who started two years earlier only ninety-six lived to see Lisbon again. So valuable were spices in those days that the profit to the king on this expedition, after all expenses had been paid and all losses deducted, was reckoned as being in the proportion of sixty to one. No wonder then that another expedition was immediately organised by Dom Manoel. This armada--in which the largest ship was of no more than four hundred tons--sailed from Lisbon under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral on March 9, 1500. Being driven out of his course, Cabral after many days saw a high mountain which he took to be an island, but sailing on found that it was part of a great continent. He landed, erected a cross, and took possession of it in the name of his king, thus securing Brazil for Portugal. One ship was sent back to Lisbon with the news, and the rest turned eastwards to make for the Cape of Good Hope. Four were sunk by a great gale, but the rest arrived at Calicut on September 13th. Here he too was well received by the zamorim and built a factory, but this excited the anger of the Arab traders, who burned it, killing fifty Portuguese. Cabral retorted by burning part of the town and sailed south to Cochin, whose ruler, a vassal of the zamorim, was glad to receive the strangers and to accept their help against his superior. Thence he soon sailed homewards with the three ships which remained out of his fleet of thirteen. In 1502 Dom Manoel received from the Pope Alexander VI. the title of 'Lord of Navigation, conquests and trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India,' and sent out another great expedition under Vasco da Gama, who, however, with his lieutenant, Vicente Sodre, found legitimate trade less profitable than the capture of pilgrim ships going to and from Mecca, which they rifled and sank with all on board. From the first thus treated they took 12,000 ducats in money and 10,000 ducats' worth in goods, and then blew up the ship with 240 men besides women and children. Reaching Calicut, the town was again bombarded and sacked, since the zamorim would not or could not expel all the Arab merchants, the richest of his people. Other expeditions followed every year till in 1509 a great Mohammedan fleet led by the 'Mirocem, the Grand Captain of the Sultan of Grand Cairo and of Babylon,' was defeated off the island of Diu, and next year the second viceroy, Affonso de Albuquerque, moved the seat of the government from Cochin to Gôa, which, captured and held with some difficulty, soon became one of the richest and most splendid cities of the East. Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and the great depot of Persian trade had been captured in 1509, and it was not long before the Portuguese had penetrated to the Straits of Malacca and even to China and Japan. So within twelve years from the time of Vasco da Gama's voyage the foundations of the Portuguese empire in the East had been firmly laid--an empire which, however, existed merely as a great trading concern in which Dom Manoel was practically sole partner and so soon became the richest sovereign of his time. Seeing therefore how close the intercourse was between Lisbon and India,[109] it is perhaps no wonder that, in his very interesting book on the Renaissance Architecture of Portugal, Albrecht Haupt, struck by the very strange forms used at Thomar and to a lesser degree in the later additions to Batalha, propounded a theory that this strangeness was directly due to the importation of Indian details. That the discovery of a sea route to India had a great influence on the architecture of Portugal cannot be denied, for the direct result of this discovery was to fill the coffers of a splendour-loving king with what was, for the time, untold wealth, and so to enable him to cover the country with innumerable buildings; but tempting as it would be to accept Haupt's theory, it is surely more reasonable to look nearer home for the origin of these peculiar features, and to see in them only the culmination of the Manoelino style and the product of an even more exuberant fancy than that possessed by any other contemporary builder. Of course, when looking for parallels with such a special object in view it is easy enough to find them, and to see resemblances between the cloister windows at Batalha and various screens or panels at Ahmedabad; and when we find that a certain Thomas Fernandes[110] had been sent to India in 1506 as military engineer and architect; that another Fernandes, Diogo of Beja, had in 1513 formed part of an embassy sent to Gujerat and so probably to the capital Ahmedabad; and that Fernandes was also the name of the architects of Batalha, it becomes difficult not to connect these separate facts together and to jump to the quite unwarrantable conclusion that the four men of the same name may have been related and that one of them, probably Diogo, had given his kinsmen sketches or descriptions on which they founded their designs.[111] With regard to Thomar, where the detail is even more curious and Indian-looking, the temptation to look for Indian models is still stronger, owing to the peculiar position which the Order of Christ at Thomar now held, for the knights of that order had for some time possessed complete spiritual jurisdiction over India and all other foreign conquests. This being so, it might have seemed appropriate enough for Dom Manoel to decorate the additions he made to the old church with actual Indian detail, as his builder did with corals and other symbols of the strange discoveries then made. The fact also that on the stalls at Santa Cruz in Coimbra are carved imaginary scenes from India and from Brazil might seem to be in favour of the Indian theory, but the towns and forests there depicted are exactly what a mediæval artist would invent for himself, and are not at all like what they were supposed to represent, and so, if they are to be used in the argument at all, would rather go to show how little was actually known of what India was like. There seems also not to be even a tradition that anything of the sort was done, and if a tradition has survived about the stalls at Coimbra, surely, had there been one, it might have survived at Thomar as well. At the same time it must be admitted that the bases of the jambs inside the west window in the chapter-house are very unlike anything else, and are to a Western eye like Indian work. However, a most diligent search in the Victoria and Albert Museum through endless photographs of Indian buildings failed to find anything which was really at all like them, and this helped to confirm the belief that this resemblance is more fancied than real; besides, the other strange features, the west window outside, and the south window, now a door, are surely nothing more than Manoelino realism gone a little mad. Thomar has already been seen in the twelfth century when Dom Gualdim Paes built the sixteen-sided church and the castle, and when he and his Templars withstood the Moorish invaders with such success. As time went on the Templars in other lands became rich and powerful, and in the fourteenth century Philippe le Bel of France determined to put an end to them as an order and to confiscate their goods. So in 1307 the grand master was imprisoned, and five years later the Council of Vienne, presided over by Clement V.--a Frenchman, Bertrand de Goth--suppressed the order. Philippe seized their property, and in 1314 the grand master was burned. In Portugal their services against the Moors were still remembered, and although by this time no part of Portugal was under Mohammedan rule, Granada was not far off, and Morocco was still to some extent a danger. Dom Diniz therefore determined not to exterminate the Templars, but to change them into a new military order, so in 1319 he obtained a bull from John XXII. from Avignon constituting the Order of Christ. At first their headquarters were at Castro-Marim at the mouth of the Guadiana, but soon they returned to their old Templar stronghold at Thomar and were re-granted most of their old possessions. The Order of Christ soon increased in power, and under the administration of Prince Henry, 1417 to 1460, took a great part in the discoveries and explorations which were to bring such wealth and glory to their country. In 1442, Eugenius IV. confirmed the spiritual jurisdiction of the order over all conquests in Africa, and Nicholas V. and Calixtus III. soon extended this to all other conquests made, or to be made anywhere, so that the knights had spiritual authority over them 'as if they were in Thomar itself.' This boon was obtained by Dom Affonso V. at his uncle Prince Henry's wish. When Prince Henry died he was succeeded as duke of Vizeu and as governor of the order by his nephew Fernando, the second son of Dom Duarte. Fernando died ten years later and was succeeded by his elder son Diogo, who was murdered fifteen years later by Dom João II. in 1485. Then the title passed to his brother Dom Manoel, and with it the administration of the order, a position which he retained when he ascended the throne, and which has since belonged to all his successors. Prince Henry finding that the old Templar church with its central altar was unsuited to the religious services of the order, built a chapel or small chancel out from one of the eastern sides and dedicated it to St. Thomas of Canterbury. But as the order advanced in wealth and in power this addition was found to be far too small, and in a general chapter held by Dom Manoel in 1492 it was determined to build a new Coro large enough to hold all the knights and leaving the high altar in its old place in the centre of the round church. In all the Templar churches in England, when more room was wanted, a chancel was built on to the east, so that the round part, instead of containing the altar, has now become merely a nave or a vestibule. At Thomar, however, probably because it was already common to put the stalls in a gallery over the west door, it was determined to build the new Coro to the west, and this was done by breaking through the two westernmost sides of the sixteen-sided building and inserting a large pointed arch. Although it was decided to build in 1492, little or nothing can have been done for long, if it is true that João de Castilho who did the work was only born about the year 1490; and that he did it is certain, as he says himself that he 'built the Coro, the chapter-house--under the Coro--the great arch of the church, and the principal door.' Two stone carvers, Alvaro Rodrigues and Diogo de Arruda, were working there in 1512 and 1513, and the stalls were begun in July 1511, so that some progress must have been made by them. If then João de Castilho did the work he must have been born some time before 1490, as he could hardly have been entrusted with such a work when a boy of scarcely twenty. João de Castilho, who is said to have been by birth a Biscayan, soon became the most famous architect of his time. He not only was employed on this Coro, but was afterwards summoned to superintend the great Jeronymite monastery of Belem, which he finished. Meanwhile he was charged by João III. with the building of the vast additions made necessary at Thomar when in 1523 the military order was turned into a body of monks. He lived long enough to become a complete convert to the renaissance, for at Belem the Gothic framework is all overlaid with renaissance detail, while in his latest additions at Thomar no trace of Gothic has been left. He died shortly before 1553, as we learn from a document dated January 1st of that year, which states that his daughter Maria de Castilho then began, on the death of her father, to receive a pension of 20,000 reis. The new Coro is about eighty-five feet long inside by thirty wide, and is of three bays. Standing, as does the Templars' church, on the highest point of the hill, it was, till the erection of the surrounding cloisters, clear of any buildings. Originally the round church, being part of the fortifications, could only be entered from the north, but the first thing done by Dom Manoel was to build on the south side a large platform or terrace reached from the garden on the east by a great staircase. This terrace is now bounded on the west by the Cloister dos Filippes, on the south by a high wall and by the chapter-house, begun by Dom Manoel but never finished, and on the north by the round church and by one bay of the Coro; and in this bay is now the chief entrance to the church. The lower part of the two western bays is occupied by the chapter-house, with one window looking west over the cloister of Santa Barbara, and one south, now hidden by the upper Cloister dos Filippes and used as a door. [See plan p. 225.] Inside, the part over the chapter-house is raised to form the choir, and there, till they were burned in 1810 by the French for firewood, stood the splendid stalls begun in July 1511 by Olivel of Ghent who had already made stalls for São Francisco at Evora.[112] The stalls had large figures carved on their backs, a continuous canopy, and a high and elaborate cresting, while in the centre on the west side the Master's stall ended in a spire which ran up with numberless pinnacles, ribs and finials to a large armillary sphere just under the vaulting.[113] Now the inside is rather bare, with no ornament beyond the intricacy of the finely moulded ribs and the elaborate corbels from which they spring. These are a mass of carving, armillary spheres, acanthus leaves, shields upheld by well-carved figures, crosses, and at the top small cherubs holding the royal crown. The inner side of the door has a segmental head and on either jamb are tall twisted shafts. A moulded string course running round just above the level once reached by the top of the stalls turns up over the window as a hood-mould. At the same time much was done to enrich the old Templars' church. All the shafts were covered with gilt diaper and the capitals with gold; crockets were fixed to the outer sides of the pointed arches of the central octagon, and inside it were placed figures of saints standing on Gothic corbels under canopies of beautiful tabernacle work. Similar statues stand on the vaulting shafts of the outer polygon and between them, filling in the spaces below the round-headed windows, are large paintings in the Flemish style common to all Portuguese pictures of that time--of the Nativity, of the Visit of the Magi, of the Annunciation, and of the Virgin and Child. To-day the only part of the south side visible down to the ground level is the eastern bay in which opens the great door. This is one of the works which João de Castilho claims as his, and on one of the jambs there is carved a strap, held by two lion's paws on which are some letters supposed to be his signature, and some figures which have been read as 1515, probably wrongly, for there seems to have been no renaissance work done in Portugal except by Sansovino till the coming of Master Nicolas to Belem in 1517 or later.[114] If it is 1515 and gives the date, it must mean the year when the mere building was finished, not the carving, for the renaissance band can hardly have been done till after his return from Belem. The doorway is one of great beauty, indeed is one of the most beautiful pieces of work in the kingdom. The opening itself is round-headed with three bands of carving running all round it, separated by slender shafts of which the outermost up to the springing of the arch is a beautiful spiral with four-leaved flowers in the hollows. Of the carved bands the innermost is purely renaissance, with candelabra, medallions, griffins and leaves all most beautifully cut in the warm yellow limestone. On the next band are large curly leaves still Gothic in style and much undercut; and in the last, four-leaved flowers set some distance one from the other. At the top, the drip-mould grows into a large trefoil with crockets outside and an armillary sphere within. At the sides tall thin buttresses end high above the door in sharp carved pinnacles and bear under elaborate canopies many figures of saints.[115] Two other pinnacles rise from the top of the arch, and between them are more saints. In the middle stands Our Lady, and from her canopy a curious broken and curving moulding runs across the other pinnacles and canopies to the sides. But that which gives to the whole design its chief beauty is the deep shadow cast by the large arch thrown across from one main buttress to the other just under the parapet. This arch, moulded and enriched with four-leaved flowers, is fringed with elaborate cusps, irregular in size, which with rounded mouldings are given a trefoil shape by small beautifully carved crockets. (Fig. 55.) Except the two round buttresses at the west end and one on the north side which has Manoelino pinnacles, all are the same, breaking into a cluster of Gothic pinnacles rather more than half-way up and ending in one large square crocketed pinnacle very like those at Batalha. The roof being flat and paved there is no gable at the west end; there is a band of carving for cornice, then a moulding, and above it a parapet of flattened quatrefoils, in each of which is an armillary sphere, and at the top a cresting, alternately of cusped openings and crosses of the Order of Christ, most of which, however, have been broken away. Of the windows all are wide and pointed, without tracery and deeply splayed. The one in the central bay next the porch has niches and canopies at the side for statues and jambs not unlike those designed some years after at Belem. There is also a certain resemblance between the door here and the great south entrance to Belem, though this one is of far greater beauty, being more free from over-elaboration and greatly helped by the shadow of the high arch. So far the design has shown nothing very abnormal; but for one or two renaissance details it is all of good late Gothic, with scarcely any Manoelino features. It is also more pleasing than any other contemporary building in Portugal, and the detail, though very rich, is more restrained. This may be due to the nationality of João de Castilho, for some of the work is almost Spanish, for example the buttresses, the pinnacles, and the door with its trefoiled drip-mould. If, however, the two eastern bays are good late Gothic, what can be said of the western? Here the fancy of the designer seems to have run quite wild, and here it is that what have been considered to be Indian features are found. It is hard to believe that João de Castilho, who nowhere, except perhaps in the sacristy door at Alcobaça, shows any love of what is abnormal and outlandish, should have designed these extraordinary details, and so perhaps the local tradition may be so far true, according to which the architect was not João but one Ayres do Quintal. Nothing else seems to be known of Ayres--though a head carved under the west window of the chapter-house is said to be his--but in a country so long illiterate as Portugal, where unwritten stories have been handed down from quite distant times, it is possible that oral tradition may be as true as written records. Now it is known that João de Castilho was working at Alcobaça in 1519. In 1522 he was busy at Belem, where he may have been since 1517, when for the first time some progress seems to have been made with the building there. What really happened, therefore, may be that when he left Thomar, the Coro was indeed built, and the eastern buttresses finished, but that the carving of the western part was still uncut and so may have been the work of Ayres after João was himself gone.[116] This is, of course, only a conjecture, for Ayres seems to be mentioned in no document, but whoever it was who carved these buttresses and windows was a man of extraordinary originality, and almost mad fancy. To turn now from the question of the builder to the building itself. The large round buttresses at the west end are fluted at the bottom; at about half their height comes a band of carving about six feet deep seeming to represent a mass of large ropes ending in tasselled fringes or possibly of roots. On one buttress a large chain binds these together, on the others a strap and buckle--probably the Order of the Garter given to Dom Manoel by Henry VII. Above this five large knotty tree-trunks or branches of coral grow up the buttresses uniting in rough trefoiled heads at the top, and having statues between them--Dom Affonso Henriques, [Illustration: FIG. 55. THOMAR. CONVENT OF CHRIST. S. DOOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 56. THOMAR. OUTSIDE OF W. WINDOW OF CHAPTER HOUSE UNDER HIGH CHOIR IN NAVE.] Dom Gualdim Paes, Dom Diniz and Dom Manoel--two on each buttress. Then the buttress becomes eight-sided and smaller, and, surrounded by five thick growths, of which not a square inch is unworked and whose pinnacles are covered with carving, rises with many a strange moulding to a high round pinnacle bearing the cross of the order--a sign, if one may take the coral and the trees to be symbolical of the distant seas crossed and of the new lands visited, of the supreme control exercised by the order over all missions. Coral-like mouldings too run round the western windows on both north and south sides, and at the bottom these are bound together with basket work. Strange as are the details of these buttresses, still more strange are the windows of the chapter-house. Since about 1560 the upper cloister of the Filippes has covered the south side of the church so that the south chapter-house window, which now serves as a door, is hidden away in the dark. Still there is light enough to see that in naturalism and in originality it far surpasses anything elsewhere, except the west window of the same chapter-house. Up the jambs grow branches bound round by a broad ribbon. From the spaces between the ribbons there sprout out on either side thick shoots ending in large thistle heads. The top of the opening is low, of complicated curves and fine mouldings, on the outermost of which are cut small curly leaves, but higher up the branches of the jambs with their thistle heads and ribbons with knotted ropes and leaves form a mass of inextricable intricacy, of which little can be seen in the dark except the royal arms. Inside the vault is Gothic and segmental, but the west window is even more strange than the southern; its inner arch is segmental and there are window seats in the thickness of the wall. The jambs have large round complicated bases of many mouldings, some enriched with leaves, some with thistle heads, some with ribbons, and one with curious projections like small elephants' trunks--in short very much what a Western mind might imagine some Hindu capital, reversed, to be like. On the jamb itself and round the head are three upright mouldings held together by carved basket work of cords, and bearing at intervals thistle heads in threes; beyond is another band of leaf-covered carving, and beyond it an upright strip of wavy lines.[117] The opening has a head like that of the other window and is filled with a bronze grille. Still more elaborate and extraordinary is the outside of this window, nor would it be possible to find words to describe it. The jambs are of coral branches, with large round shafts beyond, entirely leaf-covered and budding into thistle heads. Ropes bind them round at the bottom and half-way up great branches are fastened on by chains. At the top are long finials with more chains holding corals on which rest armillary spheres. The head of the window is formed of twisted masses, from which project downwards three large thistle heads. Above this is a great wreath of leaves, hung with two large loops of rope, and twisting up as a sort of cusped ogee trefoil to the royal arms and a large cross of the Order of Christ. A square frame with flamelike border rises to the top of the side finials to enclose a field cut into squares by narrow grooves. Below the window more branches, coral, and ropes knot each other round the head of Ayres just below the rope moulding which runs across from buttress to buttress. Above the top of the opening and about half-way up the whole composition there is an offset, and on it rests a series of disks, set diagonally and strung on another rope. (Fig. 56.) Although, were the royal arms and the cross removed, the window might not look out of place in some wild Indian temple, yet it is much more likely not to be Indian, but that the shafts at the sides are but the shafts seen in many Manoelino doors, that the window head is an elaboration of other heads,[118] that the coral jambs are another form of common naturalism, and that the great wreath is only the hood-mould rendered more extravagant. In no other work in Portugal or anywhere in the West are these features carved and treated with such wild elaboration, nor anywhere else is there seen a base like that of the jambs inside, but surely there is nothing which a man of imagination could not have evolved from details already existing in the country. Above the window the details are less strange. A little higher than the cross a string course traverses the front from north to south, crested with pointed cusps. Higher up still, a round window, set far back in a deep splay, lights the church above. Outside the sharp projecting outer moulding of this window are rich curling leaves, inside a rope, while other ropes run spirally across the splay, which seems to swell like a sail, and was perhaps meant to remind all who saw it that it was the sea that had brought the order and its master such riches and power. At the top are the royal arms crowned, and above the spheres of the parapet and the crosses of the cresting another larger cross dominates the whole front. Such is Dom Manoel's addition to the Templars' church, and outlandish and strange as some of it is, the beautiful rich yellow of the stone under the blue sky and the dark shadows thrown by the brilliant sun make the whole a building of real beauty. Even the wild west window is helped by the compactness of its outline and by the plainness of the wall in which it is set, and only the great coral branches of the round buttresses are actually unpleasing. The size too of the windows and the great thickness of the wall give the Coro a strength and a solidity which agree well with the old church, despite the richness of the one and the severe plainness of the other. There is perhaps no building in Portugal which so well tells of the great increase of wealth which began under Dom Manoel, or which so well recalls the deeds of his heroic captains--their long and terrible voyages, and their successful conquests and discoveries. Well may the emblem of Hope,[119] the armillary sphere, whereby they found their way across the ocean, be carved all round the parapet, over the door, and beside the west window with its wealth of knots and wreaths. Whether or not Ayres or João de Castilho meant the branches of coral to tell of the distant oceans, the trees of the forests of Brazil, and the ropes of the small ships which underwent such dangers, is of little consequence. To the present generation which knows that all these discoveries were only possible because Prince Henry and his Order of Christ had devoted their time and their wealth to the one object of finding the way to the East, Thomar will always be a fitting memorial of these great deeds, and of the great men, Bartholomeu Diaz, Vasco da Gama, Affonso de Albuquerque, Pedro Cabral, and Tristão da Cunha, by whom Prince Henry's great schemes were brought to a successful issue. CHAPTER XII THE ADDITIONS TO BATALHA Little had been done to the monastery of Batalha since the death of Dom Duarte left his great tomb-chapel unfinished. Dom Affonso v., bent on wasting the lives of the bravest of his people and his country's wealth in the vain pursuit of conquests in Morocco, could spare no money to carry out what his father had begun, and so make it possible to move his parents' bodies from their temporary resting-place before the high altar to the chapel intended to receive them. Affonso V. himself dying was laid in a temporary tomb of wood in the chapter-house, as were his wife and his grandson, the only child of Dom João II.; while a coffin of wood in one of the side chapels held Dom João himself. When João died, his widow Dona Leonor is said to have urged her brother, the new king, to finish the work begun by their ancestor and so form a fitting burial-place for her son as well as for himself and his descendants. Dom Manoel therefore determined to finish the Capellas Imperfeitas, and the work was given to the elder Matheus Fernandes, who had till 1480, when he was followed by João Rodrigues, been master of the royal works at Santarem. The first document which speaks of him at Batalha is dated 1503, and mentions him as Matheus Fernandes, vassal of the king, judge in ordinary of the town of Santa Maria da Victoria, and master of the works of the same monastery, named by the king. He died in 1515, and was buried near the west door.[120] He was followed by another Matheus Fernandes, probably his son, who died in 1528, to be succeeded by João de Castilho. But by then Dom Manoel was already dead. He had been buried not here, but in his new foundation of Belem, and his son João III. and João de Castilho himself were too much occupied in finishing Belem and in making great additions to Thomar to be able to do much to the Capellas Imperfeitas. So after building two beautiful but incongruous arches, João de Castilho went back to his work elsewhere, and the chapels remain Imperfeitas to this day. It will be remembered that the tomb-house begun by Dom Duarte took the form of a vast octagon some seventy-two feet in diameter surrounded by seven apsidal chapels--one on each side except that towards the church--and by eight smaller chapels between the apses. When Matheus Fernandes began his work most of the seven surrounding chapels were finished except for their vaulting, but not all, as in two or three the outer moulding of the entrance arch is enriched by small crosses of the Order of Christ, and by armillary spheres carved in the hollow; while the whole building stood isolated and unconnected with the church. The first thing, therefore, done by Matheus was to build an entrance hall or pateo uniting the octagon with the church. Unless the walls of the Pateo be older than Dom Manoel's time it is impossible now to tell how Huguet, Dom Duarte's architect, meant to connect the two, perhaps by a low passage running eastwards from the central apse, perhaps not at all. The plan carried out by Matheus took the form of a rectangular hall enclosing the central apse and the two smaller apses to the north and south, but leaving--now at any rate--a space between it and the side apses. Possibly the original intention may have been to pull down the two side apses, and so to form a square ambulatory behind the high altar leading to the great octagon beyond; but if that were the intention it was never carried out, and now the only entrance is through an insignificant pointed door on the north side. The walls of the Pateo with their buttresses, string courses and parapet are so exactly like the older work as to suggest that they may really date from the time of Dom Duarte, and that all that Matheus Fernandes did was to build the vault, insert the windows, and form the splendid entrance to the octagon; but in any case the building was well advanced if not finished in 1509, when over the small entrance door was written, 'Perfectum fuit anno Domini 1509.' Two windows light the Pateo, one looking north and one south. They are both alike, and both are thoroughly Manoelino in style. They are of two lights, with well-moulded jambs, and half-octagonal heads. The drip-mould, instead or merely surrounding the half octagon, is so broken and bent as to project across it at four points, being indeed shaped like half a square with a semicircle on the one complete side, and two quarter circles on the half sides, all enriched by many a small cusp and leaf. The mullion is made of two branches twisting upwards, and the whole window head is filled with curving boughs and leaves forming a most curious piece of naturalistic tracery, to be compared with the tracery of some of the openings in the Claustro Real. (Fig. 58.) No doubt, while the Pateo was being built, the great entrance to the Imperfect chapels, one of the richest as well as one of the largest doorways in the world, was begun, and it must have taken a long time to build and to carve, for the lower part, on the chapel side especially, seems to be rather earlier in style than the upper. The actual opening to the springing of the arch measures some 17 feet wide by 28 feet high, while including the jambs the whole is about 24 feet wide on the chapel, and considerably more on the Pateo side,--since there the splay is much deeper--by 40 feet high. To take the chapel side first:--Above a complicated base there is up the middle of each jamb a large hollow, in which are two niches one above the other, with canopies and bases of the richest late Gothic; on either side of this hollow are tall thin shafts entirely carved with minute diaper, two on the inner and one on the outer side. Next towards the chapel is another slender shaft, bearing two small statues one above the other, and outside it slender Gothic pinnacles and tabernacle work rise up to the capital. Up the outer side of the jambs are carved sharp pointed leaves, like great acanthus whose stalk bears many large exquisitely carved crockets. On the other side of the central hollow the diapered shaft is separated from the tiers of tiny pinnacles which form the inner angle of the jamb by a broad band of carving, which for beauty of design and for delicacy of carving can scarcely be anywhere surpassed. On the Pateo side the carving is even more wonderful.[121] There are seven shafts in all on each side, some diapered, some covered with spirals of leaves, one with panelling and one with exquisite foliage carved as minutely as on a piece of ivory. Between each shaft are narrow mouldings, and between the outer five four bands of ivy, not as rich or as elaborately undercut as on the chapel side, but still beautiful, and interesting as the ivy forms many double circles, two hundred and four in all, in each of which are written the words 'Tãyas Erey' or 'Tãya Serey,' Dom Manoel's motto. For years this was a great puzzle. In the seventeenth century the writer of the history of the Dominican Order in Portugal, Frei Luis de Souza, boldly said they were Greek, and in this opinion he was supported by 'persons of great judgment, for "Tanyas" is the accusative of a Greek word "Tanya," which is the same as region, and "erey" is the imperative of the verb "ereo", which signifies to seek, inquire, investigate, so that the meaning is, addressed to Dom Manoel, seek for new regions, new climes.' Of course whatever the meaning may be it is not Greek, indeed at that time in Portugal there was hardly any one who could speak Greek, and Senhora de Vasconcellos--than whom no one has done more for the collecting of inscriptions in Portugal--has come to the very probable conclusion that the words are Portuguese. She holds that 'Tãyas erey' or 'Tãya serey' should be read 'Tanaz serey,' 'I shall be tenacious'--for Tanaz is old Portuguese for Tenaz--and that the Y is nothing but a rebus or picture of a tenaz or pair of pincers, and indeed the Y's are very like pincers. In this opinion she is upheld by the carving of the tenacious ivy round each word, and the fact that Dom Manoel was not really tenacious at all, but rather changeable, makes it all the more likely that he would adopt such a motto. The carvers were doubtless quite illiterate and may well have thought that the pincers in the drawing from which they were working were a letter and may therefore have mixed them up to the puzzling of future generations.[122] Or since nowhere is 'Tayaz serey' written with the 'z' may not the first 'y' be the final 'z' of Tanaz misplaced? The arched head of the opening is treated differently on the two sides. Towards the Pateo the two outer mouldings form a large half octagon set diagonally and with curved sides; the next two form a large trefoil. In the spandrels between these are larger wreaths enclosing 'Tanyas erey,' which is also repeated all round these four mouldings. The trefoils form large hanging cusps in front of the complicated inner arch. This too is more or less trefoil in shape, [Illustration: Fig. 57. BATALHA ENTRANCE TO CAPELLAS INPERFEITAS. From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto] but with smaller curves between the larger, and all elaborately fringed with cuspings and foliage. Four mouldings altogether are of this shape, two on each side, and beyond them towards the chapel is that arch or moulding which gives to the whole its most distinctive character. The great trefoil, with large cusps, which forms the head is crossed by another moulding in such a way as to become a cinquefoil, while the second moulding, like the hood of the door at Santarem, forms three large reversed cusps, each ending in splendid acanthus leaves. Further, the whole of these mouldings are on the inner side carved with a delicate spiral of ribbon and small balls, and on the outer with the same acanthus that runs up the jambs. Now, on the chapel side especially, from the base to the springing there is little that might not be found in late French Gothic work, except perhaps that diapered shafts were not then used in France, and that the bands of carving are rather different in spirit from French work; but as for the head, no opening of that size was made in France of so complicated and, it must be added, so unconstructional a shape. It is the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the Manoelino style, and although a foreigner may be inclined at first, from its very strangeness, to call it Eastern, it is really only a true development in the hands of a real artist of what Manoelino was; an expression of Portugal's riches and power, and of the gradual assimilation of such Moors as still remained on this side the Straits. Of course it is easy to say that it is extravagant, overloaded and debased; and so it may be. Yet no one who sees it can help falling a victim to its fascination, for perhaps its only real fault is that the great cusps and finials are on rather too large a scale for the rest. Not even the greatest purist could help admiring the exquisite fineness of the carving--a fineness made possible by the limestone, very soft when new, which gradually hardens and grows to a lovely yellow with exposure to the air. No records tell us so, but considering the difference in style between the upper and the lower part it may perhaps be conjectured that the elder Matheus designed the lower part, and the younger the upper, after his father's death in 1515. In the great octagon itself the first thing to be done was to build huge piers, which partly encroach on the small sepulchral chapels between the larger apses. These piers now rise nearly to the level of the central aisle of the church where they are cut off unfinished; they must be about 80 or 90 feet in height. On the outer side they are covered with many circular shafts which are banded together by mouldings at nearly regular intervals. Haupt has pointed out that in general appearance they are not unlike the great minar called the Kutub at Old Delhi, and a lively imagination might see a resemblance to the vast piers, once the bases of minars, which flank the great entrance archways of some mosques at Ahmedabad, for example those in the Jumma Musjid. Yet there is no necessity to go so far afield. Manoelino architects had always been fond of bundles of round mouldings and so naturally used them here, nor indeed are the piers at all like either the Kutub or the minars at Ahmedabad. They have not the batter or the sharp angles of the one, nor the innumerable breaks and mouldings of the others. Between each pier a large window was meant to open, of which unfortunately nothing has been built but part of the jambs. Inside the vaulting of the apsidal chapels was first finished; all the vaults are elaborate, have well-moulded ribs, and bosses, some carved with crosses of the Order of Christ, some with armillary spheres, others with a cross and the words 'In hoc signo vinces,' or with a sphere and the words 'Espera in Domino.' Where Dom João II. was to be buried is a pelican vulning herself--for that was his device--and in that intended for his father Dom Affonso V. a 'rodisio' or mill-wheel. A little above the entrance arches to the chapels the octagon is surrounded by two carved string courses separated by a broad plain frieze.[123] On the lower string are the beautifully modelled necks and heads of dragons, springing from acanthus leaves and so set as to form a series of M's, and on the upper an exquisite pattern arranged in squares, while on it rests a most remarkable cresting. In this cresting, which is formed of a single bud set on branches between two coupled buds, the forms are most strange and at the same time beautiful. Inside, the great piers have been much more highly adorned than without. The vaulting shafts in the middle--which, formed of several small round mouldings, have run up quite plain from the ground, only interrupted by shields and their mantling on the frieze--are here broken and twisted. On either side are niches with Gothic canopies, above which are interlacing leaves and branches. Beyond the niches are the window jambs, on which, next the opening, are shafts carved with naturalistic tree-stems, and between these and the niches two bands of ornament separated by thin plain shafts. In each opening these bands are different. In some is Gothic foliage, in others semi-classic carving like the string below or realistic like the cresting. In others are naturalistic branches, and in the opening over the chapel where Dom Manoel was to lie are cut the letters M in one hand and R in the other; Manoel Rey. (Fig. 59.) Only the first foot or so of the vaulting has been built, and there is nothing now to show how the great octagon was to be roofed. Murphy[124] gives his idea; the eight piers carried high up and capped with spires, huge Gothic windows between, and the whole covered by a vast pointed roof--presumably of wood--above the vault. Haupt with his Indian prepossessions suggests a dome surrounded by eight great domed pinnacles. Probably neither is right; certainly Murphy's great roof of wood would never have been made, and as for Haupt's dome nothing domed was built in Portugal till long after and that at first only on a small scale.[125] Besides, the well-developed Gothic ribs which are seen springing in each corner clearly show that some kind of Gothic vault was meant, and not a dome; and that the Portuguese could build wonderful vaults had been already shown by the chapter-house here and was soon to be shown by the transept at Belem. So in all probability the roof would have been a great Gothic vault of which the centre would rise very considerably above the sides; for there is no sign of stilting the ribs over the windows. The whole would have been covered with stone slabs, and would have been surrounded by eight groups of pinnacles, most of which would no doubt have been twisted. Deeply though one must regret that this great chapel has been left unfinished and open to the sky, yet even in its incomplete state it is a treasure-house of beautiful ornament, and it is wonderful how well the more commonplace Gothic of Huguet's work agrees with and even enhances the richness of the detail which Fernandes drew from so many sources, late Gothic, early renaissance, and naturalistic, and which he knew so well how to combine into a beautiful whole. The great Claustro Real, built by Dom João I., was peculiar among Portuguese cloisters in having, or at least being prepared for, large traceried windows. Probably these had remained blank, and for about a hundred years awaited the tracery which more than any part of the convent shows the skill of Matheus Fernandes. There seems to be no exact record of when the work was done, but it must have been while additions were being made to the Imperfect chapels, though more fortunate than they, the work here was successfully finished. The cloister has seven bays on each side, of which the five in the middle are nearly equal, having either five or six lights. In the eastern corners the openings have only three lights, in the south-western they have four, and in the north-western there stands the square two-bayed lavatory. (Fig. 60.) In all the openings the shafts are alike. They have tall eight-sided and round bases, similar capitals and a moulded ring half-way up, while the whole shaft from ring to base and from ring to capital is carved with the utmost delicacy, with spirals, with diaper patterns, or with leaflike scales. Above the capitals the pointed openings are filled in with veils of tracery of three different patterns. In the central bay, and in the two next but one on either side of it, and so filling nine openings, is what at first seems to be a kind of reticulated tracery. But on looking closer it is found to be built up of leaf-covered curves and of buds very like those forming the cresting in the Capellas Imperfeitas. In the corner bays--except where stands the lavatory--there is another form of reticulated tracery, where the larger curves are formed by branches, whose leaves make the cusps, while filling in the larger spaces are budlike growths like those in the first-mentioned windows. On either side of the central openings the tracery is more naturalistic than elsewhere; here the whole is formed of interlacing and intertwining branches, with leaves and large fruit-like poppy heads, and in the centre the Cross of the Order of Christ. But of all, the most successful is in the lavatory; there the two bays which form each side are high and narrow, [Illustration: FIG. 58. BATALHA. WINDOW OF PATEO.] [Illustration: FIG. 59. BATALHA. CAPELLAS IMPERFEITAS. UPPER PART. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] with richly cusped pointed arches. Instead of cutting out the cusps and filling the upper part with tracery, Matheus Fernandes has with extraordinary skill thrown a crested transome across the opening and below it woven together a veil of exquisitely carved branches, which, resting on a central shaft, half hide and half reveal the large marble fountain within. (Fig. 61.) At first, perhaps, accustomed to the ordinary forms of Gothic tracery, these windows seem strange, to some even unpleasing. Soon, however, when they have been studied more closely, when it has been recognised that the brilliant sunshine needs closer tracery and smaller openings than does the cooler North, and that indeed the aim of the designer is to keep out rather than to let in the direct rays of light, no one can be anything but thankful that Matheus Fernandes, instead of trying to adapt Gothic forms to new requirements, as was done by his predecessors in the church, boldly invented new forms for himself; forms which are entirely suited to the sun, the clear air and sky, and which with their creamy lace make a fitting background to the roses and flowers with which the cloister is now planted. Now the question arises, from whence did Matheus Fernandes draw his inspiration? We have seen that windows with good Gothic tracery are almost unknown in Portugal, for even in the church here at Batalha the larger windows nearly all show a want of knowledge, and a wish to shut out the sun as much as possible, and besides there is really no resemblance between the tracery in the church and that in the cloister. In the lowest floor of the Torre de São Vicente, begun by Dom João II. and finished by Dom Manoel to defend the channel of the Tagus, the central hall is divided from a passage by a thin wall whose upper part is pierced to form a perforated screen. The original plan for the tower is said to have been furnished by Garcia de Resende, whose house we have seen at Evora, and if this screen, which is built up of heart-shaped curves, is older than the cloister windows at Batalha, he may have suggested to Matheus Fernandes the tracery which has a more or less reticulated form, though on the other hand it may be later and have been suggested by them. Most probably, however, Matheus Fernandes thought out the tracery for himself. He would not have had far to go to see real reticulated panelling, for the church is covered with it; but an even more likely source of this reticulation might be found in the beautiful Moorish panelling which exists on such buildings as the Giralda or the tower at Rabat, and if we find Moors among the workmen at Thomar there may well have been some at Batalha as well. As for the naturalistic tracery, it is clearly only an improvement on such windows as those of the Pateo behind the church, and there is no need to go to Ahmedabad and find there pierced screens to which they have a certain resemblance. However, whatever may be its origin, this tracery it is which makes the Claustro Real not only the most beautiful cloister in Portugal, but even, as that may not seem very great praise, one of the most beautiful cloisters in the world, and it must have been even more beautiful before a modern restoration crowned all the walls with a pierced Gothic parapet and a spiky cresting, whose angular form and sharp mouldings do not quite harmonise with the rounded and gentle curves of the tracery below. After the suppression of the monastic orders in 1834, Batalha, which had already suffered terribly from the French invasion--for in 1810 during the retreat under Massena two cloisters were burned and much furniture destroyed--was for a time left to decay. However, in 1840 the Cortes decreed an annual expenditure of two contos of reis,[126] or about £450 to keep the buildings in repair and to restore such parts as were damaged. The first director was Senhor Luis d'Albuquerque, and he and his successors have been singularly successful in their efforts, and have carried out a restoration with which little fault can be found, except that they have been too lavish in building pierced parapets, and in filling the windows of the church with wooden fretwork and with hideous green, red and blue glass. [Illustration: FIG. 60. BATALHA. CLOISTER. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] [Illustration: FIG. 61. BATALHA. LAVATORY IN CLAUSTRO REAL.] CHAPTER XIII BELEM Belem or Bethlehem lies close to the shore, after the broad estuary of the Tagus has again grown narrow, about four miles from the centre of Lisbon, and may best be reached by one of the excellent electric cars which now so well connect together the different parts of the town and its wide-spreading suburbs. Situated where the river mouth is at its narrowest, it is natural that it was chosen as the site of one of the forts built to defend the capital. Here, then, on a sandbank washed once by every high tide, but now joined to the mainland by so unromantic a feature as the gasworks, a tower begun by Dom João II., and designed, it is said, by Garcia de Resende, was finished by Dom Manoel about 1520 and dedicated to São Vicente, the patron of Lisbon.[127] The tower is not of very great size, perhaps some forty feet square by about one hundred high. It stands free on three sides, but on the south towards the water it is protected by a great projecting bastion, which, rather wider than the tower, ends at the water edge in a polygon. The tower contains several stories of one room each, none of which are in themselves in any way remarkable except the lowest, in which is the perforated screen mentioned in the last chapter. In the second story the south window opens on to a long balcony running the whole breadth of the tower, and the other windows on to smaller balconies. The third story is finished with a fortified parapet resting on great corbels. The last and fourth, smaller than those below, is fortified with pointed merlons, and with a round corbelled turret at each corner. On entering, it is found that the bastion contains a sort of cloister with a flat paved roof on to which opens the door of the tower. Under the cloister are horrid damp dungeons, last used by Dom Miguel, who during his usurpation imprisoned in them such of his liberal opponents as he could catch. The whole bastion is fortified with great merlons, rising above a rope moulding, each, like those on the tower, bearing a shield carved with the Cross of the Order of Christ, and by round turrets corbelled out at the corners. These, like all the turrets, are capped with melon-shaped stone roofs, and curious finials. Similar turrets jut out from two corners of the ground floor. The parapet also of the cloister is interesting. It is divided into squares, in each of which a quatrefoil encloses a cross of the Order of Christ. At intervals down the sides are spiral pinnacles, at the corners columns bearing spheres, and at the south end a tall niche, elaborately carved, under whose strange canopy stand a Virgin and Child. The most interesting features of the tower are the balconies. That on the south side, borne on huge corbels, has in front an arcade of seven round arches, resting on round shafts with typical Manoelino caps. A continuous sloping stone roof covers the whole, enriched at the bottom by a rope moulding, and marked with curious nicks at the top. The parapet is Gothic and very thin. The other balconies are the same, a pointed tentlike roof ending in a knob, a parapet whose circles enclose crosses of the order, but with only two arches in front. The third story is lit by two light windows on three sides, and on the south side by two round-headed windows, between which is cut a huge royal coat-of-arms crowned. Altogether the building is most picturesque, the balconies are charming, and the round turrets and the battlements give it a look of strength and at the same time add greatly to its appearance. The general outline, however, is not altogether pleasing owing to the setting back of the top story. (Fig. 62.) The detail, however, is most interesting. It is throughout Manoelino, and that too with hardly an admixture of Gothic. There is no naturalism, and hardly any suggestion of the renaissance, and as befits a fort it is without any of the exuberance so common to buildings of this time. Now here again, as at Thomar and Batalha, Haupt has seen a result of the intercourse with India; both in the balconies and in the turret roofs[128] he sees a likeness to a temple in Gujerat; and it must be admitted that in the example he gives the balconies and roofs are not at all unlike those at Belem. It might further be urged that Garcia de Resende who designed the tower, if he was never in India himself, formed part of Dom Manoel's great embassy to Rome in 1514, when the wonders of the East were displayed before the Pope, that he might easily be familiar with Indian carvings or paintings, and that finally there are no such balconies elsewhere in Portugal. All that may be true, and yet in his own town of Evora there are still many pavilions more like the smaller balconies than are those in India, and it surely did not need very great originality to put such a pavilion on corbels and so give the tower its most distinctive feature. As for the turrets, in Spain there are many, at Medina del Campo or at Coca, which are corbelled out in much the same way, though their roofs are different, and like though the melon-shaped dome of the turrets may be to some in Gujerat, they are more like those at Bacalhôa, and surely some proof of connection between Belem and Gujerat, better than mere likeness, is wanted before the Indian theory can be accepted. That the son of an Indian viceroy should roof his turrets at Bacalhôa with Indian domes might seem natural; but the turrets were certainly built before he bought the Quinta in 1528, and neither they nor the house shows any other trace of Indian influence. The night of July 7, 1497, the last Vasco da Gama and his captains were to spend on shore before starting on the momentous voyage which ended at Calicut, was passed by them in prayer, in a small chapel built by Prince Henry the Navigator for the use of sailors, and dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Restello. Two years later he landed again in the Tagus, with a wonderful story of the difficulties overcome and of the vast wealth which he had seen in the East. As a thankoffering Dom Manoel at once determined to found a great monastery for the Order of St. Jerome on the spot where stood Prince Henry's chapel. Little time was lost, and the first stone was laid on April 1 of the next year. The first architect was that Boutaca who, about ten years before, had built the Jesus Church at Setubal for the king's nurse, Justa Rodrigues, and to him is probably due the plan. Boutaca was succeeded in 1511 by Lourenço Fernandes, who in turn gave place to João de Castilho in 1517[129] or 1522. It is impossible now to say how much each of these different architects contributed to the building as finished. At Setubal Boutaca had built a church with three vaulted aisles of about the same height. The idea was there carried out very clumsily, but it is quite likely that Belem owes its three aisles of equal height to his initiative even though they were actually carried out by some one else. Judging also from the style, for the windows show many well-known Manoelino features, while the detail of the great south door is more purely Gothic, they too and the walls may be the work of Boutaca or of Lourenço Fernandes, while the great door is almost certainly that of João de Castilho. In any case, when João de Castilho came the building was not nearly finished, for in 1522 he received a thousand cruzados towards building columns and the transept vault.[130] But even more important to the decoration of the building than either Boutaca or João de Castilho was the coming of Master Nicolas, the Frenchman[131] whom we shall see at work at Coimbra and at São Marcos. Belem seems to have been the first place to which he came after leaving home, and we soon find him at work there on the statues of the great south door, and later on those of the west door, where, with the exception of the Italian door at Cintra, is carved what is probably the earliest piece of renaissance detail in the country. The south door, except for a band of carving round each entrance, is free of renaissance detail, and so was probably built before Nicolas added the statues, but in the western a few such details begin to appear, and in these, as in the band round the other openings, he may have had a hand. Inside renaissance detail is more in evidence, but since the great piers would not be carved till after they were built, it is more likely that the renaissance work there is due to João de Castilho himself and to what he had learned either from Nicolas or [Illustration: FIG. 62. TORRE DE SÃO VICENTE. BELEM.] [Illustration: FIG. 63. BELEM. SACRISTY.] from the growing influence of the Coimbra School. It is, of course, also possible that when Nicolas went to Coimbra, where he was already at work in 1524, some French assistant may have stayed behind, yet the carving on the piers is rather coarser than in most French work, and so was more probably done by Portuguese working under Castilho's direction. The monastic buildings were begun after the church; but although at first renaissance forms seem supreme in the cloisters, closer inspection will show that they are practically confined to the carving on the buttresses and on the parapets of the arches thrown across from buttress to buttress. All the rest, except the door of the chapter-house--the refectory, undertaken by Leonardo Vaz, the chapter-house itself, and the great undercroft of the dormitory stretching 607 feet away opposite the west door, and scarcely begun in 1521, are purely Manoelino, so that the date 1544 on the lower cloister must refer to the finishing of the renaissance additions and not to the actual building, especially as the upper cloister is even more completely Gothic than the lower. The sacristy, adjoining the north transept, must have been one of the last parts of the original building to be finished, since in it the vault springs in the centre from a beautiful round shaft covered with renaissance carving and standing on a curious base. (Fig. 63.) The first chancel, which in 1523 was nearly ready, was thought to be too small and so was pulled down, being replaced in 1551 by a rather poor classic structure designed by Diogo de Torralva. In it now lie Dom Manoel, his son Dom João III., and the unfortunate Dom Sebastião, his great-grandson. Vasco da Gama and other national heroes have also found a resting-place in the church, and the chapter-house is nearly filled with the tomb of Herculano, the best historian of his country. Since the expulsion of the monks in 1834 the monastic buildings have been turned into an excellent orphanage for boys, who to the number of about seven hundred are taught some useful trade and who still use the refectory as their dining-hall. The only other change since 1835 has been the building of an exceedingly poor domed top to the south-west tower instead of its original low spire, the erection of an upper story above the long undercroft, and of a great entrance tower half-way along, with the result that the tower soon fell, destroying the vault below. [Illustration: O Mosheiro des Jerónimos de Sta Maria de Belem. 1. CHAPTER HOVSE 2. SACRISTY 3. REFECTORY 4. CHOIR GALLERY 5. INTENDED ENTRANCE PORCH 6. VNDERCROFT OF DORMITORY 607 FEET LONG FOVNDED BY DOM MANOEL APRIL 21 1500. BOVTACA ARCHITECT TILL 1511. SVCCEEDED BY LOVRENÇO FERNANDES. LITTLE DONE TILL 1522 WHEN JOÃO DE CASTILHO SVCCEEDED. LOWER CLOISTER FINISHED 1544. CAPELLA MOR REBVILT 1551 BY DIOGO DE TORRALVA. ] The plan of the church is simple but original. It consists of a nave of four bays with two oblong towers to the west. The westernmost bay is divided into two floors by a great choir gallery entered from the upper cloister and also extending to the west between the towers, which on the ground floor form chapels. The whole nave with its three aisles of equal height measures from the west door to the transept some 165 feet long by 77 broad and over 80 high. East of the nave the church spreads out into an enormous transept 95 feet long by 65 wide, and since the vast vault is almost barrel-shaped considerably higher than the nave. North and south of this transept are smaller square chapels, and to the east the later chancel, the whole church being some 300 feet long inside. North of the nave is the cloister measuring 175 feet by 185, on its western side the refectory 125 feet by 30, and on the east next the transept a sacristy 48 feet square, and north of it a chapter-house of about the same size, but increased on its northern side by a large apse. In the thickness of the north wall of the nave a stair leads from the transept to the upper cloister, and a series of confessionals open alternately, the one towards the church for the penitent and the next towards the lower cloister for the father confessor. Lastly, separated from the church by an open space once forming a covered porch, there stretches away to the west the great undercroft, 607 feet long by 30 wide. Taking the outside of the church first. The walls of the transept and of the transept chapel are perfectly plain, without buttresses, with but little cornice and, now at least, without a cresting or parapet. They are only relieved by an elaborate band of ornament which runs along the whole south side of the church, by the tall round-headed windows, and in the main transept by a big rope moulding which carries on the line of the chapel roof. Plain as it is, this part of the church is singularly imposing from its very plainness and from its great height, and were the cornice and cresting complete and the original chancel still standing would equal if not surpass in beauty the more elaborate nave. The windows--one of which lights the main transept on each side of the chancel, and two, facing east and west, the chapel which also has a smaller round window looking south--are of great size, being about thirty-four feet high by over six wide; they are deeply set in the thick wall, are surrounded by two elaborate bands of carving, and have crocketed ogee hood-moulds. The great band of ornament which is interrupted by the lower part of the windows has a rope moulding at the top above which are carved and interlacing branches, two rope mouldings at the bottom, and between them a band of carving consisting of branches twisted into intertwining S's, ending in leaves at the bottom and buds at the top, the whole being nearly six feet across. The three eastern bays of the nave are separated by buttresses, square below, polygonal above, and ending in round shafts and pinnacles at the top. The cornice, here complete, is deep with its five carved mouldings, but not of great projection. On it stands the cresting of elaborately branched leaves, nearly six feet high. The central bay is entirely occupied by the great south door which, with its niches, statues and pinnacles entirely hides the lower part of the buttresses. The outer round arch of the door is thrown across between the two buttresses, which for more than half their height are covered with carved and twisted mouldings, with niches, canopies, corbels, and statues all carved with the utmost elaboration. Immediately above the great arch is a round-headed window, and on either side between it and the buttresses are two rows of statues and niches in tiers separated by elaborate statue-bearing shafts and pinnacles. Statues even occupy niches on the window jamb, and a Virgin and Child stand up in front on the end of the ogee drip-mould of the great arch. (Fig. 64.) It will be seen later how poorly Diogo de Castilho at Coimbra finished off his window on the west front of Santa Cruz. Here the work was probably finished first, and it is curious that Diogo in copying his brother's design did not also copy the great canopy which overshadows the window and which, rising through the cornice to a great pinnacled niche, so successfully finishes the whole design. Here too the buttresses carry up the design to the top of the wall, and with the strong cornice and rich cresting save it from the weakness which at Coimbra is emphasised by the irregularity of the walling above. Luckier than the door at Coimbra this one retains its central jamb, on which, on a twisting shaft from whose base look out two charming lions, there stands, most appropriately, Prince Henry the Navigator, without whose enterprise Vasco da Gama would in all probability never have sailed to India and so given occasion for the founding of this church. Round each of the two entrances runs a band of renaissance carving, and the flat reliefs in the divided tympanum are rather like some that may be seen in France,[132] but otherwise the detail is all Gothic. Twisted shafts bearing the corbels, elaborate canopies, crocketed finials, all are rather Gothic than Manoelino. Since the material--a kind of marble--is much less fine than the stone used at Batalha or in Coimbra or Thomar, the carving is naturally less minute and ivory-like than it is there, and this is especially the case with the foliage, which is rather coarse. The statues too--except perhaps Prince Henry's--are a little short and sturdy. The tall windows in the bays on either side of this great door are like those in the transept, except that round them are three bands of carving instead of two, the one in the centre formed of rods which at intervals of about a foot are broken to cross each other in the middle, and that beyond the jambs tall twisted shafts run up to round finials just under the cornice. In the next bay to the west, where is the choir gallery inside, there are two windows, one above the other, like the larger ones but smaller, and united by a moulding which runs round both. The same is the case with the tower, where, however, the upper window is divided into two, the lower being a circle and the upper having three intersecting lights. The drip-mould is also treated in the common Manoelino way with large spreading finials. Above the cornice, which is less elaborate than in the nave, was a short octagonal drum capped by a low spire, now replaced by a poor dome and flying buttresses. The west door once opened into a three-aisled porch now gone. It is much less elaborate than the great south door, but shows great ingenuity in fitting it in under what was once the porch vault. The twisted and broken curves of the head follow a common Manoelino form, and below the top of the broken hood-mould are two flying angels who support a large corbel on which is grouped the Holy Family. On the jambs are three narrow bands of foliage, and one of figures standing under renaissance canopies. On either side are spreading corbels and large niches with curious bulbous canopies[133] under which kneel Dom Manoel on the left presented by St. Jerome, and on the right, presented by St. John the Baptist, his second wife, Queen Maria--like the first, Queen Isabel, a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and the aunt of his third wife, Leonor. These figures are evidently portraits, and even if they were flattered show that they were not a handsome couple. Below these large corbels, on which are carved large angels, are two smaller niches with figures, one on each side of the twisted shaft. Renaissance curves form the heads of these as they do of larger niches, one on each side of the Holy Family above, which contain the Annunciation and the Visit of the Wise Men. Beyond Dom Manoel and his wife are square shafts with more niches and figures, and beyond them again flatter niches, half Manoelino, half renaissance. The rest of the west front above the ruined porch is plain except for a large round window lighting the choir gallery. The north-west tower does not rise above the roof. Outside, the church as a whole is neither well proportioned nor graceful. The great mass of the transept is too overwhelming, the nave not long enough, and above all, the large windows of the nave too large. It would have looked much better had they been only the size of the smaller windows lighting the choir gallery--omitting the one below, and this would further have had the advantage of not cutting up the beautiful band of ornament. But the weakest part of the whole design are the towers, which must always have been too low, and yet would have been too thin for the massive building behind them had they been higher. Now, of course, the one finished with a dome has nothing to recommend it, neither height, nor proportion, nor design. Yet the doorway taken by itself, or together with the bay on either side, is a very successful composition, and on a brilliantly sunny day so blue is the sky and so white the stone that hardly any one would venture to criticise it for being too elaborate and over-charged, though no doubt it might seem so were the stone dingy and the sky grey and dull. The church of Belem may be ill-proportioned and unsatisfactory outside, but within it is so solemn and vast as to fill one with surprise. Compared with many churches the actual area is not really very great nor is it very high, yet there is perhaps no other building which gives such an impression of space and of freedom. Entering from the brilliant sunlight it seems far darker than, with large windows, should be the case, and however hideous the yellow-and-blue checks with which they are filled may be, they have the advantage of keeping out all brilliant light; the huge transept too is not well lit and gives that feeling of vastness and mystery which, as the supports are few and slender, would otherwise be wanting, while looking westwards the same result is obtained by the dark cavernous space under the gallery. (Fig. 65.) [Illustration: FIG. 64. BELEM. SOUTH SIDE OF CHURCH OF JERONYMOS.] [Illustration: FIG. 65. BELEM. NAVE OF CHURCH LOOKING WEST.] On the south side the walls are perfectly plain, broken only by the windows, whose jambs are enriched with empty niches; on the north the small windows are placed very high up, the twisted vaulting shafts only come down a short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly seventy feet to support a great stone vault. Four only of the six stand clear from floor to roof, for the two western are embedded at the bottom in the jambs of the gallery arches. From their capitals the vaulting ribs spread out in every direction, being constructively not unlike an English fan vault, and covering the whole roof with a network of lines. The piers are round, stand on round moulded pedestals, and are divided into narrow strips by eight small shafts. The height is divided into four nearly equal parts by well-moulded rings, encircling the whole pier, and in the middle of the second of these divisions are corbels and canopies for statues. The capitals are round and covered with leaves, but scarcely exceed the piers in diameter. Besides all this each strip between the eight thin shafts is covered from top to bottom--except where the empty niches occur--with carving in slight relief, either foliage or, more usually, renaissance arabesques. Larger piers stand next the transept, cross-shaped, formed of four of the thinner piers set together, and about six feet thick. They are like the others, except that there are corbels and canopies for statues in the angles, and that a capital is formed by a large moulding carved with what is meant for egg and tongue. From this, well moulded and carved arches, round in the central and pointed in the side aisles, cross the nave from side to side, dividing its vault from that of the transept. This transept vault, perhaps the largest attempted since the days of the Romans--for it covers a space measuring about ninety-five feet by sixty-five--is three bays long from north to south and two wide from east to west; formed of innumerable ribs springing from these points--of which those at the north and south ends are placed immediately above the arches leading to the chapels--it practically assumes in the middle the shape of a flat oblong dome. Now, though the walls are thick, there are no buttresses, and the skill and daring required to build a vault sixty-five feet wide and about a hundred feet high resting on side walls on one side and on piers scarcely six feet thick on the other must not only excite the admiration of every one, especially when it is remembered that no damage was caused by the great earthquake which shook Lisbon to pieces in 1755, but must also raise the wish that what has been so skilfully done here had been also done in the Capellas Imperfeitas at Batalha. At the north end of the main transept are two doors, one leading to the cloister and one to the sacristy. A straight and curved moulding surrounds their trefoil heads under a double twining hood-mould. Outside, other mouldings rise high above the whole to form a second large trefoil, whose hood-mould curves into two great crocketed circles before rising to a second ogee. The chancel has a round and the chapels pointed entrance arches, formed, as are the jambs, of two bands of carving and two thick twisted mouldings. Tomb recesses, added later, with strapwork pediments line the chapels, and at the entrance to the chancel are two pulpits, for the Gospel and Epistle. These are rather like João de Ruão's pulpit at Coimbra in outline, but supported on a large capital are quite Gothic, as are the large canopies which rise above them. Strong arches with cable mouldings lead to the space under the gallery, which is supported by an elaborate vault, elliptical in the central and pointed in the side aisles. In the gallery itself--only to be entered from the upper cloister--are the choir stalls, of Brazil wood, added in 1560, perhaps from the designs of Diogo da Carta.[134] With the earlier stalls at Santa Cruz and at Funchal, and the later at Evora, these are almost the only ones left which have not been replaced by rococo extravagances. The back is divided into large panels three stalls wide, each containing a painting of a saint, and separated by panelled and carved Corinthian pilasters. Below each painting is an oblong panel with, in the centre, a beautifully carved head looking out of a circle, and at the sides bold carvings of leaves, dragons, sirens, or animals, while beautiful figures of saints stand in round-headed niches under the pilasters. At the ends are larger pilasters, and a cornice carried on corbels serves as canopy. Each of the lower stalls has a carved panel under the upper book-board, but the small figures which stood between them on the arms are nearly all gone. If 1560 be the real date, the carving is extraordinarily early in character; the execution too is excellent, though perhaps the heads under the paintings are on too large a scale for woodwork, still they are not at all coarse, and would be worthy of the best Spanish or French sculptors. The cloister, nearly, but not quite square, has six bays on each side, of which the four central bays are of four lights each, while narrower ones at the ends have no tracery. In the traceried bays the arches are slightly elliptical, subdivided by two round-headed arches, which in turn enclose two smaller round arches enriched some with trefoil cusps, some with curious hanging pieces of tracery which are put, not in the middle, but a little to the side nearer the central shaft. The shafts are round, very like those at Batalha, and, like every inch of the arch and tracery mouldings, are covered with ornament; some are twisted, some diapered, some covered with renaissance detail. Broad bands too of carving run round the inside and the outside of the main arches, the inner being almost renaissance and the outer purely Manoelino. The vault of many ribs, varying in arrangement in the different walks, is entirely Gothic, while all the doors--except the double opening leading to the chapter-house, which has beautifully carved renaissance panels on the jambs--are Manoelino. The untraceried openings at the ends are fringed with very extraordinary lobed projections, and on the solid pieces of walling at the corners are carved very curious and interesting coats of arms crosses and emblems worked in with beautifully cut leaves and birds. (Figs. 66 and 67.) Outside, between each bay, wide buttresses project, of which the front--formed into a square pilaster--is enriched with panels of beautiful renaissance work, while the back part is fluted or panelled. From the top mouldings of these pilasters, rather higher than the capitals of the openings, elliptical arches with a vault behind are thrown across from pier to pier with excellent effect. Now, the base mouldings of these panelled pilasters either do not quite fit those of the fluted strips behind, or else are cut off against them, as are also the top mouldings of the fluted part; further, the fluted part runs up rather awkwardly into the vault, so that it seems reasonable to conjecture that these square renaissance pilasters and the arches may be an after-thought, added because it was found that the original buttresses were not quite strong enough for their work, and this too would account for the purely renaissance character of the carving on them, while the rest is almost entirely Gothic or Manoelino. The arches are carried diagonally across the corners, in a very picturesque manner, and they all help to keep out the direct sunlight and to throw most effective shadows. The parapet above these arches is carved with very pleasing renaissance details, and above each pier rise a niche and saint. The upper cloister is simpler than the lower. All the arches are round with a big splay on each side carved with four-leaved flowers. They are cusped at the top, and at the springing two smaller cusped arches are thrown across to a pinnacled shaft in the centre. The buttresses between them are covered with spiral grooves, and are all finished off with twisted pinnacles. Inside the pointed vault is much simpler than in the walks below. Here the tracery is very much less elaborate than in the Claustro Real at Batalha, but as scarcely a square inch of the whole cloister is left uncarved the effect is much more disturbed and so less pleasing. Beautiful though most of the ornament is, there is too much of it, and besides, the depressed shape of the lower arches is bad and ungraceful, and the attempt at tracery in the upper walks is more curious than successful. The chapter-house too, though a large and splendid room, would have looked better with a simpler vault and without the elliptical arches of the apse recesses. The refectory, without any other ornament than the bold ribs of its vaulted roof, and a dado of late tiles, is far more pleasing. Altogether, splendid as it is, Belem is far less pleasing, outside at least, than the contemporary work at Batalha or at Thomar, for, like the tower of São Vicente near by, it is wanting in those perfect proportions which more than richness of detail give charm to a building. Inside it is not so, and though many of the vaulting ribs might be criticised as useless [Illustration: FIG. 66. BELEM. CLOISTER.] [Illustration: FIG. 67. BELEM. LOWER CLOISTER.] and the whole vault as wanting in simplicity, yet there is no such impressive interior in Portugal and not many elsewhere. The very over-elaboration which spoils the cloister is only one of the results of all the wealth which flowed in from the East, and so, like the whole monastery, is a worthy memorial of all that had been done to further exploration from the time of Prince Henry, till his efforts were crowned with success by Vasco da Gama. [Sidenote: Conceição, Velha.] There can be little doubt that the transept front of the church of the Conceição Velha was also designed by João de Castilho. The church was built after 1520 on the site of a synagogue, and was almost entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1755. Only the transept front has survived, robbed of its cornice and cresting, and now framed in plain pilasters and crowned by a pediment. The two windows, very like those at Belem, have beautiful renaissance details and saints in niches on the jambs. The large door has a round arch with uprights at the sides rising to a horizontal crested moulding. Below, these uprights have a band of renaissance carving on the outer side, and in front a canopied niche with a well-modelled figure. Above they become semicircular and end in sphere-bearing spirelets. The great round arch is filled with two orders of mouldings, one a broad strip of arabesque, the other a series of kneeling angels below and of arabesque above. The actual openings are formed of two round-headed arches whose outer mouldings cross each other on the central jamb. Above them are two reversed semicircles, and then a great tympanum carved with a figure of Our Lady sheltering popes, bishops, and saints under her robe: a carving which seems to have lately taken the place of a large window. (Fig. 68.) As it now stands the front is not pleasing. It is too wide, and the great spreading pediment is very ugly. Of course it ought not to be judged by its present appearance, and yet it must be admitted that the windows are too large and come too near the ground, and that much of the detail is coarse. Still it is of interest if only because it is the only surviving building closely related to the church of Belem. Built perhaps to commemorate the expulsion of the Jews, it shared the fate of the Jesuits who instigated the expulsion, and was destroyed only a few years before they were driven from the country by the Marques de Pombal. CHAPTER XIV THE COMING OF THE FOREIGN ARTISTS If João de Castilho and his brother Diogo were really natives of one of the Basque provinces, they might rightly be included among the foreign artists who played such an important part in Portugal towards the end of Dom Manoel's reign and the beginning of that of his son, Dom João III. Yet the earlier work of João de Castilho at Thomar shows little trace of that renaissance influence which the foreigners, and especially the Frenchmen, were to do so much to introduce. [Sidenote: Santa Cruz, Coimbra.] A great house of the Canon Regular of St. Augustine had been founded at Coimbra by Dom Affonso Henriques for his friend São Theotonio in 1131. But with the passage of centuries the church and monastic building of Sta. Cruz had become dilapidated, and were no longer deemed worthy of so wealthy and important a body. So in 1502 Dom Manoel determined to rebuild them and to adorn the church, and it was for this adorning that he summoned so many sculptors in stone and in wood to his aid. The first architect of the church was Marcos Pires, to whom are due the cloister and the whole church except the west door, which was finished by his successor Diogo de Castilho with the help of Master Nicolas, a Frenchman. One Gregorio Lourenço seems to have been what would now be called master of the works, and from his letters to Dom Manoel we learn how the work was going on. After Dom Manoel's death in 1521 he writes to Dom João III., telling him what, of all the many things his father the late king had ordered, was already finished and what was still undone. The church consists of a nave of four bays, measuring some 105 feet by 39, with flanking chapels, the whole lined with eighteenth-century tiles, mostly blue and white. There are also a great choir gallery at the west end, a chancel, polygonal [Illustration: FIG. 68. LISBON. CONCEIÇÃO VELHA.] within but square outside, 54 feet long by 20 broad, with a seventeenth-century sacristy to the south, a cloister to the north, and chapels, one of which was the chapter-house, forming a kind of passage from sacristy to cloister behind the chancel. By 1518 the church must have been already well advanced, for in January of that year Gregorio Lourenço writes to Dom Manoel saying that 'the wall of the dormitory was shaken and therefore I have sent for "Pere Anes"--Pedro Annes had been master builder of the royal palace, now the university at Coimbra, and being older may have had more experience than Marcos Pires, the designer of the monastery--who had it shored up, and they say that after the vault of the cloister is finished and the wooden floors in it will be quite safe. Also six days ago came the master of the reredos from Seville and set to work at once to finish the great reredos, for which he has worked all the wood--he must surely have brought it with him from Seville--but the glazier has not yet come to finish the windows.' [Illustration: PLAN OF STA. CRUZ] On 22nd July following he writes again that all but one of the vaults of the cloister were finished--'and Marcos Pirez works well, and the master of the reredos has finished the tabernacle, and the "cadeiras" [that is probably, sedilia] and the bishop has come to see them and they are very good, and the master who is making the tombs of the kings is working at his job, and has already much stonework.' These tombs of the kings are the monuments of Dom Affonso Henriques on the north wall of the chancel and of Dom Sancho I. on the south. The two first kings of Portugal had originally been buried in front of the old church, and were now for the first time given monuments worthy of their importance in the history of their country. In 1521 Dom Manoel died, and next year Gregorio tells his successor what his father had ordered; after speaking of the pavement, the vault of São Theotonio's Chapel, the dormitory with its thirty beds and its fireplace, the refectory, the royal tombs and a great screen twenty-five palms, or about eighteen feet high, he comes to the pulpit--'This, Sir, which is finished, all who see it say, that in Spain there is no piece of stone of better workmanship, for this 20$000 have been paid,' leaving some money still due. He then speaks of the different reredoses, tombs of two priors, silver candlesticks, a great silver cross made by Eytor Gonsalves, a goldsmith of Lisbon, much other church plate, and then goes on to say that a lectern was ordered for the choir but was not made and was much needed, as was a silver monstrance, and that the monastery had no money to pay Christovam de Figueiredo for painting the great reredos of the high altar and those of the other chapels, 'and, Sir, it is necessary that they should be painted.' Besides making so many gifts to Sta. Cruz, Dom Manoel endowed it with many privileges. The priors were exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop, and had themselves complete control over their own dependent churches. All the canons were chaplains to the king, and after the university came back to Coimbra from Lisbon in 1539 Dom João III. made the priors perpetual chancellors.[135] By 1522 then the church must have been practically ready, though some carving still had to be done. Marcos Pires died in 1524 and was succeeded by Diogo de Castilho, and in a letter dated from Evora in that year the king orders a hundred gold cruzados to be paid to Diogo and to Master Nicolas[136] for the statues on the west door which were still wanting, and two years later in September another letter granted Diogo the privilege of riding on a mule.[137] The interest of the church itself is very inferior to that of the different pieces of church furniture, nearly all the work of foreigners, with which it was adorned, and of which some, though not all, survive to the present day. Inside there is nothing very remarkable in the structure of the church except the fine vaulting with its many moulded ribs, the large windows with their broken Manoelino heads, and the choir gallery which occupies nearly two bays at the west end. Vaulted underneath, it opens to the church by a large elliptical arch which springs from jambs ornamented with beautiful candelabrum shafts. Of the outside little is to be seen except the west front, one of the least successful designs of that period. In the centre--now partly blocked up by eighteenth-century additions, and sunk several feet below the street--is a great moulded arch, about eighteen feet across and once divided into two by a central jamb bearing a figure of Our Lord, whence the door was called 'Portal da Majestade'; above the arch a large round-headed window, deeply recessed, lights the choir gallery, and between it and the top of the arch are three renaissance niches, divided by pilasters, and containing three figures--doubtless some of those for which Diogo de Castilho and Master Nicolas were paid one hundred cruzados in 1524. The window with its mouldings is much narrower than the door, and is joined to the tall pinnacles which rise to the right and left of the great opening by Gothic flying buttresses. Between the side pinnacles and the central mass of the window a curious rounded and bent shaft rises from the hood-mould of the door to end in a semi-classic column between two niches, and from the shaft there grow out two branches to support the corbels on which the niche statues stand. All this is very like the great south door of the Jeronymite monastery at Belem, the work of Diogo's brother João de Castilho; both have a wide door below with a narrower window above, surrounded by a mass of pinnacles and statues, but here the lower door is far too wide, and the upper window too small, and besides the wall is set back a foot or two immediately on each side of the window so that the surface is more broken up. Again, instead of the whole rising up with a great pinnacled niche to pierce the cornice and to dominate parapet and cresting, the drip-mould of the window only gives a few ugly twists, and leaves a blank space between the window head and the straight line of the cornice and parapet; a line in no way improved by the tall rustic cross or the four broken pinnacles which rise above it. Straight crested parapets also crown the wall where it is set back, but at the sides the two corners grow into eight-sided turrets ending in low crocketed stone roofs. Of course the whole front has suffered much from the raising of the street level, but it can never have been beautiful, for the setting back of part of the wall looks meaningless, and the turrets are too small for towers and yet far too large for angle pinnacles. (Fig. 69.) Although the soft stone is terribly perished, greater praise can be given to the smaller details, especially to the figures, which show traces of considerable vigour and skill. If the church shows that Marcos Pires was not a great architect, the cloister still more marks his inferiority to the Fernandes or to João de Castilho, though with its central fountain and its garden it is eminently picturesque. Part of it is now, and probably all once was, of two stories. The buttresses are picturesque, polygonal below, a cluster of rounded shafts above, and are carried up in front of the upper cloister to end in a large cross. All the openings have segmental pointed heads with rather poor mouldings. Each is subdivided into two lights with segmental round heads, supporting a vesica-like opening. All the shafts are round, with round moulded bases and round Manoelino caps. The central shaft has a ring moulding half-way up, and all, including the flat arches and the vesicae, are either covered with leaves, or are twisted into ropes, but without any of that wonderful delicacy which is so striking at Batalha. Across one corner a vault has been thrown covering a fountain, and though elsewhere the ribs are plainly moulded, here they are covered with leaf carving, and altogether make this north-east corner the most picturesque part of the whole cloister. (Fig. 70.) The upper walk with its roof of wood is much simpler, there being three flat arches to each bay upheld by short round shafts. Now to turn from the church itself and its native builders to the beautiful furniture provided for it by foreign skill. Much of it has vanished. The church plate when it became unfashionable was sent to Gôa, the great metal screen made by Antonius Fernandes is gone, and so is the reredos carved by a master from Seville and painted by Christovão de Figueredo. There still hang on the wall of the sacristy two or three [Illustration: FIG. 69. COIMBRA. WEST FRONT OF STA. CRUZ.] [Illustration: FIG. 70. COIMBRA. CLOISTER OF STA. CRUZ.] pictures which may have formed part of this reredos. They are high up and very dirty, but seem to have considerable merit, especially one of 'Pentecost' which is signed 'Velascus.' The 'Pentecost' still has for its frame some pieces of beautiful early renaissance moulding not unlike what may still be seen on the reredos at Funchal, and it is just the size of a panel for a large reredos. Of course 'Velascus' is not Grão Vasco, though the name is the same, nor can he be Christovão de Figueredo, but perhaps the painting spoken of by Gregorio Lourenço as done by Christovão may only have been of the framing and not necessarily of the panels. These are gone, but there are still left the royal tombs, the choir stalls, the pulpit, and three beautiful carved altar-pieces in the cloister. The royal tombs are both practically alike. In each the king lies under a great round arch, on a high altar-tomb, on whose front, under an egg and tongue moulding a large scroll bearing an inscription is upheld by winged children. The arch is divided into three bands of carving, one--the widest--carved with early renaissance designs, the next which is also carried down the jambs, with very rich Gothic foliage, and the outermost with more leaves. The back of each tomb is divided into three by tall Gothic pinnacles, and contains three statues on elaborate corbels and under very intricate canopies, of which the central rises in a spire to the top of the arch. On the jambs, under the renaissance band of carving, are two statues one above the other on Gothic corbels but under renaissance canopies. Beyond the arch great piers rise up with three faces separated by Gothic pinnacles. On each face there is at the bottom--above the interpenetrating bases--a classic medallion encompassed by Manoelino twisting stems and leaves, and higher up two statues one above the other. Of these the lower stands on a Gothic corbel under a renaissance canopy, and the upper, standing on the canopy, has over it another tall canopy Gothic in style. Higher up the piers rise up to the vault with many pinnacles and buttresses, and between them, above the arch, are other figures in niches and two angels holding the royal arms. The design of the whole is still very Manoelino, and therefore the master of the royal tombs spoken of by Gregorio Lourenço was probably a Portuguese, but the skill shown in modelling the figures and the renaissance details are something quite new. (Fig. 71.) Many Frenchmen are known to have worked in Santa Cruz. One, Master Nicolas, has been met already working at Belem and at the west door here, and others--Longuim, Philipo Uduarte, and finally João de Ruão (Jean de Rouen)--are spoken of as having worked at the tombs. Though the figures are good with well-modelled draperies, their faces, or those of most of them, are rather expressionless, and some of them look too short--all indeed being less successful than those on the pulpit, the work of João de Ruão. It is likely then that the figures are mostly the work of the lesser known men and not of Master Nicolas or of João de Ruão, though João, who came later to Portugal, may have been responsible for some of the renaissance canopies which are not at all unlike some of his work on the pulpit. The pulpit projects from the north wall of the church between two of the chapels. In shape it is a half-octagon set diagonally, and is upheld by circular corbelling. It was ready by the time Gregorio Lourenço wrote to Dom João III. in 1522, but still wanted a suitable finishing to its door. This Gregorio urged Dom João to add, but it was never done, and now the entrance is only framed by a simple classic architrave. Now Georges d'Amboise, the second archbishop of that name to hold the see of Rouen, began the beautiful tomb, on which he and his uncle kneel in prayer, in the year 1520, and the pulpit at Coimbra was finished before March 1522. Among the workmen employed on this tomb a Jean de Rouen is mentioned, but he left in 1521. The detail of the tomb at Rouen and that of the pulpit here are alike in their exceeding fineness and beauty, and a man thought worthy of taking part in the carving of the tomb might well be able to carry out the pulpit; besides, on it are cut initials or signs which have been read as J.R.[138] The J or I is distinct, the R much less so, but the carver of the pulpit was certainly a Frenchman well acquainted with the work of the French renaissance. It may therefore be accepted with perhaps some likelihood, that the Jean de Rouen who left Normandy in 1521, came then to Coimbra, carved this pulpit, and is the same who as João de Ruão is mentioned in later documents as [Illustration: FIG. 71. COIMBRA, STA. CRUZ. TOMB OF D. SANCHO I.] [Illustration: FIG. 72. COIMBRA. STA. CRUZ. PULPIT.] still working for Santa Cruz, where he signed a discharge as late as 1549.[139] The whole pulpit is but small, not more than about five feet high including the corbelled support, and all carved with a minuteness and delicacy not to be surpassed and scarcely to be equalled by such a work as the tomb at Rouen. At the top is a finely moulded cornice enriched with winged heads, tiny egg and tongue and other carving. Below on each of the four sides are niches whose shell tops rest on small pilasters all covered with the finest ornaments, and in each niche sits a Father of the Western Church, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and St. Ambrose. Their feet rest on slightly projecting bases, on the front of each of which is a small panel measuring about four inches by two carved with tiny figures and scenes in slight relief. On the shell heads, which project a little in the centre, there stand, above St. Augustine three minute figures of boys with wreaths, the figures being about three or four inches high, above St. Jerome sit two others, with masks hanging from their arms, upholding a shield and a cross of the Order of Christ. Those above St. Gregory support a sphere, and above St. Ambrose one stands alone with a long-necked bird on each side. At each angle two figures, one above the other, each about eight inches high, stand under canopies the delicacy of whose carving could scarcely be surpassed in ivory. They represent, above, Religion with Faith, Hope, and Charity, and below, four prophets. The corbelled support is made up of a great many different mouldings, most of them enriched in different ways. Near the top under the angles of the pulpit are beautiful cherubs' heads. About half-way down creatures with wings and human heads capped with winged helmets grow out of a mass of flat carving, and at the very bottom is a kind of winged dragon whose five heads stretch up across the lower mouldings. (Fig. 72.) Altogether the pulpit is well worthy of the praise given it by Gregorio; there may be more elaborate pieces of carving in Spain, but scarcely one so beautiful in design and in execution, and indeed it may almost be doubted whether France itself can produce a finer piece of work. The figure sculpture is worthy of the best French artists, the whole design is elaborate, but not too much so, considering the smallness of the scale, and the execution is such as could only have been carried out in alabaster or the finest limestone, such as that found at Ançã not far off, and used at Coimbra for all delicate work.[140] In the discharge signed by João de Ruão in 1549 reredoses are spoken of as worked by him. There is nothing in the document to show whether these are the three great pieces of sculpture in the cloisters each of which must once have been meant for a reredos. Unfortunately in the seventeenth century they were walled up, and were only restored to view not many years ago, and though much destroyed, enough survives to show that they were once worthy of the pulpit. They represent 'Christ shown to the people by Pilate,' the 'Bearing of the Cross,' and the 'Entombment.' In each there is at the bottom a shelf narrower than the carving above, and uniting the two, a broad band wider at the top than at the bottom, most exquisitely carved in very slight relief, with lovely early renaissance scrolls, and with winged boys holding shields or medallions in the centre. Above is a large square framework, flanked at the sides by tall candelabrum shafts on corbels, and finished at the top by a moulding or, above the 'Bearing of the Cross,' by a crested entablature, with beautifully carved frieze. Within this framework the stone is cut back with sloping sides, carved with architectural detail, arches, doors, entablatures in perspective. At the top is a panelled canopy. In the 'Ecce Homo' on the left is a flight of steps leading up to the judgment seat of Pilate, who sits under a large arch, with Our Lord and a soldier on his right. The other half of the composition has a large arch in the background, and in front a crowd of people some of whom are seen coming through the opening in the sloping side. In the 'Bearing of the Cross' the background is taken up by the walls and towers of Jerusalem. Our Lord with a great T-shaped cross is in the centre, with St. Veronica on the right and a great crowd of people behind, while other persons look out of the perspective arches at the side. (Fig. 73.) In all, especially perhaps in the 'Ecce Homo,' the composition is good, and the modelling of the figures excellent. Unfortunately the faces are much decayed and perhaps the figures may be rather wanting in repose, and yet even in their decay they are very beautiful pieces of work, and show that João de Ruão--if he it was who carved them--was as able to design a large composition as to carve a small pulpit. Under the 'Ecce Homo,' in a tablet held by winged boys who grow out of the ends of the scrolls, there is a date which seems to read 1550. The 'Quitaçam' was signed on the 11th of September 1549, and if 1550 is the date here carved it may show when the work was finally completed.[141] There once stood in the refectory a terra cotta group of the 'Last Supper.' Now nothing is left but a few fragments in the Museum, but there too the figures of the apostles were well modelled and well executed. Of the other works ordered by Dom Manoel the only one which still remains are the splendid stalls in the western choir gallery. These in two tiers of seats run round the three walls of the gallery except where interrupted by the large west window. They can hardly be the 'cadeiras' or seats mentioned in Gregorio's letter of July 1518, for it is surely impossible that they should have been begun in January and finished in July however active the Seville master may have been, and judging from their carving they seem more Flemish than Spanish, and we know that Flemings had been working not very long before on the cathedral reredos. The lower tier of seats has Gothic panelling below, good Miserere seats, arms, on each of which sits a monster, and on the top between each and supporting the book-board of the upper row, small figures of men, with bowed backs, beggars, pilgrims, men and women all most beautifully carved. The panels behind the upper tier are divided by twisted Manoelino shafts bearing Gothic pinnacles, and the upper part of each panel is enriched with deeply undercut leaves and finials surrounding armillary spheres. Above the panels, except over the end stalls where sat the Dom Prior and the other dignitaries, and which have higher canopies, there runs a continuous canopy panelled with Gothic quatrefoils, and having in front a fringe of interlacing cusps. Between this and the cresting is a beautiful carved cornice of leaves and of crosses of the Order of Christ, and the cresting itself is formed by a number of carved scenes, cities, forests, ships, separated by saintly figures and surmounted by a carved band from which grow up great curling leaves and finials. These scenes are supposed to represent the great discoveries of Vasco da Gama and of Pedro Alvares Cabral in India and in Brazil, but if this is really so the carvers must have been left to their own imagination, for the towns do not look particularly Indian, nor do the forests suggest the tropical luxuriance of Brazil: perhaps the small three-masted ships alone, with their high bows and stern, represent the reality. (Fig. 74.) As a whole the design is entirely Gothic, only at the ends of each row of stalls is there anything else, and there the panels are carved with renaissance arabesque, which, being gilt like all the other carving, stands out well from the dark brown background. These are almost the only mediæval stalls left in the country. Those at Thomar were burnt by the French, those in the Carmo at Lisbon destroyed by the earthquake, and those at Alcobaça have disappeared. Only at Funchal are there stalls of the same date, for those at Vizeu seem rather later and are certainly poorer, their chief interest now being derived from the old Chinese stamped paper with which their panels are covered. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Sé Velha.] If the stalls at Santa Cruz are the only examples of this period still left on the mainland, the Sé Velha possesses the only great mediæval reredos. In Spain great structures are found in almost every cathedral rising above the altar to the vault in tier upon tier of niche and panel. Richly gilded, with fine paintings on the panels, with delicate Gothic pinnacles and tabernacle work, they and the metal screens which half hide them do much to make Spanish churches the most interesting in the world. Unfortunately in Portugal the bad taste of the eighteenth century has replaced all those that may have existed by great and heavy erections of elaborately carved wood. All covered with gold, the Corinthian columns, twisted and wreathed with vines, the overloaded arches and elaborate entablatures are now often sadly out of place in some old interior, and make one grieve the more over the loss of the simpler or more appropriate reredos which came before them. Dom Jorge d'Almeida held the see of Coimbra and the countship of Arganil--for the bishops are always counts of [Illustration: FIG. 73. COIMBRA. STA. CRUZ. REREDOS IN CLOISTER.] [Illustration: FIG. 74. COIMBRA. STALLS, STA. CRUZ.] Arganil--from 1481 till 1543, when he died at the age of eighty-five; during these sixty-two years he did much to beautify his church, and of these additions the oldest is the reredos put up in 1508. This we learn from a 'quitaçã' or discharge granted in that year to 'Mestre Vlimer framengo, ora estante nesta cidada, e seu Parceiro João Dipri,' that is, to 'Master Vlimer a Fleming, now in this city, and to his partner John of Ypres.' The reredos stands well back in the central apse; it is divided into five upright parts, of which that in the centre is twice as wide as any of the others, while the outermost with the strips of panelling and carving which come beyond them are canted, following the line of the apse wall. Across these five upright divisions and in a straight line is thrown a great flattened trefoil arch joined to the back with Gothic vaulting. In the middle over the large division it is fringed with the intersecting circles of curved branches, while from the top to the blue-painted apse vault with its gilded ribs and stars a forest of pinnacles, arches, twisting and intertwining branches and leaves rises high above the bishop's arms and mitre and the two angels who uphold them. Below the arch the five parts are separated by pinnacle rising above pinnacle. At the bottom under long canopies of extraordinary elaboration are scenes in high relief. Above them in the middle the apostles watch the Assumption of the Virgin; saints stand in the other divisions, one in each, and over their heads are immense canopies rising across a richly cusped background right up to the vaulting of the arch. Though not so high, the canopy over the Virgin is far more intricate as it forms a great curve made up of seven little cusped arches with innumerable pinnacles and spires. (Fig. 75.) Being the work of Flemings, the reredos is naturally full of that exuberant Flemish detail which may be seen in a Belgian town-hall or in the work of an early Flemish painter; and if the stalls at Santa Cruz are not by this same Master Vlimer, the intertwining branches on the cresting and the sharply carved leaves on the panels show that he had followers or pupils. Like most Flemish productions, the reredos is wanting in grace. Though it throws a fine deep shadow the great arch is very ugly in shape and the great canopies are far too large, and yet the mass of gold, well lit by the windows of the lantern and rising to the dim blue vault, makes a singularly fine ending to the old and solemn church. More important than the reredos in the art history of the country are some other changes made by Dom Jorge, which show that the Frenchmen working at Santa Cruz were soon employed elsewhere. On the north side of the nave a door leads out of the church, and this these Frenchmen entirely transformed. At the bottom, between two much decayed Corinthian pilasters, is the door reached by a flight of steps. The arch is of several orders, one supported by thin columns, one by square fluted pilasters. Within these, at right angles to each other, are broad faces carved and resting on piers at whose corners are tiny round columns, in two stories, with carved reliefs between the upper pair. In the tympanum is a beautiful Madonna and Child, and two round medallions with heads adorn the spandrils above the arch. Beyond each pilaster is a canted side joining the porch to the wall and having a large niche and figure near the top. The whole surface has been covered with exquisite arabesques like those below the reredoses in the cloister at Santa Cruz, but they have now almost entirely perished. Above the entablature a second story rises forming a sort of portico. At the corners are square fluted Corinthian pilasters; between them in front runs a balustrading, divided into three by the pedestals of two slender columns, Corinthian also, and there are others next the pilasters. The entablature has been most delicate, with the finest wreaths carved on the frieze. Over the canted sides are built small round-domed turrets. Above this the third story reaches nearly up to the top of the wall. In the middle is an arch resting on slender columns and supporting a pediment; on either side are square niches with columns at the sides, beyond them fan-shaped semicircles, and at the corners vases. Behind this there rise to the top of the battlements four panelled Doric pilasters with cornice above, and two deep round-headed niches with figures, one on each side. Inside the church are pilasters and a wealth of delicate relief. Perhaps the whole may not be much more fortunate than most attempts to build up a tall composition by piling columns one above the other, and the top part is certainly too heavy [Illustration: FIG. 75. COIMBRA. SÉ VELHA. REREDOS.] [Illustration: FIG. 76. COIMBRA. SÉ VELHA. CHAPEL OF SÃO PEDRO.] for what comes below it. Yet the details are or were beautiful, and the portico above the door most graceful and pleasing, though, being unfortunately on the north side, the effect is lost of the deep shadow the sun would have thrown and the delicacy of the mouldings almost wasted. Less important are the changes made to the north transept door. Fluted pilasters and Corinthian columns were inserted below, a medallion with a figure cut on the tympanum, and small coupled shafts resting on the Doric capitals of the pilasters built to uphold the entablature. Inside the most important, as well as the most beautiful addition, was a reredos built by Dom Jorge as his monument in the chapel of São Pedro, the small apse to the north of the high altar. Just above the altar table--which is of stone supported on one central shaft--are three panels filled in high relief with sculptured scenes from the life of St. Peter, the central and widest panel representing his martyrdom, while on the uprights between them are small figures under canopies. The upper and larger part is arranged somewhat like a Roman triumphal arch. There are three arches, one larger and higher in the middle, with a lower and narrower one on each side, separated by most beautiful tall candelabrum shafts with very delicate half-Ionic capitals. In the centre, in front of the representation of some town, probably Rome, is Our Lord bearing His Cross and St. Peter kneeling at His feet--no doubt the well-known legend 'Domine quo vadis?' In the side arches stand two figures with books: one is St. Paul with a sword, and the other probably St. Peter himself. Above each of the side arches there is a small balustraded loggia, scarcely eighteen inches high, in each of which are two figures, talking, all marvellously lifelike. Beautiful carvings enrich the friezes everywhere, and small heads in medallions all the spandrils. At the top, in a hollow circle upheld by carved supports, crowned and bearing an orb in His left hand, is God the Father Himself. (Fig. 76.) Less elaborate than the pulpit and less pictorial than the altar-pieces in the cloister of Santa Cruz, this reredos is one of the most successful of all the French works at Coimbra, and its beauty is enhanced by the successful lighting through a large window cut on purpose at the side, and by the beautiful tiles--probably contemporary--with which the chapel is lined. In front of the altar lies Dom Jorge d'Almeida, under a flat stone, bearing his arms, and this inscription in Latin, 'Here lies Jorge d'Almeida by the goodness of the divine power bishop and count. He lived eighty-five years, and died eight days before the Kalends of Sextillis A.D. 1543, having held both dignities sixty-two years.' CHAPTER XV THE INFLUENCE OF THE FOREIGNER Very quickly the fame of these French workers spread across the country, and they or their pupils were employed to design tombs, altar-pieces, or chapels outside of Coimbra. Perhaps the da Silvas, lords of Vagos, were among the very first to employ them, and in their chapel of São Marcos, some eight or nine miles from Coimbra, more than one example of their handiwork may still be seen. [Sidenote: Tomb in Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes, Thomar.] However, before visiting São Marcos mention must be made of two tombs, one in Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at Thomar, and one in the Graça church at Santarem. Both are exceedingly French in design, and both were erected not long after the coming of the foreigners. The tomb in Thomar is the older. It is that of Diogo Pinheiro, the first bishop of Funchal--which he never visited--who died in 1525. No doubt the monument was put up soon after. It is placed rather high on the north wall of the chancel; at the very bottom is a moulding enriched with egg and tongue, separated by a plain frieze--crossed by a shield with the bishop's arms--from the plinth and from the pedestals of the side shafts and their supporting mouldings. On the plinth under a round arched recess stands a sarcophagus with a tablet in front bearing the date A.D. 1525, while behind in an elegant shell-topped niche is a figure kneeling on a beautiful corbel. The front of this arch is adorned with cherubs' heads, the jambs with arabesques, and heads look out of circles in the spandrils. At the sides are Corinthian pilasters, and in front of them beautiful candelabrum shafts. The cornice with a well-carved frieze is simple, and in the pediment are again carved Dom Diogo's arms, surmounted by his bishop's hat. At the ends are vase-shaped finials, and another supported by dragons rises from the pediment. (Fig. 77.) This monument is indeed one of the most pleasing pieces of renaissance work in existence, and one would be tempted to attribute it to João de Castilho were it not that it is more French than any of his work, and that in 1525 he can hardly have come back to Thomar, where the Claustro da Micha, the first of the new additions, was only begun in 1528. It will be safer then to attribute it to one of the Coimbra Frenchmen. [Sidenote: Tomb in Graça, Santarem.] The same must be said of the tomb in the Graça church at Santarem. It was built in 1532 in honour of three men already long dead--Pero Carreiro, Gonzalo Gil Barbosa his son-in-law, and Francisco Barbosa his grandson. The design is like that of Bishop Pinheiro's monument, omitting all beneath the plinth, except that the back is plain, the arch elliptical, and the pediment small and round. The coffer has a long inscription,[142] the jambs and arch are covered with arabesques, the side shafts are taller and even more elegant than at Thomar, and in the round pediment is a coat of arms, and on one side the head of a young man wearing a helmet, and on the other the splendidly modelled head of an old man; though much less pleasing as a whole, this head for excellent realism is better than anything found on the bishop's tomb. If we cannot tell which Frenchman designed these tombs, we know the name of one who worked for the da Silvas at São Marcos, and we can also see there the work of some of their pupils and successors. [Sidenote: São Marcos.] São Marcos, which lies about two miles to the north of the road leading from Coimbra through Tentugal to Figueira de Foz at the mouth of the Mondego, is now unfortunately much ruined. Nothing remains complete but the church, for the monastic buildings were all burned not so long ago by some peasantry to injure the landlord to whom they belonged, and with them perished many a fine piece of carving. The da Silvas had long had here a manor-house with a chapel, and in 1452 Dona Brites de Menezes, the wife of Ayres Gomes da Silva, the fourth lord of Vagos, founded a small Jeronymite monastery. Of her chapel, designed by [Illustration: FIG. 77. THOMAR. STA. MARIA DOS OLIVAES. TOMB OF BP. OF FUNCHAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 78. SÃO MARCOS. TOMB IN CHANCEL. _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] Gil de Souza, little now remains, for the chancel was rebuilt in the next century and the nave in the seventeenth. Only the tomb of Dona Brites' second son, Fernão Telles de Menezes, still survives, for the west door, with a cusped arch, beautifully undercut foliage, and knotted shafts at the side, was added in 1570. The tomb of Fernão Telles, which was erected about the year 1471, is still quite Gothic. In the wall there opens a large pointed and cusped arch, within which at the top there hangs a small tent which, passing through a ring, turns into a great stone curtain upheld by hairy wild men. Inside this curtain Dom Fernão lies in armour on a tomb whose front is covered with beautifully carved foliage, and which has a cornice of roses. On it are three coats of arms, Dom Fernão's, those of his wife, Maria de Vilhena, and between them his and hers quartered. Most of the tombs, five in all, are found in the chancel which was rebuilt by Ayres da Silva, fifth lord of Vagos, the grandson of Dona Brites, in 1522 and 1523. These are, on the north side, first, at the east end, Dona Brites herself, then her son João da Silva in the middle, and her grandson Ayres at the west, the tombs of Ayres and his father being practically identical. Opposite Dona Brites lies the second count of Aveiras, who died in 1672 and whose tomb is without interest, and opposite Ayres, his son João da Silva, sixth lord of Vagos, who died in 1559. At the east end is a great reredos given by Ayres and containing figures of himself and of his wife Dona Guiomar de Castro, while opening from the north side of the nave is a beautiful domed chapel built by Dona Antonia de Vilhena as a tomb-house for her husband, Diogo da Silva, who died in 1556. In it also lies his elder brother Lourenço, seventh lord of Vagos. The chancel, which is of two bays, one wide, and one to the east narrower, has a low vault with many well-moulded ribs springing from large corbels, some of which are Manoelino, while others have on them shields and figures of the renaissance. It still retains an original window on each side, small, round-headed, with a band of beautiful renaissance carving on the splay. Dona Brites lies on a plain tomb in front of which there is a long inscription. Above her rises a round arch set in a square frame. Large flowers like Tudor roses are cut on the spandrils, the ogee hood-mould is enriched with huge wonderfully undercut curly crockets, all Gothic, but the band between the two mouldings of the arch is carved with renaissance arabesques. The tomb of Ayres himself and that of his father João are much more elaborate. Each, lying like Dona Brites on an altar-tomb, is clad in full armour. In front are semi-classic mouldings at the top and bottom, and between them a tablet held by cherubs, that on Dom João's bearing a long inscription, while Dom Ayres' has been left blank. The arches over the recumbent figures are slightly elliptical, and like that of the foundress's tomb each is enriched by a band of renaissance carving, but with classic mouldings outside, instead of a simple round, and with a rich fringe of leafy cusps within. At the ends and between the tombs are square buttresses or pilasters ornamented on each face with renaissance corbels and canopies. The background of each recess is covered with delicate flowing leaves in very slight relief, and has in the centre a niche, with rustic shafts and elaborate Gothic base and canopy under which stands a figure of Our Lord holding an orb in His left hand and blessing with His right. The buttresses, on which stand curious vase-shaped finials, are joined by a straight moulded cornice, above which rises a rounded pediment floriated on the outer side. From the pediment there stands out a helmet whose mantling entirely covers the flat surface, and below it hangs a shield, charged with the da Silva arms, a lion rampant. (Fig. 78.) Here, as in the royal tombs at Coimbra, Manoelino and renaissance forms have been used together, but here the renaissance largely predominates, for even the cusping is not Gothic, although, as is but natural, the general design still is after the older style. Though very elaborate, these tombs cannot be called quite satisfactory. The figure sculpture is poor, and it is only the arabesques which show skill in execution. Probably then it was the work not of one of the well-known Frenchmen, but of one of their pupils.[143] Raczynski[144] thought that here in São Marcos he had found some works of Sansovino: a battlepiece in relief, a statue of St. Mark, and the reredos. The first two are gone, but if they were as unlike Italian work as is the reredos, one may be sure that they were not by him. A recently found document[145] confirms what its appearance suggests, namely, that it is French. It was in fact the work of Mestre Nicolas, the Nicolas Chantranez who worked first at Belem and then on the Portal da Magestade at Santa Cruz, and who carved an altar-piece in the Pena chapel at Cintra. Though much larger in general design, it is not altogether unlike the altar-piece in the Sé Velha. It is divided into two stories. In the lower are four divisions, with a small tabernacle in the middle, and in each division, which has either a curly broken pediment, or a shell at its head, are sculptured scenes from the life of St. Jerome. The upper part contains only three divisions, one broad under an arch in the centre, and one narrower and lower on each side. As in the cathedral, slim candelabrum shafts stand between each division and at the ends, but the entablatures are less refined, and the sharp pediments at the two sides are unpleasing, as is the small round one and the vases at the top. The large central arch is filled with a very spirited carving of the 'Deposition.' In front of the three crosses which rise behind with the thieves still hanging to the two at the sides, is a group of people--officials on horseback on the left, and weeping women on the right. In the division to the left kneels Ayres himself presented by St. Jerome, and in the other on the right Dona Guiomar de Castro, his wife, presented by St. Luke. Throughout all the figure sculpture is excellent, as good as anything at Coimbra, but compared with the reredos in the Sé Velha, the architecture is poor in the extreme: the central division is too large, and the different levels of the cornice, rendered necessary of course by the shape of the vault, is most unpleasing. No one, however, can now judge of the true effect, as it has all been carefully and hideously painted with the brightest of colours. (Fig. 79.) Being architecturally so inferior to the Sé Velha reredos, it is scarcely possible that they should be by the same hand, and therefore it seems likely that both the work in St. Peter's chapel and the pulpit in Santa Cruz may have been executed by the same man, namely by João de Ruão.[146] [Sidenote: Pena Chapel, Cintra.] Leaving São Marcos for a minute to finish with the works of Nicolas Chantranez, we turn to the small chapel of Nossa Senhora da Pena, founded by Dom Manoel in 1503 as a cell of the Jeronymite monastery at Belem. Here in 1532 his son João III. dedicated a reredos of alabaster and black marble as a thankoffering for the birth of a son.[147] Like Nicolas' work at São Marcos the altar piece is full of exquisite carving, more beautiful than in his older work. In the large central niche, with its fringe of cusps, is the 'Entombment,' where Our Lord is being laid by angels in a beautiful sarcophagus. Above this niche sit the Virgin and Child, on the left are the Annunciation above and the Birth at Bethlehem below, and on the right the Visit of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt. Nothing can exceed the delicacy of these alabaster carvings or of the beautiful little reliefs that form the pradella. Many of the little columns too are beautifully wrought, with good capitals and exquisitely worked drums, and yet, though the separate details may be and are fine, the whole is even more unsatisfactory than is his altar-piece at São Marcos, and one has to look closely and carefully to see its beauties. As the one at São Marcos is spoiled by paint, this one is spoiled by the use of different-coloured marble; besides, the different parts are even worse put together. There is no repose anywhere, for the little columns are all different, and the bad effect is increased by the way the different entablatures are broken out over the many projections. [Sidenote: São Marcos.] Interesting and even beautiful as are the tombs on the north side of the chancel of São Marcos, the chapel dos Reis Magos is even more important historically. This chapel, as stated above, was built by Dona Antonia de Vilhena in 1556 as a monument to her husband. Dona Antonia was in her time noted for her devotion to her husband's memory, and for her patriotism in that she sent her six sons to fight in Morocco, from whence three never returned. Her brother-in-law, Lourenço da Silva, also, who lies on the east side of the same chapel, fell in Africa in the fatal battle of Alcacer-Quebir in 1578, where Portugal lost her king and soon after her independence. The chapel is entered from the nave by a large arch enriched in front with beautiful cherubs' heads and wreaths of flowers, and on the under side with coffered panels. This arch springs from a beautifully modelled entablature borne on either side by a Corinthian pilaster, panelled and carved, and by a column fluted above, and wreathed with hanging fruits and flowers below, while similar arches form recesses on the three remaining sides of the chapel, one--to the north--containing the altar, and the other two the tombs of Diogo and of Lourenço da Silva. On the nave side, outside the columns, there stands on either side--placed like the columns on a high pedestal--a pilaster, panelled and carved with exquisite arabesques. These pilasters have no capitals, but instead well-moulded corbels, carved with griffin heads, uphold the entablature, and, by a happy innovation, on the projection thus formed are pedestals bearing short Corinthian columns. These support the main entablature whose cornice and frieze are enriched, the one with egg and tongue and with dentils, and the other with strapwork and with leaves. In the spandrils above the arch are medallions surrounding the heads of St. Peter and of St. Paul, St. Peter being especially expressive. Inside, the background of each tomb recess is covered with strapwork, surrounding in one case an open and in another a blank window, but unfortunately the reredos representing the Visit of the Magi is gone, and its place taken by a very poor picture of Our Lady of Lourdes. The pendentives with their cherub heads are carried by corbels in the corners, and the dome is divided by bold ribs, themselves enriched with carving, into panels filled with strapwork. (Fig. 80.) This chapel then is of great interest, not only because of the real beauty of its details but also because it was the first built of a type which was repeated more than once elsewhere, as, for instance, at Marceana near Alemquer, on the Tagus, and in the church of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos at Montemor-o-Velho, not far from São Marcos. Of the chapels at Montemor one at least was built by the same family, and in another where the reredos--a very fine piece of carving--represents a Pietà, small angels are seen to weep as they look from openings high up at the sides. Perhaps the most successful feature of the design is the happy way in which corbels take the place of capitals on the lower pilasters of the front. By this expedient it was possible to keep the upper column short without having to compare its proportions with those of the pilaster below, and also by projecting these columns to give the upper part an importance and an emphasis it would not otherwise have had. There is no record of who designed this or the similar chapels, but by 1556 enough time had passed since the coming of the French for native pupils to have learned much from them. There is in the design something which seems to show that it is not from the hand of a Frenchman, but from that of some one who had learned much from Master Nicolas or from João de Ruão, but who had also learned something from elsewhere. While the smaller details remain partly French, the dome with its bold ribs suggests Italy, and it is known that Dom Manoel, and after him Dom João, sent young men to Italy for study. In any case the result is something neither Italian nor French. Even more Italian is the tomb of Dona Antonia's father-in-law, João da Silva, sixth lord of Vagos, erected in 1559 and probably by the same sculptor. João da Silva lies in armour under a round arch carved with flowers and cherubs. In front of his tomb is a long inscription on a tablet held by beautifully modelled boys. On each side of the arch is a Corinthian pilaster, panelled and carved below and having at the top a shallow niche in which stand saints. On the entablature, enriched with medallions and strapwork, is a frame supported by boys and containing the da Silva arms. But the most interesting and beautiful part of the monument is the back, above the effigy. Here, in the upper part, is a shallow recess flanked by corbel-carried pilasters, and containing a relief of the Assumption of the Virgin. Now, the execution of the Virgin and of the small angels who bear her up may not be of the best, but the character of the whole design is quite Italian, and could only have been carved by some one who knew Italian work. On either side of this recess are round-headed niches containing saints, while boys sit in the spandrils above the arch. Any one seeing this tomb will be at once struck with the Italian character of the design, especially perhaps with the boys who hold the tablet and with those who sit in the spandrils.[148] [Illustration: FIG. 79. SÃO MARCOS. CHANCEL.] [Illustration: FIG. 80. SÃO MARCOS. CHAPEL OF THE "REYES MAGOS." _From a photograph by E. Biel & Co., Oporto._] Even without leaving their country, Portuguese designers would already have had no great difficulty in finding pieces of real Italian work. Not to speak of the white marble door in the old palace of Cintra, possibly the work of Sansovino himself, with its simple mouldings and the beautiful detail of its architrave, there exist at Evora two doorways originally belonging to the church of São Domingos, which must either be the work of Italians or of some man who knew Italy. (Fig. 81.) [Sidenote: Evora, São Domingos.] Built of white marble from Estremoz and dating from about 1530, the panelled jambs have moulded caps on which rests the arch. Like the jambs, the arch has a splay which is divided into small panels. Above in the spandrils are ribboned circles enclosing well-carved heads. On either side are pilasters with Corinthian capitals of the earlier Italian kind. The entablature is moulded only, and instead of a pediment two curves lead up to a horizontal moulding supporting a shell, and above it a cherub's head. Such real Italian doors, which would look quite at home in Genoa, seem almost unique, but there are many examples of work which, like the tomb and the chapel at São Marcos, seem to have been influenced not only by the French school at Coimbra, but also by Italian work. [Sidenote: Portalegre.] [Sidenote: Tavira.] [Sidenote: Lagos.] Not very far from Evora in Portalegre, where a bishop's see was founded by Dom João III. in 1549, there is a very fine monument of this kind to a bishop of the Mello family in the seminary, and also a doorway, while at Tavira in the Algarve the Misericordia has an interesting door, not unlike that at Evora, but more richly ornamented by having a sculptured frieze and a band of bold acanthus leaves joining the two capitals above the arch. There is another somewhat similar, but less successful, in the church of São Sebastião at Lagos. [Sidenote: Goes.] [Sidenote: Trofa.] Nearer Coimbra there are some fine monuments to the Silveira family at Goes not far from Louzã, and four less interesting to the Lemos in the little parish church of Trofa near Agueda. At Trofa there is a pair of tombs on each side of the chancel, round-arched, with pilasters and with heads in the spandrils, and covered with arabesques. Each pair is practically alike except that the tombs on the north side, being placed closer together leave no room for a central pilaster and have small shafts instead of panelled jambs, and that the pair on the south have pediments. The best feature is a figure of the founder of the chancel kneeling at prayer with his face turned towards the high altar. [Sidenote: Caminha.] Even in the far north the doors of the church at Caminha show how important had been the coming of the Frenchmen to Coimbra. They seem later than the church, but though very picturesque are clearly the work of some one who was not yet quite familiar with renaissance forms. The south door is the more interesting and picturesque. The arch and jambs are splayed, but there are no capitals; heads look out of circles in the spandrils; and the splay as well as the panels of the side pilasters are enriched with carvings which, partly perhaps owing to the granite in which they are cut, are much less delicate than elsewhere. The Corinthian capitals of the pilasters are distinctly clumsy, as are the mouldings, but the most interesting part of the whole design is the frieze, which is so immensely extended as to leave room for four large niches separated by rather clumsy shafts and containing figures of St. Mark and St. Luke in the middle and of St. Peter and St. Paul at the ends. Above in the pediment are a Virgin and Child with kneeling angels. Besides the innovation of the enlarged frieze, which reminds one of a door in the Certosa near Pavia, the clumsiness of the mouldings and the comparative poorness of the sculpture, though the figures are much better than any previously worked by native artists, suggest that the designer and workmen were Portuguese. The same applies to the west door, which is wider and where the capitals are of a much better shape, though the pilasters are rather too tall. The sculpture frieze is a little wider than usual, and instead of a pediment there is a picturesque cresting, above which are cut four extraordinary monsters. (Fig. 82.) [Sidenote: Moncorvo.] A somewhat similar but much plainer door has been built against the older and round-arched entrance of the Misericordia at Moncorvo in Traz os Montes. The parish church of the same place begun in 1544 is both outside and in a curious mixture of Gothic and Classic. The three aisles are of the same height with round-arched Gothic vaults, but the columns are large and round with bases and capitals evidently copied from Roman doric, though the abacis have been made circular. Outside the buttresses are still Gothic in form, but the west door is of the fully developed renaissance. The opening is [Illustration: FIG. 81. PALACE, CINTRA. DOOR BY SANSOVINO.] [Illustration: FIG. 82. W. DOOR, CAMINHA.] flanked by coupled columns which support an entablature on which rest four other shorter columns separating three white marble niches. Above this is a window flanked by single columns which carry a pediment. Though built of granite, the detail is good and the whole doorway not unpleasing.[149] But, that it was not only such details as doors and monuments that began to show the result of the coming of the Frenchmen is seen in the work of João de Castilho, after he first left Thomar for Belem. There he had found Master Nicolas Chantranez already at work, and there he learned, perhaps from him, so to change his style that by the time he returned to Thomar to work for Dom João III. in 1528 he was able to design buildings practically free from that Gothic spirit which is still found in his latest work at Belem. CHAPTER XVI LATER WORK OF JOÃO DE CASTILHO AND THE EARLIER CLASSIC To Dom Manoel, who died in 1521, had succeeded his son Dom João III. The father had been renowned for his munificence and his splendour, the son cared more for the Church and for the suppression of heresy. By him the Inquisition was introduced in 1536 to the gradual crushing of all independent thought, and so by degrees to the degradation of his country. He reigned for thirty-six years, a time of wealth and luxury, but before he died the nation had begun to suffer from this very luxury; with all freedom of thought forbidden, with the most brave and adventurous of her sons sailing east to the Indies or west to Brazil, most of them never to return, Portugal was ready to fall an easy prey to Philip of Spain when in 1580 there died the old Cardinal King Henry, last surviving son of Dom Manoel, once called the Fortunate King. With the death of Dom Manoel, or at least with the finishing of the great work which he had begun, the most brilliant and interesting period in the history of Portuguese architecture comes to an end. When the younger Fernandes died seven years after his master in 1538, or when João de Castilho saw the last vault built at Belem, Gothic, even as represented by Manoelino, disappeared for ever, and renaissance architecture, taught by the French school at Coimbra, or learned in Italy by those sent there by Dom Manoel, became universal, to flourish for a time, and then to fall even lower than in any other country. Except the Frenchmen at Coimbra no one played a greater part in this change than João de Castilho, who, no doubt, first learned about the renaissance from Master Nicolas at Belem; Thomar also, his own home, lies about half-way between Lisbon and Coimbra, so that he may well have visited his brother Diogo at Santa Cruz and seen what other Frenchmen were doing there and so become acquainted with better architects than Master Nicolas; but in any case, who ever it may have been who taught him, he planned at Thomar, after his return there, the first buildings which are wholly in the style of the renaissance and are not merely decorated with renaissance details. [Sidenote: Alcobaça.] But before following him back to Thomar, his additions to the abbey of Alcobaça must be mentioned, as there for the last time, except in some parts of Belem, he allowed himself to follow the older methods, though even at this early date--1518 and 1519--renaissance forms are beginning to creep in. On the southern side of the ambulatory one of the radiating chapels was pulled down in 1519 to form a passage, irregular in shape and roofed with a vault of many ribs. From this two doors lead, one on the north to the sacristy, and one on the south to a chapel. Unfortunately both sacristy and chapel have been rebuilt and now contain nothing of interest, except, in the sacristy, some fine presses inlaid with ivory, now fast falling to pieces. The two doors are alike, and show that João de Castilho was as able as any of his contemporaries to design a piece of extreme realism. On the jambs is carved renaissance ornament, but nowhere else is there anything to show that João and Nicolas had met at Belem some two years before. The head of the arch is wavy and formed mostly of convex curves. Beyond the strip of carving there grows up on either side a round tree, with roots and bark all shown; at the top there are some leaves for capitals, and then each tree grows up to meet in the centre and so form a great ogee, from which grow out many cut-off branches, all sprouting into great curly leaves. This is realism carried to excess, and yet the leaves are so finely carved, the whole design so compact, and the surrounding whitewashed wall with its dado of tiles so plain, that the effect is quite good. (Fig. 83.) The year before he had begun for Cardinal Henry, afterwards king, and then commendator of the abbey, a second story to the great cloister of Dom Diniz. Reached by a picturesque stair on the south side, the three-centred arches each enclose two or three smaller round arches, with the spandrils merely pierced or sometimes cusped. The mouldings are simple but not at all classic. The shafts which support these round arches are all carried down across the parapet through the rope moulding at the top to the floor level, and are of three or more patterns. Those at the jambs are plain with hollow chamfered edges, as are also a few of the others. They are, however, mostly either twisted, having four round mouldings separated by four hollows, or else shaped like a rather fat baluster; most of the capitals with curious volutes at the corner are evidently borrowed from Corinthian capitals, but are quite unorthodox in their arrangement. Though this upper cloister adds much to the picturesqueness of the whole it is not very pleasing in itself, as the three-centred arches are often too wide and flat, and yet it is of great interest as showing how João de Castilho was in 1518 beginning to accept renaissance forms though still making them assume a Manoelino dress. [Sidenote: Batalha, Santa Cruz.] But in the door of the little parish church of Sta. Cruz at Batalha, also built by João de Castilho, Manoelino and renaissance details are used side by side with the happiest result. On each jamb are three round shafts and two bands of renaissance carving; of these the inner band is carried round the broken and curved head of the opening, while the outer runs high up to form a square framing. Of the three shafts the inner is carried round the head, the outer round the outside of the framing, while the one in the centre divides into two, one part running round the head, while the other forms the inner edge of the framing, and also forms a great trefoil on the flat field above the opening. In the two corners between the trefoils and the framing are circles enclosing shields, one charged with the Cross of the Order of Christ, the other with the armillary sphere. The inner side of the trefoil is cusped, crockets and finials enrich the outer moulding of the opening, while beyond the jambs are niches, now empty. (Fig. 84.) It is not too much to say that, except the great entrance to the Capellas Imperfeitas, this is the most beautiful of all Manoelino doorways; in no other is the detail so refined nor has any other so satisfactory a framing. Unfortunately the construction has not been good, so that the upper part is now all full of cracks and gaping joints. [Sidenote: Thomar.] Since Dom João III. was more devoted to the Church than [Illustration: FIG. 83. ALCOBAÇA. SACRISTY DOOR.] [Illustration: FIG. 84. W. DOOR, STA. CRUZ. BATALHA.] to anything else he determined in 1524 to change the great Order of Christ from a body of military knights bound, as had been the Templars, by certain vows, into a monastic order of regulars. This necessitated great additions to the buildings at Thomar, for the knights had not been compelled to live in common like monks. Accordingly João de Castilho was summoned back from Belem and by 1528 had got to work. All these additions were made to the west of the existing buildings, and to make room for them Dom João had to buy several houses and gardens, which together formed a suburb called São Martinho, and some of which were the property of João de Castilho, who received for them 463$000 or about £100.[150] [Illustration: PLAN OF THOMAR] These great additions, which took quite twenty-five years to build, cover an immense area, measuring more than 300 feet long by 300 wide and containing five cloisters. Immediately to the west of the Coro of the church, then probably scarcely finished, is the small cloister of Sta. Barbara; to the north of this is the larger Claustro da Hospedaria, begun about 1539, while to the south and hiding the lower part of the Coro is the splendid two-storied Claustro, miscalled 'dos Filippes,' begun in its present form in 1557 by Diogo de Torralva some time after de Castilho's death. Further west are two other large cloisters, do Mixo or da Micha to the north and dos Corvos to the south, and west of the Corvos a sort of farmyard called the Pateo dos Carrascos--that is of the evergreen oaks, or since Carrasco also means a hangman, it may be that the executioners of the Inquisition had their quarters there. Between these cloisters, and dividing the three on the east from the two on the west, is an immense corridor nearly three hundred feet long from which small cells open on each side; in the centre it is crossed by another similar corridor stretching over one hundred and fifty feet to the west, separating the two western cloisters, and with a small chapel to the east. North of all the cloisters are more corridors and rooms extending eastwards almost to the Templars' castle, but there the outer face dates mostly from the seventeenth century or later. The first part to be begun was the Claustro da Micha, or loaf, so called from the bread distributed there to the poor. Outside it was begun in 1528, but inside an inscription over the door says it was begun in 1534 and finished in 1546. Being the kitchen cloister it is very plain, with simple round-headed arches. Only the entrance door is adorned with a Corinthian column on either side; its straight head rests on well-carved corbels, and above it is a large inscribed tablet upheld by small boys. Under the pavement of the cloister as well as under the Claustro dos Corvos is a great cistern. On the south was the kitchen and the oil cellar, on the east the dispensary, and on the west a great oven and wood-store with three large halls above, which seem to have been used by the Inquisition.[151] The lodgings of the Dom Prior were above the cloister to the north. Like the Claustro da Micha, the Claustro dos Corvos has plain round arches resting on round columns and set usually in pairs with a buttress between each pair. On the south side, below, were the cellars, finished in 1539, and above the library, on the west, various vaulted stores with a passage above leading to the library from the dormitory. The whole of the east side is occupied by the refectory, about 100 feet long by 30 wide. On each of the long sides there is a pulpit, one bearing the date 1536, enriched with arabesques, angels, and small columns. At the south end are two windows, and at the north a hatch communicating with the kitchen. The Claustro da Hospedaria, as its name denotes, was where strangers were lodged; like the Claustro dos Corvos each pair of arches is divided by a buttress, and the round columns have simple but effective capitals, in which nothing of the regular Corinthian is left but the abacus, and a large plain leaf at each corner. Still, though plain, this cloister is very picturesque. Its floor, like those of all the cloisters, lies deep below the level of the church, and looking eastward from one of the cell windows the Coro and the round church are seen towering high above the brown tile roofs of the rooms beyond the cloister and of the simple upper cloister, which runs across the eastern walk. (Fig. 85.) This part of the building, begun about 1539, must have been carried on during João de Castilho's absence, as in 1541 he was sent to Mazagão on the Moroccan coast to build fortifications; there he made a bastion 'so strong as to be able not only to resist the Shariff, but also the Turk, so strong was it.'[152] The small cloister of Santa Barbara is the most pleasing of all those which João de Castilho was able to finish. In order not to hide the west front of the church its arches had to be kept very low. They are three-centred and almost flat, while the vault is even flatter, the bays being divided by a stone beam resting on beautifully carved brackets. The upper cloister is not carried across the east side next the church; but in its south-west corner an opening with a good entablature, resting on two columns with fine Corinthian capitals, leads to one of those twisting stairs without a newel of which builders of this time were so fond. Going up this stair one reaches the cloister of the Filippes which João did not live to carry out. More interesting than any of these cloisters are the long dormitory passages. The walls for about one-third of the height are lined with tiles, which with the red paving tiles were bought for about £33 from one Aleixo Antunes. The roofs are throughout of dark panelled wood and semicircular in shape. The only windows--except at the crossing--are at the ends of the three long arms. There is a small round-headed window above, and below one, flat-headed, with a column in the centre and one at each side, the window on the north end having on it the date 1541, eight years after the chapel in the centre had been built. On this chapel at the crossing has been expended far more ornament than on any other part of the passages. Leading to each arm of the passage an arch, curiously enriched with narrow bands which twice cross each other leaving diamond-shaped hollows, rests on Corinthian pilasters, which have only four flutes, but are adorned with niches, whose elegant canopies mark the level of the springing of the chapel vault. This vault, considerably lower than the passage arches, is semicircular and coffered. Between it and the cornice which runs all round the square above the passage arches is a large oblong panel, in the middle of which is a small round window. Beautifully carved figures which, instead of having legs, end in great acanthus-leaf volutes with dragons in the centre, hold a beautifully carved wreath round this window. In the middle of the architrave below, a tablet, held by exquisite little winged boys, gives the date, 'Era de 1533.' Above the cornice there rises a simple vault with a narrow round-headed window on each side. This carving over the chapel is one of the finest examples of renaissance work left in the country. It is much bolder than any of the French work left at Coimbra, being in much higher relief than was usual in the early French renaissance, and yet the figures and leaves are carved with the utmost delicacy and refinement. (Fig. 86.) The same delicacy characterises such small parts of the cloister dos Filippes as were built by João de Castilho before he retired in 1551. These are now confined to two stairs leading from the upper to the lower cloister. These stairs [Illustration: FIG. 85. THOMAR. CONVENT OF CHRIST. CLAUSTRO DA HOSPEDARIA.] [Illustration: FIG. 86. THOMAR. CHAPEL IN DORMITORY PASSAGE.] are adorned with pilasters or thin columns against the walls, delicate cornices, medallions, figures, and foliage; in one are square-headed built-up doors or doorlike spaces, with well-moulded architraves, and always in the centre above the opening small figures are carved, in one an exquisite little Cupid holding a torch. At the bottom of the eastern stair, which is decorated with scenes from the life of St. Jerome and with the head of Frei Antonio of Lisbon, first prior of the reformed order, a door led into the lower floor of the unfinished chapter-house. On this same stair there is a date 1545, so the work was probably going on till the very end of João's tenure of office, and fine as the present cloister is, it is a pity that he was not able himself to finish it, for it is the chief cloister in the whole building, and on it he would no doubt have employed all the resources of his art. (Fig. 87.) It is not without interest to learn that, like architects of the present day, João de Castilho often found very great difficulties in carrying out his work. Till well within the last hundred years Portugal was an almost roadless country, and four centuries ago, as now, most of the heavy carting was done by oxen, which are able to drag clumsy carts heavily laden up and down the most impassable lanes. Several times does he write to the king of the difficulty of getting oxen. On 4th March 1548 he says: 'I have written some days ago to Pero Carvalho to tell him of the want of carts, since those which we had were away carrying stone for the works at Cardiga and at Almeirim'--a palace now destroyed opposite Santarem--'the works of Thomar remaining without stone these three months. And for want of a hundred cart-loads of stone which I had worked at the quarry--doors and windows--I have not finished the students' studies'--probably in the noviciate near the Claustro da Micha. 'The studies are raised to more than half their height and in eight days' work I shall finish them if only I had oxen, for those I had have died. 'I would ask 20$000 [about £4, 10s.] to buy five oxen, and with three which I have I could manage the carriage of a thousand cart-loads of worked stone, besides that of which I speak of to your Highness, and since there are no carts the men can bring nothing, even were they given 60 reis [about 3d.] a cartload there is no one to do carting.... ' ... And if your Highness will give me these oxen I shall finish the work very quickly, that when your Highness comes here you may find something to see and have contentment of it.' Later he again complains of transport difficulties, for the few carts there were in the town were all being used by the Dom Prior; and in the year when he retired, 1551, he writes in despair asking the king for 'a very strong edict [Alvará] that no one of any condition whatever might be excused, because in this place those who have something of their own are excused by favour, and the poor men do service, which to them seems a great aggravation and oppression. May your Highness believe that I write this as a desperate man, since I cannot serve as I desire, and may this provision be sent to the magistrate and judge that they may have it executed by their officer, since the mayor [Alcaide] here is always away and never in his place.'[153] These letters make it possible to understand how buildings in those days took such a long time to finish, and how João de Castilho--though it was at least begun in 1545--was able to do so little to the Claustro dos Filippes in the following six years. The last letter also seems to show that some at least of the labour was forced. Leaving the Claustro dos Filippes for the present, we must return to Batalha for a little, and then mention some buildings in which the early renaissance details recall some of the work at Thomar. [Sidenote: Batalha.] The younger Fernandes had died in 1528, leaving the Capellas Imperfeitas very much in the state in which they still remain. Though so much more interested in his monastery at Thomar, Dom João ordered João de Castilho to go on with the chapels, and in 1533 the loggia over the great entrance door had been finished. Beautiful though it is it did not please the king, and is not in harmony with the older work, and so nothing more was done. In place of the large Manoelino window, which was begun on all the other seven sides, João de Castilho here built two renaissance arches, each of two orders, of which the broader springs from the square pilasters and the narrower from candelabrum shafts. In front there run up to the cornice three beautiful shafts standing on high pedestals which rest [Illustration: FIG. 87. THOMAR. CONVENTO DE CHRISTO. STAIR IN CLAUSTRO DOS FILIPPES.] [Illustration: FIG. 88. THOMAR. CHAPEL OF THE CONCEIÇÃO.] on corbels; the frieze of the cornice is carved much after the manner of the window panel in the dormitory corridor at Thomar, and with long masks where it projects over the shafts. Below, the carved cornice and architrave are carried across the opening as they are round the whole octagon, but the frieze is open and filled with balusters. Behind, the whole space is spanned by a three-centred arch, panelled like the passage arches at Thomar. All the work is most exquisite, but it is not easy to see how the horizontal cornice was to be brought into harmony with the higher windows intended on the other seven sides, nor does the renaissance detail, beautiful though it is, agree very well with the exuberant Manoelino of the rest. With the beginning of the Claustro dos Filippes the work of João de Castilho comes to an end. He had been actively employed for about forty years, beginning and ending at Thomar, finishing Belem, and adding to Alcobaça, besides improving the now vanished royal palace and even fortifying Mazagão on the Moroccan coast, where perhaps his work may still survive. In these forty years his style went through more than one complete change. Beginning with late Gothic he was soon influenced by the surrounding Manoelino; at Belem he first met renaissance artists, at Alcobaça he either used Manoelino and renaissance side by side or else treated renaissance in a way of his own, though shortly after, at Belem again, he came to use renaissance details more and more fully. A little later at Thomar, having a free hand--for at Belem he had had to follow out the lines laid down by Boutaca--he discarded Manoelino and Gothic alike in favour of renaissance. In this final adoption of the renaissance he was soon followed by many others, even before he laid down his charge at Thomar in 1551. In most of these buildings, however, it is not so much his work at Thomar which is followed--except in the case of cloisters--but rather the chapel of the Conceição, also at Thomar. Like it they are free from the more exuberant details so common in France and in Spain, and yet they cannot be called Italian. [Sidenote: Thomar, Conceição.] There is unfortunately no proof that the Conceição chapel is João's work; indeed the date inscribed inside is 1572, twenty-one years after his retirement, and nineteen after his death. Still this date is probably a mistake, and some of the detail is so like what is found in the great convent on the hill above that probably it was really designed by him. This small chapel stands on a projecting spur of the hill half-way down between the convent and the town. Inside the whole building is about sixty feet long by thirty wide, and consists of a nave with aisles about thirty feet long, a transept the width of the central aisle but barely projecting beyond the walls, a square choir with a chapel on each side, followed by an apse; east of the north choir chapel is a small sacristy, and east of the south a newel-less stair--like that in the Claustro de Sta. Barbara--leading up to the roof and down to some vestries under the choir. Owing to the sacristy and stair the eastern part of the chancel, which is rather narrower than the nave, is square, showing outside no signs of the apse. The outside is very plain: Ionic pilasters at the angles support a simple cornice which runs round the whole building; the west end and transepts have pediments with small semicircular windows. The tile roofs are surmounted by a low square tower crowned by a flat plastered dome at the crossing and by the domed stair turret at the south-east corner. The west door is plain with a simple architrave. The square-headed windows have a deep splay--the wall being very thick--their architraves as well as their cornices and pediments rest on small brackets set not at right angles with the wall, but crooked so as to give an appearance of false perspective. The inside is very much more pleasing, indeed it is one of the most beautiful interiors to be found anywhere. (Fig. 88.) On each side of the central aisle there are three Corinthian columns, with very correct proportions, and exquisite capitals, beautifully carved if not quite orthodox. Corresponding pilasters stand against the walls, as well as at the entrance to the choir, and at the beginning of the apse. These and the columns support a beautifully modelled entablature, enriched only with a dentil course. Central aisle, transepts and choir are all roofed with a larger and the side aisles with a smaller barrel vault, divided into bays by shallow arches. In choir and transepts the vault is coffered, but in the nave each bay is ornamented with three sets of four square panels, set in the shape of a cross, each panel having in it another panel set diagonally to form a diamond. At the crossing, which is crowned by a square coffered dome, the spandrils are filled with curious winged heads, while the semi-dome of the apse is covered with narrow ribs. The windows are exactly like those outside, but the west door has over it a very refined though plain pediment. So far, beyond the great refinement of the details, there has been nothing very characteristic of João de Castilho, but when we find that the pilasters of the choir and apse, as well as the choir and transept arches, are panelled in that very curious way--with strips crossing each other at long intervals to form diamonds--which João employed in the passage arches in the Thomar dormitory and in the loggia at Batalha, it would be natural enough to conclude that this chapel is his work, and indeed the best example of what he could do with classic details. Now under the west window of the north aisle there is a small tablet with the following inscription in Portuguese[154]:--'This chapel was erected in A.D. 1572, but profaned in 1810 was restored in 1848 by L. L. d'Abreu,' etc. Of course in 1572 João de Castilho had been long dead, but the inscription was put up in 1848, and it is quite likely that by then L. L. d'Abreu and his friends had forgotten or did not know that even as late as the sixteenth century dates were sometimes still reckoned by the era of Cæsar, so finding it recorded that the chapel had been built in the year 1572 they took for granted that it was A.D. 1572, whereas it may just as well have been E.C. 1572, that is A.D. 1534, just the very time when João de Castilho was building the dormitory in the convent and using there the same curious panelling. Besides in 1572 this form of renaissance had long been given up and been replaced by a heavier and more classic style brought from Italy. It seems therefore not unreasonable to claim this as João de Castilho's work, and to see in it one of the earliest as well as the most complete example of this form of renaissance architecture, a form which prevailed side by side with the work of the Frenchmen and their pupils for about fifteen years. Now in some respects this chapel recalls some of the earlier renaissance buildings in Italy, and yet no part of it is quite Italian, nor can it be called Spanish. The barrel vault here and in the dormitory chapel in the convent are Italian features, but they have not been treated exactly as was done there, or as was to be done in Portugal some fifty years later, so that it seems more likely that João de Castilho got his knowledge of Italian work at second-hand, perhaps from one of the men sent there by Dom Manoel, and not by having been there himself. No other building in this style can be surely ascribed to him, and no other is quite so pleasing, yet there are several in which refined classic detail of a similar nature is used, and one of the best of these is the small church of the Milagre at Santarem. As for the cloisters which are mentioned later, they have much in common with João de Castilho's work at Thomar, as, for instance, in the Claustros da Micha, or the Claustro da Hospedaria; in the latter especially the upper story suggests the arrangement which became so common. This placing of a second story with horizontal architrave on the top of an arched cloister is very common in Spain, and might have been suggested by such as are found at Lupiana or at Alcalá de Henares,[155] but these are not divided into bays by buttresses, so it is more likely that they were borrowed from such a cloister as that of Sta. Cruz at Coimbra, where the buttresses run up to the roof of the upper story and where the arches of that story are almost flat. [Sidenote: Santarem, Milagre.] The Milagre or Miracle church at Santarem is so called because it stands near where the body of St. Irene, martyred by the Romans at Nabantia, now Thomar, after floating down the Nabão, the Zezere, and the Tagus, came to shore and so gave her name to Santarem. The church is small, being about sixty-five feet long by forty wide. It has three aisles, wooden panelled roofs, an arcade resting on Doric columns, and at the east a sort of transept followed by an apse. The piers to the west side of this transept are made up of four pilasters, all of different heights. The highest, the one on the west side, has a Corinthian capital and is enriched in front by a statue under a canopy standing on a corbel upheld by a slender baluster shaft. The second in height is plain, and supports the arch which crosses the central aisle. The arches opening from the aisles into the transept chapel are lower still, and rest, not on capitals, but on corbels. Like the nave arch, on their spandrels heads are carved looking out of circles. Lowest of all--owing to the barrel vault which covers the central aisle at the crossing--are the arches leading north and south to the chapels. They too spring from corbels and are quite plain. [Sidenote: Santarem, Marvilla.] Up in the town on the top of the hill the nave of the church of the Marvilla--whose Manoelino door and chancel have already been mentioned--is of about the same date. This nave is about one hundred feet long by fifty-five wide, has three aisles with wooden ceilings; the arcades of round arches with simple moulded architrave rest on the beautiful Ionic capitals of columns over twenty-six feet high. These capitals, of Corinthian rather than of Ionic proportions, with simple fluting instead of acanthus leaves, have curious double volutes at each angle, and small winged heads in the middle of each side of the abacus. Altogether the arcades are most stately, and the beauty of the church is further enhanced by the exceptionally fine tiles with which the walls as well as the spandrels above the arches are lined. Up to about the height of fifteen feet, above a stone bench, the tiles, blue, yellow, and orange, are arranged in panels, two different patterns being used alternatively, with beautiful borders, while in each spandrel towards the central aisle an Emblem of the Virgin, Tower of Ivory, Star of the Sea, and so on, is surrounded by blue and yellow intertwining leaves. Above these, as above the panels on the walls, the whole is covered with dark and light tiles arranged in checks, and added as stated by a date over the chancel arch in 1617. The lower tiles are probably of much the same date or a little earlier. Against one of the nave columns there stands a very elegant little pulpit. It rests on the Corinthian capital of a very bulbous baluster, is square, and has on each side four beautiful little Corinthian columns, fluted and surrounded with large acanthus leaves at the bottom. Almost exactly like it, but round and with balusters instead of columns, is the pulpit in the church of Nossa Senhora dos Olivaes at Thomar. (Fig. 89.) [Sidenote: Elvas, São Domingos.] The most original in plan as well as in decoration of all the buildings of this time is the church of the nunnery of São Domingos at Elvas, like nearly all nunneries in the kingdom now fast falling to pieces. In plan it is an octagon about forty-two feet across with three apses to the east and a smaller octagonal dome in the middle standing on eight white marble columns with Doric capitals. The columns, the architrave below the dome, the arches of the apses and their vaults, are all of white marble covered with exquisite carved ornament partly gilt, while all the walls and the other vaults are lined with tiles, blue and yellow patterns on a white ground. The abacus of each column is set diagonally to the diameter of the octagon, and between it and the lower side of the architrave are interposed thin blocks of stone rounded at the ends. Like the Conceicão at Thomar this too dates from near the end of Dom João's reign, having been founded about 1550. [Sidenote: Cintra, Penha Longa and Penha Verde.] Capitals very like those in the nave of the Marvilla, but with a ring of leaves instead of flutes, are found in the cloister of the church at Penha Longa near Cintra, and in the little round chapel at Penha Verde not far off, where lies the heart of Dom João de Castro, fourth viceroy of India. Built about 1535, it is a simple little round building with a square recess for the altar opposite the door. Inside, the dome springs from a cornice resting on six columns whose capitals are of the same kind. Others nearly the same are found in the house of the Conde de São Vicente at Lisbon, only there the volutes are replaced by winged figures, as is also the case in the arcades of the Misericordia at Tavira, the door of which has been mentioned above. [Sidenote: Vizeu, Cloister.] Still more like the Marvilla capitals are those of the lower cloister of the cathedral of Vizeu. This, the most pleasing of all the renaissance cloisters in Portugal, has four arches on each side resting on fluted columns which though taller than usual in cloisters, have no entasis. The capitals are exactly like those at Santarem, but being of granite are much coarser, with roses instead of winged heads on the unmoulded abaci. At the angles two columns are placed together and a shallow strip is carried up above them all to the cornice. Somewhere in the lower cloister are the arms of Bishop Miguel da Silva, who is [Illustration: FIG. 89. SANTAREM. CHURCH OF THE MARVILLA.] [Illustration: FIG. 90. VIZEU. CATHEDRAL CLOISTER.] said to have built it about 1524, but that is an impossibly early date, as even in far less remote places such classical columns were not used till at least ten years later. Yet the cloister must probably have been built some time before 1550. An upper unarched cloister, with an architrave resting on simple Doric columns, was added, _sede vacante_, between 1720 and 1742, and greatly increases the picturesqueness of the whole. (Fig. 90.) [Sidenote: Lamego, Cloister.] A similar but much lower second story was added by Bishop Manoel Noronha[156] in 1557 to the cloister of Lamego Cathedral. The lower cloister with its round arches and eight-sided shafts is interesting, as most of its capitals are late Gothic, some moulded, a few with leaves, though some have been replaced by very good capitals of the Corinthian type but retaining the Gothic abacus.[157] [Sidenote: Coimbra, São Thomaz.] [Sidenote: Carmo.] [Sidenote: Cintra, Penha Longa.] [Sidenote: Faro, São Bento.] [Sidenote: Lorvão.] Most, however, of the cloisters of this period do not have a continuous arcade like that of Vizeu, but have arches set in pairs in the lower story with big buttresses between each pair. Such is the cloister of the college of São Thomaz at Coimbra, founded in 1540, where the arches of the lower cloister rest on Ionic capitals, while the architrave of the upper is upheld by thin Doric columns; of the Carmo, also at Coimbra, founded in 1542, where the cloister is almost exactly like that of São Thomaz, except that there are twice as many columns in the upper story; of Penha Longa near Cintra, where the two stories are of equal height and the lower, with arches, has moulded and the upper, with horizontal architrave, Ionic capitals, and of São Bento at Faro, where the lower capitals are like those in the Marvilla, but without volutes, while the upper are Ionic. In all these the big square buttress is carried right up to the roof of the upper cloister, as it was also at Lorvão near Coimbra. There the arches below are much wider, so that above the number of supports has been doubled.[158] [Sidenote: Amarante.] In one of the cloisters of São Gonçalvo at Amarante on the Tamega--famous for the battle on the bridge during the French invasion--there is only one arch to each bay below, and it springs from jambs, not from columns, and is very plain. The buttresses do not rise above the lower cornice and have Ionic capitals, as have also the rather stout columns of the upper story. The lower cloister is roofed with a beautiful three-centred vault with many ribs, and several of the doors are good examples of early renaissance. [Sidenote: Santarem, Sta. Clara.] More like the other cloisters, but probably somewhat later in date, is that of Sta. Clara at Santarem, fast falling to pieces. In it there are three arches, here three-centred, to each bay, and instead of projecting buttresses wide pilasters, like the columns, Doric below, Ionic above. [Sidenote: Guarda, Reredos.] On first seeing the great reredos in the cathedral of Guarda, the tendency is to attribute it to a period but little later than the works of Master Nicolas at São Marcos or of João de Ruão at Coimbra. But on looking closer it is seen that a good deal of the ornament--the decoration of the pilasters and of the friezes--as well as the appearance of the figures, betray a later date--a date perhaps as late as the end of the reign of Dom João III. (Fig. 91.) Though the reredos is very much larger and of finer design, the figures have sufficient resemblance to those in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Sé Velha at Coimbra, put up in 1566, to show that they must be more or less contemporary, the Guarda reredos being probably the older.[159] Filling the whole of the east end of the apse of the Capella Mor, the structure rises in a curve up to the level of the windows. Without the beautiful colouring of Master Vlimer's work at Coimbra, or the charm of the reredos at Funchal, with figures distinctly inferior to those by Master Nicolas at São Marcos, this Guarda reredos is yet a very fine piece of work, and is indeed the only large one of its kind which still survives. It is divided into three stories, each about ten feet high, with a half-story below resting on a plain plinth. Each story is divided into large square panels by pilasters or columns set pretty close together, the topmost story having candelabrum shafts, the one below it Corinthian columns, the lowest Doric pilasters, and the half-story below pedestals for these pilasters. Entablatures with ornamental friezes divide each story, while at the top the centre is raised to admit of an arch, an arrangement probably copied from João de Ruão's altar-piece. In the half-story at the bottom are half-figures of the twelve Apostles, four under each of the square panels at the sides, and one between each pair of pilasters. Above is represented, on the left the Annunciation, on the right the Nativity; in the centre, now hidden by a hideous wooden erection, there is a beautiful little tabernacle between two angels. Between the pilasters, as between the columns above, stand large figures of prophets. In the next story the scenes are, on the left the Magi, on the right the Presentation, and in the centre the Assumption of the Virgin. The whole of the top is taken up with the Story of the Crucifixion, our Lord bearing the Cross on the left, the Crucifixion under the arch, and the Deposition on the right. Although the whole is infinitely superior in design to anything by Master Nicolas, it must be admitted that the sculpture is very inferior to his, and also to João de Ruão's. The best are the Crucifixion scenes, where the grouping is better and the action freer, but everywhere the faces are rather expressionless and the figures stiff. As everything is painted, white for the background and an ugly yellow for the figures and detail, it is not possible to see whether stone or terra cotta is the material; if terra cotta the sculptor may have been a pupil of Filipe Eduard, who in the time of Dom Manoel wrought the Last Supper in terra cotta, fragments of which still survive at Coimbra. CHAPTER XVII THE LATER RENAISSANCE AND THE SPANISH USURPATION This earlier style did not, however, last very long. Even before the death of Dom João more strictly classical forms began to come in from Italy, brought by some of the many pupils who had been sent to study there. Once when staying at Almeirim the king had been much interested in a model of the Colosseum brought to him by Gonçalo Bayão, whom he charged to reproduce some of the monuments he had seen in Rome. Whether he did reproduce them or not is unknown, but in the Claustro dos Filippes at Thomar this new and thoroughly Italian style is seen fully developed. [Sidenote: Thomar, Claustro dos Filippes.] Diogo de Torralva had been nominated to direct the works in Thomar in 1554, but did nothing to this cloister till 1557 after Dom João's death, when his widow, Dona Catharina, regent for her grandson, Dom Sebastião, ordered him to pull down what was already built, as it was unsafe, and to build another of the same size about one hundred and fifteen feet square, but making the lower story rather higher. The work must have been carried out quickly, since on the vault of the upper cloister there is the date 1562--a date which shows that the whole must have been practically finished some eighteen years before Philip of Spain secured the throne of Portugal, and that therefore the cloister should rather be called after Dona Catharina, who ordered it, than after the 'Reis Intrusos,' whose only connection with Thomar is that the first was there elected king. Between each of the three large arches which form a side of the lower cloister stand two Roman Doric columns of considerable size. They are placed some distance apart leaving room between them for an opening, while another window-like opening occurs above the moulding from which the arches [Illustration: FIG. 91. GUARDA. REREDOS IN CATHEDRAL.] [Illustration: FIG. 92. THOMAR. CLAUSTRO DOS FILIPPES.] spring. In the four corners the space between the columns, as well as the entablature, is set diagonally, leaving room in one instance for a circular stair. The cornice is enriched with dentils and the frieze with raised squares. On the entablature more columns of about the same height as those below, but with Ionic capitals, stand in pairs. Stairs lead up in each corner to the flat roof, above which they rise in a short dome-bearing drum. In this upper cloister the arches are much narrower, springing from square Ionic pilasters, two on each side, set one behind the other, and leaving an open space beyond so that the whole takes the form of a Venetian window. The small upper window between the columns is round instead of square, and the cornice is carried on large corbels. In front of all the openings is a balustrade. Two windows look south down the hillside over rich orchards and gardens, while immediately below them a water channel, the end of a great aqueduct built under Philip I. of Portugal, II. of Spain, by the Italian Filippo Terzi,[160] cools the air, and, overflowing, clothes the arches with maidenhair fern. Another window opening on to the Claustro de Sta. Barbara gives a very good view of the curious west front of the church. There is not and there probably never was any parapet to the flat paved roof, from where one can look down on the surrounding cloisters, and on the paved terrace before the church door where Philip was elected king in April 1580. (Fig. 92.) This cloister, the first example in Portugal of the matured Italian renaissance, is also, with the exception of the church of São Vicente de Fora at Lisbon, the most successful, for all is well proportioned, and shows that Diogo de Torralva really understood classic detail and how to use it. He was much less successful in the chancel of Belem, while about the cathedral which he built at Miranda de Douro it is difficult to find out anything, so remote and inaccessible is it, except that it stands magnificently on a high rock above the river.[161] The reigns of Dom Sebastião and of his grand-uncle, the Cardinal-King, were noted for no great activity in building. Only at Evora, where he so long filled the position of archbishop before succeeding to the throne, was the cardinal able to do much. The most important architectural event in Dom Sebastião's reign was the coming of Filippo Terzi from Italy to build São Roque, the church of the Jesuits in Lisbon, and the consequent school of architects, the Alvares, Tinouco, Turianno, and others who were so active during the reign of Philip. But before speaking of the work of this school some of Cardinal Henry's buildings at Evora must be mentioned, and then the story told of how Philip succeeded in uniting the whole Peninsula under his rule. [Sidenote: Evora, Graça.] A little to the south of the cathedral of Evora, and a little lower down the hill, stands the Graça or church of the canons of St. Augustine. Begun during the reign of Dom João III., the nave and chancel, in which there is a fine tomb, have many details which recall the Conceicão at Thomar, such as windows set in sham perspective. But they were long in building, and the now broken down barrel vault and the curious porch were not added till the reign of Dom Sebastião, while the monastic buildings were finished about the same time. This porch is most extraordinary. Below, there are in front four well-proportioned and well-designed Doric columns; beyond them and next the outer columns are large projecting pilasters forming buttresses, not unlike the buttresses in some of the earlier cloisters. Above the entablature, which runs round these buttresses, there stand on the two central columns two tall Ionic semi-columns, surmounted by an entablature and pointed pediment, and enclosing a large window set back in sham perspective. On either side large solid square panels are filled by huge rosettes several feet across, and above them half-pediments filled with shields reach up to the central pediment but at a lower level. Above these pediments another raking moulding runs up supported on square blocks, while on the top of the upper buttresses there sit figures of giant boys with globes on their backs; winged figures also kneel on the central pediment. It will be seen that this is one of the most extraordinary erections in the world. Though built of granite some of the detail is quite fine, and the lower columns are well proportioned; but the upper part is ridiculously heavy and out of keeping with the rest, and inconceivably ill-designed. The different parts also are ill put together and look as if they had belonged to distinct buildings designed on a totally different scale. [Sidenote: Evora University.] Not much need be said of the Jesuit University founded at Evora by the Cardinal in 1559 and suppressed by the Marques de Pombal. Now partly a school and partly an orphanage, the great hall for conferring degrees is in ruins, but the courtyard with its two ranges of galleries still stands. The court is very large, and the galleries have round arches and white marble columns, but is somehow wanting in interest. The church too is very poor, though the private chapel with barrel vault and white marble dome is better, yet the whole building shows, like the Graça porch, that classic architecture was not yet fully understood, for Diogo de Torralva had not yet finished his cloister at Thomar, nor had Terzi begun to work in Lisbon. When Dom João III. died in 1557 he was succeeded by his grandson Sebastião, who was then only three years old. At first his grandmother, Dona Catharina, was regent, but she was thoroughly Spanish, and so unpopular. For five years she withstood the intrigues of her brother-in-law, Cardinal Henry, but at last in 1562 retired to Spain in disgust. The Cardinal then became regent, but the country was really governed by two brothers, of whom the elder, Luis Gonçalves da Câmara, a Jesuit, was confessor to the young king. Between them Dom Sebastião grew up a dreamy bigot whose one ambition was to lead a crusade against the Moors--an ambition in which popular rumour said he was encouraged by the Jesuits at the instigation of his cousin, Philip of Spain, who would profit so much by his death. Since the wealth of the Indies had begun to fill the royal treasury, the Cortes had not been summoned, so there was no one able to oppose his will, when at last an expedition sailed in 1578. At this time the country had been nearly drained of men by India and Brazil, so a large part of the army consisted of mercenaries; peculation too had emptied the treasury, and there was great difficulty in finding money to pay the troops. Yet the expedition started, and landing first at Tangier afterwards moved on to Azila, which Mulay Ahmed, a pretender to the Moorish umbrella, had handed over. On July 29th, Dom Sebastião rashly started to march inland from Azila. The army suffered terribly from heat and thirst, and was quite worn out before it met the reigning amir, Abd-el-Melik, at Alcacer-Quebir, or El-Kasar-el-Kebir, 'the great castle,' on the 3rd of August. Next morning the battle began, and though Abd-el-Melik died almost at once, the Moors, surrounding the small Christian army, were soon victorious. Nine thousand were killed, and of the rest all were taken prisoners except fifty. Both the Pretender and Dom Sebastião fell, and with his death and the destruction of his army the greatness of Portugal disappeared. For two years, till 1580, his feeble old grand-uncle the Cardinal Henry sat on the throne, but when he died without nominating an heir none of Dom Manoel's descendants were strong enough to oppose Philip II. of Spain. Philip was indeed a grandson of Dom Manoel through his mother Isabel, but the duchess of Braganza, daughter of Dom Duarte, duke of Guimarães, Cardinal Henry's youngest brother, had really a better claim. But the spirit of the nation was changed, she dared not press her claims, and few supported the prior of Crato, whose right was at least as good as had been that of Dom João I., and so Philip was elected at Thomar in April 1580. Besides losing her independence Portugal lost her trade, for Holland and England both now regarded her as part of their great enemy, Spain, and so harried her ports and captured her treasure ships. Brazil was nearly lost to the Dutch, who also succeeded in expelling the Portuguese from Ceylon and from the islands of the East Indies, so that when the sixty years' captivity was over and the Spaniards expelled, Portugal found it impossible to recover the place she had lost. It is then no wonder that almost before the end of the century money for building began to fail, and that some of the churches begun then were never finished; and yet for about the first twenty or thirty years of the Spanish occupation building went on actively, especially in Lisbon and at Coimbra, where many churches were planned by Filippo Terzi, or by the two Alvares and others. Filippo Terzi seems first to have been employed at Lisbon by the Jesuits in building their church of São Roque, begun about 1570.[162] [Sidenote: Lisbon, São Roque.] Outside the church is as plain as possible; the front is divided into three by single Doric pilasters set one on each side of the main door and two at each corner. Similar pilasters stand on these, separated from them only by a shallow cornice. The main cornice is larger, but the pediment is perfectly plain. Three windows, one with a pointed and two with round pediments, occupy the spaces left between the upper pilasters. The inside is richer; the wooden ceiling is painted, the shallow chancel and the side chapels vaulted with barrel vaults, of which those in the chapels are enriched with elaborate strapwork. Above the chapels are square-headed windows, and then a corbelled cornice. Even this is plain, and it owes most of its richness to the paintings and to the beautiful tiles which cover part of the walls.[163] The three other great churches which were probably also designed by Terzi are Santo Antão, Sta. Maria do Desterro, and São Vicente de Fora. Of these the great earthquake of 1755 almost entirely destroyed the first two and knocked down the dome of the last. [Sidenote: São Vicente de Fora.] Though not the first to be built, São Vicente being the least injured may be taken before the others. It is a large church, being altogether about 236 feet long by 75 wide, and consists of a nave of three bays with connected chapels on each side, a transept with the fallen dome at the crossing, a square chancel, a retro-choir for the monks about 45 feet deep behind the chancel, and to the west a porch between two tall towers. On the south side are two large square cloisters of no great interest with a sacristy between--in which all the kings of the House of Braganza lie in velvet-covered coffins--and the various monastic buildings now inhabited by the patriarch of Lisbon. The outside is plain, except for the west front, which stands at the top of a great flight of steps. On the west front two orders of pilasters are placed one above the other. Of these the lower is Doric, of more slender proportions than usual, while the upper has no true capitals beyond the projecting entablature and corbels on the frieze. Single pilasters divide the centre of the front into three equal parts and coupled pilasters stand at the corners of the towers. In the central part three plain arches open on to the porch, with a pedimented niche above each. In the tower the niches are placed lower with oblong openings above and below. Above the entablature of the lower order there are three windows in the middle flanked by Ionic pilasters and surmounted by pediments, while in the tower are large round-headed niches with pediments. (Fig. 93.) [Illustration: PLAN OF SÃO VICENTE] The entablature of the upper order is carried straight across the whole front, with nothing above it in the centre but a balustrading interrupted by obelisk-bearing pedestals, but at the ends the towers rise in one more square story flanked with short Doric pilasters. Round-arched openings for bells occur on each side, and within the crowning balustrade with its obelisks a stone dome rises to an eight-sided domed lantern. Like all the church, the front is built of beautiful limestone, rivalling Carrara marble in whiteness, and seen down the narrow street which runs uphill from across the small _praça_ the whole building is most imposing. It would have been even more satisfactory had the central part been a little narrower, and had there been something to mark the barrel vault within; the omission too of the lower order, which is so much taller than the upper, would have been an improvement, but even with these defects the design is most stately, and refreshingly free of all the fussy over-elaboration and the fantastic piling up of pediments which soon became too common. But if the outside deserves such praise, the inside is worthy of far more. The great stone barrel vault is simply coffered with square panels. The chapel arches are singularly plain, and spring from a good moulding which projects nearly [Illustration: FIG. 93. LISBON. SÃO VICENTE DE FORA.] [Illustration: FIG. 94. LISBON. SÃO VICENTE DE FORA.] to the face of the pilasters. Two of these stand between each chapel, and have very beautiful capitals founded on the Doric but with a long fluted neck ornamented in front by a bunch of crossed arrows and at the corners with acanthus leaves, and with egg and tongue carved on the moulding below the Corinthian abacus. Of the entablature, only the frieze and architrave is broken round the pilasters; for the cornice with its great mutules runs straight round the whole church, supported over the chapels by carving out the triglyphs--of which there is one over each pilaster, and two in the space between each pair of pilasters--so as to form corbels. Only the pendentives of the dome and the panelled drum remain; the rest was replaced after the earthquake by wooden ceiling pierced with skylights. (Fig. 94.) Though so simple--there is no carved ornament except in the beautiful capitals--the interior is one of the most imposing to be seen anywhere, and though not really very large gives a wonderful impression of space and size, being in this respect one of the most successful of classic churches. It is only necessary to compare São Vicente de Fora with the great clumsy cathedral which Herrera had begun to build five years earlier at Valladolid to see how immensely superior Terzi was to his Spanish contemporary. Even in his masterpiece, the church of the Escorial, Herrera did not succeed in giving such spacious greatness, for, though half as large again, the Escorial church is imposing rather from its stupendous weight and from the massiveness of its granite piers than from the beauty of its proportions. Philip took a great interest in the building of the Escorial, and also had the plans of São Vicente submitted to him in 1590. This plan, signed by him in November 1590, was drawn by João Nunes Tinouco, so that it is possible that Tinouco was the actual designer and not Terzi, but Tinouco was still alive sixty years later when he published a plan of Lisbon, and so must have been very young in 1590. It is probable, therefore, that tradition is right in assigning São Vicente to Terzi, and even if it be actually the work of Tinouco, he has here done little but copy what his master had already done elsewhere. [Sidenote: Lisbon, Santo Antão.] After São Roque the first church begun by Terzi was Santo Antão, now attached to the hospital of São José. Begun in 1579 it was not finished till 1652, only to be destroyed by the earthquake in 1755. As at São Vicente, the west front has a lower order of huge Doric pilasters nearly fifty feet high. There is no porch, but three doors with poor windows above which look as if they had been built after the earthquake. Unfortunately, nearly all above the lower entablature is gone, but enough is left to show that the upper order was Ionic and very short, and that the towers were to rise behind buttress-like curves descending from the central part to two obelisks placed above the coupled corner pilasters. The inside was almost exactly like São Vicente, but larger. [Sidenote: Lisbon, Santa Maria do Desterro.] Santa Maria do Desterro was begun later than either of the last two, in 1591. Unlike them the two orders of the west front are short and of almost equal size, Doric below and Ionic above. The arches of the porch reach up to the lower entablature, and the windows above are rather squat; it looks as if there was to have been a third order above, but it is all gone. The inside was of the usual pattern, except that the pilasters were not coupled between the chapels, that they were panelled, and that above the low chapel arches there are square windows looking into a gallery. [Sidenote: Torreão do Paço.] Besides these churches Terzi built for Philip a large addition to the royal palace in the shape of a great square tower or pavilion, called the Torreão. The palace then stood to the west of what is now called the Praça do Commercio, and the Torreão jutted out over the Tagus. It seems to have had five windows on the longer and four on the shorter sides, to have been two stories in height, and to have been covered by a great square dome-shaped roof, with a lantern at the top and turrets at the corners. Pilasters stood singly between each window and in pairs at the corners, and the windows all had pediments. Now, not a stone of it is left, as it was in the palace square, the Terreno do Paço da Ribeira, that the earthquake was at its worst, swallowing up the palace and overwhelming thousands of people in the waves of the river. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Sé Nova.] Meanwhile the great Jesuit church at Coimbra, now the Sé Nova or new cathedral, had been gradually rising. Founded by Dom João III. in 1552, and dedicated to the Onze mil Virgems, it cannot have been begun in its present form till much later, till about 1580, while the main, or south, front seems even later still.[164] Inside, the church consists of a nave of four bays with side chapels--in one of which there is a beautiful Manoelino font--transepts and chancel with a drumless dome over the crossing. In some respects the likeness to São Vicente is very considerable; there are coupled Doric pilasters between the chapels, the barrel vault is coffered, and the chapel arches are extremely plain. But here the likeness ends. The pilasters are panelled and have very simple moulded capitals; the entablature is quite ordinary, without triglyphs or mutules, and is broken round each pair of pilasters; the coffers on the vault are very deep, and are scarcely moulded; and, above all, the proportions are quite different as the nave is too wide for its height, and the drum is terribly needed to lift up the dome. In short, the architect seems to have copied the dispositions of Santo Antão and has done his best to spoil them, and yet he has at the same time succeeded in making the interior look large, though with an almost Herrera-like clumsiness. The south front is even more like Santo Antão. As there, three doors take the place of the porch, and the only difference below is that each Doric pilaster is flanked by half pilasters. Above the entablature the front breaks out into a wild up-piling of various pediments, but even here the likeness to Santo Antão is preserved, in that a great curve comes down from the outer Ionic pilasters of the central part, to end, however, not in obelisks, but in a great volute: the small towers too are set much further back. Above, as below, the central part is divided into three. Of these the two outer, flanked by Ionic pilasters on pedestals, are finished off above with curved pediments broken to admit of obelisks. The part between these has a large window below, a huge coat of arms above, and rises high above the sides to a pediment so arranged that while the lower mouldings form an angle the upper form a curve on which stand two finials and a huge cross. (Fig. 95.) [Sidenote: Oporto, Collegio Novo.] Very soon this fantastic way of piling up pieces of pediment and of entablature became only too popular, being copied for instance in the Collegio Novo at Oporto, where, however, the design is not quite so bad as the towers are brought forward and are carried up considerably higher. But apart from this horrid misuse of classic details the greatest fault of the façade at Coimbra is the disproportionate size of some of the details; the obelisks and the cherubs' heads on which they stand, the statues at the ends, and the central cross, and above all the colossal acanthus leaves in the great scrolls are of such a size as entirely to dwarf all the rest. From what remains of the front of Santo Antão, it looks as if it and the front of the Sé Velha had been very much alike. Santo Antão was not quite finished till 1652, so that it is probable that the upper part of the west front dates from the seventeenth century, long after Terzi's death, and that the Sé Nova at Coimbra was finished about the same time, and perhaps copied from it. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Misericordia.] But it was not only Terzi's churches which were copied at Coimbra. While the Sé Nova, then, and for nearly two hundred years more, the church of the Jesuits, was still being built, the architect of the chief pateo of the Misericordia took Diogo de Torralva's cloister at Thomar as his model. It was in the year 1590 that Cardinal Affonso de Castello Branco began to build the headquarters of the Misericordia of Coimbra, founded in 1500 as a simple confraternity. The various offices of the institution, including a church, the halls whose ceilings have been already mentioned, and hospital dormitories--all now turned into an orphanage--are built round two courtyards, one only of which calls for special notice, for nearly everything else has been rebuilt or altered. In this court or cloister, the plan of the Claustro dos Filippes has been followed in that there are three wide arches on each side, and between them--but not in the corners, and further apart than at Thomar--a pair of columns. In this case the space occupied by one arch is scarcely wider than that occupied by the two fluted Doric columns and the square-headed openings between them. Another change is that the complete entablature with triglyphs and metopes is only found above the columns, for the arches rise too high to leave room for more than the cornice. (Fig. 96.) The upper story is quite different, for it has only square-headed windows, though the line of the columns is carried up by slender and short Ionic columns; a sloping tile roof rests immediately on the upper cornice, above which rise small obelisks placed over the columns. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Episcopal Palace.] At about the same time the Cardinal built a long loggia on the west side of the entrance court of his palace at Coimbra. The hill on which the palace is built being extremely [Illustration: FIG. 95. SÉ NOVA, COIMBRA.] [Illustration: FIG. 96 COIMBRA. MISERICORDIA.] steep, an immense retaining wall, some fifty or sixty feet high, bounds the courtyard on the west, and it is on the top of this wall that the loggia is built forming a covered way two stories in height and uniting the Manoelino palace on the north with some offices which bound the yard on the south. This covered way is formed by two rows of seven arches, each resting on Doric columns, with a balustrading between the outer columns on the top of the great wall. The ceiling is of wood and forms the floor of the upper story, where the columns are Ionic and support a continuous architrave. The whole is quite simple and unadorned, but at the same time singularly picturesque, since the view through the arches, over the old cathedral and the steeply descending town, down to the convent of Santa Clara and the wooded hills beyond the Mondego, is most beautiful; besides, the courtyard itself is not without interest. In the centre stands a fountain, and on the south side a stair, carried on a flying half-arch, leads up to a small porch whose steep pointed roof rests on two walls, and on one small column. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Sé Velha Sacristy.] The same bishop also built the sacristy of the old cathedral. Entered by a passage from the south transept, and built across the back of the apse, it is an oblong room with coffered barrel vault, lit by a large semicircular window at the north end. The cornice, of which the frieze is adorned with eight masks, rests on corbels. On a black-and-white marble lavatory is the date 1593 and the Cardinal's arms. The two ends are divided into three tiled panels by Doric columns, and on the longer sides are presses. Altogether it is very like the sacristy of Santa Cruz built some thirty years later, but plainer. By 1590 or so several Portuguese followers of Terzi had begun to build churches, founded on his work, but in some respects less like than is the Sé Nova at Coimbra. Such churches are best seen at Coimbra, where many were built, all now more or less deserted and turned to base uses. Three at least of these stand on either side of the long Rua Sophia which leads northwards from the town. [Sidenote: Coimbra, São Domingos.] The oldest seems to be the church of São Domingos, founded by the dukes of Aveiro, but never finished. Only the chancel with its flanking chapels and the transept have been built. Two of the churches at Lisbon and the Sé Nova of Coimbra are noted for their extremely long Doric pilasters. Here, in the chancel the pilasters and the half columns in the transept are Ionic, and even more disproportionately tall. The architrave is unadorned, the frieze has corbels set in pairs, and between the pairs curious shields and strapwork, and the cornice is enriched with dentils, egg and tongue and modillions. Most elaborate of all is the barrel vault, where each coffer is filled with round or square panels surrounded with strapwork. This vault and the cornice were probably not finished till well on in the seventeenth century, for on the lower, and probably earlier vaults, of the side chapels the ornamentation is much finer and more delicate. The transepts were to have been covered with groined vaults of which only the springing has been built. In the north transept and in one of the chapels there still stand great stone reredoses once much gilt, but now all broken and dusty and almost hidden behind the diligences and cabs with which the church is filled. The great fault in São Domingos is the use of the same order both for the tall pilasters in the chancel, and for the shorter ones in the side chapels; so that the taller, which are twice as long and of about the same diameter, are ridiculously lanky and thin. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Carmo.] Almost opposite São Domingos is the church of the Carmo, begun by Frey Amador Arraes, bishop of Portalegre about 1597. The church is an oblong hall about 135 feet long, including the chancel, by nearly 40 wide, roofed with a coffered barrel vault. On each side of the nave are two rectangular and one semicircular chapel; the vaults of the chapel are beautifully enriched with sunk panels of various shapes. The great reredos covers the whole east wall with two stories of coupled columns, niches and painted panels. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Graça.] Almost exactly the same is the Graça church next door, both very plain and almost devoid of interest outside. [Sidenote: São Bento.] Equally plain is the unfinished front of the church of São Bento up on the hill near the botanical gardens. It was designed by Baltazar Alvares for Dom Diogo de Murça, rector of the University in 1600, but not consecrated till thirty-four years later. The church, which inside is about 164 feet long, consists of a nave with side chapels, measuring 60 feet by about 35, a transept of the same width, and a square chancel. Besides there is a deep porch in front between two oblong towers, which have never been carried up above the roof. The porch is entered by three arches, one in the middle wider and higher than the others. Above are three niches with shell heads, and then three windows, two oblong and one round, all set in rectangular frames. At the sides there are broad pilasters below, with the usual lanky Doric pilasters above reaching to the main cornice, above which there now rises only an unfinished gable end. The inside is much more pleasing. The barrel vaults of the chapels are beautifully panelled and enriched with egg and tongue; between each, two pilasters rise only to the moulding from which the chapel arches spring, and support smaller pilasters with a niche between. In the spandrels of the arches are rather badly carved angels holding shields, and on the arches themselves, as at São Marcos, are cherubs' heads. A plain entablature runs along immediately above these arches, and from it to the main cornice, the walls, covered with blue and white tiles, are perfectly blank, broken only by square-headed windows. Only at the crossing do pilasters run up to the vault, and they are of the usual attenuated Doric form. As usual the roof is covered with plain coffers, as is also the drumless dome. This is very like the Carmo and the Graça, which repeat the fault of leaving a blank tiled wall above the chapels, and it is quite possible that they too may have been built by Alvares; the plan is evidently founded on that of one of Terzi's churches, as São Vicente, or on that of the Sé Nova, but though some of the detail is charming there is a want of unity between the upper and lower parts which is found in none of Terzi's work, nor even in the heavier Sé Nova.[165] [Sidenote: Lisbon, São Bento.] Baltazar Alvares seems to have been specially employed by the order of St. Benedict, for not only did he build their monasteries at Coimbra but also São Bento, now the Cortes in Lisbon, as well as São Bento da Victoria at Oporto, his greatest and most successful work. [Sidenote: Oporto, São Bento.] The plan is practically the same as that of São Bento at Coimbra, but larger. Here, however, there are no windows over the chapel arches, nor any dome at the crossing. Built of grey granite, a certain heaviness seems suitable enough, and the great coffered vault is not without grandeur, while the gloom of the inside is lit up by huge carved and gilt altar-pieces and by the elaborate stalls in the choir gallery. CHAPTER XVIII OTHER BUILDINGS OF THE LATER RENAISSANCE, TILL THE EXPULSION OF THE SPANIARDS In the last chapter the most important works of Terzi and of his pupils have been described, and it is now necessary to go back and tell of various buildings which do not conform to his plan of a great barrel-vaulted nave with flanking chapels, though the designers of some of these buildings have copied such peculiarities as the tall and narrow pilasters of which his school was so fond, and which, as will be seen, ultimately degenerated into mere pilaster strips. [Sidenote: Vianna do Castello, Misericordia.] But before speaking of the basilican and other churches of this time, the Misericordia at Vianna do Castello must be described.[166] The Misericordia of Vianna stands on the north side of the chief square of the town, and was built in 1589 by one João Lopez, whose father had designed the beautiful fountain which stands near by. It is a building of very considerable interest, as there seems to be nothing else like it in the country. The church of the Misericordia, a much older building ruined by later alteration, is now only remarkable for the fine blue and white tile decoration with which its walls are covered. Just to the west of it, and at the corner of the broad street in which is a fine Manoelino house belonging to the Visconde de Carreira, stands the building designed by Lopez. The front towards the street is plain, but that overlooking the square highly decorated. At the two corners are broad rusticated bands which run up uninterrupted to the cornice; between them the front is divided into three stories of open loggias. Of these the lowest has five round arches resting on Ionic columns; in [Illustration: FIG. 97. VIANNA DO CASTELLO. MISERICORDIA.] the second, on a solid parapet, stand four whole and two half 'terms' or atlantes which support an entablature with wreath-enriched frieze; corbels above the heads of the figures cross the frieze, and others above them the low blocking course, and on them are other terms supporting the main cornice, which is not of great projection. A simple pediment rises above the four central figures, surmounted by a crucifix and containing a carving of a sun on a strapwork shield. (Fig. 97.) The whole is of granite and the figures and mouldings are distinctly rude, and yet it is eminently picturesque and original, and shows that Lopez was a skilled designer if but a poor sculptor. [Sidenote: Beja, São Thiago.] Coming now to the basilican churches. That of São Thiago at Beja was begun in 1590 by Jorge Rodrigues for Archbishop Theotonio of Evora. It has a nave and aisles of six bays covered with groined vaults resting on Doric columns, a transept and three shallow rectangular chapels to the east. The clerestory windows are round. [Sidenote: Azeitão, São Simão.] Much the same plan had been followed a little earlier by Affonso de Albuquerque, son of the great viceroy of India, when about 1570 he built the church of São Simão close to his country house of Bacalhôa, at Azeitão not far from Setubal. São Simão is a small church with nave and aisles of five bays, the latter only being vaulted, with arcades resting on Doric columns; at first there was a tower at each corner, but they fell in 1755, and only one has been rebuilt. Most noticeable in the church are the very fine tiles put up in 1648, with saintly figures over each arch. They are practically the same as those in the parish church of Alvito. [Sidenote: Evora, Cartuxa.] Another basilican church of this date is that of the Cartuxa or Charter House,[167] founded by the same Archbishop Theotonio in 1587, a few miles out of Evora. Only the west front, built about 1594 of black and white marble, deserves mention. Below there is a porch, spreading beyond the church, and arranged exactly like the lower Claustro dos Filippes at Thomar, with round arches separated by two Doric columns on pedestals, but with a continuous entablature carried above the arches on large corbelled keystones. Behind rises the front in two stories. The lower has three windows, square-headed and separated by Ionic columns, two on each side, with niches between. Single Ionic columns also stand at the outer angles of the aisles. In the upper story the central part is carried up to a pediment by Corinthian columns resting on the Ionic below; between them is a large statued niche surrounded by panels. Unfortunately the simplicity of the design is spoilt by the broken and curly volutes which sprawl across the aisles, by ugly finials at the corners, and by a rather clumsy balustrading to the porch. [Sidenote: Beja, Misericordia.] The interior of the Misericordia at Beja, a square, divided into nine smaller vaulted squares by arches resting on fine Corinthian columns, with altar recesses beyond, looks as if it belonged to the time of Dom João III., but if so the front must have been added later. This is very simple, but at the same time strong and unique. The triple division inside is marked by three great rusticated Doric pilasters on which rest a simple entablature and parapet. Between are three round arches, enclosing three doors of which the central has a pointed pediment, while over the others a small round window lights the interior. [Sidenote: Oporto, Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar.] But by far the most original of all the buildings of this later renaissance is the monastery of Nossa Senhora da Serra do Pilar in Villa Nova de Gaya, the suburb of Oporto which lies south of the Douro. Standing on a high granite knoll, which rises some fifty feet above the country to the south, and descends by an abrupt precipice on the north to the deep-flowing river, here some two hundred yards wide, and running in a narrow gorge, the monastery and its hill have more than once played an important part in history. From there Wellington, in 1809, was able to reconnoitre the French position across the river while his army lay hidden behind the rocks; and it was from a creek just a little to the east that the first barges started for the north bank with the men who seized the unfinished seminary and held it till enough were across to make Soult see he must retreat or be cut off. Later, in 1832, the convent, defended for Queen Maria da Gloria, was much knocked about by the besieging army of Dom Miguel. The Augustinians had begun to build on the hill in 1540, but none of the present monastery can be earlier than the seventeenth century, the date 1602 being found in the cloister. The plan of the whole building is most unusual and original: the nave is a circle some seventy-two feet in diameter, surmounted by a dome, and surrounded by eight shallow chapels, of which one contains the entrance and another is prolonged to form a narrow chancel. This chancel leads to a larger square choir behind the high altar, and east of it is a round cloister sixty-five feet across. The various monastic buildings are grouped round the choir and cloister, leaving the round nave standing free. The outside of the circle is two stories in height, divided by a plain cornice carried round the pilasters which mark the recessed chapels within. The face of the wall above this cornice is set a little back, and the pilaster strips are carried up a short distance to form a kind of pedestal, and are then set back with a volute and obelisk masking the offset. The main cornice has two large corbels to each bay, and carries a picturesque balustrading within which rises a tile roof covering the dome and crowned by a small lantern at the top. The west door has two Ionic columns on each side; a curious niche with corbelled sides rises above it to the lower cornice; and the church is lit by a square-headed window pierced through the upper part of each bay. Only the pilasters, cornices, door and window dressings are of granite ashlar, all the rest being of rubble plastered and whitewashed. [Illustration: PLAN OF NOSSA SENHORA DO PILAR] Now the eucalyptus-trees planted round the church have grown so tall that only the parapet can be seen rising above the tree-tops. Though much of the detail of the outside is far from being classical or correct, the whole is well proportioned and well put together, but the same cannot be said of the inside. Pilasters of inordinate height have been seen in some of the Lisbon churches, but compared with these which here stand in couples between the chapels they are short and well proportioned. These pilasters, which are quite seventeen diameters high, have for capitals coarse copies of those in São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. In São Vicente the cornice was carried on corbels crossing the frieze, and so was continuous and unbroken. Here all the lower mouldings of the cornice are carried round the corbels and the pilasters so that only the two upper are continuous, an arrangement which is anything but an improvement. Another unpleasing feature are the three niches which, with hideous painted figures, are placed one above the other between the pilasters. The chancel arch reaches up to the main cornice, but those of the door and chapel recesses are low enough to leave room for the windows. The dome is divided into panels of various shapes by broad flat ribs with coarse mouldings. The chancel and choir beyond have barrel vaults divided into simple square panels. The church then, though interesting from its plan, is--inside especially--remarkably unpleasing, though it is perhaps only fair to attribute a considerable part of this disagreeable effect to the state of decay into which it has fallen--a state which has only advanced far enough to be squalid and dirty without being in the least picturesque. Far more pleasing than the church is the round cloister behind. In it the thirty-six Ionic columns are much better proportioned, and the capitals better carved; on the cornice stands an attic, rendered necessary by the barrel vault, heavy indeed, but not too heavy for the columns below. This attic is panelled, and on it stand obelisk-bearing pedestals, one above each column, and between them pediments of strapwork. (Fig. 98.) Had this cloister been square it would have been in no way very remarkable, but its round shape as well as the fig-trees that now grow in the garth, and the many plants which sprout from joints in the cornice, make it one of the most picturesque buildings in the country. The rest of the monastic buildings have been in ruins since the siege of 1832. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Santa Cruz Sacristy.] The sacristy of Santa Cruz at Coimbra must have been begun before Nossa Senhora da Serra had been finished. Though so much later--for it is dated 1622--the architect of this sacristy has followed much more closely the good Italian forms introduced by Terzi. Like that of the Sé Velha, the sacristy of Santa Cruz is a rectangular building, and measures about 52 feet long by 26 wide; each of the longer sides is divided into three bays by Doric pilasters which have good capitals, but are themselves cut up into many small panels. The cornice is partly carried on corbels as in the Serra church, but here the effect is much better. There are large semicircular windows, divided into three lights at each end, and [Illustration: FIG. 98. OPORTO. CLOISTER, NOSSA SENHORA DA SERRA DO PILAR.] [Illustration: FIG. 99. COIMBRA. SACRISTY OF STA. CRUZ.] the barrel vault is covered with deep eight-sided coffers. One curious feature is the way the pilasters in the north-east corner are carried on corbels, so as to leave room for two doors, one of which leads into the chapter-house behind the chancel. (Fig. 99.) [Sidenote: Lisbon, Santa Engracia.] Twenty years later was begun the church of Santa Engracia in Lisbon. It was planned on a great scale; a vast dome in the centre surrounded by four equal apses, and by four square towers. It has never been finished, and now only rises to the level of the main cornice; but had the dome been built it would undoubtedly have been one of the very finest of the renaissance buildings in the country. Like the Serra church it is, outside, two stories in height having Doric pilasters below--coupled at the angles of the towers--and Ionic above. In the western apse, the pilasters are replaced by tall detached Doric columns, and the Ionic pilasters above by buttresses which grow out of voluted curves. Large, simply moulded windows are placed between the upper pilasters, with smaller blank windows above them, while in the western apse arches with niches set between pediment-bearing pilasters lead into the church. Here, in Santa Engracia, is a church designed in the simplest and most severe classic form, and absolutely free of all the fantastic misuse of fragments of classic detail which had by that time become so common, and which characterise such fronts as those of the Sé Nova at Coimbra or the Collegio Novo at Oporto. The niches over the entrance arches are severe but well designed, as are the windows in the towers and all the mouldings. Perhaps the only fault of the detail is that the Doric pilasters and columns are too tall. Now in its unfinished state the whole is heavy and clumsy, but at the same time imposing and stately from its great size; but it is scarcely fair to judge so unfinished a building, which would have been very different had its dome and four encompassing towers risen high above the surrounding apses and the red roofs of the houses which climb steeply up the hillside. [Sidenote: Coimbra, Santa Clara.] The new convent of Santa Clara at Coimbra was begun about the same time--in 1640--on the hillside overlooking the Mondego and the old church which the stream has almost buried; and, more fortunate than Santa Engracia, it has been finished, but unlike it is a building of little interest. The church is a rectangle with huge Doric pilasters on either side supporting a heavy coffered roof. There are no aisles, but shallow altar recesses with square-headed windows above. The chancel at the south end is like the nave but narrower; the two-storied nuns' choir is to the north. As the convent is still occupied it cannot be visited, but contains the tomb of St. Isabel, brought from the old church, in the lower choir, and her silver shrine in the upper. Except for the cloister, which, designed after the manner of the Claustro dos Filippes at Thomar, has coupled Doric columns between the arches, and above, niches flanked by Ionic columns between square windows, the rest of the nunnery is even heavier and more barrack-like than the church. Indeed almost the only interest of the church is the use of the huge Doric pilasters, since from that time onward such pilasters, usually as clumsy and as large, are found in almost every church. This fondness for Doric is probably due to the influence of Terzi, who seems to have preferred it to all the other orders, though he always gave his pilasters a beautiful and intricate capital. In any case from about 1580 onwards scarcely any other order on a large scale is used either inside or outside, and by 1640 it had grown to the ugly size used in Santa Clara and in nearly all later buildings, the only real exception being perhaps in the work of the German who designed Mafra and rebuilt the Capella Mor at Evora. Such pilasters are found forming piers in the church built about 1600 to be the cathedral of Leiria, in the west front of the cathedral of Portalegre, where they are piled above each other in three stories, huge and tall below, short and thinner above, and in endless churches all over the country. Later still they degenerated into mere angle strips, as in the cathedral of Angra do Heroismo in the Azores and elsewhere. Such a building as Santa Engracia is the real ending of Architecture in Portugal, and its unfinished state is typical of the poverty which had overtaken the country during the Spanish usurpation, when robbed of her commerce by Holland and by England, united against her will to a decaying power, she was unable to finish her last great work, while such buildings as she did herself finish--for it must not be forgotten that Mafra was designed by a foreigner--show a meanness of invention and design scarcely to be equalled in any other land, a strange contrast to the exuberance of fancy lavished on the buildings of a happier age. CHAPTER XIX THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY When elected at Thomar in 1580, Philip II. of Spain had sworn to govern Portugal only through Portuguese ministers, a promise which he seems to have kept. He was fully alive to the importance of commanding the mouth of the Tagus and the splendid harbour of Lisbon, and had he fixed his capital there instead of at Madrid it is quite possible that the two countries might have remained united. For sixty years the people endured the ever-growing oppression and misgovernment. The duque de Lerma, minister to Philip III., or II. of Portugal, and still more the Conde duque de Olivares under Philip IV., treated Portugal as if it were a conquered province. In 1640, the very year in which Santa Engracia was begun, the regent was Margaret of Savoy, whose ministers, with hardly an exception, were Spaniards. It will be remembered that when Philip II. was elected in 1580, Dona Catharina, duchess of Braganza and daughter of Dom Manoel's sixth son, Duarte, duke of Guimarães, had been the real heir to the throne of her uncle, the Cardinal King. Her Philip had bought off by a promise of the sovereignty of Brazil, a promise which he never kept, and now in 1640 her grandson Dom João, eighth duke of Braganza and direct descendant of Affonso, a bastard son of Dom João I., had succeeded to all her rights. He was an unambitious and weak man, fond only of hunting and music, so Olivares had thought it safe to restore to him his ancestral lands; and to bind him still closer to Spain had given him a Spanish wife, Luisa Guzman, daughter of the duke of Medina Sidonia. Matters, however, turned out very differently from what he had expected. A gypsy had once told Dona Luisa that she would be a queen, and a queen she was determined to be. With difficulty she persuaded her husband to become the nominal head of the conspiracy for the expulsion of the Spaniards, and on the 1st of December 1640 the first blow was struck by the capture of the regent and her ministers in the palace at Lisbon. Next day, December 2nd, the duke of Braganza was saluted as King Dom João IV. at Villa Viçosa, his country home beyond Evora. The moment of the revolution was well chosen, for Spain was at that time struggling with a revolt which had broken out in Cataluña, and so was unable to send any large force to crush Dom João. All the Indian and African colonies at once drove out the Spaniards, and in Brazil the Dutch garrisons which had been established there by Count Maurice of Nassau were soon expelled. Though a victory was soon gained over the Spaniards at Montijo, the war dragged on for twenty-eight years, and it was only some years after Don John of Austria[168] had been defeated at Almeixial by Schomberg (who afterwards took service under William of Orange) that peace was finally made in 1668. Portugal then ceded Ceuta, and Spain acknowledged the independence of the revolted kingdom, and granted to its sovereign the title of Majesty. It is no great wonder, then, that with such a long-continued war and an exhausted treasury a building like Santa Engracia should have remained unfinished, and it would have been well for the architecture of the country had this state of poverty continued, for then far more old buildings would have survived unaltered and unspoiled. Unfortunately by the end of the seventeenth century trade had revived, and the discovery of diamonds and of gold in Brazil had again brought much wealth to the king. Of the innumerable churches and palaces built during the eighteenth century scarcely any are worthy of mention, for perhaps the great convent palace of Mafra and the Capella Mor of the Sé at Evora are the only exceptions. In the early years of that century King João V. made a vow that if a son was born to him, he would, on the site of the poorest monastery in the country, build the largest and the richest. At the same time anxious to emulate the glories of the Escorial, he determined that his building should contain a palace as well as a monastery--indeed it may almost be said to contain two palaces, one for the king on the south, and one on the north for the queen. [Sidenote: Mafra.] A son was born, and the poorest monastery in the kingdom was found at Mafra, where a few Franciscans lived in some miserable buildings. Having found his site, King João had next to find an architect able to carry out his great scheme, and so low had native talent fallen, that the architect chosen was a foreigner, Frederic Ludovici or Ludwig, a German. The first stone of the vast building was laid in 1717, and the church was dedicated thirteen years later, in 1730.[169] The whole building may be divided into two main parts. One to the east, measuring some 560 feet by 350, and built round a large square courtyard, was devoted to the friars, and contained the convent entrance, the refectory, chapter-house, kitchen, and cells for two hundred and eighty brothers, as well as a vast library on the first floor. The other and more extensive part to the west comprises the king's apartments on the south side, the queen's on the north, and between them the church. It is not without interest to compare the plan of this palace or monastery with the more famous Escorial. Both cover almost exactly the same area,[170] but while in the Escorial the church is thrust back at the end of a vast patio, here it is brought forward to the very front. There the royal palace occupies only a comparatively small area in the north-west corner of the site, and the monastic part the whole lying south of the entrance patio and of the church; here the monastic part is thrust back almost out of sight, and the palace stretches all along the west front except where it is interrupted in the middle by the church. Indeed the two buildings differ from one another much as did the characters of their builders. The gloomy fanaticism of Philip of Spain is exemplified by the preponderance of the monastic buildings no less than by his own small dark bed-closet opening only to the church close to the high altar. João V., pleasure-loving and luxurious, pushed the friars to the back, and made his own and the queen's rooms the most prominent part of the whole building, and one cannot but feel that, though a monastery had to be built to fulfil a vow, the king was actuated not so much by religious zeal as by an ostentatious megalomania which led him to try and surpass the size of the Escorial. [Illustration: PLAN OF MAFRA] To take the plan rather more in detail. The west front, about 740 feet long, is flanked by huge square projecting pavilions. The king's and the queen's apartments are each entered by rather low and insignificant doorways in the middle of the long straight blocks which join these pavilions to the church. These doors lead under the palace to large square courtyards, one on each side of the church, and forming on the ground floor a cloister with a well-designed arcading of round arches, separated by Roman Doric shafts. The king's and the queen's blocks are practically identical, except that in the king's a great oval hall called the Sala dos actos takes the place of some smaller rooms between the cloister and the outer wall. Between these blocks stands the church reached by a great flight of steps. It has a nave and aisles of three large and one small bay, a dome at the crossing, and transepts and chancel ending in apses. In front, flanking towers projecting beyond the aisles are united by a long entrance porch. Between the secular and the monastic parts a great corridor runs north and south, and immediately beyond it a range of great halls, including the refectory at the north end and the chapter-house at the south. Further east the great central court with its surrounding cells divides the monastic entrance and great stair from such domestic buildings as the kitchen, the bakery, and the lavatory. Four stories of cells occupy the whole east side. Though some parts of the palace and monastery such as the two entrance courts, the library, and the interior of the church, may be better than might have been expected from the date, it is quite impossible to speak at all highly of the building as a whole. It is nearly all of the same height with flat paved roofs; indeed the only breaks are the corner pavilions and the towers and dome of the church. The west side consists of two monotonous blocks, one on each side of the church, with three stories of windows. At either end is a great square projecting mass, rusticated on the lowest floor, with short pilaster strips between the windows on the first, and Corinthian pilasters on the second. The poor cornice is surmounted by a low attic, within which rises a hideous ogee plastered roof. (Fig. 100.) The church in the centre loses much by not rising above the rest of the front, and the two towers, though graceful enough in outline, are poor in detail, and are finished off with a very ugly combination of hollow curves and bulbous domes. The centre dome, too, is very poor in outline with a drum and lantern far too tall for its size; though of course, had the drum been of a better proportion, it would hardly have shown above the palace roof. Still more monotonous are the other sides with endless rows of windows set in a pink plastered wall. Very different is the outline of the Escorial, whose very plainness and want of detail suits well the rugged mountain side in which it is set. The main front with its high corner towers and their steep slate roofs, and with its high centre-piece, is far more impressive, and the mere reiteration of its endless featureless windows gives the Escorial an appearance of size quite wanting to Mafra. Above all the great church with massive dome and towers rises high above all the rest, and gives the whole a sense of unity and completeness which the smaller church of Mafra, though in a far more prominent place, entirely fails to do. Poor though the church at Mafra is outside, inside there is much to admire, and but little to betray the late date. The porch has an effective vault of black and white marble, and domes with black and white panels cover the spaces under the towers. Inside the church is all built of white marble with panels and pilasters of pink marble from Pero Pinheiro on the road to Cintra. (Fig. 101.) The whole church measures about 200 feet long by 100 wide, with a nave also 100 feet long. The central aisle is over 40 feet wide, and has two very well-proportioned Corinthian pilasters between each bay. Almost the only trace of the eighteenth century is found in the mouldings of the pendentive panels, and in the marble vault, but on the whole the church is stately and the detail refined and restrained. The refectory, a very plain room with plastered barrel vault, 160 feet long by 40 wide, is remarkable only for the splendid slabs of Brazil wood which form the tables, and for the beautiful brass lamps which hang from the ceiling. Much more interesting is the library which occupies the central part of the floor above. Over 200 feet long, it has a dome-surmounted transept in the middle, and a barrel vault divided into panels. All the walls are lined with bookcases painted white like the barrel vault and like the projecting gallery from which the upper shelves are reached. One half is devoted to religious, and one half to secular books, and in the latter each country has a space more or less large allotted to it. As scarcely any books seem to have been added since the building was finished, it should contain many a rare and valuable volume, and as all seem to be in excellent condition, [Illustration: FIG. 100. MAFRA. W. FRONT OF PALACE.] [Illustration: FIG. 101. MAFRA. INTERIOR OF CHURCH.] they might well deserve a visit from some learned book-lover. Mafra does not seem to have ever had any interesting history. Within the lines of Torres Vedras, the palace escaped the worst ravages of the French invasion. In 1834 the two hundred and eighty friars were turned out, and since then most of the vast building has been turned into barracks, while the palace is but occasionally inhabited by the king when he comes to shoot in the great wooded _tapada_ or enclosure which stretches back towards the east. [Sidenote: Evora, Capella Mor.] Just about the time that João V. was beginning his great palace at Mafra, the chapter of the cathedral of Evora came to the conclusion that the old Capella Mor was too small, and altogether unworthy of the dignity of an archiepiscopal see. So they determined to pull it down, and naturally enough employed Ludovici to design the new one. The first stone was laid in 1717, and the chancel was consecrated in 1746 at the cost of about £27,000. The outside, of white marble, is enriched with two orders of pilasters, Corinthian and Composite. Inside, white, pink and black marbles are used, the columns are composite, but the whole design is far poorer than anything at Mafra. King João V. died in 1750 after a long and prosperous reign. Besides building Mafra he gave great sums of money to the Pope, and obtained in return the division of Lisbon into two bishoprics, and the title of Patriarch for the archbishop of Lisboa Oriental, or Eastern Lisbon. When he died he was succeeded by Dom José, whose reign is noted for the terrible earthquake of 1755, and for the administration of the great Marques de Pombal. It was on the 1st of November, when the population of Lisbon was assembled in the churches for the services of All Saints' day, that the first shock was felt. This was soon followed by two others which laid the city in ruins, killing many people. Most who had escaped rushed to the river bank, where they with the splendid palace at the water's edge were all overwhelmed by an immense tidal wave. The damage done to the city was almost incalculable. Scarcely a house remained uninjured, and of the churches nearly all were ruined. The cathedral was almost entirely destroyed, leaving only the low chapels and the romanesque nave and transepts standing, and of the later churches all were ruined, and only São Roque and São Vicente de Fora--which lost its dome--remained to show what manner of churches were built at the end of the sixteenth century. This is not the place to tell of the administration of the Marques de Pombal, who rose to eminence owing to the great ability he showed after this awful calamity, or to give a history of how he expelled the Jesuits, subdued the nobles, attempted to make Portugal a manufacturing country, abolished slavery and the differences between the _Old_ and the _New Christians_, reformed the administration and the teaching of the University of Coimbra, and robbed the Inquisition of half its terrors by making its trials public. In Lisbon he rebuilt the central part of the town, laying out parallel streets, and surrounding the Praça do Commercio with great arcaded government offices; buildings remarkable rather for the fine white stone of which they are made, than for any architectural beauty. Indeed it is impossible to admire any of the buildings erected in Portugal since the earthquake; the palaces of the Necessidades and the Ajuda are but great masses of pink-washed plaster pierced with endless windows, and without any beauty of detail or of design. [Sidenote: Lisbon, Estrella.] Nor does the church of the Coração de Jesus, usually called the Estrella, call for any admiration. It copies the faults of Mafra, the tall drum, the poor dome, and the towers with bulbous tops. [Sidenote: Oporto, Torre dos Clerigos.] More vicious, indeed, than the Estrella, but much more original and picturesque, is the Torre dos Clerigos at Oporto, built by the clergy in 1755. It stands at the top of a steep hill leading down to the busiest part of the town. The tower is a square with rounded corners, and is of very considerable height. The main part is four stories in height, of which the lowest is the tallest and the one above it the shortest. All are adorned with pilasters or pilaster strips, and the third, in which is a large belfry window, has an elaborate cornice, rising over the window in a rounded pediment to enclose a great shield of arms. The fourth story is finished by a globe-bearing parapet, within which the tower rises to another parapet much corbelled out. The last or sixth story is set still further back and ends in a fantastic dome-shaped roof. In short, the tower is a good example of the wonderful and ingenious way in which the eighteenth-century builders of Portugal often contrived the strangest results by a use--or misuse--of pieces of classic detail, forming a whole often more Chinese than Western in appearance, but at the same time not unpicturesque.[171] [Sidenote: Oporto, Quinta do Freixo.] A much more pleasing example of the same school--a school doubtless influenced by the bad example of Churriguera in Spain--is the house called the Quinta do Freixo on the Douro a mile or so above the town. Here the four towers with their pointed slate roofs rise in so picturesque a way at the four corners, and the whole house blends so well with the parapets and terraces of the garden, that one can almost forgive the broken pediments which form so strange a gable over the door, and the still more strange shapes of the windows. Now that factory chimneys rise close on either side the charm is spoiled, but once the house, with its turrets, its vase-laden parapets, its rococo windows, and the slates painted pale blue that cover its walls, must have been a fit setting for the artificial civilisation of a hundred and fifty years ago, and for the ladies in dresses of silk brocade and gentlemen in flowered waistcoats and powdered hair who once must have gone up and down the terrace steps, or sat in the shell grottoes of the garden. [Sidenote: Queluz.] Though less picturesque and fantastic, the royal palace at Queluz, between Lisbon and Cintra, is another really pleasing example of the more sober rococo. Built by Dom Pedro III. about 1780, the palace is a long building with a low tiled roof, and the gardens are rich in fountains and statues. [Sidenote: Guimarães, Quinta.] Somewhat similar, but unfinished, and enriched with niches and statues, is a Quinta near the station at Guimarães. Standing on a slope, the garden descends northwards in beautiful terraces, whose fronts are covered with tiles. Being well cared for, it is rich in beautiful trees and shrubs. [Sidenote: Oporto, Hospital and Factory.] Much more correct, and it must be said commonplace, are the hospital and the English factory--or club-house--in Oporto. The plans of both have clearly been sent out from England, the hospital especially being thoroughly English in design. Planned on so vast a scale that it has never been completed, with the pediment of its Doric portico unfinished, the hospital is yet a fine building, simple and severe, not unlike what might have been designed by some pupil of Chambers. The main front has a rusticated ground floor with round-headed windows and doors. On this in the centre stands a Doric portico of six columns, and at the ends narrower colonnades of four shafts each. Between them stretches a long range of windows with simple, well-designed architraves. The only thing, apart from its unfinished condition, which shows that the hospital is not in England, are some colossal figures of saints which stand above the cornice, and are entirely un-English in style. Of later buildings little can be said. Many country houses are pleasing from their complete simplicity; plastered, and washed pink, yellow, or white, they are devoid of all architectural pretension, and their low roofs of red pantiles look much more natural than do the steep slated roofs of some of the more modern villas. The only unusual point about these Portuguese houses is that, as a rule, they have sash windows, a form of window so rare in the South that one is tempted to see in them one of the results of the Methuen Treaty and of the long intercourse with England. The chimneys, too, are often interesting. Near Lisbon they are long, narrow oblongs, with a curved top--not unlike a tombstone in shape--from which the smoke escapes by a long narrow slit. Elsewhere the smoke escapes through a picturesque arrangement of tiles, and hardly anywhere is there to be seen a simple straight shaft with a chimney can at the top. For twenty years after the end of the Peninsular War the country was in a more or less disturbed state. And it was only after Dom Miguel had been defeated and expelled, and the more liberal party who supported Dona Maria II. had won the day, that Portugal again began to revive. In 1834, the year which saw Dom Miguel's surrender, all monasteries throughout the country were suppressed, and the monks turned out. Even more melancholy was the fate of the nuns, for they were allowed to stay on till the last should have died. In some cases one or two survived nearly seventy years, watching the gradual decay of their homes, a decay they were powerless to arrest, till, when their death at last set the convents free, they were found, with leaking roofs, and rotten floors, almost too ruinous to be put to any use. The Gothic revival has not been altogether without its effects in Portugal. Batalha has been, and Alcobaça is being, saved from ruin. The Sé Velha at Coimbra has been purged--too drastically perhaps--of all the additions and disfigurements of the eighteenth century, and the same is being done with the cathedral of Lisbon. Such new buildings as have been put up are usually much less successful. Nothing can exceed the ugliness of the new domed tower of the church of Belem, or of the upper story imposed on the long undercroft. Nor can the new railway station in the Manoelino style be admired. Probably the best of such attempts to copy the art of Portugal's greatest age is found at Bussaco, where the hotel, with its arcaded galleries and its great sphere-bearing spire, is not unworthy of the sixteenth century, and where the carving, usually the spontaneous work of uninstructed men, shows that some of the mediæval skill, as well as some of the mediæval methods, have survived till the present century. BOOKS CONSULTED Hieronymi Osorii Lusitani, Silvensis in Algarviis Episcopi: _De rebus Emmanuelis, etc._ Cologne, 1597. Padre Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcellos: _Historia de Santarem Edificada_. Lisboa Occidental, 1790. J. Murphy: _History and Description of the Royal Convent of Batalha_. London, 1792. Raczynski: _Les Arts en Portugal_. Paris, 1846. Raczynski: _Diccionaire Historico-Artistique du Portugal_. Paris, 1847. J. C. Robinson: 'Portuguese School of Painting' in the _Fine Arts Quarterly Review_. 1866. Simões, A. F.: _Architectura Religiosa em Coimbra na Idade Meia_. Ignacio de Vilhena Barbosa: _Monumentos de Portugal Historicos, etc._ Lisboa, 1886. Oliveira Martims: _Historia de Portugal_. Pinho Leal: _Diccionario Geographico de Portugal_. Albrecht Haupt: _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Portugal_. Frankfurt A.M., 1890. Visconde de Condeixa: _O Mosteiro da Batalha em Portugal_. Lisboa & Paris. Justi: 'Die Portugiesische Malerei des 16ten Jahrhunderts' in the _Jahrbuch der K. Preuss. Kunstsammlung_, vol. ix. Berlin, 1888. Joaquim Rasteiro: _Quinta e Palacio de Bacalhôa em Azeitão_. Lisboa, 1895. Joaquim de Vasconcellos: 'Batalha' & 'São Marcos' from _A Arte e a Natureza em Portugal._ Ed. E. Biel e Cie. Porto. L. R. D.: _Roteiro Illustrado do Viajante em Coimbra_. Coimbra, 1894. Caetano da Camara Manoel: _Atravez a Cidade de Evora, etc._ Evora, 1900. Conde de Sabugosa: _O Paço de Cintra_. Lisboa, 1903. Augusto Fuschini: _A Architectura Religiosa da Edade Média_. Lisboa, 1904. José Queiroz: _Ceramica Portugueza_. Lisboa, 1907. INDEX A Abd-el-Melik, 244. Abrantes, 41, 103. Abreu, L. L. d', 233. Abu-Zakariah, the vezir, 44. Affonso II., 64, 65. ---- III., 7, 64, 67, 68, 75, 116. ---- IV., 43, 73, 74, 76. ---- V., 92, 101, 102, 127, 134, 143, 161, 171, 176. ---- VI., 24, 127. ---- I., Henriques, 6, 31, 38, 40, 41, 44, 51, 117, 166, 196, 197. ---- of Portugal, Bishop of Evora, 19. ---- son of João I., 261. ---- son of João II., 144. Africa, 66, 144, 161. Aguas Santas, 33, 136. Agua de Peixes, 131. Ahmedabad, 159, 176, 180. Albuquerque, Affonso de, 25, 144, 158, 170, 183, 255. ---- Luis de, 180, 183 _n._ Alcacer-Quebir, battle of, 216, 244. Alcacer Seguer, 102. Alcantara, 28. Alcobaça, 44, 45, 48, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 68, 70, 71, 75-78, 82, 166, 204, 206, 223, 227, 231, 270. Al-Coraxi, emir, 42. Alemquer, 217. Alemtejo, 1, 10, 51, 100, 129, 143. Alexander VI., Pope, 158. Alfonso VI. of Castile and Leon, 6, 117. ---- VII. of Castile and Leon, 6, 7, 38, 39. ---- X. of Castile and Leon, 68. Alga, San Giorgio in, 133. Algarve, the, 7, 67, 68, 116, 219. Alhambra, the, 120, 128. Aljubarrota, battle of, 7, 18, 80, 93, 98. Almada, Rodrigo Ruy de, 11. Almansor, 30, 42. Almeida, Bishop Jorge d', 21, 48, 206, 208, 209, 210. Almeirim, palace of, 122, 144, 229, 240. Almeixial, battle of, 262. Almourol, 41. Almoravides, the, 6. Alvares, the, 49, 242, 244. ---- Baltazar, 252, 253. ---- Fernando, 19. Alvito, 27, 100, 129-132, 255. Amarante, 237. Amaro, Sant', 27. Amboise, Georges d', 202. Ançã, 204. Andalucia, 4. Andrade, Fernão Peres de, 144. Angra do Heroismo, in the Azores, 260. Annes, Canon Gonçalo, 20 _n._ ---- Margarida, 91 _n._ ---- Pedro, 197. Antunes, Aleixo, 228. Antwerp, 11. Arabes, Sala dos, Cintra, 23, 24, 124. Aragon, 5. Arganil, Counts of, 206, 207. Arraes, Frey Amador, 252. Arruda, Diogo de, 162. Astorga, 41. Asturias, 5. ---- Enrique, Prince of the, 81. Augustus, reign of, 3. Ave, river, 2, 29, 31, 107. Aveiro, convent at, 142. ---- the Duque d', 140. ---- Dukes of, 251. Avignon, 161. Aviz, House of, 8. Azeitão, 255. Azila, in Morocco, 134, 243, 244. Azurara, 63, 107, 108, 136. B Bacalhôa, Quinta de, 22, 25, 27, 176 _n._, 183, 255. Barbosa, Francisco, 212. ---- Gonzalo Gil, 212. Barcellos, 127. Barcelona, 5. Batalha, 24, 61 _n._, 62, 63, 65, 70, 78, 80-92, 95, 96, 97, 99, 109, 159, 171-181, 193, 194, 204, 224, 227, 230-233, 270. Bayão, Gonçalo, 240. Bayona, in Galicia, 39. Beatriz, Dona, wife of Charles III. of Savoy, 14. ---- Queen of Affonso III., 68, 75. ---- ---- Affonso IV., 117. Bebedim, 116, 168 _n._ Beckford, 59. Beira, 1, 7, 64. Beja, 7, 51, 69, 148, 255, 256. ---- Luis, Duke of, 14. Belem, 14, 15, 16, 20, 28, 100, 104, 162, 164, 166, 171, 172, 177, 183-195, 221, 222, 227, 231, 241, 271. ---- Tower of São Vicente, 146, 179, 181-183, 194. Bernardo (of Santiago), 36, 48 _n._ ---- Master, 48. Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 59. Boelhe, 32. Bonacofú, 102. Boulogne, Countess of, 68, 75. Boutaca, or Boitaca, 147, 149, 184, 231. Braga, 2, 3, 18, 19, 31, 34-40, 52, 62, 67, 98, 99, 104, 112-115. Braganza, Archbishop José de, 114 _n._ ---- Catherine, Duchess of, 244, 261. ---- Duke of, 143. ---- Dukes of, 127. ---- João, Duke of, 261. Brandão, Francisco, 11. Brazil, 8, 66, 144, 158, 160, 222, 243, 244, 261, 262. Brazil, Pedro of, 8. Brazões, Sala dos, Cintra, 24, 126, 138, 151. Brites, Dona, daughter of Fernando I., 80. ---- ---- mother of D. Manoel, 25, 183 _n._ Buchanan, George, 198 _n._ Bugimaa, 116, 168 _n._ Burgos, 90. Burgundy, Count Henry of, 6, 37, 41, 42, 114, 117. ---- Isabel, Duchess of, 11, 98 _n._, 120. Bussaco, 271. C Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 8, 101, 144, 158, 170, 206. Caldas da Rainha, 27, 146, 147. Cales, 6. Calicut, Portuguese at, 8, 144, 157, 158, 183. Calixtus III., Pope, 161. Câmara, Luis Gonçalves de, 243. Caminha, 27, 109, 110, 136, 137, 218, 220. Cantabrian Mountains, 1, 5. Cantanhede, 215 _n._ Canterbury Cathedral, 82. Canton, Portuguese at, 144. Cão, Diogo, 143. Cardiga, 229. Carlos, Frey, painter, 12. Carnide, Pero de, 149. Carreira, house of Visconde de, 254. Carreiro, Pero, 212. Carta, Diogo da, 192. Carvalho, Pero, 229. Castello Branco, Cardinal Affonso de, 19, 20, 140, 250. Castile, 5, 6, 7, 44, 80. ---- Constance of, 80, 81. Castilho, Diogo de, 188, 196, 198, 199. ---- João de, 22, 28, 72, 162, 164-166, 169, 171, 172, 184, 195, 196, 199, 200, 212, 222-239. ---- Maria de, 162. Castro de Avelans, 58. ---- Guiomar de, 213, 215. ---- Inez de, 38, 62, 76-78, 88. ---- Isabel de, 102. Castro-Marim, 161. Cataluña, 5, 262. Catharina, queen of João III., 240, 243. Cavado, river, 29. Cellas, 70. Cêras, 55. Cetobriga, 2, 4. Ceuta, 88, 100, 101, 262. Ceylon, loss of, 244. Chambers, 269. Chantranez, Nicolas. See Nicolas, Master. Chelb. See Silves. Chillenden, Prior, 82. Chimneys, 270. China, Portuguese in, 158. Christo de la Luz, 116. Churriguera, 269. Cintra, 21, 22, 23, 28, 116-128, 130, 136-138, 148, 184, 215, 216. Citania, 2, 3. Clairvaux, 59, 60. Claustro Real, Batalha, 178-180. Clement v., Pope, 161. Coca, in Spain, 183. Cochin, Portuguese in, 158. Cogominho, Pedro Esteves, 94. Coimbra, 16, 17, 19, 30, 40, 44, 79, 80, 109, 184, 239, 244. ---- Archdeacon João de, 114. ---- Carmo, 252. ---- County of, 6. ---- Episcopal palace, 250. ---- Graça, 252. ---- Misericordia, 140, 250. ---- Pedro, Duke of, 88, 101. ---- São Bento, 252. ---- São Domingos, 251. ---- São Thomaz, 237. ---- Sta. Clara, 72. New, 259. ---- Sta. Cruz, 12, 13, 20, 151, 153, 160, 188, 192, 196-200, 214, 215, 234, 258. ---- Sé Nova, 248, 253, 259. ---- Sé Velha, 19, 23, 41, 45, 49-51, 54, 62, 63, 71, 110, 206-210, 251, 270. ---- University, 59, 141, 153, 198, 268. Columbus, Christopher, 8, 143. Condeixa, 2, 3. ---- Visconde de, 89. Conimbriga, 2, 3. Conselbo, Sala do, Cintra, 24, 121. Cordeiro, Johan, 149. Cordoba, 116. Coro, the, Thomar, 161-170. Coutinho, Beatriz, 101. Crato, Prior of, 244. Cunha, João Lourenço da, 74 _n._ ---- Tristão da, 170. Cyprus, 89. Cysnes, Sala de. See Swan Hall. D Dartmouth, 44. David, Gerhard, 12. Delhi, Old, Kutub at, 176. Diana, Pateo de, Cintra, 24, 125. Diaz, Bartholomeu, 143, 170. Diniz, Dom, King, 7, 59, 62, 69, 72, 117, 161, 167, 223. ---- ---- son of Inez de Castro, 79. Diogo, Duke of Vizen, 143, 161. D'ipri, João, 49, 287. Diu, 158. Domingues, Affonso, 71, 82, 90. ---- Domingo, 71, 82. Douro, river, 1, 2, 5, 6, 44, 256. Dralia, Johannes, 13. Duarte, Dom, 88, 91, 101, 122, 171, 172. Durando, Bishop of Evora, 51, 54. Dürer, Albert, 11. E Eannes, Affonso, 98. ---- Diogo, 109. ---- Gonçalo, 98. ---- Rodrigo, 98. Earthquake at Lisbon, 8, 98, 192, 267, 268. Ebro, river, 5. Eduard, Felipe, 239. See Uduarte. Ega, 117. Egas Moniz, 7, 38, 39, 41. Eja, 32. El-Kasar-el-Kebir, 244. Elsden, William, 60. Elvas, 28, 152, 236. English influence, supposed, 82-92. Entre Minho e Douro, 29, 30. Escorial, the, 247, 263-266. Escudos, Sala dos. See Sala dos Brazões. Espinheiro, 12. Essex, Earl of, 68. Estaço, Gaspar, 93 _n._ Esteves, Pedro, 94. Estrella, Serra d', 1. Estremadura, 1, 2, 64. Estremoz, 219. Eugenius IV., Pope, 161. Evora, 2, 9 _n._, 12, 51, 129, 143, 183, 198, 241. ---- Cartuxa, 255. ---- Fernão d', 92. ---- Graça, 242. ---- Henrique, Archbishop of, 14, 20. ---- Monte, 9. ---- Morgado de Cordovis, 132. ---- Paços Reaes, 132. ---- Resende, House of, 146, 148, 179. ---- São Braz, 135. ---- São Domingos, 219. ---- São Francisco, 134, 163. ---- Sé, 17, 19, 30, 51-55, 62, 64, 71, 72, 89, 192, 260, 262, 267. ---- Temple, 4. ---- University, 243. Eyck, J. van, 11. F Familicão, 32. Faro, 68 _n._, 237. Felix, the goldsmith, 18. Fenacho, João, 154. Fernandes, Antonius, 200. ---- Diogo, 159. ---- Lourenço, 184. ---- Matheus, sen., 171, 172, 175, 200, 222, 230. ---- Matheus, jun., 171, 175, 178, 179, 200, 222, 230. ---- Thomas, 159. ---- Vasco, 12. Ferdinand and Isabella (the Catholic king), 87, 144, 189. Fernando I. of Castile and Leon, 5, 6, 44, 47. ---- I., Dom, 7, 74, 76, 78, 79. ---- son of João I., 88. ---- ---- Dom Duarte, 161. Figueira de Foz, 212. Figueredo, Christovão de, 198, 200, 201. Flanders, Isabel of. See Burgundy, Duchess of. Fontenay, 59, 71. Fontfroide, 71. Furness, 59. Funchal, in Madeira, 67, 110, 136, 137, 192, 206, 211. G Galicia, 2, 5, 6, 7, 29, 42, 44, 67. Gama, Vasco da, 8, 125, 143, 144, 157, 170, 183, 185, 188, 195, 206. Gandara, 32. Garcia, King of Galicia, 6. Gata, Sierra de, 1. Gaunt, John of, 80, 81. ---- ---- Philippa, daughter of. See Lancaster, Philippa of. Gerez, the, 1, 3, 29. Gilberto, Bishop. See Hastings, Gilbert of. Giraldo, São, 18. Giustiniani, San Lorenzo, 28, 133. Gôa (India), 20, 144, 158, 200, 234 _n._ Goes, 219. ---- Damião de, 11, 145. Gollegã, 151, 152, 153. Gomes, Gonçalo, 149. Gonsalves, André, 149. ---- Eytor, 198. Goth, Bertrand de. See Clement V. Granada, 116, 161. Guadiana, river, 1. Guarda, 33, 61 _n._, 62, 95-99, 151, 238. ---- Fernando, Duke of, 14. Guadelete, 5. Guimarães, 2, 3, 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 31, 38, 41, 42, 63, 65, 70, 80, 93, 94, 103, 127, 269. ---- Duarte, Duke of, 14, 244, 261. Gujerat, 159, 183. Guntino, Abbot, 73. Guzman, Beatriz de, 68. See Beatriz, Queen of Affonso III. ---- Luisa, Queen of João IV., 261. H Haro, Dona Mencia de, 67. Hastings, Gilbert of, 45, 55. Haupt, Albrecht, 82, 85, 130, 159, 176, 177, 183. Henares, Alcalá de, 234. Henriques, Francisco, 135. Henry, Cardinal King, 14, 20, 59, 72, 144, 222, 223, 241-244, 261. ---- Prince, the Navigator, Duke of Vizen, 8, 70, 88, 102, 103, 161, 169, 170, 183, 188, 195. ---- VII. of England, 166. Herculano, 185. Herrera, 247. Hollanda, Antonio de, 16, 17. ---- Francisco de, 17. Holy Constable. See Pereira, Nuno Alvares. Huguet (Ouguet, or Huet), 82, 90, 91, 98, 178. I Idacius, 4. Idanha a Velha, 57. India, 66, 144, 159, 243. Indian influence, supposed, 159, 183. Inquisition, the, 222, 248. Isabel, St., Queen, 19, 20, 72, 117, 260. ---- Queen of D. Manoel, 87, 144, 189. ---- Queen of Charles V., 14, 244. Italian influence, 219. J Jantar, Sala de, Cintra, 24, 123. Japan, Portuguese in, 158. Jeronymo, 203. Jews, expulsion of the, 144. João I., 1, 8, 11, 18, 23, 24, 42, 80, 81, 84, 88, 93, 95, 101, 117, 122, 123, 178, 244. ---- II., 8, 25, 92, 97, 93, 130, 131, 143, 144, 161, 171, 176, 179, 181. ---- III., 17, 95, 162, 185, 196, 198, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 236, 242, 243, 248, 251, 256. ---- IV., 59, 261, 262. ---- V., 262, 263, 267. ---- Dom, son of Inez de Castro, 79, 80. ---- ---- son of João I., 88. John, Don, of Austria, son of Philip of Spain, 262. John XXII., Pope, 161. José, Dom, 267. Junot, Marshal, 8. Justi, 12, 13. L Lagos, São Sebastião at, 219. Lagrimas, Quinta das, 76. Lamego, 4, 9 _n._, 44, 111, 237. Lancaster, Philippa of, 81, 84, 88, 89, 100, 122. Leça do Balio, 41, 42 _n._, 63, 67, 73, 74, 79. Leiria, 33, 69, 260. Leyre, S. Salvador de, 35 _n._ Lemos family, 219. Leo X., Pope, 122. Leon, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 29, 44, 80. Leonor, Queen of João II., 146, 153, 171. ---- Queen of D. Manoel, 14, 189. Lerma, Duque de, 261. Lima, river, 29. Lis, river, 69. Lisbon, 6, 9, 65, 157, 158, 159, 192, 227, 251, 261, 267. ---- Ajuda Palace, 268. ---- Carmo, 98, 99, 206. ---- ---- Museum, 78, 99. ---- Cathedral, 38, 45-47, 49, 50, 52, 54, 61 _n._, 71, 72, 74, 271. ---- Conceição Velha, 195. ---- Estrella, 268. ---- Madre de Deus, 26, 153, 155, 156. ---- Necessidades, Palace, 268. ---- São Bento, 253. ---- São Roque, 26, 242, 244, 245, 268. ---- São Vicente de Fora, 241, 245, 247, 253, 257, 268. ---- ---- house of Conde de, 236. ---- Santo Antão, 245, 247-248, 249, 250. ---- Sta. Maria do Desterro, 245, 248. ---- Torre do Tombo, 226 _n._ ---- Torreão do Paço, 248. ---- University, 248. ---- Affonso, Archbishop of, 14. Lobo, Diogo, Barão d'Alvito, 131. Lobos, Ruy de Villa, 75. Loches, St. Ours, 126. Lopez, João, 254-255. Lorvão, 20, 237. Longuim, 202. Lourenço, Gregorio, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202. ---- Thereza, 76, 80. Louzã, 10 _n._, 219. Loyos, the, 99, 133, 260. Ludovici, Frederic, 263, 267. Lupiana, Spain, 234 _n._ Lusitania, 1, 4. M Madrid, 10, 261. Mafamede, 116, 168. Mafra, 52, 260, 262, 263, 268. Malabar Coast, 157. Malacca, 158. Manoel, Dom, 11, 12, 14, 20, 24, 26, 54, 56, 71, 83, 87, 95, 97, 104, 105, 108-111, 117-119, 144, 157, 159, 162-169, 171-172, 189, 196, 198, 199, 205, 216, 218, 222, 244. Manuel, Jorge, 226 _n._ Marão Mts., 1, 29. Marceana, 217. Maria I., 119, 121. ---- II., da Gloria, 8, 256, 270. ---- Queen of Dom Manoel, 144, 189. Massena, General, 180. Matsys, Quentin, 13. Mattos, Francisco de, 22, 26, 28, 245 _n._ Mazagão, Morocco, 227, 231. Meca, Terreiro da, 125, 127. Mecca, 158. Medina del Campo, Spain, 183. ---- Sidonia, Duke of, 261. Mello, family, 219. ---- Rodrigo Affonso de, 133, 134. Melrose, 59. Mendes, Hermengildo, Count of Tuy and Porto, 41. Menendes, Geda, 18. Menezes, Brites de, 212-215. ---- Duarte de, 57, 101, 102. ---- Fernão Telles de, 213. ---- Dona Leonor Telles de, 74 _n._, 79. ---- Leonor de, daughter of D. Pedro, 100. ---- Pedro de, 100, 101. Merida, 4. Mertola, 116. Miguel, Dom, 8, 182, 256, 270. ---- Prince, son of D. Manoel, 144. ---- bishop of Coimbra, 18, 47, 48. Minho, river, 1, 64, 109. Miranda de Douro, 241. Moissac, 72. Moncorvo, 220. Mondego, river, 5, 30, 44, 73, 212, 251, 259. Montemor-o-Velho, 217. Montijo, battle of, 262. Morocco, 5, 21, 55, 88, 100, 121, 143, 171. Mulay-Ahmed, 243. Mumadona, Countess of Tuy and Porto, 41. Muñoz, assistant of Olivel of Ghent, 163. Murillo, 10. Murça, Diogo de, 252. Murphy, J., 90 _n._, 177. N Nabantia. See Thomar. Nabão, river, 66, 234. Napier, Captain Charles, 9. Nassau, Maurice of, 262. Navarre, 5, 35 _n._ Nicolas, Master, 164, 184, 196, 198, 199, 200, 215, 216, 218, 221, 222, 223, 238, 239. ---- V., Pope, 161. Noronha, Bishop Manoel, 237. Noya, 254 _n._ O Oliva, Antonio ab, 28. Olivares, Conde, Duque de, 261. Olivel of Ghent, 135, 163. Oporto, 6, 9, 22, 41, 73, 80. ---- Cathedral, 37, 39, 71, 72. ---- Cedofeita, 5, 32. ---- Collegio Novo, 249, 259. ---- Hospital and Factory, 269, ---- Misericordia, 13, 19. ---- Nossa Senhors da Serra do Pilar, 256-8. ---- Quinta ado Freixo, 269. ---- São Bento, 253. ---- São Francisco, 63. ---- Torre dos Clerigos, 268. Order of Christ, the. See Thomar. Orense, in Galicia, 6, 66 _n._, 254. Ormuz, Portuguese in, 144, 158. Ouguet. See Huguet. Ourem, Count of, 100. Ourique, 7, 51. Ovidio, Archbishop, 18. P Pacheco, Lopo Fernandes, 75. ---- Maria Rodrigues, 75. Paço de Souza, 38, 40. Paes, Gualdim, 55, 56, 66, 117, 160, 167. Palmella, 28, 62. Pax Julia, the. See Beja. Payo, Bishop, of Evora, 51 _n._ Pedro I., 62, 76, 77, 79, 88. ---- II., 25. ---- III., 269. ---- son of João I., Duke of Coimbra, 88. ---- the Cruel, Constance, daughter of, 80. Pegas, Sala das, Cintra, 24, 122, 145, 152. Pekin, Portuguese in, 144. Pelayo, Don, 5. Penafiel, Constança de, 76. Penha Longa, 236-237. ---- Verde, 236. Pereira, Nuno Alvares, 11, 98. Pero Pinheiro, 266. Persia, 124. Philip I. and II., 7, 14, 144, 222, 240-244, 261, 263. ---- III. and IV., 261. Philippe le Bel, 161. Pimentel, Frei Estevão Vasques, 73. Pinhal, 80. Pinheiro, Diogo, Bishop of Funchal, 211, 212. Pires Marcos, 153, 196-198, 200. Po, Fernando, 143. Pombal, Marques de, 8, 122, 151, 195, 243, 267. Pombeiro, 39, 40, 62. Ponza, Carlos de. See Captain Napier, 9. Pontigny, 60. Portalegre, 219, 260. Ptolomeu, Master, 18, 48 _n._ Q Queluz, 269. Quintal, Ayres do, 166, 168, 169. R Rabat, minaret at, 168 _n._, 180. Raczynski, Count, 11, 13, 160 _n._, 214. Raimundes Alfonso. See Alfonso VII. Ranulph, Abbot, 59. Rates, São Pedro de, 3, 34, 36. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, 6. Resende, Garcia de, 146, 179, 181, 183. Restello, Nossa Senhora do, 183. Rio Mau, São Christovão do, 34. Robbia, della, 26, 176 _n._ Robert, Master, 49, 50. Roderick, King, 5. Rodrigues, Alvaro, 162. ---- João, 171. ---- Jorge, 255. ---- Justa, 13, 147, 184. Roliça, battle of, 62 _n._ Romans in Portugal, 2, 3, 4. Rome, embassy to, 1514, 183. Rouen, Jean de. See next. Ruão, João de, 192, 202-205, 215, 218, 238, 239. S Sabrosa, 3. Salamanca, 54. Saldanha, Manoel de, 141. Sancha, Dona, 64, 70. Sancho, King of Castile, 6. Sancho I., 7, 51, 52, 59, 64, 95, 197. ---- II., 64, 67. Sansovino, Andrea da, 25, 130, 144, 164, 198, 214. São Marcos, 177, 184, 185, 211-216. ---- Theotonio, 196. ---- Thiago d'Antas, 32. ---- Torquato, 18, 33, 94. Santa Cruz. See Coimbra. ---- Maria da Victoria. See Batalha. Santarem, 6, 44, 55, 56, 229. ---- Graça, 53, 100, 104, 105, 211, 212. ---- Marvilla, 27, 152, 153, 156, 235. ---- Milagre, 234. ---- São Francisco, 57. 65, 67, 78, 83. ---- São João de Alporão, 56-57, 63, 64, 101. ---- Sta. Clara, 238. ---- Frey Martinho de, 101. Santiago, 36, 45, 47, 72, 254. Santos, 227 _n._ Santo Thyrso, 70, 103. Sash windows, 270. Savoy, Margaret of, 261. Schomberg, Marshal, 262. Sebastião, Dom, 100, 121, 185, 240-244. Sem Pavor, Giraldo, 51. Sempre Noiva, 123, 133, 146. Sereias, Sala das, Cintra, 24, 122. Sesnando, Count, 5, 47. Setubal, 2, 4, 13, 147, 148, 154-156, 184. Seville, 42, 116, 157, 197. Silvas, the da, 211-215. Silva, Ayres Gomes da, 212, 213. ---- Miguel da, Bishop of Vizeu, 236. ---- Diogo da, 213, 217. ---- João da, 213, 218. ---- Lourenço da, 213, 216, 217. Silveira family, 219. Silves, 63, 67, 68, 116. Simão, 203. Sodre, Vicente, 158. Soeire, 48. Soult, Marshal, 17, 256. Soure, 55. Souza, Diogo de, Archbishop of Braga, 19, 113. ---- Gil de, 213. Sta. Maria a Velha, 59. St. James, 3. St. Vincent, Cape, battle of, 9. Suevi, 2, 4, 5, 32. Swan Hall, the, Cintra, 24, 119, 120, 137. T Taipas, 3. Tagus, river, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 30, 51, 72 _n._, 129, 144, 261. Tangier, 243. Tarragona, 37, 55. Tavira, 219, 236. Telles, Maria, 79. Templars, the, 55, 117, 160, 161. Tentugal, 212. Terzi, Filippo, 241, 242, 243, 244-253, 258, 260. Tetuan, in Morocco, 21. Theodomir, Suevic King, 5, 32. Theotonio, Archbishop of Evora, 255. Theresa, Dona, wife of Henry of Burgundy, 6, 37, 114. Thomar, 56, 116, 222, 244, 261. ---- Convent of the Order of Christ, 12, 17, 28, 50, 51, 55, 70, 103, 151, 157-170, 194, 206, 224-230, 240, 250, 255, 260. ---- Conceição, 231-234, 242. ---- Nossa Senhora do Olival, 63, 66, 68, 73, 74 _n._, 211. ---- São João Baptista, 13, 105. Tinouco, João Nunes, 242, 247. Toledo, 6, 37, 48, 58, 116. ---- Juan Garcia de, 42, 93, 94. Torralva, Diogo de, 185, 226, 240-243, 250. Torre de Murta, 117. ---- de São Vicente. See Belem. Torres, Pero de, 149. ---- Pedro Fernandes de, 241. ---- Vedras, 267. Toulouse, St. Sernin at, 36, 45, 47. Trancoso, 33. Trava, Fernando Peres de, 6, 7. Traz os Montes, 1, 29, 220. Trofa, near Agueda, 219, 220. Troya, 3. Tua, river, 2. Turianno, 242. Tuy, 6, 41. U Urraca, Queen of Castile and Leon, 6, 41. ---- Queen of Affonso II., 11, 65. Uduarte, Philipo, 202. V Vagos, Lords. See the da Silvas, 211. Valladolid, 247. Vandals, the, 4. Varziella, 215 _n._ Vasari, 130. Vasco, Grão, 11, 12, 14, 112, 201. Vasconcellos, Senhora de, 174. Vasquez, Master, 91. Vaz, Leonardo, 185. Velasquez, 10. Vianna d'Alemtejo, 135. ---- do Castello, 254. Vicente, family of goldsmiths, 20. ---- João, 99. Vigo, 9. Viegas, Godinho, 34. Vilhegas, Diogo Ortiz de, Bishop of Vizeu, 16, 111. Vilhelmus, Doñus, 27. Vilhena, Antonia de, 213, 216. ---- Henrique de, 117. ---- Maria de, 213. Villa do Conde, 29 _n._, 63, 106-108, 109, 136, 141, 142. ---- da Feira, 127, 128. ---- nova de Gaya, 256-258. Villa Viçosa, 202. Villar de Frades, 34-36, 99. Villarinho, 31. Vimaranes, 41. Visigoths, 1, 4, 5. Viterbo, San Martino al Cimino, near 60 _n._ Vizeu, 11, 14, 16, 44, 111, 112, 143, 161, 206, 236, 237. ---- Diogo, Duke of, 143, 161. Vizella, 31. Vlimer, Master, 49, 110, 207. Vouga, river, 29. W Walis, palace of, 117. Wellington, Duke of, 62, 77 _n._, 241, 256. Windsor, Treaty of, 1386, 80. Y Yakub, Emir of Morocco, 51, 56. Yokes, ox, 29 _n._ Ypres, John of. See D'ipri. Yusuf, Emir of Morocco, 51. Z Zalaca, battle of, 6. Zezere, river, 234. FOOTNOTES: [1] The most noticeable difference in pronunciation, the Castilian guttural soft G and J, and the lisping of the Z or soft C seems to be of comparatively modern origin. However different such words as 'chave' and 'llave,' 'filho' and 'hijo,' 'mão' and 'mano' may seem they are really the same in origin and derived from _clavis_, _filius_, and _manus_. [2] From the name of this dynasty Moabitin, which means fanatic, is derived the word Maravedi or Morabitino, long given in the Peninsula to a coin which was first struck in Morocco. [3] The last nun in a convent at Evora only died in 1903, which must have been at least seventy years after she had taken the veil. [4] A narcissus triandrus with a white perianth and yellow cup is found near Lamego and at Louzã, not far from Coimbra. [5] See article by C. Justi, 'Die Portugesische Malerei des xvi. Jahrhunderts,' in vol. ix. of the _Jahrbuch der K. Preussischen Kunstsammlungen_. [6] Raczynski, _Les Arts en Portugal_. [7] These are the 'Annunciation,' the 'Risen Lord appearing to His Mother,' the 'Ascension,' the 'Assumption,' the 'Good Shepherd,' and perhaps a 'Pentecost' and a 'Nativity.' [8] V. Guimarães, _A Ordem de Christo_, p. 155. [9] A. Hapt, _Die Baukunst, etc., in Portugal_, vol. ii. p. 36. [10] These may perhaps be by the so-called Master of São Bento, to whom are attributed a 'Visitation'--in which Chastity, Poverty, and Humility follow the Virgin--and a 'Presentation,' both now in Lisbon. Some paintings in São Francisco Evora seem to be by the same hand. [11] Misericordia=the corporation that owns and manages all the hospitals, asylums, and other charitable institutions in the town. There is one in almost every town in the country. [12] She seems almost too old to be Dona Leonor and may be Dona Maria. [13] His first wife was Dona Isabel, eldest daughter and heiress to the Catholic Kings. She died in 1498 leaving an infant son Dom Miguel, heir to Castile and Aragon as well as to Portugal. He died two years later when Dom Manoel married his first wife's sister, Dona Maria, by whom he had six sons and two daughters. She died in 1517, and next year he married her niece Dona Leonor, sister of Charles V. and daughter of Mad Juana. She had at first been betrothed to his eldest son Dom João. All these marriages were made in the hope of succeeding to the Spanish throne. [14] Some authorities doubt the identification of the king and queen. But there is a distinct likeness between the figures of Dom Manoel and his queen which adorn the west door of the church at Belem, and the portrait of the king and queen in this picture. [15] It has been reproduced by the Arundel Society, but the copyist has entirely missed the splendid solemnity of St. Peter's face. [16] See 'Portuguese School of Painting,' by J. C. Robinson, in the _Fine Arts Quarterly_ of 1866. [17] Vieira Guimarães, _A Ordem de Christo_, p. 150. [18] _Ibid._, p. 157. [19] Carriage hire is still cheap in Portugal, for in 1904 only 6$000 was paid for a carriage from Thomar to Leiria, a distance of over thirty-five miles, though the driver and horses had to stay at Leiria all night and return next day. 6$000 was then barely over twenty shillings. [20] It was the gift of Bishop Affonso of Portugal who held the see from 1485 to 1522. [21] This monstrance was given by Bishop Dom Jorge d'Almeida who died in 1543, having governed the see for sixty-two years. (Fig. 7.) [22] Presented by Canon Gonçalo Annes in 1534. [23] D. Francisco Simonet, professor of Arabic at Granada. Note in _Paço de Cintra_, p. 206. [24] See Miss I. Savory, _In the Tail of the Peacock_. [25] A common pattern found at Bacalhôa, near Setubal, in the Museum at Oporto, and in the Corporation Galleries of Glasgow, where it is said to have come from Valencia in Spain. [26] Joaquim Rasteiro, _Palacio e Quinta de Bacalhôa em Azeitão_. Lisbon, 1895. [27] Columns with corbel capitals support a house on the right. Such capitals were common in Spain, so it is just possible that these tiles may have been made in Spain. [28] Antonio ab Oliva=Antonio de Oliveira Bernardes, who also painted the tiles in São Pedro de Rates. [29] _E.g._ in the church of the Misericordia Vianna do Castello, the cloister at Oporto, the Graça Santarem, Sta. Cruz Coimbra, the Sé, Lisbon, and in many other places. [30] Paço de Cintra, _Cond. de Sabugosa_. Lisbon, 1903. [31] These yokes are about 4 or 5 feet long by 18 inches or 2 feet broad, are made of walnut, and covered with the most intricate pierced patterns. Each parish or district, though no two are ever exactly alike, has its own design. The most elaborate, which are also often painted bright red, green, and yellow are found south of the Douro near Espinho. Further north at Villa do Conde they are much less elaborate, the piercings being fewer and larger. Nor do they extend far up the Douro as in the wine country in Tras-os-Montes the oxen, darker and with shorter horns, pull not from the shoulder but from the forehead, to which are fastened large black leather cushions trimmed with red wool. [32] Originally there was a bell-gable above the narthex door, since replaced by a low square tower resting on the north-west corner of the narthex and capped by a plastered spire. [33] Theodomir rex gloriosus v. erex. & contrux. hoc. monast. can. B. Aug. ad. Gl. D. et V.M.G.D. & B. Martini et fecit ita so: lemnit: sacrari ab Lucrec. ep. Brac. et alliis sub. J. III. P. M. Prid. Idus. Nov. an. D. DLIX. Post id. rex in hac eccl. ab. eod. ep. palam bapt. et fil. Ariamir cum magnat. suis. omnes conversi ad fid. ob. v. reg. & mirab. in fil. ex sacr. reliq. B.M. a Galiis eo. reg. postul translatis & hic asservatis Kal. Jan. An. D. DLX. [34] From M. Bernardes, _Tratados Varios_, vol. ii. p. 4. The same story is told of the monastery of San Salvador de Leyre in Navarre, whose abbot, Virila, wondering how it could be possible to listen to the heavenly choirs for ever without weariness, sat down to rest by a spring which may still be seen, and there listened, enchanted, to the singing of a bird for three hundred years. [35] _E.g._ the west door of Ste. Croix, Bordeaux, though it is of course very much more elaborate. [36] Namely, to give back some Galician towns which had been captured. [37] Bayona is one of the most curious and unusual churches in the north of Spain. Unfortunately, during a restoration made a few years ago a plaster groined vault was added hiding the old wooden roof. [38] The tomb is inscribed: Hic requiescit Fys: Dei: Egas: Monis: Vir: Inclitus: era: millesima: centesima: LXXXII _i.e._ Era of Caesar 1182, A.D. 1144. [39] He died soon after at Medinaceli, and a Christian contemporary writer records the fact saying: 'This day died Al-Mansor. He desecrated Santiago, and destroyed Pampluna, Leon and Barcelona. He was buried in Hell.' [40] Another cloister-like building of even earlier date is to be found behind the fourteenth-century church of Leça de Balio: it was built probably after the decayed church had been granted to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. (Fig. 17.) [41] A careful restoration is now being carried out under the direction of Senhor Fuschini. [42] The inscription is mutilated at both ends and seems to read, 'Ahmed-ben-Ishmael built it strongly by order of ...' [43] It is a pity that the difference in date makes it impossible to identify this Bernardo with the Bernardo who built Santiago. For the work Dom Miguel gave 500 morabitinos, besides a yoke of oxen worth 12, also silver altar fronts made by Master Ptolomeu. Besides the money Bernardo received a suit of clothes worth 3 morabitinos and food at the episcopal table, while Soeiro his successor got a suit of clothes, a quintal of wine, and a mora of bread. The bishop also gave a great deal of church plate showing that the cathedral was practically finished before his death. [44] Compare the doorlike window of Nossa Senhora da Oliveira at Guimarães. [45] The small church of São Salvador has also an old door, plainer and smaller than São Thiago. [46] The five small shields with the Wounds of Christ on the Portuguese coat are supposed to have been adopted because on the eve of this battle Christ crucified appeared to Affonso and promised him victory, and because five kings were defeated. [47] Andre de Rezende, a fifteenth-century antiquary, says, quoting from an old 'book of anniversaries': 'Each year an anniversary is held in memory of Bishop D. Payo on St. Mark's Day, that is May 21st, on which day he laid the first stone for the foundation of this cathedral, on the spot where now is St. Mark's Altar, and he lies behind the said place and altar in the Chapel of St. John. This church was founded Era 1224,' _i.e._ 1186 A.D. D. Payo became bishop in 1181. Another stone in the chancel records the death, in era 1321, _i.e._ 1283 A.D., of Bishop D. Durando, 'who built and enriched this cathedral with his alms,' but probably he only made some additions, perhaps the central lantern. [48] It was built 1718-1746 by Ludovici or Ludwig the architect of Mafra and cost 160:000$000 or about £30,000. [49] The whole inscription, the first part occurring also on a stone in the castle, runs thus:-- E (i.e. Era) MC : L[~X]. VIII. regnant : Afonso : illustrisimo rege Portugalis : magister : galdinus : Portugalensium : Militum Templi : cum fratribus suis Primo : die : Marcii : cepit edificari : hoc : castellu : n[=m]e Thomar : q[=o]d : prefatus rex obtulit : Deo : et militibus : Templi : E. M. CC. XX. VIII : III. mens. : Julii : venit rex de maroqis ducens : CCCC milia equit[=u] : et quingenta milia : pedit[=u]m : et obsedit castrum istud : per sex Dies : et delevit : quantum extra : murum invenit : castell[=u] : et prefatus : magister : c[=u] : fratribus suis liberavit Deus : de manibus : suis Idem : rex : remeavit : in patri[=a] : su[=a] : cu : innumerabili : detrimento : homin[=u] et bestiarum. [50] Cf. Templar church at Segovia, Old Castile, where, however, the interior octagon is nearly solid with very small openings, and a vault over the lower story; it has also three eastern apses. [51] There is a corbel table like it but more elaborate at Vezelay in Burgundy. [52] _E.g._ in S. Martino al Cimino near Viterbo. [53] So says Murray. Vilhena Barbosa says 1676. 1770 seems the more probable. [54] Indeed to the end the native builders have been very chary of building churches with a high-groined vault and a well-developed clerestory. The nave of Batalha and of the cathedral of Guarda seem to be almost the only examples which have survived, for Lisbon choir was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1755, as was also the church of the Carmo in the same city, which perhaps shows that they were right in rejecting such a method of construction in a country so liable to be shaken. [55] Cf. similar corbel capitals in the nave of the cathedral of Orense in Galicia. [56] Before the Black Death, which reduced the number to eight, there are said to have sometimes been as many as 999 monks! [57] It was a monk of Alcobaça who came to General Wellesley on the night of 16th August 1808, and told him that if he wished to catch the French he must be quick as they meant to retire early in the morning, thus enabling him to win the battle of Roliça, the first fight of the Peninsular War. [58] Cf. the clerestory windows of Burgos Cathedral, or those at Dunblane, where as at Guimarães the circle merely rests on the lights below without being properly united with them. [59] From the north-east corner of the narthex a door leads to the cloisters, which have a row of coupled shafts and small pointed arches. From the east walk a good doorway of Dom Manoel's time led into the chapter-house, now the barrack kitchen, the smoke from which has entirely blackened alike the doorway and the cloister near. [60] Compare the horseshoe moulding on the south door of the cathedral of Orense, Galicia, begun 1120, where, however, each horseshoe is separated from the next by a deep groove. [61] The town having much decayed owing to fevers and to the gradual shallowing of the river the see was transferred to Faro in 1579. The cathedral there, sacked by Essex in 1596, and shattered by the earthquake of 1755, has little left of its original work except the stump of a west tower standing on a porch open on three sides with plain pointed arches, and leading to the church on the fourth by a door only remarkable for the dog-tooth of its hood-mould. [62] The towers stand quite separate from the walls and are united to them by wide round arches. [63] In the dilapidated courtyard of the castle there is one very picturesque window of Dom Manoel's time (his father the duke of Beja is buried in the church of the Conceição in the town). [64] An inscription says:-- 'Era 1362 [i.e. A.D. 1324] anos foi esta tore co (meçad) a (aos) 8 dias demaio. é mandou a faze (r o muito) nobre Dom Diniz rei de P...' [65] Just outside the castle there is a good romanesque door belonging to a now desecrated church. [66] Some of the distinctive features of Norman such as cushion capitals seem to be unknown in Normandy and not to be found any nearer than Lombardy. [67] Sub Era MCCCXLVIII. idus Aprilis, Dnus Nuni Abbas monasterij de Alcobatie posuit primam lapidem in fundamento Claustri ejusdem loci. presente Dominico Dominici magistro operis dicti Claustri. Era 1348 = A.D. 1310. [68] It is interesting to notice that the master builder was called Domingo Domingues, who, if Domingues was already a proper name and not still merely a patronymic, may have been the ancestor of Affonso Domingues who built Batalha some eighty years later and died 1402. [69] In this cloister are kept in a cage some unhappy ravens in memory of their ancestors having guided the boat which miraculously brought St. Vincent's body to the Tagus. [70] Cf. the aisle windows of Sta. Maria dos Olivaes at Thomar. [71] It was at Leça that Dom Fernando in 1372 announced his marriage with Dona Leonor Telles de Menezes, the wife of João Lourenço da Cunha, whom he had seen at his sister's wedding, and whom he married though he was himself betrothed to a daughter of the Castilian king, and though Dona Leonor's husband was still alive: a marriage which nearly ruined Portugal, and caused the extinction of the legitimate branch of the house of Burgundy. [72] Opening off the north-west corner of the cathedral is an apsidal chapel of about the same period, entered by a fine pointed door, one of whose mouldings is enriched by an early-looking chevron, but whose real date is shown by the leaf-carving of its capitals. [73] A note in Sir H. Maxwell's _Life of Wellington_, vol. i. p. 215, says of Alcobaça: 'They had burned what they could and destroyed the remainder with an immense deal of trouble. The embalmed kings and queens were taken out of their tombs, and I saw them lying in as great preservation as the day they were interred. The fine tesselated pavement, from the entrance to the Altar, was picked up, the facings of the stone pillars were destroyed nearly to the top, scaffolding having been erected for that purpose. An orderly book found near the place showed that regular parties had been ordered for the purpose' (Tomkinson, 77). [74] There is in the Carmo Museum at Lisbon a fine tomb to Dom Fernando, Dom Pedro's unfortunate successor. It was brought from São Francisco at Santarem, but is very much less elaborate, having three panels on each side filled with variously shaped cuspings, enclosing shields, all beautifully wrought. [75] Another trophy is now at Alcobaça in the shape of a huge copper caldron some four feet in diameter. [76] This site at Pinhal was bought from one Egas Coelho. [77] Though a good deal larger than most Portuguese churches, except of course Alcobaça, the church is not really very large. Its total length is about 265 feet with a transept of about 109 feet long. The central aisle is about 25 feet wide by 106 high--an unusual proportion anywhere. [78] Albrecht Haupt, _Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Portugal_, says that 'Der Plan durchaus englisch ist (Lang-und Querschiff fast ganz identisch mit dener der Kathedral zu Canterbury, nur thurmlos).' [79] This spire has been rebuilt since the earthquake of 1755, and so may be quite different from that originally intended. [80] In his book on Batalha, Murphy, who stayed in the abbey for some months towards the end of the eighteenth century, gives an engraving of an open-work spire on this chapel, saying it had been destroyed in 1755. [81] Huguet witnessed a document dated December 7, 1402, concerning a piece of land belonging to Margarida Annes, servant to Affonso Domingues, master of the works, and his name also occurs in a document of 1450 as having had a house granted to him by Dom Duarte, but he must have been dead some time before that as his successor as master of the works, Master Vasquez, was already dead before 1448. Probably Huguet died about 1440. [82] Caspar Estaço, writing in the sixteenth century, says that this triptych was made of the silver against which King João weighed himself, but the story of its capture at Aljubarrota seems the older tradition. [83] These capitals have the distinctive Manoelino feature of the moulding just under the eight-sided abacus, being twisted like a rope or like two interlacing branches. [84] The church was about 236 feet long with a transept of over 100 feet, which is about the length of the Batalha transept. [85] She also sent the beautiful bronze tomb in which her eldest brother Affonso, who died young, lies in the cathedral, Braga. The bronze effigy lies on the top of an altar-tomb under a canopy upheld by two slender bronze shafts. Unfortunately it is much damaged and stands in so dark a corner that it can scarcely be seen. [86] In one transept there is a very large blue tile picture. [87] The Aleo is still at Ceuta. In the cathedral Our Lady of Africa holds it in her hand, and it is given to each new governor on his arrival as a symbol of office. [88] The inscription is:-- Memoria de D. Duarte de Menezes Terceiro conde de Viana, Tronco dos condes de Tarouca. Primeiro Capitão de Alcacer-Seguer, em Africa, que com quinhentos soldados defendeu esta praça contra cemmil Mouros, com os quaes teve muitos encontros, ficando n'elles com grande honra e gloria. Morreu na serra de Bonacofú per salvar a vida do seu rei D. Affonso o Quinto. [89] When the tomb was moved from São Francisco, only one tooth, not a finger, was found inside. [90] Besides the church there is in Caminha a street in which most of the houses have charming doors and windows of about the same date as the church. [91] 1524 seems too early by some forty years. [92] The rest of the west front was rebuilt and the inside altered by Archbishop Dom José de Braganza, a son of Dom Pedro II., about two hundred years ago. [93] A chapel was added at the back, and at a higher level some time during the seventeenth century to cover in one of the statues, that of St. Anthony of Padua, who was then becoming very popular. [94] This winding stair was built by Dom Manoel: cf. some stairs at Thomar. [95] A 'pelourinho' is a market cross. [96] The kitchens in the houses at Marrakesh and elsewhere in Morocco have somewhat similar chimneys. See B. Meakin, _The Land of the Moors_. [97] 'Esta fortaleza se começou a xiij dagosto de mil cccc.l. P[N. of T. horizonal line through it] iiij por mãdado del Rey dõ Joam o segundo nosso sõr e acabouse em tpõ del Rey dom Manoel o primeiro nosso Sñor fela per seus mãdados dom Diogo Lobo baram dalvito.' [98] The house of the duke of Cadaval called 'Agua de Peixes,' not very far off, has several windows in the same Moorish style. [99] Vilhena Barbosa, _Monumentos de Portugal_, p. 324. [100] Though the grammar seems a little doubtful this seems to mean Since these by service were And loyal efforts gained, By these and others like to them They ought to be maintained. [101] One blank space in one of the corners is pointed out as having contained the arms of the Duque d'Aveiro beheaded for conspiracy in 1758. In reality it was painted with the arms of the Coelhos, but the old boarding fell out and has never been replaced. [102] Affonso de Albuquerque took Ormuz in 1509 and Gôa next year. [103] Sumatra was visited in 1509. [104] Fernão Peres de Andrade established himself at Canton in 1517 and reached Pekin in 1521. [105] Compare the elaborate outlines of some Arab arches at the Alhambra or in Morocco. [106] Some have supposed that Boutaca was a foreigner, but there is a place called Boutaca near Batalha, so he probably came from there. [107] Once the Madre de Deus was adorned with several della Robbia placques. They are now all gone. [108] Danver's _Portuguese in India_, vol. i. [109] See in Oliveira Martims' _Historia de Portugal_, vol. II. ch. i., the account of the Embassy sent to Pope Leo IX. by Dom Manoel in 1514. No such procession had been seen since the days of the Roman Empire. There were besides endless wealth, leopards from India, also an elephant which, on reaching the Castle of S. Angelo, filled its trunk with scented water and 'asperged' first the Pope and then the people. These with a horse from Ormuz represented the East. Unfortunately the representative of Africa, a rhinoceros, died on the way. [110] Danver's _Portuguese in India_, vol. i. [111] Unfortunately Fernandes was one of the commonest of names. In his list of Portuguese artists, Count Raczynski mentions an enormous number. [112] In the year 1512 Olivel was paid 25$000. He had previously received 12$000 a month. He died soon after and his widow undertook to finish his work with the help of his assistant Muñoz. [113] See the drawing in _A Ordem de Christo_ by Vieira Guimarães. [114] The last two figures look like 15 but the first two are scarcely legible; it may not be a date at all. [115] All the statues are rather Northern in appearance, not unlike those on the royal tombs in Santa Cruz, Coimbra, and may be the work of the two Flemings mentioned among those employed at Thomar, Antonio and Gabriel. [116] The door--notwithstanding the supposed date, 1515--was probably finished by João after 1523. [117] Cf. the carving on the jambs of the Allah-ud-din gate at Delhi. [118] Such heads of many curves may have been derived from such elaborate Moorish arches as may be seen in the Alhambra, or, for example, in the Hasan tower at Rabat in Morocco, and it is worth noticing that there were men with Moorish names among the workmen at Thomar--Omar, Mafamede, Bugimaa, and Bebedim. [119] Esp(h)era=_sphere_; Espera=_hope_, present imperative. [120] The inscription says: 'Aqui jaz Matheus Fernandes mestre que foi destas obras, e sua mulher Izabel Guilherme e levou-o nosso Senhor a dez dias de Abril de 1515. Ella levou-a a....' [121] Fig. 57. [122] _As Capellas Imperfeitas e a lenda das devisas Gregas._ Por Caroline Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Porto, 1905. [123] The frieze is now filled up and plastered, but not long ago was empty and recessed as if prepared for letting in reliefs. Can these have been of terra cotta of the della Robbia school? Dom Manoel imported many which are now all gone but one in the Museum at Lisbon. There are also some della Robbia medallions at the Quinta de Bacalhôa at Azeitão near Setubal. [124] J. Murphy, _History of the Royal Convent of Batalha_. London, 1792. [125] One of the first was probably the chapel dos Reys Magos at São Marcos near Coimbra. [126] A conto = 1.000$000. [127] It is no use telling a tramway conductor to stop near the Torre de São Vicente. He has never heard of it, but if one says 'Fabrica de Gas' the car will stop at the right place. [128] Similar roofs cap the larger angle turrets in the house of the Quinta de Bacalhôa near Setubal, built by Dona Brites, mother of Dom Manoel, about 1490, and rebuilt or altered by the younger Albuquerque after 1528 when he bought the Quinta. [129] Raczynski says 1517, Haupt 1522. [130] According to Raczynski, João de Castilho in 1517 undertook to carry on the work for 140$000 per month, at the rate of $50 per day per man. 140$000=now about £31. [131] Nicolas was the first of the French renaissance artists to come to Portugal. [132] _E.g._ on the Hotel Bourgthéroulde, Rouen. [133] Cf. the top of a turret at St. Wulfram, Abbeville. [134] Haupt. [135] The university was first accommodated in Sta. Cruz, till Dom João gave up the palace where it still is. It was after the return of the university to Coimbra that George Buchanan was for a time professor. He got into difficulties with the Inquisition and had to leave. [136] Nicolas the Frenchman is first mentioned in 1517 as working at Belem. He therefore was probably the first to introduce the renaissance into Portugal, for Sansovino had no lasting influence. [137] 'To give room and licence to Dioguo de Castylho, master of the work of my palace at Coimbra, to ride on a mule and a nag seeing that he has no horse, and notwithstanding my decrees to the contrary.'--Sept. 18, 1526. [138] _Vilhena Barbosa Monumentes de Portugal_, p. 411. [139] Other men from Rouen are also mentioned, Jeronymo and Simão. [140] The stone used at Batalha and at Alcobaça is of similar fineness, but seems better able to stand exposure, as the front of Santa Cruz at Coimbra is much more decayed than are any parts of the buildings at either Batalha or Alcobaça. The stone resembles Caen stone, but is even finer. [141] João de Ruão also made some bookcases for the monastery library. [142] 'Aqui jas o muito honrado Pero Rodrigues Porto Carreiro, ayo que foy do Conde D. Henrique, Cavalleiro da Ordem de San Tiago, e o muyto honrado Gonzalo Gil Barbosa seu genro, Cavalleiro da Ordem de X^to, e assim o muito honrado seu filho Francisco Barbosa: os quaes forão trasladados a esta sepultura no anno de 1532.'--Fr. _Historia de Santarem edificada_. By Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcellos. Lisboa Occidental, MDCCXXXX. [143] The date 1522 is found on a tablet on Ayres' tomb, so the three must have been worked while the chancel was being built. [144] _Les Arts en Portugal:_ letters to the Berlin Academy of Arts. Paris, 1846. [145] _São Marcos:_ E. Biel. Porto, in _A arte e a natureza em Portugal:_ text by J. de Vasconcellos. [146] There is also a fine reredos of somewhat later date in the church of Varziella near Cantanhede not far off: but it belongs rather to the school of the chapel dos Reis Magos; there is another in the Matriz of Cantanhede itself. [147] Johannis III. Emanuelis filius, Ferdinandi nep. Eduardi pronep. Johannis I. abnep. Portugal. et Alg. rex. Affric. Aethiop. arabic. persic. Indi. ob felicem partum Catherinae reginae conjugis incomparabilis suscepto Emanuele filio principi, aram cum signis pos. dedicavitque anno MDXXXII. Divae Mariae Virgini et Matri sac. [148] The only other object of any interest in the São Marcos is a small early renaissance pulpit on the north side of the nave, not unlike that at Caminha. [149] During the French invasion much church plate was hidden on the top of capitals and so escaped discovery. [150] João then bought a house in the Rua de Corredoura for 80$000 or nearly £18.--Vieira Guimarães, _A Ordem de Christo_, p. 167. [151] There is preserved in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon a long account of the trial of a 'new Christian' of Thomar, Jorge Manuel, begun on July 15, 1543, in the office of the Holy Inquisition within the convent of Thomar.--Vieira Guimarães, p. 179. [152] From book 34 of João III.'s Chancery a 'quitaçã' or discharge given to João de Castilho for all the work done for Dom João or for his father, viz.--'In Monastery of Belem; in palace by the sea--swallowed up by the earthquake in 1755--balconies in hall, stair, chapel, and rooms of Queen Catherine, chapel of monastery of São Francisco in Lisbon, foundation of Arsenal Chapel; a balcony at Santos, and divers other lesser works. Then a door, window, well balustrade, garden repairs; work in pest house; stone buildings at the arsenal for a dry dock for the Indian ships; the work he has executed at Thomar, as well as the work he has done at Alcobaça and Batalha; besides he made a bastion at Mazagão so strong,' etc.--Raczynski's _Les Artistes Portugais_. [153] Vieira Guimarães, _A Ordem de Christo_, pp. 184, 185. [154] Foi erecta esta cap. No A.D. 1572 sed prof. E. 1810 foi restaur E. 1848 por L. L. d'Abreu Monis. Serrão, E. Po. D Roure, Pietra concra. Muitas Pessoas ds. cid^{eç}. [155] Ferguson (_History of Modern Architecture_, vol. ii. p. 287) says that some of the cloisters at Gôa reminded him of Lupiana, so no doubt they are not unlike those here mentioned. [156] An inscription over a door outside says: DNS. EMANVEL NORONHA EPVS LAMACEN. 1557. [157] One chapel, that of São Martin, has an iron screen like a poor Spanish _reja_. [158] It has been pulled down quite lately. Lorvão, in a beautiful valley some fifteen miles from Coimbra, was a very famous nunnery. The church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, has a dome, a nuns' choir to the west full of stalls, but in style, except the ruined cloister, which was older, all is very rococo. [159] This reredos is in the chapel on the south of the Capella Mor. [160] This aqueduct begun by Terzi in 1593 was finished in 1613 by Pedro Fernandes de Torres, who also designed the fountain in the centre of the cloister. [161] It was here that Wellington was slung across the river in a basket on his way to confer with the Portuguese general during the advance on Salamanca. [162] Terzi was taken prisoner at Alcacer-Quebir in 1578 and ransomed by King Henry, who made him court architect, a position he held till his death in 1598. [163] Some of the most elaborate dated 1584 are by Francisco de Mattos. [164] It was handed over to the cathedral chapter on the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1772. [165] São Bento is now used as a store for drain-pipes. [166] The Matriz at Vianna has a fifteenth-century pointed door, with half figures on the voussoirs arranged as are the four-and-twenty elders on the great door at Santiago, a curious arrangement found also at Orense and at Noya. [167] There was only one other house of this order in Portugal, at Laveiras. [168] Not of course the famous son of Charles V., but a son of Philip IV. [169] In that year from June to October 45,000 men are inscribed as working on the building, and 1266 oxen were bought to haul stones! [170] The area of the Escorial, excluding the many patios and cloisters, is over 300,000 square feet; that of Mafra, also excluding all open spaces, is nearly 290,000. [171] Compare also the front of the Misericordia in Oporto. 
33955	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print archive. [Illustration: Book Cover] REMODELED FARMHOUSES [Illustration: THE CURTIS HOUSE FROM THE ROADSIDE] REMODELED FARMHOUSES BY MARY H. NORTHEND AUTHOR OF "COLONIAL HOMES AND THEIR FURNISHINGS," "HISTORIC HOMES OF NEW ENGLAND," ETC. _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_ [Illustration] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1915 _Copyright, 1915,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY FRIENDS IN MY NATIVE CITY TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR MANY KINDNESSES PREFACE There is a certain fascination connected with the remodeling of a farmhouse. Its low, raftered interior, its weather-beaten exterior, never fail to appeal. Types vary with the period in which they were built, but all are of interest. In this collection, which has been pictured with great care, pains have been taken to show as many different types as possible, so that the student will be able to find numerous interesting details that can be incorporated into his contemplated remodeling. In the study of this work I have grown to feel a deep reverence for the old homes of our forefathers, and have come to realize as never before the care and painstaking thoroughness of the old master builders. I wish to thank the owners of these homes who have so kindly thrown open their doors to my inspection, and who have told me the interesting stories connected with the houses. Acknowledgment should be made to _American Homes and Gardens_ for permission to use various articles of mine which they have previously published. In the contents of this book I trust there may be much of value to those who are contemplating the remodeling of a farmhouse and that the work will bring to them the same enjoyment that the study of the subject has brought to me. MARY H. NORTHEND. AUGUST, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE vii I. IRISTHORPE 1 II. LIMOVADY 15 III. THE KITTREDGE HOUSE 28 IV. THE CURTIS HOUSE 38 V. GREEN MEADOWS 49 VI. NAWN FARM 61 VII. BOULDER FARM 71 VIII. THREE ACRES 84 IX. THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE 100 X. THE DAVENPORT BROWN HOUSE 110 XI. THE DOCTOR CHARLES E. INCHES HOUSE 124 XII. THE CHARLES MARTIN LOEFFLER HOUSE 136 XIII. LITTLE ORCHARD 146 XIV. WILLOWDALE 155 XV. THE GEORGE E. BARNARD ESTATE 166 XVI. THE W. P. ADDEN HOUSE 177 XVII. THE KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN HOUSE 187 XVIII. THE FRANKLIN BRETT HOUSE 198 XIX. THE GEORGE D. HALL HOUSE 208 XX. THE WALTER SCOTT HOPKINS HOUSE 220 XXI. HENRY W. WRIGHT'S HOUSE 231 XXII. THE HOWLAND S. CHANDLER HOUSE 243 INDEX 255 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE CURTIS HOUSE FROM THE ROADSIDE _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE IRISTHORPE, FRONT VIEW 4 The Entrance Porch 5 From the Garden 8 The Entrance Porch, Another View 9 The Dining Room, and the Living Room 12 The Morning Room, and the Out-door Living Room 13 LIMOVADY, REAR VIEW FROM THE GARDEN 18 Side View 19 Two Views of the Living Room 22 The Dining Room, and the Lounge 23 Two of the Chambers 26 AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE 27 Side View 30 The Attic Chamber, and the Living Room 31 The Kitchen 36 THE CURTIS HOUSE, THE ENTRANCE PORCH 37 Before Remodeling, and Remodeled 42 The Hall and Unique Stairway 43 Side View, and the Dining Room 48 GREEN MEADOWS, FRONT VIEW 49 An Old-fashioned Chamber, and the Living Room 56 Two Views of the Den 57 NAWN FARM, FRONT VIEW 64 Rear View, and the Living Room 65 Two Views of the Dining Room 68 The China Closet in the Dining Room 69 BOULDER FARM, FRONT VIEW 74 The Front Doorway 75 The Hall 78 The Den, and the Parlor 79 Two Views of the Dining Room 84 THREE ACRES, FROM THE MAIN ROAD 85 Front View 90 Side View 91 A Corner of the Living Room 94 The Living Room, and the Dining Room 95 THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE ON CAPE COD 100 Front View 101 Two Views of the Living Room 106 The Attic Chambers 107 THE DAVENPORT BROWN HOUSE 112 The Hallway 113 The Sun-Parlor or Out-door Nursery, and the Library 118 Two of the Chambers 119 The Nursery, and the Service Wing 124 THE CHARLES E. INCHES HOUSE, FRONT VIEW SHOWING THE OLD WELL 125 Before Remodeling 130 Across the Lawn 131 The Hall and Stairway, and the Living Room 134 THE STUDIO OPPOSITE THE CHARLES M. LOEFFLER HOUSE 135 THE CHARLES M. LOEFFLER HOUSE BEFORE REMODELING 138 As Remodeled 139 Two Views of the Living Room 142 The Dining Room, and the Music Room in the Studio Building 143 LITTLE ORCHARD, THE HOUSE FROM THE DRIVEWAY 148 The Angle of the Ell 149 The Stairway 152 The Entrance Porch, and the Dining Room 153 WILLOWDALE, BEFORE REMODELING, AND THE FRONT VIEW 158 The House from the Garden 159 A Rear View, and the Living Room 162 Two of the Chambers 163 THE GEORGE E. BARNARD HOUSE BEFORE REMODELING, AND THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE 166 The House from the Terrace 167 The Pergola-Porch 172 The Hall, and the Alcove in the Living Room 173 The Den, and the Dining Room 176 THE W. P. ADDEN HOUSE 177 The Stairway 186 QUILLCOTE, MRS. KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN'S SUMMER HOME 187 The Hall 192 Two Views of the Living Room 193 The Den, and the Dining Room 196 Two of the Chambers 197 THE FRANKLIN BRETT HOUSE, FRONT VIEW 202 Before Remodeling, and as Remodeled 203 The Pergola-Porch 206 A First-floor Vista, and the Living Room 207 LONE TREE FARM 212 As Finally Remodeled, and the Sun-Parlor 213 The Living Room, and a Corner in the Dining Room 218 The Sewing Room, and the Den 219 THE WALTER SCOTT HOPKINS HOUSE BEFORE REMODELING 224 As Remodeled 225 The Living Room 228 Two Views of the Dining Room 229 THE HENRY W. WRIGHT HOUSE 236 The Living Room, and the Dining Room 237 Two Noteworthy Chambers 242 THE HOWLAND S. CHANDLER HOUSE 243 End View 248 The Hall 249 The Sun-Parlor, and the Living Room 252 The Den, and the Kitchen 253 CHAPTER I IRISTHORPE As you drove slowly along the country road, did you ever stop to consider the many possibilities for development that lie hidden in the old Colonial farmhouses found here and there? Some are situated quite a distance from the main road, while others are placed practically on its boundary line. Many of the types are disguised by the unattractive additions that have been built to accommodate the growing needs of their occupants. Others, with sagging roofs and weather-beaten exteriors, stand mute witnesses of the days when our country was making history for itself. Some of these unattractive old dwellings in their early days sheltered the most ardent patriots of our land, men whose gallant deeds have made them famous, and who now lie forgotten. Fortunately for us, these old houses were not all built in the same century, but present a variety of types which makes them all the more interesting both to architect and house owner. The age of the house is clearly defined in its design. Many of the earliest examples were framed in white pine, a wood whose lasting qualities have been plainly shown through their power to withstand the ravages of time. Others were constructed of stone or brick and are equally interesting in character. From an architectural standpoint, most of these houses, no matter how dilapidated their condition, show good lines. To be sure, these are often hidden under poor surroundings, for as the families grew larger and additions became necessary, the new parts were often badly placed. This makes it hard for an inexperienced eye to detect where the old house leaves off and the additions begin. It must be remembered that the early tillers of the soil took little interest in their homes save as shelters for themselves and families, and chose for their buildings material that lay nearest at hand. All their ready money was expended in the building of large and spacious barns to house their cattle. There is a wealth of possibilities in the reconstruction of old farmhouses that are easily recognized by the experienced eye of the architect. The study of lines which determine the size and design of the old building is most interesting and teaches a lesson in old-time architecture which is extremely fascinating. The adaptation of the house to new and different purposes, the creation of a picturesque result wholly unlike and yet following the lines of the original building, calls into play not only skilful designing but careful planning. Many of these old houses contain fine woodwork which is often hidden under layer upon layer of hideous wall-paper bought with an eye to price rather than good taste. The fireplaces are sometimes bricked up and plastered over to permit the use of a modern "air-tight"; the wainscot and molding are buried under coats of unattractive paint and give little impression of their value until the original walls and woodwork lie bare. Some houses, more especially those situated near the coast and erected during the period of commercial prosperity, were built by ship carpenters and wood-carvers during dull seasons. In these, one comes occasionally upon a wonderful old fireplace or perchance a porch that shows artistic carving. Many of these old dwellings naturally show original treatment, and it is to these that the architects of to-day turn for details to be introduced into the modified Colonial house. They were built by men who were forced to use their brains, since they were unable to turn to books for ideas. As originally built, many of them stood with their backs to the road, their long, sloping roofs sweeping to the ground, their front doors opening on to extensive farm lands. Before the door usually stood the father and mother elm, their graceful branches seeming to hover protectingly over the dwellings. Many of the trees were there when the houses were built, while others have replaced their worthy sires and contribute a bit of landscape picturing that adds much to the attractiveness of the home. In these old houses, more especially those that are past complete restoration, the architect of to-day frequently finds choice old woodwork. Sometimes it is a rare bit of pumpkin pine such as is seldom seen; again it is a fine old wainscot, or a wonderful staircase that has been saved from the ravages of time. Often some of these details are introduced into another remodeled farmhouse to replace parts too far gone to be used. The growing vogue of the country home has led to the restoration of many of these old-time farmhouses and has saved many a valuable structure from falling into decay. Fortunately the appreciation of their possibilities came before it was too late to save them from destruction, although many that could have done service were allowed to go to ruin. There are, however, many fine examples still standing, and some of these have been altered to suit modern uses. Little wonder the old farmhouse has come into its own, its attractiveness after remodeling making it available for summer or all-the-year-round uses. To-day there is scarcely a farm or country resort that does not show one or more of these old-time buildings in their new dress. Some have interesting history connected with them and are associated with legends that have been handed down from generation to generation. Often the house has been photographed to show both its former appearance and the results of the restoration. Some owners, however, have given little thought to the original structure, and it is left to the imagination to picture the house as it used to be. [Illustration: IRISTHORPE--FRONT VIEW] It was six years ago, while hunting for a place to locate a summer home, that Doctor and Mrs. Homer Gage of Worcester, Massachusetts, discovered at Shrewsbury a simple little farmhouse, showing no claim to architectural beauty. It was such an unattractive, plain, little building, that only the experienced eye could discover its fine lines. This house stood close by the dusty highway; the fence which formed the boundary line had fallen into decay, while the farm lands, run down through hard usage, showed no trace even of an old-fashioned garden, such as many of the housewives of the earlier day so loved to tend. The house was built before the Revolutionary War, being erected in 1760, and was considered in those days to be a good example of what a farmhouse stood for. Surely it was an excellent type, considering the usual lines in the New England farmhouses of that day,--this small, unpretentious dwelling, whose entrance door out of plumb and windows irregularly placed made a curious combination that was in reality fascinating and appealing. It was two stories in height, with an attic under the eaves,--a hot little place during the summer months and cold in winter, but good for storage of furniture and unnecessary household belongings. The roof had a pitch at the back and sloped to meet the kitchen, which was only one story in height. Two sturdy, six-foot chimneys had been built on one side of the house, as stoves were unknown in those days. The frame was of white pine, well seasoned, and the timber hand-hewn, with the mark of the adze plainly showing in the beams, for it was built when honest labor prevailed and was as stanch as in the days when the bush stuck in the chimney or ridge-pole showed that the carpenters' work was done. The farm buildings were connected with the main house and comprised a barn, hen-house, corn-crib, and byre, all huddled together in the most compact kind of way. It had not been occupied since Doctor Brown, the original owner, paid his last visit and left the house to its fate. The interior was not as dilapidated as in most old houses, being in tolerably good repair. And so, with little alteration, it was used as a dwelling house, while the new home which was being built near the center of the estate was erected. After the cellar was built and the foundation partly laid, the work on the new house was stopped. There was something about the old clapboarded farmhouse that appealed so strongly to the new occupants that they fell under its charm and decided not to supplant it by a modern home. But the house stood too near the road; there was no privacy and no freedom from dust. It was of such solid construction, however, that its moving could be easily accomplished. So, slowly but surely, it slid down the hill and finally rested on the foundations which had been designed for the summer house. [Illustration: The Entrance Porch] Under the direction of Mr. George Hunt Ingraham, the remodeling was begun. The old lines of the roof were left unaltered, and although more room was needed, dormers were left out in its reconstruction. Nothing, the new owners felt, could so destroy the lines of the house as to break them with intrusions such as this. The long, unbroken skyline is one of its greatest charms, and even the long slope at one side, reaching down and over the one-story kitchen ell, has been carefully retained and adds not a little to the harmonious effect of the whole structure. At the front was added a small porch showing Colonial treatment, in the center of which hang graceful vases filled with iris. The same latticed effect was carried out across the front of the house in the space between the windows of the first and second stories. On either side of the main dwelling, outdoor living-rooms were secured by the introduction of screened piazzas, the roofs of which were painted with water-proof paint. One of these living-rooms opens on to a water-garden with its arches of roses at one side of the house. It is fitted up with willow furniture, in the coverings of which is introduced the prevailing flower, the iris, which is also shown in the table cover and the shape of the vase filled with the same flowers. The opposite porch is also fitted up as a living-room and overlooks the home garden. The exterior of the house is painted white with conventional green blinds, the chimneys following the same treatment, while the windows remain unchanged. The massive stone fireplaces were not taken out, although the old kitchen chimney had to be altered slightly in order to meet present needs. The house to-day overlooks extensive grounds and is embowered in a wealth of rambler roses and iris. It resembles the old house in its lines but shows in its remodeled form a most wonderful effect and reveals what beautiful results can be obtained by correct restoration. [Illustration: From the Garden] The house is named "Iristhorpe," the name being chosen by the mistress of the house, who since her childhood has taken great interest in the iris because of a fairy tale told her by her grandmother, in which the flower was supposed to be the home of the fairies. [Illustration: The Entrance Porch. Another View] With modern methods of living, it would have been an impossibility to retain the old house in its entirety. More room was needed, and a service department was an absolute necessity, but in its enlargement such careful attention was paid to carrying out the lines of the original type that to-day it is almost an impossibility to find where the old house leaves off, and the new one commences. In the old structure, as it stood facing the main road, there were three rooms in a row on the first floor, with the kitchen ell attached at the rear, and the upper part of the house cut up into small rooms. In remodeling, these rooms were changed over into morning-room, living-room, and library, and occupy the entire front of the house, just as they did in the original building. They are connected with doors so carefully placed in line that they give one the impression of greater space than is really found at Iristhorpe. At the rear, the old kitchen was converted into a most attractive hallway and stairway, with closets and lavatory located at the farther side. [Illustration: The Dining Room] The dining-room, which is at the rear of the living-room, has been added and conforms in every respect to the original design of the old house. Back of this are the service rooms, which are admirably planned and equipped with butler's pantry, servants' dining-room, kitchen pantry, rear hall, and stairway, together with a kitchen. In the remodeling, the second story was divided into four servants' bedrooms, a bathroom, and a large sewing-room at the rear. An interesting feature is that this department has no connection on the second floor with any other room in the house. The porch door opens directly into the living-room, which has never been changed from its original place in the old house. Its central feature is the old fireplace, which has been opened at the opposite side into the new dining-room. This was originally the old kitchen chimney and contained the brick oven. It has been bricked in for modern use, and here, as throughout the house, the iris motive prevails. It is shown in the graceful andirons, in the coverings of the Sheraton wing chair, in the sofa pillows, and even in the lamp-shade. This room contains fine woodwork, which is, in fact, a noticeable feature of every part of the house, and the Colonial idea has been carefully carried out in all the furniture used. [Illustration: The Living Room] The library opens out from the living-room at the right, and from that one passes to the outdoor living-room. On the opposite side of the living-room is the den or morning-room, with glass doors which open on to the porch. Here again the iris is always the motive of decoration. In this room particularly the old paneling has been retained, as have the old strap hinges and latches, which, when missing, have been replaced by others of like design. This room was originally the doctor's office, and in the cupboard was found, at the purchase of the house, some of his old stock. One of the most interesting rooms is the dining-room, which contains an old brick oven and paneling so exactly corresponding to the character of the original that at first glance it is impossible to differentiate between them, either in age or workmanship. The window sashes, with their small well-shaped panes, give to the room an appropriate scale, and the old iron and brass hinges and latches lend an effective tone. The iris, charming in nature and no less decorative in its conventionalized form, appears here and there in the carved woodwork and always gives a delicate twist to the Colonial design it embellishes. The beamed ceiling carries out the old-time idea, while wonderful Japanese panels have been inserted in the finish over the fireplace, and huge iron andirons show an exact reproduction of the fleur-de-lis. This flower is found also in the cushions of the Chippendale chairs, the decoration of the table, the china, and in a beautiful Japanese screen of most graceful design that hides the service entrance into this room. [Illustration: The Morning Room] The white woodwork is a noticeable feature of the interior, where harmony has been so carefully maintained that on entering one feels as if he were in a really old house, rather than one restored. It should be noted that in the architectural treatment, especial consideration has been given to lighting and air; the windows have been distributed so that the light is concentrated, giving the rooms an effect of cheerfulness that could not be obtained otherwise. Even the hanging of the curtains, which are of the Colonial type, adds to the charm of the house. [Illustration: The Out-door Living Room] The bedrooms, on the second floor, of which there are four, show the same low stud that is characteristic of the lower floor. They are small but most conveniently fitted up, even to the conversion of a small closet, which the architect had considered impractical for use, into an extra bathroom. Every bit of available space has been made usable. An unusual feature is the guest house, which has been created in the second story of the large stable which stands at one side of the estate. This is especially useful for week-end parties. The loft has been converted into a suite of bedrooms, pool-rooms, and a screened veranda that can be used for sleeping accommodations. Iristhorpe might be called a conventional farmhouse, one of the type met with on almost every country road. It has no exterior adornment of any kind, but is a fine example of how a picturesque building can be evolved from an unattractive one, and is probably one of the best examples of remodeling that can be found. The house is typical of the best American architecture, and credit should be given the pioneer who first laid the foundation of the old farmhouse. As Iristhorpe now stands, its graceful lines cannot be improved upon, and clever as the alterations undoubtedly are, the great fascination that grips us as we view the house arises from the fact that it is a part of the early architecture, when hewn beams were first primed together, and when dwellings were erected that would endure for centuries. CHAPTER II LIMOVADY First the electric car and now the automobile have solved the problem of accessibility which until recently confronted those who would have returned to the old homestead even sooner, had it been nearer the town. But to-day the house must be far away indeed if it cannot be easily reached from the more active centers, and probably this fact more than any other has opened up for the enjoyment of the younger generations the natural charm of the countryside endeared to our forefathers. In the roomy, old-fashioned farmhouses of New England, surrounded by stately trees and overlooking acres upon acres of rolling pasture and meadow land, unlimited opportunities are offered for the development of the country home. In remodeling these houses of the early builders, any radical departure from the original scheme is seldom necessary. Rather should the lines and motives be sacredly preserved to accentuate their old-time charm, and modern improvements introduced unobtrusively and with such care that the final result is indeed a restoration and not an alteration. The mellowing passage of time has dealt gently with many of our old homes, and history and romance have woven about them an added fascination for every generation to enjoy. When the work of restoration is commenced, the problem of retaining this charm is often a difficult one. In some instances it would seem as if nothing short of pure inspiration had guided the hands of the remodelers of many of the quaint and irregular old houses that stand by the side of the road. The old house is nearly always in harmony with its surroundings; if it did not seem a part of the landscape when it was built, it has at least had time to grow into it through the years, and the problem of all remodeling is to preserve in the completed structure the atmosphere that will make it appear to have always belonged where it stands. While the first thought of our forefathers was to provide an adequate home, they undoubtedly possessed a peculiar instinct in the choice of a picturesque location. By selecting the site best adapted to their needs, the house seemed literally to grow out of the land, and herein lies the secret of more than half the allurement of the old-fashioned structures. The intimacy between house and grounds seems as strong as were the family ties of those hardy pioneers who laid the foundations of American civilization. More practical considerations in regard to the environment than picturesqueness confront the house owner, however, and one of the most important is that of water supply and drainage. These must necessarily be kept far apart. A gentle incline is the best location for a dwelling, so that the one may come to the house from higher ground above, and the other be carried off below. A hollow is bad, because the water will not readily flow away from it; it is always damp and hot, as it is shut in from the breezes. On too steep a hillside, heavy rains will work havoc with lawns, walks, and flower beds. The slope of the land should be considered in reference to the prevailing winds. The house should be placed so that the cool breezes of summer blow upon the living-room side and not upon the kitchen, or all the heat and odors from cooking will fill the rooms, and they will always be hot and stuffy. The attractiveness of the immediate outlook should be noted, and it is well to ascertain if there are any objectionable features which cannot be removed or which are likely to arise within immediate prospect. The character and proximity of the neighbors will play a large part in the enjoyment of a summer home. If the house is not set well back on the property, it should at least be screened with full-grown trees and shrubbery to obtain the seclusion desired. Old trees add greatly not only to the attractiveness of a place but to its actual value and comfort, for it takes a long time to grow new trees that will provide adequate shade from the heat of summer suns. There is an illustration of a thus happily situated farmhouse at Georgetown, about thirty miles from Boston, known as the Jewett house, which was built in 1711. It is typical of an old Dutch lean-to and has a great central chimney twelve feet square, with four flues. Snuggled down in the midst of rolling grass land, it made an attractive picture in its surroundings of old elms. It stood far back from the road and was approached by a long lane that wound among splendid trees to the front of the house. Like many dwellings of this period, its back was toward the main road, and the front door opened upon a wide expanse of shady meadows which in the summer were bright with many-colored wild flowers. Between the house and the road there was a wide stretch of green grass which has been transformed into an old-fashioned flower garden, planted about a small, cement-lined pool and water garden. [Illustration: Rear View from the Garden] This house was discovered several years ago by a young Southerner who had come north from her sunny home in Kentucky to find a summer abode for her brother and herself. The house as it stood was in a very dilapidated condition, and only an artist would have realized its possibilities. But about it was a warmth of atmosphere that appealed to the enthusiastic Southerner. Not the least of its attractions were the elms that cast their protecting shadows not only over the long avenue which led to the house but over the dwelling itself; many of them were patriarchs of the primeval forests when their younger companions were yet in seed; others were set out later, to add their charm to the forsaken home. [Illustration: LIMOVADY--SIDE VIEW] It was purchased in 1906, and the work of restoration was immediately commenced. The outside was weather-beaten and guiltless of paint. The roof sagged, and the great stone chimney needed repair. It was propped up and made thoroughly safe, and the old roof was entirely-rebuilt, but the original lines were closely followed. Viewing the house as it stands to-day, one realizes what attractive apartments can be evolved from ugly interiors, and what interesting results ingenuity and good judgment can bring about. The interior showed coat after coat of vivid tint and layer after layer of atrociously colored wall-paper. The rooms, originally large and square, had been divided and partitioned off to meet the needs of growing families; many of them were small and hopelessly unattractive. But there were latent possibilities. When the house was first purchased, the owner went over the inside herself to discover the original lines. As in many houses of the kind, it was easy to restore the size of the room by following beams and knocking out partitions. It must be remembered that the usual plan in houses of that period was to construct a large, square room in the center with small rooms opening off from it which were used as chambers. The work of decorating, and, as far as possible, the remodeling itself, was done by Mrs. William Otis Kimball and her brother. Along the front of the house a screened, outdoor living-room has been added. The original building consisted of four rooms on the first floor. The front door opened into a small hall, to the right of which was the great living-room, and to the left the dining-room. Back of the former was a guest room, and back of the latter the old kitchen. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Living Room] In the living-room, the flooring, which was composed of boards often two feet wide, was in such good condition that it was left intact, treated to a black walnut stain, and shellacked. The height of the ceiling was but seven feet; so the heavy beams of swamp oak were boxed in and painted white, and the space between whitewashed. The walls, which were covered with ten tiers of paper, each one uglier than the last, were cleared to the boarding. The last one was found to be a wonderfully fine landscape paper, which showed that an early owner of the house must have been a person of means, who probably had it brought over in one of the merchant-ships during the time of commercial prosperity, when Newburyport had a lively trade with foreign lands. The walls were treated with a water paint colored a creamy pumpkin tint that makes the room seem always well lighted. It is a most inexpensive finish, such as is used by scene painters in a theater, and can be put on with an ordinary-whitewash brush. The wainscot was stained dark brown to harmonize with the floors. Around the top of the room the owner painted a frieze of conventionalized pomegranates, which follow the color scheme of the woodwork and wall. The old fireplace, which had been closed up, was opened, and the over-mantel enriched with a splendidly decorative painting by the artist herself, representing a Normandy boar hunt about 1330. After it was remodeled, the room measured twenty-four by twenty-six feet, the original size when the house was first built. It is now used as a living-room and library. Inexpensive shelves, made of boards stained to match the wainscot, are fastened along the walls. In places there is a single shelf; sometimes two are placed about twelve inches apart, and they are used for books, pictures, and ornaments. The windows are curtained with an appropriate simplicity that is unusually attractive. Unbleached cotton is used for the over-curtains and decorated with a border of richly colored cretonne, corresponding in color and conventionality of design to the painted frieze on the walls. The hallway is five feet in width and has been kept in the original boards. They are stained in tones of soft brown which harmonize splendidly with the varying color schemes of the rooms that open on either side. Opposite the entrance door is a narrow, winding staircase whose white steps and balustrade contrast sharply with the dark woodwork and hand-rail. Half way up is the old nightcap closet from which, in the early days, our forefathers took their nightly toddy. Underneath the stairs is a secret closet so carefully hidden in the panels that only those familiar with it can find it. This was known in Colonial days as the "priest hole," and it was here, so the legend runs, that French refugees were secreted during the French and Indian wars. [Illustration: The Dining Room] The dining-room opens off the hallway at the left. It is a long, narrow room with a fireplace at one side of the end nearest the hall. The woodwork has been finished in a dark stain, and the old corner cupboard has been kept intact. The fireplace wall is paneled in swamp pine, and over the mantel there is a secret panel cupboard. The lower part of the walls is covered with dark green burlap, and above is a decorative paper in boldly striking colors. There is a long, refectory dining-table in this room, made of stout oak boards, and the other furniture has a monastic simplicity which is entirely in keeping with the character of the room. The small room at the rear of the living-room is used as a guest chamber and is known as the missionary room. Here the walls are tinted a soft moss green, and ornamented at the top by a black and white frieze that pictures the different stages of a missionary's life. He is shown from the time of his arrival on the lonely island to his chase and capture by a band of cannibals, and finally being roasted amidst scenes of hilarity as they turn his fat form on the spit. The studio was originally the kitchen and opens out of this room. The woodwork is of the same dark brown tint used through all the lower story, and the walls are hung with natural colored burlap. The principal features of the room are its fireplace and quaint Dutch oven which were built into the center of the twelve-foot chimney when the house was erected. From the pothook on the crane hangs an old Colonial kettle. Of almost equal interest are the small-paned windows which are closed by sliding inside panels. The present kitchen has been added at the rear. It has white walls decorated with a frieze in which lobsters disport themselves in different attitudes. A small closet at one side of the passage that leads into the kitchen has been utilized for a bathroom. It is finished in white with a dado of tiles painted with turtles. [Illustration: The Lounge] When the house was first purchased, there was an old barn on the property a short distance away. This was moved up and connected with the house. It opens from the dining-room and has been converted into a lounge room, with servants' quarters at the rear. This room is one of the most interesting in the house. It is finished in stained pine, and the old rafters and woodwork have been left as they originally were. The spaces between the heavy beams of the ceiling are white, the beams being black with a narrow band of peacock blue above. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two of the Chambers] The originality used in finishing the house is evidenced nowhere better than in the chambers, on the second floor. Each one has been decorated with a different flower, and they are known as the holly-hock, the sweet pea, the wistaria, and the morning-glory room. A frieze of the particular flower has been painted around, and the canopies and bed coverings show the same design and colors in cretonne. A small room in the barn wing, which was not large enough to be converted into a chamber as it stood, has been utilized for this purpose by opening up a large, connecting closet into an alcove to hold the bed. It is so arranged that at night the bed can be pulled out into the center of the room, and in the daytime hidden behind curtains drawn across the alcove. There are quaint old four-posters in all of the bedrooms, and old-fashioned and simple furniture is used throughout the house. Some of it is home-made, and in many of the rooms are bookcases constructed from packing-boxes, and hung across with curtains of the cretonne used elsewhere in the room. In altering many old houses for modern occupancy, there has been a greater expenditure than would have been required to build an entirely new structure. But in this instance the charm of the old home has been retained with a considerably smaller outlay than would have been necessary to erect another of equal size and facilities. There is an undeniable satisfaction in realizing that all has been gotten out of a venture of this kind that was possible, and that no offense has been committed against the spirit of the old house. Every one who has attempted remodeling obtains different results from those first planned, for as the work proceeds, new possibilities and new limitations constantly appear, till the completed building has an individuality unrealized in the beginning. In Limovady, as this little country place is named, we find a good example of what can be done to make an old house not only a livable but a delightful home, and it is a success such as this that inspires other home seekers to remodel, according to their own ideas. For no two people will be likely to conceive the reconstruction of a home in just the same way, and it is this stamp of individuality that lends to the remodeled house a large part of its charm. CHAPTER III THE KITTREDGE HOUSE Have you ever noticed the fishermen's little cottages that stand along the seacoast wherever modern summer resorts have not displaced them? From a modern architectural point of view, they would at first seem quite insignificant, and yet, hidden away beneath the rough exteriors, there are often interesting lines and good proportions. The humble fishermen who dwelt there cared little for external appearance, but they built their cottages strong and solid and, though unpretentious, they were comfortable. These little old houses, seemingly commonplace though they may be, hold much more interest for the prospective house owner and the architect than do the more elaborate ones of later periods. For wherever men have utilized what skill and intelligence they have to satisfy definite needs in the simplest, most straightforward way, they have achieved something of lasting worth. The ages of these old seacoast houses vary just as do those farther inland. Some were built long before the Revolution and others at a much more recent date. Some have fallen into hopeless decay, while others are still stanch and habitable. The possible purchaser should make a careful examination both inside and out before he decides to remodel. Sometimes, from a superficial survey, an old house may appear sturdy enough to warrant renovation, but a closer investigation will prove that this would be an expensive business. For the old timbers often hold together firmly because they have all settled together as a unit; if any one is disturbed, the rest may be greatly weakened or even threaten to fall apart, like the proverbial house of cards. The first indication of dangerous weakness is a sagging roof. If the lines are even a little concave, it is a bad sign, for the roof would not have settled had the walls held absolutely true. Because of pressure against them, they have been forced apart and perhaps are on the point of tumbling down altogether. If the roof passes its test well, then examine the line of the walls and be sure they are absolutely vertical and have neither spread nor fallen inward. Next study the condition of the timbers. The sill is the most important one. If it is badly-decayed, all the other members resting upon it will have been thereby weakened and the whole structure impaired. The upright timbers and the studs will all have settled, and to straighten them will mean practically the rebuilding of the house. The floors and the roof which rest upon them will be endangered. Sometimes the ends of the uprights have rotted, and the slightest new work about them will result in their crumbling and undermining the beams and rafters they support. It is often necessary to use a sharp iron or a long knife and pry underneath the coverings on both the exterior and the interior to determine their condition. A little attention given to these points will determine whether it is worth while to attempt remodeling, or whether the expense involved would be out of all proportion to the result. Scarcely less vital is the condition of the cellar. Is there dampness, caused by lack of ventilation, by bad walls, or by some inherent moisture? Some of these old houses have a well in the cellar; this should be drained off and filled up. But if there is an actual spring of water, as not infrequently occurs, either move the house or abandon it. Bad walls can be cemented and waterproofed. If the trouble comes from lack of light and air, it may be possible to cut larger window openings. Most old houses were set too low, however, and it is frequently an advantage to raise them. This requires sound underpinning, or the expense will be great. While considering the subject of dampness, it is well to examine the roof and see how much it leaks under the moss-grown shingles. If it is an old house that is in tolerably good repair at the present time, it may be that under some previous owner the roof fell into decay, and rains soaked through. Look for signs of this, for it will mean weakness in timbers and plaster that must be guarded against. Examine the boards of the roof to see if they are strong enough to permit the laying of new shingles. The chimney is another important matter to investigate. In old houses which have not been used for some time, the bricks often deteriorate and become so soft that they crumble at the touch. This would necessitate the not inconsiderable expense of rebuilding the whole chimney, unless it is so large that a second smaller one may be inserted within the old. With the huge fireplaces of other days, whose yawning mouths were often capable of holding a ten-foot log, a metal flue is frequently used in the remodeling. It is surrounded on the outside, between itself and the old chimney, with concrete, which renders it entirely safe from danger of fire. A glance should be given also, in this inspection, at the condition of the floors. If they are not level, it indicates defects in the timbers underneath. The boards themselves are often so rough and laid with such large cracks that it will be necessary to lay new floors. Notice, too, the condition of doors and windows; whether they are straight and true enough to be used again, or if others will have to replace them. Tap the plaster here and there to see where it is loose and to what extent it must be renewed. These are the tests that indicate whether the old house is worth buying and what will be the essential expense to make it habitable. Sometimes one or another defect is so severe as to make the venture foolish; again it can be remedied by resort to strenuous methods. Not infrequently the drawbacks of a bad cellar and a poor location are at once overcome by removing the house altogether to a new site. This is practicable when the building is sound in structure and an inexpensive operation if it is small. [Illustration: AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE] That was the proceeding which Miss Mabel L. Kittredge undertook with an old fisherman's cottage that had stood for many years on the shores of Cape Cod. It was a simple little building, dilapidated and weather-beaten, and quite unsuggestive of a summer home. But its very quaintness and diminutive size attracted her attention, and she determined to investigate it. The owner was willing to part with it, just as it stood, for eighty-five dollars, not including the land. The location was not desirable, and it was decided to "fleck" the house, as is the colloquial term on the Cape for preparing a building to be moved. It was taken apart and floated across the water to its new foundations in South Yarmouth. Here it was "unflecked" and set up facing the harbor and the cool breezes from the ocean. [Illustration: AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE--SIDE VIEW] The original building, erected in the early part of the nineteenth century, was a small, shingled structure, thirty by twenty feet, with a straight gable roof rising from the low stud of the first story. Its proportions were not at all unpleasing, and the placing of the several small-paned windows was particularly agreeable. There was a kitchen shed attached to the rear. When it was set in position in the new location, additional windows were cut, a small porch built at the front entrance, and a second shed attached at right angles to the kitchen wing. In the second story, a broad flat-roofed dormer with three windows increased the interior space, without seriously altering the straight lines of the roof. The effort to retain the original simplicity of line is also evident in the porch roof, which follows closely the wide angle of the gable ends of the house. [Illustration: The Living Room] The original interior was cut up into a number of small rooms, the partitions of which were removed, with the exception of those dividing off a bedroom at the rear. This left one good-sized apartment, which was fitted up for living and dining-room combined and made a most delightful place. The stairs were built at the left, along the rear wall. A group of three windows was cut here to give extra light and air, and the manner in which they have been handled is interesting. On account of the position of a heavy supporting beam, it was impossible to make these new windows the height of the original ones. The effect of this was ameliorated by placing a shelf directly above the group of three and extending it across the wall to meet the old window. A number of interesting pieces of china placed on the shelf give it a character and weight which thus carries the eye along from one opening to the other without any consciousness of the break in height. This is but one of those ingenious methods by which remodeling is made successful. The large, old-fashioned fireplace is the center of interest in this room. At the right of it is a china closet with mullioned glass door, and on the left two narrower closets are found in the paneling. A new hardwood floor had to be laid, as the original one was in bad condition. The wainscot and woodwork throughout the house was unusually good for such a small and unpretentious structure. After the former layers of paint had been removed and the wood thoroughly cleaned, it was finished in white. The walls, scraped down to the original plaster, were painted in a soft green flat-coat that was delightfully fresh and cool. Back of this large room was a small hallway leading into the ell at the back. At the left, space was taken for a bathroom. [Illustration: AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE--THE KITCHEN] The kitchen was kept practically the same as in the old house. The rough stud and rafters were stained a dark brown, and the boards of the roof whitewashed. The walls were plastered to the height of the stud. A modern stove was attached to the old chimney flue on the outside of the building. The exposed uprights provided an opportunity for convenient shelves to be built for the various kitchen appliances. [Illustration: The Attic Chamber] Up-stairs the entire floor was thrown into one room, instead of making several small, stuffy, sleeping apartments. The dormer which was cut in the front added not only to the light, air, and space of the room, but gave an opportunity for a most attractive window-seat to be built beneath the broad windows. The old, wide boards of the floor were in good condition and kept intact. The walls were plastered to the ridge, exposing the heavy tie-beams. Along the walls under the eaves, sets of drawers were built into the woodwork, thus obviating the necessity of having chiffoniers or chests of drawers to consume already limited space. The rough bricks of the chimney, which breaks slantingly through the floor near the center of the room, are not concealed. Instead, they form a rather decorative feature in the little apartment, and about the four sides of the flue shelves are built which serve as a dressing-table and a desk. The furnishings of the whole house are delightfully simple and suggestive of the quaint Colonial period when it was built. Tables and chairs, pictures, mirrors, and china are interesting heirlooms that have been handed down in the family of the owner and preserve the spirit of the little cottage as admirably as do the various alterations which have made it so modern and habitable. CHAPTER IV THE CURTIS HOUSE The great charm of Colonial farmhouses lies in the simplicity of their appearance. Many dilapidated, weather-beaten old buildings, long neglected by an indifferent community, are really little masterpieces of harmonious line and good proportion. The style of the roof tells much about the age of the building to the initiated, and its line is easily the most important factor in the appearance of the house. The pitched roof is one of the oldest types and was used long before our country was discovered. This roof slopes away from the ridge-pole on both sides, thus forming a triangular area, the angle at each end of which is called a gable. In the early days, the pitch was built very steep to accommodate the thatching with which the roof was covered. As shingles came into use, the slope gradually flattened, and the age can be roughly judged by its angle. The gambrel roof appeared before the eighteenth century and was commonly used in New England farmhouses. Each side of this is made up of two distinct pitches, which have no rule to govern their relationship. A somewhat later development was the hipped roof, in which the gabled ends were flattened, making four flat sides sloping from the ridge-pole. This was used when no attic chamber was needed. In the more pretentious Georgian houses, the top was flattened, and a wooden balustrade put around it. These roofs are generally shingled and practically never painted; the soft gray color they attain in weathering is sometimes imitated in stain on new shingles. The addition of a wing or ell brought up a new problem in roofing, and it is this point that demands most serious attention from the remodeler. The old builders have not always been successful in preserving the unity of the roof line that is so essential to pleasing design. Whenever it is possible, the new roof should be made a part of the old, and the lines of one should run into those of the other. The pitch of the two should be practically the same. The same type of roof must be used over all parts of the building, although it is occasionally permissible to have a pitched roof on an ell when the main roof is a gambrel. Where a veranda is added, its roof line must be carefully studied and made to seem an original part of the building, not something stuck on as an afterthought. This problem of keeping the lines of the different roofs in harmony is a vital one, and nowhere is there greater demand for ingenuity and thoughtful treatment. The question of dormers is also important. When it is desired to have a second-story porch or sleeping-room, the dormer often supplies the solution of this difficult problem. The earliest ones were merely a flattening of the pitch of the roof, and this is the type that should be used when it is necessary to add a dormer to the older farmhouses. As the Georgian details were developed, the gable-roofed dormer was used with the cornice moldings of porches and door frames. These dormers were high, with a single window often having a semicircular head. They were usually combined in groups of three and connected with each other by a balustrade. The exterior walls of the first houses were made of heavy boards laid vertically on the framework, without studding. Before long, the wood was laid horizontally, each board overlapping the one below it. This clapboarding and siding was used without interruption through all the various changes in other details. Much later, the shingle was adopted for the sides of the house as well as for the roof. A larger shingle, however, was used on the walls, with a wide exposure of surface. These were made of pine or cypress. Although the walls of most old houses follow a straight line from one story to the next, there was a type, copied by the colonists from the buildings of the mother country and used somewhat freely before the Georgian era, in which the second story extended beyond the first. This overhang was generally used only on the front and back and not on all four sides, as in the European counterparts. The girders and cross beams were framed into the second-story posts, which frequently ended in an ornamental knob or drop, as it was called. The gables, too, occasionally had a slight overhang. In altering a pre-Georgian house, it is therefore permissible to make use of this overhang feature, and it may solve some otherwise knotty problems of required extra space. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] A house which shows unusually clever handling of these points is situated in the little village of Charles River, not so many miles outside of Boston. Within the last few years, this locality has been opened up, and many modern homes have been built and farmhouses remodeled. They are situated along charming woodland roads and seem to nestle in their picturesque surroundings. This particular one stands on the road from Boston to Dover, invitingly shaded by graceful elms that have watched unnumbered generations pass. It suggests to passers-by a typical, seventeenth century farmhouse, ingeniously remodeled, through the plans of the late Philip B. Howard and F. M. Wakefield, architects of Boston, into a twentieth-century summer home. This old farmhouse was built in 1647 and was of the rectangular type, built about a central chimney, with four rooms and a hall on the lower floor. When Mr. Frederick H. Curtis selected it for his home, it had already been materially altered from the original simple structure by various succeeding tenants. And many of these had not added to its charms. The exterior was most uninviting in a vicious shade of red paint with white trim. In front was a small lattice porch entirely out of keeping with the architecture of the house. But in spite of all these unattractive features, there was an insistent appeal about the old place that made it seem worth venturing to restore. The first problem which presented itself was that of interior space. The difficulty lay in enlarging this space in such a way as to provide the needed room and at the same time maintain the harmony of the exterior lines. The original four rooms had been added to from time to time by former owners by means of the customary ells at the rear. The house was two and a half stories high, with a straight, pitched roof starting from the top of the second story. In the rear there was a two-story ell and a one-story addition behind that, with an outside chimney. Each of these was increased by one room, so that space for a laundry was added in the lower floor and for servants' quarters in the second. The chimney was kept on the outside above the laundry roof and built up to the required height. This second-story extension overhangs the old kitchen wall by about eighteen inches on one side and on the other runs into an entirely new wing, whose roof line joins without a break to that of the old ell. The roof of the main building has been extended in the rear, following its straight line to the top of the first story, as was frequently done in old houses. This brought the lines of the main building and the rear ells into greater harmony and provided space for an outdoor living-room on the first floor. A flat-roofed dormer was thrown out above this on the second floor and turned into a sleeping-porch. The lines of the several roofs have thus been kept remarkably simple, considering the great amount of space which has been added. [Illustration: Remodeled] [Illustration: Side View] On the opposite side of the house a new wing has been added to the second floor, parallel to the main building and at right angles to the ells in the rear. The front part of it has a pitched roof following the angle of that on the main building, and the rear has a flat roof on a very low stud. This provides three additional rooms on the second floor. It has been built over an outdoor breakfast or morning-room on the first floor, and the kitchen has been widened under it. [Illustration: The Entrance Porch] At the front of the house, the flat-roofed entrance porch was removed, and one more in keeping with the Colonial period built in its place. This has a gabled roof, supported in front on two simple columns. The back part of it is closed and forms a small vestibule, with old-time oval windows extending on each side beyond the gabled roof-line. There are two benches in front, also beyond this line and protected by vine-grown lattices and small, extending eaves. The floor is paved with brick. These comprise the major changes to the exterior; but new shingles were put on the old roof; the dilapidated slat-shutters were replaced by blinds of solid wood, with a diamond cut in the upper panel after the old-time fashion; and the ugly red paint was changed to a soft Colonial buff. [Illustration: The Hall and Unique Stairway] The narrow entrance hall, opening directly on the stairs, has not been altered. In the stairs, however, an exceedingly interesting treatment has been introduced, made necessary by the plan of the rooms above. On the first landing a doorway was cut in the chimney wall, and stairs built up the center of the chimney between the two flues. These give access to a small hall in the rear, connecting the several bedrooms. The door that leads to these stairs, at the foot, is a "secret" one; that is, it is covered with the wall-paper which surrounds it and fits tightly into the wall without framing woodwork. [Illustration: The Dining Room] At the right of the hallway the parlor and dining-room were thrown into one long living-room, and a pleasant triple window was cut in the rear wall looking out upon the veranda. The fine old woodwork about the fireplace was restored to its original beauty with many coats of white paint. The hand-hewn beams in the ceiling were uncovered from the casing which had hidden them, and the wood rubbed and oiled. The floor was found to be in good condition and, after the placing of additional boards where the partition was removed, was merely scraped, filled, stained, and polished. A semicircular corner cupboard in a reproduction of an old style, its shelves filled with interesting specimens of seventeenth-century pewter, gives character to the room. The walls were finished in a soft shade of burlap, and the old mahogany furniture, chintz covers, rag rugs, and simple scrim curtains preserve the delightful atmosphere. On the opposite side of the hall is the library or den. This is unchanged, except for the white paint and the quaint Colonial wall-paper. Willow furniture is used. Back of this, and extending across to the living-room, is the dining-room. The beams show the position of the original walls and indicate the way in which the room was enlarged. This leaves the fireplace at the side of a sort of alcove and so, to balance it and give importance to that end of the room, a china closet was built across the corner. An unpaneled wainscot, with simple baseboard and molding at the top, runs around the room, the new part matching the old. The woodwork is all white, including the encased beams, which here were not in a condition to be exposed. The upper walls are covered with a blue and silver grass-cloth that strikes an effective color note behind the mahogany furniture. In this room is a good example of the use of modern reproductions of Sheraton chairs with a genuine old sideboard. Glass doors lead from either end of the dining-room on to the two verandas. Both of these verandas are really rooms without walls, as they have been incorporated so completely within the lines and framework of the house. The one on the side of the house in front of the kitchen is used as a breakfast-room, and many of the other meals are served out here in the open air. That in the rear of the living-room is a delightful spot on summer afternoons and evenings. Both of these porches are thoroughly screened and fitted with framework in which glass sashes are placed during the winter. On the second floor there are four bedrooms and a bath in the main part of the building, with a sleeping balcony leading from one of them. This is protected with screens and awnings and furnished with hammocks and reclining chairs. In the wings there are three servants' rooms and a bath. All of the rooms have been fitted up in a quaintly simple style that is thoroughly in keeping with the period of the house, the low ceilings, and fine woodwork. In some of the rooms there are valuable old pieces of furniture, a four-poster of the Sheraton type, and a highboy with details of the Queen Anne period. In another room modern white enamel furniture has been used, but it is so simple and straightforward in design that it harmonizes entirely with the atmosphere of the room engendered by the old fireplace and chimney cupboard, the thumb latches on the doors, rag rugs, and an old-time wall-paper figured with stripes of morning-glories and daintily poised humming-birds. In this second floor, the old iron hardware has been largely used in strap and H and L hinges, latches, knobs, and shutter fastenings. Throughout the lower story, modern brass knobs and key plates reproducing an old Colonial pattern have been used, securing greater convenience and safety. Hot-air heating has been installed and electric lighting. The outlets, however, are all in the walls or baseboard sockets, so that there is no conspicuous inconsistency in the atmosphere, and lamps and candles are also used throughout the house. CHAPTER V GREEN MEADOWS The architect of to-day has an advantage over the master builder of long ago in that he is able to grasp all ideas that were introduced into the old house and can restore it without losing the spirit of the original in either the exterior or interior. The wings and ells which were added by succeeding tenants often bear little relation to the main building and must either be torn down or harmonized in some way to preserve the unity of the completed design. The general plan of the house and the arrangement of the rooms should be carefully observed before the house owner and architect undertake the task of remodeling. Too many houses are disappointing because a study has not been made of the different types and periods of old houses, and the result is a mixture, neither one thing nor the other. Old Colonial houses were always built on the rectangular plan, as this provided the greatest amount of enclosed space with the least expenditure of labor and material. They were also constructed about an axis, and it is essential for the remodeler to determine what that axis is before making any alterations. In the earliest days, the chimney was the center of the building and dominated the plan. The various rooms opened around it, so that as many of them as possible could have a fireplace from the one chimney. It was consequently a huge affair and occupied about three fourths as much space as one of the rooms. In the first plans, there were usually but two rooms, a kitchen on one side and a parlor on the other. Later, a room was built in the back for the kitchen, and a third opening made in the chimney. The narrow stairs were built in at the front to fit into the chimney space and generally ascended with two landings and turns at right angles. As a late development, about the time of the Revolution, four equally large rooms were needed, and this one chimney was divided into two and placed on either side of the center of the house, so that in each of the main rooms there was a fireplace opening front or back from one of the two chimneys. This arrangement altered the position of the stairs, and stairs and hall became the central axis of the house. The proportion of the space allotted to them, however, remained about the same as when the chimney had occupied the center. This accounts for the wide Colonial halls, which are such a charming feature of old houses. The stairs were built along one side, the length of the hall, often a perfectly straight flight without turn or landing, and the hall was frequently cut clear through to a door in the back, which formed a rear exit to the garden. The Georgian houses at the end of the eighteenth century were commonly built on this plan. There was one other distinct type, in which the fireplaces in the four corner rooms were in the outer walls, and four separate chimneys were built. The central hall and staircase retained their same dominant proportions, but a second cross hall was sometimes built, dividing the house from end to end. To all of these types, additions were frequently made, as the family increased, or new owners took possession. The extra space was not acquired by enlarging the main building but by adding an ell in the back at right angles to the original structure, or a wing at the side, parallel with it. These additions were attached to the house by their smallest dimension, as that obstructed the least amount of light. They were smaller than the main part; many were but one story in height, and those that were two had a lower stud, so that the original building would remain the important feature in the whole. After examining the old house from this point of view, consider the new uses to which it will be put and determine what changes will have to be made. Sketch the entire plan out before commencing an alteration, and then endeavor to see if the proposed remodeling is practical from a structural point of view, and if it harmonizes with the original spirit of the old building. Mark out in each room the position of windows and decide where new ones may have to be cut in the rearranged interiors. Study the fireplaces and find out whether the proposed removal of a partition wall will throw them out of balance in the rooms, and what you can do to counteract it. Pay particular attention to closet room, for in the old days it was given too little consideration for modern requirements. Draw rough plans and put your ideas regarding every possibility down on paper; it is surprising how many new suggestions will occur as each scheme is worked out, and there is a fascination in seeing how much can be fitted into a given space. After the work is begun, unforeseen conditions will crop up and necessitate changes in the project, as well as disclose new opportunities, but a greater part of the planning can be done beforehand. A roomy, old, New England farmhouse near Hamilton was recognized by Mr. George Burroughs as a fertile subject for development into a beautiful country home. It was situated in the heart of rolling country and surrounded by wide stretches of grass land, from which the estate was named "Green Meadows." [Illustration: GREEN MEADOWS--FRONT VIEW] The original house, separated from the highway by an old wall of field stone and an elm-shaded dooryard, was built in 1786, and it is curious to note that no deed was ever recorded. It was the usual type of farmhouse, constructed about a central chimney, two and a half stories in height, with an unbroken roof line. Subsequent owners had added wings at each side instead of the more customary ell at the rear. One of these wings is of brick, which indicates that it was probably not built before the middle of the last century, but although the two building materials seem incongruous in the one house, vines have so overgrown this wing that the red glimpsed through them and contrasting with the white walls of the house is very attractive. The only important alterations in the exterior appearance of the house were in the addition of the long veranda across the rear and the alteration of the frame wing at the right. The old structure was found to be in too dilapidated a condition to restore, but it was reproduced in all its exterior details and joined to the end of a new wing attached to the house and a trifle broader than the old. Two hip-roofed dormers add to the space in the second floor and permit the construction of attractive servants' quarters. The frame of the entrance door in the center of the front façade is a particularly happy example of the simple Georgian style used in the better class of farmhouses of that day. Its flat pilasters and well-proportioned cornice illustrate the restraint and refinement in the work of even the average builders. The door itself opens into a small hallway, restored with fresh white paint to all its original beauty. On this left side of the house the partition between the old dining-room and parlor has been removed to make one large living-room. After the cornices and the wainscoting were restored, the woodwork, including the encased beams in the ceiling, was painted white. The condition of the old floor made it necessary to lay a new one of hard wood. This room admirably reflects the old Colonial spirit in its fireplace and cupboards. The paneling above the mantel shelf presents an interesting variation in the framing of fireplaces. The original wainscot with its molded cap divides the wall surface in an agreeable proportion, and the rather heavy cornice moldings at the ceiling line relieve the emphasis of the great beams. The old hardware is used on doors and windows, the thumb latches are finished in the natural black, and the H and L hinges painted white to correspond with the woodwork. The upper part of the walls is covered with a rose-colored paper reproducing a conventional Georgian medallion design in silvery gray. This rose color has been carried out in all the furnishings of this room; the upholstery of chairs and sofas is in a deeper shade; the over-curtains are somewhat paler, and in the Oriental rugs, rose blends with soft browns and blues. Old-fashioned Venetian blinds or slat-curtains shade the windows in the living-room and throughout the house. On the opposite side of the entrance hall is the reception-room. The same treatment has been accorded here as in the living-room, and the furnishings are especially harmonious and well arranged. The long, low lines of an Adam sofa, a slender-legged desk, and chairs and table, each one a noteworthy masterpiece of cabinet making, are admirably chosen to add apparent height to the low stud, but the monotony of too much light and low furniture is broken by a tall grandfather clock placed in the corner. The pictures on the walls, old prints simply framed in mahogany, are hung with a similar thought to increase the apparent height of the room, and their arrangement is well worth studying. The fireplace, on the opposite side of the chimney from that in the living-room, is equally interesting. The wall above the white wainscot is papered in a golden yellow of conventional flowers, and the upholstery and draperies are of a golden striped and figured Adam damask that brings out the rich color of the satinwood and mahogany furniture. In the rear, on the same side of the house, is the dining-room. The old woodwork here was insignificant, and it has been replaced with modern paneled wainscot covering two thirds of the wall surface. One could wish that the proportions of the original woodwork had been a little more closely followed, and the atmosphere of the other rooms carried more definitely into this. The old fireplace has been retained across the corner of the room with its flue in the central chimney, but its frame is a modern conception. The chimney cupboard in the side has been turned into a china closet with a new door of mullioned glass displaying interesting old pewter and plates. The upper third of the wall above the wainscot is covered with a reproduction of an old-time scenic paper in greens and grays, and the window hangings are of corresponding colors in damask. The seats of the Hepplewhite chairs carry the same tones in tapestry. The apparent size of the dining-room has been cleverly increased by carrying the decorative motives into the passageway which connects it with the service quarters in the right wing. The same paneling of the wainscot and the same paper above, seen through the double doorway, give the impression that this is all part of the one room, and the placing of a buffet in front of the opening enhances the effect. On the other side of the dining-room a small hall, paneled with white enameled woodwork to the ceiling, leads into the living-room. [Illustration: The Living Room] French doors of glass open from here on to the wide veranda which has been added across the back of the house, overlooking the green meadows and shady vales that stretch away on all sides. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Den] From this veranda or from the living-room, one can enter the brick wing at the left of the house. This originally contained the kitchen with bedrooms above, but in altering it, the entire wing was thrown into one room opened to the roof. With the great old beams and rafters showing, and all the woodwork stained dark, this apartment lends itself admirably to the character of a den or smoking-room. At the end, the old kitchen chimney has been utilized for a fireplace, and old paneling inserted above the high mantel. Seats have been built under the windows flanking the chimney and, with their soft cushions and pillows, add materially to the comfort of the room. The windows in this wing are unusually large,--an indication of the later date of its construction,--and in order to carry the same proportions in their divisions as in the older part of the house, twenty-four panes of glass were used in each. A rich green and brown landscape paper covers the upper two thirds of the walls above the wainscot molding. The upholstery and cushions on davenport, armchairs, and window-seats of brown leather stamp this apartment indelibly as a man's room, and the decorations of old flint-locks in one corner add to the effect. The service quarters of the house in the wings at the right have been made especially complete. In the middle section are butler's pantry, kitchen, laundry, and refrigerator, with two bedrooms on the second floor; and in the narrower part is a servants' hall and three bedrooms which are open to the roof. [Illustration: The Old-fashioned Chamber] On the upper floor of the main part of the house the four bedrooms have been kept much as in the past. Those in the rear have been made to open out, through double doors, on to the second story of the veranda, which can be used as a sleeping-porch. The old white woodwork and the original fireplaces add their ineffable charm. The floors were in poor condition and are covered with matting as a background for the rag rugs. Some very interesting old pieces of furniture add to the atmosphere of these chambers. The registers of the hot-air heating system which has been installed are unusually well selected for an old Colonial house. Instead of the customary meaningless scroll and meander pattern in the grills, a simple square lattice has been used, which preserves the spirit of other days admirably. CHAPTER VI NAWN FARM City people are prone to think that the country is agreeable only during the summer months, and that winters spent there are unpleasant and dreary. This notion is fast being dispelled, as country houses are kept open longer and longer each year, and the pleasures of country week-ends during the entire winter are definitely proven. There is in reality no more delightful place to spend the long winter months than in the heart of a beautiful country. A never-ending round of interests astonishes one who has never tried it before. Each month brings a fresh phase, and it is hard to determine whether the country is at its best during the summer or winter season. There is a fascination indescribable in watching the fall of snow, the settling of flakes on the bare limbs, the transition from brown to diamond-covered branches that glisten with every motion and are often decorated with long icicles reflecting all the prismatic colors. If you have never seen this side of country life, you will find it a wonderful world, where it is intensely interesting to study the seasons in turn, note the coming and going of birds, look for the early and late flowers, watch the melting of snows and the swelling of buds in the warm spring suns. More active pleasures, too, await the adventurer in the winter country. There are so many sports to be enjoyed that one does not wonder the youth delights to come here for skating, snow-shoeing, or toboganning. What is more delightful than a sleighing party, whose destination is a remodeled farmhouse not too many miles from the city? Start the cheery fire in the huge fireplace, pile on the six-foot logs, draw your chairs nearer while you forget the outside world, and feel a glow of delight that you, too, have joined the throng who know the thrill of country life. The first thing to do when contemplating an all-the-year-round country home is to look for a house in the right location. In selecting it the problem of heating must be thought of in a different way than as that for merely summer use. Then fireplaces will amply suffice for the few cool days and chilly evenings, and no better method could be desired. But for the real cold of winter, whether for continued use or the occasional week-end, more complete heating will need to be provided. The cheapest and simplest way is undoubtedly by stoves which can be attached to the fireplace flues. But this necessitates closing up the fireplace and depriving family and guests of all the joys of the blazing logs which never seem more cheerful and hospitable than in the bitterest weather. If the house is to be used mainly for week-end parties, stoves have another serious drawback. They must be kept oiled when not in use, to prevent their rusting, and it takes nearly two days after the fire is lighted to burn the oil off. Then, when closing up the house again, the stove must be re-oiled, and this necessitates putting the fire out and waiting in the cold house until the metal is sufficiently cool to apply the treatment. The most adequate method is by hot water or steam, and for a large country house these are really the only practical ways. The expense involved will depend upon the structure of the house. In a brick or stone building, it will cost a good deal to have the pipes built into the wall. Sometimes conditions will allow them to be carried up in a closet or partition. In a frame house that has been built with deep window jambs, as was so often done in the olden times, the pipes can be hidden within this furred framework. The great objection to steam or hot-water systems in old houses, however, is the presence of the radiator, which never can be made to harmonize thoroughly with the spirit of the old building. When it is used, some attempt must be made to disguise it. If it can be made long and low and placed in front of a window, it can be treated as a window-seat with a metal grill in front. For houses of the later Georgian period, grills can be found whose designs are not at all out of keeping with the other classical details. Sometimes a radiator can be placed entirely within the furred partition, and the heat admitted into the room through paneled doors which are thrown open when it is in use. For small houses, the hot-air system is perhaps the most desirable. The registers are inconspicuous and bring no jarring note into the old-time atmosphere. The pipes require considerable overhead room in the cellar, which sometimes becomes a hard problem in the low foundations of old houses. The fact that it is difficult to drive the hot air against the wind raises a second objection, but if the furnace is placed in the corner of the house from which the cold winds blow, or even a second furnace is installed, the trouble will be largely overcome. And there is the great advantage, especially for a week-end house, that it can be started up or left at a moment's notice without trouble from water in the pipes or danger of freezing as in the hot-water systems. Whatever the method decided upon, it is an interesting work from start to finish. One feels a thrill of adventure in evoking from the home of past generations one for twentieth-century living with all the comforts and appliances necessary. But to transform an old building that has never even been intended for living purposes into a residence that is not only comfortable and suited to the owner's needs but an architectural success as well, is a still more fascinating problem. How Messrs. Killam and Hopkins have accomplished this with an old barn at Dover and kept the distinctive simplicity and atmosphere of the original building is worthy of emulation. [Illustration: NAWN FARM--FRONT VIEW] When Mrs. Genevieve Fuller bought the Nawn Farm some three years ago, it was her intention to alter the farmhouse then on the property. Its location, however, was not entirely favorable; the house was on sloping ground in somewhat of a hollow and too near the public road. Besides this, the rooms were small and very much out of repair. On the crest of the hill was the barn, occupying a commanding position and framed in splendid old trees. The structure was found to be so stanch that it was decided to tear down the old house and convert the barn into the residence. [Illustration: Rear View] The foundations were left unchanged, and an ell on the north side was added for the service portion of the building. The supports and interior divisions are all virtually unaltered. The living and dining rooms occupy the positions of the former mows, and the hall connecting them is the old passage for the wagons. Most of the original studding has been used as it stood, and the beams incased or hidden in the finish of the walls. The roof was flattened on the top, and the gables cut off, but the slope was unaltered. Wider eaves were added at a slightly different pitch, softening the lines of the roof. Doors and windows were, of course, cut anew to conform with the different usage of the building. Their position was necessarily determined somewhat by the existing supports, but they have been very happily placed, whether in groups or singly. Those of the sleeping rooms on the second floor are especially well handled; they are wide and raised well up under the overhanging roof, so that they carry out the broad low lines of the architecture. The openings of the sleeping-porches have been treated exactly as windows, their size corresponding with the apparent dimensions of the windows, and their locations determined by the same factors. They become at once an integral part of the structure instead of the unsightly excrescence which the presence of a sleeping-porch so often proves. [Illustration: The Living Room] On the first floor, the living-room occupies the entire eastern end, having exposures on three sides. This has been attractively finished in gum wood stained a dark brown, and the warm tones of natural colored grass-cloth tone the walls. An interesting treatment has been accorded the fireplace by flanking it on either side with a nook, the outer walls of which cleverly conceal parts of the old structure. In each of the recesses is a small window above the paneling and window-seat. The furnishings of the room are appropriately simple and invitingly comfortable, suggesting old-fashioned things adapted for modern uses. Especial interest is attached to the fireplace fittings; they are of hand-forged iron, wrought by the village blacksmith after designs of the owner. The andirons were made from the tires of old cart wheels, flattened and bent into shape and curled over at the top. The wood-box is of flat strips of iron interlaced. From one wing of the hall ascend stairs which are the faithful reproduction of an old Colonial design. The other part of the hall, across the southern front, is so broad and cheerful with two big windows and two glass doors opening on to the sunny loggia that it has been furnished with a davenport, tables, and chairs almost as a second living-room. The woodwork is North Carolina pine stained brown, and the walls are gray. The billiard-room back of this hall, with its attractive alcove and fireplace, is finished in fumed oak, and the walls are also gray. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Dining Room] Perhaps the distinction of being the most attractive room in the house can be accorded the dining-room with its Colonial white woodwork. The fireplace and the china closet, balanced on the other side by the door into the pantry, are of excellent proportions and charming detail. The mullioned panes of the china closet and the treatment of the moldings about the frame are especially interesting. On the opposite side of the room a group of three windows provides opportunity for an unusually delightful feature in the long window-box, built by the village carpenter. Its simple, sturdy lines are worthy of notice. The walls are papered in a deep cream, and the greatest simplicity maintained in the furniture and draperies. [Illustration: The China Closet in the Dining Room] The service portion is well arranged both for convenience of labor and comfort of the domestics. The basement laundry leads directly into a large drying yard which was the original enclosure for the cows and is surrounded by the same wall of field stone. Up-stairs the rooms might be said to be divided into three suites, which can be practically shut off from each other: each has its own bath and sleeping-porch. In the group over the living-room there has been an ingenious solution of the structural conditions. The division of the rooms made possible by the old supports permitted a dressing-room to be placed conveniently between the two chambers, but the fireplace added in the living-room was directly below, so that the chimney would naturally cut off the outside wall. It would have been possible to construct a large fireplace in the dressing-room and allow the light to come through the chambers, but the architects evolved another scheme. The chimney was carried up on one side, providing a fireplace for one of the chambers, and a second chimney was built in the opposite corner of the dressing-room. In the space between, a window was cut, and the two flues joined directly over the window. From the outside of the building this gives a most unusual effect as there is a chimney directly over a window, having no apparent support, or even purpose. The lines of the pyramidal base conform to the slope of the roof. CHAPTER VII BOULDER FARM The remodeling of an old farmhouse is apparently a simple matter; it would at first seem necessary only to preserve the main lines and characteristics of the original in the alterations that are required to meet the conditions of modern life. But when one realizes that the less conspicuous details are also important, in order to maintain the essential harmony of the whole, it becomes a more intricate proposition. One cannot merely study the details already on the building and slavishly copy them for the new parts, because frequently it will be found that doors or windows or shutters have been added by more recent owners and are not really in keeping with the old structure at all. In order to reclaim the house, then, so that it shall have a consistent unity throughout, one must have some understanding of the evolution of these details. There is no more significant element in these old Colonial houses than the front door. It was placed in the center of the front wall and formed the unit of the exterior design. The very early doors were of heavy oak boards placed vertically and fastened together with horizontal strips. These batten doors, as they were called, were made very sturdy and strong, in order to resist attacks from Indians or other marauders. Often they were marked with an awl into diamond and lozenge patterns and sometimes studded with hand-wrought nails. Not for a good many years did the panel door come into use. At first it was a flat panel, flush with the sides of the door and separated from the sides and top only by a small bead molding. This was soon developed into the flat sunken panel, meeting the surrounding wood with several moldings; and then the panels were beveled and raised in the center, and the moldings gradually became more elaborate and delicate in outline. The early doors were solid for purposes of protection, but as the country became more settled, thick bull's-eye glass was inserted into the top horizontal panel to let light into the hall. As the interior plan was changed in its evolution, the hall became larger, and these bull's-eyes did not provide sufficient light, so the transom was introduced over the door. For some time a simple top light was used, divided by lead and then wooden muntins. Then side lights were introduced, and the treatment became more elaborate in the beautiful styles of the later Georgian period. The frame about the door was at first of flat, undecorated boards, the upper one resting on the two at the sides. Then these were molded and mitered at the corners, and later a cap of heavier moldings was put across the top. This hood became more and more prominent and required the use of definite support. Console brackets were sometimes used but more frequently flat pilasters set against the wall. These gradually became more important, developing into the three-quarter round and finally the isolated column. The pediment and cornice were then extended into the open porch that is one of the splendid features of the Georgian style. Here in cornice and capital was a field for the development of all the most delicate and beautiful motives of classic carving. As this door and porch was the center of the design of the exterior, the windows were grouped symmetrically about it, the same on each side. There were few of them at first, and they were of rather small size. Casement windows were the earliest kind used, and the small, diamond panes were sunk in lead, as were those made in the mother country. It is probable that most of these windows were brought over from England and not constructed here. After 1700, the sliding sash was introduced, dividing the windows horizontally, and these had wooden muntins. It must have been considered a more elegant type of window, for it was used in the front of the house for a long time, while the leaded casement was still put in rear windows for many years. The early wooden muntins were quite heavy but later became nearly as delicate as the leaden ones. They divided the sash horizontally and vertically into squares. The window casings, like the door frames, were at first entirely plain and then had a heavier band across the top which developed into a molded cap or cornice, as at the entrance. When sliding sashes were introduced, the walls of the houses were not thick enough to contain them, so the frames and the sashes were built on to the outside, frequently projecting quite a distance. The necessity for constructing them in this way led to the deep jambs and sills which are such a charming characteristic of the Colonial style. Shutters were used on the outside of the house as a means of protection from the Indians, when the country was being settled, and these were made of heavy, battened wood three or four inches thick, like the doors. Subsequently a small diamond was cut in the top to admit some light when the shutter was closed. Then a shutter with a solid upper and lower panel was used, and finally these panels were replaced with slats. There was one other part of the exterior which developed interesting characteristics to be observed in the remodeling: that is, the cornice of the roof. This was merely the overhang in the early buildings and sometimes consisted of the framing beam actually exposed. In the Georgian houses, this was boxed and later elaborated with splendid carvings that deserve perpetuation in more lasting material than wood. There was no gutter for rain-water, and the drip from the eaves was caught on flagstones on the ground at the corners of the house. This detail, although not needed with modern gutters and rain pipes, gives a charming old-time touch when retained in the remodeled home. It is by attention to such seemingly insignificant points that the atmosphere of the original buildings has been consistently retained in so many cases. An excellent instance of how this has been done may be seen in a late Georgian type of farmhouse that stands somewhat back from the old Londonderry turnpike on an estate at Hopkinton, New Hampshire. Although it is not very old, having been built in 1820, it is typical of the better class of simple home in the early days of the Republic. [Illustration: BOULDER FARM--FRONT VIEW] The history of the building of this old house is rather interesting. In the days when lotteries were still in flourishing condition, and some of the best men in the community were interesting themselves in the various schemes, a member of one of the churches induced Deacon Philip Brown's hired man to purchase a ticket for a paltry sum. Repenting his investment, he afterwards sold it to his employer, who was a clever silversmith and clock-maker, much respected and well known in the community through his yearly rounds about Hopkinton to repair the clocks of the farmers. The ticket proved to be the winning one, that drew a great prize. With part of this money, Deacon Brown purchased the old "Boulder Farm," as it was called from a great rock that still stands in an open field just south of the house. Here he erected the Georgian farmhouse that is standing to-day. The rest of the money, so the legend runs, he buried somewhere in the field, but he probably removed it later, as it has never been found. He placed the house on rising land, a short distance from the broad highway, built in the same year and for a long time the straight thoroughfare from Londonderry to Concord and Boston. Deacon Brown lived on the estate until 1846, with the exception of the year 1830, when it was occupied by Governor Matthew Harvey of New Hampshire. The property, placed on the market, then fell into the hands of a man named Kelly, brother-in-law to Grace Fletcher, the first wife of Daniel Webster. During his life, the great American statesman often visited there. What happened during the period between this occupancy and the time of its purchase by Mr. Harry Dudley of Concord, New Hampshire, is not recorded, but we can be confident that the house had careful treatment from its state of preservation. It was while Mr. Dudley was looking around for a home with ample grounds, and near enough to his business to allow him to go back and forth every day, that he discovered this historic place. Its attractiveness and the healthfulness of the surroundings appealed to him. Very little was needed to bring the house back to good condition and make it habitable. The land was attractive and could be improved. In front of the house was a wide stretch of meadow that was easily terraced to meet the boundary line. To the many old trees shading the house and lawn were added young trees to replace some of the ancient ones that were dying. [Illustration: The Front Doorway] Although the house was a model type of the architecture of its day, and there had been abundant room for the old-time residents, modern ways of living demanded additional space. A long ell, built at the rear for the service department, and a wide veranda in dignified Colonial style along one side were the two main exterior alterations. The appearance of the windows was changed by putting in larger panes in order to admit more light, but they were still in keeping with the old-time atmosphere. The reshingling and repainting of the house and the addition of the trellises at one side completed the exterior improvements. The splendid front entrance porch with its graceful fanlight, Doric columns, and straight cornice, and the equally interesting though less imposing side porch were left practically unchanged. The old blinds were restored, to give the stately, old-time atmosphere to the mansion. The new veranda is wide and extends along the whole side of the house. Its flat roof rests on coupled Doric columns that carry out the classical Georgian detail of the entrance porch; the second story is finished with a simple balustrade, in keeping with the fine simplicity of the main lines. During the summer months this broad piazza is a delightful out-of-door living-room, from which there is a splendid view over the green country; and one can, in imagination, picture the old stage-coaches of former days lumbering by on the highroad. The upper part of the veranda opening from the chambers on that side of the house is used as a sleeping-porch. The path that leads to the main entrance passes through a wicket gate and ascends the terrace over stone steps to the granite block before the door. The pleasant formality of this porch is accentuated by two close-clipped bay trees, one on either side of the step. [Illustration: The Hall] This door opens directly into the hall and faces the long, straight flight of stairs which reaches the second floor without a turn. The woodwork of these stairs is particularly nice in proportion and line; and the carving under the ends of the steps, in a simple but beautiful scroll design, is most interesting. The hand-rail is mahogany, and the molding which follows it on the wall side above the wainscoting is also mahogany. [Illustration: The Parlor] In the parlor at the left no innovation has been introduced, and it remains almost as when the house was built. There we find the old white wainscoting unpaneled, with a fine carved molding defining the top. The windows, recessed in the Colonial style, retain their original inside shutters that are still used. It is unusual to find these to-day, for in remodeling houses the shutters are almost always removed in favor of more modern conveniences. Shutters were formerly used as we now employ curtains, to be closed at night-fall or to shut out light and cold. The fireplace in this room is a fine example of Colonial work. It shows a central medallion of a plentifully filled fruit basket and wheat sheaves over the fluted side columns; the edge of the mantel shelf has an unusual ball and string ornamentation finely carved. The wall-paper dates back to the time of the fireplace. It shows a Grecian pastoral design in shades of brown, yellow, and old rose and was hand-printed from blocks made in England. Through all these years it has retained its brightness, escaping the hands of time, and lends a charming and quaint atmosphere to this room. All of the movable furnishings are equally well in keeping; the slat-back chairs and tables conform to the spirit of the period, as does the fine old Empire mirror, resting on its rosettes. On the opposite side of the hall from the parlor is the living-room. This is similar in character, with a fireplace only slightly less interesting. It has the same old white wainscoting, but the upper walls have been covered with a modern foliage paper which, strangely enough, blends harmoniously with the setting of the room. It is furnished with eighteenth-century pieces corresponding to those in the other parts of the house. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Dining Room] At the end of the hall is the dining-room, reached through an open arch. The old wall and door here were cut away in the remodeling to produce an impression of spaciousness and give a vista from the entrance clear through the house and into the garden at the rear. The arch was added to finish the opening, but it conforms carefully to the details found in the architecture of that day. This room was originally divided, and one part used as a kitchen, but the partition was removed and the two thrown into one, making a long dining-room which occupies the greater part of the rear of the house. At the end, the old single window was enlarged, and two smaller ones cut through on either side to make a delightful sunny group which adds materially to the charm of the room. In the fireplace, which was the original old kitchen one, used for cooking and baking, the brick oven was removed to admit the introduction of a door opening into the living-room. Otherwise it was left unchanged, and the white painted woodwork about it, although simple and unpretentious, is beautifully proportioned. The old flint-lock and warming-pan which hang there pleasantly emphasize the Colonial idea. The wall-paper is a reproduction of a Colonial block pattern in soft shades of gray and green. The floors in this room, as all over the house, are covered with matting laid over the original boards, which were found to be in too bad a condition to restore; entirely new ones would have been necessitated had bare, polished floors been demanded. [Illustration: The Den] At the end of the dining-room, opposite the triple window, a door leads into a small room which is used as a den. This retains the old fireplace opening from the same chimney and directly back of that in the parlor. The walls have been papered in a plain green and are sparingly decorated with sporting prints and trophies suggestive of the hunt and the master's particular domain. Doors lead from this room not only into the dining-room, but to the parlor and the veranda at the side. The ell of the house, opening from the dining-room, is devoted to butler's pantry, kitchen, servants' dining-room, and servants' chambers on the second floor. The upper story of the main part of the house has been kept almost as when it was built, and the large square chambers are well-lighted and airy. The open fireplaces and the Colonial furniture, four-posters and highboys and chests, give to the rooms a delightfully old-fashioned atmosphere. The whole house is a fine example of late Georgian architecture, preserved in all its interesting detail. CHAPTER VIII THREE ACRES Few people realize how much thought should be put into the remodeling of a farmhouse, and many fail to keep the simple country atmosphere; they endeavor to establish in suburban surroundings a home that is better suited to city life. A house reclaimed in this way is necessarily a misfit and must always seem inharmonious in its setting. It never carries out the idea for which we are striving: that a house should be typical of the life of the people who live in it. It should express individuality, be a house to live in, to grow in, to become identified with your life; this is a most important fact that cannot be too carefully observed, and it becomes all the more essential if the home is to be an all-the-year-round one and not merely a summer residence where but a few months are passed. To-day it is a far more difficult matter to select an old farmhouse of sufficient distinction to remodel than it was even ten years ago. The most desirable ones have already been bought, since the pleasures of living in the country have been realized by so many former dwellers in the city. There are many personal matters to be thought of in the selection of a house for remodeling; one must consider his individual needs in its relation to his daily pursuits. The business man must select a house near enough to the city to allow traveling back and forth every day; but the man whose occupation does not require city life during the time he wishes to be in the country can establish himself wherever he chooses. There is no doubt that the latter is able to find a far better farmhouse, for he can go farther away, where the best types have not been reclaimed, owing to their distances from the large cities. It is to be taken for granted that a person has a definite purpose when he leaves the city for a country existence, and it is necessary that he educate himself to the point where he makes his ideas practical. This cannot be done without study beforehand. In making a house suit individual requirements, one must follow along its own lines. Do not attempt to transplant into it features from some other house you admire. An Elizabethan gable or a craftsman living-room may have been very interesting in the friends' houses in which you saw them, but they would be quite out of place thrust into a Colonial farmhouse. If you have a real need for the features that you find in some other house, you should adapt them to the spirit of the building you are remodeling. If it cannot be made to harmonize with the other motives, it is possible that you are attempting to make a home out of a building that is not suited to your style of life. But it is because these Colonial farmhouses meet the requirements of the average American families so adequately that they are so interesting to remodel. Each house owner must decide for himself what is the main element in his existence and reclaim the house accordingly. In one family, the interests will be entirely domestic; another household will live in the open, occupied with sports; another devotes much time to music; and there are still others who are absorbed in some special craft or work that will require definite accommodations. In many cases the house can readily be adapted to these particular requirements without any essential change in its atmosphere. The success that is achieved by working with these old-time elements is due to their sincerity and honesty in solving the problems of their own day and age; they are the results of actual and real experience, and we know no better ways to meet the same conditions. So that when we have the same problems confronting us, we cannot do better than accept the successful results of others' experiments. This does not mean a slavish copying of the old in restoration; to simply imitate old elements would be neither interesting nor commendable, except for the purposes of a museum. Each style is based upon some fundamental principle, and it should be our aim to work with the underlying idea of creating that which will best meet our special needs, not merely to reproduce the old in imitation of itself. Nature lends itself to the remodeling and suggests many ideas that help to identify the house with the personality of its owner. Everything attempted in the way of improvements can be broad and expansive and not congested, as would be necessary in the city. You should in every particular make the house grow to fit the surroundings and do it in such a way that it will seem to have been so always. Often the house has to be moved on its foundations to meet this need, but that is not a difficult matter to accomplish, if the timbers are stanch and the underpinning steady. If the owner's ideas are carried out, the house in its finished condition will be but an expression of his taste and understanding. In it we will be able to read his likes and dislikes. Unity should be the keynote of it all and should permeate not only the house itself in all its details, but its gardens, lawns, stables, and every aspect of the estate. [Illustration: THREE ACRES, FROM THE MAIN ROAD] There is a house that has been given rare individuality in this way at Duxbury, Massachusetts. As one drives along the picturesque country road, he comes to a winding lane that leads by graceful turns to a little brown farmhouse situated on the crest of a hill about three hundred yards from the main road. If the farmhouse alone is attractive, how much more so is it made by the entrance, for on either side are graceful elms that form an archway, disclosing the house beyond like a picture set in a rustic frame. On either side of the roadway one finds meadow lands and flower and vegetable gardens, everywhere dotted with graceful trees and the picturesque sumach. Vines clamber over the stone walls, partly hiding their roughness and giving their homelike atmosphere to the grounds. There are just three acres in this little property, bounded on two sides by delightful woodlands and on the others by rolling farmland and pastures; but there is room in even these small confines for a garden to supply the table all the year round and a bit of orchard where the gnarled old apple-trees are still fruitful. Originally the old farmhouse was in a most unprepossessing condition. It had been inhabited for many years by farmer folk who took little pains with its appearance either without or within. When Mrs. Josephine Hartwell Shaw, of Boston, was searching for a country seat where she could pursue her occupation away from the bustle of city life and unmolested by chance guests, she was attracted first of all to the quiet little town by the name of Duxbury. As she looked about for a suitable house, she was charmed with the location of this weather-beaten old building, and closer examination proved it well worth reclaiming, both from an artist's point of view and from that of her own individual requirements. [Illustration: THREE ACRES--FRONT VIEW] Like many of the farmhouses in eastern Massachusetts, it had that peculiar beauty which consisted largely in its simple and straightforward solution of the problems at hand. It was not the creation of a master architect but of ordinary builders and craftsmen following the traditions of their fathers, varied by the restrictions of local material and newer requirements. It is this rugged and sturdy simplicity that gives to it an enduring charm; it was the very lack of a set style that gave to the remodeling of it an unfailing zest, increased by the very difficulty of the experiment that might result in a woeful failure or a great success. In dealing with houses such as this, it is impossible for the architect to rely on any formula or book of rules to direct him in a correct restoration. It requires a much deeper study and an understanding of the problems that confronted the builder in erecting the structure and the conditions under which he worked. It is then that the spirit of the old house will be manifest, and its adaptation to modern requirements will be but the thought of former years revised to meet present needs. [Illustration: THREE ACRES--SIDE VIEW] There are few buildings that can claim a more sympathetic handling in their restoration than this early, pre-Georgian farmhouse, which is called Three Acres. The excellent line of the wide, gabled roof, broken by a succession of outbuildings, forms an unusually attractive picture, with the weather-stained shingles softened against a background of oak and pine trees. The house now faces away from the main road and fronts upon a wooded slope that falls sharply down to the shores of a picturesque little pond. This is partly hidden by dense woods that form a background and a windbreak for the house. Formerly the public road went along here within a few yards of the front of the house, but it has been abandoned for the broader highway in the rear, and only the vaguest traces of it remain to-day. The building was a two-story, shingled structure with an uncompromising squareness about it. The wide, gable roof sloped down to the stud of the first floor, giving but little room in the chambers above. It was of the central chimney type. In the rear, a small, gable-roofed ell had been added, and later still a flat-roofed shed at right angles to the ell, or parallel to the main house, was built. In still a third addition, a well was incorporated in the rear, under a continuation of the roof of the shed, and another small outhouse in an extension to the side. This seeming conglomeration of roofs in reality made a rather interesting and graceful play of line that lifted the little house from commonplaceness. It was found to be in such good condition on the exterior that little repairing was needed, but several alterations were made, adding both to the character of the building and the comfort of the occupants. The original front door opened very abruptly upon the stairs, leaving only enough hall space to open the door. This was remedied by the addition of a small, flat-roofed bay at the front, increasing the space in the hall by just that much. The old door with its bull's-eyes was used in the new position. The step before it was protected under the same roof, supported on two, small, square posts and a trellis at the sides, giving somewhat the effect of an old-time Colonial porch and serving not only the material purpose of adding room to the interior but of relieving the abrupt and uninteresting severity of the front lines. In the second story, unusually successful dormers were cut in both the back and front pitch of the roof. The plan of these dormers deserves especial study, as each group is in reality composed of three separate dormers, enlarging three rooms in the interior, but confined under the one flat roof. Note, too, how each end of the dormer extends beyond the middle portion, and how the shape of the windows accents the design. A new entrance was cut at the side toward the lane, and a screened veranda added, with a flat roof corresponding to that at the front. Several new windows were made necessary by the rearrangements in the interior, but they were placed with careful regard to the exterior proportion and balance. The glass used in the old windows when the house was bought was all the full size of the sashes, doubtless having been put there by some recent owner and seeming quite out of harmony with the details of the house; consequently they were replaced with small panes, twenty-four to a window, and the new windows were all of the casement type. The interior of the house with its ugly paint and paper, presented a rather hopeless appearance, that only a vivid imagination and an unwavering enthusiasm could have transformed into the attractive home that it is to-day. Beginning at the front, the cramped little hall was enlarged as has already been explained. This made a trifle more stair room, and the first seven steps reaching to the little landing were rebuilt with lower risers and broader treads that made ascent to the second floor a less arduous matter. On the left of the hall was the living-room, on the right a bedroom, and in the rear of the house the room originally designed for the kitchen; in each of these was a fireplace opening out of the one central chimney. The first step in the restoration consisted of tearing off the many layers of hideous wall-paper, removing the plaster where it was crumbling, and scraping the woodwork free from its dingy paint. In these operations a number of unexpected discoveries were made concerning the fine old paneling and great, hand-hewn beams that had been entirely covered up. [Illustration: A Corner of the Living Room] The only change made in the plan of this floor was in the corner beyond the living-room and at the end of the kitchen. This was originally divided into a tiny chamber opening from the living-room, and a pantry off the kitchen. These were thrown into one, and the openings to living-room and kitchen enlarged. The former bedroom window was changed to a door leading on to the screened veranda, and an attractive group of three casement windows replaced the one in the rear wall, overlooking the charming vista of winding lane and old apple-trees and meadows beyond. This little apartment has been treated as a sort of anteroom or really a wing of the living-room, and wall finish, paint, and furnishings all harmonize. [Illustration: The Living Room] In the living-room the fireplace holds the center of attention. It is faced with queer old Spanish tiles inserted at intervals in plain cement, the rich colorings of which give a quaintly exotic air to the fine white woodwork. The moldings about the frame and over the mantel are unusually fine for this type of house; the support of the heavy mantel shelf and the carved dentils in the ceiling cornice are especially interesting. At the right of the fireplace is a cupboard with an upper and lower door, in the old-time fashion; the upper one has small, square, mullioned panes of glass which disclose some attractive pieces of old china and silver. [Illustration: The Dining Room] In the kitchen, which was turned into the dining-room, the old fireplace had been bricked up to receive a stovepipe, and the woodwork had been plastered over and papered. The fireplace was opened up to its original size, large enough to accommodate a six-foot log, and in refacing it, the old, blackened, fire-burned bricks were used with delightful effect. The paneling about it is very simple, but the proportions are interesting, and the quaint, double-panel cupboards on each side lend the whole an insistent charm. The two, great, hand-hewn beams in the ceiling have been left exposed, and the fact that they have settled a little on their supports, sagging toward one end, only adds to the effect, just as the unevenness of a hand-drawn line is more beautiful than the accuracy of one ruled. These three rooms opening so closely into each other have been treated so that there is a harmonious and striking vista from every point. The walls are covered with a soft, creamy gray, and the hangings of Russian crash are of the same tone. The color is supplied in fireplaces, rugs, books, pictures, and such ornaments. In the dining-room, there has been a slight accent of blue and rose in rug and table runner and candle-shades. In the living-room the deep green of the upholstery carries the strongest note. The characteristically old-time furniture, with a pleasant mingling of Dutch and English and American motifs of the eighteenth century, has been arranged with studied care to preserve the possibilities of the open vistas from room to room. The entrance hall completes a delightful picture from the living-room; the soft gray colors of a lovely Japanese paper blend strikingly with tiny curtains of a wonderfully fresh old blue at the casement windows. The rag carpet carries this same blue up the white stairs to the second floor. The rooms on the right of the lower hallway have been kept nearly in their original state with the addition of fresh paint and attractive papers. They form a small suite of a study and bedroom, seeming quite apart from the rest of the house. On the second floor, a refreshing simplicity has been observed in the bedrooms. The dormers that have been cut in the roof add not only to their comfort but provide charming little bays and alcoves, giving unexpected opportunities for interesting furnishings. Quaint, old-time papers and hangings and coverlets on the four-poster beds, matched in rugs and cushions and candle-shades, contrast gaily with the spotless white paint. Considerable ingenuity has been necessary in planning this floor, as the original rooms were so tiny and space so very limited under the long slopes of the roof. The dormers gave the much needed increase in the size of the chambers, and part of the rear one was converted into the bathroom. In the ell and shed at the rear of the house, perhaps the most interesting feature of all is situated. A step lower than the dining-room and reached through swinging French doors of glass, is the little kitchen which has been fitted up in a most compact way. An additional window has been cut at the side to provide both light and air, and an outside door gives access to the small court on the far side of the house between the main building and the rear shed. This has been turned into a miniature old-fashioned garden, where it is pleasant to sit among the flowers. Back of the kitchen is the laundry and an old well, which has been drained and is now used as a cooling cellar, and the wire basket containing meats and milk and butter is drawn up and down on the old crank. Beyond this, the old wood and coal shed has been transformed into the studio. Here Mrs. Shaw designs all her beautiful jewelry work at the long work-table across the rear under the four long windows. Opening from it is a tiny little apartment used as an office, and here at a quaint desk, the designs for the metal work are sketched out, and the correspondence connected with the business end transacted. In the adaptation of the outbuildings to the special and unusual requirements of the owner, an excellent example is given to others who have individual hobbies such as this to accommodate. But throughout the building the needs and the personality of the owner have been as carefully if not as ostensibly expressed. There has been no thought of comfort or of service sacrificed in the effort to revive the atmosphere of the past, but rather has that very simplicity and straight-forwardness been utilized to banish all that might complicate entire convenience. The personality of the owner has been interwoven into every detail, and shows nowhere more strongly than in the preservation of all the delightful vagaries and unevenness of hand work played upon and mellowed by time. CHAPTER IX THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE The prospective house owner generally has little or no idea of how to go about designing his own home. If he chances to see some other house that strikes his fancy, he realizes that it approaches, at least in part, what he has in mind. How to accomplish his desire, however, he has no definite knowledge. He hesitates to call in an architect who is a stranger to him and knows nothing of his needs and habits and preferences; he fears that an attempt to combine his own ideas with those of the architect will result unsatisfactorily to both of them. To such a man as this, the remodeled farmhouse comes as a boon. From the old house he is able to determine what type his home will be; no matter how battered and worn it is to start with, he can get some impression of the possible room space and arrangement by studying other old interiors and their relation to each other. That is one of the reasons why the movement sweeping through the country to-day has become so extensive. It gives a substantial foundation upon which to develop an artistic home under one's own supervision. When a man purchases a weather-beaten farmhouse, it is evident that he is up against a real problem in remodeling, and the task demands plenty of time and a wide-awake, ingenious brain. If he consults his friends and neighbors across the way, doubtless their opinions differ so materially from his own that the result is worse than if he had solved the questions in his own way. We all have ideals, but it is not always easy to express them; they need to be developed in order to be made practical and require thought and diligent research if they are to be concretely embodied in the altered home. Paper and pencil are good friends at this stage of the game, and even a rough sketch drawn carelessly on the back of an old envelope, as an idea occurs, gives subject matter for larger schemes and more realistic results. Few people who are planning to spend the summer months in a new house realize how much their comfort depends upon light and space. It would be foolish for you to buy an old farmhouse and make the rooms small and cramped in size. You would lose a great part of the advantage of coming to the country to live, the pleasure of being as nearly out of doors as possible. Most of the old houses were cut up into small rooms, for, owing to the limited heating facilities in olden days, large rooms would have been freezing in winter; accordingly one or two bedrooms were invariably crowded into the first floor to receive the warmth from the kitchen. But it is almost always possible to tear out the partitions between some of the rooms and make them into one large apartment which can be used for living purposes. This can usually be done without weakening the structure; the floor above will be found to rest upon a great beam, or a new girder can be put across. If the stud is low, do not change it, or you will spoil the whole atmosphere of the place. A low stud and large rooms are good developments, so try to achieve them when you are making over the house. Have plenty of windows; in the old days, many windows meant a cold house in the winter, but if the farmhouse is to be used only as a summer home, the cooler the better. If for a winter residence also, modern systems of heating will counteract the difficulty. Windows of the long French type are especially desirable; they are more adapted to the requirements of country life, as they admit abundant light and air and are entirely in keeping with the style of the farmhouse. The house should represent a unit; the porch should be planned so that it leads into the living-room, and by throwing open the windows, will seem to become part of a large airy room. The dining-room should either be part of the living-room or open conveniently near. The service quarters must immediately adjoin the dining-room. If there is other space on the floor which cannot be used to increase the comfort of the two main rooms, well and good; it may then be devoted to whatever purpose you desire. But when the removal of partitions will make a place more pleasant to live in, it is always wise to make such a change. We know that there are few of these old houses that have not been cut up and divided; but the conditions which made that necessary in the earlier days have been changed, and for a simple country house one large living and dining-room is far better than divisions which shut out light and air. Many people look at these propositions from a limited view-point and do not stop to consider the complete idea. We all learn from houses that we visit what is right and what is wrong to do. If we look deeper into the subject and go farther afield, we find it pays to carefully develop the plan before commencing to rebuild. The requirements of elaborate modes of life, liveried servants and much entertaining, demand, of course, many apartments; reception-room and drawing-room, library and den seem essential in the house plan, but for those who come to the country to simplify existence, these are not needed. In remodeling your house, let three things be uppermost in your mind: convenience, comfort, and light; if you follow these, you will not go far astray. Even a very small house need not be devoid of these qualities. It may be very tiny and yet most attractive and complete in every detail. With careful thought and a broad conception of the whole, it is quite possible to make a place where it is a pleasure to visit and where even the casual guest realizes the application of small and interesting details in making a harmonious whole. Do not let your mind wander from the fact that the interior is of as much importance, and even more, than the exterior, for it is there that we live much of the time during the season, and it should therefore be harmonious and in good taste. The development of one room for common family use, and the elimination of the shut-up parlor for company, have brought about an atmosphere of simplicity that goes to make a perfect and livable house. [Illustration: THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE ON CAPE COD] This one-room idea has been charmingly carried out in a small house that has been remodeled for a summer home by Mr. Robert Spencer of New York and South Yarmouth. It is most attractively situated, standing far back from the road, with a background of pine trees that give a picturesque touch to the little cottage. Originally it stood on the opposite side of the bay, on the shores of Cape Cod at South Dennis, Massachusetts. Its possibilities seemed to the present owner worth developing, and he had it "flecked" and brought over the water to its present site. This was not a hard task to accomplish, as the timbers were stanch and in a good state of preservation. [Illustration: THE ROBERT SPENCER HOUSE--FRONT VIEW] It was a typical fisherman's cottage, with a wide gable roof sloping down to the first story and four small rooms about a central chimney. To meet the needs of the new owner, it required considerable enlargement. A two-story building was added at the rear and side, meeting the main house only along the corner. Little attempt was made to have the two harmonize, for not only are the roof lines of widely different types, but the frame of one is of white clapboarding and of the other weathered shingle. At the angle where they join, the roof of the old building has been raised to accommodate the higher stud in the new, thus making a break in it near the ridge. Two dormers have been cut in the main roof to give extra room in the second floor; these are flat-roofed and well spaced, with two windows occupying the entire front of each. A porch has been added across the whole front of the house and half of it is roofed over. This breaks with the slope of the main roof, but follows that of the dormers. A detail which adds much to the appearance of the exterior is the simple, square-posted fence that surrounds the porch and encloses a quaint little garden in the square formed by the angle of the two buildings. This same detail has been adopted at the side of the porch roof in an effective way. This fence, and the clapboards and trim of the house, are white, and the shutters and shingles are green. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Living Room] The front door opens immediately into the living and dining-room which occupies the whole right side of the house and opens at the rear on to a grassy terrace. A triple window has been cut along the side to allow ample light and air. Small panes are used in these windows, and the French doors have glass of corresponding size. The feature of this room is the fine old fireplace at the center of the inside wall. It is very simple, with slight attempt at ornamentation, but the proportions are good, and the lines rather unusual. Over the fireplace is an old cupboard that used to be called a "nightcap closet" from the hospitable bottle which was kept there to be passed around among the men just before retiring. At the left is a cupboard with upper and lower doors; in the panels of the former, panes of glass have been inserted. This end of the room has been treated as the living-room and the opposite end as the dining-room. The woodwork is all white, and the roughly finished plaster is tinted a deep cream. Straight stairs lead to the second story along the wall at the dining end of the room. Here, about the walls, a wide molding has been carried over doors and windows, which serves as a plate-rail for numerous interesting old family plates and jugs. Beneath it, in several places, shelves have been bracketed to the wall to hold other pieces of china. The glass door at the end opens on to the terrace, and the paneled door beside it communicates with the kitchen and servants' quarters in the addition. The furnishings in this room admirably accord with the building in both age and simplicity. The older furniture has been supplemented with modern pieces of straightest and most unpretentious line and character. Clocks, mirrors, pictures, andirons, and fire-set are family heirlooms. The coverings on the floor are large and plain rag carpets; at the windows are simple muslin curtains, with overhangings of Colonial chintz in soft colors harmonizing with the cheerful and sunny atmosphere of the room. At the left of this room, occupying the other side of the house, are two bedrooms. One of them is the children's own room and has been furnished very attractively; fresh white tables and chairs harmonize with the older mahogany pieces and lend an air of distinctive charm to the apartment. [Illustration] [Illustration: The Attic Chambers] The space up-stairs is divided into large and small rooms under the eaves. The slope of the roof allows room for many built-in drawers and closets, and every inch has been utilized. The white paint and the simple white furniture arranged with a care and precision that is worthy of emulation contribute to make the effect of these rooms light and airy and inviting. The Japanese crêpe or gay cretonne curtains at the windows add just the necessary touch of color. The lighting fixtures in the house demand especial notice, as it is so difficult a matter to attain a distinction in them when a house has not been wired but must depend upon older methods of illumination than electricity or gas. A number of simple candle brackets attaching to the wall have been purchased, and these are placed symmetrically in pairs, balancing each other on either side of a fireplace or mirror or window. The candlesticks for shelf or table have been arranged with equal precision, and some are given all the more importance by attractive hand-made shades. An occasional simple, square, candle lantern hangs from the ceiling to contribute to the effect. The table and reading lamps have been chosen with equal success. CHAPTER X THE DAVENPORT BROWN HOUSE In planning the remodeling of a farmhouse, has it ever occurred to you how much of the appearance of the exterior depends upon the architecture of verandas and porches? Not only must we give much thought to the alteration of the lines of the house which may be required by the interior plan, but we must be equally careful when it comes to the addition of entirely exterior features. Modern country life demands plenty of veranda room and, whenever possible, sleeping-porches. One does not go to the country to sit indoors, even if the windows are all thrown open. There is nothing that will so materially improve the health as outdoor life; tired and jaded nerves are soon restored by use of a sleeping-porch, where the fresh air can soothe and induce restful slumber. In the early days, the porch or veranda did not exist; it may be supposed that our pioneer ancestors were too busy to enjoy any leisurely hours out of doors; at least, they made no provision in connection with their houses for such relaxation. As the details of the exterior became more elaborate, the entrance porch was developed with free-standing columns. In time, this assumed greater importance, especially in the south, where columns the height of the whole building supported a roof across its entire front. In the north, the veranda was less frequently used, but there is occasional authority for both the front and the less pretentious back piazza. It is one of the additions which are imperative in remodeling the house, however, and it becomes something of a problem because there is no more definite authority for it. If there is to be simply an entrance porch, offering a bit of shelter at the front door for stranger or friend, it may have much precedent in the porches of Georgian houses. In planning this, take into consideration that it should be an index of what one will find in the interior; it should be the keynote, as it were, of the entire house. Here we may have the same details and the same proportions as in the cornice of the roof, or the fireplace within. We find many porches that are sadly out of keeping with the rest of the house and seem very carelessly designed. It is far better to have none at all than one which is insignificant and out of scale; yet it must not be more elaborate than the house itself and tend to dwarf the main structure. Few people realize how important this feature is and how necessary that it should be a satisfactory adjunct to the architecture of the whole. It is almost the first thing we notice as we approach the house. Whether it is well placed and rightly proportioned, whether it has a proper overhang, good roof lines, and adequately supported cornice, affects to a very great extent the style and character of the house. There were a great many different types of porch in the Georgian houses: the simple hood with a high-backed settle on either side that was commonly used at a side entrance; the gable-roofed and flat-roofed, square porch and circular, open and partly enclosed, with round and oval windows at the sides, were all developed to high perfection. The simple, Doric column, plain or fluted, with corresponding pilasters or three-fourths round against the house, was used on many of the porches; but the Ionic and Corinthian capitals are more elaborate than is appropriate for the simplicity of a farmhouse. From the infinite number of models which can be found, it should be a comparatively easy matter to construct an entrance porch, utilizing the details found in the house. A veranda demands somewhat different manner of procedure. First it is necessary to decide where it shall be put. Where will it receive the best air and the least sun? It must, presumably, open from or adjacent to the living-room and yet be so placed that its roof will not cut off too much light. If the house is uncomfortably near the highway or neighbors, the matter of privacy cannot be neglected, and a thought may well be given to the outlook from the piazza. Let it enjoy any advantage of a fine view or a picturesque garden that may be compatible with its other requirements. Thus it may be at the front, at either or both sides, or in the rear. At the side of the ordinary, gable-roofed house, the roof of the veranda should as a rule be flat. If it is possible to continue the roof line of the house to include that of the porch, by all means let it be done; the unbroken sweep will usually be found excellent. At some angles it may seem too long and severe; then it is often possible to put a slight "kick" in it, especially if there is anything of the Dutch type about the building. The floor of the porch in farmhouses should be low; it may be on a level with that of the house, or a step below it. It is well to let the underpinning be a continuation of that of the house, and it may then be covered with brick or tile, or the conventional boards. The columns or posts which support the roof are a stumbling block for many remodelers. These should closely copy the entrance porch, if there is one; even if it be no more than a flat semblance of a pilaster about the frame of the door, it will supply the correct motive. Lacking this, there will undoubtedly be some detail in the interior which can be magnified to the right proportion for the exterior,--the upright of a mantel or the frame of a door. For a house which can boast no such source of suggestion, a straight, square post with a simple molding would be the solution. The cornice should follow the detail of the entrance door or the house cornice; and it is effective and increases the apparent unity to repeat the decoration of the one on the other. The rails and balusters of old houses were extremely simple and should be kept so in the remodeling. In the very early examples, the balusters were square and spaced far apart; later both square and turned balusters were used, and they were spaced twice their width. The design for these can often be taken from the stairs in the interior of the house. It is the modern tendency to use no railing about verandas, particularly when they are low or when they are screened in. Some of the flat-roofed type had a railing around the roof, and an open-air porch was thus made for the second story. Sometimes this porch can be utilized as a sleeping-porch on the second floor. This feature, while of course entirely foreign to the farmhouse, has become as much a necessity in many families as the open-air living-room, and it is therefore logical to introduce it where possible to do so without destroying the lines of the building. It is better, however, to do without it than to add it in such a way that it will seem an afterthought and not really incorporated in the structure. Often it can be placed in a wide dormer cut in the slope of the roof; sometimes the roof line can be extended over the roof of the sleeping-porch, or again it may be merely a room with the walls largely cut away. Each remodeler will have his own problem in connection with this, and by ingenuity and careful study must work it out to his own satisfaction. Remember always that the integral simplicity of the building must not be disturbed, and that whether it be sleeping-porch, veranda, or entrance portico, it must seem always a part of the original building, as if it were the conception of the master craftsman who erected the first timbers. [Illustration: THE DAVENPORT BROWN HOUSE] Most gratifying results along this line are shown in an old farmhouse at Medfield, Massachusetts, which was built in 1755. Like many other old houses, this had fallen into decay and stood neglected and unoccupied by the side of the road while the extensive grounds lay unkempt and desolate. But Mr. Davenport Brown recognized in it a house that could be made to serve most acceptably as the foundation of his summer home. It is of the Georgian type, built with the hall and straight flight of stairs as the axis. There are two main chimneys opening into four fireplaces on the first floor. A service wing has been added at the left, parallel with the main building, and half its width. Back of that, an ell of equal size extends at right angles. Both of these are two storied, but the upper stud is somewhat lower than in the main building, thus allowing it to retain its predominance in the design. The main part is given further importance by the dignified entrance porch. Two three-fourths round and two free-standing, fluted, Doric columns are used, supporting a cornice and a gabled roof, the details of which repeat those in the cornice of the house. A rather unusual type of scalloped dentation lends additional interest. The frame about the door is arched over, and there are side lights and an overhead fanlight in a simple style that carries out the Colonial tradition. [Illustration: The Hallway] The hall leads past the stairs and through an open doorway to the rear of the house, where there is another entrance, repeating the design of the front one. This is some distance from the rear wall of the house, and consequently there is a small, arched-over portico formed within the lines of the building. The walls of this are paneled, and on each side is a built-in seat. The floor is tiled, and the woodwork painted white. At each end of the main part of the building is a flat-roofed veranda carrying out the details of the entrance porch in column and cornice. The same dentil ornamentation that appears on the cornice of the house is used here in smaller size, as on the entrance porch. Around the edges of the flat roofs, boxes filled with blooming plants and vines form an original and most attractive method of softening the sharp lines and finish of the house. The veranda on the right side overlooking the wide lawns and gardens is used largely as the outdoor living-room and is screened in. The spacing of the bars and framework of the screening is well proportioned and adds not a little to the decoration. The floor of the veranda is edged with brick and paved in the center with square tiles which slope toward a drain at one side. This wing of the living-room has been comfortably furnished with canvas hammocks and Chinese grass chairs and stools, and even a sand-box for the children finds room here. In the central hall, the details carry out the character of the old period carefully. There is a white unpaneled wainscot carved around the walls and up the stairs, with a similar treatment in the second-floor hall. The stairs are wide, with white risers and mahogany treads, and the hand-rail is mahogany supported on white, turned balusters and a mahogany newel post. The upper walls are papered in a gray landscape paper, and the furnishings consist of a pair of Sheraton card tables. [Illustration: The Sun-Parlor or Out-door Nursery] [Illustration: The Library] At the right of the hall, the two rooms have been combined into a living-room by cutting double arches on either side of the fireplaces which open from the back and front of the chimney. The furnishings are especially interesting here, as there are a number of rare and beautiful pieces. The mantel mirror over the front fireplace is a fine example of American workmanship. The mahogany frame divides its length into three sections, and it is ornamented with carved and gilded husk festoons; the scroll top is surmounted with a gilt spread eagle. In front of the fire there is a beautiful little Sheraton fire-screen. Chairs and tables are equally interesting; there is an old "comb-back" chair and an upholstered "Martha Washington" chair, as well as more modern easy chairs and davenports. The upholstery and curtains are of small-patterned, Colonial fabrics that carry out the spirit of the room. In the back part of this room, a large double window has been cut, looking out over the gardens and the grounds. Underneath it is a most attractive window-seat suggestive of an old-time settle, and on each side low book-shelves extend around the whole end of the room. The dining-room is situated at the left of the hallway. The fireplace and paneling hold the attention in this room. The woodwork is very simple but well proportioned, and on either side of the mantel are narrow, built-in, china closets with small, leaded, diamond panes in both upper and lower parts of the door and even in a transom over it. The walls above the unpaneled wainscot are painted white and divided into simple, large panels with narrow moldings. The furniture in this room is suggestive of the early part of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the Queen Anne type of chair. Over the heavy and massive sideboard is a long gilt mirror of the Empire "banister" type; between the two side windows is a gilt, convex girandole with three branching candlesticks on each side. On the mantel is a fine example of a Willard shelf clock, and on each side of it are tall mahogany candlesticks with the old-fashioned wind glasses. The over-curtains at the windows are a soft rose damask; they hang from gilded cornices and are caught back on gilded rosettes,--the style of draping which is carried out in all the main rooms of the house. [Illustration: The Service Wing] The service wing opens from the left of the dining-room, and the den, which is back of it, with a fireplace on the opposite side of the same chimney, is reached from the rear of the hall. [Illustration: The Nursery] At the head of the stairs at the right, one enters the bright and sunny nursery. Here the fireplace is very simple and has no over-mantel. The woodwork is white, and a broad molding divides the upper part of the wall. Below is a quaint paper picturing Mother Goose scenes which the children never tire of studying. The furniture is mainly white, and the little chairs and tables in child's size are decorated in peasant fashion with painted flowers and lines of color. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two of the Chambers] There are two other bedrooms in the main part of the house and each has an open fireplace. The furnishings are simple and old-fashioned in character, retaining the Colonial atmosphere admirably. In one room there is a Field bedstead of English make, dating about 1780, showing reeded posts and a curved canopy top. The chairs and the little night stand at the side of the bed are in close harmony with the period of its design. In the other chamber are twin beds which are modern reproductions of four-posters, but other furnishings retain the distinctive atmosphere of age. Over one bureau there is a fine mirror with the Georgian eagle ornamentation; in keeping with it are the old fireside wing chair and a side chair of Sheraton type. The most interesting bedroom, perhaps, is in the wing of the house, where Hannah Adams, the first American authoress, was born. This is reached by a cross hall which leads from the main one, and gives access to baths and rear stairs and another tiny bedroom. Although the old fireplace has been remodeled, the aspect of the room is much the same as when the house was built. The woodwork here is all dark, and the hand-hewn rafters and cross beams are exposed in the ceiling. An unusual wall-paper in black and gay colors forms an interesting background for the four-poster and other old furnishings. An old batten door with a quaint little window in the center strip leads from this room to the chambers in the service ell. Much of the house has been restored under the direction of the architect, Mr. John Pickering Putnam of Boston, and to him the credit for its successful remodeling must be largely given. The planning and laying out of the grounds about the house, however, are the work of the owner, who has spared no pains to make a harmonious setting for his home. Between the house and the road is a row of great overshadowing elms that make a delightful setting for the red and white of the house. The drive sweeps around these trees to the stable on the left and is separated from the house and the lawns by white palings in a simple Colonial pattern, having fine, carved posts surmounted by balls. The fence stops at either side of the front to allow wide space for a heavy embankment of conifers. Somewhat back of this fence, along the whole length of the lawn, is a second lower one, with posts of the same height. This marks the boundary of the wide lawn and forms a charming background for an old-fashioned hardy border that extends all the way to a swimming-pool and pergolas at the far end. Immediately behind the house is the flower garden, from which all the blossoms used to decorate the house are cut; this is screened by a white trellis and pergola, carrying out some of the details of the entrance porches and verandas. CHAPTER XI THE DOCTOR CHARLES E. INCHES HOUSE A very interesting feature in an old farmhouse is the fireplace, which varies in size with the age of the house; the oldest ones are large, with cavernous mouths, since they were the only means of heating the house. These are capable of holding a ten-foot log, for it must be remembered that at that period of our country's history the woods grew at the very door. A few of these old fireplaces are found to-day, principally in the old kitchens or living-rooms, although occasionally we see an old house which has them in almost every room. There is a great variety in their design as well as size, some being very simple and framed in wood, while others show tiling; occasionally we find elaborate carving, but this is in the better class building rather than in the simple little farmhouse. These details denote the different periods and also the wealth of the former owner. With the introduction of stoves, many fireplaces were bricked in to accommodate an air-tight stove which gave more heat and saved fuel. One unaccustomed to the features of an old farmhouse would infer a lack of fireplaces. The removal of brick and mortar, however, reveals the large, cavernous hearth which was often three feet deep and sometimes showed a second bricking in, to make it smaller. Often in the narrowing of the fireplace, tiles are used, generally Dutch, which are blue and white in coloring. Occasionally in opening up these fireplaces, one comes across rare old andirons that were considered of too little value to be removed; old cranes and kettles are also found, of the type common in the days of our early ancestors. It must be remembered that the chimneys of these old houses were often six feet square and had many fireplaces opening from them. It was the central feature of the house, around which the rooms were built. The earliest chimneys were daubed in clay, and in the masonry oak timbers were often used. In remodeling a house many people tear down these old chimneys for the space which may be converted into closet use and alcoves, making a smaller chimney do service. In the olden times, when the first chimneys were erected, they were so carefully built that they were less liable to smoke than the smaller ones, so that it is better to let the old one remain if possible. Brick was generally used in the construction, although sometimes we find stone. It was not the finished brick of to-day but rough and unfaced. This was not true, however, of those which formed a part of cargoes from abroad, more especially those brought from Holland. The use of stone was not popular, as it was apt to chip when brought in contact with the heat; this is also true of the hearthstones, where the flagging became rough and most unsatisfactory. The fireback was a feature of some of the old fireplaces. The earliest of these made in our country were cast in Saugus, Massachusetts, and some were most elaborate in design. Often coats-of-arms and initials were worked out in their construction. In addition to the brick and stone, soapstone facings were sometimes shown, but seldom do we come across good carving. The crane was a feature of the fireplace, and on it were hung the pothooks from which depended the iron and brass pots in which food was cooked. In one side of the bricks, just at the left of the fireplace, was often a large brick oven with an iron door, and here on baking days roaring wood fires were kindled to heat the bricks before the weekly baking was placed within. Examination of these old ovens will be very apt to reveal the age of the house. In the remodeling it is well to leave the fireplaces much as they stand, with the exception of bricking them in, for the old ones allowed too much air to come down the chimney, and at the present high price of wood, we are not able to indulge in the ten-foot logs that were in evidence in our grandmothers' time. A house with many fireplaces that stands back from the winding country road on the border line between Medfield and Walpole in Massachusetts was chosen for a summer home by Charles E. Inches. It is shaded now as it was long ago by large, old elms whose widespreading branches seem to add a note of hospitality to this most attractive estate. Possibly there are better examples of the restored farmhouse than this one found at Medfield, but it is very picturesque, not only in type but in surroundings. It stands near a turn of the road, where it was erected, in 1652, situated in a sheltered glen and protected from cold winds. [Illustration: Front View showing the Old Well] At that time it was a small and unpretentious building about twenty feet long and showing in the interior fine examples of hand-hewn timbers. Even in its dilapidated state it was most attractive, with its many fireplaces and old woodwork. This particular house has two values, the one relating to its historical record and the other to its old-time construction. Through two centuries this little farmhouse had been the home of the Adams family, a branch that was near in kin to the presidential line of Adams who lived at Quincy, Massachusetts. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] At the time of its building, a stream wound in and out through the meadow land that was a part of the property. It was such a large stream that it afforded sufficient power to run an old mill that originally stood on the estate and which for many years ground the neighbors' grain. On a ridge opposite the house, worn stone steps lead up through pastures to a sturdy oak which stands nearly opposite the front of the house and is known in history as the "whipping tree." Here, in Colonial days, wrong-doers were tied to be whipped. Just before we reach the stone wall, which was laid probably by the slaves held by the landowner of that period, we find an old mounting-block. On the side of one of the stones are the figures 1652; and it was from this block that many a Colonial dame mounted to her pillion to ride in slow and dignified style behind her worthy squire. Even in those days the grounds were very extensive and reached for many acres. These to-day have been reclaimed and laid down to grass land and garden. [Illustration: Across the Lawn] Half way between the house and the tennis court which defines the estate is a wonderful old garden which has been designed not so much for show purposes as to supply flowers all through the season. This is not the only garden on the place, for back of it is the vegetable garden and the old-fashioned one. The dividing line between the two is a row of stately trees which hide the former from view at the front of the house. Rows of apple-trees, many of which were on the estate when it was first purchased, remnants of the original orchard, surround in part the tennis court, behind which is a swimming pool which is in frequent use. This is about twenty-five feet long and twelve wide, cemented to a depth of seven feet; with its background of tall poplars it is very artistic and lends itself to all sorts of water contests. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, new life came to the old house. It had stood for years, weather-beaten and old, guarding the family name. While the outside was very attractive and in tolerably good repair, it was the interior that appealed especially. There was beautiful old wainscoting and paneling of wide boards, some of which was split from logs at least thirty inches in width. Great reverence was paid by the owner to the original structure, particularly to the old kitchen with its large, brick fireplace and chimney which was restored to its early beauty. Sagging plaster was removed, and underneath were found well-preserved, hand-hewn beams and rafters. These were carefully cleaned and considered of such great beauty that they were left exposed as far as possible, more especially those which showed the sign of the adze. The walls, which had been previously neglected, were stripped of wall-papers which were in some places ten thicknesses deep. In removing one of these, a wonderfully fine landscape paper was discovered, and although every attempt was made to save it, it was too far defaced. Under the paper was a wide paneling of white pine, so good that it needed only a slight restoration. In the opening of the fireplace the crane, pothook, and hangers were found to be intact, while many pieces of ancestral pewter and copper were polished and placed in proper position on the wide, receding chimney. This was to give it the look of the olden days, when pewter was used for the table. There was no bricking in of this old fireplace, for it was considered such a wonderful example that it was left in its original state. The old flint-lock that did service in the early war was hung over the fireplace, while from the chimney hook the old-time kettles were swung much as they did in the days when they were used for cooking purposes. The old brick oven used by the Adams family was not removed, and at one side of the fireplace a long braid of corn was hung in conformity with the custom of that period. The hand-hewn rafters and beams have been left intact in this room, as has the old woodwork, so that the kitchen, now used as a den, is an exact reproduction of the original room. It is the most interesting apartment in the house, being situated at the right of the entrance and furnished with old family heirlooms, including five rare slat-back chairs, a rush-bottomed rocking-chair, and a settle of the same period. Even the wide boards that were used in the original flooring have been retained, and the old brick hearth, showing wide bricks such as are never found in modern residences. To meet present requirements, the cellar was cemented, and a furnace added, in order that the occupants need not depend entirely on the fireplaces for heat. [Illustration: The Hall and Stairway] In the hallway, the stairway, following the lines of many Colonial houses, rises at one side. Here the wall-paper is wonderfully preserved, being in the old colors of yellow and white and of a very old design. It was made in England over a century ago and gives an appropriate atmosphere to the entrance of the attractive old home. [Illustration: The Living Room] The living-room, which is spacious and comfortable, is at the right just before you enter the den. The woodwork has been painted white, following the Colonial idea, while old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows have been substituted for the original ones. Here, as throughout all the house, one comes unexpectedly upon groups of shelves filled with books. There are built-in cupboards that provide places for the wonderful collection of books, many of which are rare editions, owned by the present occupants. Like every room in the house, this shows several tables of unusually fine design, a handsome side-wing chair, and a few other choice pieces. The great open fireplace with its Colonial accessories lends much to the hominess of this room. At the left of the hallway is the large and spacious dining-room, which is in reality three rooms opened into one, the partitions showing in the beamed ceilings. The walls are finished in green textile and are left unornamented with the exception of one or two choice pictures. There was a method in the construction of this room which was planned for unbroken spaces to bring out to advantage the lines of the beautiful old sideboard. Then, too, the space shows off the lines of the rush-bottomed chairs that are used for dining-chairs. The mantel, framed in white wood, is hung with rare porringers, ranging from large to baby size. There is a restful atmosphere about this room, that, combined with its perfect setting, is most refreshing. At the farther end of the room, French doors open upon the sun parlor which is used during the summer months for a breakfast-room. This overlooks the garden. The bedrooms up-stairs are large and airy, each one of them being carefully furnished with Colonial pieces which include four-posters, high and lowboys as well as quaint, old-time chests of drawers that can do service as bureaus, or as storage space for extra blankets, hangings, or rugs. The floors throughout the entire house are of hard wood, many of them being the original ones that were laid when the house was built. Rare old Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hepplewhite chairs are used in the furnishings, while hand-woven rugs cover the floors. The windows are screened by chintz hangings of bright colors and gay designs, and the whole house presents a sunny, restful atmosphere. At the rear of the house an ell has been added where the new kitchen with all modern conveniences, pantries, servants' dining and sitting rooms are found. Thus while the exterior features of the old house have been carefully preserved, the addition of the ell gives comfort and convenience to the new building. Shrubbery has been planted around the house, and a veranda thrown out; window-boxes filled with brilliantly blossoming plants add a bit of color to the remodeled farmhouse which is painted red with white trim. Velvety lawns have replaced the old-time farming lands, and the planting of trees has done much to add to the picturesqueness of this estate. The grounds themselves are extensive, covering forty-five acres, and the natural beauties are unusually varied. Broad stretches of fields and hills intersected with trees make a most appropriate setting for the old Adams homestead. CHAPTER XII THE CHARLES MARTIN LOEFFLER HOUSE It was a staircase that was responsible for the remodeling of one house which had no other unusual feature. It was designed by a village carpenter whose object was four walls and a shelter rather than architectural beauty. The structure was so simple and unobtrusive that it did not arouse any enthusiasm in the heart of the architect who examined it, for it presented no chance to show his ability in its remodeling. It was the kind of a farmhouse that one would find in almost any suburban town, built without any pretensions, its only good feature being the staircase which saved it from passing into oblivion and caused it to be remodeled into a charming, all-the-year-round home. It had been unoccupied for a long period and with exterior weather-beaten and interior uninhabitable, it presented a forlorn appearance, repelling to most would-be purchasers. It stood by the side of a traveled road and in its best days was occupied by a farmer and his family who cared more for the barn adjoining the house than they did for the farmhouse itself. The estate was a large one that had been neglected and allowed to run down until weeds and rank grass were so intermingled that it seemed a discouraging task to bring it back into a good state of cultivation. Adjoining the house, and connected with it by a shed, was a large barn with sagging roof and so dilapidated that it seemed past restoring. Across the front, defining the estate, was once a neat paling fence that had been torn down until only a small portion remained. Many acres of the estate were meadow-land which swept to the horizon of trees, yet the once fine apple orchard, though sadly in need of pruning, showed promise, and there were possibilities in the whole estate that needed only attention and development to make them profitable. There had been no one to care for the old house, and it stood discouraged by the roadside awaiting a sympathetic owner. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] It was in this condition when first seen by Mr. Charles Martin Loeffler, whose experienced eye discerned its possibilities. It is the wise man who fits his house to his grounds and who in the general scheme considers its surroundings. The grass land, the garden, the orchards, the fencing of the estate, each one of which demands separate treatment, should be so arranged that they will be profitable in the end. The new owner realized this and also that he could not be too careful in combining house and garden so that they would make a harmonious whole. The location was ideal, quiet and retired and exactly what had been most desired, so the remodeling was placed in the hands of a careful architect, who, after thoroughly considering the situation, decided it could not be done. It was then that Mr. Loeffler took the matter into his own hands, drawing exact plans of what was necessary to achieve the desired result, and it was under his personal direction that the workmen began to remodel the unattractive little cottage. It was borne in mind that even the addition of a porch or veranda must be carefully considered to avoid confusion of architecture so that the house itself, when finished, should follow a single idea and not a composite mass of details that were entirely out of place and in bad taste. It was realized that no house, no matter how situated, should have discordant surroundings. Out-buildings should not be allowed to mar the symmetry of the house and should be removed so that they would not be an eyesore but in keeping with the general plan. The house itself, however, demanded attention first; it was very small, with a pitched roof in the upper story and a long ell connecting it with the farm buildings. The exterior was left practically as when first purchased, with the exception of a small and well-planned porch at the front, a long ell for servants' quarters, and a wide veranda at the rear that extended the entire length of the house. In the porch settles were added on either side which help to give the house an air of dignity and invite the guest to rest and enjoy the beautiful scenery. [Illustration: As Remodeled] The screened-in veranda at the back is used as an out-of-doors living-room. It is wide, carpeted with rugs, and furnished with simple but substantial pieces. It is a most comfortable place, where charming views and wonderful vistas can be enjoyed, for beyond lie the old orchard with the meadows between and a background of finger-pointed pines that seemingly melt into the blue of the sky. Trellises were built on the garden side of the house to carry vines, but this was after the house had been given a coat of white paint and the blinds painted green. Over the veranda a balcony was built which can be used for outdoor sleeping purposes if desired. The picket fence was restored and painted white to match the coloring of the house, and a stone wall was built at the farther end to enclose the garden; on the outside wild shrubs were planted to give a note of color to the gray stone. The old trees, pruned, took on a new life and are now in a most nourishing condition; across the entire front, as a partial screening, silver-leafed poplars were planted. The farm lands were reclaimed, new trees planted in the old apple orchard, and at the side of the house an attractive garden was laid out with a background of apple-trees. It was a small garden, only about an eighth of an acre in size, and filled with old-fashioned flowers to make it harmonize with the period in which the house was built. A single path divides it in two, and its color schemes have been given careful study. At one side of the garden a rustic pergola has been built with a central path of grass, and over this a grapevine has been trained which makes it a restful, shady place in summer, while in early fall the vines are loaded with great clusters of purple grapes. Everywhere surrounding the garden are stretches of green lawns that prove a fitting setting to the bright blossoms in the trim and well-kept beds. The fields beyond have been brought back to a good state of cultivation and present a beautiful green tract beyond which stretch rich meadows with waving grass where flit the bobolink and the red-winged blackbird. In the trees around the house orioles and robins nest, while everywhere the old apple-trees grow, many of them gnarled and twisted with age. In the early fall, loaded with fruit, they form an attractive color note of red and yellow in the landscape. Great care has been taken to remove the branches of the old trees in order to afford attractive vistas. This gives a landscape picture carefully planned and creates a delightful feeling of restfulness and a sense of relief from the bustle of city life. Over the porch has been built a lattice to be covered eventually with rambler roses, and in order to obtain more light, clusters of windows have been let in on either side of the front door. The interior as well as the exterior has been carefully planned with a regard to light and views. One enters the house through the little porch and finds himself in a spacious hallway which extends to the living-room. The staircase is at the right of the' entrance. It is not a primitive affair of the ladder type which is the earliest on record; neither is it steep with flat treads, high risers and molded box stringers, but the kind that shows simple posts and rail with plain balusters. It is of the box stringer type and has no carving in either post or balusters; it is perfectly straight and leads by easy treads to the second-story floor. [Illustration: The Dining Room] The dining-room is at the left of the hallway and is a room built for comfort and for everyday life, showing plenty of windows. A feature is the great, open fireplace and the bricked chimney-breast, with small closets at one side. The woodwork in this room is the same that was in the house when it was discovered by Mr. Loeffler and, cleaned and treated to a coat of paint, is most attractive. The wide board floor has been retained and stained dark to bring out the color schemes of the rugs. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Living Room] This room leads directly into the living-room which extends entirely across the house and is also entered from the hallway. Its windows face the green fields studded with trees and also overlook the old-fashioned garden which is near enough to the house so that every summer breeze wafts the perfume of its flowers to the occupants. A central feature is a bricked-in fireplace that has been built into the room. Instead of plastering, the old oaken cross-beams have been left in their original state, and the room is finished with a wainscot painted white, above which is a wall covering of Japanese grass-cloth. Bookcases form an important furnishing of this room which also contains many pieces of antique furniture. It is a cheerful, homelike apartment, into which the sun shines practically all day long. Through large French windows one steps from the living-room on to the veranda. The second story is devoted to chambers and bath. Its location has a distinctive charm, as it is not too near the city or too far away from neighbors. It is well adapted for outdoor living, with its wide, inviting veranda and the side garden where bloom the stately phlox, the gaudy poppies, and the bright-hued marigold. [Illustration: THE STUDIO OPPOSITE THE CHARLES M. LOEFFLER HOUSE] [Illustration: The Music Room in the Studio Building] As time went on, the house grew too small for the owner's needs, and so another house just across the way that had passed its prime and stood desolate and deserted was also purchased and remodeled into a studio, one room expressly designed for Mr. Loeffler's work,--large and commodious with high, vaulted ceiling. Here, too, a veranda was built across one end that can be used if need be for an outdoor living-room. It is shaded by many trees, more especially some fine old elms whose graceful branches shadow the house, while a stretch of lawn extends to the street. Across the front a paling fence corresponding in style to that across the street was built, entrance being through a swinging gate that leads directly to the outside porch. This house shows less remodeling than the first one; it is principally in the interior that changes have been made. The whole front of the house is made into a music-room of unusual type, being hung with pictures of the old masters. Here the second-story flooring has been removed, and the ceiling vaulted and sheathed, in order to secure acoustic properties. A large chimney has been introduced into the inner wall, with brick mantel and chimney breast, and big enough to hold a six-foot log. The floors are of polished hardwood, and the ornamentation shows Chinese ships hung upon the walls,--an interesting feature for interior decoration. The room is entered through French windows that lead on to the outside porch. In addition to the music-room, this house is also used for the caretaker and week-end guests. The long ell at one side is used for the former, while at the back of the music-room several rooms are fitted up for the use of guests, thus solving a problem that is to-day vexing the minds of many a house owner, more especially in suburban towns. There is about the whole place a restfulness that has been achieved by careful planning and attention to details. There is no part of the estate where one may wander without coming upon picturesque bits of landscape, that while apparently in their natural state, yet are restored and preserved with a true appreciation of nature. This estate is a lesson in reclaiming and remodeling that cannot fail to be instructive to all home builders. It goes to show that forethought and ingenuity can create a comfortable and inviting home in the midst of desolation, and transform an old dilapidated cottage into a charming and picturesque abode. CHAPTER XIII LITTLE ORCHARD The old farmhouse can well be copied as a type for the modern summer home, for its lines are excellent, and its design is often so striking that it lends itself to easy reproduction. To the house owner of to-day it may seem a little strange that, with the trend of modern improvements, the old houses should be used for this purpose, and the architecture of the master builders of long ago shown preference over that of modern architects who have given their life to this subject. The builders and designers of old houses had to depend on their own ideas or possibly on a few designs that were sent over in the cumbersome ships that plied between England and the new country,--the work of Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most celebrated architects of his day. There are no more satisfactory details of house construction than we find in these old houses, where fireplaces, doors, porches, and carving show individuality. These ideas, modified and improved upon, are found in many a twentieth-century home, lending a dignity and charm that would otherwise be lacking. If you are remodeling an old house and wish to change a fireplace that is unsatisfactory or a stairway that is not artistic in design, do not introduce modern ideas, but rather seek for an old house that is being torn down and from it take bits that will satisfactorily fit into the work of remodeling. It is not a hard matter to find details of this kind, for many an old farmhouse has been neglected so long that it is past redemption, and it is the blending of the old with the old that does much to keep distinctive the period that you are seeking to preserve. Sometimes the house has been badly mutilated, often to such an extent that its best features are disguised, and it is a serious problem to eliminate the wrong ideas and duplicate the original. The old craftsmen before Colonial times were apt to build houses along certain lines which often failed to bring proper results; details varied and sometimes were incongruous with the type of the house. The first houses were generally one-roomed; later, other rooms like units were gathered around it, and the result in some cases was the appearance of a lean-to. Later on came the ell, and, to save steps, chambers were designed on the lower floor, leading off the main rooms of the houses. Naturally in houses of this kind the largest room was the kitchen, for this was the family-living-room, more especially during the cold weather. We will find as we examine an old farmhouse that the dominant portion of the building was the first floor, and that the chambers were adapted to the lower-story plan. These were not always satisfactory, as little or no care was given to the arrangement of the rooms, and in many houses closets were little considered. The partitions between these rooms were not double, like those found to-day, but were made of matched board and accommodated themselves to the framework. Later on plastering came into vogue and this made the rooms warmer and much more habitable. The windows were generally spaced carefully and were in harmony with the front door, making an attractive exterior. The walls were of wood, often with a layer of brick to keep out the cold and also to form a better protection. The roofs, more especially in the early houses, were very steep, since they were planned for thatching; later on, when shingles came into use, they grew lower and wider. It was not until 1700 that the gambrel roof came into style. In considering the evolution of the house we must look backward, and thus we come to realize the progression of architecture. We then discover that every old house shows interesting features, and it is the house with a history that makes its greatest appeal to the antiquarian; while the revival of Colonial architecture brings a renewed interest in the history of that period. There is no more attractive remodeled farmhouse than that of Mr. Roland C. Lincoln, which is a charming, rambling, summer home situated on the Gloucester road half way between Manchester-by-the-Sea and Magnolia. It is a low, yellow cottage, picturesquely placed against a background of trees and nestled on the side of a hill seemingly as if it had been there for centuries. At the front is the ocean, while surrounding it is well-placed shrubbery and artistically trained vines. [Illustration: The House from the Driveway] The grounds are just at the left of the main road and separated from it by a low stone wall; the entrance is by a driveway at one side that winds to an entrance porch. All around the house are carefully trimmed lawns and gardens gay with flowers, while the soft expanse of green sward extends to the shadowing trees and the background of forest and rock. The house was built two hundred and fifteen years ago. At that time it stood on the road and was overshadowed by the very oldest house there was in the town, which stood on the crest of an adjoining hill. It then contained four rooms only, each one of which was thirteen and a half feet square. Surrounding the old farmhouse was an orchard of apple-trees that even in the early days gave to it its present name of Little Orchard. [Illustration: The Angle of the Ell] The possibilities of the little cottage, as it stood forlorn by the side of the road, attracted the attention of the present owner, who purchased it, moved it back from the road to its present location, and remodeled it, adding a wing at the left. The old front door was improved by the addition of a semicircular porch which is an exact reproduction of the porch on the White house at Salem, Massachusetts. The side porch was unique and most picturesque in its design. Ivy has been trained to cover the veranda and outline many of the windows. At the rear, facing the garden with its frontage of gnarled apple-trees, we find the veranda or out-of-doors living-room. This is used during the summer months and commands one of the most picturesque views on the estate, overlooking lawns and forest. [Illustration: The Entrance Porch] [Illustration: The Stairway] Entrance to the old house is through the porch, and one finds himself in a most charming hallway, at one side of which is an alcoved recess. This is hung in blue and white Morris paper. Near the front door at the right is the staircase which leads with low treads and broad landing to the second-story floor; it has a hand-carved balustrade with a mahogany rail, while its newel post shows fine carving. Half way up between two huge beams have been placed some wonderful old pieces of china of the Colonial period, and under them is the quaint inscription, a welcome to the home, "In God's hands stands this house, may good luck come to it and bad luck go out of it." The staircase is reproduced from a particularly fine model found in a house in Boston that was originally the home of one of America's greatest statesmen, Edward Everett. It fits into its new surroundings as if it had always been there and is exactly the type one would expect to find in such a house as this. There is a fine old cabinet near the staircase that is considered one of the best pieces in the country. Inside is an entire tea-set of Lowestoft originally brought to Manchester by one of the old sea captains as a commercial venture and placed on sale. It was purchased by the present owner and holds a prominent place in her collection. At the foot of the stairs, inside the front door, the name of the house has been done in burnt wood. Mrs. Lincoln arranged to have this executed while she was traveling abroad and when talking with the workman she told him the story of her remodeled farmhouse and why it was named Little Orchard. He was very much interested in her description, and when the inscription was finished, it bore not only the name, but decorations in each corner of tiny little apples. [Illustration: The Dining Room] At the end of the entrance hall is the dining-room which is long and well lighted by many windows on two sides. This was a part of the original house, enlarged and added to. Here we find the low stud and the beamed ceiling so prevalent in houses of that day. It is hung with a most interesting Morris paper done in pink and blue, and at one end is a recessed sideboard. The upper part of this is used as a china cupboard, while on either side bookcases have been inserted. The furnishing of this room is all of the Colonial period; the chairs are Sheraton, as is also the sideboard. The fireplace is unusually good, being handsomely carved with a basket of fruit as the central decoration. Opening from the dining-room is the living-room, a large, square room with beamed ceiling, a feature being a built-in bookcase at the farther end. On the walls are many original paintings including one by the late William H. Hunt, "Tired of Work." An interesting inglenook is a space-saving device that has been introduced. Underneath the window-seat, studded in brass nails, is the name of the house again, Little Orchard. The reception-room is back of the living-room and shows the staircase of old Colonial design at the farther end. The fireplace was taken from a house which once sheltered General Lafayette. When the house was torn down, the beauty of the carving and the graceful design attracted the attention of the present owner, who purchased it for his remodeled house. When it was brought home, it was found to be almost impracticable, through being so badly worm-eaten; under the hands of skilful workmen, however, it has been thoroughly renovated and is now a prominent feature of the room. The apartment is well lighted by many windows, each one of which is of a different design. These have been perfectly planned, and there is no discordant note. The second story has been so arranged that all the rooms open into each other and also into the hallway. They are of low stud and contain dormer windows. The Colonial atmosphere has been carefully observed, so that new pieces which have been introduced fit in harmoniously with the old ones. Each room has a large, open fireplace with a crane, suggestive of good cheer. The success of this house has been attained through the careful thought of the owners, and it is an example of a charmingly remodeled farmhouse of a type such as one seldom finds. CHAPTER XIV WILLOWDALE Should you chance to run across an old farmhouse that shows good interior woodwork, do not carelessly pass it by, for such houses are not easy to discover. You must realize that when restored it will be much more attractive than one with a plain mopboard and narrow cornice. Woodwork was not of the Colonial type in the earliest houses; it was used merely as a wall covering and was called wainscot, the same as it is to-day. This was because the paneling was originally made from wainscot oak which was well grained and without knots. Differing from that in nineteenth-century houses, it was put on the walls vertically, the boards being rough and wide. It must be remembered that in those days trees had not been felled to any extent, and the giants of the forest provided the best of lumber for this purpose. These boards were either lapped or put together with tongue-strips. Later on, we find interiors where they were laid horizontally, like those of a century or more ago, and instead of being plain boards, were well finished. Wainscot is an inheritance from our early ancestors, for in the manor houses in the mother country there is wonderful woodwork, used not only for wainscot, but for other parts of the interior finish. White pine, which at that time grew abundantly in our native woods, was employed for interior as well as exterior purposes, this being more especially true in the northern and eastern parts of the country, where it was more plentiful. It has generally been conceded that this wood was the best on account of its wearing properties, and as it did not show figure in either the grain or markings. It was often called "cheese-like" and for this reason was preferred by wood-carvers and cabinetmakers for their art. The wainscot was used until about the time of the Revolution and not until a later period were the walls plastered. It has never lost its popularity and is found in many twentieth-century houses. It is generally shown in paneled effects which came into vogue much later than the plain board period. This woodwork was generally in the lower story, where more time and thought were given to interior finish; very rarely is it found in the chambers and then only in the better class of houses. Wainscot is not the only interior woodwork used; we often find whole walls finished in paneled wood, and fireplaces with a simple frame in paneled effects. Many of these old fireplaces showed a wooden shelf only, while later on, in the early part of the nineteenth century, fine carvings were included. Occasionally we run across a mantel of this kind in an old farmhouse, but it is very rare. It would be out of place for the house owner to introduce a mantel of this kind, no matter how attractive, in some types of old farmhouses. It would not be in keeping with the style and, while handsome and graceful in design, would be incongruous even in remodeled surroundings. Door-frames as well as the wainscot betoken the age of the house, for in the earlier ones doors are perfectly plain in finish, elaboration in design of paneling and wood-carving coming into play at a little later period. Cornices widened and also became more elaborate as house building progressed, and a century after the first wainscot was used, we find them sometimes several inches in width and showing different motives, such as the egg and dart. These also are rarely found in an old farmhouse, for it must be remembered that our early ancestors had little time to think out elaboration in the interior finish of their homes which were built solely as shelters. In the reproductions of to-day the wide boards are not easy to find, unless they are taken from some old house. One of the most valuable boards is the pumpkin pine which is now rarely found, having disappeared from the New England forest long ago. Fortunate is the house owner who discovers this wood in his old farmhouse, for it is found only in the very oldest buildings. The softness of the wood and the great width of the boards distinguish it from the white pine. In 1695, on the shores of Cape Cod, not far from Cataumet, a small farmhouse was built, with four rooms down-stairs and two rooms and an unfinished attic above. It was the home of one of the early settlers and stood facing the highway, a simple, unpretentious dwelling of no particular design and incongruous architecture. Although it had been substantially built, it had been abandoned for many years and was in a most dilapidated condition. Originally the water came nearly to its door, but the shore line gradually had receded, so when first discovered, the little building stood with its back to the road, and its face to the bare meadows. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] Like other houses of this early period, it was guiltless of paint, and its weather-beaten sides showed the wear and exposure of many years' conflict with the elements. To transform this house into a summer home equipped with accommodations adequate for a modern family, was a difficult problem. The proportions of the exterior were good but so simple that in order to extend the original quaint outline of the house without marring it, the additions had to be made with unusual care. [Illustration: The Front View] The first step was to carefully study the period for correct remodeling and to lay out the five acres of grounds to balance the house and preserve symmetry of detail. A driveway starts at the entrance, where on a high pole swings a shield-like sign with a red background and showing the name of the house, Willowdale, in white. The estate is defined by a fence, and the house in its remodeled state is attractively located on rising land, many feet back from the main highway. [Illustration: The House from the Garden] A hundred years after the house was built, a new highway was opened at the rear; thus the front or south side was wholly screened from observation, and it was here that the new owner decided to lay out his garden. It is enclosed by a high fence painted white, with latticed panels stained green; at the end a summer-house was erected, whose axis is the central path of flat stepping-stones that leads to the quaint porch entrance. Its three outer sides extend beyond the fence and command a broad view of the picturesque shore territory. The garden proper is of the old-fashioned type, in conformity with the old-time atmosphere of the estate, and the same sorts of flowers thrive in the trim beds that bloomed no doubt in the first owner's garden. Trailing vines conceal the fence outlining this plot from view. The only distinctive modern touch and yet one quite in harmony with the quaintness of the grounds is a large crystal gazing-bowl. This reflects in its luminous surface the nodding heads of the flowers, the floating clouds, the children dashing past, or the still loveliness of the summer sunset which preludes the night. [Illustration: A Rear View] The original house had been substantially built, and while appearing dilapidated, few of the shingles needed replacing even after two hundred years' wear. In the interior comparatively few repairs were necessary, paint and paper being the principal requisites. Additions had to be made to secure the needed room, and the first problem was to arrange these to conform with the original quaint outline. The old part was of the old farmhouse type, low of build. To the right a wing was built to contain three bedrooms and a bathroom, and to balance this a broad, covered veranda was added at the left; behind this, at the rear, quarters for the kitchen, servants' hall, and chambers were thrown out. There was need of more light for the second-floor rooms in the old building, so dormers were inserted in the deep pitched roof at the front. The exterior was then painted dark red with a white trim, following the style of the first painted houses. Whether the red was used for economy's sake or not is a question, but it probably was, and proved most appropriate. Yellow was the next coloring used, which is shown by the fact that it is sometimes found with red underneath; the white paint came into vogue still later. Over the front door a small porch was built which was in strict keeping with the period. Trellises were erected at one side of the house for rambler roses and vines that would break the plain, solid effect of the shingled surface. An old-fashioned well was boxed in, at the rear of the kitchen entrance, and furnishes drinking-water for the family. The old chimney was retained, so that the fireplaces could be used. When the house was first built, there were two rooms at the front and at the rear a kitchen, kitchen-bedroom, and a dairy. The three small rooms were thrown into one large room which is now used as a dining-room. When the plaster was scraped off from the ceiling, it was found that there were hand-hewn beams underneath in such a good state of preservation that they were left uncovered, giving to the new apartment a distinctive touch. It was then discovered that the house had been built around a tree, for a substantial oak, with its roots deep in the ground and its large trunk still shouldering the roof beam, was disclosed. Underneath the old paper was found fine wood paneling which was scraped and painted white; next the fireplace was opened, and proved to be eight feet wide with a swinging crane at the back. This was restored to its original size, and a square, brick hearth was laid. The old floors were replaced by new ones, and the entire room was given the tone of the period. Rag rugs are laid on the floor, and all the furniture represents seventeenth-century pieces. At one end of the room is the dining-table, and at the farther side, large French windows hung with chintz open on to a vine-clad veranda. [Illustration: The Living Room] The parlor, which opened from the dining-room, was covered with many layers of dirty wall-paper. When these were removed, it was discovered that there was a very fine wainscoting. In one corner was a three-cornered cupboard with a paneled door underneath. The fireplace was opened up, and when the room was painted it developed into one of the most charming rooms in the house. The paneling was painted just off the white, and the walls were hung with soft, gray paper with tiny pink flowers, making the color scheme of the room gray and pink. This was carried out in all the furnishings,--the chintz used for cushions and the hangings harmonizing with these tones. Instead of having all the furniture of the Colonial period, comfortable willow chairs were introduced, in order to give the light, airy touch that makes a summer home distinctive. This is a large, livable room, well-lighted by many windows and looking out upon the lawn and the garden. The hallway is of the plain, simple type which was so common in the oldest houses. The walls are covered with a reproduction of an old-time landscape paper, and the passage forms the division line between the old sitting-room and the dining-room. This dining-room is now used as a chamber; it is large and sunny with a wide-open fireplace. It is furnished with an Empire bed and shows everything that would have been found in the early days in a chamber of this kind, even to the spirit lamp that stands on the high mantel, the warming-pan beside the generous fireplace, the oval mirror, and the wooden cradle with its hand-woven blanket, where now sleeps a twentieth-century baby. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two of the Chambers] On the second story the rooms have been remodeled and show the same good taste which prevails all through the house. The unfinished attic has been plastered, papered, and converted into two bedrooms which are equipped with the old-time furnishings and are used primarily as guest rooms. The gable windows make them light and airy and at the same time afford a charming glimpse of the garden, heavy with the fragrance of the sweet-smelling blossoms, much as it was two centuries ago. Willowdale is one of the most comfortable and well appointed of the many remodeled houses that are found in New England. It is the possession of such a quantity of fine old woodwork that has given the house its distinctive atmosphere, though this has been preserved and heightened by the good taste of the present residents, who have succeeded in making it a most livable dwelling. Every room is well lighted and well ventilated, yet the house maintains in its renovated state all the quaintness and charm of a seventeenth-century home. It is a fine example of how an old house can be remodeled with little trouble and expense, and how the old and new can be combined harmoniously. CHAPTER XV THE GEORGE E. BARNARD ESTATE In remodeling a farmhouse, one should plan to build wide verandas, overlooking pleasing views. These can be glass-enclosed, so that during inclement weather one need not stay indoors. Out-door life is a part of the essentials in planning a summer home, and it means so much to the house owner that every possible means should be devised to secure it. With this object in view, why not lay out around the house attractive flower beds? Just a plain lawn does not mean much, but planted with trees, effective shrubbery, and well-planned gardens, it furnishes an inducement to sit on the porch and watch the ever changing views. In attempting this work, plan for vistas, well-selected spaces through which one can get glimpses of the world beyond. Have an objective point in view, so that the beauty of the setting sun and the clouds clothed in rainbow hues make it more attractive. Panorama effects are always interesting and are obtained through judicious planting, for one must remember that a plain level lawn in itself has few features that attract. Let the units be carefully spaced, and if there are walks or drives near the house, lay them out where they will not detract from the picturesque effect that you desire. An exception can be made with the English or flag treads, which make a charming adjunct to the grounds when grass grown. In the early days, the first settlers had their flower beds close to the house, probably because they did not then interfere with garden space. The effect was pleasing, for it added to the simple attraction of the early building. It is a good plan, after remodeling a house, to carry out this scheme of our forebears and have a narrow bed following the line of the house. Trees also are always effective; they break the roof line and shut off objectionable views. If you have no trees, by all means plant some. Screens can be devised by planting shrubbery, which makes unnecessary a latticed enclosure and is all the more interesting if the shrubs bear flowers, adding a bright spot to the color scheme. They are very practical as well, since they serve many purposes besides shutting off objectionable portions of the grounds. If rightly planted, they serve as windbreaks and can be arranged to frame a vista. While evergreen is often used for this scheme, yet shrubs such as the lilac, forsythia, bridal wreath, flowering almond, and many others are suitable. Plant these so that there will be a continuation in bloom, and also with reference to a definite color scheme. A remodeled farmhouse set back from the road without any surrounding decoration of garden or hedge cannot be picturesque, for merely a stretch of green lawn leaves it bare and uninviting, no matter how much you cover the house with vines. The composition of house and garden should be carefully planned, all the more if the estate is extensive, with plenty of land that can be used for this purpose. It is not much trouble to plant shrubs, and they need little cultivation. In the woods near at hand you can usually find plenty that will serve the purpose, if economy has to be considered. In planting the garden there are many things to be regarded; one of the most important is the sequence of bloom. This should be arranged with a view to color effects, for nowhere will one's taste be more conspicuous than in the garden plot which surrounds the house. There is no doubt that the harmony of color is a vital question, and complementary ones should be grouped together. Yellow should never be left out of the garden unless one wishes a very quiet effect; red is a favorite color and contrasts well with white. It must be remembered that quiet colors can be used in greater profusion than glaring ones; and if the exterior of the house is white, it permits one a much wider latitude in the choice of colors and in the arrangement of pleasing effects. The combination of house and garden that is found on the George E. Barnard estate of Ipswich, Massachusetts, is ideal and the result of many years of careful thought. The house was originally a small and unattractive farmhouse which contained only four rooms; it was dilapidated and forlorn in appearance and situated in the midst of uncultivated grounds. It was the location which attracted the present owner, for he saw here great possibilities for development; so he purchased the estate with a view of surrounding the house with gardens. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] The house has been added to, a little at a time, by throwing out here a room and there a veranda, instead of completing the whole work at once. Vine-covered verandas now surround three sides of the house; the shrubbery has been well planted. From the time the garden was first started, it was the desire of the owner to paint in flowers what other people have painted on canvas. Steep hills that obstructed the view at the side of the house have been converted into gentle slopes; bare spots have been thickly planted, and colors have been combined so that there is no inharmonious note in the finished garden. Careful planning eliminated straight lines, but not even the slightest curve in a flower bed was made until after due consideration. The flowers were planted to fulfill, as near as possible, the scheme of a landscape picture, and each plant not in perfect harmony was removed. The effect as one sits on the veranda is like looking at an immense canvas, where the pictures change with every move, for the estate is a masterpiece of color and bloom, depicting a different phase of landscape on every side. In remodeling the house, so many changes have been made that it is almost impossible to tell the manner in which the improvements were effected. There is not a room in the house but has been thoroughly changed, nor one that has not been enlarged. The service quarters are all new; they have been placed in the rear, where they do not intrude on the scheme that has been carried out in remodeling--that of making an attractive house in keeping with the setting of the grounds. The main house is at the front and has been kept in practically the same general style as when purchased. The entire rear portion of the house has been added a little at a time, until now it is most complete in each and every detail. [Illustration: The Front of the House] [Illustration: The House from the Terrace] Dormer windows have been let into the roof in order to give better lighting, and the wide verandas have been railed in, to provide an up-stairs living-room, from which one gets the best views of the garden. The lower veranda is furnished with well-chosen willow furniture, each piece being carefully selected so that there are no two alike. It has been given a setting of ornamental bay-trees in green tubs and huge pottery vases filled with masses of bloom. The most attractive part of the veranda is at one side of the house, where it is paved with brick and lined on the one side with evergreen trees and on the other with scarlet geraniums. [Illustration: The Pergola-Porch] [Illustration: The Hall] The hall or morning-room was a part of the original house. It is entered directly from the veranda and has been so treated as to present a different series of pictures from the time one enters the door until one leaves, each room which opens out of it being carefully designed for harmonious effects. [Illustration: The Alcove in the Living Room] At the left of the room is the staircase which leads to the second-story floor. The low mahogany risers and treads contrast with the white balusters which are topped with a highly polished mahogany rail. Doors have been removed so that the adjoining rooms are glimpsed as one enters from the veranda. This room is hung with a Colonial paper showing delicately tinted red flowers against a gray background, and its beauty is heightened by the leaded glass windows of the china closet at the right and the simple fireplace with its brass accessories. Every bit of furniture here is old Colonial and is upholstered in green to match the color of the hangings. A long French window opens on to the veranda and gives glimpses of the beautiful gardens. The upper portions of the old cupboards that were in the house have been glassed in. The floors have had to be re-laid. [Illustration: The Den] Particularly noticeable is the den which is at the left of the hallway. Here the color scheme is green, the walls being covered with textile; the wainscot is painted white, and the hangings at the window brighten the plain effect of the wall treatment. There is no crowding of furniture, but a dignified atmosphere pervades the entire room. It is an apartment such as one loves to find--quiet and restful. These two rooms occupy the entire front of the house. Opening from the hall is a long reception-room which was originally a part of the old house and which shows two rooms thrown into one, with an addition at the end nearest the avenue. This is done in old blue velour and is furnished in mahogany. The plain tint of the wall gives an admirable background to the fine old pictures which hang here and there. Every piece of furniture in this room is Colonial. Ionic columns outline the wide double windows. Light and air have been carefully considered in the remodeling of the entire house and have particularly been sought in designing this room, as is shown by the many windows on either side. At the farther end, to one side, a French window leads to a glassed-in veranda which is used for a breakfast-room. This room is a feature of the house, for it has been set in the middle of the terraced grounds that lie at the side of the house, so that one can get the full benefit of the picture garden with the slope of the hill beyond rising to meet the blue of the horizon. In the reception-room, as in every room in the house, wooden doors have been removed and replaced by glass ones which act as windows to reveal the room beyond. It is a most unusual treatment,--this picture idea carried out inside as well as outside of the house,--for there is no spot in the whole interior where you do not get a vista of some kind. [Illustration: The Dining Room] Beyond the reception-room is the dining-room. This, too, is a long, narrow room and has been added, since the house was purchased, but so fitted in that it is seemingly a part of the old house. This room is divided into a dining and a breakfast-room and is used during inclement weather. Heavy draperies make it possible to shut the rooms off from each other if desired. The entire end of the breakfast-room has been given up to groups of long French windows which are repeated on either side, making a wide bay window. Here again has the picture effect been carried out, for the windows act as a frame to the mass of harmonious blossoms beyond, with their setting of green. The dining-room proper has a paneled Colonial landscape paper; the furniture is of the Empire period, while at the farther end of the room have been let in on either side of the long windows an attractive china closet. Here, as in every room in the house, we find wainscot and the same use of white paint. At the rear of this dining-room are the service quarters which consist of a large, sanitary, and well-equipped kitchen, butlers' pantries, servants' dining-room and sitting-room. The chambers in the second story are entirely separate from the rest of the house. The second floor shows at the right of the staircase a most delightful morning-room which is large and square with an open fireplace. This is a particularly attractive room, for it commands magnificent views. The rest of the house is given over to chambers which are laid out in suites and furnished with old-time furniture. There is an atmosphere about this remodeled farmhouse that is refreshing and most unusual. It has taken years to satisfactorily develop the owner's idea of combining house and garden in one harmonious color scheme. In the exterior this is changed each year, the favorite combination being lavender and white. This is attained by the use of heliotrope and sweet alyssum which outline the terraced wall and which show a carpet of green for central effect. The veranda is a harmony of green and white which is carried out in the awnings, the foliage, the willow furniture, and the white of the exterior and the balustrade. In the interior there is not a jumble of different colorings, and the rooms have been so arranged that they present a series of pictures brought about by the use of plain colors that perfectly blend. This has not been the work of a day or a year, but of ten years of careful study and is one of the most instructive lessons for those who are planning to remodel an old farmhouse and to introduce into its interior finish harmonious, restful, color schemes. CHAPTER XVI THE W. P. ADDEN HOUSE Many of the old houses still contain some fine specimens of old hardware that were used when they were built, more especially the H and L hinges and the old latches which have not been removed. The knockers have often disappeared, being more conspicuous and therefore eagerly sought, not only by collectors but by builders of new houses into which Colonial ideas have been introduced. If you are looking for this particular feature in the farmhouse, you will probably find it widely varied, as the different owners of the house each had his own special ideas and changed the hardware to suit his tastes. Many did not realize the importance of these fixtures in retaining the sixteenth and seventeenth-century interiors. It is absolutely necessary that the hardware should correspond in material to period. Too little thought has been given to this subject and has led to an incongruous use of hardware, leaving an impression of lack of information concerning the correct architectural details of the house. There is a decided difference between the hardware that was used in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth and that we employ to-day. The twentieth-century "builders' hardware" covers a great variety of objects included in every part of the house. In Colonial times the term was applied to few, such as latches, locks, knockers, and hinges, some of which were very ornamental in design, for they ranged from small pieces to large ones. The evolution of this special feature of the house is of interest to the house builder; it originated in the Dark Ages, at which period we find used Romanesque, Renaissance, and Gothic types in so many different forms that it is little wonder the architect turns to them for copy. The best examples are seen in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century houses, when the decoration of the entrance door was a very serious subject and received great attention, especially during the Colonial period. Then the knockers were of the most importance and were either of cast-iron or brass. The former were often very beautiful in design and were used on the earlier houses, for brass did not come into favor until later. Unfortunately the waning vogue of this piece of hardware led to many rare pieces being destroyed or thrown into the melting pot. It is fortunate that some house owners realized their worth and that collectors felt they would become a fad later on and so stored them away, which accounts for many old knockers found on the market to-day. The latch, lock, knob, and hinge are also interesting. The former is made from either iron or brass but rarely of any other metal. Before the appearance of the latch, the door-ring was used, but this it would be most difficult to locate. The thumb-latch is occasionally fanciful in design but is generally very plain and is rarely seen even in old-time houses, having been replaced by the door-knob. The most common feature, and one which we are quite apt to discover, is the long strap-hinge which was designed for a special purpose, for we must remember that in the early days wooden pins were used to fasten the door; and while they kept it compact, yet it demanded the strap-hinge also for protection. This hinge will be found in many different patterns and makes, sometimes running almost the entire width of the door, and often constructed in three sections,--the upper, lower, and central, although frequently only two were used. The ornamental ones are rarely if ever seen in farmhouses, being confined to the wealthier class. The plain iron ones were more often found, and these are of two types,--the one known as the H hinge and the other as the H and L. Closet doors often are equipped with the H hinge which takes its name from its formation. Because of the fact that the home builders of to-day are turning their attention more and more to the use of decorative hardware, one should be very careful to retain this feature as an effective detail in the interior finish of a remodeled farmhouse. In the town of Reading, Massachusetts, is a most attractive remodeled farmhouse that has been carefully worked out by W. P. Adden with such a regard for the preservation of old-time atmosphere that it can be considered as a fine type to copy. Not only has the exterior been carefully planned, but the owner has gone farther and made a special study of the hardware, so that the house to-day contains many wonderful examples that are correct in their treatment and add much to the atmosphere of the home. [Illustration: THE W. P. ADDEN HOUSE] This old farmhouse was originally a gambrel-roofed cottage built about 1760 and was probably a four-roomed house, as is indicated by the partitions filled with brick that were found in the center of the present house, and also by an old brick oven and fireplace which were buried up and covered over by the portion of an old brick chimney evidently added later. The additions to this dwelling, even when purchased by the present owner, had been carefully planned, so that there were no awkward joinings or incongruous jogs discernible in the outline. There is no doubt that here, as in other old farmhouses, the early builders had displayed an inherent sense of proper proportion, and the additions which were made from time to time might be said to be after-expressions of first thoughts. When this house was first purchased, it was in an excellent state of preservation, with the exception of the ell which was past repairing. It faced directly south and had evidently been set by a compass regardless of street boundary, though the location was only a short distance from the main road. The design of the house contained all the characteristics of early construction,--the small-paned windows, closely cropped eaves, and long, unrelieved, roof line. At the time of the purchase of the estate, which had originally included hundreds of acres, it was surrounded by a low wall of field stone which had evidently been taken from the grounds to make tillage possible. The house stood on a slope and was surrounded by grass land; the same idea is carried out to-day, in that little attempt has been made at garden culture, the owner preferring to keep the estate as near as possible to the farm lands of centuries ago. After the remodeling was commenced, many interesting facts of construction were brought to light. The north side of the house, which was originally the rear, was changed by the present owner into the main front, with entrance and staircase hall. The hall was necessarily small, and in order to make it practical, five feet of the large central chimney had to be removed, including three fireplaces and two brick ovens. It was then found that this portion had evidently been added to the house after the original chimney had been built, as an old fireplace and brick oven were found on the line of a partition on the south side of the hall. It was also discovered that in all probability the original house had a lean-to at the north which was used for a kitchen, and that this fireplace and brick oven were a part of the old room. The original chimney was found by actual measurement to be sixteen feet by seven and a half feet, and the stone foundation was the largest ever seen, being ample enough to accommodate the wide hearths as well as the chimney. In fact, to-day it takes all the central portion of the basement, leaving two small spaces on either side. In the remodeling, it was found that the original work was laid up with clay, meadow clay being taken as a binder. The exterior required little alteration, save on the north side, where it was necessary to remove a portion of the wall in order to run the hall out under the roof of the house so that it might be two stories in height. The front of the house, which faced directly south, was left unaltered, with the exception that on the opposite side from the ell a glass-enclosed piazza was built of like width, length, and height. This afforded a ballast, as it were, to the main building and made a comfortable playroom for the children. A new porch, arched with Colonial pillars, was built at the front of the house in keeping with the type. In the ell a second one of less formal proportions was designed which was reached by a flagging of rough stones. A third porch of entirely different character was a finish to the rear of the house and shows lattice work, being quite ornamental in design. The angle formed by the main building and the new ell gave space for a flower plot, and here is located a small rose garden. This is outlined by broad paths of stone; surrounding the whole are wide borders of old-fashioned flowers which lend a touch of color that is very attractive. [Illustration: The Stairway] Entering through the front porch, one comes to a new hall, and with the exception of this, there has been little change in interior. This hall is most interesting; here are found the H and L hinges, a yellow and white Colonial wall-paper, and a staircase that divides at the landing and by easy treads leads on either side to chambers above. An old grandfather's clock is an appropriate furnishing for this part of the house. All through the lower story the old woodwork has been carefully preserved, and where it was destroyed it has been replaced. The living-room is practically as it was when purchased. Here we find the H hinges and the old-time latches, while through the center of the room runs a beam which had to be cased in and which has been painted white to match the trim. At one side a built-in bookcase has followed the architectural lines so perfectly that it seems as if it had been there ever since the house was built. The simple Colonial fireplace shows more ornamentation than is generally found in old farmhouses, which indicates that it was of a better type dwelling. With its new wall hangings and white trim, this room is most attractive. It connects with the sun-parlor at one end and is well-lighted and most homelike in atmosphere. The dining-room, facing east, has had a new group of windows added and contains the largest fireplace in the house. The china closet above the fireplace was discovered when the plaster was removed for the purpose of building in a similar one. This room is fitted with H and L hinges and the old-time iron latch. It was originally a portion of the old kitchen, the remainder of it being taken for a lavatory and passageway. All through the house we find that careful attention has been paid not only to hardware but to furnishings. No new-fashioned pieces have been used in any room in the house, and this careful attention to details has been carried out even in the lighting fixtures, which are all of the Colonial type. The second-story floor has undergone changes to meet the requirements of the present owner. One half of this story is devoted to the nursery; it is equipped with a large fireplace, deep closets, bath, and nurse's room, while the remainder provides a large bedroom, bath, and dressing-room. It has been so arranged that each part is distinct by itself, and convenience has been looked after in every particular. The original attic was entirely unfinished, and when new stairs were erected in the second-story hall, there was great difficulty in finding room enough to enter the attic by the side of the large chimney. In the remodeling of this house, comfort, a careful following of Colonial details, and an especial attention to the hardware are the salient features. CHAPTER XVII THE KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN HOUSE There is one thing that should be carefully considered in buying an old farmhouse,--that is, character. In order to obtain this, distinct points should be sought after and brought out. These can be accentuated not only in the house but also in its surroundings,--the garden, the trees, and the shrubbery; even the defining wall or fence does its part in making a good or bad impression on the casual passer-by. One must remember, in dealing with subjects of this sort, that the term "farmhouses" is a varying one. These range from small, insignificant little dwellings to the more elaborate houses that were built primarily for comfort as well as shelter. There are many large, substantial dwellings, not of the earlier type, for they were erected much later, but which illustrate the progression of the farmhouse design. One looks in houses such as these for larger rooms, higher stud, and more up-to-date ideas. The fireplaces are smaller and more ornate, for it must be remembered that as time passed on, money circulated more freely through the colonies, allowing for more extensive work and better finished details. While it is not necessary to copy the Colonial wall hangings, yet in the older houses it is much more satisfactory; still one can depart from this custom in a more elaborate house and use his own taste in selecting an attractive modern paper. Many people consider that houses restored, no matter of what period, should invariably have carefully consistent interior finish, without realization that it is sometimes better to look for character than type. The old-time wall-papers, more especially the picturesque ones, were generally used in more expensive houses, although we find them here and there in the more simple ones. Often this feature of the interior decoration is not well carried out, the wall hangings being chosen for cheapness rather than merit. To-day there is on the market such a great variety of papers that it is a very easy matter to get one suitable for any certain room and suggesting good taste. Many of them are reproductions of old motives, while others are plain and simple in character, giving to the room a quiet effect and providing a good background for pictures and hangings. There is nothing more restful in character than the soft grays; they are effective as a setting for stronger colors that can be used in the curtains, for this part of a room finish is as important as the wall hangings themselves. There is an indescribable charm to a room that has been carefully planned and shows good taste and restful surroundings. In many houses, some decorative scheme has been introduced which necessitates a particular kind of wall hanging, and even though it may be most unusual in type, it illustrates a motive that has been in the mind of the owner. Houses would lack character if the same line of interior decoration were carried out in all of them. With a high wainscot and cornice painted ivory white, comparatively little paper is needed, which reduces the cost and permits a better paper than if the room had a simple mopboard and a tiny molding. Papers that are garish and discordant in themselves, if skilfully handled, can produce harmonious effects, for it is often the unusual wall hangings that attract most. In curtaining these rooms let the same main tone be reproduced; this need not apply to every detail but to the general tone. Many people are timid in the use of odd wall-papers or curtains; they are afraid that they may look bizarre, but they should remember that color is in reality a very powerful agent in making an artistic home. It is sometimes effective to treat a house as a whole, and then again it is better that each room should have its own individuality. Very few houses but have at least one corner that offers interesting opportunities, and it is the artistic treatment of this that helps out the harmony of the room. There is a charming atmosphere surrounding "Quillcote," the home of Kate Douglas Wiggin, at Hollis, Maine, where Mrs. Riggs spends three months of the year. It may be that the quietness of the place lends to it additional charm, and then again it may possibly be the result of its environment. [Illustration: Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin's Summer House] The house itself is typical of the better class of New England farmhouses, and since it has come into Mrs. Riggs' possession, many alterations have been made, until to-day it is one of the most attractive farmhouses to be found anywhere. Two stories and a half in height, with a slant to the roof, it stands back from the road on a slight elevation, with a surrounding of lawns and overshadowed by century-old elms. To-day its weather-beaten sides have been renovated by a coat of white paint, while the blinds have been painted green. A touch of picturesqueness has been secured through the introduction of a window-box over the porch, bright all through the season with blossoming flowers. There is no attempt at floriculture, the owner preferring to maintain the rural simplicity of a farmhouse devoid of flowers and only relieved by the shrubbery planted around the building. When the house was first purchased, it was not in a dilapidated condition, having been lived in by townspeople and kept in good repair. The work of remodeling has been done by the people of the village, and it has been superintended by the owner of the house, in order that her own ideas, not only in remodeling, but in decorating, should be exactly carried out. The old shed is now used as the service department, a wide veranda having been built at one side for a servants' outdoor sitting-room. At the rear of the house is the old barn, which to-day is used for a study and for entertainment purposes. [Illustration: The Hall] Entrance to the house is through a Colonial door with a fanlight on either side. The owner has preferred to keep this in its original state, rather than add a porch of the Colonial type. The only porch that has been added to the house is a latticed, circular one at the side door. The entrance hall is long and narrow, the staircase also being narrow and built at one side in order to save space. The Colonial idea has been carried out here in the wainscot, and the ornamentation of hand-carving on the stairs shows it was done by a stair-builder and not by an ordinary mechanic. The lighting is from a lantern which carries out the general effect. The wall-hanging is in Colonial colors,--yellow and white,--while the rugs are the old, woven rag carpets which are repeated for stair covering. The balusters are very simple in design, while the balustrade has been painted white, thus showing it is not of mahogany. [Illustration: The Dining Room] At the right is the dining-room, a bright, sunny room that has been uniquely planned to occupy the front of the house instead of the rear, as is more usual. It is a large, square room, in which little or no alteration has been made and which has been treated so as to make an effective setting to the rare old Colonial furniture. The size of the dining-room has been considered in reference to the furniture, this being one reason why Mrs. Riggs has chosen this large, square room--in order to correctly place her old mahogany pieces. The decorations are very simple and follow out the idea of Colonial days, there being no pieces that are not in actual use. The walls are hung in shades of yellow and brown, and she has been most successful in carrying out her color scheme. [Illustration: The Den] The home study, or den, leads from the dining-room and has been carefully planned with an idea of restfulness. A chamber at one end has been converted into an alcove, and additional light is obtained by cutting a group of casement windows over the writing-table. The room is very simply furnished and shows marked originality. The walls are papered with woodland scenes, for it was a fad of the occupant to bring into the house by wall hangings suggestions of the outside world. While it is unique, it has a distinctly restful influence and is in tone with the fireplace, which has been decorated with unusual features and which bears the name "Quillcote." The draperies in this room are original in treatment, being decorated to order by a noted artist who has introduced his signature in some part of the work. They are ornamented with original designs suggestive of farm life, with such subjects as wheat, apples, or corn and are covered with delicate traceries of rushes or climbing vines. The fireplace has for andirons black owls, and on either side stand altar candles. In the furnishing of the room everything has been chosen with an eye to restful effects; the owner has done away with the pure Colonial idea, using the mission type and considering comfort more than conventionality. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Living Room] Opposite the dining-room at the front of the house is the living-room, where further originality is found in furnishings and in scenes from nature introduced in the unique wall hangings. This room is in blue and white, the wall-paper being delft blue with a rush design over which hover gulls. Singularly enough, the idea is very pleasing. The hangings are of white muslin with blue over-curtains, while the furniture is a mixture of Colonial and modern pieces. An inglenook has been obtained through the introduction of a built-in window-seat which is covered with blue to match the tone of the paper. The furniture is all painted white, and the white fur rugs laid upon the blue floor covering give a charming effect. The decoration and furnishing of this room is quiet and restful, for those two ideas form the basis of the owner's scheme which she had in mind long before she took this house and while she lived in the old family mansion that stands just across the way. It is a comfortable, livable room and not used for state occasions alone, but for everyday needs. Just beyond is the sitting-room in which an entirely different idea is presented. Here the china fad is evidenced in the ornamentation of priceless old plates that have been collected by the owner's sister, Miss Nora Smith, and arranged according to her taste. This room is a typical Colonial room, and the furniture shown is all of that period, even to a spinning-wheel which gives an old-time effect. From this room one passes through a door on to the rear porch, from which fine views are obtained of the little, old-fashioned garden, the pine grove opposite the house, and the winding road. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two of the Chambers] The second story shows large, square chambers which have been carefully planned, each following out a distinct color scheme. In one of these rooms there is a combination of lavender, white, and green, shown in wall hangings, curtains, and furnishings. The canopied Field bed, with its lavender and white spread, has been painted white. Over it has been draped a white muslin canopy. The walls are in light green and show no pictures save that of a Madonna and Child, suggestive of the author's love of children. On the mantel are several very rare pieces of Staffordshire, many of which can not be duplicated. The furniture has been painted white, with the exception of two chairs which have been treated to a coat of green. Another room, showing wainscot and a quiet yellow and white Colonial paper, has a Field bed with white spread and white muslin canopy. Here the Colonial idea in furnishing has been strictly carried out. An original and yet artistic room has its walls entirely covered with a dainty cretonne, the bed-covering and hangings being of the same material. The most interesting idea in remodeling is presented by the old barn, which has been converted into a large music-room or hall, with a rustic platform at one end. Here a new floor has been laid, many windows inserted, and a few old-time settles placed, constructed of weathered wood toned by time to an almost silvery hue. Nothing else has been changed; the ancient rafters and walls remain as they were a century ago. The hall is lighted by many lanterns hanging from ceiling and harness pegs, also by curious Japanese lanterns painted especially for Mrs. Wiggin and bearing the name of the artist. The lanterns, hung from overhead, greatly relieve the somber effect of the heavy beams. At the rear of the hall a broad door space makes a frame for a pretty picture,--a field of buttercups and daisies, a distant house, and two arching elms. A large closet, once the harness-room, is fitted up with shelves and contains all the necessary china for a "spread" such as is given to the village folk several times a year, when dances are held in the old barn. CHAPTER XVIII THE FRANKLIN BRETT HOUSE Floors are an important detail in the remodeled house. Sometimes the original building has many that are in fairly good condition so that they can be saved. There is a great advantage in keeping these old floors if possible, for they were made with plain edge, of strong timber and laid close together. The earliest floors were not double in treatment, therefore the edges had to be either lapped or rabbited. These wide boards that were used in the early construction stand the test of furnaces and modern heating a great deal better than do modern ones of the same width. The latter are much more apt to shrink and open joints. It will be found that the better floors are in the second story in almost every house. It is probable, however, that if you are remodeling your house, you will have to lay at least one or more floors, and in such cases, matched hemlock is the most advisable for the under floor; but the boards should be laid diagonally and close together. The usual method is to lay them matching the upper floor. It is a great mistake, even if advised to do so by an architect, to lay only one floor, for with shrinkage come cracks through which cold air and dust can rise; even a carpet does not remedy the trouble. Hardwood boards make the most popular floors and come in varying thicknesses, the oak being generally three eighths of an inch thick and the North Carolina pine averaging seven eighths of an inch. Both are employed for new floors and for re-covering old, soft-wood ones. The narrow width of oak is more satisfactory, as the narrower the stock the smaller the space between the strips and the less danger of unsightly appearance. They may be a little more expensive than the wider ones, but they make a much better showing. Then, too, the shading and figure blend more harmoniously than when the broader strips are employed. Narrow widths also obviate any danger of the flooring strips cupping, as they are laid and stay absolutely flat. One should be careful not to lay oak flooring while the walls and plaster are damp; in fact, if you have to do much remodeling, the floor should be the last thing attended to, as it is a better plan to get everything else done and thoroughly dried--even to painting, wall hangings, and decorating. Hard pine is best for the kitchen, as it does not splinter, is more reasonable in price, and has fine wearing qualities. It must be taken into consideration that oak flooring is cheaper in the end than carpet. A yard of carpet is twenty-seven inches wide by three feet in length and contains six and three quarters square feet. Clear quartered-oak flooring can be bought, laid, and polished for one dollar per carpet yard, and when you consider the lasting qualities of the wood and the beauty of a polished floor, you will make no mistake to put in one of the better quality, more sanitary, and the best background for rugs, instead of laying a floor of cheap wood. Carpets, with the exception of straw matting, are inadvisable for a home like this. They are unsanitary, hold the dust, and are not nearly as attractive as rugs. These may vary in price with the purse of the owner, and can range from Oriental rugs, costing hundreds of dollars, to the simple rag rug which is always appropriate and in good taste. The absolute carrying out of the Colonial idea is not necessary, for it would not be appropriate to have old-fashioned rag mats in every room of the house. They can be used, however, in the dining-room or in the chambers, and to-day the woven rag carpets and mats are so attractive in their weave and so lasting that they are satisfactory adjuncts to the house furnishings. In the parlor and living-room, while they can be used if desired, there are so many attractive low-priced rugs, both Oriental and domestic, that it is an easy matter to get something both suitable and in good taste. [Illustration: THE FRANKLIN BRETT HOUSE--FRONT VIEW] This attention to floors and their covering is nowhere better shown than in the Franklin Brett House at North Duxbury, Massachusetts. This house, which is over two hundred and fifty years old, was put up at auction several years ago, at just the time when the present owner was looking for an old farmhouse to remodel. It was a double house that had been occupied by two families. The frame, excepting certain parts of the first floor joints and also portions of the sills, was in very good condition, but the first-floor boarding was badly worn and was not fit to be retained for use. It was replaced by a new one of narrow boards. The second story, however, was in much better condition, and the floors, with the exception of the one in the bathroom, could all be used. The house was particularly ugly, displaying a combination of bright yellow paint and dark red trim, and the exterior was wholly devoid of any artistic design. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] At the front of the house there was a wide porch;--just a simple flooring and two doors that stood side by side. The old place was so forlorn that it was bid in during the excitement of the auction partly out of sympathy. It showed so little possibilities that at first the owner was doubtful whether it had been a good purchase, for the building did not in any way fit his ideal of what was desired in order to make a suitable summer home. [Illustration: As Remodeled] After careful examination, however, various possibilities were discovered indicating that there was a very good chance to make it attractive. Originally the house was built for one family only; in architecture it was square-framed, containing two stories and an attic, with ells at the rear and one side and a deep, sloping roof broken by two chimneys. In the old house there were nine rooms on the first floor and five rooms and a hallway on the second. Some of these on the first floor have been combined by removing partitions to make a living-room and dining-room, together with a hallway. [Illustration: The Pergola-Porch] In the living-room were found some hand-hewn, second-floor joists, and it was decided to leave these exposed and plaster in between them, instead of bringing the ceiling down to its original level. In practically every room the plaster was in good condition and needed only to be treated in places. The chimneys were touched up wherever needed, but on the whole very few repairs were necessary. In the lower story to-day there are four rooms and a good-sized hall, while the second story is divided into six rooms and a bathroom. Five additional windows were added down-stairs and two in the second story, in order to secure proper light. Very little new material was put into the house, the work consisting chiefly of tearing out old material and patching woodwork and plaster. At the rear of the house, on a line with the larger ell,--the smaller kitchen ell having been torn down,--a rustic pergola was constructed and a covered veranda, over which grape-vines were trained for shade. The roof was partially reshingled, and the house was painted light gray with white trim, with green for the blinds. At the front a Colonial porch was added with latticed sides and a settle, which is in direct keeping with the architecture of the house. In its remodeled condition, with its setting of closely cropped lawn, it bears little resemblance to the ugly farmhouse of a few years ago. There was no plumbing in the old house, so a single bathroom was put in, a hot-water boiler was added in the kitchen, and a hot-air engine and pump were installed in the cellar which furnish water under pressure from a thousand-gallon supply tank. Later on, a hot-water heater was installed, so that with the modern improvements the house was made very comfortable for habitation all the year round if desired. [Illustration: A First-floor Vista] The original parlor on the left has been utilized for a morning-room; the bedroom, dining-room, and pantry have been combined into a living-room. The partitions between the old hallways have been removed, converting them into one good-sized hall. The remaining portion of the old dining-room has been made into a large pantry. The kitchen in the main ell has been left practically unchanged as to size and shape, although the shed opening from it, as well as the kitchen itself, have been entirely renovated and equipped with up-to-date improvements. Paint and paper and rugs have effected an interior transformation that is most attractive. There are no doors in the house, wide openings making it appear as though it were one large room. The hallway is entered from the Colonial porch and is unique because of its spaciousness. The stairs are at the further end, opposite the door. The Colonial atmosphere has been maintained in the wall hangings, the braided rag mats, and the old furniture. At the left of the hall is the morning-room with its wide, open fireplace, its Colonial paper, and Oriental rugs which are in color tones to correspond with the paper. [Illustration: The Living Room] Opening from this room is the living-room, where the same kind of rugs are laid on the hardwood floor. In this room, after the house was purchased, a fireplace was discovered hidden away behind the partition. It was opened up and restored to its original size. At one side a closet was glassed in, while in either corner cosy, built-in settles give an inglenook effect that is very interesting. The furnishings are wholly Colonial and in keeping with the general character of the apartment. Here the low stud, the beamed ceiling, the depth and lightness of the room, are most attractive. From the long French window one steps out on grass land which commands a most attractive vista of shrubbery and trees. In the planting around the house, great care has been taken to secure shade and picturesqueness, so that in its new life the remodeled farmhouse is surrounded by charming effects. On the opposite side of the hallway one enters the long dining-room. It is finished in red and white, with one-toned hangings; at the farther end is a quaint corner cupboard; a handsome fireplace has been introduced at one side. Many of the pieces in this room are very rare, especially the Hepplewhite sideboard, the chair-table that was once owned by Governor Bradford, and the rush-bottomed chairs. Long glass windows open on the side veranda and combine with attractively grouped windows to make this room light and cheerful. Opening out of this is the pantry, conveniently equipped with cupboards and shelves, and beyond is the kitchen and shed which have been made entirely modern in their appointments. The chambers up-stairs are large, square, and fitted up with furniture of the period. In taking a "secret" cupboard out of a closet, there was discovered some paneling that had been plastered and papered over. On removing the plaster, it was found that the whole side of the room was paneled. By the restoration of this old-time finish, the chamber became even more indicative of the period in which it was built. Here the wall hangings are all Colonial in design. Few houses, even among the many that are being restored, have retained the old-time atmosphere throughout as completely as has this farmhouse. Each room has been made comfortable and given an air of space, and consistency has been shown in the furnishing, thus securing a result that is perfectly harmonious and in the best of taste. By comparing the appearance of the old house at the time of its purchase with the results that have been obtained, one realizes how much thought and care have been put into its every part. The lines remain the same but have been extended by the introduction of the pergola at one side and a porch which are very attractive features in themselves. The combination of old and new, correctly treated, has done much to make a harmonious whole. CHAPTER XIX THE GEORGE D. HALL HOUSE Fortunate is he who, on opening up the old fireplace in the house he intends to remodel, finds hidden away behind plaster and paper a pair of old andirons and possibly a shovel and tongs, indispensable furnishings for the fireplace. No old farmhouse but what has in almost every room some kind of an open hearth, and these are useless for the burning of wood without fire-dogs or andirons, as they are commonly known. To the inexperienced house owner who is looking for economy in his house furnishing, reproductions are tempting, and most attractive sets of fire-dogs are to be found in almost every store. In choosing a set, however, one must exercise judgment. Many of the reproductions are low in cost but are really merely lengths of brass piping, showing brass balls that are lacquered and strung together on invisible wire frames. They are in reality the cheapest kind of spun-brass andirons. If one with a knowledge of the weight of brass handles them, he will realize their flimsiness, but thousands of people do not recognize the difference. Poor fireplace accessories such as these detract greatly from the charm that surrounds a good hearth and mantel. It is no longer easy to pick up original, cut-brass andirons at the antique and junk shops,--that is, at a reasonable price. It is in the country places, old farmhouses, and from people who have not yet learned to gage their worth, that one can get a good bargain, bringing often only three or four dollars a pair, and being of the best material. In reproduction there are on the market to-day plenty of good, cast-brass andirons, but they are expensive and cannot be purchased at less than seven dollars, ranging from that to a hundred dollars a pair, while the spun-brass kind may be purchased for two dollars and a half a pair. Andirons come in a great many heights, and in the olden times two sets were used, the one holding the forestick, and the other the backlog. In addition to that, in the earliest American houses, creepers were used; they were, in reality, of iron, small enough to be placed between the andirons, and they helped out in holding the sticks. The first material used for andirons was iron, and we find to-day occasional specimens of this kind, many of them not particularly graceful, while others are very ornamental in design. There are the Hessian andirons which are found either in plain iron or decorated with bright paint; these came into use about 1776 and were used to caricature the British soldiers who were very unpopular in our country. The most interesting of these old andirons show unusual shapes, a great many of them having artistic ornamentation; occasionally we find them with brass tops. It was fitting to use this metal, on account of the fire frame, which was of cast-iron as well, and while many of these were of foreign manufacture, yet not a few were fashioned by the village blacksmith. In the choice of andirons, the size of the fireplace should be considered; the small ones should not have the steeple tops but small, ball pattern or some other design that is low enough not to crowd the fireplace and thus give the impression of bad taste. The large fireplaces need the high andirons, of which there are so many different kinds. The modern adaptation of the Colonial has brought these furnishings into vogue, so that to-day it would be almost impossible to tell the old from the new. Shovel and tongs were much used during the early period, but a poker never accompanied the set. These appeared after the introduction of coal and are found among the reproductions on the market to-day. Another bit of the furnishings is the fender, of which there are many designs, some being of simple wire painted black with brass top and balls, while others are entirely of brass. The warming-pan is an appropriate accessory for this part of the room; it should be hung on a peg at one side of the hearth. In addition to that, we find the bellows, some of which are most decorative in their design. The proper selection of this furniture gives an air of refinement to the room. There is a most attractive farmhouse situated in Dover, Massachusetts. It is owned by Mr. George D. Hall, and shows a series of remodelings, rather than a complete work, for each year an addition has been made which has bettered the initial scheme. The original farmhouse, for instance, which was built in 1729, was a small, unpretentious building that was very dilapidated in condition, but whose situation appealed to its present owner. It was his desire to obtain an old house that could be used if need be for an all-the-year-round home; plenty of land, picturesque views, good landscape effects, and ample elbow room were what he especially desired. [Illustration: LONE TREE FARM] The house stands back from a winding country road in one of the most picturesque situations it would be possible to find. An old stone wall, built over a century ago by the original owner, still forms a boundary line to protect the grounds. Few estates show so many beautiful trees; they add greatly to the pictorial effect of the place. Graceful elms with swaying branches are on every side, while on the opposite side of the road pine trees are in evidence, and on either side of the stone wall wild shrubs have been planted. There has been no attempt at formal arrangement of the grounds, not even with the garden which is at the side of the house. There has been built simply a picturesque lattice that separates house from barn and over which have been trained attractive vines. [Illustration: As Finally Remodeled] In 1907 a wing was thrown out to the south, with an enclosed, tiled porch and a sitting-room above. A small eyebrow window was placed in the roof to light the stairway, while the original porch on the west and south was carefully retained. Two years later this porch was removed, and a smaller entrance one was substituted. This showed a brick walk extending from carriage block to covered loggia at the south. Again in 1914 the eyebrow window was removed, and dormers inserted in the roof. An open, tiled platform was built outside the enclosed loggia, and a sleeping-porch was added to the east sitting-room. A garden and pond were laid out to the south of the loggia, with a vista framed by two huge elms that were some thirty feet south of the house. These improvements have converted the old farmhouse into one of the most interesting and beautiful houses that can be found. Within the last few years the planting and garden effects have been more carefully considered; the grounds have been enlarged, and at the left of the house an old-fashioned garden has been laid out with a gazing-globe for the central feature. The name "Lone Tree Farm" was given at the time of purchase from the fact that a single tree guarded the house at the front. This tree still stands but has been enhanced by the careful planting of shrubbery on either side the driveway, which has now grown until it has become a partial screen for the lower floor of the farmhouse. Other trees have been added, and in order to obtain the seclusion desired, extensive grounds have been purchased on the opposite side of the road, so that no neighbors may come near enough to detract from the quiet. In remodeling this house, an ell has been added at the rear for the service department, and a sun-parlor has been thrown out at one side. This makes a most attractive living-room in winter and, with windows removed, a cool sleeping-porch in the summer. The Colonial porch which has been added at the front is much more attractive than the former long veranda which is replaced by the sun-parlor. In painting the house, white has been used with green blinds, so that it is in reality a symphony of green and white, and as it stands in the center of the lot, surrounded on three sides by pasture land, gardens, and meadows, and on the front by hundreds of acres of woodland, it is one of the most interesting studies in house remodeling to be found. The small hallway is simply an entrance with narrow, winding staircase that leads by easy treads to the second-story floor. In 1914, in ripping out these front stairs to secure the space above them for a small room, it was discovered that the old smoke-house, where in olden days hams were cured, and the back of the bake oven behind it had not been torn out. The former consisted of two Gothic arches, the taller of which was twenty feet in height; the shape was dependent on the two fireplaces in adjoining rooms. The smoke-house is about five feet deep and when discovered was enclosed with an inch of greasy soot. An oak cross-beam with hand-wrought nails indicated where the hogs were hung. It had been left in its natural state after being cleaned out, and as it looked crude to one entering the front door, it was shut off with an old, paneled door, so that the hall, with stairs removed, is now shaped like six sides of a hexagon, the front door remaining where it originally was placed. [Illustration: The Living Room] The living-room, which is at the right of the hallway, has been made from two rooms. In this the old woodwork has been carefully retained, and the walls have been hung with a soft green that is a fine background for the many pictures and which brings out the beauty of the white woodwork. The furniture here does not follow the Colonial lines, for comfort has been the first consideration. It is shown in the large, roomy davenport piled with sofa pillows and the comfortable armchair at one side of the open fireplace. Here the owner has supplied the correct fireplace accessories, the andirons being low with brass ball tops, and the shovel and tongs having the same finish. The mantel, while not elaborate, shows hand-carving and paneling. Bookcases are a feature of this room and are found everywhere. [Illustration: The Sun Parlor] Opening from the living-room is the glass-enclosed sun-parlor which has been tiled, and in which is a modern fireplace of bricks laid in white mortar. Over it is a bas-relief. The andirons are high, of modern type, showing fleur-de-lis design, and are in keeping with the fireplace. Willow furniture is used in order to give the sun-parlor a light touch which could not have been done if the Colonial idea had been carried out. It is an ideal summer living-room, being sunny most of the day. Then, too, its location is well chosen, as it overlooks the old-fashioned garden and commands vistas cut in trees and shrubbery. [Illustration: The Den] The den, used extensively by the owner, is a typical man's room. Built-in bookcases and window-seats give it a most livable look, while pictures of the hunt line the wall, and a hunting scene is used as a frieze. It is placed in a sunny part of the house so as to catch as much light as possible. [Illustration: A Corner in the Dining Room] The dining-room was made from a part of the old kitchen and strangely enough shows fine paneling of white pine, which has been carefully preserved and makes a background for the mantel ornaments. The mantel shelf is narrow and extends around the whole fireplace; the old chimney has been partly built in for modern use, while the andirons are very unique reproductions. The old crane has been retained, as have the pothooks and iron kettle, while the old brick oven, now never used, is a memento of the days when our grandmothers cooked with great logs of wood, heating the oven once a week in order to do the family baking. The furniture is of the Colonial type, while the rugs are modern but blend with the scheme color of the room. It is large, well-lighted by many windows, and divided by an alcove only from the living-room which adjoins it. Every room in this house has been carefully considered with regard to view, and one can stand at any window and look out upon a different phase of country life, for trees and shrubbery are so arranged that the grounds lend themselves admirably to pictorial effects upon which no neighboring house intrudes. [Illustration: The Sewing Room] Up-stairs in the ell of the house, over the sun-parlor, is a large sitting-room. It has been so designed that it faces three different directions and is lighted by a group of long windows at one side. In this room the sunlight lays practically all day, making it a bright, livable room, where Colonial features have not been considered. To be sure there are several pieces, such as the old-time work-table, but modern ideas mainly have been introduced. On either side of the cluster of windows are built-in bookcases which have been painted white to match the trim and are filled with well-read books. Between these bookcases is a long window-seat, beneath which drawers have been built which are very convenient for holding unfinished work. The hangings are of muslin with blue over-drapery, harmonizing with the color scheme of the room. A large, open fireplace on the opposite side provides for a cheery wood fire, more especially on stormy days, for this house is one that is lived in all the year round, so that heating and lighting had to be taken into consideration. In addition to this room there are three chambers, two bathrooms, and a closet on the floor. Each one of these chambers has been given a different treatment. One of the most interesting shows fine woodwork in the paneled doors and also in the small closet that is over the fireplace, a favorite place for a closet to be introduced in the early days. The fireplace is not a large one, and the andirons are small-sized steeple tops. The bed is an old slat bed, while every piece of furniture is in keeping with the period. Take it all in all, one rarely finds a farmhouse that shows more attractive features than this one, where comfort, light, and view have all been carefully considered. It is perfectly available for an all-the-year-round home, as it is not too far from the station to allow its occupants to go back and forth to business every day. CHAPTER XX THE WALTER SCOTT HOPKINS HOUSE When you plan to remodel your house, there is nothing that should receive much more careful attention than the closets. It is doubtful, that is, if the house is of the earliest period, if you will find many. Our emigrant ancestors did not have as many clothes or table appointments as we require to-day. The few of the former they possessed were hung on pegs or disposed of in chests; the dishes were placed on racks, thus eliminating the necessity for closet room in houses where every available bit of space was utilized for living purposes. In all probability you will find corner cupboards which will be more or less elaborate in design. The best examples show a shell treatment. The earliest corner cupboards were clumsy affairs, being movable; later on they were built into the house and employed to hold family china and glassware. There was a great variety in these closets, some being fitted up with shelves only, while others were divided in two, the underneath part being used for books and odds and ends. Fortunate is the house owner who finds in his old house one or more of these old corner cupboards. To be sure they can be reproduced; but how much better are the originals. Dig out the old plaster, rip open the sides of the partitions, if you think there is any chance of odd closets being hidden away between, and remember that in many old houses there are secret closets, and it will pay you to tap the wall space to discover their whereabouts. Sometimes they are hidden under the flooring, and again the space between the windows is used for this purpose. It is always well to open them, for who knows what valuable heirlooms may be hidden inside. There are plenty of spaces where new closets can be introduced as, for instance, the end of the dining-room, where a glassed-in china closet with an arched top and half-domed interior makes an excellent place to display the old china and glass. Panels in the wainscot can be utilized, more especially when they are under the first step of the staircase. These are most convenient for filing newspapers or any magazines that are kept for reference. If the hallway is paneled, it is a very easy matter to put an invisible door into one of the panels. This can be used for the coat closet, with a low shelf underneath to hold hats; and on the floor partitions can be made to hold rubbers. On each side of the chimney a great deal of waste space can be converted into bookcases, with little, leaded, glass doors. Above the mantel, set in the chimney-breast, will be found spaces which even in the early days were devoted to closets. They are cut in a panel and were used to protect china or old pewter from the dust. Sometimes three of these closets have been found built into the fireplaces, all of which were used to hold the household china. In the upper part of the house, under the attic stairs, can generally be found places that can be made into linen closets, but it must be remembered that if no ventilation is allowed, cloth will become yellowed, so by all means have brass ventilators in the doors. Whatever the purpose of the closet, its location should be carefully considered,--the shape, the place, and the cost,--so that as many as possible can be introduced. There is no doubt that the majority of old-time farmhouses readily adapt themselves to modern requirements and show possibilities that allow of most attractive development. The result of working out certain possibilities is shown in the Walter Scott Hopkins house at Reading, Massachusetts. It is a long, rambling house that seemed when first purchased wholly lacking in artistic qualities, and it was not until after careful deliberation that the owner realized that the old farmhouse, beneath its coating of accumulated dust, possessed a wealth of fine features that were well worth developing. [Illustration: Before Remodeling] The house had been used for two families, and each section was separate and distinct, although under the same roof. It was built in the latter part of the eighteenth century and contains fine woodwork,--better than that found in most houses of that day. All the distinctive features of the Colonial architecture were evident in this old farmhouse, where unbroken roof-line, close-cropped eaves, and small-paned windows were placed with mathematical precision, and the severely simple exterior was in strict conformity with the period. In remodeling the house, the original outlines were carefully preserved, and the additions were made to conform. The small, ugly entrances which had marred the exterior of the house were torn down and replaced by windows, so that only a single entrance was left. A very attractive porch with sloping roof-line was supported by solid but unornamented columns. In the roof dormer windows were cut, both at the front and rear. This was to make the attic practical for living purposes by affording sufficient light and air. At one side of the house, in place of the woodshed, an out-of-door living-room was added, broad and low of build, with a sloping roof that harmonized in outline with the main roof. At the rear a small addition of the deep, bay-window type was added; this was to secure extra space for the newly arranged dining-room and the remodeled kitchen. Two small porches were built in addition to the new trellised entrance, giving a simple dignity to the old house, which has been painted white with green blinds. [Illustration: As Remodeled] The grounds, rough and unkempt, with a stone wall defining a part of them, were beautified to afford a fitting environment for the new home, and to-day smooth sweeps of lawn and judicious groupings of shrubbery add in no small degree to the exterior attractiveness of the old homestead. A path of rough, irregular flagstones leads to the main entrance, and a similar path winds from the street to a gateway in the outlying wall and opens into a charming garden plot that has been laid out just beyond the outdoor living-room. Planting has been judiciously carried out, and the estate has been brought to a fine state of cultivation, with the result that it has become an attractive setting for the remodeled house, which stands on the slope of a hill. The interior required a great deal of altering, including much tearing down of partitions to suit present-day needs and to make broad, spacious rooms out of the tiny spaces which sufficed a century or more ago. There was installation of plumbing, lighting and heating devices, in order to meet the demands of modern life, and the New England attic was made over into servants' quarters that were sufficiently ample for a large country house. A leaded glass door that shows fanlight above opens into a broad, low-ceilinged hall. At one side is a large fireplace, and a heavy beam crosses the ceiling. To the right is the new dining-room, to the left the living-room, and from the end of the hall opens the den, a passageway connecting this with the servants' department. In all the rooms every detail of the old-fashioned construction has been retained. The fine woodwork shows the original paneling; the great fireplaces with their chimney closets have been preserved intact, and even the old, hand-made hardware has been retained for present-day use. Cupboards were discovered, when the coating of plaster and paper were removed, and are serving the same purpose in the twentieth-century home that they did years ago in the Colonial one; and the new cupboards that have been added seem to fit in as if they had always been there. The house in its entirety shows many points that are of unusual interest. The arrangement of the windows is particularly good, as are the chimneys, while the sweeping roof-line at the rear carries out the old contour and yet has been slightly changed to afford light and air to chambers inside. The semblance of the original farmhouse has been left unaltered, while the really radical changes have been tempered with a regard for the preservation of the old-time atmosphere. [Illustration: The Living Room] The living-room shows a typical old farmhouse room. The woodwork here is particularly good; there is a wainscot three feet high that comes above the lower sill of the window frame, and which is paneled in doors and over the mantel. The fireplace has remained unchanged, being a Colonial one of huge size. The early period is evidenced in the absence of a mantel, which brings out the lines of the wonderful old woodwork to the greatest advantage. The andirons, instead of following the sixteenth or seventeenth-century type, represent griffins. A nightcap closet, introduced in the middle panel over the fireplace, shows the original H hinges of iron. When the house was first purchased, these were hidden away, and only when the original woodwork was reached were they discovered, restored, treated to a coat of white paint, and adapted to present use. This is a feature that is rarely found in the remodeled farmhouse of to-day. The walls are hung with a one-toned paper of soft coloring, while plain muslin curtains shade the windows. The old floor was re-laid with narrow boards over which are laid Daghestan rugs; Mission furniture is used. The lighting fixtures are of the Colonial type and placed at the sides only. The room contains many well-placed windows which give to it light and air. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Views of the Dining Room] The dining-room is at the rear of the living-room and opens into it, being connected with a wide opening so that, if need be, the rooms can be used as one, giving plenty of space for large dinner parties. Here the woodwork has been restored to its original charming simplicity and painted white to match that of the living-room. The walls have been covered with a dark-toned paper, and at one end, opposite the living-room, an alcoved recess has been added in order that its group of windows may give better lighting to the dining-room which is exposed to the outside on two sides only. The floors of this room, too, have been re-laid and handsomely polished, and are an effective foil to the domestic rug which is used. Here, also, the furniture follows the Mission style, in order to be in keeping with that of the living-room. The lighting fixtures are of the same type found in the adjoining room and are also side lights, considered more effective because softer than a ceiling light. In order to let the light in from the hallway, windows were inserted which follow the early window casing in their plain style and contain small panes, there being no elaboration. They are placed on either side of the entrance door, which is glassed in the upper portion. Here, as all through the house, the early style of small-paned windows has been retained. There are many reasons why these are advantageous: not only do they follow the period in which the house was built, carrying out details correctly, but when broken they are more easily replaced, though much harder to keep clean. These windows are usually placed near the ceiling, being designed for light and ornamentation, rather than as outlooks. The ornamental design which has been carried out in the arrangement of windows and door is unusual even in Colonial houses, where the low stud and the beamed ceiling helped much towards effectiveness. This room was originally the kitchen and bedroom combined. The old fireplace has been preserved, as has the brick oven, and over it is a series of small closets such as are rarely found. There is a central closet and a smaller one on either side. Here the H hinges have been retained and also the old-time latches. On the opposite side of the hall is the parlor, which corresponds in size to the living-room and shows equally fine woodwork. This was originally the parlor in the farther side of the double house and has been left practically its original shape and size, for in this part of the house very little remodeling has been done. The old fireplace has been retained at the farther end of the room. At the rear of this, what was once the sitting-room has been converted into an office. Beyond this room, the original kitchen on that side of the house and the shed have been thrown into a most attractive summer room. In the story above there were formerly two large bedrooms on either side. These remain practically as they were and are furnished with Colonial pieces. The old attic, which originally was used for clutter, is now remodeled into servants' quarters and by the addition of the dormer windows has been made into comfortable rooms which can be kept cool during the warm weather by the cross draughts. The architects were very wise in remodeling this house so as to show its extremely simple lines, for they give it individuality and character and accentuate certain features that were necessary to create of it a home for one family. There is no doubt that the alterations have been planned and executed with rare taste and discrimination. CHAPTER XXI Henry W. Wright's House People who possess old pieces of furniture often have very erroneous ideas as to their real age and call everything "Colonial" for want of a better name. They assume, that is, if they have not made a careful study of the subject, that anything belonging to their great grandmother must be at least two hundred years old. But, for instance, sideboards were not made two hundred years ago, and Chippendale never designed one; the nearest he came to it was a serving-table. People get an impression that he included this piece of furniture in his productions, but they are wrong in their assumption. The revival of interest in "antiques" has caused many an heirloom that has been relegated to attic or storehouse to be brought out, renovated, and given a prominent place. Can we assign to each ancient article an approximate date or maker, it becomes much more valuable than the daintiest piece of up-to-date furniture. Worm-holes are a sign of age and a proof of guarantee, that is, if the pieces are family possessions. There is so much cunning workmanship in remodeled furniture that this does not apply to every bit, though apparently original. It must be remembered that very few furnishings were brought over by the colonists, and the early houses were very scantily supplied. The oldest furniture was made of oak; it was very heavy and showed more or less elaboration in carving. Chests made at this early period are often found in families where they have been carefully treasured since they were brought over the sea packed with clothing. The three leading cabinetmakers were Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton. Chippendale was the earliest but was not appreciated until after his death. His masterpieces, which combined the Chinese, French, and Dutch models with ideas originated in his own brain, were so perfectly constructed that we find them in a fine state of preservation even to-day. Lighter and more dainty in character were the designs of Hepplewhite, who cultivated a freedom of line such as was adopted by his predecessor, but who banished the Chippendale heaviness. The Prince of Wales feather was a favorite design of his. Carved drapery, the belle-flower, and wheat were often used by him. A distinguishing mark was usually given to the backs of his chairs, which are either oval, heart, or shield-shaped. They were finished in japanned work and often inlaid in light and dark wood. The legs were generally much more slender than the Chippendale and often ended in what is known as a spade-foot. Sheraton, who succeeded him, took advantage of the ideas of his forerunners and revealed a still more delicate touch, although he retained many of Hepplewhite's ideas which he strengthened and improved. The shield is rarely if ever found in a chair of his make, which can be distinguished by its rectangular back and its slender uprights, ranging in number from four to seven. The legs show a great many different styles, the best being straight, while carved, fluted, and twisted ones are also found. The general trend of fancy in those days was towards light, elegant designs and showy decorations. Sheraton indulged his fancy for brilliant coloring in the most gorgeously painted decorations, combining them with inlay and carving. Next he introduced white and gold, following the French style, and still later the brass inlay so fashionable in Napoleon's day. Caned work was used for seats and was varied by coverings of needlework, morocco, striped and variegated horsehair, damasks, and fine printed silks. The curved piece which Sheraton introduced about 1800 remained the favorite chair pattern for a century, although it lost the brass mounts which he at first used. There is not much danger of confounding the three great masters, for each produced an entirely different style of furniture. After the French Revolution, the furniture became markedly different in style; Greek models were once more popular, and the tripod became a favorite support. Coarse woods and mahogany were freely used and were carved and profusely gilded. The Empire furniture which is so popular to-day was heavy and stiff in its early period, particularly so when of English make, but under American manipulation the beauty of the wood showed to the best advantage. Yet there is a certain appeal in its solidity and massiveness. When the darkened mahogany came into fashion an opportunity arose for the revival of brass and wood that lent charm to the court of the Empress Josephine. Few good examples of the Empire style are found in remodeled farmhouses. Old furniture is most interesting, and if you intend to furnish your remodeled farmhouse with it, do not fail to make a careful study of the subject before attempting it. It covers a wide field of makers, styles, and decorations, but the modern home affords ample scope for the employment of these old pieces, many of which have been brought down from the attic. When Salem was in her highest and proudest days of mercantile prosperity, when her wharves were bustling scenes of unlading and shipping, when her harbor was a gathering place of quaintly rigged vessels, and great East-Indiamen labored under clouds of canvas, then from the holds of these cumbersome ships were discharged cargoes of rich furniture, teakwood, and sandalwood brought from every land. The wealth of these incoming treasures has made the quiet city prominent even until to-day. Here may be found many old heirlooms, and in the homes of the descendants of old shipmasters we frequently find rare pieces. These show to advantage in various remodeled farmhouses that have been adopted as all-the-year-round homes by the last generation. [Illustration: THE HENRY W. WRIGHT HOUSE] Many fine old pieces are found in the home of Mr. Henry W. Wright at Danvers, Massachusetts. Some of them are of exceptional value and rare examples such as are seldom seen even in the homes of collectors. The farmhouse itself stands close to the road, a simple, plain, unostentatious building, yet showing good lines and careful treatment. The soft gray of the exterior and the white trim blend harmoniously with the green of the grass and the bright-colored flowers of the little garden. At the front of the house at each side stand tall elms that cast a grateful shade over the old farmhouse. The entrance porch has been made square, its lattice, designed for the support of vines, taking away the plain look of the exterior. The windows are well spaced, and the small panes have been retained. At the side of the house a porch has been thrown out which can be glassed in as a living-room or sun-parlor during the winter and used as an out-of-door veranda during the summer months. It is so situated that it commands a picturesque view of the rolling country which is on every side. The big chimney, that was formerly the central feature of the house, has given way to two smaller ones, one on either end. The sloping roof has been treated to new shingles, while the exterior has been left practically as it was when built. The addition of green blinds has done much to soften what would otherwise be a rather bare exterior. The house is of the type that shows four rooms in each story. The hallway has a castellated paper in gray and white and a winding staircase with box stairs and simple balusters and posts painted white and a mahogany rail. It is a simple little hall, small, compact, and truly Colonial in its type, with its Dutch armchair showing pierced slats of Chippendale influence. This chair was probably made about the time the house was built which was in the early part of the eighteenth century, the date not being definitely known. [Illustration: The Living Room] At the left of the hallway is the living-room, which is of the simple farmhouse type, lacking a wainscot but containing a simple mopboard and paneled door. The wide boards in the flooring have been retained here as well as in the dining-room,--plain-edged boards that, while laid close together, still show a crack between. This living-room was in the early days used as living-room and bedroom; the space at the farther end, which was used as a closet into which the bed folded during the daytime, is now utilized as a bookcase and makes an interesting feature. The slat-back chair beside the bookcase is the most valuable type of its period, being made about 1750. It shows a turned knob. In chairs of this kind, which were more commonly used during the first part of the eighteenth century, the number of slats varied, the most common having three, while the rarest have five. The gate-legged table is a good example, while the Chippendale chair is unusual, showing very graceful effect, with wonderfully delicate carving, and being of the best design. An equally rare example of a Hepplewhite chair, which is beautifully carved, is contained in the same room. In addition to these are banister and Sheraton chairs, as well as a fine example of girandole, uncommon from the fact that there is a pair exactly alike, and they are seen one on either side of the room. [Illustration: The Dining Room] Opposite the living-room is the dining-room, and here the same correct furnishing has been used. The plain wainscot is of the early type, the lighting has Colonial fixtures, while the chairs are painted Sheraton, being most unusual in that there is a whole set of the same pattern which are all originals. A wonderfully fine example of a mahogany dining-table has been utilized as a serving-table, and the silver is all of the Colonial pattern. Here one finds the low stud, but none of the exposed beams often found in old houses. At the rear of the dining-room is the kitchen which is equipped with modern appliances. Leading from the dining-room at the left is a small room which has been fitted up as a music-room and den combined. It is a most livable room, there being no stiffness or formality in the arrangement of the furniture, and each piece of furniture proves a fitting foil for its mate. The wall hangings are not of the Colonial type; they are plain gray and bring out to advantage the setting of furniture, pictures, and ornaments in the room. In the upper hall is found a fine old carved chest of the Jacobean period. This is considered one of the best examples of chests in existence, being wonderfully carved, of solid oak, and probably used originally as a dower chest. Leading off from the hallway are four large, square chambers, each one correctly furnished with Colonial pieces, many of which are family heirlooms. Here, where modern lighting has been introduced, the Colonial type of fixtures has been carefully maintained. In all the house there is no central light, all the lights being at the side. In the upper story as well as the lower, the wide flooring has been retained, as it was found in such excellent condition it could easily be used. [Illustration] [Illustration: Two Noteworthy Chambers] The steeple-topped andirons in the simple fireplace, the painted mirror, and the old brass candlesticks of one chamber are most appropriately chosen. The Field bed has a canopy of white with ball fringe which is an exact replica of the old-time draping. Rag mats have been used for the floor; they are not the common braided ones but woven rugs which are more suitable. Alcoved recesses are shown on either side of the fireplace; in one of them a six-legged, high chest of drawers with china steps, designed about 1720, shows drop handles, and is ornamented with rare old family china. On the opposite side is a wing or Martha Washington chair of the Sheraton type. The bureau, 1815, is a fine example of the period, while the swell-front, Hepplewhite bureau with the oval, pressed-brass handles and the painted mirror above are in conformity with the general scheme. A banister-backed chair with a rush bottom stands at one side of the bed. Very unusual is the Colonial wall-paper which is found in a second chamber, while eighteenth-century andirons are used in the fireplace which is still of the original size and which shows a plain Colonial mantel. In this chamber, as in the other, there is a very plain wainscot of boards placed horizontally. An Empire bed which has wonderfully beautiful carving is shown in this room, and also a very unusual chair known as a comb-back rocker and dating about 1750. The rugs here are of the Arts and Crafts style, while the bureau and writing-table have cabriole legs and secret drawers, the central one with rising sun or fan carving. Every piece in this house is genuine, for they all are heirlooms or pieces that have been carefully chosen, since the owner is an expert in determining period and correct types. It is a well-known fact that to-day one has to be a careful student of furniture not to be deceived. The popularity of the Colonial period, more especially since the vogue of the modified Colonial house, has led many a fakir to reproduce the lines of the genuine antique. Skilful workmen are employed to manufacture these pieces, and they are able, by imitating worm-holes, dentation, and other distinguishing marks, to put on the market pieces whose genuineness even the antique dealer is puzzled to decide. All through the country the value of antiques is becoming better and better known, so that it is far more difficult to obtain bargains than it was even five years ago. To-day, so great has grown the demand, people who before were unaware of the worth of their heirlooms have been led to overestimate their value and they now ask fabulous sums for pieces hitherto neglected and ignored. CHAPTER XXII THE HOWLAND S. CHANDLER HOUSE When your house is remodeled, be careful what kind of paint you use for both outside and inside finish. A variation from the right tone will mar the whole effect. So much depends on this that one should not copy from houses of to-day but turn back to the style of a century ago, so that in this particular, at least, the house shall correspond with the old Colonial idea. Few, if any, care to use a weathered exterior, that is, unless the scientifically treated shingles that will soon turn a silver gray are employed. There are two reasons why your house should be painted: one is that it preserves the wood and if rightly treated is fireproof; the second is that it gives the finish a far better appearance than it would have without paint. Every house needs paint of some kind to improve its appearance, whether it be oil paint or stain. There are many different brands found to-day, and they are of every conceivable color, so that you have a wide range of choice. It is always safe to use one made by a reliable concern or one hand-mixed, if both white lead and linseed oil are absolutely pure. There is nothing more variable in quality than paint, and even experts are puzzled at times and it is necessary to have a chemical analysis in order to determine between good and bad. For exterior use the proper kind should be a mixture of pure white lead and linseed oil or pure zinc white and linseed oil. Manufacturers, more especially those of white lead paints, will insist that theirs is the only kind to use, and the zinc paint producers will do likewise, but a reliable dealer or architect will inform you correctly. One of the first colors to be used on any house is white,--in all probability there is nothing as durable as this. The reason for it is that the ingredients used have greater wearing qualities than any of the other pigments. There is a complaint that it is apt to yellow with age and become discolored, but in reality it remains unchanged longer than almost any other color. Green blinds secure the best effect, or trellises that relieve the monotony of the white. This the old farmers realized, and it is one of the reasons why it was so much used. If your house is shingled, there are a great many shades of gray that need a white trim, and there is no color that harmonizes with every other as well as this. There are a great many reliable stains for shingles; do not let the painter mix the stain himself, because that carefully prepared by a manufacturer is generally superior both in color and durability. In mixing these stains, both Creosote and oil are used, there being on the market to-day excellent brands of both kinds. The repainting of the country house is a necessary evil that recurs periodically. We tire of one color as we weary of an old dress, and this leads to a different tone of coloring each time. For instance, the white house is changed possibly to a Colonial yellow or a gray, and with its new coat it seems to take on a new lease of life. The fall of the year is the best time for the painting, as the dry October weather is especially suited for good results. During the summer months there are insects flying about and too much dust. By October the outside has had time to cool after the heat and is in good condition for treatment. The time to paint is before the house gets shabby, when the paint is powdery or porous. It can be tested with either a knife or the finger, and if the old paint chips off, soaks up water, or can be rubbed off like a powder with the finger, it no longer protects the wood and needs another coat. With this covering of paint, wood will last practically forever, and as lumber is expensive, it is greater economy to keep your house properly painted. The cost of painting is a serious problem to many house owners and is never alluded to by an agent when selling a house; to the novice it does not occur, so eager is he to secure for himself a new home. At the end of the second year, its freshness is dimmed through exposure to wind and storm, and at the end of the third season, it is shabby and needs a new covering. In attempting to figure the cost, it is necessary to ascertain the square feet on the outside. Any painter has a rule for this, making allowances for errors. Windows and doors are considered as plain surfaces that are to be treated to paint even though only the sills and sides are in need of it. Good exterior paint costs from three to five dollars a gallon, and a painter can put on one hundred square yards in a day for the first coat and seventy-five for the second. This gives the house owner a little idea of what it will cost, although it is best to make a regular bargain with the architect to cover this expense. For interior finish, white is always preferable. It seems to be the proper treatment for any Colonial home. To be sure, if you are planning for a den, a dark color can be used and also a stain for the kitchen part of the house. In searching for a farmhouse to be converted into a country home, Mr. Howland S. Chandler of Boston chanced upon an old house at Needham, Massachusetts, that seemed to meet his requirements. It was a square-framed house, two stories and a half in height, with a kitchen ell at the rear. It was not handsome but quite ordinary in appearance and without any unusual exterior features. It was not even a seventeenth-century house but was built in 1801, and it was in such good condition and the frame was so sound that it hardly deserved the term "old." [Illustration: THE HOWLAND S. CHANDLER HOUSE] The farmhouse fronted the southwest, so that its main rooms were dark, with little sunlight, while the rear was flooded with light and very cheerful. There were delightful views from this part of the house which overlooked a merry, gurgling brook, the mill-pond, and the distant hills. But this idea had not entered the minds of the former owners, who had given little consideration to the subject and with no forethought had inserted only two small windows, one in the kitchen and the other in a bedroom. Evidently their idea was to sacrifice view to arrangement, for to their minds, houses should be built parallel to the street and with the "best room" at the front. [Illustration: THE HOWLAND S. CHANDLER HOUSE--END VIEW] The grounds showed little care, but in remodeling a brick-paved terrace was arranged at the left just outside the original parlor. An old-fashioned garden was planted near the kitchen end, and a trellis enclosed the clothes-yard. The grounds in front of the house have been laid out in well-trimmed lawns, while a brick walk now leads from the sidewalk to the house. A feature of the house is a large, overhanging elm which affords shade and picturesqueness; fresh shrubbery has been attractively planted, and vines trained to clamber over latticed work and the trellised porch which is at the front of the house. Dormer windows have been added to the roof, and the simple little farmhouse has been converted into a most attractive all-the-year-round home. In the process of remodeling, the original house was left unchanged, and additions were depended upon for development. A good-sized porch with brick floor and high-backed settles at the side replaced the unattractive, old-time entrance, while the dormers relieved the long, monotonous roof-line and afforded light to the apartment constructed from the formerly unfinished attic space. Just outside the original parlor, beside the shed space, an addition has been built that runs midway of the shed to the line of the chimney in the parlor, and without a large covered veranda is added. To the kitchen ell an addition of about four feet was made to provide space for a vestibule within the new back door and also to secure extra space at one side of the room so that a window might be inserted. Due attention was paid to the rear, in the matter of windows, and here were laid out the rooms which would be most frequently used. In consequence of the rearrangement, the interior is practically wholly changed. The shed was remodeled into a charming sewing-room that opens at one side on to a veranda, and the new addition was combined with the little bedroom and a small portion from the parlor to secure space for a library. This made possible a doorway to the dining-room and sewing-room, and a broad open space to the living-room. [Illustration: The Sun-Parlor] The old-time parlor showed two deep closets beside the fireplace. One of these was torn out, a window was inserted in the outer wall, and a seat was built beneath it. The other was made into an opening into the library. This arrangement secured additional light and at the same time permitted a glimpse of the picturesque rear view. In the dining-room several alterations were made, resulting in a complete change in shape and size. Oblique walls replace the two rear corners, one containing the doorway leading to the library, and the other affording entrance and furnishing some space for the china closet which was inserted between the dining-room and the kitchen. The single window on the southeast was replaced by a semi-octagonal bow recess. This was fitted with small lights of glass and affords space for the grouping of many plants and incidentally adds a touch of distinct picturesqueness. The kitchen received its share of consideration during the process of remodeling, resulting in the substitution of a pleasant, convenient apartment in place of the conspicuous, ill-lighted, original one. There was added at the right of the vestibule a built-in refrigerator, and about the side walls of the room newly built-in cupboards were grouped. Two important changes in the body of the house consisted in the enlargement of the cellar, made necessary by the greater space required for the modern heating apparatus, and in the substitution of the original, small-paned type of window for the two panes which had been inserted to take the place of the old ones. [Illustration: The Hall] The entrance hall at the front of the house is a small apartment hung with landscape paper of the Colonial period; a staircase with one landing and a half turn in its flight, showing white balusters and mahogany top, leads to the second story. In the lighting, the Colonial idea is attained by the use of a lantern, while under the stairs is a closet opened by a brass door-pull. [Illustration: The Living Room] At the left is the living-room, with dull red hangings and a white wainscot that provides a fitting background for the wonderful old mahogany found in this room. There are some rare Dutch chairs sometimes known as Queen Anne from the opening that is found on either side of the central slat, designed about 1710, and the earliest of that design. There is a refreshing simplicity and a dignified air to this room, brought about in part by the simple Colonial fireplace with its steeple-topped andirons, and the well-spaced windows that let plenty of sunlight into the apartment. On the opposite side of the room is the dining-room which is finished with tapestry hanging in dark green, brown, and yellow, with a design of pine cones and needles that contrasts prettily with the white wainscot. A slight reduction in the height of the window casing affords an opportunity to carry the wall-paper and moldings across the windows and doors, thus avoiding the cramped effect of too high window arrangement. The original floor has been replaced by a new one, and a cheerful atmosphere has been given to the room by opening a semicircular bay up for a small conservatory which can be closed or opened at pleasure by the use of glass doors. [Illustration: The Den] The library has been finished in dark brown with low bookcases extending around part of the room, corresponding in color with the woodwork. The hangings are tan color, and the furniture is partly Colonial and partly modern, to meet the demands of a den. This is one of the pleasantest rooms in the house, having a delightful outlook; combined with the sewing-room and living-room opening from it, it makes a charming and conveniently arranged interior. [Illustration: The Kitchen] The kitchen at the rear of the house has been altered with the idea of saving steps. This is shown in the numberless closets at the right, for flour barrel and other supplies. At the left is the kitchen cupboard, while the china is in the built-in closet above and the groceries in the drawers below. The sink has a shelf underneath to hold the dishpan and drainer. The whole color tone, including the beamed ceiling, is a dark stain with lighter wall finish. This house is an interesting example of successful and artistic remodeling, the interior and exterior being in harmony and giving the result of a comfortable and attractive home which was secured at much less cost than if an entirely new house had been built. * * * * * The houses described in this book cover but the merest fraction of the homes and summer places evolved from old-fashioned farmhouses. They are scattered broadcast through New England, sometimes isolated on roads which still retain their country atmosphere, sometimes surrounded by the town which has outgrown its early limits, and sometimes the center of a large estate. Each has its individual charm, its special beauties, but wherever found these remodeled farmhouses testify to the stanchness of early American workmanship and to the appreciation of modern Americans for their forefathers' handiwork. Certainly many a one of the latter "builded better than he knew." INDEX Adams family, 128. Hannah, 122. Adden, W. P., 180. Adden house, W. P., 180-186. age, 181. chimney, 182-183. hardware, 184, 185. location, 180. porches, 183-184. remodeling, 182-186. type, 181. Andirons, 11, 12, 68, 125, 194, 208-210, 216, 217, 219, 227, 240, 241, 252. Hessian, 210. Arches, 81, 119. Attics, 6, 164, 186, 224, 225, 230. Balusters, 114-115. Barns, 2, 25, 65-70, 137, 191, 196-197. Barnard house, George E., 169-176. breakfast-room, 173. color scheme, 175. den, 172. dining-room, 174. location, 169. picture effect, 170, 174. remodeling, 170-174. Bathrooms, 14, 25, 35, 47, 97, 202, 204, 218. Beams, 7, 20, 29, 34, 36, 46, 47, 55, 58, 66, 75, 94, 102, 122, 130, 131, 151, 185, 197, 203, 215. Bedrooms, 13, 24, 25, 26, 36, 47, 59, 83, 108, 121, 122, 133, 148, 164, 175, 195, 206, 218, 230, 239. Billiard-room, 68. Blinds, 79, 237. inside, 80. paneled, 75. slat, 45, 75. solid, 45, 75. Venetian, 56. Boston, Massachusetts, 18, 42, 77, 122, 151. Boulder Farm, 76-83. arch, 81. history, 76-77. improvements, 78-79. location, 76, 78. parlor, 80. Bradford, Governor, 206. Breakfast-rooms, 44, 47, 133, 173-174. Brett house, Franklin, 201-207. age, 201. dining-room, 206. floors, 202. heating, 204. living-room, 205. location, 201. paneling, 207. repairs, 203. type, 202. Bricks, 126, 132. Brown, Doctor, 7. Brown, Davenport, 116. Brown house, Davenport, 116-123. age, 116. bedroom, 122. dining-room, 120. furnishings, 119, 120, 121, 122. grounds, 122-123. living-room, 119. location, 116. nursery, 121. porches, 116, 117, 118. remodeling, 116-122. type, 116. Brown, Deacon Philip, 76, 77. Burroughs, George, 53. Cape Cod, 33, 105. Cataumet, Massachusetts, 158. Ceilings, beamed, 12, 21, 25, 45, 55, 96, 152, 153, 162, 205-206, 225, 253. vaulted, 144. Cellars, 7, 30, 98, 251. Chambers, see BEDROOMS. Chandler house, Howard S., 247-253. age, 247. dining-room, 250, 252. grounds, 248. kitchen, 253. library, 252. living-room, 251. location, 247. remodeling, 247-253. type, 247. views, 247, 249, 250. Charles River, Massachusetts, 41. Chimneys, 7, 9, 18, 19, 31, 43, 50, 53, 69-70, 105, 116, 125, 144, 182-183, 203, 217, 237, 249. Clapboards, 7, 40-41, 106. Closets, 10, 23, 52, 55, 95, 96, 109, 132, 142, 148, 205, 218, 220-222, 226, 229, 250, 251, 253. chimney, 57, 218, 222, 226. china, 35, 46, 57, 68, 120, 153, 172, 185, 197, 220, 221, 250. corner, 23, 46, 163, 206, 220-221. linen, 222. nightcap, 23, 107. secret, 23, 207, 221. wainscot, 221, 222. Concord, New Hampshire, 77. Cottages, fishermen's, 28. "flecked," 33, 105. Cupboards, see CLOSETS. Curtis, Frederick H., 42. Curtis house, Frederick H., 42-48. age, 42. furnishings, 48. hardware, 48. heating, 48. lighting, 48. lines of, 43-44. location, 41-42. new wing, 44. remodeling, 43-48. stairway, 45. veranda, 47. Danvers, Massachusetts, 236. Dens, 12, 46, 58, 83, 104, 121, 131, 173, 193, 216. Dining-rooms, 10, 11, 23, 34, 46, 56-57, 68, 81-82, 95, 96, 103, 107, 120, 133, 142, 152, 162, 174, 185, 206, 217, 227, 238, 250, 252. Doors, 6, 10, 32, 45, 71-73, 180. batten, 72, 122. French, 98, 107, 133. front, 18, 54, 71, 92, 106, 150, 161, 178, 192, 202. glass, 12, 34, 47, 58, 68, 225, 252. panel, 72. secret, 45. Door-frames, 54, 73, 117, 157. Door lights, bull's-eye, 72, 92. fanlight, 117, 192, 225. side, 73, 117. top, 73. transom, 72. Dover, Massachusetts, 42, 65, 211. Drainage, 17. Drawing-room, 104. Dudley, Harry, 77. Duxbury, Massachusetts, 88, 89. Ells, 8, 9, 43, 44, 51, 53, 66, 78, 83, 91, 98, 116, 134, 139, 145, 148, 150, 161, 181, 212, 217, 249. brick, 58. Everett, Edward, 151. Farmhouses, architectural treatment, 71, 100, 138, 146. axis, 50-51, 116. Colonial, 49, 223. construction, 49-51, 116, 147, 148. cottages, 28, 29. examination, 29-33. frame, 7, 106. Georgian, 51, 75, 76, 83, 116. heating, 48, 59, 62-65, 102, 204. individuality, 84-88, 146, 187. lighting, 48, 102, 103, 109, 192, 196, 251. lines, 2, 3, 8, 15, 28, 29, 38, 147. location, 8, 16, 17, 18, 33, 41-42, 53, 62, 65, 66, 76, 78, 88-89, 105, 116, 127, 136, 138, 143, 149, 158, 169, 180, 190, 201, 212, 223, 236, 247. painting, 242-247. remodeling, 8, 9-14, 19-26, 34-36, 43-48, 52, 54-60, 66-70, 78-83, 90-99, 101-104, 105-108, 111-123, 130-134, 139-145, 147, 150-154, 159-164, 170-174, 182-186, 201-207, 214-219, 223-230, 236-240, 247-253. Fireback, 126. Fireplace fittings, 68, 82, 125, 126, 131, 208, 209, 210-211, 216, 217. Fireplaces, 3, 11, 13, 22, 24, 31, 35, 46, 50, 55, 56, 58, 62, 67, 68, 80, 82, 95, 107, 120, 121, 122, 124-127, 130, 142, 143, 144, 153, 157, 162, 175, 185, 188, 193, 205, 218, 227, 230, 240, 250, 252. Fences, 106, 123, 137, 140, 144, 159, 160. Flagstones, 75, 167, 224. Fletcher, Grace, 77. Floors, 21, 30, 32, 35, 46, 55, 82, 114, 132, 134, 142, 144, 198-200, 228, 237, 240, 252. brick, 44, 118. tiled, 117, 212, 216. Flower-boxes, 118, 134, 191. French and Indian War, 23. Frieze, 22, 24, 25, 216. Fuller, Mrs. Genevieve, 65. Furnaces, 65. Furniture, 22, 56, 59, 80, 81, 83, 108, 118, 119, 120, 121, 132, 133, 139, 152, 163, 184, 194, 196, 205, 206, 215, 219, 231-235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 251, 252. Adams, 56. Chippendale, 13, 134, 232, 238. Empire, 80, 120, 164, 175, 234, 235, 241. Field, 121, 196, 240. Hepplewhite, 57, 134, 206, 232, 238, 240. home-made, 26. Jacobean, 239. Mission, 227, 228. old-fashioned, 26, 37, 46, 59, 68, 96, 108, 121, 131, 143, 153, 172, 173, 193, 195, 230, 235, 239. Queen Anne, 120, 251. Sheraton, 11, 47, 48, 119, 122, 134, 153, 233, 238, 239, 240. white enamel, 48. willow, 9, 46, 163, 171, 176. Gables, 38, 40, 41, 66. Gage, Doctor Homer, 5. Gardens, 106, 123, 129, 166-168, 170. old-fashioned, 6, 19, 98, 140, 143, 160, 184, 195, 213, 248. water, 9, 19, 213. Georgetown, Massachusetts, 18. Girandoles, 120, 238. Gloucester, Massachusetts, 149. Green Meadows, 53-60. age, 53. alterations, 54-60. dining-room, 57. door, 54. heating, 59. living-room, 55. location, 53. reception-room, 56. type, 53. wing, 58. Grills, 60, 64. Grounds, 9, 18, 89, 118, 122, 123, 129, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 150, 159, 167-168, 182, 206, 213, 214, 224, 248. Hall, George D., 211. house, see LONE TREE FARM. Hallways, 10, 23, 45, 50, 51, 54, 92, 96, 97, 118, 151, 163, 171, 184, 192, 204, 205, 215, 237, 251. Hangings, 13, 22, 55, 56, 96, 97, 108, 109, 119, 120, 134, 163, 172, 173, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 205, 207, 218, 227, 239, 251, 252. Hardware, 12, 48, 55, 177-180. Harvey, Governor Matthew, 77. Heating, by fireplaces, 62. hot-air, 48, 59, 64. hot-water, 63, 64, 204. steam, 63, 64. stoves, 63. Hinges, H, 180, 184, 227. H and L, 55, 177, 179, 180, 184, 185. strap, 12. Hollis, Maine, 190. Hopkins house, Walter Scott, 223-230. age, 223. attic, 230. closets, 226, 227, 229. dining-room, 227, 228. grounds, 224, 225. hardware, 227, 229. lighting, 227. living-rooms, 224, 226, 227. location, 223 parlor, 229. remodeling, 223-230. type, 223. Hopkinton, New Hampshire, 76. Howard, Philip B., 42. Hunt, William H., 153. Ingraham, George Hunt, 8. Inches, Doctor Charles E., 127. Inches house, Charles E., 127-135. age, 127. den, 131. dining-room, 133. furnishings, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135. gardens, 129. grounds, 129, 134, 135. living-room, 132. location, 127. remodeling, 130-134. swimming-pool, 129. value, 128. whipping-tree, 128. Ipswich, Massachusetts, 169. Iristhorpe, 6-14. age, 6. architectural treatment, 13. guest house, 14. iris motive, 9. lines, 8, 14. location, 6. remodeling, 8-13. Jewett house, see LIMOVODY. Josephine, Empress, 235. Kelly, William, 77. Killam and Hopkins (Architects), 64. Kimball, Mrs. William Otis, 20. Kitchens, 10, 36, 44, 50, 95, 98, 108, 130, 148, 204, 239, 250, 253. Kittredge, Mabel L., 33. Kittredge house, 33-37. chimney, 36, 37. furnishings, 37. lines, 34. location, 33. remodeling, 34-36. size, 33. Knockers, 178. Lafayette, General, 153. Latches, 12, 48, 55, 177, 179, 184, 185. Lavatories, 10, 185. Lean-to, Dutch, 18. Libraries, 10, 12, 22, 46, 104, 252. Lighting, 103. candles, 48, 109. electric, 48. lamps, 48, 109. lanterns, 192, 196, 251. Limovady, 18-27. age, 18. bedrooms, 25, 26. lines, 20. location, 18. lounge room, 25. Missionary room, 24. "priest hole," 23. remodeling, 19-26. studio, 24. Lincoln, Roland C., 149. Mrs. Roland C., 152. Little Orchard, 149-154. age, 150. china, 152. fireplace, 153. furnishings, 152, 153. location, 149. name, 152. remodeling, 150-154. staircase, 151. Living-rooms, 10, 11, 21, 22, 34, 45, 55, 58, 67, 81, 94, 95, 103, 107, 119, 132, 153, 184, 194, 203, 204, 205, 214, 215, 226, 237, 251. outdoor, 8, 9, 12, 21, 44, 68, 79, 118, 139, 142, 144, 151, 171, 224. Loeffler, Charles Martin, 137, 138, 142, 144. Loeffler house, 136-146. atmosphere, 141, 145. grounds, 140, 141. location, 136, 138, 143. music room, 144. remodeling, 139-144. Loggia, 213. Londonderry, New Hampshire, 76, 77. Lone Tree Farm, 211-219. age, 211. dining-room, 217. furnishings, 215-219. grounds, 214. living-room, 215. location, 212. sitting-room, 218. smoke-house, 214, 215. remodeling, 214-219. vistas, 216, 217. wing, 212. Magnolia, Massachusetts, 149. Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, 149. Mantels, 157, 216, 217, 241. Medfield, Massachusetts, 116, 127. Morning-rooms, 10, 12, 44, 175, 204, 205. Music-rooms, 144, 196, 239. Nawn Farm, 65-70. alterations, 66-70. chimney, 70. dining-room, 68. living-room, 67. location, 65, 66. windows, 66, 70. Needham, Massachusetts, 247. Newburyport, Massachusetts, 21. New York City, 105. North Duxbury, Massachusetts, 201. Nurseries, 121, 186. Office, 230. Out-buildings, 7, 91, 99, 138. Ovens, brick, 11, 12, 82, 127, 131, 181, 217, 229. Dutch, 24. Overmantel, 22. Paint, 9, 21, 42, 45, 134, 140, 161, 191, 202, 203, 214, 224, 243-247. Paneling, 12, 23, 55, 58, 94, 95, 120, 130, 154, 162, 207, 217, 219, 221, 222, 226. Japanese, 13. Parlors, 50, 80, 105, 163, 229, 250. sun, 216, 236. Partitions, 148. removal of, 20, 34, 46, 52, 54, 82, 102, 103, 203, 204. Pergolas, 123, 140, 203, 207. Pewter, 46, 57, 131. Piazza, see PORCHES. Plate-rail, 107. Porch columns, 44, 73, 78, 79, 92, 111, 112, 114, 117, 224. Porches, 3, 34, 40, 42, 47, 79, 93, 103, 106, 111-116, 117, 138, 139, 150, 161, 170, 183, 184, 192, 202, 212, 213, 224, 236, 249. Colonial, 8, 44, 92, 204, 214. Georgian, 73, 78, 111, 112. sleeping, 40, 44, 47, 59, 67, 79, 110, 115, 117, 140, 213, 214. types of, 112. Porch railings, 114. Portico, 117. Putnam, John Pickering, 122. Quillcote, 190-197. barn, 196, 197. china, 195, 196. furnishings, 193, 194, 196. location, 190. type, 190. wall-papers, 193, 194. Quincy, Massachusetts, 128. Radiators, 64. Reading, Massachusetts, 180, 223. Reception-rooms, 56, 104, 153, 173, 174. Registers, 59. Revolution, American, 6, 29, 50, 156. French, 234. Roofs, 19, 29, 31, 34, 38-40, 43, 44, 66, 91, 113, 148, 190, 224, 226. flat, 44. gambrel, 38, 149, 181. hipped, 39. overhang, 41, 75. pitched (gable), 6, 38, 44, 91, 105, 139, 202, 237. Rugs, Arts and Crafts, 24. fur, 194. modern, 217. Oriental, 55, 200, 201, 205, 227. rag, 46, 48, 59, 108, 134, 162, 192, 200, 201, 205, 240. Salem, Massachusetts, 150, 235. Saugus, Massachusetts, 126. Screen, Japanese, 13. Servants' rooms, 11, 43, 47, 83, 108, 134, 225. Service departments, 10, 11, 43, 59, 69, 78, 103, 116, 121, 171, 175, 191, 206. Serving-room, 249. Shaw, Mrs. Josephine Hartwell, 89, 98. Shingles, 41, 91, 106, 149, 243, 245. Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, 6, 134, 149. Shrubbery, 167, 168, 213, 224, 248. Shutters, see BLINDS. Sill, 30. Sitting-room, 218. Sleeping-porches, see PORCHES. Smith, Nora, 195. South Dennis, Massachusetts, 105. South Yarmouth, Massachusetts, 33, 105. Spencer, Robert, 105. Spencer house, 105-109. fence, 106. furniture, 108, 109. lighting, 109. location, 105. new wing, 105, 106. windows, 106. Staircases, 4, 10, 23, 45, 50, 51, 68, 80, 93, 107, 118, 132, 136, 142, 151, 153, 184, 192, 214, 251. Stoves, 63. Stud, 30, 66, 106, 117. low, 13, 44, 52, 56, 102, 152, 154, 205, 239. Three Acres, 88-99. living-room, 95. location, 88, 89. restoration, 90-99. studio, 98. type, 91. vistas, 96. windows, 92, 97. Tiles, 125. "Tired of Work" (picture), 153. Trees, 4, 15, 18, 19, 42, 78, 88, 91, 105, 123, 127, 128, 129, 134, 140, 141, 144, 150, 167, 212, 213, 236, 248. Verandas, see PORCHES. Wainscot, 22, 35, 46, 55, 57, 80, 81, 118, 120, 130, 143, 155-157, 163, 173, 192, 221, 226, 238, 241, 251, 252. Wakefield, F. M., 42. Walls, 29, 41, 46, 47, 67, 69, 83, 96, 130, 133, 148, 155-157, 173, 215. burlap, 23, 45. exterior, 40, 41. grass-cloth, 47, 67, 143. painted, 21, 24, 25, 35, 68. papered, 23, 45, 48, 55, 56, 57, 59, 69, 81, 83, 119, 122, 163, 227, 228. plastered, 36, 107, 156. sheathed, 144, 155. stone, 128, 140, 149, 182, 212, 224. tapestry, 252. Wall-papers, 3, 20, 23, 48, 80, 97, 132, 188-190. castellated, 237. Colonial, 46, 82, 172, 184, 188, 196, 241. foliage, 81. Georgian, 55. Japanese, 97. landscape, 21, 57, 59, 119, 164, 175, 193, 194, 251. Morris, 151, 152. Wall-papers, Mother Goose, 121. Walpole, Massachusetts, 127. Water supply, 17, 204. Webster, Daniel, 77. White house (Salem), 150. Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 190, 197. Willowdale, 158-165. additions, 161. age, 158. dining-room, 162. garden, 160. lines, 159. location, 158. parlor, 163. tree, 162. woodwork, 165. Window casings, 74. muntins, 73, 74. Windows, 6, 9, 34, 35, 52, 58, 66, 73, 78, 102, 119, 141, 148, 154, 218, 226. bay, 92, 224, 250, 252. casement, 74, 93, 94, 97, 193. dormer, 8, 34, 36, 40, 54, 92, 97, 106, 115, 154, 161, 171, 213, 224, 248. eyebrow, 212. French, 102, 143, 145, 163, 172, 174, 206. gable, 104. oval, 44, 112. small-paned, 24, 34, 74, 132, 228, 236, 251. triple, 45, 69, 82, 107. Window-seats, 36, 58, 67, 119, 153, 194, 216, 218, 250. Wings, see ELLS. Wood, cypress, 41. gum, 67. hemlock, 98. oak, 155, 199, 200. fumed, 68. swamp, 21, 125. pine, hard, 200. North Carolina, 68, 199. pumpkin, 4, 158. swamp, 23. white, 2, 7, 41, 156. Woodwork, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 22, 23, 24, 25, 35, 45, 46, 48, 55, 56, 58, 59, 68, 80, 82, 95, 107, 120, 121, 122, 131, 142, 155-158, 165, 184, 192, 215, 219, 226, 227, 228. Worcester, Massachusetts, 5. Wren, Sir Christopher, 146. Wright, Henry W., 236. Wright house, 236-241. furniture, 237-241. lighting, 238, 240. location, 236. remodeling, 236-240. type, 236, 237. 
30754	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 30754-h.htm or 30754-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h/30754-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30754/30754-h.zip) Volumes II and III are available in the Project Gutenberg Library: Volume II--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30755 Volume III--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30756 Volume III contains the index for all three volumes. The index in the html version of Volume III has links to the the other two volumes. Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are listed at the end of the text. A number following a letter, such as d3, was printed as a subscript in the original. The Complete Works of John Ruskin Volume VII STONES OF VENICE VOLUME I [Illustration: VENICE. FROM A PAINTING BY J. M. W. TURNER.] Library Edition The Complete Works of John Ruskin STONES OF VENICE VOLUMES I-II National Library Association New York Chicago THE STONES OF VENICE VOLUME I. THE FOUNDATIONS PREFACE. In the course of arranging the following essay, I put many things aside in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things which I shall now put aside altogether, and pass by; for when a book has been advertised a year and a half, it seems best to present it with as little preface as possible. Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to know, that, when I planned the work, I had materials by me, collected at different times of sojourn in Venice during the last seventeen years, which it seemed to me might be arranged with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of value as illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring, however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of chronology, I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849, not doubting but that the dates of the principal edifices of the ancient city were either ascertained, or ascertainable without extraordinary research. To my consternation, I found that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed within a century as to the date of the building of the façades of the Ducal Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice of the early city, except that at some time or other it had been fitted up for somebody's reception, and been thereupon fresh painted. Every date in question was determinable only by internal evidence, and it became necessary for me to examine not only every one of the older palaces, stone by stone, but every fragment throughout the city which afforded any clue to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could, and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the only existing account of the details of early Venetian architecture on which dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I do not care to point out the deficiencies of other works on this subject; the reader will find, if he examines them, either that the buildings to which I shall specially direct his attention have been hitherto undescribed, or else that there are great discrepancies between previous descriptions and mine: for which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based on personal examination and measurement of it, and that my taking the pains so to examine what I had to describe, was a subject of grave surprise to my Italian friends. The work of the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to be distinguished with respect; it is clear in arrangement, and full of useful, though vague, information; and I have found cause to adopt, in great measure, its views of the chronological succession of the edifices of Venice. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel with it on other grounds, but not without expression of gratitude for the assistance it has given me. Fontana's "Fabbriche di Venezia" is also historically valuable, but does not attempt to give architectural detail. Cicognara, as is now generally known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve mention. Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything, however simple. Zoologists often disagree in their descriptions of the curve of a shell, or the plumage of a bird, though they may lay their specimen on the table, and examine it at their leisure; how much greater becomes the likelihood of error in the description of things which must be in many parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable circumstances of light and shade; and of which many of the distinctive features have been worn away by time. I believe few people have any idea of the cost of truth in these things; of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure of the simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate observations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of reconcilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am ashamed of the number of times in which I have had to say, in the following pages, "I am not sure," and I claim for them no authority, as if they were thoroughly sifted from error, even in what they more confidently state. Only, as far as my time, and strength, and mind served me, I have endeavored down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the truth. Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging difficulties, peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not sustained essential change in one or more of its most important features. By far the greater number present examples of three or four different styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally associated; and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of which nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of identity, exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernized portions: the Will of the old building asserted through them all, stubbornly, though vainly, expressive; superseded by codicils, and falsified by misinterpretation; yet animating what would otherwise be a mere group of fantastic masque, as embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the mineralogist, the epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance modelled on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark's itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is an epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the tenth to the nineteenth century. Its crypt, and the line of low arches which support the screen, are apparently the earliest portions; the lower stories of the main fabric are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later Gothic interpolations; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed Venetian Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on the projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de Leoni, is of far finer, and probably earlier workmanship than all the rest. The southern range of pinnacles is again inferior to the northern and western, and visibly of later date. Then the screen, which most writers have described as part of the original fabric, bears its date inscribed on its architrave, 1394, and with it are associated a multitude of small screens, balustrades, decorations of the interior building, and probably the rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings of the upper arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance: and, finally, the figures which carry the waterspouts on the north side--utterly barbarous seventeenth or eighteenth century work--connect the whole with the plastered restorations of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in Venice have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those of the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year's labor would probably be insufficient altogether to disentangle and define them. I therefore gave up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly clear chronological view of the early architecture; but the dates necessary to the main purposes of the book the reader will find well established; and of the evidence brought forward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge. Doubtful estimates are never made grounds of argument; and the accuracy of the account of the buildings themselves, for which alone I pledge myself, is of course entirely independent of them. In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the chapters on construction involve questions so difficult and so general, that I cannot hope that every expression referring to them will be found free from error: and as the conclusions to which I have endeavored to lead the reader are thrown into a form the validity of which depends on that of each successive step, it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness could be detected in one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings were valueless. The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so; the method of proof used in the following essay being only one out of many which were in my choice, adopted because it seemed to me the shortest and simplest, not as being the strongest. In many cases, the conclusions are those which men of quick feeling would arrive at instinctively; and I then sought to discover the reasons of what so strongly recommended itself as truth. Though these reasons could every one of them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same. I should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-grounded defence; and endeavor to repair my error by a better one. I have not, however, written carelessly; nor should I in any wise have expressed doubt of the security of the following argument, but that it is physically impossible for me, being engaged quite as much with mountains, and clouds, and trees, and criticism of painting, as with architecture, to verify, as I should desire, the expression of every sentence bearing upon empirical and technical matters. Life is not long enough; nor does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should desire, the separate studies which general criticism continually forces me to undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he will find the certainty of every statement I permit myself to make, increase with its importance; and that, for the security of the final conclusions of the following essay, as well as for the resolute veracity of its account of whatever facts have come under my own immediate cognizance, I will pledge myself to the uttermost. It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of the work (of which account is given in the First Chapter), that I should establish some canons of judgment, which the general reader should thoroughly understand, and, if it pleased him, accept, before we took cognizance, together, of any architecture whatsoever. It has taken me more time and trouble to do this than I expected; but, if I have succeeded, the thing done will be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called "the Foundations," and some account of the connection of Venetian architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have filled the present volume. The second will, I hope, contain all I have to say about Venice itself. It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded details to the size of an octavo volume,--I do not say impossible, but inexpedient; requiring infinite pains on the part of the engraver, with no result except farther pains to the beholder. And as, on the other hand, folio books are not easy reading, I determined to separate the text and the unreducible plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the illustrations absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in the detached work, such additional text as has special reference to the larger illustrations. A considerable number of these larger plates were at first intended to be executed in tinted lithography; but, finding the result unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the principal subjects for mezzotinting,--a change of method requiring two new drawings to be made of every subject; one a carefully penned outline for the etcher, and then a finished drawing upon the etching. This work does not proceed fast, while I am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them. For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have used any kind of engraving which seemed suited to the subjects--line and mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs and woodcuts, at considerable loss of uniformity in the appearance of the volume, but, I hope, with advantage, in rendering the character of the architecture it describes. And both in the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at clear intelligibility; that any one, however little versed in the subject, might be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not made all the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least learned, and easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely to take interest in the matter at all. There are few passages which even require so much as an acquaintance with the elements of Euclid, and these may be missed, without harm to the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may appear mysterious; and the architectural terms necessarily employed (which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in a note; so that, though I may often be found trite or tedious, I trust that I shall not be obscure. I am especially anxious to rid this essay of ambiguity, because I want to gain the ear of all kinds of persons. Every man has, at some time of his life, personal interest in architecture. He has influence on the design of some public building; or he has to buy, or build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or statues: but, in architecture, all must in some way commit themselves; they _must_ do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how to turn it to account. Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and cottages, and small row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built, and lived in, however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly intended that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our knowledge, in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not to be left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors. There is not, indeed, anything in the following essay bearing on the special forms and needs of modern buildings; but the principles it inculcates are universal; and they are illustrated from the remains of a city which should surely be interesting to the men of London, as affording the richest existing examples of architecture raised by a mercantile community, for civil uses, and domestic magnificence. DENMARK HILL, _February_, 1851. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface, iii CHAPTER I. The Quarry, 1 CHAPTER II. The Virtues of Architecture, 36 CHAPTER III. The Six Divisions of Architecture, 47 CHAPTER IV. The Wall Base, 52 CHAPTER V. The Wall Veil, 58 CHAPTER VI. The Wall Cornice, 63 CHAPTER VII. The Pier Base, 71 CHAPTER VIII. The Shaft, 84 CHAPTER IX. The Capital, 105 CHAPTER X. The Arch Line, 122 CHAPTER XI. The Arch Masonry, 132 CHAPTER XII. The Arch Load, 144 CHAPTER XIII. The Roof, 148 CHAPTER XIV. The Roof Cornice, 155 CHAPTER XV. The Buttress, 166 CHAPTER XVI. Form of Aperture, 174 CHAPTER XVII. Filling of Aperture, 183 CHAPTER XVIII. Protection of Aperture, 195 CHAPTER XIX. Superimposition, 200 CHAPTER XX. The Material of Ornament, 211 CHAPTER XXI. Treatment of Ornament, 236 CHAPTER XXII. The Angle, 259 CHAPTER XXIII. The Edge and Fillet, 267 CHAPTER XXIV. The Roll and Recess, 276 CHAPTER XXV. The Base, 281 CHAPTER XXVI. The Wall Veil and Shaft, 294 CHAPTER XXVII. The Cornice and Capital, 305 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Archivolt and Aperture, 333 CHAPTER XXIX. The Roof, 343 CHAPTER XXX. The Vestibule, 349 * * * * * APPENDIX. 1. Foundation of Venice, 359 2. Power of the Doges, 360 3. Serrar del Consiglio, 360 4. S. Pietro di Castello, 361 5. Papal Power in Venice, 362 6. Renaissance Ornament, 369 7. Varieties of the Orders, 370 8. The Northern Energy, 371 9. Wooden Churches of the North, 381 10. Church of Alexandria, 381 11. Renaissance Landscape, 381 12. Romanist Modern Art, 384 13. Mr. Fergusson's System, 388 14. Divisions of Humanity, 394 15. Instinctive Judgments, 399 16. Strength of Shafts, 402 17. Answer to Mr. Garbett, 403 18. Early English Capitals, 411 19. Tombs near St. Anastasia, 412 20. Shafts of the Ducal Palace, 413 21. Ancient Representations of Water, 417 22. Arabian Ornamentation, 429 23. Varieties of Chamfer, 429 24. Renaissance Bases, 431 25. Romanist Decoration of Bases, 432 LIST OF PLATES. Facing Page Plate 1. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan and Ca' Dario, 13 " 2. Plans of Piers, 100 " 3. Arch Masonry, 134 " 4. Arch Masonry, 137 " 5. Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como, 141 " 6. Types of Towers, 207 " 7. Abstracts Lines, 222 " 8. Decorations by Disks, Ca' Badoari, 241 " 9. Edge Decoration, 268 " 10. Profiles of Bases, 283 " 11. Plans of Bases, 288 " 12. Decorations of Bases, 289 " 13. Wall Veil Decorations, 295 " 14. Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace, 298 " 15. Cornice Profiles, 306 " 16. Cornice Decorations, 311 " 17. Capitals--Concave, 323 " 18. Capitals--Convex, 327 " 19. Archivolt Decoration, Verona, 333 " 20. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan, 369 " 21. Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca, 378 THE STONES OF VENICE. CHAPTER I. THE QUARRY. § I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction. The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God." Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow. I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE. § II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence. § III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in the form of her government, or altogether, as assuredly in great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed. The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the Rialto,[1] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six[2] years were passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired. § IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the doge on the other. Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and noblest man whom they could find among them,[5] called their Doge or Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body. This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements, and the circumstances which determined her character and position among European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated, we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo. § V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno. I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418;[6] the _visible_ commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk: in the same year was established the Inquisition of State,[7] and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the diminution of her internal strength. § VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their call was heard. § VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress, impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant with Death.[9] § VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion. I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten; and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement of her own private interests, at once broke her faith[10] and betrayed her religion. § IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions, and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church,[11] inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice,[12] who now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his tomb. § X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual religion characterising the lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with several characteristics of the temper of our present English legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character. § XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in the portico of St. Mark's,[13] the central expression in most men's thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it. To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.[14] The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed theirs to avoid. § XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only: from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies.[15] § XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connexion with the history of the state. 1st. Receive the witness of Painting. It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice as far back as 1418. Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini, and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connexion between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who surround her. Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion of Venice had expired. § XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice was in her wars, not in her worship. The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or portraiture. The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century had taken away the religious heart of Venice. § XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must here give a general idea of its heads. Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,-- "Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees y passent à travers et y ay ven navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes toutes painctes; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de là, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais vene et qui plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus sollempnellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres faultes, si je croy que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz portent au service de l'Eglise."[16] [Illustration: Plate I. Wall-Veil-Decoration. CA'TREVISAN CA'DARIO.] § XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons. Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their fronts." On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces which so struck the French ambassador.[17] He was right in his notice of the distinction. There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the connexion of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of Europe, from its origin forwards. § XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem. § XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualisation of both. § XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex: those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English, Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.[18] § XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and the Ægean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.[19] But rough wakening was ordained for it. § XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change. § XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth; and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and borrowed art was organising itself into strength and consistency. The reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely nominal extent. § XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden paralysis. § XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.[20] The Arab banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is VENICE. The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world. § XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them. § XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman; mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of sacred symbols. The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery, and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement. § XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof. These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave pillars, which were themselves also of wood.[21] Now, these uprights were necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and civilisation increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft. In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia. § XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers. Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic superstitions. § XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualisation of Northern work under its influence. The noblest buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque) Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the Arab. § XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government; while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form, was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the islands. § XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,[22] it being quite immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever other parts of the world they were employed. To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces. § XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes, not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the mosque for Christian churches. I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second division of the following essay. § XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San Giacopo dell'Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the _distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third division of the essay. § XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic) style of the Venetian work is centralised by the date 1180, and is transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century; that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has since practised. § XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which brought about the Reformation. § XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has been a consequence of this error. The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio. § XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of George II. § XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation. Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through them. Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the grave. § XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may be immediately useful in fixing in the readers mind the epoch above indicated for the commencement of decline. § XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow. This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling respecting Venetian art. "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularise the defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy."[24] It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's mortality. § XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs. § XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative by translation. "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore antico che senza ombra d'imitazione traspare da tutta l'opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s'alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novità di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un fregio il più gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l'_arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c. There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work, and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico) "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts attained by ministry of the chisel." To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side. § XLIII. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and I do not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much the zecchin? I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs. But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from Venice for forgery_ in 1487.[25] § XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter; but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting piece of evidence, which I promised. The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of referring,--the masonry of the palace itself. § XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."[26] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the reader. § XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade, eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration. Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th, from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33rd, from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th, which is very nobly designed. § XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal) with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples (perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima in Deo." § XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone._ Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light He gave; so that in the issue, when that light opened into the Reformation, on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted? § XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's: "Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty, and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first, and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? Shall we not rather find that Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of Protestantism from its side?[27] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it." FOOTNOTES: [1] Appendix 1, "Foundation of Venice." [2] Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges." [3] Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v. [4] Appendix 3, "Serrar del Consiglio." [5] "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino._) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed. [6] Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii. [7] Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment. [8] Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their territories. [9] The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.) [10] By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.) [11] Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello." [12] Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, § V. [13] "In that temple porch, (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,) Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off, And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake On his stone pillow." I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else that has been written of her. [14] At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal Power in Venice." [15] The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself. They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack of a foreign enemy. [16] Mémoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii. [17] Appendix 6, "Renaissance Ornaments." [18] Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders." [19] The reader will find the _weak_ points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,--Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant." [20] Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy." [21] Appendix 9, "Wooden Churches of the North." [22] Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria." [23] Appendix 11, "Renaissance Landscape." [24] Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147. [25] Selvatico, p. 221. [26] The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different quality. [27] Appendix 12, "Romanist Modern Art." CHAPTER II. THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE. § I. We address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining some law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and of all time; and by help of which, and judgment according to which, we may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular. The first question will of course be: What are the possible Virtues of architecture? In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of duty. Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,--acting and talking:--acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; talking, as the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and express feelings; or of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as books of history, to tell such history clearly and forcibly. We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural virtue, and we require of any building,-- 1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best way. 2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the best words. 3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to do or say.[28] § II. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evident that we can establish no general laws. First, because it is not a virtue required in all buildings; there are some which are only for covert or defence, and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, because there are countless methods of expression, some conventional, some natural: each conventional mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively employed and instinctively understood, wherever there is true feeling; and this instinct is above law. The choice of conventional methods depends on circumstances out of calculation, and that of natural methods on sensations out of control; so that we can only say that the choice is right, when we feel that the means are effective; and we cannot always say that it is wrong when they are not so. A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a series of sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a person unacquainted with the Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of the Old and New Testaments might be written on its walls, and yet the building be a very inconvenient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of exciting emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or cold; and the building may be often blamed for what is the fault of its critic, or endowed with a charm which is of its spectator's creation. It is not, therefore, possible to make expressional character any fair criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves in the position of those to whom their expression was originally addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every symbol, and are capable of being touched by every association which its builders employed as letters of their language. I shall continually endeavor to put the reader into such sympathetic temper, when I ask for his judgment of a building; and in every work I may bring before him I shall point out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression; nay, I must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best evidence respecting the character of the builders. But I cannot legalize the judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it if it be refused. I can neither force the reader to feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel him to confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no impression on his own mind. § III. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for incidental notice only. But their other two virtues are proper subjects of law,--their performance of their common and necessary work, and their conformity with universal and divine canons of loveliness: respecting these there can be no doubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader discern them so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a glance of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He can do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts; and all that I have to do for him is to remove from those instincts the artificial restraints which prevent their action, and to encourage them to an unaffected and unbiassed choice between right and wrong. § IV. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects of separate inquiry: their action, and aspect, and the sources of virtue in both; that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both of these being less admired in themselves, than as testifying the intelligence or imagination of the builder. For we have a worthier way of looking at human than at divine architecture: much of the value both of construction and decoration, in the edifices of men, depends upon our being led by the thing produced or adorned, to some contemplation of the powers of mind concerned in its creation or adornment. We are not so led by divine work, but are content to rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish the reader to note this especially: we take pleasure, or _should_ take pleasure, in architectural construction altogether as the manifestation of an admirable human intelligence; it is not the strength, not the size, not the finish of the work which we are to venerate: rocks are always stronger, mountains always larger, all natural objects more finished; but it is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject of our praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is less the actual loveliness of the thing produced, than the choice and invention concerned in the production, which are to delight us; the love and the thoughts of the workman more than his work: his work must always be imperfect, but his thoughts and affections may be true and deep. § V. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must insist upon at somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away with some of the ungrateful coldness which we show towards the good builders of old time. In no art is there closer connection between our delight in the work, and our admiration of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet we rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at whose cost, the monk through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remember occasionally; never the man who verily did the work. Did the reader ever hear of William of Sens as having had anything to do with Canterbury Cathedral? or of Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal Palace of Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this; and therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how much of his pleasure in building is derived, or should be derived, from admiration of the intellect of men whose names he knows not. § VI. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly weigh, are, we said, its strength or good construction, and its beauty or good decoration. Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you say a building is well constructed or well built; you do not merely mean that it answers its purpose,--this is much, and many modern buildings fail of this much; but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose in the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means. We require of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and carry a light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been ill built; but it may do it to the end of time, and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and have cost thousands of pounds more than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best arrangements of stone for encountering them, and the quickest ways of effecting such arrangements: then only, so far as such arrangements have been chosen, and such methods used, is it well built. Then the knowledge of all difficulties to be met, and of all means of meeting them, and the quick and true fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is seen through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental power, observe: not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical, nor empirical,--pure, precious, majestic, massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, nor received without thanks, and without asking from whom. § VII. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building of a bridge: the bricklayers or masons have had their centring erected for them, and that centring was put together by a carpenter, who had the line of its curve traced for him by the architect: the masons are dexterously handling and fitting their bricks, or, by the help of machinery, carefully adjusting stones which are numbered for their places. There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and the shaping of the numbered stones, and the appointment of that number; there were many things to be known and thought upon before these were decided. The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to know the times and tides of the river, and the strength of its floods, and the height and flow of them, and the soil of the banks, and the endurance of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build with, and the kind of traffic that day by day would be carried on over his bridge,--all this specially, and all the great general laws of force and weight, and their working; and in the choice of the curve and numbering of stones are expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such ingenuity and firmness as he had, in applying special means to overcome the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying how much wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind, courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone to the placing of a single stone of it. This is what we have to admire,--this grand power and heart of man in the thing; not his technical or empirical way of holding the trowel and laying mortar. § VIII. Now there is in everything properly called art this concernment of the intellect, even in the province of the art which seems merely practical. For observe: in this bridge-building I suppose no reference to architectural principles; all that I suppose we want is to get safely over the river; the man who has taken us over is still a mere bridge-builder,--a _builder_, not an architect: he may be a rough, artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing all his days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort, but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great man, infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless in expedient, unsurpassable in quickness of thought. Take good heed you understand him before you despise him. § IX. But why is he to be in anywise despised? By no means despise him, unless he happen to be without a soul,[29] or at least to show no signs of it; which possibly he may not in merely carrying you across the river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver after all; and there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality,--nest or hive building in its highest development. You need something more than this, or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of building through which he may show his affections and delights; you need its beauty or decoration. § X. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more human than another. Theologists fall into this error very fatally and continually; and a man from whom I have learned much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his noble book by it, speaking as if the spirit of the man only were immortal, and were opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the senses; whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal, immortal or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification; and there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the second death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God. For to what shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts that perish? To our higher intellect?--yet are we not bidden to be wise as the serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant?--or to our affections? nay; these are more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence. Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it,--a dog had stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love; not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it,--but in the dedication of them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day. § XI. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, which man leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling than the signs of his intelligence; but it is the balance of both whose expression we need, and the signs of the government of them all by Conscience; and Discretion, the daughter of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part of man being eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of his work, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration; and, that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are needed: first, that the affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, that they be fixed on the right things. § XII. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in wrong order. Logically I have; practically I have not: for it is necessary first to teach men to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, in the second place, to teach them which of their likings are ill set, and which justly. If a man is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he will not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get him to feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him right. And the fact is, that the great evil of all recent architectural effort has not been that men liked wrong things: but that they either cared nothing about any, or pretended to like what they did not. Do you suppose that any modern architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it? Not in the least. He builds it because he has been told that such and such things are fine, and that he _should_ like them. He pretends to like them, and gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you seriously imagine, reader, that any living soul in London likes triglyphs?[30]--or gets any hearty enjoyment out of pediments?[31] You are much mistaken. Greeks did: English people never did,--never will. Do you fancy that the architect of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had any particular satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the archway, instead of a useful garret window? By no manner of means. He had been told it was right to do so, and thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few faults of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost always hypocrisies. § XIII. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,--it is a perfect Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects of Venice liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better than our English way of liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs. § XIV. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign of our liking the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God's work, which He made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all noble ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work. § XV. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the signs of man's own good work; secondly, the expression of man's delight in better work than his own. And these are the two virtues of which I desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at least in some measure; to have a definite opinion up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point he cannot form one. When the science of the building is great, great science is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of difficult bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river dykes, and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly formed. But of common buildings, built in common circumstances, it is very possible for every man, or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their necessary, or even possible, features are but few; the laws of their construction are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of a few hours is enough to render the reader master of their main points; and from that moment he will find in himself a power of judgment which can neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover subjects of interest where everything before had appeared barren. For though the laws are few and simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good building has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them. Understand the laws of structure, and you will feel the special difficulty in every new building which you approach; and you will know also, or feel instinctively,[32] whether it has been wisely met or otherwise. And an enormous number of buildings, and of styles of buildings, you will be able to cast aside at once, as at variance with these constant laws of structure, and therefore unnatural and monstrous. § XVI. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to consult your own natural choice and liking. There is a right and wrong in it; but you will assuredly like the right if you suffer your natural instinct to lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing what they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they don't know _that_,--they rather think they like keeping it; and they _do_ keep it under this false impression, often to their great discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one in a hundred finds _this_ out. Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world. So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little care to try experiments upon yourself: it needs deliberate question and upright answer. But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse reasoning to be gone into; only a little watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness, and so much honesty as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all men, that you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not. § XVII. This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true humility, a trust that you have been so created as to enjoy what is fitting for you, and a willingness to be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It is the child's spirit, which we are then most happy when we most recover; only wiser than children in that we are ready to think it subject of thankfulness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament with that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me the hay was none the better for them. § XVIII. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches, and these I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider the construction of buildings, dividing them into their really necessary members or features; and I shall endeavor so to lead the reader forward from the foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best way of doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the ground, and then ask him to build; only helping him, as I can, if I find him puzzled. And when he has built his house or church, I shall ask him to ornament it, and leave it to him to choose the ornaments as I did to find out the construction: I shall use no influence with him whatever, except to counteract previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may be, free. And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in what he has done. I shall assure him that no one in the world could, so far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as futile or fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own performances. FOOTNOTES: [28] Appendix 13, "Mr. Fergusson's System." [29] Appendix 14, "Divisions of Humanity." [30] Triglyph. Literally, "Three Cut." The awkward upright ornament with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern. [31] Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticoes, as on the Mansion House or Royal Exchange. [32] Appendix 15: "Instinctive Judgments." CHAPTER III. THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE. § I. The practical duties of buildings are twofold. They have either (1), to hold and protect something; or (2), to place or carry something. 1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended to protect men or their possessions from violence of any kind, whether of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke, breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible under the given circumstances. 2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended to carry men or things to some certain places, or to hold them there. This will include all bridges, aqueducts, and road architecture; light-houses, which have to hold light in appointed places; chimneys to carry smoke or direct currents of air; staircases; towers, which are to be watched from or cried from, as in mosques, or to hold bells, or to place men in positions of offence, as ancient moveable attacking towers, and most fortress towers. § II. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three things: to wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of persons, light, and air; and it is therefore to be considered under the three divisions of walls, roofs, and apertures. We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection of these members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring always to keep the simplicity of our first arrangement in view; for protective architecture has indeed no other members than these, unless flooring and paving be considered architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a roof; the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior's or carpenter's work, rather than architect's; and, at all events, work respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly find much difference of opinion, except in points of æsthetics. We shall therefore concern ourselves only with the construction of walls, roofs, and apertures. § III. 1. _Walls._--A wall is an even and united fence, whether of wood, earth, stone, or metal. When meant for purposes of mere partition or enclosure, it remains a wall proper: but it has generally also to sustain a certain vertical or lateral pressure, for which its strength is at first increased by some general addition to its thickness; but if the pressure becomes very great, it is gathered up into _piers_ to resist vertical pressure, and supported by _buttresses_ to resist lateral pressure. If its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, together with that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a wall veil between the piers into which it has been partly gathered; but if it is required only to resist the vertical or roof pressure, it is gathered up into piers altogether, loses its wall character, and becomes a group or line of piers. On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may retain its character of a wall, being supported against the pressure by buttresses at intervals; but if the lateral pressure be very great, it is supported against such pressure by a continuous buttress, loses its wall character, and becomes a dyke or rampart. § IV. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea of a wall, and of right construction of walls; then (B) to see how this wall is gathered into piers; and to get a general idea of piers and the right construction of piers; then (C) to see how a wall is supported by buttresses, and to get a general idea of buttresses and the right construction of buttresses. This is surely very simple, and it is all we shall have to do with walls and their divisions. [Illustration: Fig. I.] § V. 2. _Roofs._--A roof is the covering of a space, narrow or wide. It will be most conveniently studied by first considering the forms in which it may be carried over a narrow space, and then expanding these on a wide plan; only there is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for an arched roof over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood composing such a roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no difficulty in understanding that he is first to consider roofs on the section only, thinking how best to construct a narrow bar or slice of them, of whatever form; as, for instance, _x_, _y_, or _z_, over the plan or area _a_, Fig. I. Having done this, let him imagine these several divisions, first moved along (or set side by side) over a rectangle, _b_, Fig. I., and then revolved round a point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, _c_, or circle, _d_, and he will have every form of simple roof: the arched section giving successively the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled section giving the gabled roof and spire. As we go farther into the subject, we shall only have to add one or two forms to the sections here given, in order to embrace all the _uncombined_ roofs in existence; and we shall not trouble the reader with many questions respecting cross-vaulting, and other modes of their combination. § VI. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that the sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be considered before we come to the expanded roof over a broad one. For when a wall has been gathered, as above explained, into piers, that it may better bear vertical pressure, it is generally necessary that it should be expanded again at the top into a continuous wall before it carries the true roof. Arches or lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them. After we have examined the structure of piers, therefore, we shall have to see how lintels or arches are thrown from pier to pier, and the whole prepared for the superincumbent roof; this arrangement being universal in all good architecture prepared for vertical pressures: and we shall then examine the condition of the great roof itself. And because the structure of the roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures which have much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to do all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, therefore, between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, § IV. So now we shall have to study: (A) the construction of walls; (B) that of piers; (C) that of lintels or arches prepared for roofing; (D) that of roofs proper; and (E) that of buttresses. § VII. 3. _Apertures._--There must either be intervals between the piers, of which intervals the character will be determined by that of the piers themselves, or else doors or windows in the walls proper. And, respecting doors or windows, we have to determine three things: first, the proper shape of the entire aperture; secondly, the way in which it is to be filled with valves or glass; and thirdly, the modes of protecting it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F; and if the reader will have the patience to go through these six heads, which include every possible feature of protective architecture, and to consider the simple necessities and fitnesses of each, I will answer for it, he shall never confound good architecture with bad any more. For, as to architecture of position, a great part of it involves necessities of construction with which the spectator cannot become generally acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore never expected to judge,--as in chimneys, light-houses, &c.: and the other forms of it are so closely connected with those of protective architecture, that a few words in Chap. XIX. respecting staircases and towers, will contain all with which the reader need be troubled on the subject. CHAPTER IV. THE WALL BASE. § I. Our first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out wherein lies the true excellence of the "Wittiest Partition." For it is rather strange that, often as we speak of a "dead" wall, and that with considerable disgust, we have not often, since Snout's time, heard of a living one. But the common epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and marks a right feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to have members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an organized creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any strength nor organization into it, that it offends us by its deadness. Every wall ought to be a "sweet and lovely wall." I do not care about its having ears; but, for instruction and exhortation, I would often have it to "hold up its fingers." What its necessary members and excellences are, it is our present business to discover. § II. A wall has been defined to be an even and united fence of wood, earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however, seldom, if ever, take the form of walls, but of railings; and, like all other metal constructions, must be left out of our present investigation; as may be also walls composed merely of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or inclosure. Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have, in their perfect form, three distinct members;--the Foundation, Body or Veil, and Cornice. § III. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an animal. It is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the wall is to stand, and which keeps it from settling into the ground. It is most necessary that this great element of security should be visible to the eye, and therefore made a part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed, it becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the building, a vast table on which walls or piers are alike set: but even then, the eye, taught by the reason, requires some additional preparation or foot for the wall, and the building is felt to be imperfect without it. This foundation we shall call the Base of the wall. § IV. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass of it, formed of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or hewn timber; the condition of structure being, that it is of equal thickness everywhere, below and above. It may be half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or fifty feet thick; but if of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a wall proper: if to its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so much as an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other appliance.[33] In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally kept of moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or buttresses; and the part of the wall between these, being generally intended only to secure privacy, or keep out the slighter forces of weather, may be properly called a Wall Veil. I shall always use this word "Veil" to signify the even portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term Body. § V. When the materials with which this veil is built are very loose, or of shapes which do not fit well together, it sometimes becomes necessary, or at least adds to security, to introduce courses of more solid material. Thus, bricks alternate with rolled pebbles in the old walls of Verona, and hewn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A banded structure, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced; and the courses of more solid material are sometimes decorated with carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded through its whole height, it frequently becomes expedient to lay a course of stone, or at least of more carefully chosen materials, at regular heights; and such belts or bands we may call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the wall's existence; something like periods of rest and reflection in human life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building, they correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its internal structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of its existence already attained. § VI. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from the weather is necessary, or some preparation for the reception of superincumbent weight, called a coping, or Cornice. I shall use the word Cornice for both; for, in fact, a coping is a roof to the wall itself, and is carried by a small cornice as the roof of the building by a large one. In either case, the cornice, small or large, is the termination of the wall's existence, the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to carry some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as its hand, opened to carry something above its head; as the base was considered its foot: and the three parts should grow out of each other and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell of a flower. These three parts we shall examine in succession; and, first, the Base. § VII. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always expedient, to prepare for the whole building some settled foundation, level and firm, out of sight. But this has not been done in some of the noblest buildings in existence. It cannot always be done perfectly, except at enormous expense; and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall never suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there be a vast table land of foundation elevated for the whole of it, accessible by steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this table is always conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to superincumbent weight, and generally is so; and we shall base all our arguments on the widest possible supposition, that is to say, that the building stands on a surface either of earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some degree to its weight. [Illustration: Fig. II.] § VIII. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on such a surface, he would set about building a substantial wall, that should be able to bear weight and to stand for ages. He would assuredly look about for the largest stones he had at his disposal, and, rudely levelling the ground, he would lay these well together over a considerably larger width than he required the wall to be (suppose as at _a_, Fig. II.), in order to equalise the pressure of the wall over a large surface, and form its foot. On the top of these he would perhaps lay a second tier of large stones, _b_, or even the third, _c_, making the breadth somewhat less each time, so as to prepare for the pressure of the wall on the centre, and, naturally or necessarily, using somewhat smaller stones above than below (since we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second, will probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer work; for if the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty equally under the great mass of masonry now knit together over it. So he will prepare for the wall itself at once by sloping off the next tier of stones to the right diameter, as at _d_. If there be any joints in this tier within the wall, he may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone across them, _e_, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself, whether in bricks or stones. § IX. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large wall, because such a preparation will give us the best general type. But it is evident that the essential features of the arrangement are only two, that is to say, one tier of massy work for foundation, suppose _c_, missing the first two; and the receding tier or real foot of the wall, _d_. The reader will find these members, though only of brick, in most of the considerable and independent walls in the suburbs of London. § X. It is evident, however, that the general type, Fig. II., will be subject to many different modifications in different circumstances. Sometimes the ledges of the tiers _a_ and _b_ may be of greater width; and when the building is in a secure place, and of finished masonry, these may be sloped off also like the main foot _d_. In Venetian buildings these lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left rough hewn; but in fine work and in important positions the lower ledges may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or another added above _d_; and all these parts may be in different proportions, according to the disposition of the building above them. But we have nothing to do with any of these variations at present, they being all more or less dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of very great importance, that is to say, the widening of the lower ledge into a stone seat, which may be often done in buildings of great size with most beautiful effect: it looks kind and hospitable, and preserves the work above from violence. In St. Mark's at Venice, which is a small and low church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils of it, we find only the three members, _b_, _c_, and _d_. Of these the first rises about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark's Place, and forms an elevated dais in some of the recesses of the porches, chequered red and white; _c_ forms a seat which follows the line of the walls, while its basic character is marked by its also carrying certain shafts with which we have here no concern; _d_ is of white marble; and all are enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect manner possible, as we shall see in Chap. XXV. And thus much may serve to fix the type of wall bases, a type oftener followed in real practice than any other we shall hereafter be enabled to determine: for wall bases of necessity must be solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the adoption of the right form; or if he deviate from it, it is generally in meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances, as in obtaining cellars and underground room, or in preparing for some grand features or particular parts of the wall, or in some mistaken idea of decoration,--into which errors we had better not pursue him until we understand something more of the rest of the building: let us therefore proceed to consider the wall veil. FOOTNOTES: [33] Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops, and have buttresses added to them (that of the Queen's Bench Prison is a curious instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall); but in all such instances the slope of the wall is properly to be considered a condition of incorporated buttress. CHAPTER V. THE WALL VEIL. § I. The summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer in researches little bearing upon his present subject, and connected chiefly with proposed illustrations of the mountain forms in the works of J. M. W. Turner. But there are sometimes more valuable lessons to be learned in the school of nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of building among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature which I have at present to develope as necessary to the perfection of the wall veil. It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls, one of them overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some hundred and fifty feet over its massy flank, three thousand above its glacier base, and fourteen thousand above the sea,--a wall truly of some majesty, at once the most precipitous and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the Alps, the Mont Cervin. § II. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin, and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without a break; and the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the grisly ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight, three thousand feet above. § III. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down, as if by the single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to the base; hewn concave and smooth, like the hollow of a wave: on each flank of it there is set a buttress, both of about equal height, their heads sloped out from the main wall about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the north is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle of a bastion, and sloped sheer away to the north-east, throwing out spur beyond spur, until it terminates in a long low curve of russet precipice, at whose foot a great bay of the glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a lake. This spur is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the masonry of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of examining the character of its materials. § IV. Few architects would like to build with them. The slope of the rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep with their ruins, a mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields beneath the foot like ashes, so that, in running down, you step one yard, and slide three. The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel. § V. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the strength of the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and the wall alike, the courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth and true as if laid by line and plummet,[34] but of thickness and strength continually varying, and with silver cornices glittering along the edge of each, laid by the snowy winds and carved by the sunshine,--stainless ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither the hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in building." § VI. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance of any universal law of natural building; there are solid as well as coursed masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe, without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are harder. And, although we are not hence to conclude that it is well to introduce courses of bad materials when we can get perfect material, I believe we may conclude with great certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness; and the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect of a wall veil, unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that it must be both thicker and weaker than it would have been, had it been properly coursed. The decorative reasons for adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall notice hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost sufficient to enforce it; and the constructive ones will apply universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of perfect or imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where the general system of the decoration of the building requires absolute unity in its surface. [Illustration: Fig. III.] § VII. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate parts themselves, it is regulated by certain conditions of bonding and fitting the stones or bricks, which the reader need hardly be troubled to consider, and which I wish that bricklayers themselves were always honest enough to observe. But I hardly know whether to note under the head of æsthetic or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is always bad which appears to have arrested the attention of the architect more than absolute conditions of strength require. Nothing is more contemptible in any work than an appearance of the slightest desire on the part of the builder to _direct attention_ to the way its stones are put together, or of any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it more than was rigidly necessary: it may sometimes, on the one hand, be necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close fitting, when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture or of mouldings; and it may often, on the other hand, be delightful to show it, as it is delightful in places to show the anatomy even of the most delicate human frame: but _studiously_ to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters, who are afraid to show that their figures have bones; and studiously to display it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams,--but with less excuse than theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed. Exhibited masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects who do not know how to fill up blank spaces, and many a building, which would have been decent enough if let alone, has been scrawled over with straight lines, as in Fig. III., on exactly the same principles, and with just the same amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and all unnecessary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever object to seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them. The divisions of a church are much like the divisions of a sermon; they are always right so long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness in carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and no meat. FOOTNOTES: [34] On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and western. CHAPTER VI. THE WALL CORNICE. § I. We have lastly to consider the close of the wall's existence, or its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has one of two offices: if the wall have nothing to carry, the cornice is its roof, and defends it from the weather; if there is weight to be carried above the wall, the cornice is its hand, and is expanded to carry the said weight. There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent walls, according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes the wall has a true roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates in a small gabled ridge, made of bricks set slanting, as constantly in the suburbs of London; or of hewn stone, in stronger work; or in a single sloping face, inclined to the outside. We need not trouble ourselves at present about these small roofings, which are merely the diminutions of large ones; but we must examine the important and constant member of the wall structure, which prepares it either for these small roofs or for weights above, and is its true cornice. § II. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind enough to think for himself, how, having carried up his wall veil as high as it may be needed, he will set about protecting it from weather, or preparing it for weight. Let him imagine the top of the unfinished wall, as it would be seen from above with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or imperfectly filled up with cement, open to the sky; and small broken materials filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready for the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if his first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay it on the top; or rather a series of such, side by side, projecting well over the edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed to lay a weight (as, for instance, the end of a beam) on the wall, he would feel at once that the pressure of this beam on, or rather among, the small stones of the wall veil, might very possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them; and the first impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on the top of all to receive the beam, or any other weight, and distribute it equally among the small stones below, as at _a_, Fig. IV. [Illustration: Fig. IV.] § III. We must therefore have our flat stone in either case; and let _b_, Fig. IV., be the section or side of it, as it is set across the wall. Now, evidently, if by any chance this weight happen to be thrown more on the edges of this stone than the centre, there will be a chance of these edges breaking off. Had we not better, therefore, put another stone, sloped off to the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at _c_. But now our cornice looks somewhat too heavy for the wall; and as the upper stone is evidently of needless thickness, we will thin it somewhat, and we have the form _d_. Now observe: the lower or bevelled stone here at _d_ corresponds to _d_ in the base (Fig. II., page 59). That was the foot of the wall; this is its hand. And the top stone here, which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the under stone _c_, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases. The reader has no idea at present of the enormous importance of these members; but as we shall have to refer to them perpetually, I must ask him to compare them, and fix their relations well in his mind: and, for convenience, I shall call the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone, Y. The reader may remember easily which is which; for X is an intersection of two slopes, and may therefore properly mean either of the two sloping stones; and Y is a figure with a perpendicular line and two slopes, and may therefore fitly stand for the upright stone in relation to each of the sloping ones; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cornice, and Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is needed. [Illustration: Fig. V.] § IV. Now the form at _d_, Fig. IV., is the great root and primal type of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what forms may be developed from it, let us take its profile a little larger--_a_, Fig. V., with X and Y duly marked. Now this form, being the root of all cornices, may either have to finish the wall and so keep off rain; or, as so often stated, to carry weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its present profile, the rain will run back down the slope of X; and if the latter, that the sharp angle or edge of X, at _k_, may be a little too weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid the evil in the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X inwards, as at _b_; and to avoid it in the second case, suppose we strengthen X by letting it bulge outwards, as at c. § V. These (_b_ and _c_) are the profiles of two vast families of cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third arising from their combination (owing its origin to æsthetic considerations, and inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other), have been employed, each on its third part of the architecture of the whole world throughout all ages, and must continue to be so employed through such time as is yet to come. We do not at present speak of the third or combined group; but the relation of the two main branches to each other, and to the line of origin, is given at _e_, Fig. V.; where the dotted lines are the representatives of the two families, and the straight line of the root. The slope of this right line, as well as the nature of the curves, here drawn as segments of circles, we leave undetermined: the slope, as well as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other, vary according to the weight to be carried, the strength of the stone, the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents; and the nature of the curves according to æsthetic laws. It is in these infinite fields that the invention of the architect is permitted to expatiate, but not in the alteration of primitive forms. § VI. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the reader, that, even allowing for some of these permissible variations in the curve or slope of X, neither the form at _b_, nor any approximation to that form, would be sufficiently undercut to keep the rain from running back upon it. This is true; but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of the wall's life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all builders, and has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to be considered. But it is evident that, as it is high above the eye, the fittest place to receive the decoration is the slope of X, which is inclined towards the spectator; and if we cut away or hollow out this slope more than we have done at _b_, all decoration will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore, the climate be fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at _b_ merely as the most protective in our power. But if the climate be one in which rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alternations with frost, we may be compelled to consider the cornice in a character distinctly protective, and to hollow out X farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish its purpose. A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called a DRIPSTONE. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of Northern buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic architecture; the true cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings, and therefore of Greek and Italian architecture; and it is one of their peculiar beauties, and eminent features of superiority. § VII. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us examine a little farther into the nature of the true cornice. We cannot, indeed, render either of the forms _b_ or _c_, Fig. V., perfectly protective from rain, but we can help them a little in their duty by a slight advance of their upper ledge. This, with the form _b_, we can best manage by cutting off the sharp upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless; and we shall have the form _f_. By a slight advance of the upper stone _c_, we shall have the parallel form _g_. These two cornices, _f_ and _g_, are characteristic of early Byzantine work, and are found on all the most lovely examples of it in Venice. The type _a_ is rarer, but occurs pure in the most exquisite piece of composition in Venice--the northern portico of St. Mark's; and will be given in due time. § VIII. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these forms of cornice result, from considerations of fitness and necessity, far more neatly and decisively than the forms of the base, which we left only very generally determined. The reason is, that there are many ways of building foundations, and many _good_ ways, dependent upon the peculiar accidents of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the arrangement being concealed by the ground, so as to modify height. But we have no room to spare in width on the top of a wall, and all that we do must be thoroughly visible; and we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones of a certain degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or clay,--so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the farther we advance. The sources of a river are usually half lost among moss and pebbles, and its first movements doubtful in direction; but, as the current gathers force, its banks are determined, and its branches are numbered. § IX. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine the form of the dripstone. [Illustration: Fig. VI.] We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, _a_ of Fig. V. We take this at _a_ in Fig. VI., and we are to consider it entirely as a protection against rain. Now the only way in which the rain can be kept from running back on the slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it upwards, _b_. But clearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the projecting part of it that the least shock would break it at the neck, _c_; we must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give us the form _d_. That the water may not lodge on the upper ledge of this, we had better round it off; and it will better protect the joint at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone project over it in a roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in _e_: _e_ is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however, more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have been _bred_ in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be prepared for rough weather. The up cutting of the curve is sometimes all the distinction between the mouldings of far-distant countries and utterly strange nations. [Illustration: Fig. VII.] Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner curve, the latter undercut. Take the outer line, and this moulding is one constant in Venice, in architecture traceable to Arabian types, and chiefly to the early mosques of Cairo. But take the inner line; it is a dripstone at Salisbury. In that narrow interval between the curves there is, when we read it rightly, an expression of another and mightier curve,--the orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between the desert of the Pyramids, and the green and level fields through which the clear streams of Sarum wind so slowly. [Illustration: Fig. VIII.] And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are often found in the north,--borrowed from classical models,--so surely as we find a true dripstone moulding in the South, the influence of Northern builders has been at work; and this will be one of the principal evidences which I shall use in detecting Lombard influence on Arab work; for the true Byzantine and Arab mouldings are all open to the sky and light, but the Lombards brought with them from the North the fear of rain, and in all the Lombardic Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: _a_, Fig. VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei Mercanti; _b_, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them with _c_ and _d_; both from Salisbury; _e_ and _f_ from Lisieux, Normandy; _g_ and _h_ from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire. § X. The reader is now master of all that he need know about the construction of the general wall cornice, fitted either to become a crown of the wall, or to carry weight above. If, however, the weight above become considerable, it may be necessary to support the cornice at intervals with brackets; especially if it be required to project far, as well as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery on top of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or shallow, forms a separate family, essentially connected with roofs and galleries; for if there be no superincumbent weight, it is evidently absurd to put brackets to a plain cornice or dripstone (though this is sometimes done in carrying out a style); so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a cornice, it implies, or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery above it. Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection with roofing, calling them "roof cornices," while what we have hitherto examined are proper "wall cornices." The roof cornice and wall cornice are therefore treated in division D. We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof. We have only obtained that which was to be the object of our first division (A); we have got, that is to say, a general idea of a wall and of the three essential parts of a wall; and we have next, it will be remembered, to get an idea of a pier and the essential parts of a pier, which were to be the subjects of our second division (B). CHAPTER VII. THE PIER BASE. § I. In § III. of Chap. III., it was stated that when a wall had to sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to sustain it by some addition to its own thickness; but if the pressure became very great, by being gathered up into PIERS. I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a wall's being gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick drawing-paper, or thin Bristol board, five or six inches square. Set it on its edge on the table, and put a small octavo book on the edge or top of it, and it will bend instantly. Tear it into four strips all across, and roll up each strip tightly. Set these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry the small octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it was before, only it is differently arranged, that is to say, "gathered up."[35] If therefore a wall be gathered up like the Bristol board, it will bear greater weight than it would if it remained a wall veil. The sticks into which you gather it are called _Piers_. A pier is a coagulated wall. § II. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the Bristol board, and twist it up at once; but let us see how you _can_ treat it. Let A, Fig. IX., be the plan of a wall which you have made inconveniently and expensively thick, and which still appears to be slightly too weak for what it must carry: divide it, as at B, into equal spaces, _a_, _b_, _a_, _b_, &c. Cut out a thin slice of it at every _a_ on each side, and put the slices you cut out on at every _b_ on each side, and you will have the plan at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your wall is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too weak before, it will be stronger now than it need be; so you may spare some of your space as well as your bricks by cutting off the corners of the thicker parts, as suppose _c_, _c_, _c_, _c_, at C: and you have now a series of square piers connected by a wall veil, which, on less space and with less materials, will do the work of the wall at A perfectly well. [Illustration: Fig. IX.] § III. I do not say _how much_ may be cut away in the corners _c_, _c_,--that is a mathematical question with which we need not trouble ourselves: all that we need know is, that out of every slice we take from the "_b_'s" and put on at the "_a_'s," we may keep a certain percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing that we do not want the wall veil for its own sake, this latter is thinned entirely away, like the girdle of the Lady of Avenel, and finally breaks, and we have nothing but a row of square piers, D. § IV. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare most room, and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther we must apply the general principle to our wall, which is equally true in morals and mathematics, that the strength of materials, or of men, or of minds, is always most available when it is applied as closely as possible to a single point. Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square piers to be applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put them directly under it, and the point will be in their centre. But now some of their materials are not so near or close to this point as others. Those at the corners are farther off than the rest. Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as possible to the centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle. The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of plan for a pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it. A circular pier is called a pillar or column, and all good architecture adapted to vertical support is made up of pillars, has always been so, and must ever be so, as long as the laws of the universe hold. The final condition is represented at E, in its relation to that at D. It will be observed that though each circle projects a little beyond the side of the square out of which it is formed, the space cut off at the angles is greater than that added at the sides; for, having our materials in a more concentrated arrangement, we can afford to part with some of them in this last transformation, as in all the rest. § V. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the wall been doing while we have been cutting the veil to pieces and gathering it together? The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the base of the column. The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the capital of the column. Do not be alarmed at the new word, it does not mean a new thing; a capital is only the cornice of a column, and you may, if you like, call a cornice the capital of a wall. We have now, therefore, to examine these three concentrated forms of the base, veil, and cornice: first, the concentrated base, still called the BASE of the column; then the concentrated veil, called the SHAFT of the column; then the concentrated cornice, called the CAPITAL of the column. And first the Base:-- [Illustration: Fig. X.] § VI. Look back to the main type, Fig. II., page 55, and apply its profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at E in Fig. IX. p. 72: If each step in Fig. II. were gathered accurately, the projection of the entire circular base would be less in proportion to its height than it is in Fig. II.; but the approximation to the result in Fig. X. is quite accurate enough for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe that I have not made the smallest change, except this necessary expression of a reduction in diameter, in Fig. II. as it is applied in Fig. X., only I have not drawn the joints of the stones because these would confuse the outlines of the bases; and I have not represented the rounding of the shafts, because it does not bear at present on the argument.) Now it would hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between the pillars, to have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular gaps or brêches de Roland in Fig. X. Our first impulse would be to cut them open; but we cannot do this, or our piers are unsafe. We have but one other resource, to fill them up until we have a floor wide enough to let us pass easily: this we may perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we are nearly sure to get it at the second, and we may then obtain access to the raised interval, either by raising the earth over the lower courses of foundation, or by steps round the entire building. Fig. XI. is the arrangement of Fig. X. so treated. [Illustration: Fig. XI.] § VII. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest chink in Fig. X. would be quite wide enough to let us pass through it. Is there then any reason for filling it up? Yes. It will be remembered that in Chap. IV. § VIII. the chief reason for the wide foundation of the wall was stated to be "that it might equalise its pressure over a large surface;" but when the foundation is cut to pieces as in Fig. X., the pressure is thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of that surface. If the ground is in some places more disposed to yield than in others, the piers in those places will sink more than the rest, and this distortion of the system will be probably of more importance in pillars than in a wall, because the adjustment of the weight above is more delicate; we thus actually want the _weight_ of the stones between the pillars, in order that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and sink together if it sink at all: and the more massy the pillars, the more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations. In the best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled up to the root of the shaft, and the columns have no independent base; they stand on the even floor of their foundation. § VIII. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when the column is of great thickness in proportion to its height, and the sufficient firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor, is evident, it is the best of all, having a strange dignity in its excessive simplicity. It is, or ought to be, connected in our minds with the deep meaning of primeval memorial. "And Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar." I do not fancy that he put a base for it first. If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge, you will hardly find them improved; and two of the most perfect buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of Venice, have no bases to their pillars: the latter has them, indeed, to its upper arcade shafts; and had once, it is said, a continuous raised base for its lower ones: but successive elevations of St. Mark's Place have covered this base, and parts of the shafts themselves, with an inundation of paving stones; and yet the building is, I doubt not, as grand as ever. Finally, the two most noble pillars in Venice, those brought from Acre, stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta, with no independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away beneath, so that you may look under parts of them, and stand (not quite erect, but leaning somewhat) safe by their own massy weight. Nor could any bases possibly be devised that would not spoil them. § IX. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely without an independent base as it would with one (at least, unless the base be in the form of a socket). But it will not appear so safe to the eye. And here for the first time, I have to express and apply a principle, which I believe the reader will at once grant,--that features necessary to express security to the imagination, are often as essential parts of good architecture as those required for security itself. It was said that the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the same way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot or paw of the pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature. A foot has two offices, to bear up, and to hold firm. As far as it has to bear up, it is uncloven, with slight projection,--look at an elephant's (the Doric base of animality);[36] but as far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and clawed, with wide projections,--look at an eagle's. § X. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the column, we require its foot to express merely the power of bearing up; in fact, it can do without a foot, like the Squire in Chevy Chase, if the ground only be hard enough. But if the column be slender, and look as if it might lose its balance, we require it to look as if it had hold of the ground, or the ground hold of it, it does not matter which,--some expression of claw, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to Fig. XI., and take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it. We may leave out the two lower steps (with which we have nothing more to do, as they have become the united floor or foundation of the whole), and, for the sake of greater clearness, I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft, nor the flat stone which carries them, though the reader is to suppose them remaining as drawn in Fig. XI.; but I shall only draw the shaft and its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained at p. 65, above: and now, expressing the rounding of these numbers on _a_ somewhat larger scale, we have the profile _a_, Fig. XII.; _b_, the perspective appearance of such a base seen from above; and _c_, the plan of it. § XI. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the stability of this form as it is seen at _b_; nor would he ever be so with the main contour of a circular base. Observe, we have taken some trouble to reduce the member Yb into this round form, and all that we have gained by so doing, is this unsatisfactory and unstable look of the base; of which the chief reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right lines, has never an appearance of fixture, or definite place,[37]--we suspect it of motion, like an orb of heaven; and the second is, that the whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp nor hold: it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,--it wants at least expansion, if not division. [Illustration: Fig. XII.] § XII. Suppose, then, instead of taking so much trouble with the member Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a square block. Xb must, however, evidently follow the pillar, as its condition is that it slope to the very base of the wall veil, and of whatever the wall veil becomes. So the corners of Yb will project beyond the circle of Xb, and we shall have (Fig. XII.) the profile _d_, the perspective appearance _e_, and the plan _f_. I am quite sure the reader likes _e_ much better than he did _b_. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its rolling away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved labor besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between the bases is just as great as it was before,--we have only filled up the corners of the squares. But is it not possible to mend the form still further? There is surely still an appearance of separation between Xb and Yb, as if the one might slip off the other. The foot is expanded enough; but it needs some expression of grasp as well. It has no toes. Suppose we were to put a spur or prop to Xb at each corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre of Yb. We will do this in the simplest possible form. We will have the spur, or small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a triangle. Applying such spurs in Fig. XII., we have the diagonal profile at _g_, the perspective _h_, and the plan _i_. § XIII. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the best, and feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully distinguish between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and the real stability of the structure. That this real stability has been slightly increased by the changes between _b_ and _h_, in Fig. XII., is true. There is in the base _h_ somewhat less chance of accidental dislocation, and somewhat greater solidity and weight. But this very slight gain of security is of no importance whatever when compared with the general requirements of the structure. The pillar must be _perfectly_ secure, and more than secure, with the base _b_, or the building will be unsafe, whatever other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made, not for the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security they involve, but in order to convince the eye of the real security which the base _b_ _appears_ to compromise. This is especially the case with regard to the props or spurs, which are absolutely useless in reality, but are of the highest importance as an expression of safety. And this will farther appear when we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily supposed to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should not the spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the whole width of the angle of the square, and to become a complete expansion of Xb to the edge of the square? Simply because, whatever its width, it has, in reality, no supporting power whatever; and the _expression_ of support is greatest where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it ought indeed to be much wider than it is in Fig. XII., where it is narrowed in order to make its structure clearly intelligible. § XIV. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an æsthetic feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to transfer what we have here said of it to the beginning of Chap. XXV. I think that its true place is here, as an _expression_ of safety, and not a means of beauty; but I will assume only, as established, the form _e_ of Fig. XII., which is absolutely, as a construction, easier, stronger, and more perfect than _b_. A word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it will be remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were higher in place; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base, were the highest members of the wall base gathered. But, exactly in proportion to this gathering or concentration in form, should, if possible, be the gathering or concentration of substance. For as the whole weight of the building is now to rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the greater importance that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb and Yb are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone; or, when the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if spurs are to be added to Xb. The reader must not be angry with me for stating things so self-evident, for these are all necessary steps in the chain of argument which I must not break. Even this change from detached stones to a single block is not without significance; for it is part of the real service and value of the member Yb to provide for the reception of the shaft a surface free from joints; and the eye always conceives it as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures in the smaller masonry of the floor. § XV. I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the height of Yb to its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each other. Both depend much on the height of shaft, and are besides variable within certain limits, at the architect's discretion. But the limits of the height of Yb may be thus generally stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the column above might break it, it is too low; and if it is higher than its own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is that of a cubic block; for if it ever become higher than it is wide, it becomes itself a part of a pier, and not the base of one. § XVI. I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from beneath Xb, as always expanded into a square, and four spurs only to be added at the angles. But Yb may be expanded into a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon; and Xb then may have five, six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as the sides increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic in their effect, and the square is in most cases the best form. § XVII. We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely on the supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a range. Suppose, however, that we require only a single pillar: as we have free space round it, there is no need to fill up the first ranges of its foundations; nor need we do so in order to equalise pressure, since the pressure to be met is its own alone. Under such circumstances, it is well to exhibit the lower tiers of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb. The noble bases of the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice are formed by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion to the shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having its proper decorative mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 feet each side). § XVIII. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are not pillars, but towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers they are barbarous, being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe, besides lying, and pretending to be what they are not. As shafts they are barbarous, because they were designed at a time when the Renaissance architects had introduced and forced into acceptance, as _de rigueur_, a kind of columnar high-heeled shoe,--a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true base exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek gentleman's sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe, than to exhibit or to decorate his cork sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed, occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others, its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use a larger shaft of coarser material; but the pedestal is in each case a make-shift, not an additional perfection. It may, in the like manner, be sometimes convenient for men to walk on stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as ornamental parts of dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument, and the column of the Place Vendôme, are to the shafts, exactly what highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human beings. § XIX. So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not yet know in what manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we can say nothing of those of grouped shafts until we know more of what they are to support. Lastly; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base supposed the pier to be circular. But circumstances may occur to prevent its being reduced to this form, and it may remain square or rectangular; its base will then be simply the wall base following its contour, and we have no spurs at the angles. Thus much may serve respecting pier bases; we have next to examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft. FOOTNOTES: [35] The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion; for the small rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their tubular form than their aggregation of material; but if the paper be cut up into small strips, and tied together firmly in three or four compact bundles, it will exhibit increase of strength enough to show the principle. Vide, however, Appendix 16, "Strength of Shafts." [36] Appendix 17, "Answer to Mr. Garbett." [37] Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line: for the circle, in its relations to its own centre, is the curve of greatest stability. Compare § XX. of Chap. XX. CHAPTER VIII. THE SHAFT. § I. We have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting the wall into the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every change of form with some quantity of material. In proportion to the quantity thus surrendered, is the necessity that what we retain should be good of its kind, and well set together, since everything now depends on it. It is clear also that the best material, and the closest concentration, is that of the natural crystalline rocks; and that, by having reduced our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be enabled to avail ourselves of this better material, and to exchange cemented bricks for crystallised blocks of stone. Therefore, the general idea of a perfect shaft is that of a single stone hewn into a form more or less elongated and cylindrical. Under this form, or at least under the ruder one of a long stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first to have occurred to the human mind; for the reader must note this carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that the order of architectural features which is most reasonable in their arrangement, is most probable in their invention. I have theoretically deduced shafts from walls, but shafts were never so reasoned out in architectural practice. The man who first propped a thatched roof with poles was the discoverer of their principle; and he who first hewed a long stone into a cylinder, the perfecter of their practice. § II. It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will call them, for convenience, _block_ shafts) should be composed of stone not liable to flaws or fissures; and therefore that we must no longer continue our argument as if it were always possible to do what is to be done in the best way; for the style of a national architecture may evidently depend, in great measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the country. Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building stone from their thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary purposes;--and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of the block shaft applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of obtaining large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural form peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere, derived from them. We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, calculated on the probabilities of our obtaining better materials than those of which the walls were built; and we shall therefore first consider the form of shaft which will be best when we have the best materials; and then consider how far we can imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate, this form with any materials we can obtain. § III. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones, that he might for himself find out how to build his wall, I shall give him the block of marble, and the chisel, that he may himself find out how to shape his column. Let him suppose the elongated mass, so given him, rudely hewn to the thickness which he has calculated will be proportioned to the weight it has to carry. The conditions of stability will require that some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance of slight disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as little chance should be left as possible of its being thrown off its balance. It will therefore be prudent to leave it slightly thicker at the base than at the top. This excess of diameter at the base being determined, the reader is to ask himself how most easily and simply to smooth the column from one extremity to the other. To cut it into a true straight-sided cone would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and would incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why not leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, _very_ slightly convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the two extremities? you will save much trouble and time, and the shaft will be all the stronger. [Illustration: Fig. XIII.] This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block shaft. It is the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to the mind or eye. I do not mean that it is not capable of more refined execution, or of the application of some of the laws of æsthetic beauty, but that it is the best recipient of execution and subject of law; better in either case than if you had taken more pains, and cut it straight. § IV. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be very slight, and that the shaft is not to _bulge_ in the centre, but to taper from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, the conditions of its sculpture. Let _a_, _a_, _b_, _b_, at A, Fig. XIII., be the rough block of the shaft, laid on the ground; and as thick as you can by any chance require it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness at its base at A, but at the other end you will mark off upon it the diameter _c_, _d_, which you intend it to have at the summit; you will then take your mallet and chisel, and working from _c_ and _d_ you will roughly knock off the corners, shaded in the figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure described by the inside lines in A and the outside lines in B; you then proceed to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave your finished shaft of the form of the _inside_ lines _e_, _g_, _f_, _h_. The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft tapers faster towards the top than it does near the ground. Observe this carefully; it is a point of great future importance. § V. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We can carry the type no farther on merely structural considerations: let us pass to the shaft of inferior materials. Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made. It is alike difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts more than ten or twelve feet long, except in remarkable positions, and as pieces of singular magnificence. Large pillars are therefore always composed of more than one block of stone. Such pillars are either jointed like basalt columns, and composed of solid pieces of stone set one above another; or they are filled up _towers_, built of small stones cemented into a mass, with more or less of regularity: Keep this distinction carefully in mind, it is of great importance; for the jointed column, every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to speak) a complete _slice_ of the shaft, is just as strong as the block pillar of one stone, so long as no forces are brought into action upon it which would have a tendency to cause horizontal dislocation. But the pillar which is built as a filled-up tower is of course liable to fissure in any direction, if its cement give way. But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason of the curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being an easy or natural procedure, the fitting of each portion of the curve to its fellow, in the separate stones, would require painful care and considerable masonic skill; while, in the case of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards would be even unsafe; for its greatest strength (and that the more in proportion to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of outside stone; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst outwards, if heavily loaded above. If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such shafts, it must be in obedience to æsthetic laws only. § VI. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the tapering by straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of execution in the pieced column. Where, indeed, the entire shaft is composed of four or five blocks set one upon another, the diameters may be easily determined at the successive joints, and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But this becomes sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so that the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in the one case, to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in the other to build by the plumb-line; and in both to give up the tapering altogether. § VII. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of horizontal dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much increased by the composition of the shaft out of joints or small stones, a larger bulk of shaft is required to carry the given weight; and, _cæteris paribus_, jointed and cemented shafts must be thicker in proportion to the weight they carry than those which are of one block. We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked division in schools of architecture: one group composed of buildings whose shafts are either of a single stone or of few joints; the shafts, therefore, being gracefully tapered, and reduced by successive experiments to the narrowest possible diameter proportioned to the weight they carry: and the other group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not tapered, and rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the weight they carry; the latter school being evidently somewhat imperfect and inelegant as compared with the former. It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the materials in cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have suggested itself to a people who possessed no large blocks out of which to hew them; and that the shaft built of many pieces is probably derived from, and imitative of the shaft hewn from few or from one. § VIII. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of Europe, and lay your finger upon the spots where volcanic influences supply either travertin or marble in accessible and available masses, you will probably mark the points where the types of the first school have been originated and developed. If, in the next place, you will mark the districts where broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty sandstone, supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the birthplaces of the derivative and less graceful school. You will, in the first case, lay your finger on Pæstum, Agrigentum, and Athens; in the second, on Durham and Lindisfarne. The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their first form, as massy as those of the other, and the tendency of both is to continual diminution of their diameters: but in the first school it is a true diminution in the thickness of the independent pier; in the last, it is an apparent diminution, obtained by giving it the appearance of a group of minor piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned is not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour; and we may note generally that while throughout the whole range of Northern work, the perpendicular shaft appears in continually clearer development, throughout every group which has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the shaft retains its curved or tapered form; and the occurrence of the vertical detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of Northern influence. § IX. It is necessary to limit this observation to European architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered, like the Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or Greek shaft, was tapered or curved on æsthetic rather than constructive principles; and the Egyptian which precedes, and the Northern which follows it, are both vertical, the one because the best form had not been discovered, the other because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree barbaric; and both possess in combination and in their ornaments a power altogether different from that of the Greek shaft, and at least as impressive if not as admirable. § X. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number were fixed, and only their diameter variable according to the weight to be borne. But this supposition is evidently gratuitous; for the same weight may be carried either by many and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the reader will look back to Fig. IX., he will find the number of shafts into which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon the length of the spaces _a_, _b_, _a_, _b_, &c., a length which was arbitrarily fixed. We are at liberty to make these spaces of what length we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the number and diminish the diameter of the shafts, or _vice versâ_. § XI. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the same kind, the choice is in great part at the architect's discretion, only there is a limit on the one hand to the multiplication of the slender shaft, in the inconvenience of the narrowed interval, and on the other, to the enlargement of the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the building.[38] That will be commonly the best proportion which is a natural mean between the two limits; leaning to the side of grace or of grandeur according to the expressional intention of the work. I say, _commonly_ the best, because, in some cases, this expressional invention may prevail over all other considerations, and a column of unnecessary bulk or fantastic slightness be adopted in order to strike the spectator with awe or with surprise.[39] The architect is, however, rarely in practice compelled to use one kind of material only; and his choice lies frequently between the employment of a larger number of solid and perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and cemented large ones. It is often possible to obtain from quarries near at hand, blocks which might be cut into shafts eight or twelve feet long and four or five feet round, when larger shafts can only be obtained in distant localities; and the question then is between the perfection of smaller features and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly, and I think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings have been composed of systems of small but perfect shafts, multiplied and superimposed. So long as the idea of the symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the builder's mind, his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the adoption of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the result of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employment of intractable materials. § XII. But farther: we have up to this point spoken of shafts as always set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each other. But there is no necessity for this; and material differences may be made in their diameters if two or more be grouped so as to do together the work of one large one, and that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger one would have occupied. § XIII. Let A, B, C, Fig. XIV., be three surfaces, of which B and C contain equal areas, and each of them double that of A: then supposing them all loaded to the same height, B or C would receive twice as much weight as A; therefore, to carry B or C loaded, we should need a shaft of twice the strength needed to carry A. Let S be the shaft required to carry A, and S_2 the shaft required to carry B or C; then S_3 may be divided into two shafts, or S_2 into four shafts, as at S_3, all equal in area or solid contents;[40] and the mass A might be carried safely by two of them, and the masses B and C, each by four of them. [Illustration: Fig. XIV.] Now if we put the single shafts each under the centre of the mass they have to bear, as represented by the shaded circles at _a_, _a2_, _a3_, the masses A and C are both of them very ill supported, and even B insufficiently; but apply the four and the two shafts as at _b_, _b2_, _b3_, and they are supported satisfactorily. Let the weight on each of the masses be doubled, and the shafts doubled in area, then we shall have such arrangements as those at _c_, _c2_, _c3_; and if again the shafts and weight be doubled, we shall have _d_, _d2_, _d3_. § XIV. Now it will at once be observed that the arrangement of the shafts in the series of B and C is always exactly the same in their relations to each other; only the group of B is set evenly, and the group of C is set obliquely,--the one carrying a square, the other a cross. [Illustration: Fig. XV.] You have in these two series the primal representations of shaft arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools; while the group _b_, of which _b2_ is the double, set evenly, and _c2_ the double, set obliquely, is common to both. The reader will be surprised to find how all the complex and varied forms of shaft arrangement will range themselves into one or other of these groups; and still more surprised to find the oblique or cross set system on the one hand, and the square set system on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern work. The dome of St. Mark's, and the crossing of the nave and transepts of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers; but the piers of St. Mark's are set square to the walls of the church, and those of Beauvais obliquely to them: and this difference is even a more essential one than that between the smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of the other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are exactly of the same size, but their expression is altogether different, and in that difference lies one of the most subtle distinctions between the Gothic and Greek spirit,--from the shaft, which bears the building, to the smallest decoration. The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the Gothic square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we find the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form, either in plan or decoration, in early northern work, there we may at least suspect the presence of a southern or Greek influence; and, on the other hand, wherever the oblique square is prominent in the south, we may confidently look for farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic architects. The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either school, there has been determined search for every possible variety of decorative figures; and accidental circumstances may reverse the usual system in special cases; but the evidence drawn from this character is collaterally of the highest value, and the tracing it out is a pursuit of singular interest. Thus, the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be pronounced to have been formed under some measure of Lombardic influence, from the oblique squares set under its arches; and in it we have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of the southern;--obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted Romanesque. At Monza, on the other hand, the levelled square is the characteristic figure of the entire decoration of the façade of the Duomo, eminently giving it southern character; but the details are derived almost entirely from the northern Gothic. Here then we have southern spirit and northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the shaft, a still more positive test of northern work, we shall have more to say in the 28th Chapter; we must at present note certain farther changes in the form of the grouped shaft, which open the way to every branch of its endless combinations, southern or northern. [Illustration: Fig. XVI.] § XV. 1. If the group at _d3_, Fig. XIV., be taken from under its loading, and have its centre filled up, it will become a quatrefoil; and it will represent, in their form of most frequent occurrence, a family of shafts, whose plans are foiled figures, trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils, &c.; of which a trefoiled example, from the Frari at Venice, is the third in Plate II., and a quatrefoil from Salisbury the eighth. It is rare, however, to find in Gothic architecture shafts of this family composed of a large number of foils, because multifoiled shafts are seldom true grouped shafts, but are rather canaliculated conditions of massy piers. The representatives of this family may be considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps; and the Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating to the general type, _b_, Fig. XVI. § XVI. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts which have concave curves instead of convex on each of their sides; but these are not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at all, and their proper place is among decorated piers; only they must be named here in order to mark their exact opposition to the foiled system. In their simplest form, represented by _c_, Fig. XVI., they have no representatives in good architecture, being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations to them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans, and in modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form they are the Greek Doric, _a_, Fig. XVI., and occur in caprices of the Romanesque and Italian Gothic: _d_, Fig. XVI., is from the Duomo of Monza. § XVII. 2. Between _c3_ and _d3_ of Fig. XIV. there may be evidently another condition, represented at 6, Plate II., and formed by the insertion of a central shaft within the four external ones. This central shaft we may suppose to expand in proportion to the weight it has to carry. If the external shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire form remains unchanged; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be pushed out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up in its expansion, as at 4, Plate II. If they are pushed out, they are removed farther from each other by every increase of the central shaft; and others may then be introduced in the vacant spaces; giving, on the plan, a central orb with an ever increasing host of satellites, 10, Plate II.; the satellites themselves often varying in size, and perhaps quitting contact with the central shaft. Suppose them in any of their conditions fixed, while the inner shaft expands, and they will be gradually buried in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, Plate II. The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing the central shaft to be circular only; but their infinity is multiplied by many other infinities when the central shaft itself becomes square or crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled (8, Plate II.) with satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and angles, in every possible relation of attraction. Among these endless conditions of change, the choice of the architect is free, this only being generally noted: that, as the whole value of such piers depends, first, upon their being wisely fitted to the weight above them, and, secondly, upon their all working together: and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin of all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the disposition of members superimposed:[41] and in his multiplied group he should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between the large central shaft and its satellites; for if this exist, the satellites will either appear useless altogether, or else, which is worse, they will look as if they were meant to keep the central shaft together by wiring or caging it in; like iron rods set round a supple cylinder,--a fatal fault in the piers of Westminster Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of the cathedral of Bourges. § XVIII. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or assembling our shafts, how far has it been possible to retain their curved or tapered outline? So long as they remain distinct and equal, however close to each other, the independent curvature may evidently be retained. But when once they come in contact, it is equally evident that a column, formed of shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all the closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central shaft, the tapering is sacrificed; and with less cause for regret, because it was a provision against subsidence or distortion, which cannot now take place with the separate members of the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at all, must be executed with far greater accuracy and stability when its supports are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such precaution. In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular line is, in nearly all cases, given to the pier; and the reader will anticipate that the two schools, which we have already found to be distinguished, the one by its perpendicular and pieced shafts, and the other by its curved and block shafts, will be found divided also in their employment of grouped shafts;--it is likely that the idea of grouping, however suggested, will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but hesitatingly by the other; and that we shall find, on the one hand, buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones, sometimes clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other, more or less regular succession of block shafts, each treated as entirely independent of those around it. § XIX. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is probable that the complexity and richness of such arrangements would recommend them to the eye, and induce their frequent, even their unnecessary introduction; so that weight which might have been borne by a single pillar, would be in preference supported by four or five. And if the stone of the country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds consistent enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the strength and simplicity of such a construction might justify it, as well as its grace. The fact, however, is that the charm which the multiplication of line possesses for the eye has always been one of the chief ends of the work in the grouped schools; and that, so far from employing the grouped piers in order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the most common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid jointed shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour of the group required. § XX. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clustered shafts have been the result or the expression of an actual gathering and binding together of detached shafts. This is not, however, always so: for some clustered shafts are little more than solid piers channelled on the surface, and their form appears to be merely the development of some longitudinal furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That clustering or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this case a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head of decoration. § XXI. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the real serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must depend upon the relative shortness of the shafts, and that, when the whole pier is so lofty that its minor members become mere reeds or rods of stone, those minor members can no longer be charged with any considerable weight. And the fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic arrangements, when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of it, no real work is given them to do, and they might all be removed without endangering the building. They are merely the _expression_ of a great consistent system, and are in architecture what is often found in animal anatomy,--a bone, or process of a bone, useless, under the ordained circumstances of its life, to the particular animal in which it is found, and slightly developed, but yet distinctly existent, and representing, for the sake of absolute consistency, the same bone in its appointed, and generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all animals, or in the genus to which the animal itself belongs. § XXII. Farther: as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone long enough for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is always unsafe to lay a stratified stone with its beds upright) they have been frequently composed of two or more short shafts set upon each other, and to conceal the unsightly junction, a flat stone has been interposed, carved into certain mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft. Now observe: the whole pier was the gathering of the whole wall, the base gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and the string courses of the veil gather into these rings; and when this is clearly expressed, and the rings do indeed correspond with the string courses of the wall veil, they are perfectly admissible and even beautiful; but otherwise, and occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the middle of continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and of late since gas has been invented, have become especially offensive from their unlucky resemblance to the joints of gas-pipes, or common water-pipes. There are two leaden ones, for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey at Poet's Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the shafts of the abbey, inside. Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft structure in pure theory; I shall now lay before the reader a brief statement of the facts of the thing in time past and present. § XXIII. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture which we know, that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrangements, properly so called, but either single and smooth shafts, or richly reeded and furrowed shafts, which represent the extreme conditions of a complicated group bound together to sustain a single mass; and are indeed, without doubt, nothing else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of lotus:[42] but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not the actual function or structure of a group; they are just as much solid and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely by the method of their decoration present to the eye the image of a richly complex arrangement. § XXIV. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale, and losing all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complexity, its so-called flutings being, visibly as actually, an external decoration. § XXV. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in the Roman and Byzantine mind; but true grouping begins in Christian architecture by the placing of two or more separate shafts side by side, each having its own work to do; then three or four, still with separate work; then, by such steps as those above theoretically pursued, the number of the members increases, while they coagulate into a single mass; and we have finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or more distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its service, is as much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one; but which differs from the Egyptian in that all its members, how many soever, have each individual work to do, and a separate rib of arch or roof to carry: and thus the great Christian truth of distinct services of the individual soul is typified in the Christian shaft; and the old Egyptian servitude of the multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of Ham, is typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians, which in its gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the sands of the desert drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind us for ever of the end of the association of the wicked. "Can the rush grow up without mire, or the flag grow without water?--So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish." § XXVI. Let the reader then keep this distinction of the three systems clearly in his mind: Egyptian system, an apparent cluster supporting a simple capital and single weight; Greek and Roman system, single shaft, single weight; Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight: at first actually and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided; so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyptian, but the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the other. § XXVII. The transition from the actual to the apparent cluster, in the Gothic, is a question of the most curious interest; I have thrown together the shaft sections in Plate II. to illustrate it, and exemplify what has been generally stated above.[43] [Illustration: Plate II. PLANS OF PIERS.] 1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beautiful of all the groups, is also the simplest; the two shafts arranged as at _b_ or _c_, (Fig. XIV.) above, bearing an oblong mass, and substituted for the still earlier structure _a_, Fig. XIV. In Plate XVII. (Chap. XXVII.) are three examples of the transition: the one on the left, at the top, is the earliest single-shafted arrangement, constant in the rough Romanesque windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded by the double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example from the cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most elaborate and perfect one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the group is twice complicated, two shafts being used, both with quatrefoil sections. The plain double shaft, however, is by far the most frequent, both in the Northern and Southern Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael's Mount, Normandy, a small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of shafts, a miniature aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent scale, but ill proportioned, for the main piers of the apse of the cathedral of Coutances, its purpose being to conceal one shaft behind the other, and make it appear to the spectator from the nave as if the apse were sustained by single shafts, of inordinate slenderness. The attempt is ill-judged, and the result unsatisfactory. [Illustration: Fig. XVII.] § XXVIII. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each other, as frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVII.), the quadruple group results, _b_ 2, Fig. XIV., of which the Lombardic sculptors were excessively fond, usually tying the shafts together in their centre, in a lover's knot. They thus occur in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como; at the angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI.; and in the balustrade of St. Mark's. This is a group, however, which I have never seen used on a large scale.[44] § XXIX. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their centre, form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured in Plate XVII., which are among the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the even to the south: we have here the northern Lombardic nation naturalised in Italy, and, behold, the oblique and even quatrefoil linked together; not confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as seen in Plate XVII., under the capitals. [Illustration: Fig. XVIII.] 4. Next to these, observe the two groups of five shafts each, 5 and 6, Plate II., one oblique, the other even. Both are from upper stories; the oblique one from the triforium of Salisbury; the even one from the upper range of shafts in the façade of St. Mark's at Venice.[45] § XXX. Around these central types are grouped, in Plate II., four simple examples of the satellitic cluster, all of the Northern Gothic: 4, from the Cathedral of Amiens; 7, from that of Lyons (nave pier); 8, the same from Salisbury; 10, from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon, having satellites of three magnitudes: 9 is one of the piers between the doors of the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an instance of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects between piers proper and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in the next chapter, § XXXI.): for this fig. 9, which is an angle at the meeting of two jambs, is treated like a rich independent shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half of a true shaft, is treated like a meeting of jambs. All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern system, the curious trefoil plan, 3, lies _between_ the two, as the double quatrefoil next it _unites_ the two. The trefoil is from the Frari, Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the Byzantine manner,--an imitation, I think, of the Byzantine work by the Gothic builders: 1 is to be compared with it, being one of the earliest conditions of the cross shaft, from the atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave pier of St. Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully developed: and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone, of far more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.[46] Then the one below (15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of Bourges (12) were fused together into forms of inextricable complexity (inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion and projection, for all of them are easily resolvable into simple systems in connexion with the roof ribs). This pier of Rouen is a type of the last condition of the good Gothic; from this point the small shafts begin to lose shape, and run into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same time farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described in the "Seven Lamps." I have only here given one example of this family, an unimportant but sufficiently characteristic one (16) from St. Gervais of Falaise. One side of the nave of that church is Norman, the other Flamboyant, and the two piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It would be useless to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the later Gothic shafts; they become mere aggregations of mouldings very sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time running together in strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. But this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present purpose, and we shall therefore turn back from the Flamboyant to the Norman side of the Falaise aisle, resolute for the future that all shafts of which we may have the ordering, shall be permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit men or cities, to gather themselves into companies, or constellate themselves into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of nebulous aggregation. FOOTNOTES: [38] In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is to be traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts and intervals to the size of the human figure is therefore necessary. When shafts are used in the upper stories of buildings, or on a scale which ignores all relation to the human figure, no such relative limits exist either to slenderness or solidity. [39] Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr. Fergusson's account of the Temple of Karnak, "Principles of Beauty in Art," p. 219. [40] I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal height is as the squares of their diameters; which, though not actually a correct expression, is sufficiently so for all our present purposes. [41] How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we shall see presently. The reader must remember, that we at present reason respecting shafts in the abstract only. [42] The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a representation of the bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the weight of the architrave. [43] I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in this plate with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are accurate enough for their purpose: those of them respecting which we shall have farther question will be given on a much larger scale. [44] The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of Verona; they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high. [45] The effect of this last is given in Plate VI. of the folio series. [46] The entire development of this cross system in connexion with the vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor Willis (Architecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly recommend every reader who is inclined to take pains in the matter, to read that chapter. I have been contented, in my own text, to pursue the abstract idea of shaft form. CHAPTER IX. THE CAPITAL. § I. The reader will remember that in Chap. VII. § V. it was said that the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and gathered together, formed the capital of the column. We have now to follow it in its transformation. We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cornices (_a_, in Fig. V., above). We will take X and Y there, and we must necessarily gather them together as we did Xb and Yb in Chap. VII. Look back to the tenth paragraph of Chap. VII., read or glance it over again, substitute X and Y for Xb and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the capital was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read also fingers for toes; and as you look to the plate, Fig. XII., turn it upside down. Then _h_, in Fig. XII., becomes now your best general form of block capital, as before of block base. § II. You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies between base and capital; our farther inquiry is into their differences. You cannot but have noticed that when Fig. XII. is turned upside down, the square stone (Y) looks too heavy for the supporting stone (X); and that in the profile of cornice (_a_ of Fig. V.) the proportions are altogether different. You will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you consider that the principal function of the sloping part in Fig. XII. is as a prop to the pillar to keep it from _slipping aside_; but the function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to _carry weight above_. The thrust of the slope in the one case should therefore be lateral, in the other upwards. § III. We will, therefore, take the two figures, _e_ and _h_ of Fig. XII., and make this change in them as we reverse them, using now the exact profile of the cornice _a_,--the father of cornices; and we shall thus have _a_ and _b_, Fig. XIX. [Illustration: Fig. XIX.] Both of these are sufficiently ugly, the reader thinks; so do I; but we will mend them before we have done with them: that at _a_ is assuredly the ugliest,--like a tile on a flower-pot. It is, nevertheless, the father of capitals; being the simplest condition of the gathered father of cornices. But it is to be observed that the diameter of the shaft here is arbitrarily assumed to be small, in order more clearly to show the general relations of the sloping stone to the shaft and upper stone; and this smallness of the shaft diameter is inconsistent with the serviceableness and beauty of the arrangement at _a_, if it were to be realised (as we shall see presently); but it is not inconsistent with its central character, as the representative of every species of possible capital; nor is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted, as it may remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian capital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y, receive, now that they form the capital, each a separate name; the sloping stone is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid above it, the Abacus. Abacus means a board or tile: I wish there were an English word for it, but I fear there is no substitution possible, the term having been long fixed, and the reader will find it convenient to familiarise himself with the Latin one. § IV. The form of base, _e_ of Fig. XII., which corresponds to this first form of capital, _a_, was said to be objectionable only because it _looked_ insecure; and the spurs were added as a kind of pledge of stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting corners of the abacus at _a_, Fig. XIX., are _actually_ insecure; they may break off, if great weight be laid upon them. This is the chief reason of the ugliness of the form; and the spurs in _b_ are now no mere pledges of apparent stability, but have very serious practical use in supporting the angle of the abacus. If, even with the added spur, the support seems insufficient, we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the bell, and we have the form _c_. Thus _a_, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself (except under some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure; _b_ is the first type of capitals which carry light weight; _c_, of capitals which carry excessive weight. § V. I fear, however, the reader may think he is going slightly too fast, and may not like having the capital forced upon him out of the cornice; but would prefer inventing a capital for the shaft itself, without reference to the cornice at all. We will do so then; though we shall come to the same result. The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same weight as the long piece of wall which was concentrated into the shaft; it is enabled to do this both by its better form and better knit materials; and it can carry a greater weight than the space at the top of it is adapted to receive. The first point, therefore, is to expand this space as far as possible, and that in a form more convenient than the circle for the adjustment of the stones above. In general the square is a more convenient form than any other; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square or hexagonal stone on the top of the shaft, projecting as far beyond it as might be safely ventured; as at _a_, Fig. XX. This is the abacus. Our next idea would be to put a conical shaped stone beneath this abacus, to support its outer edge, as at _b_. This is the bell. [Illustration: Fig. XX.] § VI. Now the entire treatment of the capital depends simply on the manner in which this bell-stone is prepared for fitting the shaft below and the abacus above. Placed as at _a_, in Fig. XIX., it gives us the simplest of possible forms; with the spurs added, as at _b_, it gives the germ of the richest and most elaborate forms: but there are two modes of treatment more dexterous than the one, and less elaborate than the other, which are of the highest possible importance,--modes in which the bell is brought to its proper form by truncation. § VII. Let _d_ and _f_, Fig. XIX., be two bell-stones; _d_ is part of a cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off); _f_ part of a four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to be square, _d_ will already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled to fit the abacus; _f_ will already fit the abacus, but has to be chiselled to fit the shaft. From the broad end of _d_ chop or chisel off, in four vertical planes, as much as will leave its head an exact square. The vertical cuttings will form curves on the sides of the cone (curves of a curious kind, which the reader need not be troubled to examine), and we shall have the form at _e_, which is the root of the greater number of Norman capitals. From _f_ cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the square and widening the truncation downwards, so as to give the form at _g_, where the base of the bell is an octagon, and its top remains a square. A very slight rounding away of the angles of the octagon at the base of _g_ will enable it to fit the circular shaft closely enough for all practical purposes, and this form, at _g_, is the root of nearly all Lombardic capitals. If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal or octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on each angle; but there would be produced, of course, six or eight curves on the sides of _e_, and twelve or sixteen sides to the base of _g_. [Illustration: Fig. XXI.] § VIII. The truncations in _e_ and _g_ may of course be executed on concave or convex forms of _d_ and _f_; but _e_ is usually worked on a straight-sided bell, and the truncation of _g_ often becomes concave while the bell remains straight; for this simple reason,--that the sharp points at the angles of _g_, being somewhat difficult to cut, and easily broken off, are usually avoided by beginning the truncation a little way down the side of the bell, and then recovering the lost ground by a deeper cut inwards, as here, Fig. XXI. This is the actual form of the capitals of the balustrades of St. Mark's: it is the root of all the Byzantine Arab capitals, and of all the most beautiful capitals in the world, whose function is to express lightness. § IX. We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption that the form of cornice which was gathered together to produce the capital was the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V. But this, it will be remembered, was said in § VI. of Chap. VI. to be especially characteristic of southern work, and that in northern and wet climates it took the form of a dripstone. Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gathered together forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called the Early English,[47] owing to its especial use in that style. There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were always to be exposed to the weather; but in Gothic constructions the most important shafts are in the inside of the building. The dripstone sections of their capitals are therefore unnecessary and ridiculous. § X. They are, however, much worse than unnecessary. [Illustration: Fig. XXII.] The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing power, and the capital fails, therefore, in its own principal function; and besides this, the undercut contour admits of no distinctly visible decoration; it is, therefore, left utterly barren, and the capital looks as if it had been turned in a lathe. The Early English capital has, therefore, the three greatest faults that any design can have: (1) it fails in its own proper purpose, that of support; (2) it is adapted to a purpose to which it can never be put, that of keeping off rain; (3) it cannot be decorated. The Early English capital is, therefore, a barbarism of triple grossness, and degrades the style in which it is found, otherwise very noble, to one of second-rate order. § XI. Dismissing, therefore, the Early English capital, as deserving no place in our system, let us reassemble in one view the forms which have been legitimately developed, and which are to become hereafter subjects of decoration. To the forms _a_, _b_, and _c_, Fig. XIX., we must add the two simplest truncated forms _e_ and _g_, Fig. XIX., putting their abaci on them (as we considered their contours in the bells only), and we shall have the five forms now given in parallel perspective in Fig. XXII., which are the roots of all good capitals existing, or capable of existence, and whose variations, infinite and a thousand times infinite, are all produced by introduction of various curvatures into their contours, and the endless methods of decoration superinduced on such curvatures. § XII. There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite, which takes place in these radical forms, before they receive either curvature or decoration. This is the variety of proportion borne by the different lines of the capital to each other, and to the shafts. This is a structural question, at present to be considered as far as is possible. [Illustration: Fig. XXIII.] § XIII. All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders with legitimate distinction; very different, however, from the five orders as commonly understood) may be represented by the same profile, a section through the sides of _a_, _b_, _d_, and _e_, or through the angles of _c_, Fig. XXII. This profile we will put on the top of a shaft, as at A, Fig. XXIII., which shaft we will suppose of equal diameter above and below for the sake of greater simplicity: in this simplest condition, however, relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any one or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change, irrespective of the others. These five quantities are: 1. The height of the shaft, _a b_; 2. Its diameter, _b c_; 3. The length of slope of bell, _b d_; 4. The inclination of this slope, or angle _c b d_; 5. The depth of abacus, _d e_. For every change in any one of these quantities we have a new proportion of capital: five infinities, supposing change only in one quantity at a time: infinity of infinities in the sum of possible changes. It is, therefore, only possible to note the general laws of change; every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it admitting, within certain limits, a variety out of which the architect has his choice; but yet fixing limits which the proportion becomes ugly when it approaches, and dangerous when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable; for proof of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the next four paragraphs without harm. § XIV. 1. _The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally, may be the projection of the abacus._ For, looking back to Fig. XXIII., let the height _a b_ be fixed, the length _d b_, the angle _d b c_, and the depth _d e_. Let the single quantity _b c_ be variable, let B be a capital and shaft which are found to be perfectly safe in proportion to the weight they bear, and let the weight be equally distributed over the whole of the abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number of equal divisions, suppose four, as _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, of brickwork above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole weight; and let this weight be placed in the most trying way on the abacus, that is to say, let the masses _l_ and _r_ be detached from _m_ and _n_, and bear with their full weight on the outside of the capital. We assume, in B, that the width of abacus _e f_ is twice as great as that of the shaft, _b c_, and on these conditions we assume the capital to be safe. But _b c_ is allowed to be variable. Let it become _b2 c2_ at C, which is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft containing half the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore, able to sustain not more than half the weight sustained by B. But the slope _b d_ and depth _d e_ remaining unchanged, we have the capital of C, which we are to load with only half the weight of _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, i.e., with _l_ and _r_ alone. Therefore the weight of _l_ and _r_, now represented by the masses _l2_, _r2_, is distributed over the whole of the capital. But the weight _r_ was adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first capital _h f c_: much more is it now adequately supported by _i h_, _f2 c2_. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is more than safe. Now in B the length _e f_ was only twice _b c_; but in C, _e2 f2_ will be found more than twice that of _b2_ _c2_. Therefore, the more slender the shaft, the greater may be the proportional excess of the abacus over its diameter. [Illustration: Fig. XXIV.] § XV. 2. _The smaller the scale of the building, the greater may be the excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft._ This principle requires, I think, no very lengthy proof: the reader can understand at once that the cohesion and strength of stone which can sustain a small projecting mass, will not sustain a vast one overhanging in the same proportion. A bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes overhang its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the gravelly banks of the lanes of Hampstead: but make the bank of gravel, equally loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you can get it to overhang a hundred or two! much more if there be weight above it increased in the same proportion. Hence, let any capital be given, whose projection is just safe, and no more, on its existing scale; increase its proportions every way equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe; diminish them equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the diminution. Let, then, the quantity _e d_, and angle _d b c_, at A of Fig. XXIII., be invariable, and let the length _d b_ vary: then we shall have such a series of forms as may be represented by _a_, _b_, _c_, Fig. XXIV., of which _a_ is a proportion for a colossal building, _b_ for a moderately sized building, while _c_ could only be admitted on a very small scale indeed. § XVI. 3. _The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must be the slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant._ This will evidently follow from the considerations in the last paragraph; supposing only that, instead of the scale of shaft and capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies alone. For it will then still be true, that, if the projection of the capital be just safe on a given scale, as its excess over the shaft diameter increases, the projection will be unsafe, if the slope of the bell remain constant. But it may be rendered safe by making this slope steeper, and so increasing its supporting power. [Illustration: Fig. XXV.] Thus let the capital _a_, Fig. XXV., be just safe. Then the capital _b_, in which the slope is the same but the excess greater, is unsafe. But the capital _c_, in which, though the excess equals that of _b_, the steepness of the supporting slope is increased, will be as safe as _b_, and probably as strong as _a_.[48] § XVII. 4. _The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may be the abacus._ The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure over the surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by any accident be directed exclusively upon its edges. In proportion to the strength of these edges, this function of the abacus is superseded, and these edges are strong in proportion to the steepness of the slope. Thus in Fig. XXVI., the bell at _a_ would carry weight safely enough without any abacus, but that at _c_ would not: it would probably have its edges broken off. The abacus superimposed might be on _a_ very thin, little more than formal, as at _b_; but on _c_ must be thick, as at _d_. [Illustration: Fig. XXVI.] § XVIII. These four rules are all that are necessary for general criticism; and observe that these are only semi-imperative,--rules of permission, not of compulsion. Thus Law 1 asserts that the slender shaft _may_ have greater excess of capital than the thick shaft; but it need not, unless the architect chooses; his thick shafts _must_ have small excess, but his slender ones need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as the building is smaller, the excess _may_ be greater; but it need not, for the excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small. So Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep slopes; but it does not say that capitals of small excess may not have steep slopes also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4 asserts the necessity of the thick abacus for the shallow bell; but the steep bell may have a thick abacus also. § XIX. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession of these laws will always be useful, and especially of the two first. The eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a more spreading capital than it does on a massy one, and a bolder mass of capital on a small scale than on a large. And, in the application of the first rule, it is to be noted that a shaft becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or increase of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I know no mode of spoiling a noble building more frequent in actual practice than the imposition of flat and slightly expanded capitals on tall shafts. § XX. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstration of the four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be given. By the alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect has it in his power to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms of his capitals. By its various distribution on their centres or edges, the slope of their bells and thickness of abaci will be affected also; so that he has countless expedients at his command for the various treatment of his design. He can divide his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope of bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells, thin or thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity in their degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their relations: and all this without reference to decoration, merely with the five forms of block capital! § XXI. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness, unity, and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every building,--proportion utterly endless in its infinities of change, with unchanged beauty. And yet this connexion of the frame of their building into one harmony has, I believe, never been so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been instinctively done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none. § XXII. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily a separate stone from the bell: evidently, however, the strength of the capital will be undiminished if both are cut out of one block. This is actually the case in many capitals, especially those on a small scale; and in others the detached upper stone is a mere representative of the abacus, and is much thinner than the form of the capital requires, while the true abacus is united with the bell, and concealed by its decoration, or made part of it. § XXIII. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and abacus as both derived from the concentration of the cornice. But it must at once occur to the reader, that the projection of the under stone and the thickness of the upper, which are quite enough for the work of the continuous cornice, may not be enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so, for the harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened and expanded: but as this would cause a want of harmony in the parts, when they occur on the same level, it is better in such case to let the _entire_ cornice form the abacus of the capital, and put a deep capital bell beneath it. § XXIV. The reader will understand both arrangements instantly by two examples. Fig. XXVII. represents two windows, more than usually beautiful examples of a very frequent Venetian form. Here the deep cornice or string course which runs along the wall of the house is quite strong enough for the work of the capitals of the slender shafts: its own upper stone is therefore also theirs; its own lower stone, by its revolution or concentration, forms their bells: but to mark the increased importance of its function in so doing, it receives decoration, as the bell of the capital, which it did not receive as the under stone of the cornice. [Illustration: Fig. XXVII.] In Fig. XXVIII., a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, the cornice or string course, which goes round every part of the church, is not strong enough to form the capitals of the shafts. It therefore forms their abaci only; and in order to mark the diminished importance of its function, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the decoration which it received as the string course of the wall. This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice, occurring most characteristically in St. Mark's: and in the Gothic of St. John and Paul we find the two arrangements beautifully united, though in great simplicity; the string courses of the walls form the capitals of the shafts of the traceries; and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the apse. [Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.] § XXV. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular shafts only: those of square piers are more frequently formed by the cornice only; otherwise they are like those of circular piers, without the difficulty of reconciling the base of the bell with its head. § XXVI. When two or more shafts are grouped together, their capitals are usually treated as separate, until they come into actual contact. If there be any awkwardness in the junction, it is concealed by the decoration, and one abacus serves, in most cases, for all. The double group, Fig. XXVII., is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen. There is, however, evident sacrifice of sound principle in this system, the smaller abaci being of no use. They are the exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan, given in Plate XVII. There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do all the work: here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and doing none. § XXVII. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto entirely as an expansion of the bearing power of the shaft, supposing the shaft composed of a single stone. But, evidently, the capital has a function, if possible, yet more important, when the shaft is composed of small masonry. It enables all that masonry to act together, and to receive the pressure from above collectively and with a single strength. And thus, considered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is a feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective of its expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals, exceedingly small. And thus every large stone set at any important point to reassemble the force of smaller masonry and prepare it for the sustaining of weight, is a capital or "head" stone (the true meaning of the word) whether it project or not. Thus at 6, in Plate IV., the stones which support the thrust of the brickwork are capitals, which have no projection at all; and the large stones in the window above are capitals projecting in one direction only. § XXVIII. The reader is now master of all he need know respecting construction of capitals; and from what has been laid before him, must assuredly feel that there can never be any new system of architectural forms invented; but that all vertical support must be, to the end of time, best obtained by shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by nearly every nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the management of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their compositions. They were gradually led into this error through a series of steps which it is not here our business to trace. But they may be generalised in a few words. § XXIX. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque which is legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold independent shafts, plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals, forming arcades or colonnades where they are needed; and of walls whose apertures are surrounded by courses of parallel lines called mouldings, which are continuous round the apertures, and have neither shafts nor capitals. The shaft system and moulding system are entirely separate. The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered the shafts till they looked like a group of mouldings. They shod and capitaled the mouldings till they looked like a group of shafts. So that a pier became merely the side of a door or window rolled up, and the side of the window a pier unrolled (vide last Chapter, § XXX.), both being composed of a series of small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect seemed to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier he rolled up the mat; if he wanted the side of a door he spread out the mat: and now the reader has to add to the other distinctions between the Egyptian and the Gothic shaft, already noted in § XXVI. of Chap. VIII., this one more--the most important of all--that while the Egyptian rush cluster has only one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a separate tiny capital to every several rush. § XXX. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until it became troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact, when the groups of shafts became excessively complicated, the expansion of their small abaci was of no use: it was dispensed with altogether, and the mouldings of pier and jamb ran up continuously into the arches. This condition, though in many respects faulty and false, is yet the eminently characteristic state of Gothic: it is the definite formation of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid to classical models; and its lightness and complexity render it, when well treated, and enriched with Flamboyant decoration, a very glorious means of picturesque effect. It is, in fact, this form of Gothic which commends itself most easily to the general mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish theories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and avenues, which have from time to time been brought forward by persons ignorant of the history of architecture. § XXXI. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that of justness and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the continuous mouldings was replaced by what Professor Willis calls the Discontinuous impost; which, being a barbarism of the basest and most painful kind, and being to architecture what the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble the reader to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appreciation of the right; and I only note even the true Continuous or Flamboyant Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful decoration, afterwards to be considered. For, as far as structure is concerned, the moment the capital vanishes from the shaft, that moment we are in error: all good Gothic has true capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and all Gothic is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be: wherever there is indication of concentrated vertical support, then the capital is a necessary termination. I know how much Gothic, otherwise beautiful, this sweeping principle condemns; but it condemns not altogether. We may still take delight in its lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or its elastic and reedy moulding; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any approximations to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever office, or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades, or traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural laws of construction; and that, wherever such examples are found in ancient buildings, they are either the experiments of barbarism, or the commencements of decline. FOOTNOTES: [47] Appendix 19, "Early English Capitals." [48] In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the abacus widens; the illustration would have been clearer if I had assumed the breadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft to vary. CHAPTER X. THE ARCH LINE. § I. We have seen in the last section how our means of vertical support may, for the sake of economy both of space and material, be gathered into piers or shafts, and directed to the sustaining of particular points. The next question is how to connect these points or tops of shafts with each other, so as to be able to lay on them a continuous roof. This the reader, as before, is to favor me by finding out for himself, under these following conditions. Let _s_, _s_, Fig. XXIX. opposite, be two shafts, with their capitals ready prepared for their work; and _a_, _b_, _b_, and _c_, _c_, _c_, be six stones of different sizes, one very long and large, and two smaller, and three smaller still, of which the reader is to choose which he likes best, in order to connect the tops of the shafts. I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone _a_, and if he can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two pillars, as at A. Very well indeed: he has done already what a number of Greek architects have been thought very clever for having done. But suppose he _cannot_ lift the great stone _a_, or suppose I will not give it to him, but only the two smaller stones at _b_, _b_; he will doubtless try to put them up, tilted against each other, as at _d_. Very awkward this; worse than card-house building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as to make each of them of the form _e_, they will stand up very securely, as at B. But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can raise those at _c_, _c_, _c_. Then, cutting each of them into the form at _e_, he will doubtless set them up as at _f_. [Illustration: Fig. XXIX.] § II. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous. Is there not a chance of the stone in the middle pushing the others out, or tilting them up and aside, and slipping down itself between them? There is such a chance: and if by somewhat altering the form of the stones, we can diminish this chance, all the better. I must say "we" now, for perhaps I may have to help the reader a little. The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at _f_ pushes out the side ones: then if we can give the side ones such a shape as that, left to themselves, they would fall heavily forward, they will resist this push _out_ by their weight, exactly in proportion to their own particular inclination or desire to tumble _in_. Take one of them separately, standing up as at _g_; it is just possible it may stand up as it is, like the Tower of Pisa: but we want it to fall forward. Suppose we cut away the parts that are shaded at _h_ and leave it as at _i_, it is very certain it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward to our entire satisfaction. Farther: the midmost stone at _f_ is likely to be troublesome chiefly by its weight, pushing down between the others; the more we lighten it the better: so we will cut it into exactly the same shape as the side ones, chiselling away the shaded parts, as at _h_. We shall then have all the three stones _k_, _l_, _m_, of the same shape; and now putting them together, we have, at C, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at once to be a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at _f_. § III. We have now got three arrangements; in one using only one piece of stone, in the second two, and in the third three. The first arrangement has no particular name, except the "horizontal:" but the single stone (or beam, it may be,) is called a lintel; the second arrangement is called a "Gable;" the third an "Arch." We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all these arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the beams were kept loose, like the stones; but as beams can be securely nailed together at the ends, we need not trouble ourselves so much about their shape or balance, and therefore the plan at _f_ is a peculiarly wooden construction (the reader will doubtless recognise in it the profile of many a farm-house roof): and again, because beams are tough, and light, and long, as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that at C is, for the most part, left to brick and stone. § IV. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though very conveniently to be first considered as composed of one, two, and three pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When we have once cut the stones of the arch into a shape like that of _k_, _l_, and _m_, they will hold together, whatever their number, place, or size, as at _n_; and the great value of the arch is, that it permits small stones to be used with safety instead of large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut into the shape of _k_, _l_, and _m_, whether they be short or long (I have drawn them all sizes at _n_ on purpose), are called Voussoirs; this is a hard, ugly French name; but the reader will perhaps be kind enough to recollect it; it will save us both some trouble: and to make amends for this infliction, I will relieve him of the term _keystone_. One voussoir is as much a keystone as another; only people usually call the stone which is last put in the keystone; and that one happens generally to be at the top or middle of the arch. § V. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of many stones or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this way over most of the windows of our brick London houses, and so also the gable: there are, therefore, two distinct questions respecting each arrangement;--First, what is the line or direction of it, which gives it its strength? and, secondly, what is the manner of masonry of it, which gives it its consistence? The first of these I shall consider in this Chapter under the head of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including all manner of construction (though we shall have no trouble except about curves); and in the next Chapter I shall consider the second, under the head, Arch Masonry. § VI. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch; or rather it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs are the vertebræ, which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it. This arch line the architect has first to conceive and shape in his mind, as opposed to, or having to bear, certain forces which will try to distort it this way and that; and against which he is first to direct and bend the line itself into as strong resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and what else he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and in its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch, and the adverse forces are its temptations; and the voussoirs, and what else we may help it with, are its armor and its motives to good conduct. § VII. This moral character of the arch is called by architects its "Line of Resistance." There is a great deal of nicety in calculating it with precision, just as there is sometimes in finding out very precisely what is a man's true line of moral conduct; but this, in arch morality and in man morality, is a very simple and easily to be understood principle,--that if either arch or man expose themselves to their special temptations or adverse forces, _outside_ of the voussoirs or proper and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe: in proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs, the arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation; and the moment the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs the arch falls. § VIII. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch lines. One is the visible direction or curve of the arch, which may generally be considered as the under edge of its voussoirs, and which has often no more to do with the real stability of the arch, than a man's apparent conduct has with his heart. The other line, which is the line of resistance, or line of good behavior, may or may not be consistent with the outward and apparent curves of the arch; but if not, then the security of the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to include the other. § IX. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance varies with every change either in place or quantity of the weight above the arch, he will see at once that we have no chance of arranging arches by their moral characters: we can only take the apparent arch line, or visible direction, as a ground of arrangement. We shall consider the possible or probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter, and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help which may best fortify these visible lines against every temptation to lose their consistency. [Illustration: Fig. XXX.] § X. Look back to Fig. XXIX. Evidently the abstract or ghost line of the arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line, as here at _a_, Fig. XXX. The abstract line of the arrangement at B, Fig. XXIX., is composed of two straight lines, set against each other, as here at _b_. The abstract line of C, Fig. XXIX., is a curve of some kind, not at present determined, suppose _c_, Fig. XXX. Then, as _b_ is two of the straight lines at _a_, set up against each other, we may conceive an arrangement, _d_, made up of two of the curved lines at _c_, set against each other. This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms: it ought to be called a curved gable; but it must keep the name it has got. Now _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, Fig. XXX., are the ghosts of the lintel, the gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel ghost we need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no changes in him: but there is much variety in the other three, and the method of their variety will be best discerned by studying _b_ and _d_, as subordinate to and connected with the simple arch at _c_. § XI. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very curious in designing out of the way arches,--elliptical arches, and four-centred arches, so called, and other singularities. The good architects have generally been content, and we for the present will be so, with God's arch, the arch of the rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and which the sun shapes for us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a moment as it climbs: when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch _a_, Fig. XXXI.; when it is half up, _b_, and when three quarters up, _c_. There will be an infinite number of arches between these, but we will take these as sufficient representatives of all. Then _a_ is the low arch, _b_ the central or pure arch, _c_ the high arch, and the rays of the sun would have drawn for us their voussoirs. § XII. We will take these several arches successively, and fixing the top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence to its base, _d_, _e_, _f_, Fig. XXXI. Then these lines give us the relative gables of each of the arches; _d_ is the Italian or southern gable, _e_ the central gable, _f_ the Gothic gable. [Illustration: Fig. XXXI.] § XIII. We will again take the three arches with their gables in succession, and on each of the sides of the gable, between it and the arch, we will describe another arch, as at _g_, _h_, _i_. Then the curves so described give the pointed arches belonging to each of the round arches; _g_, the flat pointed arch, _h_, the central pointed arch, and _i_, the lancet pointed arch. § XIV. If the radius with which these intermediate curves are drawn be the base of _f_, the last is the equilateral pointed arch, one of great importance in Gothic work. But between the gable and circle, in all the three figures, there are an infinite number of pointed arches, describable with different radii; and the three round arches, be it remembered, are themselves representatives of an infinite number, passing from the flattest conceivable curve, through the semicircle and horseshoe, up to the full circle. The central and the last group are the most important. The central round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine, and Norman arch; and its relative pointed includes one wide branch of Gothic. The horseshoe round is the Arabic and Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes the whole range of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French Gothics. I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of which the equilateral arch is the representative. Between it and the outer horseshoe, as this latter rises higher, the reader will find, on experiment, the great families of what may be called the horseshoe pointed,--curves of the highest importance, but which are all included, with English lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe arch. [Illustration: Fig. XXXII.] § XV. The groups above described are all formed of circular arcs, and include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordinary work. I believe that singular and complicated curves are made use of in modern engineering, but with these the general reader can have no concern: the Ponte della Trinita at Florence is the most graceful instance I know of such structure; the arch made use of being very subtle, and approximating to the low ellipse; for which, in common work, a barbarous pointed arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe, exists in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with it on a large scale; but it occurs in the niches of the later portions of the Ducal palace at Venice, together with a singular hyperbolic arch, _a_ in Fig. XXXIII., to be described hereafter: with such caprices we are not here concerned. § XVI. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity of another form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs to the English perpendicular Gothic. Taking the gable of any of the groups in Fig. XXXI. (suppose the equilateral), here at _b_, in Fig. XXXIII., the dotted line representing the relative pointed arch, we may evidently conceive an arch formed by reversed curves on the inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner curved lines. I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the nature of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability was gained by the curve on the _outside_ of the gable, exactly so much is lost by curves on the _inside_. The natural tendency of such an arch to dissolution by its own mere weight renders it a feature of detestable ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large scale. It is eminently characteristic of Tudor work, and it is the profile of the Chinese roof (I say on a large scale, because this as well as all other capricious arches, may be made secure by their masonry when small, but not otherwise). Some allowable modifications of it will be noticed in the chapter on Roofs. [Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.] § XVII. There is only one more form of arch which we have to notice. When the last described arch is used, not as the principal arrangement, but as a mere heading to a common pointed arch, we have the form _c_, Fig. XXXIII. Now this is better than the entirely reversed arch for two reasons; first, less of the line is weakened by reversing; secondly, the double curve has a very high æsthetic value, not existing in the mere segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are not only admissible, but even of great desirableness, when their scale and masonry render them secure, but above a certain scale they are altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed Tudor arch, wantonly employed, are the characteristics of the worst and meanest schools of architecture, past or present. This double curve is called the Ogee; it is the profile of many German leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there more excusable, because associated and in sympathy with exquisitely managed arches of the same line in the walls below), of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and it is at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over the world. § XVIII. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the reversed portion of it may be engrafted on every other form of arch, horseshoe, round, or pointed. Whatever is generally worthy of note in these varieties, and in other arches of caprice, we shall best discover by examining their masonry; for it is by their good masonry only that they are rendered either stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us address ourselves. CHAPTER XI. THE ARCH MASONRY. § I. On the subject of the stability of arches, volumes have been written and volumes more are required. The reader will not, therefore, expect from me any very complete explanation of its conditions within the limits of a single chapter. But that which is necessary for him to know is very simple and very easy; and yet, I believe, some part of it is very little known, or noticed. We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an arch. It is a curved _shell_ of firm materials, on whose back a burden is to be laid of _loose_ materials. So far as the materials above it are _not loose_, but themselves hold together, the opening below is not an arch, but an _excavation_. Note this difference very carefully. If the King of Sardinia tunnels through the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not require to build a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of the Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed. The Mont Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a succession of invisible granite arches, rather larger than the tunnel. But when Mr. Brunel tunnelled the Thames bottom, he needed to build a brick arch to carry the six or seven feet of mud and the weight of water above. That is a type of all arches proper. § II. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the two. So far as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is to say, colossal in comparison of them, and granitic, so that the arch is a mere hole in the rock substance of it, the form of the arch is of no consequence whatever: it may be rounded, or lozenged, or ogee'd, or anything else; and in the noblest architecture there is always _some_ character of this kind given to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand. But the theory of arches does not presume on any such condition of things; it allows itself only the shell of the arch proper; the vertebræ, carrying their marrow of resistance; and, above this shell, it assumes the wall to be in a state of flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand, with its whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be solved by the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight, but to carry it with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to carry it by continually thickening your voussoirs: if you have six feet depth of sand or gravel to carry, and you choose to employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no question but your arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too costly: the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least thickness of voussoir which will be safe; and to do this requires peculiar arrangement of the lines of the arch. There are many arrangements, useful all in their way, but we have only to do, in the best architecture, with the simplest and most easily understood. We have first to note those which regard the actual shell of the arch, and then we shall give a few examples of the superseding of such expedients by Mont-Cenisian masonry. § III. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the central pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let _a_, Plate III., be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading above; and suppose you find that shell not quite thick enough; and that the weight bears too heavily on the top of the arch, and is likely to break it in: you proceed to thicken your shell, but need you thicken it all equally? Not so; you would only waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common sense you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon's skull is thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I fancy), as at _b_. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot off it right and left, as the bullets do off a cuirassier's breastplate, and will have no chance of beating it in. If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be made, as at _c_, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base also. But as this may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently high, or occasion a waste of voussoirs at the top, we may employ another expedient. § IV. I imagine the reader's common sense, if not his previous knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the arch at _a_, Plate III., burst _in_ at the top, it must burst _out_ at the sides. Set up two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and press them down with your hand, and you will see them bend out at the sides. Therefore, if you can keep the arch from starting out at the points _p_, _p_, it _cannot_ curve in at the top, put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer crushing of the stones to fragments. § V. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at _p_ by loading it at _p_, putting more weight upon it and against it at that point; and this, in practice, is the way it is usually done. But we assume at present that the weight above is sand or water, quite unmanageable, not to be directed to the points we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes happen that we cannot put weight upon the arch at _p_. We may perhaps want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the building, and many other circumstances may occur to hinder us. § VI. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above it, we are perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it. You may always thicken your shell inside, and put the weight upon it as at _x x_, in _d_, Plate III. Not much chance of its bursting out at _p_, now, is there? § VII. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical pressure, it will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at _b_ or _d_, than as at _a_: _b_ and _d_ are, therefore, the types of arches built to resist vertical pressure, all over the world, and from the beginning of architecture to its end. None others can be compared with them: all are imperfect except these. [Illustration: Plate III. ARCH MASONRY.] The added projections at _x x_, in _d_, are called CUSPS, and they are the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic; yet never thoroughly understood nor found in perfection, except in Italy, the northern builders working often, even in the best times, with the vulgar form at _a_. The form at _b_ is rarely found in the north: its perfection is in the Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad according to their use, occur in Saracenic work. § VIII. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it was probably invented (by the Arabs?) not as a constructive, but a decorative feature, in pure fantasy; and in early northern work it is only the application to the arch of the foliation, so called, of penetrated spaces in stone surfaces, already enough explained in the "Seven Lamps," Chap. III., p. 85 _et seq._ It is degraded in dignity, and loses its usefulness, exactly in proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In later architecture, especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage, and becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of the arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie. § IX. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its exact application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch, varies with the direction of the weight to be sustained. I have spent more than a month, and that in hard work too, in merely trying to get the forms of cusps into perfect order: whereby the reader may guess that I have not space to go into the subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the leading and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry. § X. The reader now understands all that he need about the shell of the arch, considered as an united piece of stone. He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This, as much as is required, he will be able best to comprehend by a few examples; by which I shall be able also to illustrate, or rather which will force me to illustrate, some of the methods of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to be the second part of our subject. § XI. 1 and 2, Plate IV., are two cornices; 1 from St. Antonio, Padua; 2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them for cornices; but I have put them in this plate because, though their arches are filled up behind, and are in fact mere blocks of stone with arches cut into their faces, they illustrate the constant masonry of small arches, both in Italian and Northern Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out of its own proper block of stone: this is Mont-Cenisian enough, on a small scale. 3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive and interesting in manner,--one of its arches being of one stone, the other of two. And here we have an instance of a form of arch which would be barbarous enough on a large scale, and of many pieces; but quaint and agreeable thus massively built. 4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Vevay; one fancies the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance, but one is pleased with it on seeing its masonry. It could hardly be stronger. § XII. These then are arches cut of one block. The next step is to form them of two pieces, set together at the head of the arch. 6, from the Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint and primitive in manner: it is a curious church altogether, and has some strange traceries cut out of single blocks. One is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII., in the left-hand corner at the bottom. 7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably decorated, as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced construction, wrought with the most exquisite proportion and precision of workmanship, as is everything else in the glorious church to which it belongs, San Fermo of Verona. The addition of the top piece, which completes the circle, does not affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their simple and perfect cusps; but it is highly curious, and serves to show how the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of the architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibiting the maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in workmanship,--a rare unison: for, in general, simple designs are rudely worked, and as the builder perfects his execution, he complicates his plan. Nearly all the arches of San Fermo are two-pieced. [Illustration: Plate IV. ARCH MASONRY.] § XIII. We have seen the construction with one and two pieces: _a_ and _b_, Fig. 8, Plate IV., are the general types of the construction with three pieces, uncusped and cusped; _c_ and _d_ with five pieces, uncusped and cusped. Of these the three-pieced construction is of enormous importance, and must detain us some time. The five-pieced is the three-pieced with a joint added on each side, and is also of great importance. The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints, rarely occurs, and need not detain us. § XIV. It will be remembered that in first working out the principle of the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces. Three is the smallest number which can exhibit the real _principle_ of arch masonry, and it may be considered as representative of all arches built on that principle; the one and two-pieced arches being microscopic Mont-Cenisian, mere caves in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks leaning together. But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all; and the larger and more complicated constructions are merely produced by keeping the central piece for what is called a keystone, and putting additional joints at the sides. Now so long as an arch is pure circular or pointed, it does not matter how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the joints are; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make it two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, especially ogee, the joints must be in particular places, and the masonry simple, or it will not be thoroughly good and secure; and the fine schools of the ogee arch have only arisen in countries where it was the custom to build arches of few pieces. § XV. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-pieced arch, with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the longest being the lowest, as at _b2_, Plate III. If the arch be very large, a fourth order of magnitude is added, as at _a2_. The portals of the palaces of Venice have one or other of these masonries, almost without exception. Now, as one piece is added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to make a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the Venetian Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, _c2_. § XVI. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful. It is wanted, he will remember, to give weight to those side stones, and draw them inwards against the thrust of the top stone. Take one of the side stones of _c2_ out for a moment, as at _d_. Now the _proper_ place of the cusp upon it varies with the weight which it bears or requires; but in practice this nicety is rarely observed; the place of the cusp is almost always determined by æsthetic considerations, and it is evident that the variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp as a wave passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top; then you will have the succession of forms from _e_ to _g_ (Plate III.), with infinite degrees of transition from each to each; but of which you may take _e_, _f_, and _g_, as representing three great families of cusped arches. Use _e_ for your side stones, and you have an arch as that at _h_ below, which may be called a down-cusped arch. Use _f_ for the side stone, and you have _i_, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use _g_, and you have _k_, an up-cusped arch. § XVII. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-cusped, not when the cusped point is in the middle of the curve of the arch, but when it is in the middle of the _side piece_, and also that where the side pieces join the keystone there will be a change, perhaps somewhat abrupt, in the curvature. I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect to its side piece than with respect to its own curve, because the most beautiful Gothic arches in the world, those of the Lombard Gothic, have, in all the instances I have examined, a form more or less approximating to this mid-cusped one at _i_ (Plate III.), but having the curvature of the cusp carried up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, however, the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch will mean one which has the point of the cusp midway between its own base and apex. The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped, as at _k_. The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and up-cusped arches, the piece of stone, added to form the cusp, is of the shape of a scymitar, held down in the one case and up in the other. § XVIII. Now, in the arches _h_, _i_, _k_, a slight modification has been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it may continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not to be given to it in practice without considerable nicety of workmanship; and some curious results took place in Venice from this difficulty. At _l_ (Plate III.) is the shape of the Venetian side stone, with its cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly be better or more graceful, or have the weight better disposed in order to cause it to nod forwards against the keystone, as above explained, Ch. X. § II., where I developed the whole system of the arch from three pieces, in order that the reader might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp. Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three stories; with perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story, and this on two or three of its sides, requiring altogether some hundred to a hundred and fifty side pieces. I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows are set together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like hooks, of which the keystones were to be the eyes; that these side pieces were ordered by the architect in the gross, and were used by him sometimes for wider, sometimes for narrower windows; bevelling the two ends as required, fitting in keystones as he best could, and now and then varying the arrangement by turning the side pieces _upside down_. There were various conveniences in this way of working, one of the principal being that the side pieces with their cusps were always cut to their complete form, and that no part of the cusp was carried out into the keystone, which followed the curve of the outer arch itself. The ornaments of the cusp might thus be worked without any troublesome reference to the rest of the arch. § XIX. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order, like that at _l_, and see what we can make of them. We will try to fit them first with a keystone which continues the curve of the outer arch, as at _m_. This the reader assuredly thinks an ugly arch. There are a great many of them in Venice, the ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders quickly began to feel them so. What could they do to better them? The arch at _m_ has a central piece of the form _r_. Substitute for it a piece of the form _s_, and we have the arch at _n_. § XX. This arch at _n_ is not so strong as that at _m_; but, built of good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it is quite strong enough for all practical purposes on a small scale. I have examined at least two thousand windows of this kind and of the other Venetian ogees, of which that at _y_ (in which the plain side-piece _d_ is used instead of the cusped one) is the simplest; and I never found _one_, even in the most ruinous palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted weight of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured; and this is the only danger to which the window is exposed; in other respects it is as strong an arch as can be built. It is not to be supposed that the change from the _r_ keystone to the _s_ keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought out by many curious experiments, which we shall have to trace hereafter, and to throw the resultant varieties of form into their proper groups. § XXI. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in its block form at _t_, with the bricks which load the back of it. Now, as these bricks support it behind, and since, as far as the use of the cusp is concerned, it matters not whether its weight be in marble or bricks, there is nothing to hinder us from cutting out some of the marble, as at _u_, and filling up the space with bricks. (_Why_ we should take a fancy to do this, I do not pretend to guess at present; all I have to assert is, that, if the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it). Substituting this side piece for the other in the window _n_, we have that at _w_, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us afterwards; here we have nothing more to do with it than to note that, thus built, and properly backed by brickwork, it is just as strong and safe a form as that at _n_; but that this, as well as every variety of ogee arch, depends entirely for its safety, fitness, and beauty, on the masonry which we have just analysed; and that, built on a large scale, and with many voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for the sake of the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantastic varieties admit, and sometimes for the sake of another merit, exactly the opposite of the constructional ones we are at present examining, that they seem to stand by enchantment. [Illustration: Plate V. Arch Masonry. BRULETTO OF COMO.] § XXII. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints of the voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been considered. It is a question of much nicety, and which I have not been able as yet fully to investigate: but the natural idea of the arrangement of these lines (which in round arches are of course perpendicular to the curve) would be that every voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner arched surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this actual law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced in the best Gothic buildings. § XXIII. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader to keep in mind of the general laws connected with this subject, by giving him an example of each of the two forms of the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped and cusped, treated with the most simple and magnificent masonry, and partly, in both cases, Mont-Cenisian. The first, Plate V., is a window from the Broletto of Como. It shows, in its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on groups of four shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the space above, and pierced with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian, this), while the mouldings above are each constructed with a separate system of voussoirs, all of them shaped, I think, on the principle above stated, § XXII., in alternate serpentine and marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure uncusped Gothic construction, _b_ of Plate III. [Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.] § XXIV. Fig. XXXIV. is the masonry of the side arch of, as far as I know or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic sepulchral monument in the world, the foursquare canopy of the (nameless?)[49] tomb standing over the small cemetery gate of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I shall have frequent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe, shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak of it: meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe the severity and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely delicate suggestion of the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly the use of the cusp in giving _inward_ weight to the great pieces of stone on the flanks of the arch, and preventing their thrust outwards from being severely thrown on the lowermost stones. The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole massy canopy is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be seen hereafter in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust, by iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the heads of the abaci; a feature of peculiar importance in this monument, inasmuch as we know it to be part of the original construction, by a beautiful little Gothic wreathed pattern, like one of the hems of garments of Fra Angelico, running along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far, is the system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely monument, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth of Italy;--chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles of a land of mourning. FOOTNOTES: [49] At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei's "Verona," nor anywhere else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19, "Tombs at St. Anastasia." CHAPTER XII. THE ARCH LOAD. § I. In the preceding enquiry we have always supposed either that the load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of gravel or sand, or that it was Mont-Cenisian, and formed one mass with the arch voussoirs, of more or less compactness. [Illustration: Fig. XXXV.] In practice, the state is usually something between the two. Over bridges and tunnels it sometimes approaches to the condition of mere dust or yielding earth; but in architecture it is mostly firm masonry, not altogether acting with the voussoirs, yet by no means bearing on them with perfectly dead weight, but locking itself together above them, and capable of being thrown into forms which relieve them, in some degree, from its pressure. § II. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof above the line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between them on the tops of the columns. We have at present nothing granted us but the bare masonry, as here at _a_, Fig. XXXV., and we must fill up the intervals between the semicircle so as to obtain a level line of support. We may first do this simply as at _b_, with plain mass of wall; so laying the roof on the top, which is the method of the pure Byzantine and Italian Romanesque. But if we find too much stress is thus laid on the arches, we may introduce small second shafts on the top of the great shaft, _a_, Fig. XXXVI., which may assist in carrying the roof, conveying great part of its weight at once to the heads of the main shafts, and relieving from its pressure the centres of the arches. [Illustration: Fig. XXXVI.] § III. The new shaft thus introduced may either remain lifted on the head of the great shaft, or may be carried to the ground in front of it, or through it, _b_, Fig. XXXVI.; in which latter case the main shaft divides into two or more minor shafts, and forms a group with the shaft brought down from above. § IV. When this shaft, brought from roof to ground, is subordinate to the main pier, and either is carried down the face of it, or forms no large part of the group, the principle is Romanesque or Gothic, _b_, Fig. XXXVI. When it becomes a bold central shaft, and the main pier splits into two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or Palladian, _c_, Fig. XXXVI. Which latter arrangement becomes absurd or unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the main shaft to carry the roof without the help of the minor shafts or arch, which in many instances of Palladian work look as if they might be removed without danger to the building. § V. The form _a_ is a more pure Northern Gothic type than even _b_, which is the connecting link between it and the classical type. It is found chiefly in English and other northern Gothic, and in early Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived as above explained, Chap. I. § XXVII. _b_ is a general French Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in great purity at Valence. The small shafts of the form _a_ and _b_, as being northern, are generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive for that reason the name of vaulting shafts. § VI. Of these forms _b_, Fig. XXXV., is the purest and most sublime, expressing the power of the arch most distinctly. All the others have some appearance of dovetailing and morticing of timber rather than stonework; nor have I ever yet seen a single instance, quite satisfactory, of the management of the capital of the main shaft, when it had either to sustain the base of the vaulting shaft, as in _a_, or to suffer it to pass through it, as in _b_, Fig. XXXVI. Nor is the bracket which frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a fitting support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events presumed to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof. § VII. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are called Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found, in any of its forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may be diminished, while their strength remains the same, by piercing them with circular holes or lights. This is rarely necessary in ordinary architecture, though sometimes of great use in bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such circles may be seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square station); but, from its constructional value, it becomes the best form in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall see hereafter. § VIII. The height of the load above the arch is determined by the needs of the building and possible length of the shaft; but with this we have at present nothing to do, for we have performed the task which was set us. We have ascertained, as it was required that we should in § VI. of Chap. III. (A), the construction of walls; (B), that of piers; (C), that of piers with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next, therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof. CHAPTER XIII. THE ROOF. § I. Hitherto our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any considerations relating exclusively either to the exterior or interior of buildings. But it can remain so no longer. As far as the architect is concerned, one side of a wall is generally the same as another; but in the roof there are usually two distinct divisions of the structure; one, a shell, vault, or flat ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper structure, built of timber, to protect the lower; or of some different form, to support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divisions, as in St. Paul's, where we have a central shell with a mask below and above. Still it will be convenient to remember the distinction between the part of the roof which is usually visible from within, and whose only business is to stand strongly, and not fall in, which I shall call the Roof Proper; and, secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly supported by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and get rid of rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Roof Mask. § II. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader in the discussion of the various methods of construction of Roofs Proper, for this simple reason, that no person without long experience can tell whether a roof be wisely constructed or not; nor tell at all, even with help of any amount of experience, without examination of the several parts and bearings of it, very different from any observation possible to the general critic: and more than this, the enquiry would be useless to us in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not contemporary with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest possible constructions, which have been admirably explained by Willis in his "Architecture of the Middle Ages," Chap. VII., to which I may refer the reader for all that it would be well for him to know respecting the connexion of the different parts of the vault with the shafts. He would also do well to read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185-193, in Mr. Garbett's rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.[50] I shall content myself therefore with noting one or two points on which neither writer has had occasion to touch, respecting the Roof Mask. § III. It was said in § V. of Chapter III. that we should not have occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add materially to the forms then suggested. The forms which we have to add are only those resulting from the other curves of the arch developed in the last chapter; that is to say, the various eastern domes and cupolas arising out of the revolution of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with the well-known Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface, being of no more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow or rain, than the ordinary spire and gable; and it is rather curious, therefore, that all of them, on a small scale, should have obtained so extensive use in Germany and Switzerland, their native climate being that of the east, where their purpose seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed surfaces. I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to architecture of any admirable dignity; their chief charm is, to the European eye, that of strangeness; and it seems to me possible that in the east the bulging form may be also delightful, from the idea of its enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy them in St. Mark's, chiefly because they increase the fantastic and unreal character of St. Mark's Place; and because they appear to sympathise with an expression, common, I think, to all the buildings of that group, of a natural buoyancy, as if they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea. But, assuredly, they are not features to be recommended for imitation.[51] § IV. One form, closely connected with the Chinese concave, is, however, often constructively right,--the gable with an inward angle, occurring with exquisitely picturesque effect throughout the domestic architecture of the north, especially Germany and Switzerland; the lower slope being either an attached external penthouse roof, for protection of the wall, as in Fig. XXXVII., or else a kind of buttress set on the angle of the tower; and in either case the roof itself being a simple gable, continuous beneath it. [Illustration: Fig. XXXVII.] § V. The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, so I esteem it the grandest of roofs; whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a grey slope of slaty mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern cathedrals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this difference between its slope in the northern and southern structure is a matter of far greater importance than is commonly supposed, and it is this to which I would especially direct the reader's attention. § VI. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off snow in the north, has been a thousand times alluded to: another I do not remember having seen noticed, namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably habitable in the north, which are painful _sotto piombi_ in Italy; and that there is in wet climates a natural tendency in all men to live as high as possible, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or squared above a tower, becomes a spire or turret; and this feature, worked out with elaborate decoration, is the key-note of the whole system of aspiration, so called, which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I entirely and boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and would have gladly staid in it for ever; whose best hope was the escaping hell, which they thought to do by building cathedrals, but who had very vague conceptions of Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting their entrance therein; and the form of the spired cathedral has no more intentional reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened slope of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has, as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. We may now, with ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic characters in the form; we may now use it with such definite meaning; but we only prevent ourselves from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords; and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof, have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue. Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be no otherwise accounted for may often be explained by reference to the natural features of the country, or to anything which habit must have rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men, and far more so in the practical minds of the north than among the early Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded, when they built basilicas, or cut conchas out of the catacombs, as were ever the Norman barons or monks. § VII. There is, however, in the north an animal activity which materially aided the system of building begun in mere utility,--an animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death. § VIII. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther to add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the Northman would be inspired by the frostwork wreathed upon its glittering point, and the Italian by the dark green depth of sunshine on the broad table of the stone-pine[52] (and consider by the way whether the spruce fir be a more heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the Mediterranean isles). § IX. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each other, the steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on its flanks, and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of cards. What is more, the desire to build high is complicated with the peculiar love of the grotesque[53] which is characteristic of the north, together with especial delight in multiplication of small forms, as well as in exaggerated points of shade and energy, and a certain degree of consequent insensibility to perfect grace and quiet truthfulness; so that a northern architect could not feel the beauty of the Elgin marbles, and there will always be (in those who have devoted themselves to this particular school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer characters of Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Raphael: whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was never lost, and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have understood the Theseus in an instant, and would have received from it new life. There can be no question that theirs was the greatest school, and carried out by the greatest men; and that while those who began with this school could perfectly well feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic remain in a narrowed field--one of small pinnacles, and dots, and crockets, and twitched faces--and cannot comprehend the meaning of a broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the northern school is an admirable and delightful thing, but a lower thing than the southern. The Gothic of the Ducal Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is grand in all the world: that of the north is in harmony with the grotesque northern spirit only. § X. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof structure in its spirit, and must return to our text. As the height of the walls increased, in sympathy with the rise of the roof, while their thickness remained the same, it became more and more necessary to support them by buttresses; but--and this is another point that the reader must specially note--it is not the steep roof mask which requires the buttress, but the vaulting beneath it; the roof mask being a mere wooden frame tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often put together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the walls like a hat, bearing vertically upon them; and farther, I believe in most cases the northern vaulting requires its great array of external buttress, not so much from any peculiar boldness in its own forms, as from the greater comparative thinness and height of the walls, and more determined throwing of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now the connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with the buttress, at such points, is not visible to the spectators from without; but the relation of the roof mask to the top of the wall which it protects, or from which it springs, is perfectly visible; and it is a point of so great importance in the effect of the building, that it will be well to make it a subject of distinct consideration in the following Chapter. FOOTNOTES: [50] Appendix 17 [51] I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its construction enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to be rather a _tour de force_ than a convenient or natural form of roof, and because the ordinary spectator's choice among its various outlines must always be dependent on æsthetic considerations only, and can in no wise be grounded on any conception of its infinitely complicated structural principles. [52] I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest scenery on the _northern_ mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish gentleman, the other day, describing, together with his own, the regret which the peasants in his neighborhood had testified for the loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the grandest in Spain, which its proprietor had suffered to be cut down for small gain. He said that the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly known as "El Pino." [53] Appendix 8. CHAPTER XIV. THE ROOF CORNICE. § I. It will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we paused (§ X.) at the point where the addition of brackets to the ordinary wall cornice would have converted it into a structure proper for sustaining a roof. Now the wall cornice was treated throughout our enquiry (compare Chapter VII. § V.) as the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its concentration, the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason _back_ from the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will serve for the roof cornice; for all our conclusions respecting the capital were based on the supposition of its being adapted to carry considerable weight condensed on its abacus: but the roof cornice is, in most cases, required rather to project boldly than to carry weight; and arrangements are therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection of large surfaces without being calculated to resist extraordinary pressure. This object is obtained by the use of brackets at intervals, which are the peculiar distinction of the roof cornice. § II. Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two great families: the first and simplest, those which are composed merely by the projection of the edge of the roof mask over the wall, sustained by such brackets or spurs as may be necessary; the second, those which provide a walk round the edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some stronger support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we shall consider in succession. § III. 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name, as represented in the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is used, however, in bold projection, both in north, and south, and east; its use being, in the north, to throw the rain well away from the wall of the building; in the south to give it shade; and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of the timbers of the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to the edge of the cornice), and sustained by spurs of timber. This is its most picturesque and natural form; not inconsistent with great splendor of architecture in the mediæval Italian domestic buildings, superb in its mass of cast shadow, and giving rich effect to the streets of Swiss towns, even when they have no other claim to interest. A farther value is given to it by its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with weight of water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals of three or four feet,--rows of magnificent leaden or iron dragons' heads, full of delightful character, except to any person passing along the middle of the street in a heavy shower. I have had my share of their kindness in my time, but owe them no grudge; on the contrary, much gratitude for the delight of their fantastic outline on the calm blue sky, when they had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant in the sunshine. § IV. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow, or when the architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed, it becomes necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits; a change of considerable importance, in that it permits the gutter, instead of being of lead and hung to the edge of the cornice, to be of stone, and supported by brackets in the wall, these brackets becoming proper recipients of after decoration (and sometimes associated with the stone channels of discharge, called gargoyles, which belong, however, more properly to the other family of cornices). The most perfect and beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in its extreme simplicity and serviceableness. § V. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the same kind, in which, however, there are no brackets, but useless appendages hung to the bottom of the gutter (giving, however, some impression of support as seen from a distance), and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops. The brackets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice; and the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing more than a vast dripstone moulding, to keep the rain from such sculpture: its decoration of guttæ, seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture. § VI. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and farther developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true importance, though of barbarous and effeminate outline: and gorgeous decorations are applied to it, and to the various horizontal mouldings which it carries, some of them of great beauty, and of the highest value to the mediæval architects who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made in the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do not know when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader), namely, the charging with ornament the under surface of the cornice between the brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of the whole edifice, from top to bottom, where ornament is least visible. I need hardly say much respecting the wisdom of this procedure, excusable only if the whole building were covered with ornament; but it is curious to see the way in which modern architects have copied it, even when they had little enough ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few persons look at the Athenæum Club-house without feeling vexed at the meagreness and meanness of the windows of the ground floor: if, however, they look up under the cornice, and have good eyes, they will perceive that the architect has reserved his decorations to put between the brackets; and by going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may succeed in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said decorations. § VII. Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon considered essential parts of the "order" to which they belonged; and the same wisdom which endeavored to fix the proportions of the orders, appointed also that no order should go without its cornice. The reader has probably heard of the architectural division of superstructure into architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain, without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an exordium or peroration; but he must very absolutely consider that the architectural peroration or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to the end of the wall's speech,--that is, to the edge of the roof; and that it has nothing whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them. And he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to the shaft as if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ their shafts often in places where they came not near the roof, forthwith cut the roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it to every column; thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy shaft wherever it went, in addition to any other work on which it might happen to be employed. I do not recollect among any living beings, except Renaissance architects, any instance of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine a savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes, with its rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling the wires asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but imagining there was magic in the ring that bound them, and so cutting that to pieces also, and fastening a little bit of it to every wire. § VIII. Thus much may serve us to know respecting the first family of wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more important, and includes the cornices of all the best buildings in the world. It has derived its best form from mediæval military architecture, which imperatively required two things; first, a parapet which should permit sight and offence, and afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of the wall with falling bodies; projection which, if the wall happened to slope inwards, required not to be small. The thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice thus developed by necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with more or less of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture, according to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the individual--decisively in the baron's house, imperfectly in the burgher's: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals, with infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing in size as their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until we find battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating the gates of the Philanthropic Society. § IX. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices of this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous importance and of most serious practical service; the second, the parapet: and these two features we shall consider in succession, and in so doing, shall learn all that is needful for us to know, not only respecting cornices, but respecting brackets in general, and balconies. § X. 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cornice, the brackets are composed of two or more long stones, supporting each other in gradually increasing projection, with roughly rounded ends, Fig. XXXVIII., and the parapet is simply a low wall carried on the ends of these, leaving, of course, behind, or within it, a hole between each bracket for the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form is best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very grand, but has a giddy look, and one is afraid of the whole thing toppling off the wall. The next step was to deepen the brackets, so as to get them propped against a great depth of the main rampart, and to have the inner ends of the stones held by a greater weight of that main wall above; while small arches were thrown from bracket to bracket to carry the parapet wall more securely. This is the most perfect form of cornice, completely satisfying the eye of its security, giving full protection to the wall, and applicable to all architecture, the interstices between the brackets being filled up, when one does not want to throw boiling lead on any body below, and the projection being always delightful, as giving greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings, there were usually towers at the angles (round which the battlements swept) in order to flank the walls, so often in the translation into civil or ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret remained at the angle, or a more bold projection of balcony, to give larger prospect to those upon the rampart. This cornice, perfect in all its parts, as arranged for ecclesiastical architecture, and exquisitely decorated, is the one employed in the duomo of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I have already spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the world. [Illustration: Fig. XXXVIII.] § XI. In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this cornice diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and at last we find nothing but the spirit and form of it left; the real practical purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and all, being cut out of a single stone. Thus we find it used in early buildings throughout the whole of the north and south of Europe, in forms sufficiently represented by the two examples in Plate IV.: 1, from St. Antonio, Padua; 2, from Sens in France. [Illustration: Fig. XXXIX.] § XII. I wish, however, at present to fix the reader's attention on the form of the bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as _a_, Fig. XXXIX., of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at _a_, being of the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen it in one of three ways; (1) by putting a second or third stone beneath it, as at _b_; (2) by giving it a spur, as at _c_; (3) by giving it a shaft and another bracket below, _d_; the great use of this arrangement being that the lowermost bracket has the help of the weight of the shaft-length of wall above its insertion, which is, of course, greater than the weight of the small shaft: and then the lower bracket may be farther helped by the structure at _b_ or _c_. [Illustration: Fig. XL.] § XIII. Of these structures, _a_ and _c_ are evidently adapted especially for wooden buildings; _b_ and _d_ for stone ones; the last, of course, susceptible of the richest decoration, and superbly employed in the cornice of the cathedral of Monza: but all are beautiful in their way, and are the means of, I think, nearly half the picturesqueness and power of mediæval building; the forms _b_ and _c_ being, of course, the most frequent; _a_, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at _a_, Fig. XL.; _b_, also, as in Fig. XXXVIII., or else itself composed of a single stone cut into the form of the group _b_ here, Fig. XL., or plain, as at _c_, which is also the proper form of the brick bracket, when stone is not to be had. The reader will at once perceive that the form _d_ is a barbarism (unless when the scale is small and the weight to be carried exceedingly light): it is of course, therefore, a favorite form with the Renaissance architects; and its introduction is one of the first corruptions of the Venetian architecture. § XIV. There is one point necessary to be noticed, though bearing on decoration more than construction, before we leave the subject of the bracket. The whole power of the construction depends upon the stones being well _let into_ the wall; and the first function of the decoration should be to give the idea of this insertion, if possible; at all events, not to contradict this idea. If the reader will glance at any of the brackets used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find them of some such character as Fig. XLI.; not a bad form in itself, but exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea of some writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support, and by their careful avoidance of the wall make the bracket look pinned on, and in constant danger of sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and Renaissance decoration. [Illustration: Fig. XLI.] § XV. 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in military architecture by the necessities of the art of war at the time of building, and are always beautiful wherever they have been really thus fixed; delightful in the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline. Nothing is more remarkable than the swiftly discerned difference between the masculine irregularity of such true battlements, and the formal pitifulness of those which are set on modern buildings to give them a military air,--as on the jail at Edinburgh. § XVI. Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon buildings not military, there are just two fixed laws. It should be pierced, otherwise it is not recognised from below for a parapet at all, and it should not be in the form of a battlement, especially in church architecture. The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain level on which the arm can be rested, and along which it can glide. Any jags or elevations are disagreeable; the latter, as interrupting the view and disturbing the eye, if they are higher than the arm, the former, as opening some aspect of danger if they are much lower; and the inconvenience, therefore, of the battlemented form, as well as the worse than absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection. Still (for the question of its picturesque value is here so closely connected with that of its practical use, that it is vain to endeavor to discuss it separately) there is a certain agreeableness in the way in which the jagged outline dovetails the shadow of the slated or leaded roof into the top of the wall, which may make the use of the battlement excusable where there is a difficulty in managing some unvaried line, and where the expense of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered: but remember always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting shadow into the light of the wall, or _vice versâ_, when it comes against light sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of the wall; but that the actual outline of the parapet itself, if the eye be arrested upon this, instead of upon the alternation of shadow, is as _ugly_ a succession of line as can by any possibility be invented. Therefore, the battlemented parapet may only be used where this alternation of shade is certain to be shown, under nearly all conditions of effect; and where the lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battlements of bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is an ornament anywhere, and that a miserable and diminutive imitation of castellated outline will always serve to fill up blanks and Gothicise unmanageable spaces, is one of the great idiocies of the present day. A battlement is in its origin a piece of wall large enough to cover a man's body, and however it may be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as long as so much of its outline is retained as to suggest its origin, so long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret six feet high with chopped battlements three inches wide, is children's Gothic: it is one of the paltry falsehoods for which there is no excuse, and part of the system of using models of architecture to decorate architecture, which we shall hereafter note as one of the chief and most destructive follies of the Renaissance;[54] and in the present day the practice may be classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there is no hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and who must pass their lives in vain struggles against the refractory lines of their own buildings. § XVII. As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is its alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or level parapet is its monotony of line. This is, however, in practice, almost always broken by the pinnacles of the buttresses, and if not, may be varied by the tracery of its penetrations. The forms of these evidently admit every kind of change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to be strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better. More fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet than in any other architectural feature, and for most services, the Flamboyant parapets seem to me preferable to all others; especially when the leaden roofs set off by points of darkness the lace-like intricacy of penetration. These, however, as well as the forms usually given to Renaissance balustrades (of which, by the bye, the best piece of criticism I know is the sketch in "David Copperfield" of the personal appearance of the man who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms invented by Paul Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together with the pure columnar balustrade of Venice, must be considered as altogether decorative features. § XVIII. So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like finishings of walls employed where no real parapet of protection is desired; originating in the defences of outworks and single walls: these are used much in the east on walls surrounding unroofed courts. The richest examples of such decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to have been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers, however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may have been rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any distinct idea of its roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its superb parapet, of which we shall give account hereafter. In most of the Venetian cases the parapets which surround roofing are very sufficient for protection, except that the stones of which they are composed appear loose and infirm: but their purpose is entirely decorative; every wall, whether detached or roofed, being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of parapet, more or less Gothicised, according to the lateness of their date. I think there is no other point of importance requiring illustration respecting the roof itself, or its cornice: but this Venetian form of ornamental parapet connects itself curiously, at the angles of nearly all the buildings on which it occurs, with the pinnacled system of the north, founded on the structure of the buttress. This, it will be remembered, is to be the subject of the fifth division of our inquiry. FOOTNOTES: [54] Not of Renaissance alone: the practice of modelling buildings on a minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been more or less admitted, and I suppose _authority_ for diminutive battlements might be gathered from the Gothic of almost every period, as well as for many other faults and mistakes: no Gothic school having ever been thoroughly systematised or perfected, even in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration sometimes occurs among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for the habitual--far less, the exclusive--use of such a decoration, than the accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an excuse for a school boy's ungrammatical exercise. CHAPTER XV. THE BUTTRESS. § I. We have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with the support of vertical pressure only; and the arch and roof have been considered as forms of abstract strength, without reference to the means by which their lateral pressure was to be resisted. Few readers will need now to be reminded, that every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or bars, exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain it,--pressure which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increasing the thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in reality thus met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less expenditure of material, and with (perhaps) more graceful effect, be met by some particular application of the provisions against lateral pressure called Buttresses. These, therefore, we are next to examine. § II. Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the character and direction of the lateral forces they are intended to resist. But their first broad division is into buttresses which meet and break the force before it arrives at the wall, and buttresses which stand on the lee side of the wall, and prop it against the force. The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three distinct kinds: dead weight, as of masonry or still water; moving weight, as of wind or running water; and sudden concussion, as of earthquakes, explosions, &c. Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress acting as a prop; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the weight, would only add to its effect. This, then, forms the first great class of buttressed architecture; lateral thrusts, of roofing or arches, being met by props of masonry outside--the thrust from within, the prop without; or the crushing force of water on a ship's side met by its cross timbers--the thrust here from without the wall, the prop within. Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do not attempt to sustain the weight, but _parry_ it, and throw it off in directions clear of the wall. Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in reality only supported by the prop buttress, must be provided for by buttresses on both sides of the wall, as their direction cannot be foreseen, and is continually changing. We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttressing; but the two latter being of small importance to our present purpose, may as well be dismissed first. § III. 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and set towards the weight they resist. The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have in the sharp piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful stream, which divide the current on their edges, and throw it to each side under the arches. A ship's bow is a buttress of the same kind, and so also the ridge of a breastplate, both adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross blow, and giving a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In Switzerland, projecting buttresses of this kind are often built round churches, heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases of light-houses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of ornamental architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence; and I merely name them in order to mark their place in our architectural system, since in the investigation of our present subject we shall not meet with a single example of them, unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a palace set against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some canal bridge quivering in its current. § IV. 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion. The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself into mere expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it stand steadier, as a man stands with his feet apart when he is likely to lose his balance. This approach to a pyramidal form is also of great use as a guard against the action of artillery; that if a stone or tier of stones be battered out of the lower portions of the wall, the whole upper part may not topple over or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress, sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes forming a great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in buildings of countries exposed to earthquake. They give a peculiarly heavy outline to much of the architecture of the kingdom of Naples, and they are of the form in which strength and solidity are first naturally sought, in the slope of the Egyptian wall. The base of Guy's Tower at Warwick is a singularly bold example of their military use; and so, in general, bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object of stability against a shock is complicated with that of sustaining weight of earth in the rampart behind. § V. 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight. This is the group with which we have principally to do; and a buttress of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its weight and partly by its strength. It acts by its weight when its mass is so great that the weight it sustains cannot stir it, but is lost upon it, buried in it, and annihilated: neither the shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion of its materials are of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags, laid up against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented mass. But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient to resist the weight by mere inertia; but it conveys the weight through its body to something else which is so capable; as, for instance, a man leaning against a door with his hands, and propping himself against the ground, conveys the force which would open or close the door against him through his body to the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of perfectly coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight to be borne could easily move it, it cannot break it: this kind of buttress may be called a conducting buttress. Practically, however, the two modes of action are always in some sort united. Again, the weight to be borne may either act generally on the whole wall surface, or with excessive energy on particular points: when it acts on the whole wall surface, the whole wall is generally supported; and the arrangement becomes a continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir. § VI. It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in architecture is equally distributed. In most cases the weight of the roof, or the force of any lateral thrust, are more or less confined to certain points and directions. In an early state of architectural science this definiteness of direction is not yet clear, and it is met by uncertain application of mass or strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses, as in Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the weight to be borne is designedly and decisively thrown upon certain points; the direction and degree of the forces which are then received are exactly calculated, and met by conducting buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions; themselves, in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by weight, and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting buttresses: so that, in the best examples of such arrangements, the weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an electric fluid, which, by a hundred different rods and channels, is divided and carried away into the ground. § VII. In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress piers which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are loaded with pinnacles, which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed, by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose, without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the expression of his face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very noble Gothic buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without any reference to construction at all: and sometimes even, as in the tomb of Can Signoria at Verona, on small piers detached from the main building. § VIII. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern work above alluded to: and that, if there had been no other place for the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of their arches (they often _did_ on the tops of gables and pediments), rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the vertical piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a complete company of detached piers and pinnacles, each sustaining an inclined prop against the central wall, and looking something like a band of giants holding it up with the butts of their lances. This arrangement would imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the intervals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form minor chapels. [Illustration: Fig. XLII.] § IX. The science of this arrangement has made it the subject of much enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to gain this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the roof, and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian method the light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall is made wide enough between the windows to bear the roof, and so left. In fact, the simplest expression of the difference in the systems is, that a northern apse is a southern one with its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, _a_, Fig. XLII., is the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces, and set all its piers edgeways, as at _b_, and you have the northern one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the exterior to pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal surface, ready for any kind of decoration, you have a series of dark and damp cells, which no device that I have yet seen has succeeded in decorating in a perfectly satisfactory manner. If the system be farther carried, and a second or third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric piers, with the _roof off_ the whole of it except the central circle, and only ribs left, to carry the weight of the bit of remaining roof in the middle; and after the eye has been accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of the Italian apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully felt. After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges Cathedral looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores. It is useless, however, to dispute respecting the merits of the two systems: both are noble in their place; the Northern decidedly the most scientific, or at least involving the greatest display of science, the Italian the calmest and purest, this having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or a windless noon, the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the north wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm and crag. § X. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand the veritable action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty in determining its fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct kinds; one, a narrow vertical pier, acting principally by its weight, and crowned by a pinnacle; the other, commonly called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set from such a pier (when detached from the building) against the main wall. This latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore, and its use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the supposition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin to stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute stone props for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real dignity of such a proceeding, but at all events the merit of the form of the flying buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly performing this somewhat humble office; it is, therefore, in its purity, a mere sloping bar of stone, with an arch beneath it to carry its weight, that is to say, to prevent the action of gravity from in any wise deflecting it, or causing it to break downwards under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite simple in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais, while at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils, and at Amiens with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate and false in principle; not, of course, that there is any occasion to make the flying buttress heavy, if a light one will answer the purpose; but it seems as if some security were sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement is now seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable. Of the degradations of the original form which took place in after times, I have spoken at p. 35 of the "Seven Lamps." § XI. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to the eye of every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into successive steps if they are to be carried to any considerable height. There is much dignity in them when they are of essential service; but even in their best examples, their awkward angles are among the least manageable features of the Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied, for merely vertical support, in the northern tabernacle work; while in some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford. Indeed, in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also to have something of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat off, should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species of decoration: in St. Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew. § XII. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design. CHAPTER XVI. FORM OF APERTURE. § I. We have now, in order, examined the means of raising walls and sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the structure of the necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door and window; respecting which there are three main points to be considered. 1. The form of the aperture, _i.e._, its outline, its size, and the forms of its sides. 2. The filling of the aperture, _i.e._, valves and glass, and their holdings. 3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, _i.e._, canopies, porches, and balconies. We shall examine these in succession. § II. 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We will, for the present, leave out of the question doors and gates in unroofed walls, the forms of these being very arbitrary, and confine ourselves to the consideration of doors of entrance into roofed buildings. Such doors will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building; except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high or low, a door may be assumed to be considerably lower than the apartments or buildings into which it gives admission, and therefore to have some height of wall above it, whose weight must be carried by the heading of the door. It is clear, therefore, that the best heading must be an arch, because the strongest, and that a square-headed door must be wrong, unless under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of the door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a connexion of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above the door is likely to be greater than that above the main shafts. Thus, while I admit the Greek general forms of temple to be admirable in their kind, I think the Greek door always offensive and unmanageable. § III. We have it also determined by necessity, that the apertures shall be at least above a man's height, with perpendicular sides (for sloping sides are evidently unnecessary, and even inconvenient, therefore absurd) and level threshold; and this aperture we at present suppose simply cut through the wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be fit enough for any building into which entrance is required neither often, nor by many persons at a time. But when entrance and egress are constant, or required by crowds, certain further modifications must take place. [Illustration: Fig. XLIII.] § IV. When entrance and egress are constant, it may be supposed that the valves will be absent or unfastened,--that people will be passing more quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers through. It is evident, therefore, that what would be done in time, for themselves, by the passing multitude, should be done for them at once by the architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away by friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed, and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible, so that the plan of the entrance should become as at _a_, Fig. XLIII. § V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside, will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther, as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing towards the interior. § VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres, and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single entrance; and (for here again the æsthetic and structural laws cannot be separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress, but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides, the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance; partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over minor doors. In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost altogether by convenience, the western doors being single in small churches, while in the larger the entrances become three or five, the central door remaining always principal, in consequence of the fine sense of composition which the mediæval builders never lost. These arrangements have formed the noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth observing[55] how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may become, when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona, and other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches, and rich sculptures grouped around the entrance. § VII. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or manifold, it is a constant law that one shall be principal, and all shall be of size in some degree proportioned to that of the building. And this size is, of course, chiefly to be expressed in width, that being the only useful dimension in a door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and waving of banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this century, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples); but though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well to increase the height also in some proportion to it, in order that there may be less weight of wall above, resting on the increased span of the arch. This is, however, so much the necessary result of the broad curve of the arch itself, that there is no structural necessity of elevating the jamb; and I believe that beautiful entrances might be made of every span of arch, retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical line became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as under a great rainbow. § VIII. On the other hand, the jamb _may_ be elevated indefinitely, so that the increasing entrance retains _at least_ the proportion of width it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in. But a less proportion of width than this has always a meagre, inhospitable, and ungainly look except in military architecture, where the narrowness of the entrance is necessary, and its height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance towers of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies only to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be of any proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations, not doors; as in the noble example of the west front of Peterborough, which, in spite of the destructive absurdity of its central arch being the narrowest, would still, if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or turnpike, or whatever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be the noblest west front in England. § IX. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and size of the building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will be the thickness of its walls, especially at the foundation, that is to say, beside the doors; and also in proportion to the numbers of a crowd will be the unruliness and pressure of it. Hence, partly in necessity and partly in prudence, the splaying or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will be deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large door than for the small one; so that the large door will always be encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to its own magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we shall see hereafter. § X. The second kind of apertures we have to examine are those of windows. Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook, and those for inlet of light, many being for both purposes, and either purpose, or both, combined in military architecture with those of offence and defence. But all window apertures, as compared with door apertures, have almost infinite licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from the slit or cross slit to the circle;[56] of any size, from the loophole of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet, according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness hold respecting them, which let us examine in the two classes of windows successively, but without reference to military architecture, which here, as before, we may dismiss as a subject of separate science, only noticing that windows, like all other features, are always delightful, if not beautiful, when their position and shape have indeed been thus necessarily determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also find in military architecture the typical forms of the two classes of outlet and inlet windows in their utmost development; the greatest sweep of sight and range of shot on the one hand, and the fullest entry of light and air on the other, being constantly required at the smallest possible apertures. Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for ourselves, not to take the examples as we find them. § XI. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline is determinable by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking, except only that the bottom or sill of the windows, at whatever height, should be horizontal, for the convenience of leaning on it, or standing on it if the window be to the ground. The form of the upper part of the window is quite immaterial, for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are _approached_ than that of the eye itself: it is the approachability of the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness of the wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If, therefore, the aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the thickness of the wall cannot be entered, the wall is to be bevelled[57] on the outside, so as to increase the range of sight as far as possible; if the aperture can be entered, then bevelled from the point to which entrance is possible. The bevelling will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say, upwards at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom, but essentially _downwards_; the earth and the doings upon it being the chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories; and where the object is a distinct and special view downwards, it will be of advantage to shelter the eye as far as possible from the rays of light coming from above, and the head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the whole aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards. The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow windows, but these are not to be considered under the head of apertures merely; they are either balconies roofed and glazed, and to be considered under the head of external appliances, or they are each a story of an external semi-tower, having true aperture windows on each side of it. § XII. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be of any shape and size whatever, according to the other necessities of the building, and the quantity and direction of light desired, their purpose being now to throw it in streams on particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it everywhere; sometimes to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in strength, as in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry showers of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being the rose, which has in it the unity of both characters, and sympathy with that of the source of light itself. It is noticeable, however, that while both the circle and pointed oval are beautiful window forms, it would be very painful to cut either of them in half and connect them by vertical lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The reason is, I believe, that so treated, the upper arch is not considered as connected with the lower, and forming an entire figure, but as the ordinary arch roof of the aperture, and the lower arch as an arch _floor_, equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also, the elliptical oval is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms, are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less light is admitted, with greater loss of strength to the building, than by any other form. If admissible anywhere, it is for the sake of variety at the top of the building, as the flat parallelogram sometimes not ungracefully in Italian Renaissance. [Illustration: Fig. XLIV.] § XIII. The question of bevelling becomes a little more complicated in the inlet than the outlook window, because the mass or quantity of light admitted is often of more consequence than its direction, and often _vice versâ_; and the outlook window is supposed to be approachable, which is far from being always the case with windows for light, so that the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open range of sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting the light in greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot on which it is to fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the one window will reverse that of the other; for, first, no natural light will strike on the inlet window from beneath, unless reflected light, which is (I believe) injurious to the health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook window the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a level with the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards within, if above it. Again, as the brightest rays of light are the steepest, the outside bevel upwards is as essential in the roof of the inlet as it was of small importance in that of the outlook window. § XIV. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand internally, a somewhat larger number of rays being thus reflected from the jambs; and the aperture being thus the smallest possible outside, this is the favorite military form of inlet window, always found in magnificent development in the thick walls of mediæval castles and convents. Its effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general (which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled, that the outline of the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference), it being generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness. FOOTNOTES: [55] And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not been associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer being represented as presiding over the central door only, and the lateral entrances being under the protection of saints, while the Madonna almost always has one or both of the transepts. But it would be wrong to press this, for, in nine cases out of ten, the architect has been merely influenced in his placing of the statues by an artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and very naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a crucifixion or a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is only, therefore, to be noted with indisputable reprobation when the Madonna gets possession of the main door. [56] The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much incumbent weight, but a window frequently has very little weight above it, especially when placed high, and the arched form loses light in a low room: therefore the square-headed window is admissible where the square-headed door is not. [57] I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall use "bevelled" instead. CHAPTER XVII. FILLING OF APERTURE. § I. Thus far we have been concerned with the outline only of the aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to consider the necessary modes of filling it with valves in the case of the door, or with glass or tracery in that of the window. 1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter, that doors in buildings of any importance or size should have headings in the form of an arch. This is, however, the most inconvenient form we could choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,--a double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity so to arrange the doorway as to admit of its being fitted with rectangular valves. § II. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we supposed the jamb of the door to be of the utmost height required for entrance. The extra height of the arch is unnecessary as an opening, the arch being required for its strength only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no reason why it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into which the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed, as we choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone. This is the form of all good doors, without exception, over the whole world and in all ages, and no other can ever be invented. § III. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only, and glass or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form in Venice. In more elaborate doors the cross lintel is of stone, and the filling sometimes of brick, sometimes of stone, very often a grand single stone being used to close the entire space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum. In large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incumbent weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore, carried by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used, fitted to the rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In the most elaborate examples of this condition, each of these secondary doorways has an arch heading, a cross lintel, and a triangular filling or tympanum of its own, all subordinated to the main arch above. § IV. 2. Fillings of windows. When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass, however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was observed, and in which weight would be an advantage, as offering more resistance to the wind. Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no constructive reason why we should not have iron traceries, as well as iron pillars, iron churches, and iron steeples. But I have, in the "Seven Lamps," given reasons for not considering such structures as architecture at all. The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone only. § V. The purpose of the window being always to let in as much light, and command as much view, as possible, these bars of stone are to be made as slender and as few as they can be, consistently with their due strength. [Illustration: Fig. XLV.] Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, _a_, _b_, Fig. XLV. The tendency of the glass sustaining any force, as of wind from without, is to bend into an arch inwards, in the dotted line, and break in the centre. It is to be supported, therefore, by the bar put in its centre, _c_. But this central bar, _c_, may not be enough, and the spaces _a c_, _c b_, may still need support. The next step will be to put two bars instead of one, and divide the window into three spaces as at _d_. But this may still not be enough, and the window may need three bars. Now the greatest stress is always on the centre of the window. If the three bars are equal in strength, as at _e_, the central bar is either too slight for its work, or the lateral bars too thick for theirs. Therefore, we must slightly increase the thickness of the central bar, and diminish that of the lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement at _f h_. If the window enlarge farther, each of the spaces _f g_, _g h_, is treated as the original space _a b_, and we have the groups of bars _k_ and _l_. So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the direction and number of the bars, there are to be central or main bars; second bars subordinated to them; third bars subordinated to the second, and so on to the number required. This is called the subordination of tracery, a system delightful to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing and unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in all fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which is not subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its structure is concerned. § VI. The next question will be the direction of the bars. The reader will understand at once, without any laborious proof, that a given area of glass, supported by its edges, is stronger in its resistance to violence when it is arranged in a long strip or band than in a square; and that, therefore, glass is generally to be arranged, especially in windows on a large scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing it be placed horizontally, they will have less power of supporting themselves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if placed vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window permits, they are to be vertical. § VII. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to support themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross bars to steady them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be introduced at necessary intervals, not to divide the glass, but to support the upright stone bars. The glass is always to be divided longitudinally as far as possible, and the upright bars which divide it supported at proper intervals. However high the window, it is almost impossible that it should require more than two cross bars. § VIII. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows are placed very close to each other for the sake of more light, the masonry between them may stand in need, or at least be the better of, some additional support. The cross bars of the windows may then be thickened, in order to bond the intermediate piers more strongly together, and if this thickness appear ungainly, it may be modified by decoration. § IX. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame work of subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the necessary intervals, and the only remaining question is the method of insertion into the aperture. Whatever its form, if we merely let the ends of the bars into the voussoirs of its heading, the least settlement of the masonry would distort the arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to connect the window bars among themselves, so framing them together that they may give the utmost possible degree of support to the whole window head in case of any settlement. But we know how to do this already: our window bars are nothing but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches across between the smaller bars, large arches over them between the larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a horizontal lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have a complete system of mutual support, independent of the aperture head, and yet assisting to sustain it, if need be. But we want the spandrils of this arch system to be themselves as light, and to let as much light through them, as possible: and we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. § VII.). We pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small and the stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the Pisan school; if the circles are as large as possible and the bars slender, those which I have already figured and described as the only perfect traceries of the Northern Gothic.[58] The varieties of their design arise partly from the different size of window and consequent number of bars; partly from the different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering one or another arrangement better for dividing the light, and partly from æsthetic and expressional requirements, which, within certain limits, may be allowed a very important influence: for the strength of the bars is ordinarily so much greater than is absolutely necessary, that some portion of it may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety in the plans of tracery--a variety which, even within its severest limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed arch, the proportion of the tracery being in the round arch necessarily more fixed. § X. The circular window furnishes an exception to the common law, that the bars shall be vertical through the greater part of their length: for if they were so, they could neither have secure perpendicular footing, nor secure heading, their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the voussoirs only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle, like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window, large enough to give footing to the necessary number of radiating bars; and the bars are arranged as spokes, being all of course properly capitaled and arch-headed. This is the best form of tracery for circular windows, naturally enough called wheel windows when so filled. § XI. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we have arrived at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without the smallest reference to any practice of any school, or to any law of authority whatever. They are forms having essentially nothing whatever to do either with Goths or Greeks. They are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion; and no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so long as the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist. § XII. It does not at all follow that this group of forms owes its origin to any such course of reasoning as that which has now led us to it. On the contrary, there is not the smallest doubt that tracery began, partly, in the grouping of windows together (subsequently enclosed within a large arch[59]), and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a single slab of stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate V. above. The perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing from experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other; and it was so far from ever becoming systematised, that I am aware of no type of tracery for which a _less_ decided preference is shown in the buildings in which it exists. The early pierced traceries are multitudinous and perfect in their kind,--the late Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and lavish in quantity,--but the perfect forms exist in comparatively few churches, generally in portions of the church only, and are always connected, and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which they are instantly to degenerate. § XIII. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all points superior to the more ancient examples. We have above conducted our reasoning entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore, the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to give steadiness and _tone_, as it were, to the arches and walls above and beside them; or to give the idea of protection to those who pass along the triforium, and of seclusion to those who walk in the cloister. Much thicker shafts, and more massy arches, may be properly employed in work of this kind; and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable into true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or quadruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for light. All this is just as _right_ in its place, as the glass tracery is in its own function, and often much more grand. But the same indulgence is not to be shown to the affectations which succeeded the developed forms. Of these there are three principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France, the Stump tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England. § XIV. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and natural transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor to introduce more grace into its lines, and more change into its combinations; and the æsthetic results are so beautiful, that for some time after the right road had been left, the aberration was more to be admired than regretted. The final conditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in the country where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar grace until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of the school in England and Italy have all its faults and none of its beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the Seine. § XV. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or German group, may be considered as including the entire range of the absurd forms which were invented in order to display dexterity in stone-cutting and ingenuity in construction. They express the peculiar character of the German mind, which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in order to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers a new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle thought to a useful one. The point and value of the German tracery consists principally in turning the features of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in two where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation and membership, and suspend everything in the air, keeping out of sight, as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning and the probabilities of an end, are the main objects of German architecture, as of modern German divinity. § XVI. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity. Not so the English Perpendicular, though a very curious school also in _its_ way. In the course of the reasoning which led us to the determination of the perfect Gothic tracery, we were induced successively to reject certain methods of arrangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable. Collect all these together, and practise them at once, and you have the English Perpendicular. [Illustration: Fig. XLVI.] As thus. You find, in the first place (§ V.), that your tracery bars are to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take a group of, suppose, eight, which you make all exactly equal, giving you nine equal spaces in the window, as at A, Fig. XLVI. You found, in the second place (§ VII.), that there was no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you take at least four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVI.), also carefully equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third place (§ VIII.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order to support the main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off the uppermost, and the fourth into three pieces (as also at A). In the fourth place, you found (§ IX.) that you were never to run a vertical bar into the arch head; so you run them all into it (as at B, Fig. XLVI.); and this last arrangement will be useful in two ways, for it will not only expose both the bars and the archivolt to an apparent probability of every species of dislocation at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, _a_, _b_, which, by throwing across the curves _c_, _d_, you may easily multiply into four; and these, as you can put nothing into their sharp tops, will afford you a more than usually rational excuse for a little bit of Germanism, in filling them with arches upside down, _e_, _f_. You will now have left at your disposal two and forty similar interstices, which, for the sake of variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty similar arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received an arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled, you will take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but to run bars, foliations and all, well into each other after the fashion of cast-iron, as at C. You have still two triangular spaces occurring in an important part of your window, _g g_, which, as they are very conspicuous, and you cannot make them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let alone;--and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless, perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party walls, with a heavy thrust against the glass. § XVII. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery only: we have lastly to note the conditions under which the glass is to be attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars themselves. [Illustration: Fig. XLVII.] These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become shafts; but, supposing the object to be the admission of as much light as possible, it is clear that the thickness of the bar ought to be chiefly in the depth of the window, and that by increasing the depth of the bar we may diminish its breadth: clearly, therefore, we should employ the double group of shafts, _b_, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window: but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we must add a member into which it is to be fitted, as at _a_, Fig. XLVII., and uniting these three members together in the simplest way, with a curved instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts, we have the section _b_, the perfect, but simplest type of the main tracery bars in good Gothic. In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass to hold, the central member is omitted, and we have either the pure double shaft, always the most graceful, or a single and more massy shaft, which is the simpler and more usual form. § XVIII. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between the glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic traceries of Venice. Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described, require the shafts of these traceries to become the main vertical supports of the floors and walls. Their thickness is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is required between them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in their lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness of driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts, and having the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire glazing is thrown behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci and bases with iron. It is thus securely sustained by their massy bulk, and leaves their symmetry and shade undisturbed. § XIX. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in windows without traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms of their bevelling, the glass occupying the narrowest interval; but when its position is not thus fixed, as in many London houses, it is to be remembered that the deeper the glass is set (the wall being of given thickness), the more light will enter, and the clearer the prospect will be to a person sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther out the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about what is going on upon the earth: the other for those who are willing to remain at rest, so that they have free admission of the light of Heaven. This might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the necessity (of which no man of ordinary feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep recess in the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural effect: still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by having it in their power to look out of window, and as the slight increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a room is more than balanced by the loss of space, and the greater chill of the nearer glass and outside air, we can, I fear, allege no other structural reason for the picturesque external recess, than the expediency of a certain degree of protection, for the glass, from the brightest glare of sunshine, and heaviest rush of rain. FOOTNOTES: [58] "Seven Lamps," p. 53. [59] On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there is an early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of foliated arches and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any enclosing curve. The effect is very painful. This remarkable window is associated with others of the common form. CHAPTER XVIII. PROTECTION OF APERTURE. § I. We have hitherto considered the aperture as merely pierced in the thickness of the walls; and when its masonry is simple and the fillings of the aperture are unimportant, it may well remain so. But when the fillings are delicate and of value, as in the case of colored glass, finely wrought tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find occupying the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by the bevel of the aperture to the joints or surface of the fillings. § II. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by channelling the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief practical service of aperture mouldings, which are otherwise entirely decorative. But as this very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture, which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the aperture. But this is, in reality, only a contracted form of a true _roof_, projecting from the wall over the aperture; and all protections of apertures whatsoever are to be conceived as portions of small roofs, attached to the wall behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale admits of their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner as may be most expedient. The proper forms of these, and modes of their support, are to be the subject of our final enquiry. [Illustration: Fig. XLVIII.] § III. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long in doubt. A deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off rain; even a low gable being better than a high arch. Flat roofs, therefore, may only be used when the nature of the building renders the gable unsightly; as when there is not room for it between the stories; or when the object is rather shade than protection from rain, as often in verandahs and balconies. But for general service the gable is the proper and natural form, and may be taken as representative of the rest. Then this gable may either project unsupported from the wall, _a_, Fig. XLVIII., or be carried by brackets or spurs, _b_, or by walls or shafts, _c_, which shafts or walls may themselves be, in windows, carried on a sill; and this, in its turn, supported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance at the applications of each of these forms in order. § IV. There is not much variety in the case of the first, _a_, Fig. XLVIII. In the Cumberland and border cottages the door is generally protected by two pieces of slate arranged in a gable, giving the purest possible type of the first form. In elaborate architecture such a projection hardly ever occurs, and in large architecture cannot with safety occur, without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of the projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice, of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII. of the folio series. With this first complete form we may associate the rude, single, projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect, because either it must be level and the water lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the persons entering. § V. 2. _b_, Fig. XLVIII. This is a most beautiful and natural type, and is found in all good architecture, from the highest to the most humble: it is a frequent form of cottage door, more especially when carried on spurs, being of peculiarly easy construction in wood: as applied to large architecture, it can evidently be built, in its boldest and simplest form, either of wood only, or on a scale which will admit of its sides being each a single slab of stone. If so large as to require jointed masonry, the gabled sides will evidently require support, and an arch must be thrown across under them, as in Fig. XLIX., from Fiesole. [Illustration: Fig. XLIX.] If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the common Gothic gable dripstone carried on small brackets, carved into bosses, heads, or some other ornamental form; the sub-arch in such case being useless, is removed or coincides with the arch head of the aperture. § VI. 3. _c_, Fig. XLVIII. Substituting walls or pillars for the brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we choose, and form the perfect porch, either of the cottage or village church, or of the cathedral. As we enlarge the structure, however, certain modifications of form become necessary, owing to the increased boldness of the required supporting arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and of the arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one of the two forms _a_ or _b_, in Fig. L., of which the latter is clearly the best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing; and when the arch becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral thrust, it may become necessary to provide for its farther safety by pinnacles, _c_. This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None other can ever be invented so good. It is that once employed by Giotto in the cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the proveditore, Benedetto Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front instead; and another such has been destroyed, not long since, in Venice, the porch of the church of St. Apollinare, also to put up some Renaissance upholstery: for Renaissance, as if it were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its own existence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself on the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches, however, happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal glories. [Illustration: Fig. L.] § VII. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are placed close together, as in cases where there are many and large entrances to a cathedral front, they would, in their general form, leave deep and uncomfortable intervals, in which damp would lodge and grass grow; and there would be a painful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of a crowd, as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a natural and right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of the porch wider, so that they may correspond in slope, or nearly so, with the bevel of the doorway, and either meet each other in the intervals, or have the said intervals closed up with an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get embayed in them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range of great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers, and direct the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances. As the lateral thrust of the arches is now met by each other, the pinnacles, if there were any, must be removed, and waterspouts placed between each arch to discharge the double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by that of Rheims. § VIII. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are beautifully used in the doors of the cathedral of Florence; and the entire arrangement, in its most perfect form, as adapted to window protection and decoration, is applied by Giotto with inconceivable exquisiteness in the windows of the campanile; those of the cathedral itself being all of the same type. Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied in Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the people, and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the sides of such projections, and they become bow-windows, the shape of roofing being then nearly immaterial and very fantastic, often a conical cap. All these conditions of window protection, being for real service, are endlessly delightful (and I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected by an open canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed all of them, and introduced the magnificent and witty Roman invention of a model of a Greek pediment, with its cornices of monstrous thickness, bracketed up above the window. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is thus useless, and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the head of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with its crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity thus obtained affords farther opportunity for putting ornament out of sight, of which the Renaissance architects are not slow to avail themselves. A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a couple of shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and the windows of this kind, which have been well designed, are perhaps the best things which the Renaissance schools have produced: those of Whitehall are, in their way, exceedingly beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, in their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of their reputed designer, Michael Angelo. CHAPTER XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION. § I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these several features I am certain that the reader feels himself prepared, by understanding their plain function, to form something like a reasonable and definite judgment, whether they be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts will, in most cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the whole. § II. The various modes in which these parts are capable of combination, and the merits of buildings of different form and expression, are evidently not reducible into lists, nor to be estimated by general laws. The nobility of each building depends on its special fitness for its own purposes; and these purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and every national custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices erected in which some accidental difference of condition did not require some difference of plan or of structure; so that, respecting plan and distribution of parts, I do not hope to collect any universal law of right; but there are a few points necessary to be noticed respecting the means by which height is attained in buildings of various plans, and the expediency and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of architecture above another. § III. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed either that a single shaft would reach to the top of the building, or that the farther height required might be added in plain wall above the heads of the arches; whereas it may often be rather expedient to complete the entire lower series of arches, or finish the lower wall, with a bold string course or cornice, and build another series of shafts, or another wall, on the top of it. § IV. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the interior shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used in nearly all countries where buildings have been meant for real service. Outcry has often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side, that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to divide it into stories until it has reached proportions too large to be justly measured by the eye. It ought then to be divided in order to mark its bulk; and decorative divisions are often possible, which rather increase than destroy the expression of general unity. § V. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds, directly contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and of lightness on weight; while the superimposition of weight on weight, or lightness on lightness, is nearly always wrong. 1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on _weakness_. The superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent want of sufficient support when the weight above is visibly passive: for all buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no visibility of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But passive architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable. In a lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street, three huge stone pillars in the second story are carried apparently by the edges of three sheets of plate glass in the first. I hardly know anything to match the painfulness of this and some other of our shop structures, in which the iron-work is concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever feel satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty or sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page. § VI. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight on lightness have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity or desirableness, in many situations, of elevating the inhabited portions of buildings considerably above the ground level, especially those exposed to damp or inundation, and the consequent abandonment of the ground story as unserviceable, or else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in many market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a general place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments raised on pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury, almost the necessity, of arcades to protect the passengers from the sun, and the desirableness of large space in the rooms above, lead to the same construction. Throughout the Venetian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus, in the first instance, universally built, all the older palaces appearing to have had the rez de chaussée perfectly open, the upper parts of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers, still retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically throughout the main street of Murano. As ground became more valuable and house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace. § VII. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most picturesque street effects throughout the world, and the most graceful, as well as the most grotesque, buildings, from the many-shafted fantasy of the Alhambra (a building as beautiful in disposition as it is base in ornamentation) to the four-legged stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:[60] nor these only, but great part of the effect of our cathedrals, in which, necessarily, the close triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed on the nave piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest simplicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral of Pisa. § VIII. In order to the delightfulness and security of all such arrangements, this law must be observed:--that in proportion to the height of wall above them, the shafts are to be short. You may take your given height of wall, and turn any quantity of that wall into shaft that you like; but you must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put more wall above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall; or the two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall; but, whatever you add to the shaft, you must take from the wall. Then also, of course, the shorter the shaft the thicker will be its _proportionate_, if not its actual, diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts are always the thickest.[61] § IX. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in its most necessary use, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition and separation by floors is frankly told. § X. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation by floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender shafts. It has been noted that these are often easily attainable, and of precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the work at once, could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories together by supplementary shafts from floor to roof,--the general practice of the Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives the look of a scaffolding, with cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the whole clerestory wall. The best method is that which avoids all chance of the upright shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their number and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the whole work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the superimposition of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque; the most beautiful examples of it being, I think, the Southern portico of St. Mark's, the church of S. Giovanni at Pistoja, and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In Renaissance work the two principles are equally distinct, though the shafts are (I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in Whitehall (and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turning himself round at Whitehall may compare with it the system of connecting shafts in the Treasury; though this is a singularly bad example, the window cornices of the first floor being like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the mass of the building in two, in spite of the pillars. § XI. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is still more distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind which I have above called Architecture of Position, that is to say, architecture of which the greater part is intended merely to keep something in a peculiar position; as in light-houses, and many towers and belfries. The subject of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it, and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of watch, rather than splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the square-browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof; the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we call towers in England (as in York Minster), are mere confectioner's Gothic, and not worth classing. § XII. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief necessity,--that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles; but these are to its main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength, and associated in its uprightness, part of the tower itself: exactly in the proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body and assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower loses its dignity. § XIII. These two characters, then, are common to all noble towers, however otherwise different in purpose or feature,--the first, that they rise from massy foundation to lighter summits, frowning with battlements perhaps, but yet evidently more pierced and thinner in wall than beneath, and, in most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open work: the second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not appear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary æsthetic requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top,--a condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which, however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also, one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify the general laws of tower building by placing side by side, drawn to the same scale, a mediæval tower, in which most of them are simply and unaffectedly observed, and one of our own modern towers, in which every one of them is violated, in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.) [Illustration: Plate VI. TYPES OF TOWERS. BRITISH VENETIAN.] § XIV. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a very perfect example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as there is in Venice; and it is fit for our present purpose, because it owes none of its effect to ornament. It is built as simply as it well can be to answer its purpose: no buttresses; no external features whatever, except some huts at the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on purpose, I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with apertures as small as possible, and these only in necessary places, giving just the light required for ascending the stair or slope, not a ray more; and the weight of the whole relieved only by the double pilasters on the sides, sustaining small arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the scallop or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in Renaissance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied. Then, when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left open, as in the ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts more slender, but severe and simple, and the whole crowned by as much spire as the tower would carry, to render it more serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is repeated in numberless campaniles throughout Italy. § XV. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it happens to compress our British system of tower building into small space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses, though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high sloping roof, but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at its angles; the British tower has no visible roof, but has four pinnacles for mere ornament. The Venetian tower has its lightest part at the top, and is massy at the base; the British tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up its windows into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to every beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper chambers will be conceived to be pursuing his employments by the light of the single chink on each side; and, had it been intended for a belfry, the sound of its bells would have been as effectually prevented from getting out as the light from getting in. § XVI. In connexion with the subject of towers and of superimposition, one other feature, not conveniently to be omitted from our house-building, requires a moment's notice,--the staircase. In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural feature, and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being apparently without support. And here I may not unfitly note the important distinction, which perhaps ought to have been dwelt upon in some places before now, between the _marvellous_ and the _perilous_ in apparent construction. There are many edifices which are awful or admirable in their height, and lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless, we have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty dome and aërial aisle and arch may seem to stand, as I said, by miracle, but by steadfast miracle notwithstanding; there is no fear that the miracle should cease. We have a sense of inherent power in them, or, at all events, of concealed and mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning towers, as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a chance between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain, resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits, for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or windows. In mediæval architecture, where there was need of room, the staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile, but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present examination. We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem; but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest. Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer to the easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity, whenever he found his judgment likely to be overborne by authority on the one hand, or dazzled by novelty on the other. If he has time to do more, and to follow out in all their brilliancy the mechanical inventions of the great engineers and architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him, but must part company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct, but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through the tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to see what gifts Nature will give us, and with what imagery she will fill our thoughts, that the stones we have ranged in rude order may now be touched with life; nor lose for ever, in their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of old, when the valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light, and the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the fern. FOOTNOTES: [60] I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass, without some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its four pegs (each topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of Alpine winds. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the chief use of the arrangement is not so much to raise the building above the snow, as to get a draught of wind beneath it, which may prevent the drift from rising against its sides. [61] Appendix 20, "Shafts of the Ducal Palace." [62] I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the height myself, the building being one which does not come within the range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here, are of no importance as respects the question at issue. CHAPTER XX. THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT. § I. We enter now on the second division of our subject. We have no more to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we are going to be happy: to look round in the world and discover (in a serious manner always, however, and under a sense of responsibility) what we like best in it, and to enjoy the same at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten all we can of it into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it for ever. This is to decorate architecture. § II. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first, to find out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly, to put as much of this as we can (which is little enough) into form; thirdly, to put this formed abstraction into a proper place. And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries in succession: first, what we like, or what is the right material of ornament; then how we are to present it, or its right treatment; then, where we are to put it, or its right place. I think I can answer that first inquiry in this Chapter, the second inquiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall answer in a more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the several parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting the kind of ornament fittest for each. § III. I said in chapter II. § XIV., that all noble ornamentation was the expression of man's delight in God's work. This implied that there was an _ig_noble ornamentation, which was the expression of man's delight in his _own_. There is such a school, chiefly degraded classic and Renaissance, in which the ornament is composed of imitations of tilings made by man. I think, before inquiring what we like best of God's work, we had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be quite sure we do not like _that_. § IV. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration hence derived. And now I cannot, as I before have done respecting construction, _convince_ the reader of one thing being wrong, and another right. I have confessed as much again and again; I am now only to make appeal to him, and cross-question him, whether he really does like things or not. If he likes the ornament on the base of the column of the Place Vendôme, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock coats, I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don't like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this is base, or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men of the longest experience in the matter would either think it so, or would be prevented from thinking it so only by some morbid condition of their minds; and I believe that the reader, if he examine himself candidly, will usually agree in my statements. § V. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may properly fall into four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture, and war; armor, and dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4. Architecture itself. 1. Instruments, armor, and dress. The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or Renaissance. Armor is a noble thing in its proper service and subordination to the body; so is an animal's hide on its back; but a heap of cast skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or imitation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting and sculpture: in poetry it is better still,--Homer's undressed Achilles is less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would rather have had him naked; in all mediæval painting, arms, like all other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied themselves in its elaborate fancy. But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead armor; to the shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression and color of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person, but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not describe Achilles, but they could describe his shield; a shield like those of dedicated spoil, without a handle, never to be waved in the face of war. And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords, sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures, the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendôme. § VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the abuse at its height, occurs in the Hôtel des Invalides, where the dormer windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast. Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence, except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation, not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base. § VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice (Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the green pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece of not altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli), where the columns are supposed to be decorated with images of handkerchiefs tied in a stout knot round the middle of them. This shrewd invention bids fair to become a new order. Multitudes of massy curtains and various upholstery, more or less in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are carved and gilt, in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical portions of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless vulgarities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo Pisano,--an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but redeemed, and altogether forgiven,--the sculpture, namely, of curtains around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains which angels are represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the faces of those who are at rest. For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone, which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent; and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern paraphernalia of the churchyard. § VIII. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration, and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a "_kind_ of beauty" in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that a ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty, ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it: witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes, introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the subject be picturesque. I shall explain this exception presently, in speaking of imitative architecture. § IX. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which may be thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant element of architectural ornament,--the cable: it is not, however, the cable itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted lines (which a cable only exhibits in common with many natural objects), which is indeed beautiful as an ornament. Make the resemblance complete, give to the stone the threads and character of the cable, and you may, perhaps, regard the sculpture with curiosity, but never more with admiration. Consider the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at the end of London Bridge. § X. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively confined to bad architecture--Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even in the mediæval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some of its noblest examples. It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what point this abuse begins, and in what it consists. § XI. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with more or less prominence in the _inverse ratio of the importance of the figures_. The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures are of great value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged wholly with them; and it is an impertinence to disturb its contemplation of them by any minor features whatever. As the figures become of less value, and are regarded with less intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such as the thoughts may have leisure for. Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues, it is gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute them over sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly instance Canova's works,[63] and the Dutch pulpit groups, with fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves. If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the Ninevite marbles. If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves, the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she shrinks back? But all mediæval work is full of delightful examples of the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese." § XII. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments, crowns, and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions as architecture; and if the reader will look back to my definition of the picturesque in the "Seven Lamps," he will see why I said, above, that they might only be prominent when the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the heart of the thing itself. And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is most fancifully complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel. § XIII. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission to represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional on its being necessary to the representation of a scene, or explanation of an action. On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible. Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is-- 1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all. 2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its picturesqueness. 3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all. So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, would not have willingly painted a dress of figured damask or of watered satin; his was heroic painting, not admitting accessories. Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would be very sorry to part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe, exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not _we_ also be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the National Gallery? But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon the counter. § XIV. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any other human work is admissible as an ornament, except in subordination to figure subject. And this law is grossly and painfully violated by those curious examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the architecture were composed of _small models_ of the larger: examples which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life, strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,--abuses which no Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia; and at Venice we find the Renaissance churches decorated with models of fortifications like those in the Repository at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in pseudo-perspective, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of conservatories. § XV. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament is base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly base,--painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we _do_ think of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings, when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's delight in God's work. § XVI. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy. Now in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done yourself; not in your own pride, not your own birth; not in your own being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does, what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will. You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they must be the expression of all this. Not copies of your own handiwork; not boastings of your own grandeur; not heraldries; not king's arms, nor any creature's arms, but God's arm, seen in His work. Not manifestation of your delight in your own laws, or your own liberties, or your own inventions; but in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;--not Composite laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the Ten Commandments. § XVII. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever God has created; and its proper treatment, that which seems in accordance with or symbolical of His laws. And, for material, we shall therefore have, first, the abstract lines which are most frequent in nature; and then, from lower to higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and organic forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and, however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by the ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand and simple for arrangements of external appearances, that I shall here follow it; noticing first, after abstract lines, the imitable forms of the four elements, of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and then those of animal organisms. It may be convenient to the reader to have the order stated in a clear succession at first, thus:-- 1. Abstract lines. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). 3. Forms of Water (Waves). 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). 6. (Organic forms.) Shells. 7. Fish. 8. Reptiles and insects. 9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks. 10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage. 11. Birds. 12. Mammalian animals and Man. It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not of air. They are, however, a perfect expression of aërial states and currents, and may sufficiently well stand for the element they move in. And I have put vegetation apparently somewhat out of its place, owing to its vast importance as a means of decoration, and its constant association with birds and men. § XVIII. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named also shades and colors, for this evident reason, that there are no such things as abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms which exhibit them, and distinguished in their own nature from each other; and that the arrangement of shadows, in greater or less quantity, or in certain harmonical successions, is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And when we use abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature herself,--using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious masses is again a matter of treatment, not selection. Yet even in this separate art of coloring, as referred to architecture, it is very notable that the best tints are always those of natural stones. These can hardly be wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural colors of marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in one or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have most assuredly never yet seen a painted building, ancient or modern, which seemed to me quite right. § XIX. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be abstract lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of natural objects, transferred to architectural forms when it is not right or possible to render such forms distinctly imitative. For instance, the line or curve of the edge of a leaf may be accurately given to the edge of a stone, without rendering the stone in the least _like_ a leaf, or suggestive of a leaf; and this the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike in all her works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in character; and when they are taken out of their combinations it is impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of very different substances and scale: the first, _a b_, is in the original, I think, the most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my life; it is a curve about three quarters of a mile long, formed by the surface of a small glacier of the second order, on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitière (Chamouni). I have merely outlined the crags on the right of it, to show their sympathy and united action with the curve of the glacier, which is of course entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent; softened, however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this high glacier surface. The line _d c_ is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is part of the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the lake of Geneva, one or two of the lines of the higher and more distant ranges being given in combination with it. [Illustration: Plate VII. ABSTRACT LINES.] _h_ is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I have taken this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful; its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures with _c d_, _e g_, and _i k_, which are all mountain lines; _e g_, about five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; _i k_, the entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; _l m_ is the line of the side of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; _n o_, one of the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; _p_, a spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; _q r_, the leaf of the Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; _s t_, the side of a bay-leaf; _u w_, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in delicacy and richness of transition. § XX. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to show in the "Modern Painters;" but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned here,--that almost all these lines are expressive of action of _force_ of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion, or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in the water or air, by clouds in various action upon the wind, by sails in the curvatures they assume under its force, and by thousands of other objects moving or bearing force. In the Alisma leaf, _q r_, the lines through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always, I think, curves of limitation or support; that is to say, curves of perfect rest. The cylindrical curve round the stem of a plant binds its fibres together; while the _ascent_ of the stem is in lines of various curvature: so the curve of the horizon and of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.: and though the reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any moving body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion, he should observe that the circular character is given to the curve not by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is the consequence not of the energy of the body, but of its being forbidden to leave the centre; and whenever the whirling or circular motion can be fully impressed on it we obtain instant balance and rest with respect to the centre of the circle. Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of rest, and security of support, in arches; while the other curves, belonging especially to action, are to be used in the more active architectural features--the hand and foot (the capital and base), and in all minor ornaments; more freely in proportion to their independence of structural conditions. § XXI. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate, in general work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of nature's highest designing: on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We shall take one mountain line (_e g_) and one leaf line (_u w_), or rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will mark off from _u w_ the little bit _x y_, and from _e g_ the piece _e f_; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with these only. § XXII. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why I do not say rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility of these depends, first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident. Their scale cannot be represented, nor their accident systematised. No sculptor can in the least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture: he can obey or exhibit the laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses, therefore, of rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual introduction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for rough service), and that noble use of the general examples of mountain structure of which I have often heretofore spoken. Imitations of rock form have, for the most part, been confined to periods of degraded feeling and to architectural toys or pieces of dramatic effect,--the Calvaries and holy sepulchres of Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains of English gardens. They were, however, not unfrequent in mediæval bas-reliefs; very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the doors of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They were rarely introduced as of ornamental character, but for particular service and expression; we shall see an interesting example in the Ducal Palace at Venice. § XXIII. But against crystalline form, which is the completely systematised natural structure of the earth, none of these objections hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless element of decoration, where higher conditions of structure cannot be represented. The four-sided pyramid, perhaps the most frequent of all natural crystals, is called in architecture a dogtooth; its use is quite limitless, and always beautiful: the cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in chequers and dentils: and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little more than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl, and such other minerals: § XXIV. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint was ever actually taken from mineral form; not even by the Arabs in their stalactite pendants and vaults: all that I mean to allege is, that beautiful ornament, wherever found, or however invented, is always either an intentional or unintentional copy of some constant natural form; and that in this particular instance, the pleasure we have in these geometrical figures of our own invention, is dependent for all its acuteness on the natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love the forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of which He formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated from the deep. § XXV. 3. Forms of Water (Waves). The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for ornament repress still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea. Yet the constant necessity of introducing some representation of water in order to explain the scene of events, or as a sacred symbol, has forced the sculptors of all ages to the invention of some type or letter for it, if not an actual imitation. We find every degree of conventionalism or of naturalism in these types, the earlier being, for the most part, thoughtful symbols; the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.[65] The most conventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation, with any capacities of thought, has given, in some of its work, the same great definition of open water, as "an undulatory thing with fish in it." I say _open_ water, because inland nations have a totally different conception of the element. Imagine for an instant the different feelings of an husbandman whose hut is built by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day, the same giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick, whirling, irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies, coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in omne volubilis ævum,--and the image of the sea in the mind of the fisher upon the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of Sicily, who sees how, day by day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them with a green wave rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the difference of the image of water in those two minds, and then compare the sculpture of the coiling eddies of the Tigris and its reedy branches in those slabs of Nineveh, with the crested curls of the Greek sea on the coins of Camerina or Tarentum. But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of the currents or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as explanatory of the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in their frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is a very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British Museum, representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of examples with dolphins on the Greek vases: the type is preserved without alteration in mediæval painting and sculpture. The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400 B.C.), in the mosaics of Torcello and St. Mark's, on the font of St. Frediano at Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael's Mount in Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented in a manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon, has, with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue color the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an enrichment of surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness. One of the best examples I know of their expressive arrangement is around some figures in a spandril at Bourges, representing figures sinking in deep sea (the deluge): the waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a story, partly to display dexterity of chiselling, but not to produce beautiful forms pleasant to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless, and it has often been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond of exhibiting their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall so short, and remain so cold,--should not have taken more pains to curl the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express, by drill-holes or other artifices, the character of foam. I think in one of the Antwerp churches something of this kind is done in wood, but in general it is rare. § XXVI. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither the sea nor the rock can be imagined, still less the devouring fire. It has been symbolised by radiation both in painting and sculpture, for the most part in the latter very unsuccessfully. It was suggested to me, not long ago,[66] that zigzag decorations of Norman architects were typical of light springing from the half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the ordinary sun type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I shall give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without any very luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the torches of Cupids and genii, and burning in tops of urns, which attest and represent the mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth century in most London churches, and in monuments all over civilised Europe, together with the gilded rays of Romanist altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader is inclined to show them. § XXVII. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manageable than flames, and of no ornamental use, their majesty being in scale and color, and inimitable in marble. They are lightly traced in much of the cinque cento sculpture; very boldly and grandly in the strange Last Judgment in the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen, described in the "Seven Lamps." But the most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged in concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the altars of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons intended for sunbeams above alluded to. § XXVIII. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after inorganic forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not themselves organic. The sense of this, and of their being mere emptiness and deserted houses, must always prevent them, however beautiful in their lines, from being largely used in ornamentation. It is better to take the line and leave the shell. One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages used as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas from their shell form: and I believe the wrinkled lip of the cockle, so used, to have been the origin, in some parts of Europe at least, of the exuberant foliation of the round arch. The scallop also is a pretty radiant form, and mingles well with other symbols when it is needed. The crab is always as delightful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the beast inside the shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner among the other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered upon sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We shall find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the Piazzetta shafts. § XXIX. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they are familiar to our sight, while their interest is increased by their symbolic meaning, are of great value as material of ornament. Love of the picturesque has generally induced a choice of some supple form with scaly body and lashing tail, but the simplest fish form is largely employed in mediæval work. We shall find the plain oval body and sharp head of the Thunny constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the expression of sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied creatures in the best mediæval sculpture. The Greek type of the dolphin, however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the real outline of the Delphinus Delphis,[67] is one of the most picturesque of animal forms; and the action of its slow revolving plunge is admirably caught upon the surface sea represented in Greek vases. § XXX. 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the principal of all the materials of mediæval picturesque sculpture. By the best sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and most natural representations of mere viper or snake are to be found interlaced among their confused groups of meaningless objects. The real power and horror of the snake-head has, however, been rarely reached. I shall give one example from Verona of the twelfth century. Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent. Small frogs, lizards, and snails almost always enliven the foregrounds and leafage of good sculpture. The tortoise is less usually employed in groups. Beetles are chiefly mystic and colossal. Various insects, like everything else in the world, occur in cinque cento work; grasshoppers most frequently. We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use of the bee. § XXXI. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these under a separate head; because, while the forms of leafage belong to all architecture, and ought to be employed in it always, those of the branch and stem belong to a peculiar imitative and luxuriant architecture, and are only applicable at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived little beauty in the stems of trees; they were little else than timber to them; and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or the fluted column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But with Christian knowledge came a peculiar regard for the forms of vegetation, from the root upwards. The actual representation of the entire trees required in many scripture subjects,--as in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects, the Fall; and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony, and many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of forms before unknown; while the symbolical name given to Christ by the Prophets, "the Branch," and the frequent expressions referring to this image throughout every scriptural description of conversion, gave an especial interest to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative structure. For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was confined to bas-relief; but it at last affected even the treatment of the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings,--as in the western façade of Genoa, where two of the shafts are represented as gnarled trunks: and as bas-relief itself became more boldly introduced, so did tree sculpture, until we find the writhed and knotted stems of the vine and fig used for angle shafts on the Doge's Palace, and entire oaks and appletrees forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures of the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more easy to carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the frequent employment in later Gothic of the "Tree of Jesse," for traceries and other purposes, the system reached full developement in a perfect thicket of twigs, which form the richest portion of the decoration of the porches of Beauvais. It had now been carried to its richest extreme: men wearied of it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects. But it is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its acceptance of this feature of ornament, proceeded from the ground, and followed, as it were, the natural growth of the tree. It began with the rude and solid trunk, as at Genoa; then the branches shot out, and became loaded leaves; autumn came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to the extremities of the delicate branches;--the Renaissance frosts came, and all perished. § XXXII. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary to consider these as separated from the stems; not only, as above noted, because their separate use marks another school of architecture, but because they are the only organic structures which are capable of being so treated, and intended to be so, without strong effort of imagination. To pull animals to pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or their heads for terminations of rods and shafts, is _usually_ the characteristic of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their animals whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look emergent from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and wherever there is throughout the architecture any expression of sternness or severity (severity in its literal sense, as in Romans, XI. 22), such divisions of the living form may be permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation around them; wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise,--it is a dressing of garden. And, therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may; vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or frame-work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of the leaf,--the hollow "foil" cut out of it,--possesses a charm which nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting, nor demanding laborious thought or sympathy, but perfectly simple, peaceful, and satisfying. § XXXIII. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general source of subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics of Christian architecture; but the two _roots_ of leaf ornament are the Greek acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.[68] The dry land and the river thus each contributed their part; and all the florid capitals of the richest Northern Gothic on the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe Lombardic capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is, I believe, called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated with the lotus flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest types of simple capital; and it is to be noted that the florid leaves of the dry land are used most by the Northern architects, while the water leaves are gathered for their ornaments by the parched builders of the Desert. § XXXIV. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color than form; nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture on a tree; but, gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible to have too much of it. We shall find it so used very dextrously on the Ducal Palace of Venice, there with a meaning which rendered it right necessary; but the Renaissance architects address themselves to spectators who care for nothing but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and above which it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for image worship, as I believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am very sure that the Protestantism of London would have found itself quite as secure in a cathedral decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round with bunches of ribston pippins. § XXXV. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird form, in general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early sculptors, and with those schools which loved form more than action; but the difficulty of expressing action, where the muscular markings are concealed, has limited the use of it in later art. Half the ornament, at least, in Byzantine architecture, and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of birds, either pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock. But how much of our general sense of grace or power of motion, of serenity, peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to these creatures, it is impossible to conceive; their wings supplying us with almost the only means of representation of spiritual motion which we possess, and with an ornamental form of which the eye is never weary, however meaninglessly or endlessly repeated; whether in utter isolation, or associated with the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the man. The heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as the richest ornaments in all ages. § XXXVI. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the horse has received an elevation into the primal rank of sculptural subject, owing to his association with men. The full value of other quadruped forms has hardly been perceived, or worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of science is more felt in these subjects than in any other branches of early work. The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the most noble examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt, the Ninevite bulls, and the mediæval griffins). Quadrupeds of course form the noblest subjects of ornament next to the human form; this latter, the chief subject of sculpture, being sometimes the end of architecture rather than its decoration. We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural decoration, and the reader may be assured that no effort has ever been successful to draw elements of beauty from any other sources than these. Such an effort was once resolutely made. It was contrary to the religion of the Arab to introduce any animal form into his ornament; but although all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion, and all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he could not produce any noble work without an _abstraction_ of the forms of leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the ground plan of his chased ornament. But I have above noted that coloring is an entirely distinct and independent art; and in the "Seven Lamps" we saw that this art had most power when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical form: the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring, and he had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional beauty at his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell, but he could build the dome. The imitation of radiance by the variegated voussoir, the expression of the sweep of the desert by the barred red lines upon the wall, the starred inshedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all the endless fantasy of abstract line,[69] were still in the power of his ardent and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort of his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn over its evanescence. FOOTNOTES: [63] The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly symptoms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present century. [64] Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular forms of crag or fissure. [65] Appendix 21, "Ancient Representations of Water." [66] By the friend to whom I owe Appendix 21. [67] One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general are "les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardée avec leur taille, les plus cruels de l'ordre;" yet that in the Delphinus Delphis, "tout l'organisation de son cerveau annonce _qu'il ne doit pas être dépourvu de la docilité_ qu'ils (les anciens) lui attribuaient." [68] Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk appears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf more pure and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our botanists have discovered, in the "Victoria regia" (supposing its blossom reversed), another strangely beautiful type of what we may perhaps hereafter find it convenient to call _Lily_ capitals. [69] Appendix 22, "Arabian Ornamentation." CHAPTER XXI. TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT. § I. We now know where we are to look for subjects of decoration. The next question is, as the reader must remember, how to treat or express these subjects. There are evidently two branches of treatment: the first being the expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the thing itself; and the second, the arrangement of the thing so expressed: both of these being quite distinct from the placing of the ornament in proper parts of the building. For instance, suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject. The first question is, how to cut the vine-leaf? Shall we cut its ribs and notches on the edge, or only its general outline? and so on. Then, how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them; whether symmetrically, or at random; or unsymmetrically, yet within certain limits? All these I call questions of treatment. Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged are to be set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a question of place. § II. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold, how to express, and how to arrange. And expression is to the mind or the sight. Therefore, the inquiry becomes really threefold:-- 1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the mind. 2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the sight. 3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both. § III. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with reference to the mind? If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only necessary to produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well cut group of flowers or animals were indeed an ornament wherever it might be placed, the work of the architect would be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture would become separate arts; and the architect would order so many pieces of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling himself with any questions but those of disposition and proportion. But this is not so. _No perfect piece either of painting or sculpture is an architectural ornament at all_, except in that vague sense in which any beautiful thing is said to ornament the place it is in. Thus we say that pictures ornament a room; but we should not thank an architect who told us that his design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one corner of it, and a Velasquez in the other; and it is just as unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted on a building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it would be to hang pictures by the way of ornament on the outside of it. It is very possible that the sculptured work may be harmoniously associated with the building, or the building executed with reference to it; but in this latter case the architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the Medicean chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose, we may say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some degree, unfits it for its purpose, and that no absolutely complete sculpture can be decoratively right. We have a familiar instance in the flower-work of St. Paul's, which is probably, in the abstract, as perfect flower sculpture as could be produced at the time; and which is just as rational an ornament of the building as so many valuable Van Huysums, framed and glazed and hung up over each window. § IV. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be beautiful in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect of every portion of the building over which it has influence; that it does not, by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by its delicacy, make other parts coarse. Every one of its qualities has reference to its place and use: _and it is fitted for its service by what would be faults and deficiencies if it had no especial duty_. Ornament, the servant, is often formal, where sculpture, the master, would have been free; the servant is often silent where the master would have been eloquent; or hurried, where the master would have been serene. § V. How far this subordination is in different situations to be expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament, the servant, be permitted to have independent will; and by what means the subordination is best to be expressed when it is required, are by far the most difficult questions I have ever tried to work out respecting any branch of art; for, in many of the examples to which I look as authoritative in their majesty of effect, it is almost impossible to say whether the abstraction or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to the choice, or the incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how far the result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent self-restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In their bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and shade, and drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the page, owing to the vivid opposition of their bright colors and quaint lines, than if they had been drawn by Da Vinci himself: and so the Arena chapel is far more brightly _decorated_ by the archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stanze of the Vatican are by those of Raffaelle. But how far it is possible to recur to such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary abandonment of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to determine. § VI. So, on the other hand, in many instances of finished work in which I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly distinguish what is erroneous in principle from what is vulgar in execution. For instance, in most Romanesque churches of Italy, the porches are guarded by gigantic animals, lions or griffins, of admirable severity of design; yet, in many cases, of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be determined how much of this severity was intentional,--how much involuntary: in the cathedral of Genoa two modern lions have, in imitation of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous great man because he knew what lions were really like, has copied them, in the menagerie, with great success, and produced two hairy and well-whiskered beasts, as like to real lions as he could possibly cut them. One wishes them back in the menagerie for his pains; but it is impossible to say how far the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity and vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have been delighted with a realisation, carried to nearly the same length by Ghiberti or Michael Angelo. (I say _nearly_, because neither Ghiberti nor Michael Angelo would ever have attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even in independent sculpture.) § VII. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few certainties may be marked in the treatment of past architecture, and secure conclusions deduced for future practice. There is first, for instance, the assuredly intended and resolute abstraction of the Ninevite and Egyptian sculptors. The men who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian room of the British Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those Ninevite kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they chose to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which the human sculpture is perfect, the architecture and animal sculpture is subordinate to it, and the architectural ornament severely subordinated to this again, so as to be composed of little more than abstract lines: and, finally, there is the peculiarly mediæval system, in which the inferior details are carried to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher sculpture; and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which it is difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and how far from incapacity. § VIII. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian are altogether opposed to modern habits of thought and action; they are sculptures evidently executed under absolute authorities, physical and mental, such as cannot at present exist. The Greek system presupposes the possession of a Phidias; it is ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner; you may build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to contain sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it. Find your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very soon settle all your architectural difficulties in very unexpected ways indeed; but until you find him, do not think yourselves architects while you go on copying those poor subordinations, and secondary and tertiary orders of ornament, which the Greek put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of them, beads, and dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for their work, and you may use them for subordinate work still; but they are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not invent them: and others of them are mistakes and impertinences in the Greek himself, such as his so-called honeysuckle ornaments and others, in which there is a starched and dull suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real resemblance nor life, for the conditions of them result from his own conceit of himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could improve everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking it into his service: by freedom from which conceits the true Christian architecture is distinguished--not by points to its arches. § IX. There remains, therefore, only the mediæval system, in which I think, generally, more completion is permitted (though this often because more was possible) in the inferior than in the higher portions of ornamental subject. Leaves, and birds, and lizards are realised, or nearly so; men and quadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and inferior subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect. The realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except under most skilful management, and the abstraction, if true and noble, is almost always more delightful.[70] [Illustration: Plate VIII. DECORATION BY DISKS. PALAZZO DEI BADOARI PARTECIPAZZI.] § X. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more than we leave behind), and using any expedient to impress what we want upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole spirit and power of peacock is in those eyes of the tail. It is true, the argus pheasant, and one or two more birds, have something like them, but nothing for a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have nearly all you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and yet those eyes are not in relief; a rigidly _true_ sculpture of a peacock's form could have no eyes,--nothing but feathers. Here, then, enters the stratagem of sculpture; you _must_ cut the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see how it is done in the peacock on the opposite page; it is so done by nearly all the Byzantine sculptors: this particular peacock is meant to be seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more hereafter), but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty feet; I have put it close to you that you may see plainly the rude rings and rods which stand for the eyes and quills, but at the just distance their effect is perfect. § XI. And the simplicity of the means here employed may help us, both to some clear understanding of the spirit of Ninevite and Egyptian work, and to some perception of the kind of enfantillage or archaicism to which it may be possible, even in days of advanced science, legitimately to return. The architect has no right, as we said before, to require of us a picture of Titian's in order to complete his design; neither has he the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculptors, in subordinate capacities. Far from this; his business is to dispense with such aid altogether, and to devise such a system of ornament as shall be capable of execution by uninventive and even unintelligent workmen; for supposing that he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far would this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings? Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it: nor, even if we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings, could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required all to be executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament, you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no free-trade measure, which will ever lower the price of brains,--there is no California of common sense. Exactly in the degree in which you require your decoration to be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish the extent and number of architectural works. Your business as an architect, is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to think for them, and to indicate for them such expressions of your thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the feeblest hand can execute. This is the definition of the purest architectural abstractions. They are the deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest men, put into such easy letters that they can be written by the simplest. _They are expressions of the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood._ § XII. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or Egyptian builders, with a couple of thousand men--mud-bred, onion-eating creatures--under him, to be set to work, like so many ants, on his temple sculptures. What is he to do with them? He can put them through a granitic exercise of current hand; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly into croche-coeurs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how to shape pothooks; he can teach them all how to draw long eyes and straight noses, and how to copy accurately certain well-defined lines. Then he fits his own great design to their capacities; he takes out of king, or lion, or god, as much as was expressible by croche-coeurs and granitic pothooks; he throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and having mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a will, and so many onions a day. § XIII. I said those times cannot now return. We have, with Christianity, recognised the individual value of every soul; and there is no intelligence so feeble but that its single ray may in some sort contribute to the general light. This is the glory of Gothic architecture, that every jot and tittle, every point and niche of it, affords room, fuel, and focus for individual fire. But you cease to acknowledge this, and you refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind, if you require the work to be all executed in a great manner. Your business is to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of it as far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence: then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its own simple act and effort; and to rejoice in its simplicity if not in its power, and in its vitality if not in its science. § XIV. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to the degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We have the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to the inventive,--the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its submissiveness. Then we have the mediæval system, in which the mind of the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is guided and ennobled by the ruling mind. This is the truly Christian and only perfect system. Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor to equalise the executive and inventive,--endeavor which is Renaissance and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architecture. § XV. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity of execution necessary in architectural ornament, as referred to the mind. Next we have to consider that which is required when it is referred to the sight, and the various modifications of treatment which are rendered necessary by the variation of its distance from the eye. I say necessary: not merely expedient or economical. It is foolish to carve what is to be seen forty feet off with the delicacy which the eye demands within two yards; not merely because such delicacy is lost in the distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost:--the delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than rough work. This is a fact well known to painters, and, for the most part, acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely, that there is a certain distance for which a picture is painted; and that the finish, which is delightful if that distance be small, is actually injurious if the distance be great: and, moreover, that there is a particular method of handling which none but consummate artists reach, which has its effects at the intended distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and unintelligible at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting, but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture; nor until my attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any idea of the care with which this great question was studied by the mediæval architects. On my first careful examination of the capitals of the upper arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, I was induced, by their singular inferiority of workmanship, to suppose them posterior to those of the lower arcade. It was not till I discovered that some of those which I thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great times which I had opportunity of examining. § XVI. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second method, a different design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose; but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are seen close; in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; the second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament. § XVII. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the vast aërial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment. Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely enough, the discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is greater in proportion to the unapproachableness of the object, is the law observed. For every distance from the eye there is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of form; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that distance, and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and reduced to strange and incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn. If you desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident, or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as you see the ruined mountain world with a wider glance, behold! dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the disjointed mass; line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line; group by group, the helpless fragments gather themselves into ordered companies; new captains of hosts and masses of battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers of foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap could now be spared from the mystic whole. § XVIII. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one kind of beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another; this is worthy of her infinite power: and, as we shall see, art can sometimes follow her even in doing this; but all I insist upon at present is, that the several effects of nature are each worked with means referred to a particular distance, and producing their effect at that distance only. Take a singular and marked instance: When the sun rises behind a ridge of pines, and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two, against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches, and all, becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either side of the sun.[71] Now suppose that a person who had never seen pines were, for the first time in his life, to see them under this strange aspect, and, reasoning as to the means by which such effect could be produced, laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by trees with swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves! We, in our simplicity, if we had been required to produce such an appearance, should have built up trees of chased silver, with trunks of glass, and then been grievously amazed to find that, at two miles off, neither silver nor glass were any more visible; but nature knew better, and prepared for her fairy work with the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own mysterious way. § XIX. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your good ornament. It may be that it is capable of being approached, as well as likely to be seen far away, and then it ought to have microscopic qualities, as the pine leaves have, which will bear approach. But your calculation of its purpose is for a glory to be produced at a given distance; it may be here, or may be there, but it is a _given_ distance; and the excellence of the ornament depends upon its fitting that distance, and being seen better there than anywhere else, and having a particular function and form which it can only discharge and assume there. You are never to say that ornament has great merit because "you cannot see the beauty of it here;" but, it has great merit because "you _can_ see its beauty _here only_." And to give it this merit is just about as difficult a task as I could well set you. I have above noted the two ways in which it is done: the one, being merely rough cutting, may be passed over; the other, which is scientific alteration of design, falls, itself, into two great branches, Simplification and Emphasis. A word or two is necessary on each of these heads. § XX. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen near, if its composition be indeed fine, the subdued and delicate portions of the design lead to, and unite, the energetic parts, and those energetic parts form with the rest a whole, in which their own immediate relations to each other are not perceived. Remove this design to a distance, and the connecting delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either disconnected altogether, or assuming with each other new relations, which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably be painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the retirement of a band of music in which the instruments are of very unequal powers; the fluting and fifeing expire, the drumming remains, and that in a painful arrangement, as demanding something which is unheard. In like manner, as the designer at arm's length removes or elevates his work, fine gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder of the markings, certainly confused, and in all probability painful. § XXI. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon the arrangement of the features which will remain visible far away. Nor does this always imply a diminution of resource; for, while it may be assumed as a law that fine modulation of surface in light becomes quickly invisible as the object retires, there are a softness and mystery given to the harder markings, which enable them to be safely used as media of expression. There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of the Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or 18 feet above the eye; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no use to trouble himself about drawing the corners of the mouth, or the lines of the lips, delicately, at that distance; his object has been to mark them clearly, and to prevent accidental shadows from concealing them, or altering their expression. The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that their line cannot be mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into the angle of the mouth; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is surprised, from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris of it, neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The expedient can only be discovered by ascending to the level of the head; it is one which would have been quite inadmissible except in distant work, six drill-holes cut into the iris, round a central one for the pupil. § XXII. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our disposal, by beautiful arrangement of the prominent features, and by choice of different subjects for different places, choosing the broadest forms for the farthest distance, it is possible to give the impression, not only of perfection, but of an exquisite delicacy, to the most distant ornament. And this is the true sign of the right having been done, and the utmost possible power attained:--The spectator should be satisfied to stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be, equally rich, full, and lovely: not desiring to climb the steeples in order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is. Perhaps the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best instances of absolute perfection in this kind: seen from below, they appear as rich as the frosted silver of the Strada degli Orefici; and the nearer you approach them, the less delicate they seem. § XXIII. This is, however, not the only mode, though the best, in which ornament is adapted for distance. The other is emphasis,--the unnatural insisting upon explanatory lines, where the subject would otherwise become unintelligible. It is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow incision, an architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with chalk on grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in the degree that he chooses, substitute _chalk sketching_ for sculpture. They are curiously mingled by the Romans. The bas-reliefs of the Arc d'Orange are small, and would be confused, though in bold relief, if they depended for intelligibility on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a strong _incision_ at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut out at all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations in all their early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to draw a mere pattern--as, for instance, the bearings of a shield--with these simple incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able sculptor twenty minutes or half an hour; and the pattern is then clearly seen, under all circumstances of light and shade; there can be no mistake about it, and no missing it. To carve out the bearings in due and finished relief would occupy a long summer's day, and the results would be feeble and indecipherable in the best lights, and in some lights totally and hopelessly invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance architects, and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of the rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be understood. They care only to speak finely, and be thought great orators, if one could only hear them. So I leave you to choose between the old men, who took minutes to tell things plainly, and the modern men, who take days to tell them unintelligibly. § XXIV. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification and energy, for the expression of details at a distance where their actual forms would have been invisible, but more especially this linear method, I shall call Proutism; for the greatest master of the art in modern times has been Samuel Prout. He actually takes up buildings of the later times in which the ornament has been too refined for its place, and translates it into the energised linear ornament of earlier art: and to this power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting it into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would have been confused, is owing the especial power of his drawings. Nothing can be more closely analogous than the method with which an old Lombard uses his chisel, and that with which Prout uses the reed-pen; and we shall see presently farther correspondence in their feeling about the enrichment of luminous surfaces. § XXV. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to ornament whose distance is fixed, or nearly so; as when it is at any considerable height from the ground, supposing the spectator to desire to see it, and to get as near it as he can. But the distance of ornament is never fixed to the _general_ spectator. The tower of a cathedral is bound to look well, ten miles off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty yards. The ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with those of its base; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the great world: and the ornaments of the base have no fixed distance at all. They are bound to look well from the other side of the cathedral close, and to look equally well, or better, as we enter the cathedral door. How are we to manage this? § XXVI. As nature manages it. I said above, § XVII., that for every distance from the eye there was a different system of form in all natural objects: this is to be so then in architecture. The lesser ornament is to be grafted on the greater, and third or fourth orders of ornaments upon this again, as need may be, until we reach the limits of possible sight; each order of ornament being adapted for a different distance: first, for example, the great masses,--the buttresses and stories and black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of miles away: then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which give it richness as we approach: then the niches and statues and knobs and flowers, which we can only see when we stand beneath it. At this third order of ornament, we may pause, in the upper portions; but on the roofs of the niches, and the robes of the statues, and the rolls of the mouldings, comes a fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can follow, when any of these features may be approached. § XXVII. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it were, one class of it branching out of another and sustained by it; and its nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class of it we may be contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to a greater, simpler, and more powerful; and if we then contemplate the greater order, we shall find it again subordinated to a greater still; until the greatest can only be quite grasped by retiring to the limits of distance commanding it. And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is bad: if the figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress be not subordinated to the folds of it,--if the folds are not subordinate to the action and mass of the figure,--if this action and mass not to the divisions of the recesses and shafts among which it stands,--if these not to the shadows of the great arches and buttresses of the whole building, in each case there is error; much more if all be contending with each other and striving for attention at the same time. § XXVIII. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect this distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to _every_ distance of the spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there must always be a bold separation; and there must be many intermediate distances, where we are too far off to see the lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp the next higher rank wholly: and at all these distances the spectator will feel himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther away. This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It is exactly the same with respect to Rouen cathedral or the Mont Blanc. We like to see them from the other side of the Seine, or of the lake of Geneva; from the Marché aux Fleurs, or the Valley of Chamouni; from the parapets of the apse, or the crags of the Montagne de la Côte: but there are intermediate distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from which one is in haste either to advance or to retire. § XXIX. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well officered and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine, and therefore of all good human government, is the democratic ornament, in which all is equally influential, and has equal office and authority; that is to say, none of it any office nor authority, but a life of continual struggle for independence and notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The English perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know; its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover its walls with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill with equal foils the equal interstices between the equal bars, and charge the interminable blanks with statues and rosettes, invisible at a distance, and uninteresting near. The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the exact reverse of this; being divided first into large masses, and these masses covered with minute chasing and surface work, which fill them with interest, and yet do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his large masses of light. § XXX. Such are the main principles to be observed in the adaptation of ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire by what method, and in what quantities, the ornament, thus adapted to mental contemplation, and prepared for its physical position, may most wisely be arranged. I think the method ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the advisable quantity depends upon the method. § XXXI. It was said above, that the proper treatment or arrangement of ornament was that which expressed the laws and ways of Deity. Now, the subordination of visible orders to each other, just noted, is one expression of these. But there may also--must also--be a subordination and obedience of the parts of each order to some visible law, out of itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order): some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain. In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us Laws. Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine law. It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this; but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a general law was sometimes sought by the mediæval workmen, I shall be frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil; the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating, scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail, overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on each side, lay their small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly the same point of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line. Two ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings round the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence. § XXXII. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the mere shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the acknowledgment _by_ the ornament of the fitness of the limitation--of its own perfect willingness to submit to it; nay, of a predisposition in itself to fall into the ordained form, without any direct expression of the command to do so; an anticipation of the authority, and an instant and willing submission to it, in every fibre and spray: not merely _willing_, but _happy_ submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so justly in accordance with its own nature. You must not cut out a branch of hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round it, and suppose that it is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn. It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them, for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression here and there, and an adaptation to some other need, or a reaching forth to some other end greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty is to be always accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and when the full form is reached and the entire submission expressed, and every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility down into its tiniest stamen, you may take your terminal line away if you will. No need for it any more. The commandment is written on the heart of the thing. § XXXIII. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there is the obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the unity of ornament, of which I think enough has been said for my present purpose in the chapter on Unity in the second vol. of "Modern Painters." But I hardly know whether to arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a representation of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light which, in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of _continuous_ ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The opposition of good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human system (so ably worked out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation of labor with rest, the mingling of life with death, or the actual physical fact of the division of light from darkness, and of the falling and rising of night and day, are all typified or represented by these chains of shade and light of which the eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur to the thoughts. § XXXIV. The next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is one closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is one in which "God's creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants." It is also a feast, where there is nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled upon some points, and left the rest of the building whey. It is very difficult to give the rules, or analyse the feelings, which should direct us in this matter: for some shafts may be carved and others left unfinished, and that with advantage; some windows may be jewelled like Aladdin's, and one left plain, and still with advantage; the door or doors, or a single turret, or the whole western façade of a church, or the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration, and the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage. But in all such cases there is either sign of that feeling which I advocated in the First Chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the desire of rather doing some portion of the building as we would have it, and leaving the rest plain, than doing the whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some important feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest, the decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system, and without preference of the nobler members, the ornament alternates between sickly luxuriance and sudden blankness. In many of our Scotch and English abbeys, especially Melrose, this is painfully felt; but the worst instance I have ever seen is the window in the side of the arch under the Wellington statue, next St. George's Hospital. In the first place, a window has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the window are not the proper place for decoration, especially _wavy_ decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in the third, the richness of the ornament is a mere patch and eruption upon the wall, and one hardly knows whether to be most irritated at the affectation of severity in the rest, or at the vain luxuriance of the dissolute parallelogram. § XXXV. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have already said, again and again, you cannot have too much if it be good; that is, if it be thoroughly united and harmonised by the laws hitherto insisted upon. But you may easily have too much if you have more than you have sense to manage. For with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty of discipline. It is exactly the same as in war: you cannot, as an abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have more than the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship is competent to command. And every regiment which you cannot manage will, on the day of battle, be in your way, and encumber the movements it is not in disposition to sustain. § XXXVI. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to measure your capacity of governing ornament. Remember, its essence,--its being ornament at all, consists in its being governed. Lose your authority over it, let it command you, or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise, and it is an offence, an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always ready to do this; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on its own devices. Measure, therefore, your strength; and as long as there is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion to battalion; but be assured that all are heartily in the cause, and that there is not one of whose position you are ignorant, or whose service you could spare. FOOTNOTES: [70] Vide "Seven Lamps," Chap. IV. § 34. [71] Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this, Shakspeare, in Richard II.:-- "But when, from under this terrestrial ball, He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines." And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy: "My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines On the steep's lofty verge--how it blackened the air! But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines With threads that seem part of his own silver hair." [72] Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice of the "Seven Lamps" in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I think, however, the writer attaches too great importance to one out of many ornamental necessities. CHAPTER XXII. THE ANGLE. § I. We have now examined the treatment and specific kinds of ornament at our command. We have lastly to note the fittest places for their disposal. Not but that all kinds of ornament are used in all places; but there are some parts of the building, which, without ornament, are more painful than others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than others; so that, although an able architect will always be finding out some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and fitting his ornament into wonderful places where it is least expected, there are, nevertheless, one or two general laws which may be noted respecting every one of the parts of a building, laws not (except a few) imperative like those of construction, but yet generally expedient, and good to be understood, if it were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in which they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few of the simplest; to trace them into their ramifications, and class in due order the known or possible methods of decoration for each part of a building, would alone require a large volume, and be, I think, a somewhat useless work; for there is often a high pleasure in the very unexpectedness of the ornament, which would be destroyed by too elaborate an arrangement of its kinds. § II. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thoroughly understand the connection of the parts of a building, that I may class together, in treating of decoration, several parts which I kept separate in speaking of construction. Thus I shall put under one head (A) the base of the wall and of the shaft; then (B) the wall veil and shaft itself; then (C) the cornice and capital; then (D) the jamb and archivolt, including the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the jambs of apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts; finally (E) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs or gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divisions, all may be arranged which is necessary to be generally stated; for tracery decorations or aperture fillings are but smaller forms of application of the arch, and the cusps are merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses have, as far as I know, no specific ornament. The best are those which have least; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles, which are common to other portions of the building, or into small shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applicability. We shall therefore have only five divisions to examine in succession, from foundation to roof. [Illustration: Fig. LI.] § III. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain minor conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly general application. For instance, whether, in archivolts, jambs, or buttresses, or in square piers, or at the extremity of the entire building, we necessarily have the awkward (moral or architectural) feature, the _corner_. How to turn a corner gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question; to be examined without reference to any particular part of the edifice. § IV. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of parallel light and shade are obtained, whether these are employed in arches, or jambs, or bases, or cornices, must of necessity present one or more of six forms: square projection, _a_ (Fig. LI.), or square recess, _b_, sharp projection, _c_, or sharp recess, _d_, curved projection, _e_, or curved recess, _f_. What odd curves the projection or recess may assume, or how these different conditions may be mixed and run into one another, is not our present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types. Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale they often themselves constitute all the ornament required for larger features, and are left smooth cut; but on a very large scale they are apt to become insipid, and they require a sub-ornament of their own, the consideration of which is, of course, in great part, general, and irrespective of the place held by the mouldings in the building itself: which consideration I think we had better undertake first of all. § V. But before we come to particular examination of these minor forms, let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back to Fig. LI., above. There are distinguished in it six forms of moulding. Of these, _c_ is nothing but a small corner; but, for convenience sake, it is better to call it an edge, and to consider its decoration together with that of the member _a_, which is called a fillet; while _e_, which I shall call a roll (because I do not choose to assume that it shall be only of the semicircular section here given), is also best considered together with its relative recess, _f_; and because the shape of a recess is of no great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together, and we shall thus have only three subjects for separate consideration:-- 1. The Angle. 2. The Edge and Fillet. 3. The Roll and Recess. § VI. There are two other general forms which may probably occur to the reader's mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof), which is a corner laid on its back, or sloping,--a supine corner, decorated in a very different manner from a stiff upright corner: and the point, which is a concentrated corner, and has wonderfully elaborate decorations all to its insignificant self, finials, and spikes, and I know not what more. But both these conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the cusp finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think it better to class them and their ornament under the head of roof decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and bosses; so that we shall be here concerned only with the three subjects above distinguished: and, first, the corner or Angle. § VII. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of angles; but the one we have principally to deal with now, is that which the reader may very easily conceive as the corner of a square house, or square anything. It is of course the one of most frequent occurrence; and its treatment, once understood, may, with slight modification, be referred to other corners, sharper or blunter, or with curved sides. § VIII. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would occur to any one who found a corner troublesome, would be to cut it off. This is a very summary and tyrannical proceeding, somewhat barbarous, yet advisable if nothing else can be done: an amputated corner is said to be chamfered. It can, however, evidently be cut off in three ways: 1. with a concave cut, _a_; 2. with a straight cut, _b_; 3. with a convex cut, _c_, Fig. LII. [Illustration: Fig. LII.] The first two methods, the most violent and summary, have the apparent disadvantage that we get by them,--two corners instead of one; much milder corners, however, and with a different light and shade between them; so that both methods are often very expedient. You may see the straight chamfer (_b_) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway stations, it being the easiest to cut: the concave chamfer requires more care, and occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture--very beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como, Plate V.; and the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind, very constantly in Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2, Plate IV., at Sens. § IX. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest mode of treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very generally the best. For while the two other methods produce two corners instead of one, this gentle chamfer does verily get rid of the corner altogether, and substitutes a soft curve in its place. [Illustration: Fig. LIII.] But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage, that it looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off, blunted by time and weather, and in want of sharpening again. A great deal often depends, and in such a case as this, everything depends, on the _Voluntariness_ of the ornament. The work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on edges intended to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not like them blunt on compulsion; so, to show that the bluntness is our own ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark off the rounding, and show that it goes no farther than we choose. We shall thus have the section _a_, Fig. LIII.; and this mode of turning an angle is one of the very best ever invented. By enlarging and deepening the incision, we get in succession the forms _b_, _c_, _d_; and by describing a small equal arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get _e_, _f_, _g_, _h_. § X. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects chamfers or beads; but I think _bead_ a bad word for a continuous moulding, and the proper sense of the word chamfer is fixed by Spenser as descriptive not merely of truncation, but of trench or furrow:-- "Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn, And, crowing in pipes made of green corn, You thinken to be lords of the year; But eft when ye count you freed from fear, Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows, Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows." So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when there is any chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, _a_, or _b_, of Fig. LII.: and when there is no such chance, I shall use the word chamfer only. § XI. Of those above given, _b_ is the constant chamfer of Venice, and _a_ of Verona: _a_ being the grandest and best, and having a peculiar precision and quaintness of effect about it. I found it twice in Venice, used on the sharp angle, as at _a_ and _b_, Fig. LIV., _a_ being from the angle of a house on the Rio San Zulian, and _b_ from the windows of the church of San Stefano. [Illustration: Fig. LIV.] § XII. There is, however, evidently another variety of the chamfers, _f_ and _g_, Fig. LIII., formed by an unbroken curve instead of two curves, as _c_, Fig. LIV.; and when this, or the chamfer _d_, Fig. LIII., is large, it is impossible to say whether they have been devised from the incised angle, or from small shafts set in a nook, as at _e_, Fig. LIV., or in the hollow of the curved chamfer, as _d_, Fig. LIV. In general, however, the shallow chamfers, _a_, _b_, _e_, and _f_, Fig. LIII., are peculiar to southern work; and may be assumed to have been derived from the incised angle, while the deep chamfers, _c_, _d_, _g_, _h_, are characteristic of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated from the angle shaft; while, with the usual extravagance of the northern architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until we arrive at the condition _f_, Fig. LIV., which is the favorite chamfer at Bourges and Bayeux, and in other good French work. I have placed in the Appendix[73] a figure belonging to this subject, but which cannot interest the general reader, showing the number of possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given size. § XIII. If we take the plain chamfer, _b_, of Fig. LII., on a large scale, as at _a_, Fig. LV., and bead both its edges, cutting away the parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used in richly decorated Gothic, both in England and Italy. It might be more simply described as the chamfer _a_ of Fig. LII., with an incision on each edge; but the part here shaded is often worked into ornamental forms, not being entirely cut away. [Illustration: Fig. LV.] § XIV. Many other mouldings, which at first sight appear very elaborate, are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small echoes of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the surface of the wall, as in _b_, Fig. LV., from Coutances (observe, here the white part is the solid stone, the shade is cut away). Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in delicate work: the coarse chamfers are found on all scales: _f_ and _g_, Fig. LIII., in Venice, form the great angles of almost every Gothic palace; the roll being a foot or a foot and a half round, and treated as a shaft, with a capital and fresh base at every story, while the stones of which it is composed form alternate quoins in the brickwork beyond the chamfer curve. I need hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a common quoined angle; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole pile attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve concerning angle decoration by chamfer. FOOTNOTES: [73] Appendix 23: "Varieties of Chamfer." CHAPTER XXIII. THE EDGE AND FILLET. § I. The decoration of the angle by various forms of chamfer and bead, as above described, is the quietest method we can employ; too quiet, when great energy is to be given to the moulding, and impossible, when, instead of a bold angle, we have to deal with a small projecting edge, like _c_ in Fig. LI. In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder and easier in its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective when not used in too great profusion; and of which the complete developments are the source of mouldings at once the most picturesque and most serviceable which the Gothic builders invented. § II. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being liable to somewhat rough collision with each other, and with the walls of the streets, are generally protected by a piece of timber, which projects in the form of the fillet, _a_, Fig. LI.; but which, like all other fillets, may, if we so choose, be considered as composed of two angles or edges, which the natural and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for ornament, otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails and glittering flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly undecorated. The rough service of these timbers, however, will not admit of rich ornament, and the boatbuilder usually contents himself with cutting a series of notches in each edge, one series alternating with the other, as represented at 1, Plate IX. § III. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian boats, but as representative of a general human instinct to hack at an edge, demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle possessors of penknives or other cutting instruments on both sides of the Atlantic;--in that rude Venetian gunwale, I say, is the germ of all the ornament which has touched, with its rich successions of angular shadow, the portals and archivolts of nearly every early building of importance, from the North Cape to the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may be seen on Plate IX. at a glance. [Illustration: Plate IX. EDGE DECORATION.] § IV. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarging the notches, until they meet each other, we have the condition 2, which is a moulding from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's. Now, considering this moulding as composed of two decorated edges, each edge will be reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of four-sided pyramids (as marked off by the dotted lines), which, the notches here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids; but by deepening the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profile _a_, more or less steep. This moulding I shall always call "the plain dogtooth;" it is used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese Gothic, generally set with its front to the spectator, as here at 3; but its effect may be much varied by placing it obliquely (4, and profile as at _b_); or with one side horizontal (5, and profile _c_). Of these three conditions, 3 and 5 are exactly the same in reality, only differently placed; but in 4 the pyramid is obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the upper side of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare. Of the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full sharp shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently seen by fig. 7 in this plate (the arch on the left, the number beneath it), in which these levelled dogteeth, with a small interval between each, are employed to set off by their vigor the delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch is the side of a niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at Verona; and the value, as well as the distant expression of its dogtooth, may be seen by referring to Prout's beautiful drawing of this tomb in his "Sketches in France and Italy." I have before observed that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading expression of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament the leading feature of the niche, expressing it, as in distance it is only expressible, by a zigzag. § V. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking so highly of this drawing, if he take the pains to compare Prout's symbolism of the work on the niche with the facts as they stand here in Plate IX. But the truth is that Prout has rendered the effect of the monument on the mind of the passer-by;--the effect it was intended to have on every man who turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense there is actually more truth and likeness[74] in Prout's translation than in my fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the details from a ladder. I do not say that all the symbolism in Prout's Sketch is the best possible; but it is the best which any architectural draughtsman has yet invented; and in its application to special subjects it always shows curious internal evidence that the sketch has been made on the spot, and that the artist tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive subject. I shall notice other instances of this hereafter. § VI. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however, rather a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory or generally available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich it as we choose: taking up its simple form at 3, and describing the arcs marked by the dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting a small triangular cavity between them, we shall leave its ridges somewhat rudely representative of four leaves, as at 8, which is the section and front view of one of the Venetian stone cornices described above, Chap. XIV., § IV., the figure 8 being here put in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put on the outer lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5; but being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and always rich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently expanded to the width of fig. 9. § VII. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described, so in this,--we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar kind.[75] It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the roof cornices. § VIII. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid, fig. 10, from the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example of the simplest decoration of the recesses or inward angles between the pyramids; that is to say, of a simple hacked edge like one of those in fig. 2, the _cuts_ being taken up and decorated instead of the _points_. Each is worked into a small trefoiled arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and another slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first cutting. I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a zigzag: in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed, but with the easiest and roughest work; the angular incision being a mere limiting line, like that described in § IX. of the last chapter. But hence the farther steps to every condition of Norman ornament are self evident. I do not say that all of them arose from development of the dogtooth in this manner, many being quite independent inventions and uses of zigzag lines; still, they may all be referred to this simple type as their root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of the Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant zigzag. § IX. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition, cast in brick, from the church of the Frari, and given here only for future reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet with the cuts on each of its edges interrupted by a bar, is a frequent Venetian moulding, and of great value; but the plain or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites, and that to such a degree, that even the Renaissance architects took them up; and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of its splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth, each about a foot wide in the base, with their points truncated, and alternating with cavities which are their own negatives or casts. § X. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance in northern architecture, that produced by oblique cuts slightly curved, as in the margin, Fig. LVI. It is susceptible of the most fantastic and endless decoration; each of the resulting leaves being, in the early porches of Rouen and Lisieux, hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and at Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold bony processes with knobs at the points, and near the spectator, into crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other fancies and intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible. [Illustration: Fig. LVI.] § XI. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge decoration. We were next to consider the fillet. Professor Willis has noticed an ornament, which he has called the Venetian dentil, "as the most universal ornament in its own district that ever I met with;" but has not noticed the reason for its frequency. It is nevertheless highly interesting. The whole early architecture of Venice is architecture of incrustation: this has not been enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of the rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much incrusted architecture throughout Italy, in elaborate ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Venetian habitually incrusted his work with nacre; he built his houses, even the meanest, as if he had been a shell-fish,--roughly inside, mother-of-pearl on the surface: he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick for his substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a dark city--washed white by the sea foam. And I told you before that it was also a city of shafts and arches, and that its dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of arches. [Illustration: Fig. LVII.] § XII. In Fig. LVII. I have given two of these Byzantine stilted arches: the one on the right, _a_, as they now too often appear, in its bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted together in pieces, which follow the contours of the building. Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat slabs cut to the arch outline; but under the soffit of the arch the marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent tiles, and fitted together so that the pieces would sustain each other even without rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader will see, in Fig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (_b_), a band which the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale in Plate IX.; and the question is, how to enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dogtoothed, but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth, and would not have used it here, if they had; for the dogtooth cannot be employed alone, especially on so principal an angle as this of the main arches, without giving to the whole building a peculiar look, which I can not otherwise describe than as being to the eye, exactly what untempered acid is to the tongue. The mere dogtooth is an _acid_ moulding, and can only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them piquancy; never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest method of giving interest to the fillet? [Illustration: Fig. LVIII.] § XIII. Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp, and to leave equal intervals of the square edge between them. Fig. LVIII. is one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its edge thus treated; one side only being done at the bottom, to show the simplicity and ease of the work. This ornament gives force and interest to the edge of the arch, without in the least diminishing its quietness. Nothing was ever, nor could be ever invented, fitter for its purpose, or more easily cut. From the arch it therefore found its way into every position where the edge of a piece of stone projected, and became, from its constancy of occurrence in the latest Gothic as well as the earliest Byzantine, most truly deserving of the name of the "Venetian Dentil." Its complete intention is now, however, only to be seen in the pictures of Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio; for, like most of the rest of the mouldings of Venetian buildings, it was always either gilded or painted--often both, gold being laid on the faces of the dentils, and their recesses colored alternately red and blue. § XIV. Observe, however, that the reason above given for the _universality_ of this ornament was by no means the reason of its _invention_. The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent on the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general idea of dentil, which had been originally given by the Greeks, and realised both by them and by the Byzantines in many laborious forms, long before there was need of them for arch armor; and the lower half of Plate IX. will give some idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the gradual transition to the more convenient and simple type, the running-hand dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic of Venetian Gothic. No. 13[76] is the common dentiled cornice, which occurs repeatedly in St. Mark's; and, as late as the thirteenth century, a reduplication of it, forming the abaci of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15 is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca' Foscari: and it is interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of Vienne, in South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark's, and 18, from the apse of Murano, are two very early examples in which the future true Venetian dentil is already developed in method of execution, though the object is still only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is joined with it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona; the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century: 19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the thirteenth century. I shall call it the _gabled_ dentil. It is found in the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example. § XV. All the forms given in Plate IX. are of not unfrequent occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of the work in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work (the earliest dentils are seldom more than an inch or an inch and a half long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil, above described. On the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be noted in the buildings where they occur.[77] The Ducal Palace furnishes three anomalies in the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic arch, as noted above, Chap. X., § XV.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and, finally, it has a dentil with concave sides, of which the section and two of the blocks, real size, are given in Plate XIV. The labor of obtaining this difficult profile has, however, been thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at ten feet distance is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the reader may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic. § XVI. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration requiring notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed chiefly to give severity or flatness to mouldings supposed to be too much rounded, and is therefore generally plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when thus employed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at last usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features in the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North. FOOTNOTES: [74] I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout's, and the character of the wild and broken leaves, half dead, on the stone of the foreground. [75] Vide the "Seven Lamps," p. 122. [76] The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that which is cut into dentils left. [77] As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil, entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna. CHAPTER XXIV. THE ROLL AND RECESS. § I. I have classed these two means of architectural effect together, because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with roll, not only in lateral, but in successive order; not merely side by side with each other, but interrupted the one by the other in their own lines. A recess itself has properly no decoration; but its depth gives value to the decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and the form which interrupts it best is the roll. § II. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings which present to the eye somewhat the appearance of being cylindrical, and look like round rods. When upright, they are in appearance, if not in fact, small shafts; and are a kind of bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and traceries;--when horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and are, in fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing an architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their side obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and that more tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained either by an incision or by any other form of projection. § III. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for rich work, and they frequently require, like the angle and the fillet, to be rendered interesting by subdivision or minor ornament of their own. When the roll is small, this is effected, exactly as in the case of the fillet, by cutting pieces out of it; giving in the simplest results what is called the Norman billet moulding: and when the cuts are given in couples, and the pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinary Greek bead, both of them too well known to require illustration. The Norman billet we shall not meet with in Venice; the bead constantly occurs in Byzantine, and of course in Renaissance work. In Plate IX., Fig. 17, there is a remarkable example of its early treatment, where the cuts in it are left sharp. § IV. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treatment. Its rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in notches; and it is rather to be covered with flat chasing or inlaid patterns. Thus ornamented, it gradually blends itself with the true shaft, both in the Romanesque work of the North, and in the Italian connected schools; and the patterns used for it are those used for shaft decoration in general. § V. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration peculiar to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters, noted the fondness of the Northern builders for deep shade and hollowness in their mouldings; and in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the changes are described which reduced the massive roll mouldings of the early Gothic to a series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was, indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect of this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is meagre and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of the style, unceasing. § VI. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or anatomies of the old shafts, left in the furrows which had taken their place. Every here and there, a fragment of a roll or shaft is left in the recess or furrow: a billet-moulding on a huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced to a skeleton; for the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into mere entanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess shown through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes pedestals, sometimes canopies, sometimes covering the whole recess with an arch of tracery, beneath which it runs like a tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the Flamboyant Gothic. § VII. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must keep carefully under separate heads, the consideration of the changes wrought in the mere physical form, and in the intellectual purpose of ornament. The relations of the canopy to the statue it shelters, are to be considered altogether distinctly from those of the canopy to the building which it decorates. In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a small temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to the pomp of a saint, a covering to his throne, or to his shrine; and this canopy is often expressed in bas-relief (as in painting), without much reference to the great requirements of the building. At other times it is a real protection to the statue, and is enlarged into a complete pinnacle, carried on proper shafts, and boldly roofed. But in the late northern system the canopies are neither expressive nor protective. They are a kind of stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the building, for which the statues are often little more than an excuse, and of which the physical character is, as above described, that of ghosts of departed shafts. § VIII. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work which will not come literally under this head, much which is straggling or flat in its plan, connecting itself gradually with the ordinary forms of independent shrines and tombs; but the general idea of all tabernacle work is marked in the common phrase of a "niche," that is to say a hollow intended for a statue, and crowned by a canopy; and this niche decoration only reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hollows are cut deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculpture had so much lost their purity and intensity that it became desirable to draw the eye away from the statue to its covering, so that at last the canopy became the more important of the two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often contented with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues, if only the canopies are left; and consequently, in our modern ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of setting statues. § IX. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example of the effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture: for the Flamboyant recess was not so much a preparation for it as a gulf which swallowed it up. When statues were most earnestly designed, they were thrust forward in all kinds of places, often in front of the pillars, as at Amiens, awkwardly enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures. The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues fell back into them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of flame in the shape of a canopy rose as they expired. § X. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking with perfect justice of this niche ornament of the north, my late studies in Italy having somewhat destroyed my sympathies with it. But I once loved it intensely, and will not say anything to depreciate it now, save only this, that while I have studied long at Abbeville, without in the least finding that it made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbeville. § XI. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and beautifully associated in the north with niche decoration, but requires no special notice, the recess in such cases being used merely to give value to the leafage by its gloom, and the difference between such conditions and those of the south being merely that in the one the leaves are laid across a hollow, and in the other over a solid surface; but in neither of the schools exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the method of the other. § XII. Finally the recess decoration by the ball flower is very definite and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in English work. It consists merely in leaving a small boss or sphere, fixed, as it were, at intervals in the hollows; such bosses being afterwards carved into roses, or other ornamental forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of the hollow, on projecting processes, like vertebræ, so as to make them more conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of Bourges. The value of this ornament is chiefly in the _spotted_ character which it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a distance. It is very rich and delightful when not used in excess; but it would satiate and weary the eye if it were ever used in general architecture. The spire of Salisbury, and of St. Mary's at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated masses; but if an entire street were built with this spotty decoration at every casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust. It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of effect which characterised the northern builders; an ingenious but somewhat vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses of coarse stone, without overtaking their powers either of invention or execution. We will thank them for it without blame or praise, and pass on. CHAPTER XXV. THE BASE. § I. We know now as much as is needful respecting the methods of minor and universal decorations, which were distinguished in Chapter XXII., § III., from the ornament which has special relation to particular parts. This local ornament, which, it will be remembered, we arranged in § II. of the same chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads, to consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls and shafts. It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown or cornice most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are decorated richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive even more decoration than other parts. § II. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its levelness and evenness. We cannot do better than construct the several members of the base, as developed in Fig. II., p. 55, each of a different colored marble, so as to produce marked level bars of color all along the foundation. This is exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall bases; that of St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect existing, for play of color; that of Giotto's campanile is on the whole the most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, _a_, _b_, _c_, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they be not too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or _must_ have it for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all sculpture on bases must be in panels, or it will soon be worn away, and that a plain panelling is often good without any other ornament. The member _b_, which in St. Mark's is subordinate, and _c_, which is expanded into a seat, are both of them decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished panelling, in red and white or green and white marble; and the member _e_ is in bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member has been of no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the chapters on construction; but it was expressed in the figure of the wall base, on account of its great value when the foundation is of stone and the wall of brick (coated or not). In such cases it is always better to add the course _e_, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the common masonry of the wall. § III. It is, however, with the member _d_, or Xb, that we are most seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature of all bases, and the true preparation for the wall or shaft, it is most necessary that here, if anywhere, we should have full expression of levelness and precision; and farther, that, if possible, the eye should not be suffered to rest on the points of junction of the stones, which would give an effect of instability. Both these objects are accomplished by attracting the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the member _d_ itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the masonry, and besides form a simple but beautifully connected group of bars of shadow, which express, in their perfect parallelism, the absolute levelness of the foundation. § IV. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an arrangement which must be perfectly familiar to the reader, as occurring under nearly every column of the too numerous classical buildings all over Europe. But I may name the base of the Bank of England as furnishing a very simple instance of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow, both forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the shafts as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the façade of the British Museum are as good examples as the reader can study on a larger scale. [Illustration: Plate X. PROFILES OF BASES.] § V. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented by the Greeks, and it has never been materially improved, as far as its peculiar purpose is concerned;[78] the classical attempts at its variation being the ugliest: one, the using a single roll of larger size, as may be seen in the Duke of York's column, which therefore looks as if it stood on a large sausage (the Monument has the same base, but more concealed by pedestal decoration): another, the using two rolls without the intermediate cavetto,--a condition hardly less awkward, and which may be studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the Athenæum Club-house: and another, the introduction of what are called fillets between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars of Hanover Chapel, Regent Street, which look, in consequence, as if they were standing upon a pile of pewter collection plates. But the only successful changes have been mediæval; and their nature will be at once understood by a glance at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be well first to give the buildings in which they occur, in order. 1. Santa Fosca, Torcello. | 14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice. 2. North transept, St. Mark's, | 15. Byzantine fragment, Venice. Venice. | 16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade. 3. Nave, Torcello. | 17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.) 4. Nave, Torcello. | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice. 5. South transept, St. Mark's. | 19. St. Zeno, Verona. 6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice. St. Mark's. | 21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.) 7. Another of the same group. | 22. Nave, Salisbury. 8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello. 9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral. 10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's, | 25. Notre Dame, Dijon. Venice. | 26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral. 11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. | 27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy). 12. Nave, Vienne, France. | 28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral. 13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. | § VI. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian, being bases to which I shall have need of future reference; but the interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from Milan, Pavia, Vienne (France), and Verona, show the exactly correspondent conditions of the Romanesque base at the period, throughout the centre of Europe. The last five examples show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects: the Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness and vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special reason, in that place. § VII. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9, from the two most important Lombardic churches of Italy, St. Ambrogio of Milan and St. Michele of Pavia, mark the character of the barbaric base founded on pure Roman models, sometimes approximating to such models very closely; and the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded on Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and, still more characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently an original element, a tendency to use the fillet and hollow instead of the roll, which is eminently Gothic; which in the base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant conditions, and is excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work certainly not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly inclined to consider these bases portions of the original church. And I have therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group to which it has so strong relationship, though, on the last supposition, five centuries older than the earliest of the five terminal examples; and it is still more remarkable because it reverses the usual treatment of the lower roll, which is in general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a base, in the degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which it advances gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at last is actually seen curling over with the long-backed rush of surf upon the shore. Yet the Torcello base resembles these Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and in depth of cavetto above. § VIII. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority of these Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented by the ancients. But they have all two great faults: They seem, in the first place, to have been designed without sufficient reference to the necessity of their being usually seen from above; their grace of profile cannot be estimated when so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an appearance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their cavetto is so deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black fissure between the members of the base; and in the Lyons and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it is impossible to conquer the idea suggested by it, that the two stones above and below have been intended to join close, but that some pebbles have got in and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with a thunder-clap. § IX. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure classic base had hardly been materially improved; but the various conditions of it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion to the variety of proportion among their lines and the delicacy of their curvatures; that is to say, the expression of characters like those of the abstract lines in Plate VII. The five best profiles in Plate X. are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10 is peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection of its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its lower; and this and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types, the one of the steep, the other of the expansive basic profiles. The characters of all, however, are so dependent upon their place and expression, that it is unfair to judge them thus separately; and the precision of curvature is a matter of so small consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue the subject farther. [Illustration: Fig. LIX.] § X. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines of moulding in the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base. But the reader will remember that in our best shaft base, in Fig. XII. (p. 78), certain props or spurs were applied to the slope of X b; but now that X b is divided into these delicate mouldings, we cannot conveniently apply the spur to its irregular profile; we must be content to set it against the lower roll. Let the upper edge of this lower roll be the curved line here, _a_, _d_, _e_, _b_, Fig. LIX., and _c_ the angle of the square plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw in Chap. VII., will be of some such form as the triangle _c e d_, Fig. LIX. § XI. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance whether the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding be fine or not, because we rarely stoop down to look at them. But this triangular spur is nearly always seen from above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of the most important features of the whole base; therefore it is a point of immediate necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (_c d_, _c e_) some curve of noble abstract character. § XII. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf at p. 224, that I had marked off the portion of it, _x y_, because I thought it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his own free will. If, therefore, he likes the above triangular spur, _c d e_, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like a tapestry bee, to cut off the little bit of line of salvia leaf _x y_, and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward lines _c d c e_. He may try it any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I think he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at _c d_, _c e_, Fig. LX. (If the reader will be at the pains to transfer the salvia leaf line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately used in this figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular line to represent the outer swell of the roll against which the spur is set, and I put another such spur to the opposite corner of the square, and we have the half base, Fig. LX., which is a general type of the best Gothic bases in existence, being very nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of Venice. In those shafts the quadrant _a b_, or the upper edge of the lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur _d e_, is 10 inches; the line _d e_ being therefore to _a b_ as 10 to 25-3/8. In Fig. LX. it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and the type somewhat more generally representative of the best, _i.e._ broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic. [Illustration: Fig. LX.] § XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing magical in salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened merely to fall conveniently on the page, and might as well have been taken from anything else; it is simply its character of gradated curvature which fits it for our use. On Plate XI., opposite, I have given plans of the spurs and quadrants of twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these latter (13), from Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given merely to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines, and lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases look the prettiest in this plate, because this variation of the outline is nearly all the ornament they have, being cut very rudely; but the Italian bases above them are merely prepared by their simple outlines for far richer decoration at the next step, as we shall see presently. The Northern bases are to be noted also for another grand error: the projection of the roll beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in various degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the base whose profile is No. 26 in Plate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15 is 28. [Illustration: Plate XI. PLANS OF BASES.] § XIV. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7 and 10, being Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark's; 3, Ca' Falier; 4, lower colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark's; 6, from the Church of St. John and Paul; 7, from the tomb near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above (p. 142); 8 and 9, Fon daco de' Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino della Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace, Venice, upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases whose profiles are respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in Plate X. The flat surfaces of the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly, that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison, reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts of very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches in diameter, and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of the roll varies accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the base is smallest, and in 6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a larger scale than the plan, or its character could not have been exhibited. [Illustration: Plate XII. DECORATION OF BASES.] § XV. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that the narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from the upper colonnade of St. Mark's, is the only instance I ever saw of the double spur, as transitive between the square and octagon plinth; the truncated form, 1, is also rare and very ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the general conditions of the Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan in Byzantine work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while 7, on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally refined in their profile and plan. § XVI. The character of the profile is indeed much altered by the accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the importance of the broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate XII. The three upper examples are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine types, 1 to 3 of Plate XI. Their plans would be nearly the same; but instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws, as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia, appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France. The 4th type, Plate XII., almost like the extremity of a man's foot, is a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St. Mark's; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming the perfect Italian Gothic types,--5, from tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 of Plate XI., in perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate XI., are conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than Venice, in which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work; a kind of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress, the _centre_ of the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter's, Oxford, which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della Carta. § XVII. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate XII., three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI., representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat contour of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the upper colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases of the sea façade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse section. Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the later shafts of the same colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No. 12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on one of these shafts only, and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to be earlier than the other, which is the characteristic base of the rest of the series, and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned character of fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its rolling. § XVIII. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand, and necessary for future reference; not as in anywise representative of the variety of the Italian treatment of the general contour, far less of the endless caprices of the North. The most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole, is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed by a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake: "quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management to confine such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse himself as he will by endless inventions of them, from types which he may gather among the weeds at the nearest roadside. The value of the vegetable form is especially here, as above noted, Chap. XX., § XXXII., its capability of unity with the mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines; none but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a beautiful instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen; a lizard pausing and curling himself round a little in the angle; one expects him the next instant to lash round the shaft and vanish: and we may with advantage compare this base with those of Renaissance Scuola di San Rocca[79] at Venice, in which the architect, imitating the mediæval bases, which he did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches higher, in the same position. § XIX. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles which are given in Northern architecture to the projections of the lower members of the base, _b_ and _c_ in Fig. II., nor of the methods in which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings in Plate X., are decorated, especially in Roman architecture, with superadded chain work or chasing of various patterns. Of the first I have not spoken, because I shall have no occasion to allude to them in the following essay; nor of the second, because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and decorated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc de l'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements of decorative appliances; and they ought always to be reserved for jambs, cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with them in the base, you have no power of refining your decorations as you ascend, and, which is still worse, you put your most delicate work on the jutting portions of the foundation,--the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,--the look of being able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so delicate that no one can be expected to treat even its base with unkindness,[80] then at least the expression of quiet, prefatory simplicity. The angle spur may receive such decoration as we have seen, because it is one of the most important features in the whole building; and the eye is always so attracted to it that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether blank; the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their length: and even with all this added fitness, the ornament of the basic spur is best, in the long run, when it is boldest and simplest. The base above described, § XVIII., as the most beautiful I ever saw, was not for that reason the best I ever saw: beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of a Baptistery sheeted with jasper and alabaster, it would have been utterly wrong, nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated along a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the richest with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general service; and the basic spurs of the building which I have named as the best Gothic monument in the world (p. 141), have no ornament upon them whatever. The adaptation, therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently takes place. § XX. I have also passed over, without present notice, the fantastic bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain many Lombardic shafts. The pillars they support have independent bases of the ordinary kind; and the animal form beneath is less to be considered as a true base (though often exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the south-west angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of sculpture, otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and deriving its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment of a wild superstition, and the representation of supernatural powers, their appeal to the imagination sets at utter defiance all judgment based on ordinary canons of law; and the magnificence of their treatment atones, in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to have sprung from an irrational religion. FOOTNOTES: [78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested by the writer of the Essay on the Æsthetics of Gothic Architecture in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base _recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent weight, it would bulge out." [79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had better delay referring to it, until we have completed our examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals. [80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases." [81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation, visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason. CHAPTER XXVI. THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT. § I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye. It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps conclude, from what was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that there is one kind of decoration which will, indeed, naturally follow on its construction. For it is perfectly natural that the different kinds of stone used in its successive courses should be of different colors; and there are many associations and analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction of horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in the first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of the wall, like the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a farther symbol of the alternation of light and darkness, which was above noted as the source of the charm of many inferior mouldings: again, they are valuable as an expression of horizontal space to the imagination, space of which the conception is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably the great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks, and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the executioner. [Illustration: Plate XIII. WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.] § II. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive in their simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal colors; nor do I know any buildings more noble than those of the Pisan Romanesque, in which they are habitually employed; and certainly none so graceful, so attractive, so enduringly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this pure and graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, "a practice more destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:" and modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament of which the reader has had one specimen above, Fig. III., p. 61, and with which half the large buildings in London are disfigured, or else traversed by mere straight lines, as, for instance, the back of the Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left, modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street. § III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which, probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars. But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is _weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged, straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly agreeable when marked by variations of hue. § IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold. When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch, Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick. § V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication. There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the worm cast or coprolite. § VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication, make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock, glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities; spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance. § VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief. The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and massive substance, and of broad surface, and that architecture instantly declined when linear design was substituted for massive, and the sense of weight of wall was lost in a wilderness of upright or undulating rods. Of the richest and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid work, as practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX. and XXI. [Illustration: Fig. LXI.] § VIII. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall veil, peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted for surface decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these spaces are found the most majestic instances of its treatment, even to late periods. One of these is the spandril space, or the filling between any two arches, commonly of the shape _a_, Fig. LXI.; the half of which, or the flank filling of any arch, is called a spandril. In Chapter XVII., on Filling of Apertures, the reader will find another of these spaces noted, called the tympanum, and commonly of the form _b_, Fig. LXI.: and finally, in Chapter XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between an arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to the form _c_, Fig. LXI. § IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most essential points respecting them. (1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square spandrils, with its circles foliated. [Illustration: Plate XIV. SPANDRIL DECORATION THE DUCAL PALACE.] Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it is merely suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall surface, as in the plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils of the Ducal Palace at Venice. It was evidently intended that all the spandrils of this building should be decorated in this manner, but only two of them seem to have been completed.[82] § X. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly reduced to four heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the Chapter-house of Salisbury, and very superbly along the west front of Bourges, the best Gothic spandrils I know. 2. Radiated foliage, more or less referred to the centre, or to the bottom of the spandril for its origin; single figures with expanded wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and 4, ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as in Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril fillings composed of colossal human figures reclining on the sides of the arch, in precarious lassitude; but these cannot come under the head of wall veil decoration. § XI. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic architecture, this is for the most part a detached slab of stone, having no constructional relation to the rest of the building. The plan of its sculpture is therefore quite arbitrary; and, as it is generally in a conspicuous position, near the eye, and above the entrance, it is almost always charged with a series of rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and consecutive in subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very nearly the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter is itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in the same manner. § XII. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it which have been noted respecting the spandril, with one more of some importance. The chief difficulty in treating a gable lies in the excessive sharpness of its upper point. It may, indeed, on its outside apex, receive a finial; but the meeting of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is necessarily both harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed. The most beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this difficulty was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual, downwards, at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the offensive lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the Northern and Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville and the tombs of Verona. § XIII. I believe there is little else to be noted of general laws of ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to consider its concentration in the shaft. Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion to its work,--its exact expression of necessary strength. If this has been truly attained, it will hardly need, in some cases hardly bear, more decoration than is given to it by its own rounding and taper curvatures; for, if we cut ornaments in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we leave them in relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from its base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature, and of high decorative value. § XIV. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations are admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are wrong upon those of middle size. For, when the shaft is enormous, incisions or sculpture on its sides (unless colossal also), do not materially interfere with the sweep of its curve, nor diminish the efficiency of its sustaining mass. And if it be diminutive, its sustaining function is comparatively of so small importance, the injurious results of failure so much less, and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament or outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle size, and impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts drawn in Plate XIII., of the "Seven Lamps," though given as examples of extravagance, are yet pleasing in the general effect of the arcade they support; being each some six or seven feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as well as unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy. § XV. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft decoration, we must ascertain the proportions representative of the mean bulk of shafts: they might easily be calculated from a sufficient number of examples, but it may perhaps be assumed, for our present general purpose, that the mean standard would be of some twenty feet in height, by eight or nine in circumference: then this will be the size on which decoration is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more and more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above, or fall farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts will both be found to look blank unless they receive some chasing or imagery; blank, whether they support a chair or table on the one side, or sustain a village on the ridge of an Egyptian architrave on the other. § XVI. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there are no examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader can study in Mr. Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I imagine, as if he were beneath their shadow, one of their chief merits, as examples of method, being the perfect decision and visibility of their designs at the necessary distance: contrast with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the Trajan pillar, much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and yet themselves untraceable, if not invisible. § XVII. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which has ever been accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which, indeed, gave the effect of a succession of unequal lines of shade, but lost much of the repose of the cylindrical gradation. The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean multiplication and deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a sharp ridge between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft altogether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact, wrong in principle; they are an elaborate weakening[83] of the shaft, exactly opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form, which is the result of a group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when special service is given to each member. [Illustration: Fig. LXII.] § XVIII. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity. Thus, in Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all the shafts been like it, the façade would have been entirely spoiled; the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in Plate XII. of the "Seven Lamps"). The same rule would condemn the Caryatid; which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed, which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces about them, as at the entrance of Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or tying drapery round them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed (Chap. 20, § VII.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the most beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender pillars, encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of the Baptistery and Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the Pisan and Lucchese churches; but the varieties of sculpture and inlaying, with which the small Romanesque shafts, whether Italian or Northern, are adorned when they occupy important positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable. Mr. Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on early mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration of the shaft with the adoption of the spiral contour. This latter is often all the decoration which is needed, and none can be more beautiful; it has been spoken against, like many other good and lovely things, because it has been too often used in extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting of the pillars in Raffaelle's "Beautiful gate." But that extravagant condition was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders kept their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example from St. Zeno, in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn from the base of the shaft to its head, and nearly always observing what I hold to be an imperative law, that no twisted shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two distinct members, twined with each other. I suppose they followed their own right feeling in doing this, and had never studied natural shafts; but the type they _might_ have followed was caught by one of the few great painters who were not affected by the evil influence of the fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in the frescoes of the Ricardi Palace, among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. LXII. Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous, as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold. FOOTNOTES: [82] Vide end of Appendix 20. [83] Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, p. 251. CHAPTER XXVII. THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL. § I. There are no features to which the attention of architects has been more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these crowning members of the wall and shaft; and it would be vain to endeavor, within any moderate limits, to give the reader any idea of the various kinds of admirable decoration which have been invented for them. But, in proportion to the effort and straining of the fancy, have been the extravagances into which it has occasionally fallen; and while it is utterly impossible severally to enumerate the instances either of its success or its error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one and the causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances, the natural channels by which invention is here to be directed or confined, and afterwards remarking the places where, in real practice, it has broken bounds. § II. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting the cornice and capital, established above in the Chapters on Construction. Of these I must, however, recapitulate thus much:-- 1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to the _slope_ of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great orders; in one of which the ornament is convex, and in the other concave. (Ch. VI., § V.) 2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting the cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular shaft with the square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented in Fig. XXII., p. 119. 3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or simple capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus. (Ch. IX., § XXIV.) We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe the treatment of the two great orders of the cornice; then their gathering into the five of the capital; then the addition of the secondary cornice to the capital when formed. § III. The two great orders or families of cornice were above distinguished in Fig. V., p. 69.; and it was mentioned in the same place that a third family arose from their combination. We must deal with the two great opposed groups first. They were distinguished in Fig. V. by circular curves drawn on opposite sides of the same line. But we now know that in these smaller features the circle is usually the least interesting curve that we can use; and that it will be well, since the capital and cornice are both active in their expression, to use some of the more abstract natural lines. We will go back, therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking the same piece of it we had before, _x y_, Plate VII., we will apply it to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice, then without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, Plate XV., the dotted line is at the same slope, and represents an average profile of the root of cornices (_a_, Fig. V., p. 69); the curve of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case, first with its roundest curvature up, then with its roundest curvature down; and we have thus the two varieties, _a_ and _b_, of the concave family, and _c_ and _d_, of the convex family. [Illustration: Plate XV. CORNICE PROFILES.] § IV. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices in the world; represent them, I mean, as central types: for in any of the profiles an infinite number of slopes may be given to the dotted line of the root (which in these four figures is always at the same angle); and on each of these innumerable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may be fitted, from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore, and every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if the reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation of the number of possible and beautiful cornices which may be based upon these four types or roots, and among which the architect has leave to choose according to the circumstances of his building and the method of its composition, let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write ciphers after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour. § V. None of the types are, however, found in perfection of curvature, except in the best work. Very often cornices are worked with circular segments (with a noble, massive effect, for instance, in St. Michele of Lucca), or with rude approximation to finer curvature, especially _a_, Plate XV., which occurs often so small as to render it useless to take much pains upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition represented by 1 of the series 1-6, in Plate XV., on many of the Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more developed form it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital in the later Venetian Gothic, and in much of the best Northern Gothic. It also represents the Corinthian capital, in which the curvature is taken from the bell to be added in some excess to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of all simple profiles of cornice and capital. § VI. _b_ is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this evident reason, that while _a_ is the natural condition of a line rooted and strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent weight, or nodding over in freedom, _b_ is yielding at the base and rigid at the summit. It has, however, some exquisite uses, especially in combination, as the reader may see by glancing in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in Plate XV. § VII. _c_ is the leading convex or Doric type, as _a_ is the leading concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek Doric is exactly what the relation of _a_ is to the Corinthian; that is to say, the curvature must be taken from the straighter limb of the curve and added to the bolder bend, giving it a sudden turn inwards (as in the Corinthian a nod outwards), as the reader may see in the capital of the Parthenon in the British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is _all but_ a right line.[84] But these Doric and Corinthian lines are mere varieties of the great families which are represented by the central lines _a_ and _c_, including not only the Doric capital, but all the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve of _c_, which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments. § VIII. _d_ is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § XX.) was invented to replace the antique: it is the representative of the great Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice and capital, and, next to the profile _a_, the most important of the four, being the best profile for the convex capital, as _a_ is for the concave; _a_ being the best expression of an elastic line inserted vertically in the shaft, and _d_ of an elastic line inserted horizontally and rising to meet vertical pressure. If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of trees, he will find them commonly dividing into these two families, _a_ and _d_: they rise out of the trunk and nod from it as _a_, or they spring with sudden curvature out from it, and rise into sympathy with it, as at _d_; but they only accidentally display tendencies to the lines _b_ or _c_. Boughs which fall as they spring from the tree also describe the curve _d_ in the plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their junction with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending out into rounder curvature. § IX. These then being the two primal groups, we have next to note the combined group, formed by the concave and convex lines joined in various proportions of curvature, so as to form together the reversed or ogee curve, represented in one of its most beautiful states by the glacier line _a_, on Plate VII. I would rather have taken this line than any other to have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the Matterhorn side, _e f_, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep the slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms; and applying this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions to that line, I have the types of the four cornices or capitals of the third family, _e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, on Plate XV. These are, however, general types only thus far, that their line is composed of one short and one long curve, and that they represent the four conditions of treatment of every such line; namely, the longest curve concave in _e_ and _f_, and convex in _g_ and _h_; and the point of contrary flexure set high in _e_ and _g_, and low in _f_ and _h_. The relative depth of the arcs, or nature of their curvature, cannot be taken into consideration without a complexity of system which my space does not admit. Of the four types thus constituted, _e_ and _f_ are of great importance; the other two are rarely used, having an appearance of weakness in consequence of the shortest curve being concave: the profiles _e_ and _f_, when used for cornices, have usually a fuller sweep and somewhat greater equality between the branches of the curve; but those here given are better representatives of the structure applicable to capitals and cornices indifferently. § X. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles _e_ or _f_, another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to the upper or lower members of the cornice or capital. I do not consider this addition as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below: still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We shall obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the Matterhorn side, of which before we took only a fragment. The entire line _e_ to _g_ on Plate VII., is evidently composed of three curves of unequal lengths, which if we call the shortest 1, the intermediate one 2, and the longest 3, are there arranged in the order 1, 3, 2, counting upwards. But evidently we might also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3, and 2, 1, 3, giving us three distinct lines, altogether independent of position, which being applied to one general dotted slope will each give four cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important are those which have the shortest curve convex: they are given in light relief from _k_ to _p_, Plate XV., and, by turning the page upside down, the other six will be seen in dark relief, only the little upright bits of shadow at the bottom are not to be considered as parts of them, being only admitted in order to give the complete profile of the more important cornices in light. § XI. In these types, as in _e_ and _f_, the only general condition is, that their line shall be composed of three curves of different lengths and different arrangements (the depth of arcs and radius of curvatures being unconsidered). They are arranged in three couples, each couple being two positions of the same entire line; so that numbering the component curves in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will read-- _k_ 1, 2, 3, _l_ 3, 2, 1, _m_ 1, 3, 2, _n_ 2, 3, 1, _o_ 2, 1, 3, _p_ 3, 1, 2. _m_ and _n_, which are the _Matterhorn line_, are the most beautiful and important of all the twelve; _k_ and _l_ the next; _o_ and _p_ are used only for certain conditions of flower carving on the surface. The reverses (dark) of _k_ and _l_ are also of considerable service; the other four hardly ever used in good work. § XII. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component series, we should have forty-eight more cornices: but there is no use in pursuing the system further, as such arrangements are very rare and easily resolved into the simpler types with certain arbitrary additions fitted to their special place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the main curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the type _e_, the longest curve, _i.e._, the lowest, having deepest curvature, and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its extremities, the convex limb by a concave, the concave by a convex. § XIII. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines into which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their best examples unite two such profiles in a mode which we cannot understand till we consider the further ornament with which the profiles are charged. And in doing this we must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the nature of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting them. [Illustration: Plate XVI. CORNICE DECORATION.] § XIV. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a few of the most characteristic mediæval examples of the treatment of the simplest cornice profiles: the uppermost, _a_, is the pure root of cornices from St. Mark's. The second, _d_, is the Christian Doric cornice, here lettered _d_ in order to avoid confusion, its profile being _d_ of Plate XV. in bold development, and here seen on the left-hand side, truly drawn, though filled up with the ornament to show the mode in which the angle is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, _b_, is _b_ of Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office was in the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see sculptured ornament at the required distance. (The other two simple profiles, _a_ and _c_ of Plate XV., would be decorated in the same manner, but require no example here, for the profile _a_ is of so frequent occurrence that it will have a page to itself alone in the next volume; and c may be seen over nearly every shop in London, being that of the common Greek egg cornice.) The fourth, _e_ in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice, passing from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: _f_ is a fully developed Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and _g_ the perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan Romanesque traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest Northern element, the Lombardic vitality restrained by classical models. I consider it a perfect cornice, and of the highest order. § XV. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there are two main points to be noted; the first, that they all, except _b_, are distinctly rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and spring to the top. This arrangement is constant in all the best cornices and capitals; and it is essential to the expression of the supporting power of both. It is exactly opposed to the system of _running_ cornices and _banded_[85] capitals, in which the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is twined round them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital, and the foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen from a mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which are proper to archivolts, jambs, &c., to the features which have definite functions of support. A tendril may nobly follow the outline of an arch, but must not creep along a cornice, nor swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential to the expression of these features that their ornament should have an elastic and upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is that of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement of its farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and ascendant strength like that of foliage. There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we shall see a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of the rule itself, we may see constant licenses taken by the great designers, and momentary violations of it, like those above spoken of, respecting other ornamental laws--violations which are for our refreshment, and for increase of delight in the general observance; and this is one of the peculiar beauties of the cornice _g_, which, rooting itself in strong central clusters, suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as the drooping outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any of its expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above the languid leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and stronger than the rest of the plant as the falling leaves are weaker. Cover this with your finger, and the cornice falls to pieces, like a bouquet which has been untied. § XVI. There are some instances in which, though the real arrangement is that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up and down, the positions of the leaves give nearly as much elasticity and organisation to the cornice, as if they had been rightly rooted; and others, like _b_, where the reversed portion of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the general expression of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice will, nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and though we may often be called upon to admire designs of these kinds, which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced, the reader will find that they are both of rare occurrence, and significative of declining style; while the greater mass of the banded capitals are heavy and valueless, mere aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round the extremity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of melted ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the metal, and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its extremity. We have many capitals of this kind in England: some of the worst and heaviest in the choir of York. The later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the same kind of effect, but owing to another cause: for their structure is quite pure, and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of their organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices which are actually composed by running tendrils, throwing off leaves into oval interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the "Seven Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of those proper to the foundation. § XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_, _d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are, in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work, but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_), will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone. § XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices, besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows, nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance from the eye, and in almost any light. § XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look back to what I said in Chap. 1. § XX. of this dealing of hers, and invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (§ VIII.) respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see how the whole is beginning to come together. § XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and _d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making. § XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most cornices of the time.) But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while the naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the classical formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately numbered, and sternly set in their places; they are leaves in office, and dare not stir nor wave. They have the shapes of leaves, but not the functions, "having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof." What is the meaning of this? § XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter, and you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy,--the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the Renaissance.[86] § XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (_g_). That is Protestantism,--a slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through, and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the leaves lie in the dust. Now, observe. The cornice _f_ represents Heathenism and Papistry, animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's dress,--Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice _g_ has the Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of Classicalism mingled with it--the good of classicalism; as much method and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the simplicity of the great profile,--all these are the healthy classical elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered liberty. § XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end. Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work; and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law in its members warring against the law of its mind. § XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question proposed in § XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to § XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine, and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediæval ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV. [Illustration: Fig. LXIII.] § XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig. LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we shall pursue in succession. § XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and 2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the profile of cornice used is _a_ of Plate XV., or a refined condition of _b_ of Fig. V., p. 69, above. Now, keeping the same refined profile, substitute the condition of it, _f_ of Fig. V. (and there accounted for), above the roll here, and you have 3, Plate XV. This superadded abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest chamfer on it (_a_ or _b_, Fig. LIII., page 287, above), but on the visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XV. (the top stone being made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:--but how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so stays. In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5 and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in cornices to the latest times. [Illustration: Fig. LXIV.] § XXVIII. Second group (c, Fig. LXIII.). If the lower angle, which was quickly felt to be hard, be rounded off, we have the form _a_, Fig. LXIV. The front of the curved line is then decorated, as we have seen; and the termination of the decorated surface marked by an incision, as in an ordinary chamfer, as at _b_ here. This I believe to have been the simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in _a_ and _d_ of Plate XVI., the decoration is _incised_ from the outside profile, without any suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour. But in the leaf cornices which follow, the decoration is represented as _overlaid_ on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour of its own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice, but beneath which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen or suggested, which terminates all the incisions of the chisel. This under profile will often be found to be some condition of the type _a_ or _b_, Fig. LXIV.; and the leaf profile to be another ogee with its fullest curve up instead of down, lapping over the cornice edge above, so that the entire profile might be considered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like packed herrings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XV. exemplify this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed in the same manner, but of which I had not marked the innermost profile, and which I have given here only to complete the series which, from 7 to 12 inclusive, exemplifies the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from its boldest projection in the cornice to its most modest service in the capital. This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's, 8 from a canopy over a door of about the same period, 9 from the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese Venier (1411), 10 from that of Pietro Cornaro (1361),[88] and 11 from that of Andrea Morosini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and Paola, all these being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital of the Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work. § XXIX. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the three examples, 10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8, or 9. This difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired that the reader should theoretically consider the capital as a concentration of the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the cornice is, on the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its separate character and importance require examination apart) is nothing more than an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves on the Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been derived, like _e_ in Plate XVI., in which the acanthus outline has become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself. Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital; while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly the same. § XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the other. Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_. Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect described in Chapter IX. § XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched upon, in the disposition of the abacus. § XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it, but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus. § XXXII. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple but perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of smaller area (compare Chap. VIII., § XIII.), and all the expansion necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle, and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate XV., used for the capital itself, with _c_ of Fig. LXIII. used for the abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the capital profile is the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V., with the added roll. This capital is somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly straight, some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it is all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being of order _d_, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as in Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister of the duomo of Verona. [Illustration: Plate XVII. CAPITALS CONCAVE GROUP.] [Illustration: Fig. LXV.] § XXXIII. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents an exquisitely finished example of the same type, from St. Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2, in Plate II., the plan of the shafts was given, but I inadvertently reversed their position: in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate II. must be held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation of 4 of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed. This method of reduction is that of order _d_ in Fig. XXII., but the peculiarity of treatment of their truncation is highly interesting. Fig. LXV. represents the plans of the capitals at the base, the shaded parts being the bells: the open line, the roll with its connecting band. The bell of the one, it will be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the angle truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as uprightly; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the farther incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT. § XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of this kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented; represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century, while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be noted here. § XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two, and only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V., p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the chiselling of which the characters described above, § XXVIII., which are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the families of the capital. § XXXVI. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must clearly have relief of some kind, and must present projecting surfaces separated by incisions. But it is a very material question whether the contour, hitherto broadly considered as that of the entire bell, shall be that of the _outside_ of the projecting and relieved ornaments, or of the _bottoms of the incisions_ which divide them; whether, that is to say, we shall first cut out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then cut farther into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms in relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell, we shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards work into the relieved ornament. § XXXVII. Now, look back to Fig. V., p. 65. Clearly, if to ornament the already hollowed profile, _b_, we cut deep incisions into it, we shall so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly lose all its supporting power. Clearly, also, if to ornament the already bulging profile _c_ we were to leave projecting pieces of stone outside of it, we should nearly destroy all its relation to the original sloping line X, and produce an unseemly and ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile. It is evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can afford to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of destroying its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition of the sculpture, and the two great families of capitals are therefore distinguished, not merely by their concave and convex contours, but by the ornamentation being left outside the bell of the one, and cut into the bell of the other; so that, in either case, the ornamental portions will fall _between the dotted lines_ at _e_, Fig. V., and the pointed oval, or vesica piscis, which is traced by them, may be called the Limit of ornamentation. § XXXVIII. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of the ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction in its position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in the Doric profile, _c_ of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be composed of the surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation must be close and united enough to form, or at least suggest, a continuous surface; it must, therefore, be rich in quantity and close in aggregation; otherwise it will destroy the massy character of the profile it adorns, and approximate it to its opposite, the concave. On the other hand, the ornament left projecting from the concave, must be sparing enough, and dispersed enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath it; otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate it to its opposite, the convex. § XXXIX. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the sculptor of the concave profile must leave masses of rough stone prepared for his outer ornament, and cannot finish them at once, but must complete the cutting of the smooth bell beneath first, and then return to the projecting masses (for if he were to finish these latter first, they would assuredly, if delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since, I say, he must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite symmetrical order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving beforehand all that he has to do, will probably render him not only more orderly in its arrangement, but more skilful and accurate in its execution, than if he could finish all as he worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the convex profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he makes in it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at liberty to roam over the surface in perfect freedom, with light incisions or with deep; finishing here, suggesting there, or perhaps in places leaving the surface altogether smooth. It is ten to one, therefore, but that, if he yield to the temptation, he becomes irregular in design, and rude in handling; and we shall assuredly find the two families of capitals distinguished, the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and exquisitely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused, and rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while we shall often have to admire the disciplined precision of the one, and as often to regret the irregular rudeness of the other, we shall not fail to find balancing qualities in both. The severity of the disciplinarian capital represses the power of the imagination; it gradually degenerates into Formalism; and the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand of accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established forms, and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license of the other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the imagination: the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling, wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster. [Illustration: Plate XVIII. CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.] § XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that these two great and real orders are representative of the two great influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness. § XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII. are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua, that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting; the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the cornice running round the whole façade. The zigzagged capital is highly curious, and in its place very effective and beautiful, although one of the exceptions which it was above noticed that we should sometimes find to the law stated in § XV. above. [Illustration: Fig. LXVI.] § XLII. The lower capital, which is also of the true convex school, exhibits one of the conditions of the spurred type, _e_ of Fig. XXII., respecting which one or two points must be noticed. If we were to take up the plan of the simple spur, represented at _e_ in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia leaf, as we did the spur of the base, we should have for the head of our capital a plan like Fig. LXVI., which is actually that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco de' Turchi at Venice; with this only difference, that the intermediate curves between the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are not so, here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are therefore given to the intermediate curves which fit them for this ornament; the inside shaded space being the head of the shaft, and the outer, the abacus. The reader has in Fig. LXVI. a characteristic type of the plans of the spurred capitals, generally preferred by the sculptors of the convex school, but treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being cut into animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type _c_ of Fig. XXII. is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope, approximating in general effect to many conditions of the real spurred type, _e_, but totally differing from them in principle. [Illustration: Fig. LXVII.] [Illustration: Fig. LXVIII.] § XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is far more complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case from the original Corinthian. Its plan may be generally represented by Fig. LXVII. The spur itself is carved into a curling tendril or concave leaf, which supports the projecting angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other ornament in their centres. The mediæval architects often put another square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig. LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented, are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus. § XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St. Mark's, and singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's, in Plate XI. In other respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. LXVIII.: the inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship's bow, with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with arborescent ornament. § XLV. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader's mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal object to develope throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by a simple, yet somewhat curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of London, as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and the north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of newly-built houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage is the exact form of the typical capital of the convex school; the Corinthian capital, within, is a finished and highly decorated example of the concave. The space between the cage and capital is the limit of ornamentation. § XLVI. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration is inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles, 13 and 14, on Plate XV. If they will glance along the line of sections from 1 to 6, they will see that the profile 13 is their final development, with a superadded cornice for its abacus. It is taken from a capital in a very important ruin of a palace, near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to be described; the projection, outside of its principal curve, is the profile of its _superadded_ leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one of the simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group. § XLVII. The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main shaft of the northern portico of St. Mark's, the most finished example I ever met with of the convex family, to which, in spite of the central inward bend of its profile, it is marked as distinctly belonging, by the bold convex curve at its root, springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian Doric cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile, which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its stem. Farther, in the profile 13, the innermost line is that of the bell; but in the profile 14, the outermost line is that of the bell, and the inner line is the limit of the incisions of the chisel, in undercutting a reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding a flower like a lily; most ingeniously, and, I hope, justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico to have been intended for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of Solomon, which Hiram made, with "nets of checker work, and wreaths of chain work for the chapiters that were on the top of the pillars ... and the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in the porch." (1 Kings, vii. 17, 19.) § XLVIII. On this exquisite capital there is imposed an abacus of the profile with which we began our investigation long ago, the profile _a_ of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by the cornice already given, _a_, of Plate XVI.: and therefore we have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the summary of the results of our investigation, from its beginning to its close: the type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its emergence from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement of the bell of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits of chiselling. I cannot express the exquisite refinements of the curves on the small scale of Plate XV.; I will give them more accurately in a larger engraving; but the scale on which they are here given will not prevent the reader from perceiving, and let him note it thoughtfully, that the outer curve of the noble capital is the one which was our first example of associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the whole of our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line than the three which I at first chose, the simplest of those which Nature set by chance before me; and that this lily, of the delicate Venetian marble, has but been wrought, by the highest human art, into the same line which the clouds disclose, when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of the Matterhorn. FOOTNOTES: [84] In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that capital is therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented by the dotted line. [85] The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different sense; which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to the Impost, and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for the general reader, who need not trouble himself about the matter.) [86] The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes, as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap. XXV., § XVII.) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate XII., to be one from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice _f_ to the cornice _g_, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it, both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time. But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same, distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of indignation. [87] The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to its profile, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower member of the shaft head; and that therefore the small Greek egg cornices are utterly incapable of becoming capitals till they have totally changed their form and depth. The Renaissance architects, who never obtained hold of a right principle but they made it worse than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the idea of turning the cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the necessity of the accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster heads formed of small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads of shafts, the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and arrow moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in London. [88] I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute accuracy to within a year or two, is here of no importance. [89] Chap. I. § XIX., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. § V. [90] Chap. I., § XIX. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE. [Illustration: Plate XIX. ARCHIVOLT DECORATION. AT VERONA.] § I. If the windows and doors of some of our best northern Gothic buildings were built up, and the ornament of their archivolts concealed, there would often remain little but masses of dead wall and unsightly buttress; the whole vitality of the building consisting in the graceful proportions or rich mouldings of its apertures. It is not so in the south, where, frequently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the variegated wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally dependent upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration. These, though in their richness of minor variety they defy all exemplification, may be very broadly generalized. Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration, nor can be; it has no organism to direct its ornament, and therefore may receive any kind and degree of ornament, according to its position. In a Greek temple, it has meagre horizontal lines; in a Romanesque church, it becomes a row of upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become anything else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natural organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable. § II. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we considered the arch to be cut straight through the wall; so that, if half built, it would have the appearance at _a_, Fig. LXIX. But in the chapter on Form of Apertures, we found that the side of the arch, or jamb of the aperture, might often require to be bevelled, so as to give the section _b_, Fig. LXIX. It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of voussoirs were used, one over another, it would be easier to leave those beneath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate junction with those outside. Whether influenced by this facility, or by decorative instinct, the early northern builders often substitute for the bevel the third condition, _c_, of Fig. LXIX.; so that, of the three forms in that figure, _a_ belongs principally to the south, _c_ to the north, and _b_ indifferently to both. [Illustration: Fig. LXIX.] § III. If the arch in the northern building be very deep, its depth will probably be attained by a succession of steps, like that in _c_; and the richest results of northern archivolt decoration are entirely based on the aggregation of the ornament of these several steps; while those of the south are only the complete finish and perfection of the ornament of one. In this ornament of the single arch, the points for general note are very few. § IV. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical architrave,[91] and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but such an architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the latter become semicircular, but their importance and value remain exactly the same; their continuity is preserved across all the voussoirs, and the joints and functions of the latter are studiously concealed. As the builders get accustomed to the arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed of its structure: the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently, and fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the circular and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave lines get worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs; being permitted to stay at all only on condition of their dressing themselves in mediæval costume, as in the plate opposite. § V. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture of the architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse parties on these terms: That the architrave shall entirely dismiss its inner three meagre lines, and leave the space of them to the voussoirs, to display themselves after their manner; but that, in return for this concession, the architrave shall have leave to expand the small cornice which usually terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of the British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put brackets under it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark with a bold shadow the terminal line of the voussoirs. This condition is seen in the arch from St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above. § VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined, and victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone; while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced to disappear altogether. But the voussoirs then concede, on the other hand, so much of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of foliage or animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the arch. In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other, and various kinds of truce or reconciliation being effected between them: sometimes merely formal, sometimes honest and affectionate, but with no regular succession in time. The greatest victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice, and receive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited by its own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early apse of Murano. § VII. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of the two members above described, § V., and which may be generally represented by the archivolt section _a_, Fig. LXX.; and from this descend a family of Gothic archivolts of the highest importance. For the cornice, thus attached to the arch, suffers exactly the same changes as the level cornice, or capital; receives, in due time, its elaborate ogee profile and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of Plate XV.; and, when the shaft loses its shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb, the archivolt has influence enough to introduce this ogee profile in the jamb also, through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves involved in deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides of doors and windows, which never would have been thought of, but for the obstinate resistance of the classical architrave to the attempts of the voussoir at its degradation or banishment. [Illustration: Fig. LXX.] § VIII. This, then, will be the first great head under which we shall in future find it convenient to arrange a large number of archivolt decorations. It is the distinctively Southern and Byzantine form, and typically represented by the section _a_, of Fig. LXX.; and it is susceptible of almost every species of surface ornament, respecting which only this general law may be asserted: that, while the outside or vertical surface may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under surface left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best Byzantine buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but the eye is led to discover it, and even to demand it, by the rich chasing of the outside of the voussoirs. It would have been an hypocrisy to carve them externally only. But there is not the smallest excuse for carving the soffit, and not the outside; for, in that case, we approach the building under the idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the soffit decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In the Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered a merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically in the places where we should least expect it, and can seldomest see it:--Approaching the Scuola di San Rocco, you probably will regret the extreme plainness and barrenness of the window traceries; but, if you will go very close to the wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has concealed under the soffits. The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a Roman application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever its intrinsic merit (compare Chap. XXIX. § IV.), may rationally be applied to waggon vaults, as of St. Peter's, and to arch soffits under which one walks. But the Renaissance architects had not wit enough to reflect that people usually do not walk through windows. § IX. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig. LXIX., above, it will be remembered that _c_ represents the simplest form of the Northern. In the farther development of this, which we have next to consider, the voussoirs, in consequence of their own negligence or over-confidence, sustain a total and irrecoverable defeat. That archivolt is in its earliest conditions perfectly pure and undecorated,--the simplest and rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we have thenceforward only to observe what comes of it. § X. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice and architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things practically denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single mighty shadow occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking their great adversary utterly defeated, are at no trouble to show themselves; visible enough in both the upper and under archivolts, they are content to wait the time when, as might have been hoped, they should receive a new decoration peculiar to themselves. § XI. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank is turned by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great blank archivolts are felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or chamfered, as at _b_, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle, and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther complicated in the end by the addition of niches to their recesses, as above described. § XII. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical camp, in hope of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set forth and pilloried in the various detestable forms of which the simplest is given above in Plate XIII. (on the left); and others may be seen in nearly every large building in London, more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure spite at the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints, but shape themselves into right-angled steps at their heads, cutting to pieces their limiting line, which otherwise would have had sympathy with that of the arch, and fitting themselves to their new friend, the Renaissance Ruled Copy-book wall. It had been better they had died ten times over, in their own ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence. § XIII. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return to our victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so easy a conquest, unless by the help of certain forms of the grouped shaft. The chamfer was quite enough to decorate the archivolts, if there were no more than two; but if, as above noticed in § III., the archivolt was very deep, and composed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing with the outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened by introducing solid shafts in their dark inner angles. This, the manliest and best condition of the early northern jamb and archivolt, is represented in section at fig. 12 of Plate II.; and its simplest aspect in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como,--an interesting example, because there the voussoirs being in the midst of their above-described southern contest with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack upon them by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance, with the help of color, in which even the shaft itself gets slightly worsted, and cut across in several places, like General Zach's column at Marengo. § XIV. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its own peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts receive running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach the exquisitely rich conditions of our own Norman archivolts, and of the parallel Lombardic designs, such as the entrance of the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona. This change, however, occupies little time, and takes place principally in doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament, in the doorway and window aperture, associated with the earliest and rudest double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St. Michele of Pavia. The nave arches, therefore, are most usually treated by the chamfer, and the voussoirs are there defeated much sooner than by the shafted arrangements, which they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and even in the north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that of birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch the rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content; while the Norman zigzag ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag often restraining itself amicably between the joints of each voussoir in the ruder work, and even in the highly finished arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or sunlike arrangement of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture, above stated, Chap. XX. § XXVI., that all such ornaments were intended to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch. I doubt the intention, but acknowledge the resemblance; which perhaps goes far to account for the never-failing delightfulness of this zigzag decoration. The diminution of the zigzag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the voussoir, and is at last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like fluency of the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest sights in the drama of architecture. § XV. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note in Plate V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of the arch. This has been above alluded to as a feature of good construction, Chap. XI., § III.; it is to be noted now as one still more valuable in decoration: for when we arrive at the deep succession of concentric archivolts, with which northern portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed, we immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve with the inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the group of archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner aperture, the inner arch may be distinctly pointed, and the outer one, if drawn with concentric arcs, approximate very nearly to a round arch. This is actually the case in the later Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the archivolt having a hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of course forming the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the pure early Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a _magnified fac-simile_ of the innermost one, every arc including the same number of degrees, but degrees of a larger circle. The result is the condition represented in Plate V., often found in far bolder development; exquisitely springy and elastic in its expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and monotony of the deep northern archivolts. § XVI. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, _b_, of Fig. LXIX. (which its convenience for admission of light has rendered common in nearly all architectures), because it has no transitions peculiar to itself: in the north it sometimes shares the fate of the outer architrave, and is channelled into longitudinal mouldings; sometimes remains smooth and massy, as in military architecture, or in the simpler forms of domestic and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface decoration like the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar expression in being placed between the tracery of the window within, and its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo of Florence: in this position it is always kept smooth in surface, and inlaid (or painted) with delicate arabesques; while the tracery and the tabernacle work are richly sculptured. The example of its treatment by colored voussoirs, given in Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of central expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian Gothic;--aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work to the jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched; using on the outer archivolt the voussoirs and concentric architrave in reconcilement (the latter having, however, some connection with the Norman zigzag); and beneath them, the pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich cusp decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are all in brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature of the whole is the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of each stone voussoir, with a most just feeling, which every artist will at once understand, that the color ought not to be let go all at once. § XVII. We have traced the various conditions of treatment in the archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of the peculiar expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout have spoken in the same terms of the jamb. Even a parallel to the expression of the voussoir may be found in the Lombardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags and other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept away by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses of these and of the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration develops itself; and the vaulted and cavernous apertures are covered with incrustations of fretwork, and with every various application of foliage to their fantastic mouldings. § XVIII. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament of the archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions of beauty in tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere multiplication and entanglement of small archivolts, and its cusp ornament is a minor condition of that proper to the spandril. It does not reach its completely defined form until the jamb and archivolt have been divided into longitudinal mouldings; and then the tracery is formed by the innermost group of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or foliations the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of adaptation which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples, of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry, than to delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions of beauty in the disposition of the tracery bars, I see no hope of dealing with the subject fairly but by devoting, if I can find time, a separate essay to it--which, in itself, need not be long, but would involve, before it could be completed, the examination of the whole mass of materials lately collected by the indefatigable industry of the English architects who have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which are of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession or mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most cases, touch on their æsthetic merits incidentally only. Of works of this kind, by far the best I have met with is Mr. Edmund Sharpe's, on Decorated Windows, which seems to me, as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to exhaust the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject, as containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general principles by which the design of tracery has been regulated, from its first development to its final degradation. FOOTNOTES: [91] The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid across the tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly marked with horizontal lines, obtained by slight projections of its surface, while it is protected above in the richer orders, by a small cornice. CHAPTER XXIX. THE ROOF. § I. The modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been common to the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings; and we have taken no notice of the various kinds of ornament which require protection from weather, and are necessarily confined to interior work. But in the case of the roof, the exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in construction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as another, and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the inside; but, in the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which decoration should naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the interior only: so that the subject of internal ornament becomes both wide and important, and that of external, comparatively subordinate. § II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it. (The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediæval builders, and grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or limit its application. § III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved; ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their vast panellings some of the noblest paintings (on stretched canvas) which the world possesses: and this is all very well for the ceiling; but one would rather have the painting in a better place, especially when the rain soaks through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through many a noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying, and loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question to the reader's thought, being myself exceedingly undecided respecting it: except only touching one point--that a blank ceiling is not to be redeemed by a decorated ventilator. § IV. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting the decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is never, I think, so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed over the course of all its curvatures, and trace the dying of the shadows along its smooth and sweeping vaults. And I would rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic vault, with all its rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out of a cathedral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco may of course be used as far as we can afford or obtain them; for these do not break the curvature. Perhaps the most solemn roofs in the world are the apse conchas of the Romanesque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe figures. Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon; both, I think, in the last degree detestable. § V. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and ribs, externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points, or ridges; these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive ornament. The outside surface is of small importance in central Europe, being almost universally low in slope, and tiled throughout Spain, South France, and North Italy: of still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as often in South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation: I cannot speak of them with confidence; to the mind of an inhabitant of the north, a roof is a guard against wild weather; not a surface which is forever to bask in serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a rising moon. I can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a richly decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original. § VI. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple. Colored tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect; but I believe the dignity of the building is always greater when the roof is kept in an undisturbed mass, opposing itself to the variegation and richness of the walls. The Italian round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and rich fluting, which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted exclusively for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding, or cutting to an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles or shingles, as in Switzerland: thus the whole surface is covered with an appearance of scales, a fish-like defence against water, at once perfectly simple, natural, and effective at any distance; and the best decoration of sloping stone roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor; it enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings. Roofs covered or edged with lead have often patterns designed upon the lead, gilded and relieved with some dark color, as on the house of Jaques Coeur at Bourges; and I imagine the effect of this must have been singularly delicate and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface decoration, the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of their dormer windows, and to the finials and fringes on their points and ridges. § VII. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be classed as decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt. The northern spire system is evidently a mere elevation and exaggeration of the domestic turret with its look-out windows, and one can hardly part with the grotesque lines of the projections, though nobody is to be expected to live in the spire: but, at all events, such windows are never to be allowed in places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and serviceable scale. § VIII. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point decoration, we may include, as above noted, the entire race of fringes, finials, and crockets. As there is no use in any of these things, and as they are visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament, and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them, adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least to be kept in severe subordination to the serener character of the prevalent lines. But as they are opposed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand, so they are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any features which make the contrast between continental domestic architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give so sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from the streets of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the quaint points and pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets. The commonest and heaviest roof may be redeemed by a spike at the end of it, if it is set on with any spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull, screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds. § IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes whose best character is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of brilliancy, or embracing it,--as on the fields of summer sea, or summer land: "Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold, And on the dews that drench the furze, And on the silvery gossamers, _That twinkle into green and gold_." And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the few points used exceedingly precious. So the best crockets and finials are set, like stars, along the lines, and at the points, which they adorn, with considerable intervals between them, and exquisite delicacy and fancy of sculpture in their own designs; if very small, they may become more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but their whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or clustered into tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in them always marks lowness of school. In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to the diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect use of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto, and in some other buildings of the Pisan school. In the North they generally err on one side or other, and are either florid and huge, or mean in outline, looking as if they had been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout the entire cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the generally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head of archivolt decoration. § X. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among the most delightful means of delicate expression; and the architect has more liberty in their individual treatment than in any other feature of the building. Separated entirely from the structural system, they are subjected to no shadow of any other laws than those of grace and chastity; and the fancy may range without rebuke, for materials of their design, through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation. CHAPTER XXX. THE VESTIBULE. § I. I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions in the methods of applying them have been only those which followed on the necessities of construction previously determined. These having been now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to build; and with what a freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide their motion; and of all these lines,--and there are myriads of myriads in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several member of bird and beast,--of all these lines, for the principal forms of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three! What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure in them all! There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals, but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive appliance, and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single flower? that would be better than trying to invent new styles, I think. There is quite difference of style enough, between a violet and a harebell, for all reasonable purposes. § II. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle of our architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly speak of this treasure of natural infinity. Let us take our patience to us for an instant, and hear one of them, not among the least intelligent:-- "It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are separated from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or carving), we then see that they are not all fitted for ornamental purposes; and indeed that very few, perhaps none, are so fitted without correction. Yes, I say _correction_, for though it is the highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to be done by imitating any natural form, but by _criticising_ and _correcting_ it,--criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works, but never completely carried out by her in any one work; correcting it, by rendering it more natural, _i.e._ more conformable to the general tendency of Nature, according to that noble maxim recorded of Raffaelle, 'that the artist's object was to make things not as Nature makes them, but as she WOULD make them;' as she ever tries to make them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of archers had aimed unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks point out the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of being nearer to it than any of their shots."[92] § III. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with that stale, second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a few _dovrebbe's_, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. Raffaelle _had_ something to mend in Humanity: I should have liked to have seen him mending a daisy!--or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed, or any other of God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one might have found for him more respectable employment,--to set the stars in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered as they are, and to be of all manner of shapes and sizes,--except the ideal shape, and the proper size); or to give us a corrected view of the ocean; that, at least, seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the very fishermen do not know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before the west wind:--perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,--of the great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time. One,--two:--here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch! Another:--Ah, careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? it is all gone away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there--I thought as much--missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another:--How now, impatient one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave; not so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?--By our architectural word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off it! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them, into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek architect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into which the great Greek architect improves the sea-- [Illustration] [Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones? § IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our foreheads, that we might be known one from the other? § V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written, as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such difference as there is between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve a text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an atheist might declare that he could improve the Book, which, if any man shall add unto, there shall be added unto him the plagues that are written therein; just such difference is there between that which, with respect to Nature, man is, in his humbleness, called upon to do, and that which, in his insolence, he imagines himself capable of doing. § VI. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between nature and art, so only that you love both. If you can love one only, then let it be Nature; you are safe with her: but do not then attempt to judge the art, to which you do not care to give thought, or time. But if you love both, you may judge between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last, by its making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind of joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight, finite, indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have in a valley among the hills, then its art and architecture are right; but if, after fair trial, you can find no delight in them, nor any instruction like that of nature, I call on you fearlessly to condemn them. We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each other is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness, like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a London Street,--if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or one ray of true and gentle pleasure,--if there is in your heart a true delight in its grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,--it is well: promote the building of more like them. But if they never taught you anything, and never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they have any mysterious goodness nor occult sublimity. Have done with the wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for, as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as surely as you know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of the ball-room, you may know, as I told you that you should, that the good architecture, which has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture, which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the beginning to the end of time. § VII. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East. It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted "villas on the Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese variations, painted red and green; a third composed for the greater part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall: some antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have conducted modern Italy. § VIII. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed. At last the road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered with bent grass, on the right of it: but do not look that way. § IX. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The view from its balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbor of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however, about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street. § X. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as if they were dragged by upon a painted scene. Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west, the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line; but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a church. It is Venice. FOOTNOTES: [92] Garbett on Design, p. 74. APPENDIX. 1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE. I find the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any: the following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the reader. "God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian province (which from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March."[93] It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was founded by good Christians: "La qual citade è stada hedificada da veri e boni Christiani:" which information I found in the MS. copy of the Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark's. Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: "Fu interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire _VENI ETIAM_, cioè, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai, sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze." 2. POWER OF THE DOGES. The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of the election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was elected in a general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and clergy, at Heraclea, "divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all serious work, in those times. His authority is thus defined by Sabellico, who was not likely to have exaggerated it:--"Penes quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset: cui jus concilium cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri oporteret; qui tribunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad Ducem esset provocatio. Cæterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam, sacerdotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id ratum haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The last clause is very important, indicating the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the popular and ducal (or patrician) powers, which, throughout her career, was one of the most remarkable features in the policy of Venice. The appeal from the tribunes to the doge is also important; and the expression "decus omne imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at least as energetic as could have been expected from an historian under the influence of the Council of Ten. 3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO. The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the grand council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing was evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following in successive years: the Council of Ten was established without any doubt in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo. The Venetian verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di Venezia, p. 153), is worth remembering. "Del mille tresento e diese A mezzo el mese delle ceriese Bagiamonte passò el ponte E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese." The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the beginning of the change of government, and this will enable him exactly to divide the 1100 years from the election of the first doge into 600 of monarchy and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence of the numbers is somewhat curious; 697 the date of the establishment of the government, 1297 of its change, and 1797 of its fall. 4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO. It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh century, and (with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where the Trojans, conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction of Troy, built "un castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo, interpretato, luogo pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in person to the Bishop of Heraclea, and commanded him to found in his honor, a church in that spot of the rising city on the Rialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi e di pecore pascolare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua, 1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together, we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele, it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended before its mildewed façade and solitary tower. 5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE. I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will be of great value to the general reader:-- "In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century, churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten, with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk of Venetian beneficed clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year 1434, the RELATIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of ambassador at Rome. "The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow, requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing, said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch, who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent] may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas à Becket, whose festival is celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords chiefs of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and that, therefore, should those Lords have come to any public declaration of their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior, and to immemorial custom and authority, recollecting that, on former occasions likewise, similar commissions were given to prevent divers incongruities; wherefore an upright intention, such as this, ought not to be taken in any other sense than its own, especially as the parishes of Venice were in her own gift,' &c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on his nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian Matteo Priuli, who allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per annum out of its revenues. A few years before this, this very same pope excommunicated the State, because she had imprisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife lasted for more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner. "In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St. Mark's Square: some murmurs had been heard about the distribution of the prizes having been pre-arranged, without regard to the 'best man.' One of the chiefs of the Ten was walking along Rialto on the 28th January, when a young priest, twenty-two years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and one of Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon a clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired they might be seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he was, however, subsequently retaken, and in that very evening hanged by torch-light between the columns with the two soldiers. Innocent VIII. was less powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker in 1605 than in 1484. "* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at the end of the fourteenth or commencement of the following century, of the Venetian ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the republic's acquisitions on the main land then made, and which, through the rich benefices they embraced, might have rendered an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the Grand Council as a victorious condottiere; or from dread of their allegiance being divided between the church and their country, it being acknowledged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome, who, in their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions given to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani, Cornaro, Pisani, Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for the good understanding that existed between the 'Papalists' and their countrymen. The Cardinal Grimani was instrumental in detaching Julius II. from the league of Cambrai; the Cardinal Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything required of Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all Venetians that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather than pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied them admission into the Grand Council." To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth book of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration by us English in present days: "Pour être parfaitement assurée contre les envahissements de la puissance ecclésiastique, Venise commença par lui ôter tout prétexte d'intervenir dans les affaires de l'Etat; elle resta invariablement fidèle au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions nouvelles n'y prit la moindre faveur; jamais aucun hérésiarque ne sortit de Venise. Les conciles, les disputes, les guerres de religion, se passèrent sans qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part. Inébranlable dans sa foi, elle ne fut pas moins invariable dans son système de tolérance. Non seulement ses sujets de la religion grecque conservèrent l'exercise de leur culte, leurs évêques et leurs prêtres; mais les Protestantes, les Arméniens, les Mahomitans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui se trouvaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sépulture dans les églises n'était point refusé aux hérétiques. Une police vigilante s'appliquait avec le même soin à éteindre les discordes, et à empêcher les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l'Etat." * * * * * "Si on considère que c'est dans un temps où presque toutes les nations tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les Vénitiens surent tenir leur clergé dans la dépendance, et braver souvent les censures ecclésiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir jamais aucun reproche sur la pureté de leur foi, on sera forcé de reconnaître que cette république avait dévancé de loin les autres peuples dans cette partie de la science du gouvernement. La fameuse maxime, 'Siamo veneziani, poi christiani,' n'était qu'une formule énergique qui ne prouvait point quils voulussent placer l'intérêt de la religion après celui de l'Etat, mais qui annonçait leur invariable résolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un pouvoir étranger portât atteinte aux droits de la république. "Dans toute la durée de son existence, an milieu des revers comme dans la prospérité cet inébranlable gouvernement ne fit qu'une seule fois des concessions à la cour de Borne, et ce fut pour détacher le Pape Jules II. de la ligue de Cambrai. "Jamais il ne se relâcha du soin de tenir le clergé dans une nullité absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en juger par la conduite qu'il tint avec l'ordre religieux le plus redoutable et le plus accoutumé à s'immiscer dans les secrets de l'Etat et dans les intérêts temporels." The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are, that the decree which permitted their establishment in Venice required formal renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could stay in Venice more than three years; that the slightest disobedience to the authority of the government was instantly punished by imprisonment; that no Venetian could enter the order without express permission from the government; that the notaries were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal of property to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families were forbidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits' colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank. Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion of the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly from the period which I have marked for the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power. The Romanist is welcome to his advantage in this fact, if advantage it be; for I do not bring forward the conduct of the senate of Venice, as Daru does, by way of an example of the general science of government. The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call a separation of "Church and State" (as if the State were not, in all Christendom, necessarily also the Church[94]), but _ought_ to call a separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to blame, in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome so far as to deprive their councils of all religious element, what excuse are we to offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual of her own faith already in her senate, permits the polity of Rome to be represented by lay members? To have sacrificed religion to mistaken policy, or purchased security with ignominy, would have been no new thing in the world's history; but to be at once impious and impolitic, and seek for danger through dishonor, was reserved for the English parliament of 1829. I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation, I appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the following passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and published in one of the journals of that year:--a passage remarkable as much for its intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve years ago, truths to which the mind of England seems but now, and that slowly, awakening. "We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion that causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once all Roman Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as the Irish. It is totally overlooked, that when we were so, our government was despotic, and fit to cope with this dangerous religion, as most of the Continental governments yet are. In what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of Roman Catholic England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists in Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of things--Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant toleration in the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous difficulty in which Roman Catholic emancipation has involved us. Too late we discover that a Roman Catholic is wholly incapable of being safely connected with the British constitution, as it now exists, _in any near relation_. The present constitution is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature essentially Protestant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with the strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I take my stand on this, against all agitators in existence, that the Roman religion is totally incompatible with the British constitution. We have, in trying to combine them, got into a maze of difficulties; we are the worse, and Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to wear the mild restraints of a Protestant Government. It was, moreover, a strange logic that begot the idea of admitting Catholics to administer any part of our laws or constitution. It was admitted by all that, by the very act of abandoning the Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people. It was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in the scale of society. We are so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed religion, that to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw down the barriers betwixt the two religions, of which the one is the acknowledged cause of light and knowledge, the other the cause of darkness and ignorance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving this people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst us, that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have found so much good in leaving them, that we deem it the best possible reason for returning to be among them. No fear of their Church again shaking us, with all our light and knowledge. It is true, the most enlightened nations fell under the spell of her enchantments, fell into total darkness and superstition; but no fear of us--we are too well informed! What miserable reasoning! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the Roman religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as our modern Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a statesman to discuss the point of Transubstantiation betwixt Protestant and Catholic, nor to trace the narrow lines which divide Protestant sectarians from each other; but can any statesman that shall have taken even a cursory glance at the face of Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the Protestant religion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the true one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people. He may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation of a kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the comparative merits of religion, as of law or government; and blind, indeed, must he be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable or desirable in a subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at that point of education and information that forms the best security for the state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people, whether religious or political." [Illustration: Plate XX. WALL VEIL DECORATION. CA' TREVISAN.] 6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS. There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,--the Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown, in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with, early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles inclosed in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page one of these ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings. Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely finished. In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca' Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned, in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan (which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca' Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much later. 7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS. Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says) from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass orders, or any number of other orders, one for every head or horn. You may have heard of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and Corinthian mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms referable to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a spoiled Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order, called Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and of another called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled, both which are simply among the most stupid variations ever invented upon forms already known. I find also in a French pamphlet upon architecture,[95] as applied to shops and dwelling houses, a sixth order, the "Ordre Français," at least as good as any of the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation, considering whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the other side of the channel to the confusion of "orders" than their multiplication: but the reader will find in the end that there are in very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian are the first examples, and _they_ not perfect, nor in anywise sufficiently representative of the vast families to which they belong; but being the first and the best known, they may properly be considered as the types of the rest. The essential distinctions of the two great orders he will find explained in §§ XXXV. and XXXVI. of Chap. XXVII., and in the passages there referred to; but I should rather desire that these passages might be read in the order in which they occur. 8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY. I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events of architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could; but this indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine rest, like a wild north wind descending into a space of rarified atmosphere, and encountered by an Arab simoom from the south, may well require from us some farther attention; for the differences in all these schools are more in the degrees of their impetuosity and refinement (these qualities being, in most cases, in inverse ratio, yet much united by the Arabs) than in the style of the ornaments they employ. The same leaves, the same animals, the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians, ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from Egypt and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which encompass the Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum, are the same as the belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenæ, and of the Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and Byzantine temper. Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity, one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables, and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth century. I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply copying the entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have left them, as they will be of use hereafter. "(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained, or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort (often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally, straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful, fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of beauty, and much solemn religious faith. "If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade, and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage, unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and, in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_ here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more chaste, pure, or solemn." I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St. Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above them is to our present purpose: "It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting subject:--two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there. Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with the edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up the intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies on their hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally, on the centre of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant and castle,--a very strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had seen one." Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him farther north. "These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and tame compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are designed also in a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I think, of indigestion. (Note that they are much earlier than St. Zeno; of the seventh century at latest. There is more of nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord Lindsay has described them admirably, but has not said half enough; the state of mind represented by the west front is more that of a feverish dream, than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or even from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with _two_ tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time), strange, large fish, apes, stags (bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses, griffins, eagles, long-tailed birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons, without end, or with a dozen of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds, with rabbits, and small nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual leaf, which is used in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in parts of these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all _alive_, and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine birds peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. They are exactly like Jip with the bit of geranium, worrying imaginary cats in it." The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,--it is the vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards, but by the latter with especial frequency, though at this time they were hardly able to indicate what they meant. It forms the most remarkable generality of the St. Michele decoration; though, had it not luckily been carved on the façade, twining round a stake, and with grapes, I should never have known what it was meant for, its general form being a succession of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each. But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties of it might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content with this, the Lombards hint the same form even in their griffin wings. They love the vine very heartily. In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance in Italy of the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is some four centuries later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the method of workmanship is altogether different. In the Pavian church, nearly all the ornament is cut in a coarse sandstone, in bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;--two devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except of some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an ornament used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and the whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs, well preserved everywhere above the reach of human animals, but utterly destroyed to some five or six feet from the ground; worn away into large cellular hollows and caverns, some almost deep enough to render the walls unsafe, entirely owing to the uses to which the recesses of the church are dedicated by the refined and high-minded Italians. But St. Michele of Lucca is wrought entirely in white marble and green serpentine; there is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the capitals of the shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall ornament are inlaid with exquisite precision--white on dark ground; the ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left in solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted on the walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small portions of real sculpture being introduced exactly where the eye, after its rest on the flatness of the wall, will take most delight in the piece of substantial form. The entire arrangement is perfect beyond all praise, and the morbid restlessness of the old designs is now appeased. Geometry seems to have acted as a febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are introduced amidst the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing double, nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of everything in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost. The fragments have come together: we are out of the Inferno with its weeping down the spine; we are in the fair hunting-fields of the Lucchese mountains (though they had their tears also),--with horse, and hound, and hawk; and merry blast of the trumpet.--Very strange creatures to be hunted, in all truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that on their shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church where a head is to be looked for. My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures, why I give so much praise to this "crazy front of Lucca." But it is not crazy; not by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison with the early Lombard work, or with our Norman. Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected, to the breaking of its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt frosts of the Maremma winters have their way with it--"Poor Tom's a cold!" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted themselves into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine are spit and rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins along its ledges; the salt sea winds have eaten away the fair shafting of its star window into a skeleton of crumbling rays. It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven only, in its benignity, preserve it from restoration, and the sands of the Serchio give it honorable grave. In the "Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing of one of its upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for there is a marked piece of character in the figure of the horseman on the left of it. And in making this reference, I would say a few words about those much abused plates of the "Seven Lamps." They are black, they are overbitten, they are hastily drawn, they are coarse and disagreeable; how disagreeable to many readers I venture not to conceive. But their truth is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing. It does not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or looks careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented; in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are made at home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines, to finish a drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details seventy feet from the ground; and any one who will try the position in which I have had to do some of my work--standing, namely, on a cornice or window sill, holding by one arm round a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal, at Venice), with my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I was drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free--will not thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally carelessly laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But, steady, or infirm, the sketches of which those plates in the "Seven Lamps" are fac-similes, were made from the architecture itself, and represent that architecture with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and with every fissure and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am speaking of some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended to illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that if anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may depend upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again at the building. It is necessary that my readers should understand this thoroughly, and I did not before sufficiently explain it; but I believe I can show them the use of this kind of truth, now that we are again concerned with this front of Lucca. They will find a drawing of the entire front in Gally Knight's "Architecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_. There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its delicate fiction.[97] [Illustration: Plate XXI. WALL VEIL DECORATION.] As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be, fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the "Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's), with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here: civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north, though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating, then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed, generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors, which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable, except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan; quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily, and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:-- 1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one. 2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in another head. 3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited. 4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail, which ends in a head. 5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way. 6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St. Peter startled, and full of motion. 7. St. Peter led out by the angel. 8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small space. 9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their horns. 10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes out of a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem with two large leaves. 11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows. 12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage. 13. Noah building the ark on shores. 14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting the other. 15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil. 16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which turns into two wings. 17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to the tree only by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into hair, and nobly sweeping. 18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a circle. Mingled with these grotesques are many _sword_ and _buckler_ combats, the bucklers being round and conical like a hat; I thought the first I noticed, carried by a man at full gallop on horseback, had been a small umbrella. This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish character of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment of the whole there is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume. 9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH. I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid, at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than snow.'" 10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA. The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i più scelti marmi;" and that the Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin. 11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE. I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of "Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed) landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others, by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated. And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best; and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not, in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially _his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him. Turner. Tintoret. Massaccio. John Bellini. Albert Durer. Giorgione. Paul Veronese. Titian. Rubens. Correggio. Orcagna. Benozzo Gozzoli. Giotto. Raffaelle. Perugino. I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_ landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power they show, than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I should class those, whose landscapes I have studied, in some such order as this at the side of the page:--associating with the landscape of Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of religious subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace yet not separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to him in Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it furnishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said in the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson's "Essay on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's Diary: "I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat or drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them, and yet they blame them, _and say they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good_. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing: he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is very old, but is still the best painter of them all." A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters, side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying, stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose. 12. ROMANIST MODERN ART. It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the proselyte to priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though I cannot pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have betrayed:--Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to God's Word and man's reason!--to talk of the authority of the Church, as if the Church were anything else than the whole company of Christian men, or were ever spoken of in Scripture[98] as other than a company to be taught and fed, not to teach and feed.--Fatuity! to talk of a separation of Church and State, as if a Christian state, and every officer therein, were not necessarily a part of the Church,[99] and as if any state officer could do his duty without endeavoring to aid and promote religion, or any clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such aid and accepting it:--Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood, and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any other way than the plainly ordered way: if _any_ man will do he shall know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests' petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible. I had hardly believed that it was a thing possible, though vague stories had been told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere scarlet and candles, until I came on this passage in Pugin's "Remarks on articles in the Rambler":-- "Those who have lived in want and privation are the best qualified to appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who have been devout and sincere members of the separated portion of the English Church; who have prayed, and hoped, and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed rites which it has retained--to them does the realisation of all their longing desires appear truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight! what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them, in all its pristine life and glory!--the stoups are filled to the brim; the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints repose beneath, the body of Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and chrismatory are there, and thurible, and cross." One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an example of the effect of ceremonial splendor on the mind of a great architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect, but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects; and that by his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:-- "I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building, except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect; but everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a failure. * * * "St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at a limited price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being restricted to lancet,--a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded town. * * * "Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished, and stone arches omitted." (Remarks, &c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.) Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter; but Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral? Let his ineffableness be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested in the contending with, or conquering it; and that there is no field so small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough for it in a single niche: you might have put the whole power of it into two feet cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high enough for want of money? But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability of better things. I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and there is much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which one might both regard and profit by. He has a most sincere love for his profession, a heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful one over the western door of St. George's; and there is some spirited impishness and switching of tails in the supporting figures at the imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of finials to be employed as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor thence deduce the incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I should have said all that I have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome. But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation. The noblest pieces of mediæval sculpture in North Italy, the two griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her clothes-lines to their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice were used by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon (Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually passing priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed in altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure brutality of neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I have repeatedly stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or other art, is compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious service. The longer I live, the more I incline to severe judgment in this matter, and the less I can trust the sentiments excited by painted glass and colored tiles. But if there be indeed value in such things, our plain duty is to direct our strength against the superstition which has dishonored them; there are thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who love them,--not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors, but to hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their imaginative enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in heavenly truth a brighter charm than in earthly imagery, and striving to gather stones for the eternal building, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall be praise. 13. MR. FERGUSSON'S SYSTEM. The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division as Mr. Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into technic, æsthetic and phonetic. But there is no connection between the two systems; mine, indeed, does not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement of my subject, for the sake of order and convenience in its treatment: but, as far as it goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson's in these two following respects:-- The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence, depends on its good construction; and the first part of the foregoing volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration of the constructive merit of buildings: but construction is not their only technical merit. There is as much of technical merit in their expression, or in their beauty, as in their construction. There is no more mechanical or technical admirableness in the stroke of the painter who covers them with fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who cements their stones: there is just as much of what is technical in their beauty, therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other hand, there is often just as much intellect shown in their construction as there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr. Fergusson means by his "Phonetic" division, whatever expresses intellect: my constructive division, therefore, includes part of his phonetic: and my expressive and decorative divisions include part of his technical. Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit the _subjects_ of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic, æsthetic, and phonetic, _arts_, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to do with any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the merits of _buildings_. As, however, I have been led into reference to Mr. Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to effect Mr. Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him a noble ally, ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood, and prejudice, of every kind: I have derived much instruction from his most interesting work, and I hope for much more from its continuation; but he must disentangle himself from his system, or he will be strangled by it; never was anything so ingeniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the whole of it is founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his capacities. Mr. Fergusson would have us take-- "First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.) "Secondly, those developments of sense _by_ which _he does!!_ as much as by his muscles." (Æsthetics.) "Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its external action, _his power of speech!!!_" (Phonetics.) Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the writer then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts as if there were some belonging to each division of man,--never observing that every art must be governed by, and addressed to, one division, and executed by another; executed by the muscular, addressed to the sensitive or intellectual; and that, to be an art at all, it must have in it work of the one, and guidance from the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had been led to arrange the arts, either by their objects, and the things to which they are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which they are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant. As thus:-- These arts are addressed to the,--Muscles!! Senses, Intellect; or executed by,--Muscles, Senses!! Intellect. Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to the muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr. Fergusson's technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may, in a sort, be said to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide both muscles and intellect in their work: but they guide them as they receive information, or are standards of accuracy, but not as in themselves capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe, the first person who has told us of senses that act or do, they having been hitherto supposed only to sustain or perceive. The weight of error, however, rests just as much in the original division of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts to it. The slight omission of the soul makes a considerable difference when it begins to influence the final results of the arrangement. Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion "Politick arts" (as if religion were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to individuals as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a body of arts by themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without the soul and the moral feeling as rest they may. Hence "expression," or "phonetics," is of intellect only (as if men never expressed their _feelings!_); and then, strangest and worst of all, intellect is entirely resolved into talking! There can be no intellect but it must talk, and all talking must be intellectual. I believe people do sometimes talk without understanding; and I think the world would fare ill if they never understood without talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty, and has nothing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part has. A man may feel and know things without expressing either the feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a _muscular_ mode of communicating the workings of the intellect or heart--muscular, whether it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing, or by expression of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular and talking parts, is to divide him into body in general, and tongue in particular, the endless confusion resulting from which arrangement is only less marvellous in itself, than the resolution with which Mr. Fergusson has worked through it, and in spite of it, up to some very interesting and suggestive truths; although starting with a division of humanity which does not in the least raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has his muscular, æsthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could, were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and that we do not understand its expressions. Animals can talk to one another intelligibly enough when they have anything to say, and their captains have words of command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being, a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language. But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr. Fergusson's arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton, and explodes into vacuity wherever one holds a light to it. I shall leave him to do so with the rest of it for himself, and should perhaps have left it to his own handling altogether, but for the intemperateness of the spirit with which he has spoken on a subject perhaps of all others demanding gentleness and caution. No man could more earnestly have desired the changes lately introduced into the system of the University of Oxford than I did myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous failures in the practical working even of the present system: but I believe that these failures may be almost without exception traced to one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of rubrical religion among the tutors; together with such rustinesses and stiffnesses as necessarily attend the continual operation of any intellectual machine. The fault is, at any rate, far less in the system than in the imperfection of its administration; and had it been otherwise, the terms in which Mr. Fergusson speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can but be imperfectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently answered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if the high powers of mind which its author possesses had been subjected to the discipline of the schools, he could not have wasted his time on the development of a system which their simplest formulæ of logic would have shown him to be untenable. Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his system than to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty of arranging a _reasonable_ system of classification, in any subject, by any one group of characters; and that the best classifications are, in many of their branches, convenient rather than reasonable: so that, to any person who is really master of his subject, many different modes of classification will occur at different times; one of which he will use rather than another, according to the point which he has to investigate. I need only instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first is the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the most simple; and all in several ways unsatisfactory. But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can grasp, and which embraces the whole range of human occupation and enquiry, the difficulties become as great, and the methods as various, as the uses to which the classification might be put; and Mr. Fergusson has entirely forgotten to inform us what is the object to which his arrangements are addressed. For observe: there is one kind of arrangement which is based on the rational connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an arrangement which maps them out like the rivers of some great country, and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and force of their united currents; and this without assigning to any one of them a superiority above another, but considering them all as necessary members of the noble unity of human science and effort. There is another kind of classification which contemplates the order of succession in which they might most usefully be presented to a single mind, so that the given mind should obtain the most effective and available knowledge of them all: and, finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers of mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to which they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and assigns to each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to the nobility of the powers they require, or the grandeur of the subjects they contemplate. Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different classification with respect to each of these great intentions, but it might be found so even to vary the order of the succession of sciences in the case of every several mind to which they were addressed; and that their rank would also vary with the power and specific character of the mind engaged upon them. I once heard a very profound mathematician remonstrate against the impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension from government, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies, the science itself would need to be deprived of the rank usually assigned to it; and there could be no doubt that, in the effect it had on the mind of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them: thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences, has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.[100] And the subject is farther complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit, and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish: metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet, as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it may in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common sense usually concedes to it. Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful, even where it does nothing more than develop difficulties. Perhaps the greatest fault of men of learning is their so often supposing all other branches of science dependent upon or inferior to their own best beloved branch; and the greatest deficiency of men comparatively unlearned, their want of perception of the connection of the branches with each other. He who holds the tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the separation of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to those the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of what they had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And, after such candid admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly noble arts and sciences, we may be enabled more justly to estimate the inferiority of those which indeed seem intended for the occupation of inferior powers and narrower capacities. In Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as to the principles on which classification might be based; but the arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could with discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a branch of one of them. 14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY. The reader will probably understand this part of the subject better if he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions of the mind and body of man in the sciences and arts, which give these latter the relations of rank usually attributed to them. It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were generally ranked according to the nobility of the powers they require, that is to say, the quantity of the being of man which they engaged or addressed. Now their rank is not a very important matter as regards each other, for there are few disputes more futile than that concerning the respective dignity of arts, all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a very important matter as regards themselves; very important whether they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not at all matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art; but it matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings, or the feeling is expressed in statues, which make either deserving of our admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine that the art which we ourselves practise is greater than any other; but it is wise to take care that in our own hands it is as noble as we can make it. Let us take some notice, therefore, in what degrees the faculties of man may be engaged in his several arts: we may consider the entire man as made up of body, soul, and intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says inaccurately--sense, intellect, and spirit--forgetting that there is a moral sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though right in the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a short expression of the moral and responsible part of being, each of these three parts has a passive and active power. The body has senses and muscles; the soul, feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination. The scheme may be put into tabular form, thus:-- Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part. Body Senses. Muscles. Soul Feeling. Resolution. Intellect Understanding. Imagination. In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and conscience I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart, inseparable from the system, yet not an essential part of it. The sense of beauty I consider a mixture of the Senses of the body and soul. Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal action on one another, so that the true perfection of any of them is not possible without some relative perfection of the others, and yet any one of the parts of the system may be brought into a morbid development, inconsistent with the perfection of the others. Thus, in a healthy state, the acuteness of the senses quickens that of the feelings, and these latter quicken the understanding, and then all the three quicken the imagination, and then all the four strengthen the resolution; while yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active savage: another false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite, consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil: another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not perceive his wounds. So that it is never so much the question, what is the solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as what is its balanced perfection in relation to the whole of him: and again, the perfection of any single power is not merely to be valued by the mere rank of the power itself, but by the harmony which it indicates among the other powers. Thus, for instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a hunter's raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense and finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results from the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it: in the hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying far more than mere practice,--implying courage, and habitual meeting of danger, and presence of mind, and many other such noble characters. So also in a musician's way of laying finger on his instrument, or a painter's handling of his pencil, there are many qualities expressive of the special sensibilities of each, operating on the production of the habit, besides the sensibility operating at the moment of action. So that there are three distinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere bodily dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called command of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding from modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it resulting from habitual patience coupled with decision, and the thousand other characters partially discernible, even in a man's writing, much more in his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there is the perfection of action produced by the operation of _present_ strength, feeling, or intelligence on instruments thus _previously_ perfected, as the handling of a great painter is rendered more beautiful by his immediate care and feeling and love of his subject, or knowledge of it, and as physical strength is increased by strength of will and greatness of heart. Imagine, for instance, the difference in manner of fighting, and in actual muscular strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a man in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas. Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power of the body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages: First, Bodily power by practice; Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit; Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy; and the arts will be greater or less, cæteris paribus, according to the degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost of the whole man. Nevertheless, though the higher arts _admit_ this higher bodily perfection, they do not all _require_ it in equal degrees, but can dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity. The arts whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed together as arts of the third order, of which the highest will be those which admit most of the power of moral habit and energy, such as riding and the management of weapons; and the rest may be thrown together under the general title of handicrafts, of which it does not much matter which are the most honorable, but rather, which are the most necessary and least injurious to health, which it is not our present business to examine. Men engaged in the practice of these are called artizans, as opposed to artists, who are concerned with the fine arts. The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for instance, in hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in apprehension of difficulties, either present or probable. It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed without bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing and another executing, as for the most part in architecture, war, and seamanship. And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion to the dignity of the art, the bodily dexterities needed even in its subordinate agents become less important, and are more and more replaced by intelligence; as in the steering of a ship, the bodily dexterity required is less than in shooting or fencing, but the intelligence far greater: and so in war, the mere swordsmanship and marksmanship of the troops are of small importance in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be estimated, not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require, but by the quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their practice, and by the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such knowledge into play. War certainly stands first in the general mind, not only as the greatest of the arts which I have called of the second order, but as the greatest of all arts. It is not, however, easy to distinguish the respect paid to the Power, from that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of victory being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration the greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it, as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its stratagems and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy. Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the Imaginative part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the soul are joined: as poetry, architecture, and painting; these forming a kind of cross, in their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find it not enough. 15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS. The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and, until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed, for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality into sermons, and his poetry into verse, than into a language of which he was not master. And this mastery of the language is that of which we should be cognizant by a glance of the eye; and if that be not found, it is wasted time to look farther: the man has mistaken his vocation, and his expression of himself will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what he was not fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed, and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come from his hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is so difficult and so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and that his works are worth reading. So that I have never yet seen the case in which this true artistical excellence, visible by the eye-glance, was not the index of some true expressional worth in the work. Neither have I ever seen a good expressional work without high artistical merit: and that this is ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are apt to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent on their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man long trained to love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten, that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial, ironshod humanities, but humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won, perhaps, here and there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens' masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his. We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error, and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful, that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall decoration and fair color, in North Italy. Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional character not so: we can at once determine the true value of technical qualities, we can only approximate to the value of expressional qualities: and besides this, the looking for the technical qualities first will enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once, and so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about their expression, or anything else concerning them. Then taking the buildings which have been rightly put together, and which show common sense in their structure, we may look for their farther and higher excellences; but on those which are absurd in their first steps we need waste no time. 16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS. I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given more study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of different materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every inquiry which general criticism might suggest, and this I believe to be one which would have occupied the reader with less profit than many others: all that is necessary for him to note is, that the great increase of strength gained by a tubular form in iron shafts, of given solid contents, is no contradiction to the general principle stated in the text, that the strength of materials is most available when they are most concentrated. The strength of the tube is owing to certain properties of the arch formed by its sides, not to the dispersion of its materials: and the principle is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts. No one would think of building a pillar of a succession of sandstone rings; however strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up, and the substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same contents would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid, must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and in modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of the preacher, and checking the sound of his voice. 17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT. Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this passage, I met accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise on Design. (Weale, 1850.) If I had cared about the reputation of originality, I should have been annoyed--and was so, at first, on finding Mr. Garbett's illustrations of the subject exactly the same as mine, even to the choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world's, if they look for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at some discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the "Builder," to pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did not see the end of the discussion, and do not know to this day how many feathers I have left: at all events the elephant's foot must belong to Mr. Garbett, though, strictly speaking, neither he nor I can be quite justified in using it, for an elephant in reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the expression of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above, (Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever written, though without referring to me; but the references to the "Seven Lamps" I should not have answered, unless I had desired, generally, to recommend the book, and partly also, because they may serve as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven Lamps" had to sustain from architects, very generally; which examples being once answered, there will be little occasion for my referring in future to other criticisms of the kind. The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second page, where Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not convenience and stability enough to constitute a fine building?"--which I should have answered shortly by asking another, "Why we have been made men, and not bees nor termites:" but Mr. Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial, answer to it himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,--an answer which I heartily beg the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day, will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features." What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was, or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense, as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome (taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies? none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament; that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of nothing less than it has, and needing nothing more. It may, indeed, receive additional decoration afterwards, exactly as a woman may gracefully put a bracelet on her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but that additional decoration is _not_ the _architecture_. It is of curtains, pictures, statues, things that may be taken away from the building, and not hurt it. What has the architect to do with these? He has only to do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say, its own inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand or acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we next find him endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament, and saying that "Positive beauty may be produced by a studious collation of whatever will display design, order, and congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There is a highly studious collation of whatever will display design, order, and congruity, in a skull, is there not?--yet small beauty. The nose is a decorative feature,--yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me; now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering a skull disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning, and by moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could think of, for a month, in vain. I found it as ugly at last as I did at first. So, also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural curl is of little use; but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty; or does he prefer a wig, because that is a "_studious_ collation" of whatever will produce design, order, and congruity? So the flush of the cheek is a decoration,--God's painting of the temple of his spirit,--and the redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola thought it beauty truly blent; and I hold with her. I have answered enough to this count. The second point questioned is my assertion, "Ornament cannot be overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged when it is bad." To which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms: "I must contend, on the contrary, that the very best ornament may be overcharged by being misplaced." A short sentence with two mistakes in it. First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion that ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened on. He supposes that an ornament may be called good in itself, in the stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop: Once for all, let him put this idea out of his head. We may say of a thing, considered separately, that it is a pretty thing; but before we can say it is a good ornament, we must know what it is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of gold is a pretty thing; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger; not a good ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet high, would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good ornament for a lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have seen this without my showing? and that, therefore, when I said "_good_" ornament, I said "well-placed" ornament, in one word, and that, also, when Mr. Garbett says "it may be overcharged by being misplaced," he merely says it may be overcharged by being _bad_. Secondly. But, granted that ornament _were_ independent of its position, and might be pronounced good in a separate form, as books are good, or men are good.--Suppose I had written to a student in Oxford, "You cannot have too many books, if they be good books;" and he had answered me, "Yes, for if I have many, I have no place to put them in but the coal-cellar." Would that in anywise affect the general principle that he could not have too many books? Or suppose he had written, "I must not have too many, they confuse my head." I should have written back to him: "Don't buy books to put in the coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse your head; you cannot have too many, if they be good: but if you are too lazy to take care of them, or too dull to profit by them, you are better without them." Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You cannot have too much ornament, if it be good: but if you are too indolent to arrange it, or too dull to take advantage of it, assuredly you are better without it." The other points bearing on this question have already been stated in the close of the 21st chapter. The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion, that the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources of value in ornament, ("Seven Lamps," p. 49, "Modern Painters," § 1, Chap. III.,) to which objection is made in these terms: "We must here warn the reader against a remarkable error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in architecture depends _not in the slightest degree_ on the _manual labor_ they contain. If it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the stone chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that so? Hear a parallel argument. "The value of the Cornish mines depends not in the slightest degree on the quantity of copper they contain. If it did, the most valuable things ever produced would be copper saucepans." It is hardly worth my while to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should be confused by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great importance, I may re-state it for them with some explanation. Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the evidence of the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract, intensely delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful to see that he _has_ labored, and to read the record of his active and worthy existence. The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a _sign of Evil greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good_. As, for instance, if a man has labored for an hour at what might have been done by another man in a moment, this evidence of his labor is also evidence of his weakness; and this weakness is greater in rank of evil, than his industry is great in rank of good. Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing, the signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his folly dishonors his industry; we had rather he had been a wise man in rest than a fool in labor. Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy with his work. Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what was better than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever it substitutes itself for these, or _negatives these by its existence_, then it is positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or poisons food: not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence, seriously objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas. Let Danaë cast it out of her lap, when the gold comes from heaven; but let the poor man gather it up carefully from the earth. Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added to other good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human work. It is only good for God to create without toil; that which man can create without toil is worthless: machine ornaments are no ornaments at all. Consider this carefully, reader: I could illustrate it for you endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour of your existence. And if you do not know that you feel it, take up, for a little time, the trade which of all manual trades has been most honored: be for once a carpenter. Make for yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever thought any table or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there will be in their crooked limbs. I have not noticed any other animadversions on the "Seven Lamps" in Mr. Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must now leave it to his own consideration, whether he may not, as in the above instances, have made them incautiously: I may, perhaps, also be permitted to request other architects, who may happen to glance at the preceding pages, not immediately to condemn what may appear to them false in general principle. I must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I may often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles; and my statements of these will generally be found worth reconnoitring before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy they have strong grounds for supposing me wrong when they seek to invalidate my assertions. Let me assure them, at least, that I mean to be their friend, although they may not immediately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public ear, and the principles I have advocated were carried into general practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead of limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts they would have to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses; and for every stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism, into which they are now forced to shape their palsied thoughts, and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they must trust their doubtful fame, they would be asked to raise whole streets of bold, and rich, and living architecture, with the certainty in their hearts of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for all men. Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor on architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or two respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to all--the applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture in general, as in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace. It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part of our architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result from the studied employment of these materials. It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how far eternally impossible. There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and form. The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or gesso. This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible by human art. The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence. Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded nobler edifices. Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without lustre. This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore, fit to receive noble form. Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of. All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better thing, is _art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most securely retain, the impressions of such human labor_. And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed upon it for ever:-- First, of thought and moral purpose; Secondly, of technical skill; Thirdly, of bodily industry. The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is very great. So far it is good. The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit brighter than thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent brain every hour,--that it might be possible to build a greenhouse larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. "But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this intolerable deal of sack." Alas! "The earth hath bubbles as the water hath: And this is of them." 18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS. The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is, indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of effect, like the "_black_ touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence. Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement of the early English capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft, contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines. Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a fortnight. 19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA. Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but masculine simplicity of construction. I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154, in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp, (whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular from the point of the cusp on _a b_. Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch, but it often happens that some of them are attainable more easily than others; some are often unattainable altogether, and it is necessary therefore to have expressions for whichever we may be able to determine. V _p_ or V _a_, _a b_, and _d c_ are always essential; then either _a c_ and V _c_ or _c c_ and _c p_: when I have my choice, I always take _a b_, V _p_, _d c_, _c c_, and _c p_, but _c p_ is not to be generally obtained so accurately as the cusp arcs. The measures of the present arch are: Ft. In. _a b_, 3 ,, 8 V _p_, 4 ,, 0 V _c_, 2 ,, 4-1/2 _a c_, 2 ,, 0-1/4 _d c_, 0 ,, 3-1/2 20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE. The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by the greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is 10 ft. 4-1/3 in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0-1/2[103] in circumference under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,, 1-3/4 high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th) is nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three others, the 15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the rest, though not so thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th have both party walls to bear, and I imagine the 15th must in old time have carried another, reaching across what is now the Sala del Gran Consiglio. They measure respectively round at the base, The 15th, 8 ,, 2 24th, 9 ,, 6-1/2 26th, 8 ,, 0-1/2 The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive of the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then there is a most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference to the 36th, thus: The 28th, 7 ,, 3 The 33rd, 7 ,, 6 29th, 7 ,, 4 34th, 7 ,, 8 30th, 7 ,, 6 35th, 7 ,, 8 31st, 7 ,, 7 36th, 10 ,, 4-1/3 32nd, 7 ,, 5 The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker columns, are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the average, 4 ,, 8-1/2 in circumference, while those of the sea façade, except the 29th, average 4 ,, 7-1/2 in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which comes above the 24th and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over the 26th, is 5 ,, 4-1/2 round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room containing part of St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons; a room which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Lorenzi's."[104] I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV., which represents one of its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that plate. The mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges of them in a third. The two complete spandrils are on the sea façade, above the 3rd and 10th capitals (_vide_ method of numbering, Chap. I., page 30); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the 9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white portions of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and never found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble. The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each side, and the lower 1 ,, 2. The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10-1/2; its field is slightly raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left. A _a_ is part of the red marble field; _a b_ the section of the dentil moulding let into it; _b c_ the entire breadth of the rayed zone, represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C _f_; _c d_ is the white marble band let in, with the dogtooth on the face of it; _b c_ is 7-3/4 inches across; _c d_ 3-3/4; and at B are given two joints of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils, as unique in Venice) of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves; its measure being (in inches) C _f_ 7-3/4; C _h_ 3/4; _f g_ 3/4; _f e_ 4-3/4, the base of the smaller leaves being of course _f e_ - _f g_ = 4. The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that the field _b c_, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre. There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their points, and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly, in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the grey seem warmed with green. A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital; but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the building. This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and is carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6. Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson's restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus, this ornament is conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian buildings of Cairo. 21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER. I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry into the effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek, mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton, had devoted much thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts which he considered most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway moss. Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already noticed in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general system. I recommend his special attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of the terms "figurative" and "symbolic," as applied to art, in the beginning of the paper. * * * * * In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented conventionally rather than naturally. By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand, representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute and equivalent. In figurative representation there is always _impersonation_; the sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as constitute personality. The sensible _symbol_, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has in some way associated it. For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind. This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is embodied is changed. Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested, like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole. Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure, _personify_, but rather _typifies_ the town, standing as the visible representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the other. Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic, are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited from the art of successive races in chronological order. In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the first of these is an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being strangely confused in the design. In this pond water is represented by parallel zigzag lines, in which fish are swimming about. On the surface are birds and lotos flowers; the herbage at the edge of the pond is represented by a border of symmetrical fan-shaped flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees, arranged round the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and in defiance of all laws of perspective. [Illustration: Fig. LXXI.] In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing, where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore, the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch, "Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water. On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming (see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just cited. In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character and attributes of this deity we know but little. The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not long after the conquest of it by the Persians. In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Mæander, are well known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping waves which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the Greeks. Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume, are generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties which distinguish one wave from another are merged in the general type. The character of ocean waves is to be "for ever changing, yet the same for ever;" it is this eternity of recurrence which the early artist has expressed in this hieroglyphic. With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi. pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Mæander pattern the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins we find the curvilinear form introduced. In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Mæander are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the Nymphs and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the language of art formed out of these elements. This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups, those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water. The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the Nereids, that is to say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a horse, the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected to show how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation. In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini. On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii. pl. 50), we have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details with which it is made out. This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling, that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a figurative representation of the water it contained. On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps. These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5). Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell, on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words from sentences. The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression. We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient harbors. Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p. 40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No. 30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii., c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph. On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, _subductæ_; at the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II., No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831, pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.) In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand. One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the _rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, appear caught up in the coils of these tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her type see Monum. dell'Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3. The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following heads--rivers, lakes, fountains. There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very frequently employed in ancient mythography. In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man with a shaggy beard and bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented with a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead; his form, human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail; his hair falls down his back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement of the Trachiniæ. [Greek: Achelôon legô, os m' en trisin morphaisin exêtei patros, phoitôn enargês auros allot' aiolos, drakôn heliktos, allot' andreiô kytei bouprôros, ek de daskiou geneiados krounoi dierrhainonto krênaiou potou]. In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Oeniadæ in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander the Great, the Achelous has a bull's body, and head with a human face. In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp. 106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are intended to express the changeful nature of the element water. Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented standing, never reclining. The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna Græcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period, the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head occur on the coins of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type. The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed, is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678. It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull's horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti, Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre, both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated symbolic panorama of the Nile. The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks, herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P. Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304, 308.) In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin. On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the youthful head of a river-god, inscribed "Hipparis" on the obverse. On some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves, which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a lake through which the river Hipparis flows. We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the lake. Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf. CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot spring at Thermæ in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle of wave pattern described above. These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias. Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures, generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms, and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller (Denkmäler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins. On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation. On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire, with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl. 1-4). In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript. Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water. This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil. Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant, and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a _hydria_, or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water plants, and the _hydria_ must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water, the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for the use of man. Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell. One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a bird's-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief. 22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION. I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable ornamentation of the Alhambra.[105] The Alhambra is no more characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment of Regent Street and Oxford Street. 23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER. Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe within it a circle, _p_ Q N _p_, of the size of the bead required, touching A B, A C, in _p_, _p_; join _p_, _p_, and draw B C parallel to it, touching the circle. Then the lines B C, _p p_ are the limits of the possible chamfers constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q _q_, N _d_, _r u_, _g c_, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines, as _a b_, _e f_. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to be struck between B C and _p p_, from every point in Q A produced to infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the straight chamfers, _a b_, _e f_, &c., of which the one formed by the line _a b_, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal early Gothic chamfer of Venice. Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A _l_ or A _m_, radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an infinite number of curves may be struck, such as _t u_, _r s_, N _n_ (all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N _n_ (for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers of the same group, _r s_, _t u_, &c., occurring often in Italy. The lines _r u_, _t u_, and _a b_ may be taken approximating to the most frequent conditions of the southern chamfer. [Illustration: Fig. LXXII.] It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q. 24. RENAISSANCE BASES. The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of late decoration of shafts. "The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and richly interlaced--the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work--and the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as those of the Noah,[106] though more injured by time. The capitals are far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy, and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive, and utterly useless." The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals, elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,--not in a bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures. The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate of the Renaissance architects,--to caricature whatever they imitated, and misapply whatever they learned. 25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES. I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the Roman Catholic priests everywhere suffer their churches to be desecrated. But the worst instances I ever saw of sacrilege and brutality, daily permitted in the face of all men, were the uses to which the noble base of St. Mark's was put, when I was last in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be found abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no obscure position. Full fronting the western sun--crossing the whole breadth of St. Mark's Place--the termination of the most noble square in the world--the centre of the most noble city--its purple marbles were, in the winter of 1849, the customary _gambling tables_ of the idle children of Venice; and the parts which flank the Great Entrance, that very entrance where "Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a common bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter spoons and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera, mixed with those of the offices of religion; the caricatures being fastened with twine round the porphyry shafts of the church. One Sunday, the 24th of February, 1850, the book-stall being somewhat more richly laid out than usual, I noted down the titles of a few of the books in the order in which they lay, and I give them below. The irony conveyed by the juxtaposition of the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be accidental; but the fact was actually so. Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds of books, Officium Beatæ Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadæ sanctæ, juxta Formam Missalis et Breviarii Romani sub Urbano VIII. correcti. Behind these lay, side by side, the following: Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica. Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione. On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open, La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica. _Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima._ _Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie._ _Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica._ Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:-- Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata. Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro il Fenice. Modo di orare per l'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI. Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rappresentarsi nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice. Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue Virtu. Traduzione dell'Idioma Italiana. La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari. La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica. Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa. I leave these facts without comment. But this being the last piece of Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I would desire to close its pages with a question to my readers--a statistical question, which, I doubt not, is being accurately determined for us all elsewhere, and which, therefore, it seems to me, our time would not be wasted in determining for ourselves. There has now been peace between England and the continental powers about thirty-five years, and during that period the English have visited the continent at the rate of many thousands a year, staying there, I suppose, on the average, each two or three months; nor these an inferior kind of English, but the kind which ought to be the best--the noblest born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation. These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation, would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her, and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they crossed the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see added together, on one side of the account book, a great sum, the certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years' spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:-- To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva, and elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa, so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much; to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written: To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and Piedmont, so much. Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time? FOOTNOTES: [93] Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I. [94] Compare Appendix 12. [95] L'Artiste en Bâtiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My printer writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with thanks:--"This is not the first attempt at a French order. The writer has a Treatise by Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his generation, which contains a Roman order, a Spanish order, which the inventor appears to think very grand, and a _new_ French order nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping its wings in the capital." [96] The lower group in Plate XVII. [97] One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight's plate represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once; and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects. Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts, as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted to the Greek architecture, which is _utterly useless_ to us--or worse. _One_ most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our English abbeys,--Mr. E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"--almost a model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all Europe. [98] Except in the single passage "tell it unto the Church," which is simply the _extension_ of what had been commanded before, i.e., tell the fault first "between thee and him," then taking "with thee one or two more," then, to all Christian men capable of hearing the cause: if he refuse to hear their common voice, "let him be unto thee as a heathen man and publican:" (But consider how Christ treated both.) [99] One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had intended to have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have arranged in more consistent order, and published in a separate pamphlet, "Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds," for the convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of Venetian palaces. [100] Not, however, by Johnson's _testimony_: Vide Adventurer, No. 39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,--the low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, _digesting dictionaries_, or accumulating compilations." [101] We have done so--theoretically; just as one would reason on the human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human form frames all at once--bone and flesh. [102] Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of sculpture could be as sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And, if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all in bronze--we might actually coin churches, and have mints of Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere mechanical applications of glass and iron. [103] I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current text, therefore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they are thus written, 2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first figures stand for English feet, the second for English inches. [104] I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my kind friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library. [105] I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work may, I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for all purposes of criticism. [106] The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace, of which we shall have much to say hereafter. * * * * * CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT. Footnote [31] 'Greek porticos' changed to 'Greek porticoes'. Page 42: '§ XL. It is not' corrected to '§ XI. It is not'. Page 161: Added 'r' to 'timbe' in 'long stone or piece of timbe'. Page 180: 'XII. 2. Inlet' corrected to '§ XII. 2. Inlet'. Page 237: 'rererence' changed to 'reference' in 'How is ornament to be treated with rererence'. Page 247: '§ XIV. Now this is' corrected to '§ XIX. Now this is'. Page 273: 'no' changed to 'not' in 'a peculiar look, which I can no otherwise describe'. Page 333: comma changed to period at the paragraph ending with 'separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable'. Page 370: 'two-thsrds' corrected to 'two-thirds'. Page 397: 'bodly' corrected to 'bodily' in 'merely through the channel of the bodly dexterities'. Page 398: 'calld' corrected to 'called' in 'Men engaged in the practice of these are calld artizans'. Page 401: 'necesary' corrected to 'necessary' in 'as Rubens was of that necesary for his'. Page 406: Space placement corrected in 'I found it a sugly at last' to 'I found it as ugly at last'. Page 423: 'Milligen' corrected to 'Millingen' in 'Compare also Milligen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings'. Page 433: space between 'rappresent' and 'arsi' removed in 'Tre Atti, da rappresent arsi'. Page 433: 'del' corrected to 'dell' in 'Traduzione del' Idioma Italiana'. 
33589	----	produced from images available at The Internet Archive.) ARCHITECTURE BY MRS. ARTHUR BELL AUTHOR OF "THE ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF ART," "MASTERPIECES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS," "REPRESENTATIVE PAINTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," ETC. [Illustration: logo] LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION: WHAT ARCHITECTURE IS--MATERIALS EMPLOYED--DEFINITION OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE TWO MAIN STYLES, TRABEATED AND ARCUATED v I. EGYPTIAN, ASIATIC, AND EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE 7 II. GREEK ARCHITECTURE 13 III. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE 22 IV. EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE 31 V. BYZANTINE AND SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE 36 VI. ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE 45 VII. ANGLO-SAXON AND ANGLO-NORMAN ARCHITECTURE 52 VIII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE 60 IX. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN 72 X. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE 83 XI. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN 88 INDEX 93 INTRODUCTION WHAT ARCHITECTURE IS--MATERIALS EMPLOYED--DEFINITION OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE TWO MAIN STYLES, TRABEATED AND ARCUATED It is only when a building entirely fulfils the purpose for which it is intended and bears the impress of a genuine style that it takes rank as a work of architecture. This definition, exclusive though it at first sight appears, brings within the province of the art every structure which combines with practical utility beauty of design and execution, from the humblest cottage to the most dignified temple or palace. Suitability of material and harmony with its surroundings are among the minor factors that give to a building vitality of character and contribute to its enduring value, a value enhanced by its reflection of the needs and aspirations of those by whom and for whom it was erected. Wood appears to have been the earliest material used for the building of a home when out-of-door dwellings took the place of the caves that were the first shelters of primitive man. At Joigny in France there still exist examples of what are supposed to be the most ancient of all such dwellings, namely circular holes, locally known as _buvards_, in which the trunk of a tree had been fixed, the branches plastered over with clay forming the roof of a simple but rain-proof refuge. Huts of wattle and hurdle work dating from prehistoric times have also been preserved, some rising from the ground, others from platforms resting on piles sunk in the beds of lakes. These were in their time superseded by stronger structures, with walls made of squared beams piled up horizontally and fastened together at the corners with wooden pegs; the roof being formed of roughly sawn planks. Out of such primeval houses as these were evolved in the course of centuries the picturesque half-timbered cottages of mediæval Europe and the quaint wooden churches of Norway such as the characteristic one at Hitterdal. Limestone, granite, and sandstone were used for building at a very remote period in much the same way as wood, large blocks, fresh from the quarry, of all manner of different shapes, being piled up horizontally or stood on edge, no cement being employed, though in certain cases crushed stone was used to fill up the spaces between the blocks. To walls or buildings of which courses of undressed stone were the only materials, the name of Cyclopean has been given because of the erroneous belief that it was originated by the Cyclopes, an imaginary race of giants, supposed to have lived in Thrace, a province of ancient Greece. Bricks, that is to say, dried blocks of clay, were used at a very early date as a supplement to or substitute for wood and stone for building purposes. The most ancient bricks were not subjected to artificial heat but were simply exposed to the sun, and even when kiln-baked bricks were introduced they were often employed merely to face the older variety. Spacious and lofty buildings consisting entirely of bricks were erected at a very early date in Assyria, Persia, and elsewhere, and some of the most noteworthy architectural survivals of the Roman Empire are of the same material. The main features of a building are determined by the shape of the walls or the mode of arrangement of the pillars that take the place of walls, the way in which the roof is constructed, and that in which the openings of the doors and windows are spanned. The earliest roofs were flat, and the most ancient mode of linking together the supports of doors and windows was to place a plank of wood or slab of stone known as a _lintel_ across them at the top. To this style of roofing and spanning, which reached its most perfect development in the temples of Greece, the name of the _trabeated_ was given, derived in the first instance from the so-called _trabea_, a toga adorned with horizontal stripes. It was only by very gradual degrees that the trabeated mode of roofing and spanning was succeeded by what is known as the _arcuated_, or that in which the arch takes the place of the horizontal beam. In early Roman temples and palaces the Greek style was long carefully copied, but in utilitarian works such as bridges, viaducts, and drains the arch was employed at a very remote period. An arch whether circular or pointed consists of two series of stones cut into the form of wedges known as _voussoirs_, a central one at the apex or highest point called the _keystone_ locking the two series together. This beautiful contrivance, the inventor of which is unknown, gradually revolutionised the science of architecture. It was used at first, tentatively as it were, in combination with the horizontal beam or slab of stone, but in the end became in its rounded form the distinctive peculiarity of the Romanesque and in its pointed shape of the Gothic style. ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER I EGYPTIAN, ASIATIC, AND EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE The most ancient existing examples of Egyptian architecture are the royal tombs of the Memphite kingdom known as the Pyramids, of which the oldest is that of King Seneferu (about 3000 B.C.) at Medum, and the largest, which rises to a height of 481 feet from a base 764 feet square, that called the Great Pyramid of King Cheops (3788-3666) at Ghizeh, near Cairo, on which 100,000 men are said to have been continuously employed for thirty years. The latter is not only a marvel of constructive skill, but is by many authorities considered to be a most accurately designed astronomical observatory. [Illustration: Section of King's Chamber, and of Passage in Great Pyramid] The Pyramids consist of masses of admirably squared and polished stones, in certain cases supplemented with bricks piled up in the form of a rectangle around a sepulchral chamber, the entrance to which was most carefully concealed. When the body of the monarch had been placed in it the tapering mound above it was finished off with huge facing blocks, that were skilfully worked into the angle required and finally levelled to a smooth surface. Near the Pyramids of the kings are the tombs, known as Mastabas, of their wives and children and of the great officers of state. They are constructed of stone, are square or oblong in form, and their walls are adorned with paintings of scenes from contemporary life, the whole reminiscent of earlier timber structures. Later tombs are those hewn out of the living rock at Beni Hassan and elsewhere, dating from about 2500 B.C., with porticoes upheld by columns resembling those of Greek temples and flat or curved roofs, the latter suggestive of the principle of the arch having been known to those who excavated them. [Illustration: Section of Hall at Karnak] It was between 1600 B.C. and 1110 B.C. that the Egyptians reached their highest point of civilisation, and it was during that period that were erected the magnificent Theban temples, of which those at Karnak and Luxor, which were connected by an avenue of colossal sphinxes, are the finest still remaining. The plan of all Egyptian temples of whatever size was the same: a horizontal gateway flanked on either side by masses of masonry of considerably greater height than it, known as pylons, their surfaces enriched with symbolic carvings, giving access to a square space open to the sky, and partly surrounded with cloisters, leading into a noble hall of huge dimensions, its flat roof upheld by columns, some with capitals resembling lotus buds, others representing the head of the goddess Isis. Beyond this hall were a number of small dark rooms, the use of which has never been ascertained, enclosing within them the nucleus of the whole, the low narrow mysterious cell or sanctuary in which was enshrined the image of the god to whom the temple was dedicated. Outside these noble buildings were ranged obelisks, or four-sided tapering-pillars of great height, covered with hieroglyphics commemorating the triumphs of the kings, and colossal figures, few of which remain _in situ_, which added greatly to the dignity of the appearance of the whole. To the same period as the temples of Thebes belong those of very similar general design hewn out of the sides of the mountains of Nubia, of which the best example is the larger of the two at Ipsambul, specially noteworthy for the huge seated figure of the monarch for whom it was built, the great Rameses II, guarding the entrance to it. The tombs of the Theban rulers, like the Nubian temples, were hewn out of the living rock, and are many of them, notably those known as the Tombs of the Kings and the Tombs of the Queens in the plains watered by the Nile, of vast extent, labyrinths of passages, alternating with large rooms, leading to the actual sepulchral chamber. [Illustration: Tomb at Beni Hassan] Of considerably later date than any of the buildings referred to above are the temples of Denderah, Edfou, and Philæ, erected after the conquest of Egypt by the Greeks, but they all resemble those of the Theban dynasty in general style, whilst that at Esneh is a good example of the results of Roman influence. Very great is the contrast to Egyptian architecture presented by the Asiatic buildings that have been preserved to the present day. In the former stone was the usual material employed, and the mode of construction was as a general rule that known as the post and lintel, whilst in the latter brick was almost exclusively used, and the arch was a distinctive feature. The so-called Babylonian or Chaldean, Assyrian, and Persian styles resemble each other so greatly that they may justly be said to belong to one type, evolved by the inhabitants of the extensive region watered by the Euphrates and Tigris, who like the Egyptians attained to a very advanced civilisation at a remote period. Of the temples not a single one has been preserved, but the remains have recently been excavated, in the mounds on the site of Babylon, of four that consisted of numerous chambers enclosing a large court with towered gateways, whilst at Assur another has been uncovered of a somewhat similar design. To atone for the lack of temples many Asiatic palaces have been to some extent reconstructed, the most remarkable being those unearthed near the villages of Nimrod, Khorsabad, and Koyunjik, all supposed to be relics of Nineveh. They originally consisted of lofty many-roomed structures raised on high platforms, and entered from arched gateways flanked by colossal winged bulls of stone. The brick walls were encased in alabaster slabs carved with figure subjects in low relief, some of which are in the British Museum, and galleries, rising from columns with capitals that foreshadowed Greek forms, admitted air and light freely. The Palace of Nebuchadnezzar has also recently been identified, and must when uninjured have been an immense castle-like pile with a vast number of courts and halls to which a paved way led up. [Illustration: Terrace Wall at Khorsabad] Tombs and palaces are the chief relics of Persian architecture. Many of the former, notably that near Murghab, supposed to have been the sepulchre of Cyrus, resemble Greek temples in general style, whilst others are rock-cut and recall the Mastabas of Egypt. Of the palaces those at Persepolis were the most remarkable, for in them Persian architecture reached its fullest development. Their ruins, that rise from a platform some forty feet high hewn out of the surface of the living rock, to which long flights of steps led up, consist of vast columned halls entered from detached porticoes known as propylæa. When intact the largest of these halls, named after Xerxes, must have exceeded in size the cathedrals of Canterbury or Winchester. Other noteworthy relics of early Asiatic architecture are the tombs of Lycia, Phrygia, and Lydia. The first named--of which the so-called tomb of the Harpies now in the British Museum is a typical example--are all either cut in the living rock or carved out of detached masses of stone, in either case recalling in their general appearance the log-huts of prehistoric times. More ornate than those of Lycia, the Phrygian sepulchral monuments, of which the grave of Midas at Doganlu is the finest, are also rock hewn, but their shape and decoration are more suggestive of the tent than the wooden dwelling, whilst those in Lydia are comparatively primitive, being in some cases, notably in the Tumulus of Tantalus on the Gulf of Smyrna, mere masses of stone heaped up above a huge mound. [Illustration: Restored Section of Hall of Xerxes] [Illustration: Capital of Lât] The most ancient examples of Indian architecture are the Stambhas or Lâts, the earliest dating from the time of Asoka (272-236 B.C.), that are pillars bearing inscriptions and surmounted by a symbolic animal such as an elephant or a lion, of which there is a good specimen at Allahabad, and the Stupas or Topes, mounds encased in masonry, crowned by a reliquary containing memorials of Buddha or of his chief disciples, and enclosed within a stone railing elaborately carved with scenes from the life of the founder of Buddhism, with an even more ornate gateway at each of the four corners, of which the finest is the larger of two at Sanchi in Central India. Even more interesting than the Lâts and Stupas are the Viharas or Buddhist monasteries, of which there is a specially good example at Nigope near Behar, and the Chaityas or temples, of which those at Karli, Ellora, Ajunta, and Elephanta are amongst the finest. All alike hewn out of the living rock, the former consist of a square central hall with or without columns, surrounded by cells for the monks, whilst the latter, of more complicated design, resemble in general plan a Roman basilica. A wide nave with rows of massive pillars upholding a slightly domed roof is flanked by lateral aisles, and at the eastern end rises a semicircular sanctuary containing a seated figure of Buddha. [Illustration: Section of Cave at Karli] Out of the Buddhist religion grew that known as the Jaina, and many fine temples, of which the most remarkable are that at Sadri and the Dilwana Temple on Mount Abu, remain that were erected for the use of its professors. It was usual to group a number on some hill-top, and the plan of each was generally that of a Greek cross, a columned portico giving access to a complex collection of shrines, each approached by avenues of pillars and roofed in with a separate dome, whilst the exterior was adorned with rounded towers finished off with pointed finials suggestive of a spire, the whole both inside and out being richly decorated with carvings. [Illustration: View of Temple at Sadri] Hindu architecture, or that of those who hold the Brahmanic faith, differs very greatly from Buddhist, its chief characteristic being a lofty pyramidal tower of several stories, as a general rule covered with ornament, that reached its fullest development in the so-called pagodas, of which there are fine specimens at Jaggernaut, Mahavellipore, and Palitana. In different parts of India various modifications of this general style occur to which distinctive names have been given, but the same spirit may be said to pervade them all, from the great Temples of Bhuvaneswar, Tanjore, Bundaban, and elsewhere, to the humbler shrines scattered throughout the length and breadth of the vast continent and of its island dependencies. There is nothing very distinctive about the architecture of China or Japan. The Buddhist temples in both countries recall those of India, but the pagodas, most of which are of wood faced with porcelain tiles, differ slightly in having a curved roof to each story. The palaces of China are impressive on account of their vast extent and the use of copper in their construction, but the domestic buildings of Japan are all of comparatively small size. In America as in Asia are many deeply interesting architectural relics of the civilisation of the early inhabitants, of which the most remarkable are the ruins of Cyclopean buildings on the shores of Lake Tatiaca, the remains of the ancient city of Cuzco, all in Peru, and the Teocallis or temples and Palaces of the kings in Mexico, Yucatan, and Guatemala, none of which however call for description here as they did not influence the architecture of the future in their own or any other country. CHAPTER II GREEK ARCHITECTURE In their architecture as in their sculpture the Greeks gave eloquent expression to the exquisite feeling for symmetry of form which was one of their most distinctive characteristics. Architects and masons were in close touch with the people for whom they built, no social barriers, so far as the arts and crafts were concerned, divided class from class, citizens, aliens, and even slaves vying with each other in their zeal to produce the best work possible. The finest buildings of ancient Greece and its dependencies entirely fulfilled the conditions of true architecture, for they were beautiful alike in design and execution, admirably adapted to the purpose for which they were erected, and in complete harmony with their surroundings. Moreover they are of exceptional importance in the history of the evolution of the art on account of the influence they exercised on that of other countries, all their distinctive features having been either copied or modified in those of the rest of Europe. [Illustration: Plan of Greek Temple] The Greeks, though they were doubtless acquainted with the arch, the dome, and the tower, refrained as a general rule from using them, probably because they considered them unsuitable to the topographical and climatic conditions that prevailed in their native land. They achieved their highest results by means of correctness of proportion and dignity of outline, giving far more attention to the exterior than to the interior of their buildings, and in this respect differing greatly from the Egyptians, who endeavoured to impress the spectator chiefly by the vast extent and massiveness of their temples and palaces. [Illustration: Doric Capital] Recent discoveries on the site of Knossos in Crete of the remains of a many-roomed palace, and elsewhere in the same island of circular stone tombs, all of which betray strong Oriental influence, confirm the opinion of archæologists that it was in the islands of the Ægina Sea that the first works of architecture properly so called were erected in Europe. On the mainland of Greece, notably at Mycenæ and Tiryns, exists relics of many buildings, including at the former the noble Lion Gate that gave access to the Acropolis, and at the latter the residence of a chieftain, which maintain the continuity between the earliest and the latest phase of Greek architecture, and may justly be said to presage the triumphs of the Golden Age. [Illustration: Column from the Parthenon] From first to last Hellenic architecture was characterised by unity of purpose, its grandest forms being essentially the same in general principle as its earliest efforts, the mud walls with timber pillars upholding a flat wooden roof, having been gradually transformed into stately colonnaded structures in costly materials, that to this day remain absolutely unrivalled in their exquisite beauty of proportion and the close correlation of every detail with each other and the whole. [Illustration: Portion of a Doric Entablature] The grand temples of Greece were built either of stone or of marble. As a general rule they are set on a platform to which a long flight of steps lead up, and are enclosed within an outer wall or a continuous colonnade. Their plan is extremely simple: a parallelogram, formed in some cases entirely of columns, in others with walls at the side and columns at the ends only, encloses a second and considerably smaller pillared space known as the cella or naos, that enshrined the image of the god to whom the building was dedicated, and was entered from a pronaos or porch, and with a posticum or back space behind it, sometimes supplemented by a kind of second cella called the opisthodomus or back temple. The front columns at either end are spanned by horizontal beams that uphold a sloping gable called a pediment, the flat, three-cornered surface of which is generally adorned with sculpture in bas-relief, and along the side-columns is placed what is known as the entablature, that consists of three parts, the architrave resting on the capitals of the columns, the frieze above it and the cornice, the last of which sustains the flat roof, usually covered with tiles or marble copies of tiles. [Illustration: The Parthenon] Greek architecture is generally divided into three groups or orders: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, each of which, though the buildings belonging to them resemble each other in general plan, is distinguished by certain peculiarities of the columns and entablatures. The Doric was the earliest to be employed, but the Ionic, that early succeeded it, was long used simultaneously with it, sometimes even in the same building, whilst the Corinthian did not come into use until considerably later. [Illustration: Metope from the Parthenon] In the Doric order the column has no separate base, but rises direct from the top step of the platform on which the building it belongs to stands. It is of massive form and has what is known as an entasis or slightly convex surface, it is generally fluted, that is to say, cut into parallel perpendicular channels, several rings called annulets connecting it with the capital, which consists of an echinus or rounded moulding and an abacus or unrounded slab resting on the echinus. The Doric entablature is equally simple, the architrave being perfectly plain, whilst the frieze is adorned with triglyphs or three upright projections with grooves between them, set at equal distances from each other, the spaces separating them, known as metopes, being as a rule enriched with fine sculptures of figure subjects. The frieze is connected with the cornice by narrow bands called mutules resting on the triglyphs and metopes, and the cornice itself has a plain lower band known as the corona, surmounted by more or less decorated courses of stone or marble. [Illustration: Portion of Frieze of Parthenon] [Illustration: Portion of Frieze of Parthenon] [Illustration: Ionic Capital] The Ionic and Corinthian orders are alike characterised by lightness and grace rather than massiveness and simplicity. In both, the columns, instead of rising direct from the platform, have a complex base consisting of a number of circular mouldings above another, the fluted shafts are comparatively slim and tapering, and the channels in them are divided by spaces called fillets. In the Ionic order the flat abacus of the Doric capital is replaced by two coiled volutes projecting beyond the echinus on either side, and the horizontal portion between the volutes is surmounted by finely carved leaf mouldings. The Corinthian order is specially distinguished by the ornate decoration of the capitals, that represent calices of flowers and leaves, chiefly those of the acanthus, arranged so as to point upwards and curve outwards in much the same style as they do in nature. The architrave in both the Ionic and the Corinthian orders consists of plain slabs, but the frieze--which is not divided as in Doric buildings into triglyphs and metopes--is in nearly every case enriched with a series of beautiful figure subjects, and is therefore known as the Zoophorus or figure-bearer. [Illustration: Ionic Column] Among the most ancient remains of sacred Greek architecture are those of the Heræon or Sanctuary of the Goddess Hera at Olympia; of the temple that preceded the Parthenon at Athens; and of those at Assos in Asia Minor, Selinus in Sicily, and Corcyra in Corfu, the last a very typical example of archaic Doric, with a pediment in which are primitive sculptures of a gorgon flanked by lions. Of somewhat later date are the ruined temples at Girgenti, Syracuse, and Segesta, all in Sicily, the last the best preserved of all; the group at Pæstum in Southern Italy, of which that of Neptune is the finest, the pediments having been originally filled in with beautifully executed sculptured figures. The Temple of Athene in the island of Ægina marks the transition from the extreme severity of early Doric to the more ornate buildings of the Golden Age of Greek architecture, its decorative sculptures being of exquisite design and execution. The Temple of Jupiter at Athens, begun in the Doric style by Pisistratus about 540 B.C. and not completed until about 174 B.C., has Corinthian capitals on some of its columns, and the Temple of Theseus, of uncertain date, in the same city, that consists entirely of white marble, ranks, in spite of its severe simplicity, even with that of Neptune at Pæstum on account of its fine proportions and the admirable finish of every detail. [Illustration: Ionic Entablature from the Erectheum] It was in the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin Goddess of Wisdom, at Athens, that the Doric style found its highest expression, for in it were combined the massive grandeur of the archaic period with the refinements of construction, decoration, and lighting of a more scientific but not less æsthetic age. It occupies the site of an earlier building, the relics of which are referred to above, that was destroyed by Xerxes, and it rises from the summit of the lofty rock of the Acropolis that dominated the ancient city. It was built, it is supposed, by the famous architects Ictinus and Callicrates about 440 B.C., under the enlightened ruler Pericles, and its decorative sculptures, some of which are now in the British Museum, were the work of Phidias and his pupils, and, mutilated though they are, they still rank amongst the greatest masterpieces of plastic art. Before the Parthenon, after being long used as a Christian church, was reduced to ruins by the explosion of a shell, when in 1687 it was desecrated by being converted into a powder magazine by the Turks during their struggle with the Venetians, it must have been one of the very noblest buildings in the world, forming with other sanctuaries and secular buildings on the world-famous hill a spectacle of surpassing grandeur, the pride and glory of the whole Greek world. [Illustration: Acanthus Ornament] [Illustration: Corinthian Capital] The Parthenon was 228 feet long by 101 broad, and 64 feet high; the porticoes at each end had a double row of eight columns; the sculptures in the pediments were in full relief, representing in the eastern the Birth of Athene, and in the western the Struggle between that goddess and Poseidon, whilst those on the metopes, some of which are supposed to be from the hand of Alcamenes, the contemporary and rival of Phidias, rendered scenes from battles between the Gods and Giants, the Greeks and the Amazons, and the Centaurs and Lapithæ. Of somewhat later date than the Parthenon and resembling it in general style, though it is very considerably smaller, is the Theseum or Temple of Theseus on the plain on the north-west of the Acropolis, and at Bassæ in Arcadia is a Doric building, dedicated to Apollo Epicurius and designed by Ictinus, that has the peculiarity of facing north and south instead of, as was usual, east and west. Scarcely less beautiful than the Parthenon itself is the grand triple portico known as the Propylæa that gives access to it on the western side. It was designed about 430 by Mnesicles, and in it the Doric and Ionic styles are admirably combined, whilst in the Erectheum, sacred to the memory of Erechtheus, a hero of Attica, the Ionic order is seen at its best, so delicate is the carving of the capitals of its columns. It has moreover the rare and distinctive feature of what is known as a caryatid porch, that is to say, one in which the entablature is upheld by caryatides or statues representing female figures. Other good examples of the Ionic style are the small Temple of Niké Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, situated not far from the Propylæa and the Parthenon of Athens, the more important Temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Miletus, originally of most imposing dimensions, and that of Artemis at Ephesus, of which however only a few fragments remain _in situ_. Of the sacred buildings of Greece in which the Corinthian order was employed there exist, with the exception of the Temple of Jupiter at Athens already referred to, but a few scattered remains, such as the columns from Epidaurus now in the Athens Museum, that formed part of a circlet of Corinthian pillars within a Doric colonnade. In the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, designed by Scopas in 394, however, the transition from the Ionic to the Corinthian style is very clearly illustrated, and in the circular Monument of Lysicrates, erected in 334 B.C. to commemorate the triumph of that hero's troop in the choric dances in honour of Dionysos, and the Tower of the Winds, both at Athens, the Corinthian style is seen at its best. [Illustration: Corinthian Column from Monument of Lysicrates] In addition to the temples described above, some remains of tombs, notably that of the huge Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in memory of King Mausolus, who died in 353 B.C., and several theatres, including that of Dionysos at Athens, with a well-preserved one of larger size at Epidaurus, bear witness to the general prevalence of Doric features in funereal monuments and secular buildings, but of the palaces and humbler dwelling-houses in the three Greek styles, of which there must have been many fine examples, no trace remains. There is however no doubt that the Corinthian style was very constantly employed after the power of the great republics had been broken, and the Oriental taste for lavish decoration replaced the love for austere simplicity of the virile people of Greece and its dependencies. [Illustration: Corinthian Entablature from Monument of Lysicrates] CHAPTER III ROMAN ARCHITECTURE After the Golden Age of Greek architecture properly so called was over, a kind of aftermath prevailed for some little time in the peninsula and the outlying colonies of Greece, to be succeeded by a transition time to which the name of the Hellenistic has been given, during which is supposed to have been inaugurated the use of the arch and the vault, which were in course of time to revolutionise the art of building. It has long been customary to give to the Etruscans, an Asiatic people who in very early times occupied a considerable portion of Italy, the credit of the first introduction of the arch in Western Europe. It is however now more generally believed that the Roman style of building was an offshoot of the Hellenistic, in which the dome was certainly employed, though no existing examples of its use can be quoted. The city of Alexandria, founded about 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, is known to have had four principal colonnaded streets leading from a four-arched central building, and many are of opinion that much of the town was built over arched cisterns. The dome may possibly have been in the first instance introduced into western Europe as a cover for the hot baths in which the wealthy delighted, and its form was probably the same as that of the one preserved at Pompeii. The famous arched drain at Rome, known as the Cloaca Maxima, so constantly referred to as the greatest masterpiece of the Etruscans was not, it has now been proved, built until after their subjugation and extinction as a nation. For all that they were without doubt most skilful architects and engineers; the walls of their cities were of cyclopean masonry and were entered from arched gateways, a good example of which is to be seen at Volterra, constructed of wedge-shaped stones fixed without cement. Their rock-cut tombs, such as those at Corneto, Vulci, and Chiusi, are divided into many chambers, the walls adorned with paintings, the roof upheld by columns, and the façades resembling those of Egyptian temples, whilst the tumuli in which they sometimes buried their dead are surmounted by pyramids of earth resting on stone foundations. [Illustration: Roman Barrel Vault] From whatever source Roman architects got their inspiration, they very soon absorbed all external influences and stamped the buildings they erected with a character of their own. From the first sun-dried bricks, sometimes combined with stone, were the chief materials used, even the grander structures of the best period such as the huge palaces and halls were of plastered brickwork, stone having been as a general rule reserved for such works as temples, theatres, and triumphal arches. Concrete was also largely employed, and timber in many cases was turned to account for roofing. The most distinctive peculiarity of the architecture of the Romans is the vaulted roof, which they employed in an infinite variety of ways, introducing it at every possible opportunity. The simplest form, known as the waggon or barrel vault, is a semicircular arch spanning two walls, whilst a more elaborate contrivance consists of two intersecting vaults of the same height crossing each other at right angles, which was used in Rome as early as 75 B.C. These two forms were sometimes supplemented by what are distinguished as conches or half-domes over external semicircular recesses, of which the apse is a characteristic example. With the aid of these three varieties of vaulting, that were occasionally combined with consummate skill, the Romans were able to roof in large or small circular spaces, and in some few cases, as in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, they even to a certain extent anticipated the clever contrivance known as the pendentive, a triangular piece of vaulting springing from the corners of a right-angled enclosure, that was later brought to such perfection in Byzantine architecture. [Illustration: Intersecting Vaulting] With their wonderful system of vaulting the Romans combined the columnation and entablature of the Greeks, introducing innovations however that were in many cases anything but improvements. Thus they sometimes supplemented the foliage of the Corinthian capital with the volutes of the Ionic; whilst what is known as the Tuscan style is really merely a modification of the Doric, and is wanting in the simple dignity that characterised the latter, the metopes being adorned with sculptures very inferior to the beautiful figure subjects of the Parthenon and other Greek temples. Roman architects were in fact rather skilful engineers and adapters of the æsthetic conceptions of others than original designers of new forms of beauty, but they were unrivalled in their power of harmoniously co-ordinating in a single building an infinite variety of structural features. They were moreover exceptionally successful in the laying out of cities, as proved by the wonderful groups of buildings in the fora or public squares in which courts of justice and markets were held, of the capital and other cities, and by the fine continuous vistas of their streets, in which irregularities were masked by clever contrivances, adding greatly to the symmetry of the general effect. Temples, basilicas, baths, bridges, aqueducts, triumphal arches, palaces, and private houses were all set in the environment most suitable to them, and even tombs were ranged according to a definite plan, not, as in most modern cemeteries, dotted here and there in an arbitrary manner. [Illustration: Pont du Gard, Nîmes] The earliest Roman works of architecture were of a purely utilitarian character, and in addition to the Cloaca Maxima already mentioned the most noteworthy still in existence are the bridges over the Tiber, the aqueducts of the Campagna outside Rome, and the so-called Pont du Gard at Nîmes, France. The most ancient temples greatly resemble those of Greece, and amongst them may be named as specially typical those of Fortuna Virilis and of Antoninus and Faustina, both now in use as churches, and that of Venus and Rome, all in the capital, that of Diana at Nîmes known as the Maison Carrée, and that of the Sun at Baalbec. Of later date are the beautiful circular temples, of which the grandest example is the Pantheon of Rome, built under Hadrian about A.D. 117, in which Roman architecture reached its noblest development. The colonnaded porch with entablature and pediment, that detracts so much from the external effect of this magnificent building, did not originally belong to it, but formed the entrance of a temple built by Agrippa more than a century before, and was added to the Rotunda after the completion of the latter. The internal diameter of the Pantheon is 142 feet 6 inches, and its height at the apex of the dome is the same; its walls are 20 feet thick, and its concrete dome is adorned with deeply recessed panels or coffers and has a single circular opening at the crown through which alone light is admitted. The floor is of marble; bronze pilasters flank doorways of the same metal, the oldest existing specimens of their kind, and it is supposed that when first completed the whole of the outside was cased in white and the inside in coloured marbles. [Illustration: Section of Pantheon] Other circular temples of Roman origin, but on a much smaller scale than the Pantheon, are the Temple of Vesta and that in the Forum Boarium, Rome, the latter much injured and spoiled by a modern roof quite out of character with it; the one at Tivoli near the capital, known as that of the Sybils, still beautiful in spite of the loss of much of its entablature and many of its columns; the Temple of Jupiter at Spalato with a domed roof upheld by columns; and that at Baalbec, which has the distinctive feature of a curved instead of a perfectly flat entablature. A very special interest attaches to the Roman basilica on account of its having so long been supposed to have been the type on which the earliest Christian churches were built. Basilicas were used as courts of justice and exchanges, more rarely as market-places, and the most ancient are said to have been merely square spaces, enclosed within rows of columns open to the air, that were however soon succeeded by walled buildings roofed with timber or with vaults of concrete supported on massive piers of stone. In them a raised semicircular space at the eastern end was divided off by columns known as cancelli for the use of the magistrate and his lectors, and between it and the main body of the hall, which was divided by columns into a nave and aisles, rose the altar on which sacrifice was offered up before any business of importance was entered upon. A good example of an early Roman basilica is that called the Ulpian in the Forum of Trajan, Rome, dating from A.D. 98, which is said to have had a flat roof and double aisles, the latter surmounted by galleries, whilst that of Maxentius and Constantine, the ruins of which are known as the Temple of Peace, also in the capital, of considerably later date, A.D. 312, had a groined central roof and barrel-vaulted side aisles. [Illustration: Roman Doric Column and Entablature] [Illustration: Roman Ionic Column and Entablature] [Illustration: Roman Corinthian Column and Entablature] It was in their Thermæ or Baths rather than in their Temples and Basilicas that the Roman architects achieved their greatest triumphs. These were vast complex structures fitted up with every conceivable luxury for the use of bathers, with a large hall artificially heated and known as the tepidarium, open colonnaded courts, and many subsidiary buildings including gymnasia, debating rooms, &c. They combined simple grandeur of structure with rich internal decoration. The most ancient Thermæ in Rome, of which extensive remains still exist, were those of Caracalla, erected in A.D. 217, already referred to in connection with the earliest use of the contrivance which foreshadowed the pendentive. Rising from a lofty platform, the noble tepidarium was roofed in by three fine intersecting vaults, and its walls were cased in marble. With their supplementary buildings the baths covered a space some 110 yards square, and beneath them were many vaulted rooms for the attendants on the bathers. Amongst their ruins were found the masterpieces of sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules and the Farnese Bull, but when they were first placed there, there is no evidence to prove. [Illustration: Temple of Vesta, Rome] Larger and more imposing in appearance even than the Baths of Caracalla were those of Diocletian, that were capable of accommodating more than 3000 bathers and were built about A.D. 303. The grand hall or tepidarium and the barrel-vaulted entrance portico were most successfully converted in the sixteenth century into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli by Michael Angelo, and one of two circular structures that flanked the encircling wall was later consecrated under the name of S. Bernardo, and is still used as a place of worship. Next in importance to the Thermæ rank the Amphitheatres of the Roman Empire, in which gladiatorial contests and other trials of skill took place, and without which no town however small was considered complete. Though their detail was almost exclusively borrowed from the Greeks--tiers of arches resting on columns and surmounted by an entablature rising one above the other--their architects managed to impress on them a distinctive character of their own. Finest of all still existing examples is the Flavian Amphitheatre, generally known as the Coliseum at Rome, which occupies the site of the famous Golden House of Nero, and was completed about A.D. 70. It is of elliptical plan, measures some 612 by 515 feet, and was from 160 to 180 feet high. It was capable of containing some 80,000 spectators, and was for a long period the chief meeting-place of the Roman citizens. The exterior is four stories high and consists of a series of three rows of arches, the lowest with Doric, the second with Ionic, and the third with Corinthian capitals, the last surmounted by a row of Corinthian pilasters, forming a fourth story, which is supposed to have been originally of wood and to have been rebuilt in stone considerably later. The groups of seats, which, with the central arena they commanded, were protected from the weather by a moveable awning called the velarium, corresponded with the exterior stories, and to each tier a staircase led up, wide vaulted corridors connecting the various entrances with each other, running round the entire building, the whole producing a most harmonious and pleasing effect. At Verona, Capria, Pola, and Pezzuoli in Italy, at Syracuse in Sicily, and at Arles and Nîmes in France are remains of important Roman amphitheatres, and of the rarer theatres used for dramatic entertainments must be named the two well-preserved examples at Pompeii, the ruins of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus at Athens, and most ancient of all, the remains of the so-called Theatre of Marcellus at Rome now incorporated with the Orsinii Palace, all which appear to have resembled the Coliseum to a great extent in their general style and decoration. Of the vast and imposing palaces built or added to by successive Roman emperors, that included audience chambers, basilicas, stadia for athletic games, galleries, state dining-halls, baths, and many suites of apartments for various purposes, there exist unfortunately but a few remains. Nero's Golden House, several of the ruins of which were excavated in the 16th century, and inspired Raphael with some of the decorative details of the loggia of the Vatican, is said to have covered more than a mile of ground, and at one time the whole of the Palatine Hill was occupied by stately edifices, with the Palace of Augustus in the centre and those of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Septimius Severus, who greatly added to and modified the work of his predecessors, grouped about them, but all that can now be fully identified are some of the ground plans with a few of the minor details of structure. To atone for this however, much of the Palace of Diocletian at Spalato in Dalmatia, to which that emperor withdrew after his abdication in A.D. 305, which originally formed a small town in itself, is still to a great extent intact, including a temple now used as a cathedral, a gallery 520 feet long by 24 wide, and a few of the covered arcades that originally connected its various parts. What is left of the so-called Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli near Rome proves that it too was of vast extent, with a great variety of buildings, different suites of rooms having been occupied according to the seasons, and at Pompeii and Herculaneum, thanks to the remarkable preservation of many of the houses in them, notably that named after Pansa, the domestic architecture of the private citizens of the great Roman Empire, of which picturesque arcaded courts were a noteworthy feature, can be well studied, as well as that of the temples, triumphal arches, public baths, &c., all of which greatly resembled those of the Capital. [Illustration: Arch of Titus at Rome] Whether the Romans were or were not the first people of Western Europe to use the arch, they certainly took a very great delight in it, setting up ornately decorated examples of it at the entrances to their towns, their fora, and their bridges, as well as in commemoration of great victories in war and of the completion of civic enterprises. Most remarkable of those still standing in Rome are the Arch of Titus of one span only, erected in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Emperor after whom it is named; the triple-span arch of Septimius Severus, and the smaller one of Constantine. Though they were rather triumphs of engineering skill than works of architecture properly so called, the fine stone built aqueducts such as those in the Campagna of Rome and at Nîmes must be mentioned here on account of the æsthetic effect of the long rows of lofty arches, and a few words must also be said of the Pillars of Victory, of which that of Trajan at Rome is the most notable still extant, adorned as it is with a spiral of finely sculptured bas-reliefs. In the early days of the Roman power it was customary to cremate the dead, the ashes being preserved in urns that were ranged in cells known as Columbaria, generally hewn in the living rock. As time went on, however, the Egyptian mode of sepulchre was adopted. Bodies were embalmed and laid in stone or marble coffins which were placed in the basements of tombs of two or more stories, surmounted by round towers with pointed or circular roofs. Of these complex resting-places of the dead the finest now in existence is the Mole or Mausoleum of Hadrian, known as the Castle of S. Angelo, at Rome, which is some 300 feet high and was originally encased in marble. No burial was allowed within the walls of a Roman city, but the approaches were generally lined with tombs as at Rome, at Pompeii, and elsewhere, most of them, though on a smaller scale, of a similar plan to that of Hadrian. CHAPTER IV EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE It was in the low, gloomy, dimly lighted subterranean galleries known as catacombs, hewn in the living rock near Rome, that Christian architecture may be said to have had its first crude beginnings. The passages in the walls of which the graves of the dead were hollowed out, widened at intervals into spacious vaulted halls, where the persecuted followers of the crucified Redeemer met in secret for worship or to take part in the funeral services for those they had lost. It was long taken for granted that it was not until the first issue in A.D. 313 of the Edict of Milan by Constantine, Emperor of the West, and Licinius, Emperor of the East, that the professors of the new faith ventured to erect above ground buildings for the exercise of the rites of their religion, but recent discoveries prove that Christian churches were built as early as the 3rd century in many parts of the Roman empire. To quote but two cases in point, relics of a circular one with a small apse at the eastern end have been found at Antepellius in Asia Minor, and of one of the basilican type at Silchester in England. Moreover, heathen temples were occasionally converted into churches, whilst basilicas were sometimes used for Christian services just as they were. [Illustration: Plan of a Basilica] Some few early Christian churches were possibly modelled on classic tombs such as those referred to in the chapter on Roman architecture, but the more usual form was the basilican, the altar having been placed on the raised platform within the semicircular apse at the eastern end, the bishops and clergy occupying the seats assigned in halls of justice to the prætor and his assessors, whilst the congregation met in the nave and aisles. Ere long, however, to this general plan was added the distinctive feature of transepts or transverse passages running across the entrance to the apse, thus giving to the whole building the form of a cross. Later structural changes were the erection of an arch above the altar, the heightening of the nave, the connecting of the columns between the nave and aisles by arches instead of horizontal architraves, the introduction of windows, to which the collective name of the clerestory or the clear-story was given, in the semicircular heads of the arches and more rarely into the upper part of the low external walls of the aisles, the apse, which was gradually lengthened eastwards, being left comparatively dark, the only light proceeding from the main body of the church. Simultaneously with or in some cases earlier than these alterations, a portico known as the narthex was added at the western end, extending across the whole width of the nave and aisles, for the use of those, such as catechumens or penitents, who were not privileged to enter the church itself. The narthex in its turn was set within an atrium or outer colonnaded court, in the centre of which was a fountain, used by worshippers for ablutions before entering the consecrated building. A minor characteristic of early Christian churches was the richness of the internal decoration, mosaics that is to say, patterns or pictures made of many coloured pieces of glass or stone, combined in certain examples with marble carvings and gilding, adorned the vaulting, the wall, and even the floor, a kind of mosaic known as the _opus alexandrinum_ being generally used for the last, the whole producing a very gorgeous but harmonious effect. One of the most interesting existing early Christian churches, that remains very much what it was when first completed, is that of the Nativity at Bethlehem, built in A.D. 327 by the Empress Helena when on her quest for the True Cross, with the Convent to which it originally belonged, that was destroyed by the Turks in 1236 and later restored by the Crusaders. The Church of the Nativity rises above a natural cave now converted into a crypt or vaulted subterranean chamber. It is of cruciform plan, and though its unpretending exterior is of brick, the interior has four rows of massive stone pillars dividing the nave from the aisles, which as well as the choir at the eastern end have semicircular apses. Contemporary with this humble building, that is closely associated with all the most sacred memories of the early Church, were the vast basilican places of worship erected at Rome by Constantine and his immediate successors, which have unfortunately been either destroyed or so much modified as to retain little of their distinctive character. The Cathedral of S. Peter occupies the site of one of them, which had five aisles, a nave 80 feet wide, a comparatively small apse, and a noble atrium; the Church of S. Giovanni in Laterano retains but a few details of its predecessor of the same name, but that of S. Paolo fuori le Mura or St. Paul without the walls, built by Theodosius in 386, is supposed to be a true copy, so far as structure is concerned, of the grand basilica destroyed by fire in 1823. It has a nave 280 feet long by 78 wide, and the whole building is 400 feet in length by 200 wide. A noble arch spans the intersection of the transepts, and lofty columns with richly carved capitals divide the nave from the aisles and the latter, of which there are five, from each other, but the roof is only a flat wooden one, the external walls are wanting in dignity and solidity, whilst the height, 100 feet only, is quite out of proportion with the otherwise noble dimensions. Another very fine early basilican church in Rome is that of S. Maria Maggiore, occupying the site of a 5th century building, some of the marble columns of which with Ionic capitals have been incorporated in the later structure. The Churches of S. Agnese and S. Lorenzo are also of basilican plan, and have both the somewhat rare feature of galleries over the aisles. The former is but little altered since its erection, whilst the latter has gone through a long series of vicissitudes. It was founded in the 4th century and greatly added to in the 5th by Sixtus III, who joined a second church on to it, so that it had an apse at each end. Both these apses, with the walls between the earlier and the later buildings, were pulled down in the 13th century by order of Pope Honorius III, who had the earlier church converted into a choir and the later into a nave, with very satisfactory results. Even more interesting than S. Lorenzo is S. Clemente, Rome, that consists of two buildings of widely separated dates one above another, the lower, which now serves as a crypt, supposed to have been built at the beginning of the 6th century, the upper not until 1108. Both are of the same general plan as the other basilican churches described, with certain differences in minor details, including in the more modern portion a low marble screen dividing the choir and altar from the nave. [Illustration: Church of S. Clemente] To many of these early churches fine cloisters, that is to say, arcaded colonnades encircling the outer walls, were added, those that once enclosed the ancient basilica of S. Paola fuori le Mura being among the finest still preserved, that may be said to have anticipated the beautiful ambulatories of later monastic and collegiate buildings. In other cities of the Roman empire are many noteworthy early basilican churches, including S. Apollinare Nuovo within and S. Apollinare in Classe without the walls of Ravenna, the cathedral of Torcello, that is connected by a narthex with the later S. Fosca, in which the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine style is shadowed forth, and the cathedrals of Parenzo and Grado in Istria, the former retaining almost intact its beautiful colonnaded atrium, the latter chiefly remarkable for its fine mosaic pavement. In addition to the early churches of basilican plan are a few of circular form, such as that at Rome enshrining the tomb of S. Constanza, the daughter of Constantine, dating from about A.D. 354, which has a domed roof and vaulted aisles, the 5th century church of S. Stefano Rotondo in the same town, the latter, though greatly modified in detail, still preserving its two concentric ranges of columns, S. Vitale at Ravenna, and S. George at Salonika, that has a circular nave but an oblong chancel and apse, whilst the 6th century tomb of Theodoric is typical of the use of a similar plan in sepulchral monuments. In the first centuries of the Christian era it was customary for the ceremony of baptism to be performed in buildings known as baptisteries, apart from, but close to, cathedrals and important parish churches. These buildings were as a general rule of circular or octagonal plan with a tank in the centre of the interior, of size sufficient for the total immersion of candidates. The earliest and also one of the finest existing examples is the Baptistery of Constantino that rises close to S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, and is two stories high, with a central domed roof of timber and flat-ceilinged aisles, the massive porphyry columns dividing them from the space set apart for the ceremony of baptism, being surmounted by slender pilasters. Another fine early Baptistery is that at Nocera, which resembles that of Constantine in general plan and style. The Christians of Egyptian descent, to whom the name of Copts has been given, evolved a style of building that combined with oriental traditions certain details of western architecture. They were very early familiar with the dome, and employed it in churches of a basilican ground-plan even before it was adopted in the Roman Empire. Moreover, certain of the barrel vaults and arches in Coptic places of worship were pointed, so that the most distinctive characteristic of Gothic architecture may be said to have been to some extent anticipated. Except for the effective feature of the dome the exteriors of these buildings were plain and unpretending, but the interiors were in many cases lavishly decorated with marble mosaics. Other peculiarities were the division of the eastern extremity into three semicircular or square recesses, each containing an altar, the use of an elaborately carved screen shutting off the choir or chancel from the nave and aisles, and the introduction of galleries above the latter for the use of the women of the congregation. Specially noteworthy examples of Coptic architecture are the two churches in Upper Egypt known as the White and Red Convents, the former supposed by some authorities to be even older than the church of the Nativity of Bethlehem, the 6th century church of Dair-as-Sûriâni in the Desert, and the 8th century S. Sergius or Abu Sargah at Cairo, whilst in the oasis of El Bagawat have recently been excavated a large number of sepulchral chapels, dating probably from the 5th century, many of which have domed cupolas greatly resembling in structure those of considerably later Byzantine buildings. In Syria, as well as in Egypt, are many very interesting early Christian churches, including the vast complex 5th century building at Kalat-Seman dedicated to S. Simeon Stylites, which has four basilicas, each with an apse, grouped about a central octagon; the 6th century church at Sergiopolis; and the smaller contemporaneous ones at Qalb Lorzeh and Roueiha; all of which, though they resemble in general plan the basilicas of Rome, have certain details that appear to shadow forth the characteristics of the Romanesque style, notably in the first the cruciform bays dividing the nave from the aisles, in the second, the use of the lobed arch, and in it and the Roueiha building the grouping of the clerestory windows. Asia Minor is also rich in examples of early Christian architecture, of which one of the most remarkable is the 5th century S. Demetrius at Salonika, of basilican plan with transepts at the eastern end, nave arcades resembling those of S. Clemente, Rome, and galleries above the aisles, such as those of the Coptic places of worship quoted above. With it must be named the 6th century church in the same city, now used as a mosque, under the name of Eski Djuma, and the considerably later churches at Bin Bir Kilissi that have only recently been explored and are of basilican plan with barrel-vaulted roofing. CHAPTER V BYZANTINE AND SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE The term Byzantine has been given to the style of architecture which was the outcome of the fusion of the best building traditions of the East and of the West, the former contributing the distinctive structural feature of the dome, with the minor details of richness of colouring and lavishness of decoration, the latter dignified symmetry of proportion and scientific solidity of construction. It was in Byzantium, when in 330 the first Christian Emperor chose it as his headquarters, and its name was changed in his honour to Constantinople, that the union which was to be so prolific of results took place. Unfortunately however none of the churches erected under the auspices of Constantine in the new capital have been preserved, the sole relic of his reign, so far as architecture is concerned, being the foundations of the apse of a church, now replaced by a considerably later building, in which he had the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem enclosed. The oldest existing church in Constantinople is a basilica of the Roman type dating from 463, with nothing distinctive of the new style about it, but there is historical evidence that the noble S. Sophia, in which that style reached its fullest development, was preceded in Constantinople by other grand buildings of a similar type, including one dedicated to the Holy Apostles which was cruciform in plan and had five domes. [Illustration: S. Sophia, Constantinople] The most distinctive peculiarity of Byzantine architecture is the roofing over of square spaces with the aid of the pendentive, a clever expedient already explained, that was carried to great perfection by the builders of Constantinople and those who elsewhere followed their example. Previously employed in comparatively small structures, it now became the fundamental principle for the roofing over of spaces of a great variety of extent, groups of domes and semi-domes, in many cases supplemented by tapering towers rising with imposing effect from massive outer walls. The long aisles and nave of the Roman and early Christian basilicas were replaced by a more or less square plan, lofty piers spanned by arches upholding the central cupola, whilst the galleries above the aisles rested on slender columns such as were also employed to rail off the sanctuary and narthex from the main body of the building. The whole of the interior, which was lighted from windows in the dome, was most profusely decorated, the walls having dados or slabs of different coloured marbles supplemented by mosaics, with which every portion of the domes, semi-domes, and pendentives were also covered, whilst the columns, in many cases of variegated marble, had beautifully carved capitals of an infinite variety of design. It is customary to divide the history of the development of Byzantine architecture into two distinct periods, the first extending from the 4th to the close of the 6th century, the second from the 8th to the 13th century, there having been a pause between them during which no buildings of any importance were erected owing to the wars which convulsed alike the East and the West. As already stated, no actual buildings belonging to the earlier portion of the first period remain, but there exist in S. Vitale at Ravenna and still more in S. Sophia at Constantinople unique examples of the golden age of Byzantine architecture, the inspiring influence of which was felt throughout the whole of Europe and the greater part of Asia. The former church, begun about 526, is of octagonal plan, each division, except that containing the choir, with an apse of its own, and though the interior has been greatly spoiled by restoration, the general effect of the vaulted roofing, marble casing of the walls, and mosaics of the eastern end is extremely fine. San Vitale is, however, altogether excelled by the world-famous S. Sophia, now the chief mosque of Constantinople, which occupies the site of a basilica built under Constantine, that was burnt down early in the reign of Justinian. The latter emperor at once ordered the erection of its successor, appointing as architects Anthemios of Thralles and Isodoros of Miletus. Begun in 532 and completed in 537, S. Sophia is of very simple yet most dignified external appearance, so symmetrical is the grouping of its many domes and semi-domes, whilst the interior, though it has none of the rich colouring usual in oriental buildings, is unsurpassed in the harmony of its structural details, all of which lead up, as it were, to the huge central dome, the lower portion of which is pierced with a series of small windows throwing a flood of light upon the vast circular space below. The general plan is square, but a fine narthex consisting of two spacious halls one above the other projects slightly beyond the actual church at the western end. The nave, which is 106 feet wide by 225 long, has a semicircular apse with small recesses opening out of it at either end, and is separated from the aisles by rows of closely set columns with ornate capitals, spanned by arches upholding two-storied arcaded galleries, roofed in by semi-domes, except at the northern and southern ends, which have walls with numerous small windows. One large western window illuminates the nave, and there is also a double circle of lights round the apse, the galleries, and the narthex. Other interesting early Byzantine buildings are the Baptistery at Kalat-Seman and the church of S. George at Ezra, both in Syria, each of which is of square plan with an octagonal central space, the latter having the comparatively unusual feature of a dome upheld by what is known as a drum, that is to say a low vertical wall instead of pendentives. The church of S. Sergius at Constantinople, contemporaneous with S. Sophia, is specially noteworthy on account of the introduction in it of a classic entablature, combined with distinctive Byzantine features, with which may be named the much-restored S. Lorenzo at Milan and the church of the Virgin at Misitra, the ancient Sparta. To the second period of Byzantine Architecture belong not only several fine buildings in Constantinople, but others in Greece, Asia Minor, the North of Italy, and elsewhere, all of which, though they have the leading structural features of the style, are distinguished by certain minor local characteristics. The most noteworthy in the capital are the now secularised church of S. Irene, founded by Constantine and rebuilt considerably later, and the church of the Chora monastery, specially remarkable for its beautiful mosaics, whilst in Greece the Churches of S. Nicodemus at Athens and that of Daphni not far from it, with the two monastic churches at Stiris and the churches of S. Sophia and S. Elias, at Salonika, are all thoroughly Byzantine, bearing a close resemblance to each other. They are all, however, excelled by the great Cathedral of S. Marco at Venice, which rivals even S. Sophia in the exquisite beauty of the interior and excels it in the ornate richness of the exterior. Founded early in the 9th century, S. Marco was partially destroyed in 978 and rebuilt soon afterwards in the original style, that of a basilica without transepts, but in the second half of the 11th century it was completely transformed by additions converting it into a cruciform building, roofed over by five domes of the same size, and with five arcaded porches at the western end that form one of the grandest façades in the world. Numerous columns of many covered marbles uphold graceful arches, the spandrels, or triangular spaces between them filled in with gleaming mosaics, and above them rise other arches that contrast well with tapering towers supported on slender pilasters to which the domes beyond form an admirable background. Within the church to which this magnificent narthex gives entrance, an infinite variety of harmonious details combine to produce an entrancing effect: one charming vista succeeding another, the whole flooded with light from a vast number of windows, there being no less than eighty in the domes alone. Mosaics of different dates and greatly varying æsthetic merit completely clothe the surfaces of the vaulting, the capitals of the columns--many of which, by the way, are purely decorative, upholding no arches--are elaborately carved, and the flooring is of marble, slabs of considerable size being set in patterns of tesseræ. In the various countries which fell under the influence of the followers of Mahommed a style of architecture was evolved that had marked affinities with the Byzantine, the first mosques having been designed, it is supposed, by Christian architects of Oriental origin, who retained the square or circular ground-plan of early churches, though they modified the interior to suit the requirements of the new religion, introducing, for instance, a central tank for ablutions. Mosques intended for worship only, generally had flat roofs, the use of the dome being at first distinctive of a burial place, but as it very soon became usual to inter in mosques, the dome came to be quoted as a distinctive feature of them. By degrees simple unadorned mosques were replaced by vast buildings with many arcaded courts entered from ornate lateral doorways, whilst certain characteristic features were introduced, of which the chief were the stalactite vaulting, the name of which explains itself, the horse-shoe arch, and the minaret, the last named a turret of several stories gradually decreasing in circumference, each with a balcony of its own from which the mueddin calls the faithful to prayer. Pointed arches were also constantly employed as well as the form known as cusped, that is to say one with a triangular projection springing from the inner curve. A minor but most significant characteristic of Saracenic architecture is the elaborate surface decoration in which geometrical designs, letters, &c., are interwoven with consummate skill, but in which no figures of animals are ever introduced, the representation of life being strictly forbidden by the Koran. Although Arabia was the birthplace of the founder of Islam, there are few Saracenic buildings of importance in it. The so-called great Mosque at Mecca, which has been a goal of pilgrimage from all points of the Mahommedan world for so many centuries, has been since its foundation completely rebuilt, not assuming its present form until the middle of the 16th century. It has little that can be called architectural style about it, consisting as it does of an arcaded enclosure in the centre of which is the Kaaba, a heathen shrine that existed long before the time of Mohammed, the whole surrounded by a wall with several gateways and minarets. [Illustration: Section of Mosque el Aksah at Jerusalem] In Jerusalem various characteristic buildings bear witness to the prevalence of the Mahommedan faith in the Holy City of the Christians, including the 7th century Mosque el Aksah, originally a Christian church transformed into what it now is by Calif Omar, and the 8th century shrine erroneously named after him, also known as the Dome of the Rock, both of which rise from the site of the Jewish Temple. The latter is of octagonal plan, and, though its details are of a somewhat hybrid character, many of the columns having been filched from other buildings, whilst the decorations of the great dome and of the exterior were added in the 16th century, is of very singular charm on account of the symmetry of its proportions and the richness of its colouring, the walls being cased in Persian tiles and the windows filled with stained glass. It appears to have been in Egypt that Saracenic architecture, strictly so-called, first attained to the structural dignity and appropriateness of ornamentation that were to distinguish it in Persia, Spain, and India. In the 7th century Mosque of Amru and that of Ibn Touloun, dating from the 9th century, both at Cairo, the earlier phases of the style can be studied, whilst the later development is illustrated in the same city by the 13th century Mosque of Kalaoon, the 14th century Mosque of Sultan Hassan, that has the rare feature in a Mahommedan building of a cruciform plan, the contemporaneous Mosque of Sultin Barkook, and the small 15th century Mosque of Kait-Bey, the last specially noteworthy on account of its beautiful internal decoration and its graceful minaret. In Persia the finest mosques are the 13th century one at Tabrez known as the Blue, and that at Ispahan dating from the 16th century, which has a grand dome and noble gateways with pointed arches, whilst at Serbistan, Firanzabad, Ukheithar, Kasir-i-Shirin, and elsewhere in the same country are remains of palaces and other secular buildings, ranging in date from the 4th to the 9th century, that give proof of great structural and decorative skill on the part of the architects who worked for the fire-worshippers, who, though they required no temples in which to worship their gods, lavished vast sums on their own homes. Beautiful as are the relics of Saracenic architecture in Egypt, Syria, and Persia, they are excelled by many remarkable buildings in Spain, where, after the conquest of the country by the Moors in the 8th century, the style reached its fullest development. The most remarkable examples of it are the Mosque at Cordova, begun in 786 by Abd-el-Rahman and added to from time to time by his successors, with the result that it affords an excellent illustration of the modification of details that took place as time went on; the 12th century Giralda or Tower at Seville, noteworthy for its fine proportions and effective surface decoration, the 13th century Alcazar or castle in the same town, and above all the Palace of the Alhambra, that dominates Granada from a lofty height above the city, which was begun in 1248 by the Moorish King, Ibn-l-Ahmar and added to by his successors. Of the original buildings that, when first completed, must have been one of the grandest and most finely situated groups in the world, all that now remain are the towers of the north wall, in one of which is the vast hall of the Ambassadors, and various colonnaded rooms and porticoes ranged round two spacious courts, one called that of the Fishpond, the other that of the Lions. The delicate grace of the columns and arches, with the richness of their decoration and of every inch of surface, has never been surpassed either in beauty of design or harmony of colour, whilst the effects of perspective from the doorways and other points of view are equally unrivalled. No single detail is superfluous or without its special meaning in relation to the whole, and even what to the uninitiated appear mere geometrical designs on the walls, lintels, &c., are quotations from the Koran and classic Arabic poetry. [Illustration: Section of Mosque at Cordoba] When through the breaking up of the power of the Moors in Spain, the architecture introduced by them seemed fated to share their decline, a kind of revival of it took place in Constantinople through the conquest of that city by the Turks in 1453. Unfortunately however the style made no real progress there, the mosques and other buildings erected by the new owners being rather Byzantine than Saracenic, even that known as the Suleimanyeh, built between 1550-1556, and the Ahmediyeh, dating from 1608-1614, greatly resembling St. Sophia. In India the mosques and palaces erected by the Mahommedan conquerors and their successors are even more beautiful and impressive than the Buddhist and Hindu buildings described in the section on Asiatic architecture. Their distinctive characteristics, as in Egypt, Persia, and Spain, are the skilful combination of the dome, the arch and the minaret, and the lavish surface decoration of the interior, with certain other peculiarities that were the outcome of local tradition. More attention was given, for instance, to external appearance, huge recessed gateways and colonnaded cloisters surmounted by rows of purely decorative domes on pilasters, being of frequent occurrence. At the same time, stalactite vaulting was rarely employed, whilst horizontal courses of corbels or arches in which each stone projects slightly beyond that on which it rests, were used as supports for the domes instead of pendentives. [Illustration: Section of Taj Mahal, Agra] Among the most noteworthy still-existing examples of Indo-Saracenic architecture are the early 15th century Jumna Musjid or Great Mosque at Ahmedabad, that has certain details recalling Hindu post and lintel structures; the late 15th century Adinah mosque at Gaur, which has 385 domes; the 16th century Jumna Musjid at Bijapur, that has the singular feature of a central space covered in by a dome upheld by intersecting arches, set in a number of squares with flat roofs; the Mosque built by Akbar in the second half of the 16th century at Futtehpore Sikhri, the gateways of which are specially characteristic; and the remarkable buildings at Delhi and Agra, erected in the 17th century under the enlightened Shah Jehan, including in the former city the Jumna Musjid and the fortified palace, and in the latter the Moti Musjid or Pearl Mosque, and the Taj Mahal, both exceptionally beautiful, in which the Saracenic style may justly be said to have reached its culmination, nothing that can be compared with them having been since produced either in India or elsewhere. The Taj Mahal, built by the Emperor as a tomb for himself and his favourite wife, is indeed of dream-like and ethereal charm, with its well-proportioned domes and minarets, cased, as is the rest of the exterior, in white marble, and its interior enriched with mosaics of precious stones. CHAPTER VI ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE The term Romanesque is given to the period between the beginning of the 9th and the middle of the 12th century, but there was no real break in the continuity of the evolution of Christian architecture in Europe from the time when that art first freed itself from Pagan influence till it reached its noblest development in the Gothic style. [Illustration: Simple Intersecting Vaulting] From first to last the keynote of structure was the use of the arch for vaulting and for the spanning of piers and columns, and its form is, as a general rule, indicative of the phase of development to which it belongs. Although, however, it may be said that the semicircular arch is characteristic of Romanesque buildings, the lintel is occasionally used simultaneously with it in interiors, and the chief entrances are in many cases spanned by horizontal beams or courses of stone that are, however, as a general rule surmounted by arches. Moreover in late Romanesque work the pointed arch is now and then introduced shadowing forth the approaching change. It was not in the invention of new forms of vaulting but in the adaptation and improvement of those already in existence that Romanesque architects chiefly displayed their skill. The earliest Romanesque vaults were simple intersecting arches similar to those which had long been in use, but as time went on these were superseded by what is known as ribbed vaulting; that is to say by roofs divided into bays by a framework of diagonal ribs supporting fillings in of thin stone called severes, which in their turn gradually developed into the complex and ornate system of Gothic vaulting. To counteract the thrust of arched and ribbed vaulting the device of buttresses was hit upon. These buttresses consisted at first of a series of supports introduced beneath the roof of the aisles and extending from the back of the nave to the aisle wall, which were later supplemented by the external buttresses known as flying, that were to be so distinctive a feature of Gothic architecture. [Illustration: Ribbed Vaulting] [Illustration: Ribbed Vaulting] Other characteristics of Romanesque architecture are the slenderness of the columns as compared with those of earlier buildings, the disuse of classic capitals, and the substitution for them of what is known as the basket form, that is to say, semicircular mouldings enclosing floral designs, later replaced by a great variety of forms, such as flowers, leaves, human and animals' heads. The grouping of columns in clusters also came into use, the general tendency being towards the production of an effect of grace and lightness rather than of strength and solidity. Arched cornices were introduced to relieve the monotony of the walls above the pillars of the nave, whilst an even more marked change took place in the windows, which, though small and few in early Renaissance buildings, gradually increased in number, in size, and in the beauty of their tracery. At the eastern end of churches several windows were in some cases grouped together, divided only by slender pilasters, and above the western entrance large circular windows known as the rose or wheel--according to certain peculiarities of their tracery--were introduced, whilst the walls were pierced by rows of complex windows, each with a number of different lights. In Romanesque churches the beautiful colonnaded narthex of the early Christian basilica is replaced in Northern and occasionally in Southern Italy by a projecting, and elsewhere by a simple, porch; but to make up for the loss of what was a very effective feature, the whole of the western façade, including the recessed doorway giving access to the nave, is generally most richly decorated with sculpture and carving, figures in niches, grotesque animal forms of symbolic meaning, with floral and geometrical designs of great variety and beauty adorning every portion. [Illustration: Clustered Column] [Illustration: Buttress] [Illustration: Buttress] On either side of the west front of many Romanesque buildings, more rarely also from the point of junction of the transepts and nave, rise lofty square or octagonal towers, the earlier with flat, the later with more or less steeply pitched roofs, that gradually developed into the tapering spires so characteristic of the Gothic style. Occasionally the eastern apse is flanked by a turret or small tower, and in some cases, chiefly in Italy, a detached and lofty tower known as a Campanile or Bell Tower--though it only rarely contains bells, being sometimes merely a secular monument--rises close to the church or at a little distance from it, but connected with it by a cloister. [Illustration: Rose Window] In S. Ambrogio, Milan, begun in the 9th and completed in the 12th century, the gradual change from the early Christian to the Romanesque style as developed in Italy can be studied. It has a nave of basilican type, a narthex surmounted by a gallery, a pediment-like gable at the western end, an octagonal cupola roofing over the eastern apse, with a circle of windows flooding the choir with light, a triforium or arcaded storey above the aisles, and most characteristic of all, an open external arcaded gallery, admitting air and light beneath the roof of the apse, such as was to become so effective a decorative feature of later buildings, and in some cases to be extended along the aisles and above the chief entrance. [Illustration: Example of Arched Cornice] S. Michele, Pavia, is a typical and very beautiful example of the Romanesque style of the twelfth century, specially noteworthy features being its cruciform plan, its two-storied aisles, and its external gallery with clustered pilasters; and the contemporary S. Zeno, Verona, though it has no triforium and is not vaulted, has noble clustered piers from which sprang arches--only one of which remains--spanning the nave, alternating with single columns. Other fine Romanesque buildings in Italy are the Cathedral of Verona, which has a fine two-storied porch; the Cathedral of Novara, specially noteworthy for its beautiful atrium; S. Miniato, Florence, that is of basilican plan, and, though it is without transepts, has the distinctive Romanesque feature of transverse arches upheld by clustered piers spanning the nave and aisles; S. Antonio, Piacenza, with transepts at the western instead of the eastern end, fine intersecting vaults roofing in the whole building, and a tower rising from the junction of the nave and transepts; and the Cathedral of Pisa, the last a complex building with vaulted aisles, a dome above the intersection of the transepts and nave, a flat roof over the latter, and a lofty triforium gallery running round the entire church, the general effect being most pleasing and harmonious. Close to the cathedral are the 12th century circular Baptistery, that has considerably later additions, and the famous Leaning Tower, the three buildings forming one of the finest architectural groups in the world. Certain very marked characteristics distinguish the buildings of Sicily from those of contemporary date on the mainland of Italy, the Romanesque style, as is very clearly seen in the Cathedral of Monreale, having been there considerably modified alike by Saracenic and Norman influences. The pointed arch was adopted long before it came into use elsewhere in Europe, having been, it is suggested, a modification of the horse-shoe form so characteristic of Moorish mosques. In France, Romanesque ecclesiastical architecture followed, in the main, the same lines as in Italy, with, in many cases, one notable addition, that of the chevet, a circlet of chapels round the eastern apse, which gradually grew out of what was known as an ambulatory, that is to say, a space in which perambulation was possible, obtained by the extension of the aisles behind the choir. In early examples of the ambulatory the circle was continuous, as in the church of S. Saturnin, Auvergne, but as time went on, small semicircular chapels were introduced, with windows between them, that gradually developed into the chevet, the chapels increasing in number and in size, and in some cases extending westwards along the aisles. The churches and cathedrals of Southern France differ in several respects from those of the North, the aisleless basilica plan with barrel, intersecting, or domed vaulting being of frequent occurrence in the former, whilst in the latter the beautiful arcaded aisles and steeply pitched roof presage the approach of the Gothic style with its pointed arches, groined roofs, flying buttresses, and tapering pinnacles. The five-domed S. Front in Perigueux, though it has rudimentary aisles only, is a good example of an early French Romanesque building, in which Oriental influence is very perceptible, it being in some of its features a copy of S. Marco, Venice, whilst in the later Cathedral of Angoulême of cruciform plan with apsidal chapels, that of Le Puy with a triple entrance porch, the church of S. Hilaire, Poitiers, with its irregular domes, the uncompleted S. Ours, Loche, with its pyramidal octagonal spires, S. Saturnin, Toulouse, with its central many-storied tapering tower, the 12th century churches of Vezelay and Avallon; the cathedral and church of La Trinité at Angers, both combining pointed arches with domed vaulting, the gradual development of the southern branch of French Romanesque architecture can be very clearly studied. In many of the noble churches and cathedrals of Northern France and elsewhere the Romanesque may justly be said to have melted into the Gothic style, some of them combining as they do the most beautiful features of both. To the cost of their erection ecclesiastics and laymen alike contributed with eager zeal, and amongst the architects and craftsmen employed on them, class and professional rivalry were merged in one common enthusiasm to promote the glory of God, all desire for individual distinction being merged in an unselfish ambition to aid in producing a building worthy of His worship. In Normandy was inaugurated the phase of Romanesque architecture which was to develop on such noble lines in England, the chief distinctions of which are the massiveness of the walls and pillars, the great length of the nave, the richness of the decoration alike of the shafts and capitals of the columns and of the round-headed arches they uphold. Very notable examples are the Abbaye aux Hommes, the Abbaye aux Dames, and the Church of S. Nicholas, all at Caen, the first with circular arched vaulting and western towers ending in spires, the second with a Gothic roof of intersecting pointed arches, the third with three apses, each with a steeply pitched roof, a porch with three arcades at the western end, and a low gabled tower rising from the point of intersection of the nave and transepts, the three buildings illustrating well the transition from the simple basilica to the complex Gothic structure. With them may be named the Abbey of Jumièges, of which unfortunately but a few relics remain, which had beautiful clustered piers alternating with single columns upholding semicircular lateral arches, a flat roofed nave, and vaulted aisles. Other fine Romanesque churches of Northern France, all of which differ somewhat in general appearance from those of Normandy, are the Cathedrals of Noyon and Soissons, the church of S. Pierre at Lisieux, all of which combine pointed with semicircular arches, and above all the Cathedral of Le Mans, which has a very characteristic Romanesque nave flanked by round-headed arches and roofed over with an equally characteristic groined Gothic vault, whilst the choir, added in the early 13th century, is encircled by a beautiful chevet, the exterior of which with its many buttresses and pinnacles presents a most impressive appearance. One of the finest Romanesque buildings in Europe is the Cathedral of Tournai, Belgium, which has a flat-roofed nave of exceptional length, picturesque lateral storied galleries, a central tower with a lofty spire, and two supplementary towers, also with spires, flanking the northern and southern apses. Elsewhere in Belgium are several flat-roofed churches of basilican plan, some with ambulatories in the French style but no apsidal chapels. In Spain, on the other hand, the chevet is rarely absent from ecclesiastical buildings, whilst a distinctive local feature is a low central dome or tower known as the cimborio, which is in many cases scarcely more than a swelling of the roof at the point of intersection of nave and transept. Germany is especially rich in Romanesque churches, which, like those of Belgium, are of basilican plan with flat roofs. In the Cathedral of Trier can be studied the gradual growth of the Teutonic form of the Romanesque style, for it was originally an early Christian Church of the Roman type, which was converted into one of a more distinctive style in the 11th century by additions, including a western apse, whilst the noble vaulting of the nave dates from the 12th and the choir from the 13th century. As time went on the multiplication of apses became characteristic of German churches, it being usual to add one at the western end, and more rarely also on the northern and southern sides, the beautiful tapering columns dividing them from the aisles, with the small chapels beyond them, producing very fine effects of perspective. Other peculiarities of German Romanesque buildings are their great height and the noble proportions of the interiors, with the finely balanced grouping of the cupolas, towers, and turrets of the exterior; to which must be added the absence of the great Western doorway that lends such distinction to French, Italian, and Belgian churches. Very fine examples of the style in Germany are the churches of S. Maria in Capitolo Cologne, S. Quirin in Neuss, and the cathedrals of Nuremberg and Bamberg, but it was in those of Speier, Mainz, and Worms that it achieved its greatest triumphs. The first, it is true, has no western apse, but this is atoned for by a fine narthex, and in the other two the western extension is as conspicuous as the eastern. Dignified simplicity and sense of space are the chief characteristics of all three buildings, massive columns upholding the arcading flanking the naves, whilst the walls of the aisles are unbroken by triforia, the piers at Speier and Worms being carried right up to the clerestory windows, whilst at Mainz two arches are placed one above the other, the vaulting of the nave springing from the upper tier. CHAPTER VII ANGLO-SAXON AND ANGLO-NORMAN ARCHITECTURE In Great Britain, even more than on the Continent, the architecture of the past reflects national character, its distinctive peculiarities having been the outcome of local conditions differing widely from those that obtained elsewhere, which largely modified the styles introduced from without. On the arrival of the Romans in the first century of the Christian era, there were, with the exception of the monoliths on Salisbury plain known as Stonehenge and other prehistoric relics, the origin of which has never yet been discovered, no buildings of greater pretension than mud huts or circular stone or wooden houses with a hole in the tapering roof through which air was admitted and smoke dispersed. The houses, palaces, and churches erected by the invaders were, as proved by the remains at Silchester, Wroxeter, and elsewhere, of the type of those of Imperial Rome, and on them many British masons were employed, who thus acquired a knowledge of the principles of construction that stood their successors in good stead. Those successors, however, showed no desire to perpetuate the style introduced by the conquerors, and when the latter withdrew in the 5th century the buildings they left behind them were allowed to fall into rapid decay. [Illustration: Example of Saxon Arcading] [Illustration: Example of Saxon Arcading] Very quickly too did most of the converts to Christianity relapse into heathenism, and although the lamp of faith was long kept burning in Ireland and in Scotland, no trace exists of the churches in which the little remnant of the followers of the Redeemer met for worship. Of those built later under the auspices of Saints Augustine, Paulinus, and other early bishops, not one escaped destruction, but there is strong evidence to prove that they were of the basilican apsidal plan, that never took very deep root in England, but was in many cases ousted by the sanctuary with a square-shaped eastern extension. It is usual to give the term Anglo-Saxon to all relics of buildings in Great Britain, that can be proved to date from between the early 7th century and 1066, but Pre-Conquest would be more strictly accurate, Anglo-Saxon architects having contributed but little to the evolution of style, for they were wanting in initiative, rarely trying experiments with new features as was the constant custom of their Norman successors. To this, however, there was one brilliant exception in Bishop Wilfrid of York, who greatly improved the primitive church, built by King Edwin in the capital of his see, that was later destroyed by fire, and erected noble minsters at Hexham and Ripon, of which the fine crypts with massive pillars still remain beneath the considerably later buildings. In the south of England, too, there was considerable architectural activity in the 7th and 8th centuries, whilst in the 9th the return of King Egbert from his long exile at the Court of Charlemagne appears to have led to the introduction in Wessex of the Oriental branch of the Romanesque style to which the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle belongs. [Illustration: Tower of Sompting Church, Sussex] The chief characteristics of the so-called Anglo-Saxon style are the great height in comparison with the length and breadth of a building, a rectangular plan, massive square towers, unadorned angular or semicircular arches, stunted clumsy-looking columns with roughly carved or plain capitals, long narrow round-headed deeply recessed windows, massive walls without internal decoration, with on the exterior a somewhat ornate surface ornamentation, combined with a series of peculiar clamps known as quoins at the angles of the walls, greatly strengthening the structure. There were no aisles or transepts in early Anglo-Saxon buildings, but the chancel was divided from the nave by an arch sometimes with and sometimes without carving. It is supposed that most of the early Anglo-Saxon churches were built of wood, and at Greenstead in Essex an example remains of the mode in which such buildings were constructed, though the probability is that none of the original material remains. Of the stone buildings that succeeded those in the more perishable material a few only are still in existence, including the Abbey Church of Deerhurst near Towkesbury, the oldest consecrated building still in use in England, the Tower of Earl's Barton Church in Northamptonshire, parts of Barfreston Church, Kent, that has a fine Norman doorway: Sompting Church, with the unusual feature of a gabled tower with a spire, and that of Worth, both in Sussex, the latter with rudimentary transepts and a semicircular apse, with which may be mentioned S. Lawrence at Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts, of somewhat uncertain but probably later date than any of these, for it has a square Eastern end and decorative arcading on the upper portion of the walls, prophetic of coming changes. Certain portions of St. Martin's Church, Canterbury, notably a doorway in the chancel and parts of the foundations, are supposed to have belonged to a Saxon church of earlier date than the crypts of Hexham and Ripon already referred to, and which was preceded by an even more ancient building, one of the very first places of Christian worship erected in England. The so-called Pyx House in Westminster Abbey, a low narrow solemn-looking vaulted room with a row of massive pillars in the centre, and a single archway in the south transept, are all that are left of the noble sanctuary built under the direction of the last of the Saxon kings, but these relics, with a few conventual buildings, suffice to connect with Anglo-Saxon times a church that is perhaps more intimately associated than any other with the history of England from the close of the 11th to the middle of the 16th century, it having been added to under every successive occupant of the throne. The Anglo-Norman style, that succeeded the Saxon, prevailed in Great Britain from the conquest to the last decade of the 12th century, becoming at that time either merged in or superseded by the earliest phase of the Gothic. Always most enthusiastic builders, the Normans found in the land of their adoption fuller scope for their energies than in their own, and before they became absorbed in the race they had conquered, they left their impress throughout the length and breadth of their new domain, monasteries, cathedrals, and parish churches, castles, and dwelling houses rising up in every direction, all stamped with a most distinctive character, the result of the welding into one of Anglo-Saxon and Norman traditions, and the modification of a foreign style by local conditions of material and environment. In many cases somewhat crude and heavy, Norman work has yet always an imposing dignity, and is, as a general rule, admirably suited to the site it occupies and the purpose for which it is intended. [Illustration: Plan of Norman Church] [Illustration: Norman Capital. White Tower, London] [Illustration: Base and Capital of Norman Pillar] [Illustration: Norman Capital] [Illustration: Norman Arcading] [Illustration: Norman Window] [Illustration: Norman Arcading] [Illustration: Norman Window] [Illustration: Norman Window] The chief characteristics of Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical buildings are a cruciform plan; the great length in comparison with the breadth of the nave, which joins the choir without the intervention of a screen, such screens as are _in situ_ being of much later date than the churches in which they are found; columns of greater girth and height than the Saxon type, some circular, others six or eight sided, the circular type occasionally clustered in groups of six or more, with roughly carved capitals of which the so-called cushion form is of most frequent occurrence, upholding arches of wide span, massive walls, those of the nave with rows of purely ornamental arcading, beautifully proportioned triforia and clerestories; long, narrow, round-headed windows, two or three being often grouped together; deeply recessed and finely decorated doorways; strong external buttresses; twin western towers and a loftier central one rising from the intersection of nave and transepts. With certain notable exceptions referred to below, Norman churches have flat timber roofs, but those of the crypt beneath them are generally of groined stone with plain or only slightly ornamented ribs. [Illustration: Norman Window] [Illustration: Norman Doorway] Another very distinctive characteristic of the Norman style is the richness of the surface decoration of the interiors of cathedrals and churches, the bases, shafts, and capitals of the columns, the arches, headings of windows, mural arcades, &c. being all enriched with mouldings of an infinite variety of form, including the so-called cable resembling a rope, the billet not unlike short bits of rounded wood, the chevron or zig-zag, the fret or fillet, the lozenge, the trellis, the cone, the scollop, and wave with the so-called torus, a convex swelling, and the cavetto, a hollow moulding, the last two used almost exclusively on the bases of columns. [Illustration: Norman Buttress] [Illustration: Cable Moulding] [Illustration: Billet Moulding] [Illustration: Chevron or Zig-zag Moulding] [Illustration: Diamond or Lozenge Moulding] [Illustration: Trellis Moulding] [Illustration: Cone Moulding] [Illustration: Scollop Moulding] Among noteworthy existing examples of the Anglo-Norman style are the nave, transepts and western doorway of Hereford Cathedral; the choir, transepts, and nave of Peterborough Cathedral; the naves of Gloucester, Exeter, Chichester, and Ely Cathedrals; certain portions of Canterbury Cathedral, including the choir chapels, part of the cloisters, the baptistery tower, S. Anselm's Tower, and a fine staircase leading up from the Close; the Chapter House of Worcester Cathedral; the greater part of Norwich Cathedral, which, though it has the French chevet at the eastern end, combines with it the distinctive English characteristics of a nave of great length and long transepts, the former with fourteen noble bays; the naves of S. Alban's Abbey, Southwell Minster, and the Priory Church of Christchurch, Hants; portions of the nave and transepts and the central tower of Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford; the beautiful portal of Tewkesbury Abbey, the finest in England, and the doorway of Hales Church, Norfolk, on which may be seen many of the characteristic mouldings enumerated above. [Illustration: Norman Church at Kilpeck] Somewhat later in date and even more distinctively Anglo-Norman than the examples quoted above, is the noble Cathedral of Durham, in which the style reached its fullest culmination. It remains, with the exception of the so-called Chapel of the Nine Altars that replaces the original apse, very much what it was when first completed, and reflects the national unity that was becoming ever more and more complete whilst it was being erected. A very noteworthy feature of this most effective building, in which every detail is subordinated to the general effect, is the vaulted roof of the nave, one of the very few dating from Norman times, significant of the approaching revolt against the flat roofs that had so long been looked upon as essential. In spite of certain crudities of structure it harmonises well alike with the vaulting of the aisles and transepts of earlier, and of the choir of somewhat later date. The great clustered piers alternating with cylindrical columns, the fine arches spanning them, the beautiful triforia and clerestories, and above all the long vista of nave and choir, combine to place Durham Cathedral in the very highest rank amongst contemporary buildings either in England or on the Continent, whilst in the Galilee Chapel, to which a porch, replacing an earlier entrance, gives access, the details of the transitional Norman style can be very clearly studied, the graceful intersecting arches, upheld by slender coupled columns, recently supplemented by additional supports, enriched with characteristic mouldings, shadowing forth the approaching change to the early English phase of Gothic. Winchester Cathedral, originally a very typical Norman building designed by William of Wykeham, retains its Norman framework, covered over, as it were, with a drapery of detail in the latest development of English Gothic, and with it may be named as characteristic Norman buildings with Gothic additions, Peterborough Cathedral, all Norman except the west front and eastern extremity of the choir; Malmesbury Abbey, with a flat-roofed nave and vaulted aisles, the latter with pointed arches; the Cathedral of Exeter; the Minster of Sherbourne; and portions of Westminster Abbey. Many parish churches, too, including those of Kilpeck in Herefordshire, a very typical Norman building; Tickencote in Lincolnshire, with intersecting pointed arches; S. Peter's in the East, Oxford, with a groined vaulted roof; Barfreston Church, Kent, with a very beautiful recessed doorway; Goring and Iffley in Oxfordshire; and above all, S. Bartholomew's in London, date from Norman times, and, though they have all been more or less modified by restoration, retain the general characteristics of the period to which they belong. [Illustration: Plan of Peterborough Cathedral] Anglo-Norman secular architecture is characterised by much the same qualities as ecclesiastical, the castles and residences of the sovereigns and the nobles having been of dignified and impressive appearance, well proportioned, and thoroughly in harmony with their surroundings. During the reigns of the Conqueror and his successors many noble strongholds were erected on points of vantage. The most important feature, and in every case the first to be built, having been the lofty central keep or donjon, the home of its owner in peace, and the last refuge of a besieged garrison in time of war. In it was a fine hall, in which the host received his guests, with a raised platform known as the daïs for the use of those of high rank, and the approach to it was protected by a complex series of defences, including deep ditches or fosses, walls with towers and turrets at intervals, forming two distinct enclosures known as the outer and inner baileys, often covering a vast extent of ground, the whole encircled by a deep moat that could be filled with water when necessary. The great main entrance was flanked by towers, and in connection with the heavy doors of solid oak was a portcullis, that is to say, a grating of timber and iron bristling with spikes, that could be drawn up from within, cutting off all access to the inner precincts. Some few Norman castles, all considerably modified to suit modern requirements, are still in use as residences or public buildings, including those of Windsor, Warwick (both specially typical), Norwich, Dover, Richmond in Yorkshire, and the Tower of London; the keep of the last named (known as the White Tower) and the chapel dedicated to S. John being amongst the best examples of the Anglo-Norman style in existence; whilst at Rochester, Colchester, Croft, Headingham, and Kenilworth are extensive remains of other strongholds, that before they fell into decay, must have equalled in grandeur those of Windsor and Warwick. A very remarkable example of a private residence dating from Norman times is Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, the seat of the Duke of Rutland, which retains the original great hall with a daïs and minstrels' gallery, and a number of fine suites of rooms to which various wings were added during the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, affording an excellent opportunity for the study of the development of English domestic architecture. CHAPTER VIII GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE The first decades of the 12th century were marked throughout Europe, as far as architecture was concerned, by the final breaking loose from the Roman traditions that had so long been accepted as binding, and the revolt against which had been inaugurated more than a hundred years before. The struggle between the old and new methods of building very clearly reflected that of the people for greater freedom of thought and action in the countries in which it took place. The keynote of both was an aspiration after nobler things, and, in architecture, a yearning for religious expression, typified by the pointing upwards of the spires and pinnacles of churches and cathedrals, coincided with the craving of builders for increased lightness and grace of structure. The lofty vaults and complicated systems of buttresses of the Gothic style bore striking witness to the ambitious daring of their designers, a daring more than justified by its results. [Illustration: Gothic Vaulting] The term Gothic, that now calls up a vision of ethereal beauty, was, strange to say, first given to the style that grew out of the Romanesque by the artists of the Renaissance as an expression of their contempt for what they looked upon as outworn methods of building, similar to those of the Gothic barbarians in warfare. It very soon, however, lost all association with this most inappropriate comparison, becoming synonymous with all that is most beautiful in the architecture of the period to which it is applied. The most important characteristics of Gothic buildings are the introduction, wherever possible, of vertical or very sharply pointed details, such as highly pitched roofs and gables, spires and pinnacles, pointed arches and pointed vaulting, flying buttresses, that grew ever slenderer and more decorative, leading downwards from the roof, and counteracting the tremendous thrust of the suspended vault of stone, all of true structural value. To these must be added the minor peculiarities of slenderer columns than those of Romanesque buildings, several being often clustered together, mouldings cut into the stone of the capitals of the columns, arcading &c., instead of projecting beyond the surface, the grouping of several windows under the arch, and the increase in the beauty of their tracery. The so-called lancet or long narrow window with stilted head, pointed like an arch, is specially distinctive of Early Gothic, and was later supplemented by the more elaborate rose window, the stained glass in them, and in the more complex groups, adding greatly to the æsthetic effect of the whole building, the many coloured light from them relieving the monotony of the stone work. [Illustration: Gothic Vaulting] The general appearance of the interior of a Gothic cathedral, with its long perspective of nave, aisles, and choir, its finely proportioned triforia and clerestories, and, above all, its graceful arches leading up to their points of union in the soaring roof, may justly be called a poem in stone, whilst its exterior is equally remarkable for the close correlation of all its parts, producing an impression of consistent unity of design. An added charm is given alike to the interior and exterior by the combined richness and quaintness of the decorative sculpture, in which is clearly illustrated the delight in symbolism of the mediæval craftsmen, who, working in close accord with architect and builder, supplemented effigies of heroes and heroines of the faith, royal patrons, &c., with emblematic animals, fruit, flowers, and foliage, welding the most incongruous forms into an elaborate and beautiful scheme of ornamentation. [Illustration: Gargoyle] It was in Northern France that the Gothic style was first developed, and there, as elsewhere, it passed through three phases. The first, characterised by comparative severity of style and simplicity of decoration, prevailing in the 12th and 13th centuries; the second, to which the name of Rayonnant is sometimes given, on account of the ray-like window tracery, in the 14th; and the third, known as the Flamboyant, because of the flame-like tracery and general brightness of the ornamentation, in the 15th century. [Illustration: Flying Buttress] A hint of the coming change was, as has already been shown, given in many a Romanesque building, notably, to quote but two cases in point, in the Cathedral of Evreux, and the Church of S. Etienne, Beauvais, but it was in the Cathedral of S. Denis, near Paris, founded in 1140, that the full significance of that change was revealed. It retains, it is true, round-headed arches above some of its windows and a few projecting decorative mouldings, but in other respects it is essentially Gothic, its double aisles foreshadowing those of the later Notre Dame of Paris, which may justly be said to be an epitome of the development of the pointed style in France. Specially dear to the French nation on account of its intimate association with many thrilling episodes of its history, it remains, in spite of all the vicissitudes through which it has passed, so far as its general structure is concerned, very much what it was when first completed in the late 13th century. The noble western façade, with its profuse and ornate ornamentation, and the fine square towers flanking it, each pierced with effective openings and adorned with grotesque gargoyles, contrast with the slender central spire--which, by the way, is modern--tiers of graceful flying buttresses, and the numerous groups of pinnacles, whilst the long line of the great roof ridge brings into relief the comparative intricacy of the design of the rest of the building, especially of the extremities of the transepts with their fairy-like arcading, beautiful sculptures, and grand rose windows. The most distinctive details of the interior of Notre Dame are the massive piers and symmetrical arches of varying width of the nave, the simple but most effective vaulting of it, the double aisles and the choir; the shortness of the transepts, atoned for by the unusual length of the semicircular apse, with its circlet of chapels; the combination in the clerestory of pointed-headed and rose windows, and, above all, the exquisitely proportioned and spacious triforium, which surmounts the whole of the double aisles and forms a circular gallery with arcaded openings, harmonising alike with those of the nave below and the clerestory above, and a stone vault of pointed intersecting arches springing from slender clustered columns. [Illustration: Gothic Arcade] [Illustration: Gothic Steeple] Contemporaneous with Notre Dame is Laon Cathedral, the original and characteristic chevet of which was replaced in the early 13th century by a square termination, in imitation it is supposed of some English church, but which otherwise resembles the Cathedral of Paris, especially in its fine western façade and open vaulted triforium. In the Cathedral of Chartres, founded in the 12th century, but practically rebuilt in the 13th after its almost complete destruction by fire, the further progress of the style may be studied, its arches being more stilted and its nave and choir wider than those of its predecessors, whilst its closed-in triforium is significant of the ever increasing height of the roofs, necessitating the strengthening of the walls, a change that was, however, quickly succeeded and, to a great extent, neutralised by the piercing and filling in with glass of the wall behind the arcading. Other characteristics of Chartres Cathedral are the noble sculptures of the west front, that are not only among the finest but the least injured in France, those of the south and north porches that are scarcely inferior, the dignified towers surmounted by beautiful and graceful spires of different but harmonious designs, and the double tier of flying buttresses of the nave. The last named are moreover of unusual construction, each consisting of two parts, the upper strengthened by an arcade with round-headed arches, springing from massive stunted piers, that seem to connect the advanced Gothic of the rest of the building, with the late Romanesque style. The Cathedral of Rheims is another typical Gothic building with a western façade, the deeply recessed central portal of which is especially fine, resembling those of Notre Dame, Laon, and Chartres; a remarkably effective central tower that rises nearly sixty feet above the high-pitched roof; a well-developed chevet, a walled-in triforium similar to that of Chartres, a noble series of clerestory and several grand rose windows filled with very beautiful stained glass. [Illustration: Gothic Clustered Column] In the Cathedral of Amiens French Gothic architecture touched its highest point of excellence, before the over exaggeration of its distinctive peculiarities sounded the note of decadence. Begun in 1220, when all the structural problems of the pointed style had been finally solved, it was completed in 1272, and although it has more than once been seriously injured by fire, it has been so successfully restored that it still remains one of the noblest churches of Europe, the one thing detracting from the solemn beauty of its general external appearance being the later Flamboyant spire, that is quite out of character with the rest of the building. Its great height and breadth; the symmetry of its proportions; the dignified simplicity of its vaulting, which in nave, aisles and transepts, chevet chapels and ambulatory is of similar design, the centre from which the ribs radiate being in every case so situated that these ribs are all of equal length; the grand sculptures and fine arcading of the great west front, the towers of which, though they differ in detail, harmonise well with each other; the exquisite statues and bas-reliefs of the transept portals; the combined strength and grace of the many flying buttresses; the admirable system of lighting, windows occupying the whole of the space between the main arcades of the nave and the roof; the beautiful and varied effects of perspective from many different points of view in the interior; with the minor detail of the marvellous carvings in the choir, justify the claim that Amiens Cathedral is the crowning glory of Gothic architecture and an ample vindication of its principles. In the contemporaneous Beauvais Cathedral, that was intended to rival that of Amiens in its height and in the ethereal lightness of its stilted arches, a convincing proof was given of the danger of carrying those principles too far, for the vaulting of the choir collapsed before the completion of the building, which, though it was restored and added to later, still remains unfinished. With it may be mentioned the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, the window tracery in which is very fine; the Cathedral of Coutances, which has a very fine central lantern tower--that is to say, one with windows that throw a light upon the centre of the interior of a building--and a beautiful tapering spire; and the Cathedral of Lisieux, with a very characteristic chevet and vaulting resembling that of the Cathedral of Amiens. The Cathedral of Le Mans, already referred to in connection with its noble Romanesque nave, has a most beautiful late 13th century Gothic choir, with one of the finest chevets in France. The aisles, that at the western end of the building are single, develop at the transepts into a double circlet, with chapels radiating from them, whilst the choir has exceptionally fine 13th and 14th century stained glass windows. The general effect of the interior, in which the solemn dignity of the nave contrasts with the almost ethereal beauty of the choir and its surroundings, is most impressive, whilst the exterior with its graceful flying buttresses and pinnacles is equally fine. The Cathedral of Bourges is another typical 13th century Gothic building which, though it is without the usual transepts, has a beautiful apse, the ambulatories of which have unusually wide spaces between the columns, double aisles flanking the nave as well as the choir and chevet, producing a unique impression of vastness, whilst the exterior is equally effective with its five grand western portals, a long main roof unbroken by towers or spires, and a series of steeply pitched supplementary roofs above the chapels of the eastern end. Dating from the same period as the cathedrals just noticed is the fortified Abbey of Mont St. Michel, that has been again and again rebuilt, and in which the gradual evolution of the Gothic style in France can be well studied, especially in the lovely chapel justly called the Merveille or the Marvel, that, with its cloisters, is still much what it was when finished in 1228, whilst the Chatelet or Gate-house, with its massive round towers and the various abbatial buildings, such as the Salle des Hôtes or Guest-Hall, are equally characteristic of French domestic architecture of the same period. On the other hand the Abbey Church, that crowns the mount, has been so much-restored and modified that little of the original structure remains, except the crypt which, with its massive piers and arches and many supplementary chapels, is practically the same as that from which uprose the famous abbey, the building of which was a labour of love to so many successive abbots. The Church of S. Pierre, Caen, which has a fine tower with a beautiful pierced spire, is a good example of the second period of the Gothic style in France, and at Rouen the Rayonnant and Flamboyant phases are exceptionally well illustrated. The Abbey Church of S. Ouen was built entirely in the 14th century, and, with its characteristic high-pitched roofs over each bay of the aisles, its lofty towers--those at the west end with tapering spires--its delicately sculptured portals, double tiers of flying buttresses, triple division of arcades, triforium, and clerestory in the nave, the number and beauty of its stained glass windows, its graceful clustered piers, that rise without a break from the ground to the springing of the vault, and its beautiful chevet, with its circlet of eleven chapels, is an epitome of all the most characteristic features of Gothic architecture. The Church of St. Maclou in the same town is a fine gem of Flamboyant work, with its stilted arches, tapering spires and pinnacles, and lavish internal and external decoration, whilst in the Cathedral of Rouen can be recognised details of each of the three stages of French Gothic, combined with those of the later Renaissance. The western façade, lateral portals, towers, spires, and fine rose windows are typically Flamboyant, and the general view of the interior, with its long vista of nave and choir, its slightly pointed arcading, two tiers of which divide the nave from the aisles, and, above all, its simple but most effective vaulting, is essentially that of an early example of the pointed style, that of the Lady Chapel being especially effective. Good secular examples of the Gothic style in France are the Palais de Justice and Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, both at Rouen, the Chateau of Coucy near Laon, the Hôtel de Cluny, Paris, the Chateau de Pierrefonds in Normandy, and, most characteristic of all, the House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges. It was, however, in Belgium that Gothic municipal and domestic architecture reached its noblest development, the great halls of the towns being remarkable for their dignified and massive appearance, and, except in the latest examples built after the decadence had set in, for the severe restraint of their ornamentation. Of rectangular plan, and several stories in height, with steeply pitched roofs, the gable ends adorned with many pinnacles, and the long sloping sides broken by dormer windows, contrasting with the rows of pointed-headed lights in the walls beneath, and lofty central tower of ornate design, these noble buildings, of which those at Ypres, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, and Tournai are the best, are the chief pride of the cities to which they belong. They rival in the affections of the people even the cathedrals of contemporary date, although those of Antwerp, specially noteworthy for its seven aisles, Louvain, the nave and transepts of which, as already stated, are Romanesque, whilst the choir is a fine specimen of Early Gothic, Brussels, Ghent, Louvain, and Liège are all noble structures, resembling those of France in general plan, though most of them are shorter and of greater width. In Spain, as in France, Gothic architecture passed through three phases: the first, that prevailed in the second half of the 12th and the first of the 13th century, to a great extent the outcome of the Romanesque; the second that succeeded it and lasted until the beginning of the 15th century, distinguished by great dignity of structure and appropriateness of ornamentation; the last, that prevailed until nearly the middle of the 16th century, corresponding to a great extent with French Flamboyant, though it lasted longer and was considerably modified by Moorish influence. To the first period of Gothic architecture in Spain belong the Cathedrals of Santiago de Compostella, of cruciform plan with a vaulted roof, semicircular headed arcades and windows, and an ornate western façade recalling that of Chartres; Zamora, Taragona, and the older of the two at Salamanca, the three last retaining the characteristic cimborio, or low dome, already referred to in connection with Romanesque work in Spain, rising from the intersection of nave and transepts, but of more complex structure than in earlier examples, the ribs of the vaulting being upheld by pendentives and the whole surmounted by a secondary dome of considerable height pierced with windows, and at Salamanca flanked by four circular towers. Unfortunately, in later Spanish ecclesiastical architecture this beautiful feature was abandoned, and the Cathedrals of Toledo, Leon, and Burgos are of the French type, with chevets, double aisles, clustered pillars upholding pointed arches, vaulted roofs, ornate decorative arcading, fine open triforia, and lofty clerestories. The exterior of that of Burgos is especially ornate, with three pinnacled towers, tapering open-traceried spires rising from those at the western end. In the 14th century the cruciform plan, which had so long prevailed, was replaced in Spain by one without either aisles or transepts; the buttresses that had previously been introduced outside the building to resist the thrust of the vaulting, were brought within the walls so as to make the nave one vast vaulted hall, flanked by lateral chapels as in the fine Cathedral of Gerona and the Church of S. Maria del Pino at Barcelona. Later, however, this comparatively simple mode of structure was superseded by vast complicated buildings such as the Cathedral of Salamanca and that of Segovia, both dating from the 16th century, the vaulting of which is especially complicated, with very ornate ribs, whilst the towers closely resemble those of contemporaneous Moorish mosques. The Gothic style, that was alike alien to the Italian temperament and unsuited to the Italian climate, never really took root in Italy, the soil of which was thoroughly impregnated with classic traditions. The horizontal cornice, so characteristic of Greek and Early Roman architecture is of frequent occurrence, the round arch was long retained in combination with pointed highly-pitched roofs, and spires are rare, whilst the beautiful groined vaulting, the flying buttresses, and the exquisite window-tracery, that lend so great a charm to the cathedrals and churches of France and England, are very seldom met with. There was no gradual evolution in Italy from Early to Late Gothic, and for this reason it is usual to treat Italian buildings in the pointed style in three geographical instead of chronological groups, namely, the northern, central, and southern. To the first belongs the Cathedral of Milan, the largest Gothic building in Italy, the exterior of which is somewhat spoiled by its over-decorated western façade, though the effect of the long rows of lateral pinnacles, the numerous flying buttresses, the low conical dome and lofty spire is very fine. The interior, with its vast nave, double aisles, and complex apse, its lofty piers, with capitals consisting of life-sized figures in niches, and its noble clerestory, presents an appearance of grandeur unequalled by any other Gothic church in Italy. The Certosa or Carthusian Monastery, the façade of which is a century older than the rest of the building; the Churches of S. Maria del Carmine and S. Michele, both at Pavia, the latter with a very typical campanile; the Cathedral of Genoa; the Churches of S. Anastasia and S. Zenone at Verona, are all good examples of Italian-Gothic, whilst amongst secular buildings in the same style in Northern Italy, the Ducal and other palaces at Venice, such as the so-called Ca' d'Ora are remarkable for the beauty of their proportions, the effectiveness of their window-grouping, and the general appropriateness and grace of their decorative details, especially of their balconies. In Central Italy the Cathedrals of Florence and Siena are specially typical, the former, with its dome of considerably later date than the rest of the building, contrasting with the Campanile or Bell Tower named after Giotto, the latter being noteworthy for the combination of a dome with pointed arcading and horizontal cornices, and the association on the west front of rounded with stilted arches, the last a peculiarity also of the cathedral at Orvieto, the façade of which is one of the most beautiful in Italy. The Gothic work of Southern Italy is far more florid than that of the rest of the peninsula, and this is equally true of that of Sicily. In the churches of both, as in the earlier Romanesque buildings already noticed, Saracenic, Greek, and Roman influences are alike noticeable, especially in those of Naples and the Cathedrals of Palermo, Monreale, and Messina, the three last named combining the pointed arch distinctive of Gothic, with the elaborate surface decoration so characteristic of the Norman style. German architects did not adopt the pointed arch until considerably later than those of the south and west of Europe, but to atone for this they delighted in highly pitched roofs with stilted gables, and lofty towers, with pointed roofs and tapering spires. The exteriors of their buildings differ very greatly from the interiors, in which the round-headed windows and semicircular arches of the Romanesque style are retained, enriched, however, with beautiful and ornate carving. The term round-arched Gothic is therefore often applied to the earliest phase of the style in Germany, of which good examples are the Churches of the Holy Apostles, of S. Martin and S. Maria in Capitolo, all in Cologne, the Abbey Churches of Arnstein and Andernach and the Liebfrauenkirche at Trèves, the last built on the foundations of a much earlier chapel. The second phase of Gothic architecture in Germany, in which the pointed arch was substituted for the semicircular, did not begin until the second half of the 13th century. To it belong the greater part of the Cathedral of Strasburg, which combines, with much beautiful Romanesque work, a typical Gothic façade with a fine open tracery spire, a companion to which was designed but never erected. The Cathedral of Freiburg, with a graceful and ornate spire, the Church of S. Stephen at Vienna, with aisles almost as lofty as the nave, portions of the Church of S. Sebald, Nuremberg, the decorative sculpture of which is remarkably fine, and, above all, the Cathedral of Cologne, the noblest example of German Gothic, with an exceptionally symmetrical plan, which in spite of the fact that the building extended over more than a century, and that the west point was only completed in the 19th century, was not departed from, so that it remains a unique specimen of mediæval design. It has a noble nave, double aisles, one of which is continued round the eastern apse and is divided into seven chapels, forming a picturesque chevet. Massive towers with a tapering central spire and many pinnacles flank the western entrance, elaborately decorated buttresses break the long lines of the walls, and from the intersecting nave and transepts rises a slender but most effective spire. [Illustration: Plan of Cologne Cathedral] To the third period of Gothic architecture in Germany belong Ulm Cathedral, which has a nave of exceptional height; the unfinished Church of S. Barbara at Kullenberg, with a very picturesque chevet, the exterior of which is most lavishly decorated, and a steeply pitched roof of unusual height, with soaring towers and pinnacles; S. Catherine at Oppenheim, the over ornate complex decorative carvings of which are specially typical; and the parish Church of Thaun, the western portal of which is remarkably fine. With these ecclesiastical buildings may be named the town halls of Lübeck, Brunswick, Münster, and other German towns, which, though they are neither so beautiful or so characteristic as those of Belgium, are of noble and symmetrical proportions, whilst a word of recognition must also be given to the beautiful domestic architecture of Germany, especially that of Prague, Nuremberg, and Frankfort all rich in survivals of mediæval times. CHAPTER IX GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN [Illustration: Early English Lancet Window] [Illustration: Early English Window] Gothic architecture in England and Scotland followed to some extent the same lines as in France, with, however, certain notable differences that were the outcome of the national feeling which had begun to make itself felt as early as the close of the 11th century. Until then the Normans had remained a distinct and alien element in what appeared to them a foreign land, but now they had become fused with the natives of that land, sharing their æsthetic as well as their political aspirations. The note of change was first sounded in the architecture of the now united races in a rebellion against the heavy massiveness of the Norman style, and a desire for a greater redundancy of what may be called structural decoration in place of extraneous surface ornamentation. The general proportions of buildings gradually became slenderer, the walls loftier, the windows longer, the piers and columns slighter, and the arches more pointed, these peculiarities becoming more and more accentuated as time went on, till they culminated in the noble and exquisitely beautiful cathedrals and churches that vied even with the best of those of Northern France. [Illustration: Early English Capital] It is usual to divide the development of English Gothic architecture into three periods: the Early English, the Decorated, and the Perpendicular--the first prevailing from about 1189 to 1307, the second from the latter date to 1380, and the third from 1380 to 1485, whilst the name of Tudor has been given to the transitional time between the last phase of Gothic and the introduction of the Renaissance style, lasting from 1485 to about 1546. It must, however, be added that hardly any buildings exist belonging entirely to one period, architects having in almost every case been compelled to be content with adding to or modifying the work of their predecessors. Amongst the characteristics of Early English architecture are groined vaulting with main diagonal ribs only, long narrow lancet-headed windows, clustered piers with capitals consisting generally of delicately carved foliage, pointed arcading, the archivolt or arched portion enriched with mouldings, in which the ornament known as the dog-tooth is of frequent occurrence, ornate yet dignified western façades with deeply recessed doorways decorated with slender columns and beautiful bas-reliefs, high-pitched roofs with stilted gable ends, lofty towers and spires, and plain buttresses ranged in pairs at the angles of buildings. The Early English lancet window has a unique significance in the development of Gothic architecture this side of the Channel, for it inaugurated an important structural change, its constantly increasing length aiding greatly in the breaking up of the triple division of walls--supposed by some to have been emblematic of the Holy Trinity--with arcading, triforium, and clerestory. By slow degrees the triforium was first reduced to a mere decorative feature, and then eliminated altogether, whilst the clerestory usurped its place in addition to its own. [Illustration: Early English Capital] [Illustration: Early English Capital] [Illustration: Base of Early English Pillar] [Illustration: Capitals of Early English Clustered Pillar] In Decorated buildings the windows are larger and divided into a greater number of lights than in Early English, the heads being filled with tracery of geometrical design; the façades are more complicated and at the same time less effective, the towers and spires are loftier and supplemented by many pinnacles and finials, flying buttresses are multiplied; parapets with pierced openings, canopied niches containing figures and other purely decorative features give to the exteriors a great richness of general appearance. In the interiors the simple Early English vaulting is superseded by roofs divided into a great number of different compartments, the points of intersection being marked by stone bosses or masses of carving, whilst increased lavishness of decoration characterises every portion of the building, mouldings of a great variety, amongst which the ballflower is of frequent occurrence, being introduced wherever possible. [Illustration: Early English Ornaments] [Illustration: Early English Ornaments] In Perpendicular Gothic, as its name implies, the vertical tendency became ever more and more marked; towers, spires, and pinnacles became more and more numerous, all decreasing in bulk and increasing in height. Turrets with many airy finials, springing from flying buttresses that were adorned with figures of lions, dragons, and other symbolic creatures, rise above equally ornate parapets, the dignified single-centred arch was replaced by a four-centred form, and rectilinear lines superseded the beautifully flowing tracery of earlier windows. It was, however, the complex and exquisitely delicate groined roofing that chiefly characterised the Perpendicular style, lending to the interior of the buildings in which it was employed an ethereal charm that has never been surpassed. In the so-called fan-tracery roof, that was the culmination of this distinctive form of vaulting, the entire surface of the roof is covered with radiating ribs resembling the sections of an outspread fan, connected by bands of trefoil or quatrefoil ornament known as cusping, and, in some cases--notably in that of Henry VII's chapel at Westminster--with pendant stalactite ornaments drooping from the point of intersection of the groins. In some Perpendicular buildings, as in the Churches of S. Stephen and S. Peter's Mancroft at Norwich, ornate open timber roofs, enriched with beautiful carving, take the place of those of stone, and in the final or Tudor phase of the style such roofs, to which the name of hammer beam has been given, and of which those of Wolsey's Great Hall at Hampton Court and of Westminster Hall are good examples, were almost as elaborate as the fan-tracery variety. Characteristic features of secular Tudor buildings are the extensive use of panelling, the bow or projecting window rising direct from the ground, the oriel window or window supported by a corbel of stone often finely carved, battlements with open tracery work and richly decorated gables, fine specimens of all of which are to be seen at Hampton Court Palace. [Illustration: Early English Dog-tooth Ornament] [Illustration: Early English Arcading] [Illustration: Early English Doorway, Westminster Abbey] One of the earliest Gothic structures in England is the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, designed by the Burgundian Williams of Sens, which recalls in general style certain contemporaneous French ecclesiastical buildings. Foreign influence is also noticeable in the somewhat later Ripon and Chichester Cathedrals, but by the beginning of the 13th century English Gothic had freed itself almost entirely from the trammels of French traditions, and started forward on the path from which it never deviated, combining a consummate mastery of structural principles and an unwearying attention to detail with a unity of expression that makes an English Gothic church or cathedral an ideal reflection of the spirit of the age which witnessed its erection. [Illustration: Plan of Salisbury Cathedral] The Cathedrals of Wells, Lincoln, and Salisbury, the choir of Ely Cathedral, and the choir, transepts, and part of the cloisters and other details of Westminster Abbey, are typical examples of the Early English phase of Gothic. The first named especially is unrivalled in the symmetry of its general proportions and the richness and appropriateness of its decorations. Its western façade rivals that of Amiens Cathedral in the restrained dignity of its general design, the delicacy of its decorative arcading, and the number and variety of its finely sculptured figures. The central tower, though its upper portion belongs to the Decorated period, harmonises well with the rest of the exterior, whilst the interior is truly a poem in stone, with the long perspective of the nave flanked by graceful arches, springing from clustered piers with capitals of exquisitely carved foliage, noble triforia and clerestories, and a simple arched vaulting of intersecting ribs. The transepts, that are of earlier date than the nave, serve as a kind of introduction to it, and in the choir the transition from Early English to Decorated Gothic can be well studied, the western portion dating from the 12th and the eastern from the 13th century. [Illustration: Decorated Window] [Illustration: Decorated Pinnacle] [Illustration: Decorated Capital] Though the exterior of Lincoln Cathedral is of a somewhat hybrid character, the towers and doorways of the west front being Norman, the arcading and decorative sculpture Early English, and the central tower Decorated, the general effect is grand and impressive. The interior, though not quite so ornate as that of Wells, is almost as beautiful, the great rose windows being specially noteworthy features. The so-called Angel Choir, which has a very fine triforium, is a gem of Early English work, and the three 15th century chapels adjoining it are equally characteristic of Perpendicular Gothic. The beautiful Early English choir of Ely Cathedral contrasts forcibly with the noble Norman nave, and the so-called Galilee Porch is one of the finest examples of the first phase of Gothic in the country, but the exterior of the building has been almost entirely rebuilt, the great central tower, which fell in 1322, having been replaced by the present one in the Decorated phase of Gothic. The Early English portions of Westminster Abbey closely resemble the other examples of the style just quoted, though the bays of the choir are not so well proportioned as those of Lincoln. Before the 15th century additions to Salisbury Cathedral and the sweeping away of the statues and other sculptures that adorned its west front, it must have been almost as typical as that of Lincoln or of Wells of the Early English style, and it still remains, in its rectangular plan and square eastern termination, a true representative of the ideals of native architects. [Illustration: Decorated Ball Flower Ornament] The transepts of York Minster, in one of which is the famous window with lancet-headed lights, known as the Five Sisters, is a good example of the transition from Early English to Decorated Gothic, and the same may be said of portions of the ruins of Hexham Abbey, the Saxon crypt of which has already been referred to, notably of the transepts with windows resembling those of York Minster, and of the many relics of the noble monastic buildings of Yorkshire, including those at Ripon, Jervaulx, Rivaulx, and Whitby. The Cathedral of Glasgow is another beautiful building in the first phase of Gothic, the choir, beneath which is a noble crypt of earlier date, being especially fine, and with it must be named the ruins of the great abbey churches of Kelso, Jedburgh, and Dryburgh, that have distinctive Norman as well as Early English details. The first half of the 14th century was the golden age of English architecture, during which the Decorated gradually grew out of the Early English style, the two being in many cases so completely merged in each other that no break is discernible. The foundations of a truly national style had been laid in the Cathedrals of Wells and of Lincoln, in which originality of design was combined with consummate technical skill of execution, and in the buildings that succeeded them, architect and craftsmen still worked together in complete harmony. The wealth of imagination of the latter found its best expression in emphasising the structural lines of the noble conceptions of the former; niches, with their figures, cusping, finials and crockets, ball flowers and bosses, all becoming essential details of one harmonious whole. The nave and choir of Exeter Cathedral are especially typical of Decorated architecture at its best. They rise from the foundations of an earlier church, of which the Norman towers above the transepts are relics, and are absolutely unsurpassed in the simple dignity of the arcading spanning the clustered piers, the exquisite beauty of the groined roofing, the bosses of which are decorated with delicate carvings of a great variety of subjects, and the fine tracery of the windows. Unfortunately the general effect of the exterior, in spite of the fine Norman towers and the beauty of the decorative sculpture of the west front, is inferior to that of the interior, a 15th century porch harmonising ill with the earlier work, whilst breadth is too great for the height of the building. [Illustration: Decorated Steeple] Other good examples of Decorated Gothic are the Church of St. Mary, Oxford, with a very fine spire; the nave and chapter-house of York Minster, which has a very beautiful window at the western end, the flowing tracing of which is specially distinctive of the style; the choir of Lichfield Cathedral, which has, however, certain Early English details; the choir of Carlisle Cathedral, with an exceptionally beautiful eastern window of nine lights with elaborate tracery; the Lady Chapel of Wells Cathedral; the crypt, all that is left of St. Stephen's, Westminster, now used as a chapel of the Houses of Parliament, the lantern tower of Ely Cathedral; the ruins of Tintern and Battle Abbeys, with those of Melrose Abbey, which has also characteristic Perpendicular features. To the same period as these ecclesiastical buildings belong the Round Tower at Windsor, the Hall of the Bishop's Palace at Wells, Conway, Caernarvon, and Chepstow Castles, all recalling Norman domestic architecture in the general massiveness of their structure, that is relieved by the comparative lightness of such details as the doors and windows. Unfortunately the second half of the 14th century was marked by a tendency to destroy or obliterate the characteristic details of Early English and Decorated buildings, a notable example of which is Gloucester Cathedral, the beautiful eastern apse of which was pulled down, whilst the piers and walls of the rest of the building were concealed as much as possible, the barbarism being, it must be owned, atoned for to some extent by the addition of a noble eastern window in the Perpendicular style. The nave of Westminster Abbey, on the other hand, begun just after the restoration of Gloucester Cathedral was completed, harmonises well with the earlier choir, and may be quoted, with the choir of York Minster and the naves of Canterbury and Winchester Cathedrals, as examples of the transition from the Decorated to the Perpendicular styles. To the final phase of the latter belong Beverley Minster, the Cathedral of Chester, and the Abbey Church at Bath, the western façades of all of which are very fine, but it was in Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, with those of Holyrood and Roslyn in Scotland, that the style reached its fullest development. That development was, alas, however, all too soon followed by a decadence that was ushered in by an employment of too lavish and often meaningless ornamentation which had nothing to do with structural necessities. [Illustration: Hammer Beam Roof] [Illustration: Perpendicular Roofing] [Illustration: Perpendicular Window] [Illustration: Perpendicular Niche] Westminster Chapel, in addition to the characteristic fan-tracery roof already referred to, has an exceptionally beautiful chevet with five apsidal chapels, a finely vaulted nave, aisles, and cloisters, in which Decorated and Perpendicular details are harmoniously combined. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and St. George's, Windsor, are both entirely in the Perpendicular style, whilst the Scotch examples quoted above are specially noticeable for the contrast their massive pillars and arcades present to the airy lightness of their vaulting. Less important Perpendicular ecclesiastical buildings are the parish churches of Blakeney and Cley in Norfolk, the former with a specially fine east window, the latter unfortunately almost in ruins, but notable on account of the beauty of the decorative carving; the parish church of Fairford, Gloucestershire, the stained glass windows of which are amongst the finest in England; and Christ Church College, Oxford, in which town, by the way, Gothic traditions lingered longer than anywhere else in England. [Illustration: Corbel] Notable secular buildings in the latest phase of English Gothic are Westminster Hall, and the earlier portions of Hampton Court Palace, whilst Longleat Palace, Wiltshire, and Christ Church Hall, Oxford, with a fine open timber roof, are good examples of the transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance styles, the general plans belonging to the former and the decorative details being Italian in feeling. CHAPTER X RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE The term Renaissance, signifying revival, has been given to the style which succeeded the Gothic. It was, to a great extent, a reversion to classic ideals modified to suit modern requirements. Its leading characteristics are simplicity of plan, symmetry of proportion, and massive grandeur of general effect, a minor peculiarity being the lavish use of plaster, not only for surface decoration, but also in some cases for the actual structure of such details as cornices, &c. [Illustration: Example of Renaissance Ornament] The Renaissance style was inaugurated in Italy, where, as already stated, the Gothic never took root, and spread thence to the other countries of Europe, assuming in each country a certain distinctive character of its own in harmony with its environment. In Italian Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture the old basilican plan was revived, the dome became again, as in ancient Rome, the crowning glory of the building, and was combined with horizontal entablatures upheld by columns, with capitals of one or another of the Greek orders, and porticoes with pediments. In secular Italian Renaissance a very notable feature is the central cortile or courtyard surrounded by open arcades, above which are the principal apartments, of style corresponding with that of the arcades, the round-headed windows being divided from each other by slender pilasters, and the spandrels above them filled in with sculptured ornamentation. The principal façade of Italian palaces was especially ornate, richly decorated courses of stone dividing the stories from each other, in which the fenestration or grouping of the windows was peculiarly effective. Whereas in the history of mediæval architecture few names emerge from the obscurity in which those who planned and erected the great cathedrals, churches, and castles were content to remain, in that of Renaissance the individual architect comes to the front, all the designing having been done by him and the whole work carried on under his personal superintendence. In the new movement Florence took the lead, owing the pre-eminence she quickly won to the gifted and versatile Filippo Brunelleschi, who, like so many of his famous contemporaries, was a skilled goldsmith and sculptor before he became an architect. His first work of importance was the dome he added to the unfinished cathedral of his native city, which was soon succeeded by the Churches of S. Spirito and S. Lorenzo, both of which are typical Renaissance buildings, as is also the Puzzi Chapel, on which the architect displayed his wonderful sense of symmetry, combining domes, arches, and lintels with consummate skill. Fine examples of Renaissance secular architecture in Florence are the Riccardi and Pitti Palaces, both designed by Brunelleschi, but considerably modified after his death, the Rucellai Palace by Alberti, a worthy successor of Brunelleschi, the Guadagni Palace, designed by Bramante, and the Pandolfini, designed by Raphael, the last very characteristic of the mature phase of Italian Renaissance. [Illustration: Façade of a Venetian Palace] It was in Rome that the style reached its noblest development, and the Cathedral of S. Peter's, on which all the greatest architects of the 16th and 17th centuries were successively employed, affords a unique opportunity for its study. Built on the site of the old basilica of S. Peter, alluded to in the section on Early Christian architecture, what was to become the largest church in the world was begun by Bramante in 1506. His plan, that of a square with four projecting apses, to be covered in with a central and four supplementary domes, was followed until his death in 1514, when the work was carried on by Giuliano da San Gallo, Fra Giacondo and Raphael, who were in favour of certain modifications of the original design, that if carried out would have converted the square into a Latin cross. The withdrawal of San Gallo, and the deaths of Giacondo and Raphael in 1515, led to Baldasarre Peruzzi being appointed architect, and under his auspices the plan was changed to that of a Greek cross. Before his death in 1536 the present south transept and the vaulting, that was to encircle the central dome were finished, and the massive pendentives that were to uphold the latter were begun. The next architect to take up the vast scheme was Antonio da San Gallo, who, could he have obtained the necessary funds, would have added a long pronaos or corridor of approach, to be entered from a domed porch at the western end. In his model the interior of the central portion of the cathedral, with the notable exception of the dome, appears much as it does now, so that with its aid a good idea can be obtained of the state of the building when, in 1546, Michael Angelo was appointed architect in chief, and set the seal of his genius upon a complex creation which was already a reflection of the highest constructive and æsthetic achievement of the golden age of Italian architecture. Reverencing the noble design of Bramante, Michael Angelo left the interior, of which the symmetry of plan and beauty of the many pilasters with their Corinthian capitals are notable characteristics, much as he found it, but though he introduced on the exterior Corinthian pilasters resembling those of the interior, he greatly modified the general aspect of the former by the removal of the projecting chapels and the aisles round the apses. It was in his design for the dome that Michael Angelo achieved his greatest architectural triumph, for without tampering at all with what had already been done by Bramante, he set upon the cylindrical drum that artist had intended to uphold a dome, which was to be a mere reproduction of that of the Pantheon, a magnificent structure of original design which dominates the capital, producing an absolutely unrivalled impression of combined strength, vastness, and symmetry, the eye being irresistibly led up from drum to dome and from dome to lantern. From within the cathedral the effect is scarcely less grand, a wonderful sense of space being conveyed by the soaring vault, that seems to spring heavenwards of its own volition. Michael Angelo died before his masterpiece was completed, but so far as the dome was concerned his design was carried out, with certain slight modifications, by Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana. Unfortunately, however, the rest of the great architect's scheme was departed from and its effectiveness destroyed by additions which he would most certainly have condemned. At the suggestion of Pope Pius IV the façade built under Michael Angelo was pulled down and replaced by Maderno with that still _in situ_, whilst the nave was lengthened out of all proportion to the rest of the building. In spite of this lamentable mistake, the general effect of the interior is remarkably fine, and is greatly enhanced by the rich colouring of the lavish decoration of every portion, the massive piers and vast arches spanning them, and the vaulted coffered ceilings, all harmonising with and supplementing each other. Moreover, the unhappy result of the substitution of Maderno's for Michael Angelo's façade was to some extent neutralised in 1666 by the erection under Bernini of the lofty colonnade encircling the piazza of S. Peter in the simple and dignified Doric style, that forms an appropriate approach to the cathedral. In the Renaissance palaces of Rome classic details were more closely copied than in Florence, pilasters and arcades forming, in almost every case, the chief decorations of the exteriors. Notable examples are the so-called Venetian Palaces, the Cancellaria designed by Bramante, the Sacchetti by Antonio San Gallo, and, above all, the Farnese, the grandest in the capital, begun by San Gallo and completed by Michael Angelo, with portions of the Vatican, including the Hall of the Belvedere, designed by Bramante. In Venice, where the Renaissance style was necessarily modified by the peculiar conditions of the lagoon city, good examples of it are the Churches S. Maria dei Miracoli, S. Zaccaria, and S. Maria della Salute, with the palaces of Vendramini, Calergo, Trevisano, and Cornaro, all, however, excelled by the beautiful Palazzo Grimani designed by San Michele and the Library of S. Mark of Sansovino. At Vicenza the famous architect Palladio erected many noble Renaissance churches, including the Redentore, enclosed the ancient Basilica in grand classic arcades, and designed a great number of fine palaces. In Milan the finest Renaissance structures are the sacristy of S. Maria Presso S. Sabino, the apse of S. Maria della Grazie and the arcaded court of the great Hospital, all designed by Bramante. Near Pavia is the fine Certosa, the façade of which is the work of Ambrogio Borgognoni; Genoa is rich in effective groups of Renaissance palaces after the designs of Alessio, and owns a late Renaissance church ascribed to Puget, and at Verona is the typical Palazzo del Conseglio, built by Fra Giocondo. It was not until the beginning of the 16th century that the Renaissance style gained a footing in France, and even for some time after that French architects, whilst adopting its main features, clung to certain characteristic Gothic details. This is very notably the case in some of the royal chateaux on the Loire, justly considered the finest secular Renaissance buildings in the country, especially in that of Chambord, which, with a typical Renaissance façade, has a highly pitched roof with soaring pinnacles and pointed-headed dormer windows. Other fine Early Renaissance French buildings are the wing added by Frances I to the old castle of Blois, famous for its beautiful external spiral staircase, the chateaux of Chenonceaux, Chateaudun, and Azay-le-Rideau, the Hôtel de Ville at Beaugency, the Church of S. Eustache, the Hôtel des Invalides, the western portion of the Louvre, and the Luxembourg, all in Paris. To the latest phase of what eventually became almost a national style, belong the Pantheon, the Palais Royal, the College and Church of the Sorbonne, all in Paris; the relics of the noble Chateau built for Richelieu on the site of the great minister's native village by Lemercier, the Chateau of Ballery in Normandy, the additions to the castle of Blois, the Chateau des Maisons near, and the Church of Val de Grace in Paris, all by François Mansard, whose name is associated with a picturesque form of roof invented by him. In the chateau of Versailles, designed by Jules Mansard, a distant connection of the greater François, the first note of the decadence of the Renaissance style was sounded, for well-built and richly decorated though it is, the huge structure is lacking in the dignified grandeur, so distinctive of the buildings enumerated above. Although it was in Italy and France that European Renaissance architecture achieved its greatest triumphs, some few fine examples of it remain in other countries, including in Spain the great Monastery and Palace of the Escurial near Madrid, the central church of which is especially fine, the Cathedrals of Burgos, Malaga, and Granada, the town halls of Saragossa and Seville, and portions of the Alcazar of Toledo, the convent of Mafra in Portugal, the Town Hall of Antwerp, the Council Halls of Leipzig and Rothenburg, the Cloth Hall of Brunswick, the Castle of Schallenburg, and the Hall of the Belvedere at Prague. It is unnecessary to refer in detail to the many buildings in Europe in what is known as the Rococo style, of which grotesque and meaningless ornamentation is the chief characteristic, but it must be added that in the early 19th century something like a new classic revival took place on the Continent. The Church of La Madeleine and the Opera House in Paris, the Arco della Pace at Milan, the Royal Theatre at Berlin, the Glyptothex and Pinacothex of Munich, the Walhalla at Ratisbon, the Museum of Dresden, and the Church of S. Isaac at St. Petersburg being notable instances of the skilful way in which Greek details of structure were combined by the best architects with modern requirements. CHAPTER XI RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN It was only by very slow degrees that the Renaissance style was introduced into England, native architects and those for whom they worked having clung with almost pathetic devotion to the traditions of the past. At the end of the 15th century the Gothic style was still in full vigour on this side of the Channel, and although early in the 16th century it was to a great extent modified by the influence of the foreign artists who were attracted to the court of Henry VIII by the lavish patronage of the young monarch, it continued to the end of the century to check the development of pure Renaissance, the two styles to a great extent neutralising each other. It is significant of the change of the attitude of rulers and ruled towards religion that took place in England during the 16th and 17th centuries, that it was no longer in churches and cathedrals that architecture achieved its greatest triumphs, but in palaces, manor-houses, colleges, and places of public entertainment. No longer was the soaring Gothic style to voice in stone the aspirations of worshippers for closer intercourse with the divine; the best energies of architects were henceforth to be directed to the promotion of comfort and luxury in private life, and for the realisation of this comparatively ignoble aim the revived classic style was peculiarly adapted. True, the spirit of the Renaissance did not display itself so fully in architecture as in other branches of human endeavour, but for all that its working was very apparent, assuming a certain character of its own in England. [Illustration: Portion of Lilford Hall, Northants] First Italians, amongst whom the most distinguished were Torregiano, designer of the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey, Giovanni da Majano, and Giovanni da Padua, the architect of Longleat in Wiltshire, then Flemings and Germans, none of whom, however, except John of Cleves, designer of Caius College, Cambridge, rose to any special eminence, endeavoured to graft their own upon English methods, succeeding with rare exceptions only so far as the minor details of ornamentation were concerned. It is not to these men of alien birth but to the builders and masons of rural England that the country owes the many noble residences, dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, that, Gothic so far as their principles of construction are concerned, are enriched or spoiled, according to the point of view from which they are considered, by Renaissance ornamentation. Amongst these builders Thomas Holt, author of the Divinity School of Oxford, and Robert Smithson and John Thorpe, joint designers of Wollaton Hall, Northamptonshire, were especially distinguished. To the last named many critics also attribute Holland House, London, Rushton, Kirkby and Apethorpe Halls in Northamptonshire, and Knowle House in Kent, all of which are truly typical examples of English 16th or early 17th domestic or academic architecture at its best. To about the same period belong Lilford Hall, Northants, Westwood, Bolsover, Charlton, and Hatfield Houses, all somewhat wanting in the dignified simplicity of plan of the work of the men quoted above, but with an undoubted charm of their own. The master-builders who alike designed and executed the many beautiful mansions and colleges of the Elizabethan age--with whom must be associated the later John Abel, designer of several fine market-halls, including those of Kingston, Hereford, and Leominster--may justly be said to have paved the way for Inigo Jones, the first Englishman to introduce pure Renaissance architecture into his native land. Already before his advent these humble predecessors had partly evolved, out of the mediæval castle and the mediæval cottage, what was to become the typical English home, bringing about something like a revolution in planning by the innovations introduced by them with a view to admitting more air and light, and rendering access to the upper floors easier by the substitution of an internal staircase, for the external flight of steps leading up to each separate room hitherto the fashion. Gifted with a vivid imagination and a rare faculty of design, Inigo Jones succeeded in so adapting Italian ideals, especially those of Palladio, to English needs, that he may justly be said to have founded something approaching to a national style. Unfortunately few of the many schemes evolved by him were carried out in their entirety, but his plans and drawings prove him to have been the equal and, in some respects, even the superior of his great successor, Sir Christopher Wren. Of his grand design for the new Palace of Whitehall after the fire of 1619, the Banqueting Hall, considered his masterpiece, alone was completed, but he was the real architect of the equally successful Greenwich Hospital, for it was his plan that was followed after his death by Wren. Although it is the custom to dwell much on the unique opportunity afforded to Sir Christopher Wren by the great fire of 1666, there is no doubt that even without it he would have set his seal on the period during which he lived. His additions to Hampton Court Palace are most dignified and appropriate, his semi-Gothic Tom Tower at Oxford well illustrates his keen sense of environment, and his design for a Royal Palace at Winchester, had it been carried out, would have given to that city a building worthy to rank with its cathedral. As it is, his fame rests chiefly on his work in London, although the masterly scheme he drew up for the rebuilding of the whole town had to be considerably modified. [Illustration: Portion of Greenwich Hospital] S. Paul's Cathedral, that dominates the vast agglomeration making up the modern capital, reflects, in its solemn and dignified beauty, almost as clearly as did a mediæval ecclesiastical Gothic edifice, the spirit of its age, during which the Puritan replaced the Roman Catholic ideal, and a rigid Protestantism became the religion of the people. Of noble and most harmonious proportions, S. Paul's is cruciform in plan, every portion of its exterior and interior subordinated to the great central dome, that, consisting as it does of an outer and inner vault, is equally impressive whether seen from within or from without. From whatever point of view, the dome, with its graceful lantern surmounted by a cross, remains the central feature of a structure at unity with itself, consistent in every detail, the western towers and the great central portico with their appropriate classic pilasters and columns all being in complete and satisfying accord. The Churches of S. Stephen, Walbrook, S. Andrew, Holborn, S. James, Piccadilly, S. Clements Danes, S. Bride's, Fleet Street, and Bow are amongst the finest designed by Wren. The steeples of the last three are especially noteworthy as the earliest examples in England of the use of that feature in Renaissance buildings. Sir Christopher did not pass away until the 18th century, which was to witness a rapid decline of architecture in England. His influence had begun to wane even before his death, and few of his immediate successors, with the exceptions of his pupils, Nicholas Hawkesmoor, architect of S. George's, Bloomsbury, and other London churches of similar design, and Sir John Vanburgh, who designed Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, rose to eminence. James Gibbs, designer of the Ratcliffe Library at Oxford, also did some good work; the brothers Adam successfully imitated classic forms in certain London and Edinburgh buildings, and Sir Robert Taylor won some distinction by the Halls erected by him in Herefordshire and Essex. Towards the close of the century a classic revival inaugurated by Sir William Chambers, designer of Somerset House, took place in England, and it became the fashion to add a Greek portico to every important public or private building. Typical examples of the new departure are S. Pancras Church, London, that is a kind of compilation from the Parthenon, the Erectheum, and the Temple of the Winds at Athens, and S. George's Hall, Liverpool, a skilful adaptation of the design of a hall of one of the great Thermæ of Rome. Early in the 19th century a reaction took place against the classic style, which was not really adapted to the English climate, and architects began to show a desire to revert to Gothic traditions. In this new movement Sir Charles Barry took the lead. The Houses of Parliament, in the latest phase of the style, considered his masterpiece, is specially successful in its general plan and in the picturesqueness of its exterior. With Sir Charles Barry must be associated Augustine Pugin, a man of fine genius and originality, with a genuine feeling for mediæval Gothic, Norman Shaw, and Bodley, all of whom have done much to leaven the utilitarian tendencies of modern times. INDEX Alhambra, the, 42 Amiens Cathedral, 65 Amphitheatres, Roman, 28 Anglo-Norman style, 54 Anglo-Saxon style, 53 Arch, vi Arches, Roman, 30 Architecture, definition of, v Asiatic architecture, 9 Assyrian architecture, 9 Babylonian architecture, 9 Baptisteries, 35 Basilicas, Roman, 26 Baths, Roman, 27 Buddhist architecture, 12 Buvards, v Byzantine architecture, 24, 36 Caryatid Porch, 21 Castles, Norman, 59 Cathedrals. _See_ Churches Chaityas, 11 Chartres Cathedral, 64 Chinese architecture, 13 Christian architecture, Early, 31 Churches, Anglo-Norman, 54 Anglo-Saxon, 53 Byzantine, 37 Early Christian, 31 Gothic, 62, 68, 76 Renaissance, 84 Romanesque, 47 Coliseum, 29 Cologne Cathedral, 70 Coptic architecture, 35 Corinthian style, 16, 18, 21 Doric style, 16, 18-21 Durham Cathedral, 58 Egyptian architecture, 7 Etruscan architecture, 22 Flamboyant Gothic style, 62, 65, 67 Gothic style, 50, 60 British, 72 Decorated, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80 Early English, 73, 78, 79 French, 62 German, 70 Italian, 69 Perpendicular, 73, 75, 80, 81 Spanish, 68 Greek architecture, 13 Hindu architecture, 12 Indian architecture, 11 Ionic style, 16, 18, 21 Jones, Inigo, 90 Keystone, vi Lâts, 11 Lintel, vi Mansions, English Renaissance, 90 Mastabas, 7, 10 Materials employed, v, 9, 23 Mosques, 40 Nineveh, 10 Norman style, 54 Notre Dame of Paris, 63 Palaces, Greek, 14 Persian, 10 Palaces, Renaissance, 86 Roman, 29 Pantheon, 26 Parthenon, 19 Persian architecture, 9, 10 Peruvian architecture, 13 Pyramids, 7 Rayonnant Gothic style, 62, 67 Renaissance style British, 88 European, 83 French, 87 Italian, 83 Rococo style, 88 Roman architecture, 22 Romanesque style, 45 Roofing, arcuated and trabeated, vi S. Ambrogio, Milan, 48 S. Marco, Venice, 39 S. Paul's Cathedral, 91 S. Peter's Cathedral, Rome, 84 S. Sophia, Constantinople, 38 Saracenic architecture, 40 Stambhas, 11 Stupas, 11 Taj Mahal, 44 Temples, Babylonian, 10 Egyptian, 8 Greek, 15, 18 Indian, 11 Tombs, Egyptian, 7 Greek, 21 Persian, 10 Topes, 11 Tudor style, 73, 76 Tuscan style, 24 Vaulting, Gothic, 61 Roman, 24 Romanesque, 45 Viharas, 11 Voussoirs, vi Westminster Abbey, 76, 78, 81 Wren, Sir Christopher, 90 THE PEOPLE'S BOOKS General Editor--H. C. O'NEILL "With the 'People's Books' in hand there should be nobody of average intelligence unable to secure self-education."--_Sunday Times._ NOW READY (February 1914) THE FIRST NINETY-SIX VOLUMES 1. The Foundations of Science By W. C. D. Whetham, M.A., F.R.S. 2. Embryology&mdash;The Beginnings of Life By Prof. Gerald Leighton, M.D. 3. Biology By Prof. W. D. Henderson, M.A. 4. Zoology: The Study of Animal Life By Prof. E. W. MacBride, M.A., F.R.S. 5. 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33837	----	Transcriber's Note Illustration captions in {curly brackets} have been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader. A considerable number of the page references in the index are incorrect; however, they have been preserved as printed. _ILLUSTRATED TEXT-BOOKS OF ART EDUCATION_ _EDITED BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A._ ARCHITECTURE GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. [Illustration: P. 114 THE CERTOSA, NEAR PAVIA. FROM THE CLOISTERS. BEGUN BY MARCO DI CAMPIONE, A.D. 1393.] _TEXT-BOOK OF ART EDUCATION, EDITED BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A._ ARCHITECTURE GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. _Occasional Lecturer on Architecture at University College, London_ [Illustration: {SAINT GEORGE. PANEL FROM THE TOMB OF CARDINAL AMBOISE IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL.}] NEW YORK SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET 1880 (_All rights reserved._) LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL, E. C. [Illustration: {CRÊTE FROM NOTRE DAME, PARIS.}] PREFACE. The history, the features, and the most famous examples of European architecture, during a period extending from the rise of the Gothic, or pointed, style in the twelfth century to the general depression which overtook the Renaissance style at the close of the eighteenth, form the subject of this little volume. I have endeavoured to adopt as free and simple a mode of treatment as is compatible with the accurate statement of at least the outlines of so very technical a subject. Though it is to be hoped that many professional students of architecture will find this hand-book serviceable to them in their elementary studies, it has been my principal endeavour to adapt it to the requirements of those who are preparing for the professional pursuit of the sister arts, and of that large and happily increasing number of students who pursue the fine arts as a necessary part of a complete liberal education, and who know that a solid and comprehensive acquaintance with art, especially if joined to some skill in the use of the pencil, the brush, the modelling tool, or the etching needle, will open sources of pleasure and interest of the most refined description. The broad facts of all art history; the principles which underlie each of the fine arts; and the most precious or most noteworthy examples of each, ought to be familiar to every art student, whatever special branch he may follow. Beyond these limits I have not attempted to carry this account of Gothic and Renaissance architecture; within them I have endeavoured to make the work as complete as the space at my disposal permitted. Some portions of the text formed part of two courses of lectures delivered before the students of the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, and are introduced here by the kind permission of Sir John Stokes. Many of the descriptive and critical remarks are transcripts of notes made by myself, almost under the shadow of the buildings to which they refer. It would, however, have been impossible to give a condensed view of so extended a subject had not every part of it been treated at much greater length by previous writers. The number and variety of the books consulted renders it impossible to make any other acknowledgment here than this general recognition of my indebtedness to their authors. T. R. S. [Illustration: {STAINED GLASS FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.}] CONTENTS. PAGE ILLUSTRATED GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL WORDS. xv to xxxix CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER II. THE BUILDINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 6 CHAPTER III. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 21 CHAPTER IV. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls. Towers and Spires. Gables. Piers and Columns 28 CHAPTER V. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND (_continued_). Analysis (_continued_). Openings. Roofs. Spires. Ornaments. Stained Glass. Sculpture 45 CHAPTER VI. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN EUROPE. 1. FRANCE. Chronological Sketch. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls, Towers and Gables. Columns and Piers. Roofs and Vaults. Openings. Mouldings and Ornaments. Construction and Design 69 2. BELGIUM and the NETHERLANDS 87 3. SCOTLAND, WALES, and IRELAND 91 CHAPTER VII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE. 1. GERMANY. Chronological Sketch. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls, Towers and Gables. Roofs and Vaults. Openings. Ornaments. Construction and Design 93 2. NORTHERN EUROPE 111 CHAPTER VIII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. 1. ITALY and SICILY. Topographical Sketch. NORTHERN ITALY. CENTRAL ITALY. SOUTHERN ITALY. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls, Towers, and Columns. Openings and Arches. Roofs and Vaults. Mouldings and Ornaments. Construction and Design 112 2. SPAIN. Chronological Sketch 137 3. PORTUGAL 142 CHAPTER IX. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. Principles of Construction and Design. Materials and Construction 143 CHAPTER X. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE. GENERAL VIEW. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls and Columns. Openings. Construction and Design 154 CHAPTER XI. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. FLORENCE. ROME. VENICE, VICENZA, VERONA. MILAN, PAVIA. GENOA, TURIN, NAPLES. Country Villas 165 CHAPTER XII. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE AND NORTHERN EUROPE. 1. FRANCE. Chronological Sketch 193 2. BELGIUM and the NETHERLANDS 206 3. GERMANY 210 CHAPTER XIII. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL. 1. ENGLAND. Chronological Sketch 214 2. SCOTLAND 227 3. SPAIN and PORTUGAL 229 [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM RHEIMS CATHEDRAL.}] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE CERTOSA, THE, NEAR PAVIA. FROM THE CLOISTERS Frontispiece SAINT GEORGE. PANEL FROM THE TOMB OF CARDINAL AMBOISE IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL Title Page GLOSSARY. FORTY ENGRAVINGS OF DETAILS xv to xxxix 1. WEST ENTRANCE, LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. (1275.) 5 2. GROUND PLAN OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. (1118 to 1193.) 6 3. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE NAVE OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL 7 4. CHOIR OF WORCESTER CATHEDRAL. (BEGUN 1224.) 9 5. NAVE OF WELLS CATHEDRAL. (1206 to 1242.) 9 6. GROUND PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 11 7. HOUSE OF JAQUES COEUR AT BOURGES. (BEGUN 1443.) 15 8. PLAN OF WARWICK CASTLE. (14TH AND 15TH CENTURIES.) 16 9. PALACES ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE. (14TH CENTURY.) 18 10. WELL AT REGENSBURG. (15TH CENTURY.) 20 11. GOTHIC ORNAMENT. FROM SENS CATHEDRAL (HEADPIECE) 21 12. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. (MOSTLY EARLY ENGLISH.) 35 13. ST. PIERRE, CAEN, TOWER AND SPIRE. (SPIRE, 1302.) 37 14. HOUSE AT CHESTER. (16TH CENTURY.) 38 15. HOUSES AT LISIEUX, FRANCE. (16TH CENTURY.) 41 16. LANCET WINDOW. (12TH CENTURY.) 46 17. TWO-LIGHT WINDOW. (13TH CENTURY.) 47 18. GEOMETRICAL TRACERY. (14TH CENTURY.) 48 19. TRIFORIUM ARCADE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. (1269.) 49 20. ROSE WINDOW FROM THE TRANSEPT OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 50 21. PERPENDICULAR WINDOW 51 22. ROOF OF HALL AT ELTHAM PALACE. (15TH CENTURY.) 53 23. HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL. (1503-1512.) 57 24. SPIRE OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, WARBOYS, LINCOLNSHIRE 59 25. DECORATED SPIRE. ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, OAKHAM 60 26. EARLY ARCH IN RECEDING PLANES 62 27. ARCH IN RECEDING PLANES MOULDED 62 28. DOORWAY, KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. (15TH CENT.) 63 29. STAINED GLASS WINDOW FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL 65 30. SCULPTURE FROM CHAPTER HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY 67 31. CHURCH AT FONTEVRAULT. (BEGUN 1125.) 70 32. DOORWAY AT LOCHES, FRANCE. (1180.) 72 33. NOTRE DAME, PARIS, WEST FRONT. (1214.) 74 34. PLAN OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL. (1220-1272.) 76 35. AMIENS CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT. (1220-1272.) 78 36. PIERS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE, RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. (1211-1240.) 80 37. CAPITAL FROM ST. NICHOLAS, BLOIS, FRANCE. (13TH CENTURY.) 84 38. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL, INTERIOR. (1225-1537.) 86 39. THE TOWN HALL OF MIDDLEBURGH. (1518.) 89 40. TOWER AT GHENT. (BEGUN 1183.) 90 41. ABBEY CHURCH OF ARNSTEIN. (12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES.) 94 42. CHURCH AT ANDERNACH. (EARLY 13TH CENTURY.) 96 43. CHURCH OF ST. BARBARA AT KUTTENBERG. EAST END. (1358-1548.) 99 44. DOUBLE CHURCH AT SCHWARTZ-RHEINDORFF. SECTION. (1158.) 101 45. DOUBLE CHURCH AT SCHWARTZ-RHEINDORFF. (1158.) 102 46. COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. GROUND PLAN. (BEGUN 1248.) 104 47. WESTERN DOORWAY OF CHURCH AT THANN. (14TH CENTURY.) 106 48. CHURCH OF ST. CATHERINE AT OPPENHEIM. (1262 TO 1439.) 107 49. ST. SEBALD'S CHURCH AT NUREMBERG. THE BRIDE'S DOORWAY 109 50. PALACE OF THE JURISCONSULTS AT CREMONA 117 51. CATHEDRAL AT FLORENCE. WITH GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE 121 52. CATHEDRAL AT SIENA. WEST FRONT AND CAMPANILE 123 53. CATHEDRAL AT ORVIETO. (BEGUN 1290; FAÇADE, 1310.) 125 54. OGIVAL WINDOW-HEAD 129 55. TRACERY IN WINDOW-HEAD, FROM VENICE 130 56. WINDOW FROM TIVOLI 134 57. ITALIAN GOTHIC WINDOW, WITH TRACERY IN HEAD 136 58. CATHEDRAL AT TOLEDO. INTERIOR. (BEGUN 1227.) 139 59. THE GIRALDA AT SEVILLE. (BEGUN IN 1196; FINISHED IN 1568.) 141 60. DOORWAY FROM CHURCH AT BATALHA. (BEGUN 1385.) 151 61. STROZZI PALACE AT FLORENCE. (BEGUN 1489.) 169 62. PART OF THE LOGGIA DEL CONSIGLIO AT VERONA 171 63. THE PANDOLFINI PALACE, FLORENCE. DESIGNED BY RAPHAEL 173 64. ST. PETER'S AT ROME. INTERIOR. (1506-1661.) 177 65. MONUMENT BY SANSOVINO, IN STA. MARIA DEL POPOLO, ROME 179 66. PALAZZO GIRAUD, ROME. BY BRAMANTE. (1506.) 180 67. ITALIAN SHELL ORNAMENT 183 68. THE CHURCH OF THE REDENTORE, VENICE. (1576.) 185 69. CERTOSA NEAR PAVIA. PART OF WEST FRONT. (BEGUN 1473.) 188 70. VILLA MEDICI--ON THE PINCIAN HILL NEAR ROME. BY ANNIBALE LIPPI (NOW THE _Académie Française_). (A.D. 1540.) 191 70A. EARLY RENAISSANCE CORBEL 192 71. WINDOW FROM A HOUSE AT ORLEANS. (EARLY 16TH CENTURY.) 195 72. CAPITAL FROM THE HOUSE OF FRANCIS I., ORLEANS. (1540.) 197 73. PAVILLON RICHELIEU OF THE LOUVRE, PARIS 199 74. PART OF THE TUILERIES, PARIS. (BEGUN 1564.) 201 75. CAPITAL FROM DELORME'S WORK AT THE LOUVRE 202 76. HÔTEL DES INVALIDES, PARIS 204 77. WINDOW FROM COLMAR. (1575.) 208 78. ZEUGHAUS, DANTZIC. (1605.) 209 79. COUNCIL-HOUSE AT LEYDEN. (1599.) 211 80. QUADRANGLE OF THE CASTLE OF SCHALABURG 213 81. HOLLAND HOUSE, KENSINGTON. (1607.) 216 82. ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON. (1675-1710.) 220 83. HOUSES AT CHESTER. (16TH CENTURY.) 225 84. THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO. (BEGUN 1568.) 231 [Illustration: {STAINED GLASS FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.}] GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL WORDS. ABACUS.--The upper portion of the capital of a column, upon which the weight to be carried rests. AISLE (Lat. _ala_).--The side subdivision in a church; occasionally all the subdivisions, including the nave, are called aisles. APSE.--A semicircular or polygonal termination to, or projection from, a church or other public building. ARCADE.--A range of arches, supported on piers or columns. ARCH.--A construction of wedge-shaped blocks of stone, or of bricks, of a curved outline, and spanning an open space. The principal forms of arch in use are Semicircular; Acutely-pointed, or Lancet; Equilateral, or Less Acutely-pointed; Four-centred, or Depressed Tudor; Three-centred, or Elliptic; Ogival; Segmental; and Stilted. (Figs. _A_ to _F_.) ARCHITRAVE.--(1) The stone which in Classic and Renaissance architecture is thrown from one column or pilaster to the next. (2) The moulding which in the same styles is used to ornament the margin of a door or window opening or arch. ASHLAR.--Finely-wrought masonry, employed for the facing of a wall of coarser masonry or brick. ATTIC (In Renaissance Architecture).--A low upper story, distinctly marked in the architecture of the building, usually surmounting an order; (2) in ordinary building, any story in a roof. BAILEY (from _vallum_).--The enclosure of the courtyard of a castle. BALL-FLOWER.--An ornament representing a globular bud, placed usually in a hollow moulding. BALUSTER.--A species of small column, generally of curved outline. BALUSTRADE.--A parapet or rail formed of balusters. [Illustration: FIG. _A_.--SEMICIRCULAR ARCH.] [Illustration: FIG. _B_.--STILTED ARCH.] The Semicircular and the Stilted Semicircular Arch were the only arches in use till the introduction of the Pointed Arch. Throughout the Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular periods they occur as exceptional features, but they were practically superseded after the close of the 12th cent. [Illustration: FIG. _C_.--EQUILATERAL ARCH.] [Illustration: FIG. _D_.--LANCET ARCH.] The Lancet Arch was characteristic of the Early English period, is never found earlier, and but rarely occurs later. The Equilateral Arch was the favourite arch of the architects of the geometrical Decorated, but is not unfrequently met with in the early part of the Perpendicular period. [Illustration: FIG. _E_.--OGIVAL ARCH.] [Illustration: FIG. _F_.--DEPRESSED TUDOR ARCH.] The Depressed (or Four-centred) Tudor Arch is characteristic of the Perpendicular period, and was then constantly employed. The Ogival Arch is occasionally employed late in that period, but was more used by French and Italian architects than by those of Great Britain. BAND.--A flat moulding or projecting strip of stone. BARREL-VAULTING.--See Waggon-head vaulting. BARGE-BOARD (OR VERGE-BOARD).--An inclined and pierced or ornamented board placed along the edge of a roof when it overhangs a gable wall. BASE.--(1) The foot of a column; (2) sometimes that of a buttress or wall. [Illustration: FIG. _G_.--BASE OF EARLY ENGLISH SHAFT.] [Illustration: FIG. _H_.--BASE OF PERPENDICULAR SHAFT.] [Illustration: FIG. _I_.--BASE OF DECORATED SHAFT.] BASILICA.--(1) A Roman public hall; (2) an early Christian church, similar to a Roman basilica in disposition. BASTION (in Fortification).--A bold projecting mass of building, or earthwork thrown out beyond the general line of a wall. BATTLEMENT.--A notched or indented parapet. BAY.--One of the compartments in a building which is made up of several repetitions of the same group of features; _e.g._, in a church the space from one column of the nave arcade to the next is a bay. BAY-WINDOW.--A window projecting outward from the wall. It may be rectangular or polygonal. It must be built up from the ground. If thrown out above the ground level, a projecting window is called an Oriel. (See Bow window.) BEAD.--A small moulding of circular profile. BELFRY.--A chamber fitted to receive a peal of bells. BELFRY STAGE.--The story of a tower where the belfry occurs. Usually marked by large open arches or windows, to let the sound escape. BELL (of a capital).--The body between the necking and the abacus (which see). BILLET MOULDING.--A moulding consisting of a group of small blocks separated by spaces about equal to their own length. BLIND STORY.--Triforium (which see). BOSS.--A projecting mass of carving placed to conceal the intersection of the ribs of a vault, or at the end of a string course which it is desired to stop, or in an analogous situation. BOW WINDOW.--Similar to a Bay-window (which see), but circular or segmental. BROACH-SPIRE.--A spire springing from a tower without a parapet and with pyramidal features at the feet of its four oblique sides (see Fig. 22) to connect them to the four angles of the tower. BROACHEAD (SPIRE).--Formed as above described. BUTTRESS.--A projection built up against a wall to create additional strength or furnish support (see Flying Buttress). BYZANTINE.--The round-arched Christian architecture of the Eastern Church, which had its origin in Byzantium (Constantinople). CANOPY.--(1) An ornamented projection over doors, windows, &c.; (2) a covering over niches, tombs, &c. CAMPANILE.--The Italian name for a bell-tower. [Illustration: FIG. _J_.--BUTTRESS.] CAPITAL.--The head of a column or pilaster (Figs. _L_ to _P_). CATHEDRAL.--A church which contains the seat of a bishop; usually a building of the first class. CERTOSA.--A monastery (or church) of Carthusian monks. CHAMFER.--A slight strip pared off from a sharp angle. CHANCEL.--The choir or eastern part of a church. CHANTRY CHAPEL.--A chapel connected with a monument or tomb in which masses were to be chanted. This was usually of small size and very rich. CHAPEL.--(1) A chamber attached to a church and opening out of it, or formed within it, and in which an altar was placed; (2) a small detached church. CHAPTER HOUSE.--The hall of assembly of the chapter (dean and canons) of a cathedral. [Illustration: FIG. _L_.--EARLY NORMAN CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. _M_.--EARLY ENGLISH CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. _N_.--LATER NORMAN CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. _O_.--PERPENDICULAR CAPITAL.] [Illustration: FIG. _P_.--EARLY FRENCH CAPITAL.] CHÂTEAU.--The French name for a country mansion. CHEVRON.--A zig-zag ornament. CHEVET.--The French name for an apse when surrounded by chapels; see the plan of Westminster Abbey (Fig. 6). CHOIR.--The part of a church in which the services are celebrated; usually, but not always, the east end or chancel. In a Spanish church the choir is often at the crossing. CLERESTORY.--The upper story or row of windows lighting the nave of a Gothic church. CLOISTER.--A covered way round a quadrangle of a monastic building. CLUSTERED (SHAFTS).--Grouped so as to form a pier of some mass out of several small shafts. CORBEL.--A projecting stone (or timber) supporting, or seeming to support, a weight (Fig. _K_). [Illustration: FIG. _K_.--EARLY RENAISSANCE CORBEL.] CORBELLING.--A series of mouldings doing the same duty as a corbel; a row of corbels. CORBEL TABLE.--A row of corbels supporting an overhanging parapet or cornice. CORTILE (Italian).--The internal arcaded quadrangle of a palace, mansion, or public building. COLUMN.--A stone or marble post, divided usually into base, shaft, and capital; distinguished from a pier by the shaft being cylindrical or polygonal, and in one, or at most, in few pieces. CORNICE.--The projecting and crowning portion of an order (which see) or of a building, or of a stage or story of a building. COURSE.--A horizontal layer of stones in the masonry of a building. CROCKET.--A tuft of leaves arranged in a formal shape, used to decorate ornamental gables, the ribs of spires, &c. [Illustration: FIG. _Q_.--DECORATED CROCKET.] [Illustration: FIG. _R_.--PERPENDICULAR CROCKET.] CROSSING.--The intersection (which see) in a church or cathedral. CROSS VAULT.--A vault of which the arched surfaces intersect one another, forming a groin (which see). CRYPT.--The basement under a church or other building (almost invariably vaulted). CUSP.--The projecting point thrown out to form the leaf-shaped forms or foliations in the heads of Gothic windows, and in tracery and panels. DEC. } The Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century DECORATED. } in England. _Abbreviated_ Dec. DETAIL.--The minuter features of a design or building, especially its mouldings and carving. DIAPER (Gothic).--An uniform pattern of leaves or flowers carved or painted on the surface of a wall. [Illustration: FIG. _S_.--DIAPER IN SPANDREL, FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] DOGTOOTH.--A sharply-pointed ornament in a hollow moulding which is peculiar to Early English Gothic. It somewhat resembles a blunt tooth. DORMER WINDOW.--A window pierced through a sloping roof and placed under a small gable or roof of its own. DOME.--A cupola or spherical convex roof, ordinarily circular on plan. DOMICAL VAULTING.--Vaulting in which a series of small domes are employed; in contradistinction to a waggon-head vault, or an intersecting vault. DOUBLE TRACERY.--Two layers of tracery one behind the other and with a clear space between. E. E. } The Gothic architecture of England in the EARLY ENGLISH. } thirteenth century. _Abbreviated_ E. E. EAVES.--The verge or edge of a roof overhanging the wall. EAVES-COURSE.--A moulding carrying the eaves. ELEVATION.--(1) A geometrical drawing of part of the exterior or interior walls of a building; (2) the architectural treatment of the exterior or interior walls of a building. ELIZABETHAN.--The architecture of England in, and for some time after, the reign of Elizabeth. EMBATTLED.--Finished with battlements, or in imitation of battlements. ENRICHMENTS.--The carved (or coloured) decorations applied to the mouldings or other features of an architectural design. (See Mouldings.) ENTABLATURE (in Classic and Renaissance architecture).--The superstructure above the columns where an order is employed. It is divided into the architrave, which rests on the columns, the frieze and the cornice. FAÇADE.--The front of a building or of a principal part of a building. FAN VAULT.--The vaulting in use in England in the fifteenth century, in which a series of conoids bearing some resemblance to an open fan are employed. FILLET.--A small moulding of square flat section. [Illustration: FIG. _T_.--PERPENDICULAR FINIAL.] FINIAL.--A formally arranged bunch of foliage or other similar ornament forming the top of a pinnacle, gablet, or other ornamented feature of Gothic architecture. FLAMBOYANT STYLE.--The late Gothic architecture of France at the end of the fifteenth century, so called from the occurrence of flame-shaped forms in the tracery. FLÈCHE.--A name adapted from the French. A slender spire, mostly placed on a roof; not often so called if on a tower. FLYING BUTTRESS.--A buttress used to steady the upper and inner walls of a vaulted building, placed at some distance from the wall which it supports, and connected with it by an arch. [Illustration: FIG. _U_.--FLYING BUTTRESS.] FOIL.--A leaf-shaped form produced by adding cusps to the curved outline of a window head or piece of tracery. FOLIATION.--The decoration of an opening, or of tracery by means of foils and cusps. FOSSE.--The ditch of a fortress. FRANÇOIS I. STYLE.--The early Renaissance architecture of France during part of the sixteenth century. FRIEZE.--(1) The middle member of a Classic or Renaissance entablature; this was often sculptured and carved; (2) any band of sculptured ornament. GABLE.--The triangular-shaped wall carrying the end of a roof. GABLET.--A small gable (usually ornamental only). GALLERY.--(1) An apartment of great length in proportion to its width; (2) a raised floor or stage in a building. GARGOYLE.--A projecting waterspout, usually carved in stone, more rarely formed of metal. GEOMETRICAL.--The architecture of the earlier part of the decorated period in England. GRILLE.--A grating or ornamental railing of metal. GROIN.--The curved line which is made by the meeting of the surfaces of two vaults or portions of vaults which intersect. GROUP.--An assemblage of shafts or mouldings or other small features intended to produce a combined effect. GROUPING.--Combining architectural features as above. HALL.--(1) The largest room in an ancient English mansion, or a college, &c.; (2) any large and stately apartment. HALF TIMBERED CONSTRUCTION.--A mode of building in which a framework of timbers is displayed and the spaces between them are filled in with plaster or tiles. HAMMER BEAM ROOF.--A roof peculiar to English architecture of the fifteenth century, deriving its name from the use of a hammer beam (a large bracket projecting from the walls) to partly support the rafters. HEAD (of an arch or other opening).--The portion within the curve; whether filled in by masonry or left open, sometimes called a tympanum. HIP.--The external angle formed by the meeting of two sloping sides of a roof where there is no gable. HÔTEL (French).--A town mansion. IMPOST.--A moulding or other line marking the top of the jambs of an arched opening, and the starting point, or apparent starting point, of the arch. INLAY.--A mode of decoration in which coloured materials are laid into sinkings of ornamental shape, cut into the surface to be decorated. INTERSECTION (OR CROSSING).--The point in a church where the transepts cross the nave. INTERSECTING VAULTS.--Vaults of which the surfaces cut one another. INTERPENETRATION.--A German mode of treating mouldings, as though two or more sets of them existed in the same stone and they could pass through (interpenetrate) each other. JAMB.--The side of a door or window or arch, or other opening. [Illustration: FIG. _V_.--PLAN OF A JAMB AND CENTRAL PIER OF A GOTHIC DOORWAY.] KEEP.--The tower which formed the stronghold of a mediæval castle. KING POST.--The middle post in the framing of a timber roof. LANCET ARCH.--The sharply-pointed window-head and arch, characteristic of English Gothic in the thirteenth century. LANTERN.--A conspicuous feature rising above a roof or crowning a dome, and intended usually to light a Hall, but often introduced simply as an architectural finish to the whole building. LIERNE (rib).--A rib intermediate between the main ribs in Gothic vaulting. LIGHT.--One of the divisions of a window of which the entire width is divided by one or more mullions. LINTEL.--The stone or beam covering a doorway or other opening not spanned by an arch. Sometimes applied to the architrave of an order. LOGGIA (Italian).--An open arcade with a gallery behind. LOOP.--Short for loophole. A very narrow slit in the wall of a fortress, serving as a window, or to shoot through. LUCARNE.--A spire-light. A small window like a slender dormer window. MOAT (or Fosse).--The ditch round a fortress or semi-fortified house. MOSAIC.--An ornament for pavements, walls, and the surfaces of vaults, formed by cementing together small pieces of coloured material (stone, marble, tile, &c.) so as to produce a pattern or picture. MOULDING.--A term applied to all varieties of contour or outline given to the angles, projections, or recesses of the various parts of a building. The object being either to produce an outline satisfactory to the eye; or, more frequently, to obtain a play of light and shade, and to produce the appearance of a line or a series of lines, broad or narrow, and of varying intensity of lightness or shade in the building or some of its features. The contour which a moulding would present when cut across in a direction at right angles to its length is called its profile. The profile of mouldings varied with each style of architecture and at each period (Figs. _W_ to _Z_). When ornaments are carved out of some of the moulded surfaces the latter are technically termed enriched mouldings. The enrichments in use varied with each style and each period, as the mouldings themselves did. MULLION.--The upright bars of stone frequently employed (especially in Gothic architecture) to subdivide one window into two or more lights. NAVE.--(1) The central avenue of a church or cathedral; (2) the western part of a church as distinguished from the chancel or choir; (3) occasionally, any avenue in the interior of a building which is divided by one or more rows of columns running lengthways is called a nave. NECKING (of a column).--The point (usually marked by a fillet or other small projecting moulding) where the shaft ends and the capital begins. NEWEL POST.--The stout post at the foot of a staircase from which the balustrade or the handrail starts. [Illustration: FIG. _W_.--ARCH MOULDING. (Gothic, 12th Century.)] [Illustration: FIG. _Y_.--ARCH MOULDING. (Decorated, 14th Century.)] [Illustration: FIG. _Z_.--ARCH MOULDING. (Gothic, 13th Century.)] NICHE.--A recess in a wall for a statue, vase, or other upright ornament. NORMAN.--The architecture of England from the Norman Conquest till the latter part of the twelfth century. OGEE.--A moulding or line of part concave and part convex curvature (see Fig. _E_, showing an ogee-shaped arch). OGIVAL.--Ogee-shaped (see Fig. 54). OPEN TRACERY.--Tracery in which the spaces between the bars are neither closed by slabs of stone nor glazed. ORDER.--(1) In Classical and Renaissance architecture a single column or pilaster and its appropriate entablature or superstructure; (2) a series of columns or pilasters with their entablature; (3) an entire decorative system appropriate to the kind of column chosen. In Renaissance architecture there are five orders--the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. Each has its own proper column, and its proper base, shaft, and capital; and its own entablature. The proportions and the degree of enrichment appropriate to each vary. The Tuscan being the sturdiest and plainest, the Composite the most slender and most small, and the others taking place in the succession in which they stand enumerated above. Where more than one order occurs in a building, as constantly happens in Classic and Renaissance buildings, the orders which are the plainest and most sturdy (and have been named first) if employed, are invariably placed below the more slender orders; _e.g._ the Doric is never placed _over_ the Corinthian or the Ionic, but if employed in combination with either of those orders it is always the lowest in position. ORIEL.--A window projecting like a bay or bow window, not resting on the ground but thrown out above the ground level and resting on a corbel. PALLADIAN.--A phase of fully developed Renaissance architecture introduced by the architect Palladio, and largely followed in England as well as in Italy. PANEL.--(1) The thinner portions of the framed woodwork of doors and other such joiner's work; (2) all sunk compartments in masonry, ceilings, &c. PANELLING.--(1) Woodwork formed of framework containing panels; (2) any decoration formed of a series of sunk compartments. PARAPET.--A breastwork or low wall used to protect the gutters and screen the roofs of buildings; also, perhaps primarily, to protect the ramparts of fortifications. [Illustration: FIG. _A A_.--OPEN PARAPET, LATE DECORATED.] [Illustration: FIG. _B B_.--BATTLEMENTED PARAPET, PERPENDICULAR.] PAVILION.--A strongly marked single block of building; most frequently applied to those blocks in French and other Renaissance buildings that are marked out by high roofs. PEDESTAL.--(1) A substructure sometimes placed under a column in Renaissance architecture; (2) a similar substructure intended to carry a statue, vase, or other ornament. PEDIMENT.--(1) The gable, where used in Renaissance buildings; (2) an ornamental gable sometimes placed over windows, doors, and other features in Gothic buildings. PERP. } The Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century PERPENDICULAR. } in England. _Abbreviated_ Perp. PIER.--(1) A mass of walling, either a detached portion of a wall or a distinct structure of masonry, taking the place of a column in the arcade of a church or elsewhere; (2) a group or cluster of shafts substituted for a column. [Illustration: FIG. _C C_.--EARLY ENGLISH PIERS.] [Illustration: FIG. _D D_.--LATE DECORATED AND PERPENDICULAR PIERS.] PILASTER.--A square column, usually attached to a wall; frequently used in Classic and Renaissance architecture in combination with columns. PINNACLE (in Gothic architecture).--A small turret, or ornament, usually with a pointed top, employed to mark the summit of gables, buttresses, and other tall features. PITCH.--The degree of slope given to a roof, gable, or pediment. PLAN.--(1) A map of the floor of a building, showing the piers, if any, and the walls which inclose and divide it, with the openings in them; (2) the actual arrangement and disposition of the floors, piers, and walls of the building itself. PLANE.--The imaginary surface within which a series of mouldings lies, and which coincides with the salient and important points of that series. Mouldings are said to be on an oblique plane when their plane forms an angle less than a right angle with the face of the wall; and in receding planes, when they can be divided into a series of groups of more or less stepped outline, each within and behind the other, and each partly bounded by a plane parallel with the face of the wall. PLASTER.--The plastic material, of which the groundwork is lime and sand, used to cover walls internally and to form ceilings. Sometimes employed as a covering to walls externally. PLINTH.--The base of a wall or of a column or range of columns. PORTAL.--A dignified and important entrance doorway. PORTICO.--A range of columns with their entablature (and usually covered by a pediment), marking the entrance to a Renaissance or Classic building. PRISMATIC RUSTICATION.--In Elizabethan architecture rusticated masonry with diamond-shaped projections worked on the face of each stone. PROFILE.--The contour or outline of mouldings as they would appear if sawn across at right angles to their length. PORCH.--A small external structure to protect and ornament the doorway to a building (rarely met with in Renaissance). QUATREFOIL.--A four-leaved ornament occupying a circle in tracery or a panel. RAFTERS.--The sloping beams of a roof upon which the covering of the roof rests. RAGSTONE.--A coarse stone found in parts of Kent and elsewhere, and used for walling. RECEDING PLANES.--(See Plane.) RECESS.--A sinking in a building deeper than a mere panel. RECESSING.--Forming one or more recesses. Throwing back some part of a building behind the general face. RENAISSANCE.--The art of the period of the Classic revival which began in the sixteenth century. In this volume used chiefly to denote the architecture of Europe in that and the succeeding centuries. RIB (in Gothic vaulting).--A bar of masonry or moulding projecting beyond the general surface of a vault, to mark its intersections or subdivide its surface, and to add strength. RIDGE.--(1) The straight line or ornament which marks the summit of a roof; (2) the line or rib, straight or curved, which marks the summit of a vault. ROLL.--A round moulding. ROSE WINDOW.--A wheel window (which see). RUBBLE.--Rough stonework forming the heart of a masonry wall; sometimes faced with ashlar (which see), sometimes shown. RUSTICATION (or RUSTICATED MASONRY).--The sort of ornamental ashlar masonry (chiefly Classic and Renaissance) in which each stone is distinguished by a broad channel all round it, marking the joints. RUSTICS.--The individual blocks of stone used in rustication (as described above). SCREEN.--An internal partition or inclosure cutting off part of a building. At the entrance to the choir of a church screens of beautiful workmanship were used. SCROLL MOULDING.--A round roll moulding showing a line along its face (distinctive of decorated Gothic). SCROLL WORK.--Ornament showing winding spiral lines like the edge of a scroll of paper (chiefly found in Elizabethan). SECTION.--(1) A drawing of a building as it would appear if cut through at some fixed plane. (2) That part of the construction of a building which would be displayed by such a drawing as described above. (3) The profile of a moulding. SET-OFF.--A small ledge formed by diminishing the thickness of a wall or pier. SEXPARTITE VAULTING.--Where each bay or compartment is divided by its main ribs into six portions. SGRAFFITO (Italian).--An ornament produced by scratching lines on the plastered face of a building so as to show a different colour filling up the lines or surfaces scratched away. SHAFT.--(1) The middle part of a column between its base and capital. (2) In Gothic, slender columns introduced for ornamental purposes, singly or in clusters. SHELL ORNAMENT.--A decoration frequently employed in Italian and French Renaissance, and resembling the interior of a shell. SKY-LINE.--The outline which a building will show against the sky. SPANDREL.--The triangular (or other shaped) space between the outside of an arch and the mouldings, or surfaces inclosing it or in contact with it. (See Fig. _S_, under Diaper.) SPIRE.--The steep and pointed roof of a tower (usually a church tower). SPIRE-LIGHT (or LUCARNE).--A dormer window (which see) in a spire. SPLAY.--A slope making with the face of a wall an angle less than a right angle. STAGE.--One division in the height of any building or portion of a building where horizontal divisions are distinctly marked, _e.g._, the belfry stage of a tower, the division in which the bells are hung. STEEPLE.--A tower and spire in combination. Sometimes applied to a tower or spire separately. STEPPED GABLE.--A gable in which, instead of a sloping line, the outline is formed by a series of steps. STILTED ARCH.--An arch of which the curve does not commence till above the level of the impost (which see). STORY.--(1) The portion of a building between one floor and the next; (2) any stage or decidedly marked horizontal compartment of a building, even if not corresponding to an actual story marked by a floor. STRAP-WORK (Elizabethan).--An ornament representing strap-like fillets interlaced. STRING-COURSE.--A projecting horizontal (or occasionally sloping) band or line of mouldings. TABERNACLE WORK.--The richly ornamented and carved work with which the smaller and more precious features of a church, _e.g._, the fittings of a choir, were adorned and made conspicuous. TERMINAL (or Finial).--The ornamental top of a pinnacle, gable, &c. TERRA-COTTA.--A fine kind of brick capable of being highly ornamented, and formed into blocks of some size. THRUST.--The pressure exercised laterally by an arch or vault, or by the timbers of a roof on the abutments or supports. TIE.--A beam of wood, bar of iron, or similar expedient employed to hold together the feet or sides of an arch, vault, or roof, and so counteract the thrust. TORUS.--A large convex moulding. TOWER.--A portion of a building rising conspicuously above the general mass, and obviously distinguished by its height from that mass. A detached building of which the height is great, relative to the width and breadth. TRACERY (Gothic).--The ornamental stonework formed by the curving and interlacing of bars of stone, and occupying the heads of windows, panels, and other situations where decoration and lightness have to be combined. The simplest and earliest tracery might be described as a combination of openings pierced through the stone head of an arch. Cusping and foliation (which see) are features of tracery. (See Figs. 18, 19, 55, and 57 in the text.) [Illustration: FIG. _E E_.--PERPENDICULAR WINDOW-HEAD.] [Illustration: FIG. _F F_.--LATE PERPENDICULAR WINDOW-HEAD.] TRANSEPT.--The arms of a church or cathedral which cross the line of the nave. TRANSITION.--The architecture of a period coming between and sharing the characteristics of two distinctly marked styles or phases of architecture, one of which succeeded the other. TRANSOM.--A horizontal bar (usually of stone) across a window or panel. TREFOIL.--A three-leaved or three-lobed form found constantly in the heads of windows and in other situations where tracery is employed. TRIFORIUM (or THOROUGH-FARE).--The story in a large church or cathedral intermediate between the arcade separating the nave and aisles, and the clerestory. TUDOR.--The architecture of England during the reigns of the Tudor kings. The use of the term is usually, however, restricted to a period which closes with the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, 1547. TURRET.--A small tower, sometimes rising from the ground, but often carried on corbels and commencing near the upper part of the building to which it is an appendage. TYMPANUM.--The filling in of the head of an arch, or occasionally of an ornamental gable. UNDERCUTTING.--A moulding or ornament of which the greater part stands out from the mouldings or surfaces which it adjoins, as though almost or quite detached from them, is said to be undercut. VAULT.--An arched ceiling to a building, or part of a building, executed in masonry or in some substitute for masonry. The vaults of the Norman period were simple barrel- or waggon-headed vaults, and semicircular arches only were used in their construction. With the Gothic period the use of intersecting, and as a result of pointed arches, was introduced into vaulting, and vaults went on increasing in complexity and elaboration till the Tudor period, when fan-vaulting was employed. Our illustrations show some of the steps in the development of Gothic vaults referred to in Chapter V. of the text. No. 1 represents a waggon-head vault with an intersecting vault occupying part of its length. No. 2 represents one of the expedients adopted for vaulting an oblong compartment before the pointed arch was introduced. The narrower arch is stilted and the line of the groin is not true. No. 3 represents a similar compartment vaulted without any distortion or irregularity by the help of the pointed arch. No. 4 represents one lay of a sexpartite Gothic vault. No. 5 represents a vault with lierne ribs making a star-shaped pallom on plan, and No. 6 is a somewhat more intricate example of the same class of vault. [Illustration: FIG. _G G_.--VAULTS.] Vaults are met with in Renaissance buildings, but they are a less distinctive feature of such buildings than they were in the Gothic period; and in many cases where a vault or a series of vaults would have been employed by a Gothic architect, a Renaissance architect has preferred to make use of a dome or a series of domes. This is called domical vaulting. Examples of it occur occasionally in Gothic work. WAGGON-HEAD VAULTING, OR BARREL-VAULTING.--A simple form of tunnel-like vaulting, which gets its name from its resemblance to the tilt often seen over large waggons, or to the half of a barrel. WAINSCOT.--(1) The panelling often employed to line the walls of a room or building; (2) a finely marked variety of oak imported chiefly from Holland; probably so called because wainscot oak was at one time largely employed for such panelling. WEATHERING.--A sloping surface of stone employed to cover the set-off (which see) of a wall or buttress and protect it from the effects of weather. WHEEL WINDOW.--A circular window, and usually one in which mullions radiate from a centre towards the circumference like the spokes of a wheel; sometimes called a rose-window. WINDOW-HEAD.--For illustrations of the various forms and filling-in of Gothic window-heads, see the words Arch and Tracery. [Illustration: {ORNAMENTAL DOLPHIN PATTERN.}] HEAD AND TAILPIECES. PAGE HEADPIECE.--CRÊTE FROM NOTRE DAME, PARIS 1 " SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 6 " " " SENS CATHEDRAL 21 " " " WESTMINSTER ABBEY 28 TAILPIECE.--NORMAN CAPITALS 44 HEADPIECE.--SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY 45 TAILPIECE.--MISERERE SEAT FROM WELLS CATHEDRAL 68 HEADPIECE.--STAINED GLASS FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL 69 TAILPIECE.--MISERERE SEAT FROM WELLS CATHEDRAL 92 " ORNAMENT FROM RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 153 HEADPIECE.--RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT FROM A FRIEZE 154 " FROM A TERRA-COTTA FRIEZE AT LODI 165 TAILPIECE.--FROM A DOOR IN SANTA MARIA, VENICE 192 HEADPIECE.--ORNAMENT BY GIULIO ROMANO 193 " FROM A FRIEZE AT VENICE 235 THE END-PAPERS ARE FROM A TAPESTRY IN HARDWICK HALL. [Illustration: _The Lily of Florence._] [Illustration: {CRÊTE FROM NOTRE DAME, PARIS.}] GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. The architecture generally known as Gothic, but often described as Christian Pointed, prevailed throughout Europe to the exclusion of every rival for upwards of three centuries; and it is to be met with, more or less, during two others. Speaking broadly, it may be said that its origin took place in the twelfth century, that the thirteenth was the period of its development, the fourteenth that of its perfection, and the fifteenth that of its decline; while many examples of its employment occur in the sixteenth. In the following chapters the principal changes in the features of buildings which occurred during the progress of the style in England will be described. Subsequently, the manner in which the different stages of development were reached in different countries will be given; for architecture passed through very nearly the same phases in all European nations, though not quite simultaneously. It must be understood that through the whole Gothic period, growth or at least change was going on; the transitions from one stage to another were only periods of more rapid change than usual. The whole process may be illustrated by the progress of a language. If, for instance, we compare round-arched architecture in the eleventh century to the Anglo-Saxon form of speech of the time of Alfred the Great, and the architecture of the twelfth century to the English of Chaucer, that of the thirteenth will correspond to the richer language of Shakespeare, that of the fourteenth to the highly polished language of Addison and Pope, and that of the fifteenth to the English of our own day. We can thus obtain an apt parallel to the gradual change and growth which went on in architecture; and we shall find that the oneness of the language in the former case, and of the architecture in the latter, was maintained throughout. For an account of the Christian round-arched architecture which preceded Gothic, the reader is referred to the companion volume in this series. Here it will be only necessary briefly to review the circumstances which went before the appearance of the pointed styles. The Roman empire had introduced into Europe some thing like a universal architecture, so that the buildings of any Roman colony bore a strong resemblance to those of every other colony and of the metropolis; varying, of course, in extent and magnificence, but not much in design. The architecture of the Dark Ages in Western Europe exhibited, so far as is known, the same general similarity. Down to the eleventh century the buildings erected (almost exclusively churches and monastic buildings) were not large or rich, and were heavy in appearance and simple in construction. Their arches were all semicircular. The first rays of light across the gloom of the Dark Ages seem to have come from the energy and ability of Charlemagne in the eighth century. In the succeeding century, this activity received a check; an idea became generally prevalent that the year one thousand was to see the end of the world; men's minds were overshadowed with apprehension; and buildings, in common with other undertakings of a permanent nature, were but little attempted. When the millennium came and passed, and left all as it had been, a kind of revulsion of feeling was experienced; many important undertakings were set on foot, such as during the preceding years it had not been thought worth while to prosecute. The eleventh century thus became a time of great religious activity; and if the First Crusade, which took place 1095, may be taken as one outcome of that pious zeal, another can certainly be found in the large and often costly churches and monasteries which rose in every part of England, France, Germany, Lombardy, and South Italy. Keen rivalry raged among the builders of these churches; each one was built larger and finer than the previous examples, and the details began to grow elaborate. Construction and ornament were in fact advancing and improving, if not from year to year, at any rate from decade to decade, so that by the commencement of the twelfth century a remarkable development had taken place. The ideas of the dimensions of churches then entertained were really almost as liberal as during the best period of Gothic architecture. An illustration of this fact is furnished by the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey under Edward the Confessor. He pulled down a small church which he found standing on the site, in order to erect one suitable in size and style to the ideas of the day. The style of his cathedral (but not its dimensions) soon became so much out of date that Henry III. pulled the buildings down in order to re-erect them of the lofty proportions and with the pointed arches which we now see in the choir and transepts of the Abbey; but the size remained nearly the same, for there is evidence to show that the Confessor's buildings must have occupied very nearly, if not quite, as much ground as those which succeeded them. At the beginning of the twelfth century many local peculiarities, some of them due to accident, some to the nature and quality of the building materials obtainable, some to differences of race, climate, and habits, and some to other causes, had begun to make their appearance in the buildings of various parts of Europe; and through the whole Gothic period such peculiarities were to be met with. Still the points of similarity were greater and more numerous than the differences; so much so, that by going through the course which Gothic architecture ran in one of the countries in which it flourished, it will readily be possible to furnish a general outline of the subject as a whole; it will then only be requisite to point out the principal variations in the practice of other countries. On some grounds France would be the most suitable country to select for this purpose, for Gothic appeared earlier and flourished more brilliantly in that country than in any other; the balance of advantage lies however, when writing for English students, in the selection of Great Britain. The various phases through which the art passed are well marked in this country, they have been fully studied and described, and, what is of the greatest importance, English examples are easily accessible to the majority of students, while those which cannot be visited may be very readily studied from engravings and photographs. English Gothic will therefore be first considered; but as a preliminary a few words remain to be said describing generally the buildings which have come down to us from the Gothic period. The word Gothic, which was in use in the eighteenth century, and probably earlier, was invented at a time when a Goth was synonymous with everything that was barbarous; and its use then implied a reproach. It denotes, according to Mr. Fergusson, "all the styles invented and used by the Western barbarians who overthrew the Roman empire, and settled within its limits." [Illustration: FIG 1.--WEST ENTRANCE, LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL, (1275.) (_See Chapter V._)] [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM RHEIMS CATHEDRAL.}] CHAPTER II. THE BUILDINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. By far the most important specimens of Gothic architecture are the cathedrals and large churches which were built during the prevalence of the style. They were more numerous, larger, and more complete as works of art than any other structures, and accordingly they are to be considered on every account as the best examples of pointed architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 2.--GROUND PLAN OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. (1118 to 1193.) A. Nave. B B. Transepts. C. Choir. D D. Aisles. E. Principal Entrance.] [Illustration: FIG. 3.--TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE NAVE OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. (A.D. 1217).] The arrangement and construction of a Gothic cathedral were customarily as follows:--(See Fig. 2.) The main axis of the building was always east and west, the principal entrance being at the west end, usually under a grand porch or portal, and the high altar stood at the east end. The plan (or main floor) of the building almost always displays the form of a cross. The stem of the cross is the part from the west entrance to the crossing, and is called the nave. The arms of the cross are called transepts, and point respectively north and south. Their crossing with the nave is often called the intersection. The remaining arm, which prolongs the stem eastwards, is ordinarily called the choir, but sometimes the presbytery, and sometimes the chancel. All these names really refer to the position of the internal fittings of the church, and it is often more accurate simply to employ the term eastern arm for this portion of a church. The nave is flanked by two avenues running parallel to it, narrower and lower than itself, called aisles. They are separated from it by rows of columns or piers, connected together by arches. Thus the nave has an arcade on each side of it, and each aisle has an arcade on one side, and a main external wall on the other. The aisle walls are usually pierced by windows. The arches of the arcade carry walls which rise above the roofs of the aisles, and light the nave. These walls are usually subdivided internally into two heights or stories; the lower story consists of a series of small arches, to which the name of triforium is given. This arcade usually opens into the dark space above the ceiling or vault of the aisle, and hence it is sometimes called the blind story. The upper story is the range of windows already alluded to as lighting the nave, and is called the clerestory. Thus a spectator standing in the nave, and looking towards the side (Figs. 4 and 5), will see opposite him the main arcade, and over that the triforium, and over that the clerestory, crowned by the nave vault or roof; and looking through the arches of the nave arcade, he will see the side windows of the aisle. Above the clerestory of the nave, and the side windows of the aisles, come the vaults or roofs. In some instances double aisles (two on each side) have been employed. The transepts usually consist of well-marked limbs, divided like the nave into a centre avenue and two side aisles, and these usually are of the same width and height as the nave and its aisles. Sometimes there are no transepts; sometimes they do not project beyond the line of the walls, but still are marked by their rising above the lower height of the nave aisles. Sometimes the transepts have no aisles, or an aisle only on one side.[1] On the other hand, it is sometimes customary, especially in English examples, to form two pairs of transepts. This occurs in Lichfield Cathedral. [Illustration: FIG. 4.--CHOIR OF WORCESTER CATHEDRAL. (BEGUN 1224.) A. Nave Arcade. B. Triforium. C. Clerestory.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.--NAVE OF WELLS CATHEDRAL. (1206 TO 1242.) A. Nave Arcade. B. Triforium. C. Clerestory.] The eastern arm of the cathedral is the part to which most importance was attached, and it is usual to mark that importance by greater richness, and by a difference in the height of its roof or vault as compared with the nave; its floor is always raised. It also has its central passage and its aisles; and it has double aisles much more frequently than the nave. The eastern termination of the cathedral is sometimes semicircular, sometimes polygonal, and when it takes this form it is called an apse or an apsidal east end; sometimes it is square, the apse being most in use on the Continent, and the square east end in England. Attached to some of the side walls of the church it is usual to have a series of chapels; these are ordinarily chambers partly shut off from the main structure, but opening into it by arched openings; each chapel contains an altar. The finest chapel is usually one placed on the axis of the cathedral, and east of the east end of the main building; this is called, where it exists, the Lady Chapel, and was customarily dedicated to the Virgin. Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster (Fig. 6) furnishes a familiar instance of the lady chapel of a great church. Next in importance rank the side chapels which open out of the aisles of the apse, when there is one. Westminster Abbey furnishes good examples of these also. The eastern wall of the transept is a favourite position for chapels. They are less frequently added to the nave aisles. The floor of the eastern arm of the cathedral, as has been pointed out, is always raised, so as to be approached by steps; it is inclosed by screen work which shuts off the choir, or inclosure for the performance of divine service, from the nave. The fittings of this part of the building generally include stalls for the clergy and choristers and a bishop's throne, and are usually beautiful works of art. Tombs, and inclosures connected with them, called chantry chapels, are constantly met with in various positions, but most frequently in the eastern arm. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--GROUND PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] Below the raised floor of the choir, and sometimes below other parts of the building, there often exists a subterranean vaulted structure known as the crypt. Passing to the exterior of the cathedral, the principal doorway is in the western front:[2] usually supplemented by entrances at the ends of the transepts, and one or more side entrances to the nave. A porch on the north side of the nave is a common feature. The walls are now seen to be strengthened by stone piers, called buttresses. Frequently arches are thrown from these buttresses to the higher walls of the building. The whole arrangement of pier and arch is called a flying buttress,[3] and, as will be explained later, is used to steady the upper part of the building when a stone vault is employed (see Chap. V.). The lofty gables in which the nave and transepts, and the eastern arm when square terminate, form prominent features, and are often occupied by great windows. In a complete cathedral, the effect of the exterior is largely due to the towers with which it was adorned. The most massive tower was ordinarily one which stood, like the central one of Lichfield Cathedral, at the crossing of the nave and transepts. Two towers were usually intended at the western front of the building, and sometimes one, or occasionally two, at the end of each transept. It is rare to find a cathedral where the whole of these towers have been even begun, much less completed. In many cases only one, in others three, have been built. In some instances they have been erected, and have fallen. In others they have never been carried up at all. During a large portion of the Gothic period it was usual to add to each tower a lofty pyramidal roof or spire, and these are still standing in some instances, though many of them have disappeared. Occasionally a tower was built quite detached from the church to which it belonged. To cathedrals and abbey churches a group of monastic buildings was appended. It will not be necessary to describe these in much detail. They were grouped round an open square, surrounded by a vaulted and arcaded passage, which is known as the cloister. This was usually fitted into the warm and sheltered angle formed by the south side of the nave and the south transept, though occasionally the cloister is found on the north side of the nave. The most important building opening out of the cloister is the chapter-house, frequently a lofty and richly-ornamented room, often octagonal, and generally standing south of the south transept. The usual arrangement of the monastic buildings round and adjoining the cloister varied in details with the requirements of the different monastic orders, and the circumstances of each individual religious house, but, as in the case of churches, the general principles of disposition were fixed early. They are embodied in a manuscript plan, dating as far back as the ninth century, and found at St. Gall in Switzerland, and never seem to have been widely departed from. The monks' dormitory here occupies the whole east side of the great cloister, there being no chapter-house. It is usually met with as nearly in this position as the transept and the chapter-house will permit. The refectory is on the south side of the cloister, and has a connected kitchen. The west side of the cloister in this instance was occupied by a great cellar. Frequently a hospitum, or apartment for entertaining guests, stood here. The north side of the cloister was formed by the church. For the abbot a detached house was provided in the St. Gall plan to stand on the north side of the church; and a second superior hospitum for his guests. Eastward of the church are placed the infirmary with its chapel, and an infirmarer's lodging. The infirmary was commonly arranged with a nave and aisles, much like, a small parish church. Other detached buildings gave a public school, a school for novices with its chapel, and, more remotely placed, granaries, mills, a bakehouse, and other offices. A garden and a cemetery formed part of the scheme, which corresponds tolerably well with that of many monastic buildings remaining in England, as _e.g._, those at Fountains' Abbey, Furness Abbey, or Westminster Abbey, so far as they can be traced. Generally speaking the principal buildings in a monastery were long and not very wide apartments, with windows on both sides. Frequently they were vaulted, and they often had a row of columns down the middle. Many are two stories high. Of the dependencies, the kitchen, which was often a vaulted apartment with a chimney, and the barn, which was often of great size, were the most prominent. They are often fine buildings. At Glastonbury very good examples of a monastic barn and kitchen can be seen. Second only in importance to the churches and religious buildings come the military and domestic buildings of the Gothic period (Fig. 7). [Illustration: FIG. 7.--HOUSE OF JAQUES COEUR AT BOURGES. (BEGUN 1413.)] Every dwelling-house of consequence was more or less fortified, at any rate during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. A lofty square tower, called a keep, built to stand a siege, and with a walled inclosure at its feet, often protected by a wide ditch (fosse or moat), formed the castle of the twelfth century, and in some cases (_e.g._ the White Tower of London), this keep was of considerable size. The first step in enlargement was to increase the number and importance of the buildings which clustered round the keep, and to form two inclosures for them, known as an inner and an outer bailey. The outer buildings of the Tower of London, though much modernised, will give a good idea of what a first class castle grew to be by successive additions of this sort. In castles erected near the end of the thirteenth century (_e.g._ Conway Castle in North Wales), and later, the square form of the keep was abandoned, and many more arrangements for the comfort and convenience of the occupants were introduced; and the buildings and additions to buildings of the fifteenth century took more the shape of a modern dwelling-house, partly protected against violence, but by no means strong enough to stand a siege. Penshurst may be cited as a good example of this class of building. It will be understood that, unlike the religious buildings which early received the form and disposition from which they did not depart widely, mediæval domestic buildings exhibit an amount of change in which we can readily trace the effects of the gradual settlement of this country, the abandonment of habits of petty warfare, the ultimate cessation of civil wars, the introduction of gunpowder, the increase in wealth and desire for comfort, and last, but not least, the confiscation by Henry VIII. of the property of the monastic houses. [Illustration: FIG. 8.--PLAN OF WARWICK CASTLE. (14TH AND FOLLOWING CENTURIES.)] Warwick Castle, of which we give a plan (Fig. 8), maybe cited as a good example of an English castellated mansion of the time of Richard II. Below the principal story there is a vaulted basement containing the kitchens and many of the offices. On the main floor we find the hall, entered as usual at the lower or servants' end, from a porch. The upper end gives access to a sitting-room, built immediately behind it, and beyond are a drawing-room and state bed-rooms, while across a passage are placed the private chapel and a large dining-room (a modern addition). Bed-rooms occupy the upper floors of the buildings at both ends of the hall. Perhaps even more interesting as a study than Warwick Castle is Haddon Hall, the well-preserved residence of the Duke of Rutland, in Derbyshire. The five or six successive enlargements and additions which this building has received between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries show the growth of ideas of comfort and even luxury in this country. As it now stands, Haddon Hall contains two internal quadrangles, separated from one another by the great hall with its dais, its minstrels' gallery, its vast open fire-place, and its traceried windows, and by the kitchens, butteries, &c., belonging to it. The most important apartments are reached from the upper end of the hall, and consist of the magnificent ball-room, and a dining-room in the usual position, _i.e._ adjoining the hall and opening out of it; with, on the upper floor, a drawing-room, and a suite of state bed-rooms, occupying the south side of both quadrangles and the east end of one. A large range of apartments, added at a late period, and many of them finely panelled and lined with tapestry, occupies the north side of this building and the northwestern tower. At the south-western corner of the building stands a chapel of considerable size, and which once seems to have served as a kind of parochial church; and a very considerable number of rooms of small size, opening out of both quadrangles, would afford shelter, if not comfortable lodging, to retainers, servants, and others. The portions built in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are more or less fortified. The ball-room, which is of Elizabethan architecture, opens on to a terraced garden, accessible from without by no more violent means than climbing over a not very formidable wall. Probably nowhere in England, can the growth of domestic architecture be better studied, whether we look to the alterations which took place in accommodation and arrangement, or to the changes which occurred in the architectural treatment of windows, battlements, doorways and other features, than at Haddon Hall. [Illustration: FIG. 9.--PALACES ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE. (14TH CENTURY.)] In towns and cities much beautiful domestic architecture is to be found in the ordinary dwelling-houses, _e.g._ houses from Chester and Lisieux (Figs. 14 and 15); but many specimens have of course perished, especially as timber was freely used in their construction. Dwelling-houses of a high order of excellence, and of large size, were also built during this period. The Gothic palaces of Venice, of which many stand on the Grand Canal (Fig. 9), are the best examples of these, and the lordly Ducal Palace in that city is perhaps the finest secular building which exists of Gothic architecture. Municipal buildings of great size and beauty are to be found in North Italy and Germany, but chiefly in Belgium, where the various town-halls of Louvain, Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, &c., vie with each other in magnificence and extent. * * * * * Many secular buildings also remain to us of which the architecture is Gothic. Among these we find public halls and large buildings for public purposes--as Westminster Hall, or the Palace of Justice at Rouen; hospitals, as that at Milan; or colleges, as King's College, Cambridge, with its unrivalled chapel. Many charming minor works, such as fountains, wells (Fig. 10), crosses, tombs, monuments, and the fittings of the interior of churches, also remain to attest the versatility, the power of design, and the cultivated taste of the architects of the Gothic period. [Illustration: FIG. 10.--WELL AT REGENSBURG. (15TH CENTURY.)] FOOTNOTES: [1] As the north transept at Peterborough (Fig. 2). [2] At E on the plan of Peterborough (Fig. 2). [3] See Glossary. [Illustration: FIG. 11.{--SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM SENS CATHEDRAL.}] CHAPTER III. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN. English Gothic architecture has been usually subdivided into three periods or stages of advancement, corresponding to those enumerated on page 1; the early stage known as Early English, or sometimes as Lancet, occupying the thirteenth century and something more; the middle stage, known as Decorated, occupying most of the fourteenth century; and the latest stage, known as Perpendicular, occupying the fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth. The duration of each of these coincides approximately with the century, the transition from each phase to the next taking place chiefly in the last quarter of the century. Adding the periods of the English types of round arched Architecture, we obtain the following table:-- Up to 1066 or up to middle of 11th century, SAXON. A.D. 1066 to 1189 or up to end of 12th " NORMAN. A.D. 1189 to 1307 or up to end of 13th " EARLY ENGLISH. A.D. 1307 to 1377 or up to end of 14th " DECORATED. A.D. 1377 to 1546 or up to middle of 16th " PERPENDICULAR. The term "Early English" (short for Early English Gothic) applied to English thirteenth-century architecture explains itself. The term "Lancet" sometimes applied to the Early English style, is derived from the shape of the ordinary window-heads, which resemble the point of a lancet in outline (Fig. 16). Whatever term be adopted, it is necessary to remark that a wide difference exists between the earlier and the late examples of this period. It will suffice for our purposes if, when speaking of the fully-developed style of the late examples, we refer to it as Advanced Early English. The architecture of the fourteenth century is called "Decorated," from the great increase of ornament, especially in window tracery and carved enrichments. The architecture of the fifteenth century is called "Perpendicular," from the free use made of perpendicular lines, both in general features and in ornaments, especially in the tracery of the windows and the panelling with which walls are ornamented.[4] The following condensed list, partly from Morant,[5] of the most striking peculiarities of each period, may be found useful for reference, and is on that account placed here, notwithstanding that it contains many technical words, for the meaning of which the student must consult the Glossary which forms part of this volume. ANGLO-SAXON--(Prior to the Norman Conquest).-- Rude work and rough material; walls mostly of rubble or ragstone with ashlar at the angles in long and short courses alternately; openings with round or triangular heads, sometimes divided by a rude baluster. Piers plain, square, and narrow. Windows splayed externally and internally. Rude square blocks of stone in place of capitals and bases. Mouldings generally semi-cylindrical and coarsely chiselled. Corners of buildings square without buttresses. NORMAN. William I. A.D. 1066. William II. " 1087. Henry I. " 1100. Stephen " 1135. Henry II. " 1154 to 1189. Arches semicircular, occasionally stilted; at first plain, afterwards enriched with chevron or other mouldings; and frequent repetition of same ornament on each stone. Piers low and massive, cylindrical, square, polygonal, or composed of clustered shafts, often ornamented with spiral bands and mouldings. Windows generally narrow and splayed internally only; sometimes double and divided by a shaft. Walls sometimes a series of arcades, a few pierced as windows, the rest left blank. Doorways deeply recessed and richly ornamented with bands of mouldings. Doors often square headed, but under arches the head of the arch filled with carving. Capitals carved in outline, often grotesquely sculptured with devices of animals and leaves. Abacus square, lower edge moulded. Bases much resembling the classic orders. The mouldings at first imperfectly formed. Pedestals of piers square. Buttresses plain, with broad faces and small projections. Parapets plain with projecting corbel table under. Plain mouldings consist of chamfers, round or pointed rolls at edges, divided from plain face by shallow channels. Enriched mouldings--the chevrons or zig-zag, the billet square or round, the cable, the lozenge, the chain, nail heads, and others. Niches with figures over doorways. Roofs of moderately high pitch, and open to the frame; timbers chiefly king-post trusses. Towers square and massive--those of late date richly adorned with arcades. Openings in towers often beautifully grouped. Vaulting waggon-headed, and simple intersecting vaults of semicircular outline. Towards the close of the style in reign of Henry II., details of transitional character begin to appear. Pointed arch with Norman pier. Arcades of intersecting semicircular arches. Norman abacus blended with Early English foliage in capitals. EARLY ENGLISH. Richard I. A.D. 1189 _Transition._ John " 1199. Henry III. " 1216. Edward I. " 1272 to 1307. General proportions more slender, and height of walls, columns, &c., greater. Arches pointed, generally lancet; often richly moulded. Triforium arches and arcades open with trefoiled heads. Piers slender, composed of a central circular shaft surrounded by several smaller ones, almost or quite detached; generally with horizontal bands. In small buildings plain polygonal and circular piers are used. Capitals concave in outline, moulded, or carved with conventional foliage delicately executed and arranged vertically. The abacus always undercut. Detached shafts often of Purbeck marble. Base a deep hollow between two rounds. Windows at first long, narrow, and deeply splayed internally, the glass within a few inches of outer face of wall; later in the style less acute, divided by mullions, enriched with cusped circles in the head, often of three or more lights, the centre light being the highest. Doorways often deeply recessed and enriched with slender shafts and elaborate mouldings. Shafts detached. Buttresses about equal in projection to width, with but one set-off, or without any. Buttresses at angles always in pairs. Mouldings bold and deeply undercut, consisting chiefly of round mouldings sometimes pointed or with a fillett, separated by deep hollows. Great depth of moulded surface generally arranged on rectangular planes. Hollows of irregular curve sometimes filled with dogtooth ornament or with foliage. Roofs of high pitch, timbers plain, and where there is no vault open. Early in the style finials were plain bunches of leaves; towards the close beautifully carved finials and crockets with carved foliage of conventional character were introduced. Flat surfaces often richly diapered. Spires broached. Vaulting pointed with diagonal and main ribs only; ridge ribs not introduced till late in the style; bosses at intersection of ribs. DECORATED. Edward II. A.D. 1307. Edward III. " 1377 to 1379. Proportions less lofty than in the previous style. Arches mostly inclosing an equilateral angle, the mouldings often continued down the pier. Windows large, and divided into two or more lights by mullions. Tracery in the head, at first composed geometrical forms, later of flowing character. Clerestory windows generally small. Diamond shaped piers with shafts engaged. Capitals with scroll moulding on under side of abacus, with elegant foliage arranged horizontally. Doors frequently without shafts, the arch moulding running down the jambs. Rich doorways and windows often surrounded with triangular and ogee-shaped canopies. Buttresses in stages variously ornamented. Parapet pierced with quatrefoils and flowing tracery. Niches panelled and with projecting canopies. Spires lofty; the broach rarely used, parapets and angle pinnacles take the place of it. Roofs of moderate pitch open to the framing. Mouldings bold and finely proportioned, generally in groups, the groups separated from each other by hollows, composed of segments of circles. Deep hollows, now generally confined to inner angles. Mouldings varying in size and kind, arranged on diagonal as well as rectangular planes, often ornamented with ball flower. Foliage chiefly of ivy, oak, and vine leaves; natural, also conventional. Rich crockets, finials, and pinnacles. Vaulting with intermediate ribs, ridge ribs, and late in the style lierne ribs, and bosses. PERPENDICULAR. Richard II. A.D. 1377. (_Transition._) Henry IV. " 1399. Henry V. " 1413. Henry VI. " 1422. Edward IV. " 1461. Edward V. " 1483. Richard III. " 1483. TUDOR. Henry VII. " 1485. Henry VIII. " 1509 to 1546. Arches at first inclosing an equilateral triangle, afterwards obtusely pointed and struck from four centres. Piers generally oblong; longitudinal direction north and south. Mouldings continued from base through arch. Capitals with mouldings large, angular, and few, with abacus and bell imperfectly defined. Foliage of conventional character, shallow, and square in outline. Bases polygonal. Windows where lofty divided into stories by transoms. The mullions often continued perpendicularly into the head. Canopies of ogee character enriched with crockets. Doors generally with square label over arch, the spandrels filled with ornament. Buttresses with bold projection often ending in finials. Flying buttresses pierced with tracery. Walls profusely ornamented with panelling. Parapets embattled and panelled. Open timber roofs of moderate pitch, of elaborate construction, often with hammer beams, richly ornamented with moulded timbers, carved figures of angels and with pierced tracery in spandrels. Roofs sometimes of very flat pitch. Lofty clerestories. Mouldings large, coarse, and with wide and shallow hollows and hard wiry edges, meagre in appearance and wanting in minute and delicate detail, generally arranged on diagonal planes. Early in the style the mouldings partake of decorated character. In the Tudor period depressed four-centered arch prevails; transoms of windows battlemented. Tudor flower, rose, portcullis, and fleur-de-lis common ornaments. Crockets and pinnacles much projected. Roofs of low pitch. Vaulting. Fan vaulting, with tracery and pendants elaborately carved. Other modes of distinguishing the periods of English Gothic have been proposed by writers of authority. The division given above is that of Rickman, and is generally adopted. A more minute subdivision and a different set of names were proposed by Sharpe as follows:-- ROMANESQUE. Saxon A.D. to 1066. Norman " 1066 to 1145. GOTHIC. Transitional " 1145 to 1190. Lancet " 1190 to 1245. Geometrical " 1245 to 1315. Curvilinear " 1315 to 1360. Rectilinear " 1360 to 1550. Of the new names proposed by Mr. Sharpe "transitional" explains itself; and "geometrical, curvilinear, and rectilinear" refer to the characters of the window tracery at the different periods which they denote.[6] * * * * * The history of English Gothic proper may be said to begin with the reign of Henry II., coinciding very nearly with the commencement of the period named by Mr. Sharpe transitional (1145 to 1190), when Norman architecture was changing into Gothic. This history we propose now to consider somewhat in detail, dividing the buildings in the simplest possible way, namely, into floors, walls, columns, roofs, openings, and ornaments. After this we shall have to consider the mode in which materials were used by the builders of the Gothic period, _i.e._ the construction of the buildings; and the general artistic principles which guided their architects, _i.e._ the design of the buildings. * * * * * It may be useful to students in and near London to give Sir G. Gilbert Scott's list of striking London examples[7] of Gothic architecture (with the omission of such examples as are more antiquarian than architectural in their interest):-- _Norman_ (temp. Conquest).--The Keep and Chapel of the Tower of London. _Advanced Norman._--Chapel of St. Catherine, Westminster Abbey; St. Bartholomew's Priory, Smithfield. _Transitional._--The round part of the Temple Church. _Early English._--Eastern part of the Temple Church; Choir and Lady Chapel of St. Mary Overy, Southwark; Chapel of Lambeth Palace. _Advanced Early English_ (passing to decorated).--Eastern part of Westminster Abbey generally and its Chapter House. _Early Decorated._--Choir of Westminster, (but this has been much influenced by the design of the earlier parts adjacent); Chapel of St. Etheldreda, Ely Place, Holborn. _Late Decorated._--The three bays of the Cloister at Westminster opposite the entrance to Chapter House; Crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster; Dutch Church, Austin Friars. _Early Perpendicular._--South and West walks of the Cloister, Westminster; Westminster Hall. _Advanced Perpendicular (Tudor period)._--Henry VII.'s Chapel; Double Cloister of St. Stephen's, Westminster. FOOTNOTES: [4] The abbreviations, E. E., Dec., and Perp., will be employed to denote these three periods. [5] _Notes on English Architecture, Costumes, Monuments, &c._ _Privately printed._ Quoted here with the author's permission. [6] See examples in Chapter V. and in Glossary. [7] Address to Conference of Architects, _Builder_, June 24, 1876. [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.}] CHAPTER IV. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.--ENGLAND. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.--FLOOR, WALLS, TOWERS, GABLES, COLUMNS. _Floor, or Plan._ The excellences or defects of a building are more due to the shape and size of its floor and, incidentally, of the walls and columns or piers which inclose and subdivide its floor than to anything else whatever. A map of the floor and walls (usually showing also the position of the doors and windows), is known as a plan, but by a pardonable figure of speech the plan of a building is often understood to mean the shape and size and arrangement of its floor and walls themselves, instead of simply the drawing representing them. It is in this sense that the word plan will be used in this volume. The plan of a Gothic Cathedral has been described, and it has been already remarked that before the Gothic period had commenced the dimensions of great churches had been very much increased. The generally received disposition of the parts of a church had indeed been already settled or nearly so. There were consequently few radical alterations in church plans during the Gothic period. One, however, took place in England in the abandonment of the apse. At first the apsidal east end, common in the Norman times, was retained. For example, it is found at Canterbury, where the choir and transept are transitional, having been begun soon after 1174 and completed about 1184; but the eastern end of Chichester, which belongs to the same period (the transition), displays the square east end, and this termination was almost invariably preferred in our country after the twelfth century. A great amount of regularity marks the plans of those great churches which had vaulted roofs, as will be readily understood when it is remembered that the vaults were divided into equal and similar compartments, and that the points of support had to be placed with corresponding regularity. Where, however, some controlling cause of this nature was not at work much picturesque irregularity prevailed in the planning of English Gothic buildings of all periods. The plans of our Cathedrals are noted for their great length in proportion to their width, for the considerable length given to the transepts, and for the occurrence in many cases (_e.g._ Salisbury, thirteenth century) of a second transept. The principal alterations which took place in plan as time went on originated in the desire to concentrate material as much as possible on points of support, leaving the walls between them thin and the openings wide, and in the use of flying buttresses, the feet of which occupy a considerable space outside the main walls of the church. The plans of piers and columns also underwent the alterations which will be presently described.[8] Buildings of a circular shape on plan are very rare, but octagonal ones are not uncommon. The finest chapter-houses attached to our Cathedrals are octagons, with a central pier to carry the vaulting. On the whole, play of shape on plan was less cultivated in England than in some continental countries. The plans of domestic buildings are usually simple, but grew more elaborate and extensive as time went on. The cloister with dwelling-rooms and common-rooms entered from its walk, formed the model on which colleges, hospitals, and alms-houses were planned. The castle, already described, was the residence of the wealthy during the earlier part of the Gothic period, and when, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, houses which were rather dwellings than fortresses began to be erected, the hall, with a large bay window and a raised floor or dais at one end and a mighty open fire-place, was always the most conspicuous feature in the plan. Towards the close of the Gothic period the plan of a great dwelling, such as Warwick Castle (Fig. 8), began to show many of the features which distinguish a mansion of the present day. In various parts of the country remains of magnificent Gothic dwelling-houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries exist, and long before the close of the perpendicular period we had such mansions as Penshurst and Hever, such palaces as Windsor and Wells, such castellated dwellings as Warwick and Haddon, differing in many respects but all agreeing in the possession of a great central hall. Buildings for public purposes also often took the form of a great hall. Westminster Hall may be cited as the finest example of such a structure, not only in England but in Europe. The student who desires to obtain anything beyond the most superficial acquaintance with architecture must endeavour to obtain enough familiarity with ground plans, to be able to sketch, measure, and lay down a plan to scale and to _read_ one. The plan shows to the experienced architect the nature, arrangement, and qualities of a building better than any other drawing, and a better memorandum of a building is preserved if a fairly correct sketch of its plan, or of the plan of important parts of it, is preserved than if written notes are alone relied upon. _Walls._ The walls of Gothic buildings are generally of stone; brick being the exception. They were in the transitional and Early English times extremely thick, and became thinner afterwards. All sorts of ornamental masonry were introduced into them, so that diapers,[9] bands, arcades, mouldings, and inlaid patterns are all to be met with occasionally, especially in districts where building materials of varied colours, or easy to work, are plentiful. In the perpendicular period the walls were systematically covered with panelling closely resembling the tracery of the windows (_e.g._, Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster). The wall of a building ordinarily requires some kind of base and some kind of top. The base or plinth in English Gothic buildings was usually well marked and bold, especially in the perpendicular period, and it is seldom absent. The eaves of the roof in some cases overhang the walls, resting on a simple stone band, called an eaves-course, and constitute the crowning feature. In many instances, however, the eaves are concealed behind a parapet[10] which is often carried on a moulded cornice or on corbels. This, in the E. E. period, was usually very simple. In the Dec. it was panelled with ornamental panels, and often made very beautiful. In the Perp. it was frequently battlemented as well as panelled. A distinguishing feature of Gothic walls is the buttress. It existed, but only in the form of a flat pier of very slight projection in Norman, as in almost all Romanesque buildings, but in the Gothic period it became developed. The buttress, like many of the peculiarities of Gothic architecture, originated in the use of stone vaults and the need for strong piers at these points, upon which the thrust and weight of those vaults were concentrated. The use of very large openings, for wide windows full of stained glass also made it increasingly necessary in the Dec. and Perp. periods to fortify the walls at regular points. A buttress[10] is, in fact, a piece of wall set athwart the main wall, usually projecting considerably at the base and diminished by successive reductions of its mass as it approaches the top, and so placed as to counteract the thrust of some arch or vault inside. It had great artistic value; in the feeble and level light of our Northern climate it casts bold shadows and catches bright lights, and so adds greatly to the architectural effect of the exterior. In the E. E. the buttress was simple and ordinarily projected about its own width. In the Dec. it obtained much more projection, was constructed with several diminutions (technically called weatherings), and was considerably ornamented. In the Perp. it was frequently enriched by panelling. The buttresses in the Dec. period are often set diagonally at the corner of a building or tower. In the E. E. period this was never done. The flying buttress[11] is one of the most conspicuous features of the exterior of those Gothic buildings which possessed elaborate stone vaults. It was a contrivance for providing an abutment to counterbalance the outward pressure of the vault covering the highest and central parts of the building in cases where that vault rested upon and abutted against walls which themselves were carried by arches, and were virtually internal walls, so that no buttress could be carried up from the ground to steady them. A pier of masonry, sometimes standing alone, sometimes thrown out from the aisle wall opposite the point to be propped, formed the solid part of this buttress; it was carried to the requisite height and a flying arch spanning the whole width of the aisles was thrown across from it to the wall at the point whence the vault sprung. The pier itself was in many cases loaded by an enormous pinnacle, so that its weight might combine with the pressure transmitted along the slope of the flying arch to give a resultant which should fall within the base of the buttress. The back of such an arch was generally used as a water channel. The forest of flying buttresses round many French cathedrals produces an almost bewildering effect, as, for instance, at the east end of Notre Dame;--our English specimens, at Westminster Abbey for example, are comparatively simple. _Towers._ The gable and the tower are developments of the walls of the building. Gothic is _par excellence_ the style of towers. Many towers were built detached from all other buildings, but no great Gothic building is complete without one main tower and some subordinate ones. In the E. E. style church towers were often crowned by low spires, becoming more lofty as the style advanced. In the Dec. style lofty spires were almost universal. In the Perp. the tower rarely has a visible roof.[12] The artistic value of towers in giving unity coupled with variety to a group of buildings can hardly be exaggerated. The positions which towers occupy are various. They produce the greatest effect when central, _i.e._ placed over the crossing of the nave and transepts. Lichfield, Chichester, and Salisbury may be referred to as examples of cathedrals with towers in this position and surmounted by spires. Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Gloucester are specimens of the effectiveness of the tower similarly placed, but without a spire (Fig. 12). At Wells a fine central octagon occupies the crossing, and is remarkable for the skill with which it is fitted to the nave and aisles internally. Next to central towers rank a pair of towers at the western end of the building. These exist at Lichfield with their spires; they exist (square-topped) at Lincoln, and (though carried up since the Gothic period) at Westminster.[13] Many churches have a single tower in this position (Fig. 13). The obvious purpose of a tower, beyond its serviceableness as a feature of the building and as a landmark, is to lift up a belfry high into the air: accordingly, almost without exception, church and cathedral towers are designed with a large upper story, pierced by openings of great size and height called the belfry stage; and the whole artistic treatment of the tower is subordinate to this feature. It is also very often the case that a turret to contain a spiral staircase which may afford the means of access to the upper part of the tower, forms a prominent feature of its whole height, especially in the Dec. and Perp. periods. [Illustration: FIG. 12.--LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. (MOSTLY EARLY ENGLISH.)] In domestic and monastic buildings, low towers were frequently employed with excellent effect. Many castles retained the Norman keep, or square strong tower, which had served as the nucleus round which other buildings had afterwards clustered; but where during the Gothic period a castle was built, or rebuilt, without such a keep, one or more towers, often of great beauty, were always added. Examples abound; good ones will be found in the Edwardian castles in Wales (end of thirteenth century), as for example at Conway and Caernarvon. _Gables._ The gable forms a distinctive Gothic feature. The gables crowned those parts of a great church in which the skill of the architect was directed to producing a regular composition, often called a front, or a façade. The west fronts of Cathedrals were the most important architectural designs of this sort, and with them we may include the ends of the transepts and the east fronts. The same parts of parish churches are often excellent compositions. The gable of the nave always formed the central feature of the main front. This was flanked by the gables, or half-gables, of the aisles where there were no towers, or by the lower portions of the towers. As a rule the centre and sides of the façade are separated by buttresses, or some other mode of marking a vertical division, and the composition is also divided by bands of mouldings or otherwise, horizontally into storeys. Some of the horizontal divisions are often strongly marked, especially in the lower part of the building, where in early examples there is sometimes in addition to the plinth, or base of the wall, an arcade or a band of sculpture running across the entire front (_e.g._ east front of Lincoln Cathedral). The central gable is always occupied by a large window--or in early buildings a group of windows--sometimes two storeys in height. A great side window usually occurs at the end of each aisle. Below these great windows are introduced, at any rate in west fronts, the doorways, which, even in the finest English examples, are comparatively small. The gable also contains as a rule one or more windows often circular which light the space above the vaults. [Illustration: FIG. 13.--ST. PIERRE, CAEN, TOWER AND SPIRE. (SPIRE, 1302.)] Part of the art in arranging such a composition is to combine and yet contrast its horizontal and vertical elements. The horizontal lines, or features, are those which serve to bind the whole together, and the vertical ones are those which give that upward tendency which is the great charm and peculiar characteristic of Gothic architecture. It is essential for the masses of solid masonry and the openings to be properly contrasted and proportioned to each other, and here, as in every part of a building, such ornaments and ornamental features as are introduced must be designed to contribute to the enrichment of the building as a whole, so that no part shall be conspicuous either by inharmonious treatment, undue plainness, or excessive enrichment. [Illustration: FIG. 14.--HOUSE AT CHESTER. (16TH CENTURY.)] During the transition the gable became steeper in pitch than the comparatively moderate slope of Norman times. In the E. E. it was acutely pointed, in the Dec. the usual slope was that of the two sides of an equilateral triangle: in the Perp. it became extremely flat and ceased to be so marked a feature as it had formerly been. In domestic buildings the gable was employed in the most effective manner, and town dwelling-houses were almost invariably built their gable ends to the street (Fig. 14). * * * * * A very effective form of wall was frequently made use of in dwelling-houses. This consisted of a sturdy framework of stout timbers exposed to view, with the spaces between them filled in with plaster. Of this work, which is known as half-timbered work, many beautiful specimens remain dating from the fifteenth and following centuries (Figs. 14 and 15), and a few of earlier date. In those parts of England where tiles are manufactured such framework was often covered by tiles instead of being filled in with plastering. In half-timbered houses, the fire-places and chimneys, and sometimes also the basement storeys, are usually of brickwork or masonry; so are the side walls in the case of houses in streets. It was usual in such buildings to cause the upper storeys to overhang the lower ones. _Columns and Piers._ The columns and piers of a building virtually form portions of its walls, so far as aiding to support the weight of the roof is concerned, and are appropriately considered in connection with them. In Gothic architecture very little use is made of columns on the outside of a building, and the porticoes and external rows of columns proper to the classic styles are quite unknown. On the other hand the series of piers, or columns, from which spring the arches which separate the central avenues of nave, transepts and choir from the aisles, are among the most prominent features in every church. These piers varied in each century.[14] The Norman piers had been frequently circular or polygonal, but sometimes nearly square, and usually of enormous mass. Thus, at Durham (Norman), oblong piers of about eleven feet in diameter occur alternately with round ones of about seven feet. In transitional examples columns of more slender proportions were employed either (as in the choir of Canterbury) as single shafts or collected into groups. Where grouping took place it was intended that each shaft of the group should be seen to support some definite feature of the superincumbent structure, as where a separate group of mouldings springs from each shaft in a doorway, and this principle was very steadily adhered to during the greater part of the Gothic period.[14] [Illustration: FIG. 15.--HOUSES AT LISIEUX, FRANCE. (16TH CENTURY.)] Through the E. E. period groups of shafts are generally employed; they are often formed of detached shafts clustering round a central one, and held together at intervals by bands or belts of masonry, and generally the entire group is nearly circular on plan. In the succeeding century (Dec. period) the piers also take the form of groups of shafts, but they are generally carved out of one block of stone, and the ordinary arrangement of the pier is on a lozenge-shaped plan. In the Perp., the piers retain the same general character, but are slenderer, and the shafts have often shrunk to nothing more than reedy mouldings. The column is often employed in Transitional and E. E. churches as a substitute for piers carrying arches. In every period small columns are freely used as ornamental features. They are constantly met with, for example, in the jambs of doorways and of windows. Every column is divided naturally into three parts, its base, or foot; its shaft, which forms the main body; and its capital, or head. Each of these went through a series of modifications. Part of the base usually consisted of a flat stone larger than the diameter of the column, sometimes called a plinth, and upon this stood the moulded base which gradually diminished to the size of the shaft. This plain stone was in E. E. often square, and in that case the corner spaces which were not covered by the mouldings of the base were often occupied by an elegantly carved leaf. In Dec. and Perp. buildings the lower part of the base was often polygonal, and frequently moulded so as to make it into a pedestal.[15] The proportions of shafts varied extraordinarily; they were, as a rule, extremely slender when their purpose was purely decorative, and comparatively sturdy when they really served to carry a weight. The capital of the column has been perhaps the most conspicuous feature in the architecture of every age and every country, and it is one of the features which a student may make use of as an indication of date and style of buildings, very much as the botanist employs the flower as an index to the genus and species of plants. The capital almost invariably starts from a ring, called the neck of the column. This serves to mark the end of the shaft and the commencement of the capital. Above this follows what is commonly called the bell,--the main portion of the capital, which is that part upon which the skill of the carver and the taste of the designer can be most freely expended, and on the top of the bell is placed the abacus, a flat block of stone upon the upper surface of which is built the superstructure or is laid the beam or block which the column has to support. The shape and ornaments given to the abacus are often of considerable importance as indications of the position in architectural history which the building in which it occurs should occupy. The Norman capital differed to some extent from the Romanesque capitals of other parts of Europe. It was commonly of a heavy, strong-looking shape, and is often appropriately called the cushion capital. In its simpler forms the cushion capital is nothing but a cubical block of stone with its lower corners rounded off to make it fit the circular shaft on which it is placed, and with a slab by way of abacus placed upon it. In later Norman and transitional work the faces of this block and the edges of the abacus are often richly moulded. By degrees, however, as the transition to E. E. approached, a new sort of capital[16] was introduced, having the outline of the bell hollow instead of convex. The square faces of the Norman capital of course disappeared, and the square abacus soon (at least in this country) became circular, involving no small loss of vigour in the appearance of the work. The bell of this capital was often decorated with rich mouldings, and had finely-designed and characteristic foliage, which almost always seemed to grow up the capital, and represented a conventional kind of leaf easily recognised when once seen. In the Dec. period the capitals have, as a rule, fewer and less elaborate mouldings; the foliage is often very beautifully carved in imitation of natural leaves, and wreathed round the capital instead of growing up it. In the Perp. this feature is in every way less ornate, the mouldings are plainer, and the foliage, often absent, is, when it occurs, conventional and stiff. Polygonal capitals are common in this period. [Illustration: _Later Norman Capital._] FOOTNOTES: [8] For illustrations consult the Glossary under _Pier_. [9] For illustration consult the Glossary. [10] For illustrations consult the Glossary. [11] For illustration consult the Glossary under _Flying buttress_. [12] For remarks on Spires, see Chap. V. [13] York, Lichfield, and Lincoln, are the cathedrals distinguished by the possession of three towers. [14] For illustrations consult the Glossary under _Pier_. [15] For illustrations consult the Glossary under _Base_. [16] For illustrations consult the Glossary. [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.}] CHAPTER V. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.--ENGLAND. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS (_continued_)--OPENINGS, ROOFS, SPIRES, ORNAMENTS, STAINED GLASS, SCULPTURE. _Openings and Arches._ The openings (_i.e._ doors and windows) in the walls of English Gothic buildings are occasionally covered by flat heads or lintels, but this is exceptional; ordinarily they have arched heads. The shape of the arch varies at all periods. Architects always felt themselves free to adopt any shape which best met the requirements of any special case; but at each period there was one shape of arch which it was customary to use. In the first transitional period (end of twelfth century) semicircular and pointed arches are both met with, and are often both employed in the same part of the same building. The mouldings and enrichments which are common in Norman work are usually still in use. In the E. E. period the doorways are almost invariably rather acutely pointed, the arched heads are enriched by a large mass of rich mouldings, and the jambs[17] have usually a series of small columns, each of which is intended to carry a portion of the entire group of mouldings. Large doorways are often subdivided into two, and frequently approached by porches. A most beautiful example occurs in the splendid west entrance to Ely Cathedral. Other examples will be found at Lichfield (Fig. 1) and Salisbury. It was not uncommon to cover doorways with a lintel, the whole being under an archway; this left a space above the head of the door which was occupied by carving often of great beauty. Ornamental gables are often formed over the entrances of churches, and are richly sculptured; but though beautiful, these features rarely attained magnificence. The most remarkable entrance to an English cathedral is the west portal of Peterborough--a composition of lofty and richly moulded arches built in front of the original west wall. A portal on a smaller scale, but added in the same manner adorns the west front of Wells. As a less exceptional example we may refer to the entrance to Westminster Abbey at the end of the north transept (now under restoration), which must have been a noble example of an E. E. portal when in its perfect state. [Illustration: FIG. 16.--LANCET WINDOW. (12TH CENTURY.)] The windows in this style were almost always long, narrow, and with a pointed head resembling the blade of a lancet (Fig. 16). The glass is generally near the outside face of the wall, and the sides of the opening are splayed towards the inside. It was very customary to place these lancet windows in groups. The best known group is the celebrated one of "the five sisters," five lofty single lights, occupying the eastern end of one of the transepts of York Minster. A common arrangement in designing such a group was to make the central light the highest, and to graduate the height of the others. It after a time became customary to render the opening more ornamental by adding pointed projections called cusps. By these the shape of the head of the opening was turned into a form resembling a trefoil leaf. Sometimes two cusps were added on each side. The head is, in the former case, said to be trefoiled--in the latter, cinqfoiled. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--TWO-LIGHT WINDOW. (13TH CENTURY.)] [Illustration: FIG. 18.--GEOMETRICAL TRACERY. (14TH CENTURY.)] When two windows were placed close together it began to be customary to include them under one outer arch, and after a time to pierce the solid head between them with a circle, which frequently was cusped, forming often a quatrefoil (Fig. 17). This completed the idea of a group, and was rapidly followed by ornamental treatment. Three, four, five, or more windows (which in such a position are often termed lights) were often placed under one arch, the head of which was filled by a more or less rich group of circles; mouldings were added, and thus rose the system of decoration for window-heads known as tracery. So long as the tracery preserves the simple character of piercings through a flat stone, filling the space between the window heads, it is known as plate tracery. The thinning down of the blank space to a comparatively narrow surface went on, and by and by the use of mouldings caused that plain surface to resemble bars of stone bent into a circular form: this was called bar tracery, and it is in this form that tracery is chiefly employed in England (Fig. 18). Westminster Abbey is full of exquisite examples of E. E. window-tracery (temp. Henry III.); as, for example, in the windows of the choir, the great circular windows (technically termed rose-windows) at the ends of the transepts, the windows of the chapter-house. Last, but not least, the splendid arcade which forms the triforium is filled with tracery similar in every respect to the best window tracery of the period (Fig. 19). [Illustration: FIG. 19.--THE TRIFORIUM ARCADE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. (1269.)] In the decorated style of the fourteenth century tracery was developed till it reached a great pitch of perfection and intricacy. In the earlier half of the century none save regular geometrical forms, made up of circles and segments of circles, occur; in other words, the whole design of the most elaborate window could be drawn with the compasses, and a curve of contrary flexure rarely occurred. In the latest half of that period flowing lines are introduced into the tracery, and very much alter its character (Fig. 20). The cusping throughout is bolder than in the E. E. period. [Illustration: FIG. 20.--ROSE WINDOW FROM THE TRANSEPT OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. (1342-1347.)] In perpendicular windows spaces of enormous size are occupied by the mullions and tracery. Horizontal bars, called transoms, are now for the first time introduced, and the upright bars or mullions form with them a kind of stone grating; but below each transom a series of small stone arches forms heads to the lights below that transom, and a minor mullion often springs from the head of each of these arches, so that as the window increases in height, the number of its lights increases. The character of the cusping changed again, the cusps becoming club-headed in their form (Fig. 21). [Illustration: FIG. 21.--PERPENDICULAR WINDOW.] Arches in the great arcades of churches, or in the smaller arcades of cloisters, or used as decorations to the surface of the walls, were made acute, obtuse, or segmental, to suit the duty they had to perform; but when there was nothing to dictate any special shape, the arch of the E. E. period was by preference acute[18] and of lofty proportions, and that of the Dec. less lofty, and its head equilateral (_i.e._ described so that if the ends of the base of an equilateral triangle touch the two points from which it springs, the apex of the angle shall touch the point of the arch). In the Perp. period the four centred depressed arch, sometimes called the Tudor arch, was introduced, and though it did not entirely supersede the equilateral arch, yet its employment became at last all but universal, and it is one of the especially characteristic features of the Tudor period. _Roofs and Vaults._ The external and the internal covering of a building are very often not the same; the outer covering is then usually called a roof--the other, a vault or ceiling. In not a few Gothic buildings, however, they were the same; such buildings had what are known as open roofs--_i.e._ roofs in which the whole of the timber framing of which they are constructed is open to view from the interior right up to the tiles or lead. Very few open roofs of E. E. character are now remaining, but a good many parish churches retain roofs of the Dec., and more of the Perp. period. The roof of Westminster Hall (Perp., erected 1397) shows how fine an architectural object such a roof may become. The roof of the hall of Eltham Palace (Fig. 22) is another good example. Wooden ceilings, often very rich, are not uncommon, especially in the churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, but greater interest attaches to the stone vaults with which the majority of Gothic buildings were erected, than to any other description of covering to the interiors of buildings. The vault was a feature rarely absent from important churches, and the structural requirements of the Gothic vault were among the most influential of the elements which determined both the plan and the section of a mediæval church. There was a regular growth in Gothic vaults. Those of the thirteenth century are comparatively simple; those of the fourteenth are much richer and more elaborate, and often involve very great structural difficulties. Those of the fifteenth are more systematic, and consequently more simple in principle than the ones which preceded them, but are such marvels of workmanship, and so enriched by an infinity of parts, that they astonish the beholder, and it appears, till the secret is known, impossible to imagine how they can be made to stand. [Illustration: FIG. 22.--ROOF OF HALL AT ELTHAM PALACE. (15TH CENTURY.)] It has been held by some very good authorities that the pointed arch was first introduced into Gothic architecture to solve difficulties which presented themselves in the vaulting. In all probability the desire to give to everything, arches included, a more lofty appearance and more slender proportions may have had as much to do with the adoption of the pointed arch as any structural considerations, but there can be no doubt that it was used for structural arches from the very first, even when window heads and wall arcades were semicircular, and that the introduction of it cleared the way for the use of stone vaults of large span to a wonderful extent. It is not easy to explain this without being more technical than is perhaps desirable in the present volume, but the subject is one of too much importance for it to be possible to avoid making the attempt. Churches, it will be recollected, were commonly built with a wide nave and narrower aisles, and it was in the Norman period customary to vault the aisles and cover the nave with a ceiling. There was no difficulty in so spacing the distances apart of the piers of the main arcade that the compartments (usually termed bays) of the aisle should be square on plan; and it was quite possible, without doing more than the Romans had done, to vault each bay of the aisles with a semicircular intersecting vault (_i.e._ one which has the appearance of a semicircular or waggon-head vault, intersected by another vault of the same outline and height). This produced a simple series of what are called groined or cross vaults, which allowed height to be given to the window heads of the aisle and to the arcades between the aisles and nave. After a time it was desired to vault the nave also, and to adopt for it an intersecting vault, so that the heads of the windows of the clerestory might be raised above the springing line of the vault, but so long as the arches remained semicircular, this was very difficult to accomplish. The Romans would probably have contented themselves with employing a barrel vault and piercing it to the extent required by short lateral vaults, but the result would have been an irregular, weak, curved line at each intersection with the main vault; and the aisle vaults having made the pleasing effect of a perfectly regular intersection familiar, this expedient does not seem to have found favour, at any rate in England. Other expedients were however tried, and with curious results. It was for example attempted to vault the nave with a cross vault, embracing two bays of the arcade to one of the vault, but the wall space so gained was particularly ill suited to the clerestory windows, as may be seen by examining the nave of St. Stephen's at Caen. In short, if the vaulting compartment were as wide as the nave one way, but only as wide as the aisle the other way, and semicircular arches alone were employed, a satisfactory result seemed to be unattainable. In the search for some means of so vaulting a bay of oblong plan that the arches should spring all at one level, and the groins or lines of intersection should cross one another in the centre of the ceiling, the idea either arose or was suggested that the curve of the smaller span should be a pointed instead of a semicircular arch. The moment this was tried all difficulty vanished, and groined (_i.e._ intersecting) vaults, covering compartments of any proportions became easy to design and simple to construct, for if the vault which spanned the narrow way of the compartment were acutely pointed, and that which spanned it the wide way were either semicircular or flatly-pointed, it became easy to arrange that the startings of both vaults should be at the same level, and that they should rise to the same height, which is the condition essential to the production of a satisfactory intersection. Scott enumerates not fewer than fourteen varieties of mediæval vaults[19] and points out that specimens of thirteen are to be found at Westminster. Without such minute detail we may select some well-known varieties:--(1) The plain waggon-head vault, as at the Chapel of the Tower; (2) in advanced Norman works, cross-vaults formed by two intersecting semicircular vaults, the diagonal line being called a groin. (3) The earliest transitional and E. E. vaults, pointed and with transverse and diagonal ribs, and bosses at the intersection of ribs, _e.g._, in the aisles and the early part of the cloisters at Westminster. (4) In the advanced part of the E. E. period, the addition of a rib at the ridge, as seen in the presbytery and transepts at Westminster. (5) At the time of the transition to Dec. (_temp._ Ed. 1.) additional ribs began to be introduced between the diagonal and the transverse ribs. (6) As the Dec. period advanced other ribs, called _liernes_, were introduced, running in various directions over the surface of the vault, making star-like figures on the vault. (7) The vault of the early Perp., which is similar to the last, but more complicated and approaching No. 8, _e.g._, Abbot Islip's chapel. (8) Lastly, the distinctive vault of the advanced or Tudor Perp., is the fan-tracery vault of which Henry VII.'s Chapel roof is the climax. The vaulting surfaces in these are portions of hollow conoids, and are covered by a net-work of fine ribs, connected together by bands of cusping (Fig. 23). [Illustration: FIG. 23.--HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL. (1503-1512.)] In Scott's enumeration the vaults of octagons and irregular compartments, and such varieties as the one called sexpartite, find a place; here they have been intentionally excluded. Many of them are works of the greatest skill and beauty, especially the vaults of octagonal chapter houses springing from one centre pier (_e.g._, Chapter Houses at Worcester, Westminster, Wells, and Salisbury). Externally, the roofs of buildings became very steep in the thirteenth century; they were not quite so steep in the fourteenth, and in the fifteenth they were frequently almost flat. They were always relied upon to add to the effectiveness of a building, and were enriched sometimes by variegated tiles or other covering, sometimes by the introduction of small windows, known as dormer windows, each with its own gablet and its little roof, and sometimes by the addition of a steep sided roof in the shape of a lantern or a "flèche" on the ridge, or a pyramidal covering to some projecting octagon or turret. All these have their value in breaking up the sky-line of the building, and adding interest and beauty to it. Still more striking, however, in its effect on the sky-line was the spire, a feature to which great attention was paid in English architecture. _Spires._ The early square towers of Romanesque churches were sometimes surmounted by pyramidal roofs of low pitch. We have probably none now remaining, but we have some examples of large pinnacles, crowned with pyramids, which show what the shape must have been. They were square in plan and somewhat steep in slope. The spire was developed early in the E. E. period. It was octagonal in plan, and the four sides which coincided with the faces of the tower rose direct from the walls above a slightly masked eaves course. The four oblique sides are connected to the tower by a feature called a broach, which may be described as part of a blunt pyramid. The broach-spire (Fig. 24) is to be met with in many parts of England, but especially in Northamptonshire. The chief ornaments of an E. E. spire consist in small windows (called spire-lights or lucarnes) each surmounted by its gablet. [Illustration: FIG. 24.--EARLY ENGLISH SPIRE. CHURCH OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE, WARBOYS, LINCOLNSHIRE.] In the Dec. period it was common to finish the tower by a parapet, and to start the spire behind the parapet, sometimes with a broach, often without. Pinnacles were frequently added at the corners of the tower, and an arch, like that of a flying buttress, was sometimes thrown across from the pinnacle to the spire. Spire-lights occur as before, and the surface of the spire is often enriched by bands of ornament at intervals. The general proportions of the spire were more slender than before, and the rib, which generally ran up each angle, was often enriched by crockets, _i.e._ tufts of leaves arranged in a formal shape (Fig. 25). [Illustration: FIG. 25.--DECORATED SPIRE. ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, OAKHAM, RUTLANDSHIRE.] Towers were frequently intended to stand without spires in the Perp. period, and are often finished by four effective angle-pinnacles and a cornice with battlements. Where spires occur in this period they resemble those of the Dec. period. Spires end usually in a boss or finial, surmounted by a weathercock. Ordinary roofs were usually finished by ornamental cresting, and their summits were marked by finials,[20] frequently of exquisite workmanship. _Ornaments._ We now come to ornaments, including mouldings, carving, and colour, and here we are landed upon a mass of details which it would be impossible to pursue far. Mouldings play a prominent part in Gothic architecture, and from the first to the last they varied so constantly that their profiles and grouping may be constantly made use of as a kind of architectural calendar, to point out the time, to within a few years, when the building in which they occur was erected. A moulding is the architect's means of drawing a line on his building. If he desires to mark on the exterior the position of an internal floor, or in any other way to suggest a division into storeys, a moulded string-course is introduced. If he wishes to add richness and play of light and shade to the sides of an important arch, he introduces a series of mouldings, the profile of which has been designed to form lights and shadows such as will answer his purpose. If again he desires to throw out a projection and to give the idea of its being properly supported, he places under his projection a corbel of mouldings which are of strong as well as pleasing form, so as to convey to the eye the notion of support. Mouldings, it can be understood, differ in both size and profile, according to the purpose which they are required to serve, the distance from the spectator at which they are fixed, and the material out of which they are formed. In the Gothic periods they also differed according to the date at which they were executed. [Illustration: FIG. 26.--EARLY ARCH IN RECEDING PLANES.] [Illustration: FIG. 27.--ARCH IN RECEDING PLANES MOULDED.] The first step towards the Gothic system of mouldings was taken by the Romanesque architects when the idea of building arches in thick walls, not only one within the others, but also in planes receding back from the face of the wall one behind as well as within another, was formed and carried out, and when a corresponding recessed arrangement of the jamb of the arch was made (Fig. 26). The next step was the addition of some simple moulding to the advancing angle of each rim of such a series of arches either forming a bead (Fig. 27) or a chamfer. In the transitional part of the twelfth century and the E. E. period this process went on till at last, though the separate receding arches still continued to exist, the mouldings[21] into which they were cut became so numerous and elaborate as to render it often difficult to detect the subordination or division into distinct planes which really remained. [Illustration: FIG. 28.--DOORWAY, KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE. (15TH CENTURY.)] This passion for elaborate mouldings, often extraordinarily undercut, reached its climax in the thirteenth century, the E. E. period. In the Dec. period, while almost everything else became more elaborate, mouldings grew more simple, yet hardly less beautiful. In the Perp. period they were not only further simplified, but often impoverished, being usually shallow, formal, and stiff.[22] Ornaments abounded, and included not only enrichments in the shape of carved foliage and figures, statuary, mosaics, and so forth, but ornamental features, such as canopies, pinnacles, arcades, and recesses (Fig. 28). In each period these are distinct in design from all that went before or came after, and thus to catch the spirit of any one Gothic period aright, it is not enough to fix the general shapes of the arches and proportions of the piers but every feature, every moulding, and every ornament must be wrought in the true spirit of the work, or the result will be marred. _Stained Glass._ Ornamental materials and every sort of decorative art, such as mosaic, enamel, metal work and inlays, were freely employed to add beauty in appropriate positions; but there was one ornament, the crowning invention of the Gothic artists, which largely influenced the design of the finest buildings, and which reflected a glory on them such as nothing else can approach: this was stained glass. So much of the old glass has perished, and so little modern glass is even passable, that this praise may seem overcharged to those who have never seen any of the best specimens still left. We have in the choir at Canterbury a remnant of the finest sort of glass which England possesses. Some good fragments remain at Westminster, though not very many; but to judge of the effect of glass at its best, the student should visit La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, or the Cathedrals of Chartres, Le Mans, Bourges, or Rheims, and he will find in these buildings effects in colour which are nothing less than gorgeous in their brilliancy, richness, and harmony. [Illustration: FIG. 29.--STAINED GLASS WINDOW FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.] The peculiar excellence of stained glass as compared with every other sort of decoration, is that it is luminous. To some extent fresco-painting may claim a sort of brightness; mosaic when executed in polished materials possesses brilliancy; but in stained glass the light which comes streaming in through the window itself gives radiance, while the quality of the glass determines the colour, and thus we obtain a glowing, lustre of colour which can only be compared to the beauty of gems. In order properly to fill their place as decorations, stained-glass windows must be something quite different from transparent pictures, and the scenes they represent must not detach themselves too violently from the general ground. The most perfect effect is produced by such windows as those at Canterbury or Chartres (Fig. 29), which recall a cluster of jewels rather than a picture. _Coloured Decoration._ Colour was also freely introduced by the lavish employment of coloured materials where they were to be had, and by painting the interiors with bright pigments. We meet with traces of rich colour on many parts of ancient buildings, where we should hardly dare to put it now, and we cannot doubt that painted decoration was constantly made use of with the happiest effect. _Sculpture._ [Illustration: FIG. 30.--SCULPTURE FROM THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPTER HOUSE, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. (1250.)] The last, perhaps the noblest ornament, is sculpture. The Gothic architects were alive to its value, and in all their best works statues abounded; often conventional to the last degree; sometimes to our eyes uncouth, but always the best which those who carved them could do at the time; always sure to contribute to architectural effect; never without a picturesque power, sometimes rising to grace and even grandeur, and sometimes sinking to grotesque ugliness. Whatever the quality of the sculpture was, it was always there, and added life to the whole. Monsters gaped and grinned from the water-spouts, little figures or strange animals twisted in and out of the foliage at angles and bosses and corbels. Stately effigies occupied dignified niches, in places of honour; and in the mouldings and tympanum of the head of a doorway there was often carved a whole host of figures representing heaven, earth, and hell, with a rude force and a native eloquence that have not lost their power to the present day. In the positions where modest ornamentation was required, as for example the capitals of shafts, the hollows of groups of mouldings, and the bosses of vaulting, carving of the most finished execution and masterly design constantly occurs. Speaking roughly, this was chiefly conventional in the E. E. period, chiefly natural in the Dec. and mixed, but with perhaps a preference for the conventional in the Perp. Examples abound, but both for beauty and accessibility we can refer to no better example than the carving which enriches the entrance to the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey (Fig. 30). [Illustration: _Miserere Seat from Wells Cathedral._] FOOTNOTES: [17] For illustrations consult the Glossary under _Jamb_. [18] For illustrations consult the Glossary under _Arch_. [19] Address to the Conference of Architects. Reported in the _Builder_ of 24th June, 1876. Outlines illustrating some of these varieties of vault will be found in the Glossary under _Vault_. [20] See Glossary. [21] For illustrations consult the Glossary. [22] For further illustrations see the Glossary. [Illustration: {STAINED GLASS FROM CHARTRES CATHEDRAL.}] CHAPTER VI. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN EUROPE. FRANCE.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. The architecture of France during the Middle Ages throws much light upon the history of the country. The features in which it differs from the work done in England at the same period can, many of them, be directly traced to differences in the social, political, or religious situation of the two nations at the time. For example, we find England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the hands of the Normans, a newly-conquered country under uniform administration; and accordingly few local variations occur in the architecture of our Norman period. The twelfth-century work, at Durham or Peterborough for instance, differs but little from that at Gloucester or Winchester. In France the case is different. That country was divided into a series of semi-independent provinces, whose inhabitants differed, not only in the leaders whom they followed, but in speech, race, and customs. As might be expected, the buildings of each province presented an aspect different in many respects from those of every other; and we may as well add that these peculiarities did not die out with the end of the round-arched period of architecture, but lingered far into the pointed period. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--CHURCH AT FONTEVRAULT. (BEGUN 1125.)] The south of France was occupied by people speaking what are now known as the Romance dialects, and some writers have adopted the name as descriptive of the peculiarities of the architecture of these districts. The Romance provinces clung tenaciously to their early forms of art, so that pointed architecture was not established in the south of France till half a century, and in some places nearly a whole century, later than in the north. On the other hand, the Frankish part of the country was the cradle of Gothic. The transition from round to pointed architecture first took place in the royal domain, of which Paris was the centre, and it may be assumed that the new style was already existing when in 1140 Abbot Suger laid the foundations of the choir of the church of St. Denis, about forty years before the commencement of the eastern arm of our own Canterbury. De Caumont, who in his "Abécédaire" did for French architecture somewhat the same work of analysis and scientific arrangement which Rickman performed for English, has adopted the following classification:-- { Primitive. } 5th to 10th { _Primordiale._ } century. { } { Second. } End of 10th to Romanesque Architecture. { _Secondaire._ } commencement of _Architecture Romane._ { } 12th century. { } { Third or Transition } { _Tertiaire ou de_ } 12th century. { _Transition._ } { First. } { _Primitive._ } 13th century. { } Pointed Architecture. { Second. } _Architecture ogivale._ { _Secondaire._ } 14th century. { } { Third. } { _Tertiaire._ } 15th century. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--DOORWAY AT LOCHES, FRANCE. (1180.)] The transitional architecture of France is no exception to the rule that the art of a period of change is full of interest. Much of it has disappeared, but examples remain in the eastern part of the cathedral of St. Denis already referred to, in portions of the cathedrals of Noyon and Sens, the west front of Chartres, the church of St. Germain des Prés at Paris, and elsewhere. We here often find the pointed arch employed for the most important parts of the structure, while the round arch is still retained in the window and door-heads, and in decorative arcades, as shown in our illustrations of a section of the church at Fontevrault (Fig. 31), and of a doorway at Loches (Fig. 32). The first pointed architecture of the thirteenth century in France differs considerably from the early English of this country. The arches are usually less acute, and the windows not so tall in proportion to their width. The mouldings employed are few and simple compared with the many and intricate English ones. Large round columns are much used in place of our complicated groups of small shafts for the piers of the nave; and the abacus of the capital remains square. An air of breadth and dignity prevails in the buildings of this date to which the simple details, noble proportions, and great size largely contribute. The western front of Notre Dame, Paris (Fig. 33), dates from the early years of this century, the interior being much of it a little earlier. The well-known cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Laon, and later in the style, Amiens, and Beauvais, may be taken as grand examples of French first pointed. To these may be added the very graceful Sainte Chapelle of Paris, the choir and part of the nave of the cathedral at Rouen, the church of St. Etienne at Caen, and the cathedrals of Coutances, Lisieux, Le Mans, and Bourges. This list of churches could be almost indefinitely extended, and many monastic buildings, and not a few domestic and military ones, might be added. Among the most conspicuous of these may be named the monastic fortress at Mont St. Michel, probably the most picturesque structure in France, the remarkable fortifications of Carcassonne, and the lordly castle of Couçy. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--NOTRE DAME, PARIS, WEST FRONT. (1214.)] The second pointed, or fourteenth century Gothic of France, bears more resemblance to contemporary English Gothic than the work of the centuries preceding or following. Large windows for stained glass, with rich geometrical tracery prevailed, and much the same sort of ornamental treatment as in England was adopted in richly decorated buildings. Specimens of the work of this century occur everywhere in the shape of additions to the great churches and cathedrals which had been left unfinished from the previous century, and also of side chapels which it became customary to add to the aisles of churches. The great and well-known abbey of St. Ouen at Rouen is one of the few first-class churches which can be named as begun and almost entirely completed in this century. The tower and spire of the church of St. Pierre at Caen (Fig. 13) are very well-known and beautiful specimens of this period. French fifteenth century architecture, or third pointed, is far from being so dignified or so scientific as English perpendicular, and differs from it considerably. Exuberant richness in decoration was the rage, and shows itself both in sculpture, tracery, and general design. Much of the later work of this period has received the name of flamboyant, because of the flame-like shapes into which the tracery of the heads of windows was thrown. In flamboyant buildings we often meet with art which, though certainly over-florid, is brilliant, rich, and full of true feeling for decoration. In this century, secular and domestic buildings attained more prominence than at any previous periods. Some of them are among the best works which this period produced. Familiar examples will be found in the noble Palais de Justice at Rouen, and the Hôtel de Bourgtherould in the same city; in parts of the great château at Blois, the splendid château of Pierrefonds, and the Hôtels de Ville of Oudenarde and Caen. FRANCE.--ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ [Illustration: FIG. 34.--PLAN OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL. (1220-1272.)] The plans of French cathedrals and other buildings conform in general to the description of Gothic plans given in Chapter II., but they have of course certain distinctive peculiarities (Fig. 34). The cathedrals are as a rule much broader in proportion to their length than English ones. Double aisles frequently occur, and not infrequently an added range of side chapels fringes each of the main side walls, so that the interior of one of these vast buildings presents, in addition to the main vista along the nave, many delightful cross views of great extent. The transepts are also much less strongly marked than our English examples. There are even some great cathedrals (_e.g._, Bourges) without transepts; and where they exist it is common to find that, as in the case of Notre Dame de Paris, they do not project beyond the line of the side walls, so that, although fairly well-marked in the exterior and interior of the building, they add nothing to its floor-space. The eastern end of a French cathedral (and indeed of French churches generally, with very few exceptions) is terminated in an apse. When, as is frequently the case, this apse is encircled by a ring of chapels, with flying buttresses on several stages rising from among them, the whole arrangement is called a _chevet_, and very striking and busy is the appearance which it presents. _Walls, Towers, and Gables._ The walls are rarely built of any other material than stone, and much splendid masonry is to be found in France. Low towers are often to be met with, and so are projecting staircase turrets of polygonal or circular forms. The façades of cathedrals, including ends of transepts as well as west fronts, are most striking, and often magnificently enriched. It is an interesting study to examine a series of these fronts, each a little more advanced than the last, as for example Notre Dame (Fig. 33), the transept at Rouen, Amiens (Fig. 35), and Rheims, and to note how the horizontal bands and other level features grow less and less conspicuous, while the vertical ones are more and more strongly marked; showing an increasing desire, not only to make the buildings lofty, but to suppress everything which might interfere with their looking as high as possible. [Illustration: FIG. 35.--AMIENS CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT. (1220-1272.)] _Columns and Piers._ The column is a greater favourite than the pier in France, as has already been said. Sometimes, where the supports of the main arcade are really piers, they are built like circular shafts of large size; and even when they have no capital (as was the case in third-pointed examples), these piers still retain much of the air of solid strength which belongs to the column, and which the French architects appear to have valued highly. In cases where a series of mouldings has to be carried--as for example when the main arcade of a building is richly moulded--English architects would usually have provided a distinct shaft for each little group (or as Willis named them order), into which the whole can be subdivided. In France, at any rate during the earlier periods, the whole series of mouldings would spring from the square unbroken abacus of a single large column, to which perhaps one shaft, or as in our illustration (Fig. 36) four shafts, would be attached which would be carried up to the springing of the nave vault, at which point the same treatment would be repeated, though on a smaller scale, with the moulded ribs of that vault. [Illustration: FIG. 36.--PIERS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE, RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. (1211-1240.) _i._ Springing of main ribs of the vault. _h._ String-course below the clerestory. _a b._ Triforium arcade. _g._ String-course below the triform. B. Main arcade separating the nave from the aisles. A and N. Shafts attached to pier and supporting portions of the superstructure.] A peculiarity of some districts of southern France is the suppression of the external buttress; the buttresses are in fact built within the church walls instead of outside, and masonry enough is added to make each into a separating wall which divides side chapels. Some large churches, _e.g._, the cathedral at Alby, in Southern France, consist of a wide nave buttressed in this way, and having side chapels between the buttresses, but without side aisles. The plans of the secular, military, and domestic buildings of France also present many interesting peculiarities, but not such as it is possible to review within the narrow limits of this chapter. _Roofs and Vaults._ The peculiarly English feature of an open roof is hardly ever met with in any shape: yet though stone vaults are almost universal, they are rarely equal in scientific skill to the best of those in our own country. In transitional examples, many very singular instances of the expedients employed before the pointed vault was fully developed can be found. In some of the central and southern districts, domes, or at least domical vaults, were employed. (See the section of Fontevrault, Fig. 31). The dome came in from Byzantium. It was introduced in Perigord, where the very curious and remarkable church of St. Front (begun early in the eleventh century) was built. This is to all intents a Byzantine church. It is an almost exact copy in plan and construction of St. Mark's at Venice, a church designed and built by Eastern architects, and it is roofed by a series of domes, a peculiarity which is as distinctive of Byzantine (_i.e._, Eastern early Christian), as the vaulted roof is of Romanesque (or Western early Christian) architecture. Artists from Constantinople itself probably visited France, and from this centre a not inconsiderable influence extended itself in various directions, and led to the use of many Byzantine features both of design and ornament. As features in the exterior of their buildings, the roofs have been in every period valued by the French architects; they are almost always steep, striking, and ornamented. All appropriate modes of giving prominence and adding ornament to a roof have been very fully developed in French Gothic architecture, and the roofs of semicircular and circular apses, staircase towers, &c., may be almost looked upon as typical.[23] _Openings._ The treatment of openings gives occasion for one of the most strongly marked points of contrast between French and English Gothic architecture. With us the great windows are unquestionably the prominent features, but with the French the doors are most elaborated. This result is reached not so much by any lowering of the quality of the treatment bestowed upon the windows, but by the greatly increased importance given to doorways. The great portals of Notre Dame at Paris (Fig. 33), Rheims, or Amiens (Fig. 35), and the grand porches of Chartres may be named as the finest examples, and are probably the most magnificent single features which Gothic Art produced in any age or any country; but in its degree the western portal of every great church is usually an object upon which the best resources of the architect have been freely lavished. The wall is built very thick so that enormous jambs, carrying a vast moulded arch, can be employed. The head of the door is filled with sculpture, which is also lavishly used in the sides and arch, and over the whole rises an ornamental gable, frequently profusely adorned with tracery and sculpture, its sides being richly decorated by crockets or similar ornaments, and crowned by a sculptured terminal or finial. The windows in the earliest periods are simpler than in our E. E., as well as of less slender proportions. In the second and third periods they are full of rich tracery, and are made lofty and wide to receive the magnificent stained glass with which it was intended to fill them, and which many churches retain. Circular windows, sometimes called wheel-windows, often occupy the gables, and are many of them very fine compositions. _Mouldings and Ornaments._ The mouldings of the French first pointed are usually larger than our own. Compared with ours they are also fewer, simpler, and designed to produce more breadth of effect. This may partly result from their originating in a sunshiny country where effects of shade are easily obtained. In the second and third periods they more nearly resemble those in use in England at the corresponding times. The carving is very characteristic and very beautiful. In the transition and first pointed a cluster of stalks, ending in a tuft of foliage or flowers, is constantly employed, especially in capitals. The use of this in England is rare; and, on the other hand, foliage like E. E. conventional foliage is rare in France. In the second pointed, natural foliage is admirably rendered (Fig. 37). In the third a somewhat conventional kind of foliage, very luxuriant in its apparent growth, is constantly met with. This carving is at every stage accompanied by figure-sculpture of the finest character. Heads of animals, statues, groups of figures, and has reliefs are freely employed, but always with the greatest judgment, so that their introduction adds richness to the very point in the whole composition where it is most needed. In every part of France, and in every period of Gothic architecture, good specimens of sculpture abound. Easily accessible illustrations will be found in the west entrance and south transept front of Rouen Cathedral, the porches and portals at Chartres, the choir inclosure of Notre Dame at Paris, and the richly sculptured inclosure of the choir of Amiens Cathedral. [Illustration: FIG. 37.--CAPITAL FROM ST. NICHOLAS, BLOIS, FRANCE. (13TH CENTURY.)] Stained glass has been more than once referred to. It is to be found in its greatest perfection in France, as for example in La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and the cathedrals of Le Mans, Bourges, Chartres, and Rheims. All that has been said in the introductory chapter on this, the crowning ornament of Gothic architecture, and on its influence upon window design, and through that, upon the whole structure of the best churches, is to the full as applicable to French examples. Coloured decoration was also frequently employed in the interior of churches and other buildings, and is constantly to be met with in French buildings, both secular and religious. In most cases, however, it is less easy to appreciate this than the stained glass, for, as it is now to be seen, the colours are either faded and darkened by time and smoke, or else restored, not always with the exactness that could be desired. _Construction and Design._ The construction of the great buildings of the middle ages in France is an interesting subject of study, but necessarily a thoroughly technical one. Great sagacity in designing the masonry, carpentry, joinery, and metal-work; and trained skill in the carrying out the designs, have left their traces everywhere; and while the construction of the earlier castles and of the simple churches shows a solidity but little inferior to that of the Romans themselves, the most elaborate works, such for example as the choir at Beauvais (Fig. 38), can hardly be surpassed as specimens of skill and daring, careful forethought, and bold execution. [Illustration: FIG. 38.--BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL, INTERIOR. (1225-1537.)] Design, in France, pursued the general principles of Gothic architecture to their logical conclusions with the most uncompromising consistency. Perhaps the most distinctive peculiarity in French cathedrals is a love of abstract beauty, and a strong preference for breadth, regularity, dignity, and symmetry wherever they come into competition with picturesqueness and irregular grouping. There is, it is true, plenty of the picturesque element in French mediæval art; but if we take the finest buildings, and those in which the greatest effort would be made to secure the qualities which were considered the greatest and most desirable, we shall find very strong evidences of a conviction that beauty was to be attained by regularity and order, rather than by unsymmetrical and irregular treatment. BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS. Belgium is a country rich in remains of Gothic architecture. Its art was influenced so largely by its neighbourhood to France, that it will not be necessary to attempt anything like a chronological arrangement of its buildings. Fine churches exist in its principal cities, but they cannot be said to form a series differing widely from the churches of France, with which they were contemporary, and where they differ the advantage is generally on the side of the French originals. The principal cathedral of the Low Countries, that at Antwerp, is a building remarkable for its great width (having seven aisles), and for the wonderful picturesqueness of its interior. The exterior, which is unfinished, is also very effective, with its one lofty spire. The other cathedrals of note include those of Tournay, Brussels, Mechlin, Louvain, Liége, and Ghent. Belgium also possesses a great number of large parochial churches. When we turn to secular buildings we find the Belgian architecture of the middle ages taking a leading position. The free cities of Belgium acquired municipal privileges at an early date, and accumulated great wealth. Accordingly we find town halls, trade halls, belfries, warehouses, and excellent private dwelling-houses in abundance. The cloth hall at Ypres has been repeatedly illustrated and referred to as an example of a grand and effective building for trade purposes; it is of thirteenth-century architecture and of great size, its centre marked by a massive lofty tower; and its angles carrying slight turrets; but in other respects it depends for its effectiveness solely on its repetition of similar features. Examples of the same kind of architecture exist at Louvain and Ghent. The Town Halls of Brussels, Louvain, Bruges, Mechlin, Ghent, Oudenarde, and Ypres, are all buildings claiming attention. They were most of them in progress during the fifteenth century, and are fine, but florid examples of late Gothic. Some one or two at least of the town halls were begun and partly carried out in the fourteenth century; on the other hand, the Hôtel de Ville at Oudenarde, was begun as late as the beginning of the sixteenth; so were the Exchange at Antwerp (destroyed by fire and rebuilt not long since) and some other well-known structures: their architecture, though certainly Gothic, is debased in style. The general aspect of these famous buildings was noble and bold in mass, and rich in ornament. Our illustration (Fig. 39) shows the Town Hall of Middleburgh in Holland; one which is less famous and of smaller dimensions than those enumerated above, but equally characteristic. The main building usually consisted of a long unbroken block surmounted by a high-pitched roof, and usually occupied one side of a public place. The side of the building presents several storeys, filled by rows of fine windows, though in some cases the lowest storey is occupied by an open arcade. The steep roof, usually crowded with dormer windows, carries up the eye to a lofty ridge, and from the centre of it rises the lofty tower which forms so conspicuous a feature in most of these buildings. In the Town Hall at Bruges the tower is comparatively simple, though of a mass and height that are truly imposing; but in Brussels, Ypres, and other examples, it is a richly ornamented composition on which every resource of the mason and the carver has been lavished. Our illustration (Fig. 40) shows the well-known tower at Ghent. [Illustration: FIG. 39.--THE TOWN HALL OF MIDDLEBURGH. (1518.)] [Illustration: FIG. 40.--TOWER AT GHENT. (BEGUN 1183.)] The gable ends of the great roof are often adorned by pinnacles and other ornaments; but they rarely come prominently into view, as it is invariably the long side of the building which is considered to be the principal front. SCOTLAND, WALES, AND IRELAND. In Scotland good but simple examples of early work (transition from Romanesque to E. E.) occur, as for example, at Jedburgh and Kelso, Dryburgh and Leuchars abbey churches. A very interesting and in many respects unique cathedral of the thirteenth century, with later additions, exists at Glasgow. It is a building of much beauty, with good tracery, and the crypt offers a perfect study of various and often graceful modes of forming groined vaults. The Cathedral of Elgin (thirteenth century), an admirable Edwardian building, now in ruins, and the Abbey at Melrose, also ruined, of fourteenth century architecture (begun 1322), are both excellent specimens of the art of the periods to which they belong, and bear a close resemblance to what was being done in England at the same time. The famous tower of St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh, and the Chapel at Roslyn, of the fifteenth century, on the other hand, are of thoroughly un-English character, resembling in this respect much of the Scotch architecture of the succeeding centuries; Roslyn is ascribed by Mr. Fergusson to a Spanish or Portuguese architect, with great probability. Other abbey churches and remains of architectural work exist at Dumblane, Arbroath, Dunkeld, and in many other localities; and Holyrood Palace, still retains part of its elegant early fourteenth-century chapel. Of secular and domestic work Linlithgow is a fair specimen, but of late date. Most of the castles and castellated mansions of Scotland belong indeed to a later time than the Gothic period, though there is a strong infusion of Gothic feeling in the very picturesque style in which they are designed. * * * * * Wales is distinguished for the splendid series of castles to which allusion has been made in a previous chapter. They were erected at the best time of English Gothic architecture (Edward I.) under English direction, and are finely designed and solidly built. Wales can also boast the interesting Cathedrals of Chester, Llandaff, St. David's, and some smaller churches, but in every case there is little to distinguish them from contemporary English work. * * * * * Ireland is more remarkable for antiquities of a date anterior to the beginning of the Gothic period than for works belonging to it. A certain amount of graceful and simple domestic work, however, exists there; and in addition to the cathedrals of Kildare, Cashel, and Dublin, numerous monastic buildings, not as a rule large or ambitious, but often graceful and picturesque, are scattered about. [Illustration: _Miserere Seat in Wells Cathedral._] FOOTNOTES: [23] For an example of these see the house of Jaques Coeur (Fig. 7). [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM WESTMINSTER ABBEY.}] CHAPTER VII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE. GERMANY.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. The architecture of Germany, from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, can be divided into an early, a middle, and a late period, with tolerable distinctness. Of these, the early period possesses the greatest interest, and the peculiarities of its buildings are the most marked and most beautiful. In the middle period, German Gothic bore a very close general resemblance to the Gothic of the same time in France; and, as a rule, such points of difference as exist are not in favour of the German work. Late Gothic work in Germany is very fantastic and unattractive. [Illustration: FIG. 41.--ABBEY CHURCH OF ARNSTEIN. (12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES.)] Through the twelfth, and part of the thirteenth centuries, the architects of Germany pursued a course parallel with that followed in France and in England, but without adopting the pointed arch. They developed the simple and rude Romanesque architecture which prevailed throughout Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and which they learnt originally from Byzantine artists who fled from their own country during the reign of the iconoclasts; and they not only carried it to a point of elaboration which was abreast of the art of our best Norman architecture, but went on further in the same course; for while the French and ourselves were adopting lancet windows and pointed arches, they continued to employ the round-headed window and the semicircular arch in buildings which in their size, richness, loftiness, and general style, correspond with early Gothic examples in other countries. This early German architecture has been sometimes called fully developed Romanesque, and sometimes round-arched Gothic, and both terms may be applied to it without impropriety, for it partakes of the qualities implied by each. The Church of the Holy Apostles at Cologne, and those of St. Martin and St. Maria in Capitolo, in the same city, may be referred to as among the best works of this class. Each of these has an eastern apse, and also an apsidal termination to each transept. The Apostles' church has a low octagon at the crossing, and its sky-line is further broken up by western and eastern towers, the latter of comparatively small size and octagonal; and under the eaves of the roof occurs an arcade of small arches. A view of the Abbey Church of Arnstein (Fig. 41) illustrates some of the features of these transitional churches. It will be noticed that though there is no transept, there are no less than four towers, two octagonal, and two square, and that the apse is a strongly developed feature. In the church at Andernach, of which we give an illustration (Fig. 42), the same arrangement, namely, that of four towers, two to the west, and two to the east, may be noticed; but there is not the same degree of difference between the towers, and the result is less happy. This example, like the last, has no central feature, and in both the arcade under the eaves of the roof is conspicuous only by its absence. It does, however, occur on the western towers at Andernach. [Illustration: FIG. 42.--CHURCH AT ANDERNACH. (EARLY 13TH CENTURY.)] The pointed arch, when adopted in Germany, was in all probability borrowed from France, as the general aspect of German churches of pointed architecture seems to prove. The greatest Gothic cathedral of Germany, Cologne Cathedral, was not commenced till about the year 1275, and its choir was probably completed during the first quarter of the fourteenth century. This cathedral, one of the largest in Europe, is also one of the grandest efforts of mediæval architecture, and it closely resembles French examples of the same period, both in its general treatment, and in the detail of its features. The plan of Cologne Cathedral (Fig. 46) is one of the most regular and symmetrical which has come down to us from the middle ages. The works were carried on slowly after the choir was consecrated, but without any deviation from the original plan, though some alteration in style and details crept in. In our own day the works have been resumed and vigorously pushed on towards completion; and, the original drawings having been preserved, the two western towers, the front, and other portions have been carried on in accordance with them. Cologne, accordingly, presents the almost unique spectacle of a great Gothic church, erected without deviation from its original plan, and completed in the style in which it was begun. It is fair to add that though splendid in the extreme, this cathedral has far less charm, and less of that peculiar quality of mystery and vitality than many, we might say most, of the great cathedrals of Europe. The plan consists of a nave of eight bays, two of which form a kind of vestibule, and five avenues, _i.e._ two aisles on each side; transepts of four bays each, with single aisles; and a choir of four bays and an apse, the double aisle of the nave being continued and carried down the choir. That part of the outer aisle which sweeps round the apse has been formed into a series of seven polygonal chapels, thus gaining a complete _chevet_.[24] Over the crossing there is a comparatively slender spire, and at the west end stand two massive towers terminated by a pair of lofty and elaborate spires, of open tracery, and enriched by crockets, finials, and much ornamentation. The cathedral is built of stone, without much variation in colour; it is vaulted throughout, and a forest of flying buttresses surrounds it on all sides. The beauty of the tracery, the magnificent boldness of the scale of the whole building, and its orderly regularity, are very imposing, and give it a high rank among the greatest works of European architecture; but it is almost too majestic to be lovely, and somewhat cold and uninteresting from its uniform colour, and perhaps from its great regularity. Strasburg Cathedral--not so large as Cologne--has been built at various times; the nave and west front are the work of the best Gothic period. This building has a nave and single aisles, short transepts, and a short apsidal choir. There is great richness in much of the work; double tracery, _i.e._ a second layer, so to speak, of tracery, is here employed in the windows, and extended beyond them, but the effect is not happy. The front was designed to receive two open tracery spires, but only one of them has been erected. It is amazingly intricate and rich, the workmanship is very astonishing, but the artistic effect is not half so good as that of many plain stone spires. Another important German church famous for an open spire is the cathedral at Friburg. Here only one tower, standing at the middle of the west front, was ever intended, and partly because the composition is complete as proposed, and partly because the design of the tracery in the spire itself is more telling, this building forms a more effective object than Strasburg, though by no means so lofty or so grandiose. [Illustration: FIG. 43.--CHURCH OF ST. BARBARA AT KUTTENBERG. EAST END. (1358-1548.)] The Cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna is a large and exceedingly rich church. In this building the side aisles are carried to almost the same height as the centre avenue--an arrangement not infrequent in German churches having little save novelty to recommend it, and by which the triforium, and, as a rule, the clerestory disappear, and the church is lighted solely by large side windows. The three avenues are covered by one wide roof, which makes a vast and rather clumsy display externally. A lofty tower, surmounted by a fine and elaborate spire of open tracery, stands on one side of the church--an unusual position--and an unfinished companion tower is begun on the corresponding side. Great churches and cathedrals are to be found in many of the cities of Germany, but their salient points are, as a rule, similar to those of the examples which have been already described. The incomplete Church of St. Barbara at Kuttenberg, in Bohemia, is one of somewhat exceptional design. It has double aisles, but the side walls for the greater part of the length of the church rest upon the arcade dividing the two aisles, instead of that separating the centre avenue from the side one; and a vault over the inner side aisle forms in effect a kind of balcony or gallery in the nave. The illustration (Fig. 43) which we give of the exterior does not of course indicate this peculiarity, but it shows a very good example of a German adaptation of the French _chevet_, and may be considered as a specimen of German pointed architecture at its ripest stage. The church is vaulted, as might be inferred from the forest of flying buttresses; and the vaulting displays some resemblance to our English fan-vaulting in general idea. German churches include some specimens of unusual disposition or form, as for example the Church of St. Gereon at Cologne, with an oval choir, and one or two double churches, one of the most curious being the one at Schwartz-Rheindorff, of which we give a section and view. (Figs. 44, 45.) In their doorways and porches the German architects are often very happy. Our illustration (Fig. 47) of one of the portals of the church at Thann may be taken as giving a good idea of the amount of rich ornament often concentrated here: it displays a wealth of decorative sculpture, which was one of the great merits of the German architects. [Illustration: FIG. 44.--DOUBLE CHURCH AT SCHWARTZ-RHEINDORFF. SECTION. (1158.)] The latest development of Gothic in Germany, of which the Church of St. Catherine at Oppenheim (Fig. 48) is a specimen, was marked (just as late French was by flamboyant tracery, and late English by fan-vaulting) by a peculiarity in the treatment of mouldings by which they were robbed of almost all their grace and beauty, while the execution of them became a kind of masonic puzzle. Two or more groups of mouldings were supposed to coexist in the same stone, and sometimes a part of one group, sometimes a part of the other group, became visible at the surface. The name given to this eccentric development is interpenetration. [Illustration: FIG. 45.--DOUBLE CHURCH AT SCHWARTZ-RHEINDORFF. (A.D. 1158.)] Secular architecture in Germany, though not carried to such a pitch of perfection as in Belgium, was by no means overlooked; but the examples are not numerous. In some of the older cities, such as Prague, Nuremberg, and Frankfort, much picturesque domestic architecture abounds, most of it of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even later, and all full of piquancy and beauty. In North Germany, where there is a large tract of country in which building stone is scarce, a style of brick architecture was developed, which was applied to all sorts of purposes with great success. The most remarkable of these brick buildings are the large dwelling-houses, with façades ornamented by brick tracery and panelling, to be found in Eastern Prussia, together with some town halls and similar buildings. GERMANY.--ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ The points of difference between German and French Gothic are not so numerous as to render a very minute analysis of the Gothic of Germany requisite in order to make them clear. The plans of German churches usually show internal piers; and columns occur but rarely. The churches have nave and aisles, transepts and apsidal choir; but they are peculiar from the frequent use of apses at the ends of the transepts, and also from the occurrence, in not a few instances, of an apse at the west end of the nave as well as at the east end of the choir. They are almost invariably vaulted. As the style advanced, large churches were constantly planned with double aisles, and the western apse disappeared. Some German church plans, notably those of Cologne Cathedral (Fig. 46) and the great church of St. Lawrence at Nuremberg, are fine specimens of regularity of disposition, though full of many parts. [Illustration: FIG. 46.--COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. GROUND PLAN. (BEGUN 1248.)] _Walls, Towers, and Gables._ The German architects delighted in towers with pointed roofs, and in a multiplicity of them. A highly characteristic feature is a tower of great mass, but often extremely low, covering the crossing. The Cathedral at Mayence shows a fine example of this feature, which was often not more than a low octagon. Western towers, square on plan, are common, and small towers, frequently octagonal, are often employed to flank the choir or in combination with the transepts. These in early examples, are always surmounted by high roofs; in late ones, by stone spires, often of rich open tracery. A very characteristic feature of the round arched Gothic churches is an arcade of small arches immediately below the eaves of the roof and opening into the space above the vaults (Fig. 45). This is rarely wanting in churches built previous to the time when the French type was followed implicitly. The gables are seldom such fine compositions as in France, or even in Italy; but in domestic and secular buildings many striking gabled fronts occur, the gable being often stepped in outline and full of windows. _Roofs and Vaults._ Vaults are universal in the great churches, and German vaulting has some special peculiarities, but they are such as hardly come within the scope of this hand-book. Roofs, however, are so conspicuous that in any general account of German architecture attention must be paid to them. They were from very early times steep in pitch and picturesque in outline, and are evidently much relied upon as giving play to the sky-line. Indeed, for variety of form and piquancy of detail the German roofs are the most successful of the middle ages. The spires, as will have been easily gathered from the descriptions of those at Strasburg, Cologne, &c., became extremely elaborate, and were constructed in many cases entirely of open tracery. [Illustration: FIG. 47.--WESTERN DOORWAY OF CHURCH AT THANN. (14TH CENTURY.)] [Illustration: FIG. 48.--CHURCH OF ST. CATHERINE AT OPPENHEIM. (1262 TO 1439.)] _Openings._ Openings are, on the whole, treated very much as the French treated them. A good example is the western doorway at Thann (Fig. 47); but the use of double tracery in the windows in late examples is characteristic. Sometimes a partial screen of outside tracery is employed in other features besides windows, as may be seen by the very elegant doorway of St. Sebald's Church at Nuremberg, which we have illustrated (Fig. 49). _Ornaments._ The ornaments of German Gothic are often profuse, but rarely quite happy. Sculpture, often of a high class, carving of every sort, tracery, and panelling, are largely employed; but with a hardness and a tendency to cover all surfaces with a profusion of weak imitations of tracery that disfigures much of the masonry. The tracery became towards the latter part of the time intricate and unmeaning, and the interpenetrating mouldings already described, though of course intended to be ornamental, are more perplexing and confusing than pleasing: the carving exaggerates the natural markings of the foliage represented, and being thin, and very boldly undercut, resembles leaves beaten out in metal, rather than foliage happily and easily imitated in stone, which is what good architectural carving should be. The use of coloured building materials and of inlays and mosaics does not prevail to any great extent in Germany, though stained glass is often to be found and coloured wall decoration occasionally. [Illustration: FIG. 49.--ST. SEBALD'S CHURCH AT NUREMBERG. THE BRIDE'S DOORWAY. (1303-1377.)] _Construction and Design._ The marked peculiarities of construction by which the German Gothic buildings are most distinguished, are the prevalent high-pitched roofs, the vaulting with aisle vaults carried to the same height as in the centre, and the employment in certain districts of brick to the exclusion of stone, all of which have been already referred to. In a great part of that large portion of Europe, which is included under the name of Germany, the materials and modes of construction adopted during the middle ages, bear a close resemblance to those in general use in France and England. Some of the characteristics of German Gothic design have been already alluded to. The German architects display an exuberant fancy, a great love of the picturesque, and even the grotesque, and a strong predilection for creating artificial difficulties in order to enjoy the pleasure of surmounting them. Their work is full of unrest; they attach small value to the artistic quality of breadth, and destroy the value of the plain surfaces of their buildings as contrasts to the openings, by cutting them up by mouldings and enrichments of various sorts. The sculpture introduced is, as a rule, naturalistic rather than conventional. The capitals of piers and columns are often fine specimens of effective carving, while the delicate and ornamental details of the tabernacle work with which church furniture is enriched, are unsurpassed in elaboration, and often of rare beauty. The churches of Nuremberg are specially distinguished for the richness and number of their sculptured fittings. There is, moreover, in some of the best German buildings a rugged grandeur which approaches the sublime; and in the humbler ones a large amount of picturesque and thoroughly successful architecture. In the smaller objects upon which the art of the architect was often employed the Germans were frequently happy. Public fountains, such for example as the one illustrated in Chapter II. (Fig. 10), are to be met within the streets of many towns, and rarely fail to please by their simple, graceful, and often quaint design. Crosses, monuments, and individual features in domestic buildings, such _e.g._ as bay windows, frequently show a very skilful and picturesque treatment and happy enrichment. NORTHERN EUROPE. Gothic architecture closely resembling German work may be found in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, and Denmark; but there are few very conspicuous buildings, and not enough variety to form a distinct style. In Norway and Sweden curious and picturesque buildings exist, erected solely of timber, and both there and in Switzerland many of the traditions of the Gothic period have been handed down to our own day with comparatively little change, in the pleasing and often highly enriched timber buildings which are to be met with in considerable numbers in those countries. FOOTNOTES: [24] See p. 77 for an explanation of _chevet._ [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM SENS CATHEDRAL.}] CHAPTER VIII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. ITALY AND SICILY.--TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Gothic architecture in Italy may be considered as a foreign importation. The Italians, it is true, displayed their natural taste and artistic instinct in their use of the style, and a large number of their works possess, as we shall see, strongly-marked characteristics and much charm; but it is impossible to avoid the feeling that the architects were working in a style not thoroughly congenial to their instincts nor to the traditions they had inherited from classical times; and not entirely in harmony with the requirements of the climate and the nature of their building materials. Italian Gothic may be conveniently considered geographically, dividing the buildings into three groups, the first and most important containing the architecture of Northern Italy (Lombardy, Venetia, and the neighbourhood), the second that of Central Italy (Tuscany, &c.), the third that of the south and of Sicily--a classification which will suit the subject better than the chronological arrangement which has been our guide in examining the art of other countries; for the variations occasioned by development as time went on are less strongly marked in Italy than elsewhere. _Northern Italy._ Lombardy in the Romanesque period was thoroughly under German influence, and the buildings remaining to us from the eleventh and twelfth centuries bear a close resemblance to those erected north of the Alps at the same date. The twelfth century Lombard churches again are specimens of round-arched Gothic, just as truly as those on the banks of the Rhine. Many of them are also peculiar as being erected chiefly in brickwork; the great alluvial plain of Lombardy being deficient in building-stone. St. Michele at Pavia, a well-known church of this date, may be cited as a good example. This is a vaulted church, with an apsidal east end and transepts. The round arch is employed in this building, but the general proportions and treatment are essentially Gothic. A striking campanile (bell tower) belongs to the church, and is a good specimen of a feature very frequently met with in Lombardy; the tower here (and usually) is square, and rises by successive stages, but with only few and small openings or ornaments, to a considerable height. There are no buttresses, no diminution of bulk, no staircase turrets. At the summit is an open belfry-stage, with large semicircular-headed arches, crowned by a cornice and a low-pitched conical roof.[25] In the same city a good example of an Italian Gothic church, erected after the pointed arch had been introduced, may be found in the church of Sta. Maria del Carmine. The west front of this church is but clumsy in general design. Its width is divided into five compartments by flat buttresses. The gables are crowned by a deep and heavy cornice of moulded brick and the openings are grouped with but little skill. Individually, however, the features of this front are very beautiful, and the great wheel-window, full of tracery, and the two-light windows flanking it, may be quoted as remarkable specimens of the ornamental elaboration which can be accomplished in brickwork. The campanile of this church, like the one just described, is a plain square tower. It rises by successive stages, each taller than the last, each stage being marked by a rich brick cornice. The belfry-stage has on each face a three-light window, with a traceried head, and above the cornice the square tower is finished by a tall conical roof, circular on plan, an arrangement not unfrequently met with. The Certosa, the great Carthusian Church and Monastery near Pavia,[26] best known by the elaborate marble front added in a different style about a century after the erection of the main building, is a good example of a highly-enriched church, with dependencies, built in brickwork, and possessing most of the distinctive peculiarities of a great Gothic church, except the general use of the pointed arch. It was begun in 1396, and is consistent in its exterior architecture, the front excepted, though it took a long time to build. Attached to it are two cloisters, of which the arches are semicircular, and the enrichments, of wonderful beauty, are modelled in terra-cotta. This church resembles the great German round-arched Gothic churches on the Rhine in many of its features. Its plan includes a nave, with aisles and side chapels, transepts and a choir. The eastern arm and the transepts are each ornamented by an apse, somewhat smaller than would be met with in a German church; but as a compensation each of these three arms has two side apses, as well as the one at the end. The exterior possesses the German arcade of little arches immediately under the eaves of the roof; it is marked by the same multiplicity of small towers, each with its own steep roof; and it possesses the same striking central feature, internally a small dome, externally a kind of light pyramidal structure, ornamented by small arcades rising tier above tier, and ending in a central pointed roof. The finest Gothic cathedral in North Italy, if dimensions, general effectiveness, and beauty of material be the test, is that of Milan. This building is disfigured by a west front in a totally inappropriate style, but apart from this it is virtually a German church of the first class, erected entirely in white marble, and covered with a profusion of decoration. Its dimensions show that, with the exception of Seville, this was the largest of all the Gothic cathedrals of Europe. It has double aisles, transepts, and a polygonal apse. At the crossing of the nave and transepts a low dome rises, covered by a conical roof, and surmounted by an elegant marble spire. The structure is vaulted throughout, and each of the great piers which carry the nave arcade is surmounted by a mass of niches and tabernacle work, occupied by statues--a splendid substitute for ordinary capitals. The interior effect of Milan Cathedral is grand and full of beauty. The exterior, though much of its power is destroyed by the weakly-designed ornament with which all the surfaces of the walls are covered, is endowed with a wonderful charm. This building was commenced in the year 1385, and consecrated in the year 1418. The details of the window-tracery, pinnacles, &c. (but not the statues which are of Italian character), correspond very closely to those of German buildings erected at the same period (close of the fourteenth century). Milan possesses, among other examples of pointed architecture, one secular building, the Great Hospital, well known for its Gothic façade. This hospital was founded in 1456, and most of it is of later date and of renaissance character; the street front of two storeys in height, with pointed arches, is very rich. The church of Chiaravalle, near Milan, which has been more than once illustrated and described, ought not to be passed unnoticed, on account of the beauty of its fully developed central dome. It was built in the early part of the thirteenth century (1221). Almost all the great cities of North Italy possess striking Gothic buildings. Genoa, for instance, can boast of her cathedral, with a front in alternate courses of black and white marble, dating from about the year 1300, and full of beauty; the details bearing much resemblance to the best Western Gothic work. Passing eastward, Verona possesses a wealth of Gothic work in the well-known tombs of the Scaligers, the churches of Sta. Anastasia, San Zenone, and several minor churches and campaniles; and at Como, Bergamo, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Cremona, Bologna, and many other cities and towns, good churches of pointed architecture are to be found. Our illustration (Fig. 50) of the ancient Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona, is a good specimen of the secular architecture of North Italy. Originally the lower storey was a loggia, or open arcaded storey, but the arches have been built up. Telling, simple, and graceful, this building owes its effect chiefly to its well-designed openings and a characteristic brick cornice. It is entirely without buttresses, has no spreading base, no gables, and no visible roof: some of these features would have been present had it been designed and erected north of the Alps. [Illustration: FIG. 50.--THE PALACE OF THE JURISCONSULTS AT CREMONA.] Venice is the city in the whole of North Italy where Gothic architecture has had freest scope and has achieved the greatest success, not, however, in ecclesiastical, but in secular buildings. The great Cathedral of St. Mark, perhaps the most wonderful church in Europe, certainly the foremost in Italy, is a Byzantine building, and though it has received some additions in Gothic times, does not fairly come within the scope of this volume; and the Gothic churches of Venice are not very numerous nor, with the exception of the fine brick church of the Frari, extremely remarkable. On the banks of the Grand Canal and its tributaries, however, stand not a few Gothic palaces of noble design (see Fig. 9, p. 18), while the Ducal Palace itself alone is sufficient to confer a reputation upon the city which it adorns. The Ducal Palace at Venice is a large rectangular block of buildings erected round a vast quadrangle. Of its exterior two sides only are visible from a distance, one being the sea front looking over the lagoon, and the other the land front directed towards the piazzetta. Rather less than one half the height of each front is occupied by two storeys of arcades; the lower storey bold, simple, and vigorous; the upper storey lighter, and ending in a mass of bold tracery. Above this open work, and resting upon it, rises the external wall of the palace, faced with marble in alternate slabs of rose-colour and white, pierced by a few large pointed windows and crowned by an open parapet. Few buildings are so familiar, even to untravelled persons, as this fine work, which owes its great charm to the extent, beauty, and mingled solidity and grace of its arcades, and to the fine sculpture by which the capitals from which they spring are enriched. The Gothic palaces are almost invariably remarkable for the skill with which the openings in their fronts are arranged and designed. It was not necessary to render any other part of the exterior specially architectural, as the palaces stand side by side like houses in a modern street, as can be seen from our illustration (Fig. 9). In almost all cases a large proportion of the openings are grouped together in the centre of the front, and the sides are left comparatively plain and strong-looking, the composition presenting a centre and two wings. By this simple expedient each portion of the composition is made to add emphasis to the other, and a powerful but not inharmonious contrast between the open centre and the solid sides is called into existence. The earliest Gothic buildings in point of date are often the most delicate and graceful, and this rule holds good in the Gothic palaces of Venice; yet one of the later palaces, the Ca' d'Oro, must be at least named on account of the splendid richness of its marble front--of which, however, only the centre and one wing is built--and the beauty of the ornament lavishly employed upon it. The balconies, angle windows, and other minor features with which the Venetian Gothic palaces abound, are among the most graceful features of the architecture of Italy. _Central Italy._ Those towns of Central Italy (by which is meant Tuscany and the former States of the Church), in which the best Gothic buildings are to be found, are Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Siena, Orvieto, and Perugia. As a general rule the Gothic work in this district is more developed and more lavishly enriched than that in Lombardy. In Pisa, the Cathedral and the Campanile (the famous leaning tower) belong to the late Romanesque style, but the Baptistry, an elegant circular building, has a good deal of Gothic ornament in its upper storeys, and may be fairly classed as a transitional building. The most charming and thoroughly characteristic work of Gothic architecture in Pisa is, however, a small gem of a chapel, the church of Sta. Maria della Spina. It displays exquisite ornament, and, notwithstanding much false construction, the beauty of its details, of its sculpture, and of the marble of which it is built, invest it with a great charm. Pisan Gothic is remarkable as being associated with the name of a family of highly gifted sculptors and architects, the Pisani, of whom Nicola Pisano was the earliest and greatest artist; he was followed by his descendants Giovanni, Nino, and Andrea. With the Pisani and Giotto the series of the known names of architects of great buildings may be said to begin. Florence, the most important of the cities we have named, is distinguished by a cathedral built in the early part of the fourteenth century, and one of the grandest in Italy. It has very few columns, and its walls and vaults are of great height. The walls are adorned externally with inlays in coloured marble, and the windows have stained glass--a rarity in Italy; but its lofty dome, added after the completion of the rest of the building, is its chief feature. This was always intended, but the pointed octagonal dome actually erected by Brunelleschi, between the years 1420 and 1444, though it harmonises fairly well with the general lines of the building, and forms, as can be seen from our illustration (Fig. 51), a striking object in all distant views of the city, is probably very different from what was originally intended. Near the cathedral stand the Baptistry, famous for the possession of the finest gates in the world, and the Campanile of Giotto. This tower is built, or at least faced, entirely with marble; and when it is stated that its height is not far short of that of the Victoria Tower of our Houses of Parliament, though of slenderer proportions, it will be seen that it is magnificently liberal in its general scheme. The tower is covered with panels of variously coloured marbles from base to summit, and enriched by fine sculpture. The angles are strengthened by slightly projecting piers. The windows are comparatively small till the highest or belfry stage is reached, and here each face of the tower is pierced by a magnificent three-light window. A deep and elaborate cornice now crowns the whole, but it was originally designed to add a high-pitched roof or a spire as a terminal. [Illustration: FIG. 51.--THE CATHEDRAL AT FLORENCE. WITH GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE. (BEGUN, 1298; DOME, 1420-1444; CAMPANILE BEGUN, 1324.)] Our illustration (Fig. 52) shows the west front and campanile of the Cathedral at Siena, an exceedingly good specimen of the beauties and peculiarities of the style. This building was commenced in 1243. The plan is simple but singular, for the central feature is a six-sided dome, at the crossing of the nave and transepts; and some ingenuity has been spent in fitting this figure to the arches of the main avenues of the building. The interior is rich and effective; the exterior, as can be seen by the illustration, is covered with ornament, and the front is the richest and probably the best designed of all the cathedral fronts of Central Italy. The strongly-marked horizontal lines of cornices, arcades, &c., the moulded gables, the great wheel-window set in a square panel, and the use of marble of various colours, are all points to note. So is the employment of the semicircular arch for the doorways of this thoroughly Gothic building. The campanile is a good example of that feature, except that instead of the rich window which usually occupies the belfry stage, or highest storey, two storeys of small lights have been formed. The introduction of angle turrets is not very usual, and it here supplies a deficiency which makes itself felt in other campaniles, where the junction of tower and spire is not always happy. [Illustration: FIG. 52.--CATHEDRAL AT SIENA. WEST FRONT AND CAMPANILE. (FAÇADE BEGUN 1284.)] Gothic churches of importance can be found in many of the cities and towns of Central Italy. None are more remarkable than the singular double church of St. Francis at Assisi, with its wealth of mural paintings and stained glass, and the cathedral at Orvieto (Fig. 53) with its splendid front. In Rome, so rich in specimens of the architecture of many styles and times, Gothic could find no footing; the one solitary church which can be claimed as Gothic may be taken as an exception. And south of the Capital there lies a considerable tract of country, containing few if any examples of the style we are considering. _Southern Italy._ Southern Italy is conveniently grouped with Sicily, but the mainland is deficient in examples of Gothic buildings. The old towns of Apulia indeed, such as Bari, Bitonto and Brindisi, possess an architecture which the few who have had an opportunity of examining, declare to be surpassingly rich in its decoration, but it is for the most part Romanesque. The Gothic work remaining in and about Naples is most of it extremely florid, and often rich, but seldom possesses the grace and charm of that which exists further north. Sicily shows the picturesquely mixed results of a complication of agencies which have not affected the mainland, and is accordingly an interesting field for architectural study. The island was first under Byzantine influence; was next occupied and held by the Saracens; and was later seized and for some time retained by the Normans. [Illustration: FIG. 53.--THE CATHEDRAL AT ORVIETO. (BEGUN 1290; FAÇADE, 1310.)] The most striking early Gothic building in Sicily is the richly adorned cathedral of Monreale, commenced in the twelfth century. Here very simple pointed arches are made use of, as the entire surface of the interior is covered with mosaic pictures of Norman origin. The small Capella Palatina in Palermo itself is of the same simple and early architectural character, and adorned with equally magnificent mosaics. In these buildings the splendour of the colouring is only equalled by the vigorous and often pathetic power with which the stories of sacred history are embodied in these mosaics. The cathedral of Cefalu is a building bearing a general resemblance to that at Monreale, but not enriched in the same manner. Of the fourteenth century are the richly ornamented cathedral of Palermo and that of Messina. The latter has been so much altered as to have lost a good deal of its interest; but at Palermo there is much that is striking and almost unique. This building has little in common with the works of northern or central Italy, and not much more alliance with the Gothic of North Europe. It is richly panelled and decorated, but its most striking feature is its bold arcaded portal. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ The plans of Italian churches are simple, compared with those of the northern and western architects. As a rule they are also moderate in size, and they bear a close resemblance to those of the early basilica churches from which they are directly descended. Though the apse is all but universal, the French _chevet_, with its crown of clustering chapels, was not adopted in Italy. There is very much in common between the churches of Lombardy and those of Germany, but the German western apse and the apsidal ends to the transept do not occur. The spaces between the piers of the main arcade are greater than in French or English examples, so that there are fewer piers, and the vaults are of wider span. In the churches founded by the great preaching orders, the division into nave and aisle does not take place, and the church consists of nothing but a large hall for the congregation, with a chancel for the choir. In monastic, secular, and domestic building a general squareness and simplicity of plan prevails, and where an internal arcaded quadrangle can be made use of (_e.g._ in the cloister of a monastery), it is almost always relied upon to add effect. The famous external arcade at the Ducal Palace, Venice, was nowhere repeated, though simpler external arcades occur frequently; but it is so splendid as to form, itself alone a feature in Italian planning. The arrangements of the mansions and palaces found in the great cities were a good deal influenced by the circumstance that it was customary, in order to secure as much cool air as possible, to devote one of the upper floors to the purpose of a suite of reception rooms; to this was given the name of _piano nobile_. _Walls, Towers, Columns._ Walls are usually thick and stand unbuttressed, and rarely have such slopes and diminutions of apparent thickness towards their upper part as are not uncommon in England. Base mouldings are not universal. The cornice, on the other hand, is far more cared for, and is made much more conspicuous than with us. In the brick buildings especially it attains great development. Above the cornice a kind of ornamental parapet, bearing some resemblance to battlements, is common. The strikingly peculiar use of materials of different colours in alternate courses, or in panels, to decorate the wall surfaces, has already been referred to. It is very characteristic of the style. The campanile or bell-tower of an Italian church is a feature very different from western towers. It is never placed over the crossing of nave and aisles and rarely forms an essential part of the church, often being quite detached and not seldom placed at an angle with the walls of the main building. Such towers are not unfrequently appended to palaces, and are sometimes (_e.g._ at Venice) erected alone. Some of the Italian cities were also remarkable for strong towers erected in the city itself as fortresses by the heads of influential families. Many of these are still standing in Bologna. The smaller towers in which northern architects took so much delight are almost unknown in Italy, though on a few of the great churches of the north (_e.g._ the Certosa at Pavia, and St. Antonio at Padua) they are to be found. The use of constructive columns is general; piers are by no means unknown, but fine shafts of marble meet the eye frequently in Italian churches. The constant use of the column for decorative purposes is a marked characteristic. Not only is it employed where French and English architects used it, as in the jambs of doorways, but it constantly replaces the mullion in traceried windows. It is employed as an ornament at the angles of buildings to take off the harshness of a sharp corner, and it is introduced in many unexpected and often picturesque situations. Twisted, knotted, and otherwise carved and ornamental shafts are not unfrequently made use of in columns that serve purely decorative purposes. _Openings and Arches._ The constructive arches in Italian Gothic buildings are, as a rule, pointed, but it is remarkable that at every period round and pointed arches are indiscriminately employed for doors and windows, both being constantly met with in the same building. The naves of Italian churches rarely show the division into three, common in the north. The triforium is almost invariably absent, and the clerestory is often reduced to a series of small round windows, sufficient to admit the moderate light which, in a very bright climate, is grateful in the interior of such a building as a church; but they are far less effective features than our own well-marked clerestory windows. [Illustration: FIG. 54.--OGIVAL WINDOW-HEAD.] The doorways are often very beautiful, and are frequently sheltered by projecting porches of extreme elegance and lightness. The window openings are, as a rule, cusped. An ogee-shaped arch (Fig. 54) is constantly in use in window-heads, especially at Venice, and much graceful design is lavished on the arched openings of domestic and secular buildings. A great deal of the tracery employed is plate tracery.[27] The tracery in terra-cotta has already been referred to. In the large windows of the principal apartments and other similar positions of the palaces in Venice and Vicenza, a sort of tracery not met with in other countries is freely employed. The openings are square-headed, and are divided into separate lights by small columns; the heads of these lights are ogee-shaped, and the spaces between them and the horizontal lintel are filled in with circles, richly quatrefoiled or otherwise cusped (Fig. 55). The upper arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice offers the best known and finest example of this class of tracery. [Illustration: FIG. 55.--TRACERY, FROM VENICE.] _Roofs and Vaults._ The vaulting of Italian churches is always simple, and the bays, as has been pointed out, are usually wider than those of the northern Gothic churches. Frequently there are no ribs of any sort to the groins of the vaults. A characteristic feature of Italian Gothic is the central dome. It is rarely very large or overpowering, and in the one instance of a magnificent dome--the Cathedral at Florence, the feature, though intended from the first, was added after the Gothic period had closed. Still many churches have a modest dome, and it frequently forms a striking feature in the interior, while in some northern instances (_e.g._ at the Certosa at Pavia, or at Chiaravalle) it is treated like a many storeyed pyramid and becomes an external feature of importance. At Sant' Antonio at Padua there are five domes. The churches of the preaching orders are some of them covered by timber ceilings, not perfectly flat but having an outline made up of hollow curves of rather flat sweep. The great halls at Padua and Vicenza displayed a vast wooden curved ceiling resembling the hull of a ship turned upside down. The ordinary church roof is of flat pitch and frequently concealed behind a parapet. Dormer windows, crestings, and other similar features, by the use of which northern architects enriched their roofs, are hardly ever employed by Italian architects. _Mouldings and Ornaments._ Ornament is almost instinctively understood by the Italians, and their mastery of it is well shown in their architecture. The carving of spandrels, capitals, and other ornaments, and the sculpture of the heads and statues introduced is full of power and beauty. The famous capitals of the lower arcade of the Ducal Palace may be quoted as illustrations. The employment of coloured materials is carried so far as sometimes to startle an eye trained to the sombreness of English architecture, but a great deal of the beauty of this style is derived from colour, and much of the comparative simplicity and scarcity of mouldings is due to the desire to leave large unbroken surfaces for marble linings, mosaics or fresco painting. Mouldings, where they are introduced, differ from northern mouldings in being flatter and far less bold, their enrichments are chiefly confined to dentils, notches, and small and simple ornaments. Stained glass is not so often seen as in France, but is to be met with, as, for example, in the fine church of San Petronio at Bologna, and in Sta. Maria Novella, and in the Cathedral at Florence. At Florence the stained glass has a character of its own both in colour and style of treatment. It is not too much to say that every kind of decoration which can be employed to add beauty to a building may be found at its best in Italy. In the churches much of the finest furniture, such as stall-work, screens, altar frontals, will be found in profusion; and the church porches and the mural monuments should be especially studied on account of the singular elegance with which they are usually designed. _Construction and Design._ The material employed for the external and internal face of the walls in a very large proportion of the buildings mentioned in this chapter is marble. This is sometimes used in blocks as stone is with us, but more frequently in the form of thin slabs as a facing upon masonry or brickwork. In Lombardy, where brick is the natural building material, most of the walls are not only built but faced with brick; and the ornamental features, including tracery, are often executed in ornamental brickwork, or in what is known as terra-cotta (_i.e._ bricks or blocks of brick clay of fine quality, moulded or otherwise ornamented and burnt like bricks). Stone was less commonly employed as a building material in Italy during the Gothic period, than in other countries of Europe. The surfaces of the vaults, and the surfaces of the internal walls were often covered with mosaics, or with paintings in fresco. Vaulting is frequently met with, but it is generally simple in character, the flat external roof over it is commonly covered with tiles or metal, while the apparent gable frequently rises more sharply than the actual roof. The Italians seem never to have cordially welcomed the Gothic principle of resisting the thrust of vaults or arches by a counter-thrust, or by the weight of a buttress. The buttress is almost unknown in Italian Gothic, and as a rule an iron tie is introduced at the feet of such arches as would in France or Germany have been buttressed. This expedient is, of course, economical, but to northern eyes it appears strange and out of place. The Italians, however, take no pains to conceal it, and many of their lighter works, such as canopies over tombs, porches, &c., would fall to pieces at once were the iron ties removed. Open timber roofs in the English fashion are unknown; but the wooden ceilings already alluded to are found in San Zeno at Verona, and the Eremitani at Padua. A kind of open roof of large span, carried by curved ribs and tied by iron ties, covers the great hall of the Basilica at Vicenza, and the very similar hall at Padua. The ribs of these roofs are built up of many thicknesses of material bolted together. The design of Italian Gothic buildings presents many peculiarities, some of which are due to the materials made use of. For example, where brick and terra-cotta are alone employed, wide moulded cornices of no great projection, and broad masses of enriched moulding encircling arches are easily executed, and they are accordingly constantly to be found; but bold mouldings, with deep hollows, similar to those of Early English arches, could not be constructed of these materials, and are not attempted. These peculiarities will be found in the Town Hall at Cremona, of which an illustration (Fig. 50) has already been given. [Illustration: FIG. 56.--WINDOW FROM TIVOLI.] Where marble is used, the peculiar fineness of its surface, upon which the bright Italian sun makes the smallest moulding effective, combined with the fact that the material, being costly, is often used in thin slabs, has given occasion to extreme flatness of treatment, and to the use of modes of enrichment which do not require much depth of material. Our illustration of a window from the Piazza S. Croce at Tivoli, shows these peculiarities extremely well (Fig. 56), and also illustrates the strong predilection which the Italian architects retained throughout the Gothic period for squareness and for horizontal lines. The whole ornamental treatment is here square; the window rests on a strongly-moulded horizontal sill, and is surrounded by flatly-carved enrichment, making a square panel of the entire feature. Even in the richly-decorated window (Fig. 57), which is in its pointed outline more truly Gothic than the Tivoli example, much of the same quality can be traced. The arch and jamb are richly moulded, but the whole mass of mouldings is flat, and the flat cuspings of the tracery, elaborately carved though it be, more resemble the cusps of early Western Gothic, executed at a time when tracery was beginning its career, than work belonging to the period of full maturity to which this feature, as a whole, undoubtedly belongs. Where marbles were plentiful enough to be built into the fabric, the national love of colour gave rise to the use of black and white--or sometimes red and white--alternate courses, already mentioned. The effect of this striped masonry may be partly judged of from the illustration of the cathedral at Siena (Fig. 52), where it is employed to a considerable extent. A finer method of surface decoration, less simple, however, and perhaps less frequently practised, was open to the Italian architect, in the use of panels of various coloured marbles. A beautiful example of the employment of this expedient exists in Giotto's campanile at Florence (Fig. 51). [Illustration: FIG. 57.--ITALIAN GOTHIC WINDOW, WITH TRACERY IN THE HEAD. (13TH CENTURY.)] The flatness of the roofs, which the Italians never abandoned, was always found difficult to reconcile with the Gothic tendency to height and steepness. In many cases, the sharp pitched gables which the buildings display, are only masks, and do not truly denote the pitch of the roofs behind them. In other instances the walls finish with a horizontal parapet, plain or ornamental, quite concealing the roof. In the roofs of their campaniles, however, the Gothic architects of Italy were usually happy; they almost always adopted a steep conical terminal, with or without pinnacles, which is very telling against the sky; even if its junction with the tower is at times clumsy. The brightness of southern suns prevented the adoption of the great windows, adapted to masses of stained glass, which were the ambition of northern architects in the fourteenth century; and the tenacity with which a love for squareness of effect and for strongly-marked horizontal lines of various sorts retained its hold, tended to keep Italian Gothic buildings essentially different from those of northern nations; but the love of colour, the command of precious materials, and of fine sculpture, the passion for beauty and for a decorative richness, and the artistic taste of the Italians, display themselves in these buildings in a hundred ways: all this lends to them a charm such as few works of the middle ages existing elsewhere can surpass. SPAIN.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. An early, middle, and late period can be distinguished in dealing with Spanish Gothic. The first period reaches to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the second occupies the remainder of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, the third completes the fifteenth and runs on into part of the sixteenth. The early style is one of much purity and dignity, and is developed directly from the Romanesque of the country. The cathedral of St. Iago di Compostella, a fine cruciform church of round-arched Gothic, with a magnificent western portal,[28] recalling the great lateral porches at Chartres, is an early and fine example. Like other churches of the type in Spain, it is far plainer inside than out, but it is vaulted throughout. The cathedral of Zamora, and those of Tarragona and Salamanca must also be referred to. In each of these, the most thoroughly Spanish feature is a dome, occupying the crossing of the nave and transepts, and apparently better developed than those in early German churches or in Italian ones. It is called in Spanish the _cimborio_. This feature was constructed so as to consist of an inner dome, decorated by ribs thrown over the central space, and carried by pendentives; having above it a separate outer dome somewhat higher and often richly decorated. This feature unfortunately disappeared when the French designs of the thirteenth century began to be the rage. A peculiarity of plan, however, which was retained throughout the whole Gothic period in Spain, is to be found in the early churches; it consists of an inclosure for the choir quite in the body of the church, and often west of the transepts,--in such a position, in fact, as the choir at Westminster Abbey occupies. A third peculiarity is the addition of an outer aisle, not unlike the arcade of a cloister, to the side walls of the churches, possibly with a view of protecting them from heat. With the thirteenth century a strong passion for churches, closely resembling those being erected in France at the same time, set in, as has just been remarked. Accordingly the cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon, approach very closely to French types. Toledo is very large, five aisled, and with a vast chevet. Its exterior is unfinished, but the dignity of its fine interior may be well understood from the illustration (Fig. 58) here given. Burgos is not so ambitious in size as Toledo, but has a florid exterior of late architecture with two lofty, open-traceried spires, like Strasburg and other German examples. Leon is remarkable for its lofty clerestory. Spanish Gothic may be said to have culminated in the vast cathedral at Seville (begun 1401), claiming to be of greater extent than any Gothic cathedral in the world, larger, therefore, than Milan or Cologne. It stands on the site of a mosque, and has never been completed externally. The interior is very imposing and rich, but when it is stated that it was not completed till 1520, it may be readily understood that many of the details are very late, and far from the purity of earlier examples. [Illustration: FIG. 58.--THE CATHEDRAL AT TOLEDO. INTERIOR. (BEGUN 1227.)] In the fourteenth century an innovation, of which French architects immediately north of the Pyrenees were also availing themselves, found favour in Barcelona. The great buttresses by which the thrust of the vaults was met were brought inside the boundary walls of the church, and were made to serve as division walls between a series of side chapels. Both here and at Manresa and Gerona, cathedrals were built, resembling in construction that at Alby, in Southern France; in these this arrangement was carried a step further, and the side aisles were suppressed, leaving the whole nave to consist of a very bold vaulted hall, fringed by a series of side chapels, which were separated from each other by the buttresses which supported the main vault. These large vaults, however, when bare of decoration, as most of the Spanish vaults are, appear bald and poor in effect, though they are grand objects structurally. The Gothic work of the latest period in Spain became extraordinarily florid in its details, especially in the variety introduced into the ribs of the vaulting and the enrichments generally. The great cathedrals of Segovia and Salamanca were neither of them begun till the sixteenth century had already well set in. They are the two principal examples of this florid Gothic. [Illustration: FIG. 59.--THE GIRALDA AT SEVILLE. (BEGUN IN 1196. FINISHED IN 1538).] It will not be forgotten that the country we are now considering was fully occupied by the Moors, and that they left in Southern Spain buildings of great merit. A certain number of Christian churches exist built in a style which has been called Moresco, as being a kind of fusion of Moorish and Gothic. The towers of these churches bear a close resemblance to the Saracenic towers of which the beautiful bell-tower, called the Giralda, at Seville (Fig. 59) is the type; with this and similar examples in the country it is not surprising that at Toledo, Saragoza, and other places, towers of the same character should be erected as parts of churches in which the architecture throughout is as much Saracenic as Christian. To many of these great churches, cloisters, and monastic buildings, which are often both extensive and of a high order of architectural excellence, are attached. The secular buildings, of Spain in the Gothic period are, on the other hand, neither numerous nor remarkable. PORTUGAL. The architecture of Portugal has been very little investigated. The great church at Batalha[29] is probably the most important in the country. This building, though interesting in plan, is more remarkable for a lavish amount of florid ornament, of which our illustration (Fig. 60) may furnish some idea, than for really fine architecture. The conventual church at Belem, near Lisbon, a work of the beginning of the sixteenth century, and equally florid, is another of the small number of specimens of Portuguese Gothic of which descriptions or illustrations have been published. FOOTNOTES: [25] An illustration of such a campanile will be found in that belonging to the Cathedral of Siena (Fig. 52). [26] See Frontispiece. [27] For an explanation of this term, see _ante_, Chapter V., page 48. [28] A cast of this portal is at the South Kensington Museum. [29] See _Sculptures of the Monastery at Batalha_, published by the Arundel Society. [Illustration: {CRÊTE FROM NOTRE DAME, PARIS.}] CHAPTER IX. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTION AND DESIGN. _Materials and Construction._ The Gothic architects adhered, at any rate till the fifteenth century, to the use of very small stones in their masonry. In many buildings of large size it is hard to find any stone heavier than two men can lift. Bad roads and the absence of good mechanical means of hoisting and moving big blocks led to this. The mortar, though good, is not equal to the Roman. As a rule in each period mortar joints are thick. They are finest in the fifteenth century. The masonry of all important features of the building is always good; it is often a perfect marvel of dexterity and skill as well as of beauty. The arts of workers in other materials, such as carpenters, joiners, smiths, and plumbers were carried to great perfection during the Gothic period. The appropriate ornamental treatment which each material is best fitted to receive was invariably given to it, and forms appropriate to one material were very rarely copied in others. For example, whenever wrought iron, a material which can be beaten and welded, or rivetted, was employed, those ornamental forms were selected into which hot iron can with ease be beaten, and such groups of those forms were designed as can be obtained by welding or by rivetting them together. Wood, on the other hand, cannot be bent with ease, but can be readily cut, drilled with holes, notched and carved; accordingly, where wood had to be treated ornamentally, we only find such forms as the drill, the chisel, the saw, or the gouge readily and naturally leave behind them. Again, the mode into which wood can be best framed together was carefully considered from a constructional point of view, and mediæval joiners' work is always first so designed as to reduce the damage from shrinkage to the smallest amount possible; and the pieces of which it is composed are then appropriately ornamented, moulded, or carved. Stone is now always, at least in this country, worked by being first squared and then worked-down or "sunk" from the squared faces to the mouldings required, and this procedure seems to have been common, though not quite universal, in the Middle Ages. Consequently we usually find the whole of the external mouldings with which the doorways and arcades of important buildings were enriched, designed so as to be easily formed out of stones having squared faces, or, to use the technical phrase, to be "sunk" from the squared blocks. The character of sculpture in wood differs from that in stone, the material being harder, more capable of standing alone; so in stone we find more breadth, in wood finer lines and more elaboration. In a word, no material was employed in simulating another (or with the rarest exceptions), and when any ornament was to be executed in one place in one material and in another place in a different one, such alterations were always made in the treatment as corresponded to the different qualities of the two materials. The arch was introduced whenever possible, and the structure of a great Gothic building presents the strongest possible contrast to that of a Greek building. In the Greek temple there was no pressure that was not vertical and met by a vertical support, wall, or column, and no support that was not vastly in excess of the dimensions actually required to do the work. A great Gothic building attains stability through the balanced counterpoise of a vast series of pressures, oblique, perpendicular, or horizontal, so arranged as to counteract each other. The vault was kept from spreading by the flying buttress, the thrust of the arcade was resisted by massive walls, and so on throughout. The equilibrium thus obtained was sometimes so ticklish that a storm of wind, a trifling settlement, or a slight concussion sufficed to occasion a disaster; and many of the daring feats of the masons of the Middle Ages are lost to us, because they dared a little too much and the entire structure collapsed. This happened more often in the middle period of the style than in the earliest, but during the whole Gothic period there is a constant uniform tendency in one direction: thinner walls, wider arches, loftier vaults, slenderer buttresses, slighter piers, confront us at every step, and we need only compare some Norman structure (such as Durham), with a perpendicular (such as Henry VII.'s Chapel), to see how vast a change took place in this respect. _The Principles of Gothic Design._ All the germs of Gothic architecture exist in the Romanesque of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and became developed as the passion for more slender proportions, greater lightness, and loftiness of effect, and more delicate enrichment became marked. It is quite true that the pointed arch is universally recognised as, so to speak, the badge of Gothic, even to the extent of having suggested the title of Christian pointed architecture, by which it is often called. But the pointed arch must be regarded rather as a token that the series of changes, which, starting from the heavy if majestic Romanesque of such a cathedral as Peterborough, culminated in the gracefulness of Salisbury or Lincoln, was far advanced towards completion, than as really essential to their perfection. Many of the examples of the transition period exhibit the round arch blended with the pointed (_e.g._ the nave of St. David's Cathedral or the Choir of Canterbury), and when we come to consider German architecture we shall find that the adoption of the pointed arch was postponed till long after the development of all, or almost all, the other features of the Gothic style; so as to place beyond question the existence, in that country at least, of "round arched Gothic." Some of the best authorities have indeed proposed to employ this title as a designation for much, if not all, the round arched architecture of the west of Europe, but Scott, Sharpe, and other authorities class mediæval art down to the middle of the twelfth century under the general head of Romanesque, a course which has been adopted in this volume. The proportions of Gothic buildings were well studied, their forms were always lofty, their gables sharp, and their general composition more or less pyramidal. Remarkable numerical relations between the dimensions of the different parts of a great Gothic cathedral can be discovered upon careful examination in most, if not all instances, and there can be little doubt that a system of geometrical proportions ran through the earlier design, and that much of the harmony and beauty which the buildings present is traceable to this fact. Independent of this the skill with which subordinate features and important ones are fitted to their respective positions, both by their dimensions and by their relative elaboration or plainness, forms a complete system of proportion, making use of the word in its broadest sense; and the results are extremely happy. Apparent size was imparted to almost every Gothic building by the smallness, great number, and variety of its features, and by the small size of the stones employed. The effect of strength is generally, though not perhaps so uniformly, also obtained, and dignity, beauty, and harmony are rarely wanting. Symmetry, though not altogether overlooked, has but a slender hold upon Gothic architects. It is far more observed in the interior than in the exterior of the buildings; but it must be remembered that symmetry formed the basis of many designs which, owing to the execution having been carried on through a long series of years and by different hands, came to be varied from the original intentions. Thus, for example, Chartres is a cathedral with two western towers. One of these was carried up and its spire completed in the twelfth century. The companion spire was not added till the end of the fifteenth, when men's ideas as to the proportions, shape, ornaments, and details of a spire had altered entirely;--the later architect did not value symmetry enough to think himself bound to adhere either to the design or to the height of the earlier spire, so we have in this great façade two similar flanking towers but spires entirely unlike. What happened at Chartres happened elsewhere. The original design of buildings was in the main symmetrical, but it was never considered that symmetry was a matter so important as to require that much sacrifice should be made to preserve it. On the other hand the subordination of a multitude of small features to one dominant one enters largely into the design of every good Gothic building; with the result that if the great governing feature or mass has been carried out in its entirety, almost any feature, no matter how irregular or unsymmetrical, may be safely introduced, and will only add picturesqueness and piquancy to the design. This is more or less a leading principle of Gothic design. A building with no irregularities, none of those charming additions which add individual character to Gothic churches, and none of the isolated features which the principle of subordination permits the architect to employ, has missed one of the chief qualities of the style. It is here that unskilled architects mostly fail when they attempt Gothic designs; they either hold on to symmetry as though they were designing a Greek temple, and they are unaware that the spirit of the style in which they are trying to work not only permits, but requires some irregular features; or if they do not fall into this error they are overtaken by the opposite one, and omit to make their irregular features subordinate to the general effect of the whole, an error less serious in its effects than the other, but still destructive of anything like the highest qualities in a building. Repetition, like symmetry, is recognised by Gothic architecture, but not adhered to in a rigid way. No buildings gain more from the repetition of parts than Gothic churches and cathedrals; the series of pillars or piers and arches inside, the series of buttresses and windows outside, add scale to the general effect. But so long as it was in the main a series of features which broadly resembled one another, the Gothic architect was satisfied, and did not feel bound to exact repetition. We are often, for example, surprised to find in the columns of a church an octagonal one alternating with a circular one, and almost invariably, if a series of capitals be examined, each will be discovered to differ from the others to some extent. In one bay of a church there may be a two-light window, and in the next a three-light window, and so on. This we find in buildings erected at one time and under one architect. Where, however, a building begun at one period was continued at another (and this, it must be remembered, was the rule, not the exception, with all large Gothic buildings), the architect, while usually repeating the same features, with the same general forms, invariably followed his own predilections as to detail. There is a very good example of this in Westminster Abbey, in the western bays of the nave, which were built years later than the eastern bays. They are, to a superficial observer, identical, being of the same height and width and shape of arch, but nearly every detail differs. Disclosure, rather than concealment, was a principle of Gothic design. This was demonstrated long ago by Pugin, and many of his followers pushed the doctrine to such extremes, that they held--and some of them still hold--that no building is really Gothic in which any part, either of its construction or arrangement, is not obviously visible inside and out. This is, however, carrying the principle too far. It is sufficient to say that the interior disposition of every Gothic building was as much as possible disclosed by the exterior. Thus, in a secular building, where there is a large room, there usually was a large window; when a lofty apartment occurs, its roof was generally proportionately high; where a staircase rises, we usually can detect it by a sloping row of little windows following the line of the stair, or by a turret roof. The mode in which the thrust of vaults is counterpoised is, as has been shown, frankly displayed by the Gothic architects, and as a rule, every portion of the structure is freely exhibited. It grows out of this, that when an ornamental feature is desired, it is not constructed purely for ornament, as the Romans added the columns and cornices of the orders to the outside of their massive walls purely as an architectural screen; but some requisite, of the building is taken and ornamented, and in some cases elaborated. Thus the belfry grew into the enormous bell tower; the tower roof grew into the spire; the extra weight required on flying buttresses grew into the ornamental pinnacle; and the window head grew into tracery. There were, however, some exceptions. The walls were still constantly faced with finer masonry than in the heart, and though some are unwilling to admit the fact, were often plastered outside as well as in; and what is more remarkable, no other sign of the vault appeared outside the building than the buttresses required to sustain it. The external gable conforms to the shape of the roof which covered the vault, but the vault, perhaps the most remarkable and characteristic feature of the whole building, does not betray its presence by any external line or mark corresponding to its position and shape in the interior of the building. Notwithstanding these and some other exceptions, frank disclosure must be reckoned one of the main principles of Gothic architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 60.--DOORWAY FROM CHURCH AT BATALHA. (BEGUN 1385.)] Elaboration and simplicity were both so well known to the Gothic architect that it is difficult to say that either of these qualities belongs exclusively to his work. But he was rarely simple when he had the opportunity of being elaborate, and simplicity was perhaps rather forced upon him by the circumstances under which he worked, by rude materials, scanty funds, and lack of skilled workmen, than freely chosen. Many of the great works of the Gothic period are as elaborate as they could be made (Fig. 60), and yet, when simplicity had to be the order of the day, no architecture has lent it such a grace as Gothic. The last pair of qualities is similarity and contrast. What has been said about repetition has anticipated the remarks called for by these qualities, so far as to point out that even where the arrangement of the building dictated the repetition of similar features, a general resemblance, and not an exact similarity, was considered sufficient. In the composition of masses of building, contrast and not similarity was the ruling principle. Even in the interiors of great churches which, as a rule, are far more regular than the exteriors, the contrast between the comparative plainness of the nave and the richness of the choir was an essential element of design. External design in Gothic buildings depends almost entirely upon contrast for its power of charming the eye, and it is this circumstance which has left the successive generations of men who toiled at our great Gothic cathedrals so free to follow the bent of their own taste in their additions, rather than that of their forerunners. But setting aside the irregularities due to the caprice of various builders, and the constant changes which took place in detail through the Gothic period, it is to contrast that we must trace most of the surprising effects attained by the architecture of the Middle Ages. The rich tracery was made richer by contrast with plain walls, the loftiest towers appeared higher from their contrast with the long level lines of roofs and parapets. It is, in truth, one of the principal marks of the decadence which began in the fifteenth century that the principle of contrast was, to a considerable extent, abandoned, at least in the details of the buildings if not in their great masses. Walls were at that time panelled in imitation of the tracery of the adjoining windows, and no longer acted as a foil to them by their solid plainness; long rows of pinnacles, all exactly alike, followed the line of the parapets, and a repetition of absolutely identical features became the rule for the first time in the history of Gothic art. There can be no doubt that had this modification run its natural course unchecked and undisturbed by the change in taste which abruptly brought the Gothic period to a close, it must have resulted in the deterioration of the art. [Illustration: {SCULPTURED ORNAMENT FROM RHEIMS CATHEDRAL.}] [Illustration: {RENAISSANCE ORNAMENT FROM A FRIEZE.}] RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER X. GENERAL VIEW. Gothic architecture had begun, before the close of the fifteenth century, to show marks of decadence, and men's minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The change, when it did take place, arose in Italy, and was a direct consequence of that burst of modern civilisation known as the revival of letters. All the characteristics of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The strain of old Roman blood in the modern Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound, literature and the arts sprang back, like a bow unstrung, into the forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before. It became the rage to read the choice Greek and Latin authors, and to write Latin with a pedantic purity. Can we wonder that in painting, in sculpture, and in architecture, men reverted to the form, the style, and the decorations of the antique compositions, statues, and architectural remains? This was the more easy in Italy, as Gothic art had never at any time taken so firm a hold upon Italians as it had upon nations north of the Alps. Though, however, the details and forms employed were all Roman, or Græco-Roman, they were applied to buildings essentially modern, and used with much freedom and spirit. This revival of classic taste in art is commonly and appropriately called Renaissance. In Italy it took place so rapidly that there was hardly any transition period. Brunelleschi, the first great Renaissance architect, began his work as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and his buildings, in which classic details of great severity and purity are employed, struck, so to speak, a keynote which had been responded to all over Italy before the close of the fifteenth century. To other countries the change spread later, and it found them less prepared to welcome it unreservedly. Accordingly, in France, in England, and in many parts of Germany, we find a transition period, during which buildings were designed in a mixed style. In England, the transition lasted almost through the sixteenth century. As the century went on, a most picturesque and telling style, the earlier phases of which are known as Tudor and the later as Elizabethan, sprang up in England. It betrays in its mixture of Gothic and classic forms great incongruities and even monstrosities; but it allows unrestrained play for the fancies, and the best mansions and manors of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, Burleigh, Bramshill, and Audley End, are unsurpassed in their picturesqueness and romantic charm. The old red-brick, heavily chimneyed, and gabled buildings, with their large windows divided by bold mullions and transoms, and their simple noble outlines, are familiar to us all, and so are their characteristic features. The great hall with its oriel or its bay, the fine plastered ceiling, supported by heavy beams of timber; the wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, and ornamented newel post, and heavy-moulded handrail; the old wainscoted parlour, with its magnificent chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling; these are all essentially English features, and are full of vigour and life, as indeed the work of every period of transition must almost necessarily prove. The transitional period in France produced exquisite works more refined and elegantly treated than ours, but not so vigorous. Its manner is known as the François Premier (Francis I.) style. No modern buildings are more profusely ornamented, and yet not spoilt. In Germany, the Castle of Heidelberg may be named as a well-known specimen of the transition period, a period over which however we must not linger. Suffice it to say, that sooner or later the change was fully accomplished in every European country, and Renaissance architecture, modified as climate, materials, habits, or even caprice suggested, yet the same in its essential characteristics, obtained a firm footing: this it has succeeded in retaining, though not to the exclusion of other styles, for now nearly three centuries. In Italy, Renaissance churches, great and small--from St. Peter's downwards--and magnificent secular buildings, some, like the Vatican Palace or the Library of St. Mark at Venice, for public purposes, but most for the occupation of the great wealthy and princely families, abound in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan, and indeed every great city. In France, the transition period was succeeded by a time when vast undertakings, _e.g._ the Hôtel de Ville, the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles, were carried out in the revived style with the utmost magnificence, and were imitated in every part of the country in the structures greater or smaller which were then built. In England, the works of Inigo Jones, and of Wren, are the most famous works of the developed style, and to the last-named architect we owe a cathedral second to none in Europe for its beauty of outline, and play of light and shade. To Germany, and the countries of the north-east Europe, and to Spain and Portugal on the south, the style also extended with no very great modification, either of its general forms or of its details. ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS. _Plan._ The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical, and the picturesqueness of the Gothic times was abandoned. The plans of churches were not widely different from those in use in Italy before the revival of classic art took place, but it will be remembered that these were by no means so irregular or picturesque at any time as the plans of French and English cathedral churches. In secular architecture, the vast piles erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Italian, French, and Spanish architects are to the last degree orderly in their disposition. They are adapted to a great variety of purposes, and they display a varying degree of skill. The palaces of Genoa are, on the one hand, among the cleverest examples of planning existing; on the other hand, many of the palaces in France are weak and poor to the last degree. As a rule the scale of the plan is more considerable than in Gothic work. A very large building is often not divided into more parts than a small one, or one of moderate size. In St. Peter's, for example, there are only four bays between the west front and the dome, everything being on a most gigantic scale. As a contrast to this principle we may cite the nave of the Gothic cathedral at Milan, which is not so long at St. Peter's, but has at least thrice as many bays, and looks much larger in consequence. No style affords more room for skill in planning than the Renaissance, and in no style is the exercise of such skill more repaid by results. _Walls and Columns._ In the treatment of external walls, the mediæval use of small materials, involving many joints for the exterior of walls has quite disappeared, and they are universally faced with stone or plaster, and are consequently uniformly smooth. Perhaps the principal feature to note is the very great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry in which the joints of the stones are very carefully channelled or otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly inappropriate name of rustic work. The basements of most Italian and French palaces are rusticated, and in many cases (as the Pitti Palace, Florence) rustic work covers an entire façade. The Gothic mouldings in receding planes disappear entirely, and the classic architrave takes their place. The orders are again revived and are used (as the Romans often used them) as purely decorative features added for the mere sake of ornament to a wall sufficient without them, and are freely piled one upon the other. Palladio (a very influential Italian architect) reproduced the use of lofty pilasters running through two or even more storeys of the building, and often combined one tall order and two short ones in his treatment of the same part of the building, a contrivance which in less clever hands than his has given rise to the greatest confusion. The Renaissance architects also revived the late Roman manner of employing the column and entablature. They frequently carried on the top of a column a little square pier divided up as the architrave and frieze proper to the column would be divided, and they surmounted it with a cornice which was carried quite round this pier, and from this curious compound pedestal an arch will frequently spring. The classic portico, with pediments, was constantly employed by them; and small pediments over window heads were common. A peculiarity worth mention is the introduction in many Italian palaces of a great crowning cornice, proportioned not to the size of the columns and of the order upon which it rests (if an order be employed), but to the height of the whole building. Much fine effect is obtained by means of this feature; it is, however, better fitted for sunny Italy than for gloomy England, and it is not an unmixed success when repeated in our climate. Towers are less frequently employed than by the Gothic architects, and indeed in Italy the sky-line was less thought of at this period than it was in the middle ages. In churches, towers sometimes occur, nowhere more picturesque than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren for many of his London parish churches. The frequent use of the dome takes the place of the tower both in churches and secular buildings. _Openings._ Openings are both flat-headed and semicircular, occasionally elliptical, but hardly ever pointed. Renaissance buildings may be to some extent divided into those which depend for effect upon window openings, and those which depend chiefly upon architectural features such as cornices, pilasters, and orders. Among the buildings where fenestration (or the treatment of windows) is relied upon the palaces of Venice stand pre-eminent as compositions admirably designed for effect and very successful. In them the openings are massed near the centre of the façade, and strong piers are left near the angles, a simple expedient when once known, and one inherited from the Gothic palaces in that city, but giving remarkable individuality of character to this group of buildings. In roofs, including vaults and domes, we meet with a divergence of practice between Italy and France. In Italy low-pitched roofs were the rule: the parapet alone often formed the sky-line, and the dome and pediment are usually the only telling features of the outline. France, on the other hand, revived a most picturesque feature of Gothic days, namely, the high-pitched roof, employing it in the shape commonly known as the Mansard[30] roof. Nothing adds more to the effectiveness of the great French Renaissance buildings than these lofty terminals. The dome is, however, the glory of this style, as it had been of the Roman. It is the one feature by which revived and original classic architects retain a clear and defined advantage over Gothic architects, who, strange to say, all but abandoned the dome. The mouldings and other ornaments of the Renaissance are much the same as those of the Roman style, which the Italians revived; their sculptures and their mural decorations were all originally drawn from classic sources. These, however, attained very great excellence, and it is probable that such decorative paintings as Raphael and his scholars executed in Rome, at Genoa, at Mantua, and elsewhere, far surpass anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever executed. _Construction and Design._ The earlier Renaissance buildings are remarkable for the great use which their architects made of carpentry, as the most modern structures are for the use of wrought and cast-iron construction. As regards carpentry, it is of course true that all the woodwork of the classic periods, and much of that done in the Gothic period, has perished, either through decay or fire; but making every allowance for this, we must still recognise a very great increase in the employment of timber as an integral part of large structures. Vaulted roofs for example are comparatively rare, and domes, even when the inner dome is of brickwork or masonry, have their outer envelope of carpentry. A disuse of brick and rough masonry, or rather a constant effort to conceal them from view, is a distinctive mark of Renaissance work. The Roman method of facing rough walls with fine stone was resorted to in the best buildings. In humbler buildings plaster is employed. Renaissance architects made very free use of plaster. Inside and out this material is utilised, not merely to cover surfaces, but to form architectural features. Cornices, panels, and enrichments of all kinds modelled in plaster are constantly employed in the interior of rooms and buildings. On the exterior we constantly find imitations of similar architectural features proper to stone executed in plaster and simulating stone; a short-sighted practice which cannot be commended, and which has only cheapness and convenience in its favour. There can be no question of the fact that the features thus executed never equal those done in stone in their effectiveness, and are far more liable to decay. Design in Renaissance buildings may be said to be directed towards producing a telling result by the effect of the buildings taken as a whole, rather than by the intricacy or the beauty of individual parts; and herein lies one of the great contrasts between Renaissance and Gothic architecture. A Renaissance building which fails to produce an impression as a whole is rarely felt to be successful. No better example of this can be given than the straggling, unsatisfactory Palace of Versailles, magnificent as it is in dimensions and rich in treatment. To the production of a homogeneous impression the arrangement of plan, the proportion of storeys, the contrasts of voids and solids, and above all the outline of the entire building, should be devoted. The general arrangement of buildings is usually strictly symmetrical, one half corresponding to the other, and with some well-defined feature to mark the centre. Of course in very large buildings this does not occur, nor in the nature of things can it often take place in the sides of churches; but the individual features of such buildings, and all those parts of them which permit of symmetry in their arrangement, always display it. Proportion plays an important part in the design of Renaissance buildings. The actual shape of openings, the proportion which they bear to voids, the proportion of storeys to one another; and, going into details, the proportions which the different features--_e.g._, cornice, and the columns supporting it--should bear to one another, have to be carefully studied. It is to the possession of a keen sense of what makes a pleasing proportion and one satisfactory to the eye, that the great architects of Italy owed the greater part of their success. Renaissance architecture is so familiar in its general features, and these have been so constantly repeated, that we may not easily recognise the great need for skill and taste which exists if they are to be designed so as to produce the most refined effect possible. Many of the successful buildings of the style owe their excellence to the great delicacy and elegance of the mode in which the details have been studied, rather than to the vigour and boldness with which the masses have been shaped and disposed; and though grandeur is the noblest quality of which the style is capable, yet many more opportunities for displaying grace and refinement than for attaining grandeur offer themselves, and by nothing are the best works of the style so well marked out as by the success with which those opportunities have been grasped and turned to account. The concealment both of construction and arrangement is largely practised in Renaissance buildings. Behind an exterior wall filled by windows of uniform size and equally spaced, rooms large and small, corridors, staircases, and other features have to be provided for. This is completely in contrast to the Gothic principle of displaying frankly on the outside the arrangement of what is within; but it must be remembered that art often works most happily and successfully when limited by apparently strict and difficult conditions, and these rules have not prevented the great architects of the Renaissance from accomplishing works where both the exterior and the interior are thoroughly successful, and are brought into such happy harmony that the difficulties have clearly been no bar to success. There is no canon of art violated by such a method, the simple fact being that Gothic buildings are designed under one set of conditions and Renaissance under another. It is less easy to defend the use of pilasters and columns large enough to appear as though they were the main support of the building, for purely decorative purposes; yet here perhaps the fault lies rather in the extent to which the practice has been carried, and above all the scale upon which it is carried out, than in anything else. Small columns are constantly employed in Gothic buildings in positions where they serve the æsthetic purpose of conveying a sense of support, but where it is impossible for them to carry any weight. The Renaissance architects have done the same thing on a large scale, but it must not be forgotten that they only revived a Roman practice as part of the ancient style to which they reverted, and that they are not responsible for originating it. It will be understood therefore that symmetry, strict uniformity, not mere similarity, in features intended to correspond, and constant repetition, are leading principles in Renaissance architecture. These qualities tend to breadth rather than picturesqueness of effect, and to similarity rather than contrast. Simplicity and elaboration are both compatible with Renaissance design; the former distinguishes the earlier and purer examples of the style, the latter those more recent and more grandiose. It should be observed that in the transition styles, such as our own Elizabethan, or the French style of Francis the First, these principles of design are mixed up in a very miscellaneous way with those followed in the Gothic period. The result is often puzzling and inconsistent if we attempt to analyse it with exactness, but rarely fails to charm by its picturesque and irregular vividness. FOOTNOTES: [30] Named after a French architect of the 17th century. [Illustration: {FROM A TERRA-COTTA FRIEZE AT LODI.}] CHAPTER XI. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. Renaissance architecture--the architecture of the classic revival--had its origin in Italy, and should be first studied in the land of its birth. There are more ways than one in which it may be attempted to classify Italian Renaissance buildings. The names of conspicuous architects are sometimes adopted for this purpose, for now, for the first time, we meet with a complete record of the names and performances of all architects of note: the men who raised the great works of Gothic art are, with a few exceptions, absolutely unknown to us. An approximate division into three stages can also be recognised. There is an early, a developed, and a late Renaissance, but this is very far indeed from being a completely marked series, and was more interfered with by local circumstances and by the character and genius of individual artists than in Gothic. For this reason a local division will be of most service. The best examples exist in the great cities, with a few exceptions, and it is almost more useful to group them--as the paintings of the Renaissance are also often grouped--by locality than in either of the other methods. FLORENCE. Renaissance architecture first sprang into existence in Florence. Here chiefly the works of the early Renaissance are met with, and the names of the great Florentine architects are Brunelleschi and Alberti. Brunelleschi was a citizen of Florence, of very ardent temperament and great energy, and a true artist. He was born in 1377, was originally trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, but devoted himself to the study of architecture, and early set his heart upon being appointed to complete the dome of the then unfinished cathedral of Florence, of which some account has already been given. Florence in the fifteenth century was full of artistic life, and the revival of learning and arts had then begun to take definite shape. The first years of the century found Brunelleschi studying antiquities at Rome, to fit himself for the work he desired to undertake. After his return to his native city, he ultimately succeeded in the object of his ambition; the cathedral was entrusted to him, and he erected the large pointed dome with which it is crowned. He also erected two large churches in Florence, which, as probably the first important buildings designed and built in the new style, possess great interest. Santo Spirito, one of these, shows a fully matured system of architectural treatment, and though it is quite true that it was a revived system, yet the application of it to a modern building, different in its purpose and in its design from anything the Romans had ever done, is little short of a work of genius. Santo Spirito has a very simple and beautifully regular plan, and its interior has a singular charm and grace: over the crossing is raised a low dome. The columns of the arcade are Corinthian columns, and the refinement of their detail and proportions strikes the eye at once on entering the building. The influence of Brunelleschi, who died in 1440, was perpetuated by the works and writings of Alberti (born 1398) an architect of literary cultivation who wrote a systematic treatise which became extremely popular, and helped to form the taste and guide the practice of his contemporaries. He lived till near the close of the fifteenth century, and erected some buildings of great merit. To Alberti we owe the design of the Ruccellai Palace in Florence, a building begun in 1460, and which had been preceded by somewhat bolder and simpler designs. This is a three storey building, but has pilasters carried up the piers between the windows and a regular entablature and cornice[31] at each storey. The building is elegant and graceful, and though the employment of the orders[32] as its decoration gives it a distinctive character, it bears a strong general resemblance to the group of which the Strozzi Palace (Fig. 61) may be taken as the type. The earliest Florentine palaces are the Riccardi, which dates from 1430, and the Pitti of almost the same date; Brunelleschi is said to have been consulted in the design of both, but Michelozzo was the architect. The distinguishing characteristic of the early palaces in this city is solidity, which rises from the fact that they were also fortresses. The Pitti, well known for its picture gallery, is a building of vast extent, built throughout in very boldly rusticated masonry, the joints and projections of the stones being greatly exaggerated. The Riccardi, a square block of building, bears a considerable resemblance to the Strozzi, but is plainer. It is a most dignified building in its effect. The Strozzi Palace (Fig. 61) was the next great palatial pile erected. It was designed by Cronaca, and begun in 1498. Like the Riccardi, it is of three storeys, with a bold projecting cornice. The whole wall is covered with rusticated masonry; the windows of the lower floor are small and square; those of the two upper floors are larger and semicircular headed, and with a shaft acting as a mullion, and carrying arches which occupy the window head with something like tracery. The entrance is by a semicircular headed archway. There is a great height of unpierced wall in the lowest storey and above the heads of the two upper ranges of windows; and to this and the bold overhanging cornice, this building, and those like it, owe much of their dignity and impressiveness. An elevation, such as our illustration, may convey a fair idea of the good proportion and ensemble of the front, but it is difficult without actually seeing the buildings to appreciate the effect produced by such palaces as these, seen foreshortened in the narrow streets, and with the shadows from their bold cornices and well-defined openings intensified by the effect of the Italian sun. [Illustration: FIG. 61.--STROZZI PALACE AT FLORENCE. (BEGUN 1489.)] Many excellent palatial buildings belong to the end of the fifteenth century. One among them is attributed to Bramante (who died 1513), a Florentine, whom we shall meet with in Rome and elsewhere. The Guadagni Palace has an upper storey entirely open, forming a sheltered loggia, but it is mentioned here chiefly on account of the decorations incised on its walls by the method known as Sgraffito. Part of the plain wall is covered in this way with decorative designs, which appear as though drawn with a bold line on their surface. An example of this decoration will be found in our illustration (Fig. 62), representing a portion of the Loggia del Consiglio at Verona. The series of great Florentine palaces closes with a charming example, the Pandolfini, designed by the great Raphael, and commenced in 1520--in other words, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. This palace is only one of many instances to be found in Italy of the skill in more walks of art than one, of some of the greatest artists. Raphael, though best known as a painter, executed works of sculpture of great merit, and designed some other buildings besides the one now under notice. The Pandolfini Palace (Fig. 63) is small, the main building having only four windows in the front and two storeys in height, with a low one-storey side building. Its general design has been very successfully copied in the Travellers' Club House, Pall Mall. On comparing this with any of the previously named designs, it will be seen that the semicircular headed windows have disappeared, the rusticated masonry is only now retained at the angles, and to emphasise the side entrance; and a small order with a little pediment (_i.e._ gable) is employed to mark each opening, door or window. In short this building belongs not only to another century, but to that advanced school of art to which we have given the name of developed Italian Renaissance. [Illustration: FIG. 62.--PART OF THE LOGGIA DEL CONSIGLIO AT VERONA. (16TH CENTURY.) Showing the incised decoration known as _Sgraffito_.] In Florence some of the work of Michelangelo is to be met with. His own house is here; so is the famous Medici chapel, a work in which we find him displaying power at once as a sculptor and an architect. This interior is very fine and very studied both in its proportions and its details. The church of the Annunziata, remarkable for a fine dome, carried on a drum resting directly on the ground, is the foremost Renaissance church in Florence. The contrast between early and matured Renaissance can indeed be better recognised in Florence than in almost any other city. The early work, that of Bramante, Brunelleschi, and the architects who drew their inspirations from these masters, was delicate and refined. The detail was always elegant, the ornament always unobtrusive, and often most graceful. Features comparatively small in scale were employed, and were set off by the use of plain wall-surface, which was unhesitatingly displayed. The classic orders were used in a restricted, unobtrusive way, and with pilasters in preference to columns; and though probably the architects themselves would have repudiated the idea that the Gothic art, which they had cast behind them, influenced their practice of revived classic in the remotest degree, it is nevertheless true that many of these peculiarities, and still more the general quality of the designs, were to a large extent those to which the practice of Gothic architecture had led them. A change which was partly due to a natural desire for progress, was helped on by the great attention paid by students of architecture to the remains of ancient Roman buildings; but it was the influence excited by the powerful genius of Michelangelo, and by the gigantic scale and vigorous treatment of his masterpiece, St. Peter's, which was the proximate occasion of a revolution in taste and practice, to which, the labours, both literary and artistic, of Vignola, and the designs of Palladio, gave form and consistency. In the fully-developed, or, as it is sometimes called, pure Renaissance of Italy, great use is made of the classic orders and pediment, and indeed of all the features which the Romans had employed. Plain wall space almost disappears under the various architectural features introduced, and all ornaments, details, and mouldings become bolder and richer, but often less refined and correct in design. [Illustration: FIG. 63.--THE PANDOLFINI PALACE, FLORENCE. DESIGNED BY RAPHAEL. (BEGUN 1520.)] ROME. Rome, the capital of the country, contains, as was fit, the central building of the fully-developed Renaissance, St. Peter's. Bramante, the Florentine, was the architect to whom the task of designing a cathedral to surpass anything existing in Europe was committed by Pope Julius II. at the opening of the sixteenth century. Some such project had been entertained, and even begun, fifty years earlier, but the enterprise was now started afresh, a new design was made, and the first stone was laid by the Pope in 1506. Bramante died in some six or seven years, and five or six architects in succession, one of whom was Raphael, proceeded with the work, without advancing it rapidly, for nearly half a century, during which time the design was modified again and again. In 1546 the great Michelangelo was appointed architect, and the last eighteen years of his life were spent in carrying on this great work. He completed the magnificent dome in all its essential parts, and left the church a Greek cross (_i.e._ one which has all its four arms equal) on plan, with the dome at the crossing. The boast is attributed to him that he would take the dome of the Pantheon and hang it in the air; and this he has virtually accomplished in the dome of St. Peter's--a work of the greatest beauty of design and boldness of construction. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Maderno was employed to lengthen the nave. This transformed the plan of the cathedral into a Latin cross. The existing portico was built at the same time; and in 1661 Bernini added the vast forecourt, lined by colonnades, which now forms the approach. This cathedral, of which the history has been briefly sketched, is the largest in the world. As we now see it, it consists of a vast vestibule; a nave of four bays with side aisles; a vast square central space over which hangs the great dome; transepts and a choir, each of one bay and an apse. Outside the great central space, an aisle, not quite like the ordinary aisle of a church, exists, and there are two side chapels. It can be well understood that if the largest church in Christendom is divided into so few parts, these must be themselves of colossal dimensions, and the truth is that the piers are masses of masonry which can be called nothing else than vast, while the spaces spanned by the arches and vaults are prodigious. There is little sense of mystery about the interior of the building (Fig. 64), the eye soon grasps it as a whole, and hours must be spent in it before an idea of its gigantic size is at all taken in. The beauty of the colouring adds wonderfully to the effect of St. Peter's upon the spectator, for the walls are rich with mosaics and coloured marbles; and the interior, the dome especially, with the drum upon which it rests, are decorated in colour throughout, with fine effect and in excellent taste. The interior is amply lighted, and, though very rich, not over decorated; its design is simple and noble in the extreme, and all its parts are wonderful in their harmony. The connection between the dome and the rest of the building is admirable, and there is a sense of vast space when the spectator stands under that soaring vault which belongs to no other building in the world. The exterior is disappointing as long as the building is seen in front, for the façade is so lofty and advances so far forward as to cut off the view of the lower part of the dome. To have an idea of the building as Michelangelo designed it, it is necessary to go round to the back; and then, with the height of the drum fully seen and the contour of the dome, with all its massy lines of living force, carrying the eye with them right up to the elegant lantern that crowns the summit, some conception of the hugeness and the symmetry of this mountain of art seems to dawn on the mind. But even here it is with the utmost difficulty that one can apply any scale to the mass, so that the idea which the mind forms of its bulk is continually fluctuating. The history of this building extends over all the period of developed Renaissance in Rome, and its list of architects includes all the best known names. By the side of it every other church, even St. John Lateran, appears insignificant; so that the secular buildings in Rome, which are numerous, and some of them excellent, are more worth attention than the churches, though not a few of the three hundred churches and basilicas of the metropolis of Italy are good examples of Renaissance. [Illustration: FIG. 64.--ST. PETER'S AT ROME. INTERIOR. (1506-1661.)] The altars, tombs, and other architectural or semi-architectural works which occur in many of the churches of Rome, are, however, finer works of art as a rule than the buildings which they adorn. Such gems are not confined to Rome, but are to be found throughout Italy: many of them belong to the best period of art. Marble is generally the material, and the light as a rule falls on these works in one direction only. Under these circumstances the most subtle moulding gives a play of light and shade, and the most delicate carving produces a richness of effect which cannot be attained in exterior architecture, executed for the most part in stone, exposed to the weather, and seen by diffused and reflected light. Nothing of this sort is finer than the monuments by Sansovino, erected in Sta. Maria del Popolo at Rome, one of which we illustrate on a small scale (Fig. 65). The magnificent altar-piece in Sta. Coronale at Vicenza, in which is framed Bellini's picture of the baptism of Christ, is another example, on an unusually large scale--fine in style, and covered with beautiful ornament. No secular building exists in Rome so early or so simple as the severe Florentine palaces; but Bramante, who belongs to the early period, erected there the fine Cancelleria palace; and the Palazzo Giraud (Fig. 66). These buildings resemble one another very closely; each bears the impress of refined taste, but delicacy has been carried almost to timidity. The pilasters and cornices which are employed have the very slightest projection, but the large mass of the wall as compared with the openings, secures an appearance of solidity, and hence of dignity. The interior of the Cancelleria contains an arcaded quadrangle (_cortile_) of great beauty. Smaller palaces belonging to the same period and of the same refined, but somewhat weak, character exist in Rome. [Illustration: FIG. 65.--MONUMENT, BY SANSOVINO, IN STA. MARIA DEL POPOLO, ROME. (15TH CENTURY.)] [Illustration: FIG. 66.--PALAZZO GIRAUD (NOW TORLONIA), ROME. BY BRAMANTE. (1506.)] The Vatican Palace is so vast that, like St. Peter's, it took more than one generation to complete. To Bramante's time belongs the great Belvedere, since much altered, but in its original state an admirable work. This palace also can show some remarkable additions by Bernini, a much later architect, with much that is not admirable or remarkable by other hands. The finest Roman palace is the Farnese, begun by San Gallo in 1530, continued by Michelangelo, and completed by Giacomo della Porta, each architect having altered the design. This building, notwithstanding its chequered history, is a dignified, impressive mass. It has only three storeys and a scarcely marked basement, and is nearly square, with a large quadrangle in its heart. It is very lofty, and has a great height of unpierced wall over each storey of windows, and is crowned by a bold and highly-enriched cornice--an unusual thing for Rome. In this, and in many palaces built about the same time, the windows are ornamented in the same manner as those of the Pandolfini Palace at Florence; the use of pilasters instead of columns is general; the openings are usually square-headed, circular heads being usually confined to arcades and loggie; the angles are marked by rustication, and the only cornice is the one that crowns the whole. This general character will apply to most of the works of Baldassare Peruzzi, Vignola, Sangallo, and Raphael, who were, with Michelangelo, the foremost architects in Rome in the sixteenth century. But "the works executed by Michelangelo are in a bolder and more pictorial style, as are also many productions grafted on the earlier Italian manner by a numerous class of succeeding architects. In these is to be remarked a greater use of columns, engaged and isolated; stronger but less studied details; and a greater use of colonnades, in which however the combination with the semicircular arch is still unusual, the antique in this respect being followed to a great disadvantage. Still there is a nobility, a palatial look about these large mansions which is very admirable, and is to be remarked in all the palaces, even up to the time of Borromini, _circa_ 1640, by whom all the principles and parts of Roman architecture were literally turned topsy-turvey. Michelangelo's peculiar style was more thoroughly carried out on ecclesiastical buildings, and as practised by his successors, exhibits much that is fine, in large masses, boldly projecting cornices, three-quarter columns, and noble domes; but it is otherwise debased by great misconceptions as to the reasonable application of architecture."--M. D. W. In the seventeenth century a decline set in. The late Renaissance has neither the severity of the early, nor the dignified richness of the mature time, but is extravagant; though at Rome examples of its extreme phase are not common. Maderno, who erected the west front of St. Peter's, and Bernini, who added the outer forecourt and also built the curiously designed state staircase (the _scala regia_) in the Vatican, are the foremost architects. To these must be added Borromini. The great Barberini Palace belongs to this century; but perhaps its most characteristic works are the fountains, some of them with elaborate architectural backgrounds, which ornament many of the open places in Rome. Few of the buildings of the eighteenth century in Rome, or indeed in Italy generally, claim attention as architectural works of a high order of merit. Before leaving central Italy for the north, it is necessary to mention the masterpiece of Vignola--the great Farnese Palace at Caprarola; and to add that in every city of importance examples more or less admirable of the art of the time were erected. VENICE, VICENZA, AND VERONA. The next great group of Renaissance buildings is to be found at Venice, where the style was adopted with some reluctance, and not till far on in the sixteenth century. At first we meet with some admixture of Gothic elements; as, for example, in the rebuilding of the internal quadrangle of the Ducal Palace. Pointed arches are partly employed in this work, which was completed about the middle of the sixteenth century. In the earlier palaces--which, it will be remembered, are comparatively narrow buildings standing side by side on the banks of the canals--the storeys are well marked; the windows are round headed with smaller arches within the main ones; the orders when introduced are kept subordinate; the windows are grouped together in the central portion of the front, as was the case with those of the Gothic palaces, and very little use is made of rusticated masonry. The Vendramini, Cornaro, and Trevisano Palaces conform to this type. To the same period belong one or two fine churches, the most famous being San Zacaria, a building with a very delicately panelled front, and a semicircular pediment in lieu of a gable; here, too, semicircular-headed openings are made use of. In many of these churches and other buildings, a beautiful ornament, which may be regarded as typical of early Venetian Renaissance, is to be found. It is the shell ornament, so called from its resemblance to a flat semicircular shell, ribbed from the centre to the circumference (Fig. 67). [Illustration: FIG. 67.--ITALIAN SHELL ORNAMENT.] As time went on the style was matured into one of great richness, not to say ostentation, with which the names of Sansovino, Sanmichele, Palladio, and Scamozzi are identified as the prominent architects of the latter part of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this city of palaces Sansovino, also a very fine sculptor, built the celebrated Library of St. Mark, facing the Ducal Palace, which has been followed very closely in the design of the Carlton Club, Pall Mall. Here, as in the splendid Cornaro Palace, the architect relied chiefly upon the columns and entablatures of the orders, combined with grand arcades enriched by sculpture, so arranged as to occupy the spaces between the columns; almost the whole of the wall-space was so taken up, and the basement only was covered with rustication, often rough worked, as at the beautiful Palazzo Pompeii, Verona, and the Grimani Palace, Venice. "Sanmichele's works are characterised chiefly by their excellent proportions, their carefully studied detail, their strength, and their beauty (qualities so difficult to combine). We believe that the buildings of this great architect and engineer at Verona are pre-eminent in their peculiar style over those of any other artist of the sixteenth century. In a different, but no less meritorious, manner are the buildings designed by Sansovino; they are characterised by a more sculptural and ornamental character; order over order with large arched voids in the interspaces of the columns producing a pictorial effect which might have led his less gifted followers into a false style, but for the example of the celebrated Palladio."--M. D. W. To the latest time of the Renaissance in Venice belongs the picturesque domed church of St. Maria della Salute, conspicuous in many views of the Grand Canal, a building which is a work of real genius in spite of what is considered its false taste. It dates from 1632. The architect is Longhena. [Illustration: FIG. 68.--THE CHURCH OF THE REDENTORE, VENICE. (1576.)] An almost endless series of palaces and houses can be found in Venice, all of them rich, but few of great extent, for every foot of space had to be won from the sea by laborious engineering. There are some features which never fail to present themselves, and which are consequences of the conditions under which the structures were designed. All rise from the water, and require to admit of gondolas coming under the walls; hence there is always a principal central entrance with steps in front, but this entrance never has any sort of projecting portico or porch, and is never very much larger than the other openings in the front. As a straight frontage to the water had to be preserved, we hardly ever meet with such a thing as a break or projection of any sort; but the Venetian architects have found other means of giving interest to their elevations, and it is to the very restrictions imposed by circumstances that we owe the great originality displayed in their earlier buildings. The churches do not usually front directly on to the water; and though they are almost all good of their kind, they are far more commonplace than the palaces. The system of giving variety to the façade of the secular buildings by massing openings near the centre, has been already referred to. Both shadow and richness were also aimed at in the employment of projecting balconies; in fact the two usually go together, for the great central window or group of windows mostly has a large and rich balcony belonging to it. Not far from Venice is Vicenza, and here Palladio, whose best buildings in Venice are churches, such, for example, as the Redentore (Fig. 68), enjoyed an opportunity of erecting a whole group of palaces, the fronts of which are extremely remarkable as designs; though, being executed in brick and plastered, they are now falling to ruin. There is much variety in them, and while some of them rely upon his device of lofty pilasters to include two storeys of the building under one storey of architectural treatment, others are handled differently. In all a singularly fine feeling for proportion and for the appropriate omission as well as introduction of ornament is to be detected. The worst defect of these fronts is, however, that they appear more like masks than the exteriors of buildings, for there is little obvious connection between the features of the exterior and anything which we may suppose to exist inside the building. The finest architectural work left behind by Palladio in this city are, however, the great arcades with which he surrounded the Basilica, a vast building of the middle ages already alluded to. These arcades are two storeys high, and are rich, yet vigorous; they ornament the great structure, the roof of which may be seen rising behind, without overpowering it. MILAN AND PAVIA. In Milan two buildings at least belong to the early Renaissance. These are the sacristy of Sta. Maria presso San Satiro, and the eastern portion of the church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie; Bramante was the architect of both. The last-named work is an addition to an existing Gothic church; it is executed in the terra-cotta and brick of Lombardy, materials which the Renaissance architects seemed to shun in later times, and is full of the most profuse and elegant ornaments. The design consists of a dome, treated externally a little like some of the Lombard domes of earlier date; and three apses forming choir and transepts. It is divided into several stages, and abundantly varied in its panelling and arcading, and is full of vigour. By Bramante is also the very beautiful arcaded quadrangle of the great hospital at Milan, the Gothic front of which has been already noticed. There are many Renaissance buildings of later date in Milan, but none very remarkable. [Illustration: FIG. 69.--THE CERTOSA NEAR PAVIA. PART OF THE WEST FRONT. (BEGUN BY BORGOGNONE 1473.)] To the early period belongs the design of the façade of the Certosa near Pavia, part of which is shown (Fig. 69). This was begun as early as 1473, by Ambrogio Borgognone, and was long in hand. It proceeded on the lines settled thus early, and is probably the richest façade belonging to any church in Christendom; it is executed entirely in marble. Sculpture is employed to adorn every part that is near the eye, and especially the portal, which is flanked by pilasters with their faces panelled and occupied by splendid _alti relievi_. The upper part is enriched by inlays of costly marbles, but the two systems of decoration do not thoroughly harmonise; for the upper half looks coarse, which it in reality is not, in contrast with the delicate richness of the carving near the eye. The great features, such as the entrance, the windows, and the angle pinnacles are thoroughly good, and an arcade of small arches is twice introduced,--once running completely across the front at about half its height, and again near the top of the central portion,--with excellent effect (see Frontispiece). GENOA, TURIN, AND NAPLES. Turning now to Genoa we find, as we may in several great cities of Italy, that very great success has been achieved by an artist whose works are to be seen in no other city, and whose fame is proportionally restricted. Just as the power of Luini as a painter can only be fully understood at Milan, or that of Giulio Romano at Mantua, so the genius of Alessio (1500 to 1572) as an architect can only be understood at Genoa. From the designs of this architect were built a series of well planned and imposing palaces. These buildings have most of them the advantage of fine and roomy sites. The fronts are varied, but as a rule consist of a very bold basement, with admirably-treated vigorous mouldings, supporting a lighter superstructure, and in one or two instances flanked by an open arcade at the wings. The entrance gives access, through a vaulted hall, to the cortile, which is usually planned and designed in the most effective manner; and in several instances the state staircase is so combined with this feature that on ascending the first flight the visitor comes to a point of sight for which the whole may be said to have been designed, and from which a splendid composition of columns and arches is seen. The rooms and galleries in these palaces are very fine, and in several instances have been beautifully decorated in fresco by Perino del Vaga. Alessio was also the architect of a large domical church (il Carignano) in the same city; but it is far inferior in merit to his series of palaces. Genoa also possesses a famous church (the Annunziata) of late Renaissance, attributed to Puget (1622-1694). It is vaulted, and enriched with marbles, mosaics, and colour to such an extent that it may fairly claim to be the most gaudy church in Italy, which is unfortunate, as its original undecorated design is fine and simple. Turin in the north, and Naples in the south, are chiefly remarkable for examples of the latest and more or less debased Renaissance, and we therefore do not propose to illustrate or describe any of the buildings in either city. COUNTRY VILLAS. [Illustration: FIG. 70.--VILLA MEDICI--ON THE PINCIAN HILL NEAR ROME. BY ANNIBALE LIPPI (NOW THE _Académie Française_). (A.D. 1540.)] As the ancient Roman patrician had his villa, which was his country resort, the Italian of the revival followed his example, and, if he was wealthy enough, built himself a pleasure house, which he called a villa, either in the immediate suburbs of his city, or at some little distance away in the country. These buildings occur throughout Italy. Many of them are excellent examples of Renaissance architecture of a more modest type than that of the palaces. The Villa Papa Giulio, built from the designs of Vignola, and the Villa Medici, designed by Annibale Lippi, but attributed, for some unknown reason, to Michelangelo, may be mentioned as among the most thoroughly architectural out of some twenty or more splendid villas in the suburbs of Rome alone. Many of these buildings were erected late in the Renaissance period, and are better worth attention for their fine decorations and the many works of art collected within their walls than as architectural studies--but this is not always the case; and as they were mostly designed to serve the purpose of elegant museums rather than that of country houses as we understand the term, they usually possess noble interiors, and exhibit throughout elaborate finish, choice materials, and lavish outlay. [Illustration: {EARLY RENAISSANCE CORBEL. FROM A DOOR IN SANTA MARIA, VENICE.}] FOOTNOTES: [31] An entablature is the superstructure which ordinarily is carried by a column, and which it is usual to divide into architrave (or beam), frieze, and cornice. [32] An order consists of a column (or pilaster) with its distinctive base and capital, its entablature, and the appropriate decorations. There are five orders, differing in proportions, in the degree of enrichment required, and in the design of the base and capital of the column or pilaster, and of the entablature. [Illustration: {ORNAMENT BY GIULIO ROMANO.}] CHAPTER XII. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE AND NORTH EUROPE. CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. The revived classic architecture came direct from Italy, and did not reach France till it had been well established in the land of its origin. It was not however received with the same welcome which hailed its appearance in Italy. Gothic architecture had a strong hold on France, and accordingly, instead of a sudden change, we meet with a period of transition, during which buildings were erected with features partly Gothic and partly Renaissance, and on varied principles of design. French Renaissance underwent great fluctuations, and it is less easy to divide it into broad periods than to refer, as most French writers prefer to do, to the work of each prominent monarch's reign separately. Francis the First (1515-1547) made the architecture of Italy fashionable in his kingdom, and his name is borne by the beautiful transitional style of his day. This in most cases retains some Gothic forms, and the principles of composition are in the main Gothic, but the features are mostly of Italian origin, though handled with a fineness of detail and a smallness of scale that is not often met with, even in early Italian Renaissance. There are few buildings more charming in the architecture of any age or country than the best specimens of the style of Francis the First, and none that can bear so much decoration and yet remain so little overladen by the ornaments they carry. The finest example is the Château of Chambord, a large building, nearly square on plan, with round corner towers, capped by simple and very steep roofs, at the angles; and having as its central feature, a large and lofty mass of towers, windows and arcades, surmounted by steep roofs, ending in a kind of huge lantern. The windows have mullions and transoms like Gothic windows, but pilasters of elegant Renaissance design ornament the walls. The main cornice is a kind of compromise between an Italian and a Gothic treatment. Dormer windows, high and sharply pointed, but with little pilasters and pediments as their ornaments, occur constantly; and the chimneys, which are of immense mass and great height, are panelled profusely, and almost ostentatiously displayed, especially on the central portion. In the interior of the central building is a famous staircase; but the main attractions are the bright and animated appearance of the whole exterior, and the richness and gracefulness of the details. The same architecture is to be well seen in the north side of the famous Château of Blois--a building parts of which were executed in three different periods of French architecture. The exterior of the _François premier_ part of Blois is irregular, and portions of the design are wildly picturesque; on the side which fronts towards the quadrangle, the architecture is more symmetrically designed, and beauty rather than picturesque effect has been aimed at. An open staircase is the part of the quadrangle upon which most care has been lavished. Throughout the whole block of buildings the character of each individual feature and of every combination of features is graceful and _piquant_. The elegance and delicacy of some of the carved decoration in the interior is unsurpassed. [Illustration: FIG. 71.--WINDOW FROM A HOUSE AT ORLEANS. (EARLY 16TH CENTURY.)] In the valley of the Loire there exist many noblemen's châteaux of this date, corresponding in general character with Chambord and Blois, though on a smaller scale. Of these Chénonceaux, fortunate alike in its design and its situation, is the most elegant and the best known: yet many others exist which approach it closely, such, for example, as the Château de Gaillon--a fragment of which forms part of the École des Beaux Arts at Paris--the Hôtel de Ville of Beaugency, the Châteaux of Châteaudun, Azay-le-Rideau, La Cote, and Ussé; the Hôtel d'Anjou at Angers, and the house of Agnes Sorel at Orleans. In the streets of Orleans houses of this date (Fig. 71) are to be found, showing the style cleverly adapted to the requirements of town dwellings and shops. Several of them also possess courtyards with arcades or other architectural features treated with great freedom and beauty, for instance, the arcades in the house of _François Premier_ (Fig. 72). An arcade in the courtyard of the Gothic Hôtel de Bourgtherould at Rouen, is one of the best known examples of the style remaining, and instances of it may be met with as far apart as at Caen (east end of church of St. Pierre) and Toulouse (parts of St. Sernin). One Paris church, that of St. Eustache, belonging to this transitional period claims mention, since for boldness and completeness it is one of the best of any date in that city. St. Eustache is a five-aisled church with an apse, transept, and lateral chapels outside the outer aisle. It is vaulted throughout, and its plan and structure are those of a Gothic church in all respects. Its details are however all Renaissance, but not so good as those to be found at Blois, nor so appropriately used, yet notwithstanding this it has a singularly impressive interior. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--CAPITAL FROM THE HOUSE OF FRANCIS I., ORLEANS. (1540.)] Meantime, and alongside the buildings resulting from this fusion of styles, others which were almost direct importations from Italy were rising; in some cases, if not in all, under the direction of Italian architects. Thus on Fontainebleau, which Francis I. erected, three or four Italian architects, one of whom was Vignola, were engaged. It may or may not have been this connection of the great architect with this work which gave him influence in France, but certainly almost the whole of the later French Renaissance, or at any rate its good time, was marked by a conformity to the practice of Vignola, in whose designs we usually find one order of columns or pilasters for each storey, rather than to that of Palladio, whose use of tall columns equalling in height two or more floors of the building has been already noticed. Designs for the Louvre, the rebuilding of which was commenced in the reign of Francis the First (about A.D. 1544), were made by Serlio, an Italian; and though Pierre Lescot was the architect of the portion built in that reign, it is probable that the design obtained from Serlio was in the main followed. The part then finished, which, to a certain extent gave the keynote to the whole of this vast building, was unquestionably a happy effort, and may be taken to mark the establishment of a French version of matured Renaissance architecture. The main building has two orders of pilasters with cornices, &c., and above them a low attic storey, with short piers: at the angles a taller pavilion was introduced, and next the quadrangle arcades are introduced between the pilasters. The sculpture, some of it at least, is from the chisel of Jean Goujon; it is good and well placed, and the whole has an air of dignity and richness. The _Pavillon Richelieu_, shewn in our engraving (Fig. 73), was not built till the next century. The colossal figures are by Barye. A little later in date than the early part of the Louvre was the Hôtel de Ville, built from the designs of Pietro da Cortona, an Italian, and said to have been begun in 1549. The building had been greatly extended before its recent total destruction by fire, but the central part, which was the original portion, was a fine vigorous composition, having two lofty pavilions, with high roofs at the extremities, and a remarkably rich stone lantern of great height for a central feature. [Illustration: FIG. 73.--PAVILLON RICHELIEU OF THE LOUVRE, PARIS.] In the reign of Charles IX. the Palace of the Tuileries was commenced (1564) for Catherine de Médicis, from the designs of Philibert Delorme. Of this building, that part only which fronted the garden was erected at the time. Our illustration (Fig. 74) shows the architectural character of a portion of it, and it is easy to detect that considerable alterations have by this time been introduced into the treatment of the features of Renaissance architecture. The bands of rustication passing round the pilasters as well as the walls, the broken pediments on the upper storey, surmounted by figures, and supported by long carved pilasters, and the shape of the dormer windows are all of them quite foreign to Renaissance architecture as practised in Italy, and may be looked upon as essentially French features. Similar details were employed in the work executed at about the same period, by the same and other architects, in other buildings, as may be seen by our illustration (Fig. 75) of a portion of Delorme's work at the Louvre. In these features, which may be found in the Château d'Anet and other works of the same time, and in the style to which they belong, may be seen the direct result of Michelangelo's Medici Chapel at Florence, a work which had much more effect on French than on Italian architecture. The full development of the architecture of Michelangelo (or rather the ornamental portions of it) is to be found in French Renaissance, rather than in the works of his own successors in Italy. Much of the late sixteenth century architecture of France was very inferior, and the parts of the Louvre and Tuileries which date from the reign of Henry IV. are the least satisfactory portions of those vast piles. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--PART OF THE TUILERIES, PARIS. (BEGUN 1564.)] Dating from the early part of the seventeenth century, we have the Palais Royal built for Richelieu, and the Palace of the Luxembourg, a building perhaps more correct and quiet than original or beautiful, but against which the reproach of extravagant ornament cannot certainly be brought. [Illustration: FIG. 75.--CAPITAL FROM DELORME'S WORK AT THE LOUVRE. (MIDDLE OF 16TH CENTURY.)] With Louis the Fourteenth (1643 to 1715) came in a great building period, of which the most striking memorial is the vast and uninteresting Palace of Versailles. The architect was the younger Mansard (1647 to 1768), and the vastness of the scale upon which he worked only makes his failure to rise to his grand opportunity the more conspicuous. The absence of features to diversify the sky-line is one of the greatest defects of this building, a defect the less excusable as the high-pitched roof of Gothic origin had never been abandoned in France. This roof has been employed with great success in many buildings of the French Renaissance. Apart from this fault, the architectural features of Versailles are so monotonous, weak, and uninteresting that the building, though its size may astonish the spectator, seldom rouses admiration. Far better is the eastern block of the Louvre (the portion facing the Place du Louvre), though here also we find the absence of high roofs, and the consequent monotony of the sky-line--a defect attaching to hardly any other portion of the building. Bernini was invited from Italy for this work, and there is a curious story in one of Sir Christopher Wren's published letters of an interview he had with Bernini while the latter was in Paris on this business, and of the glimpse which he was allowed to enjoy of the design the Italian had made. The building was, however, after all, designed and carried out by Perrault, and, though somewhat severe, possesses great beauty and much of that dignity in which Versailles is wanting. The best French work of this epoch to be found in or out of Paris is probably the Hôtel des Invalides (Fig. 76), with its fine central feature. This is crowned by the most striking dome in Paris, one which takes rank as second only in Europe to our own St. Paul's, for beauty of form and appropriateness of treatment. The two domes are indeed somewhat alike in general outline. The reign of Louis XIV. witnessed a large amount of building throughout France, as well as in the metropolis, and to the same period we must refer an enormous amount of lavish decoration in the interior of buildings, the taste of which is to our eyes painfully extravagant. Purer taste on the whole prevailed, if not in the reign of Louis XV. certainly in that of Louis XVI., to which period much really good decorative work, and some successful architecture belongs. The chief building of the latter part of the eighteenth century is the Pantheon (Ste. Geneviève), the best domed church in France, and one which must always take a high rank among Renaissance buildings of any age or country. The architect was Soufflot, and his ambition, like that of the old Gothic masons, was not only to produce a work of art, but a feat of skill; his design accordingly provided a smaller area of walls and piers compared with the total floor space than any other Renaissance church, or indeed than any great church, except a few of the very best specimens of late Gothic construction, such for example as King's College Chapel. The result has been that the fabric has not been quite stout enough to bear the weight of the dome, and that it has required to be tied and propped and strengthened in various ways from time to time. The plan of the Pantheon is a Greek cross, with a short vestibule, and a noble portico at the west, and a choir corresponding to the vestibule on the east. It has a fine central dome, which is excellently seen from many points of view externally, and forms the principal feature of the very effective interior. Each arm of the building is covered by a flat domical vault; a single order of pilasters and columns runs quite round the interior of the church occupying the entire height of the walls; and the light is admitted in a most successful manner by large semicircular windows at the upper part of the church, starting above the cornice of the order. [Illustration: FIG. 76.--L'ÉGLISE DES INVALIDES, PARIS. BY J. H. MANSARD. (BEGUN A.D. 1645.)] One other work of the eighteenth century challenges the admiration of every visitor to Paris and must not be overlooked, because it is at once a specimen of architecture and of that skilful if formal arrangement of streets and public places in combination with buildings which the French have carried so far in the present century. We allude to the two blocks of buildings, occupied as government offices, which front to the Place de la Concorde and stand at the corner of the Rue Royale. They are the work of Gabriel (1710-1782), and are justly admired as dignified if a little heavy and uninteresting. As specimens of architecture these buildings, with the Pantheon, are enough to establish a high character for French art at a time when in most other European countries the standard of taste had fallen to a very low level. The hôtels (_i.e._ town mansions) and châteaux of the French nobility furnish a series of examples, showing the successive styles of almost every part of the Renaissance period. The phases of the style, subsequent to that of Francis the First, can however, be so well illustrated by public buildings in Paris, that it will be hardly necessary to go through a list of private residences however commanding; but the Château of Maisons, and the Royal Château of Fontainebleau, may be named as specimens of a class of building which shows the capacity of the Renaissance style when freely treated. Renaissance buildings in France are distinguished by their large extent and the ample space which has been in many instances secured in connection with them. They are rarely of great height or imposing mass like the early Italian palaces. For the most part they are a good deal broken up, the surface of the walls is much covered by architectural features, not usually on a large scale, so that the impression of extent which really belongs to them is intensified by the treatment which their architects have adopted. Orders are frequently introduced and usually correspond with the storeys of the building. However this may be the storeys are always well marked. The sky-line also is generally picturesque and telling, though Versailles and the work of Lescot at the Louvre form an exception. Rustication is not much employed, and the vast but simple crowning cornices of the Italian palaces are never made use of. Narrow fronts like those at Venice, and open arcades or loggias like those of Genoa, do not form features of French Renaissance buildings; but on the other hand, much richness, and many varieties of treatment which the Italians never attempted, were tried, and as a rule successfully, in France. Much good sculpture is employed in external enrichments, and a cultivated if often luxuriant taste is always shown. Many of the interiors are rich with carving, gilding, and mirrors, but harmonious coloured decoration is rare, and the fine and costly mosaics of Italy are almost unknown. BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS. These countries afford but few examples of Renaissance. The Town Hall at Antwerp, an interesting building of the sixteenth century, and the Church of St. Anne at Bruges, are the most conspicuous buildings; and there are other churches in the style which are characteristic, and parts of which are really fine. The interiors of some of the town halls display fittings of Renaissance character, often rich and fanciful in the extreme, and bearing a general resemblance to French work of the same period. [Illustration: FIG. 77.--WINDOW FROM COLMAR. (1575.)] [Illustration: FIG. 78.--ZEUGHAUS, DANTZIC. (1605.)] GERMANY AND NORTHERN EUROPE. Buildings of pure Renaissance architecture, anterior to the nineteenth century, are scarce in Germany, or indeed in North-east Europe; but a transitional style, resembling our own Elizabethan, grew up and long held its ground, so that many picturesque buildings can be met with, of which the design indicates a fusion of the ideas and features of Gothic with those of classic art. This architectural style took so strong a hold that examples of it may be found throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in almost every northern town. That part of the Castle of Heidelberg, which was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, may be cited as belonging to this German transitional style. The front in this case is regularly divided by pilasters of the classic orders, but very irregular in their proportions and position. The windows are strongly marked, and with carved mullions. Large dormer windows break into the high roof; ornaments abound, and the whole presents a curiously blended mixture of the regular and the picturesque. Rather earlier in date, and perhaps rather more Gothic in their general treatment, are such buildings as the great Council Hall at Rothenberg (1572), that at Leipzig (1556), the Castle of Stuttgart (1553), with its picturesque arcaded quadrangle, or the lofty and elaborate Cloth Hall at Brunswick. [Illustration: FIG. 79.--COUNCIL-HOUSE AT LEYDEN. (1599.)] Examples of similar character abound in the old inns of Germany and Switzerland, and many charming features, such as the window from Colmar (Fig. 77), dated 1575, which forms one of our illustrations could be brought forward. Another development of the same mixed style may be illustrated by the Zeug House at Dantzic (1605), of which we give the rear elevation (Fig. 78). Not altogether dissimilar from these in character is the finely-designed Castle of Fredericksberg at Copenhagen, testifying to the wide spread of the phase of architecture to which we are calling attention. The date of this building is 1610. A richer example, but one little if at all nearer to Italian feeling, is the Council House at Leyden, a portion of which we illustrate (Fig. 79). This building dates from 1599, and bears more resemblance to English Elizabethan in its ornaments, than to the architecture of any other country. Simultaneously with these, some buildings made their appearance in Germany, which, though still picturesque, showed the dawn of a wish to adopt the features of pure Renaissance. The quadrangle of the Castle of Schalaburg (Fig. 80), may be taken as a specimen of the adoption of Renaissance ideas as well as forms. It is in effect an Italian cortile, though more ornate than Italian architects would have made it. It was built in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and seems to point to a wish to make use of the new style with but little admixture of northern ornament or treatment. When architecture had quite passed through the transition period, which fortunately lasted long, the buildings, not only of Germany, but of the north generally, became uninteresting and tame; in fact, they present so few distinguishing features, that it is not necessary to describe or illustrate them. Russia, it is true, contains a few striking buildings belonging to the eighteenth century, but most of those which we might desire to refer to, were built subsequent to the close of that century. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--QUADRANGLE OF THE CASTLE OF SCHALABURG. (LATE 16TH CENTURY.)] [Illustration: {ORNAMENTAL FOLIAGE PATTERN.}] CHAPTER XIII. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL. ENGLAND.--CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH. In England, as in France and Germany, the introduction of the Italian Renaissance was not accomplished without a period of transition. The architecture of this period is known as Elizabethan, though it lasted long after Elizabeth's reign. Sometimes it is called Tudor; but it is more convenient and not unusual to limit the term Tudor to the latest phase of English Gothic. Probably the earliest introduction into any English building of a feature derived from the newly-revived classic sources is in the tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey. The grille inclosing this is of good, though late Gothic design; but when the tomb itself came to be set up, for which a contract was made with Torregiano in 1512, it was Italian in its details. The earliest examples of Renaissance features actually built into a structure, so far as we are aware, is in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Layer Marney House in Essex, which it is certain was erected prior to 1525. It is however long--surprisingly long--after this period before we come upon the traces of a general use of Renaissance details. In fact, up to the accession of Elizabeth (1558) they appear to have been little employed. It is however said that early in her reign the treatises on Renaissance architecture of Philibert de l'Orme and Lomazzo were translated from Italian into English, and in 1563 John Shute published a book on Italian architecture. John of Padua, an Italian architect, was brought to this country by Henry VIII. and practised here; and Theodore Havenius of Cleves was employed as architect in the buildings of Caius College, Cambridge (1565-1574). These two foreigners undoubtedly played an important part in a change of taste which, though not general so early, certainly did commence before Elizabeth's death in 1603. At the two universities, and in many localities throughout England, new buildings and enlargements of old ones were carried out during the long and prosperous reign of Elizabeth; and the style in which they were built will be found to have admitted of very great latitude. Where the intention was to obtain an effect of dignity or state, the classic principles of composition were more or less followed. The buildings at Caius College, Cambridge, Longleat, built between 1567 and 1579 by John of Padua, Woollaton, built about 1580 by Smithson, and Burleigh (built 1577), may be named as instances of this. On the other hand where a manorial or only a domestic character was desired, the main lines of the building are Gothic, but the details, in either case, are partly Gothic and partly modified Renaissance. This description will apply to such buildings as Knowle, Penshurst, Hardwick, Hatfield, Bramshill, or Holland House (Fig. 81). In the introductory chapter some account has been given, in general terms, of the features familiar to most and endeared to many, which mark these peculiarly English piles of buildings; those remarks may be appropriately continued here. [Illustration: FIG. 81.--HOLLAND HOUSE AT KENSINGTON. (1607.)] The hall of Gothic houses was still retained, but only as one of a series of fine apartments. In many cases English mansions had no internal quadrangle, and are built as large solid blocks with boldly projecting wings. They are often of three storeys in height, the roofs are frequently of flat pitch, and in that case are hidden behind a parapet which is sometimes of fantastic design. Where the roofs are steeper and not concealed the gables are frequently of broken outline. Windows are usually very large, and with mullions and transoms, and it is to these large openings that Elizabethan interiors owe their bright and picturesque effects. Entrances are generally adorned with some classic or semi-classic features, often, however, much altered from their original model; here balustrades, ornamental recesses, stone staircases, and similar formal surroundings are commonly found, and are generally arranged with excellent judgment, though often quaint in design. "This style is characterised by a somewhat grotesque application of the ancient orders and ornaments, by large and picturesquely-formed masses, spacious staircases, broad terraces, galleries of great length (at times 100 feet long), orders placed on orders, pyramidal gables formed of scroll-work often pierced, large windows divided by mullions and transoms, bay windows, pierced parapets, angle turrets, and a love of arcades. The principal features in the ornament are pierced scroll-work, strap-work, and prismatic rustication, combined with boldly-carved foliage (usually conventional) and roughly-formed figures."--M. D. W. Interiors are bright and with ample space; very richly ornamented plaster ceilings are common; the walls of main rooms are often lined with wainscot panelling, and noble oak staircases are frequent. In the reign of James I., our first Renaissance architect of mark, Inigo Jones (1572-1652) became known. He was a man of taste and genius, and had studied in Italy. He executed many works, the designs for which were more or less in the style of Palladio. These include the addition of a portico to the (then Gothic) cathedral of St. Paul's, and a magnificent design for a palace which Charles I. desired to build at Whitehall. A fragment of this building, now known as the Chapel Royal Whitehall, was erected, and small though it be, has done much by its conspicuous position and great beauty, to keep up a respect for Inigo Jones's undoubted high attainments as an artist. More fortunate than Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren (1632-1723) had just attained a high position as a young man of science, skill, and cultivation, and as the architect of the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, when in 1666 the great fire of London destroyed the Metropolitan Cathedral, the parochial churches, the Royal Exchange, the Companies' Halls, and an immense mass of private property in London, and created an opportunity which made great demands upon the energy, skill, and fertility of design of the architect who might attempt to grasp it. Fortunately, Wren was equal to the occasion, and he has endowed London with a Cathedral which takes rank among the very foremost Renaissance buildings in Europe, as well as a magnificent series of parochial churches, and other public buildings. It is not pretended that his works are free from defects, but there can be no question that admitting anything which can be truly said against them, they are works of artistic genius, full of fresh and original design, and exhibiting rare sagacity in their practical contrivance and construction. St. Paul's stands second only to St. Peter's as a great domical cathedral of Renaissance architecture. It falls far short of its great rival in actual size and internal effect, and is all but entirely devoid of that decoration in which St. Peter's is so rich. On the other hand, the exterior of St. Paul's (Fig. 82) is far finer, and as the English cathedral had the good fortune to be erected entirely from the plans and under the supervision of one architect, it is a building consistent with itself throughout, which, as we have seen, is more than can be said of St. Peter's. The plan of St. Paul's is a Latin cross, with well marked transepts, a large portico, and two towers at the western entrance; an apse of small size forms the end of the eastern arm, and of each of the transepts; a great dome covers the crossing; the cathedral has a crypt raising the main floor considerably, and its side walls are carried high above the aisle roofs so as to hide the clerestory windows from sight. The dome is very cleverly planted on eight piers instead of four at the crossing, and is a triple structure; for between the dome seen from within, and the much higher dome seen from without, a strong cone of brickwork rises which bears the weight of the stone lantern and ball and cross that surmount the whole. The skill with which the dome is made the central feature of a pyramidal composition whatever be the point of view, the great beauty of the circular colonnade immediately below the dome, the elegant outline of the western towers, and the unusual but successful distribution of the great portico, are among the most noteworthy elements which go to make up the charm of this very successful exterior. [Illustration: FIG. 82.--ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON. (1675-1710.)] Wren may be said to have introduced to Renaissance architecture the tower and spire, for though many examples occur in Spain, there is reason to suppose that he was before the architects of that country in his employment of that feature. He has enriched the City of London with a large number of steeples, which are Gothic so far as their general idea goes, but thoroughly classic in details, and all more or less distinctive. The most famous of these is the one belonging to Bow Church; others of note belong to St. Clement Danes and St. Bride, Fleet Street. The interiors of some of these churches, as for example St. Stephen, Walbrook, St. Andrew, Holborn, and St. James, Piccadilly, are excellent both for their good design and artistic treatment, and for their being well contrived and arranged for the special purposes they were intended to fill. Wren's secular works were considerable. The Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the theatre of the College of Physicians London (long since disused), are a group of special buildings each of which was undoubtedly a remarkable and successful work. Chelsea and Greenwich hospitals are noteworthy as among the first specimens of those great buildings for public purposes in which England is now so rich, and which to a certain extent replace the monastic establishments of the middle ages. At Chelsea the building is simple and dignified. Without lavish outlay, or the use of expensive materials, much ornament, or any extraneous features, an artistic and telling effect has been produced, such as few hospitals or asylums since built have equalled. Greenwich takes a higher level, and though Wren's work had the disadvantage of having to be accommodated to buildings already erected by another architect, this building, with its twin domes, its rich outline, and its noble and dignified masses, will always reflect honour upon its designer. The view of Greenwich hospital from the river may fairly be said to be unique for beauty and picturesqueness. At Greenwich, too, we meet with some of that skill in associating buildings and open spaces together which is so much more common in France than in this country, and by the exercise of which the architecture of a good building can be in so many ways set off. Wren, like Inigo Jones, has left behind him a great unexecuted design which in many respects is more noble than anything that he actually built. This is his earlier design for St. Paul's Cathedral, which he planned as a Greek cross, with an ampler dome than the present cathedral possesses, but not so lofty. A large model of this design exists. Had it been carried out the exterior of the building would probably not have appeared so commanding, perhaps not so graceful, as it actually is; but the interior would have surpassed all the churches of the style in Europe, both by the grandeur of the vast arched space under the dome and by the intricacy and beauty of the various vistas and combinations of features, for which its admirably-designed plan makes provision. Wren had retired from practice before his death in 1723. His immediate successors were Hawksmoor, whose works were heavy and uninteresting, and Sir James Vanbrugh. Vanbrugh was a man of genius and has a style of his own, "bold, original, and pictorial." His greatest and best work is Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, built for the Duke of Marlborough. This fine mansion, equal to any French château in extent and magnificence, is planned with much dignity. The entrance front looks towards a large space, inclosed right and left by low buildings, which prolong the wings of the main block. The angles of the wings and the centre are masked by two colonnades of quadrant shape, and the central entrance with lofty columns which form a grand portico, is a noble composition. The three garden fronts of Blenheim are all fine, and there is a magnificent entrance hall, but the most successful part of the interior is the library, a long and lofty gallery, occupying the entire flank of the house and treated with the most picturesque variety both of plan and ornament. Vanbrugh also built Castle Howard, Grimesthorpe, Wentworth, King's Weston, as well as many other country mansions of more moderate size. Campbell, Kent, and Gibbs are the best known names next in succession. Of these Campbell is most famous as an author, but Gibbs (1674-1754) is the architect of two prominent London churches--St. Martin's and St. Mary le Strand, in which the general traditions of Wren's manner are ably followed. He was the architect of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford. Kent (1684-1748) was the architect of Holkham, the Treasury Buildings, and the Horse Guards. He was associated with the Earl of Burlington, who acquired a high reputation as an amateur architect, which the design of Burlington House (now remodelled for the Royal Academy), went far to justify. Probably the technical part of this and other designs was supplied by Kent. Sir William Chambers (1726-1796) was the architect of Somerset House, a building of no small merit, notwithstanding that it is tame and very bare of sculpture. This building is remarkable as one of the few in London in which the Italian feature of an interior quadrangle is attempted to be reproduced. Chambers wrote a treatise which has become a general text-book of revived classical architecture for English students. Contemporary with him were the brothers John and Robert Adam, who built much, and began to introduce a severity of treatment and a fineness of detail which correspond to some extent to the French style of Louis XVI. The interior decorations in plaster by these architects are of great elegance and often found in old houses in London, as in Hanover Square, on the Adelphi Terrace, and elsewhere. The list of the eighteenth century architects closes with the names of Sir Robert Taylor and the two Dances, one of whom built the Mansion House and the other Newgate; and Stuart, who built several country mansions, but who is best known for the magnificent work on the antiquities of Athens, which he and Revett published together in 1762, and which went far to create a revolution in public taste; for before the close of the century there was a general cry for making every building and every ornamental detail purely and solely Greek. The architects above named, and others of less note were much employed during the eighteenth century in the erection of large country houses of Italian, usually Palladian design, many of them extremely incongruous and unsatisfactory. Here and there a design better than the average was obtained, but as a rule these stately but cold buildings are very far inferior to the picturesque and home-like manors and mansions built during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. [Illustration: FIG. 83.--HOUSES AT CHESTER. (16TH CENTURY.)] It is worth notice that the picturesque element, inherited from the Gothic architecture of the middle ages, which before the eighteenth century had completely vanished from our public buildings, and the mansions of the wealthy did not entirely die out of works executed in remote places. In the half-timbered manors and farmhouses which abound in Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, and in other minor works, we always find a tinge, sometimes a very full colouring, of the picturesque and the irregular; the gables are sharp, upper storeys overhang, and the treatment of the timbers is thoroughly Gothic (Fig. 83); so are the mouldings, transoms and mullions to the windows, and barge boards to the roofs. In the reign of James I. a mode of enriching the exteriors of dwelling-houses, as well as their ceilings, chimney-pieces, &c., with ornaments modelled in plaster came in, and though the remaining specimens are from year to year disappearing, yet in some old towns (_e.g._ in Ipswich) examples of this sort of treatment (known as Jacobean) still linger. In Queen Anne's reign a semi-Gothic version of Renaissance architecture was practised, to which great attention has been directed in the present day. The Queen Anne style is usually carried out in brickwork, executed in red bricks and often most admirable in its workmanship. Pilasters, cornices, and panels are executed in cut bricks, and for arches, niches, and window heads very finely jointed bricks are employed. The details are usually Renaissance, but of debased character; a crowning cornice of considerable projection under a high-pitched hipped roof (_i.e._ one sloping back every way like a truncated pyramid) is commonly employed; so also are gables of broken outline. Dormer windows rich and picturesque, and high brick chimneys are also employed; so are bow windows, often carried on concave corbels of a clumsy form. Prominence is given in this style to the joiner's work; the windows, which are usually sash windows, are heavily moulded and divided into small squares by wooded sash bars. The doors have heavily moulded panels, and are often surmounted by pediments carried by carved brackets or by pilasters; in the interiors the woodwork of staircases such as the balusters, newel posts, and handrails is treated in a very effective and well considered way, the greater part of the work being turned on the lathe and enriched with mouldings extremely well designed for execution in that manner. By this style and the modifications of it which were more or less practised till they finally died out, the traditional picturesqueness of English architecture which it had inherited from the middle ages was kept alive, so that it has been handed down, in certain localities almost, if not quite, to the present century. SCOTLAND. The architecture of Scotland during the sixteenth and succeeding centuries possesses exceptional interest. It was the case here, as it had been in England, that the most important buildings of the time were domestic; the erection of churches and monasteries had ceased. The castles and semi-fortified houses of Scotland form a group apart, possessing strongly-marked and well-defined character; they are designed in a mixed style in which the Gothic elements predominated over the classic ones. But the Scottish domestic Gothic, from which the new style was partly derived, had borne little or no resemblance to the florid Tudor of England. It was the severe and simple architecture of strongholds built with stubborn materials, and on rocky sites, where there was little inducement to indulge in decoration. Dunstaffnage or Kilchurn Castles may be referred to as examples of these plain, gloomy keeps with their stepped gables, small loops for windows, and sometimes angle turrets. The classic elements of the style were not drawn (as had been the case in England) direct from Italy, but came from France. The Scotch, during their long struggles with the English, became intimately allied with the French, and it is therefore not surprising that Scottish Baronial architecture should resemble the early Renaissance of French châteaux very closely. The hardness of the stone in which the Scotch masons wrought forbade their attempting the extremely delicate detail of the François I. ornament, executed as it is in fine, easily-worked stone of smooth texture; and the difference in the climate of the two countries justified in Scotland a boldness which would have appeared exaggerated and extreme in France. Accordingly the style in passing from one country to the other has changed its details to no inconsiderable extent. Many castles were erected in the sixteenth and following centuries in Scotland, or were enlarged and altered; the most characteristic features in almost all of them are short round angle turrets, thrown out upon bold corbellings near the upper part of towers and other square masses. These are often capped by pointed roofs; and the corbels which carry them, and which are always of bold, vigorous character, are frequently enriched by a kind of cable ornament, which is very distinctive. Towers of circular plan, like bastions, and projecting from the general line of the walls, or at the angles, constantly occur. They are frequently crowned by conical roofs, but sometimes (as at Fyvie Castle) they are made square near the top by means of a series of corbels, and finished with gables or otherwise. Parapets are in general use, and are almost always battlemented. Roofs, when visible, are of steep pitch, and their gables are almost always of stepped outline, while dormer windows, frequently of fantastic form, are not infrequent. Chimneys are prominent and lofty. Windows are square-headed, and, as a rule, small; sometimes they retain the Gothic mullions and transom, but in many cases these features are absent. Doorways are generally arched, and not often highly ornamented. Cawdor Castle, Glamis Castle, Fyvie Castle, Castle Fraser, the old portions of Dunrobin Castle, Tyninghame House, the extremely picturesque palace at Falkland, and a considerable part of Stirling Castle, may be all quoted as good specimens of this thoroughly national style, but it would be easy to name two or three times as many buildings nearly, if not quite, equal to these in architectural merit. Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh, may be quoted (with part of Holyrood Palace) as showing the style of the seventeenth century. Heriot's Hospital was built between the years 1628 and 1660. It is built round a great quadrangle, and has square towers at the four corners, each relieved by small corbelled angle turrets. The entrance displays columns and an entablature of debased but not unpleasing Renaissance architecture, and the building altogether resembles an English Elizabethan or Jacobean building to a greater extent than most Scottish designs. When this picturesque style, which appears indeed to have retained its hold for long, at last died out, very little of any artistic value was substituted for it. Late in the eighteenth century, it is true, the Brothers Adam erected public buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and carried out various works of importance in a classic style which has certainly some claim to respect; but if correct it was tame and uninteresting, and a poor exchange for the vigorous vitality which breathes in the works of the architects of the early Renaissance in Scotland. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. In the Spanish peninsula, Renaissance architecture ran through three phases, very strongly distinguished from one another, each being marked by peculiarities of more than ordinary prominence. The early stage, to which the Spaniards give the name of Plateresco, exhibits the same sort of fusion of Gothic with classic which we find in France and Scotland. The masses are often simple, but the individual features are overladen with an extravagant amount of ornament, and, as in France, many things which are essentially Gothic, such as pinnacles, gargoyles, and parapets, are retained. The Renaissance style was introduced at the latter part of the fifteenth century, and a very considerable number of buildings to which the description given above will apply were erected prior to the middle of the sixteenth. Among these may be enumerated the cathedral at Granada, the Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo (1504-1514), the dome of Burgos Cathedral (1567), the Cathedral of Malaga, San Juan della Penitencia at Toledo (1511), the façade of the Alcazar at Toledo (1548), the Town Hall (1551), and Casa Zaporta (1560) at Zarragoza, and the Town Hall of Seville (1559). A great number of tombs, staircases, doorways, and other smaller single features, executed during this period from the designs of good artists, are to be found scattered through the country. "These Renaissance monuments exhibit an extraordinary degree of variety in their ornaments, which are of the most fantastic nature; an exuberant fancy would seem to have sought a vent, especially in the sculptured ornament of the style, which though at times crowded, overladen, and we must add disfigured by the most grotesque ideas, is very striking for its originality and excellent workmanship."--(M. D. W.) [Illustration: FIG. 84.--THE ALCAZAR AT TOLEDO. (BEGUN 1568.)] The second phase of Spanish architecture was marked by a plain and simple dignity, equally in contrast with the Plateresco which had preceded it and with the extravagant style to which it at length gave place. The earliest architect who introduced into Spain an architectural style founded on the best examples of Italy, was Juan Baptista de Toledo. He in the year 1563 commenced the Escurial Palace--the Versailles of Spain; but the principal part of the building was erected by his more celebrated pupil, Juan de Herrera, who carried on the works during the years from 1567 to 1579. This building, one of the most extensive palaces in Europe, is noble in its external aspect from a distance, thanks to its great extent, its fine central dome, and its many towers, but it is disappointing when approached. Of the interior the most noteworthy feature is a magnificently decorated church, of great size and unusual arrangement; and this dignified central feature has raised the Escurial, in spite of many faults, to the position of the most famous and probably most deservedly admired among the great Renaissance palaces of Europe. By the same architect numerous buildings were erected, among others the beautiful, if somewhat cold, arcaded interior of the Alcazar of Toledo (Fig. 84), which may be taken as a fair specimen of the noble qualities to be found in his dignified and comparatively simple designs. About the middle of the sixteenth century Charles V. erected his palace at Granada; but here the architecture is strongly coloured by Italian or French examples, and much of the building resembles Perrault's work at the Louvre very closely. Herrera and his school were probably too severe in taste to suit the fancy of their countrymen, for Spanish architecture in the eighteenth century fell a victim to debased forms and a fantastic and exaggerated style of ornament. Churriguera was the architect who has the credit of having introduced this unfortunate third manner, and has lent it his name. For a time "Churriguerismo" found general acceptance, and the century closed under its influence. We must not pass over the excellent and varied Renaissance towers and steeples of Spain in silence. They are not unlike Wren's spires in general idea; they are to be met with in many parts of the country attached to the churches, and their variety and picturesqueness increase the claim of Spanish architecture to our respect. * * * * * The one Renaissance building in Portugal which has been much illustrated, and is spoken of in high terms, is the Convent at Mafra, a building of the eighteenth century, of great extent and picturesque effect. Great skill is shown in dealing with the unwieldy bulk of an overgrown establishment which does not yield even to the Escurial in point of extent. We are, however, up to the present time without the means of forming an opinion upon the nature and value of the architecture of Portugal as a whole. [Illustration: {ORNAMENTAL FOLIAGE PATTERN.}] [Illustration: {FROM A FRIEZE AT VENICE.}] INDEX. _See also CONTENTS at beginning._ Adam, John and Robert, 223. Alberti, _Architect_, 167. Amiens Cathedral, 76, 78. Andernach, Church at, 96. Anne, Queen, Style of, 225. Arnstein Abbey, 94. Baptista, _Architect_, 232. Batalha, Monastery at, 142, 153. Beauvais Cathedral, _Interior_, 86. Belgium and Netherlands, _Gothic_, 87. ---- _Renaissance_, 206. Bernini, _Architect_, 175, 181, 203. Blenheim, 221. Blois, Château of, 194. Blois, Capital from St. Nicholas, 84. Bourges, House of Jaques Coeur, 15. Bramante, _Architect_, 168, 174, 180. Brunelleschi, _Architect_, 120, 166. Buttresses, 32. Caen, Saint Pierre at, 37. Cambridge, King's College, 63. Campaniles in Italy, 128. Capitals, Gothic, 43. Certosa, near Pavia, _frontispiece_, 183. Chambers, _Architect_, 222. Chambord, Château of, 194. Chartres, Stained glass at, 65, 69. Chester, Old Houses at, 38, 224. Churriguera, _Architect_, 230. Colmar, Window at, 206. Cologne Cathedral, 97, 104. Columns and Piers, 40. Cortona, Pietro da, _Architect_, 198. Cremona, Palace at, 117. Dantzic, Zeughaus at, 203. De Caumont. _Abécédaire_, 71. Decorated style of Architecture, 24. Delorme, _Architect_, 200, 214. Domestic Buildings, _Gothic_, 14. Early English Architecture, 24. Eltham Palace, Roof of, 53. England, Gothic Architecture in, 21. ---- Renaissance in, 213. Florence, Cathedral at, 121. ---- Pandolfini Palace, 170, 173. ---- Riccardi Palace, 167. ---- Strozzi Palace, 169. Fontevrault, Church at, 70. France, Gothic Architecture in, 69. ---- Renaissance in, 193. Francis the First of France, 193. Friburg Cathedral, 98. Gables in Gothic Architecture, 36. Germany, Gothic Architecture in, 93. ---- Renaissance, 209. Ghent, Tower at, 90. Gibbs, _Architect_, 222. Giotto's Campanile at Florence, 120. Gothic, The word, 5. Goujon, Jean, _Sculptor_, 198. Haddon Hall, 17. Havenius of Cleves, _Architect_, 214. Hawksmoor, _Architect_, 221. Heidelberg, Castle of, 156, 209. Herrera, Juan de, _Architect_, 217. Holland House, 215. Italy, Gothic Architecture in, 112. ---- Renaissance in, 165. John of Padua, _Architect_, 214. Jones, Inigo, _Architect_, 217. Kent, _Architect_, 222. Kuttenberg, St. Barbara at, 99. Lescot, _Architect_, 198. Leyden, Council-house at, 210. Lichfield Cathedral, West Door, 5. Lincoln Cathedral, General view, 35. Lippi Annibale, _Architect_, 192. Lisieux, Old Houses at, 41. Loches, Doorway at, 72. London, St. Paul's Cathedral, 218. Maderno, _Architect_, 175, 181. Mafra, Convent at, 232. Mansard, _Architect_, 160. Michelangelo _as an Architect_, 170, 174. Michelozzo, _Architect_, 167. Middleburgh, Town Hall at, 89. Milan Cathedral, 115. Misereres in Wells Cathedral, 68, 92. Mouldings, Gothic, 62. Nuremberg, St. Sebald's at, 109. Oakham, Decorated Spire of, 60. Ogee-shaped arch, 129. Oppenheim, St. Catherine at, 107. Orleans, Capital from house at, 197. Orleans, Window at, 196. Pavia, Certosa, near, 114, 188. Palladio, _Architect_, 172, 184, 187. Paris, Cathedral of Notre Dame, 74. ---- Hôtel des Invalides at, 205. ---- Louvre, Capital from, 202. ---- Louvre, Pavillon Richelieu, 199. ---- Pantheon at, 204. ---- Tuileries, by Delorme, 200. Perpendicular Architecture, 25. Peruzzi, _Architect_, 181. Peterborough Cathedral, Plan, 6. Pisano, Nicola, _Sculptor_, 120. Plateresco, _Spanish_, 230. Principles of Gothic Design, 146. Raphael _as an Architect_, 170. Renaissance Architecture, 154. Regensburg (Ratisbon), Well at, 20. Rheims Cathedral, Piers, 80. Rome, Monument in Santa Maria del Popolo, 179. Rome, Palazzo Giraud, 178, 180. ---- St. Peter's, 174, 177. ---- Villa Medici, 191. Saint Gall Manuscript, The, 13. Salisbury Cathedral, Section, 7. Saint Iago di Compostella, 137. Sangallo, _Architect_, 181. Sansovino, _Architect_, 178, 184. Scamozzi, _Architect_, 184. Scotland, Cawdor Castle, 227. ---- Dunrobin Castle, 228. ---- Heriot's Hospital, 228. Schalaburg, Castle of, 212. Schwartz-Rheindorff, Church at, 101. Serlio, _Architect_, 198. Seville, The Giralda at, 140. Siena Cathedral, 123. Spain, Gothic Architecture in, 137. ---- Renaissance in, 228. Spires, 58. Stained Glass, 64. Strasburg Cathedral, 98. Thann, Doorway at, 106. Tivoli, Window from, 134. Toledo, Alcazar at, 232. ---- Cathedral, 138. Towers and Spires, 33. Tracery, Venetian, 130. Tudor Architecture, 25. Vanbrugh, _Architect_, 221. Venice, 182. Venice, Church of Redentore, 186. ---- Ducal Palace at, 118. ---- Palaces on Grand Canal, 18. Vienna, St. Stephen at, 98. Vignola, _Architect_, 172, 181, 182. Warboys, Early English Spire, 59. Warwick Castle, Plan, 16. Wells Cathedral, Nave, 9. Westminster Abbey, Plan, 11. Westminster Abbey, Carving, 67. ---- Henry VII.'s Chapel, 57. ---- Triforium, 49. Windows, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51. Window, Italian Gothic, 134, 136. Worcester Cathedral, Choir, 9. Wren, Sir C., _Architect_, 203, 217, 220. LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR. _Now in course of Publication._ A NEW SERIES OF ILLUSTRATED TEXT-BOOKS OF ART EDUCATION, EDITED BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A. Each volume contains numerous illustrations, and is strongly bound for the use of students. Price 5_s._ _To be issued in the following Divisions:--_ _PAINTING._ * CLASSIC and ITALIAN. By EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A., and PERCY R. HEAD, Lincoln College, Oxford. GERMAN, FLEMISH, and DUTCH. By H. WILMOT BUXTON, M.A. FRENCH and SPANISH. By GERARD SMITH, Exeter College, Oxford. ENGLISH and AMERICAN. By H. WILMOT BUXTON, M.A. _ARCHITECTURE._ CLASSIC and EARLY CHRISTIAN. By T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. * GOTHIC and RENAISSANCE. By T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A. _SCULPTURE._ ANTIQUE: EGYPTIAN and GREEK. By GEORGE REDFORD, F.R.C.S. RENAISSANCE and MODERN. By GEORGE REDFORD, F.R.C.S. _ORNAMENT._ DECORATION IN COLOUR. By GEORGE AITCHISON, M.A. ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT. With numerous Illustrations. * _These Divisions are now ready._ Transcriber's Note Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. Hyphenation and accent usage has been made consistent. Spelling was made consistent as follows: Page xxxvii--Transome amended to Transom--"TRANSOM.--A horizontal bar (usually of stone) ..." Page xl--Hardwicke amended to Hardwick--"THE END-PAPERS ARE FROM A TAPESTRY IN HARDWICK HALL." Page 198--di amended to da--"... built from the designs of Pietro da Cortona, ..." Page 217--transomes amended to transoms--"... and with mullions and transoms, ..." Page 217--transomes amended to transoms--"... large windows divided by mullions and transoms, ..." Page 224--Cotemporary amended to Contemporary--"Contemporary with him were the brothers John and Robert Adam, ..." Page 226--transomes amended to transoms--"... so are the mouldings, transoms and mullions to the windows, ..." Page 236--Middleburg amended to Middleburgh--"Middleburgh, Town Hall at, 89." Page 236--Nícolo amended to Nicola--"Pisano, Nicola, _Sculptor_, 120." Page 236--Strassburg amended to Strasburg--"Strasburg Cathedral, 98." Page 236--Van Brugh amended to Vanbrugh--"Vanbrugh, _Architect_, 221." The following amendments have been made: Page x--omitted page number added--"3. SCOTLAND, WALES, and IRELAND 91" Page xxiv--frize amended to frieze--"... the architrave, which rests on the columns, the frieze and the cornice." Page xxiv--The entry for Entablature originally followed Embattled. It has been moved to the correct place in the glossary. Page xxv--Styl amended to Style--"FRANÇOIS I. STYLE.--The early Renaissance architecture of France during part of the sixteenth century." Page xxvii--Lintol amended to Lintel--"LINTEL.--The stone or beam covering a doorway ..." Page 12--arrangment amended to arrangement--"The whole arrangement of pier and arch ..." Page 25--ierced amended to pierced--"Parapet pierced with quatrefoils and flowing tracery." Page 30--repeated 'and' deleted--"... Gothic dwelling-houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries exist, ..." Page 36--constrast amended to contrast--"... is to combine and yet contrast its horizontal and vertical elements." Page 39--storys amended to storeys--"... and sometimes also the basement storeys, ..." Page 46--and amended to end--"... occupying the eastern end of one of the transepts ..." Page 82--semi-circula amended to semicircular--"... and the roofs of semicircular and circular apses, ..." Page 88--achitecture amended to architecture--"... their architecture, though certainly Gothic, is debased in style." Page 114--laboration amended to elaboration--"... remarkable specimens of the ornamental elaboration which can be accomplished in brickwork." Page 142--Ths amended to The--"The great church at Batalha ..." Page 159--omitted 'the' added before building--"... in his treatment of the same part of the building ..." Page 176--repeated 'is' deleted--"... as long as the building is seen in front ..." Page 186--builing amended to building--"... lofty pilasters to include two storeys of the building ..." Page 194--first amended to First--"...than the best specimens of the style of Francis the First ..." Page 226--82 amended to 83--"... the treatment of the timbers is thoroughly Gothic (Fig. 83); ..." Page 230--archiect amended to architect--"The earliest architect who introduced into Spain an architectural style ..." Page 233--picuresque amended to picturesque--"... a building of the eighteenth century, of great extent and picturesque effect." Page 235--page references put into numerical order--"Brunelleschi, _Architect_, 120, 166." Page 235--137 amended to 173--"Florence ... ---- Pandolfini Palace, 170, 173." Page 235--omitted 7 added--"Haddon Hall, 17." Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph. There was an error in the List of Illustrations. The original read: 66. PALAZZO GIRAUD, ROME. BY BRAMANTE. (1506.) 180 67. THE CHURCH OF ST. FRANCESCO, AT FERRARA. INTERIOR 183 68. ITALIAN SHELL ORNAMENT 184 69. THE CHURCH OF THE REDENTORE, VENICE. (1576.) 186 70. CERTOSA NEAR PAVIA. PART OF WEST FRONT. (BEGUN 1473.) 189 70A. EARLY RENAISSANCE CORBEL 192 71. WINDOW FROM A HOUSE AT ORLEANS. (EARLY 16TH CENTURY.) 195 The listed Fig. 67 does not appear anywhere in the text. The List of Illustrations has been amended to accurately list the figures in the main body of the book, by removing the erroneous listing, renumbering the figures as necessary, including a previously omitted figure, FIG. 70.--VILLA MEDICI--ON THE PINCIAN HILL NEAR ROME. BY ANNIBALE LIPPI (NOW THE _Académie Française_). (A.D. 1540.), and amending the page numbers. The advertising material has been moved to the end of the book. 
34897	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Internet Archive. COLONIAL HOMES AND THEIR FURNISHINGS [Illustration: PLATE I.--Dodge-Shreves Doorway. Built in 1816.] COLONIAL HOMES AND THEIR FURNISHINGS BY MARY H. NORTHEND _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_ BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1917 _Copyright, 1912,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ONE THROUGH WHOSE CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT AND WISE ADVICE I OWE MY SUCCESS IN THE FIELD OF LITERATURE PREFACE The wonderfully good collection of antiques for which Salem is noted was of great interest to me, being owned by personal friends who kindly consented to allow me for the first time to go through their homes and pick out the cream of their inheritance. If the readers are half as interested in these objects as I have become,--growing enthusiastic in the work through the valuable pieces found,--they will enjoy the pictures of colonial furnishings, many of which cannot be duplicated in any other collection of antiques. Family bits, wonderful old Lowestoft, and other treasures are included, all brought over in the holds of cumbersome ships, at the time when the commerce of Salem was at high tide. To Mr. Charles R. Waters, Mrs. Nathan C. Osgood, Mrs. Henry P. Benson, Mrs. William C. West, Mrs. Nathaniel B. Mansfield, Miss A. Grace Atkinson, Mrs. Walter C. Harris, Dr. Hardy Phippen, Mrs. McDonald White, and Mr. Horatio P. Peirson, as well as many others in my native city, I owe acknowledgment for their kindness in opening their houses and letting me in, as well as to Mrs. George Rogers of Danvers, Mrs. D. P. Page, Dr. Ernest H. Noyes, and Mrs. Charles H. Perry of Newburyport, Mrs. Walter J. Mitchell of Manchester, Mrs. Prescott Bigelow and Mrs. William O. Kimball of Boston, Mrs. A. A. Lord of Newton, Mrs. Charles M. Stark of Dunbarton, N.H., and the late Mr. Daniel Low. The work was commenced at first through ill health and the desire for occupation, and has met with such good results through an interest in the story of antiques, that I have to-day one of the most valuable collections of photographs to be found in New England. MARY H. NORTHEND. AUGUST 1, 1912. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE vii I. OLD HOUSES 1 II. COLONIAL DOORWAYS 16 III. DOOR KNOCKERS 29 IV. OLD-TIME GARDENS 41 V. HALLS AND STAIRWAYS 54 VI. FIREPLACES AND MANTELPIECES 63 VII. OLD-TIME WALL PAPERS 79 VIII. OLD CHAIRS AND SOFAS 92 IX. SIDEBOARDS, BUREAUS, TABLES, ETC. 105 X. FOUR-POSTERS 119 XI. MIRRORS 132 XII. OLD-TIME CLOCKS 145 XIII. OLD-TIME LIGHTS 159 XIV. OLD CHINA 172 XV. OLD GLASS 194 XVI. OLD PEWTER 210 XVII. OLD SILVER 223 LIST OF PLATES I. Dodge-Shreves Doorway. Built in 1816 _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE II. The Warner House, Portsmouth, N. H. Built in 1718 8 III. Middleton House, Bristol, R. I. Built about 1808 9 IV. Indian Hill Farm, West Newbury, Mass. Begun soon after 1650 12 V. Andrew House Doorway, 1818 13 VI. Gardner House Doorway, 1804 22 VII. Doorway of Nathan Robinson House, 1804 23 VIII. Sixteenth Century Knocker, Lion type. Striker, of first type; Georgian Urn type, in use on modern houses; Mexican Knocker of the Hammer type; Hammer type Knocker, Eighteenth Century, Charles P. Waters House 32 IX. Eagle Knocker; Eagle Knocker, Rogers House, Danvers, Mass.; Medusa Head, elaborate early type; Garland type of Knocker 33 X. Whittier Garden, Danvers, Mass. 46 XI. Peabody Garden, Danvers, Mass. 47 XII. Saltonstall Hallway, about 1800 54 XIII. Hallway, Lee House, 1800 55 XIV. Hallway, Tucker House, about 1800 60 XV. Hallway of Wentworth House, 1750 61 XVI. Historic Fireplace at Ipswich, Mass. 64 XVII. Old Fireplace in Wentworth House, Portsmouth, N. H. 65 XVIII. First Hob Grate in New England, Waters House; Mantel Glass and Fireplace, showing decoration of floral basket 70 XIX. Middleton House Steeple Top Andirons, and Bellows; Southern Andirons, Atkinson Collection 71 XX. Cupid and Psyche paper, Safford House 80 XXI. Venetian paper in Wheelwright House, Newburyport 81 XXII. Roman Ruins paper, Lee Mansion, Marblehead 86 XXIII. Adventures of Telemachus paper, Nymphs Swinging 87 XXIV. Queen Anne Fiddle Back; Queen Anne, Stuffed Chair; Dutch Chair, carved; Empire Lyre-backed Roundabout, on Chippendale lines, 1825 92 XXV. Chippendale, Lord Timothy Dexter's Collection, H. P. Benson; French Chair, showing Empire influence; Flemish Chair; Banister-back Chair 93 XXVI. Chippendale Armchair, showing straight, square legs; Chippendale Chair; Chippendale, one of a set of six, showing Rosette design; Chippendale Armchair with Cabriole legs, Ball and Claw feet 96 XXVII. Empire Sofa; Cornucopia Sofa; Sofa in Adams style, about 1800 97 XXVIII. Sheraton, mahogany frame, about 1800; Sheraton, with solid arms, and straight, slender legs; Sheraton, about 1790. Note the graceful curve of the arms 100 XXIX. Sheraton, about 1800; Sofa, about 1820; Sofa, about 1820, with winged legs 101 XXX. Sheraton Night Table; Block Front Bureau Desk, owned by Dr. Ernest H. Noyes, Newburyport, Mass.; Cellarette, 1790, owned originally by Robert Morris 106 XXXI. Dressing Glass, with Petticoat legs; Empire Bureau, 1816 107 XXXII. Chest of Drawers, 1710; Six-legged High Chest of Drawers, about 1705 108 XXXIII. Dressing Table, with brass feet; Bureau and Dressing Glass 109 XXXIV. Block Front Bureau Desk, owned by Nathan C. Osgood. One of the best specimens in New England; oak paneled Chest, about 1675 112 XXXV. Secretary, showing Shell ornamentation; Highboy with Shell ornamentation and Ball and Claw feet, 1760; Highboy with Shell ornamentation 113 XXXVI. Dressing Table, 1760; Mahogany Commode, collection of Nathan C. Osgood. 116 XXXVII. Sheraton Sideboard; Simple form of Sheraton Sideboard, with line Inlay around Drawers and Doors. Date, 1800 117 XXXVIII. Bedstead in Middleton House, 1798 120 XXXIX. Sheraton type in Kittredge House; Four-poster, about 1825 121 XL. Field Bedstead, slept in by Lafayette, in Stark Mansion. Owned by Mrs. Charles Stark, Dunbarton, N. H. 124 XLI. Sheraton Four-poster; Four-poster showing decided English characteristics 125 XLII. Girandole in George Ropes House, 1800; Girandole, 1800; Constitution Mirror, 1780 134 XLIII. Picture Mirror, showing Dawn, in Adams House, 1703; English Georgian Mirror, 1750; Two-piece Looking Glass, 1750 135 XLIV. Oval Mirror, showing Acanthus Leaves. Once on Cleopatra's Barge. The first pleasure yacht built in America. Mirror, 1710, resting on ornamental knobs; Mirror, 1810, in Dudley L. Pickman House 140 XLV. Mirror, 1770; Lafayette Courting Mirror, Osgood Collection; Empire Mirror, 1810 141 XLVI. Willard Banjo Clock, 1802; Banjo Clock, 1804; Willard Banjo Clock, 1802 150 XLVII. English Grandfather's Clock, William Dean Howells; Collection of Old Clocks, property of Mr. Mills, Saugus, Mass.; Grandfather's Clock, formerly owned by President Franklin Pierce. Property of Mrs. Charles Stark 151 XLVIII. General Stephen Abbot Clock; Terry Shelf Clock, 1824; English Clock, with Ball ornamentation 158 XLIX. Whale Oil Lamps with Wicks; Mantel Lamps, 1815; Paul and Virginia Candelabra 159 L. Astral Lamps, 1778; English Brass Branching Candlestick, showing Lions 164 LI. Colonial Mantel Lamp; Single Bedroom Brass Candlestick; Sheffield Plate Candlesticks 165 LII. Pierced, or Paul Revere, Lantern; Old Hand Lantern; English Silver Candlestick; Brass Branching Candlestick, Chippendale, 1760 170 LIII. Peacock Plate of Delft, very rare; Decorated Salt Glaze Plate, about 1780 171 LIV. Liverpool Pitcher, showing Salem ship; Old Chelsea Ware; Canton China Teapot; Wedgewood, with Rose decoration. Very rare 176 LV. Gold Luster Pitcher; Staffordshire Pitcher, with Rose decoration; Peacock Delft Pitcher; Jasper Ware Wedgewood Pitcher, Blue and White 177 LVI. The Shepherd Toby. One of the rarest Tobies; English Toby, very old; very old Toby showing Cocked Hat 190 LVII. Venetian and English Decanters; Toddy Glasses, about 1800; English Glass with Silver Coasters. Very old 191 LVIII. Russian Glass Decanter and Tumblers. Note the exquisite cutting on this Decanter 200 LIX. English Cut Glass Decanter, about 1800; Typical Red Bohemian Glass Decanter; American Glass Bottle, Jenny Lind, about 1850 201 LX. Bohemian Glass. The center one is rare, showing figure of Peacock, in Red and White; English Cut Glass Wineglasses, 1790; English Glass Decanters. Very fine and rare 208 LXI. Pewter half-pint, pint, and quart Measures. One hundred years old; Three unusual shaped Pewter Cream Jugs; German Pewter, Whorl pattern 209 LXII. Old Silver Coffee Urn with Pineapple finial; Sheffield Plate Teapot, formerly owned by President Thomas Jefferson; Tall Silver Pitcher, of Flagon influence 226 LXIII. Several old silver pieces; collection of Salem silver, almost all inherited; wonderfully fine Silver Bowl with chasing 227 CHAPTER I OLD HOUSES There is an indescribable charm surrounding colonial houses, especially if historic traditions are associated with them. Many of an early date of erection are still to be found throughout New England towns, where the Puritan and the Pilgrim first settled, and not a few have remained in the same families since their construction. Some are still in an excellent state of preservation, though the majority show weather-beaten exteriors, guiltless of paint, with broken windows and sagging sills, speaking forcibly of a past prosperity, and mutely appealing through their forlornness for recognition. These are not, however, the first homes built by the colonists, and, indeed, it is doubtful if any examples of the earliest type are still standing. These were rude cabins built of logs, kept together by daubings of clay thrust into their chinks, and showing roofs finished with thatch. Great chimneys were characteristic of all these cabins, built of stone, lengthened at the top with wood, and best known by the name Catted Chimneys. In the rude interiors of the old-time fireplaces hung soot-blackened cranes, while on cold, cheerless nights the blaze of logs on the hearths "Made the rude, bare, raftered room Burst, flowerlike, into rosy bloom." The next type was the frame house, built large or small according to the means of the owner, and constructed through the influence of Governor John Endicott, who sent to England for skilled workmen. Generally, these dwellings were two stories in height, the more pretentious ones showing peaks on either side to accommodate chambers, and their marked superiority over the first type soon resulted in their adoption throughout New England. In design they bore some resemblance to the Dutch architecture of the period, the outcome doubtless of many of the early settlers' long sojourn in Holland. Many of the frames were of white wood brought from the mother country in the incoming ships, and the low ceilings invariably present were crossed with the heavy beams of the floors above, projecting through the timbers. The lean-to, characteristic of some houses of this type, did not come into vogue until about the middle of the seventeenth century, and its adoption is generally believed to have been for the use of the eldest son of the family, who, according to the law of England, would inherit the homestead, and until such inheritance, could remain, with his family, beneath the ancestral roof. The third type, the gambrel-roofed house, was at the height of its popularity about the time of the Revolutionary War, and continued in favor until the tide of commercial prosperity sweeping through the land brought in its wake the desire for more pretentious dwellings. Then came into fashion the large, square, wooden mansion, later followed by that of stately brick, excellent examples of both types being still extant. Like the Egyptian Isis who went forth to gather up the scattered fragments of her husband Osiris, fondly hoping that she might be able to bring back his former beauty, so we of to-day are endeavoring in New England to gather and bring into unison portions of the early homes, that we may eventually restore them to their original charm and dignity. Outwardly these dwellings appear much as they did when built, more than a century ago, but inwardly sad changes have been wrought, leaving scarcely a trace of their old-time beauty. Yet beneath this devastation one versed in house lore can read many a tale of interest, for old houses, like old books, secrete between their covers many a story that is well worth while. Among the carefully preserved specimens, none of the earlier type is more interesting than the Pickering house at Salem, Massachusetts, built in 1660, more than a hundred years before the Revolution. The land on which it stands is part of the twenty acres' grant which was a portion of Governor's Field, originally owned by Governor Endicott, and conveyed by him to Emanuel Downing, who, in order to pay for his son George's commencement dinner at Harvard, disposed of it to John Pickering, the builder of the home, in 1642. In design, the dwelling is Gothic, a popular type in the Elizabethan period, and closely resembles the Peacock Inn at Rouseley, England. The timbers used in its construction were taken from a near-by swamp, and when it was first built it showed on the northern side a sloping roof affording but a single story at that end. In 1770, the then owner, Timothy Pickering, decided to raise this end to make room for three chambers, and the new portion was built to conform exactly with the old part, the windows equipped with the same quaint panes, set in leaded strips, which were finely grooved to receive the glass, on which the lead was pressed down and soldered together. It was found when the weatherboards were ripped off that the sills were sound, and it was decided to continue to use them, feeling they would last longer than those that could then be obtained. Two of the peaks found to be leaky were removed at this time, and they were not replaced until 1840, when Colonel Timothy Pickering's son, John, had reproductions set in place. The house has never been out of the Pickering family, and, with one exception, has descended to a John Pickering ever since its erection. Distinctly a New England landmark is the Colonel Jeremiah Page house at Danvers, Massachusetts, erected in the year 1750. It occupies a site that at the time of its construction was on the highway between Ipswich and Boston, now broadened at this point and known as Danvers Square. Originally, it consisted of four rooms, but these were later moved back and a new front added, the ell being replaced by a larger one. From a historic point of view, the roof is probably the most interesting feature of this old home, for here occurred the famous tea-party that Lucy Larcom has forever immortalized. During the troublous times of 1775, when all good patriots scorned the use of tea, Colonel Page demanded that it should not be drunk beneath his roof. Mistress Page had acceded to his request, but she did not promise that she would not drink it on his roof, so with a few friends she repaired one afternoon to the rail-enclosed roof, and here brewed and distributed the much liked beverage. The secret of the tea-party did not leak out until after her death, when one of the party, visiting at the house, asked to be taken to the roof, at the same time relating the, till then unknown, experience. Antedating the Page house some twenty-five years is the home of the Stearns family on Essex Street, Salem, erected by Joseph Sprague, a prominent old-time merchant, whose warehouse occupied the present site at the corner of North and Federal streets. This dwelling is of spacious dimensions, excellently proportioned, and it is especially interesting from the fact of its unusual interior arrangement, which provides on each floor for three rooms at the back and only two at the front. The original owner was captain of the first uniformed company of militia organized in Salem, April 22, 1776, and he was also the first American to spill his blood in the Revolution, receiving a slight wound at the time of Leslie's retreat, while scuttling his gondola so it should not fall into the hands of the enemy. Another fine old home is the Cabot house, also in Salem. This dwelling, erected in 1745 by one Joseph Cabot, is considered by experts to be of the purest colonial type, and it has proved a subject of unusual interest to any number of artists and architects. No modern touch has been allowed to mar the old-time aspect of the Whipple house at Ipswich, Massachusetts, built in 1760, and which remains wholly unchanged from its original construction. It stands to-day almost alone in its picturesque antiquity, its huge central chimney, tiny window-panes, plain front door, guiltless of porch, with iron knocker, steep-pitched roof with lean-to at the back nearly sweeping the ground,--all betokening its age. Little wonder it is the haunt of tourists, for it presents a picture in its old-time beauty that modern architecture can never duplicate. In the historic town of Marblehead, in Massachusetts, is one of the most interesting of old-time homes,--the Colonel Jeremiah Lee mansion, built in 1768, and considered at the time of its erection the finest house in the Colonies. It was designed by an English architect at a cost of ten thousand pounds, and the timber and finish used in its construction were brought from England in one of the colonel's ships. It stands well to the front of the lot of which it forms a part, with scarcely any yard space separating it from the sidewalk, and it boasts a handsome porch supported by finely carved pillars, approached by a flight of steps. The broad entrance door, with its brass latch and old-time knob, swings easily upon its great hinges into a spacious hall that extends the length of the dwelling, affording access to the finely finished interior apartments. Equally as interesting as these old homes are several houses in New Hampshire, one of the most prominent being the Stark mansion at Dunbarton. This was built in 1785 by Major Caleb Stark of Revolutionary fame, and it is approached to-day through the original tree-lined avenue, a mile in length. In construction it is of the mansion type, two stories in height, with gambrel roof, twelve dormer windows, and a large, two-storied ell. Its entrance door is nearly three inches through, with handsome, hand-made panels, and it swings on wrought-iron hinges two feet either way. It is adorned with a knocker and latch that were brought from England by the major. Ever since its erection, this house has been occupied by a member of the Stark family, and the present owner, Charles Morris Stark, boasts the distinction of being of Revolutionary stock on both sides of the family, his mother being a lineal descendant of Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution. [Illustration: PLATE II.--The Warner House, Portsmouth, N. H. Built in 1718] Another interesting colonial home is the Warner house at Portsmouth, occupying a corner section on one of the city's main thoroughfares. This fine dwelling was erected by Captain Macpheadris, a wealthy merchant who came to this country from Scotland, and it is built of Dutch bricks that were imported from Holland, with walls eighteen inches thick. It stands firmly on its foundation, a magnificent specimen of early construction; and its gambrel roof, Lutheran windows, quaint cupola, and broad simplicity of entrance door, suggest the old-time hospitality that was so freely dispensed here. After the captain's death, the house came to his daughter, Mary, who had married Hon. Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council until the outbreak of the Revolution, and it is by his name that the fine old home is known. Two miles from Portsmouth, at Little Harbor, is the old home of Governor Benning Wentworth, built in 1750. In general, this dwelling is two stories in height, with wings that form three sides of a hollow square, though it boasts no particular style of architecture, appearing to be rather a group of buildings added to the main structure from time to time. It is screened from the roadway by great trees, and on the north and east faces the water. Originally it had fifty-two rooms, but some of these have been combined, so to-day there are but forty-five. The cellar is particularly large, and here in times of danger the governor hid his horses. After the governor's death, his widow married John Wentworth, and it was during the occupancy of Sir John and his wife that Washington was entertained here. Typical of the wooden mansion type, that succeeded in favor the gambrel-roofed dwellings, is the house now known as the Endicott house, at Danvers, Massachusetts. This building, constructed about 1800, was purchased about 1812 by Captain Joseph Peabody, a Salem merchant, and grandfather of the present owner, as a place of refuge for himself and family during the embargo. In design, it is most imposing, and the front now shows a wide veranda, with the entrance dignified by a porte-cochère, supported by high columns, between each two of which a great bay tree is set. Sweeps of smooth lawn afford an attractive setting, and great trees, here and there, bestow protecting shade. The dwelling is surrounded by beautiful gardens, the most interesting from a historic point of view being the old-fashioned posy plot laid out at the time of the erection of the house. [Illustration: PLATE III.--Middleton House, Bristol, R. I. Built about 1808.] Not unlike in type to this fine home is "Hey Bonnie Hall" in Rhode Island, the residence of the Misses Middleton. Built in 1808, it stands to-day in all its original beauty, the pure white of its exterior admirably set off by the great green sweeps of sward, dotted with fine trees, that surround it on all sides. It was erected from plans of Russell Warren, who designed the White House at Washington, and it is renowned not only for its beautiful colonial architecture, but also for the wonderful collection of old-time furniture and objects of art that it contains. In type, it is very similar to a Maryland manor, with projecting wings, the service portion in a separate building connected with the main house by a covered passage, after the Southern fashion. In this passage is the well room, so called from the fact that a well of pure spring water is located here. In length the house is one hundred and forty feet, its front just enough broken to avoid monotony, and its spaciousness affording an air of comfort. Two Corinthian columns, as high as the house itself, support the roof over the entrance porch, and on either side are well-protected verandas, overlooking beds of old-fashioned flowers and smooth stretches of sward. In front lies the harbor, and beyond is the picturesque town of Bristol, affording a most pleasing prospect. [Illustration: PLATE IV.--Indian Hill Farm, West Newbury, Mass. Begun soon after 1650.] Unlike these latter-day types, in fact unlike any set design, is the low, rambling house at West Newbury, Massachusetts, known as Indian Hill, and so called from the location that it occupies. In appearance, this dwelling is most picturesque, resembling in design a castle, and it is as historic as it is interesting. The site that it occupies is the last reservation of the Indians in the neighborhood, the land having been sold by Old Tom, the Indian chieftain, to the town, and the deed of the sale being still preserved by the present owners. Viewed from any angle, the house presents a series of pictures, each equally as interesting as the other, and its irregular roof lines, gables and bays, quaint, diamond-paned windows, and chimneys adorned with chimney pots, are further embellished by the flowering vines of a rambler rose, perhaps the finest in the country. While the house can be seen from the road, it is only when one drives under the archway into the courtyard, bounded on three sides by barn, stables, and house, that he can realize its true worth. [Illustration: PLATE V.--Andrew House Doorway, 1818.] Salem, fortunate in specimens of early construction, is also fortunate in examples of latter-day types, and here are to be found several of the fine brick dwellings, built at the time of her greatest commercial prosperity. One of these is the Andrews house, located on Washington Square, and one of the three dwellings erected in 1818. Its brick exterior gives no hint of its age other than the softening dignity that time bequeaths, and it stands to-day, tall and broad, its gray-faced bricks brightened by white trimmings, and its beauty emphasized by a fine circular porch supported by white columns, topped with a high balustrade. At one side is a charming old-fashioned garden, laid out in prim, box-bordered beds, and all about its fence inclosure flowering vines clamber. Complete, the dwelling cost forty thousand dollars,--a large sum for the time of its erection. Every brick used in its construction was first dipped into boiling oil to render it impervious to moisture, and all the framework is of timbers seasoned by long exposure to the sun and rain. On one brick is cut the date of erection, the work of the master builder under whose supervision the dwelling was erected. The great pillars of the side porch, overlooking the garden, are packed, so the story goes, with rock salt--not an uncommon process at that time--to keep out dampness and to save the wood from being eaten by worms. Some years previous to the erection of this dwelling, Mr. Nathan Robinson had constructed on Chestnut Street a brick dwelling, considered by connoisseurs to be one of the finest specimens to-day extant. The porch, at the front, is wonderfully fine, and has attracted the attention of any number of students and architects, who have made a careful study of it. And so we might go on and on, singling out particularly good specimens here and there, but when all is said and done, it is undeniable that all old houses afford interesting study. Architects of the present are coming to appreciate their worth, and into many modern homes features of early construction are being incorporated. Naturally, to the antiquarian, nothing can ever take the place of these bygone specimens, and as he paces the main thoroughfares of historic cities, now lined with stores, he sees in fancy the stately homes with their fragrant garden plots, which modern demand has superseded. Pausing on the curbing near the old State House in Boston, what an array of bygone dwellings in fancy can be conjured, and how many of the old-time dignitaries can be recalled. So vivid is the picture that one might almost expect to see old Thomas Leverett saunter by, or perchance hear the rattle of wheels as the carriage of Dr. Elisha Cook lumbered on its way. It is a pleasant picture to contemplate, and the lover of the old breathes a sigh of regret at the passing of such picturesqueness. CHAPTER II COLONIAL DOORWAYS No type of architecture to-day holds such a distinctive place in the minds of architects and home builders as does that of the colonial period. This is especially true concerning the porch or doorway, for this feature, affording as it does entrance to the home, called for most careful thought, that it might be made harmonious and artistic, and expressive of the sentiment which it embodies. The straight lines and ample dimensions which characterized it required skill to arrange properly, and, considering the limitations of the period in which it was constructed, the results obtained were remarkable. These porches and doorways were designed at a time when our country was young, and the builders were not finished architects like the designers of to-day; but they were planned and built by men who were masters in their line, and who taxed their skill to the utmost that results might be artistic and varied, individualizing each home so that the entrance porch should express both hospitality and refinement. In the holds of the cumbersome ships that plied between the new country and the motherland were placed as cargoes, pillars, columns, and bits of shaped wood, all to be used in the construction of the new home, and incidentally in the porch. It was no easy task to devise from these fragments a complete and artistic whole, and to the ingenuity of the builders great credit is due. In contour and construction, these porches differ greatly. Those found in New England depict a stateliness that savors of Puritanical influence, while those in the South convey, through their breadth, an impression of the cordiality which is characteristic of that section. Some are semicircular, others square; a few are oblong, and some are three-cornered, fitting into two sides of the entrance, and in each case giving to the dwelling a congruous appearance that is refreshing to contemplate in an age like ours, when so many different periods are combined in a finished whole. All these porches show a harmony of form and proportion that gives just the right effect, and many are embellished by wonderful wood carving. The Grecian column, in its many forms, lends itself in a great degree to artistic effects, often bestowing an originality of finish that is most pleasing, and one that differs in every respect from the modern broad veranda, and the stately porte-cochère. The art of hand carving reached its highest state of perfection about the year 1811, during which period the best types of porches were erected. The results are shown not only in the capitals of the columns and on the architrave, but on the pediments and over the entrance door as well. A good example of the decoration of the architrave is seen on the old Assembly House on Federal Street, in Salem, Massachusetts, where the carving takes the form of a grapevine, with bunches of the hanging fruit, and also over the door of the Kimball house, in the same city, where Samuel McIntyre, one of the most noted wood carvers, lived. It can be well and correctly said that the colonial porch embodied not only the characteristics of the period in which it was built, but the personality of the owner as well. Should the unobservant person feel that this statement is far-fetched, let him take a stroll through some tree-shaded street of an old New England village, and the truth of the assertion is readily revealed. Though the house itself may be old and battered, and fast falling into decay, yet the porch greets one with a simple welcome that breathes of former hospitality, and, in admiration of this feature, the shabbiness of the rest of the exterior sinks into oblivion. Broadly speaking, porches are divided into three types or classes. The first belong to the period beginning with the year 1745 and continuing until the year 1785, a space of time marked by stirring events, culminating in the Revolutionary War, and the birth of the new republic. Houses of this period are of the gambrel-roofed type. The second class adorn the succeeding type of dwelling,--the large, square, colonial house, built by the merchant prince, whose ships circumnavigated the globe, and who filled his home with foreign treasures; while the third type is that which ornamented the brick mansion which came into vogue about 1818. As many of these were erected during the commercial period, they cannot, strictly speaking, be called colonial; they belong rather to the Washingtonian time, and reflect in their construction the gracious hospitality of that day. Porches of varied colonial types are found in most of the New England cities and towns, in the Middle States, and in the South, and particularly fine examples can be seen in Salem, Massachusetts. There is about all of these a dignity and refinement that is unmistakable, bespeaking a culture that is felt at once, and a stranger wandering through Salem's streets cannot help but be impressed with the fact. Adorning the three-storied houses with their flat roofs, they give an artistic touch to what would otherwise be plain exteriors. From step to knocker, from leaded glass to the arched or square roof of the doorway, there is a plainness and simplicity which betokens art, but of such a quiet, unpretentious type that by the untrained eye it is hardly appreciated, though to the architect it brings inspiration and affords study for classic detail, the result of which is shown in the modified colonial homes of to-day. Romance and history are strangely intermingled in these old-time porches and doorways. Under their stately portals has passed many a colonial lover, doffing his cocked hat to his lady fair, who, with silken gown, powdered hair and patches, sat at the window awaiting his coming. Those were Salem's halcyon days, when the tide of life ebbed and flowed in uneventful harmony, free from the disturbing elements of latter-day life. To attempt even a brief description of each and every doorway would be a herculean task. Rather, it is better to depict the different types, studying with critical eye the various examples. One is the semicircular entrance, with its rounded front, a type shown in many a New England home. The Andrew porch, numbered among the finest in the city, belongs to this class. Under this doorway passed the late war governor, John Andrew, during visits to his uncle, John Andrew, builder of the dwelling, that he always coveted for his own. The dwelling was one of three built in 1818 on three sides of a training field, which is now the Common. The fine elm trees that characterize the Common were planted in the same year. The other two houses were the John Forrester dwelling and the Nathaniel Silsbee house. The Andrew porch shows straight columns, and a roof topped with a balustrade; the simplicity of outline renders it most attractive. [Illustration: PLATE VI.--Gardiner House Doorway, 1804.] Another porch of the same type is that of the John Gardiner house on Essex Street, built in 1804. Here is an entrance considered by good judges of architecture to be one of the best examples of its type, characterized by perfect symmetry of outline. Numbered among its features are quaint indentations in the door head. This dwelling was formerly the home of Captain Joseph White, one of the worthy and noted Salem merchants. Other porches of similar contour, though differently ornamented, are to be found on Chestnut Street. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--Nathan Robinson House Doorway, 1804.] It is only when one carefully studies doorways such as these, contrasting them with latter-day porches, which are often little more than holes in the wall, fitted with a cheap framing and entirely out of keeping with the exterior, that their worth is viewed in the true light, and the opportunity to turn to the old-time types for inspiration is appreciated. Perhaps the most Puritanical of all the doorways are the simple narrow ones that generally stand at one side of the house, although sometimes they are used as the main entrance. These show either fluted side pilasters, or severely plain columns, surmounted by a pediment. The door is always dark in coloring, trimmed with a polished brass knocker and often with a brass latch. One of the most elaborate of these is that of the dwelling known as the Cabot house on Essex Street. This house was designed in 1745 by an English architect for Joseph Choate, and later came into the possession of Joseph Cabot. Another notable entrance is that of the Lord house on Washington Square. This is a side entrance, and is said to be one of the finest of its type in Salem. This house was at one time occupied by Stephen White, a man of worth, who was falsely accused of the murder of his uncle, and who engaged as counsel Daniel Webster. While this case was in progress, Webster brought his son, Fletcher, to the White home, where he met and fell in love with the daughter of the house, later making her his bride. Thus were romance and law strangely intermingled! The house was afterwards the home of Nathaniel Lord, one of the most brilliant jurists of his time. The inclosed porch is another phase of old Salem doorways. There are several interesting examples of this type still to be seen here, perhaps the most noted being the one on Charter Street, on a three-story, wooden building, about a century and a half old, low of stud, with square front, standing directly on a shabby little by-street, and cornered in a graveyard. This porch, inclosing the entrance door, is lighted by small, oval windows, one on either side, affording glimpses up and down the street. It has been graphically described by a silent, dark-browed man, who, with two women, came to the dwelling in the dusk of an evening in 1838, and, lifting the old-time knocker, announced his arrival. The door was opened by Elizabeth Peabody, who graciously admitted Nathaniel Hawthorne and his sisters, showed them into the parlor, and then ran up-stairs to tell her sister Sophia of the handsome young man--handsomer than Lord Byron--who had just arrived. As the door closed behind him that evening, Hawthorne shut out forever the dreary solitude of his life, and we read that he came again and again to the old home, where he played the principal part in one of the most idyllic of courtships, ending in his marriage two years later with the fair Sophia. This dwelling he made the scene of _Dr. Grimshawe's Secret_, and the old porch has taken on a dignity and historic interest that will live forever. But perhaps one loves to dwell longest on the doorway of the Assembly House on Federal Street, for it is full of vivid memories. It is an oddly shaped porch, beautifully carved, and under its portals the daughters of Salem's merchant princes passed, holding in their slender hands the skirts of their silken gowns, as they gayly mounted the broad stone steps. On the evening of October 29, 1784, Lafayette was entertained in this old home, and five years later, Washington, who had just been inaugurated as the first President of the United States, came here. Concerning his visit, he wrote in his diary: "Between 7 and 8 I went to an Assembly, where there were at least a hundred handsome young ladies." With one of these, the daughter of General Abbot, Washington opened the ball, and for her later, as he did not dance, he secured as a partner General Knox. Other types of porches still seen in Salem include the Dutch porch, quaint and comely in its construction, an excellent example of which is seen on the Whipple house on Andover Street, while surrounding the Common on Washington Square are many rare and picturesque porches of various dates of erection. Considered by experts to excel them all is the porch that adorns the Pierce-Jahonnot house on Federal Street. This dwelling was erected by Mr. Pierce, of Pierce and Waitte, merchants, in the year 1782, and beside the main entrance it boasts a fine example of the narrow doorway at one side. In the early spring, crocuses clustering about the base of the porch add a touch that is decorative and charming, and the box-bordered garden beds, just in front, filled with masses of pure white bloom, complete a wholly delightful setting. There is about this particular doorway a touch of sentiment felt by every Salemite. It is a piece of architecture of which any one might feel proud, and in its beauty and dignity it stands distinctive in the midst of many fine bits. It is the Mecca of architects, who delight in the exquisite blending of doorway and entrance. There is a touch of the old Witchcraft Days connected with a doorway at Number 23 Summer Street, that resembles in type the one immortalized by Hawthorne. More than two hundred years ago, this porch was the site of an event that culminated in tragedy. Bridget Bishop, the first victim of the terrible delusion of 1692, kept a tavern here, and in her gay light-heartedness, she scorned the dictates of the church and insisted upon wearing on Sabbath Day a black hat and a red paragon bodice, bordered and looped with different colors. Her boldness in defying the rigid doctrines made the dignitaries suspicious of her, and at her trial, when one witness told of meeting her before the site of the present doorway where his horse stopped, and the buggy he was driving flew to pieces,--she of course having bewitched it,--was condemned to death. Individual types found throughout the city show a variety of construction and ornamentation, and many of these are most unique, although they do not belong to any special period. Prominent among these is the Pineapple doorway on Brown Street Court, an excellently proportioned and finely adorned entrance, which, through the remoteness of its location, is rarely seen by tourists. The dwelling of which it is a part was built in 1750 by Captain Thomas Poynton, and this feature, unlike the old Benjamin Pickman porch on Essex Street, which shows a codfish, has nothing about it suggestive of New England. The pineapple, which is set in a broken pediment, was brought over from England in one of the captain's own ships, and in the days of his occupancy it was kept brightly gilded, its leaves painted green. Many of the doorways show an innovation in the presence of the climbing vine, which winds its tendrils about the pillar supports, emphasizing their beauty. It is not definitely known whether the early owners encouraged the vine-covered porch or not, but they probably did, as they delighted in the vine-covered summer-house, which was a feature of nearly every old-time garden. While Salem may hold a prominent rank in attractive porches, many fine examples are to be found in Philadelphia, and though these specimens differ radically in design, they are most attractive. One is to be seen on Independence Hall on Chestnut Street, while others are found on churches and houses. These doorways illustrate a phase of architectural construction totally different from the porches of New England and those of the South, yet they combine features of the other types, while at the same time displaying a certain definite style of their own which gives to them as great distinctiveness as characterizes Salem porches. If the twentieth-century architect desires studies of truly attractive doorways, the seaport towns of New England will afford him excellent models. There is enough variety here in porches which are still preserved to give him any number of models from which to devise an entrance that will serve its purpose in every sense of the word. For the home builder, it will not be amiss to carefully consider the best type of porch before he goes to the architect to develop his plans; he can be assured that study will develop ideas that will give to his home an individuality that will embody his ideas and personality. CHAPTER III DOOR KNOCKERS There is no more decorative feature of the entrance door than the old-time door knocker, especially if in conjunction with it are used a latch and hinge. It possesses a dignity and charm that is most attractive, and when shown in brass, brightly burnished, it forms a most effective foil for the dark or polished surface of the wood. Door knockers have been in use, save for short periods during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, since their invention, early in the world's history, although they were most freely used during the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the Renaissance periods. For easy identification they may be divided into three classes, the first characterized by a ring, the second by a hammer, and the third by human figures and animals' heads. The first two types show a much larger surface of plate than the third, and the designs employed are often most elaborate. Door knockers in use during the Medieval period were perhaps the most carefully designed, while those of the Renaissance period showed the most fanciful treatment. It must be remembered, when considering the ornamental qualities of both these types of knockers, and comparing them with latter-day productions, that they were made at a time when designers were practically unknown, artists being employed to draw patterns which were worked out by assistants under the supervision of master smiths, which method resulted in a greater diversity of treatment. Iron was at first used in the construction of knockers, partly on account of its inexpensiveness, and the results secured from this seemingly ugly material were both artistic and beautiful. Later, brass came into favor for the purpose, and it has since remained the principal knocker material, as no better substitute has been found. Brightly polished, a brass knocker undeniably adds to the decorative attractiveness of any door. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, knockers were used on all classes of houses. These for the most part were very elaborate in design, showing a wonderful delicacy of workmanship, and they were in many instances larger than those found on modern colonial homes. Except for the period during the seventeenth century, as above mentioned, door knockers remained in favor until the middle of the nineteenth century, when a wave of modernity, sweeping the length and breadth of the land, brought in its wake an overthrow of colonial ideas and furnishings. Modern doors, plain of surface, replaced the finely paneled old-time ones, and with their coming disappeared the knocker and the latch. Probably the principal cause of this was the demolition of many of the old landmarks, and the substitution of dwellings of an entirely different architectural type. This innovation for a second time consigned the knocker to oblivion, and many there were who, not realizing its artistic value, cast it into the scrap heap. Others, with a veneration for heirlooms, packed the knockers away in old hair trunks under the eaves of the spacious attic, together with other antiques of varying character. No doubt the greatest number were saved by the wise and far-sighted collector, who, realizing the artistic beauty of the knocker, felt that it would in time come to its own again. Quietly he purchased them and stored them away, awaiting the day of their revival, and his foresight was amply repaid when the modified colonial house came into vogue, demanding that the knocker should again be the doorway's chief feature. Many of those now shown are genuine antiques, while others are reproductions, but so carefully copied that only to one who has made a study of antiques is the difference discernible. [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--16th Century Knocker, Lion type, Striker of first type; Georgian Urn type, in use on modern house; Mexican Knocker of the Hammer type; Hammer type Knocker, 18th Century, Charles P. Waters House.] Old door knockers vary as to size according to the date of their construction. Many are of odd design, having been made to fit doors of unusual shapes, and the ornamentation is as varied as the shapes. The most elaborate knockers depict such ideas as Medusa's head, Garlands of Roses, and, in many cases, animals' heads, while the simple ones show oval or plain shapes, with border decorated with bead or fretwork. [Illustration: PLATE IX.--Eagle Knocker; Eagle Knocker, Rogers House, Danvers, Mass.; Medusa head, elaborate early type; Garland type of Knocker.] The shape of the knocker is of great assistance in classification, as is the metal used. The most common type has the striker round or stirrup-shaped. This is either plain or ornamented with twisted forms, with wreathing or masks, and the plate is formed of a rosette or lion's head. In the second type, the striker is hammer-shaped, the handle often showing a split and straplike formation, while the plate and knob are plain. This is an early type, as is shown from the fact that specimens still exist that are not unlike Byzantine and Saracenic forms. It is to this type that the exquisite iron-chiseled knockers of Henry II and Louis XIV belong. The lyre or elongated loop drawn down to form the striker constitute the third style. Masks, snakes, dragons, and human figures belong to this class, and, on account of the elaborate workmanship employed, these are often found in brass and bronze. This type shows ornamentation lavished on the striker, while the plate is very plain. The greatest difference noted in all these classes is that in the third type the escutcheon or plate by which the knocker is fastened to the door is of little importance, while in the first two types it is the leading motive. During the Gothic period, the design was diamond-shape, richly decorated with pierced work, and while this same motif was retained in the making of the Renaissance knocker, it was frequently varied by the double-headed or some similar style. What is correct concerning the design of the Medieval knocker holds good in that of to-day. No door knocker ever designed was ugly, even at the time of the earliest manufacture, when so little was known concerning architectural construction. There is a fine individuality in the style of all knockers, and singularly enough one fails to find duplicates of even the most admirable specimens. Another fact that seems strange is that reproductions often sell for as much as genuine antiques. It would seem that the price of the old knocker would be high, on account of its historical value, and yet this type of knockers sells at a lower price than present-day specimens. Old brass examples can be purchased as low as two dollars and fifty cents, while large and elaborate ones bring only ten dollars. This is not on account of their true value not being known, but because there is, as yet, comparatively little demand for them; and their sale at the best is limited, for where a person could use twenty candlesticks, two knockers would suffice for door ornamentation. There is an important phase of the copied specimens that must be taken into consideration, and that is that they have no historic value. This fact has made reproductions of no appeal to either the collector or the antiquarian, unless there is some special interest in the model from which they have been copied. Whether a knocker is a reproduction or a genuine antique can often be told by examining the plate and noting if it is forged to the ring or flat plate. If so, it is a fine piece of workmanship and a genuine antique; otherwise, it is spurious. The best place to purchase genuine old knockers is in the curio shops, where only such things are for sale. Even in this event, it is well to know the earmarks, for if one is anxious for a real antique, he should be posted on the characteristics, as a spurious specimen is apt to find its way even here. The door knockers in general use to-day are the Georgian urn or vase, the thumb latch, and the eagle. Such designs as Medusa's head, and the head of Daphne with its wreath of laurel leaves are also sometimes found. The lion with ring has always been more popular in England than in our country, and, indeed, during the Revolutionary War and for fifty years after, it was not even tolerated here, being superseded by the eagle, which came into vogue about 1775. The garland knocker, which belongs to the early type, is still sometimes found to-day. One such specimen is shown on a modern colonial home at Wayland, Massachusetts. This originally graced the doorway of one of Salem's merchant prince's homes, but it was purchased by a dealer in antiques at the time of the decline in favor of the knocker, later finding its original resting place, from which it has only recently been removed. Another rare and unusual knocker is shown on a house on Lynde Street, Salem, Massachusetts. This is of Mexican type, and has been on the house since its erection. It was painted over some years ago by an owner who cared little for its worth, and it was not until a comparatively short time ago that it was discovered to be a fine example of a rare type. The horseshoe knocker, a specimen of the hammer class, is a prized relic of many old homes. Like all true colonial specimens, it is made of wrought iron, painfully hammered by hand upon the forge in the absence of machinery for working iron, as even nails had to be hammered out in those early times. This is one of the quaintest and most original knockers, and is after the pattern of the earliest designed. Subsequent specimens were more elaborate, colonial craftsmen bestowing upon them their greatest skill. Among the most ornate were the purely Greek or Georgian vases or urns, eagles in all possible and impossible positions, heads of Medusa, Ariadne, and other mythological ladies, and Italian Renaissance subjects, such as nymphs, mermaids, and dolphins, with ribbons, garlands, and streamers. Not a few of these knockers have wonderfully interesting histories. Scenes have been enacted about them, which, could they be but known, would make thrilling tales. Take, for instance, the knocker on the Craigie House at Cambridge, Massachusetts. How many men of letters from all over the world have lifted the knocker to gain admittance to our late loved poet's home, and think what stories such visits could furnish! On the Whittier homestead at Amesbury, Massachusetts, is still to be seen the knocker which was on the door during the poet's life. This is of eagle design, probably chosen on account of its patriotic significance. Another interesting knocker formerly graced the house wherein the "Duchess" lived, on Turner Street, in Salem, many times lifted by Hawthorne, who was a frequent visitor to this dwelling, and who forever immortalized it in his famous romance, _The House of Seven Gables_. This is now replaced by another of different design. Considered to be one of the oldest knockers in this section is that on the door of the May house at Newton, Massachusetts. Be that as it may, it is certainly unique. The plate shows a phoenix rising from the plain brass surface, while the knocker has for ornamentation a Medieval head. This knocker has attracted the attention of antiquarians throughout the country, who have given it much study in attempts to find out the period in which it was made. Thumb latches are not so common as the hammer and ring class. Two of these specially unique show wonderful cutting. One is found on the front door of the Waters house on Washington Square, Salem, being brought from the John Crowninshield dwelling, while the other is seen on the side porch of this same residence, having been placed there at the time of the building's erection in 1795. England is the seat of most of the old-time knockers, although they are still found in almost every part of the globe. Threading the narrow by-streets of London, one finds many historic specimens replaced by simple modern affairs. Some have become the prey of avaricious tourists, while others, because of their owners' little regard for their value, have been relegated to ash heaps and thrown away. This is true of the knocker made famous by Dickens in the _Christmas Carol_. On the polished surface of this, Scrooge was said to have thought he saw reflected the face of Marley "like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." Later he spoke of it as follows: "I shall love it as long as I live. I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face. It is a wonderful knocker." Clasped hands holding a ring of laurel is the form of the knocker still seen on the door of the famous Dr. Johnson house, and, as one gazes at it, he can in fancy see David Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds ascending the steps, and if he pauses a moment longer he can no doubt even hear the metallic ring of the knocker, as it responds to the vigorous raps that they give. The most beautiful knocker left in London is the one shown on the outer gate of the Duke of Devonshire's house at Piccadilly. The design here, as unique as it is beautiful, shows an angelic head with flowing hair. Chapels and cathedrals in England have many examples of this type of door decoration, one being a knocker handle with pierced tracery seen on Stogumber Church in Somerset. The history of door knockers is practically unwritten, and little is known concerning their make. The revival of antiques is responsible for their present popularity, and gives them an importance in house ornamentation little dreamed of a few years ago. To be sure, the coming of electric bells has precluded their necessity, but, on account of their ornamental value, it is doubtful if they ever become obsolete. The variety of design, the many artistic shapes to which they can be adapted, and, more than all, their decorative qualities, make them particularly valuable. CHAPTER IV OLD-TIME GARDENS There was a restful charm and dignity surrounding the garden of olden times that is lacking in the formal ones of to-day. This effect was gained partly from the prim box borders and the straight, central path, and partly from the stateliness of the old-fashioned flowers. Gardens formed a distinctive feature in the colonists' home grounds, from the time of their landing on unknown soil. At first they were very small, and consisted mostly of wild flowers and plants that had been brought from their homes in England and Holland. The early settlers brought with them to this new land a deep love for floriculture, and the earliest garden plots filled with flowering plants, though rude in construction, saved the house mother many a heartache, reminding her as they did of the beautiful gardens in the motherland left behind. We find in the earliest records of the new settlers allusions to flowers, and Reverend Francis Higginson speaks of the wild flowers which he saw blossoming near the shore. He considered them of enough importance to record in his diary on June 24, 1629, writing "that wild flowers of yellow coloring resembling Gilliflowers were seen near the shore as they sighted land, and that as they came closer they saw many of these flowers scattered here and there, some of the plots being from nine to ten feet in size." Four of the men who went ashore on the twenty-seventh of that month found on the headlands of Cape Cod single wild roses. Later on he tells again of the number of plants found growing, giving their names. These facts have enabled people in later years to locate the same flowers growing near the same places as when they were first discovered. Governor Bradford also considered the flowers of importance, and in his historical account of the Colonies of New England, he tells us that "here grow many fine flowers, among them the fair lily and the fragrant rose." On Governors Island in Boston Harbor were rich vineyards and orchards, as well as many varieties of flowers. Governor Winthrop, inserting a clause in the grant, said that vineyards and orchards should be planted here; that this was complied with is shown from the fact that the rent in 1634 was paid with a hogshead of wine. Following the growth of colonist gardens, we find that John Josslyn arrived in Boston four years later, in 1638, and that soon after his arrival he visited his brother's plantation in Black Point, Maine. He made a careful list of plants that he found here, each one of which he carefully described and sent in part to England, and it is interesting to note that in those days, the colonists in the spring gathered hepaticas, bloodroot, and numerous other wild flowers. His description of the pitcher plant is graphic: "Hollow leaved lavender is a plant that grows in the marshes, overgrown with moss, with one straight stalk about the bigness of an oat straw. It is better than a cubic high, and upon the top is found one single fantastic flower. The leaves grow close to the root in shape like a tankard, hollow, tight, and always full of water." The whole plant, so he says, comes into perfection about the middle of August, and has leaves and stalks as red as blood, while the flower is yellow. Mr. Josslyn also speaks of the fact that shrubs and flowers brought from England and Holland by the Puritans as early as 1626 were the nucleus of old-fashioned gardens, and that woadwaxen, now a pest covering acres of ground and showing during the time of blossoming a brilliant yellow, was kept in pots by Governor Endicott, while the oxeye daisy and whiteweed were grown on Governor Endicott's Danvers farm. He also tells us of the gardens with "their pleasant, familiar flowers, lavender, hollyhocks, and satin." "We call this herbe in Norfolke sattin," says Gerard, "and among our women, it is called honestie and gillyflowers, which meant pinks as well, and dear English roses and eglantine." The evolution of the garden commenced at this time, and from then until fifty years ago the old-fashioned garden was in vogue. There was much sameness to this kind of garden; each one had its central path of varying width, generally with a box border on either side, while inside were sweet-smelling flowers, such as mignonette, heliotrope, and sweet alyssum. Vine-covered arbors were the central feature, and at the end of the walk stood a summer-house of simple proportions, sometimes so covered with trailing vines as to be almost unseen. It was here on summer afternoons that our grandmothers loved to come for a social cup of tea, knitting while breathing in the sweet-scented air, permeated with the fragrance of single and double peonies, phlox, roses, and bushes of syringa. Tall hollyhocks swayed in the breeze, holding their stately cups stiff and upright, and there were tiger lilies, as well as the dielytra, with its row of hanging pink and white blossoms, from which the children made boats, rabbits, and other fantastic figures. In some of the old-time gardens, the small, thorny Scotch roses intermingled with the red and white roses of York and Lancaster. Little wonder that the perfume of their blooms was wafted through the air, although they were hidden among the taller roses, and there was no visible trace of their presence. One walked along the broad sidewalks of the old-time cities, expecting to find at every turn a garden of flowers. Not even a glimpse did they obtain, for the gardens of those days were not in view, but hidden away behind high board fences which have now in many cases been changed for iron ones, thus giving to the public glimpses of the central arbor and the long line of path with brilliant bloom on either side. One reason that the gardens in the olden days were hidden from view was that the houses, more especially the Salem ones, were built close to the sidewalk, and there was no chance for flowers in front or at either side. [Illustration: PLATE X.--Whittier Garden, Danvers, Mass.] [Illustration: PLATE XI.--Peabody Garden, Danvers, Mass.] Most of the noted old gardens have long since become things of the past, but a few are still left to give hints of the many that long ago were the pride of New England housewives. The estate of the late Captain Joseph Peabody at Danvers, Massachusetts, was at one time famed for its old-fashioned garden. This lay to the right of the avenue of trees that formed the driveway to the house. These trees were planted in 1816 by Joseph Augustus Peabody, the elder son of the owner. The garden proper was hidden from view, as one passed up the driveway, but lay at the front of the house. In its center was a large tulip tree, which still stands, said to be one of the oldest and largest in the country. One of the unique features of the grounds, and one that has existed since the days of Captain Peabody's occupancy, is a small summer-house, showing lattice work and graceful arches. Its top is dome-shaped, surmounted by a gilded pineapple. There is, however, another historic summer-house on this estate. It was formerly on the Elias Hasket Derby property, and was built about 1790. This was purchased by the present owner of the estate, who had it moved to her grounds, a distance of four miles, without a crack in the plaster. It was built by Samuel McIntyre, and is decorated with the pilaster and festoons that are characteristic of his workmanship. Four urns and a farmer whetting his scythe adorn the top. Originally a companion piece was at the other end, representing a milkmaid with her pail. This latter figure was long ago sold by the former owner and placed with a spindle in its hand on the Sutton Mills at Andover, Massachusetts, where it stood for many years until destroyed by fire. The house itself contains a tool room on the lower floor, while at the head of the staircase is a large room, sixteen feet square, containing eight windows and four cupboards. It is hung with Japanese lanterns, and the closets are filled with wonderful old china. Its setting of flowers is most appropriate. At Oak Knoll in Danvers is still left the garden that the poet Whittier so much loved. It stands at the side of the house, bordering the avenue that leads from the entrance gate. The paths have box borders, and inside is a wealth of bloom, the central feature being a fountain which was a gift from Whittier to the mistress of the home. It was here he loved to come during the warm summer afternoons to pace up and down, doubtless thinking over and shaping many of his most noted poems. The garden has been carefully tended, and it shows to-day the same flowers that were in their prime during his life. Another fine example of a box-bordered, old-time garden is seen at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the estate of Mrs. Charles Perry. Here the colonial house stands back from the main road, with a long stretch of lawn at the front. Passing out of the door at the rear, one comes upon a courtyard with moss-grown flagging that leads directly to the garden itself, fragrant with the incense of old-time blooms. At Indian Hill, the summer home of the late Major Benjamin Perley Poore at West Newbury, much care has been given to the gardens to keep the flowers as they were in the olden days. A feature of this estate, in addition to the gardens, is a shapely grove of trees at the rear of the mansion, that took first prize years ago as being the finest and best-shaped specimens in the county. Many of these trees were named for the major's friends, and they bear names well known to New Englanders. More than a century ago, when Salem was the trade center of the world, her gardens were renowned. These gardens were at the rear of the dwellings, and it was here that the host and his guests came for their after-dinner smoke, surrounded by the flowers that they loved. The first improvements in garden culture were made by one George Heussler, who, according to Captain Jonathan P. Felt, came to America in 1780, bringing with him a diploma given him by his former employers. Previous to this period he had served an apprenticeship in the gardens of several German princes, as well as in that of the king of Holland, and was, in consequence, well qualified for the work. The first experience he had in America in gardening was at the home of John Tracy in Newburyport, where he worked faithfully for several years. Ten years afterwards he came to Salem to take charge of the farm and garden of Elias Hasket Derby, Senior, at Danvers, and later worked in other gardens in the city of Salem, where he lived until his death in 1817. From the records we glean that on October 21, 1796, Mr. Heussler gave notice that he had choice fruit trees for sale at Mr. Derby's farm, while a newspaper of that date informs us that the latter gentleman had recently imported valuable trees from India and Africa and that he had "an extensive nursery of useful plants in the neighborhood of his rich garden." His son, E. Hersey Derby, had a garden of great dimensions at his estate in South Salem, or, as it was then called, South Fields. This was in 1802, and for a long time the fame of this rare and beautiful garden was retained. Both of the Derby gardens were worthy of attention, and it is said by those in authority that in the Derby greenhouse the first night-blooming cereus blossomed. This was in 1790, and the flower was the true _cereus grande flora_, not the flat-leaved cactus kind that is now cultivated under that name. It was largely the influence of the beautiful Derby gardens that gave to Salem its impetus for fine garden culture. Who knows how many romances have been enacted in the old-fashioned gardens of long ago! They were fascinating places for lovers to wander and in their vine-clad summer-houses many a love-tale was told. The sight of an old-time garden recalls to-day the early owners, and in imagination one can hear the swish of silken skirts as the mistress of the home saunters down the central path to take tea with friends in her beloved arbor. There were warm friendships among neighbors in those days, and the summer season was marked by a daily interchange of visits; and so the old-time garden is fraught with memories of bygone festivities and perchance of gossip. After the close of commerce, the Derby Street houses, formerly occupied by the old merchants, gradually became deserted, and new houses were sought in different parts of the town, farther removed from shipping interests. Chestnut Street was the location of many of these new homes, and here the beautiful old-fashioned gardens were shown at their best. These were usually inclosed, and were reached by a side door, opening directly into a veritable wealth of bloom. Among the extensive gardens cultivated here was a smaller one containing a greenhouse. This was owned by John Fiske Allen. Mr. Allen was an ardent lover of flowers, and was always interested in adding some new and rare specimen to his collection. From Caleb Ropes in Philadelphia he purchased seed of the _Victoria Regia_, the water lily of the Amazon. These plants blossomed for the second time in our country on July 28, 1833, the grounds being thronged with visitors during the time of their blossoming. This fact was called to the attention of William Sharp, who had illustrations made for a book on the subject. The following year an extension was made to the greenhouse, and more seed was planted, which had come from England, and, in addition, orchids and other plants were grown. The Humphrey Devereux house stands almost directly across the street from the Allen house. This garden, under the care of the next owner, Captain Charles Hoffman, became famous, for here the first camellias and azaleas in this country were planted. One of the former plants is still seen in a greenhouse in Salem. Captain Hoffman had a well-trained gardener, named Wilson, whose care gave this garden a distinctive name in the city. This garden is now the property of Dr. James E. Simpson, and it shows like no other the direct influence of olden times. There is the same vine-clad arbor for the central figure, and the plants which are grown behind box borders are the same that grew in our grandmothers' time. This scheme has been carefully carried out by the mistress of the house, who is passionately fond of the old-time blossoms. In the garden of the Cabot house on Essex Street, the first owner of the house imported tulips from Holland, and, during the time of their blossoming, threw open the garden to friends. The later owners improved the garden by adding rare specimens of peonies and other plants, and have kept the same effects, adding to the gardens' beauty each year. While the old-fashioned garden has gone into decline, yet the modern-day enthusiast has brought into his formal gardens the flowers of yesterday. The artistic possibilities of these have appealed so strongly to the flower lover that they have been restored to their own once more. The box border is practically a thing of the past, having been replaced by flower borders of mignonette and sweet alyssum, which afford a fine setting for the beds. Like pictures seem these old-fashioned gardens, framed with thoughts of days long gone by, and one unconsciously sighs for those days that are gone, taking with them the sweet odor of the flowers that grew in our grandmothers' time. CHAPTER V HALLS AND STAIRWAYS The colonial hall as we have come to think of it--dignified and spacious, with characteristics of unrivaled beauty--was not the type in vogue in the first years of the country's settlement, but rather was the outgrowth of inherent tendencies, reflecting in a measure the breadth and attractiveness of the English hallway. The earliest dwellings were built for comfort, with little regard for effect, and they showed no hallways, only a rude entrance door giving directly upon the general and often only apartment. Sometimes this door was sheltered on the outside by a quaint closed porch, which afforded additional warmth and protection from the driving storms of rain or snow; but it was never anything more than a mere comfort-seeking appendage, boasting no pretentions whatever to architectural merit. Crude, indeed, such entrances must have seemed to the stern Puritan dwellers, in comparison with those of their ancestral abodes; and it is not to be wondered at if in secret they sometimes longed for the hallways of their boyhood, where, after the evening meal in the winter season, the family was wont to gather about the roaring fire, perchance to listen to some tale of thrilling adventure. The first American hall came in with the building of the frame house, erected after the early hardships were over, and the colonists could afford to abandon their rude cabin domiciles. This was really little more than an entry, rarely characterized by any unusual features, but it served as a sort of introduction to the home proper, and was dignified by the title of hallway. The hall in the old Capen house at Topsfield, Massachusetts, belongs to this type. [Illustration: PLATE XII.--Saltonstall Hallway, about 1800.] Later came the more pretentious hall, typical of the gambrel roof house, that enjoyed so long a period of popularity. This was generally a narrow passage, with doors opening at either side into the main front apartments, and with the staircase at the end rising in a series of turns to the rooms above. The first turn often contained in one corner a small table, which held a candlestick and candle used to light a guest to bed, or a grandfather's clock, the dark wood of its casing serving as an effective contrast to the otherwise light finish of the apartment. Not infrequently the hall was solidly paneled, and a built-in cupboard or like device was sometimes concealed behind the paneling; or, as in a dwelling in Manchester, Massachusetts, it contained an innovation in the form of a broad space opened between two high beams, halfway up the staircase, arranged, no doubt, for the display of some choice possession, and showing beneath a motto of religious import. [Illustration: PLATE XIII.--Hallway, Lee House, 1800.] In the better class of houses of this period, the hallway sometimes extended the width of the dwelling, opening at the rear on to the yard space. This type was the forerunner of the stately attractive hall that came into vogue in the last half of the eighteenth century, and continued in favor during the first years of the nineteenth century, with the advent of the wooden and brick mansion. Belonging to the earlier class are the Warner and Stark halls in New Hampshire. The former is paneled from floor to ceiling, the white of the finish now mellowed to ivory tones, and serving to display to advantage the fine furnishings with which it is equipped. At the rear it opens upon a grassy yard space, shaded by tall trees, thought to be the site of the old slave quarters, long since demolished. The walls show several adornments, among the most interesting being the enormous antlers of an elk, which, tradition tells, were presented to the builder of the dwelling by some of the Indians with whom he traded, as an evidence of their friendship and good will. The latter hall is of similar type, entered through a narrow door space and continuing the width of the dwelling; it ends at the rear in a quaint old door that shows above its broad wooden panels a row of green bull's eyes, specimens of early American glass manufacture, still rough on the inside where detached from the molding bar. This door gives upon an old-time garden plot, fragrant with the blooms of its original planting, and preserving intact its early features. Rare bits of old furniture are used in the equipment of this hall, and the paneled walls are hung with family portraits. When unwearied toil had made living considerably easier, and many of the merchants had amassed fortunes, there sprang up, in both the North and the South, those charming colonial mansions that were the fit abode of a brave race. They demanded hallways of spacious dimensions, and into favor then came the broad and lofty hall, embodying in its construction the highest development of the colonial type. Quite through the center of the house this hall extended, from the pillared portico and stately entrance door, with its fan lights and brazen knocker, to another door at the rear, through the glazed upper panels of which tantalizing glimpses could be obtained of tall hollyhocks and climbing roses growing in the old-fashioned garden just without. [Illustration: PLATE XIV.--Hallway, Tucker House, about 1800.] In a measure this hall was a reproduction of the English type, particularly in its spaciousness of dimension. Unlike this type, however, it lacked the dominant influence of the fireplace, and in its construction it showed several independent features, all tending to emphasize the attractive dignity suggested in the broadness of outline. Often an elliptical arch spanned the width at about one third the length, generally serving to frame the staircase, and tending to make dominant the attractiveness of this feature. This was usually little more than a skeleton arch, being a suggestion, rather than a reality, sometimes plain, and sometimes slightly ornamental. This feature is shown in the Lee hall at Salem, and in the main hall of the old Governor Wentworth house at Little Harbor, New Hampshire. This latter hall is particularly interesting, not only for its beauty of construction, but also for its historic associations. Under its arch, framing the fine old staircase, men prominent in the history of the State and country have passed, and on the walls and over the door are still seen stacks of arms, thirteen in number, the muskets of the governor's guard, so long dismissed. [Illustration: PLATE XV.--Hallway, Wentworth House, 1750.] The most important feature of all these halls was the staircase, and in its construction the greatest interest was centered. Generally it ascended by broad, low treads to a landing lighted by a window of artistic design, and continued in a shorter flight to the second floor apartments. It was always located at one side, and generally near the rear, to allow the placing of furniture without crowding. The balusters were usually beautifully carved and hand turned, with newel posts of graceful design; and sometimes even the risers showed carved effects. The cap rail was usually of mahogany. Hard wood was sometimes used in the construction of the staircase, the treads in this event being dark and polished, while soft wood painted white was also much used. The finish of the walls in this type of hall varied. Some were entirely paneled, others showed a quaint landscape paper above a low white wainscot, and still others showed hangings of pictorial import, framed like great pictures. To the last-named class belongs the Lee hall at Marblehead, considered to be one of the finest examples of its type extant. Black walnut is the wood finish here, and the hangings, designed by a London artist, are in soft tones of gray, beautifully blended, and represent scenes of ruined Greece, each set in a separate panel, handsomely carved. Occasionally, to-day, a staircase of the spiral type is found,--a type that possesses certain satisfying characteristics, but which never enjoyed the popularity of the straight staircase. Some few of the staircases in the old Derby Street mansions at Salem are of this type, as is the staircase at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, the poet Whittier's last residence. The common name for this type of staircase was winder. A large number of representatives of the finest type of the colonial hall are scattered throughout the North and South, and their sturdiness of construction bids fair to make them valued examples indefinitely. One particularly good example is shown at Hey Bonnie Hall, in Bristol, Rhode Island, a mansion built on Southern lines, and suggesting in its construction the hospitality of that section. Here the hall is twenty feet wide; the walls are tinted their original coloring, a soft rich green, that harmonizes perfectly with the white woodwork and the deep, mellow tones of the priceless old mahogany of the furnishings. A well-designed, groined arch forming a portion of the ceiling, and supported at the corners by four slender white pillars, is one of the apartment's attractive adjuncts, while the dominant feature is the staircase that rises at the farther end, five feet in width, with treads of solid mahogany and simple but substantial balusters of the same wood on either side. The upper hall is as distinctive as the lower one, and exactly corresponds in length and width. Wonderful old furnishings are placed here, and at one end is displayed a fine bit of architectural work in a fanlight window, overlooking the garden. One wonders, when viewing such a hall as this, how this type could ever have been superseded in house construction, but with the gradual decline in favor of the colonial type of dwelling, it was abolished, and in place of its lofty build and attractive spaciousness, halls of cramped dimensions came into vogue, culminating in the entry passage typical of houses built toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Happily, present-day house builders are coming to a realizing sense of the importance of the hallway, and are beginning to appreciate the fact that, to be attractive, the hall must be ample, well lighted, and of pleasing character. With this realization the beauty of the colonial hall has again demanded attention, and in a large number of modern homes it has been copied in a modified degree. CHAPTER VI FIREPLACES AND MANTELPIECES It is a far cry from the fireplaces of early times to those of the present, when elaborate fittings make them architecturally notable. We read that in the Middle Ages, the fire in the banquet hall was laid on the floor in the center of the large apartment, the smoke from the blazing logs, as it curled slowly upward, escaping through a hole cut in the ceiling. Later, during the Renaissance period, the fire was laid close to the wall, the space set apart for it framed with masonry jambs that supported a mantel shelf. A projecting hood of stone or brick carried the smoke away, and the jambs were useful, inasmuch as they protected the fire from draughts. From this time, the evolution of the fireplace might be said to date, improvement in its arrangement being worked out gradually, until to-day it is numbered among the home's most attractive features. It is interesting to note, in reference to these latter-day specimens, that many of them are similar in design to those of the Renaissance, Louis Sixteenth, and colonial periods. Not a few of the early fireplaces were of the inglenook type, a fad that has been revived and is much in evidence in modern dwellings; and many of them followed certain periods, such as the Queen Anne style and the Elizabethan design. Several, too, were topped with mantels, features practical as well as ornamental, which are almost always associated with the fireplaces of to-day. Many of the old mantels were very narrow, prohibiting ornamentation with pottery or small bits of bric-a-brac; they were so built, because the designers of early times considered them sufficiently decorative in themselves without any additional embellishment, and their sturdiness and architectural regularity seem to justify this opinion. Mantels and fireplaces of early Renaissance type show in detail an elegance that is characteristic of all the work of that period, the Italian designers being masters in their line. In the baronial halls of Merrie England, we find huge fireplaces, wide enough to hold the Yule log, around which, after the chase, the followers gathered to drink deep of the wassail bowl. Such pictures must have lingered long in the minds of the colonists in their new surroundings, and to us they are suggestive of the Squire in "Old Christmas," who, seated in his great armchair, close by the fire, contentedly smoked his pipe and gazed into the heart of the flickering flames, filled with the joy of his ancestral possessions. [Illustration: PLATE XVI.--Historic Fireplace at Ipswich, Mass.] Life with the early colonists was a stern reality. The climate here was far more rigorous than that of the motherland, and a home and a warm fire were the two necessities first demanded. Logs from the near-by forest afforded the former, while rocks taken from the clearings supplied the latter. The fireplaces of those days were perhaps the largest ever built in any land, some ten feet or more in depth, and broad enough to hold the logs which were stacked just outside the cabin door. The rude stones which formed the fireplace were piled wall fashion, the largest at the bottom and the smallest on top, the chinks between made strong by daubings of clay. Later, the builders gave a more finished effect to this feature, and the hearths were then extended many feet into the single large apartment, while on either side were placed rude, home-made benches with high backs, to shield the inmates from the cold felt outside the circle of the fire's warmth. [Illustration: PLATE XVII.--Old Fireplace in Wentworth House, Portsmouth, N. H.] At the rear of the fireplace was arranged a huge backlog, to afford protection to the stones, and also to throw the heat into the room. This was often of unseasoned timber, that it might last the longer, two feet in diameter, and eight feet or more in length. Firedogs were used to hold the smaller logs, while creepers were employed for the smallest of all, and to start the fire, small pine boughs and small timbers were heaped high, flint and tinder serving to ignite them. Once started, the fire was kept indefinitely, being carefully covered at night or piled with peat; above the blaze swung the soot-blackened crane, with its various pots and kettles. Such was the early colonial kitchen, the fireplace its dominant feature, the light from its glowing logs throwing into relief the sanded floor, bare, unplastered walls, and the rafters overhead. With the coming of prosperity, these rude log huts gave way to timber houses, two stories in height, and with their advent the better type of colonial fireplaces came into vogue. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--First Hob Grate in New England, Waters House; Mantel Glass and Fireplace, showing decoration of floral basket.] Dating as far back as the earliest fireplaces are found fire sets, as they were sometimes called, comprising the hearth accessories necessary for an open fire. The oldest of these sets, which were in use long before coal was burned as fuel, consisted usually of a pair of andirons, a long-handled fire shovel, and a pair of tongs. In some cases more than one set of andirons was included, for in the great, cavernous fireplaces of the colonists' log cabins, the high supports used for the heavy forestick and logs were not suitable for the smaller wood, and creepers had to be set between the large andirons to hold the short sticks in place. Bellows were often found beside the fireplace in those times, but the poker was rarely if ever included in fire sets, previous to the introduction of coal as a fuel. In material and design these fire sets, particularly the andirons, differed widely. Iron, steel, copper, and brass were the metals most commonly used for their construction, although in other countries even silver was occasionally made into fire irons. As for design, they ranged from the very simplest and most unpretentious styles up through the quaint dogs' heads to the grotesque figures and elaborately wrought pieces to be found among good collections of antique hearth accessories. Andirons for kitchen use were as a rule very plain and substantial. Sometimes they were merely straight pieces supported by short legs and having uprights of either plain or twisted metal, topped by small knots of some sort. They were probably most commonly made of iron, and not a few were rudely hammered and shaped on the pioneer blacksmith's anvil. It is consequently little to be wondered at that many of the andirons once used in colonial kitchens give one the impression of having been designed for strength and utility rather than for ornament. The better class of andirons in use during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries were for the most part of graceful, but, at the same time, simple and dignified designs. The finest ones were of brass, which was kept brightly polished by the energetic housekeeper. Short knobs or uprights were often placed a few inches back of the main uprights and served the double purpose of holding the forestick in place and of protecting the shining brass. Occasionally andirons were made in rights and lefts with the shanks curving outward from the short knobs where they joined the straight, horizontal supports. [Illustration: PLATE XIX.--Middleton House Steeple Top Andirons, and Bellows; Southern Andirons, Atkinson Collection.] Among other popular andiron designs of this period were the twisted flame, the urn topped, the queer iron and brass dogs with claw feet, the colonial baluster, and the steeple topped. Of these, the steeple-topped andirons were perhaps the rarest, while the colonial baluster pattern with ball tops was, without doubt, the most popular and commonly used. A good example of the style of andirons which came into favor during the latter half of the eighteenth century is found in the Hessian design. They take their name from the fact that the upright of each iron is cast in the form of a Hessian soldier, posed as if in the act of marching. Since this particular pattern first made its appearance immediately after the close of the American Revolution, it is not difficult to comprehend its significance, for it is a well-known fact that the patriotic colonists heartily hated the hired allies in the employ of King George of England who had fought against them. This humbling of the Hessian to service among the flames and ashes, although only in effigy, seemed to afford the Americans a great deal of satisfaction, if the great popularity of these andirons stood for anything. Probably no finer collection of colonial hearths is to be found anywhere than in Salem. The Derby Street mansions even now show wonderful bits of the skill which has made Salem a name synonymous of the best in the architectural world. McIntyre designed many of these, following in some cases the style of the decorator, Adams. Many of the mantels show a wonderful harmony of contour, capped by a simple shelf, for the most part unadorned. One such is seen in the Gove house on Lynde Street, its straight, simple lines affording dignity and grace that are most attractive. The decoration is the head of Washington, fixing the period of its construction about the time of the Revolution. Other popular decorations were the eagle, which came into favor at the same period as the Washington decoration, baskets of flowers, wonderfully delicate in their carving, garlands, and many such designs, in all of which McIntyre shows a versatility that, considering the limitations of his day, is truly remarkable. While many of the mantels were of wood, some few were of marble. Two such of special interest are to be found, one in the Thomas Sanders's house on Chestnut Street, and the other in Hon. David M. Little's residence on the same thoroughfare. The former shows an exquisite design, supported on either side by caryatids, gracefully carved; and the latter, of the same period, is practically of the same design. A third marble mantel is found in the home of the Salem Club, formerly the residence of Captain Joseph Peabody. This mantel is of Florentine marble and was imported by the captain in 1819. It is particularly beautiful in its finish, and has served as an inspiration for many similar mantels to be found in New England. Belonging to the early type is the quaint fireplace found in the hallway of the Robinson house on Chestnut Street. This apartment was formerly the kitchen, and the fireplace in its original condition was discovered in the process of remodeling. Upon investigation, it was found to be a composite of three separate fireplaces, built one within the other, and culminating outwardly in a small grate; and when opened, it showed portions of the old pothooks. It was restored to its original aspect, appearing to-day as it was first constructed, its narrow mantel adorned with rare bits of pewter. In what was formerly the home of Mrs. Nathaniel B. Mansfield in Salem, is a curious mantel, which was first owned by Mr. Fabens. It is one of the rarest bits of McIntyre's work, decorated with his best wrought and finest planned carving. Another fine mantel is in the home of Hon. George von L. Meyer at Hamilton, Massachusetts. This is as historic as it is beautiful, and was part of the original equipment of the Crowninshield house in Boston. Many of the later style fireplaces, more especially of the better class, showed firebacks. These were of iron, and were designed to keep the back of the fireplace from cracking. Some of these old firebacks had flowers for ornamentation, while others showed decoration in the form of family coats-of-arms. In the Pickering house on Broad Street, Salem, is a quaint fireback which was made in the first iron foundry at Saugus, now Lynn. This has on the back the initials of the then owners of the dwelling, John and Alice Pickering, inscribed as follows, "J. A. P. 1660." This same Alice Pickering was very fond of dress, and an old record of 1650 tells that she wore to church a silken hood. For this offense she was reprimanded and brought before the church, but was allowed to go when it was learned that she was worth two hundred pounds. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, fireplaces had come to be considered of great decorative importance, and in an account written in 1750 Isaac Ware says of them: "With us no article in a well-furnished room is more essential. The eye immediately falls upon it on entering the room, and the place for sitting down is naturally near it. By this means it becomes the most prominent thing in the furnishing of the room." The popularity of the fireplace was somewhat checked in 1745 through the invention of the Franklin stove, which immediately came into favor. These stoves were constructed of iron, with trimmings of rosettes and railing and knobs of varying size; in appearance they were very similar to the small, open fireplace with andirons for burning logs. As heat producers, however, they were a decided improvement over the old-time hearth, which in many cases smoked abominably, and sent much of the heat up the chimney instead of into the room. The new stoves proved economical, and there was but little waste of heat through the pipes connecting them with the chimneys. In the dining room of Harriet Prescott Spofford's house at Newburyport is one of these stoves, before which Whittier delighted to sit during his frequent visits to this old home. It is a fine specimen of its kind, and as interesting in its way as the quaint room which it graces. For many years this dwelling served as an inn, kept by one Ebenezer Pearson, being one of the favorite resorts for pleasure parties, and in the old-time dining room much brilliant parrying of wit took place, as distinguished visitors amiably chatted over their teacups. Later in the eighteenth century, another form of heating came into vogue. This was the fire frame, which appeared about thirty years after the invention of the Franklin stove, and in type was something of a compromise between the open fireplace and the stove, possessing certain characteristics of each. It was so arranged that it could be used in a fireplace that had either been filled in with brick, or finished with a fireboard, and in appearance was very similar to the upper part of a Franklin stove. Unlike the stove, however, it rested directly upon the fireplace hearth, instead of being raised from the floor. When coal first came into use, a Salem man saw it burn, and so impressed was he with its worth that he told Dr. George Perkins of Lynde Street about it. The doctor immediately ordered a barrel of the fuel to be brought down in a baggage wagon from Boston, and he also ordered a new-fangled stove of the hob grate order. The trial took place in the living-room of his home, and the neighbors gathered to watch it burn. So great was the success of the venture that a load of coal was ordered, and it landed at the North River wharf, where the water was then so deep that vessels could easily come to pier there. The cargo consisted of from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy tons, considered an enormous load at the time. The first coal burned in a stove was in Wilkes-barre, Pennsylvania, where Judge Jesse Fell, in the main room of the old tavern, in February, 1808, started the first coal fire. Previous to that time coal had been burned in open forges, under a heavy draught, by a few blacksmiths, but it had never been adapted for household purposes, and the discovery that it could be used changed it from a useless thing to something of great value. In 1812 Colonel George Shoemaker discovered coal in the Susquehanna Valley, and he took twelve tons of it to Philadelphia to sell. He disposed of two tons, but was compelled to give the rest away, as people considered him a fraud, proving that the use of coal was not general at this period. The hob grate came into use in 1750, a few years after the advent of the Franklin stove, and it proved especially valuable for the burning of coal, when that product became popular. At first it was known as "Cat Stone," but later was called hob grate, by which name it is known at the present time. Fenders of brass or iron were generally used with these grates, a small one placed close to the fire to prevent the ashes from falling over the hearth, and a larger one arranged around the entire fireplace. Although hob grates were popular in Northern houses, they were much more frequently used in the South. Tiles were little used in America until the hob grate era, when they seem to have come into vogue. They were used to surround both hob grates and Franklin stoves. Some of them showed decorations of religious subjects, while others, like a set in a Salem house, told in pictures the story of �sop's Fables. There is a tiled fireplace still in existence in the Saltonstall-Howe house at Haverhill, Massachusetts, a dwelling originally owned by Dr. Saltonstall, the first medical practitioner in the city. This fireplace, in the dining-room, shows a double row of tiles, depicting a series of Scriptural events, and it is equipped with a fender of ancient hammered brass, a family heirloom. The date of the fireplace can be definitely determined without knowledge of the time of the erection of the house from the fact of the absence of a mantel above. Another similar fireplace adorned with quaint Dutch tiles is shown in the Pickering house living-room. Like the Saltonstall one, this fireplace has a beautiful, ancient fender of brass and a pair of bellows that were made by Rev. Theophilus Pickering, a preacher in Essex, Massachusetts, who succeeded the Rev. John Wise. The first hob grate ever placed in a Salem home is to be seen in the Waters house on Washington Square. It is topped with one of McIntyre's famous mantels, showing that the original fireplace was brought down to be used with the grate. Elias Hasket Derby, one of Salem's most famous merchants, had a beautiful estate where Market Square now stands. The house, which was a marvel of elegance, stood in the center of the square, surrounded with terraced gardens that swept to the water's edge. After his death the house was too large and elegant to be kept up, and it was torn down and the land sold. The timbers of the house, the wood carving, and mantels were purchased by Salem house owners, one hob grate finding its way to the old Henry K. Oliver house on Federal Street. This dwelling, which was built in 1802 by Captain Samuel Cook for his daughter, who married Mr. Oliver, shows old-time fireplaces in many rooms, one of brass being found in the parlor. This was the first of its kind ever placed in a Salem home, and it has a grate, on either side of which are brass pillars about three feet in height, with brass balls on top. A brass band extends from pillar to pillar below the grate, and the fender is also of brass. The mantel above is elegantly carved, and came from the Elias Hasket Derby mansion. A soapstone fireplace with grate is shown in the General Stephen Abbot house on Federal Street, where General Abbot, who served under Washington, entertained the latter during his visit to Salem. Behind this fireplace is a secret closet, large enough to conceal three men, where, during troublous times, slaves were hidden. With the advent of the furnace, many beautiful fireplaces were closed up, or taken away to be replaced by modern ones that lacked in every respect the dignity and grace of the colonial specimens. Happily this state of affairs was of short duration, and to-day the fireplace in all its original charm is a feature of many homes. To be sure, it is now a luxury rather than a necessity, but it is a luxury that is enjoyed not only by the wealthy classes, but by those in moderate circumstances as well, who appreciate the great decorative advantages of this feature. Surely there is nothing more homelike than the warm glow of blazing logs, and it is a delight to sit before the sputtering flames, and enjoy the warmth and glow, as did our ancestors in the long ago. CHAPTER VII OLD-TIME WALL PAPERS The records of many old-time features are scanty in detail, and, in consequence, their meaning is differently and often wrongly interpreted. Even one who has spent years in delving into the past secures facts that differ materially from those obtained by some one else who has spent a like time in research, and thus accounts of varying dependency are propounded for reference. This is especially true in tracing the origin of the old picture wall papers that, with the revival of colonial ideas, are again coming into vogue. One may prate about the papers of to-day, but they cannot compare either in style or in effect with these early types, which show designs patiently and carefully worked out by men who were masters of their craft, and who, while lacking the advantages afforded the designers of the present, nevertheless achieved results that have never been surpassed. This fact is especially noteworthy, and it is wholly to the credit of these old-time craftsmen that their products are to-day an inspiration to architects and home builders who are seeking the best in the way of interior decoration. When wall papers first came into use is uncertain, for various authorities with apparently good reason set different times. China claims the honor of having originated them, as does Japan, while Holland boasts the distinction of having first introduced them into other lands. We know for a certainty that wall papers fashioned in strips three feet long and fifteen inches wide were made in Holland centuries ago and introduced into England and France, and latter-day specimens, of similar type, are to be found in the homes of the colonists in our own land. The printing of these decorative wall papers was at first done from blocks, much as books were printed in early times. While it may not have been block printing, a unique wall hanging of like type was to be seen until within the last few years in a colonial house on Essex Street, at Salem--the Lindall-Andrews dwelling, built in 1740 by Judge Lindall. This wall paper, printed and hung in squares, adorned the parlor at the left of the hallway, and before its removal a reproduction was made by Bumstead for a descendant of the first owner to use on the walls of a room in her summer home. Dr. Thomas Barnard, minister of the First Church, who succeeded in arranging for a compromise at the time of Leslie's Retreat, lived in this dwelling during his pastorate, and on the walls of the hallway he caused to have painted by one Bartol of Marblehead, father of Dr. Cyrus Bartol, a series of wonderfully realistic pastoral scenes, that have never been removed and are still to be seen, although their brightness has been dimmed by time. Pictorial wall paper did not come into general favor in Europe until the eighteenth century, the period that marked the adoption of the long roll still in vogue. To be sure, this type had been used much earlier by the Chinese, but machinery for its fashioning was not invented until the latter half of the eighteenth century. Up to this time, wall paper was made in small squares and laboriously hung,--a fact that made it expensive and accordingly prohibitive to all but the wealthy classes. Jackson of Battersea in 1744 published a book of designs taken from Italian scenes and bits of sculpture. These were pictures done as panels and printed in oils, and resulted in the adoption of printed wall paper throughout England. From that time on, as their cost grew less, wall papers were extensively used in the motherland, which fact accounts for the general adoption of this type of wall hanging by the colonists, as the new land grew richer, and square, substantial homes were built. In the early days of the colonies, there were few mechanics who were able to furnish settings for the new homes, and consequently the home builders were forced to depend on foreign lands for most of their furnishings. Among these, wall hangings were not included, due partly to the fact that there was no place for them in the rude cabins of early times, and partly because they were not then in general use. Wall papers were first brought to this country in 1735, though, owing to their expensiveness, they were not used to any extent until many years later. The frugal housewife preferred to paint the walls either in soft gray tones, with a mixture of gray clay and water, or with yellow paint, ornamented with a hand-painted frieze of simple design, often supplemented by a narrow border stenciled above the chair rail. The earliest examples of this work depicted the rose, the poppy, the violet, or the pink, followed later by depictions of human interest, such as Indians, wigwams, forest scenes, etc. This idea has been carried out in the recently renovated Kimball house at Georgetown, Massachusetts, where the mistress of the home has used for wall adornment hand-painted friezes of soft-tinted flowers and emblematic designs. Later, wall papers were brought here in quantities, and while a number of these rare old hangings have been removed and replaced by others of modern type, yet there are many left, each rich in memories of bygone days. The stories connected with them will never be known, save the legends which have been handed down from generation to generation, and which the present grandames love to repeat, as they sit at twilight by the open fire, and the roaring of the logs recalls to mind the olden days. Much of the wall paper brought here was made to order from accurate measurements, and much was carefully selected in accordance with previous instructions. Often special patterns were purchased for a new home by a young lover, and into their selection went fond and happy thoughts of the bride-to-be. Even to this day one occasionally finds, stored away in some old attic, rolls of priceless paper which had been brought here years ago and never used. To the student and dreamer such a discovery is rich in association, and even to the practical home maker it is fraught with suggestions. There is something genuine about it, a touch of quaintness and simplicity that, for lack of a more accurate term, we call colonial. From one such attic, not so very long ago, were brought to light rolls of rare old paper, which had been hidden away under the eaves for forty years. Upon investigation this was found to be the Don Quixote pattern, one of the three rarest types known, depicting the story of this quaint character from the time of his leaving his home accompanied by his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, to the time of his return, a sadder and wiser man. The scenes are worked out in soft gray tones, wonderfully blended, providing a harmonious and attractive ensemble. On the walls of a third-story room in the Andrew house on Washington Square, Salem, is shown a wonderful wall paper, representing an old-time English hunt. In the first picture of the series the soft green of the trees furnishes a contrasting background for the red coats of the hunters who, on prancing steeds, with yelping hounds grouped about, are ready for the start. Then follow the run over hill and dale, past cottages where wondering peasants gape in open-mouthed admiration at the brilliant train as it flashes by, and the bringing of the fox to bay, ending with the luncheon upon the greensward, showing the huntsmen and their ladies fair enjoying a well-earned repast. [Illustration: PLATE XX.--Cupid and Psyche paper, Safford House.] When this dwelling was first built, the parlor, at the right of the hallway, was papered in a rare old hanging, that was removed when defaced, the owners at the time giving little thought to its value. In the room, since its erection, has hung a great, handsomely framed mirror, occupying an entire panel space. Behind this mirror, a short time ago, when the room was to be repapered, a panel of the first wall covering was discovered, as distinct in coloring and detail as the day it was placed there. It is one of twelve panels,--consisting of twenty-six breadths each five feet seven inches long by twenty inches wide, fifteen hundred blocks being used in its printing,--depicting the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, Psyche's lack of faith, and the sad ending of the romance, and is a pattern that is numbered among the most noted designed. The panel found here has been preserved, and the old mirror hung in place hides it from view. Such papers are a keen delight to lovers of the colonial, for they convey their meaning clearly and attractively in well-chosen and harmonious coloring. Contrasted with present papers, depicting designs figured or flowered, they show their worth, and it is little wonder that architects have discovered their fascination, and are having old ideas in new dress depicted on the walls of many modern dwellings. The colonists understood harmony in home decoration, and their wall hangings as well as their furniture were carefully chosen. They purchased papers to suit their apartments, and the colors were selected with a view to the best effect, so that the soft white of the woodwork might be in keeping with their pictorial value. Consistency is the keynote of the colonial interior, and it is this feature that has given to homes of this type that touch of distinction that no other period of architecture possesses. [Illustration: PLATE XXI.--Venetian paper in Wheelwright House, Newburyport.] The old wall papers all represent foreign scenes, those of France and England predominating, the latter in a greater degree than the former, though the French papers were more highly finished than the English. When the colonist became prosperous, and the newest fashions of the motherland were eagerly copied, wall papers of both types were imported; many of these are still preserved, showing shadings done by hand with the utmost care, and colorings of lovely reds, blues, and browns, all produced by the use of from fifteen to twenty sets of blocks. [Illustration: PLATE XXII.--Roman Ruins paper, Lee Mansion, Marblehead.] One of the most exquisite of French papers is shown in the Knapp house at Newburyport, Massachusetts, built by a Revolutionary hero, at the time of the erection of the Lee Mansion at Marblehead. This paper is thought to have been fashioned in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and in type it is like that found on the hall of the "Hermitage," Andrew Jackson's residence near Nashville, Tennessee. It is produced in wonderful shades of soft green, red, peacock blue, and white, all undimmed by time, and it represents scenes from Fénelon's "Adventure of Telemachus," a favorite novelty in Paris in 1820. [Illustration: PLATE XXIII.--Adventures of Telemachus paper, Nymphs Swinging.] Other fine examples of this type of paper, which have never been hung, are still preserved in the home of Major George Whipple at Salem, having been imported about 1800. These show different scenes, including representations of gateways and fountains, with people in the foreground. Natural scenes were favorite themes with many designers, one such example being a Venetian scheme still shown on the walls of the Wheelwright house in Newburyport, a fine, colonial dwelling, built a hundred years ago by an ancestor of William Wheelwright, whose energies resulted in the first railroad over the Andes. This paper is found in the drawing-room, and another, illustrative of a chariot race, is shown in one of the chambers. The Bay of Naples was another favorite theme with designers; in fact, it was numbered among the best-liked subjects. Its faithfulness of detail and exquisite coloring are no doubt responsible for this popularity, and then, too, no other subject could better bear repetition. Other favorite views were scenes of France, more particularly of Paris, and these types were in great favor during Washington's administration and that of John Adams, though later they lost caste. The new landscape papers suggest the old ones, though they are unlike them in tone and character, except in cases where specimens have been taken as models and copied with faithful exactness. Such instances, however, are rare. The best examples of old specimens of this type date from twenty-five years prior to the Revolution up to about fifty years afterwards. Fine examples of such paper are still to be seen at the Lee Mansion at Marblehead, now the home of the Marblehead Historical Society. These, like many others, were made to order in England by accurate measurements, proof positive of this fact being gleaned a few years ago when the panel between the two windows in the upper hall was peeled off, and on the back was found the following inscription, "11 Regent Street, London. Between windows, upper hall." They are all excellently preserved, and constitute probably the most remarkable set in America. For the most part, they are done in gray, outlined in black, and depict old Roman ruins, set like framed pictures, in alternation with strange heraldic devices, like coats of arms. In some of the rooms the papers are in sepia tones, showing castellated scenery, sailboats gliding over lakes, and peasant figures loitering along the shore. Another interesting wall paper is found at Hillsboro, New Hampshire, in the home of Governor Pierce, father of Franklin Pierce, fourteenth President of the United States, which is now used as an inn. The room that it adorns is set apart, and the pattern depicts galleys setting sail for foreign lands, while to the music of the harpsichord, the gentry dance upon the lawn. In its prime this estate was one of the show places of Hillsboro, with beautiful gardens surrounding the house, and interesting features in the way of peacocks that proudly displayed themselves to the gaze of admiring guests. Unlike these old-time papers, and yet equally as distinctive, is the wall covering in the hall of the Warner house at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This is a series of paintings, extending the length of the staircase, and constituting the most unique wall adornment in the country. Ever since the hall was finished, there has been displayed at the staircase landing, in the broad spaces at either side of the central window, life-sized paintings of two Indians, highly decorated and finely executed, thought to be representations of fur traders of early times; but the rest of the series was lost to view for a long time until about sixty years ago, when the hall was repaired. During the process of renovation, four coats of paper that had accumulated were removed, and as the last coat was being torn off, the picture of a horse's hoof was disclosed. This led to further investigation, and soon a painting of Governor Phipps, resplendent in scarlet and yellow, seated on his charger, was brought to light, followed by the representation of a lady carding wool at a colonial spinning-wheel, who had been interrupted in her task by the alighting of a hawk among chickens. Next came a Scriptural scene, that of Abraham offering up Isaac, followed by a foreign city scene, and several other sketches, covering in all an area of between four and five hundred square feet. The entire paintings to-day are presented in their original beauty, and they lend to the fine hall an atmosphere of interesting quaintness. But whatever their type, the old wall hangings are always attractive. Sometimes it is the subject that most strongly appeals, again it is the coloring, or it may be the effect, but in any event each and every one serves the purpose for which it was intended, and a room hung with old-time wall paper is undeniably beautiful, affording a setting that modern effects rarely equal. CHAPTER VIII OLD CHAIRS AND SOFAS There is a charm about old furnishings that cannot fail to appeal to all lovers of the quaint and interesting, and a study of their characteristics is a diversion well worth while. Old-time cabinet-makers understood the value of bestowing upon details the same consideration they gave main features, and, as a result, their work shows that harmony that gives to it an interest not found in later types, and which, more than anything else, has helped bring it into prominence in the equipment of modern dwellings. While this is true of all colonial fittings, it is especially true of the chair, for this article more than any other depicts the gradual betterment of rudely formed beginnings culminating in the work of the three master craftsmen, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, whose designs, even to-day, serve as an inspiration to high-class cabinet-makers. In the early days of the colonies, chairs were scarce appurtenances, and the few used, generally not more than three in number in each home, and known as forms, were very rudely constructed, being in reality stools or benches, fashioned after the English designs then in vogue. Later, these developed into the high-backed settles, which are so much used in a modified form to-day. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV.--Queen Anne, Fiddle Back; Queen Anne, stuffed chair; Dutch Chair, carved; Empire Lyre-backed Roundabout on Chippendale lines, 1825.] By the middle of the seventeenth century, chairs had come into more common usage, the type then in favor being strong and solid of frame, with seat and back covered with durable leather or Turkey work. Generally, the legs and stretches were plain, though sometimes the legs and back posts were turned. Specimens of the turned variety, which are the first seats that really could be termed chairs, are very scarce to-day, the best examples being found at Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth, in the home of Hon. John D. Long at Hingham, Massachusetts, in the Heard house at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and in the Waters collection at Salem, where one specimen shows a covering which is a reproduction, having been fashioned to exactly match in design and texture the original one it replaced when that one wore out. The year 1700 marked the introduction of the slat-back chair, which enjoyed a long period of popularity. The number of slats at the back, characteristic of this type, varied with the time of making, the first specimens showing but two, while later types showed five. These chairs were solid and strong of frame, and in Pennsylvania were made curved to fit the back, affording a comfortable support. They included, in addition to ordinary chairs, armchairs, and it was to an armchair of this make that Benjamin Franklin affixed rockers, thus inventing the first American rocking-chair and inaugurating a fashion that has never waned in popularity. This first rocking-chair and its contemporaries, which did not antedate the Revolutionary War by any great number of years, had rockers that projected as far in the front as they did at the back,--a peculiarity that makes them easily recognizable to-day. Later, this objection was remedied, and the present type of rocking-chair came into fashion. [Illustration: PLATE XXV.--Chippendale, Lord Timothy Dexter's Collection, H. P. Benson; French Chair, showing Empire influence; Flemish Chair; Banister-back Chair.] From 1710 to 1720 the banister-back chair was much used, though it never enjoyed equal favor with the slat-back type. Instead of the horizontal slats typical of the earlier model, the banister-back chair showed upright spindles, usually four in number, and generally flat, though sometimes rounded at the back. Its seat, like that of the slat back, was of rush, and it was fashioned of either hard or soft wood, and almost always painted black. One interesting example of this make is found at "Highfield," the ancestral home of the Adams family at Byfield, Massachusetts, having been brought here in the early days of the dwelling's erection by Anne Sewall Longfellow, who came here the bride of Abraham Adams, and who brought the chair herself from her old home across the fields that divided the two estates, so that no harm would befall it. It has been carefully treasured by her descendants, and to-day occupies its original resting place by the side of the wide old fireplace, where, on the night before the Battle of Bunker Hill, leaden bullets used in that historic encounter were cast. Slightly later than these types came the Dutch chair, sometimes severely plain in design, and again pierced and curiously carved. One excellent example of this model, formerly owned by Moll Pitcher, the famous soothsayer of Lynn, who told one's fate by the teacup at her home at High Rock, is now preserved in a Chestnut Street dwelling at Salem, and shows the straight legs and straight foot of the best class of the Dutch type, and the usual rush seat. Most Dutch specimens found their way to Dutch settlements, though many were brought to New England direct from northern Holland. Easy chairs which came into style not long after the slat-back model, proved the most comfortable type yet invented, and served as a welcome variation from the straight and stiff-backed chairs up to that time in favor. They were stuffed at back and sides, and covered with patch or material of like nature. Owing to the amount of material which was used in stuffing and covering them, their cost was considerable, varying from one to five pounds, according to the style and quality of covering used. The most common and popular chairs of the eighteenth century were those of the Windsor type, manufactured in this country as early as 1725, and deriving their name from the town in England where they originated. The story of their origin is most interesting. The reigning George of that day, the second of his name, saw in a shepherd's cottage a chair which he greatly admired. He bought it to use as a model, thus setting the stamp of kingly approval on this type, and bringing it into immediate favor. It is not related what color he had his chairs painted, but the general coloring employed was either black or dark green, though some chairs were not painted at all. The finish of the back of this type was varied to suit different fancies, some few having a comblike extension on top as a head-rest, while others had a curved or bowlike horizontal top piece, like a fan. These types originated the names comb back and fan back, by which Windsor chairs of these types are known. American manufacturers in general copied the English styles, though they also developed several variations. Many American Windsors, particularly the fan backs, are equipped with rockers, the date of their manufacture coming after the Revolution. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--Chippendale Arm Chair, showing straight, square legs; Chippendale Chair; Chippendale, one of a set of six, showing Rosette design; Chippendale Arm Chair with Cabriole legs, Ball and Claw feet.] But Windsor chairs, popular and fine as they were, by no means were the best type developed in this century, for this period marked a great change in the history of cabinet-making, resulting in the development of wonderful designs, exquisitely blended and finished. First on the list of the new master craftsmen was Chippendale, who in 1753 issued his first book of designs, and whose models were given first consideration for more than thirty years. Then, in 1789, followed Hepplewhite, and two years later came Sheraton, while lesser lights, such as the Brothers Adam, Manwaring, Ince, and Mayhew, all contributed their share to the betterment of chair manufacture. The chair seems to have been Chippendale's favorite piece of furniture, and in its design he has blended the finest points in French, Dutch, and Chinese patterns. His first chairs showed Dutch influence, and for these he used the cabriole leg, greatly improving its curving, with the Dutch or ball-and-claw foot, the latter more frequently than the former. His chair seats were broad and flat, and in his backs he disregarded the usual Dutch types, his uprights generally joining the top at an angle, and his top piece being usually bow-shaped. His backs were a little broader at the top than at the bottom, and he used the central splat carved and pierced. Next, his chairs showed Louis the Fifteenth characteristics, notably in the splats, which were often handsomely carved and pierced. During this time he produced his ribbon-back chair, though his best chairs, showing this influence, were upholstered armchairs, with legs terminating in French scroll feet. Later, he introduced in his chairs Gothic and Chinese features, even though the backs still preserved the Dutch and French features. Finally, the details of the several features became much mixed, and at length resulted in a predominance of Chinese characteristics. Most of his chairs were done in mahogany, which was a favorite wood in his day, and his skill is especially displayed in the wonderful carving which is typical of much of his work. Not only are his chairs excellently proportioned, but they are so substantially built that even to-day, after more than one hundred and fifty years' usage, they show no sign of wear. [Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--Empire Sofa; Cornucopia Sofa; Sofa in Adams style, about 1800.] Not a little of his work found its way to New England homes, many fine specimens at one time gracing the dwelling of "Lord" Timothy Dexter, Newburyport's eccentric character, who made his fortune by selling warming pans to the heathen, who used the covers for scooping sugar, and the pans for sirup. His home was filled with quantities of beautiful furniture, including many excellent Chippendale chairs. Hepplewhite, the second of the master cabinet-makers, succeeded Chippendale in popular favor in 1789, and his furniture, while much lighter and consequently less durable than that of his predecessor, showed a beauty of form and a wealth of ornamentation that rendered it most artistic. He employed not only carving of the most delicate and exquisite nature, but inlay and painting as well, introducing japanning after the style of Vernis-Martin work. The shield or heart-shaped back is one of the characteristics of his chairs, though he also used oval backs and sometimes even square backs. They are all very graceful and delicate, with carved drapery, and many of the shield-shaped type show for decoration the three feathers of the Prince of Wales, Hepplewhite being one of the Prince's party when sentiment ran strong during the illness of George III. Other decorations employed by him were the urn, husk and ear of wheat. The wood he generally used was mahogany, though occasionally he made use of painted satinwood. [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.--Sheraton, mahogany frame, about 1800; Sheraton with solid arms and straight, slender legs; Sheraton, about 1790. Note the graceful curve of the arms.] Following close upon the heels of Hepplewhite came Sheraton, the last of the three great masters in cabinet-work. His designs were delicate, but strong, and generally his chair backs were firmer than those of Hepplewhite. When he had exhausted other forms of decoration, he indulged his fancy for brilliant coloring, mixing it with both inlay and carving. Later he embellished his work with the white and gold of the French style, finally employing features of the Napoleonic period, such as brass mounts and brass inlay. His last seats show the influence of the Empire type, which came into vogue in the early days of the nineteenth century, and the curved piece which he brought in about 1800 served as a model for nearly a century, though it was not adorned with the brass mounts that he had intended. His greatest glory as a constructor lies in his skillful workmanship and his excellent choice of woods,--satinwood, tulipwood, rosewood, applewood, and occasionally mahogany, being his selection; and as a decorator in the color and arrangement of his marquetry, as well as in the fact that he never allowed consideration of ornament to affect his work as a whole. Among the chairs he fashioned was one that has come to be known in this country as the Martha Washington chair, from the fact that a specimen of this type was owned at Mount Vernon. Several excellent examples of his chairs are found at "Hey Bonnie Hall," in Bristol, Rhode Island, one of them being the chair in which John Adams is said to have died. Chairs of all types are found in any number of old-time homes, those in Salem being as representative as any, for to this old seaport more than to any other, in proportion, rare furnishings were brought. Many of the pieces are of historic interest, such as the old-time chair of Flemish make, brought over in the ship _Angel Gabriel_, which was wrecked off the coast of Maine; much of its cargo was recovered, including this old chair, which was later brought to Salem in another ship. Another fine old specimen is the armchair, for many years the prized possession of Hawthorne, and an heirloom in his family, which he presented to the Waters family, in whose possession it now is. With the passing of Sheraton, Empire models held full sway, and, while some of these were comfortable and graceful, the majority were massive, stiff, and extreme in style. Early nineteenth-century chairs manufactured in America are of this type, some of them of rosewood, some of mahogany, and some painted, while many are of mahogany veneer. But while chairs were the most common seats in the colonies, they were not the only ones, for old-time homes were supplied with sofas as well. To be sure, these did not come into use until many years after the advent of the chair, the time of their appearance being about the year 1760; the majority shown are the work of the master cabinet-makers. Sheraton models are those most commonly found here, though the earliest specimens are of Chippendale manufacture, excellent examples of his work being still found, many of them characterized by Louis XV features. A special design of Chippendale's much in favor was "The Darby and Joan" sofa, in reality a double seat, which model, as well as many others that became very popular, was never shown in his catalogue. [Illustration: Plate XXIX.--Sheraton, about 1800; Sofa, about 1820; Sofa, about 1820, winged legs.] Sheraton sofas came in vogue about 1800, their graceful designs and handsome carving making them at once favorites. Many of these showed eight legs, though later, when his designs became heavier and more elaborate, only four legs were used. The coverings of these later specimens were generally haircloth, fastened with brass nails. The Brothers Adam also made some of the sofas found here, their designs showing a peculiar slanting or curved leg which is known as the Adam leg, and which is also characteristic of some of Sheraton's pieces. About 1820 what was known as the Cornucopia sofa came into style, the carving at the arms showing horns of plenty, which design was often repeated in the top-rail, while the hollow made by the curve of the decoration was filled with hard, round pillows, known as "squabs." Contemporaneous with this type was the Empire sofa, with winged legs and claw feet, often covered with haircloth. One example of this model, exquisitely carved, is in the possession of a Salem family. But whatever their type or characteristic, the old-time chair and sofa are distinctive, and it is a tribute to their worth that in the equipment of modern homes designers are reverting to them for inspiration. Likewise it is with relief that we welcome them, after so long harboring the ugly monstrosities that followed in favor the Empire types. CHAPTER IX SIDEBOARDS, BUREAUS, TABLES, ETC. The present interest in antiques has brought into prominence the old-time furnishings, and as a result ancient hiding places have been forced to give up their treasures, and hitherto little appreciated relics are now reinstated with all their original dignity. The architect of the twentieth century is responsible in a great measure for this, for in his zest to give to modern homes the best that could be afforded, he has seen fit to revert to early types for inspiration; and with the revival in favor of these specimens, genuine antiques have come to be appreciated, and their value has correspondingly increased. Included among these old-time pieces are chests, which in early days did service for numerous purposes. In America they were first fashioned by workmen who came to this country from foreign lands, through the efforts of the first governor, John Endicott, many of them being employed on plantations, where much of their work was done. These chests were made of the wood of forest trees, which then grew so plentifully, and are rude and simple in construction, in striking contrast to the rich, hand-carved, mahogany chests, which many of the colonists brought from the motherland, packed with their clothing, and which, later on, were shipped here in large numbers. Old inventories frequently mention both these types of chests, those manufactured here generally being spoken of as "owld pine chests." They were principally used in the chamber and at one side of the fireplace in the general room, the larger ones to hold family necessities, such as the homespun clothing and anything else that needed to be covered, while the smaller ones served as receptacles for the skeins of wool from which the handy housewife fashioned the family wearing apparel. Such chests were an intimate part of the home life in those early times, and viewing their quaintness it is not hard to picture the scenes of which they were a part, when the house mother, in her homespun gown, busily spun at her old clock wheel, drawing the skeins from the chest at her side, while the little ones, seated on rude benches before the open fire, carefully filled the quills for the next day's supply. Mayhap the eldest daughter fashioned on the big wheel, under her mother's guidance, her wedding garments, weaving into them loving thoughts of the groom-to-be, while the song in her heart kept time to the merry whirr of the wheel. Of the larger type of the "owld pine chest" is the treasured specimen at Georgetown, known for many generations as the magic chest, and so called from the feats it is said to have performed in the early days of its history, such as walking up and down stairs, and dancing a merry jig when a deacon sat upon its lid. It stands to-day quiet and demure, giving no hint of its former hilarious tendencies, though it is no longer used for its original purpose,--the storing of meal for the family use. [Illustration: PLATE XXX.--Sheraton Night Table; Block Front Bureau Desk, owned by Dr. Ernest H. Noyes, Newburyport, Mass.; Cellarette, 1700, owned originally by Robert Morris.] With the betterment of financial conditions, the rude pine chests went out of fashion, and in their stead beautiful hand-carved specimens were brought from foreign countries. Many of these show exquisite coloring, any number of examples being still preserved; sometimes they were placed in the chamber, but more frequently on the landing at the head of the stairs. [Illustration: PLATE XXXI.--Dressing Glass with Petticoat legs; Empire Bureau, 1816.] Chests with drawers were in fashion as early as 1650, according to the old records, many of them handsomely carved, and all showing little egg-shaped pieces upon the drawers. Some of the finest of these old chests are shown in the Waters collection at Salem. Generally they were fashioned of oak, and a frequent characteristic was a lid on top which lifted off, allowing for the packing of large articles, while the drawers at the front were used for storing smaller things. Sometimes chests are found constructed on frames, but not often. This type was probably fashioned to hold linen, being the forerunner of the high chest of drawers which came into vogue in the later days of the seventeenth century. Up to some time after 1700, chests continued in general use, though it is doubtful if they were made in any great quantity after 1720. The number of legs found on these chests varies with the time of making, some showing six, while others have but four. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII.--Chest of Drawers, 1710; Six-legged High Chest of Drawers, about 1705.] With the advent of the high chest of drawers, other woods than oak, such as walnut and cherry, and later mahogany, became popular; the use of these woods produced a marked change in chest designs, notably in the massiveness of build. Many specimens of both types are found throughout New England, one very fine example of the early type showing the drop handle, which is a characteristic of the early chest, being included in the Nathaniel B. Mansfield collection. Another of the later type, now in the Pickering house, carefully stored away that no harm may befall it, shows on one side the initials of Colonel Timothy Pickering, who used it during his army days. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.--Dressing Table with Brass feet; Bureau and Dressing Glass.] Dressing tables were made to go with these chests, following the same lines of design, though constructed with four rather than six legs. These came to be designated as "lowboys" in distinction from the chests mounted upon high legs, which were known as "highboys." Examples of both were found in the old General Abbot house at Salem, until a few years ago; while a highboy, showing bandy legs, a characteristic of the earliest high chest, is a prized possession in the Benson home, also at Salem. Many highboys and lowboys show inlay work, one of the former, of English manufacture, being found in the Warner house at Portsmouth, while another, of different style, is shown in the Osgood house at Salem. Lowboys were made to correspond with every style of the high chest, and frequently they were constructed of maple, beautifully marked, after the fashion of the chests made of walnut and cherry. Highboys sometimes took the form of a double chest, showing drawers extending almost to the floor, and mounted on varied-style feet, frequently of the claw-and-ball type. These, as well as lowboys, continued to be regularly used until well into the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Hepplewhite's book of designs, published in 1789, shows models for chests of drawers extending almost to the floor, but it is not probable that they were made in any number after this date. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--Block Front Bureau Desk, owned by Nathan C. Osgood, Esq. One of the best specimens in New England; oak paneled Chest, about 1675.] The desk occupied a prominent place in New England homes in the early days of the colonies, though not to the extent of the other and more necessary articles of furniture. It varied in size and design according to the period of its manufacture, the earliest type being little more than a box that locked, with flat or sloping top, and placed on the table when used. This type was often ornamented with rich carving, and sometimes it was arranged upon legs, with a shelf beneath. The form in common use about 1700 was known as the "scrutoir," being in reality a desk resting on a chest of drawers; the sloping front opened on hinges, and afforded a writing desk. One example of this type, fitted with ball feet, and showing secret drawers and many cupboards, is found in the Ropes house in Salem, being an inheritance from the original owner, General Israel Putnam. Another of equal interest is in the home of Mrs. Guerdon Howe at Haverhill. This originally belonged to Daniel Webster, who was at one time a law partner of Mr. Howe's grandfather. This desk, which was brought to the house after the death of Webster, is filled with old and interesting letters. [Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--Secretary, showing shell ornamentation; Highboy with shell ornamentation and ball and claw feet, 1760; Highboy with shell ornamentation.] The earliest "scrutoirs" were of foreign manufacture, chiefly English, but by 1710 they were being made in this country. These early American "scrutoirs" are very plain in form, generally made of cherry, though occasionally one is found constructed of walnut. After the first quarter of the eighteenth century, American manufacturers improved their output, and made some very handsome specimens of the type known as bureau desks. One excellent example of the very early bureau desk of foreign make is found in the possession of the Alden family, having been brought to this country in the _Mayflower_ by John Alden himself. By 1750 the desk in its various forms had come to be considered an important part of the household equipment, and in their manufacture many woods were employed, such as mahogany, cherry, apple, and black walnut, sometimes solid, and sometimes veneered. The following thirty years saw the advent of many new styles, two of which were more dominant than the rest; one of these was the development of the early "scrutoir," and the other the forerunner of the bookcase desk or secretary. During this period Chippendale designed several desk models, the most notable of which was probably his secretary, characterized by Chinese fret designs in the glass doors, and an ingenious arrangement of secret drawers. In 1790 Hepplewhite followed with his designs, many of which were severe in contour, being wholly straight in front and arranged with two glass doors above, sometimes fancifully framed. Then Sheraton's desks and secretaries came into favor; many of his models showed practical features and beautiful finish, and after 1793 were generally characterized by inlay work, with the lower portion consisting of a cupboard instead of the usual drawers. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--Dressing Table, 1760; Mahogany Commode, collection of Nathan C. Osgood, Esq.] During these latter days of the eighteenth century, beautiful secretaries were manufactured in this country, ranging in form from the very plain to the very elaborate, but after 1800, when some few French Empire desks found their way here, serving as models for American manufacturers, the domestic output became less graceful, depending for beauty on the grain of the veneering used. Many of all these types of desks are found throughout New England, one particularly good specimen being shown in the Noyes house at Newburyport. This belongs to a period antedating the Revolutionary War, and shows the oval which is characteristic of its type. Among its features are paneled doors one and one half inches thick. Though the date of their introduction was not until well along in the eighteenth century, sideboards are prominent among the old-time furnishings, and in the highest state of their development they were articles of beauty and utility. In reality they are a development of the serving table, which came into vogue in the first half of the eighteenth century, and in form are a combination of the serving table and its accompanying pieces. At first they were little more than unwieldy, unattractive chests of drawers, gradually developing to their best form, with carved front, slender legs, and other details. In their construction, mahogany was chiefly used, inlaid with satinwood, holly, tulip, and maple, and veneered occasionally with walnut; and they showed in their finished lines the best work of the skilled craftsman. The last type of the old sideboard showed Empire characteristics, being more massive than graceful, but yet containing features of marked beauty. While Chippendale is often credited with having made sideboards, no record of this fact is found among his designs, though he makes frequent mention of several large tables, which he calls sideboard tables. No doubt, many of the sideboards credited to him were made by Shearer, a designer to whom belongs the credit of originating the sideboard, and who included in his designs pieces with curved and serpentine fronts, a style which was later perfected by Hepplewhite. There is no doubt that Hepplewhite made sideboards, for in his book of designs he shows a sideboard model, with a deep drawer at each end and a shallow one in the center, as well as four different designs in the table form, without the drawers, which are similar to Chippendale's work. Hepplewhite's sideboards are characterized by square legs, often ending in the spadefoot, the ends sometimes square and sometimes round, the front swelled, straight, or curved, affording a great variety to his work. Generally his sideboards are made of mahogany, and almost invariably they are inlaid, though occasionally they show carving. Sheraton also designed sideboards, and while in general appearance they somewhat resemble Hepplewhite's designs, in many respects they are superior. They were equipped with any number of devices, such as cellarets, closets for wine bottles, slides for the serving tray, and racks for plates and glasses, and many of them are lavishly ornamented with inlay work, though few show carving. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--Sheraton Sideboard; Simple form of Sheraton Sideboard, with line inlay around drawers and doors. Date 1800.] Examples of all these types are found in the colonies, one of Hepplewhite design showing the fine inlay work and graceful proportions typical of his pieces and originally owned by Governor Wentworth, being in the possession of a Salem family. Another, of Sheraton make, is preserved in the Stark home, having been brought here from the Governor Pierce house at Hillsboro. Another of like make is found in the Howe house, having originally belonged to an ancestor of the present owner, Governor John Leverett, governor of Massachusetts during the time of King Philip's War. Shortly after 1800, the style of sideboard greatly changed, becoming more massive, with the body placed nearer the floor, and the legs shorter. French Empire styles influenced the manufacture in this country to a great extent, though carving and the grain of the wood were still depended upon for ornament, rather than the French features. The best examples of this type are to-day found in the South; 1820-1830 saw the advent of a plainer model, being in reality an adaptation of one of Sheraton's types; in the following years other variations were made, all showing the heaviness of the Empire style in a more or less degree, until about 1850, when the architectural merits of the sideboard disappeared. Intimately associated with the sideboard is the table which probably shows more variety in design than any of the other old-time furnishings. From the table board or top used in 1624, square, oval, or round in contour, evolved the butterfly table popular about 1700, many examples of which are found throughout Connecticut. These followed in form the outline of a butterfly, and were supported by pieces of wood shaped much like the rudder of a ship. Other types popular here were the Dutch table, the hundred-legged table, the dish-top table, and the tea table. The first table used in this country was the table top, which was literally a board made separate from its supports, which was taken off and placed at one side of the room after meals. This showed different forms, and was known by different names, one called the chair table, and so constructed that when not in use it served as a seat, being probably the most unique. It was invariably fashioned with drawers. Included in the later designs were writing tables fashioned by Sheraton, showing elegant carving at the back, the most decorative of these, known as the "Kidney" based table, being used either for writing or as a lady's worktable. Another model of Sheraton's was a worktable known as the Pouch Table, arranged with a bag of drawn silk. These were often fitted with drawers and a sliding desk, which drew forward from beneath the table top. The dining table of this period showed the pillar and claw style with central leg fixed to a block, on which the table hinged. This principle received the support of the English people for many years, and Sheraton tables of this make had four claws to each pillar, and castors of brass. So much did Sheraton designs resemble those of French artisans that only close inspection will decide as to which cabinet-maker a certain piece belongs. Following this type came the telescopic table, showing extensions fitted through slides moving in grooved channels. Other later tables were card tables, which closed and could be stood against the wall when not in use, the pie-crust table of the Dutch style of make, and the table with scalloped moldings carved from solid pieces of wood, with legs terminating in claw-and-ball feet. Tables of Empire design often have brass feet and lyre supports, while others show the rope carving and acanthus leaf. Popular types of the later days of the eighteenth century were Pembroke tables, small and of ornamental design, with inlaid tops and brackets to supply the two side flaps, as well as Pier tables, circular or serpentine in shape. CHAPTER X FOUR-POSTERS At no time since the days of the Renaissance has interest been so keen in interior decoration as it is at the present day, not only as regards the main living rooms of the home, but the sleeping apartments as well. This has resulted in a revival of old-time features, and the chamber fittings of the present in many cases are similar in type to those of early times, when purely classical designs were in vogue,--models that have never been surpassed in beauty by later designers, though many a fine piece of furniture has been made since then by expert cabinet-makers. Early specimens showed a delicacy of touch and a mastery of thought that gave to them a lasting place in the world of architecture, and while the coming historian may dilate upon twentieth-century models, he cannot make any comparison that will in any way be derogatory to these wonderfully fine old pieces. In early days, labor was a very different problem from what it is to-day, years being often spent in the making of a single specimen of furniture, and, indeed, in some countries, a workman has been known to have spent his whole life in the fashioning of a single piece. Taking these points into consideration, one cannot wonder that early century pieces are still as perfect as they were the day that they left the makers' hands, and it is with regret that he views the hurry and rush of modern times resulting in the practical abolition of hand carving, and the introduction of machinery that has helped in the deterioration of the art. Reproductions, as they are made to-day, while in many cases very beautiful, cannot equal in finish the originals fashioned at a time when art was the first consideration. Fortunately, many genuine antiques are still in existence, and present interest for the most part centers in their types and periods of manufacture. With so many periods and so many makers, it is not surprising that mistakes in these respects are sometimes made, especially as regards the bedstead. For the best of these, one need not search farther back than the seventeenth century, for the most valuable specimens were made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of these to-day bringing from two to three hundred dollars apiece. Of course, these fine beds were not the first beds used here, though no doubt the earlier types, as well as these later specimens, were imported from England, along with the other household furnishings. If any bedsteads were made here, they were undoubtedly simple and unpretentious, along the lines of the settle and board tables. The articles of furniture devised by people of different countries for comfort in sleep vary according to climate and the progress of civilization. The bed of our primeval ancestors consisted of dried mosses and leaves, with a canopy of waving leaves above. Later, through the need of shelter from the frost and protection from crawling insects, a rude structure consisting of a framework of poles, covered with branches, was substituted. Probably the first authentic representation of a bed is found on ancient Egyptian tombs, depicting a long, narrow receptacle, suited for but one person. Greek and Roman beds, representations of which have also been found, are of the single type, resembling in shape the Flemish couches made in the latter half of the seventeenth century, while the Greek thalamos, another type, showed a framework of great beauty, curiously carved, and decked with ivory, gold, silver, and precious stones. Roman luxury outvied that of Greece, as is shown by specimens that have been found in Pompeii, and the hangings of the bed, while receiving special attention, seemed to be less highly prized than the frame, probably on account of the mildness of the climate. The eleventh century saw the half-savage people of northern Europe building beds into the walls of their rooms, and fitting them with doors and sliding panels to insure against the cold. These cupboard couches are reproduced in a modified form in many summer homes to-day, being arranged like steamer berths. After the Norman Conquest, beds of this type came into favor in England, though they were quickly superseded by a great oaken bed with roofed-over top. This was arranged in the center of the room, and heavily curtained for protection against the wind that blew in through the cracks of the poorly hung doors and the unglazed windows, closed only by loosely fitted shutters. Many of these beds were of prodigious size, the most historic, "The Great Bed of Ware" to which Shakespeare alludes, being twelve feet square, built of solid oak, and finished with the most elaborate carving imaginable. This bed is known to have furnished sleeping accommodations for twelve persons at one time, and it has stood for nearly four centuries in an ancient inn, located in the town of Ware. In style, this is a four-poster, and doubtless marks the induction of this, the most expensive but the most popular bed of its day. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.--Bedstead in Middleton House, 1798.] Old-time four-posters consisted, as do those we see to-day, of four posts, supporting a tester, and connected laterally by sidepieces which were almost always undecorated, as the bedspread was supposed to fall over the sides of the bed and cover them. A headboard was considered almost indispensable, although it is absent in some cases. It was usually rather low and decorated with carving, more or less elaborate. The footboard was sometimes used, but was quite often omitted in the older specimens, and seems to have come into favor later on, as an additional detail. When the posts were lowered, the footboard rose into prominence, but this was not until after the first quarter of the nineteenth century had elapsed. Many of the beds had a canvas bottom, held in place either by iron rods or ropes, or sometimes by both. It was "sackcloth and ashes" at house-cleaning time in those days, for either kind required the united strength of several muscular arms to put it together. The hair mattress was unknown at that period, and in its place was used brown linen sacking filled with straw and buttoned at one side, so that the straw could be easily removed at any time. This formed the lower strata of the bed, and above it were laid innumerable feather beds, piled one above the other, so high that often steps were necessary assistants in getting into bed. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.--Sheraton type, in Kittredge House; Four-poster, about 1825.] In colonial homes, where bedrooms were fireless, curtains and hangings were important accessories of the bed to shield the sleeper from drafts. These were often made of linen, handspun by some member of the household, and while many were white, some were in colors. One of these, of blue and white homespun pattern, edged with hand-made ball fringe, has been in constant use for generations, and as yet shows not the slightest sign of wear. It is now owned by a fortunate Salem woman. [Illustration: PLATE XL.--Field Bedstead, slept in by Lafayette, in Stark Mansion. Owned by Mrs. Charles Stark, Dunbarton, N. H.] Many of these hangings were made of chintz and hand-embroidered linen, and in homes of limited means they were also made of patch, following the style of the quilt. Blankets were likewise home-made, of handspun wool, adorned with roses in each corner, which gave them the name of rose blankets. A blue and white homespun counterpane added the finishing touch, and often the hangings of the bed were of this same material, the curtains being drawn back loosely so that, on cold nights, they could be permitted to fall about the bed. Often both counterpane and hangings were finished with a hand-made netted fringe, varying in width from five to eight inches. While beds were a scarcity in the rude homes of our early ancestors, still they were sometimes brought here from over the seas, as is proven from an account written by Rev. Robert Crowell in his _History of Essex_, in which he speaks of two bedrooms in Darius Cogswell's house. These were divided off from the main room by handsome curtains that were stretched the whole way across, and, in the bed reserved for visitors, the guests of the night lay inclosed with curtains to exclude the night air; these, when drawn in the morning, allowed one to peer through the cracks in the shrunken logs at the world outside. Most of our ancestors, however, were content with much simpler beds than this, for mere frames, with curtains and valances, were most frequently used, the beds stuffed with straw or feathers plucked from live geese, or poultry, and laid on the floor. Among these early types are "Cupboard" or "Presse" bedsteads, frequently mentioned in the inventories from which we gather much of our information. These, when not in use, were fastened up against the wall, proving valuable space savers where space was limited. Bunks were another type of the early bed in use here, one specimen, used in early days for slaves who were in the family, being still shown at the Adams house at Byfield. Possibly the early settlers may have used a bed that is still in fashion among the Kentucky mountaineers, known as "Wild Bill." This is a one-poster, rather than a four-poster, and occupies a corner of the loft in a log cabin. The side and end of the cabin serve for headboard and one side of the bed; saplings nailed to the solitary post that runs from roof to flooring supply footboard and sidepiece; springy poles, running crosswise, uphold the home-made straw mattress and feather bed. Doubtless the rest of the mountaineer who uses this is sweet, but to one unused to it, it seems a diabolical bed! When life in the new country became easier, furniture of all kinds was brought here from England, much of it of the Queen Anne period. This comprised, among other details, four-posters made of black walnut, this wood having superseded English oak in popular favor during the preceding reign of William and Mary. Panelings and moldings that had done duty during the Jacobean period were retained in all their splendor, and to these were added the new feature of the claw-and-ball foot. Our oldest beds belong to this period, unless we consider Presse bedsteads or Cupboard bedsteads, already spoken of, as real beds. The Dutch name for such contrivances was "slaw-bank," and they might be said to be the forerunner of the latter-day folding bed. Mahogany was first used in England in the year 1720, and therefore it belongs to the Georgian period. Four-posters of this material, as constructed in the early days of their popularity, had slender and delicate posts, which were sometimes fluted and sometimes carved. In these earlier specimens the headboards were simply made and left undecorated. At this time great advance in the designing of furniture was made, for cabinet-makers published books of designs, and Chippendale, who was doubtless the greatest English exponent of his craft, designed beds with footpieces and sidepieces, carefully paneled and carved. He used tall and slender posts, and carving of the most elaborate nature. Genuine Chippendale beds are rare in America, and they are not common in England, seeming almost as if he had executed this piece of furniture less frequently than any other. We have, however, beautiful specimens which were modeled after Chippendale designs. In English furniture making, the brothers Adam held the supremacy from 1775 until the end of the century. They endeavored to restore the simply classical styles of Greece and Rome, with Greek ornamental figures, such as the acanthus, urns, shells, rosettes, and female heads. They made a smaller bed than the Chippendale pattern, with lower posts and less abundant carving. Hepplewhite's influence culminated some ten years later than that of the brothers Adam. He designed four-posters of attractive delicacy, used carved rosettes and a delicately carved beading by way of decoration, and delighted to place an urn-shaped section, lightly festooned with drapery, on the post where the sidepiece joins the standard. [Illustration: PLATE XLI.--Sheraton Four-poster; Four-poster showing decided English characteristics.] Sheraton was the last of the noted cabinet-makers of the Georgian period, commencing to publish his designs in 1790. They were distinguished for the use of inlaid work, and later on he developed painted designs. In his work he introduced many light woods, such as whitewood, satinwood, and sycamore, which, when painted green, was termed harewood. The trend of sentiment at that time seemed to be toward simplicity and delicacy. The last great change in the old four-poster was made, curiously enough, in deference to Napoleon, for it was through his influence that ancient Roman decorations, such as the laurel wreath and the torch, were revived. England had her mental reservations regarding this type, however, and by the time the fashion reached America it simply lowered the bedposts. It was the beginning of the end, however, and forty years later came the Renaissance of black walnut, and with it the relegation of the old four-posters to attic and storehouse, or else to the chopping block. Saddest of all, their owners were glad to see them go, on account of the difficulty of putting them together. In the revival of colonial fittings, the four-poster has again been restored to favor, and in many modern homes the old four-poster is the chamber's most pleasing feature. There are some wonderfully fine old four-posters in America. One of these, in the Howe house at Haverhill, showing slender posts, surmounted by the ball and eagle, is made of brass. Originally it belonged to the first owner of the dwelling, Dr. Nathaniel Saltonstall, a contemporary of George Washington, and a descendant of Sir Richard Saltonstall. It has never been out of the family since its importation, the present owner being the widow of the first owner's great-grandson. Historic through the fact that it once graced the chamber of Oliver Wendell Holmes is the exquisite four-poster now in a Salem house. This is characterized by a richness of design that is most attractive, and the hangings are in keeping with the exquisiteness of the whole. In this same dwelling is another old poster, this time of the low type, that came into vogue about 1825. This shows but little of the carving that is a feature of the older types. Other fine old four-posters can be found in Salem. One is of Hepplewhite make, showing the slender posts and fluting of his type, while another is considered one of the best specimens in New England, with a drapery of patch that is probably all of a hundred years old. At Dunbarton, New Hampshire, in the old Stark mansion, is a fine example of the Field bedstead, standing exactly as it did when Lafayette occupied it so many years ago, and still known by the name then given to it, the Lafayette bed. In the Middleton house at Bristol is a most interesting four-poster, done in white, the gift to a bride of long ago. Lately this has been repainted exactly as it was when first placed in the house, the design depicted, that of the bow and arrow, showing as clear and dainty as when first traced. In another chamber in this same old home is another four-poster that was brought direct from Leghorn. Both of these rare specimens have been in the family since the building of the homestead. Examples of these fine old beds are growing scarcer and rarer each year, and their value is correspondingly increasing. Some years ago they could be had almost for the asking, but with their revival in favor, their worth has increased. They depict an era that is associated with the best in the way of design and craftsmanship, and not a few of them have historic associations that render them particularly notable. CHAPTER XI MIRRORS The heavily freighted ships that came into the harbor in the days of Salem's commercial prosperity brought in their holds many valuables, including mirrors, several of which are to-day found in Salem homes. Not a few of these are ancestral heirlooms, closely interlinked with interesting family histories, and their depths have reflected the faces of many old-time belles. Even in the earliest days of the colonies, mirrors formed a part of the household accessories, for our Puritan ancestors, scorning as they did all pretence of personal vanity, did not forbear to glimpse their appearance before they wended their way to service on Sabbath morn. Proof positive of their use at this time is to-day in existence in the form of inventories that list the prices and tell odd, descriptive stories concerning them, as, for instance, a record of 1684 that speaks of "a large looking-glass and brasses valued at two pounds, five shillings." The origin of the mirror is shrouded in mystery and the time of its invention uncertain, but there is no doubt that rude reflectors were made to serve the purpose in South Europe and Asia, at least three hundred years before the Christian Era. These were made of metal, varied in shape, and they were considered necessary toilet accessories. All were highly polished, and several showed handles elaborately wrought. Small mirrors of polished iron or bronze were used by the early Chinese, who wore them as ornaments at their girdles, attached to a cord that held the handle or knob. Who knows but these may have been forerunners of the "vanity case" in use to-day! Small circular placques of polished metal known as pocket and hand mirrors came into vogue between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. These, too, were worn at the girdle, and placed in shallow boxes covered with a lid. The cases were of ivory, beautifully carved with representations of love, romance, and, less frequently, of the hunt. Looking-glasses when first used were fastened to the wall like panels, but in the fifteenth century they became movable. These earlier mirrors show a great variety of shapes, and were made of different kinds of polished metal. The Venetians undoubtedly made the first looking-glasses, having been the ones to discover the art of coating plates of glass with an amalgam of tin foil and mercury. For over a century they guarded their secret well, and it was not until 1670 that the art became known in England through the keenness of an Englishman named Lambert. Salem merchants sent their ships to Venetian ports, and an occasional mirror of this make is found here. One of these is owned in Salem. It is about a foot and a half in length, its frame of gilt surmounted by a cornice and gilt pineapple, with claw feet. The introduction of glass mirrors gave rise to a new industry,--the making of mirror frames. In this occupation, cabinet-makers found a new vent for their skill, since by far the larger number of frames were made of wood. Of course, there were a few odd frames made, such as those of glass fitted together at the joints with gilt molding, but the majority were of wood. The different styles are characteristic of certain periods or designers, and it is upon the frame rather than upon the glass that one must rely for value, as well as for date of manufacture. Previous to the Revolution, the colonists manufactured little furniture, and were dependent upon England, Holland, Spain, and France for their house furnishings, including mirrors. Many beautiful specimens thus found their way here, and many are still to be found in colonial homes. One such is owned in Salem. This is a Bilboa glass, an especially fine type, one of several still preserved in New England, principally in Marblehead. There is a popular legend that these old glasses were brought from the Bay of Biscay by sailors for sweethearts at home, though some authorities insist that they were imported from Italy and paid for with dried fish. However this may be, they are certainly excellent illustrations of the early craftsmen's skill. The distinctive feature of the Bilboa glass is a column of salmon-colored marble on either side of the gilt frame. This marble is glued or cemented in small sections to the wood, and in some cases strips of marble form the border around the frame. It is ornamented on top by a broken arch surmounted by an urn. Grotesque and grinning heads top the columns, and a narrow bead molding surrounds the glass and decorates the lower part in scroll design. [Illustration: PLATE XLII.--Girandole in George Ropes House, 1800; Girandole, 1800; Constitution Mirror, 1780.] The earliest type of looking-glasses came into vogue in the first half of the eighteenth century, during the reign of Queen Anne of England. The frames of simple wood gave little hint of the extravagant decorations that were to follow, the only ornamentation being gilded wooden figures and squat urns, which were occasionally used. [Illustration: PLATE XLIII.--Picture Mirror showing Dawn, in Adams House, 1703; English Georgian Mirror, 1750; Two-piece Looking-glass, 1750.] Owing to the extreme difficulty of making large pieces of glass, and also because it was not deemed prudent to waste the smaller pieces, many of the Queen Anne mirrors were made of two pieces of glass arranged so that one plate overlapped the other. Later, these parts were joined by strips of gilt molding. Several of these mirrors are still in existence, one of the earlier type being owned by Mrs. Walter L. Harris of Salem, showing a simple glass with gilt figure ornament. One of the finest mirror designers was Chippendale, who wrought out Chinese patterns, his schemes showing a wonderful weaving of birds, flowers, animals, and even human beings. One design, typical of his work, shows a flat wooden frame cut in graceful arches, with a gilded eagle perched on top with outspread wings. Gilt rosettes and flowers, as well as ornaments strung on wire, were frequently used by him, and are considered characteristic of his type. It was customary for the frames to rest on a pair of mirror knobs, which were fitted to the lower edge of the frame and screwed firmly to the wall. These knobs were often made of brass, but the most fashionable ones were of copper overlaid with Battersea enamel, and framed in rings of brass. Among the most quaint designs which were carried out on these mirror knobs were heads of prominent persons such as Washington, Lafayette, and Lord Nelson. Bright-colored flowers and landscapes, the American eagle, and the thirteen stars, representing the original colonies, were also frequently used, as were the queer designs of the funeral urn and weeping willow, that seemed to especially appeal to our ancestors' taste. By the year 1780 American mirror manufacturers had evolved a style peculiarly their own, and the glasses made at that time were known as Constitution mirrors. The frames were not unusual in design, generally being made of wood, in more or less elaborate shapes, but they were original in their decoration, especially in their tops. These generally were graced by the American eagle, the newly chosen emblem of the Republic, executed either in plaster covered with gilt, or in wood. A good example of the Constitution type is shown in the Lord house at Newton. The top shows the usual eagle decoration, though the cornice is overhanging, fixing the date of manufacture early in the nineteenth century. This mirror is especially historic, having belonged to the brilliant Revolutionary hero, Henry Knox, General Washington's most intimate friend. Another handsome mirror of the same period is one that was originally in the Harrod mansion at Newburyport. It was one of the few things saved when the house was burned at the time of the great fire in 1812. This mirror now hangs in the home of a lineal descendant of the Harrod family in Salem. It is in perfect condition, and shows the eagle top and draped sides. The overhanging cornice came into vogue early in the nineteenth century. A mirror characteristic of this date is shown in the living room at "Highfield," the Byfield home of the Adams family, built by Abraham Adams in 1703. It has a gilt frame of the ordinary picture type, and on account of its association is most interesting. A specimen of the same period is shown in the Lord house at Newton. This is decorated with the figure of a goddess sitting in a chariot drawn by two rams. The frame is of fine mahogany, with handsomely carved columns, simply ornamented. [Illustration: PLATE XLIV.--Oval Mirror, showing Acanthus leaves, once on Cleopatra's Barge, the first pleasure yacht built in America; Mirror, 1710, resting on ornamental knobs; Mirror, 1810, in Dudley L. Pickman House.] Other types of mirrors popular in the days of our forefathers were the mantel mirrors that came into favor early in the eighteenth century, first in England and later in America. Their greatest period of popularity was from 1760 until the commencement of the nineteenth century. Many of these glasses were oval in shape, though the majority consisted of three panels of glass separated only by narrow moldings of wood. This style was probably originated by some economical cabinet-maker who, in order to avoid the heavy expense which the purchase of large plates involved, designed these. They were most favorably received upon their introduction, and many of the old glasses to be found at the present day are of this style. One of the most valuable of these three-piece mantel glasses is that in the drawing-room of the Pierce-Nichols house on Federal Street at Salem, the frame of which has attracted the attention of antiquarians all over the country. It was made for a bride, who in 1783 came to be mistress of this old home, and it shows a finish of gold and white harmonizing admirably with the surrounding white woodwork, exquisitely carved by Samuel McIntyre, the noted wood-carver. Its principal features are slender, fluted columns twined with garlands, which fancy is repeated in the decorations of the capitals. Above the glass are two narrow panels, one of white ornamented with gilt, and the other of latticework over white. Just beneath the overhang of the cornice is a row of gilt balls, a form of decoration that came into style during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and which continued to characterize a certain class of mirrors for several decades. Late in the nineteenth century mirrors known as bull's-eyes and girandoles came into vogue. These were circular in form, the glass usually convex, and they were made by Chippendale, the Adam Brothers, and others. The fact of their being convex rendered them impractical for common use, though it allowed for elaborate framing, and they were employed rather for ornament than for use. Looking up the old definition, we find these glasses alone have the right to be called mirrors, and that all else save "circular convex" should, properly speaking, be termed looking-glasses. One good example of this type was in the George house at Rowley, Massachusetts, now demolished. It showed a heavy gilt frame, surmounted by an eagle. Originally, there were shown in Hamilton Hall, at Salem, two fine examples of girandoles, with glass pendants, which in the midst of lighted candles reflected myriad sparkles. Interesting, indeed, would be the tales they could tell of fair ladies in powder and patches, and courtly gallants who in the long ago gathered in this famous hall to tread the measures of the minuet! These girandoles were the gift of Mr. Cabot, and they are now replaced by simpler examples, the originals having been given to the Saltonstall family, in whose possession they still are. Of the late colonial looking-glasses, there are two general types, the earlier dating back to about 1810 and characterized by an overhanging cornice, beneath which pendant balls or acorns are frequently found, with frames of wood carved and gilded, or painted. Further decoration is found in a panel beneath the cornice ornamented with various designs, such as a horn of plenty, floral subjects, or classical scenes. In the later type, the cornice has disappeared, and the frame as a rule is more simply ornamented. The upper panel, however, has been retained, and almost invariably it shows a painting of some sort. Until within a comparatively few years, it was not a difficult matter to secure mirrors of this type, but the recent fad for collecting old furniture has caused many of the best specimens to be purchased, and, in consequence, really good colonial mirrors are rapidly becoming scarce, and one is a treasured possession. The Kittredge house at North Andover, Massachusetts, shows several fine examples of this later type, and other examples are to be found in the Lord house at Newton, and in several Salem residences. These show a great variety of panels, ranging from pastoral scenes to horns of plenty, and from ships to simple baskets of flowers. It is interesting to note, in connection with these old-time mirrors, the influence of the period reflected in the framing, and also how graphically the frame depicts the social life of its date of manufacture, and the country in which it was designed. There is a marked flamboyancy in the Venetian designs of the early eighteenth century, changed in the middle of the same century to a heavy splendor and inartistic grandeur. England, slightly earlier, gave examples of fruit which many think were designed by Gibbon, but which materially lack the freedom of his work. Scrolls and angles, arabesques and medallions, belong to the second half of the eighteenth century. Many such came to New England, and one of these mirrors is still seen in a Salem home. Its decorations hint of the influence of the Renaissance, and it shows medallions decorated with grotesque figures on either side of the upper panel. [Illustration: PLATE XLV.--Mirror, 1770; Lafayette Courting Mirror, Osgood Collection; Empire Mirror, 1810.] Perhaps as interesting as any of the old mirrors is the Lafayette mirror, one excellent example of which is seen in the Osgood house at Salem. This is small in size, surmounted with a painting of Lafayette, and is one of a great number designed in compliment to the beloved Frenchman's visit to Salem in 1784. It is known as the Courtney Mirror. Many of the fine old specimens to be seen in Salem were brought to New England at the time of the old seaport town's commercial glory, about the period of the Revolution, and previous to the restrictions following the War of 1812. These were halcyon days in Salem, "before the great tide of East India trade had ebbed away, leaving Derby Street stranded, its great wharves given over to rats and the slow lap of the water among the dull green piles." Probably there are few of these old-time mirrors but have been connected with interesting traditions and events, and it seems a pity that their histories have never been compiled, but have been allowed to pass unrecorded, leaving the imagination to conjure up scenes of joy and sorrow that have been reflected in their depths. Still, for all their unwritten stories each and every one possesses a glamor of mystery that makes the work of collecting them most fascinating. The personal note so prevalent in nearly all workmanship of past centuries is particularly noticeable in the looking-glass, and perhaps it is this very attribute more than anything else that lends so great a degree of charm and attractiveness to them. CHAPTER XII OLD-TIME CLOCKS There is something quaintly pathetic about an old colonial clock. Its sociability appeals to all home lovers, as it cheerily ticks the hours away, with a regularity that is almost human. The first clocks, if so they might be called, were composed of two bowls connected by an opening through which water trickled, drop by drop, from one to the other. Next came a simple contrivance consisting of a greased wick tied into knots. The smoldering of the lighted wick determined the flight of time. The first clock, which was made in 807, was given as a present to the Emperor Claudius. It was a small clock of bronze inlaid with gold, and was fitted with twelve small doors. Each one of these opened at a given time, and allowed tiny balls to roll out, differing in number according to the hour represented. Promptly at the strike of twelve, toy horsemen came prancing out, and closed every open door. This was a marvel of clock-making that attracted a great deal of attention. In 1335, a monk, Peter Lightfoot by name, constructed a wonderful clock, which he presented to Glastonbury Abbey. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many and varied kinds of clocks were made, and we are assured that this was a successful venture, even in the early ages, from the fact that in 1500 a clock-makers' union was formed. To one who is interested in the history of clocks, there is no better place to view them than in Europe, where the most skilled clock-makers lived during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Marseilles, Exeter, and Westminster Abbey are the homes of some of the most wonderful clocks in the world. Some of the most beautiful of these were made by Chippendale and Sheraton, the former manufacturing specimens that stood nine feet high and measured twenty-five inches across. On the door, was placed a reliable thermometer, while on the inner circle, the signs of the Zodiac were marked, the outer circle showing the movable features by means of a sliding ring. The manufacture of clocks in America began early in the eighteenth century. Among the earliest clock-makers was one Benjamin Bagnall, who learned his trade in England and settled in Boston in 1712. A record of a meeting of the selectmen of the town on August 13, 1717, reads: "that Mr. Joseph Wadsworth, William Welstead, Esq., and Habijah Savage, Esq., be desired to treat with Mr. Benjamin Bagnall about making a Town Clock," and according to the record in September of that year he was paid for it. The earliest Bagnall clock on record is of the Pendulum type, in a tall case of pine; on the inside of the lower door was written: "This clock put up January 10, 1722." Another, very similar to this type, belongs to the New England Historical Genealogical Society of Boston. The case, though plain, is handsome and unusual, being made of solid black walnut. Most of the cases, however, were made of pine, veneered. The use of this wood was characteristic of old American-made cases, while those of old English make were veneered on oak. A particularly fine Bagnall clock is in the Hosmer collection at Hartford, Connecticut. It is a black walnut veneer on pine. A peculiarity of the Bagnall make is the small dial, only twelve inches square. Above the dial is an arched extension, silvered and engraved with the name of the maker. Samuel Bagnall, son of Benjamin, has left a few good clocks, thought to be equal to the work of his father. The clocks of Enos Doolittle, another colonial maker, are not numerous enough to give him a prominent place among the great manufacturers. Nevertheless, he deserves much praise for the few good clocks which he has left behind. One of them is at Hartford, Doolittle's native town. The case is of beautifully carved cherry, ornamented with pilasters on the sides of the case and face; the top of the case is richly ornamented with scrolls and carvings. A circular plate above the dial has the legend "Enos Doolittle, Hartford." [Illustration: PLATE XLVI.--Willard Banjo Clock, 1802; Banjo Clock, 1804; Willard Banjo Clock, 1802.] There were many small clock-makers in colonial days, one, we might say, in every town, who left a few examples of their work; but none of them left the number or quality produced by the great clock-makers, the Willards. Benjamin Willard, who had shops in Boston, Roxbury, and Grafton, made a specialty of the musical clock, which he advertised as playing a tune a day and a psalm tune on Sundays. Aaron Willard, a brother, made tall, striking clocks. One of his productions, owned by Dr. G. Faulkner of Boston, has run for over one hundred and twenty years. On the inside of the case is written: "The first short timepiece made in America, 1784." It is a departure from the ordinary Aaron Willard clock, because it is so short. The case of mahogany stands only twenty-six inches high; and there are scroll feet, turning back. A separate upper part, with ogre feet, which can be lifted off, contains the movements. Simon Willard, another brother, in 1802 patented the "Improved timepiece" which later was known as the "banjo" because of its resemblance in shape to that instrument. The "banjo" which Willard manufactured had a convex glass door over the face, a slim waist with brass ornaments running parallel to the curve of the box, and a rectangular base, which was sometimes built with legs for a shelf, sometimes with an ornamental bracket on the bottom, in which case the clock was intended for the wall. The construction of these clocks was simple; the works were of brass, and capable of running eight or nine days. There was no strike, but this clock was a favorite, because of its accuracy. Hardly less famous than the Willards was Eli Terry, born April, 1773, in East Windsor, Connecticut. Before he was twenty-one, he was recognized as having unusual ingenuity at clock-making. He had learned the trade from Thomas Harland, a well-known clock-maker of the times, had constructed a few old-fashioned hanging clocks and sold them in his own town. He moved to Plymouth and continued to make clocks, working alone till 1800, when he hired a few assistants. He would start about a dozen movements at a time, cutting the wheels and teeth with saw and jack-knife. Each year he made a few trips through the surrounding country, carrying three or four clock movements which he sold for about twenty-five dollars apiece. Felt tells in his annals that "in 1770, Joseph Hiller moved from Boston to Salem and took a shop opposite the courthouse on the exchange." Later on, in 1789, we learn that Samuel Mullikin made an agreement to barter clocks for both English and West Indies goods, and also in exchange for country produce. So popular did they become that we learn that in 1844 there were in Salem ten clock-makers and eleven jewelers all working at this trade. While the colonists still imported many of their clocks, yet in 1800 clock-making had become such a thriving industry that wooden cases were constantly being made, the manufacture of the works being a separate field. [Illustration: PLATE XLVII.--English Grandfather's Clock, William Dean Howells; Collection of Old Clocks, property of Mr. Mills, Saugus, Mass.; Grandfather's Clock, formerly owned by President Franklin Pierce. Property of Mrs. Charles Stark.] One of the most interesting is a tall grandfather's clock, showing the moon above the face, at the Stark house in Dunbarton. This clock formerly stood in the old Governor Pierce mansion at Hillsboro. It is very handsome, showing fine inlaid work on the case. Varied in shape and size were the numerous clocks which were found in colonial homes in New England. They ranged from the tall grandfather's clock to the smaller wall and bracket pieces. One kind that was in use, though rarely seen to-day, is the table clock, a type highly prized by the colonists, and recorded as a fine timekeeper. By the early nineteenth century we find the making of American clocks had become so universal that they were to be found not only in many New England houses, but throughout the South and Middle states as well. Many of the rarest and oldest were at the plantation manors of Virginia and Kentucky as well as in New England. There are to-day in many houses colonial clocks valued not only for their worth, but for association's sake. One of these is in the home of Mr. John Albree at Swampscott, Massachusetts. It is considered one of the oldest of its kind in the United States, and was brought from England in the year 1635 by one John Albree, and has been in the family ever since. It is known as the weaver's clock, and has one hand only. These clocks are very rare, only a very few being known of. Singularly enough, few people, even those who are the most interested in clocks and their making, know much about their early history and construction. The purchase of a clock at the present time means not only the case, but the entire works as well. It was, however, far different in the early days, at least while the tall clocks were so popular. Transportation was difficult, so the clock peddlers contented themselves by slinging half a dozen clock movements over the saddle and starting out to find purchasers. After the works were purchased, and the family felt they had twenty pounds to spare, they called in a local cabinet-maker, and often the whole of the amount went into the making of the case. Naturally, a certain-shaped case was made to fit a certain movement, so that definite types of clocks were found, but it must be remembered that the case gave no indication of the period of the maker of the movements. [Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.--General Stephen Abbot Clock; Terry Shelf Clock, 1824; English Clock, with Ball ornamentation.] One of the first types of clocks made in America was the wall clock. This was set on a shelf through which slits were cut for the pendulum and weight cords to fall. These were known as "lantern," "bird cage," or "wag-at-the-wall," later replaced by the more imposing "Grandfather," which served a double duty as timekeeper and as one of the "show pieces" of furniture. The first known Terry clock was made in 1792. It was built with a long, handsome case and with a silver-plated dial, engraved with Terry's name. This clock, just as it was when Eli Terry set it going for the first time with all the pride which he must have had in his first accomplishment, is now in the possession of the Terry family. There was an interesting clock of this type in the General Stephen Abbot house on Federal Street, Salem, and another is still in the possession of Mr. Henry Mills of Saugus, Massachusetts. Terry introduced a patent shelf clock, with a short case. This made the clock much more marketable, because it was short enough to allow of easy transportation and at the same time offered the inducement of a well-made and inexpensive case. The patent shelf clock was a surprise to the rivals of Terry, because this change in construction had produced an absolutely new and improved model,--an unheard-of thing in clock making. The conservatism before shown by the colonial makers had stunted the growth of clock improvements in many ways, hence Terry's new invention produced a sensation. The change was such as to allow the play of weights on each side and the whole length of the case. The placing of the pendulum, crown wheel, and verge in front of the wheels, and between the dial and the movement, was another space-saving device, as was also the changing of the dial wheels from the outside to the inside of the movement plates. The escapement was transferred by hanging the verge on a steel pin, instead of on a long, heavy shaft inside the plates. This allowed the clock to be fastened to the case in back, making the pendulum accessible by removing only the dial. Thus Terry fairly revolutionized small-clock making, by introducing a new form, more compact, more serviceable, and cheaper than any of the older makes. In 1807 Terry bought an old mill in Plymouth and fitted it up so as to make his clocks by machinery. About this time several Waterbury men associated themselves to supply Terry with the materials, if he would make the clocks. With this steady income from machine-made clocks, and the profits from extra sales, he made, in a very short time, what was then considered quite a fortune. In 1808 he started five hundred clocks at once,--an undertaking which was considered foolhardy. People argued that there weren't enough people in the colonies to buy so many clocks, but nevertheless the clocks sold rapidly. In 1810 Terry sold out to Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley, two of his head workmen. The new company was a leader in colonial clock manufacturing for a number of years, until competition brought the prices of clocks down to five and ten dollars. All these years Terry had been experimenting, and in 1814 he introduced his pillar scroll top case. This upset the clock trade to such an extent that the old-fashioned hanging, wooden clocks, which hitherto had been the leading type, were forced out of existence. The shape of the scroll top case is rectangular, the case, with small feet and top, standing about twenty-five inches high. On the front edges of the case are pillars, twenty-one inches long, three quarters of an inch in diameter at the base, and three eighths at the top, having, as a rule, square bases. The dial, which takes up a half or more of the whole front, is eleven inches square, while below is a tablet about seven by eleven inches. The dial is not over-ornamental and has suitable spandrels in the corners. The scroll top is found plain as well as highly carved, but always the idea of the scroll is present. Terry sold the right to manufacture the clock to Seth Thomas for a thousand dollars. At first they each made about six thousand clocks a year, but later increased the output to twelve thousand. The clocks were great favorites and sold easily for fifteen dollars each. Another conservatism of the colonial clock-makers was the sharp division which they made between the use of wood and brass in the manufacture of the movements. The one-day clocks were made of wood throughout, and this prevented their use on water or even their exportation, because the works would swell in the dampness and render the clock useless. The eight-day clocks were made of brass, but the extra cost of the movements sufficient to make the clock run eight days excluded many people, who had to remain content with the one-day clock. It was not till 1837 that it occurred to any of these ingenious makers of timepieces to produce a one-day clock out of brass. To Chauncey Jerome, the first exporter of clocks from America to England in the year 1824, the honor was reserved of applying the principle of the cheap wire pinion to the brass, one-day clock. Thus began the revolution of American clock manufacturing, which has placed this country before all the world as a leader in cheap and accurate watch and clock making. The whirr and bustle of hundreds of factories of to-day, which manufacture watches and clocks at an output of thousands per year, is a strong contrast to the slow and laborious construction of the old colonial clocks. And not only is there a contrast in their manufacture, but when one compares the finished products of the year 1700 and 1900 side by side, one is conscious of conflicting emotions. There is naturally a decided feeling of admiration for the artistically designed timepiece of the twentieth century on the one hand, and, on the other, an irresistibly sentimental sensation when standing before a dignified, ancient, tall clock, on the door of which one reads:-- "I am old and worn as my face appears, For I have walked on time for a hundred years, Many have fallen since my race began, Many will fall ere my race is run. I have buried the World with its hopes and fears In my long, long march of a hundred years." CHAPTER XIII OLD-TIME LIGHTS Since the introduction of gas and electric light, the old-time lamp has ceased to be a necessity, though in many instances it still does service as the receptacle for the gas jet or electric bulb. Likewise, candlesticks and candelabra are still in use, not, of course, as necessities, as they were a century ago, but yet doing efficient service in the homes of people who realize that the soft glow of the candle affords an artistic touch that nothing else can give. Undeniably, there is a peculiar fascination about candlelight that few can resist, and in whatever room it is used, that room is benefited through its attractiveness. It is only when harking back that one realizes the strides that have been made in house lighting. In the early days, when the country was new, the only light was firelight, candlewood, or pine torches. To be sure, there was always the punched lantern, hung on the wall ready for use at a moment's notice, but this was for outside rather than inside lighting. The earliest artificial light used by the colonist was candlewood, or pine torches. These torches were cut from trees in near-by forests, and were in reality short sections of dry, pitch-pine log from the heart of the wood, cut into thin strips, eight inches in length. The resinous quality of the wood caused these little splinters to burn like torches, hence their name. The drippings from them were caught on flat stones, which were laid just inside the fireplace; and to make a brighter light several torches were burned at one time, their steady flame, combined with the flickering blaze of the roaring logs, casting into the room just enough light by which to accomplish the simple tasks which had to be performed after nightfall. Even this rude means of lighting was not available in some homes, for it is not uncommon to read in old chronicles of lessons being learned by the light of the fire only. While such a state of affairs would be looked upon as a calamity to-day, it was not without compensation, for the merry flames of the huge logs, as they flickered and danced on the hearth, cast a cheerful light on the closed shutters, and against the brown walls, much to the delight of the little ones, who, seated on rude benches close at hand, threw hickory shavings into the fire to make it flame faster, or poked the great backlog with the long iron peel to make the sparks fly upward. Candlewood fagots were in use throughout New England until the early part of the eighteenth century, and it was customary each fall to cut enough wood to supply the family demand for a year. In some Northern states, these fagots were commonly used until 1820, while in the South they are used in a few sections even to-day, being often carried in the hand like a lantern. When candles were first used here, they were imported from England, but their cost was so high that they were prohibitive save for festive occasions. The scarcity of domestic animals in the new land barred their being killed save for meat, and thus was lost an opportunity for candle making that was seriously felt. Some people, including Governors Winthrop and Higginson, in 1620 sent to England for supplies of tallow or suet to make their own candles, but the majority had to be content with candlewood. These first candles were fashioned without wicks, being provided instead with pith taken from the common rush and generally known as rush light,--a lighting which possessed disadvantages, inasmuch as it burned but dimly and lasted but a short time. Even in 1634 we find that candles could not be bought for less than fourpence apiece,--a price above the limited purses of the majority. Fortunately, the rivers were abundantly stocked with fish, and these were caught and killed, and their livers tried out for oil. This oil, which was crude, was principally used in lanterns, the wicks being made of loosely spun hemp and tow, often dipped in saltpeter. [Illustration: PLATE XLIX.--Whale Oil Lamps with Wicks; Mantel Lamps, 1815; Paul and Virginia Candelabra.] The earliest lamp was a saucer filled with oil, and having in the center a twisted rag. This rude form of wick was used for over a century. Then came the Betty lamp, a shallow receptacle, in form either circular, oval, or triangular, and made of pewter, iron, or brass. Filled with oil, it had for a wick the twisted rag, which was stuck into the oil and left protruding at one side. This type came into use before the invention of matches, and was lighted by flint and steel, or by a live coal. A most unique specimen of the early lamp is seen in a Salem home. It stands about six inches high, with a circumference of about twelve inches, and is an inch thick. It is made of iron, showing a liplike pitcher, while at the back is a curved handle. It is arranged to be filled with oil, and the wick is the twisted rag, which rests on the nose. Tradition relates that this lamp was used at the time of the witchcraft delusion, to light the unfortunate prisoners to jail. When whale-fishing became the pursuit of the colonists, an addition to the lighting requisites was discovered in the form of sperm secured from the head of the whale. This proved very valuable in the manufacture of candles, which gave a much brighter light than the older type. So popular did this oil become that in 1762 a factory was established at Germantown, at that time a part of Quincy, to manufacture sperm oil from its crude state; and candles made from this oil were later sold in Salem by one John Appleton. At this period, candle making was a home industry, being included in the fall work of every good housewife. At candle season, two large kettles, half filled with water, were hung on the long iron crane over the roaring fire in the kitchen, and in this the tallow was melted, having to be scalded twice before it was ready for use. Across large poles placed on the back of two chairs, smaller ones, known as candle rods, were laid, and to each one of these was attached a wick. Each wick in turn was dipped into the boiling tallow and then set away to cool. This way of making candles was slow and tedious, and it required skill to cool them without cracking, though an experienced candle-maker could easily fashion two hundred a day. Bayberry candles, so much in favor to-day, were also made in early times. The berries were gathered in the fall, and thrown into boiling water, the scum carefully removed as it formed. At first a dirty green color was secured, but as the wax refined, the coloring changed to a delicate, soft green. Candles of this type were not so plentiful as those of tallow, for the berries emitted but little fat, and they were therefore carefully treasured by their makers. To-day these candles are the most popular of all makes, emitting a pungent odor as they burn, but their cost sometimes makes them prohibitive. Instead of the housewife always attending to this tedious task, it was sometimes performed by a person who went from house to house, making the winter's supply of bayberry candles. It was customary for every housekeeper in those days to have quantities of these in her storeroom, often as many as a thousand. With the increase in sheep, many were killed, and the tallow obtained used for candle making. Such candles were provided with wicks made from loosely spun hemp, four or five inch lengths being suspended from each candle rod. The number of wicks used depended largely on the size of the kettle of boiling water and tallow. First the wicks were very carefully straightened, and then dipped into the tallow, and when cold this process was repeated until the candle had attained the right shape. Great care had to be exercised in this respect, and also that the tallow was kept hot, the wicks straight, and that the wicks were not dipped too deep in the boiling tallow. In drying, care was taken lest they dry too quickly or too slowly, and also that a board was placed underneath to catch the drippings. These drippings, when cool, were scratched from the board and used over. The introduction of candle molds lessened the task of candle making to a great extent, and, in addition, secured a better-shaped candle, and one that burned longer than the old dip type. With their advent came into vogue professional candle-makers, men who traveled all over the country, taking with them large molds. In two days' time, so rapidly did they work, they could make the entire stock for a family's winter supply. These candles, when complete, were very carefully packed away in wooden boxes to insure safety from mice. They were a jolly set of men, these candle-makers, who pursued the work for love of the roving life it afforded, as well as for the money it netted. They came equipped with the latest gossip, and their presence was a boon to the tired house mother, whose duties did not allow of much social intercourse. Ordinarily, candles were very sparingly used, but on festive occasions they were often burned in great quantities. At Hamilton Hall, in Salem, built at a cost of twenty-two thousand dollars, this mode of lighting was a feature, and in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the hall was the scene of the old assemblies, it was lighted by innumerable candles and whale-oil lamps, so many being required to properly illumine it that it took John Remond, Salem's noted caterer of that period, several days to prepare them for use. In those days, informal parties were much in vogue, commencing promptly at six and closing promptly at twelve, even if in the midst of a dance. The dances then enjoyed were of the contra type, waltzes and polkas being at that day unknown. The gentlemen at these gay assemblies came dressed in Roger de Coverley coats, small-clothes, and silken stockings, while the ladies were arrayed in picturesque velvets and satins, the popular fabrics of the period. [Illustration: PLATE L.--Astral Lamps, 1778; English brass branching Candlestick, showing Lions.] Candlesticks seem always to have been considered a part of the house furnishings in America, for we find accounts of them in the earliest records of the colonies. Many of these were brought from England, and in colonial dwellings still standing we find excellent specimens still preserved. The first candlesticks extensively used here were rudely fashioned of iron and tin, being among the first articles of purely domestic manufacture found in New England. Later, with the building of more pretentious homes, candlesticks made of brass, pewter, and silver came into vogue, the brass ones being the most commonly used, as well as candelabra, and in the homes of the wealthier class were found brass wall sconces that were imported from London and France. [Illustration: PLATE LI.--Colonial Mantel Lamp; Single bedroom brass Candlestick; Sheffield Plate Candlesticks.] A particularly fine pair of these sconces is found in the Osgood house on Chestnut Street, Salem. Here the brass filigree work is in the form of a lyre encircled with a laurel wreath, and surmounted by the head of Apollo. The tree branches curve gracefully outward from the wreath and below the lyre. In the early part of the eighteenth century, snuffers and snuffer boats, as the trays in which the candlesticks rested were known, came into use. These were sometimes of plain design, and sometimes fanciful, made either of brass or silver. Pewter was also used for this purpose, and later it became a favorite metal for the manufacture of hall lamps and candlesticks. [Illustration: PLATE LII.--Pierced, or Paul Revere Lantern; Old Hand Lantern; English Silver Candlesticks; Brass Branching Candlesticks, Chippendale, 1760.] Lanterns next came into style and were a prominent feature of the hallway furnishing. Many of these were gilded and many were painted, and their greatest period of popularity was during the first part of the eighteenth century. About 1750 the first glass lamps came into favor. These were not like those of a later period, being very simple in form, and not particularly graceful. In 1782 a Frenchman, named Argand, introduced the lamp which still bears his name. This marked the beginning of the lamp era, and while at first these lamps were so high in price that they could only be afforded by the wealthier classes, later they were produced at a more reasonable figure, when they came into general use. The last half of the eighteenth century marked the adoption of magnificent chandeliers, many of which are still preserved. One such is found in the Warner house at Portsmouth, in the parlor at the right of the wide old hall, a room wherein have assembled many notable gatherings, for the Hon. Jonathan Warner was a generous host. This specimen is among the finest in the country, and is in keeping with the other fine old-time fittings. About the beginning of the nineteenth century, candelabra and lamps with glass prisms were much used, some of them very simple in design, being little more than a plain stick with a few prisms attached, while others were very elaborate. Many of these candlesticks and candelabra are still preserved, together with the other old-time lights. In a Jamaica Plain home are some very valuable specimens of lighting fixtures that once stood on the mantel in the Sprague House on Essex Street, Salem, having been brought to this country by the first owner at the time the dwelling was being furnished for his bride. With Fashion's decree that lamps and candelabra should be hung with cut-glass prisms, they attained great popularity, and sets of three came to be regular ornaments of the carved mantelpieces. These sets consisted of a three-pronged candelabrum for the middle, and a single stick on either side. The stand was of marble, while the standards were of gilt. At the base of each candle a brass ornament, like an inverted crown, supported the sparkling prisms, which jingled and caught rainbow reflections at every slight quiver. In the lamps, frequently the side portions were of bronze, the lamp for holding the oil being surrounded by prisms which depended from the central standard. The flaring chimneys of ground glass softened and shaded the light, while they also kept it from flickering in case of sudden draughts. Up to the year 1837, flint and steel were the only mode of ignition, and their long association with old-time lights makes them an intimate part of them. At first both flint and steel were very crudely made, but later on, some of the steels were very ornamental. With them was used a tinder box, with its store of charred linen to catch the tiny flame as it leaped toward the steel, and this, too, must be considered in the review of old-time lights. Examples of these and the old forms of lighting are found in every part of New England and throughout the South, though perhaps the largest collection in any single section is found in Salem, the home of excellent examples of all things colonial. As one views them, he cannot but be impressed with their quaintness, and while no doubt he is thankful for the strides in science that have made possible the brilliant illumination of the present, yet in his heart he must acknowledge that the present lights, though in many instances undeniably beautiful, lack the charm of the old-time types. CHAPTER XIV OLD CHINA China constituted an important part of the household equipment in colonial days, and while not as antique as pewter and wooden ware, it outrivaled both in beauty and popular favor. Its daintiness of coloring, variety of make, and exquisiteness of texture afforded a welcome change from the somber-colored and little varied ware hitherto used; and its fragility proved of wondrous interest to the careful housewife, causing her to bestow upon it her tenderest care and to zealously guard it against harm, since it was her delight to boast that her sets were intact. To-day it is equally appreciated, and it is displayed on the shelves of built-in cupboards, with all the pride of possession exhibited by its original owners. [Illustration: PLATE LIII.--Peacock Plate of Delft, very rare; Decorated Salt Glaze Plate, about 1780.] Old cupboards are somehow always associated with old china in this country, and in most instances they are worthy of the admiration in which they are held. In colonial times, cupboards formed a decorative feature of the house furnishings, and they were fashioned with as much regard for shape and finish as the rooms in which they were to be placed. In time they came to be considered almost indispensable adjuncts, and with their increase in favor, their development became marked. Perhaps the finest type is that with the shell top, some excellent examples of which are still preserved, notably in the Brown Inn at Hamilton and in the Dummer house at Byfield, Massachusetts. [Illustration: PLATE LIV.--Liverpool Pitcher, showing Salem Ship; Old Chelsea Ware; Canton China Teapot; Wedgwood, with Rose decoration. Very rare.] [Illustration: PLATE LV.--Gold Luster Pitcher; Staffordshire Pitcher with Rose decoration; Peacock Delft Pitcher; Jasper Ware Wedgwood Pitcher. Blue and White.] Of all the old wares used here, salt glaze is most rarely found, most collections including not even a single specimen. This is probably due in a great measure to its fragility; it is not owing to its scarcity of import, as large quantities of this ware were brought here in early times. Examples now found are principally of Staffordshire manufacture, made between 1760 and 1780, though much of the ware that was made about 1720, belonging to the so-called second period, was shipped here. A study of all forms of salt glaze is of interest, but that of English manufacture is of most importance to American collectors, for it is that type that the colonists imported, and with which American collections are most closely associated. The process of salt glaze manufacture was known in England as early as 1660, and a familiar legend as to its origin was that it was accidentally discovered through the boiling over of a kettle of brine, the salt running down the outside of the earthen pot, and, when cold, hardening upon it, forming a glaze. This theory has been discredited by later scientists, and it is not unlikely that it was the invention of some imaginary individual, but however that may be, the ware in itself is of unusual attractiveness, and records show that upon its introduction into Staffordshire, it superseded in favor the dull lead glaze. The first ware finished by this method was coarse and brown, a type that remained in vogue until the early years of the eighteenth century, when a gray ware was produced. Some of this latter found its way to America, but the type most familiar here is that manufactured in the closing years of the eighteenth century,--a ware with a white or nearly white body, thin and graceful in contour, and characterized by a very hard saline glaze. Pepper pots, soup tureens, plates, and pitchers were among the most common pieces manufactured, though teapots in various shapes, bottles, vases, etc., were also made. Some of these pieces have a plain center and decorated border, while others show an entirely decorated surface. [Illustration: PLATE LVI.--The Shepherd Toby, one of the rarest Tobies; English Toby. Very old; Very old Toby, showing Cocked Hat.] Another output of the Staffordshire factories, now much valued here, are the old toby jugs, many excellent examples of which were brought here and have been carefully preserved. In their way they are as interesting as the finest china bits, their gay coloring and quaint shape affording a striking contrast to the delicately tinted and daintily shaped Lowestoft and like wares. The first tobies were in reality scarcely more than hollow figures to which a handle had been attached, but as time went on they grew more and more like mugs, and while at first the cap or hat lifted off, forming a cover, the succeeding style had the hat incorporated into the mug. Tobies are broadly classed as Staffordshire, and while this is probably true of a large portion, Dutch and German tobies as well as French ones are not uncommon. A supposed example of the last named is included in the Page collection at Lynn, and is known as the Napoleon toby. It is thought to be French from the fact that the likeness of the little corporal is not a caricature. English potters delighted to depict Bonaparte, but they seldom gave him the attractive countenance of this jug. They made him tall and thin, or short and abnormally fat, and they decked him in queer clothes, and labeled him "Boney." This jug depicts Napoleon in a very pleasant guise, suave of countenance and very well dressed. There is a smoothness of texture and finish about the work which marks it as distinct from the English tobies, which unfortunately frequently lacked these desirable qualities. English tobies are sometimes classified as young and old tobies. The terms are expressive, for the young toby is a figure standing, as if full of vigor and life, with a jovial, happy-go-lucky expression, while the old toby is represented seated, with a worldly-wise face that has the appearance of having experienced life to the fullest. Both types always carry a mug in one hand, or both hands, from which a foaming liquid is about to issue. The coloring of the old toby is principally yellow, while the young toby is a combination of brown and yellow. Of course, both these colorings are varied with others. Tobies show considerable variety in modeling and decoration. Some are jovial in appearance, others placid, and still others leering. In fact, every kind of a toby is represented, except a dry one. In addition to depicting the figures of human beings, some tobies represented animals, and not a few were in the form of teapots. The latter were generally finished in blue, with a band of green and a bit of copper luster, and in height they varied from twelve to eighteen inches. Although these drinking mugs were made in many factories, none bear hallmarks, save those made at Bennington, and, in consequence, those are more highly prized by connoisseurs. A unique specimen among the output of this factory has no mug in the hand, the arms being arranged close to the body, which has the appearance of having no arms at all. Delft ware, which is at the present time enjoying great favor among collectors, made the country where it originated famous, and its history is in reality the history of Holland's commercial rise. Besides its age, old Delft has the charm of individuality. As the designs were handworked, the ware lacks the precision in drawing that later stamped pieces have, and shows softened outlines instead of sharply defined pictures. Nor is old Delft ware so intense in coloring as its descendants of to-day. Comparing them side by side on a plate rail, or hanging on the wall, old Delft is told by its soft, beautiful blue. Then there is the charm of association. Coming from a nation of thrift and exemplary housekeeping, Delft, much more than fragile glass, aristocratic china, or curious foreign objects, appeals to the collector as a cheerful, comfortable, homelike thing to collect. There are undoubtedly many good specimens in this country to-day, but many more are inaccessible. Connecticut, as well as New England generally, has considerable, for the merchant princes who brought so many other treasures to Eastern ports brought also Delft. How much more of this charming old ware is hidden under peaked roofs of story-and-a-half farmhouses in some of the old Dutch settlements along the Hudson and on Long Island, is unknown, but perhaps we shall know in another generation or so. Among our specimens we find more of the English than the Dutch Delft. The latter, which is the original ware, took its name from the town of Delft, where the ware was first produced, and which, for several centuries, continued to be the chief center of the Delft industry. Although it was probably made as early as the latter part of the fifteenth century, but little is known of it until about one hundred years later. Its origin was an attempt on the part of Dutch potters to imitate, in a cheaper form, Chinese and Japanese wares. At that time were made large importations of Eastern wares, and Holland, as the only European power allowed a port by Japan, had a great variety of types to copy. The first potteries were established at Delft about the year 1600, and almost from its inception the industry was protected by a trust. For nearly one hundred and fifty years, the protection of this trust or "Guild of St. Luke" made Delft an important manufacturing center, giving employment to nearly one twelfth of its inhabitants. The best examples of this old Dutch Delft are beautiful copies of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, which are hardly distinguishable from the Oriental. A fact worth noting in connection with the rapid rise and great popularity of Delft is that the combination or Guild which was instrumental in the prosperity of the industry was also at least partly responsible for its downfall. In Holland, an independent maker could not flourish, but the progressive English made it very well worth while for workmen to emigrate. There was another and perhaps more potent factor in the decline of the Dutch Delft industry; the very success of Delft potters became their ruin. The market was glutted with their products, and there ceased to be the same demand for it as formerly. Gradually, the English ware, made of better clay, although cheaper in price, supplanted the Dutch ware, even in Holland, and as early as 1760 the struggle for existence began among the Dutch potteries. Of the thirty establishments existing in the beginning of the century, only eight were working in 1808, and most of these soon after stopped. The most common pieces made, in point of numbers, were the Delft plates. Some excellent examples of these are found in the Page collection at Newburyport, one, a peacock plate, being a good example of Dutch Delft in one of its most popular patterns. Another shows the design of a basket of flowers, and this same adornment is on an old English platter, a piece that deserves not only a compliment to its beauty, but also a tribute to its Dutch-English durability, since within a few years it has been used to hold all of a New England boiled dinner. Delft tile was produced almost as commonly as plates, although at first it was used to illustrate many designs essentially Dutch, and also religious subjects. It is on record that the _Boston News Letter_ of 1716 advertised the first sale of "Fine Holland Tile" in America, and in that same paper, three years later, is a notice of "Dutch Tile for Chimney." From that date on, all through the century, one may find recurring advertisements of chimney tiles, on the arrival of every foreign ship. They must have been imported in vast numbers in the aggregate, and they were not expensive, yet they are rare in New England. Americans have always been patrons of Delft ware, and as a result a representative lot of the very best types is found here, and while it is to be regretted that the old tiles are not included in any great numbers in this list, yet those preserved are eminently satisfactory. An English writer has said that controversy always makes a subject interesting. Lowestoft was already so enchanting a topic that the searchlight of exposition was scarcely needed to reveal additional charms. Of the several wares that have been labeled Lowestoft, there seem to be four distinct varieties. There is the Simon-pure, soft-paste, Lowestoft china, made and decorated in the town of Lowestoft; there is the so-called Lowestoft, which is purely Oriental, being both made and decorated in China; there is probably ware made in China and decorated in Lowestoft; and there is probably ware made in Holland and decorated in Lowestoft. All of these may bear the printed name of the town, since members of the company which traded in them resided at that place. Doubt has been cast upon every one of these four wares, but the first two, at least, seem to be cleared of all uncertainty. For the last half of the eighteenth century, a factory existed at Lowestoft. This is true, beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was, however, a small factory, employing at its best but seventy hands, and having but one oven and one kiln. It is simply impossible that great quantities of hard-glaze porcelain should have been brought from overseas, to be decorated, and then fired in this one small kiln. If the whole output charged up to Lowestoft had been really hers, the factory must needs have been the largest in England, which it certainly was not. The first ware produced was of a dingy white, coarse, and semi-opaque. The glaze was slightly "blued" with cobalt, and speckled with bubbles and minute black spots, which seemed to show careless firing. When viewed by transmitted light, the pieces had a distinctly yellowish tinge. There was never any distinctive mark, as in the case of Crown Derby. About 1790 a change for the better took place in the character of the ware. Certain French refugees, driven from their own country by the lawlessness of the great Revolution, began to come into England. One of these men, who was named Rose, obtained employment at the Lowestoft works, where he soon became head decorator, and introduced taste as well as delicacy of touch into the product. Underneath many Lowestoft handles will be found a small rose, which denotes that the work was done by him. The rose is his mark, but before this was known, people supposed that it merely represented the coat of arms for Lowestoft borough, which was the Tudor rose. Roses set back to back appear on the highest grade of Lowestoft china; and at its best the ware was finer than any sent out by Bow and Chelsea. The Lowestoft red is of a peculiar quality, varying from carmine to ashes of roses, and often approaching a plum color. Roses and garlands of roses in these lovely hues of pink and purple distinguish this china. Dainty and familiar are the flowers and sprigs in natural colors, with delicate borders in color and gold. A familiar style of decoration was that of the dark blue bands, or dots, or other figures, heavily overlaid with gold and often with coats of arms. This ware is a hard-paste porcelain, and was doubtless made and decorated in China. The fact that some of it bears the mark of "Allen Lowestoft," and that Mr. Allen was manager of the Lowestoft works at this time, proves nothing beyond the fact that when the dealer sent his order to China to be filled, he ordered his name marked on the bottom. Small quantities of undecorated ware may have been brought from China and Holland to be painted, but we have no record of any such transactions; the duty was heavy, and the amount of such ware imported must have been inconsiderable. China was doing this same work for other countries, and it is only reasonable to suppose that the managers of the Lowestoft factory sent the greater part of their orders to China to be filled by Chinese workmen upon Chinese material. This also explains the failure of the company. It is recorded upon good authority that the ruin resulted partly from the sharp competition with the Staffordshire wares, but was precipitated in 1803 by the wreck of one of the vessels carrying a cargo of porcelain, and by the burning of the Rotterdam warehouse by the French army. Rotterdam, where Lowestoft ware was stored, was the seat of an immense commerce between Holland and China. It seems but natural that their trade in common Delft wares should lead the Lowestoft company into communication with wholesale importers of Chinese porcelain, from whom they could purchase large supplies; and should also lead them into the establishment, in England, of a more highly remunerative branch of their business, through underselling the Dutch East India Company. It was customary for the Dutch firms to send over to their foreign settlements shapes and designs obtained from European sources, to be reproduced by native hands. The Lowestoft people did what all other merchants had done before them, and through the same channel forwarded to China the designs of coats of arms, English mottoes, and initials that were to be printed upon the porcelain which they had undertaken to supply. And so the great conflagration of the Lowestoft controversy was furnished with fuel, and there is no knowing where it will end, because conclusive proof is so slight in each case and the partisans so eager and aggressive. Meantime, our grandmother's sprigged china remains a joy and a delight, whether or no we dare to call it genuine Lowestoft. There is no mystification about Crown Derby, but the old ware, which along with Lowestoft was beloved of the colonists, is as distinctive as any, and fortunate indeed is the individual who can boast of having in his possession a specimen. The works of Derby were established by a French refugee, named Planche, who had been sojourning in Saxony until the death of his father, when he came to Derby in 1745, bringing with him the secret of china manufacture, as he had learned it in Saxony. We have reason to suppose that he made in Derby many china figures of cats, dogs, shepherdesses, Falstaffs, Minervas, and the like, which William Duesbury, who was an expert enameler in London, colored for him. Unfortunately, none of this early output of the factory was marked, and in consequence it has become sadly confused, not only with the work of Bow and Chelsea, but with that of Lowestoft as well. After 1770, a mark was adopted, and the ware after that date is easily distinguishable. William Duesbury bought out Planche's interest in the Derby works, though he did not dispense with Planche's services. Keenly artistic, with a taste at once discriminating and appreciative, Duesbury combined a winning personality with his intellectual gifts. He possessed the faculty of securing the services of potters of unusual worth, and throughout his management, which continued until his death in 1796, he maintained in his output a standard of pure English art work of the highest order. Prominent in the group of potters in his employ stands the name of William Billingsley, who was connected with the factory from 1774 to 1796. At Derby he established his reputation as a painter of exquisite flowers, and his work is characterized by a singularly true perception of intrinsic beauty and decorative value, being original and unhampered by traditional technique. The rose was his favorite flower; he invariably painted the back of a rose in his groups, and his justly famed "Billingsley Roses" are exceedingly soft in their treatment. Another favorite of his is the double-flowered stock, either yellow or white, and always shaded in gray. In 1785 Duesbury associated with himself his son, the second William Duesbury, and then followed the most successful period of the work, being in reality the Crown Derby epoch _par excellence_. After the death of the elder Duesbury, the second William Duesbury became sole owner of the Derby works, but failing health compelled him to take Michael Kean into the firm as partner. After the death of the younger Duesbury, Kean assumed control of the whole works, but his mismanagement soon resulted in the sale of the factory to Robert Bloor in 1810. This marked the commencement of a new dispensation, and after this date the trademark became "Bloor-Derby." For a time things went on in the old way, but soon Bloor, in his eagerness to amass a fortune, yielded to temptation and began to put on the market ware that had been accumulating in the storehouse for sixty years, and which Planche and the Duesburys had considered of inferior quality and discarded. This ware he decorated with so-called Japan patterns, to hide defects and, to make a bad matter worse, he used for coloring the flowing under-glaze blue, which was wholly unsuited to the soft glaze of the Delft ware, and was sure to "run" in the glost oven. The train of ruin was now well laid, and by 1822 Bloor was forced to resort to auction sales in the factory, in order to dispose of his output. The result was an utter loss of reputation for factory and product, and before the manufacture had reached the century mark of its existence, Derby china was relegated to the past. Many beautiful specimens of Crown Derby were imported to this country, one of the finest being in Mrs. William C. West's collection at Salem, showing the head of Bacchus with grapevine and wreath decoration, the whole beautifully colored. Expressive of the greatest heights which English pottery reached, is the ware of Wedgwood, and a review of his achievements forms the most interesting chapter in the history of England's ceramic art. Of a family of potters, Josiah Wedgwood early exhibited the traits which later made him so justly famous, and a review of his life from the age of eleven years, when he was put to work in the potworks, as a thrower, until his death in 1795, covering a period of fifty-four years, is a review of the most remarkable story of progressiveness in a chosen profession ever recorded. During the early days of his pottery making, about five years after his apprenticeship had expired, Wedgwood became associated with Thomas Whieldon, a potter who had attained considerable success in the manufacture of combed and agate wares, and the period of their partnership, which ended in 1759, was of benefit to both. One of Wedgwood's first successes was made at this time, in the invention of a green glaze which Whieldon used with excellent effect on his cauliflower ware. With the expiration of this partnership, Wedgwood returned to Burslem, where he soon purchased an interest in the Ivy Works, where he worked independently, and laid the foundation for many of his future successes. Among other things he experimented in perfecting the coarse cream wares then on the market, and six years after his coming to the Ivy Works he succeeded in producing his first real achievement, "Queen's Ware." The success of this ware was most pronounced, and its popularity caused Wedgwood to realize that a division of labor which would allow him to look after the creative part and supply some one else to care for the commercial side of the undertaking was most important. In 1768, Thomas Bentley was taken on for this purpose, and at the new works, to which Wedgwood had previously removed, and known as the Bell House or Brick House, the new régime went into effect. The popularity of Queen's Ware had netted him enough to allow him to make finer productions, and after the finish of several schemes, in 1769, he removed to the famous factory known as Etruria, where his finest work was accomplished, and at which place he remained until his death. The several wares he manufactured are as varied as they are beautiful, and, in addition, he possessed the power to reproduce in a remarkable degree. This is best exemplified in his replica of the famous Portland Vase, which is so perfect that it has often deceived even connoisseurs. An amusing incident is related in connection with one of his reproductions, a Delft piece of a dinner set, which had become broken, and which he fashioned and sent to the owner by a messenger. The messenger started for his destination, which was but a short distance, but he did not appear again for a week. Upon his return, Wedgwood questioned him, and learned that the family was so delighted with the reproduction that they had kept the messenger, feasting him the entire time. While old Wedgwood in all its forms is appreciated in this country, for some reason or other cream ware and jasper ware are especially favored among American collectors. Fine pieces of both are included in the Rogers collection at Danvers, the jasper piece being an especially fine specimen. A review of old china would not seem complete without including the luster wares, several excellent examples of which are in American collections. Silver-tinted comes first in point of rarity, though the rose-spotted Sunderland luster is a close second in this respect, and really commands a higher price. Originally, silver luster was a cheap imitation of silver, and first specimens were lustered inside as well as out, to further increase the deception. When the ware became common, and the deception was well known, silver luster was used only on the exterior of vessels in decorations, and occasionally in conjunction with gold luster. After 1838, which year marked the introduction of electroplating, silver luster declined in favor, and shortly after the completion of the first half of the nineteenth century ceased to be manufactured. Numberless beautiful articles were made of this ware, including quaint candlesticks, teapots, cream jugs, bowls, salt cellars, and vases. Copper and gold luster are likewise shown in a variety of attractive forms, and these, unlike silver luster, were never made as shams. Wedgwood is credited with having first made the copper-and gold-lustered wares, but authentic proof of this is lacking. Jugs were often lustered with gold and copper, the latter usually characterized by bands of brilliant yellow or colored flowers, sometimes printed and sometimes painted. The gold luster was especially fine, and it is this type, together with copper luster, that is most commonly found. Excellent specimens of gold-lustered ware are found in a collection at Lynn, one piece of exceptional interest having been secured at the time of the Civil War by a party of Northern soldiers while devastating a Southern plantation. CHAPTER XV OLD GLASS Of all the old-time wares, glass, until recently, has been most rarely collected, and in consequence, whereas specimens of silver and pewter are comparatively abundant, examples of glass are scarce. There are several reasons for this, the principal being its fragility; and then, too, the date of its manufacture is very uncertain. To be sure, the shape and finish of a glass piece determines in a measure the period of its make, but it is not proof positive, any more than are the traditions handed down in families as to the time of purchase of certain specimens. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the price of old glass is constantly increasing, and within the last few years has almost doubled. The first glass made was of a coarse type, crude in shape, and of greenish coloring, with sand and bubbles showing on its surface, detracting from its finish. Examples of this type are very scarce to-day, bringing prices wholly at variance with their attractiveness. Up to the eighteenth century, all glass was very expensive, making it prohibitive to all but the wealthy classes, but since that time its cost has been greatly reduced, and beautiful specimens, of exquisite design, can now be purchased at prices within the means of almost every one. Of course, these later specimens do not possess the quaintness of old-time pieces, and to the collector they are of no interest whatever. The fad of collecting has brought into favor the old types, and throughout the country the regard for old glassware is constantly increasing, although it will be some time before it comes into prominence here in the same measure that it has in England. [Illustration: PLATE LVII.--Venetian and English Decanters; Toddy glasses, about 1800; English Glass with Silver Coasters. Very old.] While the origin of glass is not definitely certain, yet specimens are in existence which are known to have been made before the coming of Christ, such as the celebrated Portland Vase, a Roman product, now seen in the British Museum. After the decline of glass making in Rome, the craft was gradually taken up in Venice and Bohemia, the output of the former country ranking among the finest made, and including, among other things, the exquisite Venetian drinking cups, which are unrivaled in beauty. [Illustration: PLATE LVIII.--Russian Glass Decanter and Tumblers; Note the exquisite cutting on this Decanter.] So important was the craft considered in these early times that manufacturers received great attention from the government, were dubbed "Gentlemen," and were looked upon with awe by the common people. Naturally, great secrecy surrounded the plying of the craft, and this secrecy led to the circulation of mysterious tales. One legend was that the furnace fire created a monster called the salamander, and it was firmly believed that at stated intervals he came out of the furnace, and carried back with him any chance visitor. People who glanced fearfully into the furnace declared that they saw him curled up at one side of his fiery bed, and the absence of any workmen was at once attributed to this monster's having captured him. The early green glass of the Rhine and Holland, while made by German-speaking people, cannot be considered as characteristic of German glass. These people lived on either side of the mountains which gird Bohemia on three sides, and divide that kingdom from Silesia, Saxony, and Bavaria respectively, and the glass they made was painted in beautiful colors, the finer kind being engraved in the upland countries, where water was abundant. Gilding was also much employed by them, and we learn that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this decoration was fixed by a cold process; that is, by simply attaching the gold leaf by means of varnish. This form of decoration was only lasting when applied to the sunken parts of the glass. Very little of this glass was used in the section where it was manufactured, nearly the whole product being exported to Austria, Germany, Italy, the East, and even to America. The industry was popular in Bohemia, for it furnished labor to a part of the population, helping to keep them from want, and it procured for the rich landowners a revenue from the use of their woods. The factories, which were rudely built, were located in the center of forest tracts, and they produced, in addition to ordinary glass pieces, articles that were intended to be highly worked or richly engraved, also colored glass, decorated with gilding and painting. Long experience in the manufacture of colored glass had made these workmen expert in this branch, and any advice they needed, they obtained from men of information who made their living by seeking out and selling secrets concerning processes and improvements in glass manufacture. All capital required was advanced by rich lords, who were eager to insure the success of industries established upon their premises. Glass cutting and luster making were regarded as special trades, being carried on in huts beside small streams; and engraving, gilding, and painting likewise formed separate branches, all paid by the very lowest wages. Products of all the factories were collected by agents from commercial houses, and by them distributed among the various markets. Comparison between the Bohemian product and the older glass upon the market resulted strongly in favor of the former. It was clear, white, light, and of agreeable delicacy to the touch, and no other glass as purely colorless was made until the modern discovery of flint glass, made by the use of lead. Through the invention of one Gasper Lehmann, improved engraving on Bohemian glass became possible, opening a field for decorative art that hitherto had been undreamed of. With his pupil George Schwanhard, he improved designs, and the world went engraved-glass mad. Nothing but this type would sell, and as material became scarce, Venetian pieces, already a hundred years old, were brought into requisition and engraved. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, some of the Bohemian manufacturers were producing vases of various shapes enriched with engraved ornaments, representing scenes, and frequently portraits. Some of the former type are shown in the wonderful collection owned by Mr. W. J. Mitchell at Manchester, Massachusetts. With the pronounced popularity of the Bohemian engraved vases, artists in other countries began decorating their ware in like fashion, those of France employing interlaced flowers. These were etched on, rather than engraved, however, and cheapened the ware; in other countries the results obtained were no better, all failing to compare with the Bohemian specimens, for the art of engraving here had been learned from long experience by workmen who were experts in their line. Many Bohemian pieces showed an original decoration in the way of ornamentations in relief on the outside, while the art of cameo incrustation was also first used by Bohemian workers, who sometimes varied it to obtain odd and pleasing effects by engraving through an outer casing of colored glass into an interior of white, transparent, or enameled glass. One such specimen, a salt cellar, is shown in the Mitchell collection. [Illustration: PLATE LIX.--English Cut Class Decanter, about 1800; Typical Red Bohemian Glass Decanter; American Glass Bottle, Jenny Lind, about 1850.] Ruby coloring was a characteristic of many fine Bohemian pieces, and its acquirement was a source of despair to any number of workers, it being hard to hit on just the right combination to produce the desired shade. So important did this feature become that we learn of one Kunckel, an artist, being given sixteen hundred ducats by the elector of Brandenburg to assist in attaining perfection in this shade of coloring. The ware of this type was made in the last half of the seventeenth century, and specimens were the admiration of all beholders. [Illustration: PLATE LX.--Bohemian Glass. The center one is rare, showing figure of Peacock in Red and White; English Cut Glass Wineglasses, 1790; English Glass Decanters. Very fine and rare.] It is a ware that possesses a strange attraction. No other type of glass is more a favorite with collectors than this, and no other encourages the amateur to greater endeavor in its pursuit, no matter how discouraging it may be at first. Then, too, no matter how large the collection may be, it is never monotonous, for the various specimens show a great diversity of form and ornamentation. The collection of Bohemian glass shown at the Mitchell house at Manchester, contains some wonderful examples of the art, including decanters with long and slender stems, odd salt cellars in frames of silver, bonbon dishes, and numerous other pieces, some in the rare ruby coloring, and others in white and gilt. Other fine pieces are found at the Nichols house on Federal Street, Salem, and in the Atkinson collection, also at Salem, while at Andover, at the old Kittredge house, many rare bits are to be seen. All of these specimens are heirlooms, those in the Kittredge house having been in the family since the home was erected, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. While examples of all types of glass are to be found in America, perhaps the most common specimens are of English make, brought to the new country after business had become firmly established, along with the other fine household equipments. Among these are many fine decanters and tumblers of various designs, particularly interesting from the part they shared in the long accepted belief that glass drinking vessels of every kind, made under certain astronomical influences, would fly to pieces if any poisonous liquid was placed in them; and also that drinking glasses of colored ware added flavor to wine, and detracted materially from its intoxicating quality. Some of these drinking glasses, known in England as toddy glasses, were the forerunners of our present tumblers. English collections, of course, include much earlier specimens of the ware than do American, for it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when the seaport towns of New England were at the height of their prosperity, that sea captains brought here from England and other ports all kinds of glass. Some of the finest of this found its way to Salem, and in the Waters house, on Washington Square, are stored some of the rarest of these specimens. These have all been collected by Mr. Fitz Waters, who has devoted years in research of old-time things, and they represent not only the different periods of manufacture, but the output of the different countries as well. Included are many engraved pieces, decanters which cannot be duplicated, and rare and wonderful bits, such as toddy glasses and numberless other glasses of varying kinds, many of them beautifully engraved with delicate tracery and the tulip of Holland. Many beautiful wine glasses and tumblers can be classified by their name, such as the white twist stem, made between 1745 and 1757,--the twisted appearance of the stem being the result of a peculiar process,--the baluster stem, and the air twist stem, some of the latter showing domed feet. Several of the best types of glasses are shown in the West collection in Salem. The cutting of the stems of several of these fix the date of manufacture at about 1800, while others of unusual shapes show bird and shield designs, also the wreath and flower. It is by the design more than anything else that the date of manufacture is fixed, determining the choiceness of the piece, and the money it should bring. While England has furnished most of the pieces shown here to-day, yet in the Northend collection in Salem are several fine Russian specimens. These are deeply cut, and were brought to this country from Russia by one John Harrod about the year 1800. For many years they were stored in the old Harrod house at Newburyport, finding their way to their present abode when the Harrod dwelling was dismantled, the owner being a descendant of this family. One piece, which is most unusual, is a deep punch bowl with a cover. Curiously enough, the first industrial enterprise undertaken in America was a factory for the manufacture of glass bottles. It was built very early in the history of the Virginia colony, and stood about a mile from Jamestown, in the midst of a woodland tract. Later, other factories were erected, many of them manufacturing glass beads to be used in trading with the Indians. The oldest glass plant still doing business, which has been continuous since its beginning, is located at Kensington in Philadelphia, having been established in 1711. To many it may be still unknown that Bohemian glassware has been manufactured in this country, and at a very early period. From Mannheim, in Germany, in the year 1750, came a certain Baron Steigel, whose parents had dubbed him William Henry. He laid out, in Pennsylvania, the village which bears the name of his native place, and there he established ironworks and glassworks, and deeded a plot of ground to the Lutheran congregation, in consideration of their annual payment, forever, of one red rose. The glasshouse was dome-shaped, and so large that a coach-and-six could enter at the doorway, turn around inside, and drive out again. He brought skilled workmen from the best factories in Europe, and made richly colored bowls and goblets, which have the true Bohemian ring, and which are now in the possession of local collectors. His works did not continue for any length of time, as he failed in business about five years after he started, but the old Steigel house is still standing in the heart of the town, distinguished by the red and black bricks of which it is built. And there still, in the month of June, is often celebrated the Feast of Roses, one feature of which is the payment of a great red rose by a church officer to the baron's descendants. But of all the old glass made here, perhaps the bottles form the most interesting portion. For the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, fancy pocket flasks and bottles were manufactured in the United States. The idea of the decorations probably came, in the first place, from the fact that English potters were decorating crockery with local subjects, in order to catch the American trade. This glassware, however, was wholly the result of our own enterprise. The objects here shown were blown in engraved metal molds, which had been prepared by professional mold cutters. Colors and sizes vary too much to be a test of age. The scarred base and the sheared neck are the surest sign of age. In all the older forms, the neck was sheared with scissors, leaving it irregular and without finishing band; also, the base always showed a rough, circular scar, left by breaking the bottle away from the rod which held it while the workman was finishing the neck. Smooth and hollow bases were made between 1850 and 1860 by means of an improvement called a "snap" or case, which held the bottle. At the same time, a rim was added to the mouth. The designs were worked out in transparent white, pale blue, sapphire blue, light green, emerald green, olive, brown, opalescent, or claret color. Twenty-nine of these historic flasks bear for ornament some form of the American eagle; nineteen different designs display the head of Washington, and twelve the head of Taylor. Their shapes varied with the passing of time. The very earliest were slender and arched in form, with edges horizontally corrugated; then came in vogue oval shapes, with edges ribbed vertically. The next pattern was almost circular in form, with plain, rounded edges; and at this time some specimens show a color at the mouth. Then appeared the calabash, or decanter form, no longer flattened and shallow, as the others had been, but almost spherical, with edges that showed vertical corrugation, ribbing, or fluting; with long, slender neck, finished with a cap at the top; with smoothly hollowed or hollowed and scarred base. These were superseded by bottles arched in form, deep and flattened, having vertically corrugated edges, a short and broad neck, finished with a round and narrow heading, and a base either scarred or flat. Last of all appeared the modern flask shape, also arched in form, with a broad shoulder, a narrow base, plainly rounded edges, and a return to the flattened and shallow type of the earliest manufactures. The neck had a single or double beading at the top, and the base was either flat or smoothly hollowed. All the Kossuth and Jenny Lind bottles were made about 1850. The Taylor or Taylor and Bragg bottles belong to the period of the Mexican War, and were probably blown in 1848. One of these bears Taylor's historic command, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg," as delivered at the battle of Buena Vista. Another has a portrait of Washington upon one side, and that of Taylor upon the other, with the motto, "Gen. Taylor never surrenders." This shows the circular, canteen shape. One of the very oldest forms known to have been decorated in this country is the one which bears in relief a design of the first railroad, represented by a horse drawing along rails a four-wheeled car heaped with cotton bales and lumps of coal. This picture runs lengthwise of the bottle and bears the legend "Success to the Railroads" about the margin of the panel. This could not have been produced earlier than 1825. Some of the Washington designs belong to earlier periods, as do the eagle and United States flag. Most of the Masonic decorations belong between 1840 and 1850. The log cabin designs are connected with the notable Harrison "hard cider" campaign of 1840, as are the inkstands made in the form of log cabins, cider barrels, and beehives. The dark brown whisky bottles in the shape of a log cabin are souvenirs of the same period of political excitement, and were made by a New Jersey glass firm for a certain liquor merchant in Philadelphia. The Jackson bottles belong to the period of the stormy thirties. The "Hero of New Orleans" is represented in uniform, wearing a throat-cutting collar which entirely obscures his ear. A Connecticut firm, in the late sixties, sent out a bottle of modern shape, decorated with a double-headed sheaf of wheat, with rake and pitchfork, having a star below. At about the same time a firm in Pittsburg put upon the market a highly decorated flask, similarly modern in outline, having upon one side an eagle, monument, and flag; upon the reverse, an Indian with bow and arrow, shooting a bird in the foreground, with a dog and a tree in the background. Some bottles of unknown origin were decorated with horns of plenty, vases of flowers, panels of fruit, sheaves of wheat, a Masonic arch and emblems, ship and eight-pointed star, and a bold Pikes Peak pilgrim with staff and bundle to celebrate the passage of the Rocky Mountains. Among the early curio bottles shown are numerous fancy designs in the form of animals, fishes, eggs, pickles, canteens, cigars, shells, pistols, violins, lanterns, and the like. To this class belongs the Moses bottle, which also goes by the name of Santa Claus. It is of clear and colorless glass, with a string fastened about the neck and attached to each end of a stick which crosses the top. Should the collector enlarge his fad so as to take in bottles from foreign lands, he would find that his collection would gain much in beauty. In the Metropolitan Museum of New York there is a very comprehensive exhibit of rare Venetian glass bottles and vials, which was the gift of James Jackson Jarves. These are the most brilliant and elegant types of their kind, graceful and refined, dainty and ethereal. CHAPTER XVI OLD PEWTER There is a charm about old pewter that is well-nigh irresistible to the collector of antiques, its odd shapes, mellow tints, and, above all, its rarity, luring one in its pursuit. In the days when it was in general use,--after the decline in favor of the wooden trencher,--it was but little valued, and our forbears quaffed their foaming, home-made ale from pewter tankards, and ate their meals from pewter dishes with little thought of the prominence this ware would one day attain, or the prices it would command. To-day pewter represents a lost art, and the tankards and plates and chargers which our ancestors used so carelessly are now pursued with untiring energy, and, if secured, are treasured as prizes of priceless worth. Intrinsically, the metal is of little value, being nothing more than an alloy of tin and lead, with sometimes a sprinkling of copper, antimony, or bismuth, but historically it is hugely interesting. Like many other old-time features, records of its early history are scanty, affording but little knowledge of its origin, though proving beyond a doubt that it was in use in very early times. When it was first used in China and Japan,--those countries to which we are forced to turn for the origin of so many of the old industries,--it is impossible to ascertain, but it is certain that pewter ware was made in China two thousand years ago, and there are to-day specimens of Japanese pewter in England, known to be all of eleven hundred years old, these latter pieces being very like some shown in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Some old chroniclers claim that the ware was used by the Phoenicians and early Hebrews, and all agree that it was manufactured, in certain forms, in ancient Rome. Proof positive of this fact was gleaned some years ago, when quantities of old pewter seals of all shapes and sizes were discovered in the county of Westmoreland, in England, where they had evidently been left by the Roman legions centuries before. It is indeed deplorable that, owing to their making excellent solder, all these seals should have been destroyed by enterprising tinkers in the neighborhood. As early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, pewter was produced in quantities, in France, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and a very little in Italy and Spain. The year 1550 marked the period of the most showy development in the first-named country, of which Francis Briot was the most celebrated worker. His most noted productions were a flagon and salver, with figures, emblems, marks, and strapwork. These exquisite pieces were cast in sections, joined together, and then finished in the most careful manner, in delicate relief. Briot was followed by Gasper Enderlein, Swiss, and by the year 1600 the Nuremberg workers entered the field with richly wrought plates and platters. France continued to hold high rank in pewter manufacture until 1750, after which time the quality of her output considerably deteriorated. In the sixteenth century the trade sprang up in Scotland, many excellent pieces of the ware being produced here, and during the seventeenth century Dutch and German pewter came to the fore, being considered, during this period, the best made. Nuremberg and Ausberg were the centers of the industry in Germany, while in Scotland, Edinburgh and Glasgow appear to have been the chief trade centers. The ware made in Spain never seems to have attained any great degree of perfection, and records of its progress in this country are extremely scarce. Barcelona seems to have been the center of the industry, but just when or where the craft had its inception, research has been unable to disclose. Certain it is that no trace of any corporation or guild has been found prior to the fifteenth century. English pewter dates back as far as the tenth century, though few pieces are now in existence that antedate the seventeenth century. Here, as in other European countries, the ware was at first made solely for ecclesiastical purposes, its manufacture for household use not becoming popular until many years later. From the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, the ware gradually grew in importance through northern Europe, though domestic pewter was used only by the clergy and nobility up to the fourteenth century. Just when it became popular for table and kitchen use is not definitely known, though it is certain that it supplanted wooden ware some time in the fifteenth century. Pewter reached the height of its popularity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though its use for household purposes continued throughout the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century the artistic quality of the ware was greatly improved, for by an act of James VI the ware was divided into two grades, the best to be marked with a crown and hammer, and the second with the maker's name. Specimens of this century are to-day extremely scarce, those few examples that do remain being for the most part found in museums or in old English castles, where they have remained in the same family from generation to generation. No doubt, specimens would have been more plentiful had not the greater part of the church plate in England and Scotland been destroyed during the Reformation. After 1780 pewter was but little used among the wealthy classes, except in their kitchens and servants' quarters, where it held sway for a considerable length of time. In fact, in some of the larger establishments, it continued to be used regularly until within the last thirty-five years, and even now it is used in the servants' hall in two or three of the large old country houses. It lingered longest in the taverns and inns, and in the London chop-houses, being used in the last named until they were forced out of business through the introduction of coffee palace and tea rooms. English pewter differs materially from that made in other countries, the workmen employing designs characterized by a sturdiness and sedate dignity that raised the ware above that made in other lands. Almost every conceivable domestic utensil was made of pewter as well as garden ornaments, and it is interesting to note, in connection with the latter, that several urns were designed by the brothers Adam. The history of pewter making in England might almost be said to be that of the London Guild or Worshipful Company of Pewterers, so closely is the ware allied with it. For a long time this company or guild controlled the manufacture and sale of the ware in England, and during the days of its greatest influence it did much to improve the quality. At one time it attempted to make general the employment and recording or marks, but the rule was not enforced, and an excellent opportunity of insuring the exact date of manufacture of a certain piece was thus lost. Several private touch marks were registered at Pewterers' Hall, but these, together with important records that the company had compiled, were destroyed in the great London fire of 1666. Very few pieces now in existence bear any of these touch marks, though occasionally a piece will be found that shows the regulation London Guild quality mark, a rose with a crown. The touch mark was the mark of the maker. This was generally his name alone, though sometimes his name was combined with some device, like an animal or flower. Scotland boasted a guild at Edinburgh that at one time enjoyed a fame second only to that of the celebrated London Company. Touch plates of the pewterers that were registered here are no longer in existence, and, indeed, much of the pewter made in this country bears no mark at all. The usual hallmark was a thistle and a crown, though there were several local marks that were frequently used, which are sometimes found on Scotch pieces. France, too, had its guilds, but they were abolished by Turgot on the ground that the free right to labor was a sacred privilege of humanity. Gradually the influence of all the guilds was less keenly felt, and in time the majority were abolished. After this the quality and use of pewter steadily declined, and with the coming into favor of china and other ware, pewter grew to be considered old-fashioned, and its use was discontinued during the first years of the nineteenth century. [Illustration: PLATE LXI.--Pewter half-pint, pint and quart Measures, one hundred years old; Three unusual-shaped Pewter Cream Jugs; German Pewter, Whorl pattern.] The old-time metal played a prominent part in the first colonial households in America, it being in many cases the only available ware, but after a time, as the population and strength of the young colonies increased, it had to give way, as in England, to the introduction and steadily increasing popularity of china. During the seventeenth century several English pewterers came to America to find employment, settling principally in Boston, Salem, and Plymouth County, and during the eighteenth century the manufacture of the ware here became quite common. It is interesting to note that the greater part of the American-made pieces bear the name of the maker. English and Continental pewter was also extensively used here, and, in consequence, American collections of the present include specimens from these countries. Most of the pieces now preserved belong to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, though there are some few pieces which are of earlier manufacture. The value of pewter, like all other antiques, varies, and a piece is really worth what one can obtain for it. In England, the highest prices are paid for sixteenth-century pewter, while in our own country the product of the eighteenth century is that most sought after, and the best prices are paid for pieces of this period. Ecclesiastical pewter is rare here, and therefore is valuable, but it does not hold such high favor in the collector's regard as do the simple pieces that once graced the quaint dressers in colonial homes. The fad for pewter has been productive of much imitation ware. This is especially true of certain types which are particularly popular, and, indeed, were it not for this demand, it would hardly pay to imitate the old metal, even at the prices now paid for the same. It costs considerable to make up spurious bits that are almost entirely like the old-time pieces, in composition, and, besides, they must be put through several processes to make them look old. Consequently, it is safe to assume that at the present time the number of imitation pieces on the market is comparatively small, and in this country there are really few pieces that are entirely counterfeit. To be sure, plain pieces of the genuine metal are sometimes ornamented to increase their value, but lately collectors seem to regard plain pieces with the greatest favor, and this form of counterfeiting will no doubt soon disappear. To-day, in America, there is one manufacturer, and perhaps more, who is reviving some of the original forms and producing pewter reproductions which are being put on the market as such. For the modern colonial dining-room these are especially attractive, serving in every particular the purpose of decoration, but to the collector they are of no interest. America boasts of several fine collections of this ware, especially in the New England states, where the chief ports for the trade were located. The Bigelow collection at Boston includes, besides plates and platters, rare bits of odd design, many of them characterized by markings. One such piece is a hot-water receptacle, showing a shield decoration on which are marked the initials "H. H. D." and the date "1796." The lid is ornamented with two lines and the initials "R. G." Several quaint lamps are other prized possessions in this collection, some of them made about 1712, and most of them of American manufacture. One of them, the smallest of the group, is marked "N. Y. Molineux." Tankards of the "tappit hen" type are also preserved here, though they are not precisely the same shape as the measures of Scotch make which went by that name; other pieces included in the collection are cream jugs, milk pitchers, spoons, forks, a water urn, and several odd tankards. Equally as interesting is the Caliga collection at Salem. Here are to be seen quantities of this rare old ware, worked up into almost every conceivable device, and several of the pieces are numbered among the choicest in the country. A squatty little teapot with wooden handle is among the most interesting specimens, and its history is in keeping with its quaintness. It was secured by Mr. Caliga in a little German town during his residence abroad, and soon after it came into his possession, it was much sought after by a collector, who offered a large sum of money for its acquirement. Mr. Caliga refused to part with it, and later he learned that it was indeed a very rare piece, being a part of a set which the collector was endeavoring to obtain for the Duke of Baden, who owned one of the three pieces, the would-be purchaser having the second. This teapot has for a hallmark an angel; a quaint sugar bowl of like design, also in this collection, shows a crown and bird. An odd pewter lamp, known as a Jewish or Seven Days' lamp, is included in this collection, the receptacle for oil being in the lower portion. There are two large pewter plates, also, one of which has the royal coat of arms in the center, and is surrounded by the whorl pattern. These plates measure about twenty inches across, and one has the hallmark of three angels on the back. Perhaps the rarest bit of pewter in existence to-day is that owned by a Massachusetts lady. It is of Japanese manufacture, and is a family heirloom, through generations back. It first came into possession of the owner's ancestors in 1450; even at that date it had a history, and, indeed, its battered sides speak eloquently and forcibly of a past. It is said to have been the possession of a French nobleman, who, for some cause or other, was compelled to flee from his native land, and who sought refuge in England, where he met and married an English girl. The precious bit remained with his descendants until the year above mentioned, when the last of his race, dying without issue, bequeathed the old relic to his dearest friend, of whom its present owner is a direct descendant. But whatever its type and origin, the old ware is always interesting. To be sure, even at its best it is plain, relying on its form for its pleasing appearance, but no other metal better repays its owner for the care expended upon it. No doubt it costs an effort or two to keep it bright and shining, but who does not feel repaid for the time and energy expended, when the slow gleams of silver-like hue that gradually appear on the surface greet one in appreciation, like the smile of an old friend! CHAPTER XVII OLD SILVER There is a widespread and growing interest in all old silver, especially in such pieces as can be traced back to colonial origin. Salem, whose commercial prosperity was well established by the middle of the seventeenth century, has some wonderfully good pieces of colonial silver, many of which are family heirlooms. The early American silverware, like our early furniture and architecture, is thoroughly characteristic of the tastes and mode of life peculiar to that period in America. It is simple in design and substantial in weight, thus reflecting the mental attitude of the people. Social conditions here would not warrant any imitation of the magnificent baronial silver which was then being made and used in England. Many of the pieces in these collections come to us hallowed by a hundred associations and by traditions recalling the lives of our forefathers in all their manifold phases. The sight of the silver communion service recalls the early history of our New England churches, and reminds us of the devotion of the people to the institutions about which revolved both the social and political life. Only the identity of the maker is revealed by the hallmark on American silver. There is no trace of the date letter, so prevalent upon English pieces of the same period, although various emblems appear, which were used as trademarks, peculiar to the owner. In cases where the crown appears above the initials, it was merely a passing fad to copy the mark of certain English silversmiths who enjoyed royal patronage. The business of making silverware in the colonies seems to have been profitable from the first. The earliest silversmith of whom we have any record is John Hull, born in 1624 and dying in 1683, who amassed much wealth through his appointment as mintmaster for Massachusetts in the old days of the pine-tree shillings. His name, together with that of his daughter Betsey, has been immortalized by Hawthorne. That Captain Hull did not have a monopoly of his trade is proved by the fact that a beaker, which was presented to the Dorchester church in 1672, was made by one David Jesse. Also, a certain Jeremiah Dummer, brother of Governor William Dummer, was apprenticed to John Hull, to learn the silversmith's trade, in 1659, and sent out much work stamped with his own name. He also taught his trade to his brother-in-law, John Cony, who engraved the plates for the first paper money that was ever made in America. Most famous of all New England silversmiths was Paul Revere. Besides the historic associations connected with his name, his works are most attractive in themselves, showing an exquisite finish and great beauty of workmanship; there are no certain marks to distinguish his work from that of his father, as each used the stamp "P. Revere." Of the many silversmiths of New York, none are so early in point of time as these New England men whom I have mentioned. Not until the middle of the eighteenth century did a certain George Ridout come over from London, and set up business "near the Ferry stairs." He has left us beautiful candlesticks, marked with his name, and by these he is remembered. At about the same time Richard Van Dyck, tracing his lineage to the Knickerbockers, made very handsome flat-chased bowls, and Myer Myers, seemingly of similar origin, set his stamp upon finely proportioned pint cans, having an ear-shaped handle and a pine-cone finial. At a later date, shortly subsequent to the Revolution, a silversmith named Tragees made beautiful sugar bowls with urn-shaped finials; and Cary Dunn, who held a position in the custom house, designed exquisitely engraved teapots, having the cover surmounted by a pineapple as the emblem of hospitality. These early makers stamped their names plainly upon their work, so that the task of approximating their age is thus rendered easy. In most families silver spoons of various patterns have been preserved for generations. Some of these were brought from England with other treasures of family silver, and are excellent examples of seventeenth-century ware. Up to that time, teaspoons had been made with very deep round or pear-shaped bowls and very short handles. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century, they assumed more nearly their present form, having handles twice as long as they had previously possessed, and bowls oval or elliptical. The new style was sometimes dubbed the "rat-tail spoon," in derisive comment upon its long and slender handle. It will be observed that many of our earliest teaspoons were no larger than the present after-dinner coffee spoons. It is probable that no other type of spoon possesses the interest, not to say the money value, of the old Apostle spoons, which came into fashion in the sixteenth century. At that time it was an English custom for the sponsors to present these spoons, as baptismal gifts, to the children for whom they made themselves responsible. A wealthy godparent would give a complete set of thirteen, but a poor man generally contented himself with giving simply the one spoon which bore the figure of the child's patron saint. The complete set consisted of the "Master" spoon and twelve others. The "Master" spoon has upon the handle a figure of Christ, holding in one hand the sphere and cross, while the other hand is extended in blessing. A nimbus surrounds the head, in all these spoons. Each apostle is distinguished by some emblem. Saint Paul has a sword, Saint Thomas a spear, and Saint Andrew a cross. Saint Matthias carries an ax or halberd, Saint Jude a club, Saint Bartholomew a butcher's knife, and Saint Philip a long staff with a cross in the T. Saint Peter appears with a key, Saint James the Greater with a pilgrim's staff, Saint James the Less with a fuller's hat, and Saint Matthew with a wallet. Saint John has one hand raised in blessing, while the other holds the cup of sorrow. Whole sets of these spoons are very rare. In fact, there are said to be but two whole sets in existence, with another set of eleven. One of these sets sold in 1903 for twenty-four thousand five hundred dollars, while another set of less ancient date brought five thousand three hundred dollars. A single Apostle spoon, bearing upon its handle a figure of Saint Nicholas, and upon its stem the inscription, "Saint Nicholas, pray for us," sold in London for three thousand four hundred and fifty dollars, a few years ago. This is said to be the highest price ever paid for one single spoon. The oldest hallmarked Apostle spoon is dated 1493, while the most modern of which we have any record bears the date of 1665. It is probable that the custom of giving these baptismal presents began to go out of fashion at that period. Other spoons of great interest, although not so old as the earliest Apostle spoons, are the curious little "caddy spoons," which came into vogue with the first popularity of tea drinking more than two centuries ago. The tea was at first kept in canisters, whose lids served as a measure. Then came into use the quaint and dainty tea caddy, with its two-lidded and metal-lined end compartments, and a central cavity to be used as a sugar bowl. A favorite and poetic custom of the old sea captains, upon visiting China, was to have their ships painted upon China caddies by Chinese artists, as gifts for wives or sweethearts at home. Now since the sugar bowl was a part of the tea caddy, the use of the caddy spoon or scoop became immediately popular. All of these spoons have very short stems and handles, with bowls of fanciful design, perforated, or shell-shaped, or fluted. A few were made like miniature scoops, with handles of ebony; while others were perfect imitations of leaves, the leaf stem curling around into a ring, to make the handle. In this country, caddy spoons came into use after the Revolution. Until very recently, they have been neglected by collectors, and were to be bought at a low figure; but all that is changed, and the price is from fifteen dollars upward in most cases, besides which the purchaser must take his chances as to the genuine worth of his bargain, as many imitations are being put upon the market. It is no proof of genuine worth that the spoon may be bought in an antique shop on a quiet street of some sleepy old seaport town. This is just the spot likely to be chosen for perpetrating a fraud. The most common counterfeit is made by joining a perfectly new bowl to the handle of a genuine Georgian teaspoon that bears an irreproachable hallmark. The unusual length of handle betrays the cheat, which can be further proved by the presence of a flattened spot similar to a thumb print, where the bowl joins the handle. Still another fraudulent specimen has a false hallmark. These counterfeits were probably made outside of this country, perhaps not even in England. The hallmark is the stamp of a head that bears no particular resemblance to George III, for whom it is possibly intended; a lion that may, perhaps, be near enough in design to pass for the royal British brute; and signs and letters, half-effaced, which, in conjunction with the king's head and the lion, make up an imitation of the Birmingham hallmark. Of course it would not deceive, for an instant, the experienced buyer in a good clear light; but the shops are often darkened to a kind of twilight, and the inexperienced amateur detects nothing wrong about the spoon, which is usually made after some uncommon and attractive style. As this fraud is of recent date, no examination would be necessary for spoons known to have been in a certain family for some years. These spoons were made of Wedgwood ware, china, glass, agate, or tortoise-shell, as well as of silver. There are beautiful silver ones in the shape of a hand or of a flower. In two cases, I have seen the spoon made to match the caddy. One of these sets was of decorated china, and the other of tortoise-shell set in silver. Another spoon, which passed out of date with the caddy ladle, was the so-called caudle spoon. It might be well to explain to the present generation that caudle was a preparation of wine, eggs, and spices which was commonly fed to invalids, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The caudle spoon, perforated or entire, but with a longer handle and smaller bowl than the caddy spoon, was employed to stir the mixture. It is now obsolete, as is the snuff spoon, another relic of the whimsical customs of yore. There was a season when it was stylish to carry a snuffbox, and to take a pinch one's self, now and then, or to offer it to a friend. The snuff spoon was used to avoid dipping the fingers into the powder, which would of course stain both finger nails and cuticle. As the caddy was the companion piece of the caddy spoon, so the caudle bowl is associated with the caudle spoon. A Salem specimen stands six inches high, and has a capacity of three pints. It has two handles, and is embellished by a broad chasing at the base, and by fluted chasing about the body. The caudle cup used with it is severely plain, but has a good outline. Tankards both with and without covers were in common use, toward the close of the seventeenth century. In size, they varied from a capacity of one quart to three. They were often fitted with a whistle, by the blowing of which the butler's attention could be called to the fact that the tankard needed filling. From this custom arose the old saying, "Let him whistle for it." The singular expression, "A plate of ale" comes from the fact that in old inventories, tankards are listed as "ale plates." The largest Salem specimen has a capacity of one quart only, and is beautifully chased around the body and upon the cover in a rose-and-pineapple design. This chasing is much worn, not only by the passage of time, but also by the pitiless polishing of the methodical New England housekeeper. This is a straight-sided tankard, with a well-curved top, which necessitates a long and tapering thumb piece. The handle is large and well-tapered, extending well above the rim. All these specimens belong to the Revolutionary epoch. [Illustration: PLATE LXII.--Old Silver Coffee Urn with Pineapple finial; Sheffield Plate Teapot, formerly owned by Thomas Jefferson; Tall Silver Pitcher, of flagon influence.] The style of silver made and used in this country during the first half of the nineteenth century is well typified by the sugar, creamer, and teapot contained in an old-time collection. The teapot and sugar bowl are adorned with a pineapple finial. This style was originated by Cary Dunn of New York at the close of the Revolution, and won immense popularity. The pineapple, which is its most notable decoration, has always been accepted as the emblem of hospitality; while the primrose pattern about base and body is neat and tasteful. The lines in these designs are less severely simple than in some, but are excellent, nevertheless. [Illustration: PLATE LXIII.--Several old Silver pieces; Collection of Salem Silver, almost all inherited; Wonderfully fine Silver Bowl.] Another favorite style of this same period is shown in a graceful little pitcher in another collection, having for sole ornament a rosette where the handle joins the body. Rosettes were high in favor in the early part of the nineteenth century, and were shown in the furniture of that day as well as in the silverware. Another charming pitcher which stands upon three legs is a veritable prize, literally as well as figuratively. During the War of 1812, our Salem privateers seized many a valuable cargo. Among the confiscated treasures was this dainty little silver pitcher, handsomely engraved, and bearing the coat of arms of a prominent English family. In the division of the confiscated goods, this article fell to an ancestor of the owner, who received it by inheritance. Another interesting bit of silver, belonging to the same period as the pitcher, is a cruet stand. Fifty years ago these were in common use upon the tables of our ancestors. Fashion has relegated them to the sideboard or to the top shelf, where the old-fashioned, high silver cake basket keeps them company in exile. To the same period belongs the teapot showing a rosette bowl, and mushroom-shaped finial, which was among the bride's presents at a wedding in 1804, while the sugar and creamer included in the same collection belong to a later date, as they were bridal presents received in 1867. The beauty of the lines in these two specimens falls far short of the standard set by American manufacturers of colonial times. Still in use and highly prized is the wonderful old bowl which is in another collection. For many years this bowl was lost, and though diligent search was made for it, it was not discovered until one day the owner and some friends, riding through a rural district, stopped at a well in a farmhouse yard for a drink. Close at hand a pig was eating from a peculiar-looking receptacle, which, though blackened and mud-stained, yet showed an interesting contour. Negotiations were entered into with the house owner for the purchase of this receptacle, and it was secured for twenty-five cents. When polished, it was found to be the long-missing bowl, which has since then been called the hog bowl. Other specimens still preserved include a tall sugar bowl, mounted upon a standard, which is more than a hundred years old, as are the tongs used with it, with their delicate acorn-cup pattern. In the larger piece, the rings which form the handles pass through the mouth of a dog's head, upon each side. The feet which support the standard suggest the work done in the furniture of that day by Chippendale, Sheraton, and their followers. To the latter days of the eighteenth century belong an endless yet interesting variety of patterns of porringers, salvers, sugar bowls, perforated baskets for loaf sugar, tea and coffee pots, and innumerable table utensils. Another article which is now found but rarely is the nutmeg holder or spice box. The interior of the lid was roughed for use as a grater, and few were the "night caps" but had a final touch added through its use. While the usefulness of the spice box and the snuffbox has long since passed away, yet they are treasured because of the pictures they bring to the mind's eye of the old days of the Georges. No product of the present can outvie the charms of such old silver. All things colonial, whether house or accessory, are distinctive, and to the designers and craftsmen of that period the world owes a debt that no amount of tribute can ever wholly repay. Colonial is synonymous of the best, and objects created during its influence are always of a higher degree of perfection than the best of other periods. Looking about for a reason for this, we are confronted with the realization that the work of that time was carefully planned and carefully finished, craftsmen giving to their output the best their brains could devise, and allowing no reason, however urgent, to interfere with the completion of a certain object as they had originally planned it to be. Therein lies the real reason of the superiority of things colonial. Later-day artisans sacrificed quality to quantity; they complied with the demand of public opinion, and as that demand became more urgent, carelessness of detail became more marked. The simplicity of the colonial era gave way to the highly decorative and often ugly ornamentation characteristic of late nineteenth-century manufacture, and it was not until a few craftsmen found courage to revive colonial features that the beauty of that type of construction was truly appreciated. To-day, colonial influence is again dominant, and it is a relief to note that in modern homes it is usurping in favor its hitherto prized successors. It is only to be hoped that its influence will be lasting, for surely of all types it is the most worthy of emulation. INDEX Abbot, General, 25. house, 78, 109, 153. Adam brothers, 98, 103, 128, 140, 215. Adams, Abraham, 95, 138. family, 95, 138. John, 88. the decorator, 69. Albree, John, 152. Alden, John, 111. Allen, John Fiske, 51. house, 51, 52. of Lowestoft, 182. Amesbury, Mass., 37. Andirons, 67-69. Andrews, John, 21, 101. house, 13, 21, 84, 85. "Angel Gabriel" (ship), 102. Appleton, John, 163. Architects, English, 8. Architecture, Dutch, 2. Gothic, 4. Architrave, decoration of, 18. Argand, Mons., 168. Assembly house, 18, 24. Atkinson collection, 200. Ausberg, Germany, 212. Austria, 197. Bagnall, Benjamin, 147. Samuel, 148. Barcelona, Spain, 213. Barnard, Dr. Thomas, 81. Bartol, Dr. Cyrus, 81. Bavaria, 196. Bay of Biscay, 135. Bedrooms, 122, 125. Beds, accessories of, 124. Adam, 128. antique, 120. bunk, 126, 127. carved, 27. Chippendale, 127, 128. cupboard, 122, 126. Egyptian, 121. Field, 131. Flemish, 121. folding, 127. four-poster, 123-131. "Great Bed of Ware," 122, 123. Greek, 121. hangings, 124. Hepplewhite, 128, 130. inlaid, 128. mahogany, 127. oak, 122. paneled, 127. "Presse," 126, 127. primeval, 121. Queen Anne, 126. Roman, 121. Sheraton, 128. "slaw-back," 127. "Wild Bill" or one-poster, 126. Benson house, 109. Bigelow collection, 219. Billingsley, William, 187. roses, 187. Bishop, Bridget, 26. Black Point, Maine, 43. Blankets, home-made, 124. Bloor, Robert, 188. Bohemia, 196, 197. Boston, Mass., 5, 43, 71, 74, 147, 148, 149, 217, 219. Bottles, 203, 205-209. arched, 206. bases of, 205. calabash, 206. canteen, 207. circular, 206. curio, 209. decorated, 207-209. designs on, 206. flask, 207. Jackson, 208. Jenny Lind, 207. Kossuth, 207. liquor, 208. Moses, 209. oldest American, 207. oval, 206. rim of, 206. Santa Claus, 209. signs of age in, 205. spherical, 206. Taylor and Bragg, 207. Venetian, 209. Bow, England, 183, 186. Bradford, Governor, quoted, 42. Bricks, Dutch, 9. gray-faced, 13, 14. Briot, Francis, 212. Bristol, R. I., 12, 60, 101, 131. Brown Inn, 173. Bumstead, 6, 80. Byfield, Mass., 95, 126, 138, 173. Cabins, log, 2. Cabot, Mr., 141. house, 7, 22, 53. Joseph, 7, 22. Caliga collection, 220. Cambridge, Mass., 37. Candelabra, 167, 169, 170. Candle, 231. bowl, 232. cup, 232. spoon, 231. Candles, 159, 160-165. bayberry, 164. dip, 165. makers, 166. making, 163, 164, 165. molds, 165. sperm, 163. suet, 161. tallow, 161, 165. wickless, 161. Candlesticks, 159, 167. brass, 167. iron, 167. pewter, 167. silver, 167. tin, 167. Cape Cod, 42. Capen house, 55. Carving, art of, 18. Ceilings, low, 3. raftered, 66. Cellar, large, 10. Chairs, arm, 94, 98. banister-back, 94. brass mounted, 101. carved, 95, 98, 99, 100. Chinese type, 98, 99. Chippendale, 97, 98. comb back, 97. Dutch, 95, 98. early colonial, 93. Empire type, 101, 102. fan back, 97. forms, 93. French types, 98, 100. heart-back, 100. Hepplewhite, 97, 99, 100. inlaid, 100. japanned, 100. Louis the Fifteenth type, 98. Martha Washington, 101 painted, 95, 97, 102. ribbon-back, 98. rocking, 94. rush seated, 95. settles, 93. Sheraton, 97, 100, 101. shield-back, 100. slat-back, 94. stuffed easy, 96. turned, 93. Windsor, 96, 97. Chandeliers, 169. Chelsea, England, 183, 186. Chests, 105-110. drop handle, 109. hand-carved, 107. highboys, 109, 110. imported, 106, 107. legs of, 108. linen, 108. lowboys, 109, 110. "magic," 107. mahogany, 106. on frames, 108. "owld pine," 106, 107. size of, 106. use of, 106. with drawers, 107. Chimney pots, 19. Chimneys, catted, 2. central, 7. China, Empire of, 80, 181, 184, 185, 211, 229. China, 172, 216. caddies, 229. cream ware, 191. Crown Derby, 182, 186-188. Delft, 177-180, 185. jasper, 191. Lowestoft, 175, 181-185. luster, 191. salt glaze, 173, 174. Staffordshire, 173-176. toby jugs, 175-177. Wedgwood, 189-191. Chippendale (designer), 92, 97, 98, 99, 112, 114, 127, 128, 136, 140, 146, 236. Choate, Joseph, 22. "Christmas Carol," 22. Claudius, Emperor, 145. Clocks, American, 146, 148, 150, 151, 153-157. Bagnall, 147. banjo, 149. "birdcage," 153. cases, 151. Chippendale, 146. construction of, 149, 150, 152, 154, 155, 156. Doolittle, 148. first, 145. grandfather's, 151, 153. hangings, 150. "lantern," 153. Makers' union, 146. making in Salem, 150. musical, 148. of Europe, 146. one-day, 157. patent shelf, 153, 154. pillar scroll top case, 155. Sheraton, 146. striking, 148. table, 151. Terry, 150, 153. "wag-at-the-wall," 153. wall and bracket, 151, 153. water, 145. weaver's, 152. wick, 145. Willard, 148, 149. Coal, discovery of, 75. first use of, 74. Cogswell house, 125. Collections, Atkinson, 200. Bigelow, 219. Caliga, 220. Hosmer, 147. Mansfield, Nathaniel B., 109. Metropolitan Museum, 209. Middleton, 11, 131. Mitchell, 199-200. Page, 175, 180. Rogers, 191. Waters, 93, 102, 108, 202. West, 189, 202. Colonial products, superiority of, 236, 237. Columns, Corinthian, 12. Grecian, 17. plain, 21, 122. Common, Salem, 21, 25. Cook, Captain Samuel, 77. Dr. Elisha, 15. Cony, John, 225. Counterpane, homespun, 125. Craigie house, 37. Crowell, Rev. Robert, 125. Crown Derby, 182. "Bloor-Derby," 188. decline of, 188. early output of, 186. epoch par excellence, 187. factory, 186, 187, 188. Crowninshield house, 38, 71. Cupboards, colonial, 1, 72. shell-top, 173. Cupola, 9. Danvers, Mass., 5, 10, 19, 44, 46, 49, 60. Delft, Holland, 178, 179. Delft ware, best examples of, 179. decline of Dutch, 179, 180. Dutch, 177, 178, 179, 180. English, 178, 180. first potteries, 179. old, 177. origin of, 178. plates, 180. tiles, 180. Derby, Elias Hasket, farm, 47, 49, 50. Elias Hersey, 50. house, 77, 78. Desks, bookcase, 112. bureau, 111. Chippendale secretary, 112. French Empire, 113. Hepplewhite secretary, 112. "scrutoir," 110, 111. Sheraton secretary, 112. Devereux, Humphrey, house, 52. Dexter, "Lord" Timothy, house, 99. Dickens, Charles, quoted, 39. Doolittle, Enos, 148. Doorways, narrow, 22, 25. pineapple, 27. Downing, Emanuel, 4. George, 4. "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," 24. Dressing tables, 109. Duesbury, William and son, 186, 187, 188. Duke of Baden, 220. Duke of Devonshire's house, 39. Dummer, Governor William, 225. house, 173. Jeremiah, 225. Dunbarton, N. H., 8, 130, 151. Dunn, Cary, 226, 233. Dutch architecture, 2. East India Company, 185. ware, 177, 178, 179, 180. East Windsor, Conn., 150. Edinburgh, Scotland, 212, 216. Elector of Brandenburg, 200. Elizabethan period, 4. Embargo, the, 11. Enderlein, Gasper, 212. Endicott, Governor John, 2, 4, 44, 105. farm, 44. house, 10. England, 2, 3, 8, 9, 35, 39, 41, 43, 64, 80, 82, 86, 128, 134, 135, 136, 139, 142, 147, 152, 157, 161, 167, 174, 183, 185, 201, 202, 203, 211, 214, 215, 217, 221, 223, 226, 230. Etruria factory, 190. Exeter, England, 146. Fabens, Mr., 71. Faulkner, Dr. G., 149. "Feast of Roses," 205. Fell, Judge Jesse, 75. Felt, Captain Jonathan P., 49. Felt's Annals, quoted, 150. Fenders, 75, 76, 77. Fireback, 71-72. Firedogs, 66. Fire frames, 73-74. Fireplace, accessories, 65, 66, 67. brass, 77. colonial, 64, 65. construction of, 65. Elizabethan, 64. Gove, 70. inglenook, 64. Louis Sixteenth, 64. modern, 63, 64. of Middle Ages, 63. of Renaissance, 63, 64. Queen Anne, 64. Robinson, 71. soapstone, 78. tiled, 76. Fire sets, 66, 67. Flint and steel, 170. Floor, sanded, 66. Forrester house, 21. France, 80, 86, 135, 167, 212. Franklin, Benjamin, 94. stores, 73, 74, 75, 76. Gardens, 11, 13, 41. Allen, 51, 52. at Indian Hill, 48. at Oak Knoll, 47. Cabot, 53. Captain Peabody's, 46. Derby, 50. features of old-fashioned, 44, 45. Humphrey Devereux, 52. location of, 45, 46, 51. Mrs. Perry's, 48. nucleus of, 43. of George Heussler, 49, 50. Salem, 49. Gardiner house, 21. George house, 141. George II, 96. George III, 69, 100, 230. Georgetown, Mass., 83, 107. Georgian period, 127. Gerard, quoted, 44. Germantown, Mass., 163. Germany, 197, 212. Gibbon (designer), 143. Glasgow, Scotland, 212. Glass, baluster stem, 202. beads, 203. blown, 205. Bohemian, 195, 197-199, 204. bonbon dishes, 200. bottles, 203, 205-209. bowls, 203, 204. cameo incrusted, 199. choiceness determined, 103. colored, 197, 201. cutting of, 198. decanters, 200, 201, 202. drinking, 201. English, 201. engraved, 196, 197, 198, 202. etched, 199. factories, 197, 198, 204. first made, 194. French, 199. gilded, 196, 197. goblets, 204. green German, 196. historic flasks, 206. legend of, 196. making in Rome, 195. origin of, 195. painted, 196, 197. Portland Vase, 192, 195. ruby colored, 199-200. Russian, 203. salt cellar, 199, 200. toddy, 201, 202. tumblers, 201-202. vases, 198, 199. Venetian, 195, 198. white twist stem, 202. wine, 202. Glastonbury Abbey, 146. Gothic architecture, 4. Gove house, 70. Governor's Field, 4. Island, 42. Grafton, Mass., 148. "Guild of St. Luke," 179. Hallway, Capen house, 55. colonial, 54. eighteenth and nineteenth century, 56, 57. entry, 61. finish of, 59. "Hey Bonnie Hall," 60, 61. Lee, 58, 60. Old English, 55, 58. paneled, 56, 57, 59. papered, 59. spacious, 57, 58. Stark, 56. Warner, 56, 57, 90-91. Wentworth, 58, 59. Hamilton, Mass., 71. Hamilton Hall, 141, 166. Hangings, bed, chintz, 124. linen, 124. patch, 124, 130. Harland, Thomas, 150. Harris, Mrs. Walter L., 136. Harrod house, 138, 203. Hartford, Conn., 147, 148. Harvard College, 4. Haverhill, Mass., 76, 129. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 24, 26, 37, 102, 224. Heard house, 93. Hearth accessories, 66, 67. Hepplewhite (designer), 92, 97, 99, 100, 110, 112, 114, 115, 128. "Hermitage," 87. Heussler, George, 49. "Hey Bonnie Hall," 11, 60, 61, 101. Higginson, Governor, 161. Rev. Francis, quoted, 41. "Highfield," 95, 126, 138. High Rock, Mass., 95. Hillsboro, N. H., 89, 90, 115, 151. Hinges, wrought-iron, 9. Hingham, Mass., 93. "History of Essex," 125. Hoadley, Silas, 155. Hoffman, Captain, 52. Holland, 2, 9, 41, 43, 80, 96, 135, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 185, 196, 212. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 130. Hosmer collection, 147. "House of Seven Gables," 37. Houses, Abbot, General, 78, 109, 153. Albree, 152. Allen, 52. Andrews, 13, 21, 84, 85. Assembly, 18, 24. Bell or Brick, 190. Benson, 109. brick, 3, 13, 14, 19, 56. Brown Inn, 173. Cabot, 7, 22, 53. Capen, 55. Cogswell, 125. colonial, 7. Craigie, 37. Crowninshield, 38, 71. Derby, 77, 78. Devereux, Humphrey, 52. Devonshire's, Duke of, 39. Dexter, 99. Dummer, 173. Endicott, 10. finest, 8. Forrester, 21. frame, 2, 55. gambrel-roofed, 3, 10, 19, 55. Gardiner, 21. George, 141. Gove, 70. Hamilton Hall, 141, 166. Harrod, 138, 203. Heard, 93. "Hermitage," 87. "Hey Bonnie Hall," 11, 60, 61, 101. "Highfield," 95, 126, 138. historic, 5, 6, 8, 12. Howe, 111, 115, 129. "Indian Hill," 12, 48. Johnson's, Dr., 39. Kimball, 18, 83. Kittredge, 142, 201. Knapp, 87. Lee, 8, 58, 60, 87, 89. Lindall-Andrews, 80, 81. Little, 70. log cabin, 2. Long, 93. Lord, 22, 138, 139, 142. Mansfield, 71. mansion, 3, 8, 10, 19, 56. Maryland Manor, 11. May, 37. Meyer, 71. Middleton, 131. Mount Vernon, 131. Nichols, 200. Noyes, 113. Oak Knoll, 47, 60. of 52 rooms, 10. Oliver, 77. Osgood, 109, 143, 168. Page, 5, 6. Pickering, 4, 5, 72, 76, 109. Pierce, 89, 115, 151. Pierce-Jahonnot, 25. Pierce-Nichols, 139. Robinson, 71. Ropes, 111. Salem Club, 70. Saltonstall-Howe, 76. Sanders, 70. Silsbee, 21. Southern, 12. Sprague, 169. Stark, 8, 56, 115, 130, 151. Stearns, 6. Steigel, 204. Warner, 9, 56, 90, 109, 169. Waters, 38, 77, 202. Wentworth, 10, 58. Wheelright, 88. Whipple, 7, 25, 87. White House, 11. Whittier, 37, 47, 60. Howe, Mrs. Guerdon, 111. house, 111, 115, 129. Hull, Betsey, 224. John, 224. Ince (designer), 98. "Indian Hill," 12, 48. Indians, 203. Ipswich, Mass., 5, 7, 93. Ironworks, American, 204. Italy, 135, 197, 212. Ivy Works, Burslem, 190. Jackson, Andrew, 87. of Battersea, 81. Jacobean period, 127. Jamaica Plain, Mass., 169. James VI, 214. Jamestown, Va., 203. Japan, 80, 179, 211. Jarves, James Jackson, 209. Jerome, Chauncey, 157. Jesse, David, 224. Johnson's, Dr., house, 39. Josslyn, John, quoted, 43. Kean, Michael, 188. Kensington, Philadelphia, 203. Kimball house, 18, 83. King Philip's War, 116. Kitchen, colonial, 66. Kittredge house, 142, 201. Knapp house, 87. Knockers, antique, 35. brass, 22, 30, 33, 34. disappearance of, 31. eagle, 35, 36, 37. English, 9. fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 30. garland, 35. Georgian urn, 35, 36. Gothic, 33. historic, 37. horseshoe, 36. invention of, 29. iron, 7, 30, 33, 36. lion and ring, 35. London, 38-39. May house, 37, 38. medieval, 33. Mexican, 36. plate or escutcheon, 33, 34. price of, 34. Renaissance, 33, 37. reproductions of, 34. thumb latch, 8, 22, 35, 38. types of, 29. Knox, General, 25. Henry, 138. Kunckel (artist), 200. Lafayette, General, 24. Lamps, Betty, 162. glass, 168. unique specimen, 162. whale-oil, 166. wick, 162. with glass prisms, 169, 170. Lanterns, 162. gilded, 168. painted, 168. Larcom, Lucy, 6. Latches, thumb, 8, 22, 35, 38. Lean-to, 3, 7. Lee, Colonel Jeremiah, house, 8, 58, 60, 87, 89. Leghorn, Italy, 131. Lehmann, Gasper, 198. Leslie's Retreat, 7, 81. Leverett, Governor John, 115. Thomas, 15. Lightfoot, Peter, 146. Lights, candelabra, 167, 169. candle, 159, 160, 161, 163-166. candlewood, 159, 160, 161. chandeliers, 169. electric, 159. fire, 159, 160. from flint and steel, 170. gas, 159. lamp, 162, 169. lantern, 162, 168. pine torch, 159, 160. rush, 162. Lindall, Judge, 80. Lindall-Andrews house, 80, 81. Little, Hon. David M., house, 70. Little Harbor, N. H., 10, 58. London, 167, 214, 215, 225. London Guild or Worshipful Company of Pewterers, 215. Long, Hon. John D., 93. house, 93. Longfellow, Anne Sewall, 95. Lord, Nathaniel, 23. house, 22, 138, 139, 142. Lowestoft, 181, 186. coat-of-arms, 183. controversy, 185. decoration of, 183, 184. factory, 182, 184, 185. first ware, 182. Holland, 182. Oriental, 181. red, 183. Luster ware, 191. copper, 192, 193. gold, 192, 193. jugs, 192. silver-tinted, 192. Sunderland, 192. Lynn, Mass., 72, 95, 175, 193. Macpheadris, Captain, 9. Mary, 9. McIntyre, Samuel, 18, 47, 69, 70, 71, 77, 140. Manchester, Mass., 56, 199, 200. Mannheim, Germany, 204. Pa., 204. Mansfield, Mrs. Nathaniel B., 71. collection, 109. Mantlepieces, 63, 64, 70. in Little house, 70. marble, 70. narrow, 64. Oliver house, 77. Renaissance, 64. Salem Club, 70. Sanders house, 70. Manwaring (designer), 98. Marblehead, Mass., 8, 60, 81, 87, 135. Historical Society, 89. Marseilles, France, 146. Maryland Manor, 11. "Mayflower," the, 111. Mayhew (designer), 98. May house, 37. Merchant princes, 19. Metropolitan Museum, 209. Mexican War, 207. Meyer, Hon. George von L., 71. Middleton, Moses, 11. collection, 11, 131. house, 131. Militia, first company of, 7. Mills, Henry, 153. Mirrors, Adam, 140. Bilboa, 135. bull's-eye, 140. Chippendale, 136, 140. Constitution, 137. "Courtney," 143. frames, 134. girandole, 140, 141. glass, 134. knobs, 137. Lafayette, 143. late colonial, 141, 142. mantel, 139-140. metal, 133, 134. origin of, 133. paneled, 141, 142, 143. Queen Anne, 136. Venetian, 134, 142. with cornice overhanging, 138, 141. Mitchell collection, 199-200. Money, first paper, 225. Mount Vernon, 131. Mullikin, Samuel, 150. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 211. Myers, Myer, 225. Nashville, Tenn., 87. Newburyport, Mass., 48, 49, 73, 87, 88, 99, 113, 138, 180, 203. New England Historical Genealogical Society of Boston, 147. Newton, Mass., 37, 138, 139, 142. Nichols house, 200. North Andover, Mass., 142. Noyes house, 113. Nuremberg, Germany, 212. Oak Knoll, 47, 60. "Old Christmas," 65. Old Tom, Indian chieftain, 12. Oliver, Henry K., house, 77. Osgood house, 109, 143, 168. Page, Colonel Jeremiah, 6. collection, 175, 180. house, 5, 6. Mistress, 6. Panels, hand-made, 9. Parties at Salem, 167. Peabody, Captain Joseph, 11, 46, 70. Elizabeth, 24. Joseph Augustus, 46. Sophia, 24. Peacock Inn, 4. Pearson, Ebenezer, 73. Perkins, Dr. George, 74. Perry, Mrs. Charles, 48. Pewter, 71, 162, 167, 168, 194, 210. American, 217. chargers, 210, 219. collections of, 219, 220. composition of, 210. development in France, 212. Dutch, 212. ecclesiastical, 213, 218. English, 213, 215, 217. flagon, 212. French, 216. German, 212. guilds, 215, 216. historic teapot, 220. household, 213, 214, 219. imitation, 218-219. in Rome, 211. in sixteenth century, 214. Japanese, 211, 221. lamps, 219, 220. marks on, 214-221. old, 211. origin of, 211, 213. plates, 210, 219, 221. rarest in existence, 221. salver, 212. Scotch, 212, 216. seals, 211. Spanish, 213. tankards, 210, 219. use discontinued, 216. value of, 217. where used, 213-214. Pewterer's Hall, London, 215. Philadelphia, Pa., 28, 51, 75, 208. Phipps, Governor, 90. Pickering, Alice, 72. house, 4, 5, 72, 76, 109. John, 4, 5, 72. Rev. Theophilus, 76. Timothy, 5, 109. Pierce, Franklin, 89. Governor, 89. house, 89, 115, 151. Mr., 25. Pierce-Jahonnot house, 25. Pierce-Nichols house, 139. Pilasters, fluted, 22. Pilgrim Hall, 93. Pillars, carved, 8. packed with salt, 14. Pitcher, Moll, 95. Planche, Mons., 186, 188. Plants and flowers, 41, 42. azaleas, 52. camellias, 52. night-blooming cereus, 50. oxeye daisy, 44. peonies, 53. pitcher plant, 43. tulips, 53. _Victoria Regia_, 51. whiteweed, 44. wild, 42. woadwaxen, 44. Plymouth, Conn., 155. County, 217. Mass., 93. Poore, Major Benjamin Perky, 48. Porcelain, Chinese, 179, 185. Japanese, 179. Lowestoft, 184. Porch, Andrews, 21. Assembly House, 24. circular, 13, 17, 21. construction of, 17. contour, 17. Dutch, 25. Gardiner, 21. hand-carved, 17, 18, 24. historic, 20, 24. inclosed, 23, 54. Lord, 22. Middle States, 9. New England, 17, 19, 28. oblong, 17. Philadelphia, 28. Pickman, 27. Pierce-Jahonnot, 25-26. Robinson, 14. side, 14, 22, 23. Southern, 17, 19. square, 17. three-cornered, 17. types of, 19, 20. Portland Vase, 195. replica of, 192. Portsmouth, N. H., 9, 10, 90, 109, 169. Poynton, Captain Thomas, 27. Putnam, General Israel, 111. Quincy, Mass., 163. Redmond, John, 166. Reformation, the, 214. Revere, Paul, 225. Revolution, the, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 19, 35, 69, 89, 94, 97, 113, 135, 143, 226, 229, 233. Rhode Island, 11. Ridout, George, 225. Robinson, Nathan, 14. house, 71. Rogers collection, 191. Rome, Italy, 211. Roof, flat, 20. gambrel, 8, 9. pitched, 7. thatched, 2. Ropes, Caleb, 51. house, 111. Rose (potter), 183. mark, 183. Rotterdam, china warehouse at, 184. Rouseley, England, 4. Rowley, Mass., 141. Roxbury, Mass., 148. Salem, Mass., 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 36, 38, 46, 49, 60, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 80, 84, 93, 95, 101, 102, 108, 109, 130, 132, 138, 139, 141, 143, 150, 153, 162, 164, 166, 168, 169, 189, 200, 202, 203, 217, 220, 223, 232. Salem Club, 70. Saltonstall, Dr. Nathaniel, 76, 130. family, 141. Sir Richard, 130. Saltonstall-Howe house, 76. Sanders, Thomas, house, 70. Saugus, Mass., 72, 153. Saxony, 186, 196. Schwanhard, George, 198. Sconces, in Osgood house, 168. wall, 167. Scotland, 9, 212, 214. Sharp, William, 52. Shearer (designer), 114. Sheraton (designer), 92, 97, 100-102, 112, 128, 146, 236. Shoemaker, Colonel George, 75. Sideboards, 113, 114. Chippendale, 114. Empire, 116. Hepplewhite, 114. inlaid, 115. Shearer, 114. Sheraton, 115. Silesia, 196. Silsbee house, 21. Silver, American, 223, 224. baronial, 223. beaker, 224. bowls, 225, 226, 232, 233, 234, 235. caddy, 229, 232. cake basket, 234. candle bowl, 232. candlesticks, 225. cans, 226. chased, 232, 233. communion service, 223. creamer, 234. cruet stand, 234. English, 224. engraved, 226, 232. hallmarks on, 224, 226, 230, 231. "hog" bowl, 235. of Paul Revere, 225. pitcher, 233. plates, 225. snuffbox, 232, 236. spice box, 236. spoons, 226-232. table utensils, 236. tankards, 232, 233. teapots, 226, 233, 234. tongs, 235. Simpson, Dr. James E., 52. Snuffer boats, 168. Snuffers, 168. Sofas, 97, 102. Adam, 103. Chippendale, 103. Cornucopia, 103. Darby and Joan, 103. Empire, 104. haircloth, 103. Louis XV, 103. Sheraton, 103. Spain, 135, 212, 213. Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 73. Spoons, "Apostle," 227, 228. "caddy," 228, 229, 231, 232. candle, 231. imitations, 230, 231. "rat-tail," 226. snuff, 231. teaspoons, 226. Sprague, Joseph, 6 house, 169. Staffordshire factories, 173, 175, 184. Staircase, 55, 59. balusters, 59. "Hey Bonnie Hall," 61. "Oak Knoll," 60. spiral, 60. winder, 60. Stark, Charles Morris, 9. Major Caleb, 8. house, 8, 56, 115, 130, 151. State House, Boston, 15. Stearns house, 6. Steigel Baron, 204. house, 204. Stogumber Church, Somerset, 39. Stoves, "Cat Stone," 75. Franklin, 73, 74, 75, 76. hub grate, 75, 76, 77. Summer house, 44. on Peabody estate, 46-47. Susquehanna Valley, 75. Sutton Mills, Andover, 47. Swampscott, Mass., 152. Switzerland, 212. Tables, butterfly, 116. card, 118. chair, 117. dining, 117, 118. dish-top, 117. Dutch, 117, 118. Empire, 118. hundred-legged, 117. Kidney, 117. Pembroke, 118. pie-crust, 118. Pied, 118. pouch, 117. Sheraton, 117. table-top, 117. tea, 117. telescopic, 118. writing, 117. Terry, Eli, 150, 153, 154, 155. family, 150. Thomas, Seth, 155, 156. Tiles, 76, 180, 181. Tobies, Bennington, 177. Dutch, 175. French, 175. German, 175. Napoleon, 175, 176. old, 176. Staffordshire, 175. teapot, 177. young, 176. Topsfield, Mass., 55. Tracy, John, 49. Tragees (silversmith), 226. Trees, on Derby farm, 50. on Indian Hill, 48. on Peabody estate, 46. Turgot, Mons., 216. Van Dyck, Richard, 225. Vineyard and orchard, 42. Wall papers, "Adventures of Telemachus," 87. "Bay of Naples," 88. block printing of, 80, 81. chariot race, 88. "Cupid and Psyche," 85. "Don Quixote," 84. English, 86, 87. English hunt, 84. foreign scenes, 86, 88. French, 86, 87. importation of, 82. landscape, 88, 89. made to order, 83, 89. origin of, 80. panels of, 81. Parisian views, 88. picture, 79, 81. roll, 81. Roman ruins, 89. squares of, 81. Venetian scenes, 88. Walls, painted, 81-83, 90, 91. thick, 9. unplastered, 66. Ware, Isaac, quoted, 72. Ware, wooden, 213. Warner, Hon. Jonathan, 10, 169. house, 9, 56, 90, 109, 169. War of 1812, 143, 234. Warren, Russell, 11. Washington, George, 10, 25, 88, 130, 138. quoted, 25. Washingtonian period, 19. Waterbury, Conn., 155. Waters, Fitz, 202. collection, 93, 102, 108, 202. house, 38, 77, 202. Wayland, Mass., 35. Webster, Daniel, 23, 111. Fletcher, 23. Wedgwood ware, 189. cream, 191. jasper, 191. Portland Vase, 192, 195. Queen's ware, 190. Wedgwood, Josiah, 189, 190, 191, 192. Well room, the, 12. Wentworth, Governor Benning, 10, 115. house, 10, 58. Sir John, 12. West, Mrs. William C., 189. collection, 189, 202. Westminster Abbey, 146. Westmoreland County, England, 211. West Newbury, Mass., 12, 48. Wheelwright, William, 88. house, 88. Whieldon, Thomas, 189. Whipple, Major George, 87. house, 7, 23, 87. White, Captain Joseph, 22. Stephen, 23. White House, Washington, 11. Whittier, John Greenleaf, 47, 73. garden, 47. house, 37, 47, 160. Wilkes-barre, Pa., 75. William and Mary, 127. Willard, Aaron, 148. Benjamin, 148. Simon, 149. Windows, bull's-eye, 57. diamond paned, 13. dormer, 9. fanlight, 61. leaded, 5. Lutheran, 9. Windsor, England, 96. Winthrop, Governor, 42, 161. Wise, Rev. John, 76. Witchcraft days, 26. Woods used, apple, 101, 112. cherry, 108, 111, 112, 148. forest trees, 106. hard, 59, 95. harewood, 129. holly, 114. mahogany, 59, 61, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106, 108, 112, 114, 115, 127. maple, 109, 114. oak, 108, 147. pine, 147. rosewood, 101, 102. satinwood, 100, 101, 114, 129. soft, 59, 95. sycamore, 129. tulip, 101, 114. walnut, 60, 108, 111, 112, 129, 147. white, 2, 129. Yule log, 64. 
36552	----	Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 36552-h.htm or 36552-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36552/36552-h/36552-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36552/36552-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/yorkminster00cust [Illustration: York Minster] YORK MINSTER by The Very Rev. A. P. PUREY-CUST, D.D. Dean of York Illustrated by Alexander Ansted London: Isbister & Co. Ltd. 15 & 16 Tavistock Street Covent Garden MDCCCXCVII York Minster "Ut rosa flos florum sic est domus ista domorum" are the words which some unknown hand has inscribed upon the walls of our Minster; and we who love the habitation of His house and the place where God's honour dwelleth venture to think that these are "words of truth and soberness" even now, though we remember that when they were written there were many features of art and taste adorning the great fabric which have long since passed away. Still York Minster is "a thing of beauty" in spite of ruthless improvements and fanatical zeal and Puritan Philistinism and indiscriminating utilitarianism and ignorant restorations. In spite of these, and in consequence of these perhaps, York Minster is what it is; and if we cannot recall all that tradition tells us once adorned its courts and enriched its sanctuaries, we can admire and appreciate what has come into our hands, and thank God that it is our privilege to worship in a house so worthy of His holy name. Yes, and it is a pleasure and interest to recall the gradual development thereof through so many generations of men; how it has come up like a flower, from a very small and insignificant beginning, putting forth gradually, as time went on, larger developments, like the seed, first the blade then the ear; extending like the vine of old her branches unto the sea and her boughs unto the river--each with some fresh and characteristic novelty, as affected by the different schools of architectural taste, which, like the different seasons of the year, have shed their influence over it. And we love to idealise the scenes which have taken place therein, and the persons, many not unknown to history, who have had their share in the good work or whose lives and actions are associated therewith, or to recall how, sometimes in accordance with, sometimes in opposition to, what they most earnestly desired, it, at length, far eclipsed the most sanguine anticipations of its founders, and in its sober dignity and chastened ornamentation acquired a reputation second to none of "the Houses of God in the land." It is, of course, a mere speculation, but fancy will sometimes be busy with vain surmises as to whether the present Minster is a development of the original British church, a mere grain of mustard seed, no doubt, as compared with its aftergrowth. But some primitive building did exist, for, as far back as the year 180, Beda tells us, missionaries were sent from Rome by Eleutherius at the request of the British chieftain Lucius, not for the conversion of the people, but to settle controverted points of differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials which were disturbing the Church, and tradition speaks of twenty-eight British bishops, one for each of the greater British cities, over whom presided the Archbishops of London, York and Caerleon-on-Usk. So that the Romans probably found a Christian Church already established when Agricola took possession of Eburacum, towards the close of the first century after Christ's birth, and probably tolerated it with proud indifference for many generations until the great persecution of Diocletian in 294, when Constantius Chlorus, one of his associates in the empire, was in command, who, Eusebius says, was nevertheless most liberal and tolerant; though Beda tells us of numbers of martyrs and confessors, and how churches were thrown down, while trembling believers fled for refuge to the wilderness and the mountains. But certainly Constantius professed himself favourable to Christianity in 305, when he divided the empire with Galerius, and, after reigning for a few months, died, and his body was probably burnt and buried here. Here, at York, his son, Constantine, if not born, was saluted as Imperator by the army on his father's death, and eventually deliberately adopted the Christian faith. [Illustration: West Front] This would lead us to expect that favour would be shown to the Christian Church, and tradition has handed down the names of several prelates of York about this date: Eborius, who was present with two others at the Councils of Arles, 314, and Nicæa and Sardica and Ariminium; Sampson, who was driven out of the city by the incursion of Pagans and fled to St David's; Pyramus, Chaplain of King Arthur, that last tower of British strength, and charged by him to restore the desolated and ruined churches; and finally Tadiocus, who, when he saw the armies of Saxons pouring in, joined Theonus, Bishop of London, and fled to Wales, whither, as the Saxons did not tolerate Christianity, they were followed by all those who desired to keep the faith in peace. However, in 597, Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet in Kent, and eventually converted and baptized Ethelbert, King of Kent, who had married Bertha, daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert, and in 601, Pope Gregory, with a desire to assist Augustine in his work amongst the Anglo-Saxons, sent over Paulinus, as a likely person, should occasion offer, to resuscitate the desolated Church of Northumbria, and restore the Metropolitan See of York. It is said that "Paulinus" was the Latin title assumed by Rum, the son of Urien, a British chief, who having opposed the Saxons in the north had, on their supremacy, fled with his family from the country and sought safety at Rome, and that, therefore, Augustine having endeavoured in vain to persuade the British clergy in Kent to co-operate with him, Gregory selected Paulinus as likely to be a useful coadjutor to him in the evangelisation of Kent. Subsequent events, perhaps unexpectedly, favoured this plan, for Edwin, the legitimate heir to the throne of Northumbria, being driven away by his brother-in-law, Ethelfrith, who had usurped the crown, sought for security and protection in other kingdoms, and, in his wanderings, came to the court of Ethelbert, where he became fascinated by Ethelburga, his daughter, and sought her for his wife. Assent was given on condition that she, being a Christian, should be allowed Christian worship, and that he would consider the faith. This he promised to do, and Redwald, King of East Anglia, having slain Ethelfrith in a battle near the sluggish waters of the river Idle, Edwin was restored to his inheritance, and proceeded to take possession of his kingdom accompanied not only by his wife but by Paulinus as her chaplain, who had been consecrated Bishop of the Northumbrians by Justus on July 21st, 625. For two years Edwin remained uninfluenced alike by the entreaties of his wife and the arguments of the bishop, but at length gave way, and on Easter day, April 12th, 627, he was baptized in a little church or chapel of wood, hastily constructed at his bidding, and dedicated to St. Peter, right in front of the great heathen temple in the centre of his capital, Eburacum. Nothing is left of this primitive structure, but the well is still pointed out from which the water used at the ceremony was drawn, and a little beyond is a flight of stone stairs ending in a square stone slab which tradition says were the steps and altar of the temple. There are still traces, however, of the stone church which Archbishop Albert built in its place (741), when it had been greatly injured by fire. Part of the herring-bone walls is still to be seen, and after the great fire in 1829, Brown, the antiquary, successfully traced out the foundations, which, however, are now concealed. However, it remained uninjured, in spite of incursions of Picts and Scots, until the Conquest, when it shared in the universal destruction meted out by the Conqueror to York and the surrounding country; and Thomas, the first Norman archbishop, found little left but a few tottering roofless walls which had survived the flames. He re-roofed and restored the church as well as he could, rebuilt the refectory and dormitory, and in other respects set in order the affairs of the establishment. And so it remained until Roger de Pont l'Evêque succeeded to the archiepiscopate in 1154. Langfranc, on his accession to the See of Canterbury in 1073, had found the cathedral of Christ Church, of which Eadmer has left a curious record, almost consumed by fire; but in seven years he succeeded in rebuilding the whole church from the foundation on the plan and dimensions of St. Stephen's at Caen, the abbacy of which he had quitted to become archbishop. A detailed and singularly precise account by Gervase, the monk, is still extant. On the death of Lanfranc, 1089, the see was bestowed on Anselm, who as soon as possible took down the short choir and replaced it with one extending magnificently eastward, provided with a crypt, an apsidal aisle, a processional path with flanking towers, called St. Anselm's and St. Andrew's towers, and radiating chapels, as well as with eastern transepts, all which was, in fact, an imitation of the great Abbey of Cluny, entrusting the superintendence of the work to the priors Ernulph and Conrad, eventually his successor, who, in 1114, completed the choir with so much magnificence that it was denominated "the glorious choir of Conrad." All this, however, was destroyed by fire in 1174, which Gervase himself witnessed, but in four years was restored and even improved by the great French architect William of Sens. In 1154, when Archbishop Fitzherbert died at York, this fair building must have been in the zenith of its beauty, and we can well imagine the anxiety of Robert the Dean and Osbert the Archdeacon to secure the election by the Chapter of Roger, who had been Archdeacon of Canterbury from 1148, and who had no doubt already given promise of that architectural ability and liberality of character which eventually made him the most munificent ruler that ever presided over the See of York. Becket succeeded him in the archdeaconry until 1162, when, elevated to the See of Canterbury, the two quondam archdeacons of Canterbury were at the very helm of the Church of England. [Illustration: Norman Piers in Crypt] Roger seems at once to have commenced the reproduction at York of this great work, by substituting for the short simple chancel of the Minster a complex eastern building which, making due allowance for its want of equal dimensions with Canterbury choir, was yet evidently planned on the same system, with the aisles square ended instead of apsidal, and the flanking towers made to perform the part of eastern transepts. Of this choir, portions only of the crypt still survive. The base of the beautiful western entrance doorway to the north aisle can still be seen by adventurous explorers. The ordinary visitor can still admire the substantial and elaborately incised columns, which once supported the floor of the choir above, and see the arches, with the bold zigzag mouldings, which once rested on them, but which were removed in the days of Edward I. to support a stone platform behind the high altar, on which was erected the shrine of William Fitzherbert, then canonised as "St. William of York," to provide for the northern province a counter-attraction to St. Thomas of Canterbury. If the arches were replaced on the piers the pavement of the choir would be 15½ feet above the pavement of the crypt, within 6 inches of that of Canterbury, and if the present nave floor were reduced 4 feet to its original level, the respective levels of the nave, crypt, and choir at York and Canterbury would be the same. No doubt the arrangement of the different flights of steps from the nave to the choir and to the crypt, broken in the centre aisle with a broad landing which still remains at Canterbury, was followed at York. But all this has passed away, and the feature of the "glorious choir" of Roger can now only be realised from the conjectures of the archæologist or the dreams of the antiquary. [Illustration: The Choir looking East] But there were munificent laymen as well as ecclesiastics in those days, for Lord William de Percy gave the church of Topcliffe, with all things pertaining, to the church of St. Peter at York, as a perpetual alms for the repairing and building thereof, a gift which still remains in the possession of the Dean and Chapter; and he and his successors continued to assist the development of the Cathedral with munificent contributions of wood until the completion of the nave, when his statue was placed, to commemorate his liberality, above the west door, on the right hand of Archbishop Melton, the Metropolitan at that time. On his left stands another figure commemorating equally liberal benefactors: Mauger le Vavasour, who gave a grant of free way for the stone required for the foundation of the Minster by Archbishop Thomas; his son, Robert le Vavasour, also gave 10 acres and half a rood of his quarry in Thievesdale in free, pure and perpetual alms; and their descendants, in like manner, presented almost all the material required for the present buildings, even as late as the great fire in 1829, when Sir Edward Vavasour, although a Roman Catholic, at once placed his quarries at the service of the Dean and Chapter for the restoration of the choir. Fancy would fain idealise the choir of Roger, which has passed away, for the superstructure to such substantial and dignified masonry as still remains must have been solemn and imposing. Professor Willis suggests a choir the floor of which was raised 15 feet above the floor of the nave, and transepts with eastern towers approached by flights of steps such as still exist at Canterbury, but the learned professor had few reliable data for his conjectures, and it must remain a conjecture _usque ad finem_. Geoffrey Plantagenet, who succeeded Roger, had not the opportunity, even if he had the will and capacity, to extend the buildings of the Minster. The youngest child of fair Rosamond, the lawful wife, historians now tell us, of Henry II., he was at least a loving son. On his breast his father died, to him the King gave his royal ring, and on his head with his last dying breath he invoked the blessing of heaven. But if his dutiful conduct caused the warm-hearted members of the Chapter to elect their Treasurer Archbishop, it did not conciliate either of his half-brothers, Richard and John. Sixteen years of incessant discord ensued, and then he gave place to one more capable of his position, Walter de Gray. But the Chapter did not at first think so. He was not one of themselves; they knew little of the Bishop of Worcester, and what they knew they disliked. He was, in their eyes, an illiterate person. Simon de Langton was more to their mind. But Walter de Gray was King John's friend, and John was not a man to be thwarted. He meant him to be Archbishop, and his representatives persuaded Pope Innocent III. to overrule the election of the Chapter. At least, he was a man of pure life, they said. "Per sanctum Petrum," replied the Pope, "virginitas magna est virtus, et nos eum damus vobis." And certainly posterity has had no reason to regret his decision. The glorious early English transepts and tower are believed to have been his conception, vast beyond anything which had been erected in those days, and, as the late Mr. Street has often told me, after all his experiences on the Continent, unsurpassed in Christendom. Walter de Gray, at least, completed the south transept, "in boldness of arrangement and design, and in richness of decoration without a peer." And there his body rests in the grave which received all that was mortal of him on the vigil of Pentecost, 1255, still surmounted with the effigy of the great man in full canonicals carved in Purbeck marble, under a comely canopy resting on ten light and graceful pillars, hidden, alas! by a crude and modern screen of iron, the well-intentioned addition of Archbishop Markham some eighty years ago. [Illustration: South Transept and Founder's Tomb] And Providence had associated with Walter de Gray one worthy of such a fellowship, John le Romain, the treasurer of the church, an Italian ecclesiastic who, tradition says, smitten with the charms of some dark-eyed beauty of the South gladly associated himself with the clergy of the Church where celibacy, at that day at least, was not _de rigueur_. He it was who completed the great work his superior had commenced, raised, at his own expense, the great tower, built the north transept, designed "the Five Sisters," and filled it with the exquisite grisaille geometrical glass, which has been the admiration of successive generations for six hundred years. How much Walter de Grey laid out in the erection of the transepts I cannot say: I only know that the South Transept cost £23,000 to restore fifteen years ago. In addition to his work on the material fabric of the Minster, Archbishop Walter de Grey achieved that which had a substantial influence on its progress to its completion. Archbishop Roger had initiated the great work, but had died in his bed, and his influence had died with him. Thomas à Becket, his successor as Archdeacon of Canterbury, had also advanced to the dignity of the archiepiscopate, but he had fallen a victim to his zeal for the Church spiritual, and his martyrdom and canonisation had entailed a shrine in the Cathedral which was eliciting from innumerable pilgrims munificent offerings for the fabric of the church. If York were to compete with Canterbury it was necessary that here, too, a shrine of some popular saint should attract the presence of the devout, and appeal to their munificence and liberality. This also Walter de Grey, supported as he was by the king, was able to accomplish, and in compliance with a petition from the Archbishop and Dean and Chapter, Pope Honorius, on March 18th, 1226, issued a letter, "tied with thread of silk and a Bull," to the effect that the name of William (Fitzherbert) of holy memory, formerly Archbishop of York, nominated by them for this honour, the predecessor of Archbishop Roger, was "inscribed in the catalogue of the Saints of the Church Militant." Little, however, seems to have been done during the archiepiscopates of Sewell de Bovell, Geoffry de Ludham and Walter Gifford. However, in 1279, William de Wykewayne, Chancellor of the Church, was elected to the see, and he at once took action by translating the remains of the canonised William, on December 29th, to a becoming shrine prepared for them behind the high altar on a platform raised upon the arches of the crypt removed to this, their present, position, for that purpose. It was a grand day in the Minster. Edward I. himself, together with the bishops who were present, carried on their shoulders the chest or feretory containing the precious relics to their new resting-place, and Anthony Beck, consecrated the same day Bishop of Durham, paid all the expenses. In 1286, Archbishop Wykewayne died, and was succeeded by another, John Romanus, the worthy son of the munificent treasurer, who had doubtless inherited the taste and munificence of his father. Perhaps for that very reason the Chapter selected him, when only Prebendary of Warthill in the church, to be his successor, and his ten years of office, if too short to do much, was sufficient to initiate the great work of building a nave consistent with the transepts. Another style of architecture was setting in, the Decorated, and where could it be better inaugurated than in such a church as this? For one hundred and fifty years the good work went on. Four prelates in succession, Henry de Newark, Thomas de Corbridge, William de Greenfield, William de Melton, each, during his tenure of office, strove to promote the completion of the grand design his predecessor had indicated, in that full perfection of ecclesiastical architecture. No effort was spared, no personal self-denial evaded; clergy and laity alike shared in the enthusiasm of the moment, the Plantagenet kings, for the most part resident in York, by offerings and by influence, encouraging and stimulating the good work. Archbishop Melton contributed many thousands of pounds from his own purse, and had the privilege of seeing the grand conception completed; and there he sits above the central doorway graven in stone in his archiepiscopal attire, with his hand still raised in the attitude of benediction; over his head one of the finest flamboyant windows in the world, and on either side the representatives of the houses of Vavasour and Percy, bearing in their arms emblems of the wood and stone which they had offered. [Illustration: The Chapter House showing Vestibule Exterior] And concurrently with the great work, another, in perfect harmony therewith, was proceeding, viz. the Chapter House, with its great circumference occupied with stalls, surmounted by elaborate and delicate canopies, enriched with innumerable quaint and suggestive carvings of heads and features, some as warnings, some as encouragements, to those who have eyes to see, and of graceful foliage of trefoil and other plants, specially the _planta benedicta_, which illustrated the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the love of God, girdled with a simple yet emblematical wreath of the vine; while the varied foliage rises again in the glass, bordering the noble windows, rich with heraldry and sacred subjects, until lost in the stately roof, which, spanning the whole area without any central column, and once glowing with emblematical figures and stars, is centred with a majestic boss of the Lamb of God. Alas that Willement ever essayed to restore it, scraped the paintings from the walls, plastered the ceiling, repaired the floor, and ruined the east window which he had taken to pieces and found himself incompetent to put together again! Still, though but the survival of its ancient glories, it is "the flower of our flowers," the focus of all the beauties which in their wanton profusion extend on all sides around us. Who built it? Who conceived this stately hall, with this elegant vestibule unique in the cloisters of Europe? Who furnished the funds by which it was founded and completed? Well, if conjecture may supply what faith or modesty may have left unexpressed, Bogo de Clare, for the shields in the tracery point to that family. He, an ecclesiastical courtier nearly related to the royal family, and a not altogether worthy scion of the House of Clare, but wealthy beyond all conception with the plurality of his benefices, which the late Chancellor Raine estimated at about £20,000 per annum, was treasurer of the Minster from 1274 to 1285. A man probably not likely to do much to promote the devotion of the Minster, though ready to devote the vast accumulation of money which he had acquired to exalt the glories of the house of which he was a member, and, for the time at least, the reputation of his name. Melton's days closed under the dark shadow of his defeat at Myton by the Scotch, and Zouche, Dean of York, his successor, though he wiped off the stain thereof by his triumphant victory over them at Nevill's Cross, and took care of Queen Philippa and her children during the absence of Edward III. in his French wars, did little to promote the material dignity of the Minster, save to build the chapel which bears his name, and which he had intended for a place of sepulture for himself. But Thoresby, a Yorkshireman from Wensleydale, and a Prebendary of the Minster, his successor in 1352, Bishop of Worcester and Lord Chancellor, was a man of very different temperament. He had the further development of the glories of the Minster thoroughly at heart. At once he sacrificed his palace at Sherburn to provide materials for an appropriate Ladye Chapel, gave successive munificent donations of £100 at each of the great festivals of the Christian year, and called on clergy and laity alike to submit cheerfully to stringent self-denial to supply the funds. [Illustration: Chapter House doorway from within] During his tenure of office of twenty-three years the Ladye Chapel was completed, a chaste and dignified specimen of Early Perpendicular style, into which the Decorated gradually blended after the year 1360, and unique in its glorious east window 78 feet high and 33 feet wide, still the largest painted window in the world, enriched with its double mullions, which give such strength and lightness to its graceful proportions. But Roger's choir, which was still standing, must now have looked sadly dwarfed between the lofty Ladye Chapel and the tower and transepts. Alexander Nevill, his immediate successor, probably did not do much to remedy this, for he soon became involved in Richard II.'s rash proceedings, and had to fly to Louvain, where he died in poverty. Neither did Arundel or Waldby, his successors, for the former was soon translated to Canterbury, the latter soon died. But Richard Scrope, who was appointed in his place, would naturally be earnest and vigorous in the good work, for he was a Yorkshireman by birth, son of Lord Scrope of Masham, kinsman of Lord Scrope of Bolton, and, during the short nine years which elapsed between his installation and his wanton, cruel murder by Henry IV., the building seems to have made rapid progress. This was energetically continued by Henry Bowet, who followed him, and who, invoking the aid of Pope Gregory XII. to enforce his appeal for funds, and enlisting the aid of Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, one of the greatest architects of mediæval times, glazed the great East window with its elaborate glass executed by John Thornton of Coventry, 1409, raised the lantern on the central tower, completed the groining of the choir aisles, rebuilt Archbishop Zouche's chapel, the treasury and vestry, and commenced the library. He was indeed a man of action to the end, for when incapacitated for walking or riding by age and infirmity, he was carried in his chair, arrayed in a breastplate with three buckles, five pendants, and ten bars of silver gilt, at the head of the forces raised by the wardens of the North of England, and through the influence of his presence, encouraged the soldiers to rout the Scotch who had invaded Northumberland and besieged Berwick, 1417. [Illustration: The Lady Chapel] Little now remained to be done. Robert Wolvedon and John de Bermyngham, two munificent treasurers in succession, helped to bring matters to a prosperous conclusion, the former filling some of the windows with painted glass, the latter raising the south-western tower. The north-western tower was added probably during the archiepiscopate, if not by the munificence, of Archbishop George Nevill. The organ screen, with its elaborate cornice and canopies enriched with angels singing and playing instruments of music, and its stately niches filled with figures of the Kings of England, from William I. to Henry VI., was built by Dean Andrew, himself the friend and secretary of the last-named monarch. And the great church was solemnly reconsecrated as a completed building on July 3rd, 1472, when an ordinance was passed by the Dean and Chapter that "on the same day the feast of the Dedication shall be celebrated in time to come." [Illustration: Perpendicular Piscina] I have no space to dwell on all the innumerable details of architectural ornament or quaint mediæval devices which decorate the walls, neither on the many interesting monuments scattered throughout the aisles, such as the delicate piscinas, or the Fiddler, a modern reproduction of an old figure which had crowned the little spiral turret of the south transept, intended as a portrait of Dr. Camidge, the organist, at the beginning of this century; or the tomb of good Archbishop Frewen, the first prelate of the Province after the Restoration. [Illustration: The Fiddler] But even a sketch of York Minster would not be complete without some mention of the glass, for if the beauty in the form of our "flos florum" is due to its architecture, very much of its beauty in colour depends on the glowing and mellowed tints with which its windows are filled. But it is a large subject to enter upon, for as regards quantity there are no less than one hundred and three windows in the Minster, most of them entirely, and the remainder partly filled with real old mediæval glass, excepting the tracery. Some of the windows too are of great size. The east window, which is entirely filled with old glass, consists of nine lights, and measures 78 ft. in height, 31 ft. 2 in. in width. The two choir transept windows, that in the north transept to St. William, and the south to St. Cuthbert, measure 73 ft. by 16 ft. They have both been restored, the latter very recently, but by far the greater part of them is old glass. On each side of the choir the aisles contain nine windows measuring 14 ft. 9 in. by 12 ft., only the tracery lights of which are modern; the same number of windows fill the clear-story above, the greater portions of which are ancient. The famous window of the north transept, the Five Sisters, consists of five lights, each measuring 53 ft. 6 in. by 5 ft. 1 in., and is entirely of old glass. There are six windows in the north and six in the south aisles of the nave, with only a little modern glass in the tracery. The superb flamboyant window at the west end of the centre aisle measures 56 ft. 3 in. by 25 ft. 4 in., and consists, I believe, entirely of old glass, except the faces of the figures. The clear-story windows are studded with ancient shields, but a great part of the glass is, I fancy, modern; those of the vestibule, 8 in number, measuring 32 ft. by 18, are of old glass, including the tracery lights. And in the Chapter House the seven windows, of five lights each, are filled with old glass. The east window has been clumsily restored by Willement. In the side windows of the transepts there is some old glass, and the great rose window over the south entrance still retains much of the old glass; while far overhead in the tower there are some really fine bold designs of late, but genuine, design and execution. Altogether, according to actual measurements, there are 25,531 superficial feet of mediæval glass in the Minster, _i.e._, more than half an acre--a possession, we should think, unequalled by any church in England, if not in Christendom. But the difficulty in describing the glass arises from the fact that many of the windows are composed of fragments of glass of different dates, which, for various reasons, perhaps to preserve them, have been interchanged during past generations. The educated eye of the glass painter can detect splendid specimens of every school of glass painting throughout the Minster, but sometimes comparatively small portions isolated in the midst of glass of a totally different period. The Five Sisters window is an almost complete specimen of Early English glass, with an elaborate geometrical pattern formed by the conventional foliage of the _planta benedicta_, but at the foot of the central light there is a panel consisting of distinctly Norman glass, portraying Jacob's dream, or Daniel in the lion's den, for it is indistinct, and critics differ. The suggestion is that this panel formed part of the previous window, in the old Norman transept, and, for some unknown reason, being specially valuable, was preserved and incorporated in its successor. The tracery lights of the vestibule windows are filled with old Norman glass, and the late Canon Sutton was of opinion that the stone tracery had been specially designed to suit it. The clear-story tracery in the nave contains also much Norman glass, probably from the old Norman nave, and in many other windows we can trace similar insertions. [Illustration: Transept, Lantern, and Five Sisters' Window] Sometimes groups of figures may be noticed evidencing, by their utter lack of connection with their environment, that they have been transplanted from some other window. Sometimes a single figure, under a Decorated canopy, stands out in a window of distinctly Perpendicular tracery. Sometimes several of such figures fill separate lights when they have evidently been intended to be together. Sometimes kneeling figures, each of which had been intended to represent the donor of some window, have been brought together in a rather amusing and inharmonious fellowship. Sometimes the whole of some large figure has been removed, and only the outline left, which has been indiscriminately filled up with a patchwork of scraps of all kinds and subjects. This is specially noticeable in the window on the north side of the choir, where the letters R.S., in the bordure, indicate that it had been put up to the memory of Archbishop Scrope; here there are three large outlines of female figures, each with a child in her arms, one of them probably the Virgin, but all detail has been obliterated. Sometimes only a portion of a figure remains, _e.g._, a beautiful and venerable head and shoulders of some grave ecclesiastic in the most delicate mezzotint; or a dignified face with splendid crown and nimbus, and cope and pectoral cross adorning what remains of a saintly figure; or a crowned head, in a maze of painted fragments, around which the initials, E., in the bordure, evidently denote Edward the Confessor. Again, there are legs only, with the water flowing over the feet and the end of the staff which the hands had grasped, evidently the remains of some grand figure of St. Christopher, a very frequent and favourite figure in the church windows of York. Or, again, draped figures of ecclesiastics, complete almost to the hem of their robes, but destitute of feet, which may be discovered in the tracery above, where they have been utilised simply to supply some fracture. Sometimes heads and bodies, which have evidently no real association, are found united together. The former occasionally the work of some modern painter, who had attempted with his own brush to supply what was lacking. This is manifestly the case in the west windows of the central aisle of the nave, where the faces of the archbishops are evidently modern insertions, and in the west window of the south aisle, where a stately figure of our Lord on the Cross, tended by little angels, has been terribly marred by a most repulsive modern face, which has been added. But sometimes the head and body are both mediæval, but sadly incongruous, for male faces are to be found on female shoulders, and delicate crowned heads of virgins or angels on the stalwart bodies of men. And similar confusion exists in many other details: borders of different dates which have been pieced together, or incongruous modern borders which have been devised to make up the space on each side of some smaller window, which has been brought from some other church. Some of the windows, indeed, are almost, if not altogether, perfect. The east window has been patched with pieces of crude coloured glass, but only as repairs, possibly after the great fire in 1829, otherwise it must be very much as put up by John Thornton, 1405; and in its nine lights divided into six tiers, it contains two hundred panels of groups of figures, the two upper tiers being subjects from the creation of the world to the death of Jacob, the remainder from the book of Revelation. The tracery lights of the east window of the north aisle seem to me altogether untouched. [Illustration: The North Aisle] The choir transept windows have been restored, but contain a large portion of the old glass in five lights. That on the north side, erected by some member of the family of de Ros, has one hundred panels of groups of figures illustrating the life of St. William, that on the south, erected by Langley, Bishop of Durham, seventy-five similar panels illustrating the life of St. Cuthbert. The grand series of windows in the vestibule also seems to me absolutely untouched since the day when they were first put up, and, with their figures of kings and queens and borders of Plantagenet badges, contain very striking specimens of the best date of painted glass. The windows on the north aisle of the nave, no doubt erected soon after its completion, are equally perfect, and were probably presented by members of the court of Edward I. The window next to the transept given by Peter le Dene, the court ecclesiastic and tutor of Edward II., when Prince of Wales, has six illustrations of the life and martyrdom of St. Catherine, step-niece of Constantine the Great, and therefore a very acceptable subject to the people of York. It is adorned, moreover, with the shields of the immediate relations of Edward I., while the border of the central light contains figures in tabards emblazoned with the arms of some of the principal nobility of the day. The next window, presented by Richard Tunnoc, the bell-founder, has three illustrations of the entrance of St. William to York, and two of the founding of bells, while peals of gold and silver bells are spread in profusion throughout it, and the worthy bell-founder himself kneels at the foot of the central light presenting his window to the Archbishop. The next window, from its quaint border of birds and animals, seems to be the offering of Brian FitzAlan, Lord of Bedale, who treated with good-humoured banter and ridicule the dilemma caused at the siege of Caerlaverock by banners emblazoned with similar coats of arms being displayed by Hugh Poyntz and himself. And the window beyond was evidently given by some member of the family of Clare. On the opposite side the glass is more mutilated, and it is difficult to trace the subject in some of the windows. One, however, conspicuous with the lions of Edward I. and the castle and dolphin of Blanche of Castile, in compliment to her great grand-daughter, his second wife, is believed to have been presented by Archdeacon de Maulay, when his friend, Anthony Bek, was consecrated Bishop of Durham here in the presence of the king. At the foot of the window the figures of his brothers, gallant knights in those days, bearing their shields above their heads, may be still traced on close examination. Splendid figures of St. Lawrence, St. Christopher, and another fill the lights of the next window. The glass in all the windows is good and probably coeval with the building, though much of the tracery glass is modern and bad, the work of William Peckett, a glass painter of some local repute, who, at the close of the last century, undertook to restore the glass of the Minster. It is difficult to accord the measure of praise and blame to which he was entitled, for certainly, on the one hand, we are indebted to him for preserving many fragments which otherwise would have been lost, and yet, on the other, we cannot but condemn the strange medley of groups and figures, heads and bodies, together with large diapers of bright and coarse designs to fill up vacant spaces, which are evidently his work, and, in some instances, sadly inharmonious with the rest of the window. The single figures in the south window of the south transept are specimens of what he could do, and if lacking in artistic treatment of form and drawing, are not altogether defective in colouring. But we have much to be thankful for, for the elaborate MS. account of the Minster, written by Torre, the antiquary, in the reign of James II., shows us that we have lost very little of what existed in his day; and it is marvellous to think that so much should have survived not only the mistaken zeal of would-be preservers and restorers, but the flames of the terrible fires, one of which consumed the woodwork and roof of the choir in 1829, and the other burnt off the roof of the nave in 1840. We could wish that we knew something more definitely about the glass painters of the Minster. The fabric rolls tell us nothing before the fourteenth century, and are rather tantalising than satisfying afterwards. As early as 1338 Thomas de Boneston covenants by indenture to glaze two windows at his own proper cost, find all the glass, pay the workmen their wages for the finishing thereof, and Thomas de Ludham, the _custos_ of the fabric, became bound to pay him twenty-two marks sterling for the same. Another indenture of the same date was made between Thomas de Boneston and Robert: for making a window at the west gable of the cathedral church, the said Robert is to find all sorts of glass and be paid 6d. per foot for white and 12d. per foot for coloured glass. In Archbishop Melton's register of the same year, the Archbishop pays to Master Thomas Sampson 100 marks for glasswork of the window at the west end of the church lately constructed--_i.e._, the great west window. In 1361 Agnes de Holm leaves 100s. to the fabric for a glass window containing figures of St. James the Apostle and St. Catherine. In 1371 the name of William de Auckland appears as Vitriarius, and it would seem that the Dean and Chapter always maintained such an official, with a working staff to execute what glass might be required. From time to time great stores of glass and lead seem to have been accumulated, and there are constant entries of expenses occurring in wages and materials, _e.g._, white glass for the great windows of the new choir, "coloured glass," "old coloured glass," "glass of small value." In 1400 John Burgh seems to have been the glazier at 27s. 5d. per annum, with Robert, his assistant, at 25s. In 1419 John Glasman, of Ruglay, supplies three sheets of white glass. John Chambre is glazier in 1421. In 1443, Thomas Schirley with his assistant William; Thomas Cartmell in 1444; Matthew Pete with two assistants, Thomas Mylett and William Cartmell, in 1447; Matthew Pete in 1456, when he seems to have employed several assistants, Thomas Clerk, Thomas Shirwynd, Thomas Coverham, William Franklan, Robert Hudson, &c., with much expenditure for "yalow glass," &c.; John Pety, 1472; Robert Pety, 1509, the last member of a family which had long filled the office. Richard Taylor supplies two chests of Rennyshe glass in 1530; William Matthewson, of Hull, twenty-two wisps of Borgandie glass; and in 1538, one cradle of Normandie glass. The indenture with John Thornton for glazing the great east window is still extant; he is to "complete it in three years, pourtray with his own hands the histories, images, and other things to be painted on the same. He is to provide glass and lead, and workmen, and receive four shillings per week, five pounds at the end of each year, and, after the work is completed, ten pounds for his reward." Little enough it seems to us; but the system was very different from that which prevails now; yet certainly the result which it produced justified the system, whatever it was, for, admitting that length of time and atmospheric influences may have toned and mellowed the colouring, there are evidences of craftsmanship in the designing and production of those days, which the best workmen of our own time have been ever ready to acknowledge, and before which they have been willing to pay generous homage. [Illustration: ACCEPTUS FREWEN qui inter vivos esse desijt Mar 28 AD 1664] Truly, at the Reformation, the building must have been "flos florum," enriched with everything which the taste of man could devise or his skill execute. The massive walls, fashioned according to the highest canons of Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular architectural taste, the great windows glowing with painted glass of each successive style, the vast area subdivided by stately screens of carved wood and stone into countless chapels and chantries; shrines glittering with offerings of precious and jewelled metals, and adorned with colour and gilding; the treasury stored, as the fabric rolls tell us, with gold and silver plate in rich profusion; vestments of the most costly fabrics and approved fashions. Exuberant in all that was of the earth earthy; but, I am afraid, sadly lacking in those inward and spiritual graces of which these should have been the outward and visible signs. History may not be impartial, perhaps not altogether accurate, and mixed motives may have animated those who dealt vigorously, not to say ruthlessly, with these things. But too many records remain to show us that "cleansing fires" were needed, and that, however depraved the instruments, however debased their motives, the work which they did was imperative, if Christian faith and life, and the worship of God in spirit and in truth were to flourish and abound in this our fatherland. Nor need we indulge in unavailing regrets. It is impossible not to wish that much which has been ruthlessly destroyed had been spared, and that many things of beauty could be recovered. We could wish that the unhallowed fingers which hesitated not even to rifle the very graves, had been checked, that the fires of 1829 and 1840 had not swept over the choir and nave; but enough survives to gladden eye and heart with the noblest evidences of mediæval work and taste, and tokens on every side abound to testify that, in these latter days, Yorkshiremen have been as ready to repair the decay of age, restore the ravages of fire, and support the glory and dignity of God's house as ever they were in days gone by. We walk about our Zion and go round about her and tell the towers thereof, and they speak to us of a living faith, not of an effete ecclesiasticism or of mere archæological interest. We rejoice that it is still emphatically a house of prayer, not only when "two or three are gathered together," but when its aisles are thronged with a vast multitude, uniting in some special act of prayer and praise, or listening to some eloquent exponent of the Gospel of peace; and "when through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault the pealing anthem swells the notes of praise," we lift up grateful hearts in devout unison, that we are permitted to worship Him in this His house on earth, and desiring that we may be permitted to attain to the "building of God, the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." [Illustration: Perpendicular Shell-Ornament Piscina] _Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. _London & Edinburgh_ 
35898	----	[Illustration: PLATE IX.--(_Frontispiece_--Vol. V.) TRACERY FROM THE CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO AT FLORENCE.] Illustrated Cabinet Edition The Seven Lamps of Architecture Lectures on Architecture and Painting The Study of Architecture by John Ruskin [Illustration] Boston Dana Estes & Company Publishers CONTENTS. SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE. PAGE PREFACE 5 INTRODUCTION 9 CHAPTER I. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 15 CHAPTER II. THE LAMP OF TRUTH 34 CHAPTER III. THE LAMP OF POWER 69 CHAPTER IV. THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 100 CHAPTER V. THE LAMP OF LIFE 142 CHAPTER VI. THE LAMP OF MEMORY 167 CHAPTER VII. THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 188 NOTES 203 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING PREFACE 213 LECTURE I. 217 LECTURE II. 248 ADDENDA to Lectures I. and II. 270 LECTURE III. Turner and his Works 287 LECTURE IV. Pre-Raphaelitism 311 ADDENDA to Lecture IV. 334 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. AN INQUIRY INTO THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE PLATE PAGE I. ORNAMENTS FROM ROUEN, ST. LO, AND VENICE 33 II. PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LO, NORMANDY 55 III. TRACERIES FROM CAEN, BAYEUX, ROUEN AND BEAVAIS 60 IV. INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS 66 V. CAPITAL FROM THE LOWER ARCADE OF THE DOGE'S PALACE, VENICE 88 VI. ARCH FROM THE FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE AT LUCCA 90 VII. PIERCED ORNAMENTS FROM LISIEUX, BAYEUX, VERONA, AND PADUA 93 VIII. WINDOW FROM THE CA' FOSCARI, VENICE 95 IX. TRACERY FROM THE CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO, AT FLORENCE. _Frontispiece._ X. TRACERIES AND MOULDINGS FROM ROUEN AND SALISBURY 122 XI. BALCONY IN THE CAMPO, ST. BENEDETTO, VENICE 131 XII. FRAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LUCCA, VENICE AND PISA 149 XIII. PORTIONS OF AN ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA 161 XIV. SCULPTURES FROM THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN 165 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING Plate I. FIGS. 1, 3 AND 5. ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS 219 " II. " 2. WINDOW IN OAKHAM CASTLE 221 " III. " 4 AND 6. SPRAY OF ASH-TREE, AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE SAME ON GREEK PRINCIPLES 226 " IV. " 7. WINDOW IN DUMBLANE CATHEDRAL 231 " V. " 8. MEDIÆVAL TURRET 235 " VI. " 9 AND 10. LOMBARDIC TOWERS 238 " VII. " 11 AND 12. SPIRES AT CONTANCES AND ROUEN 240 " VIII. " 13 AND 14. ILLUSTRATIVE DIAGRAMS 253 " IX. " 15. SCULPTURE AT LYONS 254 " X. " 16. NICHE AT AMIENS 255 " XI. " 17 AND 18. TigER'S HEAD, AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE SAME ON GREEK PRINCIPLES 258 " XII. " 19. GARRET WINDOW IN HOTEL DE BOURGTHEROUDE 265 " XIII. " 20 AND 21. TREES, AS DRAWN IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY 294 " XIV. " 22. ROCKS, AS DRAWN BY THE SCHOOL OF LEONARDO DA VINCI 296 " XV. " 23. BOUGHS OF TREES, AFTER TITIAN 298 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE PREFACE. The memoranda which form the basis of the following Essay have been thrown together during the preparation of one of the sections of the third volume of "Modern Painters."[A] I once thought of giving them a more expanded form; but their utility, such as it may be, would probably be diminished by farther delay in their publication, more than it would be increased by greater care in their arrangement. Obtained in every case by personal observation, there may be among them some details valuable even to the experienced architect; but with respect to the opinions founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking of an art he has never practised. There are, however, cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, and perhaps too strongly to be wrong; I have been forced into this impertinence; and have suffered too much from the destruction or neglect of the architecture I best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot love, to reason cautiously respecting the modesty of my opposition to the principles which have induced the scorn of the one, or directed the design of the other. And I have been the less careful to modify the confidence of my statements of principles, because in the midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our architectural systems, it seems to me that there is something grateful in any _positive_ opinion, though in many points wrong, as even weeds are useful that grow on a bank of sand. [A] The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supplementary volume has, indeed, been chiefly owing to the necessity under which the writer felt himself, of obtaining as many memoranda as possible of mediæval buildings in Italy and Normandy, now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be consummated by the Restorer or Revolutionist. His whole time has been lately occupied in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which masons were knocking down the other; nor can he yet pledge himself to any time for the publication of the conclusion of "Modern Painters;" he can only promise that its delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part. Every apology is, however, due to the reader, for the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates. Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naïvely describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not to the illustration. So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are valuable; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superintendence. Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype indistinct; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of the mosaic details, more especially of those which surround the window, and which I rather imagine, in the original, to be sculptured in relief. The general proportions are, however, studiously preserved; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of the whole is as near that of the thing itself, as is necessary for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them; and though the looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavor to draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly. The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in which sections have been given, appears somewhat obscure in the references, but it is convenient upon the whole. The line which marks the direction of any section is noted, if the section be symmetrical, by a single letter; and the section itself by the same letter with a line over it, a.--[=a]. But if the section be unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a. a_2 at its extremities; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over them, [=a]. [=a]. [=a]_2, at the corresponding extremities. The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples, not an essay on European architecture; and those examples I have generally taken either from the buildings which I love best, or from the schools of architecture which, it appeared to me, have been less carefully described than they deserved. I could as fully, though not with the accuracy and certainty derived from personal observation, have illustrated the principles subsequently advanced, from the architecture of Egypt, India, or Spain, as from that to which the reader will find his attention chiefly directed, the Italian Romanesque and Gothic. But my affections, as well as my experience, led me to that line of richly varied and magnificently intellectual schools, which reaches, like a high watershed of Christian architecture, from the Adriatic to the Northumbrian seas, bordered by the impure schools of Spain on the one hand, and of Germany on the other: and as culminating points and centres of this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val d'Arno, as representing the Italian Romanesque and pure Italian Gothic; Venice and Verona as representing the Italian Gothic colored by Byzantine elements; and Rouen, with the associated Norman cities, Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances, as representing the entire range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque to Flamboyant. I could have wished to have given more examples from our early English Gothic; but I have always found it impossible to work in the cold interiors of our cathedrals, while the daily services, lamps, and fumigation of those upon the Continent, render them perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I undertook a pilgrimage to the English Shrines, and began with Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days' work was a state of weakened health, which I may be permitted to name among the causes of the slightness and imperfection of the present Essay. INTRODUCTORY. Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of color, the writer made some inquiry respecting the general means by which this latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was comprehensive--"Know what you have to do, and do it"--comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it temporarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success in every direction of human effort; for I believe that failure is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labor, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done; and therefore, while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to themselves a perfection of any kind, which reason, temperately consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the consideration of means to interfere with our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be remembered; because, while a man's sense and conscience, aided by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience, nor feeling, are ever enough, because they are not intended, to determine for him what is possible. He knows neither his own strength nor that of his fellows, neither the exact dependence to be placed on his allies nor resistance to be expected from his opponents. These are questions respecting which passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance must limit them; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the apprehension of duty, or the acknowledgment of right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance of the causes of the many failures to which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more especially in matters political, they seem to me more largely to spring from this single error than from all others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, relations of capability, chance, resistance, and inconvenience, invariably precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes the too cold calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and even lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive. What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively political art of Architecture. I have long felt convinced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some determined effort to extricate from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which it has become encumbered during imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, with the purity and simplicity of the reflective, element. This tendency, like every other form of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age; and the only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and already regarded with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance as tyrannical, are evidently inapplicable to the new forms and functions of the art, which the necessities of the day demand. How many these necessities may become, cannot be conjectured; they rise, strange and impatient, out of every modern shadow of change. How far it may be possible to meet them without a sacrifice of the essential characters of architectural art, cannot be determined by specific calculation or observance. There is no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material; and the most rational, if not the only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient authority in our judgment, is to cease for a little while, our endeavors to deal with the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints, or requirements; and endeavor to determine, as the guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right--laws, which based upon man's nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them. There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any one art. Their range necessarily includes the entire horizon of man's action. But they have modified forms and operations belonging to each of his pursuits, and the extent of their authority cannot surely be considered as a diminution of its weight. Those peculiar aspects of them which belong to the first of the arts, I have endeavored to trace in the following pages; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily be, not only safeguards against every form of error, but sources of every measure of success, I do not think that I claim too much for them in calling them the Lamps of Architecture, nor that it is indolence, in endeavoring to ascertain the true nature and nobility of their fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or special questioning of the innumerable hindrances by which their light has been too often distorted or overpowered. Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would have become certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which are avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple though it be, its extent is too great to admit of any adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of time which the writer did not feel justified in withdrawing from branches of inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken has engaged him. Both arrangements and nomenclature are those of convenience rather than of system; the one is arbitrary and the other illogical: nor is it pretended that all, or even the greater number of, the principles necessary to the well-being of the art, are included in the inquiry. Many, however, of considerable importance will be found to develope themselves incidentally from those more specially brought forward. Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver fault. It has been just said, that there is no branch of human work whose constant laws have not close analogy with those which govern every other mode of man's exertion. But, more than this, exactly as we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one group of these practical laws, we shall find them passing the mere condition of connection or analogy, and becoming the actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty laws which govern the moral world. However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest forms of manly virtue; and the truth, decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard as honorable conditions of the spiritual being, have a representative or derivative influence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, and the action of the intellect. And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a peculiar dignity in the manner of it, which we sometimes express by saying it is truly done (as a line or tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. For there is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence George Herbert-- "A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, Makes that and the action fine." Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of argument: one based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always disputable; the other based on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually: our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these--that we should forget it? I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable: and this, I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery; and the weight of evil against which we have to contend, is increasing like the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us to approach the questions in which we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his life to contend. THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power and pleasure. It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building. To build, literally to confirm, is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects; and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage commodious or a ship swift. I do not, of course, mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture); but in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, from extending principles which belong altogether to building, into the sphere of architecture proper. Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of its working, the necessities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, _that_ is Architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery supported on projecting masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting masses be carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, _that_ is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply and simply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or color of being architectural; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on good building; but it is perfectly easy and very necessary to keep the ideas distinct, and to understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use. I say common; because a building raised to the honor of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details. II. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself under five heads:-- Devotional; including all buildings raised for God's service or honor. Memorial; including both monuments and tombs. Civil; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for purposes of common business or pleasure. Military; including all private and public architecture of defence. Domestic; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place. Now, of the principles which I would endeavor to develope, while all must be, as I have said, applicable to every stage and style of the art, some, and especially those which are exciting rather than directing, have necessarily fuller reference to one kind of building than another; and among these I would place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has nevertheless such especial reference to devotional and memorial architecture--the spirit which offers for such work precious things simply because they are precious; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who forward the devotional buildings of the present day; but that it would even be regarded as an ignorant, dangerous, or perhaps criminal principle by many among us. I have not space to enter into dispute of all the various objections which may be urged against it--they are many and spacious; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience while I set down those simple reasons which cause me to believe it a good and just feeling, and as well-pleasing to God and honorable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the production of any great work in the kind with which we are at present concerned. III. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit of Sacrifice, clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious things merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more costly because it was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in the same compass present more cost and more thought. It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps best negatively defined, as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the largest results at the least cost. Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms: the first, the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline merely, a wish acted upon in the abandonment of things loved or desired, there being no direct call or purpose to be answered by so doing; and the second, the desire to honor or please some one else by the costliness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in the first case, either private or public; but most frequently, and perhaps most properly, private; while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-denial for its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary to a far greater degree than any of us practise it. But I believe it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate it as a good in itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when they become imperative, and to calculate, with some partiality, whether the good proposed to others measures or warrants the amount of grievance to ourselves, instead of accepting with gladness the opportunity of sacrifice as a personal advantage. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter here; since there are always higher and more useful channels of self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any connected with the arts. While in its second branch, that which is especially concerned with the arts, the justice of the feeling is still more doubtful; it depends on our answer to the broad question, Can the Deity be indeed honored by the presentation to Him of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which is not immediately beneficial to men? For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fairness and majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral purpose; it is not the _result_ of labor in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness--the substance and labor and time themselves: are these, we ask, independently of their result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered by Him as doing Him honor? So long as we refer this question to the decision of feeling, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or imperfectly answered; it admits of entire answer only when we have met another and a far different question, whether the Bible be indeed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed in the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the New. IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular ordinances divinely appointed for special purposes at any given period of man's history, may be by the same divine authority abrogated at another, it is impossible that any character of God, appealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of that ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased by the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be expressed at one time rather than another, and although the mode in which His pleasure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously modified to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was necessary that, in order to the understanding by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be foreshown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice. But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time of Moses than He has now; He never accepted as a propitiation for sin any sacrifice but the single one in prospective; and that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively demanded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every day brought its claim of typical and material service or offering, as now when He asks for none but that of the heart. So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle that, if in the manner of performing any rite at any time, circumstances can be traced which we are either told, or may legitimately conclude, _pleased_ God at that time, those same circumstances will please Him at all times, in the performance of all rites or offices to which they may be attached in like manner; unless it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special purpose, it is now His will that such circumstances should be withdrawn. And this argument will have all the more force if it can be shown that such conditions were not essential to the completeness of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were added to it as being in _themselves_ pleasing to God. V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshowed was to be God's free gift; and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only render that type in a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering which God would in the end provide for all men. Yet this costliness was _generally_ a condition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. "Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing."[B] That costliness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human offerings at all times; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has never been. [B] 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. Deut. xvi. 16, 17. Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of the Levitical offering, that it should be the best of the flock? Doubtless the spotlessness of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the Christian mind; but was it because so expressive that it was actually, and in so many words, demanded by God? Not at all. It was demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds on which an earthly governor would demand it, as a testimony of respect. "Offer it now unto thy governor."[C] And the less valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image Christ, nor fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but because it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him who gave them; and because it was a bold dishonoring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now see reason to present unto God (I say not what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the best of their kind. [C] Mal. i. 8. VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendor in the form or services of the tabernacle or temple? Was it necessary to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that there should be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet? those taches of brass and sockets of silver? that working in cedar and overlaying with gold? One thing at least is evident: there was a deep and awful danger in it; a danger that the God whom they so worshipped, might be associated in the minds of the serfs of Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen similar gifts offered and similar honors paid. The probability, in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous Romanist is absolutely as nothing compared with the danger to the Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian;[1] no speculative, no unproved danger; but proved fatally by their fall during a month's abandonment to their own will; a fall into the most servile idolatry; yet marked by such offerings to their idol as their leader was, in the close sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. This danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the most awful kind: it was the one against which God made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive; but by temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attribute of mercy. The principal object of every instituted law of that Theocracy, of every judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to mark to the people His hatred of idolatry; a hatred written under their advancing steps, in the blood of the Canaanite, and more sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem, and the lion tracked his prey in the dust of Samaria.[D] Yet against this mortal danger provision was not made in one way (to man's thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most effective), by withdrawing from the worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or shape the imagination, or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God refused, demanding for Himself such honors, and accepting for Himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol gods by heathen worshippers; and for what reason? Was the glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or image His divine glory to the minds of His people? What! purple or scarlet necessary to the people who had seen the great river of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His condemnation? What! golden lamp and cherub necessary for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their mortal lawgiver? What! silver clasp and fillet necessary when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his rider? Nay--not so. There was but one reason, and that an eternal one; that as the covenant that He made with men was accompanied with some external sign of its continuance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of that covenant might be marked and signified by use, in some external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will; and that their gratitude to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at once their expression and their enduring testimony in the presentation to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty; of the thought that invents, and the hand that labors; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold. [D] Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings xvii. 25. And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated principle--I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they have His tithe must be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so much He is forgotten: of the skill and of the treasure, of the strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering must be made reverently; and if there be any difference between the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now visibly dwell in His temple; if He is invisible it is only through our failing faith: nor any excuse because other calls are more immediate or more sacred; this ought to be done, and not the other left undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble, must be more specifically answered. VII. It has been said--it ought always to be said, for it is true--that a better and more honorable offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so: woe to all who think that any other kind or manner of offering may in any wise take the place of these! Do the people need place to pray, and calls to hear His word? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this; but let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not between God's house and His poor: it is not between God's house and His Gospel. It is between God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors? no frescoed fancies on our roofs? no niched statuary in our corridors? no gilded furniture in our chambers? no costly stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of these been offered? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been devoted to the great purposes of human stewardship, and that there remains to us what we can spend in luxury; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than this selfish one--that of bringing a portion of such things as these into sacred service, and presenting them for a memorial[E] that our pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remembrance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. And until this has been done, I do not see how such possessions can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the feeling which would arch our own gates and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with its narrow door and foot-worn sill; the feeling which enriches our own chambers with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple. There is seldom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so much self-denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in which men's happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain degree of luxury in their houses; but then this is true luxury, felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed; men's average resources cannot reach it; and that which they _can_ reach, gives them no pleasure, and might be spared. It will be seen, in the course of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for meanness of private habitation. I would fain introduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible; but I would not have that useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities; cornicings of ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thousands such; things which have become foolishly and apathetically habitual--things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most contemptible use--things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak from experience: I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate; and I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living between a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say that such things have not their place and propriety; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts, and incumbrances, would, if collectively offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. [E] Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. lxxvi. 11. VIII. I have said for every town: I do not want a marble church for every village; nay, I do not want marble churches at all for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would build them. The church has no need of any visible splendors; her power is independent of them, her purity is in some degree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple; and it may be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase of effective piety; but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration: not the gift, but the giving.[2] And see how much more charity the full understanding of this might admit, among classes of men of naturally opposite feelings; and how much more nobleness in the work. There is no need to offend by importunate, self-proclaiming splendor. Your gift may be given in an unpresuming way. Cut one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose preciousness those only would know who would desire it to be so used; add another month's labor to the undercutting of a few capitals, whose delicacy will not be seen nor loved by one beholder of ten thousand; see that the simplest masonry of the edifice be perfect and substantial; and to those who regard such things, their witness will be clear and impressive; to those who regard them not, all will at least be inoffensive. But do not think the feeling itself a folly, or the act itself useless. Of what use was that dearly-bought water of the well of Bethlehem with which the King of Israel slaked the dust of Adullam?--yet was not thus better than if he had drunk it? Of what use was that passionate act of Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the false tongue, the very objection we would now conquer took a sullen tone for ever?[F] So also let us not ask of what use our offering is to the church: it is at least better for _us_ than if it had been retained for ourselves. It may be better for others also: there is, at any rate, a chance of this; though we must always fearfully and widely shun the thought that the magnificence of the temple can materially add to the efficiency of the worship or to the power of the ministry. Whatever we do, or whatever we offer, let it not interfere with the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the zeal of the other. That is the abuse and fallacy of Romanism, by which the true spirit of Christian offering is directly contradicted. The treatment of the Papists' temple is eminently exhibitory; it is surface work throughout; and the danger and evil of their church decoration lie, not in its reality--not in the true wealth and art of it, of which the lower people are never cognizant--but in its tinsel and glitter, in the gilding of the shrine and painting of the image, in embroidery of dingy robes and crowding of imitated gems; all this being frequently thrust forward to the concealment of what is really good or great in their buildings.[3] Of an offering of gratitude which is neither to be exhibited nor rewarded, which is neither to win praise nor purchase salvation, the Romanist (as such) has no conception. [F] John xii. 5. IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate the imputation of any other acceptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than that which it receives from the spirit of its presentation, it may be well to observe, that there is a lower advantage which never fails to accompany a dutiful observance of any right abstract principle. While the first fruits of his possessions were required from the Israelite as a testimony of fidelity, the payment of those first fruits was nevertheless rewarded, and that connectedly and specifically, by the increase of those possessions. Wealth, and length of days, and peace, were the promised and experienced rewards of his offering, though they were not to be the objects of it. The tithe paid into the storehouse was the expressed condition of the blessing which there should not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus always: God never forgets any work or labor of love; and whatever it may be of which the first and best proportions or powers have been presented to Him, he will multiply and increase sevenfold. Therefore, though it may not be necessarily the interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts will never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that service--devoted, both by architect and employer; by the one in scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design; by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which he would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us; and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may be diminished by counter-workings of vanity and self-interest, yet its mere acknowledgment would bring a reward; and with our present accumulation of means and of intellect, there would be such an impulse and vitality given to art as it has not felt since the thirteenth century. And I do not assert this as other than a national consequence: I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those faculties had been wisely and religiously employed; but the impulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain; and would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best; and, secondly, that we should consider increase of apparent labor as an increase of beauty in the building. A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I have done. X. For the first: it is alone enough to secure success, and it is for want of observing it that we continually fail. We are none of us so good architects as to be able to work habitually beneath our strength; and yet there is not a building that I know of, lately raised, wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither architect nor builder has done his best. It is the especial characteristic of modern work. All old work nearly has been hard work. It may be the hard work of children, of barbarians, of rustics; but it is always their utmost. Ours has as constantly the look of money's worth, of a stopping short wherever and whenever we can, of a lazy compliance with low conditions; never of a fair putting forth of our strength. Let us have done with this kind of work at once: cast off every temptation to it: do not let us degrade ourselves voluntarily, and then mutter and mourn over our short comings; let us confess our poverty or our parsimony, but not belie our human intellect. It is not even a question of how _much_ we are to do, but of how it is to be done; it is not a question of doing more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss our roofs with wretched, half-worked, blunt-edged rosettes; do not let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of mediæval statuary. Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to be spent in decoration; let us go to the Flaxman of his time, whoever he may be, and bid him carve for us a single statue, frieze or capital, or as many as we can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do; place them where they will be of the most value, and be content. Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty. No matter: better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be that we do not desire ornament of so high an order; choose, then, a less developed style, also, if you will, rougher material; the law which we are enforcing requires only that what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be the best of their kind; choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet work, instead of the Flaxman frieze and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work; and if you cannot afford marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed; and if not stone, brick, but the best brick; preferring always what is good of a lower order of work or material, to what is bad of a higher; for this is not only the way to improve every kind of work, and to put every kind of material to better use; but it is more honest and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, upright, and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to take into consideration. XI. The other condition which we had to notice, was the value of the appearance of labor upon architecture. I have spoken of this before;[G] and it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure which belong to the art, always, however, within certain somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not at first appear easily to be explained why labor, as represented by materials of value, should, without sense of wrong or error, bear being wasted; while the waste of actual workmanship is always painful, so soon as it is apparent. But so it is, that, while precious materials may, with a certain profusion and negligence, be employed for the magnificence of what is seldom seen, the work of man cannot be carelessly and idly bestowed, without an immediate sense of wrong; as if the strength of the living creature were never intended by its Maker to be sacrificed in vain, though it is well for us sometimes to part with what we esteem precious of substance, as showing that in such a service it becomes but dross and dust. And in the nice balance between the straitening of effort or enthusiasm on the one hand, and vainly casting it away upon the other, there are more questions than can be met by any but very just and watchful feeling. In general it is less the mere loss of labor that offends us, than the lack of judgment implied by such loss; so that if men confessedly work for work's sake, and it does not appear that they are ignorant where or how to make their labor tell, we shall not be grossly offended. On the contrary, we shall be pleased if the work be lost in carrying out a principle, or in avoiding a deception. It, indeed, is a law properly belonging to another part of our subject, but it may be allowably stated here, that, whenever, by the construction of a building, some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the continuation of others bearing some consistent ornament, it is not well that the ornament should cease in the parts concealed; credit is given for it, and it should not be deceptively withdrawn: as, for instance, in the sculpture of the backs of the statues of a temple pediment; never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not lawfully to be left unfinished. And so in the working out of ornaments in dark concealed places, in which it is best to err on the side of completion; and in the carrying round of string courses, and other such continuous work; not but that they may stop sometimes, on the point of going into some palpably impenetrable recess, but then let them stop boldly and markedly, on some distinct terminal ornament, and never be supposed to exist where they do not. The arches of the towers which flank the transepts of Rouen Cathedral have rosette ornaments on their spandrils, on the three visible sides; none on the side towards the roof. The right of this is rather a nice point for question. [G] Mod. Painters, Part I. Sec. 1, Chap. 3. XII. Visibility, however, we must remember, depends, not only on situation, but on distance; and there is no way in which work is more painfully and unwisely lost than in its over delicacy on parts distant from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty must govern our treatment: we must not work any kind of ornament which is, perhaps, to cover the whole building (or at least to occur on all parts of it) delicately where it is near the eye, and rudely where it is removed from it. That is trickery and dishonesty. Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in the distance and what near, and so distribute them, keeping such as by their nature are delicate, down near the eye, and throwing the bold and rough kinds of work to the top; and if there be any kind which is to be both near and far off, take care that it be as boldly and rudely wrought where it is well seen as where it is distant, so that the spectator may know exactly what it is, and what it is worth. Thus chequered patterns, and in general such ornaments as common workmen can execute, may extend over the whole building; but bas-reliefs, and fine niches and capitals, should be kept down, and the common sense of this will always give a building dignity, even though there be some abruptness or awkwardness, in the resulting arrangements. Thus at San Zeno at Verona, the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest are confined to a parallelogram of the front, reaching to the height of the capitals of the columns of the porch. Above these, we find a simple though most lovely, little arcade; and above that, only blank wall, with square face shafts. The whole effect is tenfold grander and better than if the entire façade had been covered with bad work, and may serve for an example of the way to place little where we cannot afford much. So, again, the transept gates of Rouen[H] are covered with delicate bas-reliefs (of which I shall speak at greater length presently) up to about once and a half a man's height; and above that come the usual and more visible statues and niches. So in the campanile at Florence, the circuit of bas-reliefs is on its lowest story; above that come its statues; and above them all its pattern mosaic, and twisted columns, exquisitely finished, like all Italian work of the time, but still, in the eye of the Florentine, rough and commonplace by comparison with the bas-reliefs. So generally the most delicate niche work and best mouldings of the French Gothic are in gates and low windows well within sight; although, it being the very spirit of that style to trust to its exuberance for effect, there is occasionally a burst upwards and blossoming unrestrainably to the sky, as in the pediment of the west front of Rouen, and in the recess of the rose window behind it, where there are some most elaborate flower-mouldings, all but invisible from below, and only adding a general enrichment to the deep shadows that relieve the shafts of the advanced pediment. It is observable, however, that this very work is bad flamboyant, and has corrupt renaissance characters in its detail as well as use; while in the earlier and grander north and south gates, there is a very noble proportioning of the work to the distance, the niches and statues which crown the northern one, at a height of about one hundred feet from the ground, being alike colossal and simple; visibly so from below, so as to induce no deception, and yet honestly and well-finished above, and all that they are expected to be; the features very beautiful, full of expression, and as delicately wrought as any work of the period. [H] Henceforward, for the sake of convenience, when I name any cathedral town in this manner, let me be understood to speak of its cathedral church. XIII. It is to be remembered, however, that while the ornaments in every fine ancient building, without exception so far as I am aware, are most delicate at the base, they are often in greater effective _quantity_ on the upper parts. In high towers this is perfectly natural and right, the solidity of the foundation being as necessary as the division and penetration of the superstructure; hence the lighter work and richly pierced crowns of late Gothic towers. The campanile of Giotto at Florence, already alluded to, is an exquisite instance of the union of the two principles, delicate bas-reliefs adorning its massy foundation, while the open tracery of the upper windows attracts the eye by its slender intricacy, and a rich cornice crowns the whole. In such truly fine cases of this disposition the upper work is effective by its quantity and intricacy only, as the lower portions by delicacy; so also in the Tour de Beurre at Rouen, where, however, the detail is massy throughout, subdividing into rich meshes as it ascends. In the bodies of buildings the principle is less safe, but its discussion is not connected with our present subject. XIV. Finally, work may be wasted by being too good for its material, or too fine to bear exposure; and this, generally a characteristic of late, especially of renaissance, work, is perhaps the worst fault of all. I do not know anything more painful or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with which the Certosa of Pavia, and part of the Colleone sepulchral chapel at Bergamo, and other such buildings, are incrusted, of which it is not possible so much as to think without exhaustion; and a heavy sense of the misery it would be, to be forced to look at it at all. And this is not from the quantity of it, nor because it is bad work--much of it is inventive and able; but because it looks as if it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and velveted caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower or gnawing frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about it, and tormented by it; and we feel that a massy shaft and a bold shadow would be worth it all. Nevertheless, even in cases like these, much depends on the accomplishment of the great ends of decoration. If the ornament does its duty--if it _is_ ornament, and its points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we shall not be offended by finding that the sculptor in his fulness of fancy has chosen to give much more than these mere points of light, and has composed them of groups of figures. But if the ornament does not answer its purpose, if it have no distant, no truly decorative power; if generally seen it be a mere incrustation and meaningless roughness, we shall only be chagrined by finding when we look close, that the incrustation has cost years of labor and has millions of figures and histories in it and would be the better of being seen through a Stanhope lens. Hence the greatness of the northern Gothic as contrasted with the latest Italian. It reaches nearly the same extreme of detail; but it never loses sight of its architectural purpose, never fails in its decorative power; not a leaflet in it but speaks, and speaks far off, too; and so long as this be the case, there is no limit to the luxuriance in which such work may legitimately and nobly be bestowed. [Illustration: PLATE I.--(Page 33--Vol. V) ORNAMENTS FROM ROUEN, ST. LO, AND VENICE.] XV. No limit: it is one of the affectations of architects to speak of overcharged ornament. Ornament cannot be overcharged if it be good, and is always overcharged when it is bad. I have given, on the opposite page (fig. 1), one of the smallest niches of the central gate of Rouen. That gate I suppose to be the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing; for though I have spoken of the upper portions, especially the receding window, as degenerate, the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any renaissance taint. There are four strings of these niches (each with two figures beneath it) round the porch, from the ground to the top of the arch, with three intermediate rows of larger niches, far more elaborate; besides the six principal canopies of each outer pier. The total number of the subordinate niches alone, each worked like that in the plate, and each with a different pattern of traceries in each compartment, is one hundred and seventy-six.[4] Yet in all this ornament there is not one cusp, one finial that is useless--not a stroke of the chisel is in vain; the grace and luxuriance of it all are visible--sensible rather--even to the uninquiring eye; and all its minuteness does not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery, of the noble and unbroken vault. It is not less the boast of some styles that they can bear ornament, than of others that they can do without it; but we do not often enough reflect that those very styles, of so haughty simplicity, owe part of their pleasurableness to contrast, and would be wearisome if universal. They are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away--all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness--all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration. CHAPTER II. THE LAMP OF TRUTH. I. There is a marked likeness between the virtues of man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits--the same diminishing gradation in vigor up to the limits of their domains, the same essential separation from their contraries--the same twilight at the meeting of the two: a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom. Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their dimness increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their sunset; and, happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down: but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; and this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all--Truth; that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually; that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility of all the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the disorders of his best--which is continually assaulted by the one, and betrayed by the other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest and the boldest violations of its law! There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain. We do not enough consider this; nor enough dread the slight and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the color of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and we are little offended by it; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; happy in that the thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we have wilfully left the fountains of it. It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the greatness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two characters are altogether distinct. The greatness of a fault depends partly on the nature of the person against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends, humanly speaking, on the degree of temptation to it. One class of circumstances determines the weight of the attaching punishment; the other, the claim to remission of punishment: and since it is not easy for men to estimate the relative weight, nor possible for them to know the relative consequences, of crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of culpability; esteeming those faults worst which are committed under least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and accidental; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them, without over care as to which is largest or blackest. Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit. To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; and it is a strange thought how many men there are, as I trust, who would hold to it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at the cost of a little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more "wanting the good of virtue and of being," than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence to fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that, whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen delights. II. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it necessary for the sake of the delights over which she has influence. For, as I advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further the cause of religion, but because most assuredly they might therein be infinitely ennobled themselves, so I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful practice of handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs of chivalry: and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and universality there is in this single principle, and how in the consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of every art and act of man. I have before endeavored to show its range and power in painting; and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be written on its authority over all that is great in architecture. But I must be content with the force of instances few and familiar, believing that the occasions of its manifestation may be more easily discovered by a desire to be true, than embraced by an analysis of truth. Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark clearly wherein consists the essence of fallacy as distinguished from supposition. III. For it might be at first thought that the whole kingdom of imagination was one of deception also. Not so: the action of the imagination is a voluntary summoning of the conceptions of things absent or impossible; and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination partly consist in its knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of their actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent presence or reality. When the imagination deceives it becomes madness. It is a noble faculty so long as it confesses its own ideality; when it ceases to confess this, it is insanity. All the difference lies in the fact of the confession, in there being _no_ deception. It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that we should be able to invent and to behold what is not; and to our rank as moral creatures that we should know and confess at the same time that it is not. IV. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, that the whole art of painting is nothing else than an endeavor to deceive. Not so: it is, on the contrary, a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible way. For instance: I desire to give an account of a mountain or of a rock; I begin by telling its shape. But words will not do this distinctly, and I draw its shape, and say, "This was its shape." Next: I would fain represent its color; but words will not do this either, and I dye the paper, and say, "This was its color." Such a process may be carried on until the scene appears to exist, and a high pleasure may be taken in its apparent existence. This is a communicated act of imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an _assertion_ of its existence (which is never for one instant made, implied, or believed), or else in false statements of forms and colors (which are, indeed, made and believed to our great loss, continually). And observe, also, that so degrading a thing is deception in even the approach and appearance of it, that all painting which even reaches the mark of apparent realization, is degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this point in another place. V. The violations of truth, which dishonor poetry and painting, are thus for the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects. But in architecture another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation of truth is possible; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of material, or the quantity of labor. And this is, in the full sense of the word, wrong; it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any other moral delinquency; it is unworthy alike of architects and of nations; and it has been a sign, wherever it has widely and with toleration existed, of a singular debasement of the arts; that it is not a sign of worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can be accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange separation which has for some centuries existed between the arts and all other subjects of human intellect, as matters of conscience. This withdrawal of conscientiousness from among the faculties concerned with art, while it has destroyed the arts themselves, has also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence which otherwise they might have presented respecting the character of the respective nations among whom they have been cultivated; otherwise, it might appear more than strange that a nation so distinguished for its general uprightness and faith as the English, should admit in their architecture more of pretence, concealment, and deceit, than any other of this or of past time. They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon the art in which they are practised. If there were no other causes for the failures which of late have marked every great occasion for architectural exertion, these petty dishonesties would be enough to account for all. It is the first step and not the least, towards greatness to do away with these; the first, because so evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture; but we _can_ command an honest architecture: the meagreness of poverty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected; but what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception? VI. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered under three heads:-- 1st. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other than the true one; as in pendants of late Gothic roofs. 2d. The painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that of which they actually consist (as in the marbling of wood), or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them. 3d. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind. Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble exactly in the degree in which all these false expedients are avoided. Nevertheless, there are certain degrees of them, which, owing to their frequent usage, or to other causes, have so far lost the nature of deceit as to be admissible; as, for instance, gilding, which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein not understood for gold; while in jewellery it is a deceit, because it is so understood, and therefore altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise, in the application of the strict rules of right, many exceptions and niceties of conscience; which let us as briefly as possible examine. VII. 1st. Structural Deceits. I have limited these to the determined and purposed suggestion of a mode of support other than the true one. The architect is not _bound_ to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. Such a structure would be presumed by an intelligent observer, the first time he saw such a roof; and the beauty of its traceries would be enhanced to him if they confessed and followed the lines of its main strength. If, however, the intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest,--this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether unpardonable. There is, however, a certain deception necessarily occurring in Gothic architecture, which relates, not to the points, but to the manner, of support. The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to the external relations of stems and branches, which has been the ground of so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the mind of the spectator a sense or belief of a correspondent internal structure; that is to say, of a fibrous and continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and an elasticity communicated _upwards,_ sufficient for the support of the ramified portions. The idea of the real conditions, of a great weight of ceiling thrown upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency partly to be crushed, and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is with difficulty received; and the more so when the pillars would be, if unassisted, too slight for the weight, and are supported by external flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other such achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now, there is a nice question of conscience in this, which we shall hardly settle but by considering that, when the mind is informed beyond the possibility of mistake as to the true nature of things, the affecting it with a contrary impression, however distinct, is no dishonesty, but on the contrary, a legitimate appeal to the imagination. For instance, the greater part of the happiness which we have in contemplating clouds, results from the impression of their having massive, luminous, warm, and mountain-like surfaces; and our delight in the sky frequently depends upon our considering it as a blue vault. But we know the contrary, in both instances; we know the cloud to be a damp fog, or a drift of snow flakes; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no dishonesty, while there is much delight, in the irresistibly contrary impression. In the same way, so long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dextrous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches. Nor is even the concealment of the support of the external buttress reprehensible, so long as the pillars are not sensibly inadequate to their duty. For the weight of a roof is a circumstance of which the spectator generally has no idea, and the provisions for it, consequently, circumstances whose necessity or adaptation he could not understand. It is no deceit, therefore, when the weight to be borne is necessarily unknown, to conceal also the means of bearing it, leaving only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do, indeed, bear as much as they are ever imagined to bear, and the system of added support is no more, as a matter of conscience, to be exhibited, than, in the human or any other form, mechanical provisions for those functions which are themselves unperceived. But the moment that the conditions of weight are comprehended, both truth and feeling require that the conditions of support should be also comprehended. Nothing can be worse, either as judged by the taste or the conscience, than affectedly inadequate supports--suspensions in air, and other such tricks and vanities. Mr. Hope wisely reprehends, for this reason, the arrangement of the main piers of St. Sophia at Constantinople. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of architectural juggling, if possible still more to be condemned, because less sublime. VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be classed, though still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it--the introduction of members which should have, or profess to have, a duty, and have none. One of the most general instances of this will be found in the form of the flying buttress in late Gothic. The use of that member is, of course, to convey support from one pier to another when the plan of the building renders it necessary or desirable that the supporting masses should be divided into groups, the most frequent necessity of this kind arising from the intermediate range of chapels or aisles between the nave or choir walls and their supporting piers. The natural, healthy, and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply sloping bar of stone, sustained by an arch with its spandril carried farthest down on the lowest side, and dying into the vertical of the outer pier; that pier being, of course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at right angles to the supported walls, and, if need be, crowned by a pinnacle to give it greater weight. The whole arrangement is exquisitely carried out in the choir of Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became gradually a decorative member, and was used in all places merely for the sake of its beauty. There is no objection to this; it is just as lawful to build a pinnacle for its beauty as a tower; but also the buttress became a decorative member; and was used, first, where it was not wanted, and, secondly, in forms in which it could be of no use, becoming a mere tie, not between the pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of the decorative pinnacle, thus attaching itself to the very point where its thrust, if it made any, could not be resisted. The most flagrant instance of this barbarism that I remember (though it prevails partially in all the spires of the Netherlands), is the lantern of St. Ouen at Rouen, where the pierced buttress, having an ogee curve, looks about as much calculated to bear a thrust as a switch of willow; and the pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no work to do whatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four idle servants, as they are--heraldic supporters, that central tower being merely a hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing than a basket does. In fact, I do not know anything more strange or unwise than the praise lavished upon this lantern; it is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in Europe; its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms;[5] and its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery. There are hardly any of the magnificent and serene constructions of the early Gothic which have not, in the course of time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things that were; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame; and the very winds that whistle through the threads of them, are to the diapasoned echoes of the ancient walls, as to the voice of the man was the pining of the spectre.[6] IX. Perhaps the most fruitful source of these kinds of corruption which we have to guard against in recent times, is one which, nevertheless, comes in a "questionable shape," and of which it is not easy to determine the proper laws and limits; I mean the use of iron. The definition of the art of architecture, given in the first chapter, is independent of its materials: nevertheless, that art having been, up to the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of structure have been based, the one altogether, the other in great part, on the necessities consequent on the employment of those materials; and that the entire or principal employment of metallic framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the first principles of the art. Abstractedly there appears no reason why iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction. But I believe that the tendency of all present sympathy and association is to limit the idea of architecture to non-metallic work; and that not without reason. For architecture being in its perfection the earliest, as in its elements it is necessarily the first, of arts, will always precede, in any barbarous nation, the possession of the science necessary either for the obtaining or the management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest laws must, therefore, depend upon the use of materials accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth; that is to say, clay, wood, or stone: and as I think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use; and since the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of more advanced science, the materials and principles of earlier ages. X. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact is, that every idea respecting size, proportion, decoration, or construction, on which we are at present in the habit of acting or judging, depends on presupposition of such materials: and as I both feel myself unable to escape the influence of these prejudices, and believe that my readers will be equally so, it may be perhaps permitted to me to assume that true architecture does not admit iron as a constructive material,[7] and that such works as the cast-iron central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our churches, are not architecture at all. Yet it is evident that metals may, and sometimes must, enter into the construction to a certain extent, as nails in wooden architecture, and therefore as legitimately rivets and solderings in stone; neither can we well deny to the Gothic architect the power of supporting statues, pinnacles, or traceries by iron bars; and if we grant this I do not see how we can help allowing Brunelleschi his iron chain around the dome of Florence, or the builders of Salisbury their elaborate iron binding of the central tower.[8] If, however, we would not fall into the old sophistry of the grains of corn and the heap, we must find a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere. This rule is, I think, that metals may be used as a _cement_ but not as a _support_. For as cements of other kinds are often so strong that the stones may easier be broken than separated, and the wall becomes a solid mass without for that reason losing the character of architecture, there is no reason why, when a nation has obtained the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods or rivets should not be used in the place of cement, and establish the same or a greater strength and adherence, without in any wise inducing departure from the types and system of architecture before established; nor does it make any difference except as to sightliness, whether the metal bands or rods so employed, be in the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as stays and cross-bands; so only that the use of them be always and distinctly one which might be superseded by mere strength of cement; as for instance if a pinnacle or mullion be propped or tied by an iron band, it is evident that the iron only prevents the separation of the stones by lateral force, which the cement would have done, had it been strong enough. But the moment that the iron in the least degree takes the place of the stone, and acts by its resistance to crushing, and bears superincumbent weight, or if it acts by its own weight as a counterpoise, and so supersedes the use of pinnacles or buttresses in resisting a lateral thrust, or if, in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to do what wooden beams would have done as well, that instant the building ceases, so far as such applications of metal extend, to be true architecture. XI. The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one, and it is well in all things to be cautious how we approach the utmost limit of lawfulness; so that, although the employment of metal within this limit cannot be considered as destroying the very being and nature of architecture, it will, if, extravagant and frequent, derogate from the dignity of the work, as well as (which is especially to our present point) from its honesty. For although the spectator is not informed as to the quantity or strength of the cement employed, he will generally conceive the stones of the building to be separable and his estimate of the skill of the architect will be based in a great measure on his supposition of this condition, and of the difficulties attendant upon it: so that it is always more honorable, and it has a tendency to render the style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific, to employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much as possible with the weight of the one and the strength of the other, and rather sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than attain the one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon dishonesty. Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy and slightness as, in some parts of very fair and finished edifices, it is desirable that it should be; and where both its completion and security are in a measure dependent on the use of metal, let not such use be reprehended; so only that as much is done as may be, by good mortar and good masonry; and no slovenly workmanship admitted through confidence in the iron helps; for it is in this license as in that of wine, a man may use it for his infirmities, but not for his nourishment. XII. And, in order to avoid an over use of this liberty, it would be well to consider what application may be conveniently made of the dovetailing and various adjusting of stones; for when any artifice is necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought to come before the use of metal, for it is both safer and more honest. I cannot see that any objection can be made to the fitting of the stones in any shapes the architect pleases: for although it would not be desirable to see buildings put together like Chinese puzzles, there must always be a check upon such an abuse of the practice in its difficulty; nor is it necessary that it should be always exhibited, so that it be understood by the spectator as an admitted help, and that no principal stones are introduced in positions apparently impossible for them to retain, although a riddle here and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well as to give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the architect. There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the cathedral of Prato (Plate IV. fig. 4.); where the maintenance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be understood until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course, of the form given in fig. 5. XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural deceits, I would remind the architect who thinks that I am unnecessarily and narrowly limiting his resources or his art, that the highest greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints. Nothing is more evident than this, in that supreme government which is the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its meeting and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and _for the sake of that contest_, admitted by the Divine Omnipotence: and these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many times and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may necessitate for the accomplishment of given purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why the system of the higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the _Infusoria_ is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or more naturally still, carbon; so framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grasshoppers, and other animals might have been framed far more magnificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations; a creation for every element, and elements infinite. But the architecture of animals _here_, is appointed by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant architecture; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon has a double skull; we, in our wisdom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of Obedience--an obedience to His own laws: and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not." XIV. 2d. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined as the inducing the supposition of some form or material which does not actually exist; as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive relief, &c. But we must be careful to observe, that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted _deception_, and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where deception begins or ends. Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is seemingly covered with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly enough painted to enable it, in its dark and removed position, to deceive a careless observer. This is, of course, gross degradation; it destroys much of the dignity even of the rest of the building, and is in the very strongest terms to be reprehended. The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural design in grissaille mingled with the figures of its frescoes; and the effect is increase of dignity. In what lies the distinctive character? In two points, principally:--First. That the architecture is so closely associated with the figures, and has so grand fellowship with them in its forms and cast shadows, that both are at once felt to be of a piece; and as the figures must necessarily be painted, the architecture is known to be so too. There is thus no deception. Second. That so great a painter as Michael Angelo would always stop short in such minor parts of his design, of the degree of vulgar force which would be necessary to induce the supposition of their reality; and, strangely as it may sound, would never paint badly enough to deceive. But though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in works severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan and that of the Sistine, there are works neither so great nor so mean, in which the limits of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care to determine; care only, however, to apply accurately the broad principle with which we set out, that no form nor material is to be _deceptively_ represented. XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no deception: it does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood or on stone, or, as will naturally be supposed, on plaster, does not matter. Whatever the material, good painting makes it more precious; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting the ground of which it gives us no information. To cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, is, therefore, perfectly legitimate; and as desirable a mode of decoration as it is constant in the great periods. Verona and Venice are now seen deprived of more than half their former splendor; it depended far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The plaster, in this case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as contemptible a procedure as the other is noble. It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything? So long as the painting is confessed--yes; but if, even in the slightest degree, the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real--no. Let us take a few instances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a border composed of flat colored patterns of great elegance--no part of it in attempted relief. The certainty of flat surface being thus secured, the figures, though the size of life, do not deceive, and the artist thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his whole power, and to lead us through fields and groves, and depths of pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose of architectural decoration. In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the trellises of vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbor; and the troops of children, peeping through the oval openings, luscious in color and faint in light, may well be expected every instant to break through, or hide behind the covert. The grace of their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole work, mark that it is painting, and barely redeem it from the charge of falsehood; but even so saved, it is utterly unworthy to take a place among noble or legitimate architectural decoration. In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has represented the Assumption with so much deceptive power, that he has made a dome of some thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of angels. Is this wrong? Not so: for the subject at once precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken the vines for a veritable pergoda, and the children for its haunting ragazzi; but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must be man's work; let him put his utmost strength to it and welcome, he can enchant us, but cannot betray. We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the art of daily occurrence, always remembering that more is to be forgiven to the great painter than to the mere decorative workman; and this especially, because the former, even in deceptive portions, will not trick us so grossly; as we have just seen in Correggio, where a worse painter would have made the thing look like life at once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this kind, as of pictured landscapes at the extremities of alleys and arcades, and ceilings like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards of the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a certain luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness, and are innocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere toys. XVI. Touching the false representation of material, the question is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping; all such imitations are utterly base and inadmissible. It is melancholy to think of the time and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts of London alone, and of the waste of our resources in absolute vanities, in things about which no mortal cares, by which no eye is ever arrested, unless painfully, and which do not add one whit to comfort or cleanliness, or even to that great object of commercial art--conspicuousness. But in architecture of a higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned? I have made it a rule in the present work not to blame specifically; but I may, perhaps, be permitted, while I express my sincere admiration of the very noble entrance and general architecture of the British Museum, to express also my regret that the noble granite foundation of the staircase should be mocked at its landing by an imitation, the more blameable because tolerably successful. The only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and upon every bit of granite afterwards encountered. One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon himself. But even this, however derogatory to the noble architecture around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the altar frameworks and pediments daubed with mottled color, and to dye in the same fashions such skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge above the pews; this is not merely bad taste; it is no unimportant or excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It may be in our power to make it beautiful, but let it at least be pure; and if we cannot permit much to the architect, do not let us permit anything to the upholsterer; if we keep to solid stone and solid wood, whitewashed, if we like, for cleanliness' sake (for whitewash has so often been used as the dress of noble things that it has thence received a kind of nobility itself), it must be a bad design indeed which is grossly offensive. I recollect no instance of a want of sacred character, or of any marked and painful ugliness, in the simplest or the most awkwardly built village church, where stone and wood were roughly and nakedly used, and the windows latticed with white glass. But the smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments, the barred windows with jaundiced borders and dead ground square panes, the gilded or bronzed wood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of curtains and cushions, and pew heads and altar railings, and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and yellow sickness of the false marble--disguises all, observe; falsehoods all--who are they who like these things? who defend them? who do them? I have never spoken to any one who _did_ like them, though to many who thought them matters of no consequence. Perhaps not to religion (though I cannot but believe that there are many to whom, as to myself, such things are serious obstacles to the repose of mind and temper which should precede devotional exercises); but to the general tone of our judgment and feeling--yes; for assuredly we shall regard, with tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of material things we have been in the habit of associating with our worship, and be little prepared to detect or blame hypocrisy, meanness, and disguise in other kinds of decoration when we suffer objects belonging to the most solemn of all services to be tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and unseemly. XVII. Painting, however, is not the only mode in which material may be concealed, or rather simulated; for merely to conceal is, as we have seen, no wrong. Whitewash, for instance, though often (by no means always) to be regretted as a concealment, is not to be blamed as a falsity. It shows itself for what it is, and asserts nothing of what is beneath it. Gilding has become, from its frequent use, equally innocent. It is understood for what it is, a film merely, and is, therefore, allowable to any extent. I do not say expedient: it is one of the most abused means of magnificence we possess, and I much doubt whether any use we ever make of it, balances that loss of pleasure, which, from the frequent sight and perpetual suspicion of it, we suffer in the contemplation of anything that is verily of gold. I think gold was meant to be seldom seen and to be admired as a precious thing; and I sometimes wish that truth should so far literally prevail as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Nevertheless, nature herself does not dispense with such semblance, but uses light for it; and I have too great a love for old and saintly art to part with its burnished field, or radiant nimbus; only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its expedience, however, any more than of that of color, it is not here the place to speak; we are endeavoring to determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. Of other and less common modes of disguising surface, as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imitations of colored stones, I need hardly speak. The rule will apply to all alike, that whatever is pretended, is wrong; commonly enforced also by the exceeding ugliness and insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately in the style of renovation by which half the houses in Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in imitation of alabaster. But there is one more form of architectural fiction, which is so constant in the great periods that it needs respectful judgment. I mean the facing of brick with precious stone. XVIII. It is well known, that what is meant by a church's being built of marble is, in nearly all cases, only that a veneering of marble has been fastened on the rough brick wall, built with certain projections to receive it; and that what appear to be massy stones, are nothing more than external slabs. Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of right is on the same ground as in that of gilding. If it be clearly understood that a marble facing does not pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm in it; and as it is also evident that, when very precious stones are used, as jaspers and serpentines, it must become, not only an extravagant and vain increase of expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no resource but this of veneering; nor is there anything to be alleged against it on the head of durability, such work having been by experience found to last as long, and in as perfect condition, as any kind of masonry. It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of mosaic on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or any other material; and when lovely stones are to be obtained, it is a manner which should be thoroughly understood, and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the shaft of a column more highly for its being of a single block, and as we do not regret the loss of substance and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver, agate, or ivory; so I think the walls themselves may be regarded with a more just complacency if they are known to be all of noble substance; and that rightly weighing the demands of the two principles of which we have hitherto spoken--Sacrifice and Truth, we should sometimes rather spare external ornament than diminish the unseen value and consistency of what we do; and I believe that a better manner of design, and a more careful and studious, if less abundant decoration would follow, upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect to all the points we have examined; that while we have traced the limits of license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude which refuses license. It is thus true that there is no falsity, and much beauty in the use of external color, and that it is lawful to paint either pictures or patterns on whatever surfaces may seem to need enrichment. But it is not less true, that such practices are essentially unarchitectural; and while we cannot say that there is actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that they have been _always_ used most lavishly in the times of most noble art, yet they divide the work into two parts and kinds, one of less durability than the other, which dies away from it in process of ages, and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities of its own, naked and bare. That enduring noblesse I should, therefore, call truly architectural; and it is not until this has been secured that the accessory power of painting may be called in, for the delight of the immediate time; nor this, as I think, until every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted. The true colors of architecture are those of natural stone, and I would fain see these taken advantage of to the full. Every variety of hue, from pale yellow to purple, passing through orange, red, and brown, is entirely at our command; nearly every kind of green and gray is also attainable: and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might we not achieve? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable; where brighter colors are required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic--a kind of work as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time--and let the painter's work be reserved for the shadowed _loggia_ and inner chamber. This is the true and faithful way of building; where this cannot be, the device of external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor; but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must pass away, and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of St. Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by every return of morning and evening rays; while the hues of our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud; and the temples whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand in their faded whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold. [Illustration: PLATE II.--(Page 55--Vol. V.) PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LO, NORMANDY.] XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work for that of the hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit. There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice; one, that all cast and machine work is bad, as work; the other, that it is dishonest. Of its badness, I shall speak in another place, that being evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is, I think, a sufficient reason to determine absolute and unconditional rejection of it. Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two entirely distinct sources of agreeableness: one, that of the abstract beauty of its forms, which, for the present, we will suppose to be the same whether they come from the hand or the machine; the other, the sense of human labor and care spent upon it. How great this latter influence we may perhaps judge, by considering that there is not a cluster of weeds growing in any cranny of ruin which has not a beauty in all respects _nearly_ equal, and, in some, immeasurably superior, to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its stones: and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich than the knots of grass beside it; of its delicacy, though it is a thousand fold less delicate; of its admirableness, though a millionfold less admirable; results from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy, toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart-breakings--of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success: all this _can_ be traced by a practised eye; but, granting it even obscure, it is presumed or understood; and in that is the worth of the thing, just as much as the worth of anything else we call precious. The worth of a diamond is simply the understanding of the time it must take to look for it before it can be cut. It has an intrinsic value besides, which the diamond has not (for a diamond has no more real beauty than a piece of glass); but I do not speak of that at present; I place the two on the same ground; and I suppose that hand-wrought ornament can no more be generally known from machine work, than a diamond can be known from paste; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, the mason's, as the other the jeweller's eye; and that it can be detected only by the closest examination. Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The using of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not; which pretends to have cost, and to be, what it did not, and is not; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. Down with it to the ground, grind it to powder, leave its ragged place upon the wall, rather; you have not paid for it, you have no business with it, you do not want it. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody wants integrity. All the fair devices that ever were fancied, are not worth a lie. Leave your walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked mud and chopped straw, if need be; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood. This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more imperative one than any other I have asserted; and this kind of dishonesty the meanest, as the least necessary; for ornament is an extravagant and inessential thing; and, therefore, if fallacious, utterly base--this, I say, being our general law, there are, nevertheless, certain exceptions respecting particular substances and their uses. XX. Thus in the use of brick; since that is known to be originally moulded, there is no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supposed to have been cut, and therefore, will cause no deception; it will have only the credit it deserves. In flat countries, far from any quarry of stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most successfully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those which run round the market-place of Vercelli, are among the richest in Italy. So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic architecture of France, colored tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers; and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs, by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret the useless and ill-arranged colors, we would by no means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects, excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater skill in its management than marble. For it is not the material, but the absence of the human labor, which makes the thing worthless; and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, so that even hand-work has all the characters of mechanism; of the difference between living and dead hand-work I shall speak presently; all that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power to secure--the confession of what we have done, and what we have given; so that when we use stone at all, since all stone is naturally supposed to be carved by hand, we must not carve it by machinery; neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any stucco ornaments of the color of stone, or which might in anywise be mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, which cast a shame and suspicion over every part of the building. But for ductile and fusible materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since these will usually be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it is at our pleasure to employ them as we will; remembering that they become precious, or otherwise, just in proportion to the hand-work upon them, or to the clearness of their reception of the hand-work of their mould. But I believe no cause to have been more active in the degradation of our natural feeling for beauty, than the constant use of cast iron ornaments. The common iron work of the middle ages was as simple as it was effective, composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the workman's will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line, or shadow, as those of cast iron; and while, on the score of truth, we can hardly allege anything against them, since they are always distinguishable, at a glance, from wrought and hammered work, and stand only for what they are, yet I feel very strongly that there is no hope of the progress of the arts of any nation which indulges in these vulgar and cheap substitutes for real decoration. Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall endeavor to show more conclusively in another place, enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, if even honest or allowable, they are things in which we can never take just pride or pleasure, and must never be employed in any place wherein they might either themselves obtain the credit of being other and better than they are, or be associated with the downright work to which it would be a disgrace to be found in their company. Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which architecture is liable to be corrupted; there are, however, other and more subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard by definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected spirit. For, as it has been above noticed, there are certain kinds of deception which extend to impressions and ideas only; of which some are, indeed, of a noble use, as that above referred to, the arborescent look of lofty Gothic aisles; but of which the most part have so much of legerdemain and trickery about them, that they will lower any style in which they considerably prevail; and they are likely to prevail when once they are admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects and feelingless spectators; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters, delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach; and when subtleties of this kind are accompanied by the display of such dextrous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of them do not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler character of the art, and end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display of dexterity and ingenious device, and by putting the whole force of our fancy into the arrangement of masses and forms, caring no more how these masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter cares which way his pencil strikes. It would be easy to give many instances of the danger of these tricks and vanities; but I shall confine myself to the examination of one which has, as I think, been the cause of the fall of Gothic architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system of intersectional mouldings, which, on account of its great importance, and for the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for explaining elementarily. XXI. I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor Willis's account of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chapter of his Architecture of the Middle Ages; since the publication of which I have been not a little amazed to hear of any attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of its derivation from imitated vegetable form--inexcusably, I say, because the smallest acquaintance with early Gothic architecture would have informed the supporters of that theory of the simple fact, that, exactly in proportion to the antiquity of the work, the imitation of such organic forms is less, and in the earliest examples does not exist at all. There cannot be the shadow of a question, in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of consecutive examples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlargement of the penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually supported by a central pillar, occupied the head of early windows. Professor Willis, perhaps, confines his observations somewhat too absolutely to the double sub-arch. I have given, in Plate VII. fig. 2, an interesting case of rude penetration of a high and simply trefoiled shield, from the church of the Eremitani at Padua. But the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub-arch, decorated with various piercings of the space between it and the superior arch; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen[9] (Plate III. fig. 1); with a very beautifully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of Eu, and that of the choir of Lisieux; with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils, in the transept towers of Rouen (Plate III. fig. 2); with a trefoil awkwardly, and very small quatrefoil above, at Coutances, (Plate III. fig. 3); then, with multiplications of the same figures, pointed or round, giving very clumsy shapes of the intermediate stone (fig. 4, from one of the nave chapels of Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the nave chapels of Bayeaux), and finally, by thinning out the stony ribs, reaching conditions like that of the glorious typical form of the clerestory of the apse of Beauvais (fig. 6). [Illustration: PLATE III.--(Page 60--Vol. V.) TRACERIES FROM CAEN, BAYEUX, ROUEN, AND BEAVAIS.] XXII. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole of this process, the attention is kept fixed on the forms of the penetrations, that is to say, of the lights as seen from the interior, not of the intermediate stone. All the grace of the window is in the outline of its light; and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from within, in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, at first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually enlarging, approaching, until they come and stand over us, as it were, filling the whole space with their effulgence. And it is in this pause of the star, that we have the great, pure, and perfect form of French Gothic; it was at the instant when the rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant unity, principality, and visible first causing of the whole, that we have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless judgments in the management alike of the tracery and decorations. I have given, in Plate X., an exquisite example of it, from a panel decoration of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen; and in order that the reader may understand what truly fine Gothic work is, and how nobly it unites fantasy and law, as well as for our immediate purpose, it will be well that he should examine its sections and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter, § xxvii.), and that the more carefully, because this design belongs to a period in which the most important change took place in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted from the natural progress of any art. That tracery marks a pause between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the taking up of another; a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous to the distant view of after times, as to the distant glance of the traveller is the culminating ridge of the mountain chain over which he has passed. It was the great watershed of Gothic art. Before it, all had been ascent; after it, all was decline; both, indeed, by winding paths and varied slopes; both interrupted, like the gradual rise and fall of the passes of the Alps, by great mountain outliers, isolated or branching from the central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the valleys of access. But the track of the human mind is traceable up to that glorious ridge, in a continuous line, and thence downwards. Like a silver zone-- "Flung about carelessly, it shines afar, Catching the eye in many a broken link, In many a turn and traverse, as it glides. And oft above, and oft below, appears-- * * * * to him who journeys up As though it were another." And at that point, and that instant, reaching the place that was nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the way by which they had come, and the scenes through which their early course had passed. They turned away from them and their morning light, and descended towards a new horizon, for a time in the warmth of western sun, but plunging with every forward step into more cold and melancholy shade. XXIII. The change of which I speak, is inexpressible in few words, but one more important, more radically influential, could not be. It was the substitution of the _line_ for the _mass_, as the element of decoration. We have seen the mode in which the openings or penetration of the window expanded, until what were, at first, awkward forms of intermediate stone, became delicate lines of tracery: and I have been careful in pointing out the peculiar attention bestowed on the proportion and decoration of the mouldings of the window at Rouen, in Plate X., as compared with earlier mouldings, because that beauty and care are singularly significant. They mark that the traceries had _caught the eye_ of the architect. Up to that time, up to the very last instant in which the reduction and thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, his eye had been on the openings only, on the stars of light. He did not care about the stone, a rude border of moulding was all he needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching. But when that shape had received its last possible expansion, and when the stone-work became an arrangement of graceful and parallel lines, that arrangement, like some form in a picture, unseen and accidentally developed, struck suddenly, inevitably, on the sight. It had literally not been seen before. It flashed out in an instant as an independent form. It became a feature of the work. The architect took it under his care, thought over it, and distributed its members as we see. Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and the dividing stone-work were both equally considered. It did not last fifty years. The forms of the tracery were seized with a childish delight in the novel source of beauty; and the intervening space was cast aside, as an element of decoration, for ever. I have confined myself, in following this change, to the window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But the transition is the same in every member of architecture; and its importance can hardly be understood, unless we take the pains to trace it in the universality, of which illustrations, irrelevant to our present purpose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue here the question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings. XXIV. The reader will observe that, up to the last expansion of the penetrations, the stone-work was necessarily considered, as it actually is, _stiff_, and unyielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still severe and pure; delicate indeed, but perfectly firm. At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of serious change was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. Reduced to the slenderness of threads, it began to be considered as possessing also their flexibility. The architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set himself to carry it out; and in a little time, the bars of tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if they had been woven together like a net. This was a change which sacrificed a great principle of truth; it sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the material; and, however delightful its results in their first developments, it was ultimately ruinous. For, observe the difference between the supposition of ductility, and that of elastic structure noticed above in the resemblance to tree form. That resemblance was not sought, but necessary; it resulted from the natural conditions of strength in the pier or trunk, and slenderness in the ribs or branches, while many of the other suggested conditions of resemblance were perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain sense flexible, is not ductile; it is as firm in its own form as the rib of stone; both of them will yield up to certain limits, both of them breaking when those limits are exceeded; while the tree trunk will bend no more than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is assumed to be as yielding as a silken cord; when the whole fragility, elasticity, and weight of the material are to the eye, if not in terms, denied; when all the art of the architect is applied to disprove the first conditions of his working, and the first attributes of his materials; _this_ is a deliberate treachery, only redeemed from the charge of direct falsehood by the visibility of the stone surface, and degrading all the traceries it affects exactly in the degree of its presence. XXV. But the declining and morbid taste of the later architects, was not satisfied with thus much deception. They were delighted with the subtle charm they had created, and thought only of increasing its power. The next step was to consider and represent the tracery, as not only ductile, but penetrable; and when two mouldings met each other, to manage their intersection, so that one should appear to pass through the other, retaining its independence; or when two ran parallel to each other, to represent the one as partly contained within the other, and partly apparent above it. This form of falsity was that which crushed the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, though they were ignoble; but the penetrated traceries, rendered, as they finally were, merely the means of exhibiting the dexterity of the stone-cutter, annihilated both the beauty and dignity of the Gothic types. A system so momentous in its consequences deserves some detailed examination. XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under the spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of managing the intersection of similar mouldings, which was universal in the great periods. They melted into each other, and became one at the point of crossing, or of contact; and even the suggestion of so sharp intersection as this of Lisieux is usually avoided (this design being, of course, only a pointed form of the earlier Norman arcade, in which the arches are interlaced, and lie each over the preceding, and under the following, one, as in Anselm's tower at Canterbury), since, in the plurality of designs, when mouldings meet each other, they coincide through some considerable portion of their curves, meeting by contact, rather than by intersection; and at the point of coincidence the section of each separate moulding becomes common to the two thus melted into each other. Thus, in the junction of the circles of the window of the Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII., given accurately in fig. 8, Plate IV., the section across the line _s_, is exactly the same as that across any break of the separated moulding above, as [=s]. It sometimes, however, happens, that two different mouldings meet each other. This was seldom permitted in the great periods, and, when it took place, was most awkwardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV. gives the junction of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the window of the _spire_ of Salisbury. That of the gable is composed of a single, and that of the vertical of a double cavetto, decorated with ball-flowers; and the larger single moulding swallows up one of the double ones, and pushes forward among the smaller balls with the most blundering and clumsy simplicity. In comparing the sections it is to be observed that, in the upper one, the line _a b_ represents an actual vertical in the plane of the window; while, in the lower one, the line _c d_ represents the horizontal, in the plane of the window, indicated by the perspective line _d e_. XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences of difficulty are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the system, and unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements. There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper and sub-arches of the triforium of Salisbury; but it is kept in the shade, and all the prominent junctions are of mouldings like each other, and managed with perfect simplicity. But so soon as the attention of the builders became, as we have just seen, fixed upon the lines of mouldings instead of the enclosed spaces, those lines began to preserve an independent existence wherever they met; and different mouldings were studiously associated, in order to obtain variety of intersectional line. We must, however, do the late builders the justice to note that, in one case, the habit grew out of a feeling of proportion, more refined than that of earlier workmen. It shows itself first in the bases of divided pillars, or arch mouldings, whose smaller shafts had originally bases formed by the continued base of the central, or other larger, columns with which they were grouped; but it being felt, when the eye of the architect became fastidious, that the dimension of moulding which was right for the base of a large shaft, was wrong for that of a small one, each shaft had an independent base; at first, those of the smaller died simply down on that of the larger; but when the vertical sections of both became complicated, the bases of the smaller shafts were considered to exist within those of the larger, and the places of their emergence, on this supposition, were calculated with the utmost nicety, and cut with singular precision; so that an elaborate late base of a divided column, as, for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville, looks exactly as if its smaller shafts had all been finished to the ground first, each with its complete and intricate base, and then the comprehending base of the central pier had been moulded over them in clay, leaving their points and angles sticking out here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals out of a nodule of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in work of this kind is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of sections being calculated to a hair's-breadth, and the occurrence of the under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places where they are so slight that they can hardly be detected but by the touch. It is impossible to render a very elaborate example of this kind intelligible, without some fifty measured sections; but fig. 6, Plate IV. is a very interesting and simple one, from the west gate of Rouen. It is part of the base of one of the narrow piers between its principal niches. The square column _k_, having a base with the profile _p r_, is supposed to contain within itself another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far above the inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile [=p] r shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. The angle of its upper portion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper inclosing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines the whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like fastening stitches, through the junction on the front of the shafts. The sections [=k] [=n] taken respectively at the levels _k_, _n_, will explain the hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig. 7 is a base, or joint rather (for passages of this form occur again and again, on the shafts of flamboyant work), of one of the smallest piers of the pedestals which support the lost statues of the porch; its section below would be the same as [=n], and its construction, after what has been said of the other base, will be at once perceived. [Illustration: PLATE IV.--(Page 66--Vol. V.) INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS.] XXVIII. There was, however, in this kind of involution, much to be admired as well as reprehended, the proportions of quantities were always as beautiful as they were intricate; and, though the lines of intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But the fancy did not stop here; it rose from the bases into the arches; and there, not finding room enough for its exhibition, it withdrew the capitals from the heads even of cylindrical shafts, (we cannot but admire, while we regret, the boldness of the men who could defy the authority and custom of all the nations of the earth for a space of some three thousand years,) in order that the arch mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at its base they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the abacus of the capital; then they ran the mouldings across and through each other, at the point of the arch; and finally, not finding their natural directions enough to furnish as many occasions of intersection as they wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when they had passed the point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate IV. is part of a flying buttress from the apse of St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the moulding whose section is rudely given above at [=f], (taken vertically through the point _f_,) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross-bar and two arches; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp at the end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation. Fig. 3 is half of the head of a door in the Stadthaus of Sursee, in which the shaded part of the section of the joint _g g_, is that of the arch-moulding, which is three times reduplicated, and six times intersected by itself, the ends being cut off when they become unmanageable. This style is, indeed, earlier exaggerated in Switzerland and Germany, owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing of wood, particularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of châlets; but it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of the fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the German, and, in the end, ruined the French Gothic. It would be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures of form, and eccentricities of treatment, which grow out of this singular abuse--the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless ornament, the liny moulding, the distorted and extravagant foliation, until the time came when, over these wrecks and remnants, deprived of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent of the renaissance, and swept them all away. So fell the great dynasty of mediæval architecture. It was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws--because its order, and consistency, and organization, had been broken through--that it could oppose no resistance to the rush of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavor to assume the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its time was come; it was not because it was scorned by the classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might have survived, and lived; it would have stood forth in stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the renaissance; it would have risen in renewed and purified honor, and with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had received it, for the honor of God--but its own truth was gone, and it sank forever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust; and the error of zeal, and the softness of luxury smote it down and dissolved it away. It is good for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came once from houses of prayer--those grey arches and quiet isles under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars--those shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the blasphemer, who sealed the destruction that they had wrought; the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started again, from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth. CHAPTER III. THE LAMP OF POWER. I. In recalling the impressions we have received from the works of man, after a lapse of time long enough to involve in obscurity all but the most vivid, it often happens that we find a strange pre-eminence and durability in many upon whose strength we had little calculated, and that points of character which had escaped the detection of the judgment, become developed under the waste of memory; as veins of harder rock, whose places could not at first have been discovered by the eye, are left salient under the action of frosts and streams. The traveller who desires to correct the errors of his judgment, necessitated by inequalities of temper, infelicities of circumstance, and accidents of association, has no other resource than to wait for the calm verdict of interposing years; and to watch for the new arrangements of eminence and shape in the images which remain latest in his memory; as in the ebbing of a mountain lake, he would watch the varying outlines of its successive shore, and trace, in the form of its departing waters, the true direction of the forces which had cleft, or the currents which had excavated, the deepest recesses of its primal bed. In thus reverting to the memories of those works of architecture by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into two broad classes: the one characterized by an exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur with a sense of affectionate admiration; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases, mysterious, majesty, which we remember with an undiminished awe, like that felt at the presence and operation of some great Spiritual Power. From about these two groups, more or less harmonised by intermediate examples, but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility--to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial interest may, indeed, have been awakened by such circumstances, and the memory may have been, consequently, rendered tenacious of particular parts or effects of the structure; but it will recall even these only by an active effort, and then without emotion; while in passive moments, and with thrilling influence, the image of purer beauty, and of more spiritual power, will return in a fair and solemn company; and while the pride of many a stately palace, and the wealth of many a jewelled shrine, perish from our thoughts in a dust of gold, there will rise, through their dimness, the white image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or forest side, with the fretted flower-work shrinking under its arches, as if under vaults of late-fallen snow; or the vast weariness of some shadowy wall whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet numberless. II. Now, the difference between these two orders of build-ing is not merely that which there is in nature between things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is derivative and original in man's work; for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing: and the secrets of his success are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon the earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those works which has been vested in man. III. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is, however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building, with what is most sublime in natural things; and it is the governing Power directed by this sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavor to trace, abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract fields of invention: for this latter faculty, and the questions of proportion and arrangement connected with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a general view of all arts; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast controlling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be considered; and that with the more advantage, that it has, of late, been little felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts, much contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the other legality--many attempts at beauty of design--many ingenious adaptations of construction; but I have never seen any aim at the expression of abstract power; never any appearance of a consciousness that, in this primal art of man, there is room for the marking of his relations with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God; and that those works themselves have been permitted, by their Master and his, to receive an added glory from their association with earnest efforts of human thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue--which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organization,--but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopean waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblances of fortress towers; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality. IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which Nature herself does not disdain to accept from the works of man; and what that sublimity in the masses built up by his coralline-like energy, which is honorable, even when transferred by association to the dateless hills, which it needed earthquakes to lift, and deluges to mould. And, first of mere size: It might not be thought possible to emulate the sublimity of natural objects in this respect; nor would it be, if the architect contended with them in pitched battle. It would not be well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni; and St. Peter's, among its many other errors, counts for not the least injurious its position on the slope of an inconsiderable hill. But imagine it placed on the plain of Marengo, or, like the Superga of Turin, or like La Salute at Venice! The fact is, that the apprehension of the size of natural objects, as well as of architecture, depends more on fortunate excitement of the imagination than on measurements by the eye; and the architect has a peculiar advantage in being able to press close upon the sight, such magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir of Beauvais; and if we secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of tower, and place them where there are no enormous natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them no want of sublimity of size. And it may be matter of encouragement in this respect, though one also of regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than nature crushes human power. It does not need much to humiliate a mountain. A hut will sometimes do it; I never look up to the Col de Balme from Chamouni, without a violent feeling of provocation against its hospitable little cabin, whose bright white walls form a visibly four-square spot on the green ridge, and entirely destroy all idea of its elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole landscape, and dethrone a dynasty of hills, and the Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon and all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by the palace lately built beneath it. The fact is, that hills are not so high as we fancy them, and, when to the actual impression of no mean comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly hand and thought, a sublimity is reached, which nothing but gross error in arrangement of its parts can destroy. V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size will ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of magnitude will bestow upon it a certain degree of nobleness: so that it is well to determine at first, whether the building is to be markedly beautiful or markedly sublime; and if the latter, not to be withheld by respect to smaller parts from reaching largeness of scale; provided only, that it be evidently in the architect's power to reach at least that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely definable as that which will make a living figure look less than life beside it. It is the misfortune of most of our modern buildings that we would fain have an universal excellence in them; and so part of the funds must go in painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in painted windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and there; and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible part of men's minds, which must be pierced through before they can be touched to the quick; and though we may prick at it and scratch it in a thousand separate places, we might as well have let it alone if we do not come through somewhere with a deep thrust: and if we can give such a thrust anywhere, there is no need of another; it need not be even so "wide as a church door," so that it be _enough_. And mere weight will do this; it is a clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual one, too; and the apathy which cannot be pierced through by a small steeple, nor shone through by a small window, can be broken through in a moment by the mere weight of a great wall. Let, therefore, the architect who has not large resources, choose his point of attack first, and, if he choose size, let him abandon decoration; for, unless they are concentrated, and numerous enough to make their concentration conspicuous, all his ornaments together would not be worth one huge stone. And the choice must be a decided one, without compromise. It must be no question whether his capitals would not look better with a little carving--let him leave them huge as blocks; or whether his arches should not have richer architraves--let him throw them a foot higher, if he can; a yard more across the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated pavement; and another fathom of outer wall, than an army of pinnacles. The limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at his disposal. VI. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed; since it is seldom, perhaps never, that a building of any pretension to size looks so large as it is. The appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially in any upper, parts of it will almost always prove that we have under-estimated the magnitude of those parts. It has often been observed that a building, in order to show its magnitude, must be seen all at once. It would, perhaps, be better to say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines, and that its extreme points should be seen all at once; or we may state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding line from top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding line from top to bottom may either be inclined inwards, and the mass, therefore, pyramidical; or vertical, and the mass form one grand cliff; or inclined outwards, as in the advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the bounding line be violently broken; if the cornice project, or the upper portion of the pyramid recede, too violently, majesty will be lost; not because the building cannot be seen all at once,--for in the case of a heavy cornice no part of it is necessarily concealed--but because the continuity of its terminal line is broken, and the _length of that line_, therefore, cannot be estimated. But the error is, of course, more fatal when much of the building is also concealed; as in the well-known case of the recession of the dome of St. Peter's, and, from the greater number of points of view, in churches whose highest portions, whether dome or tower, are over their cross. Thus there is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts. In all cases in which the tower is over the cross, the grandeur and height of the tower itself are lost, because there is but one line down which the eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the inner angle of the cross, not easily discerned. Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs may often have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the tower itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or better still, detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard churches if their campaniles were carried only to their present height over their crosses; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present debased spire! VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tower or wall, there must be one bounding line from base to coping; and I am much inclined, myself, to love the true vertical, or the vertical, with a solemn frown of projection (not a scowl), as in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. This character is always given to rocks by the poets; with slight foundation indeed real rocks being little given to overhanging--but with excellent judgment; for the sense of threatening conveyed by this form is a nobler character than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this threatening should be somewhat carried down into their mass. A mere projecting shelf is not enough, the whole wall must, Jupiter like, nod as well as frown. Hence, I think the propped machicolations of the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo of Florence far grander headings than any form of Greek cornice. Sometimes the projection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge's palace of Venice, where the chief appearance of it is above the second arcade; or it may become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship of the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly attained by the projection of the niches in the third story of the Tour de Beurre at Rouen. VIII. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in height, is right also in the marking it in area--let it be gathered well together. It is especially to be noted with respect to the Palazzo Vecchio and other mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has been stated that dimension, in order to become impressive, should be expanded either in height or length, but not equally: whereas, rather it will be found that those buildings seem on the whole the vastest which have been gathered up into a mighty square, and which look as if they had been measured by the angel's rod, "the length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal," and herein something is to be taken notice of, which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, considered among our architects. Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered, none appear to me more significant than that into buildings whose interest is in their walls, and those whose interest is in the lines dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the wall is as nothing; the entire interest is in the detached columns and the frieze they bear; in French Flamboyant, and in our detestable Perpendicular, the object is to get rid of the wall surface, and keep the eye altogether on tracery of line; in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and honored member, and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated. Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature, the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her plains, and cliffs, and waters; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle of power, and, in some sense, of beauty also. For, whatever infinity of fair form there may be in the maze of the forest, there is a fairer, as I think, in the surface of the quiet lake; and I hardly know that association of shaft or tracery, for which I would exchange the warm sleep of sunshine on some smooth, broad, human-like front of marble. Nevertheless, if breadth is to be beautiful, its substance must in some sort be beautiful; and we must not hastily condemn the exclusive resting of the northern architects in divided lines, until at least we have remembered the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone, and one mixed from Genoa and Carrara, of serpentine with snow: but as regards abstract power and awfulness, there is no question; without breadth of surface it is in vain to seek them, and it matters little, so that the surface be wide, bold and unbroken, whether it be of brick or of jasper; the light of heaven upon it, and the weight of earth in it, are all we need: for it is singular how forgetful the mind may become both of material and workmanship, if only it have space enough over which to range, and to remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in contemplating the flatness and sweep of great plains and broad seas. And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon: or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it; and how in the rising or declining of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and luridly on its high lineless forehead, and fades away untraceably down its tiers of confused and countless stone. IX. This, then, being, as I think, one of the peculiar elements of sublime architecture, it may be easily seen how necessarily consequent upon the love of it will be the choice of a form approaching to the square for the main outline. For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, in that direction the eye will be drawn to its terminal lines; and the sense of surface will only be at its fullest when those lines are removed, in every direction, as far as possible. Thus the square and circle are pre-eminently the areas of power among those bounded by purely straight or curved lines; and these, with their relative solids, the cube and sphere, and relative solids of progression (as in the investigation of the laws of proportion I shall call those masses which are generated by the progression of an area of given form along a line in a given direction), the square and cylindrical column, are the elements of utmost power in all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, grace and perfect proportion require an elongation in some one direction: and a sense of power may be communicated to this form of magnitude by a continuous series of any marked features, such as the eye may be unable to number; while yet we feel, from their boldness, decision, and simplicity, that it is indeed their multitude which has embarrassed us, not any confusion or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings, of which, repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most familiar forms of our furniture, it is impossible altogether to weary. Now, it is evident that the architect has choice of two types of form, each properly associated with its own kind of interest or decoration: the square, or greatest area, to be chosen especially when the _surface_ is to be the subject of thought; and the elongated area, when the _divisions_ of the surface are to be the subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as I think nearly every other source of power and beauty, are marvellously united in that building which I fear to weary the reader by bringing forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection--the Doge's palace at Venice: its general arrangement, a hollow square; its principal façade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of thirty-four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is separated by a richly-canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose height and length are nearly as four to five; the arcades which give it length being confined to the lower stories, and the upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose-color and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified and most fair. X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into each other, as most characteristically in the Cathedral of Pisa: length of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of twenty-one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave; bold square proportion in the front; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting deep shadows; the first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second of twenty-one; the third and fourth of eight each; sixty-three arches in all; all _circular_ headed, all with cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with _square_ panellings, set diagonally under their semicircles, an universal ornament in this style (Plate XII., fig. 7); the apse, a semicircle, with a semi-dome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches for its exterior ornament; in the interior of the nave, a range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat _surface_, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above; the whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but characteristic of every church of the period; and, to my feeling, the most majestic; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form which the mind of man has ever conceived) based exclusively on associations of the circle and the square. I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to reserve for more careful examination, in connection with other æsthetic questions: but I believe the examples I have given will justify my vindication of the square form from the reprobation which has been lightly thrown upon it; nor might this be done for it only as a ruling outline, but as occurring constantly in the best mosaics, and in a thousand forms of minor decoration, which I cannot now examine; my chief assertion of its majesty being always as it is an exponent of space and surface, and therefore to be chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by masses of light and shade those portions of buildings in which surface is to be rendered precious or honorable. XI. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in which the scale of architecture is best to be exhibited. Let us next consider the manifestations of power which belong to its details and lesser divisions. The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of masonry. It is true that this division may, by great art, be concealed; but I think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so; for this reason, that there is a very noble character always to be obtained by the opposition of large stones to divided masonry, as by shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones; and there is a certain organization in the management of such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, opposed to the vertebræ, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore, that, for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be shown: and also that, with certain rare exceptions (as in the cases of chapels and shrines of most finished workmanship), the smaller the building, the more necessary it is that its masonry should be bold, and _vice versâ_. For if a building be under the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. Their size is not one whit diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen to project conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall. On the other hand, after a building has once reached the mark of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its masonry be large or small, but if it be altogether large, it will sometimes diminish the magnitude for want of a measure; if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical resource, besides interfering in many cases with the lines of the design, and delicacy of the workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in the façade of the church of St. Madeleine at Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size, with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close trellis. So, then, that masonry will be generally the most magnificent which, without the use of materials systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as they came from the quarry would often raise a building a story higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to take advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labor necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendor and sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But, in most cases, I believe, the labor and time necessary to do this would be better spent in another way; and that to raise a building to a height of a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate indeed, who would desire to see the Pitti palace polished. XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the divisions of the design itself. Those divisions are, necessarily, either into masses of light and shade, or else by traced lines; which latter must be, indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure linear division. Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a painter, with this only difference, that the wall has already a sublimity in its height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it is more dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface. And, for my own part, I think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it; much more, a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is caused to assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them. And the principles on which this division is to be made, are as regards relation of quantities, the same in architecture as in painting, or indeed, in any other art whatsoever, only the painter is by his varied subject partly permitted, partly compelled, to dispense with the symmetry of architectural light and shade, and to adopt arrangements apparently free and accidental. So that in modes of grouping there is much difference (though no opposition) between the two arts; but in rules of quantity, both are alike, so far forth as their commands of means are alike. For the architect, not being able to secure always the same depth or decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness by color (because even when color is employed, it cannot follow the moving shade), is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself of many contrivances, which the painter needs neither consider nor employ. XIII. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive shade is a more necessary and more sublime thing in an architect's hands than in a painter's. For the latter being able to temper his light with an under-tone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet color, or awful with lurid color, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its whole space with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an universal extent of it, and the best painters most delight in such extent; but as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface, his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, the Power of architecture may be said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or intenseness) of its shadow; and it seems to me, that the reality of its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily life of men (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing to do but in times of rest or of pleasure) require of it that it should express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness as great as there is in human life: and that as the great poem and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric sprightliness, but must be serious often, and sometimes melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this wild world of ours; so there must be, in this magnificently human art of architecture, some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery: and this it can only give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown upon its front, and the shadow of its recess. So that Rembrandtism is a noble manner in architecture, though a false one in painting; and I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface. And among the first habits that a young architect should learn, is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a design in its miserable liny skeleton; but conceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it, and the dusk leaves it; when its stones will be hot and its crannies cool; when the lizards will bask on the one, and the birds build in the other. Let him design with the sense of cold and heat upon him; let him cut out the shadows, as men dig wells in unwatered plains; and lead along the lights, as a founder does his hot metal; let him keep the full command of both, and see that he knows how they fall, and where they fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value: all that he has to do must be done by spaces of light and darkness; and his business is to see that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun. And that this may be, the first necessity is that the quantities of shade or light, whatever they may be, shall be thrown into masses, either of something like equal weight, or else large masses of the one relieved with small of the other; but masses of one or other kind there must be. No design that is divided at all, and is not divided into masses, can ever be of the smallest value: this great law respecting breadth, precisely the same in architecture and painting, is so important, that the examination of its two principal applications will include most of the conditions of majestic design on which I would at present insist. XIV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses of light and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it is convenient sometimes to restrict the term "mass" to the portions to which proper form belongs, and to call the field on which such forms are traced, interval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of light, with intervals of shade; and, in light skies with dark clouds upon them, masses of shade with intervals of light. This distinction is, in architecture, still more necessary; for there are two marked styles dependent upon it: one in which the forms are drawn with light upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture and pillars; the other in which they are drawn with darkness upon light, as in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the designer's power determinately to vary degrees and places of darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in determined directions his degrees of light. Hence, the use of the dark mass characterises, generally, a trenchant style of design, in which the darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by sharp edges; while the use of the light mass is in the same way associated with a softened and full manner of design, in which the darks are much warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are rounded and melt into them. The term applied by Milton to Doric bas-relief--"bossy," is, as is generally the case with Milton's epithets, the most comprehensive and expressive of this manner, which the English language contains; while the term which specifically describes the chief member of early Gothic decoration, feuille, foil or leaf, is equally significative of a flat space of shade. XV. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in which these two kinds of mass have been treated. And, first, of the light, or rounded, mass. The modes in which relief was secured for the more projecting forms of bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too well described by Mr. Eastlake[I] to need recapitulation: the conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he has remarked, being one on which I shall have occasion farther to insist presently, that the Greek workman cared for shadow only as a dark field wherefrom his light figure or design might be intelligibly detached: his attention was concentrated on the one aim at readableness, and clearness of accent; and all composition, all harmony, nay, the very vitality and energy of separate groups were, when necessary, sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was there any predilection for one kind of form rather than another. Bounded forms were, in the columns and principal decorative members, adopted, not for their own sake, but as characteristic of the things represented. They were beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually did well what he had to do, not because he loved roundness more than squareness; severely rectilinear forms were associated with the curved ones in the cornice and triglyph, and the mass of the pillar was divided by a fluting, which, in distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth. What power of light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive refinements and additions of ornament; and continued to diminish through Roman work, until the confirmation of the circular arch as a decorative feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the eye to ask for a similar boundary of solid form; the dome followed, and necessarily the decorative masses were thenceforward managed with reference to, and in sympathy with, the chief feature of the building. Hence arose, among the Byzantine architects, a system of ornament, entirely restrained within the superfices of curvilinear masses, on which the light fell with as unbroken gradation as on a dome or column, while the illumined surface was nevertheless cut into details of singular and most ingenious intricacy. Something is, of course, to be allowed for the less dexterity of the workmen; it being easier to cut down into a solid block, than to arrange the projecting portions of leaf on the Greek capital: such leafy capitals are nevertheless executed by the Byzantines with skill enough to show that their preference of the massive form was by no means compulsory, nor can I think it unwise. On the contrary, while the arrangements of _line_ are far more artful in the Greek capital, the Byzantine light and shade are as incontestably more grand and masculine, based on that quality of pure gradation, which nearly all natural objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form. The rolling heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by rents, and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid, and towering zone, and its midnight darkness opposite; the scarcely less majestic heave of the mountain side, all torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and shadowy decline; and the head of every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough, yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and rounded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in the distant forest, makes it look bossy from above; all these mark, for a great and honored law, that diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments were designed; and show us that those builders had truer sympathy with what God made majestic, than the self-contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know that they are barbaric in comparison; but there is a power in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious; a power faithful more than thoughtful, which conceived and felt more than it created; a power that neither comprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wandered as it listed, like mountain streams and winds; and which could not rest in the expression or seizure of finite form. It could not bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the night and day of the earth itself. [I] Literature of the Fine Arts.--Essay on Bas-relief. XVI. I have endeavored to give some idea of one of the hollow balls of stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occur in varied succession on the architrave of the central gate of St. Mark's at Venice, in Plate I. fig. 2. It seems to me singularly beautiful in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, with breadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensitive, and had risen and shut themselves into a bud at some sudden touch, and would presently fall back again into their wild flow. The cornices of San Michele of Lucca, seen above and below the arch, in Plate VI., show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stems arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the light dying from off them as it turns. It would be difficult, as I think, to invent anything more noble; and I insist on the broad character of their arrangement the more earnestly, because, afterwards modified by greater skill in its management, it became characteristic of the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital, given in Plate V., is of the noblest period of the Venetian Gothic; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage so luxuriant, absolutely subordinated to the breadth of two masses of light and shade. What is done by the Venetian architect, with a power as irresistible as that of the waves of his surrounding sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but not less expressing their assent to the same great law. The ice spiculæ of the North, and its broken sunshine, seem to have image in, and influence on the work; and the leaves which, under the Italian's hand, roll, and flow, and bow down over their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in the North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I. is the finial of the pediment given in Plate II., from the cathedral of St. Lo. It is exactly similar in feeling to the Byzantine capital, being rounded under the abacus by four branches of thistle leaves, whose stems, springing from the angles, bend outwards and fall back to the head, throwing their jaggy spines down upon the full light, forming two sharp quatre-foils. I could not get near enough to this finial to see with what degree of delicacy the spines were cut; but I have sketched a natural group of thistle-leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and see with what mastery they are subjected to the broad form of the whole. The small capital from Coutances, Plate XIII. fig. 4, which is of earlier date, is of simpler elements, and exhibits the principle still more clearly; but the St. Lo finial is only one of a thousand instances which might be gathered even from the fully developed flamboyant, the feeling of breadth being retained in minor ornaments long after it had been lost in the main design, and sometimes capriciously renewing itself throughout, as in the cylindrical niches and pedestals which enrich the porches of Caudebec and Rouen. Fig. 1, Plate I. is the simplest of those of Rouen; in the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, divided by buttresses into eight rounded compartments of tracery; even the whole bulk of the outer pier is treated with the same feeling; and though composed partly of concave recesses, partly of square shafts, partly of statues and tabernacle work, arranges itself as a whole into one richly rounded tower. [Illustration: PLATE V.--(Page 88--Vol. V.) CAPITAL FROM THE LOWER ARCADE OF THE DOGE'S PALACE, VENICE.] XVII. I cannot here enter into the curious questions connected with the management of larger curved surfaces; into the causes of the difference in proportion necessary to be observed between round and square towers; nor into the reasons why a column or ball may be richly ornamented, while surface decorations would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter's. But what has been above said of the desireableness of serenity in plane surfaces, applies still more forcibly to those which are curved; and it is to be remembered that we are, at present, considering how this serenity and power may be carried into minor divisions, not how the ornamental character of the lower form may, upon occasion, be permitted to fret the calmness of the higher. Nor, though the instances we have examined are of globular or cylindrical masses chiefly, is it to be thought that breadth can only be secured by such alone: many of the noblest forms are of subdued curvature, sometimes hardly visible; but curvature of some degree there must be, in order to secure any measure of grandeur in a small mass of light. One of the most marked distinctions between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will be found in their relative delicacy of perception of rounded surface; the full power of expressing the perspective, foreshortening and various undulation of such surface is, perhaps, the last and most difficult attainment of the hand and eye. For instance: there is, perhaps, no tree which has baffled the landscape painter more than the common black spruce fir. It is rare that we see any representation of it other than caricature. It is conceived as if it grew in one plane, or as a section of a tree, with a set of boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite sides. It is thought formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if it grew as it is drawn. But the power of the tree is not in that chandelier-like section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables of leafage, which it holds out on its strong arms, curved slightly over them like shields, and spreading towards the extremity like a hand. It is vain to endeavor to paint the sharp, grassy, intricate leafage, until this ruling form has been secured; and in the boughs that approach the spectator, the foreshortening of it is like that of a wide hill country, ridge just rising over ridge in successive distances; and the finger-like extremities, foreshortened to absolute bluntness, require a delicacy in the rendering of them like that of the drawing of the hand of the Magdalene upon the vase in Mr. Rogers's Titian. Get but the back of that foliage, and you have the tree; but I cannot name the artist who has thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculpture, it is the power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every inferior mass which preserves the serenity, as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which demands the highest knowledge and skill from the workman. A noble design may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and it was the sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of surface for sharp edges and extravagant undercutting, which destroyed the Gothic mouldings, as the substitution of the line for the light destroyed the Gothic tracery. This change, however, we shall better comprehend after we have glanced at the chief conditions of arrangement of the second kind of mass; that which is flat, and of shadow only. [Illustration: PLATE VI.--(Page 90--Vol. V.) ARCH FROM THE FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE AT LUCCA.] XVIII. We have noted above how the wall surface, composed of rich materials, and covered with costly work, in modes which we shall examine in the next Chapter, became a subject of peculiar interest to the Christian architects. Its broad flat lights could only be made valuable by points or masses of energetic shadow, which were obtained by the Romanesque architect by means of ranges of recessed arcade, in the management of which, however, though all the effect depends upon the shadow so obtained, the eye is still, as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the projecting columns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate VI. But with the enlargement of the window, which, in the Lombard and Romanesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit, came the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, by penetrations which, seen from within, are forms of light, and, from without, are forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is exclusively fixed upon the dark forms of the penetrations, and the whole proportion and power of the design are caused to depend upon them. The intermediate spaces are, indeed, in the most perfect early examples, filled with elaborate ornament; but this ornament was so subdued as never to disturb the simplicity and force of the dark masses; and in many instances is entirely wanting. The composition of the whole depends on the proportioning and shaping of the darks; and it is impossible that anything can be more exquisite than their placing in the head window of the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or the church of Or San Michele. So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is quite useless to draw Italian tracery in outline; if with any intention of rendering its effect, it is better to mark the black spots, and let the rest alone. Of course, when it is desired to obtain an accurate rendering of the design, its lines and mouldings are enough; but it often happens that works on architecture are of little use, because they afford the reader no means of judging of the effective intention of the arrangements which they state. No person, looking at an architectural drawing of the richly foliaged cusps and intervals of Or San Michele, would understand that all this sculpture was extraneous, was a mere added grace, and had nothing to do with the real anatomy of the work, and that by a few bold cuttings through a slab of stone he might reach the main effect of it all at once. I have, therefore, in the plate of the design of Giotto, endeavored especially to mark these points of _purpose_; there, as in every other instance, black shadows of a graceful form lying on the white surface of the stone, like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence, as before observed, the universal name of foil applied to such ornaments. XIX. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it is evident that much caution is necessary in the management of the glass. In the finest instances, the traceries are open lights, either in towers, as in this design of Giotto's or in external arcades like that of the Campo Santo at Pisa or the Doge's palace at Venice; and it is thus only that their full beauty is shown. In domestic buildings, or in windows of churches necessarily glazed, the glass was usually withdrawn entirely behind the traceries. Those of the Cathedral of Florence stand quite clear of it, casting their shadows in well detached lines, so as in most lights to give the appearance of a double tracery. In those few instances in which the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or San Michele, the effect of the latter is half destroyed: perhaps the especial attention paid by Orgagna to his surface ornament, was connected with the intention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late architecture, the glass, which tormented the older architects, considered as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery more slender; as in the smallest intervals of the windows of Merton College, Oxford, where the glass is advanced about two inches from the centre of the tracery bar (that in the larger spaces being in the middle, as usual), in order to prevent the depth of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent interval. Much of the lightness of the effect of the traceries is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement. But, generally speaking, glass spoils all traceries; and it is much to be wished that it should be kept well within them, when it cannot be dispensed with, and that the most careful and beautiful designs should be reserved for situations where no glass would be needed. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--(Page 93--Vol. V.) PIERCED ORNAMENTS FROM LISIEUX, BAYEUX, VERONA, AND PADUA.] XX. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we have hitherto traced it, common to the northern and southern Gothic. But in the carrying out of the system they instantly diverged. Having marble at his command, and classical decoration in his sight, the southern architect was able to carve the intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate material; and he had no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut into foiled shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but always with a vigorous sense of composition, and always, observe, depending on the _shadows_ for effect. Where the wall was thick and could not be cut through, and the foilings were large, those shadows did not fill the entire space; but the form was, nevertheless, drawn on the eye by means of them, and when it was possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised screens of pediment, like those on the west front of Bayeux; cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct low front light, great breadth of shadow. The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the southwestern entrance of the Cathedral of Lisieux; one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost forever, by the continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit; the opposite spandrils have different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its own block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point I have above insisted upon--the architect's utter neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early period. The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left, forms the flank of the door; three outer shafts bearing three orders within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatre-foils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and full of strange play of light and shade. For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for convenience called, maintained their bold and independent character. Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shallower as they did so; then they began to run together, one swallowing up, or hanging on to, another, like bubbles in expiring foam--fig. 4, from a spandril at Bayeux, looks as if it had been blown from a pipe; finally, they lost their individual character altogether, and the eye was made to rest on the separating lines of tracery, as we saw before in the window; and then came the great change and the fall of the Gothic power. XXI. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star window of the little chapel close to St. Anastasia at Verona, and the other a very singular example from the church of the Eremitani at Padua, compared with fig. 5, one of the ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen, show the closely correspondent conditions of the early Northern and Southern Gothic.[10] But, as we have said, the Italian architects, not being embarrassed for decoration of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some time longer; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point, however, and opened the way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That architecture began with the luxuriance in which all others expired: it founded itself on the Byzantine mosaic and fretwork; and laying aside its ornaments, one by one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth, at last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly systematised, that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture with so stern a claim to our reverence. I do not except even the Greek Doric; the Doric had cast nothing away; the fourteenth century Venetian had cast away, one by one, for a succession of centuries, every splendor that art and wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its color, like a king disrobing; it had resigned its exertion, like an athlete reposing; once capricious and fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of nature herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power; both the highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular number--the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric manner of ornament admitted no temptation, it was the fasting of an anchorite--the Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms; it was the temperance of a man, the command of Adam over creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of imagination; the calm and solemn restraint with which, his mind filled with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life, he gives those thoughts expression for an instant, and then withdraws within those massy bars and level cusps of stone.[11] [Illustration: PLATE VIII.--(Page 95--Vol. V.) WINDOW FROM THE CA' FOSCARI, VENICE.] And his power to do this depended altogether on his retaining the forms of the shadows in his sight. Far from carrying the eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, he abandoned these latter one by one; and while his mouldings received the most shapely order and symmetry, closely correspondent with that of the Rouen tracery, compare Plates III. and VIII., he kept the cusps within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace) just traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity of its form: the cusp is usually quite sharp; but slightly truncated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple ball in that of the Doge; and the glass of the window, where there was any, was, as we have seen, thrown back behind the stone-work, that no flashes of light might interfere with its depth. Corrupted forms, like those of the Casa d'Oro and Palazzo Pisani, and several others, only serve to show the majesty of the common design. XXII. Such are the principal circumstances traceable in the treatment of the two kinds of masses of light and darkness, in the hands of the earlier architects; gradation in the one, flatness in the other, and breadth in both, being the qualities sought and exhibited by every possible expedient, up to the period when, as we have before stated, the line was substituted for the mass, as the means of division of surface. Enough has been said to illustrate this, as regards tracery; but a word or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings. Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances, composed of alternate square and cylindrical shafts, variously associated and proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur, as in the beautiful west doors of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical shafts, which they throw out into broad light. The eye in all cases dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few. In course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging along the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming a line of light upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at first (as on the alternate rolls of the north door of Rouen), it grows and pushes out as gradually as a stag's horns: sharp at first on the edge; but, becoming prominent, it receives a truncation, and becomes a definite fillet on the face of the roll. Not yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself becomes subordinate to it, and is finally lost in a slight swell upon its sides, while the concavities have all the time been deepening and enlarging behind it, until, from a succession of square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has become a series of _concavities_ edged by delicate fillets, upon which (sharp _lines_ of light, observe) the eye exclusively rests. While this has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has affected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I. fig. 2 (_a_), I have given two from the transepts of Rouen. It will be observed how absolutely the eye rests on the forms of the leaves, and on the three berries in the angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in darkness. These mouldings nearly adhere to the stone; and are very slightly, though sharply, undercut. In process of time, the attention of the architect, instead of resting on the leaves, went to the _stalks_. These latter were elongated (_b_, from the south door of St. Lo); and to exhibit them better, the deep concavity was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light. The system was carried out into continually increasing intricacy, until, in the transepts of Beauvais, we have brackets and flamboyant traceries, composed of twigs without any leaves at all. This, however, is a partial, though a sufficiently characteristic, caprice, the leaf being never generally banished, and in the mouldings round those same doors, beautifully managed, but itself rendered liny by bold marking of its ribs and veins, and by turning up, and crisping its edges, large intermediate spaces being always left to be occupied by intertwining stems (_c_, from Caudebec). The trefoil of light formed by berries or acorns, though diminished in value, was never lost up to the last period of living Gothic. XXIII. It is interesting to follow into its many ramifications, the influence of the corrupting principle; but we have seen enough of it to enable us to draw our practical conclusion--a conclusion a thousand times felt and reiterated in the experience and advice of every practised artist, but never often enough repeated, never profoundly enough felt. Of composition and invention much has been written, it seems to me vainly, for men cannot be taught to compose or to invent; of these, the highest elements of Power in architecture, I do not, therefore, speak; nor, here, of that peculiar restraint in the imitation of natural forms, which constitutes the dignity of even the most luxuriant work of the great periods. Of this restraint I shall say a word or two in the next Chapter; pressing now only the conclusion, as practically useful as it is certain, that the relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigor of their masses than on any other attribute of their design: mass of everything, of bulk, of light, of darkness, of color, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them; not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor divided weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time would fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the range of the principle; there is not a feature, however apparently trifling, to which it cannot give power. The wooden fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protect their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided into a number of neatly executed cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of course, become as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting in their precise carpentry, multiplying, moreover, the horizontal lines which directly contradict those of the architecture. Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts of its mouldings; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of shadow, with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and curves, and covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very often the thing is more delightful than the stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how common, the means are, that get weight and shadow--sloping roof, jutting porch, projecting balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet; get but gloom and simplicity, and all good things will follow in their place and time; do but design with the owl's eyes first, and you will gain the falcon's afterwards. XXIV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so simple; it looks trite and commonplace when it is written, but pardon me this: for it is anything but an accepted or understood principle in practice, and the less excusably forgotten, because it is, of all the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey. The executive facility of complying with its demands cannot be too earnestly, too frankly asserted. There are not five men in the kingdom who could compose, not twenty who could cut, the foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned; but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and dispose its black openings, and not a village mason who could not cut them. Lay a few clover or wood-roof leaves on white paper, and a little alteration in their positions will suggest figures which, cut boldly through a slab of marble, would be worth more window traceries than an architect could draw in a summer's day. There are few men in the world who could design a Greek capital; there are few who could not produce some vigor of effect with leaf designs on Byzantine block: few who could design a Palladian front, or a flamboyant pediment; many who could build a square mass like the Strozzi palace. But I know not how it is, unless that our English hearts have more oak than stone in them, and have more filial sympathy with acorns than Alps; but all that we do is small and mean, if not worse--thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is not modern work only; we have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth century (except only in our castles). What a contrast between the pitiful little pigeon-holes which stand for doors in the east front of Salisbury, looking like the entrances to a beehive or a wasp's nest, and the soaring arches and kingly crowning of the gates of Abbeville, Rouen, and Rheims, or the rock-hewn piers of Chartres, or the dark and vaulted porches and writhed pillars of Verona! Of domestic architecture what need is there to speak? How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty neatness is our best! how beneath the mark of attack, and the level of contempt, that which is common with us! What a strange sense of formalised deformity, of shrivelled precision, of starved accuracy, of minute misanthropy have we, as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy for the market towns of Kent! Until that street architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and boldness, until we give our windows recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how we can blame our architects for their feebleness in more important work; their eyes are inured to narrowness and slightness: can we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth and solidity? They ought not to live in our cities; there is that in their miserable walls which bricks up to death men's imaginations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the fury of the populace: and Heaven forbid that for such cause we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in our England! But we have other sources of power, in the imagery of our iron coasts and azure hills; of power more pure, nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea; which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness of Elijah's Horeb cave; and lifted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent air. CHAPTER IV. THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding chapter, that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters: the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation. I have endeavored to show in what manner its majesty was attributable to a sympathy with the effort and trouble of human life (a sympathy as distinctly perceived in the gloom and mystery of form, as it is in the melancholy tones of sounds). I desire now to trace that happier element of its excellence, consisting in a noble rendering of images of Beauty, derived chiefly from the external appearances of organic nature. It is irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into any inquiry respecting the essential causes of impressions of beauty. I have partly expressed my thoughts on this matter in a previous work, and I hope to develope them hereafter. But since all such inquiries can only be founded on the ordinary understanding of what is meant by the term Beauty, and since they presume that the feeling of mankind on this subject is universal and instinctive, I shall base my present investigation on this assumption; and only asserting that to be beautiful which I believe will be granted me to be so without dispute, I would endeavor shortly to trace the manner in which this element of delight is to be best engrafted upon architectural design, what are the purest sources from which it is to be derived, and what the errors to be avoided in its pursuit. II. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly limited the elements of architectural beauty to imitative forms. I do not mean to assert that every arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external creation; that in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, must be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen; and that beyond a certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot advance in the invention of beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, in the Doric temple, the triglyph and cornice are unimitative; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of wood. No one would call these members beautiful. Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity. The fluting of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek symbol of the bark of the tree, was imitative in its origin, and feebly resembled many caniculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt in it, but of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in the true forms of organic life, and those chiefly human. Again: the Doric capital was unimitative; but all the beauty it had was dependent on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent occurrence. The Ionic capital (to my mind, as an architectural invention, exceedingly base) nevertheless depended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral line, perhaps the commonest of all that characterise the inferior orders of animal organism and habitation. Farther progress could not be made without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf. Again: the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line. Its type is always before us in that of the apparent vault of heaven, and horizon of the earth. The cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God has so moulded the stem of every tree that it is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful; it is the termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its most fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from the stars of its flowers. Further than this, man's invention could not reach without frank imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves, and wreathe them in his capitals. III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I doubt not that further illustrations will occur to the mind of every reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are directly taken from natural objects; because I would fain be allowed to assume also the converse of this, namely, that forms which are _not_ taken from natural objects _must_ be ugly. I know this is a bold assumption; but as I have not space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form consists, that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no other resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since forms are not beautiful _because_ they are copied from nature; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe the reader will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced; the degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it; but if it be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter of very essential importance, namely, what _is_ or is _not_ ornament. For there are many forms of so-called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received, therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture at expression or dislike, which I have no hesitation in asserting to be not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the expense of which ought in truth to be set down in the architect's contract, as "For Monstrification." I believe that we regard these customary deformities with a savage complacency, as an Indian does his flesh patterns and paint (all nations being in certain degrees and senses savage). I believe that I can prove them to be monstrous, and I hope hereafter to do so conclusively; but, meantime, I can allege in defence of my persuasion nothing but this fact of their being unnatural, to which the reader must attach such weight as he thinks it deserves. There is, however, a peculiar difficulty in using this proof; it requires the writer to assume, very impertinently, that nothing is natural but what he has seen or supposes to exist. I would not do this; for I suppose there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but in some part of the universe an example of it may be found. But I think I am justified in considering those forms to be _most_ natural which are most frequent; or, rather, that on the shapes which in the every-day world are familiar to the eyes of men, God has stamped those characters of beauty which He has made it man's nature to love; while in certain exceptional forms He has shown that the adoption of the others was not a matter of necessity, but part of the adjusted harmony of creation. I believe that thus we may reason from Frequency to Beauty and _vice versâ_; that knowing a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful; and assume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful: I mean, of course, _visibly_ frequent; for the forms of things which are hidden in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are evidently not intended by their Maker to bear the habitual gaze of man. And, again, by frequency I mean that limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all perfection; not mere multitude: as a rose is a common flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the tree as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty; but I call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be the other. IV. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would attack is that Greek fret, now, I believe, usually known by the Italian name Guilloche, which is exactly a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of bismuth formed by the unagitated cooling of the melted metal, there occurs a natural resemblance of it almost perfect. But crystals of bismuth not only are of unusual occurrence in every-day life, but their form is, as far as I know, unique among minerals; and not only unique, but only attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being found pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament; and I think that I may trust my remembrance as including most of the arrangements which occur in the outward forms of common and familiar things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament to be ugly; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous; different from anything which it is the nature of man to admire: and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely preferable to one covered with this vile concatenation of straight lines: unless indeed it be employed as a foil to a true ornament, which it may, perhaps, sometimes with advantage; or excessively small, as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its arrangement being less perceived. V. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in Greek works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful--that egg and dart moulding, whose perfection in its place and way, has never been surpassed. And why is this? Simply because the form of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar to us in the soft housing of the bird's nest, but happens to be that of nearly every pebble that rolls and murmurs under the surf of the sea, on all its endless shore. And with that a peculiar accuracy; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is _not_ in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It is _flattened_ on the upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave out this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is singular also that the insertion of this rounded form in the hollow recess has a _painted_ type in the plumage of the Argus pheasant, the eyes of whose feathers are so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form placed in a hollow. VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test of natural resemblance, that we shall at once conclude that all perfectly beautiful forms must be composed of curves; since there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line. Nevertheless, Architecture, having necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its purposes in many instances and to the expression of its power in others, must frequently be content with that measure of beauty which is consistent with such primal forms; and we may presume that utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the arrangements of such lines are consistent with the most frequent natural groupings of them we can discover, although, to find right lines in nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence to her finished work, break through the sculptured and colored surfaces of her crags, and examine the processes of their crystallisation. VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, because it has no precedent to allege for its arrangement except an artificial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament of Lombard architects, Plate XII., fig. 7, as exclusively composed of right lines as the other, only, observe, with the noble element of shadow added. This ornament, taken from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal throughout the Lombard churches of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and Florence; and it will be a grave stain upon them if it cannot be defended. Its first apology for itself, made in a hurry, sounds marvellously like the Greek one, and highly dubious. It says that its terminal contour is the very image of a carefully prepared artificial crystal of common salt. Salt being, however, a substance considerably more familiar to us than bismuth, the chances are somewhat in favor of the accused Lombard ornament already. But it has more to say for itself, and more to the purpose; namely, that its main outline is one not only of natural crystallisation, but among the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, &c.; and that those projecting forms in its surface represent the conditions of structure which effect the change into another relative and equally common crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. We may rest assured it is as good a combination of such simple right lines as can be put together, and gracefully fitted for every place in which such lines are necessary. VIII. The next ornament whose cause I would try is that of our Tudor work, the portcullis. Reticulation is common enough in natural form, and very beautiful; but it is either of the most delicate and gauzy texture, or of variously sized meshes and undulating lines. There is no family relation between portcullis and cobwebs or beetles' wings; something like it, perhaps, may be found in some kinds of crocodile armor and on the backs of the Northern divers, but always beautifully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in the thing itself, if its size were exhibited, and the shade given through its bars; but even these merits are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on a solid surface. It has not a single syllable, I believe, to say in its defence. It is another monster, absolutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that carving on Henry the Seventh's Chapel simply deforms the stones of it. In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is its object. Its pride and significance have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent parts of the building, as over its gates; and allowably in places where its legendary may be plainly read, as in painted windows, bosses of ceilings, &c. And sometimes, of course, the forms which it presents may be beautiful, as of animals, or simple symbols like the fleur-de-lis; but, for the most part, heraldic similitudes and arrangements are so professedly and pointedly unnatural, that it would be difficult to invent anything uglier; and the use of them as a repeated decoration will utterly destroy both the power and beauty of any building. Common sense and courtesy also forbid their repetition. It is right to tell those who enter your doors that you are such a one, and of such a rank; but to tell it to them again and again, wherever they turn, becomes soon impertinence, and at last folly. Let, therefore, the entire bearings occur in few places, and these not considered as an ornament, but as an inscription; and for frequent appliance, let any single and fair symbol be chosen out of them. Thus we may multiply as much as we choose the French fleur-de-lis, or the Florentine giglio bianco, or the English rose; but we must not multiply a King's arms. IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any one part of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the motto; since, of all things unlike nature, the forms of letters are, perhaps, the most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar look, at their clearest, anything but legible. All letters are, therefore, to be considered as frightful things, and to be endured only upon occasion; that is to say, in places where the sense of the inscription is of more importance than external ornament. Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often desirable, but they are not to be considered as architectural or pictorial ornaments: they are, on the contrary, obstinate offences to the eye, not to be suffered except when their intellectual office introduces them. Place them, therefore, where they will be read, and there only; and let them be plainly written, and not turned upside down, nor wrong end first. It is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make that illegible whose only merit is in its sense. Write it as you would speak it, simply; and do not draw the eye to it when it would fain rest elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by anything but a little openness of place and architectural silence about it. Write the Commandments on the Church walls where they may be plainly seen, but do not put a dash and a tail to every letter; and remember that you are an architect, not a writing master. X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake of the scroll on which they are written; and in late and modern painted glass, as well as in architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Ribands occur frequently in arabesques,--in some of a high order, too,--tying up flowers, or flitting in and out among the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands in nature? It might be thought that grass and sea-weed afforded apologetic types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an anatomy, a central rib, or fibre, or framework of some kind or another, which has a beginning and an end, a root and head, and whose make and strength effects every direction of their motion, and every line of their form. The loosest weed that drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily on the brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength, structure, elasticity, gradation of substance; its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, its centre than its root; every fork of its ramification is measured and proportioned; every wave of its languid lines is love. It has its allotted size, and place, and function; it is a specific creature. What is there like this in a riband? It has no structure: it is a succession of cut threads all alike; it has no skeleton, no make, no form, no size, no will of its own. You cut it and crush it into what you will. It has no strength, no languor. It cannot fall into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense, but only flutter: it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn and be wrinkled. It is a vile thing; it spoils all that is near its wretched film of an existence. Never use it. Let the flowers come loose if they cannot keep together without being tied; leave the sentence unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll of paper. I know what authority there is against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's angels, and the ribands of Raphael's arabesques, and of Ghiberti's glorious bronze flowers: no matter; they are every one of them vices and uglinesses. Raphael usually felt this, and used an honest and rational tablet, as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say there is any type of such tablets in nature, but all the difference lies in the fact that the tablet is not considered as an ornament, and the riband, or flying scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Durer's Adam and Eve, is introduced for the sake of the writing, understood and allowed as an ugly but necessary interruption. The scroll is extended as an ornamental form, which it is not, nor ever can be. XI. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and form might be affirmed of drapery also, and that this latter is a noble subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a subject of sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns in the seventeenth century and in some of the baser scenic Italian decorations? Drapery, as such, is always ignoble; it becomes a subject of interest only by the colors it bears, and the impressions which it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture (color and texture being at present out of our consideration), have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of two great functions; they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation. They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as present motion in the figure, and they are almost the only means of indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly necessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all representation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of it which express lightness in the material, and follow gesture in the person. The Christian sculptors, caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not seen or had despised. The principal element of this expression was the entire removal of agitation from what was so pre-eminently capable of being agitated. It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, and concealing the feet; while the Greek drapery was often blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the drapery gradually came to represent the spirit of repose as it before had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the soul; and the motion of the figure only bent into a softer line the stillness of the falling veil, followed by it like a slow cloud by drooping rain: only in links of lighter undulation it followed the dances of the angels. Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble; but it is as an exponent of other and higher things. As that of gravitation, it has especial majesty, being literally the only means we have of fully representing this mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of solid curved surface, and expresses the force of another invisible element. But drapery trusted to its own merits, and given for its own sake,--drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis,--is always base. XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is that of garlands and festoons of flowers as an architectural decoration, for unnatural arrangements are just as ugly as unnatural forms; and architecture, in borrowing the objects of nature, is bound to place them, as far as may be in her power, in such associations as may befit and express their origin. She is not to imitate directly the natural arrangement; she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her columns to account for the leaves at the top, but she is nevertheless to place her most exuberant vegetable ornament just where Nature would have placed it, and to give some indication of that radical and connected structure which Nature would have given it. Thus the Corinthian capital is beautiful, because it expands under the abacus just as Nature would have expanded it; and because it looks as if the leaves had one root, though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant leaf mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and run up the hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the shafts which natural leaves would have delighted to fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural leaves; they are counted, orderly, and architectural: but they are naturally, and therefore beautifully, placed. XIII. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never uses festoons: she loves them, and uses them lavishly; and though she does so only in those places of excessive luxuriance wherein it seems to me that architectural types should seldom be sought, yet a falling tendril or pendent bough might, if managed with freedom and grace, be well introduced into luxuriant decoration (or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of architectural fitness, which incapacitates them for such uses). But what resemblance to such example can we trace in a mass of all manner of fruit and flowers, tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall? For it is strange that the wildest and most fanciful of the builders of truly luxuriant architecture never ventured, so far as I know, even a pendent tendril; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted this extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness to be fastened in the middle of their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the whole value of the flower work is lost. Who among the crowds that gaze upon the building ever pause to admire the flower work of St. Paul's? It is as careful and as rich as it can be, yet it adds no delightfulness to the edifice. It is no part of it. It is an ugly excrescence. We always conceive the building without it, and should be happier if our conception were not disturbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the architecture look poverty-stricken, instead of sublime; and yet it is never enjoyed itself. Had it been put, where it ought, into the capitals, it would have been beheld with never-ceasing delight. I do not mean that it could have been so in the present building, for such kind of architecture has no business with rich ornament in any place; but that if those groups of flowers had been put into natural places in an edifice of another style, their value would have been felt as vividly as now their uselessness. What applies to festoons is still more sternly true of garlands. A garland is meant to be seen upon a head. There it is beautiful, because we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. But it is not meant to be hung upon a wall. If you want a circular ornament, put a flat circle of colored marble, as in the Casa Doria and other such palaces at Venice; or put a star, or a medallion, or if you want a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of garlands, looking as if they had been used in the last procession, and been hung up to dry, and serve next time withered. Why not also carve pegs, and hats upon them? XIV. One of the worst enemies of modern Gothic architecture, though seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excrescence, as offensive by its poverty as the garland by its profusion, the dripstone in the shape of the handle of a chest of drawers, which is used over the square-headed windows of what we call Elizabethan buildings. In the last Chapter, it will be remembered that the square form was shown to be that of pre-eminent Power, and to be properly adapted and limited to the exhibition of space or surface. Hence, when the window is to be an exponent of power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower story of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, the square head is the most noble form they can assume; but then either their space must be unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else the square must be used as a finial outline, and is chiefly to be associated with forms of tracery, in which the relative form of power, the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and Florentine, and Pisan Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut its lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you have lost its unity and space. It is an including form no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest possible. Look abroad into the landscape and see if you can discover any one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange windlass-looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every element of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and unconnected with every other; it has no harmony either with structure or decoration, it has no architectural support, it looks glued to the wall, and the only pleasant property it has, is the appearance of some likelihood of its dropping off. I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I think I have named those false forms of decoration which are most dangerous in our modern architecture as being legal and accepted. The barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are contemptible; they neither admit attack nor are worth it; but these above named are countenanced, some by the practice of antiquity, all by high authority: they have depressed the proudest, and contaminated the purest schools, and are so established in recent practice that I write rather for the barren satisfaction of bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing any serious convictions to their prejudice. XV. Thus far of what is _not_ ornament. What ornament is, will without difficulty be determined by the application of the same test. It must consist of such studious arrangements of form as are imitative or suggestive of those which are commonest among natural existences, that being of course the noblest ornament which represents the highest orders of existence. Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones, imitated animals, than flowers; imitated human form of all animal forms the noblest. But all are combined in the richest ornamental work; and the rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea, the clouds of Heaven, the herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit, the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man, and the angel, mingle their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti. Every thing being then ornamental that is imitative, I would ask the reader's attention to a few general considerations, all that can here be offered relating to so vast a subject; which, for convenience sake, may be classed under the three heads of inquiry:--What is the right place for architectural ornament? What is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders it architectural? and what is the right use of color as associated with architectural imitative form? XVI. What is the place of ornament? Consider first that the characters of natural objects which the architect can represent are few and abstract. The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is its chief use to man; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight and thought: a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds that which is good to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her work may mingle happily with all our thoughts, and labors, and times of existence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion, and demands from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to understand it and feel it. It is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought. XVII. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought to any other of the senses at times when the mind could not address that sense to the understanding of it. Suppose that in time of serious occupation, of stern business, a companion should repeat in our ears continually some favorite passage of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should not only soon be utterly sick and weary of the sound of it, but that sound would at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear that the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it would ever thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover it. The music of it would not meanwhile have aided the business in hand, while its own delightfulness would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed. It is the same with every other form of definite thought. If you violently present its expression to the senses, at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness and clearness destroyed forever. Much more if you present it to the mind at times when it is painfully affected or disturbed, or if you associate the expression of pleasant thought with incongruous circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a painful color for ever. XVIII. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the eye. Remember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear. "The eye it cannot choose but see." Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help it in its work, and among objects of vulgar use and unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar object. But you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and you will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much use to you any more; you have killed or defiled it; its freshness and purity are gone. You will have to pass it through the fire of much thought before you will cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it will revive. XIX. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the present day, a law of simple common sense,--not to decorate things belonging to purposes of active and occupied life. Wherever you can rest, there decorate; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work first and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails: nor put bas-reliefs on millstones. What! it will be asked, are we in the habit of doing so? Even so; always and everywhere. The most familiar position of Greek mouldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn temples and beautify kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in them where they are. Absolutely valueless--utterly without the power of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their own forms. Many of these are in themselves thoroughly good copies of fine things, which things themselves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers' and cheese-mongers' and hosiers' shops: how it is that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in large gilt letters on their house fronts? how pleasurable it would be to have the power of going through the streets of London, pulling down those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest and equal terms, each with his name in black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the upper stories, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that people would not think of breaking in order to be sent to prison! How much better for them would it be--how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their customers. It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our street decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle. XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decoration of the middle ages was in shop fronts. No; it was in _house_ fronts, of which the shop was a part, and received its natural and consistent portion of the ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to live _by_ their shops, and over them, all their days. They were contented with them and happy in them: they were their palaces and castles. They gave them therefore such decoration as made themselves happy in their own habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were always the richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which belonged to the house more than to it. And when our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respecting future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated, and their shops too, but with a national and domestic decoration (I shall speak more of this point in the sixth chapter). However, our cities are for the most part too large to admit of contented dwelling in them throughout life; and I do not say there is harm in our present system of separating the shop from the dwelling-house; only where they are so separated, let us remember that the only reason for shop decoration is removed, and see that the decoration be removed also. XXI. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad station. Now, if there be any place in the world in which people are deprived of that portion of temper and discretion which are necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad travelling is addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miserable. No one would travel in that manner who could help it--who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks: at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For the time he has parted with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the wind. Carry him safely, dismiss him soon: he will thank you for nothing else. All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery, and insults to the things by which you endeavor to do so. There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find, confess them the miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety and speed. Give large salaries to efficient servants, large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen; let the iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be easily met: and to increase expense in any other direction is madness. Better bury gold in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh? He will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Museum: or on the North Western, because there are old English-looking spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe? He will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil. XXII. It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse of which I speak takes place. There is hardly, at present, an application of ornamental work, which is not in some sort liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden decoration, which is, in all other places, associated with such necessities. I will name only one instance, that to which I have alluded before--the roses which conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very beautiful design, borrowed from fine works: all their grace and finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they constantly occur; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable influence: and this without our having accomplished the smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonored form. Not a single person in the congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof roses; they are regarded with mere indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness. XXIII. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for in the forms which we associate with our every-day life? Yes, if you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen; but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it into the places set apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop; put it upon domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All men have sense of what is right in this manner, if they would only use and apply that sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it. Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether he likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of teaching if they could only think and speak truth, and ask for what they like and want, and for nothing else: nor can a right disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this common sense, and allowance for the circumstances of the time and place. It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the lamps of London Bridge, that it would be so on those of the Ponte della Trinita; nor, because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The question of greatest external or internal decoration depends entirely on the conditions of probable repose. It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in external ornament, for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use; for it is just there that perhaps the happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that--so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude? XXIV. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were next to inquire into the characters which fitted it peculiarly for architectural appliance, and into the principles of choice and of arrangement which best regulate the imitation of natural forms in which it consists. The full answering of these questions would be a treatise on the art of design: I intend only to say a few words respecting the two conditions of that art which are essentially architectural,--Proportion and Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, to the same extent, in other fields of design. The sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter, frequently sacrificed to character and accident; the power of abstraction to that of complete realisation. The flowers of his foreground must often be unmeasured in their quantity, loose in their arrangement: what is calculated, either in quantity or disposition, must be artfully concealed. That calculation is by the architect to be prominently exhibited. So the abstraction of few characteristics out of many is shown only in the painter's sketch; in his finished work it is concealed or lost in completion. Architecture, on the contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears to complete her forms. Proportion and Abstraction, then, are the two especial marks of architectural design as distinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior degrees; leaning, on the one hand, to an architectural manner, when it is usually greatest (becoming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on the other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity, and sink into mere ingenious carving. XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I believe the only facts which are of practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out of sight by vain accumulations of particular instances and estimates. Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as severally in colors, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs in music: and it is just as rational an attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the proportions of fine works, as it would be to teach him to compose melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the notes in Beethoven's Adelaïde or Mozart's Requiem. The man who has eye and intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it; but he can no more tell _us_ how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a romance. But there are one or two general laws which can be told: they are of no use, indeed, except as preventives of gross mistake, but they are so far worth telling and remembering; and the more so because, in the discussion of the subtle laws of proportion (which will never be either numbered or known), architects are perpetually forgetting and transgressing the very simplest of its necessities. XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists at all, one member of the composition must be either larger than, or in some way supreme over, the rest. There is no proportion between equal things. They can have symmetry only, and symmetry without proportion is not composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least necessary of its elements, nor of course is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession of equal things is agreeable; but to compose is to arrange unequal things, and the first thing to be done in beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the principal thing. I believe that all that has been written and taught about proportion, put together, is not to the architect worth the single rule, well enforced, "Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them well together." Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as between the heights of stories in good designs for houses; sometimes a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles: the varieties of arrangement are infinite, but the law is universal--have one thing above the rest, either by size, or office, or interest. Don't put the pinnacles without the spire. What a host of ugly church towers have we in England, with pinnacles at the corners, and none in the middle! How many buildings like King's College Chapel at Cambridge, looking like tables upside down, with their four legs in the air! What! it will be said, have not beasts four legs? Yes, but legs of different shapes, and with a head between them. So they have a pair of ears: and perhaps a pair of horns: but not at both ends. Knock down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King's College Chapel, and you will have a kind of proportion instantly. So in a cathedral you may have one tower in the centre, and two at the west end; or two at the west end only, though a worse arrangement: but you must not have two at the west and two at the east end, unless you have some central member to connect them; and even then, buildings are generally bad which have large balancing features at the extremities, and small connecting ones in the centre, because it is not easy then to make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings, because the size of the wing does not give supremacy to the wing. The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes, however wide, are subordinate. In fine west fronts with a pediment and two towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and interest (as having the main gateway), and the towers are subordinated to it, as an animal's horns are to its head. The moment the towers rise so high as to overpower the body and centre, and become themselves the principal masses, they will destroy the proportion, unless they are made unequal, and one of them the leading feature of the cathedral, as at Antwerp and Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them down in due relation to the centre, and to throw up the pediment into a steep connecting mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery. This is nobly done in St. Wulfran of Abbeville, and attempted partly at Rouen, though that west front is made up of so many unfinished and supervening designs that it is impossible to guess the real intention of any one of its builders. [Illustration: PLATE X.--(Page 122--Vol. V.) TRACERIES AND MOULDINGS FROM ROUEN AND SALISBURY.] XXVII. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well as to the leading features: it is interestingly seen in the arrangement of all good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite page, from Rouen cathedral; that of the tracery before distinguished as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic (Chap. II. § XXII.). It is a tracery of three orders, of which the first is divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4, and _b_ in the section, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 4, _c_ in the section; these two divisions surround the entire window or panelling, and are carried by two-face shafts of corresponding sections. The second and third orders are plain rolls following the line of the tracery; four divisions of moulding in all: of these four, the leaf moulding is, as seen in the sections, much the largest; next to it the outer roll; then, by an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (_e_), in order that it may not be lost in the recess and the intermediate (_d_), the smallest. Each roll has its own shaft and capital; and the two smaller, which in effect upon the eye, owing to the retirement of the innermost, are nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two larger, lifted a little to bring them to the same level. The wall in the trefoiled lights is curved, as from _e_ to _f_ in the section; but in the quatrefoil it is flat, only thrown back to the full depth of the recess below so as to get a sharp shadow instead of a soft one, the mouldings falling back to it in nearly a vertical curve behind the roll _e_. This could not, however, be managed with the simpler mouldings of the smaller quatrefoil above, whose half section is given from _g_ to g_2; but the architect was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its circular foils as opposed to the light spring of the arches below: so he threw its cusps obliquely clear from the wall, as seen in fig. 2, attached to it where they meet the circle, but with their finials pushed out from the natural level (_h_, in the section) to that of the first order (g_2) and supported by stone props behind, as seen in the profile fig. 2, which I got from the correspondent panel on the buttress face (fig. 1 being on its side), and of which the lower cusps, being broken away, show the remnant of one of their props projecting from the wall. The oblique curve thus obtained in the profile is of singular grace. Take it all in all, I have never met with a more exquisite piece of varied, yet severe, proportioned and general arrangement (though all the windows of the period are fine, and especially delightful in the subordinate proportioning of the smaller capitals to the smaller shafts). The only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement of the central shafts; for the enlargement of the inner roll, though beautiful in the group of four divisions at the side, causes, in the triple central shaft, the very awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has just been in most instances condemned. In the windows of the choir, and in most of the period, this difficulty is avoided by making the fourth order a fillet which only follows the foliation, while the three outermost are nearly in arithmetical progression of size, and the central triple shaft has of course the largest roll in front. The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari (Plate VIII., and Plate IV. fig. 8) is, for so simple a group, the grandest in effect I have even seen: it is composed of a large roll with two subordinates. XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into details of instances belonging to so intricate division of our subject, in the compass of a general essay. I can but rapidly name the chief conditions of right. Another of these is the connection of Symmetry with horizontal, and of Proportion with vertical, division. Evidently there is in symmetry a sense not merely of equality, but of balance: now a thing cannot be balanced by another on the top of it, though it may by one at the side of it. Hence, while it is not only allowable, but often necessary, to divide buildings, or parts of them, horizontally into halves, thirds, or other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this kind are utterly wrong; worst into half, next worst in the regular numbers which more betray the equality. I should have thought this almost the first principle of proportion which a young architect was taught: and yet I remember an important building, recently erected in England, in which the columns are cut in half by the projecting architraves of the central windows; and it is quite usual to see the spires of modern Gothic churches divided by a band of ornament half way up. In all fine spires there are two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented portion of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because the spire forms the third mass to which the other two are subordinate: two stories are also equal in Giotto's campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below, and subordinated to the noble third above. Even this arrangement is difficult to treat; and it is usually safer to increase or diminish the height of the divisions regularly as they rise, as in the Doge's Palace, whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical progression: or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion between the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the campanile of St. Mark's. But, at all events, get rid of equality; leave that to children and their card houses: the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike against it, in arts, as in politics. There is but one thoroughly ugly tower in Italy that I know of, and that is so because it is divided into vertical equal parts: the tower of Pisa.[12] XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have to name, equally simple, equally neglected. Proportion is between three terms at _least_. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so neither the spire without the pinnacles. All men feel this and usually express their feeling by saying that the pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire and tower. This is one reason; but a more influential one is, that the pinnacles furnish the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is not enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a building unequally; it must be divided into at least three parts; it may be into more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale I find three is about the best number of parts in elevation, and five in horizontal extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one case and seven in the other; but not to more without confusion (in architecture, that is to say; for in organic structure the numbers cannot be limited). I purpose, in the course of works which are in preparation, to give copious illustrations of this subject, but I will take at present only one instance of vertical proportion, from the flower stem of the common water plantain, _Alisma Plantago_. Fig. 5, Plate XII. is a reduced profile of one side of a plant gathered at random; it is seen to have five masts, of which, however, the uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can consider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the lowest mass _a b_, A C=_b c_, A D=_c d_, and A E=_d e_. If the reader will take the trouble to measure these lengths and compare them, he will find that, within half a line, the uppermost A E=5/7 of A D, A D=6/8 of A C, and A C=7/9 of A B; a most subtle diminishing proportion. From each of the joints spring three major and three minor branches, each between each; but the major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches at the joint below, by the curious arrangement of the joint itself--the stem is bluntly triangular; fig. 6 shows the section of any joint. The outer darkened triangle is the section of the lower stem; the inner, left light, of the upper stem; and the three main branches spring from the ledges left by the recession. Thus the stems diminish in diameter just as they diminish in height. The main branches (falsely placed in the profile over each other to show their relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four, and three arm-bones, like the masts of the stem; these divisions being proportioned in the same subtle manner. From the joints of these, it seems to be the _plan_ of the plant that three major and three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers: but, in these infinitely complicated members, vegetative nature admits much variety; in the plant from which these measures were taken the full complement appeared only at one of the secondary joints. The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as its flower generally five masts, arranged with the most exquisite grace of curve; but of lateral proportion I shall rather take illustrations from architecture: the reader will find several in the accounts of the Duomo at Pisa and St. Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V. §§ XIV.-XVI. I give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not as precedents: all beautiful proportions are unique, they are not general formulæ. XXX. The other condition of architectural treatment which we proposed to notice was the abstraction of imitated form. But there is a peculiar difficulty in touching within these narrow limits on such a subject as this, because the abstraction of which we find examples in existing art, is partly involuntary; and it is a matter of much nicety to determine where it begins to be purposed. In the progress of national as well as of individual mind, the first attempts at imitation are always abstract and incomplete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline; whence absolute completion of imitative form is often supposed to be in itself wrong. But it is not wrong always, only dangerous. Let us endeavor briefly to ascertain wherein its danger consists, and wherein its dignity. XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings; that is to say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are represented by straight and simple ones; interior markings of forms are few, and much is symbolical and conventional. There is a resemblance between the work of a great nation, in this phase, and the work of childhood and ignorance, which, in the mind of a careless observer, might attach something like ridicule to it. The form of a tree on the Ninevite sculptures is much like that which, come twenty years ago, was familiar upon samplers; and the types of the face and figure in early Italian art are susceptible of easy caricature. On the signs which separate the infancy of magnificent manhood from every other, I do not pause to insist (they consist entirely in the choice of the symbol and of the features abstracted); but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition of strength in which the abstraction which was begun in incapability is continued in free will. This is the case, however, in pure sculpture and painting, as well as in architecture; and we have nothing to do but with that greater severity of manner which fits either to be associated with the more realist art. I believe it properly consists only in a due expression of their subordination, an expression varying according to their place and office. The question is first to be clearly determined whether the architecture is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament of the architecture. If the latter, then the first office of that sculpture is not to represent the things it imitates, but to gather out of them those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in their intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade have been added to the mouldings which were meagre, or to the lights which were unrelieved, the architectural work of the imitation is accomplished; and how far it shall be wrought towards completeness or not, will depend upon its place, and upon other various circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it is symmetrically arranged, there is, of course, an instant indication of architectural subjection. But symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be carved in the most regular order, and yet be meanly imitative; or, on the other hand, they may be thrown wild and loose, and yet be highly architectural in their separate treatment. Nothing can be less symmetrical than the group of leaves which join the two columns in Plate XIII.; yet, since nothing of the leaf character is given but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its image and the attainment of the lines desired, their treatment is highly abstract. It shows that the workman only wanted so much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture, and would allow no more; and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I have said, much more on place and circumstance than on general laws. I know that this is not usually thought, and that many good architects would insist on abstraction in all cases: the question is so wide and so difficult that I express my opinion upon it most diffidently; but my own feeling is, that a purely abstract manner, like that of our earliest English work, does not afford room for the perfection of beautiful form, and that its severity is wearisome after the eye has been long accustomed to it. I have not done justice to the Salisbury dog-tooth moulding, of which the effect is sketched in fig. 5, Plate X., but I have done more justice to it nevertheless than to the beautiful French one above it; and I do not think that any candid reader would deny that, piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Rouen moulding is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that its symmetry is more complicated, the leafage being divided into double groups of two lobes each, each lobe of different structure. With exquisite feeling, one of these double groups is alternately omitted on the other side of the moulding (not seen in the Plate, but occupying the cavetto of the section), thus giving a playful lightness to the whole; and if the reader will allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved outlines (especially on the angle), of which he cannot in the least judge from my rude drawing, he will not, I think, expect easily to find a nobler instance of decoration adapted to the severest mouldings. Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high degree of abstraction, though not so conventional as that of Salisbury: that is to say, the leaves have little more than their flow and outline represented; they are hardly undercut, but their edges are connected by a gentle and most studied curve with the stone behind; they have no serrations, no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an incision gracefully made towards their extremities, indicative of the central rib and depression. The whole style of the abstraction shows that the architect could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation much farther, but stayed at this point of his own free will; and what he has done is also so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his authority without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on the whole subject of abstraction. XXXII. Happily his opinion is frankly expressed. This moulding is on the lateral buttress, and on a level with the top of the north gate; it cannot therefore be closely seen except from the wooden stairs of the belfry; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I. fig. 2 _a_. It will be seen that the abstraction is here infinitely less; the ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to detach their forms from the stone; while in the vine-leaf moulding above, of the same period, from the south gate, serration appears added to other purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form the ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture. XXXIII. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only circumstance which influences architectural abstraction. These very animals are not merely better cut because close to the eye; they are put close to the eye that they may, without indiscretion, be better cut, on the noble principle, first I think, clearly enunciated by Mr. Eastlake, that the closest imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of growth of vegetation render a bona fide imitation of it impossible in sculpture--since its members must be reduced in number, ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most earnestly imitative treatment,--it becomes a point, as I think, of good judgment, to proportion the completeness of execution of parts to the formality of the whole; and since five or six leaves must stand for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline--since its form is detached, and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts. And this principle will be actually found. I believe, to guide the old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete, and coining out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for a boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping among leafage, its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine material, may rightly be carried to the utmost possible completion. Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which animate the mouldings of the south door of the cathedral of Florence; nor desire that the birds in the capitals of the Doge's palace should be stripped of a single plume. XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think that perfect sculpture may be made a part of the severest architecture; but this perfection was said in the outset to be dangerous. It is so in the highest degree; for the moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. And then he is lost. His architecture has become a mere framework for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better be all taken down and put into cabinets. It is well, therefore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force, or conciseness, yet, indeed, a perfection--the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of all--one which by itself, and regarded in itself, is an architectural coxcombry, but is yet the sign of the most highly-trained mind and power when it is associated with others. It is a safe manner, as I think, to design all things at first in severe abstraction, and to be prepared, if need were, to carry them out in that form; then to mark the parts where high finish would be admissible, to complete these always with stern reference to their general effect, and then connect them by a graduated scale of abstraction with the rest. And there is one safeguard against danger in this process on which I would finally insist. Never imitate anything but natural forms, and those the noblest, in the completed parts. The degradation of the cinque cento manner of decoration was not owing to its naturalism, to its faithfulness of imitation, but to its imitation of ugly, i.e. unnatural things. So long as it restrained itself to sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained noble. The balcony, on the opposite page, from a house in the Campo St. Benedetto at Venice, shows one of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento arabesque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in Plate XII. fig. 8. It is but the arresting upon the stone work of a stem or two of the living flowers, which are rarely wanting in the window above (and which, by the by, the French and Italian peasantry often trellis with exquisite taste about their casements). This arabesque, relieved as it is in darkness from the white stone by the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and pure; and as long as the renaissance ornament remained in such forms it may be beheld with undeserved admiration. But the moment that unnatural objects were associated with these, and armor, and musical instruments, and wild meaningless scrolls and curled shields, and other such fancies, became principal in its subjects, its doom was sealed, and with it that of the architecture of the world. [Illustration: PLATE XI.--(Page 131--Vol. V.) BALCONY IN THE CAMPO, ST. BENEDETTO, VENICE.] XXXV. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of color as associated with architectural ornament. I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the touching of _sculpture_ with color. I would only note one point, that sculpture is the representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a real thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colorless, and colored by the beholder's mind: but a reality ought to have reality in all its attributes: its color should be as fixed as its form. I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in any wise perfect without color. Farther, as I have above noticed, I think the colors of architecture should be those of natural stones; partly because more durable, but also because more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the harshness and deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the management and discretion of a true painter; and on this co-operation we must not calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or Giorgione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint, we will alter our whole design for their sake, and become their servants; but we must, as architects, expect the aid of the common workman only; and the laying of color by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness in cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only; the former deadness or discordance. At the best, such color is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone, that it is wise to sacrifice some of the intricacy of design, if by so doing we may employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to learn the management of color, we shall, perhaps, find that this sacrifice of intricacy is for other causes expedient. XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this reference we are to consider our building as a kind of organized creature; in coloring which we must look to the single and separately organized creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations. Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to be colored as Nature would color one thing--a shell, a flower, or an animal; not as she colors groups of things. And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observance of natural color in such cases will be, that it never follows form, but is arranged on an entirely separate system. What mysterious connection there may be between the shape of the spots on an animal's skin and its anatomical system, I do not know, nor even if such a connection has in any wise been traced: but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many cases that of color is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed certain graceful harmonies with the form, diminishing or enlarging in directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the directions of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies there may be, are distinctly like those of two separate musical parts, coinciding here and there only--never discordant, but essentially different I hold this, then, for the first great principle of architectural color. Let it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it.[13] Never give separate mouldings separate colors (I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however contrary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural principles); and in sculptured ornaments I do not paint the leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one color and their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same harmony. Notice how Nature does it in a variegated flower; not one leaf red and another white, but a point of red and a zone of white, or whatever it may be, to each. In certain places you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colors and the forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes have single colors: as a bird's head is sometimes of one color and its shoulders another, you may make your capital of one color and your shaft another; but in general the best place for color is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws or about its eyes; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital and moulding; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify color when form is rich, and vice versâ; and I think it would be well in general to carve all capitals and graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them. XXXVII. Independence then being first secured, what kind of limiting outlines shall we adopt for the system of color itself? I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural objects will never be surprised at any appearance of care or finish in them. That is the condition of the universe. But there is cause both for surprise and inquiry whenever we see anything like carelessness or incompletion: that is not a common condition; it must be one appointed for some singular purpose. I believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by any one who, after studying carefully the lines of some variegated organic form, will set himself to copy with similar diligence those of its colors. The boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the object, have found drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human hand can follow. Those of its colors he will find in many cases, though governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not indeed always so: there is occasionally, as in the eye of the peacock's plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that lovely stain; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence in arrangement, is admitted in color which would be monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the precision of a fish's scales and of the spots on them. XXXVIII. Now, why it should be that color is best seen under these circumstances I will not here endeavor to determine; nor whether the lesson we are to learn from it be that it is God's will that all manner of delights should never be combined in one thing. But the fact is certain, that color is always by Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the union of perfect color with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Color, to be perfect, _must_ have a soft outline or a simple one: it cannot have a refined one; and you will never produce a good painted window with good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of color as you give perfection of line. Try to put in order and form the colors of a piece of opal. XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of color, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous; and that, to paint a color pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural color like this: it is not in the bond. I find it in all natural form--never in natural color. If, then, our architectural color is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions--to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra; cloudings and flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions. All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharpness and delicacy, and of complication in arrangement. The zone may become a delicate line, and arrange itself in chequers and zig-zags. The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, and may at last be represented by a triangle of color, and arrange itself in stars or other shapes; the spot may be also graduated into a stain, or defined into a square or circle. The most exquisite harmonies may be composed of these simple elements: some soft and full of flushed and melting spaces of color; others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups of the fiery fragments: perfect and lovely proportion may be exhibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their disposition: but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as it determines their quantity, and regulates their operation on each other; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths of others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore convenient, or others the simplest possible; leaving the pleasure of the spectator to be taken in the color, and in that only. Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the color, and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colorists have either melted their outline away, as often Correggio and Rubens; or purposely made their masses of ungainly shape, as Titian; or placed their brightest hues in costume, where they could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of color is secondary to grace of line. Hence, he never uses the blended hues of Correggio, like those on the wing of the little Cupid, in the "Venus and Mercury," but always the severest type--the peacock plume. Any of these men would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and scrollwork which form the ground of color in our modern painted windows, and yet all whom I have named were much infected with the love of renaissance designs. We must also allow for the freedom of the painter's subject, and looseness of his associated lines; a pattern being severe in a picture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural coloring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to reprobate in form, are, in color, the best that can be invented. I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style, for this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and breadth,--having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful; sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an entanglement of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve. Yet this very reticulation would in color be highly beautiful; and all the heraldry, and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as themes of color (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted lines in them); and this observe, because, when colored, they take the place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bearings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue?) and white, with cardinal's hats in alternate squares. This is of course, however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge's palace at Venice is the purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one) of the fit application of color to public buildings. The sculpture and mouldings are all white; but the wall surface is chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted to the forms of the windows; but looking as if the surface had been completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate XII. fig. 2 the reader will see two of the patterns used in green and white, on the columns of San Michele of Lucca, every column having a different design. Both are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in sculpture its lines would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even of the lower not enough refined. XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple patterns, so far forth as our color is subordinate either to architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, monochrome design, the intermediate condition between coloring and carving. The relations of the entire system of architectural decoration may then be thus expressed. 1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and alto-relievo; rich capitals, and mouldings; to be elaborate in completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in pure white marble, or most cautiously touched with color in points and borders only, in a system not concurrent with their forms. 2. Organic form sub-dominant. Basso-relievo or intaglio. To be more abstract in proportion to the reduction of depth; to be also more rigid and simple in contour; to be touched with color more boldly and in an increased degree, exactly in proportion to the reduced depth and fulness of form, but still in a system non-concurrent with their forms. 3. Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrome design, still farther reduced to simplicity of contour, and therefore admitting for the first time the color to be concurrent with its outlines; that is to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be detached in one color from a ground of another. 4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns or variable cloudings in the most vivid color. On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the color pattern, I would place the various forms of painting which may be associated with architecture: primarily, and as most fit for such purpose, the mosaic, highly abstract in treatment, and introducing brilliant color in masses; the Madonna of Torcello being, as I think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Baptistery of Parma the richest: next, the purely decorative fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel; finally, the fresco becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. But I cannot, with any safety, follow the principles of abstraction in this pictorial ornament; since the noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their architectural applicability to their archaic manner; and I think that the abstraction and admirable simplicity which render them fit media of the most splendid coloring, cannot be recovered by a voluntary condescension. The Byzantines themselves would not, I think, if they could have drawn the figure better, have used it for a color decoration; and that use, as peculiar to a condition of childhood, however noble and full of promise, cannot be included among those modes of adornment which are now legitimate or even possible. There is a difficulty in the management of the painted window for the same reason, which has not yet been met, and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to consider the wall as a painted window on a large scale. Pictorial subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at all events, ceases to be the architect's concern; its plan must be left to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice. XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered as limited to the four kinds above specified; of which each glides almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrome in a state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrome, I have given an example in Plate VI., from the noble front of St. Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green serpentine; a most elaborate mode of sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting of the edges, and of course double work, the same line needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine. The excessive simplicity of the forms will be at once perceived; the eyes of the figures of animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot, formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over: but, though simple, they admit often much grace of curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right hand pillar.[14] The pieces of serpentine have fallen out in many places, giving the black shadows, as seen under the horseman's arm and bird's neck, and in the semi-circular line round the arch, once filled with some pattern. It would have illustrated my point better to have restored the lost portions, but I always draw a thing exactly as it is, hating restoration of any kind; and I would especially direct the reader's attention to the completion of the forms in the _sculptured_ ornament of the marble cornices, as opposed to the abstraction of the monochrome figures, of the ball and cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the arch on the left. XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrome figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which I found them; nevertheless, I believe that the excessive degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a perfect building should rather be composed of the highest sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant), associated with pattern colors on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than that of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the color being put in geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal-forms and lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And I think that the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of color, while the color itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp angular arrangements. Thus the sculpture is approved and set off by the color, and the color seen to the best advantage in its opposition both to the whiteness and the grace of the carved marble. XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding chapters, I have now separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power and Beauty, which in the outset I stated to be the grounds of the deepest impressions with which architecture could affect the human mind; but I would ask permission to recapitulate them in order to see if there be any building which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such manner as is possible, of them all. Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the third chapter, and introducing in their place the conditions incidentally determined in the two previous sections, we shall have the following list of noble characters: Considerable size, exhibited by simple terminal lines (Chap. III. § 6). Projection towards the top (§ 7). Breadth of flat surface (§ 8). Square compartments of that surface (§ 9). Varied and visible masonry (§ 11). Vigorous depth of shadow (§ 13), exhibited especially by pierced traceries (§ 18). Varied proportion in ascent (Chap. IV. § 28). Lateral symmetry (§ 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. § 12). Enriched quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13). Sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap. IV. § 31), complete in animal forms (§ 33). Both to be executed in white marble (§ 40). Vivid color introduced in flat geometrical patterns (§ 39), and obtained by the use of naturally colored stone (§ 35). These characteristics occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto at Florence. The drawing of the tracery of its upper story, which heads this chapter, rude as it is, will nevertheless give the reader some better conception of that tower's magnificence than the thin outlines in which it is usually portrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is something unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament than the martins' nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, colored like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty above the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy; ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labors, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon his crown was that of David's:--"I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep." CHAPTER V. THE LAMP OF LIFE. I. Among the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the material creation, none are more striking than the impressions inseparably connected with the active and dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere endeavored to show, that no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of Beauty depended on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the statement which I believe will meet with general acceptance, that things in other respects alike, as in their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in proportion to the fulness of the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by their bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this is especially true of all objects which bear upon them the impress of the highest order of creative life, that is to say, of the mind of man: they become noble or ignoble in proportion to the amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them. But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect to the creations of Architecture, which being properly capable of no other life than this, and being not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves,--as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colors, but of inert substance,--depend, for their dignity and pleasurableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been concerned in their production. II. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man's mind, there is no question as to what is life, and what is not. Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great feebleness, as to render its existence a matter of question, but when it is evident at all, it is evident as such: there is no mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place; nor is any resemblance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the judgment; although many occur which the human imagination takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight of the real nature of the dead things it animates; but rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds, and joy into waves, and voices into rocks. III. But when we begin to be concerned with the energies of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing with a double creature. Most part of his being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his peril if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a true and a false life. His true life is like that of lower organic beings, the independent force by which he moulds and governs external things; it is a force of assimilation which converts everything around him into food, or into instruments; and which, however humbly or obediently it may listen to or follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own authority as a judging principle, as a will capable either of obeying or rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but one of the conditions of death or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be said to animate, and is not always easily known from the true. It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our time in the world; that life in which we do what we have not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that, which instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. But, with all the efforts that the best men make, much of their being passes in a kind of dream, in which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow-dreamers, but have no clear consciousness of what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the other, [Greek: nôthroi]. I would not press the definition into its darker application to the dull heart and heavy ear; I have to do with it only as it refers to the too frequent condition of natural existence, whether of nations or individuals, settling commonly upon them in proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the arts, and in Architecture more than in any other; for it, being especially dependent, as we have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the false; and I do not know anything more oppressive, when the mind is once awakened to its characteristics, than the aspect of a dead architecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of promise and of interest,--the struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and continuity,--but to see impotence and rigidity settling upon the form of the developed man; to see the types which once had the die of thought struck fresh upon them, worn flat by over use; to see the shell of the living creature in its adult form, when its colors are faded, and its inhabitant perished,--this is a sight more humiliating, more melancholy, than the vanishing of all knowledge, and the return to confessed and helpless infancy. Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possible. There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but I know not how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life. The stirring which has taken place in our architectural aims and interests within these few years, is thought by many to be full of promise: I trust it is, but it has a sickly look to me. I cannot tell whether it be indeed a springing of seed or a shaking among bones; and I do not think the time will be lost which I ask the reader to spend in the inquiry, how far all that we have hitherto ascertained or conjectured to be the best in principle, may be formally practised without the spirit or the vitality which alone could give it influence, value, or delightfulness. IV. Now, in the first place--and this is rather an important point--it is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or if it imitates without choice. The art of a great nation, which is developed without any acquaintance with nobler examples than its own early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is regarded usually as peculiarly venerable in its self-origination. But there is something to my mind more majestic yet in the life of an architecture like that of the Lombards, rude and infantine in itself, and surrounded by fragments of a nobler art of which it is quick in admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges every fragment that it copies or borrows into harmony with its own thoughts,--a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but completed in the end, and fused into perfect organisation; all the borrowed elements being subordinated to its own primal, unchanged life. I do not know any sensation more exquisite than the discovering of the evidence of this magnificent struggle into independent existence; the detection of the borrowed thoughts, nay, the finding of the actual blocks and stones carved by other hands and in other ages, wrought into the new walls, with a new expression and purpose given to them, like the blocks of unsubdued rocks (to go back to our former simile) which we find in the heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the power which has fused all but those calcined fragments into the mass of its homogeneous fire. V. It will be asked, How is imitation to be rendered healthy and vital? Unhappily, while it is easy to enumerate the signs of life, it is impossible to define or to communicate life; and while every intelligent writer on Art has insisted on the difference between the copying found in an advancing or recedent period, none have been able to communicate, in the slightest degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom they might have influence. Yet it is at least interesting, if not profitable, to note that two very distinguishing characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness and its Audacity; its Frankness is especially singular; there is never any effort to conceal the degree of the sources of its borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a whole figure from Masaccio, or borrows an entire composition from Perugino, with as much tranquillity and simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket; and the architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns and capitals where he could find them, as an ant picks up sticks. There is at least a presumption, when we find this frank acceptance, that there is a sense within the mind of power capable of transforming and renewing whatever it adopts; and too conscious, too exalted, to fear the accusation of plagiarism,--too certain that it can prove, and has proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing its homage to what it admires in the most open and indubitable way; and the necessary consequence of this sense of power is the other sign I have named--the Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient. For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Romanesque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was replaced by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the pediment of the west front became divided into three portions, of which the central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above the wings; there remained at the extremities of the aisles two triangular fragments of pediment, which could not now be filled by any of the modes of decoration adapted for the unbroken space; and the difficulty became greater when the central portion of the front was occupied by columnar ranges, which could not, without painful abruptness, terminate short of the extremities of the wings. I know not what expedient would have been adopted by architects who had much respect for precedent, under such circumstances, but it certainly would not have been that of the Pisan,--to continue the range of columns into the pedimental space, shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last column vanished altogether, and there remained only its _capital_ resting in the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no question at present whether this arrangement be graceful or otherwise; I allege it only as an instance of boldness almost without a parallel, casting aside every received principle that stood in its way, and struggling through every discordance and difficulty to the fulfilment of its own instincts. VI. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for repetition, nor audacity for innovation, when the one is indolent and the other unwise. Nobler and surer signs of vitality must be sought,--signs independent alike of the decorative or original character of the style, and constant in every style that is determinedly progressive. Of these, one of the most important I believe to be a certain neglect or contempt of refinement in execution, or, at all events, a visible subordination of execution to conception, commonly involuntary, but not unfrequently intentional. This is a point, however, on which, while I speak confidently, I must at the same time reservedly and carefully, as there would otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously misunderstood. It has been truly observed and well stated by Lord Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy were also the most careful in their workmanship; and that the stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or other work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to the apparent improbability of the great designers condescending to the care of details among us so despised. Not only do I fully admit and re-assert this most important fact, but I would insist upon perfect and most delicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic of all the highest schools of architecture, as much as it is those of painting. But on the other hand, as perfect finish belongs to the perfected art, a progressive finish belongs to progressive art; and I do not think that any more fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling upon that undeveloped art could possibly be detected, than that it had been _taken aback_ by its own execution, and that the workmanship had gone ahead of the design; while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the right place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I must reserve to myself the right of answering in my own way the two very important questions, what _is_ finish? and what _is_ its right place? VII. But in illustrating either of these points, we must remember that the correspondence of workmanship with thought is, in existent examples, interfered with by the adoption of the designs of an advanced period by the workmen of a rude one. All the beginnings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and the necessary consequence is of course an increase of the visible interval between the power of realisation and the beauty of the idea. We have at first an imitation, almost savage in its rudeness, of a classical design; as the art advances, the design is modified by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in which balance they advance to new perfection. Now during the whole period in which the ground is being recovered, there will be found in the living architecture marks not to be mistaken, of intense impatience; a struggle towards something unattained, which causes all minor points of handling to be neglected; and a restless disdain of all qualities which appear either to confess contentment or to require a time and care which might be better spent. And, exactly as a good and earnest student of drawing will not lose time in ruling lines or finishing backgrounds about studies which, while they have answered his immediate purpose, he knows to be imperfect and inferior to what he will do hereafter,--so the vigor of a true school of early architecture, which is either working under the influence of high example or which is itself in a state of rapid development, is very curiously traceable, among other signs, in the contempt of exact symmetry and measurement, which in dead architecture are the most painful necessities. [Illustration: PLATE XII.--(Page 149--Vol. V.) FRAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LUCCA, VENICE, AND PISA.] VIII. In Plate XII. fig. 1 I have given a most singular instance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little pillar and spandril from a panel decoration under the pulpit of St. Mark's at Venice. The imperfection (not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and ugliness) of the leaf ornament will strike the eye at once: this is general in works of the time, but it is not so common to find a capital which has been so carelessly cut; its imperfect volutes being pushed up one side far higher than on the other, and contracted on that side, an additional drill hole being put in to fill the space; besides this, the member _a_, of the mouldings, is a roll where it follows the arch, and a flat fillet at _a_; the one being slurred into the other at the angle _b_, and finally stopped short altogether at the other side by the most uncourteous and remorseless interference of the outer moulding: and in spite of all this, the grace, proportion, and feeling of the whole arrangement are so great, that, in its place, it leaves nothing to be desired; all the science and symmetry in the world could not beat it. In fig. 4 I have endeavored to give some idea of the execution of the subordinate portions of a much higher work, the pulpit of St. Andrea at Pistoja, by Nicolo Pisano. It is covered with figure sculptures, executed with great care and delicacy; but when the sculptor came to the simple arch mouldings, he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over precision of work or over sharpness of shadow. The section adopted, _k_, _m_, is peculiarly simple, and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as never to produce a sharp line; and it is worked with what at first appears slovenliness, but it is in fact sculptural _sketching_; exactly correspondent to a painter's light execution of a background: the lines appear and disappear again, are sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, sometimes quite broken off; and the recession of the cusp joins that of the external arch at _n_, in the most fearless defiance of all mathematical laws of curvilinear contact. IX. There is something very delightful in this bold expression of the mind of the great master. I do not say that it is the "perfect work" of patience, but I think that impatience is a glorious character in an advancing school; and I love the Romanesque and early Gothic especially, because they afford so much room for it; accidental carelessness of measurement or of execution being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fancy, which are eminently characteristic of both styles. How great, how frequent they are, and how brightly the severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace and suddenness, has not, I think, been enough observed; still less, the unequal measurements of even important features professing to be absolutely symmetrical. I am not so familiar with modern practice as to speak with confidence respecting its ordinary precision; but I imagine that the following measures of the western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked upon by present architects as very blundering approximations. That front is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the second, fourth or central, and sixth contain doors; the seven are in a most subtle alternating proportion; the central being the largest, next to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly the third and fifth. By this arrangement, of course, these three pairs should be equal; and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual measures to be the following, taken from pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and inches:-- Braccia. Palmi. Inches. Total in inches. 1. Central door 8 0 0 = 192 2. Northern door } 6 3 1-1/2 = 157-1/2 3. Southern door } 6 4 3 = 163 4. Extreme northern space } 5 5 3-1/2 = 143-1/2 5. Extreme southern space } 6 1 0-1/2 = 148-1/2 6. Northern intervals between the doors } 5 2 1 = 129 7. Southern intervals between the doors } 5 2 1-1/2 = 129-1/2 There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of five inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the other. X. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable to some accommodation of the accidental distortions which evidently took place in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much as in those of the campanile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the most wonderful of the two: I do not believe that a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical: the pavement rises and falls to different heights, or rather the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to different depths, the whole west front literally overhangs (I have not plumbed it; but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo): and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall shows that this inclination had begun when the first story was built. The cornice above the first arcade of that wall touches the tops of eleven out of its fifteen arches; but it suddenly leaves the tops of the four westernmost; the arches nodding westward and sinking into the ground, while the cornice rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by the rise of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of more than two feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by added courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of this struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the columns of the main entrance. (These notices are perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me highly interesting; and they, at all events, prove one of the points on which I would insist,--how much of imperfection and variety in things professing to be symmetrical the eyes of those eager builders could endure: they looked to loveliness in detail, to nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those columns of the principal entrance are among the loveliest in Italy; cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of sculptured foliage, which at the base extends nearly all round them, up to the black pilaster in which they are lightly engaged: but the shield of foliage, bounded by a severe line, narrows to their tops, where it covers their frontal segment only; thus giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line sloping boldly outwards, which, as I think, was meant to conceal the accidental leaning of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated inclination in the same direction, to throw them by comparison into a seeming vertical. XI. There is another very curious instance of distortion above the central door of the west front. All the intervals between the seven arches are filled with black marble, each containing in its centre a white parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the whole surmounted by a broad white band, which, generally, does not touch the parallelogram below. But the parallelogram on the north of the central arch has been forced into an oblique position, and touches the white band; and, as if the architect was determined to show that he did not care whether it did or not, the white band suddenly gets thicker at that place, and remains so over the two next arches. And these differences are the more curious because the workmanship of them all is most finished and masterly, and the distorted stones are fitted with as much neatness as if they tallied to a hair's breadth. There is no look of slurring or blundering about it; it is all coolly filled in, as if the builder had no sense of anything being wrong or extraordinary: I only wish we had a little of his impudence. XII. Still, the reader will say that all these variations are probably dependent more on the bad foundation than on the architect's feeling. Not so the exquisite delicacies of change in the proportions and dimensions of the apparently symmetrical arcades of the west front. It will be remembered that I said the tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower in Italy, because its tiers were equal, or nearly so, in height; a fault this, so contrary to the spirit of the builders of the time, that it can be considered only as an unlucky caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of the west front of the cathedral may then have occurred to the reader's mind, as seemingly another contradiction of the rule I had advanced. It would not have been so, however, even had its four upper arcades been actually equal; as they are subordinated to the great seven-arched lower story, in the manner before noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury, and as is actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja. But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of its four arcades is of like height with another. The highest is the third, counting upwards; and they diminish in nearly arithmetical proportion alternately; in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th. The inequalities in their arches are not less remarkable: they at first strike the eye as all equal; but there is a grace about them which equality never obtained: on closer observation, it is perceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, eighteen are equal, and the central one larger than the rest; in the second arcade, the nine central arches stand over the nine below, having, like them, the ninth central one largest. But on their flanks, where is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches vanish, and a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, tapering outwards, in order to allow the columns to be carried to the extremity of the pediment; and here, where the heights of the shafts are so far shortened, they are set thicker; five shafts, or rather four and a capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving twenty-one intervals instead of nineteen. In the next or third arcade,--which, remember, is the highest,--eight arches, all equal, are given in the space of the nine below, so that there is now a central shaft instead of a central arch, and the span of the arches is increased in proportion to their increased height. Finally, in the uppermost arcade, which is the lowest of all, the arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower than any of the façade; the whole eight going very nearly above the six below them, while the terminal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by flanking masses of decorated wall with projecting figures. XIV. Now I call _that_ Living Architecture. There is sensation in every inch of it, and an accommodation to every architectural necessity, with a determined variation in arrangement, which is exactly like the related proportions and provisions in the structure of organic form. I have not space to examine the still lovelier proportioning of the external shafts of the apse of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the reader should think it a peculiar example, to state the structure of another church, the most graceful and grand piece of Romanesque work, as a fragment, in north Italy, that of San Giovanni Evangelista at Pistoja. The side of that church has three stories of arcade, diminishing in height in bold geometrical proportion, while the arches, for the most part, increase in number in arithmetical, _i.e._ two in the second arcade, and three in the third, to one in the first. Lest, however, this arrangement should be too formal, of the fourteen arches in the lowest series, that which contains the door is made larger than the rest, and is not in the middle, but the sixth from the West, leaving five on one side and eight on the other. Farther: this lowest arcade is terminated by broad flat pilasters, about half the width of its arches; but the arcade above is continuous; only the two extreme arches at the west end are made larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they should, into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and its broad pilaster. Even this, however, was not out of order enough to satisfy the architect's eye; for there were still two arches above to each single one below: so at the east end, where there are more arches, and the eye might be more easily cheated, what does he do but _narrow_ the two extreme _lower_ arches by half a braccio; while he at the same time slightly enlarged the upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, instead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly confused, and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one of which is either exactly in nor positively out of its place; and, to get this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting from the east, I found as follows:-- Braccia. Palmi. Inches. 1st 3 0 1 2nd 3 0 2 3rd 3 3 2 4th 3 3 3-1/2 The upper arcade is managed on the same principle; it looks at first as if there were three arches to each under pair; but there are, in reality, only thirty-eight (or thirty-seven, I am not quite certain of this number) to the twenty-seven below; and the columns get into all manner of relative positions. Even then, the builder was not satisfied, but must needs carry the irregularity into the spring of the arches, and actually, while the general effect is of a symmetrical arcade, there is not one of the arches the same in height as another; their tops undulate all along the wall like waves along a harbor quay, some nearly touching the string course above, and others falling from it as much as five or six inches. XIV. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St. Mark's at Venice, which, though in many respects imperfect, is in its proportions, and as a piece of rich and fantastic color, as lovely a dream as ever filled human imagination. It may, perhaps, however, interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion upon this subject, and after what has been urged in the preceding pages respecting proportion in general, more especially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and other regular designs, together with my frequent references to the Doge's palace, and campanile of St. Mark's, as models of perfection, and my praise of the former especially as projecting above its second arcade, the following extracts from the journal of Wood the architect, written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them, and may show that I have not been stating principles altogether trite or accepted. "The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile, could not be mistaken. The exterior of this church surprises you by its extreme ugliness, more than by anything else." "The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything I have previously mentioned. Considered in detail, I can imagine no alteration to make it tolerable; but if this lofty wall had been _set back behind_ the two stories of little arches, it would have been a very noble production." After more observations on "a certain justness of proportion," and on the appearance of riches and power in the church, to which he ascribes a pleasing effect, he goes on: "Some persons are of opinion that irregularity is a necessary part of its excellence. I am decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am convinced that a regular design of the same sort would be far superior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not very showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should appear between _two lofty towers_ and have _two obelisks_ in front, and on each side of this cathedral let other squares partially open into the first, and one of these extend down to a harbor or sea shore, and you would have a scene which might challenge any thing in existence." Why Mr. Wood was unable to enjoy the color of St. Mark's, or perceive the majesty of the Ducal Palace, the reader will see after reading the two following extracts regarding the Caracci and Michael Angelo. "The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far preferable to those of Venice, for if the Venetian school surpass in coloring, and, perhaps, in composition, the Bolognese is decidedly superior in drawing and expression, and the Caraccis _shine here like Gods_." "What is it that is so much admired in this artist (M. Angelo)? Some contend for a grandeur of composition in the lines and disposition of the figures; this, I confess, I do not comprehend; yet, while I acknowledge the beauty of certain forms and proportions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that similar merits may exist in painting, though I am unfortunately unable to appreciate them." I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of a contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an architect's understanding of his own art; and especially with what curious notions, or lack of notions, about proportion, that art has been sometimes practised. For Mr. Wood is by no means unintelligent in his observations generally, and his criticisms on classical art are often most valuable. But those who love Titian better than the Caracci, and who see something to admire in Michael Angelo, will, perhaps, be willing to proceed with me to a charitable examination of St. Mark's. For, although, the present course of European events affords us some chance of seeing the changes proposed by Mr. Wood carried into execution, we may still esteem ourselves fortunate in having first known how it was left by the builders of the eleventh century. XV. The entire front is composed of an upper and lower series of arches, enclosing spaces of wall decorated with mosaic, and supported on ranges of shafts of which, in the lower series of arches, there is an upper range superimposed on a lower. Thus we have five vertical divisions of the façade; _i.e._ two tiers of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, below; one tier of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, above. In order, however, to bind the two main divisions together, the central lower arch (the main entrance) rises above the level of the gallery and balustrade which crown the lateral arches. The proportioning of the columns and walls of the lower story is so lovely and so varied, that it would need pages of description before it could be fully understood; but it may be generally stated thus: The height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being severally expressed by _a_, _b_, and _c_, then _a_:_c_::_c_:_b_ (_a_ being the highest); and the diameter of shaft _b_ is generally to the diameter of shaft _a_ as height _b_ is to height _a_, or something less, allowing for the large plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the upper shaft: and when this is their proportion of width, one shaft above is put above one below, with sometimes another upper shaft interposed: but in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, proportioned as truly as the boughs of a tree; that is to say, the diameter of each upper = 2/3 of lower. There being thus the three terms of proportion gained in the lower story, the upper, while it is only divided into two main members, in order that the whole height may not be divided into an even number, has the third term added in its pinnacles. So far of the vertical division. The lateral is still more subtle. There are seven arches in the lower story; and, calling the central arch _a_, and counting to the extremity, they diminish in the alternate order _a_, _c_, _b_, _d_. The upper story has five arches, and two added pinnacles; and these diminish in _regular_ order, the central being the largest, and the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends, another descends, like parts in music; and yet the pyramidal form is secured for the whole, and, which was another great point of attention, none of the shafts of the upper arches stand over those of the lower. XVI. It might have been thought that, by this plan, enough variety had been secured, but the builder was not satisfied even thus: for--and this is the point bearing on the present part of our subject--always calling the central arch _a_, and the lateral ones _b_ and _c_ in succession, the northern _b_ and _c_ are considerably wider than the southern _b_ and _c_, but the southern _d_ is as much wider than the northern _d_, and lower beneath its cornice besides; and, more than this, I hardly believe that one of the effectively symmetrical members of the façade is actually symmetrical with any other. I regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave up the taking them upon the spot, owing to their excessive complexity, and the embarrassment caused by the yielding and subsidence of the arches. Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine workmen to have had these various principles in their minds as they built. I believe they built altogether from feeling, and that it was because they did so, that there is this marvellous life, changefulness, and subtlety running through their every arrangement; and that we reason upon the lovely building as we should upon some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that know not their own beauty. XVII. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than any I have yet given, of the daring variation of pretended symmetry, is found in the front of the Cathedral of Bayeux. It consists of five arches with steep pediments, the outermost filled, the three central with doors; and they appear, at first, to diminish in regular proportion from the principal one in the centre. The two lateral doors are very curiously managed. The tympana of their arches are filled with bas-reliefs, in four tiers; in the lowest tier there is in each a little temple or gate containing the principal figure (in that on the right, it is the gate of Hades with Lucifer). This little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated shaft which divides the whole arch at about 2/3 of its breadth, the larger portion outmost; and in that larger portion is the inner entrance door. This exact correspondence, in the treatment of both gates, might lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension. Not at all. The small inner northern entrance measures, in English feet and inches, 4 ft. 7 in. from jamb to jamb, and the southern five feet exactly. Five inches in five feet is a considerable variation. The outer northern porch measures, from face shaft to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft. 6 in.; giving a difference of 7 in. on 14-1/2 ft. There are also variations in the pediment decorations not less extraordinary. XVIII. I imagine I have given instances enough, though I could multiply them indefinitely, to prove that these variations are not mere blunders, nor carelessnesses, but the result of a fixed scorn, if not dislike, of accuracy in measurements; and, in most cases, I believe, of a determined resolution to work out an effective symmetry by variations as subtle as those of Nature. To what lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we shall see by the very singular management of the towers of Abbeville. I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but it is a wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a living architecture; for, say what we will of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal mind; and it would have lived till now, if it had not taken to telling lies. I have before noticed the general difficulty of managing even lateral division, when it is into two equal parts, unless there be some third reconciling member. I shall give, hereafter, more examples of the modes in which this reconciliation is effected in towers with double lights: the Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather too sharply. Vexed by the want of unity between his two windows he literally laid their heads together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as to leave only one of the trefoiled panels above, on the inner side, and three on the outer side of each arch. The arrangement is given in Plate XII. fig. 3. Associated with the various undulation of flamboyant curves below, it is in the real tower hardly observed, while it binds it into one mass in general effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, I like sins of the kind, for the sake of the courage it requires to commit them. In plate II. (part of a small chapel attached to the West front of the Cathedral of St. Lo), the reader will see an instance, from the same architecture, of a violation of its own principles, for the sake of a peculiar meaning. If there be any one feature which the flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche--it was what the capital is to the Corinthian order; yet in the case before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once represented an Annunciation; and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question; which appears, therefore, to be intended for a representation of this effulgence, while at the same time it was made a canopy for the delicate figures below. Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring departure from the common habits of the time. XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche decoration of the portal of St. Maclou at Rouen. The subject of the tympanum bas-relief is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture of the inferno side is carried out with a degree of power whose fearful grotesqueness I can only describe as a mingling of the minds of Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are perhaps even more awful than Orcagna's; and, in some of the expressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, the English painter is at least equalled. Not less wild is the imagination which gives fury and fear even to the placing of the figures. An evil angel, poised on the wing, drives the condemned troops from before the Judgment seat; with his left hand he drags behind him a cloud, which is spreading like a winding-sheet over them all; but they are urged by him so furiously, that they are driven not merely to the extreme limit of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere within the tympanum, but out of the tympanum and _into the niches_ of the arch; while the flames that follow them, bent by the blast, as it seems, of the angel's wings, rush into the niches also, and burst up _through their tracery_, the three lowermost niches being represented as all on fire, while, instead of their usual vaulted and ribbed ceiling, there is a demon in the roof of each, with his wings folded over it, grinning down out of the black shadow. [Illustration: PLATE XIII.--(Page 161--Vol. V.) PORTIONS OF AN ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA.] XX. I have, however, given enough instances of vitality shown in mere daring, whether wise, as surely in this last instance, or inexpedient; but, as a single example of the Vitality of Assimilation, the faculty which turns to its purposes all material that is submitted to it, I would refer the reader to the extraordinary columns of the arcade on the south side of the Cathedral of Ferrara. A single arch of it is given in Plate XIII. on the right. Four such columns forming a group, there are interposed two pairs of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate; and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, not less than forty arches, perhaps of many more; and in the grace and simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being hardly two correspondent, and the architect having been ready, as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre; the distorted pillars beside it suggest images of less agreeable character; the serpentine arrangements founded on the usual Byzantine double knot are generally graceful; but I was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type of the pillar, fig. 3, one of a group of four. It so happened, fortunately for me, that there had been a fair in Ferrara; and, when I had finished my sketch of the pillar, I had to get out of the way of some merchants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing their stall. It had been shaded by an awning supported by poles, which, in order that the covering might be raised or lowered according to the height of the sun, were composed of two separate pieces, fitted to each other by a _rack_, in which I beheld the prototype of my ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I have above said of the inexpedience of imitating anything but natural form, that I advance this architect's practice as altogether exemplary; yet the humility is instructive, which condescended to such sources for motives of thought, the boldness, which could depart so far from all established types of form, and the life and feeling, which out of an assemblage of such quaint and uncouth materials, could produce an harmonious piece of ecclesiastical architecture. XXI. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long upon that form of vitality which is known almost as much by its errors as by its atonements for them. We must briefly note the operation of it, which is always right, and always necessary, upon those lesser details, where it can neither be superseded by precedents, nor repressed by proprieties. I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might always be known from machine-work; observing, however, at the same time, that it was possible for men to turn themselves into machines, and to reduce their labor to the machine level; but so long as men work _as_ men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price: it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted in more than others--that there has been a pause, and a care about them; and then there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and anon timidly; and if the man's mind as well as his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right places, and each part will set off the other; and the effect of the whole, as compared with the same design cut by a machine or a lifeless hand, will be like that of poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the difference is imperceptible; but to those who love poetry it is everything--they had rather not hear it at all, than hear it ill read; and to those who love Architecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything. They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it ill cut--deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad; but it is cold cutting--the look of equal trouble everywhere--the smooth, diffused tranquillity of heartless pains--the regularity of a plough in a level field. The chill is more likely, indeed, to show itself in finished work than in any other--men cool and tire as they complete: and if completeness is thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine-lathe at once. But _right_ finish is simply the full rendering of the intended impression; and _high_ finish is the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling. I am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the _form_ of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the _effect_ of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his chisel: half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into the form: they are touches of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of execution is very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole; their best effects being reached by strange angular, and seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children on the tombs in the church of the Badia, appear only half finished when they are seen close; yet the expression is farther carried and more ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especially considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo equals it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is attained; in Greek sculptures is not even attempted. XXII. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, such masculine handling, likely as it must be to retain its effectiveness when higher finish would be injured by time, must always be the most expedient; and as it is impossible, even were it desirable that the highest finish should be given to the quantity of work which covers a large building, it will be understood how precious the intelligence must become, which renders incompletion itself a means of additional expression; and how great must be the difference, when the touches are rude and few, between those of a careless and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to retain anything of their character in a copy; yet the reader will find one or two illustrative points in the examples, given in Plate XIV., from the bas-reliefs of the north of Rouen Cathedral. There are three square pedestals under the three main niches on each side of it, and one in the centre; each of these being on two sides decorated with five quatrefoiled panels. There are thus seventy quatrefoils in the lower ornament of the gate alone, without counting those of the outer course round it, and of the pedestals outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole reaching to something above a man's height. A modern architect would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of each pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediæval. The general form being apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides of a square, it will be found on examination that none of the arcs are semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares. The latter are rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according to their larger or smaller size; and the arcs upon their sides slide into such places as they can get in the angles of the enclosing parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each of the four angles, of various shapes, which are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole panel being thus varied, the two lowest of the five are tall, the next two short, and the uppermost a little higher than the lowest; while in the course of bas-reliefs which surrounds the gate, calling either of the two lowest (which are equal), _a_, and either of the next two _b_, and the fifth and sixth _c_ and _d_, then _d_ (the largest): _c_::_c_:_a_::_a_:_b_. It is wonderful how much of the grace of the whole depends on these variations. XXIII. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an animal. There are thus 70 x 4=280 animals, all different, in the mere fillings of the intervals of the bas-reliefs. Three of these intervals, with their beasts, actual size, the curves being traced upon the stone, I have given in Plate XIV. [Illustration: PLATE XIV.--(Page 165--Vol. V.) SCULPTURE FROM THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN.] I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines of the wings and scales, which are perhaps, unless in those of the central dragon, not much above the usual commonplaces of good ornamental work; but there is an evidence in the features of thoughtfulness and fancy which is not common, at least now-a-days. The upper creature on the left is biting something, the form of which is hardly traceable in the defaced stone--but biting he is; and the reader cannot but recognise in the peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen, as I think, but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and preparing to start away with it: the meaning of the glance, so far as it can be marked by the mere incision of the chisel, will be felt by comparing it with the eye of the couchant figure on the right, in its gloomy and angry brooding. The plan of this head, and the nod of the cap over its brow, are fine; but there is a little touch above the hand especially well meant: the fellow is vexed and puzzled in his malice; and his hand is pressed hard on his cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is _wrinkled_ under the eye by the pressure. The whole, indeed, looks wretchedly coarse, when it is seen on a scale in which it is naturally compared with delicate figure etchings; but considering it as a mere filling of an interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as one of more than three hundred (for in my estimate I did not include the outer pedestals), it proves very noble vitality in the art of the time. XXIV. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment--was the carver happy while he was about it? It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in it; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living. How much of the stone mason's toil this condition would exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke, on the whole façade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done. And so long as they do so they are merely loading your walls with shapes of clay: the garlands of everlastings in Père la Chaise are more cheerful ornaments. You cannot get the feeling by paying for it--money will not buy life. I am not sure even that you can get it by watching or waiting for it. It is true that here and there a workman may be found who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in the inferior work--he struggles forward into an Academician; and from the mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone--how recoverable I know not: this only I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural ornament, in the present condition of that power, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice's sake, or worse. I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical color-mosaic, and that much might result from our strenuously taking up this mode of design. But, at all events, one thing we have in our power--the doing without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the stamped metals, and artificial stones, and imitation woods and bronzes, over the invention of which we hear daily exultation--all the short, and cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honor--are just so many new obstacles in our already encumbered road. They will not make one of us happier or wiser--they will extend neither the pride of judgment nor the privilege of enjoyment. They will only make us shallower in our understandings, colder in our hearts, and feebler in our wits. And most justly. For we are not sent into this world to do any thing into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heartily: neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be spared if it is not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It does not become our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with its authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which it can dispense, to come between it and the things it rules: and he who would form the creations of his own mind by any other instrument than his own hand, would, also, if he might, give grinding organs to Heaven's angels, to make their music easier. There is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sensuality enough in human existence without our turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism; and since our life must at the best be but a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel. CHAPTER VI. THE LAMP OF MEMORY. I. Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained; and the far-reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was Spring time, too; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulæ: and there was the oxalis, troop by troop like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges--ivy as light and lovely as the vine; and ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-colored moss. I came out presently on the edge of the ravine; the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with a fall of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavored, in order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music[15]; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colors of human endurance, valor, and virtue; and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of Joux and the four-square keep of Granson. II. It is as the centralisation and protectress of this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears! how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world: there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality; it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is impossible to overrate; the first, to render the architecture of the day historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of past ages. III. It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men would generally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily and honorably, they would be grieved at the close of them to think that the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in all their honor, their gladness, or their suffering,--that this, with all the record it bare of them, and all of material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon--was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm monument in the heart and house to them; that all that they ever treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples--temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honor, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up in mildewed forwardness out of the kneaded fields about our capital--upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone--upon those gloomy rows of formalised minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar--not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground; that those comfortless and unhonored dwellings are the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change. IV. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil: it is ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonored both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their children what they have been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. V. I look to this spirit of honorable, proud, peaceful self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two stories above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, _Il. n'est. rose. sans. épine_; it has also only a ground floor and two stories, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiæ. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. VI. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, I will say presently, under another head; but, at all events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier:-- "Mit herzlichem Vertrauen Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi Dieses Haus bauen lassen. Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren Vor allem Unglück und Gefahren, Und es in Segen lassen stehn Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, Wo alle Frommen wohnen, Da wird Gott sie belohnen Mit der Friedenskrone Zu alle Ewigkeit." VII. In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,--I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to classical,--that it admits of a richness of record altogether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be known of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important features--capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast: that of unmanageable costume; nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle "che die legge," and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay. The capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding with Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds (Plate V.), and then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then the national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries subject to Venetian rule. VIII. Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with bas-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work be better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of care in the points which insure the building's endurance. And as this question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at some length. IX. The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labor for its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include not only the companions, but the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one of the appointed conditions of the labor of men that, in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of what we have labored for, the more wide and rich will be the measure of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave. X. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, for futurity. Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations; it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and color, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess of language and of life. XI. For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of good composition under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque." It is of some importance to our present purpose to determine the true meaning of this expression, as it is now generally used; for there is a principle to be developed from that use which, while it has occultly been the ground of much that is true and just in our judgment of art, has never been so far understood as to become definitely serviceable. Probably no word in the language (exclusive of theological expressions), has been the subject of so frequent or so prolonged dispute; yet none remained more vague in their acceptance, and it seems to me to be a matter of no small interest to investigate the essence of that idea which all feel, and (to appearance) with respect to similar things, and yet which every attempt to define has, as I believe, ended either in mere enumeration of the effects and objects to which the term has been attached, or else in attempts at abstraction more palpably nugatory than any which have disgraced metaphysical investigation on other subjects. A recent critic on Art, for instance, has gravely advanced the theory that the essence of the picturesque consists in the expression of "universal decay." It would be curious to see the result of an attempt to illustrate this idea of the picturesque, in a painting of dead flowers and decayed fruit, and equally curious to trace the steps of any reasoning which, on such a theory, should account for the picturesqueness of an ass colt as opposed to a horse foal. But there is much excuse for even the most utter failure in reasonings of this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to human reason; and the idea is itself so varied in the minds of different men, according to their subjects of study, that no definition can be expected to embrace more than a certain number of its infinitely multiplied forms. XII. That peculiar character, however, which separates the picturesque from the characters of subject belonging to the higher walks of art (and this is all that is necessary for our present purpose to define), may be shortly and decisively expressed. Picturesqueness, in this sense, is _Parasitical Sublimity_. Of course all sublimity, as well as all beauty, is, in the simple etymological sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to become the subject of a picture; and all sublimity is, even in the peculiar sense which I am endeavoring to develope, picturesque, as opposed to beauty; that is to say, there is more picturesqueness in the subject of Michael Angelo than of Perugino, in proportion to the prevalence of the sublime element over the beautiful. But that character, of which the extreme pursuit is generally admitted to be degrading to art, is _parasitical_ sublimity; _i.e._, a sublimity dependent on the accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to which it belongs; and the picturesque is _developed distinctively exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought of those points of character in which the sublimity is found_. Two ideas, therefore, are essential to picturesqueness,--the first, that of sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque at all, and becomes so only as the sublime element mixes with it), and the second, the subordinate or parasitical position of that sublimity. Of course, therefore, whatever characters of line or shade or expression are productive of sublimity, will become productive of picturesqueness; what these characters are I shall endeavor hereafter to show at length; but, among those which are generally acknowledged, I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous oppositions of light and shadow, and grave, deep, or boldly contrasted color; and all these are in a still higher degree effective, when, by resemblance or association, they remind us of objects on which a true and essential sublimity exists, as of rocks or mountains, or stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, or any others of a higher and more abstract sublimity, be found in the very heart and substance of what we contemplate, as the sublimity of Michael Angelo depends on the expression of mental character in his figures far more than even on the noble lines of their arrangement, the art which represents such characters cannot be properly called picturesque: but, if they be found in the accidental or external qualities, the distinctive picturesque will be the result. XIII. Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are employed only to make the contours of the features thoroughly felt; and to those features themselves the mind of the observer is exclusively directed (that is to say, to the essential characters of the thing represented). All power and all sublimity rest on these; the shadows are used only for the sake of the features. On the contrary, by Rembrandt, Salvator, or Caravaggio, the features are used _for the sake of the shadows_; and the attention is directed, and the power of the painter addressed to characters of accidental light and shade cast across or around those features. In the case of Rembrandt there is often an essential sublimity in invention and expression besides, and always a high degree of it in the light and shade itself; but it is for the most part parasitical or engrafted sublimity as regards the subject of the painting, and, just so far, picturesque. XIV. Again, in the management of the sculptures of the Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as a dark field on which the forms are drawn. This is visibly the case in the metopes, and must have been nearly as much so in the pediment. But the use of that shadow is entirely to show the confines of the figures; and it is to _their lines_, and not to the shapes of the shadows behind them, that the art and the eye are addressed. The figures themselves are conceived as much as possible in full light, aided by bright reflections; they are drawn exactly as, on vases, white figures on a dark ground: and the sculptors have dispensed with, or even struggled to avoid, all shadows which were not absolutely necessary to the explaining of the form. On the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a subject of thought. It is considered as a dark color, to be arranged in certain agreeable masses; the figures are very frequently made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions: and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms underneath, in order to increase the complexity and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and painting, two, in some sort, opposite schools, of which the one follows for its subject the essential forms of things, and the other the accidental lights and shades upon them. There are various degrees of their contrariety: middle steps, as in the works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility and of degradation in the several manners: but the one is always recognised as the pure, and the other as the picturesque school. Portions of picturesque treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure and unpicturesque in Gothic; and in both there are countless instances, as pre-eminently in the works of Michael Angelo, in which shadows become valuable as media of expression, and therefore take rank among essential characteristics. Into these multitudinous distinctions and exceptions I cannot now enter, desiring only to prove the broad applicability of the general definition. XV. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between essential and inessential forms. One of the chief distinctions between the dramatic and picturesque schools of sculpture is found in the treatment of the hair. By the artists of the time of Pericles it was considered as an excrescence,[16] indicated by few and rude lines, and subordinated in every particular to the principality of the features and person. How completely this was an artistical, not a national idea, it is unnecessary to prove. We need but remember the employment of the Lacedæmonians, reported by the Persian spy on the evening before the battle of Thermopylæ, or glance at any Homeric description of ideal form, to see how purely _sculpturesque_ was the law which reduced the markings of the hair, lest, under the necessary disadvantages of material, they should interfere with the distinctness of the personal forms. On the contrary, in later sculpture, the hair receives almost the principal care of the workman; and while the features and limbs are clumsily and bluntly executed, the hair is curled and twisted, cut into bold and shadowy projections, and arranged in masses elaborately ornamental: there is true sublimity in the lines and the chiaroscuro of these masses, but it is, as regards the creature represented, parasitical, and therefore picturesque. In the same sense we may understand the application of the term to modern animal painting, distinguished as it has been by peculiar attention to the colors, lustre, and texture of skin; nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and principal attributes, as perhaps more than all others in the horse, we do not call them picturesque, but consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated with pure historical subject. Exactly in proportion as their character of sublimity passes into excrescences;--into mane and beard as in the lion, into horns as in the stag, into shaggy hide as in the instance above given of the ass colt, into variegation as in the zebra, or into plumage,--they become picturesque, and are so in art exactly in proportion to the prominence of these excrescential characters. It may often be most expedient that they should be prominent; often there is in them the highest degree of majesty, as in those of the leopard and boar; and in the hands of men like Tintoret and Rubens, such attributes become means of deepening the very highest and most ideal impressions. But the picturesque direction of their thoughts is always distinctly recognizable, as clinging to the surface, to the less essential character, and as developing out of this a sublimity different from that of the creature itself; a sublimity which is, in a sort, common to all the objects of creation, and the same in its constituent elements, whether it be sought in the clefts and folds of shaggy hair, or in the chasms and rents of rocks, or in the hanging of thickets or hill sides, or in the alternations of gaiety and gloom in the variegation of the shell, the plume, or the cloud. XVI. Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly inconsistent with the preservation of original character, and the picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of color and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of a building consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential character; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by the weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of such a period would necessitate. XVII. It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degree dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite serpentine, or crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. XVIII. It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the architecture we possess: but a few words may be forgiven, as especially necessary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word _restoration_ understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered; a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is _impossible_, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as for direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, or cost can secure it?), how is the new work better than the old? There was yet in the old _some_ life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate 14, as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them? The first step to restoration (I have seen it, and that again and again, seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux), is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and however labored, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained or even attempted. XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care; but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent it. The principle of modern times (a principle which I believe, at least in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,) is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at _any_ cost from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid; better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonoring and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. XX. Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. _We have no right whatever to touch them._ They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them: that which they labored for, the praise of achievement or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to throw down; but what other men gave their strength, and wealth, and life to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That sorrow, that loss we have no right to inflict. Did the cathedral of Avranches belong to the mob who destroyed it, any more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex; nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If ever valid, certainly not now when the place both of the past and future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertions, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates. The only influence which can in any wise _there_ take the place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: like him who sat so often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark streets of Verona. CHAPTER VII. THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. I. It has been my endeavor to show in the preceding pages how every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,--Obedience. Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty; most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. In one of the noblest poems[17] for its imagery and its music belonging to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe because eternal? How could he otherwise? since if there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. II. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of committing a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean license, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool equality, by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and truest is, Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else its would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the things governed and the laws of general sway to which they are subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both honor and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold." III. Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labor it concentrates or whose interest it concerns. This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. And taking into account also what we have before so often observed of Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action dependent on far more severe laws than theirs; that the license which they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, amidst the counter evidence of success attending opposite accidents of character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of wealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a school, that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or its coin. IV. A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called upon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman or Saxon, or Norman or English laws. But it is of considerable importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, and that code accepted and enforced from one side of the island to another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another in Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything whether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colors, or new modes of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of color, the general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck, who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental bye-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that would be both an uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs which have been enough for the support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to understand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them beforehand; and if, as is usual with _appointed_ changes, they be into a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, to rest for the time being, contented with the conditions of its existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its present state is appointed and continued. V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with respect to either, are ever to be sought in themselves, or can ever be healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of tastes; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit architecture and all art, like other things, to English law. VI. I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish until that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government) our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until the first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It may be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: I have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and treasuries, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, not create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it universally. VII. How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily determine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching any other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or the breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license might be permitted; and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And thus in process of time and by a great national movement, it might come to pass, that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several building, large or small, domestic, civil, or ecclesiastical. I have said that it was immaterial what style was adopted, so far as regards the room for originality which its developement would admit: it is not so, however, when we take into consideration the far more important questions of the facility of adaptation to general purposes, and of the sympathy with which this or that style would be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or Gothic, again using the latter term in its broadest sense, may be questionable when it regards some single and considerable public building; but I cannot conceive it questionable, for an instant, when it regards modern uses in general: I cannot conceive any architect insane enough to project the vulgarization of Greek architecture. Neither can it be rationally questionable whether we should adopt early or late, original or derivative Gothic: if the latter were chosen, it must be either some impotent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly impossible to limit or arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We are equally precluded from adopting styles essentially infantine or barbarous, however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their outlawry, such as our own Norman, or the Lombard Romanesque. The choice would lie I think between four styles:--1. The Pisan Romanesque; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Republics, advanced as far and as fast as our art would enable us to the Gothic of Giotto; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest developement; 4. The English earliest decorated. The most natural, perhaps the safest choice, would be of the last, well fenced from chance of again stiffening into the perpendicular; and perhaps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements from the exquisite decorated Gothic of France, of which, in such cases, it would be needful to accept some well known examples, as the North door of Rouen and the church of St. Urbain at Troyes, for final and limiting authorities on the side of decoration. VIII. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in our present state of doubt and ignorance, the sudden dawn of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing sense of power and facility, and, in its _proper sense_, of Freedom, which such wholesome restraint would instantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. Freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half the discomforts of the world; freed from the accompanying necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible styles; and enabled, by concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous, as a child's would be within a walled garden, who would sit down and shudder if he were left free in a fenceless plain. How many and how bright would be the results in every direction of interest, not to the arts merely, but to national happiness and virtue, it would be as difficult to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state: but the first, perhaps the least, of them would be an increased sense of fellowship among ourselves, a cementing of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and happy recognition of our affection for and sympathy with each other, and our willingness in all things to submit ourselves to every law that would advance the interest of the community; a barrier, also, the best conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper and middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establishments; and even a check to much of what is as vain as it is painful in the oppositions of religious parties respecting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be the first consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it would be by the simplicity of practice; domestic comforts uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes of architects ignorant of the capacities of the styles they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our harmonized streets and public buildings, are things of slighter account in the catalogue of benefits. But it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavor to trace them farther. I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have more immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it may be only contingently in our power to recover. I should be unjustly thought unaware of the difficulty of what I have proposed, or of the unimportance of the whole subject as compared with many which are brought home to our interests and fixed upon our consideration by the wild course of the present century. But of difficulty and of importance it is for others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement of what, if we desire to have architecture, we MUST primarily endeavor to feel and do: but then it may not be desirable for us to have architecture at all. There are many who feel it to be so; many who sacrifice much to that end; and I am sorry to see their energies wasted and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, therefore, the only ways in which that end is attainable, without venturing even to express an opinion as to its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the zeal with which I have spoken may sometimes have betrayed it, but I hold to it with no confidence. I know too well the undue importance which the study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of Architecture; and yet I think I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding it as at least useful in the sense of a National employment. I am confirmed in this impression by what I see passing among the states of Europe at this instant. All the horror, distress, and tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are traceable, among the other secondary causes through which God is working out His will upon them, to the simple one of their not having enough to do. I am not blind to the distress among their operatives; nor do I deny the nearer and visibly active causes of the movement: the recklessness of villany in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, and of common courage and honesty in the heads of governments. But these causes themselves are ultimately traceable to a deeper and simpler one: the recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most fruitful cause of calamity in households--idleness. We think too much in our benevolent efforts, more multiplied and more vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and instruction. There are few who will take either: the chief thing they need is occupation. I do not mean work in the sense of bread,--I mean work in the sense of mental interest; for those who either are placed above the necessity of labor for their bread, or who will not work although they should. There is a vast quantity of idle energy among European nations at this time, which ought to go into handicrafts; there are multitudes of idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be shoemakers and carpenters; but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the business of the philanthropist is to find them some other employment than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell them they are fools, and that they will only make themselves miserable in the end as well as others: if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief; and the man who will not work, and who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. I have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young educated men of France and Italy, to account for, as it deserves, the deepest national suffering and degradation; and though, for the most part, our commerce and our natural habits of industry preserve us from a similar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider whether the forms of employment which we chiefly adopt or promote, are as well calculated as they might be to improve and elevate us. We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty millions, with which we have paid men for digging ground from one place and depositing it in another. We have formed a large class of men, the railway navvies, especially reckless, unmanageable, and dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the benefits as fairly as possible) a number of iron founders in an unhealthy and painful employment; we have developed (this is at least good) a very large amount of mechanical ingenuity; and we have, in fine, attained the power of going fast from one place to another. Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern ourselves in the operations we have set on foot, but have been left to the usual vanities and cares of our existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we had employed the same sums in building beautiful houses and churches. We should have maintained the same number of men, not in driving wheelbarrows, but in a distinctly technical, if not intellectual, employment, and those who were more intelligent among them would have been especially happy in that employment, as having room in it for the developement of their fancy, and being directed by it to that observation of beauty which, associated with the pursuit of natural science, at present forms the enjoyment of many of the more intelligent manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical ingenuity, there is, I imagine, at least as much required to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a locomotive: we should, therefore, have developed as much science, while the artistical element of intellect would have been added to the gain. Meantime we should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by the interest we should have taken in the work with which we were personally concerned; and when all was done, instead of the very doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place, we should have had the certain advantage of increased pleasure in stopping at home. IX. There are many other less capacious, but more constant, channels of expenditure, quite as disputable in their beneficial tendency; and we are, perhaps, hardly enough in the habit of inquiring, with respect to any particular form of luxury or any customary appliance of life, whether the kind of employment it gives to the operative or the dependant be as healthy and fitting an employment as we might otherwise provide for him. It is not enough to find men absolute subsistence; we should think of the manner of life which our demands necessitate; and endeavor, as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the supply of them, raise, as well as feed, the poor. It is far better to give work which is above the men, than to educate the men to be above their work. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the habits of luxury, which necessitate a large train of men servants, be a wholesome form of expenditure; and more, whether the pursuits which have a tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey and the groom be a philanthropic form of mental occupation. So again, consider the large number of men whose lives are employed by civilized nations in cutting facets upon jewels. There is much dexterity of hand, patience, and ingenuity thus bestowed, which are simply burned out in the blaze of the tiara, without, so far as I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or who behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental power which are involved in the employment of the workman. He would be far more healthily and happily sustained by being set to carve stone; certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no room in his present occupation, would develope themselves in the nobler; and I believe that most women would, in the end, prefer the pleasure of having built a church, or contributed to the adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of bearing a certain quantity of adamant on their foreheads. X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to set down. I content myself with finally reasserting, what has been throughout the burden of the preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever importance, may be attributed or attached to their immediate subject, there is at least some value in the analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and some instruction in the frequent reference of its commonest necessities to the mighty laws, in the sense and scope of which all men are Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or the stone. I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have checked the course of what might otherwise have been importunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with hands. There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. NOTES NOTE I. Page 21. _"With the idolatrous Egyptian."_ The probability is indeed slight in comparison, but it _is_ a probability nevertheless, and one which is daily on the increase. I trust that I may not be thought to underrate the danger of such sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of it. I have confidence in the central religious body of the English and Scottish people, as being not only untainted with Romanism, but immoveably adverse to it: and, however strangely and swiftly the heresy of the Protestant and victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among us, I feel assured that there are barriers in the living faith of this nation which neither can overpass. Yet this confidence is only in the ultimate faithfulness of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and the punishment of partial apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been committed and suffered already; and, in expressing my belief of the close connection of the distress and burden which the mass of the people at present sustain, with the encouragement which, in various directions, has been given to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or irrational. No man was ever more inclined than I, both by natural disposition and by many ties of early association, to a sympathy with the principles and forms of the Romanist Church; and there is much in its discipline which conscientiously, as well as sympathetically, I could love and advocate. But, in confessing this strength of affectionate prejudice, surely I vindicate more respect for my firmly expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and system of that Church is in the fullest sense anti-Christian; that its lying and idolatrous Power is the darkest plague that ever held commission to hurt the Earth; that all those yearnings for unity and fellowship, and common obedience, which have been the root of our late heresies, are as false in their grounds as fatal in their termination; that we never can have the remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful Falsehood, and live; that we have nothing to look to from them but treacherous hostility; and that, exactly in proportion to the sternness of our separation from them, will be not only the spiritual but the temporal blessings granted by God to this country. How close has been the correspondence hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism marked in our national acts, and the honor with which those acts have been crowned, has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer whose investigations into the influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have been singularly earnest and successful--a writer with whom I faithfully and firmly believe that England will never be prosperous again, and that the honor of her arms will be tarnished, and her commerce blighted, and her national character degraded, until the Romanist is expelled from the place which has impiously been conceded to him among her legislators. "Whatever be the lot of those to whom error is an inheritance, woe be to the man and the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, free above all other nations, sustained amidst the trials which have covered Europe, before her eyes, with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by the fullest knowledge of divine truth, shall refuse fidelity to the compact by which those matchless privileges have been given, her condemnation will not linger. She has already made one step full of danger. She has committed the capital error of mistaking that for a purely political question which was a purely religious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge of the precipice. It must be retracted, or the empire is but a name. In the clouds and darkness which seem to be deepening on all human policy--in the gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home--it may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives to erect the fallen majesty of the constitution once more. But there are mighty means in sincerity; and if no miracle was ever wrought for the faithless and despairing, the country that will help itself will never be left destitute of the help of Heaven" (Historical Essays, by the Rev. Dr. Croly, 1842). The first of these essays, "England the Fortress of Christianity," I most earnestly recommend to the meditation of those who doubt that a special punishment is inflicted by the Deity upon all national crime, and perhaps, of all such crime most instantly upon the betrayal on the part of England of the truth and faith with which she has been entrusted. NOTE II. Page 25. "_Not the gift, but the giving._" Much attention has lately been directed to the subject of religious art, and we are now in possession of all kinds of interpretations and classifications of it, and of the leading facts of its history. But the greatest question of all connected with it remains entirely unanswered, What good did it do to real religion? There is no subject into which I should so much rejoice to see a serious and conscientious inquiry instituted as this; an inquiry neither undertaken in artistical enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless and fearless. I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but there is a wide difference between loving it as a manifestation of individual feeling, and looking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have not knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and I should be most grateful to any one who would put it in my power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct questions to be considered: the first, What has been the effect of external splendor on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian worship? the second, What the use of pictorial or sculptural representation in the communication of Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affectionate imagination? the third, What the influence of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist? In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately every collateral influence and circumstance; and, by a most subtle analysis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the abuses with which it was associated. This could be done only by a Christian; not a man who would fall in love with a sweet color or sweet expression, but who would look for true faith and consistent life as the object of all. It never has been done yet, and the question remains a subject of vain and endless contention between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments. NOTE III. Page 26. _"To the concealment of what is really good or great."_ I have often been surprised at the supposition that Romanism, In its present condition, could either patronise art or profit by it. The noble painted windows of St. Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in France, are entirely blocked up behind the altars by the erection of huge gilded wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cherubs. NOTE IV. Page 33. _"With different pattern of traceries in each."_ I have certainly not examined the seven hundred and four traceries (four to each niche) so as to be sure that none are alike; but they have the aspect of continual variation, and even the roses of the pendants of the small groined niche roofs are all of different patterns. NOTE V. Page 43. "_Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms._" They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as forming the figure of the fleur-de-lis, always a mark, when in tracery bars, of the most debased flamboyant. It occurs in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the buttresses of St. Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of the domestic buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St. Ouen which is overrated. Its nave is a base imitation, in the flamboyant period, of an early Gothic arrangement; the niches on its piers are barbarisms; there is a huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the aisles to support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on a Gothic building; the traceries of the nave are the most insipid and faded flamboyant; those of the transept clerestory present a singularly distorted condition of perpendicular; even the elaborate door of the south transept is, for its fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque in its foliation and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the circle of Eastern chapels, the details of sculpture, and the general lightness of proportion; these merits being seen to the utmost advantage by the freedom of the body of the church from all incumbrance. NOTE VI. Page 43. Compare Iliad [Greek: S]. 1. 219 with Odyssey [Greek: Ô]. 1. 5-10. NOTE VII. Page 44. "_Does not admit iron as a constructive material._" Except in Chaucer's noble temple of Mars. "And dounward from an hill under a bent, Ther stood the temple of Mars, armipotent, Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see. And thereout came a rage and swiche a vise, That it made all the gates for to rise. The northern light in at the dore shone, For window on the wall ne was ther none, Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne The dore was all of athamant eterne, Yclenched overthwart and ende long With yren tough, and for to make it strong, Every piler the temple to sustene Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene." _The Knighte's Tale._ There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural color just before: "And northward, in a turret on the wall _Of alabaster white, and red corall_, An oratorie riche for to see, In worship of Diane of Chastitee." NOTE VIII. Page 44. _"The Builders of Salisbury."_ "This way of tying walls together with iron, instead of making them of that substance and form, that they shall naturally poise themselves upon their buttment, is against the rules of good architecture, not only because iron is corruptible by rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the metal, some places of the same bar being three times stronger than others, and yet all sound to appearance." Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren. For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with iron, than to support a false dome by a brick pyramid. NOTE IX. Page 60. PLATE III. In this plate, figures 4, 5, and 6, are glazed windows, but fig. 2 is the open light of a belfry tower, and figures 1 and 3 are in triforia, the latter also occurring filled, on the central tower of Coutances. NOTE X. Page 94. _"Ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen."_ The reader cannot but observe agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of shade, which especially belongs to the "sacred trefoil." I do not think that the element of foliation has been enough insisted upon in its intimate relations with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what was the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the Trefoil. It is the very soul of it; and I think the loveliest Gothic is always formed upon simple and bold tracings of it, taking place between the blank lancet arch on the one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled arch on the other. NOTE XI. Page 95. "_And levelled cusps of stone._" The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third story of the Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear in somewhat distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central windows. I found by measurement their construction exceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact within the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow cross. An inner circle struck through the intersections of the circles by the tangents, truncates the cusps. NOTE XII. Page 124. "_Into vertical equal parts._" Not absolutely so. There are variations partly accidental (or at least compelled by the architect's effort to recover the vertical), between the sides of the stories; and the upper and lower story are taller than the rest. There is, however, an apparent equality between five out of the eight tiers. NOTE XIII. Page 133. "_Never paint a column with vertical lines._" It should be observed, however, that any pattern which gives opponent lines in its parts, may be arranged on lines parallel with the main structure. Thus, rows of diamonds, like spots on a snake's back, or the bones on a sturgeon, are exquisitely applied both to vertical and spiral columns. The loveliest instances of such decoration that I know, are the pillars of the cloister of St. John Lateran, lately illustrated by Mr. Digby Wyatt, in his most valuable and faithful work on antique mosaic. NOTE XIV. Page 139. On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of the same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at Florence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harry Rogers, for his intelligent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptation of the connecting arabesque. (Stamp on cloth cover of _London_ edition.) NOTE XV. Page 169. "_The flowers lost their light, the river its music._" Yet not all their light, nor all their music. Compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. 1. chap. iv. SECTION 8. NOTE XVI. Page 181. "_By the artists of the time of Perides._" This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, whose profound knowledge of Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the advantage of his friends only: Mr. C. Newton, of the British Museum. NOTE XVII. Page 188. "_In one of the noblest poems._" Coleridge's Ode to France: "Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may control! Ye Ocean-Waves! that wheresoe'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws! Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing. Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea, everything that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty." Noble verse, but erring thought: contrast George Herbert:-- "Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths, Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man? Houses are built by rule and Commonwealths. Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky. Who lives by rule then, keeps good company. "Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack, And rots to nothing at the next great thaw; Man is a shop of rules: a well-truss'd pack Whose every parcel underwrites a law. Lose not thyself, nor give thy humors way; God gave them to thee under lock and key." TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES 1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. 2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. 3. Numbered subscript is represented using underscore. For instance, a_2 indicates letter a with subscript 2. 4. The original text includes certain characters with overline. For this version, such letters have been preceeded with equals sign enclosed in square brackets. For instance, [=a] indicates letter a with overline. 
37049	----	[Illustration: LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF LICHFIELD A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY A. B. CLIFTON WITH FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration] LONDON, GEORGE BELL & SONS, 1900 _First published February 1898_ _Second Edition revised February 1900_ W. H. WHITE AND CO., LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archaeology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archaeological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE, EDWARD E. F. STRANGE, _Editors of the Series_. AUTHOR'S PREFACE Concerning any old Cathedral the mass of information is very great, and the authorities to be consulted many; and perhaps the almost total absence--as in this case--of a documentary history of the building of the fabric, makes for a larger bulk of pamphlets and of communications to the antiquarian journals. Whether or no theory be wiser than fact, it is certainly more voluminous. Besides the books and papers mentioned in their place, I have especially to express my indebtedness to the work on Lichfield by the Rev. William Beresford, one of the "Diocesan Histories" Series, and to the "Handbook of Lichfield Cathedral" by the late John Hewitt, the well-known antiquarian. I have also to thank Mr R. R. Redmayne of Lichfield for much valuable information, as also Mr C. Harradine, the Principal Verger, whose interest in and knowledge of the Cathedral are well known in Lichfield; and the Photochrom Co. Ltd., Messrs S. B. Bolas & Co., and Mr F. G. M. Beaumont, for the excellent photographs they have allowed me to reproduce. A. B. CLIFTON. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--History of the Cathedral 3 CHAPTER II.--Description of the Exterior 30 The Close 33 Bishop's Palace 34 Spires 35 West Front 39 North Doorway 48 Lady Chapel 50 South Transept 51 Bells 52 CHAPTER III.--Description of the Interior 54 Nave 54 Pulpit, Lectern, etc. 64 North Aisle of Nave--Monuments and Glass 64 South Aisle of Nave--Monuments and Glass 67 Transepts 67 Organ 71 Choir 75 Screen and Stalls 84 Reredos 87 Sedilia and Pavements 88 Monuments and Glass in the Choir 91 Lady Chapel 99 Sacristy and Chapel of St. Chad's Head 106 Chapter-House 110 Library 113 CHAPTER IV.--History of the See 117 DIMENSIONS 136 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Cathedral from the West _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title page_ South Prospect of the Cathedral (Old Print) 2 Cathedral from Stowe Church (Old Print) 13 Ancient Gateway in the Close 17 South Transept in 1813--Exterior 23 Cathedral from the South 31 Cathedral from the Minster Pool 37 Great West Doorway in 1813 42 Great West Doorway 43 Southern Doorway in West Front 46 Bay of the Nave--Exterior 48 North Entrance in 1813 49 Bay of the Choir--Exterior 50 Doorway of South Transept 51 Bay of the Nave--Interior 55 Bay of the Choir--Interior 56 Nave in 1813--Interior 57 Nave, looking East 59 Nave, looking West 61 North Aisle of Nave, looking East 64 Arcade with Semi-Effigy 68 Detail of Semi-Effigy 69 Choir in 1820--Interior 77 Choir, looking East 79 South Choir Aisle 80 Choir, looking West 81 Under the Central Tower 85 Reredos 89 The Sleeping Children 95 Fresco in South Choir Aisle 97 Brackets in Lady Chapel 99 Lady Chapel 101 Brackets in Lady Chapel 104 Capital in Chapter-House 108 Chapter-House 109 Arcade in Chapter-House 111 The Gospels of St. Chad 115 Monument to Dr Johnson 136 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL 137 [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.] CHAPTER I THE HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL The cathedral of Lichfield, as we now know it, was built at various times in the thirteenth century and the early part of the fourteenth; and but for some comparatively slight and obvious alterations, it is therefore entirely in the styles known as Early English and Decorated. Unhappily nearly all the early archives and documents belonging to the cathedral are lost, having been destroyed in the time of the Civil Wars by the soldiery who sacked the place after the siege of the close by the forces of the Parliament. The absence of all documentary evidence as to the dates of the various parts of the cathedral has been much regretted by antiquarians, since it would be hard to find a better example of the gradual change which English church architecture was undergoing during the very busy period when this cathedral must have been built. Here we have the rigid simplicity of the Early English style in the transepts, giving place in the nave to the luxury of the Early Decorated, with its geometrical tracery; while in the Lady Chapel and presbytery we find an example, in some respects unique, of the gorgeousness of the completely evolved Decorated style. To know exactly when each part was built would be to add to our knowledge of architectural chronology; but instead, we must employ what knowledge we already possess, and by a process the very converse of what we could wish to have been able to use, we can arrive at an approximate history of the structure of the cathedral. Not so long ago Oswy had the credit of having built the cathedral, and later it was set down to Roger de Clinton. Modern criticism as easily disposes of the claims of the latter as of the former, and there can be no doubt that no part of the present cathedral is of earlier date than 1200 A.D. Much valuable information as to the cathedral, which Clinton may have had a part in building, was obtained in 1860, when, for the alterations which were then in progress, excavations were made in the choir. The result of his investigations Professor Willis published in an article in the _Archaeological Journal_ for 1861, entitled "Memoir on the Foundations of Early Buildings recently discovered at Lichfield Cathedral," and the theory which he there set out as to the history of the cathedral has been generally accepted by antiquarians. Nothing can be more interesting than this article, but it is too full of detail for anything beyond the bare results of Professor Willis's reasoning to be given here: these are set out in their place. Of the early Saxon church which was erected on this site practically nothing is known, but it is supposed to have been built by Bishop Hedda at the close of the seventh century, and of stone taken from Roman ruins in the neighbourhood, though there is really no evidence to support this theory. The desire to find another instance of the waste material and sites once dedicated to a pagan religion being used by the victorious Christian church may have something to do with such a legend. Nothing except tradition is left of this church, to which it is said the bones of St. Chad were removed from Stowe. Probably in the four or five hundred years which elapsed before the Norman cathedral was built, several churches succeeded one another on or about the present site: whatever happened, we know nothing. Our real knowledge commences with the Norman cathedral. The excavations already spoken of laid bare small portions of its foundations, and from these Professor Willis decided that the Norman choir had a semi-circular apse, and extended from the central tower to about the middle of the fifth bay of the present choir; while the exterior line of its side walls nearly corresponded with the interior line of the present aisle. The Norman building probably possessed transepts, but these certainly had no aisles; the rest is conjecture, but from other Norman cathedrals and churches which are in existence we can fairly well imagine what it was like. The altar probably stood over the centre of the semi-circle of the apse, while the bishop's throne was behind it, facing west, with the canons' stalls spreading out down the choir, and the choir stalls continuing them right down under the tower into the nave: or perhaps there were no seats for the choir in those days--we do not know; but there must have been a processional path round the altar. We can imagine, too, the massive masonry of the pillars with their heavy capitals and circular arches. To think of a Norman church is to think possibly of Peterborough; and Lichfield Cathedral, no doubt, was like that minster, but on a very much smaller scale. There is no record as to when the Norman church was built, but Robert de Lymesey, the bishop, is said in 1088 to have used a large quantity of silver, which he took from the church at Coventry, in extensive buildings in Lichfield; and Roger de Clinton is declared to have exalted the church as well in building as in honour, so he may have erected, or helped to erect, the Norman cathedral. Nothing whatever remains above ground of this building, which was probably taken down gradually while the cathedral which now stands in its place was being erected. Before this was done, however, there was added a rectangular chapel to the east of the Norman apsidal choir, which, with it, must have extended nearly to the end of the seventh bay of the present choir. Nothing is known of it beyond the fact that the foundations were discovered and examined by Professor Willis, who decided that it was probably built late in the twelfth century, and that its existence, if it was ever finished, must have been short. Very early in the thirteenth century the first part of the present building was begun by erecting a rectangular choir just outside the walls of the Norman choir, which must have been then removed. This new Early English choir (including the presbytery) extended from the central tower to the end of the seventh bay of the present choir. It will be found that the eastern portion of this was subsequently removed, but the western half still remains, and can readily be distinguished from the Decorated part. The high altar of this period must have stood just to the west of the space between the fifth piers, thus leaving the space between the fifth and sixth piers as a processional path between the two side aisles; while against the eastern wall were four altars, one at the end of each aisle and two between them. At the same time that this choir was built, was also built on the south side the sacristy, with the room adjoining it: these both remain. The next alteration took place about 1220, and was the erection of a new south transept in place of the Norman one, which, as has been said, almost certainly had no aisle; then followed in about twenty years the north transept and the chapter-house, with its vestibule, all these buildings being in the Early English style, though the difference in their times of erection is clearly marked in their details. Two royal licences to dig Hopwas stone for "the new fabric of the church at Lichfield" in 1235 and 1238 are evidence that work was going on about this time; and the desire of Henry III. (which is more fully set out in the description of the interior of the transept) to have a roof at Windsor like that of Lichfield gives an almost documental certainty to the architectural theory that the transepts were built at the time above stated. No historical document exists that can apply to the building of the nave; but that must have come next, and have been in progress almost before the north transept could have been finished. The west front was commenced somewhere about the beginning of the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and, including the two towers which form such an important part of it, must have taken a very long time to complete. From the thorough examination made when the recent restorations were in progress, it was decided that these towers were built in three distinct stages--the lowest, which just included the row of kings, being assigned to about 1280; the next stage to 1300; and the upper part, including the belfry windows, to about 1330, while the spires were not finished till some time after. Walter de Langton became bishop in 1296, and of him it is distinctly recorded that he commenced the Lady Chapel. From an old register in the Salt Library at Stafford, it appears that Langton left £80, 13s. 3d. for the building of the chapel. He died in 1321. And, in 1323, there is another entry showing that the chapter came to some agreement with his executor by which each party should pay half the cost of finding a quarry for the stone; so that it does not appear that building operations had proceeded very far at his death. It is interesting to note, as the same source shows us, that the money left by the bishop was partly on loan to King Edward II. for the expenses of his wars with Scotland, which wars had ended so disastrously at Bannockburn. In the following reign, Edward III. was asked by the chapter to repay what was still owing of this money. The Lady Chapel was probably erected beyond the eastern end of the church as it then stood; and while this was being done, the Early English presbytery was taken down and rebuilt in the Decorated style to match the new Lady Chapel, and the old clerestory of the choir was also rebuilt in the same style. The main idea was to obtain uniformity; but as it apparently was not proposed to take down the sacristy on the south, nor the chapter-house on the north, it was not considered necessary to pull down the choir--_i.e._ the last three western bays--any lower than the triforium; for the lower parts would be hidden by these buildings from the outside, and inside various shifts were resorted to to obtain uniformity. The work almost certainly grew from east to west gradually, as the clerestory of the choir end is lighter than that of the eastern or presbytery end; so that no doubt the pulling down of the old choir clerestory was only done after the building of the eastern end made it seem better to alter the rest into uniformity. With regard to the inside effect, Professor Willis says: "The front half of their pier arches (those belonging to the three western bays), however was removed and mouldings given them corresponding to those of the new presbytery. Their piers also were slightly altered, although partially concealed by the choir stalls. By these arrangements the aspect of the whole interior of the choir and presbytery was made uniform." How far this theory is sound will be seen when the alterations early in the present century are considered in their place. Bishop Langton also erected the shrine of St. Chad at an expense of £2000. This shrine stood behind the high altar in the most eastern bay of the retro-choir, and, as was usual, had on its western side an altar dedicated to the saint. A similar arrangement can still be seen in Westminster Abbey, where the shrine of Edward the Confessor stands behind the reredos. The space behind the reredos, with the corresponding bays of the aisles, were in the past called the lady choir. This portion was separated from the rest of the choir by the reredos in the centre, and by screens in a line with the reredos in the aisles; there was a chapel in the lady choir at the end of each aisle, but to whom they were dedicated is doubtful. Stukeley, writing in 1715, says: "In St. Peter's Chapel, which is now a place to lay scaffolding and ladders, etc., was painted upon the wall St. Peter crucified with his head downwards, and two other apostles, etc. And in this place is the noted St. Chad's tomb, though defaced, removed from the lady choir to be put here since the Restoration." The same writer also tells us that: "Over across the middle of the said choir was a rood loft, finely carved and gilded, and St. Chad's shrine, but destroyed in time of war." Professor Willis has pointed out the singular parallelism between the development of this cathedral and that of York. "The Norman Cathedral of York was built in 1080, and that of Lichfield at an uncertain date. Between 1154-1181, Archbishop Roger substituted for the original chancel at York a long, square-ended choir, with the aisle carried behind the end. At Lichfield, during the same period, the large chapel was built at the end of the Norman apse; and about the beginning of the thirteenth century the whole Norman eastern termination was, as at York, replaced by a long, square-ended choir with the low aisles behind. Next, at York the Norman transepts were rebuilt in Early English: the south transept, 1230-1241; followed by the north transept, 1241-1260. Also at Lichfield the Norman transepts were rebuilt in Early English, beginning with the south and ending with the north. The Early English work of this cathedral is shown by the licences to dig stone to have been in progress in 1235 and 1238. York nave and Lichfield were next rebuilt in Early Decorated--the first in 1291-1324. Lastly, at Lichfield, the elongation of the eastern part was begun at the extreme east, beyond the existing choir by the Lady Chapel, in late Decorated under Bishop Langton, 1296-1321, and followed by taking down the choir, and continuing the same work on its site westward. The works at York followed in the same order, but forty or fifty years later, by first erecting the presbytery outside the existing choir, and then taking down the latter and continuing the work of the presbytery to form the new choir. The plans of the two cathedrals rival each other in the simplicity of their proportions." One other important thing which Bishop Langton did was to fortify, or at any rate to add greatly to the fortifications of the cathedral. He surrounded the close with a high stone wall and constructed "two beautiful gates" on the west and south sides of the close. Truly, had he been able to see the result of his fortification, he might have said with the Preacher: "All is vanity and vexation of spirit"; for if there was one thing which brought down on the cathedral the extremities of hatred and violence in the Civil Wars, it was that it proved able to be held as a fortress against those who came up against it. Bishop Langton built also the palace, which for so long, with its towers and turrets, stood in the north-east corner of the close. It must have been a magnificent building, and we know that its hall was decorated with frescoes of scenes in the recent wars. It was destroyed after the siege of the close in 1643, and Fuller, writing about that time, speaks of it as the "invisible castle now vanished out of sight." Roger de Norburg completed the Lady Chapel and the new presbytery, and was succeeded by Robert de Stretton, who (as we discover from a document dated 1390, four years after his death) completed St. Chad's shrine; for that is the only meaning which can be given to the wording of the bond, that the vicar's choral should offer prayers for, amongst others, "Robert Stretton, bishop, for making St. Chadd's shrine, and for giving them £24 to continue amongst them." There has recently been discovered among the muniments of the chapter, an indenture dated in 1345 or 1346, and made between the sacrist on the one hand, and the dean and chapter on the other, for the safe custody of the goods in the sacristy. The "goods" are too numerous for a list of them to be given, but they include "the head of Blessed Chad, in a certain painted wooden case; also an arm of Blessed Chad; also bones of the said saint in a certain portable shrine." Then follows a list of the bones and relics of a large number of saints, including part of the sepulchre of Our Lord, and part of St. Peter's cross. There were also crosses, gold, and silver, and jewelled--a large number of many kinds, all set out separately--mitres, jewels, chalices, copes, and every kind of vestment of the most gorgeous description. Bishops and kings and queens had apparently showered their wealth and valuables upon the cathedral; and with the subscriptions of the diocese, known as Chad's Pennies, and the offerings of pilgrims, the riches of the cathedral seem to have been enormous. These "goods," in many cases with their donors' names, are all set out in the roll, which, it is interesting to notice, is dated in the year of the Black Death; possibly the enormous mortality of the time may have made it seem necessary that the mere memory of man should not be depended upon when so few seemed likely to survive. To read the list is to get some notion of the magnificence of the services; and it is no wonder that pilgrims came from all parts of the diocese, and of England, to worship where so many relics were collected. The mid-Sunday in Lent was originally the time, afterwards Whitsuntide, for the crowds to attend the cathedral. They were shown the head of St. Chad, probably from the little gallery in the south aisle of the choir, and then they laid their offerings at the great shrine, on which were lying the other relics of the saint. No doubt the early part of the fifteenth century was the period when the cathedral was most glorious within and without. Fuller, in his "Church History," published in 1655, from which quotation has already been made, after giving an account of the building of the cathedral, says: "But now in the time of the aforesaid William Heyworth, the Cathedral of Litchfield was in the verticall height thereof, being (though not augmented in the essentials) beautified in the ornamentals thereof. Indeed, the West front thereof is a stately Fabrick, adorned with exquisite imagerie, which I suspect our age is so far from being able to imitate the workmanship that it understandeth not the Historie thereof. Surely what Charles the Fifth is said to have said of the citie of Florence, that it is a pittie it should be seen save only on Holy-dayes; as also that it was fit that so fair a Citie should have a Case and Cover for it to keep it from wind and weather, so in some sort, this Fabrick may seem to deserve a shelter to secure it. But alas! it is now in a pittiful case--indeed, almost beaten down to the ground in our civil dissensions. Now, lest the Church should follow the Castle--I mean quite vanish out of view--I have, at the cost of my worthy friend here exemplified the Portraiture thereof; and am glad to hear it to be the design of ingenious persons to preserve ancient churches in the like nature (whereof many are done in this, and more expected in the next part of Monasticon), seeing when their substance is gone, their verie shadows will be acceptable to posteritie." In the fifteenth century a library was built outside the door of the north transept, but a little to the west; it was quite separate from the cathedral. This was one of the gifts of Dean Heywood (1457-1493). It is recorded that he gave £40 towards the building of it, but died before it was completed, and this was done by his successor, Dean Yotton, who also contributed to its erection. According to the statement in "_Anglia Sacra_" it was finished in the year 1500. It is marked in the plan of Browne Willis, 1727, and was taken down about 1750. Some time in this century saw a change in the tracery of many of the windows. It may be that the introduction of printing was responsible for this change, and that the greater amount of light admitted by the windows of the Perpendicular style made their insertion advisable; or it may be that the tracery of windows being naturally fragile, in many cases a renewal became necessary, and the new Gothic style was naturally considered the best. Whatever the reason, the new Perpendicular tracery was inserted in many of the windows just as it was in a large number of cathedrals and churches all over England. In reading the history of the building of this fabric, we cannot help noticing that even the great Gothic builders could not leave well alone. Then, as now, Fashion was the ruling power. Having a Norman church, they altered it into an Early English one; then they pulled down a good deal of this to get a more Decorated building; and finally they changed the windows in order to give the whole a Perpendicular appearance: side by side with other reasons that actuated them, they did their best to keep their cathedral in the fashion. In the sixteenth century, Henry VIII., the great destroyer of religious houses, made but little difference to the fabric of this cathedral, but he laid his hands on the valuables. The shrine of St. Chad was denuded of its jewels, and everything which could be turned into money was taken away, much of it was fortunately returned for the "necessary uses" of the cathedral, but the services and ritual must have been much impaired and their beauty diminished. During that century, however, the cathedral gradually recovered, and we know that early in the next the services were again very much on the same scale of magnificence as they had been when the good bishops Patteshull and Weseham directed the diocese. The next event in the history of the building is one which is necessarily referred to many times in this book. The siege of Lichfield Cathedral is probably the most famous incident in its long career; not only on account of the immense injury done to the fabric itself, to its monuments and its decorations, but also on account of the "miraculous intervention" on behalf of the holy building, an intervention which, viewed with nineteenth-century scepticism, does not appear to have done the cathedral any obvious good, but which at the time appears to have been treated with all the deference due to a genuine miracle. The great Civil War began on August 22, 1642, when Charles I. set up his standard at Nottingham. At Lichfield, as everywhere else in England, there were partisans of both sides. The cathedral group was naturally for the king, while others, for one reason or another, joined either the Royal Party or the Parliamentarian. After Edgehill, which was fought in the autumn, matters became more and more serious in the Midlands; and finally, in February 1643, the Royalists at Lichfield, hearing that at any moment an outbreak might take place, garrisoned the close, which ever since the days of Walter de Langton had been strongly fortified. They hoisted the king's flag on the great steeple, and waited the result. They had not long to wait. With March Lord Brooke, one of the fiercest of anti-churchmen, arrived in command of a strong body of Roundheads, and on the 2nd the siege commenced. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM STOWE CHURCH.] Lord Brooke was a fanatic, and ever fierce against cathedrals: he had, according to the diary of Archbishop Laud, two years before, as he was passing in a boat upon the Thames, said he hoped to see St. Paul's with not one stone left upon another. It was in this spirit that he set about the siege of the cathedral, and of his fate there are many accounts. Perhaps the following, taken from Dugdale's "View of the Late Troubles in England," is as good as any:--"This lord (Lord Brooke) being strangely tainted with fanatic principles, by the influence of one of his near relations, and some schismatical preachers (though in his own nature a very civil and well-humoured man), became thereby so great a zealot against the established discipline of the Church, that no less than the utter extirpation of Episcopacy, and abolishing all decent order in the service of God, would satisfy him; to which end he became leader of all the power he could raise for the destruction of the cathedral of that diocese of Coventry and Litchfield. In order whereunto, when he had marched within half a mile of Litchfield, he drew up his army, and then devoutly prayed a blessing upon his intended works; withal earnestly desiring that God would, by some special token, manifest upon them His approbation of that their design: which being done, he went on and planted his great guns against the south-east gate of the close, himself standing in a window of a little house near thereto, to direct the gunners in their supposed battery; but it so happened that, there being two persons placed in the battlement of the chiefest steeple to make shot with long fouling guns at the cannoniers, upon a sudden accident, which caused the soldiers to give a shout, this lord, coming to the door (completely harnessed with plate armour _cap-à-pie_) was suddenly shot into one of his eyes; but the strength of the bullet, so much abated by the glance thereof on a piece of timber which supported a pentiss over the door, that it only lodged in his brains, whereupon he suddenly fell down dead; nor is it less notable that this accident fell out on the second day of March, which is the festival of that sometime famous Bishop S. Chad, to whose memory Offa, King of the Mercians, first erected this stately church and devoutly dedicated it." Tradition has always asserted that the shot which killed Lord Brooke was fired by one of the sons of Sir Richard Dyott, who, with the Earl of Chesterfield, was commanding the cathedral garrison. This son was deaf and dumb, and was known as "Dumb Dyott." The gun is preserved in the family, and they are supported by other historians, disagreeing with Dugdale, in their account that the shot was no accidental one, but that Dyott, who was an accomplished marksman, recognising Lord Brooke, aimed at him and killed him. In those days--and indeed even to the present day--it was believed that one who was afflicted with dumbness, idiocy, or any natural disease which showed God's hand, was especially His agent. Dumb Dyott was looked upon as being the agent of divine vengeance, and the fact of its being St. Chad's Day strengthened the belief. Here is an extract from a very courtly letter written a few days afterwards by a young cavalier to Lady Dyer; in it the feeling that a miracle had been performed is clearly shown. The writer says: "We have had the honour in these parts to bring my Lord Brooke to a quiet condition. That enemy of our Church (March 2) was slain in his quarrel against our Church, by the God of our Church, with a shot out of the Cathedral, by a bullet made of Church lead, through the mouth which reviled our Church; and (if this be worth your reading) this Cathedral was dedicated to the memory of an old Saxon holy man (called Ceadda, commonly Chad); the blow of death came from St. Chad's Church upon St. Chad's Day. This, being a verity, is fit for a lady of rare worth." The incident is constantly referred to in contemporary literature, where the miracles claimed on behalf of the Royalist party are worthy of a better result. One more quotation will suffice. The celebrated preacher, Dr South, in his sermon on the text, "God hath loved the gates of Sion more than all the dwellings of Jacob," says: "Nor is that instance to be passed over of a commander in the Parliamentary army, who, coming to rifle and deface the cathedral at Lichfield, solemnly, at the head of his troops, begged God to show some remarkable token of His approbation or dislike of the work they were going about. Immediately after which, he was shot in the forehead by a deaf and dumb man; and this was on St. Chad's Day, the name of which saint that church bare, being dedicated to God in memory of the same: where we see that as he asked of God a sign, so God gave him one in the forehead, and that with such a mark as he is like to be known by all posterity." The house in which Lord Brooke was killed is in Dam Street, at a distance, it is said, of about 185 yards from the central spire of the cathedral; the late Mr Green caused the following inscription to be put up over the doorway:-- "_March 2, 1643._--Lord Brooke, a general of the Parliament forces preparing to besiege the Close of Lichfield, then garrisoned for King Charles the First, received his death wound on the spot beneath this inscription by a shot in the forehead from Mr Dyott, a gentleman who had placed himself on the battlements of the great steeple to annoy the besiegers." The death of Lord Brooke was kept a secret as much as possible, for fear the soldiers should indeed take it for a sign; Sir John Gell was appointed in his place, and the siege continued. Under his direction "all such townsmen that had any sons, apprentises, or other servants within the close, and likewise all citizens' wives that had their husbands there, whether magistrates or other persons whatsoever," were collected together and put in the front of the soldiers against the close, but after a while, it not appearing to make much difference, they were all sent home again. The close meanwhile had been bombarded with cannon, and finally there arrived from Coventry a new engine, called a mortar, which cast burning shells. Most of these fell into the mill pool or went over the close altogether; but it is said to have caused so much fright, no one there having seen such an engine before, that the Earl of Chesterfield, knowing also that his provisions could not last another day, and that there was little likelihood of their being reinforced, decided to yield the close on the best terms he could. These included free quarter to all, and on the 5th March, after a siege of three days, the close was yielded. The damage that had been done was terrible; not only was the whole fabric much injured, and all the stained glass destroyed, but the great steeple had been blown down and had in its fall broken in the roof of the church in several places. But even now the work of desecration was not complete. The close having been taken, the Parliamentary forces and their prisoners were all housed in and round the cathedral, and the most sacrilegious conduct is attributed to the former. The wanton soldiers pulled down the curious carved work, and battered in pieces what was left of the beautiful old stained glass; they stripped the gravestones of their brasses, and destroyed the ancient records which were stored in the cathedral. These acts of destruction were no doubt due to the religious mania of the Roundheads against any form of ceremony or beauty in the House or Service of God; but their passion became keener when they found what rich spoils were ready to their hands. It happened during their riotous proceedings that one of the soldiers raised the covering of the tomb containing the remains of Bishop Scrope, and found in it a silver chalice and a crozier of considerable value. This discovery naturally excited the soldiers, and every tomb was at once taken to pieces and its contents scattered; it is not wonderful therefore that the tombs that remain to the present day are few in number and these terribly mutilated. The crozier was afterwards sold to Elias Ashmole, the antiquarian, who took so great an interest in Lichfield. Nor was the sacrilege confined to destruction and spoliation. Dugdale tells us that "every day they hunted a cat with hounds through the church, delighting themselves with the echo from the goodly vaulted roof; and to add to their wickedness, brought a calf into it, wrapt in linen; carried it to the font, sprinkled it with water; and gave it a name in scorn and derision of that holy sacrament of baptism." [Illustration: ANCIENT GATEWAY FORMERLY IN THE CLOSE.] Not for long, however, did the Roundheads remain in possession. Prince Rupert was sent from Oxford, the headquarters of the Royalist party at the time, to retake Lichfield. Having taken Bromicham on the way, he arrived at Lichfield with a strong force, and history repeated itself. The town offered no opposition, and Rupert had to lay siege to the close, which now was better garrisoned. The Royalists erected batteries on the north side, and kept up a heavy fire; they also attempted to undermine the walls, and finally succeeded in blowing up one of the towers of the close, and a fierce encounter took place, in which many men were slaughtered on both sides. At length, after ten days' siege, the close was surrendered to the king by the governor, who probably got better terms than he expected, as Rupert was required at Reading. The articles of capitulation are referred to by Clarendon as being most honourable, and are as follow:-- "It is consented by Colonel Hastings, by the authority given him by his highness Prince Rupert, that, in consideration of the delivery and yielding up of the Close of Lichfield, Lieutenant-Colonel Russel, and all the Captains and Officers with him, shall march out of the said Close, to-morrow being the one and twentieth day of this instant April, by ten o'clock in the morning, with fourscore men and musquetts, with flying colours, and fourscore horsemen, with arms belonging to them, and all other persons within the said Close to be at liberty to goe whither they please; and for their better and safe conveyance, a free pass or convoy from his highnesse, and eleven carts to convey away such goods as belong to any of the officers or soldiers, with themselves, to the City of Coventry; and that all prisoners shall be released on both sides, which have been taken in the City of Stafford since the coming down of the Right Honourable Lord Brooke. In witness whereof, we have hereunto put our hand and seal, this twentieth day of April A.D. 1643. H. HASTINGS." Russel did not leave empty-handed, as he is said to have taken away the communion plate and linen, and whatever else was of value. He was succeeded in command of the close by Colonel Bagot, who held it until 1646, when in the general ruin of the king's affairs the close was again taken. In "_Mercurius Aulicus_" there is an interesting anecdote which shows the state of feeling between the two parties. A certain Captain Hunt, who had a command in the neighbouring town of Tamworth, sent Colonel Bagot the following challenge:--"Bagot, thou sonne of an Egyptian ... meete mee half the way to-morrow morning, the half-way betwixt Tamworth and Litchfeald, if thou darest; if not, I will whippe whensoever I meete thee. Tamworth, this December 1644.--THOMAS HUNT." Colonel Bagot did not neglect the challenge, and though he did not succeed in taking him prisoner, he "whipped" him home to Tamworth. During the time Colonel Bagot was governor the post can have been no sinecure, for although there was no regular siege to be compared to the two just described, yet, lying as it did with so many Parliamentary strongholds in the immediate neighbourhood, this period cannot have been one of peace; and Dr Harwood, in his "History of Lichfield," goes so far as to say that the close was frequently in a state of seige at this period. The battle of Naseby was fought on the 14th June 1645, with disastrous effect to the king. Colonel Bagot was present with 200 men, and no doubt escorted the king back to Lichfield, for he lay there for at least one night, and received an address from his faithful citizens, which, from its wording, shows that there was little hope left in his side. The king came again later in the year, and about March in the following year, 1646, the last siege commenced. It was a desultory affair compared to the first two, and only ended when the Royalists, in July, finding that the king had practically no real army in the field anywhere, surrendered again on terms which were most honourable to both sides. The damage done to the cathedral in these times was estimated at £14,000, which was for those days a very large amount. Some of the losses are thus particularised: For a pair of organs broke in pieces £200 The destruction of the vicars' seats 600 The defacing of Lord Paget's tomb, which was executed in Italy 700 But enough has been said to show that the cathedral was in a most ruinous state, and so it remained until a twelvemonth after the Restoration. From a manuscript in the Ashmolean Collection at Oxford, it appears that Elias Ashmole had an interview with the king in June 1660 as to the condition of the cathedral. The memorandum reads: "16 June 1660. This morning Mr Rawlins of Lichfield tould me that the Clearke Viccars of the Cathedrall Church had entered the Chapter-house and there said service; and this when the Vestry was the only place in the Church yt had a roof to shelter them. This very afternoon, I, having an opportunity to waite on the Kg, and being in his Closet, tould him that the aforesaid remaining number of poore Clearks Vicarrs had assembled in the aforesaid place, and there kept their Canonicall houres and prayd for his Maty, which he was pleased to heare. Upon further discourse, I acquainted him with the desolacion of the place, which he much lamented, and said he had been informed that Winchestre Cathedrall had exceedingly suffred in these late tymes, and that they had turnd it into Brewhouses, Malt-houses, etc." And again, on "July 18, 1660, Mr Dugdale moved Dr Sheldon to become an instrument for the repair of Lichfield Cathedral; and proposed that the prebends, etc., that were admitted should part with one-half of their profits towards the repair of the fabrick, which would be no great burden to them; and by this example the gentry would be invited to join with them in some considerable contribution. _N.B._--I find this method succeeded accordingly." The see was vacant for nearly a year after the Restoration, as Bishop Frewen, who had been appointed to the see by Charles I., was almost at once made Archbishop of York. At last, in December 1661, John Hacket, Doctor of Divinity of Trinity College, Cambridge, was appointed, and he at once set himself to the repair of the dilapidated cathedral; on the very morning of his arrival at Lichfield he is said to have set his carriage-horses and servants to the work of clearing out the rubbish, and with his own hands to have set them an example at the start. The work to be done must have appeared to be almost impossible of completion, for the central spire was still lying in ruins over the chapter-house and choir, the roof was broken in, and the pavements completely destroyed: everything was ruinous, for the Parliamentary folk had during the Common-wealth seized all materials which seemed to be of use for the repair of the dwelling-houses in the close and neighbourhood. However, the work progressed; the bishop was so energetic that he was able to collect in the surrounding country about £8000, and so generous that he subscribed himself a sum of £1683, 12s.: and in eight years he succeeded in restoring the beauty of the cathedral. The service at which it was re-consecrated was of great solemnity and ceremony: "His lordship, being arrayed in his episcopal vestments, attended by the dean, dignitaries, prebendaries, and other members of the Church, accompanied by many of the nobility and gentry, the bailiffs, citizens, and other public officers of the city and county of Lichfield, with an immense concourse of people, entered at the great west doors of the Cathedral. The vicars, choristers, etc., first walked up the south aisle of the Church, where the bishop with a loud voice repeated the first verse of the 144th psalm. Afterwards the whole choir alternately sang the psalm to the organ. In the same order they proceeded to the north aisle. The bishop sang the 100th psalm, which was repeated by the whole company. Then the train passed to the body of the Church, where the bishop began the 102nd psalm, which when the vicars choral had concluded, he commanded the doors of the choir to be opened, and in the same form, first encompassed the south side. The bishop began the first verse of the 122nd psalm; the company finished it, and with the like ceremony proceeded to the north side, and sang the 131st psalm." The procession over, the bishop knelt down in the centre of the choir and prayed silently; and then with a loud voice called on all the people to join with him in the Lord's Prayer, which was followed by other prayers suitable to the occasion. He then pronounced a solemn benediction on the act in which they were engaged, and upon all that were present. The usual service of morning prayer followed, with two special anthems, and a collection--not for the cathedral--but for the poor of the parish. The bishop also gave three magnificent banquets--to the cathedral clergy, to the nobility of the neighbourhood, and to the principal citizens of the city. Thus concluded the ceremony of re-consecration, a work which left the cathedral, not, unhappily, as it was when the first siege took place, but still a very beautiful edifice, with more of the Perpendicular style about the windows than previously, and with grievous signs here and there of the terrible misfortunes it had weathered. Sir Christopher Wren is said to have designed the new central spire, and to have acted as architect to the re-builders; but this is almost certainly not the case: his advice may have been asked, but probably at the most he gave it with regard to rich altar-piece in the Corinthian style which was erected in front of the old screen behind the high altar. At any rate, his signature appears on one of the sixteen papers on this matter still preserved among the muniments of the cathedral. The king gave 200 fair timber trees out of Needwood forest, and his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards King James II., gave the money for the tracery of the great west window. This window remained until the recent alterations, when it was replaced by one more in accordance with the original thirteenth century style. The Duke of York's window, with its ill-proportioned geometrical tracery, need not be regretted any more than the removal of the heroic statue of his Majesty King Charles II., which occupied the central niche above it. The statue was principally remarkable for its ugliness, and for the history of the stonemason who hewed it; he afterwards married a rich wife, and finally arrived at the dignity of knighthood. Bishop Hacket adorned the church with new stalls and with an organ which cost £600; and he also made arrangements for new bells worthy of the cathedral. He ordered six, and three of them were delivered in his life-time. Only one--the tenor bell--however, was hung in time for the good bishop to hear it. His biographer, Dr Plume, says: "The first time it was rung, the bishop was very weak; yet he went out of his bed-chamber into the next room to hear it: he seemed well pleased with the sound, and blessed God, who had favoured him with life to hear it; but at the same time observed that it would be his passing-bell, and retiring into his chamber, he never left it till he was carried to his grave." He died in October 1670. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT IN 1813.] For some time the cathedral has no history to be recounted. In 1750 we know that the ancient library outside the north aisle, built by Deans Heywood and Yotton, was removed, and the churchyard levelled; we also know that the roof became very defective, and the rain came in, so that a new roofing was required. Pennant tells us that the dean and chapter were obliged to substitute slates instead of metal, on account of the narrow revenues left to maintain this venerable pile; and after the strictest economy, they were under the necessity of contributing from their own income in order to complete their plan. A few years later it was found that the fabric itself was in so dilapidated a condition that much more extensive repairs were necessary, and so Mr Wyatt, the celebrated architect, as Britton calls him, came to Lichfield and began that scheme of alteration which has been the object of so much ridicule and contempt. To lovers of church architecture at the end of the nineteenth century it seems astounding that the splendid and inimitable cathedrals and churches of this country should have been handed over every one to be destroyed and debased in the way Wyatt destroyed and debased them. But there is no doubt that Wyatt represented the spirit of the time, just as Sir Gilbert Scott represented the spirit of the middle of this century. Then it was a love of "vistas" which actuated the alterations, and caused the destruction of anything which came in the way of what was considered a fine view. In those days "vistas" were the all-absorbing consideration and the subject of discussion amongst those who considered themselves cultured, as may be seen in the novels of Jane Austen, and in "Mansfield Park" in particular. Later, the passion for replacing what was old or worn by time with something new, something which was supposed to be a reproduction of the old, has caused endless destruction. The later passion has not yet disappeared, unhappily; but thankfully we may note the signs of the times, and feel sure that in a few years neither a Wyatt with his vistas and Roman cement, nor others, who, having more knowledge, are therefore the less excusable, will be permitted under any circumstances to lay a finger on what it has here and there graciously pleased their forerunners to leave unspoiled. How little this is, can be judged by a visit to any cathedral church from Worcester downwards. The achievements of Wyatt are recounted by Britton, who does not appear to have entirely decided whether he approved or not. Some of them, no doubt, were necessary; and it would be unfair to indiscriminately blame any architect who had to deal, however violently, with a building which had deteriorated, not merely in the pass of time, but also by the shock of war. Also a great deal of what Wyatt did was done for the sake of warmth, though the object in view, it is said, was not attained. Britton says that not only was there a general restoration of doors, windows, and flooring throughout, but also "two of the spires were partly rebuilt, the ends of the transepts were strengthened by new buttresses, the external roofs of the aisles were raised, and five divisions of the stone roof in the nave were taken down and replaced with plaster. The Lady Chapel was united with the choir by removing the screen which had been erected by Bishop Hacket. On taking this away, the workmen discovered the beautiful old screen which formed in all probability the original partition when the Lady Chapel was completed by the executors of Walter de Langton. This elaborate piece of architecture was in a very mutilated state; but Mr Wyatt, having restored it by the assistance of Roman cement to a very perfect condition, appropriated part of it to the new altar-piece, and the remainder to the organ screen or partition which divides the nave from the Choir," and which took up the whole of the western bay of the choir. Since Britton's time it has been thought necessary to take another tone and to try to justify these alterations. Mr James Potter, the son of Mr Wyatt's chief assistant, who was afterwards architect to the cathedral, has endeavoured to prove that some of the alterations were unavoidable, and that the others were not made under Wyatt's advice, but in spite of it. Incidentally, in the course of a letter to the _Staffordshire Advertiser_, he speaks of the "unsightly and incongruous work of Wren's," in referring to the wooden reredos, and states that Wren had previously closed the arches of the four most western bays of the choir in order to receive the stalls. He also says: "But so completely did Wren perform his work of blocking-up that he took care to conceal every vestige of moulding, both of the piers and the archivolts, leaving only in view the clustered shafts from which the vaulting of the roof sprang. I have before noticed that Mr James Wyatt's death occurred in A.D. 1813, and that this western portion of the choir remained in the state in which Sir Christopher Wren left it up to the following year. In the early part of that year the architect to the fabric, the late Mr Potter, was instructed by the dean and chapter to cause the entire removal of the old stall work and unmask the three arches (then concealed), this being the space on either side of the choir occupied by the stalls in question. The arches being much dilapidated and past restoration, Dean Woodhouse decided to have them made to correspond with the decorated bays in an easterly direction. This work was executed, as also the canopy of the new stalls, in Roman cement. I cannot myself think that Dean Woodhouse exhibited any degree of bad taste in adopting the existing decorated arches as his model for the new ones; and, as regards the canopies of the new stalls, they were exact resemblances of the old reredos, and surely no modern architect will presume to find fault with them. I must here observe that the choice of material was not confined to the architect employed to carry out the work, but was chosen by the dean and chapter, the state of the fabric fund, out of which the whole of the expenses were defrayed, being insufficient to meet the outlay of a more costly material." The above account is most interesting, and, assuming that the writer was correct in the facts as to what was done by Wyatt and by his father, we are confronted with a difficulty. From Professor Willis's account, already quoted, it is obvious that he was of opinion that the alteration in the style of the front of these pier arches was made in Gothic times. Mr Potter says it was done in the nineteenth century. It is, of course, possible for some alteration to have been made at both these times; but it looks as if the harmony was not complete until recently, probably because the height of the old stalls prevented the variations from being easily seen. As to Wren, Mr Potter probably was only repeating the recognised tradition that Wren was responsible for the rebuilding by Bishop Hacket, and no argument can be deduced on this point, the latest and best opinion being that there is, as already stated, no evidence to prove that the great Sir Christopher had much to do with the cathedral. Soon after Wyatt's death the policy of Roman cement, which he had inaugurated, was continued, and the whole of the west front become one mass of stucco and paste. The row of kings was replaced in this way, as also the statues in the great porch, and all the mouldings and decorations were covered with cement, and practically the whole cathedral from end to end had its deficiencies added to in this way. This work was completed about 1822. From then to 1856 the cathedral did not receive much alteration; but in the latter year Sir Gilbert, then Mr. Scott was called in, and the extensive alterations were commenced, which may be said scarcely to have finished in this year of 1897. It is not necessary to discuss here this restoration. It is sufficient to say that it has been the aim of those in authority to restore the cathedral to the appearance and arrangement it presented at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Wyatt's alterations received scant courtesy, and the cathedral as we now see it may be declared to be a triumph for the restorer--so great a triumph, indeed, that in many parts the unsuspicious admirer might be led to conclude that he was looking at a brand new edifice. Still, the cathedral has some of its old work left, and perhaps in the nave we are confronted with more of the work of the original Gothic builders than in any other part. What has been done in the last forty years is specifically discussed in the description of the exterior and interior in the two next chapters; but here it will be well to show what the condition of the cathedral was in the middle of the century, just before the recent restoration. Canon Lonsdale has given us a splendid description in his "Recollections," and if anything can reconcile us to the wholesale renewal which then took place, it will be found in the account which he gives in this little pamphlet, from which are now quoted the following sentences. He says: "The Nave and Transepts were absolutely empty of furniture of any kind, except that the South Transept contained the fittings of the Dean's Consistory Court (since abolished), and in the North Transept, on the spot where the organ now is, stood the statue of Bishop Ryder, raised on a high pedestal, and looking as if it were about to tumble forward. The walls, arches, and pillars were one uniform, dead, yellowish whitewash, many coats thick; as also the Choir from end to end, and from top to bottom, and indeed the whole of the interior.... The Nave was quite unused; indeed, except during service hours, the Verger's Silver Key alone gave admission to any part of the church.... The two parts of the building were altogether separate from each other. The Choir was entered by a door under a high partition, composed of remains of the original High Altar, fourteenth century screen, and of other materials. This partition filled the whole of the first bay of the present Choir. On each side of the entrance were Vestries for the Lay Vicars and the Choristers, and above these was placed the organ; the rest of the space up to the Roof being filled in with glass, so that the separation of Nave and Choir was complete.... In the Choir itself the remains of the Reredos, which stood at the spot where the present one is now fixed, had been removed by Wyatt at the end of the last century, and the Holy Table was carried to the extreme East of the Lady Chapel. On either side, from the screen up to the very entrance of the Lady Chapel, were pews made of oak lined with green baize and studded with brass nails. The Choir Aisles on either side were entirely shut out from the Choir, the arches being filled in by plaster, in order, as was imagined, to help towards warmth. In the three bays eastward from the screen--the second, third, and fourth, as they are now--stalls were fixed, composed of plaster, wood, rope, nails, and much else, with canopies of the same material over them, which the old Verger of that day used to call 'beautiful Tabernacle work.' The Dean and Canons' Residentiary had stalls facing eastward in the screen under the organ.... The Choir Aisles, shut out from the Choir, were long, narrow passages, never used, ending on the North side in a blank wall, and on the South with the monument of the 'Sleeping Children.'" This was the inside of the Cathedral: the outside was stucco. Such facts as these will have to be borne in mind when the next century passes judgment on Sir Gilbert Scott. For us, it should be sufficient that we have judged Wyatt. CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR Of all the cathedral churches of England, Lichfield may be said to be the most lovely. Other cathedrals are larger--indeed, this is the smallest of them all--grander, or more magnificent; but for simple beauty, for charm, for delicacy of construction and appearance, Lichfield may rightly claim to take the foremost place. Peterborough, when we stand inside the west door and look down its line of enormous columns, fills us with awe at its immensity and strength: a feeling which is perhaps a little impaired by the present position of its stalls. Salisbury appeals to us with its perfect simplicity and symmetry, and York with its unequalled grandeur and splendour; but after viewing all the cathedrals of England, it is Lichfield which is most likely to be remembered among them for something which may be most aptly called charm. What can be more delightful than the view which confronts the traveller who, approaching from the town, pauses to look across the sparkling water of the pool at the three graceful spires standing out amid a wealth of green trees and shrubs. Truly a picture to be long remembered. Here is, indeed, the precious jewel set in a silver sea. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.] The cathedral does not stand on high enough ground for any very fine view of the entire building to be obtained. But from whatever point in the neighbourhood of Lichfield we look we can see its three slender spires, grouping themselves, sometimes so that only two can be distinguished, sometimes so that they all appear in one cluster as though rising from one tower, and sometimes spreading out so that two seem to have very little connection with the third. For years they have been known as the "Ladies of the Vale"; they have looked down on many changes, and indeed have suffered changes themselves. They now rise from an almost new building--new at any rate in appearance. As we approach the cathedral either from Bird Street and face the west front, or from Dam Street and confront the south side of the Lady Chapel, the same sad feeling comes over us that all here is new. Even as these words are written the south side of the choir is being renovated, and no doubt what little of the old is still left will soon disappear. The west front, with its niches and images, is all new; the south side of the nave is new, and indeed everywhere it is its newness that first strikes one. One cannot help wondering if this extreme severity of restoration is absolutely essential; for if not essential, the vague disappointment might well turn to anger that in days when the art of architecture has become almost non-existent, it should be thought necessary to carry through such wholesale renewal of work, never to be replaced, belonging to the grand days of Gothic building. For this old work can never be replaced: it is a sad thought that in every art, the early groping days, when the new medium or the new method is hardly settled, and its limitations but imperfectly understood, produce the great work. It is so in literature, in music, in painting, in sculpture, and in architecture; but it is only to the last that we dare to offer the assistance of our own less artistic age. The cathedral as we see it to-day has met with many vicissitudes. Of its misfortunes in the Civil Wars much has already been said; and something of its sufferings at the hands of restorers. At present, after studying the west front and contemplating the extreme newness of its every detail, we can only hope that when age has somewhat staled the infinite variety of its modern ornament, future pilgrims to the shrine of St. Chad will not think too unkindly of an age given over to the rigours of restoration. =The Close.=--The cathedral stands in a close which was once surrounded by strong walls with bastions and a moat. Nature had supplied the moat on the south side, and the Cathedral Pool, as it is now called, is still there. The artificial moat has been drained, but its course can be easily traced running round the bishop's palace, and its water has been replaced by lovely gardens and gravel walks. Some bits of the old walls remain, the north-east bastion in the palace gardens and a turret on a house at the south corner: the "beautiful gates" of Bishop Langton are gone; but in the Vicars' Close at the west of the cathedral are two small irregular courtyards with houses so old that we feel sure that their wooden beams and plaster were there when the Royalists of the neighbourhood housed themselves within the fortified close. The close is not large, and of course, as Lichfield is a cathedral of the old establishment, there are no monastical buildings, no ruined cloisters. On the north side the ground rises rapidly in a grassy slope to a terrace, behind which are some of the canons' houses. Opposite the north transept is the deanery, a substantial red brick house in the style of the middle of the last century; next to it, and farther east, is the bishop's palace. =The Bishop's Palace= is of stone, and was built by Thomas Wood, the bishop who succeeded Hacket, and who is said to have been compelled to erect it as a fine for his neglect of the diocese. It bears on the front the date 1687. The old palace of Bishop Langton, which occupied the same position in the close, was swept away in the Civil Wars. The bishops of Lichfield had another palace at Eccleshall until the time of Bishop Selwyn, who sold it, and with a portion of the money erected here the two unsightly wings and the still more unsightly chapel. In the palace gardens, in the south-west corner, stood the old bell-tower of the cathedral, of whose destruction in 1315 we have a record. From the bishop's garden there is a charming view through the trees of Stowe pool and St. Chad's Church apparently standing at its farther edge: its old towers stand out finely, and the gravestones in the churchyard remind us that in far-off Mercian days St. Chad was laid to rest in this very spot. On the east side of the close is an unsightly white house which rises a blot on the otherwise beautiful view of the cathedral from Stowe; next to it is a charming old building with the turret already mentioned. On the south side is the entrance from Dam Street, with an old house at the corner. On this side also is the Theological College, a low ordinary-looking building, said to have been originally training-stables for race horses; and farther west are more houses of the cathedral clergy. And behind all these is the pool. One cannot help agreeing with Britton in thinking what a delightful thing it would be for the close if all the houses on this side could be pulled down so that the cathedral might have nothing but grass and trees between it and the pool. Britton gives an imaginary view of the south side with all the houses cleared away. On the west side of the cathedral is another entrance to the close, which runs between the Vicars' Close already mentioned and the hideous college built by Andrew Newton for the widows and orphans of clergymen. =The Cathedral= is built of new red sandstone from quarries in the immediate neighbourhood of Lichfield itself. On Borrowcop, to the north (where tradition says two Mercian kings were killed, to be afterwards buried in the close), is the hole left by the cathedral; and on the other side, at Wheel Lane, is a quarry from which much stone, both red and white, has been taken for the recent repairs to the fabric. Its ruddy colour adds much to the picturesqueness of the building. Mrs Van Rensselaer, in her interesting account of the English cathedrals, says: "In any and every aspect, but more especially when foliage comes close about it, Lichfield's colour assists its other beauties. Grey is the rule in English churches--dark cold grey at Ely, for example; light yellow grey at Canterbury, and pale pearly grey at Salisbury; and although dark greyness means great solemnity and grandeur, and light greyness great delicacy and charm, they both need the hand of time--the stain of the weather and the web of the lichen--to give them warmth and tone; and the work of the hand of time has almost everywhere in England been effaced by the hand of the restorer. Red stone is warm and mellow in itself, and Lichfield is red with a beautiful soft ruddiness that could hardly be over-matched by the sandstone of any land." The plan of the cathedral shows a simple cross, with a chapter-house (joined by a vestibule to the choir) on the north side, and a sacristy on the south side. It may also be noticed that the nave and the choir (including the presbytery) have each eight bays or severies, and that if we regard the bay under the central tower as a double one, the two transepts together have eight bays. Thus the transverse arm of the cross is nearly of the same length as the eastern and the western arms. There is a Lady Chapel at the eastern end of the choir, and there are aisles on each side of the nave and choir and on the eastern side of the transepts. We have already seen that the cathedral has three =Spires=, and this is perhaps its most notable characteristic, for Lichfield is the only church now existing in England with this distinction. The cathedral at Coventry, so long the sister church of the diocese, and so ruthlessly destroyed by Henry VIII., had also three spires; as had Ripon Minster, but these were of lead, and have since been pulled down. Of the spires, one rises from the central tower and one surmounts each of the towers which flank the west front. The central spire dates only from the Restoration, the older spire having been entirely destroyed in the Civil Wars. There is no doubt that the original spire was different in appearance to the present one, which is an imitation of the western spires, carried out in the spirit of the Perpendicular style. What the earlier spire was really like is doubtful, neither is it quite certain when it was built, though the central tower was probably rebuilt about 1250, when it is supposed that the intention was to retain the Norman nave. What the height and pitch of the roof of the old Norman nave must have been can be seen from the old housing course which remains to this day above the nave groining. "It was the custom," as Mr J. O. Scott explained in a lecture on the cathedral, "of old builders, as of modern builders, to insert in any wall against which a roof abuts a projecting course of stone, called a 'housing,' following the slope of the roof, the object being to keep the wet from getting in between the roof and the wall. And so when the central tower was rebuilt, there was the Norman nave to which the new work had to be fitted. Hence, at this time the builders inserted a 'housing course' of masonry into the west wall of the new tower, to protect the junction of the old Norman nave roof from the weather." These disused housing courses can constantly be seen in old churches, sometimes several, one above the other, showing the changes in the roofing of the church. The present spire is said vaguely to have been erected from the designs or under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren; but the tradition which connects this great modern architect with the cathedral is very uncertain. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE MINSTER POOL.] The two western spires were probably built in Bishop Norburgh's time, and possibly were finished in the time of his successor; but the north-west spire has been rebuilt from the belfry windows upwards in imitation of the old work, but, like the central tower, in the Perpendicular manner. The south-west or Jesus Tower, which is a little higher than the other, has also had its two upper storeys rebuilt. The spires are octagonal, and are divided into six compartments. In the western spires the four lower compartments have windows of two lights each with acute crocketted pediments. There are only four windows in the lowest compartment; but in the second, third, and fourth compartments there is a window in each face; the fifth is panelled between crocketted ribs, and the top compartment is plain with small windows. All the spires are open all the way up without any inside supports. The central spire has the same number of compartments, with windows in all of them except the top; but there are only four windows in each compartment, facing north, east, west, and south. The top of the central spire is about 252 feet from the floor, and of the western spire about 193. But if Lichfield's three spires are unique, so also is Lichfield's =West Front=. It is not, of course, very large, and it is not indeed as large as it might have been had the same means been employed here as were employed at Wells, where an exaggerated idea of size is attained by placing the towers outside the lines of the nave aisles. Here the two towers, which form so important a part of the front, are in their lowest stage merely part of the aisles, so that the whole width of the west front is very little greater than the width of the nave itself. The west front of Lichfield is noted for the richness of its decorations, covered as it is with niches holding images and, it might almost be said, with every available inch covered with decorative work. The whole has a most superb effect, and at a distance, where the poverty of the modern workmanship is not easily discerned, its appearance cannot be very different now to that which it presented at the end of the fourteenth century. Once again the niches are filled with statuary; but this work is nearly all new, and it is by some considered doubtful if any of the original remained in this century. It is, however, generally supposed, and not without good reason, that the five old statues which form part of the highest row in the north-west tower may have been original, and have escaped the general destruction which followed the Puritan capture of the cathedral. Three of the old statues are represented in the picture of the west front in Britton's "Cathedral Antiquities"; and in the interesting picture in Fuller's "Church History," published in 1655, the west front is shewn with every niche filled; but there can be no doubt that this picture must have been made before the siege, or else it must have been drawn with the aid of memory from what remained afterwards. This west front is flat, with octagonal turrets at each side, and consists of two towers and a central part. The central part has a doorway, a large window, and an acute pediment, the top point of the pediment being almost on a level with the parapet of the towers where the spires commence. These rise from between square pinnacles, enriched with feathered panels and crockets at the angles of the towers. The front is in three stages; the lowest stage contains the three doorways, and is surmounted by a very elaborate arcading filled with statues of kings. The second is covered with two storeys of arcading, and is divided into two parts by the large west window, above which is the pediment. The third stage consists of the upper part of the two towers; these are surmounted with parapets with lozenge-shaped mouldings inclosing quatrefoil and trefoil panels. There are windows to the belfry floors in this stage. Altogether, including these two belfry windows, there are only three windows in this front; this is unusual, as there are commonly windows at the west end of the nave aisles. It is not easy to give a clear description of this front, or any which will convey its superb effect. As we see by the frontispiece, it is not only thickly covered with arcading and statues, but also it is very much enriched with trefoils, quatrefoils, and cinquefoils, especially in the spaces over the doors in the lowest stage, and in the pediment above the great window. The prevalence of the ball-flower decoration should not escape notice; upon the third stage and the spires it constantly occurs, although it is not encountered in the first and second stages, except in the modern tracery of the west window. The ball-flower is a fourteenth-century ornament: its constant use in the upper parts, contrasted with its total absence in the lower parts, supplies a very strong argument that a considerable time elapsed between the construction of the two lower stages and the upper. The very careful examination which took place when the whole front was lately restored revealed the fact that work was not proceeded with continuously; and by expert opinion the lowest stage is assigned to 1280, the next to 1300, while the upper stages are still later; and perhaps the whole was not completed until well on into the last half of the fourteenth century. As has been stated before, the present appearance of the west front is that of an entirely new building. In 1820 the front, which is said to have been then in a very dilapidated condition, was covered with Roman cement. So thoroughly was this done that the original stone facing only showed on the eastern side of the north-west tower. Careful drawings of the tracery there were made by Sir Gilbert Scott, and in 1877 the work of reconstructing was commenced. It took seven years, and the new west front was dedicated in 1884. Only five of the old statues remained, and it was decided to restore the others. There are in all one hundred and thirteen niches in the west front, including those on the north and south faces of the side turrets; all but four are now filled, and about one hundred are in view of any one standing facing the middle of the front. The large =West Window= has undergone several changes in its tracery; fortunately we have pictures showing all of them. In Fuller's "Church History" the tracery, as shown in Hollar's engraving, appears to be very simple. This tracery was all destroyed in the Civil Wars; and that which replaced it at the Restoration was provided by James II., when Duke of York, but it was so ugly and unsuitable to the whole spirit of the cathedral that it was removed in 1869, and is now replaced by work which, though greatly differing from the original, yet preserves the spirit of fourteenth-century work. The Restoration window may be seen in the beautiful engraving in Britton's "Cathedral Antiquities." There also is an engraving of the great west door as it was in the early part of the century, and before the Roman cement era of which mention has just been made. This doorway, one of the most beautiful in the country, has much in common with the "Prior's doorway" on the south side of Lincoln Cathedral. As Britton says: "Both are peculiarly rich and fanciful and calculated to excite the warmest admiration," but in his time the sculptured foliage and the figures running round the architrave mouldings and between the columns were so much battered and injured that it was almost impossible to tell the characters of some of them. This doorway is a recessed porch, the outer arch, in line with the main walls, being cusped and foliated with elaborate carving; the inner portion is divided into two arches; the whole being most elaborately decorated with carvings. The central clustered supports has a figure of the Virgin and Child, and on either side of the doorway, standing on clustered pillars beneath canopies, are figures of St. Mary Magdalene (on the north) with the box of ointment, and on the south, Mary the wife of Cleophas; farther forward on each side are vacant pedestals, and in the front are St. John the Evangelist (on the north) and St. Paul (on the south). Whether these were the characters originally represented is open to doubt; Stukeley suggested that what was left in his time represented the Virgin in the centre, and the four Evangelists with Moses and Aaron. [Illustration: GREAT WEST DOORWAY IN 1813.] The =bas-relief figures= in the architrave already mentioned have been restored to represent the two genealogies of Christ as given by St. Matthew and St. Luke, on the north and south sides respectively, as follows:-- North side: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz, Jesse, David, Virgin and Child. South side: Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Judah, and St. Joseph; the Virgin and St. Joseph being the two figures at the top of the arch. There is a very beautiful fourteenth-century bas-relief above the central pillar of the doorway, representing Our Lord in Glory, with an angel on each side, having a serpent under his feet. The doors are covered with fine iron work, which, with the exception of that on the lowest panel, is supposed to be original. [Illustration: THE GREAT WEST DOORWAY.] The two side doorways in the west front are deeply recessed in three orders with very finely-carved mouldings. These also have bas-relief figures in the architraves. Those in the northern doorway represent the principal princes and princesses who promoted Christianity in England, while those in the southern doorway represent the leading early missionaries to England. In the northern doorway, on the north side, are Ethelbert, Edwin, Oswald, Oswy, Peada, Wulphere; and on the south side, Bertha, Ethelburga, Hilda, Eanfled, Ermenilda, Werburga. In the southern doorway, on the north side, are St. Aidan, Finan, Diuma, Ceollach, Trumhere, Jaruman; and on the south side, Gregory, Augustine, Paulinus, Theodore, Cuthbert, Wilfrid. The corbels of the arches of these two doorways are interesting. Those of the north-west doorway represent Night on one side and the Morning Star on the other. The former is a female face with a reversed torch, and the Greek word NYX for night; the latter is a beautiful boy's face with a burning torch. Those on the south-west doorway are a blindfolded face and an open face, representing the Law and the Gospel respectively. Up to the time of the recent restoration a large statue of Charles II., who, by gifts of money and also of timber from Needham Forest, helped Bishop Hacket in the general repair after the Civil Wars, occupied the principal canopy in the middle of the central gable of the west front. This statue was the work of a certain stone-mason named William Wilson, who, by marrying a rich widow, "arrived at knighthood" in 1681. The statue, which certainly was not a work of art from all account of it, was taken down, and the pedestal is now occupied by a figure of Our Lord. The two other large canopied niches in the gable being filled with statues of Moses and Elijah, on the north and south sides respectively; while the four smaller statues represent, on the north, St. Gabriel, with St. Uriel underneath; and on the south, St. Michael, with St. Raphael below. In giving the list of the statuary on the west front, which now follows, it is only necessary to say that there is no pretence that the characters now chosen were those originally represented. All that could be done in filling the niches was to study the plan of other similar facades, such as that at Wells, and to imitate the general idea. Tradition, however, had it that the long row of figures in the top of the lowest stage represented the Saxon and English kings, with St. Chad in the centre, and the tradition has been respected. [Illustration: THE SOUTHERN DOORWAY OF THE WEST FRONT.] The following is a list of all the statues not already mentioned on the west front, including these on the north and south faces of the flanking turrets. The statues are enumerated in rows from the north side to the south. On the northern tower the highest tier commences round the corner with two of the old figures already mentioned, then Aaron, Samuel, Hannah, another old figure, Deborah, Rachel, another old figure, Sarah, another old figure, and Eve. On the southern tower the highest tier commences with Adam, Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Melchisedec, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Daniel, Job, and Shem (these two last being, of course, round the corner on the south side). Taking next the two rows on the northern tower to the north of the great west window, there are in the higher row, St. Editha, David, St. Helena, Solomon, St. Gabriel, Zechariah, Nahum, Amos, Jeremiah; and in the lower row, Dean Bickersteth, St. Mark, Queen Victoria, St. Luke, St. Uriel, Malachi, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Daniel (Jeremiah being just above Daniel, by the window). Taking next the two rows on the southern tower to the south of the great west window, there are in the higher row, Isaiah, Hosea, Jonah, Zephaniah, St. Michael, Bishop Hacket, Bishop Lonsdale, Bishop Selwyn (the niche round the corner is vacant), and in the lower row, Ezekiel, Joel, Micah, Haggai, St. Raphael, Bishop Clinton, Bishop Patteshall, Bishop Langton (the niche round the corner is vacant). Next again below is the long row of kings with St. Chad in the centre stretching right across the cathedral, the pre-Conquest kings on the south side of St. Chad, the post-Conquest on the north, as follows:--William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., Richard I., John, Henry III., Edward I., Edward II., Edward III., Richard II., St. Chad, Peada, Wulphere, Ethelred, Offa, Egbert, Ethelwolf, Ethelbert, Ethelred, Alfred, Edgar, Canute, Edward the Confessor. Lastly, there is the lowest row, which is broken three times by the doors; these are St. Cyprian, St. Bartholomew, St. Simon, St. James the Less, St. Thomas (then the northern door), St. Philip, St. Andrew (then the central door with its seven niches and five statues already described), St. Paul, St. Matthew (then the southern door), St. James the Greater, St. Jude, St. Stephen, St. Clement, St. Werburga. There is also a small figure of St. Antony over the belfry window on the south side. [Illustration: A BAY OF THE NAVE--EXTERIOR.] A tour of the cathedral, starting by the north side, leads past the nave with its buttresses and flying-buttresses looking picturesque in their unrestored state, and there can be seen outside the seventh bay of the nave the remains of the entrance to Dean Yotton's chantry. Coming to the front of the north transept, it will be noticed that the doorway has steps inside leading down into the cathedral, while on the opposite side it will be found that the steps lead from the south door down outside; the level of the ground on the two sides of the cathedral being very different. =The North Doorway= is extremely fine, and is deeply recessed. Like the other two main doorways of the cathedral,--that at the west end and that in the south transept--this doorway is double, the main arch being divided into two. The archivolts of these are lancet-shaped and covered with foliage, but not foliated as in the west door. Outside the double-arched doorway proper, the architrave is divided into five principal and several smaller mouldings; the larger ones being very finely carved, as to two, the second and fourth, with inter-twisted foliage and scroll work; and as to the other three, the inner, middle, and outer, with small lozenge-shaped plaques containing bas-relief figures. These figures in the inner moulding are angels, in the middle one probably they are patriarchs and prophets. In the outer one, on the left or eastern side, the figures show the genealogy of Christ, beginning with Jesse at the springing stone, and ending with the Virgin and Child near the crown; while on the right-hand side, opposite Jesse, is the figure of St. Chad baptising the sons of King Wulphere, and above, the Apostles from St. Matthias to St. Peter at the crown. The whole architrave is surmounted by a weather moulding in the form of a gable, with a recently executed cross in the style of the thirteenth century at the top. The pillars on each side of the doorway have finely carved capitals, and the outer pillars are separated by lines of dog-toothing. The central pillar is very graceful, and consists of four slender shafts with carved capitals. The whole forms a magnificent example of a doorway in the Early English style, but showing signs of its derivation from the Norman. There is a niche in the tympanum which was apparently in Britton's time empty; but it must soon after have been filled with an image of St. Anne in Roman cement; this has recently been replaced by a statue of the same saint by Mr W. R. Ingram, while above some Roman cement work in the top of the gable has been removed, and a vesica containing a bas-relief of Our Lord in Glory by Mr Bridgeman reproduces no doubt the original architect's idea. The doorway, though it has been considerably restored, was not so much injured as a great deal of the rest of the cathedral, and so contains some very charming carving of the thirteenth century. There are two figures in Roman cement, one on each side of the doorway, representing St. Jude with a scroll, and St. James the Less with a club. No doubt these will both disappear before long, and their place be filled with modern statues. [Illustration: THE NORTH ENTRANCE IN 1813.] Passing by the somewhat plain octagonal chapter-house, where we may perhaps wonder whether the small niches in the top of the buttresses which stick up like little turrets ever contained images, we come to the side of the choir and presbytery, which has not yet been restored, and then to the Lady Chapel. [Illustration: A BAY OF THE CHOIR--EXTERIOR.] The outside of the =Lady Chapel= has recently been very much altered; and the old buttresses, which but the other day were as left by Bishop Langton, with only the hand of decay showing on them, are now gone, and in their place are brand new buttresses, with brand new niches and saints. Those in the top row are the holy women of the Old Testament, while below them are the holy women of the New Testament. The lower row represent Priscilla, Anna, Dorcas, Mary, Martha, Lydia, Phoebe and Elizabeth; and above are Esther, Ruth, Naomi, Rizpah, Deborah, Miriam, Rachel, and Rebecca. On the south side of the Lady Chapel are the curious chapels--known as the mortuary chapels--with their gabled fronts lying in the three spaces between the buttresses. These are more fully described in their place in the next chapter. From this end of the cathedral can be well seen the arcaded parapet with its battlements, which runs round the top of the eastern half of the building and of the transepts, also the turrets of the sacristry with their high crocketted pinnacles; from here, too, can be seen, what Professor Willis draws attention to, "that the rebuilt clerestory of the western part of the choir betrays by the lighter colour of its stone that it was a work subsequent to the eastern part." On one of the buttresses of the choir on this side is an ancient image of a female figure, but it is too much decayed to afford any clue to the character represented, though it remains a very charming instance of Gothic sculpture. On the east corner of the sacristry there is a modern figure of Godefroi de Bouillon, and at the other corner is a figure of St. Chad. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF SOUTH TRANSEPT BEFORE THE LAST RESTORATION.] In the gable of the =South Transept= is a very beautiful rose window, which is hidden by the stone groining from the inside. Mr J. O. Scott, in a lecture already referred to, declared that "this rose window is so high up in the gable that it never could have been combined with any stone groining. But, by referring to York Minster, between which and Lichfield many curious parallels may be traced, it is seen at once how a rose window in this position may be brought into the general design. This is effected by using a particular kind of wooden groining, the part of which nearest to the gable wall is lifted up so as to exhibit the window from within the building." The large doorway in the south transept, which as seen from the outside is at the top of a flight of steps, very much resembles the doorway on the north side, but the carving is not so fine; it has been very much restored, and three shields have been in comparatively recent times carved in the tympanum. The shields show the arms of the see, of Bishop Lloyd, and Dean Addison, thus declaring this to have been done about 1700. To the right of this doorway, outside the southern end of the transept aisle, is an ancient monument, probably of an archdeacon. A carved figure lies in a recess surmounted by a stone canopy. The large heavy buttresses which disfigure the outside of this transept were the work of Wyatt at the end of the last century. The outside of the nave on this side presents a very different appearance to the other side. Here everything is new and uninteresting. The entrance to the bell tower is on this side, and a winding stair leads to the belfry stage. There are ten =Bells=, seven of which date from about 1687, and are therefore of the same age as the bishop's palace. In that year Hacket's six bells, which can only have been hanging some sixteen or seventeen years, were found to be useless, and a subscription was raised to replace them with a peal of ten. There is a letter from the dean and chapter to Elias Ashmole, in which it is stated that Henry Bagley of Ecton, the bell-founder, had "so over-sized the eight bells he had cast, that they had swallowed up all the metal for the ten," and that eighty pounds more would be required, but that they did not regret the mistake as it "would make extremely for the advantage and glory of the cathedral (the bigness of such a ring far more befitting the place)." Only seven of these bells are now in use; the other three are by Rudhall of Gloucester and Mears of London. In 1748 the belfry caught fire and the ninth bell cracked with the heat, but it was recast in the same year, and since then there has been no change. The story of the earliest cathedral bells is lost. It was usual in early days to hang the bells in a separate tower somewhere in the cathedral precincts. Here, we know that in 1315 the bell tower was burnt down,--"Combustum fuit campanile cum campanis in clauso Lichfeldensi." The site of this tower was lately discovered in the bishop's garden. Dean Heywood, in 1477, gave a large bell to the cathedral--it was known as the Jesus Bell; the gift is mentioned in the _Cantaria Sancti Blasii_, where the cost is stated to be one hundred pounds. The bell bore this inscription:-- _"I am the bell of Jesus, and Edward is our king,_ _Sir Thomas Heywood first caused me to ring."_ This bell was hung in the south-west tower, which thus came to be called the Jesus-Bell Tower. The bell was destroyed during the Civil Wars. An ancient writer quoted by Shaw, after detailing the terrible fates of those who took part against religious houses and churches, says: "Nor shall I relate what happened to one, Pickins, a pewterer, who on July 26, 1653, knoct in pieces the fair bell called Jesus, at Lichfield, he being the chief officer appointed for demolishing that cathedral." There was also a bell called the "Clocke Bell," which was hung in the lowest storey of the Jesus spire. It is shown in the south view given in Fuller's "Church History," and particular attention is there directed to it. The clock bell and all the others are now hung in the top storey of the tower. There is also a small bell in the great central tower called "the Tantony": it formerly belonged to the Dyott family. In the south-west tower is also the new =Clock,= which was put up in 1890. The face is underneath, in the west end of the south aisle of the nave; there is no outside face. The well-known Cambridge quarter chimes can, it is said, be heard at a distance of three miles. In the green grass of the close are many tombstones, and round about the cathedral stone coffins have been dug up; on the north side of the choir is the traditional burying-place of two Mercian kings. CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR Lichfield is one of the smallest cathedrals in England. In length it only measures 370 feet from the inside of the west door to the extreme end of the inside of the Lady Chapel, while the interior of the nave, with its aisles, is only a little more than 68 feet wide; and yet its smallness is not the first fact that will strike the visitor on entering the west door: rather, on the other hand, its immense length in proportion to its height and width will be noticed, but probably all other feelings will be forgotten in the beauty of the vista that lies before him. The long line of arches and the long low roof, with its almost countless bosses, lead the eye down to the Lady Chapel, where a mass of blue and red shows that the cathedral has some of the most beautiful glass in the kingdom. The orientation of the nave and choir are not the same--the choir and Lady Chapel being considerably inclined to the north. Many have been the theories raised by the curious discoveries made as to the deflections of various parts of this cathedral. They are too numerous to quote here, and it will be sufficient to note that the total deflection of the east end from the true east is about ten degrees. [Illustration: A BAY OF THE NAVE--INTERIOR.] =The Nave.=--The view of the interior of the cathedral from the inside of the west door is, as we have said, extremely beautiful. This beauty is much enhanced by the general appearance of unity in the whole design. There seems to be no mixture of styles, and though a closer examination of the details of the interior shows that there is a very marked difference between the style in which the nave is built and that which was in vogue when the Lady Chapel and presbytery were erected; yet the whole, having been built at a time when the Early English style was giving place gradually to the Decorated, or, in the more eastern portion, when that later style was well established, the general effect of the cathedral, seen from this aspect, is one of unity. The exact date of the nave cannot be determined, and there is no direct evidence on which to base a theory; but it is very clear, from a comparison of its style with that of churches whose history is known, that it must have been commenced and carried to a speedy conclusion about the middle of the thirteenth century. Professor Willis gives the date as 1250, and other archaeologists at various dates between that and 1280. There is no doubt, at any rate, that it was built at the transitional period of the Early English style, and it would be described by some as belonging to the Early Decorated period, and by others as belonging to the geometrical period of the Decorated style. The nave, including the western front, consists of eight bays, having aisles on the north and south sides, with the same number of bays; but the spaces underneath the two western towers are considerably larger than the other aisle bays, though not large enough to be looked upon as western transepts, as is possible in some churches where there is a similar arrangement. Many writers have complained of the insufficient height of the nave, and that the general effect is thereby spoilt, and to a very limited extent this may be true. Probably the nave roof was at one time of much higher pitch; the course on the outside of the great tower suggests it, as also does the fact that the great west window runs into the roof. Probably the roof was lowered when the presbytery was built, and the whole roofing of the cathedral brought down to the same level. [Illustration: A BAY OF THE CHOIR--INTERIOR.] The piers are large, and consist of clustered shafts, lozenge-shaped in plan, set on much moulded bases, and having beautifully carved foliated capitals from which spring architrave mouldings of great variety. From the base and up the centre of each pier runs a cluster of three fine columns to capitals, also foliated, at the top of the triforium; from these spring five vaulting ribs, three of which diverge to an ornamental central rib, and two to a small similarly decorated transverse rib. There are finely carved bosses at the intersection of all the various ribs. The top of each arch touches the string course, above which is the beautiful triforium. This consists of a row of double arches, each arch being sub-divided into two lights with geometrical tracery above. The mouldings are highly decorated with dog-toothing, and the string course between the triforium and the clerestory, as well as the moulding enclosing the clerestory windows, has this same ornament, which is freely used and produces a very rich effect. The clerestory windows are spherical triangles enclosing three circles with quatrefoil cusps; the form of these windows is somewhat rare, but similar windows are to be seen at Westminster, Hereford, Carlisle, and York. The spandrels of most of the pier arches are ornamented with a large circle with five cusps, across which the vault shafts pass; this decoration will be seen again in the choir. A notable feature in these bays is the size of the triforium in proportion to the size of the pier arches and clerestory; this gives it unusual importance in the general scheme. At Lincoln, where there is a similar triforium, a very different effect is produced by its comparative smallness. The open tracery here is very much like that in Westminster Abbey. It will be seen that the dripstones of the arches and windows terminate in small sculptured heads: a usual arrangement at this period. It may be added that the beautiful capitals have scarcely been restored at all; so little damage had been done to them, that when the whitewash was removed during the recent restorations, they were found to have been hardly touched either by decay, Puritans, or previous restorers. [Illustration: THE NAVE IN 1813.] [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING EAST.] The roof of the nave was greatly damaged at the time of the Civil Wars--indeed, it has been said that the central spire, in its fall, completely smashed it in; but this is probably not the case, as the spire almost certainly fell on the other side of the tower. Still, it is not difficult, after reading an account of the siege, to understand that the roof would be much injured. About a century after its repair by Bishop Hacket, it was found that the great weight of the stone groining was forcing out the clerestory walls, already much weakened by rough usage, and, in consequence, Wyatt removed the stone work in several bays, and replaced it with lath and plaster work made to imitate the rest of the roofing. Sir Gilbert Scott was urged to restore the old stone vaulting, but he decided that without great structural alterations, principally to the buttresses, which he did not feel justified in making, this could not be done. The vaulting has been coloured so that the difference between the stone compartments--the most eastern and the two western ones--and the plaster compartments might not be noticed; it will easily be seen how much the clerestory walls have been thrust out. It is also interesting to note that at about the same time Wyatt restored the roof of the aisles to its old pitch. Originally, as now, the aisle roof ascended so as to reach to just below the clerestory windows. In Hollar's picture the upper portion of the triforium windows can be seen, so that they must have become practically a portion of the clerestory during this time. Investigation of the windows themselves proves that they have been glazed, and this confirms what otherwise, considering the great inexactness of the pictures of the period, could not be inferred with certainty. There is a view of the cathedral as late as 1781 showing this arrangement; but in Jackson's "History of Lichfield," 1796, the aisle roof hides the whole of the triforium as at present. The windows of the aisles agree well with the other windows of the nave, and have three lights with trefoiled circles in the head, while below the windows is an arcade resting on a bench, the arches of which are surmounted with pediments richly carved. There are six of these arches in each bay, and between the bays rise triple vaulting shafts with carved capitals of leafage; from these spring three ribs running to a central rib on which are beautiful bosses like those in the nave. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST.] =The Great West Window.=--The tracery of this window has already been discussed in the description of the exterior. The present glass was placed there in 1869, to the memory of Canon Hutchinson, who, perhaps, of all was most eager for the restoration of the cathedral, and to whose untiring energy, it is said, is due the wholesale renovation of the interior by Sir Gilbert Scott. This window was the result of a public subscription, and is the work of Messrs Clayton & Bell. The six large figures represent St. Michael, St. Joseph, St. Mary, and the Three Magi, while underneath are small pictures of the Annunciation, the Angel warning Joseph, the Nativity, the Journey of the Magi, the Magi inquire of Herod, and the Flight into Egypt. As to the previous glass in this window, there seems to be no record of that which must have decorated it before the Civil Wars. In Shaw's "History of Staffordshire," there are long lists of the glass to be found in the cathedral; but it is difficult to decide which window is being described. After the Restoration, we have in a Bodleian MS. the following record:--"Oct. 6, 1671. Arms in the Great West Window, Arms of King Charles the Second, Crest and Supporters; Arms of James Duke of York, his brother, Crest and Supporters. And beneath them, _Serenissimus princeps Jacobus dux Ebor hanc fenestram. F.F._" Britton says it was afterwards filled with painted glass, the work of Brookes, by the legacy of Dr Addenbroke, who died dean of this cathedral in 1776. Over the great west door in the inside of the cathedral was formerly inscribed:-- _Oswyus est Lichfield fundator, sed reparator_ _Offa fuit; regum fama perennis erit:_ _Rex Stephanus, rex Heniricus primusque Richardus,_ _Rex et Johannis, plurima dona dabant._ _Pene haec millenos ecclesia floruit annos,_ _Duret ad extremum nobilis usque diem,_ _Daque deus longum, ut floreat hae sacra aedes_ _Et celebret nomen plebs ibi sancta tuum._ _Fundata est ecclesia Merciencis_ _Quae nunc Lichfieldia dicitur_ _Facta Cathedralis_ _Anno Domini_ _DCLVII_ Dugdale, in his "Visitation of Staffordshire," gives us this inscription. It has long since disappeared. Pennant mentions a curious or, as he calls it, "droll" epitaph on the floor near the west door, but there is no sign of it now:--"_William Roberts of Overbury, some time malster in this town (tells you) for the love I bore to choir service, I chose to be buried in this place._ He died Decr. 16th, 1768." From a MS. quoted by Shaw we learn that before the Great War "on a fair marble gravestone, placed on the right-hand at the entrance into the choir, is this inscription on a brass plate:-- "_Here lyeth George Bullen lat dean of this church who made his own epitaph--viz._, _Lo here in earth my body lyes,_ _Whose sinfull lyfe deserves the rod:_ _Yet I believe the same shall rise,_ _And praise the mercies of my God._ _As for my soule let none take thought,_ _It is with him that hath it bought;_ _For God on me doth mercy take_ _For nothing else but Jhesus sake._" Bullen or Boleyn was dean during the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth, who offered him the bishopric of Worcester, which he refused. Elizabeth, it will be remembered, was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose kinsman the dean was. =The Font= stands between the first and second pillars from the west door on the north side of the nave. It is quite modern, and is the gift of the Honourable Mrs Henry Howard, widow of the late dean. It is made of alabaster and Caen stone, and is supported on marble pillars. There are four sculptured panels in relief, representing--"The Entry into the Ark," "The Passage of the Red Sea," "The Baptism of our Lord," and "The Resurrection." Between these there are niches containing figures of St. Mary, St. Peter, St. Chad, and St. Helen. A curious old font was discovered in 1856 immediately under the place where the present altar stands. It was very simple in form, being about a yard and a half square and two feet thick, with a hemispherical cavity in it. It had been coloured bright red, and was much cracked, as though it had been subjected to intense heat. How it came where it was is not known. It may have been discarded as rubbish or hidden as a relic. =The Pulpit= is in the nave, and is fixed to the north-western pier of the tower. Its design and execution were by Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr Skidmore respectively, who were also responsible for the choir screen. The pulpit is of wrought-iron, brass, copper, enamels, and marble. In the middle there is a bronze group representing St. Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost. There are stairs on each side of the pulpit. The brass =Lectern= is also modern, and is in the usual form of an eagle. It was presented by the members of the Lichfield Theological College, and was executed by Mr Hardman of Birmingham. The =Litany Desk= is by Messrs Rattee & Kett of Cambridge, the well-known carvers; and the =Bishop's Chair=, which stands under the great tower, was presented by the clergy of Derbyshire when that county was transferred from this diocese to the new diocese of Southwell. The chair is not of striking beauty. [Illustration: NORTH AISLE OF NAVE, LOOKING EAST.] In the North Aisle of the Nave there are several monuments and some modern glass. The window in the north-west tower has recently been adorned with glass to the memory of Bishop Lonsdale, under whom the recent restoration commenced. The subject is "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple," and it is the work of Messrs Burlison & Grylls. Close to this is a tablet, originally placed in the north transept by order of Ann Seward, who had considerable fame as a poetess in the last century, to the memory of her father, Canon Seward, his wife and daughter Sarah. It also commemorates her own death. The lines are by Sir Walter Scott, but it is impossible to be enthusiastic over them. They end-- "_Honour'd beloved, and mourn'd here Seward lies;_ _Her worth, her warmth of heart, our sorrows say,--_ _Go seek her genius in her living lay._" There is a representation of the poetess mourning her dead relatives, while her harp is hanging neglected on a tree. On the other side is a memorial tablet to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was a native of Lichfield. In these days of anti-vaccination agitations it is interesting to read the inscription which runs:-- "_The Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who happily introduced from Turkey into this country the Salutary Art of inoculating the Smallpox. Convinced of its efficacy, she first tried it with success on her own children, and then recommended the practice of it to her fellow-citizens. Thus, by her example and advice, we have softened the Virulence and escaped the danger of this Malignant Disease. To perpetuate the memory of such benevolence, and to express the gratitude for the benefit she hereby has received from this Alleviating Art, this Monument is erected by Henrietta Inge, Relict of Theodore William Inge, Esq., and Daughter of Sir John Wrotesley, Baronet. In the year of Our Lord, 1789._" Close at hand is a tablet in memory of Mr Gilbert Walmesley, who was registrar of the diocese, and an early and close friend of Dr Johnson. Of him the latter wrote, in his life of Edmund Smith (one of the well-known "Lives of the Poets"), that passage which contains the celebrated sentence about David Garrick so often quoted. Speaking of Gilbert Walmesley, he says that he is "not able to name a man of equal knowledge. His acquaintance with books was great; such was his amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may be doubted whether a day now passes in which I have not some advantage from his friendship. At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours with companions such as are not often found; with one who has lengthened, and one who has gladdened life; with Dr James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered, and with David Garrick, whose death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure." There are other monuments in this aisle, but they are scarcely of such general interest. Here are tablets in memory of Jane and Catherine Jervis and of Elizabeth and Arabella Buchanan. There is a stained glass window by Messrs Burlison & Grylls containing three large figures of Joshua, St. Michael, and the Centurion, with, underneath, pictures of the Angel appearing to Joshua, the Centurion at the Cross, and the Centurion coming to Our Lord; above, in the tracery of the window, are angels. This window was the gift of the officers of the 38th (1st Staffordshire) Regiment; on one side are their Peninsular, and on the other their Crimean colours, which the dean and chapter received from the regiment with much ceremony in 1886 and 1887 respectively. Beneath the window is a brass in memory of those members of the regiment who died in the Peninsula, first Burmah, Crimean, and Egyptian (1882) wars, and the Indian Mutiny. There are also brasses to Lieutenant-Colonels Sinclair and Eyre and the officers and men of this regiment who fell in the first Soudan war, and also brasses to Colonel Bromley Davenport and Sir Arthur Scott, Bart. Here, too, is a window in memory of Canon Madan, his wife and children: the subject being Faith, Hope, and Charity. In the window next the transept is some quite new glass in memory of Canon Curteis, the large figures representing Samuel, St. Paul, and Origen, while below are Samuel teaching the Sons of the Prophets, St. Paul saying farewell to the Elders at Miletus, and St. Catherine and the Philosophers of Alexandria. The famous Dr Stukeley, writing about 1715, says: "As you walk down the north aisle, by a little doorway, formerly a chapel, where lay several figures now demolished, yet one remains, who was dean Yotton, his coat of arms at his head and Yot with a tun by it which shows his name." The only remaining sign of this chapel is the entrance, which can be plainly seen from the outside of the cathedral. In the =South Aisle of the Nave=, at the west end, there is a monument to Dean Addison, the father of the great essayist and poet; he died in 1703. His memorial slab is now under the Jesus Tower, but formerly it was on the north of the west door. The glass in the window of the tower is in memory of Dean Howard, during whose time as dean so much of the work of restoration was done, and who so munificently aided the work. This glass, which is by Messrs Burlison & Grylls, represents St. Michael and the Dragon, and St. Chad. The other glass on this side is the window of the fifth bay, by Messrs Clayton & Bell, the subjects being Our Lord and Lazarus, Our Lord and Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene washing Our Lord's feet; in the next bay the glass, by Messrs Ward & Hughes, shows Faith, Hope, and Charity; in the seventh bay the glass is by Messrs Clayton & Bell, and has David and Goliath for its subject, and is in memory of the officers of the 64th (2nd Staffordshire) Regiment who fell in the Indian Mutiny. There is in the eighth bay a window by Hardman in memory of Helen, wife of Josiah Spode. Between the aisle and the nave there is a brass in the floor in memory of the late Earl of Lichfield, placed there in 1854. There are several other modern brasses and tablets. In this aisle are two of the three semi-effigies to be seen in the cathedral. These show only the heads and the feet. Britton says: "They are said to represent two old canons of the church; and are evidently of ancient date, as they appear to have been placed in the present situation at the time of building or finishing the nave." One of these is in a better state of preservation than the other, and shows in the drapery the remains of colour. =The Transepts= are earlier than the nave in style, having been built in the beginning of the thirteenth century: the south transept first, and then the north. It must have been for these transepts that Henry III., in 1235 and 1238, granted licences to the dean and chapter of Lichfield to dig stone from the royal forest of Hopwas for the new fabric of the church of Lichfield. Whether these ecclesiastics did more harm than the king liked in digging on the first occasion cannot be said, but on the second occasion they are permitted "fodere petram ad fabricam ecclesiae suae de Lichefeld in quarrera de Hopwas; ita tamen quod hoc fiat sine detrimento forestae nostrae"--that is to say, they were to do as little damage as possible. [Illustration: ARCADE, WITH SEMI-EFFIGY, IN SOUTH AISLE.] The transepts have three bays each, with eastern aisles, the aisle belonging to the north transept being very much the larger. There can be no doubt that when the Norman transepts were standing there were no aisles; nor were any contemplated when the choir was built, for, as Professor Willis says: "The side walls of the choir are continued to the transepts, and had windows in the part looking into the present transept aisles. Probably when the choir was built Norman transepts were standing, and had each an apsidal chapel looking east in the usual manner." The history of the roof is extremely interesting. We know that "in 1243 King Henry III. issued a commission to Walter Grey, Archbishop of York, to expedite the works at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in which he orders a lofty wooden roof, like the roof of the new work at Lichfield, to appear like stone work, with good ceiling (_celatura?_) and painting. The transepts of Lichfield have now stone vaults, considerably later than the walls, and, therefore, may have had a wooden vault at first. The date would suit the transepts better than the choir, and it may be remarked that the early abacus of the vault shaft (at least, in the south transept) is surmounted by a second abacus in the Perpendicular style, which shows the later construction of the springing stones of the present stone vault." The low stone vaulting has destroyed the effect which the original windows in the north and south ends of the transepts must have produced. At the south end was probably a large five-light Early English window, surmounted by a rose window. The rose window still remains, but, being above the present groining, cannot be seen from inside the cathedral; the five lights are replaced by a nine-light obtuse-headed window, which seems much too large for the transept; and this effect is increased by the extreme whiteness and transparency of its glass. At the north end, the five-light window is surmounted with three small lights, but these last again are hidden in the roof. [Illustration: DETAIL OF A SEMI-EFFIGY.] The windows in the transepts have seen many changes, and are now mostly in the Perpendicular manner, the exceptions being in the west wall of the south transept, and the north window just referred to. Until 1892 this was a large Perpendicular window--which, though early, and prior to the Civil War, was a manifest intrusion on the space originally occupied by an Early English window. The old design, which is not unlike that of the famous window at York, has again taken its place. Canon Lonsdale says that this change is "in every sense a restoration: for, on taking out the Perpendicular window, and removing such of the stone work as was defective on either side, the headings of the five Early English lights, which had unquestionably composed the original window, were discovered, hidden away by the later workmen. The cusps, or headings, of the lights, as they are now seen from the inside, are, with the exception of six stones, the very identical material which the Early English builders carved, and placed in that spot. Of these six missing stones, three have since been discovered during the work going on in the south transept." There can be no doubt that some of the Perpendicular work in the cathedral is due to the general repair at the Restoration; but Professor Willis declares that many of the changes are earlier, and that they were perhaps effected in the time between Bishops Heyworth and Blythe, 1420 to 1503. The engravings of Hollar, already referred to, were published before 1660, and show Perpendicular windows in the gable of the south transept and in the clerestory; and though from these pictures nothing can be gleaned about the north transept, the character of the Perpendicular work was such that it also, as has just been stated, must have been prior to the Rebellion. It is possible, on the outside western face of the north transept, to trace the old lancet windows, which must have been arranged in groups of three, while the lower windows on the west side of the south transept are still in their old form, though on this side there are only two lancets to each bay. It may be mentioned here that underneath these last windows, on the outside, there is an arcading with simple pointed arches which does not appear on the other transept. Inside the arcading differs in the two transepts; in the south and older one the pointed arches are plain, while on the north they are cusped. This arcading is almost entirely new; what there was of it until recently was principally of plaster. From the ground plan of this cathedral published by Browne Willis in 1727, we see that the whole of the aisle of the north transept is described as "The Bishop's Consistory Court and St. Stephen's Chapel," while the aisle of the south transept is divided into two parts, the southern being called "The Dean's Consistory Court," the northern "The Vicar's Vestry." St. Stephen's Chapel was in the inner bay of the aisle; and it has been suggested that "the chantry of St. Anne and the image of Jesus" was in the rood loft of the same transept. In the =North Transept= are many memorial tablets, but it cannot be said that they are of general interest either from their beauty, age, or on account of the eminence of the persons commemorated. On the west side of the steps down from the north door is the curious monument to Dean Heywood, who died in 1492, and whose benefactions are mentioned in their proper places. The monument is sadly decayed, but there is a print of it in Shaw's "Staffordshire," taken, says Britton, from Dugdale's "Visitation." From this we know that the upper part is now missing; the lower part, which remains, shows the skeleton of the dean--his body after death--while above was his representation in full canonical costume. Similar monuments may be seen at St. John's College, Cambridge, in the chapel, and at Exeter and Lincoln Cathedrals. On the other side of the door is a large modern monument to Archdeacon Iles, who died in 1888: the figure is recumbent. Above the door is a marble tablet to Dean Woodhouse; he gave the glass--now in the Guildhall--which filled the Perpendicular window recently replaced by the present Early English window. The new glass, and indeed the new window, was given by Mr James Chadwick of Hints Hall, near Tamworth; it is known as the Jesse window, and gives the genealogy of our Lord according to St. Matthew. The figures beginning from the west side represent (1) Achaz, Asa, Abia; (2) Ezekias, Solomon, Roboam; (3) the Virgin Mary and Child, Salathiel, David, Jesse; (4) Josias, Josaphat, Joram; (5) Manasses, Joatham, Ozias; with angels in the four side lights. The inscription under the window says: "Hanccine fenestram Jacobus Chadwick de vico Hints reficiendam vitroque picto ornandam impensis suis curavit. A.D. MDCCCXCIII." Messrs Clayton & Bell are responsible for this window. The whole of the aisle of this transept is taken up with the organ, in front of which a metal screen or gryll was placed in 1881 by the officers and men of the 80th Regiment, in memory of their comrades who fell in the Zulu War. The screen is ornamented with imitations of Zulu shields and assegais. There are many tablets in this aisle, but they are entirely hidden by the organ. =The Organ= was presented by Mr Spode of Hawkesyard Park, near Lichfield, in 1860, and was first used at the reopening in 1861; in 1884 it needed repair, and was then very much enlarged by Messrs Hill & Son, the well-known organ-builders of London, the expense being defrayed by voluntary subscriptions. It was dedicated, at the same time as the restored west front, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, on May 29th, 1884. The console of the organ is now behind the stalls in the first bay of the south aisle of the choir. It is interesting to learn from Canon Lonsdale that, when it was found necessary to build an engine-house in the close to supply motive power to the organ, in digging out the chamber, somewhat to the east of the steps leading to the north door, two or three cannon balls and the remains of a shell were unearthed at a short distance from the surface. The present organ is the successor to many other organs. The first of which there is any record was given to the cathedral by Dean Heywood, as is known from this entry in the _Cantaria S. Blasii_, in the cathedral library: "Magna organa in pulpito. Item cito post festum nativitatis Sancti Johannis Baptiste. Anno domini MCCCC. octogesimo secundo. ex providencia et sumptibus magistri Thome Heywode decani antedicti. conferuntur ecclesi cath lich organa nova magnae quantitatis. et formae decentis. ad honorem sancti cedde et ornamentirm ecclesiae precij xxvi. Li. iij.s. iiij.d. totalitur de sumptibus et expensis predicti decani. Sma xxvj. Li. iij.s. iiij.d." Dean Heywood also presented another organ, which was known as the Jesus organ; but it was much smaller presumably, as it cost rather less than half as much. The next time there is mention of an organ is in 1634, when, in an account of their travels by three tourists, they say: "The organs and voices were deep and sweet, their anthems we were much delighted with, and of the voyces, 2 Trebles, 2 Counter-tenors, and 2 Bases, that equally on each side of the Quire most melodiously acted and performed their parts." The organ here referred to, however "deep and sweet," was not considered good enough, for in 1636, according to a deed still preserved in the cathedral, the dean and chapter purchased an organ from Robert Dallam of Covent Garden, which, no doubt, "was the pair of organs valued at £200" destroyed by the Puritans. The organ that Hacket set up was obtained by the subscriptions of ladies; the bishop writes: "An Organ is bespoke at £600 price, to be call'd the Ladies Organ, because none but the honourable and most pious of that sex shall contribute to that sum." The names of the chief subscribers were written on the organ: "Illustrissima heroina Francisca ducissima Somersetensis. Honoratissima domina, comitissa Devon: Clarissima domina, Jana, domina de Gerard Bromley," and many others, as set out by Ashmole, who also tells us that there were "coats of arms under the organ at the entrance into the choir," showing that the organ loft was situated between the two eastern piers of the tower. Harwood, in his "History of Lichfield," tells us of another organ "which was removed in A.D. 1740 to the vicar's hall, and became at length an ornament to Mr Greene's museum," whence it afterwards found its way to the church at Hamstall Ridware. While in the vicar's hall it was damaged by soldiers quartered there in the '45. It is now in the bishop's palace. In 1740 it was replaced in the cathedral by an organ by Schwarbrook, which in turn, in Wyatt's time, was superseded by one by Samuel Green--this was much larger, and took up the whole of the western bay of the choir. The present organ is much the largest the cathedral has possessed, and, compared to the old one in the palace, is so large that, according to Mr Hewitt, the whole of the latter would go inside the pedal pipes of the former. The south transept has its full share of monuments, two of which are of great interest. These are the memorials to Dr Johnson and to his friend, David Garrick, the actor. The busts are both by Sir Richard Westmacott, R.A. The inscription to the first says: _The Friends of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (a native of Lichfield), erected this Monument as a tribute of respect to the Memory of a man of extensive learning, a distinguished Moral Writer, and a Sincere Christian. He died the 13th of December 1784; Aged 75 years._ The other reads: _EVA MARIA, Relict of DAVID GARRICK, Esq., caused this Monument to be erected to the Memory of her beloved Husband, who died the 20th January 1779: Aged 63 years._ Garrick had not only the amiable qualities of private life, but such astonishing dramatic talents as to well verify the observations of his friend, which have already been quoted (p. 66), in reference to the memorial of Gilbert Walmesley. Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, where his father was a bookseller; his shop is still standing, scarcely altered, on the west side of the Market Place, close to the monument of his famous son (see p. 136). David Garrick came with his parents to live in Lichfield when very young, and he and Johnson attended the Grammar School together. There was a difference of several years in their ages, but their life-long friendship must have begun early, seeing that Johnson wrote the Prologue for Garrick's performance of Farquhar's comedy, "The Recruiting Officer," which took place at the Bishop's Palace when Garrick was only eleven years old. Some years after, when Johnson had left Oxford and had set up a school in the neighbourhood of Lichfield, Garrick joined him as a pupil; but the venture did not prove successful, and master and pupil left Lichfield for London, where each in his own line reached the highest summit of fame. These memorials stand side by side in the aisle; for some reason, the busts were removed to the library when the interior was being restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, but they have once again been replaced in the spot originally chosen for them. The friendship of Johnson and Garrick was long and cordial: it is fitting we should see that in their death they were not divided. In this aisle, which until recently was used as the Dean's Consistory Court, is another monument by Westmacott; this is in memory of Andrew Newton, who was so munificent a friend to his native Lichfield. He founded the institution on the west side of the close for the widows and orphans of clergymen, which he also endowed; and on his death, in 1806, he left a library of books to the cathedral. In the first bay of the aisle is a monument to the officers and men of the 80th Regiment (Staffordshire Volunteers). The design is Egyptian, and is surmounted by a sphinx. Over the monument hang colours taken from the Sikhs, and on the wall behind are the old regimental colours. At the south end is a very fine and costly altar tomb--to Admiral Sir William Parker, who, when he died in 1866, was the last survivor of Nelson's captains. The slab of Pyrenean jasper is inlaid with a gold cross, and the front is adorned with stones of porphyry and lapis lazuli. The window above has some of the Herkenrode glass left over from the Lady Chapel, together with some modern glass. The great south window, which, as has just been stated, is in the Perpendicular style, was in 1895 adorned with new glass; this was the gift of Mr A. P. Heywood-Lonsdale, in memory of his father and his uncle, Bishop Lonsdale. The subject is "I am the vine, ye are the branches," and represents Our Lord in the centre surrounded by angels, with the principal bishops of the Early Christian Church. The six early British bishops: St. Columba, Scotland; St. Wulstan, Worcester; St. Chad, Lichfield; St. Augustine, Canterbury; St. Aidan, Northumbria; St. Hugh, Lincoln, are at the feet of Our Lord. The other bishops are St. Basil, Caesarea; St. Cyril, Jerusalem; St. Patrick, Ireland; St. Ignatius, Antioch; St. Polycarp, Smyrna; St. Boniface, Germany; St. Martin, Tours; St. David, Wales; St. Gregory, Rome; St. Augustine, Hippo; St. Athanasius, Alexandria; St. Cyprian, Carthage; St. Isidore, Spain; St. Chrysostom, Constantinople; St. Ambrose, Milan; and St. Vigilius, Aries. This glass is by Mr C. E. Kempe. On the west side are several brasses and tablets, including one to John Saville, vicar choral of the cathedral, who died in 1803. The lines underneath are by the Miss Seward whose own memorial is in the north aisle of the nave; they, like so much of the elegiac poetry of the period, owe not only their style, but a good many of their phrases, to the poet Gray. =The Choir=, with the presbytery and retro-choir--that is to say, the whole extent of that part of the cathedral between the central tower and the entrance to the Lady Chapel--has eight bays. The most noticeable difference between it and the nave, is the absence of a triforium. Professor Willis says: "The entire height of the severey (or bay) is divided into two nearly equal parts, of which the lower is given to the pier arches, the upper to the clerestory. The window-sills of the latter are high, and there is a passage in front of them immediately above the tablement or string course over the pier arches. This passage, the veritable triforium, pierces the great piers of masonry which sustain the vault. The high sills receive the sloping roof of the side aisles, and have three plain open arches in each severey to air the roof." These sills are panelled with a foliated arcading, and in front of the passage there is an open trefoil work parapet. The effect of the windows inside is much enhanced by the lovely quatrefoil ornamentation with which their splays are decorated. In the single window--the east on the south side--where the original tracery remains, it is very beautiful and graceful, and is a good example of the Decorated period; but into the other windows Perpendicular tracery has been introduced. The vaulting is very much the same as in the nave, but the vaulting shafts divide into seven instead of five ribs. The bosses, as everywhere else in the cathedral, are very deeply and richly carved. On the four eastern sets of piers long slender shafts run up from the base of the piers in the same way as in the nave, and similarly the spandrels are ornamented with foliated circles, of which nearly all trace had disappeared before the recent restoration. This, however, is not the arrangement on the three western pairs. It was found here that these shafts did not reach the ground; and so Sir Gilbert Scott, having discovered a portion of the sculptured wing of an angel just above the dean's present stall, decided upon finishing the shafts with corbels in the form of angels occupied in minstrelsy. Above each of these angels--which were innovations--he placed, under richly crocketted canopies and standing on very finely-carved brackets, the figures of six saints. These were not innovations, though no signs of them appear in the engraving in Britton's "Cathedrals," where, indeed, the incomplete shafts just mentioned are to all appearance complete. But in Pennant's "Journey from Chester to London," 1782, the six statues are mentioned, and he tells us not only their names, but also that they were richly painted. The new statues represent the same original characters: St. Mary, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Peter on the north side; St. James, St. Philip, and St. Christopher on the south: these with their niches have been executed partly from the old description of them and partly by reference to the niches remaining in the Lady Chapel. An investigation of the roof proved that its bosses had been originally profusely gilded and painted, and that the ribs had been painted in tri-colour, though, oddly enough, this apparently had not been the case in the Lady Chapel. Mr Dyce, R.A., was called in to give an opinion, and suggested a large scheme, upon which he actually started, but after having proceeded only a small way, difficulties arose and he departed. What little paint had been applied to the ribs was removed; but a few of the more easterly bosses remain gilt to this day, and afterwards the others were reddened to bring out the sculpture. [Illustration: THE CHOIR IN 1820.] The architectural history of the choir and presbytery is very interesting. There is practically no documentary evidence at all to tell when and how it was built; and what we know about it now is due to the antiquarian skill of the late Professor Willis. Nothing can have been more fortunate than that he should have been able to make an inspection of the foundations of the choir, for no man had a greater genius for using the smallest discoveries to the greatest advantage. Numerous stories are told of his extraordinary gift for divining what was to be found. As Canon Lonsdale says: "He knew, as it were, by instinct what was hidden under the soil. 'Dig there,' he said, and the base he wanted came to light. 'Open out the earth here,' and the solid piece of stone which he had been looking for to complete his imaginary plan was straightway disclosed to view." He came here in August 1859, when excavations were being made in the choir, and on what he saw then he based the theory of the growth of the cathedral which has found favour with everyone ever since. The nature of his discoveries here, and the conclusions he drew from them, have been briefly given in the section of this book devoted to the history of the cathedral, so that it is unnecessary to further discuss them, except when they apply to buildings which are now in existence. The present choir was commenced at the very beginning of the thirteenth century. Of this choir only the lower portions of the three bays nearest the tower remain above ground, but there is no doubt that the original eastern termination had been removed to make way for the beautiful presbytery which now remains and extends eastward, with its vaulting at the same elevation as that of the choir. This was done probably immediately after the Lady Chapel had been built, or at the same time, and it is supposed that the work proceeded from the east end and the old choir was gradually pulled down, leaving the three western bays standing, and that then the clerestory of these bays was replaced by work in uniformity with that in the new presbytery; at the same time the front half of their pier arches was removed and mouldings given to them corresponding to those in the presbytery, their piers were also slightly altered. In this way the choir and presbytery acquired a uniform appearance, both inside and out; for the portion of the old side aisle on the south is hidden by the sacristry, and that on the north by the chapter-house and vestibule. As has been said, only one of the original Decorated clerestory windows now remain; the others, it may be supposed, were destroyed in the sieges of the Civil War, for they have been replaced with Perpendicular tracery which belongs to a period when this style was only being imitated; it was probably put in at the Restoration. The high altar is now placed between the sixth pair of piers (counting from the west). This is probably the old arrangement, but until the recent restorations the altar was placed in the Lady Chapel: the pier arches of the choir were walled up, and a large screen placed in the eastern tower arch; so that the choir and Lady Chapel were converted into one long aisleless chapel. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.] It is very interesting to note the signs in the choir of the attempt to combine the two styles which, as has been explained, met here. The third piers stand on the line of demarcation between the part retained and the part rebuilt, and consequently carry an Early English arch to the west and a Decorated arch to the east. The Early English column was partially cut away and partially used in the new work, as may be seen on inspection of these piers. It will also be seen that the vaulting in the aisles is much rougher in the old part than in the eastern bays. The plaster used to hide this; but Sir Gilbert Scott caused it to be removed, and is said afterward to have regretted having done so. [Illustration: SOUTH AISLE OF CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.] Another interesting junction between two buildings of different dates is the entrance to the vestibule of the chapter-house. This entrance is in the third bay of the north aisle, and is obviously a combination of doorway and window, as may be seen by comparing the window of the first bay with it. Again, in the first bays of the aisles there are windows in the Early English style, but they look only into the aisles of the transepts; showing, as has before been stated, that the transept aisles were not originally contemplated, and certainly did not take the place of earlier Norman aisles. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.] The arch at the west end of the north choir aisle is decorated with a double chevron moulding--evidence that it is one of the oldest pieces of work left in the cathedral. This arch has at a more recent date been lined with another arch of the Decorated period, probably in order to strengthen it. The arcading in the aisles is very interesting. In the first three western bays in both aisles the large arcading, with its plain trefoiled arches, is clearly Early English. The arcading in the other bays is equally clearly of the Decorated period, and is considerably smaller. In the four eastern bays in each aisle the arches go right up to the course which forms the top of the arcading, and the triangular spandrels thus formed are ornamented each with a curious little head, having queer headgear; the rest of the spandrel is carved with foliage, and in the plates of the foliated arches are quaint animals. The arcading in the remaining bay is similar, but angels' heads with wings take up the whole spandrel. Some of the arcading, notably that in the three easterly bays of the south aisle, is unrestored. The inferiority of the modern work in the next bay is only too patent. In the south choir aisle the third window from the east has very beautiful carved work, the splays being covered with two bands of richly-carved foliage. Under the window is now the tomb of Bishop Hacket, and Dean Heywood's monument is said to have also been in this place. In the south aisle, over the entrance to the sacristy, there is a very charmingly-proportioned gallery which is known as the "minstrel gallery." A gallery of this kind, though not unique, is very rare, but Exeter Cathedral has two--one in the north transept and another in the nave. In this case the arcading has been altered to accommodate this obviously later addition, made probably in the early part of the fifteenth century. Three shafts from the arcade have been left, which support a fan-shaped vaulting, upon which the gallery rests. There is little doubt as to the object of the gallery, though various theories have been advanced. By some it is supposed that it was used by the priest whose duty it was to watch the lights burning on the various altars; others suggest that it was indeed used by the instrumentalists to keep time during the procession, etc.; but, as it is immediately in front of the chapel of the Head of St. Chad, it was no doubt intended for the exhibition of the head to those below in the aisle. However, it may be said that the raised galleries in mediæval halls were always called by the name of "minstrel gallery," and so the name came to be used of galleries generally. This gallery is reached by the staircase in the wall which leads to the upper floor of the sacristy. Just against the entrance to this staircase, in the wall of the aisle, is an ancient piscina. Its presence here is unexplained, as there is no record of a chapel at this spot; though it has been suggested that the altar dedicated to St. Blaise occupied a position in this aisle. It is perhaps worth noticing that in the old days the two bays of the cathedral between the high altar and the Lady Chapel, together with their portions of the aisles, were generally spoken of as the Lady Choir, and are marked as such in old plans; other writers again speak of this part of the building as "the cross aisle." There were gates across the choir aisles in a line with the reredos, and these are marked in the plan of the cathedral published somewhere about 1720. No doubt the eastern ends of the choir aisles in still earlier days were spoken of as St. Andrew's Chapel or St. Nicholas' Chapel; but, though it is almost certain that the east end of the north choir aisle was dedicated to St. Andrew, there is no certain information as to the dedication of the corresponding chapel in the south aisle, but it is generally believed to have contained an altar to St. Nicholas. =The Choir Screen= was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr J. B. Phillips, and executed by Mr Skidmore of Coventry. It is a very highly-ornamented structure in wrought-iron, copper, and brass, and is said to have been the first screen of this kind; but other screens of the same character are now to be seen at Salisbury, Worcester, Hereford, and other churches. The capitals are of hammered copper; there are imitations of various fruits in ivory, onyx, and red and white cornelian: on the upper part, on each side, are eight angels with instruments of music; the whole is surmounted with a frieze of open scroll work, and a cross rises from the top of the pedimented gate-way in the centre. The side iron gates into the choir aisles were also executed by Mr Skidmore. [Illustration: UNDER THE CENTRAL TOWER.] =The Stalls= are modern, and are somewhat disappointing. The canons' stalls have no canopies, and their absence certainly deprives the choir of a feature generally to be found in cathedrals. Otherwise, the stalls are a satisfactory instance of modern carving, and were carried out by Mr Evans of Ellastone in Derbyshire. He is always said to have been the original of Seth in "Adam Bede," and he certainly was a cousin of the great authoress. There is much natural foliage in the carving, with figures of apostles, kings, and bishops, and panels representing scenes from Old Testament history. The =Bishop's Throne= is by the same artist. =The Reredos= is a very gorgeous piece of work, but it must be confessed that the effect is again not wholly satisfactory. It might even be said that in the endeavour to attain magnificence, over-elaboration has ended in a tawdry appearance. However, tastes differ, and this reredos has its admirers. It was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and cost £2000, which sum was raised by the Honourable Mrs H. Howard, the wife of the dean. It was part of the scheme that all the materials for the reredos should come from the diocese, and with the exception of the green malachite, this idea has been carried out. The alabaster came from near Tutbury, and the marbles from Derbyshire (then in the diocese): and the Duke of Devonshire was induced to give some of the beautiful red marble, which bears the name of the "Duke's red," from his quarry, so rarely opened. In the centre is a bas-relief of the Ascension, with, a figure of "The Lamb" underneath; on each side are two compartments containing the emblems of the four evangelists. All five compartments are surmounted with very highly-decorated pediments, the central one being the largest and most magnificent; above it rises a very elaborate pinnacle, ending in a cross. There is an open arcading on each side, extending to the piers of the presbytery. The pediments have each a head in the centre, and between the pediments are angels with ivory trumpets. The reredos has purposely been kept very low, so that the view of the glass in the Lady Chapel may be intercepted as little as possible. One cannot help feeling that too much was sacrificed to that idea. One of the main principles of the Gothic builder, it has been said, was to suggest an air of mystery. The light screen and the low reredos have the very opposite effect; and it may be prophesied that the days of their admiration are rapidly coming to an end. =The Sedilia= are interesting on account of the canopies, which are old, and probably formed part of the original high altar screen. Their style is that known as Perpendicular, but they obviously belong to its early period. No doubt the screen suffered grievously after the siege; and at the Restoration of the monarchy and the cathedral a wooden screen was erected in front of it. Pennant, who saw it in 1780, says: "The beauty of the choir was much impaired by the impropriety of a rich altar-piece, of Grecian architecture, terminating this elegant Gothic building." This arrangement came to an end in 1788, when Wyatt threw the choir and Lady Chapel into one long chapel, and the old altar screen was utilised in the choir screen and helped to support the organ. When this screen in turn was taken down, the old canopies, much battered and largely repaired with plaster, were examined, and found to be of Bath stone, and in this the repairs were executed. Six of them were used for the sedilia, and the other three are to be found just behind, over the effigy of Dean Howard. =The Pavement= between the stalls is of tiles, made after the pattern of old tiles which were found in the cathedral. The modern ones are by Messrs Minton. There is some record of how the cathedral has at various times been paved, as Dr Plot tells us that "the old floor of the choir was paved lozengy with cannel coal and alabaster, the former got at Beaudesert," and at one time the nave and aisles were paved with brick. Some of the old tiles and two slabs of coal are preserved in the floor of the consistory court. The pavement in the presbytery is different, and is made principally of incised stone, with marble borders. There are four large medallions, which show scenes in the history of the diocese, and these are surrounded with representations of kings and bishops who have had some connection with the see. The general scheme was arranged by Sir Gilbert Scott, but the medallions were designed by the Rev. J. Pitman, headmaster of Rugeley Grammar School. The first medallion represents the consecration of St. Chad as Bishop of York; round it are Oswy, King of Northumbria and Mercia, who was the principal instrument in introducing Christianity into Mercia; Diuma, first Bishop; Wulphere, King of Mercia; and Jaruman, Bishop of Mercia, the immediate predecessor of St. Chad. [Illustration: REREDOS.] The second medallion gives the well-known story of Theodore, the great archbishop, setting St. Chad on a horse; around are Ethelred, king of Mercia after Wulphere; Sexwulf, the bishop who divided up the diocese; Offa, King of Mercia, who made Lichfield an archbishopric, and Higbert, the archbishop. The third medallion shows the translation of St. Chad's bones from Stowe Church, where they were buried, to the cathedral; around are Stephen, who was king when Bishop Roger de Clinton built the Norman cathedral; Henry III., who gave stone for the transept; and Bishop Langton, who built the Lady Chapel. The fourth medallion shows the procession to the chapter-house for divine service at the Restoration (1660); around are Charles II. and Bishop Hacket, who then restored the cathedral; Queen Victoria and Bishop Lonsdale, who was bishop at the time of the recent restorations. The altar space is covered with encaustic tiles, given by Mr C. Minton Campbell. In the centre is the Feast of the Passover, and around are shown Cain and Abel, Melchisedec blessing Abraham, Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and his brethren, Moses striking the Rock, and the Brazen Serpent--all Old Testament types of the Divine Sacrifice. =The Monuments= in the south choir aisle are particularly interesting. Commencing from the west end, there is on the south side an altar tomb in memory of Archdeacon Hodson, who died in 1855. The slab is of Serpentine stone, with a brass cross inlaid, and there are alabaster plaques representing the Crucifixion, the Entombment, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. Opposite is a monument to his son, Major Hodson, known as "Hodson of Hodson's Horse," who played a dramatic part in the Indian Mutiny, where he received his death wound. The coped top forms a cross, and underneath are represented the King of Delhi surrendering his sword to Major Hodson, with allegorical figures of Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, and Mercy; and at the corners statuettes of Joshua, David, St. Thomas of India, and St. George of England. Both these monuments are by Mr G. E. Street, R.A., the well-known architect of the Law Courts in London. Close to the gate is a medallion to Erasmus Darwin, "a skilful observer of Nature," and the author of several books. He died in 1802, and was the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the celebrated biologist, whose name is a household word. The memorial to the grandfather directs attention to the hereditary obligations of the grandson. In the second bay, between the pier arches, is the monument of Bishop Langton, who died in 1296. This originally stood to the south of the high altar. The figure is of Purbeck marble, and is habited _in pontificalibus_; the head lies on a plain cushion in a kind of frame. The mitre and shoes were probably once richly jewelled, and the whole, as we know from Sir William Dugdale's "Visitation," had a pedimented canopy. Now nothing remains but the mutilated effigy. In a similar position in the third bay is the effigy of Bishop Patteshull, who died in 1241. This is also of Purbeck marble, and was probably jewelled. There are ministering angels outside a pediment at the head; the figure has the pastoral staff in the left hand, while the right is obviously raised in benediction, though only the fingers are left, the second wearing the episcopal ring. Pennant and others have drawn attention to the fact that this effigy has the "stigmata" or marks of Our Lord's wounds on his hands and feet. Some antiquarians think that this is the monument of Bishop Weseham, and not of Bishop Patteshull. There are engravings and descriptions of these last two monuments in Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain," 1796, but it is certainly strange that Langton's monument is described as Patteshull's, and _vice versa_. Opposite to Bishop Langton is the most curious monument in the cathedral. It has now been identified as the tomb of Sir John Stanley of Pipe. The effigy represents a knight naked to the waist, below which was formerly a deep skirt painted with the arms of Stanley, the legs being in armour, while under the head is a buck's horn, and a similar horn is placed beneath the feet. The whole subject of this tomb is one presenting many difficulties, but they have now been cleared up, and in a communication to the "Archaeological Journal," vol. 24, Mr J. Hewitt has given much interesting information. From it the following account is taken:--The monument was always known as that of "Captain Stanley," who for some offence had been excommunicated, and who, after atonement, had been admitted to sepulture in holy ground on condition that the evidence of his punishment should appear on his sepultured effigy. The mutilations of the Civil Wars have so defaced the monument as to make this story extremely doubtful, until among papers belonging to the Earl of Winchelsea was found a coloured drawing of this effigy, done by Sir William Dugdale just before the wars for Sir Christopher Hatton. This sketch showed that the skin was bare, and that the skirt had the Stanley arms. But this did not clear up the difficulty. Pennant, in his "Journey from Chester to London," describes the tomb and gives the story, and then says: "I find a Sir Humphrey Stanley of Pipe, who died in the reign of Henry VII., who had a squabble with the Chapter about conveying water through his lands to the close ... so probably this might be the gentleman who incurred the censure of the church for his impiety." Shaw, in his "History of Staffordshire," declares that the arms on the base of the tomb show "the arms of Stanley impaling or, three chevronels gules (Clare)," which means that the person represented married a Clare. This Sir Humphrey did not do, and, moreover, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his brass still remains. Further investigation showed that the arms of Clare are also the arms of Gerard, and then that Sir John Stanley of Pipe married Margaret, the daughter of Sir Thomas Gerard. Pipe is a domain about a mile from Lichfield, so that the family of the dead knight would naturally have desired his interment in the cathedral of that city. It does not appear that there was any ignominy implied in scourging as a public penance. On the contrary, many royal personages have submitted to it, and everyone will remember that Henry II. underwent a scourging upon his naked shoulders by the hands of the monks of Canterbury. There is a stained-glass window in the Bodleian Library at Oxford showing this scene. Dr Rock, in the same volume of the "Archaeological Journal," says that to his thinking "this Stanley, of knightly rank, had drawn upon himself the greater excommunication through the spilling of blood in Lichfield Cathedral on some occasion, from a blow on the face with his hand or possibly by a slight stab with his avelace on the person of one with whom he had quarrelled. He lies bareheaded and naked as far down as the girdle. His upraised hands, according to the representation given by Pennant, and copied in Shaw's 'History of Staffordshire,' held a scroll which must have been the document ... signifying under the bishop's hand that, having undergone the canonical penance, the offender was again admitted to all Christian privileges." Farther east than the "minstrel gallery" there is a window in memory of Bishop Rawle, who was consecrated Bishop of Trinidad in this cathedral by Bishop Selwyn. The subjects depicted in the window are Christ's Appeal to St. Peter, St. Paul's Vision, and The Baptism of the Ethiopian by St. Philip. Underneath the window is a highly-ornamented altar tomb designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in memory of Archdeacon Moore, whose effigy lies on the top. He died in 1876. Opposite, in the next bay, is the monument of Dean Howard, who died in 1868; the effigy of the dean, in marble, lies under a triple canopy formed from portions of the old screen. These last two effigies were the work of H. Armstead, R.A. It was here that Bishop Langton's monument once stood, and here also was Bishop Hacket's. This last now stands on the opposite side under the very beautiful window of the sixth bay of this aisle: it is in the Jacobean style, and is much painted and gilded. An effigy of the Bishop lies on an altar tomb under a canopy, while in front is a lengthy inscription in Latin. Near this place, with other monuments, is one to the memory of Colonel Richard Bagot, who received his death wound at the battle of Naseby, 1645, and was buried in the cathedral. His father was Sir Hervey Bagot, Governor of the Close on behalf of the king. In the seventh bay is another of the semi-effigies, two of which are in the south aisle of the nave, but this one is much more damaged; it is supposed to be the monument of Canon Strangeways. In Jackson's "History of Lichfield," which was published in 1805, it is stated that the name, though not then distinguishable, had only recently become obliterated, and was known and remembered to be Strangeways. On the south wall, towards the east are, amongst others, brasses to Dean Champneys, 1875, and Dean Bickersteth, 1892, and above these there is a monument to Canon Horton, who died in 1728. Two windows have recently been ornamented with new glass by Mr Kempe, showing scenes taken from the Acts of the Apostles; one, in memory of Dr H. W. Hewitt, represents Peter and Paul healing the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. The other is in memory of Mr J. T. Godfrey Faussett, and represents Stephen before the Council, having delivered his apology, looking up and declaring "Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." At the east end of this aisle, on the spot where probably once stood the altar of St. Nicholas, is the famous monument known as "The Sleeping Children." This was executed by Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A., and set up in 1817. It is said that this monument established his fame. Britton, in 1820, devotes more than two large quarto pages--a great space for him--to ecstasies over it, and no doubt the taste of the time demanded undiluted admiration. Now we may prize it as an early example of the new style which, in art as well as in literature, was to supersede the artifice of the eighteenth century: the essence of that new style was, Mr Walter Pater tells us, "an intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things." [Illustration: THE SLEEPING CHILDREN.] The monument is in memory of the two daughters of the Reverend William Robinson, Prebendary of the cathedral, and represents the young children locked in each other's arms. Behind it is a wall memorial to their father, and to the side is a piscina, which has at the back of it an old fresco, probably of the fourteenth century. The subject is the Crucifixion, with figures of St. Mary and St. John, one on each side of our Lord. The illustration is from a drawing preserved in the National Art Library, South Kensington Museum. The window at the end of the aisle contains some of the old Flemish glass, which has in the centre a curious representation of the Trinity. In leaving this aisle it may be noted that tradition has it that between the pillars of the eighth bay was the monument of Lord Basset: that the tomb of Bishop William de Corkhull was between the pillars of the seventh bay, and that, in a similar position in the fifth bay, was buried Bishop de Molend. The Ashmolean MSS. give a long description of Lord Basset's monument: "Between the choir and the chapel of the Blessed Mary is the monument of Ralph, Lord Basset. He is lying in complete armour, his hands erected, and thereon his gauntlets. On his head, which is laid upon his helm and crest, viz., a boar, is a steel cap, and on his right shoulder a square shield of his arms. His dagger is laid by his right side, and his feet are resting upon a boar." He died in the reign of Richard II. It is always said that Sir Walter Scott had this monument in his mind when he described Lord Marmion's monument:-- "Fitz-Eustace care A pierced and mangled body bare To moated Lichfield's lofty pile; And there, beneath the southern aisle, A tomb, with Gothic sculpture fair, Did long Lord Marmion's image bear, (Now vainly for its sight you look; 'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brook The fair cathedral storm'd and took; But thanks to Heaven and good St. Chad, A guerdon meet the spoiler had!) There erst was martial Marmion found, His feet upon a couchant hound His hands to Heaven upraised; And all around, on scutcheon rich And tablet carved, and fretted niche, His arms and feats were blazed." [Illustration: FRESCO-PAINTING OF THE CRUCIFIXION IN THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] The accounts do not entirely tally, so that it may be the tomb described was as little Lord Basset's as it was really Lord Marmion's. Not very far from this last tomb was the monument of William, Lord Paget, who was not buried here but at Drayton. He was ambassador from Henry VIII. to Charles V., and held other important posts under that king and his daughter, Queen Mary; he died in 1563. There is an engraving of his monument in Shaw's "Staffordshire," which shows it to have been very magnificent. The monuments in the =North Choir Aisle= are not only more scanty than those in other parts of the cathedral, but they are of less interest. At the east end is the kneeling figure of Bishop Ryder, who died in 1836. This monument is in white marble, and one of Chantrey's latest works, just as the more famous monument in a similar position in the south aisle is one of his earliest. It was originally intended that the figure should be on a higher pedestal, and no doubt the effect is not increased by its lower position. Behind, on the east wall, is an inscription in memory of the bishop. The window above this contains some old Flemish glass, which has a figure of St. Christopher in the centre. The window in the north side in the corner is by Mr C. E. Kempe, in memory of Mr Patterson, late sub-chanter of the cathedral. The glass shows King David teaching the singers of the House of the Lord. Beneath is an ancient aumbry. Opposite, between the pillars, is the traditional site of the burial-place of Bishop Stretton; he is said to have been buried in St. Andrew's Chapel. There is little doubt that the end of this aisle contained an altar dedicated to that saint. Between the next pair of pillars westward, it is said that Bishop Blythe was buried, but his monument at one time stood in the other aisle of the choir. On the north side of the altar is the monument to the memory of Bishop Lonsdale, who died in 1867. The monument, which is highly decorative, consists of an effigy of the bishop lying on an altar-tomb of marble and alabaster. The effigy is by Mr G. F. Watts, R.A., the celebrated artist, and the tomb was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, who is said to have taken the idea of the canopy, with its triple pediment, from the monument of John of Eltham in Westminster Abbey. In the space between the next pair of pillars westward, Archbishop Scrope, formerly bishop of this diocese, is said to have been buried. He was beheaded in 1405 by Henry IV. In the most easterly bay but one of this aisle there must have been a doorway leading into the chapel which Dr Stukeley speaks of: "In the chapel over against the lady choir was the burying-place of two Mercian Kings; but it is now chosen for a burying-place by Dr Chandler, present bishop of Lichfield, who has there buried one child." =The Lady Chapel= has always most justly been admired by architects and antiquarians. Not only is it peculiarly beautiful in its construction, but also its windows are now filled with some of the most charming old glass to be seen in England. In shape it forms a symmetrical extension, both in height and width, to the choir, but without aisles; and it has an octagonal apse--the only example, it is said, of such a termination in the country. It is lighted by nine high windows, with Decorated tracery. This tracery has recently been restored in the style of that in the three end windows; until this was done most of the windows contained Perpendicular tracery. [Illustration: BRACKETS IN THE LADY CHAPEL.] The windows rest on an arcade of very beautiful design. The arcade may be said to consist of a series of small decorated canopies, supported by shafts with carved capitals, and separated by ornamented buttresses. The canopies, which bow forward, have trefoil ogee arches, surmounted with crockets and finials. Above the arcade is a similar embattled parapet to that in the choir, with a similar passage round the chapel behind it. The vaulting of the roof is like that in the choir; the same number of ribs diverging from the slender shafts which run right down to the bends of the arcade. Half-way up these shafts are niches, the brackets and canopies to which are beautifully carved. These are old, but until recently were empty, and no authentic record remained as to what were the characters represented. Dr Stukeley believed that the figures had been those of the five wise and five foolish virgins. This theory has not, however, found sufficient favour to lead to a reproduction of their effigies, for in 1895 the niches were filled with figures of ten virgin saints and martyrs. These were executed by Messrs Farmer & Brindley, from designs by Mr C. E. Kempe, and they may be warmly congratulated on their work. The statues are really beautiful, and are infinitely superior to most of the other modern sculpture in the cathedral. It will be noticed, too, that the figures seem the right size for the niches, instead of being much too large, as in many other cases. The statues are as follow:-- 1. St. Werburga, with pastoral staff and book, and a model of Chester Cathedral at her feet. 2. St. Cecilia, with organ. 3. St. Prisca, with palm branch, and lion at her feet. 4. St. Faith, with sword and rack. 5. St. Catherine, with sword and wheel and open book, treading on a monster. 6. St. Margaret, with book and cross, treading on a dragon. 7. St. Lucy, with palm branch and lamp. 8. St. Agnes, with palm branch and book, and lamb at her feet. 9. St. Agatha, with palm branch and tongs. 10. St. Etheldreda, with crown and pilgrim staff, and pastoral staff and a model of Ely Cathedral at her feet. [Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL.] The present altar-piece, which is in the form of a triptych, has scenes connected with the birth of Our Lord carved in relief. These are: The Annunciation, the Salutation of Elizabeth, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, and the Adoration of the Magi. The doors, which can be closed, have paintings on the back representing David, Isaiah, St. John the Baptist, and St. Chad. There are four carved figures of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory supporting the central panel. The altar rails are of alabaster. Before the recent alterations there was a plaster reredos, which had been placed there by Wyatt, and the continuity of the arcading and open carved work, which originally went right round the chapel, was thus broken. Sir Gilbert Scott is said to have been anxious not to remove the reredos, partly, perhaps, on account of the glass behind, which was known to be plain. However, the restoration to the original style has been made, and the plain glass replaced by a very excellent imitation of the Herkenrode glass, representing the three Marys. This was done by Messrs Burlison & Grylls with great skill. There was a screen between the Lady Chapel and the rest of the cathedral in old days. Stukeley mentions it in his notes. He says: "The partition there betwixt the two choirs is a fine piece of architecture, but demolished also in time of war; and, though the figures are destroyed, and at the foot of the same every cherub defaced, yet it may be perceived to be a fine piece of work; for though it be uniform from top to bottom, yet every capital and pedestall are different works within and without." What is known of the building of the Lady Chapel has already been told in Chapter I. and in the account of the choir and presbytery. The founder of the chapel, Bishop Langton, was buried here, but his tomb was afterwards removed to the south side of the high altar. Shaw tells us of the monument at one time "in the east part of the chapel, towards the south," of Robert Master and Catherine, his wife, and says that "the drawing in Dugdale's 'Visitation' represents them each under a round arch, in the attitude of prayer at a desk." No trace is left of this monument. As might be expected from what has been given of the history of the cathedral, there is none of the old glass belonging to it remaining; but in spite of this, all the nine windows of the Lady Chapel have very beautiful old glass in them. This glass is not Mediæval, but belongs to the sixteenth century, and the whole of it is a comparatively recent acquisition for the cathedral. That in the seven most eastern windows, and known as the Herkenrode glass, was put in at the beginning of the century; and the other two windows which, until recently, held modern glass, bearing the arms of various dignitaries of the cathedral, have recently been enriched by old glass of probably very nearly the same period as the other. The nine windows, for the purposes of explanation, may be numbered in succession 1 to 9. No. 1, being the first window on the north, and No. 9, the first on the south, contain, therefore, the more recently acquired glass. This is supposed to have come from the Low Countries; but, at any rate, about the middle of the century it was brought to England, and lay for years in some cellars in London, where it was forgotten. Finally, it was purchased from the representatives of the Marquis of Ely. The glass shows the arms of the kingdom of Aragon, and amongst other mottoes, that of Charles V. No. 1. The lower compartment is a symbolic picture on the subject of Baptism. Out of the waters in the fountain come the children, to be received by their guardian spirits, while above are figures representing Faith, Fortitude, and Love, and still higher is a representation of the Divine Presence. No. 9 is a pictorial representation of the legendary Death of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin is represented lying in a canopied bed, surrounded by the apostles, who have been summoned to gather round her death-bed: they are all present except St. Thomas, who has been detained at the baptism of a royal prince. Above is a representation of the Virgin entering into glory. As stated above, these two windows had originally coats of arms in them, and a reproduction of the arms appears in the tracery of the windows, No. 1 having those of the dean and chapter in 1803, and No. 9 those of the bishops of the diocese from Bishop Hacket to that date. The glass in the other seven windows--the Herkenrode glass--was purchased in 1802 by Sir Brooke Boothby, who discovered it in Belgium, where it had been hidden for protection from the French. It had been taken from the dissolved Abbey of Herkenrode, near Liege. There were three hundred and forty pieces, each about twenty-two inches square, and some of them are marked with dates between 1530 and 1540. Sir Brooke is said to have given two hundred pounds for it; but it has since been valued at fifteen thousand pounds. He, however, most generously sold it to the dean and chapter for the modest sum he had paid for it. It turned out that there was enough to fill the seven windows it now occupies in the Lady Chapel. Some portions have been used in other windows of the cathedral, which have been already described. There is a considerable difference in appearance between this glass and that in the other two windows. The subjects depicted in the latter are very distinct, while in the former they are more confused, and it must be said that the Herkenrode glass is much faded. Still, the whole of it is very beautiful, and if it does not satisfy those who crave after the Mediæval stained glass, it is certainly some of the finest glass of the kind to be found in England. The designs have been conjectured to be by Lambert Lombard, the first, and one of the most famous, of the Italianised Flemish School of the sixteenth century; and the other glass belongs to the same period. [Illustration: BRACKETS IN THE LADY CHAPEL.] The abbey at Herkenrode was founded in 1182, and belonged to the Cistercian Order. It became noted for the miracles performed there; from which reason, no doubt, it acquired great wealth, and increased so much in size that it was almost like a small town. All the nuns were of noble family. A history of the abbey was published in 1744, and a copy was presented to the cathedral library by Sir Brooke Boothby. The book contains a view of the abbey buildings, in the centre of which is seen the church. In the third window of the Lady Chapel is a similar picture of the church. Windows Nos. 2 and 3 contain portraits of founders and benefactors of the abbey, with their patron saints. The other five windows, Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7 show scenes in the life of Christ. The following is a brief description of these windows:-- No. 2. In this window the glass is in four pictures. In the lower left-hand compartment is Cardinal Evrad de la Marck, Bishop of Liege, supported by St. Lambert; and in the corresponding space to the right is Floris Egmont, Count de Buren, with his wife, attended by St. Christopher and St. Margaret. The picture above is of Maximilian Egmont, Count de Buren, kneeling before an altar, and attended by St. Christopher and St. Barbara. The remaining picture on the left has John, Count de Horn, and his wife Anne, also kneeling before an altar. They are attended by St. John the Evangelist and St. Anne the mother of the Virgin. No. 3 contains six pictures, which go right across the window--(1) the lowest, has the church of the abbey already mentioned, with an abbess and two nuns, and the Virgin and Child; (2) the Virgin and Child again, with an angel bearing a shield; (3) the Virgin and Child, an abbot and abbess of the Cistercian Order, and the Emperor Lotharius II.; (4) Agnes Mettecoven and her husband kneeling to St. Agnes, with her lamb; (5) St. John the Evangelist and St. Barbara, St. John the Baptist, and St. Margaret, with members of the Mettecoven family; (6) the highest, has Henry de Lechy and his wife, with St. Henry and St. Christina. No. 4. Christ scourged, Christ crowned with thorns, the Annunciation. No. 5, the central window. The Ascension, Christ and the two Disciples at Emmaus, the Three Marys (modern glass). No. 6. The Last Supper, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. No. 7. The Day of Judgment, the Day of Pentecost, St. Thomas is reproved for his doubt. No. 8. Pilate delivering Christ to be crucified, Christ bearing his Cross, the Descent from the Cross, the Resurrection. On the south side of the Lady Chapel, between the buttresses, are three erections, which were no doubt built at the same time as the Lady Chapel itself. They have been known as "the Mortuary Chapels," and also as "the Vestries." They were probably built for the former purpose. They have recently been restored as a memorial to Bishop Selwyn, who died in 1878. All three chapels have groined roofs, with ribs and bosses, and in the floor some of the old encaustic tiles still remain. The central chapel is the largest, and is lighted by two small windows. It is only entered from the eastern chapel by means of a doorway cut right through the buttress. In this central chapel lies the effigy, in Derbyshire alabaster, of Bishop Selwyn. During his life he had expressed a wish to be buried here, but this was found to be illegal, and he was buried in the close just outside. The effigy is by Mr Nicholls, and the decorations of the walls of the chapel are by Messrs Clayton & Bell. These show the arms of the bishopric of New Zealand, to which the bishop was originally consecrated, and the arms of the dioceses formed out of it, and there are more than usually hideous frescoes showing the labours of the bishop among the Maories and among the pitmen of the English diocese. Here he is not likely to be forgotten; and at Cambridge there is a college known as Selwyn College, founded with a similar idea to that which at Oxford caused Keble College to be erected to the memory of another great modern churchman: there also his memory will remain. The western chapel has, at its north-western corner, a stair-way leading to three cryptal chambers whose flooring is the solid rock. =The Sacristy.=--The building on the south side of the choir, which is generally known as the "sacristy," is a very interesting part of the cathedral. Professor Willis decided that it was erected at the same time as the original Early English choir, and no doubt it belongs to the same period. A careful inspection, however, especially of the entrance from the "minstrel gallery" to the chapel of St. Chad's Head, which now forms the top storey, shows unmistakable signs that, like the entrance to the vestibule in the corresponding bay of the north choir aisle, this doorway was once a window, similar, no doubt, to those two still remaining--one in each aisle--which look into the aisles of the transepts. This being so, it is obvious that the "sacristy," or, at any rate, the upper storey, was an afterthought, and that it is later, though perhaps only a little, than the choir, its date corresponding perhaps with that of the south transept. The upper storey, which until recently was used as the muniment room, was originally the chapel of St. Chad's Head. It has now been restored as a chapel through the zeal and munificence of the present dean, Dr Luckock, and was re-dedicated and re-opened on St. Chad's Day, March 2nd of this year, 1897. In the order of service of that day the dean gave an account of the chapel as follows:-- "The Chapel of St. Chad, first Bishop of Lichfield, and, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, patron of our Cathedral Church, was destroyed in all probability when the rest of the Cathedral was laid in ruins in 1643, the siege beginning on St. Chad's Day, March 2nd of that year. Little was left: the four walls remained in a broken condition, with the vaulting-shafts and caps for the springers of the stone groining, and the wall-ribs, to mark its original lines; also the very beautiful Early English windows--twelve lancets in groups of three--which, singularly enough, were little injured. Externally these are very plain, but internally they are full of interest, and there is nothing better of the kind in the Cathedral. The site of the old altar is clearly marked; indeed, a small portion of it has been preserved. The piscina also still remains. After the destruction the chapel must have been left roofless for years, as, on breaking up the floor which had been raised by some accumulation of rubbish, the workmen found roots of shrubs embedded in it. At some time quite unknown, the chapel was roofed in again, and the tops of the walls rebuilt where they had been broken down. A flat plaster ceiling was inserted, and being divided into two rooms, the old chapel was filled with cupboards and used till last year for the custody of the muniments. The aumbry remains in which antiquarians suppose that St. Chad's relics were preserved. Dr Cox, in his Catalogue of the muniments, page 90, throws some light upon the subject, from the Chapter Act Books, quoting from F. 4 in the year 1481:--'Two monstrances given to the Cathedral in charge of William Hukyns, the custodian of the Head of St. Chad by Dean Heywood, for keeping relics.' And he appends the following note:--'This very likely gives the date of the stone gallery in front of the muniment room in the South Choir aisle (then the chapel of the head of St. Chad). This gallery is of Perpendicular work, and was chiefly intended for the exhibition of relics, in monstrances, to the pilgrims in the aisle below; the second staircase, that allowed of a flow of pilgrims to the upper chapel, being at this time removed.' All the stone groining and the wood and iron work have been completely restored under the direction of Mr J. Oldrid Scott. There are some very old pieces of stone figure-work, which have been preserved. The new bosses and corbels have been carved with subjects from the history of St. Chad, the chief of which show his being mounted on horseback, by Archbishop Theodore; his protection of the hart that fled to him for refuge; and his death in his cell, surrounded by angels. The reredos, of Staffordshire alabaster, replacing one the existence of which at the east end is clearly indicated, is of a very uncommon design, by Mr C. E. Kempe. It consists of an altar-piece of ornamental arcading, surmounted by three tall canopied niches in which are placed sculptured figures representing the Crucifixion, St. Mary, and St. John. These are supported by angels bearing shields. All the windows are filled with stained glass by Mr Kempe, and contain Choirs of Angels singing the Confessor's hymn, or Psalm cxii., _Beatus vir_, which runs in scrolls through nine of the lights. The angels over the crucifix in the east window bear a scroll with the words of Psalm xxi. 3, _Posimisti in capite_, etc. St. Chad is represented in the centre lancet of the west wall." [Illustration: CAPITAL IN CHAPTER-HOUSE.] This chapel is now approached by a staircase, leading from a doorway in the fourth bay on to the gallery, usually and incorrectly known as the "minstrel gallery," from which again two short flights of steps, right and left, lead into the chapel. The lower storey was originally the sacristy: it is now used as the consistory court. Against the west wall are some of the old Jacobean stalls, which were put into the choir in Bishop Hacket's time; while in the corner are let into the floor some of the old tiles and slabs of cannel coal with which, and alabaster, the cathedral was at one time paved. The windows are filled with Perpendicular tracery, replacing the old Early English windows. Underneath, and reached by a staircase in the south-east turret, now closed, is a vault, at present used as the burial vault of the Paget family. Probably it was once a dungeon. [Illustration: THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.] In the west wall can be seen the place where a doorway led into a chamber built in between the sacristy and the south transept aisle. This was no doubt the treasury of the cathedral, where all the most precious relics and valuables were kept. It is now entered by a doorway in the choir aisle. At present it appears to be a receptacle for odds and ends, and cupboards are placed along the walls. On the west side are several large aumbries, in which, no doubt, the relics were kept. The floor in this chamber has been raised at some time or other, and it is now much higher than that of the adjoining consistory court, so that there are steps in the south-east corner leading to a door into the consistory court. This is not the old doorway already mentioned, which is blocked up, but probably a much later entrance. Some old cannon balls which have been discovered in and round the cathedral may be seen in the treasury. On the north wall in both the consistory court and the treasury can be seen the remains of an old course or housing which, though in both cases incomplete, appears to have a semi-circular form. No theory seems to have been advanced as to these remains, and in this book it were wiser to follow precedent. =The Chapter-House=, which lies to the north of the choir, is approached by a vestibule which has a doorway, already described, into the third bay of the north choir aisle. Both the chapter-house and the vestibule were built at the same time as the north transept--that is, somewhere near the middle of the thirteenth century--and the style is therefore that known as the Early English, but it is a later instance than that part of the choir into which the doorway leads. That the vestibule was not built when the early part of the choir was finished is evident, as "its walls abut against those of the choir with a straight joint, and the arch of entrance in the side aisle is a manifest intrusion into the space once occupied by a window." The north end of the vestibule has also been altered, there having been a doorway where now there is a window; the former existed until nearly the end of the last century, but it had been altered before the plate in Britton's "Cathedrals" was engraved. It can easily be seen from the outside that such a door must have existed, from the different colouring of the stone-work. The window has recently been filled with stained glass by Messrs Burlison & Grylls, representing Nehemiah and Simeon, in memory of the late verger, William Yeend. Down each side of the vestibule there is a very fine arcading, that on the west side being double and much deeper than that on the east, which is single; the niches are large enough to be used as seats, and it has been suggested that here the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor took place on Maundy Thursday; as there were thirteen niches, this is highly probable. Some of the capitals of the pillars of the arcade are very finely carved, and, as was usual at the time, are very deeply under-cut; and the dripstones terminate in very interesting corbels in the form of heads and bunches of foliage. Recently, on the west side, some of the arcading has been opened out to afford access to the new vestry, which has been constructed by roofing in the space between the vestibule and the north transept. On the east side near the cathedral is the entrance to the library, which is the upper storey of the chapter-house building, and is approached by a spiral staircase. At the farther end, on the same side, is the very fine entrance to the chapter-house. This, like the central west doorway and that in the north transept, is double and recessed. The mouldings in the arch are deeply and finely cut, and the capitals of the grouped shafts are very richly carved with delicate leaves. The jambs have an enrichment of dog-toothing behind the slender detached shafts, and the two small arches have trefoil archivolts, so that the whole has a very rich effect. In the tympanum of the arch there is a bas-relief figure of Our Lord in a quatrefoil recess. [Illustration: EASTERN PORTION OF THE ARCADE IN THE CHAPTER-HOUSE.] The chapter-house is a very fine room; it is octagonal in shape, but the north and south sides of it are double the length of each of the other six sides, which are equal. There is a central pillar, the clustered shafts of which are banded in the centre; the capitals of these shafts have a particularly rich and elaborate carving of foliage; and above, the vaulting ribs spread to the roof like the branches of a tree, producing a very fine effect. The bosses where the ribs intersect are also worthy of attention, and the ribs rise from very richly-carved and deeply-moulded corbels. The windows are Early English, and of two lights each. Below is a very beautiful arcading, similar, indeed, to that in the vestibule, which entirely surrounds the building. The arcade is composed of deep, moulded, trefoil arches, resting on single columns, with beautifully-carved capitals, in some of which will be found figures of birds and animals. The canopies of the arches are dog-toothed, and end in curiously-carved heads, which afford interesting illustrations of the head-dresses of the time. The chapter-house was decorated with frescoes and stained glass by Dean Heywood in the fifteenth century, as we know from the MSS. entitled _Cantaria Sancti Blasii_ in the library. The frescoes have disappeared except over the doorway, where still remain faint signs of the representation of the Assumption, which may have formed part of Dean Heywood's decoration, but more likely is earlier: it has been suggested that it was placed there by Bishop Burghill from the fact that a Dominican Friar, to which order he belonged, is represented in the group in adoration. The glass contained figures of the apostles, with other pictures above; these being all pre-Cromwellian, have, of course, disappeared. More recently the glazing of the chapter-house displayed armorial bearings, more or less correct, in imitation of glass known to have ornamented the cathedral in the past. This armorial glass is gradually giving way to glass representing scenes in the history of the cathedral. At present, five of the windows have been so glazed, and the rest will be changed gradually, as opportunity offers. The first window on the left-hand side on entering is in memory of Prebendary Edwards. There are figures of St. Chad and King Wulphere, with scenes showing the Consecration of St. Chad, and the Baptism by St. Chad of the two sons of King Wulphere. The second window is in memory of Archdeacon Allen and Prebendary de Bunsen. The figures are St. Oswald and St. Aidan. The scenes represent St. Aidan preaching to the Northumbrians, with King Oswald interpreting; and St. Aidan at Lindisfarne, teaching in his school, where St. Chad is one of the scholars. The third window is in memory of Dean Bickersteth. The figures are Archbishop Theodore and St. Ovin, and the scenes St. Chad teaching his clergy, and St. Ovin listening to the angels who were calling St. Chad at his death. The fourth window is in memory of Prebendary Gresley. The figures are Oswy, King of Northumbria, and Diuma, the first bishop of Mercia. The scenes are Bishop Jaruman promising to build a church at Lichfield, and the institution by King Æthelwald of prebendaries. The fifth window is in memory of Prebendary Finch Smith. The figures represent Archbishop Higbert of Lichfield, and Thomas Cantelupe, Bishop of Hereford, formerly prebendary of this cathedral. The scenes are Bishop Aldulf at the Council of Cloveshoo, renouncing the metropolitan powers in favour of Canterbury, and Bishop Roger de Clinton building a new cathedral in honour of St. Mary and St. Chad. =The Library= is immediately above the chapter-house, and is of the same octagonal shape. The arrangements also are similar, but the room is less lofty, the carvings less elaborate, and there is no reading. Otherwise, we find the same central pillar, from which similar vaulting ribs spring, with corbels in the walls to receive them. It is not known for what purpose this room was originally intended, but certainly, until recent years, it was not used as a library. The old library, of which there are pictures by Hollar and King, stood to the north of the north transept in the close, or, as it is recorded in the Capitular Acts, vol. 3, "ex parte boreali in cimeterio." Dean Heywood gave £40 to build the library, and though it was not begun in his time, it was completed in the time of his successor, Dean Yotton, who also subscribed to its erection. This was at about the commencement of the sixteenth century, and the building remained until the middle of the eighteenth, when it was demolished. The extent of the library has been increased by opening a doorway into the room above the vestibule. This room, it has recently been decided, was the old chapel of St. Peter. Though an upstairs chapel was not usual, yet it is not by any means unknown, and chapels were even sometimes to be found in the rood lofts of cathedrals. No trace can be found of the fresco, mentioned by Stukeley, of "St. Peter crucified with his head downwards, and two other apostles, etc." He tells us that the chapel was in his time used as a place for storing scaffolding and ladders, and that here was placed the mutilated remains of St. Chad's tomb. The place still shows signs of its ill-usage, little having been done to repair the ravages of the Civil War. The vaulting is much broken, and the walls cracked: these facts strengthen the belief in the tradition that it was on this building, together with the choir, that the great central tower fell during the siege by the soldiers of the Parliament. The library has had many generous donations of books at various times. Under the will of Frances, Duchess of Somerset, the cathedral received the library of her late husband, the Duke, who succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Hertford, and was restored to the family dukedom at the Restoration. The duchess was the daughter of the Earl of Essex who was the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and whom she afterwards had beheaded. These books numbered about one thousand, and included many rare old Black-Letter chronicles and histories printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many others have contributed to the library, amongst whom are Archdeacon Davies, 1763; William Smallbroke, 1771; Canon Lamb, 1770; Richard Hurd, 1777; Bishop Cornwallis, 1783; Rev. Henry White, 1786; Dr Pegge, the well-known antiquary, who, amongst other things, wrote an account of the life of Bishop Weseham, and who left the library, by his will, one hundred books out of his own library; Andrew Newton, who left his books to the cathedral, and built the college in the close for the widows and orphans of the clergy, besides spending large sums on educational purposes; and Sir Brooke Boothby, 1815, who gave the "History of the Abbey of Herckenrode," referred to in the account of the glass now in the Lady Chapel. There have been besides many recent benefactions, including a valuable set of drawings, by herself, of most of the churches in the county of Stafford, left by Mrs Moore, the widow of the Archdeacon of Stafford. There is also in the library a fine old picture of the Duchess of Somerset, as well as an engraving from Sir Joshua Reynolds' picture of Dr Johnson. Among the most valuable manuscripts and books in the library are the "Gospels of St. Chad," of which more immediately; a fine folio manuscript, on vellum, of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," but without the doubtful Ploughman's Tale; the initial letters, especially those at the commencement of each tale, being richly coloured and gilt; the "Valor Ecclesiasticus of Pope Nicholas IV."--this is an account taken of the value of ecclesiastical property in the time of Edward I., from which the tithe granted to the Pope could be ascertained. Other notable volumes are, "Dives and Pauper," a MS. treatise on the Decalogue--this treatise was one of the earliest books printed in England; "Orders generally to be observed of the whole household of the prince his highness," a large folio, marked with the sign-manual of King Charles I. at every ordinance; and a collection of recipes by Sir John Floyer, physician to Charles II. There is also a volume of MSS. already often referred to, superscribed, "_Cantaria Sancti Blasii; Ordinatio Majistri Thomoe Heywood decani Eccles. Lich de et super Cantaria Jesu et Sancta Anne in parte boreai eccles. Lich et de pensione Capellani ibidem perpetuo celebaturi et aliis articulis, etc._" Besides these, there are many rare Bibles:--Cranmer's Bible, 1540; the "Breeches" Bible; the "Vinegar" Bible, and many others. [Illustration: THE GOSPELS OF ST. CHAD, IN THE LIBRARY.] But to many the most interesting volume in the library will be a copy of South's Sermons, published in 1694. It belonged to Dr Johnson, and was used by him in the compilation of his Dictionary. His method, apparently, was to put a letter in the margin opposite the word whose particular use here he intended to quote; and it is interesting, Sermons in hand, to test his method with the dictionary. On one page a "K" in the margin is opposite the word "Key." In the dictionary will be found under "Key" the expected quotation from South, "that every man should keep the key of his own breast." The most valuable book in the library is the _Textus S. Ceddæ_, generally known as "St. Chad's Gospels." This is written on vellum, and contains the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, and a small portion of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is undoubtedly an Irish MS., probably about the end of the seventh century. There is a page in the book which, with its tesselated work enclosing a cross, recalls to antiquarians similar work in the famous Irish Book of Kells, and in the Gospels of St. Columba which are preserved at Dublin. The connection of an Irish MS. with St. Chad is not difficult of explanation, since, after being taught by St. Aidan at Lindisfarne, he is supposed to have gone, as so many other earnest priests did at the time, to Ireland, to one of the noted monasteries there. The MS. is in Latin, and, with many remarkable variations, follows closely the _Codex Amiatinus_ of St Jerome. But its marginal notes are not the least interesting part of the book; from these, which are sometimes in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon, and sometimes in Latin, we learn something of its history, which is remarkable. The cathedral of Llandaff seems to have acquired it indirectly in exchange for a horse, and there is a note in Celtic, "underneath the record of this transaction, which is witnessed by Aidan; whether or no this is the Northumbrian bishop is not known." Another entry, on the page devoted to a picture of St. Luke, shows that the MS. was still at Llandaff at the end of the ninth century; but on the first page of all is a faint but legible signature which reads "Kynsy" or "Wynsy Praesul", both names of bishops of Lichfield at the end of the tenth century, so that it had probably arrived at its present home not so far short of a thousand years ago. There are other notes connecting it with Lichfield. All these have been printed many times in the pages of learned publications. It owes its escape at the time of the Civil War to the vigilance of William Higgins, Archdeacon of Derby, who was precentor of the cathedral. He abstracted it and kept it until the troubles were over. It now lies in a glass case in the library, side by side with the beautiful "Canterbury Tales." So marvellous are some of the decorations, that it is no wonder that, in an age more faithful than ours, popular belief declared some of them to be "the work of angels." CHAPTER IV THE HISTORY OF THE SEE At the present day the diocese of Lichfield consists of almost the whole of the county of Stafford, part of Shropshire, and a small part of Flintshire and of Warwickshire. Originally, in Anglo-Saxon times, when the first bishop was appointed, the see of Lichfield extended over the whole of Mercia--that is, from the Humber and East Anglia on the north and east, to Wales on the west, and the Thames on the south. Since those days the diocese has been at various times divided, and other dioceses formed; Hereford, Lincoln, Ely, Peterborough, Chester, Worcester, Oxford, St. Albans, Gloucester, Manchester, Liverpool, and Southwell, have all, in whole or in part, been formed out of what was once the diocese of Lichfield. Of Lichfield in Roman times practically nothing is known. Situated as it is, at a little distance from the crossing of the great Roman roads, Watling Street and Ryknield Street--at which junction the Roman town of Etocetum (the modern Wall) lay, Lichfield was then probably nothing more than open country. The neighbouring towns have yielded a rich harvest of archaeological treasures; but beyond coins of various Roman Emperors, bearing Christian emblems, there is little to show that the Gospel had made its way in this part of England; though, in the cemeteries filled with urns containing the ashes of the dead, there have been found, near Burton-on-Trent and near Derby, skeletons, no doubt of Christians who, according to the rites of their religion, had been buried and not burnt. To Roman times belongs the legend, which is said to give its name to Lichfield, of the massacre of Christians under Diocletian; in consequence, it is related, the place was called Lyccidfelth, or Licidfield--the field of dead men. This is the derivation most generally accepted at the present day; but some etymologists think that Lichfield means Lakefield, from the quantity of water in the neighbourhood. It is almost certain that the people of Mercia remained pagan from the Roman epoch, and through all the long wars which were waged between the gradually defeated Britons and the Saxons. Three Saxon kings, all pagans, ruled Mercia; and Christianity, which had taken such firm hold in Northumbria, still had not penetrated to the dark central region of Mercia. Then came Penda the Strong, himself a pagan. "He was not baptised," it was said of him, "and never believed in God." He slew many kings, amongst them being the saintly Oswald, king of Northumbria. One of King Penda's daughters had married Alchfrid, a nephew of Oswald and son to the then King Oswy of Northumbria; and in 652 Penda's son, Peada, became suitor for the hand of one of Oswy's daughters. Peada was then ruling under his father the Middle Angles, and he journeyed to the Northumbrian Court, where he was most hospitably received, in spite of the fact that constant war was being waged between Mercia and Northumbria; but the princess whom he sought was promised him only on condition that he and his people in Mid-Anglia should become Christians. Alchfrid became his teacher; and the beauty of this new faith so seized on him that he declared his willingness to become a Christian whether he might win his princess or not. That same year he was baptised by Finan, the British bishop and head of the Church in Northumbria, and with him all his followers. He returned to his own country, taking with him four priests of the British Church: Cedda, who was afterwards made Bishop of London, and who was the brother of St. Chad, Adda, Betti, and Diuma. These four taught the Gospel to the Mid-Anglians, and even went north among the other Mercians; and it does not appear that Penda, in spite of his paganism, made any opposition. Notwithstanding these close links between the two kingdoms, in the year 655 Penda with an enormous force invaded Northumbria; he was defeated and killed by Oswy, who now became king of Mercia, but left Peada in his old rule in Mid-Anglia. This was the death-blow of paganism in Mercia; Christianity, which was beginning to take firm hold in Peada's country, spread rapidly, and =Diuma= (656-658) was made bishop of Mercia. This may be said to be the commencement of the see which afterwards was called by the name of Lichfield; but as yet there was no cathedral, nor was any place particularly settled upon as the headquarters of the work which was so enthusiastically carried on. Diuma was a travelling or missionary bishop, and when he died, after a brief rule of two years, the Church in Mercia was an accomplished fact. Diuma was succeeded by =Creollach= (658-659), who, unlike his predecessor an Irishman, was a Briton; he was appointed by Oswy; but in this same year the Mercians rebelled, Oswy fled, and Creollach fled with him, and finally retired to Iona. The next bishop was a Saxon abbot named =Trumhere= (659-662), and he was succeeded on his death by =Jaruman= (662-667). Both were appointed by King Wulphere, son of Penda, who had been raised to the Mercian throne by his people; and both were Saxons who had been consecrated in the Northumbrian Church. Jaruman was a most energetic bishop, and he appears to have been sent into Essex to reconvert the people there who had fallen into paganism again; his mission was a success, and Jaruman returned to his own people in Mercia. It was during Jaruman's episcopate that difficulties arose between the Church in Britain and the Church in Rome. Rome had sent messengers to Britain, and they had been the means of converting a large portion of the south coast and of East Anglia; but there were differences in the two Churches, and one particularly caused much trouble. The Roman Church had always kept Easter Day on a Sunday, but the British Church held this feast on March 14, whatever day of the week it might be. A synod was called at Whitby, and it was decided, mainly through the instrumentality of Wilfrid, the future bishop of York, in favour of the Roman Sunday. In this way, it may be said, began the rule of Rome in the English Church. Shortly after, in 667, Jaruman died, and no successor was appointed for two years. During this time, Theodorus of Tarsus became Archbishop of Canterbury, and to him belongs the credit of making the English Church: before, each kingdom had had its own Church, but Theodore welded them together into one whole, and completed their dependence on the bishop of Rome. Wilfrid was made bishop of York, and St. Chad, who had been consecrated to that see, retired to the abbey at Lastingham, only in the next year, 669, to be reconsecrated as bishop of Mercia by the new Archbishop of Canterbury. =St. Chad= or =Ceadda= (669-672) made his seat at Lichfield, and in so doing founded the diocese of Lichfield. St. Chad, as has been stated before, was the patron saint of Lichfield. What is known of him is principally derived from Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation." From this we learn that when not on his missionary travels over the diocese he spent most of his time in prayer, and in meditation on death and supernatural things. His method was to proceed from place to place in his diocese on foot; and there is a story of Theodore taking St. Chad in his arms and lifting him on to a horse which he presented to him. He founded the abbey of Barrow-on-Humber, which King Wulphere endowed with fifty hides of land. His headquarters, as we have said, were at Lichfield, and he built, or finished building, a small church near what is still known as St. Chad's Well, at the eastern end of Stowe Pool. Like his predecessors' his time was short; only for two years was he allowed to labour at Lichfield. There is a beautiful legend of his death which has been well told by Dean Bickersteth. "A week before his death a sound of angelic melody was heard coming from the south-east, until it reached and filled the little oratory where he was praying. This the good bishop interpreted to be his summons to heaven. The voices, he privately told Ovin, were those of angels. The messenger of death, that 'lovable guest,' was with them. They would come again in seven days and take him with them. About the same time, Egbert, a Northumbrian who had been a fellow-student with St. Chad in an Irish monastery, dreamt that he saw the soul of Cedda, Chad's brother, descending from heaven with a company of angels to take the soul of Chad with him into the heavenly kingdom." As he had foretold, so he died; but he was not forgotten, and many were the miracles said to have been performed at his shrine. His bones were removed from their first resting-place near Stowe Church into a beautiful shrine in the cathedral, where they remained until the Reformation, when they were taken away, and are now said to be in the Roman Catholic cathedral at Birmingham. There is another legend concerning St. Chad which has become more closely attached to Peterborough than to Lichfield, but it must be briefly stated here, as the story appears in some of the decorations of the cathedral. Bede does not mention it, and it has been given in varying forms by different writers. Briefly, the essence of the legend is that Wulphere, the king of Mercia, had killed two of his sons, Wulfade and Rufin, on account of their having been baptised by St. Chad. Each of these young princes had been hunting in the forest when he came across a hart with a rope round its neck. The prince gave chase, and the hart led him to St. Chad, who, having prayed with him, baptised him. This happened to both Wulfade and Rufin separately. Then Wulphere in his anger slew them. Afterwards he repented, and setting out to St. Chad, was led there by the same hart, and found the saint at prayer, with his cloak hanging on a sunbeam. Wulphere was absolved on condition that he should expiate his crime by founding churches and monasteries all over his kingdom. Lichfield is said to have been one of these churches, and Peterborough one of these monasteries. Many churches have been dedicated to St. Chad, especially in the Midlands, and in the east of London there was a well known as St. Chad's Well, where miracles were performed; and it was noted for its medicinal waters up to quite recent times. A large district in east London is still called after St. Chad's Well in the corrupted form of Shadwell. The next bishop was =Winfrid= (672-675), the abbot of St. Chad's Abbey at Barrow-on-Humber; but in the year that he was appointed a church council was held by Theodore, at which it was decided to split up some of the dioceses. Lichfield being one of the largest, would have been divided at once, but Winfrid, whether for his own sake or at the instigation of King Wulphere, resisted, and the diocese remained unchanged until Wulphere died, when in 675, Winfrid, still remaining opposed to the scheme, was deprived. He subsequently was murdered on his way to Rome. The new bishop was =Saxwulf= (675-691), abbot of Peterborough, and the work of cutting up the diocese was begun. The sees of Hereford and Worcester were made. Lincolnshire was taken from the diocese, and the Middle Angles became the see of Leicester. However, Lichfield still remained an enormous diocese, and when Saxwulf died he was bishop of both Lichfield and Leicester. He was succeeded by =Hedda= (691-721), who is said to have determined the site of the present cathedral by building a church there. However, nothing remains of this cathedral, but it is always supposed that Hedda brought St. Chad's bones from Stowe Church and deposited them here. The cathedral was dedicated to St. Peter. Hedda and his successor, =Aldwin= (721-737), were bishops of both Lichfield and Leicester. They were followed at Lichfield by =Witta= (737-752), and the connection with Leicester ceased. In 756 Offa, the greatest of the Mercian kings, ascended the throne. Offa added a part of Shropshire to the diocese, which from this time remained the same in extent down to the Reformation. Here followed three bishops--=Hemele= (752-764), =Cuthred= (765-768), and =Berthum= (768-779)--of whom little is known; and then came =Higbert= or =Hygeberht= (785-801), who holds a remarkable position in the history of the diocese. Offa had by this time advanced himself into the leading position in England; and so great was his power that Charlemagne called him emperor of the west, keeping for himself the title of emperor of the east. But Offa was first of all king of Mercia, and it did not please him to think that his bishops were subordinate to an archbishop who lived in one of his subject states; and so he determined "to humble Canterbury and exalt Lichfield." He began by confiscating all the property of Canterbury situated in Mercia, and then he appealed to the Pope that the bishop of Lichfield should be made an archbishop. The Pope assented, a council held at Chelsea in 785 also agreed, and Higbert, the new bishop, became archbishop, with the bishoprics of Worcester, Leicester, Lincoln, and Hereford, parts of the old diocese of Mercia, as well as Elmham and Dunwich, to make up his province. Offa died in 796, and immediately a stir was made to restore Canterbury to its old dignity. The negotiations were long, but in 802 Pope Leo decided in favour of Canterbury, and the council of Cloveshoe in 803 formally annulled the metropolitan dignity of Lichfield. =Aldulf= (801-812), who had succeeded Higbert as archbishop, became bishop, but took precedency after Canterbury overall the other bishoprics, and =Herewin= (812-818) on his appointment submitted to Canterbury. Shortly afterwards =Æthelwald= (818-828) organised the bishopric upon the basis of its present constitution. Churches were springing up all over the diocese, with their own clergy, and so, although the church at Lichfield remained the headquarters of the diocese, yet the clergy attached to it were no longer to be responsible for the ministrations of the whole diocese, but were to confine themselves to the estates of the bishop and the cathedral, where they were to dwell under canons or rules. It is possible that from this time the cathedral clergy became known as canons. Then comes the period of the invasion by the Danes, whereby the country was devastated and the rich abbeys were destroyed. Peterborough, Crowland, and Ely, "went up in flames"; the enemy advanced along the Trent, and levelled to the ground the famous monastery of Repton--the Walhalla of Mercia--where countless kings and princes had been buried. What happened at Lichfield is not known, but many bishops succeeded one another, of whose consecration, in some cases, the dates are so doubtful that it is not worth while to give them. Their names are:--=Hunbert=, 828; =Kynebert=; =Tunfrith=; =Ella=; =Algar=, 941; =Kinsy=, 949; =Winsy=, 964; =Elfege=, 973; =Godwin=, 1004; =Leofgar=, 1020; =Brithmar=, 1026; and =Wulsy=, 1039; but little is known of them, though these two centuries are far from being unimportant in the history of the diocese. Probably the destruction of the royal abbeys caused the building of numerous parish churches during this period, and of the collegiate churches which were planted in the principal centres of the population. The former were mostly endowed with lands or tithes to support the parish clergy, or to recompense the canons who should attend the church, in which latter case the tithes were probably "appropriated" to the cathedral. So the system developed until about the year 1000, when began, in Mercia, a new age of monasteries, not like the old royal abbeys which had mostly been destroyed, but houses that were filled with monks or nuns of the Benedictine order. These competed with the secular clergy in appropriating the endowments of the churches, and a jealousy began between the two systems which blazed continually, with greater or less heat, until the final overthrow of the monasteries by Henry VIII. at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Early in the eleventh century was founded, at Coventry, the Benedictine abbey which had so great a share in the history of the diocese. Its founder, Earl Leofric, was the husband of the beautiful Godiva whose ride through the town made Coventry free from tolls. "I, Luriche, for love of thee, Doe make Coventre toll-free," are the old words. She induced her husband to found and endow the abbey with its twenty-four monks; she herself contributed her gold and silver, and the monastery became so wealthy that "the walls seemed almost too strait to hold it all." =Leofwin=, bishop of Lichfield (1054-1066), was made the first abbot of Coventry; he died in the year of the Conquest, and was the last Saxon bishop: henceforth a new order of men was to rule the Church in England. No doubt Lichfield owed to its insignificance as a city the immunity which it again enjoyed while all the neighbouring country was being pillaged. William appointed his own chaplain, =Peter= (1072-1084), as bishop, and here, no doubt, he lived until 1075, when, at the synod of London, it was decided that the seats of the bishops should be in the larger towns and not in the villages. So to the town of Chester, where there were about 400 or 500 houses, the bishop's seat was moved. It is interesting to find in "Domesday Book" mention of the extraordinarily heavy fines payable to the bishop at Chester for such offences as the following:--"If any free man does work on a holy day, the bishop has a forfeit of eight shillings. A slave or maidservant so transgressing pays four shillings. A merchant coming into the city and carrying a stall shall pay to the bishop four shillings if he take it down between the ninth hour of the Sabbath and Monday without licence from the bishop's officer." Following Peter came =Robert de Lymesey= (1087-1117), who, after waiting a short time, obtained papal leave to remove his seat to Coventry, the barony of which he bought from the king; and so he became both bishop and abbot, and for about a century his successors united the two offices. This arrangement was not at all to the taste of the monks, and constant quarrels occurred. Robert de Lymesey is said to have rifled the place; some contend, for the sake of the cathedral at Lichfield, but others, in order to prosecute the suit at Rome in which he was involved with the monks. The next bishop was =Robert Peche= (1121-1126), and then came =Roger de Clinton= (1129-1148); he was known as the soldier-bishop, and was certainly a strong man, whatever his reputation may have been in other ways. At Lichfield, he was a reformer who did much good to the place. The five canons he found there were dependent for their support on the bishop, and he seems to have settled property on the cathedral to support them. He also added a number of prebendaries, or non-resident canons, who were to be members of the chapter, and were to enjoy a stall in the choir; and to each stall a small estate or prebend was attached. Many other things he did; but, principally, he is supposed to have built the Norman cathedral, and to have fortified the close. Bishop Roger seems to have been also a great supporter of the Cistercian monks, who appeared in the neighbourhood about this time, and for whom he built an abbey in the diocese at Buildwas, not very far from Shrewsbury. Then, being a soldier as well as a bishop, he started for the East, and died, after fighting in the Crusades, at Antioch in 1148. Ever since the Conquest the struggles in the Church had been growing sharper. There is no room for a full discussion of these quarrels, but, briefly, it may be said that they arose largely from a desire on the part of the monks and the collegiate churches to shake off the power of the bishops. In doing this it had been necessary to appeal more and more to the Pope, and in consequence the Pope was gradually increasing his power in England, to the detriment not only of the bishops, but also of the king. On the death of Bishop Clinton, Stephen, instead of appointing a successor himself, as had been the custom of the king on previous occasions, found it necessary to depute his authority to a joint council of the monks of Coventry and the canons of Lichfield and Chester. They met at Leicester, and the monks by themselves appointed =Walter Durdent= (1149-1159), prior of Canterbury. The canons would not admit this election, although the new nominee had been precentor at Lichfield; they appealed to Rome, and--how the result came about is not clear, but indeed is a matter of dispute--Durdent was consecrated at Canterbury. He was enthroned at Coventry, but was barred out of Lichfield, where he commenced his rule by excommunicating the canons. But Durdent, being now a bishop, soon drew the canons to his side, and it was with Coventry that the differences continued. He and the prior were summoned to Rome, where it was settled that the bishop should keep the abbey as a monastic cathedral, but that the prior should in the future have the first voice in the election of bishops. Durdent died at Rome, and was succeeded by =Richard Peche= (1161-1182), son of Robert Peche--for the clergy of that day often married--who seems to have secured the suffrages of both sets of electors. He retired just before his end to the priory of St Thomas, near Stafford, which he had founded in 1180 in memory of Thomas à Becket, who had been murdered ten years previously. He was one of those who had consecrated the archbishop a few years before, and he joined in the popular indignation which ended in the canonisation of the victim. About this time the diocese was permanently divided into the archdeaconries of Derby, Stafford, Chester, and Coventry. The next bishop was =Gerard Puella= (1183), a celebrated authority on ecclesiastical and canon law. Lichfield refused to admit him, and he died soon after his consecration. The next bishop was =Hugh de Nonant= or Nunant (1184-1199); his intense hatred of the monks led to terrible disturbances at Coventry. Soon after his consecration he exasperated the monks so greatly that they beat him, and Nonant, with the wounds upon him, hurried to the king, and obtained his consent--some say by purchase--to the monks being turned out. This was done, and secular canons instituted in their place. During the absence of King Richard at the Crusades, Nonant appears to have identified himself too much with the cause of Prince John. This brought about his ruin; for, being suspected by Richard on his return from captivity of participation in the plots against the crown, he was deprived of his bishopric, which in course of time, however, he was allowed to buy back for 5000 marks. He lived not only to see the monks restored to Coventry by the Pope, but also to repent of his harshness to monastical institutions. He died on his way to Rome, and was buried among the monks of Caen. The next election revived the bitterness between Coventry and Lichfield, a bitterness accentuated by the political adherence of the two parties, Coventry being on King Richard's side, Lichfield for Prince John. Under these circumstances, the canons had not even been called to the ceremony of election, and Coventry's candidate, =Geoffry de Muschamp= (1198-1208), was elected. But the greatest difficulty of all arose at the election of the next bishop. John was now king, and Lichfield in favour. The monks chose their prior, but John would not allow his consecration; then came a series of proposals, to none of which could king, monks, and canons all three assent, but finally, at the intercession of Pandulf, the Pope's legate, they all agreed on =William de Cornhull= (1215-1223). Thomas of Chesterfield tells us that this bishop conferred the right upon the chapter of electing their own dean. The next bishop, =Alexander de Stavenby= (1224-1238), was appointed by the Pope, on the appeal to him of both parties, who were still unable to agree. He built the friary in Lichfield, and dedicated it to St. Francis, the founder of the Friar Minors, which order he first introduced into the diocese. The high position of Stavenby in the councils of the realm make him an important personality among the bishops of the diocese. He died in 1238; and it might have been expected that a successor would have been appointed without difficulty, for during his rule it had been agreed that Coventry and Lichfield should appoint to the vacant bishopric alternatively. Coventry appointed William de Raleigh, but he accepted Norwich in preference, and then the monks claimed to appoint again, but the canons would not allow this, and appointed their dean, William of Manchester, who, however, stood aside when the monks suggested Nicholas de Farnham, and he was too modest to accept the office. Then =Hugh de Patteshull= (1239-1241) was chosen at the king's desire. He was Treasurer of England and a native of the diocese; he seems to have followed in the steps of his predecessor, and it is said that he made new regulations as to the manner of the cathedral services. He died only eighteen months after his appointment, and a fresh trouble arose over the election of a successor; but the Pope intervened without asking permission of the king, and, under the advice of Grosseteste, the famous bishop of Lincoln, appointed =Roger de Weseham= (1245-1256), the dean of the cathedral. The king in his anger seized the endowments of the see, and Weseham began his work amid great difficulties, but finally Henry restored the endowments, and allowed Weseham to prosecute his salutary re-organisation of the clergy. Weseham retired in 1256, and died shortly after. It is doubtful if the monument in the south aisle, generally known as that of Bishop Patteshull, is not in reality that of Bishop Weseham. There was no contention over the election of the next bishop, =Roger de Molend= or Meyland (1256-1295). He was a natural son of the Earl of Salisbury, William Longespée, and so nephew to King Henry III. His was not an admirable role, the most remarkable event being his attempt, _vi et armis_, to obtain admittance to the Royal Free Chapel of St. Mary at Stafford. Both sides refused to plead at the Assizes, but it was finally decided that the bishop should be allowed the use of the free chapels in Derby and Stafford, but should have no disciplinary powers over their clergy. Afterwards he seems to have neglected his diocese, and the scandalous and avaricious conduct of the clergy, which the last two bishops had controlled, now became so intense that in 1282 Archbishop Peckham had to interfere, and Roger was forced to come into residence. Soon after it was found necessary to find him a coadjutor, who was to advise him in all official acts. Incompetent as he was as a bishop, the diocese obtained several remarkable benefits during his rule. The king gave Cannock Chase to the see, and the west front of the cathedral was begun. It may well be that in his travels he had acquired a love of beauty he would not have acquired at home, and that we owe to him the conception of this beautiful feature of the cathedral. The money it must have cost, too, could only have been found by one whose princely rank enabled him to obtain money with some ease. In London also he left his mark, unhappily now entirely obliterated. Where Somerset House now stands he erected his palace, next to the palace of his brother Bishop of Worcester. It was a beautiful mansion, but the site was too valuable to permit of it belonging to any one but the king when Henry VIII. graced the throne. About this time the archdeaconry of Stafford was occupied by Thomas de Cantilupe, afterwards Bishop of Hereford. The story of his life belongs to the account of that diocese, but such a man must have had great influence on his archdeaconry. The next bishop was =Walter de Langton= (1296-1321), Treasurer of England, and friend to King Edward I. He was chosen unanimously by both parties. At first his political duties claimed him, and brought him into collision with the Prince of Wales, who, as soon as he had ascended the throne as Edward II., threw him into prison. There he does not seem to have remained long, and when Piers Gaveston, the king's favourite, was beheaded in 1312, he was restored to his former treasurership. Langton is principally remembered in connection with the see as having founded the Lady Chapel and built the Bishop's Palace, for so long a splendid monument to his memory in the north-east corner of the close. He rebuilt also Eccleshall and Haywood Manor houses, and walled the close for "the honour of God, the dignity of the cathedral, and the bodies of the saints there reposing, and also for security and quiet of the canons." This last a mistaken work, as we who live after the event are well able to judge. He also bridged the cathedral pool, and made a magnificent shrine for St. Chad's bones. Langton died in 1321 in London, and was carried to Lichfield, where he was buried with much ceremony. His bones were removed into the Lady Chapel when it was finished during the rule of the next bishop, and a sumptuous monument placed over them. The mutilated remains of this monument can be seen in the south choir aisle to this day. His successor, =Roger de Norbury= or Northbury (1322-1359), was appointed by the Pope, as the two chapters had not agreed once more. His was a long rule, nearly forty years, and filled with good for the see. The registers of both Langton and Norbury are both still in existence among the muniments of the cathedral, and from them we know much of the life of a bishop of this time. Every kind of evil seems to have come under the notice of the bishop--whose power of inducing those who had done wrong to repent and do right was the direct outcome of the terrible threat of excommunication which he was able to wield. Lichfield had constantly during the later reigns been the scene of royal festivities, and after the battle of Crecy Edward III. held his Court here, and there were tournaments and banquets at which the flower of English chivalry assisted. It is said by some that here occurred the famous incident of the garter which led to the institution of the order of that name. At any rate, Uttoxeter was appropriated to the chapel of the garter. About this time, too, the cathedral must have been finished; now, too, was the terrible visitation of the black death, that most deadly of all plagues, which is said to have cut off one half of the whole population of the realm. Whether the fear of it, or the occasion of the completion of the cathedral, caused the chapter to set their house in order, certain it is that we have, in the discovery of the sacrist's roll of 1346, a kind of inventory of the valuables of the cathedral at this time; these are set out in the part devoted to the cathedral. Thomas of Chesterfield, the early historian of the diocese, whose work is printed in Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_, and on whom all later writers on the subject have had largely to rely, lived at this time, and brought down his "chronicle" to 1348, one of the years of the black death. =Roger de Stretton= (1360-1386), an absolutely uneducated man, succeeded Langton; then came =Walter Skirlaw= (1386) and =Richard Scrope= (1386-1396), but the former, between his consecration and his enthronement, was translated to Bath and Wells, from whence he went to Durham, and the latter, though distinguished in English history, is more noted as Archbishop of York. Next came Bishop =John Burghill= (1398-1414), a barefooted Black Friar, who gained a reputation for asceticism, and left his worldly goods to the church. Richard II. was present at the enthronement of these two last bishops. They were followed by =John Catterick= (1415-1419). In 1419, =William Heyworth= (1419-1447), the abbot of St. Albans, became bishop. An important question was settled in his time--viz. the bishop's position in the cathedral. At his suggestion, it was arranged that he should give notice to the dean when he intended a visitation: the chapter should be summoned, and they should conduct him to the high altar and there leave him to stand or kneel alone in prayer. Afterwards they were to conduct him to the chapter-house, where he might inquire into the title and conduct of the canons; the other cathedral clergy were to be entirely subject to the dean and chapter. His rule saw also the beginnings of the collegiate church of Manchester, which so long after was to become the cathedral of the new diocese to be carved out of our see. It is unnecessary to more than mention the names of bishops who succeeded about this time: they are--=William Booth= (1447-1450), =Nicholas Cloose= (1452), =Reginald Bolars= (1453-1459). =John Halse= (1459-1492) was called on to give shelter to Queen Margaret after the battle of Bloreheath. At the end of the fifteenth century there is another political bishop. This was =William Smyth= (1492-1496). He, like several of his successors, was President of Wales, and he was also the founder of Brasenose College, Oxford. Next comes =John Arundel= (1496-1503), and then comes =Geoffry Blythe=, whose rule, commencing in 1503, lasts until 1531, the year when Henry required the clergy to acknowledge him as supreme head of the Church. This period of the dark days before the Reformation must have been one of great difficulty for the bishops, but Blythe seems to have been very popular at Lichfield; he made several attempts to stamp out Lollardism, and has earned for himself an unenviable niche in the house of fame by his inclusion in Fox's "Book of Martyrs" for his holding of the "Court of Heresy." One martyr (a woman) was burned at Coventry, and others were tried and acquitted or condemned to less horrible punishments. On the whole, Blythe seems to have been as gentle as the times would allow him to be. He died in 1531, and escaped the storm which was now to burst. When it had cleared away, many of the old religious landmarks had disappeared; Lichfield Cathedral had lost her sister minster, and had been shorn of much that it valued and was beautiful. After an interval, =Rowland Lee= (1534-1543) was appointed. He had been chaplain to the king, and it was he who officiated at the private marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn; he was rewarded with the bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry, and was made President of Wales, in which latter appointment he was said to have ruled so wisely that we owe to him the kindly feelings which have ever since existed between the two countries. This work must have kept him much away from the diocese, and it was superintended by two suffragans; but we have it on record that he did his best to save something for the diocese from the wreck of the Reformation; how little he was able to do we shall now see. He also issued to the clergy a set of injunctions, in which the new teaching and ideas are set forth, "that the King's Majesty is only Supreme Head under Chryst in Erthe of this his Churche of England"; that every parish priest shall provide for his church a "Boke of the hole Byble both in Latin and alsoe in Englishe, and lay the same in the Quiere for every man that will loke and read therein"; and other injunctions on prayers and preaching and behaviour, which are not, like the first two, new and startling, but are reminiscences of the ordinances and manners of the past. Bishop Lee, who had failed in his efforts to save the cathedral church of Coventry, also exerted himself on behalf of the shrine of St. Chad, and succeeded so well that, though the shrine was rifled of its jewels and precious metals, they were granted to the uses of the cathedral, instead of finding their way into the coffers of the king. The ashes of the saint were stolen by one of the prebendaries. Soon after, the collegiate churches were confiscated, and the diocese, like other dioceses, found itself stripped of all its finest churches. The royal chapels of Stafford, Shrewsbury, Chester, Bridgenorth, Derby, and Penkridge all went; and throughout the country, for want of the endowments which had been confiscated, churches and chapels were falling into ruin. Henry seems to have had ideas of using some of the money thus obtained for ecclesiastical purposes, but his own needs did not permit him to do much. The bishopric of Shrewsbury, which he had planned, came to nothing, though a suffragan with that title was appointed; but at Chester the abbey of St. Werburgh became a cathedral church when, in 1541, the see of Chester was founded, and Cheshire and Lancashire were taken from Lichfield to form the new diocese. =Richard Sampson= (1543-1553), dean of the cathedral, succeeded Lee as bishop, and died early in Mary's reign. His successor, =Ralph Bane= (1554-1558), lighted the fires in the diocese, and many perished at his hands. He was a bishop after Mary's heart, and sat with Tonstall and Bonner in the inquisitions which disgraced the reign. He resigned on the advent of Elizabeth. And then another kind of persecution commenced; this time it was the Papists who suffered, and many were done to death in the diocese. Following Bane came =Thomas Bentham= (1560-1579), and =William Overton= (1580-1609); then =George Abbott= was bishop in 1609, and in one year was promoted to Canterbury, where he preceded Laud, whose life-long opponent he was. Then came =Richard Neill= (1610-1614), who was dean of Westminster as well, and earned an ignoble reputation by burning a Papist named Wightman, at Lichfield. He was consecrated to Rochester in 1608, and translated successively to Lichfield, 1610; Lincoln, 1614; Durham, 1617; Winchester, 1628; and York, 1632. =John Overall= (1614-1618) wrote that part of the "Church Catechism" which explains the sacraments; he afterwards went to Norwich. =Thomas Morton= (1619-1632) came from Chester; he was one of the most learned bishops of the time, and a noted advocate of the Church of England principles. =Robert Wright= (1632-1644) was a supporter of Laud; under him the cathedral service became again something like that of the time of Bishop Patteshull. He was one of the twelve bishops who were impeached by the Long Parliament in 1641, and, though an old man, pleaded his cause at the bar of the House of Commons. He was still bishop when the Civil War broke out; and during the famous siege of Lichfield he was shut up in his castle at Eccleshall, where he died while it was being defended against the Parliamentarians. His successor, =Accepted Frewen=, president of Magdalen College, Oxford, was appointed by the king, and consecrated in the chapel of his college; but, having neither cathedral, revenues, nor power, he retired into Kent, until in 1660 he became Archbishop of York. =John Hacket= (1661-1671) was appointed to the see by Charles II., and decided that its title should be altered from "Coventry and Lichfield" to "Lichfield and Coventry"; partly, no doubt, because the cathedral was here, and partly because in the late troubles Lichfield had been loyal to the Crown, and Coventry had not. His great work was the restoration of the cathedral from its ruins, and the re-organisation of the diocese. He had had a distinguished record, and was one of the sub-committee in 1640 appointed to try and settle the vexed questions in the Church, and as such he made an eloquent speech at the bar of the House of Commons. Later he continued the use of the liturgy in his church of St. Andrew, Holborn, after it had been forbidden, and when the officer and soldiers were sent to arrest him and ordered him to desist on pain of instant death, he answered: "Soldier, I am doing my duty, do you do yours," and continued the service. Surely a man pre-eminently fitted for the work of re-organisation he was to do at Lichfield; and the king got the credit from the clergy of having the old "apostolic spirit of discerning," so greatly was he to their minds. He must have been a wit too, for, when the bishopric was offered to him, he remarked that he would rather that in future times people should ask why Dr Hacket was not a bishop, than why he was. He is also said to have entreated the gentleman who had declared that hell was paved with bishops' skulls to tread lightly over his. Hacket's dean cannot have confirmed the clergy in their opinion of Charles, whose appointment to the post he had purchased; so bad was he that the bishop excommunicated him, and the sentence was even read in the cathedral while he was there, but he heeded it not. The chapter loathed him, but apparently the king's feelings were different, for at Hacket's death he was appointed to succeed him. So =Thomas Wood= (1671-1692) became bishop, and was the worst the see ever had: he lived much away from the diocese. Lancelot Addison, the father of the famous Joseph Addison, was dean in his time. William III., staying a night at the deanery, was attracted to the genial essayist early; and we may imagine that he must have been greatly influenced by that part of his life spent within the cathedral close. The next bishop was =William Lloyd= (1692-1699): he came from St. Asaph, and went to Worcester. While bishop of St. Asaph he was one of the seven bishops who were sent to the Tower in 1688. =John Hough= (1699-1717) came next; he also had crossed the path of James II., for he had been elected President of Magdalen over the head of James's nominee, but James had proved the stronger at the time, and he was ejected, only to be reinstated by the frightened king soon after. At the Revolution he was made bishop of Oxford, whence he was translated hither; he afterwards refused the primacy. The next two bishops--=Edward Chandler= (1717-1730) and =Richard Smallbroke= (1730-1749)--were distinguished defenders of Christianity against the infidelity of the time. Their controversial writings are numerous and well known. The next bishop, =Frederick Cornwallis= (1749-1768), afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury. Then came =John Egerton= (1768-1771), from Bangor, and went to Durham; =Brownlow North= (1771-1774), who was translated to Worcester, and thence to Winchester; =Richard Hurd= (1774-1781), who also went to Worcester; =James Cornwallis= (1781-1824), and =Henry Ryder= (1824-1836), who came from Gloucester. He succeeded in founding many new churches and immensely increasing the membership of the Church in the diocese. His successor, =Samuel Butler= (1836-1843), went on with this work. It was in his time that the archdeaconry of Coventry was taken from the diocese and added to Worcester. The title of the see now becomes Lichfield only; Coventry, which at one time held the premier place in the title, and then the second, now slips out altogether. Ten years later the deanery of Bridgenorth was allotted to Hereford, and in the same year all peculiar and exempt jurisdiction was abolished, so that the archdeacons had power to visit every church in the diocese; the number of canons of Lichfield was reduced from six to four. In the meantime =James Bowstead= (1840-1843) and =John Lonsdale= (1843-1867) became bishops. The latter was one of the greatest bishops the diocese has had, and his work, like that of Ryder, lives in the increased power of the Church in the diocese. He was succeeded by another great bishop, =George Augustus Selwyn=, who, as bishop of New Zealand, had organised the Church in those islands. The next bishop, =William Dalrymple Maclagan= (1878-1891), is now Archbishop of York. It was during his rule, in 1884, that the new diocese of Southwell was formed and Derbyshire was taken from Lichfield. The present bishop is the Hon. =Augustus Legge=. [Illustration: MONUMENT TO DR JOHNSON IN THE MARKET-PLACE.] DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL Feet Length, total (interior) 370 " of Nave 140 " of Transept 149 Width of Nave and Aisles 68 Height of Vault 57 Area 27,720 sq. feet [Illustration: PLAN OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL.] 
37194	----	[Illustration: MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE SOUTH.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF MANCHESTER A SHORT HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCH AND OF THE COLLEGIATE BUILDINGS NOW KNOWN AS CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL BY THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A. RECTOR OF TURNWORTH, DORSET WITH 43 ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: Arms of the See] LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1901 PREFACE. I have to acknowledge with my sincerest thanks the help I received locally in compiling this little volume. The Dean of Manchester was good enough to offer to read the proof-sheets, and has made various suggestions and additions which have done much to improve it. The sheets have also had the benefit of Canon Hicks' revision. The photographic illustrations, with the exception of two by Mr. W. H. Bowman of Manchester, were taken by myself, and I have also to thank the Dean for permission to photograph in all parts of the church. Mr. Walter T. Browne, Governor of Chetham's Hospital and Library, gave me every facility for examining and photographing the building, and supplied me with much valuable information. He also carefully revised the proof-sheets of the latter portion of the book. Mr. J. T. Chapman, of Albert Square, placed his dark-room at my disposal, so that I was able to develop my negatives on the spot, and make second exposures when necessary. Lastly, Mr. Thackeray Turner, Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, lent me sundry papers and reports dealing with Chetham's Hospital and Library. The kind assistance thus received has made my task an easy one, and has materially added to the accuracy of the volume. THOMAS PERKINS. TURNWORTH, _September 1901_. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I.--HISTORY OF THE BUILDING 3 CHAPTER II.--THE EXTERIOR 13 CHAPTER III.--THE INTERIOR 23 CHAPTER IV.--SHORT HISTORY OF THE PARISH AND DIOCESE 55 CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL AND LIBRARY 63 INDEX 87 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Manchester Cathedral from the South _Frontispiece_ The Arms of the See _Title Page_ Manchester Cathedral from the North-East 2 The Cathedral from the West 3 View across the Choir from the Ely Chapel about 1850 8 Windows on the South Side 12 The West Porch 14 The South Porch 16 The Ely Chapel 18 North Side of the Nave 20 The Choir, looking East 22 The Choir Screen 23 View across the Nave, looking North-East 25 The Inner South Aisle of the Nave 28 The Tower Arch 30 Screen of the Jesus Chapel 31 Entrance to the Chapter House 32 The South Choir Aisle 33 Screen of the Lady Chapel 35 Statue of Sir Humphrey Chetham 36 Interior of North Doorway 39 View across the Nave, looking North-West 40 The Choir, looking West 42 Desk Ends in the Choir Stalls 43 Choir Stalls, North Side 44 The Gordon Memorial Window 51 The Nave from the West 54 The Hall, Chetham's Hospital 62 Chetham's Hospital from the South-East 63 The North Gallery of the Cloister 65 The College Gateway 68 Corridor and Entrance to the Hall 69 The Cloister 70 Recess in the Hall 72 West Side of the Cloister 74 Staircase leading to Cloister Gallery 75 Cloister Gallery, North Side 76 Chetham's Library, formerly the Dormitory 77 The Warden's Room, now the Reading Room 79 The Reading Room, East Side 82 The Cloister, West Walk 83 Plan of Chetham's Hospital 85 PLAN OF MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL _end_ [Illustration: MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST.] MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE BUILDING. In the minds of most Englishmen the name of Manchester calls up the image of a vast city that, with the borough of Salford, which, though municipally distinct, yet is topographically united with it, contains a population of about three quarters of a million of inhabitants. And it is, moreover, generally supposed that Manchester is entirely of modern growth--a collection of mills, and warehouses, and shops; yet, if anyone pauses for a moment to consider, the name itself suggests that the foundation of the city must date back from the time of the Roman occupation of the island. It has been, and not unreasonably, supposed that it was a British stronghold before the soldiers of Agricola took possession of it. Certain it is that it was occupied by Roman troops, and it is said that they made their summer camp near the spot where the building that is the subject of this book now stands, hard by the junction of the little stream of the Irk with the larger river Irwell. In those early days these streams in all probability ran bright and clear through broad meadow lands, and were crossed by bridges of very ancient construction. The remains of one such bridge have long been known to exist, and have on more than one occasion been uncovered. The Irk now runs through a tunnel, and discharges its waters into the grimy, sluggish stream of the Irwell, which divides Manchester from Salford, and runs between the Exchange Station of the London and North-Western Railway and the cathedral church of the new diocese created in 1847. Many Roman coins, principally those of Nero, Vitellius, Vespasian, Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Constantine, have been found at various times in the course of digging the foundations of houses. What befell Manchester when the Romans left Britain we do not know. That Paulinus preached here is highly probable; that Ine, King of the West Saxons, resided here with his Queen Ethelburga about 690 is recorded; that, like many other places not far distant from the seaboard, it was ravaged by the Danes is certain. King Edward the Unconquered, in 923, sent troops to repair its walls and garrison the town. No picturesque legends about the foundation of the original Church of St. Mary which stood near the site of the present cathedral have come down to us. All we know is, that two wood-built churches are mentioned in Domesday Book as standing either in the town or the parish, one of them dedicated to St. Mary, the other to St. Michael.[1] The former was probably a predecessor of the present building, which is dedicated jointly to St. Mary, St. George, and St. Denys, though not on the same site. But of any Norman church of St. Mary not a trace is left, nor are there any remains of thirteenth century work visible in the church as we see it to-day. Various examples of thirteenth and fourteenth century work, however, have been found in the walls of the church and in the western tower at different times during repairs and restorations. William the Conqueror conferred the lands between the Mersey and the Ribble on Roger of Poictou, who granted the Manor of Manchester to the Gresley family; Thomas Gresley, Baron of Manchester, granted a charter to the townspeople of Manchester in 1301. Under these early barons the church was held successively by about fifteen rectors, among whom may be mentioned William de la Marcia (1284), who became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1292; Walter Langton, who was appointed Rector of Manchester, and also Keeper of the Great Seal by Edward I. in 1292, and was consecrated Bishop of Lichfield in 1296, but retained his rectory for three years after his consecration; John de Verdun or Everden (1313), who became Dean of St. Paul's in 1323. Meanwhile, the manor had passed from the Gresleys to the De la Warres; the last of their family became a priest, and appointed himself Rector of Manchester in 1373. He was a liberal benefactor to the church, and in order that there should be a suitable body of clergy to look after the spiritual welfare of the town, he endowed the church as a collegiate institution, obtaining the requisite charter from Henry V. in 1422. The college consisted of a warden, eight fellows in priests' orders, four deacons, and six boy choristers. The old baronial hall was granted to the newly appointed body as a place of residence. This was largely modified to suit the requirements of its new inmates, and the church itself was gradually reconstructed. Hence we find the church built in the Perpendicular style, a style that has been imitated in the many additions that have been made to the building since it was raised to cathedral rank in 1847. So quickly does the smoke-laden atmosphere of Manchester discolour the stone, that in a very few years after their erection the new parts of the church match in colour the older parts of the building, and the passer-by who gives but a casual glance at the cathedral would be surprised to learn how much of its structure dates from the nineteenth century. At the present time, 1901, the only obviously new part is the western porch, but the north and south porches, the Fraser Chapel on the south side of the choir, the south-west corner of the building, as well as the tower, are all modern additions or reconstructions, and much of the exterior has been recased with stone. The residence of the warden and fellows, much modified at subsequent dates, may still be found on the north side of the church, on the other side of a road that skirts the churchyard. It is now known as Chetham's Hospital and Library; for fuller information about this building the reader is referred to the latter part of this volume. No sooner had the first warden, John Huntington, been appointed, than he set to work to enlarge and beautify the collegiate church. The oldest part of the church is the arch leading into the Lady Chapel, which, with its responds, has more resemblance to the Decorated than to the Perpendicular style. This arch was accurately restored some twenty-five or thirty years ago. The rebus of Sir John Huntington, the first warden, who was appointed in 1422, renders it probable that this part of the church was largely reconstructed by him. While he was warden, 1422-1458, the choir and its aisles were rebuilt, and the chapter house built. Under successive wardens the work of reconstruction was carried on, and occupied about a hundred years. The third warden, Ralph Langley (1465-1481), is said to have completed the nave; much work was done during the wardenship of James Stanley II. (1485-1509), afterwards Bishop of Ely, for the chapel of the Holy Trinity was founded by W. Radcliffe in 1498; the Jesus Chapel, now the vestry and library, was founded by Richard Beswick in 1506; the Hulme Chapel, now destroyed, which formerly projected to the south from the eastern part of the south wall of the Jesus Chapel, was founded by Ralph Hulme in 1507; the St. James' Chantry or Ducie Chapel was built in the same year; and the choir stalls were erected by the warden himself in 1508. In this year also W. Galley built St. George's Chapel. James Stanley is also recorded to have built the double entrance into the chapter house. The Derby and Ely Chapels on the north side are of rather later date; in the latter the ex-warden, James Stanley II., then Bishop of Ely, was buried. This chapel was built by Sir John Stanley in 1515. In 1518 the eighth warden, George West (1518-1535) is recorded to have built the Lady Chapel, but this work was probably a reconstruction rather than a fresh building; the windows that we see in it now are eighteenth century work, but probably are imitations of those that previously existed in this chapel, and their style indicates a considerably earlier date than 1518. Indeed, their tracery resembles fourteenth century work. It will be noticed from the dates just given that the church was finished not long before the Reformation. Up to 1541 Manchester belonged to the diocese of Lichfield, but Henry VIII. then transferred it to the newly founded see of Chester. The college was dissolved by Edward VI., who bestowed its lands on the Stanley family. Queen Mary re-established the college and gave back its lands, with the exception of the domestic buildings, which still remained in the hands of the Earls of Derby. During the time of the Civil Wars the church suffered in common with many other ecclesiastical buildings. Richard Heyrick, who had been warden since 1636, was deprived of his office in 1646, but was reinstated in 1660. Some negotiations had been entered into for the sale of the domestic buildings to the trustees under the will of Humphrey Chetham, but the sale was not completed until after the Restoration, when they became the property of the feoffees of the Chetham Hospital and Library. Subsequently the church shared the same fate as befell most ecclesiastical buildings during the eighteenth century, viz., neglect and injudicious repairs. But it was left to the early part of the nineteenth century to work the greatest havoc on the building. A thorough process of repair, or "beautifying" as it was then called, was set on foot in the year 1815. Galleries were erected in the nave, the various chapels outside the nave aisles were thrown into the main building by the removal of the screens which separated them from the north and south aisles, so that from that time the western half of the church has had double aisles on either side of the nave proper. But worse than this, the whole interior was covered with Roman cement, and that this might adhere more firmly to the stone-work, the walls themselves and the pillars of the main arcade of the nave and the clerestory walls were hacked about in the most shameful way. In this condition the church remained for many years. When the new see of Manchester was erected in 1847, this church was chosen as the cathedral church of the diocese, and before long proposals were made to rebuild or enlarge it, as it was felt by many that it lacked the dignity and size of the old cathedral churches, and, indeed, suffered in comparison with many of the old abbey churches that existed in England, some of which have since that time been raised to cathedral rank. Queen Victoria visited Manchester for the first time in 1851, and to commemorate her visit, Canon Parkinson suggested the rebuilding of the church, and himself headed the subscription list with a donation of £1000, but the proposal did not meet with much favour. [Illustration: VIEW ACROSS CHOIR FROM THE ELY CHAPEL ABOUT 1850. _From Winkles' "Cathedrals."_] At this time the municipal seats at the west end were enclosed by a glass screen; above them was the Chetham gallery, as it was called, its back occupied by the organ and choristers, its front by the schoolboys of Chetham's Hospital. The organ had previously stood on the screen beneath the choir arch, but had been removed to the west for a musical festival held in 1828. This old organ loft was then converted into a pewed gallery, intended for the use of the Chetham feoffees, but was usually occupied by the officers of regiments quartered in Manchester. In 1858 some repairs, external and internal, were carried out, and shortly after this J. E. Gregan, architect, and David Bell, builder, recommended the rebuilding of the tower. Their advice was taken, the old tower was demolished, and a new tower was designed by J. P. Holden. On 4th August 1864 the foundation stone of the new tower was laid by the Bishop, Dr. Prince Lee. In this ceremony, among others, the present Dean of Manchester, Dr. Maclure, took part, acting as chaplain to the High Sheriff, Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, Bart. The tower was nearly four years in building, and was dedicated on Whitsunday 1868. In 1872 the Dean, Dr. Cowie, and the canons proposed that a new cathedral church should be built on a new site, but this plan met with little favour. Ten years passed away and then Mr. George Milner and Mr. (afterwards Sir) John William Maclure, churchwardens, and Mr. Thomas Lings, comptroller, advocated a thorough restoration of the existing church; plans were prepared by Mr. Crowther, architect; a meeting was called to consider the matter, and it was resolved to accept and carry out these plans. The roof of the nave was repaired, the old bosses being preserved, the galleries were removed, and it was decided to clear off the Roman cement from the pillars and walls, but it was found that the stone-work beneath had been so much mutilated, that it was resolved to rebuild the main arcade of the nave and the clerestory. Various donors undertook to defray the cost of rebuilding the different bays. A muniment room containing the celebrated parish registers mentioned by Macaulay, was built in memory of Alderman Graves by his son, and the baptistery, in memory of Thomas Chesters, by his son. The Derby Chapel was re-roofed. The Earl of Derby, notwithstanding the agreement made in 1774 by which the chapel was handed over to the church on condition that the Earls of Derby should no longer be required to keep it in repair, generously contributed £1000 towards this work. The choir roof was renewed in English oak, but the bosses and carved angels were boiled in oil and replaced. Fortunately the Roman cement could be removed from the walls of the choir more easily than from the nave, and the old stone-work was allowed to stand. The south porch was erected by James Jardine in 1891; the north porch was built as a memorial to James Craven by his children in 1888. The west or Victoria porch was built in 1900 by subscription raised by the present Dean. The conical roof of the octagonal chapter house is modern; the chapel to the east of it was built by his widow as a memorial to Dr. James Fraser, the second Bishop of Manchester, who died in 1885. At the present time, 1901, further building operations are being carried on in the yard on the south side of the church, a new and larger chapter house and vestries being in course of erection. [Illustration: WINDOWS ON THE SOUTH SIDE.] CHAPTER II. THE EXTERIOR. The exterior of the Cathedral Church of Manchester is by no means imposing. The traveller who reaches the city by the London and North-Western Railway and alights at the Exchange Station, will see fronting him what appears to be a large parish church with a western tower. Its walls are grimy with the smoke of the city, and although the building occupies a good site, open on every side save the east, with a large churchyard stretching out on the north and south sides of it, yet few of those who see it would stay their steps to walk round the building or enter it by the south porch, unless they had been previously told that this parish church, as it seemed to them, and as in a certain way it is, is also the Cathedral Church of Manchester, and that its interior is both impressive as a whole, and contains detail work of the highest interest. Our examination of the exterior may well begin with the most recent addition to the church--=the western porch=--only lately finished and still showing the colour of the stone fresh from the carver's hands. Whether this addition is an improvement to the general appearance of the building or not is open to question. To some, among them the writer, it appears that the porch takes away from the appearance of height in the tower, much as the Galilee Chapel at Durham, beautiful as it is in its details, is an excrescence detracting from the effect of the western front of St. Cuthbert's Cathedral Church. Moreover, the single crocketed turret that rises from the south-west corner of the porch proper gives it a one-sided appearance, which is somewhat to be regretted, as with this exception the porch and its lower flanking chambers is symmetrical, as indeed is the church itself in its main features, turret answering to turret, and window to window, porch to porch. The carving on the western porch is elaborate and carefully executed, and if, as must necessarily be the case owing to the conditions under which nineteenth century carving was executed, it lacks the freedom that is so great a charm in old work, it is more in accordance with the general style of the church, and is characteristic of its own date. This porch was designed by Mr. Basil Champneys, who has succeeded in training carvers to carry out his designs in an admirable manner. A verbal description of the porch is hardly needed, as the illustration on the opposite page will show the reader its character. On either side of the porch is a chamber rising to about the same height as the spring of the arch of the doorway; each of these is flat-roofed, its wall terminates in a pierced battlemented parapet, and is lighted by two rectangular-headed windows facing west. To the south and north of these two chambers respectively, are iron gates and flights of steps giving access to the churchyard. [Illustration: THE WEST PORCH.] Ascending the southern flight we find before us the west ends of the two south aisles of the church; the roof of the inner one slopes slightly down from the clerestory wall, and the outer one rises into a very obtuse-angled gable. The west end of the inner or true aisle is original, but the outer aisle was extended two bays westward at the time of the recent restoration. The windows of the church, though all or nearly all of Perpendicular character, are not all alike, as may be seen by examining the illustrations; but in most of them the hood moulding after following the curve of the arch at the head of the window, is brought down in a vertical line for a short distance beside the lower part of the window. Most of the windows have four lights, but there are some exceptions, which will be duly noticed as we pass by them. To begin with, the west window of the outer south aisle has five lights. On turning round the south-west corner of this aisle we find the =south porch= projecting from the second bay. The porch itself consists of two bays, and has two stories. The lower story of the porch proper is lighted by two two-light windows on the western side, the upper story by two windows on the western and southern faces, and by one on the eastern face. Beneath the windows on the south side the following inscription may be read:-- To the honour and Glory of God and in thankful acknowledgement of many mercies this porch is erected by James Jardine of Manchester and Alderley Edge in the year of our Lord MDCCCXCI. [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORCH.] An octagonal stair turret surmounted by a crocketed pyramidal termination stands at the south angle of the inner bay on the eastern side. The whole of this porch is elaborately carved, as will be seen from the illustration. The next two bays of the south aisle project beyond the general line of the south wall of the church. The walls of this are finished by a pierced battlemented parapet similar to that which runs round the south porch. The windows in these two bays are alike, but the next two in the south wall have five lights, and differ from the last two in their shape and tracery (see illustration, p. 12). To the south of the church about this point stands a sun-dial, shown in the illustration. The three next bays belong to what was formerly known as the Jesus Chapel. In the westernmost of these there is a doorway to give room for which the sill of the window is placed at a higher level than the sills of the other windows. The tracery of these windows differs from the preceding two. From the easternmost of the three bays of the Jesus Chapel formerly projected the Hulme chantry. To the east of the Jesus Chapel stands the octagonal chapter house; three of its sides contain windows of a pattern differing from any of these already mentioned. From within the parapet, which is not battlemented, rises a rather steep pyramidal roof. This is modern. Whether the original roof was of this form or not is not known, but the modern roof is a distinctly agreeable feature. To the east of the chapter house is another window in the south wall, and then we come to the Fraser Memorial Chapel, which forms the south-east angle of the church. This has a four-light window in its south and a three-light window in its eastern wall. Before examining the east end of the church we may remark that the clerestory wall is terminated by a pierced battlemented parapet--a modern addition--and that the pattern is slightly different on either side of the octagonal turret which rises from the junction of the nave and choir. The parapet that runs along the south wall of the chapel of St. Nicholas, again, differs from that which runs along the other walls on the south side of the church. The east window of the south choir aisle has five lights; passing this we come to the =Lady Chapel=. This is exceedingly small, projecting only some eighteen feet to the east of the aisle walls. It has two bays, each lit by a small two-light window on either side. Against the centre of the eastern face rises a buttress, on either side of which is a four-light window. As already mentioned in Chapter I. the Lady Chapel windows are eighteenth century work, probably copies of the original windows, and have tracery of Decorated character. [Illustration: THE ELY CHAPEL.] Beyond the Lady Chapel is the window of the north choir aisle; and beyond this again the eastern termination of the Derby Chapel. This contains a seven-light window. Passing round the north-eastern corner we see the =Ely Chapel= projecting from the second bay to the west, with four-light windows in its eastern and western walls, and a five-light window on its northern face. From the fourth and fifth bays, counting from the east, projects a low building with a battlemented parapet, a door and square headed windows, erected to contain the hydraulic apparatus used for working the bellows of the organ. To the west of this is a small doorway with an ogee head leading into the ante chapel of the Derby or John the Baptist's Chapel. This is the last bay of the eastern division of the church. The next bay, the north wall of what was once St. James' Chapel, contains a five-light window. After two more bays, comprising the chapel of the Holy Trinity, we come to the registry, and see the north porch projecting from the last bay but one. This bears a general resemblance to the south porch, save that niches take the place of windows on the east and west faces of the upper story, and that the stair turret stands on the west side at the angle between the porch and aisle wall. The following inscription may be read running round the porch commencing on the eastern side. "To the glory of God and in loving memory of James Craven this porch and registry are erected by his children 1888." The west window of the outer north aisle has seven lights, and that of the inner aisle five. As on the south side so on the north, the tracery is not the same in all the windows. Those on the north side of the Derby Chapel and the Ely Chantry resemble each other; the next is a short window above the doorway; the next, which is known as the Gordon window, is entirely different; the next three have tracery similar to that of the windows of the Derby Chapel. The parapet along the north walls of the church, like that along the south walls, is pierced and battlemented, the design differing in different parts. The parapet of the Lady Chapel, however, is not pierced, but is simply battlemented. The parapet on the clerestory on both sides is a modern addition, and is considered by some to be no improvement on the old form which ran in an unbroken line from end to end of the church, and gave an appearance of greater length than that given by the present arrangement, with its line broken by battlements and pinnacles. The two octagonal turrets that rise from the east end of the clerestory walls with their crocketed pyramidal terminations form a pleasing feature. The tower, square in section, projects from the western extremity of the nave, and rises to the stately height of 140 feet. The west window of the nave is surmounted on the outside by a richly carved ogee label; in the next stage we see the faces of the clock, and in the belfry stage above double windows on each face of the tower; a pierced battlemented parapet with three pinnacles at each of the angles and one at the middle points of each of its sides, forms a suitable termination to the tower. We have now carefully examined the exterior of the church in detail. It remains only to mention the points of view from which it is best seen as a whole. The view from the roadway running up to the railway station shows the tower to advantage, as not only is it of considerable height itself, but its base on the level of the churchyard is considerably raised above the street. The whole of the south side, which is richer in variety and detail than the north, can be well seen from the churchyard, and the north side itself from the open space in front of Chetham's hospital, the play-ground of the boys who are educated there. [Illustration: NORTH SIDE OF THE NAVE.] [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: THE CHOIR SCREEN.] CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR. It has been already said that the exterior of the Cathedral Church at Manchester lacks somewhat of the charm that so many of our old cathedrals possess. There is no wide-spreading close with its smooth turf and immemorial elms, no birds to fly round tower and pinnacle, and break the silence of the home of ancient peace with their songs or cries, but ever we hear the scream of railway engines, the bells of tramcars, and the roar of the traffic along a busy thoroughfare. The surrounding buildings are not now, as in many cathedral cities, the residences of Dean and Canons, quaint and mediaeval, with stone mullioned windows and ivy-covered walls, but modern erections, shops, and warehouses, and hotels. And the church itself, destitute of transept and central tower, provided only with a western tower, gives us the idea of a large parish church, rather than of a building associated in our mind with Bishop, Dean, and Canons. There is no cloister-garth with its surrounding walks, the old collegiate buildings are detached from the church and appropriated to secular purposes; so that probably our first feeling is one of disappointment, but this feeling will vanish as soon as we have passed into its interior. The usual way of entrance is by the south porch; this is always open. The western doors are unfortunately generally closed--unfortunately, for the most impressive view of the church is to be had from beneath the tower arch looking to the east. It is a dimly lighted building; this is due chiefly to two causes: first to the fact that it is enormously wide, and the aisle windows are therefore far from the central nave, and secondly to the fact that almost all the windows both of aisles and clerestory are filled with painted glass, in many cases of a deep colour, and rendered still more impervious to light by the incrustation of carbon deposited on their outside by the perpetual smoke of the city. So dark is the church that in the winter months it has generally to be lit with gas all the day long, and even in the summer, in comparatively bright weather, some gas burners will generally be found alight. The mist also of the exterior atmosphere finds its way into the building, and hangs beneath the roof, lending an air of mystery to the whole place, and giving rise to most beautiful effects when the sunlight streams through the clerestory windows. The tone also of the nave arcading and clerestory rebuilt in recent years, of warm, rose-coloured sandstone, is very lovely. The visitor on entering the church, before examining the different objects in detail, should get general impressions of the building. The view from just inside the south porch showing the four rows of arcading separating the outer aisles from the inner, and these from the central nave, is very fine. The view from beneath the tower arch looking eastward is most impressive. Another good view is from the altar steps looking westward, especially in the early part of a bright day, when there is sufficient light to show the magnificent tabernacle work of the stalls, and the organ-stands out clearly defined against the sunlit misty air of the upper part of the nave behind it. [Illustration: VIEW ACROSS THE NAVE, LOOKING NORTH-EAST.] To see these three views of the building under favourable conditions of light will well repay the visitor for a journey of many miles to Manchester, to say nothing of the exquisite detail work that now demands our attention. It has been already explained that the outer aisles on either side have been formed by throwing down the walls or screens that once divided these spaces into a series of chapels on the outside of the real nave aisles. In Continental churches double aisles on the north and south side of the church are by no means uncommon, but instances of this arrangement are more rarely met with in England. The most familiar example is Chichester Cathedral, where double aisles have been formed by the inclusion of lateral chapels. It has been already stated that the baptistery which occupies the western end of the outer southern aisles is entirely modern, as also is the south porch. At one time a small porch called Bibby's Porch projected from the second bay from the west of the true south aisle, to the east of which, stretching right over the outer south aisle, was the Chapel of St. George. This occupied two bays, and projecting from it to the south was Brown's Chantry. To the east of St. George's Chapel, also occupying two bays, was the Chapel of St. Nicholas, the Trafford Chapel. These were the chapels on the south side of the nave aisle. Opposite to them, outside the north nave aisle, were two chapels, that of the Most Holy Trinity at the west, that of St. James, otherwise known as the Ducie Chapel, at the east end. The west wall of the outer nave aisle on the north side is original, so that the whole length of the series of chapels on this side was greater than that of the series on the south side. The nave and its twin aisles, as will be seen from what has already been said, consist of six bays. The eastern half of the church also consists of six bays, and the choir aisles, like those of the nave, are flanked by chapels which have fortunately remained undestroyed down to the present day, enclosed by their original screens. On the south side, raised three steps above the level of the nave and occupying three bays, was the Jesus Chapel, now divided into two parts, the western bay being used as a vestry, the two others as the Cathedral Library; from this a door leads into the chapter house, the main entrance to which is from the choir aisle. With this the unbroken series of building attached to the south side of the church ends, but from the easternmost bay a doorway in a screen opens into the Fraser Chapel, built as a memorial to her husband, the second Bishop of Manchester, by Mrs. Fraser. Crossing the church by the ambulatory, passing the small Lady Chapel, we find the whole length of the outer aisle on the north side occupied by the chapel of St. John the Baptist, often called the Derby Chapel. The western bay forms the antechapel, from which we pass into the chapel itself through the original oak screen. From the second bay, counting from the east end of this, the Ely Chapel projects. [Illustration: THE INNER SOUTH AISLE OF THE NAVE.] The reader should follow on the plan the general description just given, and while doing so he will notice that the church is not quite regularly built, but tapers slightly towards the east. The enclosed choir, presbytery, and sanctuary taper still more, so that the east end is between three and four feet narrower than the west end. But this enclosed space is symmetrically placed in the church. The plan shows the very great width of the church in proportion to its length. The interior width of the nave and its double aisles is 114 feet, while its length is only 85 feet; the whole interior length of the church, omitting the tower at the west and the Lady Chapel at the east, is 172 feet. This shows that the choir is about the same length as the nave, and that the total length of nave and choir is only about one and a half times the width. [Illustration: THE TOWER ARCH.] Having now taken a cursory glance round the church, we will go once more over the same ground, examining it more in detail. We will suppose that the outer doors of the =West Porch= are open, and we can pass through them from the street. We go up from the level of the pavement three steps and find ourselves within the porch; on the south and north sides of it, doors open into two rooms used the one as the lecture-room of the Scholae Episcopi (or non-residential Theological College of the Diocese), the other as a schoolroom for the choir boys. A flight of eleven steps takes us up to a landing measuring about five feet from west to east, and then four more steps bring us to the level of the nave floor, and we enter through what were originally the west doors of the church, into the space below the tower. The ceiling of this is of fan tracery, and its side walls are panelled in five tiers. Passing under the tower arch and looking back, we notice that the tower arch with the walls on either side of it are original. =The Baptistery= is a modern addition. The font formerly stood in the outer aisle on the north side. The =South Porch= is also new. It is divided into two bays, each covered with a vault formed of eight ribs crossing each other at the centre, and decorated by two lierne ribs in each of the four quarters. The arcade dividing the outer from the inner aisle on the south side is entirely modern; the chapels which occupied the site of the outer aisle were formerly divided from each other by stone walls, and from the aisle by irregular arches filled with oak screens. All these were removed in 1815, so as to throw the area of the chapels into that of the church; an arcade was then built, but this was removed to make room for the present arcade during the restoration that was begun in 1872. The westernmost chantry, or =Chapel of St. George=, was founded by W. Galley in 1508. The next, the chapel of =St. Nicholas=, or the Trafford Chantry, is said to have been founded long ere the present church was built in 1186 by Robert de Greslet; at the south-east corner of this a piscina may be seen, though the altar has disappeared. Three steps and a screen divide this chantry from the larger =Jesus Chapel=. This is separated from the south aisle by a beautiful wooden screen of sixteenth century date. This is glazed in order to make the room now used as a library comfortable. This chantry was founded in 1506. [Illustration: SCREEN BETWEEN THE JESUS CHAPEL AND THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPTER HOUSE, SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] [Illustration: THE SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.] Between the Jesus Chapel and the entrance to the chapter house on the south wall of the aisle are memorial tablets to Richard Heyrick, warden, who died in 1667, and Thomas Ogden, who died in 1763. The entrance to the =Chapter House= is a very beautiful piece of work. There are two doorways whose heads are four centred arches; above these there are two tiers of panel work, all being enclosed by one large arch whose sides and top are decorated by six tiers of panelling on each side (see illustration, p. 32). The chapter house is very comfortably fitted up. There are to be seen in it several fragments of brasses and of other old work taken from the floor of the choir and of the Lady Chapel and elsewhere. The =Fraser Chapel= contains an altar cenotaph in memory of the second Bishop of Manchester, who died October 22nd, 1885, at Bishop's Court, Higher Broughton, Manchester, but who was buried, not in his cathedral church, but in the churchyard of Ufton Nervet in Berkshire, a parish of which he had once been rector. The recumbent statue is considered to be a fine likeness of the late bishop. This statue was unveiled on July 8th, 1887. The tomb bears the following inscription written by the late Dr Vaughan, Dean of Llandaff. "To the beloved memory of James Fraser, D.D., Bishop of Manchester, 1870-85, a man of singular gifts both of nature and the spirit; brave, true, devout, diligent, in labours unwearied. He won all hearts by opening to them his own, and so administered this great Diocese as to prove yet once more that the people know the voice of a good shepherd and will follow where he leads." At the east end of the south aisle stands a marble life-size statue by Bailey of Thomas Fleming, who died in 1848, and a memorial tablet to the Rev. George Ogden, B.D., who died in 1706. The aisle is divided from the choir by a wooden screen; in the third bay from the east are iron gates leading into the choir. The retro-choir, about thirteen feet from east to west, runs between the back of the modern reredos behind the high altar and the beautiful mediaeval screen which stands beneath the arch at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. The =Lady Chapel= has modern fittings making it suitable for the celebration of Holy Communion when the congregation is small. In the south wall a piscina may be noticed, and on the north side of the altar stands a Renaissance font of grey-veined marble which was formerly in use in the nave. There are marble tablets in memory of various members of the Chetham family at the west ends of the north and south walls of the Lady Chapel. [Illustration: SCREEN OF THE LADY CHAPEL.] On the west wall of the arch leading into the chapel may be seen the rebus of Sir John Huntington, the first warden and rebuilder of the church. On the north side is a man and dog _hunting_, on the south side two _tuns_ of wine. This rebus is repeated in the roof of the choir. At the north-east corner of the north choir aisle may be seen a statue by Theed (1853) of Humphrey Chetham, the founder of the Hospital (_i.e._ school) and Library that bears his name. He sits, a roll in his right hand, with long hair and pointed beard, a ruff round his neck, and a long cloak which, falling open in front, shows doublet and slashed trunk hose. At the bottom of the pedestal sits one of the boys of the hospital school, pointing with his left hand to a book which he holds open in his right, on which we read the inscription: "He hath dispersed abroad, and given to the poor, and his righteousness remaineth for ever" (Ps. cxii. 9; Prayer-book version). [Illustration: STATUE OF SIR HUMPHREY CHETHAM.] An old oak screen running under five arches of the arcading to the north side of the aisle separates the =Derby Chapel= from the aisle. This screen is of good design, but the workmanship is not so good as that of the other old screens in the church. Near the first pier, counting from the east, is the altar tomb of Hugh Birley, M.P. for Manchester, with a recumbent figure. Here also may be seen an old oak deed chest. About halfway down this aisle on the south side may be seen a small organ built by the celebrated Father Smith, dated 1680; this is of the finest tone and is still frequently used. It has one manual with seven stops and pedal with one stop. Four steps lead from the outer nave aisle on the north side into the antechapel that stands to the west end, outside the entrance to the Derby Chapel. This chapel is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It was a private chantry built and endowed by the Stanley family, of which the Earls of Derby were members. Two of the family were closely connected with the church. One, James Stanley, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and archdeacon of Chester, held the office of warden from 1481-1485, and was succeeded by another James Stanley, whose tenure was longer, 1485-1509. He it was who began the building of the Derby Chapel. He became bishop of Ely, but when he died in 1515 his body was buried at Manchester, close by the screen of the =Ely Chapel=; but "for reasons which need not be mentioned here" his body was laid just by the wall, and the chapel was erected by his son according to his will over his grave, and called after the name of his diocese. This tomb still stands there, with its original brass and curiously inscribed epitaph, for which see hereafter. The following description is copied from a MS in Chetham's Library. "In the old or Christ's Church, Manchester, is a Chapell dedicated to S. John Baptist on the screen which separates it from the broad north aisle and over door leading from the aforesaid chapel into the aisle is an ancient coat of arms carv'd in wood, and three old brass inscriptions setting forth the founders of the chapell together with y'e cause of its erection. "The arms are those of Stanley tho much different from those born by that name at this day tho unquestionably of the same family with the present Earl of Derby, who bears 3 stags heads caboch'd on a bend these arms on the screen bears the stags heads in chief and 3 eagles claws in base this kind of bearing might possibly be to difference it from the elder house or grand stem of the family, a matter not unusual in those days. In an old manuscript I have the above arms born by the name of Stanley of Handford, and from this family of Handford I should suppose sprung S'r John Stanley of Aderley Ches'r which is within a few miles of Handford tho S'r J'no now bears the same arms for his paternall coat as the Earl of Derby. The arms impal'd with Stanley on the screen is first and fourth a Chevron between three mascles voided second and third a star with seven points the whole arms appears to be totally void of colouring. The helmet is very clumsy and differs much from those now us'd in arms. The crest or rather part of a crest for it appears to have had something broke from it is not now to be determin'd what it formerly was. What I take to be the motto is grav'd upon two plates of brass on each side the arms the half of one brass is broke way but no doubt was the same as the other they are engraved in the old text with these words Vanitas vanitatum Omnia Vanitas that is Vanity of vanity all is vanity. "On the brass plate over the door is grav'd in the same character and old Latin Obsecramus ut adjuvetis nos Jacobum Stanley Eliens Epis Johanne Stanley milite et Margareta uxore ej ac parentes cor oracionibus vris apud Dom Jhesu expm q. hanc Capellam in ej nomine et in honore Sancti Johanis Baptiste Fabricavimus An^o incarnationis illius MCCCCCXIII. Designs from the Originall plates may be seen in the following drawings. The Inscription on the long brass I take to be this in English. "We beseech you that you assist us James Stanley Bishop of Ely John Stanley Knt. and Margaret his wife and their parents with your prayers to y'e Lord Jesus Christ who have built this chapel in his name and in honour of St Jn'o Baptist in the year of his incarnation 1513." According to an old poem entitled Flodden Field S'r John Stanley was at that great Battle fought in Sept. 1513 along with other gentlemen of Lancashire and Cheshire and in enumerating the Leaders says: Next with Sir John Stanley there yede The Bishop of Ely's servants bold Sir Lionel Percy eke did lead Some hundred men well tried and told. (Barrett MS. No. 41458, C. 4. 13.) [Illustration: INTERIOR OF NORTH DOORWAY.] These two chapels were the private property of the Earls of Derby, who had to keep them in repair. In the second half of the eighteenth century the roofs needed extensive repair; this was done by the thirteenth Earl of Derby in conjunction with the townspeople of Manchester, and the Earl surrendered his rights to the chapels, handing them over to the parishioners on condition that he and his successors should no longer be held responsible for keeping them in repair. The Derby Chapel is now fitted with an altar at the east end, a font on the north side, and oak benches, so that it can be used for week-day services when desired. The Ely Chapel is not fitted in any way. [Illustration: VIEW ACROSS THE NAVE, LOOKING NORTH-WEST.] =St. James' Chapel=, or the Ducie Chantry, and the =Chapel Of the Holy Trinity=, which formerly occupied the east and west ends of what is now the outer north aisle, and were founded, the former in 1507 and the latter by W. Radcliffe of Ordsall in 1498, have no longer any separate existence; the only sign of their having been chapels that remains is a piscina in the pier at the south east corner of St. James' Chapel. The arcade between the outer and inner north aisles originally dated from about 1500. =The North or Craven Porch= is opposite to the south porch and bears a strong resemblance to it. It consists of two bays, each vaulted in stone in the same manner as the bays of the south or Jardine Porch; a door to the east side of the inner bay leads into the registry office. It now remains to examine the =Central Nave= and =Choir=. This church differs from most of our cathedral and abbey churches in having no triforium.[2] And the clerestory is not lofty, so that the church is rather low for its width,[3] though the height of the arches of the main arcade prevents this being felt. The roofs of the aisles are all modern, but that of the nave, though extensively repaired, has much of the original work in it, and, with the exception of a few bosses, the choir roof is old. All the roofs are of timber; in the nave the intersections of the main beams are covered by beautiful bosses carved out of the solid wood. On either side, at the points from which the main cross beams spring, is a series of angelic figures splendidly carved in wood: those on the south side playing stringed instruments, those on the north side wind instruments. The choir roof is more ornate; the panels between the beams are filled with tracery; the bosses here are differently constructed from those in the nave; here each leaf was separately carved and then nailed in its place. At the time of the restoration this roof was skilfully repaired by introducing new beams above the old ones and fastening the old to the new with bolts. The pillars of the main arcade of the nave are modern work built in imitation of the original ones. They are light and graceful, and like many other pillars of fifteenth century date, are formed of shafts of which only half have separate capitals, the other mouldings running round the arch. The spaces between the arches are elaborately carved with heraldic shields. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.] [Illustration: DESK-ENDS IN THE CHOIR STALLS; NORTH SIDE.] Towards the east end of the nave may be seen desks for the choir on either side, a brass eagle lectern on the south side, and a modern pulpit against the first pillar from the east on the north side (see page 54). The pulpit, the gift of the late Chancellor Christie and his wife, is octagonal, and six of its faces are carved with representations of Christ, the four Evangelists, and St. Paul; of the other two sides one rests against the pier, and the other, on the north, forms the entrance from the pulpit steps. The ancient rood screen (see page 23) is a very beautiful piece of work. It has three wide openings with double doors in each; upon it stands the central part of the large organ; other parts of the organ occupy spaces in the north and south aisles behind the stalls. The case was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, and is effective. [Illustration: CHOIR STALLS, NORTH SIDE.] The present =organ= rebuilt by Wadsworth Brothers at the cost of Sir W. H. Houldsworth, Bart., 1871, has Four manuals CC to A 58 notes Pedal CCC to F 30 " The great organ has 13 stops swell 16 " choir 8 " solo 5 " pedal 9 " accessory 8 " and combination pedals 8 " If we pass on through the screen beneath the organ we find ourselves in the =choir=. This, the choir proper, as distinguished from the presbytery to the east of it, is sometimes called the Radcliffe choir, for many members of this family were buried here, and their brasses were placed on the floor, but these were removed when the floor was repaved with tiles. On either side of us, and behind us, we see some of the most elaborate tabernacle work to be met with anywhere. Some idea may be formed of the wealth of detail by examining the illustration on the opposite page. There are twelve stalls on either side, and three on each side of the entrance through the rood screen facing east. The stalls are furnished with misereres, which, in common with many others both in England and on the Continent, represent all manner of quaint subjects, monsters, animals, hunting scenes, etc. The =stalls= date from the early part of the sixteenth century, and bear a strong resemblance to those in Beverley Minster and Ripon Cathedral. At Beverley, however, the level cornice above the canopies which we see at Manchester is wanting, except at the west end. The carved elbows of the stalls and the ends of the book desks are also worthy of careful examination, especially the Eagle and Child and general carving of the Dean's Stall, which is a marvel of beautiful workmanship, and said by high authorities to be unequalled. Between the stalls the floor is one step higher than that of the nave, and at the east end of the stalls there is a further rise of two steps as we pass into the presbytery. Here, on the south side, we see the bishop's throne--modern work, carved with a view to be in harmony with the stalls, but comparing unfavourably with them in execution. There is a rise of two more steps into the sanctuary, and the altar itself is raised two steps higher; this gives a good effect. Behind the altar is an elaborately carved wooden reredos of modern work, richly painted and gilt. The upper part, as will be seen from the illustration on p. 22, is wider than the lower; it is divided vertically into seven divisions, the two lateral divisions on each side being themselves divided into two tiers. The three central niches contain figures of the three patron saints, St. George on the north, the Blessed Virgin in the centre, and St. Denys on the south side.[4] Above the central figure, St. Mary, is another niche containing a seated figure of Christ, holding in His left hand an orb and cross, His right hand raised in the act of blessing; above this figure is a canopy. On the top of the six uprights that form the vertical divisions of the reredos, angels stand with clasped hands. The carving on the smaller panels illustrates the following verses of the "Preface to the Sanctus" which are inscribed beneath them. "With angels and | archangels and | all the company | of heaven we laud and | magnify Thy | glorious name. | Amen." It will be noticed that there are no sedilia in the usual place on the south side of the altar, the arch being open where we might expect to find them, and there is no pulpit in the choir. Most of the services in which a sermon is preached are conducted in the nave. Most of the windows have in recent times been filled with painted glass. Perhaps we may be inclined to think that there are too many thus filled, and that it would have been well if the windows of the clerestory had been left uncoloured. Certain it is that as there is no triforium, there is no place from which the clerestory windows can be examined; and had they been left unpainted, the church would have been much lighter than it is. A brief description must now be given of the windows. We will begin with the west window in the tower, proceeding eastward along the outer south aisle, crossing the church by the ambulatory, and coming back to the west by the aisle on the north side, and then examining the clerestory windows of nave and choir. =The Windows.=--The west window of the tower has five lights, and is divided by one transom. It represents the Ascension, and Acts of Mercy. It was given by J. C. Harter, and is the work of Hardman. The west window of the inner aisle on the south side has four lights, and its subject is the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was erected by subscription in memory of Jonas Craven, and was painted by Messrs. Heaton, Butler & Baynes. The west window of the outer south aisle, or Baptistery, has six lights, and represents baptism by blood, water, and fire, illustrated by the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the baptism of Christ, and the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. It was given by Thomas Chesters in 1892, and is the work of Messrs. Percy Bacon & Bros. The window in the westernmost bay of the outer south aisle has four lights, and illustrates the text "Suffer little children to come unto Me," and was erected as a memorial to W. H. Bowler (son-in-law of Thomas Chesters), who died in 1887. This also was painted by Percy Bacon & Bros. The window to the east of the porch in the Brown Chapel has four lights, and represents Christ healing all manner of sickness, and was erected in memory of John, William, Maria, and Henry Stevenson, and is by Wailes of Newcastle. The next window has four lights, and has for its subject various incidents in the life of St. John the Baptist: 1, the announcement of his birth to Zacharias; 2, his birth; 3, his preaching in the wilderness; and 4, his baptism of Christ. This was given by Margaret Clowes in memory of the Rev. T. Clowes, and is by Hardman. The window in the fifth bay has five lights. It represents Christ in Glory, and was given by Catharine, Countess of Stamford and Warrington, in memory of her husband, the seventh Earl, who died in 1883. It was painted by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. The next window also has five lights, and illustrates the Magnificat. It was erected by public subscription in memory of Dean Oakley, who died in 1890. It is by Burlison & Grylls. The next window is in the westernmost bay of the Jesus Chapel. It has four lights. Its subject is Simeon receiving Christ in the temple. It was given as a memorial to Frederick Andrews, who died in 1890. It is by Messrs. Heaton, Butler & Baynes. The next window, in that part of the Jesus Chapel now used as the cathedral library, has four lights, and represents Christ among the doctors; it is a memorial to James Gray, who died in 1871, and is by Messrs. Heaton, Butler & Baynes. The next window of four lights has for its subject Christ healing all manner of disease, and was inserted in memory of Jonas Craven, who died in 1894. It is by Messrs. Heaton, Butler & Baynes. There are four windows in the chapter house, all of four lights. The first, with figures of Sts. James, Thomas, Simon, and Jude, was given by Canon Gibson in 1869, and is by Messrs. Ward & Hughes. The next, representing Sts. Peter, Mary, George, and Paul, is by Edmundson & Son, and incorporates some old glass found in the clerestory windows of the choir. The next, with figures of Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, was given by the children of Canon Wray, in memory of their father, who died in 1866. It is the work of Clayton & Bell. The last, with figures of Sts. James, Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew, was given by Dean Bowers in 1869, and is by Ward & Hughes. In the bay between the chapter house and the Fraser Chapel is a four-light window with eight subjects. In the upper row, The Transfiguration, Lazarus, Christ riding on an Ass, The institution of the Lord's Supper; and in the lower, "This is my beloved Son," Elisha raising the Child, David, The offering of Isaac. This was given in 1859 by a citizen once a chorister. It is by Edmundson & Son. In the Fraser Chapel are two windows. The first, facing south, has four lights, and contains the glass which formerly occupied the window of the bay that was opened out when the Fraser Chapel was built. Its four subjects are: Simeon, The Baptism of Christ, The Miracle at Cana, and Christ blessing little Children. An inscription records that it was given in 1858 by a citizen once a chorister; it is by Edmundson & Son. The window in the east wall of this chapel has three lights. Its subjects are: 1, St. John; 2, "I am He that was dead and am alive again"; 3, St. Paul. It was erected as a memorial to Bishop Fraser by Messrs. Shrigley & Hunt. The east window of the south choir aisle has five lights, and each of these contains two subjects. In the upper row we see Christ in the centre, with two of the evangelists on either side of him. In the lower tier are represented: 1, The Agony in the Garden; 2, Christ bearing His Cross; 3, The Crucifixion; 4, The Angels announcing the Resurrection; 5, The Ascension. This was given by G. Pilkington, and is by Wailes of Newcastle. In the Lady Chapel there are two windows, each of two lights in the north and south walls, and two, of four lights each, in the east wall. Beginning with the westernmost window in the south side, we find a representation of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, and an inscription which states that the window is a memorial to "John Allen bonorum bujus ecclesiae custos," who died in 1861. The next window contains a representation of Christ among the Doctors. It is a memorial to Samuel Bulteel, who died in 1883. The next window in the east wall represents the Crucifixion of Christ and the two robbers, and was erected to commemorate the fact that the Lady Chapel was once the property of the Hoare family. The other window in this wall shows the visit of the Magi, and was given by J. H. Chetham in 1884, in memory of Humphrey Chetham, the great benefactor to Manchester, who was born in 1580 and died in 1653. The two windows in the north wall represent the Annunciation and Salutation respectively, and were inserted as memorials to Edith Mary Romilly, daughter of Dean Cowie, who died in 1883; it was given by the Dean; and to Elizabeth Sharp, who died in 1881. The latter was given by S. Wm., and Elizabeth Bulteel. All the windows in the Lady Chapel are by Moore of London. The five-light window at the east end of the north choir aisle illustrates the text beginning "I was hungry," etc. It was given by G. Pilkington as a memorial to Humphrey Chetham. It is by Wailes of Newcastle. The east window of the Derby Chapel has seven lights, each containing two subjects. The upper tier are: 1, The Magi; 2, The flight into Egypt; 3 and 5, Angels; 4, Christ; 6, Christ blessing Children; 7, Christ among the Doctors. In the lower tier the three central subjects are hidden by the reredos erected in recent years over the altar. Of the four visible, the first is the raising of Jairus' daughter; 3, Christ setting a Child in the midst; 6, Suffer little Children to come unto Me; 7, The feeding of the Five Thousand. It is by Edmundson & Son of Manchester. The easternmost window in the north wall has four lights. The subjects are: St. Mary, "Why weepest thou?" and St. John. This window was inserted as a memorial to George Hull Bowers, D.D., the second Dean of Manchester, who died in 1872. It is by Burlison & Grylls. There are three windows in the Ely Chantry. That facing north has five lights, the other two four; the central light of the north window contains the figure of Bishop Stanley wearing his mitre and holding his pastoral staff. The next window to the west contains in its four lights representation of four incidents in the life of Jacob: His dream, Rachel tending her sheep, Jacob watering them, and Jacob's journey into Egypt. This window is a memorial to William Newall, who died in 1851. It is by Ward & Hughes. The next window, also of four lights, represents Christ cleansing the leper, raising the daughter of Jairus, blessing children, and restoring sight to Bartimaeus. This was inserted in memory of Robert Barnes, who died in 1871. It is by Clayton & Bell. The next window--the last within the screen of the Derby Chapel--represents: 1. Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen. xlviii. 14); 2, The end of Job (Job xlii. 17); 3, Simeon blessing Christ (Luke ii. 27-29); 4, The great multitude in Heaven (Rev. vii. 9.) It is a memorial window to Thomas Broadbent, who died in 1875. It was given by his daughter, Elizabeth Boyd Garfit, the wife of Thomas Garfit, M.P. for Bristol, and is by Hardman. In the antechapel is a four light window. The subjects are the Good Shepherd teaching the young and healing the sick. It was given by James Chadwick, churchwarden, in 1863, and is by Ward & Hughes. [Illustration: THE GORDON MEMORIAL WINDOW.] The easternmost window in the nave, in what was once the Ducie Chapel, has five lights, and was erected by C. J. Scholfield in 1888 as a memorial to Major-General Gordon, who was killed at Khartoum in 1888. In the centre light the General is represented with his hand on the head of a native boy; in the other lights we see native women and children expressing their gratitude to him for his work on their behalf; and in the outer lights and above the heads of the human figures are angels. This window is by Messrs. Wilson & Whitehouse of London, and from the interest of its subject attracts much attention. The next window to the west has four lights, each of which contains two subjects: in the upper tier, Sts. Stephen, Paul, Barnabas, and Philip; in the lower, the stoning of St. Stephen, the Conversion of Saul, St. Paul and Barnabas, and St. Paul before Agrippa. It was given by Stephen Smith in memory of his two sisters, Lucinda and Marie, who died in 1881 and 1883 respectively. This window is the work of Messrs. Burlison & Grylls. The next window contains, in two tiers, representations of various Old and New Testament characters. It was inserted as a memorial to Samuel and Elizabeth Pickup. It is by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. The next window also has two subjects in each of its four lights: the upper one, Feeding the hungry, etc.; the lower, the story of the Good Samaritan. This was given in memory of James Pickup, who died in 1868. It is by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. The next bay opens into the north porch and does not contain any window. Between this and the west wall is a four-light window containing representations of eight incidents in the life of Joseph: 1, His dream; 2, his coat dipped in blood; 3, his imprisonment; 4, his interpretation of the butler's and baker's dreams; 5, his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams; 6, his honour in Egypt; 7, his turning aside from his brothers to weep; 8, the presentation of Jacob to Pharaoh. This window was presented by J. Beard in 1887, and is by Hardman. The west window of the outer north aisle has seven lights. The subject is the Ascension. It is a memorial to William Rose, superintendent of the Manchester Fire Brigade, who died in 1884, and is the work of Messrs. Clayton & Bell. The window at the west end of the inner north aisle has two tiers of subjects; in the heads are angels playing on musical instruments. It was given as a memorial by the widow and children of Samuel Fletcher, who died in 1863, and is by Hardman. The windows of the clerestory contain five lights; in the north side all are painted, on the south side only the four western ones. The subjects are:-- On the north side: 1, Aaron sacrificing on the day of Atonement; given by R. B. M. Lingard Monk. It was painted by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. 2. Joshua at the fall of Jericho; given by Sir J.W. Maclure, Bart., M.P. It is by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. 3. David praising God in the tabernacle; given by G. Benton. By Burlison & Grylls. 4. Solomon praising God; given by Susanna Woodcock in memory of Henry Woodcock. By Gibbs of London. 5. The ascent of Elijah; given by Sir W. Cunliffe Brooks, Bart. Painted by Messrs. Clayton & Bell. 6. Malachi pointing out the promised messenger; given by Edward and Henry Charlewood. It was painted by Messrs. Burlison & Grylls. On the south side:-- 1. Moses with the tables of the Law; given by James Chadwick. 2. Miriam dancing and singing; given by William Hatton. 3. Joseph and his brethren; given by Lord Egerton of Tatton. 4. Abraham offering Isaac; given by the Earl of Ellesmere. These four windows are all the work of Messrs. Heaton, Butler & Baynes. In the choir clerestory on the north side only the second from the west is painted; it represents Christ raising the dead, and is by Clayton & Bell. On the south side, the first and third from the west are painted. The former represents Christ and Nicodemus; it was the gift of Canon Gibson, and is by Hardman. The other, representing the presentation of Christ in the Temple, was given by Canon Gibson, and is by Ward & Hughes. The east window of the choir, a short wide window of seven lights, representing the Crucifixion, was given by W. Andrews in 1856, and is by Hardman. [Illustration: THE NAVE FROM THE WEST.] CHAPTER IV. SHORT HISTORY OF THE PARISH AND DIOCESE. Before 1422 the church was purely parochial, and was under rectors, the names of thirteen of whom have come down to us. Ranulphus de Welling is the first of whom we have any record. Albert de Neville's name is also preserved, but we do not know the dates of their appointment; all we know is that the former lived before the commencement of the thirteenth century. With the appointment of Peter Greslet in 1261, the unbroken list begins. 1284 William de Marchia succeeded him. He became Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1292 or 1293. Here he obtained a great reputation for saintly life, and after his death miracles were worked at his tomb, persons suffering from toothache resorting to it. He was for some time Treasurer of England under Edward I. 1292 Walter de Langton was appointed rector of Manchester, and also Treasurer of England. In 1296 he was promoted to the Bishopric of Lichfield, to which diocese Manchester then belonged. At Lichfield he distinguished himself as builder of the Lady Chapel and Palace. He retained the rectory of Manchester until 1299, when he was succeeded by his grandson. 1301 Geoffrey de Stoke became rector, and was succeeded in 1313 by John de Guerden, whose name appears in several other forms Verdun and Everden. He became Dean of St. Paul's, London, in 1323. Another name, that of John de Arden, occurs about this time among the rectors of Manchester, but the date of his appointment is not known. 1323 Adam de Southwick became rector. 1327 John de Clandon. 1351 Thomas de Wyke; and finally in 1373 Thomas de la Warre. In 1422 the church became collegiate, when Henry V. granted a charter to Thomas, Lord de la Warre, Rector of Manchester, and Lord of the Manor "Ecclesiam de Mancestre in ecclesiam collegeatam erigere," and from this date the title of Rector was exchanged for that of Warden. The following is a complete list of the wardens, with the dates of their appointments:-- 1422. John Huntington, B.D. (rector of Ashton-under-Lyne); he is noteworthy as the builder of much of the church which we see to-day. 1459. John Booth, LL.B., archdeacon of Redmore, formerly treasurer of the cathedral church at York. 1465. Ralph Langley, LL.D., rector of Prestwich, the rebuilder of the nave. 1481. James Stanley (1), D.D., Prebendary of St Paul's and archdeacon of Chester. 1485. James Stanley (2), M.A., D.C.L. He founded the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, built the entrance to the chapter house, and in connection with Richard Beck, a Manchester merchant, erected the choir stalls and canopies. He became Bishop of Ely in 1509, and is buried in the Ely Chantry at Manchester. 1509. Robert Cliff, B.D., LL.D. 1515. Richard Alday. 1518. George West. 1535. George Collyer, M.A. 1557. Laurence Vaux, B.D., chaplain to the Bishop of Gloucester. 1558. William Bird, M.A. 1570. Thomas Herle, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth. 1578. John Walton, B.D. He was appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1579. 1579. William Chadderton, D.D., consecrated Bishop of Chester in 1579. Manchester by this time had become part of the new see of Chester, and Chadderton retained his wardenship along with the higher office, but he resigned it when he was translated to the see of Lincoln in 1595. 1595. John Dee, M.A., a layman and a celebrated mathematician, alchemist, astrologer, and necromancer, who professed to see visions in crystal globes, and was much consulted by many, among them by the Queen, to forecast future events, held the office of warden for some years, but retired in 1608, and died in poverty at Mortlake, at the age of 81. 1608. Richard Murray, D.D., Rector of Stopford, and Dean of St. Buryan's in Cornwall. 1636. Richard Heyrick, M.A. He was expelled in 1646, but reinstated in his office in 1660. His memorial tablet may be seen on the wall of the south aisle, dated 1667. 1667. Nicholas Stratford, D.D. He resigned in 1684, and five years after this was consecrated Bishop of Chester. 1684. Richard Wroe, D.D., Prebendary of Chester. 1718. Samuel Peploe (1), D.D. He was consecrated Bishop of Chester in 1726, and ruled that see till 1752. He retained the wardenship, together with the bishopric, until 1738. 1738. Samuel Peploe (2), LL.D. He was Chancellor of Chester, and Archdeacon of Richmond, Yorkshire. 1781. Richard Assheton, D.D. 1800. Thomas Blackburne, LL.D. 1823. Thomas Calvert, D.D., rector of Wilmslow. 1840. The Hon. William Herbert, D.D., LL.D. When the diocese of Manchester was formed out of that of Chester in 1847, the warden was raised to the higher rank of Dean, and hence Dr. Herbert was last warden and first Dean, but he did not hold the latter office long. The following is a list of the Deans:-- 1847. The Hon. William Herbert, D.D., LL.D. 1847. George Hull Bowers, D.D. 1872. Benjamin Morgan Cowie, D.D. In 1884 he became Dean of Exeter, a post he held until he died in 1900. 1884. John Oakley, D.D. He had been Dean of Carlisle from 1881-1884. 1890. Edward Craig Maclure, D.D., the present Dean. The present cathedral staff consists of the Dean, four residentiary Canons, twenty-four honorary Canons, two minor Canons, two Clerks (in orders), an organist, four singing men, and four singing boys on the foundation, to whom others are added by subscription. The relation of the Dean of Manchester to the Rectory is defined by the Parish of Manchester Division Act, 1850, which states that "Such Part or Residue of the said Parish of Manchester as shall remain after severance therefrom of any Parts or Portions thereof, shall be, and be deemed to be for all Ecclesiastical Purposes, the Parish of Manchester; and the Dean of Manchester for the time being shall, upon Institution and Installation into his Deanery, have the cure of souls therein, and shall be assisted in such cure by the Chaplains or Minor Canons of the said Cathedral or Collegiate Church, to be hereafter appointed, who, in all matters connected with the Spiritual Duties of the said Parish, shall be subject to, and act under his directions; and the said Dean shall have all rights and powers in reference to the performance of the services of the said church, as the Parish Church of Manchester, as fully and effectually as if he were Rector of the same, subject nevertheless to any rights belonging to or duties imposed on the Canons and Minor Canons or Chaplains of the said Cathedral or Collegiate Church, in respect of the performance of the services thereof prescribed by the recited Letters Patent." The list of the churchwardens of the parish church from 1422 to 1595, and from 1663 to the present time, three for each year, is in existence. The diocese of Manchester has but a short history, as it has had an independent existence for little more than half a century. Until 1541 Manchester was part of the great see of Lichfield. In that year Henry VIII. made a new diocese of Chester, by taking the archdeaconry of Chester from the diocese of Lichfield, and the archdeaconry of Richmond from that of York. The see of Chester then included the counties of Chester, Lancaster, and portions of Cumberland, Westmorland, York, Flint, and Denbigh. In 1836 the archdeaconry of Richmond was assigned to the new see of Ripon, and the part of Lancashire known as Furness, together with these parts of Westmorland and Cumberland above mentioned, were added to the diocese of Carlisle. In 1847 the new see of Manchester was formed from the diocese of Chester. The diocese of Manchester lies within the county of Lancaster, but does not embrace the whole county, part of which forms the see of Liverpool, while a small part of it belongs to that of Carlisle. It consists of three archdeaconries:--Manchester, Lancaster, and Blackburn. The total number of benefices in the diocese in the year 1900 was 550, of beneficed clergy, 525, and of assistant curates about 360. The cathedral church is calculated to afford accommodation for 2000 persons. Since the foundation of the see it has been presided over by three bishops. The first was the Right Rev. =James Prince Lee=, D.D., F.R.S., for many years headmaster of King Edward's School, Birmingham, and a distinguished scholar. He was elected in 1847, and consecrated in the first month of the following year by the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Chester and Worcester. He died in 1869 at Mauldeth Hall, Heaton Mersey, and was buried in Heaton Mersey Churchyard. He was succeeded by the Right Rev. =James Fraser=, D.D., who when at Oxford had gained the Ireland Scholarship, and became a Fellow of Oriel College. He was a man of great intellectual power, of kindly manner, and won the respect and confidence not only of Churchmen, but of members of all denominations, especially of the mill hands of his populous diocese. He was nominated to the see in January 1890, and consecrated in March of the same year. He died 22nd October 1885 at Manchester, and is buried in the churchyard of Ufton Nervet, Berks. The present bishop, the Right Rev. =James Moorhouse=, D.D., was translated from the see of Melbourne to that of Manchester in 1886. DIMENSIONS OF MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL. Ft. Total length over all, exterior, 248 Width, 173 Length of Nave and Choir, interior, 172 Width of Nave exclusive of Projections, interior, 114 Distance from Rood Screen to Screen of Lady Chapel, 88 Length and breadth of Tower, exterior exclusive of buttresses, 28 Length of Lady Chapel, E. to W., interior, 18 Width of Lady Chapel, N. to S., interior, 19 Width of Nave, 27 Width of inner Nave Aisles, 16 Width of outer North Aisle of Nave, 24 Width of outer South Aisle of Nave, 22 Projection South Porch beyond Wall of aisle, exclusive of buttresses, 22 Projecting of North Porch, beyond walls of aisle, exclusive of buttresses, 25 Width of South Porch, interior, 11 Width of North Porch, interior, 13 Diameter of Chapter House interior, 19 Height of Roof, interior, 50 Height of Tower, 140 Area, about 18,000 sq. ft. CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL AND LIBRARY [Illustration: THE HALL, CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL.] [Illustration: CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL AND LIBRARY. As we stand on the north side of the cathedral and look to the north, our eyes rest upon a wide gravelled courtyard beyond a low wall, backed up by a range of mediaeval-looking buildings. These were the domestic buildings of the College, and are now used partly for Chetham's Free Library, partly for the school known as Chetham's Hospital. The endowment and other sources of income provide for the board and education of a hundred boys. They receive a sound elementary education, and are instructed in technical and manual work. The school is carried on under the Board of Education, and is typical of this education at its best. The religious instruction is in accordance with the tenets of the Established Church, and much care is taken to train the boys not only in intellectual and manual pursuits, but in morals and manners. A boy once placed on the foundation of Humphrey Chetham has a successful career assured to him, unless he forfeits his chances by subsequent folly on his own part. The boys who show the greatest intellectual power can be passed on to the Manchester Grammar School, and thence to Owens College, while the feoffees of the hospital have no difficulty in finding good places in the business houses of Manchester for the rest. To have been educated at Chetham's Hospital is a great recommendation to any boy. The boys still wear the picturesque costume of the sixteenth century--caps, bands, long-skirted dark blue coats, knee-breeches, stockings, and shoes adorned with buckles. The visitor to the Hospital will probably be greeted by one of these boys, who will ask if he wishes to see the buildings. The boy will, if the answer is in the affirmative, take the visitor to the library, where, on payment of sixpence, a ticket will be handed to him, franking him for the day, and the boy will conduct him over the whole of the buildings, pointing out the past and present uses to which each part of them was or is put. Before we proceed to describe the building a few words must be said about its history. Its site was once occupied by the "summer camp" of Roman legionaries, and when the Romans passed away from the island, it is highly probable that the English occupants of the country used it as a place of abode. The first authentic notice of its occupation by any person whose name has come down to us, dates from 1182, when Robert, the fifth Baron Greslet, kept court here. Thomas, the eighth baron, granted the citizens of Manchester their first charter in 1301, signing and sealing the charter here. He was the last male in the direct line of descent, and on his death the property passed to John De la Warre, who was a descendant of the Greslets or Gresleys in the female line. One of his descendants, Thomas, as has been already mentioned, became rector of Manchester, who before his death applied to King Henry V. for a charter to enable him to collegiate the church. He bestowed on it lands to increase the endowment, and gave his baronial hall to the newly founded college of priests to be used as their residence. All this may be read in the grant made in the first year of Henry VI. Certain alterations were made in the buildings, to fit them for the new use to which they were to be put, and from 1422 to 1549 they were occupied by warden after warden, who, assisted by the Fellows, performed the services in the adjoining church, looked after the sick and poor, and ministered generally to the inhabitants of the parish of Manchester. For some reason the College was not suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII., when the revenues of monasteries, small and great, were seized by the king; but in the first year of Edward VI. it was disendowed, and in the third year of the reign it was granted to Edward Stanley, third Earl of Derby. He used it as a town house. Henry Stanley, the next earl, in the reign of Elizabeth obtained a charter from the Queen, re-endowing the College, and it once more became the abode of the wardens, now priests of the reformed Church. During the civil wars the warden was expelled (1646), and the buildings seized by the Parliament. They were let to a certain Joseph Werden, who sublet the refectory to the Presbyterians, to be used by them as a meeting-house. The Independents made use of a barn in the enclosure for a similar purpose. [Illustration: THE NORTH GALLERY OF THE CLOISTER.] Lieut.-Col. the Rev. John Wigan applied for the reversion of this property, "part of y'e estate of the late Earl of Derby, and part of y'e jointure of y'e Countess Dowager already sequestrated." Humphrey Chetham also had his eye upon this property, wishing to obtain it so that he might carry out a project formed long before to found a school and home for boys. The survey of the property made at this time describes it as consisting of "Y'e large building called y'e College in Manchester, consisting of many rooms, with two barnes, one gate house, verie much decay'd, one parcell of ground formerly an orchard, and one garden, now in y'e possession of Joseph Werden gent., who pays for y'e same, for y'e use of the Common wealth, ten pounds yearly. There is likewise one other room in ye said College reserved and made use of for publique meetings of X'sian conscientious people." Humphrey Chetham did not live to see the school founded; but in his will, made three years before his death, which took place in 1653, he appointed trustees to carry out his purpose. They, in accordance with his instructions, bought "y'e great house with buildings, court, gardens, and appurtenances, called ye Colledge or the Colledge House," obtaining it for the sum of £500. On August 5, 1658, the building was formally dedicated to its new use, and Hallworth, chief assistant to Heyrick, the expelled warden, who, as stated in Chapter IV., was afterwards reinstated, in his speech on this occasion, told the history of the building, and concluded by saying, "Henceforth the said house could fitly and justly be named by no other name than by the name of Mr. Chetham's Hospital," and by that name it is known at the present day. At the time of the Restoration the Stanleys claimed the property of which they had been dispossessed by the Parliament, but made no difficulty about regranting to the feoffees that part of it occupied by the new School and Library. For the Library as well as the School had been already founded, since after making sufficient provision for the maintenance of the Hospital, the feoffees had money in hand which they spent in the purchase of books, thus forming the nucleus of the first _free_ library in England. To this collection books have been added by gift, bequest, and purchase, so that the library now contains about 60,000 volumes. The books can be consulted free of charge during certain hours of the day, but are not allowed to be removed from the building. The general public, however, does not make much use of the library, as it does not contain the light and ephemeral literature that appeals to modern taste; but the student who desires to read up some special subject will find many valuable books and manuscripts to aid him in his work. Among the rare books is a copy of the historical compilations of Matthew Paris, with marginal corrections in the author's handwriting. There is much matter to be found on these shelves dealing with the antiquities and history of Lancashire and Cheshire. Canon Raine bequeathed a fine series of Lancashire manuscripts; besides these may be seen a collection of broadsides, formed by Mr. T. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, and the library of John Byrom. In the last named collection is the final draft of the well-known hymn, "Christians, awake; salute the happy morn." Among the other books there are some fine specimens of Caxton's printing. [Illustration: THE COLLEGE GATEWAY.] We leave the churchyard, cross the street that skirts it to the north, and pass through a small doorway in the wall at the opposite side of the street, and so enter the play-ground of Chetham's Hospital. On our left hand as we make our way to the original building, we pass the modern schoolroom, which stands by itself. This, like many other buildings in Manchester, was designed by A. Waterhouse, R.A. The main building runs east and west, with projecting wings at either end. Near the eastern wing we notice the old entrance gateway, and the modern staircase leading up to what was the "hospitium" or guest-house. This has been converted into a dormitory for the boys. The most interesting part of the College is to be found in the western wing, of which an illustration is given, p. 63. The three windows crossed by transoms are those of the hall; the lower windows to the left of these belong to the audit room, the upper to the warden's private room, now the reading-room of the library. The building to the extreme left contains the library on the upper floor, and offices on the lower. [Illustration: CORRIDOR AND ENTRANCE TO THE HALL.] There is a long corridor, shown in the illustration below, running from east and west of the building; it can be entered by a door at its eastern end not shown in the illustration on p. 63. After entering this, as we proceed towards the west we pass on the right hand the fine kitchen; it has an open timbered roof about 35 feet from floor to ridge, and measures 29 feet in length and 17 in width; beyond this, on the same side, are two doors giving entrance to the cellar, where the warden and Fellows kept their wine, the buttery or rather _butlery_. Opposite this, on the left hand side, is the Hall; its north end is partially closed by massive screens of black oak. It has windows on the east and west. One of those on the west gives light to a staircase with Jacobean balusters, which, starting in a direction parallel to the west wall of the hall, turns round and gives access to the upper story. As we still pass westward we come to the cloister on the left hand, and the old infirmary on the right; and a door still further on leads out into a garden, where the fish pond was formerly situated; in this the fish required for Fridays and other days of abstinence were kept. Caught in other water--the streams of Irwell and Irk probably--they were brought here and stored so that they could always be caught without difficulty when required for the table. [Illustration: THE CLOISTER--SOUTH-WEST ANGLE.] The cloister is small and has only three walks, the one to the north forming part of the corridor which has been just described; the one to the west is terminated at its south end by an iron gate; and the walk on the south leads to, and is terminated by the entrance to the audit room. From the west walk (illustration, p. 83) an archway leads into the cloister itself. This is a very secluded spot, and the walls show signs of great age. This cloister has one peculiarity: the walks already described have other walks or corridors over them. Over the south walk is a corridor leading by what was St. Mary's Chapel into the warden's room; the corridor over the west walk opened out into what was once the dormitory, now filled with bookcases; the walk over the long eastern corridor below gave access to the old refectory, which has now been divided into living-rooms for the governor and the librarian. The long straight line of building between the eastern and western wing contained the old school, the brew house, and the bakery; the upper story, used formerly for guests, has been converted into a dormitory for the boys; this is the most ancient part of the hospital. The reader, from the sketch just given, will understand the general arrangement of the building, various parts of which will now be described in more detail. We will begin with the =Hall=. This measures 43 feet from north to south, 24 from east to west; its walls are 22 feet in height, and the distance from the floor to the ridge of the open timber roof is 35 feet. At the south end is the dais, behind this the wall is panelled; on the west side near the dais is a recess shown in the illustration on page 72, and on the same side of the hall, further north, and in the centre of the wall, is the "Ingle-nook," as it is called. [Illustration: RECESS IN THE HALL.] This Ingle-nook did not originally form part of the hall. It is said that at one time it was a barn, or place for storing grain for use in the baronial buildings. The hall was in all probability warmed, according to the usual custom, by a brazier standing on the centre of the floor, the smoke from which gathered under the high pitched roof, blackening beams and rafters, and finally escaped through a spire or turret rising from the ridge of the roof furnished with louvre boards. The fireplace was at some subsequent time removed to the west side of the room, and afterwards placed inside the ingle-nook, first at the back of it, then at the north-eastern corner. It will be seen from the illustration that this recess was at one time entered through an arch, but the sides of this were afterwards cut away and a flat lintel, composed of two enormous stones, was inserted; the space between this and the arch was then filled in with masonry; at the same time, no doubt, the interior space was covered with a plaster ceiling at a height of about six feet from the floor; this has been recently removed, and the roof vaulted with stone. The recess is lighted from the back with windows, and provided with seats, and has an open fireplace. The ingle-nook is a picturesque addition to the hall, and forms no doubt a very cosy corner when on a cold day the fire is blazing in the grate; but as a means of warming the hall the present arrangement is manifestly far inferior to the old plan of having an open fire in the centre of the floor of the hall. On the wall above this recess may be seen a bust of the founder, with crossed swords on either side of it, and a flintlock hung below it. The illustrations show that the walls are built of large-size squared stones, and are not covered with plaster. Across the end of the hall, cutting off the western part of it to form the main passage spoken of above, is a battlemented screen. This is peculiar in that it is not a continuous screen furnished with doorways for entrance, and does not rise to the level of the roof, but consists of three detached pieces, one resting against the east, one against the west wall, and one standing in the middle, each rising to the height of about nine feet. Thus two entrances, each about five feet wide, are left. Here, as in other parts of the building, the improvements of the nineteenth century have found their way, and the mediaeval walls of the old hall are lighted with electric lamps--a most convenient and safe addition, but striking one, at first, as out of harmony with the surroundings. Sundry portraits adorn the walls, the floor is neatly sanded, and the room is kept scrupulously clean; an air of refinement is added to it by vases of fresh flowers placed on the table. In this hall the boys of the Hospital assemble at stated hours for prayers and meals. [Illustration: WEST SIDE OF THE CLOISTER.] The next part to be examined is the cloister court. This is a very small enclosure, surrounded by somewhat high walls. Admission to it is obtained from the west walk through the archway cut in one of the windows, shown in the illustration. The curious form of the glass in the windows is worthy of note; the pavement of the cloister-garth is formed of cobblestones, and towards the south end may be seen the top of the college well. The cloister is not rectangular, the line of the eastern side being broken by sundry projections. [Illustration: STAIRCASE LEADING TO CLOISTER GALLERY.] As we leave the cloister, we examine the walks to the south and west. The latter (see illustration, p. 83) is terminated at its south end by a wrought iron gate through which we get a glimpse of the outside view and the entrance to the library. The roof is nearly flat, with massive oaken beams. Several doors may be seen on the western side opening into cells--the living-rooms of the clergy connected with the college. As we turn round the corner and pass into the south walk, we see before us the door of the audit room. The oaken ceiling of this room is of fifteenth century date; the walls up to a certain height are wainscoted; above this they are covered with a plaster frieze. Here may be seen what is known as the "Founder's Chair," although it is of far earlier date than Chetham's time--earlier, indeed, than the date of the conversion of the baron's residence into a college in the fifteenth century. [Illustration: CLOISTER GALLERY, NORTH SIDE.] Leaving this room, we pass through the two cloister walks already described, and proceed towards the hall until on the right hand we see a staircase with balusters of oak, black from age. We mount this, and when we reach the top find ourselves in the upper corridor that runs along the north side of the cloister-garth. This is lit by windows looking into the cloister, and is covered with a wooden ceiling, just at the head of the staircase is the doorway leading into the private rooms of the governor, with exquisite oak fittings; on the north side of this corridor are doors similar to those that we noticed in the corridor below, opposite to the hall; these lead into the librarian's rooms; beyond these, to the west, stands a beautiful Tudor table of carved oak. At the west end of the corridor is an iron studded door. The carvings over the doorway on the west side should not be passed by unnoticed (see p. 65). The corridor over the west walk of the cloister is filled with bookcases plentifully supplied with books. [Illustration: CHETHAM'S LIBRARY, FORMERLY THE DORMITORY.] Parallel to this runs the old dormitory of the College, a room with a fine timber roof lighted from above; on the west side of this are a number of compartments formed of tall bookcases, and entered from the corridor by open-work doors. At the north end of the corridor is a window filled with painted glass, one light of which represents St. Martin of Tours dividing his cloak with a beggar, and the other Eutychus falling out of the window. At the south end of this corridor we find a staircase which leads from the ground floor close to the main entrance to the library, and is, in fact, the way by which readers usually enter it. There is a room with a similar timber roof running along the south side of the building parallel to the corridor above the south walk of the cloister. This was once a chapel dedicated to St. Mary, and now, like the dormitory, is filled with bookcases; but an oak altar rail, dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, with double spiral rails, may still be seen here. At the east end of the south corridor is a door leading into a beautiful room, now used as the reading room; formerly it was the warden's room, and many a man well known in history has sat within its walls. Here Sir Walter Raleigh and the courtiers of his day were entertained by the warden, Dr. Dee, of whom mention was made in the last chapter,--a wizard as he was then thought to be, whom even the Queen did not hesitate to consult when she wished to know the future. This room, like many others in this building, has an open timber roof and a cornice, dating from the time of the foundation of the College in the days of Henry V. The walls are wainscoted up to the level of the spring of the roof which spans the room from east to west. [Illustration: THE WARDEN'S ROOM, NOW THE READING ROOM--NORTH SIDE.] In the centre of the north side of this room is a fireplace. This wall is wainscoted up to the same height as the other walls, and above the oak panelling it is profusely decorated, as will be seen from the illustrations, with scrolls and other patterns. This decoration was done in the early years of the reign of Charles II., after the College had been converted into Chetham's Hospital. In the centre of the room is a handsome oval oak table, with a number of chairs to match; against the south wall stands a fifteenth century communion table, and against the north wall to the left of the fireplace, a handsome sideboard of carved oak. This was made up of portions of two pieces of old furniture, namely, the top of a bookcase once given by Humphrey Chetham to Walmsley Church, near Bolton-le-Moors, still bearing an inscription: "The gift of Humphrey Chetham Esquire, 1655," and a fifteenth century bedstead once used by the Pretender when sleeping at Hulton Park in Lancashire. This sideboard was presented to the College by a member of the Hulton family, who was one of the Chetham feoffees. Round the walls are several portraits. From the east side of the room there is a projecting bay lighted by three windows and furnished with seats and a square writing table with sloping sides, to which students can take the book from which they wish to make extracts. The enrichments of the ceiling of the bay are of plaster, but the rest of the vault is stone. All the floors of this upper story are of oak, well polished by the feet of many generations. The furniture of the reading room harmonizes well with the room itself. The windows are placed under widely splayed, obtusely pointed four centred arches. On the sill of one stands a statuette in bronze of Humphrey Chetham and one of the boys of his school, similar to the marble statue already described as standing at the east end of the north choir aisle of the cathedral church. At the northwest corner of the room is a door which the visitor might easily overlook, but which gives access to a most interesting chamber. This was at one time the minstrels' gallery opening out into the hall, when in the time of the Greslets and the De le Warres, the baron, his guests and retainers feasted merrily there, while the harpers twanged their strings and sang of deeds of daring and war and victory. When the building passed into ecclesiastical hands in 1422 the arches opening into the hall were walled up, and the minstrels' gallery was converted into a scriptorium; two small openings were, however, left in the wall from which the warden passing out of his own room into the scriptorium might see what was being done in the hall below. [Illustration: THE READING ROOM: EAST SIDE.] Leaving the warden's room we may descend by the staircase at the south-west corner of the building, and before quitting this part of the hospital altogether, make a closer examination of the wrought iron gate at the south end of the west walk of the cloister. On it we see embossed in brass, the arms of the founder and below the arms, the motto, "Quod tuum tene," "Hold thine own." The part of the building used as the boys' dormitories has been internally refitted in modern times, and so has lost somewhat of its archaeological interest; but the building, taken as a whole, is a very valuable relic of mediaeval times. Even if there were nothing older than Chetham's day, it would be well worth study; but of course it is of much earlier date, and we see a building which has been used for three distinct purposes at different times of its history: first as a baron's dwelling-place, then as the abode of one of those religious bodies differing in many points from the regular monastic orders known as colleges of clergy, and finally converted into one of those educational establishments which sprang up into vigorous existence in the days succeeding the dissolution of the monasteries. It is especially interesting to note how many features of the life led by the boys at the time of the foundation are still preserved at this hospital. Modern improvements have been judiciously introduced into the management of this educational foundation; there has been no unnecessary reckless sweeping away of what is old and picturesque, and yet, at the same time, the character of the education given has been brought well up to modern requirements, fulfilling literally the conditions laid down by the founder, who directed that "Ye boys shall be taught ye reading, ye writing, ye summes, and all kinds of ye ingenuitie." [Illustration: THE CLOISTER--WEST WALK.] It is a matter of congratulation that this ancient building has been preserved from falling into ruin and being used as a quarry of ready-hewn stone, a fate that overtook so many of the religious houses of the country when the monastic bodies were expelled; and also that by the wise regulations made for the admission of visitors, the place is easily seen, and yet is preserved from all chance of injury. GROUND-PLAN OF THE COLLEGIATE BUILDINGS, NOW CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL. (From "Old Halls of Lancashire and Cheshire," by Henry Taylor.) [Illustration: GROUND-PLAN OF THE COLLEGIATE BUILDINGS, NOW CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL. (From "Old Halls of Lancashire and Cheshire," by Henry Taylor.)] 1. Porch. 2. Hall. 3. Cloister. 4. Cloister walks with galleries above. 5. Audit Room with Warden's Room above. 6. Fellows' Rooms. 7. Butteries. 8. Kitchen. 9. Bakehouse. 10. Hospitium. 11. Gateway. 12. Steps to River--now covered. INDEX. Aisles, the outer, 27. Archdeaconries, the, 59. Baptistery, the, 29. Bibby's Porch, 27. Bishop's Throne, 45. Bishops of Manchester, the, 59. Brown's Chantry, 27. Bust of Humphrey Chetham, the, 73. Chapel of the Holy Trinity, 6, 40. Chapter, the, 58. Chapter House, the, 10, 17, 34. Chetham's Hospital and Library, 6, 63; cloister, the, 71, 74; hall, the, 71; library, the, 67; reading-room, the, 78; kitchen, the, 69. Chetham, Humphrey, 36, 66. Choir, the, 6, 41, 45. College, the, 5, 7, 66, 67; dormitory, the, 78; founder's chair, the, 75; minstrels' gallery, the, 81. Craven Porch, 19, 41. Deans of Manchester, the, 57, 58. Dedication, the, 4. Derby Chapel, the, 6, 9, 19, 37-39. Dimensions of the Cathedral, 60. Edward VI., 7. Ely Chapel, the, 6, 17, 19, 37. Fraser, Bishop, 34, 59. Fraser Chapel, the, 5, 10, 17, 28, 34 Gordon Window, the, 51. Gresley family, the, 5, 31, 64. Guest-House, the, 68. Henry VIII., 7. Heyrick, Richard, warden, 7, 57. Hulme Chapel, the, 6, 17. Huntington, John, warden, 6, 35, 56. Jesus Chapel, the, 6, 17, 29, 33. Lady Chapel, the, 6, 17, 19, 34. Langley, Ralph, warden, 6, 56. Lee, Bishop Prince, 59. Manchester, See of, 8, 58. Mary I., 7. Moorhouse, Bishop, 59. Nave, the central, 41. Organ, the, 45. Organ, the small, 9, 37. Parapets, 19. Porch, the west, 5, 10, 13, 29; the south, 5, 10, 15, 29; the north, 5, 10, 41. Pulpit, the, 43. Rectors, the, 55. Reredos, the, 46. Rood-Screen, the, 43. Smith, Father, 37. Stalls, the, 6, 45. Stanley family, the, 7, 66. Stanley, James, Bishop of Ely, 6; warden, 56. St. John the Baptist's Chapel, 29, 37, 38 (see Derby Chapel). St. James' Chapel (Ducie), 6, 27, 40. St. George's Chapel, 6, 27, 30. St. Nicholas' Chapel, 17, 27, 30. Sundial, 17. Tower, the western, 9, 19. Trafford Chapel, 27, 30. Wardens, the, 56, 57. Windows, the, 7, 24, 47-53. [Illustration: PLAN OF MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL.] * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: It states that the churches of St. Mary and St. Michael hold one carucate (that is, about 100 acres) of land quit of all taxes save the Danegelt.] [Footnote 2: A triforium in purely Perpendicular buildings is rare.] [Footnote 3: The height of the central line of the roof (50 feet) is not quite double the span (27 feet).] [Footnote 4: St. George and St. Denys, patron saints of England and France, were added to the dedication at the time that the church became collegiate, Henry V. being King of England and France.] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Minor obvious typographic errors have been corrected. Otherwise, inconsistencies in the usage of capitalization, accents and spelling, etc. have been preserved as printed. 
37288	----	VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY By HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN Ph.D. (Fine Arts), A.I.A. With Drawings and Photographs by the Author VIRGINIA 350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION CORPORATION WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA 1957 COPYRIGHT©, 1957 BY HENRY CHANDLEE FORMAN Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet, Number 11 Dedicated to Singleton Peabody Moorehead INTRODUCTION In the green, southern land which today comprises the Commonwealth of Virginia, there flourished three centuries ago the fine art of architecture, and it is with that subject--the art of building in good design, with sound construction, and for the proper use--that this brief essay is concerned. But it is deplorable for one interested in the subject of historic preservation to have to relate what time and man have done to seventeenth-century Virginia architecture; there is so very little left compared to what formerly existed. If it has not been man himself with his so-called "improvements," his neglect, and his vandalism, it has been fire, the weather, and the insects which have caused widespread obliteration--almost a clean sweep--of the structures of those times. Nevertheless, by means of careful studies of a few existing buildings, of several foundations under the ground, of artifacts and manuscripts, of old prints and photographs--and even of relevant material found in Britain,--we possess today enough data to make a goodly outline of the subject. Set forth here are the principal styles of architecture in Virginia between 1600 and 1700, with some account of their origins and their development. [Illustration: PUNCHED BRASS KEY ESCUTCHEON 2-5/8" long, from the "Bin House," Jamestown] The writer has endeavored to approach this task with understanding and sympathy, for which he is qualified. He has lived on the Jamestown road in Williamsburg and has Jamestown in his blood; he has written and lectured much on Virginia; is currently a registered architect in that Commonwealth; and on both sides of his family traces his descent back to the seventeenth-century Chews, Brents, Ayres, and Skipwiths, who, living along the banks of the James River, saw much of the architecture described herein. In the preparation for this little work, two incidents stand out as being important and essential: in 1936 he was a house guest of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and lived in its "Malvern Hill" reproduction at Jamestown while he made studies of the ruins on that property; and in 1940 he stayed several nights on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation, near West Point, as guest of those Virginia Indians, while he made a study in art and archaeology in part preparation for the doctorate. This work is protected under the copyright law of the United States of America, and no part of this work may be taken or used in any fashion--whether text or illustration--without written permission from the publishers and the author. We commence the fascinating story of the early architecture of Virginia by describing the first architectural style which ever flourished there--a style about which most people know little and most school children nothing. VIRGINIA ARCHITECTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY I FIRST IN VIRGINIA: AMERICAN INDIAN ARCHITECTURE When the first English colonists arrived before Jamestown Island, Virginia, on May 13, 1607, there was already in existence an indigenous architecture which had been flourishing in that land for hundreds of years. It is true that that particular kind of architecture, American Indian, was, by and large, a perishable wooden one; nevertheless, the subject may not be ignored by stating that it did not exist. This Indian art of building forms an important chapter in the early history of Virginia. For thousands of years the Indian--a light-brown man, with brown or black eyes, and straight, blue-black hair--was the owner of what is now the United States of America. That he roamed the country which is now called Virginia for "countless centuries" is proven by the ancient Folsom spear points--one of red jasper--discovered among the Peaks of Otter, near the Skyline Drive, Bedford County, Virginia. And the Indians who made those spear points lived thirteen thousand or more years ago. The Indian tribes who settled east of the Mississippi River became skilful in mound-building, sculpture, and other accomplishments. They were generally clever and dexterous peoples. In the areas covered by Virginia and the other southeastern states the life of the natives had an exotic flavor. Their graceful and courtly manner was noted by the first European explorers. At the time of the white settlement in 1607, the land of Virginia was occupied by three main linguistic groups: first, the _Algonquian_, which included the Powhatan Confederacy in tidewater north of the James River, and the gentle Accowmacks and Accohannocks on the Eastern Shore; second, the _Siouan_, located in Piedmont Virginia above the falls of the James, that is, west of Richmond--a group of Indians which included the Monacan and Manahoac Confederacies; third, the _Iroquoian_, which included the Cherokees and the Nottaways, both tribes of which lived south and southeast of the James River. In 1607 there were altogether about 17,000 Indians in Virginia between the mountains and the sea. It has been estimated that they lived in about two hundred settlements, called "towns," and in some four thousand dwelling-houses. Their architecture, as has been mentioned, was for the most part a perishable one. At this time, three hundred and fifty years after 1607, not one American Indian wooden structure has remained above Virginia ground. By such complete destruction we and our descendants are forever deprived of the physical background which would continuously remind us of the Indian past, in the way that the city of Rome reminds Italians of their Roman past. i. THE TOWNS In the Old Dominion, Indian towns were small, usually covering about an acre of ground and containing ten or twelve buildings--seldom more than thirty. They were always built on or near a river or other body of water. One of these settlements by the name of "Kecoughtan," the present Hampton, possessed in 1607 only eighteen Indian buildings. The towns themselves may be grouped into three kinds: open, fortified, and partially fortified. The first group, the open towns, comprised those settlements which were laid out irregularly, with the buildings generally arranged loosely on either side of a central avenue or cleared space. Footpaths criss-crossed this open area. The fortified or walled towns were, as far as is known, built on two designs, round and square. The chief constructional method of fortification was the palisade-and-moat, or to put it another way, the stockade-and-ditch. This architectural arrangement, it may be mentioned, was employed by some of the peoples of prehistoric Europe, and by the Romans, and Anglo-Saxons, and others abroad. But the American Indian developed the method entirely independently of Europeans. The palisades thus built by the Indians in Virginia usually were tree trunks or heavy timbers, from five inches to eight in diameter. Sometimes, as at "Patawomeke" or "Potomac" village, the posts were only three to four inches across. Corner posts were generally larger, being ten inches thick or thereabouts. The timbers, usually with the branches uncut, were for the most part set vertically in the bank of earth thrown up by excavating the moat or trench. They reached two or three feet underground, and rose seven to twelve feet above the earth. At times, the posts leaned outward to make scaling them more difficult. The ditch was usually outside the palisade. Often these heavy timbers were set close enough to touch each other, when they are called "palisading." At other times, they were placed in the ground a little apart from one another, the interstices being filled with branches and the bark of trees interwoven, and with bullrush mats, to make the fortification spear-and-arrow proof. This method of construction we call puncheoning. In other words, the stockade comprised "puncheons" which were matted and "wattled"--"wattling" being the term for the basketry type of weaving of branches and bark strips. When the posts of a fort were wattled six inches apart, it was comparatively easy for the defenders to shoot through cracks in the wattling. A variation of the palisade method was the twisting and interweaving of the top branches of the tree-posts into a tight mass, in order to discourage climbers. For observation and defense, loopholes at a convenient distance from each other were usually inserted in the walls. Not all Indian palisades were substantial. Perhaps some became too ancient for their own good. Great storms might blow them down on a dark night. At one Siouan village, "the first Puff blew down all the Palisadoes that fortified the town." As a result, some fortifications had their palisades doubled or trebled for strength. Other fortified settlements were erected like a nest of walls, one within the other. [Illustration: Shapes of Indian Fortified Towns in Virginia] Circular towns, like Paski, in Southampton County, Virginia, usually had in the center a ceremonial space firebed. Separate buildings were grouped about that area. In order to protect the inhabitants against attack, the usual entrance in the walls was narrow, so that only one man at a time could enter. Often measuring two-and-a-half feet wide, such a gateway was formed, snail-shell-like, by the overlapping of the ends of the palisade. When the English in Virginia saw such gates, they called them "turnpikes," possibly because the gates carried spears or sharp projections, vaguely resembling the spiked entrances of medieval England. The plan of another circular settlement, "Patawomeke" or "Potomac," in Stafford County, Virginia, is of interest because there were two rings of palisaded posts, not concentric, but with the rings touching each other at one point. The inner ring was about one hundred seventy-five feet in diameter, and the outer two hundred and eighty. Square towns, like the Nottaway settlement, also in Southampton County, usually measured from two hundred to three hundred feet on a side, and had more than one palisaded entrance. Though not yet proven, it is believed that when the Indians employed "flankers," which are side or corner projections, or bastions, in their walls, as they did upon occasion, they copied them from the English settlers. The third class of town, the partially fortified, was very common. The chief building and a few structures would be enclosed, leaving the remainder unprotected outside the walls. ii. THE MOUNDS The Indian earth mounds in the land of Virginia have not perished as rapidly as the wooden buildings, with the result that many mounds have survived in one fashion or another. They are of at least three kinds: the burial mound, the platform mound, and the effigy mound. But it must be admitted that to this date, as far as research has disclosed, examples of the last two categories have not yet been identified. By far the greater number of mounds were located in Piedmont Virginia, above the Falls of the James. Unlike the Siouan and the Iroquoian, the Algonquian tribes of tidewater Virginia, such as the Powhatans, did not erect earth mounds--at least, as far as present evidence indicates. The earliest white American to have explored scientifically a Virginia mound was Thomas Jefferson. A few years before the American Revolution, he excavated and examined a burial mound on the Rivanna River in Albemarle County, and found it to be a communal grave with an estimated one thousand skeletons laid in distinct strata. The structure was spheroidal in shape, and about forty feet in diameter. Its original height was thought to be twice the height of a man. Such a burial mound was made gradually by covering with earth and stone one skeleton lying on the ground, then placing a second skeleton on top and again covering with earth and stone, until in that manner a thousand burials had been made. A similar mound, but larger, was found beside the Rapidan River, in Orange County. Many earth mounds have been found west of the Shenandoah River. Within this burial mound classification may be included the "cairn," a Gaelic name meaning "the heap," and comprising a grave under a small pile of stones. The largest of such rock heaps is said to be fifteen feet in diameter and three feet high. Several small cairns have been located on the banks of the Rivanna. As for platform mounds, it was the custom of the Cherokee tribe to erect such elevated earth forms as sub-structures or bases for wooden temples or council chambers. As has been already indicated, some Cherokees lived in the land of Virginia, notably in the vicinity of the Peaks of Otter, in Bedford County. Further south, as far away as Georgia, some platform mounds are immense, man-made hills, formerly covered with smooth, polished, hard clay, which at times reflected the rays of the sun. Great buildings once stood upon the summits of those mounds. Because none have hitherto been discovered in the Cherokee area of Virginia does not mean that none existed. And the same can be said of the Cherokee effigy mounds. An effigy mound is one built for religious purposes, generally in the shape or silhouette of an animal or bird; but as yet, none has been discovered in Virginia. The probability that there were effigy mounds is strong. iii. DWELLING-HOUSES Contrary to popular belief, the Indians of Virginia were not a tent people. They lived in wigwams, which are _houses_. Tents belonged to the natives of the Great Plains, like the Sioux Indians. Among the various types of wigwams there are two chief kinds: the circular or "beehive" dwelling, and the rectangular or "arbor" house. Both of these names were given by the English settlers because the buildings resembled constructions in their own homeland across the sea. The round house had a domed roof. On the other hand, the "arbor" abode resembled, in the words of the English, "the arbories in our gardens in England." The roofs of such habitations were arched in the form of a tunnel vault. [Illustration: Indian dwellings in Va.] The construction of the wigwam was generally a framework of saplings or young trees spaced nearly vertically in the ground at regular intervals, and bowed at the top, to make the dome or tunnel vault, as the case might be. Although the saplings were usually tied securely at the top with "withes"--which are flexible twigs,--and with roots, vines, reeds, or bark strips, some dwellings had young trees long enough to have both ends stuck in the ground, so that nothing had to be tied at the top. Ordinarily for strength the walls of such homes were battered or sloped inward at the top. At all events, cross pieces of small poles, running horizontally, were fastened to the saplings in order to serve as braces and as supports for the various kinds of curtain material employed by the Indians--materials like woven-grass mats, bark, and skins. One of the curious features of some of these arbor houses which the writer does not believe to have been elsewhere described before, is the use of a kind of "lunette" or half-moon window, of multiple lights, on the long side of a domicile. Such a feature gave additional ceiling space and more headroom. If lunettes were employed opposite each other on each side of a wigwam roof, for which arrangement we have no evidence, the roof must have resembled what we call a "cross-vault." It is interesting that lunettes and cross-vaults of masonry were employed by the Romans and the Goths of Europe. That the Indian had lunettes and probably had cross-vaults was a mere coincidence. It seems that most of the arbor houses averaged twelve feet wide and eighteen long, according to finds made in excavations. Even so, many lodgings were longer. Some were over seventy feet, and were divided into separate compartments by interior partitions of saplings and mats. [Illustration: Two arbor-houses in Va. Garden Listening post Framing detail Path Border] For wigwams the covering mats were woven with long rushes or grasses, and for the most part extended from the top of the house to the ground. They were usually three or four feet wide and in length eight or ten feet, and were stitched together or to the framework of the dwelling. Furthermore, mats were not the only covering employed. Bark of cedar, oak, or hickory was used, and made a thicker and better insulated material than mats, which in summer permitted the interiors to heat up like stoves. The bark was stripped off the tree in great flakes, and was laid so closely together that no rain could enter. Some wigwams had a combination of mat and bark, like mat walls and bark roofs. And sometimes animal skins were used as coverings. As for house entrances, the beehive had one doorway, the arbor abode usually one at each end. The "doors" were usually mats, which could be rolled up neatly in hot weather. Often in winter curtains of bear skins would cover the doorways. The Indians anticipated the present outdoor-, glass-wall-, and barbecue-loving age by arranging their wigwams so that in warm weather the sidewall mats could be rolled up on the sapling framework, much as the flaps of a circus tent can be raised. Consequently, in the Indian dwelling one or more whole sides could be opened to balmy breezes, throwing the whole interior construction open to outside gaze. The place for the fire was the firebed, and it stood in the ground in the center of the wigwam. When the lodging was long, there was usually a fireplace for each compartment. Flues there were none. The smoke from the fire, winding its way leisurely around the interior, finally found its way through an outlet or louvre in the roof or through windows at the eaves level. In wet weather a mat flap or piece of bark would cover the louvre. On the other hand, in the summer time, the Indian enjoyed cooking over an outdoor firebed in true barbecue style. The wigwam windows were merely apertures without glass--true "wind-holes." They comprised single, double, triple, or quadruple lights, sometimes arranged in "lunette" fashion, as has been indicated. To keep out bad weather, these openings had moveable covers, like bark shutters; but the prevailing method seems to have been to run long mats, either lengthwise or crosswise, over the arbor roof, so that the ends of the mats formed covering flaps. It is interesting to note that the Indian knew that smoky rooms were undesirable, so that when he could obtain them, logs of pine were burned, a process which cut down the amount of smoke. On rare occasions when the fire went out, he lit pine splinter "candles," of which he generally kept a large stock on hand. When he went journeying apace, he rolled heavy logs against the doorways to keep out wild beasts and marauders. Possibly because the American Indian was a descendant of Orientals, he was accustomed to little in the way of furniture. Chairs and tables he appears to have had none. The ground was stable and permanent. An important chief might have, however, a low earth bench covered with skins, for comfort. But the rest of the people sat on the ground or upon their "beds." It should be written here that the whites were not the first on this side of the Atlantic to use built-in furniture. The Indian invented built-in beds, which were turned into benches in the daytime. They were made by thrusting forked sticks into the ground, about a foot or two in height, to support a horizontal framework of small poles, tied to the saplings of the wigwam itself. Over that framework were stretched skins, furs, coarse mats, and sometimes soft white grass mats of excellent quality and handsome patterns. Great men, like the "Emperor" Powhatan, had leather pillows, a real luxury. In their arrangement the built-in beds were in the arbor houses placed generally end-to-end along two or three sides. Again, if there were plenty of space, the beds were separated one from another, but still abutted the walls. In the beehive dwellings the beds circled the fire. One feature which we today remember in our old-fashioned homes is the pantry or buttery; but the Indian habitation was not even "modern" enough for that. There was no native pantry. Food contained in woven sacks, gourds, and like receptacles, was hung from the cross-beams high above the heads of the occupants of the wigwam. iv. KING'S HOUSES, TREASURE HOUSES, AND TEMPLES The lodging of a "werowance" or chief, or of an "emperor," who was head of many chiefs, was called by the English a "King's House" or "Palace." It was commonly an enlarged arbor house, "broad and long," sometimes with winding interior passages. The principal residence of Powhatan was at Portan or Powhatan Bay, on York River, and was of the arbor variety and very long. Another King's House, dating about 1649, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, had a framework of great locust posts sunk in the ground at the corners and at the partitions, and the arched roof was tied to the framework by vines and roots. In breadth this "Palace" was some sixty feet long and eighteen or twenty wide. The bed platforms, each about six feet long, were placed on the long sides of the edifice, and were separated from each other by some five feet. In the center was the customary firebed. The Eastern Shore potentate himself sat upon a bank of earth adorned with finely-dressed deer skins, and with the very best otter and beaver skins which could be found in that region. As in the ordinary dwelling-house, the entire wall of mats and coverings could be rolled up as high as the King should desire. In size, the Treasure House of Powhatan, at a place called Orapaks, was one of the largest known structures in seventeenth-century Virginia. According to accounts, it reached somewhere between one hundred fifty and one hundred eighty feet in length. That some of these immense buildings were not without ornament is proven by the description of the sculptured corner posts of the Orapaks Treasure House. There were figures resembling a bear, leopard, dragon, and giant man. Another popular architectural sculpture was the bird, such as eagle, which was set upon great Indian edifices. The "Mortuary Temple," sometimes called by the English the "Temple," "Temple-Tomb," or "Bone-House," seems to have been the most interesting of their known wooden edifices. To the Indians such a structure was a "Quacasum House," because it contained idols or "quioccos." Some of those images of their gods were ornate, being hand-carved and painted, dressed with beads, copper, and necklaces, and adorned with skins. Sometimes the idols were placed under a matted canopy in the same way that the Madonnas of some of the Old Masters abroad sat under canopies with "cloths of honor" behind them. [Illustration: A Central Type of Indian Temple in Virginia] The interior of the Mortuary Temple was dark and mysterious. The only light, it seems, came through a single doorway. Some of these sanctums were arbor-like, but others were built on a central plan: round, hexagonal, or octagonal. We know that the roof of at least one Temple was an ogee-pointed, "gored" dome. An ogee is a line of double curvature, and the silhouette of such a dome was curved in that manner. At Pamunkey, Virginia, Powhatan possessed three Temples, situated on top of red sandy hills--which, by the way, may have been artificial platform mounds. Each structure was built arbor-wise, and reached nearly sixty feet in length. Others of the same ilk extended in length as much as one hundred feet. Like the treasure houses, they had a circle of carved posts surrounding them, upon which the native sculptors could make ornate and colorful carvings. The chief function of the Temple was a temporary storage place for the important dead, before permanent burial in ossuaries or mounds. The bodies were stuffed mummies with bones and skin still intact, and were laid out side by side upon a scaffolding of vertical poles about nine or ten feet high, well lined with mats, and roofed with a matted tunnel vault. Such a scaffolding under the temple roof formed a kind of miniature arbor home for the deceased. As in ordinary dwellings, the mats of the scaffolding could be rolled up at will. Beneath the platform lived priests, who had charge of the dead and who were reported to have spent their time mumbling incantations night and day. It seems to have been customary to orient the temple doorway, that is, to place it on the eastern side, and to build, as in the king's houses, dark and labyrinthine passageways, located in the west end of the sanctum, where stood two or three "black" idols, facing eastward. v. BATH HOUSES AND OTHER BUILDINGS The English called the Indian bath house by the names of "Bagnio" and "Sweating House." Such fabrics were generally circular, like the outdoor ovens used by the Indians, and had no windows. The Siouan tribes of Virginia built some of their bath houses of stone; but throughout Virginia the common material for such structures was wood. As in the ordinary dwelling, regularly-spaced saplings were thrust into the ground and bowed overhead. Then the interstices were closely woven with branches--that is, wattled,--and were plastered with mud. The Indian took what amounted to a Turkish bath, a method still in use in Finland, Mexico, and other parts of the world. But in Virginia the bath went like this: the bather heated ten or twelve small or "pebble" stones in a fire. When they had become red hot, they were placed in a firebed inside the "Bagnio." The bather then stripped, grabbed a blanket, and shut the door. Slowly pouring water upon the hot stones, he caused steam to rise so thick you could cut it with a knife. He sat on a bench until he could no longer stand the intense heat, at which moment he rushed out of the bath house and jumped into the river, over his head and ears. If the bather happened to be ill, he was supposed to be washed clean of sickness. At any rate that was the way of taking the Saturday night bath on the James, the York, the Pamunkey, the Rivanna, and elsewhere in the Old Dominion. * * * * * Other structures known to have been built by the Indian in Virginia were hunting houses, platforms, fences, landings, and outdoor ceremonial centers. Many were the weeks that the Indian left logs rolled in front of his house door and was off hunting or foraging. On long trips he erected "hunting houses," temporary shelters also known as "camping stations." These were probably simplified wigwams, which could be easily taken down and reërected in another place. In every town there stood "scaffolding" or raised platforms, where the inhabitants frequently sat and conversed, and which served somewhat the same purpose as our own outdoor summerhouses of olden times. But the Indian platforms had a loft made of hurdles, upon which the women of the settlement placed their maize, fish, and other foods to dry. There was another kind of platform, constructed in their tilled fields, to serve as scarecrows to their crops of beans, pompions, tomatoes, squash, corn, and the like. Upon the platform was built a small cabin or cottage, sometimes arranged in the shape of a half-dome, like a "round chair," in which an Indian sat to watch the fields. Such listening posts anticipated our own radar warning installations. The usual fence was a row of irregular pales, but sometimes it was made of wattles. A rarer kind, it seems, was a low fence to border paths which comprised overlapping semi-circles of tree branches. We today have the same kind of staggered semi-circles for our park paths, but they are usually made of iron, which the Indian did not possess. Nothing appears to be known of the form of the Indian dock or wharf, like the "Indian Landing" of 1654 on the Harmanson tract in Accomack County; but their bridges were generally simple constructions comprising forked stakes with poles laid across them for a footway. Because there were no wheeled vehicles, footpaths and foot bridges for land travel were sufficient. For that matter, the main highway was the water. In this connection, the oldest "road" in Virginia, called by the English "the Greate Road," which ran from James City to Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg, was at first--at least in the Jamestown-Pasbyhayes section of it--an Indian pathway. In the beginning the English called it a "bridle" path. The open-air ceremonial centers, to which the English gave the name of "Dancing Grounds," played an important part in Indian life. To the native the art of dancing was essential to his religion. The usual large space was layed out for dances and bounded by a circle of wooden posts, sculptured with painted heads. At one center the English likened such carven figures to the faces of veiled nuns. Other posts sometimes had men's countenances upon them. vi. UNUSUAL CONSTRUCTIONS At the native town of Sapponey, Brunswick County, Virginia, there was an interesting variation of the usual town plan. The dwellings were row houses, adjoining one another in the form of a circle. The individual home had palisaded walls, made of large, squared timbers, set two feet deep in the earth and rising seven feet above it. The back walls of such habitations formed the town wall, and there were three entrances into the settlement, formed by leaving passageways about six feet wide between certain pairs of buildings. But the most unusual feature was that the abodes possessed pitched or gable roofs, built with rafters. Upon the rafters hickory bark strips were set so closely together that no rain could penetrate. Another Indian habitation with pitched roof and palisaded walls once stood in a spot north of the present Pamunkey Indian Reservation, near West Point, Virginia. Still another native homestead, it seems, had puncheoned walls with a low-pitched roof of unusual construction: each half of the roof was hinged at the ridge and could be raised like a flap in order to obtain better ventilation. Perhaps the Indian obtained the idea of a pitched roof from the whites, but that theory is open to question. We know that, among other good qualities, the native had an inventive mind. It is difficult for some of us to realize that some Virginia Indians employed plastered ceilings in their dwelling-houses, but that is exactly how the Cherokees of Virginia constructed their ceilings--the plaster being the usual combination of clay and straw. * * * * * The first chapter in Virginia's architectural history--the Indian chapter--is one of which we may be proud, because, in spite of its widespread perishable nature, the architecture was well-designed, beautifully ornamented, and often of great size and dignity. It, too, sometimes revealed the native's inventive tendencies. No one can relegate with justice the status of Indian architecture to a lower place when the Orapaks Treasure House of Powhatan had a larger floor area than that of the greatest mansion of all Virginia in the seventeenth century--Sir William Berkeley's home, "The Green Spring," near Jamestown--which is shown in our diagram without the "ell" addition. Even with the "ell" included, the Orapaks Treasure House was larger. Moreover, this Treasure House was more extensive in ground space than the largest English house of its time in the American colonies--Lord Baltimore's "Governor's Castle," St. Mary's City, Maryland, of 1639. [Illustration: Comparative Floor Areas 3,000 sq. ft. + Powhatan's Orapaks Treasure H. 2,413 sq. ft. "The Green Spring," Va. c. 1646 2,934 sq. ft. "The Governor's Castle" Md., 1639] The Cherokees of Virginia may have had, and probably did have, council chambers larger than the Orapaks Treasure House, similar to the great town house holding five hundred persons, which the Cherokees constructed at Chote in Tennessee. Of this fact we may be sure: the Cherokees were great builders. They comprised a nation extending from Virginia to Georgia, and only a century and a half ago they possessed their own written language, their own dictionary, and their own printed newspaper. It was from that Cherokee nation that Will Rogers descended, and it was Rogers' great uncle, Chief Joseph Vann, who built for himself in 1803 in the Georgia mountains a large brick mansion, with a handsome hanging staircase and tall panelled mantels and richly-carved cornices with rosettes. It is a manor house after the English fashion; but in the attic are two incipient, rounded, Indian council chambers with sapling partitions--because an Indian is always an Indian. It has been this writer's good fortune to restore Vann's mansion for the State. But how could a mere Indian, our school children will say, build a manor equal to that of a white man? The Cherokees could. * * * * * Thirty-seven years before the English established Jamestown, a Spanish Jesuit and other missionaries from Florida erected (1570), according to the best authority, a hut and small chapel in the James-York region of what later became Virginia. These buildings may have resembled the crude St. Augustine mission of 1566, the earliest Spanish church in this country, which was constructed of vertical plank walls and with a gable roof. No trace of these two structures has ever been found, but they constitute a short Spanish chapter in the history of early Virginia architecture. II THE ENGLISH VERNACULAR AT A GLANCE As we have seen, the first English colonists, arriving in 1607 from across the sea, to construct James Fort in Virginia, encountered a native architecture flourishing about them. In establishing that outpost in the New World, which was to become the first permanent English settlement on this side of the Atlantic, as well as the beginning of the British Empire--now the Commonwealth,--they brought with them a knowledge of, and skill in, English architecture. At that time, the beginning of the seventeenth century, architecture in Britain had reached a very high level of culture--witness the great minsters, like Lincoln and York, or the great castles, like Windsor and Hampton Court. Without an elementary knowledge of the English vernacular, no one can fully understand the early English architecture of Virginia. Besides, contrary to popular belief up to this very day, Virginia architecture was much more English than has been supposed. The Britain of 1600 was a country of fortified manors, battlemented castles, thatched and wattled farmhouses, picturesque chimneystacks, half-timber work, winding tower staircases, and tracery-windowed abbeys, minsters, and little parish churches. For the most part the spirit of this building work was informal, romantic, and naïve; it partook of things not according to rule; it breathed Chaucer. In short, Britain at that period was a land where _medieval architecture_ flourished almost everywhere. Now what is this Medieval Style which lasted in England more than a thousand years? It comprises three chief divisions: Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Gothic. Yet the great English Gothic Style is itself subdivided into styles based on window tracery which are called "Early English," "Decorated," "Perpendicular," and "Tudor." Of main concern to us in this essay is that last subdivision, the "Tudor,"--also called "Late Gothic" or "Late Medieval",--which was chiefly centered around the Court of King Henry VIII (1509-1547). It may be necessary to remind the reader that Henry, wife-lover and neck-chopper, was an enthusiastic builder, who initiated in England a domestic architecture in which the desire for comfort was paramount. No better homes have been built in England than at the height of Tudor influence. Most authorities date medieval architecture as terminating in England in 1558 with the accession of Elizabeth to the throne. But it was not as simple as that. On the contrary, the vast majority of British buildings after 1558 continued to be built in the Tudor or Late Medieval manner, even as late as Queen Anne and the year 1702 or thereabouts. It was this long and widespread persistence of the traditional manner of building which greatly influenced Virginia architecture in the seventeenth century. [Illustration: A Medieval House in England · Pyramid Chimney · · Crow-steps · · Half-timber Work · · Lattice Casements ·] Furthermore, there came upon the English scene in Elizabeth's time, an architecture called "Early Renaissance," comprising two styles, the Elizabethan (1558-1603) and the Jacobean (1603-1625). The "Early Renaissance" was followed by the "High Renaissance" in architecture, a subject which has little to do with this essay, but which has much to do with Williamsburg. But in spite of the penetrating wedge of the "Early Renaissance" into the great mass of English medieval construction, Britain remained a place where medieval building traditions, especially in the rural areas, remained powerful and overwhelmingly popular throughout the seventeenth century. The situation was, for all purposes, like a grain of Renaissance sand in a medieval bucket. _That_ we should remember when we survey the early architecture of Virginia. The significant aspect of the transposition of the English Medieval Style to Virginia was that the "lag"--meaning the delay caused at that period by an architectural style crossing an ocean--served only to bring Virginia closer to the heart of medievalism. This lag in fact gave a new lease on life to the Medieval Style flourishing within the Old Dominion. [Illustration: A BRANDING IRON FROM JAMESTOWN. This implement for marking cattle or hogsheads with the initials _R L N_ came to light in the ruins of the First State House. On the right is shown the side view, with most of the twelve-inch handle excluded.] III THE ENGLISH STYLES OF ARCHITECTURE IN VIRGINIA For many years after the founding of James Fort in Virginia, the Indian continued to build in his traditional manner along side the newly-blossoming English architecture. In what year the last, authentic, wooden structure of Indian style was constructed in Virginia by a native Indian is not known, but it probably was in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. However that may be, in eighteenth-century Virginia Indian construction was a dying art, of which the skills, it seems, have been completely lost. Even if you gave the present-day Indians in the Old Dominion the tools to build them with, those natives would not know how to erect the great wigwams and temples of their ancestors. Such a statement is no minimization, because this writer once resided as a guest in the Pamunkey Indian Reservation near West Point, Virginia, and he found the natives there, who are descendants of the oldest and most powerful clan in Virginia, who possess the oldest Indian reservation in the United States, living in clapboard houses of the kind we call "shacks." With all their inherited courtly bearing and good manners, they had even forgotten how to make their own pottery, with its indigenous designs based on the scroll, the swastika, and the like. Instead, they sold to tourists and visitors to the reservation imported Southwestern or Pueblo pottery, of step-designs. To that favor they had come at last, three centuries after Jamestown. The fact that a large percent of the people who settled Jamestown, and other English settlements of Virginia in the seventeenth century were lowly fishermen, farmers and laborers who were not adjusted to new national economic conditions, unsuccessful tradesmen, unemployed craftsmen, and such folk, has a direct bearing on the style of architecture introduced from Britain into Virginia. Because there were few bluebloods, and because most were of the humbler classes, the average Virginian came from the overwrought farms on remote and secluded roads, the little small-town shops, in narrow streets, the peasant dwellings of sod or wattle, far out on the fens and moors of Britain. The real point is, architecturally speaking, it was in these very rural districts of England the Medieval Style was the most entrenched. [Illustration: The First English Architecture in Va. was at James Fort (1607) now washed away, off this point below Orchard Run] It can not be said that the yeomen, the sawyers, the joiners, the hog-raisers, the merchants, or the carpenters of Jamestown Island--and we know many by name and exactly where they lived there--were interested in the continental, classical or Renaissance ideas in architecture which were commencing to be fashionable among the rich and affluent. It was, on the contrary, those very same poorer classes, ill-affording and not understanding the Renaissance fads, who were the most reactionary of all in their approach to building methods. They loved medieval architecture. They doted on their Gothic heritage, whether it were a diamond-pane casement or a stock floor plan for a traditional house. By the year 1615--eight years after the founding of James Fort--the great English architect, Inigo Jones, had taken home from Italy a number of books by Palladio, distinguished Italian architect in the classical manner, and by 1622 had completed the important banqueting hall at "White Hall," London, replete with rows of classical pilasters. But the Virginia settlers--probably at least ninety-five percent of them--knew nothing of Inigo Jones and Palladio, because, in their arts and crafts thinking, the colonists were overwhelmingly medieval. We come, now, to the three English styles of architecture prevalent in Virginia in the seventeenth century: the Medieval, the Jacobean, and the Transitional. The first two were common throughout that hundred years, but the third, the Transitional, began about 1680 and extended about one-third of the way into the eighteenth century. i. THE MEDIEVAL STYLE [Illustration: Medieval One-Bay Dwelling (c. 1670) in Va. Restoration by Author] The buildings represented by this first style should be spoken of as "Virginia Medieval Architecture," because that is what the style is. "Colonial" and "Early Colonial" are technically not correct names for the style. This particular manifestation in architecture belonged to the style, English Medieval; it was the direct product, not an "afterglow," of the Middle Ages. The Old Dominion at this time was full of medieval structures, of which there were hundreds of kinds of every description: windmills, water mills, taverns, guest houses, coffee houses, churches, mansions, dwellings, hovels, state houses, glebes, brew-houses, warehouses, furnaces, stores, shops, tanneries, market houses, guard houses, blockhouses, tenements, silk factories, and countless outhouses. Taken as a whole, these buildings possessed Tudor features identical to those which we find in the medieval architecture of Britain: steeply-pointed roofs, half-timber work, the huge "pyramid" chimney, "black-diapered" brickwork patterns of glazed brick, and casements on hinges. Others are: separate or grouped chimney stacks, overhanging storeys, beamed ceilings, buttresses, stair towers, and "outshuts"--wart-like additions. These are a few of the Tudor motifs; there are many more. Generally the overall building designs were marked by informality and naïveté. Some of these medieval Virginia buildings, such as the "Thoroughgood House" (c. 1640), and the "One-Bay Dwelling" (c. 1670), of which we present several illustrations, are still extant. ii. THE JACOBEAN STYLE Although only a little wedge at first, when it came upon the English scene, the Early Renaissance Style of architecture slowly and gradually developed and expanded. As we have noted, it combined two phases, first the Elizabethan Style, and then the Jacobean, much of which was based either directly or indirectly upon Dutch, Flemish, and German architecture. On the other hand, in Virginia these two styles, Elizabethan and Jacobean, are for practical purposes combined into one style, called "Jacobean." [Illustration: Medieval One-Bay House, with "Pyramid" Chimney] At the same time, this Virginia Jacobean was never an important and widespread manner of building. To all intents and purposes it was a minor style, dominated by, or grafted upon, the Medieval Style. You may think of it as a kind of window dressing upon the Medieval. Its chief example extant in the Old Dominion is "Bacon's Castle" (c. 1650), in Surry County. [Illustration: 2nd Bruton, Williamsb'g. 1683 A Jacobean Church in Virginia Author's Restoration.] For the most part you may recognize the Jacobean by Cupid's bow lines in house gables, door heads, window heads, and stair balusters. Such lines reveal the decorative and exuberant curves loved much by the Low Countrymen and by the Englishmen who took over the curves. All in all, Virginia saw relatively little of the Jacobean because it was a minor style. iii. THE TRANSITIONAL STYLE More complicated than either of the first two styles is the Transitional--an architectural style identified and named by this writer to include all experimental examples which formed the transitional link between the Medieval of the seventeenth century and the Georgian of the eighteenth. This style of the Transition prevailed in England, but as far as we know has not been identified or labelled as such. It seems that in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, that is, from about 1680, Virginians generally were becoming weary of their dark medieval cottages, mostly one room in depth, with a loft above, and with the only daylight entering through small casements of opaque glass. These people began to look toward a goal which may have been vaguely defined in their minds: a handsome and shipshape residence, preferably of brick, of two rooms deep and two storeys-and-garret high, with wings or separate dependencies to balance; a neat and orderly mansion, without steep gables, but with one cornice line for the whole building. This goal, of course, was the Georgian mansion of the eighteenth century. At any rate, between 1680 and 1730 change permeated the air of Virginia, and a whole host of experimental buildings sprang up which we loosely label as "Transitional." In the first place, the sash or "guillotine" window is one of the barometers indicating the Transitional stage to Georgian. No doubt by the 1680s such windows, comprising crude, vertically-sliding sash, which often fell suddenly on wrist or neck, like a French _guillotine_, were introduced into Virginia. But not until 1699 do the records reveal their existence, at which time they were specified for the Capitol in Williamsburg. Notwithstanding, such sash before 1700 was a rarity, because the casement window was still fashionable. [Illustration: Early Cell Types of Transitional Houses "Fen's Point," Va. "Belmont" Lanc. Co. Va.] Other first signs of the Transition are the diagonal or catercornered fireplace, the hipped or "pyramid" roof, the gambrel roof, and the open-well stairs, which mount up the sides of a room--an arrangement which Britons at home complained of as "wasters of space." In short, it may be said that while these features may earmark a building as of the Transition, they are only thus _when_ combined with certain house-forms and floor plans. A diagonal fireplace by itself is no criterion of a building being Transitional. [Illustration: A Transitional House Early "Cell" Type Towles Pt. c. 1711] Many of the dwellings of this Style were "cell" houses. That is, there was a "cell" or "aisle" at the rear of the narrow Tudor cottage, one room deep. In the same way, the English parish church of single nave sometimes sprouted a side aisle in order to make more space for parishioners. In the Old Dominion such elongated warts or "outshuts" at the rear of the homestead afforded additional bedroom space over and beyond the cramped garret, but at the same time unfortunately threw off-center the steep medieval gable, thereby causing what the English have called a "catslide." A catslide roof is one in which the slope at the rear extends nearly the whole way to the ground. In New England the "cell" addition became the "lean-to." For such fabrics in Virginia we have coined the term, the _Early Cell_ type, one which was well represented by the destroyed "Towles Point," in Lancaster County. Even so, the Virginian did not long relish an "ugly," though perhaps picturesque, catslide gable; therefore, he once more began to build symmetrically, at the same time keeping his little back "cells." When such gables became symmetrical, we may assign the examples to the _Late Cell_ type. [Illustration: A "Late Cell" Transitional House Richardson House Jas. Cy. Co. Va.] We find, moreover, that not all Transitional structures had "cells." Sometimes the mark of experimentation is shown by other building forms, such as the one-room deep cottage mushrooming upward into a full second storey and garret; at other times the settler, dissatisfied with his "knock-head" bed chambers, experimented with the gambrel roof, frequently but mistakenly called the "Dutch roof." The gambrel, to the best of our knowledge, was introduced from England into the American Colonies in the 1680s; but it did not become widespread for almost half a century. Likewise Transitional are certain early Virginia homes with hip roofs, perhaps the best example being the brick "Abingdon Glebe" (c. 1700) in Gloucester County, where the one-and-a-half-storey main block of the house is exactly balanced by low end pavilions--each surmounted by a hipped roof. There were other Virginia building experiments in the period covered by the Transition, but the foregoing is sufficient to summarize the Style, which paved the way for the Georgian in the eighteenth century. IV THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE IN VIRGINIA. i. THE COTTAGE PERIOD The thirteen years between the founding of James Fort in 1607 and the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock on Christmas Day, 1620, have been designated by this writer, for the sake of convenience, as the "Cottage" Period of Virginia architecture. It was in the "Cradle of the Republic," on James River, that we find the English styles taking root and flourishing mightily. As a result, the United States of America became characterized more by these same English styles than by any other foreign style, such as French or Spanish. For the most part--though not entirely--these first thirteen years of English settlement in Virginia were marked by rough shelters, temporary huts or booths, and fragile buildings. As a case in point, the first fortification thrown together upon the day of first landing upon Jamestown Island was of the skimpiest construction: boughs of trees cast together in the form of a half-moon. The first settlement at that time was frankly a bivouac, where a tented church was set up, and the customary lodging was a tent cover or a hole in the ground. Secretary Strachey wrote home to England about the ill-lodged colonists, of whom the poorer slept on the ground and the more fortunate had such miserable cottages that the sun pierced through them and made them hot as stoves. All these fragile shelters have disappeared, but types of them have in later years been described. In 1621, for example, a servant by the name of Richard Chelsey was to have a new house built for him, in length, fourteen feet, and in breadth, twelve feet. In Northampton County one John Alford squeezed himself into a hut only five and a half feet high, with a doorway only four feet, nine inches and a quarter in height. Big enough for children! Some habitations did not bother about wood for walls; they were of earth or clay mixed with straw. This last type was represented in later years by some of the outhouses at "Four Mile Tree" plantation, Virginia, which were made of red clay held together by chopped straw. Such abbreviated buildings had waxed paper or curtains to cover their "wind-holes," sliding-panel windows, hinged shutters without glass, or tiny casements. In addition to these frail and temporary shelters were more substantial edifices, which may be classified, according to present knowledge, as illustrating at least five chief methods of English Medieval construction. These may be listed as follows: 1. The palisade 2. The puncheon 3. The cruck 4. Timber framing, including half-timber work 5. Brick Now the first of these, _palisading_, was common in England for two thousand years and more, and, as we have already seen, was employed by the Virginia Indian, who invented it entirely independently of European contact. The first palisade on the James River, that of James Fort of 1607, comprised strong planks and posts placed close together four feet deep in the earth. They rose above ground about fourteen feet. But there was nothing, to our knowledge, which was unusual about that palisading, except, perhaps, its triangular shape. Most forts of that kind were square, but on Jamestown Island the fort was a triangle, supposedly forced into that configuration by the topography. At any rate, the customary bulwarks or watchtowers rose at the three corners of the fortification, and there was the usual moat and drawbridge. English forts of this kind, with stockades and ditches, were common to Virginia, as for example, at Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Fort of 1585 in North Carolina, formerly Virginia; at Old Point Comfort in 1609; in City of Henrico in 1611; at Claiborne's Kent Island trading post of 1621--now in Maryland; and at the "Town" on the Eastern Shore in 1623. One of the longest palisades in all Virginia in the seventeenth century was Dale's "Dutch Gap" on the James. Its two-mile-long moat was lined by palisaded walls accented by towers. After the Massacre of 1622, the Colony of Virginia ordered (1624-25) all dwellings and plantations to be palisaded in, that is, to be enclosed by "Park-pales," as the English called them. Ordinarily walls about seven and a half feet high were tall enough for protection from sudden attack. Even churches were palisaded in, as for example, the first church on the Eastern shore. In the 1630s one Stephen Charleton threatened to kick the Reverend Cotton over the paled fence--the "Pallyzados"--around that sacred edifice. The second medieval method is _puncheoning_. It seems that the English made puncheons or "quarters" pretty much like the Indians, that is, they fashioned upright timbers or posts, set apart in the ground so that the space between them was the same as the thickness of the timber or post. Then they filled the interstices with "wattle-and-daub," a basketwork of branches, twigs, and roots, coated on both sides with loam and lime, mixed with straw. Back home in England, this filling of the spaces was named "post and pan." On James River there is record of the Berkeley settlement of 1619 having most of the dwellings built of "punches" set in the earth and with boards for the roofs. Other huts were flimsy shelters merely "covered with boards," so that one spark could easily set them off. But when the English employed thin turf or sod for their roofs, the structures were safer from fire. [Illustration: A Puncheoned Cot with wattle filling and clapboard roof] In connection with this wattling and daubing of Virginia buildings, the two early churches on Eastern Shore are believed to have been puncheoned edifices. The second church (c. 1638), near Fishing Creek was described as "of insignificant dimensions" and constructed of two materials: "roughly riled logs"--that is, vertical timbers, since log cabins as we know them were virtually unknown in the English colonies before 1660; and "wattles." A reference to "daubing" the first church (c. 1623), on King's Creek, leads us to believe that it also was built on "punches" and was woven with wattles. Now, about the third construction type, the _cruck_. No one has seen today an original cruck building in this country, but early Virginia possessed hundreds and perhaps thousands of cruck fabrics. Like the palisade and puncheon methods, the cruck was medieval down to its very core. In describing the James Fort church of 1607, Captain John Smith stated it was set upon "crotchets," covered with rafters, rushes, and earth. When he spoke of crotchet, he probably meant cruck, of which it was a later derivative. At all events, a building set on crucks means that it is supported or hung upon pairs of curved or bent tree trunks placed together in the shape of a Gothic pointed arch and spaced one "bay" apart. It was the custom in medieval England to erect buildings in bays for the sake of convenience. A bay was the standard unit of length, generally sixteen feet, although it could vary. A four-bay cruck church on Jamestown Island means that there were five pairs of bent trees, or crucks, in total length some sixty-four feet, arranged in the following manner: : : : : : Then, upon the crucks were hung the side walls and the roof. [Illustration: A Hypothetical Three-Bay Cruck House in Virginia] Yet in this era of Virginia history before the "Mayflower" landed in New England, the most common of all the medieval types of construction is _timber-framing_. A building which was timber-framed was a substantial one, comprising a framework of posts set _far_ apart, of diagonal braces, and of studs, sills, plates, and girts--the ensemble fastened together securely with tongues and grooves and wooden pegs. It was the custom to cut and adz the timbers so that they would fit together neatly; and in order to do that, Roman numerals were cut into each timber to identify it. In that way the whole framework could be assembled properly and efficiently--the first pre-fabricated house in Virginia. So good were these timber-framed structures that the English in the Old Dominion called them "fair houses" and "English houses." In 1611 James City boasted of two fair rows of dwellings, all of framed timber, two storeys and garret, or corn-loft, high. At Berkeley, in 1619 there were two timber-framed habitations, and at the City of Henrico in 1611 three streets of well framed houses. [Illustration: Example of Timber Framing in 17{th} C. Va.] The timber-framed dwelling is the most commonly erected today in this country, although builders and carpenters no longer bother to number or to peg together the timbers. In this Cottage Period about which we have been reading the general manner of framing structures was to either cover the framework or make "half-timber work." In the former method, weatherboarding (clapboards), or shingle tiles or slate nailed to weatherboards, covered up the posts and studs. In the latter method, the filling between the studding would be left exposed to the elements. And this filling could take a variety of forms: plaster; "wattle-and-daub"; brick "nogging," with the bricks laid horizontally, in herring-bone, or helter-skelter; or mud and straw. Contrary to popular opinion, there were undoubtedly _brick_ buildings in Virginia in the first thirteen years. It was at Jamestown in 1607 that President Wingfield visited "ould Short, the bricklayer." What do you suppose Short did in those early years of the Colony? He manufactured brick for chimneys, walks, walls, terraces, floors, kilns, and buildings--_brick_ buildings. Now brick for an edifice, usually laid in English bond, where the courses are alternately headers and stretchers, is still another English medieval method of construction, which became popular in Virginia. We know, for instance, that there were in 1611, in addition to the well-framed dwellings already cited at City of Henrico, some "competent and decent houses, the first storie all of brick." These were not purely brick structures but only part brick, which we have called buildings of "half-and-half work." The downstairs was brick, the upstairs timber-framed--another English medieval type. Further, during the Cottage Period and for many a year afterward, the wooden chimney was the common method of smoke outlet. Strachey mentioned at James City not only the wattled buildings, but the "wide and large Country chimnies"--in other words, the wood or "Welsh" chimney, a medieval construction which dates back in English history to the eleventh century and before. Ordinarily the fire had its smoke and sparks sucked up a large wattle-and-daubed or lath-and-plastered hood resting on the garret floor, thence up a wood flue and out the stack, which might have been a barrel or wood box or some such contraption. At other times the whole chimney and fireplace were placed on the exterior, the better to protect against fire; and the boards were lined with crude lath and clay daubing. Still another kind of chimney was the "catted" chimney, made of "cats" or rolled-up strips of clay mixed with straw, and placed closely together within a framework of wooden posts and rails. But you have to see these wooden chimneys to know how they actually appeared. * * * * * The story of this thirteen year period from 1607 to 1620 should not be concluded without mention of the influence of Indian building methods upon the English settlers. In 1608, after the great smoke of the fire had blown away from James City, the colonists under the direction of Captain Newport roofed some of their new homes with the bark of trees, which was cooler than their usual roofing clapboards or wooden shingles. Also they adorned their new rooms with mats woven into delicate colors and designs by the Indians. Thatch for roofs did not go out of style altogether in favor of bark, because as late as 1638 there is record of a "thatcht" dwelling on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Plowden noted the construction in 1650 in some of our East Coast settlements of "arbour" houses, of poles and bark boards; and some of these _English_ arbor buildings were undoubtedly built in Jamestown and the other major settlements in earliest Virginia. While the white man sometimes copied the Indian in his construction, it is significant that when the colonists landed in 1607, the Indian, for his part, was already employing several types of English medieval construction, which he had invented and acquired independently of European contact. Although we have already cited most of these types, we list them again, in order to give the Indian credit, where credit is due: palisaded walls with moats, and pale fencing; puncheoning with wattles; central hearths with roof louvres for smoke; thatched roofs; and timber-framing with wattle-and-daub panels. How can anyone belittle the technical accomplishments of the Indian by calling him "savage," when in at least five building methods he equalled the white man bringing the English Medieval Style to these shores? Our English ancestors _originally_ lived in smoky buildings with the central open hearth in the middle of the great room; in seventeenth-century Virginia the Indian did likewise. The difference was in timing. ii. THE COUNTRY HOUSE In the seventeenth century, the English rural homestead was usually placed along the great Bay, the Chesapeake, or upon one of its tidewater tributaries. Back of such a seat, or on either side of it, there stretched the outhouses, generally arranged in rows or around courtyards. The water served as the principal highway, and the plantation depended upon it. Certain Indian paths, it is true, were turned into narrow lanes for carts, in order to reach the interior, like the oldest "road" in Virginia, which, as we have seen, extended from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg. [Illustration: A Type of 17{th} century Virginia Plantation "Carotoman," Lancaster Co.] The variety and number of properties which the prosperous land-owners possessed is revealing, by giving us a glimpse of the economic and architectural life of the times. Besides the mansion-house there were offices, kitchens and bake houses, slave quarters, school houses, dairies, barns, stables, granaries, smoke houses, spring houses, and dovecots. There were servants' dwellings, spinning houses, smithies, tan houses, bin houses, well houses, hogsties, cornhouses, and guest houses. For the gardens, sometimes called "hortyards," there were summerhouses, greenhouses, and arbors. Then there were bloomeries and ironworks, wharves for landing goods, called "bridges," warehouses, windmills, watermills, sawmills, glassworks, silkhouses, brick and pottery kilns, lime kilns, saltworks, and blockhouses. [Illustration: The Green Spring Pottery Kiln c. 1646] [Illustration: Two Va. Outhouses Bin House Jamestown (Author's Reconstr'ns)] For all intents and purposes such grandiose estates were self-sustaining. Those goods not produced in Virginia came generally from England and were usually landed upon the wharf in front of the plantation-dwelling. That the kitchen outhouse was frequently placed at a distance from the dining room was primarily due not to class or color distinction, but to the medieval custom of carrying food across the service courtyard. Very often throughout the seventeenth century, especially on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the kitchen building was tied to the main abode by a colonnade--a passage with columns--or by a curtain--a covered passageway. That these edifices in their wooden parts were painted, when the owner could afford paint, is proven by the record of importations of large quantities of color pigments and oils to make paint. Many of us today think that the early Virginia building was white, but colors like gray and tan were common. When the owner could not bear the expense of painting, he left his house bare or "whited" it with good white lime--that is, used whitewash. [Illustration: SOME OCCUPANTS OF 17TH-CENTURY VIRGINIA HOMES ATE FROM BOWLS LIKE THIS ONE, FROM JAMESTOWN A scraffito or scratched slipware bowl with one handle. Height 3-5/8", dia. 8-3/4". _Photo, author._ (See page 21)] [Illustration: A MEDIEVAL "PYRAMID" CHIMNEY IN VIRGINIA So large is the fireplace of this one-bay dwelling that you can burn an eight-foot log within it. Great "weatherings" taper the chimney towards the stack, which is freestanding as protection against fire. Note medieval "black-diapered" brick pattern in gable. _Photo, author._ (See page 22)] [Illustration: REMNANTS OF A MEDIEVAL VIRGINIA STOREHOUSE The foundation of the "Bin House," Jamestown, excavated by the National Park Service. The two brick bins have concave floors below the original main floor level. _Photo, author._ (See page 36)] [Illustration: A TYPE OF MEDIEVAL CORNICE IN VIRGINIA Unlike the later box cornice, to which we are accustomed, the cornice of this dwelling of about 1670 has exposed and rounded beam ends, which are pegged to a tilted plate, on which the rafters rest. Note corbel of overlapping bricks which stops cornice. _Photo, author._ (See page 37)] [Illustration: A MEDIEVAL "HALL-AND-PARLOR" HOUSE IN JAMES CITY COUNTY The "Warburton House" or "Pinewoods" of about 1680 has segmental-arched openings, "T"-chimneys, and chimney caps with mouse-tooth brickwork, a decoration which seems to have come into fashion about that time. A rear wing has disappeared. _Photo, author._ (See page 40)] [Illustration: "SWEET HALL," A MEDIEVAL "T"-PLAN HOME IN VIRGINIA This old seat of the Claibornes in King William County, dating from about 1695, has very tall "T"-stacks, with "weatherings" or slopes above the ridge, and with heavy, ornate caps. The dormers and porches are later. _Photo, author._ (See page 41)] [Illustration: CLAY ROOFING PANTILES FROM THE FIRST STATE HOUSE, JAMESTOWN The left-hand tile, nearly complete, has a "nob" at one end to catch on the roof strips. It was pieced together by Mr. John T. Zaharov, and is the _first_ pantile ever found in the United States. The paper arrow at right marks cemented overlap. _Photo, author._ (See page 48)] [Illustration: ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC SITES IN THE UNITED STATES Much of our knowledge of 17th-century Virginia life and art comes from Jamestown foundations. This interesting "complex" of ruins reveals William Sherwood's house cellar of c. 1677-80, and in the immediate foreground, a fireplace hearth of the "Governor's House," probably built in the 1620s, and occupied by Sir George Yeardley. _Photo, author._ (see page 49)] [Illustration: A JAMESTOWN LATTICE CASEMENT AS IT CAME FROM THE GROUND This medieval window, with the diamond panes or "quarrels" knocked out, came from the "Double House on the Land of Thomas Hampton," and is drawn restored in _Jamestown and St. Mary_'s. Note pane of glass standing upon a Dutch brick. _Photo, author._ (See page 67)] [Illustration: TWO UNUSUAL JAMESTOWN STRAP-HINGES The right-hand hinge, broken, probably came from a wagon-box or chest. (See page 68)] [Illustration: A BRASS SWORD HANDLE FROM THE JAMESTOWN MUD Found in three pieces with the blade missing, this cavalier's sword is ornamented with _putti_ and other decorations. _Photos, author._ _Courtesy, Antiques Magazine._] The most significant aspect of the medieval rural abode in Virginia was its regular course of development from the simple, one-room-and-garret cottage--what an English bishop in 1610 called a "silly cote," a hut of "one bay's breath"--to the stately and elegant Georgian mansion of the eighteenth century. Even so, it may not be unequivocally declared that all the simple dwellings were constructed first and all the complex ones later. At the same time, we find that often the homes with more than two downstairs rooms and a central passageway were constructed in late seventeenth-century times. Further, the country lodging for the most part was only one-storey-and-loft high. The full two-storey domicile was the exception. [Illustration: Floor Plan of a Medieval One-Bay House (c. 1670) in Va.] The elementary hut of one bay, such as we have noted as having been prevalent in the Cottage Period of the first thirteen years, was the earliest type of substantial house-form in the Old Dominion; it had a "hall," which was the "Great Room"--not a passage,--a dining room, and a kitchen, all rolled into one. The garret with sloping ceilings, perhaps reached by a stepladder or narrow, winding, "break-your-neck" staircase, was usually a cold, unheated, cramped space for sleeping. One of these small, fractional-bay dwellings stood (1660) in Northampton County, and was ten feet from end to end. It served as the first meeting-place of the Quakers or Friends on the Eastern Shore, and was later used as a "wheat house." A better known one-bay domicile was Richard May's, built about 1661 in Jamestown, and pictured in a crude sort of way in the Ambler Manuscripts: a flush chimney at one gable and a front with central door flanked on each side by a window. Excavations by the National Park Service at the site of May's revealed that the house had a chimney at the opposite end--a feature which must of necessity have marked an addition. [Illustration: PLAN OF A HOUSE-FOUNDATION ON THE LAND OF ISAAC WATSON AT JAMESTOWN. Showing the distribution of important hardware, and a reconstruction of the house. _Courtesy Antiques Magazine._] One of the few known ruins of a one-bay dwelling was excavated at Jamestown under this writer's direction and was designated as the timber-framed "House on Isaac Watson's Land," built possibly as early as 1644. Before its destruction, it comprised one "hall," twenty feet by twenty, with a great projecting fireplace at one gable big enough for an eight-foot log to burn. The chimney must have been what we call a "pyramid," and it was flanked on either side by small "outshuts," which were probably "ingle recesses" or "chimney-pents." Inside, there was a Dutch oven at one side of the fireplace and a setting for a brewing copper next to it. This was no pauper's hovel, for the casements were leaded, and the hardware included fancy wrought-iron hinges, including the fairly-rare "Cock's Head" hinge. Another structure of this type is here illustrated under the caption, "Medieval One-Bay House" (c. 1670) in Virginia. Without including its tremendous "pyramid" chimney, the dwelling measures twenty-and-a-half feet long and sixteen wide. The chimney end is wholly brick, and the other three sides clapboarded. The one downstairs room, the "Great Hall," has exposed posts, beams, and wall plates, with chamfers terminating in crude "lamb's tongues." In a corner opposite the fireplace there was a stepladder or very steep staircase, only twenty-seven inches wide. Upstairs there was one sleeping room with two tiny, lie-on-your-stomach windows--almost peep-holes--to give air and light. There were no dormers, and the long cedar shingles were pegged to thin oaken strips across the rafters. Even the floor beams were pegged to the rafters so that the roof on a stormy night would not part company with the "Great Hall." [Illustration: A Medieval Hall-and-Parlor House in Va.] When the planter or tradesman became a little wealthier, or his family became larger, it was a simple matter to add a "parlor" to one end of the homestead, thus making the second stage of development, the "hall-and-parlor" dwelling. There was a regular "school" of building of such habitations in seventeenth-century Virginia. In such examples the parlor was smaller than the "Hall" or "Great Room." Sometimes, of course, the early settler commenced with a "hall-and-parlor" residence built all at once. The foremost example of this type in the Old Dominion is the "Adam Thoroughgood House" (c. 1640), Princess Anne County, a brick storey-and-garret dwelling, with a flush chimney at one gable and a "pyramid" at the other. The chimney-stacks are "T"s, meaning that they are designed in that shape in plan to reveal multiple flues. The brickwork is English bond, and the windows, before alterations, were leaded casements. The doors, too, were battened, or built up with boards. All the openings have segmental arches, and high up on the brick gables are lines of glazed header bricks parallel to the rakes. Of the same ilk is another brick lodging, the "Wishart House" (c. 1680) in Norfolk, which has two pyramid, "T"-chimneys, and a cornice terminated by little corbels of overlapping brick--a common medieval feature. Other extant examples are "Sweet Hall" (c. 1695) and "Warburton House" (c. 1680), both of which had a projecting addition at the rear. In fact the records are full of "hall-and-parlor" houses which may have been destroyed, such as Sam Wools' plantation (1638) on Eastern Shore, twenty-five feet long and sixteen wide--a standard size. There was "one partition in it," and it had only one chimney and only one wing, a buttery. The kitchen, it seems, was not mentioned, but it probably was an outhouse. It was a natural step to the third development, the "central-passage" type, a group of buildings named by this writer for the purpose of convenience. A "screen" or wooden partition was added to the end of the "Hall" or Great Room in order to make a passage from front to back in the center of the edifice. In that way the living space, the "Hall," was made more private than when it served as a passageway. At any rate, the brick "Keeling House" (c. 1700), Princess Anne County, is a good specimen. A later, or "Hangover" phase of the central-passage type is "Smith's Fort Plantation," generally known as the "Rolfe House," Surry County, which has been continuously and erroneously dated 1652, but which really belongs to the first half of the eighteenth century. [Illustration: A Cross Plan in Virginia "Bacon's Castle," c. 1650] The last or culminating development in the rural dwelling was the changing of a "hall-and-parlor" habitation, or one of "central-passage" variety, into a "cross-house." The cross was formed by adding an enclosed porch, usually with a "porch chamber" above it, on the front façade, and a wing, like a stair tower, to the rear. However, a "T"-shaped domicile, with no back wing, is also classified as a "cross-house." An old record tells of one Southey Littleton, of Accomack, who had a porch and porch chamber on the front of his dwelling--in other words, a cross-house. Of the extant or partially extant examples in Virginia are "Bacon's Castle" (c. 1650), Surry County; "Malvern Hill" (c. 1662), Henrico County; and "Christ's Cross" (c. 1690) and "Foster's Castle," (c. 1685) both in New Kent. They make a veritable school of building which once must have flourished the length and breadth of tidewater Virginia. With its noted "Bond Castle," Maryland, too, had a school of cross-houses. Of the Virginia examples, "Bacon's Castle," two-storeys-and-garret high, with basement, was built by one Arthur Allen, and was named for the rebel, Nathaniel Bacon, who in 1676 ordered his men to capture the dwelling. "Castle" meant "fort." Its cross-plan incorporated a porch, porch chamber, and stair tower. A low, wooden, curtain and kitchen extension, which is believed to have been seventeenth century in date, formerly stood off the gable on the "Hall" side--an arrangement indicating that the Great Room perhaps also served as a dining room. The curtain was the buttery, or bottlery. [Illustration: Medieval Diamond Stacks in Virginia Plan Bacon's Castle c. 1650 West Gable] But the most distinguishing feature of "Bacon's Castle" is the Jacobean "curvilinear" gable at each end. These gables possess round members--"cuspings"--and steps, built pretty much the same way in which they were made in England and the Low Countries. The chimney stacks are Tudor, three in number, set diagonally on their bases at each gable. Because of the way these chimneys look in plan, we call them "diamond stacks." Also Jacobean are the crude brick pediment over the main entrance, now much changed, and the brick borders surrounding the windows--called "enframements." And of course, the windows formerly held leaded casements, with mullions and transom bars. Two important features of another of the cross-houses mentioned belong to "Christ's Cross," called for short, "Criss Cross." This writer can remember when there was hardly a person who knew of the existence of this place, and where it was located. The double door opening out into the enclosed porch from the "Hall" we have denoted as the "finest Tudor door in all Virginia"--because of its panel design and Gothic mouldings; and the post in the "Hall" has probably the finest Jacobean carved capital in the United States. The capital is in truth a _folk_ Jacobean carving, a grotesque, comprising a raised heart-shaped shield with crudely chiselled volutes upon it, and an "echinus" or cushion, and an "abacus" or block above it. It reminds one of the ancient Greek Ionic wooden capitals in Athens, Asia Minor, or elsewhere, which possessed rough or incipient volutes. [Illustration: The Folk Jacobean Post Capital (c. 1690) "Christ's Cross," Va.] Study of the cross-house in Virginia needs an essay to itself. We have tried here to give some of the highlights of this last development of the rural dwelling, which is outstandingly medieval in design and construction--with a bit here and there of Jacobean trimming. [Illustration: Archaic Ionic Cap found at Athens] Branching off the main stream of country house development are exceptions and special cases, such as "The Green Spring" mansion (c. 1646), Sir William Berkeley's home near Jamestown. Sometimes it is mistakenly called the first large country house in America, but it may not lay claim to that status since the earlier "Governor's Castle" in Maryland had a larger area. However that may be, "The Green Spring" for its time was baronial. It seems to have been a "double-parlor" dwelling--an English derivative, where the "Hall" stood between two parlors. When the recently-revealed watercolor of this mansion-house by Benjamin Henry Latrobe is published, its features, like the roof "shingled" with dormers and the front porch of "clumsy Jacobean brickwork" may be more fully described. [Illustration: The Pre-Berkeley House at "The Green Spring," Va. Restoration by Author] In the recent excavations at "The Green Spring" were found the brick footings of a _pre_-Berkeley building. We know that it antedated Sir William's great pile because part of it was covered by Sir William's structure. Our floor plan, based on Kocher, Waterman, and Dimmick, shows a very unusual room arrangement for seventeenth-century Virginia. It looks very much like an "E"-plan of the Elizabethan Style of architecture. And at the rear were "cells" or "outshuts." With grains of allowance, the sketch of the entrance front is conjectural, but probably has enough of the truth about it to reveal the unique character of the edifice. iii. THE TOWN DWELLING Because Virginians in founding their towns wished to crowd their houses in rows along their streets, the city abode is substantially different in type from the rural one. Many of our city developers today are building squeezed-up row houses, in order to make as much money as possible, where the front foot is valued in dollars. But, for all that, the Jamestown developers were doing the very same thing, building sardine-packed row dwellings--only the payment was in English currency. Inside James Fort that first year the settlers erected streets of "settled" houses, which, because of the small space available within the palisade, must have been of necessity row homes. The current oil painting of James Fort in the Jamestown Museum is all very fine, being based largely on a plan and description of the first settlement by the writer; but it has one great error: the houses are not contiguous to one another, as they were forced to be within the cramped space of the triangular palisade. Four years later, the settlement had two fair rows of timber-framed houses, two storeys and garret high. Even storehouses at Jamestown were constructed in rows. In 1614 there were erected in that settlement three large, substantial storehouses, joined together in length about one hundred and twenty feet, and extending in breadth forty feet. [Illustration: The Governor's House, c. 1620 A Jamestown Duplex] What appears from a drawing in the Ambler Manuscripts to be an early example of a row dwelling is the "Governor's House" or the "Country House,"--the word, country, meaning not countryside, but Colony or Province. This edifice was situated at Jamestown, but it was outside the triangular Fort and upon the so-called "fourth ridge," the highest ground near that fortification. The house was erected some time between the arrival in Virginia of Sir George Yeardley in 1619 and the year 1660. The probable date lies somewhere in the 1620s. The manuscript drawing is crudely drawn and badly torn, but it does indicate a one-and-a-half storey domicile with three chimneys, one in the center and one at each end--making what seems to be a _double_ house--a duplex. Excavations of the fragmentary brick remains of the "Governor's House" revealed that it was a brick edifice fifty-three feet long and twenty wide, with a little frame wing at the rear. Unfortunately no trace remained of the central chimney; but at any rate the diggings established that the eastern half had a cellar, while the western section did not--another indication of the double house. There is an interesting story about the "Governor's House." Those who disagree with the Gregory-Forman theory of the site of James Fort of 1607 being at or near the point below Orchard Run, Jamestown Island, not a half mile up river near the Brick Church, must explain away the conversation recorded in the archives of Virginia for the night of June 23, 1624, at the "Governor's House," Jamestown. Briefly, there were two "fellows" who lurked on that evening under the walls of this building, trying to get inside. They were seen and hailed by sentries on the walls of James Fort. One of the men at the Fort shouted at the two fellows: "Que Vulla?"--evidently stock military vulgar Latin for _Quae Vultis_?, "What do you want?" To which question the two fellows at the "Governor's House" replied that they could not get in because the door was locked. It is obvious that the Fort lay near the Governor's House and not half a mile away. [Illustration: MAP OF THE "NEW TOWNE" AT JAMES CITY. Illustrating buildings mentioned in the text, and based on a map in the writer's _Jamestown and St. Mary's_] At least by 1623, it was the desire of the Virginia Company of London to build towns in Virginia which would possess a convenient and suitable number of houses, constructed together of brick and encircled by a battlemented brick wall. Exactly in the same way Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, commanded the first Maryland settlers to lay out row houses in their first settlement. And also, Jamestown excavations have borne out the fact that the typical city building was usually a row affair. The few rural homes within the city limits may not be classified as "town" houses. There are at least five groups of row houses known at Jamestown, and there are even stock sizes for such groups. Twenty feet by forty, measured on the inside of the walls, were the most common dimensions--an inheritance from British medieval building laws. [Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: Cellar] [Illustration: First State House, Jamestown: River Front Author's Reconstruction] Perhaps the foremost of the James City row buildings is the group of three brick edifices which comprised the "First State House" in Virginia. The three cellars, their long walls being party walls, were excavated under the direction of this writer and of a colleague. The structure was originally two storeys and garret high. The down-river, or eastern section, and the central portion, were erected about 1635 by Governor John Harvey and were used as the capitol building of the Colony from 1641 for fifteen years. The up-river section was built before 1655 by Sir William Berkeley. But by 1670 the whole pile, with its three front gables facing the James River, had gone up in flames. The unit floor plan of the "First State House" comprised a "hall-and-parlor" dwelling with back-to-back fireplaces and a very narrow passageway running the length of the building at one side. Now that arrangement formed pretty much the stock plan of the city house in seventeenth-century London, as our researches have disclosed. That the "First State House" was Tudor in appearance is evidenced by the great wealth of medieval wrought-iron hardware found in the ruins: such items as Cock's Head hinges, leaded lattice casements, and great rim locks with eight-inch keys. The roof once carried the medieval "pantile," which is an "S"-shaped clay tile about thirteen inches long, with a nob at one end to catch on to the roofing strips. Another row example with gables facing the street lay about a thousand feet north of the Brick Church at Jamestown. It comprised two brick buildings with their long sides being party walls; and we have named them the "Double House on the land of Thomas Hampton." Each basement is approximately sixteen feet by twenty-four in size--another stock configuration--which came about as the result of the Virginia Act of 1639. This duplex contained beautiful Delft tiles in the fireplaces, representing figures of Dutchmen at sport and at play. [Illustration: London 17{th} C. Town Houses] Not all row dwellings had gables across the front; some buildings were joined end to end, their gables party walls. The most important example of such at Jamestown is what we have called the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five buildings, situated up river a short distance from the Brick Church. Four of these were private homes, and the fifth was the "Third State House." They were all set up as a result of the Act of 1662 calling for thirty-two brick (row) dwellings, arranged in a square or other form which the Governor should decide. Each dwelling was to be twenty feet by forty on the inside, eighteen feet from floor to eaves, fifteen feet from eaves to ridge measured vertically, and to have a slate or tile roof. Of these four habitations, the two nearest the river had floor plans similar to that of the "First State House," already described, except that the gables adjoined one another. To delve a little further into the subject of this interesting block, we may note that the other two houses were of the same size as the pair nearer the water, but that they had "flush" chimneys abutting the party walls instead of "central" chimneys with back-to-back fireplaces. These two were also marked by three enclosed porches on their front façades. All four dwellings had "cell" or "aisle" additions at the rear. Another row house at James City is what we have called the "Double House back of John White's Land," where half the building possessed a large, brick-vaulted, wine cellar, with hundreds of bottles kept within it--a feature indicating a tavern. Let no one think they did not drink at Jamestown: the whole settlement was permeated with taverns and ale-houses. One of the most recent finds at Jamestown is a triplet or "triplex" row, lying some four hundred feet northeast of the Brick Church. The three dwellings faced south, and each measured twenty by fifty-two feet within the walls. There was the customary back-to-back fireplace on the north wall of each unit; but the easternmost house had an exterior fireplace at its east gable-end, and a square porch room on the south. As new discoveries are made in this first capital of Virginia, it becomes clearer year by year that the city was full of row buildings, trying to emulate Oxford or Chipping Camden or even the great London herself. iv. CHURCHES, CHAPELS, AND GLEBES The medieval Virginia church of the seventeenth century was generally a crossroads shrine set down in or near the middle of a group of plantations. Towns, like James City, also had their own churches, situated on the main thoroughfares. When roads were too bad for traversing, or distances were too great, parishioners built sometimes small fanes called "chapels of ease," nearer their homes than the main parish churches. The starting point for the Virginia church is at Jamestown, a place which can count five churches, and perhaps more. For brevity we list them: 1. The "cruck" church of 1607, the first substantial church, which, according to Smith, was covered by rushes, boards, and earth. 2. The timber-framed church of 1610, of Lord Delaware, sixty feet by twenty-four in size, where took place in 1614 the marriage of the Indian princess, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe. This edifice had casements on hinges and, at the west end, two bells. 3. Argall's frame church of 1617, fifty feet by twenty, which by 1623 may have been the structure possessing a latticed gallery for ladies, and which needed repairs in 1624. In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Shore. Then there was the Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of 1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower, because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in seventeenth-century Virginia--at least, as far as present research has disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet out--big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells. To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches: 4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church; but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard Run, Jamestown Island. 5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and foundation are extant. [Illustration: Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown After a Foundation Plan in "Jamestown and St. Mary's"] The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English" bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways--as the floor plan shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof was probably battlemented or crenellated. The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion. In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some interesting medieval features: buttresses; pointed and mullioned windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile chancel floor. The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church," often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered "1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent years have assigned to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or before" and "1682." Unlike the belfry of the Brick Jamestown Church, the tower of old "St. Luke's" is incorporated into the west gable-end of the building. It, too, probably had a battlemented top, which has now been changed. That the Jamestown belfry is a good deal older than the one at "St. Luke's" is proven by the simplicity of design of the former in contradistinction to the sophisticated appearance of the latter. The "St. Luke's" tower possesses Jacobean brick quoins, a feature imitating corner stones, and an "embryo" or much simplified, triangular pediment, of Jacobean derivation, over the circular-headed doorway. [Illustration: The East Window St. Luke's Church, Va.] The buttresses, the crow-stepped gables, the pointed windows at "St. Luke's" are all original medieval features. In fact the great east window of the chancel, made up of eight main lights separated by foliated tracery, is English Gothic, of the style known as "Decorated" or "Geometric," which flourished between 1307 and 1377 in England. A source for this east window is the chancel traceried window at Liscomb Park Chapel (c. 1350), Soulbury, England. From the foregoing it is obvious that the main body of the "St. Luke's" church preceded the Tudor Style and is "Decorated" Gothic. The tower has Jacobean trimmings. At the same time it is erroneous to call this church "Gothic Colonial." What a mixture! In style it is English Gothic, that is, Gothic of England. It is as much Gothic as "Westminster Abbey" or "Wells" or "Yorkminster." What a multitude of errors is covered by that word "Colonial." Recent research done at "St. Luke's" has uncovered the original, chamfered, timbered trusses and horizontal tie-beams, which were exposed in the nave; traces of the original gallery at the tower end of the nave which appears to have had balusters of oak; the old wineglass pulpit; and the enclosed porch or vestibule in the first storey of the tower. [Illustration: Liscomb Park Chapel Soulbury England c. 1350 A Source for "St. Luke's," Virginia] Let not the reader think that most Virginia churches in the seventeenth century had towers. Such buildings were usually simple rectangles, occasionally with a porch attached to the long side on the south, in the approved English parish church manner. Giving an idea how an early church was constructed is revealed in the building specifications of the "Second Hungars Church" (1680), in Northampton County--an edifice which was contemporaneous with old "St. Luke's." Specifications can be pretty dry reading, but this one had a humorous touch or two. It appears that the church wardens contracted with the builder to put up a timber-framed parish church forty feet by twenty, with wall plates ten feet high. Wall plates, by the way, are timbers upon which rafters rest. Of "substantial substance," the framing was to be oak, and the foundation to be locust blocks of wood. The walls and roof were to have planks or clapboards. It is interesting that the upper edge of the roof planks were to be let, or set, into the rafters for strength and tightness. The inside of the church was also to be planked in order to seal off the walls of the "Old Church,"--the "First Hungars Church,"--which seems to have been incorporated, at least in part, in the second shrine. The planks covered the barrel vault, which was called "Arches," situated beneath the roof. Nails, planks, and food were to be furnished to the builder. One of the excellent contract provisions was that the contractor was to take over no additional work elsewhere, or to leave the works, except upon some great occasion, for a week or two at the most. Upon completion of the job he was to receive ten thousand pounds of tobacco and to have the help of a hand able to work an axe for the space of a month. The foremost example of Jacobean Style in early ecclesiastical work was the "Second Bruton Church," Middle Plantation, now Williamsburg. It was completed in 1683--that is, soon after "St. Luke's,"--and has been completely demolished. Excavations of its brick foundations revealed that it possessed buttresses on its long sides and at the back. The inside measurements were sixty feet by twenty-four. The main west door--there was no tower--and the chancel door on the side were to be, with minor variations, the sizes of the doors of the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown. An old drawing shows that the "Second Bruton Parish Church" had curvilinear gables of the type found at "Bacon's Castle," and the western rose window was flanked by scrolls which were probably formed of hand-cut brick. Both of these features are Jacobean. Another early doorway, which is plain, round-headed, and of rubbed brick, stands at the "Merchant's Hope Church," Prince George County, and in style it seems to bolster the theory that at least a portion of the existing shrine is of the seventeenth century. Some believe that brick "Pungoteague Church" on Eastern Shore, originally erected on a cross plan, with a mansard roof, was seventeenth-century in date, but it is the part of wisdom to accept G. C. Mason's belief for valid reasons that the pile was constructed as late as 1738. That some of these parish churches in Virginia had interiors which were richly furnished is evident from the description of the builder's work on one of them, the frame "Poplar Spring Church," (1677), Gloucester County. Father Time has unfortunately done away with this shrine, but we do know that its walls and ceiling were lathed and plastered, and that the chancel, fifteen feet long, was to be divided from the nave by a wooden _rood screen_--a "Screen to be run Crosse the church," and to have "ballisters." In the medieval English church the rood screen is the name given to the chancel or choir screen when it supported the "rood," a large cross. It was customary to build such a screen in three parts: a base comprising panelled walls as high as the pews, a middle section with a row of wood balusters set closely together, and a top part of pierced woodwork--that is, traceried work--and heavy cornice. [Illustration: Elements of the Typical Medieval Church in Va.] At "Poplar Spring Church" there were double pews built on each side of the chancel abutting the rood screen. Also set against the rood screen was another double pew, this one between the pulpit in the nave and the screen. The rest of the pews in the church, on both sides of the aisle, were double and had panelled backs. The pulpit itself was hexagonal and a three-decker affair. There was a six-foot space permitted for the reading desk, set eighteen inches above the floor, and for the passage into the pulpit. Half way up were the minister's pew and desk. The church was also the proud possessor of a flowered, crimson, velvet pulpit cloth, a silver communion service, and a drawing of cherubim, presumably upon the altarpiece. Although it was customary to place wainscoted pews within the chancel, the "Second Lynnhaven Church," of 1692, Princess Anne County, had also in the chancel several benches, which were used by the parish poor. That all seventeenth-century churches in the Old Dominion were not of brick or wood is shown by the "Second York Church" (1697), now Grace Church, Yorktown, which was constructed of native marl. The Transitional Style of architecture, which, as we have seen, greatly influenced rural dwellings from about 1680 to about 1730, is marked in the Virginia church chiefly by the doorway designs. The earliest motif of a brick doorway is that plain, round-arched one on the entrance to the Jamestown Brick Church belfry. By 1700, brick doorways were becoming transitional: a good example is that at "Ware Church" (perhaps 1715), Gloucester County, which is flanked by brick pilasters and an arch bounded by a shallow hood--the whole made up of rubbed or gauged brick. One of the most curious doorways of transitional vintage is the main south entrance to "Yeocomico Church" (1706), Westmoreland County. The door head consists of three brick arches in relief with stucco tympanums or fillings. Of the three, the top arch rests upon the other two--much in the manner that small arches cluster inside a large arch in some English Gothic doorways. But the "Yeocomico" door has the flavor of transitional experimentation. Apropos of this same "Yeocomico" church, the door itself is a heavy battened door which is Tudor, and which is believed to have been taken from an earlier church (1653) on the same site. At all events, the long vertical panels on the exterior of the door are reminiscent of those at "Christ's Cross," New Kent County, already described. But the "Yeocomico" entrance has an additional medieval feature: a small door or "wicket" within the big door--a feature common to buildings of the Middle Ages abroad. Most early Virginia churches possessed parsonages, usually on the glebe land and therefore known as "glebes." We have already cited, as an example of the Transition, the "Abingdon Glebe House" (c. 1700), Gloucester County, erected with balancing pavilion wings. Another interesting glebe was specified in 1635 for erection on Old Plantation Creek in Northampton County. Such a building appears to have been of the "hall-and-parlor" variety with a chimney at each end and with a study "outshut" and a buttery "outshut" off each chimney. On the front was an "entry," the familiar little enclosed square porch, and at the rear were a "Kitchinge" and a "Chamber." In size this parsonage was to be forty feet by eighteen, and there were nine feet to the "wall plates," upon which the rafters rested. One could almost make an accurate restoration drawing of this glebe house from the description. But it must have been typical of the minister's house of that day, and the building of a "study" perhaps indicated that religion was then based on learning. v. STATE HOUSES AND OTHER PUBLIC BUILDINGS From the records we may learn of many kinds of public buildings, even though their actual remains have disappeared above ground. We know, for instance, of the Tavern or Ale-house (1660) of Thomas Woodhouse at Jamestown, where at one time were made the laws of Virginia. We are cognizant of the Eastern Shore tavern of 1697 where John Cole was licensed to keep an "ordinary" and to retail liquors near the Court House. We have heard of the "quartering house" of 1670 in Accomack County, which was a kind of tourist home for one-night stop-overs. We learn that there were many courthouses in seventeenth-century Virginia, like that of 1690 in Northampton County, which is sketchily described as having one exterior chimney and as being twenty-five feet long. Jails there were, too, like the Westover Prison and Stocks of 1643, which were probably constructed by Theoderick Bland. In Accomack there stood in 1674 a "logg'd" prison, fifteen feet by ten. At Westover, it may be noted, was also a "Brew house." Also from the records we find mention of the Salt Works of 1676 owned by Daniel and Anne Jenifer and of Darby's Grist Mill of 1668, both in Accomack County; and of the Windmill of 1642 constructed jointly by John Williams and Obedience Robins, "chirugion," in Northampton County. The Glass House or Factory of 1608 near Jamestown is one building which we do know something about, because of excavations by the National Park Service. It had originally a dirt floor about fifty feet by thirty-seven--a large area. Upon this floor were built three crude stone furnaces and a pot kiln. There was probably an open-walled timber structure with a pitched roof over the large floor and with louvres for the thick smoke to escape through the roof. There is not the slightest evidence for the use of crucks in the present off-site reconstruction of this great pile. [Illustration: THE COUNTRY-LUDWELL-THIRD STATE HOUSE BLOCK Author's reconstruction from _Jamestown and St. Mary's_ showing four residences and the first American state house to be built specifically as a State House or Capitol.] When we take up the subject of State Houses, we have an excellent example in the "Third State House" at Jamestown, which, as heretofore noted, formed part of the "Country-Ludwell-State House" block of five buildings a little up river from the Brick Church of 1647. Only the foundations of the "Third State House" remain, but from them and from the references in the Virginia records we know pretty much how the edifice looked originally. And it is noted as the first structure in the United States erected as a legislative seat. Built about 1662 and burned in 1676, the "Third State House" was a medieval cross-house possessing close analogies to "Bacon's Castle" in the general neighborhood, and it rose two full storeys and garret high. There was no basement. The main façade, facing the south and the main body of Jamestown, had a porch and porch chamber, and at the back was a tower which held the stairway--an area which in that day was known as a "Stair Case." In size, the stair tower was about the same as that of the "Brick State House of 1676" in St. Mary's City, Maryland, a cross-building which postdated the Virginia structure by only about thirteen years. The interior of the "Third State House" must have been impressive. Downstairs were a spacious waiting room and a Court House Room, in which the Governor and his Council met and in which at times Provincial Courts were held. Upstairs were another waiting room and the Assembly Hall or House of Burgesses. The little porch chamber on the second floor was used by His Majesty's Secretary of Virginia, until he was ordered to work in the eastern garret. The four great rooms in this pile--two down and two up--had huge fireplaces on their long sides. The downstairs fireplaces could burn nine-foot logs. All the ceilings had girders and joists exposed. After the conflagration of 1676 set by Nathaniel Bacon, the building was rebuilt (1685) on the same site, probably using what brick walls were still standing, to become the "Fourth State House." It is believed that in the rebuilding there was not much change in the design. But it was only natural that some of the rooms should have new uses, so that we find that the lower waiting room was fitted into a Secretary's Office by placing a strong partition under the "second girder" and, because of dampness, by raising the floor two feet up from the ground. To keep persons from breaking in to steal the record books of the Colony in the small storage room next to the Secretary's Office, the windows were barred with iron and had board shutters half an inch thick, with cross-bars. [Illustration: In 17{th} C.--Va., builders used to scratch their initials on plaster. From J'town.] Virginia may well be proud of the design of this "Third State House" at Jamestown, which has recently been the subject of a special restoration study for the Commonwealth by this writer. That legislative seat, built nearly three hundred years ago, was dignified, handsome, impressive, and in fine scale. Through its portals passed in those days the chief figures of the Dominion. Its mullioned and diamond-pane windows, its pantile roof, and its porch and porch chamber gave the fabric a strong medieval flavor. It is unfortunate that the "Fourth State House" burned on October 31, 1698, through an accident. What kind of an accident the records do not state. Was it a faulty flue, an overturned sconce, or carelessness in lighting a tobacco pipe? We shall probably never know. But the very next year the early capital, Jamestown, which had flourished for ninety-two years, was abandoned in favor of Middle Plantation, "nigh his Majesties Royall Colledg of William and Mary." Three years before the destruction by fire of the "Fourth State House," the foundation of the "Sir Christopher Wren Building" of William and Mary College was laid down (1695). The shape of the great structure was to have been a quadrangle in the best English tradition of the Middle Ages. Colleges in Britain, as early as the 1200s, were in their general equipment much like monastic establishments, grouped about an arcaded cloister, and were halls of residence for communities of teachers and students. But in Williamsburg the Wren Building was slow to get started, and has in truth never been completed in the form of a rectangle. By 1705, the year of the first fire, only the front façade and half of the north side had been completed. Consequently, for all intents and purposes, the edifice is an eighteenth-century structure, in spite of its earlier foundation, and belongs more to Classic Williamsburg than to the former era. In more than one respect it paved the way for the Virginia Georgian. For all that, the style of the original building may be said to be Transitional, with Georgian details, like modillions in the cornice. The main façade, one hundred and thirty-six feet long, is distinguished by a "break-front" or projecting bay on the center, crowned by a steeply pitched gable--the motif being repeated on the courtyard side. According to an old drawing of 1702 the entrance façade had in the center two balconies, one above the other, over the great, arched, front doorway. The hipped main roof is crowned by a "tower" or cupola. The arrangement of the main roof on the quadrangle side is unique: there is on each side of the central gable a row of hipped roofs. In the early days in Virginia there must have been many a building with a similar row. It is possible that the "First State House" itself had three hips contiguous to one another instead of the three gables which we have drawn herein. At any rate, in order to see existing parallels one has to visit the Bermudas, the Bahamas, or even Great Britain herself. V THE RICH HERITAGE OF ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS Although it is true that the vast majority of English buildings in Virginia during the seventeenth century were simple and unadorned, constructed by plain people, there was a large number of structures which had ornate or costly details and exquisite furnishings. What is known about these interesting features is still largely unknown to Virginians, and it is the purpose of this chapter to make mention of some of them. The richest details known to a seventeenth-century building in the Old Dominion appear to have once upon a time decorated the ceiling of the Great Hall of "William Sherwood's House," built about 1677-80 in Jamestown. The dwelling was a small, brick, storey-and-garret residence built on top of and across the foundation ruins of the old "Governor's House," already described. Mr. Sherwood's Great Hall, seventeen feet by sixteen in size, was rented in 1685 by the Government of Virginia and used as a Council Room by His Majesty's Governor and Council. Now for the discovery. It was in the excavations of 1935 in Sherwood's neat, brick basement, and in the area immediately surrounding that cellar, that more than fifty thousand fragments of plaster were retrieved. There are still some who do not believe that this plaster work came from Sherwood's House; but like "Kilroy," this writer was there and can vouch for its coming from Sherwood's. In fact we have charts showing exactly where each important fragment of plaster was found, and at what depth below the ground. At any rate, some of the plaster was colored or frescoed, and much of it was moulded. There were two particular pieces of plaster with raised letters upon them: on one the letters "VI," on the other the letter "Y." What did they mean? This writer invited Mr. Singleton Moorehead, of the Williamsburg Restoration, down to Jamestown Island to view the letters, and he immediately identified them as belonging to the "Garter" of the Royal Arms of Great Britain. In quoting what the Garter states, we have underlined the Jamestown letters, thus: "HONI SOIT Q_VI_ MAL _Y_ PENSE." Translated, the words mean, "Evil be to him who evil thinks." There is no doubt that Mr. Moorehead was correct. The tail of the "Q" in "Q_VI_" showed plainly, and the blank space in front of the "_Y_" indicated that it was a letter by itself. But with the Garter in hand we could identify the other important plaster finds--the masks, roses, leaves, the lion, the hand-and-book, and the ribs, which ordinarily divide a large plaster composition into separate panels--as part of the Royal Coat of Arms. [Illustration: The Now Famous Letters from the Jamestown Plaster Garter identified by S. P. Moorehead] In England such a ceiling arrangement in plaster was called "pargetry" and was a Tudor manner of decorating an important room. How appropriate to find the Royal Arms of England in the room in Sherwood's which was used by His Majesty's Governor and Council. That was one of the great archaeological finds of America, and the translation of the inscription one of the great interpretations. The important, widespread, and non-perishable building material of tidewater was brick; and when we take up the subject of seventeenth-century brickwork, we may still with justification hover about the ruins of "William Sherwood's House" at Jamestown as a starting point. It was there were found the largest and most varied collection of rubbed or gauged brick in that capital city. By "gauging"--and we have mentioned the term before in describing certain church doorways,--we mean that the bricks have been cut and finished off by rubbing upon a sandstone. In England by 1660, only about seventeen years before Mr. Sherwood's home was erected, gauged bricks had become widely popular. Such bricks were usually lighter in color than the run-of-the-mill bricks, and were employed on cornices, belt or string courses, quoins at the corners of buildings, and the heads and jambs of openings. They dressed up an edifice in the eye of the seventeenth-century beholder. Further, we know that in Britain one of the ways of decorating an opening in a late medieval building was to put mouldings on jambs and head of a doorway or of a window. Apropos of Sherwood's at Jamestown, few of us, if any, know that his mansion possessed openings with _ovolo_ bricks--bricks rubbed and cut in an egg-shaped ornamental moulding. [Illustration: Part of a Medieval Ornamental Ovolo Jamb Brick from Sherwood's H. Jamestown] There seems little doubt that Virginians made bricks, even gauged bricks, in their capital and did not bring them from England--popular tradition to the contrary. Several brick kilns have been discovered at Jamestown by the National Park Service. One was a well-preserved, square brick kiln of about 1650, found with arched ovens and with some bricks and tiles in place. The citizens of James City had no difficulty in fabricating all the fancy and ornamental bricks or tiles which they desired. Virginia brick of the seventeenth century was generally called English brick or English _statute_ brick, not because it was brought from England--which it was not--but because its size was regulated by English law. There was another kind of brick used at that time in Virginia, the Dutch brick, made not by Hollanders but by Virginians and English, which was a great deal smaller than the English brick. The Jamestown English brick generally run 9" by 4-1/4" by 2-1/4" in size, but the Dutch brick, yellow in color, average 6" by 2-1/2" by 1-1/2". In the realm of fireplaces, early Virginia had some ornate ones. Old "Fairfield" (1692), Gloucester County, before its destruction, had a mantelpiece of carved marble and some "linenfold" wainscoting. A peculiarity of Gothic carved decoration, the linenfold design was employed in oak panels in imitation of folded parchment or linen. Sometimes in the Old Dominion a rich array of Dutch faïence tiles, five inches square, decorated the sides of a fireplace, as in the "Double House on the Land of the Reverend Hampton," already described. Those tiles, called Dutch, but probably made in England in the Dutch manner, have blue designs upon a milky white surface, and show human figures--Dutchmen--throwing javelins, bowling, or playing games. In the field of wrought-iron work early Virginia was outstanding. Iron was a common commodity, even as far back as 1610, when the Spanish spy, Don Miguel, wrote from Jamestown to Spain that iron mines, and mines for other metals, were being worked in Virginia. Then, in 1619, Sir Edwin Sandys, Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London, sent one hundred and fifty persons to Virginia to set up three iron works. Glassware, too, was made as early as 1608, at the "Glass House" on Glass House Point, near Jamestown, and was imported into England; but the fragile nature of glass has caused it to endure less well than wrought-iron. Probably much of the best quality ironwork was brought from England: we have record, for instance, of Sir John Harvey in 1639 bringing with him "iron wares to the value of upwards of £45." The wooden casement window, as well as that of wrought-iron, often gave Virginians a chance to create beautiful and enriched designs. The little metal casement taken from the ruin on the "John Washington Farm" of about 1670 in Westmoreland County measures only 12-3/4" across and 18-1/2" tall, yet it has a fairly ornate iron plate, punched and cut out in an interesting design, over which is fastened a spring latch-bar, also of a cut-out shape. A ring or pull through which a finger could be slipped to twist a lever against the latch-bar to open the casement was welded to the latch itself. When viewed from the interior of a room, the ornamental fastener was especially effective silhouetted against the light. There was no limit to the fanciful shapes and decorations of such fasteners. The "First State House," which as we have already noted formed a group of three row dwellings at Jamestown, had in its day probably as much wealth of ornate ironwork as any other building in the Old Dominion. From its ruins came a veritable mine of hardware of good quality, yet rusted. A few specimens may be mentioned here: Cock's Head hinges--a type of "H"-hinge with four heads, the pattern of which harks back to Roman times; an ornamental cupboard latch-lock, made of wrought-iron and steel, with a punched and lobed silhouette, a spring, a pull for turning; and a bar delicately incised with diagonal grooves. Another bit of hardware from the "First State House" was a pair of decorative cupboard latch-bars, with diagonal grooves, with spear-and-ball terminations at one end and with "V"-shaped notches at the other. An outstanding example of woodcarving is the folk Jacobean capital with its heart shield and twin volutes at the dwelling, "Christ's Cross," in New Kent. How many other wood sculptures of equal importance have been lost in the almost clean sweep of seventeenth-century Virginia building? For all that, we know today that the Virginia domicile and edifice sometimes possessed in its details and its decoration an elegance scarcely yet realized in this country--an elegance for which it is necessary to search England to find the proper sources and comparisons. [Illustration: MEDIEVAL DOOR AND FURNITURE HARDWARE FROM JAMESTOWN Originally made for _Antiques Magazine_, this drawing shows a. wrought-iron key; b. and i. Cock's Head hinges; c. door-pull escutcheon; d. iron key; e. part of a strap-hinge; f. stock-lock main plate; g. small brass cabinet hinge; h. brass keyhole escutcheon.] VI EPILOGUE: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES? When over the fens and marshy slashes of Jamestown Island the eighteenth century dawned in that year of 1700, there were two significant aspects of Virginia architectural history which stand out clearly. Today the first of these aspects is well known, but the second is known only to a handful of persons. They are: 1. The most important style of architecture of the eighteenth century--the pseudo-classical Georgian--was about to make its entrée upon the Virginia scene, with the building of the "Governor's Palace," Williamsburg, begun in 1706. 2. All the styles of architecture, both American Indian and English, which flourished in the seventeenth century carried over--_hung over_--into the eighteenth century, and even into the nineteenth century. The Georgian Style, of course, was actually English Georgian--Georgian of England--and in Virginia it prevailed from the 1710s to the 1780s--a span of some seventy years. It ushered into the Old Dominion a rage for ballrooms, such as that in the "Governor's Palace," theatres, tea tables, and china. It marked the golden age of the great houses, like "Marmion," "Stratford Hall," "Westover," and "Mt. Vernon." At the same time in Virginia there existed side by side with the Georgian Style the following five styles of architecture, of which the last four have been identified and named by this writer for convenience: 1. The American Indian Style, which faded away probably in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. 2. The "Hangover" Medieval Style. 3. The "Hangover" Jacobean Style. 4. The Transitional Style, which, as we have seen, prevailed from about 1680 to about 1730. 5. The "Hangover" Transitional Style (after about 1730). In this way, like a mighty river the four main streams of Virginia architecture in the seventeenth century--American Indian, Medieval, Jacobean, and Transitional--flowed into the eighteenth, to be then joined by the Georgian tributary. Furthermore, in the nineteenth century the men of tidewater Virginia who put up the buildings in the false medieval style, the copybook, birthday-cake Gothic known as the "Gothic Revival," were not aware of, and took no cognizance of, the true medieval examples existing on their very doorsteps--a "Thoroughgood House" here, a "St. Luke's Church" there. That situation was one of the strange paradoxes of our architectural history. A few of us in very recent years are just beginning to label those English structures along tidewater which make up the bulk of Virginia architecture in the seventeenth century by the correct name, _Medieval_. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambler Manuscripts, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. "American Notes," C. E. Peterson, ed., _Journal of Society of Architectural Historians_. Bruce, P. A., _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century_. N. Y. 1895. 2 vols. Bushnell, D. I., Jr., _Native Villages and Village Sites East of the Mississippi_. Washington, D. C. 1919. Bushnell, D. I., Jr., _Virginia before Jamestown_. Washington, D. C. 1940. Caywood, L. R., _Excavations at Green Spring Plantation_ (brochure). Yorktown, Va. 1955. Forman, H. C., _The Architecture of the Old South_. Cambridge, Mass. 1948. Forman, H. C., "The Beginning of American Architecture," in _College Art Journal_, vol. 6. no. 2. Winter, 1946. Forman, H. C., "The Bygone 'Subberbs of James Cittie,'" in _William and Mary College Quarterly_, 2nd ser., vol. 20, no. 4. October, 1940. Forman. H. C., _Jamestown and St. Mary's: Buried Cities of Romance_. Baltimore, 1938. Forman, H. C., "The Old Hardware of James Towne," in _Antiques Magazine_, vol. 39, no. 1, January, 1941. Harrington, J. C., _Glassmaking at Jamestown_. Richmond, Va. 1952. Hatch, C. E., Jr., _The Oldest Legislative Assembly in America & its First State House_. Washington, D. C. Revised, 1947. Historic American Buildings Survey. Library of Congress. Washington, D. C. Gregory, G. C., "Jamestown--First Brick State House," in _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, vol. 42, pp. 193-199. July 1935. Lewis, C. M., and Loomie, A. J., _The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572_. Chapel Hill, N. C. 1955. Mason, G. C., _Colonial Churches of Tidewater Virginia_. Richmond, Va. 1945. Moorehead, S. P., "Christ's Cross," in _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, vol. 43. January, 1935. Moorehead, S. P., "The Castle," in _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, vol. 42. October, 1934. Stewart, T. D., "Excavating the Indian Village of Patawomeke," in _Exploration and Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1938_. Washington, D. C. 1939. Swem, E. G., _The Virginia Historical Index_. 2 volumes, Roanoke, Va. 1934-36. Waterman, T. T., _Domestic Colonial Architecture of Tidewater Virginia_. N. Y. 1932. Whitelaw, R. T., _Virginia's Eastern Shore_. Richmond, Va. 1951. 2 vols. Yonge, S. H., _The Site of Old Jamestown, 1607-1698_. Richmond 1904. INDEX Illustrations are lettered A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J. Abingdon Glebe, 27, 57 Accohannocks, 1 Accomack Co. (Va.), 14, 41, 58, 59 Accowmacks, 1 Act of 1639, 49; of 1662, 49 Albemarle Co. (Va.), 5 Alehouse, of Thomas Woodhouse, 58 Alford, John, 29 Algonquian, 1, 5 Allen, Arthur, 41 Ambler Manuscripts, 38, 45 Anglo-Saxons, 3 "Arches" (church), 54 Architectural details, heritage of, 63 Architecture, American Indian, 1, 21, 34, 69; Dutch, 24; English, 18, 69; English styles of, in Va., 21, 22, 28, 69; Georgian, 25, 27, 62, 69; Gothic Revival, 70; "Hangover" Jacobean, 70; "Hangover" Medieval, 69; "Hangover" Transitional, 70; Jacobean, 24, 42, 55; medieval, 18, 23, 28; Transitional, 23, 25, 26, 57, 62, 70. _see also_ Indian Architecture, Medieval Style Arms, of Great Britain, 64 Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, vi Athens, Greece, 43 Ayres family, vi Back Street, 46 Bacon, Nathaniel, 41, 60 Bacon's Castle, 24, 41, 55, 60 Bagnio, Indian, 12, 13 Baltimore, Lord, 16, 47 Bath houses, Indian, 12, 13 Bathing, Indian, 13 Bay (unit), 31 Bedford Co. (Va.), 1, 6 Belmont, 26 Berkeley (plantation), 30, 32 Berkeley, Sir William, 16, 43, 44, 48 Bermudas, 62 Bin House, 36, 46 Bland, Theoderick, 58 Bond Castle (Md.), 41 Bone-house, Indian, 11 Bowl, slipware, A Branding Iron, 20 Brick Church, Jamestown, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 60 Brick construction, 29, 33 Brick houses, half-and-half, 33 Bricklayer, first, in Va., 33 Bricks, Dutch, 66; English statute, 65, 66; ovolo, 65 Brickwork, black-diapered, 23; Jacobean, 43, 53; mouse-tooth, E; rubbed (gauged), 55, 57, 65; seventeenth-century, in Va., 33, 64, 65 Bridges (wharves), 14, 36 Bridges, Indian, 14 Britain; _see_ England Brunswick Co. (Va.), 15 Bruton Church, Second, 24, 55 Buildings, on a Virginia plantation, 35, 36; public, 58 Buttery (bottlery), 40, 42, 58 Cairns, 6 Calvert, Cecilius, 47 Camping stations, Indian, 13 Capitol, 25, 48, 59 Casement; _see_ Window "cats," 34 Ceiling, plastered, at Sherwood's, 64; of Indians, 15 Cell (aisle), 26, 27, 44, 49 Cellar, wine, 50 Ceremonial centers, Indian, 14 Chapels of ease, 50 Charleton, Stephen, 30 Chelsey, Richard, 28 Cherokees, 2, 6, 15, 16 Chesapeake Bay, 35 Chew family, vi chimney, board, 34; "catted," 34; pyramid, 19, 23, 24, 39; T-, 40; wooden (Welsh), 33, 34 Chimney-pent, 39 Chote (Tenn.), 16 Christ's Cross, 41, 42, 43, 57, 67 Church, Argall's, 51; at Hog Island, 51; cruck, 31, 50; elements of medieval, in Va., 50, 56; Elizabeth City, 51; First Hungars, 54; first, on Eastern Shore, 30, 31, 51; interiors, 55; Lord Delaware's, 50; Merchant's Hope, 55; new in 1636, at Jamestown, 51, 52; of 1607, 28, 31; palisaded, 30, 31; Poplar Spring, 55; Second Bruton, 24, 55; Second Hungars, 54; Second Lynnhaven, 56; second, on Eastern Shore, 31; Second York, 57; transitional, 57; Ware, 57; Yeocomico, 57. _see also_ Brick Church; St. Luke's Church. Claiborne, William, 30 Clapboards, 32, 54 Clough's tomb, 52 Cock's Head hinge, 39, 48, 67, 68 Cole, John, 58 College, William and Mary, 61, 62 Colonial style, a misnomer, 23, 53 Colonnade, in Va., 36 Construction, English medieval, 29, 32, 33, 34 Cornice, medieval, in Va., D Corotoman, 35 Cottage Period, the, 28, 33, 37 Cotton, Reverend, 30 Council Room, 16 Country house, development of, 37; _see also_ Governor's House Country-Ludwell-State House block, Jamestown, 49, 59 Court House, in Northampton Co., 58; in Va., 58; on Eastern Shore, 58; Room, 60 Cross-house, the, 41, 42, 43, 60 Crotchets; _see_ Cruck Cruck, 29, 31, 50 Curtain, the, in Va., 41 Cuspings (gable), 42 Dale, Sir Thomas, 30 Dancing Grounds, Indian, 14 Darby's Grist Mill, 59 Daubing; _see_ Wattles Decorated Style (window), 18, 53 Delaware, Lord, 50 Dome, gored, Indian, 12 Don Miguel (spy), 66 Door, battened, 40; earliest brick, in Va., 52; English Gothic, 57, 65; transitional church, 57; Tudor, 42, 57; wicket, 57 Double House, back of John White's Land, 46, 50; on land of Reverend Thomas Hampton, 46, 48, 51, 66 Duplex house, 45, 48 Dutch brick, 66; oven, 39, 65 Dwelling, _see_ House Early Cell type, 27 Eastern Shore, 1, 10, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 40, 51, 55, 58 Elizabeth (Queen), 19 Elizabeth City, 51 Elizabethan Style of architecture, 19, 24, 44 Empire, British, 19 England, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 42, 53, 65, 66 English arbor houses, 34 English bond, 33, 40, 52 English Gothic Style, 18, 19, 23, 53 English medieval construction, types of, employed by Indians, 34 English statute bricks, 65, 66 English Tudor Style; _see_ Tudor Style Factory, Glass, of 1608, 59, 66 Fairfield, 66 Fences, Indian, 8, 14, 35; pale, 30, 35; "Park-pale," 30 Fen's Point, 26 Finland, 13 Firebed, Indian, 9, 10, 13, 35 Fireplace, back-to-back, 48, 49, 50; diagonal, 26; hooded, 34; ornate, in Va., 66 First Hungars Church, 54 First State House, Jamestown, 20, 46, 47, 48, 62, 67; cellar plan of, 47 Fishing Creek, 31 Flemish bond, 52 Florida, 17 Folsom points, in Va., 1 Fort, at Dutch Gap, 30; at Henrico, 30; at Kent Island (Md.), 30; at Old Point Comfort, 30; at the "Town," 30; first, on Jamestown Island, _see_ James Fort; Indian towns Foster's Castle, 41 Four Mile Tree (plantation), 29 Fourth State House, Jamestown, 60, 61, 62 Fresco, at Jamestown, 63 Furnace, glass, 59, 66 Furniture, Indian, 9, 10 Gables, curvilinear, 24, 42; crow-step, 52, 53 Gallery, latticed, 51 Gardens, in Va., 36 Garret, the eastern, 60 Garter, plaster, at Jamestown, 64 Geometric Style (window), 53 Georgia, 6, 16 Georgian mansion, the, 25, 37 Georgian Style, in Va., 25, 27, 62, 69 Glass House, of 1608, 59, 66 Glass House Point, 66 Glassmaking, at Jamestown, 66 Glebes, 57, 58; _see also_ Abingdon Glebe Gloucester Co. (Va.), 27, 55, 57, 66 Gothic arch, 31 Gothic Revival, 70 Gothic Style of architecture, 18, 19, 53; _see also_ Medieval Style Governor, His Majesty's, 63, 64 Governor's Castle (Md.), 43 Governor's House, Jamestown, 45, 46, 63; drawing of, 45 Governor's Palace, 69 Great Plains, the, 6 Great Room; _see_ Hall "Greate Road, the," from Jamestown, 14 Green Spring, the, 16, 36, 43; pre-Berkeley house at, 44 Gregory-Forman theory, 46 Guillotine window; _see_ Window Half-and-half work, 33 Half-timber work, 23, 29, 32, 33 Hall (Great Hall, Great Room), 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 63 Hall, Assembly, 60 Hall-and-parlor house, 39, 40, 48, 58 Hampton (Va.), 2 Hampton Court, 18 Hampton, Reverend Thomas, 46, 48, 51, 66 Hardware, diagram of, 68; distribution of, at Jamestown, 38; drawing of door and furniture, from Jamestown, 68; furniture, 67, 68 Harmanson tract, 14 Harvey, Sir John, 48, 66 Hearth, central, 35 Henrico, City of, 32, 33 Henrico Co. (Va.), 41 Henry VIII, 19 Hog Island Church, 51 Hood, fireplace, 34 "Hortyards," in Va., 36 House, ale, 58; arbor, 6, 7, 8, 10, 34; bath, 12; beehive, 6; Bin, 36, 46; brew, 58; cell, 26, 27; "central-passage," 40; country, 35, 37; cruck, 31, 32; double, in Va., 45, 48; double-parlor, 43; earth, 29; "fair" or "English," 32; first brick, in Va., 33; first pre-fabricated, in Va., 32; "hall-and-parlor," 39, 40, 48, 58; hunting, Indian, 13; Indian "row," 15; May's, at Jamestown, 38; of Burgesses, 60; on land of Issac Watson, 38, 46; on land of Thomas Hampton, 46, 48, 66; medieval, one-bay, 23, 37, 38, 39; puncheoned, 30, 31; pre-Berkeley, 44; "quartering," 58; row, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49; Sherwood's, 63, 64, 65; the town, 44, 47; thatched, 34; timber-framed, 32, 45; triplet, 50; two rows of, at Jamestown, 32, 45; types of, in Va., 23, 28, 29; wheat, 37. _See also_ Cross house, Indian Architecture Hunting houses, Indian, 13 Huts, or booths, 28, 29, 37 Indian architecture, 1, 15, 21, 69; building methods on English, influence of, 34; council chamber, 16; designs, 15, 34; houses, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 34; hunting houses, 13; landing, 14; plastered ceilings, 15; sculpture, 11, 12, 14; towns, 2; tribes, 1. _See also_ Mounds Ingle recess, 38 Ionic capital, at Athens, 43; at Christ's Cross, 42, 43 Iron, branding, 20; wrought-iron, in Va., 66 Iroquoian, 2, 5 Isle of Wight Co. (Va.), 52 Italy, 22 Jacobean capital, 42, 43, 67; enframements, 42; gable, 24, 42, 55; pediment, 42, 53; quoins, 53; scrolls, 43, 55; style of architecture, 19, 23, 24, 55 Jail, 58; _see also_ Prison James City; _see_ Jamestown James Fort, fire at, 34; near Governor's House, 46; painting of, 44; plan of, 29, 30; shape of, 28, 29; site of, 22, 46 James River, 1, 2, 5, 13, 28, 30, 48, 51 Jamestown (James City), 14, 16, 17, 33, 35, 36, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 66 Jamestown Brick Church, 46; _see also_ Brick Church Jamestown Island, 28, 29, 31, 46, 64, 69 Jamestown Museum, 44 Jefferson, Thomas, 5 Jenifer, Daniel and Anne, 59 Jerkin (roof), 26 Jesuits, 17 Jones, Inigo, 22 Kecoughtan, 2 Keeling House, 40 Kiln, brick, 36, 65; lime, 36; pottery, 36, 59 King's Creek, 31 King's House, Indian, 10 Kocher, Lawrence, 44 Lamb's tongue, 39 Lancaster Co. (Va.), 27, 35 Late Cell type, 27 Latrobe, Benjamin, 43 Linenfold, 66 Listening post, Indian, 8, 14 Liscomb Park Chapel, 53 Littleton, Southey, 41 Log cabins, 31 London, England, 22, 49, 50; unit floor plan in, 48, 49 Lunette window, 7, 9 Malvern Hill, 41 Manahoac, 2 Marmion, 69 Maryland, 16, 41, 43, 60 Mason, G. C., 52, 55 Massacre of 1622, 30 May, Richard, house of, 38 _Mayflower, The_, 32 Medieval, Late; _see_ Tudor Medieval cottage in England, the, 19 Medieval Style of architecture, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 29, 70; "Hangover," 70 Merchant's Hope Church, 55 Middle Plantation; _see_ Williamsburg Mill, Darby's Grist, 59 Mines, iron, in Va., 66 Monocan, 2 Moorehead, S. P., 64 Mortuary temples, Indian, 11 Mounds, burial, 5; effigy, 6; platform, 6, 12 Mt. Vernon, 69 National Park Service, 38, 59, 65 New England, 26, 32 New Kent Co. (Va.), 41, 57, 67 New Towne, at Jamestown, 46 Nogging, brick, 32 Norfolk, 40 North Carolina, 30 Northampton Co. (Va.), 29, 37, 54, 58 Nottaway town, 4; tribe, 2 Old Brick Church; _see_ St. Luke's Church Old Plantation Creek, glebe at, 58 One-bay dwelling, in Va., 23, 24, 37, 38, 39 Orange Co. (Va.), 5 Orapaks (Va.), 11, 16 Orapaks Treasure House, 11, 16 Orchard Run, Jamestown, 22, 46, 51 Ossuaries, 12 Outhouses, in Va., 23, 35, 36, 40 Outshuts, 23, 26, 39, 44, 58 Ovens, Indian, 12; English, 65 Oxford (England), 50 Paint, in Va., 36 Painting of James Fort, 44 Palaces, Indian, 10 Palisading (palisades), 2, 3, 4, 15, 29, 30, 35, 44, 45 Palladio, Andrea, 22 Pamunkey (Va.), 12, 21; Indian Reservation, 15, 21 Pantile, 48, 61, G Pargetry, 64 Pasbyhayes (suburb), 14 Paski, town of, 4 Patawomeke (Potomac), village, 3 Paths, Indian, 14, 35 Peaks of Otter, 1, 6 Piedmont, 1, 5 Pilgrim Fathers, 28 "Pinewoods," 40, E Plan, unit floor, in Va., 48 Plantation, the, in Va., 35 Plaster, 15, 32, 34, 61; at Sherwood's, 63, 64 Plowden, 34 Plymouth Rock, 28 Pocahontas, 51 Poplar Spring Church, 55, 56 Porch chamber, 41, 60 Porch, enclosed, 41, 42, 43, 49, 50, 54, 56, 58, 60 Portan (Powhatan) Bay, 10 Post and pan (wattle-and-daub), 30 Pottery, Indian, 21 Pottery kiln, 36; _see also_ Kiln Powhatan, 10, 11, 12, 16; Confederacy, 1, 5 Prince George Co. (Va.), 55 Princess Anne Co. (Va.), 40, 41, 56 Prison, log, 58; _see_ Jail Pulpit, hexagonal, 56; wineglass, 54 Puncheoning, 3, 15, 29, 30, 35, 51 Puncheons (quarters, punches), 3, 29, 30 Pungoteague (brick) Church, 55 Quacasum House, 11 Quadrangle, the medieval, 62 Quakers, 37 Queen Anne, 19 Queen Elizabeth, 19 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 30 Rapidan River, 5 Renaissance architecture, 19, 24 Renaissance, Early, 19, 24; High, 19 Restoration, Williamsburg, 64 Richardson House, 27 Richmond (Va.), 2 Rivanna River, 5, 6 Road, "Greate," 14, 35 Roanoke Fort (N. C.), 30 Robins, Obedience, 59 Rogers, Will, 16 Rolfe, John, 51 Roman numerals, on timbers, 32 Roofs, bark, 7, 8, 15, 34; board, 30, 31, 34, 54; catslide, 26, 27; gambrel, 26, 27; hinged, of Indians, 15; hip, 26, 27, 62; Indian, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15; mansard, 55; pantile, 48, 61; "pyramid," 26; shingle tile, 49; "shingled" with dormers, 43; slate, 49; sod, 31; thatched, 34, 35; wooden shingle, 32, 34, 39 Room, Court House, 60; waiting, 60 Row houses, in London, 48, 49; in Jamestown, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50; Indian, 15 Salt Works, 58 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 66 Sapponey (Va.), 15 Scaffolding, Indian, 12, 13 Screen, rood, 56; hall, 40 Sculpture, Indian, 11, 12, 14; folk, at Christ's Cross, 42, 43, 67 Second Bruton Church, 55 Second Hungars Church, 54 Second Lynnhaven Church, 56 Second York Church, 57 Secretary of Va., 60 Secretary's Office, 60, 61 Shenandoah River, 5 Sherwood's House, Jamestown, 63, 64, 65, H Short, bricklayer in 1607, 33 Shutters, bark, 9; board, 29, 61 Siouan, 1, 4, 5, 12 Sioux Indians, 6 Skipwith family, vi Smith, Capt. John, 31, 50 Smith's Fort Plantation (Rolfe House), 41 Soulbury (England), 53 Southampton Co. (Va.), 4 Spain, 66 Spanish architecture, in Va., 17 Spanish settlement in Va., 17 Specifications, for church, 54 St. Augustine (Fla.), 17 St. Luke's Church (Old Brick Church), 52, 53, 54, 55 St. Mary's City (Md.), 16, 60 Stack, freestanding, B; diamond, 42 Stafford Co. (Va.), 4 Stair Case, the, 60 Stair tower, 23, 41 Stairs, open-well, 26; winding, 37 State House, First, 20, 46, 47, 48, 62, 67; Fourth, 60, 61, 62; Third, 49, 59, 60, 61 State House, Brick, of 1676 (Md.), 60 Storehouses, in Va., 45; _see also_ Bin House Strachey, William, 28, 33 Stratford Hall, 69 Style, medieval, naming of, 70 Styles, architectural; _see_ Architecture Surry Co. (Va.), 24, 41 Sweating house, Indian, 12, 13; _see also_ Bath houses Sweet Hall, 40, F Sword, from Jamestown, J Tavern, of John Cole, 58; _also see_ Alehouse Temples, Indian, 10, 11, 12 Tennessee, 16 Tercentenary, Jamestown, 52 Third State House, Jamestown, 49, 59, 60, 61 Thoroughgood House, 40 Tiles, Delft, 49, 66; faïence, 49, 66; shingle, 32, 33, 49; square paving, 51, 52; _see also_ Pantiles Timber-framing, 29, 32, 35, 51, 54; diagram of, 32 Tombs, in Jamestown Brick Church, 52 Towers, church, 51, 52, 54, 56 Towles Point, 26, 27 Town House, of Cherokees, 16 Town houses, in Va., 44, 47; stock sizes of, 47 Towns, Indian, 2, 4, 15; in Virginia, 47 Transitional, "Hangover," 70 Transitional Style of architecture, 23, 24, 25, 26, 57, 62 Treasure House, at Orapaks, 11, 16 Treasure houses, Indian, 10 Triplet house ("triplex"), 50 Tudor Chimney stacks, 42 Tudor Style of architecture, 18, 19, 53, 64 Turnpikes (gates), 4 Vann House (Ga.), 16 Vaults, Indian, 7, 12; Roman, 7 Vernacular, the English, 18 Virginia Company of London, 47, 66 Virginia Medieval architecture, 23 Walls, battlemented, 47, 52, 53; palisaded, 2, 3, 4, 15, 30; puncheoned, 3, 15, 30; timber-framed, 29, 32; wattled, 3, 13, 30, 31; _see also_ House Warburton House (Pinewoods), 40, E Ware Church, 57 Washington Farm, 67 Waterman, Thomas T., 44, 52 Watson, Isaac, house on land of, 38, 46 Wattle-and-daub (wattling), 3, 13, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 West Point (Va.), 15, 21 Westminster Abbey, 53 Westmoreland Co. (Va.), 67 Westover Prison, 58 Wharves, Indian, 14; called "bridges," 36 White Hall (London), 22 White, John, house back of land of, 46 Wigwam; _see_ House William and Mary College, 61, 62 Williams, John, 59 Williamsburg (Va.), 14, 19, 24, 25, 35, 55, 61, 69 Williamsburg Restoration, 64 Windmill, 23, 36, 59 Window, barred, 61; casement, 23, 25, 26, 29, 39, 40, 42, 48, 51, 61, 67, I; "guillotine" or sash, 25; Indian, 7, 9; lie-on-your-stomach, 39; lunette, 7, 9; paper, 29; pointed, 52, 53; rose, 55; traceried, 18, 53; shutter, 29; sliding-panel, 29 Windsor Castle, 18 Wingfield, President, 33 Wishart House, 39, 40 Woodhouse, Thomas, 58 Woods, Sam, plantation, 40 Wren Building, 62 Yeardley, Sir George, 45 Yeocomico Church, 57 York River, 10 Yorkminster, 53 Yorktown, 57 Zaharov, John T., G TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Text in italics or underlined text is surrounded with underscores: _italics_ Superscripted text is surrounded with curly brackets: 17{th} Punctuation has been corrected without note. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: Page 12: labyrinthin changed to labyrinthine Page 55: orginally changed to originally Page 69: ever changed to even Extensive research did not reveal that the copyright on this book was renewed. 
33820	----	AN ARCHITECT'S NOTE-BOOK IN SPAIN _PRINCIPALLY ILLUSTRATING THE_ DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THAT COUNTRY. BY M. DIGBY WYATT, M.A. SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, &C. WITH ONE HUNDRED OF THE AUTHOR'S SKETCHES, REPRODUCED BY THE AUTOTYPE MECHANICAL PROCESS. LONDON: AUTOTYPE FINE ART COMPANY (LIMITED), _36, RATHBONE PLACE._ TO OWEN JONES, ESQ. KNIGHT OF THE ORDERS OF SAINTS MAURICE AND LAZARUS OF ITALY, AND OF LEOPOLD OF BELGIUM, MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SAINT FERDINAND OF SPAIN, &C., &C., &C. _My dear Owen, _The last book I wrote I dedicated to my brother by blood; the present I dedicate to you--my brother in Art. Let it be a record of the value I set upon all you have taught me, and upon your true friendship._ _Ever yours,_ M. DIGBY WYATT. 37, Tavistock Place, W.C. October, 1872. PREFACE. Before quitting England for a first visit to Spain in the Autumn of 1869, I made up my mind both to see and draw as much of the Architectural remains of that country as the time and means at my disposal would permit; and further determined so to draw as to admit of the publication of my sketches and portions of my notes on the objects represented, in the precise form in which they might be made. I was influenced in that determination by the consciousness that almost from day to day the glorious past was being trampled out in Spain; and that whatever issue, prosperous or otherwise, the fortunes of that much distracted country might take in the future, the minor monuments of Art at least which adorned its soil, would rapidly disappear. Their disappearance would result naturally from what is called "progress" if Spain should revive; while their perishing through neglect and wilful damage, or peculation, would inevitably follow, if the ever smouldering embers of domestic revolution should burst afresh into flame. Such has been the invariable action of those fires which in all history have melted away the most refined evidences of man's intelligence, leaving behind only scanty, and often all but shapeless, relics of the richest and ripest genius. It is difficult to realise the rapidity with which, almost under one's eyes, the Spain of history and romance "is casting its skin." Travelling even with so recent and so excellent a handbook as O'Shea's of 1869, I noted the following wanton acts of Vandalism and destruction, committed upon monuments of the greatest archæological and artistic interest since he wrote. At Seville, the Church of San Miguel, one of the oldest and finest in the city, was senselessly demolished by the populace as a sort of auto-da-fé, and by way of commemoration of the revolution of September, 1867. In exactly the same way the fine Byzantine churches of San Juan at Lerida, and of San Miguel at Barcelona, have been "improved off the face of the earth." Church plate, Custodias and Virils of the D'Arfés, Becerrias, and other Art workmen, have vanished from the treasuries of all the great ecclesiastical structures; whether sold, melted down, or only hidden, "quien sabe?" The beautiful Moorish decorations of the Alcazar at Segovia had been all but entirely destroyed by fire, attributed to the careless cigar-lighting of the Cadets to whom the structure had been abandoned. The finest old mansion in Barcelona, the Casa de Gralla, probably the masterpiece of Damian Forment, and dating from the commencement of the fourteenth century, has been pulled down by the Duke of Medina Celi to form a new street. The beautiful wooden ceiling of the Casa del Infantado at Guadalaxara, the finest of its kind in Spain, in the absence of its owner, who I was told lives in Russia, is coming down in large pieces, and once fallen, I scarcely think it will be in the power of living workmen to make it good again. The exquisite Moorish Palace of the Generalife at Granada, second only to the Alhambra and the Alcazar at Seville, is never visited by its proprietor, and is now one mass of white-wash, a victim of the zeal for cleanliness of a Sanitary "Administrador." In short to visit a Spanish city now, by the light shed upon its ancient glories by the industrious Ponz, is simply to have forced upon one's attention the most striking evidence of the "vanity of human things," and man's inherent tendency to destroy. One of the most painful sensations the lover of the Art of the Past cannot but experience in Spain, is the feeling of its dissonance from, and irreconcileability with, the wants and economical necessities of to-day. The truth is that at the present moment, amongst the many difficult problems which surround and beset the ruling powers, one of the most puzzling is to find fitting uses for the many vast structures which have fallen into the hands of the Government. Churches in number and size out of all proportion to the wants of the population, monasteries entirely without monks, convents with scarcely any nuns, Jesuit seminaries without Jesuits, exchanges without merchants, colleges without students, tribunals of the Holy Inquisition with, thank God! no Inquisitors, and palaces without princes, are really "drugs in the market;" too beautiful to destroy, too costly to properly maintain, and for the original purposes for which they were planned and constructed at incredible outlay they stand now almost useless. For the most part, the grand architectural monuments of the country are now like Dickens' "used-up giants" kept only "to wait upon the dwarfs." Among a few instances of such, may be noticed the magnificent foundation of the noblest Spanish ecclesiastic, Ximenez. His College at Alcala de Heñares (see etext transcriber note) is turned into a young ladies' boarding-school; the splendid Convent of the Knights of Santiago at Leon, the masterpiece of Juan de Badajoz, dedicated to Saint Mark, and one of the finest buildings in Spain, is now in charge of a solitary policeman and his wife, awaiting its possible conversion into an agricultural college; the grand Palace of the Dukes of Alva at Seville is let out in numerous small tenements and enriched with unlimited whitewash; the Colegiata of San Gregorio at Valladolid, another of the magnificent foundations of Cardinal Ximenez, and the old cathedral at Lerida, the richest Byzantine monument in Spain, are now both barracks;--the vast exchanges of Seville and Saragossa are tenantless and generally shut up; the beautiful "Casa de los Abades" at Seville is converted into a boy's school and lodging-house for numerous poor tenants, the Casa del Infante at Saragossa, containing the most richly sculptured Renaissance Patio in Spain, is chiefly occupied as a livery stable-keeper's establishment; Cardinal Mendoza's famous Hospital of the Holy Cross at Toledo is now an Infantry College; the great monastery of the Cartuja near Seville, with one of the finest Mudejar wooden ceilings in the country, is turned into Pickman's china factory; the "Taller del Moro" a model Moorish house with its beautiful decorations, at Toledo, is now only a carpenter's workshop and storehouse; the celebrated establishment of El Cristo de la Victoria at Malaga, with all its glorious associations with the "Reyes Cattolicos," is occupied as a military hospital; and so on '_ad infinitum_.' Every record the pen and pencil of any accurate observer can preserve at this juncture of the fading glories of the past in Spain is, as it were, snatching a brand from the inevitable fire which has already consumed inestimable treasures upon its soil. It was to give a stamp of truth and authenticity to the few such records I might be enabled to make, that I determined to complete them in the actual presence as it were of the object illustrated, and to admit of no intervention between my own hand, and the eye of any student willing to honour my work with his attention. My sketches might no doubt have gained in beauty by being transcribed on stone or wood by some artist more skilful than I am, but as any such alteration would detract from their simple veracity, I preferred to make them at once upon the spot with anastatic ink, in order that they might be printed just as they were executed. Working with such ink in the open air is difficult, and the result capricious, I have therefore to ask for some indulgence, and to express a hope that any shortcomings in the drawings may be overlooked in the obvious interest of the subjects pourtrayed. Could I but have known, on leaving England, that my sketches could have been so successfully transferred to collodion, and printed therefrom by the beautiful Autotype mechanical process, as they have been since my return, I might have spared myself much extra trouble and anxiety, and have probably attained a much better result with less effort. In order to retain as much "local colour" as possible, I have preferred, even in the binding of this volume, to take its ornament in fac-simile from a beautiful little Mudejar casket of which I am the fortunate possessor, rather than to trust to my own powers to design something specially characteristic. I have further to ask corresponding indulgence for any literary insufficiencies my text may present. Although for some years a not inattentive student of Spanish art and literature, I could not, and cannot but feel that my acquaintance with the country was, and is insufficient for writing worthy notes even upon its architectural monuments, after the excellent works which have been already written by such of my countrymen as Ford, Street, Stirling, and O'Shea. At the same time, considering that to publish my sketches altogether without explanatory letter-press would greatly detract from their interest and consequent usefulness, I have brought into their present shape the scanty notes made upon the spot, more or less directly illustrative of the subjects upon which my pencil found occupation. It will be obvious, it is hoped, that in the selection of subjects for illustration, an endeavour has been made to avoid in any wise trenching upon or clashing with those already fully treated in the admirable work on Spanish Ecclesiastical Architecture by Mr. G. E. Street. Whilst he has turned from, I have turned towards, the Plateresque and later styles of Spain, and whilst he has sought specially for what might be useful to church-builders, my aim has been rather to collect hints for house-builders. Thanks to him, and others like him, we have now been left with more to learn in the latter direction than in the former. The following was my line of tour, and as it comprises most of what is, I believe, best worth seeing in Spain in the way of Art, with the notable exceptions of Santiago, Oviedo, Murcia, Cuenca, Placencia, Alicante and Valencia, which want of time did not permit me to include, I do not hesitate to commend it to those, desirous, as I was, of seeing as much as possible of what was excellent or curious within a short space of time. It was as follows, from London via Paris, Bordeaux, and Bayonne to Spain, beginning with Burgos, then successively visiting Valladolid (rail), Venta de Baños (rail), Leon (rail), Zamora and Salamanca, (by "diligence" from Leon) Avila (by "diligence" from Salamanca) Escorial (rail), Madrid (rail), Segovia (by "diligence" from Madrid and back), Alcala de Heñares (by rail from Madrid and back), Toledo (by rail from Madrid and back), Cordoba (rail), Sevilla (rail), Cadiz (by the Guadalquivir steamer), Gibraltar (by steamer), Malaga (by steamer), Granada (rail and "diligence,") Andujar ("diligence,") Madrid (rail), a second time, Guadalajara (rail), Saragossa (rail), Lerida (rail), Barcelona (rail), and Gerona (rail), thence to the frontier by "diligence," and home by rail, viâ Perpignan, Carcassonne, Toulouse and Paris. To preserve some sort of order, I have arranged my sketches as they were executed in point of time, and thrown my notes into a corresponding sequence. To assert that Spain can teach the lessons to the architect which may be gained from Italy, or even from France would, I think, be to claim too much for her, but on the other hand, it should be remembered, that it is a mine which has been very much less exhausted. To the interest and grandeur of its Northern Gothic buildings, Mr. Street has done a justice long denied to them; while Girault de Prangey, and above all Owen Jones, have helped us to a right appreciation of the works of those masterly artificers, the Moors, who seem to have possessed an intuitive love for the beautiful in structure. It is with no small pleasure that I have laboured to direct attention to other monuments, than those they have so satisfactorily illustrated, of a land from travelling in which I have derived great delight, and much instruction. If asked what predominant sensation Spanish Architecture had produced in my mind, I think I should be inclined to say, that of the manifestation of an entire indifference to expense. No one appears to have counted the cost of the work upon which he engaged. Whether it was a mediæval architect entering upon the vast construction of Cathedrals, such as Seville, Toledo or Leon, a Renaissance architect dashing upon the immense laying out of buildings such as the Cathedrals of Salamanca or Granada, or an Herrera plunging into such stone quarries as the Escorial or the Cathedral at Valladolid, not a shadow of doubt ever seems to have crossed the mind of the beginners, that some one would complete what they began. Such peculiarities of national character are apt to beget proverbs, and we accordingly find the grave ponderosity, and at the same time power, of the Spaniard in the undertakings of his palmy days, thus characterised in comparison with those of the other peoples of Europe. "In their undertakings," says "Der curieuse Antiquarius durch Europam,"[1] the natives of different European countries are assumed by old legends to proceed thus:-- "Der Frantzose wie ein Adler, Der Deutsche wie ein Bär, Der Italianer wie ein Fuchs, Der Spanier wie ein Elephant, Der Engelländer wie ein Löw."[2] To some, and but few, Spanish architects was it given to see ended what they commenced, and even such favourites of fortune generally suffered from a curtailment of their too ambitious designs. I could not but feel, in looking at the works of Herrera, and indeed at those of several other men, such as Diego de Siloe, Gil de Ontañon, Henrique de Egas, Alonso Covarrubbias, and Juan de Badajoz, that there exists for architecture a just mean between their frequent extravagance, and the sordid and shabby spirit in which we from time to time approach the question of expenditure upon "public works." The economy which consists in sobriety and simplicity of parts, especially in structures destined to subserve ordinary uses, is as much to be admired, as the economy which aims at the combination of magnificence with "cheese-paring" is to be deprecated and despised. CONTENTS PLATE I. BURGOS. The Arco de Santa Maria PLATE II. BURGOS. Casa de Miranda PLATE III. VALLADOLID. College of San Gregorio PLATE IV. VALLADOLID. Patio de San Gregorio PLATE V. VALLADOLID. Patio de San Gregorio PLATE VI. VALLADOLID. Small Patio, Colegio de San Gregorio PLATE VII. VALLADOLID. La Casa del Infantado PLATE VIII. VALLADOLID. Church of San Isidro PLATE IX. LEON. Convent of San Marcos PLATE X. LEON. Cloister of the Convent of San Marcos PLATE XI. LEON. Exterior of the Casa de Los Gusmanes PLATE XII. LEON. Patio of the Casa de Los Gusmanes PLATE XIII. LEON. Detail from a House in the Calle de La Tesoriera PLATE XIV. SALAMANCA. Exterior of the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XV. SALAMANCA. Patio of the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XVI. SALAMANCA. Staircase of the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XVII. SALAMANCA. Window from the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XVIII. SALAMANCA. Window in the Patio of the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XIX. SALAMANCA. External Window of the Casa de Las Conchas PLATE XX. SALAMANCA. Exterior of the Casa Monterey PLATE XXI. SALAMANCA. Renaissance House opposite San Benito PLATE XXII. SALAMANCA. Renaissance House in the Calle del Aguila PLATE XXIII. AVILA. Entrance Gateway of the Casa Polentina PLATE XXIV. AVILA. The Patio of the Casa Polentina PLATE XXV. AVILA. Iron Pulpit in the Cathedral PLATE XXVI. AVILA. Iron Pulpit in the Cathedral PLATE XXVII. ESCORIAL. General view of the Escorial PLATE XXVIII. SEGOVIA. Gateway in the City Walls PLATE XXIX. SEGOVIA. Archway in the Hall of the Kings PLATE XXX. SEGOVIA. Detail from the Alcazar PLATE XXXI. SEGOVIA. Exterior View of the Monastery of El Parral PLATE XXXII. ALCALA-DE-HENARES. Exterior of the Colegio de San Ildefonso PLATE XXXIII. ALCALA-DE-HENARES. Window of the Arzobispado PLATE XXXIV. ALCALA-DE-HENARES. Detail from the Arzobispado PLATE XXXV. TOLEDO. View of the Remains of a Moorish Fortress on the River PLATE XXXVI. TOLEDO. Bridge of Alcantara PLATE XXXVII. TOLEDO. Bridge of San Martin PLATE XXXVIII. TOLEDO. Moorish Gateway by the Bridge of Alcantara PLATE XXXIX. TOLEDO. Entrance Archway of the Zocodover PLATE XL. TOLEDO. Interior of the "Taller del Moro." PLATE XLI. TOLEDO. Tower of the Church of La Magdalena PLATE XLII. TOLEDO. Moorish Tower of San Pedro Martire PLATE XLIII. TOLEDO. Tower of the Church of Sant' Iago de La Vega PLATE XLIV. TOLEDO. External View of the Hospital of the Holy Cross PLATE XLV. TOLEDO. Cortile of the Hospital of the Holy Cross PLATE XLVI. TOLEDO. Doorway from the Hospital of the Holy Cross PLATE XLVII. TOLEDO. Entrance Gateway to the Alcazar PLATE XLVIII. TOLEDO. Patio of the Hospital of Cardinal Tavera PLATE XLIX. CORDOBA. Exterior of the Casa Cabello PLATE L. SEVILLE. Church of La Feria PLATE LI. SEVILLE. Church of San Marcos PLATE LII. SEVILLE. Remains of Mudejar House near La Feria PLATE LIII. SEVILLE. Mudejar Window in the Fonda de Madrid PLATE LIV. SEVILLE. View in the Upper Story of one of the Patios of the Casa de Pilatus PLATE LV. SEVILLE. Detail from a Doorway in the Upper Floor of one of the Patios of the House of Pilate PLATE LVI. SEVILLE. One of the Arches of the Patio of the Casa Alba PLATE LVII. SEVILLE. Detail from the Patio of the Casa Alba PLATE LVIII. SEVILLE. Arches from the Casa de Los Abades PLATE LIX. SEVILLE. View in the Patio of the Casa de Los Abades PLATE LX. SEVILLE. A Peep into an Ordinary Patio PLATE LXI. CADIZ. Internal View of the Cathedral PLATE LXII. MALAGA. The Fountain of the Alameda PLATE LXIII. MALAGA. Renaissance House in the Calle Sant' Augustin PLATE LXIV. MALAGA. Old Window of the Ospedale de Santo Tomé PLATE LXV. MALAGA. Knocker of the Monastery of Sant' Jago PLATE LXVI. GRANADA. Remains of the Alhambra as seen from the Albaycin PLATE LXVII. GRANADA. Entrance to the Bosqué del Alhambra PLATE LXVIII. GRANADA. Puerta de Justicia PLATE LXIX. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Sala de Embajadores PLATE LXX. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Stucco Detail from the Hall of the Ambassadors PLATE LXXI. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Detail of Glass Inlay from the Hall of the Ambassadors PLATE LXXII. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Mosaic from the Hall of the Ambassadors PLATE LXXIII. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Niche in La Sala de Las dos Hermanas PLATE LXXIV. GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA. Stucco Detail from the Sala del Tribunal PLATE LXXV. GRANADA. View of the Cathedral from the back of the High Altar PLATE LXXVI. GRANADA. The Reja of the Reyes Catolicos PLATE LXXVII. GRANADA. View of the Arzobispado PLATE LXXVIII. GUADALAXARA. Palacio de Los Duques del Infantado PLATE LXXIX. GUADALAXARA. Doorway of the Monastery of San Miguel PLATE LXXX. GUADALAXARA. Casa del Duqué de Ribas PLATE LXXXI. GUADALAXARA. Door Handle from the Calle del Barrio Nuevo PLATE LXXXII. SARAGOSSA. View of the Patio of the Palacio de La Infanta PLATE LXXXIII. SARAGOSSA. Detail of the Arcading of the First Floor of the Casa de La Infanta PLATE LXXXIV. SARAGOSSA. Exterior of the Exchange PLATE LXXXV. SARAGOSSA. Patio of the Casa de Comercio PLATE LXXXVI. SARAGOSSA. Patio of the House of the Marquis of Monistol PLATE LXXXVII. SARAGOSSA. Bronze Renaissance Knocker of a House in the Plazuela Aduana PLATE LXXXVIII. LERIDA. Tower of the Church of San Lorenzo PLATE LXXXIX. BARCELONA. Old House in the Calle de Santa Lucia PLATE XC. BARCELONA. Patio of the Casa de la Diputacion PLATE XCI. BARCELONA. Detail from the Casa de la Diputacion PLATE XCII. BARCELONA. Window from the Casa de la Diputacion PLATE XCIII. BARCELONA. Doorway in the Town Hall PLATE XCIV. BARCELONA. Knocker of an old House in the Calle Santa Lucia PLATE XCV. BARCELONA. Knocker to an old House in the Calle Santa Lucia PLATE XCVI. BARCELONA. Courtyard of an old House in the Calle de Moncara PLATE XCVII. BARCELONA. Staircase of an old House in the Calle de Moncara PLATE XCVIII. GERONA. Old House near the Estrella de Oro PLATE XCIX. GERONA. Upper Part of an old House and Spire of the Church of San Feliu PLATE C. GERONA. Old Walls near the Monastery of San Pedro FOOTNOTES ETEXT TRANSCRIBER NOTE PLATE 1 BURGOS THE ARCO DE SANTA MARIA MDW 1869 [Illustration: PLATE 1 BURGOS THE ARCO DE SANTA MARIA MDW 1869] PLATE I. _BURGOS._ THE ARCO DE SANTA MARIA. IT is sad to notice how few traces beyond its magnificent Cathedral are left in this, the capital of old Castile, of those "Castellanos rancios y viejos," who once so splendidly represented the pride and power of Spanish chivalry. Of the sixteen golden castles the city bears upon its stately arms how insignificant are the relics? The remains of its walls and bastions attest the many centuries during which it held its own against all comers, Christian or Infidel. Of these walls, our sketch represents a portion in which there is little doubt the Renaissance frontispiece and archway replaced an older and sterner portal, better suited probably for defence than decoration. The legend runs that this façade was executed by the citizens, who had been exhibiting proclivities of far too Communistic a character to be agreeable to so high-handed a sovereign as Charles V., in order to propitiate that potentate, and to commemorate a visit, on his part at least, of a conciliatory character. It would seem, however, that in spite of the loyalty which induced the Burgalese to assign the post of honour (always under the invocation of the "Virgen sin pecado concebida)" to the statue of the King, they took good care to give him for companions Nuño Rasura, and Lain Calvo, whom they had themselves elected in the tenth century to rule over them, and protect their Communal rights. The maintenance of these had been somewhat interfered with by the King of Leon, Fruela II., who had invited the chief citizens to a banquet, and then quietly removed them out of his royal way by summarily putting them all to death. Amongst other statues which adorn this gateway are to be found those of Don Diego Parcelos, the founder of the city in 884, of the Cid--the pride of Spain and especially of Burgos, in which city he was born, and where his bones still rest--and of Fernan Gonzalez who redeemed the district from the yoke of the Kings of Leon, to whom it had been tributary, and who constituted himself and his family its protectors, under the style and title of Condes de Castilla. The architecture of this frontispiece which gains great importance and much picturesque effect from its association with the bartizans and turrets of the mediæval gateway, has been attributed to Felipe de Borgoña, not apparently on any other grounds than the facts that he was an inhabitant of the city in whom his fellow-citizens felt great pride, and that he was employed upon the "Crucero" of the cathedral at about the period when this grand portal was probably erected. [Illustration: PLATE 2 BURGOS CASA DE MIRANDA MDW 1869] PLATE II. _BURGOS._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE MIRANDA. THIS plate introduces us to the most striking feature of all important Spanish houses, the Patio, or internal courtyard, answering to and perpetuating the Atrium of Roman architecture, with its impluvium and compluvium, and corresponding with the ordinary Cortile of the Italians. It is usually rectangular in plan, and entirely surrounded upon at least two stories by arcading, behind which run passages into which open the doors of every principal set of apartments of the house. There are rarely many windows in the walls of the Patios, as the rooms generally occupy the whole width intervening between the Patio walls, and the external walls of the house from which the light is mainly derived. There are, however, usually more windows on the lower story of the Patio than on the upper, since the chief saloons requiring most light were on the first floor, while much of the lower floor was occupied as was also usual in Italy, by retainers, servants, poor guests, mendicant friars and administradores--to say nothing of mules, and horses with stores and munitions of all sorts. Nothing can be more picturesque or better suited to the climate than these Patios, since owing to the deep arcades which surround the open part (the Cavædium) of the court-yard upon more stories than one, there is always some portion of the arcade in which shelter can be obtained from sun, rain, or wind, and in which the occupants of the several apartments can sit and work, or lounge and smoke, in abundant but not unbearable light, and perfect comfort. This facility of outlet enables them, during the hours when the sun shines most fiercely, to keep their living and sleeping rooms dark and cool, and in exactly the state to make the midday meal and subsequent siesta truly luxurious and refreshing. One open staircase usually connects the upper and lower arcades; admission is rarely given to the whole building at more than one point, the great door, adjoining which is almost always to be found the concierge, the janitor of the old Roman house, upon the model of which the Spaniards probably founded their notion of a residence at once noble and comfortable. Little need be said concerning the particular house sketched. It is one of the few left in Burgos to bear witness to the grandeur of its old aristocracy. Though once the residence of the powerful Condes de Miranda of the family of the Zunigas, it is now but a half ruined and entirely dirty lodging-house for the lower classes in a poor and neglected part of the city. A fine dedication to the most illustrious "Señor Don Francisco de çuñiga y Avellaneda, Conde de Miranda, Señor de la Villa Daça, y de la Casa de Avellaneda, by Pedro Martinez the Printer of Seville, in 1565," sets forth the arms as well as the style and title of the nobleman by whom, or by whose next descendant the "Casa de Miranda" of Burgos was probably built. The present representative of this family is no other than the Conde de Montijo, head of the house to which Her Majesty the Empress of the French belongs. The remarkable "Casa solar" of Peñaranda de Duero, within an easy excursion from Burgos, once a magnificent villa of the Zunigas, was one of the hereditary possessions of her sister the Duchess of Alba. There are some few other old houses remaining in Burgos, the most remarkable, for oddity rather than beauty, being the "Casa del Cordon;" so called from its façade, which exhibits a gigantic rope representing the "Cordon" of the Teutonic order, encircling and uniting, the arms of the Velascos, Mendozas, and Figueras with those of Royalty. It was erected by a Count Haro, Constable of Castile, at the end of the fifteenth century. It is now the residence of the Capitan General of the Province, and the property of the Duca de Frias, a descendant of Count Haro. The Casa de Miranda is to be found in Burgos, in the "Calle de la Calera," not far from the "Barrio de la Vega." No English visitor to Burgos should omit to see the Convent of las Huelgas, most interesting not only as founded by an English Princess, (Leonora, daughter of Henry II, married to Alfonso VIII), in 1180; but as evidencing in its design, which is exceptionally grave, simple, and well proportioned, an unquestionably English architectural influence. Of the Cathedral, remains of the Castle, and the Convent of the Cartuja it is needless to speak here, since they are certain not to be overlooked by the traveller. Mr. Waring, who has so well drawn the marvels of the last mentioned building,[3] has given some pretty illustrations of ornamental detail from the fine Renaissance "Ospedal del Rey," which may be found not far from the Convent of las Huelgas.[4] [Illustration: PLATE 3 Valladolid. College of San Gregorio. MDW 1869] PLATE III. _VALLADOLID._ COLEGIO DE SAN GREGORIO. FROM early in the fifteenth century, through the reigns of Juan II. and his successors, until the elevation of Madrid into the Capital by Charles the Fifth, and into the only and official seat of the Court by Philip II. Valladolid was emphatically the Royal city of Spain. It is there, accordingly, that the traveller would naturally look for relics of Royal and courtly magnificence as displayed in the stirring times during which the over-elaboration of Gothic Art began to merge itself, in sympathy with the Medicean energies of Rome and Florence, into the style of the Renaissance as practised at a later date by many citizens of Valladolid, such as Antonio de Arphe, and Juan de Arphe y Villafañe, master-workers in gold and silver; as Juan de Juni, and Hernandez, the marvellous wood-carvers and sculptors, authors of the peculiar gilt painted groups for which the city became so famous; and as Alonzo Berruguete, Henrique de Egas, and Macias Carpintero "masters of works" of no mean repute. Of all the glorious objects these men and their disciples and contemporaries produced in Valladolid a few "disjecta membra" alone remain. Of the very building, an outlying fragment of which forms the subject of the sketch under notice, all but the actual structure was destroyed by the French under Napoleon I. in person, who in 1809 inaugurated a reign of terror in the city. "No where," in Spain, as Ford writes in 1845, "has recent destruction been more busy (than in Valladolid); witness San Benito, San Diego, San Francisco, San Gabriel, &c., almost swept away, their precious altars broken, their splendid sepulchres dashed to pieces; hence the sad void created in the treasures of art and religion which are recorded by previous travellers while now-a-days the native in this mania of modernising is fast destroying those venerable vestiges of Charles V. and Philip II. which escaped the Gaul." The situation of this city on the direct line of railway communication between France and Madrid has greatly helped forward this "modernising" and even as this is written, numerous old streets are being pulled down to make way for the convenient, but far from picturesque monotony in which the nineteenth century usually writes its date upon its street architecture. In one respect, especially, the glory of Valladolid has entirely departed. In this, the city of the Arphes, in which as Navagiero[5] says, (writing in 1525), "Sono in Valladolid assai artefeci di ogni sorte, é se vi lavora benissimo di tutte le arti, e sopra tutto d'argenti, e vi sono tanti argenteri quanti non sono in due altre terre," no gold or silversmith's work is to be found worthy a moment's attention. The "Plateria" still remains, and the shops of the Plateros still abound, but, with the exception of two or three little old fragments saved from the melting pot, the elegant types of the "Varia commensuracion" of Villafañe have disappeared, giving place to poor imitations of bad French work. [Illustration: PLATE 4 VALLADOLID PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO. MDW 1869 MDW 1869] PLATE IV. _VALLADOLID._ DETAIL FROM THE "PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO." THE portion of the great Dominican Convent of Valladolid which formed the subject of the last sketch, is supposed to have been the commencement of a second Patio, or courtyard, around which were to have been arranged apartments, mainly intended for the reception of guests or visitors, lay as well as ecclesiastic. The arcading, of which Plate IV is a sketch, surrounds the great Patio of the monastic establishment of which the "Colegio" proper is the Church. Around this noble courtyard were grouped the apartments in which resided the powerful Black Friars--so called from their dress--worthy adherents to the traditions of the founder of the Order, himself an old Castilian, whose activity as Preachers, and still more as Inquisitors, made them, perhaps, even more powerful in controlling the destinies of the Peninsula than the political heads of the State. The first stone of this great establishment, dedicated to St. Gregory, and founded by Alonso of Burgos, Bishop of Palencia, was laid in the year 1488. Some idea of the rapid growth and elevation of the Dominicans about this period may be derived from an observation of the fact that this splendid Church and Monastery was the second great establishment of the Order in Valladolid completed within the space of about ten years. Cean Bermudez tells us that the Cardinal Don Juan Torquemada caused the Church of the Convent of St. Paul to be erected, which, with its façade of excellent architecture, was finished in the year 1463. The work at Saint Gregory lasted about eight years, a very short time, considering not only the quantity and extent of labour involved in the mere construction, but the amount of intricate and elaborate sculpture which decorates the façade of the Church. Its architect, Macias Carpintero, of Medino del Campo, is placed by Llaguno y Amirola upon a footing, as to merit, with the celebrated architects Siloe and Cruz of Cologne, who introduced extraordinary elaboration into the ornamental carving of Spain. The fate of Macias was a sad one, since on the last Saturday in July, in the year 1490, while working himself, and directing this great architectural work, he committed suicide, infinitely to the surprise and regret of the monks and their fellow-citizens. Some idea of the scale upon which the Patio of San Gregorio is worked out, may be derived from a knowledge of the facts, that the lower arcade is about twenty feet high, and the upper fifteen feet. The open space enclosed by the arcading is very large, and the distance from centre to centre of each of the pillars about nine feet. [Illustration: PLATE 5 VALLADOLID. PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO. MDW 1869] PLATE V. _VALLADOLID._ SMALL PATIO DE SAN GREGORIO. IN that material--stucco--which we of the nineteenth century affect to despise, and in the use of which both the Romans and the Great Masters of the Renaissance, under Raffaelle's guidance, excelled, the Moors delighted. By its use they were able, with speed and accuracy, to supply the redundancy of conventional ornament essential to contrast with the rigid geometrical setting out of lines and compartments which formed a fundamental law of their beautiful style of design. Their aptitude in the manipulation of this material did not desert them when their talents were called into operation by their Christian Masters. Of this the pretty window which forms the chief feature of the sketch under consideration, offers an agreeable proof. At the first glance, one might have fancied that this window was of earlier date than the gothic stone arch beneath, and indeed a relic of the Moorish occupation of Valladolid before the Christians reconquered the district, so different in style are its details from those of the arch. To have encountered the difficulties of constructing such an arch beneath, without destroying such a window, is, however, so contrary to all ancient precedents in similar cases, that any such theory must be dismissed on reflexion, and an explanation sought in some other direction. It is to be found in the fact, that about the middle of the fifteenth century, shortly after which date, both arch and window were probably constructed, the Christians had plenty of skilful artificers in stone, who possessed no aptitude for working in stucco, whilst the Moors executed but little ornament in stone, but much in brick and plaster. Hence the marked difference in style which is apparent between the window sketched, and the architectural detail of the rest of this pretty little court, which is shown on this sketch, and the one which follows it. The rooms surrounding the Arcade of this Patio, and the Arcade itself, are now used as a "Corps de Garde" in connection with the Government offices of the great Patio of this "Colegio." They naturally, therefore, rejoice in the rapidly accumulating whitewash, which serves very generally in Spain, at once as a panacea against cholera and fever, and the obliterator of all useless excrescences in the nature of Architectural Ornament. [Illustration: PLATE 6 VALLADOLID MDW 1869 PATIO COLEGIO DE SAN GREGORIO] PLATE VI. _VALLADOLID._ SMALL PATIO, COLEGIO DE SAN GREGORIO. THE stucco upper-storey from which the last sketch (Plate V) was taken, rests upon a lower open storey, forming the usual recessed Arcade or Colonade of even very humble Patios. In this case, the columns, on two sides, (the upper parts of one of which are shown) including the coat-of-arms, are in stone; while the brackets easing the compression of the fibres, and shortening the bearing of the beams, the beams themselves, and the row of brackets above, being really only the moulded ends of the joists of the upper floor, are all in wood. They thus illustrate the combination of materials in construction so much affected by the Moors. At the same time the architectural details shown both in this sketch, and in the one which precedes it, exhibit certain ornamental features derived from Arabian models. That there should be no question in this structure, however, as to the ascendency of the Christian over the Moor, the proud founder has affixed his arms, in which the Church's sacred emblems of the fleur-de-lys and cross forcibly express the favourite tenets of the Spaniard. Few cities of Spain more rejoiced in heraldic devices than did Valladolid, the especial seat of the Castilian nobility, at least until its removal to Madrid. Amongst all the beautiful fac-similes of finely-mantled and well-displayed escutcheons which adorn the works of early printers, given to us by Sir Stirling Maxwell, few excel those which issued from the presses of the Valladolid printers. The Germans who followed in the train, or, at any rate under the auspices, of Charles V., no doubt set the fashion at the commencement of the century at Seville, which was taken up by Spaniards towards the middle of the same century at Valladolid. Francesco Fernandez de Cordova appears to have been the great master of the craft there, and many and splendid are the heraldic frontispieces of his books from 1548 onwards. His style, at any rate, was maintained in his family till near the end of the century, as the title page of the celebrated "Quilatador de la Plata oro y piedras," by Joan Arphe, 1572,[6] displays the arms of the Cardinal Bishop of Siguenza, drawn by, and bearing the initials of, no less an artist than Arphe y Villafañe himself. The imprint of the volume bears no longer the name of Francisco, but the names of Alonzo y Diego Fernandez de Cordova. The finest specimen of Francisco's work, given by Sir Stirling Maxwell, is the grand heading to a proclamation issued by Charles V., in 1549. It exhibits not only the Royal and Imperial escutcheon, Double-headed Eagle, and Columns, with the proud motto "plus ultra," but a quantity of pure Renaissance ornament from which all trace of Gothic has disappeared. [Illustration: PLATE 7 VALLADOLID LA CASA DEL INFANTADO MDW 1869] PLATE VII. _VALLADOLID._ LA CASA DEL INFANTADO. AS in Italy, so in Spain, the architecture of the revival may be divided into at least two great schools, viz., the early, in which sculpture, and particularly sculptured arabesque, play a prominent part; and the late, in which regularity in the use of the orders and a system of rigidly proportioned plain architectural members form the main constituents of the most highly commended structures. Both merged into the extravagance which follows when architects learn to draw with facility rather than to think with steadfastness and propriety. As Italy had its Borromini, so had Spain its Churriguera. The building from which my sketch has been taken, belongs to the second of these divisions of the architecture of the revival, as may be seen by the grave simplicity of the Ionic columns which support the massive but plain arches of both stories of a large and pretentious Patio. In this sketch I have chosen the point of view from the entrance loggia of the house, because looking from it I could well see, and therefore illustrate, the way in which a grand staircase, covered at the top, but open to the air upon one side, usually connects, in large houses, the upper and lower arcades of the Patios, and consequently the upper and lower floors of the mansion which open on to the two main arcades. The staircase is very rarely closed by iron-work or otherwise; consequently the visitor once obtaining access to the Patio was and is at liberty to ramble nearly all over the house unchecked. As front doors usually stand open from morning till night, access to Patios may generally be freely obtained; but where the house is inhabited by one family only, or by more than one family desiring privacy, iron or wooden doors usually close openings to the Patio such as are shown in the sketch. It is only when in answer to a bell, or knocker, attached to this or to an external doorway, a servant has appeared and ascertained that the visitor is an "amigo," that the door itself is opened, and access to the interior afforded. It is a popular prejudice that gravity in Spanish architecture only came in with Herrera, after the middle of the fifteenth century in Spain, but in reality there were several other men who before him asserted their dissent from the plateresque redundancy of ornament, and designed works upon a careful study of Italian models of architectural proportion. Among such may be reckoned Pedro Machuca who in 1526 designed the palace of Charles V. at Granada, Alonzo Covarrubias who was architect for the noble staircase and cortile of the Alcazar at Toledo, and Diego Siloe who a few years later created the fine Cathedral of Granada. [Illustration: PLATE 8 LEON SAN ISIDRO MDW 1869] PLATE VIII. _LEON._ CHURCH OF SAN ISIDRO. THE antiquity of the city of Leon and its importance as a Roman station are well shown by its picturesque and strong walls, which in many places yet exhibit clearly Roman masonry in the substructure and general form. On other places, subsequent generations of artificers have left unmistakeable autographs inscribed in most legible and durable forms, attesting dates of construction, dilapidation, restoration, and then again dilapidation, through centuries of tempestuous existence. One of the most picturesque bastions of these old walls is the one shown in my sketch which groups exceedingly well with the fine Romanesque steeple of San Isidro, which stands on the west of the Church but altogether detached from it. Both Church and steeple date from about the middle of the twelfth century, and possess great historical and architectural interest. Their historical interest is due to their association with the fervidly pious Queen Sancha; and to the fact that in the Pantheon, or chapel dedicated to Santa Catilina at the north-west end of the Church, probably grouped around the body of the Saint, repose Kings and Queens of Spain from Fernando I. and Doña Sancha the founders of the Church, through eight generations. Their architectural interest is derivable from the constructional and ornamental details dwelt upon by Mr. Street, to whose excellent account of the building the reader may be referred. [Illustration: PLATE 9 LEON SAN MARCOS MDW 1869] PLATE IX. _LEON._ CONVENT OF SAN MARCOS. ON the 3rd of September, 1512, a meeting took place between certain ecclesiastics of the Chapter of Salamanca, and nine of the most famous architects of Spain, the minute or "procès verbal" of which would form a model for what might often be done in this country with much advantage to all concerned in the initiation of any great architectural work. The object of the Junta was to settle the principal difficulties of the design of the new Cathedral of Salamanca, then about to be begun. Interesting as are all the conclusions arrived at upon this memorable occasion, it is not with them we have now to concern ourselves, but with the circumstance only that, amongst the signatures attached to the document[7] occurs that of Juan de Badajoz, the architect of the noble façade of the celebrated Convent of the Knights of Santiago at Leon, which forms the subject of our ninth sketch. In the following year to that of the meeting at Salamanca, Juan de Badajoz was summoned in concert with Juan Gil de Hontañon and Juan de Alava to report on the repairs necessary to the Cathedral at Seville. For this he was paid by the Chapter one hundred ducats, no mean sum in those days. Called from Seville to Leon, Badajoz seems to have immediately set in hand the Capilla Mayor of the Church of San Isidro. In Leon and elsewhere he appears to have been much employed, until in 1537 he commenced the Convent of San Zoil at Carrion (about twelve leagues from Leon,) for the Condes of that place. The taste for elaborate ornamental sculpture greatly increasing at that time, Juan de Badajoz seems to have taken pains to surround himself with the most skilful carvers of his days, and on all occasions to have pushed them forwards as their merits deserved. Hence, when called upon, shortly after setting in hand the works at Carrion, to commence the even more elaborate and important ones of San Marcos, he was able to carry on the two for a time concurrently, and ultimately to resign the charge of what he began and advanced considerably single-handed at Leon, to his deputy, Pedro di Castrillo. On San Marcos, Juan de Badajoz appears to have worked pertinaciously, at any rate until the year 1543, when more than half the whole work was completed. In the sculpture, of which there is an enormous quantity, he had the assistance, as principal sculptor, of Guillermo Doncel. The ornamental details[8] are excellent, far better than those involving a knowledge of the proportions and forms of the human figure. The size of the building is enormous, and its general effect very picturesque. The works appear to have been suspended while still far from complete. They were not resumed until the year 1715. [Illustration: PLATE 10 MDW 1869 LEON SAN MARCOS] PLATE X. _LEON._ CLOISTER OF THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCOS. IT used to be a proud old boast of the brothers of the Military Order of Sant' Iago that their Palace, or Convent, call it which you will, at Leon, was quite as fine and spacious as the palace occupied by the Kings of Spain at Madrid. Knowing this, I visited it with a certain amount of apprehension as to my reception by such successors to the magnates of old, as might still occupy the building. My fears were groundless, for I found after much knocking and ringing, that a solitary policeman was the only occasional tenant of its vast halls, and almost numberless rooms. It was indeed melancholy to see such a structure so evidently and entirely "out of joint with fortune" and "the times," as to be apparently inapplicable and inconvertible to any useful purpose. With the impressions received from meeting with such a state of things, the traveller naturally feels a difficulty in realising the fact that the extent and splendour of this Convent actually represented what was once a vital principle of first importance to Spain. To her, until Mariolatry set in with full intensity, the name of Sant' Iago was a tower of strength. Not only did the possession of his shrine to which pilgrims flocked, even from beyond the seas in thousands, bring wealth to the Church; but the elevation of the Saint into an actual soldier of the Faith, a leader to material as well as to spiritual victory, supplied for Spain that fervour under arms which, when passing under the form of devotion to "the Prophet" had, as both Church and State in Spain wisely recognised, wrought such marvels in the consolidation of the power of her natural enemies, the Moors. By the creation of the religious orders of cavaliers, or rather of the military orders of priests, Spain at once nourished the spirit of chivalry and the Christian Faith, the union of which ultimately won for her the reconquest of all that Mahommedan Chivalry and Mahommedan Faith had conquered from her.[9] The very length and pertinacity of the struggle only served to quicken the devotion of the people to their "Gran Capitan," Sant' Iago, and to induce them to enrich to the utmost the order which bore his name. Hence the magnificent scale of buildings, such as the Convent of San Marcos, the stately cloisters of which once sheltered those whose energy in council and skill in the field maintained that life and action for the warlike, and protection and repose for the peaceable, which were essential to the consolidation and upholding of the monarchy of Spain, and its supposed indispensable and inseparable adjunct the "Catholic Faith." [Illustration: PLATE 11 LEON CASA DE LOS GUSMANES MDW 1869] PLATE XI. _LEON._ EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES. IN an ancient house which stood upon the site on which now stands the Palace which forms the subject of our sketch, there was born, in the year 1266, a "Cavalier," who, when arrived at manhood, followed the fortunes of Sancho the Brave. After many struggles, the King having taken Tarifa in Andalucia from the Moors in 1292, looked round amongst his followers for one willing to hold what he had won. All refused, owing to the danger of the position, until Alonso Perez de Guzman, the Cavalier in question, offered to keep possession of the town for a year. The story is thus condensed by Ford, from the "Romancero." The Moors beleaguered it, aided by the Infante Juan, a traitor brother of Sancho's to whom Alonso's eldest son, aged nine, had been entrusted previously as a page. "Juan now brought the boy under the walls, and threatened to kill him if his father would not surrender the place. Alonso drew his dagger and threw it down exclaiming, 'I prefer honour without a son, to a son with dishonour.' He retired, and the Prince caused the child to be put to death. A cry of horror ran through the Spanish battlements. Alonso rushed forth, beheld his son's body, and returning to his childless mother, calmly observed, 'I feared that the infidel had gained the city.' Sancho, the King, likened him to Abraham, from this parental sacrifice and honoured him with the 'canting' name 'El Bueno.' The good (Guzman, Gutman, Goodman.) He became the founder of the princely Dukes of Medina Sidonia, now merged by marriage in the Villafrancas." From this great head descended ultimately Her Majesty the Empress Eugénie of France. Gaining strength, riches and power, the original residence of El Bueno became too small for his aspiring family, and in 1560, Don Juan Quiñones y Guzman, Bishop of Calahorra, determined upon the erection, on the same site, of the present fine structure. The name of the architect does not seem to be known, but it is obviously the work of one who, rejecting the elaboration of the Plateresque style, followed the simpler and more chastened proportions recommended by the early Italian writers on architecture, such as Alberti and Serlio, and by the first Spanish student of Vitruvius, Diego Sagredo in his "Medidas del Romano," (Toledo, 1526.) It is probable that the use of a large quantity of iron externally, as in the balconies and other parts of this Palace was somewhat of a novelty at the date of construction, since the story runs "that when Philip II. visited Leon, as his courtiers, some friends of the Bishops, were praising the building, and were mentioning in a friendly way the thousands of cwts. of iron employed in it, the King severely observed, punningly by the way, 'En verdad que ha sido mucho _yerro_ para un obispo.'"[10] The pun turns upon the word _yerro_ which means both iron, and a mistake. The joke would have been unworthy of Philip II. if it had not been grim. [Illustration: PLATE 12 LEON. CASA DE LOS GUSMANES MDW. 1869] PLATE XII. _LEON._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES. PALACES, such as supply our twelfth illustration, are now rarely occupied in Spain by one family only. Instead of serving as the place of general rendezvous for the dependants and intimate friends only of the aristocratic proprietor, the Patios are now usually peopled with men, women and children belonging to the numerous families, between whom the occupation of the Palace, sadly fallen from its high estate, is divided. Instead of the mansions being guarded by a grand inquisitor in the shape of a porter, with armed servants within hail, with almost more than Oriental jealousy, as in the old days, he who will, may usually find entrance or exit unheeded, passing but as one more or one less of the hundreds who go to and fro in the course of the day to the various apartments which are frequently let and sublet, at ridiculously low rents, to poor occupants who can afford to pay no other. Poverty, in fact, revels in halls where magnificence once reigned supreme. It is no easy task for the imagination to repeople such grand old residences with the stately Hidalgoes and Señoras, who once occupied and maintained them with scrupulous care and princely dignity. Happily, the Countess d'Aulnois comes to our aid with her lively account of the dwelling at Madrid of the Duchess of Terra Nueva, appointed Camerera-Mayor to the young Queen, in 1679; and her picturesque sketch may be freely accepted as expressing the general style in which families of dignity, such as the Guzmanes, magnates of Leon, lived during the plenitude of Spanish wealth and power. "One can hardly see anything," says she,[11] "that looks more splendid than this house of theirs; they use the upper apartments, which are hung with tapestry, all done with raised work of gold. In one great chamber, which is longer than it is broad, you may see several glass doors, which go into closets, or little cells; the first of which is the Duchess of Terra Nova's, hung with grey, and a bed of the same, and all other things very plain. On one side lodges her daughter, the Duchess of Monteleon, who is a widow, and has her room furnished like her mother's. Afterwards you come to the Princess of Monteleon's chamber, which is not larger than the others; but her bed is of gold and green damask, lined with silver brocade, and trimmed with Point-de-Spain. The sheets were laced about with an English lace of half an ell deep. Over against it were the chambers of Monteleon and Hijar's children, which were furnished with white damask. Next to these is the little chamber of the Duchess Hijar, furnished with crimson coloured velvet upon a gold ground. Their rooms were no otherwise divided than by partitions of a certain sweet wood; and they told me that six of their women lay in their chambers upon beds brought thither at night. The ladies were in a great gallery, spread with a very rich foot-cloth. There were set round it crimson coloured velvet cushions embroidered with gold, and they are longer than they are broad. There were also several great cabinets inlaid, and adorned with precious stones; but they are not made in Spain. And between them were tables of silver, and admirable looking-glasses, both for their largeness and rich frames, the worst of which were of silver. But that which I thought finest, were their escaparates, which is a certain sort of close cabinet with one great glass, and filled with all the rarities which one can imagine, whether it be in amber, porcelain, crystal, bezoar-stone, branches of coral, mother-of-pearl, filligreen in gold, and a thousand other things of value." [Illustration: PLATE 13 LEON MDW 1869 CALLE DELLA TESORIERA. LEON.] PLATE XIII. _LEON._ DETAIL FROM A HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE LA TESORIERA. THIS pretty little keystone, with its acanthus leaf well drawn and freely cut in good cinque-cento style occurs over the Portal of an old house in one of the secondary streets of Leon. The pot of lilies which surmounts it is a pretty little "impresa," quaintly signifying the devotion of the owner of the house to the especial object of every good Spaniard's worship, the most holy Virgin "sin pecado concebida." The S shaped irons, which appear on the right and left of the pot of lilies, serve to help to support the light balcony, which generally occurs over entrance doors of minor importance in Spain, and which often serves as a small open air addition to the common sitting room, in which the women of the house do much of the usual needle work, spinning, &c. [Illustration: PLATE 14 SALAMANCA CASA DE LAS CONCHAS MDW 1869] PLATE XIV. _SALAMANCA._ EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. THIS is, upon the whole, the most complete house I met with of its period, answering in Art, and nearly in point of time, to the florid Burgundian style of the Low Countries, with which there was much intercourse at the probable date of its construction--the close of the fifteenth century. It stands almost opposite the great Church of the Gesuitas, some of the columns of an unfinished porch or portico of which may be seen upon the left hand side of the sketch. No doubt this fine mansion does not possess its original roofing, as testified by the comparatively modern windows of a portion of the top storey, but with that exception it is fairly complete, both externally and internally. The little projections on the masonry looking like nail heads are, really, as will be seen by the details given in Plates XVII. and XIX., representations of shells, the heraldic badge of the owner of the house, from which, rather than from his name, the cognomen by which the house is known, has been derived. It is difficult now to divine in what way the top storey was originally constructed, but judging by analogy with what was usual in such houses elsewhere in Spain at the time, it appears probable that it may have consisted of a light open arcading, serving as a "look out"--"mirador"--and place for exercising for the ladies of the household, at times when the streets may have been neither safe nor agreeable. [Illustration: PLATE 15 SALAMANCA, CASA DE LAS CONCHAS MDW 1869] PLATE XV. _SALAMANCA._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. THE Patio of this house is yet more perfect than its façade, and, a rare circumstance in Spain, I found it both clean and well kept. It is not upon a large scale, and did not, perhaps, look the less elegant on that account. The upper arcade produces a far better effect than the lower, since in the latter the principle of the arch seems fantastically and heedlessly lost sight of. With the exception in the upper arcade of the way in which the wreaths and escutcheons are placed, as though to conceal a confusion in the lines of the archivolt, which the architect (or mason) did not seem quite to know how to bring together comfortably over the capitals, the whole effect is quiet and pretty. The open work parapet at the top is the only _motif_ in the design which appears to be borrowed from the architecture of the Moors. [Illustration: PLATE 16 CASA DE LAS CONCHAS MDW 1869] PLATE XVI. _SALAMANCA._ STAIRCASE OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. ON the side of the Patio, opposite to the entrance, occurs the archway through the wall which forms the back of the arcade on that side of the Court, and beyond which is seen the staircase which connects the upper and lower arcades. From its masonry bonded in with the enclosing walls, it assumes even, while simple in design, a thoroughly architectural character, while the depth of shade, which almost invariably covers the back wall and parts of the side wall, serve to throw the lower part of the staircase into brilliant relief. The graceful and gay figures which, in the characteristic costume of Salamanca, from time to time, went up or down the staircase, or linger upon it in groups chatting or smoking, or flirting, make up occasional pictures not rapidly to be effaced from the author's memory. [Illustration: PLATE 17 SALAMANCA MDW 1869 CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.] PLATE XVII. _SALAMANCA._ WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. ONE of the most agreeable features in the design of the Casa de las Conchas, is the variety of detail of the different windows throughout the house. On the sketch under consideration, and in the two which follow it, evidence is afforded of the burning of the "lamp of life," as Mr. Ruskin would call it. They are all of them conceived in a transitional and composite but very picturesque style, and however different or possibly antagonistic the details of each window may appear amongst themselves, as a whole they agree and look exceedingly well. This window occurs on the first floor of the façade, and possesses an additional interest from showing us pretty clearly what kind of windows may have been superseded in a similar situation by the Italian windows so much to be regretted in the fine Palace of the Duques del Infantado at Guadalajara. See Plate LXXVIII. [Illustration: PLATE 18 SALAMANCA CASA DE LAS CONCHAS MDW 1869] PLATE XVIII. _SALAMANCA._ WINDOW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. THIS window with its heavy ironwork, gives light through the back wall of the arcading of the Patio to a passage running behind a room, which derives its light from the external wall of the house. Such passages occur not unfrequently in Spanish houses, and are convenient, as they serve to bring three rooms into a suite without the necessity of having to pass through any one room to get to another. Of course of the three rooms two may be of the full width, extending from the external wall of the house to the back wall of the arcading of the Patio, and one of that width less the width of the passage, into which the three doors open, and which is lighted by a window from the Patio (such as that sketched), and frequently approached also from the arcading by a doorway adjoining the window. As the Patio is a comparatively public part of the house, such windows require, and usually have, the strong close iron work, which gives security and a certain amount of privacy to the external windows of the ground-floor of the house. [Illustration: PLATE 19 SALAMANCA MDW 1869 CASA DE LAS CONCHAS] PLATE XIX. _SALAMANCA._ EXTERNAL WINDOW OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS. THE windows of the first-floors of Spanish houses are always the largest, airiest, and openest, of the whole of the windows of the house, excepting in the rare cases where there is a top story consisting of a large gallery, as frequently at Genoa, serving for promenade and look out--in fact a species of Belvedere. The importance of the rooms lighted is generally indicated by the relative richness of the window dressings. The profusion with which heraldic insignia are used in the window sketched, suffices, therefore, to show that with others of the same kind it lighted the principal saloons of the house. Another point of construction illustrated by the sketch, is the fact that the "conchas" or carved stone shells have been applied after the general building of the wall. This is proved by the regularity with which they are placed, irrespective of the heights of the various courses of masonry, and of the levels at which the joints occur. [Illustration: PLATE 20 SALAMANCA CASA MONTEREY. MDW 1869] PLATE XX. _SALAMANCA_. EXTERIOR OF THE CASA MONTEREY. OF the very picturesque specimen of domestic architecture illustrated in Plate XX., and bearing the local name of the Casa de Monterey, but little seems to be known. Escosura confesses himself reduced to conjecture, and thus theorises on the subject. As to the exact epoch at which the Casa de Monterey was built, the following circumstances should be borne in mind. "The title of Conde de Monterey was created in favour of Don Baltasar de Zuñiga, who was Viceroy of Naples in the year 1626. This nobleman caused the Church of the Convent of Nuns which bore his name, and which stands opposite his palace, to be erected at his expense from the designs of the fashionable Italian architect, Fontana. May it be unreasonable to suppose that the Palace was designed at the same time by the same architect?" To this question, the proper answer given by some better judge of architectural style would, probably, be "very," since it is difficult to perceive any similarity between the modes of design, upon which the two buildings are based. The architecture of the Church of the Convent, one angle of which appears on the left hand of the sketch, is in the large florid manner of the post-Palladian Italians, while that of the Palace is small in its ornamental parts, and instead of exhibiting Italian features, seems throughout to show the peculiar reading of Italian style adopted by the late Plateresque Spanish architects of the second half of the sixteenth century. This is particularly noticeable in the absence of a crowning balustrade, and in the substitution for it of the elaborate pierced cresting which apparently the Spanish architects adopted from Moorish rather than from any antique models. The interior of this grand looking palace is said to have been all but destroyed by the French. [Illustration: PLATE 21 SALAMANCA MDW 1869 OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.] PLATE XXI. _SALAMANCA_. RENAISSANCE HOUSE OPPOSITE SAN BENITO. IN every ancient city the largest and most costly building ever erected in it is usually the most enduring. The causes of this are various--for instance--the construction in itself may have been the most solid, the citizens may have taken such pride in it as to bestow unusual pains upon its conservation, they may have retained it for uses for which it may have become more or less unfit (as is the case with the majority of ancient Ecclesiastical buildings in Protestant countries), rather than face the expense of re-erecting appropriate buildings, or it may still be well suited for present purposes. Hence cathedrals, churches, palaces, (rarely castles, owing to the combative propensities of their owners), hospitals, great residences of ancient families, and in Catholic countries, convents and monasteries, of almost all periods, may remain to attest the changes of architectural style, &c.; but the ordinary residences of the middle classes, and of the numerous secondary nobility, get swept away by the tides of history, or are so altered by them as to leave scarcely any satisfactory land-marks to indicate what once gave its predominant character to the streets of many an ancient city. Such changes are effected almost equally by progress and by decay. By the former, all minor monuments become obliterated or transformed,--they represent in fact old age, pushed aside to make way for youth--while by the latter they descend in the social scale until beggars break up what nobles once built up. How constantly the traveller meets with some splendid old cathedral still "hale and hearty," with the weight of half-a-dozen or more centuries upon its head, around which he knows were once grouped teeming populations full of strength, life, and wealth, of which not a habitation may be left extending backwards for more than a hundred years from the present date? Any exceptions to such illustrations of the way in which fortune turns her wheel become the especially cherished haunts of the antiquary, who knows that from day to day they become rarer, and consequently more precious. Hence the enthusiasm with which the neglected quarters of every old town are visited in the hope of meeting with some relics of what may therein at least appear, "remains of an extinct civilization." Some such reward I met with in encountering, amidst much dirt and apparent poverty in the quarter of San Benito, in Salamanca, the pretty façades of old Renaissance houses which form the subjects of this sketch and of the one which succeeds it. [Illustration: PLATE 22 SALAMANCA MDW 1869 CALLE DEL AGUILA] PLATE XXII. _SALAMANCA_. RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE DEL AGUILA. THE Renaissance house now presented to the reader, although richer in its ornaments, is not as complete as the one given in the preceding sketch, having apparently lost its original roof. Instead of the overhanging eaves casting a constantly cool shade over the open balustrading, through which light and air still pass to "a chamber that's next to the sky;" in this case nothing is probably left over the principal apartment, the window of which richly decorated with heraldry and arabesque is shown over the strong doorway with its deep flat arch, excepting a dark and scarcely habitable attic. I think it very likely that the wreath, coat of arms, and boys, which still occupy their original position over the principal window, once supported the sill of a superior window, and that the house which now appears to have two stories only, had once at least as many as three. Such houses as these of the ancient nobility, of which I could find only two or three, must once have been common enough in the fashionable city of Gil Blas, when the university numbered seven thousand students, and eighty professors, with salaries of one thousand crowns each--a bountiful payment in those days for the exercise of the noblest talents--and swarms of assistants and "Pretendientes" on half-pay and unattached.[12] [Illustration: PLATE 23 AVILA ENTRANCE TO THE CASA POLENTINA MDW 1869] PLATE XXIII. _AVILA_. ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF THE CASA POLENTINA. THE Portal which forms the subject of my twenty-third sketch serves as the entrance to the dilapidated old mansion of the Condes de Polentinos at Avila, a view of the remains of the Patio of which will be found on turning over this page. The architectural characteristics of this striking gateway are certainly very singular. On catching a glimpse of it from a distance, and seizing the aspect only of its ponderous masonry and deep machicolations, I fully believed I was coming upon an old bit of castellated construction of the fourteenth or fifteenth century at latest. On nearer inspection, however, I found out my mistake, and arrived at the conclusion that the Señor Conde, late in the sixteenth century, who had caused the whole structure to be built, had probably charged his architect, either to preserve the general form of some much earlier portal of the old house, which he may have caused to be pulled down, or to imitate the general aspect of some other aristocratic portal of early date, which the Count may have admired elsewhere. Different as the corbelling, &c., looks to the gateway, and the window over it, I found that ornamental detail of a similar nature to, but somewhat coarser style than that of the door and window dressings was worked over most of the corbelling, and part of the upper gallery carried by the corbels, but apparently by a provincial hand. The stone work of the door and window had probably been left in the rough for awhile, possibly for some fifty years, and then its carving entrusted to some superior artist, working according to the latest lights of the fashion of the close of the sixteenth century. Although the style of all this carving is plateresque, there are many indications about it of an inclination to Greco-Roman work. For instance, the griffins, the lions' heads of antique type, and the arms and armour arranged as trophies, all indicate acquaintance with the prevalent materials of Italian arabesque design of late cinque-cento style. Indeed, the very form and fluting of the corselets, brasses, vambrasses, and cuisses, would indicate that armour of a date posterior to the middle of the sixteenth century had been adopted as types for the making up of the trophies. [Illustration: PLATE 24 AVILA CASA POLENTINA MDW 1869] PLATE XXIV. _AVILA_. THE PATIO OF THE CASA POLENTINA. NEXT to the general feeling of interest excited by the picturesque aspect of decayed architectural grandeur, which is presented by the remains of this dilapidated Patio, rises a feeling of curiosity as to the mode and manner of life of those whose wants such costly building subserved. Privacy and coolness appear to have been the chief desiderata, and those architectural ornaments seem to have been preferred, which recall, at almost every step, the hereditary dignities of the family tree. Madame d'Aulnois, whose Letters from Spain, written in 1679,[13] give the liveliest possible picture of life in those days in the Peninsula, gratifies our curiosity in the most agreeable manner, and with that quickness of perception, as to domestic habits, by means of which, none but a woman can seize at a glance, the telling details essential to give completeness and reality to a sketch. Speaking of the Spaniards of the upper and middle classes of the seventeenth century she says:--"All their houses have a great many rooms on a floor; you go through a dozen or fifteen parlours, or chambers, one after another. Those which are the worst lodged have six or seven. The rooms are generally longer than they are broad. The floors and ceilings are neither painted nor gilt; they are made of plaister quite plain, but so white that they dazzle one's eyes; for every year they are scraped, and whited as the walls, which look like marble, they are so well polished. The Court to their summer apartments is made of certain matter, which, after it has ten pails of water thrown upon it, yet is dry in half-an-hour, and leaves a pleasant coolness; so that in the morning they water all, and a little while after they spread mats or carpets made of fine rushes, which cover all the pavement. The whole apartments are hung with the same small mat about the depth of an ell, to hinder the coolness of the walls from hurting those which lean against them. On the top of these mats there are hung pictures and looking-glasses. The cushions, which are of gold and silver brocade, are placed upon the carpet; and the tables and cabinets are very fine; and at little distances there are set silver cases or boxes, filled with orange and jessamine trees. In their windows they set things made of straw, to keep the sun out; and in the evenings they work in their gardens. There are several houses which have very fine ones, where you see grottoes and fountains in abundance." [Illustration: PLATE 25 AVILA THE CATHEDRAL. IRON PULPIT. MDW 1869] PLATE XXV. _AVILA_. IRON PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL. MR. STREET'S illustrations and description of all that is left of the old glories of Avila, previous to the epoch of the Renaissance, are so complete, that I can feel no compunction in having gleaned only from this delightful old city two specimens of the ability of the Spanish smiths of the period he repudiates, and two others showing remains of the domestic architecture of the same style. Let it not be supposed, however, that it was only the school of the Renaissance which produced masterly iron-work, and even masterly iron pulpits, in Spain. Mr. Street has himself given us a beautiful woodcut of the pulpit in the church of St. Gil, at Burgos. This exhibits no other than Gothic details, while in the pulpit which forms the subject of my twenty-fifth sketch, as will no doubt be observed, Renaissance details are freely intermixed with Gothic ones. The whole, however different in style in different parts, appeared to me to be contemporaneous; and I, therefore, regard this pulpit as an interesting example of a transitional style, later of course, than that followed in the pulpit of Saint Gil, which Mr. Street describes as the earliest he saw. In both, the primitive mode of working through thin plates superposed to form tracery has been adhered to, and the whole of the ironwork has been applied to a wooden framework. I regard the pulpit at Burgos as likely to have been executed early in the fifteenth century, and the one now under consideration as of the close of the same century; and both may, I think, have been produced under the influence of the masters from Cologne, who did such wonders, and set so many fashions, in Burgos and its vicinity, especially at Miraflores. [Illustration: PLATE 26 AVILA THE CATHEDRAL MDW 1869] PLATE XXVI. _AVILA_. IRON PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL. IN method of manufacture no less than in style of design this pulpit, which forms a pendant to the one last given just outside the choir of Avila Cathedral, offers a contrast to its predecessor. We no longer meet with a superposition of perforated plates, but the operations of beating and chasing, and, indeed, cutting the metal with chisels, files and hammers; working in fact as the Italians term it "a massiccio." The basis of the design is no longer Gothic, but strictly of the regular Spanish Plateresque Renaissance with balustrade columns, figures in niches, and Arabesques imitated from the Italians. From all these details, we may fairly be justified in ascribing this work to about the middle of the sixteenth century. The method of working this pulpit is no longer that of the simple smith, but really corresponds much more closely with that of the armourer which reached its zenith about this period. There can be no doubt that the Spaniards gained much of their well-known skill in the manipulation of iron and steel from the Moors, who had themselves obtained knowledge from Damascus, and perhaps even improved upon the knowledge they had derived from that source. From the times of the Carthaginians and Romans, the Celt-Iberian mines had been known as amongst the richest existing sources, from which iron could be procured. Many fragments of finely wrought iron work, of the middle ages, still exist in Spain; but for the most part in very fragmentary condition.[14] From the end of the fifteenth century, however, in the Rejas, great seals and minor screens, (such as that seen at the back of the pulpit in my sketch) of the churches and cathedrals, and especially in the arms and armour of Moorish and Christian Caballeros, (as attested by many splendid specimens in the Real Armeria of Madrid), perfect examples are to be met with of the skill of Spanish artificers in dealing with all the metallurgical processes by which iron and steel can be made to assume forms of grace and beauty. Charles V., Philip II., and Don Juan of Austria, were boundless in their extravagance in the encouragement of the best armourers, not of Toledo and Valladolid only, but of Milan and Augsburg as well. There can be no doubt that the models of beauty bought by these Sovereigns from artists in iron and steel, such as the Negroli and Piccinini, tended to develope that perfection of workmanship, which was attained in Spain in the reign of Philip III. The pains-taking editors of the Catalogue of the Madrid Armoury cite Pamplona as at the head of the trade at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, and name as the chief rivals to Pamplona of the cities of Spain, in the manufacture of splendid arms and armour, Tolosa, Barcelona, and Calatayud.[15] [Illustration: PLATE 27 J. ESCORIAL MDW 1869] PLATE XXVII. _ESCORIAL_. GENERAL VIEW OF THE ESCORIAL. IN all Spain I saw nothing which so ill-agreed with my preconceptions as the Escorial. As for beauty, I could find none whatever in it. The building appeared to me thoroughly unsatisfactory alike as church, palace, or monastery. Still, to omit it altogether from any series of Spanish sketches with pen or pencil, would be to leave out the Monument which reflects, probably, more perfectly than any other in the Peninsula, the mixture of arrogant extravagance, and arid ascetism, which characterized its most potent rulers in the plenitude of their historical importance. In it, in my opinion, Herrera proved himself an architect thoroughly worthy of the masters who employed him, formal, pedantic, cold, extravagant to a degree, and yet mean. That the building contains many most interesting works of art, is as true, as that a visit to it should on no account be omitted by any one who would at all attempt to realize what the Spanish Court may have been in the days of Philip II.; but, after all, I am bound to confess that what most pleased me in the vast edifice, with the exception of some few pictures and illuminated books, was the work of Italians and not of Spaniards, viz., the marble crucifix of Benvenuto Cellini, the magnificent gilt bronze statues of the Kings and Queens of Spain in the Church, by Pompeio Leoni, and the decorations of the Library, principally by Pelegrino Tibaldi. To such a judgment may be objected that the structure now is not what it was, let us see what an acute observer says of it, writing late in the seventeenth century:-- "A while after we went to the Escurial, which to give it no less than its due, may in Spain pass for an admirable structure, but where building is understood, would not be looked on as very extraordinary. In a general consideration, it seems a mass of stone of great perfection; but going to particulars, scarce any of them but falls very short of the magnificence imagined, and that so much, that if Philip the Second, who built it, and was called the Solomon of his age, did no more resemble that wise king then this edifice does his Temple, to which it is often compared, the copy comes very short of the original; in the meantime to stretch the comparison they please themselves in saying, that Charles the Fifth, like another David, only designed his holy work, which (being a man of war and blood) God reserved for his son. Ignorant strangers are entertained with this tale, but such as are versed in history tell us, that after the battle of St. Quentin, Philip the Second made two vows, one never to go in person to the wars, the other to build this cloyster for the Order of St. Jerome instead of that which had been burnt, it cost him near six millions of gold, though out of consideration of parsimony and convenience of bringing stone, he made choice of the worst situation in nature, for it is at the foot of a barren mountain, and hard by a wretched village called Escurial, that can hardly lodge a man of any fashion; this may seem very strange to those that know the Court is there twice in a year: the place it stands on is, by transcendence, called the Seat, because it was levelled in order to build on. "The fabrick is very fair, with four towers at the four corners, but coming to it, one knows not which way to enter, for as soon as out of the great walk, in a kind of Piazza, you see only little doors, which, when you are over it, lead into two pavilions, that contain offices and lodgings for some of the Court; when you have well viewed this side of the square, you come to that which is towards the mountain, where there is a very large magnificent portal, on each side beautify'd with pillars; by this stately gate you enter a quadrangle, where right over against it stands the Church, ascended to it by a stair of five or six steps, as long as the Court is large, extending from one side of it to the other, very fair columnes support the porch, and on the top of the wall stand six statues, the middlemost of which are David and Solomon, by whom they would represent Charles the Fifth, and Philip the Second. About the church are many pavillions, all comprehended in the exact square which environs that building. Report mentions many Bascourts, but we could not reckon above seven or eight. That this is a very fair cloyster for Friers cannot be denied, neither can it be allowed to be a pallace magnificent enough for such a monarch as Philip the Second, who having built it in one-and-twenty years, and enjoyed it twelve or thirteen, boasted, that from the foot of a mountain and his closet, with two inches of paper, he made himself obeyed in the Old and New World. "The King and Queen's apartments have nothing in them that appears roial, they are altogether unfurnished, and they say, when the King goes to any of his houses of pleasure, they remove all to the very bedsteads; the rooms are little and low; the roofs not beautiful enough to invite the eyes to look up to them; its many pictures of excellent masters, and especially of Titian, that wrought a great while there, are very much vaunted, yet there are not so many as report gives out. The Spaniards have so little understanding of pictures, they are alike taken with all, and the Marquis Serragenovese, that accompanied us, sufficiently laughed at the foolishness of a Castillian, who, willing to have us admire the slightest and wretchedest landskipes of a gallery where we were, told us nothing could equalize them, because in a place where their King sometimes walked. There are yet in the vestry some good pieces, especially a Christ, and Mary Magdalen; and in the Church others very estimable. For paintings in fresco, the quire, done by Titian, is doubtlessly an excellent work, and so is the library, I think by the same hand, where amongst the rest is represented the ancient Roman manner of defending criminals, who stand by bound hand and foot; Cicero is also there pleading for Milo, or some other, I not being sufficiently acquainted with his meen, to be positive, and without apprehension of mistaking; this library is truly very considerable, as well for its length, breadth, height, and light; the pictures and marble tables that stand in the midst of it, as for its quantity of choice and rare books, if we may believe the monks; they are certainly very well bound and guilded, and if I mistake not, but seldom read. In the vestry, they show priests' copes, where embroidery and pearl with emulation contend whether art or matter renders them more rich and sumptuous; they showed us a cross of very fair pearl, diamonds, and emeralds; it is a very pretty knack, and would not become less such if it changed countreys, I would willingly have undertaken for it if they would have suffered it to pass the Pyreneans, had it been only to show my friends a hundred thousand crowns in a nut-shell. The library I have spoken of, the high altar and monument of their kings, which they call Pantheon (though I know not why, unless because a single round arch like the Pantheon at Rome), are certainly the best pieces of this magnificent fabrick. The high altar is approached by steps of red marble, and invironed by sixteen pillars of jasper, which reach the top of the quire, and cost only a matter of fifty or sixty thousand crowns cutting, between these are niches with statues of guilded brass, and so there are on the side of the tables and praying places. The Pantheon is under the altar, and descended by stairs, though narrow, very light; at the entrance of this rich chappel, a marble shines, whose lustre is heightened by reflexion of the gold, with which all the iron-work and part of that fair stone are overlaid. In the middle of it, and right against the altar, is a fair candlestick of brass, gilded, and in six several niches, twenty-four sepulchres of black marble to receive as many bodies; above the gate are two more. This stately monument is small, but sumptuous, it was finished by the present King, who, about six months since placed there the bodies of Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second, and Philip the Third. The first was most intire; in the niches, on the left, lie the Queens, and the last of them Queen Elizabeth of Burbon. He that preached the day that these seven tombs or sepulchres had bodies laid in them, began by his apprehension to speak in presence of so many kings who had conquered the world, and expressed himself so well, and so highly pleased the King that he got a yearly pension of a thousand crowns. Nothing attaining such perfection as to secure it from the teeth of criticks, the three pieces I have now mentioned, have been attacqued by them. It is objected against the Library, that its entrance suits not with its magnificence and grandeur, and that it stands as if stoln in, and not of the same piece with the rest. "Over against the great altar, where all is so well proportioned, they wish away a silver lamp, whose size corresponds not with that of the place it burns in, which is vast and large. In the Pantheon they find great fault, that all the steps by which it is descended are not marble, and that the sides of the walls are not incrusted with it, the chappel being all so, and a like magnificence requisite everywhere. In the brazen candlestick, the inner part which is not guilded is discerned amongst the black and foul branches that extend from it. It cost ten thousand crowns, which is ten times more than it is worth; but it is common in this country to boast things of excessive price, which they would have admired on that account, as if because they are foolish merchants, the ware they buy too dear, were therefore the more valuable. These are my observations of the so famous Escurial, adorned only by some small parterras and fountains; one side of it affords a handsome prospect, but the ground near it is the greatest part rock or heath, some walks and groves are planted about it, but being cold and windy, trees thrive not. There are some deer in a kind of park, ill-designed, and with very low walls, the way to it is nothing pleasant, and the King who goes thither thrice every year, one of which times is in the winter, cannot certainly find any great diversion in those journeys, for during three months all is covered with snow." Nothing need be added, I think, to so graphic a "boutade" as this, which, though somewhat satirical, would not appear to have been much too highly coloured for the occasion. [Illustration: PLATE 28 SEGOVIA GATE IN WALLS MDW 1869] PLATE XXVIII. _SEGOVIA_. GATEWAY IN THE CITY WALLS. THERE is probably no city in all Spain, and few perhaps in any part of the world, in which within a similar compass, so many good, although fragmentary, materials could be found for illustrating styles and inflections of style in building, from the days of the Romans through those of the Moors and Christians, up to the period of the Renaissance, than Segovia. Of this last named period, two of the greatest masters, Gil de Ontañon and his son Rodrigo, have nobly left their mark in the splendid Cathedral, a worthy rival to that of Salamanca, also executed from the designs, and under the personal superintendence of the elder of the two Ontañones. The city, probably, owes these varied monuments to its merits, as a strong, as well as a beautiful position. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that its old walls should offer many features of interest as well as picturesqueness. In fact, to the educated eye, the former is almost a necessary ingredient to making up the latter. As I wended my way upwards, therefore, from the railway station to the town, through this gateway, about which I caught indications here of one style, and there of another, Roman, Moor, and Christian doing here a jot and there a little, that I should linger on my way for awhile; partly, perhaps, to cool myself, and partly to make the little sketch I present herewith to my readers. I need, perhaps, only add that the rough but effective cornice of the gateway is made up from its top to its bottom by different combinations of common tiles, and that its little enriched frieze is a specimen of the clever stucco-work, probably executed by workmen of Moorish descent in Renaissance times. The whole, even to the painting of the Virgin, is roughly executed, but is not the less graceful, perhaps, from the apparent absence of all effort. An aspect of spontaneity in works of art has its own particular charm, as has the semblance of the most careful solicitude under appropriate circumstances. The true artist, heedful of his "when" and "how," is master of both moods. [Illustration: PLATE 29 SEGOVIA MDW 1869 THE ALCAZAR. HALL OF THE KINGS.] PLATE XXIX. _SEGOVIA._ ARCHWAY IN THE HALL OF THE KINGS. DON Juan Alvarez de Colmenar,[16] writing at the commencement of the eighteenth century, gives the following description of the Royal Palace at Segovia-- "The Alcazar," he says, "is situated on a mountain in the highest part of the city. It is entirely covered with lead; the access to it being by means of a staircase cut in the rock. There is always a sentinel in the towers, and on a platform may be seen many cannons of which the greater number are pointed against the city and the residue towards the faubourg and country. It contains sixteen richly tapestried chambers, one of which has a fire-place of porphyry. Thence a descent may be made to another platform smaller than the first mentioned, also furnished with cannon. From this, access is obtained to a small chamber with gilt dado, marble fire-place, and walls covered with mirrors up to the ceiling. Near this room is the Royal Chapel, splendidly gilt and decorated with very fine pictures, amongst which that of the Magi is of the highest beauty. Issuing from the chapel is a magnificent hall gilt from top to bottom. It is called the Sala de los Reyes, ("literally the Hall of the Kings,") because therein are all the Kings of Spain from Pelayo to Jane, mother of the Emperors Charles V. and Ferdinand. They are represented seated on thrones under canopies, so artistically worked that they look like agates. There is another hall lined with glasses of the height of three feet, with marble seats and ceilings gilt with pure gold. All these halls are differently ornamented, and with the exception of the gilding there is not one like the others. The river which surrounds the château forms its moat."[17] I have preferred quoting this old description to giving one of the present aspect of this once splendid palace, since of all its magnificence nothing is now left but its massive walls covered here and there with elegant stucco-work, some of which is given in my sketches, and its commanding and noble position which is one of very great natural strength. Here it was that the Moors, who never failed to fortify such spots, reared the great central tower around which, after its capture by the Christians, the Spanish sovereigns built the palace which contained the majority of the apartments described by Colmenares, employing the subjugated Moorish artificers for many of the original decorations. In 1412, a splendid hall called, from its celebrated ceiling, the Sala del Arteson, was completed, as testified by an inscription to that effect given at length by Cean Bermudez.[18] Other inscriptions mark the work executed by the king, Henry IV., in 1452, 1456, and 1458, who resided in it amidst his treasures, and the glorious spoils taken in what one inscription designates "la guerra de los Moros." Here dwelt Isabella la Catolica, and at a later date Charles V. The decorations described by Colmenares were probably for the most part those executed by command of Philip II., the elegant stucco work given in the sketch (No. 29) being clearly of the time of Henry IV. Here lodged our Charles I. in 1623. The wretched Philip V. with congenial propriety converted it into a prison, justifying Le Sage's amusing sketch of the committal to it of Gil Blas. Many of the Algerine and Barbary pirates taken by the Spanish men-of-war were here confined. At length it was converted into an academy for artillery cadets, and made a miserable sort of Woolwich. Decorations were torn down, old windows blocked up, and new ones made in the most barbarous style. Stoves were placed in most dangerous situations, until as a natural consequence a fire broke out, and the "coup de grâce" was given to the glories of this palatial fortress, which is now alike useless for royal, military, or civic purposes. [Illustration: PLATE 30 MDW 1869 SEGOVIA. ALCAZAR.] PLATE XXX. _SEGOVIA._ DETAIL FROM THE ALCAZAR. In describing the last sketch (No. 29), some particulars were given of the building from which both that and this (No. 30) were taken. It may be well to note now the peculiar style of design illustrated by both. This style is what is technically known in Spain as "Mudejar," _i.e._, neither Gothic nor Moorish strictly, but a compound of both. The date of these particular specimens happens to be well fixed by the inscriptions to which allusion has been recently made, and of one of which a portion is shown in the sketch (No. 30), as running horizontally between two string courses on each side of the small quasi-rose windows. This "Mudejar" work was certainly executed between the years 1452 and 1458, in the reign of Enrique IV., King of Castille. It was the wise policy of the most sagacious of the Spanish monarchs in their contests with the Moors, to half-shut their eyes to what they could not eradicate, viz., the secret Islamism of the race. They long continued this laudable inclination to tolerate and use the skilful Arabian artificers, under Christian guidance and superintendence, in the various localities in which they successively planted the Standard of the Cross, tearing down that of the Crescent. At last the inflation which followed their ultimate conquests under Ferdinand and Isabella, led to the establishment of the pernicious Inquisition, the "teterrima causa" of infinite misery, and the subverter of tolerance and progress throughout the country. From that period gradually disappeared--lingering, as we shall have occasion to observe, much longer in the South than in the North--the skilled artificer, learned in all the technicalities, and the elaborate geometrical principles of the combination of ornamental form, which Arabian genius had engrafted upon the traditions of Ancient Rome, handed down to them through the medium of Byzantium. The very antagonism of creed induced the Moor to avoid polluting his art with types of form or processes borrowed from the Christian, as he would have avoided polluting his faith with Catholic legend or tenets. Hence when he and his became the spoil of the Christian, which, to a great extent, they did, the Christian necessarily inherited no unimportant addition to his repertory of beautiful, fresh, and valuable arts and industries. This precious inheritance was not altogether appreciated by the Spaniards, as it might have been by a people of greater producing energies; but in spite of their comparative ineptitude, they gained greatly by the leaven of Moorish skill and talent; and as one of the first and best fruits of the gradual conquest and absorption of the race, we may certainly reckon the leading features of the "Mudejar" style. [Illustration: PLATE 31 EL PARRAL. MDW 1869 SEGOVIA.] PLATE XXXI. _SEGOVIA._ EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE MONASTERY OF EL PARRAL. IN Mr. Street's work on "Gothic Architecture on Spain," so justly praised by all who know anything of ancient Spanish Art will be found on Plate VIII a sketch plan, and on pages 185 and 186 a full description of this extensive old Convent, and especially of the Church of the Vera Cruz to which it is attached. I felt, therefore, that my duty to the student would be best fulfilled by simply laying before him a sketch of the exterior to supplement Mr. Street's ground plan, referring the student for all further information to his work. It would have been easy to extract from Cean Bermudez the same historical details; but it could only have resulted in a thrice-told tale. It may suffice to note that the entrance to the Convent may be sought (with much but rarely effectual knocking and ringing) through the curious old porch represented in my sketch on the right hand of the Church, which should be visited in the morning, on account of its beautiful arrangement of lighting, mainly from the East. [Illustration: PLATE 32 ALCALA DE HENARES. COLEGIO DE SAN ILDEFONSO. MDW 1869] PLATE XXXII. _ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES._ EXTERIOR OF THE COLEGIO DE SAN ILDEFONSO. SUCH a man as Francis Ximenez de Cisneros--the founder of the University at Alcala de Heñares--would have been a man amongst men anywhere; but in Spain, his union of prudence with strength, courage with calmness, learning in the closet with action in the field, humility with aptitude for supreme command, benevolence with the sternest energy, raised him rapidly from poverty and insignificance to the Regency of that country. So aggrandized, he ruled the kingdom for many years, until his death, in 1517, with far greater wisdom, and more to the benefit of the State, than any Sovereign who has ever sat upon its throne. This is not the place in which to dwell upon his life, intensely interesting as it was, but only to briefly allude to the relics of his greatness as displayed in Alcala de Heñares, in which locality he himself commenced his studies. Protected by Mendoza he became confessor to Isabella in 1492, who made him Archbishop of Toledo in 1495. Three years afterwards he founded his great University dedicated to Saint Ildefonso; but which, in honour of his ever famous labour, the compilation of the Complutensian Polyglot,[19] bears the distinguished name in Spain of the "Universidad Complutense." The building, of which the main block of the façade shown in my sketch, is about one hundred feet long, by about sixty-five feet high, contains no less than three Patios of different styles. It was designed by Pedro Gumiel, and, as originally planned, finished in 1533, by Rodrigo Gil. The whole façade which is of marble, with the exception of the basement of grey granite, was no doubt entirely the work of the last named architect. The structure has been well illustrated, architecturally, in the great government publication--the "Monumentos Arquitectonicos de España"--to which the student may be referred for the details of this immense establishment. About it, in the days of its full prosperity, there were grouped no less than eleven thousand students, and nineteen colleges. Nothing shows, perhaps, more clearly the "high estate" from which the poor Spain of the present day has fallen, than a contrast between the muster rolls of the University of Madrid of late years, and those of Salamanca, and Alcala, in the sixteenth century. The visitor to the "Colegio" of Alcala should on no account omit to see the chapel built by Gil de Ontañon, since within it rests the Wolsey of Spain. Upon a monument of white marble, by the skilful hand of Domenico of Florence, reposes an effigy of Cardinal Cisneros. A lithograph of this and of the quasi-Mudejar style of the chapel is given in the work of Villa Amil,[20] and we may well take to heart the concluding sentence of the description of it by Patricio Escosura:--"Una pregunta, y concluimos; ¿Cuantos monumentos como el que acabamos de ejaminar dejarémos nosotros en herencia à nuestros nietos?"[*] [Illustration: PLATE 33 ALCALA DE HENARES ARZOBISPADO MDW 1869] PLATE XXXIII. _ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES._ WINDOW OF THE ARZOBISPADO. THE Archi-episcopal Palace of Alcala de Heñares is a building of many periods and many styles. Founded upon the Old Alcazar, of which vestiges remain, it contains several pretty mediæval windows, one of which Mr. Street thought not unworthy of his pencil. The late Plateresque details of its double Patios arrested my attention, and I was pleased to observe in them a more than usual elegance of moulding, and originality, with propriety of style. On account of their possession of these qualities, their invention and the execution of the medallion-heads and ornaments have been ascribed to Alonzo Berruguete, whose studies in Florence have been looked upon as the main agents in purifying the then prevalent tendency to exuberance in Plateresque design to which he might have surrendered himself, but for his opportunities of becoming acquainted with the works of Michael Angelo and other great contemporary masters of Italian Art. If Berruguete had no hand in this work, (and I have been able to find no proof whatever that he had), it lends greater probability to the theory I have ventured to broach in the description of the next sketch, which is taken from another but contemporary part of the same building. Another attribution of the design of these details has been to Alonso de Covarrubias, but I can find no other authority for it than the fact that Ponz considered them to resemble certain windows of the Alcazar at Toledo which were known to have been designed by that master. [Illustration: PLATE 34 EL ARZOBISPADO ALCALA DE HENARES] PLATE XXXIV. _ALCALA-DE-HEÑARES._ DETAIL FROM THE ARZOBISPADO. ALTHOUGH commonly described as Plateresque, the architecture of the Patio of the Archbishop's Palace at Alcala de Heñares, of which my sketch represents the detail of the upper story, excites a far more forcible reminiscence of good cinque-cento work. It seems to have been executed principally by Spaniards of the sixteenth century, but still to have been founded on pure Italian models. This is particularly shown, as it appeared to me, in the regular form of the bell and volutes of the capitals of the columns with the well drawn and cut acanthus leaves, and the regular eggs and tongues of the cornice. Recognising this, and noticing the correspondence in style between the execution of this work, and that of the architectural parts of the monument to Cardinal Cisneros alluded to in the description of the last sketch but one, I could not but fancy it possible that the same artist, Domenico of Florence, who is allowed to have produced that monument, may, after its completion, have been retained to work upon the Patios of the Archi-episcopal Palace; and possibly also upon some portions of the façade of the University which was not as we know set in hand until some time after the Cardinal's death. [Illustration: PLATE 35 TOLEDO MDW 1869] PLATE XXXV. _TOLEDO_. VIEW OF THE REMAINS OF A MOORISH FORTRESS ON THE RIVER. THE situation of Toledo is most romantic, and presents as many charms from its beauty to the architect, as the site for a commanding city, as no doubt it offered from, its great natural strength, to the "man of war" who must needs have regarded it as an almost heaven-born fortress. It owes much, both of its beauty and its strength, to the clear and abundant current of the Tagus, which more than half surrounds it. This river has, as we shall have occasion to observe, been nobly spanned by Roman, Moor, and Christian; and on its banks are yet traceable, in architectural fragments, the handiwork of each of those races. Our sketch represents a passage of this river which has once been commanded by the Moorish fortress, above the "tapia" or concrete remains of which, some shade-loving Spaniard of to-day has planted his vines and gourds, and reared his modest, but neither unpicturesque nor altogether uncomfortable, tenement. A fortification of this kind was much affected by the Moors for salient points, on account of the command it gave them of the various directions from which attack might be apprehended, and was called by them "Almodovar." Charles Didier has admirably described the charms of such a position, as that occupied by the world-renowned capital of New Castille, in the following passage of his "Année en Espagne," "Tolède doit à sa situation," says he,[21] "une inépuisable richesse de sites et de vues. La montagne escarpée dont elle couvre les flancs est séparée par le Tage d'une autre montagne non moins escarpée, mais nue, déserte, abandonnée à la stérilité et tombant à pic dans le fleuve. A micôte est le château ruiné de Saint Cervantes. Un petit ermitage, _la Virgen del Valle_, est égaré au sommet; mais, bâti au milieu des rochers, il s'en détache à peine et se confond avec eux: des troupeaux de chèvres sauvages errent à l'entour, et, presque aussi sauvage qu'elles, le pâtre, vêtu de peaux, apporte au seuil de la ville les moeurs de la sierra. Ces contrastes sont frappants, mais ce sont les vues surtout qui captivent; quoique borné, le spectacle est varié; les masses granitiques dont la montagne est formée s'adoucissent au-dessus du pont Saint Martin, et des villas, appelées dans le pays _cigarrales_, étendent sur la pierre nue et grisâtre de frais tapis de verdure; c'est le seul point champêtre du paysage, tout le reste est sec et dépouillé. La montagne n'a pas un arbre. La variété naît des mouvements du sol et des anfractuosités du rocher; les perspectives sont courtes, mais frappantes; tantôt l'oeil plonge sur le Tage, qui serpente en méandres verdâtres entre les deux collines; tantôt la ville apparaît hérissée de ses innombrables clochers, puis le rideau retombe, et enferronné dans une gorge déserte et muette, on pourrait se croire tout d'un coup transporté dans quelque solitude primitive. Ces brusques alternatives ont un grand charme; elles impriment à ce paysage austère et mélancolique un profond cachet d'originalité." [Illustration: PLATE 36 TOLEDO BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA MDW 1869] PLATE XXXVI. _TOLEDO_. BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA. The brief words in which Ford gives the chronology of this "Bridge of Bridges," carries one to the long series of Lords and Masters who have made of Toledo a perfect mine of Archæological interest. "The Roman one," he says, "was repaired in 687 by the Goth Sala; destroyed by an inundation, it was rebuilt in 871, by the Alcaide Halaf, repaired in 1258 by Alonzo el Sabio,[22] restored by Archbishop Tenorio about 1380, and fortified in 1484 by Andres Manrique." To crown the whole and make it safe for ever, Philip II. placed it, by solemn dedication, under the especial protection of San Ildefonso, who certainly appears to have done his duty hitherto, as I saw few signs of repair or want of it from the middle of the sixteenth century till now. I need scarcely say, that it crosses the River Tagus in one noble and most lofty span, and connects the walled city with its dependencies "across the water." Nothing can be more picturesque than this bridge, or indeed than the whole aspect of the position of the city placed upon seven hills, forming one lofty and rocky eminence, around which, on more than two sides, tears the Tagus. Conspicuous in my sketch is the lofty Tower controlling access from the Bridge to the City on the side of the commanding "Alcazar," as literally the "royal residence," as Alcantara is in Arabic "the Bridge." Cean Bermudez[23] tells us, that one Mateo Paradiso was the architect, who in 1217 constructed a tower (probably, in at least the greatest part, the same which now remains) upon this famous bridge. In support of his opinion, he cites Estévan de Garibay, who in the ninth volume of his "unedited Works" fol. 512 tit. 6º, speaking of the Memorabilia of Toledo, says with reference to this Bridge, "that the river suddenly rising destroyed one of its pillars in the month of February, 1211, placing the bridge in peril of falling. As soon as it had been repaired, Henrique I. caused a tower to be built upon it for the greater security of it and of the city, as appears by an original inscription which once existed upon the tower in these words. "Henry, son of the King Alfonso, caused this tower to be built in honour of God, by the hand of Matheo Paradiso in the year 1255." Another tower of the time of Charles V. guards the access to the Bridge from the side farthest from the city, that from which my sketch has been taken. [Illustration: PLATE 37 TOLEDO PUENTE DE SAN MARTIN MDW 1869] PLATE XXXVII. _TOLEDO_. BRIDGE OF SAN MARTIN. AMIROLA[24] has given us an excellent account of the origin of this noble mediæval bridge, upon which the following short statement is mainly based. Near to the site on which the bridge of St. Martin now stands at Toledo, there was formerly a fine Roman bridge. This having been entirely destroyed for useful purposes, by a tremendous flood which rose, according to the most ancient annals of Toledo, in the year 1212, the city determined upon building another bridge upon a better site. Having erected abutments of vast strength, which were ultimately crowned and weighted with two towers for defence, and having bedded two solid piers in the line of the stream, their master of the works, Rodrigo Alfonso, proceeded to span it with one of three lofty arches, two of which are shown in my sketch. This magnificent arch of one hundred and forty Spanish feet in width, and ninety-five in height was destroyed in the terrible struggle between the King Don Pedro, and his brother Don Henrique, in the year 1368. It was shortly after rebuilt, and the bridge generally repaired by the great Don Tenorio, Archbishop of Toledo. Villa Franca, Alcala de Heñares, and the neighbourhood of Alamin, all boasted of bridges put up by the same Rodrigo Alfonso, who designed the bridge of San Martin at Toledo. Beyond the bridge, in my sketch, appears on the crest of the hill the mass of the beautiful, though somewhat over florid church, San Juan de los Reyes. Having been erected by Ferdinand and Isabella, in a period as late as 1476, it fails to enlist the sympathies and approbation of some; others have praised it enthusiastically, and certain it is, that if it may have possessed faults when complete, scarcely anything can be more picturesque as a ruin. [Illustration: PLATE 38 TOLEDO MOORISH GATEWAY BY THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA. MDW 1869] PLATE XXXVIII. _TOLEDO_. MOORISH GATEWAY BY THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA. Near to the bridge of Alcantara (sketch No. 36) on the road leading up from it to the city, stands the celebrated Moorish gateway of the "Puerta del Sol." This strong, large, and well fortified approach to the city, I found to labour under two marked disadvantages for my sketch-book, viz., it had been too often illustrated, and its curious details had been so vigorously "restored" (when Spaniards do "restore" there is no mistake about it), as to have lost in a great degree its original and authentic characteristics. I looked about, therefore, in the immediate vicinity of the bridge, for other vestiges of the antiquity of the city. These I soon came upon in the old gateway of which I give a sketch, and to the construction of which, both Roman and Moor have contributed. As the poor heavily laden mules laboured up the dusty stony road, with the patience of, in Spain, a much-abused race, it was impossible not to speculate upon the generations upon generations which had followed in the same track up the same road, on the same duty, through every vicissitude of occupation of the Gateway, through which they swayed monotonously from side to side. [Illustration: PLATE 39 TOLEDO ARCO DEL ZOCODOVER MDW 1869] PLATE XXXIX. TOLEDO. ENTRANCE ARCHWAY OF THE ZOCODOVER. ALTHOUGH as appears from the steps shown in my sketch rising up through this archway, which is known as that of the Zocodover, or more properly Zocodober, which means in Arabic, according to Cean Bermudez, "a place upon a lower level," the archway is situated upon _an ascent_, it by no means follows that there may not be a higher plane to which it may still be a _descent._ Such is the case in the Zocodover of Toledo, which is really the "Place" of the city in the usual French, or the "Piazza" in the Italian, sense. It is reached from without the walls by the steps shown, and is yet literally the "lower Place" when compared with the platform of the Alcazar or "Royal Residence." Of great strength, it must in its time have been the scene of terrible struggles, and blood shedding, as it dates from the days when Moors ruled in the North of Spain, and had to be wrested from the descendants of its builders only by many a tussle between the upholders of the Crescent and the Cross. On the inside of the city to the market place it has been modified, and Italianised, but to the thousands who pass up it daily from the lower parts of the outskirts, it wears its original Oriental aspect. Ford gives to the word "Zocodover" quite another meaning and derivation. He explains it as "the square market." Whether he or Bermudez may be right, I know not, but, certain it is that either meaning may be aptly fitted to describe the spot to which our gateway leads--a spot of no comfortable memories--since it still reeks with the cruelties of genuine Spanish diversions, "Autos da Fe," and "Fiestas de Toros." [Illustration: PLATE 40 TOLEDO TALLER DEL MORO MDW 1869] PLATE XL. _TOLEDO_. INTERIOR OF THE "TALLER DEL MORO." FROM the spring of the year 712, when Tarik, with his renegade Jews and Berbers, wrested the city from its Gothic rulers, to the spring of the year 1085, when Alfonso VI.--the Emperor as he styled himself after having won his laurels--reconquered the city for the Christians, Toledo remained altogether an Oriental city. As such, it was inhabited by Berbers, strict Mahommedans and Jews, the last named being occasionally tolerated and occasionally persecuted as they had been by the Goths, and subsequently were by the Castilian Christians. The duration of this tenure of power has to be borne in mind continually, in the endeavour to assign dates to the Moorish monuments of this city, of which there are a great number. It is of course true that long after the date of Alfonso's conquest the Moorish artificers worked for the Christians, but such was their constant condition of subjection that it is not to be credited that any one of them could have been allowed to live in the wealth and luxury, in which the inhabitants of such a Moorish house, as that known as the "Taller del Moro," a beautiful fragment of which forms the subject of the fortieth sketch, must have lived. I can, therefore, have no hesitation in repudiating for the date of its origin, as late a period as 1350, which has been assigned to it. On the other hand, I am no less confident that Señor Escosura, who has written of it as of "between the ninth and tenth centuries," is also in error. What I believe is, that this elegant set of chambers was really one of the latest works in the city immediately preceding its capture by Alfonso, in 1085. The style of its work is certainly later than any of that executed under the Khalifate of Corduba while in the hands of the Ummeyàh family. It belongs, I believe, to the school of the Almohades, and reflects some of the novelties in complicated geometry introduced by the Arabs of Damascus, in advance of the Ummeyàhs. They held to earlier types, as may be seen in all the works at Corduba, including even those ascribed to the author of the splendid Mih-ráb or sanctuary, the Sultan Al-Hakem II., who completed the "cubba," or Cupola of the Mih-ràb (the most complicated piece of design in all Cordova) in the year A.D., 965. All that is left at present of this once sumptuous mansion consists of a central chamber, (fifty-four feet long by twenty-three feet wide), approached from a court-yard, the usual Moorish Alfagia, (no doubt, by the doorway shown on the right hand side of my sketch), and of two chambers, one at each end of the central one. Traces of colour and gilding have almost entirely disappeared, but the stucco ornamentation, where not wilfully or heedlessly destroyed, retains all its original sharpness and beauty. I found the "Taller del Moro" in full use, or rather abuse, as a carpenter's workshop. [Illustration: PLATE 41 TOLEDO LA MAGDALENA MDW 1869] PLATE XLI. _TOLEDO_. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF LA MAGDALENA. TOLEDO is, or rather has been, a city of peculiar devotion. Its Christian mediæval architecture Mr. Street has fully illustrated, but he has passed hurriedly over some of the remains of that peculiar mixed style in which Christians usually gave the order, and Moors did the work. I have, accordingly, sketched two Christiano-Moorish campaniles which he has not given, and one which he has, but from a different point of view. The steeple of La Magdalena is, I fancy, of two periods, the construction from the ground to the base of the belfry being of one class, and the belfry itself of another. It has all the appearance of having been the old tower of a mosque previous to the conquest of Toledo by King Alfonso, and of having been subsequently taken down to a certain level, and the belfry chamber and bells added, on the christianising of the structure. It is built almost entirely of brick, and although simple to the extent of rudeness, its mass yet groups well with the long roof lines of the convents by which it is as it were hemmed in. As the student wanders through these old streets of Toledo, rendered so picturesque by remnants of old Moorish use and ceremony, his mind is naturally attracted to the days when the "mezquita" took the place of the church, and was thronged by the worshippers of the "One God and Mahomet his Prophet," by day and by night. The description given of the comparatively modern Moors in the account of Commodore Stewart's embassy to the Emperor of Morocco, in the year 1721, seems to carry us back to the days when Toledo, and many other cities of Spain, owned no other faith than that defined by the Koran. "The Moors," says the writer,[25] "seem not (as we do) to observe the day for business, and the night for sleep, but sleep and wake often in the four-and-twenty hours, going to church by night as well as day, for which purpose their Talbs call from the top of the mosques, (or places of worship) having no bells, every three hours throughout the city. In going to church they observe no gravity, nor mind their dress; but as soon as the Talb begins to bellow from the steeple, the carpenter throws down his axe, the shoemaker his awl, the tailor his shears, and away they all run like so many fellows at football; when they come into church, they repeat the first chapter of the _Alcoran_ standing, after which they look up, and lift up their hands as much above their heads as they can, and as their hands are leisurely coming down again, drop on their knees with their faces towards the _Kebla_, (as they call it) or East and by South; then touching the ground with their foreheads twice, sit a little while on their heels muttering a few words, and rise up again. This they repeat two or three times, after which, looking on each shoulder, (I suppose to their guardian angels) they say, _Selemo Alikoon (i.e.,) Peace be with you_; and have done. When there are many at prayers together, you would think they were so many gally-slaves a rowing, by the motion they make on their knees." [Illustration: PLATE 42 TOLEDO TOWER OF SAN PEDRO MARTIRE MDW 1869] PLATE XLII. _TOLEDO_. MOORISH TOWER OF SAN PEDRO MARTIRE. PLATE Forty-two presents us with another type of Christiano-Moorish Campanile from that given by the last sketch. In this case the usual fashion of the mediæval church builders of dividing the total height of the tower into several compartments, pierced with largish openings on more than one floor, has been followed. The regular Arabian praying-tower is generally simply the inclosure of a staircase, with a gallery, or open chamber, only at the summit, from which "the faithful" are duly summoned by the Imaum to their devotions. The conversion of one or more stories into belfries, however, indicates (where the work is clearly that of a Mahommedan artificer), that he has been working only for the performance of the behests of a Christian, as in the case of the Tower of San Pedro Martire at Toledo. The Church itself exhibits only a clumsy and overgrown Palladian style of a thoroughly commonplace description, gloomy and uninteresting. [Illustration: PLATE 43 TOLEDO SANT' JAGO DEL LA VEGA MDW 1869] PLATE XLIII. _TOLEDO_. TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF SANT' IAGO DE LA VEGA. THIS Church appeared to me to retain more of the primitive "Mezquita," or mosque, than any other in Toledo, excepting the celebrated "Christo de la Luz." Its aspect is most picturesque as one descends from the city towards the Vega, or once rich and lovely plain. I could not help recognizing in it how good an effect might be produced in our ordinary street architecture by the use of common brick, provided that the masses of the construction should be artistically disposed, and used without the appearance of pinching here and paring off there, which spoils many of our usually too ambitious efforts. In all such work as this in Spain, one is reminded only of the "bottom of the purse" when the work remains unfinished. With us the aspect of the "fond-du-sac" begins generally with the beginning, with the first lines of the disposition of the plan, and ends only with the end of the whole. As far as appearances go in this structure, differences of style from those of the rest of the building shown in my sketch in the belfry, and in the apsidal end of the choir of the Church, and in one or two other parts, seemed to point to those features of the design as being of considerably later date than that of the rest of the building. If the primitive Moorish work may have been of the middle of the eleventh century, the Christiano-Moorish may have been of the end of the thirteenth. [Illustration: PLATE 44 TOLEDO HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS] PLATE XLIV. _TOLEDO_. EXTERNAL VIEW OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS. DESCENDING from the main Piazza of the city, through the gateway shown by the thirty-ninth sketch, the great "Hospedal de la Santa Cruz" is speedily reached. This is generally considered the finest example of Plateresque (literally silversmith's) Architecture left in Spain. Its founder was the all powerful Cardinal D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, "Tertius Rex," of Castile, Consolidator of the Monarchy, and Father of the absolute supremacy of the Catholic Church in Spain. The style of this building, and the circumstances of the birth and training of its architect, raise the important question of the extent to which the Plateresque style in Spain may, or may not, have been of national origin? It appears that in 1459, a certain Anequin de Egas de Bruselas (or Brussels) of the Cathedral of Toledo, in his capacity of "Maestro Mayor," with his assistant Juan Fernandez de Liena, executed the façade of the main southern transept of that Cathedral, and the entrance familiarly known as "de los Leones." In this work, the architecture is of florid Burgundian-Gothic, with scarcely a trace of Renaissance about its original design. Anequin died in 1494, and his son Henrique was appointed, by the Chapter of Toledo, to succeed his father as "Maestro Mayor," the duties of which office he performed until his death in 1534. Henrique was the favourite architect of the King D. Fernando, and of his son, the Archbishop D. Alonso, who actually disputed, in 1505, as to which of them should for awhile avail themselves of his exclusive services. He was called in to every important consultation of architects of his time, and was evidently "au courant" of the great changes of style which had been developed in Italy, and which were in course of development in France, and in and about his father's native place. His influence as a naturalizer of the exotic details of which models were furnished to artists by the prints and portable works of the "petits maîtres," is clearly manifested when we recognise the early dates at which his florid Renaissance buildings were executed. For instance, in those designed for Cardinal Mendoza, the dates of which are well known, we find Renaissance features well carried out with scarcely any admixture of Gothic. The earliest of these is the vast "Colegio Mayor" de Sta. Cruz at Valladolid, which Henrique began in 1480 and completed in 1492, and the second the splendid Hospital for Foundlings at Toledo (1504 to 1514) from which the sketch, now under consideration, and the two which follow it have been taken. In describing the second of these sketches, we shall resume our consideration of the Plateresque style generally from the point at which it is now left. It may be well, however, with relation to this sketch, to state that it shows the principal portal or great entrance to the Hospital, and that the top story appears to be of later date and coarser execution than the portal and the two elegant windows of the first floor. The carving in the lunette of the doorway represents, in very good style, the "invention of the Cross" with Sta. Helena and the Founder. The colour of the stone, and the quality of the workmanship leave nothing to be desired. [Illustration: PLATE 45 TOLEDO SANTA CRUZ MDW 1869] PLATE XLV. _TOLEDO_. CORTILE OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS. IT is in the interior rather than on the exterior of the Toledo Foundling Hospital, that Henrique de Egas has best shown his command over the Plateresque style. It was no longer in designing the former a question of adding on ornament in fanciful door and window dressings, as it was in the latter, but a necessity to adapt from existing models, or originate essential parts of the structure, executing important functions of use and stability. The columns, arches, and interspacing of the arcading of the Patios evidence by their proportions, quite as much as by their details, that Henrique's and his employer's backs had been turned upon Gothic, and that a new style had been inaugurated for Spanish architecture, as the successes of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the discovery of America, had laid the foundations of an entirely new era for Spain. The construction of the building under notice was begun by Cardinal Mendoza, under Henrique, in 1504; the year in which those Sovereigns ascended the throne, and completed in the year 1514. Simultaneously with the commencement of the great Hospital for the "Tertius Rex," Henrique designed a still more extensive and magnificent Hospital which the "Reyes Catolicos" proposed to construct at Santiago, and entered upon many other great architectural works in other parts of Spain. Ford, who was no mean judge, says of the Hospedal de la Santa Cruz, that its "position overlooking the Tagus is glorious, and the building is one of the gems of the world; nor can any chasing of Cellini surpass the elegant Portal." There is little doubt that Egas was stimulated to great exertion by the rivalry of many competitors, few of whom, however, designed in exactly his style. The work which most resembles his, I believe, will be found in the detail of the wonderful Plateresque Town Hall at Seville, and that of the Cathedral at Plasencia. That so magnificent a Palace (for such it is) should have been thought necessary, or at any rate should have been indulged in, for the reception of foundlings, is to be partially accounted for by an old assertion I have met with, that the Spaniards, not knowing the parentage of the "niños perdidos," gave them "the benefit of the doubt," and considered them all as children of Hidalgos, a questionable compliment to the boasted morality, or at any rate austerity, of the upper classes. [Illustration: PLATE 46 TOLEDO HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS. MDW 1869] PLATE XLVI. _TOLEDO._ DOORWAY FROM THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS. THE facts that Moorish workmen should have been found in Toledo, Segovia, and elsewhere in Spain, to modify their national style, in their Mudejar work, and to incorporate freely in it many features of late mediæval work; while they scarcely ever lent themselves to any expression of Renaissance form, although they occasionally laboured in buildings of that style, have been supposed to imply a greater affinity between Arabian and Gothic modes of design, than between the Arabian style and Plateresque. This may, to some extent, account for the presence of this Mudejar work, assimilating in no way with the last-mentioned style, in a building of so distinctly a Renaissance character as this one possesses. The fact is, however, rather thus--that after the expulsion of the Moors, and the institution of the Inquisition (the period of the construction of this Hospital), the Moorish artificers diminished very rapidly in number, and lost their individuality almost entirely in Northern and Central Spain; and that, whereas, during several centuries they had lived there in cities in which Gothic architecture was practised by Christians, and had thus made themselves partially acquainted with its details, they had but a short term of scarcely tolerated national existence wherein to learn the novelties which were beginning to be taken up by the Spaniards, at the commencement of the sixteenth century. My sketch, while it indicates the elaboration of this late specimen of Mudejar stucco-work, shows by the figures I have introduced (from life) the class to whose tender mercies this gem is now confided. Let it be hoped that the "Genius loci," may protect it, for the respectable Spanish soldier of the nineteenth century can scarcely be regarded as a satisfactory Conservative element. [Illustration: PLATE 47 TOLEDO GREAT DOORWAY OF THE ALCAZAR MDW 1869] PLATE XLVII. _TOLEDO._ ENTRANCE GATEWAY TO THE ALCAZAR. THE Royal residence, for such is the meaning of the word "Alcazar," of Toledo, is one of the two great Palaces which Charles V. caused to be constructed in order that Spain might, for the first time, have "Royal Residences" commensurate with her grandeur and wealth. He appears to have chosen the same architect for both in the person of Alonso de Covarrubbias. This distinguished artist was born in the locality, in the diocese of Burgos, from whence he derived his name. At an early age he allied himself with the family of the Flemish Egas, distinguished in the highest degree as architects in the persons of Anequin and his son Henrique. The wife of Alonso de Covarrubbias was a certain Maria Gutierrez de Egas, and by her he became the father of several sons, who in different ways (not in architecture) achieved great distinction and consideration. To return to the architectural career of Covarrubbias. Through the interest of Henrique de Egas, and probably in succession to him, Alonso Covarrubbias was appointed "Maestro Mayor" of the Cathedral of Toledo, whereupon he settled himself altogether in that city with his brother Marcos. His great work in Toledo Cathedral was the famous Chapel "de los Reyes nuevos," which he completed in the year 1534. He is then said to have given some plans to Cardinal D. Alonso de Fonseca, for the improvement of the Archbishop's Palace at Alcala de Heñares (see my notes on that structure, Sketches, Nos. 33 and 34). He subsequently occupied himself, until 1537, in designing and carrying out the splendid entry to the Colegio Mayor (known as that of the Archbishop) in Salamanca, and other works. In the last mentioned year he was appointed, by Charles V., with another architect, Luis de Vega, to make plans for rebuilding the Royal Palaces of Toledo and Madrid. This commission was subsequently modified, giving to Covarrubbias the works of Toledo, and to de Vega those at Madrid. The Alcazar of Toledo had been originally built by King Alonso VI., on the highest point of the city, when he took it from the Moors in 1085. It had been added to at various dates, chiefly by the powerful Alvaro de Luna, and lastly by the Reyes Catolicos. What Charles V. caused to be built, consisted of a façade of great extent, a magnificent vestibule, court-yard and staircase, on all of which he placed his insignia. The Portal I have sketched, is stated by Cean Bermudez, from whom most of the above mentioned facts have been derived, to have been constructed by Henrique de Egas,[26] under the direction of Covarrubbias who closed an honourable life, much favoured by his Sovereign, in 1570. The Spaniards are justly proud of the noble simplicity and grand style of Covarrubbias, which has none of the coldness and heaviness of Herrera's; and this is one of the rare cases in which they have made, of late years, a really splendid and not over-loaded restoration. Upon the whole, the Alcazar at Toledo is one of the few buildings existing in Spain which reflects, particularly in its grand Cortile, the "magnificenze" of the Italian Renaissance, in their completest form. [Illustration: PLATE 48 TOLEDO HOSPEDAL DE TAVERA PATIO MDW 1869] PLATE XLVIII. _TOLEDO._ PATIO OF THE HOSPITAL OF CARDINAL TAVERA. THE great Cardinal Primate, whose name this gigantic Hospital still bears, was a worthy successor to Mendoza and Cisneros. In 1542 he employed the Architect Bartholomé de Bustamente to design and construct the four façades of this enormous pile. Not particularly attractive from without, internally the extent, fine proportions, and simplicity of its great Patios are very striking. It is one of the most regular pieces of Italian architecture I met with in Spain, and would have produced a highly satisfactory effect if its upper arches had been semi-circular instead of elliptic. The Hospital is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and is placed without the walls of the city, whence its cognomen of "a fuera." The Church of the Hospital is older in style if not in date than the rest of the structure. Here in the room beneath the clock died the famous Berruguete in 1561, shortly after completing the portal of the Church and the marble monument within it which commemorates the cardinal virtues of the illustrious founder. [Illustration: PLATE 49 CORDOBA CASA CABELLO MDW 1869] PLATE XLIX. _CORDOBA._ EXTERIOR OF THE CASA CABELLO. THIS pretty entrance to a Spanish nobleman's house of the latter part of the sixteenth century has, like most of its class, little story to tell, and that little, could I but unravel it, would probably turn out to be only of the dullest. Let us see, therefore, from a contemporary witness, what manner of life was ordinarily led by the class of nobles for one of whom it may have been fitted up in the fashion of the century succeeding that in which it was built. "In the morning as soon as they are up they drink water cooled with ice, and presently after chocolate. When dinner time is come, the master sits down to table; his wife and children eat upon the floor near the table; this is not done out of respect, as they tell me, but the women cannot sit upon a chair, they are not accustomed to it; and there are several ancient Spanish women who never sat upon one in their whole life. They make a light meal, for they eat little flesh; the best of their food are pigeons, pheasants, and their olios, which are excellent; but the greatest lord has not brought to his table above two pigeons, and some very bad ragoust, full of garlick and pepper; and after that some fennel and a little fruit. When this little dinner is over, every one in the house undress themselves and lie down upon their beds, upon which they lay Spanish leather-skins for coolness; at this time you shall not find a soul in the streets; the shops are shut, all the trade ceased, and it looks as if every body were dead. At two o'clock in the winter and at four in the summer they begin to dress themselves again, then eat sweetmeats, drink either some chocolate or water cooled in ice, and afterwards everybody goes where they think fit, and indeed they tarry out till eleven or twelve o'clock at night; I speak of people that live regularly; then the husband and wife go to bed, a great table-cloth is spread all over the bed, and each fastens it under their chin. The he and she-dwarfs serve up supper, which is as frugal as the dinner, for it is either a pheasant-hen made into a ragoust, or some pastry business, which burns their mouth it is so excessively peppered; the lady drinks her belly full of water, and the gentleman very sparingly of the wine; and when supper is ended each goes to sleep as well as they can." [Illustration: PLATE 50 SEVILLE LA FERIA] PLATE L. _SEVILLE._ CHURCH OF LA FERIA. "LA FERIA" in Seville, has been time out of mind the essence of all that is most "Picaresque" in the city. Not quite so thronged with Gitanos and Gitanas as the suburb of Triana, it makes up for shortcomings in that element of rascality and picturesqueness, by majos and majas, rustic beaux and belles, bull-fighters and beggars, dogs and donkeys, mules and muleteers, rags and tatters, and abundance of the most gloriously coloured fruits under the sun--and, above all, there reign such a sun and such a sky as denizens of the North have really little or no notion of. As if these elements of the picture were not enough, by way of background, stands a church in which the "battle of the Styles" seems to have been fairly fought out, with the victory now inclining to Moor, and now to Christian, while over all is seen a little of the Renaissance, with more than a suspicion, in the heavy scrolls of the highest belfry, of "Churriguerismo." While I sat on a door-step making this poor little sketch, I think I must have seen Murillo's by the dozen, and John Phillips' by the hundred, not on canvas, but glowing with Nature's own light, and life, and colour. [Illustration: PLATE 51 SEVILLE SAN MARCOS MDW 1869] PLATE LI. _SEVILLE._ CHURCH OF SAN MARCOS. SOME notion of the richness of Seville, in the remains of old Moorish mosques converted into Christian churches, may be formed from the fact that this edifice, in which we trace the two styles blended in the most interesting way, finds no mention in the pages of Ford, O'Shea, Mellado, or any other guide books of Spain I have been able to meet with, except Bradshaw's. In that, Dr. Charnock thus briefly alludes to San Marcos. "Note," says he, "its beautiful western façade which has served as a model for several churches; the Retablo of the Altar de las Animas, contains a painting by D. Martinez; the tower rising to the left of the Church in imitation of the Giralda, is a fine monument of Arabian architecture." It is, of course, to the grand portal, rather than to the whole façade, that Dr. Charnock alludes, since the former from the purity of its apparently late fifteenth century work, merits his praise, while the latter cannot certainly be regarded as other than a "barbarismo." The tower, particularly pleasing in the style of its Mudejar additions, has been engraved in elevation in "los Monumentos Arquitectonicos." It is about seventy-five feet high by ten feet wide. [Illustration: PLATE 52 SEVILLE LA FERIA MDW 1869] PLATE LII. _SEVILLE._ REMAINS OF MUDEJAR HOUSE NEAR LA FERIA. THE habit of the Moors was almost universally to make their exterior architecture plain, and to reserve richness and elaboration for the interiors of their houses. The fact that what is commonly internal architecture has been used by Moorish workmen on the external façade of the little house, which forms the subject of this fifty-second sketch, would be sufficient of itself to prove that it had not been executed for a Moor, even if the Gothic mouldings and ornaments of the buttresses, imposts, cornices, and string courses failed to assert the Christianity of those for whom the house may have been built. The date of its construction, judging from style, was probably about the middle of the fifteenth century, at which period, in Spain, Renaissance features had in nowise affected the integrity of either Gothic or Moorish architecture. In this case all the mason's work is Gothic, and all the stucco-work is Moorish; and this distinction of style, according to the technical mode of construction, is not an uncommon feature of Mudejar work. It was not only in stucco that the traditions of Moorish art-workmanship enriched all Spain, since both in metal-work and wood-work, the Moors continued to be employed long after their subjugation, preserving very many of their old and excellent types of form throughout many phases of transition. To this subject I may have occasion to recur. I was myself fortunate enough to meet with a beautiful little walnut-wood box, covered with Mudejar ornament, in the midst of which a Moorish workman of the sixteenth century had carved the I.H.S. of Christianity, and the sword of Sant' Iago. [Illustration: PLATE 53 SEVILLE FONDA DE MADRID MDW 1869] PLATE LIII. _SEVILLE._ MUDEJAR WINDOW IN THE FONDA DE MADRID. THIS window which is of the class known as "Ajimez," or literally "through which the sun shines," _i.e._ in an external wall, is a specimen of Mudejar work left as a "waif" in a part of Seville which, with this exception, has been entirely modernised. It belongs to exactly the house where one would least expect to find it, viz., one of the best hotels, if not the best hotel, in Seville, the "Fonda de Madrid." All of this pretty window is made of brickwork, once covered apparently in Moorish fashion with thin plaster, excepting the column which is of white marble. The room it lights is an ordinary nineteenth century inn bedroom, with square casements, and not a vestige of the fifteenth century left about it. I could learn nothing about this relic, or perfect reproduction of the past, from any one in the hotel, so that all I could do was to sketch it. While doing so, I could not but wonder how with so sensible, and, at the same time, so pretty a window ready to their hands as a model, the builders of the Fonda could have been contented to execute the regular expressionless square-headed windows I found everywhere else. After a few minutes moralising in this vein, I began to ask myself whether, as an Englishman, I was not assiduously "plucking the mote from my brother's eye," with a beam all the time in my own? [Illustration: PLATE 54 CASA DE PILATUS SEVILLE MDW 1869] PLATE LIV. _SEVILLE._ VIEW IN THE UPPER STORY OF ONE OF THE PATIOS OF THE CASA DE PILATUS. THE principal monument of Moorish magnificence still left in Seville, is, of course, the "Royal Residence," the "Alcazar," commenced in 1181, by Jalubi, the architect of Toledo. Next to it in importance is the "Casa de Pilatus," as it is called, from which this sketch, and the succeeding one have been taken. From the first named of these buildings I did not sketch at all, feeling myself entirely baffled by the extreme elaboration of all that was most interesting and admirable in the old Moorish, Mudejar and Plateresque work. Such a building can be in no wise now satisfactorily illustrated, excepting by one who may be in a position to devote much time and study to the task. "Restoration," and the adaptation of the structure to the necessities of nineteenth century life have so mystified the work and intention of the original designers, that although one may readily admire, it becomes exceedingly difficult to analyse, all that meets the eye. I have, therefore, preferred giving my attention, so far as this publication is concerned, to other, although less noteworthy, specimens of the domestic architecture of Seville. The student of the Fine Arts, and even the ordinary traveller, are sure, without any urging on my part, to visit and enjoy the Alcazar, as a Royal Palace; but may possibly, and, indeed, unless advised on the subject, probably, may overlook the great beauty and curiosity of the old, and now sadly neglected, Moorish and cinque-cento garden which lies in the rear of the building. How to make a garden a delight the Mahommedans learnt from the Persians, and taught by example, if not by precept, to the Christians. Throughout these antique, orange, lemon, box, and myrtle, groves, the Moors carried their system of irrigation. Fountains and fishponds, baths and open water channels, even in the hottest summer, still cool the favourite haunts. Many of these, Pedro "el Cruel" caused to be formed in 1364 by architects specially brought from Granada to rebuild a large portion of the Palace, for his accommodation and that of his celebrated and beautiful mistress, Maria de Padilla. Much more modern, and far less beautiful, gardening was done by Charles V, but it is to the Moors the spot owes all its great charm. To return to the "Casa de Pilatus," so called from an old tradition, that it was intended as a reproduction of the house of Pilate at Jerusalem. It was built in 1533, by Fadrique Henriquez de Ribera, after his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519. From him the Palace, for such it was, has descended (and, oh, how much descended!) to its present owner, who is said to rarely visit it, a Duke of Medina Coeli. From the Señor Duque, it has again _descended_ to his Administrador, who does his best to keep it (for Spain) clean, and in tolerable order. My sketch has been taken in the upper gallery of the third Patio. [Illustration: PLATE 55 SEVILLE HOUSE OF PILATUS MDW 1869] PLATE LV. _SEVILLE._ DETAIL FROM A DOORWAY IN THE UPPER FLOOR OF ONE OF THE PATIOS OF THE HOUSE OF PILATE. THIS sketch represents, to a larger scale, a portion of the doorway shown upon a small scale in the preceding sketch. It illustrates two of the special points of architectural value in this fine old Palace, viz., the entirely Moresque character of the stucco-work at a comparatively late date, and the profuse use of "Azulejos" or coloured tiles. Some of these may be recognized, although in a sketch in black and white, it is not easy to make them apparent, in the coverings of the lower part of the door jamb. It is, however, in and about the splendid staircase, that this charming tile lining, of the use of which we have here of late years commenced a very satisfactory revival, asserts its value as a beautiful mode of introducing clean and permanent polychromatic decoration--the only mode, indeed, as I believe, suitable for our changeful climate, and smoky ways. I regret that my sketch is not sufficiently minute to show a favourite habit of the Moors of Granada and Seville, in the technical working of their stucco, by the use of which they give an appearance of extraordinary elaboration to their decorations. It consists in working different patterns on different planes of the same piece of stucco-work. At a distance the dominant lines of the pattern only are apparent, on a nearer approach the pattern comes into sight which fills up the bold openings left between the dominant lines of the top pattern; and on a still closer inspection, a third series of forms running counter to the main lines of the pattern on the second plane and filling up the interstices of it may be traced. I am inclined to believe, from their peculiar sharpness, that few, or none, of the repeats of these patterns were done from moulds by the operation of casting, but that wire, or cut metal stencils, were used as guides for the pointed tools and knives, by which superfluous plaster was removed, whilst the whole was yet in a plastic state. This method of shaping semi-plastic stucco with sharp tools, was, I have no doubt, derived by the Arabs from Roman tradition, as I have seen many examples of a similar mode of working at Rome, Pompeii, Naples, and elsewhere in Italy. [Illustration: PLATE 56 SEVILLE CASA ALBA MDW 1869] PLATE LVI. _SEVILLE._ ONE OF THE ARCHES OF THE PATIO OF THE CASA ALBA. "HOW are the Mighty fallen," is the predominant sensation, as one wanders through these "banquet halls deserted." One may fairly paraphrase Byron, and declare that "in Seville Alba's echoes are no more." Ford and O'Shea, whose notes on the relics of domestic edifices in Spain are invaluable, both tell us that this still beautiful, though sadly destroyed, whitewashed, and dilapidated, old Palace, once "contained eleven patios, nine fountains, and one hundred marble columns." Of the elaboration of its workmanship, my sketch may serve to give some idea. It was probably next to the Alcazar, the most important residence in the City, far surpassing in extent the "Casa de Pilatus." This house presents one of the rare instances in Spain, in which the Moorish stucco-workers have lent themselves to the rendering of Renaissance details. For these, no doubt, they were furnished with drawings or models, since in other parts of the same building, and especially in many beautiful rooms in the interior, where they have apparently been left to themselves, they have reverted partly to Mudejar work, and partly to the old types of geometrical enrichment, which may be regarded as specifically their own. Much of this is almost reduced to a flat surface by repeated coats of whitewash. I was very much pleased, however, to meet with one Spanish gentleman, occupying a suite of rooms in the house, who was fully alive to the beauty of the Palace he lived in; and who had, with his own hands, cleared off some of the whitewash, and restored much of the fine ornamental detail of his rooms to its original sharpness. Would that there were more like him in Spain! [Illustration: PLATE 57 SEVILLE MDW 1869 CASA ALBA] PLATE LVII. _SEVILLE._ DETAIL FROM THE PATIO OF THE CASA ALBA. TURNING from a consideration of the grand scale upon which the houses of the old Spanish nobility have been usually constructed, and the elaboration with which, as in the present sketch, the profuse ornamental detail has been combined with heraldic insignia to set forth the splendour and dignity of the family and its alliances, to the ruin and dilapidation which seem to have fallen alike upon the architecture and the families, one naturally wonders at the causes of the almost total wreck. Some may, no doubt, be found in active assailment from without, invasion, revolution, "y otras cosas de España;" but it is from within that the real main enemy--pride--has undermined all. During the latter part of the sixteenth, and early part of the seventeenth century, this national infirmity reached its acme. Witness emphatically the sketch given by an eye-witness towards the close of the last named century. "It would grieve a body to see the ill-management of some great lords; there are divers who will never go to their estates (for so they call their lands, their towns, and castles) but pass all their lives at Madrid, and trust all to a steward, who makes them believe what he judges most for his own interest. They will not so much as vouchsafe to inquire whether he speaks true or false; this would be too exact, and by consequence below them. This, methinks, is one considerable fault; the strange profusion of vessels only for an egg and a pigeon is another. But it is not only in these things which they fail, but it is also in the daily expences of their houses. They know not what it is to lay up stores, or make provision of anything; but every day they fetch in what they want, and all upon trust, at the bakers, cooks, butchers, and all other trades; they are even ignorant what they set down in their books, and they put down what price they will for every thing they sell; this matter is neither examined into nor contradicted. There are often fifty horses in a stable, without either corn or straw, and they perish with hunger. And when the master is in bed, if he should be taken ill in the night, he would be at a great loss, for they let nothing remain in his house, neither wine nor water, charcoal nor wax-candle, and in a word nothing at all; for though they do not take in provisions so near that there is nothing left, yet his servants have a custom of carrying the overplus away to their own lodgings, and the next day they furnish themselves with the same things again. They observe no better rules with the tradesmen. A man or woman of quality had rather die than to haggle for, or ask the price of a stuff, or lace, or any other thing, or to take the remainder of a piece of gold; they rather chuse to give it the tradesman, for his pains of having sold them for ten pistoles that which was not worth five. If there is a reasonable price made, he that sells to them is so honest not to take the advantage of their easiness to give whatever is asked them; and as they have credit given them for ten years together, without even thinking of paying, so at last they find themselves under great difficulties with their debts." [Illustration: PLATE 58 SEVILLE CASA DE LOS ABADES MDW 1869] PLATE LVIII. _SEVILLE._ ARCHES FROM THE CASA DE LOS ABADES. THE architectural style of this very pretty house, No. 9, in the Calle de los Abades, is much purer, that is more Italian in its Plateresque, than is usual in other houses in Seville in which the hand of the skilful Moorish operative is to be distinctly perceived. This is to be accounted for by the fact, that although the mansion existed as a house of importance at the commencement of the fifteenth century,[27] the architectural features which now meet the eye were all executed for the rich Genoese family of the Pinedos about 1533. If it were not for the peculiar engrailed double edging to the arches, the thinness of the marble central window shaft, and a few oriental turns here and there given to the foliage, and enrichments of the mouldings, one could almost believe that this architecture was regular Genoese cinque-cento. It is possible however, that although here in the midst of ordinary Spanish Plateresque one is tempted to cry out "Oh! how Italian this is!" if one could only meet with a precisely similar building in Genoa; one would be quite as much tempted to exclaim, "Oh! how Spanish this is!" The fact of course is, that it exhibits a mixture of the two styles, produced under the exceptional circumstances to which I have alluded. After passing from its Genoese owners, it was inhabited by certain Abades, rich members of the Cathedral Staff, who left behind them their name, but no very popular odour of sanctity, "En la calle de los Abades, Todos han Tíos, y ningunos Padres."[28] So runs the jingle Ford quotes, with manifest glee, adding as a sequel to bring the matter home to the right offenders, "Los Canonigos, Madre, no tienen hijos; Los que tienen en casa, son sobrinicos."[29] Possibly it may have been some of these very "sobrinicos" who hindered my sketching by many small practical "chistes," for as the Patio served as a play-ground to a tumultuous little boys' school, I found it by no means conducive to that state of mind which facilitates elaborate sketching. I fear also that such an occupation of its graceful galleries may not prove conducive to the preservation of the noses, and possibly even of the heads, of the "Caballeros de mucha consideracion," who fill the medallions of the spandrels of the principal arches of the Patio. [Illustration: PLATE 59 CASA DE LOS ABADES SEVILLE. MDW 1869] PLATE LIX. _SEVILLE._ VIEW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS ABADES. IN spite of all the habits of reckless extravagance, in the days when America poured its countless riches into the mother-country, described by travellers; and in spite of the quantity of money which must have been lavished on building by nobles and superior ecclesiastics, (as in the case of the extremely elegant Renaissance "Casa de los Abades" which forms the subject of our fifty-eighth sketch,) the home-life of Spain never approached the contemporary plenty and comfort which obtained in Italy, France, and England. In spite of the occasional prodigality of wedding feasts, such as that of Camacho in Don Quixotte, and in spite, perhaps, of a little occasional "gourmanderie" on the part of the "Señores Abades" of this Calle, neither cooking nor service appear to have been carried to much perfection. It is in fact very curious, in wandering over any fine old Spanish house, to observe how little provision appears to have been made in them architecturally for the kitchen and its service. Ornament appears to have been much more general in the public parts of the richest houses than good fare in the interior and private parts. Nor was there any such movement towards excess in this particular, as usually accompanies the passage of a wealthy and powerful people from wealth and power, through laziness, to poverty and weakness. So late as 1775, the year in which Philip Thicknesse[30] travelled through part of Spain, and whilst it was yet a comparatively unbroken-up country, domestic luxury had reached but a little way beyond the satisfaction of the simplest wants of nature in the simplest way. "The people of fashion in general," he says, "have no idea of serving their tables with elegance, or eating delicately; but rather, in the style of our forefathers, without spoon or fork, they use their own fingers, and give drink from the glass of others; foul their napkins and cloaths exceedingly, and are served at table by servants who are dirty, and often very offensive. I was admitted, by accident, to a gentleman's house, of large fortune, while they were at dinner; there were seven persons at a round table, too small for five; two of the company were visitors; yet neither their dinner was so good, nor their manner of eating it so delicate, as may be seen in the kitchen of a London tradesman. The dessert (in a country where fruit is so fine and so plenty) was only a large dish of the seeds of pomegranates, which they eat with wine and sugar. In truth, Sir, an Englishman who has been the least accustomed to eat at genteel tables, is, of all other men, least qualified to travel into other kingdoms, and particularly into Spain." [Illustration: PLATE 60 SEVILLE MDW 1869 A PEEP INTO AN ORDINARY PATIO] PLATE LX. _SEVILLE._ A PEEP INTO AN ORDINARY PATIO. IN several previous notices, I have described the uses of the Patios in olden times, and on a large scale, and the degree to which they have been made, as architectural contrivances, to fall in with popular manners and customs. It remains to notice the extent to which the Spaniards of to-day sympathise in this respect with their forefathers, and how essential the Patio still is to the happiness of domestic life. It is at once cool and airy, and may be made quite private or semi-public at pleasure. With its iron gate to the street closed, and a screen drawn across it, it becomes private, and with its door opened it occupies in modern life exactly the position which the "Atrium" used to occupy in ancient classical life. An awning, drawn across from side to side of the Patio, answers to the Roman Velarium, closing the Impluvium, and gives shade and softened light during the glare of mid-day, allowing the court of the house to be used as the ordinary sitting-room of the family. Theophile Gautier[31] gives a pretty picture of the facility with which the Patio may be converted at night into the "Salon," in which what answers to the Soirée of the French is usually given by the Spaniards. "The Tertullia," he says, "is held in the Patio which is surrounded by columns of alabaster, and ornamented with a fountain, the basin of which is encircled with flowers and masses of foliage, on the leaves of which the trickling drops fall in small showers. Six or eight lights are suspended against the walls, chairs and sofas of straw or cane furnish the arcades; guitars are laid about here and there, and the piano occupies one angle and a whist-table another. The guests, on entering, salute the master and mistress of the house, who never fail, after the usual compliments, to offer a cup of chocolate, which may or may not be refused, and a cigarette which is generally accepted. These duties fulfilled, the visitor may attach himself to whichever group in the corners of the Patio he may consider most attractive. The family and the elderly guests play cards. The young gentlemen talk to the young ladies, and in fact, if they are so minded while away the time in innocent flirtation, or perhaps less innocent gossip and tittle-tattle." The Patio thus becomes the stage on which the elegant señoritas display their most winning fascinations, and "spin cobwebs to catch flies" in the shape of "novios." It is principally in those cities in which classical and oriental tradition is still strongest, such as Segovia, Toledo, Granada, and Seville, that the use of the Patio, as the Romans and Moors used their open air Cortiles, is chiefly affected. Our sketch was taken in Seville, but hundreds of similar sketches might readily be taken there, or elsewhere. There is nevertheless a special charm about these Seville houses, in spite of their remorseless whitewash, which makes life in them most pleasant. This has no doubt justified the old proverb, quoted in German, Latin and Italian by Berckenmeyern[32] "Wen Gott lieb hat, dem giebt er ein Haus in Sevilia." (To whom God loves he gives a house in Seville). [Illustration: PLATE 61 CADIZ CATHEDRAL MDW 1869] PLATE LXI. _CADIZ._ INTERNAL VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL. SWINBURNE,[33] who visited Cadiz in January, 1775, and who certainly possesses the merit (so far as I can find out) of being the first Englishman who made any drawings from the remains of ancient architecture in Spain, found the Cathedral of that city, "la nueva," (intended to supersede the mean "la vieja," built in 1597,) in course of construction, and the following is his description of what he then saw. "On the shore stands the Cathedral, a work of great expense, but carried on with so little vigour, that it is difficult to guess at the term of years it will require to bring it to perfection; I think fifty have already elapsed since the first stone was laid, and the roof is not yet half finished. The vaults are executed with great solidity. The arches that spring from the clustered pilasters to support the roof of the church are very bold; the minute sculpture bestowed upon them seems superfluous, as all the effect will be lost from their great height, and from the shade that will be thrown upon them by the filling up of the interstices. From the sea, the present top of the church resembles the carcase of some huge monster cast upon its side, rearing its gigantic blanched ribs high above the buildings of the city. The outward casings are to be of white marble, the bars of the windows of bronze; but I fear the work will be coarsely done, if one may draw inference from the sample of a small chapel, where the squares are so loosely jointed and ill fitted, that in a few years the facing will be quite spoilt. It is unfair to prejudge a piece of architecture in such an imperfect state, but I apprehend the style of this will be crowded and heavy." In spite of all Swinburne's forebodings the real effect of this Cathedral is now, internally at least, vast and stately, although in too florid a style as to detail to be quite satisfactory. The true cause of much of the delay, culminating in total stoppage in 1769, of which Swinburne complains, was the cupidity of certain Commissioners who appropriated to themselves the funds (a tax on American imports) allotted by the government for the work. To give a cover to their gross dishonesty, they laid blame on the designs of the architect, Vicente Acero,[34] which could not, as they averred, be completed. At last, in 1832, the scandal was wiped out by the zeal and liberality of Bishop Domingo de Silos Moreus who caused the interior to be completed, and the exterior partially so, mainly out of his privy purse. [Illustration: PLATE 62 MALAGA THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ALAMEDA MDW 1869] PLATE LXII. _MALAGA._ THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ALAMEDA. IN almost every Spanish town there exists a feature, too often wanting, under similar circumstances, in England, in the shape of a public walk, or "paseo." In these popular airing places in the summer-heats the inhabitants turn out, take exercise, meet and chat with one another, the poor with the rich (by mutual consent) under the shade of green trees, usually within compass of the scent of flowers, and almost invariably within hearing of the pleasant trickle of some pretty fountain. Such places, which, as their name imports, the Spaniards have inherited, with almost all that makes life pleasant, from the Moors, are called "Alamedas." In this particular Malaga is especially favoured, for not only is her Alameda, which forms the principle Plaza of the city, cooled by refreshing breezes from the sea, "La que baña dulce el mar Entre Jazmín y Azahar," but it is adorned by one of the prettiest fountains in the world. It is made of pure white marble, and of such exquisite workmanship that it would betray its Italian origin at a glance, even if it did not possess a history of its own which places the fact beyond a doubt. Ordered originally at Genoa by Charles V. for his Palace at Granada, it was shipped, on its completion for conveyance thither, on board a Spanish galleon.[35] On the voyage the vessel was captured by Barbarossa, and recovered by Don Bernardino de Mendoza, General de Galeras. Ford remarks that the costume (_à la_ fig leaf) of the nymphs and Amorini which adorn it is somewhat too slight for Spanish ideas of propriety, and O'Shea caps his observation by commenting on its perfect suitability to the Malagan climate. [Illustration: PLATE 63 MALAGA RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANT' AUGUSTIN MDW 1869] PLATE LXIII. _MALAGA._ RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANT' AUGUSTIN. NOT only is Malaga endowed with an "eternal summer" by its lovely climate, there being actually no "winter of its discontent," but it has also enjoyed historically a splendid and long summer of prosperity, its present state being comparatively autumnal. This "golden age" existed under the Moors for many centuries preceding the dreadful siege laid to the city by the Catholic kings, which ended on the 18th of August, 1487. It has never altogether recovered from the christianising influences then brought to bear upon it, though the charms of its position and climate prevented its being altogether deserted at any time. They indeed produced an after-crop of splendour, in the shape of fine residences of powerful nobility, enriched many of them by the spoils of the Moors, and yet more by the silver of America and the great profits of the foreign trade, to say nothing of the smuggling carried on in its port. Of such our sketch presents a specimen, more Italian in its character than would be likely to be met with in Spain, in any other locality than a "Port de Mer." The great establishment of the Genoese merchants, the "Casa de los Genoveses," may have exercised a powerful local influence upon the arts and especially the architecture of Malaga, as that of our "Merchants of the Steleyard" did upon those of London. In the distance is seen one of the cupola-covered towers of the vast Cathedral--most promising and picturesque from a distance, but unsatisfactory in its incompleteness, when visited by the Ecclesiologist. [Illustration: PLATE 64 MALAGA OSPEDALE DE SANTO TOMÉ MDW 1869] PLATE LXIV. _MALAGA._ OLD WINDOW OF THE OSPEDALE DE SANTO TOMÉ. THIS pretty window of, as I believe, the early part of the sixteenth century is evidently of Mudejar design with little of the Moorish element left in it, excepting the obvious Orientalism of the workman. Take away the engrailed intrados of the arch, and the little dove-tailed break in the line of the archivolt, and all that is Moorish in the design would disappear; but still the particular mode of combining the brick and tile work would be left to show the disinclination of the Moor to quit or alter his old technical habits as an operative. This window is associated in my memory with some sad scenes of suffering. It is situated, as it were, on the road to a sort of wicket or buttery-hatch, at which aid is given daily to cripples out of the funds of the great Hospital of Santo Tomé. At an early hour these poor creatures, the halt, maimed, diseased, and blind, take up their stations against the wall, and gradually creep onwards towards the spot at which the distribution takes place. The "Ay de mis" and "Por l'amor de Dios," echo in a dismal strain, interrupted only by a few especially ferocious oaths as one a little stronger or more active than the rest struggles forwards to cheat the others of their turn. The whole scene would have made an admirable subject for Callot's needle, Hurtado de Mendoza's pen, or Van Obstal's chisel. Lazarillo de Tormes and his blind "Amo" sat before me; and one could clearly recognise what it must have cost noblemen, like D. Miguel de Manana[A] and his "cofrades" of the vast Hospital of the "Caridad" at Seville (the great rival no doubt to the Malagan Hospital), to carry on their works of mercy in the midst of a dirt and squalor which should be seen to be realised. [Illustration: PLATE 65 MALAGA DOOR OF SANT' JAGO MDW 1869] PLATE LXV. _MALAGA._ KNOCKER OF THE MONASTERY OF SANT' JAGO. TRAVELLERS in Spain rarely fail to observe and comment on the great strength of ordinary entrance doors, the thick planks forming which are frequently held together by iron bars, or plating, with ponderous bolts, or nail-heads, often of very pretty design. Such doors have descended apparently from Roman days, and the retention of the type, by Moor and Christian down to the present day, has been regarded as an evidence of the proverbially jealous temperament of the Spaniard. I think it bears a much clearer testimony to the want of good police in the streets, and the frequency of quarrels and rows, to say nothing of marauders and more serious fighters in disastrous times. One is strengthened in this belief by the inclination ever shown by the old Spaniards to have as few external windows as possible on the ground floors of their houses, and those few raised high above the pathway, and protected by close and strong iron grilles and thick shutters. These may have been useful restraints on the love-making propensities of the Spanish Lotharios; but the difficulties they presented to pilferers and "Soldados de Fortuna," when a little out of luck, were, perhaps, of even greater importance to the householder. The portion of the door I have sketched, formed part of a solid defence against a formidable class in Spain, bold in attack, and not easily cast down even in retreat--the beggars. Much of the enormous sums given by the devout to God in Catholic times, this class believed they had as good right to scramble for as the monks; and it behoved the latter to fortify themselves, as they never failed to do, pretty strongly against the importunity of the former. No doubt the coronetted knocker of the Monastery of Sant' Jago was intended to inspire the beggars with fitting awe, and an intimation that it was not to be audaciously handled by vulgarity. Some such scarecrow was certainly locally necessary, for I well remember being driven away by clustering beggars no less than four times before I could accomplish my very hasty sixty-fifth sketch. [Illustration: PLATE 66 GRANADA THE ALHAMBRA FROM THE ALBAYCIN MDW 1869] PLATE LXVI. _GRANADA._ REMAINS OF THE ALHAMBRA AS SEEN FROM THE ALBAYCIN. NO one looking from the quarter of the city to which, after its conquest by the Christians in 1480, the Moors who lingered behind the bulk of their fellows, were relegated, (as the Jews by the Popes to the Ghetto at Rome,) would be justified in supposing that the stern-looking and dilapidated fortresses, and lines of walling of vast height and apparent strength, which meet the eye, contained nearly complete specimens of the loveliest and most elaborate system of ornamentation, both in form and colour, which has ever existed. The position of the Alhambra is worthy in every respect of the treasures of art it contains. It overlooks the Vega, an extended plain, which in the days of the city's prosperity was literally one vast garden, and even in the present day is, to most of central Spain, pretty nearly what an oasis may be supposed to be to a desert. On the extreme left in this sketch is seen the great mass of the "Torre de Comares," which contains the celebrated Hall of the Ambassadors; next to it on the right are the ancient buildings of the Patio de la Mezquita or Mosque. Behind these, and further to the right, rises the great rectangular mass of the Palace of Charles V. The flat space, in front and on the right of the Palace, is known as the Plaza de los "Algibes" (of the tanks) and the mass of towers and buildings beyond are those of the Alcazaba, (the fortress) with, conspicuous on the extreme right, the Torre de la Vela, (the Watch-Tower,) from which a constant look-out was kept far and wide over the city to the west, and the far spreading Vega to the west and south. On the horizon stretched the great range of snow-clad mountains, the Sierra Nevada. The beauty of the view from this tower cannot be exceeded, and I never shall forget the aspect of the scene upon one especially lovely moonlight night. By such soft illumination, the desolation of which one saw so much by day was passed over in the breadth of the great masses of light and shade. As the moonlight caught the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada and traced itself in the silver lines of the winding River Genil, coming from the far off distance to the city beneath, and losing itself in the thousands of twinkling lights of the suburbs in which its silver threads seemed to get entangled and lost, everything was perfect; and as one turned away towards the nearer mountain heights, and saw, upon their hilly eastern slopes, the Generalife and the Alhambra, almost close at hand, one felt inclined to forget the present in the past and to think of ruin as perfection, and of death as life. By day the illusion was destroyed, the young Alhambra of the night faded away, and in its place one saw all the seams and stains and wrinkles age had left upon its hoary head and face, all the more painfully perhaps from the efforts one recognise as having been made here and there, by loving and anxious hands, to mend and palliate conspicuous decay. [Illustration: PLATE 67 GRANADA ENTRANCE TO THE BOSQUÉ DEL ALHAMBRA MDW 1869] PLATE LXVII. _GRANADA._ ENTRANCE TO THE BOSQUÉ DEL ALHAMBRA. OUR sixty-seventh sketch illustrates the road by which the traveller usually ascends from the City of Granada to the delights of the Alhambra. On passing through the massive gateway, seen in the middle of the sketch, he finds himself in a thickly-planted wood or "bosqué," cool, shady, refreshing, and beautiful. At several turns in the winding road, fountains, abundantly supplied with crystal water, charm his eye and ear at the same moment. With his pulse just quickened by the gradual ascent, everything seems to conduce to ease of body, and to throw him into a happy frame of mind for enjoying the feast of beauty which lies in store for him. As a preparation for such a banquet, I know nothing better calculated to insure a healthy digestion of the artistic "pabulum" the Alhambra furnishes, than a thorough acquaintance with the views of Owen Jones upon the subject of Moorish art generally. If in his noble work on the Alhambra he has described the system "no work so fitted to illustrate a grammar of ornament as that in which every ornament contains a grammar in itself. Every principle which we can derive from the study of the ornamental art of any other people is not only ever present here, but was by the Moors universally and truly obeyed." "We find in the Alhambra the speaking art of the Egyptians, the natural grace and refinement of the Greeks, the geometrical combinations of the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Arabs. The ornament wanted but one charm, which was the peculiar feature of the Egyptian ornament, symbolism. This the religion of the Moors forbade; but the want was more than supplied by the inscriptions, which, addressing themselves to the eye by their outward beauty, at once excited the intellect by the difficulties of deciphering their curious and complex involutions, and delighted the imagination when read, by the beauty of the sentiments they expressed and the music of their composition. To the artist and those provided with minds to estimate the value of the beauty to which they gave a life, they repeated _Look and Learn_." It is not, of course, from the study of the monuments of one period, or of one locality, that any accurate idea is to be formed of the Architecture of any races, whose national history and whose dominion have extended for many centuries over many lands. Nor, indeed, is a just appreciation of the artistic value of the system of Art, sectionally studied, to be arrived at until the student has compared it with its antecedents in its own and other localities. Such works, therefore, as offer to the inquirer means for instituting studies of the nature alluded to, acquire peculiar value, although necessarily incomplete for sectional study. The student of Oriental Architecture, from this point of view, has been laid under a debt of gratitude by M. Girault de Prangey,[36] whose works enable him to obtain a fair idea of the varieties of style practised by the Mahommedan races in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Spain, Sicily and Barbary. Through all these there evidently runs a harmony of system, but not the less clearly have we to recognize an endless variety of detail, and an incessantly changeful development--reaching its climax certainly in the Alhambra at Granada. [Illustration: PLATE 68 GRANADA. PUERTA DE JUSTICIA. MDW 1869] PLATE LXVIII. _GRANADA._ PUERTA DE JUSTICIA. WENDING his way upwards through the beautiful "Bosqué," it is on arriving at the celebrated "Gate of Justice"[37] that the traveller first finds himself face to face with the Moor, and his wise and patriarchal habits, as well as his inherent love for the beautiful. Within these venerable walls once sat the Monarch, as Solomon sat, to administer justice to the poorest, as to the richest, of his subjects. On the side shown to the outer world the archway wears the stern features of the fortress; while on the inner side, the one shown in my sketch, there are traces of a beauty and richness suitable to the Palace to which it led. What is most remarkable architecturally about this Gateway is, firstly, the ingenuity of its plan for resisting surprise in attack; and, secondly, the beauty of the coloured tiles by which its inside elevation is decorated. First, with respect to its plan. This, so far as the passage way from gate to gate (carried between walls of great thickness and massive construction) is concerned, assumes the form of two letters L placed in contact with one another, thus, __ B | __| A , the gate of entry from without being at A, and the gate of exit at B. The consequence is that no assailant entering from A can form any idea of what preparations for resistance may exist in the interior of the gateway. Neither can he gain anything by a rush, as the impetus of any attack would be broken by the necessities of having to stop, turn round and start in another direction for too short a distance, before having to check and turn again, to acquire any momentum or "élan." Even after fighting his way from gate to gate, the assailant would only find himself in a narrow gallery between high walls and upper platforms through which it would be most difficult to advance, exposed to missiles from every direction. While attacking the outer gate and intermediate obstacles, the besieger would, of course, be liable to the amenities of molten lead, &c., from the upper chambers of the Gateway. Secondly, with respect to the beauty of the coloured tiles. These are unlike, both in colour and texture, as well as I could see, any other tiles existing in the Alhambra, or any left at Cordova, Seville or Toledo. My impression is, that they may have been a present from Damascus, Cairo, or from Persia proper. The peculiar deep granulated blue which is conspicuous in them, I have only seen in fragments from ancient Mosques, which have been brought from the East. The mode of manufacture is not that either of the usual Moorish and Spanish Azulejos, with raised outlines forming compartments for the separate colours; nor is it like that of the Majorca tiles and dishes, and the usual flat tiles of the Alhambra, which, with their fine white surfaces for painting on, formed the basis of Majolica. It is, however, quite like that of the half-encaustic, half-painted tiles of the early Mahommedan buildings in India, Persia, and especially Arabia proper. A long inscription occurs in two lines over the inner gateway, towards the exterior. The following is from the translation of the distinguished Arabic student and historian, Don Pasqual de Gayangos. "This gate, called Bábu-sh-shari'ah (the Gate of the Law)--may God prosper through it the law of Islám, and He made this a lasting monument of His glory--was built at the command of our Lord, the Commander of the Moslems, the warlike and just Sultan Abú-l-walid Ibu Naor, (may God remunerate his good deeds in the observance of religion, and accept of his valorous performances in support of the faith). And it was closed for the first time in the glorious month of the birth of our Prophet, in the year 749. May the Almighty make this gate a protecting bulwark, and write down its erection among the imperishable actions of the Just." [Illustration: PLATE 69 GRENADA. THE ALHAMBRA SALA DE EMBAJADORES MDW 1869] PLATE LXIX. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ SALA DE EMBAJADORES. TO describe the progress of the visitor through the Courts and apartments of the "Casa Real," as the Palace of the Alhambra is called, would be to echo a more than thrice-told tale. For present purposes, it may suffice to say, that in the Hall of the Ambassadors he reaches the acmé of Moorish magnificence. My sketch represents one of the nine windows by which the hall is lighted on the level of the floor. The space from the single arch, which is on the internal face of the apartment, to the coupled arches which are on the external face of the building, represents the thickness, no less than about eight feet, of the wall of the Tower of Comares. The window I have chosen for sketching, looks towards a Renaissance addition to the Alhambra, made by Charles V. for the accommodation of his Queen. This elegant pavilion, from which is obtained a view of almost unparallelled loveliness over the Vega, is known as the "Tocador de la Reina," or, Boudoir of the Queen. The Hall of Ambassadors occupies the whole of the internal area on plan of the Tower, and is an apartment thirty-seven feet square and seventy-five feet high. It is entered from the Court of the "Blessing," (as Mr. O'Shea considers the Patio de la Berkàh to be more properly called, than the Court of the Fish Pond,) or "de la Alberca," the title by which it is usually known. Advancing from the Patio, the visitor traverses the Sala. In the wall opposite to the door of entrance to the Hall are three windows. In the central one appears to have been placed the throne of the Sultan. In each of the walls, on the right and left of the entrance, are three nearly-similar windows: the one I have selected for representation being the middle one of the three in the wall on the right upon entering. The dado which runs round the whole of the splendid Hall, is made of Mosaic and Azulejos for a height of about four feet from the pavement; and above it run bands with inscriptions and medallions. Over these, the walls, covered with lace-like diapers in stucco, to a height of about seven and twenty feet from the floor, run up to a second tier of windows, five on a side, lighting the upper portion of the Hall. At a height of about forty feet, occurs a beautiful stalactite cornice from which starts a noble dome, or "Artesonado" ceiling, most ingeniously made in inlaid wood, and gorgeously decorated. This ceiling, splendid as it is, occupies the place only of one yet more marvellous, which fell down. The original ceiling, or rather hollow cone, was of the same description as the existing stalactite, or pendentive, ceilings of the Hall of "the Abencerrages," of "Justice," and of "the two Sisters;" but larger and finer. Mr. Owen Jones has given us, in Plate VII of his magnificent work, a long section, to a large scale, passing from the window in which the throne of the Sultan was placed, through the Hall of the Ambassadors with its arch of entrance, through the Sala de la Barca, the splendid anteroom, as it were, to the Throne room, through the Loggia, or Arcade, of the Patio of the Alberca, through the Patio itself, and through the end Loggia of the Court with its exquisite Pavilion on the first floor. From this section can be admirably realised, what must have been the view, or "colpo d'occhio," of the Sultan, as he sat upon his throne to receive foreign Ambassadors.[38] It seems impossible to conceive of any position more imposing, or better calculated to impress the imagination particularly of Eastern magnates. Even now, bereft of so much that must once have added to its charm, the view is one of exquisite and most romantic beauty. It is, indeed, a sight to stir a poet's heart, although "Lonely and still are now thy marble halls, Thou fair Alhambra! there the feast is o'er; And with the murmur of thy fountain falls,[39] Blend the wild tones of minstrelsy no more. Hushed are the voices, that in years gone by, Have mourn'd, exulted, menaced, through thy towers, Within thy pillar'd courts the grass waves high, And all uncultured bloom thy fairy bowers. Unheeded there the flowering myrtle blows, Through tall arcades unmark'd the sunbeam smiles, And many a tint of soften'd brilliance throws O'er fretted walls and shining peristyles."[40] [Illustration: PLATE 70 GRANADA. THE ALHAMBRA FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS. IN STUCCO FULL SIZE. MDW 1869] PLATE LXX. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS. IN describing the subject of the last sketch, our theme was the general aspect of the "Sala de los Embajadores." I have chosen to let this minute specimen of its detail follow the statement of its large dimensions, in order the more forcibly to convey an idea of its wonderful elaboration. The elegant morsel of stucco-work now presented to the student has been actually traced from a portion of the stucco-work of one of the window recesses immediately above the dado. It affords an admirable illustration of two principles constantly followed by the Moors in their treatment of decoration--viz., to preserve the continuity of all scroll work from root to fully developed foliation--a principle entirely disregarded in all previous ornamentation based upon classical practice--and to care first for larger surfaces to satisfy the eye with harmonious relations of those surfaces to one another, and to the spaces they have to enrich, from a distance; and then to provide minor fillings and intersections so as to supply adequate elaboration for close inspection. In addition to the decorative effect produced by variations in relief, still greater refinement was obtained by patterns in colour, painted upon the surfaces of the modelled ornaments. Although almost everywhere the colour has either been rubbed off, or rubbed into confusion, the abrasion has affected for the most part only the pigment and its albuminous vehicle, leaving the surface of the stucco bare, and showing the outline of the delicate ornament which has been drawn in by the pencil of the artist. It is on the nature of the stucco itself I think it may be well to offer here a few remarks. It certainly appears to be harder, closer in texture, tougher, and much less absorbent, than gypsum or plaster of Paris, when set in the usual manner. Lime alone, as ordinarily slacked, would not I believe give any such texture, even if it could be manipulated into similar ornamental forms. I believe the Moorish Stucco to be almost if not quite identical with the Indian "Chunam," and that in its turn to be a substance produced much in the same way that the fine Stucco of the Romans was ordinarily wrought by that people. In the native treatment of all of these substances, I believe four peculiarities to have been generally used. Firstly--to employ the finest lime only. Secondly--to mix it with pounded earthen-ware. Thirdly--to beat it thoroughly. Fourthly--to use saccharine substances to retard the setting and keep the mass plastic under the tool. The present is scarcely a fitting occasion upon which to state in any detail the grounds upon which I have been led to this conclusion, but I have little doubt that any student will be struck by the identity of practice of Roman, Indian, and Moor, who will refer to the practical descriptions of the various modes of the formation of terraces given by Vitruvius, by Captain Phipps, in "The Barrackmaster's Assistant,"[41] and by John Windus, in his "Journey to Mequinez."[42] I have elsewhere noticed the command the descendants of the Moors seemed to retain over all operations of plaster and lime work throughout Spain, as evidenced by the beauty and elaboration of the Mudejar style in those materials, long after they ceased to be the dominant race in the localities in which they continued to practice their old technical arts. [Illustration: PLATE 71 GRANADA. THE ALHAMBRA. FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS. BLACK ON WHITE. FULL SIZE GLASS INLAY. MDW 1869] PLATE LXXI. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ DETAIL OF GLASS INLAY FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS. THIS little pattern which forms the centre, or eye--the point of departure in fact--of an elaborate geometrical mosaic has been most carefully traced and copied from the original, which yet remains in the centre of the dado on the side of the window on the right of the Sultan's throne in the Hall of the Ambassadors. It may thus be said to occupy an especial post of honour and so to challenge, as it were, curiosity and admiration. Both these a close inspection thoroughly justifies, since in all the history of the manufacture of vitrified substances I know nothing more curious and puzzling. The pattern is in bluish-black on a white ground; and both ground and inlay are made apparently in two separate pieces of glass, and in two only. The most minute inspection shows no joint whatever on the surface of either coloured material; at the same time it establishes the fact that the ground has been made with the whole pattern sunk "en creux," and that the inlay has been made in one piece--practically a specimen of glass lace--and fixed into the cavity of the ground with a very fine calcareous cement, made probably of lime and white of egg. To inlay glass in glass involves little difficulty, if ground and inlay are as it were fused together; but to produce a ground apparently in glass, and to inlay it with so fine a pattern, both "au froid," is a perfect marvel in vitreous manufacture. The only way in which I can imagine that such an effect could be produced is as follows, but in offering any such explanation I desire to do so with all due deference to practical glass-workers. I believe that two metal-moulds were made, one with the ornament in relief, and the other with the same ornament sunk in intaglio. From each mould, glass reproductions having been made of about equal substances (so as to contract equally in cooling), and, with the exception of a black film in one case, of the same glass, the two reproductions were stuck together firmly by the calcareous cement. The black glass in "cameo" would then be encased within the white glass in "intaglio;" and the pattern would of course be invisible, the two reproductions being firmly stuck together face to face, making apparently one white glass tessera of double the requisite thickness. The back of the cameo side would then have to be ground away, probably at a lapidary's wheel, until the back of the black pattern in cameo should be reached. At the same moment the face of the white intaglio would be exposed; and the tessera, being reduced to its proper thickness for insertion with the rest of the adjoining glass mosaic, would be fit to permanently combine with it; showing an elaborate black pattern held in by calcareous cement, on a white face, exactly as it now appears. Any such resolution of a difficult technical problem exhibits the Moors to us as excelling in two of their favourite Arts, viz., inlaying and glass manufacture. For much of their knowledge of both of these arts there is no doubt that the Moors were indebted to the Arabians. The Arabians were in their turn inheritors from the Byzantine Greeks of many of the traditions of manufacturing excellence once practised by the Romans. Amongst these were, no doubt, almost every process of glass-working and mosaic.[43] Considerable doubts exist as to the inheritance by the Greek of the lower empire of the process of inlaying from the Romans, and to their originality in adapting the process to their architecture. The first building in which it appears to have been freely used by the Greeks was the Mosque of Santa Sofia, built by Justinian. For that building he is known to have invoked the assistance of Persian designers and artificers; and from the divergence in the patterns of those inlays from any patterns usual in Roman contemporary work, I am inclined to believe that they represent the foreign element to which I have alluded. A most interesting comparison may be made, by the student, of the patterns from the Aya Sofia given in Salzenburg's great work, with those of the principal of the Cairene Mosques drawn by Mr. James Wild and given in the "Grammar of Ornament." [Illustration: PLATE 72 GRANADA THE ALHAMBRA HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS MOSAIC FULL SIZE MDW 1869] PLATE LXXII. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ MOSAIC FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS. IN the description of the last sketch I alluded to the sources whence the Moors derived much of their knowledge of glass-making and mosaic-working. In the specimen now given, the full size of the original, on the opposite page, a considerable advance is shown upon what was usual in the contemporary, "Opus Grecanicum," as executed, either in Italy or in Greece itself. The advance is principally to be seen in this particular, that whereas in the last mentioned work, every complicated pattern is made up out of tesseræ, or glass strips cut into squares, oblongs, triangles, or other simple figures; in the Moorish work, arbitrary shapes of considerable geometrical complexity are given to each separate piece of mosaic. When these tesseræ, so shaped, are brought together, their combination immediately results in the formation of perfect patterns, such as the one now illustrated. Tesseræ of this description were no doubt formed by squeezing plastic clay into metal moulds, and almost perfect identity was obtained between the tesseræ obtained from the same mould. These, after firing, were then apparently covered with coloured vitreous glazes by a subsequent operation. In illustration of the advantages possessed by the Moors over the Greeks, in working such mosaics as the one I have sketched, it may be noted, that while a Greek would have required one hundred and nineteen separate pieces to make up what is shown, the Moor wanted only forty-nine. Moreover, instead of having to chip every one of the one hundred and nineteen pieces to a definite size and shape, and then to place them slowly so as to ensure the truth of his angles of forty-five and twenty-two and a half degrees, as the Greek or Italian had, the Moor had only to place one of his forty-nine pieces with precision; and, provided he never took any of the eleven patterns, of which his repeats are composed, out of their right turn, his mosaic would work itself with scarcely any other attention on his part. Another source of anxiety was saved to him; viz., constant heedfulness as to the working of the interlacement of his lines--_i. e._, their running, as it were, under and over one another. The result, in this particular, is far clearer and more effective in the Moorish, than according to the Greco-Italian method; since, while in the former there are no joints which do not help to define an interlacement, according to the latter, the joints occurring on the line of mitre of every angle become confused with the joints which express interlacement. A comparison of the Sicilian, with the Alhambrese, geometrical mosaics, would show in a moment the superiority of the last mentioned method. No people, except perhaps the Chinese, have ever equalled the Moors in devising patterns of most complicated appearance, in which colours were, as it were, counterchanged by combining tiles, or tesseræ, of similar geometrical forms, but made in different tints or tones. Beautiful examples are given in profusion in the works of Mr. Owen Jones, M. Girault de Prangey, Herr Hessemer, M. Coste and many others. [Illustration: PLATE 73 THE ALHAMBRA LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS MDW 1869] PLATE LXXIII. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ NICHE IN LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS. THAT the Moors themselves were fully conscious that in creating the Alhambra they were creating types of beauty for all generations, would be clearly manifest from the inscriptions of the Hall of the two Sisters, (from which our illustration is taken), even if every other of the hundreds of inscriptions the building contains in other apartments were destroyed. "I am the garden, and every morning do I appear decked out in beauty. Look attentively at my elegance, and thou wilt reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration." "Indeed, we never saw a palace more lofty than this in its exterior, or more brilliantly decorated in its interior; or having more extensive apartments--markets they are, where those provided with money are paid in beauty, and where the judge of elegance is perpetually sitting to pronounce sentence." "Here is the wonderful cupola, at sight of whose beautiful proportions, all other cupolas vanish and disappear." Such inscriptions are not all of them of this hyperbolic stamp, since some of them serve to record the names of illustrious founders, and to explain the uses of various parts of the structure. To an inscription of this kind we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of the uses of such niches as the one represented in my sketch. Many travellers and writers had supposed that their purpose had been to hold the slippers of the visitors, but this theory was entirely dispelled, when M. Pasqual de Gayangos read the inscription of the left niche of the Hall de las dos Hermanas. "Praise to God! With my ornaments and tiara[44] I surpass beauty itself, nay the luminaries in the Zodiac out of envy descend to me. "The water vase within me, they say, is like a devout man standing towards the Kiblah of the Mihrab,[45] ready to begin his prayers." The idea that these niches were used to hold water-bottles is further strengthened, as Mr. Owen Jones has justly remarked, by the existence of the mosaic linings amid the plaster work by which they were surrounded; as well as by the white marble slabs which serve for their base or floor. The wall and pier dados, which extend from these marble slabs to the beautiful Azulejos floor, are all made in elegant mosaic. Above the niche in the sketch appears the ingenious pendentive impost from which spring the great arches carried by the piers, with the characteristic ingrailed fringe work which was almost always retained even, as we see at Seville, in the latest Renaissance Mudejar work. [Illustration: PLATE 74 MDW 1869 GRANADA THE ALHAMBRA SALA DEL TRIBUNAL BORDER FULL SIZE] PLATE LXXIV. _GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._ STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE SALA DEL TRIBUNAL. THE correctness of this sketch, as to dimension at least, has been ensured by the mode in which it was obtained, viz., by gently pressing a piece of paper against the surface of the piece of ornament (so as to obtain a slight impression of its outline,) then marking it faintly with pencil, pressing it out again quite flat, and finishing it in ink on the spot. It may be looked upon, therefore, as giving, as nearly as is possible on a plane surface, an accurate transcript of the elegant ornament from the Sala del Tribunal selected for illustration. My reason for this selection was, chiefly because I desired to show the minute scale and extreme delicacy of much of the decoration in relief with which the walls of the principal apartments of the Alhambra are covered. It was partly also because this particular specimen retained faint tracing lines drawn, most likely with a silver or lead point, and a free hand, upon the flat surfaces of certain parts of the ornament in relief. These served as guide lines for the yet more delicate labour of the painter, who carried the subdivision of parts, by means of the application of contrasting colours and gilding, into yet more microscopic superficial enrichment. As this is the last illustration I have to offer of the Alhambra, it may be well to direct the reader's attention briefly to the general system upon which such Art as the Moors practised, and most dearly loved, was based. Those who would know "all about it," must give themselves diligently to a study of all Owen Jones' works; from the ponderous "Alhambra," with its magnificent illustrations, to the little guide to the "Alhambra Courts of the Crystal Palace," not forgetting to test his theory by his practice in the beautiful reproductions of Moorish Art he has created for their edification at Sydenham. In the pages of the smaller volume they will find the system epitomised simply and delightfully in nine propositions under the following heads. First, to decorate construction, never to construct decoration. Second, to let all lines grow out of each other in gradual undulations--always so as to conduce to repose. Third, to care first for general forms and then for harmonious subdivisions and fillings. Fourth, to balance straight, inclined, and curved forms so as to produce harmony and repose by contrast. Fifth, to let all lines flow out of a parent stem, traceable throughout its course. Sixth, either radially (as in nature with the human hand or in a chestnut leaf.). Seventh, or tangentially,--as stems from branches. Eighth, to avoid the simpler curves and use only those of a higher order. Ninth, to treat all ornament conventionally, _i.e._, not in direct imitation of Nature, but in a mode of imitation subordinated to the architectural conditions of the surface or form to be ornamented. [Illustration: PLATE 75 GRANADA MDW 1869 CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR] PLATE LXXV. _GRANADA._ VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR IT is always interesting to watch the first rays of light which dissipate clouds of darkness or prejudice; and this, by the aid of the annals of the early printing press, we are enabled to do (with comparative certainty as to chronology) in the case of the dawn of the revival of classical architecture in every country of Europe except Italy. In that favoured land, the sacred fire of Roman tradition was never quite extinguished, and in its great cities the renascent flame was already lambent, and gaining strength, before Sweynheim and Pannarz started their celebrated press at Subiaco. The first edition of the ten books of Vitruvius printed by G. Herolt at Rome, _circa_ 1486, was immediately followed by the edition of Florence, under the editorship of Leon Baptista Alberti, bearing the imprint of the previous year. At least two other editions were exhausted in Italy before the close of the century, and succeeded by many more previous to the middle, of the sixteenth century. Alberti's own admirable writings on Architecture and the other Fine Arts moved all Italy, giving a thoroughly practical direction to the lessons somewhat obscurely inculated by Vitruvius; whose writings, without Alberti's comments, would have been of little practical use in countries in which ample remains of classical art were not at hand for reference and study. The first French edition of the text of Vitruvius is of 1523; the first German is of 1543. The first French translation dates from 1547; the first German from 1548, published at Nuremburg. It was "volgarizzato" in Italy from 1521. The Latin text was translated into Spanish by Miguel de Urrea and printed after his death at Alcala de Heñares in 1587. Its publication had however been long preceded in Spain by the digest of the views of Vitruvius under the tide of "las Medidas del Romano o Vitruvio," published by Diego de Sagredo in 1526. Sagredo had no doubt been stimulated to such studies, (as Alberti had previously been) by his admiration of the vestiges of Roman architectural greatness, still abounding on the soil of his native land. What oral tradition could teach previous to the publication of these texts in Spain, no doubt the architect of the Cathedral of Granada, Diego de Siloe, had learnt from his father, Gil, the even more celebrated Sculptor of Burgos; whose monuments to Don Juan II., his Queen, Donna Isabel, and the Infante Don Alonso, and whose "Retablo" in the Cartuja of Miraflores in the outskirts of that city, have never been surpassed in tasteful elaboration.[46] From whatever source Diego de Siloe may have obtained his knowledge, certain it is that he must share with Alonso Covarrubbias, the honour of having been the earliest revivers of classical architecture in Spain: not in its details only as had been attempted by the early Plateresque architects, but in its structural proportions and in its symmetrical arrangements of great leading features. The following is the account of the construction of this Cathedral given by Amirola.[47] "It was begun," he says, "on the 15th of March, 1529, and consists of three naves, the principal of which terminates in the choir after the Gothic manner. It is four hundred and twenty-five feet (Spanish) long, and two hundred and forty-nine wide. The order is Corinthian, but defective in its true proportions, since the principal nave is only forty-five feet wide, its height is one hundred and twenty." It would profit us but little to follow Amirola through his straight-laced criticisms on a design the beauty of which he was unable to apprehend; and it may be well to take a larger and juster view of its merits. The following which, I heartily endorse, is the verdict of a far better judge.[48] "Looking at its plan only, this is certainly one of the finest churches in Europe. It would be difficult to point out any other in which the central aisle leads up to the dome, so well proportioned to its dimensions, and to the dignity of the high altar which stands under it, or one where the side aisles have a purpose and a meaning so perfectly appropriate to the situation, and where the centre aisle has also its functions as perfectly marked out and so well understood. All this being so, it is puzzling to know how it has been so neglected." My sketch has been taken from the "Ambulatory" at the back of, and surrounding, the choir. Its dimensions, as will be at once apparent, are enormous. The arches, which separate the choir from the ambulatory, and through one of which in my sketch the high altar is seen, are of very great interest. They form the earliest examples I have ever seen (out of Italy) of artificial perspectives, "guocchi di prospettiva." The arches next to the choir are narrower and lower than those next to the ambulatory; the distance between the two, owing to the necessities of supporting and distributing the weights of the vast cupola, being very considerable. The two archways are connected by falling lines of impost mouldings and converging lines of coffering. The consequence is that, as appears in the sketch, the archways, which really occupy only about five and twenty feet in depth, look at least double that dimension. [Illustration: PLATE 76 GRANADA THE REJA OF THE REYES CATOLICOS MDW 1869] PLATE LXXVI. _GRANADA._ THE REJA OF THE REYES CATOLICOS. I WAS tempted to sketch this magnificent screen for four reasons:-- Firstly, because it is, I believe, entirely of iron, which most of the Spanish Rejas are not. Secondly, because it is, I also believe, the earliest specimen of anything like equal importance in Spain. Thirdly, because of its historical interest in enclosing the tombs of "the Catholic Sovereigns" on the spot before which the greatness of their lives had been achieved. Fourthly, because I considered it to be the best in design of all I saw. It is by no means the richest, but it appeared to me to be arranged upon the justest principles. Its chief merits, as compared with many others, I considered to be as follows:-- Firstly, its _transparency_. One of the most important qualities any such screen should possess, is that of due subordination to the great architectural features of the locality in which it is placed. Where ornament is spread all over the surface of a screen, or where the main lines wander about in capricious directions, the eye is arrested by the metal work as a plane surface; and if not actually stopped by it, is at least led off in wayward directions, and fails to pass beyond it. In this case, the rectangularity of the whole gives great repose; the plain vertical bars almost disappear; while the splendidly ornamented portions of the screen seem as if suspended in mid air, and in no wise injure the effect of the architecture,[49] or diminish the apparent space of the locality they decorate. Secondly, its _stability_ without heaviness. The subdivision of the whole surface into regular compartments allows of a concentration of strength in the skeleton lines, and gives great constructional stiffness without too much formality. Thirdly, its _propriety of design_. Its author has simply, as it were, asserted the principle of "serve God and honour the King;" instead of, as is usual, "look at me, and see what a fine fellow I am." At the summit of his design he has represented the Crucifixion; immediately beneath, the leading incidents of Gospel history, making conspicuous (in compliment no doubt to the triumph of the Church in the entry into Granada of his sovereigns), Christ's entry into Jerusalem. As the central object, not much less than twenty feet square, he has grouped in masterly style the full heraldic insignia of those whose remains are deposited in the chapel beyond. The lower portion of his design has evidently been intended simply to give stability to the upper part, and to close the access to the magnificent marble and alabaster monuments of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip of Burgundy and "Juana la Loca," without interfering with the facilities for seeing them of those who might gain access to the Antechapel, but be refused it to the Mausoleum itself. The name of the admirable artist, "el Maestre Bartholomé," who wrought this Reja in the year 1522, is inscribed upon it, near to the keyhole of the great central gates. [Illustration: PLATE 77 GRANADA L'ARZOBISPADO MDW 1869] PLATE LXXVII. _GRANADA._ VIEW OF THE ARZOBISPADO. A CAREFUL contrast of this stately old mansion in which, if not the hand, at least the influence of the architect, Henrique de Egas, (son of Anequin de Egas de Bruselas, so greatly patronized by the celebrated Cardinal Mendoza,) may be clearly traced, with the great Palace of Charles V., ascribed to the artist Machuca, (both at Granada,) may afford a useful lesson to the architectural student. In the earliest of the two monuments--the Arzobispado--a window of which I now offer a slight sketch, the florid Plateresque style, as exemplified by the celebrated Hospedal de la Santa Cruz, at Toledo, (Sketches 44, 45, 46) is at once recalled to the memory. In the latest, we find a marked sympathy with the symmetrical style of the then fashionable Italian architects. The Circular Cortile of Vignola's masterpiece at Caprarola, is exceeded in dimension, and indeed in dignity of style, by the vast round Patio of the Palace of Charles V., with which it is probably nearly contemporary. Such sober architecture, though enriched by the chisel of sculptors who, like Berruguete, had been ardent admirers of Florentine and Roman models, was the form of Plateresque which, intervening between the first form of Renaissance, founded on French and Burgundian models, and the austere Italian of Herrera, found special favour in the eyes of the most judicious critics in Spain. How far the best designers of Spain, amongst whom must certainly be reckoned Juan de Arfe y Villafañe, acknowledged their dependence upon the great Italian masters for all they considered most excellent in style, may be gathered from the curious account of the development of good art in his time[50] that he gives in his celebrated Treatise on Sculpture and Architecture. After dwelling upon what he curiously enough calls the "obra moderna," with which the great cathedrals of Spain had been, as he considers, built, he observes, "This _barbarous work_, having arrived at its end, its disuse having commenced in our times, gave place to the ancient styles of the Greeks and Romans. Although this style of work had been revived at an earlier period in Italy by the diligence and study of Bramante, Master of the Works of St. Peter's at Rome, Baldassare Perruzzi and Leon Baptista Alberti, celebrated architects, it also began to flourish in Spain through the industry of the excellent Alonso de Covarrubbias, Master of the Works of the Cathedral at Toledo, and of the Royal Palace, father of the most famous doctor, Don Diego Covarrubbias, President of the Supreme Council of his Majesty and Bishop of Segovia, and of Diego Siloe, Master of the Works of the Cathedral and Palace of Granada. These masters began to use this kind of work in many places wherever they built, although always with some admixture of the modern work (Gothic or early Plateresque) which they could never entirely forget." [Illustration: PLATE 78 GUADALAXARA PALACE OF THE DUQUÉ DEL INFANTADO MDW 1869] PLATE LXXVIII. _GUADALAXARA._ PALACIO DE LOS DUQUES DEL INFANTADO. THIS is unquestionably one of the most important of the Palaces of the ancient nobility left in Spain, worthy of the renown of the Mendozas, long Seigneurs of Guadalaxara. In spite of its present picturesque aspect, however, architecturally speaking, it is a strange jumble of incongruities; and offers but a ghost of the beauty it must have possessed upon its first construction towards the end of the fifteenth century from 1461 onwards. Splendour it must have possessed in perfection at the date at which it excited warm admiration in the breast of the captive sovereign, Francis I. of France, who was here magnificently entertained by the then Duque del Infantado. The top story with its remains of continuous arcading and balconies, the walls, the splendid doorway, and above all the Patio, with the exception probably of the top cornice and the Doric columns of the ground-floor arcade, all belong to the original construction. These remains afford sufficient indication of what has been destroyed to make way for Italian decoration and barbarous repair, to enable the practised eye to see the whole as it once existed; before a vulgar desire for novelty, and especially for foreign novelty induced the desecration of the integrity of the design. One might have fancied that every true Spaniard would have regarded this palace almost as a holy place, from its having received the last breath of the great Cardinal Mendoza--the "Rex tertius," whom Felipe Vigarny, or some other dextrous sculptor, portrayed in the carvings of the Cathedral at Granada,[51] riding with Ferdinand and Isabella, and receiving the keys of the Alhambra from the hands of the unfortunate "Boabdil el Chico." The interior of this Palace is fully as rich and remarkable as the exterior. The Patio which is about eighty feet long by fifty-six wide, (about two-thirds of the size of the court-yards of the Royal Exchange and the India Office), is surrounded by arcades of two stories, each about twenty feet in height. Both series of arches are of a Gothic and fantastic form, with spandrels filled in on the lower story with lions, and on the upper with winged griffins. Between each arch are columns, surmounted with armorial bearings, eagles, and grouped finials. The whole, if coarsely, is very spiritedly carved, and produces a stately and simple, though rich effect. The saloons are large and lofty, with remains of beautiful half Moorish ceilings, and much effective Italian fresco decoration of good colour and enriched with harmonious Arabesque ornament. The state of this once splendid structure is unfortunately as dilapidated as the national finances. What more can or need be said? Everything going to pieces for want of that "stitch in time," which nowhere, and in nothing, in Spain, seems ever likely "to save nine." [Illustration: PLATE 79 GUADALAXARA SAN MIGUEL MDW 1869] PLATE LXXIX. _GUADALAXARA._ DOORWAY OF THE MONASTERY OF SAN MIGUEL. IN and about Guadalaxara may be found many indications of the traditional preservation, long after the expulsion of the Moors, not only from New Castille, but from Spain generally as well, of their excellence in the technical arts, amongst which brick-making, combining, and laying were conspicuous. Hence, especially throughout the two Castilles, Aragon, and Andalucia, the common method of using brick-work is peculiarly Oriental and effective. The entrance doorway to the Monastery of San Miguel, which forms the subject of our seventy-ninth sketch, illustrates this mixture; as well it may, since traces are yet to be found of the structure having been originally a mosque converted, probably, shortly before the year 1500 to Christian uses. The round instead of square buttresses, with conical terminations, the segmental arch, with its ponderous archivolt, the great strength and almost heaviness given by the regular rectangular setting out of the woodwork--and a coarseness and yet spirit in the execution of carving, are marked features of Aragonese style; the echoes of which may not unfrequently be met with at Naples, especially in the entrance gateways to many an old house. I well remember being puzzled by several of those which I sketched there, and which appeared to me to differ from ordinary contemporary Italian architecture in other localities. I subsequently recognized similar features in Palermo, and elsewhere in Sicily. [Illustration: PLATE 80 GUADALAXARA CASA DEL DUQUÉ DE RIBAS MDW 1869] PLATE LXXX. _GUADALAXARA._ CASA DEL DUQUÉ DE RIBAS. THE traveller who takes his seat for an hour or so before some old portal of a Spanish provincial mansion, garnished with heraldic insignia, proclaiming the rank, if not the dignity, of the possible owner, can scarcely fail to be struck by the usual incongruity between the assumption of the structure, and the modesty, not to say meanness, of those who pass in and out of it generally at long intervals. The sketcher's operations naturally, after a little while, attract the attention of some few, and "their name is legion" throughout Spain, of those who have nothing to do; or who, at any rate, do nothing, but wander lazily but restlessly up and down to while away the time. After a compliment or two, and probably a request that the spectators will not stand exactly between the artist and the object he may be drawing, an inquiry very generally follows as to "whose house that may be?" If the answer extends beyond the usual "Quien sabe Caballero?" it may chance to be "del Señor Duqué," or "del Señor Marques," something or other, or at any rate of a "Señor somebody," "somebody," "somebody." To the next inquiry, as to where the Hidalgo, if he be such, may be? the usual answer will be "Madrid" or "Paris," or at any rate the "chef-lieu" of the Province. The next demand may likely enough be, "Who lives there then, now?" If the answer is not the usual "No puedo decir a Usted," it may possibly be, "El Señor Administrador," the Steward, or "Algunos Pobres," or "Don Manoel, the shoemaker," or "Don Juan, the carpenter." Where the nobility live, if they are not all absentees, it seems very difficult to find out; and hence it is that instead of ladies and gentlemen, and liveried servants, who pass in and out of these grand looking "portone," the sketcher usually sees only extremely picturesque poverty. Sometimes this presents itself in the shape of a ragged girl or two, carrying antique-shaped earthen water-jars, sometimes an old woman with a heap of long-haired unkempt children sitting down to spin, or reel off yarn, or lolling against the wall, distaff in hand; and sometimes, possibly, two or three boys or young men assemble, who, after smoking out some cigarrilos or stumps of cigars, coil themselves up on the threshold, and go off into a comatose condition closely resembling sleep. Such were my experiences whilst trying to gain some local information as to the mansion of the very noble, the Duqué de Ribas at Guadalaxara. [Illustration: PLATE 81 GUADALAXARA DOOR HANDLE CALLE DEL BARRIO NUEVO Nº 10 MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXI. _GUADALAXARA._ DOOR HANDLE FROM THE CALLE DEL BARRIO NUEVO. THE outskirts of Guadalaxara are very picturesque, and the traveller who wanders about in quest of beauty, old or new, cannot fail to be rewarded; not only by glimpses of scenery, but by the discovery of many quaint little fragments of art which have escaped the attention of the many despoiling locusts--native as well as foreign--who have done their best at different times to "devour the land." Of such, a specimen is given in the "knowing" little knocker, or door-handle illustrated in my eighty-first sketch. It is no doubt a joke on the part of some cunning smith, of the last century, mindful of the still greater cunning of his handicraft, traditions of which may have descended to him, from the days when the armourers of Spain rivalled those of Milan and Augsburg. [Illustration: PLATE 82 SARAGOSSA PALACIO DELLA INFANTA MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXII. _SARAGOSSA._ VIEW OF THE PATIO OF THE PALACIO DE LA INFANTA. PONZ speaks with great complacency of the sumptuousness of the houses of Saragossa--particularly those with columns, (such as that of the Marques de Monistol) and those the Patios of which are adorned with sculptures--"such costly and sumptuous works," he says, "as no one undertakes now a days." Amongst these he particularises the house which forms the subject of the present sketch. Before his time it appears to have belonged to the Citizen Gabriel Zaporta, "muy distinguido y rico," as Ponz calls him. From him it was bought by the widow of a certain Don Gabriel Franco. At the close of the last century it was the home of the Infante Don Luis, (uncle of Charles IV. of Spain), a Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo! who married "La Vallabriga," earning exile to Saragossa for his pains. She lived here with him, and procured for the house its popular and best known name, la Casa de la Infanta. Their eldest daughter was bestowed, as an Infanta of Spain, upon the detestable Godoy--"Prince of Peace,"--the recognised lover of her first cousin by marriage, the Queen, wife of Charles IV., thus crowning a double mésalliance. "On the ground floor," says Ponz,[52] "of the Patio are twelve arches supported on columns wrought with a thousand fancies, as are those also of the first floor. On the lower floor of this house is a painter's studio. Both floors are enriched with medallions representing kings, fanciful foliage, and infinite labour in cornices, mouldings, &c." Similar elaboration, now much defaced, is to be seen in the staircase with vaulting, and handrail with medallions recalling those of the first floor. Amongst the most important palaces, next to the house of Zaporta or de la Infanta, and that of the Marques de Monistol, were those known as the "Castel-Florit," which belonged in Ponz's time to the Count Aranda--and another the property of the Duqué de Hijar. The "Casa de Comercio" which forms the subject of my eighty-fifth sketch was less important as to quantity, but more important as to quality, than those last mentioned appear to have been. As a general rule, the Saragossan houses appear very large but coarsely treated as to detail, even in the richest, such as those with showy windows behind the Seminario, in the Plazuela de San Carlos. My sketch sufficiently shows the "base uses" to which the truly palatial Casa de Zaporta, or de la Infanta, has "come at last." It is well that as many as possible of the rising generation of art-students should see it, for it is not likely that any of it will be left for their children. [Illustration: PLATE 83 CASA DE LOS INFANTES ZARAGOZA MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXIII. _SARAGOSSA._ DETAIL OF THE ARCADING OF THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE CASA DE LA INFANTA. THIS sketch gives to an enlarged scale some of the architectural features represented in little in the preceding sketch. Many of the arches which were once open in a beautiful arcading are now closed up in lath and plaster; with a heartless indifference to everything else than getting as much room as possible to let to the poor lodgers who swarm in this once splendid Palace. The whitewash brush goes recklessly over any surfaces with which it is brought into contact at the command of sanitary inspectors, who enforce perfunctory cleansings from time to time of at least the "outside of the platter." As I sat sketching and "poking about" for some hours in this apparent "rabbit warren" of a house, I could not but become conscious that the Arragonese had by no means lost their old character for devotion, not to say bigotry. "Our Lady of the pillar," the tutelary of Saragossa in spite of all alleged pilferings from her shrine, seemed still at a premium in popular estimation; and casts of her in the poorest plaster were multiplied even in the poorest tenements. In fact, this seemed to be the very place for meeting with the truly Spanish couple of the lower middle class, so well sketched by the German Fischer in his travels at the close of the last century. "I cannot conclude this letter," says he, "without saying a word or two of my hosts. Both the man and his wife are originals not to be met with but in Catholic countries; both bigots to excess, but each in a different way. In the husband, this disposition has assumed a silent and gloomy cast of character, while in his wife it bears all the symptoms of tenderness. The husband has filled the whole house, and especially his own apartment, with images of saints, resembling an entire collection of the little Augsburg toys so well known in Germany. In fulfilment of a vow, he mutters his prayers three times a day before these idols, an occupation which daily employs two full hours. He also imposes on himself very painful mortifications, talks very little, reads gloomy books, and remains whole hours with his eyes shut, so that he is on the high road to become either a madman or a saint. The wife's fanaticism is much more social, and her pious imaginations bear the stamp of the mildness and softness of her sex. She has got herself received a "slave of the Holy Trinity" (esclava de la Santissima Trinidad), of which she has obtained a certificate in form from her confessor, and in consequence of which she is bound every day to decorate a large picture with flowers and tapers, to repeat a certain number of prayers before it, and to pay a certain sum weekly to her confessor, an agent of the Trinity; yet all this does not seem to her sufficient for salvation, and she has besides an image of the Holy Virgin, which she very punctually supplies with all the necessary habiliments, both for day and night, besides tapers, flowers and all that can contribute to ornament the happy idol. "This devout esclava is a little woman very affable and complaisant, whose religious sentiments do not at all interfere with other terrestrial feelings, while her impassive husband seems to have arrived at all the spirituality of the blessed." [Illustration: PLATE 84 SARAGOZA LA LONJA MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXIV. _SARAGOSSA._ EXTERIOR OF THE EXCHANGE. THERE is something about the exterior of this fine building essentially Florentine in style. The bold overhanging and crowning cornice, the Ricardi-Palace kind of windows, the simplicity of the Mezzanine, and indeed the introduction of a Mezzanine at all, associated with the severity of the rectangular structure, massive in a noble simplicity, rather recall the work of the grand masters of Tuscan Architecture at the end of the fifteenth century, than any styles, Plateresque or Greco-Roman, one recognises as peculiarly Spanish. The name of the architect appears to have been lost, but there is no question as to the date of its erection, which is given by an inscription which runs beneath a cornice in the interior, and states that it was completed in "1551, reynando Donya Jona y Don Carlos su hijo." The "Lonjas," or Exchanges, of Spain, constitute an important and interesting class of buildings, dating, from mediæval times in the most commercial of the towns on the seaboard, and from the Renaissance period in those of the interior. The term Lonja, originally only implied a "long place" or platform, the sort of spot in a town on which merchants would meet, as on "the flags" at Liverpool. In process of time the Lonjas came to be covered in, and converted into handsome "Exchanges." The earliest structure of this class is, or rather was, at Barcelona. All the fine old building of 1383, Mr. Street tells us, has "been completely destroyed, with the one exception of its grand Hall, which still does service as of old. This consists of three naves, divided by lofty and slender columns, which carry stilted semi-circular arches. The ceiling is flat ... and the dimensions about one hundred feet by seventy-five." The "Casa Lonja" of Valencia, which Mr. Street has also fully illustrated[53] is one of the prettiest of the late Gothic buildings in Spain. It was erected between 1482 and the close of the fifteenth century. The next important Lonja in point of date was the Saragossan of 1551. The last was that of Seville built by Herrera between 1585 and 1598, and certainly one of his best works. It was avowedly built in rivalry with Gresham's Royal Exchange--completed in 1571. To the interior of the fine building under notice I could not obtain access, and have therefore to trust to Ponz's description of it. "It forms," he says, "a splendid saloon with an internal double gallery of Doric columns and arches, to the number of fifty." Within it are erected an altar to, and statue of, the guardian angel, in fact the building had its Lararium. Ponz mentions, further, many paintings. These appear no longer to exist, since all I could learn by personal inquiry on the spot was that the place, having long been used as a carpenter's shop and warehouse was now absolutely empty and unused. I fear therefore that the "Angelo Custode" has had too much to do, and has broken down under his task. [Illustration: PLATE 85 SARAGOZA CASA DE COMERCIO MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXV. _SARAGOSSA._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE COMERCIO. THIS house, originally a Gothic one, in some of its earliest details, still acknowledges its allegiance to the noble family of the Torrellas, its founders. Their arms, with a lion, and the three little towers which pun heraldically upon their name, as charges, still exist upon a Gothic escutcheon over one of the doorways. The house is locally stated, I know not on what authority, to have been occupied, and altered by a company of Genoese merchants, whence, no doubt, its popular name "de Comercio." It is situated in the Calle de Sant' Jago, and is now the property of the Marquis de Ayerve. Although retaining the usual Saragossan bracket-capitals and "Anillos," in the shape of quasi bases and dies or pedestals united, the symmetry of the plan and the regularity of the cinque-cento ornament and Arabesque of the panels and pilasters certainly bear out the tradition of the Genoese occupation and alteration of an original mediæval structure early in the sixteenth century. At that time, and for nearly a couple of centuries afterwards, the bulk of the commercial transactions of Spain were administered by foreigners, principally at first Italians, and subsequently Flemings and Frenchmen. The expulsion of the Moors, the persecutions of the Jews, and the pouring in of American silver opened up a splendid field in Spain, during this period, for the trafficking talents of people endowed with greater activity and commercial genius than the Spaniards themselves possessed. Their function was to despise trade, and use, but detest, the foreigners, whose aptitude for work supplied the wants engendered by one of their besetting sins--laziness. "Ociedad, raiz de los vicios, y sepulchro de las virtudes," as Marcos Obregon exclaims. "En quatro cosas," he continues, "gasta la vida el ocioso, en dormir sin tiempo, en comer sin sagon, en solicitar quietas, en murmurar de todos."[54] The following are the Countess d'Aulnois' comments on the effects of the mixed jealousy and laziness of the Spaniards in her time--the latter part of the seventeenth century. "All strangers," she says, "what services soever they may have done, the Spaniards ought to fear them, they considering themselves and interests only, in such a manner that the Italians and Flemings, that are this king's subjects, are used no more favourably than if born under another master. If they pretend to imployments, either at Court or in the armies, they are told they are not natural Spaniards who engross all, as well to keep up the glory of the nation, as out of diffidence of others, whom they in a manner declare incapable of all trust because not born in Spain; this country, nevertheless, abounds in strangers, but they are only artificers and mercenaries invited by gain, and that meddle with nothing but their peddling traffick. It is thought that there are above forty thousand French in Madrid, who, wearing the Spanish habit, and calling themselves Burgundinians, Walloons and Lorraines, keep up commerce and manufacture; it concerns them to conceal their country, for if it be discovered, they are obliged to pay a daily Pole-money of about a penny to the town, and, any bad success happening to the publick, appearing in the streets, are liable to a thousand insolencies, even to blows. "They that know what number of strangers are in this town, report, that would they undertake it, they might make themselves masters, and drive out the Spaniards." [Illustration: PLATE 86 1869 MDW SARAGOSSA HOUSE OF THE MARQUIS OF MONISTOL] PLATE LXXXVI. _SARAGOSSA._ PATIO OF THE HOUSE OF THE MARQUIS OF MONISTOL. THE great dimensions of this house, and its massive strength and solidity are no bad emblems of the old sturdiness, wealth, and pride of the Aragonese nobility, whose Plateresque architecture "differed" as Mr. O'Shea justly remarks, "in many points from its countertype the Seville Moro-Italian, or strictly Andalusian style, applied to private dwellings." Although apparently far ruder in execution than either of the other two houses I sketched--that of the Infanta and that known as de Comercio--in the same city, I have little doubt that this is of considerably later date. The florid Spanish Plateresque of the former, and the cinque-cento carving of the latter, took precedence of the more regular Greco-Roman architecture aimed at by the architect of the house now under notice. The retention of the bracket capital in lieu of either arches or a lengthened column, and of the "anillo" or ring dividing the shaft into two heights, illustrate the way in which local habits interfered with the adoption of the rigid rules prescribed by the writers on architecture, and practised by contemporary architects, of the Herrera type. Considering the terrible "fortunes of war," to which Saragossa has been exposed, and its frightful hand to hand fighting in the heart of the city, it is only wonderful that so much of the past should still linger within the lines of defence. If the ruinous sieges have left Saragossa poorer than they found her, they certainly do not appear to have left her weaker or less fierce. She struck me as being poorer and prouder than any other city I visited in Spain. At the same time, both men and women show a hardy activity and lively inclination to pugnacity I did not see elsewhere. The only answer I got from a Madrileño to my question as to "why the Saragossans did not work?" was, that "they preferred fighting," adding that "while they would look hard at a peseta before they would undertake even a trifling job for it, they would at any time do a good day's fighting for one half of that coin." [Illustration: PLATE 87 SARAGOZA PLAZUELA ADUANA MDW 1869 BRONZE RENAISSANCE KNOCKER] PLATE LXXXVII. _SARAGOSSA._ BRONZE RENAISSANCE KNOCKER OF A HOUSE IN THE PLAZUELA ADUANA. THE quaint little animal, or rather conventionalised notion of an animal, which I found in an out of the way "Plazuela," or "little place," of Saragossa, doing duty as a knocker, furnishes a good illustration of the ready dexterity in his craft of the old Spanish smith and brazier. Of splendid bronze work (in spite of the intrinsic value of the material which has no doubt led to the fusion of thousands of treasures of Art all over the Peninsula) Spain yet possesses invaluable treasures. Amongst these the most salient which occur to my memory as single pieces, are the magnificent eleven gilt life-size portrait statues of the greatest of the Spanish Royal Family from Charles V. to Philip II. with which Pompeio Leoni decorated the "Entierros Reales" of the Escorial--and the same sculptor's still finer statues of the celebrated prime minister and favourite, the Duqué de Lerma, and his Duqueza, founders of the Convent of San Pablo, at Valladolid, whence they have been transferred to the museum of that city. As semi-architectural, semi-sculpturesque works in bronze, occasionally with an admixture of iron upon a large scale, of course the most important and abundant are the late Rejas, or metal screens, of the great Spanish churches and cathedrals. Of these, ample notices are given by both Ford and O'Shea--authorities, at once so excellent, and so readily accessible, as to render unnecessary any more on my part than a passing reference to them. Another form in which copper and bronze have been well and plentifully used by the Spaniards is in the shape of coverings and strengthenings to doors. In this guise the models have been mainly derived from the Moors whose doors may generally, whether in wood or metal, be regarded as perfection itself, for beauty, strength, and fitness for the circumstances under which they have been used. The Spaniards (at Toledo Cathedral for example) have produced many admirable doors in which, by the judicious strengthening of the joiner's work with embossed and occasionally perforated bronze plates, they have combined strength with moderate substance, and the appearance of great richness with fairly simple and not costly labour. [Illustration: PLATE 88 LERIDA SAN LORENZO. MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXVIII. _LERIDA._ TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO. THE interest of every other building in Lerida altogether pales before that of its noble, but now much desecrated Cathedral. Its ancient glories may be well studied in Mr. Street's pages, but its present humiliation can only be appreciated upon the spot. Toiling up from the city through streets and open platforms on the hill-side, thronged with soldiers, gipsies, beggars, and ragged boys innumerable, the traveller at last arrives, not at a church, but at a monster-barrack. In lieu of a sacristan he has to engage the services of a corporal as Cicerone, and with the consent of, I am bound to say, an exceedingly polite Spanish officer, he is free to examine, at his leisure, a Cathedral which, as Mr. Street says, "is in itself worth the journey from England." Its construction, and that of its splendid cloister, occupied almost the whole of the thirteenth century, and the vastness and regularity of its plan, its solid and perfect execution, and the just proportion of its structural and ornamental details certainly, to my mind, justify the praise bestowed upon them by that accomplished architect. It was sad to see such a building cut about by the insertion of floors and partitions, and to hear the piquant, not to say ribald, jokes, "refranes, seguidillas" and songs of the soldiers, echoing from vaulting which once rang only with peals from the organ, and chants and hymns from the priests and people. As my stay was bound to be short in Lerida, and I remembered that Mr. Street had done full justice to the Cathedral, I looked elsewhere for a subject for my note-book, and found it in the picturesque tower of the Church of San Lorenzo, given by my eighty-eighth sketch. The legend runs that this Church, and that of San Juan, were originally mosques; and that after the taking of the city from the Moors in 1149, they were applied to Christian uses. I am inclined to think this probable, although the detail is not anywhere Mahommedan, so far as the darkness of the interior would allow me to form any opinion. The great thickness of the walls, the mode of lighting, the form and proportions of the entrance archways (shown in my sketch) and the materials and mode of building of the base of the tower all seem to favour the supposition of an original Moorish construction. The octagonal form of tower is a favourite feature of this district, and occurs on a grand scale in the old Cathedral. The upper portion, at least, of this tower of San Lorenzo, may probably date from early in the fifteenth century. [Illustration: PLATE 89 BARCELONA OLD HOUSE CALLE DE SANTA LUCIA MDW 1869] PLATE LXXXIX. _BARCELONA._ OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE SANTA LUCIA. AS Prescott[55] observes, "The City of Barcelona, which originally gave its name to the county of which it was the capital, was distinguished from a very early period by ample municipal privileges. After the union with Aragon in the twelfth century, the monarchs of the latter kingdom extended towards it the same liberal legislation; so that by the thirteenth, Barcelona had reached a degree of commercial prosperity rivalling that of any of the Italian Republics. She divided with them the lucrative commerce with Alexandria; and her port thronged with foreigners from every nation, became a principal emporium in the Mediterranean for the spices, drugs, perfumes, and other rich commodities of the East, whence they were diffused over the interior of Spain and the European Continent." Amongst its other merits was that of having established in 1401 the first bank of Exchange and deposit in Europe--as well as of having compiled the first written code amongst the Moderns of Maritime law. Her great merchants were "magnificos" ennobled, not degraded as in Castile, by connection with trade. The long civil war which began in 1462 and ended with the surrender of the city to King Juan in 1472 was the first great check the city received in its splendid career of prosperity. The house I have sketched was doubtless well adapted to such troublous times, affording comparative safety on its lower floors and comparative air and comfort as its occupants mounted higher and higher. It was probably built shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, revealing here and there traces of a French mason's handicraft. It follows the type, not of the merchant's, but of the cavalier's house. Such towers, half residence, half fortress, were, especially in the south of Europe, far more numerous than one may now be justified in supposing; and the more frequently Italian street views in pictures and illuminated manuscripts are studied, the more natural and usual appears what we now fancy to be strange and rare. With the introduction of Renaissance architecture, the character of these quasi-mediæval structures changed altogether. Navagiero[56] writing of the condition of Barcelona in 1524, says that "the houses are good and commodious, built of stone and not of earth, as are those of the rest of Catalogna. Although lying on the sea it has no port, but an arsenal, in which many galleys were wont to be constructed, now there are none. Bread and wine are scarce, but of every kind of fruit there is abundance. The cause is said to be that the land is stripped of men through the war with King John on account of his son Don Carlos." Depopulated the city may have been, and its commerce may, no doubt, have suffered in consequence, but the Catalonian character was energetic, and the city still preserved much of its previously accumulated wealth. Merchants too have a knack of prospering in troublous times, especially those who thrive on profits upon imports. Hence we still find merchants' houses of great comfort, although evidently constructed during the evil days of Barcelona. Of one of these I furnish (in my ninety-sixth sketch) a good example, offering an interesting theme for comparison with the sketch now given. [Illustration: PLATE 90 CASA DE LA DIPUTACION MDW 1869] PLATE XC. _BARCELONA._ PATIO OF THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION. WITHIN the ancient "Palacio de la Diputacion" is preserved the elaborate late Gothic Chapel of St. George (protector of Catalonia) with a small but highly wrought entrance from the arcading on the first floor of the Patio de la Audiencia, represented in my sketch. This Patio is so called because its arcades, in which habitually sit many lawyers, and saunter many clients, lead to the Courts of Justice, in which causes are tried. The existence of this Chapel has, for ages, given a sort of prescriptive right to the public to invade the Patio, the Chapel, and its precincts, upon St. George's day. Of the gay scene which then takes place Parcerisa[57] has given an animated lithograph, showing the very different aspect it then wears to any it habitually presents. Under any circumstances, however, its architecture, which is bold, even to the verge of rashness, gives it a permanent interest. It is a subject for wonder, that any structure in which the main supports of a heavy third story appear so insignificant as do the little marble columns (about two inches in diameter only) of the first floor of this Patio should have existed from mediæval days to our times. The truth, no doubt, is that the main weight of the walls of the top story, and of the roof, is carried by means of massive beams, acting as cantilevers, back to the walls which form the internal faces of the arcades, a device not quite maintaining that beautiful "lamp of truth" we are taught to look for in all mediæval designs. The users of the arcades have lately procured the building up of many of the arches, leaving windows to light the arcades. I have taken the liberty of omitting all of these but one, as I was desirous of showing, not what the lawyers have done, but what the original architects devised, no doubt as a "tour de force." I was told upon the spot that this building up of the arches, the supports of which certainly appeared to my eye far too fragile for beauty, was a matter not of choice but of necessity. [Illustration: PLATE 91 BARCELONA CASA DE LA DEPUTACION MDW 1869] PLATE XCI. _BARCELONA._ DETAIL FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION. IF Catalonian architecture differs from ordinary Spanish, and it is quite manifest from my sketch that it does in detail, as I have already shown that it does in system, the character of the Catalonian men and women differs even more markedly from that of the Spanish. While one of the latter in his laziness, as Marcos Obregon says, "ni come con gusto, ni duerme con quietud, ni descansa con reposo," the former, on the contrary, eat with appetite, sleep with tranquillity, and throw off their cares healthily in rest. The latter, in fact, chew but scarcely digest the bread of idleness, while the former thrive on that of industry. As a natural consequence, there is no love lost between the two races. The Castilian regards as mean and debasing the cultivation of the very mechanical arts, excellence in which the Catalonian well knows to be the source, not only of wealth, but of power and honour as well. To Barcelona belongs the credit of having been one of the first cities in the world, out of France, to establish gratuitous schools of design in which poor youths were taught specially to design for manufactures. Both Laborde and Whittaker[58] testify to the extent and excellence of these schools at the end of the last century and beginning of the present. The latter, writing in 1803, says, "we visited the Academy of Arts instituted in the Palace of Commerce, and supported in the most magnificent manner by the merchants of Barcelona. We were conducted through a long suite of apartments, in which seven hundred boys were employed in copying and designing; some of them, who display superior talents, are sent to Rome, and to the Academy of St. Fernando at Madrid; the others are employed in different ways by the merchants and manufacturers. The rooms are large and commodious, and are furnished with casts of celebrated statues and every proper apparatus. We observed a few drawings of considerable merit, produced by the scholars; but the grand picture before us of liberality and industry, amply rewarded our visit; and was the more striking to us, for having of late been continually accustomed to lament the traces of neglect and decay, so visibly impressed on every similar institution in the impoverished cities of Italy." [Illustration: PLATE 92 BARCELONA CASA DE LA DEPUTACION MDW 1869] PLATE XCII. _BARCELONA._ WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION. THIS quaint and very late specimen of Gothic, although Ecclesiastical enough in its sculpture, is purely domestic in its architecture. The latter is in its character rather French or Burgundian than Spanish, while the former was, I have little doubt, the work of a native of the Peninsula. So far as I could see, no preparation had ever been made for glazing this window, and the wooden shutters, both in their form and mode of joinery, were rather Moorish than Spanish. No one can be surprised at such symptoms of internationality, in works executed at a sea-port like Barcelona--in which the Arts, like the prevalent language, may have had a "lingua franca" of cosmopolitan freedom from prejudice. In most of such Gothic work, and indeed in every kind of building in Spain, however fantastic and not unfrequently over intricate the detail may be, we scarcely ever observe any flimsiness, or want of due substance in the constructional parts. In this matter the Spanish architects merit, for attention to the erection of permanent structures in all their styles, the praise bestowed by Mr. Street upon those mainly who wrought in the mediæval ones. Of those last, the Spanish critics, who have been sometimes accused of overduly estimating what they call Greco-Roman architecture, early showed what I regard as a fair appreciation. Antonio Ponz, for instance, in the last century certainly praised Berruguete, Covarrubbias, and even Herrera in very glowing terms, but I know few writers who have better expressed an opinion as to the fitness of the mediæval styles, and especially the old Spanish system of the sturdiest construction, for ecclesiastical purposes. Of this "Arquitectura Gótica," he says,[59] "nadie puede con razón decir, que falta en la majestad y el decoro: al contrario parece inventada para dárselo á los Templos, y casas del Señor. Los mas insignes Arquitectos han confessado su solidez, y han tenido mucho que admirar en el capricho de sus adornos, y en la prolixidad con que están acabadas todas sus partes. Muchos países de Europa se precian de sus monumentos, y en España los hay magnificos, como son la Catedral de Burgos, la de Sevilla, Valencia, y otras." [Illustration: PLATE 93 BARCELONA THE TOWN HALL MDW 1869] PLATE XCIII. _BARCELONA._ DOORWAY IN THE TOWN HALL. THE mission to Spain of the Count de Laborde on the part of the French Government at the moment when Napoleon I. thought he had the whole country within his grasp, was essentially economic in its object. Hence his accounts of, and investigations into, its past, present and future capabilities for trade are of far greater value than his topographical and archæological investigations, most of which are founded on the writings of Ponz and other well known authorities. While Spain was at the height of its prosperity, Seville and subsequently Cadiz commanded the South American trade, but Barcelona remained as it had been from a very early date, the great maritime means of communication and interchange of commodities between Spain and the rest of Europe. The business transactions carried on at its Lonja, or Bourse, and its Town Hall were very extensive, and these buildings were of commensurate importance. Our present sketch represents an internal doorway of the last named building, and the cosmopolitan character of its architecture, of probably the commencement of the sixteenth century, will be manifest at a glance. The following is Laborde's[60] epitome of the history of that great foreign trade of which Barcelona once shared with Valencia and Almeria almost a complete monopoly. "The state of Spanish manufactures, in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, will form a tolerably accurate clue to that of commerce at the same period. The latter was then in a most flourishing condition, and its ramifications extended to all parts of Europe. The cities of Medina del Campo, Rio Seco, Burgos, Segovia, Toledo, Cuenca, Granada, Almeria, Cordova, Jaen, Seville, Barcelona, Valencia, Ciudad Real, and Sant' Jago, carried on a very extensive commerce. Almeria, Valencia and Barcelona pushed their commercial concerns into Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and the Archipelago. These cities were equally important, in a mercantile view, with the Hanseatic towns. Barcelona had a very great foreign trade; after the commencement of the fourteenth century; under the Kings of Aragon it equipped and maintained armed ships for the defence of the Catalonian coast and the protection of its trade. It established factories in the extreme parts of Europe and Asia, as far as the river Tanais; kept a consul, who represented the city, and who was presented to Tamerlane the Great in the year 1397, when he returned in triumph from his military expedition into Muscovy and the Kipzac, a country lying east and west of the Caspian Sea and the river Volga. "Spain at that period had a large navy, and its shipping trade was immense. If the account of Thomé Cano in his 'Arte de construir Naves' be admitted, it possessed a thousand merchant vessels at a time when the European marine was far less extensive than it is at present." To return for a moment to the picturesque doorway I have sketched. Its sculpture, which in execution is very good of its kind, is as completely Renaissance in character as its architecture is still Gothic; it in fact corresponds to Mudejar work, with this difference, that the admixture with the Gothic in this case is Plateresque, while in the Mudejar work it is Moorish. [Illustration: PLATE 94 BARCELONA KNOCKER TO OLD HOUSE CALLE SANTA LUCIA. MDW 1869] PLATE XCIV. _BARCELONA._ KNOCKER OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA. IN the vicinity of the old church of Sta. Lucia yet exist at Barcelona several interesting stone houses of the fifteenth century. Upon the doors of these are to be still found specimens of excellent iron work of the same period. It is not however to be supposed that the Barcelonese possessed any very special gifts in this line, since evidences of almost equal dexterity are to be found scattered over the whole extent of the Peninsula. In the north and south alike, the "Rejas," or vast screens, sometimes of iron only, sometimes of brass and bronze, and sometimes of mixed metals, are yet to be found of great importance and interest. The most famous of the "Rejeros," as they were called, or makers of Rejas, were Francesco de Salamanca who flourished in 1533; Christobal Andino of 1540; Francesco de Vilalpando of 1561; and Juan Bautista Celma of 1600. Because these men's names have become "household words" amongst all students of Spanish Art, it should not be forgotten that great men "to fortune and to fame unknown" lived before those whose good deeds and works encountered fitting record. By some of these were executed many of the various admirable specimens of metal work commented upon in terms of high praise by Ford, Street, O'Shea and other writers. The finest metal worker who really startled his contemporaries by the beauty and splendour of his workmanship, its "elaboracion y prolixedad," was the celebrated Henrique de Arfé, gold and silversmith of Leon, founder of a family which for several generations supplied artist-workmen in the precious metals whose fame rests upon the same platform as that of Cellini and Caradosso di Milano. His principal works were, according to the account given to us of them by his grandson Juan, in the "Varia Commensuracion," the custodias (or "ciboria" for holding the sanctified wafer) of the Cathedrals of Leon, Cordova, Toledo, and Sahagun. Of crosses, paxes, censers, pixes, feretories, candelabra, monstrances, lamps, &c., he scattered specimens broadcast throughout Spain. In all of them he showed, as his descendant declared, "El valor de su ingenio raro, con mayor efecto que puede escribirse." As the present is the last occasion on which, in this volume at least, I may have to speak of mediæval metal work, and especially iron work, I may be allowed to allude very briefly to the two principal tools by which it was worked, viz.: the hammer and the pliers. In England and in France the first was used in preference at least to the last; while in Germany, Burgundy and the Low Countries, the last was specially affected, and by its means foliage, both natural and conventional, was rendered with great skill, facility and taste. The Spaniards, as is proved by the present sketch, and that which follows it, were at an early period dexterous in the use of both tools; uniting the massive style engendered by the predominant use of the hammer with the more florid and fanciful manner springing out of the light and convoluted forms created by a more liberal use of the pliers. [Illustration: PLATE 95 BARCELONA KNOCKER TO OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA. MDW 1869] PLATE XCV. _BARCELONA._ KNOCKER TO AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA. IN this fanciful little object we meet with another illustration of the spirit of humour as well as of dexterity in their craft, manifested in abundance by the excellent old ironworkers of Spain. Still good as the blacksmiths unquestionably were, the triumphs of Spanish metal working were chiefly embodied in the precious metals. It is rather in the cabinets of connoisseurs than in the churches of the country that specimens should be sought for to justify the splendid reputation those artist-workmen enjoyed in the palmy days of the Spanish Court and Church. Everywhere the traveller comes now only upon exhausted treasuries and emptied sacristies. Even since the days of Ford's inimitable handbook the spoiler has been rampant, and of the custodias and virus, the "blandones" and "portapaces" in which he delighted, so far as my perquisitions extended, scarcely a vestige was to be met with. Even since my sketches were made, the contents of the treasury of "Nuestra Señora del Pilar" have been brought to the hammer; and the pressure of other engagements alone prevented my return to Saragossa empowered to secure a share of those artistic curiosities for our National collection. No doubt many beautiful specimens of Gothic precious metal work once adorned the principal mediæval ecclesiastical structures of Spain, but it was not till a later date that the most important and famous works, other than those already noticed (by Henrique de Arfé,) were produced. A brief notice of some of these from the pen of a contemporary may not be altogether uninteresting. "Although Renaissance architecture was introduced in Spain in a fully developed form before the middle of the sixteenth century, it was never thoroughly understood and adopted, we are told by Juan de Arphe y Villafañe,[61] in ecclesiastical plate, 'until my father, Antonio de Arfé, began to use it in the Custodia of Santiago in Galicia and in that of Medina de Rioseco, and in the portable shrine of Leon.' "In all his work he evidenced an imperfect knowledge of good style, introducing fanciful columns of irregular proportions according to his own fancy. Juan Alvarez, who was a native of Salamanca, died in the prime of his life in the service of Don Carlos of Austria. For this reason he left no evidence of his rare talent in any public performance. Alonso Beceril obtained reputation in his turn on account of having made in his studio the Custodia of Cuenca. This work secured the approbation of every artist in Spain who at that time was really learned in Art. Juan de Orna was an excellent plate-worker in Burgos. Juan Rinz,[62] a disciple of my grandfather, made the Custodias of Jaen, Baza, and that of San Pablo of Seville. He was the first who used the lathe for forming plate in Spain; he set the fashion for the principal pieces of silver services for the table, and instructed workmen throughout Andalusia. All the above artists, and others, began to give elegant shapes to the principal objects made in silver and gold for the use of the church, each one improving in symmetry and general excellence upon the works of his predecessors until those types became established which I am now about to describe." Juan de Arphe proceeds, after complimenting Philip II. on his majestic works at the Escorial, to give the forms and proportions of the five orders, and their application to every variety of silversmith's work, recognised as suitable for employment in sacred offices and ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies in his time. [Illustration: PLATE 96 BARCELONA. OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE MONCARA. MDW 1869] PLATE XCVI. _BARCELONA._ COURTYARD OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE MONCARA. IN noticing my ninety-first sketch I took occasion to comment on the difference which existed between Spanish and Catalonian architecture, and Spanish and Catalonian character. Both are pressed upon one's attention in looking over a house which, like the one I have sketched in the Calle de Moncara at Barcelona, appears to have been the comfortable home of a well-to-do merchant, with roomy stores and warehouses on the ground floor facing the entrance, domestic offices to the left, and counting-house and living rooms on the first floor, with bedrooms above. As is becoming in the house of one welcoming alike buyer and seller, we find a total absence of that almost Asiatic privacy which the Spaniards generally, and especially the Andalusians, appear in their homes to have adopted from Moorish models. Under the old Counts of Barcelona the architecture of the city had no doubt been mainly French. After the annexation of the city to the crown of Aragon, the architecture became tinctured with detail corresponding with much yet to be seen at Saragossa and elsewhere in Aragon, and finally after the consolidation of the whole monarchy by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the expulsion of the Moors, Barcelonese architecture fell under the Plateresque revival and the subsequent Greco-Roman mania which affected all Spain. The date of erection of the house of which I now give a sketch, appears to have brought it under the second of these two sets of conditions. In the twisted column, its cap and base, and some other features, we may recognise the Aragonese style, while in the staircase and some of the windows there is to be traced, I consider, a decided French influence. In spite of legislative assimilation, the Catalonians have never been able to cordially adopt a Spanish nationality. They have never warmly responded to the caresses of their monarchs. Even as late as 1802, when Charles IV. paid a visit to Barcelona with the infamous Godoy, and a retinue like an army, and drew some eighty thousand strangers to the city, a visitor in the following year records that "the Catalans felt a generous pride in observing that no accident or quarrel occurred on that occasion, and no life was lost, _notwithstanding the enmity subsisting between them and the Spaniards_."[63] Whittaker further illustrates this mutual jealousy and spiteful feeling by the following characteristic anecdote:--"This enmity," he says, "is carried to such a height that when it was proposed to strike a medal in honour of the King's visit, the Academy of Arts of St. Fernando, at Madrid, were requested to superintend the execution; but this body, actuated by a most illiberal and unworthy spirit, endeavoured to excuse themselves, and made every possible delay, which so enraged the Catalans, that they withdrew the business from their hands, and trusted it to their own academy. The medal was produced in a month, and remains a record rather of their loyal zeal, than of their ability in the fine arts." [Illustration: PLATE 97 CALLE DE MONCARA. MDW 1869] PLATE XCVII. _BARCELONA._ STAIRCASE OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE MONCARA. I AM induced to give this one little specimen of what the Spaniards call "Churriguerismo" for these reasons: 1stly, because it is a prettier example than usual of the style practised early in the eighteenth century by the fashionable José Churriguerra--the William Kent of Spanish architecture; 2ndly, because it affords a good specimen of the comfortable house of a rich Barcelonese merchant of the last century; and 3rdly, on account of the singular arrangement of the jointing of the masonry, which converts the apparently double arch into very little else than one tolerably stable spanning of the whole space. In describing my eighty-fifth sketch I alluded to the fact that the trade of Spain gradually fell into the hands mainly of foreigners, and especially at first of the Genoese, the difference between them and the native Spanish merchant being that while the former were crafty, industrious and dishonest, the latter were stupid and lazy, but (except in the matter of smuggling) strictly honest. Plenty of witness is borne by different writers to both facts. Quevedo, for instance, abounds in hits at the Genoese and other Italians. "Give an Italian to the Devil," he says in his "El Alguazil Endemoniado," "and the old gentleman won't try to take him, for an Italian would take away the Devil himself."[64] Elsewhere in the same satire he cautions his readers telling them that they are bound to know "that in Spain the mysteries of the accounts of the Genoese are disastrous for the millions that come from the Indies, and that the cannons of their pens are batteries for purses. There are no incomes which, if they once get into the strokes of their pens, and the inkholders of their inkstands, escape without drowning."[65] The poco-curante honesty of the Spaniard on the other hand, (the "poco-curanteeism" at least an inheritance from the East,) kept business in his hands which, but for his reliability, ought according to every recognised law of probability in trade, to have left him before it did. Laborde, a writer by no means inclined to take too favourable a view of the national character, confesses that "Spanish probity is proverbial, and that it conspicuously shines in commercial relations. Good faith and punctuality are generally prevalent among merchants, the instances of deception, negligence, fraudulent dealing and non-fulfilment of engagements, so general in the trading world, being unknown to and not practised amongst them." As an illustration, Laborde mentions some coined silver sent home in the year 1654, which was paid away by the Spanish merchants, and was subsequently discovered to have been debased. Not only were the Spanish merchants eager to make good the loss to those who had dealt with them, but having discovered the culprit they obtained his conviction, and the wretched man was publicly burnt alive. In spite of honesty, however, trade and commerce will not thrive in any country in which they are looked upon as degrading. A Catalonian might work, since he was but half a Spaniard. A Castilian, however, was quite willing to pay any one who would work for him, and as with his increase of wealth his wants became more and more artificial and luxurious, the swarms of foreigners he harboured about him to do his bidding, increased to an unprecedented extent. The Countess D'Aulnois gives a capital account of the state of things in this respect in her time (circâ 1679). "Spain," she says,[66] "cannot well be without commerce with France, not only on the frontiers of Biscai and Arragon, where it hath been almost ever permitted, but through the whole country where it is prohibited, for Provence hath ever had correspondencies in the kingdom of Valentia, by its necessity of the others commodities; and for the same reason Britaign, Normandy, and other parts on the ocean have continually sent theirs to Cadiz and Bilbo. I speak not of corn and stuffs of all sorts brought from that country, but even of ironwork and swords; by which it appears a mistake to think that in these dayes the best come of Spain. No more being now made at Toledo, few but forrain are used, unless a very small quantity that come from Biscai, which are excessively dear. "It is, moreover, hard to imagine how much Spain suffers for want of manufactures. So few artificers remain in its towns, that native commodities are carried abroad to be wrought in forrain countries. Wools and silks are transported raw, and being spun and weaved in England, France, and Holland, return thither at dear rates. The land itself is not tilled by the people it feeds. In seed time, harvest, and vintage, husbandmen come from Bearn and other parts of France, who get a great deal of money by sowing and reaping their corn, and dressing and cutting their vines. Carpenters and masons are (for the most part) also strangers, who will be paid treble what they can get in their own country. In Madrid there is hardly a waterbearer that is not a foreigner, such are also the greatest part of shoomakers and taylors, and it is believed the third of these come only to get a little money and afterwards return home; but none thrive so much as architects, masons, and carpenters. Almost every house hath wooden windows (here being no glass), and a balcony jutting into the street." [Illustration: PLATE 98 GERONA OLD HOUSE NEAR THE ESTRELLA DE ORO. MDW 1869] PLATE XCVIII. _GERONA._ OLD HOUSE NEAR THE ESTRELLA DE ORO. IF my last sketch illustrated the regular rich merchant's house of the eighteenth century--symbol of peace and plenty, police and protection--the kind of residence I now submit to the reader's attention is cast in quite a different key. It is essentially a fighter's house, the only kind of structure in which (before the use of gunpowder) a family could hold its own for months of foreign siege or protracted street fighting. Gerona has always been, as we shall have occasion to recognize in examining its fine old walls, almost a frontier city, struggled for repeatedly by Christian and by Moor. The house I have sketched is one of the earliest and most complete of its class I have ever seen, the lower half alone having been materially altered from its original construction. It dates in all probability from the middle of the twelfth century, and yet stands strong and stalwart in a quarter of the city in which very little of anything not comparatively of yesterday meets the wandering visitor's eye. On comparing this sketch with that from a house at Barcelona (No. 96) erected at least three hundred years later, it will be found that the type furnished by the earliest in date had changed but little in the interval. Hence we may fairly infer that the conditions of insecurity affecting domestic life had scarcely varied in Catalonia during the whole of that term. In fact, it was not until the invention of printing spread abroad the elements of education, and brought about changes in social systems, that men began to dream of peace and security ensured by other preservatives from danger than heavy armour and fortress-like houses. [Illustration: PLATE 99 GERONA. UPPER PART OF OLD HOUSE. NEAR SAINT FELIX MDW 1869] PLATE XCIX. _GERONA._ UPPER PART OF OLD HOUSE AND SPIRE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN FELIU. THE west front of the Cathedral at Gerona stands at the top of a noble flight of eighty-six steps, and these ascended, platforms are reached on the west and south of the splendid pile from which fine views over the city and its environs are obtained. The sketch now under notice was taken from the southern platform, the wall enclosing which upon the west cuts off something like thirty feet in height of the fine old house which forms the principal object in the sketch. Its uppermost story, with its continuous arcade, has a symmetrical and agreeable effect, and appears to have been the only portion of the building really suitable for habitation according to modern views as to the value of abundant light and air. On the right is seen the cathedral well, the waters of which have no doubt alike served for the bodily and spiritual ablutions of Mahommedan and Christian, since cathedral, mosque, and then again cathedral, have existed in turn upon the same site from the days of Charlemagne to the present time. During the Moorish occupation in the eighth century the Christians were permitted to worship in the original church of San Feliu (Felix) the truncated spire of the successor to which appears in my sketch between the old house, and the south-west angle of the cathedral, shown on the extreme right. The present church, dedicated to San Feliu, dates probably from the early part of the fourteenth century. Its history has been clearly traced by Mr. Street from a comparison of the building with the particulars given and documents quoted in the "España Sagrada." "The steeple is said to have been finished in 1392. Pedro Zacoma having acted as architect as late as A.D. 1376." It was struck by lightning in the year 1581, and has remained ever since shorn of its fair proportions, as we now see it. San Feliu, as he is popularly called, was an early Spanish Christian, deacon to San Narciso, the Martyr, Protector and "Generalissimo" of the See of Gerona. [Illustration: PLATE 100 GERONA OLD WALLS NEAR SAN PEDRO MDW 1869] PLATE C. _GERONA._ OLD WALLS NEAR THE MONASTERY OF SAN PEDRO. FROM the date at least on which Charlemagne captured Gerona from the Moors, it has been a victim to the horrors of war; manned through all history, and under every circumstance of siege and occupation, by men and women of the sternest courage and determination it has been held with the utmost tenacity, as really even more than Figueras (the actual frontier town), the key to the easiest line of advance from France into Spain. Hence the strength and interest of its fine old walls, which in spite of every ancient and modern vicissitude, still retain more curious features of middle age defence than, to the best of my belief, any other city of Spain, with the exception of Avila. As will be seen from my sketch, the apse of the fine old Romanesque church of San Pedro, which actually forms a bulwark, has been raised so as to bring it into practical fighting order; and the covered galleries for marksmen, with bow and cross bow, matchlock and firelock, still extend from it to the north and to the south in easily to be recognised, and still fairly complete, galleries of well-sheltered communication. The present aspect of the north of Gerona forms a fair pendant to the description Charles Didier gives of its sister fortress to the side of France, Figueras. He says, "Tout a un air d'abandon et de désolation; les casernes sont magnifiques, mais désertes; les casemates spacieuses, mais vides; les longues herbes de la solitude croissent partout, et la seule partie des bâtiments qui soit aujourd'hui de première nécessité, l'infirmerie, n'est point terminée; les pierres à moitié taillées jonchent le sol et sont couvertes de mousse. J'errai longtemps seul dans ce silencieux désert sans rencontrer personne; de loin en loin seulement, j'apercevais quelque sentinelle perdue à la pointe d'une demi-lune et nonchalamment appuyée contre les canons et les mortiers; de gros rats rongeaient en paix les affuts; ils se sont si bien emparés du lieu, que mon approche les dérangeait à peine; je n'avais pas fait trois pas, qu'ils se remettaient à l'oeuvre. Voilà sous quels traits l'Espagne apparaît au voyageur qui vient de France, triste et frappante image d'une chute sans exemple et d'une misère sans terme."[67] One would have preferred receiving from any other than a Frenchman so dreary a picture of the desolation mainly wrought by Frenchmen. Returning to Gerona, to which Didier's description applies (as I have already stated) nearly as well as to Figueras, in sight of which he may have written it, we shall find Mr. Street no less strongly impressed than I was with what Spain owes to France in the matter. "All this havoc and ruin is owing," he says, "like so much that one sees in Spain, to the action of the French troops during the Peninsular War." It is however but just to the French to add that the Spaniards are not, like them, endowed with wonderful recuperative energy. FOOTNOTES: [1] Von P. L. Berckenmeyern. Hamburg, 1731. [2] "The Frenchman like an eagle. The German like a bear. The Italian like a fox. The Spaniard like an elephant. The Englishman like a lion." [3] Waring (John Burley) Architectural, Sculptural, and Picturesque Studies of Burgos and its neighbourhood. Folio. London. 1851. [4] Examples of Architectural Art in Italy and Spain. Folio. London. 1850. [5] "Viaggio in Spagna," quoted by O'Shea, page 498. [6] Examples of Ornamental Heraldry of the sixteenth century. London, 1867. Privately printed. [7] Given at length under the No. XXXV in the Appendix to the First Volume of the "Noticias de los Arquitectos y Architectura de España, &c.," por Señor D. Eugenio Llaguno y Amirola, &c. Madrid, 1829. [8] Carefully illustrated geometrically in the "Monumentos Arquitectonicos." Madrid. Folio. [9] See: "Historia de las ordenes Militares de S. Iago," por F. Caro de Torres. Madrid, 1629. Folio. [10] O'Shea. Page 236. [11] Ingenious and diverting letters of "A Lady's Travels into Spain," London, 1720, Vol. I, page 308. [12] See Colmenar's description of the condition of the University in 1715. [13] London 1771, Vol. II., page 24. [14] There is much in this very town of Avila in the beautiful old church of San Vicente. [15] Catálogo de la Real Armeria--siendo Director General, &c.--el S. D. José Maria Marchesi--Madrid, 1849, pages 188-89. [16] Les Délices de l'Espagne et du Portugal--Leide chez Pierre van der Aa, 1706. [17] See the true and topographical views given in the above work, and the artistic and considerably embellished one by David Roberts in Jennings' Landscape Annual for 1837. [18] "Documentos," Vol. I. of the "Noticias" Appendix No. XXXVIII. [19] Printed at Alcala in 1514-15 in 6 vols. folio. [20] España Artistica y monumental de Villa Amil y Escosura, Vol. I. page 82. [21] Tome I., page 222. Bruxelles, 1837. [22] The greater part of the above facts are verified by the inscription which was placed upon the bridge by Alonzo the Wise, in 1252, and the original of which is given by Cean Bermudez in his "Documentos" Vol. I. Number XXIV. [23] Noticias de los Arquitectos, &c. Par Amirola y Bermudez, Madrid, 1829. Vol. I. page 41. [24] Noticias &c. Vol. I. page 79. [25] A Journey to Mequinez. London, Jacob Tonson, 1725. [26] Probably a son of the great Henrique de Egas, who died in 1534. [27] O'Shea states (page 410) that the Infante Don Fernando, uncle of Juan II., lodged in it in 1407. [28] In the Street of the Abbots, all have _uncles_ none _fathers_. [29] The Cathedral Canons have no _sons_, those they keep at home are _little nephews_. [30] "A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain," by Philip Thicknesse. Bath, 1777. Vol. I. pages 260-1. [31] In his amusing "Tra los Montes." Bruxelles, 1843. Vol. II. page 44. [32] Neu-vermehrter Curieuser Antiquarius. Hamburgh. 1731. [33] Travels through Spain in the year 1775 and 1776, in which several monuments of Roman and Moorish architecture are illustrated by accurate drawings taken on the spot by Henry Swinburne, Esq. London. 4to. 1779. [34] O'Shea adds the name of Cayon to that of Acero, describing the two as descending from the Salamanca school, founded by Churriguera and Tomé. [35] There is a little discrepancy between Ford's and O'Shea's accounts, the former says that it was given by the Republic of Genoa to Charles V., the latter gives the facts as I have stated them. [A] Miguel Mañara Vicentelo de Leca (1627-1679). Note of etext transcriber. [36] See, especially for Spain, his "Monuments Arabes et Moresques de Cordoue, Séville et Grenade." Paris, 1832-3, and its continuation--"Monuments Arabes d'Egypte de Syrie et d'Asie Mineure," 1842-5, Paris. The above are essentially pictorial works, but in his "Essai sur l'Architecture des Arabes et des Maures," &c., Paris, 1841, he has discussed the whole subject historically with much ability. [37] Plan section and elevation of the outer side of this Gateway, to a large scale, will be found on Plate II. of Owen Jones's great work on the Alhambra. I sketched the interior of this Gateway, mainly because that was the only part of it which he had not given. [38] A pretty coloured view from this very point will be found in M. Girault de Prangey's "Choix d'Ornements moresques de l'Alhambra," Paris, 1842. Plate No. 3. [39] An alabaster fountain probably occupied the centre of the Sala de Embajadores. [40] It is but just to Señor Contréras to remark that the Poet's picture was sketched before the date of his admirable conservatorship. He is a true artist, and has done wonders in the way of restoration, completing and as little as possible interfering with the marvellous picturesque character of the noble old Palace. [41] Calcutta, 1821. [42] "A Journey to Mequinez, the residence of the present Emperor of Fez and Morocco, on the occasion of Commodore Stewart's Embassy thither for the redemption of the British Captives in the year 1711." London, Jacob Tonson. 1725. A very interesting old book, the descriptions in which carry the mind forcibly back to the Moorish occupation of Spain. [43] For full information on the Glass of the Romans, the Byzantine-Greeks, and the Arabs, of Damascus especially, see Mr. Augustus Franks' account in Mr. J. B. Waring's beautiful work on the Manchester Exhibition, Mr. Alexander Nesbitt's "Historical Notice" Introductory to the Catalogue of Mr. Felix Slade's collection, M. Bontemps' "Guide du Verrier," and M. Labarte's "Histoire des Arts Industriels au moyen-âge et à l'Epoque de la Renaissance." [44] Of course alluding to the ceiling, which is even more beautiful in the same style, than that of the Hall of the Abencerrages, which, my colleague, Mr. Owen Jones so perfectly reproduced in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. [45] "The Kiblah is the point in the horizon towards which Mahommedans turn in their prayers marking the place where Mecca stands. The Mihrab is the enclosure before the Kiblah." [46] See Mr. J. B. Waring's masterly sketches of the details of these works of art. [47] Who also states that in his time the drawings of the design by Diego Siloe were yet extant, "Noticias de los Arquitectos y Arquitectura de España." Madrid. 1829. Vol. I. page 199. [48] "History of the Modern Styles of Architecture," by James Fergusson. London. 1862. page 135. [49] Mr. Street in referring to the usual practice in good mediæval iron screens observes that in such "the ornament is reserved for open traceried crestings, with bent and sharply cut crockets, for traceried rails, and for the locks and fastenings." He mentions a very fine iron screen, thirty feet high, as existing at Pamplona, the general design of which seems to have a good deal in common with that of the "Reja de los Reyes" at Granada. It appears, however, to be of earlier date, and consequently more decidedly Gothic in character. [50] "Varia Commensuracion." Sixth Edition, pages 221-222. [51] Casts of these sculptures I caused to be placed in the surbase of the Renaissance Court of the Crystal Palace. [52] Viage de España. Vol. XV. page 79. [53] "Gothic Architecture in Spain," page 270. [54] "Marcos Obregon por el Maestro Vicente Espinel." Madrid. 1804. Pages 40-41. (note of etext transcriber: sagon should read razón.) [55] "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic." New York. 1845. Page cxi. [56] Navagiero--"Il Viaggio fatto in Spagna." Venice. 1563. Page 3. [57] "Recuerdos y Bellezas de España," por F. J. Parcerisa escrita y documentada, por P. Piferrer y J. Pi y Margall. Cataluña. Tome II., page 222. [58] "Travels through Spain and Part of Portugal." Sherwood Collection. London, 1818, page 281. [59] Ponz, Antonio, "Viage de España." Third Edition. Madrid. 1787. Vol. I. page 54. [60] "A View of Spain." Translated from the French of Alexandre de Laborde. London, 1809. Vol. IV., pp. 371-3. [61] Even better known as "El Vandolino." [62] "Varia Commensuracion para la escultura y Arquitectura, sexta impresion." Madrid, 1773. Page 222. [63] "Travels through Spain and Part of Portugal," by the Rev. G. D. Whittaker in 1803. Sherwood's Collection, London, 1813, page 279. [64] "Days al Diablo un Italiano, y no le toma el Diablo, por que ay Italiano que tomara al Diablo." [65] "Y haveys de saber que en España los misterios de las cuentas de los Ginoveses, son dolorosos para los millones que vienen de las Indias, y que los cañones de sus plumas son de bateria contra las bolsas, y no ay renta que si la cogen en medio el tajo de sus plumas, y el jarama de su tinta no la ahoguen." (The reader will observe the double meaning which points Quevedo's sarcasm--"cañones" express at the same time quills and cannons.)--"Sueños y Discursos por Don Francisco de Quevedo Villegas Zaragoza." 1627. Page 19. [66] "Letter of a Lady's Travels into Spain." London. Ninth Edition. [67] "Une Année en Espagne," par Charles Didier. 1837. [*] This should read: "¿Cuántos monumentos como el que acabamos de examinar dejarémos nosotros en herencia à nuestros nietos?" (note of etext transcriber.) [Etext transcriber note:] Vicente Acera was corrected to Vicente Acero The name of the city Alcalá (acute accent) de Henares is very often printed ALCALA DE HEÑARES. (tilde on the N) Duque is consistently printed Duqué (acute accent) Guadalajara and Guadalaxara are used Mih-ràb (grave accent) and Mih-ráb (acute accent) are used Bosque (forest/woods) is printed bosqué (acute accent) 
38321	----	TRANSCRIBER NOTES: Words in bold in the original are bracketed in equal signs (=). Words in italics in the original are bracketed by underscores (_). The tables have been modified to fit by creating a key for the first column. The key precedes the tables. Footnotes have been moved closer to the reference. Additional notes can be found at the end of the text. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Agricultural Experiment Station BULLETIN NO. 143 ECONOMY OF THE ROUND DAIRY BARN BY WILBER J. FRASER [Illustration] URBANA, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY, 1910 SUMMARY OF BULLETIN NO. 143 1. Round barns would be more generally built if their advantages were known and if the few which have been erected had been rightly constructed. Page 1. 2. The round dairy barn offers greater convenience in storing, handling and distributing the feed. Page 5. 3. In the circular construction, much greater strength is secured with less lumber. Page 6. 4. The material for rectangular barns costs from 34 to 58 percent more than for round barns of the same area and capacity. Page 7. 5. Round and rectangular barns compared. Page 11. 6. Round and rectangular barns, including silos, compared. Page 13. 7. Detailed account, with illustrations showing how the round barn at the University was built. Page 17. 8. Itemized statement of cost of a 60-foot round barn. Page 29. 9. Brief descriptions with illustrations and plans of several round dairy barns in actual use. Page 31. 10. Conclusions. The advantages of the round dairy barn are convenience, strength and cheapness. Page 44. ECONOMY OF THE ROUND DAIRY BARN FULL SPECIFICATIONS AND DETAILED COST AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW SIXTY-FOOT CIRCULAR DAIRY BARN AT THE UNIVERSITY. SAVING OF ROUND OVER RECTANGULAR BARNS. NOTES ON SEVERAL ROUND BARNS ON DAIRY FARMS.[A] [A] Special acknowledgment is made to Mr. H. E. Crouch and Mr. R. E. Brand for their assistance in working out the detailed data which are the bases for the economic comparisons of the round and rectangular barns made in this bulletin. BY W. J. FRASER, CHIEF IN DAIRY HUSBANDRY The planning, construction, and arrangement of farm buildings do not usually receive the thought and study these subjects warrant. How many dairymen have compared a circular, 40-cow barn with the common rectangular building containing the same area? How many understand that the circular structure is much the stronger; that the rectangular form requires 22 percent more wall and foundation to enclose the same space; and that the cost of material is from 34 to 58 percent more for the rectangular building? In a community in which everyone is engaged in the same occupation, one person is likely to copy from his neighbor without apparently giving a thought as to whether or not there is a better way. In a district of Kane county, Illinois, a certain type of dairy barn is used by nearly everyone, while in the next county a distinctly different type prevails, and the dairy barns of another adjacent county differ from those of either of the former, simply because the early settlers of this particular locality came from an eastern state and started building the style of barn then common in Pennsylvania. In a certain community in Ohio where a milk condensing factory is located, a large number of farmers have barns 36 × 60 feet, with an "L" the same size. The loft of the "L" is used for the storage of straw, and the cows run loose in the lower portion. These barns are all built on practically the same plan and are usually of the same size, and this is the only community known to the writer where this form of barn is used in this manner. This tendency to imitate emphasizes the fact that men do not exercise sufficient originality. Because most barns are rectangular is no reason that this is the best and most economical form. WHY MORE ROUND BARNS ARE NOT BUILT [Illustration: FIG. 1. BARN NO. 5. 100 FEET IN DIAMETER, SCALE 20 FEET TO ONE INCH; SHOWING INCREASED MOW CAPACITY GIVEN BY SELF-SUPPORTING ROOF.] In an early day when lumber was cheap, buildings were built of logs, or at least had heavy frames. Under these conditions, the rectangular barn was the one naturally used, and people have followed in the footsteps of their forefathers in continuing this form of barn. The result is that the economy and advantages of the round barn have apparently never been considered. This is because they are not obvious at first sight, and become fully apparent only after a detailed study of the construction. For these reasons, the rectangular form still continues to be built, altho it requires much more lumber. As the price of lumber has advanced so materially in recent years, the possible saving in this material is a large item, and well worth investigating. The objections to round barns have usually been made by those who have only a superficial knowledge of the subject, and do not really understand the relative merits of the two forms. To the writer's knowledge, there has never been published a carefully figured out, detailed comparison of a properly constructed circular barn with the rectangular barn. The difficulty with most round barns that have been built, thus far, is that they do not have a self-supporting roof, and consequently lose many of the advantages of a properly constructed round barn. This is the principal reason why round barns have not become more popular. A straight roof necessarily requires many supports in the barn below. These are both costly and inconvenient, and make the roof no stronger than a dome-shaped, self-supporting roof which nearly doubles the capacity of the mow. See Fig. (1). Many who have thus disregarded capacity have also wasted lumber and made a needless amount of work by chopping or hewing out the sill and plate, thus requiring more labor and lumber, besides sacrificing the greater strength of a built-up sill. Rightly constructed round barns are, however, being built to a limited extent. One contractor has erected twenty-four round barns, with self-supporting roofs, in the last nine years. These barns vary in size from 40 feet in diameter with 18-foot posts to 102 feet in diameter with 30-foot posts. Another reason for the scarcity of round barns is the difficulty in getting them built. Most carpenters hesitate to undertake the work because in the erection of a round barn the construction should be entirely different from that of the rectangular form. Many new problems present themselves, but when these are once understood, the round barn offers no more difficulties in construction than the rectangular form. It is, however, important to have a head carpenter who is accustomed to putting up round barns, as a man with ingenuity and experience can take advantage of many opportunities to save labor and material. KIND OF BARN NEEDED The first thing to consider in the erection of a barn is a convenient arrangement for the purpose for which it is to be used. At the University of Illinois, two years ago, a twenty-acre demonstration dairy farm was started, the sole object being to produce the largest amount of milk per acre at the least possible cost. To meet the requirements of a barn for this purpose, it became imperative to build one that was convenient for feeding and caring for the cows, economical of construction, and containing a large storage capacity in both silo and mow. These are the requirements of a barn for every practical dairyman. [Illustration: FIG. 2. FILLING THE SILO.] A silo was needed that could be fed from the year round. With the small number of cows kept, a deep enough layer of silage could not be fed off each day to keep it good thru the summer, if the silo was more than 12 feet in diameter. As this small diameter was a necessity, it would require two silos 33 feet deep to supply enough silage. Two silos of such small diameter would not only be costly, but difficult to make stand, unless built of concrete. This difficulty was overcome by using the circular barn and placing in the center a silo which is 12 feet in diameter and 54 feet deep, thus making the one silo, with as much capacity as the two before mentioned, answer every purpose. This deep silo is an important part of the round barn, as it not only forms a support for the roof, but is protected by the barn, thus saving the cost of siding. Then, too, besides occupying the space least valuable for other purposes, it being centrally located, is in the most convenient place for feeding. The silage chute being open at the top forms a suction of air, which keeps the silage odor from the barn at milking time, and also assists in ventilation when the door to the chute is open. ADVANTAGES OF THE ROUND BARN The points of superiority that the round dairy barn shows over the rectangular form are convenience, strength, and cheapness. ROUND BARN MOST CONVENIENT Considering that the barn on a dairy farm is used twice every day in the year, and that for six months each year the cows occupy it almost continuously, and that during this time a large amount of the labor of the farm is done inside the barn, it is evident that the question of its convenience is a vital one. The amount of time and strength wasted in useless labor in poorly arranged buildings is appalling. People do not stop to consider the saving in a year or a lifetime by having the barn so conveniently arranged that there is a saving of only a few seconds on each task that has to be done two or three times every day. [Illustration: Fig. 3. INTERIOR OF BARN, SECOND FLOOR, SHOWING SILO AND LOCATION OF ENSILAGE CUTTER. (TEAM UNHITCHED TO SHOW CUTTER.)] The round barn has a special advantage in the work of distributing silage to the cows. The feeding commences at the chute where it is thrown down, and is continued around the circle, ending with the silage cart at the chute again, ready for the next feeding. The same thing is true in feeding hay and grain. Still another great advantage is the large unobstructed hay mow. With the self-supporting roof, there are no timbers whatever obstructing the mow, which means no dragging of hay around posts or over girders. The hay carrier runs on a circular track around the mow, midway between the silo and the outside wall, and drops the hay at any desired point, thus in no case does the hay have to be moved but a few feet, which means a saving of much labor in the mowing. To successfully embody all of the above discussed advantages in a dairy barn is one of the large problems in milk production. In a careful study of the barn question it soon became apparent that it was impossible to embody all of the requirements advantageously in anything but a circular form of building, and the 60-foot round barn, which is here described, was built. [Illustration: FIG. 4. SOUTH VIEW, SHOWING WELL LIGHTED STABLE.] CIRCULAR CONSTRUCTION THE STRONGEST The circular construction is the strongest, because it takes advantage of the lineal, instead of the breaking strength of the lumber. Each row of boards running around the barn forms a hoop that holds the barn together. A barrel, properly hooped and headed, is almost indestructible, and much stronger than a box, altho the hoops are small. This strength is because the stress comes on the hoops in a lineal direction. Any piece of timber is many times stronger on a lineal pull than on a breaking stress. Take for example a No. 1 yellow pine 2 × 6, 16 feet long, with an actual cross section of 1-5/8 × 5-5/8 inches. If placed on edge and supported at the ends, as a joist, the limit of safety for a load evenly distributed is 642 pounds, while the limit of safety for a load in the lineal direction of the same piece of timber is 12,800 pounds, or twenty times as great. [Illustration: FIG. 5. IN COW STABLE, SHOWING SILO AND FEED ALLEY IN CENTER OF BARN; STANCHIONS ON RIGHT, MILK SCALES AND RECORD SHEET ON LEFT.] All exposed surfaces of a round barn are circular, as both the sides and roof are arched, which is the strongest form of construction to resist wind pressure; besides, the wind, in striking it, glances off and can get no direct hold on the walls or roof, as it can on the flat sides or gable ends of a rectangular structure. If the lumber is properly placed in a round barn, much of it will perform two or more functions. Every row of siding boards running around the building serves also as a brace, and the same is true of the roof boards and the arched rafters. If the siding is put on vertically and the roof built dome-shaped, no scaffolding is required inside or out. These are points of economy in the round construction. RECTANGULAR BARNS REQUIRE 34 TO 58 PERCENT MORE MATERIAL In order to compare the amount and cost of material in round and rectangular barns, the following figures have been carefully worked out by an expert barn builder. Two comparisons, based on wood construction thruout, are made, in which round barns 60 feet and 90 feet in diameter are compared with both plank and mortise frame rectangular barns containing the same number of square feet of floor space, respectively. Since the most practical width of a rectangular dairy barn is 36 feet, its length will depend upon the number of square feet required in the barn. [Illustration: FIG. 6. SHOWING CONSTRUCTION OF MORTISE FRAME BARN, END VIEW.] [Illustration: FIG. 7. SHOWING CONSTRUCTION OF PLANK FRAME BARN, SIDE VIEW.] Figures 6 to 9 are side and end views, showing the detail construction and size of the timbers of the plank frame and mortise frame barns here figured. The detailed figures of the lumber bills for each of these barns were carefully worked out, but are too voluminous for publication here. The total number of feet of each kind of lumber required is given in Tables 1A and 1B. Since the proportion of the different kinds of lumber and shingles varied for the different barns, to draw an exact comparison it was necessary to base it upon the money value, and for this purpose the total cost of lumber has been figured in each case. The lumber values used thruout are the best average prices that could be obtained. As the same prices are used for the material of all the barns, the comparisons of cost are correct, altho these exact prices will not hold for all localities and all times. [Illustration: FIG. 8. SHOWING CONSTRUCTION OF PLANK FRAME BARN, END VIEW.] Since a silo cannot be economically built inside of a rectangular barn, the first comparison is made with the barns simply enclosed, altho one of the chief advantages of a round barn is the deep silo which it is possible to build so economically in the center. [Illustration: FIG. 9. SHOWING CONSTRUCTION OF MORTISE FRAME BARN, SIDE VIEW.] Another item of economy in the circular barn is less framing lumber. This form has the strongest possible construction with the least lumber in the frame, and the least bracing, not a single timber larger than a 2 × 6 being required above the sill. The arched circular roof requires no supports, and no scaffolding is needed inside during its construction. The accompanying tables show the comparative amount and value of lumber and cubical content in round barns 60 and 90 feet in diameter, and rectangular barns of equal area and height of posts. TABLE 1A.--A COMPARISON OF THE COST OF MATERIAL IN ROUND AND RECTANGULAR BARNS OF THE SAME AREA, _Not Including_ Foundation And Silos. A: Framing lumber, B: Sheathing, siding, and flooring, C: Shingles, D: Bolts, E: Total cost of lumber, F: Content, cubic feet, ==+=====================+=========================================== | | Rectangular barn, 36 × 78-1/2 ft. | Round barn, +---------------------+--------------------- | 60 feet in diameter | Plank frame | Mortise frame --+---------------------+---------------------+--------------------- A | 13,976 ft. @ $25 | 19,833 ft. @ $25 | 29,074 ft. @ $25 | = $349.40 | = $495.83 | = $726.85 B | 12,971 ft. @ $22 | 15,355 ft. @ $22 | 15,355 ft. @ $22 | = 285.36 | = 337.81 | = 337.81 C | 44,000 @ $3.75 | 45,000 @ $3.75 | 45,000 @ $3.75 | = 165.00 | = 168.75 | = 168.75 D | | 20.88 | --+---------------------+---------------------+--------------------- E | =$799.76=| =$1023.27=| =$1233.41= ==+=====================+=====================+===================== F | =117,669= | =117,138= | =117,138= ==+=====================+=====================+===================== TABLE 1B. A: Framing lumber, B: Sheathing, siding, and flooring, C: Shingles, D: Bolts, E: Total cost of lumber, F: Content, cubic feet, ==+=====================+=========================================== | | Rectangular barn, 36 × 176-3/4 ft. | Round barn, +---------------------+--------------------- | 90 feet in diameter | Plank frame | Mortise frame --+---------------------+---------------------+--------------------- A | 30,899 ft. @ $25 | 38,815 ft. @ $25 | 59,481 ft. @$25 | = $772.48 | = $970.38 | = $1487.03 B | 22,375 ft. @ $22 | 28,547 ft. @ $22 | 28,547 ft. @ $22 | = 492.25 | = 628.03 | = 628.03 C | 97,000 @ $3.75 | 102,000 @ $3.75 | 102,000 @ $3.75 | = 363.75 | = 382.50 | = 382.50 D | | 26.76 | --+---------------------+---------------------+--------------------- E | =$1628.48= | =$2007.67= | =$2497.56= ==+=====================+=====================+===================== F | =322,952= | =270,570= | =270,570= ==+=====================+=====================+===================== ROUND AND RECTANGULAR BARNS COMPARED In comparing the 60-foot round barn with a rectangular barn of the same area, the two barns should afford the cows the same amount of space on the platform. Allowing each cow in the 60-foot round barn 3 feet 6 inches in width at the rear of the platform, it will accommodate 40 cows and leave space for two passage ways. But in a rectangular barn, only 3 feet 4 inches of platform space need be allowed for each cow, and the 78-1/2 foot barn, with two 3-foot passage ways across it for convenience in feeding, will accommodate 42 cows. While the rectangular barn has stall room for two more cows, the round barn contains space in the center for a silo 18 feet in diameter. The floor space and cubical content of the round barn 60 feet in diameter, and the rectangular barn compared with it in these tables, are practically the same, and the barns are therefore directly comparable. This being true, the percentages which were figured from the complete bills of material for these barns show the exact saving in lumber on the 60-foot round barn over the plank and mortise frame rectangular barns 36 × 78-1/2 feet. The lumber bills of the rectangular barns show an increase in cost of 28 percent for the plank frame and 54 percent for the mortise frame. The round barn, 60 feet in diameter, contains 188-1/2, and the rectangular barn 225 lineal feet of wall. The rectangular barn has, therefore, 22 percent more lineal feet of outside barn wall, requiring a proportional increase in both paint and foundation. The 176-3/4-foot rectangular barn would hold 100 cows, allowing each cow 3 feet 4 inches in width and providing for 3 passage ways of 3 feet each across the barn. The 90-foot round barn would hold 100 cows in two rows headed together, 65 of which would be in the outer circle, and have 3 feet 6 inches each in width at the gutter. This leaves sufficient room for feed alleys and walks, and two passage ways, one three feet and the other seven feet wide for the manure and feed carriers. All of this is outside of a central space for a silo 20 feet in diameter and 71 feet high, with a capacity for 620 tons of silage, and in the mow there would still be an excess, above the capacity of the rectangular barn, of 33,000 cubic feet, which would hold 66 tons of hay, or as much as the entire mow of a barn 32 × 36 feet with 20-foot posts. TABLE 2A.--A COMPARISON OF THE COST OF MATERIAL IN ROUND AND RECTANGULAR BARNS, _Including_ FOUNDATION AND SILOS. ========================+=============+============================= | Round barn, | Rectangular barn, | 60 feet in | 36 × 78-1/2 ft. | diameter +-------------+--------------- | | Plank frame | Mortise frame ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Lumber in barn, | $799.76 | $1023.27 | $1233.41 Material in foundation, | 86.89 | 105.90 | 105.90 Material in silo, | 159.01 | 295.26 | 295.26 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Total cost of material | | | in barn, | =$1045.66= | =$1424.43= | =$1634.57= ========================+=============+=============+=============== Actual money saved, | | =$378.77= | =$588.91= ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Proportional cost, | =100%= | =136%= | =156%= ========================+=============+=============+=============== TABLE 2B. ========================+=============+============================= | Round barn, | Rectangular barn, | 90 feet in | 36 × 176-3/4 ft. | diameter +-------------+--------------- | | Plank frame | Mortise frame ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Lumber in barn, | $1628.48 | $2007.67 | $2497.56 Material in foundation, | 130.35 | 196.80 | 196.80 Material in silo, | 265.00 | 513.52 | 513.52 ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Total cost of material | | | in barn, | =$2023.83= | =$2717.99= | =$3207.88= ========================+=============+=============+=============== Actual money saved, | | =$694.16= | =$1184.05= ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Proportional cost, | =100%= | =134%= | =158%= ========================+=============+=============+=============== The square feet of floor space in the round barn 90 feet in diameter and rectangular barn 36 × 176-3/4 feet are the same, but the cubical content of the former is more than that of the latter. The increase in the lumber bill is 23 percent in the plank frame and 53 percent in the mortise frame barn. The round barn 90 feet in diameter contains 283 and the rectangular barn 426 lineal feet of wall. The rectangular barn has, therefore, 50 percent more lineal feet of outside barn wall, requiring a proportional increase in both paint and foundation. The smaller surface on the outside wall of the round barn requires less paint and makes a proportional saving in keeping the round barn painted in after years. ROUND AND RECTANGULAR BARNS, _Including Silos_, COMPARED Owing to the fact that a silo is a necessity for the most economical production of milk, a barn is not complete for a dairyman's purpose unless it includes a silo with capacity to store sufficient silage for the herd. In the case of the round barn, the silo is most economically built inside, but in the rectangular form would cause a waste of space, and for that reason is best erected outside. Therefore, in comparing a round dairy barn with a rectangular dairy barn, silos should be included. In figuring the cost of materials in the silos for the round and rectangular barns, the capacity needed in each case was determined in the following manner: Allowing 40 pounds of silage per cow per day for 7 winter months and 25 pounds per cow per day for 3 months during the summer, would require for 40 cows 220 tons; then allowing one-eighth for waste would make the silage requirement 248 tons. As the silo in the round barn 60 feet in diameter is 53 feet deep, it would need to be only 16 feet in diameter to hold 250 tons. This diameter is sufficiently small to allow summer feeding without waste. To erect a silo outside of a barn, with sufficient stability to stand well, the height above ground should not be much more than twice the diameter, and in order to avoid waste for summer feeding, the diameter should not be greater than 16 feet for a herd of 40 cows. In order that a deep enough layer of silage can be fed off each day during the summer to avoid waste, it is evident that to store 250 tons of silage outside the barn, two silos would be required. One of these should be 16 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep, holding 154 tons, and the other 13 feet in diameter and 36 feet deep, holding 102 tons, making a total silo capacity of 256 tons. As the large barns hold 100 cows, the same allowance of silage per cow for the season would require silo capacity for 620 tons. As the silo in the round barn 90 feet in diameter would be 71 feet deep, it would need to be only 20 feet in diameter to hold 620 tons. To store 620 tons of silage in silos built outside the rectangular barn would require two silos, each 20 feet in diameter and 44 feet deep.[B] These are the sizes on which the figures for cost of silos of the Gurler type, given in Tables 2A and 2B, were used. [B] Since the deeper the silo the more firmly the silage packs, one silo 71 feet deep will hold as much as two silos of the same diameter and 44 feet deep. [Illustration: FIG. 10. INTERIOR OF COW STABLE, SHOWING WATER TROUGH WITH FLOAT VALVE, SALT BOX, AND DOOR INTO DAIRY.] The table (page 12) is the final summing up of the cost of all the material for the completed dairy barns, with silos, and shows a saving of from 34 to 58 percent in favor of the round barn and silo, or an actual money saving in this case of from $379 to $1184, depending upon the size and construction of the barns. Thoughtlessly, men go on building rectangular barns, but what would this reckless disregard of a possible saving of 34 to 58 percent mean in a year's business on the farm? Some illustrations may help us to understand what this money saved in building a round barn really amounts to, and its convenience is also a great saving. If the dairyman discarded the idea of a rectangular barn and built a round barn instead, he could take the money thus saved and buy one of the best pure-bred sires for his herd, and also three to ten pure-bred heifers or fine grade cows. Either of these purchases might double the profit of the herd. Or, this saving, properly applied, would purchase many labor-saving devices which would make life less of a drudgery on many dairy farms. Is not such a saving worth while? [Illustration: FIG. 11. COW COMFORT IN A ROUND BARN.] When the comparative cost and merit of two constructions are known, it is a poor financier who will pay extra for the one which is inferior. If a man received bids from contractors for a building, he would be a foolish man who would accept one which is from 34 to 58 percent higher than the lowest bidder, especially when he knew the lowest bidder would put up the most convenient and substantial building. DISADVANTAGES OF THE ROUND DAIRY BARN The disadvantages of the round dairy barn are, that it cannot be enlarged by building on as readily as can the rectangular form, but as the round barn may be built higher to the eaves than a rectangular barn 36 feet wide, provision can be made for the growth of the herd by building so as to put cows in the second story and still leave sufficient mow room for hay. The objection is frequently raised that a round barn is difficult to light. This difficulty is entirely overcome in a barn 90 feet or less in diameter, if a sufficient number of properly spaced windows are used. See Figs. 4 and 30. With the same number of windows, the light is more evenly distributed in a round barn and the sun can shine directly into some portion at all hours of the day during the winter. [Illustration: FIG. 12. FIRST STORY WALL, AND FOUNDATION FOR SILO, FEED ALLEY, AND MANGER; SILL IN PLACE, READY FOR JOISTS AND STUDS.] The objection has been raised that rectangular objects cannot be placed in a circle without a waste of space, but this does not apply to a dairy barn, as the storage of hay and grain depends upon cubical content, alone, and silos should always be circular, no matter where built. Cows, when lying down, are decidedly wedge-shaped, requiring much less space in front than behind. The objection may be raised, with round barns large enough for two rows of cows, that the row headed out does not use the space as economically as in the rectangular form, because a cow needs more width at the rear of the platform than at the manger. Where there are two rows of cows, the inner row is usually headed out, and as only about one-third of the cows are in this row, this loss of space is counterbalanced by the large number of cows in the outer circle using the space more economically than they do in the rectangular barn. Box stalls cannot be as conveniently arranged, but in a one-row barn, gates hung on the outside and swung around to the manger, form stalls for cows at freshening time, and in a barn with two rows, box stalls can be arranged in the inner circle. HOW THE ROUND BARN AT THE UNIVERSITY WAS BUILT The barn is located on the side of a hill, sloping gently to the south and east. With this location, it was an advantage to excavate 5 feet deep on the northwest and run out to the surface of the ground on the southeast. [Illustration: FIG. 13. SHOWING TEMPORARY BRACING TO HOLD STUDS IN PLACE WHILE SHIP LAP CEILING IS NAILED ON.] The footing for the foundation is 18 inches wide. A ten-inch brick wall was carried up nine feet above the stable floor. This wall contains a 2-inch air space to prevent moisture from condensing on the inner wall and making the barn damp. This is an important point, as barns with a solid stone or brick wall are very objectionable on account of dampness. It has been proven by two years' use that this difficulty is entirely obviated by the air space in the wall. The foundation for the manger and feed alley is built up 2 feet above the stable floor. The foundation for the silo extends 4 feet below the stable floor and is continued 9 inches above the floor in the feed alley. This silo wall, together with the foundation under the manger, forms the foundation for the center supports of the barn. Fig. 12 shows the foundation completed. The silo, which is the Gurler type, was then started and carried up with the barn. It was built by placing 2 × 4 studs around the circle, one foot on centers, and ceiling inside with 1/2 × 6-inch lumber. This 1/2-inch lumber was obtained by re-sawing 1 × 6 yellow pine fencing. Common lath were then put on horizontally in the regular way inside, without furring out, and plastered with rich cement plaster. The sill of the barn is 6 × 6, made up of 1 × 6s, and built on top of the wall. Building it up in this manner makes a stronger sill than can be obtained in any other way, as it forms a continuous hoop around the barn. [Illustration: FIG. 14. SHOWING HEIGHT AND CONSTRUCTION OF SILO, SIDING COMPLETED, AND FOUR MAIN RAFTERS IN PLACE.] The joists are 2 × 12s notched 6 inches to fit the sill, so that the outer ends rest on both the sill and the brick wall. The outer span of joists is 14 feet and the inner ends of these joists rest on a similar sill built of 1 × 6s on top of the 4 × 4 supports at the stanchions. The inner span of joists, between the stanchions and the silo, is 8 feet, the outer end resting on the sill over the stanchions, and the inner end on a 1-1/2 × 6-inch band, made up of three 1/2 × 6-inch pieces, running around the outside of the silo. These joists are placed 2-1/2 feet apart at the outside of the barn, and half as many joists are used in the inner span, making the joists at the silo one foot apart. The number of joists under the driveways are doubled, being only 1 foot and 3 inches apart at the outside of the barn. [Illustration: FIG. 15. SHOWING ALL RAFTERS IN PLACE AND METHOD OF SHEATHING ROOF.] The studs, which are 2 × 6s, 20 feet long, were then placed on the sill, about 2 feet 6 inches apart, being as evenly spaced between the windows as possible, and temporarily braced, as shown in Fig. 13, until the 8-inch ship lap ceiling could be nailed on the outside. This was carried up 5 feet to the second scaffold, and then covered to this height with shingles laid 5 inches to the weather. The scaffolding was then moved up and this process repeated until the siding was completed. The plate, made up of five 1 × 4s, was then built in the notch in the top of the studs shown in Fig. 13. [Illustration: FIG. 16. SHOWING HEIGHT OF SILO, CAPACITY OF BARN, AND CONSTRUCTION OF ROOF.] The silo was completed, as before described. The rafters, which were framed on the ground, were then erected, as shown in Fig. 14, the first eight going to the center of the roof, and the remaining ones were cut to rest on the plate of the silo. There are 64 framed rafters, and these are the only ones in the upper section of the roof. At the break in the roof, a header is cut in between the framed rafters, and in the lower section a rafter is placed between these, thus making twice as many rafters in the lower section of the roof as in the upper section. After the rafters were all in place and temporarily braced, the 1 × 2-inch sheathing was put on, as shown in Fig. 15, and the shingles, which were the best 5/2 red cedar, were laid 5 inches to the weather on the lower section of the roof, and 4 inches to the weather on the upper section, as this had less pitch. No chalk line was necessary, as the shingles were laid by the sheathing. [Illustration: FIG. 17. SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF JOISTS AND HOW THE FLOOR IS LAID.] The floor was made of 1 × 8 ship lap, laid in four directions, as shown in Fig. 17. In the driveway an extra layer of ship lap was used, making this portion of the floor 2 inches thick. The doorways in the second story are 14 feet wide, and in the lower story 12 feet. These openings are closed by two sliding doors, each door being made of two sections, hinged together so as to follow the circular wall of the barn in opening. The cow stable is on the ground floor, and well lighted by 16 windows having twelve 9 × 12 lights each. There are also six windows in the doors. The windows are placed just below the ceiling and admit an abundance of sunshine at all times of the day, which is one of the essentials of a good dairy barn. [Illustration: FIG. 18. SHOWING PRESENT ARRANGEMENT OF COW STABLE. THERE ARE STANCHIONS AND MANGERS FOR 28 COWS, AND 2200 SQ. FT. OF FLOOR SPACE IN WHICH THE COWS CAN RUN LOOSE. THE GATES ARE SWUNG INTO THE PRESENT POSITION WHEN BOX STALLS ARE NEEDED.] The floor, back of the manger, is of clay, except at the door, where a small portion is covered with cement. The cows run loose except at feeding and milking time, when they are placed in rigid stanchions. It must be distinctly understood that rigid stanchions are strongly condemned as a cow tie, where cows are to remain in them all night, but as they are here used merely to hold the cow during milking, they are both economical and convenient. [Illustration: FIG. 19. SHOWING CROSS SECTION OF 60-FOOT ROUND BARN.] [Illustration: FIG. 20. CLEANING OUT COW STABLE WITH THREE-HORSE MANURE SPREADER.] [Illustration: FIG. 21. COWS IN STANCHION AT MILKING TIME.] Running cows loose in this manner is an excellent method, where bedding is abundant and sufficient space is available, as the cows are more comfortable, and all fertility is saved. There is no waste from leaching, as when the manure lies exposed to the weather. This method saves the labor of cleaning the stable, as the manure is loaded into the spreader and hauled directly upon the land whenever convenient, and the land is in the best condition to receive it.[C] [C] For a more detailed discussion of the advantages of keeping cows in this manner, see Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Circular No. 93. Three gates are hung on posts at the outside wall, and when box stalls are needed, these are swung around to the manger, as shown in Fig. 18. The south door in the cow stable can be closed by slatted gates, thus affording an abundance of fresh air and sunshine on nice days, without letting the cows out of the barn. SYSTEM OF VENTILATION [Illustration: FIG. 21. CONTINUED.] The system of ventilation is the "King." To economize space and lumber, the hay chute is used for a ventilator. This chute, which extends to the cupola, is 2-1/4 × 3-1/2 feet, having a cross section area of 8 sq. ft., which, with a good draft, is sufficient for 40 cows. In order that this combination of ventilator and hay chute prove practical, doors thru which the hay could be thrust were placed at intervals in the side of the chute. These doors are hinged at the top, opening in, and close immediately after the hay drops, thus maintaining a closed ventilator chute. The air is drawn in at the bottom, the amount being regulated by means of a sliding door in the side. As this chute is 50 feet high, it creates a strong suction. THE MILK ROOM To economize space, the milk room, 12 × 16 feet, is located under the north driveway. The brick walls under the drive form the sides of this room, and the floor of the drive, which is made of 2 × 6s grooved on both edges, forms the roof. The grooves in the flooring were filled with white lead, and a wooden strip, fitted to fill the grooves of both planks, was driven in, forming a water-tight floor. This floor was covered with hot tar and sand 1/2 inch thick. The milk room is plastered on the inside, the plaster being applied directly to the brick walls, excepting in the case of the ceiling, which is lathed. The floor and cooling tank are of cement. The passage from the barn to the milk room is thru a small hallway, which is open to the outside, thus preventing the stable air getting into the milk room. [Illustration: FIG. 22. FEED ALLEY, SHOWING COMBINED HAY CHUTE AND VENTILATOR. A DOOR ON THE SIDE WHICH IS HINGED AT THE BOTTOM, 3 FEET FROM THE FLOOR, IS LET IN TOWARD THE SILO, SLIDING THE HAY ONTO THE FLOOR. IN HOT WEATHER THIS OPENING TAKES THE HEAT OUT OF THE BARN; DURING THE WINTER THIS DOOR IS KEPT CLOSED AND THE VENTILATION IS REGULATED BY RAISING THE SLIDE, AS SHOWN IN THE CUT.] BARN SATISFACTORY This round dairy barn above described has been in use for over two years at the University of Illinois, and has given entire satisfaction. [Illustration: FIG. 23. NORTHEAST VIEW, SHOWING DAIRY UNDER DRIVEWAY. THE BARN IS ON THE SAME SCALE AS THE DRAWING ON PAGE 28.] [Illustration: FIG. 24. INTERIOR OF DAIRY; COOLING TANK ON LEFT.] RE-ARRANGEMENT OF BARN TO ACCOMMODATE 40 COWS If it is desired to keep cows in stalls in a round barn of this size, the circular manger can be enlarged to 38 feet in diameter, which gives room for forty cows, as shown in Fig. 25, and the silo, to hold sufficient silage to feed the year round, enlarged to 18 feet in diameter. The present mow room is sufficient to store enough hay and bedding for this number of cows. The barn on the Twenty-acre Demonstration Dairy Farm was built this large, as it was thought it might be desired at some future time to increase the size of the farm and herd, and the barn could easily be changed to accommodate a larger herd by simply enlarging the silo, without rebuilding the barn. [Illustration: FIG. 25. SHOWING HOW THIS 60-FOOT BARN MAY BE ARRANGED TO ACCOMMODATE 40 COWS IN STALLS. TO SUPPLY THIS SIZED HERD AND THE NECESSARY YOUNG STOCK WITH SILAGE FOR EIGHT MONTHS WOULD REQUIRE A 370-TON SILO, OR ONE 18 FEET IN DIAMETER AND 56 FEET DEEP; WITH A SEVEN-FOOT FEED ALLEY AND A 2-1/2-FOOT MANGER, THE CIRCLE AT THE STANCHIONS WOULD BE 38 FEET IN DIAMETER, OR 119-1/3 FEET IN CIRCUMFERENCE; ALLOWING 4-1/4 FEET FOR TWO PASSAGE WAYS, THE STALLS WOULD BE 2 FEET 10-1/2 INCHES WIDE AT THE STANCHION, AND 3 FEET 6 INCHES AT THE DROP.] ITEMIZED COST OF THIS ROUND BARN Excavating, foundation, and first story brick wall $904.00 Lumber: 149 pieces, 1 × 4 × 16 Y. P. 31 " 1 × 4 × 14 Cypress 16 " 1 × 4 × 12 " 165 " 1 × 6 × 16 Y. P. 17 " 1 × 6 × 14 " 226 " 2 × 4 × 12 " 20 " 2 × 4 × 16 " 6 " 2 × 4 × 14 " 15 " 4 × 4 × 14 " 120 " 2 × 12 × 16 " 23 " 2 × 12 × 14 " 100 " 2 × 6 × 20 " 144 " 2 × 6 × 16 " 67 " 2 × 6 × 18 " 4 " 2 × 6 × 26 " 60 " 2 × 6 × 12 " 30 " 2 × 6 × 22 " 4 " 2 × 6 × 24 " 6 " 2 × 8 × 10 " 9 " 2 × 8 × 16 " 4 " 2 × 10 × 14 " 11 " 2 × 10 × 12 " 1 " 2 × 10 × 22 " 1 " 1 × 10 × 12 " 1 " 1 × 10 × 14 Cypress 2 " 1 × 12 × 14 " 22 " 1-1/8 × 8 × 10 Cyp. S2S 2 " 1 × 1-1/8 × 12 × 14 " 2 " 1 × 1-1/8 × 12 × 16 " 6000 feet of 8-inch ship lap 3150 feet of 10-inch ship lap 71 M 5/2 red cedar shingles 165 Lineal feet of 2-inch Cr. molding 240 Lineal feet of Cr. molding 270 feet of 4-inch Y. P. S1S 4000 feet of 6-inch rough pine 62 feet of 3/8-inch Y. P. Ceiling 850 feet of 6-inch No. 1 flooring 230 feet of 6-inch fence flooring 56 lineal feet of 1/2 × 3-inch battening 32 lineal feet of lattice 444 lineal feet of 4-inch cypress 3 10-foot cedar posts Total cost of lumber $1,313.63 Mill work: Window sash and doors $270.00 Window and door frames 71.00 Sawing lumber for silo, roof, bridge and stanchions 29.78 Cost of hardware 96.57 Carpenter work: Head carpenter 518 hrs. @ 40c = $207.20 Carpenters 1057 hrs. @ 35c = 369.95 Common labor 429 hrs. @ 20c = 85.80 ------- Total cost for carpenter work 662.95 Tiling around barn and silo, sewer from dairy room, retaining wall, cement floor in alley, dairy, doorway of barn, and steps and tanks 128.54 Plastering dairy room and inside of silo 104.60 Painting 89.54 -------- Total cost of barn $3670.61 [Illustration: FIG. 26. BARN NO. 2. 80 FEET IN DIAMETER; ENGINE ROOM IN FOREGROUND.] The cost of this barn, if built on the ordinary dairy farm, could be materially reduced without shortening the life of the barn. Owing to the conditions under which this barn was built, it was necessary to pay for hauling all material to the farm, two and one-half miles from town. All of the labor had to be hired, and as it was necessary for the men to board themselves the wages paid were proportionately higher. The farmer usually does the excavating and hauls the brick, sand, and lumber with his own teams, tends the mason, and does quite an amount of the rough work with his own help, besides boarding the men, all of which would greatly reduce the cost. The construction could also be cheapened by using drop siding to cover the outside, instead of shingles, which in this case were used over ship lap on the side walls to improve the appearance. This barn could be still further cheapened by putting hoops, five feet apart, around the studs, and covering with common 1 × 12 boards, put on vertically, as is done in some cases. A saving could also be made on the mill work and large doors by having the carpenters make these plainer and leave the windows out of them. Anyone wishing to build a round barn can get local bids on the lumber bill, and determine approximately the cost in his locality. This will vary with both the location and the year. OTHER ROUND DAIRY BARNS BARN NO. 2 Built 1897. Diameter, 80 feet. Capacity, 75 cows in 2 rows, tails together, 51 head in outer circle, 24 head in inner circle. [Illustration: FIG. 27. INTERIOR OF BARN NO. 2. SHOWING TWO ROWS OF STANCHIONS AND DRIVE BEHIND COWS WHICH IS USED IN CLEANING BARN; SILO ON RIGHT.] Cost, $1800. Studs, 2 × 6s, placed 2-1/2 feet on center. Supports, two 2 × 6s in each stanchion. Joists, main span 3 × 12s, 20 feet long, placed 14 inches on center. Short spans over feed alleys, 2 × 10s. Plate, 1 × 10-inch boards sprung around near top of studs. Roof supports, 6 × 6s placed 12 feet apart. Purline plate rests on these posts and consists of 1 × 8s sprung to the circle. Siding, 8-inch, put on horizontally, first story ceiled inside. To clean out, a wagon is driven around between the two rows of cows. The chief objection to this barn is insufficient light in the cow stable. This barn and No. 3 are approximately the same in construction, and are more substantially built than barns No. 4 and 5. [Illustration: FIG. 28. ARRANGEMENT OF COW STABLE IN BARN NO. 2; TWO ROWS OF COWS TAILED TOGETHER. THE BARN IS CLEANED BY DRIVING AROUND BEHIND THE COWS.] [Illustration: FIG. 29. BARN NO. 3. 80 FEET IN DIAMETER.] BARN NO. 4 Built in 1900. Diameter, 90 feet. Capacity, 105 cows, two rows heading together. Cost, $3000. Foundation, width at base and top, 18 inches; depth in ground, 20 inches, (not sufficient). Sills, 2 × 8s, sawed in short lengths, and placed flatwise. Studding, 20-foot 2 × 8s, placed 3 feet on center and toenailed to sill. Supports, first story 4 × 4s placed between stanchions in each row, making two rows of supports between the outside wall and the silo; 4 × 4s cut to a circle placed on top of these supports. The outside span, over cows, is 13 feet 6 inches; middle span, over feed alley, 6 feet 8 inches, and inside span, over cows, 13 feet. Joists, 2 × 8s placed 3 feet apart at studs on outside wall. There are as many joists in center of barn as at the outside. Supports, second-story, consist of one row of posts running around at a point immediately under the break in the roof. These are 16 feet apart and are made of three 2 × 8s kept 2 inches apart by horizontal braces which run from studding near the eave thru these posts to studding in silo. See Fig. 31. Plate, rafter is set on top of each stud, and no plate is used. Rafters, 2 × 6s resting on studs at outside and on circular plate at break in roof. [Illustration: FIG. 30. BARN NO. 4. 90 FEET IN DIAMETER; ONE OF THE FEW DAIRY BARNS WITH SUFFICIENT LIGHT; SAME SCALE AS DRAWING ON PAGE 37.] [Illustration: FIG. 31. SILO IN CENTER OF BARN NO. 4; UPPER PORTION IN HAY LOFT. LOWER PORTION IN COW STABLE.] Siding, 8-inch drop siding, put on horizontally, nailed with 10d nails. Ends holding well. Windows, 12 light, 10 × 12 glass; one window every six feet. This gives an abundance of light in the center of the barn. Doors, built on circle; (not satisfactory). Silo, round; diameter, 24 feet over all; height, 53 feet, exclusive of 12-foot space for water tank on top; capacity, 500 tons. Studs of silo, 2 × 4s placed 12 inches on center. Ceiled inside of studs with two thicknesses of half-inch lumber with paper between. [Illustration: FIG. 32. INTERIOR OF BARN NO. 4, SHOWING STALLS AND FEED ALLEY.] Remarks: Considering its size, the construction of this barn is apparently too light to be substantial, as the joists and studs are too small and too far apart, yet it has stood for nine years with no more evidence of wear than is common with any barn. Were the owner to build again he would place the studs only 2-1/2 feet apart and use 2 × 12 joists, 2-1/2 feet apart at the outside wall. He would also use cement plaster on inside of silo. The owner says it would have cost him as much to have built a rectangular barn without the 500-ton silo, and containing 1300 sq. ft. less floor space. In other words, he gained a 500-ton silo and 1300 sq. ft. of floor space, besides an immense amount of mow room, by building a circular barn. [Illustration: FIG. 33. ARRANGEMENT OF COW STABLE IN BARN NO. 4, 90 FEET IN DIAMETER; TWO ROWS OF COWS HEADED TOGETHER.] BARN NO. 5 Built in 1906. Diameter, 100 feet. Capacity, 115 cows. Cost, $3400. Studding, 16-foot 2 × 6s, placed 3 feet on centers. Supports, 3 rows 4 × 4s. Joists, 2 × 10s, placed 3 feet on centers. Hemlock and yellow pine. Floor, laid in eight directions. Rafters, 2 × 6s spiked to studs. A band of two 1 × 6s is placed around the studs just below the rafters, and helps support the rafters. Supports for roof. There are three purline plates. Two of these are supported by posts, the other by braces running out from the silo. The roof is straight from eaves to peak. The bracing is similar to that of barn No. 4. Silo, 18 feet in diameter, 56 feet deep, 2 feet in ground. Capacity, 350 tons. [Illustration: FIG. 34. BARN 92 FEET IN DIAMETER; TWO ROWS OF COWS HEADED TOGETHER; SILO IN CENTER.] [Illustration: FIG. 35. VIEW OF 70-FOOT SELF-SUPPORTING ROOF ON BARN SHOWN IN FIG. 36; NOTE HOOPS ON STUDS IN RIGHT FOREGROUND.] [Illustration: FIG. 36. BARN 70 FEET IN DIAMETER; FRAME HOOPED FOR PERPENDICULAR SIDING; LOWER SECTION SIDED.] THE SMALL DAIRYMAN'S BARN [Illustration: FIG. 37. BARN 40 FEET IN DIAMETER.] [Illustration: FIG. 38. BARN 48 FEET IN DIAMETER, 16-FOOT POSTS; NOTE METHOD OF TAKING HAY INTO SMALL ROUND BARN.] The round barns previously described do not meet the needs of the man with only a few cows. He usually wants a general-purpose barn. The circular form can be made satisfactory for this purpose if proper attention is given to the plan. It is necessary that the cow stable be distinctly separated from all other stock by a tight wall. Round barns with this arrangement are giving satisfaction in Illinois at the present time. [Illustration: FIG. 39. SHOWING CONSTRUCTION OF BARN IN FIG. 40. HOOPS IN PLACE READY FOR PERPENDICULAR SIDING; ROOF SHEATHED FOR SHINGLES.] [Illustration: FIG. 40. BARN 102 FEET IN DIAMETER AND 85 FEET HIGH.] DISADVANTAGES OF THE POLYGONAL BARN. A polygonal barn has the disadvantages of both the rectangular and the round barn, and is less stable than either. It must necessarily have a heavy frame, which is expensive, and as the siding cannot run around the corners, it is very difficult to tie the different sides together sufficiently to prevent the barn being racked by the wind. BARN NO. 6 16-sided. Built, 1888. [Illustration: FIG. 41. BARN NO. 6; 85 FEET IN DIAMETER; SAME SCALE AS DRAWING ON OPPOSITE PAGE.] Diameter, 85 feet. Height, 26-foot posts on 9-foot wall. Capacity, 88 cows; 350 tons of hay. Foundation and first story, cement wall 9 feet above cement floor. Supports, 4 × 8s, placed just back of stanchions, 3 feet on center. Studs, 2 × 10s, 26 feet long, placed 2-1/2 feet on center. Joists 3 × 12s, 20 feet long, 14 inches on center for main span. Rafters, self-supporting. Sheathed with 1 × 6s with no space between. This roof has a purline plate thrown in the gambrel. The plate is supported only by the braces which tie the joints. [Illustration: FIG. 42. ARRANGEMENT OF COW STABLE IN BARN NO. 6.] The barn has been racked three times by the wind, replumbed and heavy iron rods put in to brace it, yet it is out of plumb at the present time. CONCLUSIONS In summing up the data given in this bulletin, it is obvious that the advantages of the round barn are convenience, strength, and cheapness. The round barn is the more convenient, because of the unobstructed mow, which reduces the labor required in mowing hay, and because of the greater ease and fewer steps with which the feed can be gotten to the cows, owing to the central location of the supply. The circular construction is the strongest because advantage is taken of the lineal strength of the lumber. All exposed surfaces are circular, and withstand greater wind pressure, as the wind can get no direct hold, as on the sides or gable ends of a rectangular barn. In round numbers, rectangular barns require, according to their construction, from 34 to 58 percent more in cost of material than round barns with the same floor area and built of the same grade of material. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER NOTES: Punctuation has been normalized without note. Hyphenation of words has been changed to be more consistent throughout the text. Page 6: "betwen" changed to "between" (midway between the silo and the outside wall). 
30756	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations and also the index for all three volumes of the set with links to the other two volumes. See 30756-h.htm or 30756-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/files/30756/30756-h/30756-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/files/30756/30756-h.zip) Volumes I and II are available in the Project Gutenberg Library: Volume I--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30754 Volume II--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30755 Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are listed at the end of the text. Characters following a caret were printed as superscript in the original. For example, "M^a,"; here the "a." is a superscript. The Complete Works of John Ruskin Volume IX STONES OF VENICE VOLUME III [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS FROM A PHOTOGRAPH] Library Edition The Complete Works of John Ruskin STONES OF VENICE VOLUME III Giotto Lectures on Architecture Harbours of England A Joy Forever National Library Association New York Chicago THE STONES OF VENICE VOLUME III. THE FALL CONTENTS. THIRD, OR RENAISSANCE, PERIOD. CHAPTER I. PAGE Early Renaissance, 1 CHAPTER II. Roman Renaissance, 32 CHAPTER III. Grotesque Renaissance, 112 CHAPTER IV. Conclusion, 166 APPENDIX. 1. Architect of the Ducal Palace, 199 2. Theology of Spenser, 205 3. Austrian Government in Italy, 209 4. Date of the Palaces of the Byzantine Renaissance, 211 5. Renaissance Side of Ducal Palace, 212 6. Character of the Doge Michele Morosini, 213 7. Modern Education, 214 8. Early Venetian Marriages, 222 9. Character of the Venetian Aristocracy, 223 10. Final Appendix, 224 INDICES. I. Personal Index, 263 II. Local Index, 268 III. Topical Index, 271 IV. Venetian Index, 287 LIST OF PLATES. Facing Page PLATE 1. Temperance and Intemperance in Ornament, 6 " 2. Gothic Capitals, 8 " 3. Noble and Ignoble Grotesque, 125 " 4. Mosaic of Olive Tree and Flowers, 179 " 5. Byzantine Bases, 225 " 6. Byzantine Jambs, 229 " 7. Gothic Jambs, 230 " 8. Byzantine Archivolts, 244 " 9. Gothic Archivolts, 245 " 10. Cornices, 248 " 11. Tracery Bars, 252 " 12. Capitals of Fondaco de Turchi, 304 THE STONES OF VENICE. THIRD, OR RENAISSANCE, PERIOD. CHAPTER I. EARLY RENAISSANCE. § I. I trust that the reader has been enabled, by the preceding chapters, to form some conception of the magnificence of the streets of Venice during the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet by all this magnificence she was not supremely distinguished above the other cities of the middle ages. Her early edifices have been preserved to our times by the circuit of her waves; while continual recurrences of ruin have defaced the glory of her sister cities. But such fragments as are still left in their lonely squares, and in the corners of their streets, so far from being inferior to the buildings of Venice, are even more rich, more finished, more admirable in invention, more exuberant in beauty. And although, in the North of Europe, civilization was less advanced, and the knowledge of the arts was more confined to the ecclesiastical orders, so that, for domestic architecture, the period of perfection must be there placed much later than in Italy, and considered as extending to the middle of the fifteenth century; yet, as each city reached a certain point in civilization, its streets became decorated with the same magnificence, varied only in style according to the materials at hand, and temper of the people. And I am not aware of any town of wealth and importance in the middle ages, in which some proof does not exist, that, at its period of greatest energy and prosperity, its streets were inwrought with rich sculpture, and even (though in this, as before noticed, Venice always stood supreme) glowing with color and with gold. Now, therefore, let the reader,--forming for himself as vivid and real a conception as he is able, either of a group of Venetian palaces in the fourteenth century, or, if he likes better, of one of the more fantastic but even richer street scenes of Rouen, Antwerp, Cologne, or Nuremberg, and keeping this gorgeous image before him,--go out into any thoroughfare, representative, in a general and characteristic way, of the feeling for domestic architecture in modern times; let him, for instance, if in London, walk once up and down Harley Street, or Baker Street, or Gower Street; and then, looking upon this picture and on this, set himself to consider (for this is to be the subject of our following and final inquiry) what have been the causes which have induced so vast a change in the European mind. § II. Renaissance architecture is the school which has conducted men's inventive and constructive faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower Street; from the marble shaft, and the lancet arch, and the wreathed leafage, and the glowing and melting harmony of gold and azure, to the square cavity in the brick wall. We have now to consider the causes and the steps of this change; and, as we endeavored above to investigate the nature of Gothic, here to investigate also the nature of Renaissance. § III. Although Renaissance architecture assumes very different forms among different nations, it may be conveniently referred to three heads:--Early Renaissance, consisting of the first corruptions introduced into the Gothic schools: Central or Roman Renaissance, which is the perfectly formed style: and Grotesque Renaissance, which is the corruption of the Renaissance itself. § IV. Now, in order to do full justice to the adverse cause, we will consider the abstract _nature_ of the school with reference only to its best or central examples. The forms of building which must be classed generally under the term _early_ Renaissance are, in many cases, only the extravagances and corruptions of the languid Gothic, for whose errors the classical principle is in no wise answerable. It was stated in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," that, unless luxury had enervated and subtlety falsified the Gothic forms, Roman traditions could not have prevailed against them; and, although these enervated and false conditions are almost instantly colored by the classical influence, it would be utterly unfair to lay to the charge of that influence the first debasement of the earlier schools, which had lost the strength of their system before they could be struck by the plague. § V. The manner, however, of the debasement of all schools of art, so far as it is natural, is in all ages the same; luxuriance of ornament, refinement of execution, and idle subtleties of fancy, taking the place of true thought and firm handling: and I do not intend to delay the reader long by the Gothic sick-bed, for our task is not so much to watch the wasting of fever in the features of the expiring king, as to trace the character of that Hazael who dipped the cloth in water, and laid it upon his face, Nevertheless, it is necessary to the completeness of our view of the architecture of Venice, as well as to our understanding of the manner in which the Central Renaissance obtained its universal dominion, that we glance briefly at the principal forms into which Venetian Gothic first declined. They are two in number: one the corruption of the Gothic itself; the other a partial return to Byzantine forms; for the Venetian mind having carried the Gothic to a point at which it was dissatisfied, tried to retrace its steps, fell back first upon Byzantine types, and through them passed to the first Roman. But in thus retracing its steps, it does not recover its own lost energy. It revisits the places through which it had passed in the morning light, but it is now with wearied limbs, and under the gloomy shadows of evening. § VI. It has just been said that the two principal causes of natural decline in any school, are over-luxuriance and over-refinement. The corrupt Gothic of Venice furnishes us with a curious instance of the one, and the corrupt Byzantine of the other. We shall examine them in succession. Now, observe, first, I do not mean by _luxuriance_ of ornament, _quantity_ of ornament. In the best Gothic in the world there is hardly an inch of stone left unsculptured. But I mean that character of extravagance in the ornament itself which shows that it was addressed to jaded faculties; a violence and coarseness in curvature, a depth of shadow, a lusciousness in arrangement of line, evidently arising out of an incapability of feeling the true beauty of chaste form and restrained power. I do not know any character of design which may be more easily recognized at a glance than this over-lusciousness; and yet it seems to me that at the present day there is nothing so little understood as the essential difference between chasteness and extravagance, whether in color, shade, or lines. We speak loosely and inaccurately of "overcharged" ornament, with an obscure feeling that there is indeed something in visible Form which is correspondent to Intemperance in moral habits; but without any distinct detection of the character which offends us, far less with any understanding of the most important lesson which there can be no doubt was intended to be conveyed by the universality of this ornamental law. § VII. In a word, then, the safeguard of highest beauty, in all visible work, is exactly that which is also the safeguard of conduct in the soul,--Temperance, in the broadest sense; the Temperance which we have seen sitting on an equal throne with Justice amidst the Four Cardinal Virtues, and, wanting which, there is not any other virtue which may not lead us into desperate error. Now, observe: Temperance, in the nobler sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a stopping short in any good thing, as in Love or in Faith; but it means the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting in any way but as it ought. And with respect to things in which there may be excess, it does not mean imperfect enjoyment of them; but the regulation of their quantity, so that the enjoyment of them shall be greatest. For instance, in the matter we have at present in hand, temperance in color does not mean imperfect or dull enjoyment of color; but it means that government of color which shall bring the utmost possible enjoyment out of all hues. A bad colorist does not _love_ beautiful color better than the best colorist does, nor half so much. But he indulges in it to excess; he uses it in large masses, and unsubdued; and then it is a law of Nature, a law as universal as that of gravitation, that he shall not be able to enjoy it so much as if he had used it in less quantity. His eye is jaded and satiated, and the blue and red have life in them no more. He tries to paint them bluer and redder, in vain: all the blue has become grey, and gets greyer the more he adds to it; all his crimson has become brown, and gets more sere and autumnal the more he deepens it. But the great painter is sternly temperate in his work; he loves the vivid color with all his heart; but for a long time he does not allow himself anything like it, nothing but sober browns and dull greys, and colors that have no conceivable beauty in them; but these by his government become lovely: and after bringing out of them all the life and power they possess, and enjoying them to the uttermost,--cautiously, and as the crown of the work, and the consummation of its music, he permits the momentary crimson and azure, and the whole canvas is in a flame. § VIII. Again, in curvature, which is the cause of loveliness in all form; the bad designer does not enjoy it more than the great designer, but he indulges in it till his eye is satiated, and he cannot obtain enough of it to touch his jaded feeling for grace. But the great and temperate designer does not allow himself any violent curves; he works much with lines in which the curvature, though always existing, is long before it is perceived. He dwells on all these subdued curvatures to the uttermost, and opposes them with still severer lines to bring them out in fuller sweetness; and, at last, he allows himself a momentary curve of energy, and all the work is, in an instant, full of life and grace. The curves drawn in Plate VII. of the first volume, were chosen entirely to show this character of dignity and restraint, as it appears in the lines of nature, together with the perpetual changefulness of the degrees of curvature in one and the same line; but although the purpose of that plate was carefully explained in the chapter which it illustrates, as well as in the passages of "Modern Painters" therein referred to (vol. ii. pp. 43, 79), so little are we now in the habit of considering the character of abstract lines, that it was thought by many persons that this plate only illustrated Hogarth's reversed line of beauty, even although the curve of the salvia leaf, which was the one taken from that plate for future use, in architecture, was not a reversed or serpentine curve at all. I shall now, however, I hope, be able to show my meaning better. § IX. Fig. 1 in Plate I., opposite, is a piece of ornamentation from a Norman-French manuscript of the thirteenth century, and fig. 2 from an Italian one of the fifteenth. Observe in the first its stern moderation in curvature; the gradually united lines _nearly straight_, though none quite straight, used for its main limb, and contrasted with the bold but simple offshoots of its leaves, and the noble spiral from which it shoots, these in their turn opposed by the sharp trefoils and thorny cusps. And see what a reserve of resource there is in the whole; how easy it would have been to make the curves more palpable and the foliage more rich, and how the noble hand has stayed itself, and refused to grant one wave of motion more. [Illustration: Plate I. TEMPERANCE AND INTEMPERANCE. IN CURVATURE.] § X. Then observe the other example, in which, while the same idea is continually repeated, excitement and interest are sought for by means of violent and continual curvatures wholly unrestrained, and rolling hither and thither in confused wantonness. Compare the character of the separate lines in these two examples carefully, and be assured that wherever this redundant and luxurious curvature shows itself in ornamentation, it is a sign of jaded energy and failing invention. Do not confuse it with fulness or richness. Wealth is not necessarily wantonness: a Gothic moulding may be buried half a foot deep in thorns and leaves, and yet will be chaste in every line; and a late Renaissance moulding may be utterly barren and poverty-stricken, and yet will show the disposition to luxury in every line. § XI. Plate XX., in the second volume, though prepared for the special illustration of the notices of capitals, becomes peculiarly interesting when considered in relation to the points at present under consideration. The four leaves in the upper row are Byzantine; the two middle rows are transitional, all but fig. 11, which is of the formed Gothic; fig. 12 is perfect Gothic of the finest time (Ducal Palace, oldest part), fig. 13 is Gothic beginning to decline, fig. 14 is Renaissance Gothic in complete corruption. Now observe, first, the Gothic naturalism advancing gradually from the Byzantine severity; how from the sharp, hard, formalized conventionality of the upper series the leaves gradually expand into more free and flexible animation, until in fig. 12 we have the perfect living leaf as if fresh gathered out of the dew. And then, in the last two examples and partly in fig. 11, observe how the forms which can advance no longer in animation, advance, or rather decline, into luxury and effeminacy as the strength of the school expires. § XII. In the second place, note that the Byzantine and Gothic schools, however differing in degree of life, are both alike in _temperance_, though the temperance of the Gothic is the nobler, because it consists with entire animation. Observe how severe and subtle the curvatures are in all the leaves from fig. 1 to fig. 12, except only in fig. 11; and observe especially the firmness and strength obtained by the close approximation to the straight line in the lateral ribs of the leaf, fig. 12. The longer the eye rests on these temperate curvatures the more it will enjoy them, but it will assuredly in the end be wearied by the morbid exaggeration of the last example. [Illustration: Plate II. GOTHIC CAPITALS.] § XIII. Finally, observe--and this is very important--how one and the same character in the work may be a sign of totally different states of mind, and therefore in one case bad, and in the other good. The examples, fig. 3. and fig. 12., are both equally pure in line; but one is subdivided in the extreme, the other broad in the extreme, and both are beautiful. The Byzantine mind delighted in the delicacy of subdivision which nature shows in the fern-leaf or parsley-leaf; and so, also, often the Gothic mind, much enjoying the oak, thorn, and thistle. But the builder of the Ducal Palace used great breadth in his foliage, in order to harmonize with the broad surface of his mighty wall, and delighted in this breadth as nature delights in the sweeping freshness of the dock-leaf or water-lily. Both breadth and subdivision are thus noble, when they are contemplated or conceived by a mind in health; and both become ignoble, when conceived by a mind jaded and satiated. The subdivision in fig. 13 as compared with the type, fig. 12, which it was intended to improve, is the sign, not of a mind which loved intricacy, but of one which could not relish simplicity, which had not strength enough to enjoy the broad masses of the earlier leaves, and cut them to pieces idly, like a child tearing the book which, in its weariness, it cannot read. And on the other hand, we shall continually find, in other examples of work of the same period, an unwholesome breadth or heaviness, which results from the mind having no longer any care for refinement or precision, nor taking any delight in delicate forms, but making all things blunted, cumbrous, and dead, losing at the same time the sense of the elasticity and spring of natural curves. It is as if the soul of man, itself severed from the root of its health, and about to fall into corruption, lost the perception of life in all things around it; and could no more distinguish the wave of the strong branches, full of muscular strength and sanguine circulation, from the lax bending of a broken cord, nor the sinuousness of the edge of the leaf, crushed into deep folds by the expansion of its living growth, from the wrinkled contraction of its decay.[1] Thus, in morals, there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base. Now, in the various forms assumed by the later Gothic of Venice, there are one or two features which, under other circumstances, would not have been signs of decline; but, in the particular manner of their occurrence here, indicate the fatal weariness of decay. Of all these features the most distinctive are its crockets and finials. § XIV. There is not to be found a single crocket or finial upon any part of the Ducal Palace built during the fourteenth century; and although they occur on contemporary, and on some much earlier, buildings, they either indicate detached examples of schools not properly Venetian, or are signs of incipient decline. The reason of this is, that the finial is properly the ornament of gabled architecture; it is the compliance, in the minor features of the building, with the spirit of its towers, ridged roof, and spires. Venetian building is not gabled, but horizontal in its roots and general masses; therefore the finial is a feature contradictory to its spirit, and adopted only in that search for morbid excitement which is the infallible indication of decline. When it occurs earlier, it is on fragments of true gabled architecture, as, for instance, on the porch of the Carmini. In proportion to the unjustifiableness of its introduction was the extravagance of the form it assumed; becoming, sometimes, a tuft at the top of the ogee windows, half as high as the arch itself, and consisting, in the richest examples, of a human figure, half emergent out of a cup of leafage, as, for instance, in the small archway of the Campo San Zaccaria: while the crockets, as being at the side of the arch, and not so strictly connected with its balance and symmetry, appear to consider themselves at greater liberty even than the finials, and fling themselves, hither and thither, in the wildest contortions. Fig. 4. in Plate I, is the outline of one, carved in stone, from the later Gothic of St. Mark's; fig. 3. a crocket from the fine Veronese Gothic; in order to enable the reader to discern the Renaissance character better by comparison with the examples of curvature above them, taken from the manuscripts. And not content with this exuberance in the external ornaments of the arch, the finial interferes with its traceries. The increased intricacy of these, as such, being a natural process in the developement of Gothic, would have been no evil; but they are corrupted by the enrichment of the finial at the point of the cusp,--corrupted, that is to say, in Venice: for at Verona the finial, in the form of a fleur-de-lis, appears long previously at the cusp point, with exquisite effect; and in our own best Northern Gothic it is often used beautifully in this place, as in the window from Salisbury, Plate XII. (Vol. II.), fig. 2. But in Venice, such a treatment of it was utterly contrary to the severe spirit of the ancient traceries; and the adoption of a leafy finial at the extremity of the cusps in the door of San Stefano, as opposed to the simple ball which terminates those of the Ducal Palace, is an unmistakable indication of a tendency to decline. In like manner, the enrichment and complication of the jamb mouldings, which, in other schools, might and did take place in the healthiest periods, are, at Venice, signs of decline, owing to the entire inconsistency of such mouldings with the ancient love of the single square jamb and archivolt. The process of enrichment in them is shown by the successive examples given in Plate VII., below. They are numbered, and explained in the Appendix. § XV. The date at which this corrupt form of Gothic first prevailed over the early simplicity of the Venetian types can be determined in an instant, on the steps of the choir of the Church of St. John and Paul. On our left hand, as we enter, is the tomb of the Doge Marco Cornaro, who died in 1367. It is rich and fully developed Gothic, with crockets and finials, but not yet attaining any extravagant developement. Opposite to it is that of the Doge Andrea Morosini, who died in 1382. Its Gothic is voluptuous, and over-wrought; the crockets are bold and florid, and the enormous finial represents a statue of St. Michael. There is no excuse for the antiquaries who, having this tomb before them, could have attributed the severe architecture of the Ducal Palace to a later date; for every one of the Renaissance errors is here in complete developement, though not so grossly as entirely to destroy the loveliness of the Gothic forms. In the Porta della Carta, 1423, the vice reaches its climax. § XVI. Against this degraded Gothic, then, came up the Renaissance armies; and their first assault was in the requirement of universal perfection. For the first time since the destruction of Rome, the world had seen, in the work of the greatest artists of the fifteenth century,--in the painting of Ghirlandajo, Masaccio, Francia, Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Bellini; in the sculpture of Mino da Fiesole, of Ghiberti, and Verrocchio,--a perfection of execution and fulness of knowledge which cast all previous art into the shade, and which, being in the work of those men united with all that was great in that of former days, did indeed justify the utmost enthusiasm with which their efforts were, or could be, regarded. But when this perfection had once been exhibited in anything, it was required in everything; the world could no longer be satisfied with less exquisite execution, or less disciplined knowledge. The first thing that it demanded in all work was, that it should be done in a consummate and learned way; and men altogether forgot that it was possible to consummate what was contemptible, and to know what was useless. Imperatively requiring dexterity of touch, they gradually forgot to look for tenderness of feeling; imperatively requiring accuracy of knowledge, they gradually forgot to ask for originality of thought. The thought and the feeling which they despised departed from them, and they were left to felicitate themselves on their small science and their neat fingering. This is the history of the first attack of the Renaissance upon the Gothic schools, and of its rapid results, more fatal and immediate in architecture than in any other art, because there the demand for perfection was less reasonable, and less consistent with the capabilities of the workman; being utterly opposed to that rudeness or savageness on which, as we saw above, the nobility of the elder schools in great part depends. But inasmuch as the innovations were founded on some of the most beautiful examples of art, and headed by some of the greatest men that the world ever saw, and as the Gothic with which they interfered was corrupt and valueless, the first appearance of the Renaissance feeling had the appearance of a healthy movement. A new energy replaced whatever weariness or dulness had affected the Gothic mind; an exquisite taste and refinement, aided by extended knowledge, furnished the first models of the new school; and over the whole of Italy a style arose, generally now known as cinque-cento, which in sculpture and painting, as I just stated, produced the noblest masters which the world ever saw, headed by Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Leonardo; but which failed of doing the same in architecture, because, as we have seen above, perfection is therein not possible, and failed more totally than it would otherwise have done, because the classical enthusiasm had destroyed the best types of architectural form. § XVII. For, observe here very carefully, the Renaissance principle, as it consisted in a demand for universal perfection, is quite distinct from the Renaissance principle as it consists in a demand for classical and Roman _forms_ of perfection. And if I had space to follow out the subject as I should desire, I would first endeavor to ascertain what might have been the course of the art of Europe if no manuscripts of classical authors had been recovered, and no remains of classical architecture left, in the fifteenth century; so that the executive perfection to which the efforts of all great men had tended for five hundred years, and which now at last was reached, might have been allowed to develope itself in its own natural and proper form, in connexion with the architectural structure of earlier schools. This refinement and perfection had indeed its own perils, and the history of later Italy, as she sank into pleasure and thence into corruption, would probably have been the same whether she had ever learned again to write pure Latin or not. Still the inquiry into the probable cause of the enervation which might naturally have followed the highest exertion of her energies, is a totally distinct one from that into the particular form given to this enervation by her classical learning; and it is matter of considerable regret to me that I cannot treat these two subjects separately: I must be content with marking them for separation in the mind of the reader. § XVIII. The effect, then, of the sudden enthusiasm for classical literature, which gained strength during every hour of the fifteenth century, was, as far as respected architecture, to do away with the entire system of Gothic science. The pointed arch, the shadowy vault, the clustered shaft, the heaven-pointing spire, were all swept away; and no structure was any longer permitted but that of the plain cross-beam from pillar to pillar, over the round arch, with square or circular shafts, and a low-gabled roof and pediment: two elements of noble form, which had fortunately existed in Rome, were, however, for that reason, still permitted; the cupola, and, internally, the waggon vault. § XIX. These changes in form were all of them unfortunate; and it is almost impossible to do justice to the occasionally exquisite ornamentation of the fifteenth century, on account of its being placed upon edifices of the cold and meagre Roman outline. There is, as far as I know, only one Gothic building in Europe, the Duomo of Florence, in which, though the ornament be of a much earlier school, it is yet so exquisitely finished as to enable us to imagine what might have been the effect of the perfect workmanship of the Renaissance, coming out of the hands of men like Verrocchio and Ghiberti, had it been employed on the magnificent framework of Gothic structure. This is the question which, as I shall note in the concluding chapter, we ought to set ourselves practically to solve in modern times. § XX. The changes effected in form, however, were the least part of the evil principles of the Renaissance. As I have just said, its main mistake, in its early stages, was the unwholesome demand for _perfection_, at any cost. I hope enough has been advanced, in the chapter on the Nature of Gothic, to show the reader that perfection is _not_ to be had from the general workman, but at the cost of everything,--of his whole life, thought, and energy. And Renaissance Europe thought this a small price to pay for manipulative perfection. Men like Verrocchio and Ghiberti were not to be had every day, nor in every place; and to require from the common workman execution or knowledge like theirs, was to require him to become their copyist. Their strength was great enough to enable them to join science with invention, method with emotion, finish with fire; but, in them, the invention and the fire were first, while Europe saw in them only the method and the finish. This was new to the minds of men, and they pursued it to the neglect of everything else. "This," they cried, "we must have in all our work henceforward:" and they were obeyed. The lower workman secured method and finish, and lost, in exchange for them, his soul. § XXI. Now, therefore, do not let me be misunderstood when I speak generally of the evil spirit of the Renaissance. The reader may look through all I have written, from first to last, and he will not find one word but of the most profound reverence for those mighty men who could wear the Renaissance armor of proof, and yet not feel it encumber their living limbs,[2]--Leonardo and Michael Angelo, Ghirlandajo and Masaccio, Titian and Tintoret. But I speak of the Renaissance as an evil time, because, when it saw those men go burning forth into the battle, it mistook their armor for their strength: and forthwith encumbered with the painful panoply every stripling who ought to have gone forth only with his own choice of three smooth stones out of the brook. § XXII. This, then, the reader must always keep in mind when he is examining for himself any examples of cinque-cento work. When it has been done by a truly great man, whose life and strength could not be oppressed, and who turned to good account the whole science of his day, nothing is more exquisite. I do not believe, for instance, that there is a more glorious work of sculpture existing in the world than that equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleone, by Verrocchio, of which, I hope, before these pages are printed, there will be a cast in England. But when the cinque-cento work has been done by those meaner men, who, in the Gothic times, though in a rough way, would yet have found some means of speaking out what was in their hearts, it is utterly inanimate,--a base and helpless copy of more accomplished models; or, if not this, a mere accumulation of technical skill, in gaining which the workman had surrendered all other powers that were in him. There is, therefore, of course, an infinite gradation in the art of the period, from the Sistine Chapel down to modern upholstery; but, for the most part, since in architecture the workman must be of an inferior order, it will be found that this cinque-cento painting and higher religious sculpture is noble, while the cinque-cento architecture, with its subordinate sculpture, is universally bad; sometimes, however, assuming forms, in which the consummate refinement almost atones for the loss of force. § XXIII. This is especially the case with that second branch of the Renaissance which, as above noticed, was engrafted at Venice on the Byzantine types. So soon as the classical enthusiasm required the banishment of Gothic forms, it was natural that the Venetian mind should turn back with affection to the Byzantine models in which the round arches and simple shafts, necessitated by recent law, were presented under a form consecrated by the usage of their ancestors. And, accordingly, the first distinct school of architecture[3] which arose under the new dynasty, was one in which the method of inlaying marble, and the general forms of shaft and arch, were adopted from the buildings of the twelfth century, and applied with the utmost possible refinements of modern skill. Both at Verona and Venice the resulting architecture is exceedingly beautiful. At Verona it is, indeed, less Byzantine, but possesses a character of richness and tenderness almost peculiar to that city. At Venice it is more severe, but yet adorned with sculpture which, for sharpness of touch and delicacy of minute form, cannot be rivalled, and rendered especially brilliant and beautiful by the introduction of those inlaid circles of colored marble, serpentine, and porphyry, by which Phillippe de Commynes was so much struck on his first entrance into the city. The two most refined buildings in this style in Venice are, the small Church of the Miracoli, and the Scuola di San Marco beside the Church of St. John and St. Paul. The noblest is the Rio Façade of the Ducal Palace. The Casa Dario, and Casa Manzoni, on the Grand Canal, are exquisite examples of the school, as applied to domestic architecture; and, in the reach of the canal between the Casa Foscari and the Rialto, there are several palaces, of which the Casa Contarini (called "delle Figure") is the principal, belonging to the same group, though somewhat later, and remarkable for the association of the Byzantine principles of color with the severest lines of the Roman pediment, gradually superseding the round arch. The precision of chiselling and delicacy of proportion in the ornament and general lines of these palaces cannot be too highly praised; and I believe that the traveller in Venice, in general, gives them rather too little attention than too much. But while I would ask him to stay his gondola beside each of them long enough to examine their every line, I must also warn him to observe, most carefully, the peculiar feebleness and want of soul in the conception of their ornament, which mark them as belonging to a period of decline; as well as the absurd mode of introduction of their pieces of colored marble: these, instead of being simply and naturally inserted in the masonry, are placed in small circular or oblong frames of sculpture, like mirrors or pictures, and are represented as suspended by ribands against the wall; a pair of wings being generally fastened on to the circular tablets, as if to relieve the ribands and knots from their weight, and the whole series tied under the chin of a little cherub at the top, who is nailed against the façade like a hawk on a barn door. But chiefly let him notice, in the Casa Contarini delle Figure, one most strange incident, seeming to have been permitted, like the choice of the subjects at the three angles of the Ducal Palace, in order to teach us, by a single lesson, the true nature of the style in which it occurs. In the intervals of the windows of the first story, certain shields and torches are attached, in the form of trophies, to the stems of two trees whose boughs have been cut off, and only one or two of their faded leaves left, scarcely observable, but delicately sculptured here and there, beneath the insertions of the severed boughs. It is as if the workman had intended to leave us an image of the expiring naturalism of the Gothic school. I had not seen this sculpture when I wrote the passage referring to its period, in the first volume of this work (Chap. XX. § XXXI.):--"Autumn came,--the leaves were shed,--and the eye was directed to the extremities of the delicate branches. _The Renaissance frosts came, and all perished!_" § XXIV. And the hues of this autumn of the early Renaissance are the last which appear in architecture. The winter which succeeded was colorless as it was cold; and although the Venetian painters struggled long against its influence, the numbness of the architecture prevailed over them at last, and the exteriors of all the latter palaces were built only in barren stone. As at this point of our inquiry, therefore, we must bid farewell to color, I have reserved for this place the continuation of the history of chromatic decoration, from the Byzantine period, when we left it in the fifth chapter of the second volume, down to its final close. § XXV. It was above stated, that the principal difference in general form and treatment between the Byzantine and Gothic palaces was the contraction of the marble facing into the narrow spaces between the windows, leaving large fields of brick wall perfectly bare. The reason for this appears to have been, that the Gothic builders were no longer satisfied with the faint and delicate hues of the veined marble; they wished for some more forcible and piquant mode of decoration, corresponding more completely with the gradually advancing splendor of chivalric costume and heraldic device. What I have said above of the simple habits of life of the thirteenth century, in no wise refers either to costumes of state, or of military service; and any illumination of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (the great period being, it seems to me, from 1250 to 1350), while it shows a peculiar majesty and simplicity in the fall of the robes (often worn over the chain armor), indicates, at the same time, an exquisite brilliancy of color and power of design in the hems and borders, as well as in the armorial bearings with which they are charged; and while, as we have seen, a peculiar simplicity is found also in the _forms_ of the architecture, corresponding to that of the folds of the robes, its _colors_ were constantly increasing in brilliancy and decision, corresponding to those of the quartering of the shield, and of the embroidery of the mantle. § XXVI. Whether, indeed, derived from the quarterings of the knights' shields, or from what other source, I know not; but there is one magnificent attribute of the coloring of the late twelfth, the whole thirteenth, and the early fourteenth century, which I do not find definitely in any previous work, nor afterwards in general art, though constantly, and necessarily, in that of great colorists, namely, the union of one color with another by reciprocal interference: that is to say, if a mass of red is to be set beside a mass of blue, a piece of the red will be carried into the blue, and a piece of the blue carried into the red; sometimes in nearly equal portions, as in a shield divided into four quarters, of which the uppermost on one side will be of the same color as the lowermost on the other; sometimes in smaller fragments, but, in the periods above named, always definitely and grandly, though in a thousand various ways. And I call it a magnificent principle, for it is an eternal and universal one, not in art only,[4] but in human life. It is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by equality, nor by likeness, but by giving and receiving; the souls that are unlike, and the nations that are unlike, and the natures that are unlike, being bound into one noble whole by each receiving something from, and of, the others' gifts and the others' glory. I have not space to follow out this thought,--it is of infinite extent and application,--but I note it for the reader's pursuit, because I have long believed, and the whole second volume of "Modern Painters" was written to prove, that in whatever has been made by the Deity externally delightful to the human sense of beauty, there is some type of God's nature or of God's laws; nor are any of His laws, in one sense, greater than the appointment that the most lovely and perfect unity shall be obtained by the taking of one nature into another. I trespass upon too high ground; and yet I cannot fully show the reader the extent of this law, but by leading him thus far. And it is just because it is so vast and so awful a law, that it has rule over the smallest things; and there is not a vein of color on the lightest leaf which the spring winds are at this moment unfolding in the fields around us, but it is an illustration of an ordainment to which the earth and its creatures owe their continuance, and their Redemption. § XXVII. It is perfectly inconceivable, until it has been made a subject of special inquiry, how perpetually Nature employs this principle in the distribution of her light and shade; how by the most extraordinary adaptations, apparently accidental, but always in exactly the right place, she contrives to bring darkness into light, and light into darkness; and that so sharply and decisively, that at the very instant when one object changes from light to dark, the thing relieved upon it will change from dark to light, and yet so subtly that the eye will not detect the transition till it looks for it. The secret of a great part of the grandeur in all the noblest compositions is the doing of this delicately in _degree_, and broadly in _mass_; in color it may be done much more decisively than in light and shade, and, according to the simplicity of the work, with greater frankness of confession, until, in purely decorative art, as in the illumination, glass-painting, and heraldry of the great periods, we find it reduced to segmental accuracy. Its greatest masters, in high art, are Tintoret, Veronese, and Turner. § XXVIII. Together with this great principle of quartering is introduced another, also of very high value as far as regards the delight of the eye, though not of so profound meaning. As soon as color began to be used in broad and opposed fields, it was perceived that the mass of it destroyed its brilliancy, and it was _tempered_ by chequering it with some other color or colors in smaller quantities, mingled with minute portions of pure white. The two moral principles of which this is the type, are those of Temperance and Purity; the one requiring the fulness of the color to be subdued, and the other that it shall be subdued without losing either its own purity or that of the colors with which it is associated. § XXIX. Hence arose the universal and admirable system of the diapered or chequered background of early ornamental art. They are completely developed in the thirteenth century, and extend through the whole of the fourteenth gradually yielding to landscape, and other pictorial backgrounds, as the designers lost perception of the purpose of their art, and of the value of color. The chromatic decoration of the Gothic palaces of Venice was of course founded on these two great principles, which prevailed constantly wherever the true chivalric and Gothic spirit possessed any influence. The windows, with their intermediate spaces of marble, were considered as the objects to be relieved, and variously quartered with vigorous color. The whole space of the brick wall was considered as a background; it was covered with stucco, and painted in fresco, with diaper patterns. § XXX. What? the reader asks in some surprise,--Stucco! and in the great Gothic period? Even so, but _not stucco to imitate stone_. Herein lies all the difference; it is stucco confessed and understood, and laid on the bricks precisely as gesso is laid on canvas, in order to form them into a ground for receiving color from the human hand,--color which, if well laid on, might render the brick wall more precious than if it had been built of emeralds. Whenever we wish to paint, we may prepare our paper as we choose; the value of the ground in no wise adds to the value of the picture. A Tintoret on beaten gold would be of no more value than a Tintoret on coarse canvas; the gold would merely be wasted. All that we have to do is to make the ground as good and fit for the color as possible, by whatever means. § XXXI. I am not sure if I am right in applying the term "stucco" to the ground of fresco; but this is of no consequence; the reader will understand that it was white, and that the whole wall of the palace was considered as the page of a book to be illuminated: but he will understand also that the sea winds are bad librarians; that, when once the painted stucco began to fade or to fall, the unsightliness of the defaced color would necessitate its immediate restoration; and that therefore, of all the chromatic decoration of the Gothic palaces, there is hardly a fragment left. Happily, in the pictures of Gentile Bellini, the fresco coloring of the Gothic palaces is recorded, as it still remained in his time; not with rigid accuracy, but quite distinctly enough to enable us, by comparing it with the existing colored designs in the manuscripts and glass of the period, to ascertain precisely what it must have been. § XXXII. The walls were generally covered with chequers of very warm color, a russet inclining to scarlet, more or less relieved with white, black, and grey; as still seen in the only example which, having been executed in marble, has been perfectly preserved, the front of the Ducal Palace. This, however, owing to the nature of its materials, was a peculiarly simple example; the ground is white, crossed with double bars of pale red, and in the centre of each chequer there is a cross, alternately black with a red centre and red with a black centre where the arms cross. In painted work the grounds would be, of course, as varied and complicated as those of manuscripts; but I only know of one example left, on the Casa Sagredo, where, on some fragments of stucco, a very early chequer background is traceable, composed of crimson quatrefoils interlaced, with cherubim stretching their wings filling the intervals. A small portion of this ground is seen beside the window taken from the palace, Vol. II. Plate XIII. fig. 1. § XXXIII. It ought to be especially noticed, that, in all chequered patterns employed in the colored designs of these noble periods, the greatest care is taken to mark that they are _grounds_ of design rather than designs themselves. Modern architects, in such minor imitations as they are beginning to attempt, endeavor to dispose the parts in the patterns so as to occupy certain symmetrical positions with respect to the parts of the architecture. A Gothic builder never does this: he cuts his ground into pieces of the shape he requires with utter remorselessness, and places his windows or doors upon it with no regard whatever to the lines in which they cut the pattern: and, in illuminations of manuscripts, the chequer itself is constantly changed in the most subtle and arbitrary way, wherever there is the least chance of its regularity attracting the eye, and making it of importance. So _intentional_ is this, that a diaper pattern is often set obliquely to the vertical lines of the designs, for fear it should appear in any way connected with them. § XXXIV. On these russet or crimson backgrounds the entire space of the series of windows was relieved, for the most part, as a subdued white field of alabaster; and on this delicate and veined white were set the circular disks of purple and green. The arms of the family were of course blazoned in their own proper colors, but I think generally on a pure azure ground; the blue color is still left behind the shields in the Casa Priuli and one or two more of the palaces which are unrestored, and the blue ground was used also to relieve the sculptures of religious subject. Finally, all the mouldings, capitals, cornices, cusps, and traceries, were either entirely gilded or profusely touched with gold. The whole front of a Gothic palace in Venice may, therefore, be simply described as a field of subdued russet, quartered with broad sculptured masses of white and gold; these latter being relieved by smaller inlaid fragments of blue, purple, and deep green. § XXXV. Now, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, when painting and architecture were thus united, two processes of change went on simultaneously to the beginning of the seventeenth. The merely decorative chequerings on the walls yielded gradually to more elaborate paintings of figure-subject; first small and quaint, and then enlarging into enormous pictures filled by figures generally colossal. As these paintings became of greater merit and importance, the architecture with which they were associated was less studied; and at last a style was introduced in which the framework of the building was little more interesting than that of a Manchester factory, but the whole space of its walls was covered with the most precious fresco paintings. Such edifices are of course no longer to be considered as forming an architectural school; they were merely large preparations of artists' panels; and Titian, Giorgione, and Veronese no more conferred merit on the later architecture of Venice, as such, by painting on its façades, than Landseer or Watts could confer merit on that of London by first whitewashing and then painting its brick streets from one end to the other. § XXXVI. Contemporarily with this change in the relative values of the color decoration and the stone-work, one equally important was taking place in the opposite direction, but of course in another group of buildings. For in proportion as the architect felt himself thrust aside or forgotten in one edifice, he endeavored to make himself principal in another; and, in retaliation for the painter's entire usurpation of certain fields of design, succeeded in excluding him totally from those in which his own influence was predominant. Or, more accurately speaking, the architects began to be too proud to receive assistance from the colorists; and these latter sought for ground which the architect had abandoned, for the unrestrained display of their own skill. And thus, while one series of edifices is continually becoming feebler in design and richer in superimposed paintings, another, that of which we have so often spoken as the earliest or Byzantine Renaissance, fragment by fragment rejects the pictorial decoration; supplies its place first with marbles, and then, as the latter are felt by the architect, daily increasing in arrogance and deepening in coldness, to be too bright for his dignity, he casts even these aside one by one: and when the last porphyry circle has vanished from the façade, we find two palaces standing side by side, one built, so far as mere masonry goes, with consummate care and skill, but without the slightest vestige of color in any part of it; the other utterly without any claim to interest in its architectural form, but covered from top to bottom with paintings by Veronese. At this period, then, we bid farewell to color, leaving the painters to their own peculiar field; and only regretting that they waste their noblest work on walls, from which in a couple of centuries, if not before, the greater part of their labor must be effaced. On the other hand, the architecture whose decline we are tracing, has now assumed an entirely new condition, that of the Central or True Renaissance, whose nature we are to examine in the next chapter. § XXXVII. But before leaving these last palaces over which the Byzantine influence extended itself, there is one more lesson to be learned from them of much importance to us. Though in many respects debased in style, they are consummate in workmanship, and unstained in honor; there is no imperfection in them, and no dishonesty. That there is absolutely _no_ imperfection, is indeed, as we have seen above, a proof of their being wanting in the highest qualities of architecture; but, as lessons in masonry, they have their value, and may well be studied for the excellence they display in methods of levelling stones, for the precision of their inlaying, and other such qualities, which in them are indeed too principal, yet very instructive in their particular way. § XXXVIII. For instance, in the inlaid design of the dove with the olive branch, from the Casa Trevisan (Vol. I. Plate XX. p. 369), it is impossible for anything to go beyond the precision with which the olive leaves are cut out of the white marble; and, in some wreaths of laurel below, the rippled edge of each leaf is as finely and easily drawn, as if by a delicate pencil. No Florentine table is more exquisitely finished than the façade of this entire palace; and as ideals of an executive perfection, which, though we must not turn aside from our main path to reach it, may yet with much advantage be kept in our sight and memory, these palaces are most notable amidst the architecture of Europe. The Rio Façade of the Ducal Palace, though very sparing in color, is yet, as an example of finished masonry in a vast building, one of the finest things, not only in Venice, but in the world. It differs from other work of the Byzantine Renaissance, in being on a very large scale; and it still retains one pure Gothic character, which adds not a little to its nobleness, that of perpetual variety. There is hardly one window of it, or one panel, that is like another; and this continual change so increases its apparent size by confusing the eye, that, though presenting no bold features, or striking masses of any kind, there are few things in Italy more impressive than the vision of it overhead, as the gondola glides from beneath the Bridge of Sighs. And lastly (unless we are to blame these buildings for some pieces of very childish perspective), they are magnificently honest, as well as perfect. I do not remember even any gilding upon them; all is pure marble, and of the finest kind.[5] And therefore, in finally leaving the Ducal Palace,[6] let us take with us one more lesson, the last which we shall receive from the Stones of Venice, except in the form of a warning. § XXXIX. The school of architecture which we have just been examining is, as we have seen above, redeemed from severe condemnation by its careful and noble use of inlaid marbles as a means of color. From that time forward, this art has been unknown, or despised; the frescoes of the swift and daring Venetian painters long contended with the inlaid marbles, outvying them with color, indeed more glorious than theirs, but fugitive as the hues of woods in autumn; and, at last, as the art itself of painting in this mighty manner failed from among men,[7] the modern decorative system established itself, which united the meaninglessness of the veined marble with the evanescence of the fresco, and completed the harmony by falsehood. § XL. Since first, in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," I endeavored to show the culpableness, as well as the baseness, of our common modes of decoration by painted imitation of various woods or marbles, the subject has been discussed in various architectural works, and is evidently becoming one of daily increasing interest. When it is considered how many persons there are whose means of livelihood consist altogether in these spurious arts, and how difficult it is, even for the most candid, to admit a conviction contrary both to their interests and to their inveterate habits of practice and thought, it is rather a matter of wonder, that the cause of Truth should have found even a few maintainers, than that it should have encountered a host of adversaries. It has, however, been defended repeatedly by architects themselves, and so successfully, that I believe, so far as the desirableness of this or that method of ornamentation is to be measured by the fact of its simple honesty or dishonesty, there is little need to add anything to what has been already urged upon the subject. But there are some points connected with the practice of imitating marble, which I have been unable to touch upon until now, and by the consideration of which we may be enabled to see something of the _policy_ of honesty in this matter, without in the least abandoning the higher ground of principle. § XLI. Consider, then, first, what marble seems to have been made for. Over the greater part of the surface of the world, we find that a rock has been providentially distributed, in a manner particularly pointing it out as intended for the service of man. Not altogether a common rock, it is yet rare enough to command a certain degree of interest and attention wherever it is found; but not so rare as to preclude its use for any purpose to which it is fitted. It is exactly of the consistence which is best adapted for sculpture: that is to say, neither hard nor brittle, nor flaky nor splintery, but uniform, and delicately, yet not ignobly, soft,--exactly soft enough to allow the sculptor to work it without force, and trace on it the finest lines of finished form; and yet so hard as never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the steel; and so admirably crystallized, and of such permanent elements, that no rains dissolve it, no time changes it, no atmosphere decomposes it: once shaped, it is shaped for ever, unless subjected to actual violence or attrition. This rock, then, is prepared by Nature for the sculptor and architect, just as paper is prepared by the manufacturer for the artist, with as great--nay, with greater--care, and more perfect adaptation of the material to the requirements. And of this marble paper, some is white and some colored; but more is colored than white, because the white is evidently meant for sculpture, and the colored for the covering of large surfaces. § XLII. Now, if we would take Nature at her word, and use this precious paper which she has taken so much care to provide for us (it is a long process, the making of that paper; the pulp of it needing the subtlest possible solution, and the pressing of it--for it is all hot-pressed--having to be done under the saw, or under something at least as heavy); if, I say, we use it as Nature would have us, consider what advantages would follow. The colors of marble are mingled for us just as if on a prepared palette. They are of all shades and hues (except bad ones), some being united and even, some broken, mixed, and interrupted, in order to supply, as far as possible, the want of the painter's power of breaking and mingling the color with the brush. But there is more in the colors than this delicacy of adaptation. There is history in them. By the manner in which they are arranged in every piece of marble, they record the means by which that marble has been produced, and the successive changes through which it has passed. And in all their veins and zones, and flame-like stainings, or broken and disconnected lines, they write various legends, never untrue, of the former political state of the mountain kingdom to which they belonged, of its infirmities and fortitudes, convulsions and consolidations, from the beginning of time. Now, if we were never in the habit of seeing anything but real marbles, this language of theirs would soon begin to be understood; that is to say, even the least observant of us would recognize such and such stones as forming a peculiar class, and would begin to inquire where they came from, and, at last, take some feeble interest in the main question, Why they were only to be found in that or the other place, and how they came to make a part of this mountain, and not of that? And in a little while, it would not be possible to stand for a moment at a shop door, leaning against the pillars of it, without remembering or questioning of something well worth the memory or the inquiry, touching the hills of Italy, or Greece, or Africa, or Spain; and we should be led on from knowledge to knowledge, until even the unsculptured walls of our streets became to us volumes as precious as those of our libraries. § XLIII. But the moment we admit imitation of marble, this source of knowledge is destroyed. None of us can be at the pains to go through the work of verification. If we knew that every colored stone we saw was natural, certain questions, conclusions, interests, would force themselves upon us without any effort of our own; but we have none of us time to stop in the midst of our daily business, to touch and pore over, and decide with painful minuteness of investigation, whether such and such a pillar be stucco or stone. And the whole field of this knowledge, which Nature intended us to possess when we were children, is hopelessly shut out from us. Worse than shut out, for the mass of coarse imitations confuses our knowledge acquired from other sources; and our memory of the marbles we have perhaps once or twice carefully examined, is disturbed and distorted by the inaccuracy of the imitations which are brought before us continually. § XLIV. But it will be said, that it is too expensive to employ real marbles in ordinary cases. It may be so: yet not always more expensive than the fitting windows with enormous plate glass, and decorating them with elaborate stucco mouldings and other useless sources of expenditure in modern building; nay, not always in the end more expensive than the frequent repainting of the dingy pillars, which a little water dashed against them would refresh from day to day, if they were of true stone. But, granting that it be so, in that very costliness, checking their common use in certain localities, is part of the interest of marbles, considered as history. Where they are not found, Nature has supplied other materials,--clay for brick, or forest for timber,--in the working of which she intends other characters of the human mind to be developed, and by the proper use of which certain local advantages will assuredly be attained, while the delightfulness and meaning of the precious marbles will be felt more forcibly in the districts where they occur, or on the occasions when they may be procured. § XLV. It can hardly be necessary to add, that, as the imitation of marbles interferes with and checks the knowledge of geography and geology, so the imitation of wood interferes with that of botany; and that our acquaintance with the nature, uses, and manner of growth of the timber trees of our own and of foreign countries, would probably, in the majority of cases, become accurate and extensive, without any labor or sacrifice of time, were not all inquiry checked, and all observation betrayed, by the wretched labors of the "Grainer." § XLVI. But this is not all. As the practice of imitation retards knowledge, so also it retards art. There is not a meaner occupation for the human mind than the imitation of the stains and striæ of marble and wood. When engaged in any easy and simple mechanical occupation, there is still some liberty for the mind to leave the literal work; and the clash of the loom or the activity of the fingers will not always prevent the thoughts from some happy expatiation in their own domains. But the grainer must think of what he is doing; and veritable attention and care, and occasionally considerable skill, are consumed in the doing of a more absolute nothing than I can name in any other department of painful idleness. I know not anything so humiliating as to see a human being, with arms and limbs complete, and apparently a head, and assuredly a soul, yet into the hands of which when you have put a brush and pallet, it cannot do anything with them but imitate a piece of wood. It cannot color, it has no ideas of color; it cannot draw, it has no ideas of form; it cannot caricature, it has no ideas of humor. It is incapable of anything beyond knots. All its achievement, the entire result of the daily application of its imagination and immortality, is to be such a piece of texture as the sun and dew are sucking up out of the muddy ground, and weaving together, far more finely, in millions of millions of growing branches, over every rood of waste woodland and shady hill. § XLVII. But what is to be done, the reader asks, with men who are capable of nothing else than this? Nay, they may be capable of everything else, for all we know, and what we are to do with them I will try to say in the next chapter; but meanwhile one word more touching the higher principles of action in this matter, from which we have descended to those of expediency. I trust that some day the language of Types will be more read and understood by us than it has been for centuries; and when this language, a better one than either Greek or Latin, is again recognized amongst us, we shall find, or remember, that as the other visible elements of the universe--its air, its water, and its flame--set forth, in their pure energies, the life-giving, purifying, and sanctifying influences of the Deity upon His creatures, so the earth, in its purity, sets forth His eternity and His TRUTH. I have dwelt above on the historical language of stones; let us not forget this, which is their theological language; and, as we would not wantonly pollute the fresh waters when they issue forth in their clear glory from the rock, nor stay the mountain winds into pestilential stagnancy, nor mock the sunbeams with artificial and ineffective light; so let us not by our own base and barren falsehoods, replace the crystalline strength and burning color of the earth from which we were born, and to which we must return; the earth which, like our own bodies, though dust in its degradation, is full of splendor when God's hand gathers its atoms; and which was for ever sanctified by Him, as the symbol no less of His love than of His truth, when He bade the high priest bear the names of the Children of Israel on the clear stones of the Breastplate of Judgment. FOOTNOTES: [1] There is a curious instance of this in the modern imitations of the Gothic capitals of the Casa d' Oro, employed in its restorations. The old capitals look like clusters of leaves, the modern ones like kneaded masses of dough with holes in them. [2] Not that even these men were able to wear it altogether without harm, as we shall see in the next chapter. [3] Appendix 4, "Date of Palaces of Byzantine Renaissance." [4] In the various works which Mr. Prout has written on light and shade, no principle will be found insisted on more strongly than this carrying of the dark into the light, and _vice versa_. It is curious to find the untaught instinct of a merely picturesque artist in the nineteenth century, fixing itself so intensely on a principle which regulated the entire sacred composition of the thirteenth. I say "untaught" instinct, for Mr. Prout was, throughout his life, the discoverer of his own principles; fortunately so, considering what principles were taught in his time, but unfortunately in the abstract, for there were gifts in him, which, had there been any wholesome influences to cherish them, might have made him one of the greatest men of his age. He was great, under all adverse circumstances, but the mere wreck of what he might have been, if, after the rough training noticed in my pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, as having fitted him for his great function in the world, he had met with a teacher who could have appreciated his powers, and directed them. [5] There may, however, be a kind of dishonesty even in the use of marble, if it is attempted to make the marble look like something else. See the final or Venetian Index under head "Scalzi." [6] Appendix 5, "Renaissance Side of Ducal Palace." [7] We have, as far as I _know_, at present among us, only one painter, G. F. Watts, who is capable of design in color on a large scale. He stands alone among our artists of the old school, in his perception of the value of breadth in distant masses, and in the vigor of invention by which such breadth must be sustained; and his power of expression and depth of thought are not less remarkable than his bold conception of color effect. Very probably some of the Pre-Raphaelites have the gift also; I am nearly certain that Rosetti has it, and I think also Millais; but the experiment has yet to be tried. I wish it could be made in Mr. Hope's church in Margaret Street. CHAPTER II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE. § I. Of all the buildings in Venice, later in date than the final additions to the Ducal Palace, the noblest is, beyond all question, that which, having been condemned by its proprietor, not many years ago, to be pulled down and sold for the value of its materials, was rescued by the Austrian government, and appropriated--the government officers having no other use for it--to the business of the Post-Office; though still known to the gondolier by its ancient name, the Casa Grimani. It is composed of three stories of the Corinthian order, at once simple, delicate, and sublime; but on so colossal a scale, that the three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach to the cornice which marks the level of its first floor. Yet it is not at first perceived to be so vast; and it is only when some expedient is employed to hide it from the eye, that by the sudden dwarfing of the whole reach of the Grand Canal, which it commands, we become aware that it is to the majesty of the Casa Grimani that the Rialto itself, and the whole group of neighboring buildings, owe the greater part of their impressiveness. Nor is the finish of its details less notable than the grandeur of their scale. There is not an erring line, nor a mistaken proportion, throughout its noble front; and the exceeding fineness of the chiselling gives an appearance of lightness to the vast blocks of stone out of whose perfect union that front is composed. The decoration is sparing, but delicate: the first story only simpler than the rest, in that it has pilasters instead of shafts, but all with Corinthian capitals, rich in leafage, and fruited delicately; the rest of the walls flat and smooth, and the mouldings sharp and shallow, so that the bold shafts look like crystals of beryl running through a rock of quartz. § II. This palace is the principal type at Venice, and one of the best in Europe, of the central architecture of the Renaissance schools; that carefully studied and perfectly executed architecture to which those schools owe their principal claims to our respect, and which became the model of most of the important works subsequently produced by civilized nations. I have called it the Roman Renaissance, because it is founded, both in its principles of superimposition, and in the style of its ornament, upon the architecture of classic Rome at its best period. The revival of Latin literature both led to its adoption, and directed its form; and the most important example of it which exists is the modern Roman basilica of St. Peter's. It had, at its Renaissance or new birth, no resemblance either to Greek, Gothic, or Byzantine forms, except in retaining the use of the round arch, vault, and dome; in the treatment of all details, it was exclusively Latin; the last links of connexion with mediæval tradition having been broken by its builders in their enthusiasm for classical art, and the forms of true Greek or Athenian architecture being still unknown to them. The study of these noble Greek forms has induced various modifications of the Renaissance in our own times; but the conditions which are found most applicable to the uses of modern life are still Roman, and the entire style may most fitly be expressed by the term "Roman Renaissance." § III. It is this style, in its purity and fullest form,--represented by such buildings as the Casa Grimani at Venice (built by San Micheli), the Town Hall at Vicenza (by Palladio), St. Peter's at Rome (by Michael Angelo), St. Paul's and Whitehall in London (by Wren and Inigo Jones),--which is the true antagonist of the Gothic school. The intermediate, or corrupt conditions of it, though multiplied over Europe, are no longer admired by architects, or made the subjects of their study; but the finished work of this central school is still, in most cases, the model set before the student of the nineteenth century, as opposed to those Gothic, Romanesque, or Byzantine forms which have long been considered barbarous, and are so still by most of the leading men of the day. That they are, on the contrary, most noble and beautiful, and that the antagonistic Renaissance is, in the main, unworthy and unadmirable, whatever perfection of a certain kind it may possess, it was my principal purpose to show, when I first undertook the labor of this work. It has been attempted already to put before the reader the various elements which unite in the Nature of Gothic, and to enable him thus to judge, not merely of the beauty of the forms which that system has produced already, but of its future applicability to the wants of mankind, and endless power over their hearts. I would now endeavor, in like manner, to set before the reader the Nature of Renaissance, and thus to enable him to compare the two styles under the same light, and with the same enlarged view of their relations to the intellect, and capacities for the service, of man. § IV. It will not be necessary for me to enter at length into any examination of its external form. It uses, whether for its roofs of aperture or roofs proper, the low gable or circular arch: but it differs from Romanesque work in attaching great importance to the horizontal lintel or architrave _above_ the arch; transferring the energy of the principal shafts to the supporting of this horizontal beam, and thus rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous, feature. The type of this arrangement has been given already at _c_, Fig. XXXVI., p. 145, Vol. I.: and I might insist at length upon the absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which has nothing to carry at all,--that taller one being strengthened, nevertheless, as if the whole weight of the building bore upon it; and on the ungracefulness, never conquered in any Palladian work, of the two half-capitals glued, as it were, against the slippery round sides of the central shaft. But it is not the form of this architecture against which I would plead. Its defects are shared by many of the noblest forms of earlier building, and might have been entirely atoned for by excellence of spirit. But it is the moral nature of it which is corrupt, and which it must, therefore, be our principal business to examine and expose. § V. The moral, or immoral, elements which unite to form the spirit of Central Renaissance architecture are, I believe, in the main, two,--Pride and Infidelity; but the pride resolves itself into three main branches,--Pride of Science, Pride of State, and Pride of System: and thus we have four separate mental conditions which must be examined successively. § VI. 1. PRIDE OF SCIENCE. It would have been more charitable, but more confusing, to have added another element to our list, namely the _Love_ of Science; but the love is included in the pride, and is usually so very subordinate an element that it does not deserve equality of nomenclature. But, whether pursued in pride or in affection (how far by either we shall see presently), the first notable characteristic of the Renaissance central school is its introduction of accurate knowledge into all its work, so far as it possesses such knowledge; and its evident conviction, that such science is necessary to the excellence of the work, and is the first thing to be expressed therein. So that all the forms introduced, even in its minor ornament, are studied with the utmost care; the anatomy of all animal structure is thoroughly understood and elaborately expressed, and the whole of the execution skilful and practised in the highest degree. Perspective, linear and aerial, perfect drawing and accurate light and shade in painting, and true anatomy in all representations of the human form, drawn or sculptured, are the first requirements in all the work of this school. § VII. Now, first considering all this in the most charitable light, as pursued from a real love of truth, and not from vanity, it would, of course, have been all excellent and admirable, had it been regarded as the aid of art, and not as its essence. But the grand mistake of the Renaissance schools lay in supposing that science and art are the same things, and that to advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the other. Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so opposed, that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, to retrograde in the other. This is the point to which I would at present especially bespeak the reader's attention. § VIII. Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or creating. But there is a still more important distinction in the nature of the things they deal with. Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human senses and human soul.[8] Her work is to portray the appearance of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they produce upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both, observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect, the other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely, but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this, and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart, what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger than the material creation. § IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than, the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. With all this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything of this kind. But the things which it does care to know, are these: that in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." § X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated? Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Never either by reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness which art bears to its visible nature. The whole value of that witness depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness, acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of the man who utters it. All its victory depends on the veracity of the one preceding word, "Vidi." The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue, or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor on the bench, nor at the bar, nor in the library. They are for other men and other work. He may think, in a by-way; reason, now and then, when he has nothing better to do; know, such fragments of knowledge as he can gather without stooping, or reach without pains; but none of these things are to be his care. The work of his life is to be twofold only: to see, to feel. § XI. Nay, but, the reader perhaps pleads with me, one of the great uses of knowledge is to open the eyes; to make things perceivable which, never would have been seen, unless first they had been known. Not so. This could only be said or believed by those who do not know what the perceptive faculty of a great artist is, in comparison with that of other men. There is no great painter, no great workman in any art, but he sees more with the glance of a moment than he could learn by the labor of a thousand hours. God has made every man fit for his work; He has given to the man whom he means for a student, the reflective, logical, sequential faculties; and to the man whom He means for an artist, the perceptive, sensitive, retentive faculties. And neither of these men, so far from being able to do the other's work, can even comprehend the way in which it is done. The student has no understanding of the vision, nor the painter of the process; but chiefly the student has no idea of the colossal grasp of the true painter's vision and sensibility. The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the last fifty years, has but now arrived at the ascertainment of those truths respecting mountain form which Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a camel's hair pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy. The knowledge of all the laws of the planetary system, and of all the curves of the motion of projectiles, would never enable the man of science to draw a waterfall or a wave; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall helping each other could not at this moment see, or represent, the natural movement of a human body in vigorous action, as a poor dyer's son did two hundred years ago.[9] § XII. But surely, it is still insisted, granting this peculiar faculty to the painter, he will still see more as he knows more, and the more knowledge he obtains, therefore, the better. No; not even so. It is indeed true, that, here and there, a piece of knowledge will enable the eye to detect a truth which might otherwise have escaped it; as, for instance, in watching a sunrise, the knowledge of the true nature of the orb may lead the painter to feel more profoundly, and express more fully, the distance between the bars of cloud that cross it, and the sphere of flame that lifts itself slowly beyond them into the infinite heaven. But, for one visible truth to which knowledge thus opens the eyes, it seals them to a thousand: that is to say, if the knowledge occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a _moment_ of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is thinking deeply, he neither sees nor feels, even though naturally he may possess strong powers of sight and emotion. He who, having journeyed all day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it was,[10] probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a thinker, not a perceiver. And this instance is only an extreme one of the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must be but poor and lifeless knowledge, if it has no tendency to force itself forward, and become ground for reflection, in despite of the succession of external objects. It will not obey their succession. The first that comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that. The first thing that a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not easily quit. It is not his way to quit anything without getting to the bottom of it, if possible. But the artist is bound to receive all things on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, not to grasp at one. For instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees something in the color of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new to him; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the morning. But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colors that come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and succession; therefore, everything that occupies room in his mind he must cast aside for the time, as completely as may be. The thoughtful man is gone far away to seek; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open his heart to receive. The thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch. And all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to receive what God has to give him. § XIII. What, then, it will be indignantly asked, is an utterly ignorant and unthinking man likely to make the best artist? No, not so neither. Knowledge is good for him so long as he can keep it utterly, servilely, subordinate to his own divine work, and trample it under his feet, and out of his way, the moment it is likely to entangle him. And in this respect, observe, there is an enormous difference between knowledge and education. An artist need not be a _learned_ man, in all probability it will be a disadvantage to him to become so; but he ought, if possible, always to be an _educated_ man: that is, one who has understanding of his own uses and duties in the world, and therefore of the general nature of the things done and existing in the world; and who has so trained himself, or been trained, as to turn to the best and most courteous account whatever faculties or knowledge he has. The mind of an educated man is greater than the knowledge it possesses; it is like the vault of heaven, encompassing the earth which lives and flourishes beneath it: but the mind of an educated and learned man is like a caoutchouc band, with an everlasting spirit of contraction in it, fastening together papers which it cannot open, and keeps others from opening. Half our artists are ruined for want of education, and by the possession of knowledge; the best that I have known have been educated, and illiterate. The ideal of an artist, however, is not that he should be illiterate, but well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and in bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, _and should keep out of it_.[11] § XIV. There are, indeed, some kinds of knowledge with which an artist ought to be thoroughly furnished; those, for instance, which enable him to express himself; for this knowledge relieves instead of encumbering his mind, and permits it to attend to its purposes instead of wearying itself about means. The whole mystery of manipulation and manufacture should be familiar to the painter from a child. He should know the chemistry of all colors and materials whatsoever, and should prepare all his colors himself, in a little laboratory of his own. Limiting his chemistry to this one object, the amount of practical science necessary for it, and such accidental discoveries as might fall in his way in the course of his work, of better colors or better methods of preparing them, would be an infinite refreshment to his mind; a minor subject of interest to which it might turn when jaded with comfortless labor, or exhausted with feverish invention, and yet which would never interfere with its higher functions, when it chose to address itself to them. Even a considerable amount of manual labor, sturdy color-grinding and canvas-stretching, would be advantageous; though this kind of work ought to be in great part done by pupils. For it is one of the conditions of perfect knowledge in these matters, that every great master should have a certain number of pupils, to whom he is to impart all the knowledge of materials and means which he himself possesses, as soon as possible; so that, at any rate, by the time they are fifteen years old, they may know all that he knows himself in this kind; that is to say, all that the world of artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be troubled about methods any more. Not that the knowledge even of his own particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only those who see him at work daily can understand his small and multitudinous ways of practice. These cannot verbally be explained to everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of course, his attendant scholars will know them best. But all that can be made public in matters of this kind should be so with all speed, every artist throwing his discovery into the common stock, and the whole body of artists taking such pains in this department of science as that there shall be no unsettled questions about any known material or method: that it shall be an entirely ascertained and indisputable matter which is the best white, and which the best brown; which the strongest canvas, and safest varnish; and which the shortest and most perfect way of doing everything known up to that time: and if any one discovers a better, he is to make it public forthwith. All of them taking care to embarrass themselves with no theories or reasons for anything, but to work empirically only: it not being in any wise their business to know whether light moves in rays or in waves; or whether the blue rays of the spectrum move slower or faster than the rest; but simply to know how many minutes and seconds such and such a powder must be calcined, to give the brightest blue. § XV. Now it is perhaps the most exquisite absurdity of the whole Renaissance system, that while it has encumbered the artist with every species of knowledge that is of no use to him, this one precious and necessary knowledge it has utterly lost. There is not, I believe, at this moment, a single question which could be put respecting pigments and methods, on which the body of living artists would agree in their answers. The lives of artists are passed in fruitless experiments; fruitless, because undirected by experience and uncommunicated in their results. Every man has methods of his own, which he knows to be insufficient, and yet jealously conceals from his fellow-workmen: every colorman has materials of his own, to which it is rare that the artist can trust: and in the very front of the majestic advance of chemical science, the empirical science of the artist has been annihilated, and the days which should have led us to higher perfection are passed in guessing at, or in mourning over, lost processes; while the so-called Dark ages, possessing no more knowledge of chemistry than a village herbalist does now, discovered, established, and put into daily practice such methods of operation as have made their work, at this day, the despair of all who look upon it. § XVI. And yet even this, to the painter, the safest of sciences, and in some degree necessary, has its temptations, and capabilities of abuse. For the simplest means are always enough for a great man; and when once he has obtained a few ordinary colors, which he is sure will stand, and a white surface that will not darken nor moulder, nor rend, he is master of the world, and of his fellow-men. And, indeed, as if in these times we were bent on furnishing examples of every species of opposite error, while we have suffered the traditions to escape us of the simple methods of doing simple things, which are enough for all the arts, and to all the ages, we have set ourselves to discover fantastic modes of doing fantastic things,--new mixtures and manipulations of metal, and porcelain, and leather, and paper, and every conceivable condition of false substance and cheap work, to our own infinitely multiplied confusion,--blinding ourselves daily more and more to the great, changeless, and inevitable truth, that there is but one goodness in art; and that is one which the chemist cannot prepare, nor the merchant cheapen, for it comes only of a rare human hand, and rare human soul. § XVII. Within its due limits, however, here is one branch of science which the artist may pursue; and, within limits still more strict, another also, namely, the science of the appearances of things as they have been ascertained and registered by his fellow-men. For no day passes but some visible fact is pointed out to us by others, which, without their help, we should not have noticed; and the accumulation and generalization of visible facts have formed, in the succession of ages, the sciences of light and shade, and perspective, linear and aerial: so that the artist is now at once put in possession of certain truths respecting the appearances of things, which, so pointed out to him, any man may in a few days understand and acknowledge; but which, without aid, he could not probably discover in his lifetime. I say, probably could not, because the time which the history of art shows us to have been actually occupied in the discovery and systematization of such truth, is no measure of the time _necessary_ for such discovery. The lengthened period which elapsed between the earliest and the perfect developement of the science of light (if I may so call it) was not occupied in the actual effort to ascertain its laws, but in _acquiring the disposition to make that effort_. It did not take five centuries to find out the appearance of natural objects; but it took five centuries to make people care about representing them. An artist of the twelfth century did not desire to represent nature. His work was symbolical and ornamental. So long as it was intelligible and lovely, he had no care to make it like nature. As, for instance, when an old painter represented the glory round a saint's head by a burnished plate of pure gold, he had no intention of imitating an effect of light. He meant to tell the spectator that the figure so decorated was a saint, and to produce splendor of effect by the golden circle. It was no matter to him what light was like. So soon as it entered into his intention to represent the appearance of light, he was not long in discovering the natural facts necessary for his purpose. § XVIII. But, this being fully allowed, it is still true that the accumulation of facts now known respecting visible phenomena, is greater than any man could hope to gather for himself, and that it is well for him to be made acquainted with them; provided always, that he receive them only at their true value, and do not suffer himself to be misled by them. I say, at their true value; that is, an exceedingly small one. All the information which men can receive from the accumulated experience of others, is of no use but to enable them more quickly and accurately to see for themselves. It will in no wise take the place of this personal sight. Nothing can be done well in art, except by vision. Scientific principles and experiences are helps to the eye, as a microscope is; and they are of exactly as much use _without_ the eye. No science of perspective, or of anything else, will enable us to draw the simplest natural line accurately, unless we see it and feel it. Science is soon at her wits' end. All the professors of perspective in Europe, could not, by perspective, draw the line of curve of a sea beach; nay, could not outline one pool of the quiet water left among the sand. The eye and hand can do it, nothing else. All the rules of aerial perspective that ever were written, will not tell me how sharply the pines on the hill-top are drawn at this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see them, and love them; not till then. I may study the laws of atmospheric gradation for fourscore years and ten, and I shall not be able to draw so much as a brick-kiln through its own smoke, unless I look at it; and that in an entirely humble and unscientific manner, ready to see all that the smoke, my master, is ready to show me, and expecting to see nothing more. § XIX. So that all the knowledge a man has must be held cheap, and neither trusted nor respected, the moment he comes face to face with Nature. If it help him, well; if not, but, on the contrary, thrust itself upon him in an impertinent and contradictory temper, and venture to set itself in the slightest degree in opposition to, or comparison with, his sight, let it be disgraced forthwith. And the slave is less likely to take too much upon herself, if she has not been bought for a high price. All the knowledge an artist needs, will, in these days, come to him almost without his seeking; if he has far to look for it, he may be sure he does not want it. Prout became Prout, without knowing a single rule of perspective to the end of his days; and all the perspective in the Encyclopædia will never produce us another Prout. § XX. And observe, also, knowledge is not only very often unnecessary, but it is often _untrustworthy_. It is inaccurate, and betrays us where the eye would have been true to us. Let us take the single instance of the knowledge of aerial perspective, of which the moderns are so proud, and see how it betrays us in various ways. First by the conceit of it, which often prevents our enjoying work in which higher and better things were thought of than effects of mist. The other day I showed a line impression of Albert Durer's "St. Hubert" to a modern engraver, who had never seen it nor any other of Albert Durer's works. He looked at it for a minute contemptuously, then turned away: "Ah, I see that man did not know much about aerial perspective!" All the glorious work and thought of the mighty master, all the redundant landscape, the living vegetation, the magnificent truth of line, were dead letters to him, because he happened to have been taught one particular piece of knowledge which Durer despised. § XXI. But not only in the conceit of it, but in the inaccuracy of it, this science betrays us. Aerial perspective, as given by the modern artist, is, in nine cases out of ten, a gross and ridiculous exaggeration, as is demonstrable in a moment. The effect of air in altering the hue and depth of color is of course great in the exact proportion of the volume of air between the observer and the object. It is not violent within the first few yards, and then diminished gradually, but it is equal for each foot of interposing air. Now in a clear day, and clear climate, such as that generally presupposed in a work of fine color, objects are completely visible at a distance of ten miles; visible in light and shade, with gradations between the two. Take, then, the faintest possible hue of shadow, or of any color, and the most violent and positive possible, and set them side by side. The interval between them is greater than the real difference (for objects may often be seen clearly much farther than ten miles, I have seen Mont Blanc at 120) caused by the ten miles of intervening air between any given hue of the nearest, and most distant, objects; but let us assume it, in courtesy to the masters of aerial perspective, to be the real difference. Then roughly estimating a mile at less than it really is, also in courtesy to them, or at 5000 feet, we have this difference between tints produced by 50,000 feet of air. Then, ten feet of air will produce the 5000th part of this difference. Let the reader take the two extreme tints, and carefully gradate the one into the other. Let him divide this gradated shadow or color into 5000 successive parts; and the difference in depth between one of these parts and the next is the exact amount of aerial perspective between one object, and another, ten feet behind it, on a clear day. § XXII. Now, in Millais' "Huguenot," the figures were standing about three feet from the wall behind them; and the wise world of critics, which could find no other fault with the picture, professed to have its eyes hurt by the want of an aerial perspective, which, had it been accurately given (as, indeed, I believe it was), would have amounted to the 10/3-5000th, or less than the 15,000th part of the depth of any given color. It would be interesting to see a picture painted by the critics, upon this scientific principle. The aerial perspective usually represented is entirely conventional and ridiculous; a mere struggle on the part of the pretendedly well-informed, but really ignorant, artist, to express distances by mist which he cannot by drawing. It is curious that the critical world is just as much offended by the true _presence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of fifty miles, and with definite purpose of representing mist, in the works of Turner, as by the true _absence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of three feet, and in clear weather, in those of Millais. § XXIII. "Well but," still answers the reader, "this kind of error may here and there be occasioned by too much respect for undigested knowledge; but, on the whole, the gain is greater than the loss, and the fact is, that a picture of the Renaissance period, or by a modern master, does indeed represent nature more faithfully than one wrought in the ignorance of old times." No, not one whit; for the most part less faithfully. Indeed, the outside of nature is more truly drawn; the material commonplace, which can be systematized, catalogued, and taught to all pains-taking mankind,--forms of ribs and scapulæ,[12] of eyebrows and lips, and curls of hair. Whatever can be measured and handled, dissected and demonstrated,--in a word, whatever is of the body only,--that the schools of knowledge do resolutely and courageously possess themselves of, and portray. But whatever is immeasurable, intangible, indivisible, and of the spirit, that the schools of knowledge do as certainly lose, and blot out of their sight, that is to say, all that is worth art's possessing or recording at all; for whatever can be arrested, measured, and systematized, we can contemplate as much as we will in nature herself. But what we want art to do for us is to stay what is fleeting, and to enlighten what is incomprehensible, to incorporate the things that have no measure, and immortalize the things that have no duration. The dimly seen, momentary glance, the flitting shadow of faint emotion, the imperfect lines of fading thought, and all that by and through such things as these is recorded on the features of man, and all that in man's person and actions, and in the great natural world, is infinite and wonderful; having in it that spirit and power which man may witness, but not weigh; conceive, but not comprehend; love, but not limit; and imagine, but not define;--this, the beginning and the end of the aim of all noble art, we have, in the ancient art, by perception; and we have _not_, in the newer art, by knowledge. Giotto gives it us, Orcagna gives it us. Angelico, Memmi, Pisano, it matters not who,--all simple and unlearned men, in their measure and manner,--give it us; and the learned men that followed them give it us not, and we, in our supreme learning, own ourselves at this day farther from it than ever. § XXIV. "Nay," but it is still answered, "this is because we have not yet brought our knowledge into right use, but have been seeking to accumulate it, rather than to apply it wisely to the ends of art. Let us now do this, and we may achieve all that was done by that elder ignorant art, and infinitely more." No, not so; for as soon as we try to put our knowledge to good use, we shall find that we have much more than we can use, and that what more we have is an encumbrance. All our errors in this respect arise from a gross misconception as to the true nature of knowledge itself. We talk of learned and ignorant men, as if there were a certain quantity of knowledge, which to possess was to be learned, and which not to possess was to be ignorant; instead of considering that knowledge is infinite, and that the man most learned in human estimation is just as far from knowing anything as he ought to know it, as the unlettered peasant. Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an eminence, whose summit is God's throne, infinitely above all; and there is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being discontented with his position, as respects the real quantity of knowledge he possesses. And, for both of them, the only true reasons for contentment with the sum of knowledge they possess are these: that it is the kind of knowledge they need for their duty and happiness in life; that all they have is tested and certain, so far as it is in their power; that all they have is well in order, and within reach when they need it; that it has not cost too much time in the getting; that none of it, once got, has been lost; and that there is not too much to be easily taken care of. § XXV. Consider these requirements a little, and the evils that result in our education and polity from neglecting them. Knowledge is mental food, and is exactly to the spirit what food is to the body (except that the spirit needs several sorts of food, of which knowledge is only one), and it is liable to the same kind of misuses. It may be mixed and disguised by art, till it becomes unwholesome; it may be refined, sweetened, and made palatable, until it has lost all its power of nourishment; and, even of its best kind, it may be eaten to surfeiting, and minister to disease and death. § XXVI. Therefore, with respect to knowledge, we are to reason and act exactly as with respect to food. We no more live to know, than we live to eat. We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore; and we may know all that is to be known in this world, and what Satan knows in the other, without being able to do any of these. We are to ask, therefore, first, is the knowledge we would have fit food for us, good and simple, not artificial and decorated? and secondly, how much of it will enable us best for our work; and will leave our hearts light, and our eyes clear? For no more than that is to be eaten without the old Eve-sin. § XXVII. Observe, also, the difference between tasting knowledge, and hoarding it. In this respect it is also like food; since, in some measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries, for future use; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not fed upon or enjoyed, but in store. And by all it is to be remembered, that knowledge in this form may be kept without air till it rots, or in such unthreshed disorder that it is of no use; and that, however good or orderly, it is still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass: only let us remember that this is not all men's work. We are not intended to be all keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by the filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most of us, are to receive day by day our daily bread, and shall be as well nourished and as fit for our labor, and often, also, fit for nobler and more divine labor, in feeding from the barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse of oil that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty, and our presses bursting out with new wine. § XXVIII. It is for each man to find his own measure in this matter; in great part, also, for others to find it for him, while he is yet a youth. And the desperate evil of the whole Renaissance system is, that all idea of measure is therein forgotten, that knowledge is thought the one and the only good, and it is never inquired whether men are vivified by it or paralyzed. Let us leave figures. The reader may not believe the analogy I have been pressing so far; but let him consider the subject in itself, let him examine the effect of knowledge in his own heart, and see whether the trees of knowledge and of life are one now, any more than in Paradise. He must feel that the real animating power of knowledge is only in the moment of its being first received, when it fills us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the previous ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. That man is always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to the full, which he is always going on to know. This is the necessary condition of a finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely directed intelligence; this, therefore, its happy state,--but observe, a state, not of triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy rather in the continual discovery of new ignorance, continual self-abasement, continual astonishment. Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to give us pleasure. It may be practically useful to us, it may be good for others, or good for usury to obtain more; but, in itself, once let it be thoroughly familiar, and it is dead. The wonder is gone from it, and all the fine color which it had when first we drew it up out of the infinite sea. And what does it matter how much or how little of it we have laid aside, when our only enjoyment is still in the casting of that deep sea line? What does it matter? Nay, in one respect, it matters much, and not to our advantage. For one effect of knowledge is to deaden the force of the imagination and the original energy of the whole man: under the weight of his knowledge he cannot move so lightly as in the days of his simplicity. The pack-horse is furnished for the journey, the war-horse is armed for war; but the freedom of the field and the lightness of the limb are lost for both. Knowledge is, at best, the pilgrim's burden or the soldier's panoply, often a weariness to them both: and the Renaissance knowledge is like the Renaissance armor of plate, binding and cramping the human form; while all good knowledge is like the crusader's chain mail, which throws itself into folds with the body, yet it is rarely so forged as that the clasps and rivets do not gall us. All men feel this, though they do not think of it, nor reason out its consequences. They look back to the days of childhood as of greatest happiness, because those were the days of greatest wonder, greatest simplicity, and most vigorous imagination. And the whole difference between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much knowledge,--conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance, and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable things around him. That is what we have to make men, so far as we may. All are to be men of genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of things known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass on. § XXIX. Let each man answer for himself how far his knowledge has made him this, or how far it is loaded upon him as the pyramid is upon the tomb. Let him consider, also, how much of it has cost him labor and time that might have been spent in healthy, happy action, beneficial to all mankind; how many living souls may have been left uncomforted and unhelped by him, while his own eyes were failing by the midnight lamp; how many warm sympathies have died within him as he measured lines or counted letters; how many draughts of ocean air, and steps on mountain-turf, and openings of the highest heaven he has lost for his knowledge; how much of that knowledge, so dearly bought, is now forgotten or despised, leaving only the capacity of wonder less within him, and, as it happens in a thousand instances, perhaps even also the capacity of devotion. And let him,--if, after thus dealing with his own heart, he can say that his knowledge has indeed been fruitful to him,--yet consider how many there are who have been forced by the inevitable laws of modern education into toil utterly repugnant to their natures, and that in the extreme, until the whole strength of the young soul was sapped away; and then pronounce with fearfulness how far, and in how many senses, it may indeed be true that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. § XXX. Now all this possibility of evil, observe, attaches to knowledge pursued for the noblest ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have assumed, in speaking of its effect both on men generally and on the artist especially, that it was sought in the true love of it, and with all honesty and directness of purpose. But this is granting far too much in its favor. Of knowledge in general, and without qualification, it is said by the Apostle that "it puffeth up;" and the father of all modern science, writing directly in its praise, yet asserts this danger even in more absolute terms, calling it a "venomousness" in the very nature of knowledge itself. § XXXI. There is, indeed, much difference in this respect between the tendencies of different branches of knowledge; it being a sure rule that exactly in proportion as they are inferior, nugatory, or limited in scope, their power of feeding pride is greater. Thus philology, logic, rhetoric, and the other sciences of the schools, being for the most part ridiculous and trifling, have so pestilent an effect upon those who are devoted to them, that their students cannot conceive of any higher sciences than these, but fancy that all education ends in the knowledge of words: but the true and great sciences, more especially natural history, make men gentle and modest in proportion to the largeness of their apprehension, and just perception of the infiniteness of the things they can never know. And this, it seems to me, is the principal lesson we are intended to be caught by the book of Job; for there God has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no suffering, no self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it. For, when the Deity himself has willed to end the temptation, and to accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities. He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring, and the fountains of the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves, He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride,--"Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee:" And the work is done. § XXXII. Thus, if, I repeat, there is any one lesson in the whole book which stands forth more definitely than another, it is this of the holy and humbling influence of natural science on the human heart. And yet, even here, it is not the science, but the perception, to which the good is owing; and the natural sciences may become as harmful as any others, when they lose themselves in classification and catalogue-making. Still, the principal danger is with the sciences of words and methods; and it was exactly into those sciences that the whole energy of men during the Renaissance period was thrown. They discovered suddenly that the world for ten centuries had been living in an ungrammatical manner, and they made it forthwith the end of human existence to be grammatical. And it mattered thenceforth nothing what was said, or what was done, so only that it was said with scholarship, and done with system. Falsehood in a Ciceronian dialect had no opposers; truth in patois no listeners. A Roman phrase was thought worth any number of Gothic facts. The sciences ceased at once to be anything more than different kinds of grammars,--grammar of language, grammar of logic, grammar of ethics, grammar of art; and the tongue, wit, and invention of the human race were supposed to have found their utmost and most divine mission in syntax and syllogism, perspective and five orders. Of such knowledge as this, nothing but pride could come; and, therefore, I have called the first mental characteristic of the Renaissance schools, the "pride" of science. If they had reached any science worth the name, they might have loved it; but of the paltry knowledge they possessed, they could only be proud. There was not anything in it capable of being loved. Anatomy, indeed, then first made a subject of accurate study, is a true science, but not so attractive as to enlist the affections strongly on its side: and therefore, like its meaner sisters, it became merely a ground for pride; and the one main purpose of the Renaissance artists, in all their work, was to show how much they knew. § XXXIII. There were, of course, noble exceptions; but chiefly belonging to the earliest periods of the Renaissance, when its teaching had not yet produced its full effect. Raphael, Leonardo, and Michael Angelo were all trained in the old school; they all had masters who knew the true ends of art, and had reached them; masters nearly as great as they were themselves, but imbued with the old religious and earnest spirit, which their disciples receiving from them, and drinking at the same time deeply from all the fountains of knowledge opened in their day, became the world's wonders. Then the dull wondering world believed that their greatness rose out of their new knowledge, instead of out of that ancient religious root, in which to abide was life, from which to be severed was annihilation. And from that day to this, they have tried to produce Michael Angelos and Leonardos by teaching the barren sciences, and still have mourned and marvelled that no more Michael Angelos came; not perceiving that those great Fathers were only able to receive such nourishment because they were rooted on the rock of all ages, and that our scientific teaching, nowadays, is nothing more nor less than the assiduous watering of trees whose stems are cut through. Nay, I have even granted too much in saying that those great men were able to receive pure nourishment from the sciences; for my own conviction is, and I know it to be shared by most of those who love Raphael truly,--that he painted best when he knew least. Michael Angelo was betrayed, again and again, into such vain and offensive exhibition of his anatomical knowledge as, to this day, renders his higher powers indiscernible by the greater part of men; and Leonardo fretted his life away in engineering, so that there is hardly a picture left to bear his name. But, with respect to all who followed, there can be no question that the science they possessed was utterly harmful; serving merely to draw away their hearts at once from the purposes of art and the power of nature, and to make, out of the canvas and marble, nothing more than materials for the exhibition of petty dexterity and useless knowledge. § XXXIV. It is sometimes amusing to watch the naïve and childish way in which this vanity is shown. For instance, when perspective was first invented, the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point. And, accordingly, it became nearly impossible for any one to paint a Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspective; and half the best architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical sculpture, as of old, was set forth with bas-relief of minor corridors and galleries, thrown into perspective. Now that perspective can be taught to any schoolboy in a week, we can smile at this vanity. But the fact is, that all pride in knowledge is precisely as ridiculous, whatever its kind, or whatever its degree. There is, indeed, nothing of which man has any right to be proud; but the very last thing of which, with any show of reason, he can make his boast is his knowledge, except only that infinitely small portion of it which he has discovered for himself. For what is there to be more proud of in receiving a piece of knowledge from another person, than in receiving a piece of money? Beggars should not be proud, whatever kind of alms they receive. Knowledge is like current coin. A man may have some right to be proud of possessing it, if he has worked for the gold of it, and assayed it, and stamped it, so that it may be received of all men as true; or earned it fairly, being already assayed: but if he has done none of these things, but only had it thrown in his face by a passer-by, what cause has he to be proud? And though, in this mendicant fashion, he had heaped together the wealth of Croesus, would pride any more, for this, become him, as, in some sort, it becomes the man who has labored for his fortune, however small? So, if a man tells me the sun is larger than the earth, have I any cause for pride in knowing it? or, if any multitude of men tell me any number of things, heaping all their wealth of knowledge upon me, have I any reason to be proud under the heap? And is not nearly all the knowledge of which we boast in these days cast upon us in this dishonorable way; worked for by other men, proved by them, and then forced upon us, even against our wills, and beaten into us in our youth, before we have the wit even to know if it be good or not? (Mark the distinction between knowledge and thought.) Truly a noble possession to be proud of! Be assured, there is no part of the furniture of a man's mind which he has a right to exult in, but that which he has hewn and fashioned for himself. He who has built himself a hut on a desert heath, and carved his bed, and table, and chair out of the nearest forest, may have some right to take pride in the appliances of his narrow chamber, as assuredly he will have joy in them. But the man who has had a palace built, and adorned, and furnished for him, may, indeed, have many advantages above the other, but he has no reason to be proud of his upholsterer's skill; and it is ten to one if he has half the joy in his couches of ivory that the other will have in his pallet of pine. § XXXV. And observe how we feel this, in the kind of respect we pay to such knowledge as we are indeed capable of estimating the value of. When it is our own, and new to us, we cannot judge of it; but let it be another's also, and long familiar to us, and see what value we set on it. Consider how we regard a schoolboy, fresh from his term's labor. If he begin to display his newly acquired small knowledge to us, and plume himself thereupon, how soon do we silence him with contempt! But it is not so if the schoolboy begins to feel or see anything. In the strivings of his soul within him he is our equal; in his power of sight and thought he stands separate from us, and may be a greater than we. We are ready to hear him forthwith. "You saw that? you felt that? No matter for your being a child; let us hear." § XXXVI. Consider that every generation of men stands in this relation to its successors. It is as the schoolboy: the knowledge of which it is proudest will be as the alphabet to those who follow. It had better make no noise about its knowledge; a time will come when its utmost, in that kind, will be food for scorn. Poor fools! was that all they knew? and behold how proud they were! But what we see and feel will never be mocked at. All men will be thankful to us for telling them that. "Indeed!" they will say, "they felt that in their day? saw that? Would God we may be like them, before we go to the home where sight and thought are not!" This unhappy and childish pride in knowledge, then, was the first constituent element of the Renaissance mind, and it was enough, of itself, to have cast it into swift decline: but it was aided by another form of pride, which was above called the Pride of State; and which we have next to examine. § XXXVII. II. PRIDE OF STATE. It was noticed in the second volume of "Modern Painters," p. 122, that the principle which had most power in retarding the modern school of portraiture was its constant expression of individual vanity and pride. And the reader cannot fail to have observed that one of the readiest and commonest ways in which the painter ministers to this vanity, is by introducing the pedestal or shaft of a column, or some fragment, however simple, of Renaissance architecture, in the background of the portrait. And this is not merely because such architecture is bolder or grander than, in general, that of the apartments of a private house. No other architecture would produce the same effect in the same degree. The richest Gothic, the most massive Norman, would not produce the same sense of exaltation as the simple and meagre lines of the Renaissance. § XXXVIII. And if we think over this matter a little, we shall soon feel that in those meagre lines there is indeed an expression of aristocracy in its worst characters; coldness, perfectness of training, incapability of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank, hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters are written in the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that common men can enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of humanity, some daily bread for the hunger of the multitude. Quaint fancy, rich ornament, bright color, something that shows a sympathy with men of ordinary minds and hearts; and this wrought out, at least in the Gothic, with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; incapable of glowing, of stooping, of conceding for an instant. Whatever excellence it has is refined, high-trained, and deeply erudite; a kind which the architect well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims it to us aloud. "You cannot feel my work unless you study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay color, no pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I am a learned man. All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its proud breeding, its rigid formalism, its perfect finish, its cold tranquillity. I do not work for the vulgar, only for the men of the academy and the court." § XXXIX. And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. In the new precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceived something peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an appalling manner: Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship. The Gothic had fellowship with all hearts, and was universal, like nature: it could frame a temple for the prayer of nations, or shrink into the poor man's winding stair. But here was an architecture that would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone; it would have its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars, in lordly order, and of stately size; it would have its wings and its corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as if all the earth were its own. And the rugged cottages of the mountaineers, and the fantastic streets of the laboring burgher were to be thrust out of its way, as of a lower species. § XL. It is to be noted also, that it ministered as much to luxury as to pride. Not to luxury of the eye, that is a holy luxury; Nature ministers to that in her painted meadows, and sculptured forests, and gilded heavens; the Gothic builder ministered to that in his twisted traceries, and deep-wrought foliage, and burning casements. The dead Renaissance drew back into its earthliness, out of all that was warm and heavenly; back into its pride, out of all that was simple and kind; back into its stateliness, out of all that was impulsive, reverent, and gay. But it understood the luxury of the body; the terraced and scented and grottoed garden, with its trickling fountains and slumbrous shades; the spacious hall and lengthened corridor for the summer heat; the well-closed windows, and perfect fittings and furniture, for defence against the cold; and the soft picture, and frescoed wall and roof, covered with the last lasciviousness of Paganism;--this is understood and possessed to the full, and still possesses. This is the kind of domestic architecture on which we pride ourselves, even to this day, as an infinite and honorable advance from the rough habits of our ancestors; from the time when the king's floor was strewn with rushes, and the tapestries swayed before the searching wind in the baron's hall. § XLI. Let us hear two stories of those rougher times. At the debate of King Edwin with his courtiers and priests, whether he ought to receive the Gospel preached to him by Paulinus, one of his nobles spoke as follows: "The present life, O king! weighed with the time that is unknown, seems to me like this. When you are sitting at a feast with your earls and thanes in winter time, and the fire is lighted, and the hall is warmed, and it rains and snows, and the storm is loud without, there comes a sparrow, and flies through the house. It comes in at one door and goes out at the other. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter's storm; but it is but for the twinkling of an eye, for from winter it comes and to winter it returns. So also this life of man endureth for a little space; what goes before or what follows after, we know not. Wherefore, if this new lore bring anything more certain, it is fit that we should follow it."[13] That could not have happened in a Renaissance building. The bird could not have dashed in from the cold into the heat, and from the heat back again into the storm. It would have had to come up a flight of marble stairs, and through seven or eight antechambers; and so, if it had ever made its way into the presence chamber, out again through loggias and corridors innumerable. And the truth which the bird brought with it, fresh from heaven, has, in like manner, to make its way to the Renaissance mind through many antechambers, hardly, and as a despised thing, if at all. § XLII. Hear another story of those early times. The king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, at the siege of Asshur, or Arsur, gave audience to some emirs from Samaria and Naplous. They found him seated on the ground on a sack of straw. They expressing surprise, Godfrey answered them: "May not the earth, out of which we came, and which is to be our dwelling after death, serve us for a seat during life?" It is long since such a throne has been set in the reception chambers of Christendom, or such an answer heard from the lips of a king. Thus the Renaissance spirit became base both in its abstinence and its indulgence. Base in its abstinence; curtailing the bright and playful wealth of form and thought, which filled the architecture of the earlier ages with sources of delight for their hardy spirit, pure, simple, and yet rich as the fretwork of flowers and moss, watered by some strong and stainless mountain stream: and base in its indulgence; as it granted to the body what it withdrew from the heart, and exhausted, in smoothing the pavement for the painless feet, and softening the pillow for the sluggish brain, the powers of art which once had hewn rough ladders into the clouds of heaven, and set up the stones by which they rested for houses of God. § XLIII. And just in proportion as this courtly sensuality lowered the real nobleness of the men whom birth or fortune raised above their fellows, rose their estimate of their own dignity, together with the insolence and unkindness of its expression, and the grossness of the flattery with which it was fed. Pride is indeed the first and the last among the sins of men, and there is no age of the world in which it has not been unveiled in the power and prosperity of the wicked. But there was never in any form of slavery, or of feudal supremacy, a forgetfulness so total of the common majesty of the human soul, and of the brotherly kindness due from man to man, as in the aristocratic follies in the Renaissance. I have not space to follow out this most interesting and extensive subject; but here is a single and very curious example of the kind of flattery with which architectural teaching was mingled when addressed to the men of rank of the day. § XLIV. In St. Mark's library there is a very curious Latin manuscript of the twenty-five books of Averulinus, a Florentine architect, upon the principles of his art. The book was written in or about 1460, and translated into Latin, and richly illuminated for Corvinus, king of Hungary, about 1483. I extract from the third book the following passage on the nature of stones. "As there are three genera of men,--that is to say, nobles, men of the middle classes, and rustics,--so it appears that there are of stones. For the marbles and common stones of which we have spoken above, set forth the rustics. The porphyries and alabasters, and the other harder stones of mingled quality, represent the middle classes, if we are to deal in comparisons: and by means of these the ancients adorned their temples with incrustations and ornaments in a magnificent manner. And after these come the chalcedonies and sardonyxes, &c., which are so transparent that there can be seen no spot in them.[14] Thus men endowed with nobility lead a life in which no spot can be found." Canute or Coeur de Lion (I name not Godfrey or St. Louis) would have dashed their sceptres against the lips of a man who should have dared to utter to them flattery such as this. But in the fifteenth century it was rendered and accepted as a matter of course, and the tempers which delighted in it necessarily took pleasure also in every vulgar or false means, of taking worldly superiority. And among such false means largeness of scale in the dwelling-house was of course one of the easiest and most direct. All persons, however senseless or dull, could appreciate size: it required some exertion of intelligence to enter into the spirit of the quaint carving of the Gothic times, but none to perceive that one heap of stones was higher than another.[15] And therefore, while in the execution and manner of work the Renaissance builders zealously vindicated for themselves the attribute of cold and superior learning, they appealed for such approbation as they needed from the multitude, to the lowest possible standard of taste; and while the older workman lavished his labor on the minute niche and narrow casement, on the doorways no higher than the head, and the contracted angles of the turreted chamber, the Renaissance builder spared such cost and toil in his detail, that he might spend it in bringing larger stones from a distance; and restricted himself to rustication and five orders, that he might load the ground with colossal piers, and raise an ambitious barrenness of architecture, as inanimate as it was gigantic, above the feasts and follies of the powerful or the rich. The Titanic insanity extended itself also into ecclesiastical design: the principal church in Italy was built with little idea of any other admirableness than that which was to result from its being huge; and the religious impressions of those who enter it are to this day supposed to be dependent, in a great degree, on their discovering that they cannot span the thumbs of the statues which sustain the vessels for holy water. § XLV. It is easy to understand how an architecture which thus appealed not less to the lowest instincts of dulness than to the subtlest pride of learning, rapidly found acceptance with a large body of mankind; and how the spacious pomp of the new manner of design came to be eagerly adopted by the luxurious aristocracies, not only of Venice, but of the other countries of Christendom, now gradually gathering themselves into that insolent and festering isolation, against which the cry of the poor sounded hourly in more ominous unison, bursting at last into thunder (mark where,--first among the planted walks and plashing fountains of the palace wherein the Renaissance luxury attained its utmost height in Europe, Versailles); that cry, mingling so much piteousness with its wrath and indignation, "Our soul is filled with the scornful reproof of the wealthy, and with the despitefulness of the proud." § XLVI. But of all the evidence bearing upon this subject presented by the various arts of the fifteenth century, none is so interesting or so conclusive as that deduced from its tombs. For, exactly in proportion as the pride of life became more insolent, the fear of death became more servile; and the difference in the manner in which the men of early and later days adorned the sepulchre, confesses a still greater difference in their manner of regarding death. To those he came as the comforter and the friend, rest in his right hand, hope in his left; to these as the humiliator, the spoiler, and the avenger. And, therefore, we find the early tombs at once simple and lovely in adornment, severe and solemn in their expression; confessing the power, and accepting the peace, of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their symbols marking that the hope of resurrection lay only in Christ's righteousness; signed always with this simple utterance of the dead, "I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell in safety." But the tombs of the later ages are a ghastly struggle of mean pride and miserable terror: the one mustering the statues of the Virtues about the tomb, disguising the sarcophagus with delicate sculpture, polishing the false periods of the elaborate epitaph, and filling with strained animation the features of the portrait statue; and the other summoning underneath, out of the niche or from behind the curtain, the frowning skull, or scythed skeleton, or some other more terrible image of the enemy in whose defiance the whiteness of the sepulchre had been set to shine above the whiteness of the ashes. § XLVII. This change in the feeling with which sepulchral monuments were designed, from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, has been common to the whole of Europe. But, as Venice is in other respects the centre of the Renaissance system, so also she exhibits this change in the manner of the sepulchral monument under circumstances peculiarly calculated to teach us its true character. For the severe guard which, in earlier times, she put upon every tendency to personal pomp and ambition, renders the tombs of her ancient monarchs as remarkable for modesty and simplicity as for their religious feeling; so that, in this respect, they are separated by a considerable interval from the more costly monuments erected at the same periods to the kings or nobles of other European states. In later times, on the other hand, as the piety of the Venetians diminished, their pride overleaped all limits, and the tombs which in recent epochs, were erected for men who had lived only to impoverish or disgrace the state, were as much more magnificent than those contemporaneously erected for the nobles of Europe, as the monuments for the great Doges had been humbler. When, in addition to this, we reflect that the art of sculpture, considered as expressive of emotion, was at a low ebb in Venice in the twelfth century, and that in the seventeenth she took the lead in Italy in luxurious work, we shall at once see the chain of examples through which the change of feeling is expressed, must present more remarkable extremes here than it can in any other city; extremes so startling that their impressiveness cannot be diminished, while their intelligibility is greatly increased, by the large number of intermediate types which have fortunately been preserved. It would, however, too much weary the general reader if, without illustrations, I were to endeavor to lead him step by step through the aisles of St. John and Paul; and I shall therefore confine myself to a slight notice of those features in sepulchral architecture generally which are especially illustrative of the matter at present in hand, and point out the order in which, if possible, the traveller should visit the tombs in Venice, so as to be most deeply impressed with the true character of the lessons they convey. § XLVIII. I have not such an acquaintance with the modes of entombment or memorial in the earliest ages of Christianity as would justify me in making any general statement respecting them: but it seems to me that the perfect type of a Christian tomb was not developed until toward the thirteenth century, sooner or later according to the civilization of each country; that perfect type consisting in the raised and perfectly visible sarcophagus of stone, bearing upon it a recumbent figure, and the whole covered by a canopy. Before that type was entirely developed, and in the more ordinary tombs contemporary with it, we find the simple sarcophagus, often with only a rough block of stone for its lid, sometimes with a low-gabled lid like a cottage roof, derived from Egyptian forms, and bearing, either on the sides or the lid, at least a sculpture of the cross, and sometimes the name of the deceased, and date of erection of the tomb. In more elaborate examples rich figure-sculpture is gradually introduced; and in the perfect period the sarcophagus, even when it does not bear any recumbent figure, has generally a rich sculpture on its sides representing an angel presenting the dead, in person and dress as he lived, to Christ or to the Madonna, with lateral figures, sometimes of saints, sometimes--as in the tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy at Dijon--of mourners; but in Venice almost always representing the Annunciation, the angel being placed at one angle of the sarcophagus, and the Madonna at the other. The canopy, in a very simple foursquare form, or as an arch over a recess, is added above the sarcophagus, long before the life-size recumbent figure appears resting upon it. By the time that the sculptors had acquired skill enough to give much expression to this figure, the canopy attains an exquisite symmetry and richness; and, in the most elaborate examples, is surmounted by a statue, generally small, representing the dead person in the full strength and pride of life, while the recumbent figure shows him as he lay in death. And, at this point, the perfect type of the Gothic tomb is reached. § XLIX. Of the simple sarcophagus tomb there are many exquisite examples both at Venice and Verona; the most interesting in Venice are those which are set in the recesses of the rude brick front of the Church of St. John and Paul, ornamented only, for the most part, with two crosses set in circles, and the legend with the name of the dead, and an "Orate pro anima" in another circle in the centre. And in this we may note one great proof of superiority in Italian over English tombs; the latter being often enriched with quatrefoils, small shafts, and arches, and other ordinary architectural decorations, which destroy their seriousness and solemnity, render them little more than ornamental, and have no religious meaning whatever; while the Italian sarcophagi are kept massive, smooth, and gloomy,--heavy-lidded dungeons of stone, like rock-tombs,--but bearing on their surface, sculptured with tender and narrow lines, the emblem of the cross, not presumptuously nor proudly, but dimly graven upon their granite, like the hope which the human heart holds, but hardly perceives in its heaviness. § L. Among the tombs in front of the Church of St. John and Paul there is one which is peculiarly illustrative of the simplicity of these earlier ages. It is on the left of the entrance, a massy sarcophagus with low horns as of an altar, placed in a rude recess of the outside wall, shattered and worn, and here and there entangled among wild grass and weeds. Yet it is the tomb of two Doges, Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo, by one of whom nearly the whole ground was given for the erection of the noble church in front of which his unprotected tomb is wasting away. The sarcophagus bears an inscription in the centre, describing the acts of the Doges, of which the letters show that it was added a considerable period after the erection of the tomb: the original legend is still left in other letters on its base, to this effect, "Lord James, died 1251. Lord Laurence, died 1288." At the two corners of the sarcophagus are two angels bearing censers; and on its lid two birds, with crosses like crests upon their heads. For the sake of the traveller in Venice the reader will, I think, pardon me the momentary irrelevancy of telling the meaning of these symbols. § LI. The foundation of the church of St. John and Paul was laid by the Dominicans about 1234, under the immediate protection of the Senate and the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo, accorded to them in consequence of a miraculous vision appearing to the Doge; of which the following account is given in popular tradition: "In the year 1226, the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo dreamed a dream; and in his dream he saw the little oratory of the Dominicans, and, behold, the ground all around it (now occupied by the church) was covered with roses of the color of vermilion, and the air was filled with their fragrance. And in the midst of the roses, there were seen flying to and fro a crowd of white doves, with golden crosses upon their heads. And while the Doge looked, and wondered, behold, two angels descended from heaven with golden censers, and passing through the oratory, and forth among the flowers, they filled the place with the smoke of their incense. Then the Doge heard suddenly a clear and loud voice which proclaimed, 'This is the place that I have chosen for my preachers;' and having heard it, straightway he awoke and went to the Senate, and declared to them the vision. Then the Senate decreed that forty paces of ground should be given to enlarge the monastery; and the Doge Tiepolo himself made a still larger grant afterwards." There is nothing miraculous in the occurrence of such a dream as this to the devout Doge; and the fact, of which there is no doubt, that the greater part of the land on which the church stands was given by him, is partly a confirmation of the story. But, whether the sculptures on the tomb were records of the vision, or the vision a monkish invention from the sculptures on the tomb, the reader will not, I believe, look upon its doves and crosses, or rudely carved angels, any more with disdain; knowing how, in one way or another, they were connected with a point of deep religious belief. § LII. Towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Venice, the recumbent figure begins to appear on the sarcophagus, the first dated example being also one of the most beautiful; the statue of the prophet Simeon, sculptured upon the tomb which was to receive his relics in the church dedicated to him under the name of San Simeone Grande. So soon as the figure appears, the sarcophagus becomes much more richly sculptured, but always with definite religious purpose. It is usually divided into two panels, which are filled with small bas-reliefs of the acts or martyrdom of the patron saints of the deceased: between them, in the centre, Christ, or the Virgin and Child, are richly enthroned, under a curtained canopy; and the two figures representing the Annunciation are almost always at the angles; the promise of the Birth of Christ being taken as at once the ground and the type of the promise of eternal life to all men. § LIII. These figures are always in Venice most rudely chiselled; the progress of figure sculpture being there comparatively tardy. At Verona, where the great Pisan school had strong influence, the monumental sculpture is immeasurably finer; and, so early as about the year 1335,[16] the consummate form of the Gothic tomb occurs in the monument of Can Grande della Scala at Verona. It is set over the portal of the chapel anciently belonging to the family. The sarcophagus is sculptured with shallow bas-reliefs, representing (which is rare in the tombs with which I am acquainted in Italy, unless they are those of saints) the principal achievements of the warrior's life, especially the siege of Vicenza and battle of Placenza; these sculptures, however, form little more than a chased and roughened groundwork for the fully relieved statues representing the Annunciation, projecting boldly from the front of the sarcophagus. Above, the Lord of Verona is laid in his long robe of civil dignity, wearing the simple bonnet, consisting merely of a fillet bound round the brow, knotted and falling on the shoulder. He is laid as asleep; his arms crossed upon his body, and his sword by his side. Above him, a bold arched canopy is sustained by two projecting shafts, and on the pinnacle of its roof is the statue of the knight on his war-horse; his helmet, dragon-winged and crested with the dog's head, tossed back behind his shoulders, and the broad and blazoned drapery floating back from his horse's breast,--so truly drawn by the old workman from the life, that it seems to wave in the wind, and the knight's spear to shake, and his marble horse to be evermore quickening its pace, and starting into heavier and hastier charge, as the silver clouds float past behind it in the sky. § LIV. Now observe, in this tomb, as much concession is made to the pride of man as may ever consist with honor, discretion, or dignity. I do not enter into any question respecting the character of Can Grande, though there can be little doubt that he was one of the best among the nobles of his time; but that is not to our purpose. It is not the question whether his wars were just, or his greatness honorably achieved; but whether, supposing them to have been so, these facts are well and gracefully told upon his tomb. And I believe there can be no hesitation in the admission of its perfect feeling and truth. Though beautiful, the tomb is so little conspicuous or intrusive, that it serves only to decorate the portal of the little chapel, and is hardly regarded by the traveller as he enters. When it is examined, the history of the acts of the dead is found subdued into dim and minute ornament upon his coffin; and the principal aim of the monument is to direct the thoughts to his image as he lies in death, and to the expression of his hope of resurrection; while, seen as by the memory far away, diminished in the brightness of the sky, there is set the likeness of his armed youth, stately, as it stood of old, in the front of battle, and meet to be thus recorded for us, that we may now be able to remember the dignity of the frame, of which those who once looked upon it hardly remembered that it was dust. § LV. This, I repeat, is as much as may ever be granted, but this ought always to be granted, to the honor and the affection of men. The tomb which stands beside that of Can Grande, nearest it in the little field of sleep, already shows the traces of erring ambition. It is the tomb of Mastino the Second, in whose reign began the decline of his family. It is altogether exquisite as a work of art; and the evidence of a less wise or noble feeling in its design is found only in this, that the image of a virtue, Fortitude, as belonging to the dead, is placed on the extremity of the sarcophagus, opposite to the Crucifixion. But for this slight circumstance, of which the significance will only be appreciated as we examine the series of later monuments, the composition of this monument of Can Mastino would have been as perfect as its decoration is refined. It consists, like that of Can Grande, of the raised sarcophagus, bearing the recumbent statue, protected by a noble foursquare canopy, sculptured with ancient Scripture history. On one side of the sarcophagus is Christ enthroned, with Can Mastino kneeling before Him; on the other, Christ is represented in the mystical form, half-rising from the tomb, meant, I believe, to be at once typical of His passion and resurrection. The lateral panels are occupied by statues of saints. At one extremity of the sarcophagus is the Crucifixion; at the other, a noble statue of Fortitude, with a lion's skin thrown over her shoulders, its head forming a shield upon her breast, her flowing hair bound with a narrow fillet, and a three-edged sword in her gauntleted right hand, drawn back sternly behind her thigh, while, in her left, she bears high the shield of the Scalas. § LVI. Close to this monument is another, the stateliest and most sumptuous of the three; it first arrests the eye of the stranger, and long detains it,--a many-pinnacled pile surrounded by niches with statues of the warrior saints. It is beautiful, for it still belongs to the noble time, the latter part of the fourteenth century; but its work is coarser than that of the other, and its pride may well prepare us to learn that it was built for himself, in his own lifetime, by the man whose statue crowns it, Can Signorio della Scala. Now observe, for this is infinitely significant. Can Mastino II. was feeble and wicked, and began the ruin of his house; his sarcophagus is the first which bears upon it the image of a virtue, but he lays claim only to Fortitude. Can Signorio was twice a fratricide, the last time when he lay upon his death-bed: _his_ tomb bears upon its gables the images of six virtues,--Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, and (I believe) Justice and Fortitude. § LVII. Let us now return to Venice, where, in the second chapel counting from right to left, at the west end of the Church of the Frari, there is a very early fourteenth, or perhaps late thirteenth, century tomb, another exquisite example of the perfect Gothic form. It is a knight's; but there is no inscription upon it, and his name is unknown. It consists of a sarcophagus, supported on bold brackets against the chapel wall, bearing the recumbent figure, protected by a simple canopy in the form of a pointed arch, pinnacled by the knight's crest; beneath which the shadowy space is painted dark blue, and strewn with stars. The statue itself is rudely carved; but its lines, as seen from the intended distance, are both tender and masterly. The knight is laid in his mail, only the hands and face being bare. The hauberk and helmet are of chain-mail, the armor for the limbs of jointed steel; a tunic, fitting close to the breast, and marking the noble swell of it by two narrow embroidered lines, is worn over the mail; his dagger is at his right side; his long cross-belted sword, not seen by the spectator from below, at his left. His feet rest on a hound (the hound being his crest), which looks up towards its master. In general, in tombs of this kind, the face of the statue is slightly turned towards the spectator; in this monument, on the contrary, it is turned away from him, towards the depth of the arch: for there, just above the warrior's breast, is carved a small image of St. Joseph bearing the infant Christ, who looks down upon the resting figure; and to this image its countenance is turned. The appearance of the entire tomb is as if the warrior had seen the vision of Christ in his dying moments, and had fallen back peacefully upon his pillow, with his eyes still turned to it, and his hands clasped in prayer. § LVIII. On the opposite side of this chapel is another very lovely tomb, to Duccio degli Alberti, a Florentine ambassador at Venice; noticeable chiefly as being the first in Venice on which any images of the Virtues appear. We shall return to it presently, but some account must first be given of the more important among the other tombs in Venice belonging to the perfect period. Of these, by far the most interesting, though not the most elaborate, is that of the great Doge Francesco Dandolo, whose ashes, it might have been thought, were honorable enough to have been permitted to rest undisturbed in the chapter-house of the Frari, where they were first laid. But, as if there were not room enough, nor waste houses enough in the desolate city to receive a few convent papers, the monks, wanting an "archivio," have separated the tomb into three pieces: the canopy, a simple arch sustained on brackets, still remains on the blank walls of the desecrated chamber; the sarcophagus has been transported to a kind of museum of antiquities, established in what was once the cloister of Santa Maria della Salute; and the painting which filled the lunette behind it is hung far out of sight, at one end of the sacristy of the same church. The sarcophagus is completely charged with bas-reliefs: at its two extremities are the types of St. Mark and St. John; in front, a noble sculpture of the death of the Virgin; at the angles, angels holding vases. The whole space is occupied by the sculpture; there are no spiral shafts or panelled divisions; only a basic plinth below, and crowning plinth above, the sculpture being raised from a deep concave field between the two, but, in order to give piquancy and picturesqueness to the mass of figures, two small trees are introduced at the head and foot of the Madonna's couch, an oak and a stone pine. § LIX. It was said above,[17] in speaking of the frequent disputes of the Venetians with the Pontifical power, which in their early days they had so strenuously supported, that "the humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out the shame of Barbarossa." It is indeed well that the two events should be remembered together. By the help of the Venetians, Alexander III. was enabled, in the twelfth century, to put his foot upon the neck of the emperor Barbarossa, quoting the words of the Psalm, "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder." A hundred and fifty years later, the Venetian ambassador, Francesco Dandolo, unable to obtain even an audience from the Pope, Clement V., to whom he had been sent to pray for a removal of the sentence of excommunication pronounced against the republic, concealed himself (according to the common tradition) beneath the Pontiff's dining-table; and thence coming out as he sat down to meat, embraced his feet, and obtained, by tearful entreaties, the removal of the terrible sentence. I say, "according to the common tradition;" for there are some doubts cast upon the story by its supplement. Most of the Venetian historians assert that Francesco Dandolo's surname of "Dog" was given him first on this occasion, in insult, by the cardinals; and that the Venetians, in remembrance of the grace which his humiliation had won for them, made it a title of honor to him and to his race. It has, however, been proved[18] that the surname was borne by the ancestors of Francesco Dandolo long before; and the falsity of this seal of the legend renders also its circumstances doubtful. But the main fact of grievous humiliation having been undergone, admits of no dispute; the existence of such a tradition at all is in itself a proof of its truth; it was not one likely to be either invented or received without foundation: and it will be well, therefore, that the reader should remember, in connection with the treatment of Barbarossa at the door of the Church of St. Mark's, that in the Vatican, one hundred and fifty years later, a Venetian noble, a future Doge, submitted to a degradation, of which the current report among his people was, that he had crept on his hands and knees from beneath the Pontiff's table to his feet, and had been spurned as a "dog" by the cardinals present. § LX. There are two principal conclusions to be drawn from this: the obvious one respecting the insolence of the Papal dominion in the thirteenth century; the second, that there were probably most deep piety and humility in the character of the man who could submit to this insolence for the sake of a benefit to his country. Probably no motive would have been strong enough to obtain such a sacrifice from most men, however unselfish; but it was, without doubt, made easier to Dandolo by his profound reverence for the Pontifical office; a reverence which, however _we_ may now esteem those who claimed it, could not but have been felt by nearly all good and faithful men at the time of which we are speaking. This is the main point which I wish the reader to remember as we look at his tomb, this, and the result of it,--that, some years afterwards, when he was seated on the throne which his piety had saved, "there were sixty princes' ambassadors in Venice at the same time, requesting the judgment of the Senate on matters of various concernment, _so great was the fame of the uncorrupted justice of the Fathers_."[19] Observe, there are no virtues on this tomb. Nothing but religious history or symbols; the Death of the Virgin in front, and the types of St. Mark and St. John at the extremities. § LXI. Of the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's, I have spoken before. It is one of the first in Venice which presents, in a canopy, the Pisan idea of angels withdrawing curtains, as of a couch, to look down upon the dead. The sarcophagus is richly decorated with flower-work; the usual figures of the Annunciation are at the sides; an enthroned Madonna in the centre; and two bas-reliefs, one of the martyrdom of the Doge's patron saint, St. Andrew, occupy the intermediate spaces. All these tombs have been richly colored; the hair of the angels has here been gilded, their wings bedropped with silver, and their garments covered with the most exquisite arabesques. This tomb, and that of St. Isidore in another chapel of St. Mark's, which was begun by this very Doge, Andrea Dandolo, and completed after his death in 1354, are both nearly alike in their treatment, and are, on the whole, the best existing examples of Venetian monumental sculpture. § LXII. Of much ruder workmanship, though still most precious, and singularly interesting from its quaintness, is a sarcophagus in the northernmost chapel, beside the choir of St. John and Paul, charged with two bas-reliefs and many figures, but which bears no inscription. It has, however, a shield with three dolphins on its brackets; and as at the feet of the Madonna in its centre there is a small kneeling figure of a Doge, we know it to be the tomb of the Doge Giovanni Dolfino, who came to the throne in 1356. He was chosen Doge while, as provveditore, he was in Treviso, defending the city against the King of Hungary. The Venetians sent to the besiegers, praying that their newly elected Doge might be permitted to pass the Hungarian lines. Their request was refused, the Hungarians exulting that they held the Doge of Venice prisoner in Treviso. But Dolfino, with a body of two hundred horse, cut his way through their lines by night, and reached Mestre (Malghera) in safety, where he was met by the Senate. His bravery could not avert the misfortunes which were accumulating on the republic. The Hungarian war was ignominiously terminated by the surrender of Dalmatia: the Doge's heart was broken, his eyesight failed him, and he died of the plague four years after he had ascended the throne. § LXIII. It is perhaps on this account, perhaps in consequence of later injuries, that the tomb has neither effigy nor inscription: that it has been subjected to some violence is evident from the dentil which once crowned its leaf-cornice being now broken away, showing the whole front. But, fortunately, the sculpture of the sarcophagus itself is little injured. There are two saints, male and female, at its angles, each in a little niche; a Christ, enthroned in the centre, the Doge and Dogaressa kneeling at his feet; in the two intermediate panels, on one side the Epiphany, on the other the Death of the Virgin; the whole supported, as well as crowned, by an elaborate leaf-plinth. The figures under the niches are rudely cut, and of little interest. Not so the central group. Instead of a niche, the Christ is seated under a square tent, or tabernacle, formed by curtains running on rods; the idea, of course, as usual, borrowed from the Pisan one, but here ingeniously applied. The curtains are opened in front, showing those at the back of the tent, behind the seated figure; the perspective of the two retiring sides being very tolerably suggested. Two angels, of half the size of the seated figure, thrust back the near curtains, and look up reverently to the Christ; while again, at their feet, about one third of _their_ size, and half-sheltered, as it seems, by their garments, are the two kneeling figures of the Doge and Dogaressa, though so small and carefully cut, full of life. The Christ raising one hand as to bless, and holding a book upright and open on the knees, does not look either towards them or to the angels, but forward; and there is a very noticeable effort to represent Divine abstraction in the countenance: the idea of the three magnitudes of spiritual being,--the God, the Angel, and the Man,--is also to be observed, aided as it is by the complete subjection of the angelic power to the Divine; for the angels are in attitudes of the most lowly watchfulness of the face of Christ, and appear unconscious of the presence of the human beings who are nestled in the folds of their garments. § LXIV. With this interesting but modest tomb of one of the kings of Venice, it is desirable to compare that of one of her senators, of exactly the same date, which is raised against the western wall of the Frari, at the end of the north aisle. It bears the following remarkable inscription: "ANNO MCCCLX. prima die Julii Sepultura . Domini . Simonii Dandolo . amador . de . Justisia . e . desiroso . de . acrese . el . ben . chomum." The "Amador de Justitia" has perhaps some reference to Simon Dandolo's having been one of the Giunta who condemned the Doge Faliero. The sarcophagus is decorated merely by the Annunciation group, and an enthroned Madonna with a curtain behind her throne, sustained by four tiny angels, who look over it as they hold it up; but the workmanship of the figures is more than usually beautiful. § LXV. Seven years later, a very noble monument was placed on the north side of the choir of St. John and Paul, to the Doge Marco Cornaro, chiefly, with respect to our present subject, noticeable for the absence of religious imagery from the sarcophagus, which is decorated with roses only; three very beautiful statues of the Madonna and two saints are, however, set in the canopy above. Opposite this tomb, though about fifteen years later in date, is the richest monument of the Gothic period in Venice; that of the Doge Michele Morosini, who died in 1382. It consists of a highly florid canopy,--an arch crowned by a gable, with pinnacles at the flanks, boldly crocketed, and with a huge finial at the top representing St. Michael,--a medallion of Christ set in the gable; under the arch, a mosaic, representing the Madonna presenting the Doge to Christ upon the cross; beneath, as usual, the sarcophagus, with a most noble recumbent figure of the Doge, his face meagre and severe, and sharp in its lines, but exquisite in the form of its small and princely features. The sarcophagus is adorned with elaborate wrinkled leafage, projecting in front of it into seven brackets, from which the statues are broken away; but by which, for there can be no doubt that these last statues represented the theological and cardinal Virtues, we must for a moment pause. § LXVI. It was noticed above, that the tomb of the Florentine ambassador, Duccio, was the first in Venice which presented images of the Virtues. Its small lateral statues of Justice and Temperance are exquisitely beautiful, and were, I have no doubt, executed by a Florentine sculptor; the whole range of artistical power and religious feeling being, in Florence, full half a century in advance of that of Venice. But this is the first truly Venetian tomb which has the Virtues; and it becomes of importance, therefore, to know what was the character of Morosini. The reader must recollect, that I dated the commencement of the fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, considering that no state could be held as in decline, which numbered such a man amongst its citizens. Carlo Zeno was a candidate for the Ducal bonnet together with Michael Morosini; and Morosini was chosen. It might be anticipated, therefore, that there was something more than usually admirable or illustrious in his character. Yet it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of it, as the reader will at once understand by comparing the following statements: § LXVI. 1. "To him (Andrea Contarini) succeeded Morosini, at the age of seventy-four years; a most learned and prudent man, who also reformed several laws."--_Sansovino_, Vite de' Principi. 2. "It was generally believed that, if his reign had been longer, he would have dignified the state by many noble laws and institutes; but by so much as his reign was full of hope, by as much was it short in duration, for he died when he had been at the head of the republic but four months."--_Sabellico_, lib. viii. 3. "He was allowed but a short time to enjoy this high dignity, which he had so well deserved by his rare virtues, for God called him to Himself on the 15th of October."--_Muratori_, Annali de' Italia. 4. "Two candidates presented themselves; one was Zeno, the other that Michael Morosini who, during the war, had tripled his fortune by his speculations. The suffrages of the electors fell upon him, and he was proclaimed Doge on the 10th of June."--_Daru_, Histoire de Venise, lib. x. 5. "The choice of the electors was directed to Michele Morosini, a noble of illustrious birth, derived from a stock which, coeval with the republic itself, had produced the conqueror of Tyre, given a queen to Hungary, and more than one Doge to Venice. The brilliancy of this descent was tarnished in the present chief representative of the family by the most base and grovelling avarice; for at that moment, in the recent war, at which all other Venetians were devoting their whole fortunes to the service of the state, Morosini sought in the distresses of his country an opening for his own private enrichment, and employed his ducats, not in the assistance of the national wants, but in speculating upon houses which were brought to market at a price far beneath their real value, and which, upon the return of peace, insured the purchaser a fourfold profit. 'What matters the fall of Venice to me, so as I fall not together with her?' was his selfish and sordid reply to some one who expressed surprise at the transaction."--_Sketches of Venetian History_. Murray, 1831. § LXVIII. The writer of the unpretending little history from which the last quotation is taken has not given his authority for this statement, and I could not find it, but believed, from the general accuracy of the book, that some authority might exist better than Daru's. Under these circumstances, wishing if possible to ascertain the truth, and to clear the character of this great Doge from the accusation, if it proved groundless, I wrote to the Count Carlo Morosini, his descendant, and one of the few remaining representatives of the ancient noblesse of Venice; one, also, by whom his great ancestral name is revered, and in whom it is exalted. His answer appears to me altogether conclusive as to the utter fallacy of the reports of Daru and the English history. I have placed his letter in the close of this volume (Appendix 6), in order that the reader may himself be the judge upon this point; and I should not have alluded to Daru's report, except for the purpose of contradicting it, but that it still appears to me impossible that any modern historian should have gratuitously invented the whole story, and that, therefore, there must have been a trace in the documents which Daru himself possessed, of some scandal of this kind raised by Morosini's enemies, perhaps at the very time of the disputed election with Carlo Zeno. The occurrence of the Virtues upon his tomb, for the first time in Venetian monumental work, and so richly and conspicuously placed, may partly have been in public contradiction of such a floating rumor. But the face of the statue is a more explicit contradiction still; it is resolute, thoughtful, serene, and full of beauty; and we must, therefore, for once, allow the somewhat boastful introduction of the Virtues to have been perfectly just: though the whole tomb is most notable, as furnishing not only the exact intermediate condition in style between the pure Gothic and its final Renaissance corruption, but, at the same time, the exactly intermediate condition of _feeling_ between the pure calmness of early Christianity, and the boastful pomp of the Renaissance faithlessness; for here we have still the religious humility remaining in the mosaic of the canopy, which shows the Doge kneeling before the cross, while yet this tendency to self-trust is shown in the surrounding of the coffin by the Virtues. § LXIX. The next tomb by the side of which they appear is that of Jacopo Cavalli, in the same chapel of St. John and Paul which contains the tomb of the Doge Delfin. It is peculiarly rich in religious imagery, adorned by boldly cut types of the four evangelists, and of two saints, while, on projecting brackets in front of it, stood three statues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, now lost, but drawn in Zanotto's work. It is all rich in detail, and its sculptor has been proud of it, thus recording his name below the epitaph: "QST OPERA DINTALGIO E FATTO IN PIERA, UNVENICIAN LAFE CHANOME POLO, NATO DI JACHOMEL CHATAIAPIERA." This work of sculpture is done in stone; A Venetian did it, named Paul, Son of Jachomel the stone-cutter. Jacopo Cavalli died in 1384. He was a bold and active Veronese soldier, did the state much service, was therefore ennobled by it, and became the founder of the house of the Cavalli; but I find no especial reason for the images of the Virtues, especially that of Charity, appearing at his tomb, unless it be this: that at the siege of Feltre, in the war against Leopold of Austria, he refused to assault the city, because the senate would not grant his soldiers the pillage of the town. The feet of the recumbent figure, which is in full armor, rest on a dog, and its head on two lions; and these animals (neither of which form any part of the knight's bearings) are said by Zanotto to be intended to symbolize his bravery and fidelity. If, however, the lions are meant to set forth courage, it is a pity they should have been represented as howling. § LXX. We must next pause for an instant beside the tomb of Michael Steno, now in the northern aisle of St. John and Paul, having been removed there from the destroyed church of the Servi: first, to note its remarkable return to the early simplicity, the sarcophagus being decorated only with two crosses in quatrefoils, though it is of the fifteenth century, Steno dying in 1413; and, in the second place, to observe the peculiarity of the epitaph, which eulogises Steno as having been "amator justitie, pacis, et ubertatis," "a lover of justice, peace, and plenty." In the epitaphs of this period, the virtues which are made most account of in public men are those which were most useful to their country. We have already seen one example in the epitaph on Simon Dandolo; and similar expressions occur constantly in laudatory mentions of their later Doges by the Venetian writers. Thus Sansovino of Marco Cornaro, "Era savio huomo, eloquente, e amava molto la pace e l' abbondanza della citta;" and of Tomaso Mocenigo, "Huomo oltre modo desideroso della pace." Of the tomb of this last-named Doge mention has before been made. Here, as in Morosini's, the images of the Virtues have no ironical power, although their great conspicuousness marks the increase of the boastful feeling in the treatment of monuments. For the rest, this tomb is the last in Venice which can be considered as belonging to the Gothic period. Its mouldings are already rudely classical, and it has meaningless figures in Roman armor at the angles; but its tabernacle above is still Gothic, and the recumbent figure is very beautiful. It was carved by two Florentine sculptors in 1423. § LXXI. Tomaso Mocenigo was succeeded by the renowned Doge, Francesco Foscari, under whom, it will be remembered, the last additions were made to the Gothic Ducal Palace; additions which, in form only, not in spirit, corresponded to the older portions; since, during his reign, the transition took place which permits us no longer to consider the Venetian architecture as Gothic at all. He died in 1457, and his tomb is the first important example of Renaissance art. Not, however, a good characteristic example. It is remarkable chiefly as introducing all the faults of the Renaissance at an early period, when its merits, such as they are, were yet undeveloped. Its claim to be rated as a classical composition is altogether destroyed by the remnants of Gothic feeling which cling to it here and there in their last forms of degradation; and of which, now that we find them thus corrupted, the sooner we are rid the better. Thus the sarcophagus is supported by a species of trefoil arches; the bases of the shafts have still their spurs; and the whole tomb is covered by a pediment, with crockets and a pinnacle. We shall find that the perfect Renaissance is at least pure in its insipidity, and subtle in its vice; but this monument is remarkable as showing the refuse of one style encumbering the embryo of another, and all principles of life entangled either in the swaddling clothes or the shroud. § LXXII. With respect to our present purpose, however, it is a monument of enormous importance. We have to trace, be it remembered, the pride of state in its gradual intrusion upon the sepulchre; and the consequent and correlative vanishing of the expressions of religious feeling and heavenly hope, together with the more and more arrogant setting forth of the virtues of the dead. Now this tomb is the largest and most costly we have yet seen; but its means of religious expression are limited to a single statue of Christ, small and used merely as a pinnacle at the top. The rest of the composition is as curious as it is vulgar. The conceit, so often noticed as having been borrowed from the Pisan school, of angels withdrawing the curtains of the couch to look down upon the dead, was brought forward with increasing prominence by every succeeding sculptor; but, as we draw nearer to the Renaissance period, we find that the _angels_ become of less importance, and the _curtains_ of more. With the Pisans, the curtains are introduced as a motive for the angels; with the Renaissance sculptors, the angels are introduced merely as a motive for the curtains, which become every day more huge and elaborate. In the monument of Mocenigo, they have already expanded into a tent, with a pole in the centre of it: and in that of Foscari, for the first time, the _angels are absent altogether_; while the curtains are arranged in the form of an enormous French tent-bed, and are sustained at the flanks by two diminutive figures in Roman armor; substituted for the angels, merely that the sculptor might _show his knowledge_ of classical costume. And now observe how often a fault in feeling induces also a fault in style. In the old tombs, the angels used to stand on or by the side of the sarcophagus; but their places are here to be occupied by the Virtues, and therefore, to sustain the diminutive Roman figures at the necessary height, each has a whole Corinthian pillar to himself, a pillar whose shaft is eleven feet high, and some three or four feet round: and because this was not high enough, it is put on a pedestal four feet and a half high; and has a spurred base besides of its own, a tall capital, then a huge bracket above the capital, and then another pedestal above the bracket, and on the top of all the diminutive figure who has charge of the curtains. § LXXIII. Under the canopy, thus arranged, is placed the sarcophagus with its recumbent figure. The statues of the Virgin and the saints have disappeared from it. In their stead, its panels are filled with half-length figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity; while Temperance and Fortitude are at the Doge's feet, Justice and Prudence at his head, figures now the size of life, yet nevertheless recognizable only by their attributes: for, except that Hope raises her eyes, there is no difference in the character or expression of any of their faces,--they are nothing more than handsome Venetian women, in rather full and courtly dresses, and tolerably well thrown into postures for effect from below. Fortitude could not of course be placed in a graceful one without some sacrifice of her character, but that was of no consequence in the eyes of the sculptors of this period, so she leans back languidly, and nearly overthrows her own column; while Temperance, and Justice opposite to her, as neither the left hand of the one nor the right hand of the other could be seen from below, have been _left with one hand each_. § LXXIV. Still these figures, coarse and feelingless as they are, have been worked with care, because the principal effect of the tomb depends on them. But the effigy of the Doge, of which nothing but the side is visible, has been utterly neglected; and the ingenuity of the sculptor is not so great, at the best, as that he can afford to be slovenly. There is, indeed, nothing in the history of Foscari which would lead us to expect anything particularly noble in his face; but I trust, nevertheless, it has been misrepresented by this despicable carver; for no words are strong enough to express the baseness of the portraiture. A huge, gross, bony clown's face, with the peculiar sodden and sensual cunning in it which is seen so often in the countenances of the worst Romanist priest; a face part of iron and part of clay, with the immobility of the one, and the foulness of the other, double chinned, blunt-mouthed, bony-cheeked, with its brows drawn down into meagre lines and wrinkles over the eyelids; the face of a man incapable either of joy or sorrow, unless such as may be caused by the indulgence of passion, or the mortification of pride. Even had he been such a one, a noble workman would not have written it so legibly on his tomb; and I believe it to be the image of the carver's own mind that is there hewn in the marble, not that of the Doge Foscari. For the same mind is visible enough throughout, the traces of it mingled with those of the evil taste of the whole time and people. There is not anything so small but it is shown in some portion of its treatment; for instance, in the placing of the shields at the back of the great curtain. In earlier times, the shield, as we have seen, was represented as merely suspended against the tomb by a thong, or if sustained in any other manner, still its form was simple and undisguised. Men in those days used their shields in war, and therefore there was no need to add dignity to their form by external ornament. That which, through day after day of mortal danger, had borne back from them the waves of battle, could neither be degraded by simplicity, nor exalted by decoration. By its rude leathern thong it seemed to be fastened to their tombs, and the shield of the mighty was not cast away, though capable of defending its master no more. § LXXV. It was otherwise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The changed system of warfare was rapidly doing away with the practical service of the shield; and the chiefs who directed the battle from a distance, or who passed the greater part of their lives in the council-chamber, soon came to regard the shield as nothing more than a field for their armorial bearings. It then became a principal object of their Pride of State to increase the conspicuousness of these marks of family distinction by surrounding them with various and fantastic ornament, generally scroll or flower work, which of course deprived the shield of all appearance of being intended for a soldier's use. Thus the shield of the Foscari is introduced in two ways. On the sarcophagus, the bearings are three times repeated, enclosed in circular disks, which are sustained each by a couple of naked infants. Above the canopy, two shields of the usual form are set in the centre of circles filled by a radiating ornament of shell flutings, which give them the effect of ventilators; and their circumference is farther adorned by gilt rays, undulating to represent a glory. § LXXVI. We now approach that period of the early Renaissance which was noticed in the preceding chapter as being at first a very visible improvement on the corrupted Gothic. The tombs executed during the period of the Byzantine Renaissance exhibit, in the first place, a consummate skill in handling the chisel, perfect science of drawing and anatomy, high appreciation of good classical models, and a grace of composition and delicacy of ornament derived, I believe, principally from the great Florentine sculptors. But, together with this science, they exhibit also, for a short time, some return to the early religious feeling, forming a school of sculpture which corresponds to that of the school of the Bellini in painting; and the only wonder is that there should not have been more workmen in the fifteenth century doing in marble what Perugino, Francia, and Bellini did on canvas. There are, indeed, some few, as I have just said, in whom the good and pure temper shows itself: but the sculptor was necessarily led sooner than the painter to an exclusive study of classical models, utterly adverse to the Christian imagination; and he was also deprived of the great purifying and sacred element of color, besides having much more of merely mechanical and therefore degrading labor to go through in the realization of his thought. Hence I do not know any example in sculpture at this period, at least in Venice, which has not conspicuous faults (not faults of imperfection, as in early sculpture, but of purpose and sentiment), staining such beauties as it may possess; and the whole school soon falls away, and merges into vain pomp and meagre metaphor. § LXXVII. The most celebrated monument of this period is that to the Doge Andrea Vendramin, in the Church of St. John and Paul, sculptured about 1480, and before alluded to in the first chapter of the first volume. It has attracted public admiration, partly by its costliness, partly by the delicacy and precision of its chiselling; being otherwise a very base and unworthy example of the school, and showing neither invention nor feeling. It has the Virtues, as usual, dressed like heathen goddesses, and totally devoid of expression, though graceful and well studied merely as female figures. The rest of its sculpture is all of the same kind; perfect in workmanship, and devoid of thought. Its dragons are covered with marvellous scales, but have no terror nor sting in them; its birds are perfect in plumage, but have no song in them; its children lovely of limb, but have no childishness in them. § LXXVIII. Of far other workmanship are the tombs of Pietro and Giovanni Mocenigo, in St. John and Paul, and of Pietro Bernardo in the Frari; in all which the details are as full of exquisite fancy, as they are perfect in execution; and in the two former, and several others of similar feeling, the old religious symbols return; the Madonna is again seen enthroned under the canopy, and the sarcophagus is decorated with legends of the saints. But the fatal errors of sentiment are, nevertheless, always traceable. In the first place, the sculptor is always seen to be intent upon the exhibition of his skill, more than on producing any effect on the spectator's mind; elaborate backgrounds of landscape, with tricks of perspective, imitations of trees, clouds, and water, and various other unnecessary adjuncts, merely to show how marble could be subdued; together with useless under-cutting, and over-finish in subordinate parts, continually exhibiting the same cold vanity and unexcited precision of mechanism. In the second place, the figures have all the peculiar tendency to posture-making, which, exhibiting itself first painfully in Perugino, rapidly destroyed the veracity of composition in all art. By posture-making I mean, in general, that action of figures which results from the painter's considering, in the first place, not how, under the circumstances, they would actually have walked, or stood, or looked, but how they may most gracefully and harmoniously walk or stand. In the hands of a great man, posture, like everything else, becomes noble, even when over-studied, as with Michael Angelo, who was, perhaps, more than any other, the cause of the mischief; but, with inferior men, this habit of composing attitudes ends necessarily in utter lifelessness and abortion. Giotto was, perhaps, of all painters, the most free from the infection of the poison, always conceiving an incident naturally, and drawing it unaffectedly; and the absence of posture-making in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, as opposed to the Attitudinarianism of the modern school, has been both one of their principal virtues, and of the principal causes of outcry against them. § LXXIX. But the most significant change in the treatment of these tombs, with respect to our immediate object, is in the form of the sarcophagus. It was above noted, that, exactly in proportion to the degree of the pride of life expressed in any monument, would be also the fear of death; and therefore, as these tombs increase in splendor, in size, and beauty of workmanship, we perceive a gradual desire to _take away from the definite character of the sarcophagus_. In the earliest times, as we have seen, it was a gloomy mass of stone; gradually it became charged with religious sculpture; but never with the slightest desire to disguise its form, until towards the middle of the fifteenth century. It then becomes enriched with flower-work and hidden by the Virtues; and, finally, losing its foursquare form, it is modelled on graceful types of ancient vases, made as little like a coffin as possible, and refined away in various elegancies, till it becomes, at last, a mere pedestal or stage for the portrait statue. This statue, in the meantime, has been gradually coming back to life, through a curious series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few years later, this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and, lo! the figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised themselves on their elbows, and began to look round them. The soul of the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body in death. § LXXX. The reader cannot but remember many instances of this form of monument, England being peculiarly rich in examples of them; although, with her, tomb sculpture, after the fourteenth century, is altogether imitative, and in no degree indicative of the temper of the people. It was from Italy that the authority for the change was derived; and in Italy only, therefore, that it is truly correspondent to the change in the national mind. There are many monuments in Venice of this semi-animate type, most of them carefully sculptured, and some very admirable as portraits, and for the casting of the drapery, especially those in the Church of San Salvador; but I shall only direct the reader to one, that of Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, in the Church of the Frari; notable not only as a very skilful piece of sculpture, but for the epitaph, singularly characteristic of the period, and confirmatory of all that I have alleged against it: "James Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, who conquered the Turks in war, himself in peace, transported from a noble family among the Venetians to a nobler among the angels, laid here, expects the noblest crown, which the just Judge shall give to him in that day. He lived the years of Plato. He died 24th March, 1547."[20] The mingled classicism and carnal pride of this epitaph surely need no comment. The crown is expected as a right from the justice of the judge, and the nobility of the Venetian family is only a little lower than that of the angels. The quaint childishness of the "Vixit annos Platonicos" is also very notable. § LXXXI. The statue, however, did not long remain in this partially recumbent attitude. Even the expression of peace became painful to the frivolous and thoughtless Italians, and they required the portraiture to be rendered in a manner that should induce no memory of death. The statue rose up, and presented itself in front of the tomb, like an actor upon a stage, surrounded now not merely, or not at all, by the Virtues, but by allegorical figures of Fame and Victory, by genii and muses, by personifications of humbled kingdoms and adoring nations, and by every circumstance of pomp, and symbol of adulation, that flattery could suggest, or insolence could claim. § LXXXII. As of the intermediate monumental type, so also of this, the last and most gross, there are unfortunately many examples in our own country; but the most wonderful, by far, are still at Venice. I shall, however, particularize only two; the first, that of the Doge John Pesaro, in the Frari. It is to be observed that we have passed over a considerable interval of time; we are now in the latter half of the seventeenth century; the progress of corruption has in the meantime been incessant, and sculpture has here lost its taste and learning as well as its feeling. The monument is a huge accumulation of theatrical scenery in marble: four colossal negro caryatides, grinning and horrible, with faces of black marble and white eyes, sustain the first story of it; above this, two monsters, long-necked, half dog and half dragon, sustain an ornamental sarcophagus, on the top of which the full-length statue of the Doge in robes of state stands forward with its arms expanded, like an actor courting applause, under a huge canopy of metal, like the roof of a bed, painted crimson and gold; on each side of him are sitting figures of genii, and unintelligible personifications gesticulating in Roman armor; below, between the negro caryatides, are two ghastly figures in bronze, half corpse, half skeleton, carrying tablets on which is written the eulogium: but in large letters graven in gold, the following words are the first and last that strike the eye; the first two phrases, one on each side, on tablets in the lower story, the last under the portrait statue above: VIXIT ANNOS LXX. DEVIXIT ANNO MDCLIX. "HIC REVIXIT ANNO MDCLXIX." We have here, at last, the horrible images of death in violent contrast with the defiant monument, which pretends to bring the resurrection down to earth, "Hic revixit;" and it seems impossible for false taste and base feeling to sink lower. Yet even this monument is surpassed by one in St. John and Paul. § LXXXIII. But before we pass to this, the last with which I shall burden the reader's attention, let us for a moment, and that we may feel the contrast more forcibly, return to a tomb of the early times. In a dark niche in the outer wall of the outer corridor of St. Mark's--not even in the church, observe, but in the atrium or porch of it, and on the north side of the church,--is a solid sarcophagus of white marble, raised only about two feet from the ground on four stunted square pillars. Its lid is a mere slab of stone; on its extremities are sculptured two crosses; in front of it are two rows of rude figures, the uppermost representing Christ with the Apostles: the lower row is of six figures only, alternately male and female, holding up their hands in the usual attitude of benediction; the sixth is smaller than the rest, and the midmost of the other five has a glory round its head. I cannot tell the meaning of these figures, but between them are suspended censers attached to crosses; a most beautiful symbolic expression of Christ's mediatorial function. The whole is surrounded by a rude wreath of vine leaves, proceeding out of the foot of a cross. On the bar of marble which separates the two rows of figures are inscribed these words: "Here lies the Lord Marin Morosini, Duke." It is the tomb of the Doge Marino Morosini, who reigned from 1249 to 1252. § LXXXIV. From before this rude and solemn sepulchre let us pass to the southern aisle of the church of St. John and Paul; and there, towering from the pavement to the vaulting of the church, behold a mass of marble, sixty or seventy feet in height, of mingled yellow and white, the yellow carved into the form of an enormous curtain, with ropes, fringes, and tassels, sustained by cherubs; in front of which, in the now usual stage attitudes, advance the statues of the Doge Bertuccio Valier, his son the Doge Silvester Falier, and his son's wife, Elizabeth. The statues of the Doges, though mean and Polonius-like, are partly redeemed by the Ducal robes; but that of the Dogaressa is a consummation of grossness, vanity, and ugliness,--the figure of a large and wrinkled woman, with elaborate curls in stiff projection round her face, covered from her shoulders to her feet with ruffs, furs, lace, jewels, and embroidery. Beneath and around are scattered Virtues, Victories, Fames, genii,--the entire company of the monumental stage assembled, as before a drop scene,--executed by various sculptors, and deserving attentive study as exhibiting every condition of false taste and feeble conception. The Victory in the centre is peculiarly interesting; the lion by which she is accompanied, springing on a dragon, has been intended to look terrible, but the incapable sculptor could not conceive any form of dreadfulness, could not even make the lion look angry. It looks only lachrymose; and its lifted forepaws, there being no spring nor motion in its body, give it the appearance of a dog begging. The inscriptions under the two principal statues are as follows: "Bertucius Valier, Duke, Great in wisdom and eloquence, Greater in his Hellespontic victory, Greatest in the Prince his son. Died in the year 1658." "Elisabeth Quirina, The wife of Silvester, Distinguished by Roman virtue, By Venetian piety, And by the Ducal crown, Died 1708." The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of these epitaphs is also interesting from its mention, in an age now altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honor, of that "Venetian piety" which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph, and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre. § LXXXV. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance spirit, the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason of the fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence against them had gone forth from everlasting. "Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart ... _Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee_; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee ...; thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee."[21] § LXXXVI. III. PRIDE OF SYSTEM. I might have illustrated these evil principles from a thousand other sources, but I have not time to pursue the subject farther, and must pass to the third element above named, the Pride of System. It need not detain us so long as either of the others, for it is at once more palpable and less dangerous. The manner in which the pride of the fifteenth century corrupted the sources of knowledge, and diminished the majesty, while it multiplied the trappings, of state, is in general little observed; but the reader is probably already well and sufficiently aware of the curious tendency to formulization and system which, under the name of philosophy, encumbered the minds of the Renaissance schoolmen. As it was above stated, grammar became the first of sciences; and whatever subject had to be treated, the first aim of the philosopher was to subject its principles to a code of laws, in the observation of which the merit of the speaker, thinker, or worker, in or on that subject, was thereafter to consist; so that the whole mind of the world was occupied by the exclusive study of Restraints. The sound of the forging of fetters was heard from sea to sea. The doctors of all the arts and sciences set themselves daily to the invention of new varieties of cages and manacles; they themselves wore, instead of gowns, a chain mail, whose purpose was not so much to avert the weapon of the adversary as to restrain the motions of the wearer; and all the acts, thoughts, and workings of mankind,--poetry, painting, architecture, and philosophy,--were reduced by them merely to so many different forms of fetter-dance. § LXXXVII. Now, I am very sure that no reader who has given any attention to the former portions of this work, or the tendency of what else I have written, more especially the last chapter of the "Seven Lamps," will suppose me to underrate the importance, or dispute the authority, of law. It has been necessary for me to allege these again and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged, against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of civilization; heady and high-minded, despisers of discipline, and refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and system, and is not written upon the heart,--as it is, in a Divine loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait about the throne of the Eternal Lawgiver,--this lower and formally expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains, forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught among responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and foolishness are in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to submit themselves painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their need of being corrected, and to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate things which are governed by law altogether; yet yielding, in the manner of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of man,--being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their greatness.[22] But, so far as men become good and wise, and rise above the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in the fulness and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law; a law so universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep it. § LXXXVIII. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this Divine law in two opposite ways: either by brute resistance, which is the way of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether; or by formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, exalting himself while he pretends to obedience, and making void the infinite and spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered commandment. And it is easy to know which law we are obeying: for any law which we magnify and keep through pride, is always the law of the letter; but that which we love and keep through humility, is the law of the Spirit: And the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. § LXXXIX. In the appliance of this universal principle to what we have at present in hand, it is to be noted, that all written or writable law respecting the arts is for the childish and ignorant: that in the beginning of teaching, it is possible to say that this or that must or must not be done; and laws of color and shade may be taught, as laws of harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the moment a man begins to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law has become a matter of course with him; and if, thenceforth, he boast himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working out such magnificent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and fulfilled in the single stroke of a great workman, than could be written in a volume. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by his Maker, not in any wise communicable or imitable.[23] Neither can any written or definitely observable laws enable us to do any great thing. It is possible, by measuring and administering quantities of color, to paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there are no laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to measure and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse; but there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the picture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study them with advantage, to the better understanding of the existing poem or picture; but no more write or paint another, than by discovering laws of vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we find the system and formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by force of intellect or of piety; for it was not possible that, either in literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind, so as materially to interfere with its originality: and the crabbed discipline and exact scholarship became an advantage to the men who could pass through and despise them; so that in spite of the rules of the drama we had Shakspeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had Tintoret,--both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the vulgar scholarship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude. § XC. But in architecture it was not so; for that was the art of the multitude, and was affected by all their errors; and the great men who entered its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the architecture merely its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had their way with it: and the reader can have no conception of the inanities and puerilities of the writers, who, with the help of Vitruvius, re-established its "five orders," determined the proportions of each, and gave the various recipes for sublimity and beauty, which have been thenceforward followed to this day, but which may, I believe, in this age of perfect machinery, be followed out still farther. If, indeed, there are only five perfect forms of columns and architraves, and there be a fixed proportion to each, it is certainly possible, with a little ingenuity, so to regulate a stonecutting machine, as that it shall furnish pillars and friezes to the size ordered, of any of the five orders, on the most perfect Greek models, in any quantity; an epitome, also, of Vitruvius, may be made so simple, as to enable any bricklayer to set them up at their proper distances, and we may dispense with our architects altogether. § XCI. But if this be not so, and there be any truth in the faint persuasion which still lurks in men's minds that architecture _is_ an art, and that it requires some gleam of intellect to practise it, then let the whole system of the orders and their proportions be cast out and trampled down as the most vain, barbarous, and paltry deception that was ever stamped on human prejudice; and let us understand this plain truth, common to all work of man, that, if it be good work, it is not a copy, nor anything done by rule, but a freshly and divinely imagined thing. Five orders! There is not a side chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it has fifty orders, the worst of them better than the best of the Greek ones, and all new; and a single inventive human soul could create a thousand orders in an hour.[24] And this would have been discovered even in the worst times, but that, as I said, the greatest men of the age found expression for their invention in the other arts, and the best of those who devoted themselves to architecture were in great part occupied in adapting the construction of buildings to new necessities, such as those developed by the invention of gunpowder (introducing a totally new and most interesting science of fortification, which directed the ingenuity of Sanmicheli and many others from its proper channel), and found interest of a meaner kind in the difficulties of reconciling the obsolete architectural laws they had consented to revive, and the forms of Roman architecture which they agreed to copy, with the requirements of the daily life of the sixteenth century. § XCII. These, then, were the three principal directions in which the Renaissance pride manifested itself, and its impulses were rendered still more fatal by the entrance of another element, inevitably associated with pride. For, as it is written, "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool," so also it is written, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" and the self-adulation which influenced not less the learning of the age than its luxury, led gradually to the forgetfulness of all things but self, and to an infidelity only the more fatal because it still retained the form and language of faith. § XCIII. IV. INFIDELITY. In noticing the more prominent forms in which this faithlessness manifested itself, it is necessary to distinguish justly between that which was the consequence of respect for Paganism, and that which followed from the corruption of Catholicism. For as the Roman architecture is not to be made answerable for the primal corruption of the Gothic, so neither is the Roman philosophy to be made answerable for the primal corruption of Christianity. Year after year, as the history of the life of Christ sank back into the depths of time, and became obscured by the misty atmosphere of the history of the world,--as intermediate actions and incidents multiplied in number, and countless changes in men's modes of life, and tones of thought, rendered it more difficult for them to imagine the facts of distant time,--it became daily, almost hourly, a greater effort for the faithful heart to apprehend the entire veracity and vitality of the story of its Redeemer; and more easy for the thoughtless and remiss to deceive themselves as to the true character of the belief they had been taught to profess. And this must have been the case, had the pastors of the Church never failed in their watchfulness, and the Church itself never erred in its practice or doctrine. But when every year that removed the truths of the Gospel into deeper distance, added to them also some false or foolish tradition; when wilful distortion was added to natural obscurity, and the dimness of memory was disguised by the fruitfulness of fiction; when, moreover, the enormous temporal power granted to the clergy attracted into their ranks multitudes of men who, but for such temptation, would not have pretended to the Christian name, so that grievous wolves entered in among them, not sparing the flock; and when, by the machinations of such men, and the remissness of others, the form and administrations of Church doctrine and discipline had become little more than a means of aggrandizing the power of the priesthood, it was impossible any longer for men of thoughtfulness or piety to remain in an unquestioning serenity of faith. The Church had become so mingled with the world that its witness could no longer be received; and the professing members of it, who were placed in circumstances such as to enable them to become aware of its corruptions, and whom their interest or their simplicity did not bribe or beguile into silence, gradually separated themselves into two vast multitudes of adverse energy, one tending to Reformation, and the other to Infidelity. § XCIV. Of these, the last stood, as it were, apart, to watch the course of the struggle between Romanism and Protestantism; a struggle which, however necessary, was attended with infinite calamity to the Church. For, in the first place, the Protestant movement was, in reality, not _reformation_ but _reanimation_. It poured new life into the Church, but it did not form or define her anew. In some sort it rather broke down her hedges, so that all they who passed by might pluck off her grapes. The reformers speedily found that the enemy was never far behind the sower of good seed; that an evil spirit might enter the ranks of reformation as well as those of resistance; and that though the deadly blight might be checked amidst the wheat, there was no hope of ever ridding the wheat itself from the tares. New temptations were invented by Satan wherewith to oppose the revived strength of Christianity: as the Romanist, confiding in his human teachers, had ceased to try whether they were teachers sent from God, so the Protestant, confiding in the teaching of the Spirit, believed every spirit, and did not try the spirits whether they were of God. And a thousand enthusiasms and heresies speedily obscured the faith and divided the force of the Reformation. § XCV. But the main evils rose out of the antagonism of the two great parties; primarily, in the mere fact of the existence of an antagonism. To the eyes of the unbeliever the Church of Christ, for the first time since its foundation, bore the aspect of a house divided against itself. Not that many forms of schism had not before arisen in it; but either they had been obscure and silent, hidden among the shadows of the Alps and the marshes of the Rhine; or they had been outbreaks of visible and unmistakable error, cast off by the Church, rootless, and speedily withering away, while, with much that was erring and criminal, she still retained within her the pillar and ground of the truth. But here was at last a schism in which truth and authority were at issue. The body that was cast off withered away no longer. It stretched out its boughs to the sea and its branches to the river, and it was the ancient trunk that gave signs of decrepitude. On one side stood the reanimated faith, in its right hand the book open, and its left hand lifted up to heaven, appealing for its proof to the Word of the Testimony and the power of the Holy Ghost. On the other stood, or seemed to stand, all beloved custom and believed tradition; all that for fifteen hundred years had been closest to the hearts of men, or most precious for their help. Long-trusted legend; long-reverenced power; long-practised discipline; faiths that had ruled the destiny, and sealed the departure, of souls that could not be told or numbered for multitude; prayers, that from the lips of the fathers to those of the children had distilled like sweet waterfalls, sounding through the silence of ages, breaking themselves into heavenly dew to return upon the pastures of the wilderness; hopes, that had set the face as a flint in the torture, and the sword as a flame in the battle, that had pointed the purposes and ministered the strength of life, brightened the last glances and shaped the last syllables of death; charities, that had bound together the brotherhoods of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;--these all stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one, even at the best; but it was rendered tenfold more bitter by the natural, but most sinful animosity of the two divisions of the Church against each other. § XCVI. On one side this animosity was, of course, inevitable. The Romanist party, though still including many Christian men, necessarily included, also, all the worst of those who called themselves Christians. In the fact of its refusing correction, it stood confessed as the Church of the unholy; and, while it still counted among its adherents many of the simple and believing,--men unacquainted with the corruption of the body to which they belonged, or incapable of accepting any form of doctrine but that which they had been taught from their youth,--it gathered together with them whatever was carnal and sensual in priesthood or in people, all the lovers of power in the one, and of ease in the other. And the rage of these men was, of course, unlimited against those who either disputed their authority, reprehended their manner of life, or cast suspicion upon the popular methods of lulling the conscience in the lifetime, or purchasing salvation on the death-bed. § XCVII. Besides this, the reassertion and defence of various tenets which before had been little more than floating errors in the popular mind, but which, definitely attacked by Protestantism, it became necessary to fasten down with a band of iron and brass, gave a form at once more rigid, and less rational, to the whole body of Romanist Divinity. Multitudes of minds which in other ages might have brought honor and strength to the Church, preaching the more vital truths which it still retained, were now occupied in pleading for arraigned falsehoods, or magnifying disused frivolities; and it can hardly be doubted by any candid observer, that the nascent or latent errors which God pardoned in times of ignorance, became unpardonable when they were formally defined and defended; that fallacies which were forgiven to the enthusiasm of a multitude, were avenged upon the stubbornness of a Council; that, above all, the great invention of the age, which rendered God's word accessible to every man, left all sins against its light incapable of excuse or expiation; and that from the moment when Rome set herself in direct opposition to the Bible, the judgment was pronounced upon her, which made her the scorn and the prey of her own children, and cast her down from the throne where she had magnified herself against heaven, so low, that at last the unimaginable scene of the Bethlehem humiliation was mocked in the temples of Christianity. Judea had seen her God laid in the manger of the beasts of burden; it was for Christendom to stable the beasts of burden by the altar of her God. § XCVIII. Nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of Protestantism to the Papacy less injurious to itself. That opposition was, for the most part, intemperate, undistinguishing, and incautious. It could indeed hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect, presumption rose over presumption; the miracles of the early Church were denied and its martyrs forgotten, though their power and palm were claimed by the members of every persecuted sect; pride, malice, wrath, love of change, masked themselves under the thirst for truth, and mingled with the just resentment of deception, so that it became impossible even for the best and truest men to know the plague of their own hearts; while avarice and impiety openly transformed reformation into robbery, and reproof into sacrilege. Ignorance could as easily lead the foes of the Church, as lull her slumber; men who would once have been the unquestioning recipients, were now the shameless inventors of absurd or perilous superstitions; they who were of the temper that walketh in darkness, gained little by having discovered their guides to be blind; and the simplicity of the faith, ill understood and contumaciously alleged, became an excuse for the rejection of the highest arts and most tried wisdom of mankind: while the learned infidel, standing aloof, drew his own conclusions, both from the rancor of the antagonists, and from their errors; believed each in all that he alleged against the other; and smiled with superior humanity, as he watched the winds of the Alps drift the ashes of Jerome, and the dust of England drink the blood of King Charles. § XCIX. Now all this evil was, of course, entirely independent of the renewal of the study of Pagan writers. But that renewal found the faith of Christendom already weakened and divided; and therefore it was itself productive of an effect tenfold greater than could have been apprehended from it at another time. It acted first, as before noticed, in leading the attention of all men to words instead of things; for it was discovered that the language of the middle ages had been corrupt, and the primal object of every scholar became now to purify his style. To this study of words, that of forms being added, both as of matters of the first importance, half the intellect of the age was at once absorbed in the base sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies utterly unworthy of the serious labor of men, and necessarily rendering those employed upon them incapable of high thoughts or noble emotion. Of the debasing tendency of philology, no proof is needed beyond once reading a grammarian's notes on a great poet: logic is unnecessary for men who can reason; and about as useful to those who cannot, as a machine for forcing one foot in due succession before the other would be to a man who could not walk: while the study of rhetoric is exclusively one for men who desire to deceive or be deceived; he who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he fear it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty keeps the truth from being heard. § C. The study of these sciences, therefore, naturally made men shallow and dishonest in general; but it had a peculiarly fatal effect with respect to religion, in the view which men took of the Bible. Christ's teaching was discovered not to be rhetorical, St. Paul's preaching not to be logical, and the Greek of the New Testament not to be grammatical. The stern truth, the profound pathos, the impatient period, leaping from point to point and leaving the intervals for the hearer to fill, the comparatively Hebraized and unelaborate idiom, had little in them of attraction for the students of phrase and syllogism; and the chief knowledge of the age became one of the chief stumbling-blocks to its religion. § CI. But it was not the grammarian and logician alone who was thus retarded or perverted; in them there had been small loss. The men who could truly appreciate the higher excellences of the classics were carried away by a current of enthusiasm which withdrew them from every other study. Christianity was still professed as a matter of form, but neither the Bible nor the writings of the Fathers had time left for their perusal, still less heart left for their acceptance. The human mind is not capable of more than a certain amount of admiration or reverence, and that which was given to Horace was withdrawn from David. Religion is, of all subjects, that which will least endure a second place in the heart or thoughts, and a languid and occasional study of it was sure to lead to error or infidelity. On the other hand, what was heartily admired and unceasingly contemplated was soon brought nigh to being believed; and the systems of Pagan mythology began gradually to assume the places in the human mind from which the unwatched Christianity was wasting. Men did not indeed openly sacrifice to Jupiter, or build silver shrines for Diana, but the ideas of Paganism nevertheless became thoroughly vital and present with them at all times; and it did not matter in the least, as far as respected the power of true religion, whether the Pagan image was believed in or not, so long as it entirely occupied the thoughts. The scholar of the sixteenth century, if he saw the lightning shining from the east unto the west, thought forthwith of Jupiter, not of the coming of the Son of Man; if he saw the moon walking in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the throne which was to be established for ever as a faithful witness in heaven; and though his heart was but secretly enticed, yet thus he denied the God that is above.[25] And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity confessed and Paganism beloved, was worse than Paganism itself, inasmuch as it refused effective and practical belief altogether. It would have been better to have worshipped Diana and Jupiter at once, than to have gone on through the whole of life naming one God, imagining another, and dreading none. Better, a thousandfold, to have been "a Pagan suckled in some creed outworn," than to have stood by the great sea of Eternity and seen no God walking on its waves, no heavenly world on its horizon. § CII. This fatal result of an enthusiasm for classical literature was hastened and heightened by the misdirection of the powers of art. The imagination of the age was actively set to realize these objects of Pagan belief; and all the most exalted faculties of man, which, up to that period, had been employed in the service of Faith, were now transferred to the service of Fiction. The invention which had formerly been both sanctified and strengthened by laboring under the command of settled intention, and on the ground of assured belief, had now the reins laid upon its neck by passion, and all ground of fact cut from beneath its feet; and the imagination which formerly had helped men to apprehend the truth, now tempted them to believe a falsehood. The faculties themselves wasted away in their own treason; one by one they fell in the potter's field; and the Raphael who seemed sent and inspired from heaven that he might paint Apostles and Prophets, sank at once into powerlessness at the feet of Apollo and the Muses. § CIII. But this was not all. The habit of using the greatest gifts of imagination upon fictitious subjects, of course destroyed the honor and value of the same imagination used in the cause of truth. Exactly in the proportion in which Jupiters and Mercuries were embodied and believed, in that proportion Virgins and Angels were disembodied and disbelieved. The images summoned by art began gradually to assume one average value in the spectator's mind; and incidents from the Iliad and from the Exodus to come within the same degrees of credibility. And, farther, while the powers of the imagination were becoming daily more and more languid, because unsupported by faith, the manual skill and science of the artist were continually on the increase. When these had reached a certain point, they began to be the principal things considered in the picture, and its story or scene to be thought of only as a theme for their manifestation. Observe the difference. In old times, men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times, they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting. The distinction is enormous, the difference incalculable as irreconcilable. And thus, the more skilful the artist, the less his subject was regarded; and the hearts of men hardened as their handling softened, until they reached a point when sacred, profane, or sensual subjects were employed, with absolute indifference, for the display of color and execution; and gradually the mind of Europe congealed into that state of utter apathy,--inconceivable, unless it had been witnessed, and unpardonable, unless by us, who have been infected by it,--which permits us to place the Madonna and the Aphrodite side by side in our galleries, and to pass, with the same unmoved inquiry into the manner of their handling, from a Bacchanal to a Nativity. Now all this evil, observe, would have been merely the necessary and natural operation of an enthusiasm for the classics, and of a delight in the mere science of the artist, on the most virtuous mind. But this operation took place upon minds enervated by luxury, and which were tempted, at the very same period, to forgetfulness or denial of all religious principle by their own basest instincts. The faith which had been undermined by the genius of Pagans, was overthrown by the crimes of Christians; and the ruin which was begun by scholarship, was completed by sensuality. The characters of the heathen divinities were as suitable to the manners of the time as their forms were agreeable to its taste; and Paganism again became, in effect, the religion of Europe. That is to say, the civilized world is at this moment, collectively, just as Pagan as it was in the second century; a small body of believers being now, as they were then, representative of the Church of Christ in the midst of the faithless: but there is just this difference, and this very fatal one, between the second and nineteenth centuries, that the Pagans are nominally and fashionably Christians, and that there is every conceivable variety and shade of belief between the two; so that not only is it most difficult theoretically to mark the point where hesitating trust and failing practice change into definite infidelity, but it has become a point of politeness not to inquire too deeply into our neighbor's religious opinions; and, so that no one be offended by violent breach of external forms, to waive any close examination into the tenets of faith. The fact is, we distrust each other and ourselves so much, that we dare not press this matter; we know that if, on any occasion of general intercourse, we turn to our next neighbor, and put to him some searching or testing question, we shall, in nine cases out of ten, discover him to be only a Christian in his own way, and as far as he thinks proper, and that he doubts of many things which we ourselves do not believe strongly enough to hear doubted without danger. What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity; and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice. And under this shelter of charity, humility, and faintheartedness, the world, unquestioned by others or by itself, mingles with and overwhelms the small body of Christians, legislates for them, moralizes for them, reasons for them; and, though itself of course greatly and beneficently influenced by the association, and held much in check by its pretence to Christianity, yet undermines, in nearly the same degree, the sincerity and practical power of Christianity itself, until at last, in the very institutions of which the administration may be considered as the principal test of the genuineness of national religion, those devoted to education, the Pagan system is completely triumphant; and the entire body of the so-called Christian world has established a system of instruction for its youth, wherein neither the history of Christ's Church, nor the language of God's law, is considered a study of the smallest importance; wherein, of all subjects of human inquiry, his own religion is the one in which a youth's ignorance is most easily forgiven;[26] and in which it is held a light matter that he should be daily guilty of lying, or debauchery, or of blasphemy, so only that he write Latin verses accurately, and with speed. I believe that in few years more we shall wake from all these errors in astonishment, as from evil dreams; having been preserved, in the midst of their madness, by those hidden roots of active and earnest Christianity which God's grace has bound in the English nation with iron and brass. But in the Venetian, those roots themselves had withered; and, from the palace of their ancient religion, their pride cast them forth hopelessly to the pasture of the brute. From pride to infidelity, from infidelity to the unscrupulous and insatiable pursuit of pleasure, and from this to irremediable degradation, the transitions were swift, like the falling of a star. The great palaces of the haughtiest nobles of Venice were stayed, before they had risen far above their foundations, by the blast of a penal poverty; and the wild grass, on the unfinished fragments of their mighty shafts, waves at the tide-mark where the power of the godless people first heard the "Hitherto shalt thou come." And the regeneration in which they had so vainly trusted,--the new birth and clear dawning, as they thought it, of all art, all knowledge, and all hope,--became to them as that dawn which Ezekiel saw on the hills of Israel: "Behold the day; behold, it is come. The rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor of their multitude; let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all the multitude thereof." FOOTNOTES: [8] Or, more briefly, science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena. I use the word "art" here with reference to the fine arts only, for the lower arts of mechanical production I should reserve the word "manufacture." [9] Tintoret. [10] St. Bernard. [11] Society always has a destructive influence upon an artist: first by its sympathy with his meanest powers; secondly, by its chilling want of understanding of his greatest; and, thirdly, by its vain occupation of his time and thoughts. Of course a painter of men must be _among_ men; but it ought to be as a watcher, not as a companion. [12] I intended in this place to have introduced some special consideration of the science of anatomy, which I believe to have been in great part the cause of the decline of modern art; but I have been anticipated by a writer better able to treat the subject. I have only glanced at his book; and there is something in the spirit of it which I do not like, and some parts of it are assuredly wrong; but, respecting anatomy, it seems to me to settle the question indisputably, more especially as being written by a master of the science. I quote two passages, and must refer the reader to the sequel. "_The scientific men of forty centuries_ have failed to describe so accurately, so beautifully, so artistically, as Homer did, the organic elements constituting the emblems of youth and beauty, and the waste and decay which these sustain by time and age. All these Homer understood better, and has described more truthfully than the scientific men of forty centuries.... "Before I approach this question, permit me to make a few remarks on the pre-historic period of Greece; that era which seems to have produced nearly all the great men. "On looking attentively at the statues within my observation, I cannot find the slightest foundation for the assertion that their sculptors must have dissected the human frame and been well acquainted with the human anatomy. They, like Homer, had discovered Nature's secret, and bestowed their whole attention on the exterior. The exterior they read profoundly, and studied deeply--the _living exterior_ and the _dead_. Above all, they avoided displaying the dead and dissected interior, through the exterior. They had discovered that the interior presents hideous shapes, but not forms. Men during the philosophic era of Greece saw all this, each reading the antique to the best of his abilities. The man of genius rediscovered the canon of the ancient masters, and wrought on its principles. The greater number, as now, unequal to this step, merely imitated and copied those who preceded them."--_Great Artists and Great Anatomists_. By R. Knox, M.D. London, Van Voorst, 1852. Respecting the value of literary knowledge in general as regards art, the reader will also do well to meditate on the following sentences from Hallam's "Literature of Europe;" remembering at the same time what I have above said, that "the root of all great art in Europe is struck in the thirteenth century," and that the great time is from 1250 to 1350: "In Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age of learning compared with the thirteenth." "The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of common grammatical rules." The fourteenth century was "not superior to the thirteenth in learning.... We may justly praise Richard of Bury for his zeal in collecting books. But his erudition appears crude, his style indifferent, and his thoughts superficial." I doubt the superficialness of the _thoughts_: at all events, this is not a character of the time, though it may be of the writer; for this would affect art more even than literature. [13] Churton's "Early English Church." London, 1840. [14] "Quibus nulla macula inest quæ non cernatur. Ita viri nobilitate præditi eam vitam peragant cui nulla nota possit inviri." The first sentence is literally, "in which there is no spot that may not be seen." But I imagine the writer meant it as I have put it in the text, else his comparison does not hold. [15] Observe, however, that the magnitude spoken of here and in the following passages, is the finished and polished magnitude sought for the sake of pomp: not the rough magnitude sought for the sake of sublimity: respecting which see the "Seven Lamps," chap. iii. § 5, 6, and 8. [16] Can Grande died in 1329: we can hardly allow more than five years for the erection of his tomb. [17] Vol. I. Chap. I. [18] Sansovino, lib. xiii. [19] Tentori, vi. 142, i. 157. [20] "Jacobus Pisaurius Paphi Episcopus qui Turcos bello, se ipsum pace vincebat, ex nobili inter Venetas, ad nobiliorem inter Angelos familiam delatus, nobilissimam in illa die Coronam justo Judice reddente, hic situs expectat Vixit annos Platonicos. Obijt MDXLVII. IX. Kal. Aprilis." [21] Isaiah xlvii. 7, 10, 11, 15. [22] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. vii. § 3. [23] See the farther remarks on Inspiration, in the fourth chapter. [24] That is to say, orders separated by such distinctions as the old Greek ones: considered with reference to the bearing power of the capital, all orders may be referred to two, as long ago stated; just as trees may be referred to the two great classes, monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous. [25] Job xxi: 26-28; Psalm lxxxix. 37. [26] I shall not forget the impression made upon me at Oxford, when, going up for my degree, and mentioning to one of the authorities that I had not had time enough to read the Epistles properly, I was told, that "the Epistles were separate sciences, and I need not trouble myself about them." The reader will find some farther notes on this subject in Appendix 7, "Modern Education." CHAPTER III. GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE. § I. In the close of the last chapter it was noted that the phases of transition in the moral temper of the falling Venetians, during their fall, were from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to the unscrupulous _pursuit of pleasure_. During the last years of the existence of the state, the minds both of the nobility and the people seem to have been set simply upon the attainment of the means of self-indulgence. There was not strength enough in them to be proud, nor forethought enough to be ambitious. One by one the possessions of the state were abandoned to its enemies; one by one the channels of its trade were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and closed against it by its more energetic rivals; and the time, the resources, and the thoughts of the nation were exclusively occupied in the invention of such fantastic and costly pleasures as might best amuse their apathy, lull their remorse, or disguise their ruin. § II. The architecture raised at Venice during this period is amongst the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which, exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I found that the entire spirit of the Renaissance could not be comprehended unless it was followed to its consummation; and that there were many most interesting questions arising out of the study of this particular spirit of jesting, with reference to which I have called it the _Grotesque_ Renaissance. For it is not this period alone which is distinguished by such a spirit. There is jest--perpetual, careless, and not unfrequently obscene--in the most noble work of the Gothic periods; and it becomes, therefore, of the greatest possible importance to examine into the nature and essence of the Grotesque itself, and to ascertain in what respect it is that the jesting of art in its highest flight, differs from its jesting in its utmost degradation. § III. The place where we may best commence our inquiry is one renowned in the history of Venice, the space of ground before the Church of Santa Maria Formosa; a spot which, after the Rialto and St. Mark's Place, ought to possess a peculiar interest in the mind of the traveller, in consequence of its connexion with the most touching and true legend of the Brides of Venice. That legend is related at length in every Venetian history, and, finally, has been told by the poet Rogers, in a way which renders it impossible for any one to tell it after him. I have only, therefore, to remind the reader that the capture of the brides took place in the cathedral church, St. Pietro di Castello; and that this of Santa Maria Formosa is connected with the tale, only because it was yearly visited with prayers by the Venetian maidens, on the anniversary of their ancestors' deliverance. For that deliverance, their thanks were to be rendered to the Virgin; and there was no church then dedicated to the Virgin, in Venice, except this.[27] Neither of the cathedral church, nor of this dedicated to St. Mary the Beautiful, is one stone left upon another. But, from that which has been raised on the site of the latter, we may receive a most important lesson, introductory to our immediate subject, if first we glance back to the traditional history of the church which has been destroyed. § IV. No more honorable epithet than "traditional" can be attached to what is recorded concerning it, yet I should grieve to lose the legend of its first erection. The Bishop of Uderzo, driven by the Lombards from his Bishopric, as he was praying, beheld in a vision the Virgin Mother, who ordered him to found a church in her honor, in the place where he should see a white cloud rest. And when he went out, the white cloud went before him; and on the place where it rested he built a church, and it was called the Church of St. Mary the Beautiful, from the loveliness of the form in which she had appeared in the vision.[28] The first church stood only for about two centuries. It was rebuilt in 864, and enriched with various relics some fifty years later; relics belonging principally to St. Nicodemus, and much lamented when they and the church were together destroyed by fire in 1105. It was then rebuilt in "magnifica forma," much resembling, according to Corner, the architecture of the chancel of St. Mark;[29] but the information which I find in various writers, as to the period at which it was reduced to its present condition, is both sparing and contradictory. § V. Thus, by Corner, we are told that this church, resembling St. Mark's, "remained untouched for more than four centuries," until, in 1689, it was thrown down by an earthquake, and restored by the piety of a rich merchant, Turrin Toroni, "in ornatissima forma;" and that, for the greater beauty of the renewed church, it had added to it two façades of marble. With this information that of the Padre dell' Oratoria agrees, only he gives the date of the earlier rebuilding of the church in 1175, and ascribes it to an architect of the name of Barbetta. But Quadri, in his usually accurate little guide, tells us that this Barbetta rebuilt the church in the fourteenth century; and that of the two façades, so much admired by Corner, one is of the sixteenth century, and its architect unknown; and the rest of the church is of the seventeenth, "in the style of Sansovino." § VI. There is no occasion to examine, or endeavor to reconcile, these conflicting accounts. All that is necessary for the reader to know is, that every vestige of the church in which the ceremony took place was destroyed _at least_ as early as 1689; and that the ceremony itself, having been abolished in the close of the fourteenth century, is only to be conceived as taking place in that more ancient church, resembling St. Mark's, which, even according to Quadri, existed until that period. I would, therefore, endeavor to fix the reader's mind, for a moment, on the contrast between the former and latter aspect of this plot of ground; the former, when it had its Byzantine church, and its yearly procession of the Doge and the Brides; and the latter, when it has its Renaissance church "in the style of Sansovino," and its yearly honoring is done away. § VII. And, first, let us consider for a little the significance and nobleness of that early custom of the Venetians, which brought about the attack and the rescue of the year 943: that there should be but one marriage day for the nobles of the whole nation,[30] so that all might rejoice together; and that the sympathy might be full, not only of the families who that year beheld the alliance of their children, and prayed for them in one crowd, weeping before the altar, but of all the families of the state, who saw, in the day which brought happiness to others, the anniversary of their own. Imagine the strong bond of brotherhood thus sanctified among them, and consider also the effect on the minds of the youth of the state; the greater deliberation and openness necessarily given to the contemplation of marriage, to which all the people were solemnly to bear testimony; the more lofty and unselfish tone which it would give to all their thoughts. It was the exact contrary of stolen marriage. It was marriage to which God and man were taken for witnesses, and every eye was invoked for its glance, and every tongue for its prayers.[31] § VIII. Later historians have delighted themselves in dwelling on the pageantry of the marriage day itself, but I do not find that they have authority for the splendor of their descriptions. I cannot find a word in the older Chronicles about the jewels or dress of the brides, and I believe the ceremony to have been more quiet and homely than is usually supposed. The only sentence which gives color to the usual accounts of it is one of Sansovino's, in which he says that the magnificent dress of the brides in his day was founded "on ancient custom."[32] However this may have been, the circumstances of the rite were otherwise very simple. Each maiden brought her dowry with her in a small "cassetta," or chest; they went first to the cathedral, and waited for the youths, who having come, they heard mass together, and the bishop preached to them and blessed them: and so each bridegroom took his bride and her dowry and bore her home. § IX. It seems that the alarm given by the attack of the pirates put an end to the custom of fixing one day for all marriages: but the main objects of the institution were still attained by the perfect publicity given to the marriages of all the noble families; the bridegroom standing in the Court of the Ducal Palace to receive congratulations on his betrothal, and the whole body of the nobility attending the nuptials, and rejoicing, "as at some personal good fortune; since, by the constitution of the state, they are for ever incorporated together, as if of one and the same family."[33] But the festival of the 2nd of February, after the year 943, seems to have been observed only in memory of the deliverance of the brides, and no longer set apart for public nuptials. § X. There is much difficulty in reconciling the various accounts, or distinguishing the inaccurate ones, of the manner of keeping this memorable festival. I shall first give Sansovino's, which is the popular one, and then note the points of importance in the counter-statements. Sansovino says that the success of the pursuit of the pirates was owing to the ready help and hard fighting of the men of the district of Sta. Maria Formosa, for the most part trunkmakers; and that they, having been presented after the victory to the Doge and the Senate, were told to ask some favor for their reward. "The good men then said that they desired the Prince, with his wife and the Signory, to visit every year the church of their district, on the day of its feast. And the Prince asking them, 'Suppose it should rain?' they answered, 'We will give you hats to cover you; and if you are thirsty, we will give you to drink.' Whence is it that the Vicar, in the name of the people, presents to the Doge, on his visit, two flasks of malvoisie[34] and two oranges; and presents to him two gilded hats, bearing the arms of the Pope, of the Prince, and of the Vicar. And thus was instituted the Feast of the Maries, which was called noble and famous because the people from all round came together to behold it. And it was celebrated in this manner:...." The account which follows is somewhat prolix; but its substance is, briefly, that twelve maidens were elected, two for each division of the city; and that it was decided by lot which contrade, or quarters of the town, should provide them with dresses. This was done at enormous expense, one contrada contending with another, and even the jewels of the treasury of St. Mark being lent for the occasion to the "Maries," as the twelve damsels were called. They, being thus dressed with gold, and silver, and jewels, went in their galley to St. Mark's for the Doge, who joined them with the Signory, and went first to San Pietro di Castello to hear mass on St. Mark's day, the 31st of January, and to Santa Maria Formosa on the 2nd of February, the intermediate day being spent in passing in procession through the streets of the city; "and sometimes there arose quarrels about the places they should pass through, for every one wanted them to pass by his house." § XI. Nearly the same account is given by Corner, who, however, does not say anything about the hats or the malvoisie. These, however, we find again in the Matricola de' Casseleri, which, of course, sets the services of the trunkmakers and the privileges obtained by them in the most brilliant light. The quaintness of the old Venetian is hardly to be rendered into English. "And you must know that the said trunkmakers were the men who were the cause of such victory, and of taking the galley, and of cutting all the Triestines to pieces, because, at that time, they were valiant men and well in order. The which victory was on the 2nd February, on the day of the Madonna of candles. And at the request and entreaties of the said trunkmakers, it was decreed that the Doge, every year, as long as Venice shall endure, should go on the eve of the said feast to vespers in the said church, with the Signory. And be it noted, that the vicar is obliged to give to the Doge two flasks of malvoisie, with two oranges besides. And so it is observed, and will be observed always." The reader must observe the continual confusion between St. Mark's day the 31st of January, and Candlemas the 2nd of February. The fact appears to be, that the marriage day in the old republic was St. Mark's day, and the recovery of the brides was the same day at evening; so that, as we are told by Sansovino, the commemorative festival began on that day, but it was continued to the day of the Purification, that especial thanks might be rendered to the Virgin; and, the visit to Sta. Maria Formosa being the most important ceremony of the whole festival, the old chroniclers, and even Sansovino, got confused, and asserted the victory itself to have taken place on the day appointed for that pilgrimage. § XII. I doubt not that the reader who is acquainted with the beautiful lines of Rogers is as much grieved as I am at the interference of the "casket-makers" with the achievement which the poet ascribes to the bridegrooms alone; an interference quite as inopportune as that of old Le Balafré with the victory of his nephew, in the unsatisfactory conclusion of "Quentin Durward." I am afraid I cannot get the casket-makers quite out of the way; but it may gratify some of my readers to know that a chronicle of the year 1378, quoted by Galliciolli, denies the agency of the people of Sta. Maria Formosa altogether, in these terms: "Some say that the people of Sta. M. Formosa were those who recovered the _spoil_ ("predra;" I may notice, in passing, that most of the old chroniclers appear to consider the recovery of the _caskets_ rather more a subject of congratulation than that of the brides), and that, for their reward, they asked the Doge and Signory to visit Sta. M. Formosa; but _this is false_. The going to Sta. M. Formosa was because the thing had succeeded on that day, and because this was then the only church in Venice in honor of the Virgin." But here is again the mistake about the day itself; and besides if we get rid altogether of the trunkmakers, how are we to account for the ceremony of the oranges and hats, of which the accounts seem authentic? If, however, the reader likes to substitute "carpenters" or "house-builders" for casket-makers, he may do so with great reason (vide Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1758); but I fear that one or the other body of tradesmen must be allowed to have had no small share in the honor of the victory. § XIII. But whatever doubt attaches to the particular circumstances of its origin, there is none respecting the splendor of the festival itself, as it was celebrated for four centuries afterwards. We find that each contrada spent from 800 to 1000 zecchins in the dress of the "Maries" entrusted to it; but I cannot find among how many contrade the twelve Maries were divided; it is also to be supposed that most of the accounts given refer to the later periods of the celebration of the festival. In the beginning of the eleventh century, the good Doge Pietro Orseolo II. left in his will the third of his entire fortune "per la Festa della Marie;" and, in the fourteenth century, so many people came from the rest of Italy to see it, that special police regulations were made for it, and the Council of Ten were twice summoned before it took place.[35] The expense lavished upon it seems to have increased till the year 1379, when all the resources of the republic were required for the terrible war of Chiozza, and all festivity was for that time put an end to. The issue of the war left the Venetians with neither the power nor the disposition to restore the festival on its ancient scale, and they seem to have been ashamed to exhibit it in reduced splendor. It was entirely abolished. § XIV. As if to do away even with its memory, every feature of the surrounding scene which was associated with that festival has been in succeeding ages destroyed. With one solitary exception,[36] there is not a house left in the whole Piazza of Santa Maria Formosa from whose windows the festa of the Maries has ever been seen: of the church in which they worshipped, not a stone is left, even the form of the ground and direction of the neighboring canals are changed; and there is now but one landmark to guide the steps of the traveller to the place where the white cloud rested, and the shrine was built to St. Mary the Beautiful. Yet the spot is still worth his pilgrimage, for he may receive a lesson upon it, though a painful one. Let him first fill his mind with the fair images of the ancient festival, and then seek that landmark the tower of the modern church, built upon the place where the daughters of Venice knelt yearly with her noblest lords; and let him look at the head that is carved on the base of the tower,[37] still dedicated to St. Mary the Beautiful. § XV. A head,--huge, inhuman, and monstrous,--leering in bestial degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant; for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice was abandoned in the fourth period of her decline; and it is well that we should see and feel the full horror of it on this spot, and know what pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty, until it melted away like the white cloud from the ancient fields of Santa Maria Formosa. § XVI. This head is one of many hundreds which disgrace the latest buildings of the city, all more or less agreeing in their expression of sneering mockery, in most cases enhanced by thrusting out the tongue. Most of them occur upon the bridges, which were among the very last works undertaken by the republic, several, for instance, upon the Bridge of Sighs; and they are evidences of a delight in the contemplation of bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, which is, I believe, the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall. This spirit of idiotic mockery is, as I have said, the most striking characteristic of the last period of the Renaissance, which, in consequence of the character thus imparted to its sculpture, I have called grotesque; but it must be our immediate task, and it will be a most interesting one, to distinguish between this base grotesqueness, and that magnificent condition of fantastic imagination, which was above noticed as one of the chief elements of the Northern Gothic mind. Nor is this a question of interesting speculation merely: for the distinction between the true and false grotesque is one which the present tendencies of the English mind have rendered it practically important to ascertain; and that in a degree which, until he has made some progress in the consideration of the subject, the reader will hardly anticipate. § XVII. But, first, I have to note one peculiarity in the late architecture of Venice, which will materially assist us in understanding the true nature of the spirit which is to be the subject of our inquiry; and this peculiarity, singularly enough, is first exemplified in the very façade of Santa Maria Formosa which is flanked by the grotesque head to which our attention has just been directed. This façade, whose architect is unknown, consists of a pediment, sustained on four Corinthian pilasters, and is, I believe, the earliest in Venice which appears _entirely destitute of every religious symbol, sculpture, or inscription_; unless the Cardinal's hat upon the shield in the centre of the impediment be considered a religious symbol. The entire façade is nothing else than a monument to the Admiral Vincenzo Cappello. Two tablets, one between each pair of flanking pillars, record his acts and honors; and, on the corresponding spaces upon the base of the church, are two circular trophies, composed of halberts, arrows, flags, tridents, helmets, and lances: sculptures which are just as valueless in a military as in an ecclesiastical point of view; for, being all copied from the forms of Roman arms and armor, they cannot even be referred to for information respecting the costume of the period. Over the door, as the chief ornament of the façade, exactly in the spot which in the "barbarous" St. Mark's is occupied by the figure of Christ, is the statue of Vincenzo Cappello, in Roman armor. He died in 1542; and we have, therefore, the latter part of the sixteenth century fixed as the period when, in Venice, churches were first built to the glory of man, instead of the glory of God. § XVIII. Throughout the whole of Scripture history, nothing is more remarkable than the close connection of punishment with the sin of vain-glory. Every other sin is occasionally permitted to remain, for lengthened periods, without definite chastisement; but the forgetfulness of God, and the claim of honor by man, as belonging to himself, are visited at once, whether in Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, or Herod, with the most tremendous punishment. We have already seen, that the first reason for the fall of Venice was the manifestation of such a spirit; and it is most singular to observe the definiteness with which it is here marked,--as if so appointed, that it might be impossible for future ages to miss the lesson. For, in the long inscriptions[38] which record the acts of Vincenzo Cappello, it might, at least, have been anticipated that some expressions would occur indicative of remaining pretence to religious feeling, or formal acknowledgement of Divine power. But there are none whatever. The name of God does not once occur; that of St. Mark is found only in the statement that Cappello was a procurator of the church: there is no word touching either on the faith or hope of the deceased; and the only sentence which alludes to supernatural powers at all, alludes to them under the heathen name of _fates_, in its explanation of what the Admiral Cappello _would_ have accomplished, "nisi fata Christianis adversa vetuissent." § XIX. Having taken sufficient note of all the baseness of mind which these facts indicate in the people, we shall not be surprised to find immediate signs of dotage in the conception of their architecture. The churches raised throughout this period are so grossly debased, that even the Italian critics of the present day, who are partially awakened to the true state of art in Italy, though blind, as yet, to its true cause, exhaust their terms of reproach upon these last efforts of the Renaissance builders. The two churches of San Moisè and Santa Maria Zobenigo, which are among the most remarkable in Venice for their manifestation of insolent atheism, are characterized by Lazari, the one as "culmine d'ogni follia architettonica," the other as "orrido ammasso di pietra d'Istria," with added expressions of contempt, as just as it is unmitigated. § XX. Now both these churches, which I should like the reader to visit in succession, if possible, after that of Sta. Maria Formosa, agree with that church, and with each other, in being totally destitute of religious symbols, and entirely dedicated to the honor of two Venetian families. In San Moisè, a bust of Vincenzo Fini is set on a tall narrow pyramid, above the central door, with this marvellous inscription: "OMNE FASTIGIVM VIRTVTE IMPLET VINCENTIVS FINI." It is very difficult to translate this; for fastigium, besides its general sense, has a particular one in architecture, and refers to the part of the building occupied by the bust; but the main meaning of it is that "Vincenzo Fini fills all height with his virtue." The inscription goes on into farther praise, but this example is enough. Over the two lateral doors are two other laudatory inscriptions of younger members of the Fini family, the dates of death of the three heroes being 1660, 1685, and 1726, marking thus the period of consummate degradation. [Illustration: Plate III. NOBLE AND IGNOBLE GROTESQUE.] § XXI. In like manner, the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo is entirely dedicated to the Barbaro family; the only religious symbols with which it is invested being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven. At the top of the church is Venice crowned, between Justice and Temperance, Justice holding a pair of grocer's scales, of iron, swinging in the wind. There is a two-necked stone eagle (the Barbaro crest), with a copper crown, in the centre of the pediment. A huge statue of a Barbaro in armor, with a fantastic head-dress, over the central door; and four Barbaros in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the common stage postures of the period,--Jo. Maria Barbaro, sapiens ordinum; Marinus Barbaro, Senator (reading a speech in a Ciceronian attitude); Franc. Barbaro, legatus in classe (in armor, with high-heeled boots, and looking resolutely fierce); and Carolus Barbaro, sapiens ordinum: the decorations of the façade being completed by two trophies, consisting of drums, trumpets, flags and cannon; and six plans, sculptured in relief, of the towns of Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu, and Spalatro. § XXII. When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto); noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs. He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of the Grotesque Renaissance. I cannot pollute this volume by any illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an idea of its most graceful and refined developments. The figure set beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself. § XXIII. First, then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful; that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to exclude all ideas of jest. But although we cannot separate the grotesque itself into two branches, we may easily examine separately the two conditions of mind which it seems to combine; and consider successively what are the kinds of jest, and what the kinds of fearfulness, which may be legitimately expressed in the various walks of art, and how their expressions actually occur in the Gothic and Renaissance schools. First, then, what are the conditions of playfulness which we may fitly express in noble art, or which (for this is the same thing) are consistent with nobleness in humanity? In other words, what is the proper function of play, with respect not to youth merely, but to all mankind? § XXIV. It is a much more serious question than may be at first supposed; for a healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a healthy manner of work: and because the choice of our recreation is, in most cases, left to ourselves, while the nature of our work is generally fixed by necessity or authority, it may be well doubted whether more distressful consequences may not have resulted from mistaken choice in play than from mistaken direction in labor. § XXV. Observe, however, that we are only concerned, here, with that kind of play which causes laughter or implies recreation, not with that which consists in the excitement of the energies whether of body or mind. Muscular exertion is, indeed, in youth, one of the conditions of recreation; "but neither the violent bodily labor which children of all ages agree to call play," nor the grave excitement of the mental faculties in games of skill or chance, are in anywise connected with the state of feeling we have here to investigate, namely, that sportiveness which man possesses in common with many inferior creatures, but to which his higher faculties give nobler expression in the various manifestations of wit, humor, and fancy. With respect to the manner in which this instinct of playfulness is indulged or repressed, mankind are broadly distinguishable into four classes: the men who play wisely; who play necessarily; who play inordinately; and who play not at all. § XXVI. First: Those who play wisely. It is evident that the idea of any kind of play can only be associated with the idea of an imperfect, childish, and fatigable nature. As far as men can raise that nature, so that it shall no longer be interested by trifles or exhausted by toils, they raise it above play; he whose heart is at once fixed upon heaven, and open to the earth, so as to apprehend the importance of heavenly doctrines, and the compass of human sorrow, will have little disposition for jest; and exactly in proportion to the breadth and depth of his character and intellect, will be, in general, the incapability of surprise, or exuberant and sudden emotion, which must render play impossible. It is, however, evidently not intended that many men should even reach, far less pass their lives in, that solemn state of thoughtfulness, which brings them into the nearest brotherhood with their Divine Master; and the highest and healthiest state which is competent to ordinary humanity appears to be that which, accepting the necessity of recreation, and yielding to the impulses of natural delight springing out of health and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often to playfulness, but never without such deep love of God, of truth, and of humanity, as shall make even its slightest words reverent, its idlest fancies profitable, and its keenest satire indulgent. Wordsworth and Plato furnish us with, perhaps, the finest and highest examples of this playfulness: in the one case, unmixed with satire, the perfectly simple effusion of that spirit--in "Which gives to all the self-same bent, Whose life is wise, and innocent;" Plato, and, by the by, in a very wise book of our own times, not unworthy of being named in such companionship, "Friends in Council," mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving satire. § XXVII. Secondly: The men who play necessarily. That highest species of playfulness, which we have just been considering, is evidently the condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but so habitually trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a considerable force of accurate thought into its moments even of recreation. This is not possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart are enjoyed, even at the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system is diffused over the whole life. To the majority of mankind, such a state is evidently unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large part of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties. When such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy, imagination, and curiosity, are all hungry for the food which the labor of the day has denied to them, while yet the weariness of the body, in a great degree, forbids their application to any serious subject. They therefore exert themselves without any determined purpose, and under no vigorous restraint, but gather, as best they may, such various nourishment, and put themselves to such fantastic exercise, as may soonest indemnify them for their past imprisonment, and prepare them to endure their recurrence. This sketching of the mental limbs as their fetters fall away,--this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect, when they are restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest purpose,--I call necessary play. It is impossible to exaggerate its importance, whether in polity, or in art. § XXVIII. Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The most perfect state of society which, consistently with due understanding of man's nature, it may be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which the whole human race were divided, more or less distinctly, into workers and thinkers; that is to say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, or play necessarily. But the number and the toil of the working class are enormously increased, probably more than doubled, by the vices of the men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by circumstances, and permitted by their want of principle, to make amusement the object of their existence. There is not any moment of the lives of such men which is not injurious to others; both because they leave the work undone which was appointed for them, and because they necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to think at all. The greater portion of the misery of this world arises from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically incapacitated them from forming true ones. Every duty which we omit obscures some truth which we should have known; and the guilt of a life spent in the pursuit of pleasure is twofold, partly consisting in the perversion of action, and partly in the dissemination of falsehood. § XXIX. There is, however, a less criminal, though hardly less dangerous condition of mind; which, though not failing in its more urgent duties, fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the degree, and directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when amusement is allowable. The most frequent error in this respect is the want of reverence in approaching subjects of importance or sacredness, and of caution in the expression of thoughts which may encourage like irreverence in others: and these faults are apt to gain upon the mind until it becomes habitually more sensible to what is ludicrous and accidental, than to what is grave and essential, in any subject that is brought before it; or even, at last, desires to perceive or to know nothing but what may end in jest. Very generally minds of this character are active and able; and many of them are so far conscientious, that they believe their jesting forwards their work. But it is difficult to calculate the harm they do, by destroying the reverence which is our best guide into all truth; for weakness and evil are easily visible, but greatness and goodness are often latent; and we do infinite mischief by exposing weakness to eyes which cannot comprehend greatness. This error, however, is more connected with abuses of the satirical than of the playful instinct; and I shall have more to say of it presently. § XXX. Lastly: The men who do not play at all: those who are so dull or so morose as to be incapable of inventing or enjoying jest, and in whom care, guilt, or pride represses all healthy exhilaration of the fancy; or else men utterly oppressed with labor, and driven too hard by the necessities of the world to be capable of any species of happy relaxation. § XXXI. We have now to consider the way in which the presence or absence of joyfulness, in these several classes, is expressed in art. 1. Wise play. The first and noblest class hardly ever speak through art, except seriously; they feel its nobleness too profoundly, and value the time necessary for its production too highly, to employ it in the rendering of trivial thoughts. The playful fancy of a moment may innocently be expressed by the passing word; but he can hardly have learned the preciousness of life, who passes days in the elaboration of a jest. And, as to what regards the delineation of human character, the nature of all noble art is to epitomize and embrace so much at once, that its subject can never be altogether ludicrous; it must possess all the solemnities of the whole, not the brightness of the partial, truth. For all truth that makes us smile is partial. The novelist amuses us by his relation of a particular incident; but the painter cannot set any one of his characters before us without giving some glimpse of its whole career. That of which the historian informs us in successive pages, it is the task of the painter to inform us of at once, writing upon the countenance not merely the expression of the moment, but the history of the life: and the history of a life can never be a jest. Whatever part, therefore, of the sportive energy of these men of the highest class would be expressed in verbal wit or humor finds small utterance through their art, and will assuredly be confined, if it occur there at all, to scattered and trivial incidents. But so far as their minds can recreate themselves by the imagination of strange, yet not laughable, forms, which, either in costume, in landscape, or in any other accessaries, may be combined with those necessary for their more earnest purposes, we find them delighting in such inventions; and a species of grotesqueness thence arising in all their work, which is indeed one of its most valuable characteristics, but which is so intimately connected with the sublime or terrible form of the grotesque, that it will be better to notice it under that head. § XXXII. 2. Necessary play. I have dwelt much in a former portion of this work, on the justice and desirableness of employing the minds of inferior workmen, and of the lower orders in general, in the production of objects of art of one kind or another. So far as men of this class are compelled to hard manual labor for their daily bread, so far forth their artistical efforts must be rough and ignorant, and their artistical perceptions comparatively dull. Now it is not possible, with blunt perceptions and rude hands, to produce works which shall be pleasing by their beauty; but it is perfectly possible to produce such as shall be interesting by their character or amusing by their satire. For one hard-working man who possesses the finer instincts which decide on perfection of lines and harmonies of color, twenty possess dry humor or quaint fancy; not because these faculties were originally given to the human race, or to any section of it, in greater degree than the sense of beauty, but because these are exercised in our daily intercourse with each other, and developed by the interest which we take in the affairs of life, while the others are not. And because, therefore, a certain degree of success will probably attend the effort to express this humor or fancy, while comparative failure will assuredly result from an ignorant struggle to reach the forms of solemn beauty, the working-man, who turns his attention partially to art, will probably, and wisely, choose to do that which he can do best, and indulge the pride of an effective satire rather than subject himself to assured mortification in the pursuit of beauty; and this the more, because we have seen that his application to art is to be playful and recreative, and it is not in recreation that the conditions of perfection can be fulfilled. § XXXIII. Now all the forms of art which result from the comparatively recreative exertion of minds more or less blunted or encumbered by other cares and toils, the art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque. And it is noble or inferior, first, according to the tone of the minds which have produced it, and in proportion to their knowledge, wit, love of truth, and kindness; secondly, according to the degree of strength they have been able to give forth; but yet, however much we may find in it needing to be forgiven, always delightful so long as it is the work of good and ordinarily intelligent men. And its delightfulness ought mainly to consist _in those very imperfections_ which mark it for work done in times of rest. It is not its own merit so much as the enjoyment of him who produced it, which is to be the source of the spectator's pleasure; it is to the strength of his sympathy, not to the accuracy of his criticism, that it makes appeal; and no man can indeed be a lover of what is best in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling and charity enough to rejoice with the rude sportiveness of hearts that have escaped out of prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which men have laid their burdens down to sow by the wayside. § XXXIV. And consider what a vast amount of human work this right understanding of its meaning will make fruitful and admirable to us, which otherwise we could only have passed by with contempt. There is very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the words, good and noble. A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of perfection. All the rest--Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic, and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and mightiest--depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque spirit; but much more the inferior domestic architecture of the middle ages, and what similar conditions remain to this day in countries from which the life of art has not yet been banished by its laws. The fantastic gables, built up in scroll-work and steps, of the Flemish street; the pinnacled roofs set with their small humorist double windows, as if with so many ears and eyes, of Northern France; the blackened timbers, crossed and carved into every conceivable waywardness of imagination, of Normandy and old England; the rude hewing of the pine timbers of the Swiss cottage; the projecting turrets and bracketed oriels of the German street; these, and a thousand other forms, not in themselves reaching any high degree of excellence, are yet admirable, and most precious, as the fruits of a rejoicing energy in uncultivated minds. It is easier to take away the energy, than to add the cultivation; and the only effect of the better knowledge which civilized nations now possess, has been, as we have seen in a former chapter, to forbid their being happy, without enabling them to be great. § XXXV. It is very necessary, however, with respect to this provincial or rustic architecture, that we should carefully distinguish its truly grotesque from its picturesque elements. In the "Seven Lamps" I defined the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to the external or accidental characters of a thing, not to the thing itself. For instance, when a highland cottage roof is covered with fragments of shale instead of slates, it becomes picturesque, because the irregularity and rude fractures of the rocks, and their grey and gloomy color, give to it something of the savageness, and much of the general aspect, of the slope of a mountain side. But as a mere cottage roof, it cannot be sublime, and whatever sublimity it derives from the wildness or sternness which the mountains have given it in its covering, is, so far forth, parasitical. The mountain itself would have been grand, which is much more than picturesque; but the cottage cannot be grand as such, and the parasitical grandeur which it may possess by accidental qualities, is the character for which men have long agreed to use the inaccurate word "Picturesque." § XXXVI. On the other hand, beauty cannot be parasitical. There is nothing so small or so contemptible, but it may be beautiful in its own right. The cottage may be beautiful, and the smallest moss that grows on its roof, and the minutest fibre of that moss which the microscope can raise into visible form, and all of them in their own right, not less than the mountains and the sky; so that we use no peculiar term to express their beauty, however diminutive, but only when the sublime element enters, without sufficient worthiness in the nature of the thing to which it is attached. § XXXVII. Now this picturesque element, which is always given, if by nothing else, merely by ruggedness, adds usually very largely to the pleasurableness of grotesque work, especially to that of its inferior kinds; but it is not for this reason to be confounded with the grotesqueness itself. The knots and rents of the timbers, the irregular lying of the shingles on the roofs, the vigorous light and shadow, the fractures and weather-stains of the old stones, which were so deeply loved and so admirably rendered by our lost Prout, are the picturesque elements of the architecture: the grotesque ones are those which are not produced by the working of nature and of time, but exclusively by the fancy of man; and, as also for the most part by his indolent and uncultivated fancy, they are always, in some degree, wanting in grandeur, unless the picturesque element be united with them. § XXXVIII. 3. Inordinate play. The reader will have some difficulty, I fear, in keeping clearly in his mind the various divisions of our subject; but, when he has once read the chapter through, he will see their places and coherence. We have next to consider the expression throughout of the minds of men who indulge themselves in unnecessary play. It is evident that a large number of these men will be more refined and more highly educated than those who only play necessarily; the power of pleasure-seeking implies, in general, fortunate circumstances of life. It is evident also that their play will not be so hearty, so simple, or so joyful; and this deficiency of brightness will affect it in proportion to its unnecessary and unlawful continuance, until at last it becomes a restless and dissatisfied indulgence in excitement, or a painful delving after exhausted springs of pleasure. The art through which this temper is expressed will, in all probability, be refined and sensual,--therefore, also, assuredly feeble; and because, in the failure of the joyful energy of the mind, there will fail, also, its perceptions and its sympathies, it will be entirely deficient in expression of character, and acuteness of thought, but will be peculiarly restless, manifesting its desire for excitement in idle changes of subject and purpose. Incapable of true imagination, it will seek to supply its place by exaggerations, incoherencies, and monstrosities; and the form of the grotesque to which it gives rise will be an incongruous chain of hackneyed graces, idly thrown together,--prettinesses or sublimities, not of its own invention, associated in forms which will be absurd without being fantastic, and monstrous without being terrible. And because, in the continual pursuit of pleasure, men lose both cheerfulness and charity, there will be small hilarity, but much malice, in this grotesque; yet a weak malice, incapable of expressing its own bitterness, not having grasp enough of truth to become forcible, and exhausting itself in impotent or disgusting caricature. § XXXIX. Of course, there are infinite ranks and kinds of this grotesque, according to the natural power of the minds which originate it, and to the degree in which they have lost themselves. Its highest condition is that which first developed itself among the enervated Romans, and which was brought to the highest perfection of which it was capable, by Raphael, in the arabesques of the Vatican. It may be generally described as an elaborate and luscious form of nonsense. Its lower conditions are found in the common upholstery and decorations which, over the whole of civilized Europe, have sprung from this poisonous root; an artistical pottage, composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a recent Italian garden, the favorite ornaments frequently consist of stucco images, representing, in dwarfish caricature, the most disgusting types of manhood and womanhood which can be found amidst the dissipation of the modern drawingroom; yet without either veracity or humor, and dependent, for whatever interest they possess, upon simple grossness of expression and absurdity of costume. Grossness, of one kind or another, is, indeed, an unfailing characteristic of the style; either latent, as in the refined sensuality of the more graceful arabesques, or, in the worst examples, manifested in every species of obscene conception and abominable detail. In the head, described in the opening of this chapter, at Santa Maria Formosa, the _teeth_ are represented as _decayed_. § XL. 4. The minds of the fourth class of men who do not play at all, are little likely to find expression in any trivial form of art, except in bitterness of mockery; and this character at once stamps the work in which it appears, as belonging to the class of terrible, rather than of playful, grotesque. We have, therefore, now to examine the state of mind which gave rise to this second and more interesting branch of imaginative work. § XLI. Two great and principal passions are evidently appointed by the Deity to rule the life of man; namely, the love of God, and the fear of sin, and of its companion--Death. How many motives we have for Love, how much there is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our gratitude, there are, happily, multitudes among us who both feel and teach. But it has not, I think, been sufficiently considered how evident, throughout the system of creation, is the purpose of God that we should often be affected by Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and contemptible fear of immediate danger, but the fear which arises out of the contemplation of great powers in destructive operation, and generally from the perception of the presence of death. Nothing appears to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances, when the actual danger is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is inflicted upon few. Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single thunder-storm. Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within the space of a hundred square miles; and their deaths, unaccompanied by the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the Judgment by all that mighty gathering of clouds; by the questioning of the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of the destroying angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death;--on how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the actual witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely are the expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehension of the human soul! The lurid color, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all as true and faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger, as the moaning or wailing of the human voice itself is to our instinct of pity. It is not a reasonable calculating terror which they awake in us; it is no matter that we count distance by seconds, and measure probability by averages. That shadow of the thunder-cloud will still do its work upon our hearts, and we shall watch its passing away as if we stood upon the threshing-floor of Araunah. § XLII. And this is equally the case with respect to all the other destructive phenomena of the universe. From the mightiest of them to the gentlest, from the earthquake to the summer shower, it will be found that they are attended by certain aspects of threatening, which strike terror into the hearts of multitudes more numerous a thousandfold than those who actually suffer from the ministries of judgment; and that, besides the fearfulness of these immediately dangerous phenomena, there is an occult and subtle horror belonging to many aspects of the creation around us, calculated often to fill us with serious thought, even in our times of quietness and peace. I understand not the most dangerous, because most attractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to exalt the beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless infinitude of mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and which does this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's kindness on the face of creation. Such kindness is indeed everywhere and always visible; but not alone. Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with the love; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, the existence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances, as that of Heaven. It is well for us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty into darkness, and of all strength into dust, have these no language for us? We may seek to escape their teaching by reasonings touching the good which is wrought out of all evil; but it is vain sophistry. The good succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so also the evil to the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man, and his Futurity.[39] § XLIII. And because the thoughts of the choice we have to make between these two, ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions (for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is that which is capable of the greatest love, and the greatest awe: and this we are taught even in our times of rest; for when our minds are rightly in tone, the merely pleasurable excitement which they seek with most avidity is that which rises out of the contemplation of beauty or of terribleness. We thirst for both, and, according to the height and tone of our feeling, desire to see them in noble or inferior forms. Thus there is a Divine beauty, and a terribleness or sublimity coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of the highest art; and there is an inferior or ornamental beauty, and an inferior terribleness coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of grotesque art. And the state of mind in which the terrible form of the grotesque is developed, is that which in some irregular manner, dwells upon certain conditions of terribleness, into the complete depth of which it does not enter for the time. § XLIV. Now the things which are the proper subjects of human fear are twofold; those which have the power of Death, and those which have the nature of Sin. Of which there are many ranks, greater or less in power and vice, from the evil angels themselves down to the serpent which is their type, and which though of a low and contemptible class, appears to unite the deathful and sinful natures in the most clearly visible and intelligible form; for there is nothing else which we know, of so small strength and occupying so unimportant a place in the economy of creation, which yet is so mortal and so malignant. It is, then, on these two classes of objects that the mind fixes for its excitement, in that mood which gives rise to the terrible grotesque; and its subject will be found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded in a peculiar temper; sometimes (A) of predetermined or involuntary apathy, sometimes (B) of mockery, sometimes (C) of diseased and ungoverned imaginativeness. § XLV. For observe, the difficulty which, as I above stated, exists in distinguishing the playful from the terrible grotesque arises out of this cause; that the mind, under certain phases of excitement, _plays_ with _terror_, and summons images which, if it were in another temper, would be awful, but of which, either in weariness or in irony, it refrains for the time to acknowledge the true terribleness. And the mode in which this refusal takes place distinguishes the noble from the ignoble grotesque. For the master of the noble grotesque knows the depth of all at which he seems to mock, and would feel it at another time, or feels it in a certain undercurrent of thought even while he jests with it; but the workman of the ignoble grotesque can feel and understand nothing, and mocks at all things with the laughter of the idiot and the cretin. To work out this distinction completely is the chief difficulty in our present inquiry; and, in order to do so, let us consider the above-named three conditions of mind in succession, with relation to objects of terror. § _XLVI_. (A). Involuntary or predetermined apathy. We saw above that the grotesque was produced, chiefly in subordinate or ornamental art, by rude, and in some degree uneducated men, and in their times of rest. At such times, and in such subordinate work, it is impossible that they should represent any solemn or terrible subject with a full and serious entrance into its feeling. It is not in the languor of a leisure hour that a man will set his whole soul to conceive the means of representing some important truth, nor to the projecting angle of a timber bracket that he would trust its representation, if conceived. And yet, in this languor, and in this trivial work, he must find some expression of the serious part of his soul, of what there is within him capable of awe, as well as of love. The more noble the man is, the more impossible it will be for him to confine his thoughts to mere loveliness, and that of a low order. Were his powers and his time unlimited, so that, like Frà Angelico, he could paint the Seraphim, in that order of beauty he could find contentment, bringing down heaven to earth. But by the conditions of his being, by his hard-worked life, by his feeble powers of execution, by the meanness of his employment and the languor of his heart, he is bound down to earth. It is the world's work that he is doing, and world's work is not to be done without fear. And whatever there is of deep and eternal consciousness within him, thrilling his mind with the sense of the presence of sin and death around him, must be expressed in that slight work, and feeble way, come of it what will. He cannot forget it, among all that he sees of beautiful in nature; he may not bury himself among the leaves of the violet on the rocks, and of the lily in the glen, and twine out of them garlands of perpetual gladness. He sees more in the earth than these,--misery and wrath, and discordance, and danger, and all the work of the dragon and his angels; this he sees with too deep feeling ever to forget. And though when he returns to his idle work,--it may be to gild the letters upon the page, or to carve the timbers of the chamber, or the stones of the pinnacle,--he cannot give his strength of thought any more to the woe or to the danger, there is a shadow of them still present with him: and as the bright colors mingle beneath his touch, and the fair leaves and flowers grow at his bidding, strange horrors and phantasms rise by their side; grisly beasts and venomous serpents, and spectral fiends and nameless inconsistencies of ghastly life, rising out of things most beautiful, and fading back into them again, as the harm and the horror of life do out of its happiness. He has seen these things; he wars with them daily; he cannot but give them their part in his work, though in a state of comparative apathy to them at the time. He is but carving and gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; but he knows that hell is burning on, for all that, and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves. § XLVII. Now, the feelings which give rise to the false or ignoble grotesque, are exactly the reverse of these. In the true grotesque, a man of naturally strong feeling is accidentally or resolutely apathetic; in the false grotesque, a man naturally apathetic is forcing himself into temporary excitement. The horror which is expressed by the one, comes upon him whether he will or not; that which is expressed by the other, is sought out by him, and elaborated by his art. And therefore, also, because the fear of the one is true, and of true things, however fantastic its expression may be, there will be reality in it, and force. It is not a manufactured terribleness, whose author, when he had finished it, knew not if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre which the workman indeed saw, and which, as it appalled him, will appal us also. But the other workman never felt any Divine fear; he never shuddered when he heard the cry from the burning towers of the earth, "Venga Medusa; sì lo farem di smalto." He is stone already, and needs no gentle hand laid upon his eyes to save him. § XLVIII. I do not mean what I say in this place to apply to the creations of the imagination. It is not as the creating but as the _seeing_ man, that we are here contemplating the master of the true grotesque. It is because the dreadfulness of the universe around him weighs upon his heart, that his work is wild; and therefore through the whole of it we shall find the evidence of deep insight into nature. His beasts and birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with the true. He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him thenceforth to conceive them coldly. He may not be able to carve plumes or scales well; but his creatures will bite and fly, for all that. The ignoble workman is the very reverse of this. He never felt, never looked at nature; and if he endeavor to imitate the work of the other, all his touches will be made at random, and all his extravagances will be ineffective; he may knit brows, and twist lips, and lengthen beaks, and sharpen teeth, but it will be all in vain. He may make his creatures disgusting, but never fearful. § XLIX. There is, however, often another cause of difference than this. The true grotesque being the expression of the _repose_ or play of a _serious_ mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the result of the _full exertion_ of a _frivolous_ one. There is much grotesque which is wrought out with exquisite care and pains, and as much labor given to it as if it were of the noblest subject; so that the workman is evidently no longer apathetic, and has no excuse for unconnectedness of thought, or sudden unreasonable fear. If he awakens horror now, it ought to be in some truly sublime form. His strength is in his work; and he must not give way to sudden humor, and fits of erratic fancy. If he does so, it must be because his mind is naturally frivolous, or is for the time degraded into the deliberate pursuit of frivolity. And herein lies the real distinction between the base grotesque of Raphael and the Renaissance, above alluded to, and the true Gothic grotesque. Those grotesques or arabesques of the Vatican, and other such work, which have become the patterns of ornamentation in modern times, are the fruit of great minds degraded to base objects. The care, skill, and science, applied to the distribution of the leaves, and the drawing of the figures, are intense, admirable, and accurate; therefore, they ought to have produced a grand and serious work, not a tissue of nonsense. If we can draw the human head perfectly, and are masters of its expression and its beauty, we have no business to cut it off, and hang it up by the hair at the end of a garland. If we can draw the human body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of leaves. Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth, and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear. No Divine terror will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength in elaborating toys; for the first lesson which that terror is sent to teach us, is the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal time. § L. And are we never, then, it will be asked, to possess a refined or perfect ornamentation? Must all decoration be the work of the ignorant and the rude? Not so; but exactly in proportion as the ignorance and rudeness diminish, must the ornamentation become rational, and the grotesqueness disappear. The noblest lessons may be taught in ornamentation, the most solemn truths compressed into it. The Book of Genesis, in all the fulness of its incidents, in all the depth of its meaning, is bound within the leaf-borders of the gates of Ghiberti. But Raphael's arabesque is mere elaborate idleness. It has neither meaning nor heart in it; it is an unnatural and monstrous abortion. § LI. Now, this passing of the grotesque into higher art, as the mind of the workman becomes informed with better knowledge, and capable of more earnest exertion, takes place in two ways. Either, as his power increases, he devotes himself more and more to the beauty which he now feels himself able to express, and so the grotesqueness expands, and softens into the beautiful, as in the above-named instance of the gates of Ghiberti; or else, if the mind of the workman be naturally inclined to gloomy contemplation, the imperfection or apathy of his work rises into nobler terribleness, until we reach the point of the grotesque of Albert Durer, where, every now and then, the playfulness or apathy of the painter passes into perfect sublime. Take the Adam and Eve, for instance. When he gave Adam a bough to hold, with a parrot on it, and a tablet hung to it, with "Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat, 1504," thereupon, his mind was not in Paradise. He was half in play, half apathetic with respect to his subject, thinking how to do his work well, as a wise master-graver, and how to receive his just reward of fame. But he rose into the true sublime in the head of Adam, and in the profound truthfulness of every creature that fills the forest. So again in that magnificent coat of arms, with the lady and the satyr, as he cast the fluttering drapery hither and thither around the helmet, and wove the delicate crown upon the woman's forehead, he was in a kind of play; but there is none in the dreadful skull upon the shield. And in the "Knight and Death," and in the dragons of the illustrations to the Apocalypse, there is neither play nor apathy; but their grotesque is of the ghastly kind which best illustrates the nature of death and sin. And this leads us to the consideration of the second state of mind out of which the noble grotesque is developed; that is to say, the temper of mockery. § LII. (B). Mockery, or Satire. In the former part of this chapter, when I spoke of the kinds of art which were produced in the recreation of the lower orders, I only spoke of forms of ornament, not of the expression of satire or humor. But it seems probable, that nothing is so refreshing to the vulgar mind as some exercise of this faculty, more especially on the failings of their superiors; and that, wherever the lower orders are allowed to express themselves freely, we shall find humor, more or less caustic, becoming a principal feature in their work. The classical and Renaissance manufacturers of modern times having silenced the independent language of the operative, his humor and satire pass away in the word-wit which has of late become the especial study of the group of authors headed by Charles Dickens; all this power was formerly thrown into noble art, and became permanently expressed in the sculptures of the cathedral. It was never thought that there was anything discordant or improper in such a position: for the builders evidently felt very deeply a truth of which, in modern times, we are less cognizant; that folly and sin are, to a certain extent, synonymous, and that it would be well for mankind in general, if all could be made to feel that wickedness is as contemptible as it is hateful. So that the vices were permitted to be represented under the most ridiculous forms, and all the coarsest wit of the workman to be exhausted in completing the degradation of the creatures supposed to be subjected to them. § LIII. Nor were even the supernatural powers of evil exempt from this species of satire. For with whatever hatred or horror the evil angels were regarded, it was one of the conditions of Christianity that they should also be looked upon as vanquished; and this not merely in their great combat with the King of Saints, but in daily and hourly combats with the weakest of His servants. In proportion to the narrowness of the powers of abstract conception in the workman, the nobleness of the idea of spiritual nature diminished, and the traditions of the encounters of men with fiends in daily temptations were imagined with less terrific circumstances, until the agencies which in such warfare were almost always represented as vanquished with disgrace, became, at last, as much the objects of contempt as of terror. The superstitions which represented the devil as assuming various contemptible forms of disguises in order to accomplish his purposes aided this gradual degradation of conception, and directed the study of the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form, until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener ludicrous than terrible. Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition of degradation. Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no effort to represent the Satanic mind in the angelic form, which has succeeded in painting. Milton succeeds only because he separately describes the movements of the mind, and therefore leaves himself at liberty to make the form heroic; but that form is never distinct enough to be painted. Dante, who will not leave even external forms obscure, degrades them before he can feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the "Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable, ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning senselessly against itself, and still further debased by foulness of form and action. Something is indeed to be allowed for the rude feelings of the time, but I believe all such men as Dante are sent into the world at the time when they can do their work best; and that, it being appointed for him to give to mankind the most vigorous realization possible both of Hell and Heaven, he was born both in the country and at the time which furnished the most stern opposition of Horror and Beauty, and permitted it to be written in the clearest terms. And, therefore, though there are passages in the "Inferno" which it would be impossible for any poet now to write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for them. For there can be no question but that one characteristic of excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts concerning the body,[40] and that the full portraiture of it cannot be given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to corporeal degradation; which, in the time of Dante, could be done frankly, but cannot now. And, therefore, I think the twenty-first and twenty-second books of the "Inferno" the most perfect portraitures of fiendish nature which we possess; and at the same time, in their mingling of the extreme of horror (for it seems to me that the silent swiftness of the first demon, "con l'ali aperte e sovra i pie leggiero," cannot be surpassed in dreadfulness) with ludicrous actions and images, they present the most perfect instances with which I am acquainted of the terrible grotesque. But the whole of the "Inferno" is full of this grotesque, as well as the "Faërie Queen;" and these two poems, together with the works of Albert Durer, will enable the reader to study it in its noblest forms, without reference to Gothic cathedrals. § LIV. Now, just as there are base and noble conditions of the apathetic grotesque, so also are there of this satirical grotesque. The condition which might be mistaken for it is that above described as resulting from the malice of men given to pleasure, and in which the grossness and foulness are in the workman as much as in his subject, so that he chooses to represent vice and disease rather than virtue and beauty, having his chief delight in contemplating them; though he still mocks at them with such dull wit as may be in him, because, as Young has said most truly, "'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool." § LV. Now it is easy to distinguish this grotesque from its noble counterpart, by merely observing whether any forms of beauty or dignity are mingled with it or not; for, of course, the noble grotesque is only employed by its master for good purposes, and to contrast with beauty: but the base workman cannot conceive anything but what is base; and there will be no loveliness in any part of his work, or, at the best, a loveliness measured by line and rule, and dependent on legal shapes of feature. But, without resorting to this test, and merely by examining the ugly grotesque itself, it will be found that, if it belongs to the base school, there will be, first, no Horror in it; secondly, no Nature in it; and, thirdly, no Mercy in it. § LVI. I say, first, no Horror. For the base soul has no fear of sin, and no hatred of it: and, however it may strive to make its work terrible, there will be no genuineness in the fear; the utmost it can do will be to make its work disgusting. Secondly, there will be no Nature in it. It appears to be one of the ends proposed by Providence in the appointment of the forms of the brute creation, that the various vices to which mankind are liable should be severally expressed in them so distinctly and clearly as that men could not but understand the lesson; while yet these conditions of vice might, in the inferior animal, be observed without the disgust and hatred which the same vices would excite, if seen in men, and might be associated with features of interest which would otherwise attract and reward contemplation. Thus, ferocity, cunning, sloth, discontent, gluttony, uncleanness, and cruelty are seen, each in its extreme, in various animals; and are so vigorously expressed, that when men desire to indicate the same vices in connexion with human forms, they can do it no better than by borrowing here and there the features of animals. And when the workman is thus led to the contemplation of the animal kingdom, finding therein the expressions of vice which he needs, associated with power, and nobleness, and freedom from disease, if his mind be of right tone he becomes interested in this new study; and all noble grotesque is, therefore, full of the most admirable rendering of animal character. But the ignoble workman is capable of no interest of this kind; and, being too dull to appreciate, and too idle to execute, the subtle and wonderful lines on which the expression of the lower animal depends, he contents himself with vulgar exaggeration, and leaves his work as false as it is monstrous, a mass of blunt malice and obscene ignorance. § LVII. Lastly, there will be no Mercy in it. Wherever the satire of the noble grotesque fixes upon human nature, it does so with much sorrow mingled amidst its indignation: in its highest forms there is an infinite tenderness, like that of the fool in Lear; and even in its more heedless or bitter sarcasm, it never loses sight altogether of the better nature of what it attacks, nor refuses to acknowledge its redeeming or pardonable features. But the ignoble grotesque has no pity: it rejoices in iniquity, and exists only to slander. § LVIII. I have not space to follow out the various forms of transition which exist between the two extremes of great and base in the satirical grotesque. The reader must always remember, that, although there is an infinite distance between the best and worst, in this kind the interval is filled by endless conditions more or less inclining to the evil or the good; impurity and malice stealing gradually into the nobler forms, and invention and wit elevating the lower, according to the countless minglings of the elements of the human soul. § LIX. (C). Ungovernableness of the imagination. The reader is always to keep in mind that if the objects of horror, in which the terrible grotesque finds its materials, were contemplated in their true light, and with the entire energy of the soul, they would cease to be grotesque, and become altogether sublime; and that therefore it is some shortening of the power, or the will, of contemplation, and some consequent distortion of the terrible image in which the grotesqueness consists. Now this distortion takes place, it was above asserted, in three ways: either through apathy, satire, or ungovernableness of imagination. It is this last cause of the grotesque which we have finally to consider; namely, the error and wildness of the mental impressions, caused by fear operating upon strong powers of imagination, or by the failure of the human faculties in the endeavor to grasp the highest truths. § LX. The grotesque which comes to all men in a disturbed dream is the most intelligible example of this kind, but also the most ignoble; the imagination, in this instance, being entirely deprived of all aid from reason, and incapable of self-government. I believe, however, that the noblest forms of imaginative power are also in some sort ungovernable, and have in them something of the character of dreams; so that the vision, of whatever kind, comes uncalled, and will not submit itself to the seer, but conquers him, and forces him to speak as a prophet, having no power over his words or thoughts.[41] Only, if the whole man be trained perfectly, and his mind calm, consistent and powerful, the vision which comes to him is seen as in a perfect mirror, serenely, and in consistence with the rational powers; but if the mind be imperfect and ill trained, the vision is seen as in a broken mirror, with strange distortions and discrepancies, all the passions of the heart breathing upon it in cross ripples, till hardly a trace of it remains unbroken. So that, strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken. And thus the "Iliad," the "Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faërie Queen," are all of them true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep, living sleep which God sends, with a sacredness in it, as of death, the revealer of secrets. § LXI. Now, observe in this matter, carefully, the difference between a dim mirror and a distorted one; and do not blame me for pressing the analogy too far, for it will enable me to explain my meaning every way more clearly. Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly: this is the fault most common and most fatal; dulness of the heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image. But, even so far as we are able to do this, we have still the distortion to fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly. And the fallen human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it; and the wider the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the winds and vapors trouble the field of the telescope most when it reaches farthest. § LXII. Now, so far as the truth is seen by the imagination[42] in its wholeness and quietness, the vision is sublime; but so far as it is narrowed and broken by the inconsistencies of the human capacity, it becomes grotesque; and it would seem to be rare that any very exalted truth should be impressed on the imagination without some grotesqueness in its aspect, proportioned to the degree of _diminution of breadth_ in the grasp which is given of it. Nearly all the dreams recorded in the Bible,--Jacob's, Joseph's, Pharaoh's, Nebuchadnezzar's,--are grotesques; and nearly the whole of the accessary scenery in the books of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse. Thus, Jacob's dream revealed to him the ministry of angels; but because this ministry could not be seen or understood by him in its fulness, it was narrowed to him into a ladder between heaven and earth, which was a grotesque. Joseph's two dreams were evidently intended to be signs of the steadfastness of the Divine purpose towards him, by possessing the clearness of special prophecy; yet were couched in such imagery, as not to inform him prematurely of his destiny, and only to be understood after their fulfilment. The sun, and moon, and stars were at the period, and are indeed throughout the Bible, the symbols of high authority. It was not revealed to Joseph that he should be lord over all Egypt; but the representation of his family by symbols of the most magnificent dominion, and yet as subject to him, must have been afterwards felt by him as a distinctly prophetic indication of his own supreme power. It was not revealed to him that the occasion of his brethren's special humiliation before him should be their coming to buy corn; but when the event took place, must he not have felt that there was prophetic purpose in the form of the sheaves of wheat which first imaged forth their subjection to him? And these two images of the sun doing obeisance, and the sheaves bowing down,--narrowed and imperfect intimations of great truth which yet could not be otherwise conveyed,--are both grotesque. The kine of Pharaoh eating each other, the gold and clay of Nebuchadnezzar's image, the four beasts full of eyes, and other imagery of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, are grotesques of the same kind, on which I need not further insist. § LXIII. Such forms, however, ought perhaps to have been arranged under a separate head, as Symbolical Grotesque; but the element of awe enters into them so strongly, as to justify, for all our present purposes, their being classed with the other varieties of terrible grotesque. For even if the symbolic vision itself be not terrible, the sense of what may be veiled behind it becomes all the more awful in proportion to the insignificance or strangeness of the sign itself; and, I believe, this thrill of mingled doubt, fear, and curiosity lies at the very root of the delight which mankind take in symbolism. It was not an accidental necessity for the conveyance of truth by pictures instead of words, which led to its universal adoption wherever art was on the advance; but the Divine fear which necessarily follows on the understanding that a thing is other and greater than it seems; and which, it appears probable, has been rendered peculiarly attractive to the human heart, because God would have us understand that this is true not of invented symbols merely, but of all things amidst which we live; that there is a deeper meaning within them than eye hath seen, or ear hath heard; and that the whole visible creation is a mere perishable symbol of things eternal and true. It cannot but have been sometimes a subject of wonder with thoughtful men, how fondly, age after age, the Church has cherished the belief that the four living creatures which surrounded the Apocalyptic throne were symbols of the four Evangelists, and rejoiced to use those forms in its picture-teaching; that a calf, a lion, an eagle, and a beast with a man's face, should in all ages have been preferred by the Christian world, as expressive of Evangelistic power and inspiration, to the majesty of human forms; and that quaint grotesques, awkward and often ludicrous caricatures even of the animals represented, should have been regarded by all men, not only with contentment, but with awe, and have superseded all endeavors to represent the characters and persons of the Evangelistic writers themselves (except in a few instances, confined principally to works undertaken without a definite religious purpose);--this, I say, might appear more than strange to us, were it not that we ourselves share the awe, and are still satisfied with the symbol, and that justly. For, whether we are conscious of it or not, there is in our hearts, as we gaze upon the brutal forms that have so holy a signification, an acknowledgment that it was not Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John, in whom the Gospel of Christ was unsealed: but that the invisible things of Him from the beginning of the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; that the whole world, and all that is therein, be it low or high, great or small, is a continual Gospel; and that as the heathen, in their alienation from God, changed His glory into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed boasts, the Christian, in his approach to God, is to undo this work, and to change the corruptible things into the image of His glory; believing that there is nothing so base in creation, but that our faith may give it wings which shall raise us into companionship with heaven; and that, on the other hand, there is nothing so great or so goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the Gospel of Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him. § LXIV. And it is easy to understand, if we follow out this thought, how, when once the symbolic language was familiarized to the mind, and its solemnity felt in all its fulness, there was no likelihood of offence being taken at any repulsive or feeble characters in execution or conception. There was no form so mean, no incident so commonplace, but, if regarded in this light, it might become sublime; the more vigorous the fancy and the more faithful the enthusiasm, the greater would be the likelihood of their delighting in the contemplation of symbols whose mystery was enhanced by apparent insignificance, or in which the sanctity and majesty of meaning were contrasted with the utmost uncouthness of external form: nor with uncouthness merely, but even with every appearance of malignity or baseness; the beholder not being revolted even by this, but comprehending that, as the seeming evil in the framework of creation did not invalidate its Divine authorship, so neither did the evil or imperfection in the symbol invalidate its Divine message. And thus, sometimes, the designer at last became wanton in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out the impurity and the savageness of his own heart, for the mere pleasure of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary, by the religion of their beholder. § LXV. It is not, however, in every symbolical subject that the fearful grotesque becomes embodied to the full. The element of distortion which affects the intellect when dealing with subjects above its proper capacity, is as nothing compared with that which it sustains from the direct impressions of terror. It is the trembling of the human soul in the presence of death which most of all disturbs the images on the intellectual mirror, and invests them with the fitfulness and ghastliness of dreams. And from the contemplation of death, and of the pangs which follow his footsteps, arise in men's hearts the troop of strange and irresistible superstitions which, more or less melancholy or majestic according to the dignity of the mind they impress, are yet never without a certain grotesqueness, following on the paralysis of the reason and over-excitement of the fancy. I do not mean to deny the actual existence of spiritual manifestations; I have never weighed the evidence upon the subject; but with these, if such exist, we are not here concerned. The grotesque which we are examining arises out of that condition of mind which appears to follow naturally upon the contemplation of death, and in which the fancy is brought into morbid action by terror, accompanied by the belief in spiritual presence, and in the possibility of spiritual apparition. Hence are developed its most sublime, because its least voluntary, creations, aided by the fearfulness of the phenomena of nature which are in any wise the ministers of death, and primarily directed by the peculiar ghastliness of expression in the skeleton, itself a species of terrible grotesque in its relation to the perfect human frame. § LXVI. Thus, first born from the dusty and dreadful whiteness of the charnel house, but softened in their forms by the holiest of human affections, went forth the troop of wild and wonderful images, seen through tears, that had the mastery over our Northern hearts for so many ages. The powers of sudden destruction lurking in the woods and waters, in the rocks and clouds;--kelpie and gnome, Lurlei and Hartz spirits; the wraith and foreboding phantom; the spectra of second sight; the various conceptions of avenging or tormented ghost, haunting the perpetrator of crime, or expiating its commission; and the half fictitious and contemplative, half visionary and believed images of the presence of death itself, doing its daily work in the chambers of sickness and sin, and waiting for its hour in the fortalices of strength and the high places of pleasure;--these, partly degrading us by the instinctive and paralyzing terror with which they are attended, and partly ennobling us by leading our thoughts to dwell in the eternal world, fill the last and the most important circle in that great kingdom of dark and distorted power, of which we all must be in some sort the subjects until mortality shall be swallowed up of life; until the waters of the last fordless river cease to roll their untransparent volume between us and the light of heaven, and neither death stand between us and our brethren, nor symbols between us and our God. § LXVII. We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to completeness of the various branches of human feeling which are concerned in the developement of this peculiar form of art. It remains for us only to note, as briefly as possible, what facts in the actual history of the grotesque bear upon our immediate subject. From what we have seen to be its nature, we must, I think, be led to one most important conclusion; that wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened preëminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy. And, accordingly, I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations, or men, more sure than the developement, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it. I think that the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual faculties, all at their highest, is Dante; and in him the grotesque reaches at once the most distinct and the most noble developement to which it was ever brought in the human mind. The two other greatest men whom Italy has produced, Michael Angelo and Tintoret, show the same element in no less original strength, but oppressed in the one by his science, and in both by the spirit of the age in which they lived; never, however, absent even in Michael Angelo, but stealing forth continually in a strange and spectral way, lurking in folds of raiment and knots of wild hair, and mountainous confusions of craggy limb and cloudy drapery; and, in Tintoret, ruling the entire conceptions of his greatest works to such a degree that they are an enigma or an offence, even to this day, to all the petty disciples of a formal criticism. Of the grotesque in our own Shakspeare I need hardly speak, nor of its intolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of Æschylus and Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it will be found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order. § LXVIII. As an index of the greatness of nations, it is a less certain test, or, rather, we are not so well agreed on the meaning of the term "greatness" respecting them. A nation may produce a great effect, and take up a high place in the world's history, by the temporary enthusiasm or fury of its multitudes, without being truly great; or, on the other hand, the discipline of morality and common sense may extend its physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and imaginative powers are continually diminishing. And again: a people may take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction, as to obtain a respect which is not justly due to them if judged on universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it a peculiar power over certain conditions of modern mind; and were the most carefully educated race that the world has seen; but a few years hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than either the Egyptians or Assyrians. § LXIX. If, then, ridding ourselves as far as possible of prejudices owing merely to the school-teaching which remains from the system of the Renaissance, we set ourselves to discover in what races the human soul, taken all in all, reached its highest magnificence, we shall find, I believe, two great families of men, one of the East and South, the other of the West and North: the one including the Egyptians, Jews, Arabians, Assyrians, and Persians; the other, I know not whence derived, but seeming to flow forth from Scandinavia, and filling the whole of Europe with its Norman and Gothic energy. And in both these families, wherever they are seen in their utmost nobleness, there the grotesque is developed in its utmost energy; and I hardly know whether most to admire the winged bulls of Nineveh, or the winged dragons of Verona. § LXX. The reader who has not before turned his attention to this subject may, however, at first have some difficulty in distinguishing between the noble grotesque of these great nations, and the barbarous grotesque of mere savages, as seen in the work of the Hindoo and other Indian nations; or, more grossly still, in that of the complete savage of the Pacific islands; or if, as is to be hoped, he instinctively feels the difference, he may yet find difficulty in determining wherein that difference consists. But he will discover, on consideration, that the noble grotesque _involves the true appreciation of beauty_, though the mind may wilfully turn to other images or the hand resolutely stop short of the perfection which it must fail, if it endeavored, to reach; while the grotesque of the Sandwich islander involves no perception or imagination of anything above itself. He will find that in the exact proportion in which the grotesque results from an incapability of perceiving beauty, it becomes savage or barbarous; and that there are many stages of progress to be found in it even in its best times, much truly savage grotesque occurring in the fine Gothic periods, mingled with the other forms of the ignoble grotesque resulting from vicious inclinations or base sportiveness. Nothing is more mysterious in the history of the human mind, than the manner in which gross and ludicrous images are mingled with the most solemn subjects in the work of the middle ages, whether of sculpture or illumination; and although, in great part, such incongruities are to be accounted for on the various principles which I have above endeavored to define, in many instances they are clearly the result of vice and sensuality. The general greatness of seriousness of an age does not effect the restoration of human nature; and it would be strange, if, in the midst of the art even of the best periods, when that art was entrusted to myriads of workmen, we found no manifestations of impiety, folly, or impurity. § LXXI. It needs only to be added that in the noble grotesque, as it is partly the result of a morbid state of the imaginative power, that power itself will be always seen in a high degree; and that therefore our power of judging of the rank of a grotesque work will depend on the degree in which we are in general sensible of the presence of invention. The reader may partly test this power in himself by referring to the Plate given in the opening of this chapter, in which, on the left, is a piece of noble and inventive grotesque, a head of the lion-symbol of St. Mark, from the Veronese Gothic; the other is a head introduced as a boss on the foundation of the Palazzo Corner della Regina at Venice, utterly devoid of invention, made merely monstrous by exaggerations of the eyeballs and cheeks, and generally characteristic of that late Renaissance grotesque of Venice, with which we are at present more immediately concerned.[43] § LXXII. The developement of that grotesque took place under different laws from those which regulate it in any other European city. For, great as we have seen the Byzantine mind show itself to be in other directions, it was marked as that of a declining nation by the absence of the grotesque element; and, owing to its influence, the early Venetian Gothic remained inferior to all other schools in this particular character. Nothing can well be more wonderful than its instant failure in any attempt at the representation of ludicrous or fearful images, more especially when it is compared with the magnificent grotesque of the neighboring city of Verona, in which the Lombard influence had full sway. Nor was it until the last links of connexion with Constantinople had been dissolved, that the strength of the Venetian mind could manifest itself in this direction. But it had then a new enemy to encounter. The Renaissance laws altogether checked its imagination in architecture; and it could only obtain permission to express itself by starting forth in the work of the Venetian painters, filling them with monkeys and dwarfs, even amidst the most serious subjects, and leading Veronese and Tintoret to the most unexpected and wild fantasies of form and color. § LXXIII. We may be deeply thankful for this peculiar reserve of the Gothic grotesque character to the last days of Venice. All over the rest of Europe it had been strongest in the days of imperfect art; magnificently powerful throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, tamed gradually in the fourteenth and fifteenth, and expiring in the sixteenth amidst anatomy and laws of art. But at Venice, it had not been received when it was elsewhere in triumph, and it fled to the lagoons for shelter when elsewhere it was oppressed. And it was arrayed by the Venetian painters in robes of state, and advanced by them to such honor as it had never received in its days of widest dominion; while, in return, it bestowed upon their pictures that fulness, piquancy, decision of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the developement of their unapproachable color-power. § LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the grotesque does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not exist in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape. They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national custom and festival; _acted_ grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another, more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado, and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on "Fat Thursday" sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy: and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the _Doge and the Senate_ attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish, and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.[44] § LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again: it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French; though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a tone of humor in it which I believe is untraceable in that of the Parisian populace. It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart during the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction in the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether compatible with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal seriousness of disposition; this latter being exactly the condition of mind which, as we have seen, leads to the richest developements of the playful grotesque; while, on the contrary, the continual pursuit of pleasure deprives the soul of all alacrity and elasticity, and leaves it incapable of happy jesting, capable only of that which is bitter, base, and foolish. Thus, throughout the whole of the early career of the Venetians, though there is much jesting, there is no levity; on the contrary there is an intense earnestness both in their pursuit of commercial and political successes, and in their devotion to religion,[45] which led gradually to the formation of that highly wrought mingling of immovable resolution with secret thoughtfulness, which so strangely, sometimes so darkly, distinguishes the Venetian character at the time of their highest power, when the seriousness was left, but the conscientiousness destroyed. And if there be any one sign by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),--I say, if there be one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is this deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly raised or idealized his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which has most perfectly taken the color of his own mind; and the least impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or an apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is a member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint. Such, then, were the general tone and progress of the Venetian mind, up to the close of the seventeenth century. First, serious, religious, and sincere; then, though serious still, comparatively deprived of conscientiousness, and apt to decline into stern and subtle policy: in the first case, the spirit of the noble grotesque not showing itself in art at all, but only in speech and action; in the second case, developing itself in painting, through accessories and vivacities of composition, while perfect dignity was always preserved in portraiture. A third phase rapidly developed itself. § LXXVI. Once more, and for the last time, let me refer the reader to the important epoch of the death of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo in 1423, long ago indicated as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power. That commencement is marked, not merely by the words of the dying Prince, but by a great and clearly legible sign. It is recorded, that on the accession of his successor, Foscari, to the throne, "SI FESTEGGIO DALLA CITTA UNO ANNO INTERO:" "The city kept festival for a whole year." Venice had in her childhood sown, in tears, the harvest she was to reap in rejoicing. She now sowed in laughter the seeds of death. Thenceforward, year after year, the nation drank with deeper thirst from the fountains of forbidden pleasure, and dug for springs, hitherto unknown, in the dark places of the earth. In the ingenuity of indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of Christendom, as of old she surpassed them in fortitude and devotion; and as once the powers of Europe stood before her judgment-seat, to receive the decisions of her justice, so now the youth of Europe assembled in the halls of her luxury, to learn from her the arts of delight. It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the steps of her final ruin. That ancient curse was upon her, the curse of the cities of the plain, "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." By the inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of Gomorrah, she was consumed from her place among the nations; and her ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea. FOOTNOTES: [27] Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of 1738, quoted by Galliciolli: "attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta. Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria." [28] Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who arranged the "Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia," vol. iii. p. 7. Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639. [29] Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted information on the short sentence of Sansovino: "Finalmente, l'anno 1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco." Sansovino, however, gives 842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding. [30] Or at least for its principal families. Vide Appendix 8, "Early Venetian Marriages." [31] "Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la Liberta."--_Mutinelli._ [32] "Vestita, _per antico uso_, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù per le spalle, conteste con fila d'oro." "Dressed according to ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold." This was when she was first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to the espousals. "And when the form of the espousal has been gone through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other musical instruments, round the room, _dancing serenely all the time, and bowing herself before the guests_ (ballando placidamente, e facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber: and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and convents, wheresoever she has any relations." [33] Sansovino. [34] English, "Malmsey." The reader will find a most amusing account of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown's translation of the Giustiniani papers. See Appendix IX. [35] "XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni anno."--_Galliciolli._ The same precautions were taken before the feast of the Ascension. [36] Casa Vittura. [37] The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal. [38] The inscriptions are as follows: To the left of the reader. "VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUM RERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUM LAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIA RUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRI TANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLAS SIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLAS SEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DIS CIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUM AURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAM VENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT." To the right of the reader. "IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHO MANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSIT POSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETU RUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSA VETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVO EXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCUR UNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUS IN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATIS MOERORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT." [39] The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance, or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not, therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil? [40] Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject, the general character of the language of Iago. [41] This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully dwelt upon by Plato, in his "Phædrus," using, in the course of his argument, almost the words of St Paul: [Greek: kallion marturousin oi palaioi manian sôphrosynês tên ek Theou tês par anthrôpôn gignomenês]: "It is the testimony of the ancients, that _the madness which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men_;" and again, "He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses have to do," (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) "without madness, thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration." The passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced. No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school, and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit, and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes' work of a strong man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon, with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division; its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view, and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair; its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over. Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,--no, nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind. Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight, lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence--often in broken syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is altogether so strong as that on the German _Ich_. I was once introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret's "Massacre of the Innocents." He looked at it superciliously, and said it "wanted to be restored." He had been himself several years employed in painting a "Faust" in a red jerkin and blue fire; which made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him. [42] I have before stated ("Modern Painters" vol. ii.) that the first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate truth. [43] Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II. respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a painter's pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines, anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular curls. [44] The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46. [45] See Appendix 9. CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION. § I. I fear this chapter will be a rambling one, for it must be a kind of supplement to the preceding pages, and a general recapitulation of the things I have too imperfectly and feebly said. The grotesques of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nature of which we examined in the last chapter, close the career of the architecture of Europe. They were the last evidences of any feeling consistent with itself, and capable of directing the efforts of the builder to the formation of anything worthy the name of a style or school. From that time to this, no resuscitation of energy has taken place, nor does any for the present appear possible. How long this impossibility may last, and in what direction with regard to art in general, as well as to our lifeless architecture, our immediate efforts may most profitably be directed, are the questions I would endeavor briefly to consider in the present chapter. § II. That modern science, with all its additions to the comforts of life, and to the fields of rational contemplation, has placed the existing races of mankind on a higher platform than any that preceded them, none can doubt for an instant; and I believe the position in which we find ourselves is somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and laborious youth succeeding a restless and heedless infancy. Not long ago, it was said to me by one of the masters of modern science: "When men invented the locomotive, the child was learning to go; when they invented the telegraph, it was learning to speak." He looked forward to the manhood of mankind, as assuredly the nobler in proportion to the slowness of its developement. What might not be expected from the prime and middle strength of the order of existence whose infancy had lasted six thousand years? And, indeed, I think this the truest, as well as the most cheering, view that we can take of the world's history. Little progress has been made as yet. Base war, lying policy, thoughtless cruelty, senseless improvidence,--all things which, in nations, are analogous to the petulance, cunning, impatience, and carelessness of infancy,--have been, up to this hour, as characteristic of mankind as they were in the earliest periods; so that we must either be driven to doubt of human progress at all, or look upon it as in its very earliest stage. Whether the opportunity is to be permitted us to redeem the hours that we have lost; whether He, in whose sight a thousand years are as one day, has appointed us to be tried by the continued possession of the strange powers with which He has lately endowed us; or whether the periods of childhood and of probation are to cease together, and the youth of mankind is to be one which shall prevail over death, and bloom for ever in the midst of a new heaven and a new earth, are questions with which we have no concern. It is indeed right that we should look for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the Day of God; but not that we should check any human efforts by anticipations of its approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads of future ages. § III. It seems to me, then, that the whole human race, so far as their own reason can be trusted, may at present be regarded as just emergent from childhood; and beginning for the first time to feel their strength, to stretch their limbs, and explore the creation around them. If we consider that, till within the last fifty years, the nature of the ground we tread on, of the air we breathe, and of the light by which we see, were not so much as conjecturally conceived by us; that the duration of the globe, and the races of animal life by which it was inhabited, are just beginning to be apprehended; and that the scope of the magnificent science which has revealed them, is as yet so little received by the public mind, that presumption and ignorance are still permitted to raise their voices against it unrebuked; that perfect veracity in the representation of general nature by art has never been attempted until the present day, and has in the present day been resisted with all the energy of the popular voice;[46] that the simplest problems of social science are yet so little understood, as that doctrines of liberty and equality can be openly preached, and so successfully as to affect the whole body of the civilized world with apparently incurable disease; that the first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English Parliament only a few months ago, in its free trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation dares to abolish its custom-houses;[47] that the simplest principles of policy are still not so much as stated, far less received, and that civilized nations persist in the belief that the subtlety and dishonesty which they know to be ruinous in dealings between man and man, are serviceable in dealings between multitude and multitude; finally, that the scope of the Christian religion, which we have been taught for two thousand years, is still so little conceived by us, that we suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice bear upon individuals in all their social relations, and yet do not bear upon nations in any of their political relations;--when, I say, we thus review the depth of simplicity in which the human race are still plunged with respect to all that it most profoundly concerns them to know, and which might, by them, with most ease have been ascertained, we can hardly determine how far back on the narrow path of human progress we ought to place the generation to which we belong, how far the swaddling clothes are unwound from us, and childish things beginning to be put away. On the other hand, a power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men,[48] almost without labor. The foundation of every natural science is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing without some addition of buttress and pinnacle to their already magnificent fabric. Social theorems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more likely to be at last determined, so that they never can be matters of question more. Human life has been in some sense prolonged by the increased powers of locomotion, and an almost limitless power of converse. Finally, there is hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occupied, more or less, in the investigation of the questions which have so long paralyzed the strength of religious feeling, and shortened the dominion of religious faith. And we may therefore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a definite state of progress, as to justify our caution in guarding against the dangers incident to every period of change, and especially to that from childhood into youth. § IV. Those dangers appear, in the main, to be twofold; consisting partly in the pride of vain knowledge, partly in the pursuit of vain pleasure. A few points are still to be noticed with respect to each of these heads. Enough, it might be thought, had been said already, touching the pride of knowledge; but I have not yet applied the principles, at which we arrived in the third chapter, to the practical questions of modern art. And I think those principles, together with what were deduced from the consideration of the nature of Gothic in the second volume, so necessary and vital, not only with respect to the progress of art, but even to the happiness of society, that I will rather run the risk of tediousness than of deficiency, in their illustration and enforcement. In examining the nature of Gothic, we concluded that one of the chief elements of power in that, and in _all good_ architecture, was the acceptance of uncultivated and rude energy in the workman. In examining the nature of Renaissance, we concluded that its chief element of weakness was that pride of knowledge which not only prevented all rudeness in expression, but gradually quenched all energy which could only be rudely expressed; nor only so, but, for the motive and matter of the work itself, preferred science to emotion, and experience to perception. § V. The modern mind differs from the Renaissance mind in that its learning is more substantial and extended, and its temper more humble; but its errors, with respect to the cultivation of art, are precisely the same,--nay, as far as regards execution, even more aggravated. We require, at present, from our general workmen, more perfect finish than was demanded in the most skilful Renaissance periods, except in their very finest productions; and our leading principles in teaching, and in the patronage which necessarily gives tone to teaching, are, that the goodness of work consists primarily in firmness of handling and accuracy of science, that is to say, in hand-work and head-work; whereas heart-work, which is the _one_ work we want, is not only independent of both, but often, in great degree, inconsistent with either. § VI. Here, therefore, let me finally and firmly enunciate the great principle to which all that has hitherto been stated is subservient:--that art is valuable or otherwise, only as it expresses the personality, activity, and living perception of a good and great human soul; that it may express and contain this with little help from execution, and less from science; and that if it have not this, if it show not the vigor, perception, and invention of a mighty human spirit, it is worthless. Worthless, I mean, as _art_; it may be precious in some other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. Once let this be well understood among us, and magnificent consequences will soon follow. Let me repeat it in other terms, so that I may not be misunderstood. All art is great, and good, and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of _manhood_ in its entire and highest sense; that is to say, not the work of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided, according to her necessities, by the inferior powers; and therefore distinguished in essence from all products of those inferior powers unhelped by the soul. For as a photograph is not a work of art, though it requires certain delicate manipulations of paper and acid, and subtle calculations of time, in order to bring out a good result; so, neither would a drawing _like_ a photograph, made directly from nature, be a work of art, although it would imply many delicate manipulations of the pencil and subtle calculations of effects of color and shade. It is no more art[49] to manipulate a camel's hair pencil, than to manipulate a china tray and a glass vial. It is no more art to lay on color delicately, than to lay on acid delicately. It is no more art to use the cornea and retina for the reception of an image, than to use a lens and a piece of silvered paper. But the moment that inner part of the man, or rather that entire and only being of the man, of which cornea and retina, fingers and hands, pencils and colors, are all the mere servants and instruments;[50] that manhood which has light in itself, though the eyeball be sightless, and can gain in strength when the hand and the foot are hewn off and cast into the fire; the moment this part of the man stands forth with its solemn "Behold, it is I," then the work becomes art indeed, perfect in honor, priceless in value, boundless in power. § VII. Yet observe, I do not mean to speak of the body and soul as separable. The man is made up of both: they are to be raised and glorified together, and all art is an expression of the one, by and through the other. All that I would insist upon is, the necessity of the whole man being in his work; the body _must_ be in it. Hands and habits must be in it, whether we will or not; but the nobler part of the man may often not be in it. And that nobler part acts principally in love, reverence, and admiration, together with those conditions of thought which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much error by considering the intellectual powers as having dignity in themselves, and separable from the heart; whereas the truth is, that the intellect becomes noble and ignoble according to the food we give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. It is not the reasoning power which, of itself, is noble, but the reasoning power occupied with its proper objects. Half of the mistakes of metaphysicians have arisen from their not observing this; namely, that the intellect, going through the same processes, is yet mean or noble according to the matter it deals with, and wastes itself away in mere rotatory motion, if it be set to grind straws and dust. If we reason only respecting words, or lines, or any trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a contemptible faculty; but reason employed on holy and infinite things, becomes herself holy and infinite. So that, by work of the soul, I mean the reader always to understand the work of the entire immortal creature, proceeding from a quick, perceptive, and eager heart, perfected by the intellect, and finally dealt with by the hands, under the direct guidance of these higher powers. § VIII. And now observe, the first important consequence of our fully understanding this preëminence of the soul, will be the due understanding of that subordination of knowledge respecting which so much has already been said. For it must be felt at once, that the increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make the soul larger or smaller; that, in the sight of God, all the knowledge man can gain is as nothing: but that the soul, for which the great scheme of redemption was laid, be it ignorant or be it wise, is all in all; and in the activity, strength, health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main difference, in His sight, between one man and another. And that which is all in all in God's estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man's labor; and to have the heart open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions and thoughts warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the other fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in this world. And therefore finally, for this, the weightiest of all reasons, let us take no pride in our knowledge. We may, in a certain sense, be proud of being immortal; we may be proud of being God's children; we may be proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by no human teaching: but not of what we have been taught by rote; not of the ballast and freight of the ship of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all the freight will only sink it faster, and strew the sea more richly with its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received what we moderns ridiculously call education, but he knows more of everything, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did; but he is not for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to be heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul. There is not at this moment a junior student in our schools of painting, who does not know fifty times as much about the art as Giotto did; but he is not for that reason greater than Giotto; no, nor his work better, nor fitter for our beholding. Let him go on to know all that the human intellect can discover and contain in the term of a long life, and he will not be one inch, one line, nearer to Giotto's feet. But let him leave his academy benches, and, innocently, as one knowing nothing, go out into the highways and hedges, and there rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep; and in the next world, among the companies of the great and good, Giotto will give his hand to him, and lead him into their white circle, and say, "This is our brother." § IX. And the second important consequence of our feeling the soul's preëminence will be our understanding the soul's language, however broken, or low, or feeble, or obscure in its words; and chiefly that great symbolic language of past ages, which has now so long been unspoken. It is strange that the same cold and formal spirit which the Renaissance teaching has raised amongst us, should be equally dead to the languages of imitation and of symbolism; and should at once disdain the faithful rendering of real nature by the modern school of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the symbolic rendering of imagined nature in the work of the thirteenth century. But so it is; and we find the same body of modern artists rejecting Pre-Raphaelitism because it is not ideal! and thirteenth century work, because it is not real!--their own practice being at once false and un-ideal, and therefore equally opposed to both. § X. It is therefore, at this juncture, of much importance to mark for the reader the exact relation of healthy symbolism and of healthy imitation; and, in order to do so, let us return to one of our Venetian examples of symbolic art, to the central cupola of St. Mark's. On that cupola, as has been already stated, there is a mosaic representing the Apostles on the Mount of Olives, with an olive-tree separating each from the other; and we shall easily arrive at our purpose, by comparing the means which would have been adopted by a modern artist bred in the Renaissance schools,--that is to say, under the influence of Claude and Poussin, and of the common teaching of the present day,--with those adopted by the Byzantine mosaicist to express the nature of these trees. § XI. The reader is doubtless aware that the olive is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all Southern scenery. On the slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber; the whole of the Val d'Arno is wooded with them, every one of its gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically impossible, in most parts of the neighborhood of Florence, Pistoja, Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak are to England, the olive is to Italy; nay, more than this, its presence is so constant, that, in the case of at least four fifths of the drawings made by any artist in North Italy, he must have been somewhat impeded by branches of olive coming between him and the landscape. Its classical associations double its importance in Greece; and in the Holy Land the remembrances connected with it are of course more touching than can ever belong to any other tree of the field. Now, for many years back, at least one third out of all the landscapes painted by English artists have been chosen from Italian scenery; sketches in Greece and in the Holy Land have become as common as sketches on Hampstead Heath; our galleries also are full of sacred subjects, in which, if any background be introduced at all, the foliage of the olive ought to have been a prominent feature. And here I challenge the untravelled English reader to tell me what an olive-tree is like? § XII. I know he cannot answer my challenge. He has no more idea of an olive-tree than if olives grew only in the fixed stars. Let him meditate a little on this one fact, and consider its strangeness, and what a wilful and constant closing of the eyes to the most important truths it indicates on the part of the modern artist. Observe, a want of perception, not of science. I do not want painters to tell me any scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to have felt and seen the olive-tree; to have loved it for Christ's sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was to the heathen in some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's right hand, when He founded the earth and established the heavens. To have loved it, even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs--the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,--and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains;--these it had been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left unstudied in the gallery. § XIII. And if the reader would know the reason why this has not been done (it is one instance only out of the myriads which might be given of sightlessness in modern art), and will ask the artists themselves, he will be informed of another of the marvellous contradictions and inconsistencies in the base Renaissance art; for it will be answered him, that it is not right, nor according to law, to draw trees so that one should be known from another, but that trees ought to be generalized into a universal idea of a tree: that is to say, that the very school which carries its science in the representation of man down to the dissection of the most minute muscle, refuses so much science to the drawing of a tree as shall distinguish one species from another; and also, while it attends to logic, and rhetoric, and perspective, and atmosphere, and every other circumstance which is trivial, verbal, external, or accidental, in what it either says or sees, it will _not_ attend to what is essential and substantial,--being intensely solicitous, for instance, if it draws two trees, one behind the other, that the farthest off shall be as much smaller as mathematics show that it should be, but totally unsolicitous to show, what to the spectator is a far more important matter, whether it is an apple or an orange tree. § XIV. This, however, is not to our immediate purpose. Let it be granted that an idea of an olive-tree is indeed to be given us in a special manner; how, and by what language, this idea is to be conveyed, are questions on which we shall find the world of artists again divided; and it was this division which I wished especially to illustrate by reference to the mosaics of St. Mark's. Now the main characteristics of an olive-tree are these. It has sharp and slender leaves of a greyish green, nearly grey on the under surface, and resembling, but somewhat smaller than, those of our common willow. Its fruit, when ripe, is black and lustrous; but of course so small, that, unless in great quantity, it is not conspicuous upon the tree. Its trunk and branches are peculiarly fantastic in their twisting, showing their fibres at every turn; and the trunk is often hollow, and even rent into many divisions like separate stems, but the extremities are exquisitely graceful, especially in the setting on of the leaves; and the notable and characteristic effect of the tree in the distance is of a rounded and soft mass or ball of downy foliage. § XV. Supposing a modern artist to address himself to the rendering of this tree with his best skill: he will probably draw accurately the twisting of the branches, but yet this will hardly distinguish the tree from an oak: he will also render the color and intricacy of the foliage, but this will only confuse the idea of an oak with that of a willow. The fruit, and the peculiar grace of the leaves at the extremities, and the fibrous structure of the stems, will all be too minute to be rendered consistently with his artistical feeling of breadth, or with the amount of labor which he considers it dexterous and legitimate to bestow upon the work: but, above all, the rounded and monotonous form of the head of the tree will be at variance with his ideas of "composition;" he will assuredly disguise or break it, and the main points of the olive-tree will all at last remain untold. § XVI. Now observe, the old Byzantine mosaicist begins his work at enormous disadvantage. It is to be some one hundred and fifty feet above the eye, in a dark cupola; executed not with free touches of the pencil, but with square pieces of glass; not by his own hand, but by various workmen under his superintendence; finally, not with a principal purpose of drawing olive-trees, but mainly as a decoration of the cupola. There is to be an olive-tree beside each apostle, and their stems are to be the chief lines which divide the dome. He therefore at once gives up the irregular twisting of the boughs hither and thither, but he will not give up their fibres. Other trees have irregular and fantastic branches, but the knitted cordage of fibres is the olive's own. Again, were he to draw the leaves of their natural size, they would be so small that their forms would be invisible in the darkness; and were he to draw them so large as that their shape might be seen, they would look like laurel instead of olive. So he arranges them in small clusters of five each, nearly of the shape which the Byzantines give to the petals of the lily, but elongated so as to give the idea of leafage upon a spray; and these clusters,--his object always, be it remembered, being _decoration_ not less than _representation_,--he arranges symmetrically on each side of his branches, laying the whole on a dark ground most truly suggestive of the heavy rounded mass of the tree, which, in its turn, is relieved against the gold of the cupola. Lastly, comes the question respecting the fruit. The whole power and honor of the olive is in its fruit; and, unless that be represented, nothing is represented. But if the berries were colored black or green, they would be totally invisible; if of any other color, utterly unnatural, and violence would be done to the whole conception. There is but one conceivable means of showing them, namely to represent them as golden. For the idea of golden fruit of various kinds was already familiar to the mind, as in the apples of the Hesperides, without any violence to the distinctive conception of the fruit itself.[51] So the mosaicist introduced small round golden berries into the dark ground between each leaf, and his work was done. [Illustration: Plate IV. Mosaics of Olive-tree and Flowers.] § XVII. On the opposite plate, the uppermost figure on the left is a tolerably faithful representation of the general effect of one of these decorative olive-trees; the figure on the right is the head of the tree alone, showing the leaf clusters, berries, and _interlacing_ of the boughs as they leave the stem. Each bough is connected with a separate line of fibre in the trunk, and the junctions of the arms and stem are indicated, down to the very root of the tree, with a truth in structure which may well put to shame the tree anatomy of modern times. § XVIII. The white branching figures upon the serpentine band below are two of the clusters of flowers which form the foreground of a mosaic in the atrium. I have printed the whole plate in blue, because that color approaches more nearly than black to the distant effect of the mosaics, of which the darker portions are generally composed of blue, in greater quantity than any other color. But the waved background in this instance, is of various shades of blue and green alternately, with one narrow black band to give it force; the whole being intended to represent the distant effect and color of deep grass, and the wavy line to _express its bending motion_, just as the same symbol is used to represent the waves of water. Then the two white clusters are representative of the distinctly visible herbage close to the spectator, having buds and flowers of two kinds, springing in one case out of the midst of twisted grass, and in the other out of their own proper leaves; the clusters being kept each so distinctly symmetrical, as to form, when set side by side, an ornamental border of perfect architectural severity; and yet each cluster different from the next, and every flower, and bud, and knot of grass, varied in form and thought. The way the mosaic tesseræ are arranged, so as to give the writhing of the grass blades round the stalks of the flowers, is exceedingly fine. The tree circles below are examples of still more severely conventional forms, adopted, on principle, when the decoration is to be in white and gold, instead of color; these ornaments being cut in white marble on the outside of the church, and the ground laid in with gold, though necessarily here represented, like the rest of the plate, in blue. And it is exceedingly interesting to see how the noble workman, the moment he is restricted to more conventional materials, retires into more conventional forms, and reduces his various leafage into symmetry, now nearly perfect; yet observe, in the central figure, where the symbolic meaning of the vegetation beside the cross required it to be more distinctly indicated, he has given it life and growth by throwing it into unequal curves on the opposite sides. § XIX. I believe the reader will now see, that in these mosaics, which the careless traveller is in the habit of passing by with contempt, there is a depth of feeling and of meaning greater than in most of the best sketches from nature of modern times; and, without entering into any question whether these conventional representations are as good as, under the required limitations, it was possible to render them, they are at all events good enough completely to illustrate that mode of symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought, and in no wise trusts to realization. And little as, in the present state of our schools, such an assertion is likely to be believed, the fact is that this kind of expression is the _only one allowable in noble art_. § XX. I pray the reader to have patience with me for a few moments. I do not mean that no art is noble but Byzantine mosaic; but no art is noble which in any wise depends upon direct imitation for its effect upon the mind. This was asserted in the opening chapters of "Modern Painters," but not upon the highest grounds; the results at which we have now arrived in our investigation of early art, will enable me to place it on a loftier and firmer foundation. § XXI. We have just seen that all great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul. But it is not only _the work_ of the whole creature, it likewise _addresses_ the whole creature. That in which the perfect being speaks, must also have the perfect being to listen. I am not to spend my utmost spirit, and give all my strength and life to my work, while you, spectator or hearer, will give me only the attention of half your soul. You must be all mine, as I am all yours; it is the only condition on which we can meet each other. All your faculties, all that is in you of greatest and best, must be awake in you, or I have no reward. The painter is not to cast the entire treasure of his human nature into his labor, merely to please a part of the beholder: not merely to delight his senses, not merely to amuse his fancy, not merely to beguile him into emotion, not merely to lead him into thought, but to do _all_ this. Senses, fancy, feeling, reason, the whole of the beholding spirit, must be stilled in attention or stirred with delight; else the laboring spirit has not done its work well. For observe, it is not merely its _right_ to be thus met, face to face, heart to heart; but it is its _duty_ to evoke its answering of the other soul; its trumpet call must be so clear, that though the challenge may by dulness or indolence be unanswered, there shall be no error as to the meaning of the appeal; there must be a summons in the work, which it shall be our own fault if we do not obey. We require this of it, we beseech this of it. Most men do not know what is in them, till they receive this summons from their fellows: their hearts die within them, sleep settles upon them, the lethargy of the world's miasmata; there is nothing for which they are so thankful as for that cry, "Awake, thou that sleepest." And this cry must be most loudly uttered to their noblest faculties; first of all to the imagination, for that is the most tender, and the soonest struck into numbness by the poisoned air; so that one of the main functions of art in its service to man, is to arouse the imagination from its palsy, like the angel troubling the Bethesda pool; and the art which does not do this is false to its duty, and degraded in its nature. It is not enough that it be well imagined, it must task the beholder also to imagine well; and this so imperatively, that if he does not choose to rouse himself to meet the work, he shall not taste it, nor enjoy it in any wise. Once that he is well awake, the guidance which the artist gives him should be full and authoritative: the beholder's imagination must not be suffered to take its own way, or wander hither and thither; but neither must it be left at rest; and the right point of realization, for any given work of art, is that which will enable the spectator to complete it for himself, in the exact way the artist would have him, but not that which will save him the trouble of effecting the completion. So soon as the idea is entirely conveyed, the artist's labor should cease; and every touch which he adds beyond the point when, with the help of the beholder's imagination, the story ought to have been told, is a degradation to his work. So that the art is wrong, which either realizes its subject completely, or fails in giving such definite aid as shall enable it to be realized by the beholding imagination. § XXII. It follows, therefore, that the quantity of finish or detail which may rightly be bestowed upon any work, depends on the number and kind of ideas which the artist wishes to convey, much more than on the amount of realization necessary to enable the imagination to grasp them. It is true that the differences of judgment formed by one or another observer are in great degree dependent on their unequal imaginative powers, as well as their unequal efforts in following the artist's intention; and it constantly happens that the drawing which appears clear to the painter in whose mind the thought is formed, is slightly inadequate to suggest it to the spectator. These causes of false judgment, or imperfect achievement, must always exist, but they are of no importance. For, in nearly every mind, the imaginative power, however unable to act independently, is so easily helped and so brightly animated by the most obscure suggestion, that there is no form of artistical language which will not readily be seized by it, if once it set itself intelligently to the task; and even without such effort there are few hieroglyphics of which, once understanding that it is to take them as hieroglyphics, it cannot make itself a pleasant picture. § XXIII. Thus, in the case of all sketches, etchings, unfinished engravings, &c., no one ever supposes them to be imitations. Black outlines on white paper cannot produce a deceptive resemblance of anything; and the mind, understanding at once that it is to depend on its own powers for great part of its pleasure, sets itself so actively to the task that it can completely enjoy the rudest outline in which meaning exists. Now, when it is once in this temper, the artist is infinitely to be blamed who insults it by putting anything into his work which is not suggestive: having summoned the imaginative power, he must turn it to account and keep it employed, or it will run against him in indignation. Whatever he does merely to realize and substantiate an idea is impertinent; he is like a dull story-teller, dwelling on points which the hearer anticipates or disregards. The imagination will say to him: "I knew all that before; I don't want to be told that. Go on; or be silent, and let me go on in my own way. I can tell the story better than you." Observe, then, whenever finish is given for the sake of realization, it is wrong; whenever it is given for the sake of adding ideas it is right. All true finish consists in the addition of ideas, that is to say, in giving the imagination more food; for once well awaked, it is ravenous for food: but the painter who finishes in order to substantiate takes the food out of its mouth, and it will turn and rend him. § XXIV. Let us go back, for instance, to our olive grove,--or, lest the reader should be tired of olives, let it be an oak copse,--and consider the difference between the substantiating and the imaginative methods of finish in such a subject. A few strokes of the pencil, or dashes of color, will be enough to enable the imagination to conceive a tree; and in those dashes of color Sir Joshua Reynolds would have rested, and would have suffered the imagination to paint what more it liked for itself, and grow oaks, or olives, or apples, out of the few dashes of color at its leisure. On the other hand, Hobbima, one of the worst of the realists, smites the imagination on the mouth, and bids it be silent, while he sets to work to paint his oak of the right green, and fill up its foliage laboriously with jagged touches, and furrow the bark all over its branches, so as, if possible, to deceive us into supposing that we are looking at a real oak; which, indeed, we had much better do at once, without giving any one the trouble to deceive us in the matter. § XXV. Now, the truly great artist neither leaves the imagination to itself, like Sir Joshua, nor insults it by realization, like Hobbima, but finds it continual employment of the happiest kind. Having summoned it by his vigorous first touches, he says to it: "Here is a tree for you, and it is to be an oak. Now I know that you can make it green and intricate for yourself, but that is not enough: an oak is not only green and intricate, but its leaves have most beautiful and fantastic forms which I am very sure you are not quite able to complete without help; so I will draw a cluster or two perfectly for you, and then you can go on and do all the other clusters. So far so good: but the leaves are not enough; the oak is to be full of acorns, and you may not be quite able to imagine the way they grow, nor the pretty contrast of their glossy almond-shaped nuts with the chasing of their cups; so I will draw a bunch or two of acorns for you, and you can fill up the oak with others like them. Good: but that is not enough; it is to be a bright day in summer, and all the outside leaves are to be glittering in the sunshine as if their edges were of gold: I cannot paint this, but you can; so I will really gild some of the edges nearest you,[52] and you can turn the gold into sunshine, and cover the tree with it. Well done: but still this is not enough; the tree is so full foliaged and so old that the wood birds come in crowds to build there; they are singing, two or three under the shadow of every bough. I cannot show you them all; but here is a large one on the outside spray, and you can fancy the others inside." § XXVI. In this way the calls upon the imagination are multiplied as a great painter finishes; and from these larger incidents he may proceed into the most minute particulars, and lead the companion imagination to the veins in the leaves and the mosses on the trunk, and the shadows of the dead leaves upon the grass, but always multiplying thoughts, or subjects of thought, never working for the sake of realization; the amount of realization actually reached depending on his space, his materials, and the nature of the thoughts he wishes to suggest. In the sculpture of an oak-tree, introduced above an Adoration of the Magi on the tomb of the Doge Marco Dolfino (fourteenth century), the sculptor has been content with a few leaves, a single acorn, and a bird; while, on the other hand, Millais' willow-tree with the robin, in the background of his "Ophelia," or the foreground of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen of Verona," carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so multiplied and minute, that the work nearly reaches realization. But it does not matter how near realization the work may approach in its fulness, or how far off it may remain in its slightness, so long as realization is not the end proposed, but the informing one spirit of the thoughts of another. And in this greatness and simplicity of purpose all noble art is alike, however slight its means, or however perfect, from the rudest mosaics of St. Mark's to the most tender finishing of the "Huguenot" or the "Ophelia." § XXVII. Only observe, in this matter, that a greater degree of realization is often allowed, for the sake of color, than would be right without it. For there is not any distinction between the artists of the inferior and the nobler schools more definite than this; that the first _color for the sake of realization_, and the second _realize for the sake of color_. I hope that, in the fifth chapter, enough has been said to show the nobility of color, though it is a subject on which I would fain enlarge whenever I approach it: for there is none that needs more to be insisted upon, chiefly on account of the opposition of the persons who have no eye for color, and who, being therefore unable to understand that it is just as divine and distinct in its power as music (only infinitely more varied in its harmonies), talk of it as if it were inferior and servile with respect to the other powers of art;[53] whereas it is so far from being this, that wherever it enters it must take the mastery, and, whatever else is sacrificed for its sake, _it_, at least, must be right. This is partly the case even with music: it is at our choice, whether we will accompany a poem with music, or not; but, if we do, the music _must_ be right, and neither discordant nor inexpressive. The goodness and sweetness of the poem cannot save it, if the music be harsh or false; but, if the music be right, the poem may be insipid or inharmonious, and still saved by the notes to which it is wedded. But this is far more true of color. If that be wrong, all is wrong. No amount of expression or invention can redeem an ill-colored picture; while, on the other hand, if the color be right, there is nothing it will not raise or redeem; and, therefore, wherever color enters at all, anything _may_ be sacrificed to it, and, rather than it should be false or feeble, everything _must_ be sacrificed to it: so that, when an artist touches color, it is the same thing as when a poet takes up a musical instrument; he implies, in so doing, that he is a master, up to a certain point, of that instrument, and can produce sweet sound from it, and is able to fit the course and measure of his words to its tones, which, if he be not able to do, he had better not have touched it. In like manner, to add color to a drawing is to undertake for the perfection of a visible music, which, if it be false, will utterly and assuredly mar the whole work; if true, proportionately elevate it, according to its power and sweetness. But, in no case ought the color to be added in order to increase the realization. The drawing or engraving is all that the imagination needs. To "paint" the subject merely to make it more real, is only to insult the imaginative power and to vulgarize the whole. Hence the common, though little understood feeling, among men of ordinary cultivation, that an inferior sketch is always better than a bad painting; although, in the latter, there may verily be more skill than in the former. For the painter who has presumed to touch color without perfectly understanding it, not for the color's sake, nor because he loves it, but for the sake of completion merely, has committed two sins against us; he has dulled the imagination by not trusting it far enough, and then, in this languid state, he oppresses it with base and false color; for all color that is not lovely, is discordant; there is no mediate condition. So, therefore, when it is permitted to enter at all, it must be with the predetermination that, cost what it will, the color shall be right and lovely: and I only wish that, in general, it were better understood that a _painter's_ business is _to paint_, primarily; and that all expression, and grouping, and conceiving, and what else goes to constitute design, _are of less importance than color, in a colored work_. And so they were always considered in the noble periods; and sometimes all resemblance to nature whatever (as in painted windows, illuminated manuscripts, and such other work) is sacrificed to the brilliancy of color; sometimes distinctness of form to its richness, as by Titian, Turner, and Reynolds; and, which is the point on which we are at present insisting, sometimes, in the pursuit of its utmost refinements on the surfaces of objects, an amount of realization becomes consistent with noble art, which would otherwise be altogether inadmissible, that is to say, which no great mind could otherwise have either produced or enjoyed. The extreme finish given by the Pre-Raphaelites is rendered noble chiefly by their love of color. § XXVIII. So then, whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. And consider what mighty consequences follow from our acceptance of this truth! what a key we have herein given us for the interpretation of the art of all time! For, as long as we held art to consist in any high manual skill, or successful imitation of natural objects, or any scientific and legalized manner of performance whatever, it was necessary for us to limit our admiration to narrow periods and to few men. According to our own knowledge and sympathies, the period chosen might be different, and our rest might be in Greek statues, or Dutch landscapes, or Italian Madonnas; but, whatever our choice, we were therein captive, barred from all reverence but of our favorite masters, and habitually using the language of contempt towards the whole of the human race to whom it had not pleased Heaven to reveal the arcana of the particular craftsmanship we admired, and who, it might be, had lived their term of seventy years upon the earth, and fitted themselves therein for the eternal world, without any clear understanding, sometimes even with an insolent disregard, of the laws of perspective and chiaroscuro. But let us once comprehend the holier nature of the art of man, and begin to look for the meaning of the spirit, however syllabled, and the scene is changed; and we are changed also. Those small and dexterous creatures whom once we worshipped, those fur-capped divinities with sceptres of camel's hair, peering and poring in their one-windowed chambers over the minute preciousness of the labored canvas; how are they swept away and crushed into unnoticeable darkness! And in their stead, as the walls of the dismal rooms that enclosed them, and us, are struck by the four winds of Heaven, and rent away, and as the world opens to our sight, lo! far back into all the depths of time, and forth from all the fields that have been sown with human life, how the harvest of the dragon's teeth is springing! how the companies of the gods are ascending out of the earth! The dark stones that have so long been the sepulchres of the thoughts of nations, and the forgotten ruins wherein their faith lay charnelled, give up the dead that were in them; and beneath the Egyptian ranks of sultry and silent rock, and amidst the dim golden lights of the Byzantine dome, and out of the confused and cold shadows of the Northern cloister, behold, the multitudinous souls come forth with singing, gazing on us with the soft eyes of newly comprehended sympathy, and stretching their white arms to us across the grave, in the solemn gladness of everlasting brotherhood. § XXIX. The other danger to which, it was above said, we were primarily exposed under our present circumstances of life, is the pursuit of vain pleasure, that is to say, false pleasure; delight, which is not indeed delight; as knowledge vainly accumulated, is not indeed knowledge. And this we are exposed to chiefly in the fact of our ceasing to be children. For the child does not seek false pleasure; its pleasures are true, simple, and instinctive: but the youth is apt to abandon his early and true delight for vanities,--seeking to be like men, and sacrificing his natural and pure enjoyments to his pride. In like manner, it seems to me that modern civilization sacrifices much pure and true pleasure to various forms of ostentation from which it can receive no fruit. Consider, for a moment, what kind of pleasures are open to human nature, undiseased. Passing by the consideration of the pleasures of the higher affections, which lie at the root of everything, and considering the definite and practical pleasures of daily life, there is, first, the pleasure of doing good; the greatest of all, only apt to be despised from not being often enough tasted: and then, I know not in what order to put them, nor does it matter,--the pleasure of gaining knowledge; the pleasure of the excitement of imagination and emotion (or poetry and passion); and, lastly, the gratification of the senses, first of the eye, then of the ear, and then of the others in their order. § XXX. All these we are apt to make subservient to the desire of praise; nor unwisely, when the praise sought is God's and the conscience's: but if the sacrifice is made for man's admiration, and knowledge is only sought for praise, passion repressed or affected for praise, and the arts practised for praise, we are feeding on the bitterest apples of Sodom, suffering always ten mortifications for one delight. And it seems to me, that in the modern civilized world we make such sacrifice doubly: first, by laboring for merely ambitious purposes; and secondly, which is the main point in question, by being ashamed of simple pleasures, more especially of the pleasure in sweet color and form, a pleasure evidently so necessary to man's perfectness and virtue, that the beauty of color and form has been given lavishly throughout the whole of creation, so that it may become the food of all, and with such intricacy and subtlety that it may deeply employ the thoughts of all. If we refuse to accept the natural delight which the Deity has thus provided for us, we must either become ascetics, or we must seek for some base and guilty pleasures to replace those of Paradise, which we have denied ourselves. Some years ago, in passing through some of the cells of the Grand Chartreuse, noticing that the window of each apartment looked across the little garden of its inhabitant to the wall of the cell opposite, and commanded no other view, I asked the monk beside me, why the window was not rather made on the side of the cell whence it would open to the solemn fields of the Alpine valley. "We do not come here," he replied, "to look at the mountains." § XXXI. The same answer is given, practically, by the men of this century, to every such question; only the walls with which they enclose themselves are those of pride, not of prayer. But in the middle ages it was otherwise. Not, indeed, in landscape itself, but in the art which can take the place of it, in the noble color and form with which they illumined, and into which they wrought, every object around them that was in any wise subjected to their power, they obeyed the laws of their inner nature, and found its proper food. The splendor and fantasy even of dress, which in these days we pretend to despise, or in which, if we even indulge, it is only for the sake of vanity, and therefore to our infinite harm, were in those early days studied for love of their true beauty and honorableness, and became one of the main helps to dignity of character, and courtesy of bearing. Look back to what we have been told of the dress of the early Venetians, that it was so invented "that in clothing themselves with it, they might clothe themselves also with modesty and honor;"[54] consider what nobleness of expression there is in the dress of any of the portrait figures of the great times, nay, what perfect beauty, and more than beauty, there is in the folding of the robe round the imagined form even of the saint or of the angel; and then consider whether the grace of vesture be indeed a thing to be despised. We cannot despise it if we would; and in all our highest poetry and happiest thought we cling to the magnificence which in daily life we disregard. The essence of modern romance is simply the return of the heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally take pleasure; and half the influence of the best romances, of Ivanhoe, or Marmion, or the Crusaders, or the Lady of the Lake, is completely dependent upon the accessaries of armor and costume. Nay, more than this, deprive the Iliad itself of its costume, and consider how much of its power would be lost. And that delight and reverence which we feel in, and by means of, the mere imagination of these accessaries, the middle ages had in the vision of them; the nobleness of dress exercising, as I have said, a perpetual influence upon character, tending in a thousand ways to increase dignity and self-respect, and together with grace of gesture, to induce serenity of thought. § XXXII. I do not mean merely in its magnificence; the most splendid time was not the best time. It was still in the thirteenth century,--when, as we have seen, simplicity and gorgeousness were justly mingled, and the "leathern girdle and clasp of bone" were worn, as well as the embroidered mantle,--that the manner of dress seems to have been noblest. The chain mail of the knight, flowing and falling over his form in lapping waves of gloomy strength, was worn under full robes of one color in the ground, his crest quartered on them, and their borders enriched with subtle illumination. The women wore first a dress close to the form in like manner, and then long and flowing robes, veiling them up to the neck, and delicately embroidered around the hem, the sleeves, and the girdle. The use of plate armor gradually introduced more fantastic types; the nobleness of the form was lost beneath the steel; the gradually increasing luxury and vanity of the age strove for continual excitement in more quaint and extravagant devices; and in the fifteenth century, dress reached its point of utmost splendor and fancy, being in many cases still exquisitely graceful, but now, in its morbid magnificence, devoid of all wholesome influence on manners. From this point, like architecture, it was rapidly degraded; and sank through the buff coat, and lace collar, and jack-boot, to the bag-wig, tailed coat, and high-heeled shoes; and so to what it is now. § XXXIII. Precisely analogous to this destruction of beauty in dress, has been that of beauty in architecture; its color, and grace, and fancy, being gradually sacrificed to the base forms of the Renaissance, exactly as the splendor of chivalry has faded into the paltriness of fashion. And observe the form in which the necessary reaction has taken place; necessary, for it was not possible that one of the strongest instincts of the human race could be deprived altogether of its natural food. Exactly in the degree that the architect withdrew from his buildings the sources of delight which in early days they had so richly possessed, demanding, in accordance with the new principles of taste, the banishment of all happy color and healthy invention, in that degree the minds of men began to turn to landscape as their only resource. The picturesque school of art rose up to address those capacities of enjoyment for which, in sculpture, architecture, or the higher walks of painting, there was employment no more; and the shadows of Rembrandt, and savageness of Salvator, arrested the admiration which was no longer permitted to be rendered to the gloom or the grotesqueness of the Gothic aisle. And thus the English school of landscape, culminating in Turner, is in reality nothing else than a healthy effort to fill the void which the destruction of Gothic architecture has left. § XXXIV. But the void cannot thus be completely filled; no, nor filled in any considerable degree. The art of landscape-painting will never become thoroughly interesting or sufficing to the minds of men engaged in active life, or concerned principally with practical subjects. The sentiment and imagination necessary to enter fully into the romantic forms of art are chiefly the characteristics of youth; so that nearly all men as they advance in years, and some even from their childhood upwards, must be appealed to, if at all, by a direct and substantial art, brought before their daily observation and connected with their daily interests. No form of art answers these conditions so well as architecture, which, as it can receive help from every character of mind in the workman, can address every character of mind in the spectator; forcing itself into notice even in his most languid moments, and possessing this chief and peculiar advantage, that it is the property of all men. Pictures and statues may be jealously withdrawn by their possessors from the public gaze, and to a certain degree their safety requires them to be so withdrawn; but the outsides of our houses belong not so much to us as to the passer-by, and whatever cost and pains we bestow upon them, though too often arising out of ostentation, have at least the effect of benevolence. § XXXV. If, then, considering these things, any of my readers should determine, according to their means, to set themselves to the revival of a healthy school of architecture in England, and wish to know in few words how this may be done, the answer is clear and simple. First, let us cast out utterly whatever is connected with the Greek, Roman, or Renaissance architecture, in principle or in form. We have seen above, that the whole mass of the architecture, founded on Greek and Roman models, which we have been in the habit of building for the last three centuries, is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honorableness, or power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, unenjoyable, and impious. Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralyzed in its old age, yet making prey in its dotage of all the good and living things that were springing around it in their youth, as the dying and desperate king, who had long fenced himself so strongly with the towers of it, is said to have filled his failing veins with the blood of children;[55] an architecture invented, as it seems, to make plagiarists of its architects, slaves of its workmen, and Sybarites of its inhabitants; an architecture in which intellect is idle, invention impossible, but in which all luxury is gratified, and all insolence fortified;--the first thing we have to do is to cast it out, and shake the dust of it from our feet for ever. Whatever has any connexion with the five orders, or with any one of the orders,--whatever is Doric, or Ionic, or Tuscan, or Corinthian, or Composite, or in any way Grecized or Romanized; whatever betrays the smallest respect for Vitruvian laws, or conformity with Palladian work,--that we are to endure no more. To cleanse ourselves of these "cast clouts and rotten rags" is the first thing to be done in the court of our prison. § XXXVI. Then, to turn our prison into a palace is an easy thing. We have seen above, that exactly in the degree in which Greek and Roman architecture is lifeless, unprofitable, and unchristian, in that same degree our own ancient Gothic is animated, serviceable, and faithful. We have seen that it is flexible to all duty, enduring to all time, instructive to all hearts, honorable and holy in all offices. It is capable alike of all lowliness and all dignity, fit alike for cottage porch or castle gateway; in domestic service familiar, in religious, sublime; simple, and playful, so that childhood may read it, yet clothed with a power that can awe the mightiest, and exalt the loftiest of human spirits: an architecture that kindles every faculty in its workman, and addresses every emotion in its beholder; which, with every stone that is laid on its solemn walls, raises some human heart a step nearer heaven, and which from its birth has been incorporated with the existence, and in all its form is symbolical of the faith, of Christianity. In this architecture let us henceforward build, alike the church, the palace, and the cottage; but chiefly let us use it for our civil and domestic buildings. These once ennobled, our ecclesiastical work will be exalted together with them: but churches are not the proper scenes for experiments in untried architecture, nor for exhibitions of unaccustomed beauty. It is certain that we must often fail before we can again build a natural and noble Gothic: let not our temples be the scenes of our failures. It is certain that we must offend many deep-rooted prejudices, before ancient Christian architecture[56] can be again received by all of us: let not religion be the first source of such offence. We shall meet with difficulties in applying Gothic architecture to churches, which would in no wise affect the designs of civil buildings, for the most beautiful forms of Gothic chapels are not those which are best fitted for Protestant worship. As it was noticed in the second volume, when speaking of the Cathedral of Torcello it seems not unlikely, that as we study either the science of sound, or the practice of the early Christians, we may see reason to place the pulpit generally at the extremity of the apse or chancel; an arrangement entirely destructive of the beauty of a Gothic church, as seen in existing examples, and requiring modifications of its design in other parts with which we should be unwise at present to embarrass ourselves; besides, that the effort to introduce the style exclusively for ecclesiastical purposes, excites against it the strong prejudices of many persons who might otherwise be easily enlisted among its most ardent advocates. I am quite sure, for instance, that if such noble architecture as has been employed for the interior of the church just built in Margaret Street[57] had been seen in a civil building, it would have decided the question with many men at once; whereas, at present, it will be looked upon with fear and suspicion, as the expression of the ecclesiastical principles of a particular party. But, whether thus regarded or not, this church assuredly decides one question conclusively, that of our present capability of Gothic design. It is the first piece of architecture I have seen, built in modern days, which is free from all signs of timidity or incapacity. In general proportion of parts, in refinement and piquancy of mouldings, above all, in force, vitality, and grace of floral ornament, worked in a broad and masculine manner, it challenges fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time. Having done this, we may do anything; there need be no limits to our hope or our confidence; and I believe it to be possible for us, not only to equal, but far to surpass, in some respects, any Gothic yet seen in Northern countries. In the introduction of figure-sculpture, we must, indeed, for the present, remain utterly inferior, for we have no figures to study from. No architectural sculpture was ever good for anything which did not represent the dress and persons of the people living at the time; and our modern dress will _not_ form decorations for spandrils and niches. But in floral sculpture we may go far beyond what has yet been done, as well as in refinement of inlaid work and general execution. For, although the glory of Gothic architecture is to receive the rudest work, it refuses not the best; and, when once we have been content to admit the handling of the simplest workman, we shall soon be rewarded by finding many of our simple workmen become cunning ones: and, with the help of modern wealth and science, we may do things like Giotto's campanile, instead of like our own rude cathedrals; but better than Giotto's campanile, insomuch as we may adopt the pure and perfect forms of the Northern Gothic, and work them out with the Italian refinement. It is hardly possible at present to imagine what may be the splendor of buildings designed in the forms of English and French thirteenth century _surface_ Gothic, and wrought out with the refinement of Italian art in the details, and with a deliberate resolution, since we cannot have figure sculpture, to display in them the beauty of every flower and herb of the English fields, each by each; doing as much for every tree that roots itself in our rocks, and every blossom that drinks our summer rains, as our ancestors did for the oak, the ivy, and the rose. Let this be the object of our ambition, and let us begin to approach it, not ambitiously, but in all humility, accepting help from the feeblest hands; and the London of the nineteenth century may yet become as Venice without her despotism, and as Florence without her dispeace. FOOTNOTES: [46] In the works of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. [47] Observe, I speak of these various principles as self-evident, only under the present circumstances of the world, not as if they had always been so; and I call them now self-evident, not merely because they seem so to myself, but because they are felt to be so likewise by all the men in whom I place most trust. But granting that they are not so, then their very disputability proves the state of infancy above alleged, as characteristic of the world. For I do not suppose that any Christian reader will doubt the first great truth, that whatever facts or laws are important to mankind, God has made ascertainable by mankind; and that as the decision of all these questions is of vital importance to the race, that decision must have been long ago arrived at, unless they were still in a state of childhood. [48] I intended to have given a sketch in this place (above referred to) of the probable results of the daguerreotype and calotype within the next few years, in modifying the application of the engraver's art, but I have not had time to complete the experiments necessary to enable me to speak with certainty. Of one thing, however, I have little doubt, that an infinite service will soon be done to a large body of our engravers; namely, the making them draughtsmen (in black and white) on paper instead of steel. [49] I mean art in its highest sense. All that men do ingeniously is art, in one sense. In fact, we want a definition of the word "art" much more accurate than any in our minds at present. For, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as "fine" or "high" art. All _art_ is a low and common thing, and what we indeed respect is not art at all, but _instinct_ or _inspiration_ expressed by the help of art. [50] "_Socrates_. This, then, was what I asked you; whether that which puts anything else to service, and the thing which is put to service by it, are always two different things? _Alcibiades._ I think so. _Socrates._ What shall we then say of the leather-cutter? Does he cut his leather with his instruments only, or with his hands also? _Alcibiades._ With his hands also. _Socrates._ Does he not use his eyes as well as his hands? _Alcibiades._ Yes. _Socrates._ And we agreed that the thing which uses and the thing which is used, were different things? _Alcibiades._ Yes. _Socrates._ Then the leather-cutter is not the same thing as his eyes or hands? _Alcibiades._ So it appears. _Socrates._ Does not, then, man make use of his whole body? _Alcibiades._ Assuredly. _Socrates._ Then the man is not the same thing as his body? _Alcibiades._ It seems so. _Socrates._ What, then, _is_ the man? _Alcibiades._ I know not." _Plato_, Alcibiades I. [51] Thus the grapes pressed by Excesse are partly golden (Spenser, book ii. cant. 12.): "Which did themselves amongst the leaves enfold, As lurking from the view of covetous guest, That the weake boughes, with so rich load opprest Did bow adowne as overburdened." [52] The reader must not suppose that the use of gold, in this manner, is confined to early art. Tintoret, the greatest master of pictorial effect that ever existed, has gilded the ribs of the fig-leaves in his "Resurrection," in the Scuola di San Rocco. [53] Nothing is more wonderful to me than to hear the pleasure of the eye, in color, spoken of with disdain as "sensual," while people exalt that of the ear in music. Do they really suppose the eye is a less noble bodily organ than the ear,--that the organ by which nearly all our knowledge of the external universe is communicated to us, and through which we learn the wonder and the love, can be less exalted in its own peculiar delight than the ear, which is only for the communication of the ideas which owe to the eye their very existence? I do not mean to depreciate music: let it be loved and reverenced as is just; only let the delight of the eye be reverenced more. The great power of music over the multitude is owing, not to its being less but _more_ sensual than color; it is so distinctly and so richly sensual, that it can be idly enjoyed; it is exactly at the point where the lower and higher pleasures of the senses and imagination are balanced; so that pure and great minds love it for its invention and emotion, and lower minds for its sensual power. [54] Vol. II. Appendix 7. [55] Louis the Eleventh. "In the month of March, 1481, Louis was seized with a fit of apoplexy at _St. Bénoit-du-lac-mort_, near Chinon. He remained speechless and bereft of reason three days; and then but very imperfectly restored, he languished in a miserable state.... To cure him," says a contemporary historian, "wonderful and terrible medicines were compounded. It was reported among the people that his physicians opened the veins of little children, and made him drink their blood, to correct the poorness of his own."--_Bussey's History of France._ London, 1850. [56] Observe, I call Gothic "Christian" architecture, not "ecclesiastical." There is a wide difference. I believe it is the only architecture which Christian men should build, but not at all an architecture necessarily connected with the services of their church. [57] Mr. Hope's Church, in Margaret Street, Portland Place. I do not altogether like the arrangements of color in the brickwork; but these will hardly attract the eye, where so much has been already done with precious and beautiful marble, and is yet to be done in fresco. Much will depend, however, upon the coloring of this latter portion. I wish that either Holman Hunt or Millais could be prevailed upon to do at least some of these smaller frescoes. APPENDIX. 1. ARCHITECT OF THE DUCAL PALACE. Popular tradition and a large number of the chroniclers ascribe the building of the Ducal Palace to that Filippo Calendario who suffered death for his share in the conspiracy of Faliero. He was certainly one of the leading architects of the time, and had for several years the superintendence of the works of the Palace; but it appears, from the documents collected by the Abbé Cadorin, that the first designer of the Palace, the man to whom we owe the adaptation of the Frari traceries to civil architecture, was Pietro Baseggio, who is spoken of expressly as "formerly the Chief Master of our New Palace,"[58] in the decree of 1361, quoted by Cadorin, and who, at his death, left Calendario his executor. Other documents collected by Zanotto, in his work on "Venezia e le sue Lagune," show that Calendario was for a long time at sea, under the commands of the Signory, returning to Venice only three or four years before his death; and that therefore the entire management of the works of the Palace, in the most important period, must have been entrusted to Baseggio. It is quite impossible, however, in the present state of the Palace, to distinguish one architect's work from another in the older parts; and I have not in the text embarrassed the reader by any attempt at close definition of epochs before the great junction of the Piazzetta Façade with the older palace in the fifteenth century. Here, however, it is necessary that I should briefly state the observations I was able to make on the relative dates of the earlier portions. In the description of the Fig-tree angle, given in the eighth chapter of Vol. II., I said that it seemed to me somewhat earlier than that of the Vine, and the reader might be surprised at the apparent opposition of this statement to my supposition that the Palace was built gradually round from the Rio Façade to the Piazzetta. But in the two great open arcades there is no succession of work traceable; from the Vine angle to the junction with the fifteenth century work, above and below, all seems nearly of the same date, the only question being of the accidental precedence of workmanship of one capital or another; and I think, from its style, that the Fig-tree angle must have been first completed. But in the upper stories of the Palace there are enormous differences of style. On the Rio Façade, in the upper story, are several series of massive windows of the third order, corresponding exactly in mouldings and manner of workmanship to those of the chapter-house of the Frari, and consequently carrying us back to a very early date in the fourteenth century: several of the capitals of these windows, and two richly sculptured string-courses in the wall below, are of Byzantine workmanship, and in all probability fragments of the Ziani Palace. The traceried windows on the Rio Façade, and the two eastern windows on the Sea Façade, are all of the finest early fourteenth century work, masculine and noble in their capitals and bases to the highest degree, and evidently contemporary with the very earliest portions of the lower arcades. But the moment we come to the windows of the Great Council Chamber the style is debased. The mouldings are the same, but they are coarsely worked, and the heads set amidst the leafage of the capitals quite valueless and vile. I have not the least doubt that these window-jambs and traceries were restored after the great fire;[59] and various other restorations have taken place since, beginning with the removal of the traceries from all the windows except the northern one of the Sala del Scrutinio, behind the Porta della Carta, where they are still left. I made out four periods of restoration among these windows, each baser than the preceding. It is not worth troubling the reader about them, but the traveller who is interested in the subject may compare two of them in the same window; the one nearer the sea of the two belonging to the little room at the top of the Palace on the Piazzetta Façade, between the Sala del Gran Consiglio and that of the Scrutinio. The seaward jamb of that window is of the first, and the opposite jamb of the second, period of these restorations. These are all the points of separation in date which I could discover by internal evidence. But much more might be made out by any Venetian antiquary whose time permitted him thoroughly to examine any existing documents which allude to or describe the parts of the Palace spoken of in the important decrees of 1340, 1342, and 1344; for the first of these decrees speaks of certain "columns looking towards the Canal"[60] or sea, as then existing, and I presume these columns to have been part of the Ziani Palace, corresponding to the part of that palace on the Piazzetta where were the "red columns" between which Calendario was executed; and a great deal more might be determined by any one who would thoroughly unravel the obscure language of those decrees. Meantime, in order to complete the evidence respecting the main dates stated in the text, I have collected here such notices of the building of the Ducal Palace as appeared to me of most importance in the various chronicles I examined. I could not give them all in the text, as they repeat each other, and would have been tedious; but they will be interesting to the antiquary, and it is to be especially noted in all of them how the Palazzo _Vecchio_ is invariably distinguished, either directly or by implication, from the Palazzo Nuovo. I shall first translate the piece of the Zancarol Chronicle given by Cadorin, which has chiefly misled the Venetian antiquaries. I wish I could put the rich old Italian into old English, but must be content to lose its raciness, as it is necessary that the reader should be fully acquainted with its facts. "It was decreed that none should dare to propose to the Signory of Venice to ruin the _old_ palace and rebuild it new and more richly, and there was a penalty of one thousand ducats against any one who should break it. Then the Doge, wishing to set forward the public good, said to the Signory, ... that they ought to rebuild the façades of the _old_ palace, and that it ought to be restored, to do honor to the nation: and so soon as he had done speaking, the Avogadori demanded the penalty from the Doge, for having disobeyed the law; and the Doge with ready mind paid it, remaining in his opinion that the said fabric ought to be built. And so, in the year 1422, on the 20th day of September, it was passed in the Council of the Pregadi that the said new palace should be begun, and the expense should be borne by the Signori del Sal; and so, on the 24th day of March, 1424, it was begun to throw down the _old_ palace, and to build it anew."--_Cadorin_, p. 129. The day of the month, and the council in which the decree was passed, are erroneously given by this Chronicle. Cadorin has printed the words of the decree itself, which passed in the Great Council on the 27th September: and these words are, fortunately, much to our present purpose. For as more than one façade is spoken of in the above extract, the Marchese Selvatico was induced to believe that both the front to the sea and that to the Piazzetta had been destroyed; whereas, the "façades" spoken of are evidently those of the Ziani Palace. For the words of the decree (which are much more trustworthy than those of the Chronicle, even if there were any inconsistency between them) run thus: "Palatium nostrum fabricetur et fiat in forma decora et convenienti, quod respondeat _solemnissimo principio palatii nostri novi_." Thus the new council chamber and façade to the sea are called the "most venerable beginning of our _New_ Palace;" and the rest was ordered to be designed in accordance with these, as was actually the case as far as the Porta della Carta. But the Renaissance architects who thenceforward proceeded with the fabric, broke through the design, and built everything else according to their own humors. The question may be considered as set at rest by these words of the decree, even without any internal or any farther documentary evidence. But rather for the sake of impressing the facts thoroughly on the reader's mind, than of any additional proof, I shall quote a few more of the best accredited Chronicles. The passage given by Bettio, from the Sivos Chronicle, is a very important parallel with that from the Zancarol above: "Essendo molto vecchio, e quasi rovinoso el Palazzo sopra la piazza, fo deliberato di far quella parte tutta da novo, et continuarla com' è quella della Sala grande, et cosi il Lunedi 27 Marzo 1424 fu dato principio a ruinare detto Palazzo vecchio dalla parte, ch' è verso panateria cioè della Giustizia, ch' è nelli occhi di sopra le colonne fino alla Chiesa et fo fatto anco la porta grande, com' è al presente, con la sala che si addimanda la Libraria."[61] We have here all the facts told us in so many words: the "old palace" is definitely stated to have been "on the piazza," and it is to be rebuilt "like the part of the great saloon." The very point from which the newer buildings commenced is told us; but here the chronicler has carried his attempt at accuracy too far. The point of junction is, as stated above, at the third pillar beyond the medallion of Venice; and I am much at a loss to understand what could have been the disposition of these three pillars where they joined the Ziani Palace, and how they were connected with the arcade of the inner cortile. But with these difficulties, as they do not bear on the immediate question, it is of no use to trouble the reader. The next passage I shall give is from a Chronicle in the Marcian Library, bearing title, "Supposta di Zancaruol;" but in which I could not find the passage given by Cadorin from, I believe, a manuscript of this Chronicle at Vienna. There occurs instead of it the following thus headed:-- "Come _la parte nova_ del Palazzo fuo hedificata _novamente_. "El Palazzo novo de Venesia quella parte che xe verso la Chiesia de S. Marcho fuo prexo chel se fesse del 1422 e fosse pagado la spexa per li officiali del sal. E fuo fatto per sovrastante G. Nicolo Barberigo cum provision de ducati X doro al mexe e fuo fabricado e fatto nobelissimo. Come fin ancho di el sta e fuo grande honor a la Signoria de Venesia e a la sua Citta." This entry, which itself bears no date, but comes between others dated 22nd July and 27th December, is interesting, because it shows the first transition of the idea of _newness_, from the Grand Council Chamber to the part built under Foscari. For when Mocenigo's wishes had been fulfilled, and the old palace of Ziani had been destroyed, and another built in its stead, the Great Council Chamber, which was "the new palace" compared with Ziani's, became "the old palace" compared with Foscari's; and thus we have, in the body of the above extract, the whole building called "the new palace of Venice;" but in the heading of it, we have "the new _part_ of the palace" applied to the part built by Foscari, in contradistinction to the Council Chamber. The next entry I give is important, because the writing of the MS. in which it occurs, No. 53 in the Correr Museum, shows it to be probably not later than the end of the fifteenth century: "El palazo nuovo de Venixia zoe quella parte che se sora la piazza verso la giesia di Miss. San Marcho del 1422 fo principiado, el qual fo fato e finito molto belo, chome al presente se vede nobilissimo, et a la fabricha de quello fo deputado Miss. Nicolo Barberigo, soprastante con ducati dieci doro al mexe." We have here the part built by Foscari distinctly called the Palazzo Nuovo, as opposed to the Great Council Chamber, which had now completely taken the position of the Palazzo Vecchio, and is actually so called by Sansovino. In the copy of the Chronicle of Paolo Morosini, and in the MSS. numbered respectively 57, 59, 74, and 76 in the Correr Museum, the passage above given from No. 53 is variously repeated with slight modifications and curtailments; the entry in the Morosini Chronicle being headed, "Come fu principiato il palazo che guarda sopra la piaza grande di S. Marco," and proceeding in the words, "El Palazo Nuovo di Venetia, cioè quella parte che e sopra la piaza," &c., the writers being cautious, in all these instances, to _limit their statement_ to the part facing the Piazza, that no reader might suppose the Council Chamber to have been built or begun at the same time; though, as long as to the end of the sixteenth century, we find the Council Chamber still included in the expression "Palazzo Nuovo." Thus, in the MS. No. 75 in the Correr Museum, which is about that date, we have "Del 1422, a di 20 Settembre fu preso nel consegio grando de dover _compir_ el Palazo Novo, e dovesen fare la spessa li officialli del Sal (61. M. 2. B.)." And, so long as this is the case, the "Palazzo Vecchio" always means the Ziani Palace. Thus, in the next page of this same MS. we have "a di 27 Marzo (1424 by context) fo principia a butar zosso, el _Palazzo Vecchio_ per refarlo da novo, e poi se he" (and so it is done); and in the MS. No. 81, "Del 1424, fo gittado zoso el _Palazzo Vecchio_ per refarlo de nuovo, a di 27 Marzo." But in the time of Sansovino the Ziani Palace was quite forgotten; the Council Chamber was then the _old_ palace, and Foscari's part was the new. His account of the "Palazzo Publico" will now be perfectly intelligible; but, as the work itself is easily accessible, I shall not burden the reader with any farther extracts, only noticing that the chequering of the façade with red and white marbles, which he ascribes to Foscari, may or may not be of so late a date, as there is nothing in the style of the work which can be produced as evidence. 2. THEOLOGY OF SPENSER. The following analysis of the first books of the "Faërie Queen," may be interesting to readers who have been in the habit of reading the noble poem too hastily to connect its parts completely together; and may perhaps induce them to more careful study of the rest of the poem. The Redcrosse Knight is Holiness,--the "Pietas" of St. Mark's, the "Devotio" of Orcagna,--meaning, I think, in general, Reverence and Godly Fear. This Virtue, in the opening of the book, has Truth (or Una) at its side, but presently enters the Wandering Wood, and encounters the serpent Error; that is to say, Error in her universal form, the first enemy of Reverence and Holiness; and more especially Error as founded on learning; for when Holiness strangles her, "Her vomit _full of bookes and papers was_, With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke." Having vanquished this first open and palpable form of Error, as Reverence and Religion must always vanquish it, the Knight encounters Hypocrisy, or Archimagus; Holiness cannot detect Hypocrisy, but believes him, and goes home with him; whereupon Hypocrisy succeeds in separating Holiness from Truth; and the Knight (Holiness) and Lady (Truth) go forth separately from the house of Archimagus. Now observe: the moment Godly Fear, or Holiness, is separated from Truth, he meets Infidelity, or the Knight Sans Foy; Infidelity having Falsehood, or Duesa, riding behind him. The instant the Redcrosse Knight is aware of the attack of Infidelity, he "Gan fairly couch his speare, and towards ride." He vanquishes and slays Infidelity; but is deceived by his companion, Falsehood, and takes her for his lady: thus showing the condition of Religion, when, after being attacked by Doubt, and remaining victorious, it is nevertheless seduced, by any form of Falsehood, to pay reverence where it ought not. This, then, is the first fortune of Godly Fear separated from Truth. The poet then returns to Truth, separated from Godly Fear. She is immediately attended by a lion, or Violence, which makes her dreaded wherever she comes; and when she enters the mart of Superstition, this Lion tears Kirkrapine in pieces: showing how Truth, separated from Godliness, does indeed put an end to the abuses of Superstition, but does so violently and desperately. She then meets again with Hypocrisy, whom she mistakes for her own lord, or Godly Fear, and travels a little way under his guardianship (Hypocrisy thus not unfrequently appearing to defend the Truth), until they are both met by Lawlessness, or the Knight Sans Loy, whom Hypocrisy cannot resist. Lawlessness overthrows Hypocrisy, and seizes upon Truth, first slaying her lion attendant: showing that the first aim of licence is to destroy the force and authority of Truth. Sans Loy then takes Truth captive, and bears her away. Now this Lawlessness is the "unrighteousness," or "adikia," of St. Paul; and his bearing Truth away captive, is a type of those "who hold the truth in unrighteousness,"--that is to say, generally, of men who, knowing what is true, make the truth give way to their own purposes, or use it only to forward them, as is the case with so many of the popular leaders of the present day. Una is then delivered from Sans Loy by the satyrs, to show that Nature, in the end, must work out the deliverance of the truth, although, where it has been captive to Lawlessness, that deliverance can only be obtained through Savageness, and a return to barbarism. Una is then taken from among the satyrs by Satyrane, the son of a satyr and a "lady myld, fair Thyamis," (typifying the early steps of renewed civilization, and its rough and hardy character "nousled up in life and manners wilde,") who, meeting again with Sans Loy, enters instantly into rough and prolonged combat with him: showing how the early organization of a hardy nation must be wrought out through much discouragement from Lawlessness. This contest the poet leaving for the time undecided, returns to trace the adventures of the Redcrosse Knight, or Godly Fear, who, having vanquished Infidelity, presently is led by Falsehood to the house of Pride: thus showing how religion, separated from truth, is first tempted by doubts of God, and then by the pride of life. The description of this house of Pride is one of the most elaborate and noble pieces in the poem; and here we begin to get at the proposed system of Virtues and Vices. For Pride, as queen, has six other vices yoked in her chariot; namely, first, Idleness, then Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Envy, and Anger, all driven on by "Sathan, with a smarting whip in hand." From these lower vices and their company, Godly Fear, though lodging in the house of Pride, holds aloof; but he is challenged, and has a hard battle to fight with Sans Joy, the brother of Sans Foy: showing, that though he has conquered Infidelity, and does not give himself up to the allurements of Pride, he is yet exposed, so long as he dwells in her house, to distress of mind and loss of his accustomed rejoicing before God. He, however, having partly conquered Despondency, or Sans Joy, Falsehood goes down to Hades, in order to obtain drugs to maintain the power or life of Despondency; but, meantime, the Knight leaves the house of Pride: Falsehood pursues and overtakes him, and finds him by a fountain side, of which the waters are "Dull and slow, And all that drinke thereof do faint and feeble grow." Of which the meaning is, that Godly Fear, after passing through the house of Pride, is exposed to drowsiness and feebleness of watch; as, after Peter's boast, came Peter's sleeping, from weakness of the flesh, and then, last of all, Peter's fall. And so it follows: for the Redcrosse Knight, being overcome with faintness by drinking of the fountain, is thereupon attacked by the giant Orgoglio, overcome and thrown by him into a dungeon. This Orgoglio is Orgueil, or Carnal Pride; not the pride of life, spiritual and subtle, but the common and vulgar pride in the power of this world: and his throwing the Redcrosse Knight into a dungeon, is a type of the captivity of true religion under the temporal power of corrupt churches, more especially of the Church of Rome; and of its gradually wasting away in unknown places, while carnal pride has the preëminence over all things. That Spenser means, especially, the pride of the Papacy, is shown by the 16th stanza of the book; for there the giant Orgoglio is said to have taken Duessa, or Falsehood, for his "deare," and to have set upon her head a triple crown, and endowed her with royal majesty, and made her to ride upon a seven-headed beast. In the meantime, the dwarf, the attendant of the Redcrosse Knight, takes his arms, and finding Una tells her of the captivity of her lord. Una, in the midst of her mourning, meets Prince Arthur, in whom, as Spenser himself tells us, is set forth generally Magnificence; but who, as is shown by the choice of the hero's name, is more especially the magnificence, or literally, "great doing" of the kingdom of England. This power of England, going forth with Truth, attacks Orgoglio, or the Pride of Papacy, slays him; strips Duessa, or Falsehood, naked; and liberates the Redcrosse Knight. The magnificent and well-known description of Despair follows, by whom the Redcrosse Knight is hard bested, on account of his past errors and captivity, and is only saved by Truth, who, perceiving him to be still feeble, brings him to the house of Coelia, called, in the argument of the canto, Holiness, but properly, Heavenly Grace, the mother of the Virtues. Her "three daughters, well up-brought," are Faith, Hope, and Charity. Her porter is Humility; because Humility opens the door of Heavenly Grace. Zeal and Reverence are her chamberlains, introducing the new comers to her presence; her groom, or servant, is Obedience; and her physician, Patience. Under the commands of Charity, the matron Mercy rules over her hospital, under whose care the Knight is healed of his sickness; and it is to be especially noticed how much importance Spenser, though never ceasing to chastise all hypocrisies and mere observances of form, attaches to true and faithful _penance_ in effecting this cure. Having his strength restored to him, the Knight is trusted to the guidance of Mercy, who, leading him forth by a narrow and thorny way, first instructs him in the seven works of Mercy, and then leads him to the hill of Heavenly Contemplation; whence, having a sight of the New Jerusalem, as Christian of the Delectable Mountains, he goes forth to the final victory over Satan, the old serpent, with which the book closes. 3. AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT IN ITALY. I cannot close these volumes without expressing my astonishment and regret at the facility with which the English allow themselves to be misled by any representations, however openly groundless or ridiculous, proceeding from the Italian Liberal party, respecting the present administration of the Austrian Government. I do not choose here to enter into any political discussion, or express any political opinion; but it is due to justice to state the simple facts which came under my notice during my residence in Italy. I was living at Venice through two entire winters, and in the habit of familiar association both with Italians and Austrians, my own antiquarian vocations rendering such association possible without exciting the distrust of either party. During this whole period, I never once was able to ascertain, from any liberal Italian, that he had a single _definite_ ground of complaint against the Government. There was much general grumbling and vague discontent; but I never was able to bring one of them to the point, or to discover what it was that they wanted, or in what way they felt themselves injured; nor did I ever myself witness an instance of oppression on the part of the Government, though several of much kindness and consideration. The indignation of those of my own countrymen and countrywomen whom I happened to see during their sojourn in Venice was always vivid, but by no means large in its grounds. English ladies on their first arrival invariably began the conversation with the same remark: "What a dreadful thing it was to be ground under the iron heel of despotism!" Upon closer inquiries it always appeared that being "ground under the heel of despotism" was a poetical expression for being asked for one's passport at San Juliano, and required to fetch it from San Lorenzo, full a mile and a quarter distant. In like manner, travellers, after two or three days' residence in the city, used to return with pitiful lamentations over "the misery of the Italian people." Upon inquiring what instances they had met with of this misery, it invariably turned out that their gondoliers, after being paid three times their proper fare, had asked for something to drink, and had attributed the fact of their being thirsty to the Austrian Government. The misery of the Italians consists in having three festa days a week, and doing in their days of exertion about one fourth as much work as an English laborer. There is, indeed, much true distress occasioned by the measures which the Government is sometimes compelled to take in order to repress sedition; but the blame of this lies with those whose occupation is the excitement of sedition. So also there is much grievous harm done to works of art by the occupation of the country by so large an army; but for the mode in which that army is quartered, the Italian municipalities are answerable, not the Austrians. Whenever I was shocked by finding, as above-mentioned at Milan, a cloister, or a palace, occupied by soldiery, I always discovered, on investigation, that the place had been given by the municipality; and that, beyond requiring that lodging for a certain number of men should be found in such and such a quarter of the town, the Austrians had nothing to do with the matter. This does not, however, make the mischief less: and it is strange, if we think of it, to see Italy, with all her precious works of art, made a continual battle-field; as if no other place for settling their disputes could be found by the European powers, than where every random shot may destroy what a king's ransom cannot restore.[62] It is exactly as if the tumults in Paris could he settled no otherwise than by fighting them out in the Gallery of the Louvre. 4. DATE OF THE PALACES OF THE BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE. In the sixth article of the Appendix to the first volume, the question of the date of the Casa Dario and Casa Trevisan was deferred until I could obtain from my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, to whom the former palace once belonged, some more distinct data respecting this subject than I possessed myself. Speaking first of the Casa Dario, he says: "Fontana dates it from about the year 1450, and considers it the earliest specimen of the architecture founded by Pietro Lombardo, and followed by his sons, Tullio and Antonio. In a Sanuto autograph miscellany, purchased by me long ago, and which I gave to St. Mark's Library, are two letters from Giovanni Dario, dated 10th and 11th July, 1485, in the neighborhood of Adrianople; where the Turkish camp found itself, and Bajazet II. received presents from the Soldan of Egypt, from the Schah of the Indies (query Grand Mogul), and from the King of Hungary: of these matters, Dario's letters give many curious details. Then, in the _printed_ Malipiero Annals, page 136 (which err, I think, by a year), the Secretary Dario's negotiations at the Porte are alluded to; and in date of 1484 he is stated to have returned to Venice, having quarrelled with the Venetian bailiff at Constantinople: the annalist adds, that 'Giovanni Dario was a native of Candia, and that the Republic was so well satisfied with him for having concluded peace with Bajazet, that he received, as a gift from his country, an estate at Noventa, in the Paduan territory, worth 1500 ducats, and 600 ducats in cash for the dower of one of his daughters.' These largesses probably enabled him to build his house about the year 1486, and are doubtless hinted at in the inscription, which I restored A.D. 1837; _it had no date_, and ran thus, URBIS . GENIO . JOANNES . DARIVS. In the Venetian history of Paolo Morosini, page 594, it is also mentioned, that Giovanni Dario was, moreover, the Secretary who concluded the peace between Mahomet, the conqueror of Constantinople, and Venice, A.D. 1478; but, unless he build his house by proxy, that date has nothing to do with it; and in my mind, the fact of the present, and the inscription, warrant one's dating it 1486, and not 1450. "The Trevisan-Cappello House, in Canonica, was once the property (A.D. 1578) of a Venetian dame, fond of cray-fish, according to a letter of hers in the archives, whereby she thanks one of her lovers for some which he had sent her from Treviso to Florence, of which she was then Grand Duchess. Her name has perhaps found its way into the English annuals. Did you ever hear of Bianca Cappello? She bought that house of the Trevisana family, by whom Selva (in Cicognara) and Fontana (following Selva) say it was ordered of the Lombardi, at the commencement of the sixteenth century: but the inscription on its façade, thus, SOLI | | HONOR. ET DEO | | GLORIA. reminding one both of the Dario House, and of the words NON NOBIS DOMINE inscribed on the façade of the Loredano Vendramin Palace at S. Marcuola (now the property of the Duchess of Berri), of which Selva found proof in the Vendramin Archives that it was commenced by Sante Lombardo, A.D. 1481, is in favor of its being classed among the works of the fifteenth century." 5. RENAISSANCE SIDE OF DUCAL PALACE. In passing along the Rio del Palazzo the traveller ought especially to observe the base of the Renaissance building, formed by alternately depressed and raised pyramids, the depressed portions being _casts_ of the projecting ones, which are truncated on the summits. The work cannot be called rustication, for it is cut as sharply and delicately as a piece of ivory, but it thoroughly answers the end which rustication proposes, and misses: it gives the base of the building a look of crystalline hardness, actually resembling, and that very closely, the appearance presented by the fracture of a piece of cap quartz; while yet the light and shade of its alternate recesses and projections are so varied as to produce the utmost possible degree of delight to the eye, attainable by a geometrical pattern so simple. Yet, with all this high merit, it is not a base which could be brought into general use. Its brilliancy and piquancy are here set off with exquisite skill by its opposition to mouldings, in the upper part of the building, of an almost effeminate delicacy, and its complexity is rendered delightful by its contrast with the ruder bases of the other buildings of the city; but it would look meagre if it were employed to sustain bolder masses above, and would become wearisome if the eye were once thoroughly familiarized with it by repetition. 6. CHARACTER OF THE DOGE MICHELE MOROSINI. The following extracts from the letter of Count Charles Morosini, above mentioned, appear to set the question at rest. "It is our unhappy destiny that, during the glory of the Venetian republic, no one took the care to leave us a faithful and conscientious history: but I hardly know whether this misfortune should be laid to the charge of the historians themselves, or of those commentators who have destroyed their trustworthiness by new accounts of things, invented by themselves. As for the poor Morosini, we may perhaps save his honor by assembling a conclave of our historians, in order to receive their united sentence; for, in this case, he would have the absolute majority on his side, nearly all the authors bearing testimony to his love for his country and to the magnanimity of his heart. I must tell you that the history of Daru is not looked upon with esteem by well-informed men; and it is said that he seems to have no other object in view than to obscure the glory of all actions. I know not on what authority the English writer depends; but he has, perhaps, merely copied the statement of Daru.... I have consulted an ancient and authentic MS. belonging to the Venieri family, a MS. well known, and certainly better worthy of confidence than Daru's history, and it says nothing of M. Morosini but that he was elected Doge to the delight and joy of all men. Neither do the Savina or Dolfin Chronicles say a word of the shameful speculation; and our best informed men say that the reproach cast by some historians against the Doge perhaps arose from a mistaken interpretation of the words pronounced by him, and reported by Marin Sanuto, that 'the speculation would sooner or later have been advantageous to the country.' But this single consideration is enough to induce us to form a favorable conclusion respecting the honor of this man, namely, that he was not elected Doge until after he had been entrusted with many honorable embassies to the Genoese and Carrarese, as well as to the King of Hungary and Amadeus of Savoy; and if in these embassies he had not shown himself a true lover of his country, the republic not only would not again have entrusted him with offices so honorable, but would never have rewarded him with the dignity of Doge, therein to succeed such a man as Andrea Contarini; and the war of Chioggia, during which it is said that he tripled his fortune by speculations, took place during the reign of Contarini, 1379, 1380, while Morosini was absent on foreign embassies." 7. MODERN EDUCATION. The following fragmentary notes on this subject have been set down at different times. I have been accidentally prevented from arranging them properly for publication, but there are one or two truths in them which it is better to express insufficiently than not at all. * * * * * By a large body of the people of England and of Europe a man is called educated if he can write Latin verses and construe a Greek chorus. By some few more enlightened persons it is confessed that the construction of hexameters is not in itself an important end of human existence; but they say, that the general discipline which a course of classical reading gives to the intellectual powers, is the final object of our scholastical institutions. But it seems to me, there is no small error even in this last and more philosophical theory. I believe, that what it is most honorable to know, it is also most profitable to learn; and that the science which it is the highest power to possess, it is also the best exercise to acquire. And if this be so, the question as to what should be the materiel of education, becomes singularly simplified. It might be matter of dispute what processes have the greatest effect in developing the intellect; but it can hardly be disputed what facts it is most advisable that a man entering into life should accurately know. I believe, in brief, that he ought to know three things: First. Where he is. Secondly. Where he is going. Thirdly. What he had best do, under those circumstances. First. Where he is.--That is to say, what sort of a world he has got into; how large it is; what kind of creatures live in it, and how; what it is made of, and what may be made of it. Secondly. Where he is going.--That is to say, what chances or reports there are of any other world besides this; what seems to be the nature of that other world; and whether, for information respecting it, he had better consult the Bible, Koran, or Council of Trent. Thirdly. What he had best do under those circumstances.--That is to say, what kind of faculties he possesses; what are the present state and wants of mankind; what is his place in society; and what are the readiest means in his power of attaining happiness and diffusing it. The man who knows these things, and who has had his will so subdued in the learning them, that he is ready to do what he knows he ought, I should call educated; and the man who knows them not,--uneducated, though he could talk all the tongues of Babel. Our present European system of so-called education ignores, or despises, not one, nor the other, but all the three, of these great branches of human knowledge. First: It despises Natural History.--Until within the last year or two, the instruction in the physical sciences given at Oxford consisted of a course of twelve or fourteen lectures on the Elements of Mechanics or Pneumatics, and permission to ride out to Shotover with the Professor of Geology. I do not know the specialties of the system pursued in the academies of the Continent; but their practical result is, that unless a man's natural instincts urge him to the pursuit of the physical sciences too strongly to be resisted, he enters into life utterly ignorant of them. I cannot, within my present limits, even so much as count the various directions in which this ignorance does evil. But the main mischief of it is, that it leaves the greater number of men without the natural food which God intended for their intellects. For one man who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for the study of things, and were intended to have a perpetual, simple, and religious delight in watching the processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, nothing is left to them but ambition or dissipation; and the vices of the upper classes of Europe are, I believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause. Secondly: It despises Religion.--I do not say it despises "Theology," that is to say, _Talk_ about God. But it despises "Religion;" that is to say, the "binding" or training to God's service. There is much talk and much teaching in all our academies, of which the effect is not to bind, but to loosen, the elements of religious faith. Of the ten or twelve young men who, at Oxford, were my especial friends, who sat with me under the same lectures on Divinity, or were punished with me for missing lecture by being sent to evening prayers,[63] four are now zealous Romanists,--a large average out of twelve; and while thus our own universities profess to teach Protestantism, and do not, the universities on the Continent profess to teach Romanism, and do not,--sending forth only rebels and infidels. During long residence on the Continent, I do not remember meeting with above two or three young men, who either believed in revelation, or had the grace to hesitate in the assertion of their infidelity. Whence, it seems to me, we may gather one of two things; either that there is nothing in any European form of religion so reasonable or ascertained, as that it can be taught securely to our youth, or fastened in their minds by any rivets of proof which they shall not be able to loosen the moment they begin to think; or else, that no means are taken to train them in such demonstrable creeds. It seems to me the duty of a rational nation to ascertain (and to be at some pains in the matter) which of these suppositions is true; and, if indeed no proof can be given of any supernatural fact, or Divine doctrine, stronger than a youth just out of his teens can overthrow in the first stirrings of serious thought, to confess this boldly; to get rid of the expense of an Establishment, and the hypocrisy of a Liturgy; to exhibit its cathedrals as curious memorials of a by-gone superstition, and, abandoning all thoughts of the next world, to set itself to make the best it can of this. But if, on the other hand, there _does_ exist any evidence by which the probability of certain religious facts may be shown, as clearly, even, as the probabilities of things not absolutely ascertained in astronomical or geological science, let this evidence be set before all our youth so distinctly, and the facts for which it appears inculcated upon them so steadily, that although it may be possible for the evil conduct of after life to efface, or for its earnest and protracted meditation to modify, the impressions of early years, it may not be possible for our young men, the instant they emerge from their academies, to scatter themselves like a flock of wild fowl risen out of a marsh, and drift away on every irregular wind of heresy and apostasy. Lastly: Our system of European education despises Politics.--That is to say, the science of the relations and duties of men to each other. One would imagine, indeed, by a glance at the state of the world, that there was no such science. And, indeed, it is one still in its infancy. It implies, in its full sense, the knowledge of the operations of the virtues and vices of men upon themselves and society; the understanding of the ranks and offices of their intellectual and bodily powers in their various adaptations to art, science, and industry; the understanding of the proper offices of art, science, and labor themselves, as well as of the foundations of jurisprudence, and broad principles of commerce; all this being coupled with practical knowledge of the present state and wants of mankind. What, it will be said, and is all this to be taught to schoolboys? No; but the first elements of it, all that are necessary to be known by an individual in order to his acting wisely in any station of life, might be taught, not only to every schoolboy, but to every peasant. The impossibility of equality among men; the good which arises from their inequality; the compensating circumstances in different states and fortunes; the honorableness of every man who is worthily filling his appointed place in society, however humble; the proper relations of poor and rich, governor and governed; the nature of wealth, and mode of its circulation; the difference between productive and unproductive labor; the relation of the products of the mind and hand; the true value of works of the higher arts, and the possible amount of their production; the meaning of "Civilization," its advantages and dangers; the meaning of the term "Refinement;" the possibilities of possessing refinement in a low station, and of losing it in a high one; and, above all, the significance of almost every act of a man's daily life, in its ultimate operation upon himself and others;--all this might be, and ought to be, taught to every boy in the kingdom, so completely, that it should be just as impossible to introduce an absurd or licentious doctrine among our adult population, as a new version of the multiplication table. Nor am I altogether without hope that some day it may enter into the heads of the tutors of our schools to try whether it is not as easy to make an Eton boy's mind as sensitive to falseness in policy, as his ear is at present to falseness in prosody. I know that this is much to hope. That English ministers of religion should ever come to desire rather to make a youth acquainted with the powers of nature and of God, than with the powers of Greek particles; that they should ever think it more useful to show him how the great universe rolls upon its course in heaven, than how the syllables are fitted in a tragic metre; that they should hold it more advisable for him to be fixed in the principles of religion than in those of syntax; or, finally, that they should ever come to apprehend that a youth likely to go straight out of college into parliament, might not unadvisably know as much of the Peninsular as of the Peloponnesian War, and be as well acquainted with the state of Modern Italy as of old Etruria;--all this however unreasonably, I _do_ hope, and mean to work for. For though I have not yet abandoned all expectation of a better world than this, I believe this in which we live is not so good as it might be. I know there are many people who suppose French revolutions, Italian insurrections, Caffre wars, and such other scenic effects of modern policy, to be among the normal conditions of humanity. I know there are many who think the atmosphere of rapine, rebellion, and misery which wraps the lower orders of Europe more closely every day, is as natural a phenomenon as a hot summer. But God forbid! There are ills which flesh is heir to, and troubles to which man is born; but the troubles which he is born to are as sparks which fly _upward_, not as flames burning to the nethermost Hell. The Poor we must have with us always, and sorrow is inseparable from any hour of life; but we may make their poverty such as shall inherit the earth, and the sorrow, such as shall be hallowed by the hand of the Comforter, with everlasting comfort. We _can_, if we will but shake off this lethargy and dreaming that is upon us, and take the pains to think and act like men, we can, I say, make kingdoms to be like well-governed households, in which, indeed, while no care or kindness can prevent occasional heart-burnings, nor any foresight or piety anticipate all the vicissitudes of fortune, or avert every stroke of calamity, yet the unity of their affection and fellowship remains unbroken, and their distress is neither embittered by division, prolonged by imprudence, nor darkened by dishonor. * * * * * The great leading error of modern times is the mistaking erudition for education. I call it the leading error, for I believe that, with little difficulty, nearly every other might be shown to have root in it; and, most assuredly, the worst that are fallen into on the subject of art. Education then, briefly, is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes men happiest in themselves, also makes them most serviceable to others. True education, then, has respect, first to the ends which are proposable to the man, or attainable by him; and, secondly, to the material of which the man is made. So far as it is able, it chooses the end according to the material: but it cannot always choose the end, for the position of many persons in life is fixed by necessity; still less can it choose the material; and, therefore, all it can do, is to fit the one to the other as wisely as may be. But the first point to be understood, is that the material is as various as the ends; that not only one man is unlike another, but _every_ man is essentially different from _every_ other, so that no training, no forming, nor informing, will ever make two persons alike in thought or in power. Among all men, whether of the upper or lower orders, the differences are eternal and irreconcilable, between one individual and another, born under absolutely the same circumstances. One man is made of agate, another of oak; one of slate, another of clay. The education of the first is polishing; of the second, seasoning; of the third, rending; of the fourth, moulding. It is of no use to season the agate; it is vain to try to polish the slate; but both are fitted, by the qualities they possess, for services in which they may be honored. Now the cry for the education of the lower classes, which is heard every day more widely and loudly, is a wise and a sacred cry, provided it be extended into one for the education of _all_ classes, with definite respect to the work each man has to do, and the substance of which he is made. But it is a foolish and vain cry, if it be understood, as in the plurality of cases it is meant to be, for the expression of mere craving after knowledge, irrespective of the simple purposes of the life that now is, and blessings of that which is to come. One great fallacy into which men are apt to fall when they are reasoning on this subject is: that light, as such, is always good; and darkness, as such, always evil. Far from it. Light untempered would be annihilation. It is good to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; but, to those that faint in the wilderness, so also is the shadow of the great rock in a weary land. If the sunshine is good, so also the cloud of the latter rain. Light is only beautiful, only available for life, when it is tempered with shadow; pure light is fearful, and unendurable by humanity. And it is not less ridiculous to say that the light, as such, is good in itself, than to say that the darkness is good in itself. Both are rendered safe, healthy, and useful by the other; the night by the day, the day by the night; and we could just as easily live without the dawn as without the sunset, so long as we are human. Of the celestial city we are told there shall be "no night there," and then we shall know even as also we are known: but the night and the mystery have both their service here; and our business is not to strive to turn the night into day, but to be sure that we are as they that watch for the morning. Therefore, in the education either of lower or upper classes, it matters not the least how much or how little they know, provided they know just what will fit them to do their work, and to be happy in it. What the sum or the nature of their knowledge ought to be at a given time or in a given case, is a totally different question: the main thing to be understood is, that a man is not educated, in any sense whatsoever, because he can read Latin, or write English, or can behave well in a drawingroom; but that he is only educated if he is happy, busy, beneficent, and effective in the world; that millions of peasants are therefore at this moment better educated than most of those who call themselves gentlemen; and that the means taken to "educate" the lower classes in any other sense may very often be productive of a precisely opposite result. Observe: I do not say, nor do I believe, that the lower classes ought not to be better educated, in millions of ways, than they are. I believe _every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated_. But I would have it education to purpose; stern, practical, irresistible, in moral habits, in bodily strength and beauty, in all faculties of mind capable of being developed under the circumstances of the individual, and especially in the technical knowledge of his own business; but yet, infinitely various in its effort, directed to make one youth humble, and another confident; to tranquillize this mind, to put some spark of ambition into that; now to urge, and now to restrain: and in the doing of all this, considering knowledge as one only out of myriads of means in its hands, or myriads of gifts at its disposal; and giving it or withholding it as a good husbandman waters his garden, giving the full shower only to the thirsty plants, and at times when they are thirsty, whereas at present we pour it upon the heads of our youth as the snow falls on the Alps, on one and another alike, till they can bear no more, and then take honor to ourselves because here and there a river descends from their crests into the valleys, not observing that we have made the loaded hills themselves barren for ever. Finally: I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting this, the government must have an authority over the people of which we now do not so much as dream; and I cannot in this place pursue the subject farther. 8. EARLY VENETIAN MARRIAGES. Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1757, insinuates a doubt of the general custom, saying "it would be more reasonable to suppose that only twelve maidens were married in public on St. Mark's day;" and Sandi also speaks of twelve only. All evidence, however, is clearly in favor of the popular tradition; the most curious fact connected with the subject being the mention, by Herodotus, of the mode of marriage practised among the Illyrian "Veneti" of his time, who presented their maidens for marriage on one day in each year; and, with the price paid for those who were beautiful, gave dowries to those who had no personal attractions. It is very curious to find the traces of this custom existing, though in a softened form, in Christian times. Still, I admit that there is little confidence to be placed in the mere concurrence of the Venetian Chroniclers, who, for the most part, copied from each other: but the best and most complete account I have read, is that quoted by Galliciolli from the "Matricola de' Casseleri," written in 1449; and, in that account, the words are quite unmistakable. "It was anciently the custom of Venice, that _all the brides_ (novizze) of Venice, when they married, should be married by the bishop, in the Church of S. Pietro di Castello, on St. Mark's day, which is the 31st of January." Rogers quotes Navagiero to the same effect; and Sansovino is more explicit still. "It was the custom to contract marriages openly; and when the deliberations were completed, the damsels assembled themselves in St. Pietro di Castello, for the feast of St. Mark, in February." 9. CHARACTER OF THE VENETIAN ARISTOCRACY. The following noble answer of a Venetian ambassador, Giustiniani, on the occasion of an insult offered him at the court of Henry the Eighth, is as illustrative of the dignity which there yet remained in the character and thoughts of the Venetian noble, as descriptive, in few words, of the early faith and deeds of his nation. He writes thus to the Doge, from London, on the 15th of April, 1516: "By my last, in date of the 30th ult., I informed you that the countenances of some of these lords evinced neither friendship nor goodwill, and that much language had been used to me of a nature bordering not merely on arrogance, but even on outrage; and not having specified this in the foregoing letters, I think fit now to mention it in detail. Finding myself at the court, and talking familiarly about other matters, two lay lords, great personages in this kingdom, inquired of me 'whence it came that your Excellency was of such slippery faith, now favoring one party and then the other?' Although these words ought to have irritated me, I answered them with all discretion, 'that you did keep, and ever had kept your faith; the maintenance of which has placed you in great trouble, and subjected you to wars of longer duration than you would otherwise have experienced; descending to particulars in justification of your Sublimity.' Whereupon one of them replied, '_Isti Veneti sunt piscatores._'[64] Marvellous was the command I then had over myself in not giving vent to expressions which might have proved injurious to your Signory; and with extreme moderation I rejoined, 'that had he been at Venice, and seen our Senate, and the Venetian nobility, he perhaps would not speak thus; and moreover, were he well read in our history, both concerning the origin of our city and the grandeur of your Excellency's feats, neither the one nor the other would seem to him those of fishermen; yet,' said I, 'did fishermen found the Christian faith, and we have been those fishermen who defended it against the forces of the Infidel, our fishing-boats being galleys and ships, our hooks the treasure of St. Mark, and our bait the life-blood of our citizens, who died for the Christian faith.'" I take this most interesting passage from a volume of despatches addressed from London to the Signory of Venice, by the ambassador Giustiniani, during the years 1516-1519; despatches not only full of matters of historical interest, but of the most delightful every-day description of all that went on at the English court. They were translated by Mr. Brown from the original letters, and will, I believe, soon be published, and I hope also, read and enjoyed: for I cannot close these volumes without expressing a conviction, which has long been forcing itself upon my mind, that _restored_ history is of little more value than restored painting or architecture; that the only history worth reading is that written at the time of which it treats, the history of what was done and seen, heard out of the mouths of the men who did and saw. One fresh draught of such history is worth more than a thousand volumes of abstracts, and reasonings, and suppositions, and theories; and I believe that, as we get wiser, we shall take little trouble about the history of nations who have left no distinct records of themselves, but spend our time only in the examination of the faithful documents which, in any period of the world, have been left, either in the form of art or literature, portraying the scenes, or recording the events, which in those days were actually passing before the eyes of men. 10. FINAL APPENDIX. The statements respecting the dates of Venetian buildings made throughout the preceding pages, are founded, as above stated, on careful and personal examination of all the mouldings, or other features available as evidence, of every palace of importance in the city. Three parts, at least, of the time occupied in the completion of the work have been necessarily devoted to the collection of these evidences, of which it would be quite useless to lay the mass before the reader; but of which the leading points must be succinctly stated, in order to show the nature of my authority for any of the conclusions expressed in the text. I have therefore collected in the plates which illustrate this article of the Appendix, for the examination of any reader who may be interested by them, as many examples of the evidence-bearing details as are sufficient for the proof required, especially including all the exceptional forms; so that the reader may rest assured that if I had been able to lay before him all the evidence in my possession, it would have been still more conclusive than the portion now submitted to him. [Illustration: Plate V. BYZANTINE BASES.] We must examine in succession the Bases, Doorways and Jambs, Capitals, Archivolts, Cornices, and Tracery Bars, of Venetian architecture. _I. Bases._ The principal points we have to notice are the similarity and simplicity of the Byzantine bases in general, and the distinction between those of Torcello and Murano, and of St. Mark's, as tending to prove the early dates attributed in the text to the island churches. I have sufficiently illustrated the forms of the Gothic bases in Plates X., XI., and XIII. of the first volume, so that I here note chiefly the Byzantine or Romanesque ones, adding two Gothic forms for the sake of comparison. The most characteristic examples, then, are collected in Plate V. opposite; namely: 1, 2, 3, 4. In the upper gallery of apse of Murano. 5. Lower shafts of apse. Murano. 6. Casa Falier. 7. Small shafts of panels. Casa Farsetti. 8. Great shafts and plinth. Casa Farsetti. 9. Great lower shafts. Fondaco de' Turchi. 10. Ducal Palace, upper arcade. PLATE V. 11. General late Gothic form. Vol. III. 12. Tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele, in St. Mark's atrium. 13. Upper arcade of Madonnetta House. 14. Rio-Foscari House. 15. Upper arcade. Terraced House. 16, 17, 18. Nave. Torcello. 19, 20. Transepts. St. Mark's. 21. Nave. St. Mark's. 22. External pillars of northern portico. St. Mark's. 23, 24. Clustered pillars of northern portico. St. Mark's. 25, 26. Clustered pillars of southern portico. St. Mark's. Now, observe, first, the enormous difference in style between the bases 1 to 5, and the rest in the upper row, that is to say, between the bases of Murano and the twelfth and thirteenth century bases of Venice; and, secondly, the difference between the bases 16 to 20 and the rest in the lower row, that is to say, between the bases of Torcello (with those of St. Mark's which belong to the nave, and which may therefore be supposed to be part of the earlier church), and the later ones of the St. Mark's Façade. Secondly: Note the fellowship between 5 and 6, one of the evidences of the early date of the Casa Falier. Thirdly: Observe the slurring of the upper roll into the cavetto, in 13, 14, and 15, and the consequent relationship established between three most important buildings, the Rio-Foscari House, Terraced House, and Madonnetta House. Fourthly: Byzantine bases, if they have an incision between the upper roll and cavetto, are very apt to approach the form of fig. 23, in which the upper roll is cut out of the flat block, and the ledge beneath it is sloping. Compare Nos. 7, 8, 9, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. On the other hand, the later Gothic base, 11, has always its upper roll well developed, and, generally, the fillet between it and the cavetto vertical. The sloping fillet is indeed found down to late periods; and the vertical fillet, as in No. 12, in Byzantine ones; but still, when a base has such a sloping fillet and peculiarly graceful sweeping cavetto, as those of No. 10, looking as if they would run into one line with each other, it is strong presumptive evidence of its belonging to an early, rather than a late period. The base 12 is the boldest example I could find of the exceptional form in early times; but observe, in this, that the upper roll is larger than the lower. This is _never_ the case in late Gothic, where the proportion is always as in fig. 11. Observe that in Nos. 8 and 9 the upper rolls are at least as large as the lower, an important evidence of the dates of the Casa Farsetti and Fondaco de' Turchi. Lastly: Note the peculiarly steep profile of No. 22, with reference to what is said of this base in Vol. II. Appendix 9. _II. Doorways and Jambs._ The entrances to St. Mark's consist, as above mentioned, of great circular or ogee porches; underneath which the real open entrances, in which the valves of the bronze doors play, are square headed. [Illustration: Fig. I.] The mouldings of the jambs of these doors are highly curious, and the most characteristic are therefore represented in one view. The outsides of the jambs are lowest. _a_. Northern lateral door. _b_. First northern door of the façade. _c_. Second door of the façade. _d_. Fourth door of the façade. _e_. Central door of the façade. I wish the reader especially to note the arbitrary character of the curves and incisions; all evidently being drawn by hand, none being segments of circles, none like another, none influenced by any visible law. I do not give these mouldings as beautiful; they are, for the most part, very poor in effect, but they are singularly characteristic of the free work of the time. The kind of door to which these mouldings belong, is shown, with the other groups of doors, in Plate XIV. Vol. II. fig. 6 _a_. Then 6 _b_, 6 _c_, 6 _d_ represent the groups of doors in which the Byzantine influence remained energetic, admitting slowly the forms of the pointed Gothic; 7 _a_, with the gable above, is the intermediate group between the Byzantine and Gothic schools; 7 _b_, 7 _c_, 7 _d_, 7 _e_ are the advanced guards of the Gothic and Lombardic invasions, representative of a large number of thirteenth century arcades and doors. Observe that 6 _d_ is shown to be of a late school by its finial, and 6 _e_ of the latest school by its finial, complete ogee arch (instead of round or pointed), and abandonment of the lintel. These examples, with the exception of 6 _a_, which is a general form, are all actually existing doors; namely: 6 _b._ In the Fondamenta Venier, near St. Maria della Salute. 6 _c._ In the Calle delle Botteri, between the Rialto and San Cassan. 6 _d._ Main door of San Gregorio. 6 _e._ Door of a palace in Rio San Paternian. 7 _a._ Door of a small courtyard near house of Marco Polo. 7 _b._ Arcade in narrow canal, at the side of Casa Barbaro. 7 _c._ At the turn of the canal, close to the Ponte dell' Angelo. 7 _d._ In Rio San Paternian (a ruinous house). 7 _e._ At the turn of the canal on which the Sotto Portico della Stua opens, near San Zaccaria. If the reader will take a magnifying glass to the figure 6 _d_, he will see that its square ornaments, of which, in the real door, each contains a rose, diminish to the apex of the arch; a very interesting and characteristic circumstance, showing the subtle feeling of the Gothic builders. They must needs diminish the ornamentation, in order to sympathize with the delicacy of the point of the arch. The magnifying glass will also show the Bondumieri shield in No. 7 _d_, and the Leze shield in No. 7 _e_, both introduced on the keystones in the grand early manner. The mouldings of these various doors will be noticed under the head Archivolt. [Illustration: Plate VI. BYZANTINE JAMBS.] Now, throughout the city we find a number of doors resembling the square doors of St. Mark, and occurring with rare exceptions either in buildings of the Byzantine period, or imbedded in restored houses; never, in a single instance, forming a connected portion of any late building; and they therefore furnish a most important piece of evidence, wherever they are part of the original structure of a _Gothic_ building, that such building is one of the advanced guards of the Gothic school, and belongs to its earliest period. On Plate VI., opposite, are assembled all the important examples I could find in Venice of these mouldings. The reader will see at a glance their peculiar character, and unmistakable likeness to each other. The following are the references: 1. Door in Calle Mocenigo. 2. Angle of tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele. 3. Door in Sotto Portico, St. Apollonia (near Ponte di Canonica). 4. Door in Calle della Verona (another like it is close by). 5. Angle of tomb of Doge Marino Morosini. 6, 7. Door in Calle Mocenigo. 8. Door in Campo S. Margherita. Plate VI. 9. Door at Traghetto San Samuele, on south side of Grand Vol. III. Canal. 10. Door at Ponte St. Toma. 11. Great door of Church of Servi. 12. In Calle della Chiesa, Campo San Filippo e Giacomo. 13. Door of house in Calle di Rimedio (Vol. II.). 14. Door in Fondaco de' Turchi. 15. Door in Fondamenta Malcanton, near Campo S. Margherita. 16. Door in south side of Canna Reggio. 17, 18. Doors in Sotto Portico dei Squellini. The principal points to be noted in these mouldings are their curious differences of level, as marked by the dotted lines, more especially in 14, 15, 16, and the systematic projection of the outer or lower mouldings in 16, 17, 18. Then, as points of evidence, observe that 1 is the jamb and 6 the archivolt (7 the angle on a larger scale) of the brick door given in my folio work from Ramo di rimpetto Mocenigo, one of the evidences of the early date of that door; 8 is the jamb of the door in Campo Santa Margherita (also given in my folio work), fixing the early date of that also; 10 is from a Gothic door opening off the Ponte St. Toma; and 11 is also from a Gothic building. All the rest are from Byzantine work, or from ruins. The angle of the tomb of Marino Morosini (5) is given for comparison only. The doors with the mouldings 17, 18, are from the two ends of a small dark passage, called the Sotto Portico dei Squellini, opening near Ponte Cappello, on the Rio-Marin: 14 is the outside one, arranged as usual, and at _a_, in the rough stone, are places for the staples of the door valve; 15, at the other end of the passage, opening into the little Corte dei Squellini, is set with the part _a_ outwards, it also having places for hinges; but it is curious that the rich moulding should be set in towards the dark passage, though natural that the doors should both open one way. [Illustration: Plate VII. GOTHIC JAMBS.] The next Plate, VII., will show the principal characters of the Gothic jambs, and the total difference between them and the Byzantine ones. Two more Byzantine forms, 1 and 2, are given here for the sake of comparison; then 3, 4, and 5 are the common profiles of simple jambs of doors in the Gothic period; 6 is one of the jambs of the Frari windows, continuous into the archivolt, and meeting the traceries, where the line is set upon it at the extremity of its main slope; 7 and 8 are jambs of the Ducal Palace windows, in which the great semicircle is the half shaft which sustains the traceries, and the rest of the profile is continuous in the archivolt; 17, 18, and 19 are the principal piers of the Ducal Palace; and 20, from St. Fermo of Verona, is put with them in order to show the step of transition from the Byzantine form 2 to the Gothic chamfer, which is hardly represented at Venice. The other profiles on the plate are all late Gothic, given to show the gradual increase of complexity without any gain of power. The open lines in 12, 14, 16, etc., are the parts of the profile cut into flowers or cable mouldings; and so much incised as to show the constant outline of the cavetto or curve beneath them. The following are the references: 1. Door in house of Marco Polo. 2. Old door in a restored church of St. Cassan. 3, 4, 5. Common jambs of Gothic doors. 6. Frari windows. 7, 8. Ducal Palace windows. 9. Casa Priuli, great entrance. 10. San Stefano, great door. PLATE VII. 11. San Gregorio, door opening to the water. Vol. III. 12. Lateral door, Frari. 13. Door of Campo San Zaccaria. 14. Madonna dell'Orto. 15. San Gregorio, door in the façade. 16. Great lateral door, Frari. 17. Pilaster at Vine angle, Ducal Palace. 18. Pier, inner cortile, Ducal Palace. 19. Pier, under the medallion of Venice, on the Piazetta façade of the Ducal Palace. _III. Capitals._ I shall here notice the various facts I have omitted in the text of the work. First, with respect to the Byzantine Capitals represented in Plate VII. Vol. II., I omitted to notice that figs. 6 and 7 represent two sides of the same capital at Murano (though one is necessarily drawn on a smaller scale than the other). Fig. 7 is the side turned to the light, and fig. 6 to the shade, the inner part, which is quite concealed, not being touched at all. We have here a conclusive proof that these capitals were cut for their place in the apse; therefore I have always considered them as tests of Venetian workmanship, and, on the strength of that proof, have occasionally spoken of capitals as of true Venetian work, which M. Lazari supposes to be of the Lower Empire. No. 11, from St. Mark's, was not above noticed. The way in which the cross is gradually left in deeper relief as the sides slope inwards and away from it, is highly picturesque and curious. No. 9 has been reduced from a larger drawing, and some of the life and character of the curves lost in consequence. It is chiefly given to show the irregular and fearless freedom of the Byzantine designers, no two parts of the foliage being correspondent; in the original it is of white marble, the ground being colored blue. Plate X. Vol. II. represents the four principal orders of Venetian capitals in their greatest simplicity, and the profiles of the most interesting examples of each. The figures 1 and 4 are the two great concave and convex groups, and 2 and 3 the transitional. Above each type of form I have put also an example of the group of flowers which represent it in nature: fig. 1 has a lily; fig. 2 a variety of the Tulipa sylvestris; figs. 3 and 4 forms of the magnolia. I prepared this plate in the early spring, when I could not get any other examples,[65] or I would rather have had two different species for figs. 3 and 4; but the half-open magnolia will answer the purpose, showing the beauty of the triple curvature in the sides. I do not say that the forms of the capitals are actually taken from flowers, though assuredly so in some instances, and partially so in the decoration of nearly all. But they were designed by men of pure and natural feeling for beauty, who therefore instinctively adopted the forms represented, which are afterwards proved to be beautiful by their frequent occurrence in common flowers. The convex forms, 3 and 4, are put lowest in the plate only because they are heaviest; they are the earliest in date, and have already been enough examined. I have added a plate to this volume (Plate XII.), which should have appeared in illustration of the fifth chapter of Vol. II., but was not finished in time. It represents the central capital and two of the lateral ones of the Fondaco de' Turchi, the central one drawn very large, in order to show the excessive simplicity of its chiselling, together with the care and sharpness of it, each leaf being expressed by a series of sharp furrows and ridges. Some slight errors in the large tracings from which the engraving was made have, however, occasioned a loss of spring in the curves, and the little fig. 4 of Plate X. Vol. II. gives a truer idea of the distant effect of the capital. The profiles given in Plate X. Vol. II. are the following: 1. _a._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Madonnetta House. _b._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Casa Falier. _c._ Lateral capitals, upper arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi. _d._ Small pillars of St. Mark's Pulpit. _e._ Casa Farsetti. _f._ Inner capitals of arcade of Ducal Palace. _g._ Plinth of the house[66] at Apostoli. _h._ Main capitals of house at Apostoli. _i._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi. 2. _a._ Lower arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi. _b, c._ Lower pillars, house at Apostoli. _d._ San Simeon Grande. PLATE X. _e._ Restored house on Grand Canal. Three of the old arches left. vol. II. _f._ Upper arcade, Ducal Palace. _g._ Windows of third order, central shaft, Ducal Palace. _h._ Windows of third order, lateral shaft, Ducal Palace. _i._ Ducal Palace, main shafts. _k._ Piazzetta shafts. 3. _a._ St. Mark's Nave. _b, c._ Lily capitals, St. Mark's. 4. _a._ Fondaco de' Turchi, central shaft, upper arcade. _b._ Murano, upper arcade. _c._ Murano, lower arcade. _d._ Tomb of St. Isidore. _e._ General late Gothic profile. The last two sections are convex in effect, though not in reality; the bulging lines being carved into bold flower-work. The capitals belonging to the groups 1 and 2, in the Byzantine times, have already been illustrated in Plate VIII. Vol. II.; we have yet to trace their succession in the Gothic times. This is done in Plate II. of this volume, which we will now examine carefully. The following are the capitals represented in that plate: 1. Small shafts of St. Mark's Pulpit. 2. From the transitional house in the Calle di Rimedio (conf. Vol. II.). 3. General simplest form of the middle Gothic capital. 4. Nave of San Giacomo de Lorio. 5. Casa Falier. 6. Early Gothic house in Campo Sta. M^a. Mater Domini. PLATE II. 7. House at the Apostoli. Vol. III. 8. Piazzetta shafts. 9. Ducal Palace, upper arcade. 10. Palace of Marco Querini. 11. Fondaco de' Turchi. 12. Gothic palaces in Campo San Polo. 13. Windows of fourth order, Plate XVI. Vol. II. 14. Nave of Church of San Stefano. 15. Late Gothic Palace at the Miracoli. The two lateral columns form a consecutive series: the central column is a group of exceptional character, running parallel with both. We will take the lateral ones first. 1. Capital of pulpit of St. Mark's (representative of the simplest concave forms of the Byzantine period). Look back to Plate VIII. Vol. II., and observe that while all the forms in that plate are contemporaneous, we are now going to follow a series _consecutive_ in time, which begins from fig. 1, either in that plate or in this; that is to say, with the simplest possible condition to be found at the time; and which proceeds to develope itself into gradually increasing richness, while the _already rich_ capitals of the old school die at its side. In the forms 14 and 15 (Plate VIII.) the Byzantine school expired; but from the Byzantine simple capital (1, Plate II. above) which was coexistent with them, sprang another hardy race of capitals, whose succession we have now to trace. The form 1, Plate II. is evidently the simplest conceivable condition of the truncated capital, long ago represented generally in Vol. I., being only rounded a little on its side to fit it to the shaft. The next step was to place a leaf beneath each of the truncations (fig. 4, Plate II., San Giacomo de Lorio), the end of the leaf curling over at the top in a somewhat formal spiral, partly connected with the traditional volute of the Corinthian capital. The sides are then enriched by the addition of some ornament, as a shield (fig. 7) or rose (fig. 10), and we have the formed capital of the early Gothic. Fig. 10, being from the palace of Marco Querini, is certainly not later than the middle of the thirteenth century (see Vol. II.), and fig. 7, is, I believe, of the same date; it is one of the bearing capitals of the lower story of the palace at the Apostoli, and is remarkably fine in the treatment of its angle leaves, which are not deeply under-cut, but show their magnificent sweeping under surface all the way down, not as a leaf surface, but treated like the gorget of a helmet, with a curved line across it like that where the gorget meets the mail. I never saw anything finer in simple design. Fig. 10 is given chiefly as a certification of date, and to show the treatment of the capitals of this school on a small scale. Observe the more expansive head in proportion to the diameter of the shaft, the leaves being drawn from the angles, as if gathered in the hand, till their edges meet; and compare the rule given in Vol. I. Chap. IX. § XIV. The capitals of the remarkable house, of which a portion is represented in Fig. XXXI. Vol. II., are most curious and pure examples of this condition; with experimental trefoils, roses, and leaves introduced between their volutes. When compared with those of the Querini Palace, they form one of the most important evidences of the date of the building. Fig. 13. One of the bearing capitals, already drawn on a small scale in the windows represented in Plate XVI. Vol. II. Now, observe. The capital of the form of fig. 10 appeared sufficient to the Venetians for all ordinary purposes; and they used it in common windows to the latest Gothic periods, but yet with certain differences which at once show the lateness of the work. In the first place, the rose, which at first was flat and quatrefoiled, becomes, after some experiments, a round ball dividing into three leaves, closely resembling our English ball flower, and probably derived from it; and, in other cases, forming a bold projecting bud in various degrees of contraction or expansion. In the second place, the extremities of the angle leaves are wrought into rich flowing lobes, and bent back so as to lap against their own breasts; showing lateness of date in exact proportion to the looseness of curvature. Fig. 3 represents the general aspect of these later capitals, which may be conveniently called the rose capitals of Venice; two are seen on service, in Plate VIII. Vol. I., showing comparatively early date by the experimental form of the six-foiled rose. But for elaborate edifices this form was not sufficiently rich; and there was felt to be something awkward in the junction of the leaves at the bottom. Therefore, four other shorter leaves were added at the sides, as in fig. 13, Plate II., and as generally represented in Plate X. Vol. II. fig. 1. This was a good and noble step, taken very early in the thirteenth century; and all the best Venetian capitals were thenceforth of this form. Those which followed, and rested in the common rose type, were languid and unfortunate: I do not know a single good example of them after the first half of the thirteenth century. But the form reached in fig. 13 was quickly felt to be of great value and power. One would have thought it might have been taken straight from the Corinthian type; but it is clearly the work of men who were making experiments for themselves. For instance, in the central capital of Fig. XXXI. Vol. II., there is a trial condition of it, with the intermediate leaf set behind those at the angles (the reader had better take a magnifying glass to this woodcut; it will show the character of the capitals better). Two other experimental forms occur in the Casa Cicogna (Vol. II.), and supply one of the evidences which fix the date of that palace. But the form soon was determined as in fig. 13, and then means were sought of recommending it by farther decoration. The leaves which are used in fig. 13, it will be observed, have lost the Corinthian volute, and are now pure and plain leaves, such as were used in the Lombardic Gothic of the early thirteenth century all over Italy. Now in a round-arched gateway at Verona, certainly not later than 1300; the pointed leaves of this pure form are used in one portion of the mouldings, and in another are enriched by having their surfaces carved each into a beautiful ribbed and pointed leaf. The capital, fig. 6, Plate II., is nothing more than fig. 13 so enriched; and the two conditions are quite contemporary, fig. 13 being from a beautiful series of fourth order windows in Campo Sta. M^a. Mater Domini, already drawn in my folio work. Fig. 13 is representative of the richest conditions of Gothic capital which existed at the close of the thirteenth century. The builder of the Ducal Palace amplified them into the form of fig. 9, but varying the leafage in disposition and division of lobes in every capital; and the workmen trained under him executed many noble capitals for the Gothic palaces of the early fourteenth century, of which fig. 12, from a palace in the Campo St. Polo, is one of the most beautiful examples. In figs. 9 and 12 the reader sees the Venetian Gothic capital in its noblest developement. The next step was to such forms as fig. 15, which is generally characteristic of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Gothic, and of which I hope the reader will at once perceive the exaggeration and corruption. This capital is from a palace near the Miracoli, and it is remarkable for the delicate, though corrupt, ornament on its abacus, which is precisely the same as that on the pillars of the screen of St. Mark's. That screen is a monument of very great value, for it shows the entire corruption of the Gothic power, and the style of the later palaces accurately and completely defined in all its parts, and is dated 1380; thus at once furnishing us with a limiting date, which throws all the noble work of the early Ducal Palace, and all that is like it in Venice, thoroughly back into the middle of the fourteenth century at the latest. Fig. 2 is the simplest condition of the capital universally employed in the windows of the second order, noticed above, Vol. II., as belonging to a style of great importance in the transitional architecture of Venice. Observe, that in all the capitals given in the lateral columns in Plate II., the points of the leaves _turn over_. But in this central group they lie _flat_ against the angle of the capital, and form a peculiarly light and lovely succession of forms, occurring only in their purity in the windows of the second order, and in some important monuments connected with them. In fig. 2 the leaf at the angle is cut, exactly in the manner of an Egyptian bas-relief, _into_ the stone, with a raised edge round it, and a raised rib up the centre; and this mode of execution, seen also in figs. 4 and 7, is one of the collateral evidences of early date. But in figs. 5 and 8, where more elaborate effect was required, the leaf is thrown out boldly with an even edge from the surface of the capital, and enriched on its own surface: and as the treatment of fig. 2 corresponds with that of fig. 4, so that of fig. 5 corresponds with that of fig. 6; 2 and 5 having the upright leaf, 4 and 6 the bending leaves; but all contemporary. Fig. 5 is the central capital of the windows of Casa Falier, drawn in Plate XV. Vol. II.; and one of the leaves set on its angles is drawn larger at fig. 7, Plate XX. Vol. II. It has no rib, but a sharp raised ridge down its centre; and its lobes, of which the reader will observe the curious form,--round in the middle one, truncated in the sides,--are wrought with a precision and care which I have hardly ever seen equalled: but of this more presently. The next figure (8, Plate II.) is the most important capital of the whole transitional period, that employed on the two columns of the Piazzetta. These pillars are said to have been _raised_ in the close of the twelfth century, but I cannot find even the most meagre account of their bases, capitals, or, which seems to me most wonderful, of that noble winged lion, one of the grandest things produced by mediæval art, which all men admire, and none can draw. I have never yet seen a faithful representation of his firm, fierce, and fiery strength. I believe that both he and the capital which bears him are late thirteenth century work. I have not been up to the lion, and cannot answer for it; but if it be not thirteenth century work, it is as good; and respecting the capitals, there can be small question. They are of exactly the date of the oldest tombs, bearing crosses, outside of St. John and Paul; and are associated with all the other work of the transitional period, from 1250 to 1300 (the bases of these pillars, representing the trades of Venice, ought, by the by, to have been mentioned as among the best early efforts of Venetian grotesque); and, besides, their abaci are formed by four reduplications of the dentilled mouldings of St. Mark's, which never occur after the year 1300. Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the adaptation of these broad bearing abaci; but as they have nothing to do with the capital itself, and could not easily be brought into the space, they are omitted in Plate II., where fig. 8 shows the bell of the capital only. Its profile is curiously subtle,--apparently concave everywhere, but in reality concave (all the way down) only on the angles, and slightly convex at the sides (the profile through the side being 2 _k_, Plate X. Vol. II.); in this subtlety of curvature, as well as in the simple cross, showing the influence of early times. The leaf on the angle, of which more presently, is fig. 5, Plate XX. Vol. II. Connected with this school of transitional capitals we find a form in the later Gothic, such as fig. 14, from the Church of San Stefano; but which appears in part derived from an old and rich Byzantine type, of which fig. 11, from the Fondaco de' Turchi, is a characteristic example. I must now take the reader one step farther, and ask him to examine, finally, the treatment of the leaves, down to the cutting of their most minute lobes, in the series of capitals of which we have hitherto only sketched the general forms. In all capitals with nodding leaves, such as 6 and 9 in Plate II., the real form of the leaf is not to be seen, except in perspective; but, in order to render the comparison more easy, I have in Plate XX. Vol. II. opened all the leaves out, as if they were to be dried in a herbarium, only leaving the furrows and sinuosities of surface, but laying the outside contour nearly flat upon the page, except for a particular reason in figs. 2, 10, 11, and 15. I shall first, as usual, give the references, and then note the points of interest. 1, 2, 3. Fondaco de' Turchi, upper arcade. 4. Greek pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre. 5. Piazzetta shafts. 6. Madonnetta House. PLATE XX. 7. Casa Falier. Vol. II. 8. Palace near St. Eustachio. 9. Tombs, outside of St. John and Paul. 10. Tomb of Giovanni Soranzo. 11. Tomb of Andrea Dandolo. 12, 13, 14. Ducal Palace. N.B. The upper row, 1 to 4, is Byzantine, the next transitional, the last two Gothic. Fig. 1. The leaf of the capital No. 6, Plate VIII. Vol. II. Each lobe of the leaf has a sharp furrow up to its point, from its root. Fig. 2. The leaf of the capital on the right hand, at the top of Plate XII. in this volume. The lobes worked in the same manner, with deep black drill holes between their points. Fig. 3. One of the leaves of fig. 14, Plate VIII. Vol. II. fully unfolded. The lobes worked in the same manner, but left shallow, so as not to destroy the breadth of light; the central line being drawn by drill holes, and the interstices between lobes cut black and deep. Fig. 4. Leaf with flower; pure Byzantine work, showing whence the treatment of all the other leaves has been derived. Fig. 6. For the sake of symmetry, this is put in the centre: it is the earliest of the three in this row; taken from the Madonnetta House, where the capitals have leaves both at their sides and angles. The tall angle leaf, with its two lateral ones, is given in the plate; and there is a remarkable distinction in the mode of workmanship of these leaves, which, though found in a palace of the Byzantine period, is indicative of a tendency to transition; namely, that the sharp furrow is now drawn _only to the central lobe_ of each division of the leaf, and the rest of the surface of the leaf is left nearly flat, a slight concavity only marking the division of the extremities. At the base of these leaves they are perfectly flat, only cut by the sharp and narrow furrow, as an elevated table-land is by ravines. Fig. 5. A more advanced condition; the fold at the recess, between each division of the leaf, carefully expressed, and the concave or depressed portions of the extremities marked more deeply, as well as the central furrow, and a rib added in the centre. Fig. 7. A contemporary, but more finished form; the sharp furrows becoming softer, and the whole leaf more flexible. Fig. 8. An exquisite form of the same period, but showing still more advanced naturalism, from a very early group of third order windows, near the Church of St. Eustachio on the Grand Canal. Fig. 9. Of the same time, from a small capital of an angle shaft of the sarcophagi at the _side_ of St. John and Paul, in the little square which is adorned by the Colleone statue. This leaf is very quaint and pretty in giving its midmost lateral divisions only two lobes each, instead of the usual three or four. Fig. 10. Leaf employed in the cornice of the tomb of the Doge Giovanni Soranzo, who died in 1312. It nods over, and has three ribs on its upper surface; thus giving us the completed ideal form of the leaf, but its execution is still very archaic and severe. Now the next example, fig. 11, is from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, and therefore executed between 1354 and 1360; and this leaf shows the Gothic naturalism and refinement of curvature fully developed. In this forty years' interval, then, the principal advance of Gothic sculpture is to be placed. I had prepared a complete series of examples, showing this advance, and the various ways in which the separations of the ribs, a most characteristic feature, are more and more delicately and scientifically treated, from the beginning to the middle of the fourteenth century, but I feared that no general reader would care to follow me into these minutiæ, and have cancelled this portion of the work, at least for the present, the main point being, that the reader should feel the full extent of the change, which he can hardly fail to do in looking from fig. 10 to figs. 11 and 12. I believe that fig. 12 is the earlier of the two; and it is assuredly the finer, having all the elasticity and simplicity of the earliest forms, with perfect flexibility added. In fig. 11 there is a perilous element beginning to develope itself into one feature, namely, the extremities of the leaves, which, instead of merely nodding over, now curl completely round into a kind of ball. This occurs early, and in the finest Gothic work, especially in cornices and other running mouldings: but it is a fatal symptom, a beginning of the intemperance of the later Gothic, and it was followed out with singular avidity; the ball of coiled leafage increasing in size and complexity, and at last becoming the principal feature of the work; the light striking on its vigorous projection, as in fig. 14. Nearly all the Renaissance Gothic of Venice depends upon these balls for effect, a late capital being generally composed merely of an upper and lower range of leaves terminating in this manner. It is very singular and notable how, in this loss of _temperance_, there is loss of _life_. For truly healthy and living leaves do not bind themselves into knots at the extremities. They bend, and wave, and nod, but never curl. It is in disease, or in death, by blight, or frost, or poison only, that leaves in general assume this ingathered form. It is the flame of autumn that has shrivelled them, or the web of the caterpillar that has bound them: and thus the last forms of the Venetian leafage set forth the fate of Venetian pride; and, in their utmost luxuriance and abandonment, perish as if eaten of worms. And now, by glancing back to Plate X. Vol. II, the reader will see in a moment the kind of evidence which is found of the date of capitals in their profiles merely. Observe: we have seen that the treatment of the leaves in the Madonnetta House seemed "indicative of a tendency to transition." Note their profile, 1_a_, and its close correspondence with 1 _h_, which is actually of a transitional capital from the upper arcade of second order windows in the Apostoli Palace; yet both shown to be very close to the Byzantine period, if not belonging to it, by their fellowship with the profile _i_, from the Fondaco de' Turchi. Then note the close correspondence of all the other profiles in that line, which belong to the concave capitals or plinths of the Byzantine palaces, and note their composition, the abacus being, in idea, merely an echo or reduplication of the capital itself; as seen in perfect simplicity in the profile _f_, which is a roll under a _tall_ concave curve forming the bell of the capital, with a roll and _short_ concave curve for its abacus. This peculiar abacus is an unfailing test of early date; and our finding this simple profile used for the Ducal Palace (_f_), is strongly confirmatory of all our former conclusions. Then the next row, 2, are the Byzantine and early Gothic semi-convex curves, in their pure forms, having no roll below; but often with a roll added, as at _f_, and in certain early Gothic conditions curiously fused into it, with a cavetto between, as _b_, _c_, _d_. But the more archaic form is as at _f_ and _k_; and as these two profiles are from the Ducal Palace and Piazzetta shafts, they join again with the rest of the evidence of their early date. The profiles _i_ and _k_ are both most beautiful; _i_ is that of the great capitals of the Ducal Palace, and the small profiles between it and _k_ are the varieties used on the fillet at its base. The profile _i_ should have had leaves springing from it, as 1 _h_ has, only more boldly, but there was no room for them. The reader cannot fail to discern at a glance the fellowship of the whole series of profiles, 2 _a_ to _k_, nor can he but with equal ease observe a marked difference in 4 _d_ and 4 _e_ from any others in the plate; the bulging outlines of leafage being indicative of the luxuriant and flowing masses, no longer expressible with a simple line, but to be considered only as confined within it, of the later Gothic. Now _d_ is a dated profile from the tomb of St. Isidore, 1355, which by its dog-tooth abacus and heavy leafage distinguishes itself from all the other profiles, and therefore throws them back into the first half of the century. But, observe, it still retains the noble swelling root. This character soon after vanishes; and, in 1380, the profile _e_, at once heavy, feeble, and ungraceful, with a meagre and valueless abacus hardly discernible, is characteristic of all the capitals of Venice. Note, finally, this contraction of the abacus. Compare 4 _c_, which is the earliest form in the plate, from Murano, with 4 _e_, which is the latest. The other profiles show the gradual process of change; only observe, in 3_a_ the abacus is not drawn; it is so bold that it would not come into the plate without reducing the bell curve to too small a scale. So much for the evidence derivable from the capitals; we have next to examine that of the archivolts or arch mouldings. [Illustration: Plate VIII. BYZANTINE ARCHIVOLTS.] _IV. Archivolts._ In Plate VIII., opposite, are arranged in one view all the conditions of Byzantine archivolt employed in Venice, on a large scale. It will be seen in an instant that there can be no mistaking the manner of their masonry. The soffit of the arch is the horizontal line at the bottom of all these profiles, and each of them (except 13, 14) is composed of two slabs of marble, one for the soffit, another for the face of the arch; the one on the soffit is worked on the edge into a roll (fig. 10) or dentil (fig. 9), and the one on the face is bordered on the other side by another piece let edgeways into the wall, and also worked into a roll or dentil: in the richer archivolts a cornice is added to this roll, as in figs. 1 and 4, or takes its place, as in figs. 1, 3, 5, and 6; and in such richer examples the facestone, and often the soffit, are sculptured, the sculpture being cut into their surfaces, as indicated in fig. 11. The concavities cut in the facestones of 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 are all indicative of sculpture in effect like that of Fig. XXVI. Vol. II., of which archivolt fig. 5, here, is the actual profile. The following are the references to the whole: 1. Rio-Foscari House. 2. Terraced House, entrance door. 3. Small Porticos of St. Mark's, external arches. 4. Arch on the canal at Ponte St. Toma. 5. Arch of Corte del Remer. 6. Great outermost archivolt of central door, St. Mark's. PLATE VIII. 7. Inner archivolt of southern porch, St. Mark's Façade. Vol. III. 8. Inner archivolt of central entrance, St. Mark's. 9. Fondaco de' Turchi, main arcade. 10. Byzantine restored house on Grand Canal, lower arcade. 11. Terraced House, upper arcade. 12. Inner archivolt of northern porch of façade, St. Mark's. 13 and 14. Transitional forms. [Illustration: Plate IX. GOTHIC ARCHIVOLTS.] There is little to be noted respecting these forms, except that, in fig. 1, the two lower rolls, with the angular projections between, represent the fall of the mouldings of two proximate arches on the abacus of the bearing shaft; their two cornices meeting each other, and being gradually narrowed into the little angular intermediate piece, their sculptures being slurred into the contracted space, a curious proof of the earliness of the work. The real archivolt moulding is the same as fig. 4 _c c_, including only the midmost of the three rolls in fig. 1. It will be noticed that 2, 5, 6, and 8 are sculptured on the soffits as well as the faces; 9 is the common profile of arches decorated only with colored marble, the facestone being colored, the soffit white. The effect of such a moulding is seen in the small windows at the right hand of Fig. XXVI. Vol. II. The reader will now see that there is but little difficulty in identifying Byzantine work, the archivolt mouldings being so similar among themselves, and so unlike any others. We have next to examine the Gothic forms. Figs. 13 and 14 in Plate VIII. represent the first brick mouldings of the transitional period, occurring in such instances as Fig. XXIII. or Fig. XXXIII. Vol. II. (the soffit stone of the Byzantine mouldings being taken away), and this profile, translated into solid stone, forms the almost universal moulding of the windows of the second order. These two brick mouldings are repeated, for the sake of comparison, at the top of Plate IX. opposite; and the upper range of mouldings which they commence, in that plate, are the brick mouldings of Venice in the early Gothic period. All the forms below are in stone; and the moulding 2, translated into stone, forms the universal archivolt of the early pointed arches of Venice, and windows of second and third orders. The moulding 1 is much rarer, and used for the most part in doors only. The reader will see at once the resemblance of character in the various flat brick mouldings, 3 to 11. They belong to such arches as 1 and 2 in Plate XVII. Vol. II.; or 6 _b_, 6 _c_, in Plate XIV. Vol. II., 7 and 8 being actually the mouldings of those two doors; the whole group being perfectly defined, and separate from all the other Gothic work in Venice, and clearly the result of an effort to imitate, in brickwork, the effect of the flat sculptured archivolts of the Byzantine times. (See Vol. II. Chap. VII. § XXXVII.) Then comes the group 14 to 18 in stone, derived from the mouldings 1 and 2; first by truncation, 14; then by beading the truncated angle, 15, 16. The occurrence of the profile 16 in the three beautiful windows represented in the uppermost figure of Plate XVIII. Vol. I. renders that group of peculiar interest, and is strong evidence of its antiquity. Then a cavetto is added, 17; first shallow and then deeper, 18, which is the common archivolt moulding of the central Gothic door and window: but, in the windows of the early fourth order, this moulding is complicated by various additions of dog-tooth mouldings under the dentil, as in 20; or the _gabled_ dentil (see fig. 20, Plate IX. Vol. I), as fig. 21; or both, as figs 23, 24. All these varieties expire in the advanced period, and the established moulding for windows is 29. The intermediate group, 25 to 28, I found only in the high windows of the third order in the Ducal Palace, or in the Chapter-house of the Frari, or in the arcades of the Ducal Palace; the great outside lower arcade of the Ducal Palace has the profile 31, the left-hand side being the innermost. Now observe, all these archivolts, without exception, assume that the spectator looks from the outside only: none are complete on both sides; they are essentially _window_ mouldings, and have no resemblance to those of our perfect Gothic arches prepared for traceries. If they were all completely drawn in the plate, they should be as fig. 25, having a great depth of wall behind the mouldings, but it was useless to represent this in every case. The Ducal Palace begins to show mouldings on both sides, 28, 31; and 35 is a _complete_ arch moulding from the apse of the Frari. That moulding, though so perfectly developed, is earlier than the Ducal Palace, and with other features of the building, indicates the completeness of the Gothic system, which made the architect of the Ducal Palace found his work principally upon that church. The other examples in this plate show the various modes of combination employed in richer archivolts. The triple change of slope in 38 is very curious. The references are as follows: 1. Transitional to the second order. 2. Common second order. 3. Brick, at Corte del Forno, Round arch. 4. Door at San Giovanni Grisostomo. 5. Door at Sotto Portico della Stua. 6. Door in Campo St. Luca, of rich brickwork. 7. Round door at Fondamenta Venier. 8. Pointed door. Fig. 6_c_, Plate XIV. Vol. II. 9. Great pointed arch, Salizzada San Lio. 10. Round door near Fondaco de' Turchi. 11. Door with Lion, at Ponte della Corona. 12. San Gregorio, Façade. 13. St. John and Paul, Nave. 14. Rare early fourth order, at San Cassan. 15. General early Gothic archivolt. 16. Same, from door in Rio San G. Grisostomo. 17. Casa Vittura. 18. Casa Sagredo, Unique thirds. Vol. II. 19. Murano Palace, Unique fourths.[67] PLATE IX. 20. Pointed door of Four-Evangelist House.[68] Vol. III. 21. Keystone door in Campo St. M. Formosa. 22. Rare fourths, at St. Pantaleon. 23. Rare fourths, Casa Papadopoli. 24. Rare fourths, Chess house.[69] 25. Thirds of Frari Cloister. 26. Great pointed arch of Frari Cloister. 27. Unique thirds, Ducal Palace. 28. Inner Cortile, pointed arches, Ducal Palace. 29. Common fourth and fifth order Archivolt. 30. Unique thirds, Ducal Palace. 31. Ducal Palace, lower arcade. 32. Casa Priuli, arches in the inner court. 33. Circle above the central window, Ducal Palace. 34. Murano apse. 35. Acute-pointed arch, Frari. 36. Door of Accademia delle belle Arti. 37. Door in Calle Tiossi, near Four-Evangelist House. 38. Door in Campo San Polo. 39. Door of palace at Ponte Marcello. 40. Door of a palace close to the Church of the Miracoli. _V. Cornices._ Plate X. represents, in one view, the cornices or string-courses of Venice, and the abaci of its capitals, early and late; these two features being inseparably connected, as explained in Vol. I. The evidence given by these mouldings is exceedingly clear. The two upper lines in the Plate, 1-11, 12-24, are all plinths from Byzantine buildings. The reader will at once observe their unmistakable resemblances. The row 41 to 50 are contemporary abaci of capitals; 52, 53, 54, 56, are examples of late Gothic abaci; and observe, especially, these are all rounded at the _top_ of the cavetto, but the Byzantine abaci are rounded, if at all, at the _bottom_ of the cavetto (see 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 28, 46). Consider what a valuable test of date this is, in any disputable building. Again, compare 28, 29, one from St. Mark's, the other from the Ducal Palace, and observe the close resemblance, giving farther evidence of early date in the palace. 25 and 50 are drawn to the same scale. The former is the wall-cornice, the latter the abacus of the great shafts, in the Casa Loredan; the one passing into the other, as seen in Fig. XXVIII. Vol. I. It is curious to watch the change in proportion, while the moulding, all but the lower roll, remains the same. [Illustration: Plate X. CORNICES AND ABACI.] The following are the references: 1. Common plinth of St. Mark's. 2. Plinth above lily capitals, St. Mark's. 3, 4. Plinths in early surface Gothic. 5. Plinth of door in Campo St. Luca. 6. Plinth of treasury door, St. Mark's. 7. Archivolts of nave, St. Mark's. 8. Archivolts of treasury door, St. Mark's. 9. Moulding of circular window in St. John and Paul. 10. Chief decorated narrow plinth, St. Mark's. 11. Plinth of door, Campo St. Margherita. 12. Plinth of tomb of Doge Vital Falier. 13. Lower plinth, Fondaco de' Turchi, and Terraced House. 14. Running plinth of Corte del Remer. 15. Highest plinth at top of Fondaco de' Turchi. 16. Common Byzantine plinth. 17. Running plinth of Casa Falier. 18. Plinth of arch at Ponte St. Toma. 19, 20, 21. Plinths of tomb of Doge Vital Falier. 22. Plinth of window in Calle del Pistor. 23. Plinth of tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele. 24. Archivolt in the Frari. 25. Running plinth, Casa Loredan. 26. Running plinth, under pointed arch, in Salizzada San Lio. 27. Running plinth, Casa Erizzo. PLATE X. 28. Circles in portico of St. Mark's. Vol. III. 29. Ducal Palace cornice, lower arcade. 30. Ducal Palace cornice, upper arcade. 31. Central Gothic plinth. 32. Late Gothic plinth. 33. Late Gothic plinth, Casa degli Ambasciatori. 34. Late Gothic plinth, Palace near the Jesuiti. 35, 36. Central balcony cornice. 37. Plinth of St. Mark's balustrade. 38. Cornice of the Frari, in brick, cabled. 39. Central balcony plinth. 40. Uppermost cornice, Ducal Palace. 41. Abacus of lily capitals, St. Mark's. 42. Abacus, Fondaco de' Turchi. 43. Abacus, large capital of Terraced House. 44. Abacus, Fondaco de' Turchi. 45. Abacus, Ducal Palace, upper arcade. 46. Abacus, Corte del Remer. 47. Abacus, small pillars, St. Mark's pulpit. 48. Abacus, Murano and Torcello. 49. Abacus, Casa Farsetti. 50. Abacus, Casa Loredan, lower story. 51. Abacus, capitals of Frari. 52. Abacus, Casa Cavalli (plain). 53. Abacus, Casa Priuli (flowered). 54. Abacus, Casa Foscari (plain). 55. Abacus, Casa Priuli (flowered). 56. Abacus, Plate II. fig. 15. 57. Abacus, St. John and Paul. 58. Abacus, St. Stefano. It is only farther to be noted, that these mouldings are used in various proportions, for all kinds of purposes: sometimes for true cornices; sometimes for window-sills; sometimes, 3 and 4 (in the Gothic time) especially, for dripstones of gables: 11 and such others form little plinths or abaci at the spring of arches, such as those shown at _a_, Fig. XXIII. Vol. II. Finally, a large number of superb Byzantine cornices occur, of the form shown at the top of the arch in Plate V. Vol. II., having a profile like 16 or 19 here; with nodding leaves of acanthus thrown out from it, being, in fact, merely one range of the leaves of a Byzantine capital unwrapped, and formed into a continuous line. I had prepared a large mass of materials for the illustration of these cornices, and the Gothic ones connected with them; but found the subject would take up another volume, and was forced, for the present, to abandon it. The lower series of profiles, 7 to 12 in Plate XV. Vol. I, shows how the leaf-ornament is laid on the simple early cornices. _VI. Traceries._ We have only one subject more to examine, the character of the early and late Tracery Bars. The reader may perhaps have been surprised at the small attention given to traceries in the course of the preceding volumes: but the reason is, that there are no _complicated_ traceries at Venice belonging to the good Gothic time, with the single exception of those of the Casa Cicogna; and the magnificent arcades of the Ducal Palace Gothic are so simple as to require little explanation. There are, however, two curious circumstances in the later traceries; the first, that they are universally considered by the builder (as the old Byzantines considered sculptured surfaces of stone) as material out of which a certain portion is _to be cut_, to fill his window. A fine Northern Gothic tracery is a complete and systematic arrangement of arches and foliation, _adjusted_ to the form of the window; but a Venetian tracery is a piece of a larger composition, cut to the shape of the window. In the Porta della Carta, in the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto, in the Casa Bernardo on the Grand Canal, in the old Church of the Misericordia, and wherever else there are rich traceries in Venice, it will always be found that a certain arrangement of quatrefoils and other figures has been planned as if it were to extend indefinitely into miles of arcade; and out of this colossal piece of marble lace, a piece in the shape of a window is cut, mercilessly and fearlessly: whatever fragments and odd shapes of interstice, remnants of this or that figure of the divided foliation, may occur at the edge of the window, it matters not; all are cut across, and shut in by the great outer archivolt. It is very curious to find the Venetians treating what in other countries became of so great individual importance, merely as a kind of diaper ground, like that of their chequered colors on the walls. There is great grandeur in the idea, though the system of their traceries was spoilt by it: but they always treated their buildings as masses of color rather than of line; and the great traceries of the Ducal Palace itself are not spared any more than those of the minor palaces. They are cut off at the flanks in the middle of the quatrefoils, and the terminal mouldings take up part of the breadth of the poor half of a quatrefoil at the extremity. One other circumstance is notable also. In good Northern Gothic the tracery bars are of a constant profile, the same on both sides; and if the plan of the tracery leaves any interstices so small that there is not room for the full profile of the tracery bar all round them, those interstices are entirely closed, the tracery bars being supposed to have met each other. But in Venice, if an interstice becomes anywhere inconveniently small, the tracery bar is sacrificed; cut away, or in some way altered in profile, in order to afford more room for the light, especially in the early traceries, so that one side of a tracery bar is often quite different from the other. For instance, in the bars 1 and 2, Plate XI., from the Frari and St. John and Paul, the uppermost side is towards a great opening, and there was room for the bevel or slope to the cusp; but in the other side the opening was too small, and the bar falls vertically to the cusp. In 5 the uppermost side is to the narrow aperture, and the lower to the small one; and in fig. 9, from the Casa Cicogna, the uppermost side is to the apertures of the tracery, the lowermost to the arches beneath, the great roll following the design of the tracery; while 13 and 14 are left without the roll at the base of their cavettos on the uppermost sides, which are turned to narrow apertures. The earliness of the Casa Cicogna tracery is seen in a moment by its being moulded on the face only. It is in fact nothing more than a series of quatrefoiled apertures in the solid wall of the house, with mouldings on their faces, and magnificent arches of pure pointed fifth order sustaining them below. [Illustration: Plate XI. TRACERY BARS.] The following are the references to the figures in the plate: 1. Frari. 2. Apse, St. John and Paul. 3. Frari. 4. Ducal Palace, inner court, upper window. 5. Madonna dell'Orto. 6. St. John and Paul. 7. Casa Bernardo. 8. Casa Contarini Fasan. 9. Casa Cicogna. 10. 11. Frari. 12. Murano Palace (see note, p. 265). PLATE XI. 13. Misericordia. Vol. III. 14. Palace of the younger Foscari.[70] 15. Casa d'Oro; great single windows. 16. Hotel Danieli. 17. Ducal Palace. 18. Casa Erizzo, on Grand Canal. 19. Main story, Casa Cavalli. 20. Younger Foscari. 21. Ducal Palace, traceried windows. 22. Porta della Carta. 23. Casa d'Oro. 24. Casa d'Oro, upper story. 25. Casa Facanon. 26. Casa Cavalli, near Post-Office. It will be seen at a glance that, except in the very early fillet traceries of the Frari and St. John and Paul, Venetian work consists of roll traceries of one general pattern. It will be seen also, that 10 and 11 from the Frari, furnish the first examples of the form afterwards completely developed in 17, the tracery bar of the Ducal Palace; but that this bar differs from them in greater strength and squareness, and in adding a recess between its smaller roll and the cusp. Observe, that this is done for strength chiefly; as, in the contemporary tracery (21) of the upper windows, no such additional thickness is used. Figure 17 is slightly inaccurate. The little curved recesses behind the smaller roll are not equal on each side; that next the cusp is smallest, being about 5/8 of an inch, while that next the cavetto is about 7/8; to such an extent of subtlety did the old builders carry their love of change. The return of the cavetto in 21, 23, and 26, is comparatively rare, and is generally a sign of later date. [Illustration: Fig. II.] [Illustration: Fig. III.] The reader must observe that the great sturdiness of the form of the bars, 5, 9, 17, 24, 25, is a consequence of the peculiar office of Venetian traceries in supporting the mass of the building above, already noticed in Vol. II.; and indeed the forms of the Venetian Gothic are, in many other ways, influenced by the difficulty of obtaining stability on sandy foundations. One thing is especially noticeable in all their arrangements of traceries; namely, the endeavor to obtain equal and horizontal pressure along the whole breadth of the building, not the divided and local pressures of Northern Gothic. This object is considerably aided by the structure of the balconies, which are of great service in knitting the shafts together, forming complete tie-beams of marble, as well as a kind of rivets, at their bases. For instance, at _b_, Fig. II., is represented the masonry of the base of the upper arcade of the Ducal Palace, showing the root of one of its main shafts, with the binding balconies. The solid stones which form the foundation are much broader than the balcony shafts, so that the socketed arrangement is not seen: it is shown as it would appear in a longitudinal section. The balconies are not let into the circular shafts, but fitted to their circular curves, so as to grasp them, and riveted with metal; and the bars of stone which form the tops of the balconies are of great strength and depth, the small trefoiled arches being cut out of them as in Fig. III., so as hardly to diminish their binding power. In the lighter independent balconies they are often cut deeper; but in all cases the bar of stone is nearly independent of the small shafts placed beneath it, and would stand firm though these were removed, as at _a_, Fig. II., supported either by the main shafts of the traceries, or by its own small pilasters with semi-shafts at their sides, of the plan _d_, Fig. II., in a continuous balcony, and _e_ at the angle of one. There is one more very curious circumstance illustrative of the Venetian desire to obtain horizontal pressure. In all the Gothic staircases with which I am acquainted, out of Venice, in which vertical shafts are used to support an inclined line, those shafts are connected by arches rising each above the other, with a little bracket above the capitals, on the side where it is necessary to raise the arch; or else, though less gracefully, with a longer curve to the lowest side of the arch. But the Venetians seem to have had a morbid horror of arches which were not _on a level_. They could not endure the appearance of the roof of one arch bearing against the side of another; and rather than introduce the idea of obliquity into bearing curves, they abandoned the arch principle altogether; so that even in their richest Gothic staircases, where trefoiled arches, exquisitely decorated, are used on the landings, they ran the shafts on the sloping stair simply into the bar of stone above them, and used the excessively ugly and valueless arrangement of Fig. II., rather than sacrifice the sacred horizontality of their arch system. [Illustration: Fig. IV.] It will be noted, in Plate XI., that the form and character of the tracery bars themselves are independent of the position or projection of the cusps on their flat sides. In this respect, also, Venetian traceries are peculiar, the example 22 of the Porta della Carta being the only one in the plate which is subordinated according to the Northern system. In every other case the form of the aperture is determined, either by a flat and solid cusp as in 6, or by a pierced cusp as in 4. The effect of the pierced cusp is seen in the uppermost figure, Plate XVIII. Vol. II.; and its derivation from the solid cusp will be understood, at once, from the woodcut Fig. IV., which represents a series of the flanking stones of any arch of the fifth order, such as _f_ in Plate III. Vol. I. [Illustration: Fig. V.] The first on the left shows the condition of cusp in a perfectly simple and early Gothic arch, 2 and 3 are those of common arches of the fifth order, 4 is the condition in more studied examples of the Gothic advanced guard, and 5 connects them all with the system of traceries. Introducing the common archivolt mouldings on the projecting edge of 2 and 3, we obtain the bold and deep fifth order window, used down to the close of the fourteenth century or even later, and always grand in its depth of cusp, and consequently of shadow; but the narrow cusp 4 occurs also in very early work, and is piquant when set beneath a bold flat archivolt, as in Fig. V., from the Corte del Forno at Santa Marina. The pierced cusp gives a peculiar lightness and brilliancy to the window, but is not so sublime. In the richer buildings the surface of the flat and solid cusp is decorated with a shallow trefoil (see Plate VIII. Vol. I.), or, when the cusp is small, with a triangular incision only, as seen in figs. 7 and 8, Plate XI. The recesses on the sides of the other cusps indicate their single or double lines of foliation. The cusp of the Ducal Palace has a fillet only round its edge, and a ball of red marble on its truncated point, and is perfect in its grand simplicity; but in general the cusps of Venice are far inferior to those of Verona and of the other cities of Italy, chiefly because there was always some confusion in the mind of the designer between true cusps and the mere bending inwards of the arch of the fourth order. The two series, 4 _a_ to 4 _e_, and 5 _a_ to 5 _e_, in Plate XIV. Vol. II., are arranged so as to show this connexion, as well as the varieties of curvature in the trefoiled arches of the fourth and fifth orders, which, though apparently slight on so small a scale, are of enormous importance in distant effect; a house in which the joints of the cusps project as much as in 5 _c_, being quite piquant and grotesque when compared with one in which the cusps are subdued to the form 5 _b_. 4 _d_ and 4 _e_ are Veronese forms, wonderfully effective and spirited; the latter occurs at Verona only, but the former at Venice also. 5 _d_ occurs in Venice, but is very rare; and 5 _e_ I found only once, on the narrow canal close to the entrance door of the Hotel Danieli. It was partly walled up, but I obtained leave to take down the brickwork and lay open one side of the arch, which may still be seen. * * * * * The above particulars are enough to enable the reader to judge of the distinctness of evidence which the details of Venetian architecture bear to its dates. Farther explanation of the plates would be vainly tedious: but the architect who uses these volumes in Venice will find them of value, in enabling him instantly to class the mouldings which may interest him; and for this reason I have given a larger number of examples than would otherwise have been sufficient for my purpose. FOOTNOTES: [58] "Olim _magistri_ prothi palatii nostri novi."--_Cadorin_, p. 127. [59] A print, dated 1585, barbarously inaccurate, as all prints were at that time, but still in some respects to be depended upon, represents all the windows on the façade full of traceries; and the circles above, between them, occupied by quatrefoils. [60] "Lata tanto, quantum est ambulum existens super columnis versus canale respicientibus." [61] Bettio, p. 28. [62] In the bombardment of Venice in 1848, hardly a single palace escaped without three or four balls through its roof: three came into the Scuola di San Rocco, tearing their way through the pictures of Tintoret, of which the ragged fragments were still hanging from the ceiling in 1851; and the shells had reached to within a hundred yards of St. Mark's Church itself, at the time of the capitulation. [63] A _Mohammedan_ youth is punished, I believe, for such misdemeanors, by being _kept away_ from prayers. [64] "Those Venetians are fishermen." [65] I am afraid that the kind friend, Lady Trevelyan, who helped me to finish this plate, will not like to be thanked here; but I cannot let her send into Devonshire for magnolias, and draw them for me, _without_ thanking her. [66] That is, the house in the parish of the Apostoli, on the Grand Canal, noticed in Vol. II.; and see also the Venetian Index, under head "Apostoli." [67] Close to the bridge over the main channel through Murano is a massive foursquare Gothic palace, containing some curious traceries, and many _unique_ transitional forms of window, among which these windows of the fourth order occur, with a roll within their dentil band. [68] Thus, for the sake of convenience, we may generally call the palace with the emblems of the Evangelists on its spandrils, Vol. II. [69] The house with chequers like a chess-board on its spandrils, given in my folio work. [70] The palace next the Casa Foscari, on the Grand Canal, sometimes said to have belonged to the son of the Doge. INDICES. I. PERSONAL INDEX. | III. TOPICAL INDEX. II. LOCAL INDEX. | IV. VENETIAN INDEX. The first of the following Indices contains the names of persons; the second those of places (not in Venice) alluded to in the body of the work. The third Index consists of references to the subjects touched upon. In the fourth, called the Venetian Index, I have named every building of importance in the city of Venice itself, or near it; supplying, for the convenience of the traveller, short notices of those to which I had no occasion to allude in the text of the work; and making the whole as complete a guide as I could, with such added directions as I should have given to any private friend visiting the city. As, however, in many cases, the opinions I have expressed differ widely from those usually received; and, in other instances, subjects which may be of much interest to the traveller have not come within the scope of my inquiry; the reader had better take Lazari's small Guide in his hand also, as he will find in it both the information I have been unable to furnish, and the expression of most of the received opinions upon any subject of art. Various inconsistencies will be noticed in the manner of indicating the buildings, some being named in Italian, some in English, and some half in one, and half in the other. But these inconsistencies are permitted in order to save trouble, and make the Index more practically useful. For instance, I believe the traveller will generally look for "Mark," rather than for "Marco," when he wishes to find the reference to St. Mark's Church; but I think he will look for Rocco, rather than for Roch, when he is seeking for the account of the Scuola di San Rocco. So also I have altered the character in which the titles of the plates are printed, from the black letter in the first volume, to the plain Roman in the second and third; finding experimentally that the former character was not easily legible, and conceiving that the book would be none the worse for this practical illustration of its own principles, in a daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience. These alphabetical Indices will, however, be of little use, unless another, and a very different kind of Index, be arranged in the mind of the reader; an Index explanatory of the principal purposes and contents of the various parts of this essay. It is difficult to analyze the nature of the reluctance with which either a writer or painter takes it upon him to explain the meaning of his own work, even in cases where, without such explanation, it must in a measure remain always disputable: but I am persuaded that this reluctance is, in most instances, carried too far; and that, wherever there really is a serious purpose in a book or a picture, the author does wrong who, either in modesty or vanity (both feelings have their share in producing the dislike of personal interpretation), trusts entirely to the patience and intelligence of the readers or spectators to penetrate into their significance. At all events, I will, as far as possible, spare such trouble with respect to these volumes, by stating here, finally and clearly, both what they intend and what they contain; and this the rather because I have lately noticed, with some surprise, certain reviewers announcing as a discovery, what I thought had lain palpably on the surface of the book, namely, that "if Mr. Ruskin be right, all the architects, and all the architectural teaching of the last three hundred years, must have been wrong." That is indeed precisely the fact; and the very thing I meant to say, which indeed I thought I had said over and over again. I believe the architects of the last three centuries to have been wrong; wrong without exception; wrong totally, and from the foundation. This is exactly the point I have been endeavoring to prove, from the beginning of this work to the end of it. But as it seems not yet to have been stated clearly enough, I will here try to put my entire theorem into an unmistakable form. The various nations who attained eminence in the arts before the time of Christ, each of them, produced forms of architecture which in their various degrees of merit were almost exactly indicative of the degrees of intellectual and moral energy of the nations which originated them; and each reached its greatest perfection at the time when the true energy and prosperity of the people who had invented it were at their culminating point. Many of these various styles of architecture were good, considered in relation to the times and races which gave birth to them; but none were absolutely good or perfect, or fitted for the practice of all future time. The advent of Christianity for the first time rendered possible the full development of the soul of man, and therefore the full development of the arts of man. Christianity gave birth to a new architecture, not only immeasurably superior to all that had preceded it, but demonstrably the best architecture that _can_ exist; perfect in construction and decoration, and fit for the practice of all time. This architecture, commonly called "Gothic," though in conception perfect, like the theory of a Christian character, never reached an actual perfection, having been retarded and corrupted by various adverse influences; but it reached its highest perfection, hitherto manifested, about the close of the thirteenth century, being then indicative of a peculiar energy in the Christian mind of Europe. In the course of the fifteenth century, owing to various causes which I have endeavored to trace in the preceding pages, the Christianity of Europe was undermined; and a Pagan architecture was introduced, in imitation of that of the Greeks and Romans. The architecture of the Greeks and Romans themselves was not good, but it was natural; and, as I said before, good in some respects, and for a particular time. But the imitative architecture introduced first in the fifteenth century, and practised ever since, was neither good nor natural. It was good in no respect, and for no time. All the architects who have built in that style have built what was worthless; and therefore the greater part of the architecture which has been built for the last three hundred years, and which we are now building, is worthless. We must give up this style totally, despise it and forget it, and build henceforward only in that perfect and Christian style hitherto called Gothic, which is everlastingly the best. This is the theorem of these volumes. In support of this theorem, the first volume contains, in its first chapter, a sketch of the actual history of Christian architecture, up to the period of the Reformation; and, in the subsequent chapters, an analysis of the entire system of the laws of architectural construction and decoration, deducing from those laws positive conclusions as to the best forms and manners of building for all time. The second volume contains, in its first five chapters, an account of one of the most important and least known forms of Christian architecture, as exhibited in Venice, together with an analysis of its nature in the fourth chapter; and, which is a peculiarly important part of this section, an account of the power of color over the human mind. The sixth chapter of the second volume contains an analysis of the nature of Gothic architecture, properly so called, and shows that in its external form it complies precisely with the abstract laws of structure and beauty, investigated in the first volume. The seventh and eighth chapters of the second volume illustrate the nature of Gothic architecture by various Venetian examples. The third volume investigates, in its first chapter, the causes and manner of the corruption of Gothic architecture; in its second chapter, defines the nature of the Pagan architecture which superseded it; in the third chapter, shows the connexion of that Pagan architecture with the various characters of mind which brought about the destruction of the Venetian nation; and, in the fourth chapter, points out the dangerous tendencies in the modern mind which the practice of such an architecture indicates. Such is the intention of the preceding pages, which I hope will no more be doubted or mistaken. As far as regards the manner of its fulfilment, though I hope, in the course of other inquiries, to add much to the elucidation of the points in dispute, I cannot feel it necessary to apologize for the imperfect handling of a subject which the labor of a long life, had I been able to bestow it, must still have left imperfectly treated. I. PERSONAL INDEX. A Alberti, Duccio degli, his tomb, iii. 74, 80. Alexander III., his defence by Venetians, i. 7. Ambrose, St., his verbal subtleties, ii. 320. Angelico, Frà, artistical power of, i. 400; his influence on Protestants, ii. 105; his coloring, ii. 145. Aristotle, his evil influence on the modern mind, ii. 319. Averulinus, his book on architecture, iii. 63. B Barbaro, monuments of the family, iii. 125. Barbarossa, Emperor, i. 7, 9. Baseggio, Pietro, iii. 199. Bellini, John, i. 11; his kindness to Albert Durer, i. 383; general power of, see Venetian Index, under head "Giovanni Grisostomo;" Gentile, his brother, iii. 21. Berti, Bellincion, ii. 263. Browning, Elizabeth B., her poetry, ii. 206. Bunsen, Chevalier, his work on Romanesque Churches, ii. 381. Bunyan, John, his portraiture of constancy, ii. 333; of patience, ii. 334; of vanity, ii. 346; of sin, iii. 147. C Calendario, Filippo, iii. 199. Canaletto, i. 24; and see Venetian Index under head "Carità." Canova, i. 217; and see Venetian Index under head "Frari." Cappello, Vincenzo, his tomb, iii. 122. Caracci, school of the, i. 24. Cary, his translation of Dante, ii. 264. Cavalli, Jacopo, his tomb, iii. 82. Cicero, influence of his philosophy, ii. 317, 318. Claude Lorraine, i. 24. Comnenus, Manuel, ii. 263. Cornaro, Marco, his tomb, iii. 79. Correggio, ii. 192. Crabbe, naturalism in his poetry, ii. 195. D Dandolo, Andrea, tomb of, ii. 70; Francesco, tomb of, iii. 74; character of, iii. 76; Simon, tomb of, iii. 79. Dante, his central position, ii. 340, iii. 158; his system of virtue, ii. 323; his portraiture of sin, iii. 147. Daru, his character as a historian, iii. 213. Dolci, Carlo, ii. 105. Dolfino, Giovanni, tomb of, iii. 78. Durer, Albert, his rank as a landscape painter, i. 383; his power in grotesque, iii. 145. E Edwin, King, his conversion, iii. 62. F Faliero, Bertuccio, his tomb, iii. 94; Marino, his house, ii. 254; Vitale, miracle in his time, ii. 61. Fergusson, James, his system of beauty, i. 388. Foscari, Francesco, his reign, i. 4, iii. 165; his tomb, iii. 84; his countenance, iii. 86. G Garbett, answer to Mr., i. 403. Ghiberti, his sculpture, i. 217. Giotto, his system of the virtues, ii. 323, 329, 341; his rank as a painter, ii. 188, iii. 172. Giulio Romano, i. 23. Giustiniani, Marco, his tomb, i. 315; Sebastian, ambassador to England, iii. 224. Godfrey of Bouillon, his piety, iii. 62. Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 195. Gradenigo, Pietro, ii. 290. Grande, Can, della Scala, his tomb, i. 268 (the cornice _g_ in Plate XVI. is taken from it), iii. 71. Guariento, his Paradise, ii. 296. Guercino, ii. 105. H Hamilton, Colonel, his paper on the Serapeum, ii. 220. Hobbima, iii. 184. Hunt, William, his painting of peasant boys, ii. 192; of still life, ii. 394. Hunt, William Holman, relation of his works to modern and ancient art, iii. 185. K Knight, Gally, his work on Architecture, i. 378. L Leonardo da Vinci, ii. 171. Louis XI., iii. 194. M Martin, John, ii. 104. Mastino, Can, della Scala, his tomb, ii. 224, iii. 72. Maynard, Miss, her poems, ii. 397. Michael Angelo, ii. 134, 188, iii. 56, 90, 99, 158. Millais, John E., relation of his works to older art, iii. 185; aerial perspective in his "Huguenot," iii. 47. Milton, how inferior to Dante, iii. 147. Mocenigo, Tomaso, his character, i. 4; his speech on rebuilding the Ducal Palace, ii. 299; his tomb, i. 26, iii. 84. Morosini, Carlo, Count, note on Daru's History by, iii. 213. Morosini, Marino, his tomb, iii. 93. Morosini, Michael, his character, iii. 213; his tomb, iii. 80. Murillo, his sensualism, ii. 192. N Napoleon, his genius in civil administration, i. 399. Niccolo Pisano, i. 215. O Orcagna, his system of the virtues, ii. 329. Orseolo, Pietro (Doge), iii. 120. Otho the Great, his vow at Murano, ii. 32. P Palladio, i. 24, 146; and see Venetian Index, under head "Giorgio Maggiore." Participazio, Angelo, founds the Ducal Palace, ii. 287. Pesaro, Giovanni, tomb of, iii. 92; Jacopo, tomb of, iii. 91. Philippe de Commynes, i. 12. Plato, influence of his philosophy, ii. 317, 338; his playfulness, iii. 127. Poussin, Nicolo and Gaspar, i. 23. Procaccini, Camillo, ii. 188. Prout, Samuel, his style, i. 250, iii. 19, 134. Pugin, Welby, his rank as an architect, i. 385. Q Querini, Marco, his palace, ii. 255. R Raffaelle, ii. 188, iii. 56, 108, 136. Reynolds, Sir J., his painting at New College, ii. 323; his general manner, iii. 184. Rogers, Samuel, his works, ii. 195, iii. 113. Rubens, intellectual rank of, i. 400; coarseness of, ii. 145. S Salvator Rosa, i. 24, ii. 105, 145, 188. Scaligeri, tombs of, at Verona; see "Grande," "Mastino," "Signorio;" palace of, ii. 257. Scott, Sir W., his feelings of romance, iii. 191. Shakspeare, his "Seven Ages," whence derived, ii. 361. Sharpe, Edmund, his works, i. 342, 408. Signorio, Can, della Scala, his tomb, character, i. 268, iii. 73. Simplicius, St., ii. 356. Spenser, value of his philosophy, ii. 327, 341; his personifications of the months, ii. 272; his system of the virtues, ii. 326; scheme of the first book of the Faërie Queen, iii. 205. Steno, Michael, ii. 306; his tomb, ii. 296. Stothard (the painter), his works, ii. 187, 195. Symmachus, St., ii. 357. T Teniers, David, ii. 188. Tiepolo, Jacopo and Lorenzo, their tombs, iii. 69; Bajamonte, ii. 255. Tintoret, i. 12; his genius and function, ii. 149; his Paradise, ii. 304, 372; his rank among the men of Italy, iii. 158. Titian, i. 12; his function and fall, ii. 149, 187. Turner, his rank as a landscape painter, i. 382, ii. 187. U Uguccione, Benedetto, destroys Giotto's façade at Florence, i. 197. V Vendramin, Andrea (Doge), his tomb, i. 27, iii. 88. Verocchio, Andrea, iii. 11, 13. Veronese, Paul, artistical rank of, i. 400; his designs of balustrades, ii. 247; and see in Venetian Index, "Ducal Palace," "Pisani," "Sebastian," "Redentore," "Accademia." W West, Benjamin, ii. 104. Wordsworth, his observation of nature, i. 247 (note). Z Zeno, Carlo, i. 4, iii. 80. Ziani, Sebastian (Doge), builds Ducal Palace, ii. 289. II. LOCAL INDEX. A Abbeville, door of church at, ii. 225; parapet at, ii. 245. Alexandria, Church at, i. 381. Alhambra, ornamentation of, i. 429. Alps, how formed for distant effect, i. 247; how seen from Venice, ii. 2, 28. Amiens, pillars of Cathedral at, i. 102. Arqua, hills of, how seen from Venice, ii. 2. Assisi, Giotto's paintings at, ii. 323. B Beauvais, piers of Cathedral at, i. 93; grandeur of its buttress structure, i. 170. Bergamo, Duomo at, i. 275. Bologna, Palazzo Pepoli at, i. 275. Bourges, Cathedral at, i. 43, 102, 228, 271, 299; ii. 92, 186; house of Jacques Coeur at, i. 346. C Chamouni, glacier forms at, i. 222. Como, Broletto of, i. 141, 339. D Dijon, pillars in Church of Notre Dame at, i. 102; tombs of Dukes of Burgundy, iii. 68. E Edinburgh, college at, i. 207. F Falaise (St. Gervaise at), piers of, i. 103. Florence, Cathedral of, i. 197, iii. 13. G Gloucester, Cathedral of, i. 192. L Lombardy, geology of, ii. 5. London, Church in Margaret Street, Portland Place, iii. 196; Temple Church, i. 412; capitals in Belgrave and Grosvenor Squares, i. 330; Bank of England, base of, i. 283; wall of, typical of accounts, i. 295; statue in King William Street, i. 210; shops in Oxford Street, i. 202; Arthur Club-house, i. 295; Athenæum Club-house, i. 157, 283; Duke of York's Pillar, i. 283; Treasury, i. 205; Whitehall, i. 205; Westminster, fall of houses at, ii. 268; Monument, i. 82, 283; Nelson Pillar, i. 216; Wellington Statue, i. 257. Lucca, Cathedral of, ii. 275; San Michele at, i. 375. Lyons, porch of cathedral at, i. 379. M Matterhorn (Mont Cervin), structure of, i. 58; lines of, applied to architecture, i. 308, 310, 332. Mestre, scene in street of, i. 355. Milan, St. Ambrogio, piers of, i. 102; capital of, i. 324; St. Eustachio, tomb of St. Peter Martyr, i. 218. Moulins, brickwork at, i. 296. Murano, general aspect of, ii. 29; Duomo of, ii. 32; balustrades of, ii. 247; inscriptions at, ii. 384. N Nineveh, style of its decorations, i. 234, 239; iii. 159. O Orange (South France), arch at, i. 250. Orleans, Cathedral of, i. 95. P Padua, Arena chapel at, ii. 324; St. Antonio at, i. 135; St. Sofia at, i. 327; Eremitani, Church of, at, i. 135. Paris, Hotel des Invalides, i. 214; Arc de l'Etoile, i. 291; Colonne Vendome, i. 212. Pavia, St. Michele at, piers of, i. 102, 337; ornaments of, i. 376. Pisa, Baptistery of, ii. 275. Pistoja, San Pietro at, i. 295. R Ravenna, situation of, ii. 6. Rouen, Cathedral, piers of, i. 103, 153; pinnacles of, ii. 213; St. Maclou at, sculptures of, ii. 197. S Salisbury Cathedral, piers of, i. 102; windows at, ii. 224. Sens, Cathedral of, i. 135. Switzerland, cottage architecture of, i. 156, 203, iii. 133. V Verona, San Fermo at, i. 136, ii. 259; Sta. Anastasia at, i. 142; Duomo of, i. 373; St. Zeno at, i. 373; balconies at, ii. 247; archivolt at, i. 335; tombs at, see in Personal Index, "Grande," "Mastino," "Signorio." Vevay, architecture of, i. 136. Vienne (South France), Cathedral of, i. 274. W Warwick, Guy's tower at, i. 168. Wenlock (Shropshire), Abbey of, i. 270. Winchester, Cathedral of, i. 192. Y York, Minster of, i. 205, 313. III. TOPICAL INDEX. A Abacus, defined, i. 107; law of its proportion, i. 111-115; its connection with cornices, i. 116; its various profiles, i. 319-323; iii. 243-248. Acanthus, leaf of, its use in architecture, i. 233; how treated at Torcello, ii. 15. Alabaster, use of, in incrustation, ii. 86. Anachronism, necessity of, in the best art, ii. 198. Anatomy, a disadvantageous study for artists, iii. 47. Angels, use of their images in Venetian heraldry, ii. 278; statues of, on the Ducal Palace, ii. 311. Anger, how symbolically represented, ii. 344. Angles, decoration of, i. 260; ii. 305; of Gothic Palaces, ii. 238; of Ducal Palace, ii. 307. Animal character in northern and southern climates, ii. 156; in grotesque art, iii. 149. Apertures, analysis of their structure, i. 50; general forms of, i. 174. Apse, forms of, in southern and northern churches compared, i. 170. Arabesques of Raffaelle, their baseness, iii. 136. Arabian architecture, i. 18, 234, 235, 429; ii. 135. Arches, general structure of, i. 122; moral characters of, i. 126; lancet, round, and depressed, i. 129; four-centred, i. 130; ogee, i. 131; non-concentric, i. 133, 341; masonry of, i. 133, ii. 218; load of, i. 144; are not derived from vegetation, ii. 201. Architects, modern, their unfortunate position, i. 404, 407. Architecture, general view of its divisions, i. 47-51; how to judge of it, ii. 173; adaptation of, to requirements of human mind, iii. 192; richness of early domestic, ii. 100, iii. 2; manner of its debasement in general, iii. 3. Archivolts, decoration of, i. 334; general families of, i. 335; of Murano, ii. 49; of St. Mark's, ii. 95; in London, ii. 97; Byzantine, ii. 138; profiles of, iii. 244. Arts, relative dignity of, i. 395; how represented in Venetian sculpture, ii. 355; what relation exists between them and their materials, ii. 394; art divided into the art of facts, of design, and of both, ii. 183; into purist, naturalist, and sensualist, ii. 187; art opposed to inspiration, iii. 151; defined, iii. 170; distinguished from science, iii. 35; how to enjoy that of the ancients, iii. 188. Aspiration, not the primal motive of Gothic work, i. 151. Astrology, judicial, representation of its doctrines in Venetian sculpture, ii. 352. Austrian government in Italy, iii. 209. Avarice, how represented figuratively, ii. 344. B Backgrounds, diapered, iii. 20. Balconies, of Venice, ii. 243; general treatment of, iii. 254; of iron, ii. 247. Ballflower, its use in ornamentation, i. 279. Balustrades. See "Balconies." Bases, general account of, iii. 225; of walls, i. 55; of piers, i. 73; of shafts, i. 84; decoration of, i. 281; faults of Gothic profiles of, i. 285; spurs of, i. 286; beauty of, in St. Mark's, i. 290; Lombardie, i. 292; ought not to be richly decorated, i. 292; general effect of, ii. 387. Battlements, i. 162; abuse of, in ornamentation, i. 219. Beauty and ornament, relation of the terms, i. 404. Bellstones of capitals defined, i. 108. Birds, use of in ornamentation, i. 234, ii. 140. Bishops, their ancient authority, ii. 25. Body, its relation to the soul, i. 41, 395. Brackets, division of, i. 161; ridiculous forms of, i. 161. Breadth in Byzantine design, ii. 133. Brickwork, ornamental, i. 296; in general, ii. 241, 260, 261. Brides of Venice, legend of the, iii. 113, 116. Buttresses, general structure of, i. 166; flying, i. 192; supposed sanctity of, i. 173. Bull, symbolical use of, in representing rivers, i. 418, 421, 424. Byzantine style, analysis of, ii. 75; ecclesiastical fitness of, ii. 97; centralization in, ii. 236; palaces built in, ii. 118; sculptures in, ii. 137, 140. C Candlemas, ancient symbols of, ii. 272. Capitals, general structure of, i. 105; bells of, i. 107; just proportions of, i. 114; various families of, i. 13, 65, 324, ii. 129, iii. 231; are necessary to shafts in good architecture, i. 119; Byzantine, ii. 131, iii. 231; Lily, of St. Mark's, ii. 137; of Solomon's temple, ii. 137. Care, how symbolized, ii. 348. See "Sorrow." Caryatides, i. 302. Castles, English, entrances of, i. 177. Cathedrals, English, effect of, ii. 63. Ceilings, old Venetian, ii. 280. Centralization in design, ii. 237. Chalet of Switzerland, its character, i. 203. Chamfer defined, i. 263; varieties of, i. 262, 429. Changefulness, an element of Gothic, ii. 172. Charity, how symbolized, ii. 327, 339. Chartreuse, Grande, morbid life in, iii. 190. Chastity, how symbolized, ii. 328. Cheerfulness, how symbolized, ii. 326, 348; virtue of, ii. 326. Cherries, cultivation of, at Venice, ii. 361. Christianity, how mingled with worldliness, iii. 109; how imperfectly understood, iii. 168; influence of, in liberating workmen, ii. 159, i. 243; influence of, on forms, i. 99. Churches, wooden, of the North, i. 381; considered as ships, ii. 25; decoration of, how far allowable, ii. 102. Civilization, progress of, iii. 168; twofold danger of, iii. 169. Classical literature, its effect on the modern mind, iii. 12. Climate, its influence on architecture, i. 151, ii. 155, 203. Color, its importance in early work, ii. 38, 40, 78, 91; its spirituality, ii. 145, 396; its relation to music, iii. 186; quartering of, iii. 20; how excusing realization, iii. 186. Commerce, how regarded by Venetians, i. 6. Composition, definition of the term, ii. 182. Constancy, how symbolized, ii. 333. Construction, architectural, how admirable, i. 36. Convenience, how consulted by Gothic architecture, ii. 179. Cornices, general divisions of, i. 63, iii. 248; of walls, i. 60; of roofs, i. 149; ornamentation of, i. 305; curvatures of, i. 310; military, i. 160; Greek, i. 157. Courses in walls, i. 60. Crockets, their use in ornamentation, i. 346; their abuse at Venice, iii. 109. Crosses, Byzantine, ii. 139. Crusaders, character of the, ii. 263. Crystals, architectural appliance of, i. 225. Cupid, representation of, in early and later art, ii. 342. Curvature, on what its beauty depends, i. 222, iii. 5. Cusps, definition of, i. 135; groups of, i. 138; relation of, to vegetation, ii. 219; general treatment of, iii. 255; earliest occurrence of, ii. 220. D Daguerreotype, probable results of, iii. 169. Darkness, a character of early churches, ii. 18; not an abstract evil, iii. 220. Death, fear of, in Renaissance times, iii. 65, 90, 92; how anciently regarded, iii. 139, 156. Decoration, true nature of, i. 405; how to judge of, i. 44, 45. See "Ornament." Demons, nature of, how illustrated by Milton and Dante, iii. 147. Dentil, Venetian, defined, i. 273, 275. Design, definition of the term, ii. 183; its relations to naturalism, ii. 184. Despair, how symbolized, ii. 334. Diaper patterns in brick, i. 296; in color, iii. 21, 22. Discord, how symbolized, ii. 333. Discs, decoration by means of, i. 240, 416; ii. 147, 264. Division of labor, evils of, ii. 165. Doge of Venice, his power, i. 3, 360. Dogtooth moulding defined, i. 269. Dolphins, moral disposition of, i. 230; use of, in symbolic representation of sea, i. 422, 423. Domestic architecture, richness of, in middle ages, ii. 99. Doors, general structure of, i. 174, 176; smallness of in English cathedrals, i. 176; ancient Venetian, ii. 277, iii. 227. Doric architecture, i. 157, 301, 307; Christian Doric, i. 308, 315. Dragon, conquered by St. Donatus, ii. 33; use of, in ornamentation, ii. 219. Dreams, how resembled by the highest arts, iii. 153; prophetic, in relation to the Grotesque, iii. 156. Dress, its use in ornamentation, i. 212; early Venetian, ii. 383; dignity of, iii. 191; changes in modern dress, iii. 192. Duties of buildings, i. 47. E Earthquake of 1511, ii. 242. Eastern races, their power over color, ii. 147. Eaves, construction of, i. 156. Ecclesiastical architecture in Venice, i. 20; no architecture exclusively ecclesiastical, ii. 99. Edge decoration, i. 268. Education, University, i. 391; iii. 110; evils of, with respect to architectural workmen, ii. 107; how to be successfully undertaken, ii. 165, 214; modern education in general, how mistaken, iii. 110, 234; system of, in Plato, ii. 318; of Persian kings, ii. 318; not to be mistaken for erudition, iii. 219; ought to be universal, iii. 220. Egg and arrow mouldings, i. 314. Egyptian architecture, i. 99, 239; ii. 203. Elgin marbles, ii. 171. Encrusted architecture, i. 271, 272; general analysis of, ii. 76. Energy of Northern Gothic, i. 371; ii. 16, 204. English (early) capitals, faults of, i. 100, 411; English mind, its mistaken demands of perfection, ii. 160. Envy, how set forth, ii. 346. Evangelists, types of, how explicable, iii. 155. F Faërie Queen, Spenser's, value of, theologically, ii. 328. Faith, influence of on art, ii. 104, 105; Titian's picture of, i. 11; how symbolized, ii. 337. Falsehood, how symbolized, ii. 349. Fatalism, how expressed in Eastern architecture, ii. 205. Fear, effect of, on human life, iii. 137; on Grotesque art, iii. 142. Feudalism, healthy effects of, i. 184. Fig-tree, sculpture of, on Ducal Palace, ii. 307. Fillet, use of, in ornamentation, i. 267. Finials, their use in ornamentation, i. 346; a sign of decline in Venetian architecture, iii. 109. Finish in workmanship, when to be required, ii. 165; dangers of, iii. 170, ii. 162. Fir, spruce, influence of, on architecture, i. 152. Fire, forms of, in ornamentation, i. 228. Fish, use of, in ornamentation, i. 229. Flamboyant Gothic, i. 278, ii. 225. Flattery, common in Renaissance times, iii. 64. Flowers, representation of, how desirable, i. 340; how represented in mosaic, iii. 179. Fluting of columns, a mistake, i. 301. Foils, definition of, ii. 221. Foliage, how carved in declining periods, iii. 8, 17. See "Vegetation." Foliation defined, ii. 219; essential to Gothic architecture, ii. 222. Folly, how symbolized, ii. 325, 348. Form of Gothic, defined, ii. 209. Fortitude, how symbolized, ii. 337. Fountains, symbolic representations of, i. 427. French architecture, compared with Italian, ii. 226. Frivolity, how exhibited in Grotesque art, iii. 143. Fruit, its use in ornamentation, i. 232. G Gable, general structure of, i. 124; essential to Gothic, ii. 210, 217. Gardens, Italian, iii. 136. Generalization, abuses of, iii. 176. Geology of Lombardy, ii. 5. Glass, its capacities in architecture, i. 409; manufacture of, ii. 166; true principles of working in, ii. 168, 395. Gluttony, how symbolized, ii. 343. Goldsmiths' work, a high form of art, ii. 166. Gondola, management of, ii. 375. Gothic architecture, analysis of, ii. 151; not derived from vegetable structure, i. 121; convenience of, ii. 178; divisions of, ii. 215; surface and linear, ii. 226; Italian and French, ii. 226; flamboyant, i. 278, ii. 225; perpendicular, i. 192, ii. 223, 227; early English, i. 109; how to judge of it, ii. 228; how fitted for domestic purposes, ii. 269, iii. 195; how first corrupted, iii. 3; how to be at present built, iii. 196; early Venetian, ii. 248; ecclesiastical Venetian, i. 21; central Venetian, ii. 231; how adorned by color in Venice, iii. 23. Government of Venice, i. 2, ii. 366. Grammar, results of too great study of it, iii. 55, 106. Greek architecture, general character of, i. 240, ii. 215, iii. 159. Grief. See "Sorrow." Griffins, Lombardic, i. 292, 387. Grotesque, analysis of, iii. 132; in changes of form, i. 317; in Venetian painting, iii. 162; symbolical, iii. 155; its character in Renaissance work, iii. 113, 121, 136, 143. Gutters of roofs, i. 151. H Heathenism, typified in ornament, i. 317. See "Paganism." Heaven and Hell, proofs of their existence in natural phenomena, iii. 138. History, how to be written and read, iii. 224. Hobbima, iii. 184. Honesty, how symbolized, ii. 349. Hope, how symbolized, ii. 341. Horseshoe arches, i. 129, ii. 249, 250. Humanity, spiritual nature of, i. 41; divisions of, with respect to art, i. 394. Humility, how symbolized, ii. 339. I Idleness, how symbolized, ii. 345. Idolatry, proper sense of the term, ii. 388; is no encourager of art, ii. 110. See "Popery." Imagination, its relation to art, iii. 182. Imitation of precious stones, &c., how reprehensible, iii. 26, 30. Imposts, continuous, i. 120. Infidelity, how symbolized, ii. 335; an element of the Renaissance spirit, iii. 100. Injustice, how symbolized, ii. 349. Inlaid ornamentation, i. 369; perfection of, in early Renaissance, iii. 26. Inscriptions at Murano, ii. 47, 54; use of, in early times, ii. 111. Insects, use of, in ornamentation, i. 230. Inspiration, how opposed to art, iii. 151, 171. Instinct, its dignity, iii. 171. Intellect, how variable in dignity, iii. 173. Involution, delightfulness of, in ornament, ii. 136. Iron, its use in architecture, i. 184, 410. Italians, modern character of, iii. 209. Italy, how ravaged by recent war, iii. 209. J Jambs, Gothic, iii. 137. Jesting, evils of, iii. 129. Jesuits, their restricted power in Venice, i. 366. Jewels, their cutting, a bad employment, ii. 166. Judgments, instinctive, i. 399. Job, book of, its purpose, iii. 53. K Keystones, how mismanaged in Renaissance work. See Venetian Index, under head "Libreria." Knowledge, its evil consequences, iii. 40; how to be received, iii. 50, &c. See "Education." L Labor, manual, ornamental value of, i. 407; evils of its division, ii. 165; is not a degradation, ii. 168. Labyrinth, in Venetian streets, its clue, ii. 254. Lagoons, Venetian, nature of, ii. 7, 8. Landscape, lower schools of, i. 24; Venetian, ii. 149; modern love of, ii. 175, iii. 123. Laws of right in architecture, i. 32; laws in general, how permissibly violated, i. 255, ii. 210; their position with respect to art, iii. 96; and to religion, iii. 205. Leaves, use of, in ornamentation, i. 232 (see "Vegetation"); proportion of, ii. 128. Liberality, how symbolized, ii. 333. Life in Byzantine architecture, ii. 133. Lilies, beautiful proportions of, ii. 128; used for parapet ornaments, ii. 242; lily capitals, ii. 137. Limitation of ornament, i. 254. Lines, abstract use of, in ornament, i. 221. Lintel, its structure, i. 124, 126. Lion, on piazzetta shafts, iii. 238. Load, of arches, i. 133. Logic, a contemptible science, iii. 105. Lombardic architecture, i. 17. Lotus leaf, its use in architecture, i. 233. Love, its power over human life, iii. 137. Lusts, their power over human nature, how symbolized by Spenser, ii. 328. Luxury, how symbolized, ii. 342; how traceable in ornament, iii. 4; of Renaissance schools, iii. 61. M Madonna, Byzantine representations of, ii. 53. Magnitude, vulgar admiration of, iii. 64. Malmsey, use of, in Feast of the Maries, iii. 117. Marble, its uses, iii. 27. Maries, Feast of the, iii. 117. Mariolatry, ancient and modern, ii. 55. Marriages of Venetians, iii. 116. Masonry, Mont-Cenisian, i. 132; of walls, i. 61; of arches, i. 133. Materials, invention of new, how injurious to art, iii. 42. Misery, how symbolized, ii. 347. Modesty, how symbolized, ii. 335. Monotony, its place in art, ii. 176. Months, personifications of, in ancient art, ii. 272. Moroseness, its guilt, iii. 130. Mosaics at Torcello, ii. 18, 19; at St. Mark's, ii. 70, 112; early character of, ii. 110, iii. 175, 178. Music, its relation to color, iii. 186. Mythology of Venetian painters, ii. 150; ancient, how injurious to the Christian mind, iii. 107. N Natural history, how necessary a study, iii. 54. Naturalism, general analysis of it with respect to art, ii. 181, 190; its advance in Gothic art, iii. 6; not to be found in the encrusted style, ii. 89; its presence in the noble Grotesque, iii. 144. Nature (in the sense of material universe) not improvable by art, i. 350; its relation to architecture, i. 351. Niches, use of, in Northern Gothic, i. 278; in Venetian, ii. 240; in French and Veronese, ii. 227. Norman hatchet-work, i. 297; zigzag, i. 339. Novelty, its necessity to the human mind, ii. 176. O Oak-tree, how represented in symbolical art, iii. 185. Obedience, how symbolized, ii. 334. Oligarchical government, its effect on the Venetians, i. 5. Olive-tree, neglect of, by artists, iii. 175; general expression of, iii. 176, 177; representations of, in mosaic, iii. 178. Order, uses and disadvantages of, ii. 172. Orders, Doric and Corinthian, i. 13; ridiculous divisions of, i. 157, 370; ii. 173, 249; iii. 99. Ornament, material of, i. 211; the best, expresses man's delight in God's work, i. 220; not in his own, i. 211; general treatment of, i. 236; is necessarily imperfect, i. 237, 240; divided into servile, subordinate, and insubordinate, i. 242, ii. 158; distant effect of, i. 248; arborescent, i. 252; restrained within limits, i. 255; cannot be overcharged if good, i. 406. Oxford, system of education at, i. 391. P Paganism, revival of its power in modern times, iii. 105, 107, 122. Painters, their power of perception, iii. 37; influence of society on, iii. 41; what they should know, iii. 41; what is their business, iii. 187. Palace, the Crystal, merits of, i. 409. Palaces, Byzantine, ii. 118, 391; Gothic, ii. 231. Papacy. See "Popery." Parapets, i. 162, ii. 240. Parthenon, curves of, ii. 127. Patience, how symbolized, ii. 334. Pavements, ii. 52. Peacocks, sculpture of, i. 240. Pedestals of shafts, i. 82; and see Venetian Index under head "Giorgio Maggiore." Perception opposed to knowledge, iii. 37. Perfection, inordinate desire of, destructive of art, i. 237; ii. 133, 158, 169. Perpendicular style, i. 190, 253; ii. 223, 227. Personification, evils of, ii. 322. Perspective, aerial, ridiculous exaggerations of, iii. 45; ancient pride in, iii. 57; absence of, in many great works, see in Venetian Index the notice of Tintoret's picture of the Pool of Bethesda, under head "Rocco." Phariseeism and Liberalism, how opposed, iii. 97. Philology, a base science, iii. 54. Piazzetta at Venice, plan of, ii. 283; shafts of, ii. 233. Pictures, judgment of, how formed, ii. 371; neglect of, in Venice, ii. 372; how far an aid to religion, ii. 104, 110. Picturesque, definition of term, iii. 134. Piers, general structure of, i. 71, 98, 118. Pilgrim's Progress. See "Bunyan." Pine of Italy, its effect on architecture, i. 152; of Alps, effect in distance, i. 245. See "Fir." Pinnacles are of little practical service, i. 170; their effect on common roofs, i. 347. Play, its relation to Grotesque art, iii. 126. Pleasure, its kinds and true uses, iii. 189. Popery, how degraded in contest with Protestantism, i. 34, iii. 103; its influence on art, i. 23, 34, 35, 384, 432, ii. 51; typified in ornament, i. 316; power of Pope in Venice, i. 362; arts used in support of Popery, ii. 74. Porches, i. 195. Portraiture, power of, in Venice, iii. 164. Posture-making in Renaissance art, iii. 90. Prayers, ancient and modern, difference between, ii. 315, 390. Pre-Raphaelitism, iii. 90; present position of, iii. 168, 174, 188. Pride, how symbolized, ii. 343, iii. 207; of knowledge, iii. 35; of state, iii. 59; of system, iii. 95. Priests, restricted power of, in Venice, i. 366. Proportions, subtlety of, in early work, ii. 38, 121, 127. Protestantism, its influence on art, i. 23; typified in ornament, i. 316; influence of, on prosperity of nations, i. 368; expenditure in favor of, i. 434; is incapable of judging of art, ii. 105; how expressed in art, ii. 205; its errors in opposing Romanism, iii, 102, 103, 104; its shame of religious confession, ii. 278. Prudence, how symbolized, ii. 340. Pulpits, proper structure of, ii. 22, 380. Purism in art, its nature and definition, ii. 189. Purity, how symbolized, iii. 20. Q Quadrupeds, use of in ornamentation, i. 234. Quantity of ornament, its regulation, i. 23. R Rationalism, its influence on art, i. 23. Realization, how far allowable in noble art, iii. 182, 186. Recesses, decoration of, i. 278. Recumbent statues, iii. 72. Redundance, an element of Gothic, ii. 206. Religion, its influence on Venetian policy, i. 6; how far aided by pictorial art, ii. 104, 109; contempt of, in Renaissance times, iii. 122. Renaissance architecture, nature of, iii. 33; early, iii. 1; Byzantine, iii. 15; Roman, iii. 32; Grotesque, iii. 112; inconsistencies of, iii. 42, etc. Reptiles, how used in ornamentation, i. 230. Resistance, line of, in arches, i. 126. Restraint, ornamental, value of, i. 255. Reverence, how ennobling to humanity, ii. 163. Rhetoric, a base study, iii. 106. Rigidity, an element of Gothic, ii. 203. Rivers, symbolical representation of, i. 419, 420. Rocks, use of, in ornamentation, i. 224; organization of, i. 246; curvatures of, i. 58, 224. Roll-mouldings, decoration of, i. 276. Romance, modern errors of, ii. 4; how connected with dress, iii. 192. Romanesque style, i. 15, 19, 145; ii. 215. See "Byzantine," and "Renaissance." Romanism. See "Popery." Roofs, analysis of, i. 46, 148; ii. 212, 216; domed, i. 149; Swiss, i. 149, 345; steepness of, conducive to Gothic character, i. 151, ii. 209; decoration of, i. 343. Rustication, is ugly and foolish, i. 65; natural objects of which it produces a resemblance, i. 296. S Salvia, its leaf applied to architecture, i. 287, 306. Sarcophagi, Renaissance treatment of, iii. 90; ancient, iii. 69, 93. Satellitic shafts, i. 95. Satire in Grotesque art, iii. 126, 145. Savageness, the first element of Gothic, ii. 155; in Grotesque art, iii. 159. Science opposed to art, iii. 36. Sculpture, proper treatment of, i. 216, &c. Sea, symbolical representations of, i. 352, 421; natural waves of, i. 351. Sensualism in art, its nature and definition, ii. 189; how redeemed by color, ii. 145. Serapeum at Memphis, cusps of, ii. 220. Sermons, proper manner of regarding them, ii. 22; mode of their delivery in Scotch church, ii. 381. Serrar del Consiglio, ii. 291. Shafts, analysis of, i. 84; vaulting shafts, i. 145; ornamentation of, i. 300; twisted, by what laws regulated, i. 303; strength of, i. 402; laws by which they are regulated in encrusted style, ii. 82. Shields, use of, on tombs, ii. 224, iii. 87. Shipping, use of, in ornamentation, i. 215. Shops in Venice, ii. 65. Sight, how opposed to thought, iii. 39. Simplicity of life in thirteenth century, ii. 263. Sin, how symbolized in Grotesque art, iii. 141. Slavery of Greeks and Egyptians, ii. 158; of English workmen, ii. 162, 163. Society, unhealthy state of, in modern times, ii. 163. Sorrow, how sinful, ii. 325; how symbolized, ii. 347. Soul, its development in art, iii. 173, 188; its connection with the body, i. 41, 395. Spandrils, structure of, i. 146; decoration of, i. 297. Spirals, architectural value of, i. 222, ii. 16. Spurs of bases, i. 79. Staircases, i. 208; of Gothic palaces, ii. 280. Stucco, when admissible, iii. 21. Subordination of ornament, i. 240. Superimposition of buildings, i. 200; ii. 386. Surface-Gothic, explanation of term, ii. 225, 227. Symbolism, i. 417; how opposed to personification, ii. 322. System, pride of, how hurtful, iii. 95, 99. T Temperance, how symbolized, ii. 338; temperance in color and curvature, iii. 420. Theology, opposed to religion, iii. 216; of Spencer, iii. 205. Thirteenth century, its high position with respect to art, ii. 263. Thought, opposed to sight, iii. 39. Tombs at Verona, i. 142, 412; at Venice, ii. 69; early Christian, iii. 67; Gothic, iii. 71; Renaissance treatment of, iii. 84. Towers, proper character of, i. 204; of St. Mark's, i 207. Traceries, structure of, i. 184, 185; flamboyant, i. 189; stump, i. 189; English perpendicular, i 190, ii. 222; general character of, ii. 220; strength of, in Venetian Gothic, ii. 234, iii. 253; general forms of tracery bars, iii. 250. Treason, how detested by Dante, ii. 327. Trees, use of, in ornamentation, i. 231. Trefoil, use of, in ornamentation, ii. 42. Triangles, used for ornaments at Murano, ii. 43. Tribune at Torcello, ii. 24. Triglyphs, ugliness of, i, 43. Trunkmakers, their share in recovery of Brides of Venice, iii. 117, 118. Truth, relation of, to religion, in Spenser's "Faërie Queen," iii, 205; typified by stones, iii. 31. Tympanum, decoration of, i. 299. U Unity of Venetian nobility, i. 10. V Vain glory, speedy punishment of, iii. 122. Vanity, how symbolized, ii. 346. Variety in ornamental design, importance of, ii. 43, 133, 142, 172. Vegetation, use of, in ornamentation, i. 232; peculiar meaning of, in Gothic, ii. 199; how connected with cusps, ii. 219. Veil (wall veil), construction of, i. 58; decoration of, i. 294. Vine, Lombardic sculpture of, i. 375; at Torcello, ii. 15; use of, in ornamentation, ii. 141; in symbolism, ii. 143; sculpture of, on Ducal Palace, ii. 308. Virtues, how symbolized in sepulchral monuments, iii. 82, 86; systems of, in Pagan and Christian philosophy, ii. 312; cardinal, ii. 317, 318, 320; of architecture, i. 36, 44. Voussoirs defined, i. 125; contest between them and architraves, i. 336. W Walls, general analysis of their structure, i. 48; bases of, i. 52, 53; cornices of, i. 63; rustication of, i. 61, 338; decoration of, i. 294; courses in, i. 61, 295. Water, its use in ornamentation, i. 226; ancient representations of, i. 417. Weaving, importance of associations connected with, ii. 136. Wells, old Venetian, ii. 279. Windows, general forms of, i. 179; Arabian, i. 180, ii. 135; square-headed, ii. 211, 269; development of, in Venice, ii. 235; orders of, in Venice, ii. 248; advisable form of, in modern buildings, ii. 269. Winds, how symbolized at Venice, ii. 367. Wooden architecture, i. 381. Womanhood, virtues of, as given by Spenser, ii. 326. Z Zigzag, Norman, i. 339. IV. VENETIAN INDEX. I have endeavored to make the following index as useful as possible to the traveller, by indicating only the objects which are really worth his study. A traveller's interest, stimulated as it is into strange vigor by the freshness of every impression, and deepened by the sacredness of the charm of association which long familiarity with any scene too fatally wears away,[71] is too precious a thing to be heedlessly wasted; and as it is physically impossible to see and to understand more than a certain quantity of art in a given time, the attention bestowed on second-rate works, in such a city as Venice, is not merely lost, but actually harmful,--deadening the interest and confusing the memory with respect to those which it is a duty to enjoy, and a disgrace to forget. The reader need not fear being misled by any omissions; for I have conscientiously pointed out every characteristic example, even of the styles which I dislike, and have referred to Lazari in all instances in which my own information failed: but if he is in any wise willing to trust me, I should recommend him to devote his principal attention, if he is fond of paintings, to the works of Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and John Bellini; not of course neglecting Titian, yet remembering that Titian can be well and thoroughly studied in almost any great European gallery, while Tintoret and Bellini can be judged of _only_ in Venice, and Paul Veronese, though gloriously represented by the two great pictures in the Louvre, and many others throughout Europe, is yet not to be fully estimated until he is seen at play among the fantastic chequers of the Venetian ceilings. I have supplied somewhat copious notices of the pictures of Tintoret, because they are much injured, difficult to read, and entirely neglected by other writers on art. I cannot express the astonishment and indignation I felt on finding, in Kugler's handbook, a paltry cenacolo, painted probably in a couple of hours for a couple of zecchins, for the monks of St. Trovaso, quoted as characteristic of this master; just as foolish readers quote separate stanzas of Peter Bell or the Idiot Boy, as characteristic of Wordsworth. Finally, the reader is requested to observe, that the dates assigned to the various buildings named in the following index, are almost without exception conjectural; that is to say, founded exclusively on the internal evidence of which a portion has been given in the Final Appendix. It is likely, therefore, that here and there, in particular instances, further inquiry may prove me to have been deceived; but such occasional errors are not of the smallest importance with respect to the general conclusions of the preceding pages, which will be found to rest on too broad a basis to be disturbed. A ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTI. Notice above the door the two bas-reliefs of St. Leonard and St. Christopher, chiefly remarkable for their rude cutting at so late a date as 1377; but the niches under which they stand are unusual in their bent gables, and in little crosses within circles which fill their cusps. The traveller is generally too much struck by Titian's great picture of the "Assumption," to be able to pay proper attention to the other works in this gallery. Let him, however, ask himself candidly, how much of his admiration is dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," on the left of the "Assumption;" the "Adam and Eve," on the right of it, is hardly inferior; and both are more characteristic examples of the master, and in many respects better pictures, than the much vaunted "Miracle of St. Mark." All the works of Bellini in this room are of great beauty and interest. In the great room, that which contains Titian's "Presentation of the Virgin," the traveller should examine carefully all the pictures by Vittor Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini, which represent scenes in ancient Venice; they are full of interesting architecture and costume. Marco Basaiti's "Agony in the Garden" is a lovely example of the religious school. The Tintorets in this room are all second rate, but most of the Veronese are good, and the large ones are magnificent. ALIGA. See GIORGIO. ALVISE, CHURCH OF ST. I have never been in this church, but Lazari dates its interior, with decision, as of the year 1388, and it may be worth a glance, if the traveller has time. ANDREA, CHURCH OF ST. Well worth visiting for the sake of the peculiarly sweet and melancholy effect of its little grass-grown campo, opening to the lagoon and the Alps. The sculpture over the door, "St. Peter walking on the Water," is a quaint piece of Renaissance work. Note the distant rocky landscape, and the oar of the existing gondola floating by St. Andrew's boat. The church is of the later Gothic period, much defaced, but still picturesque. The lateral windows are bluntly trefoiled, and good of their time. ANGELI, CHURCH DELGLI, at Murano. The sculpture of the "Annunciation" over the entrance-gate is graceful. In exploring Murano, it is worth while to row up the great canal thus far for the sake of the opening to the lagoon. ANTONINO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. APOLLINARE, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. APOSTOLI, CHURCH OF THE. The exterior is nothing. There is said to be a picture by Veronese in the interior, "The Fall of the Manna." I have not seen it; but, if it be of importance, the traveller should compare it carefully with Tintoret's, in the Scuola di San Rocco, and San Giorgio Maggiore. APOSTOLI, PALACE AT, II. 253, on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto, opposite the fruit-market. A most important transitional palace. Its sculpture in the first story is peculiarly rich and curious; I think Venetian, in imitation of Byzantine. The sea story and first floor are of the first half of the thirteenth century, the rest modern. Observe that only one wing of the sea story is left, the other half having been modernized. The traveller should land to look at the capital drawn in Plate II. of Vol. III. fig. 7. ARSENAL. Its gateway is a curiously picturesque example of Renaissance workmanship, admirably sharp and expressive in its ornamental sculpture; it is in many parts like some of the best Byzantine work. The Greek lions in front of it appear to me to deserve more praise than they have received; though they are awkwardly balanced between conventional and imitative representation, having neither the severity proper to the one, nor the veracity necessary for the other. B BADOER, PALAZZO, in the Campo San Giovanni in Bragola. A magnificent example of the fourteenth century Gothic, circa 1310-1320, anterior to the Ducal Palace, and showing beautiful ranges of the fifth order window, with fragments of the original balconies, and the usual lateral window larger than any of the rest. In the centre of its arcade on the first floor is the inlaid ornament drawn in Plate VIII. Vol. I. The fresco painting on the walls is of later date; and I believe the heads which form the finials have been inserted afterwards also, the original windows having been pure fifth order. The building is now a ruin, inhabited by the lowest orders; the first floor, when I was last in Venice, by a laundress. BAFFO, PALAZZO, in the Campo St. Maurizio. The commonest late Renaissance. A few olive leaves and vestiges of two figures still remain upon it, of the frescoes by Paul Veronese, with which it was once adorned. BALBI, PALAZZO, in Volta di Canal. Of no importance. BARBARIGO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Casa Pisani. Late Renaissance; noticeable only as a house in which some of the best pictures of Titian were allowed to be ruined by damp, and out of which they were then sold to the Emperor of Russia. BARBARO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Palazzo Cavalli. These two buildings form the principal objects in the foreground of the view which almost every artist seizes on his first traverse of the Grand Canal, the Church of the Salute forming a most graceful distance. Neither is, however, of much value, except in general effect; but the Barbaro is the best, and the pointed arcade in its side wall, seen from the narrow canal between it and the Cavalli, is good Gothic, of the earliest fourteenth century type. BARNABA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. BARTOLOMEO, CHURCH OF ST. I did not go to look at the works of Sebastian del Piombo which it contains, fully crediting M. Lazari's statement, that they have been "Barbaramente sfigurati da mani imperite, che pretendevano ristaurarli." Otherwise the church is of no importance. BASSO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. BATTAGIA, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. BECCHERIE. See QUERINI. BEMBO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Casa Manin. A noble Gothic pile, circa 1350-1380, which, before it was painted by the modern Venetians with the two most valuable colors of Tintoret, Bianco e Nero, by being whitewashed above, and turned into a coal warehouse below, must have been among the most noble in effect on the whole Grand Canal. It still forms a beautiful group with the Rialto, some large shipping being generally anchored at its quay. Its sea story and entresol are of earlier date, I believe, than the rest; the doors of the former are Byzantine (see above, Final Appendix, under head "Jambs"); and above the entresol is a beautiful Byzantine cornice, built into the wall, and harmonizing well with the Gothic work. BEMBO, PALAZZO, in the Calle Magno, at the Campo de' due Pozzi, close to the Arsenal. Noticed by Lazari and Selvatico as having a very interesting staircase. It is early Gothic, circa 1330, but not a whit more interesting than many others of similar date and design. See "Contarini Porta de Ferro," "Morosini," "Sanudo," and "Minelli." BENEDETTO, CAMPO OF ST. Do not fail to see the superb, though partially ruinous, Gothic palace fronting this little square. It is very late Gothic, just passing into Renaissance; unique in Venice, in masculine character, united with the delicacy of the incipient style. Observe especially the brackets of the balconies, the flower-work on the cornices, and the arabesques on the angles of the balconies themselves. BENEDETTO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. BERNARDO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A very noble pile of early fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace. The traceries in its lateral windows are both rich and unusual. BERNARDO, PALAZZO, at St. Polo. A glorious palace, on a narrow canal, in a part of Venice now inhabited by the lower orders only. It is rather late Central Gothic, circa 1380-1400, but of the finest kind, and superb in its effect of color when seen from the side. A capital in the interior court is much praised by Selvatico and Lazari, because its "foglie d'acanto" (anything by the by, _but_ acanthus), "quasi agitate de vento si attorcigliano d'intorno alla campana, _concetto non indegno della bell'epoca greca_!" Does this mean "epoca Bisantina?" The capital is simply a translation into Gothic sculpture of the Byzantine ones of St. Mark's and the Fondaco de' Turchi (see Plate VIII. Vol. I. fig. 14), and is far inferior to either. But, taken as a whole, I think that, after the Ducal Palace, this is the noblest in effect of all in Venice. BRENTA, Banks of the, I. 354. Villas on the, I. 354. BUSINELLO, CASA, II. 391. BYZANTINE PALACES generally, II. 118. C CAMERLENGHI, PALACE OF THE, beside the Rialto. A graceful work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman Renaissance. Its details are inferior to most of the work of the school. The "Camerlenghi," properly "Camerlenghi di Comune," were the three officers or ministers who had care of the administration of public expenses. CANCELLARIA, II. 293. CANCIANO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. CAPPELLO, PALAZZO, at St. Aponal. Of no interest. Some say that Bianca Cappello fled from it; but the tradition seems to fluctuate between the various houses belonging to her family. CARITÀ, CHURCH OF THE. Once an interesting Gothic church of the fourteenth century, lately defaced, and applied to some of the usual important purposes of the modern Italians. The effect of its ancient façade may partly be guessed at from the pictures of Canaletto, but only guessed at; Canaletto being less to be trusted for renderings of details, than the rudest and most ignorant painter of the thirteenth century. CARMINI, CHURCH OF THE. A most interesting church of late thirteenth century work, but much altered and defaced. Its nave, in which the early shafts and capitals of the pure truncate form are unaltered, is very fine in effect; its lateral porch is quaint and beautiful, decorated with Byzantine circular sculptures (of which the central one is given in Vol. II. Plate XI. fig. 5), and supported on two shafts whose capitals are the most archaic examples of the pure Rose form that I know in Venice. There is a glorious Tintoret over the first altar on the right in entering; the "Circumcision of Christ." I do not know an aged head either more beautiful or more picturesque than that of the high priest. The cloister is full of notable tombs, nearly all dated; one, of the fifteenth century, to the left on entering, is interesting from the color still left on the leaves and flowers of its sculptured roses. CASSANO, CHURCH OF ST. This church must on no account be missed, as it contains three Tintorets, of which one, the "Crucifixion," is among the finest in Europe. There is nothing worth notice in the building itself, except the jamb of an ancient door (left in the Renaissance buildings, facing the canal), which has been given among the examples of Byzantine jambs; and the traveller may, therefore, devote his entire attention to the three pictures in the chancel. 1. _The Crucifixion._ (On the left of the high altar.) It is refreshing to find a picture taken care of, and in a bright though not a good light, so that such parts of it as are seen at all are seen well. It is also in a better state than most pictures in galleries, and most remarkable for its new and strange treatment of the subject. It seems to have been painted more for the artist's own delight, than with any labored attempt at composition; the horizon is so low that the spectator must fancy himself lying at full length on the grass, or rather among the brambles and luxuriant weeds, of which the foreground is entirely composed. Among these, the seamless robe of Christ has fallen at the foot of the cross; the rambling briars and wild grasses thrown here and there over its folds of rich, but pale, crimson. Behind them, and seen through them, the heads of a troop of Roman soldiers are raised against the sky; and, above them, their spears and halberds form a thin forest against the horizontal clouds. The three crosses are put on the extreme right of the picture, and its centre is occupied by the executioners, one of whom, standing on a ladder, receives from the other at once the sponge and the tablet with the letters INRI. The Madonna and St. John are on the extreme left, superbly painted, like all the rest, but quite subordinate. In fact, the whole mind of the painter seems to have been set upon making the principals accessary, and the accessaries principal. We look first at the grass, and then at the scarlet robe; and then at the clump of distant spears, and then at the sky, and last of all at the cross. As a piece of color, the picture is notable for its extreme modesty. There is not a single very full or bright tint in any part, and yet the color is delighted in throughout; not the slightest touch of it but is delicious. It is worth notice also, and especially, because this picture being in a fresh state we are sure of one fact, that, like nearly all other great colorists, Tintoret was afraid of light greens in his vegetation. He often uses dark blue greens in his shadowed trees, but here where the grass is in full light, it is all painted with various hues of sober brown, more especially where it crosses the crimson robe. The handling of the whole is in his noblest manner; and I consider the picture generally quite beyond all price. It was cleaned, I believe, some years ago, but not injured, or at least as little injured as it is possible for a picture to be which has undergone any cleaning process whatsoever. 2. _The Resurrection._ (Over the high altar.) The lower part of this picture is entirely concealed by a miniature temple, about five feet high, on the top of the altar; certainly an insult little expected by Tintoret, as, by getting on steps, and looking over the said temple, one may see that the lower figures of the picture are the most labored. It is strange that the painter never seemed able to conceive this subject with any power, and in the present work he is marvellously hampered by various types and conventionalities. It is not a painting of the Resurrection, but of Roman Catholic saints, _thinking_ about the Resurrection. On one side of the tomb is a bishop in full robes, on the other a female saint, I know not who; beneath it, an angel playing on an organ, and a cherub blowing it; and other cherubs flying about the sky, with flowers; the whole conception being a mass of Renaissance absurdities. It is, moreover, heavily painted, over-done, and over-finished; and the forms of the cherubs utterly heavy and vulgar. I cannot help fancying the picture has been restored in some way or another, but there is still great power in parts of it. If it be a really untouched Tintoret, it is a highly curious example of failure from over-labor on a subject into which his mind was not thrown: the color is hot and harsh, and felt to be so more painfully, from its opposition to the grand coolness and chastity of the "Crucifixion." The face of the angel playing the organ is highly elaborated; so, also, the flying cherubs. 3. _The Descent into Hades._ (On the right-hand side of the high altar.) Much injured and little to be regretted. I never was more puzzled by any picture, the painting being throughout careless, and in some places utterly bad, and yet not like modern work; the principal figure, however, of Eve, has either been redone, or is scholar's work altogether, as, I suspect, most of the rest of the picture. It looks as if Tintoret had sketched it when he was ill, left it to a bad scholar to work on with, and then finished it in a hurry; but he has assuredly had something to do with it; it is not likely that anybody else would have refused all aid from the usual spectral company with which common painters fill the scene. Bronzino, for instance, covers his canvas with every form of monster that his sluggish imagination could coin. Tintoret admits only a somewhat haggard Adam, a graceful Eve, two or three Venetians in court dress, seen amongst the smoke, and a Satan represented as a handsome youth, recognizable only by the claws on his feet. The picture is dark and spoiled, but I am pretty sure there are no demons or spectres in it. This is quite in accordance with the master's caprice, but it considerably diminishes the interest of a work in other ways unsatisfactory. There may once have been something impressive in the shooting in of the rays at the top of the cavern, as well as in the strange grass that grows in the bottom, whose infernal character is indicated by its all being knotted together; but so little of these parts can be seen, that it is not worth spending time on a work certainly unworthy of the master, and in great part probably never seen by him. CATTARINA, CHURCH OF ST., said to contain a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Paul Veronese, the "Marriage of St. Catherine." I have not seen it. CAVALLI, PALAZZO, opposite the Academy of Arts. An imposing pile, on the Grand Canal, of Renaissance Gothic, but of little merit in the details; and the effect of its traceries has been of late destroyed by the fittings of modern external blinds. Its balconies are good, of the later Gothic type. See "BARBARO." CAVALLI, PALAZZO, next the Casa Grimani (or Post-Office), but on the other side of the narrow canal. Good Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace, circa 1380. The capitals of the first story are remarkably rich in the deep fillets at the necks. The crests, heads of sea-horses, inserted between the windows, appear to be later, but are very fine of their kind. CICOGNA, PALAZZO, at San Sebastiano, II. 265. CLEMENTE, CHURCH OF ST. On an island to the south of Venice, from which the view of the city is peculiarly beautiful. See "SCALZI." CONTARINI PORTA DI FERRO, PALAZZO, near the Church of St. John and Paul, so called from the beautiful ironwork on a door, which was some time ago taken down by the proprietor and sold. Mr. Rawdon Brown rescued some of the ornaments from the hands of the blacksmith, who had bought them for old iron. The head of the door is a very interesting stone arch of the early thirteenth century, already drawn in my folio work. In the interior court is a beautiful remnant of staircase, with a piece of balcony at the top, circa 1350, and one of the most richly and carefully wrought in Venice. The palace, judging by these remnants (all that are now left of it, except a single traceried window of the same date at the turn of the stair), must once have been among the most magnificent in Venice. CONTARINI (DELLE FIGURE), PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, III. 17. CONTARINI DAI SCRIGNI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A Gothic building, founded on the Ducal Palace. Two Renaissance statues in niches at the sides give it its name. CONTARINI FASAN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 244. The richest work of the fifteenth century domestic Gothic in Venice, but notable more for richness than excellence of design. In one respect, however, it deserves to be regarded with attention, as showing how much beauty and dignity may be bestowed on a very small and unimportant dwelling-house by Gothic sculpture. Foolish criticisms upon it have appeared in English accounts of foreign buildings, objecting to it on the ground of its being "ill-proportioned;" the simple fact being, that there was no room in this part of the canal for a wider house, and that its builder made its rooms as comfortable as he could, and its windows and balconies of a convenient size for those who were to see through them, and stand on them, and left the "proportions" outside to take care of themselves; which, indeed, they have very sufficiently done; for though the house thus honestly confesses its diminutiveness, it is nevertheless one of the principal ornaments of the very noblest reach of the Grand Canal, and would be nearly as great a loss, if it were destroyed, as the Church of La Salute itself. CONTARINI, PALAZZO, at St. Luca. Of no importance. CORNER DELLA CA' GRANDE, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. One of the worst and coldest buildings of the central Renaissance, It is on a grand scale, and is a conspicuous object, rising over the roofs of the neighboring houses in the various aspects of the entrance of the Grand Canal, and in the general view of Venice from San Clemente. CORNER DELLA REGINA, PALAZZO. A late Renaissance building of no merit or interest. CORNER MOCENIGO, PALAZZO, at St. Polo. Of no interest. CORNER SPINELLI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A graceful and interesting example of the early Renaissance, remarkable for its pretty circular balconies. CORNER, RACCOLTA. I must refer the reader to M. Lazari's Guide for an account of this collection, which, however, ought only to be visited if the traveller is not pressed for time. D DANDOLO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Between the Casa Loredan and Casa Bembo is a range of modern buildings, some of which occupy, I believe, the site of the palace once inhabited by the Doge Henry Dandolo. Fragments of early architecture of the Byzantine school may still be traced in many places among their foundations, and two doors in the foundation of the Casa Bembo itself belong to the same group. There is only one existing palace, however, of any value, on this spot, a very small but rich Gothic one of about 1300, with two groups of fourth order windows in its second and third stories, and some Byzantine circular mouldings built into it above. This is still reported to have belonged to the family of Dandolo, and ought to be carefully preserved, as it is one of the most interesting and ancient Gothic palaces which yet remain. DANIELI, ALBERGO. See Nani. DA PONTE, PALAZZO. Of no interest. DARIO, PALAZZO, I. 370; III. 211. DOGANA DI MARE, at the separation of the Grand Canal from the Giudecca. A barbarous building of the time of the Grotesque Renaissance (1676), rendered interesting only by its position. The statue of Fortune, forming the weathercock, standing on the world, is alike characteristic of the conceits of the time, and of the hopes and principles of the last days of Venice. DONATO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano, II. 31. DONA', PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. I believe the palace described under this name as of the twelfth century, by M. Lazari, is that which I have called the Braided House, II. 132, 392. D'ORO CASA. A noble pile of very quaint Gothic, once superb in general effect, but now destroyed by restorations. I saw the beautiful slabs of red marble, which formed the bases of its balconies, and were carved into noble spiral mouldings of strange sections, half a foot deep, dashed to pieces when I was last in Venice; its glorious interior staircase, by far the most interesting Gothic monument of the kind in Venice, had been carried away, piece by piece, and sold for waste marble, two years before. Of what remains, the most beautiful portions are, or were, when I last saw them, the capitals of the windows in the upper story, most glorious sculpture of the fourteenth century. The fantastic window traceries are, I think, later; but the rest of the architecture of this palace is anomalous, and I cannot venture to give any decided opinion respecting it. Parts of its mouldings are quite Byzantine in character, but look somewhat like imitations. DUCAL PALACE, I. 29; history of, II. 282, etc.; III. 199; plan and section of, II. 282, 283; description of, II. 304, etc.; series of its capitals, II. 332, etc.; spandrils of, I. 299, 415; shafts of, I. 413; traceries of, derived from those of the Frari, II. 234; angles of, II. 239; main balcony of, II. 245; base of, III. 212; Rio Façade of, III. 25; paintings in, II. 372. The multitude of works by various masters, which cover the walls of this palace is so great, that the traveller is in general merely wearied and confused by them. He had better refuse all attention except to the following works: 1. _Paradise_, by Tintoret; at the extremity of the Great Council chamber. I found it impossible to count the number of figures in this picture, of which the grouping is so intricate, that at the upper part it is not easy to distinguish one figure from another; but I counted 150 important figures in one half of it alone; so that, as there are nearly as many in subordinate position, the total number cannot be under 500. I believe this is, on the whole, Tintoret's _chef-d'oeuvre_; though it is so vast that no one takes the trouble to read it, and therefore less wonderful pictures are preferred to it. I have not myself been able to study except a few fragments of it, all executed in his finest manner; but it may assist a hurried observer to point out to him that the whole composition is divided into concentric zones, represented one above another like the stories of a cupola, round the figures of Christ and the Madonna, at the central and highest point: both these figures are exceedingly dignified and beautiful. Between each zone or belt of the nearer figures, the white distances of heaven are seen filled with floating spirits. The picture is, on the whole, wonderfully preserved, and the most precious thing that Venice possesses. She will not possess it long; for the Venetian academicians, finding it exceedingly unlike their own works, declare it to want harmony, and are going to retouch it to their own ideas of perfection. 2. _Siege of Zara_; the first picture on the right on entering the Sala del Scrutinio. It is a mere battle piece, in which the figures, like the arrows, are put in by the score. There are high merits in the thing, and so much invention that it is possible Tintoret may have made the sketch for it; but, if executed by him at all, he has done it merely in the temper in which a sign-painter meets the wishes of an ambitious landlord. He seems to have been ordered to represent all the events of the battle at once; and to have felt that, provided he gave men, arrows, and ships enough, his employers would be perfectly satisfied. The picture is a vast one, some thirty feet by fifteen. Various other pictures will be pointed out by the custode, in these two rooms, as worthy of attention, but they are only historically, not artistically, interesting. The works of Paul Veronese on the ceiling have been repainted; and the rest of the pictures on the walls are by second-rate men. The traveller must, once for all, be warned against mistaking the works of Domenico Robusti (Domenico Tintoretto), a very miserable painter, for those of his illustrious father, Jacopo. 3. _The Doge Grimani kneeling before Faith_, by Titian; in the Sala delle quattro Porte. To be observed with care, as one of the most striking examples of Titian's want of feeling and coarseness of conception. (See above, Vol. I. p. 12.) As a work of mere art, it is, however, of great value. The traveller who has been accustomed to deride Turner's indistinctness of touch, ought to examine carefully the mode of painting the Venice in the distance at the bottom of this picture. 4. _Frescoes on the Roof of the Sala delle quattro Porte_, by Tintoret. Once magnificent beyond description, now mere wrecks (the plaster crumbling away in large flakes), but yet deserving of the most earnest study. 5. _Christ taken down from the Cross_, by Tintoret; at the upper end of the Sala dei Pregadi. One of the most interesting mythic pictures of Venice, two doges being represented beside the body of Christ, and a most noble painting; executed, however, for distant effect, and seen best from the end of the room. 6. _Venice, Queen of the Sea_, by Tintoret. Central compartment of the ceiling, in the Sala dei Pregadi. Notable for the sweep of its vast green surges, and for the daring character of its entire conception, though it is wild and careless, and in many respects unworthy of the master. Note the way in which he has used the fantastic forms of the sea weeds, with respect to what was above stated (III. 158), as to his love of the grotesque. 7. _The Doge Loredano in Prayer to the Virgin_, by Tintoret; in the same room. Sickly and pale in color, yet a grand work; to be studied, however, more for the sake of seeing what a great man does "to order," when he is wearied of what is required from him, than for its own merit. 8. _St. George and the Princess._ There are, besides the "Paradise," only six pictures in the Ducal Palace, as far as I know, which Tintoret painted carefully, and those are all exceedingly fine: the most finished of these are in the Anti-Collegio; but those that are most majestic and characteristic of the master are two oblong ones, made to fill the panels of the walls in the Anti-Chiesetta; these two, each, I suppose, about eight feet by six, are in his most quiet and noble manner. There is excessively little color in them, their prevalent tone being a greyish brown opposed with grey, black, and a very warm russet. They are thinly painted, perfect in tone, and quite untouched. The first of them is "St. George and the Dragon," the subject being treated in a new and curious way. The principal figure is the princess, who sits astride on the dragon's neck, holding him by a bridle of silken riband; St. George stands above and behind her, holding his hands over her head as if to bless her, or to keep the dragon quiet by heavenly power; and a monk stands by on the right, looking gravely on. There is no expression or life in the dragon, though the white flashes in its eye are very ghastly: but the whole thing is entirely typical; and the princess is not so much represented riding on the dragon, as supposed to be placed by St. George in an attitude of perfect victory over her chief enemy. She has a full rich dress of dull red, but her figure is somewhat ungraceful. St. George is in grey armor and grey drapery, and has a beautiful face; his figure entirely dark against the distant sky. There is a study for this picture in the Manfrini Palace. 9. _St. Andrew and St. Jerome._ This, the companion picture, has even less color than its opposite. It is nearly all brown and grey; the fig-leaves and olive-leaves brown, the faces brown, the dresses brown, and St. Andrew holding a great brown cross. There is nothing that can be called color, except the grey of the sky, which approaches in some places a little to blue, and a single piece of dirty brick-red in St. Jerome's dress; and yet Tintoret's greatness hardly ever shows more than in the management of such sober tints. I would rather have these two small brown pictures, and two others in the Academy perfectly brown also in their general tone--the "Cain and Abel" and the "Adam and Eve,"--than all the other small pictures in Venice put together, which he painted in bright colors, for altar pieces; but I never saw two pictures which so nearly approached grisailles as these, and yet were delicious pieces of color. I do not know if I am right in calling one of the saints St. Andrew. He stands holding a great upright wooden cross against the sky. St. Jerome reclines at his feet, against a rock, over which some glorious fig leaves and olive branches are shooting; every line of them studied with the most exquisite care, and yet cast with perfect freedom. 10. _Bacchus and Ariadne._ The most beautiful of the four careful pictures by Tintoret, which occupy the angles of the Anti-Collegio. Once one of the noblest pictures in the world, but now miserably faded, the sun being allowed to fall on it all day long. The design of the forms of the leafage round the head of the Bacchus, and the floating grace of the female figure above, will, however, always give interest to this picture, unless it be repainted. The other three Tintorets in this room are careful and fine, but far inferior to the "Bacchus;" and the "Vulcan and the Cyclops" is a singularly meagre and vulgar study of common models. 11. _Europa_, by Paul Veronese: in the same room. One of the very few pictures which both possess and deserve a high reputation. 12. _Venice enthroned_, by Paul Veronese; on the roof of the same room. One of the grandest pieces of frank color in the Ducal Palace. 13. _Venice, and the Doge Sebastian Venier_; at the upper end of the Sala del Collegio. An unrivalled Paul Veronese, far finer even than the "Europa." 14. _Marriage of St. Catherine_, by Tintoret; in the same room. An inferior picture, but the figure of St. Catherine is quite exquisite. Note how her veil falls over her form, showing the sky through it, as an alpine cascade falls over a marble rock. There are three other Tintorets on the walls of this room, but all inferior, though full of power. Note especially the painting of the lion's wings, and of the colored carpet, in the one nearest the throne, the Doge Alvise Mocenigo adoring the Redeemer. The roof is entirely by Paul Veronese, and the traveller who really loves painting, ought to get leave to come to this room whenever he chooses; and should pass the sunny summer mornings there again and again, wandering now and then into the Anti-Collegio and Sala dei Pregadi, and coming back to rest under the wings of the couched lion at the feet of the "Mocenigo." He will no otherwise enter so deeply into the heart of Venice. E EMO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no interest. ERIZZO, PALAZZO, near the Arsenal, II. 262. ERIZZO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Fondaco de'Turchi. A Gothic palace, with a single range of windows founded on the Ducal traceries, and bold capitals. It has been above referred to in the notice of tracery bars. EUFEMIA, CHURCH OF ST. A small and defaced, but very curious, early Gothic church on the Giudecca. Not worth visiting, unless the traveller is seriously interested in architecture. EUROPA, ALBERGO, ALL'. Once a Giustiniani Palace. Good Gothic, circa 1400, but much altered. EVANGELISTI, CASA DEGLI, II. 265. [Illustration: Plate XII. CAPITALS OF FONDACO DE' TURCHI.] F FACANON, PALAZZO (ALLA FAVA). A fair example of the fifteenth century Gothic, founded on Ducal Palace. FALIER, PALAZZO, at the Apostoli. Above, II. 253. FANTINO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a John Bellini, otherwise of no importance. FARSETTI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 124, 393. FAVA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. FELICE, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Tintoret, which, if untouched, I should conjecture, from Lazari's statement of its subject, St. Demetrius armed, with one of the Ghisi family in prayer, must be very fine. Otherwise the church is of no importance. FERRO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Fifteenth century Gothic, very hard and bad. FLANGINI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. FONDACO DE' TURCHI, I. 328; II. 120, 121, 236. The opposite plate, representing three of its capitals, has been several times referred to. FONDACO DE' TEDESCHI. A huge and ugly building near the Rialto, rendered, however, peculiarly interesting by remnants of the frescoes by Giorgione with which it was once covered. See Vol. II. 80, and III. 23. FORMOSA, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA, III. 113, 122, FOSCA, CHURCH OF ST. Notable for its exceedingly picturesque campanile, of late Gothic, but uninjured by restorations, and peculiarly Venetian in being crowned by the cupola instead of the pyramid, which would have been employed at the same period in any other Italian city. FOSCARI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The noblest example in Venice of the fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace, but lately restored and spoiled, all but the stone-work of the main windows. The restoration was necessary, however: for, when I was in Venice in 1845, this palace was a foul ruin; its great hall a mass of mud, used as a back receptacle of a stone-mason's yard; and its rooms whitewashed, and scribbled over with indecent caricatures. It has since been partially strengthened and put in order; but as the Venetian municipality have now given it to the Austrians to be used as barracks, it will probably soon be reduced to its former condition. The lower palaces at the side of this building are said by some to have belonged to the younger Foscari. See "GIUSTINIANI." FRANCESCO DELLA VIGNA, CHURCH OF ST. Base Renaissance, but must be visited in order to see the John Bellini in the Cappella Santa. The late sculpture, in the Cappella Giustiniani, appears from Lazari's statement to be deserving of careful study. This church is said also to contain two pictures by Paul Veronese. FRARI, CHURCH OF THE. Founded in 1250, and continued at various subsequent periods. The apse and adjoining chapels are the earliest portions, and their traceries have been above noticed (II. 234) as the origin of those of the Ducal Palace. The best view of the apse, which is a very noble example of Italian Gothic, is from the door of the Scuola di San Rocco. The doors of the church are all later than any other portion of it, very elaborate Renaissance Gothic. The interior is good Gothic, but not interesting, except in its monuments. Of these, the following are noticed in the text of this volume: That of Duccio degli Alberti, at pages 74, 80; of the unknown Knight, opposite that of Duccio, III. 74; of Francesco Foscari, III. 84; of Giovanni Pesaro, 91; of Jacopo Pesaro, 92. Besides these tombs, the traveller ought to notice carefully that of Pietro Bernardo, a first-rate example of Renaissance work; nothing can be more detestable or mindless in general design, or more beautiful in execution. Examine especially the griffins, fixed in admiration of bouquets, at the bottom. The fruit and flowers which arrest the attention of the griffins may well arrest the traveller's also; nothing can be finer of their kind. The tomb of Canova, _by_ Canova, cannot be missed; consummate in science, intolerable in affectation, ridiculous in conception, null and void to the uttermost in invention and feeling. The equestrian statue of Paolo Savelli is spirited; the monument of the Beato Pacifico, a curious example of Renaissance Gothic with wild crockets (all in terra cotta). There are several good Vivarini's in the church, but its chief pictorial treasure is the John Bellini in the sacristy, the most finished and delicate example of the master in Venice. G GEREMIA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. GESUATI, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. GIACOMO DE LORIO, CHURCH OF ST., a most interesting church, of the early thirteenth century, but grievously restored. Its capitals have been already noticed as characteristic of the earliest Gothic; and it is said to contain four works of Paul Veronese, but I have not examined them. The pulpit is admired by the Italians, but is utterly worthless. The verdantique pillar, in the south transept, is a very noble example of the "Jewel Shaft." See the note at p. 83, Vol. II. GIACOMO DI RIALTO, CHURCH OF ST. A picturesque little church, on the Piazza di Rialto. It has been grievously restored, but the pillars and capitals of its nave are certainly of the eleventh century; those of its portico are of good central Gothic; and it will surely not be left unvisited, on this ground, if on no other, that it stands on the site, and still retains the name, of the first church ever built on that Rialto which formed the nucleus of future Venice, and became afterwards the mart of her merchants. GIOBBE, CHURCH OF ST., near the Cana Reggio. Its principal entrance is a very fine example of early Renaissance sculpture. Note in it, especially, its beautiful use of the flower of the convolvulus. There are said to be still more beautiful examples of the same period, in the interior. The cloister, though much defaced, is of the Gothic period, and worth a glance. GIORGIO DE' GRECI, CHURCH OF ST. The Greek Church. It contains no valuable objects of art, but its service is worth attending by those who have never seen the Greek ritual. GIORGIO DE' SCHIAVONI, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a very precious series of paintings by Victor Carpaccio. Otherwise of no interest. GIORGIO IN ALIGA (St. George in the seaweed), Church of St. Unimportant in itself, but the most beautiful view of Venice at sunset is from a point at about two thirds of the distance from the city to the island. GIORGIO MAGGIORE, CHURCH OF ST. A building which owes its interesting effect chiefly to its isolated position, being seen over a great space of lagoon. The traveller should especially notice in its façade the manner in which the central Renaissance architects (of whose style this church is a renowned example) endeavored to fit the laws they had established to the requirements of their age. Churches were required with aisles and clerestories, that is to say, with a high central nave and lower wings; and the question was, how to face this form with pillars of one proportion. The noble Romanesque architects built story above story, as at Pisa and Lucca; but the base Palladian architects dared not do this. They must needs retain some image of the Greek temple; but the Greek temple was all of one height, a low gable roof being borne on ranges of equal pillars. So the Palladian builders raised first a Greek temple with pilasters for shafts; and, _through the middle of its roof, or horizontal beam_, that is to say, of the cornice which externally represented this beam, they lifted another temple on pedestals, adding these barbarous appendages to the shafts, which otherwise would not have been high enough; fragments of the divided cornice or tie-beam being left between the shafts, and the great door of the church thrust in between the pedestals. It is impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard. Observe, also, that when Palladio had got his pediment at the top of the church, he did not know what to do with it; he had no idea of decorating it except by a round hole in the middle. (The traveller should compare, both in construction and decoration, the Church of the Redentore with this of San Giorgio.) Now, a dark penetration is often a most precious assistance to a building dependent upon color for its effect; for a cavity is the only means in the architect's power of obtaining certain and vigorous shadow; and for this purpose, a circular penetration, surrounded by a deep russet marble moulding, is beautifully used in the centre of the white field on the side of the portico of St. Mark's. But Palladio had given up color, and pierced his pediment with a circular cavity, merely because he had not wit enough to fill it with sculpture. The interior of the church is like a large assembly room, and would have been undeserving of a moment's attention, but that it contains some most precious pictures, namely: 1. _Gathering the Manna._ (On the left hand of the high altar.) One of Tintoret's most remarkable landscapes. A brook flowing through a mountainous country, studded with thickets and palm trees; the congregation have been long in the Wilderness, and are employed in various manufactures much more than in gathering the manna. One group is forging, another grinding manna in a mill, another making shoes, one woman making a piece of dress, some washing; the main purpose of Tintoret being evidently to indicate the _continuity_ of the supply of heavenly food. Another painter would have made the congregation hurrying to gather it, and wondering at it; Tintoret at once makes us remember that they have been fed with it "by the space of forty years." It is a large picture, full of interest and power, but scattered in effect, and not striking except from its elaborate landscape. 2. _The Last Supper._ (Opposite the former.) These two pictures have been painted for their places, the subjects being illustrative of the sacrifice of the mass. This latter is remarkable for its entire homeliness in the general treatment of the subject; the entertainment being represented like any large supper in a second-rate Italian inn, the figures being all comparatively uninteresting; but we are reminded that the subject is a sacred one, not only by the strong light shining from the head of Christ, but because the smoke of the lamp which hangs over the table turns, as it rises, into a multitude of angels, all painted in grey, the color of the smoke; and so writhed and twisted together that the eye hardly at first distinguishes them from the vapor out of which they are formed, ghosts of countenances and filmy wings filling up the intervals between the completed heads. The idea is highly characteristic of the master. The picture has been grievously injured, but still shows miracles of skill in the expression of candle-light mixed with twilight; variously reflected rays, and half tones of the dimly lighted chamber, mingled with the beams of the lantern and those from the head of Christ, flashing along the metal and glass upon the table, and under it along the floor, and dying away into the recesses of the room. 3. _Martyrdom of various Saints._ (Altar piece of the third altar in the South aisle.) A moderately sized picture, and now a very disagreeable one, owing to the violent red into which the color that formed the glory of the angel at the top is changed. It has been hastily painted, and only shows the artist's power in the energy of the figure of an executioner drawing a bow, and in the magnificent ease with which the other figures are thrown together in all manner of wild groups and defiances of probability. Stones and arrows are flying about in the air at random. 4. _Coronation of the Virgin._ (Fourth altar in the same aisle.) Painted more for the sake of the portraits at the bottom, than of the Virgin at the top. A good picture, but somewhat tame for Tintoret, and much injured. The principal figure, in black, is still, however, very fine. 5. _Resurrection of Christ._ (At the end of the north aisle, in the chapel beside the choir.) Another picture painted chiefly for the sake of the included portraits, and remarkably cold in general conception; its color has, however, been gay and delicate, lilac, yellow, and blue being largely used in it. The flag which our Saviour bears in his hand, has been once as bright as the sail of a Venetian fishing-boat, but the colors are now all chilled, and the picture is rather crude than brilliant; a mere wreck of what it was, and all covered with droppings of wax at the bottom. 6. _Martyrdom of St. Stephen._ (Altar piece in the north transept.) The Saint is in a rich prelate's dress, looking as if he had just been saying mass, kneeling in the foreground, and perfectly serene. The stones are flying about him like hail, and the ground is covered with them as thickly as if it were a river bed. But in the midst of them, at the saint's right hand, there is a book lying, crushed but open, two or three stones which have torn one of its leaves lying upon it. The freedom and ease with which the leaf is crumpled is just as characteristic of the master as any of the grander features; no one but Tintoret could have so crushed a leaf; but the idea is still more characteristic of him, for the book is evidently meant for the Mosaic History which Stephen had just been expounding, and its being crushed by the stones shows how the blind rage of the Jews was violating their own law in the murder of Stephen. In the upper part of the picture are three figures,--Christ, the Father, and St. Michael. Christ of course at the right hand of the Father, as Stephen saw him standing; but there is little dignity in this part of the conception. In the middle of the picture, which is also the middle distance, are three or four men throwing stones, with Tintoret's usual vigor of gesture, and behind them an immense and confused crowd; so that, at first, we wonder where St. Paul is; but presently we observe that, in the front of this crowd, and _almost exactly in the centre of the picture_, there is a figure seated on the ground, very noble and quiet, and with some loose garments thrown across its knees. It is dressed in vigorous black and red. The figure of the Father in the sky above is dressed in black and red also, and these two figures are the centres of color to the whole design. It is almost impossible to praise too highly the refinement of conception which withdrew the unconverted St. Paul into the distance, so as entirely to separate him from the immediate interest of the scene, and yet marked the dignity to which he was afterward to be raised, by investing him with the colors which occurred nowhere else in the picture except in the dress which veils the form of the Godhead. It is also to be noted as an interesting example of the value which the painter put upon color only; another composer would have thought it necessary to exalt the future apostle by some peculiar dignity of action or expression. The posture of the figure is indeed grand, but inconspicuous; Tintoret does not depend upon it, and thinks that the figure is quite ennobled enough by being made a key-note of color. It is also worth observing how boldly imaginative is the treatment which covers the ground with piles of stones, and yet leaves the martyr apparently unwounded. Another painter would have covered him with blood, and elaborated the expression of pain upon his countenance. Tintoret leaves us under no doubt as to what manner of death he is dying; he makes the air hurtle with the stones, but he does not choose to make his picture disgusting, or even painful. The face of the martyr is serene, and exulting; and we leave the picture, remembering only how "he fell asleep." GIOVANELLI, PALAZZO, at the Ponte di Noale. A fine example of fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace. GIOVANNI E PAOLO, CHURCH OF ST.[72] Foundation of, III. 69. An impressive church, though none of its Gothic is comparable with that of the North, or with that of Verona. The Western door is interesting as one of the last conditions of Gothic design passing into Renaissance, very rich and beautiful of its kind, especially the wreath of fruit and flowers which forms its principal molding. The statue of Bartolomeo Colleone, in the little square beside the church, is certainly one of the noblest works in Italy. I have never seen anything approaching it in animation, in vigor of portraiture, or nobleness of line. The reader will need Lazari's Guide in making the circuit of the church, which is full of interesting monuments: but I wish especially to direct his attention to two pictures, besides the celebrated Peter Martyr: namely, 1. _The Crucifixion_, by Tintoret; on the wall of the left-hand aisle, just before turning into the transept. A picture fifteen feet long by eleven or twelve high. I do not believe that either the "Miracle of St. Mark," or the great "Crucifixion" in the Scuola di San Rocco, cost Tintoret more pains than this comparatively small work, which is now utterly neglected, covered with filth and cobwebs, and fearfully injured. As a piece of color, and light and shade, it is altogether marvellous. Of all the fifty figures which the picture contains, there is not one which in any way injures or contends with another; nay, there is not a single fold of garment or touch of the pencil which could be spared; every virtue of Tintoret, as a painter, is there in its highest degree,--color at once the most intense and the most delicate, the utmost decision in the arrangement of masses of light, and yet half tones and modulations of endless variety; and all executed with a magnificence of handling which no words are energetic enough to describe. I have hardly ever seen a picture in which there was so much decision, and so little impetuosity, and in which so little was conceded to haste, to accident, or to weakness. It is too infinite a work to be describable; but among its minor passages of extreme beauty, should especially be noticed the manner in which the accumulated forms of the human body, which fill the picture from end to end, are prevented from being felt heavy, by the grace and elasticity of two or three sprays of leafage which spring from a broken root in the foreground, and rise conspicuous in shadow against an interstice filled by the pale blue, grey, and golden light in which the distant crowd is invested, the office of this foliage being, in an artistical point of view, correspondent to that of the trees set by the sculptors of the Ducal Palace on its angles. But they have a far more important meaning in the picture than any artistical one. If the spectator will look carefully at the root which I have called broken, he will find that in reality, it is not broken, but cut; the other branches of the young tree having _lately been cut away_. When we remember that one of the principal incidents in great San Rocco Crucifixion is the ass feeding on withered palm leaves, we shall be at no loss to understand the great painter's purpose in lifting the branch of this mutilated olive against the dim light of the distant sky; while, close beside it, St. Joseph of Arimathea drags along the dust a white garment--observe, the principal light of the picture,--stained with the blood of that King before whom, five days before, his crucifiers had strewn their own garments in the way. 2. _Our Lady with the Camerlenghi._ (In the centre chapel of the three on the right of the choir.) A remarkable instance of the theoretical manner of representing Scriptural facts, which, at this time, as noted in the second chapter of this volume, was undermining the belief of the facts themselves. Three Venetian chamberlains desired to have their portraits painted, and at the same time to express their devotion to the Madonna; to that end they are painted kneeling before her, and in order to account for their all three being together, and to give a thread or clue to the story of the picture, they are represented as the Three Magi; but lest the spectator should think it strange that the Magi should be in the dress of Venetian chamberlains, the scene is marked as a mere ideality, by surrounding the person of the Virgin with saints who lived five hundred years after her. She has for attendants St. Theodore, St. Sebastian, and St. Carlo (query St. Joseph). One hardly knows whether most to regret the spirit which was losing sight of the verities of religious history in imaginative abstractions, or to praise the modesty and piety which desired rather to be represented as kneeling before the Virgin than in the discharge or among the insignia of important offices of state. As an "Adoration of the Magi," the picture is, of course, sufficiently absurd: the St. Sebastian leans back in the corner to be out of the way; the three Magi kneel, without the slightest appearance of emotion, to a Madonna seated in a Venetian loggia of the fifteenth century, and three Venetian servants behind bear their offerings in a very homely sack, tied up at the mouth. As a piece of portraiture and artistical composition, the work is altogether perfect, perhaps the best piece of Tintoret's portrait-painting in existence. It is very carefully and steadily wrought, and arranged with consummate skill on a difficult plan. The canvas is a long oblong, I think about eighteen or twenty feet long, by about seven high; one might almost fancy the painter had been puzzled to bring the piece into use, the figures being all thrown into positions which a little diminish their height. The nearest chamberlain is kneeling, the two behind him bowing themselves slightly, the attendants behind bowing lower, the Madonna sitting, the St. Theodore sitting still lower on the steps at her feet, and the St. Sebastian leaning back, so that all the lines of the picture incline more or less from right to left as they ascend. This slope, which gives unity to the detached groups, is carefully exhibited by what a mathematician would call coordinates,--the upright pillars of the loggia and the horizontal clouds of the beautiful sky. The color is very quiet, but rich and deep, the local tones being brought out with intense force, and the cast shadows subdued, the manner being much more that of Titian than of Tintoret. The sky appears full of light, though it is as dark as the flesh of the faces; and the forms of its floating clouds, as well as of the hills over which they rise, are drawn with a deep remembrance of reality. There are hundreds of pictures of Tintoret's more amazing than this, but I hardly know one that I more love. The reader ought especially to study the sculpture round the altar of the Capella del Rosario, as an example of the abuse of the sculptor's art; every accessory being labored out with as much ingenuity and intense effort to turn sculpture into painting, the grass, trees, and landscape being as far realized as possible, and in alto-relievo. These bas-reliefs are by various artists, and therefore exhibit the folly of the age, not the error of an individual. The following alphabetical list of the tombs in this church which are alluded to as described in the text, with references to the pages where they are mentioned, will save some trouble: Cavalli, Jacopo, III. 82. | Mocenigo, Pietro, III. 89. Cornaro, Marco, III. 11. | Mocenigo, Tomaso, I. 8, 26, III. 84. Dolfin, Giovanni, III. 78. | Morosini, Michele, III. 80. Giustiniani, Marco, I. 315. | Steno, Michele, III. 83. Mocenigo, Giovanni, III. 89. | Vendramin, Andrea, I. 27, III. 88. GIOVANNI GRISOSTOMO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the most important in Venice. It is early Renaissance, containing some good sculpture, but chiefly notable as containing a noble Sebastian del Piombo, and a John Bellini, which a few years hence, unless it be "restored," will be esteemed one of the most precious pictures in Italy, and among the most perfect in the world. John Bellini is the only artist who appears to me to have united, in equal and magnificent measures, justness of drawing, nobleness of coloring, and perfect manliness of treatment, with the purest religious feeling. He did, as far as it is possible to do it, instinctively and unaffectedly, what the Caracci only pretended to do. Titian colors better, but has not his piety. Leonardo draws better, but has not his color. Angelico is more heavenly, but has not his manliness, far less his powers of art. GIOVANNI ELEMOSINARIO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Titian and a Bonifazio. Of no other interest. GIOVANNI IN BRAGOLA, CHURCH OF ST. A Gothic church of the fourteenth century, small, but interesting, and said to contain some precious works by Cima da Conegliano, and one by John Bellini. GIOVANNI NOVO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. GIOVANNI, S., SCUOLA DI. A fine example of the Byzantine Renaissance, mixed with remnants of good late Gothic. The little exterior cortile is sweet in feeling, and Lazari praises highly the work of the interior staircase. GIUDECCA. The crescent-shaped island (or series of islands), which forms the most northern extremity of the city of Venice, though separated by a broad channel from the main city. Commonly said to derive its name from the number of Jews who lived upon it; but Lazari derives it from the word "Judicato," in Venetian dialect "Zudegà," it having been in old time "adjudged" as a kind of prison territory to the more dangerous and turbulent citizens. It is now inhabited only by the poor, and covered by desolate groups of miserable dwellings, divided by stagnant canals. Its two principal churches, the Redentore and St. Eufemia, are named in their alphabetical order. GIULIANO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. GIUSEPPE DI CASTELLO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Paul Veronese: otherwise of no importance. GIUSTINA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. GIUSTINIANI PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, now Albergo all' Europa. Good late fourteenth century Gothic, but much altered. GIUSTINIANI, PALAZZO, next the Casa Foscari, on the Grand Canal. Lazari, I know not on what authority, says that this palace was built by the Giustiniani family before 1428. It is one of those founded directly on the Ducal Palace, together with the Casa Foscari at its side: and there could have been no doubt of their date on this ground; but it would be interesting, after what we have seen of the progress of the Ducal Palace, to ascertain the exact year of the erection of any of these imitations. This palace contains some unusually rich detached windows, full of tracery, of which the profiles are given in the Appendix, under the title of the Palace of the Younger Foscari, it being popularly reported to have belonged to the son of the Doge. GIUSTINIAN LOLIN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. GRASSI PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, now Albergo all' Imperator d' Austria. Of no importance. GREGORIO, CHURCH OF ST., on the Grand Canal. An important church of the fourteenth century, now desecrated, but still interesting. Its apse is on the little canal crossing from the Grand Canal to the Giudecca, beside the Church of the Salute, and is very characteristic of the rude ecclesiastical Gothic contemporary with the Ducal Palace. The entrance to its cloisters, from the Grand Canal, is somewhat later; a noble square door, with two windows on each side of it, the grandest examples in Venice of the late window of the fourth order. The cloister, to which this door gives entrance, is exactly contemporary with the finest work of the Ducal Palace, circa 1350. It is the loveliest cortile I know in Venice; its capitals consummate in design and execution; and the low wall on which they stand showing remnants of sculpture unique, as far as I know, in such application. GRIMANI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, III. 32. There are several other palaces in Venice belonging to this family, but none of any architectural interest. J JESUITI, CHURCH OF THE. The basest Renaissance; but worth a visit in order to examine the imitations of curtains in white marble inlaid with green. It contains a Tintoret, "The Assumption," which I have not examined; and a Titian, "The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," originally, it seems to me, of little value, and now, having been restored, of none. L LABIA PALAZZO, on the Canna Reggio. Of no importance. LAZZARO DE' MENDICANTI, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. LIBRERIA VECCHIA. A graceful building of the central Renaissance, designed by Sansovino, 1536, and much admired by all architects of the school. It was continued by Scamozzi, down the whole side of St. Mark's Place, adding another story above it, which modern critics blame as destroying the "eurithmia;" never considering that had the two low stories of the Library been continued along the entire length of the Piazza, they would have looked so low that the entire dignity of the square would have been lost. As it is, the Library is left in its originally good proportions, and the larger mass of the Procuratie Nuove forms a more majestic, though less graceful, side for the great square. But the real faults of the building are not in its number of stories, but in the design of the parts. It is one of the grossest examples of the base Renaissance habit of turning _keystones_ into _brackets_, throwing them out in bold projection (not less than a foot and a half) beyond the mouldings of the arch; a practice utterly barbarous, inasmuch as it evidently tends to dislocate the entire arch, if any real weight were laid on the extremity of the keystone; and it is also a very characteristic example of the vulgar and painful mode of filling spandrils by naked figures in alto-relievo, leaning against the arch on each side, and appearing as if they were continually in danger of slipping off. Many of these figures have, however, some merit in themselves; and the whole building is graceful and effective of its kind. The continuation of the Procuratie Nuove, at the western extremity of St. Mark's Place (together with various apartments in the great line of the Procuratie Nuove) forms the "Royal Palace," the residence of the Emperor when at Venice. This building is entirely modern, built in 1810, in imitation of the Procuratie Nuove, and on the site of Sansovino's Church of San Geminiano. In this range of buildings, including the Royal Palace, the Procuratie Nuove, the old Library, and the "Zecca" which is connected with them (the latter being an ugly building of very modern date, not worth notice architecturally), there are many most valuable pictures, among which I would especially direct attention, first to those in the Zecca, namely, a beautiful and strange Madonna, by Benedetto Diana; two noble Bonifazios; and two groups, by Tintoret, of the Provveditori della Zecca, by no means to be missed, whatever may be sacrificed to see them, on account of the quietness and veracity of their unaffected portraiture, and the absolute freedom from all vanity either in the painter or in his subjects. Next, in the "Antisala" of the old Library, observe the "Sapienza" of Titian, in the centre of the ceiling; a most interesting work in the light brilliancy of its color, and the resemblance to Paul Veronese. Then, in the great hall of the old Library, examine the two large Tintorets, "St. Mark saving a Saracen from Drowning," and the "Stealing of his Body from Constantinople," both rude, but great (note in the latter the dashing of the rain on the pavement, and running of the water about the feet of the figures): then in the narrow spaces between the windows, there are some magnificent single figures by Tintoret, among the finest things of the kind in Italy, or in Europe. Finally, in the gallery of pictures in the Palazzo Reale, among other good works of various kinds, are two of the most interesting Bonifazios in Venice, the "Children of Israel in their journeyings," in one of which, if I recollect right, the quails are coming in flight across a sunset sky, forming one of the earliest instances I know of a thoroughly natural and Turneresque effect being felt and rendered by the old masters. The picture struck me chiefly from this circumstance; but, the note-book in which I had described it and its companion having been lost on my way home, I cannot now give a more special account of them, except that they are long, full of crowded figures, and peculiarly light in color and handling as compared with Bonifazio's work in general. LIO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance, but said to contain a spoiled Titian. LIO, SALIZZADA DI ST., windows in, II. 252, 257. LOREDAN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto, II. 123, 393. Another palace of this name, on the Campo St. Stefano, is of no importance. LORENZO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. LUCA, CHURCH OF ST. Its campanile is of very interesting and quaint early Gothic, and it is said to contain a Paul Veronese, "St Luke and the Virgin." In the little Campiello St. Luca, close by, is a very precious Gothic door, rich in brickwork, of the thirteenth century; and in the foundations of the houses on the same side of the square, but at the other end of it, are traceable some shafts and arches closely resembling the work of the Cathedral of Murano, and evidently having once belonged to some most interesting building. LUCIA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. M MADDALENA, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA. Of no importance. MALIPIERO, PALAZZO, on the Campo St. M. Formosa, facing the canal at its extremity. A very beautiful example of the Byzantine Renaissance. Note the management of color in its inlaid balconies. MANFRINI, PALAZZO. The architecture is of no interest; and as it is in contemplation to allow the collection of pictures to be sold, I shall take no note of them. But even if they should remain, there are few of the churches in Venice where the traveller had not better spend his time than in this gallery; as, with the exception of Titian's "Entombment," one or two Giorgiones, and the little John Bellini (St. Jerome), the pictures are all of a kind which may be seen elsewhere. MANGILI VALMARANA, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. MANIN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. MANZONI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, near the Church of the Carità. A perfect and very rich example of Byzantine Renaissance: its warm yellow marbles are magnificent. MARCILIAN, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Titian, "Tobit and the Angel:" otherwise of no importance. MARIA, CHURCHES OF STA. See FORMOSA, MATER DOMINI, MIRACOLI, ORTO, SALUTE, and ZOBENIGO. MARCO, SCUOLA DI SAN, III. 16. MARK, CHURCH OF ST., history of, II. 57; approach to, II. 71; general teaching of, II. 112, 116; measures of façade of, II. 126; balustrades of, II. 244, 247; cornices of, I. 311; horseshoe arches of, II. 249; entrances of, II. 271, III. 245; shafts of, II. 384; base in baptistery of, I. 290; mosaics in atrium of, II. 112; mosaics in cupola of, II. 114, III. 192; lily capitals of, II. 137; Plates illustrative of (Vol. II.), VI. VII. figs. 9, 10, 11, VIII. figs. 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, IX. XI. fig. 1, and Plate III. Vol. III. MARK, SQUARE OF ST. (Piazza di San Marco), anciently a garden, II. 58; general effect of, II. 66, 116; plan of, II. 282. MARTINO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. MATER DOMINI, CHURCH OF ST. MARIA. It contains two important pictures: one over the second altar on the right, "St. Christina," by Vincenzo Catena, a very lovely example of the Venetian religious school; and, over the north transept door, the "Finding of the Cross," by Tintoret, a carefully painted and attractive picture, but by no means a good specimen of the master, as far as regards power of conception. He does not seem to have entered into his subject. There is no wonder, no rapture, no entire devotion in any of the figures. They are only interested and pleased in a mild way; and the kneeling woman who hands the nails to a man stooping forward to receive them on the right hand, does so with the air of a person saying, "You had better take care of them; they may be wanted another time." This general coldness in expression is much increased by the presence of several figures on the right and left, introduced for the sake of portraiture merely; and the reality, as well as the feeling, of the scene is destroyed by our seeing one of the youngest and weakest of the women with a huge cross lying across her knees, the whole weight of it resting upon her. As might have been expected, where the conception is so languid, the execution is little delighted in; it is throughout steady and powerful, but in no place affectionate, and in no place impetuous. If Tintoret had always painted in this way, he would have sunk into a mere mechanist. It is, however, a genuine and tolerably well preserved specimen, and its female figures are exceedingly graceful; that of St. Helena very queenly, though by no means agreeable in feature. Among the male portraits on the left there is one different from the usual types which occur either in Venetian paintings or Venetian populace; it is carefully painted, and more like a Scotch Presbyterian minister, than a Greek. The background is chiefly composed of architecture, white, remarkably uninteresting in color, and still more so in form. This is to be noticed as one of the unfortunate results of the Renaissance teaching at this period. Had Tintoret backed his Empress Helena with Byzantine architecture, the picture might have been one of the most gorgeous he ever painted. MATER DOMINI, CAMPO DI STA. MARIA, II. 261. A most interesting little piazza, surrounded by early Gothic houses, once of singular beauty; the arcade at its extremity, of fourth order windows, drawn in my folio work, is one of the earliest and loveliest of its kind in Venice; and in the houses at the side is a group of second order windows with their intermediate crosses, all complete, and well worth careful examination. MICHELE IN ISOLA, CHURCH OF ST. On the island between Venice and Murano. The little Cappella Emiliana at the side of it has been much admired, but it would be difficult to find a building more feelingless or ridiculous. It is more like a German summer-house, or angle turret, than a chapel, and may be briefly described as a bee-hive set on a low hexagonal tower, with dashes of stone-work about its windows like the flourishes of an idle penman. The cloister of this church is pretty; and the attached cemetery is worth entering, for the sake of feeling the strangeness of the quiet sleeping ground in the midst of the sea. MICHIEL DALLE COLONNE, PALAZZO. Of no importance. MINELLI, PALAZZO. In the Corte del Maltese, at St. Paternian. It has a spiral external staircase, very picturesque, but of the fifteenth century and without merit. MIRACOLI, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DEI. The most interesting and finished example in Venice of the Byzantine Renaissance, and one of the most important in Italy of the cinque-cento style. All its sculptures should be examined with great care, as the best possible examples of a bad style. Observe, for instance, that in spite of the beautiful work on the square pillars which support the gallery at the west end, they have no more architectural effect than two wooden posts. The same kind of failure in boldness of purpose exists throughout; and the building is, in fact, rather a small museum of unmeaning, though refined sculpture, than a piece of architecture. Its grotesques are admirable examples of the base Raphaelesque design examined above, III. 136. Note especially the children's heads tied up by the hair, in the lateral sculptures at the top of the altar steps. A rude workman, who could hardly have carved the head at all, might have allowed this or any other mode of expressing discontent with his own doings; but the man who could carve a child's head so perfectly must have been wanting in all human feeling, to cut it off, and tie it by the hair to a vine leaf. Observe, in the Ducal Palace, though far ruder in skill, the heads always _emerge_ from the leaves, they are never _tied_ to them. MISERICORDIA, CHURCH OF. The church itself is nothing, and contains nothing worth the traveller's time; but the Albergo de' Confratelli della Misericordia at its side is a very interesting and beautiful relic of the Gothic Renaissance. Lazari says, "del secolo xiv.;" but I believe it to be later. Its traceries are very curious and rich, and the sculpture of its capitals very fine for the late time. Close to it, on the right-hand side of the canal which is crossed by the wooden bridge, is one of the richest Gothic doors in Venice, remarkable for the appearance of antiquity in the general design and stiffness of its figures, though it bears its date 1505. Its extravagant crockets are almost the only features which, but for this written date, would at first have confessed its lateness; but, on examination, the figures will be found as bad and spiritless as they are apparently archaic, and completely exhibiting the Renaissance palsy of imagination. The general effect is, however, excellent, the whole arrangement having been borrowed from earlier work. The action of the statue of the Madonna, who extends her robe to shelter a group of diminutive figures, representative of the Society for whose house the sculpture was executed, may be also seen in most of the later Venetian figures of the Virgin which occupy similar situations. The image of Christ is placed in a medallion on her breast, thus fully, though conventionally, expressing the idea of self-support which is so often partially indicated by the great religious painters in their representations of the infant Jesus. MOISÈ, CHURCH OF ST., III. 124. Notable as one of the basest examples of the basest school of the Renaissance. It contains one important picture, namely "Christ washing the Disciples' Feet," by Tintoret; on the left side of the chapel, north of the choir. This picture has been originally dark, is now much faded--in parts, I believe, altogether destroyed--and is hung in the worst light of a chapel, where, on a sunny day at noon, one could not easily read without a candle. I cannot, therefore, give much information respecting it; but it is certainly one of the least successful of the painter's works, and both careless and unsatisfactory in its composition as well as its color. One circumstance is noticeable, as in a considerable degree detracting from the interest of most of Tintoret's representations of our Saviour with his disciples. He never loses sight of the fact that all were poor, and the latter ignorant; and while he never paints a senator, or a saint once thoroughly canonized, except as a gentleman, he is very careful to paint the Apostles, in their living intercourse with the Saviour, in such a manner that the spectator may see in an instant, as the Pharisee did of old, that they were unlearned and ignorant men; and, whenever we find them in a room, it is always such a one as would be inhabited by the lower classes. There seems some violation of this practice in the dais, or flight of steps, at the top of which the Saviour is placed in the present picture; but we are quickly reminded that the guests' chamber or upper room ready prepared was not likely to have been in a palace, by the humble furniture upon the floor, consisting of a tub with a copper saucepan in it, a coffee-pot, and a pair of bellows, curiously associated with a symbolic cup with a wafer, which, however, is in an injured part of the canvas, and may have been added by the priests. I am totally unable to state what the background of the picture is or has been; and the only point farther to be noted about it is the solemnity, which, in spite of the familiar and homely circumstances above noticed, the painter has given to the scene, by placing the Saviour, in the act of washing the feet of Peter, at the top of a circle of steps, on which the other Apostles kneel in adoration and astonishment. MORO, PALAZZO. See OTHELLO. MOROSINI, PALAZZO, near the Ponte dell' Ospedaletto, at San Giovannie Paolo. Outside it is not interesting, though the gateway shows remains of brickwork of the thirteenth century. Its interior court is singularly beautiful; the staircase of early fourteenth century Gothic has originally been superb, and the window in the angle above is the most perfect that I know in Venice of the kind; the lightly sculptured coronet is exquisitely introduced at the top of its spiral shaft. This palace still belongs to the Morosini family, to whose present representative, the Count Carlo Morosini, the reader is indebted for the note on the character of his ancestors, above, III. 213. MOROSINI, PALAZZO, at St. Stefano. Of no importance. N NANI-MOCENIGO, PALAZZO. (Now Hotel Danieli.) A glorious example of the central Gothic, nearly contemporary with the finest part of the Ducal Palace. Though less impressive in effect than the Casa Foscari or Casa Bernardo, it is of purer architecture than either: and quite unique in the delicacy of the form of the cusps in the central group of windows, which are shaped like broad scimitars, the upper foil of the windows being very small. If the traveller will compare these windows with the neighboring traceries of the Ducal Palace, he will easily perceive the peculiarity. NICOLO DEL LIDO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. NOME DI GESU, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. O ORFANI, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. ORTO, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA, DELL'. An interesting example of Renaissance Gothic, the traceries of the windows being very rich and quaint. It contains four most important Tintorets: "The Last Judgment," "The Worship of the Golden Calf," "The Presentation of the Virgin," and "Martyrdom of St. Agnes." The first two are among his largest and mightiest works, but grievously injured by damp and neglect; and unless the traveller is accustomed to decipher the thoughts in a picture patiently, he need not hope to derive any pleasure from them. But no pictures will better reward a resolute study. The following account of the "Last Judgment," given in the second volume of "Modern Painters," will be useful in enabling the traveller to enter into the meaning of the picture, but its real power is only to be felt by patient examination of it. "By Tintoret only has this unimaginable event (the Last Judgment) been grappled with in its Verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one traditional circumstance he has received, with Dante and Michael Angelo, the Boat of the Condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image; he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam Pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat; the Firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls into the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and higher and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation." Note in the opposite picture the way the clouds are wrapped about in the distant Sinai. The figure of the little Madonna in the "Presentation" should be compared with Titian's in his picture of the same subject in the Academy. I prefer Tintoret's infinitely: and note how much finer is the feeling with which Tintoret has relieved the glory round her head against the pure sky, than that which influenced Titian in encumbering his distance with architecture. The "Martyrdom of St. Agnes" _was_ a lovely picture. It has been "restored" since I saw it. OSPEDALETTO, CHURCH OF THE. The most monstrous example of the Grotesque Renaissance which there is in Venice; the sculptures on its façade representing masses of diseased figures and swollen fruit. It is almost worth devoting an hour to the successive examination of five buildings, as illustrative of the last degradation of the Renaissance. San Moisè is the most clumsy, Santa Maria Zobenigo the most impious, St. Eustachio the most ridiculous, the Ospedaletto the most monstrous, and the head at Santa Maria Formosa the most foul. OTHELLO, HOUSE OF, at the Carmini. The researches of Mr. Brown into the origin of the play of "Othello" have, I think, determined that Shakspeare wrote on definite historical grounds; and that Othello may be in many points identified with Christopher Moro, the lieutenant of the republic at Cyprus, in 1508. See "Ragguagli su Maria Sanuto," i. 252. His palace was standing till very lately, a Gothic building of the fourteenth century, of which Mr. Brown possesses a drawing. It is now destroyed, and a modern square-windowed house built on its site. A statue, said to be a portrait of Moro, but a most paltry work, is set in a niche in the modern wall. P PANTALEONE, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Paul Veronese; otherwise of no importance. PATERNIAN, CHURCH OF ST. Its little leaning tower forms an interesting object as the traveller sees it from the narrow canal which passes beneath the Porte San Paternian. The two arched lights of the belfry appear of very early workmanship, probably of the beginning of the thirteenth century. PESARO PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The most powerful and impressive in effect of all the palaces of the Grotesque Renaissance. The heads upon its foundation are very characteristic of the period, but there is more genius in them than usual. Some of the mingled expressions of faces and grinning casques are very clever. PIAZZETTA, pillars of, see Final Appendix under head "Capital." The two magnificent blocks of marble brought from St. Jean d'Acre, which form one of the principal ornaments of the Piazzetta, are Greek sculpture of the sixth century, and will be described in my folio work. PIETA, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. PIETRO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano. Its pictures, once valuable, are now hardly worth examination, having been spoiled by neglect. PIETRO, DI CASTELLO, CHURCH OF ST., I. 7, 361. It is said to contain a Paul Veronese, and I suppose the so-called "Chair of St. Peter" must be worth examining. PISANI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The latest Venetian Gothic, just passing into Renaissance. The capitals of the first floor windows are, however, singularly spirited and graceful, very daringly under-cut, and worth careful examination. The Paul Veronese, once the glory of this palace, is, I believe, not likely to remain in Venice. The other picture in the same room, the "Death of Darius," is of no value. PISANI, PALAZZO, at St. Stefano. Late Renaissance, and of no merit, but grand in its colossal proportions, especially when seen from the narrow canal at its side, which terminated by the apse of the Church of San Stefano, is one of the most picturesque and impressive little pieces of water scenery in Venice. POLO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance, except as an example of the advantages accruing from restoration. M. Lazari says of it, "Before this church was modernized, its principal chapel was adorned with Mosaics, and possessed a pala of silver gilt, of Byzantine workmanship, which is now lost." POLO, SQUARE OF ST. (Campo San Polo.) A large and important square, rendered interesting chiefly by three palaces on the side of it opposite the church, of central Gothic (1360), and fine of their time, though small. One of their capitals has been given in Plate II. of this volume, fig. 12. They are remarkable as being decorated with sculptures of the Gothic time, in imitation of Byzantine ones; the period being marked by the dog-tooth and cable being used instead of the dentil round the circles. POLO, PALAZZO, at San G. Grisostomo (the house of Marco Polo), II. 139. Its interior court is full of interest, showing fragments of the old building in every direction, cornices, windows, and doors, of almost every period, mingled among modern rebuilding and restoration of all degrees of dignity. PORTA DELLA CARTA, II. 302. PRIULI, PALAZZO. A most important and beautiful early Gothic Palace, at San Severo; the main entrance is from the Fundamento San Severo, but the principal façade is on the other side, towards the canal. The entrance has been grievously defaced, having had winged lions filling the spandrils of its pointed arch, of which only feeble traces are now left, the façade has very early fourth order windows in the lower story, and above, the beautiful range of fifth order windows drawn at the bottom of Plate XVIII. Vol. II., where the heads of the fourth order range are also seen (note their inequality, the larger one at the flank). This Palace has two most interesting traceried angle windows also, which, however, I believe are later than those on the façade; and finally, a rich and bold interior staircase. PROCURATIE NUOVE, see "LIBRERIA" VECCHIA: A graceful series buildings, of late fifteenth century design, forming the northern side of St. Mark's Place, but of no particular interest. Q QUERINI, PALAZZO, now the Beccherie, II. 255, III. 234. R RAFFAELLE, CHIESA DELL'ANGELO. Said to contain a Bonifazio, otherwise of no importance. REDENTORE, CHURCH OF THE, II. 378. It contains three interesting John Bellinis, and also, in the sacristy, a most beautiful Paul Veronese. REMER, CORTE DEL, house in. II. 251. REZZONICO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of the Grotesque Renaissance time, but less extravagant than usual. RIALTO, BRIDGE OF THE. The best building raised in the time of the Grotesque Renaissance; very noble in its simplicity, in its proportions, and in its masonry. Note especially the grand way in which the oblique archstones rest on the butments of the bridge, safe, palpably both to the sense and eye: note also the sculpture of the Annunciation on the southern side of it; how beautifully arranged, so as to give more lightness and a grace to the arch--_the dove, flying towards the Madonna, forming the keystone_,--and thus the whole action of the figures being parallel to the curve of the arch, while all the masonry is at right angles to it. Note, finally, one circumstance which gives peculiar firmness to the figure of the angel, and associates itself with the general expression of strength in the whole building; namely that the sole of the advanced foot is set perfectly level, as if placed on the ground, instead of being thrown back behind like a heron's, as in most modern figures of this kind. The sculptures themselves are not good; but these pieces of feeling in them are very admirable. The two figures on the other side, St. Mark and St. Theodore, are inferior, though all by the same sculptor, Girolamo Campagna. The bridge was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1588. It was anciently of wood, with a drawbridge in the centre, a representation of which may be seen in one of Carpaccio's pictures at the Accademia delle Belle Arti: and the traveller should observe that the interesting effect, both of this and the Bridge of Sighs, depends in great part on their both being _more_ than bridges; the one a covered passage, the other a row of shops, sustained on an arch. No such effect can be produced merely by the masonry of the roadway itself. RIO DEL PALAZZO, II. 282. ROCCO, CAMPIELLO DI SAN, windows in, II. 258. ROCCO, CHURCH OF ST. Notable only for the most interesting pictures by Tintoret which it contains, namely: 1. _San Rocco before the Pope._ (On the left of the door as we enter.) A delightful picture in his best manner, but not much labored; and, like several other pictures in this church, it seems to me to have been executed at some period of the painter's life when he was either in ill health, or else had got into a mechanical way of painting, from having made too little reference to nature for a long time. There is something stiff and forced in the white draperies on both sides, and a general character about the whole which I can feel better than I can describe; but which, if I had been the painter's physician, would have immediately caused me to order him to shut up his painting-room, and take a voyage to the Levant, and back again. The figure of the Pope is, however, extremely beautiful, and is not unworthy, in its jewelled magnificence, here dark against the sky, of comparison with the figure of the high priest in the "Presentation," in the Scuola di San Rocco. 2. _Annunciation._ (On the other side of the door, on entering.) A most disagreeable and dead picture, having all the faults of the age, and none of the merits of the painter. It must be a matter of future investigation to me, what could cause the fall of his mind from a conception so great and so fiery as that of the "Annunciation" in the Scuola di San Rocco, to this miserable reprint of an idea worn out centuries before. One of the most inconceivable things in it, considered as the work of Tintoret, is that where the angel's robe drifts away behind his limb, one cannot tell by the character of the outline, or by the tones of the color, whether the cloud comes in before the robe, or whether the robe cuts upon the cloud. The Virgin is uglier than that of the Scuola, and not half so real; and the draperies are crumpled in the most commonplace and ignoble folds. It is a picture well worth study, as an example of the extent to which the greatest mind may be betrayed by the abuse of its powers, and the neglect of its proper food in the study of nature. 3. _Pool of Bethesda._ (On the right side of the church, in its centre, the lowest of the two pictures which occupy the wall.) A noble work, but eminently disagreeable, as must be all pictures of this subject; and with the same character in it of undefinable want, which I have noticed in the two preceding works. The main figure in it is the cripple, who has taken up his bed; but the whole effect of this action is lost by his not turning to Christ, but flinging it on his shoulder like a triumphant porter with a huge load; and the corrupt Renaissance architecture, among which the figures are crowded, is both ugly in itself, and much too small for them. It is worth noticing, for the benefit of persons who find fault with the perspective of the Pre-Raphaelites, that the perspective of the brackets beneath these pillars is utterly absurd; and that, in fine, the presence or absence of perspective has nothing to do with the merits of a great picture: not that the perspective of the Pre-Raphaelites _is_ false in any case that I have examined, the objection being just as untenable as it is ridiculous. 4. _San Rocco in the Desert._ (Above the last-named picture.) A single recumbent figure in a not very interesting landscape, deserving less attention than a picture of St. Martin just opposite to it,--a noble and knightly figure on horseback by Pordenone, to which I cannot pay a greater compliment than by saying that I was a considerable time in doubt whether or not it was another Tintoret. 5. _San Rocco in the Hospital._ (On the right-hand side of the altar.) There are four vast pictures by Tintoret in the dark choir of this church, not only important by their size (each being some twenty-five feet long by ten feet high), but also elaborate compositions; and remarkable, one for its extraordinary landscape, and the other as the most studied picture in which the painter has introduced horses in violent action. In order to show what waste of human mind there is in these dark churches of Venice, it is worth recording that, as I was examining these pictures, there came in a party of eighteen German tourists, not hurried, nor jesting among themselves as large parties often do, but patiently submitting to their cicerone, and evidently desirous of doing their duty as intelligent travellers. They sat down for a long time on the benches of the nave, looked a little at the "Pool of Bethesda," walked up into the choir and there heard a lecture of considerable length from their _valet-de-place_ upon some subject connected with the altar itself, which, being in German, I did not understand; they then turned and went slowly out of the church, not one of the whole eighteen ever giving a single glance to any of the four Tintorets, and only one of them, as far as I saw, even raising his eyes to the walls on which they hung, and immediately withdrawing them, with a jaded and _nonchalant_ expression easily interpretable into "Nothing but old black pictures." The two Tintorets above noticed, at the end of the church, were passed also without a glance; and this neglect is not because the pictures have nothing in them capable of arresting the popular mind, but simply because they are totally in the dark, or confused among easier and more prominent objects of attention. This picture, which I have called "St. Rocco in the Hospital," shows him, I suppose, in his general ministrations at such places, and is one of the usual representations of a disgusting subject from which neither Orcagna nor Tintoret seems ever to have shrunk. It is a very noble picture, carefully composed and highly wrought; but to me gives no pleasure, first, on account of its subject, secondly, on account of its dull brown tone all over,--it being impossible, or nearly so, in such a scene, and at all events inconsistent with its feeling, to introduce vivid color of any kind. So it is a brown study of diseased limbs in a close room. 6. _Cattle Piece._ (Above the picture last described.) I can give no other name to this picture, whose subject I can neither guess nor discover, the picture being in the dark, and the guide-books leaving me in the same position. All I can make out of it is, that there is a noble landscape with cattle and figures. It seems to me the best landscape of Tintoret's in Venice, except the "Flight into Egypt;" and is even still more interesting from its savage character, the principal trees being pines, something like Titian's in his "St. Francis receiving the Stigmata," and chestnuts on the slopes and in the hollows of the hills; the animals also seem first-rate. But it is too high, too much faded, and too much in the dark to be made out. It seems never to have been rich in color, rather cool and grey, and very full of light. 7. _Finding of Body of San Rocco._ (On the left-hand side of the altar.) An elaborate, but somewhat confused picture, with a flying angel in a blue drapery; but it seemed to me altogether uninteresting, or perhaps requiring more study than I was able to give it. 8. _San Rocco in Campo d' Armata._ So this picture is called by the sacristan. I could see no San Rocco in it; nothing but a wild group of horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and flight ever painted by man. They seem all dashed different ways as if by a whirlwind; and a whirlwind there must be, or a thunderbolt, behind them, for a huge tree is torn up and hurled into the air beyond the central figure, as if it were a shivered lance. Two of the horses meet in the midst, as if in a tournament; but in madness of fear, not in hostility; on the horse to the right is a standard-bearer, who stoops as from some foe behind him, with the lance laid across his saddle-bow, level, and the flag stretched out behind him as he flies, like the sail of a ship drifting from its mast; the central horseman, who meets the shock, of storm, or enemy, whatever it be, is hurled backwards from his seat, like a stone from a sling; and this figure with the shattered tree trunk behind it, is the most noble part of the picture. There is another grand horse on the right, however, also in full action. Two gigantic figures on foot, on the left, meant to be nearer than the others, would, it seems to me, have injured the picture, had they been clearly visible; but time has reduced them to perfect subordination. ROCCO, SCUOLA DI SAN, bases of, I. 291, 431; soffit ornaments of, I. 337. An interesting building of the early Renaissance (1517), passing into Roman Renaissance. The wreaths of leafage about its shafts are wonderfully delicate and fine, though misplaced. As regards the pictures which it contains, it is one of the three most precious buildings in Italy; buildings, I mean, consistently decorated with a series of paintings at the time of their erection, and still exhibiting that series in its original order. I suppose there can be little question, but that the three most important edifices of this kind in Italy are the Sistine Chapel, the Campo Santo of Pisa, and the Scuola di San Rocco at Venice: the first is painted by Michael Angelo; the second by Orcagna, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Laurati, and several other men whose works are as rare as they are precious; and the third by Tintoret. Whatever the traveller may miss in Venice, he should therefore give unembarrassed attention and unbroken time to the Scuola di San Rocco; and I shall, accordingly, number the pictures, and note in them, one by one, what seemed to me most worthy of observation. There are sixty-two in all, but eight of these are merely of children or children's heads, and two of unimportant figures. The number of valuable pictures is fifty-two; arranged on the walls and ceilings of three rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is only in the early morning that some of the pictures can be seen at all, nor can they ever be seen but imperfectly. They were all painted, however, for their places in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret's other works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more than vast sketches, made to produce, under a certain degree of shadow, the effect of finished pictures. Their treatment is thus to be considered as a kind of scene-painting; differing from ordinary scene-painting only in this, that the effect aimed at is not _that of a natural scene_ but _a perfect picture_. They differ in this respect from all other existing works; for there is not, as far as I know, any other instance in which a great master has consented to work for a room plunged into almost total obscurity. It is probable that none but Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most fortunate that he was forced to it. For in this magnificent scene-painting we have, of course, more wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowledge of effect, than could ever have been exhibited in finished pictures; while the necessity of doing much with few strokes keeps his mind so completely on the stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity of production prevented his being wearied), that no other series of his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the other hand, owing to the velocity and coarseness of the painting, it is more liable to injury through drought or damp; and, as the walls have been for years continually running down with rain, and what little sun gets into the place contrives to fall all day right on one or other of the pictures, they are nothing but wrecks of what they were; and the ruins of paintings originally coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to the public mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken down to be retouched; but the man to whom the task was committed providentially died, and only one of them was spoiled. I have found traces of his work upon another, but not to an extent very seriously destructive. The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all that are in the upper room, appear entirely intact. Although, as compared with his other works, they are all very scenic in execution, there are great differences in their degrees of finish; and, curiously enough, some on the ceilings and others in the darkest places in the lower room are very nearly finished pictures, while the "Agony in the Garden," which is in one of the best lights in the upper room, appears to have been painted in a couple of hours with a broom for a brush. For the traveller's greater convenience, I shall give a rude plan of the arrangement, and list of the subjects, of each group of pictures before examining them in detail. First Group. On the walls of the room on the ground floor. [Illustration: 1. Annunciation. 5. The Magdalen. 2. Adoration of Magi. 6. St. Mary of Egypt. 3. Flight into Egypt. 7. Circumcision. 4. Massacre of Innocents. 8. Assumption of Virgin. At the turn of the stairs leading to the upper room: 9. Visitation.] 1. _The Annunciation._ This, which first strikes the eye, is a very just representative of the whole group, the execution being carried to the utmost limits of boldness consistent with completion. It is a well-known picture, and need not therefore be specially described, but one or two points in it require notice. The face of the Virgin is very disagreeable to the spectator from below, giving the idea of a woman about thirty, who had never been handsome. If the face is untouched, it is the only instance I have ever seen of Tintoret's failing in an intended effect, for, when seen near, the face is comely and youthful, and expresses only surprise, instead of the pain and fear of which it bears the aspect in the distance. I could not get near enough to see whether it had been retouched. It looks like Tintoret's work, though rather hard; but, as there are unquestionable marks in the retouching of this picture, it is possible that some slight restoration of lines supposed to be faded, entirely alter the distant expression of the face. One of the evident pieces of repainting is the scarlet of the Madonna's lap, which is heavy and lifeless. A far more injurious one is the strip of sky seen through the doorway by which the angel enters, which has originally been of the deep golden color of the distance on the left, and which the blundering restorer has daubed over with whitish blue, so that it looks like a bit of the wall; luckily he has not touched the outlines of the angel's black wings, on which the whole expression of the picture depends. This angel and the group of small cherubs above form a great swinging chain, of which the dove representing the Holy Spirit forms the bend. The angels in their flight seem to be attached to this as the train of fire is to a rocket; all of them appearing to have swooped down with the swiftness of a falling star. 2. _Adoration of the Magi._ The most finished picture in the Scuola, except the "Crucifixion," and perhaps the most delightful of the whole. It unites every source of pleasure that a picture can possess: the highest elevation of principal subject, mixed with the lowest detail of picturesque incident; the dignity of the highest ranks of men, opposed to the simplicity of the lowest; the quietness and serenity of an incident in cottage life, contrasted with the turbulence of troops of horsemen and the spiritual power of angels. The placing of the two doves as principal points of light in the front of the picture, in order to remind the spectator of the poverty of the mother whose child is receiving the offerings and adoration of three monarchs, is one of Tintoret's master touches; the whole scene, indeed, is conceived in his happiest manner. Nothing can be at once more humble or more dignified than the bearing of the kings; and there is a sweet reality given to the whole incident by the Madonna's stooping forward and lifting her hand in admiration of the vase of gold which has been set before the Christ, though she does so with such gentleness and quietness that her dignity is not in the least injured by the simplicity of the action. As if to illustrate the means by which the Wise men were brought from the East, the whole picture is nothing but a large star, of which Christ is the centre; all the figures, even the timbers of the roof, radiate from the small bright figure on which the countenances of the flying angels are bent, the star itself, gleaming through the timbers above, being quite subordinate. The composition would almost be too artificial were it not broken by the luminous distance where the troop of horsemen are waiting for the kings. These, with a dog running at full speed, at once interrupt the symmetry of the lines, and form a point of relief from the over concentration of all the rest of the action. 3. _Flight into Egypt._ One of the principal figures here is the donkey. I have never seen any of the nobler animals--lion, or leopard, or horse, or dragon--made so sublime as this quiet head of the domestic ass, chiefly owing to the grand motion in the nostril and writhing in the ears. The space of the picture is chiefly occupied by lovely landscape, and the Madonna and St. Joseph are pacing their way along a shady path upon the banks of a river at the side of the picture. I had not any conception, until I got near, how much pains had been taken with the Virgin's head; its expression is as sweet and as intense as that of any of Raffaelle's, its reality far greater. The painter seems to have intended that everything should be subordinate to the beauty of this single head; and the work is a wonderful proof of the way in which a vast field of canvas may be made conducive to the interest of a single figure. This is partly accomplished by slightness of painting, so that on close examination, while there is everything to astonish in the masterly handling and purpose, there is not much perfect or very delightful painting; in fact, the two figures are treated like the living figures in a scene at the theatre, and finished to perfection, while the landscape is painted as hastily as the scenes, and with the same kind of opaque size color. It has, however, suffered as much as any of the series, and it is hardly fair to judge of its tones and colors in its present state. 4. _Massacre of the Innocents._ The following account of this picture, given in "Modern Painters," may be useful to the traveller, and is therefore here repeated. "I have before alluded to the painfulness of Raffaelle's treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents. Fuseli affirms of it, that, 'in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and terror.' If this be so, I think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it; but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror, with various development of maternal character. Fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. For this reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, I think, false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with the fugitives; he has sat down in his study to convulse features methodically, and philosophize over insanity. Not so Tintoret. Knowing, or feeling, that the expression of the human face was, in such circumstances, not to be rendered, and that the effort could only end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features, he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching expression. Still less does he depend on details of murder or ghastliness of death; there is no blood, no stabbing or cutting, but there is an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro. The scene is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed Moabite on the water that came by the way of Edom: a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, _she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight_;--she will be dashed dead in a second:--close to us is the great struggle; a heap of the mothers, entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords; one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp, and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel vice, falls backwards, helpless over the heap, right on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one hopeless, frenzied, furious abandonment of body and soul in the effort to save. Far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is something in the shadow like a heap of clothes. It is a woman, sitting quiet,--quite quiet,--still as any stone; she looks down steadfastly on her dead child, laid along on the floor before her, and her hand is pressed softly upon her brow." I have nothing to add to the above description of this picture, except that I believe there may have been some change in the color of the shadow that crosses the pavement. The chequers of the pavements are, in the light, golden white and pale grey; in the shadow, red and dark grey, the white in the sunshine becoming red in the shadow. I formerly supposed that this was meant to give greater horror to the scene, and it is very like Tintoret if it be so; but there is a strangeness and discordance in it which makes me suspect the colors may have changed. 5. _The Magdalen._ This and the picture opposite to it, "St. Mary of Egypt," have been painted to fill up narrow spaces between the windows which were not large enough to receive compositions, and yet in which single figures would have looked awkwardly thrust into the corner. Tintoret has made these spaces as large as possible by filling them with landscapes, which are rendered interesting by the introduction of single figures of very small size. He has not, however, considered his task, of making a small piece of wainscot look like a large one, worth the stretch of his powers, and has painted these two landscapes just as carelessly and as fast as an upholsterer's journeyman finishing a room at a railroad hotel. The color is for the most part opaque, and dashed or scrawled on in the manner of a scene-painter; and as during the whole morning the sun shines upon the one picture, and during the afternoon upon the other, hues, which were originally thin and imperfect, are now dried in many places into mere dirt upon the canvas. With all these drawbacks the pictures are of very high interest, for although, as I said, hastily and carelessly, they are not languidly painted; on the contrary, he has been in his hottest and grandest temper; and in this first one ("Magdalen") the laurel tree, with its leaves driven hither and thither among flakes of fiery cloud, has been probably one of the greatest achievements that his hand performed in landscape: its roots are entangled in underwood; of which every leaf seems to be articulated, yet all is as wild as if it had grown there instead of having been painted; there has been a mountain distance, too, and a sky of stormy light, of which I infinitely regret the loss, for though its masses of light are still discernible, its variety of hue is all sunk into a withered brown. There is a curious piece of execution in the striking of the light upon a brook which runs under the roots of the laurel in the foreground: these roots are traced in shadow against the bright surface of the water; another painter would have drawn the light first, and drawn the dark roots over it. Tintoret has laid in a brown ground which he has left for the roots, and painted the water through their interstices with a few mighty rolls of his brush laden with white. 6. _St. Mary of Egypt._ This picture differs but little in the plan, from the one opposite, except that St. Mary has her back towards us, and the Magdalen her face, and that the tree on the other side of the brook is a palm instead of a laurel. The brook (Jordan?) is, however, here much more important; and the water painting is exceedingly fine. Of all painters that I know, in old times, Tintoret is the fondest of running water; there was a sort of sympathy between it and his own impetuous spirit. The rest of the landscape is not of much interest, except so far as it is pleasant to see trunks of trees drawn by single strokes of the brush. 7. _The Circumcision of Christ._ The custode has some story about this picture having been painted in imitation of Paul Veronese. I much doubt if Tintoret ever imitated any body; but this picture is the expression of his perception of what Veronese delighted in, the nobility that there may be in mere golden tissue and colored drapery. It is, in fact, a picture of the moral power of gold and color; and the chief use of the attendant priest is to support upon his shoulders the crimson robe, with its square tablets of black and gold; and yet nothing is withdrawn from the interest or dignity of the scene. Tintoret has taken immense pains with the head of the high-priest. I know not any existing old man's head so exquisitely tender, or so noble in its lines. He receives the Infant Christ in his arms kneeling, and looking down upon the Child with infinite veneration and love; and the flashing of golden rays from its head is made the centre of light, and all interest. The whole picture is like a golden charger to receive the Child; the priest's dress is held up behind him, that it may occupy larger space; the tables and floor are covered with chequer-work; the shadows of the temple are filled with brazen lamps; and above all are hung masses of curtains, whose crimson folds are strewn over with golden flakes. Next to the "Adoration of the Magi" this picture is the most laboriously finished of the Scuola di San Rocco, and it is unquestionably the highest existing type of the sublimity which may be thrown into the treatment of accessaries of dress and decoration. 8. _Assumption of the Virgin._ On the tablet or panel of stone which forms the side of the tomb out of which the Madonna rises, is this inscription, in large letters, REST. ANTONIUS FLORIAN, 1834. Exactly in proportion to a man's idiocy, is always the size of the letters in which he writes his name on the picture that he spoils. The old mosaicists in St. Mark's have not, in a single instance, as far as I know, signed their names; but the spectator who wishes to know who destroyed the effect of the nave, may see his name inscribed, twice over, in letters half a foot high, BARTOLOMEO BOZZA. I have never seen Tintoret's name signed, except in the great "Crucifixion;" but this Antony Florian, I have no doubt, repainted the whole side of the tomb that he might put his name on it. The picture is, of course, ruined wherever he touched it; that is to say, half over; the circle of cherubs in the sky is still pure; and the design of the great painter is palpable enough yet in the grand flight of the horizontal angel, on whom the Madonna half leans as she ascends. It has been a noble picture, and is a grievous loss; but, happily, there are so many pure ones, that we need not spend time in gleaning treasures out of the ruins of this. 9. _Visitation._ A small picture, painted in his very best manner; exquisite in its simplicity, unrivalled in vigor, well preserved, and, as a piece of painting, certainly one of the most precious in Venice. Of course it does not show any of his high inventive powers; nor can a picture of four middle-sized figures be made a proper subject of comparison with large canvases containing forty or fifty; but it is, for this very reason, painted with such perfect ease, and yet with no slackness either of affection or power, that there is no picture that I covet so much. It is, besides, altogether free from the Renaissance taint of dramatic effect. The gestures are as simple and natural as Giotto's, only expressed by grander lines, such as none but Tintoret ever reached. The draperies are dark, relieved against a light sky, the horizon being excessively low, and the outlines of the drapery so severe, that the intervals between the figures look like ravines between great rocks, and have all the sublimity of an Alpine valley at twilight. This precious picture is hung about thirty feet above the eye, but by looking at it in a strong light, it is discoverable that the Saint Elizabeth is dressed in green and crimson, the Virgin in the peculiar red which all great colorists delight in--a sort of glowing brick-color or brownish scarlet, opposed to rich golden brownish black; and both have white kerchiefs, or drapery, thrown over their shoulders. Zacharias leans on his staff behind them in a black dress with white sleeves. The stroke of brilliant white light, which outlines the knee of Saint Elizabeth, is a curious instance of the habit of the painter to relieve his dark forms by a sort of halo of more vivid light, which, until lately, one would have been apt to suppose a somewhat artificial and unjustifiable means of effect. The daguerreotype has shown, what the naked eye never could, that the instinct of the great painter was true, and that there is actually such a sudden and sharp line of light round the edges of dark objects relieved by luminous space. Opposite this picture is a most precious Titian, the "Annunciation," full of grace and beauty. I think the Madonna one of the sweetest figures he ever painted. But if the traveller has entered at all into the spirit of Tintoret, he will immediately feel the comparative feebleness and conventionality of the Titian. Note especially the mean and petty folds of the angel's drapery, and compare them with the draperies of the opposite picture. The larger pictures at the sides of the stairs by Zanchi and Negri, are utterly worthless. [Illustration: Second Group. On the walls of the upper room. 10. Adoration of Shepherds. 17. Resurrection of Lazarus. 11. Baptism. 18. Ascension. 12. Resurrection. 19. Pool of Bethesda. 13. Agony in Garden. 20. Temptation. 14. Last Supper. 21. St. Rocco. 15. Altar Piece: St. Rocco. 22. St. Sebastian. 16. Miracle of Loaves.] 10. _The Adoration of the Shepherds._ This picture commences the series of the upper room, which, as already noticed, is painted with far less care than that of the lower. It is one of the painter's inconceivable caprices that the only canvases that are in good light should be covered in this hasty manner, while those in the dungeon below, and on the ceiling above, are all highly labored. It is, however, just possible that the covering of these walls may have been an after-thought, when he had got tired of his work. They are also, for the most part, illustrative of a principle of which I am more and more convinced every day, that historical and figure pieces ought not to be made vehicles for effects of light. The light which is fit for a historical picture is that tempered semi-sunshine of which, in general, the works of Titian are the best examples, and of which the picture we have just passed, "The Visitation," is a perfect example from the hand of one greater than Titian; so also the three "Crucifixions" of San Rocco, San Cassano, and St. John and Paul; the "Adoration of the Magi" here; and, in general, the finest works of the master; but Tintoret was not a man to work in any formal or systematic manner; and, exactly like Turner, we find him recording every effect which Nature herself displays. Still he seems to regard the pictures which deviate from the great general principle of colorists rather as "tours de force" than as sources of pleasure; and I do not think there is any instance of his having worked out one of these tricky pictures with thorough affection, except only in the case of the "Marriage of Cana." By tricky pictures, I mean those which display light entering in different directions, and attract the eye to the effects rather than to the figure which displays them. Of this treatment, we have already had a marvellous instance in the candle-light picture of the "Last Supper" in San Giorgio Maggiore. This "Adoration of the Shepherds" has probably been nearly as wonderful when first painted: the Madonna is seated on a kind of hammock floor made of rope netting, covered with straw; it divides the picture into two stories, of which the uppermost contains the Virgin, with two women who are adoring Christ, and shows light entering from above through the loose timbers of the roof of the stable, as well as through the bars of a square window; the lower division shows this light falling behind the netting upon the stable floor, occupied by a cock and a cow, and against this light are relieved the figures of the shepherds, for the most part in demi-tint, but with flakes of more vigorous sunshine falling here and there upon them from above. The optical illusion has originally been as perfect as one of Hunt's best interiors; but it is most curious that no part of the work seems to have been taken any pleasure in by the painter; it is all by his hand, but it looks as if he had been bent only on getting over the ground. It is literally a piece of scene-painting, and is exactly what we might fancy Tintoret to have done, had he been forced to paint scenes at a small theatre at a shilling a day. I cannot think that the whole canvas, though fourteen feet high and ten wide, or thereabouts, could have taken him more than a couple of days to finish: and it is very noticeable that exactly in proportion to the brilliant effects of light is the coarseness of the execution, for the figures of the Madonna and of the women above, which are not in any strong effect, are painted with some care, while the shepherds and the cow are alike slovenly; and the latter, which is in full sunshine, is recognizable for a cow more by its size and that of its horns, than by any care given to its form. It is interesting to contrast this slovenly and mean sketch with the ass's head in the "Flight into Egypt," on which the painter exerted his full power; as an effect of light, however, the work is, of course, most interesting. One point in the treatment is especially noticeable: there is a peacock in the rack beyond the cow; and under other circumstances, one cannot doubt that Tintoret would have liked a peacock in full color, and would have painted it green and blue with great satisfaction. It is sacrificed to the light, however, and is painted in warm grey, with a dim eye or two in the tail: this process is exactly analogous to Turner's taking the colors out of the flags of his ships in the "Gosport." Another striking point is the litter with which the whole picture is filled in order more to confuse the eye: there is straw sticking from the roof, straw all over the hammock floor, and straw struggling hither and thither all over the floor itself; and, to add to the confusion, the glory around the head of the infant, instead of being united and serene, is broken into little bits, and is like a glory of chopped straw. But the most curious thing, after all, is the want of delight in any of the principal figures, and the comparative meanness and commonplaceness of even the folds of the drapery. It seems as if Tintoret had determined to make the shepherds as uninteresting as possible; but one does not see why their very clothes should be ill painted, and their disposition unpicturesque. I believe, however, though it never struck me until I had examined this picture, that this is one of the painter's fixed principles: he does not, with German sentimentality, make shepherds and peasants graceful or sublime, but he purposely vulgarizes them, not by making their actions or their faces boorish or disagreeable, but rather by painting them ill, and composing their draperies tamely. As far as I recollect at present, the principle is universal with him; exactly in proportion to the dignity of character is the beauty of the painting. He will not put out his strength upon any man belonging to the lower classes; and, in order to know what the painter is, one must see him at work on a king, a senator, or a saint. The curious connexion of this with the aristocratic tendencies of the Venetian nation, when we remember that Tintoret was the greatest man whom that nation produced, may become very interesting, if followed out. I forgot to note that, though the peacock is painted with great regardlessness of color, there is a feature in it which no common painter would have observed,--the peculiar flatness of the back, and undulation of the shoulders: the bird's body is all there, though its feathers are a good deal neglected; and the same thing is noticeable in a cock who is pecking among the straw near the spectator, though in other respects a shabby cock enough. The fact is, I believe, he had made his shepherds so commonplace that he dare not paint his animals well, otherwise one would have looked at nothing in the picture but the peacock, cock, and cow. I cannot tell what the shepherds are offering; they look like milk bowls, but they are awkwardly held up, with such twistings of body as would have certainly spilt the milk. A woman in front has a basket of eggs; but this I imagine to be merely to keep up the rustic character of the scene, and not part of the shepherd's offerings. 11. _Baptism._ There is more of the true picture quality in this work than in the former one, but still very little appearance of enjoyment or care. The color is for the most part grey and uninteresting, and the figures are thin and meagre in form, and slightly painted; so much so, that of the nineteen figures in the distance, about a dozen are hardly worth calling figures, and the rest are so sketched and flourished in that one can hardly tell which is which. There is one point about it very interesting to a landscape painter: the river is seen far into the distance, with a piece of copse bordering it; the sky beyond is dark, but the water nevertheless receives a brilliant reflection from some unseen rent in the clouds, so brilliant, that when I was first at Venice, not being accustomed to Tintoret's slight execution, or to see pictures so much injured, I took this piece of water for a piece of sky. The effect as Tintoret has arranged it, is indeed somewhat unnatural, but it is valuable as showing his recognition of a principle unknown to half the historical painters of the present day,--that the reflection seen in the water is totally different from the object seen above it, and that it is very possible to have a bright light in reflection where there appears nothing but darkness to be reflected. The clouds in the sky itself are round, heavy, and lightless, and in a great degree spoil what would otherwise be a fine landscape distance. Behind the rocks on the right, a single head is seen, with a collar on the shoulders: it seems to be intended for a portrait of some person connected with the picture. 12. _Resurrection._ Another of the "effect of light" pictures, and not a very striking one, the best part of it being the two distant figures of the Maries seen in the dawn of the morning. The conception of the Resurrection itself is characteristic of the worst points of Tintoret. His impetuosity is here in the wrong place; Christ bursts out of the rock like a thunderbolt, and the angels themselves seem likely to be crushed under the rent stones of the tomb. Had the figure of Christ been sublime, this conception might have been accepted; but, on the contrary, it is weak, mean, and painful; and the whole picture is languidly or roughly painted, except only the fig-tree at the top of the rock, which, by a curious caprice, is not only drawn in the painter's best manner, but has golden ribs to all its leaves, making it look like one of the beautiful crossed or chequered patterns, of which he is so fond in his dresses; the leaves themselves being a dark olive brown. 13. _The Agony in the Garden._ I cannot at present understand the order of these subjects; but they may have been misplaced. This, of all the San Rocco pictures, is the most hastily painted, but it is not, like those we have been passing, _clodly_ painted; it seems to have been executed altogether with a hearth-broom, and in a few hours. It is another of the "effects," and a very curious one; the Angel who bears the cup to Christ is surrounded by a red halo; yet the light which falls upon the shoulders of the sleeping disciples, and upon the leaves of the olive-trees, is cool and silvery, while the troop coming up to seize Christ are seen by torch-light. Judas, who is the second figure, points to Christ, but turns his head away as he does so, as unable to look at him. This is a noble touch; the foliage is also exceedingly fine, though what kind of olive-tree bears such leaves I know not, each of them being about the size of a man's hand. If there be any which bear such foliage, their olives must be the size of cocoa-nuts. This, however, is true only of the underwood, which is, perhaps, not meant for olive. There are some taller trees at the top of the picture, whose leaves are of a more natural size. On closely examining the figures of the troops on the left, I find that the distant ones are concealed, all but the limbs, by a sort of arch of dark color, which is now so injured, that I cannot tell whether it was foliage or ground: I suppose it to have been a mass of close foliage, through which the troop is breaking its way; Judas rather showing them the path, than actually pointing to Christ, as it is written, "Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place." St. Peter, as the most zealous of the three disciples, the only one who was to endeavor to defend his Master, is represented as awakening and turning his head toward the troop, while James and John are buried in profound slumber, laid in magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves, however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which from the Angel's presence is spread over the robes of the disciples. The strangest feature in the whole is that the Christ also is represented as sleeping. The angel seems to appear to him in a dream. 14. _The Last Supper._ A most unsatisfactory picture; I think about the worst I know of Tintoret's, where there is no appearance of retouching. He always makes the disciples in this scene too vulgar; they are here not only vulgar, but diminutive, and Christ is at the end of the table, the smallest figure of them all. The principal figures are two mendicants sitting on steps in front; a kind of supporters, but I suppose intended to be waiting for the fragments; a dog, in still more earnest expectation, is watching the movements of the disciples, who are talking together, Judas having just gone out. Christ is represented as giving what one at first supposes is the sop to Judas, but as the disciple who received it has a glory, and there are only eleven at table, it is evidently the Sacramental bread. The room in which they are assembled is a sort of large kitchen, and the host is seen employed at a dresser in the background. This picture has not only been originally poor, but is one of those exposed all day to the sun, and is dried into mere dusty canvas: where there was once blue, there is now nothing. 15. _Saint Rocco in Glory._ One of the worst order of Tintorets, with apparent smoothness and finish, yet languidly painted, as if in illness or fatigue; very dark and heavy in tone also; its figures, for the most part, of an awkward middle size, about five feet high, and very uninteresting. St. Rocco ascends to heaven, looking down upon a crowd of poor and sick persons who are blessing and adoring him. One of these, kneeling at the bottom, is very nearly a repetition, though a careless and indolent one, of that of St. Stephen, in St. Giorgio Maggiore, and of the central figure in the "Paradise" of the Ducal Palace. It is a kind of lay figure, of which he seems to have been fond; its clasped hands are here shockingly painted--I should think unfinished. It forms the only important light at the bottom, relieved on a dark ground; at the top of the picture, the figure of St. Rocco is seen in shadow against the light of the sky, and all the rest is in confused shadow. The commonplaceness of this composition is curiously connected with the languor of thought and touch throughout the work. 16. _Miracle of the Loaves._ Hardly anything but a fine piece of landscape is here left; it is more exposed to the sun than any other picture in the room, and its draperies having been, in great part, painted in blue, are now mere patches of the color of starch; the scene is also very imperfectly conceived. The twenty-one figures, including Christ and his Disciples, very ill represent a crowd of seven thousand; still less is the marvel of the miracle expressed by perfect ease and rest of the reclining figures in the foreground, who do not so much as look surprised; considered merely as reclining figures, and as pieces of effect in half light, they have once been fine. The landscape, which represents the slope of a woody hill, has a very grand and far-away look. Behind it is a great space of streaky sky, almost prismatic in color, rosy and golden clouds covering up its blue, and some fine vigorous trees thrown against it; painted in about ten minutes each, however, by curly touches of the brush, and looking rather more like seaweed than foliage. 17. _Resurrection of Lazarus._ Very strangely, and not impressively conceived. Christ is half reclining, half sitting, at the bottom of the picture, while Lazarus is disencumbered of his grave-clothes at the top of it; the scene being the side of a rocky hill, and the mouth of the tomb probably once visible in the shadow on the left; but all that is now discernible is a man having his limbs unbound, as if Christ were merely ordering a prisoner to be loosed. There appears neither awe nor agitation, nor even much astonishment, in any of the figures of the group; but the picture is more vigorous than any of the three last mentioned, and the upper part of it is quite worthy of the master, especially its noble fig-tree and laurel, which he has painted, in one of his usual fits of caprice, as carefully as that in the "Resurrection of Christ," opposite. Perhaps he has some meaning in this; he may have been thinking of the verse, "Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth," &c. In the present instance, the leaves are dark only, and have no golden veins. The uppermost figures also come dark against the sky, and would form a precipitous mass, like a piece of the rock itself, but that they are broken in upon by one of the limbs of Lazarus, bandaged and in full light, which, to my feeling, sadly injures the picture, both as a disagreeable object, and a light in the wrong place. The grass and weeds are, throughout, carefully painted, but the lower figures are of little interest, and the face of the Christ a grievous failure. 18. _The Ascension._ I have always admired this picture, though it is very slight and thin in execution, and cold in color; but it is remarkable for its thorough effect of open air, and for the sense of motion and clashing in the wings of the Angels which sustain the Christ: they owe this effect a good deal to the manner in which they are set, edge on; all seem like sword-blades cutting the air. It is the most curious in conception of all the pictures in the Scuola, for it represents, beneath the Ascension, a kind of epitome of what took place before the Ascension. In the distance are two Apostles walking, meant, I suppose, for the two going to Emmaus; nearer are a group round a table, to remind us of Christ appearing to them as they sat at meat; and in the foreground is a single reclining figure of, I suppose, St. Peter, because we are told that "he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:" but this interpretation is doubtful; for why should not the vision by the Lake of Tiberias be expressed also? And the strange thing of all is the scene, for Christ ascended from the Mount of Olives; but the Disciples are walking, and the table is set, in a little marshy and grassy valley, like some of the bits near Maison Neuve on the Jura, with a brook running through it, so capitally expressed, that I believe it is this which makes me so fond of the picture. The reflections are as scientific in the diminution, in the image, of large masses of bank above, as any of Turner's, and the marshy and reedy ground looks as if one would sink into it; but what all this has to do with the Ascension I cannot see. The figure of Christ is not undignified, but by no means either interesting or sublime. 19. _Pool of Bethesda._ I have no doubt the principal figures have been repainted; but as the colors are faded, and the subject disgusting, I have not paid this picture sufficient attention to say how far the injury extends; nor need any one spend time upon it, unless after having first examined all the other Tintorets in Venice. All the great Italian painters appear insensible to the feeling of disgust at disease; but this study of the population of an hospital is without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have all been uninteresting,--I believe chiefly owing to the observance in them of Sir Joshua's rule for the heroic, "that drapery is to be mere drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade." However wise such a rule may be when applied to works of the purest religious art, it is anything but wise as respects works of color. Tintoret is never quite himself unless he has fur or velvet, or rich stuff of one sort or the other, or jewels, or armor, or something that he can put play of color into, among his figures, and not dead folds of linsey-woolsey; and I believe that even the best pictures of Raffaelle and Angelico are not a little helped by their hems of robes, jewelled crowns, priests' copes, and so on; and the pictures that have nothing of this kind in them, as for instance the "Transfiguration," are to my mind not a little dull. 20. _Temptation._ This picture singularly illustrates what has just been observed; it owes great part of its effect to the lustre of the jewels in the armlet of the evil angel, and to the beautiful colors of his wings. These are slight accessaries apparently, but they enhance the value of all the rest, and they have evidently been enjoyed by the painter. The armlet is seen by reflected light, its stones shining by inward lustre; this occult fire being the only hint given of the real character of the Tempter, who is otherways represented in the form of a beautiful angel, though the face is sensual: we can hardly tell how far it was intended to be therefore expressive of evil; for Tintoret's good angels have not always the purest features; but there is a peculiar subtlety in this telling of the story by so slight a circumstance as the glare of the jewels in the darkness. It is curious to compare this imagination with that of the mosaics in St. Mark's, in which Satan is a black monster, with horns, and head, and tail, complete. The whole of the picture is powerfully and carefully painted, though very broadly; it is a strong effect of light, and therefore, as usual, subdued in color. The painting of the stones in the foreground I have always thought, and still think, the best piece of rock drawing before Turner, and the most amazing instance of Tintoret's perceptiveness afforded by any of his pictures. 21. _St. Rocco._ Three figures occupy the spandrils of the window above this and the following picture, painted merely in light and shade, two larger than life, one rather smaller. I believe these to be by Tintoret; but as they are quite in the dark, so that the execution cannot be seen, and very good designs of the kind have been furnished by other masters, I cannot answer for them. The figure of St. Rocco, as well as its companion, St. Sebastian, is colored; they occupy the narrow intervals between the windows, and are of course invisible under ordinary circumstances. By a great deal of straining of the eyes, and sheltering them with the hand from the light, some little idea of the design may be obtained. The "St. Rocco" is a fine figure, though rather coarse, but, at all events, worth as much light as would enable us to see it. 22. _St. Sebastian._ This, the companion figure, is one of the finest things in the whole room, and assuredly the most majestic Saint Sebastian in existence; as far as mere humanity can be majestic, for there is no effort at any expression of angelic or saintly resignation; the effort is simply to realize the fact of the martyrdom, and it seems to me that this is done to an extent not even attempted by any other painter. I never saw a man die a violent death, and therefore cannot say whether this figure be true or not, but it gives the grandest and most intense impression of truth. The figure is dead, and well it may be, for there is one arrow through the forehead and another through the heart; but the eyes are open, though glazed, and the body is rigid in the position in which it last stood, the left arm raised and the left limb advanced, something in the attitude of a soldier sustaining an attack under his shield, while the dead eyes are still turned in the direction from which the arrows came: but the most characteristic feature is the way these arrows are fixed. In the common martyrdoms of St. Sebastian they are stuck into him here and there like pins, as if they had been shot from a great distance and had come faltering down, entering the flesh but a little way, and rather bleeding the saint to death than mortally wounding him; but Tintoret had no such ideas about archery. He must have seen bows drawn in battle, like that of Jehu when he smote Jehoram between the harness: all the arrows in the saint's body lie straight in the same direction, broad-feathered and strong-shafted, and sent apparently with the force of thunderbolts; every one of them has gone through him like a lance, two through the limbs, one through the arm, one through the heart, and the last has crashed through the forehead, nailing the head to the tree behind as if it had been dashed in by a sledge-hammer. The face, in spite of its ghastliness, is beautiful, and has been serene; and the light which enters first and glistens on the plumes of the arrows, dies softly away upon the curling hair, and mixes with the glory upon the forehead. There is not a more remarkable picture in Venice, and yet I do not suppose that one in a thousand of the travellers who pass through the Scuola so much as perceives there is a picture in the place which it occupies. [Illustration: Third Group. On the roof of the upper room. 23. Moses striking the Rock. 29. Elijah. 24. Plague of Serpents. 30. Jonah. 25. Fall of Manna. 31. Joshua. 26. Jacob's Dream. 32. Sacrifice of Isaac. 27. Ezekiel's Vision. 33. Elijah at the Brook. 28. Fall of Man. 34. Paschal Feast. 35. Elisha feeding the People.] 23. _Moses striking the Rock._ We now come to the series of pictures upon which the painter concentrated the strength he had reserved for the upper room; and in some sort wisely, for, though it is not pleasant to examine pictures on a ceiling, they are at least distinctly visible without straining the eyes against the light. They are carefully conceived and thoroughly well painted in proportion to their distance from the eye. This carefulness of thought is apparent at a glance: the "Moses striking the Rock" embraces the whole of the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, and even something more, for it is not from that chapter, but from parallel passages that we gather the facts of the impatience of Moses and the wrath of God at the waters of Meribah; both which facts are shown by the leaping of the stream out of the rock half-a-dozen ways at once, forming a great arch over the head of Moses, and by the partial veiling of the countenance of the Supreme Being. This latter is the most painful part of the whole picture, at least as it is seen from below; and I believe that in some repairs of the roof this head must have been destroyed and repainted. It is one of Tintoret's usual fine thoughts that the lower part of the figure is veiled, not merely by clouds, but in a kind of watery sphere, showing the Deity coming to the Israelites at that particular moment as the Lord of the Rivers and of the Fountain of the Waters. The whole figure, as well as that of Moses and the greater number of those in the foreground, is at once dark and warm, black and red being the prevailing colors, while the distance is bright gold touched with blue, and seems to open into the picture like a break of blue sky after rain. How exquisite is this expression, by mere color, of the main force of the fact represented! that is to say, joy and refreshment after sorrow and scorching heat. But, when we examine of what this distance consists, we shall find still more cause for admiration. The blue in it is not the blue of sky, it is obtained by blue stripes upon white tents glowing in the sunshine; and in front of these tents is seen that great battle with Amalek of which the account is given in the remainder of the chapter, and for which the Israelites received strength in the streams which ran out of the rock in Horeb. Considered merely as a picture, the opposition of cool light to warm shadow is one of the most remarkable pieces of color in the Scuola, and the great mass of foliage which waves over the rocks on the left appears to have been elaborated with his highest power and his most sublime invention. But this noble passage is much injured, and now hardly visible. 24. _Plague of Serpents._ The figures in the distance are remarkably important in this picture, Moses himself being among them; in fact, the whole scene is filled chiefly with middle-sized figures, in order to increase the impression of space. It is interesting to observe the difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great painters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret. The first two, equal to the latter in energy, had less love of liberty: they were fond of binding their compositions into knots, Tintoret of scattering his far and wide: they all alike preserve the unity of composition, but the unity in the first two is obtained by binding, and that of the last by springing from one source; and, together with this feeling, comes his love of space, which makes him less regard the rounding and form of objects themselves, than their relations of light and shade and distance. Therefore Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents huge boa constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them. Tintoret does not like to be so bound; so he makes the serpents little flying and fluttering monsters like lampreys with wings; and the children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We are told that "the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they _bit_ the people;" we are not told that they crushed the people to death. And while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific conception. M. Angelo's would be terrific if one could believe in it: but our instinct tells us that boa constrictors do not come in armies; and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, where there is no probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their _veritableness_ which makes them awful. They have triangular heads with sharp beaks or muzzle; and short, rather thick bodies, with bony processes down the back like those of sturgeons; and small wings spotted with orange and black; and round glaring eyes, not very large, but very ghastly, with an intense delight in biting expressed in them. (It is observable, that the Venetian painter has got his main idea of them from the sea-horses and small reptiles of the Lagoons.) These monsters are fluttering and writhing about everywhere, fixing on whatever they come near with their sharp venomous heads; and they are coiling about on the ground, and all the shadows and thickets are full of them, so that there is no escape anywhere: and, in order to give the idea of greater extent to the plague, Tintoret has not been content with one horizon; I have before mentioned the excessive strangeness of this composition, in having a cavern open in the right of the foreground, through which is seen another sky and another horizon. At the top of the picture, the Divine Being is seen borne by angels, apparently passing over the congregation in wrath, involved in masses of dark clouds; while, behind, an Angel of mercy is descending toward Moses, surrounded by a globe of white light. This globe is hardly seen from below; it is not a common glory, but a transparent sphere, like a bubble, which not only envelopes the angel, but crosses the figure of Moses, throwing the upper part of it into a subdued pale color, as if it were crossed by a sunbeam. Tintoret is the only painter who plays these tricks with transparent light, the only man who seems to have perceived the effects of sunbeams, mists, and clouds, in the far away atmosphere; and to have used what he saw on towers, clouds, or mountains, to enhance the sublimity of his figures. The whole upper part of this picture is magnificent, less with respect to individual figures, than for the drift of its clouds, and originality and complication of its light and shade; it is something like Raffaelle's "Vision of Ezekiel," but far finer. It is difficult to understand how any painter, who could represent floating clouds so nobly as he has done here, could ever paint the odd, round, pillowy masses which so often occur in his more carelessly designed sacred subjects. The lower figures are not so interesting, and the whole is painted with a view to effect from below, and gains little by close examination. 25. _Fall of Manna._ In none of these three large compositions has the painter made the slightest effort at expression in the human countenance; everything is done by gesture, and the faces of the people who are drinking from the rock, dying from the serpent-bites, and eating the manna, are all alike as calm as if nothing was happening; in addition to this, as they are painted for distant effect, the heads are unsatisfactory and coarse when seen near, and perhaps in this last picture the more so, and yet the story is exquisitely told. We have seen in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore another example of his treatment of it, where, however, the gathering of manna is a subordinate employment, but here it is principal. Now, observe, we are told of the manna, that it was found in the morning; that then there lay round about the camp a small round thing like the hoar-frost, and that "when the sun waxed hot it melted." Tintoret has endeavored, therefore, first of all, to give the idea of coolness; the congregation are reposing in a soft green meadow, surrounded by blue hills, and there are rich trees above them, to the branches of one of which is attached a great grey drapery to catch the manna as it comes down. In any other picture such a mass of drapery would assuredly have had some vivid color, but here it is grey; the fields are cool frosty green, the mountains cold blue, and, to complete the expression and meaning of all this, there is a most important point to be noted in the form of the Deity, seen above, through an opening in the clouds. There are at least ten or twelve other pictures in which the form of the Supreme Being occurs, to be found in the Scuola di San Rocco alone; and in every one of these instances it is richly colored, the garments being generally red and blue, but in this picture of the manna the figure is _snow white_. Thus the painter endeavors to show the Deity as the giver of bread, just as in the "Striking of the Rock" we saw that he represented Him as the Lord of the rivers, the fountains, and the waters. There is one other very sweet incident at the bottom of the picture; four or five sheep, instead of pasturing, turn their heads aside to catch the manna as it comes down, or seem to be licking it off each other's fleeces. The tree above, to which the drapery is tied, is the most delicate and delightful piece of leafage in all the Scuola; it has a large sharp leaf, something like that of a willow, but five times the size. 26. _Jacob's Dream._ A picture which has good effect from below, but gains little when seen near. It is an embarrassing one for any painter, because angels always look awkward going up and down stairs; one does not see the use of their wings. Tintoret has thrown them into buoyant and various attitudes, but has evidently not treated the subject with delight; and it is seen to all the more disadvantage because just above the painting of the "Ascension," in which the full fresh power of the painter is developed. One would think this latter picture had been done just after a walk among hills, for it is full of the most delicate effects of transparent cloud, more or less veiling the faces and forms of the angels, and covering with white light the silvery sprays of the palms, while the clouds in the "Jacob's Dream" are the ordinary rotundities of the studio. 27. _Ezekiel's Vision._ I suspect this has been repainted, it is so heavy and dead in color; a fault, however, observable in many of the small pictures on the ceiling, and perhaps the natural result of the fatigue of such a mind as Tintoret's. A painter who threw such intense energy into some of his works can hardly but have been languid in others in a degree never experienced by the more tranquil minds of less powerful workmen; and when this languor overtook him whilst he was at work on pictures where a certain space had to be covered by mere force of arm, this heaviness of color could hardly but have been the consequence: it shows itself chiefly in reds and other hot hues, many of the pictures in the Ducal Palace also displaying it in a painful degree. This "Ezekiel's Vision" is, however, in some measure worthy of the master, in the wild and horrible energy with which the skeletons are leaping up about the prophet; but it might have been less horrible and more sublime, no attempt being made to represent the space of the Valley of Dry Bones, and the whole canvas being occupied only by eight figures, of which five are half skeletons. It it is strange that, in such a subject, the prevailing hues should be red and brown. 28. _Fall of Man._ The two canvases last named are the most considerable in size upon the roof, after the centre pieces. We now come to the smaller subjects which surround the "Striking the Rock;" of these this "Fall of Man" is the best, and I should think it very fine anywhere but in the Scuola di San Rocco; there is a grand light on the body of Eve, and the vegetation is remarkably rich, but the faces are coarse, and the composition uninteresting. I could not get near enough to see what the grey object is upon which Eve appears to be sitting, nor could I see any serpent. It is made prominent in the picture of the Academy of this same subject, so that I suppose it is hidden in the darkness, together with much detail which it would be necessary to discover in order to judge the work justly. 29. _Elijah (?)._ A prophet holding down his face, which is covered with his hand. God is talking with him, apparently in rebuke. The clothes on his breast are rent, and the action of the figures might suggest the idea of the scene between the Deity and Elijah at Horeb: but there is no suggestion of the past magnificent scenery,--of the wind, the earthquake, or the fire; so that the conjecture is good for very little. The painting is of small interest; the faces are vulgar, and the draperies have too much vapid historical dignity to be delightful. 30. _Jonah._ The whale here occupies fully one-half of the canvas; being correspondent in value with a landscape background. His mouth is as large as a cavern, and yet, unless the mass of red color in the foreground be a piece of drapery, his tongue is too large for it. He seems to have lifted Jonah out upon it, and not yet drawn it back, so that it forms a kind of crimson cushion for him to kneel upon in his submission to the Deity. The head to which this vast tongue belongs is sketched in somewhat loosely, and there is little remarkable about it except its size, nor much in the figures, though the submissiveness of Jonah is well given. The great thought of Michael Angelo renders one little charitable to any less imaginative treatment of this subject. 31. _Joshua (?)._ This is a most interesting picture, and it is a shame that its subject is not made out, for it is not a common one. The figure has a sword in its hand, and looks up to a sky full of fire, out of which the form of the Deity is stooping, represented as white and colorless. On the other side of the picture there is seen among the clouds a pillar apparently falling, and there is a crowd at the feet of the principal figure, carrying spears. Unless this be Joshua at the fall of Jericho, I cannot tell what it means; it is painted with great vigor, and worthy of a better place. 32. _Sacrifice of Isaac._ In conception, it is one of the least worthy of the master in the whole room, the three figures being thrown into violent attitudes, as inexpressive as they are strained and artificial. It appears to have been vigorously painted, but vulgarly; that is to say, the light is concentrated upon the white beard and upturned countenance of Abraham, as it would have been in one of the dramatic effects of the French school, the result being that the head is very bright and very conspicuous, and perhaps, in some of the late operations upon the roof, recently washed and touched. In consequence, every one who comes into the room, is first invited to observe the "bella testa di Abramo." The only thing characteristic of Tintoret is the way in which the pieces of ragged wood are tossed hither and thither in the pile upon which Isaac is bound, although this scattering of the wood is inconsistent with the Scriptural account of Abraham's deliberate procedure, for we are told of him that "he set the wood in order." But Tintoret had probably not noticed this, and thought the tossing of the timber into the disordered heap more like the act of the father in his agony. 33. _Elijah at the Brook Cherith (?)._ I cannot tell if I have rightly interpreted the meaning of this picture, which merely represents a noble figure couched upon the ground, and an angel appearing to him; but I think that between the dark tree on the left, and the recumbent figure, there is some appearance of a running stream, at all events there is of a mountainous and stony place. The longer I study this master, the more I feel the strange likeness between him and Turner, in our never knowing what subject it is that will stir him to exertion. We have lately had him treating Jacob's Dream, Ezekiel's Vision, Abraham's Sacrifice, and Jonah's Prayer, (all of them subjects on which the greatest painters have delighted to expend their strength,) with coldness, carelessness, and evident absence of delight; and here, on a sudden, in a subject so indistinct that one cannot be sure of its meaning, and embracing only two figures, a man and an angel, forth he starts in his full strength. I believe he must somewhere or another, the day before, have seen a kingfisher; for this picture seems entirely painted for the sake of the glorious downy wings of the angel,--white clouded with blue, as the bird's head and wings are with green,--the softest and most elaborate in plumage that I have seen in any of his works: but observe also the general sublimity obtained by the mountainous lines of the drapery of the recumbent figure, dependent for its dignity upon these forms alone, as the face is more than half hidden, and what is seen of it expressionless. 34. _The Paschal Feast._ I name this picture by the title given in the guide-books; it represents merely five persons watching the increase of a small fire lighted on a table or altar in the midst of them. It is only because they have all staves in their hands that one may conjecture this fire to be that kindled to consume the Paschal offering. The effect is of course a fire light; and, like all mere fire lights that I have ever seen, totally devoid of interest. 35. _Elisha feeding the People._ I again guess at the subject: the picture only represents a figure casting down a number of loaves before a multitude; but, as Elisha has not elsewhere occurred, I suppose that these must be the barley loaves brought from Baalshalisha. In conception and manner of painting, this picture and the last, together with the others above-mentioned, in comparison with the "Elijah at Cherith," may be generally described as "dregs of Tintoret:" they are tired, dead, dragged out upon the canvas apparently in the heavy-hearted state which a man falls into when he is both jaded with toil and sick of the work he is employed upon. They are not hastily painted; on the contrary, finished with considerably more care than several of the works upon the walls; but those, as, for instance, the "Agony in the Garden," are hurried sketches with the man's whole heart in them, while these pictures are exhausted fulfilments of an appointed task. Whether they were really amongst the last painted, or whether the painter had fallen ill at some intermediate time, I cannot say; but we shall find him again in his utmost strength in the room which we last enter. [Illustration: Fourth Group. Inner room on the upper floor. On the Roof. 36 to 39. Children's Heads. 41 to 44. Children. 40. St. Rocco in Heaven. 45 to 56. Allegorical Figures. On the Walls. 57. Figure in Niche. 60. Ecce Homo. 58. Figure in Niche. 61. Christ bearing his Cross. 59. Christ before Pilate. 62. CRUCIFIXION.] 36 to 39. _Four Children's Heads_, which it is much to be regretted should be thus lost in filling small vacuities of the ceiling. 40. _St. Rocco in Heaven._ The central picture of the roof, in the inner room. From the well-known anecdote respecting the production of this picture, whether in all its details true or not, we may at least gather that having been painted in competition with Paul Veronese and other powerful painters of the day, it was probably Tintoret's endeavor to make it as popular and showy as possible. It is quite different from his common works; bright in all its tints and tones; the faces carefully drawn, and of an agreeable type; the outlines firm, and the shadows few; the whole resembling Correggio more than any Venetian painter. It is, however, an example of the danger, even to the greatest artist, of leaving his own style; for it lacks all the great virtues of Tintoret, without obtaining the lusciousness of Correggio. One thing, at all events, is remarkable in it,--that, though painted while the competitors were making their sketches, it shows no sign of haste or inattention. 41 to 44. _Figures of Children_, merely decorative. 45 to 56. _Allegorical Figures on the Roof._ If these were not in the same room with the "Crucifixion," they would attract more public attention than any works in the Scuola, as there are here no black shadows, nor extravagances of invention, but very beautiful figures richly and delicately colored, a good deal resembling some of the best works of Andrea del Sarto. There is nothing in them, however, requiring detailed examination. The two figures between the windows are very slovenly, if they are his at all; and there are bits of marbling and fruit filling the cornices, which may or may not be his: if they are, they are tired work, and of small importance. 59. _Christ before Pilate._ A most interesting picture, but, which is unusual, best seen on a dark day, when the white figure of Christ alone draws the eye, looking almost like a spirit; the painting of the rest of the picture being both somewhat thin and imperfect. There is a certain meagreness about all the minor figures, less grandeur and largeness in the limbs and draperies, and less solidity, it seems, even in the color, although its arrangements are richer than in many of the compositions above described. I hardly know whether it is owing to this thinness of color, or on purpose, that the horizontal clouds shine through the crimson flag in the distance; though I should think the latter, for the effect is most beautiful. The passionate action of the Scribe in lifting his hand to dip the pen into the ink-horn is, however, affected and overstrained, and the Pilate is very mean; perhaps intentionally, that no reverence might be withdrawn from the person of Christ. In work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the figures of Pilate and Herod are always intentionally made contemptible. _Ecce Homo._ As usual, Tintoret's own peculiar view of the subject. Christ is laid fainting on the ground, with a soldier standing on one side of him; while Pilate, on the other, withdraws the robe from the scourged and wounded body, and points it out to the Jews. Both this and the picture last mentioned resemble Titian more than Tintoret in the style of their treatment. 61. _Christ bearing his Cross._ Tintoret is here recognizable again in undiminished strength. He has represented the troops and attendants climbing Calvary by a winding path, of which two turns are seen, the figures on the uppermost ledge, and Christ in the centre of them, being relieved against the sky; but, instead of the usual simple expedient of the bright horizon to relieve the dark masses, there is here introduced, on the left, the head of a white horse, which blends itself with the sky in one broad mass of light. The power of the picture is chiefly in effect, the figure of Christ being too far off to be very interesting, and only the malefactors being seen on the nearer path; but for this very reason it seems to me more impressive, as if one had been truly present at the scene, though not exactly in the right place for seeing it. 62. _The Crucifixion._ I must leave this picture to work its will on the spectator; for it is beyond all analysis, and above all praise. S SAGREDO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 256. Much defaced, but full of interest. Its sea story is restored; its first floor has a most interesting arcade of the early thirteenth century third order windows; its upper windows are the finest fourth and fifth orders of early fourteenth century; the group of fourth orders in the centre being brought into some resemblance to the late Gothic traceries by the subsequent introduction of the quatrefoils above them. SALUTE, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DELLA, on the Grand Canal, II. 378. One of the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, rendered impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These latter are exceedingly good; the grace of the whole building being chiefly dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty grouping of the two campaniles behind them. It is to be generally observed that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to do with the style or general merits of their architecture. An architect trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all meaning or purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of massing and grouping as will render all his structures effective when seen from a distance: such a gift is very general with the late Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in the country have good stage effect so long as we do not approach them. The Church of the Salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the canal; and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by Turner for the principal object in his well-known view of the Grand Canal. The principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by Lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs none. The sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small Titian, "St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and Damian," was, when I first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first work of Titian's in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine it carefully. At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo (see above, page 74); and, at the side of it, one of the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice, namely: _The Marriage in Cana._ An immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which Tintoret signed with his name. I am not surprised at his having done so in this case. Evidently the work has been a favorite with him, and he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal strength to take with anything. The subject is not one which admits of much singularity or energy in composition. It was always a favorite one with Veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find Tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. Neither is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture. This mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its intensity. The cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes, and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell' effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks farther off than the other; but there is more in the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common laws of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky. The spectator looks all along the table, at the farther end of which are seated Christ and the Madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the tablecloth, falls in full length along the line of young Venetian women, who thus fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up of fair faces and golden hair. Close to the spectator a woman has risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances the mass of gathered light. It is rather curious, considering the subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride or the bridegroom; but the fourth figure from the Madonna in the line of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and I think that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left hand the unity of the line of women is intercepted by a male figure; be this as it may, this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as I recollect, that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of the Madonna in the "Flight into Egypt." It is an ideal which occurs indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and delicate, the Italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and childishness of English beauty some half a century ago; but I have never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. The face may best be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's conceptions, executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. The men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of minor figures which fill the background of the picture. The tone of the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are all broad masses of color, and the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of wealth or splendor are the head-dresses of the women. In this respect the conception of the scene differs widely from that of Veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable truth. Still the marriage is not an unimportant one; an immense crowd, filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of color against the distant sky. Taken as a whole, the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local color. In all the other works of Tintoret, and much more of other colorists, either the light and shade or the local color is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly conventional, and approaches the conditions of glass-painting. This picture unites color as rich as Titian's with light and shade as forcible as Rembrandt's, and far more decisive. There are one or two other interesting pictures of the early Venetian schools in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining cloister; among which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention. See above, p. 74. SALVATORE, CHURCH OF ST. Base Renaissance, occupying the place of the ancient church, under the porch of which the Pope Alexander III. is said to have passed the night. M. Lazari states it to have been richly decorated with mosaics; now all is gone. In the interior of the church are some of the best examples of Renaissance sculptural monuments in Venice. (See above, Chap. II. § LXXX.) It is said to possess an important pala of silver, of the thirteenth century, one of the objects in Venice which I much regret having forgotten to examine; besides two Titians, a Bonifazio, and a John Bellini. The latter ("The Supper at Emmaus") must, I think, have been entirely repainted: it is not only unworthy of the master, but unlike him; as far, at least, as I could see from below, for it is hung high. SANUDO PALAZZO. At the Miracoli. A noble Gothic palace of the fourteenth century, with Byzantine fragments and cornices built into its walls, especially round the interior court, in which the staircase is very noble. Its door, opening on the quay, is the only one in Venice entirely uninjured; retaining its wooden valve richly sculptured, its wicket for examination of the stranger demanding admittance, and its quaint knocker in the form of a fish. SCALZI, CHURCH OF THE. It possesses a fine John Bellini, and is renowned through Venice for its precious marbles. I omitted to notice above, in speaking of the buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, that many of them are remarkable for a kind of dishonesty, even in the use of _true_ marbles, resulting not from motives of economy, but from mere love of juggling and falsehood for their own sake. I hardly know which condition of mind is meanest, that which has pride in plaster made to look like marble, or that which takes delight in marble made to look like silk. Several of the later churches in Venice, more especially those of the Jesuiti, of San Clemente, and this of the Scalzi, rest their chief claims to admiration on their having curtains and cushions cut out of rock. The most ridiculous example is in San Clemente, and the most curious and costly are in the Scalzi; which latter church is a perfect type of the vulgar abuse of marble in every possible way, by men who had no eye for color, and no understanding of any merit in a work of art but that which arises from costliness of material, and such powers of imitation as are devoted in England to the manufacture of peaches and eggs out of Derbyshire spar. SEBASTIAN, CHURCH OF ST. The tomb, and of old the monument, of Paul Veronese. It is full of his noblest pictures, or of what once were such; but they seemed to me for the most part destroyed by repainting. I had not time to examine them justly, but I would especially direct the traveller's attention to the small Madonna over the second altar on the right of the nave, still a perfect and priceless treasure. SERVI, CHURCH OF THE. Only two of its gates and some ruined walls are left, in one of the foulest districts of the city. It was one of the most interesting monuments of the early fourteenth century Gothic; and there is much beauty in the fragments yet remaining. How long they may stand I know not, the whole building having been offered me for sale, ground and all, or stone by stone, as I chose, by its present proprietor, when I was last in Venice. More real good might at present be effected by any wealthy person who would devote his resources to the preservation of such monuments wherever they exist, by freehold purchase of the entire ruin, and afterwards by taking proper charge of it, and forming a garden round it, than by any other mode of protecting or encouraging art. There is no school, no lecturer, like a ruin of the early ages. SEVERO, FONDAMENTA SAN, palace at, II. 264. SILVESTRO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance in itself, but it contains two very interesting pictures: the first, a "St. Thomas of Canterbury with the Baptist and St. Francis," by Girolamo Santa Croce, a superb example of the Venetian religious school; the second by Tintoret, namely: _The Baptism of Christ._ (Over the first altar on the right of the nave.) An upright picture, some ten feet wide by fifteen high; the top of it is arched, representing the Father supported by angels. It requires little knowledge of Tintoret to see that these figures are not by his hand. By returning to the opposite side of the nave, the join in the canvas may be plainly seen, the upper part of the picture having been entirely added on: whether it had this upper part before it was repainted, or whether originally square, cannot now be told, but I believe it had an upper part which has been destroyed. I am not sure if even the dove and the two angels which are at the top of the older part of the picture are quite genuine. The rest of it is magnificent, though both the figures of the Saviour and the Baptist show some concession on the part of the painter to the imperative requirement of his age, that nothing should be done except in an attitude; neither are there any of his usual fantastic imaginations. There is simply the Christ in the water and the St. John on the shore, without attendants, disciples, or witnesses of any kind; but the power of the light and shade, and the splendor of the landscape, which on the whole is well preserved, render it a most interesting example. The Jordan is represented as a mountain brook, receiving a tributary stream in a cascade from the rocks, in which St. John stands: there is a rounded stone in the centre of the current; and the parting of the water at this, as well as its rippling among the roots of some dark trees on the left, are among the most accurate remembrances of nature to be found in any of the works of the great masters. I hardly know whether most to wonder at the power of the man who thus broke through the neglect of nature which was universal at his time; or at the evidences, visible throughout the whole of the conception, that he was still content to paint from slight memories of what he had seen in hill countries, instead of following out to its full depth the fountain which he had opened. There is not a stream among the hills of Priuli which in any quarter of a mile of its course would not have suggested to him finer forms of cascade than those which he has idly painted at Venice. SIMEONE, PROFETA, CHURCH OF ST. Very important, though small, possessing the precious statue of St. Simeon, above noticed, II. 309. The rare early Gothic capitals of the nave are only interesting to the architect; but in the little passage by the side of the church, leading out of the Campo, there is a curious Gothic monument built into the wall, very beautiful in the placing of the angels in the spandrils, and rich in the vine-leaf moulding above. SIMEONE, PICCOLO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the ugliest churches in Venice or elsewhere. Its black dome, like an unusual species of gasometer, is the admiration of modern Italian architects. SOSPIRI, PONTE DE'. The well known "Bridge of Sighs," a work of no merit, and of a late period (see Vol. II. p. 304), owing the interest it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant sentimentalism of Byron. SPIRITO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST. An interesting building of central Gothic, the best ecclesiastical example of it in Venice. The west entrance is much later than any of the rest, and is of the richest Renaissance Gothic, a little anterior to the Porta della Carta, and first-rate of its kind. The manner of the introduction of the figure of the angel at the top of the arch is full of beauty. Note the extravagant crockets and cusp finials as signs of decline. STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano (pugnacity of its abbot), II. 33. The church no longer exists. STROPE, CAMPIELLO DELLA, house in, II. 266. T TANA, windows at the, II. 260. TIEPOLO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance. TOLENTINI, CHURCH OF THE. One of the basest and coldest works of the late Renaissance. It is said to contain two Bonifazios. TOMA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance. TOMA, PONTE SAN. There is an interesting ancient doorway opening on the canal close to this bridge, probably of the twelfth century, and a good early Gothic door, opening upon the bridge itself. TORCELLO, general aspect of, II. 12; Santa Fosca at, I. 117, II. 13; duomo, II. 14; mosaics of, II. 196; measures of, II. 378; date of, II. 380. TREVISAN, PALAZZO, I. 369, III. 212. TRON, PALAZZO. Of no importance. TROVASO, CHURCH OF ST. Itself of no importance, but containing two pictures by Tintoret, namely: 1. _The Temptation of St. Anthony._ (Altar piece in the chapel on the left of the choir.) A small and very carefully finished picture, but marvellously temperate and quiet in treatment, especially considering the subject, which one would have imagined likely to inspire the painter with one of his most fantastic visions. As if on purpose to disappoint us, both the effect, and the conception of the figures, are perfectly quiet, and appear the result much more of careful study than of vigorous imagination. The effect is one of plain daylight; there are a few clouds drifting in the distance, but with no wildness in them, nor is there any energy or heat in the flames which mantle about the waist of one of the figures. But for the noble workmanship, we might almost fancy it the production of a modern academy; yet as we begin to read the picture, the painter's mind becomes felt. St. Anthony is surrounded by four figures, one of which only has the form of a demon, and he is in the background, engaged in no more terrific act of violence toward St. Anthony, than endeavoring to pull off his mantle; he has, however, a scourge over his shoulder, but this is probably intended for St. Anthony's weapon of self-discipline, which the fiend, with a very Protestant turn of mind, is carrying off. A broken staff, with a bell hanging to it, at the saint's feet, also expresses his interrupted devotion. The three other figures beside him are bent on more cunning mischief: the woman on the left is one of Tintoret's best portraits of a young and bright-eyed Venetian beauty. It is curious that he has given so attractive a countenance to a type apparently of the temptation to violate the power of poverty, for this woman places one hand in a vase full of coins, and shakes golden chains with the other. On the opposite side of the saint, another woman, admirably painted, but of a far less attractive countenance, is a type of the lusts of the flesh, yet there is nothing gross or immodest in her dress or gesture. She appears to have been baffled, and for the present to have given up addressing the saint: she lays one hand upon her breast, and might be taken for a very respectable person, but that there are flames playing about her loins. A recumbent figure on the ground is of less intelligible character, but may perhaps be meant for Indolence; at all events, he has torn the saint's book to pieces. I forgot to note, that under the figure representing Avarice, there is a creature like a pig; whether actual pig or not is unascertainable, for the church is dark, the little light that comes on the picture falls on it the wrong way, and one third of the lower part of it is hidden by a white case, containing a modern daub, lately painted by way of an altar piece; the meaning, as well as the merit, of the grand old picture being now far beyond the comprehension both of priests and people. 2. _The Last Supper._ (On the left-hand side of the Chapel of the Sacrament.) A picture which has been through the hands of the Academy, and is therefore now hardly worth notice. Its conception seems always to have been vulgar, and far below Tintoret's usual standard; there is singular baseness in the circumstance, that one of the near Apostles, while all the others are, as usual, intent upon Christ's words, "One of you shall betray me," is going to help himself to wine out of a bottle which stands behind him. In so doing he stoops towards the table, the flask being on the floor. If intended for the action of Judas at this moment, there is the painter's usual originality in the thought; but it seems to me rather done to obtain variation of posture, in bringing the red dress into strong contrast with the tablecloth. The color has once been fine, and there are fragments of good painting still left; but the light does not permit these to be seen, and there is too much perfect work of the master's in Venice, to permit us to spend time on retouched remnants. The picture is only worth mentioning, because it is ignorantly and ridiculously referred to by Kugler as characteristic of Tintoret. V VITALI, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a picture by Vittor Carpaccio, over the high altar: otherwise of no importance. VOLTO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. An interesting but desecrated ruin of the fourteenth century; fine in style. Its roof retains some fresco coloring, but, as far as I recollect, of later date than the architecture. Z ZACCARIA, CHURCH OF ST. Early Renaissance, and fine of its kind; a Gothic chapel attached to it is of great beauty. It contains the best John Bellini in Venice, after that of San G. Grisostomo, "The Virgin, with Four Saints;" and is said to contain another John Bellini and a Tintoret, neither of which I have seen. ZITELLE, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance. ZOBENIGO, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA, III. 124. It contains one valuable Tintoret, namely: _Christ with Sta. Justina and St. Augustin._ (Over the third altar on the south side of the nave.) A picture of small size, and upright, about ten feet by eight. Christ appears to be descending out of the clouds between the two saints, who are both kneeling on the sea shore. It is a Venetian sea, breaking on a flat beach, like the Lido, with a scarlet galley in the middle distance, of which the chief use is to unite the two figures by a point of color. Both the saints are respectable Venetians of the lower class, in homely dresses and with homely faces. The whole picture is quietly painted, and somewhat slightly; free from all extravagance, and displaying little power except in the general truth or harmony of colors so easily laid on. It is better preserved than usual, and worth dwelling upon as an instance of the style of the master when _at rest_. FOOTNOTES: [71] "Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincius? Are those the distant turrets of Verona? And shall I sup where Juliet at the Masque Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him? Such questions hourly do I ask myself; And not a stone in a crossway inscribed 'To Mantua,' 'To Ferrara,' but excites Surprise, and doubt, and self-congratulation." Alas, after a few short months, spent even in the scenes dearest to history, we can feel thus no more. [72] I have always called this church, in the text, simply "St. John and Paul," not Sts. John and Paul, just as the Venetians say San Giovanni e Paolo, and not Santi G., &c. * * * * * CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT. Page 69: 'Italian sarcophagi are kept massive, smoth and gloomy' smoth corrected to smooth. Page 74: 'fallen back peacefully uppon his pillow' uppon corrected to upon. Page 100: 'men's modes of life, and tones of throught' throught changed to thought. Page 121: 'breathed upon her beaaty, until it melted away' beaaty corrected to beauty. Page 157: 'morbid action by terror, accompained by the belief' accompained changed to accompanied. Page 207: 'finds him by a fountaiu side' fountaiu corrected to fountain. Page 222: 'Pietro di Castello, for the feast of St. Mary' Mary changed to Mark. Page 233: Number 2. misplaced. Moved to 'a. Lower arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi.' Page 233: Missing 4. added before 'a. Fondaco de' Turchi, central shaft, upper arcade.' Page 237: 'fourth order windows in Campo Sta. Ma Mater Domini' Ma changed to M^a. Page 293: 'the usual inportant purposes of the modern Italians.' inportant changed to important. Page 294: 'not the slightest touch os it but is delicious.' os corrected to of. Page 318: 'examine the two large tintorets' tintorets changed to Tintorets. Page 319: 'Mlaipiero, Palazzo, on the Campo St. M. Formosa.' Mlaipiero corrected to Malipiero. Page 358: 'drift of its clouds, and originalty and complication.' originalty corrected to originality. 
38879	----	THE SEVEN PERIODS OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. THE SEVEN PERIODS OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED. BY EDMUND SHARPE, M.A., ARCHITECT. _TWENTY STEEL ENGRAVINGS AND WOODCUTS._ THIRD EDITION. [Illustration] E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON. NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET. 1888. PREFACE. "We have been so long accustomed to speak of our National Architecture in the terms, and according to the classification bequeathed to us by Mr. Rickman, and those terms and that classification are so well understood and have been so universally adopted, that any proposal to supersede the one, or to modify the other, requires somewhat more than a mere apology. To disturb a Nomenclature of long standing, to set aside terms in familiar use, and to set up others in their place which are strange, and therefore at first unintelligible, involves an interruption of that facility with which we are accustomed to communicate with one another on any given subject, that is only to be justified by reasons of a cogent and satisfactory nature. "The sufficiency of Mr. Rickman's Nomenclature and Divisions, and their suitableness at the time and for the purpose for which they were made, are best evidenced by the fact that, although the attempts to supersede them have been both numerous and persevering, they have remained for nearly half a century the principal guide to the Architectural Student; and Mr. Rickman's 'Attempt to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England,' is still the Text-book from which the greater part of the popular works of the present day have been compiled. "In referring, however, to these attempts to supersede Mr. Rickman's system, it is proper to remark that one observation applies to the whole of them;--although they propose to change the Nomenclature of his different styles, or to subdivide them, his main division of English Architecture into four great Periods or Styles, is adopted by all, and still remains undisturbed. No point, therefore, has been hitherto proposed to be gained by these alterations, beyond a change of name; and this may be taken as a sufficient reason why none of these attempts have been successful: men are not willing to unlearn a term with which they are familiar, however inappropriate, in order to learn another, which, after all, means the same thing. "Although, however, Mr. Rickman's simple division of Church Architecture into four Periods, or Styles, may perhaps have been the one best suited to his time, and to the elementary state of the knowledge of the subject possessed by the best informed Archæologists of his day, it may with propriety be questioned how far such a division is suited to the exigencies of writers of the present day, or to the present advanced tastes of knowledge on the subject. "Simplicity was doubtless the object Mr. Rickman had in view in his division of English Architecture into four Styles only. This is a recommendation, however, which can hardly be said to hold good at the present day: it behoves us to consider well, perhaps more especially at the present moment, whether Mr. Rickman's system fulfils all the conditions essential to one calculated for popular and universal use; and whether we should therefore seek to confirm and to perpetuate it, or whether the time has not arrived for the adoption of a more detailed and accurate division of the long and noble series of buildings which contain the History of our National Architecture from the Heptarchy to the Reformation."[A] No one can enter into an inquiry of this kind without eventually coming to the conclusion that there are two large classes of Buildings containing distinctive marks of peculiarity of character, which find no place in Mr. Rickman's system, but which nevertheless, from the number and importance of their examples, are pre-eminently entitled to separate classification. These two classes are those to which the buildings enumerated at pp. 24, and 31, 32 respectively belong, and which cannot, without circumlocution, be described in any of the terms prescribed by Mr. Rickman. As regards the earlier of these two classes, the extent to which these distinctive peculiarities of detail exist, will perhaps at first scarcely be credited, and proofs of a much more extensive and satisfactory character than are contained in the following pages, or could be looked for in an elementary work of this nature, will probably be required before its title to separate classification will be universally conceded. As regards the later of these classes, the same difficulty does not exist. Mr. Rickman divided the whole of the buildings of Pointed Architecture into three Styles or Classes, which he denominated "Early English," "Decorated," "Perpendicular." The titles of the two last he professed to derive from the character of their windows, conceiving, no doubt justly, that no part of a Gothic building exhibits peculiarities of Style in so prominent and characteristic a manner as its windows. In strict accordance with this rule, which may be assumed to be a correct and valuable one, it has already been shown,[B] that had Mr. Rickman gone a step further and classed the whole of the buildings of Pointed Architecture according to the forms of their Windows under _four_ heads, instead of _three_, he would have obtained a classification equally simple, but more intelligible and convenient; he would have obviated much that is confused and indefinite, and therefore perplexing to the Architectural Student, in his description of buildings which belong to the class to which we are now referring, and would have enabled us to compare the buildings of our own Country with those of corresponding character, and nearly contemporaneous date on the Continent, in a manner that would have established an analogy between them, which, according to the present classification, has no apparent existence. The inability to describe, or speak of any of the buildings belonging to either of these two classes, including some of the finest in the kingdom, otherwise than as examples of an intermediate and anomalous character, exhibiting the peculiarities partly of one style and partly of another, but belonging specifically to neither, must be admitted to be a serious defect in all hitherto recognised systems of Architectural Nomenclature; and there are probably few Architecturalists who have not frequently felt the inconvenience arising from the want of more explicit and definite terms than at present exist, by means of which to describe the buildings of these two classes. It is to remedy these defects, and to provide for this want, that the following division of the History of our National Architecture into Seven Periods instead of Four, is now formally proposed, under the belief that some such Division as this, by whatever terms it may be characterised, will sooner or later force itself into universal adoption. With respect to the terms themselves it would be unreasonable to expect the same unanimity; the following considerations, however, would seem to bring their selection within narrow limits. It would appear, in the first place, unadvisable to designate any of the later Periods, except the last, by any of the terms hitherto in use, as tending probably to confusion and misapprehension, from the difficulty of limiting their signification to the extent proposed in the minds of those who have been accustomed to use them in a more ample sense: and to retain the last, if the others be abandoned, and a more appropriate or analogous term can be found, appears to be still less desirable. At the same time it is much to be desired that the terms we use should be not altogether strange, and, if possible, self-explanatory. These two conditions are such as to render it difficult to find terms such as to be in all respects perfectly satisfactory; and perhaps no system of Nomenclature could be found so perfect as to be entirely free from objection. The reasons which have caused the adoption of the terms made use of in the following system, are fully given in their proper place, and it only remains for the Author to notice that the terms "Curvilinear" and "Rectilinear" were first proposed by a writer in the "British Critic," some years ago, as a substitute for Mr. Rickman's terms "Decorated" and "Perpendicular;" and in a sense, therefore, as regards the former of these terms, essentially different from that in which it is here proposed to be applied. The rest must be more or less familiar to all who have been of late engaged in the study. The Author desires to take this opportunity of acknowledging his obligations to Mr. T. Austin, by whom all the subjects, with one exception, have been measured and drawn from the buildings themselves; as well as to Mr. G. B. Smith, by whom the whole have been engraved on steel, for the accuracy and appearance of the principal illustrations. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: The preceding paragraphs, distinguished by inverted commas, formed part of the introduction to a Paper "On the Geometrical Period of English Church Architecture," read by the Author at the Lincoln meeting of the Archæological Institute in July 1848.] [Footnote B: "Treatise on the Rise and Progress of Window Tracery," by E. Sharpe, M.A. Van Voorst, London.] CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION 3 CHAPTER III. COMPARTMENTS 13 CHAPTER IV. SAXON PERIOD 15 CHAPTER V. NORMAN PERIOD 17 CHAPTER VI. TRANSITIONAL PERIOD 21 CHAPTER VII. LANCET PERIOD 25 CHAPTER VIII. GEOMETRICAL PERIOD 29 CHAPTER IX. CURVILINEAR PERIOD 33 CHAPTER X. RECTILINEAR PERIOD 37 LIST OF PLATES. NORMAN PERIOD. _Exterior_ ELY CATHEDRAL Nave. _Interior_ " " " _Exterior_ PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL Choir. _Interior_ " " " TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. _Exterior_ RIPON CATHEDRAL Choir. _Interior_ " " " LANCET PERIOD. _Exterior_ ELY CATHEDRAL Presbytery. _Interior_ " " " _Exterior_ LINCOLN CATHEDRAL Nave. _Interior_ " " " _Exterior_ " " Choir. _Interior_ " " " GEOMETRICAL PERIOD. _Exterior_ LINCOLN CATHEDRAL Presbytery. _Interior_ " " " _Exterior_ LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL Nave. _Interior_ " " " CURVILINEAR PERIOD. _Exterior_ ELY CATHEDRAL Choir. _Interior_ " " " RECTILINEAR PERIOD. _Exterior_ WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL Nave. _Interior_ " " " THE SEVEN PERIODS OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. To present at a single glance a comprehensive view of the History of English Church Architecture from the Heptarchy to the Reformation, and to do this in a manner, which, without taxing too seriously the memory of the student, may enable him to fix in his mind the limits, and the general outline of the inquiry he is about to enter upon, is the object of the present treatise. Instead therefore of entering, as is usual in elementary works of this nature, into a detailed account of all the parts of an Ecclesiastical structure, a certain portion only of such a building has for this purpose been selected, and so exhibited in the garb in which it appeared at successive intervals of time, as to present to the reader a means of comparison that will enable him readily to apprehend the gradual change of form through which it passed from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, and at once to recognise the leading characteristics of the several Periods into which it is here proposed to divide the History of our National Architecture. Having thus fixed these leading characteristics in his mind, he will then be in a condition to follow us hereafter, if he pleases, into the detail of the whole subject, and to become familiar with those niceties of distinction, the detection of which--escaping, as they do, the eye of the general observer--contributes so materially to the enjoyment of the study, and a perfect acquaintance with which is so absolutely essential to a correct understanding of the true History of the Art. That this mode of approaching the study of this subject is a convenient one, will probably be admitted by those who may remember the difficulties they encountered, in their early attempts to acquire a general conception of the scheme of the History of Church Architecture, as given in most of the manuals now in use; and the complexity of detail in which they found themselves immediately involved on the very threshold of their inquiry. It has been the practice in most elementary works on Church Architecture to derive the illustrations of the subject, indifferently from the smaller and the larger buildings of the Kingdom; and by implication to assign an equal authority to both. It will be readily admitted, however, that the History of an Art is to be gathered from its principal Monuments, and not from those the design or execution of which may have been entrusted to other than the ablest masters of the Period: in the choice, therefore, of the examples which have been selected to illustrate the series of changes which are described in the following pages, reference has been made principally to the great Cathedral, Abbey, and Collegiate Churches of the Kingdom, and occasionally only to some of the larger Parish Churches whose size or importance would seem to bring them under the above denomination. CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION. Church Architecture in England, from its earliest existence down to the Sixteenth Century, was in a state of constant progress, or transition, and this progress appears to have been carried on, with certain exceptions in different parts of the country, very nearly simultaneously. It follows from this circumstance, first, That it is impossible to divide our National Architecture correctly into any number of distinct _Orders_ or _Styles_; and secondly, That any Division of its History into a given number of _Periods_, must necessarily be an arbitrary one. It is nevertheless absolutely essential for the purpose of conveniently describing the long series of noble monuments which remain to us, that we should adopt some system of chronological arrangement, which may enable us to group, and to classify them in a distinct and intelligible manner: and although no broad lines of demarcation in this connected series are discernible--so gradual was the change--yet so rapid and so complete was it also, that a period of fifty years did not elapse without a material alteration in the form and fashion of every detail of a building. Now it will be readily conceived that, even in the midst of this continual change, certain favourite forms would remain in use longer than others; and that this circumstance may possibly afford us the opportunity of which we are in search; and enable us in the adoption of any such arbitrary Division so to define and to characterise the Architecture of its different Periods, as to render this Historical Survey and our future descriptions sufficiently intelligible. One principal Division of Church Architecture has been recognised and adopted by all who have studied and written on the subject; that, namely, which separates Ecclesiastical Buildings into two classes, in the first or earlier of which the _circular arch_ was exclusively employed; and in the second or later, the _pointed arch_ alone was used. To the former of these two Classes, the term ROMANESQUE has been given, and to the latter, the term GOTHIC. This division is so simple, and at the same time so strongly marked, that without entering into a discussion as to the value or propriety of the terms themselves, and contenting ourselves with the fact that they are already in general use, we can have little hesitation in adopting this primary division as the groundwork of our system. At the same time, it is manifest, that, for purposes of description, it is not sufficiently minute; and that a further subdivision is necessary: it is also clear, that it excludes a large class of buildings that were erected during the period which intervened between the first appearance of the pointed arch, and the final disappearance of the circular arch. As regards the buildings of the Romanesque Period, no subdivision of them can be more satisfactory than that which has already been for some time in use, and which divides them into those which were built before and after the Conquest, and designates them accordingly SAXON and NORMAN. As regards the buildings of that Intermediate Period just mentioned, to none can the term TRANSITIONAL so aptly be applied as to those erected under influences created by that remarkable contest between two great antagonistic principles, which, after having been carried on for a period of nearly fifty years, terminated in a complete revolution in the style of building at the end of the Twelfth Century. Lastly, as regards the Gothic Period, no subdivision of it appears to be so natural and convenient, as that which is suggested by the four principal changes of form through which the Window passed from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Centuries. These changes have been fully illustrated by the author in a former work,[C] and will be therefore only briefly recapitulated here. For half a century or more, after the disappearance of the circular arch, the window appeared under a form, which from its general resemblance to a _lancet_, in its length, breadth, and principal proportions, rather than from any uniform acuteness in the shape of its head, led to the universal application of that term to all the windows of this Period. This observation applies equally to the window whether used singly, or in groups of two, three, five, or seven; and equally also to the later as to the earlier examples of this Period. [Illustration: TEMPLE CHURCH.] It is proposed therefore to denominate this the LANCET PERIOD of Gothic Architecture. Towards the close of this Period the practice of combining a plurality of Lancets, under one arch, or hood-moulding--and of piercing the solid spaces that intervened between the heads of these lancets and the underside of this arch in various ornamental ways, became common; by the adoption of which, a group of several lancets was converted into a single window of several lights. Out of this practice arose a novel and beautiful discovery; this was the invention of _Tracery_. [Illustration: CROFT.] For nearly three-quarters of a century after its introduction the Tracery of windows contained forms in which that simplest of all Geometrical figures, the _Circle_, was principally conspicuous: and although, in the latter part of this Period, the Circle does not obtain the same prominent place, in the centre of the window-head, and as the principal feature of the design, that is generally allotted to it in the earlier examples, yet the important part that it bears in the construction of the design of even the whole of these later examples, fully justifies the application of the term, already pretty generally in use, to this class of windows; and entitles us to call this Period after that figure, and "par excellence," the GEOMETRICAL PERIOD. [Illustration: HOWDEN.] At the close of this Period a feature began to make its way into the subordinate parts of the tracery, which had already shown itself for some time previously in the mouldings, and which eventually exercised a most important influence on the Architecture of the next half-century. This feature is the curve which mathematicians call the _curve of contra-flexure_, and which is known amongst architecturalists as the _Ogee_. [Illustration: WILSFORD.] The flowing nature of this curve imparted to the Tracery a grace and an ease which the rigid outline of the Circle denied it: and affords us a strong point of contrast whereby to distinguish the Architecture of the two Periods. The sinuosity of form which characterises the tracery, pervades also the mouldings, the carved work, and all the details of this Period, and enables us to designate it appropriately as the CURVILINEAR PERIOD. [Illustration: WINCHESTER.] In the latter part of this Period, a horizontal bar, or _transom_, as it is called, was occasionally used in the lower part of the window. Whether this bar was introduced for the purpose of strengthening the mullions, or for the sake of proportion, it speedily grew into frequent use. At the same time also vertical lines presented themselves occasionally in the Tracery; a new principle, in fact, had made its appearance, which rapidly overran not only the windows, but the doorways, the arcades, and every part of the building. The straight line, when once introduced, quickly superseded the curved line; square panels covered the walls; angularity of form pervaded even the mouldings and minor details, and to the round finish, the square edge was preferred. This, the last of the four Periods of Gothic Architecture which extended over a term of nearly two Centuries, we propose accordingly to call the RECTILINEAR PERIOD. The History of our National Architecture will thus be divided into Seven Periods, the order and duration of which are as follows:-- ROMANESQUE. A.D. A.D. YEARS. I. SAXON PERIOD from ---- to 1066, prevailed -- II. NORMAN PERIOD " 1066 " 1145, " 79 III. TRANSITIONAL PERIOD " 1145 " 1190, " 45 GOTHIC. IV. LANCET PERIOD " 1190 " 1245, " 55 V. GEOMETRICAL PERIOD " 1245 " 1315, " 70 VI. CURVILINEAR PERIOD " 1315 " 1360, " 45 VII. RECTILINEAR PERIOD " 1360 " 1550, " 190 [Illustration: INTERIOR COMPARTMENT.] CLERE-STORY. 27 Boss. 26 Vaulting Ribs (Transverse). 25 do. (Longitudinal). 24 Vault. 23 Sill of C. Window. 22 Mullion of do. 21 Tracery of do. 20 Arch-mouldings of C. Arch. 19 Bases of Jamb of do. 18 Capitals of do. 17 Jamb-mouldings of do. 16 Clere-story String. BLIND-STORY. (Triforium.) 15 Capitals of Vaulting Shaft. 14 Tracery of Triforium. 13 Triforium-Arch. 12 Bases of T. Piers. 11 Capitals of do. 10 Pier of T. (Secondary). 9 do. (Primary). 8 Triforium String. GROUND-STORY. 7 Corbel. 6 Vaulting-Shaft. 5 Pier-Arch. 4 do. Band. 3 do. Base. 2 do. Capital. 1 Pier. [Illustration: EXTERIOR COMPARTMENT.] CLERE-STORY. 28 Parapet. 27 Cornice. 26 Clere-story Buttress. 25 Flying Buttress. 24 Tracery of C. Window. 23 Window Arch. 22 Mullions of C. Window. 21 Sill of do. 20 Jambs of do. 19 Weather Table. AISLE COMPARTMENT. 18 Aisle Roof. 17 Capping to Buttress. 16 Parapet. 15 Cornice. 14 Gurgoyle. 13 Canopied Set-off. 12 Plain Set-off. 11 Tracery. 10 Window Arch. 9 Mullion. 8 Sill. 7 Bases of Window Shafts. 6 Capitals of do. 5 Jambs. 4 Canopied Niche. 3 String-Course. 2 Buttress. 1 Base-Course. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote C: "Treatise on the Rise and Progress of Window Tracery." Van Voorst, London.] CHAPTER III. EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR COMPARTMENTS. The most perfect type of a church built in England, during the best ages of Church Architecture, may be said to contain the following essentials:-- 1. The Ground Plan is after the form of the Latin Cross, and is divisible _longitudinally_ into three portions; namely, THE CHOIR, THE TRANSEPTS, THE NAVE. 2. The Choir and the Nave, and occasionally the Transepts, are divided, by means of columns and arches, _transversely_ into three portions, consisting of the CENTRE AISLE, NORTH AISLE, SOUTH AISLE. 3. The MAIN WALL of each of the first-mentioned separate portions of the building is divisible, in the interior _vertically_ into three portions, or Stories, consisting of THE GROUND-STORY, THE TRIFORIUM OR BLIND-STORY, THE CLERE-STORY. Now on viewing any of these Main Walls of a building, whether on the inside, or the outside, it will be at once seen that they consist, in their entire length, of a series of single and separate portions, or _Compartments_, tied together, and connected by the horizontal lines, or String courses, which traverse them from end to end; and that each of these single Compartments embodies within itself the spirit of the whole design, and may be said to represent, individually, the MAIN IDEA of the Building. It is this portion of such a building then--a single Compartment of the Exterior and Interior of the Main Walls of the Choir or Nave, and its adjacent Aisle--that we have selected for the purpose of instituting that comparison which will enable us to fix and define the characteristics of the Seven Periods of English Architecture. Neglecting, therefore, for the present, the Gable Ends, the Towers and Turrets, the Porches, the Doorways, the Chapels, the Cloisters, and all the other adjuncts of an Ecclesiastical Building, and bestowing our entire attention upon these Exterior and Interior Compartments, we will proceed at once to a comparison of their several parts, and consider in order the mode of treatment they received at the hands of the builders, of each of these Seven Periods, commencing with the earliest and descending to the latest. CHAPTER IV. THE SAXON PERIOD. A.D. ---- TO A.D. 1066. Inasmuch as there does not remain to us a single Exterior or Interior Compartment in any Cathedral or Conventual Church of genuine Saxon Architecture, the comparative illustration of this Period is rendered impossible. A few Piers and Arches exist indeed, in all probability, in the Churches of BRIXWORTH in Northamptonshire, St. Michael's at ST. ALBANS, and REPTON in Derbyshire; but they differ considerably in their character from one another, and as widely probably in their date. We have also a few Chancel and Tower arches left, which appear to belong to this Period; as well as some singular and interesting Towers, a few Doorways and Windows, and some considerable portions of masonry. Altogether, however, these remains are not such as to enable us to define, with any degree of certainty, the nature and character of the _Main Walls_ of a Saxon Cathedral, and are, therefore, not available for our present purpose. BUILDINGS OF THE SAXON PERIOD. BRIXWORTH All Saints' Church Nave, Tower. REPTON St. Wistan's Church Crypt, Chancel. BARNACK St. John's Church Tower. BARTON St. Peter's Church Tower. EARL'S BARTON All Saints' Church Tower. WHITTINGHAM St. Bartholomew's Church Tower and Pier-arch. CAMBRIDGE St. Benet's Church Tower. SOMPTING Parish Church Tower. DEERHURST Holy Trinity Church Tower. CORHAMPTON Parish Church Nave. STANTON LACY St. Peter's Church Nave. ST. ALBANS St. Michael's Church Nave. STOW St. Mary's Church Transepts. WORTH Parish Church Nave, Chancel. WING All Saints' Church Chancel. CHAPTER V. NORMAN PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. THE UNIVERSAL USE OF THE CIRCULAR ARCH IN EVERY PART OF A BUILDING THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE PERIOD. _Exterior Compartment._ The walls of a Norman building are usually strong and massive, and built of small stones. They have a plain BASE-COURSE, of little projection, and are generally finished above with a CORBEL-TABLE, consisting sometimes of a series of small arches, on rude heads, and sometimes of a projecting horizontal table resting on a series of rudely sculptured blocks. Upon this Corbel-table is a plain PARAPET and COPING where these are left, which is rarely the case. The compartments are divided by a shallow BUTTRESS or PILASTER STRIP. The WINDOWS are low and broad, and have usually a single shaft set in an angular recess, carrying a cubical capital and a single roll. The STRING-COURSES, when not plain, have frequently indented ornaments of different kinds--such as the _billet_, the _saw-tooth_, the _star_, and the _chevron_. The CLERE-STORY WINDOWS, in the larger and richer buildings, are usually placed in an arcade, consisting of three or more arches, of which the centre one, filled by the window, is the largest. _Interior Compartment._ The proportions of the interior are invariably heavy and massive. The PIERS consist either of a stout cylindrical column, or of a rectangular mass, having semicircular shafts attached to its different faces. They are sometimes, when circular, scored and ornamented with zig-zag, spiral, and other mouldings. The CAPITALS are formed of a cubical block, rounded off on the lower side from the square to the circle, and are ordinarily of a heavy cumbrous character, and sometimes ornamented with rude sculpture of leaves and animals, carved in slight relief on the surface of the block. The PIER-ARCHES, in early examples, are perfectly plain, and square edged, without mouldings or ornament; but more frequently they carry one or more heavy rolls on the angle of each order of the arch; and are often ornamented richly with concentric rows of chevron, billet, and other Norman ornaments. The VAULTING or ROOF-SHAFT is usually a semicircular shaft rising from the floor--on the face of every alternate Pier--to the springing of the vault or roof. In the earlier buildings the TRIFORIUM is generally occupied by one large arch, of somewhat less span and height than the pier-arch: but in the later examples, this arch is generally subdivided into two, and later still, into four small arches, carried on single shafts; the capitals, arch-mouldings, and other details, being all on a smaller scale, but of similar character, to those of the Ground-story. In most Norman buildings of large size, the Triforium forms a very important part of the design of the Interior. The CLERE-STORY in nearly all large buildings carries a gallery made in the thickness of the wall, which passes between the Clere-story Window and the inner face of the _Main Wall_. This inner face is accordingly carried on one or more arches. In Norman buildings, this Clere-story arcade usually consists of three arches, of which the middle one is the largest, and corresponds with the window. In some examples, this middle arch is stilted above the others, by being lifted on a second small shaft on each side, standing on the lower one which carries the side arches. In almost all buildings of importance, an ARCADE is carried along the walls of the Church below the side-aisle windows. In Norman buildings this usually consists of a series of single or intersecting circular arches, resting on small cushion capitals on single shafts. The side-aisles are usually covered with a plain circular quadripartite VAULT, having sometimes a diagonal rib, as well as a transverse band, moulded with single roll mouldings. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE NORMAN PERIOD. TOWER OF LONDON White Chapel. ST. ALBANS Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. ROCHESTER Cathedral Church Nave. WINCHESTER Cathedral Church Transepts. HEREFORD Cathedral Church Nave. ELY Cathedral Church Transepts. LINCOLN Cathedral Church West End. CARLISLE Cathedral Church Nave. SELBY Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. GLOUCESTER Cathedral Church Nave. CHICHESTER Cathedral Church Nave. WALTHAM Abbey Church Choir. SOUTHWELL Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. DURHAM Cathedral Church Choir. CHRISTCHURCH Priory Church Transepts, Nave. NORWICH Cathedral Church Choir. TEWKESBURY Abbey Church Nave. DURHAM Cathedral Church Nave. LINDISFARNE Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. ROMSEY Abbey Church Choir, Transepts. WINCHESTER Cathedral Church Tower, Transepts. ELY Cathedral Church Nave. PETERBOROUGH Cathedral Church Choir. NORWICH Cathedral Church Nave. CASTLE ACRE Priory Church Nave. CHAPTER VI. TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. THE CONTEMPORANEOUS USE, IN THE SAME BUILDING, OF CIRCULAR AND POINTED ARCHES. _Exterior Compartment._ On the outside the usual prevalence of the circular arch in the WINDOWS and DOORWAYS, gives still a Norman character to the building; but the BASE-COURSE and BUTTRESSES begin to show greater projection, and the walls are lightened in proportion. The invariable Billet moulding disappears from the STRING-COURSES. The WINDOWS are more elongated in form, and have lighter shafts. The circular CORBEL-TABLE gives place to a regularly moulded CORNICE, carried on a series of blocks of uniform profile; and a sloped COPING covers the PARAPET. In some of the latest examples indeed, the BUTTRESSES have SET-OFFS, and, rising above the parapet, have also a pyramidal Capping. An increasing lightness of proportion is perceptible in all parts of the buildings of this Period. _Interior Compartment._ Except in the earliest examples of this Period, the heavy cylindrical column disappears; and the PIER consists of a lighter mass of semicircular shafts, and square edges; occasionally also, a shaft having a pear-shaped section is substituted for the semicircular shaft. The CAPITALS consist still of a square block, moulded down to the circular form below; with this difference, however, that the lower part of the capital is hollowed down to the circle, instead of being left as in the Norman Period, full and round; the latter showing a _convex_, and the former a _concave_ profile. Both the larger and the smaller Capitals have also very frequently an ornament peculiar to the Period, which consists of a small volute, forming the curled end of a plain leaf, which enfolds the bell of the Capital. This volute may be looked upon as one of the most characteristic features of the Period. The abacus of the capital is invariably square in plan, and has its upper edge (except in a few of the latest examples) also square in section. In the later buildings of the Period, foliage, exhibiting considerable freedom of design, is occasionally to be seen. The _Pointed Arch_ first made its appearance in the Transitional Period; in the earlier buildings it is used in the _Arches of Construction_ only, or those constituting the framework of the building, such as the Pier-arches and the Arches of the Vaulting, and of the Crossing; whilst the Circular Arch is used in the _Arches of Decoration_ only, or those which may be said to constitute the panel-work, such as the windows, the arcades, the doorways, and such like. In the later buildings of the Period, however, the Pointed Arch is frequently found in some of the smaller arches also. The PIER-ARCHES, therefore, are almost invariably pointed, in the earlier examples obtusely, and in the later examples often acutely; the mouldings, which have become much lighter, are few and plain; carrying usually a roll, or a pear-shaped moulding, at the angle of each order of the arch: they frequently have no HOOD-MOULDING. All the usual rich ornaments of the Norman Style disappear, but the Chevron occurs occasionally, and another ornamental moulding somewhat resembling it, but peculiar to this Period, is frequently seen. The STRING-COURSES do not usually carry any ornament, and have commonly a simple section peculiar to the Period. The VAULTING or ROOF-SHAFT has usually a pear-shaped section. The TRIFORIUM-ARCADE has usually Circular Arches, but in the later examples the two forms of arch are frequently intermixed. The Shafts are of a much lighter character, and carry arches of simple mouldings. The Pointed Arch, if found anywhere in the arches of Decoration, is generally to be seen in the CLERE-STORY, the highest part of the building, and consequently the latest in point of construction. Plain pointed quadripartite VAULTING not unfrequently covers the side-aisles, and sometimes the centre-aisle. The contrast presented by the discriminate use of the two forms of arch before mentioned, is sometimes strikingly exhibited in the side-aisles, where it is by no means uncommon to find a large plain circular window placed immediately under an acutely pointed wall rib, forming part of the contemporaneous pointed VAULTING of the side-aisle. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. MALMESBURY Abbey Church Nave. NORTHAMPTON St. Sepulchre's Church Nave. FOUNTAINS Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. KIRKSTALL Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. BUILDWAS Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. KELSO Abbey Church West Transept. ELY Cathedral Church West Transept. PETERBOROUGH Cathedral Church West Transept. ST. CROSS Abbey Church Choir, Transepts. FURNESS Abbey Church Transepts, Nave. LONDON Temple Church Nave. RIPON Cathedral Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. BRINKBURN Cathedral Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. LLANTHONY Abbey Church Choir, Nave. OXFORD Cathedral Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. DURHAM Cathedral Church Galilee. ROCHE Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. NEW SHOREHAM Abbey Church Choir, Transepts. SELBY Abbey Church Nave. BYLAND Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. JEDBURGH Abbey Church Nave. HARTLEPOOL Parish Church Chancel, Nave. GLASTONBURY Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. GLASTONBURY Abbey Church St. Joseph's Chapel. CANTERBURY Cathedral Church Choir. CANTERBURY Cathedral Church Trinity Chapel, Becket's crown. CHICHESTER Cathedral Church Choir, North Chapel. WELLS Cathedral Church Transepts, Nave. CHAPTER VII. LANCET PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. THE LANCET WINDOW USED SINGLY, IN COUPLETS AND TRIPLETS, AND ARRANGED IN GROUPS OF FOUR, FIVE, AND SEVEN. _Exterior Compartment._ The BUTTRESSES have considerable projection, are divided into stages, and have usually a plain pyramidal capping, and sometimes a plain pinnacle. The BASE-COURSE Has also more projection and importance, and its upper members are frequently moulded. FLYING-BUTTRESSES often span the roof of the side-aisle to support the main vaulting. The WINDOWS in the earliest examples stand alone as single windows; they are also sometimes placed singly in a continuous arcade; later still in triplets under one arch, the centre one being the tallest, and in some instances two lancets are coupled under one arch,--the spandrel between them being frequently pierced with a quatrefoil, or other opening. The PARAPET has occasionally sunk ornaments upon it, and is carried by a cornice having a few deep mouldings, with a flower, or other ornament at intervals, or by a trefoiled Corbel-table, or by a series of blocks. _Interior Compartment._ The PIERS consist most commonly of a cluster of shafts, disposed in a circular form. These shafts sometimes stand entirely free, and surround a large circular or octagonal column, and are banded in the middle. The CAPITALS have sometimes one or two rows of stiff projecting leaves, of a bulbous form, which appear to grow out of the neck of the capital, and sometimes a single or double series of minute deeply cut mouldings; the square form of capital, both in the plan and in the upper edge of the abacus, entirely disappears. The BASES consist almost invariably of a deep small hollow, set between two rounds, standing on a square-edged plinth; and greatly resemble the ordinary Attic base. The PIER-ARCHES usually show three orders, of small deeply cut mouldings of alternate rounds and hollows, the number and depth of which give an exceedingly rich and characteristic appearance to all the arches of this Period. The peculiar ornament called the _dog-tooth_, which is formed by hollowing out the sides of a series of contiguous pyramids notched out of an angular projection, occurs constantly in the arch-mouldings, as well as in almost every other part of buildings where an opportunity of carving it presents itself. The HOOD-MOULDING, resting on small and elegant heads or bosses, is an almost invariable accompaniment of arches of every description. The VAULTING-SHAFT sometimes rises from the floor in front of the principal Pier,--but more usually from a corbel-shaft, resting on a large ornamental corbel, placed immediately over the pier; it consists generally of a triple cluster of small elegant shafts, with hollows between them. The TRIFORIUM-ARCH generally covers two smaller arches; but occasionally, a pair of principal Triforium-arches cover two pair of subordinate arches, which are sometimes plain, and sometimes trefoiled; the spandrel wall above them being ornamented with foliage, or a sunk trefoil, and sometimes pierced through with a quatrefoil or other opening. Sometimes, indeed, one large primary arch covers two secondary arches, which again contain two small tertiary arches; thus fully developing the principle of subordination in this part of the building. The principal TRIFORIUM-PIERS generally exhibit a row of light shafts on the face of a solid pier, carrying arch-mouldings of three orders, and separated sometimes by a line of dog-tooth moulding, or stiff foliage. The _secondary piers_ are usually single, double, or triple detached shafts, carrying the smaller arches. Where the Triforium contains three orders of piers, the _tertiary pier_ consists of a single shaft only, carrying the third order of arch-mouldings. The VAULTING-SHAFT usually terminates in an elegant capital, just below the Clerestory-string, the mouldings of which form in that case the impost mouldings of the capital. The ARCADE generally corresponds with the windows, and consists either of a row of continuous arches, of equal height, or, as is commonly the case, of three tall arches carried on a triple shaft, of which the centre one is the loftiest: the mouldings and ornaments being similar to those of the rest of the building. The VAULTING is generally simple, and acute, and usually of the quadripartite or sexpartite form. The AISLE-ARCADE consists generally of a series of plain, or trefoil-headed arches on single shafts, carrying the usual mouldings and ornaments. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE LANCET PERIOD. LINCOLN Cathedral Church Choir. WORCESTER Cathedral Church Choir. WINCHESTER Cathedral Church Lady Chapel. FOUNTAINS Abbey Church Choir, East Transept. WHITBY Abbey Church Choir. YORK Cathedral Church N. and S. Transepts. BOLTON Abbey Church Nave. BEVERLEY Minster Choir, Transepts. LINCOLN Cathedral Church Nave. LICHFIELD Cathedral Church Chapter House. WELLS Cathedral Church West Front. PETERBOROUGH Cathedral Church West Front. SOUTHWELL Collegiate Church Choir. OXFORD Cathedral Church Chapter House. HEREFORD Cathedral Church Lady Chapel. LANERCOST Abbey Church Nave. DURHAM Cathedral Church East Transept. RIEVAULX Abbey Church Choir. LONDON Temple Church Choir. SALISBURY Cathedral Church Choir. WORCESTER Cathedral Church Presbytery. WHITBY Abbey Church N. Transept. ELY Cathedral Church Presbytery. CHAPTER VIII. GEOMETRICAL PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. SIMPLE GEOMETRICAL TRACERY IN THE HEADS OF THE WINDOWS, IN PANELS AND IN ARCADES. _Exterior Compartment._ The BUTTRESSES have frequently set-offs, and canopies attached to their faces, carrying often a series of CROCKETS: these in the earlier examples are plain, stiff, and curled; but the later ones are formed by a gracefully disposed leaf. Towards the end of the Period, the buttresses became very bulky and massive, and carried little or no ornaments. The PINNACLES have often the same ornament, and are crowned with finials composed of a bunch of foliage. The CORNICE often carries a large ornamental leaf in its hollow, and the projecting Corbel-table is no longer seen. The earlier WINDOWS exhibit tracery which consists almost exclusively of plain foliated circles; but in the later examples other simple geometrical forms were employed. The heads of the window lights, occasionally plain, were more frequently, even in the earlier examples, and invariably in the later ones, cusped or foliated. The CLERE-STORY usually contains a single window, or at most a pair, containing tracery similar to that of the side-aisle windows, and the Clere-story arcade altogether disappears. The CORNICE is usually similar to that of the side-aisles. _Interior Compartment._ The PIERS have occasionally, in the earlier examples, detached shafts; but they more usually consist of a solid mass of engaged shafts, separated by hollow mouldings, and disposed on the plan of a spherical triangle. The BASES consist generally of a triple roll, standing on the usual plinth; and the CAPITALS carry foliage disposed much more freely and gracefully than in the preceding Period, and frequently of exquisite design. The PIER-ARCHES have usually mouldings in three orders of very elegant profile, not so deeply cut, however, as in the Lancet Period: the favourite dog-tooth is nowhere seen, but late in the period a substitute for it was found in the ornament called the _Ball-flower_. All BOSSES, FIGURES, and SCULPTURES of every kind are carved in the very best manner; and all STRING-COURSES and HOOD-MOULDINGS are moulded with the greatest care and elegance; indeed the art of carving in stone may be said to have attained its greatest perfection during this Period. The TRIFORIUM in the earlier examples commonly contains a pair of double arches, carrying circular tracery in their heads: in the later examples, it becomes greatly reduced in size and prominence, and is made entirely subordinate to the Clere-story; and consists often of a low foliated arcade, or a band of plain tracery. The inner arcade of the CLERE-STORY altogether disappears, and in its place is sometimes found a plane of Geometrical Tracery, corresponding with that of the window; but more commonly a single arch spans the entire compartment; and sometimes the gallery is dispensed with altogether. The AISLE-ARCADE is often very elegant; the arches are usually foliated, and covered with a straight-sided canopy. Occasionally this arcade consists of a series of beautiful panels containing geometrical tracery, with mouldings of a very minute and elegant character. Both the centre and side-aisles are generally covered with VAULTING of simple form, having characteristic bosses and rib-mouldings. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE GEOMETRICAL PERIOD. WESTMINSTER Abbey Church Choir, Transepts. WESTMINSTER Abbey Church Chapter House. SALISBURY Cathedral Church Chapter House. HOWDEN Collegiate Church Transepts. ELY Cathedral Church South Transept, Chapel. HEREFORD Cathedral Church North Transept. LINCOLN Cathedral Church Presbytery. GRANTHAM Parish Church North Aisle. CHICHESTER Cathedral Church Nave, North Aisle. ST. ALBANS Abbey Church Choir. TINTERN Abbey Church Choir, Transepts. LICHFIELD Cathedral Church Nave. NEWSTEAD Abbey Church West End. YORK, ST. MARY'S Abbey Church Nave. EXETER Cathedral Church Lady Chapel. RIPON Cathedral Church East End. CHICHESTER Cathedral Church Lady Chapel. EXETER Cathedral Church Choir. MERTON COLLEGE Chapel Choir. YORK Cathedral Church Chapter House. SOUTHWELL Collegiate Church Chapter House. TEMPLE BALSALL Collegiate Church Chancel. HOWDEN Collegiate Church Nave. GUISBOROUGH Priory Church Choir. YORK Cathedral Church Nave. WELLS Cathedral Church Chapter House. ST. AUGUSTINE'S Abbey Gateway. CHAPTER IX. CURVILINEAR PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. FLOWING TRACERY IN THE WINDOWS, AND THE PREVALENCE OF THE OGEE CURVE IN ALL THE DETAILS. _Exterior Compartment._ As the Circle characterises the previous Period, so the Ogee marks the present Period. It is found not only in the principal outline of the tracery, but also in its smaller subdivisions; not only in the profiles of the mouldings, but also in the contour of the foliage and carved work. The WINDOWS are the most important features in the Churches of this Period. In the more important buildings they are frequently of great size and elaborate design, and in the smaller buildings, the rest of the work seems often to have been impoverished for the sake of the Windows. The infinite variety of design that is contained in the Tracery of this Period is very remarkable, and distinguishes its Architecture, in a manner not to be mistaken, from that of other nations during the same Period. The BASE-COURSE carries a series of mouldings in which the Ogee profile is almost invariably found. The STRING-COURSES, HOOD-MOULDINGS, and SET-OFFS exhibit it also. The BUTTRESSES are usually divided into a greater number of equal stages; their canopies, and those of their pinnacles, are invariably richly crocketed, and have usually the Ogee form instead of the straight pedimental finish. The CORNICE carries usually a row of large square pateras of foliage, in a shallow hollow, and is often surmounted with a battlement, or a parapet pierced or panelled with a flowing trefoil or a quatrefoil. The BALL-FLOWER which appeared at the end of the previous Period, became a favourite ornament for a short time in the commencement of this Period. _Interior Compartment._ The PIERS are usually disposed in plan in the form of a diamond; and consist generally of four shafts with intervening hollows. The BASES and CAPITALS are not unfrequently octagonal in form; and the foliage of the latter consists of crumpled leaves, not growing out of the neck of the capital, as in the earlier Periods, but apparently attached to it, or bound round it. The mouldings of the PIER-ARCHES are fewer in number; they are shallower than those of the preceding Period, and often contain the double Ogee; the walls being thinner, the arches frequently carry, in this Period, as well as in the following one, only two orders of mouldings instead of three. The small square patera, consisting of four leaves, is a common ornament of the Period, and all the foliage is formed of peculiar crumpled leaves, which are easily distinguished from those of the preceding Period. It is not uncommon in this Period to find the arch mouldings continued, without the intervention of impost or capital, down to the ground; or, inversely, the mouldings of the piers carried uninterruptedly upwards through the arch. This is the case as well in the arches of the Ground-story, as in the windows and doorways. The TRIFORIUM rarely occurs in its full proportions, and in such cases exhibits the usual window tracery of the Period: it oftener consists of a panel enclosed within the prolonged jambs of the Clere-story window, and is sometimes reduced to a row of quatrefoils. The CLERE-STORY has its inner arch sometimes foliated, but oftener the window is flush with the face of the inner wall, and the gallery is omitted. The VAULTING exhibits much more intricacy; and a variety of ribs generally intersect the surface of the different cells. The AISLE-ARCADE is not often seen. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE CURVILINEAR PERIOD. HOWDEN Collegiate Church Choir. ELY Cathedral Church Lantern. ELY Cathedral Church Choir. ELY Cathedral Church Crauden's Chapel. ELY Cathedral Church Trinity Chapel. HINGHAM St. Andrew's Church Nave. HECKINGTON St. Andrew's Church Chancel, Transepts, Nave. HAWTON All Saints' Church Chancel. EWERBY St. Andrew's Church Chancel, Nave. SLEAFORD St. Giles' Church Nave. CHESTER Cathedral Church South Transept. COVENTRY St. John's Hospital Chapel. CARLISLE Cathedral Church Choir (part). NEWARK St. Mary's Church South Aisle. BEVERLEY St. Mary's Church North Aisle of Choir. SELBY Abbey Church Choir (part). WALSINGHAM Abbey Church Choir. CHESTER Cathedral Church South Transept. NANTWICH St. Mary's Church Chancel. MELROSE Abbey Church Nave, Transept. BOLTON Abbey Church Choir. BOSTON St. Botolph's Church Nave. LICHFIELD Cathedral Church Choir. WELLS Cathedral Church Choir, Lady Chapel. BURY ST. EDMUND'S Abbey Gateway. HULL Holy Trinity Church Chancel. CHAPTER X. RECTILINEAR PERIOD. PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC. THE PREVALENCE OF STRAIGHT LINES, BOTH HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL, IN THE TRACERY OF WINDOWS, IN PANELS AND ARCADES. _Exterior Compartment._ The WALLS and BUTTRESSES of this Period present great contrasts, being generally perfectly plain, but occasionally, in the richer buildings, completely covered with rectangular panelling. The BASE-COURSE is often deep, rises in several stages, and contains a few large bold mouldings. The mullions of the WINDOWS almost invariably rise vertically through the Tracery, and are often crossed at right angles by other straight lines, as well in the lower part of the Window as in the Tracery itself. These _Transoms_ in some of the larger East and West Windows, occurring at equal intervals, divide the entire design into a series of rectangular compartments, and give to the whole the appearance of a huge gridiron. They are sometimes ornamented with a small battlemented moulding. The CLERE-STORY WINDOWS, as well as the side windows, where the aisle walls are low, are often square-headed. The CORNICE generally carries a large shallow hollow, filled at intervals with a square flat leaf, and grotesque sculptures. _Gurgoyles_, formed usually of the head and shoulders of some monster, and projecting from the cornice, for the purpose of carrying the water from the gutters clear of the walls, which occur in the former Period, are now universal. The PARAPETS are frequently ornamented richly, with rectangular foliated panelling, and covered with a BATTLEMENT. Both are sometimes pierced instead of being panelled. _Interior Compartment._ The PIERS are usually tall and light, and consist generally, as in the preceding Period, of four shafts with intervening hollows, which latter are continued uninterruptedly round the Pier-arch. Frequently the entire Pier is moulded without shafts, and the whole of the mouldings are carried round the Pier-arch. The Pier is frequently so disposed that its transverse section is greater than its longitudinal section, or, in other words, it is thicker from North to South than it is from East to West. The CAPITALS are usually octagonal, but sometimes circular. Foliage is much more rarely seen in their hollows, and they contain plain mouldings of a more angular character generally than in the preceding Period. They are also taller, in comparison, to their diameter. They have sometimes a battlement moulding on their upper edge, which is in other cases often square. The BASES are generally tall, narrow, and polygonal, and often of several stages. In the PIER-ARCHES occasionally a form occurs for the first time, which is seen in no other Period. This is the _four-centered_ arch, so called from the circumstance of its being drawn from four different centres: its use, however, in _arches of construction_, except in the Vaulting, is by no means so common as in _arches of decoration_, where it continually appears. It is often enclosed in doorways, under a square head. The mouldings of Pier-arches, Window-arches, and all others are usually plain, broad, and shallow; the double Ogee occurs continually, as well as a large shallow hollow, drawn from three centres, between a few small filleted members. Few Arches carry more than two orders. In the STRING-COURSES, CORNICES, and other hollow mouldings, flat square leaves at intervals, continuous training foliage, and the vine-leaf and grapes, frequently occur; but the relief is usually not considerable, and the amount of undercutting in foliage exhibited in the two previous Periods is never seen. The Tudor Rose and the Tudor Flower are frequent ornaments of this Period. The TRIFORIUM is rarely seen, and in its place the Clere-story Window is often carried down in blank panelling to the passage or String-course over the Pier-arches. It is sometimes, however, represented by a band of panelling or pierced work. The CLERE-STORY attains considerable height and importance in this Period; the effect of which, in large buildings, is increased by the suppression of the Triforium, and the substitution in its place of the apparent continuation downwards of the Clere-story. In many buildings the Clere-story windows are in pairs, and so numerous that all blank wall entirely disappears; and the effect of the mass of light thus poured down into the Church is very striking and characteristic. The VAULTING becomes much more complicated and enriched in this Period. Diverging ribs having bosses and shields at their points of intersection, cover the surface of the Vault: the plans of these vaultings are very various: some are called _Fan-tracery_ vaults, and others _Stellar_ vaults, terms which explain themselves. Open wooden roofs of elaborate construction, and large span, become common in this Period. They spring frequently from Corbel shafts, resting on figures in the Clere-story wall; and have rich cornices of mouldings and carved work, traceried spandrels, figures of angels, and richly moulded beams. The AISLE-ARCADE is not often found, but its place is sometimes supplied by the rectangular surface panelling, so characteristic of the Period, which in some of the richer buildings literally covers the whole of the walls, leaving no blank or unoccupied space. PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS OF THE RECTILINEAR PERIOD. YORK Cathedral Church Choir. WINCHESTER Cathedral Church Nave. CANTERBURY Cathedral Church Transepts. CANTERBURY Cathedral Church Nave. YORK Cathedral Church West Towers. WELLS Cathedral Church Central Tower. BEVERLEY Minster West Front. BRIDLINGTON Priory Church West Front. HOWDEN Collegiate Church Chapter House. CAMBRIDGE St. Mary's Church Nave. LONG MELFORD Holy Trinity Church Chancel, Nave. SAFFRON WALDEN St. Mary's Church Chancel, Nave. LAVENHAM St. Peter and St. Paul's Church Nave. DONCASTER St. George's Church Chancel, Nave. BURY ST. EDMUND'S St. James' Church Chancel, Nave. ROTHERHAM All Saints' Church Nave, Transepts. HULL Holy Trinity Church Nave. WINDSOR St. George's Chapel Chancel, Nave. MANCHESTER Cathedral Church Choir, Nave. TAUNTON St. Mary's Church Nave, Tower. GLOUCESTER Cathedral Church Choir. CAMBRIDGE King's College Chapel. WARWICK St. Mary's Church Beauchamp Chapel. WESTMINSTER Cathedral Church Henry Seventh's Chapel. BATH Abbey Church Choir, Transepts, Nave. THE SEVEN PERIODS OF ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. ROMANESQUE. A.D. A.D. YEARS. I. SAXON PERIOD from ---- to 1066, prevailed -- II. NORMAN PERIOD " 1066 " 1145, " 79 III. TRANSITIONAL PERIOD " 1145 " 1190, " 45 GOTHIC. IV. LANCET PERIOD " 1190 " 1245, " 55 V. GEOMETRICAL PERIOD " 1245 " 1315, " 70 VI. CURVILINEAR PERIOD " 1315 " 1360, " 45 VII. RECTILINEAR PERIOD " 1360 " 1550, " 190 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. [Illustration: NORMAN Exterior ELY CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: NORMAN Interior ELY CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: NORMAN Exterior PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: NORMAN Interior PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: TRANSITIONAL Exterior RIPON CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: TRANSITIONAL Interior RIPON CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: LANCET Exterior ELY CATHEDRAL. Presbytery] [Illustration: LANCET. Interior ELY CATHEDRAL. Presbytery] [Illustration: LANCET Exterior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: LANCET Interior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: LANCET Exterior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: LANCET Interior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: GEOMETRICAL Exterior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Presbytery] [Illustration: GEOMETRICAL Interior LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. Presbytery] [Illustration: GEOMETRICAL Exterior LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: GEOMETRICAL Interior LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: CURVILINEAR Exterior ELY CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: CURVILINEAR Interior ELY CATHEDRAL. Choir] [Illustration: RECTILINEAR Exterior WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. Nave] [Illustration: RECTILINEAR Interior WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. Nave] A SELECTION FROM E. & F. N. SPON'S CATALOGUE OF BOOKS. _A HANDBOOK OF FORMULÆ, TABLES, AND MEMORANDA_, For Architectural Surveyors and others engaged in Building. By J. T. HURST, C.E. Fourteenth Edition. Royal 32mo, roan, 5_s._ CONTAINING: Formulae and Tables for the Strength of Materials, Roofs, Water Supply, Drainage, Gas, and other matters useful to Architects and Builders. Information connected with Sanitary Engineering. 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Imperial 4to, handsomely bound in cloth, 1_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._ _ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF CARPENTRY._ By THOMAS TREDGOLD. Revised from the original edition, and partly rewritten, by JOHN THOMAS HURST. Contained in 517 pages of letterpress, and _illustrated with 48 plates and 150 wood engravings_. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, 12_s._ 6_d._ _DOMESTIC ELECTRICITY FOR AMATEURS_: Translated from the French of E. HOSPITALIER, Editor of 'l'Electricien,' with additions, by C. J. WHARTON, Assoc. Soc. Tel. Engineers. _Numerous illustrations._ Demy 8vo, cloth, 9_s._ CONTENTS: 1. Production of the Electric Current--2. Electric Bells--3. Automatic Alarms--4. Domestic Telephones--5. Electric Clocks--6. Electric Lighters--7. Domestic Electric Lighting--8. Domestic Application of the Electric Light--9. Electric Motors--10. Electrical Locomotion--11. Electrotyping, Plating, and Gilding--12. Electric Recreations--13. 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40558	----	Transcribers Note: Text that is represented in bold has been enclosed in =. Punctuation errors have been fixed and superscript has been noted by a ^ prior to the superscript itself. [Illustration: FAIRFAX COUNTY VIRGINIA HUNTLEY SITE LOCATION] HUNTLEY A Mason Family Country House By Tony P. Wrenn Published by the Fairfax County Division of Planning under the direction of the County Board of Supervisors in cooperation with the County History Commission Fairfax, Virginia November 1971 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76-183058 Typography by ARVA Printers, Inc. Printing by ARVA Printers, Inc. Additional copies available for $1.50 from Administrative Services, Massey Building TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Illustrations v Preface vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter I. The Mason Family 3 Thomson Francis Mason 3 Chapter II. Huntley and Its Owners 9 Location and Site 9 Origin of Name 9 Owners and Occupants 10 Mason ownership 10 King ownership 13 Harrison-Pierson ownership 15 Harrison ownership 17 Later owners 23 Chapter III. An Architectural Description 27 The Dwelling or Mansion House 27 Room arrangement 27 Windows and doors 29 Interior features 29 Exterior features 31 The Tenant House 31 The Storage House and Necessary 33 The Icehouse 35 The Root Cellar 35 Dairy and Springs 37 Early Structures No Longer Standing 37 Chapter IV. The Architect of Huntley 41 The Architectural Plan 41 Area Architects, circa 1820 42 George Hadfield 42 Similarities to the Work of Hadfield 43 Summary 47 Appendix A Some Mason Houses in Northern Virginia 50 Appendix B Chain of Title 53 List of Sources 55 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1. Huntley, viewed from southwest, including root cellar and necessary, 1969 viii 2. Huntley house and barn complex, viewed from south, 1947 8 3. Detail, _Map of Eastern Virginia and Vicinity of Washington_, 1862 12 4. Plat of Huntley division, 1868 14 5. Detail, Hopkins, _Atlas of Fifteen Miles around Washington_, 1879 18 6. Rear facade, c. 1890 19 7. Rear facade, c. 1900 20 8. Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, New Jersey 22 9. Front view, 1969 26 10. Rear view, 1969 26 11. Mantel, central first floor room, 1969 28 12. Mantel, north room first floor, 1969 28 13. Detail, exterior door, north facade, 1969 30 14. Detail, interior of entrance door, south facade, 1969 30 15. Detail, window and door, central first floor room, 1969 30 16. Necessary and tenant house from the icehouse, 1969 32 17. Necessary, rear or west facade, 1969 32 18. Necessary, door detail, 1969 34 19. Necessary, interior detail, 1969 34 20. Icehouse, detail, dome and opening, 1969 36 21. Icehouse door to root cellar, 1969 36 22. Root cellar entrance to icehouse, 1969 36 23. Dairy and spring house, viewed from southeast, 1969 38 24. Architect George Hadfield's ground plan exhibit at Royal Academy, 1780-82 40 25. Hadfield's design, bed chamber story plan 40 26. Arlington House (Custis-Lee Mansion) showing portico designed by Hadfield 44 27. Analostan, now demolished, possibly Hadfield designed 44 28. Front elevation, Huntley, 1946 47 29. Rear elevation, Huntley, 1946 48 30. Basement floor plan, 1946 48 31. First floor plan, 1946 49 32. Second floor plan, 1946 49 PREFACE I first visited Huntley in May, 1969 in the company of Edith Sprouse, Joyce Wilkinson, and Tony Wrenn. Neither I nor anyone else on the staff of the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission had ever seen or heard of the house, and my Fairfax guides were anxious that their "discovery" be brought to our attention. Having assumed that anything of interest in that section of Fairfax County had long been swept away for housing developments, I was in no way prepared when suddenly we rounded a corner and looked up to see a curious geometric structure sitting placidly among its outbuildings against a wooded hillside, aloof from its plebian neighbors. A quick scanning of composition and details dissipated any skepticism I may have had: here, on the outskirts of the capital city was a genuine Federal villa! After being graciously escorted throughout the house by the owners, we all agreed that Huntley was, without question, one of Virginia's undiscovered architectural treasures. Since next to nothing was known either of its history or the development of its design, we concluded that the house deserved the most detailed study. All assumed that a house of such intriguing individuality had to have a story behind it. Through the far-sighted patronage of the Fairfax County Government and the meticulous research of Tony Wrenn, this story has now been pieced together. The text which follows provides a history and descriptive analysis worthy of this distinguished Virginia landmark. Calder Loth Architectural Historian Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was undertaken at the request of the Fairfax County History Commission in 1969, when Mrs. William E. Wilkinson was chairman, and in cooperation with the Fairfax County Division of Planning. Colonel and Mrs. Ransom Amlong, owners of Huntley and their son Bill answered the author's numerous questions and gave him free rein to wander through the house and site. Edith Moore Sprouse provided frequent research leads and both E. Blaine Cliver, restoration architect, and Calder Loth, architectural historian with the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission, provided architectural analysis. William Edmund Barrett provided most of the architectural photography. A major source of material concerning Thomson F. Mason was a collection of his papers, lent to the Alexandria Library by William Francis Smith for our use. Other leads were provided by Mrs. Earl Alcorn, Mrs. Sherrard Elliot, Miss Patricia Carey of the Fairfax County Public Library and Miss Margaret Calhoun of the Alexandria Library. Mrs. Hugh Cox provided valuable material on T. F. Mason in Alexandria. Acknowledgment is also due to those who read and made suggestions concerning the final draft of this report, among them Dr. John Porter Bloom, Patricia Williams, John Gott, Mrs. Ross Netherton, Julia Weston, and several others already named above. T.P.W. September, 1971 [Illustration: Figure 1. Huntley, viewed from the southwest, including root cellar and necessary. November 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] INTRODUCTION It is difficult to understand how a house whose history is closely connected to the well-known Mason family has existed, practically without notice or mention, for one hundred and fifty years. This fact is all the more puzzling when the structure is as architecturally important as "Huntley." Several possible explanations come to mind: * Though near a major highway, the house is isolated on its hillside site. * Because the structure has been somewhat altered, close inspection is necessary before its architectural merits can be fully recognized. * The house was a country or secondary home for a member of the Mason family who, though important in his own right, was overshadowed by his more illustrious father, Thomson Mason of "Hollin Hall", and by his grandfather, George Mason IV of "Gunston Hall." * No one has written in detail about the house before and there is little secondary material available concerning it. Kate Mason Rowland's _Life of George Mason_, published in 1892,[1] gives one of the few references to Huntley found by the author in secondary sources. In an appendix titled "Land described in George Mason's will, and now owned by his descendent's," she notes: It was incorrectly stated in one of the earlier volumes that "Lexington" was the only one of the Mason places in Virginia now in the family. The writer had overlooked "Okeley" in Fairfax County, about six miles from Alexandria. The farms of "Okeley" and "Huntley" were both parts of the estate bequeathed by George Mason to his son Thomson Mason of "Hollin Hall." A double ditch[50] is still to be seen on the southern border of these two places, extending several miles from East to West, with a broad space about thirty feet wide separating the two ditches. These mark the line between the lands of George Mason and George Washington, as they were in the lives of those gentlemen. In General Washington's will he refers "to the back line or outer boundary of the tract between Thomson Mason and myself ... now double ditching with a post-and-rail fence thereon," etc. And he mentions in another place "the new double ditch" in connection with the boundary line between "Mt. Vernon" and the Mason property. In adding to his estate he had purchased land at one time from George Mason. And among the Washington papers preserved in the Lewis and Washington families, and recently sold to autograph collectors, are three letters of George Mason, on the subject of the bounds between the Washington and Mason plantations, one written in 1768, the others in 1769. Washington adds a memorandum to the former, saying that "the lines to which this letter has reference were settled by and between Colonel Mason and myself the 19th of April, 1769, as will appear ... by a survey thereof made on that day in his presence, and with his approbation." "Huntley" owned by Judge Thomson F. Mason of "Colross," son of Thomson Mason of "Hollin Hall," passed out of the family some years ago ... Another mention is in Edith Moore Sprouse's _Potomac Sampler_, published in 1961.[2] She identifies Huntley as "a part of the estate of George Mason of Gunston Hall ... on a tract of land which bordered Washington's on the north and stretched from the Potomac to Kings Highway." The following study of the Huntley complex combines the work of architects, architectural historians and historians in reading and interpreting the structures. At some future date, efforts of archaeologists will probably be rewarded with further information about the complex at various stages of development. Introduction Notes [Footnote 1: Kate Mason Rowland, =The Life of George Mason= (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1892), p. 472] [Footnote 2: Edith Moore Sprouse, =Potomac Sampler= (Alexandria: privately printed, 1961).] CHAPTER I THE MASON FAMILY The first George Mason came to Virginia during the middle of the seventeenth century.[3] Two other Georges followed before 1725, when the fourth George Mason, "The Pen of the Revolution," was born. Movement of the Mason family had been gradually northward, from Norfolk, then to Stafford and Prince William Counties in Virginia, across the Potomac River to Charles County, Maryland, and then back to Fairfax County in Virginia where, in 1758, George Mason IV built Gunston Hall. The builder of Gunston Hall was later the author of the Fairfax Resolves, of the first Constitution of Virginia and of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. His Declaration of Rights, which was adopted by the Virginia House of Burgesses in Williamsburg on June 12, 1776, was the major source for the Federal Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791. Though a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Mason refused to sign the Constitution because it did not provide for the abolition of slavery, nor did it, in his views, sufficiently safeguard the rights of the individual.[4] George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other early American leaders were friends of George Mason and Mason's family surely met many of them at Gunston Hall. Jefferson, who called George Mason "the wisest man of his generation," was his last recorded visitor at Gunston Hall, on September 30, 1792.[5] On October 7, one week later, Mason died. Nine of his children married. On December 17, 1788, George wrote to his son John that "Your brother Thomson and his family have just moved from Gunston to his own seat at Hollin Hall." A tutor of General Thomson Mason's family, Elijah Fletcher, wrote in a letter from Alexandria, August 4, 1810: [General Mason is] ... a man of note and respectability, his family very agreeable, social, affable and easy. I use as much freedom in the family as I did at my fathers house. I doubt not of their kindness to me in health or sickness. My employment is respectable and I consider my standing upon a par and equality with most of the people. Our living is rich and what in Vermont would be called extravagant. The family rise very late in the morning and consequently do not have breakfast till eight or nine. Our dinner at three and tea at eight in the evening.[6] General Thomson Mason served as an officer of militia in the American Revolution, held numerous state and local offices and was active in organizing banks and transportation companies before his death in 1820. It was his son, Thomson Francis Mason, born in 1785 at Gunston Hall, who built "Huntley." Thomson Francis Mason Thomson Francis Mason was heir to a family tradition of important friendships, public service and good taste, and he carried on this tradition. Educated at Princeton, Class of 1807,[7] he chose to return to the Fairfax County area to practice law and enter public service. His life story is difficult to trace. No biography exists, nor is he mentioned in most works concerning Alexandria, even though he later attained significant recognition there. On November 24, 1817, the _Alexandria Gazette_ announced the marriage, on Wednesday evening, November 19th of: Thomson F. Mason, Esq., of this place, to Miss Elizabeth C. Price of Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia.... The young Mrs. Mason was familiarly known as Eliza Clapham Price, not as Elizabeth C., but Thomson F. called her Betsey. The use of the phrase "of this place" is of interest here, and open to several interpretations. It could mean that he was living in Alexandria at the time or only that he had an office there. He could have been living in Alexandria and building a home in Fairfax County at the same time. Mason was probably already a practicing lawyer at the time of his marriage and was by 1824 a man of consequence in Alexandria. The fight to get out of the District began in 1824, while it was not settled by Congress until 1846. The citizens of Alexandria, becoming tired of being in the District of Columbia, made an attempt to have Alexandria receded to Virginia. A meeting was held March 9, 1824, for the purpose of preparing a memorial to Congress on the subject. S. Thompson Mason was Chairman of the meeting....[8] The memorial sent to Congress was couched in legal enough terms to have been drafted by Mason, who later became a judge. His political activities gave him enough local standing to insure his election as Mayor of Alexandria in 1827 and again in 1836.[9] A glimpse of Mason as a family man can be seen in a reply to a letter from his wife in which she complained of an exchange of words with Huntley's overseer (in 1828), Slighter Smith. Mason, who must have been in court at Leesburg, wrote: I have been indeed a little surprised at hearing the conduct of Mr. Smith. Altho' I knew about the general unkind and bad temper which he possessed, I had no idea that he would have ventured to exhibit it in your presence--or have him guilty of the insolence of threatening violence in your presence and to one under your protection.... I still cannot believe that he would seriously attempt it.... In that same letter Mason noted: ... the great pleasure and pride I have ever felt in seeing you placed above the flame, and having you so looked up to by others.[10] As a good plantation manager, he also included a note to Smith informing him of his surprise and displeasure at the outbreak and suggesting: I feel it is proper to inform you that I shall feel it my duty to inquire strictly into this subject--And with regard to the threatened violence I beg leave ... to put you on your guard and to inform you that any new attempt will be followed by the most serious consequences. Mason lived in several houses in Alexandria (see Appendix A), but it was the time he spent at Colross which seems to have received the most notice. Mrs. Marian Gouverneur wrote in her book, _As I Remember_: Another Virginia family of social prominence, whose members mingled much in Washington Society, while I was still visiting the Winfield Scotts, was that of the Masons of "Colross," the name of their old homestead near Alexandria in Virginia. Mrs. Thomson F. Mason was usually called Mrs. "Colross" Mason to distinguish her from another family by the same name, that of James M. Mason, United States Senator from Virginia. The family thought nothing of the drive to Washington and no entertainment was quite complete without the "Mason girls," who were especially bright and attractive young women. Open house was kept at this delightful country seat, and many were the pleasant parties given there....[11] Indeed the Mason occupancy of Colross made such an impression, that for years afterward the house was known as "The Mason Mansion." During the Civil War, on October 12, 1864, the _Alexandria Gazette_, in reporting the military occupation of the town, carried the following item on Colross: ... The fine old Mason mansion, in the suburbs of the town, was hired by an army officer.... The Mason mansion ... is a fair type of the residence of a wealthy Virginian. A wide hall in the centre opens into various rooms, while the front entrance is approached through a pleasant courtyard. At the rear of the house is a spacious area, paved with marble in diamond shaped blocks, looking out upon a large garden, well shaded with fruit trees and surrounded by a heavy brick wall. At one corner of this garden is the family tomb, in which are the remains of old Judge Mason, the former owner of the estate, who died just before the war broke out. He was a near relative of the present Confederate Commissioner to England, and his widow now resides at Point of Rocks.... Colross remained in the Mason family until the 1880's, Mrs. Betty Carter Smoot, Alexandria historian, who lived at Colross, wrote in 1934, of the house and family: Jonathan Swift and his wife, and the Masons, who for many years resided at Colross, are said to have lived in great style and elegance. As regarded the Masons, there were still some evidences of this when we went there. Although pretty well denuded of its furnishings, there were one or two fine old mahogany pieces which had not been removed, and some handsome mirrors, with gilded frames, of a size appropriate to the surroundings. In the garret was stored quantities of china, remains of dinner sets, some in white and gold and others in blue willow pattern. There were some beautiful old cut glass decanters, wine glasses, and goblets. I remember also some vases and other bric-a-brac. Much of this was mutilated, but it furnished a fair sample of the style of living maintained in palmy days of the past. These belongings of the Masons were all packed, under the supervision of a daughter of the family, Miss Caroline Mason, and disposed of by her.[12] When Thomson F. Mason died on December 21, 1838, his obituary in the _Alexandria Gazette_ ran two full columns.[13] It was noted that Mason, who was a Judge of the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia at the time of his death, had: ... graduated at Princeton with the highest honors of that institution ... studied law and practiced with much success and celebrity, until he was elevated by the Executive of the United States to that Station on the Bench, which he filled with such ability at the time of his decease ... his services were eminently valuable not only in the character of Chief Magistrate of their City (Alexandria), the duties of which he discharged for many years, but in all their public undertakings.... That same issue of the _Gazette_ carried resolutions of the Common Council of Alexandria decreeing that they would: ... attend his funeral, and will wear crape on the left arm for one month.... That, as a further mark of respect, and to evince the sense of his community of their loss, the great bell in the public building be tolled on Sunday next, from 1 o'clock P.M., till half past 4 P.M.... Members of the Bar and Officers of the Courts of Alexandria County voted to: ... attend his funeral ... and wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days ... that a committee of three be appointed respectively to tender them [family] our condolence ... that the proceeding of the meeting be published in the _Alexandria Gazette_.... The Bar and Officers of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia voted to: ... attend his funeral, and, during the residue of the term, wear the usual badges of mourning ... that the Chairman [Francis Scott Key] with Richard Coxe and Alexander Hunter, Esqrs., be a Committee to tender to the family of the deceased the sympathy of this meeting at the death of one endeared to us by long acquaintance, which has made known the character of the deceased as one deserving of our warmest personal regard and highest respect, and which rendered this event a great public loss, as well as a private affliction.... T. F. Mason had been appointed to the newly organized Criminal Court of the District of Columbia less than six months before his death. He was the first judge appointed to that court, and its only judge during its formative period. As a Justice of Peace he had received his first appointment in February 1828, and was reappointed in 1833, and 1838.[14] The story of Mason's life presented here is only a partial one but it is included to show something of the type of man who built Huntley.[15] Chapter 1 Notes [Footnote 3: Stevens Thompson Mason, =Mason Family Chart= (Baltimore: privately printed, 1907). All genealogical material is taken either from this chart or from Kate Mason Rowland, =The Life of George Mason=.] [Footnote 4: Rowland, =George Mason=, p. 365.] [Footnote 5: =Ibid.=] [Footnote 6: =Ibid.=, p. 307; The Letters of Elijah Fletcher, ed. by =Martha von Briesen=, (University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 1965), p. 8.] [Footnote 7: Princeton Alumni Association, Princeton University] [Footnote 8: Mary G. Powell, =The History of Old Alexandria Virginia=, (Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1928), p. 324. In her list of the Mayors of Alexandria Mrs. Powell also lists T.F. Mason incorrectly as S. Thomson (sic) Mason, although she spells the name without a "p" there.] [Footnote 9: William F. Carne, =Alexandria Business Book= (Alexandria: M. Hill Co., 1897).] [Footnote 10: Thomson Francis Mason Papers, 1820-38, Collection of William Francis Smith, Alexandria, Virginia.] [Footnote 11: Marian Gouverneur, =As I Remember= (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1911), p. 212.] [Footnote 12: Mrs. Betty Carter Smoot, =Days in an Old Town= (Alexandria: privately printed, 1934), p. 127. Colross was moved to Princeton, N.J., in 1929. According to a clipping in the Gunston Hall archives, which is undated and unidentified, it moved in "... a grand total of 16 carloads of brick, wood, marble, etc...."] [Footnote 13: =Alexandria Gazette.= December 27, 1838.] [Footnote 14: Noel F. Regis, "Some Notable Suits in Early District Courts," =Records of the Columbia Historical Society=. Volume 24 (1922), 68, and Charles S. Bundy, "History of the Office of Justice of the Peace," Volume 5 (1902), 278.] [Footnote 15: Additional information may be found in the Thomson Francis Mason Papers, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, Accession #1146. Also Gunston Hall Library, Gunston Hall, Lorton, Virginia.] [Illustration: Figure 2. Huntley house and barn complex, viewed from the south. 1947. Photo by Bill Amlong, copy by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] CHAPTER II HUNTLEY AND ITS OWNERS Location and Site Huntley, 6918 Harrison Lane, near Woodlawn Plantation, Fairfax County, Virginia, is currently owned by Colonel and Mrs. Ransom G. Amlong. It is located off the Jefferson Davis Highway (U.S. Route 1), in the Groveton community, on Harrison Lane, between Lockheed Boulevard and Kings Highway (Route 633). The house is on a plateau, overlooking Hybla Valley, at 150 feet above sea level. To the south, or in front of the house, the ground level drops in three terraces to 130 feet above sea level. To the north or rear there is a sharp rise to 200 feet. A church and several houses are located directly in front of Huntley, but the vista from the house toward the Potomac River, especially in summer, is relatively undisturbed. The general area is one of intense commercial and residential development. Hybla Valley, through which Barnyard Creek flows from Huntley, constitutes the major part of the view from the house, and much of this land is owned by the U.S. Government. The Huntley complex consists of: 1. The mansion house. 2. Necessary with flanking storage rooms. 3. Root cellar. 4. Ice house. 5. Spring house. 6. Tenant house. All the buildings are brick. The house itself is a significant Federal period structure, built during the ownership of Thomson F. Mason, c. 1820, and believed to have been influenced by George Hadfield, architect of Washington's first City Hall and first superintendent of the Capitol's construction. Origin of the Name The first known use of "Huntley" as a place name for the Harrison Lane house appears in an 1859 deed of the property by Betsey C. Mason, widow of T.F. Mason, to her sons John Francis and A. Pendleton Mason. The property is described as: ... all that certain tract of land in the County of Fairfax and state of Virginia called "Huntley" and containing about one thousand acres....[16] It is probable that the plantation was named Huntley before Thomson F. Mason died in 1838, although his will of that year mentions no real estate, or personal property specifically. If he followed the Mason tradition, the house may have been named after an ancestral home in England, and probably after the home of a maternal ancestor. In writing of Gunston Hall, Helen Hill Miller says: They called their home "Gunston Hall." The name had come down through several generations of Mason's maternal ancestry: his grandmother was Mary Fowke of Gunston Hall in Charles County, Maryland, and her grandfather was the Gerald Fowke of Gunston Hall in Staffordshire who emigrated to Virginia at the same time as the first George Mason. The habit of naming new homes in America after the old ones in England was general among the planters of the Virginia Tidewater. Mason conformed to this tradition for a second time when he made a gift of a nearby plantation to his son Thomson and called it "Hollin Hall," after the home of his mother's people near Ripon....[17] If Thomson F. Mason had followed the same procedure he could have used the name "Huntley," which might at any point have had an "e" added. His father was General Thomson Mason of Hollin Hall, who was married to Sarah McCarty Chichester.[18] Sarah was the daughter of Richard McCarty Chichester, whose first wife had been Ann Gordon.[19] The ancestral Gordon home in Scotland was called "Huntley." In these lands of Strathbogie Sir Adam (Adam the V) fixed his residence, and was the first of the Gordons who removed from the south of Scotland to the North. He obtained from the parliament holden at Perth anno 1311, that his new estate should be called _Huntley_, as it is still called in writings and public instruments, altho' amongst the vulgar it retains the old name of Strathbogie.[20] OWNERS AND OCCUPANTS Mason Ownership The will of General Thomson Mason of Hollin Hall was written on April 15, 1797, and probated, after his death, on November 21, 1820.[21] That will does not specifically mention real estate, but does: ... give and devise unto my Son Thomason Mason my gold watch and I confirm unto him his right and title to a mulatto boy named Bill, given him by his Grandfather Mr. Richard Chichester and I also give and devise unto him my interest in the Potomack Company.... One reason no real estate is specifically mentioned may be cleared up by a later deed (1823)[22] in which other heirs of General Mason deed to: Thomson F. Mason of the Town of Alexandria in the District of Columbia, ... a certain tract of land situate in the County of Fairfax and State of Virginia known and called by the name of Hunting Creek Farm.... This deed reaffirms settlements made by General Mason during his lifetime on January 1, 1817, and includes the land on which Huntley is located. Thomson F. could have begun Huntley at any time after January 1, 1817. On the 29th of January 1818, he paid Alexander Baggett $37.79-1/2 for, among other things: 40 Ft. Double Architrave 18 Ft. Jamb lining 1 Carpet strip 2 pr hinges put on 1 mortice lock put on 2 Flush Bolts 135 Ft 4/4 clear boards locks, hinges, bolts, nails, and Springs....[23] Also included is one item labeled "folding doors" (double doors). No double doors have been located at Huntley, although Mason is not known to have been building elsewhere at this period. During the latter part of 1819 he was still building and paid $28.00 for: Sept 20--20 bushels plaster Sept 22--20 bushels plaster Oct 10--10 bushels plaster....[24] There was probably a structure at Huntley by 1823, for in February of that year Mason sent "to his farm by surry ten bushels shoots and six bran...."[25] By 1826 the house must have been substantially finished, for in that year Mason's Grandmother Chichester wanted: to spend a few days at Mr. T.F. Mason's farm, but was deterred from doing so by the apprehension that, as Mr. Mason resided in Town, and there was no other white person on the farm but the overseer ... she would not be secure.[26] By implication there was a dwelling at Huntley ready for her occupancy. Another letter written to Mason on August 18, 1827, now incomplete and in poor condition, suggests finishing some construction work and notes that the writer, whose name is missing: ... had understood you had only rented the place by the month, tho the man has a little crop on the land growing and if the season proves good at the end of the year may be worth ... [the rest is missing][27] Almost a year later the _Alexandria Gazette_, on Thursday morning August 5, 1828, had an advertisement offering: $25 Reward/ran away from the farm of Thompson F. Mason/Fairfax County on the night of 2d instant negro/BOB. He is about 6 feet high, stout made, very black/and about 45 years of age; has a stammering in his/speech; his right leg sore. Had on when he eloped,/brown linen shirt and trowsers and took with him/blue coat, white linsey trowsers, and black fur hat-/I will give $10 for taking him so I get him again if in the County. If taken out of the County/or District of Columbia, $25./Slighter Smith, Agent for Thompson F. Mason/Fairfax County, State of Virginia/August 5. Mr. Smith had been replaced as Overseer at Huntley by 1832 for in that year Price Skinner wrote: ... being moved to your house last friday--we are in a bad fix--I want you if you please to ride out to see what you will have don--if I was you I wood have the floor layed down with the plank not used--the whole of the cappenders work may be made in less than one day--and I ast John Parsons what the cappenders work wood be worth--he said about fourty dollars--and forty cents I believe wood be anough there is but three suns [?] worth--to lay the floor and weather bord the shed Sir you will please to ride out....[28] Mason had already acquired Colross, in Alexandria (see Appendix A.), by 1833, for in March of that year an estimate was submitted by Thos. Beale for: Labour and Materials, for repairs on the large Building North of the Town of Alexandria.... The estimate included plastering, painting, brickwork, erection of porches and porticos, and fencing of the property.[29] It is Colross with which Thomson F. Mason's name is normally linked. He died December 21, 1838, and was buried there. [Illustration: Figure 3. Detail from =Map of Eastern Virginia and Vicinity of Washington=, Arlington, January 1, 1862, Bureau of Topographic Engineers, Record Group 77, National Archives. Copy by Stuart C. Schwartz.] His will was probated on February 4, 1839,[30] with Mrs. Mason as executrix, though it was not recorded until February 18, 1839.[31] Seven days before his death Mason had written in his will: ... I devise all my estate real and personal in possession remainder or reversion or in expectancy to my beloved wife B.C.M. for her maintenance and support of our children during her life and widowhood.... For any aid or assistance which my wife may require in the management of my estate, I recommend her to my brother Richard C. Mason, and my most excellent friends Benjamin King and Bernard Hooe.... Though Thomson F. Mason had built Huntley, it never served as his permanent residence. It was occupied by a succession of renters, overseers and farmers. Mason's "excellent friend Benjamin King," a doctor, was to have a more personal connection with Huntley, however. King Ownership In November of 1859, Betsey C. Mason, having been authorized: ... by deed or will, to dispose of all or any part of his estate to their children or any of them, at such times and in such proportions as she may think just and prudent, and whereas, the said Betsey C. Mason deems if just and prudent to dispose of a portion of said estate to her said sons [John Francis and A. Pendleton] ... all that certain tract of land in the County of Fairfax and state of Virginia called "Huntley" and containing about one thousand acres....[32] At the same time Mrs. Mason transferred to her two sons: ... eighty five negroes, slaves for life, which said negroes are particularly mentioned and set forth in the scheduled annexes to this deed ... Daniel Humphreys and his wife Rachel and their son Daniel, now living at Huntley ... and Priscilla, their daughter and her child named Thomas, the last two being at Huntley ... Sandy living at Huntley....[33] Of the 85 more than six may have lived at Huntley, but only these six are specified. Exactly one month later, the two Mason boys, being: ... justly indebted to the said Benjamin King the just sum of thirteen thousand dollars, lawful money of the United States, to be paid to the said Benjamin King on the first day of January one thousand eight hundred and sixty two.... transferred as security for a debt to John A. Smith: ... that certain tract or parcel of land ... known and commonly called Huntley ... containing one thousand acres, more or less ... together with all and singular its appurtenances ... for the following purposes and none other, that is to say to permit the said John Francis Mason and Arthur Pendleton Mason, their heirs or assigns to retain possession of the said tract or land, without account of rents or profits, until a sale become necessary under this deed and if the said John Francis and Arthur Pendleton Mason, shall fail to pay the sum of thirteen thousand dollars, as the same shall become due according to the conditions of the said bond ... the said John A. Smith shall upon the request of the said parties entitled to said payment proceed to sell at public auction, to the highest bidder for cash, the said tract or parcel of land or as much thereof as may be necessary ... after having given at least 30 days notice of the time and place of sale in some newspaper printed in the town of Alexandria....[34] [Illustration: Figure 4. Survey, Huntley, prior to May 15, 1868. Fairfax County Deed Book 1-4, p. 240. Copy by Stuart C. Schwartz.] There the ownership remained until the Civil War. A map of that era (1862) shows "Huntley Pl--Mrs. Mason's". The overview is labelled "Wide fertile Valley with but little Timber."[35] This map also labels Kings Highway the "Gravel Road," a term used in many of the Huntley deeds. Why the Masons became indebted to Benjamin King is not known, but on June 12, 1862, the property was transferred from Smith to King. According to the deed they did: ... advertise the said property in the Alexandria News, a paper published in the City of Alexandria, for upwards of thirty days for sale at public auction and wheras pursuant to said advertisement the said John A. Smith did on Thursday, the 12th day of June, 1862, at 12 o'clock a.m. in front of the Mayor's office in the City of Alexandria, offer at public sale to the highest bidder ... several bids having been made therefor, the said property was struck off to Benjamin King at and for the sum of thirteen thousand dollars ... that certain tract of land known as "Huntley" ... together with all and singular the appurtenances thereto....[36] As nearly as can be determined no _Alexandria News_ was being published at the time, and the property was not advertised in the _Gazette_. The transaction was noted in its "Local News"; ... the property known as "Huntley" in Fairfax County, containing about 1,000 acres, was sold today at public auction by John A. Smith, esq., Trustee. It was subject to a lien of about $10,000, and was purchased by Dr. Benjamin King, subject to said lien, for $13,000 cash.[37] Evidently King either already had moved to Huntley, or did at that time. He next appeared in the _Gazette_ when he was leaving the property in 1868. For sale on Tuesday the 19th instant at 10 o'clock a.m. at "Huntley" the residence of Doctor B. King, all his HOUSEHOLD and KITCHEN FURNITURE consisting of sideboard, chairs, tables, bedsteads, bureaus and glasses, wash stands, toilet sets, and c. Also stock and farming utensils, horses, cows, plows, harrows, corn cob and crushers, horse power and threshers, cauldron, kettles, and c. with all articles usually found on a farm. Terms at sale, my 11--1 w.[38] Harrison-Pierson Ownership Dr. King sold Huntley to Albert W. Harrison and Nathan W. Pierson of New Jersey. The instrument of sale provided: ... the tract hereby conveyed containing eight hundred and ninety and one half acres, more or less, known as and commonly called "Huntley"....[39] The deed more specifically noted that the courses in this deed had been so changed as: ... to make them conform to the ancient surveys of the land, and being the same land which was surveyed by George and others to Thomson F. Mason, by deed dated October 1st, eighteen hundred and twenty three ... Accompanying the deed was a survey which was accomplished for Dr. King by Thomas W. Carter, "formerly surveyor, Prince William County." The survey was received by the County Clerk on May 15, 1868. The "Gravel Road" was shown as running north of the "Mansion House," and the "South Branch Little Hunting Creek" east of the house. The Huntley part of the purchase was shown as a plot of land with 682 acres, 0 rods and 30 poles, containing the "Mansion House." The "Journal of Records of Huntley Farm," covering the period between 1868-89, is currently in the possession of Mrs. Earl Alcorn of Alexandria. It details the purchase, subsequent division between Pierson and Harrison, payment of liens, etc., on Huntley. The Journal indicates that the farm was actually purchased on March 1, 1868. Dr. King was probably given time to settle his affairs, as the transfer was not recorded until November of that year. At any rate, the Journal entry for March 1, 1868, reads: 956 acres at $32.50 per acre 31,070.00 Paid down each $5,000 10,000.00 --------- 21,070.00 The Harrisons obviously entered into community affairs, for by May 1870: The regular monthly meeting of the Woodlawn Farmers' Club was held on Saturday last pursuant to adjournment at Huntley, the residence of A.W. Harrison. The President being absent, Courtland Lukens was appointed Chairman pro tem. Twenty four members were present. Theron Thompson was admitted as a member. The report of the committee on vegetables and a supplement for March last was called for, again read, and discussed at some length. The committee on cereals presented their report on the condition of things about the farm and premises of Huntley, which was a good one and rather commendatory of Mr. Harrison as a practical farmer, and elicited several pertinent questions and answers. Some discussion ensued as to the best method of ridding farms of garlic. E. E. Mason produced several "pips" taken dexterously with the thumb nail from under the tongue of young chickens. The "pip" is a little boney substance similar to a fish scale, a negative of the tongue, and prevents the chick from eating unless it is removed. A conversational style of discussion ensured on the subject of poultry. An invitation to supper, as usual, was unanimously accepted without debate. The club then adjourned to meet one month hence at Edward Daniels' [Gunston Hall].[40] In the 1870 census Harrison was recorded as being 36 years old, having four daughters, real estate worth $28,000 and personal property worth $8,000.[41] Harrison became a well known citizen. The _Alexandria Gazette_ reported on March 3, 1870, that "Mr. Harrison's horses ran away," causing great excitement in the city. Harrison Ownership Pierson and Harrison divided the Huntley tract on March 11, 1871,[42] and by the time the Hopkins _Atlas_ was published in 1879, the house was listed clearly as "A.W. Harrison, 'Huntley'."[43] In 1875 "A.F.B.", evidently a correspondent for the _Syracuse_ (N.Y.) _Journal_, visited Huntley, and on July 25th filed a dispatch to the _Journal_. The story indicated much about life at Huntley during the era, including the marks left by the Civil War and the life of the Northerners who had moved to the South: To come to Huntley you take the steamer from Washington to Alexandria. The cars run hourly or nearly so, but the river ride is more pleasant. If you have been to Alexandria at any time since the century opened, you will recognize the place. Many things change in three score years and fifteen, but Alexandria is not one of them. It is the same yesterday and today. Your hospitable friends at Huntley will meet you on the wharf, and you shall have a charming ride through the Fairfax fair fields for four miles, until you reach the Old Dominion plantation of Judge Mason. It joins on the south Mt. Vernon, which is plainly visible from the ancient family residence of the Masons, now the home of an enterprising eastern gentleman, who has a fondness for agriculture on a grand scale. The house stands boldly on a hill spur, looking over broad acres of corn, rye, wheat, oats, and fertile meadows--a sight to see. Beyond, in plain vision, rolls the Potomac. Vessels of many kinds--by sail and by steam--are going to and from the city of Washington.... We took a walk today over the great farm. I dare not say how many were the acres of corn standing eleven and twelve feet high, with tasseled ears. Our host had us through the meadows, going like Boaz of old among his men. He speaks well of the ex-slaves, and of their service. Among them I met a Washington and an Andrew Jackson.... As we walked on into shady woods we came upon an old encampment of our Union Forces in the war. If fruit and berries were as abundant then as now, the boys in blue had a good time in their season. Nor could the weather have been peculiarly trying. At night we get the west winds from off the Alleghanies, and at times the delicious coolness of the sea-side is rivaled. I counted as many as thirty open graves here from which the forms of those who had been buried had been taken away. Trees are growing in the places of the tents, and time is fast sweeping away the marks of war. The Southern people are not considered by these northern farmers especially unfriendly. There is little social intercourse, however, because the women got so thoroughly mad, that they will never get over it in this world.... Nevertheless, there is such a sprinkling of Yankees in these parts that life here has its social attractions. The farmers' clubs meet statedly to picnic, to discuss, and to prove that the lines have fallen to them in pleasant places. And a better home for a farmer can scarcely be imagined. The winter is short; the spring early; the summer not oppressive, and the autumn continuous, rich and glorious. The people catch the inspiration and are "given to hospitality." One could do much worse than to live at Huntley. As for us, we are coming again. [Illustration: Figure 5. Detail, G.M. Hopkins, =Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington=, Philadelphia, 1879. p. 71.] [Illustration: Figure 6. Rear facade, c. 1890. Courtesy Mrs. Ransom Amlong. Copy by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 7. Rear facade, c. 1900; Courtesy Mrs. Earl Alcorn. Copy by Stuart C. Schwartz.] In May, 1892, the _Gazette_ reported another meeting of the Woodlawn Farmers' Club at Huntley, though the column was a little garble, noting that the Club: ... met at Huntley, the residence of Mrs. Pierson.... The farm of our hostess consists of about 300 acres and is part of the estate formerly owned by Mrs. Thomson Mason. A new cottage has been built overlooking a fertile valley, and giving a fine prospect including the Potomac River, Mt. Vernon, Woodlawn and Belvoir estates and is carried on by Harry Pierson, son of our former President.[44] The Pierson House may be the structure directly across Harrison Lane from Huntley. It has the same outlook and general location as Huntley, and is located on part of the original Huntley tract. Albert W. Harrison, to whom Huntley had passed in 1868, died in 1911. The _Gazette_ noted that: Mr. Albert W. Harrison, an old, well known and esteemed resident of Fairfax County, died at his home "Huntley" in the Woodlawn neighborhood at 7:30 o'clock last night. The deceased was 80 years old. He leaves four children, a son and three daughters. Mr. Harrison was a native of Montclair, New Jersey, but moved to Fairfax County in 1869. His frequent visits to this city for more than forty years made him as well known in Alexandria as any resident of the City. Mr. Harrison was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church. His funeral will take place Saturday afternoon at the residence. The interment will be in Alexandria.[45] On April 5, 1911 the married daughter, Margaret N. Harrison Gibbs, and her husband J. Norman Gibbs, deeded: ... all of their right, title and interest, legal and equitable in and to the personal estate of said Albert W. Harrison, deceased, except his watch, and also to hold as tenants in common, the following described tract of land containing three hundred fifty eight and three quarters (358 3/4) being part of "Huntley" so called and known ...[46] to Clara B. Harrison, unmarried; Mary C. Harrison, unmarried, and Albert R. Harrison, unmarried. The part of the Huntley tract transferred contained the house. For the next 19 years neither the Harrisons nor Huntley seem to have made the news. Then in 1930, a full page _Alexandria Gazette_ article appeared entitled "Nation's Greatest Air Center."[47] The rest of the headline read: George Washington Air Junction Tract Found Ideal for Trans-Atlantic Terminal for Airships of Zeppelin and R-101 types without Interfering with Thousand-Acre Airport for Planes--Admiral Chester Shows That Historic Ancestral Lands of George Washington and George Mason, First Selected by War Department 12 Years Ago for Army Aviation Field, Afford Only Tract Ideal for Great National Air Center. The "only ideal tract" was the valley in front of Huntley. Admiral Chester was reported as saying that the War Department in 1916-17, made an investigation: ... of all possible sites for an Army Aviation field near Washington, and found that the Air Junction site was the only ideal site for a large air center. [Illustration: Figure 8. Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, New Jersey, May 6, 1937. Photo published in =New York Times=, National Archives print.] Public Relations men for the Air Junction certainly used local history as a promotional gimmick: It will be a twentieth century aeronautic, scientific and historic center, but retaining the gorgeous 18th Century pastoral setting, including beautiful groves that teem with birdlife ... a dozen bubbling springs that have been making for centuries the sparkling Little Hunting Creek and Dogue Creek.... There are many other alluring surprises that one would not dream of finding within only nine miles from the Capital, such as Mason's poetic "Huntley," a gem of colonial architecture, surrounded by stately trees. George Mason's "Huntley" and "Okeley" are both part of the George Washington Air Junction. These estates ... had been forgotten, due to the lack of signs on the Washington-Richmond Highway to make known that a modest lane led to them. The lane has now been widened into a 50 foot gravel road and has become the entrance to the Air Junction. As the visitors drive into the Junction, past the historic Little Hunting Creek, about 3,000 feet westward, they behold "Huntley," a gem of colonial architecture, which graces one of the hills on the north side of the Washington Air Junction Drive and overlooks the Thousand Acres Airport. It is surrounded by stately trees, and its sides are screened by vines and picturesque thick bushes of lilacs, roses and other flowers. "May I carry it away?" is the usual query from visitors, as from the distance "Huntley" looks small enough to carry away. Failing to obtain permission to remove this colonial gem, the visitors feel happy in being photographed on the quaint porch and steps.... The writer had apparently convinced himself of at least one thing, for under the photograph of Huntley, which accompanies the article, the house is again called "a gem of colonial architecture." Air Junction promoters invited the Graf Zeppelin and subsequent airships to make their base here rather than at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The same invitation went to the British and to others, but the accidental burning of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst on May 6, 1937, seems to have put an end to dreams of a great airship junction at Huntley, though there was an operative airport there. Such names as Lockheed Boulevard, Fairchild Drive, Piper Lane, Beechcraft Drive and Fordson Road still survive. Later Owners Albert R. Harrison, still unmarried and last of the Harrison children, died on March 24, 1946, and in September his executors sold Huntley to August W. and Eleanor S. Nagel.[48] For some reason the Nagels had Edward M. Pitt, an Arlington architect, do seven sheets of drawings of Huntley that same year.[49] Less than three years later the Nagels sold the house to the present owners, Colonel and Mrs. Ransom G. Amlong.[50] Chapter 2 Notes [Footnote 16: Deed Book B., No. 4, p. 448, November 7, 1859 Fairfax County, Virginia. T.F. Mason's first name is spelled "Thomason," "Thompson" and "Thomson."] [Footnote 17: Helen Hill Miller, =George Mason Constitutionalist= (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 18.] [Footnote 18: Stevens Thompson Mason, =Mason Family Chart=.] [Footnote 19: Ann was not Mason's grandmother, but the first wife of his grandfather. Thomson was a favorite of Grandfather Chichester and he would have known of Ann Gordon. Mr. Chichester had, as a matter of fact, spent his first married years with the Gordon family.] [Footnote 20: C.A. Gordon, =History of the House of Gordon= (Aberdeen: D. Wyllie & Son, 1890), p. 11.] [Footnote 21: Will Book M, No. 1, p. 130, November 21, 1820, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 22: Deed Book W, No. 2, p. 199, October 1, 1823, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 23: January 29, 1818, Letter to Alexandria Baggett from Thomson F. Mason, Alexandria, William Francis Smith Collection, Thomson F. Mason Papers.] [Footnote 24: =Ibid.=, A.P. Glover [?] to T.F. Mason, October 18, 1819.] [Footnote 25: =Ibid.=, P. Taylor "sent T.F. Mason, esq...." February 5, 1823. Mason either was not at Huntley at the time, or the items were for his tenant. The bill notes specifically that the delivery was for "W.T.R.".] [Footnote 26: Lee vs. Chichester, #60, Fairfax County Court House. From a deposition of Bernard Hooe.] [Footnote 27: Letter, William Francis Smith Collection.] [Footnote 28: =Ibid.=, Price Skinner to T.F. Mason, December 7, 1832.] [Footnote 29: At least 10 documents concerning the work which Mason did at Colross are in the William Francis Smith Collection.] [Footnote 30: Will Book T, No. 1, p. 3, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 31: Will Book T, No. 1, pps. 1-4, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 32: Deed Book B, No. 4, p. 448, November 7, 1859, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 33: Deed Book B, No. 4, pps. 449-50, November 7, 1859, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 34: Deed Book B, No. 4, p. 451, December 7, 1859, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 35: United States, National Archives, Record Group 77, Map of Eastern Virginia and Vicinity of Washington, Arlington, January 1, 1862, Bureau of Topographical Engineers.] [Footnote 36: Deed Book E, No. 4, p. 195, June 12, 1862, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 37: =Alexandria Gazette=, June 12, 1862.] [Footnote 38: =Alexandria Gazette=, May 13, 1868. King, then in the U.S. Army, married on May 18, 1827, according to the Christ Church Register. On May 14, 1879, when he sold Lloyd's Lot, which is adjacent to the Huntley property, to Pierson and Harrison, he is listed as "Benjamin King of Anne Arundel County." King, John Mason, and T.F. Mason, all married girls named Price and may have been relatives. It is possible therefore that King was the brother-in-law of T.F.] [Footnote 39: Deed Book I, No. 4, p. 236, November 21, 1868, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 40: =Alexandria Gazette=, May 16, 1870.] [Footnote 41: 1870 Census, Reel 108, Frame Number 197, National Archives. In earlier censuses neither Mason nor King appeared. The actual occupant at Huntley prior to this time was usually an overseer or tenant. Not knowing who most of these were and having no maps coded to the census, the author was unable to gather any earlier information from the census.] [Footnote 42: Deed Book O, No. 4, p. 338, March 11, 1871, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 43: G.M. Hopkins, =Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington=. (Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1879), p. 71.] [Footnote 44: =Alexandria Gazette=, May 14, 1892. A Pierson property is shown adjacent to "Huntley" on the 1879 Hopkins map.] [Footnote 45: =Alexandria Gazette=, March 3, 1911. The =Fairfax Herald=, March 10, 1911, also carried an obituary. The March 4, 1911, =Alexandria Gazette=, noted that the funeral took place "from the residence this afternoon ... conducted by Rev. J.M. Nourse. The remains were interred in Presbyterian Cemetery in this City." The Harrison plot is in the third section to the left from the entrance. Stones bear no epitaphs, only names and dates of birth and death.] [Footnote 46: Deed Book J, No. 7, p. 22, April 5, 1911, Fairfax County, Virginia.] [Footnote 47: =Alexandria Gazette=, "Northern Virginia Industrial Edition," January 1, 1930, Section C, p. 8.] [Footnote 48: Deed Book 515, p. 60, September 1, 1946, Fairfax County, Virginia. See also Deed Book 515, p. 64, August 21, 1953. A survey of the area is shown on pps. 62-63. The plat is marked "Farm and Mansion House Area," and shows the "House," "Tenant House," and "Barn."] [Footnote 49: According to the records of the American Institute of Architects, Mr. Pitt died January 18, 1969.] [Footnote 50: Deed Book 694, p. 400, June 11, 1949, Fairfax County, Virginia. Col. Amlong is a retired U.S. Army officer.] [Illustration: Figure 9. Huntley, front view. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 10. Huntley, rear view. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] CHAPTER III AN ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION[51] The buildings currently comprising the Huntley complex include the mansion house, the tenant house, the storage and necessary house, the ice house, the root cellar and the spring house. The Dwelling or Mansion House Huntley, the mansion house, is of brick construction. The brick is laid in common, or American, bond, with five courses of stretchers to one of headers. Average brick size is eight and three-eights inches by four inches by two and one-quarter inches thick.[52] "The brickwork does not seem to have been laid ornamentally, but this is not strange for a building of the early part of the nineteenth century, where the emphasis was taken away from brick and it was often either stuccoed or painted."[53] Room Arrangement Originally the house was "H" shaped. The center portion is three stories at the front (south), two at the rear, and only one room deep. The wings on either side are two stories at the front, one at the rear and two rooms deep. Construction of the house on the slope of the hill accounts for the difference in height. Major entrances are on the first floor, although a ground floor is located beneath it. The wings project about half their width front and rear from the center section. This arrangement provides a large center room at the first floor level, with two rooms on each side. On the second floor level there is only one large center room, while on the ground floor level there is a large center room with two flanking rooms on each side. Here were the kitchen, various storage rooms, and possibly quarters for the household staff. Every room on the first floor and almost every room on the ground floor had an exterior entrance. There is no obvious physical evidence to indicate the means of access to the second story room. Evidence of a dumbwaiter from the ground floor kitchen area to the floor above still exists in the rear ground floor room of the west wing. A wing has been added to the rear portion of the west side of the house. This is partly brick and partly frame and is of relatively recent construction. The rear of the H-shaped building has been filled in to create a hall space, bath and an enclosed stair to the second floor room. At the second floor level it provides an extra room and a bath. This work is probably nineteenth century, but the exact date is unknown. In front, at the first floor level is a porch addition. This is built around earlier steps which are of quarried stone supported by a brick wall on each side. The present porch roof covers and obscures the brick arch and top of the fanlight over the entrance. There was probably no covered porch on the house originally. [Illustration: Figure 11. Mantel, central first floor room. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 12. Mantel, north room first floor. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] Windows and Doors Windows in the facade are unique in that they are set into recessed brick frames. While the frames in the root cellar are arched, those in the residence are square panels, with the window set into the center of the frame. According to architectural historian E. Blaine Cliver, the exterior window construction is quite simple with a double beaded frame set into the brick two to three inches from the front surface. The simplicity of the window framing, which is Federal in style, would place the house somewhat after the late Colonial period, in the early nineteenth century. Windows on the ground and first floor are six-over-six, double-hung sash, except adjacent to the entrance on the first floor porch where they are four-over-four. Windows on the second floor consist of a single, nine-pane sash, which opens to the side on hinges. The pane size is eight and a half inches by ten inches and a large portion of the glass is early. The exterior shutters consist of a single panel of fixed louvers and much shutter hardware survives. This includes several types of shutter stops, which are generally wrought rather than stamped. A fine boot scraper also exists at the rear first floor entrance. The door entrance in the south front has framing sidelights and an elliptical fanlight with wood tracery. In general, the oval fanlight came into use in the 1790's and went out of common use around 1825; although according to Mr. Cliver it probably was not common in this area until after 1800. The stiles of the entrance are basically the pilaster type although the reeding within the pilaster is rounded rather than flat. An opposing door at the north or rear of the center room was also originally exterior. The keystone over the fanlight has a beaded center portion which is similar to those found in the work of nineteenth century architect Asher Benjamin. Interior Features The center first floor room has a fine mantel which is also similar in proportion to the Federal styles of Benjamin. The mantel is somewhat busy, and a little heavy, yet it has delicate detail and reeding on the sides. The mantels in the side rooms are much simpler, as might be expected in ancillary rooms. Basically, however, their proportions are the same, dateable to the early nineteenth century but with much less style involved. All four of the side mantels are of the same basic design, but each has been given an individual detail or refinement. The second floor room has a simple mantel and moldings. It has the ovolo curve in the molding around the architraves which was common in the eighteenth century and persisted into the nineteenth.[54] This room would have been less used than downstairs rooms and the moldings are bound to be simpler, as is often found in the nineteenth century, when the upstairs was no longer as much used as in the eighteenth century. This room has a tray ceiling of the type one would expect to find beneath a hip roof, such as Huntley had in the nineteenth century. Much of the flooring in the house is early, consisting of wide random width pine boards. The saw marks in the subflooring above the ground floor center room are vertical, but apparently from a mechanical saw. Beams under this portion of the house are hand-sawn on one side and broad-axed on the other. [Illustration: Figure 13. Detail, exterior door, north facade. 1969.] [Illustration: Figure 14. Detail, interior of entrance door, south facade, 1969.] [Illustration: Figure 15. Detail, window and door, central first floor room. 1969. Photos by Wm. Edmund Barrett] On the ground floor only the kitchen fireplace in the west side is open. There is evidence of a possible oven in the west chimney in the center room. In the east wing the front fireplace has been closed, though a balancing structural arch in the adjacent room is still open. The floor on the ground level was brick but floors in all rooms except the rear room in the east wing have been covered with concrete. Much early hardware remains at Huntley, some of which fits stylistically into the period of construction. Most of it cannot be positively dated. The front door latch, for example, is an old Carpenter-type lock, generally common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but having no visible manufacturers mark, it cannot be positively dated. Door and window architraves in the center first floor room, and in rooms in the east wing have corner blocks, while those in the west wing do not. Detail of the architraves throughout is early, and those with corner blocks are probably contemporary with the rest of the house. In the center room, first floor, the mantel, door and window architraves, and panelling beneath windows, all have the same molding details, indicating that all woodwork is of the same age. Exterior Features On the two wings the wooden cornice is fairly deep, approximately eight inches, providing a slight projection. This may be indicative of a somewhat later date--moving toward the cornices of the Greek Revival period. They are probably of a later date, but if so, certainly within thirty to forty years after the house was constructed, or no later than the mid-nineteenth century. The saw-tooth cornice line does not run behind the present wooden cornice, indicating, along with the fact that brick bonding continues into the gable end, that the roof configuration on the wings is probably original. The only probable differences between the original roof and that now in place is that the gable ends over the center section were clipped, giving the appearance of a hip roof when seen from the front. This roof continued, shed style, over the wings. There probably were no covered porches and the front porch at the first floor level may have been open above and below. The Tenant House The tenant house is a brick two-story structure with a ridge roof, a slightly off-center interior chimney and a three bay front. The building is approximately thirty-two feet long and twenty-two feet wide. A seven foot projection on the right end, added in this century, houses bath and kitchen facilities. It is approximately two hundred seventy feet west of the mansion house. The brick is laid in common bond, with five courses of stretchers to one of headers. The average brick size is eight and one-half inches by four inches by two and one-eighth inches. The cornice line is composed of three rows of bricks stepped outward. The first and third courses are stretchers and the middle course is composed of headers laid to form a dentil course. This structure burned in 1947; now only the exterior walls are original. All windows, doors and interiors date from remodelling after the fire. As part of the Huntley complex, it is still a visually important building. [Illustration: Figure 16. Necessary and tenant house from the icehouse, 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 17. Necessary, rear or west elevation. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] The Storage House and Necessary The building referred to by the present owners as the slave quarters does not seem to have been suitable for the housing of human beings, and may actually not have been used for that purpose. It is a one-story brick structure with a ridge roof over three rooms. Neither of the end rooms has a finished floor or ceiling nor do they appear ever to have had finished walls; the windows are wall openings protected by iron bars; each room has four brick diamond-shaped ventilators and neither seems to have been heated--in addition to being open, there are no chimneys or flues. It is likely that both rooms were used for storage spaces and, from the evidence in existing doors and windows, secure ones. The overall measurements of the building are approximately thirty-four feet eight inches by ten feet ten inches, each end room measuring approximately eleven feet eleven inches by ten feet ten inches. The necessary, a privy or outdoor toilet, occupies the central recessed portion between the two end storage rooms. It measures approximately ten feet ten inches by five feet five inches, and includes separate men's and women's sections. Brick in the structure has an average size of nine inches by four and one-quarter inches by two and one-quarter inches. The bond is common, varying from three courses of stretchers to one of headers at the foundations, to five to one at the gable end. Queen closers are used at the corners of the structure. The cornice line is three bricks deep, stepped outward. The bottom and top course are stretchers, while the middle course is set at an angle in a saw-tooth pattern,[55] the same cornice as is used on the house. The structure is symmetrical. Brick ventilators, two in each gable end and two to the rear of each end section, are worked into the brick wall. They are in the shape of a flattened diamond, with sixteen headers eliminated to form the pattern.[56] To the rear of the structure the roof has been replaced, though the front part of the ridge is old. This may be accounted for by the fact that the rear wall is bowed back two or three inches out of plumb. This may be immediately seen in the joint of the wall dividing the storage room on the left from the necessary. This shift could have necessitated the replacement of the roof to the rear. Hand wrought, rose head nails were used in the construction of the doors to the necessary; they may have been used for their clenching properties. The latches are hand wrought, or at least one of the early fabrications. The left door consists of three vertical boards, from left to right; nine, ten and eleven inches in width. The center board is beaded on each side, while the outer boards are undecorated. Hand wrought rose head nails are also used in the construction of the barred windows in the front of the storage rooms. Here they are used structurally, tho the effect is decorative. The bars are iron, and the original frame and bars remain in the left storage unit window. The storage rooms have dirt floors and unfinished ceilings. Bars at the windows, strong doors and the open ventilators would indicate storage areas needing light, ventilation and security. Such an area might be required for any number of farm produced commodities. Both necessaries, in the center portion, are completely finished, with plaster walls, well shaped seats, windows with sash and glass, and brick floors, now covered with concrete. The necessary for men to the right has one seat, while that for women, to the left, has three. Two of these are at ordinary height, while the third is at a child's height. The necessary was cleaned from the rear. A tray, inserted beneath a log sill at the foundation line, could be removed, cleaned and reinserted daily. [Illustration: Figure 18. Necessary, door detail. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 19. Detail, interior, women's necessary, 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] Part of the lath in the ceiling of the necessary is split; there has been some replacement with sawn lath. Lath nails in a piece of split lath removed from the ceiling probably postdate 1830, while nails used in the seats are cut and probably postdate 1840. The significance of dating these nails is minimal as the interiors could have been finished at any time after the construction of the building. The ceiling and columns of the recessed entrance to the necessaries were recently replaced by the present owners, the Amlongs. They replaced the round columns with square posts. The brick floor laid in a herringbone pattern, if not original, is certainly early. In the absence of documentary material it is difficult to date this structure. It would probably be safe to say that it was built as early as the house, c. 1820, and possibly before. The Icehouse The icehouse, located sixty-six feet northwest of the mansion, is one of the most striking structures at Huntley, and one that differs from most other Virginia icehouses known to the author. It exhibits quality of design and workmanship seldom seen in a utilitarian structure. Most icehouses are square, a simple form which would offer easier construction than the round structure at Huntley. Not only is this structure round, but the roof is hemispherical, forming a complete circular dome. Construction of the dome is all headers. Some of the bricks are fired to a dark color but there is no discernible pattern in the brick work. All of the structure is below ground. At the top of the dome is a square opening of quarried stone which is at ground level. The stone here shows the wear of ropes which were used to lower and raise ice. Most other ice houses are at least partially above ground, with some type of superstructure, or reveted into a bank or side of a hill.[57] They require some depth, and insulation, so that they are usually finished in brick or stone. Sawdust was an ingredient commonly used for storing ice, used in alternating layers of block ice and sawdust. Sawdust was certainly used in the icehouse at Huntley, and has covered the floor to such an extent that it is not possible to determine the original depth of the structure. Walking on the present "floor" gives one somewhat the same feeling as walking on a peat bog. The distance is at least twelve feet from the present floor level to the entrance at the top of the dome, and approximately fifteen and one-half feet in diameter. The dome is strong enough to support the Amlong automobile, which is parked above it in a recently constructed carport. Access to the icehouse may be had directly from the adjacent root cellar. One stone step exists, in the root cellar wall. There may have been a ladder or wooden steps at one time. The walls between the root cellar and icehouse are separate, indicating that the two structures were constructed at different dates. The Root Cellar This building, located fifty feet northwest of the mansion and adjacent to the icehouse, consists of a one story brick structure above ground, approximately fifteen feet two inches square, with a full cellar below ground level. Access to the cellar is through steep steps of rough cut stone, located on the right side of the structure. Access to the icehouse is directly opposite. [Illustration: Figure 20. Detail, dome and ground level opening, icehouse. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 21. Detail, icehouse door to root cellar. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 22. Detail, root cellar entrance to icehouse. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] Evidence of ventilators can be seen on both front and rear. These were barred openings approximately six inches deep with vents to the surface, which were finished with brick and faced with quarried stone at ground level. The bars are now gone, but they were horizontal, instead of vertical as are those in the storage rooms adjacent to the necessary and of approximately the same size. There is no shelving or other built-in furniture to indicate the use of the cellar. Since the room above and the roof are replacements, there is little indication of actual use, and the name "root cellar" has been used only for convenience. The cellar walls are brick, laid in common bond, with three courses of stretchers to one of headers. This bond is uniform for the structure, above and below ground. The average size of bricks is eight and three-eighths by four by two and one-half inches. The plain cornice is uniform, probably indicating that the roof was originally hipped. With the exception of the brick walls, which stand substantially as constructed, the structure has been entirely rebuilt. Windows in these walls are set into brick arches which are decorative rather than structural. The recessed windows of the building like those in the mansion house are of particular interest. Dairy and Springs A dairy or springhouse is located at the base of the hill, some one hundred fifty-six feet southeast of the mansion house, near the point where the south driveway to Huntley meets Harrison Lane. This spring, and the one immediately across the road, form the source of the south branch of Little Hunting Creek, from which derived the early name of Huntley, "Hunting Creek Farm." The springhouse is brick, now overgrown and filled almost completely so that there is no flow of water and original use is difficult to ascertain. The structure may have had a door and shelves in the brick wall. The roof is arched, one brick course deep, and the structure is reveted into the hillside. There is another spring on the hill to the northwest above the mansion house. This, too, is encased with bricks, all below ground, and could have furnished water to the house through gravity flow. Since both this cistern type spring and the springhouse below the mansion house are probably contemporary, the lower one may have served exclusively as a dairy. At least two other springs or shallow wells also exist on the property, providing the headwaters for Barnyard Creek, and for part of Dogue Creek. Early Structures No Longer Standing Though barns existed until the 1950's, none of these, as evidenced by photographs, would seem to date from the period of construction of the house. Some one hundred seventy-one feet west of the tenant house, and in a straight line with the main house, are the remains of a large brick foundation. This foundation supported a sizeable structure in the Huntley complex, which may have been a barn. The ruins are rectangular, and approximately thirty-three by sixty feet. [Illustration: Figure 23. Dairy and springhouse, viewed from the southeast. 1969. Photo by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] None of the storage rooms in the outbuildings show any evidence of ever having been used as a smoke house, though the structure over the root cellar may have been used for that purpose. It has been completely remodeled inside, including a floor and roof, and any evidence of smoke house use has been eradicated. Though one would expect to find, in a complete southern plantation complex, barns, slave quarters, and a smoke house, none of these now exist at Huntley, as is the case with most surviving eighteenth and nineteenth century mansions. Chapter 3 Notes [Footnote 51: All quotes in this section unless otherwise credited are from E. Blaine Cliver who visited the site with the author on November 11, 1969, and taped his comments. Mr. Cliver is with the firm of Geoffrey W. Fairfax, AIA, Honolulu, Hawaii, where he is working as restoration architect for Iolani Palace. Calder Loth, architectural historian with the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission visited the site with the author on May 12, 1969. Their comments were of immeasurable value in the investigation.] [Footnote 52: All measurements are approximate, and are only used to suggest scale and distance.] [Footnote 53: In this area examples include Arlington House, 1802-17; Tudor Place, about 1815; and Oatlands, Loudoun County, 1800-27.] [Footnote 54: Similar moldings may be found at Sully, 1794, Fairfax County, and at Monticello, about 1770-1808.] [Footnote 55: This was a relatively common cornice line in the Washington area. It appears on, among others, Earps Ordinary in Fairfax, last half of the eighteenth century; Millers House, Colvin Run, about 1825; servants wing of Decatur House, 1818, Washington.] [Footnote 56: This design is used, among other places, in the outbuildings at Bremo, about 1820, Fluvanna County, and the jail, about 1848, Palmyra. In the immediate area the use is known to the author only in the barn at the Oxon Hill Childrens Museum, Prince Georges County, Maryland, early nineteenth century.] [Footnote 57: The icehouse at Belle Grove, Middletown, late eighteenth century, is the former type, while Woodlawn, Fairfax County, 1805, is believed to have been the latter type.] [Illustration: Figure 24. Architect George Hadfield's exhibit at the Royal Academy, 1780-82.] [Illustration: Figure 25. Hadfield's design, bed chamber story plan. Courtesy, Avery Library, Columbia University] CHAPTER IV THE ARCHITECT OF HUNTLEY The construction of Huntley was probably not supervised by an architect. There are too many imperfections for that. At the same time, it is too architectonic to have either evolved or been put together from style manuals. It is likely instead that the building derived from an architect's plan. The Architectural Plan The mansion house at Huntley has remarkable refinement for a secondary house of a Virginia planter's family. This includes not only concept, scale, and the manner in which the component parts hold together, but extends to detail as well. For example, both the center first floor room and the east wing have corner blocks, of two different designs, as a part of door and window architraves. The architect Benjamin Latrobe used corner blocks, for which the drawings still exist, in some of the rooms at Decatur House in 1818.[58] Fiske Kimball, the architectural historian, believes that: In the Forrester House and the Andrew House there [Salem, Massachusetts] at this time [1818], and in the Decatur House, Washington, just before, we find the first examples of doors framed, not by a mitred architrave, but by moulded bands with corner blocks, which remained characteristic through the middle of the Century.[59] That Huntley, c. 1820, should have corner blocks, is probably too much to expect from a local carpenter's design, if Mr. Kimball's dates are correct. Inasmuch as the corner blocks are an integral part of the design of the center first floor room at Huntley, there can be no question that they were original. It is interesting to note that at Decatur House, as at Huntley and Arlington, corner blocks are used only in some rooms, and not uniformly throughout the house, as is common later. Of course, Thomson Francis Mason could have had easy access to the works of Gibbs, Morris, Benjamin and others. George Mason IV had enough knowledge of architecture and design to employ William Buckland to design the interiors at Gunston Hall and his library was extensive. Mrs. Rowland, in speculating on what was in that library, notes that it was divided among his five sons, including T. F.'s father, and further notes that: The editor of the "Spotswood Letters" notices the libraries, really extensive for the time, of the second William Byrd of "Westover," of Sir John Randolph of Williamsburg, and of John Mercer of "Marlboro," and numerous others nearly as large, among them that of George Mason of Gunston.[60] Books might have given Mason an appreciation and knowledge of architecture and design, but it is highly unlikely that the design for Huntley derived from a book. In discussing the design of houses in this period architect Robert Mills noted in his "Autobiographical Notes" that: The principle assumed and acted upon was that beauty is founded upon order, and that convenience and utility were constituent parts ... the author has made it a rule never to consult books when he had to design a building. His considerations were first, the object of the building; second, the means appropriated for its construction; third, the situation it was to occupy; these served as guides in forming the outlines of his plan. Books are useful guides to the student, but when he entered on the practice of a profession, he should lay them aside and only consult them upon doubtful points, or in matters of details or, as mere studies, not to copy buildings from.[61] At Huntley the designer certainly considered convenience and utility, while keeping in mind "the object of the building ... the means appropriated for its construction" and "the situation it was to occupy." Area Architects, Circa 1820 During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Dr. William Thornton, Charles Bulfinch, Robert Mills, Benjamin Latrobe and George Hadfield were all designing buildings in the stylistic mode of Huntley. Mason would have been aware of Dr. Thornton's work at Tudor Place in Georgetown, completed about 1815, and at Woodlawn Plantation, near Huntley, completed about 1805. Though Thornton did not die until 1828, he was already an elderly man by 1820, and Tudor Place is the last house he is known to have designed.[62] Mason would have been aware of Bulfinch's work from his visits to Boston, and Bulfinch arrived in this area in 1817. He immediately busied himself as Architect of the United States Capitol, however.[63] Robert Mills studied in Washington with Latrobe, and later designed buildings here, but he was not in Washington at the time Huntley was built.[64] Latrobe, who died in 1820, was at the height of his career and had ample commissions in the period of time from 1810-20. Hadfield, on the other hand, was available, needed work,[65] and had not yet begun his City Hall. Huntley would have provided not only suitable work, but a challenging site, and a suitable family for whom to work. George Hadfield Hadfield, a British subject, was born in Leghorn, Italy, about 1764.[66] His architectural training and collection of architectural prizes were outstanding when he arrived in this country in 1795 to superintend the construction of the United States Capitol. He, and his sister Maria Cosway, a painter, were both friends of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson championed Hadfield here, though his actual recommendation to the Capitol job was from John Trumbull, the American artist. Soon difficulties began with Dr. William Thornton, who had won the competition for design of the Capitol and Hadfield lost his job. From the time of Hadfield's dismissal from the Capitol in 1798, until 1820, when he was busy with his _magnum opus_, the City Hall, the records are sketchy and incomplete. He elected to stay in this city rather than go to Philadelphia where the social and political centers were. This decision must have been made deliberately, with the prospect of designing many buildings in this growing metropolis. He was without a steady income during all this period, yet he was able to keep busy on many jobs that enabled him to stay alive.[67] Hadfield was obviously not always happy with the commissions which came his way, however. On September 22, 1822, he wrote Jefferson: ... am much obliged to you Sir, for the wish you express to inform my Sister that I am in good health and doing well: the former, thanks to Providence, I enjoy; as to the latter, I cannot say much; there is here a stagnation in the building line, owing to the scarcity of money, that is very injurious to both architects and mechanics. I have for the two preceding seasons been occupied in the building of the City Hall....[68] We know little of what Hadfield accomplished in Washington, though his obituary, in 1826, gives some leads: It is a duty we owe to the founders of our city, when any of them are called from the scene of their former usefulness, to do honor to their memory, by recording with truth, whatever they have done in laying the foundations of our infant metropolis, or promoting its welfare. It is but doing justice to the dead; and it is to be hoped, when such men die, that it will excite the living to emulate them. Amongst this class may be placed the late Mr. GEORGE HADFIELD, _Architect_, who died at his residence in this city, on Sunday evening, the 5th instant, aged about 62 years.... The obituary notes that Mr. Hadfield never married, mentions his early training and prizes, his arrival in Washington to superintend the construction of the Capitol and the subsequent arguments. His accomplishments were summarized: Amongst the works which will serve to perpetuate his memory in this city are the City Hall; the Public Offices, which were built from his design; Mr. Custis's house [Arlington House]; Com. Porter's; Mr. Way's Row, now occupied by Mr. Gunton and others; Heightman's Row, now occupied by Mr. Poor and others; Col. Taylor's, now Williamson's Hotel; the Mausoleum, built for the families of Van Ness and Burns; and the Branch Bank of the United States. It is only to be regretted that there are so few remains of his uncommon talents.[69] There are "remains of his uncommon talents" which are not in that list. Hadfield is known, for example, to have provided plans and designs for the Marine Barracks in Washington.[70] There are also good reasons to believe that he designed Analostan, located on what is now called Theodore Roosevelt Island, for John Mason, Thomson Francis Mason's uncle.[71] Similarities to the Work of Hadfield Among the few known drawings of Hadfield is one labelled "A Country House--Geo. Hadfield--Exhibited Arc. designs at Royal acad. in 1780-82...."[72] The house is of three-part construction and has windows set into arched recessed panels. Arlington House (Custis-Lee Mansion) is of three-part construction and has windows set into arched recessed panels.[73] The City Hall in Washington, now the District of Columbia Court House, is of three-part construction, with connecting hyphens, and has windows set into arched recessed panels.[74] The same is true of the plan for Analostan, though one wing evidently was never constructed. Huntley, too, is of three-part construction and though the windows are not set into arched recessed panels, they are set into the center of square recessed panels, which serve the same design function of catching and reflecting light and shadow. The recessed arch appears at Huntley in the root cellar superstructure, however, duplicating Hadfield's use in the structures mentioned above. [Illustration: Figure 26. Arlington House (Custis-Lee Mansion) showing portico designed by Hadfield. Photo courtesy National Park Service.] [Illustration: Figure 27. Analostan, now demolished, formerly stood on Theodore Roosevelt Island. Possibly designed by Hadfield. Photo by Abbie Rowe. Courtesy National Park Service.] Arlington House has a two story center section with one story wings, as does Huntley. It is possible that had Huntley been built on different terrain, it might have followed the more common "I" plan of Arlington House. Given the limited space on Huntley's hill, however, the "H" plan obviously made more usable space available on the site. The chimneys at Arlington, and those at Huntley, are placed in the same position in relation to the center structure and the wings; the wooden mantels in both houses have obvious stylistic similarities. When Huntley is compared with Analostan another similarity shows up. The gable end at Analostan has a relatively shallow cornice, common in the period, outlining a pediment strikingly similar to the gable ends of the wings at Huntley. Located within the pediment at both houses is an elliptical ventilator. The design for Huntley could easily have come from Hadfield. There were opportunities for T.F. Mason to have met him through Jefferson or through his uncle, General John Mason of Analostan. George Washington Parke Custis of Arlington House and Thomson Mason of Hollin Hall were both sheep raisers and there was much rivalry between the two families in this field, including Mason entries which took prizes at Custis exhibitions and shows.[75] This offers, in addition to the day-to-day opportunities presented to Mason through his political and social standing, one more means whereby T.F. Mason might have learned of Hadfield, observed his work, met him, and contracted for design assistance in the construction of his country house. In addition, Mason was a lawyer, who later became a justice of the peace and a judge. For several years before and after 1820, Hadfield was involved with the design and construction of the City Hall, which was to house the Courts of the District. Mason would have been aware of this and would probably have known Hadfield. Certainly the design evidence of Huntley indicates the work of an architect. The structure is much too architectonic to have evolved and in many respects much too advanced for its day to have been designed by a local carpenter-builder. Perhaps at some future time we shall discover information which indicates precisely whose trained hand put all the pieces together in this highly satisfactory manner. Until that time, the evidence strongly points to George Hadfield. Chapter 4 Notes [Footnote 58: Paul F. Norton, "Decatur House: Design and Designer," =Historic Preservation=, Volume 19, Numbers 3-4 (July-December 1967), pp. 9-24.] [Footnote 59: Fiske Kimball, =Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic=, (New York: Dover, 1966 Reprint), p. 27.] [Footnote 60: Rowland, =George Mason=, Volume II, p. 369.] [Footnote 61: H. M. Pierce Gallagher, =Robert Mills= (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 170.] [Footnote 62: Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey, Ralph Cole Hall, =Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period=. (New York: Bonanza Books, 1944), pp. 21-23.] [Footnote 63: Lonnelle Aikman, =We the People= (Washington: U.S. Capitol Historical Society, 1965), p. 33.] [Footnote 64: H.M. Gallagher, =Robert Mills=, p. 169.] [Footnote 65: George S. Hunsberger, "The Architectural Career of George Hadfield," =Records of the Columbia Historical Society=, Volume 51-52 (1955), pp. 46-65.] [Footnote 66: =Ibid.=] [Footnote 67: =Ibid.= p. 51. See also: Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, =Dictionary of American Biography= (New York: Charles Scribner, 1932 (1931)), Vol. IV, p. 76.] [Footnote 68: Letter, George Hadfield to Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson papers. Volume 222, op. 39775, Library of Congress.] [Footnote 69: =Daily National Intelligencer=, February 13, 1826.] [Footnote 70: Karl Schuon, =Home of the Commandants= (Washington: Leatherneck Association, 1966), pp. 61-64.] [Footnote 71: Harry F. Cunningham, Joseph A. Younger, Wilmer Smith, =Measured Drawings of Georgian Architecture in the District of Columbia, 1750-1820= (New York: Architectural Book Co., 1914), Sheets 58-61.] [Footnote 72: Original watercolor signed "Geo. Hadfield, Sept. 1798," Avery Library, Columbia University.] [Footnote 73: Murray H. Nelligan, =Custis-Lee Mansion= (Washington: National Park Service, 1950), pp. 2-4, 6, 15, 24. The staff at Arlington House was also kind enough to allow the author the use of Mr. Nellingan's unpublished manuscript on Arlington House.] [Footnote 74: H. Paul Caemmerer, =Historic Washington= (Washington: Columbia Historical Society, 1960), pp. 34, 39.] [Footnote 75: Edith Moore Sprouse, "Died in a Kind of Fit Like....", Hollin Hills Bulletin, May and June-July, 1969.] SUMMARY It should be clear from the picture of Mason which emerges from an earlier part of this report that his tastes and his capabilities could have included a house designed by a known architect. His family ties, educational background, travels, position and social standing evidence the highest standards of his day. His acquisition of Colross, his sensitive repairs of that structure and the manner in which he seems to have furnished the house again indicate taste and awareness of current architectural trends. The design evidence indicates that Mason did build well at Huntley, and that he sought assistance in doing so. Huntley's similarities to other area structures designed by the architect George Hadfield are striking. In addition, of all the architects in the area at the time Hadfield was most available and is believed to have already designed one house for the Mason family, Analostan. There is also good reason to believe that Thomson Francis Mason and Hadfield knew each other. Whatever the derivation of the mansion house at Huntley, it survives as a notable example of early nineteenth century architecture; as an example of a farm or country house of an early nineteenth century city dweller; as a Mason family house and as a part of a well sited and relatively complete complex. When considered together, these factors make Huntley an important architectural landmark. [Illustration: Figure 28. Huntley, front elevation, 1946. Edward M. Pitt, Architect. Blueprints courtesy Col. and Mrs. Ransom Amlong. Photo copies by Wm. Edmund Barrett.] [Illustration: Figure 29. Huntley, rear elevation.] [Illustration: Figure 30. Huntley, basement floor plan.] [Illustration: Figure 31. Huntley, first floor plan.] [Illustration: Figure 32. Huntley, second floor plan.] APPENDIX A SOME MASON HOUSES IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA Mason land holdings were vast in Stafford, Prince William, Loudoun and Fairfax Counties in Virginia, and in Maryland and Kentucky. In the northern Virginia area the Masons built or occupied a number of houses many of which are mentioned here. Thomson Francis Mason Houses _501 Cameron Street_, Alexandria. This is believed to be the "large and comodious" dwelling which, according to an 1823 entry in the _Alexandria Gazette_, Mason was renting at the corner of Cameron and Pitt Streets. The house is a three-story brick structure, probably built during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It is still standing. (_Alexandria Gazette_, March 13, 1823 and November 1, 1833.) _Colross_, Alexandria, 1100 block of Oronoco Street, block between Oronoco, Pendleton, North Henry and North Fayette. This was an existing house built in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, acquired by Thomson F. Mason in 1833. Mason was buried in a tomb behind the mansion after his death in 1838. The main house was moved to Princeton, New Jersey, in 1929 and rebuilt there. Today the block in Alexandria includes a warehouse, car wash, automobile repair facility and a transformer station. The present location of the remains of Thomson F. Mason, removed from Colross, is not known to the writer. (Mary G. Powell, _The History of Alexandria_, Va., Richmond, Wm. Byrd Press, 1928, p. 261; _New York Herald Tribune_, July 7, 1929, "Colross Built 1785, to come to Jersey site."; Mrs. Betty Carter Smoot, _Days in an Old Town_, Alexandria, privately printed, 1934, pp. 121-32; Henry H. Saylor, _Alexandria Virginia_, The White Pine Series, New York, Russell F. Whitehead, 1926, (photographs and drawings); plus additional material available in the Alexandria Public Library.) _The Hallowell School_, 609 Oronoco Street, Alexandria. A two-and-a-half-story brick structure, built circa 1800, it is the companion house to the Lee Home, next door at 607 Oronoco. At 609, Benjamin Hallowell operated a school among whose students was Robert E. Lee. T.F. Mason acquired the house after the Hallowell School moved elsewhere, at public auction on February 9, 1835, though he may have lived there earlier as a tenant. By the time of purchase he was already a resident at Colross, but a sale advertisement for 609 Oronoco Street in 1839 calls it "... the late residence of the Honorable T. F. Mason ...". The house is still standing. (Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey and Ralph Cole Hall, _Alexandria Houses_, Cornwall, N.Y. Architectural Book Publishing Co., Inc., 1946, pp. 88-89, 126; Benjamin Hallowell, _Autobiography_, Philadelphia, Friends Book Association, 1884, pp. 95-120. _Alexandria Gazette_, August 30, 1839,; Alexandria Deed Book V-2, p. 355(1835).) _Huntley_, 6918 Harrison Lane, Groveton, Fairfax County. Still standing. Though Huntley was built during Mason's ownership of the property, no record has been found that he actually lived there. _115 South St. Asaph Street_, Alexandria, is a two-and-one-half-story brick structure over an English basement built about 1800, and still standing. A sign on the structure says "Home of Thomas Mason, circa 1775." It was purchased by Mason in May of 1832, at about the same time that he purchased the lot next door at 117 S. St. Asaph Street. A three-story structure of the last quarter of the nineteenth century now stands there. Mason may have been a tenant at 115 before his purchase, but was already out of the house by November 8, 1833, when a Dr. Wheelwright announced that he had "... removed to the house on St. Asaph Street ... formerly occupied by Thomson F. Mason, Esq." (Deering Davis, Stephen P. Dorsey & Ralph Cole Hall, _Alexandria Houses_, Cornwall, N.Y., Architectural Book Publishing Co., Inc., 1946, p. 126; _Alexandria Gazette_, November 8, 1833. Alexandria Deed Books: U-2, p. 27 (1832); U-2, p. 29 (1832); and M-3, p. 646 (1852).) This list includes only part of the real estate owned by Thomson Francis Mason. He lived in the Cameron Street house during the 1820's. He may have lived in either the Oronoco Street or St. Asaph Street houses before he purchased them. At any rate, he purchased Colross, Hallowell School and the St. Asaph Street houses in the decade before his death. He died in 1838 and was buried at Colross. There are long periods of time unaccounted for and probably many real estate transactions which have not yet been documented. Other Mason Houses _Analostan_, home of General John Mason. Located on the Potomac River in the District of Columbia on Theodore Roosevelt Island, known in the past as Barbadoes, Mason's Island, or Analostan. Built in the 1790's, its design is attributed to George Hadfield. General Mason sold the house about 1833 and moved to Clermont. Parts of the Analostan house stood until the 1930's when they were demolished by the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association. (_Sunday Star_, Feb. 6, 1921, Rambler "... History of Analostan Island;" _Star_, June 4, 1958, Rambler, "Revisits Analostan Island;" _Virginia Record_, July 1956, p. 9, Mollie Somerville, "George Mason's Island;" Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Vol I, p. 117; Harry F. Cunningham, Joseph A. Younger, and J. Wilmer Smith, _Measured Drawings of Georgian Architecture in the District of Columbia_, 1750-1820, New York, Architectural Book Company 1914, Sheets 58-61.) _Clermont_, which was purchased by General John Mason and to which he and his family moved in 1833. Site near Fairfax County-Alexandria line, off Clermont Drive, near point where the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac tracks cross Cameron Run. It was demolished in the 19th Century. ("Diary of Miss Mason," beginning Sept. 20th 1833, property of Mrs. Augustus Thorndike, partial copy in Gunston Hall archives (Analostan file); Christine Gibson unpublished report, Fairfax County Public Library, Virginiana Collection.) _Gunston Hall_, home of George Mason IV, in Fairfax County. The house is a one-and-one-half-story brick structure, with interiors by William Buckland joiner and architect. In the garden is one of America's best surviving stands of English Boxwood. The house still stands on Route 242, 4 miles southeast of Route 1, and south of Fort Belvoir. It is owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia and administered as an historic house museum by a Board of Regents of the National Society of Colonial Dames. (Thomas Tileston Waterman, _The Mansions of Virginia_, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1946.) _Hollin Hall_, built for and occupied by General Thomson Mason, son of George Mason IV of Gunston Hall, and father of T.F. Mason. It was a two-story frame structure, which burned early in the nineteenth century. Part of the complex may still exist, or be incorporated into the present structure known as Little Hollin Hall at 1901 Sherwood Hall Lane, in Fairfax County south of Alexandria. (Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Volume II, pps. 307, 351, and numerous others; _Hollin Hills Bulletin_, May 1969, June-July, 1969.) _Lexington_, in Fairfax County, built for George Mason V, son of George of Gunston Hall and uncle of T.F. Mason. The house stood on Mason Neck, near Gunston Hall. The structure burned in the nineteenth century. (Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Volume I, p. 112; Edith Moore Sprouse, _Lexington_, unpublished report, June 1967, Virginiana Files, Fairfax County Public Library.) _Okeley_, home of Richard Chichester Mason, brother of T.F. Mason. The structure was destroyed during the Civil War. It was located in Fairfax County on S. Kings Highway, just south of Huntley. (Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Volume II, p. 473; _Alexandria Gazette_, March 30, 1841). _Spring Bank_, owned by George Mason, son of William Mason and first cousin of T.F. Mason. There may have been an earlier structure on the site, but the house in which this George Mason lived is a two-story brick structure, built about 1850, which is still standing. It is located at Penn Daw in Fairfax County in the Spring Bank Trailer Park, at the intersection of Kings Highway and the Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1). (Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Volume II, pps. 366, 369, and others.) _Woodbridge_, home of Thomas, son of George of Gunston Hall, and uncle of T.F. Mason. It stood in Prince William County almost directly across Occoquan River from Colchester and was demolished prior to 1892. (Rowland, _George Mason_, New York, Russell & Russell, 1892 and 1946, Volume I, p. 112.) APPENDIX B CHAIN OF TITLE 1949--June 11, Deed Book 694, page 400: AUGUST & ELEANOR S. NAGEL _to_ RANSOM G. AND MARGUERITE K. AMLONG. 1946--September 1, Deed Book 515, p. 60: ARMISTEAD L. BOOTH, _executor under the will of_ ALBERT R. HARRISON _to_ AUGUST W. & ELEANOR S. NAGEL. 1911--April 5, Liber J, No. 7, p. 22: CLARA B. HARRISON, UNMARRIED, MARY C. HARRISON, UNMARRIED, ALBERT R. HARRISON, UNMARRIED, _first part_, MARGARET N. HARRISON GIBBS AND HER HUSBAND J. NORMAN GIBBS, _second part_. (Albert W. Harrison died intestate.) 1871--March 11, Liber O, No. 4, p. 338: NATHAN W. & SUSAN E. PIERSON _to_ ALBERT W. HARRISON. 1868--November 21, Liber I, No. 4, p. 236: BENJAMIN KING _to_ ALBERT W. HARRISON AND NATHAN W. PIERSON OF NEW JERSEY. 1862--June 12, Liber E, No. 4, p. 195: JOHN A. SMITH _to_ BENJAMIN KING. 1859--December 7, Liber B, No. 4, p. 451: JOHN FRANCIS MASON AND ARTHUR PENDLETON MASON, _first part_, JOHN A. SMITH, _second part_, BENJAMIN KING, U.S. ARMY, NOW RESIDING IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, _third part_. 1859--November 7, Liber B, No. 4, p. 449: BETSEY C. MASON _to_ JOHN FRANCIS MASON AND A. PENDLETON MASON, SONS OF THE SAID BETSEY C. 1859--November 7, Liber B, No. 4, p. 448: BETSEY C. MASON _to_ JOHN FRANCIS MASON AND A. PENDLETON MASON, SONS OF THE SAID BETSEY C. 1839--February 4, Will Book T, No. 1, p. 3: "To all persons to whom the presents shall come, greetings. Know ye that the last will and testament of Thomson F. Mason of Alexandria County deceased hath been in duo form of law exhibited, proved and recorded in the Office of the Register of Wills of said County, a copy of which is to these presents annexed and administration of all the goods, chattles and credits of the deceased is hereby granted and committed unto Betsey C. Mason, the Executrix of the said will appointed...." 1839--February 18, Will Book T, No. 1, pp. 1-4: _Will of_ THOMSON F. MASON. Will was dated December 14, 1838. 1825--Chancery Suit referenced in Liber W, No. 2, pp. 162-65: THOMSON F. MASON _vs._ GEORGE W. MASON, RICH C. MASON, FAYETTE BALL AND MARY HIS WIFE, GEORGE MASON AND HELLEN, JOHN, GEORGE, AND SALLY MASON HIS INFANT CHILDREN AND SAMUEL DAWSON AND EUGENIA AND MASON DAWSON HIS INFANT CHILDREN. (Suit was not located.) 1823--October 1, Liber W, No. 2, p. 199: THIS INDENTURE MADE THIS FIRST DAY OF OCTOBER IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE BETWEEN GEORGE M. MASON, AND MARY HIS WIFE, RICHARD C. MASON AND LUCY B., HIS WIFE, GEORGE MASON OF GUNSTON, AND ELEANOR ANN, HIS WIFE, ALL OF THE COUNTY OF FAIRFAX AND STATE OF VIRGINIA, AND FAYETTE BALL AND MARY T. HIS WIFE AND SAMUEL DAWSON, BOTH OF THE COUNTY OF LOUDOUN AND STATE AFORESAID, _all of the one part_, AND THOMSON F. MASON OF THE TOWN OF ALEXANDRIA IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, _of the other part_. 1820--November 21, Will Book M, No. 1, p. 130: _Will of_ THOMSON MASON OF HOLLIN HALL, dated April 15 1797. The land on which Huntley is located had come to Thomson by the will of his Father, George Mason of Gunston Hall. 1792--August 23, Will Book F, pp. 104-105: Will of George Mason of Gunston Hall granting lands to his son, Thomson Mason, which were part of the Ball patent on both sides of the North Branch of Little Hunting Creek. 1772--June 18, Deed Book K-1, p. 54: Sampson Darrell to George Mason the lower part of a tract granted to John Ball by the proprietors of the Northern Neck of Virginia in September, 1695; willed to his son George Ball August 14, 1722; sold to John Carlyle, March 17, 1742/43; sold to Sampson Darrell August 16, 1748. LIST OF SOURCES Books Aikman, Lonnelle, =We the People=. Washington: U.S. Capitol Historical Society, 1965. Caemmerer, H. Paul. =Historic Washington.= Washington: Columbia Historical Society, 1966. Carne, William F. =Alexandria Business Book.= Alexandria: M. Hill Co., 1897. Cunningham, Harry F.; Younger, Joseph A.; and Smith, Wilmer. =Measured Drawings of Georgian Architecture in the District of Columbia, 1750-1820.= New York: Architectural Book Co., 1914. Davis, Derring; Dorsey, Stephen P.; and Hall, Ralph Cole. =Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period.= New York: Bonanza Books, 1944. Gallagher, H.M. Pierce. =Robert Mills.= New York: Columbia University Press, 1935. Gordon, C.A. =History of the House of Gordon.= Aberdeen: D. Wyllie & Son, 1890. Gouverneur, Marian. =As I Remember.= New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1911. Hallowell, Benjamin. =Autobiography.= Philadelphia: Friends Book Association, 1884. Hopkins, G.M. =Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington.= Philadelphia: privately published, 1879. Johnson, Allen; and Malone, Dumas, eds. =Dictionary of American Biography.= New York: Charles Scribner, 1932. Kimball, Fiske. =Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic.= New York: Charles Scribner Sons, 1922. Mason, Stevens Thompson. =Mason Family Chart.= Baltimore: Privately published, 1907. Miller, Helen Hill. =George Mason Constitutionalist.= Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938. Nelligan, Murray H. =Custis-Lee Mansion.= Washington: National Park Service, 1950. Powell, Mary G. The =History of Old Alexandria Virginia.= Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1928. Rowland, Kate Mason. =The Life of George Mason.= New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1892, Volume II. Schuon, Karl. =Home of the Commandants.= Washington: Leatherneck Association, 1966. Smoot, Mrs. Betty Carter. =Days in an Old Town.= Alexandria: Privately printed, 1934. Sprouse, Edith Moore. =Potomac Sampler.= Alexandria: privately published, 1961. Waterman, Thomas Tileston. =The Mansions of Virginia.= Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946. Articles Bundy, Charles S., "History of the Office of the Justice of the Peace." Washington: =Records of the Columbia Historical Society=. 1902. Hunsberger, George S. "The Architectural Career of George Hadfield," =Records of the Columbia Historical Society=, Vol. 51-52, 1955. Norton, Paul F., "Design and Designer," =Historic Preservation=, Volume 19, Nos. 3-4, July-December 1967. Regis, Noel F. "Some Notable Suits in Early District Courts." Washington: =Records of the Columbia Historical Society=, 1922. Somerville, Mollie. "George Mason's Island," =Virginia Record=. July, 1956. Newspapers =Alexandria Gazette=: November 24, 1817; March 13, 1823; August 5, 1828; November 1 & 8, 1833; May 16, 1837; December 27, 1838; August 30, 1839; June 12, 1862; October 12, 1864; May 13, 1868; May 3, 1870; May 16, 1870; May 14, 1892; March 3, 1911; January 1, 1930. =Daily National Intelligencer=: February 13, 1826. =Fairfax Herald=: March 10, 1911. =New York Herald Tribune=: July 7, 1929. =Syracuse (N.Y.) Journal=: July 28, 1875. =Washington Sunday Star=: February 6, 1921; June 4, 1958. Manuscripts Nelligan, Murray H. "Custis-Lee Mansion." Unpublished manuscript. National Park Service. Sprouse, Edith Moore. "Lexington." Unpublished report, 1967. Thomson Francis Mason Papers. Collection of William Francis Smith, Alexandria, Virginia. Thomson Francis Mason Papers. Duke University, Durham, N.C. Legal Records Fairfax County Courthouse, Deeds, Wills, Chancery Court Cases: Will of George Mason, August 23, 1792; Will of Thomson Mason, April 15, 1797, Will Book M, No. 1, p. 130, November 21, 1820; Liber W, No. 2, p. 199. October 1, 1823; Liber W, No. 2, pp. 162-65; Will Book T, No. 1, February 18, 1839; Will Book T, No. 1, p. 3, February 4, 1839; Liber B, No. 4, p. 448, November 7, 1859; Liber B, No. 4, p. 451, December 7, 1859; Liber E, No. 4, p. 195, June 12, 1862; Liber I, No. 4, p. 236, November 21, 1868; Liber O, No. 4, p. 338, March 11, 1871; Liber J, No. 7, p. 22, April 5, 1911; Deed Book 515, p. 60, September 1, 1946; Deed Book 694, p. 400, June 11, 1949. Division of Planning Publications Staff Peter T. Johnson, Chief, Operations Branch Stephen H. Lopez, Historic District Planner Nan Netherton, Historic Research Supervisor Elizabeth David, Research Assistant Jay Linard, Copy Editor Gloria Matthews, Book Designer 
30755	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 30755-h.htm or 30755-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30755/30755-h/30755-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30755/30755-h.zip) Volumes I and III are available in the Project Gutenberg Library: Volume I--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30754 Volume III--see http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30756 Volume III contains the index for all three volumes. The index in the html version of Volume III has links to the the other two volumes. Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are listed at the end of the text. Characters following a caret were printed as superscript in the original. For example, St^a; here the "a" is a superscript. Library Edition The Complete Works of John Ruskin STONES OF VENICE VOLUMES I-II National Library Association New York Chicago The Complete Works of John Ruskin Volume VIII STONES OF VENICE VOLUME II THE STONES OF VENICE VOLUME II. The Sea Stories ADVERTISEMENT. It was originally intended that this Work should consist of two volumes only; the subject has extended to three. The second volume, however, will conclude the account of the ancient architecture of Venice. The third will embrace the Early, the Roman, and the Grotesque Renaissance; and an Index, which, as it gives, in alphabetical order, a brief account of all the buildings in Venice, or references to the places where they are mentioned in the text, will be found a convenient guide for the traveller. In order to make it more serviceable, I have introduced some notices of the pictures which I think most interesting in the various churches, and in the Scuola di San Rocco. CONTENTS. FIRST, OR BYZANTINE, PERIOD. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Throne, 1 CHAPTER II. Torcello, 11 CHAPTER III. Murano, 27 CHAPTER IV. St. Mark's, 57 CHAPTER V. Byzantine Palaces, 118 SECOND, OR GOTHIC, PERIOD. CHAPTER VI. The Nature of Gothic, 151 CHAPTER VII. Gothic Palaces, 231 CHAPTER VIII. The Ducal Palace, 281 APPENDIX. 1. The Gondolier's Cry, 375 2. Our Lady of Salvation, 378 3. Tides of Venice and Measures at Torcello, 378 4. Date of the Duomo of Torcello, 380 5. Modern Pulpits, 380 6. Apse of Murano, 382 7. Early Venetian Dress, 383 8. Inscriptions at Murano, 384 9. Shafts of St. Mark's, 384 10. Proper Sense of the Word Idolatry, 388 11. Situations of Byzantine Palaces, 391 12. Modern Paintings on Glass, 394 LIST OF PLATES. Facing Page Plate 1. Plans of Torcello and Murano, 14 " 2. The Acanthus of Torcello, 15 " 3. Inlaid Bands of Murano, 40 " 4. Sculptures of Murano, 42 " 5. Archivolt in the Duomo of Murano, 45 " 6. The Vine, Free and in Service, 96 " 7. Byzantine Capitals--Convex Group, 131 " 8. Byzantine Capitals--Concave Group, 132 " 9. Lily Capital of St. Mark's, 136 " 10. The Four Venetian Flower Order, 137 " 11. Byzantine Sculptures, 138 " 12. Linear and Surface Gothic, 224 " 13. Balconies, 247 " 14. The Orders of Venetian Arches, 248 " 15. Windows of the Second Order, 254 " 16. Windows of the Fourth Order, 257 " 17. Windows of the Early Gothic Palaces, 259 " 18. Windows of the Fifth Order, 266 " 19. Leafage of the Vine Angle, 308 " 20. Leafage of the Venetian Capitals, 368 THE STONES OF VENICE. FIRST, OR BYZANTINE, PERIOD. CHAPTER I. THE THRONE. § I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stalí,"[1] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation,[2] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. § II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. § III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of the ruins of ages. § IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. § V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis. § VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons[3]); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. § VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in worldwide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor. FOOTNOTES [1] Appendix 1, "The Gondolier's Cry." [2] Appendix 2, "Our Lady of Salvation." [3] Appendix 3, "Tides of Venice." CHAPTER II. Torcello. § I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen grey; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and grey moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea. § II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky. Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO and VENICE. Thirteen hundred years ago, the grey moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea. The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow land. § III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight and distress,[4] who sought in the hurried erection of their island church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed." § IV. I am not aware of any other early church in Italy which has this peculiar expression in so marked a degree; and it is so consistent with all that Christian architecture ought to express in every age (for the actual condition of the exiles who built the cathedral of Torcello is exactly typical of the spiritual condition which every Christian ought to recognize in himself, a state of homelessness on earth, except so far as he can make the Most High his habitation), that I would rather fix the mind of the reader on this general character than on the separate details, however interesting, of the architecture itself. I shall therefore examine these only so far as is necessary to give a clear idea of the means by which the peculiar expression of the building is attained. [Illustration: Plate I. PLANS OF TORCELLO AND MURANO.] § V. On the opposite page, the uppermost figure, 1, is a rude plan of the church. I do not answer for the thickness and external disposition of the walls, which are not to our present purpose, and which I have not carefully examined; but the interior arrangement is given with sufficient accuracy. The church is built on the usual plan of the Basilica[5] that is to say, its body divided into a nave and aisles by two rows of massive shafts, the roof of the nave being raised high above the aisles by walls sustained on two ranks of pillars, and pierced with small arched windows. At Torcello the aisles are also lighted in the same manner, and the nave is nearly twice their breadth.[6] [Illustration: Plate II. THE ACANTHUS OF TORCELLO.] The capitals of all the great shafts are of white marble, and are among the best I have ever seen, as examples of perfectly calculated effect from every touch of the chisel. Mr. Hope calls them "indifferently imitated from the Corinthian:"[7] but the expression is as inaccurate as it is unjust; every one of them is different in design, and their variations are as graceful as they are fanciful. I could not, except by an elaborate drawing, give any idea of the sharp, dark, deep penetrations of the chisel into their snowy marble, but a single example is given in the opposite plate, fig. 1, of the nature of the changes effected in them from the Corinthian type. In this capital, although a kind of acanthus (only with rounded lobes) is indeed used for the upper range of leaves, the lower range is not acanthus at all, but a kind of vine, or at least that species of plant which stands for vine in all early Lombardic and Byzantine work (vide Vol. I. Appendix 8); the leaves are trefoiled, and the stalks cut clear so that they might be grasped with the hand, and cast sharp dark shadows, perpetually changing, across the bell of the capital behind them. I have drawn one of these vine plants larger in fig. 2, that the reader may see how little imitation of the Corinthian there is in them, and how boldly the stems of the leaves are detached from the ground. But there is another circumstance in this ornament still more noticeable. The band which encircles the shaft beneath the spring of the leaves is copied from the common classical wreathed or braided fillet, of which the reader may see examples on almost every building of any pretensions in modern London. But the mediæval builders could not be content with the dead and meaningless scroll: the Gothic energy and love of life, mingled with the early Christian religious symbolism, were struggling daily into more vigorous expression, and they turned the wreathed band into a serpent of three times the length necessary to undulate round the shaft, which, knotting itself into a triple chain, shows at one side of the shaft its tail and head, as if perpetually gliding round it beneath the stalks of the vines. The vine, as is well known, was one of the early symbols of Christ, and the serpent is here typical either of the eternity of his dominion, or of the Satanic power subdued. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] § VI. Nor even when the builder confines himself to the acanthus leaf (or to that representation of it, hereafter to be more particularly examined, constant in Romanesque work) can his imagination allow him to rest content with its accustomed position. In a common Corinthian capital the leaves nod forward only, thrown out on every side from the bell which they surround: but at the base of one of the capitals on the opposite side of the nave from this of the vines,[8] two leaves are introduced set with their sides outwards, forming spirals by curling back, half-closed, in the position shown in fig. 4 in Plate II., there represented as in a real acanthus leaf; for it will assist our future inquiries into the ornamentation of capitals that the reader should be acquainted with the form of the acanthus leaf itself. I have drawn it, therefore, in the two positions, figs. 3 and 4 in Plate II.; while fig. 5 is the translation of the latter form into marble by the sculptor of Torcello. It is not very like the acanthus, but much liker than any Greek work; though still entirely conventional in its cinquefoiled lobes. But these are disposed with the most graceful freedom of line, separated at the roots by deep drill holes, which tell upon the eye far away like beads of jet; and changed, before they become too crowded to be effective, into a vigorous and simple zigzagged edge, which saves the designer some embarrassment in the perspective of the terminating spiral. But his feeling of nature was greater than his knowledge of perspective; and it is delightful to see how he has rooted the whole leaf in the strong rounded under-stem, the indication of its closing with its face inwards, and has thus given organization and elasticity to the lovely group of spiral lines; a group of which, even in the lifeless sea-shell, we are never weary, but which becomes yet more delightful when the ideas of elasticity and growth are joined to the sweet succession of its involution. § VII. It is not, however, to be expected that either the mute language of early Christianity (however important a part of the expression of the building at the time of its erection), or the delicate fancies of the Gothic leafage springing into new life, should be read, or perceived, by the passing traveller who has never been taught to expect anything in architecture except five orders: yet he can hardly fail to be struck by the simplicity and dignity of the great shafts themselves; by the frank diffusion of light, which prevents their severity from becoming oppressive; by the delicate forms and lovely carving of the pulpit and chancel screen; and, above all, by the peculiar aspect of the eastern extremity of the church, which, instead of being withdrawn, as in later cathedrals, into a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, or contributing by the brilliancy of its windows to the splendor of the altar, and theatrical effect of the ceremonies performed there, is a simple and stern semicircular recess, filled beneath by three ranks of seats, raised one above the other, for the bishop and presbyters, that they might watch as well as guide the devotions of the people, and discharge literally in the daily service the functions of bishops or _overseers_ of the flock of God. § VIII. Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession; and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this church, its luminousness. This perhaps strikes the traveller more from its contrast with the excessive gloom of the Church of St. Mark's; but it is remarkable when we compare the Cathedral of Torcello with any of the contemporary basilicas in South Italy or Lombardic churches in the North. St. Ambrogio at Milan, St. Michele at Pavia, St. Zeno at Verona, St. Frediano at Lucca, St. Miniato at Florence, are all like sepulchral caverns compared with Torcello, where the slightest details of the sculptures and mosaics are visible, even when twilight is deepening. And there is something especially touching in our finding the sunshine thus freely admitted into a church built by men in sorrow. They did not need the darkness; they could not perhaps bear it. There was fear and depression upon them enough, without a material gloom. They sought for comfort in their religion, for tangible hopes and promises, not for threatenings or mysteries; and though the subjects chosen for the mosaics on the walls are of the most solemn character, there are no artificial shadows cast upon them, nor dark colors used in them: all is fair and bright, and intended evidently to be regarded in hopefulness, and not with terror. § IX. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the building was originally decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder, but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." § X. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure. The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description, though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was constructed. § XI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich, but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of bluntness and rudeness of feeling, we may perceive, upon reflection, that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so slight an effort. § XII. It appears however questionable in the present instance, whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts; itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in any way moving beneath the preacher's hands.[9] Six balls, or rather almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediæval cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches. It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service, and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature of a church be the best possible. § XIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary erection in other parts of the building: and though this may often be done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade by them. § XIV. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst. § XV. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort (for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence. § XVI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot. Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raised up, itself like an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices: THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT: AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND. FOOTNOTES [4] Appendix 4, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello." [5] For a full account of the form and symbolical meaning of the Basilica, see Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vol. i. p. 12. It is much to be regretted that the Chevalier Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome is not translated into English. [6] The measures are given in Appendix 3. [7] Hope's "Historical Essay on Architecture" (third edition, 1840), chap. ix. p. 95. In other respects Mr. Hope has done justice to this building, and to the style of the early Christian churches in general. [8] A sketch has been given of this capital in my folio work. [9] Appendix 5, "Modern Pulpits." CHAPTER III. MURANO. § I. The decay of the city of Venice is, in many respects, like that of an outwearied and aged human frame; the cause of its decrepitude is indeed at the heart, but the outward appearances of it are first at the extremities. In the centre of the city there are still places where some evidence of vitality remains, and where, with kind closing of the eyes to signs, too manifest even there, of distress and declining fortune, the stranger may succeed in imagining, for a little while, what must have been the aspect of Venice in her prime. But this lingering pulsation has not force enough any more to penetrate into the suburbs and outskirts of the city; the frost of death has there seized upon it irrevocably, and the grasp of mortal disease is marked daily by the increasing breadth of its belt of ruin. Nowhere is this seen more grievously than along the great north-eastern boundary, once occupied by the smaller palaces of the Venetians, built for pleasure or repose; the nobler piles along the grand canal being reserved for the pomp and business of daily life. To such smaller palaces some garden ground was commonly attached, opening to the water-side; and, in front of these villas and gardens, the lagoon was wont to be covered in the evening by gondolas: the space of it between this part of the city and the island group of Murano being to Venice, in her time of power, what its parks are to London; only gondolas were used instead of carriages, and the crowd of the population did not come out till towards sunset, and prolonged their pleasures far into the night, company answering to company with alternate singing. § II. If, knowing this custom of the Venetians, and with a vision in his mind of summer palaces lining the shore, and myrtle gardens sloping to the sea, the traveller now seeks this suburb of Venice, he will be strangely and sadly surprised to find a new but perfectly desolate quay, about a mile in length, extending from the arsenal to the Sacca della Misericordia, in front of a line of miserable houses built in the course of the last sixty or eighty years, yet already tottering to their ruin; and not less to find that the principal object in the view which these houses (built partly in front and partly on the ruins of the ancient palaces) now command is a dead brick wall, about a quarter of a mile across the water, interrupted only by a kind of white lodge, the cheerfulness of which prospect is not enhanced by his finding that this wall encloses the principal public cemetery of Venice. He may, perhaps, marvel for a few moments at the singular taste of the old Venetians in taking their pleasure under a churchyard wall: but, on further inquiry, he will find that the building on the island, like those on the shore, is recent, that it stands on the ruins of the Church of St. Cristoforo della Pace; and that with a singular, because unintended, moral, the modern Venetians have replaced the Peace of the Christ-bearer by the Peace of Death, and where they once went, as the sun set daily, to their pleasure, now go, as the sun sets to each of them for ever, to their graves. § III. Yet the power of Nature cannot be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of man. The broad tides still ebb and flow brightly about the island of the dead, and the linked conclave of the Alps know no decline from their old pre-eminence, nor stoop from their golden thrones in the circle of the horizon. So lovely is the scene still, in spite of all its injuries, that we shall find ourselves drawn there again and again at evening out of the narrow canals and streets of the city, to watch the wreaths of the sea-mists weaving themselves like mourning veils around the mountains far away, and listen to the green waves as they fret and sigh along the cemetery shore. § IV. But it is morning now: we have a hard day's work to do at Murano, and our boat shoots swiftly from beneath the last bridge of Venice, and brings us out into the open sea and sky. The pure cumuli of cloud lie crowded and leaning against one another, rank beyond rank, far over the shining water, each cut away at its foundation by a level line, trenchant and clear, till they sink to the horizon like a flight of marble steps, except where the mountains meet them, and are lost in them, barred across by the grey terraces of those cloud foundations, and reduced into one crestless bank of blue, spotted here and there with strange flakes of wan, aerial, greenish light, strewed upon them like snow. And underneath is the long dark line of the mainland, fringed with low trees; and then the wide-waving surface of the burnished lagoon trembling slowly, and shaking out into forked bands of lengthening light the images of the towers of cloud above. To the north, there is first the great cemetery wall, then the long stray buildings of Murano, and the island villages beyond, glittering in intense crystalline vermilion, like so much jewellery scattered on a mirror, their towers poised apparently in the air a little above the horizon, and their reflections, as sharp and vivid and substantial as themselves, thrown on the vacancy between them and the sea. And thus the villages seem standing on the air; and, to the east, there is a cluster of ships that seem sailing on the land; for the sandy line of the Lido stretches itself between us and them, and we can see the tall white sails moving beyond it, but not the sea, only there is a sense of the great sea being indeed there, and a solemn strength of gleaming light in sky above. § V. The most discordant feature in the whole scene is the cloud which hovers above the glass furnaces of Murano; but this we may not regret, as it is one of the last signs left of human exertion among the ruinous villages which surround us. The silent gliding of the gondola brings it nearer to us every moment; we pass the cemetery, and a deep sea-channel which separates it from Murano, and finally enter a narrow water-street, with a paved footpath on each side, raised three or four feet above the canal, and forming a kind of quay between the water and the doors of the houses. These latter are, for the most part, low, but built with massy doors and windows of marble or Istrian stone, square-set and barred with iron; buildings evidently once of no mean order, though now inhabited only by the poor. Here and there an ogee window of the fourteenth century, or a doorway deeply enriched with cable mouldings, shows itself in the midst of more ordinary features; and several houses, consisting of one story only carried on square pillars, forming a short arcade along the quay, have windows sustained on shafts of red Verona marble, of singular grace and delicacy. All now in vain: little care is there for their delicacy or grace among the rough fishermen sauntering on the quay with their jackets hanging loose from their shoulders, jacket and cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some life in the scene, more than is usual in Venice: the women are sitting at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses sifting glass dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water, from venders of figs and grapes, and gourds and shell-fish; cries partly descriptive of the eatables in question, but interspersed with others of a character unintelligible in proportion to their violence, and fortunately so if we may judge by a sentence which is stencilled in black, within a garland, on the whitewashed walls of nearly every other house in the street, but which, how often soever written, no one seems to regard: "Bestemme non più. Lodate Gesù." § VI. We push our way on between large barges laden with fresh water from Fusina, in round white tubs seven feet across, and complicated boats full of all manner of nets that look as if they could never be disentangled, hanging from their masts and over their sides; and presently pass under a bridge with the lion of St. Mark on its archivolt, and another on a pillar at the end of the parapet, a small red lion with much of the puppy in his face, looking vacantly up into the air (in passing we may note that, instead of feathers, his wings are covered with hair, and in several other points the manner of his sculpture is not uninteresting). Presently the canal turns a little to the left, and thereupon becomes more quiet, the main bustle of the water-street being usually confined to the first straight reach of it, some quarter of a mile long, the Cheapside of Murano. We pass a considerable church on the left, St. Pietro, and a little square opposite to it with a few acacia trees, and then find our boat suddenly seized by a strong green eddy, and whirled into the tide-way of one of the main channels of the lagoon, which divides the town of Murano into two parts by a deep stream some fifty yards over, crossed only by one wooden bridge. We let ourselves drift some way down the current, looking at the low line of cottages on the other side of it, hardly knowing if there be more cheerfulness or melancholy in the way the sunshine glows on their ruinous but whitewashed walls, and sparkles on the rushing of the green water by the grass-grown quay. It needs a strong stroke of the oar to bring us into the mouth of another quiet canal on the farther side of the tide-way, and we are still somewhat giddy when we run the head of the gondola into the sand on the left-hand side of this more sluggish stream, and land under the east end of the Church of San Donato, the "Matrice" or "Mother" Church of Murano. § VII. It stands, it and the heavy campanile detached from it a few yards, in a small triangular field of somewhat fresher grass than is usual near Venice, traversed by a paved walk with green mosaic of short grass between the rude squares of its stones, bounded on one side by ruinous garden walls, on another by a line of low cottages, on the third, the base of the triangle, by the shallow canal from which we have just landed. Near the point of the triangular space is a simple well, bearing date 1502; in its widest part, between the canal and campanile, is a four-square hollow pillar, each side formed by a separate slab of stone, to which the iron hasps are still attached that once secured the Venetian standard. The cathedral itself occupies the northern angle of the field, encumbered with modern buildings, small outhouse-like chapels, and wastes of white wall with blank square windows, and itself utterly defaced in the whole body of it, nothing but the apse having been spared; the original plan is only discoverable by careful examination, and even then but partially. The whole impression and effect of the building are irretrievably lost, but the fragments of it are still most precious. We must first briefly state what is known of its history. § VIII. The legends of the Romish Church, though generally more insipid and less varied than those of Paganism, deserve audience from us on this ground, if on no other, that they have once been sincerely believed by good men, and have had no ineffective agency in the foundation of the existent European mind. The reader must not therefore accuse me of trifling, when I record for him the first piece of information I have been able to collect respecting the cathedral of Murano: namely, that the emperor Otho the Great, being overtaken by a storm on the Adriatic, vowed, if he were preserved, to build and dedicate a church to the Virgin, in whatever place might be most pleasing to her; that the storm thereupon abated; and the Virgin appearing to Otho in a dream showed him, covered with red lilies, that very triangular field on which we were but now standing, amidst the ragged weeds and shattered pavement. The emperor obeyed the vision; and the church was consecrated on the 15th of August, 957. § IX. Whatever degree of credence we may feel disposed to attach to this piece of history, there is no question that a church was built on this spot before the close of the tenth century: since in the year 999 we find the incumbent of the Basilica (note this word, it is of some importance) di Santa Maria Plebania di Murano taking an oath of obedience to the Bishop of the Altinat church, and engaging at the same time to give the said bishop his dinner on the Domenica in Albis, when the prelate held a confirmation in the mother church, as it was then commonly called, of Murano. From this period, for more than a century, I can find no records of any alterations made in the fabric of the church, but there exist very full details of the quarrels which arose between its incumbents and those of San Stefano, San Cipriano, San Salvatore, and the other churches of Murano, touching the due obedience which their less numerous or less ancient brotherhoods owed to St. Mary's. These differences seem to have been renewed at the election of every new abbot by each of the fraternities, and must have been growing serious when the patriarch of Grado, Henry Dandolo, interfered in 1102, and, in order to seal a peace between the two principal opponents, ordered that the abbot of St. Stephen's should be present at the service in St. Mary's on the night of the Epiphany, and that the abbot of St. Mary's should visit him of St. Stephen's on St. Stephen's day; and that then the two abbots "should eat apples and drink good wine together, in peace and charity."[10] § X. But even this kindly effort seems to have been without result: the irritated pride of the antagonists remained unsoothed by the love-feast of St. Stephen's day; and the breach continued to widen until the abbot of St. Mary's obtained a timely accession to his authority in the year 1125. The Doge Domenico Michele, having in the second crusade secured such substantial advantages for the Venetians as might well counterbalance the loss of part of their trade with the East, crowned his successes by obtaining possession in Cephalonia of the body of St. Donato, bishop of Euroea; which treasure he having presented on his return to the Murano basilica, that church was thenceforward called the church of Sts. Mary and Donato. Nor was the body of the saint its only acquisition: St. Donato's principal achievement had been the destruction of a terrible dragon in Epirus; Michele brought home the bones of the dragon as well as of the saint; the latter were put in a marble sarcophagus, and the former hung up over the high altar. § XI. But the clergy of St. Stefano were indomitable. At the very moment when their adversaries had received this formidable accession of strength, they had the audacity "ad onta de' replicati giuramenti, e dell'inveterata consuetudine,"[11] to refuse to continue in the obedience which they had vowed to their mother church. The matter was tried in a provincial council; the votaries of St. Stephen were condemned, and remained quiet for about twenty years, in wholesome dread of the authority conferred on the abbot of St. Donate, by the Pope's legate, to suspend any o the clergy of the island from their office if they refused submission. In 1172, however, they appealed to Pope Alexander III, and were condemned again: and we find the struggle renewed at every promising opportunity, during the course of the 12th and 13th centuries; until at last, finding St. Donate and the dragon together too strong for him, the abbot of St. Stefano "discovered" in his church the bodies of two hundred martyrs at once!--a discovery, it is to be remembered, in some sort equivalent in those days to that of California in ours. The inscription, however, on the façade of the church, recorded it with quiet dignity:--"MCCCLXXIV. a di XIV. di Aprile. Furono trovati nella presente chiesa del protomartire San Stefano, duecento e più corpi de' Santi Martiri, dal Ven. Prete Matteo Fradello, piovano della chiesa."[12] Corner, who gives this inscription, which no longer exists, goes on to explain with infinite gravity, that the bodies in question, "being of infantile form and stature, are reported by tradition to have belonged to those fortunate innocents who suffered martyrdom under King Herod; but that when, or by whom, the church was enriched with so vast a treasure, is not manifested by any document."[13] § XII. The issue of the struggle is not to our present purpose. We have already arrived at the fourteenth century without finding record of any effort made by the clergy of St. Mary's to maintain their influence by restoring or beautifying their basilica; which is the only point at present of importance to us. That great alterations were made in it at the time of the acquisition of the body of St. Donato is however highly probable, the mosaic pavement of the interior, which bears its date inscribed, 1140, being probably the last of the additions. I believe that no part of the ancient church can be shown to be of more recent date than this; and I shall not occupy the reader's time by any inquiry respecting the epochs or authors of the destructive modern restorations; the wreck of the old fabric, breaking out beneath them here and there, is generally distinguishable from them at a glance; and it is enough for the reader to know that none of these truly ancient fragments can be assigned to a more recent date than 1140, and that some of them may with probability be looked upon as remains of the shell of the first church, erected in the course of the latter half of the tenth century. We shall perhaps obtain some further reason for this belief as we examine these remains themselves. § XIII. Of the body of the church, unhappily, they are few and obscure; but the general form and extent of the building, as shown in the plan, Plate I. fig. 2, are determined, first, by the breadth of the uninjured east end D E; secondly, by some remains of the original brickwork of the clerestory, and in all probability of the side walls also, though these have been refaced; and finally by the series of nave shafts, which are still perfect. The doors A and B may or may not be in their original positions; there must of course have been always, as now, a principal entrance at the west end. The ground plan is composed, like that of Torcello, of nave and aisles only, but the clerestory has transepts extending as far as the outer wall of the aisles. The semicircular apse, thrown out in the centre of the east end, is now the chief feature of interest in the church, though the nave shafts and the eastern extremities of the aisles, outside, are also portions of the original building; the latter having been modernized in the interior, it cannot now be ascertained whether, as is probable, the aisles had once round ends as well as the choir. The spaces F G form small chapels, of which G has a straight terminal wall behind its altar, and F a curved one, marked by the dotted line; the partitions which divide these chapels from the presbytery are also indicated by dotted lines, being modern work. § XIV. The plan is drawn carefully to scale, but the relation in which its proportions are disposed can hardly be appreciated by the eye. The width of the nave from shaft to opposite shaft is 32 feet 8 inches: of the aisles, from the shaft to the wall, 16 feet 2 inches, or allowing 2 inches for the thickness of the modern wainscot, 16 feet 4 inches, half the breadth of the nave exactly. The intervals between the shafts are exactly one fourth of the width of the nave, or 8 feet 2 inches, and the distance between the great piers which form the pseudo-transept is 24 feet 6 inches, exactly three times the interval of the shafts. So the four distances are accurately in arithmetical proportion; i.e. Ft. In. Interval of shafts 8 2 Width of aisle 16 4 Width of transept 24 6 Width of nave 32 8 The shafts average 5 feet 4 inches in circumference, as near the base as they can be got at, being covered with wood; and the broadest sides of the main piers are 4 feet 7 inches wide, their narrowest sides 3 feet 6 inches. The distance _a c_ from the outmost angle of these piers to the beginning of the curve of the apse is 25 feet, and from that point the apse is nearly semicircular, but it is so encumbered with renaissance fittings that its form cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. It is roofed by a concha, or semi-dome; and the external arrangement of its walls provides for the security of this dome by what is, in fact, a system of buttresses as effective and definite as that of any of the northern churches, although the buttresses are obtained entirely by adaptations of the Roman shaft and arch, the lower story being formed by a thick mass of wall lightened by ordinary semicircular round-headed niches, like those used so extensively afterwards in renaissance architecture, each niche flanked by a pair of shafts standing clear of the wall, and bearing deeply moulded arches thrown over the niche. The wall with its pillars thus forms a series of massy buttresses (as seen in the ground plan), on the top of which is an open gallery, backed by a thinner wall, and roofed by arches whose shafts are set above the pairs of shafts below. On the heads of these arches rests the roof. We have, therefore, externally a heptagonal apse, chiefly of rough and common brick, only with marble shafts and a few marble ornaments; but for that very reason all the more interesting, because it shows us what may be done, and what was done, with materials such as are now at our own command; and because in its proportions, and in the use of the few ornaments it possesses, it displays a delicacy of feeling rendered doubly notable by the roughness of the work in which laws so subtle are observed, and with which so thoughtful ornamentation is associated. § XV. First, for its proportions: I shall have occasion in Chapter V. to dwell at some length on the peculiar subtlety of the early Venetian perception for ratios of magnitude; the relations of the sides of this heptagonal apse supply one of the first and most curious instances of it. The proportions above given of the nave and aisles might have been dictated by a mere love of mathematical precision; but those of the apse could only have resulted from a true love of harmony. In fig. 6, Plate I. the plan of this part of the church is given on a large scale, showing that its seven external sides are arranged on a line less than a semicircle, so that if the figure were completed, it would have sixteen sides; and it will be observed also, that the seven sides are arranged in four magnitudes, the widest being the central one. The brickwork is so much worn away, that the measures of the arches are not easily ascertainable, but those of the plinth on which they stand, which is nearly uninjured, may be obtained accurately. This plinth is indicated by the open line in the ground plan, and its sides measure respectively: Ft. In. 1st. _a b_ in plan 6 7 2nd. _b c_ 7 7 3rd. _c d_ 7 5 4th. _d e_ (central) 7 10 5th. _e f_ 7 5 6th _f g_ 7 8 7th. _g h_ 6 10 § XVI. Now observe what subtle feeling is indicated by this delicacy of proportion. How fine must the perceptions of grace have been in those builders who could not be content without _some_ change between the second and third, the fifth and sixth terms of proportion, such as should oppose the general direction of its cadence, and yet _were_ content with a diminution of two inches on a breadth of seven feet and a half! For I do not suppose that the reader will think the curious lessening of the third and fifth arch a matter of accident, and even if he did so, I shall be able to prove to him hereafter that it was not, but that the early builders were always desirous of obtaining some alternate proportion of this kind. The relations of the numbers are not easily comprehended in the form of feet and inches, but if we reduce the first four of them into inches, and then subtract some constant number, suppose 75, from them all, the remainders 4, 16, 14, 19, will exhibit the ratio of proportion in a clearer, though exaggerated form. § XVII. The pairs of circular spots at _b_, _c_, _d_, etc., on the ground plan fig. 6, represent the bearing shafts, which are all of solid marble as well as their capitals. Their measures and various other particulars respecting them are given in Appendix 6. "Apse of Murano;" here I only wish the reader to note the coloring of their capitals. Those of the two single shafts in the angles (_a_, _h_) are both of deep purple marble; the two next pairs, _b_ and _g_, are of white marble; the pairs _c_ and _f_ are of purple, and _d_ and _e_ are of white: thus alternating with each other on each side; two white meeting in the centre. Now observe, _the purple capitals are all left plain; the white are all sculptured_. For the old builders knew that by carving the purple capitals they would have injured them in two ways: first, they would have mixed a certain quantity of grey shadow with the surface hue, and so adulterated the purity of the color; secondly, they would have drawn away the thoughts from the color, and prevented the mind from fixing upon it or enjoying it, by the degree of attention which the sculpture would have required. So they left their purple capitals full broad masses of color; and sculptured the white ones, which would otherwise have been devoid of interest. § XVIII. But the feature which is most to be noted in this apse is a band of ornament, which runs round it like a silver girdle, composed of sharp wedges of marble, preciously inlaid, and set like jewels into the brickwork; above it there is another band of triangular recesses in the bricks, of nearly similar shape, and it seems equally strange that all the marbles should have fallen from it, or that it should have been originally destitute of them. The reader may choose his hypothesis; but there is quite enough left to interest us in the lower band, which is fortunately left in its original state, as is sufficiently proved by the curious niceties in the arrangement of its colors, which are assuredly to be attributed to the care of the first builder. A word or two, in the first place, respecting the means of color at his disposal. § XIX. I stated that the building was, for the most part, composed of yellow brick. This yellow is very nearly pure, much more positive and somewhat darker than that of our English light brick, and the material of the brick is very good and hard, looking, in places, almost vitrified, and so compact as to resemble stone. Together with this brick occurs another of a deep full red, and more porous substance, which is used for decoration chiefly, while all the parts requiring strength are composed of the yellow brick. Both these materials are _cast into any shape and size_ the builder required, either into curved pieces for the arches, or flat tiles for filling the triangles; and, what is still more curious, the thickness of the yellow bricks used for the walls varies considerably, from two inches to four; and their length also, some of the larger pieces used in important positions being a foot and a half long. With these two kinds of brick, the builder employed five or six kinds of marble: pure white, and white veined with purple; a brecciated marble of white and black; a brecciated marble of white and deep green; another, deep red, or nearly of the color of Egyptian porphyry; and a grey and black marble, in fine layers. § XX. The method of employing these materials will be understood at once by a reference to the opposite plate (Plate III.), which represents two portions of the lower band. I could not succeed in expressing the variation and chequering of color in marble, by real tints in the print; and have been content, therefore, to give them in line engraving. The different triangles are, altogether, of ten kinds: a. Pure white marble with sculptured surface (as the third and fifth in the upper series of Plate III.). b. Cast triangle of red brick with a sculptured round-headed piece of white marble inlaid (as the first and seventh of the upper series, Plate III.). c. A plain triangle of greenish black marble, now perhaps considerably paler in color than when first employed (as the second and sixth of the upper series of Plate III.). d. Cast red brick triangle, with a diamond inlaid of the above-mentioned black marble (as the fourth in the upper series of Plate III.). e. Cast white brick, with an inlaid round-headed piece of marble, variegated with black and yellow, or white and violet (not seen in the plate). f. Occurs only once, a green-veined marble, forming the upper part of the triangle, with a white piece below. g. Occurs only once. A brecciated marble of intense black and pure white, the centre of the lower range in Plate III. h. Sculptured white marble with a triangle of veined purple marble inserted (as the first, third, fifth, and seventh of the lower range in Plate III.). i. Yellow or white marble veined with purple (as the second and sixth of the lower range in Plate III.). k. Pure purple marble, not seen in this plate. [Illustration: Plate III. INLAID BANDS OF MURANO.] § XXI. The band, then, composed of these triangles, set close to each other in varied but not irregular relations, is thrown, like a necklace of precious stones, round the apse and along the ends of the aisles; each side of the apse taking, of course, as many triangles as its width permits. If the reader will look back to the measures of the sides of the apse, given before, p. 42, he will see that the first and seventh of the series, being much narrower than the rest, cannot take so many triangles in their band. Accordingly, they have only six each, while the other five sides have seven. Of these groups of seven triangles each, that used for the third and fifth sides of the apse is the uppermost in Plate III.; and that used for the centre of the apse, and of the whole series, is the lowermost in the same plate; _the piece of black and white marble being used to emphasize the centre of the chain_, exactly as a painter would use a dark touch for a similar purpose. § XXII. And now, with a little trouble, we can set before the reader, at a glance, the arrangement of the groups along the entire extremity of the church. There are thirteen recesses, indicative of thirteen arches, seen in the ground plan, fig. 2, Plate I. Of these, the second and twelfth arches rise higher than the rest; so high as to break the decorated band; and the groups of triangles we have to enumerate are, therefore, only eleven in number; one above each of the eleven low arches. And of these eleven, the first and second, tenth and eleventh, are at the ends of the aisles; while the third to the ninth, inclusive, go round the apse. Thus, in the following table, the numerals indicate the place of each entire group (counting from the south to the north side of the church, or from left to right), and the letters indicate the species of triangle of which it is composed, as described in the list given above. 6. h. i. h. g. h. i. h. 5. b. c. a. d. a. c. b. 7. b. c. a. d. a. c. b. 4. b. a. b. c. a. e. a. 8. a. e. a. c. b. a. b. 3. b. a. b. e. b. a. 9. a. b. e. b. a. b. 2. a. b. c. 10. a. b. c. b. 1. a. b. c. b. a. 11. b. a. c. f. a. a. The central group is put first, that it may be seen how the series on the two sides of the apse answer each other. It was a very curious freak to insert the triangle e, in the outermost place _but one_ of both the fourth and eighth sides of the apse, and in the outermost _but two_ in the third and ninth; in neither case having any balance to it in its own group, and the real balance being only effected on the other side of the apse, which it is impossible that any one should see at the same time. This is one of the curious pieces of system which so often occur in mediæval work, of which the key is now lost. The groups at the ends of the transepts correspond neither in number nor arrangement; we shall presently see why, but must first examine more closely the treatment of the triangles themselves, and the nature of the floral sculpture employed upon them. [Illustration: Plate IV. SCULPTURES OF MURANO.] § XXIII. As the scale of Plate III. is necessarily small, I have given three of the sculptured triangles on a larger scale in Plate IV. opposite. Fig. 3 is one of the four in the lower series of Plate IV., and figs. 4 and 5 from another group. The forms of the trefoils are here seen more clearly; they, and all the other portions of the design, are thrown out in low and flat relief, the intermediate spaces being cut out to the depth of about a quarter of an inch. I believe these vacant spaces were originally filled with a black composition, which is used in similar sculptures at St. Mark's, and of which I found some remains in an archivolt moulding here, though not in the triangles. The surface of the whole would then be perfectly smooth, and the ornamental form relieved by a ground of dark grey; but, even though this ground is lost, the simplicity of the method insures the visibility of all its parts at the necessary distance (17 or 18 feet), and the quaint trefoils have a crispness and freshness of effect which I found it almost impossible to render in a drawing. Nor let us fail to note in passing how strangely delightful to the human mind the trefoil always is. We have it here repeated five or six hundred times in the space of a few yards, and yet are never weary of it. In fact, there are two mystical feelings at the root of our enjoyment of this decoration: the one is the love of trinity in unity, the other that of the sense of fulness with order; of every place being instantly filled, and yet filled with propriety and ease; the leaves do not push each other, nor put themselves out of their own way, and yet whenever there is a vacant space, a leaf is always ready to step in and occupy it. § XXIV. I said the trefoil was five or six hundred times repeated. It is so, but observe, it is hardly ever twice of the same size; and this law is studiously and resolutely observed. In the carvings _a_ and _b_ of the upper series, Plate III., the diminution of the leaves might indeed seem merely representative of the growth of the plant. But look at the lower: the triangles of inlaid purple marble are made much more nearly equilateral than those of white marble, into whose centres they are set, so that the leaves may continually diminish in size as the ornament descends at the sides. The reader may perhaps doubt the accuracy of the drawing on the smaller scale, but in that given larger, fig. 3, Plate IV., the angles are all measured, and the _purposeful_ variation of width in the border therefore admits of no dispute.[14] Remember how absolutely this principle is that of nature; the same leaf continually repeated, but never twice of the same size. Look at the clover under your feet, and then you will see what this Murano builder meant, and that he was not altogether a barbarian. § XXV. Another point I wish the reader to observe is, the importance attached to _color_ in the mind of the designer. Note especially--for it is of the highest importance to see how the great principles of art are carried out through the whole building--that, as only the white capitals are sculptured below, only the white triangles are sculptured above. No colored triangle is touched with sculpture; note also, that in the two principal groups of the apse, given in Plate III., the centre of the group is color, not sculpture, and the eye is evidently intended to be drawn as much to the chequers of the stone, as to the intricacies of the chiselling. It will be noticed also how much more precious the lower series, which is central in the apse, is rendered, than the one above it in the plate, which flanks it: there is no brick in the lower one, and three kinds of variegated marble are used in it, whereas the upper is composed of brick, with black and white marble only; and lastly--for this is especially delightful--see how the workman made his chiselling finer where it was to go with the variegated marbles, and used a bolder pattern with the coarser brick and dark stone. The subtlety and perfection of artistical feeling in all this are so redundant, that in the building itself the eye can rest upon this colored chain with the same kind of delight that it has in a piece of the embroidery of Paul Veronese. [Illustration: Fig. II.] § XXVI. Such being the construction of the lower band, that of the upper is remarkable only for the curious change in its proportions. The two are separated, as seen in the little woodcut here at the side, by a string-course composed of two layers of red bricks, of which the uppermost projects as a cornice, and is sustained by an intermediate course of irregular brackets, obtained by setting the thick yellow bricks edgeways, in the manner common to this day. But the wall above is carried up perpendicularly from this projection, so that the whole upper band is advanced to the thickness of a brick over the lower one. The result of this is, of course, that each side of the apse is four or five inches broader above than below; so that the same number of triangles which filled a whole side of the lower band, leave an inch or two blank at each angle in the upper. This would have looked awkward, if there had been the least appearance of its being an accidental error; so that, in order to draw the eye to it, and show that it is done on purpose, the upper triangles are made about two inches higher than the lower ones, so as to be much more acute in proportion and effect, and actually to look considerably narrower, though of the same width at the base. By this means they are made lighter in effect, and subordinated to the richly decorated series of the lower band, and the two courses, instead of repeating, unite with each other, and become a harmonious whole. [Illustration: Plate V. Archivolt in the Duomo of Murano.] In order, however, to make still more sure that this difference in the height of the triangles should not escape the eye, another course of plain bricks is added above their points, increasing the width of the band by another two inches. There are five courses of bricks in the lower band, and it measures 1 ft. 6 in. in height: there are seven courses in the upper (of which six fall between the triangles), and it measures 1 ft. 10 in. in height, except at the extremity of the northern aisle, where for some mysterious reason the intermediate cornice is sloped upwards so as to reduce the upper triangles to the same height as those below. And here, finally, observe how determined the builder was that the one series should not be a mere imitation of the other; he could not now make them acute by additional height--so he here, and here only, _narrowed their bases_, and we have seven of them above, to six below. § XXVII. We come now to the most interesting portion of the whole east end, the archivolt at the end of the northern aisle. It was above stated, that the band of triangles was broken by two higher arches at the ends of the aisles. That, however, on the northern side of the apse does not entirely interrupt, but lifts it, and thus forms a beautiful and curious archivolt, drawn opposite, in Plate V. The upper band of triangles cannot rise together with the lower, as it would otherwise break the cornice prepared to receive the second story; and the curious zigzag with which its triangles die away against the sides of the arch, exactly as waves break upon the sand, is one of the most curious features in the structure. It will be also seen that there is a new feature in the treatment of the band itself when it turns the arch. Instead of leaving the bricks projecting between the sculptured or colored stones, reversed triangles of marble are used, inlaid to an equal depth with the others in the brickwork, but projecting beyond them so as to produce a sharp dark line of zigzag at their junctions. Three of these supplementary stones have unhappily fallen out, so that it is now impossible to determine the full harmony of color in which they were originally arranged. The central one, corresponding to the keystone in a common arch, is, however, most fortunately left, with two lateral ones on the right hand, and one on the left. § XXVIII. The keystone, if it may be so called, is of white marble, the lateral voussoirs of purple; and these are the only colored stones in the whole building which are sculptured; but they are sculptured in a way which, more satisfactorily proves that the principle above stated was understood by the builders, than if they had been left blank. The object, observe, was to make the archivolt as rich as possible; eight of the white sculptured marbles were used upon it in juxtaposition. Had the purple marbles been left altogether plain, they would have been out of harmony with the elaboration of the rest. It became necessary to touch them with sculpture as a mere sign of carefulness and finish, but at the same time destroying their colored surface as little as possible. _The ornament is merely outlined upon them with a fine incision_, as if it had been etched out on their surface preparatory to being carved. In two of them it is composed merely of three concentric lines, parallel with the sides of the triangle; in the third, it is a wreath of beautiful design, which I have drawn of larger size in fig. 2, Plate V., that the reader may see how completely the surface is left undestroyed by the delicate incisions of the chisel, and may compare the method of working with that employed on the white stones, two of which are given in that plate, figs. 4 and 5. The keystone, of which we have not yet spoken, is the only white stone worked with the light incision; its design not being capable of the kind of workmanship given to the floral ornaments, and requiring either to be carved in complete relief, or left as we see it. It is given at fig. 1 of Plate IV. The sun and moon on each side of the cross are, as we shall see in the fifth Chapter, constantly employed on the keystones of Byzantine arches. § XXIX. We must not pass without notice the grey and green pieces of marble inserted at the flanks of the arch. For, observe, there was a difficulty in getting the forms of the triangle into anything like reconciliation at this point, and a mediæval artist always delights in a difficulty: instead of concealing it, he boasts of it; and just as we saw above that he directed the eye to the difficulty of filling the expanded sides of the upper band by elongating his triangles, so here, having to put in a piece of stone of awkward shape, he makes that very stone the most conspicuous in the whole arch, on both sides, by using in one case a dark, cold grey; in the other a vigorous green, opposed to the warm red and purple and white of the stones above and beside it. The green and white piece on the right is of a marble, as far as I know, exceedingly rare. I at first thought the white fragments were inlaid, so sharply are they defined upon their ground. They are indeed inlaid, but I believe it is by nature; and that the stone is a calcareous breccia of great mineralogical interest. The white spots are of singular value in giving piquancy to the whole range of more delicate transitional hues above. The effect of the whole is, however, generally injured by the loss of the three large triangles above. I have no doubt they were purple, like those which remain, and that the whole arch was thus one zone of white, relieved on a purple ground, encircled by the scarlet cornices of brick, and the whole chord of color contrasted by the two precious fragments of grey and green at either side. § XXX. The two pieces of carved stone inserted at each side of the arch, as seen at the bottom of Plate V., are of different workmanship from the rest; they do not match each other, and form part of the evidence which proves that portions of the church had been brought from the mainland. One bears an inscription, which, as its antiquity is confirmed by the shapelessness of its letters, I was much gratified by not being able to read; but M. Lazari, the intelligent author of the latest and best Venetian guide, with better skill, has given as much of it as remains, thus: [Illustration: T SCEMARIEDIGENETRICISETBEATIESTEFANIMART IRIEGOINDIGNVSETPECCATURDOMENICUST] I have printed the letters as they are placed in the inscription, in order that the reader may form some idea of the difficulty of reading such legends when the letters, thus thrown into one heap, are themselves of strange forms, and half worn away; any gaps which at all occur between them coming in the wrong places. There is no doubt, however, as to the reading of this fragment:--"T ... Sancte Marie Domini Genetricis et beati Estefani martiri ego indignus et peccator Domenicus T." On these two initial and final T's, expanding one into Templum, the other into Torcellanus, M. Lazari founds an ingenious conjecture that the inscription records the elevation of the church under a certain bishop Dominic of Torcello (named in the Altinat Chronicle), who flourished in the middle of the ninth century. If this were so, as the inscription occurs broken off on a fragment inserted scornfully in the present edifice, this edifice must be of the twelfth century, worked with fragments taken from the ruins of that built in the ninth. The two T's are, however, hardly a foundation large enough to build the church upon, a hundred years before the date assigned to it both by history and tradition (see above, § VIII.): and the reader has yet to be made aware of the principal fact bearing on the question. § XXXI. Above the first story of the apse runs, as he knows already, a gallery under open arches, protected by a light balustrade. This balustrade is worked on the _outside_ with mouldings, of which I shall only say at present that they are of exactly the same school as the greater part of the work of the existing church. But the great horizontal pieces of stone which form the top of this balustrade are fragments of an older building turned inside out. They are covered with sculptures on the back, only to be seen by mounting into the gallery. They have once had an arcade of low wide arches traced on their surface, the spandrils filled with leafage, and archivolts enriched with studded chainwork and with crosses in their centres. These pieces have been used as waste marble by the architect of the existing apse. The small arches of the present balustrade are cut mercilessly through the old work, and the profile of the balustrade is cut out of what was once the back of the stone; only some respect is shown for the crosses in the old design, the blocks are cut so that these shall be not only left uninjured, but come in the centre of the balustrades. § XXXII. Now let the reader observe carefully that this balustrade of Murano is a fence of other things than the low gallery round the deserted apse. It is a barrier between two great schools of early architecture. On one side it was cut by Romanesque workmen of the early Christian ages, and furnishes us with a distinct type of a kind of ornament which, as we meet with other examples of it, we shall be able to describe in generic terms, and to throw back behind this balustrade, out of our way. The _front_ of the balustrade presents us with a totally different condition of design, less rich, more graceful, and here shown in its simplest possible form. From the outside of this bar of marble we shall commence our progress in the study of existing Venetian architecture. The only question is, do we begin from the tenth or from the twelfth century? § XXXIII. I was in great hopes once of being able to determine this positively; but the alterations in all the early buildings of Venice are so numerous, and the foreign fragments introduced so innumerable, that I was obliged to leave the question doubtful. But one circumstance must be noted, bearing upon it closely. In the woodcut on page 50, Fig. III., _b_ is an archivolt of Murano, _a_ one of St. Mark's; the latter acknowledged by all historians and all investigators to be of the twelfth century. _All_ the twelfth century archivolts in Venice, without exception, are on the model of _a_, differing only in their decorations and sculpture. There is not one which resembles that of Murano. But the deep mouldings of Murano are almost exactly similar to those of St. Michele of Pavia, and other Lombard churches built, some as early as the seventh, others in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. On this ground it seems to me probable that the existing apse of Murano is part of the original earliest church, and that the inscribed fragments used in it have been brought from the mainland. The balustrade, however, may still be later than the rest; it will be examined, hereafter, more carefully.[15] I have not space to give any farther account of the exterior of the building, though one half of what is remarkable in it remains untold. We must now see what is left of interest within the walls. [Illustration: Fig. III.] § XXXIV. All hope is taken away by our first glance; for it falls on a range of shafts whose bases are concealed by wooden panelling, and which sustain arches decorated in the most approved style of Renaissance upholstery, with stucco roses in squares under the soffits, and egg and arrow mouldings on the architraves, gilded, on a ground of spotty black and green, with a small pink-faced and black-eyed cherub on every keystone; the rest of the church being for the most part concealed either by dirty hangings, or dirtier whitewash, or dim pictures on warped and wasting canvas; all vulgar, vain, and foul. Yet let us not turn back, for in the shadow of the apse our more careful glance shows us a Greek Madonna, pictured on a field of gold; and we feel giddy at the first step we make on the pavement, for it, also, is of Greek mosaic waved like the sea, and dyed like a dove's neck. § XXXV. Nor are the original features of the rest of the edifice altogether indecipherable; the entire series of shafts marked in the ground plan on each side of the nave, from the western entrance to the apse, are nearly uninjured; and I believe the stilted arches they sustain are those of the original fabric, though the masonry is covered by the Renaissance stucco mouldings. Their capitals, for a wonder, are left bare, and appear to have sustained no farther injury than has resulted from the insertion of a large brass chandelier into each of their abaci, each chandelier carrying a sublime wax candle two inches thick, fastened with wire to the wall above. The due arrangement of these appendages, previous to festal days, can only be effected from a ladder set against the angle of the abacus; and ten minutes before I wrote this sentence, I had the privilege of watching the candlelighter at his work, knocking his ladder about the heads of the capitals as if they had given him personal offence. He at last succeeded in breaking away one of the lamps altogether, with a bit of the marble of the abacus; the whole falling in ruin to the pavement, and causing much consultation and clamor among a tribe of beggars who were assisting the sacristan with their wisdom respecting the festal arrangements. § XXXVI. It is fortunate that the capitals themselves, being somewhat rudely cut, can bear this kind of treatment better than most of those in Venice. They are all founded on the Corinthian type, but the leaves are in every one different: those of the easternmost capital of the southern range are the best, and very beautiful, but presenting no feature of much interest, their workmanship being inferior to most of the imitations of Corinthian common at the period; much more to the rich fantasies which we have seen at Torcello. The apse itself, to-day (12th September, 1851), is not to be described; for just in front of it, behind the altar, is a magnificent curtain of new red velvet with a gilt edge and two golden tassels, held up in a dainty manner by two angels in the upholsterer's service; and above all, for concentration of effect, a star or sun, some five feet broad, the spikes of which conceal the whole of the figure of the Madonna except the head and hands. § XXXVII. The pavement is however still left open, and it is of infinite interest, although grievously distorted and defaced. For whenever a new chapel has been built, or a new altar erected, the pavement has been broken up and readjusted so as to surround the newly inserted steps or stones with some appearance of symmetry; portions of it either covered or carried away, others mercilessly shattered or replaced by modern imitations, and those of very different periods, with pieces of the old floor left here and there in the midst of them, and worked round so as to deceive the eye into acceptance of the whole as ancient. The portion, however, which occupies the western extremity of the nave, and the parts immediately adjoining it in the aisles, are, I believe, in their original positions, and very little injured: they are composed chiefly of groups of peacocks, lions, stags, and griffins,--two of each in a group, drinking out of the same vase, or shaking claws together,--enclosed by interlacing bands, and alternating with chequer or star patterns, and here and there an attempt at representation of architecture, all worked in marble mosaic. The floors of Torcello and of St. Mark's are executed in the same manner; but what remains at Murano is finer than either, in the extraordinary play of color obtained by the use of variegated marbles. At St. Mark's the patterns are more intricate, and the pieces far more skilfully set together; but each piece is there commonly of one color: at Murano every fragment is itself variegated, and all are arranged with a skill and feeling not to be caught, and to be observed with deep reverence, for that pavement is not dateless, like the rest of the church; it bears its date on one of its central circles, 1140, and is, in my mind, one of the most precious monuments in Italy, showing thus early, and in those rude chequers which the bared knee of the Murano fisher wears in its daily bending, the beginning of that mighty spirit of Venetian color, which was to be consummated in Titian. § XXXVIII. But we must quit the church for the present, for its garnishings are completed; the candles are all upright in their sockets, and the curtains drawn into festoons, and a paste-board crescent, gay with artificial flowers, has been attached to the capital of every pillar, in order, together with the gilt angels, to make the place look as much like Paradise as possible. If we return to-morrow, we shall find it filled with woful groups of aged men and women, wasted and fever-struck, fixed in paralytic supplication, half-kneeling, half-couched upon the pavement; bowed down, partly in feebleness, partly in a fearful devotion, with their grey clothes cast far over their faces, ghastly and settled into a gloomy animal misery, all but the glittering eyes and muttering lips. Fit inhabitants, these, for what was once the Garden of Venice, "a terrestrial paradise,--a place of nymphs and demi-gods!"[16] § XXXIX. We return, yet once again, on the following day. Worshippers and objects of worship, the sickly crowd and gilded angels, all are gone; and there, far in the apse, is seen the sad Madonna standing in her folded robe, lifting her hands in vanity of blessing. There is little else to draw away our thoughts from the solitary image. An old wooden tablet, carved into a rude effigy of San Donato, which occupies the central niche in the lower part of the tribune, has an interest of its own, but is unconnected with the history of the older church. The faded frescoes of saints, which cover the upper tier of the wall of the apse, are also of comparatively recent date, much more the piece of Renaissance workmanship, shaft and entablature, above the altar, which has been thrust into the midst of all, and has cut away part of the feet of the Madonna. Nothing remains of the original structure but the semi-dome itself, the cornice whence it springs, which is the same as that used on the exterior of the church, and the border and face-arch which surround it. The ground of the dome is of gold, unbroken except by the upright Madonna, and usual inscription, M R [Greek: Theta] V. The figure wears a robe of blue, deeply fringed with gold, which seems to be gathered on the head and thrown back on the shoulders, crossing the breast, and falling in many folds to the ground. The under robe, shown beneath it where it opens at the breast, is of the same color; the whole, except the deep gold fringe, being simply the dress of the women of the time. "Le donne, anco elle del 1100, vestivano _di turchino con manti in spalla_, che le coprivano dinanzi e di dietro."[17] Round the dome there is a colored mosaic border; and on the edge of its arch, legible by the whole congregation, this inscription: "QUOS EVA CONTRIVIT, PIA VIRGO MARIA REDEMIT; HANC CUNCTI LAUDENT, QUI CRISTI MUNERE GAUDENT."[18] The whole edifice is, therefore, simply a temple to the Virgin: to her is ascribed the fact of Redemption, and to her its praise. § XL. "And is this," it will be asked of me, "the time, is this the worship, to which you would have us look back with reverence and regret?" Inasmuch as redemption is ascribed to the Virgin, No. Inasmuch as redemption is a thing desired, believed, rejoiced in, Yes,--and Yes a thousand times. As far as the Virgin is worshipped in place of God, No; but as far as there is the evidence of worship itself, and of the sense of a Divine presence, Yes. For there is a wider division of men than that into Christian and Pagan: before we ask what a man worships, we have to ask whether he worships at all. Observe Christ's own words on this head: "God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit, _and_ in truth." The worshipping in spirit comes first, and it does not necessarily imply the worshipping in truth. Therefore, there is first the broad division of men into Spirit worshippers and Flesh worshippers; and then, of the Spirit worshippers, the farther division into Christian and Pagan,--worshippers in Falsehood or in Truth. I therefore, for the moment, omit all inquiry how far the Mariolatry of the early church did indeed eclipse Christ, or what measure of deeper reverence for the Son of God was still felt through all the grosser forms of Madonna worship. Let that worship be taken at its worst; let the goddess of this dome of Murano be looked upon as just in the same sense an idol as the Athene of the Acropolis, or the Syrian Queen of Heaven; and then, on this darkest assumption, balance well the difference between those who worship and those who worship not;--that difference which there is in the sight of God, in all ages, between the calculating, smiling, self-sustained, self-governed man, and the believing, weeping, wondering, struggling, Heaven-governed man;--between the men who say in their hearts "there is no God," and those who acknowledge a God at every step, "if haply they might feel after Him and find Him." For that is indeed the difference which we shall find, in the end, between the builders of this day and the builders on that sand island long ago. They _did_ honor something out of themselves; they did believe in spiritual presence judging, animating, redeeming them; they built to its honor and for its habitation; and were content to pass away in nameless multitudes, so only that the labor of their hands might fix in the sea-wilderness a throne for their guardian angel. In this was their strength, and there was indeed a Spirit walking with them on the waters, though they could not discern the form thereof, though the Masters voice came not to them, "It is I." What their error cost them, we shall see hereafter; for it remained when the majesty and the sincerity of their worship had departed, and remains to this day. Mariolatry is no special characteristic of the twelfth century; on the outside of that very tribune of San Donato, in its central recess, is an image of the Virgin which receives the reverence once paid to the blue vision upon the inner dome. With rouged cheeks and painted brows, the frightful doll stands in wretchedness of rags, blackened with the smoke of the votive lamps at its feet; and if we would know what has been lost or gained by Italy in the six hundred years that have worn the marbles of Murano, let us consider how far the priests who set up this to worship, the populace who have this to adore, may be nobler than the men who conceived that lonely figure standing on the golden field, or than those to whom it seemed to receive their prayer at evening, far away, where they only saw the blue clouds rising out of the burning sea. FOOTNOTES [10] "Mela, e buon vino, con pace e carità," Memorie Storiche de' Veneti Primi e Secondi, di Jacopo Filiasi (Padua, 1811), tom. iii. cap. 23. Perhaps, in the choice of the abbot's cheer, there was some occult reference to the verse of Solomon's Song: "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples." [11] Notizie Storiche delle Chiese di Venezia, illustrate da Flaminio Corner (Padua, 1758), p. 615. [12] "On the 14th day of April, 1374, there were found, in this church of the first martyr St. Stefano, two hundred and more bodies of holy martyrs, by the venerable priest, Matthew Fradello, incumbent of the church." [13] Notizie Storiche, p. 620. [14] The intention is farther confirmed by the singular variation in the breadth of the small fillet which encompasses the inner marble. It is much narrower at the bottom than at the sides, so as to recover the original breadth in the lower border. [15] Its elevation is given to scale in fig. 4, Plate XIII., below. [16] "Luogo de' ninfe e de' semidei."--_M. Andrea Calmo_, quoted by Mutinelli, Annali Urbani di Venezia (Venice, 1841), p. 362. [17] "The women, even as far back as 1100, wore dresses of blue, with mantles on the shoulder, which clothed them before and behind."--_Sansorino_. It would be difficult to imagine a dress more modest and beautiful. See Appendix 7. [18] "Whom Eve destroyed, the pious Virgin Mary redeemed; All praise her, who rejoice in the Grace of Christ." Vide Appendix 8. CHAPTER IV. ST. MARK'S. § I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work,[19] how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation! § II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome;[20] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the "Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia,"[21] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta Città;" but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation. § III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet,[22] divided by a small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. § IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it,[23] gave a very different character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor. St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's."[24] § V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085,[25] according to Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school, had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated;[26] happily, though with no good will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible. § VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of the façade; the first representing the interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church. § VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that act of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed. "After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten; so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which the body of the Evangelist was laid." § VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe of mosaic flower-work which then encompassed the whole church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executed at that period, and their absence in the representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the northern door;[27] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of its most important exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. § IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested by the obscurities of chronology. § X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowed of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. § XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English cathedral gateway. § XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28·32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier. § XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. § XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. § XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafés, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it continually. That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there. The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it. § XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures: in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed; for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also, and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon his breast. The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower: the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp, perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines; but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in summer. It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe half of what we know of her former fortunes. § XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the "Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has expressed the ancient division in the single massy line, "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers," and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes, verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall. Venice has made her choice. § XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, and the dust lies upon his lips. Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. § XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the darker places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted. § XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight, on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left comparatively empty.[28] But this effect is altogether to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind, and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness; preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition, which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou.[29] § XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those to whom it owes its magnificence, it stands, in reality, more desolate than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the tombs in the desecrated cloister. § XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or influencing the feelings of a civilized community. The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine domes appear to have lost for ever. § XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle ages. § XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in massive materials. It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall.[30] But just as it is perfectly possible to have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance, in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's. § XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," § 18, I especially guarded this incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel. Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the knight. These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must be our business to develope. § XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any regular service in the support of the building. An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others', and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved every relic with which he was entrusted. § XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might, under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than the merchant vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious emotion. § XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method, considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds. In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," § 14, the reader will find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood, that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another, namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St. Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the frescoes of Giorgione. § XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure will be easily discernible: These I shall state in their natural order. § XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface, but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support, aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for the full honesty and straight-forwardness of the work, it is necessary that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly incapable of severer work than that assigned to them. § XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work, therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within. § XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone. § XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels,[31] the block of precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons, and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be, without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it. § XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either inadmissible altogether, or objectionable in proportion to their value; that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among the mazes of their azure veins. § XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that, on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however, often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Æschylus or Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope. § XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone, not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins. And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those of religion downwards, which present no mistakeable aspect to casual or ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort, as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it is discovered, into deeper truths. § XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble, where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out, until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only. § XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation, rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body. This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations, Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism; secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase, or shallow hieroglyphic. § XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been directly derived. § XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted, and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the grey stones that fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting which could be added with advantage. § XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force, and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow, there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be wearied by the lightness of the general handling. § XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and Southern nations. § XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art, that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color. Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone grey of Nature and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe, any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediæval Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did, in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern builders, which we have finally to examine. § XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it; but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed, namely, that he did not at all like _grey_ hawthorn, but preferred it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could. The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be painted at all, they could hardly be painted any tiling but green, and green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his hawthorn blue. § XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye, compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage; breadth of surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and pearly greys of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality. Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means, for they are all permanent. § XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the _naïveté_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without in letters of enamel and gold. § XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth, and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with our hand. § XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it were in my power to lay also before the general reader some exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression of it; and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning, except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the result of distance, together with perfect expression of the peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness, neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates, and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the most delicate sculpture in every part, but, as we have just stated, eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable, inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's. The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate the impossibility of illustration. § XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness. The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces, like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet, seen in the plate. [Illustration: Plate VI. THE VINE TREE, AND IN SERVICE.] The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be satisfied.[32] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers, the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's alone. From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky: and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I.), and see what there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity, and let him judge between us. § L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following chapter.[33] Here I must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it, as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character. § LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church, as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to deal with briefly and candidly. The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral. § LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous. But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city, of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meeting-house has by his whitewashed walls and square-cut casements.[34] § LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because, while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know, if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave. There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor in traceries. Churches were larger than most other buildings, because they had to hold more people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the façade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of every house in the market-place; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house. § LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that every dwelling-house of mediæval cities was as richly adorned and as exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse, not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting, buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible: all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna, or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door, and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the grotesques of the brackets and the gables. § LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say, may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters, must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray. § LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow that no style of noble architecture _can_ be exclusively ecclesiastical. It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice, so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use, which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style is tried by its being used in a church, we find it fail. But because the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were used for both. § LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which, according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please, altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore, the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the art of the mosaicist? § LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion. One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it of Martin's, rarely fails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the time. § LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it, which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or grey, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more saintly, and pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag. § LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity, and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed represent a fact! it matters little whether the fact be well or ill told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one, and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of accredited truth. § LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea.[35] We do not severely criticise the manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy, and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town, of Europe, who have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having. But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth square stones, and consider ourselves wise. § LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_ have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the reader to examine the connexion and subjects of these mosaics; but in the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which are not in violent action;[36] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever, these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all Romanist purposes. Idolatry,[37] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works. Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of Europe they have had none whatever; while by far the greater number of the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other. It consists partly in missal painting, and such book-illustrations as, since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings; partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which, in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it. § LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions, and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern book-illustration has been so little skilful as hardly to be worth naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations; neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa. § LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow out the connexion of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was built. Now there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and wearied with writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of the builder or of his times. § LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which that manna was the type. § LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other, in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU CONSIDER." Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the invisible Church of God. § LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His Church: "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH: HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY. HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST: BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD." And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_. It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory. § LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity, as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre, and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna, and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice." § LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. § LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was little seen by the people;[38] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation;[39] but if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of warning,--"Christ shall come." § LXXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that, as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be of jasper,[40] and the foundations of it garnished with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches?" And shall we not look with changed temper down the long perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street, there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify, we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masquer laughed their laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." FOOTNOTES [19] Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39. [20] The reader who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by him. [21] Venice, 1761, tom. i. p. 126. [22] St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the bridge of the Malpassi, Galliciolli, lib. i. cap. viii. [23] My authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the Ducal Palace. [24] In the Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella." [25] "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church itself: "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo," is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro." [26] Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, &c. [27] Guida di Venezia, p. 6. [28] The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter, which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named, must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient causes of its being then more frequented. [29] I said above that the larger number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin. [30] Vide "Builder," for October, 1851. [31] "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_."--_Sansovino_, of the verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century. [32] The fact is, that no two tesseræ of the glass are exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color of a fruit piece. [33] Some illustration, also, of what was said in § XXXIII. above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's." [34] See the farther notice of this subject in Vol. III. Chap. IV. [35] I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this or that painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'étonnait de retrouver à la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait dessiné dans le baptistère de St. Marc, à Venise. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout temps le même, non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le nombre et l'épaisseur des plis." [36] All the effects of Byzantine art to represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so, even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western, mind, which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the nature of Gothic. [37] Appendix 10, "Proper Sense of the word Idolatry." [38] It is also of inferior workmanship, and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i. p. 124, note. [39] The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished, and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century. [40] Rev. xxi. 18. CHAPTER V. BYZANTINE PALACES. § I. The account of the architecture of St. Mark's given in the previous chapter has, I trust, acquainted the reader sufficiently with the spirit of the Byzantine style: but he has probably, as yet, no clear idea of its generic forms. Nor would it be safe to define these after an examination of St. Mark's alone, built as it was upon various models, and at various periods. But if we pass through the city, looking for buildings which resemble St. Mark's--first, in the most important feature of incrustation; secondly, in the character of the mouldings,--we shall find a considerable number, not indeed very attractive in their first address to the eye, but agreeing perfectly, both with each other, and with the earliest portions of St. Mark's, in every important detail; and to be regarded, therefore, with profound interest, as indeed the remains of an ancient city of Venice, altogether different in aspect from that which now exists. From these remains we may with safety deduce general conclusions touching the forms of Byzantine architecture, as practised in Eastern Italy, during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. § II. They agree in another respect, as well as in style. All are either ruins, or fragments disguised by restoration. Not one of them is uninjured or unaltered; and the impossibility of finding so much as an angle or a single story in perfect condition is a proof, hardly less convincing than the method of their architecture, that they were indeed raised during the earliest phases of the Venetian power. The mere fragments, dispersed in narrow streets, and recognizable by a single capital, or the segment of an arch, I shall not enumerate: but, of important remains, there are six in the immediate neighborhood of the Rialto, one in the Rio di Ca' Foscari, and one conspicuously placed opposite the great Renaissance Palace known as the Vendramin Calerghi, one of the few palaces still inhabited[41] and well maintained; and noticeable, moreover, as having a garden beside it, rich with evergreens, and decorated by gilded railings and white statues that cast long streams of snowy reflection down into the deep water. The vista of canal beyond is terminated by the Church of St. Geremia, another but less attractive work of the Renaissance; a mass of barren brickwork, with a dull leaden dome above, like those of our National Gallery. So that the spectator has the richest and meanest of the late architecture of Venice before him at once: the richest, let him observe, a piece of private luxury; the poorest, that which was given to God. Then, looking to the left, he will see the fragment of the work of earlier ages, testifying against both, not less by its utter desolation than by the nobleness of the traces that are still left of it. § III. It is a ghastly ruin; whatever is venerable or sad in its wreck being disguised by attempts to put it to present uses of the basest kind. It has been composed of arcades borne by marble shafts, and walls of brick faced with marble: but the covering stones have been torn away from it like the shroud from a corpse; and its walls, rent into a thousand chasms, are filled and refilled with fresh brickwork, and the seams and hollows are choked with clay and whitewash, oozing and trickling over the marble,--itself blanched into dusty decay by the frosts of centuries. Soft grass and wandering leafage have rooted themselves in the rents, but they are not suffered to grow in their own wild and gentle way, for the place is in a sort inhabited; rotten partitions are nailed across its corridors, and miserable rooms contrived in its western wing; and here and there the weeds are indolently torn down, leaving their haggard fibres to struggle again into unwholesome growth when the spring next stirs them: and thus, in contest between death and life, the unsightly heap is festering to its fall. Of its history little is recorded, and that little futile. That it once belonged to the dukes of Ferrara, and was bought from them in the sixteenth century, to be made a general receptacle for the goods of the Turkish merchants, whence it is now generally known as the Fondaco, or Fontico, de' Turchi, are facts just as important to the antiquary, as that, in the year 1852, the municipality of Venice allowed its lower story to be used for a "deposito di Tabacchi." Neither of this, nor of any other remains of the period, can we know anything but what their own stones will tell us. § IV. The reader will find in Appendix 11, written chiefly for the traveller's benefit, an account of the situation and present state of the other seven Byzantine palaces. Here I shall only give a general account of the most interesting points in their architecture. They all agree in being round-arched and incrusted with marble, but there are only six in which the original disposition of the parts is anywise traceable; namely, those distinguished in the Appendix as the Fondaco de' Turchi, Casa Loredan, Caso Farsetti, Rio-Foscari House, Terraced House, and Madonnetta House:[42] and these six agree farther in having continuous arcades along their entire fronts from one angle to the other, and in having their arcades divided, in each case, into a centre and wings; both by greater size in the midmost arches, and by the alternation of shafts in the centre, with pilasters, or with small shafts, at the flanks. § V. So far as their structure can be traced, they agree also in having tall and few arches in their lower stories, and shorter and more numerous arches above: but it happens most unfortunately that in the only two cases in which the second stories are left the ground floors are modernized, and in the others where the sea stories are left the second stories are modernized; so that we never have more than two tiers of the Byzantine arches, one above the other. These, however, are quite enough to show the first main point on which I wish to insist, namely, the subtlety of the feeling for proportion in the Greek architects; and I hope that even the general reader will not allow himself to be frightened by the look of a few measurements, for, if he will only take the little pains necessary to compare them, he will, I am almost certain, find the result not devoid of interest. [Illustration: Fig. IV.] § VI. I had intended originally to give elevations of all these palaces; but have not had time to prepare plates requiring so much labor and care. I must, therefore, explain the position of their parts in the simplest way in my power. The Fondaco de' Turchi has sixteen arches in its sea story, and twenty-six above them in its first story, the whole based on a magnificent foundation, built of blocks of red marble, some of them seven feet long by a foot and a half thick, and raised to a height of about five feet above high-water mark. At this level, the elevation of one half of the building, from its flank to the central pillars of its arcades, is rudely given in Fig. IV., in the previous page. It is only drawn to show the arrangement of the parts, as the sculptures which are indicated by the circles and upright oblongs between the arches are too delicate to be shown in a sketch three times the size of this. The building once was crowned with an Arabian parapet; but it was taken down some years since, and I am aware of no authentic representation of its details. The greater part of the sculptures between the arches, indicated in the woodcut only by blank circles, have also fallen, or been removed, but enough remain on the two flanks to justify the representation given in the diagram of their original arrangement. And now observe the dimensions. The small arches of the wings in the ground story, _a_, _a_, _a_, measure, in breadth, from Ft. In. shaft to shaft 4 5 interval _b_ 7 6½ interval _c_ 7 11 intervals _d_, _e_, _f_, &c. 8 1 The difference between the width of the arches _b_ and _c_ is necessitated by the small recess of the cornice on the left hand as compared with that of the great capitals; but this sudden difference of half a foot between the two extreme arches of the centre offended the builder's eye, so he diminished the next one, _unnecessarily_, two inches, and thus obtained the gradual cadence to the flanks, from eight feet down to four and a half, in a series of continually increasing steps. Of course the effect cannot be shown in the diagram, as the first difference is less than the thickness of its lines. In the upper story the capitals are all nearly of the same height, and there was no occasion for the difference between the extreme arches. Its twenty-six arches are placed, four small ones above each lateral three of the lower arcade, and eighteen larger above the central ten; thus throwing the shafts into all manner of relative positions, and completely confusing the eye in any effort to count them: but there is an exquisite symmetry running through their apparent confusion; for it will be seen that the four arches in each flank are arranged in two groups, of which one has a large single shaft in the centre, and the other a pilaster and two small shafts. The way in which the large shaft is used as an echo of those in the central arcade, dovetailing them, as it were, into the system of the pilasters,--just as a great painter, passing from one tone of color to another, repeats, over a small space, that which he has left,--is highly characteristic of the Byzantine care in composition. There are other evidences of it in the arrangement of the capitals, which will be noticed below in the seventh chapter. The lateral arches of this upper arcade measure 3 ft. 2 in. across, and the central 3 ft. 11 in., so that the arches in the building are altogether of six magnitudes. § VII. Next let us take the Casa Loredan. The mode of arrangement of its pillars is precisely like that of the Fondaco de' Turchi, so that I shall merely indicate them by vertical lines in order to be able to letter the intervals. It has five arches in the centre of the lower story, and two in each of its wings. [Illustration] Ft. In. The midmost interval, _a_, of the central five, is 6 1 The two on each side, _b_, _b_ 5 2 The two extremes, _c_, _c_ 4 9 Inner arches of the wings, _d_, _d_ 4 4 Outer arches of the wings, _e_, _e_ 4 6 The gradation of these dimensions is visible at a glance; the boldest step being here taken nearest the centre, while in the Fondaco it is farthest from the centre. The first loss here is of eleven inches, the second of five, the third of five, and then there is a most subtle increase of two inches in the extreme arches, as if to contradict the principle of diminution, and stop the falling away of the building by firm resistance at its flanks. I could not get the measures of the upper story accurately, the palace having been closed all the time I was in Venice; but it has seven central arches above the five below, and three at the flanks above the two below, the groups being separated by double shafts. § VIII. Again, in the Casa Farsetti, the lower story has a centre of five arches, and wings of two. Referring, therefore, to the last figure, which will answer for this palace also, the measures of the intervals are: Ft. In. _a_ 8 0 _b_ 5 10 _c_ 5 4 _d_ and _e_ 5 3 It is, however, possible that the interval _c_ and the wing arches may have been intended to be similar; for one of the wing arches measures 5 ft. 4 in. We have thus a simpler proportion than any we have hitherto met with; only two losses taking place, the first of 2 ft. 2 in., the second of 6 inches. The upper story has a central group of seven arches, whose widths are 4 ft. 1 in. Ft. In. The next arch on each side 3 5 The three arches of each wing 3 6 Here again we have a most curious instance of the subtlety of eye which was not satisfied without a third dimension, but _could_ be satisfied with a difference of an inch on three feet and a half. § IX. In the Terraced House, the ground floor is modernized, but the first story is composed of a centre of five arches, with wings of two, measuring as follows: Ft. In. Three midmost arches of the central group 4 0 Outermost arch of the central group 4 6 Innermost arch of the wing 4 10 Outermost arch of the wing[43] 5 0 Here the greatest step is towards the centre; but the increase, which is unusual, is towards the outside, the gain being successively six, four, and two inches. I could not obtain the measures of the second story, in which only the central group is left; but the two outermost arches are visibly larger than the others, thus beginning a correspondent proportion to the one below, of which the lateral quantities have been destroyed by restorations. § X. Finally, in the Rio-Foscari House, the central arch is the principal feature, and the four lateral ones form one magnificent wing; the dimensions being from the centre to the side: Ft. In. Central arch 9 9 Second " 3 8 Third " 3 10 Fourth " 3 10 Fifth " 3 8 The difference of two inches on nearly three feet in the two midmost arches being all that was necessary to satisfy the builder's eye. § XI. I need not point out to the reader that these singular and minute harmonies of proportion indicate, beyond all dispute, not only that the buildings in which they are found are of one school, but (so far as these subtle coincidences of measurement can still be traced in them) in their original form. No modern builder has any idea of connecting his arches in this manner, and restorations in Venice are carried on with too violent hands to admit of the supposition that such refinements would be even noticed in the progress of demolition, much less imitated in heedless reproduction. And as if to direct our attention especially to this character, as indicative of Byzantine workmanship, the most interesting example of all will be found in the arches of the front of St. Mark's itself, whose proportions I have not noticed before, in order that they might here be compared with those of the contemporary palaces. [Illustration: Fig. V.] § XII. The doors actually employed for entrance in the western façade are as usual five, arranged as at _a_ in the annexed woodcut, Fig. V.; but the Byzantine builder could not be satisfied with so simple a group, and he introduced, therefore, two minor arches at the extremities, as at _b_, by adding two small porticos which are of _no use whatever_ except to consummate the proportions of the façade, and themselves to exhibit the most exquisite proportions in arrangements of shaft and archivolt with which I am acquainted in the entire range of European architecture. Into these minor particulars I cannot here enter; but observe the dimensions of the range of arches in the façade, as thus completed by the flanking porticos: Ft. In. The space of its central archivolt is 31 8 " the two on each side, about[44] 19 8 " the two succeeding, about 20 4 " small arches at flanks, about 6 0 [Illustration: Fig. VI.] I need not make any comment upon the subtle difference of eight inches on twenty feet between the second and third dimensions. If the reader will be at the pains to compare the whole evidence now laid before him, with that deduced above from the apse of Murano, he cannot but confess that it amounts to an irrefragable proof of an intense perception of harmony in the relation of quantities, on the part of the Byzantine architects; a perception which we have at present lost so utterly as hardly to be able even to conceive it. And let it not be said, as it was of the late discoveries of subtle curvature in the Parthenon,[45] that what is not to be demonstrated without laborious measurement, cannot have influence on the beauty of the design. The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say, that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the changes of expression in the human countenance. The greater he is, the more he will feel their subtlety, and the intense difficulty of perceiving all their relations, or answering for the consequences of a variation of a hair's breadth in a single curve. Indeed, there is nothing truly noble either in color or in form, but its power depends on circumstances infinitely too intricate to be explained, and almost too subtle to be traced. And as for these Byzantine buildings, we only do not feel them because we do not _watch_ them; otherwise we should as much enjoy the variety of proportion in their arches, as we do at present that of the natural architecture of flowers and leaves. Any of us can feel in an instant the grace of the leaf group, _b_, in the annexed figure; and yet that grace is simply owing to its being proportioned like the façade of St. Mark's; each leaflet answering to an arch,--the smallest at the root, to those of the porticos. I have tried to give the proportion quite accurately in _b_; but as the difference between the second and third leaflets is hardly discernible on so small a scale, it is somewhat exaggerated in _a_.[46] Nature is often far more subtle in her proportions. In looking at some of the nobler species of lilies, full in the front of the flower, we may fancy for a moment that they form a symmetrical six-petaled star; but on examining them more closely, we shall find that they are thrown into a group of three magnitudes by the expansion of two of the inner petals above the stamens to a breadth greater than any of the four others; while the third inner petal, on which the stamens rest, contracts itself into the narrowest of the six, and the three under petals remain of one intermediate magnitude, as seen in the annexed figure. [Illustration: Fig. VII.] § XIII. I must not, however, weary the reader with this subject, which has always been a favorite one with me, and is apt to lead too far; we will return to the palaces on the Grand Canal. Admitting, then, that their fragments are proved, by the minute correspondences of their arrangement, to be still in their original positions, they indicate to us a form, whether of palace or dwelling-house, in which there were, universally, central galleries, or loggias, opening into apartments on each wing, the amount of light admitted being immense; and the general proportions of the building, slender, light, and graceful in the utmost degree, it being in fact little more than an aggregate of shafts and arches. Of the interior disposition of these palaces there is in no instance the slightest trace left, nor am I well enough acquainted with the existing architecture of the East to risk any conjecture on this subject. I pursue the statement of the facts which still are ascertainable respecting their external forms. § XIV. In every one of the buildings above mentioned, except the Rio-Foscari House (which has only one great entrance between its wings), the central arcades are sustained, at least in one story, and generally in both, on bold detached cylindrical shafts, with rich capitals, while the arches of the wings are carried on smaller shafts assisted by portions of wall, which become pilasters of greater or less width. And now I must remind the reader of what was pointed out above (Vol. I. Chap. XXVII. §§ III. XXXV. XL.), that there are two great orders of capitals in the world; that one of these is convex in its contour, the other concave; and that richness of ornament, with all freedom of fancy, is for the most part found in the one, and severity of ornament, with stern discipline of the fancy, in the other. Of these two families of capitals both occur in the Byzantine period, but the concave group is the longest-lived, and extends itself into the Gothic times. In the account which I gave of them in the first volume, they were illustrated by giving two portions of a simple curve, that of a salvia leaf. We must now investigate their characters more in detail; and these may be best generally represented by considering both families as formed upon the types of flowers,--the one upon that of the water-lily, the other upon that of the convolvulus. There was no intention in the Byzantine architects to imitate either one or the other of these flowers; but, as I have already so often repeated, all beautiful works of art must either intentionally imitate or accidentally resemble natural forms; and the direct comparison with the natural forms which these capitals most resemble, is the likeliest mode of fixing their distinctions in the reader's mind. The one then, the convex family, is modelled according to the commonest shapes of that great group of flowers which form rounded cups, like that of the water-lily, the leaves springing horizontally from the stalk, and closing together upwards. The rose is of this family, but her cup is filled with the luxuriance of her leaves; the crocus, campanula, ranunculus, anemone, and almost all the loveliest children of the field, are formed upon the same type. The other family resembles the convolvulus, trumpet-flower, and such others, in which the lower part of the bell is slender, and the lip curves outwards at the top. There are fewer flowers constructed on this than on the convex model; but in the organization of trees and of clusters of herbage it is seen continually. Of course, both of these conditions are modified, when applied to capitals, by the enormously greater thickness of the stalk or shaft, but in other respects the parallelism is close and accurate; and the reader had better at once fix the flower outlines in his mind,[47] and remember them as representing the only two orders of capitals that the world has ever seen, or can see. § XV. The examples of the concave family in the Byzantine times are found principally either in large capitals founded on the Greek Corinthian, used chiefly for the nave pillars of churches, or in the small lateral shafts of the palaces. It appears somewhat singular that the pure Corinthian form should have been reserved almost exclusively for nave pillars, as at Torcello, Murano, and St. Mark's; it occurs, indeed, together with almost every other form, on the exterior of St. Mark's also, but never so definitely as in the nave and transept shafts. Of the conditions assumed by it at Torcello enough has been said; and one of the most delicate of the varieties occurring in St. Mark's is given in Plate VIII., fig. 15, remarkable for the cutting of the sharp thistle-like leaves into open relief, so that the light sometimes shines through them from behind, and for the beautiful curling of the extremities of the leaves outwards, joining each other at the top, as in an undivided flower. § XVI. The other characteristic examples of the concave groups in the Byzantine times are as simple as those resulting from the Corinthian are rich. They occur on the _small_ shafts at the flanks of the Fondaco de' Turchi, the Casa Farsetti, Casa Loredan, Terraced House, and upper story of the Madonnetta House, in forms so exactly similar that the two figures 1 and 2 in Plate VIII. may sufficiently represent them all. They consist merely of portions cut out of the plinths or string-courses which run along all the faces of these palaces, by four truncations in the form of arrowy leaves (fig. 1, Fondaco de' Turchi), and the whole rounded a little at the bottom so as to fit the shaft. When they occur between two arches they assume the form of the group fig. 2 (Terraced House). Fig. 3 is from the central arches of the Casa Farsetti, and is only given because either it is a later restoration or a form absolutely unique in the Byzantine period. [Illustration: Plate VII. BYZANTINE CAPITALS. CONVEX GROUP.] § XVII. The concave group, however, was not naturally pleasing to the Byzantine mind. Its own favorite capital was of the bold convex or cushion shape, so conspicuous in all the buildings of the period that I have devoted Plate VII., opposite, entirely to its illustration. The form in which it is first used is practically obtained from a square block laid on the head of the shaft (fig. 1, Plate VII.), by first cutting off the lower corners, as in fig. 2, and then rounding the edges, as in fig. 3; this gives us the bell stone: on this is laid a simple abacus, as seen in fig. 4, which is the actual form used in the upper arcade of Murano, and the framework of the capital is complete. Fig. 5 shows the general manner and effect of its decoration on the same scale; the other figures, 6 and 7, both from the apse of Murano, 8, from the Terraced House, and 9, from the Baptistery of St. Mark's, show the method of chiselling the surfaces in capitals of average richness, such as occur everywhere, for there is no limit to the fantasy and beauty of the more elaborate examples. § XVIII. In consequence of the peculiar affection entertained for these massy forms by the Byzantines, they were apt, when they used any condition of capital founded on the Corinthian, to modify the concave profile by making it bulge out at the bottom. Fig. 1, _a_, Plate X., is the profile of a capital of the pure concave family; and observe, it needs a fillet or cord round the neck of the capital to show where it separates from the shaft. Fig. 4, _a_, on the other hand, is the profile of the pure convex group, which not only needs no such projecting fillet, but would be encumbered by it; while fig. 2, _a_, is the profile of one of the Byzantine capitals (Fondaco de' Turchi, lower arcade) founded on Corinthian, of which the main sweep is concave, but which bends below into the convex bell-shape, where it joins the shaft. And, lastly, fig. 3, _a_, is the profile of the nave shafts of St. Mark's, where, though very delicately granted, the concession to the Byzantine temper is twofold; first at the spring of the curve from the base, and secondly the top, where it again becomes convex, though the expression of the Corinthian bell is still given to it by the bold concave leaves. § XIX. These, then, being the general modifications of Byzantine profiles, I have thrown together in Plate VIII., opposite, some of the most characteristic examples of the decoration of the concave and transitional types; their localities are given in the note below,[48] and the following are the principal points to be observed respecting them. The purest concave forms, 1 and 2, were never decorated in the earliest times, except sometimes by an incision or rib down the centre of their truncations on the angles. [Illustration: Plate VIII. BYZANTINE CAPITALS. CONCAVE GROUP.] Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7 show some of the modes of application of a peculiarly broad-lobed acanthus leaf, very characteristic of native Venetian work; 4 and 5 are from the same building, two out of a group of four, and show the boldness of the variety admitted in the management even of the capitals most closely derived from the Corinthian. I never saw one of these Venetian capitals in all respects like another. The trefoils into which the leaves fall at the extremities are, however, for the most part similar, though variously disposed, and generally niche themselves one under the other, as very characteristically in fig. 7. The form 8 occurs in St. Mark's only, and there very frequently: 9 at Venice occurs, I think, in St. Mark's only; but it is a favorite early Lombardic form. 10, 11, and 12 are all highly characteristic. 10 occurs with more fantastic interweaving upon its sides in the upper stories of St. Mark's; 11 is derived, in the Casa Loredan, from the great lily capitals of St. Mark's, of which more presently. 13 and 15 are peculiar to St. Mark's. 14 is a lovely condition, occurring both there and in the Fondaco de' Turchi. The modes in which the separate portions of the leaves are executed in these and other Byzantine capitals, will be noticed more at length hereafter. Here I only wish the reader to observe two things, both with respect to these and the capitals of the convex family on the former Plate: first the Life, secondly, the Breadth, of these capitals, as compared with Greek forms. § XX. I say, first, the Life. Not only is every one of these capitals differently fancied, but there are many of them which _have no two sides alike_. Fig. 5, for instance, varies on every side in the arrangement of the pendent leaf in its centre; fig. 6 has a different plant on each of its four upper angles. The birds are each cut with a different play of plumage in figs. 9 and 12, and the vine-leaves are every one varied in their position in fig. 13. But this is not all. The differences in the character of ornamentation between them and the Greek capitals, all show a greater love of nature; the leaves are, every one of them, more founded on realities, sketched, however rudely, more directly from the truth; and are continually treated in a manner which shows the mind of the workman to have been among the living herbage, not among Greek precedents. The hard outlines in which, for the sake of perfect intelligibility, I have left this Plate, have deprived the examples of the vitality of their light and shade; but the reader can nevertheless observe the _ideas_ of life occurring perpetually: at the top of fig. 4, for instance, the small leaves turned sideways; in fig. 5, the formal volutes of the old Corinthian transformed into a branching tendril; in fig. 6, the bunch of grapes thrown carelessly in at the right-hand corner, in defiance of all symmetry; in fig. 7, the volutes knitted into wreaths of ivy; in fig. 14, the leaves, drifted, as it were, by a whirlwind round the capital by which they rise; while figs. 13 and 15 are as completely living leaves as any of the Gothic time. These designs may or may not be graceful; what grace or beauty they have is not to be rendered in mere outline,--but they are indisputably more _natural_ than any Greek ones, and therefore healthier, and tending to greatness. § XXI. In the second place, note in all these examples, the excessive breadth of the masses, however afterwards they may be filled with detail. Whether we examine the contour of the simpler convex bells, or those of the leaves which bend outwards from the richer and more Corinthian types, we find they are all outlined by grand and simple curves, and that the whole of their minute fretwork and thistle-work is cast into a gigantic mould which subdues all their multitudinous points and foldings to its own inevitable dominion. And the fact is, that in the sweeping lines and broad surfaces of these Byzantine sculptures we obtain, so far as I know, for the first time in the history of art, the germ of that unity of perfect ease in every separate part, with perfect subjection to an enclosing form or directing impulse, which was brought to its most intense expression in the compositions of the two men in whom the art of Italy consummated itself and expired--Tintoret and Michael Angelo. I would not attach too much importance to the mere habit of working on the rounded surface of the stone, which is often as much the result of haste or rudeness as of the desire for breadth, though the result obtained is not the less beautiful. But in the capital from the Fondaco de' Turchi, fig. 6, it will be seen that while the sculptor had taken the utmost care to make his leaves free, graceful, and sharp in effect, he was dissatisfied with their separation, and could not rest until he had enclosed them with an unbroken line, like that of a pointed arch; and the same thing is done in many different ways in other capitals of the same building, and in many of St. Mark's: but one such instance would have been enough to prove, if the loveliness of the profiles themselves did not do so, that the sculptor understood and loved the laws of generalization; and that the feeling which bound his prickly leaves, as they waved or drifted round the ridges of his capital, into those broad masses of unbroken flow, was indeed one with that which made Michael Angelo encompass the principal figure in his Creation of Adam with the broad curve of its cloudy drapery. It may seem strange to assert any connexion between so great a conception and these rudely hewn fragments of ruined marble; but all the highest principles of art are as universal as they are majestic, and there is nothing too small to receive their influence. They rule at once the waves of the mountain outline, and the sinuosities of the minutest lichen that stains its shattered stones. § XXII. We have not yet spoken of the three braided and chequered capitals, numbered 10, 11, and 12. They are representations of a group, with which many most interesting associations are connected. It was noticed in the last chapter, that the method of covering the exterior of buildings with thin pieces of marble was likely to lead to a system of lighting the interior by minute perforation. In order to obtain both light and air, without admitting any unbroken body of sunshine, in warm countries, it became a constant habit of the Arabian architects to pierce minute and starlike openings in slabs of stone; and to employ the stones so pierced where the Gothic architects employ traceries. Internally, the form of stars assumed by the light as it entered[49] was, in itself, an exquisite decoration; but, externally, it was felt necessary to add some slight ornament upon the surface of the perforated stone; and it was soon found that, as the small perforations had a tendency to look scattered and spotty, the most effective treatment of the intermediate surfaces would be one which bound them together, and gave unity and repose to the pierced and disturbed stone: universally, therefore, those intermediate spaces were carved into the semblance of interwoven fillets, which alternately sank beneath and rose above each other as they met. This system of braided or woven ornament was not confined to the Arabs; it is universally pleasing to the instinct of mankind. I believe that nearly all early ornamentation is full of it,--more especially, perhaps, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon; and illuminated manuscripts depend upon it for their loveliest effects of intricate color, up to the close of the thirteenth century. There are several very interesting metaphysical reasons for this strange and unfailing delight, felt in a thing so simple. It is not often that any idea of utility has power to enhance the true impressions of beauty; but it is possible that the enormous importance of the art of weaving to mankind may give some interest, if not actual attractiveness, to any type or image of the invention to which we owe, at once, our comfort and our pride. But the more profound reason lies in the innate love of mystery and unity; in the joy that the human mind has in contemplating any kind of maze or entanglement, so long as it can discern, through its confusion, any guiding clue or connecting plan: a pleasure increased and solemnized by some dim feeling of the setting forth, by such symbols, of the intricacy, and alternate rise and fall, subjection and supremacy, of human fortune; the "Weave the warp, and weave the woof," of Fate and Time. [Illustration: Plate IX. LILY CAPITAL OF ST. MARKS.] § XXIII. But be this as it may, the fact is that we are never tired of contemplating this woven involution; and that, in some degree, the sublime pleasure which we have in watching the branches of trees, the intertwining of the grass, and the tracery of the higher clouds, is owing to it, not less than that which we receive from the fine meshes of the robe, the braiding of the hair, and the various glittering of the linked net or wreathed chain. Byzantine ornamentation, like that of almost all nations in a state of progress, is full of this kind of work: but it occurs most conspicuously, though most simply, in the minute traceries which surround their most solid capitals; sometimes merely in a reticulated veil, as in the tenth figure in the Plate, sometimes resembling a basket, on the edges of which are perched birds and other animals. The diamonded ornament in the eleventh figure is substituted for it in the Casa Loredan, and marks a somewhat later time and a tendency to the ordinary Gothic chequer; but the capitals which show it most definitely are those already so often spoken of as the lily capitals of St. Mark's, of which the northern one is carefully drawn in Plate IX. [Illustration: Plate X. THE FOUR VENETIAN FLOWER ORDERS.] § XXIV. These capitals, called barbarous by our architects, are without exception the most subtle pieces of composition in broad contour which I have ever met with in architecture. Their profile is given in the opposite Plate X. fig. 3, _b_; the inner line in the figure being that of the stone behind the lily, the outer that of the external network, taken through the side of the capital; while fig. 3, _c_ is the outer profile at its angle; and the reader will easily understand that the passing of the one of these lines into the other is productive of the most exquisite and wonderful series of curvatures possible within such compass, no two views of the capital giving the same contour. Upon these profoundly studied outlines, as remarkable for their grace and complexity as the general mass of the capital is for solid strength and proportion to its necessary service, the braided work is wrought with more than usual care; perhaps, as suggested by the Marchese Selvatico, with some idea of imitating those "nets of chequerwork and wreaths of chainwork" on the chapiters of Solomon's temple, which are, I suppose, the first instances on record of an ornamentation of this kind thus applied. The braided work encloses on each of the four sides of the capital a flower whose form, derived from that of the lily, though as usual modified, in every instance of its occurrence, in some minor particulars, is generally seen as represented in fig. 11 of Plate VIII. It is never without the two square or oblong objects at the extremity of the tendrils issuing from its root, set like vessels to catch the dew from the points of its leaves; but I do not understand their meaning. The abacus of the capital has already been given at _a_, Plate XVI., Vol. I.; but no amount of illustrations or eulogium would be enough to make the reader understand the perfect beauty of the thing itself, as the sun steals from interstice to interstice of its marble veil, and touches with the white lustre of its rays at mid-day the pointed leaves of its thirsty lilies. In all the capitals hitherto spoken of, the form of the head of the bell has been square, and its varieties of outline have been obtained in the transition from the square of the abacus to the circular outline of the shafts. A far more complex series of forms results from the division of the bell by recesses into separate lobes or leaves, like those of a rose or tulip, which are each in their turn covered with flower-work or hollowed into reticulation. The example (fig. 10, Plate VII.) from St. Mark's will give some idea of the simplest of these conditions: perhaps the most exquisite in Venice, on the whole, is the central capital of the upper arcade of the Fondaco de' Turchi. Such are the principal generic conditions of the Byzantine capital; but the reader must always remember that the examples given are single instances, and those not the most beautiful but the most intelligible, chosen out of thousands: the designs of the capitals of St. Mark's alone would form a volume. [Illustration: Plate XI. BYZANTINE SCULPTURE.] § XXV. Of the archivolts which these capitals generally sustain, details are given in the Appendix and in the notice of Venetian doors in Chapter VII. In the private palaces, the ranges of archivolt are for the most part very simple, with dentilled mouldings; and all the ornamental effect is entrusted to pieces of sculpture set in the wall above or between the arches, in the manner shown in Plate XV., below, Chapter VII. These pieces of sculpture are either crosses, upright oblongs, or circles: of all the three forms an example is given in Plate XI. opposite. The cross was apparently an invariable ornament, placed either in the centre of the archivolt of the doorway, or in the centre of the first story above the windows; on each side of it the circular and oblong ornaments were used in various alternation. In too many instances the wall marbles have been torn away from the earliest Byzantine palaces, so that the crosses are left on their archivolts only. The best examples of the cross set above the windows are found in houses of the transitional period: one in the Campo St^a M. Formosa; another, in which a cross is placed between every window, is still well preserved in the Campo St^a Maria Mater Domini; another, on the Grand Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli, has two crosses, one on each side of the first story, and a bas-relief of Christ enthroned in the centre; and finally, that from which the larger cross in the Plate was taken in the house once belonging to Marco Polo, at San Giovanni Grisostomo. § XXVI. This cross, though graceful and rich, and given because it happens to be one of the best preserved, is uncharacteristic in one respect; for, instead of the central rose at the meeting of the arms, we usually find a hand raised in the attitude of blessing, between the sun and moon, as in the two smaller crosses seen in the Plate. In nearly all representations of the Crucifixion, over the whole of Europe, at the period in question, the sun and the moon are introduced, one on each side of the cross,--the sun generally, in paintings, as a red star; but I do not think with any purpose of indicating the darkness at the time of the agony; especially because, had this been the intention, the moon ought not to have been visible, since it could not have been in the heavens during the day at the time of passover. I believe rather that the two luminaries are set there in order to express the entire dependence of the heavens and the earth upon the work of the Redemption: and this view is confirmed by our frequently finding the sun and moon set in the same manner beside the figure of Christ, as in the centre of the great archivolt of St. Mark's, or beside the hand signifying benediction, without any cross, in some other early archivolts;[50] while, again, not unfrequently they are absent from the symbol of the cross itself, and its saving power over the whole of creation is indicated only by fresh leaves springing from its foot, or doves feeding beside it; and so also, in illuminated Bibles, we find the series of pictures representing the Creation terminate in the Crucifixion, as the work by which all the families of created beings subsist, no less than that in sympathy with which "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." § XXVII. This habit of placing the symbol of the Christian faith in the centres of their palaces was, as I above said, universal in early Venice; it does not cease till about the middle of the fourteenth century. The other sculptures, which were set above or between the arches, consist almost invariably of groups of birds or beasts; either standing opposite to each other with a small pillar or spray of leafage between them, or else tearing and devouring each other. The multitude of these sculptures, especially of the small ones enclosed in circles, as figs 5 and 6, Plate XI., which are now scattered through the city of Venice, is enormous, but they are seldom to be seen in their original positions. When the Byzantine palaces were destroyed, these fragments were generally preserved, and inserted again in the walls of the new buildings, with more or less attempt at symmetry; fragments of friezes and mouldings being often used in the same manner; so that the mode of their original employment can only be seen in St. Mark's, the Fondaco de' Turchi, Braided House, and one or two others. The most remarkable point about them is, that the groups of beasts or birds on each side of the small pillars bear the closest possible resemblance to the group of Lions over the gate of Mycenæ; and the whole of the ornamentation of that gate, as far as I can judge of it from drawings, is so like Byzantine sculpture, that I cannot help sometimes suspecting the original conjecture of the French antiquarians, that it was a work of the middle ages, to be not altogether indefensible. By far the best among the sculptures at Venice are those consisting of groups thus arranged; the first figure in Plate XI. is one of those used on St. Mark's, and, with its chain of wreathen work round it, is very characteristic of the finest kind, except that the immediate trunk or pillar often branches into luxuriant leafage, usually of the vine, so that the whole ornament seems almost composed from the words of Ezekiel. "A great eagle with great wings, long-winged, full of feathers, which had divers colors, came into Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar: He cropped off the top of his young twigs; and _carried it into a city of traffic; he set it in a city of merchants_. He took also of the seed of the land, ... and it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, _whose branches turned towards him, and the roots thereof were under him_." § XXVIII. The groups of contending and devouring animals are always much ruder in cutting, and take somewhat the place in Byzantine sculpture which the lower grotesques do in the Gothic; true, though clumsy, grotesques being sometimes mingled among them, as four bodies joined to one head in the centre;[51] but never showing any attempt at variety of invention, except only in the effective disposition of the light and shade, and in the vigor and thoughtfulness of the touches which indicate the plumes of the birds or foldings of the leaves. Care, however, is always taken to secure variety enough to keep the eye entertained, no two sides of these Byzantine ornaments being in all respects the same: for instance, in the chainwork round the first figure in Plate XI. there are two circles enclosing squares on the left-hand side of the arch at the top, but two smaller circles and a diamond on the other, enclosing one square, and two small circular spots or bosses; and in the line of chain at the bottom there is a circle on the right, and a diamond on the left, and so down to the working of the smallest details. I have represented this upper sculpture as dark, in order to give some idea of the general effect of these ornaments when seen in shadow against light; an effect much calculated upon by the designer, and obtained by the use of a golden ground formed of glass mosaic inserted in the hollows of the marble. Each square of glass has the leaf gold upon its surface protected by another thin film of glass above it, so that no time or weather can affect its lustre, until the pieces of glass are bodily torn from their setting. The smooth glazed surface of the golden ground is washed by every shower of rain, but the marble usually darkens into an amber color in process of time; and when the whole ornament is cast into shadow, the golden surface, being perfectly reflective, refuses the darkness, and shows itself in bright and burnished light behind the dark traceries of the ornament. Where the marble has retained its perfect whiteness, on the other hand, and is seen in sunshine, it is shown as a snowy tracery on a golden ground; and the alternations and intermingling of these two effects form one of the chief enchantments of Byzantine ornamentation. § XXIX. How far the system of grounding with gold and color, universal in St. Mark's, was carried out in the sculptures of the private palaces, it is now impossible to say. The wrecks of them which remain, as above noticed, show few of their ornamental sculptures in their original position; and from those marbles which were employed in succeeding buildings, during the Gothic period, the fragments of their mosaic grounds would naturally rather have been removed than restored. Mosaic, while the most secure of all decorations if carefully watched and refastened when it loosens, may, if neglected and exposed to weather, in process of time disappear so as to leave no vestige of its existence. However this may have been, the assured facts are, that both the shafts of the pillars and the facing of the old building were of veined or variously colored marble: the capitals and sculptures were either, as they now appear, of pure white marble, relieved upon the veined ground; or, which is infinitely the more probable, grounded in the richer palaces with mosaic of gold, in the inferior ones with blue color; and only the leaves and edges of the sculpture gilded. These brighter hues were opposed by bands of deeper color, generally alternate russet and green, in the archivolts,--bands which still remain in the Casa Loredan and Fondaco de' Turchi, and in a house in the Corte del Remer, near the Rialto, as well as in St. Mark's; and by circular disks of green serpentine and porphyry, which, together with the circular sculptures, appear to have been an ornament peculiarly grateful to the Eastern mind, derived probably in the first instance from the suspension of shields upon the wall, as in the majesty of ancient Tyre. "The men of Arvad with thine army were upon thy walls round about, and the Gammadins were in thy towers: they hanged their shields upon thy walls round about; they have made thy beauty perfect."[52] The sweet and solemn harmony of purple with various green (the same, by the by, to which the hills of Scotland owe their best loveliness) remained a favorite chord of color with the Venetians, and was constantly used even in the later palaces; but never could have been seen in so great perfection as when opposed to the pale and delicate sculpture of the Byzantine time. § XXX. Such, then, was that first and fairest Venice which rose out of the barrenness of the lagoon, and the sorrow of her people; a city of graceful arcades and gleaming walls, veined with azure and warm with gold, and fretted with white sculpture like frost upon forest branches turned to marble. And yet, in this beauty of her youth, she was no city of thoughtless pleasure. There was still a sadness of heart upon her, and a depth of devotion, in which lay all her strength. I do not insist upon the probable religious signification of many of the sculptures which are now difficult of interpretation; but the temper which made the cross the principal ornament of every building is not to be misunderstood, nor can we fail to perceive, in many of the minor sculptural subjects, meanings perfectly familiar to the mind of early Christianity. The peacock, used in preference to every other bird, is the well-known symbol of the resurrection; and when drinking from a fountain (Plate XI. fig. 1) or from a font (Plate XI. fig. 5), is, I doubt not, also a type of the new life received in faithful baptism. The vine, used in preference to all other trees, was equally recognized as, in all cases, a type either of Christ himself[53] or of those who were in a state of visible or professed union with him. The dove, at its foot, represents the coming of the Comforter; and even the groups of contending animals had, probably, a distinct and universally apprehended reference to the powers of evil. But I lay no stress on these more occult meanings. The principal circumstance which marks the seriousness of the early Venetian mind is perhaps the last in which the reader would suppose it was traceable;--that love of bright and pure color which, in a modified form, was afterwards the root of all the triumph of the Venetian schools of painting, but which, in its utmost simplicity, was characteristic of the Byzantine period only; and of which, therefore, in the close of our review of that period, it will be well that we should truly estimate the significance. The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of color. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty,--nay, even as the mere source of a sensual pleasure; and we might almost believe that we were daily among men who "Could strip, for aught the prospect yields To them, their verdure from the fields; And take the radiance from the clouds With which the sun his setting shrouds." But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the most part in thoughtlessness; and if the speakers would only take the pains to imagine what the world and their own existence would become, if the blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the hair,--if they could but see for an instant, white human creatures living in a white world,--they would soon feel what they owe to color. The fact is, that, of all God's gifts to the sight of man, color is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most. § XXXI. I know that this will sound strange in many ears, and will be especially startling to those who have considered the subject chiefly with reference to painting; for the great Venetian schools of color are not usually understood to be either pure or pensive, and the idea of its pre-eminence is associated in nearly every mind with the coarseness of Rubens, and the sensualities of Correggio and Titian. But a more comprehensive view of art will soon correct this impression. It will be discovered, in the first place, that the more faithful and earnest the religion of the painter, the more pure and prevalent is the system of his color. It will be found, in the second place, that where color becomes a primal intention with a painter otherwise mean or sensual, it instantly elevates him, and becomes the one sacred and saving element in his work. The very depth of the stoop to which the Venetian painters and Rubens sometimes condescend, is a consequence of their feeling confidence in the power of their color to keep them from falling. They hold on by it, as by a chain let down from heaven, with one hand, though they may sometimes seem to gather dust and ashes with the other. And, in the last place, it will be found that so surely as a painter is irreligious, thoughtless, or obscene in disposition, so surely is his coloring cold, gloomy, and valueless. The opposite poles of art in this respect are Frà Angelico and Salvator Rosa; of whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, and never harbored an impure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, the colors of the draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted window, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their color is for the most part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it must take its dye from the close rather than the course of life:--"In such laughter the heart of man is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." § XXXII. These are no singular instances. I know no law more severely without exception than this of the connexion of pure color with profound and noble thought. The late Flemish pictures, shallow in conception and obscene in subject, are always sober in color. But the early religious painting of the Flemings is as brilliant in hue as it is holy in thought. The Bellinis, Francias, Peruginos painted in crimson, and blue, and gold. The Caraccis, Guidos, and Rembrandts in brown and grey. The builders of our great cathedrals veiled their casements and wrapped their pillars with one robe of purple splendor. The builders of the luxurious Renaissance left their palaces filled only with cold white light, and in the paleness of their native stone.[54] § XXXIII. Nor does it seem difficult to discern a noble reason for this universal law. In that heavenly circle which binds the statutes of color upon the front of the sky, when it became the sign of the covenant of peace, the pure hues of divided light were sanctified to the human heart for ever; nor this, it would seem, by mere arbitrary appointment, but in consequence of the fore-ordained and marvellous constitution of those hues into a sevenfold, or, more strictly still, a threefold order, typical of the Divine nature itself. Observe also, the name Shem, or Splendor, given to that son of Noah in whom this covenant with mankind was to be fulfilled, and see how that name was justified by every one of the Asiatic races which descended from him. Not without meaning was the love of Israel to his chosen son expressed by the coat "of many colors;" not without deep sense of the sacredness of that symbol of purity, did the lost daughter of David tear it from her breast:--"With such robes were the king's daughters that were virgins apparelled."[55] We know it to have been by Divine command that the Israelite, rescued from servitude, veiled the tabernacle with its rain of purple and scarlet, while the under sunshine flashed through the fall of the color from its tenons of gold: but was it less by Divine guidance that the Mede, as he struggled out of anarchy, encompassed his king with the sevenfold burning of the battlements of Ecbatana?--of which one circle was golden like the sun, and another silver like the moon; and then came the great sacred chord of color, blue, purple, and scarlet; and then a circle white like the day, and another dark, like night; so that the city rose like a great mural rainbow, a sign of peace amidst the contending of lawless races, and guarded, with color and shadow, that seemed to symbolize the great order which rules over Day, and Night, and Time, the first organization of the mighty statutes,--the law of the Medes and Persians, that altereth not. § XXXIV. Let us not dream that it is owing to the accidents of tradition or education that those races possess the supremacy over color which has always been felt, though but lately acknowledged among men. However their dominion might be broken, their virtue extinguished, or their religion defiled, they retained alike the instinct and the power: the instinct which made even their idolatry more glorious than that of others, bursting forth in fire-worship from pyramid, cave, and mountain, taking the stars for the rulers of its fortune, and the sun for the God of its life; the power which so dazzled and subdued the rough crusader into forgetfulness of sorrow and of shame, that Europe put on the splendor which she had learnt of the Saracen, as her sackcloth of mourning for what she suffered from his sword;--the power which she confesses to this day, in the utmost thoughtlessness of her pride, or her beauty, as it treads the costly carpet, or veils itself with the variegated Cachemire; and in the emulation of the concourse of her workmen, who, but a few months back, perceived, or at least admitted, for the first time, the pre-eminence which has been determined from the birth of mankind, and on whose charter Nature herself has set a mysterious seal, granting to the Western races, descended from that son of Noah whose name was Extension, the treasures of the sullen rock, and stubborn ore, and gnarled forest, which were to accomplish their destiny across all distance of earth and depth of sea, while she matured the jewel in the sand, and rounded the pearl in the shell, to adorn the diadem of him whose name was Splendor. § XXXV. And observe, farther, how in the Oriental mind a peculiar seriousness is associated with this attribute of the love of color; a seriousness rising out of repose, and out of the depth and breadth of the imagination, as contrasted with the activity, and consequent capability of surprise, and of laughter, characteristic of the Western mind: as a man on a journey must look to his steps always, and view things narrowly and quickly; while one at rest may command a wider view, though an unchanging one, from which the pleasure he receives must be one of contemplation, rather than of amusement or surprise. Wherever the pure Oriental spirit manifests itself definitely, I believe its work is serious; and the meeting of the influences of the Eastern and Western races is perhaps marked in Europe more by the dying away of the grotesque laughter of the Goth than by any other sign. I shall have more to say on this head in other places of this volume; but the point I wish at present to impress upon the reader is, that the bright hues of the early architecture of Venice were no sign of gaiety of heart, and that the investiture with the mantle of many colors by which she is known above all other cities of Italy and of Europe, was not granted to her in the fever of her festivity, but in the solemnity of her early and earnest religion. She became in after times the revel of the earth, the masque of Italy; and _therefore_ is she now desolate: but her glorious robe of gold and purple was given her when first she rose a vestal from the sea, not when she became drunk with the wine of her fornication. § XXXVI. And we have never yet looked with enough reverence upon the separate gift which was thus bestowed upon her; we have never enough considered what an inheritance she has left us, in the works of those mighty painters who were the chief of her children. That inheritance is indeed less than it ought to have been, and other than it ought to have been; for before Titian and Tintoret arose,--the men in whom her work and her glory should have been together consummated,--she had already ceased to lead her sons in the way of truth and life, and they erred much, and fell short of that which was appointed for them. There is no subject of thought more melancholy, more wonderful, than the way in which God permits so often His best gifts to be trodden under foot of men, His richest treasures to be wasted by the moth, and the mightiest influences of His Spirit, given but once in the world's history, to be quenched and shortened by miseries of chance and guilt. I do not wonder at what men Suffer, but I wonder often at what they Lose. We may see how good rises out of pain and evil; but the dead, naked, eyeless loss, what good comes of that? The fruit struck to the earth before its ripeness; the glowing life and goodly purpose dissolved away in sudden death; the words, half spoken, choked upon the lips with clay for ever; or, stranger than all, the whole majesty of humanity raised to its fulness, and every gift and power necessary for a given purpose, at a given moment, centred in one man, and all this perfected blessing permitted to be refused, perverted, crushed, cast aside by those who need it most,--the city which is Not set on a hill, the candle that giveth light to None that are in the house:--these are the heaviest mysteries of this strange world, and, it seems to me, those which mark its curse the most. And it is true that the power with which this Venice had been entrusted, was perverted, when at its highest, in a thousand miserable ways; still, it was possessed by her alone; to her all hearts have turned which could be moved by its manifestation, and none without being made stronger and nobler by what her hand had wrought. That mighty Landscape, of dark mountains that guard the horizon with their purple towers, and solemn forests, that gather their weight of leaves, bronzed with sunshine, not with age, into those gloomy masses fixed in heaven, which storm and frost have power no more to shake, or shed;--that mighty Humanity, so perfect and so proud, that hides no weakness beneath the mantle, and gains no greatness from the diadem; the majesty of thoughtful form, on which the dust of gold and flame of jewels are dashed as the sea-spray upon the rock, and still the great Manhood seems to stand bare against the blue sky;--that mighty Mythology, which fills the daily walks of men with spiritual companionship, and beholds the protecting angels break with their burning presence through the arrow-flights of battle:--measure the compass of that field of creation, weigh the value of the inheritance that Venice thus left to the nations of Europe, and then judge if so vast, so beneficent a power could indeed have been rooted in dissipation or decay. It was when she wore the ephod of the priest, not the motley of the masquer, that the fire fell upon her from heaven; and she saw the first rays of it through the rain of her own tears, when, as the barbaric deluge ebbed from the hills of Italy, the circuit of her palaces, and the orb of her fortunes, rose together, like the Iris, painted upon the Cloud. FOOTNOTES [41] In the year 1851, by the Duchesse de Berri. [42] Of the Braided House and Casa Businello, described in the Appendix, only the great central arcades remain. [43] Only one wing of the first story is left. See Appendix 11. [44] I am obliged to give these measures approximately, because, this front having been studied by the builder with unusual care, not one of its measures is the same as another; and the symmetries between the correspondent arches are obtained by changes in the depth of their mouldings and variations in their heights, far too complicated for me to enter into here; so that of the two arches stated as 19 ft. 8 in. in span, one is in reality 19 ft. 6½ in., the other 19 ft. 10 in., and of the two stated as 20 ft. 4 in., one is 20 ft. and the other 20 ft. 8 in. [45] By Mr. Penrose. [46] I am sometimes obliged, unfortunately, to read my woodcuts backwards owing to my having forgotten to reverse them on the wood. [47] Vide Plate X. figs. 1 and 4. [48] 1. Fondaco de' Turehi, lateral 8. St. Mark's. pillars. 9. St. Mark's. 2. Terraced House, lateral pillars. 10. Braided House, upper arcade. 3. Casa Farsetti, central pillars, 11. Casa Loredan, upper arcade. upper arcade. 12. St. Mark's. 4. Casa Loredan, lower arcade. 13. St. Mark's. 5. Casa Loredan, lower arcade. 14. Fondaco de' Turchi, upper 6. Fondaco de' Turchi, upper arcade. arcade. 7. Casa Loredan, upper arcade. 15. St. Mark's. [49] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. ii. § 22. [50] Two of these are represented in the second number of my folio work upon Venice. [51] The absence of the true grotesque spirit in Byzantine work will be examined in the third chapter of the third volume. [52] Ezekiel, xxvii. 11. [53] Perhaps this type is in no place of Scripture more touchingly used than in Lamentations, i. 12, where the word "afflicted" is rendered in the Vulgate "vindemiavit," "vintaged." [54] Appendix 12, "Modern Painting on Glass." [55] 2 Samuel, xiii. 18. SECOND, OR GOTHIC, PERIOD. CHAPTER VI. THE NATURE OF GOTHIC. § I. If the reader will look back to the division of our subject which was made in the first chapter of the first volume, he will find that we are now about to enter upon the examination of that school of Venetian architecture which forms an intermediate step between the Byzantine and Gothic forms; but which I find may be conveniently considered in its connexion with the latter style. In order that we may discern the tendency of each step of this change, it will be wise in the outset to endeavor to form some general idea of its final result. We know already what the Byzantine architecture is from which the transition was made, but we ought to know something of the Gothic architecture into which it led. I shall endeavor therefore to give the reader in this chapter an idea, at once broad and definite, of the true nature of _Gothic_ architecture, properly so called; not of that of Venice only, but of universal Gothic: for it will be one of the most interesting parts of our subsequent inquiry, to find out how far Venetian architecture reached the universal or perfect type of Gothic, and how far it either fell short of it, or assumed foreign and independent forms. § II. The principal difficulty in doing this arises from the fact that every building of the Gothic period differs in some important respect from every other; and many include features which, if they occurred in other buildings, would not be considered Gothic at all; so that all we have to reason upon is merely, if I may be allowed so to express it, a greater or less degree of _Gothicness_ in each building we examine. And it is this Gothicness,--the character which, according as it is found more or less in a building, makes it more or less Gothic,--of which I want to define the nature; and I feel the same kind of difficulty in doing so which would be encountered by any one who undertook to explain, for instance, the nature of Redness, without any actual red thing to point to, but only orange and purple things. Suppose he had only a piece of heather and a dead oak-leaf to do it with. He might say, the color which is mixed with the yellow in this oak-leaf, and with the blue in this heather, would be red, if you had it separate; but it would be difficult, nevertheless, to make the abstraction perfectly intelligible: and it is so in a far greater degree to make the abstraction of the Gothic character intelligible, because that character itself is made up of many mingled ideas, and can consist only in their union. That is to say, pointed arches do not constitute Gothic, nor vaulted roofs, nor flying buttresses, nor grotesque sculptures; but all or some of these things, and many other things with them, when they come together so as to have life. § III. Observe also, that, in the definition proposed, I shall only endeavor to analyze the idea which I suppose already to exist in the reader's mind. We all have some notion, most of us a very determined one, of the meaning of the term Gothic; but I know that many persons have this idea in their minds without being able to define it: that is to say, understanding generally that Westminster Abbey is Gothic, and St. Paul's is not, that Strasburg Cathedral is Gothic, and St. Peter's is not, they have, nevertheless, no clear notion of what it is that they recognize in the one or miss in the other, such as would enable them to say how far the work at Westminster or Strasburg is good and pure of its kind: still less to say of any non-descript building, like St. James's Palace or Windsor Castle, how much right Gothic element there is in it, and how much wanting, And I believe this inquiry to be a pleasant and profitable one; and that there will be found something more than usually interesting in tracing out this grey, shadowy, many-pinnacled image of the Gothic spirit within us; and discerning what fellowship there is between it and our Northern hearts. And if, at any point of the inquiry, I should interfere with any of the reader's previously formed conceptions, and use the term Gothic in any sense which he would not willingly attach to it, I do not ask him to accept, but only to examine and understand, my interpretation, as necessary to the intelligibility of what follows in the rest of the work. § IV. We have, then, the Gothic character submitted to our analysis, just as the rough mineral is submitted to that of the chemist, entangled with many other foreign substances, itself perhaps in no place pure, or ever to be obtained or seen in purity for more than an instant; but nevertheless a thing of definite and separate nature, however inextricable or confused in appearance. Now observe: the chemist defines his mineral by two separate kinds of character; one external, its crystalline form, hardness, lustre, &c.; the other internal, the proportions and nature of its constituent atoms. Exactly in the same manner, we shall find that Gothic architecture has external forms, and internal elements. Its elements are certain mental tendencies of the builders, legibly expressed in it; as fancifulness, love of variety, love of richness, and such others. Its external forms are pointed arches, vaulted roofs, &c. And unless both the elements and the forms are there, we have no right to call the style Gothic. It is not enough that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not enough that it has the Power, if it have not the form. We must therefore inquire into each of these characters successively; and determine first, what is the Mental Expression, and secondly, what the Material Form, of Gothic architecture, properly so called. 1st. Mental Power or Expression. What characters, we have to discover, did the Gothic builders love, or instinctively express in their work, as distinguished from all other builders? § V. Let us go back for a moment to our chemistry, and note that, in defining a mineral by its constituent parts, it is not one nor another of them, that can make up the mineral, but the union of all: for instance, it is neither in charcoal, nor in oxygen, nor in lime, that there is the making of chalk, but in the combination of all three in certain measures; they are all found in very different things from chalk, and there is nothing like chalk either in charcoal or in oxygen, but they are nevertheless necessary to its existence. So in the various mental characters which make up the soul of Gothic. It is not one nor another that produces it; but their union in certain measures. Each one of them is found in many other architectures besides Gothic; but Gothic cannot exist where they are not found, or, at least, where their place is not in some way supplied. Only there is this great difference between the composition of the mineral, and of the architectural style, that if we withdraw one of its elements from the stone, its form is utterly changed, and its existence as such and such a mineral is destroyed; but if we withdraw one of its mental elements from the Gothic style, it is only a little less Gothic than it was before, and the union of two or three of its elements is enough already to bestow a certain Gothicness of character, which gains in intensity as we add the others, and loses as we again withdraw them. § VI. I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic are the following, placed in the order of their importance: 1. Savageness. 2. Changefulness. 3. Naturalism. 4. Grotesqueness. 5. Rigidity. 6. Redundance. These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness, or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed Imagination. 5, Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I shall proceed to examine them in their order. § VII. 1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations, appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the so-called Dark ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent honorableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and wild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that it deserves our profoundest reverence. § VIII. The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know the differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colors change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought its gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of color, and swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but rejoice at the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smoothes with soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them. There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all dignity and honorableness; and we should err grievously in refusing either to recognise as an essential character of the existing architecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in that which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work; this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp; this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more energetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by the hail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gather redundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the axe or pressed the plough. § IX. If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious principle. In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXI. of the first volume of this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament, properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament, in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely subjected to the intellect of the higher:--2. Constitutional ornament, in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point, emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3. Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat greater length. Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of mere geometrical forms,--balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage,--which could be executed with absolute precision by line and rule, and were as perfect in their way when completed, as his own figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both systems, a slave.[56] § X. But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labor of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. § XI. But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And therefore, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honorable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellences, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they _are_ tardy or torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honor them in their imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do with all our laborers; to look for the _thoughtful_ part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. § XII. And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either made a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them. § XIII. And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God, into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be slave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the exactness of a line. § XIV. And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children. § XV. Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labor to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity and there is pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty,--liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is to say, irrational or selfish: but there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant, who, 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his chief?[57]--and as each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!" And therefore, in all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave, not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;--this nature bade not,--this God blesses not,--this humanity for no long time is able to endure. § XVI. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labor; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; but the men:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is,--we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labor. § XVII. And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad and simple rules: 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share. 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. 3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving record of great works. The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the enforcement of the third for another place. 1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the production of which invention has no share. For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods, or fuse the fragments, have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavoring to put down. But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to say for the beautiful form, or color, or engraving, and not for mere finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity. § XVIII. So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their value is, therefore, a slave-driver. But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be employed to heighten its splendor; and their cutting is then a price paid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. § XIX. I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought without it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who can without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take the graceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the thought, and do not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good things, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and the finish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their noble purposes. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requires consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must take their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple: Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without painful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no refinement of execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sandpaper. § XX. I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader what I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman, that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges, while the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough, when made by clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. § XXI. Nay, but the reader interrupts me,--"If the workman can design beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and so I will have my design and my finish too." All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by another man's hands; the second, that manual labor is a degradation, when it is governed by intellect. On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should be carried out by the labor of others; in this sense I have already defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common work of art. How wide the separation is between original and second-hand execution, I shall endeavor to show elsewhere; it is not so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error of despising manual labor when governed by intellect; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days endeavoring to separate the two; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dishonor of manual labor done away with altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own colors; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly obtain. § XXII. I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term "Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble but an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is _not_ imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the intellect of the age can make it. § XXIII. But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the laborer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_. § XXIV. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure; that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.[58] § XXV. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain, irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity. Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic cannot exist without it. § XXVI. The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety. I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the inferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling the architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the perpetual variety of every feature of the building. Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek work, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then the degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the order of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total; if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and execution, the workman must have been altogether set free. § XXVII. How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the laborer may perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a form for everything and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters; and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess, the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe them. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care that the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced confidence that we are well housed. § XXVIII. But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our minds for a moment. And for good reason:--There is indeed rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires a strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colors, or stones, does _not_ say the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. § XXIX. Let us then understand at once, that change or variety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. § XXX. And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasure which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture, which we enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape which is characteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of compliance with established law, as we are in architecture. § XXXI. How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we come to describe the Renaissance schools: here we have only to note, as the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. The pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by greater irregularity and richer variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind. § XXXII. We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. § XXXIII. I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice, first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony which there is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which there is not in light. § XXXIV. Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course, uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of the second. § XXXV. Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price paid for the future pleasure. § XXXVI. Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employment of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it. Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. § XXXVII. From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and, of those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give value to change, and, above all, that _transparent_ monotony which, like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature loves monotony, any more than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape. § XXXVIII. From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we may at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety of the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love of change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,--subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be different from the style at the bottom.[59] § XXXIX. These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's inquiry, as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and in the figure sculpture. § XL. I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture," in which the distinction was drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his developement of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of man, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem is often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a creation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the picture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two elements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truths commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or felt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe what they are: the confession of Imperfection and the confession of Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not express anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just because we are something better than birds or bees, our building must confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have that sentence written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And, observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of _Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_ of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labor, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that sleep. § XLI. The third constituent element of the Gothic mind was stated to be NATURALISM; that is to say, the love of natural objects for their own sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained by artistical laws. This characteristic of the style partly follows in necessary connexion with those named above. For, so soon as the workman is left free to represent what subjects he chooses, he must look to the nature that is round him for material, and will endeavor to represent it as he sees it, with more or less accuracy according to the skill he possesses, and with much play of fancy, but with small respect for law. There is, however, a marked distinction between the imaginations of the Western and Eastern races, even when both are left free; the Western, or Gothic, delighting most in the representation of facts, and the Eastern (Arabian, Persian, and Chinese) in the harmony of colors and forms. Each of these intellectual dispositions has its particular forms of error and abuse, which, though I have often before stated, I must here again briefly explain; and this the rather, because the word Naturalism is, in one of its senses, justly used as a term of reproach, and the questions respecting the real relations of art and nature are so many and so confused throughout all the schools of Europe at this day, that I cannot clearly enunciate any single truth without appearing to admit, in fellowship with it, some kind of error, unless the reader will bear with me in entering into such an analysis of the subject as will serve us for general guidance. § XLII. We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colors and lines is an art analogous to the composition[60] of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good coloring does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It consists in certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but not in likenesses to anything. A few touches of certain greys and purples laid by a master's hand on white paper, will be good coloring; as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good coloring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract qualities and relations of the grey and purple. In like manner, as soon as a great sculptor begins to shape his work out of the block, we shall see that its lines are nobly arranged, and of noble character. We may not have the slightest idea for what the forms are intended, whether they are of man or beast, of vegetation or drapery. Their likeness to anything does not affect their nobleness. They are magnificent forms, and that is all we need care to know of them, in order to say whether the workman is a good or bad sculptor. § XLIII. Now the noblest art is an exact unison of the abstract value, with the imitative power, of forms and colors. It is the noblest composition, used to express the noblest facts. But the human mind cannot in general unite the two perfections: it either pursues the fact to the neglect of the composition, or pursues the composition to the neglect of the fact. § XLIV. And it is intended by the Deity that it _should_ do this; the best art is not always wanted. Facts are often wanted without art, as in a geological diagram; and art often without facts, as in a Turkey carpet. And most men have been made capable of giving either one or the other, but not both; only one or two, the very highest, can give both. Observe then. Men are universally divided, as respects their artistical qualifications, into three great classes; a right, a left, and a centre. On the right side are the men of facts, on the left the men of design,[61] in the centre the men of both. The three classes of course pass into each other by imperceptible gradations. The men of facts are hardly ever altogether without powers of design; the men of design are always in some measure cognizant of facts; and as each class possesses more or less of the powers of the opposite one, it approaches to the character of the central class. Few men, even in that central rank, are so exactly throned on the summit of the crest that they cannot be perceived to incline in the least one way or the other, embracing both horizons with their glance. Now each of these classes has, as I above said, a healthy function in the world, and correlative diseases or unhealthy functions; and, when the work of either of them is seen in its morbid condition, we are apt to find fault with the class of workmen, instead of finding fault only with the particular abuse which has perverted their action. § XLV. Let us first take an instance of the healthy action of the three classes on a simple subject, so as fully to understand the distinction between them, and then we shall more easily examine the corruptions to which they are liable. Fig. 1 in Plate VI. is a spray of vine with a bough of cherry-tree, which I have outlined from nature as accurately as I could, without in the least endeavoring to compose or arrange the form. It is a simple piece of fact-work, healthy and good as such, and useful to any one who wanted to know plain truths about tendrils of vines, but there is no attempt at design in it. Plate XIX., below, represents a branch of vine used to decorate the angle of the Ducal Palace. It is faithful as a representation of vine, and yet so designed that every leaf serves an architectural purpose, and could not be spared from its place without harm. This is central work; fact and design together. Fig. 2 in Plate VI. is a spandril from St. Mark's, in which the forms of the vine are dimly suggested, the object of the design being merely to obtain graceful lines and well proportioned masses upon the gold ground. There is not the least attempt to inform the spectator of any facts about the growth of the vine; there are no stalks or tendrils,--merely running bands with leaves emergent from them, of which nothing but the outline is taken from the vine, and even that imperfectly. This is design, unregardful of facts. Now the work is, in all these three cases, perfectly healthy. Fig. 1 is not bad work because it has not design, nor Fig. 2 bad work because it has not facts. The object of the one is to give pleasure through truth, and of the other to give pleasure through composition. And both are right. What, then, are the diseased operations to which the three classes of workmen are liable? § XLVI. Primarily, two; affecting the two inferior classes: 1st, When either of those two classes Despises the other: 2nd, When either of the two classes Envies the other; producing, therefore, four forms of dangerous error. First, when the men of facts despise design. This is the error of the common Dutch painters, of merely imitative painters of still life, flowers, &c., and other men who, having either the gift of accurate imitation or strong sympathies with nature, suppose that all is done when the imitation is perfected or sympathy expressed. A large body of English landscapists come into this class, including most clever sketchers from nature, who fancy that to get a sky of true tone, and a gleam of sunshine or sweep of shower faithfully expressed, is all that can be required of art. These men are generally themselves answerable for much of their deadness of feeling to the higher qualities of composition. They probably have not originally the high gifts of design, but they lose such powers as they originally possessed by despising, and refusing to study, the results of great power of design in others. Their knowledge, as far as it goes, being accurate, they are usually presumptuous and self-conceited, and gradually become incapable of admiring anything but what is like their own works. They see nothing in the works of great designers but the faults, and do harm almost incalculable in the European society of the present day by sneering at the compositions of the greatest men of the earlier ages,[62] because they do not absolutely tally with their own ideas of "Nature." § XLVII. The second form of error is when the men of design despise facts. All noble design must deal with facts to a certain extent, for there is no food for it but in nature. The best colorist invents best by taking hints from natural colors; from birds, skies, or groups of figures. And if, in the delight of inventing fantastic color and form the truths of nature are wilfully neglected, the intellect becomes comparatively decrepit, and that state of art results which we find among the Chinese. The Greek designers delighted in the facts of the human form, and became great in consequence; but the facts of lower nature were disregarded by them, and their inferior ornament became, therefore, dead and valueless. § XLVIII. The third form of error is when the men of facts envy design: that is to say, when, having only imitative powers, they refuse to employ those powers upon the visible world around them; but, having been taught that composition is the end of art, strive to obtain the inventive powers which nature has denied them, study nothing but the works of reputed designers, and perish in a fungous growth of plagiarism and laws of art. Here was the great error of the beginning of this century; it is the error of the meanest kind of men that employ themselves in painting, and it is the most fatal of all, rendering those who fall into it utterly useless, incapable of helping the world with either truth or fancy, while, in all probability, they deceive it by base resemblances of both, until it hardly recognizes truth or fancy when they really exist. § XLIX. The fourth form of error is when the men of design envy facts; that is to say, when the temptation of closely imitating nature leads them to forget their own proper ornamental function, and when they lose the power of the composition for the sake of graphic truth; as, for instance, in the hawthorn moulding so often spoken of round the porch of Bourges Cathedral, which, though very lovely, might perhaps, as we saw above, have been better, if the old builder, in his excessive desire to make it look like hawthorn, had not painted it green. § L. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that the two morbid conditions to which the men of facts are liable are much more dangerous and harmful than those to which the men of design are liable. The morbid state of men of design injures themselves only; that of the men of facts injures the whole world. The Chinese porcelain-painter is, indeed, not so great a man as he might be, but he does not want to break everything that is not porcelain; but the modern English fact-hunter, despising design, wants to destroy everything that does not agree with his own notions of truth, and becomes the most dangerous and despicable of iconoclasts, excited by egotism instead of religion. Again: the Bourges sculptor, painting his hawthorns green, did indeed somewhat hurt the effect of his own beautiful design, but did not prevent any one from loving hawthorn: but Sir George Beaumont, trying to make Constable paint grass brown _instead_ of green, was setting himself between Constable and nature, blinding the painter, and blaspheming the work of God. § LI. So much, then, of the diseases of the inferior classes, caused by their envying or despising each other. It is evident that the men of the central class cannot be liable to any morbid operation of this kind, they possessing the powers of both. But there is another order of diseases which affect all the three classes, considered with respect to their pursuit of facts. For observe, all the three classes are in some degree pursuers of facts; even the men of design not being in any case altogether independent of external truth. Now, considering them _all_ as more or less searchers after truth, there is another triple division to be made of them. Everything presented to them in nature has good and evil mingled in it: and artists, considered as searchers after truth, are again to be divided into three great classes, a right, a left, and a centre. Those on the right perceive, and pursue, the good, and leave the evil: those in the centre, the greatest, perceive and pursue the good and evil together, the whole thing as it verily is: those on the left perceive and pursue the evil, and leave the good. § LII. The first class, I say, take the good and leave the evil. Out of whatever is presented to them, they gather what it has of grace, and life, and light, and holiness, and leave all, or at least as much as possible, of the rest undrawn. The faces of their figures express no evil passions; the skies of their landscapes are without storm; the prevalent character of their color is brightness, and of their chiaroscuro fulness of light. The early Italian and Flemish painters, Angelico and Hemling, Perugino, Francia, Raffaelle in his best time, John Bellini, and our own Stothard, belong eminently to this class. § LIII. The second, or greatest class, render all that they see in nature unhesitatingly, with a kind of divine grasp and government of the whole, sympathizing with all the good, and yet confessing, permitting, and bringing good out of the evil also. Their subject is infinite as nature, their color equally balanced between splendor and sadness, reaching occasionally the highest degrees of both, and their chiaroscuro equally balanced between light and shade. The principal men of this class are Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Giotto, Tintoret, and Turner. Raffaelle in his second time, Titian, and Rubens are transitional; the first inclining to the eclectic, and the last two to the impure class, Raffaelle rarely giving all the evil, Titian and Rubens rarely all the good. § LIV. The last class perceive and imitate evil only. They cannot draw the trunk of a tree without blasting and shattering it, nor a sky except covered with stormy clouds: they delight in the beggary and brutality of the human race; their color is for the most part subdued or lurid, and the greatest spaces of their pictures are occupied by darkness. Happily the examples of this class are seldom seen in perfection. Salvator Rosa and Caravaggio are the most characteristic: the other men belonging to it approach towards the central rank by imperceptible gradations, as they perceive and represent more and more of good. But Murillo, Zurbaran, Camillo Procaccini, Rembrandt, and Teniers, all belong naturally to this lower class. § LV. Now, observe: the three classes into which artists were previously divided, of men of fact, men of design, and men of both, are all of Divine institution; but of these latter three, the last is in no wise of Divine institution. It is entirely human, and the men who belong to it have sunk into it by their own faults. They are, so far forth, either useless or harmful men. It is indeed good that evil should be occasionally represented, even in its worst forms, but never that it should be taken delight in: and the mighty men of the central class will always give us all that is needful of it; sometimes, as Hogarth did, dwelling upon it bitterly as satirists,--but this with the more effect, because they will neither exaggerate it, nor represent it mercilessly, and without the atoning points that all evil shows to a Divinely guided glance, even at its deepest. So then, though the third class will always, I fear, in some measure exist, the two necessary classes are only the first two; and this is so far acknowledged by the general sense of men, that the basest class has been confounded with the second; and painters have been divided commonly only into two ranks, now known, I believe, throughout Europe by the names which they first received in Italy, "Puristi and Naturalisti." Since, however, in the existing state of things, the degraded or evil-loving class, though less defined than that of the Puristi, is just as vast as it is indistinct, this division has done infinite dishonor to the great faithful painters of nature: and it has long been one of the objects I have had most at heart to show that, in reality, the Purists, in their sanctity, are less separated from these natural painters than the Sensualists in their foulness; and that the difference, though less discernible, is in reality greater, between the man who pursues evil for its own sake, and him who bears with it for the sake of truth, than between this latter and the man who will not endure it at all. § LVI. Let us, then, endeavor briefly to mark the real relations of these three vast ranks of men, whom I shall call, for convenience in speaking of them, Purists, Naturalists, and Sensualists; not that these terms express their real characters, but I know no word, and cannot coin a convenient one, which would accurately express the opposite of Purist; and I keep the terms Purist and Naturalist in order to comply, as far as possible, with the established usage of language on the Continent. Now, observe: in saying that nearly everything presented to us in nature has mingling in it of good and evil, I do not mean that nature is conceivably improvable, or that anything that God has made could be called evil, if we could see far enough into its uses, but that, with respect to immediate effects or appearances, it may be so, just as the hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil to the eater, though in the one is the protection of the fruit, and in the other its continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but receives from nature and from God that which is good for him; while the Sensualist fills himself "with the husks that the swine did eat." The three classes may, therefore, be likened to men reaping wheat, of which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the one, and their couch of the other. § LVII. For instance. We know more certainly every day that whatever appears to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary operation; that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries a city preserves a thousand from destruction. But the evil is not for the time less fearful, because we have learned it to be necessary; and we easily understand the timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which would withdraw itself from the presence of destruction, and create in its imagination a world of which the peace should be unbroken, in which the sky should not darken nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, however, who contemplates with an equal mind the alternations of terror and of beauty; who, not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of twilight narrowing on the horizon; and, not less sensible to the blessing of the peace of nature, can rejoice in the magnificence of the ordinances by which that peace is protected and secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable distance would be the man who delighted in convulsion and disease for their own sake; who found his daily food in the disorder of nature mingled with the suffering of humanity; and watched joyfully at the right hand of the Angel whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the corners of the House of feasting were struck by the wind from the wilderness. § LVIII. And far more is this true, when the subject of contemplation is humanity itself. The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn; but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend. The passions of which the end is the continuance of the race; the indignation which is to arm it against injustice, or strengthen it to resist wanton injury; and the fear[63] which lies at the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all honorable and beautiful, so long as man is regarded in his relations to the existing world. The religious Purist, striving to conceive him withdrawn from those relations, effaces from the countenance the traces of all transitory passion, illumines it with holy hope and love, and seals it with the serenity of heavenly peace; he conceals the forms of the body by the deep-folded garment, or else represents them under severely chastened types, and would rather paint them emaciated by the fast, or pale from the torture, than strengthened by exertion, or flushed by emotion. But the great Naturalist takes the human being in its wholeness, in its mortal as well as its spiritual strength. Capable of sounding and sympathizing with the whole range of its passions, he brings one majestic harmony out of them all; he represents it fearlessly in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, its sensuality, and its pride, as well as in its fortitude or faith, but makes it noble in them all; he casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds the mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an inferior creature: there is nothing which he is reluctant to behold, nothing that he is ashamed to confess; with all that lives, triumphing, falling, or suffering, he claims kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet standing, in a sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of his sympathy; for the spirit within him is too thoughtful to be grieved, too brave to be appalled, and too pure to be polluted. § LIX. How far beneath these two ranks of men shall we place, in the scale of being, those whose pleasure is only in sin or in suffering; who habitually contemplate humanity in poverty or decrepitude, fury or sensuality; whose works are either temptations to its weakness, or triumphs over its ruin, and recognize no other subjects for thought or admiration than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when thus definitely stated, that such a school should exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks would disfigure our gallery and chamber walls, in places that we have long approached with reverence, if every picture, every statue, were removed from them, of which the subject was either the vice or the misery of mankind, portrayed without any moral purpose: consider the innumerable groups having reference merely to various forms of passion, low or high; drunken revels and brawls among peasants, gambling or fighting scenes among soldiers, amours and intrigues among every class, brutal battle pieces, banditti subjects, gluts of torture and death in famine, wreck, or slaughter, for the sake merely of the excitement,--that quickening and suppling of the dull spirit that cannot be gained for it but by bathing it in blood, afterward to wither back into stained and stiffened apathy; and then that whole vast false heaven of sensual passion, full of nymphs, satyrs, graces, goddesses, and I know not what, from its high seventh circle in Correggio's Antiope, down to the Grecized ballet-dancers and smirking Cupids of the Parisian upholsterer. Sweep away all this, remorselessly, and see how much art we should have left. § LX. And yet these are only the grossest manifestations of the tendency of the school. There are subtler, yet not less certain, signs of it in the works of men who stand high in the world's list of sacred painters. I doubt not that the reader was surprised when I named Murillo among the men of this third rank. Yet, go into the Dulwich Gallery, and meditate for a little over that much celebrated picture of the two beggar boys, one eating lying on the ground, the other standing beside him. We have among our own painters one who cannot indeed be set beside Murillo as a painter of Madonnas, for he is a pure Naturalist, and, never having seen a Madonna, does not paint any; but who, as a painter of beggar or peasant boys, may be set beside Murillo, or any one else,--W. Hunt. He loves peasant boys, because he finds them more roughly and picturesquely dressed, and more healthily colored, than others. And he paints all that he sees in them fearlessly; all the health and humor, and freshness, and vitality, together with such awkwardness and stupidity, and what else of negative or positive harm there may be in the creature; but yet so that on the whole we love it, and find it perhaps even beautiful, or if not, at least we see that there is capability of good in it, rather than of evil; and all is lighted up by a sunshine and sweet color that makes the smock-frock as precious as cloth of gold. But look at those two ragged and vicious vagrants that Murillo has gathered out of the street. You smile at first, because they are eating so naturally, and their roguery is so complete. But is there anything else than roguery there, or was it well for the painter to give his time to the painting of those repulsive and wicked children? Do you feel moved with any charity towards children as you look at them? Are we the least more likely to take any interest in ragged schools, or to help the next pauper child that comes in our way, because the painter has shown us a cunning beggar feeding greedily? Mark the choice of the act. He might have shown hunger in other ways, and given interest to even this act of eating, by making the face wasted, or the eye wistful. But he did not care to do this. He delighted merely in the disgusting manner of eating, the food filling the cheek; the boy is not hungry, else he would not turn round to talk and grin as he eats. § LXI. But observe another point in the lower figure. It lies so that the sole of the foot is turned towards the spectator; not because it would have lain less easily in another attitude, but that the painter may draw, and exhibit, the grey dust engrained in the foot. Do not call this the painting of nature: it is mere delight in foulness. The lesson, if there be any, in the picture, is not one whit the stronger. We all know that a beggar's bare foot cannot be clean; there is no need to thrust its degradation into the light, as if no human imagination were vigorous enough for its conception. § LXII. The position of the Sensualists, in treatment of landscape, is less distinctly marked than in that of the figure: because even the wildest passions of nature are noble: but the inclination is manifested by carelessness in marking generic form in trees and flowers: by their preferring confused and irregular arrangements of foliage or foreground to symmetrical and simple grouping; by their general choice of such picturesqueness as results from decay, disorder, and disease, rather than of that which is consistent with the perfection of the things in which it is found; and by their imperfect rendering of the elements of strength and beauty in all things. I propose to work out this subject fully in the last volume of "Modern Painters;" but I trust that enough has been here said to enable the reader to understand the relations of the three great classes of artists, and therefore also the kinds of morbid condition into which the two higher (for the last has no other than a morbid condition) are liable to fall. For, since the function of the Naturalists is to represent, as far as may be, the whole of nature, and the Purists to represent what is absolutely good for some special purpose or time, it is evident that both are liable to error from shortness of sight, and the last also from weakness of judgment. I say, in the first place, both may err from shortness of sight, from not seeing all that there is in nature; seeing only the outsides of things, or those points of them which bear least on the matter in hand. For instance, a modern continental Naturalist sees the anatomy of a limb thoroughly, but does not see its color against the sky, which latter fact is to a painter far the more important of the two. And because it is always easier to see the surface than the depth of things, the full sight of them requiring the highest powers of penetration, sympathy, and imagination, the world is full of vulgar Naturalists: not Sensualists, observe, not men who delight in evil; but men who never see the deepest good, and who bring discredit on all painting of Nature by the little that they discover in her. And the Purist, besides being liable to this same shortsightedness, is liable also to fatal errors of judgment; for he may think that good which is not so, and that the highest good which is the least. And thus the world is full of vulgar Purists,[64] who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things: the greatest men being, in all times of art, Naturalists, without any exception; and the greatest Purists being those who approach nearest to the Naturalists, as Benozzo Gozzoli and Perugino. Hence there is a tendency in the Naturalists to despise the Purists, and in the Purists to be offended with the Naturalists (not understanding them, and confounding them with the Sensualists); and this is grievously harmful to both. § LXIII. Of the various forms of resultant mischief it is not here the place to speak: the reader may already be somewhat wearied with a statement which has led us apparently so far from our immediate subject. But the digression was necessary, in order that I might clearly define the sense in which I use the word Naturalism when I state it to be the third most essential characteristic of Gothic architecture. I mean that the Gothic builders belong to the central or greatest rank in _both_ the classifications of artists which we have just made; that, considering all artists as either men of design, men of facts, or men of both, the Gothic builders were men of both; and that again, considering all artists as either Purists, Naturalists, or Sensualists, the Gothic builders were Naturalists. § LXIV. I say first, that the Gothic builders were of that central class which unites fact with design; but that the part of the work which was more especially their own was the truthfulness. Their power of artistical invention or arrangement was not greater than that of Romanesque and Byzantine workmen: by those workmen they were taught the principles, and from them received their models, of design; but to the ornamental feeling and rich fancy of the Byzantine the Gothic builder added a love of _fact_ which is never found in the South. Both Greek and Roman used conventional foliage in their ornament, passing into something that was not foliage at all, knotting itself into strange cup-like buds or clusters, and growing out of lifeless rods instead of stems; the Gothic sculptor received these types, at first, as things that ought to be, just as we have a second time received them; but he could not rest in them. He saw there was no veracity in them, no knowledge, no vitality. Do what he would, he could not help liking the true leaves better; and cautiously, a little at a time, he put more of nature into his work, until at last it was all true, retaining, nevertheless, every valuable character of the original well-disciplined and designed arrangement.[65] § LXV. Nor is it only in external and visible subject that the Gothic workman wrought for truth: he is as firm in his rendering of imaginative as of actual truth; that is to say, when an idea would have been by a Roman, or Byzantine, symbolically represented, the Gothic mind realizes it to the utmost. For instance, the purgatorial fire is represented in the mosaic of Torcello (Romanesque) as a red stream, longitudinally striped like a riband, descending out of the throne of Christ, and gradually extending itself to envelope the wicked. When we are once informed what this means, it is enough for its purpose; but the Gothic inventor does not leave the sign in need of interpretation. He makes the fire as like real fire as he can; and in the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen the sculptured flames burst out of the Hades gate, and flicker up, in writhing tongues of stone, through the interstices of the niches, as if the church itself were on fire. This is an extreme instance, but it is all the more illustrative of the entire difference in temper and thought between the two schools of art, and of the intense love of veracity which influenced the Gothic design. § LXVI. I do not say that this love of veracity is always healthy in its operation. I have above noticed the errors into which it falls from despising design; and there is another kind of error noticeable in the instance just given, in which the love of truth is too hasty, and seizes on a surface truth instead of an inner one. For in representing the Hades fire, it is not the mere _form_ of the flame which needs most to be told, but its unquenchableness, its Divine ordainment and limitation, and its inner fierceness, not physical and material, but in being the expression of the wrath of God. And these things are not to be told by imitating the fire that flashes out of a bundle of sticks. If we think over his symbol a little, we shall perhaps find that the Romanesque builder told more truth in that likeness of a blood-red stream, flowing between definite shores and out of God's throne, and expanding, as if fed by a perpetual current, into the lake wherein the wicked are cast, than the Gothic builder in those torch-flickerings about his niches. But this is not to our immediate purpose; I am not at present to insist upon the faults into which the love of truth was led in the later Gothic times, but on the feeling itself, as a glorious and peculiar characteristic of the Northern builders. For, observe, it is not, even in the above instance, love of truth, but want of thought, which _causes_ the fault. The love of truth, as such, is good, but when it is misdirected by thoughtlessness or over-excited by vanity, and either seizes on facts of small value, or gathers them chiefly that it may boast of its grasp and apprehension, its work may well become dull or offensive. Yet let us not, therefore, blame the inherent love of facts, but the incautiousness of their selection, and impertinence of their statement. § LXVII. I said, in the second place, that Gothic work, when referred to the arrangement of all art, as purist, naturalist, or sensualist, was naturalist. This character follows necessarily on its extreme love of truth, prevailing over the sense of beauty, and causing it to take delight in portraiture of every kind, and to express the various characters of the human countenance and form, as it did the varieties of leaves and the ruggedness of branches. And this tendency is both increased and ennobled by the same Christian humility which we saw expressed in the first character of Gothic work, its rudeness. For as that resulted from a humility which confessed the imperfection of the _workman_, so this naturalist portraiture is rendered more faithful by the humility which confesses the imperfection of the _subject_. The Greek sculptor could neither bear to confess his own feebleness, nor to tell the faults of the forms that he portrayed. But the Christian workman, believing that all is finally to work together for good, freely confesses both, and neither seeks to disguise his own roughness of work, nor his subject's roughness of make. Yet this frankness being joined, for the most part, with depth of religious feeling in other directions, and especially with charity, there is sometimes a tendency to Purism in the best Gothic sculpture; so that it frequently reaches great dignity of form and tenderness of expression, yet never so as to lose the veracity of portraiture, wherever portraiture is possible: not exalting its kings into demi-gods, nor its saints into archangels, but giving what kingliness and sanctity was in them, to the full, mixed with due record of their faults; and this in the most part with a great indifference like that of Scripture history, which sets down, with unmoved and unexcusing resoluteness, the virtues and errors of all men of whom it speaks, often leaving the reader to form his own estimate of them, without an indication of the judgment of the historian. And this veracity is carried out by the Gothic sculptors in the minuteness and generality, as well as the equity, of their delineation: for they do not limit their art to the portraiture of saints and kings, but introduce the most familiar scenes and most simple subjects; filling up the backgrounds of Scripture histories with vivid and curious representations of the commonest incidents of daily life, and availing themselves of every occasion in which, either as a symbol, or an explanation of a scene or time, the things familiar to the eye of the workman could be introduced and made of account. Hence Gothic sculpture and painting are not only full of valuable portraiture of the greatest men, but copious records of all the domestic customs and inferior arts of the ages in which it flourished.[66] § LXVIII. There is, however, one direction in which the Naturalism of the Gothic workmen is peculiarly manifested; and this direction is even more characteristic of the school than the Naturalism itself; I mean their peculiar fondness for the forms of Vegetation. In rendering the various circumstances of daily life, Egyptian and Ninevite sculpture is as frank and as diffuse as the Gothic. From the highest pomps of state or triumphs of battle, to the most trivial domestic arts and amusements, all is taken advantage of to fill the field of granite with the perpetual interest of a crowded drama; and the early Lombardic and Romanesque sculpture is equally copious in its description of the familiar circumstances of war and the chase. But in all the scenes portrayed by the workmen of these nations, vegetation occurs only as an explanatory accessory; the reed is introduced to mark the course of the river, or the tree to mark the covert of the wild beast, or the ambush of the enemy, but there is no especial interest in the forms of the vegetation strong enough to induce them to make it a subject of separate and accurate study. Again, among the nations who followed the arts of design exclusively, the forms of foliage introduced were meagre and general, and their real intricacy and life were neither admired nor expressed. But to the Gothic workman the living foliage became a subject of intense affection, and he struggled to render all its characters with as much accuracy as was compatible with the laws of his design and the nature of his material, not unfrequently tempted in his enthusiasm to transgress the one and disguise the other. § LXIX. There is a peculiar significancy in this, indicative both of higher civilization and gentler temperament, than had before been manifested in architecture. Rudeness, and the love of change, which we have insisted upon as the first elements of Gothic, are also elements common to all healthy schools. But here is a softer element mingled with them, peculiar to the Gothic itself. The rudeness or ignorance which would have been painfully exposed in the treatment of the human form, are still not so great as to prevent the successful rendering of the wayside herbage; and the love of change, which becomes morbid and feverish in following the haste of the hunter, and the rage of the combatant, is at once soothed and satisfied as it watches the wandering of the tendril, and the budding of the flower. Nor is this all: the new direction of mental interest marks an infinite change in the means and the habits of life. The nations whose chief support was in the chase, whose chief interest was in the battle, whose chief pleasure was in the banquet, would take small care respecting the shapes of leaves and flowers; and notice little in the forms of the forest trees which sheltered them, except the signs indicative of the wood which would make the toughest lance, the closest roof, or the clearest fire. The affectionate observation of the grace and outward character of vegetation is the sure sign of a more tranquil and gentle existence, sustained by the gifts, and gladdened by the splendor, of the earth. In that careful distinction of species, and richness of delicate and undisturbed organization, which characterize the Gothic design, there is the history of rural and thoughtful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, and devoted to subtle inquiry; and every discriminating and delicate touch of the chisel, as it rounds the petal or guides the branch, is a prophecy of the developement of the entire body of the natural sciences, beginning with that of medicine, of the recovery of literature, and the establishment of the most necessary principles of domestic wisdom and national peace. § LXX. I have before alluded to the strange and vain supposition, that the original conception of Gothic architecture had been derived from vegetation,--from the symmetry of avenues, and the interlacing of branches. It is a supposition which never could have existed for a moment in the mind of any person acquainted with early Gothic; but, however idle as a theory, it is most valuable as a testimony to the character of the perfected style. It is precisely because the reverse of this theory is the fact, because the Gothic did not arise out of, but develope itself into, a resemblance to vegetation, that this resemblance is so instructive as an indication of the temper of the builders. It was no chance suggestion of the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but a gradual and continual discovery of a beauty in natural forms which could be more and more perfectly transferred into those of stone, that influenced at once the heart of the people, and the form of the edifice. The Gothic architecture arose in massy and mountainous strength, axe-hewn, and iron-bound, block heaved upon block by the monk's enthusiasm and the soldier's force; and cramped and stanchioned into such weight of grisly wall, as might bury the anchoret in darkness, and beat back the utmost storm of battle, suffering but by the same narrow crosslet the passing of the sunbeam, or of the arrow. Gradually, as that monkish enthusiasm became more thoughtful, and as the sound of war became more and more intermittent beyond the gates of the convent or the keep, the stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew light, till they had wreathed themselves into the semblance of the summer woods at their fairest, and of the dead field-flowers, long trodden down in blood, sweet monumental statues were set to bloom for ever, beneath the porch of the temple, or the canopy of the tomb. § LXXI. Nor is it only as a sign of greater gentleness or refinement of mind, but as a proof of the best possible direction of this refinement, that the tendency of the Gothic to the expression of vegetative life is to be admired. That sentence of Genesis, "I have given thee every green herb for meat," like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbolical as well as a literal meaning. It is not merely the nourishment of the body, but the food of the soul, that is intended. The green herb is, of all nature, that which is most essential to the healthy spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need fine scenery; the precipice and the mountain peak are not intended to be seen by all men,--perhaps their power is greatest over those who are unaccustomed to them. But trees, and fields, and flowers were made for all, and are necessary for all. God has connected the labor which is essential to the bodily sustenance, with the pleasures which are healthiest for the heart; and while He made the ground stubborn, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms fair. The proudest architecture that man can build has no higher honor than to bear the image and recall the memory of that grass of the field which is, at once, the type and the support of his existence; the goodly building is then most glorious when it is sculptured into the likeness of the leaves of Paradise; and the great Gothic spirit, as we showed it to be noble in its disquietude, is also noble in its hold of nature; it is, indeed, like the dove of Noah, in that she found no rest upon the face of the waters,--but like her in this also, "LO, IN HER MOUTH WAS AN OLIVE BRANCH, PLUCKED OFF." § LXXII. The fourth essential element of the Gothic mind was above stated to be the sense of the GROTESQUE; but I shall defer the endeavor to define this most curious and subtle character until we have occasion to examine one of the divisions of the Renaissance schools, which was morbidly influenced by it (Vol. III. Chap. III.). It is the less necessary to insist upon it here, because every reader familiar with Gothic architecture must understand what I mean, and will, I believe, have no hesitation in admitting that the tendency to delight in fantastic and ludicrous, as well as in sublime, images, is a universal instinct of the Gothic imagination. § LXXIII. The fifth element above named was RIGIDITY; and this character I must endeavor carefully to define, for neither the word I have used, nor any other that I can think of, will express it accurately. For I mean, not merely stable, but _active_ rigidity; the peculiar energy which gives tension to movement, and stiffness to resistance, which makes the fiercest lightning forked rather than curved, and the stoutest oak-branch angular rather than bending, and is as much seen in the quivering of the lance as in the glittering of the icicle. § LXXIV. I have before had occasion (Vol. I. Chap. XIII. § VII.) to note some manifestations of this energy or fixedness; but it must be still more attentively considered here, as it shows itself throughout the whole structure and decoration of Gothic work. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the building. And, in like manner, the Greek and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engraving, as if the face of the wall had been stamped with a seal, or its lines are flowing, lithe, and luxuriant; in either case, there is no expression of energy in framework of the ornament itself. But the Gothic ornament stands out in prickly independence, and frosty fortitude, jutting into crockets, and freezing into pinnacles; here starting up into a monster, there germinating into a blossom; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form of nervous entanglement; but, even when most graceful, never for an instant languid, always quickset; erring, if at all, ever on the side of brusquerie. § LXXV. The feelings or habits in the workman which give rise to this character in the work, are more complicated and various than those indicated by any other sculptural expression hitherto named. There is, first, the habit of hard and rapid working; the industry of the tribes of the North, quickened by the coldness of the climate, and giving an expression of sharp energy to all they do (as above noted, Vol. I. Chap. XIII. § VII.), as opposed to the languor of the Southern tribes, however much of fire there may be in the heart of that languor, for lava itself may flow languidly. There is also the habit of finding enjoyment in the signs of cold, which is never found, I believe, in the inhabitants of countries south of the Alps. Cold is to them an unredeemed evil, to be suffered, and forgotten as soon as may be; but the long winter of the North forces the Goth (I mean the Englishman, Frenchman, Dane, or German), if he would lead a happy life at all, to find sources of happiness in foul weather as well as fair, and to rejoice in the leafless as well as in the shady forest. And this we do with all our hearts; finding perhaps nearly as much contentment by the Christmas fire as in the summer sunshine, and gaining health and strength on the ice-fields of winter, as well as among the meadows of spring. So that there is nothing adverse or painful to our feelings in the cramped and stiffened structure of vegetation checked by cold; and instead of seeking, like the Southern sculptor, to express only the softness of leafage nourished in all tenderness, and tempted into all luxuriance by warm winds and glowing rays, we find pleasure in dwelling upon the crabbed, perverse, and morose animation of plants that have known little kindness from earth or heaven, but, season after season, have had their best efforts palsied by frost, their brightest buds buried under snow, and their goodliest limbs lopped by tempest. § LXXVI. There are many subtle sympathies and affections which join to confirm the Gothic mind in this peculiar choice of subject; and when we add to the influence of these, the necessities consequent upon the employment of a rougher material, compelling the workman to seek for vigor of effect, rather than refinement of texture or accuracy of form, we have direct and manifest causes for much of the difference between the northern and southern cast of conception: but there are indirect causes holding a far more important place in the Gothic heart, though less immediate in their influence on design. Strength of will, independence of character, resoluteness of purpose, impatience of undue control, and that general tendency to set the individual reason against authority, and the individual deed against destiny, which, in the Northern tribes, has opposed itself throughout all ages to the languid submission, in the Southern, of thought to tradition, and purpose to fatality, are all more or less traceable in the rigid lines, vigorous and various masses, and daringly projecting and independent structure of the Northern Gothic ornament: while the opposite feelings are in like manner legible in the graceful and softly guided waves and wreathed bands, in which Southern decoration is constantly disposed; in its tendency to lose its independence, and fuse itself into the surface of the masses upon which it is traced; and in the expression seen so often, in the arrangement of those masses themselves, of an abandonment of their strength to an inevitable necessity, or a listless repose. § LXXVII. There is virtue in the measure, and error in the excess, of both these characters of mind, and in both of the styles which they have created; the best architecture, and the best temper, are those which unite them both; and this fifth impulse of the Gothic heart is therefore that which needs most caution in its indulgence. It is more definitely Gothic than any other, but the best Gothic building is not that which is _most_ Gothic: it can hardly be too frank in its confession of rudeness, hardly too rich in its changefulness, hardly too faithful in its naturalism; but it may go too far in its rigidity, and, like the great Puritan spirit in its extreme, lose itself either in frivolity of division, or perversity of purpose.[67] It actually did so in its later times; but it is gladdening to remember that in its utmost nobleness, the very temper which has been thought most adverse to it, the Protestant spirit of self-dependence and inquiry, was expressed in its every line. Faith and aspiration there were, in every Christian ecclesiastical building, from the first century to the fifteenth; but the moral habits to which England in this age owes the kind of greatness that she has,--the habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth,--were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creation of the Gothic schools, in the veined foliage, and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pinnacle and crested tower, sent like an "unperplexed question up to Heaven."[68] § LXXVIII. Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,--the uncalculating bestowal of the wealth of its labor. There is, indeed, much Gothic, and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable, and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion: still, in the most characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole façade covered with fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by the complexity or the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection, but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which would rather cast fruitless labor before the altar than stand idle in the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose operation we have already endeavored to define. The sculptor who sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labor to the few stones that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring. § LXXIX. We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to completeness of the various moral or imaginative elements which composed the inner spirit of Gothic architecture. We have, in the second place, to define its outward form. Now, as the Gothic spirit is made up of several elements, some of which may, in particular examples, be wanting, so the Gothic form is made up of minor conditions of form, some of which may, in particular examples, be imperfectly developed. We cannot say, therefore, that a building is either Gothic or not Gothic in form, any more than we can in spirit. We can only say that it is more or less Gothic, in proportion to the number of Gothic forms which it unites. § LXXX. There have been made lately many subtle and ingenious endeavors to base the definition of Gothic form entirely upon the roof-vaulting; endeavors which are both forced and futile: for many of the best Gothic buildings in the world have roofs of timber, which have no more connexion with the main structure of the walls of the edifice than a hat has with that of the head it protects; and other Gothic buildings are merely enclosures of spaces, as ramparts and walls, or enclosures of gardens or cloisters, and have no roofs at all, in the sense in which the word "roof" is commonly accepted. But every reader who has ever taken the slightest interest in architecture must know that there is a great popular impression on this matter, which maintains itself stiffly in its old form, in spite of all ratiocination and definition; namely, that a flat lintel from pillar to pillar is Grecian, a round arch Norman or Romanesque, and a pointed arch Gothic. And the old popular notion, as far as it goes, is perfectly right, and can never be bettered. The most striking outward feature in all Gothic architecture is, that it is composed of pointed arches, as in Romanesque that it is in like manner composed of round; and this distinction would be quite as clear, though the roofs were taken off every cathedral in Europe. And yet, if we examine carefully into the real force and meaning of the term "roof" we shall perhaps be able to retain the old popular idea in a definition of Gothic architecture which shall also express whatever dependence that architecture has upon true forms of roofing. § LXXXI. In Chap. XIII. of the first volume, the reader will remember that roofs were considered as generally divided into two parts; the roof proper, that is to say, the shell, vault, or ceiling, internally visible; and the roof-mask, which protects this lower roof from the weather. In some buildings these parts are united in one framework; but, in most, they are more or less independent of each other, and in nearly all Gothic buildings there is considerable interval between them. Now it will often happen, as above noticed, that owing to the nature of the apartments required, or the materials at hand, the roof proper may be flat, coved, or domed, in buildings which in their walls employ pointed arches, and are, in the straitest sense of the word, Gothic in all other respects. Yet so far forth as the roofing alone is concerned, they are not Gothic unless the pointed arch be the principal form adopted either in the stone vaulting or the timbers of the roof proper. I shall say then, in the first place, that "Gothic architecture is that which uses, if possible, the pointed arch in the roof proper." This is the first step in our definition. § LXXXII. Secondly. Although there may be many advisable or necessary forms for the lower roof or ceiling, there is, in cold countries exposed to rain and snow, only one advisable form for the roof-mask, and that is the gable, for this alone will throw off both rain and snow from all parts of its surface as speedily as possible. Snow can lodge on the top of a dome, not on the ridge of a gable. And thus, as far as roofing is concerned, the gable is a far more essential feature of Northern architecture than the pointed vault, for the one is a thorough necessity, the other often a graceful conventionality: the gable occurs in the timber roof of every dwelling-house and every cottage, but not the vault; and the gable built on a polygonal or circular plan, is the origin of the turret and spire;[69] and all the so-called aspiration of Gothic architecture is, as above noticed (Vol. I. Chap. XII. § VI.), nothing more than its developement. So that we must add to our definition another clause, which will be, at present, by far the most important, and it will stand thus: "Gothic architecture is that which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof-mask." § LXXXIII. And here, in passing, let us notice a principle as true in architecture as in morals. It is not the _compelled_, but the _wilful_, transgression of law which corrupts the character. Sin is not in the act, but in the choice. It is a law for Gothic architecture, that it shall use the pointed arch for its roof proper; but because, in many cases of domestic building, this becomes impossible for want of room (the whole height of the apartment being required everywhere), or in various other ways inconvenient, flat ceilings may be used, and yet the Gothic shall not lose its purity. But in the roof-mask, there can be no necessity nor reason for a change of form: the gable is the best; and if any other--dome, or bulging crown, or whatsoever else--be employed at all, it must be in pure caprice, and wilful transgression of law. And wherever, therefore, this is done, the Gothic has lost its character; it is pure Gothic no more. § LXXXIV. And this last clause of the definition is to be more strongly insisted upon, because it includes multitudes of buildings, especially domestic, which are Gothic in spirit, but which we are not in the habit of embracing in our general conception of Gothic architecture; multitudes of street dwelling-houses and straggling country farm-houses, built with little care for beauty, or observance of Gothic laws in vaults or windows, and yet maintaining their character by the sharp and quaint gables of the roofs. And, for the reason just given, a house is far more Gothic which has square windows, and a boldly gabled roof, than the one which has pointed arches for the windows, and a domed or flat roof. For it often happened in the best Gothic times, as it must in all times, that it was more easy and convenient to make a window square than pointed; not but that, as above emphatically stated, the richness of church architecture was also found in domestic; and systematically "when the pointed arch was used in the church it was used in the street," only in all times there were cases in which men could not build as they would, and were obliged to construct their doors or windows in the readiest way; and this readiest way was then, in small work, as it will be to the end of time, to put a flat stone for a lintel and build the windows as in Fig. VIII.; and the occurrence of such windows in a building or a street will not un-Gothicize them, so long as the bold gable roof be retained, and the spirit of the work be visibly Gothic in other respects. But if the roof be wilfully and conspicuously of any other form than the gable,--if it be domed, or Turkish, or Chinese,--the building has positive corruption mingled with its Gothic elements, in proportion to the conspicuousness of the roof; and, if not absolutely un-Gothicized, can maintain its character only by such vigor of vital Gothic energy in other parts as shall cause the roof to be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must always admit that it _may_ be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will _not_ allow so much, either of the Duomo of Florence, or the Baptistery of Pisa. We must either mend it, therefore, or understand it in some broader sense. [Illustration: Fig. VIII.] § LXXXV. And now, if the reader will look back to the fifth paragraph of Chap. III. Vol. I., he will find that I carefully extended my definition of a roof so as to include more than is usually understood by the term. It was there said to be the covering of a space, _narrow or wide_. It does not in the least signify, with respect to the real nature of the covering, whether the space protected be two feet wide, or ten; though in the one case we call the protection an arch, in the other a vault or roof. But the real point to be considered is, the manner in which this protection stands, and not whether it is narrow or broad. We call the vaulting of a bridge "an arch," because it is narrow with respect to the river it crosses; but if it were built above us on the ground, we should call it a waggon vault, because then we should feel the breadth of it. The real question is the nature of the curve, not the extent of space over which it is carried: and this is more the case with respect to Gothic than to any other architecture; for, in the greater number of instances, the form of the roof is entirely dependent on the ribs; the domical shells being constructed in all kinds of inclinations, quite undeterminable by the eye, and all that is definite in their character being fixed by the curves of the ribs. [Illustration: Fig. IX.] § LXXXVI. Let us then consider our definition as including the narrowest arch, or tracery bar, as well as the broadest roof, and it will be nearly a perfect one. For the fact is, that all good Gothic is nothing more than the developement, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the _pointed arch for the bearing line_ below, and _the gable for the protecting line_ above; and from the huge, gray, shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath, to the slight crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. The modes of support and of decoration are infinitely various, but the real character of the building, in all good Gothic, depends upon the single lines of the gable over the pointed arch, Fig. IX., endlessly rearranged or repeated. The larger woodcut, Fig. X., represents three characteristic conditions of the treatment of the group: _a_, from a tomb at Verona (1328); _b_, one of the lateral porches at Abbeville; _c_, one of the uppermost points of the great western façade of Rouen Cathedral; both these last being, I believe, early work of the fifteenth century. The forms of the pure early English and French Gothic are too well known to need any notice; my reason will appear presently for choosing, by way of example, these somewhat rare conditions. [Illustration: Fig. X.] § LXXXVII. But, first, let us try whether we cannot get the forms of the other great architectures of the world broadly expressed by relations of the same lines into which we have compressed the Gothic. We may easily do this if the reader will first allow me to remind him of the true nature of the pointed arch, as it was expressed in § X. Chap. X. of the first volume. It was said there, that it ought to be called a "curved gable," for, strictly speaking, an "arch" cannot be "pointed." The so-called pointed arch ought always to be considered as a gable, with its sides curved in order to enable them to bear pressure from without. Thus considering it, there are but three ways in which an interval between piers can be bridged,--the three ways represented by A, B, and C, Fig. XI.,[70] on page 213,--A, the lintel; B, the round arch; C, the gable. All the architects in the world will never discover any other ways of bridging a space than these three; they may vary the curve of the arch, or curve the sides of the gable, or break them; but in doing this they are merely modifying or subdividing, not adding to the generic forms. § LXXXVIII. Now there are three good architectures in the world, and there never can be more, correspondent to each of these three simple ways of covering in a space, which is the original function of all architectures. And those three architectures are _pure_ exactly in proportion to the simplicity and directness with which they express the condition of roofing on which they are founded. They have many interesting varieties, according to their scale, manner of decoration, and character of the nations by whom they are practised, but all their varieties are finally referable to the three great heads:-- A, Greek: Architecture of the Lintel. B, Romanesque: Architecture of the Round Arch. C, Gothic: Architecture of the Gable. [Illustration: Fig. XI.] The three names, Greek, Romanesque, and Gothic, are indeed inaccurate when used in this vast sense, because they imply national limitations; but the three architectures may nevertheless not unfitly receive their names from those nations by whom they were carried to the highest perfections. We may thus briefly state their existing varieties. § LXXXIX. A. GREEK: Lintel Architecture. The worst of the three; and, considered with reference to stone construction, always in some measure barbarous. Its simplest type is Stonehenge; its most refined, the Parthenon; its noblest, the Temple of Karnak. In the hands of the Egyptian, it is sublime; in those of the Greek, pure; in those of the Roman, rich; and in those of the Renaissance builder, effeminate. B. ROMANESQUE: Round-arch Architecture. Never thoroughly developed until Christian times. It falls into two great branches, Eastern and Western, or Byzantine and Lombardic; changing respectively in process of time, with certain helps from each other, into Arabian Gothic and Teutonic Gothic. Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo of Pisa; its most perfect Byzantine type (I believe), St. Mark's at Venice. Its highest glory is, that it has no corruption. It perishes in giving birth to another architecture as noble as itself. C. GOTHIC: Architecture of the Gable. The daughter of the Romanesque; and, like the Romanesque, divided into two great branches, Western and Eastern, or pure Gothic and Arabian Gothic; of which the latter is called Gothic, only because it has many Gothic forms, pointed arches, vaults, &c., but its spirit remains Byzantine, more especially in the form of the roof-mask, of which, with respect to these three great families, we have next to determine the typical form. § XC. For, observe, the distinctions we have hitherto been stating, depend on the form of the stones first laid from pier to pier; that is to say, of the simplest condition of roofs proper. Adding the relations of the roof-mask to these lines, we shall have the perfect type of form for each school. [Illustration: Fig. XII.] In the Greek, the Western Romanesque, and Western Gothic, the roof-mask is the gable: in the Eastern Romanesque, and Eastern Gothic, it is the dome: but I have not studied the roofing of either of these last two groups, and shall not venture to generalize them in a diagram. But the three groups, in the hands of the Western builders, may be thus simply represented: _a_, Fig. XII., Greek;[71] _b_, Western Romanesque; _c_, Western, or true, Gothic. Now, observe, first, that the relation of the roof-mask to the roof proper, in the Greek type, forms that pediment which gives its most striking character to the temple, and is the principal recipient of its sculptural decoration. The relation of these lines, therefore, is just as important in the Greek as in the Gothic schools. [Illustration: Fig. XIII.] § XCI. Secondly, the reader must observe the difference of steepness in the Romanesque and Gothic gables. This is not an unimportant distinction, nor an undecided one. The Romanesque gable does not pass gradually into the more elevated form; there is a great gulf between the two; the whole effect of all Southern architecture being dependent upon the use of the flat gable, and of all Northern upon that of the acute. I need not here dwell upon the difference between the lines of an Italian village, or the flat tops of most Italian towers, and the peaked gables and spires of the North, attaining their most fantastic developement, I believe, in Belgium: but it may be well to state the law of separation, namely, that a Gothic gable _must_ have all its angles acute, and a Romanesque one _must_ have the upper one obtuse: or, to give the reader a simple practical rule, take any gable, _a_ or _b_, Fig. XIII., and strike a semicircle on its base; if its top rises above the semicircle, as at _b_, it is a Gothic gable; if it falls beneath it, a Romanesque one; but the best forms in each group are those which are distinctly steep, or distinctly low. In the figure _f_ is, perhaps, the average of Romanesque slope, and _g_ of Gothic. [Illustration: Fig. XIV.] § XCII. But although we do not find a transition from one school into the other in the slope of the gables, there is often a confusion between the two schools in the association of the gable with the arch below it. It has just been stated that the pure Romanesque condition is the round arch under the low gable, _a_, Fig. XIV., and the pure Gothic condition is the pointed arch under the high gable, _b_. But in the passage from one style to the other, we sometimes find the two conditions reversed; the pointed arch under a low gable, as _d_, or the round arch under a high gable, as _c_. The form _d_ occurs in the tombs of Verona, and _c_ in the doors of Venice. § XCIII. We have thus determined the relation of Gothic to the other architectures of the world, as far as regards the main lines of its construction; but there is still one word which needs to be added to our definition of its form, with respect to a part of its decoration, which rises out of that construction. We have seen that the first condition of its form is, that it shall have pointed arches. When Gothic is perfect, therefore, it will follow that the pointed arches must be built in the strongest possible manner. [Illustration: Fig. XV.] Now, if the reader will look back to Chapter XI. of Vol. I., he will find the subject of the masonry of the pointed arch discussed at length, and the conclusion deduced, that of all possible forms of the pointed arch (a certain weight of material being given), that generically represented at _e_, Fig. XV., is the strongest. In fact, the reader can see in a moment that the weakness of the pointed arch is in its flanks, and that by merely thickening them gradually at this point all chance of fracture is removed. Or, perhaps, more simply still:--Suppose a gable built of stone, as at _a_, and pressed upon from without by a weight in the direction of the arrow, clearly it would be liable to fall in, as at _b_. To prevent this, we make a pointed arch of it, as at _c_; and now it cannot fall inwards, but if pressed upon from above may give way outwards, as at _d_. But at last we build as at _e_, and now it can neither fall out nor in. § XCIV. The forms of arch thus obtained, with a pointed projection called a cusp on each side, must for ever be delightful to the human mind, as being expressive of the utmost strength and permanency obtainable with a given mass of material. But it was not by any such process of reasoning, nor with any reference to laws of construction, that the cusp was originally invented. It is merely the special application to the arch of the great ornamental system of FOLIATION; or the adaptation of the forms of leafage which has been above insisted upon as the principal characteristic of Gothic Naturalism. This love of foliage was exactly proportioned, in its intensity, to the increase of strength in the Gothic spirit: in the Southern Gothic it is _soft_ leafage that is most loved; in the Northern _thorny_ leafage. And if we take up any Northern illuminated manuscript of the great Gothic time, we shall find every one of its leaf ornaments surrounded by a thorny structure laid round it in gold or in color; sometimes apparently copied faithfully from the prickly developement of the root of the leaf in the thistle, running along the stems and branches exactly as the thistle leaf does along its own stem, and with sharp spines proceeding from the points, as in Fig. XVI. At other times, and for the most part in work in the thirteenth century, the golden ground takes the form of pure and severe cusps, sometimes enclosing the leaves, sometimes filling up the forks of the branches (as in the example fig. 1, Plate I. Vol. III.), passing imperceptibly from the distinctly vegetable condition (in which it is just as certainly representative of the thorn, as other parts of the design are of the bud, leaf, and fruit) into the crests on the necks, or the membranous sails of the wings, of serpents, dragons, and other grotesques, as in Fig. XVII., and into rich and vague fantasies of curvature; among which, however, the pure cusped system of the pointed arch is continually discernible, not accidentally, but designedly indicated, and connecting itself with the literally architectural portions of the design. [Illustration: Fig. XVI.] [Illustration: Fig. XVII.] § XCV. The system, then, of what is called Foliation, whether simple, as in the cusped arch, or complicated, as in tracery, rose out of this love of leafage; not that the form of the arch is intended to _imitate_ a leaf, but _to be invested with the same characters of beauty which the designer had discovered in the leaf_. Observe, there is a wide difference between these two intentions. The idea that large Gothic structure, in arches and roofs, was intended to imitate vegetation is, as above noticed, untenable for an instant in the front of facts. But the Gothic builder perceived that, in the leaves which he copied for his minor decorations, there was a peculiar beauty, arising from certain characters of curvature in outline, and certain methods of subdivision and of radiation in structure. On a small scale, in his sculptures and his missal-painting, he copied the leaf or thorn itself; on a large scale he adopted from it its abstract sources of beauty, and gave the same kinds of curvatures and the same species of subdivision to the outline of his arches, so far as was consistent with their strength, never, in any single instance, suggesting the resemblance to leafage by _irregularity_ of outline, but keeping the structure perfectly simple, and, as we have seen, so consistent with the best principles of masonry, that in the finest Gothic designs of arches, which are always _single_ cusped (the cinquefoiled arch being licentious, though in early work often very lovely), it is literally impossible, without consulting the context of the building, to say whether the cusps have been added for the sake of beauty or of strength; nor, though in mediæval architecture they were, I believe, assuredly first employed in mere love of their picturesque form, am I absolutely certain that their earliest invention was not a structural effort. For the earliest cusps with which I am acquainted are those used in the vaults of the great galleries of the Serapeum, discovered in 1850 by M. Maniette at Memphis, and described by Colonel Hamilton in a paper read in February last before the Royal Society of Literature.[72] The roofs of its galleries were admirably shown in Colonel Hamilton's drawings made to scale upon the spot, and their profile is a cusped round arch, perfectly pure and simple; but whether thrown into this form for the sake of strength or of grace, I am unable to say. § XCVI. It is evident, however, that the structural advantage of the cusp is available only in the case of arches on a comparatively small scale. If the arch becomes very large, the projections under the flanks must become too ponderous to be secure; the suspended weight of stone would be liable to break off, and such arches are therefore never constructed with heavy cusps, but rendered secure by general mass of masonry; and what additional _appearance_ of support may be thought necessary (sometimes a considerable degree of _actual_ support) is given by means of tracery. [Illustration: Fig. XVIII.] § XCVII. Of what I stated in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps" respecting the nature of tracery, I need repeat here only this much, that it began in the use of penetrations through the stone-work of windows or walls, cut into forms which looked like stars when seen from within, and like leaves when seen from without: the name foil or feuille being universally applied to the separate lobes of their extremities, and the pleasure received from them being the same as that which we feel in the triple, quadruple, or other radiated leaves of vegetation, joined with the perception of a severely geometrical order and symmetry. A few of the most common forms are represented, unconfused by exterior mouldings, in Fig. XVIII., and the best traceries are nothing more than close clusters of such forms, with mouldings following their outlines. § XCVIII. The term "foliated," therefore, is equally descriptive of the most perfect conditions both of the simple arch and of the traceries by which, in later Gothic, it is filled; and this foliation is an essential character of the style. No Gothic is either good or characteristic which is not foliated either in its arches or apertures. Sometimes the bearing arches are foliated, and the ornamentation above composed of figure sculpture; sometimes the bearing arches are plain, and the ornamentation above them is composed of foliated apertures. But the element of foliation _must_ enter somewhere, or the style is imperfect. And our final definition of Gothic will, therefore, stand thus:-- "_Foliated_ Architecture, which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof-mask." § XCIX. And now there is but one point more to be examined, and we have done. [Illustration: Fig. XIX.] Foliation, while it is the most distinctive and peculiar, is also the easiest method of decoration which Gothic architecture possesses; and, although in the disposition of the proportions and forms of foils, the most noble imagination may be shown, yet a builder without imagination at all, or any other faculty of design, can produce some effect upon the mass of his work by merely covering it with foolish foliation. Throw any number of crossing lines together at random, as in Fig. XIX., and fill their squares and oblong openings with quatrefoils and cinquefoils, and you will immediately have what will stand, with most people, for very satisfactory Gothic. The slightest possible acquaintance with existing forms will enable any architect to vary his patterns of foliation with as much ease as he would those of a kaleidoscope, and to produce a building which the present European public will think magnificent, though there may not be, from foundation to coping, one ray of invention, or any other intellectual merit, in the whole mass of it. But floral decoration, and the disposition of mouldings, require some skill and thought; and, if they are to be agreeable at all, must be verily invented, or accurately copied. They cannot be drawn altogether at random, without becoming so commonplace as to involve detection: and although, as I have just said, the noblest imagination may be shown in the dispositions of traceries, there is far more room for its play and power when those traceries are associated with floral or animal ornament; and it is probable, _à priori_, that, wherever true invention exists, such ornament will be employed in profusion. § C. Now, all Gothic may be divided into two vast schools, one early, the other late;[73] of which the former, noble, inventive, and progressive, uses the element of foliation moderately, that of floral and figure sculpture decoration profusely; the latter, ignoble, uninventive, and declining, uses foliation immoderately, floral and figure sculpture subordinately. The two schools touch each other at that instant of momentous change, dwelt upon in the "Seven Lamps," chap, ii., a period later or earlier in different districts, but which may be broadly stated as the middle of the fourteenth century; both styles being, of course, in their highest excellence at the moment when they meet, the one ascending to the point of junction, the one declining from it, but, at first, not in any marked degree, and only showing the characters which justify its being above called, generically, ignoble, as its declension reaches steeper slope. § CI. Of these two great schools, the first uses foliation only in large and simple masses, and covers the minor members, cusps, &c., of that foliation, with various sculpture. The latter decorates foliation itself with minor foliation, and breaks its traceries into endless and lace-like subdivision of tracery. A few instances will explain the difference clearly. Fig. 2, Plate XII., represents half of an eight-foiled aperture from Salisbury; where the element of foliation is employed in the larger disposition of the starry form; but in the decoration of the cusp it has entirely disappeared, and the ornament is floral. [Illustration: Plate XII. LINEAR AND SURFACE GOTHIC.] But in fig. 1, which is part of a fringe round one of the later windows in Rouen Cathedral, the foliation is first carried boldly round the arch, and then each cusp of it divided into other forms of foliation. The two larger canopies of niches below, figs. 5 and 6, are respectively those seen at the flanks of the two uppermost examples of gabled Gothic in Fig. X., p. 213. Those examples were there chosen in order also to illustrate the distinction in the character of ornamentation which we are at present examining; and if the reader will look back to them, and compare their methods of treatment, he will at once be enabled to fix that distinction clearly in his mind. He will observe that in the uppermost the element of foliation is scrupulously confined to the bearing arches of the gable, and of the lateral niches, so that, on any given side of the monument, only three foliated arches are discernible. All the rest of the ornamentation is "bossy sculpture," set on the broad marble surface. On the point of the gable are set the shield and dog-crest of the Scalas, with its bronze wings, as of a dragon, thrown out from it on either side; below, an admirably sculptured oak-tree fills the centre of the field; beneath it is the death of Abel, Abel lying dead upon his face on one side, Cain opposite, looking up to heaven in terror: the border of the arch is formed of various leafage, alternating with the scala shield; and the cusps are each filled by one flower, and two broad flowing leaves. The whole is exquisitely relieved by color; the ground being of pale red Verona marble, and the statues and foliage of white Carrara marble, inlaid. § CII. The figure below it, _b_, represents the southern lateral door of the principal church in Abbeville: the smallness of the scale compelled me to make it somewhat heavier in the lines of its traceries than it is in reality, but the door itself is one of the most exquisite pieces of flamboyant Gothic in the world; and it is interesting to see the shield introduced here, at the point of the gable, in exactly the same manner as in the upper example, and with precisely the same purpose,--to stay the eye in its ascent, and to keep it from being offended by the sharp point of the gable, the reversed angle of the shield being so energetic as completely to balance the upward tendency of the great convergent lines. It will be seen, however, as this example is studied, that its other decorations are altogether different from those of the Veronese tomb; that, here, the whole effect is dependent on mere multiplications of similar lines of tracery, sculpture being hardly introduced except in the seated statue under the central niche, and, formerly, in groups filling the shadowy hollows under the small niches in the archivolt, but broken away in the Revolution. And if now we turn to Plate XII., just passed, and examine the heads of the two lateral niches there given from each of these monuments on a larger scale, the contrast will be yet more apparent. The one from Abbeville (fig. 5), though it contains much floral work of the crisp Northern kind in its finial and crockets, yet depends for all its effect on the various patterns of foliation with which its spaces are filled; and it is so cut through and through that it is hardly stronger than a piece of lace: whereas the pinnacle from Verona depends for its effect on one broad mass of shadow, boldly shaped into the trefoil in its bearing arch; and there is no other trefoil on that side of the niche. All the rest of its decoration is floral, or by almonds and bosses; and its surface of stone is unpierced, and kept in broad light, and the mass of it thick and strong enough to stand for as many more centuries as it has already stood, scatheless, in the open street of Verona. The figures 3 and 4, above each niche, show how the same principles are carried out into the smallest details of the two edifices, 3 being the moulding which borders the gable at Abbeville, and 4, that in the same position at Verona; and as thus in all cases the distinction in their treatment remains the same, the one attracting the eye to broad sculptured _surfaces_, the other to involutions of intricate _lines_, I shall hereafter characterize the two schools, whenever I have occasion to refer to them, the one as Surface-Gothic, the other as Linear-Gothic. § CIII. Now observe: it is not, at present, the question, whether the form of the Veronese niche, and the design of its flower-work, be as good as they might have been; but simply, which of the two architectural principles is the greater and better. And this we cannot hesitate for an instant in deciding. The Veronese Gothic is strong in its masonry, simple in its masses, but perpetual in its variety. The late French Gothic is weak in masonry, broken in mass, and repeats the same idea continually. It is very beautiful, but the Italian Gothic is the nobler style. § CIV. Yet, in saying that the French Gothic repeats one idea, I mean merely that it depends too much upon the foliation of its traceries. The disposition of the traceries themselves is endlessly varied and inventive; and indeed, the mind of the French workman was, perhaps, even richer in fancy than that of the Italian, only he had been taught a less noble style. This is especially to be remembered with respect to the subordination of figure sculpture above noticed as characteristic of the later Gothic. It is not that such sculpture is wanting; on the contrary, it is often worked into richer groups, and carried out with a perfection of execution, far greater than those which adorn the earlier buildings: but, in the early work, it is vigorous, prominent, and essential to the beauty of the whole; in the late work it is enfeebled, and shrouded in the veil of tracery, from which it may often be removed with little harm to the general effect.[74] [Illustration: Fig. XX.] § CV. Now the reader may rest assured that no principle of art is more absolute than this,--that a composition from which anything can be removed without doing mischief is always so far forth inferior. On this ground, therefore, if on no other, there can be no question, for a moment, which of the two schools is the greater; although there are many most noble works in the French traceried Gothic, having a sublimity of their own dependent on their extreme richness and grace of line, and for which we may be most grateful to their builders. And, indeed, the superiority of the Surface-Gothic cannot be completely felt, until we compare it with the more degraded Linear schools, as, for instance, with our own English Perpendicular. The ornaments of the Veronese niche, which we have used for our example, are by no means among the best of their school, yet they will serve our purpose for such a comparison. That of its pinnacle is composed of a single upright flowering plant, of which the stem shoots up through the centres of the leaves, and bears a pendent blossom, somewhat like that of the imperial lily. The leaves are thrown back from the stem with singular grace and freedom, and foreshortened, as if by a skilful painter, in the shallow marble relief. Their arrangement is roughly shown in the little woodcut at the side (Fig. XX.); and if the reader will simply try the experiment for himself,--first, of covering a piece of paper with crossed lines, as if for accounts, and filling all the interstices with any foliation that comes into his head, as in Figure XIX. above; and then, of trying to fill the point of a gable with a piece of leafage like that in Figure XX. above, putting the figure itself aside,--he will presently find that more thought and invention are required to design this single minute pinnacle, than to cover acres of ground with English perpendicular. § CVI. We have now, I believe, obtained a sufficiently accurate knowledge both of the spirit and form of Gothic architecture; but it may, perhaps, be useful to the general reader, if, in conclusion, I set down a few plain and practical rules for determining, in every instance, whether a given building be good Gothic or not, and, if not Gothic, whether its architecture is of a kind which will probably reward the pains of careful examination. § CVII. First. Look if the roof rises in a steep gable, high above the walls. If it does not do this, there is something wrong; the building is not quite pure Gothic, or has been altered. § CVIII. Secondly. Look if the principal windows and doors have pointed arches with gables over them. If not pointed arches, the building is not Gothic; if they have not any gables over them, it is either not pure, or not first-rate. If, however, it has the steep roof, the pointed arch, and gable all united, it is nearly certain to be a Gothic building of a very fine time. § CIX. Thirdly. Look if the arches are cusped, or apertures foliated. If the building has met the first two conditions, it is sure to be foliated somewhere; but, if not everywhere, the parts which are unfoliated are imperfect, unless they are large bearing arches, or small and sharp arches in groups, forming a kind of foliation by their own multiplicity, and relieved by sculpture and rich mouldings. The upper windows, for instance, in the east end of Westminster Abbey are imperfect for want of foliation. If there be no foliation anywhere, the building is assuredly imperfect Gothic. § CX. Fourthly. If the building meets all the first three conditions, look if its arches in general, whether of windows and doors, or of minor ornamentation, are carried on _true shafts with bases and capitals_. If they are, then the building is assuredly of the finest Gothic style. It may still, perhaps, be an imitation, a feeble copy, or a bad example of a noble style; but the manner of it, having met all these four conditions, is assuredly first-rate. If its apertures have not shafts and capitals, look if they are plain openings in the walls, studiously simple, and unmoulded at the sides; as, for instance, the arch in Plate XIX. Vol. I. If so, the building may still be of the finest Gothic, adapted to some domestic or military service. But if the sides of the window be moulded, and yet there are no capitals at the spring of the arch, it is assuredly of an inferior school. This is all that is necessary to determine whether the building be of a fine Gothic style. The next tests to be applied are in order to discover whether it be good architecture or not: for it may be very impure Gothic, and yet very noble architecture; or it may be very pure Gothic, and yet, if a copy, or originally raised by an ungifted builder, very bad architecture. If it belong to any of the great schools of color, its criticism becomes as complicated, and needs as much care, as that of a piece of music, and no general rules for it can be given; but if not-- § CXI. First. See if it looks as if it had been built by strong men; if it has the sort of roughness, and largeness, and nonchalance, mixed in places with the exquisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign-manual of the broad vision, and massy power of men who can see _past_ the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If the building has this character, it is much already in its favor; it will go hard but it proves a noble one. If it has not this, but is altogether accurate, minute, and scrupulous in its workmanship, it must belong to either the very best or the very worst of schools: the very best, in which exquisite design is wrought out with untiring and conscientious care, as in the Giottesque Gothic; or the very worst, in which mechanism has taken the place of design. It is more likely, in general, that it should belong to the worst than the best: so that, on the whole, very accurate workmanship is to be esteemed a bad sign; and if there is nothing remarkable about the building but its precision, it may be passed at once with contempt. § CXII. Secondly. Observe if it be irregular, its different parts fitting themselves to different purposes, no one caring what becomes of them, so that they do their work. If one part always answers accurately to another part, it is sure to be a bad building; and the greater and more conspicuous the irregularities, the greater the chances are that it is a good one. For instance, in the Ducal Palace, of which a rough woodcut is given in Chap. VIII., the general idea is sternly symmetrical; but two windows are lower than the rest of the six; and if the reader will count the arches of the small arcade as far as to the great balcony, he will find it is not in the centre, but set to the right-hand side by the whole width of one of those arches. We may be pretty sure that the building is a good one; none but a master of his craft would have ventured to do this. § CXIII. Thirdly. Observe if all the traceries, capitals, and other ornaments are of perpetually varied design. If not, the work is assuredly bad. § CXIV. Lastly. _Read_ the sculpture. Preparatory to reading it, you will have to discover whether it is legible (and, if legible, it is nearly certain to be worth reading). On a good building, the sculpture is _always_ so set, and on such a scale, that at the ordinary distance from which the edifice is seen, the sculpture shall be thoroughly intelligible and interesting. In order to accomplish this, the uppermost statues will be ten or twelve feet high, and the upper ornamentation will be colossal, increasing in fineness as it descends, till on the foundation it will often be wrought as if for a precious cabinet in a king's chamber; but the spectator will not notice that the upper sculptures are colossal. He will merely feel that he can see them plainly, and make them all out at his ease. And, having ascertained this, let him set himself to read them. Thenceforward the criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the same principles as that of a book; and it must depend on the knowledge, feeling, and not a little on the industry and perseverance of the reader, whether, even in the case of the best works, he either perceive them to be great, or feel them to be entertaining. FOOTNOTES [56] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and in the endeavor to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at the examination of the Renaissance schools. [57] Vide Preface to "Fair Maid of Perth." [58] The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect." In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection, but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the frieze are roughly cut. [59] In the eighth chapter we shall see a remarkable instance of this sacrifice of symmetry to convenience in the arrangement of the windows of the Ducal Palace. [60] I am always afraid to use this word "Composition;" it is so utterly misused in the general parlance respecting art. Nothing is more common than to hear divisions of art into "form, composition, and color," or "light and shade and composition," or "sentiment and composition," or it matters not what else and composition; the speakers in each case attaching a perfectly different meaning to the word, generally an indistinct one, and always a wrong one. Composition is, in plain English, "putting together," and it means the putting together of lines, of forms, of colors, of shades, or of ideas. Painters compose in color, compose in thought, compose in form, and compose in effect: the word being of use merely in order to express a scientific, disciplined, and inventive arrangement of any of these, instead of a merely natural or accidental one. [61] Design is used in this place as expressive of the power to arrange lines and colors nobly. By facts, I mean facts perceived by the eye and mind, not facts accumulated by knowledge. See the chapter on Roman Renaissance (Vol. III. Chap. II.) for this distinction. [62] "Earlier," that is to say, pre-Raphaelite ages. Men of this stamp will praise Claude, and such other comparatively debased artists; but they cannot taste the work of the thirteenth century. [63] Not selfish fear, caused by want of trust in God, or of resolution in the soul. [64] I reserve for another place the full discussion of this interesting subject, which here would have led me too far; but it must be noted, in passing, that this vulgar Purism, which rejects truth, not because it is vicious, but because it is humble, and consists not in choosing what is good, but in disguising what is rough, extends itself into every species of art. The most definite instance of it is the dressing of characters of peasantry in an opera or ballet scene; and the walls of our exhibitions are full of works of art which "exalt nature" in the same way, not by revealing what is great in the heart, but by smoothing what is coarse in the complexion. There is nothing, I believe, so vulgar, so hopeless, so indicative of an irretrievably base mind, as this species of Purism. Of healthy Purism carried to the utmost endurable length in this direction, exalting the heart first, and the features with it, perhaps the most characteristic instance I can give is Stothard's vignette to "Jorasse," in Rogers's Italy; at least it would be so if it could be seen beside a real group of Swiss girls. The poems of Rogers, compared with those of Crabbe, are admirable instances of the healthiest Purism and healthiest Naturalism in poetry. The first great Naturalists of Christian art were Orcagna and Giotto. [65] The reader will understand this in a moment by glancing at Plate XX., the last in this volume, where the series 1 to 12 represents the change in one kind of leaf, from the Byzantine to the perfect Gothic. [66] The best art either represents the facts of its own day, or, if facts of the past, expresses them with accessories of the time in which the work was done. All good art, representing past events, is therefore full of the most frank anachronism, and always _ought_ to be. No painter has any business to be an antiquarian. We do not want his impressions or suppositions respecting things that are past. We want his clear assertions respecting things present. [67] See the account of the meeting at Talla Linns, in 1682, given in the fourth chapter of the "Heart of Midlothian." At length they arrived at the conclusion that "they who owned (or allowed) such names as Monday, Tuesday, January, February, and so forth, served themselves heirs to the same if not greater punishment than had been denounced against the idolaters of old." [68] See the beautiful description of Florence in Elizabeth Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows," which is not only a noble poem, but the only book I have seen which, favoring the Liberal cause in Italy, gives a just account of the incapacities of the modern Italian. [69] Salisbury spire is only a tower with a polygonal gabled roof of stone, and so also the celebrated spires of Caen and Coutances. [70] Or by the shaded portions of Fig. XXIX. Vol. I. [71] The reader is not to suppose that Greek architecture had always, or often, flat ceilings, because I call its lintel the roof proper. He must remember I always use these terms of the first simple arrangements of materials that bridge a space; bringing in the real roof afterwards, if I can. In the case of Greek temples it would be vain to refer their structure to the real roof, for many were hypæthral, and without a roof at all. I am unfortunately more ignorant of Egyptian roofing than even of Arabian, so that I cannot bring this school into the diagram; but the gable appears to have been magnificently used for a bearing roof. Vide Mr. Fergusson's section of the Pyramid of Geezeh, "Principles of Beauty in Art," Plate I., and his expressions of admiration of Egyptian roof masonry, page 201. [72] See 'Athenæum,' March 5th, 1853. [73] Late, and chiefly confined to Northern countries, so that the two schools may be opposed either as Early and Late Gothic, or (in the fourteenth century) as Southern and Northern Gothic. [74] In many of the best French Gothic churches, the groups of figures have been all broken away at the Revolution, without much harm to the picturesqueness, though with grievous loss to the historical value of the architecture: whereas, if from the niche at Verona we were to remove its floral ornaments, and the statue beneath it, nothing would remain but a rude square trefoiled shell, utterly valueless, or even ugly. CHAPTER VII. GOTHIC PALACES. § I. The buildings out of the remnants of which we have endeavored to recover some conception of the appearance of Venice during the Byzantine period, contribute hardly anything at this day to the effect of the streets of the city. They are too few and too much defaced to attract the eye or influence the feelings. The charm which Venice still possesses, and which for the last fifty years has rendered it the favorite haunt of all the painters of picturesque subject, is owing to the effect of the palaces belonging to the period we have now to examine, mingled with those of the Renaissance. This effect is produced in two different ways. The Renaissance palaces are not more picturesque in themselves than the club-houses of Pall Mall; but they become delightful by the contrast of their severity and refinement with the rich and rude confusion of the sea life beneath them, and of their white and solid masonry with the green waves. Remove from beneath them the orange sails of the fishing boats, the black gliding of the gondolas, the cumbered decks and rough crews of the barges of traffic, and the fretfulness of the green water along their foundations, and the Renaissance palaces possess no more interest than those of London or Paris. But the Gothic palaces are picturesque in themselves, and wield over us an independent power. Sea and sky, and every other accessory might be taken away from them, and still they would be beautiful and strange. They are not less striking in the loneliest streets of Padua and Vicenza (where many were built during the period of the Venetian authority in those cities) than in the most crowded thoroughfares of Venice itself; and if they could be transported into the midst of London, they would still not altogether lose their power over the feelings. § II. The best proof of this is in the perpetual attractiveness of all pictures, however poor in skill, which have taken for their subject the principal of these Gothic buildings, the Ducal Palace. In spite of all architectural theories and teachings, the paintings of this building are always felt to be delightful; we cannot be wearied by them, though often sorely tried; but we are not put to the same trial in the case of the palaces of the Renaissance. They are never drawn singly, or as the principal subject, nor can they be. The building which faces the Ducal Palace on the opposite side of the Piazzetta is celebrated among architects, but it is not familiar to our eyes; it is painted only incidentally, for the completion, not the subject, of a Venetian scene; and even the Renaissance arcades of St. Mark's Place, though frequently painted, are always treated as a mere avenue to its Byzantine church and colossal tower. And the Ducal Palace itself owes the peculiar charm which we have hitherto felt, not so much to its greater size as compared with other Gothic buildings, or nobler design (for it never yet has been rightly drawn), as to its comparative isolation. The other Gothic structures are as much injured by the continual juxtaposition of the Renaissance palaces, as the latter are aided by it; they exhaust their own life by breathing it into the Renaissance coldness: but the Ducal Palace stands comparatively alone, and fully expresses the Gothic power. [Illustration: Fig. XXI.] § III. And it is just that it should be so seen, for it is the original of nearly all the rest. It is not the elaborate and more studied developement of a national style, but the great and sudden invention of one man, instantly forming a national style, and becoming the model for the imitation of every architect in Venice for upwards of a century. It was the determination of this one fact which occupied me the greater part of the time I spent in Venice. It had always appeared to me most strange that there should be in no part of the city any incipient or imperfect types of the form of the Ducal Palace; it was difficult to believe that so mighty a building had been the conception of one man, not only in disposition and detail, but in style; and yet impossible, had it been otherwise, but that some early examples of approximate Gothic form must exist. There is not one. The palaces built between the final cessation of the Byzantine style, about 1300, and the date of the Ducal Palace (1320-1350), are all completely distinct in character, so distinct that I at first intended the account of them to form a separate section of this volume; and there is literally _no_ transitional form between them and the perfection of the Ducal Palace. Every Gothic building in Venice which resembles the latter is a copy of it. I do not mean that there was no Gothic in Venice before the Ducal Palace, but that the mode of its application to domestic architecture had not been determined. The real root of the Ducal Palace is the apse of the church of the Frari. The traceries of that apse, though earlier and ruder in workmanship, are nearly the same in mouldings, and precisely the same in treatment (especially in the placing of the lions' heads), as those of the great Ducal Arcade; and the originality of thought in the architect of the Ducal Palace consists in his having adapted those traceries, in a more highly developed and finished form, to civil uses. In the apse of the church they form narrow and tall window lights, somewhat more massive than those of Northern Gothic, but similar in application: the thing to be done was to adapt these traceries to the forms of domestic building necessitated by national usage. The early palaces consisted, as we have seen, of arcades sustaining walls faced with marble, rather broad and long than elevated. This form was kept for the Ducal Palace; but instead of round arches from shaft to shaft, the Frari traceries were substituted, with two essential modifications. Besides being enormously increased in scale and thickness, that they might better bear the superincumbent weight, the quatrefoil, which in the Frari windows is above the arch, as at _a_, Fig. XXI., on previous page, was, in the Ducal Palace, put between the arches, as at _b_; the main reason for this alteration being that the bearing power of the arches, which was now to be trusted with the weight of a wall forty feet high,[75] was thus thrown _between_ the quatrefoils, instead of under them, and thereby applied at far better advantage. And, in the second place, the joints of the masonry were changed. In the Frari (as often also in St. John and St. Paul's) the tracery is formed of two simple cross bars or slabs of stone, pierced into the requisite forms, and separated by a horizontal joint, just on a level with the lowest cusp of the quatrefoils, as seen in Fig. XXI., _a_. But at the Ducal Palace the horizontal joint is in the centre of the quatrefoils, and two others are introduced beneath it at right angles to the run of the mouldings, as seen in Fig. XXI., _b_.[76] The Ducal Palace builder was sternly resolute in carrying out this rule of masonry. In the traceries of the large upper windows, where the cusps are cut through as in the quatrefoil Fig. XXII., the lower cusp is left partly solid, as at _a_, merely that the joint _a b_ may have its right place and direction. [Illustration: Fig. XXII.] § IV. The ascertaining the formation of the Ducal Palace traceries from those of the Frari, and its priority to all other buildings which resemble it in Venice, rewarded me for a great deal of uninteresting labor in the examination of mouldings and other minor features of the Gothic palaces, in which alone the internal evidence of their date was to be discovered, there being no historical records whatever respecting them. But the accumulation of details on which the complete proof of the fact depends, could not either be brought within the compass of this volume, or be made in anywise interesting to the general reader. I shall therefore, without involving myself in any discussion, give a brief account of the developement of Gothic design in Venice, as I believe it to have taken place. I shall possibly be able at some future period so to compress the evidence on which my conviction rests, as to render it intelligible to the public, while, in the meantime, some of the more essential points of it are thrown together in the Appendix, and in the history of the Ducal Palace given in the next chapter. § V. According, then, to the statement just made, the Gothic architecture of Venice is divided into two great periods: one, in which, while various irregular Gothic tendencies are exhibited, no consistent type of domestic building was developed; the other, in which a formed and consistent school of domestic architecture resulted from the direct imitation of the great design of the Ducal Palace. We must deal with these two periods separately; the first of them being that which has been often above alluded to, under the name of the transitional period. We shall consider in succession the general form, the windows, doors, balconies, and parapets, of the Gothic palaces belonging to each of these periods. § VI. First. General Form. We have seen that the wrecks of the Byzantine palaces consisted merely of upper and lower arcades surrounding cortiles; the disposition of the interiors being now entirely changed, and their original condition untraceable. The entrances to these early buildings are, for the most part, merely large circular arches, the central features of their continuous arcades: they do not present us with definitely separated windows and doors. But a great change takes place in the Gothic period. These long arcades break, as it were, into pieces, and coagulate into central and lateral windows, and small arched doors, pierced in great surfaces of brick wall. The sea story of a Byzantine palace consists of seven, nine, or more arches in a continuous line; but the sea story of a Gothic palace consists of a door and one or two windows on each side, as in a modern house. The first story of a Byzantine palace consists of, perhaps, eighteen or twenty arches, reaching from one side of the house to the other; the first story of a Gothic palace consists of a window of four or five lights in the centre, and one or two single windows on each side. The germ, however, of the Gothic arrangement is already found in the Byzantine, where, as we have seen, the arcades, though continuous, are always composed of a central mass and two wings of smaller arches. The central group becomes the door or the middle light of the Gothic palace, and the wings break into its lateral windows. § VII. But the most essential difference in the entire arrangement, is the loss of the unity of conception which, regulated Byzantine composition. How subtle the sense of gradation which disposed the magnitudes of the early palaces we have seen already, but I have not hitherto noticed that the Byzantine work was centralized in its ornamentation as much as in its proportions. Not only were the lateral capitals and archivolts kept comparatively plain, while the central ones were sculptured, but the midmost piece of sculpture, whatever it might be,--capital, inlaid circle, or architrave,--was always made superior to the rest. In the Fondaco de' Turchi, for instance, the midmost capital of the upper arcade is the key to the whole group, larger and more studied than all the rest; and the lateral ones are so disposed as to answer each other on the opposite sides, thus, A being put for the central one, F E B C +A+ C B E F, a sudden break of the system being admitted in one unique capital at the extremity of the series. § VIII. Now, long after the Byzantine arcades had been contracted into windows, this system of centralization was more or less maintained; and in all the early groups of windows of five lights the midmost capital is different from the two on each side of it, which always correspond. So strictly is this the case, that whenever the capitals of any group of windows are not centralized in this manner, but are either entirely like each other, or all different, so as to show no correspondence, it is a certain proof, even if no other should exist, of the comparative lateness of the building. In every group of windows in Venice which I was able to examine, and which were centralized in this manner, I found evidence in their mouldings of their being _anterior_ to the Ducal Palace. That palace did away with the subtle proportion and centralization of the Byzantine. Its arches are of equal width, and its capitals are all different and ungrouped; some, indeed, are larger than the rest, but this is not for the sake of proportion, only for particular service when more weight is to be borne. But, among other evidences of the early date of the sea façade of that building, is one subtle and delicate concession to the system of centralization which is finally closed. The capitals of the upper arcade are, as I said, all different, and show no arranged correspondence with each other; but _the central one is of pure Parian marble_, while all the others are of Istrian stone. The bold decoration of the central window and balcony above, in the Ducal Palace, is only a peculiar expression of the principality of the central window, which was characteristic of the Gothic period not less than of the Byzantine. In the private palaces the central windows become of importance by their number of lights; in the Ducal Palace such an arrangement was, for various reasons, inconvenient, and the central window, which, so far from being more important than the others, is every way inferior in design to the two at the eastern extremity of the façade, was nevertheless made the leading feature by its noble canopy and balcony. § IX. Such being the principal differences in the general conception of the Byzantine and Gothic palaces, the particulars in the treatment of the latter are easily stated. The marble facings are gradually removed from the walls; and the bare brick either stands forth confessed boldly, contrasted with the marble shafts and archivolts of the windows, or it is covered with stucco painted in fresco, of which more hereafter. The Ducal Palace, as in all other respects, is an exact expression of the middle point in the change. It still retains marble facing; but instead of being disposed in slabs as in the Byzantine times, it is applied in solid bricks or blocks of marble, 11½ inches long, by 6 inches high. The stories of the Gothic palaces are divided by string courses, considerably bolder in projection than those of the Byzantines, and more highly decorated; and while the angles of the Byzantine palaces are quite sharp and pure, those of the Gothic palaces are wrought into a chamfer, filled by small twisted shafts which have capitals under the cornice of each story. § X. These capitals are little observed in the general effect, but the shafts are of essential importance in giving an aspect of firmness to the angle; a point of peculiar necessity in Venice, where, owning to the various convolutions of the canals, the angles of the palaces are not only frequent, but often necessarily _acute_, every inch of ground being valuable. In other cities, the appearance as well as the assurance of stability can always be secured by the use of massy stones, as in the fortress palaces of Florence; but it must have been always desirable at Venice to build as lightly as possible, in consequence of the comparative insecurity of the foundations. The early palaces were, as we have seen, perfect models of grace and lightness, and the Gothic, which followed, though much more massive in the style of its details, never admitted more weight into its structure than was absolutely necessary for its strength, Hence, every Gothic palace has the appearance of enclosing as many rooms, and attaining as much strength, as is possible, with a minimum quantity of brick and stone. The traceries of the windows, which in Northern Gothic only support the _glass_, at Venice support the _building_; and thus the greater ponderousness of the _traceries_ is only an indication of the greater lightness of the _structure_. Hence, when the Renaissance architects give their opinions as to the stability of the Ducal Palace when injured by fire, one of them, Christofore Sorte, says, that he thinks it by no means laudable that the "Serenissimo Dominio" of the Venetian senate "should live in a palace built in the air."[77] And again, Andrea della Valle says, that[78] "the wall of the saloon is thicker by fifteen inches than the shafts below it, projecting nine inches within, and six without, _standing as if in the air_, above the piazza;"[79] and yet this wall is so nobly and strongly knit together, that Rusconi, though himself altogether devoted to the Renaissance school, declares that the fire which had destroyed the whole interior of the palace had done this wall no more harm than the bite of a fly to an elephant. "Troveremo che el danno che ha patito queste muraglie sarà conforme alla beccatura d' una mosca fatta ad un elefante."[80] § XI. And so in all the other palaces built at the time, consummate strength was joined with a lightness of form and sparingness of material which rendered it eminently desirable that the eye should be convinced, by every possible expedient, of the stability of the building; and these twisted pillars at the angles are not among the least important means adopted for this purpose, for they seem to bind the walls together as a cable binds a chest. In the Ducal Palace, where they are carried up the angle of an unbroken wall forty feet high, they are divided into portions, gradually diminishing in length towards the top, by circular bands or rings, set with the nail-head or dog-tooth ornament, vigorously projecting, and giving the column nearly the aspect of the stalk of a reed; its diminishing proportions being exactly arranged as they are by Nature in all jointed plants. At the top of the palace, like the wheat-stalk branching into the ear of corn, it expands into a small niche with a pointed canopy, which joins with the fantastic parapet in at once relieving, and yet making more notable by its contrast, the weight of massy wall below. The arrangement is seen in the woodcut, Chap. VIII.; the angle shafts being slightly exaggerated in thickness, together with their joints, as otherwise they would hardly have been intelligible on so small a scale. The Ducal Palace is peculiar in these niches at the angles, which throughout the rest of the city appear on churches only; but some may perhaps have been removed by restorations, together with the parapets with which they were associated. [Illustration: Fig. XXIII.] § XII. Of these roof parapets of Venice, it has been already noticed that the examples which remain differ from those of all other cities of Italy in their purely ornamental character. (Chap. I. § XII.) They are not battlements, properly so-called; still less machicolated cornices, such as crown the fortress palaces of the great mainland nobles; but merely adaptations of the light and crown-like ornaments which crest the walls of the Arabian mosque. Nor are even these generally used on the main walls of the palaces themselves. They occur on the Ducal Palace, on the Casa d' Oro, and, some years back, were still standing on the Fondaco de' Turchi; but the majority of the Gothic Palaces have the plain dog-tooth cornice under the tiled projecting roof (Vol. I. Chap. XIV. § IV.); and the highly decorated parapet is employed only on the tops of walls which surround courts or gardens, and which, without such decoration, would have been utterly devoid of interest. Fig. XXIII. represents, at _b_, part of a parapet of this kind which surrounds the courtyard of a palace in the Calle del Bagatin, between San G. Grisostomo, and San Canzian: the whole is of brick, and the mouldings peculiarly sharp and varied; the height of each separate pinnacle being about four feet, crowning a wall twelve or fifteen feet high: a piece of the moulding which surrounds the quatrefoil is given larger in the figure at _a_, together with the top of the small arch below, having the common Venetian dentil round it, and a delicate little moulding with dog-tooth ornament to carry the flanks of the arch. The moulding of the brick is throughout sharp and beautiful in the highest degree. One of the most curious points about it is the careless way in which the curved outlines of the pinnacles are cut into the plain brickwork, with no regard whatever to the places of its joints. The weather of course wears the bricks at the exposed joints, and jags the outline a little; but the work has stood, evidently from the fourteenth century, without sustaining much harm. § XIII. This parapet may be taken as a general type of the _wall_-parapet of Venice in the Gothic period; some being much less decorated, and others much more richly: the most beautiful in Venice is in the little Calle, opening on the Campo and Traghetto San Samuele; it has delicately carved devices in stone let into each pinnacle. The parapets of the palaces themselves were lighter and more fantastic, consisting of narrow lance-like spires of marble, set between the broader pinnacles, which were in such cases generally carved into the form of a fleur-de-lis: the French word gives the reader the best idea of the form, though he must remember that this use of the lily for the parapets has nothing to do with France, but is the carrying out of the Byzantine system of floral ornamentation, which introduced the outline of the lily everywhere; so that I have found it convenient to call its most beautiful capitals, the _lily_ capitals of St. Mark's. But the occurrence of this flower, more distinctly than usual, on the battlements of the Ducal Palace, was the cause of some curious political speculation in the year 1511, when a piece of one of these battlements was shaken down by the great earthquake of that year. Sanuto notes in his diary that "the piece that fell was just that which bore the lily," and records sundry sinister anticipations, founded on this important omen, of impending danger to the adverse French power. As there happens, in the Ducal Palace, to be a joint in the pinnacles which exactly separates the "part which bears the lily" from that which is fastened to the cornice, it is no wonder that the omen proved fallacious. § XIV. The decorations of the parapet were completed by attaching gilded balls of metal to the extremities of the leaves of the lilies, and of the intermediate spires, so as literally to form for the wall a diadem of silver touched upon the points with gold; the image being rendered still more distinct in the Casa d' Oro, by variation in the height of the pinnacles, the highest being in the centre of the front. Very few of these light roof parapets now remain; they are, of course, the part of the building which dilapidation first renders it necessary to remove. That of the Ducal Palace, however, though often, I doubt not, restored, retains much of the ancient form, and is exceedingly beautiful, though it has no appearance from below of being intended for protection, but serves only, by its extreme lightness, to relieve the eye when wearied by the breadth of wall beneath; it is nevertheless a most serviceable defence for any person walking along the edge of the roof. It has some appearance of insecurity, owing to the entire independence of the pieces of stone composing it, which, though of course fastened by iron, look as if they stood balanced on the cornice like the pillars of Stonehenge; but I have never heard of its having been disturbed by anything short of an earthquake; and, as we have seen, even the great earthquake of 1511, though it much injured the Gorne, or battlements at the Casa d' Oro, and threw down several statues at St. Mark's,[81] only shook one lily from the brow of the Ducal Palace. [Illustration: Fig. XXIV.] § XV. Although, however, these light and fantastic forms appear to have been universal in the battlements meant primarily for decoration, there was another condition of parapet altogether constructed for the protection of persons walking on the roofs or in the galleries of the churches, and from these more substantial and simple defences, the BALCONIES, to which the Gothic palaces owe half of their picturesque effect, were immediately derived; the balcony being, in fact, nothing more than a portion of such roof parapets arranged round a projecting window-sill sustained on brackets, as in the central example of the annexed figure. We must, therefore, examine these defensive balustrades and the derivative balconies consecutively. § XVI. Obviously, a parapet with an unbroken edge, upon which the arm may rest (a condition above noticed, Vol. I. p. 157., as essential to the proper performance of its duty), can be constructed only in one of three ways. It must either be (1) of solid stone, decorated, if at all, by mere surface sculpture, as in the uppermost example in Fig. XXIV., above; or (2) pierced into some kind of tracery, as in the second; or (3) composed of small pillars carrying a level bar of stone, as in the third; this last condition being, in a diseased and swollen form, familiar to us in the balustrades of our bridges.[82] § XVII. (1.) Of these three kinds, the first, which is employed for the pulpit at Torcello and in the nave of St. Mark's, whence the uppermost example is taken, is beautiful when sculpture so rich can be employed upon it; but it is liable to objection, first, because it is heavy and unlike a parapet when seen from below; and, secondly, because it is inconvenient in use. The position of leaning over a balcony becomes cramped and painful if long continued, unless the foot can be sometimes advanced _beneath_ the ledge on which the arm leans, i. e. between the balusters or traceries, which of course cannot be done in the solid parapet: it is also more agreeable to be able to see partially down through the penetrations, than to be obliged to lean far over the edge. The solid parapet was rarely used in Venice after the earlier ages. § XVIII. (2.) The Traceried Parapet is chiefly used in the Gothic of the North, from which the above example, in the Casa Contarini Fasan, is directly derived. It is, when well designed, the richest and most beautiful of all forms, and many of the best buildings of France and Germany are dependent for half their effect upon it; its only fault being a slight tendency to fantasticism. It was never frankly received in Venice, where the architects had unfortunately returned to the Renaissance forms before the flamboyant parapets were fully developed in the North; but, in the early stage of the Renaissance, a kind of pierced parapet was employed, founded on the old Byzantine interwoven traceries; that is to say, the slab of stone was pierced here and there with holes, and then an interwoven pattern traced on the surface round them. The difference in system will be understood in a moment by comparing the uppermost example in the figure at the side, which is a Northern parapet from the Cathedral of Abbeville, with the lowest, from a secret chamber in the Casa Foscari. It will be seen that the Venetian one is far more simple and severe, yet singularly piquant, the black penetrations telling sharply on the plain broad surface. Far inferior in beauty, it has yet one point of superiority to that of Abbeville, that it proclaims itself more definitely to be stone. The other has rather the look of lace. [Illustration: Fig. XXV.] The intermediate figure is a panel of the main balcony of the Ducal Palace, and is introduced here as being an exactly transitional condition between the Northern and Venetian types. It was built when the German Gothic workmen were exercising considerable influence over those in Venice, and there was some chance of the Northern parapet introducing itself. It actually did so, as above shown, in the Casa Contarini Fasan, but was for the most part stoutly resisted and kept at bay by the Byzantine form, the lowest in the last figure, until that form itself was displaced by the common, vulgar, Renaissance baluster; a grievous loss, for the severe pierced type was capable of a variety as endless as the fantasticism of our own Anglo-Saxon manuscript ornamentation. § XIX. (3.) The Baluster Parapet. Long before the idea of tracery had suggested itself to the minds either of Venetian or any other architects, it had, of course, been necessary to provide protection for galleries, edges of roofs, &c.; and the most natural form in which such protection could be obtained was that of a horizontal bar or hand-rail, sustained upon short shafts or balusters, as in Fig. XXIV. p. 243. This form was, above all others, likely to be adopted where variations of Greek or Roman pillared architecture were universal in the larger masses of the building; the parapet became itself a small series of columns, with capitals and architraves; and whether the cross-bar laid upon them should be simply horizontal, and in contact with their capitals, or sustained by mimic arches, round or pointed, depended entirely on the system adopted in the rest of the work. Where the large arches were round, the small balustrade arches would be so likewise; where those were pointed, these would become so in sympathy with them. § XX. Unfortunately, wherever a balcony or parapet is used in an inhabited house, it is, of course, the part of the structure which first suffers from dilapidation, as well as that of which the security is most anxiously cared for. The main pillars of a casement may stand for centuries unshaken under the steady weight of the superincumbent wall, but the cement and various insetting of the balconies are sure to be disturbed by the irregular pressures and impulses of the persons leaning on them; while, whatever extremity of decay may be allowed in other parts of the building, the balcony, as soon as it seems dangerous, will assuredly be removed or restored. The reader will not, if he considers this, be surprised to hear that, among all the remnants of the Venetian domestic architecture of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, there is not a single instance of the original balconies being preserved. The palace mentioned below (§ XXXII.), in the piazza of the Rialto, has, indeed, solid slabs of stone between its shafts, but I cannot be certain that they are of the same period; if they are, this is the only existing example of the form of protection employed for casements during this transitional period, and it cannot be reasoned from as being the general one. § XXI. It is only, therefore, in the churches of Torcello, Murano, and St. Mark's, that the ancient forms of gallery defence may still be seen. At Murano, between the pillars of the apse, a beautiful balustrade is employed, of which a single arch is given in the Plate opposite, fig. 4, with its section, fig. 5.; and at St. Mark's, a noble round-arched parapet, with small pillars of precisely the same form as those of Murano, but shorter, and bound at the angles into groups of four by the serpentine knot so often occurring in Lombardic work, runs round the whole exterior of the lower story of the church, and round great part of its interior galleries, alternating with the more fantastic form, fig. 6. In domestic architecture, the remains of the original balconies begin to occur first in the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the round arch had entirely disappeared; and the parapet consists, almost without exception, of a series of small trefoiled arches, cut boldly through a bar of stone which rests upon the shafts, at first very simple, and generally adorned with a cross at the point of each arch, as in fig. 7 in the last Plate, which gives the angle of such a balcony on a large scale; but soon enriched into the beautiful conditions, figs. 2 and 3, and sustained on brackets formed of lions' heads, as seen in the central example of their entire effect, fig. 1. [Illustration: Plate XIII. BALCONIES.] § XXII. In later periods, the round arches return; then the interwoven Byzantine form; and finally, as above noticed, the common English or classical balustrade; of which, however, exquisite examples, for grace and variety of outline, are found designed in the backgrounds of Paul Veronese. I could willingly follow out this subject fully, but it is impossible to do so without leaving Venice; for the chief city of Italy, as far as regards the strict effect of the balcony, is Verona; and if we were once to lose ourselves among the sweet shadows of its lonely streets, where the falling branches of the flowers stream like fountains through the pierced traceries of the marble, there is no saying whether we might soon be able to return to our immediate work. Yet before leaving the subject of the balcony[83] altogether, I must allude, for a moment, to the peculiar treatment of the iron-work out of which it is frequently wrought on the mainland of Italy--never in Venice. The iron is always wrought, not cast, beaten first into thin leaves, and then cut either into strips or bands, two or three inches broad, which are bent into various curves to form the sides of the balcony, or else into actual leafage, sweeping and free, like the leaves of nature, with which it is richly decorated. There is no end to the variety of design, no limit to the lightness and flow of the forms, which the workman can produce out of iron treated in this manner; and it is very nearly as impossible for any metal-work, so handled, to be poor, or ignoble in effect, as it is for cast metal-work to be otherwise. § XXIII. We have next to examine those features of the Gothic palaces in which the transitions of their architecture are most distinctly traceable; namely, the arches of the windows and doors. It has already been repeatedly stated, that the Gothic style had formed itself completely on the mainland, while the Byzantines still retained their influence at Venice; and that the history of early Venetian Gothic is therefore not that of a school taking new forms independently of external influence, but the history of the struggle of the Byzantine manner with a contemporary style quite as perfectly organized as itself, and far more energetic. And this struggle is exhibited partly in the gradual change of the Byzantine architecture into other forms, and partly by isolated examples of genuine Gothic taken prisoner, as it were, in the contest; or rather entangled among the enemy's forces, and maintaining their ground till their friends came up to sustain them. Let us first follow the steps of the gradual change, and then give some brief account of the various advanced guards and forlorn hopes of the Gothic attacking force. [Illustration: Plate XIV. THE ORDERS OF VENETIAN ARCHES.] § XXIV. The uppermost shaded series of six forms of windows in Plate XIV., opposite, represents, at a glance, the modifications of this feature in Venetian palaces, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Fig. 1 is Byzantine, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; figs. 2 and 3 transitional, of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries; figs. 4 and 5 pure Gothic, of the thirteenth, fourteenth and early fifteenth; and fig. 6. late Gothic, of the fifteenth century, distinguished by its added finial. Fig. 4 is the longest-lived of all these forms: it occurs first in the thirteenth century; and, sustaining modifications only in its mouldings, is found also in the middle of the fifteenth. I shall call these the six orders[84] of Venetian windows, and when I speak of a window of the fourth, second, or sixth order, the reader will only have to refer to the numerals at the top of Plate XIV. Then the series below shows the principal forms found in each period, belonging to each several order; except 1 _b_ to 1 _c_, and the two lower series, numbered 7 to 16, which are types of Venetian doors. § XXV. We shall now be able, without any difficulty, to follow the course of transition, beginning with the first order, 1 and 1 _a_, in the second row. The horse-shoe arch, 1 _b_, is the door-head commonly associated with it, and the other three in the same row occur in St. Mark's exclusively; 1 _c_ being used in the nave, in order to give a greater appearance of lightness to its great lateral arcades, which at first the spectator supposes to be round-arched, but he is struck by a peculiar grace and elasticity in the curves for which he is unable to account, until he ascends into the galleries whence the true form of the arch is discernible. The other two--1 _d_, from the door of the southern transept, and 1 _c_, from that of the treasury,--sufficiently represent a group of fantastic forms derived from the Arabs, and of which the exquisite decoration is one of the most important features in St. Mark's. Their form is indeed permitted merely to obtain more fantasy in the curves of this decoration.[85] The reader can see in a moment, that, as pieces of masonry, or bearing arches, they are infirm or useless, and therefore never could be employed in any building in which dignity of structure was the primal object. It is just because structure is _not_ the primal object in St. Mark's, because it has no severe weights to bear, and much loveliness of marble and sculpture to exhibit, that they are therein allowable. They are of course, like the rest of the building, built of brick and faced with marble, and their inner masonry, which must be very ingenious, is therefore not discernible. They have settled a little, as might have been expected, and the consequence is, that there is in every one of them, except the upright arch of the treasury, a small fissure across the marble of the flanks. [Illustration: Fig. XXVI.] § XXVI. Though, however, the Venetian builders adopted these Arabian forms of arch where grace of ornamentation was their only purpose, they saw that such arrangements were unfit for ordinary work; and there is no instance, I believe, in Venice, of their having used any of them for a dwelling-house in the truly Byzantine period. But so soon as the Gothic influence began to be felt, and the pointed arch forced itself upon them, their first concession to its attack was the adoption, in preference to the round arch, of the form 3 _a_ (Plate XIV., above); the point of the Gothic arch forcing itself up, as it were, through the top of the semicircle which it was soon to supersede. § XXVII. The woodcut above, Fig. XXVI., represents the door and two of the lateral windows of a house in the Corte del Remer, facing the Grand Canal, in the parish of the Apostoli. It is remarkable as having its great entrance on the first floor, attained by a bold flight of steps, sustained on pure _pointed_ arches wrought in brick. I cannot tell if these arches are contemporary with the building, though it must always have had an access of the kind. The rest of its aspect is Byzantine, except only that the rich sculptures of its archivolt show in combats of animals, beneath the soffit, a beginning of the Gothic fire and energy. The moulding of its plinth is of a Gothic profile,[86] and the windows are pointed, not with a reversed curve, but in a pure straight gable, very curiously contrasted with the delicate bending of the pieces of marble armor cut for the shoulders of each arch. There is a two-lighted window, such as that seen in the vignette, on each side of the door, sustained in the centre by a basket-worked Byzantine capital: the mode of covering the brick archivolt with marble, both in the windows and doorway, is precisely like that of the true Byzantine palaces. [Illustration: Fig. XXVII.] § XXVIII. But as, even on a small scale, these arches are weak, if executed in brickwork, the appearance of this sharp point in the outline was rapidly accompanied by a parallel change in the method of building; and instead of constructing the arch of brick and coating it with marble, the builders formed it of three pieces of hewn stone inserted in the wall, as in Fig. XXVII. Not, however, at first in this perfect form. The endeavor to reconcile the grace of the reversed arch with the strength of the round one, and still to build in brick, ended at first in conditions such as that represented at _a_, Fig. XXVIII., which is a window in the Calle del Pistor, close to the church of the Apostoli, a very interesting and perfect example. Here, observe, the poor round arch is still kept to do all the hard work, and the fantastic ogee takes its pleasure above, in the form of a moulding merely, a chain of bricks cast to the required curve. And this condition, translated into stone-work, becomes a window of the second order (_b_5, Fig. XXVIII., or 2, in Plate XIV.); a form perfectly strong and serviceable, and of immense importance in the transitional architecture of Venice. [Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.] § XXIX. At _b_, Fig. XXVIII., as above, is given one of the earliest and simplest occurrences of the second order window (in a double group, exactly like the brick transitional form _a_), from a most important fragment of a defaced house in the Salizzada San Liò, close to the Merceria. It is associated with a fine _pointed_ brick arch, indisputably of contemporary work, towards the close of the thirteenth century, and it is shown to be later than the previous example, _a_, by the greater developement of its mouldings. The archivolt profile, indeed, is the simpler of the two, not having the sub-arch; as in the brick example; but the other mouldings are far more developed. Fig. XXIX. shows at 1 the arch profiles, at 2 the capital profiles, at 3 the basic-plinth profiles, of each window, _a_ and _b_. [Illustration: Fig. XXIX.] § XXX. But the second order window soon attained nobler developement. At once simple, graceful, and strong, it was received into all the architecture of the period, and there is hardly a street in Venice which does not exhibit some important remains of palaces built with this form of window in many stories, and in numerous groups. The most extensive and perfect is one upon the Grand Canal in the parish of the Apostoli, near the Rialto, covered with rich decoration, in the Byzantine manner, between the windows of its first story; but not completely characteristic of the transitional period, because still retaining the dentil in the arch mouldings, while the transitional houses all have the simple roll. Of the fully established type, one of the most extensive and perfect examples is in a court in the Calle di Rimedio, close to the Ponte dell' Angelo, near St. Mark's Place. Another looks out upon a small square garden, one of the few visible in the centre of Venice, close by the Corte Salviati (the latter being known to every cicerone as that from which Bianca Capello fled). But, on the whole, the most interesting to the traveller is that of which I have given a vignette opposite. But for this range of windows, the little piazza SS. Apostoli would be one of the least picturesque in Venice; to those, however, who seek it on foot, it becomes geographically interesting from the extraordinary involution of the alleys leading to it from the Rialto. In Venice, the straight road is usually by water, and the long road by land; but the difference of distance appears, in this case, altogether inexplicable. Twenty or thirty strokes of the oar will bring a gondola from the foot of the Rialto to that of the Ponte SS. Apostoli; but the unwise pedestrian, who has not noticed the white clue beneath his feet,[87] may think himself fortunate, if, after a quarter of an hour's wandering among the houses behind the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, he finds himself anywhere in the neighborhood of the point he seeks. With much patience, however, and modest following of the guidance of the marble thread, he will at last emerge over a steep bridge into the open space of the Piazza, rendered cheerful in autumn by a perpetual market of pomegranates, and purple gourds, like enormous black figs; while the canal, at its extremity, is half-blocked up by barges laden with vast baskets of grapes as black as charcoal, thatched over with their own leaves. Looking back, on the other side of this canal, he will see the windows represented in Plate XV., which, with the arcade of pointed arches beneath them, are the remains of the palace once belonging to the unhappy doge, Marino Faliero. The balcony is, of course, modern, and the series of windows has been of greater extent, once terminated by a pilaster on the left hand, as well as on the right; but the terminal arches have been walled up. What remains, however, is enough, with its sculptured birds and dragons, to give the reader a very distinct idea of the second order window in its perfect form. The details of the capitals, and other minor portions, if these interest him, he will find given in the final Appendix. [Illustration: Plate XV. WINDOWS OF THE SECOND ORDER. CASA FALIER.] § XXXI. The advance of the Gothic spirit was, for a few years, checked by this compromise between the round and pointed arch. The truce, however, was at last broken, in consequence of the discovery that the keystone would do duty quite as well in the form _b_ as in the form _a_, Fig. XXX., and the substitution of _b_, at the head of the arch, gives us the window of the third order, 3 _b_, 3 _d_, and 3 _e_, in Plate XIV. The forms 3 _a_ and 3 _c_ are exceptional; the first occurring, as we have seen, in the Corte del Remer, and in one other palace on the Grand Canal, close to the Church of St. Eustachio; the second only, as far as I know, in one house on the Canna-Reggio, belonging to the true Gothic period. The other three examples, 3 _b_, 3 _d_, 3 _e_, are generally characteristic of the third order; and it will be observed that they differ not merely in mouldings, but in slope of sides, and this latter difference is by far the most material. For in the example 3 _b_ there is hardly any true Gothic expression; it is still the pure Byzantine arch, with a point thrust up through it: but the moment the flanks slope, as in 3 _d_, the Gothic expression is definite, and the entire school of the architecture is changed. [Illustration: Fig. XXX.] This slope of the flanks occurs, first, in so slight a degree as to be hardly perceptible, and gradually increases until, reaching the form 3 _e_ at the close of the thirteenth century, the window is perfectly prepared for a transition into the fifth order. § XXXII. The most perfect examples of the third order in Venice are the windows of the ruined palace of Marco Querini, the father-in-law of Bajamonte Tiepolo, in consequence of whose conspiracy against the government this palace was ordered to be razed in 1310; but it was only partially ruined, and was afterwards used as the common shambles. The Venetians have now made a poultry market of the lower story (the shambles being removed to a suburb), and a prison of the upper, though it is one of the most important and interesting monuments in the city, and especially valuable as giving us a secure date for the central form of these very rare transitional windows. For, as it was the palace of the father-in-law of Bajamonte, and the latter was old enough to assume the leadership of a political faction in 1280,[88] the date of the accession to the throne of the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, we are secure of this palace having been built not later than the middle of the thirteenth century. Another example, less refined in workmanship, but, if possible, still more interesting, owing to the variety of its capitals, remains in the little piazza opening to the Rialto, on the St. Mark's side of the Grand Canal. The house faces the bridge, and its second story has been built in the thirteenth century, above a still earlier Byzantine cornice remaining, or perhaps introduced from some other ruined edifice, in the walls of the first floor. The windows of the second story are of pure third order; four of them are represented above, with their flanking pilaster, and capitals varying constantly in the form of the flower or leaf introduced between their volutes. [Illustration: Fig. XXXI.] § XXXIII. Another most important example exists in the lower story of the Casa Sagredo, on the Grand Canal, remarkable as having the early upright form (3 _b_, Plate XIV.) with a somewhat late moulding. Many others occur in the fragmentary ruins in the streets: but the two boldest conditions which I found in Venice are those of the Chapter-House of the Frari, in which the Doge Francesco Dandolo was buried circa 1339; and those of the flank of the Ducal Palace itself absolutely corresponding with those of the Frari, and therefore of inestimable value in determining the date of the palace. Of these more hereafter. [Illustration: Plate XVI. WINDOWS OF THE FOURTH ORDER.] [Illustration: Fig. XXXII.] § XXXIV. Contemporarily with these windows of the second and third orders, those of the fourth (4 _a_ and 4 _b_, in Plate XIV.) occur, at first in pairs, and with simple mouldings, precisely similar to those of the second order, but much more rare, as in the example at the side, Fig. XXXII., from the Salizada San Liò; and then, enriching their mouldings as shown in the continuous series 4 _c_, 4 _d_, of Plate XIV., associate themselves with the fifth order windows of the perfect Gothic period. There is hardly a palace in Venice without some example, either early or late, of these fourth order windows; but the Plate opposite (XVI.) represents one of their purest groups at the close of the thirteenth century, from a house on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Church of the Scalzi. I have drawn it from the side, in order that the great depth of the arches may be seen, and the clear detaching of the shafts from the sheets of glass behind. The latter, as well as the balcony, are comparatively modern; but there is no doubt that if glass were used in the old window, it was set behind the shafts, at the same depth. The entire modification of the interiors of all the Venetian houses by recent work has however prevented me from entering into any inquiry as to the manner in which the ancient glazing was attached to the interiors of the windows. The fourth order window is found in great richness and beauty at Verona, down to the latest Gothic times, as well as in the earliest, being then more frequent than any other form. It occurs, on a grand scale, in the old palace of the Scaligers, and profusely throughout the streets of the city. The series 4 _a_ to 4 _e_, Plate XIV., shows its most ordinary conditions and changes of arch-line: 4 _a_ and 4 _b_ are the early Venetian forms; 4 _c_, later, is general at Venice; 4 _d_, the best and most piquant condition, owing to its fantastic and bold projection of cusp, is common to Venice and Verona; 4 _e_ is early Veronese. § XXXV. The reader will see at once, in descending to the fifth row in Plate XIV., representing the windows of the fifth order, that they are nothing more than a combination of the third and fourth. By this union they become the nearest approximation to a perfect Gothic form which occurs characteristically at Venice; and we shall therefore pause on the threshold of this final change, to glance back upon, and gather together, those fragments of purer pointed architecture which were above noticed as the forlorn hopes of the Gothic assault. [Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.] [Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.] The little Campiello San Rocco is entered by a sotto-portico behind the church of the Frari. Looking back, the upper traceries of the magnificent apse are seen towering above the irregular roofs and chimneys of the little square; and our lost Prout was enabled to bring the whole subject into an exquisitely picturesque composition, by the fortunate occurrence of four quaint trefoiled windows in one of the houses on the right. Those trefoils are among the most ancient efforts of Gothic art in Venice. I have given a rude sketch of them in Fig. XXXIII. They are built entirely of brick, except the central shaft and capital, which are of Istrian stone. Their structure is the simplest possible; the trefoils being cut out of the radiating bricks which form the pointed arch, and the edge or upper limit of that pointed arch indicated by a roll moulding formed of cast bricks, in length of about a foot, and ground at the bottom so as to meet in one, as in Fig. XXXIV. The capital of the shaft is one of the earliest transitional forms;[89] and observe the curious following out, even in this minor instance, of the great law of centralization above explained with respect to the Byzantine palaces. There is a central shaft, a pilaster on each side, and then the wall. The pilaster has, by way of capital, a square flat brick, projecting a little, and cast, at the edge, into the form of the first type of all cornices (_a_, p. 63, Vol. I.; the reader ought to glance back at this passage, if he has forgotten it); and the shafts and pilasters all stand, without any added bases, on a projecting plinth of the same simple profile. These windows have been much defaced; but I have not the least doubt that their plinths are the original ones: and the whole group is one of the most valuable in Venice, as showing the way in which the humblest houses, in the noble times, followed out the system of the larger palaces, as far as they could, in their rude materials. It is not often that the dwellings of the lower orders are preserved to us from the thirteenth century. [Illustration: Plate XVII. WINDOWS OF THE EARLY GOTHIC PALACES.] § XXXVI. In the two upper lines of the opposite Plate (XVII.), I have arranged some of the more delicate and finished examples of Gothic work of this period. Of these, fig. 4 is taken from the outer arcade of San Fermo of Verona, to show the condition of mainland architecture, from which all these Venetian types were borrowed. This arch, together with the rest of the arcade, is wrought in fine stone, with a band of inlaid red brick, the whole chiselled and fitted with exquisite precision, all Venetian work being coarse in comparison. Throughout the streets of Verona, arches and windows of the thirteenth century are of continual occurrence, wrought, in this manner, with brick and stone; sometimes the brick alternating with the stones of the arch, as in the finished example given in Plate XIX. of the first volume, and there selected in preference to other examples of archivolt decoration, because furnishing a complete type of the master school from which the Venetian Gothic is derived. § XXXVII. The arch from St. Fermo, however, fig. 4, Plate XVII., corresponds more closely, in its entire simplicity, with the little windows from the Campiello San Rocco; and with the type 5 set beside it in Plate XVII., from a very ancient house in the Corte del Forno at Santa Marina (all in brick); while the upper examples, 1 and 2, show the use of the flat but highly enriched architrave, for the connection of which with Byzantine work see the final Appendix, Vol. III., under the head "Archivolt." These windows (figs. 1 and 2, Plate XVII.) are from a narrow alley in a part of Venice now exclusively inhabited by the lower orders, close to the arsenal;[90] they are entirely wrought in brick, with exquisite mouldings, not cast, but _moulded in the clay by the hand_, so that there is not one piece of the arch like another; the pilasters and shafts being, as usual, of stone. § XXXVIII. And here let me pause for a moment, to note what one should have thought was well enough known in England,--yet I could not perhaps touch upon anything less considered,--the real use of brick. Our fields of good clay were never given us to be made into oblong morsels of one size. They were given us that we might play with them, and that men who could not handle a chisel, might knead out of them some expression of human thought. In the ancient architecture of the clay districts of Italy, every possible adaptation of the material is found exemplified: from the coarsest and most brittle kinds, used in the mass of the structure, to bricks for arches and plinths, cast in the most perfect curves, and of almost every size, strength, and hardness; and moulded bricks, wrought into flower-work and tracery as fine as raised patterns upon china. And, just as many of the finest works of the Italian sculptors were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts of their architects are expressed in brick, or in the softer material of terra cotta; and if this were so in Italy, where there is not one city from whose towers we may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine, everlasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more ought it to be so among the fields of England! I believe that the best academy for her architects, for some half century to come, would be the brick-field; for of this they may rest assured, that till they know how to use clay, they will never know how to use marble. § XXXIX. And now observe, as we pass from fig. 2 to fig. 3, and from fig. 5 to fig. 6, in Plate XVII., a most interesting step of transition. As we saw above, § XIV., the round arch yielding to the Gothic, by allowing a point to emerge at its summit, so here we have the Gothic conceding something to the form which had been assumed by the round; and itself slightly altering its outline so as to meet the condescension of the round arch half way. At page 137 of the first volume, I have drawn to scale one of these minute concessions of the pointed arch, granted at Verona out of pure courtesy to the Venetian forms, by one of the purest Gothic ornaments in the world; and the small window here, fig. 6, is a similar example at Venice itself, from the Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini, where the reversed curve at the head of the pointed arch is just perceptible and no more. The other examples, figs. 3 and 7, the first from a small but very noble house in the Merceria, the second from an isolated palace at Murano, show more advanced conditions of the reversed curve, which, though still employing the broad decorated architrave of the earlier examples, are in all other respects prepared for the transition to the simple window of the fifth order. § XL. The next example, the uppermost of the three lower series in Plate XVII., shows this order in its early purity; associated with intermediate decorations like those of the Byzantines, from a palace once belonging to the Erizzo family, near the Arsenal. The ornaments appear to be actually of Greek workmanship (except, perhaps, the two birds over the central arch, which are bolder, and more free in treatment), and built into the Gothic fronts; showing, however, the early date of the whole by the manner of their insertion, corresponding exactly with that employed in the Byzantine palaces, and by the covering of the intermediate spaces with sheets of marble, which, however, instead of being laid over the entire wall, are now confined to the immediate spaces between and above the windows, and are bounded by a dentil moulding. In the example below this the Byzantine ornamentation has vanished, and the fifth order window is seen in its generic form, as commonly employed throughout the early Gothic period. Such arcades are of perpetual occurrence; the one in the Plate was taken from a small palace on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Casa Foscari. One point in it deserves especial notice, the increased size of the lateral window as compared with the rest: a circumstance which occurs in a great number of the groups of windows belonging to this period, and for which I have never been able to account. § XLI. Both these figures have been most carefully engraved; and the uppermost will give the reader a perfectly faithful idea of the general effect of the Byzantine sculptures, and of the varied alabaster among which they are inlaid, as well as of the manner in which these pieces are set together, every joint having been drawn on the spot: and the transition from the embroidered and silvery richness of this architecture, in which the Byzantine ornamentation was associated with the Gothic form of arch, to the simplicity of the pure Gothic arcade as seen in the lower figure, is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of Venetian art. If it had occurred suddenly, and at an earlier period, it might have been traced partly to the hatred of the Greeks, consequent upon the treachery of Manuel Comnenus,[91] and the fatal war to which it led; but the change takes place gradually, and not till a much later period. I hoped to have been able to make some careful inquiries into the habits of domestic life of the Venetians before and after the dissolution of their friendly relations with Constantinople; but the labor necessary for the execution of my more immediate task has entirely prevented this: and I must be content to lay the succession of the architectural styles plainly before the reader, and leave the collateral questions to the investigation of others; merely noting this one assured fact, that _the root of all that is greatest in Christian art is struck in the thirteenth century_; that the temper of that century is the life-blood of all manly work thenceforward in Europe; and I suppose that one of its peculiar characteristics was elsewhere, as assuredly in Florence, a singular simplicity in domestic life: "I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone; And, with no artful coloring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Verli and of Vecchio, well content With unrobed jerkin, and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax.... One waked to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lulled the parents' infancy; Another, with her maidens, drawing off The tresses from the distaff, lectured them Old tales of Troy, and Fesole, and Rome."[92] § XLII. Such, then, is the simple fact at Venice, that from the beginning of the thirteenth century there is found a singular increase of simplicity in all architectural ornamentation; the rich Byzantine capitals giving place to a pure and severe type hereafter to be described,[93] and the rich sculptures vanishing from the walls, nothing but the marble facing remaining. One of the most interesting examples of this transitional state is a palace at San Severo, just behind the Casa Zorzi. This latter is a Renaissance building, utterly worthless in every respect, but known to the Venetian Ciceroni; and by inquiring for it, and passing a little beyond it down the Fondamenta San Severo, the traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a palace which the Ciceroni never notice, but which is unique in Venice for the magnificence of the veined purple alabasters with which it has been decorated, and for the manly simplicity of the foliage of its capitals. Except in these, it has no sculpture whatever, and its effect is dependent entirely on color. Disks of green serpentine are inlaid on the field of purple alabaster; and the pillars are alternately of red marble with white capitals, and of white marble with red capitals. Its windows appear of the third order; and the back of the palace, in a small and most picturesque court, shows a group of windows which are, perhaps, the most superb examples of that order in Venice. But the windows to the front have, I think, been of the fifth order, and their cusps have been cut away. § XLIII. When the Gothic feeling began more decidedly to establish itself, it evidently became a question with the Venetian builders, how the intervals between the arches, now left blank by the abandonment of the Byzantine sculptures, should be enriched in accordance with the principles of the new school. Two most important examples are left of the experiments made at this period: one at the Ponte del Forner, at San Cassano, a noble house in which the spandrils of the windows are filled by the emblems of the four Evangelists, sculptured in deep relief, and touching the edges of the arches with their expanded wings; the other now known as the Palazzo Cicogna, near the church of San Sebastiano, in the quarter called "of the Archangel Raphael," in which a large space of wall above the windows is occupied by an intricate but rude tracery of involved quatrefoils. Of both these palaces I purposed to give drawings in my folio work; but I shall probably be saved the trouble by the publication of the beautiful calotypes lately made at Venice of both; and it is unnecessary to represent them here, as they are unique in Venetian architecture, with the single exception of an unimportant imitation of the first of them in a little by-street close to the Campo Sta. Maria Formosa. For the question as to the mode of decorating the interval between the arches was suddenly and irrevocably determined by the builder of the Ducal Palace, who, as we have seen, taking his first idea from the traceries of the Frari, and arranging those traceries as best fitted his own purpose, designed the great arcade (the lowest of the three in Plate XVII.), which thenceforward became the established model for every work of importance in Venice. The palaces built on this model, however, most of them not till the beginning of the fifteenth century, belong properly to the time of the Renaissance; and what little we have to note respecting them may be more clearly stated in connexion with other facts characteristic of that period. § XLIV. As the examples in Plate XVII. are necessarily confined to the upper parts of the windows, I have given in the Plate opposite (XVIII[94]) examples of the fifth order window, both in its earliest and in its fully developed form, completed from base to keystone. The upper example is a beautiful group from a small house, never of any size or pretension, and now inhabited only by the poor, in the Campiello della Strope, close to the Church of San Giacomo de Lorio. It is remarkable for its excessive purity of curve, and is of very early date, its mouldings being simpler than usual.[95] The lower example is from the second story of a palace belonging to the Priuli family, near San Lorenzo, and shows one feature to which our attention has not hitherto been directed, namely, the penetration of the cusp, leaving only a silver thread of stone traced on the darkness of the window. I need not say that, in this condition, the cusp ceases to have any constructive use, and is merely decorative, but often exceedingly beautiful. The steps of transition from the early solid cusp to this slender thread are noticed in the final Appendix, under the head "Tracery Bars;" the commencement of the change being in the thinning of the stone, which is not cut through until it is thoroughly emaciated. Generally speaking, the condition in which the cusp is found is a useful test of age, when compared with other points; the more solid it is, the more ancient: but the massive form is often found associated with the perforated, as late as the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the Ducal Palace, the lower or bearing traceries have the solid cusp, and the upper traceries of the windows, which are merely decorative., have the perforated cusp, both with exquisite effect. [Illustration: Plate XVIII. WINDOWS OF THE FIFTH ORDER.] § XLV. The smaller balconies between the great shafts in the lower example in Plate XVIII. are original and characteristic: not so the lateral one of the detached window, which has been restored; but by imagining it to be like that represented in fig. 1, Plate XIII., above, which is a perfect window of the finest time of the fifth order, the reader will be enabled to form a complete idea of the external appearance of the principal apartments in the house of a noble of Venice, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. § XLVI. Whether noble, or merchant, or, as frequently happened, both, every Venetian appears, at this time, to have raised his palace or dwelling-house upon one type. Under every condition of importance, through every variation of size, the forms and mode of decoration of all the features were universally alike; not servilely alike, but fraternally; not with the sameness of coins cast from one mould, but with the likeness of the members of one family. No fragment of the period is preserved, in which the windows, be they few or many, a group of three or an arcade of thirty, have not the noble cusped arch of the fifth order. And they are especially to be noted by us at this day, because these refined and richly ornamented forms were used in the habitations of a nation as laborious, as practical, as brave, and as prudent as ourselves; and they were built at a time when that nation was struggling with calamities and changes threatening its existence almost every hour. And, farther, they are interesting because perfectly applicable to modern habitation. The refinement of domestic life appears to have been far advanced in Venice from her earliest days; and the remains of her Gothic palaces are, at this day, the most delightful residences in the city, having undergone no change in external form, and probably having been rather injured than rendered more convenient by the modifications which poverty and Renaissance taste, contending with the ravages of time, have introduced in the interiors. So that, in Venice, and the cities grouped around it, Vicenza, Padua, and Verona, the traveller may ascertain, by actual experience, the effect which would be produced upon the comfort or luxury of daily life by the revival of the Gothic school of architecture. He can still stand upon the marble balcony in the soft summer air, and feel its smooth surface warm from the noontide as he leans on it in the twilight; he can still see the strong sweep of the unruined traceries drawn on the deep serenity of the starry sky, and watch the fantastic shadows of the clustered arches shorten in the moonlight on the chequered floor; or he may close the casements fitted to their unshaken shafts against such wintry winds as would have made an English house vibrate to its foundation, and, in either case, compare their influence on his daily home feeling with that of the square openings in his English wall. § XLVII. And let him be assured, if he find there is more to be enjoyed in the Gothic window, there is also more to be trusted. It is the best and strongest building, as it is the most beautiful. I am not now speaking of the particular form of Venetian Gothic, but of the general strength of the pointed arch as opposed to that of the level lintel of the square window; and I plead for the introduction of the Gothic form into our domestic architecture, not merely because it is lovely, but because it is the only form of faithful, strong, enduring, and honorable building, in such materials as come daily to our hands. By increase of scale and cost, it is possible to build, in any style, what will last for ages; but only in the Gothic is it possible to give security and dignity to work wrought with imperfect means and materials. And I trust that there will come a time when the English people may see the folly of building basely and insecurely. It is common with those architects against whose practice my writings have hitherto been directed, to call them merely theoretical and imaginative. I answer, that there is not a single principle asserted either in the "Seven Lamps" or here, but is of the simplest, sternest veracity, and the easiest practicability; that buildings, raised as I would have them, would stand unshaken for a thousand years; and the buildings raised by the architects who oppose them will not stand for one hundred and fifty, they sometimes do not stand for an hour. There is hardly a week passes without some catastrophe brought about by the base principles of modern building; some vaultless floor that drops the staggering crowd through the jagged rents of its rotten timbers; some baseless bridge that is washed away by the first wave of a summer flood; some fungous wall of nascent rottenness that a thunder-shower soaks down with its workmen into a heap of slime and death.[96] These we hear of, day by day: yet these indicate but the thousandth part of the evil. The portion of the national income sacrificed in mere bad building, in the perpetual repairs, and swift condemnation and pulling down of ill-built shells of houses, passes all calculation. And the weight of the penalty is not yet felt; it will tell upon our children some fifty years hence, when the cheap work, and contract work, and stucco and plaster work, and bad iron work, and all the other expedients of modern rivalry, vanity, and dishonesty, begin to show themselves for what they are. [Illustration: Fig. XXXV.] § XLVIII. Indeed, dishonesty and false economy will no more build safely in Gothic than in any other style: but of all forms which we could possibly employ, to be framed hastily and out of bad materials, the common square window is the worst; and its level head of brickwork (_a_, Fig. XXXV.) is the weakest way of covering a space. Indeed, in the hastily heaped shells of modern houses, there may be seen often even a worse manner of placing the bricks, as at _b_, supporting them by a bit of lath till the mortar dries; but even when worked with the utmost care, and having every brick tapered into the form of a voussoir and accurately fitted, I have seen such a window-head give way, and a wide fissure torn through all the brickwork above it, two years after it was built; while the pointed arch of the Veronese Gothic, wrought in brick also, occurs at every corner of the streets of the city, untouched since the thirteenth century, and without a single flaw. § XLIX. Neither can the objection, so often raised against the pointed arch, that it will not admit the convenient adjustment of modern sashes and glass, hold for an instant. There is not the smallest necessity, because the arch is pointed, that the aperture should be so. The work of the arch is to sustain the building above; when this is once done securely, the pointed head of it may be filled in any way we choose. In the best cathedral doors it is always filled by a shield of solid stone; in many early windows of the best Gothic it is filled in the same manner, the introduced slab of stone becoming a field for rich decoration; and there is not the smallest reason why lancet windows, used in bold groups, with each pointed arch filled by a sculptured tympanum, should not allow as much light to enter, and in as convenient a way, as the most luxuriously glazed square windows of our brick houses. Give the groups of associated lights bold gabled canopies; charge the gables with sculpture and color; and instead of the base and almost useless Greek portico, letting the rain and wind enter it at will, build the steeply vaulted and completely sheltered Gothic porch; and on all these fields for rich decoration let the common workman carve what he pleases, to the best of his power, and we may have a school of domestic architecture in the nineteenth century, which will make our children grateful to us, and proud of us, till the thirtieth. § L. There remains only one important feature to be examined, the entrance gate or door. We have already observed that the one seems to pass into the other, a sign of increased love of privacy rather than of increased humility, as the Gothic palaces assume their perfect form. In the Byzantine palaces the entrances appear always to have been rather great gates than doors, magnificent semicircular arches opening to the water, and surrounded by rich sculpture in the archivolts. One of these entrances is seen in the small woodcut above, Fig. XXV., and another has been given carefully in my folio work: their sculpture is generally of grotesque animals scattered among leafage, without any definite meaning; but the great outer entrance of St. Mark's, which appears to have been completed some time after the rest of the fabric, differs from all others in presenting a series of subjects altogether Gothic in feeling, selection, and vitality of execution, and which show the occult entrance of the Gothic spirit before it had yet succeeded in effecting any modification of the Byzantine forms. These sculptures represent the months of the year employed in the avocations usually attributed to them throughout the whole compass of the middle ages, in Northern architecture and manuscript calendars, and at last exquisitely versified by Spenser. For the sake of the traveller in Venice, who should examine this archivolt carefully, I shall enumerate these sculptures in their order, noting such parallel representations as I remember in other work. § LI. There are four successive archivolts, one within the other, forming the great central entrance of St. Mark's. The first is a magnificent external arch, formed of obscure figures mingled among masses of leafage, as in ordinary Byzantine work; within this there is a hemispherical dome, covered with modern mosaic; and at the back of this recess the other three archivolts follow consecutively, two sculptured, one plain; the one with which we are concerned is the outermost. It is carved both on its front and under-surface or soffit; on the front are seventeen female figures bearing scrolls, from which the legends are unfortunately effaced. These figures were once gilded on a dark blue ground, as may still be seen in Gentile Bellini's picture of St. Mark's in the Accademia delle Belle Arti. The sculptures of the months are on the under-surface, beginning at the bottom on the left hand of the spectator as he enters, and following in succession round the archivolt; separated, however, into two groups, at its centre, by a beautiful figure of the youthful Christ, sitting in the midst of a slightly hollowed sphere covered with stars to represent the firmament, and with the attendant sun and moon, set one on each side to rule over the day and over the night. § LII. The months are personified as follows:-- 1. JANUARY, _Carrying home a noble tree on his shoulders, the leafage of which nods forwards, and falls nearly to his feet._ Superbly cut. This is a rare representation of him. More frequently he is represented as the two-headed Janus, sitting at a table, drinking at one mouth and eating at the other. Sometimes as an old man, warming his feet at a fire, and drinking from a bowl; though this type is generally reserved for February. Spenser, however, gives the same symbol as that on St. Mark's: "Numbd with holding all the day An hatchet keene, with which he felled wood." His sign, Aquarius, is obscurely indicated in the archivolt by some wavy lines representing water, unless the figure has been broken away. 2. FEBRUARY. _Sitting in a carved chair, warming his bare feet at a blazing fire._ Generally, when he is thus represented, there is a pot hung over the fire, from the top of the chimney. Sometimes he is pruning trees, as in Spenser: "Yet had he by his side His plough and harnesse fit to till the ground, And tooles to prune the trees." Not unfrequently, in the calendars, this month is represented by a female figure carrying candles, in honor of the Purification of the Virgin. His sign, Pisces, is prominently carved above him. 3. MARCH. Here, as almost always in Italy, _a warrior_: the Mars of the Latins being of course, in mediæval work, made representative of the military power of the place and period; and thus, at Venice, having the winged Lion painted upon his shield. In Northern work, however, I think March is commonly employed in pruning trees; or, at least, he is so when that occupation is left free for him by February's being engaged with the ceremonies of Candlemas. Sometimes, also, he is reaping a low and scattered kind of grain; and by Spenser, who exactly marks the junction of mediæval and classical feeling, his military and agricultural functions are united, while also, in the Latin manner, he is made the first of the months. "First sturdy March, with brows full sternly bent, And armed strongly, rode upon a Ram, The same which over Hellespontus swam; Yet in his hand a spade he also bent, And in a bag all sorts of seeds ysame,[97] Which on the earth he strowed as he went." His sign, the Ram, is very superbly carved above him in the archivolt. 4. APRIL. Here, _carrying a sheep upon his shoulder_. A rare representation of him. In Northern work he is almost universally gathering flowers, or holding them triumphantly in each hand. The Spenserian mingling of this mediæval image with that of his being wet with showers, and wanton with love, by turning his zodiacal sign, Taurus, into the bull of Europa, is altogether exquisite. "Upon a Bull he rode, the same which led Europa floting through the Argolick fluds: His horns were gilden all with golden studs, And garnished with garlonds goodly dight Of all the fairest flowres and freshest buds Which th' earth brings forth; and _wet he seemed in sight With waves, through which he waded for his love's delight_." 5. MAY _is seated, while two young maidens crown him with flowers._ A very unusual representation, even in Italy; where, as in the North, he is almost always riding out hunting or hawking, sometimes playing on a musical instrument. In Spenser, this month is personified as "the fayrest mayd on ground," borne on the shoulders of the Twins. In this archivolt there are only two heads to represent the zodiacal sign. The summer and autumnal months are always represented in a series of agricultural occupations, which, of course, vary with the locality in which they occur; but generally in their order only. Thus, if June is mowing, July is reaping; if July is mowing, August is reaping; and so on. I shall give a parallel view of some of these varieties presently; but, meantime, we had better follow the St Mark's series, as it is peculiar in some respects. 6. JUNE. _Reaping._ The corn and sickle sculptured with singular care and precision, in bold relief, and the zodiacal sign, the Crab, above, also worked with great spirit. Spenser puts plough irons into his hand. Sometimes he is sheep-shearing; and, in English and northern French manuscripts, carrying a kind of fagot or barrel, of the meaning of which I am not certain. 7. JULY. _Mowing._ A very interesting piece of sculpture, owing to the care with which the flowers are wrought out among the long grass. I do not remember ever finding July but either reaping or mowing. Spenser works him hard, and puts him to both labors: "Behinde his backe a sithe, and by his side Under his belt he bore a sickle circling wide." 8. AUGUST. Peculiarly represented in this archivolt, _sitting in a chair, with his head upon his hand, as if asleep; the Virgin_ (the zodiacal sign) _above him, lifting up her hand_. This appears to be a peculiarly Italian version of the proper employment of August. In Northern countries he is generally threshing, or gathering grapes. Spenser merely clothes him with gold, and makes him lead forth "the righteous Virgin, which of old Lived here on earth, and plenty made abound." 9. SEPTEMBER. _Bearing home grapes in a basket._ Almost always sowing, in Northern work. By Spenser, with his usual exquisite ingenuity, employed in gathering in the general harvest, and _portioning it out with the Scales_, his zodiacal sign. 10. OCTOBER. _Wearing a conical hat, and digging busily with a long spade._ In Northern work he is sometimes a vintager, sometimes beating the acorns out of an oak to feed swine. When September is vintaging, October is generally sowing. Spenser employs him in the harvest both of vine and olive. 11. NOVEMBER. _Seems to be catching small birds in a net._ I do not remember him so employed elsewhere. He is nearly always killing pigs; sometimes beating the oak for them; with Spenser, fatting them. 12. DECEMBER. _Killing swine._ It is hardly ever that this employment is not given to one or other of the terminal months of the year. If not so engaged, December is usually putting new loaves into the oven; sometimes killing oxen. Spenser properly makes him feasting and drinking instead of January. § LIII. On the next page I have given a parallel view of the employment of the months from some Northern manuscripts, in order that they may be more conveniently compared with the sculptures of St. Mark's, in their expression of the varieties of climate and agricultural system. Observe that the letter (f.) in some of the columns, opposite the month of May, means that he has a falcon on his fist; being, in those cases, represented as riding out, in high exultation, on a caparisoned white horse. A series nearly similar to that of St. Mark's occurs on the door of the Cathedral of Lucca, and on that of the Baptistery of Pisa; in which, however, if I recollect rightly, February is fishing, and May has something resembling an umbrella in his hand, instead of a hawk. But, in all cases, the figures are treated with the peculiar spirit of the Gothic sculptors; and this archivolt is the first expression of that spirit which is to be found in Venice. SECOND PERIOD +---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | | | MS. French. | MS. French. | MS. French. | | | St. Mark's. | Late 13th | Late 13th | Late 13th | | | | Century | Century | Century | |---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ | | | | | | |January |Carrying wood.|Janus feasting.|Janus feasting.|Drinking and | | | | | | stirring fire.| | | | | | | |February |Warming feet. |Warming feet. |Warming feet. |Pruning. | | | | | | | |March |Going to war. |Pruning. |Pruning. |Striking | | | | | | with axe. | | | | | | | |April |Carrying |Gathering |Gathering |Gathering | | | sheep. | flowers. | flowers. | flowers. | | | | | | | |May |Crowned with |Riding (f.). |Riding (f.). |Playing | | | flowers. | | | violin. | | | | | | | |June |Reaping. |Mowing. |Mowing. |Gathering large| | | | | | red flowers. | | | | | | | |July |Mowing. |Reaping. |Reaping. |Mowing. | | | | | | | |August |Asleep. |Threshing. |Gathering |Reaping. | | | | | grapes. | | | | | | | | |September|Carrying |Sowing. |Sowing. |Drinking wine. | | | grapes. | | | | | | | | | | |October |Digging. |Gathering |Beating oak. |Sowing. | | | | grapes. | | | | | | | | | |November |Catching |Beating oak. |Killing swine. |Killing swine. | | | birds. | | | | | | | | | | |December |Killing swine.|Killing swine. |Baking. |Killing oxen. | +---------+--------------+---------------+---------------+---------------+ +---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------+ | | MS. French. | MS. English. | MS. Flemish. | | |Early 14th Century.|Early 15th Century.| 15th Century. | |---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------| | | | | | |January |Warming feet. | Janus feasting. |Feasting | | | | | | | | | | | |February |Bearing candles. | Warming feet. |Warming hands. | | | | | | |March |Pruning. | Carrying candles. |Reaping. | | | | | | |April |Gathering flowers. | Pruning. |Gathering flowers.| | | | | | |May |Riding (f.). | Riding (f.). |Riding with lady | | | | | on pillion. | | | | | | |June |Carrying (fagots?) | Carrying fagots. |Sheep-shearing. | | | | | | | | | | | |July |Mowing. | Mowing. |Mowing. | | | | | | |August |Reaping. | Reaping. |Reaping. | | | | | | |September|Threshing. | Threshing. |Sowing. | | | | | | |October |Sowing. | Sowing. |Beating oak. | | | | | | |November |Killing swine. | Killing swine. |Pressing (grapes?)| | | | | | |December |Baking. | Baking. |Killing swine. | +---------+-------------------+-------------------+------------------+ § LIV. In the private palaces, the entrances soon admitted some concession to the Gothic form also. They pass through nearly the same conditions of change as the windows, with these three differences: first, that no arches of the fantastic fourth order occur in any doorways; secondly, that the pure pointed arch occurs earlier, and much oftener, in doorways than in window-heads; lastly, that the entrance itself, if small, is nearly always square-headed in the earliest examples, without any arch above, but afterwards the arch is thrown across above the lintel. The interval between the two, or tympanum, is filled with sculpture, or closed by iron bars, with sometimes a projecting gable, to form a porch, thrown over the whole, as in the perfect example, 7 _a_, Plate XIV., above. The other examples in the two lower lines, 6 and 7, of that Plate are each characteristic of an enormous number of doors, variously decorated, from the thirteenth to the close of the fifteenth century. The particulars of their mouldings are given in the final Appendix. § LV. It was useless, on the small scale of this Plate, to attempt any delineation of the richer sculptures with which the arches are filled; so that I have chosen for it the simplest examples I could find of the forms to be illustrated: but, in all the more important instances, the door-head is charged either with delicate ornaments and inlaid patterns in variously colored brick, or with sculptures, consisting always of the shield or crest of the family, protected by an angel. Of these more perfect doorways I have given three examples carefully, in my folio work; but I must repeat here one part of the account of their subjects given in its text, for the convenience of those to whom the larger work may not be accessible. § LVI. "In the earlier ages, all agree thus far, that the name of the family is told, and together with it there is always an intimation that they have placed their defence and their prosperity in God's hands; frequently accompanied with some general expression of benediction to the person passing over the threshold. This is the general theory of an old Venetian doorway;--the theory of modern doorways remains to be explained: it may be studied to advantage in our rows of new-built houses, or rather of new-built house, changeless for miles together, from which, to each inhabitant, we allot his proper quantity of windows, and a Doric portico. The Venetian carried out his theory very simply. In the centre of the archivolt we find almost invariably, in the older work, the hand between the sun and moon in the attitude of blessing, expressing the general power and presence of God, the source of light. On the tympanum is the shield of the family. Venetian heraldry requires no beasts for supporters, but usually prefers angels, neither the supporters nor crests forming any necessary part of Venetian bearings. Sometimes, however, human figures, or grotesques, are substituted; but, in that case, an angel is almost always introduced above the shield, bearing a globe in his left hand, and therefore clearly intended for the 'Angel of the Lord,' or, as it is expressed elsewhere, the 'Angel of His Presence.' Where elaborate sculpture of this kind is inadmissible, the shield is merely represented as suspended by a leather thong; and a cross is introduced above the archivolt. The Renaissance architects perceived the irrationality of all this, cut away both crosses and angels, and substituted heads of satyrs, which were the proper presiding deities of Venice in the Renaissance periods, and which in our own domestic institutions, we have ever since, with much piety and sagacity, retained." § LVII. The habit of employing some religious symbol, or writing some religious legend, over the door of the house, does not entirely disappear until far into the period of the Renaissance. The words "Peace be to this house" occur on one side of a Veronese gateway, with the appropriate and veracious inscription S.P.Q.R., on a Roman standard, on the other; and "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," is written on one of the doorways of a building added at the flank of the Casa Barbarigo, in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It seems to be only modern Protestantism which is entirely ashamed of _all_ symbols and words that appear in anywise like a confession of faith. § LVIII. This peculiar feeling is well worthy of attentive analysis. It indeed, in most cases, hardly deserves the name of a feeling; for the meaningless doorway is merely an ignorant copy of heathen models: but yet, if it were at this moment proposed to any of us, by our architects, to remove the grinning head of a satyr, or other classical or Palladian ornament, from the keystone of the door, and to substitute for it a cross, and an inscription testifying our faith, I believe that most persons would shrink from the proposal with an obscure and yet overwhelming sense that things would be sometimes done, and thought, within the house which would make the inscription on its gate a base hypocrisy. And if so, let us look to it, whether that strong reluctance to utter a definite religious profession, which so many of us feel, and which, not very carefully examining into its dim nature, we conclude to be modesty, or fear of hypocrisy, or other such form of amiableness, be not, in very deed, neither less nor more than Infidelity; whether Peter's "I know not the man" be not the sum and substance of all these misgivings and hesitations; and whether the shamefacedness which we attribute to sincerity and reverence, be not such shamefacedness as may at last put us among those of whom the Son of Man shall be ashamed. § LIX. Such are the principal circumstances to be noted in the external form and details of the Gothic palaces; of their interior arrangements there is little left unaltered. The gateways which we have been examining almost universally lead, in the earlier palaces, into a long interior court, round which the mass of the palace is built; and in which its first story is reached by a superb external staircase, sustained on four or five pointed arches gradually increasing as they ascend, both in height and span,--this change in their size being, so far as I remember, peculiar to Venice, and visibly a consequence of the habitual admission of arches of different sizes in the Byzantine façades. These staircases are protected by exquisitely carved parapets, like those of the outer balconies, with lions or grotesque heads set on the angles, and with true projecting balconies on their landing-places. In the centre of the court there is always a marble well; and these wells furnish some of the most superb examples of Venetian sculpture. I am aware only of one remaining from the Byzantine period; it is octagonal, and treated like the richest of our Norman fonts: but the Gothic wells of every date, from the thirteenth century downwards, are innumerable, and full of beauty, though their form is little varied; they being, in almost every case, treated like colossal capitals of pillars, with foliage at the angles, and the shield of the family upon their sides. § LX. The interior apartments always consist of one noble hall on the first story, often on the second also, extending across the entire depth of the house, and lighted in front by the principal groups of its windows, while smaller apartments open from it on either side. The ceilings, where they remain untouched, are of bold horizontal beams, richly carved and gilded; but few of these are left from the true Gothic times, the Venetian interiors having, in almost every case, been remodelled by the Renaissance architects. This change, _however_, for once, we cannot regret, as the walls and ceilings, when so altered, were covered with the noblest works of Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret; nor the interior walls only, but, as before noticed, often the exteriors also. Of the color decorations of the Gothic exteriors I have, therefore, at present taken no notice, as it will be more convenient to embrace this subject in one general view of the systems of coloring of the Venetian palaces, when we arrive at the period of its richest developement.[98] The details, also, of most interest, respecting the forms and transitional decoration of their capitals, will be given in the final Appendix to the next volume, where we shall be able to include in our inquiry the whole extent of the Gothic period; and it remains for us, therefore, at present, only to review the history, fix the date, and note the most important particulars in the structure of the building which at once consummates and embodies the entire system of the Gothic architecture of Venice,--the DUCAL PALACE. FOOTNOTES [75] 38 ft. 2 in., without its cornice, which is 10 inches deep, and sustains pinnacles of stone 7 feet high. I was enabled to get the measures by a scaffolding erected in 1851 to repair the front. [76] I believe the necessary upper joint is vertical, through the uppermost lobe of the quatrefoil, as in the figure; but I have lost my memorandum of this joint. [77] "Dice, che non lauda per alcun modo di metter questo Serenissimo Dominio in tanto pericolo d' habitar un palazzo fabricato in aria."--_Pareri di XV. Architetti, con illustrazioni dell' Abbate Giuseppe Cadorin_ (Venice, 1838), p. 104. [78] "Il muro della sala è più grosso delle colonne sott' esso piedi uno e onze tre, et posto in modo che onze sei sta come in aere sopra la piazza, et onze nove dentro."--_Pareri di XV. Architetti_, p. 47. [79] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. iii. § 7. [80] Pareri, above quoted, p. 21. [81] It is a curious proof how completely, even so early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Venetians had lost the habit of _reading_ the religious art of their ancient churches, that Sanuto, describing this injury, says, that "four of the _Kings_ in marble fell from their pinnacles above the front, at St. Mark's church;" and presently afterwards corrects his mistake, and apologises for it thus: "These were four saints, St. Constantine, St. Demetrius, St. George, and St. Theodore, all Greek saints. _They look like Kings_." Observe the perfect, because unintentional, praise given to the old sculptor. I quote the passage from the translation of these precious diaries of Sanuto, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, a translation which I hope will some day become a standard book in English libraries. [82] I am not speaking here of iron balconies. See below, § XXII. [83] A Some details respecting the mechanical structure of the Venetian balcony are given in the final Appendix. [84] I found it convenient in my own memoranda to express them simply as fourths, seconds, &c. But "order" is an excellent word for any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases, mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that it be not understood in any wise to imply preëminence or isolation in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; and so also we may rationally speak, for the sake of intelligibility, of the five orders of Greek pillars, provided only we understand that there may be five millions of orders as good or better, of pillars _not_ Greek. [85] Or in their own curves; as, on a small scale, in the balustrade fig. 6, Plate XIII., above. [86] For all details of this kind, the reader is referred to the final Appendix in Vol. III. [87] Two threads of white marble, each about an inch wide, inlaid in the dark grey pavement, indicate the road to the Rialto from the farthest extremity of the north quarter of Venice. The peasant or traveller, lost in the intricacy of the pathway in this portion of the city, cannot fail, after a few experimental traverses, to cross these white lines, which thenceforward he has nothing to do but to follow, though their capricious sinuosities will try his patience not a little. [88] An account of the conspiracy of Bajamonte may be found in almost any Venetian history; the reader may consult Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. iii. [89] See account of series of capitals in final Appendix. [90] If the traveller desire to find them (and they are worth seeking), let him row from the Fondamenta S. Biagio down the Rio della Tana, and look, on his right, for a low house with windows in it like those in the woodcut No. XXXI. above, p. 256. Let him go in at the door of the portico in the middle of this house, and he will find himself in a small alley, with the windows in question on each side of him. [91] The bitterness of feeling with which the Venetians must have remembered this, was probably the cause of their magnificent heroism in the final siege of the city under Dandolo, and, partly, of the excesses which disgraced their victory. The conduct of the allied army of the Crusaders on this occasion cannot, however, be brought in evidence of general barbarism in the thirteenth century: first, because the masses of the crusading armies were in great part composed of the refuse of the nations of Europe; and secondly, because such a mode of argument might lead us to inconvenient conclusions respecting ourselves, so long as the horses of the Austrian cavalry are stabled in the cloister of the convent which contains the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. See Appendix 3, Vol. III.: "Austrian Government in Italy." [92] It is generally better to read ten lines of any poet in the original language, however painfully, than ten cantos of a translation. But an exception may be made in favor of Cary's Dante. If no poet ever was liable to lose more in translation, none was ever so carefully translated; and I hardly know whether most to admire the rigid fidelity, or the sweet and solemn harmony, of Cary's verse. There is hardly a fault in the fragment quoted above, except the word "lectured," for Dante's beautiful "favoleggiava;" and even in this case, joining the first words of the following line, the translation is strictly literal. It is true that the conciseness and the rivulet-like melody of Dante must continually be lost; but if I could only read English, and had to choose, for a library narrowed by poverty, between Cary's Dante and our own original Milton, I should choose Cary without an instant's pause. [93] See final Appendix, Vol. III., under head "Capitals." [94] This Plate is not from a drawing of mine. It has been engraved by Mr. Armytage, with great skill, from two daguerreotypes. [95] Vide final Appendix, under head "Archivolt." [96] "On Thursday, the 20th, the front walls of two of the new houses now building in Victoria Street, Westminster, fell to the ground.... The roof was on, _and a massive compo cornice_ was put up at top, as well as dressings to the upper windows. The roof is formed by girders and 4½-brick arches in cement, covered with asphalt to form a flat. The failure is attributed _to the quantity of rain which has fallen_. Others suppose that some of the girders were defective, and gave way, carrying the walls with them."--_Builder_, for January 29th, 1853. The rest of this volume might be filled with such notices, if we sought for them. [97] "Ysame," collected together. [98] Vol. III. Chap. I. I have had considerable difficulty in the arrangement of these volumes, so as to get the points bearing upon each other grouped in consecutive and intelligible order. CHAPTER VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE. § I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices which were raised for half a century after its completion, their characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination, employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon an image more attractive. § II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian antiquaries, whether the main façade of the palace be of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of the Venetian character. § III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him the necessary topographical knowledge: Fig. XXXVI. opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place; and the following references will clearly explain their relative positions: A. St. Mark's Place. B. Piazzetta. P. V. Procuratie Vecchie. P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove. P. L. Libreria Vecchia. I. Piazzetta de' Leoni. T. Tower of St. Mark. F F. Great Façade of St. Mark's Church. M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had been marked, which would have confused the whole.) D D D. Ducal Palace. g s. Giant's stair. C. Court of Ducal Palace. J. Judgment angle. c. Porta della Carta. a. Fig-tree angle. p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw). S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). R R. Riva de' Schiavoni. The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B, and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the Church of St. Mark. [Illustration: Fig. XXXVI.] [Illustration: Fig. XXXVII.] Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Façade;" that towards the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Façade;" and that towards the Rio del Palazzo, the "Rio Façade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy, in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely resemble each other in form. § IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a general view of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade (the latter in very steep perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. XXXVII. roughly represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade, will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated, the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left. § V. The great façade which fronts the spectator looks southward. Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the "Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows, refittings of the brickwork, &c. [Illustration: Fig. XXXVIII.] § VI. It will be observed that the façade is composed of a smooth mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other. The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at once by the rough section, fig. XXXVIII., which is supposed to be taken right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of the Sea Façade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both in the inner court and on the Façade, which carry the main walls; _b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C are the three stories of the interior of the palace. The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple, and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed, there could be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls, carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable. The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader; but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important. § VII. In the bird's-eye view above, fig. XXXVII., it will be noticed that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the façade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience, which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the Gothic schools. The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or above them. The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued along the façade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces of wall above and below the windows. § VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows, which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise." In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground, opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace, and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony." The façade which looks on the Piazetta is very nearly like this to the Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber, one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea, light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta della Carta. § IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its history. We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance. The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and the existing building is formed by the union of the two. We shall review the history of each in succession.[99] 1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE. In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813,[100] the Venetians determined to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of their state. Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government.[101] The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last representation of her power. § X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal,"[102] towards San Giorgio; that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Façade; but this was merely the popular report of his day. We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the palace;"[103] and the Venetian historians express pride in the building's being worthy of an emperor's examination. This was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against Candiano IV.,[104] and just repaired, and richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with ornaments of marble and gold.[105] There can be no doubt whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi, &c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color. § XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire,[106] but repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial praise.[107] Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every direction;"[108] and, after this enlargement, the palace seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year 1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace, of which half remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani."[109] So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace. § XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important change in the Venetian government which gave stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297,[110] under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government." We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world.[111] The acquiescence in the secure establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity. The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement, or decoration of the chamber in which they sat. We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council first sat in it_."[112] In the first year, therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles. § XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is _now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio."[113] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace: but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent, which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws. § XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent will soon become visible to us. The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Façade, behind the present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low or high, but probably on a first story. The great façade of the Ziani Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being obviously the points first considered. § XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction of that room. "There were, _near_ _it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the _Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower."[114] Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the Rio Façade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century.[115] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated.[116] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio in the year 1309. § XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo. There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St. Mark's."[117] § XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which are fortunately preserved,[118] in the following terms:-- "1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St. Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates[119] ... for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the palace." "1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace stairs." The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced by the Porta della Carta. § XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion, began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio. The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle:[120] "1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty ducats a year." It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal.[121] _The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio. § XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as shown in fig. XXXVII. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can be known respecting the design of the Sea Façade, must be gleaned out of the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber. Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of 1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in 1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall be forthwith completed.[122] The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder.[123] The work was resumed in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls;[124] so that the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400.[125] They represented the heavens covered with stars,[126] this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window towards the sea: "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT." And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the central one of her life. § XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the "Palazzo Vecchio."[127] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendor as the Sea Façade. But no such sweeping measure of renovation had been contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger. It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt, but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the desirableness of doing so was too strong to permit fair discussion, and the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it. § XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be for the good of the state. Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's, and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I shall relate in the words of Sanuto.[128] § XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge[129] to restore it in the form in which it was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work; and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but hardly even begun." § XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts which, if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember, that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_. § XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one; and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new Council Chamber, of which the whole façade to the Sea consisted, never entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily connected with the Ducal residence. I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422[130] that the decree passed to rebuild the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year,[131] and Francesco Foscari was elected in his room. The Great Council Chamber was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle;[132] the 23rd, which is probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum;[133]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani.[134] § XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance." It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,--and of Venice herself. The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I dated its commencement above (Ch. I. Vol. 1.) from the death of Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her fortunes, the city never flourished again. § XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge Foscari;[135] the interior buildings connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro (the Othello of Shakspeare)[136] in 1462. § XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or, as is more probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479, together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it became necessary to reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal. This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century. The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure XXXVII. on the Rio Façade. § XXVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbé Cadorin, in the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace. I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others, especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise of Guariento had withered before the flames. § XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and interfere in many directions with the earlier work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace, to the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form; with the exception of alterations in doors, partitions, and staircases among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I suppose, nearly every building of importance in Italy. § XXX. Now, therefore, we are liberty to examine some of the details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I shall not, however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here, because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to us in the art of illustration,[137] and that I shall be able to give large figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to points of interest as can be explained in the text. § XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare, which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence will always be distinctly traceable in them. § XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject; above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the ground to the top of the angle. § XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's, and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated, only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according to the arrangement just explained,-- First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade). Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade). Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade). Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade). Fifthly, Three spiral shafts with niches. § XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most important evidences of the feeling, as well as of the skill, of the builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly inscribed. § XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the Renaissance spirit. The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence in its own wisdom. Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves. The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called the angle of the Fig-tree: Its subject is the FALL OF MAN. The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine: Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH. The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle: Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON. It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration, the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two schools. § XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it turns to the Piazzetta (the façade upon the Piazzetta being, as we saw above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital, which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preëminence of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather suppose it to have been the earliest completed. [Illustration: Plate XIX. LEAFAGE OF THE VINE ANGLE.] § XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness, the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of the palace; boldly cut separate from the stone-work behind, and branching out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight, beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the subject of the opposite illustration rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses, there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the eye. § XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp, the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body, carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of technical skill. This monument bears date 1317,[138] and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name: "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS, LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS." § XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet, on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital. § XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to 1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354. § XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine. The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to nature; they are ill set on the stems, bluntly defined on the edges, and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled drapery. § XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade, the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right. A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his hand a scroll with this inscription: EFICE Q SOFRE TUR AFA EL REVE RENDE QUIETU i.e. Effice (quæso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum.[139] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has only in its hand the Annunciation lily. § XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace; and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse. § XLIV. The principal sculptures of the capitals consist of personifications of the Virtues and Vices, the favorite subjects of decorative art, at this period, in all the cities of Italy; and there is so much that is significant in the various modes of their distinction and general representation, more especially with reference to their occurrence as expressions of praise to the dead in sepulchral architecture, hereafter to be examined, that I believe the reader may both happily and profitably rest for a little while beneath the first vault of the arcade, to review the manner in which these symbols of the virtues were first invented by the Christian imagination, and the evidence they generally furnish of the state of religious feeling in those by whom they were recognised. § XLV. In the early ages of Christianity, there was little care taken to analyze character. One momentous question was heard over the whole world,--Dost thou believe in the Lord with all thine heart? There was but one division among men,--the great unatoneable division between the disciple and adversary. The love of Christ was all, and in all; and in proportion to the nearness of their memory of His person and teaching, men understood the infinity of the requirements of the moral law, and the manner in which it alone could be fulfilled. The early Christians felt that virtue, like sin, was a subtle universal thing, entering into every act and thought, appearing outwardly in ten thousand diverse ways, diverse according to the separate framework of every heart in which it dwelt; but one and the same always in its proceeding from the love of God, as sin is one and the same in proceeding from hatred of God. And in their pure, early, and practical piety, they saw there was no need for codes of morality, or systems of metaphysics. Their virtue comprehended everything, entered into everything; it was too vast and too spiritual to be defined; but there was no need of its definition. For through faith, working by love, they knew that all human excellence would be developed in due order; but that, without faith, neither reason could define, nor effort reach, the lowest phase of Christian virtue. And therefore, when any of the Apostles have occasion to describe or enumerate any forms of vice or virtue by name, there is no attempt at system in their words. They use them hurriedly and energetically, heaping the thoughts one upon another, in order as far as possible to fill the reader's mind with a sense of the infinity both of crime and of righteousness. Hear St. Paul describe sin: "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." There is evidently here an intense feeling of the universality of sin; and in order to express it, the Apostle hurries his words confusedly together, little caring about their order, as knowing all the vices to be indissolubly connected one with another. It would be utterly vain to endeavor to arrange his expressions as if they had been intended for the ground of any system, or to give any philosophical definition of the vices.[140] So also hear him speaking of virtue: "Rejoice in the Lord. Let your moderation be known unto all men. Be careful for nothing, but in everything let your requests be made known unto God; and whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Observe, he gives up all attempt at definition; he leaves the definition to every man's heart, though he writes so as to mark the overflowing fulness of his own vision of virtue. And so it is in all writings of the Apostles; their manner of exhortation, and the kind of conduct they press, vary according to the persons they address, and the feeling of the moment at which they write, and never show any attempt at logical precision. And, although the words of their Master are not thus irregularly uttered, but are weighed like fine gold, yet, even in His teaching, there is no detailed or organized system of morality; but the command only of that faith and love which were to embrace the whole being of man: "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Here and there an incidental warning against this or that more dangerous form of vice or error, "Take heed and beware of covetousness," "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees;" here and there a plain example of the meaning of Christian love, as in the parables of the Samaritan and the Prodigal, and His own perpetual example: these were the elements of Christ's constant teaching; for the Beatitudes, which are the only approximation to anything like a systematic statement, belong to different conditions and characters of individual men, not to abstract virtues. And all early Christians taught in the same manner. They never cared to expound the nature of this or that virtue; for they knew that the believer who had Christ, had all. Did he need fortitude? Christ was his rock: Equity? Christ was his righteousness: Holiness? Christ was his sanctification: Liberty? Christ was his redemption: Temperance? Christ was his ruler: Wisdom? Christ was his light: Truthfulness? Christ was the truth: Charity? Christ was love. § XLVI. Now, exactly in proportion as the Christian religion became less vital, and as the various corruptions which time and Satan brought into it were able to manifest themselves, the person and offices of Christ were less dwelt upon, and the virtues of Christians more. The Life of the Believer became in some degree separated from the Life of Christ; and his virtue, instead of being a stream flowing forth from the throne of God, and descending upon the earth, began to be regarded by him as a pyramid upon earth, which he had to build up, step by step, that from the top of it he might reach the Heavens. It was not possible to measure the waves of the water of life, but it was perfectly possible to measure the bricks of the Tower of Babel; and gradually, as the thoughts of men were withdrawn from their Redeemer, and fixed upon themselves, the virtues began to be squared, and counted, and classified, and put into separate heaps of firsts and seconds; some things being virtuous cardinally, and other things virtuous only north-north-west. It is very curious to put in close juxtaposition the words of the Apostles and of some of the writers of the fifteenth century touching sanctification. For instance, hear first St. Paul to the Thessalonians: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it." And then the following part of a prayer which I translate from a MS. of the fifteenth century: "May He (the Holy Spirit) govern the five Senses of my body; may He cause me to embrace the Seven Works of Mercy, and firmly to believe and observe the Twelve Articles of the Faith and the Ten Commandments of the Law, and defend me from the Seven Mortal Sins, even to the end." § XLVII. I do not mean that this quaint passage is generally characteristic of the devotion of the fifteenth century: the very prayer out of which it is taken is in other parts exceedingly beautiful:[141] but the passage is strikingly illustrative of the tendency of the later Romish Church, more especially in its most corrupt condition, just before the Reformation, to throw all religion into forms and ciphers; which tendency, as it affected Christian ethics, was confirmed by the Renaissance enthusiasm for the works of Aristotle and Cicero, from whom the code of the fifteenth century virtues was borrowed, and whose authority was then infinitely more revered by all the Doctors of the Church than that either of St. Paul or St. Peter. § XLVIII. Although, however, this change in the tone of the Christian mind was most distinctly manifested when the revival of literature rendered the works of the heathen philosophers the leading study of all the greatest scholars of the period, it had been, as I said before, taking place gradually from the earliest ages. It is, as far as I know, that root of the Renaissance poison-tree, which, of all others, is deepest struck; showing itself in various measures through the writings of all the Fathers, of course exactly in proportion to the respect which they paid to classical authors, especially to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. The mode in which the pestilent study of that literature affected them may be well illustrated by the examination of a single passage from the works of one of the best of them, St. Ambrose, and of the mode in which that passage was then amplified and formulized by later writers. § XLIX. Plato, indeed, studied alone, would have done no one any harm. He is profoundly spiritual and capacious in all his views, and embraces the small systems of Aristotle and Cicero, as the solar system does the Earth. He seems to me especially remarkable for the sense of the great Christian virtue of Holiness, or sanctification; and for the sense of the presence of the Deity in all things, great or small, which always runs in a solemn undercurrent beneath his exquisite playfulness and irony; while all the merely moral virtues may be found in his writings defined in the most noble manner, as a great painter defines his figures, _without outlines_. But the imperfect scholarship of later ages seems to have gone to Plato, only to find in him the system of Cicero; which indeed was very definitely expressed by him. For it having been quickly felt by all men who strove, unhelped by Christian faith, to enter at the strait gate into the paths of virtue, that there were four characters of mind which were protective or preservative of all that was best in man, namely, Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance,[142] these were afterwards, with most illogical inaccuracy, called cardinal _virtues_, Prudence being evidently no virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccuracy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of the Latin word "virtutes," which sometimes, in mediæval language, signifies virtues, sometimes powers (being occasionally used in the Vulgate for the word "hosts," as in Psalm ciii. 21, cxlviii. 2, &c., while "fortitudines" and "exercitus" are used for the same word in other places), so that Prudence might properly be styled a power, though not properly a virtue; and partly from the confusion of Prudence with Heavenly Wisdom. The real rank of these four virtues, if so they are to be called, is however properly expressed by the term "cardinal." They are virtues of the compass, those by which all others are directed and strengthened; they are not the greatest virtues, but the restraining or modifying virtues, thus Prudence restrains zeal, Justice restrains mercy, Fortitude and Temperance guide the entire system of the passions; and, thus understood, these virtues properly assumed their peculiar leading or guiding position in the system of Christian ethics. But in Pagan ethics, they were not only guiding, but comprehensive. They meant a great deal more on the lips of the ancients, than they now express to the Christian mind. Cicero's Justice includes charity, beneficence, and benignity, truth, and faith in the sense of trustworthiness. His Fortitude includes courage, self-command, the scorn of fortune and of all temporary felicities. His Temperance includes courtesy and modesty. So also, in Plato, these four virtues constitute the sum of education. I do not remember any more simple or perfect expression of the idea, than in the account given by Socrates, in the "Alcibiades I.," of the education of the Persian kings, for whom, in their youth, there are chosen, he says, four tutors from among the Persian nobles; namely, the Wisest, the most Just, the most Temperate, and the most Brave of them. Then each has a distinct duty: "The Wisest teaches the young king the worship of the gods, and the duties of a king (something more here, observe, than our 'Prudence!'); the most Just teaches him to speak all truth, and to act out all truth, through the whole course of his life; the most Temperate teaches him to allow no pleasure to have the mastery of him, so that he may be truly free, and indeed a king; and the most Brave makes him fearless of all things, showing him that the moment he fears anything, he becomes a slave." § L. All this is exceedingly beautiful, so far as it reaches; but the Christian divines were grievously led astray by their endeavors to reconcile this system with the nobler law of love. At first, as in the passage I am just going to quote from St. Ambrose, they tried to graft the Christian system on the four branches of the Pagan one; but finding that the tree would not grow, they planted the Pagan and Christian branches side by side; adding, to the four cardinal virtues, the three called by the schoolmen theological, namely, Faith, Hope, and Charity: the one series considered as attainable by the Heathen, but the other by the Christian only. Thus Virgil to Sordello: "Loco e laggiù, non tristo da martiri Ma di tenebre solo, ove i lamenti Non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri: * * * * * Quivi sto io, con quei che le tre sante Virtù non si vestiro, e senza vizio Conobbei l' altre, e seguir, tutte quante." . . . . . "There I with those abide Who the Three Holy Virtues put not on, But understood the rest, and without blame Followed them all." CARY. § LI. This arrangement of the virtues was, however, productive of infinite confusion and error: in the first place, because Faith is classed with its own fruits,--the gift of God, which is the root of the virtues, classed simply as one of them; in the second, because the words used by the ancients to express the several virtues had always a different meaning from the same expressions in the Bible, sometimes a more extended, sometimes a more limited one. Imagine, for instance, the confusion which must have been introduced into the ideas of a student who read St. Paul and Aristotle alternately; considering that the word which the Greek writer uses for Justice, means, with St. Paul, Righteousness. And lastly, it is impossible to overrate the mischief produced in former days, as well as in our own, by the mere habit of reading Aristotle, whose system is so false, so forced, and so confused, that the study of it at our universities is quite enough to occasion the utter want of accurate habits of thought which so often disgraces men otherwise well-educated. In a word, Aristotle mistakes the Prudence or Temperance which must regulate the operation of the virtues, for the essence of the virtues themselves; and, striving to show that all virtues are means between two opposite vices, torments his wit to discover and distinguish as many pairs of vices as are necessary to the completion of his system, not disdaining to employ sophistry where invention fails him. And, indeed, the study of classical literature, in general, not only fostered in the Christian writers the unfortunate love of systematizing, which gradually degenerated into every species of contemptible formulism, but it accustomed them to work out their systems by the help of any logical quibble, or verbal subtlety, which could be made available for their purpose, and this not with any dishonest intention, but in a sincere desire to arrange their ideas in systematical groups, while yet their powers of thought were not accurate enough, nor their common sense stern enough, to detect the fallacy, or disdain the finesse, by which these arrangements were frequently accomplished. § LII. Thus St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Luke vi. 20, is resolved to transform the four Beatitudes there described into rewards of the four cardinal Virtues, and sets himself thus ingeniously to the task: "'Blessed be ye poor.' Here you have Temperance. 'Blessed are ye that hunger now.' He who hungers, pities those who are an-hungered; in pitying, he gives to them, and in giving he becomes just (largiendo fit Justus). 'Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.' Here you have Prudence, whose part it is to weep, so far as present things are concerned, and to seek things which are eternal. 'Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.' Here you have Fortitude." § LIII. As a preparation for this profitable exercise of wit, we have also a reconciliation of the Beatitudes as stated by St. Matthew, with those of St. Luke, on the ground that "in those eight are these four, and in these four are those eight;" with sundry remarks on the mystical value of the number eight, with which I need not trouble the reader. With St. Ambrose, however, this puerile systematization is quite subordinate to a very forcible and truthful exposition of the real nature of the Christian life. But the classification he employs furnishes ground for farther subtleties to future divines; and in a MS. of the thirteenth century I find some expressions in this commentary on St. Luke, and in the treatise on the duties of bishops, amplified into a treatise on the "Steps of the Virtues: by which every one who perseveres may, by a straight path, attain to the heavenly country of the Angels." ("Liber de Gradibus Virtutum: quibus ad patriam angelorum supernam itinere recto ascenditur ab omni perseverante.") These Steps are thirty in number (one expressly for each day of the month), and the curious mode of their association renders the list well worth quoting:-- § LIV. Primus gradus est Fides Recta. Unerring faith. Secundus " Spes firma. Firm hope. Tertius " Caritas perfecta. Perfect charity. 4. " Patientia vera. True patience. 5. " Humilitas sancta. Holy humility. 6. " Mansuetudo. Meekness. 7. " Intelligentia. Understanding. 8. " Compunctio cordis. Contrition of heart. 9. " Oratio. Prayer. 10. " Confessio pura. Pure confession. 11. " Penitentia digna. Fitting penance.[143] 12. " Abstinentia. Abstinence (fasting). 13. " Timor Dei. Fear of God. 14. " Virginitas. Virginity. 15. " Justicia. Justice. 16. " Misericordia. Mercy. 17. " Elemosina. Almsgiving. 18. " Hospitalitas. Hospitality. 19. " Honor parentum. Honoring of parents. 20. " Silencium. Silence. 21. " Consilium bonum. Good counsel. 22. " Judicium rectum. Right judgment. 23. " Exemplum bonum. Good example. 24. " Visitatio infirmorum. Visitation of the sick. 25. " Frequentatio Companying with saints. sanctorum. 26. " Oblatio justa. Just oblations. 27. " Decimas Deo solvere. Paying tithes to God. 28. " Sapientia. Wisdom. 29. " Voluntas bona. Goodwill. 30. " Perseverantia. Perseverance. § LV. The reader will note that the general idea of Christian virtue embodied in this list is true, exalted, and beautiful; the points of weakness being the confusion of duties with virtues, and the vain endeavor to enumerate the various offices of charity as so many separate virtues; more frequently arranged as seven distinct works of mercy. This general tendency to a morbid accuracy of classification was associated, in later times, with another very important element of the Renaissance mind, the love of personification; which appears to have reached its greatest vigor in the course of the sixteenth century, and is expressed to all future ages, in a consummate manner, in the poem of Spenser. It is to be noted that personification is, in some sort, the reverse of symbolism, and is far less noble. Symbolism is the setting forth of a great truth by an imperfect and inferior sign (as, for instance, of the hope of the resurrection by the form of the phoenix); and it is almost always employed by men in their most serious moods of faith, rarely in recreation. Men who use symbolism forcibly are almost always true believers in what they symbolize. But Personification is the bestowing of a human or living form upon an abstract idea: it is, in most cases, a mere recreation of the fancy, and is apt to disturb the belief in the reality of the thing personified. Thus symbolism constituted the entire system of the Mosaic dispensation: it occurs in every word of Christ's teaching; it attaches perpetual mystery to the last and most solemn act of His life. But I do not recollect a single instance of personification in any of His words. And as we watch, thenceforward, the history of the Church, we shall find the declension of its faith exactly marked by the abandonment of symbolism,[144] and the profuse employment of personification,--even to such an extent that the virtues came, at last, to be confused with the saints; and we find in the later Litanies, St. Faith, St. Hope, St. Charity, and St. Chastity, invoked immediately after St. Clara and St. Bridget. § LVI. Nevertheless, in the hands of its early and earnest masters, in whom fancy could not overthrow the foundations of faith, personification is, often thoroughly noble and lovely; the earlier conditions of it being just as much more spiritual and vital than the later ones, as the still earlier symbolism was more spiritual than they. Compare, for instance, Dante's burning Charity, running and returning at the wheels of the chariot of God,-- "So ruddy, that her form had scarce Been known within a furnace of clear flame," with Reynolds's Charity, a nurse in a white dress, climbed upon by three children.[145] And not only so, but the number and nature of the virtues differ considerably in the statements of different poets and painters, according to their own views of religion, or to the manner of life they had it in mind to illustrate. Giotto, for instance, arranges his system altogether differently at Assisi, where he is setting forth the monkish life, and in the Arena Chapel, where he treats of that of mankind in general, and where, therefore, he gives only the so-called theological and cardinal virtues; while, at Assisi, the three principal virtues are those which are reported to have appeared in vision to St. Francis, Chastity, Obedience, and Poverty: Chastity being attended by Fortitude, Purity, and Penance; Obedience by Prudence and Humility; Poverty by Hope and Charity. The systems vary with almost every writer, and in almost every important work of art which embodies them, being more or less spiritual according to the power of intellect by which they were conceived. The most noble in literature are, I suppose, those of Dante and Spenser: and with these we may compare five of the most interesting series in the early art of Italy; namely, those of Orcagna, Giotto, and Simon Memmi, at Florence and Padua, and those of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace at Venice. Of course, in the richest of these series, the vices are personified together with the virtues, as in the Ducal Palace; and by the form or name of opposed vice, we may often ascertain, with much greater accuracy than would otherwise be possible, the particular idea of the contrary virtue in the mind of the writer or painter. Thus, when opposed to Prudence, or Prudentia, on the one side, we find Folly, or Stultitia, on the other, it shows that the virtue understood by Prudence, is not the mere guiding or cardinal virtue, but the Heavenly Wisdom,[146] opposed to that folly which "hath said in its heart, there is no God;" and of which it is said, "the thought of foolishness is sin;" and again, "Such as be foolish shall not stand in thy sight." This folly is personified, in early painting and illumination, by a half-naked man, greedily eating an apple or other fruit, and brandishing a club; showing that sensuality and violence are the two principal characteristics of Foolishness, and lead into atheism. The figure, in early Psalters, always forms the letter D, which commences the fifty-third Psalm, "_Dixit insipiens_." § LVII. In reading Dante, this mode of reasoning from contraries is a great help, for his philosophy of the vices is the only one which admits of classification; his descriptions of virtue, while they include the ordinary formal divisions, are far too profound and extended to be brought under definition. Every line of the "Paradise" is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Christian truth; and that poem is only less read than the "Inferno" because it requires far greater attention, and, perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart. § LVIII. His system in the "Inferno" is briefly this. The whole nether world is divided into seven circles, deep within deep, in each of which, according to its depth, severer punishment is inflicted. These seven circles, reckoning them downwards, are thus allotted: 1. To those who have lived virtuously, but knew not Christ. 2. To Lust. 3. To Gluttony. 4. To Avarice and Extravagance. 5. To Anger and _Sorrow_. 6. To Heresy. 7. To Violence and Fraud. This seventh circle is divided into two parts; of which the first, reserved for those who have been guilty of Violence, is again divided into three, apportioned severally to those who have committed, or desired to commit, violence against their neighbors, against themselves, or against God. The lowest hell, reserved for the punishment of Fraud, is itself divided into ten circles, wherein are severally punished the sins of,-- 1. Betraying women. 2. Flattery. 3. Simony. 4. False prophecy. 5. Peculation. 6. Hypocrisy. 7. Theft. 8. False counsel. 9. Schism and Imposture. 10. Treachery to those who repose entire trust in the traitor. § LIX. There is, perhaps, nothing more notable in this most interesting system than the profound truth couched under the attachment of so terrible a penalty to sadness or sorrow. It is true that Idleness does not elsewhere appear in the scheme, and is evidently intended to be included in the guilt of sadness by the word "accidioso;" but the main meaning of the poet is to mark the duty of rejoicing in God, according both to St. Paul's command, and Isaiah's promise, "Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness."[147] I do not know words that might with more benefit be borne with us, and set in our hearts momentarily against the minor regrets and rebelliousnesses of life, than these simple ones: "Tristi fummo Nel aer dolce, che del sol s' allegra, Or ci attristiam, nella belletta negra." "We once were sad, In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun, Now in these murky settlings are we sad."[148] CARY. The virtue usually opposed to this vice of sullenness is Alacritas, uniting the sense of activity and cheerfulness. Spenser has cheerfulness simply, in his description, never enough to be loved or praised, of the virtues of Womanhood; first feminineness or womanhood in specialty; then,-- "Next to her sate goodly Shamefastnesse, Ne ever durst, her eyes from ground upreare, Ne ever once did looke up from her desse,[149] As if some blame of evill she did feare That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare: And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed, Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare, Were deckt with smyles that all sad humours chaced. "And next to her sate sober Modestie, Holding her hand upon her gentle hart; And her against, sate comely Curtesie, _That unto every person knew her part_; And her before was seated overthwart Soft Silence, and submisse Obedience, Both linckt together never to dispart." § LX. Another notable point in Dante's system is the intensity of uttermost punishment given to treason, the peculiar sin of Italy, and that to which, at this day, she attributes her own misery with her own lips. An Italian, questioned as to the causes of the failure of the campaign of 1848, always makes one answer, "We were betrayed;" and the most melancholy feature of the present state of Italy is principally this, that she does not see that, of all causes to which failure might be attributed, this is at once the most disgraceful, and the most hopeless. In fact, Dante seems to me to have written almost prophetically, for the instruction of modern Italy, and chiefly so in the sixth canto of the "Purgatorio." § LXI. Hitherto we have been considering the system of the "Inferno" only. That of the "Purgatorio" is much simpler, it being divided into seven districts, in which the souls are severally purified from the sins of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Indifference, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust; the poet thus implying in opposition, and describing in various instances, the seven virtues of Humility, Kindness,[150] Patience, Zeal, Poverty, Abstinence, and Chastity, as adjuncts of the Christian character, in which it may occasionally fail, while the essential group of the three theological and four cardinal virtues are represented as in direct attendance on the chariot of the Deity; and all the sins of Christians are in the seventeenth canto traced to the deficiency or aberration of Affection. § LXII. The system of Spenser is unfinished, and exceedingly complicated, the same vices and virtues occurring under different forms in different places, in order to show their different relations to each other. I shall not therefore give any general sketch of it, but only refer to the particular personification of each virtue in order to compare it with that of the Ducal Palace.[151] The peculiar superiority of his system is in its exquisite setting forth of Chastity under the figure of Britomart; not monkish chastity, but that of the purest Love. In completeness of personification no one can approach him; not even in Dante do I remember anything quite so great as the description of the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh: "As pale and wan as ashes was his looke; His body lean and meagre as a rake; And skin all withered like a dryed rooke; Thereto as cold and drery as a snake; That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake: _All in a canvas thin he was bedight, And girded with a belt of twisted brake_: Upon his head he wore an helmet light, Made of a dead man's skull." He rides upon a tiger, and in his hand is a bow, bent; "And many arrows under his right side, Headed with flint, and fethers bloody dide." The horror and the truth of this are beyond everything that I know, out of the pages of Inspiration. Note the heading of the arrows with flint, because sharper and more subtle in the edge than steel, and because steel might consume away with rust, but flint not; and consider in the whole description how the wasting away of body and soul together, and the _coldness_ of the heart, which unholy fire has consumed into ashes, and the loss of all power, and the kindling of all terrible impatience, and the implanting of thorny and inextricable griefs, are set forth by the various images, the belt of brake, the tiger steed, and the _light_ helmet, girding the head with death. § LXIII. Perhaps the most interesting series of the Virtues expressed in Italian art are those above mentioned of Simon Memmi in the Spanish chapel at Florence, of Ambrogio di Lorenzo in the Palazzo Publico of Pisa, of Orcagna in Or San Michele at Florence, of Giotto at Padua and Assisi, in mosaic on the central cupola of St. Mark's, and in sculpture on the pillars of the Ducal Palace. The first two series are carefully described by Lord Lindsay; both are too complicated for comparison with the more simple series of the Ducal Palace; the other four of course agree in giving first the cardinal and evangelical virtues; their variations in the statement of the rest will be best understood by putting them in a parallel arrangement. ST. MARK'S. ORCAGNA. GIOTTO. DUCAL PALACE. Constancy. Perseverance. Constancy. Modesty. Modesty. Chastity. Virginity Chastity. Chastity. Patience. Patience. Patience. Mercy. Abstinence. Abstinence? Piety.[152] Devotion. Benignity. Humility. Humility. Humility. Humility. Obedience. Obedience. Obedience. Docility. Caution. Poverty. _Honesty._ Liberality. _Alacrity_. § LXIV. It is curious, that in none of these lists do we find either _Honesty_ or _Industry_ ranked as a virtue, except in the Venetian one, where the latter is implied in Alacritas, and opposed not only by "Accidia" or sloth, but by a whole series of eight sculptures on another capital, illustrative, as I believe, of the temptations to idleness; while various other capitals, as we shall see presently, are devoted to the representation of the active trades. Industry, in Northern art and Northern morality, assumes a very principal place. I have seen in French manuscripts the virtues reduced to these seven, Charity, Chastity, Patience, Abstinence, Humility, Liberality, and Industry: and I doubt whether, if we were but to add Honesty (or Truth), a wiser or shorter list could be made out. § LXV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. § XLVI.) that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first, which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle. § LXVI. All their capitals, except that of the first, are octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the groups or single figures which we have to examine.[153] In some instances, the intermediate or lower leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side; and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western sides of each. § LXVII. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle. In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its wings expanded, covering his breast. On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves. On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other, a pair of scissors. It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the façade, should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small. § LXVIII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds. THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads, large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned. FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds. The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling hair, deep cut with drill holes. This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed coxcombs. FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription. In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR" (contracted [Illustration: IPAT.]). On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand, and sceptre in left. On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away. He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much injured, but has once been very noble in expression. SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard, and bad. § LXIX. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues. _First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is, "LARGITAS ME ONORAT." In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always injuries. This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients. § LXX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL TIMENS." This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name." § LXXI. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA SUM, DISCORDANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like person with a veil. She is the Atë of Spenser; "mother of debate," thus described in the fourth book: "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see, With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended; And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, That nought but gall and venim comprehended, And wicked wordes that God and man offended: Her lying tongue was in two parts divided, And both the parts did speake, and both contended; And as her tongue, so was her hart discided, That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided." Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for the other sense of the word. § LXXII. _Fourth side._ Patience. A female figure, very expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM." She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _Physician_ in the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed." § LXXIII. _Fifth side._ Despair. A female figure thrusting a dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears, instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each side. This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the attention of Sir Philip Sidney. § LXXIV. _Sixth side._ Obedience: with her arms folded; meek, but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI * *;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like [Illustration: Graphic signs]. I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo." This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems; represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet."[154] Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood. § LXXV. _Seventh side._ Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI, CERO," remain. By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, is _bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet. In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,-- "Full large of limbe and every joint He was, and cared not for God or man a point." For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III. § LXXVI. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffee-pot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA [Illustration: Graphic signs]." I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood, but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in the second book: "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew, Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight: Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew. * * * * * And ever and anone with rosy red The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye, That her became, as polisht yvory Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd With fayre vermilion or pure castory." § LXXVII. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of the degradation of human instincts. _First side._ A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque. His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back. _Second side._ A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow. _Third side._ A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head, founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand. _Fourth side._ A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise. It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg. _Fifth side._ A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a curved sword. _Sixth side._ A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a two-edged sword. _Seventh side._ A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with a top like a fir-cone. _Eighth side._ A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand, ending below in a fish. § LXXVIII. Ninth Capital. _First side._ Faith. She has her left hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is still more spiritual and noble: "She was araied all in lilly white, And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, With wine and water fild up to the hight, In which a serpent did himselfe enfold, That horrour made to all that did behold; But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood: And in her other hand she fast did hold A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood; Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood." § LXXIX. _Second side._ Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?] tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin, knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins deeply infixed. Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt, however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere manliness or courage. § LXXX. _Third side._ Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L^s)? only left. In this somewhat vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New College) temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much sternness: "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete, That from his head no place appeared to his feete, His carriage was full comely and upright; His countenance demure and temperate; But yett so sterne and terrible in sight, That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate." The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sôphrosynê], involves the idea of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania], or inspiration; but he most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term [Greek: hubris], which, in the "Phædrus," is divided into various intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles) to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediæval systems is generally opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance; a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St. Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately, "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach, That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet." The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser, for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace. § LXXXI. _Fourth side._ Humility; with a veil upon her head, carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN ME." This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation. § LXXXII. _Fifth side._ Charity. A woman with her lap full of loaves(?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital. Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth. The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in Oreagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and, with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear fire, she could not have been discerned. Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and sculptors. § LXXXIII. _Sixth side._ Justice. Crowned, and with sword. Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE." This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue, representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws, but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands. In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been working at a desk or table. Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music. Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity. § LXXXIV. _Seventh side._ Prudence. A man with a book and a pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of men occupied in any civil capacity. This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find, in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never enough considered or symbolized. The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom. § LXXXV. _Eighth side._ Hope. A figure full of devotional expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy this hand does not appear. Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not; for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid: "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe." § LXXXVI. Tenth Capital. _First side._ Luxury (the opposite of chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA." These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His Luxury rides upon a goat: "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire, Which underneath did hide his filthinesse, And in his hand a burning hart he bare." But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediæval and the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented. I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters; namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now, therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for the central mediæval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and fillet, and feet ending in claws,"[155] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediæval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of the Graces, but full of terror: "With that the darts which his right hand did straine Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake, And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine, That all his many it afraide did make." His _many_, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is. Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope, Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty. After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame, "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead, Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead, Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty, Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity, Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy." Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our literature, and our minds. § LXXXVII. _Second side._ Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird, which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM." Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine: "His belly was upblowne with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a crane his necke was long and fyne, Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne." He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance. § LXXXVIII. _Third side._ Pride. A knight, with a heavy and stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA." Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep under current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her palace she is thus described: "So proud she shyned in her princely state, Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne; And sitting high, for lowly she did hate: Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne; And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright, Wherein her face she often vewed fayne" The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto VIII.) Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride which vents itself in insult to others. § LXXXIX. _Fourth side._ Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance copy it is "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME." Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides upon a lion, brandishing a fire-brand, his garments stained with blood. Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the most terrible; both of them make him violent. § XC. _Fifth side._ Avarice. An old woman with a veil over her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring and intense, yet without the slightest: caricature. Inscribed in the Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR." Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power. Note the position of the house of Richesse: "Betwixt them both was but a little stride, That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide." It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness, although they are vices totally different in their operation on the human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be consistent with, much charity; not so avarice. § XCI. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken away, having had its arms round two branches of trees. I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless, in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice especially upon the clergy,-- "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde, Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin, Like to an holy monck, the service to begin. And in his hand his portesse still he bare, That much was worne, but therein little redd." And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices: "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd, When such an one had guiding of the way" Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse, indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards. § XCII. _Seventh side._ Vanity. She is smiling complacently as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable. There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas generally, I think, bears, in the mediæval period, the sense given it in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal, of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phædria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress." § XCIII. _Eighth side._ Envy. One of the noblest pieces of expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap. Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping; a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer, joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole mind: "Malicious Envy rode Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw Between his cankred teeth a venemous tode, That all the poison ran about his jaw. _All in a kirtle of discolourd say He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_, And in his bosome secretly there lay An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes In many folds, and mortall sting implyes." He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in the twelfth canto of the fifth book. § XCIV. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which, however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description. § XCV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures. _First side._ Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA." The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser-- "All in sable sorrowfully clad, Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere: * * * * * A pair of pincers in his hand he had, With which he pinched people to the heart." He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth canto of the fourth book: "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade, That neither day nor night from working spared; But to small purpose yron wedges made: Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade. Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent, Ne better had he, ne for better cared; With blistered hands among the cinders brent." It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as "Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred Sorrow. § XCVI. _Second side._ Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as singing. Inscribed " ALACRITAS." We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance copy, "ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from them in the earlier capitals. § XCVII. _Third side._ Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb." § XCVIII. _Fourth side._ Destroyed, all but a book, which identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy; there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent life with the pursuit of literature?). Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the convent, but of wedded life. § XCIX. _Fifth side._ Only a scroll is left; but, from the copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only. The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite character in the "Faerie Queen." § C. _Sixth side._ Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits. In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect, "A goodly lady, clad in scarlot red, Purfled with gold and pearle;... Her wanton palfrey all was overspred With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave, Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave." Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted. § CI. _Seventh side._ Injustice. An armed figure holding a halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia" is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger. _Eighth side._ A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child, who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA." § CII. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round, coarsely cut. FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its haunches. Three dogs, one a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks, hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness. § CIII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade. The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general illustration of Idleness. _First side._ A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated, and fastened by a buckle. _Second side._ A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand. _Third side._ A woman in a turban stroking a puppy which she holds by the haunches. _Fourth side._ A man with a parrot. _Fifth side._ A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary(?) in her left hand, her right on her breast. _Sixth side._ A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand upon the leaves of the capital. _Seventh side._ A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand. _Eighth side._ A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right laid on his breast. § CIV. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large heads, partly intended to be grotesque,[156] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and, therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations. Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches. § CV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are the following: _First side._ A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP)IENS." _Second side._ A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters "GRAMMATIC" remain. _Third side._ "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his back. _Fourth side._ Destroyed. _Fifth side._ Destroyed, all but a board with three (counters?) on it. _Sixth side._ A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *" _Seventh side._ Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle wrought into a lion's head. _Eighth side._ Destroyed. § CVI. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of interrogation), and then as I would read them. § CVII. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the houses of the planets are thus arranged: The house of the Sun, is Leo. " Moon, " Cancer. " of Mars, " Aries and Scorpio. " Venus, " Taurus and Libra. " Mercury, " Gemini and Virgo. " Jupiter, " Sagittarius and Pisces. " Saturn, " Capricorn. " Herschel, " Aquarius. The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from which I shall not depart. § CVIII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea, has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the leaves of the capital. His inscription is: "ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) 1^s 7BRE." § CIX. _Second side._ Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast, ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is: "INDE JOVI'[157] DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ^s CIRONA." Or, "Inde Jovis dona Pisces simul atque Chirona." Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron." § CX. _Third side._ Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio. Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_ Latin for "I am of iron." § CXI. _Fourth side._ The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription: "TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO *?) SIGNE LEONI." I believe the first phrase is, "Tunc est Domus solis;" but there is a letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum "signe" stands for. § CXII. _Fifth side._ Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra. The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs: "LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR *." § CXIII. _Sixth side._ Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot understand the inscription, though more than usually legible. "OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LACONE." § CXIV. _Seventh side._ The Moon, in her house Cancer. This sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat, upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat, may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on this capital, as well as on the rest of the façade, are disposed in severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such, far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this intention. The inscription is: "LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU." § CXV. _Eighth side._ God creating Man. Represented as a throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of "formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligible, before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely ascertained the rest. "DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA." Or "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;" From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve. I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves. Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble Christianity. In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the whole, the finest I know in Europe. The sculptor has put his whole strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work. § CXVI. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the Fig-tree angle the first. It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying, and of the value of color generally in his own art. § CXVII. _First side._ "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital. The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up open, with the palm outwards. _Second side._ A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at the Vine angle. Inscription effaced. _Third side._ An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO." _Fourth side._ A crowned figure; but the object on which it has been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST. E(N?)AS." _Fifth side._ A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble. _Sixth side._ A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed _on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils, with a rich cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been universal in the early fourteenth century. There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups of the time. _Seventh side._ A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals, see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted marble. _Eighth side._ A figure with a rich open crown, working on a delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * * ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front, two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work was undertaken at this time. § CXVIII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals, and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series, though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman, better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but he could not have composed them more skilfully. § CXIX. _First side._ A lion with a stag's haunch in his mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the Ducal Palace, to the lions' heads of the fourteenth century. The moment we reach the Renaissance work, the lions' ears are smooth. Inscribed simply, "LEO." _Second side._ A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed "LUPUS." _Third side._ A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth, its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed "(VULP?)IS." _Fourth side._ Entirely broken away. _Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone. _Sixth side._ "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed species of dog, with ugly flap ears. _Seventh side._ "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth. _Eighth side._ "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees. § CXX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior professions. _First side._ An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer. Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM." _Second side._ I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is gone. _Third side._ A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable. _Fourth side._ Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM." _Fifth side._ A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"? _Sixth side._ A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA." _Seventh side._ A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM." _Eighth side._ A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is inscribed "FABER SUM." § CXXI. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of the planets on human life. _First side._ The moon, governing infancy for four years, according to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then forgotten to return to it. _Second side._ A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on it. The legend above is "MECUREU^s DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X." Or, "Mercurius dominatur pueritiæ per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.) "Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years." _Third side._ An older youth, with another tablet, but broken. Inscribed "ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII." Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o; showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a Roman ear. _Fourth side._ A youth with a hawk on his fist. "IUVENTUTI DNT SOL. P. AN. XIX." The son governs youth for nineteen years. _Fifth side._ A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder. Inscribed "SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV." Mars governs manhood for fifteen years. _Sixth side._ A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap, reading. "SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII." Jupiter governs age for twelve years. _Seventh side._ An old man in a skull-cap, praying. "DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ^s ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.) Saturn governs decrepitude until death. _Eighth side._ The dead body lying on a mattress. "ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI." Last comes death, the penalty of sin. § CXXII. Shakspeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression of this early and well known system. He has deprived the dotage of its devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage. TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads. § CXXIII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian guard-house. § CXXIV. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are, however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series. _First side._ March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the beginning of the year. _Second side._ April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather fan in her hand. _Third side._ June. Carrying cherries in a basket. I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter, because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called "the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I. The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut. _Fourth side._ July and August. The first reaping; the _leaves_ of the straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite, beats (the grain?) in a basket. _Fifth side._ September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a branch of vine. Very beautiful. _Sixth side._ October and November. I could not make out their occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire. _Seventh side._ December. Killing pigs, as usual. _Eighth side._ January warming his feet, and February frying fish. This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter as the cherries are of the Venetian summer. The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS. This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources. This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of the last capital, which are both fine. I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of these capitals, as they are not worth description. § CXXV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely changing the succession of the figures. TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given, and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art, namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA. Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter, whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like a bottle compresed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to this day. § CXXVI. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh. TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth. THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the "Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC^S (?) INFERI" (?). THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth. THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads, or chins, or on the leaves around them. THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth. THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh. THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth century. § CXXVII. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta façade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied, very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work, though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures of lawgivers, in the following order: _Second side._ Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed: "ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE." Aristotle who declares laws. _Third side._ I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari call it "Isidore" (?).[158] _Fourth side._ Solon with his pupils. Inscribed: "SAL^O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE." Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares laws. Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery. _Fifth side._ The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed: "ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE." A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away. _Sixth side._ Numa Pompilius building churches. "NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE." Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery. _Seventh side._ Moses receiving the law. Inscribed: "QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LEGE I SUL MONTE." Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with clusters of three berries in the centre of three leaves, sharp and quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch, with the stone tablets between. _Eighth side._ Trajan doing justice to the Widow. "TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA." He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind: the widow kneeling before his horse. § CXXVIII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the political and judicial language of the period,[159] nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or _wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps, better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own government is carried on, and the occasional difference between parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine, with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place, that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables: in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure. § CXXIX. We have now examined the portions of the palace which contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The capitals of the upper arcade are exceedingly various in their character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones; others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth, in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art; and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculptures of the four winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante, the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand; Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana, the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton: "Thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise, Sirocco and Libecchio." I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and the other of the fifteenth century. § CXXX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that of fig. 14. [Illustration: Plate XX. LEAFAGE OF THE VENETIAN CAPITALS.] § CXXXI. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig. 14 the best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14 gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore, abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness, elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength, freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer winds, as the sands are by the sea. § CXXXII. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period, i.e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject. § CXXXIII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper arcade there are only the four traceried windows,[160] and one or two of the third order on the Rio Façade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting the original workmanship of the older palace. I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the façade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the façade, the parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice; still less in the large central windows on each façade, which are entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression. § CXXXIV. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case, though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by piece being destroyed for ever. § CXXXV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art in Europe. The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one,[161] and have no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. The reputation of certain works is raised, partly by accident, partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever, in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term, without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with the beauties which they have heard attributed to it. § CXXXVI. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst, the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time, in reality, of very small value indeed. § CXXXVII. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been short, and circumstances disadvantageous. § CXXXVIII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected, whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the walls piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode, looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his accomplished duty. § CXXXIX. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens, that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture, will pay fifty to repaint it:[162] and when I was at Venice in 1846, there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world), curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling; while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common house-painter's vessel of paint. This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world. § CXL. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the "Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine. FOOTNOTES [99] The reader will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given with the quotations. Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 4to, Venice, 1663. Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale. 8vo, Venice, 1829. Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780. Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. 8vo, Venice, 1838. Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811. Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale. 8vo, Venice, 1837. Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847. [100] The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo Ducal nel luogo ditto Bruolo in confin di S. Moisè, et fece riedificar la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi, vol. vi. chap. 1, corrects this date to 813. [101] "Ampliò la città, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d' Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la cappella di S. Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si è che il suddetto Agnello lo incominciò da fondamenti, e cost pure la cappella ducale di S. Marco." [102] What I call the Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio, stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are: "Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted, says: "In the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say, on the Piazzetta." [103] "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino, quoted by Cadorin and Temanza. [104] There is an interesting account of this revolt in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber, speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way somewhat startling to the state, by his absconding with a French priest to St. Michael's, in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs, therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named. [105] "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_, p. 25. [106] "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these fires, vide Cadorin, p. 121, 123. [107] "Urbis situm, ædificiorum decorem, et regiminis æquitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted by Cadorin. [108] "Non solamente rinovò il palazzo, ma lo aggrandì per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle for account of these repairs. [109] "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M. Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as "molto particolare e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p. 593.--It terminates in the year 1422. [110] See Vol. I. Appendix 3. [111] Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the reign of Gradenigo, p. 564. [112] Sansovino, 324, 1. [113] "1301 fu presa parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_, quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del 1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se adoperava a far el pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin 1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122 years."--_Cod. Ven_. tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from 1253 to 1454. [114] "Vi era appresso la Cancellaria, e la Gheba o Gabbia, chiamata poi Torresella."--P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in question. [115] Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23. [116] Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof of the palace, the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine where it is greatest." [117] "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S. Marco,"--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120. [118] These documents I have not examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I take the passages quoted. [119] "Libras tres, soldos 15 grossorum."--_Cadorin_, 189, 1. [120] Cod. Ven., No. CXLI. p. 365. [121] Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree: "For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) was not capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal Grande."--P. 324. [122] Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342 is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the Council Chamber as only begun in 1345. [123] Calendario. See Appendix 1, Vol. III. [124] "Il primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento, il quale l' anno 1365 vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino._ [125] "L' an poi 1400 vi fece il cielo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle, ch' era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. VIII. [126] "In questi tempi si messe in oro il cielo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il pergolo del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e l'altro di stelle, ch' erano l'insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_, lib. XIII. Compare also Pareri, p. 129. [127] Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix 1, Vol. III. [128] Cronaca Sanudo, No. CXXV. in the Marcian Library, p. 568. [129] Tomaso Mocenigo. [130] Vide notes in Appendix. [131] On the 4th of April, 1423, according to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April. [132] "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3 April, et fu il primo giorno che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365. [133] "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto Gran Conseio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta più fatto Gran Conseio si che el primo Gran Conseio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation, fo fatto in la salla nuova, nel qual conseio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c., p. 426. [134] Compare Appendix 1, Vol. III. [135] "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogado del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131. [136] This identification has been accomplished, and I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all the leisure which, during the last twenty years, his manifold offices of kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will shortly be made public. [137] See the last chapter of the third volume. [138] "IN XRI--NOIE AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen, in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c. [139] "Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well-known tale of the Fisherman and St. Mark's ring. [140] In the original, the succession of words is evidently suggested partly by similarity of sound; and the sentence is made weighty by an alliteration which is quite lost in our translation; but the very allowance of influence to these minor considerations is a proof how little any metaphysical order or system was considered necessary in the statement. [141] It occurs in a prayer for the influence of the Holy Spirit, "That He may keep my soul, and direct my way; compose my bearing, and form my thoughts in holiness; may He govern my body, and protect my mind; strengthen me in action, approve my vows, and accomplish my desires; cause me to lead an honest and honorable life, and give me good hope, charity and chastity, humility and patience: may He govern the Five Senses of my body," &c. The following prayer is also very characteristic of this period. It opens with a beautiful address to Christ upon the cross; then proceeds thus: "Grant to us, O Lord, we beseech thee, this day and ever, the use of penitence, of abstinence, of humility, and chastity; and grant to us light, judgment, understanding, and true knowledge, even to the end." One thing I note in comparing old prayers with modern ones, that however quaint, or however erring, they are always tenfold more condensed, comprehensive, and to their purpose, whatever that may be. There is no dilution in them, no vain or monotonous phraseology. They ask for what is desired plainly and earnestly, and never could be shortened by a syllable. The following series of ejaculations are deep in spirituality, and curiously to our present purpose in the philological quaintness of being built upon prepositions:-- "Domine Jesu Christe, sancta cruce tua apud me sis, ut me defendas. Domine Jesu Christe, pro veneranda cruce tua post me sis, ut me gubernes. Domine Jesu Christe, pro benedicta cruce tua intra me sis, ut me reficeas. Domine Jesu Christe, pro benedicta cruce tua circa me sis, ut me conserves. Domine Jesu Christe, pro gloriosa cruce tua ante me sis, ut me deduces. Domine Jesu Christe, pro laudanda cruce tua super me sis, ut benedicas. Domine Jesu Christe, pro magnifica cruce tua in me sis, ut me ad regnum tuum perducas, per D. N. J. C. Amen." [142] This arrangement of the cardinal virtues is said to have been first made by Archytas. See D'Ancarville's illustration of the three figures of Prudence, Fortitude, and Charity, in Selvatico's "Cappellina degli Scrovegni," Padua, 1836. [143] Or Penitence: but I rather think this is understood only in Compunctio cordis. [144] The transformation of a symbol into a reality, observe, as in transubstantiation, is as much an abandonment of symbolism as the forgetfulness of symbolic meaning altogether. [145] On the window of New College, Oxford. [146] Uniting the three ideas expressed by the Greek philosophers under the terms [Greek: phronêei], [Greek: sophia], and [Greek: epistêmê]; and part of the idea of [Greek: sôphrosonê]. [147] Isa. lxiv. 5. [148] I can hardly think it necessary to point out to the reader the association between sacred cheerfulness and solemn thought, or to explain any appearance of contradiction between passages in which (as above in Chap. V.) I have had to oppose sacred pensiveness to unholy mirth, and those in which I have to oppose sacred cheerfulness to unholy sorrow. [149] "Desse," seat [150] Usually called Charity: but this virtue in its full sense is one of the attendant spirits by the Throne; the Kindness here meant is Charity with a special object; or Friendship and Kindness, as opposed to Envy, which has always, in like manner, a special object. Hence the love of Orestes and Pylades is given as an instance of the virtue of Friendship; and the Virgin's, "They have no wine," at Cana, of general kindness and sympathy with others' pleasure. [151] The "Faerie Queen," like Dante's "Paradise," is only half estimated, because few persons take the pains to think out its meaning. I have put a brief analysis of the first book in Appendix 2, Vol. III.; which may perhaps induce the reader to follow out the subject for himself. No time devoted to profane literature will be better rewarded than that spent _earnestly_ on Spenser. [152] Inscribed, I believe, Pietas, meaning general reverence and godly fear. [153] I have given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the expression of the figures. [154] Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. p. 226. [155] Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. letter IV. [156] Selvatico states that these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins, Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians. Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to note them. [157] The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform mark, I believe of contraction, and the small ^s for a zigzag mark of the same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked, on the stone. [158] Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of the fifth side for the word Isidore? [159] Compare the speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II. § LIX. [160] Some further details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix 1, Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them into the text. [161] Many persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's garret? [162] This is easily explained. There are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch; and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in recommending those of the picture. APPENDIX. 1. THE GONDOLIER'S CRY. Most persons are now well acquainted with the general aspect of the Venetian gondola, but few have taken the pains to understand the cries of warning uttered by its boatmen, although those cries are peculiarly characteristic, and very impressive to a stranger, and have been even very sweetly introduced in poetry by Mr. Monckton Milnes. It may perhaps be interesting to the traveller in Venice to know the general method of management of the boat to which he owes so many happy hours. A gondola is in general rowed only by one man, _standing_ at the stern; those of the upper classes having two or more boatmen, for greater speed and magnificence. In order to raise the oar sufficiently, it rests, not on the side of the boat, but on a piece of crooked timber like the branch of a tree, rising about a foot from the boat's side, and called a "fórcola." The fórcola is of different forms, according to the size and uses of the boat, and it is always somewhat complicated in its parts and curvature, allowing the oar various kinds of rests and catches on both its sides, but perfectly free play in all cases; as the management of the boat depends on the gondolier's being able in an instant to place his oar in any position. The fórcola is set on the right-hand side of the boat, some six feet from the stern: the gondolier stands on a little flat platform or deck behind it, and throws nearly the entire weight of his body upon the forward stroke. The effect of this stroke would be naturally to turn the boat's head round to the left, as well as to send it forward; but this tendency is corrected by keeping the blade of the oar under the water on the return stroke, and raising it gradually, as a full spoon is raised out of any liquid, so that the blade emerges from the water only an instant before it again plunges. A _downward_ and lateral pressure upon the fórcola is thus obtained, which entirely counteracts the tendency given by the forward stroke; and the effort, after a little practice, becomes hardly conscious, though, as it adds some labor to the back stroke, rowing a gondola at speed is hard and breathless work, though it appears easy and graceful to the looker-on. If then the gondola is to be turned to the left, the forward impulse is given without the return stroke; if it is to be turned to the right, the plunged oar is brought forcibly up to the surface; in either case a single strong stroke being enough to turn the light and flat-bottomed boat. But as it has no keel, when the turn is made sharply, as out of one canal into another very narrow one, the impetus of the boat in its former direction gives it an enormous lee-way, and it drifts laterally up against the wall of the canal, and that so forcibly, that if it has turned at speed, no gondolier can arrest the motion merely by strength or rapidity of stroke of oar; but it is checked by a strong thrust of the foot against the wall itself, the head of the boat being of course turned for the moment almost completely round to the opposite wall, and greater exertion made to give it, as quickly as possible, impulse in the new direction. The boat being thus guided, the cry "Premi" is the order from one gondolier to another that he should "press" or thrust forward his oar, without the back stroke, so as to send the boat's head round _to the left_; and the cry "Stali" is the order that he should give the return or upward stroke which sends the boat's head round to the _right_. Hence, if two gondoliers meet under any circumstances which render it a matter of question on which side they should pass each other, the gondolier who has at the moment the least power over his boat, cries to the other, "Premi," if he wishes the boats to pass with their right-hand sides to each other, and "Stali," if with their left. Now, in turning a corner, there is of course risk of collision between boats coming from opposite sides, and warning is always clearly and loudly given on approaching an angle of the canals. It is of course presumed that the boat which gives the warning will be nearer the turn than the one which receives and answers it; and therefore will not have so much time to check itself or alter its course. Hence the advantage of the turn, that is, the outside, which allows the fullest swing and greatest room for lee-way, is always yielded to the boat which gives warning. Therefore, if the warning boat is going to turn to the right, as it is to have the outside position, it will keep its own right-hand side to the boat which it meets, and the cry of warning is therefore "Premi," twice given; first as soon as it can be heard round the angle, prolonged and loud, with the accent on the e, and another strongly accented e added, a kind of question, "Prémi-é," followed at the instant of turning, with "Ah Premí," with the accent sharp on the final i. If, on the other hand, the warning boat is going to turn to the left, it will pass with its left-hand side to the one it meets; and the warning cry is, "Stáli-é, Ah Stalí." Hence the confused idea in the mind of the traveller that Stali means "to the left," and "Premi" to the right; while they mean, in reality, the direct reverse; the Stali, for instance, being the order to the unseen gondolier who may be behind the corner, coming from the left-hand side, that he should hold as much as possible _to his own right_; this being the only safe order for him, whether he is going to turn the corner himself, or to go straight on; for as the warning gondola will always swing right across the canal in turning, a collision with it is only to be avoided by keeping well within it, and close up to the corner which it turns. There are several other cries necessary in the management of the gondola, but less frequently, so that the reader will hardly care for their interpretation; except only the "sciar," which is the order to the opposite gondolier to stop the boat as suddenly as possible by slipping his oar in front of the fórcola. The _cry_ is never heard except when the boatmen have got into some unexpected position, involving a risk of collision; but the action is seen constantly, when the gondola is rowed by two or more men (for if performed by the single gondolier it only swings the boat's head sharp round to the right), in bringing up at a landing-place, especially when there is any intent of display, the boat being first urged to its full speed and then stopped with as much foam about the oar-blades as possible, the effect being much like that of stopping a horse at speed by pulling him on his haunches. 2. OUR LADY OF SALVATION. "Santa Maria della Salute," Our Lady of Health, or of Safety, would be a more literal translation, yet not perhaps fully expressing the force of the Italian word in this case. The church was built between 1630 and 1680, in acknowledgment of the cessation of the plague;--of course to the Virgin, to whom the modern Italian has recourse in all his principal distresses, and who receives his gratitude for all principal deliverances. The hasty traveller is usually enthusiastic in his admiration of this building; but there is a notable lesson to be derived from it, which is not often read. On the opposite side of the broad canal of the Giudecca is a small church, celebrated among Renaissance architects as of Palladian design, but which would hardly attract the notice of the general observer, unless on account of the pictures by John Bellini which it contains, in order to see which the traveller may perhaps remember having been taken across the Giudecca to the Church of the "Redentore." But he ought carefully to compare these two buildings with each other, the one built "to the Virgin," the other "to the Redeemer" (also a votive offering after the cessation of the plague of 1576); the one, the most conspicuous church in Venice, its dome, the principal one by which she is first discerned, rising out of the distant sea: the other, small and contemptible, on a suburban island, and only becoming an object of interest because it contains three small pictures! For in the relative magnitude and conspicuousness of these two buildings, we have an accurate index of the relative importance of the ideas of the Madonna and of Christ, in the modern Italian mind. Some further account of this church is given in the final Index to the Venetian buildings at the close of the third Volume. 3. TIDES OF VENICE, AND MEASURES AT TORCELLO. The lowest and highest tides take place in Venice at different periods, the lowest during the winter, the highest in the summer and autumn. During the period of the highest tides, the city is exceedingly beautiful, especially if, as is not unfrequently the case, the water rises high enough partially to flood St. Mark's Place. Nothing can be more lovely or fantastic than the scene, when the Campanile and the Golden Church are reflected in the calm water, and the lighter gondolas floating under the very porches of the façade. On the other hand, a winter residence in Venice is rendered peculiarly disagreeable by the low tides, which sometimes leave the smaller canals entirely dry, and large banks of mud beneath the houses, along the borders of even the Grand Canal. The difference between the levels of the highest and lowest tides I saw in Venice was 6 ft. 3 in. The average fall rise is from two to three feet. * * * * * The measures of Torcello were intended for Appendix 4; but having by a misprint referred the reader to Appendix 3, I give them here. The entire breadth of the church within the walls is 70 feet; of which the square bases of the pillars, 3 feet on each side, occupy 6 feet; and the nave, from base to base, measures 31 ft. 1 in.; the aisles from base to wall, 16 feet odd inches, not accurately ascertainable on account of the modern wainscot fittings. The intervals between the bases of the pillars are 8 feet each, increasing towards the altar to 8 ft. 3 in., in order to allow for a corresponding diminution in the diameter of the bases from 3 ft. to 2 ft. 11 in. or 2 ft. 10. in. This subtle diminution of the bases is in order to prevent the eye from feeling the greater narrowness of the shafts in that part of the nave, their average circumference being 6 ft. 10 in.; and one, the second on the north side, reaching 7 feet, while those at the upper end of the nave vary from 6 ft. 8 in. to 6 ft. 4 in. It is probable that this diminution in the more distant pillars adds slightly to the perspective effect of length in the body of the church, as it is seen from the great entrance: but whether this was the intention or not, the delicate adaptation of this diminished base to the diminished shaft is a piece of fastidiousness in proportion which I rejoice in having detected; and this the more, because the rude contours of the bases themselves would little induce the spectator to anticipate any such refinement. 4. DATE OF THE DUOMO OF TORCELLO. The first flight to the lagoons for shelter was caused by the invasion of Attila in the fifth century, so that in endeavoring to throw back the thought of the reader to the former solitude of the islands, I spoke of them as they must have appeared "1300 years ago." Altinum, however, was not finally destroyed till the Lombard invasion in 641, when the episcopal seat was removed to Torcello, and the inhabitants of the mainland city, giving up all hope of returning to their former homes, built their Duomo there. It is a disputed point among Venetian antiquarians, whether the present church be that which was built in the seventh century, partially restored in 1008, or whether the words of Sagornino, "ecclesiam jam vetustate consumptam recreare," justify them in assuming an entire rebuilding of the fabric. I quite agree with the Marchese Selvatico, in believing the present church to be the earlier building, variously strengthened, refitted, and modified by subsequent care; but, in all its main features, preserving its original aspect, except, perhaps, in the case of the pulpit and chancel screen, which, if the Chevalier Bunsen's conclusions respecting early pulpits in the Roman basilicas be correct (see the next article of this Appendix), may possibly have been placed in their present position in the tenth century, and the fragmentary character of the workmanship of the latter, noticed in §§ X. and XI., would in that case have been the result of innovation, rather than of haste. The question, however, whether they are of the seventh or eleventh century, does not in the least affect our conclusions, drawn from the design of these portions of the church, respecting pulpits in general. 5. MODERN PULPITS. There is no character of an ordinary modern English church which appears to me more to be regretted than the peculiar pompousness of the furniture of the pulpits, contrasted, as it generally is, with great meagreness and absence of color in the other portions of the church; a pompousness, besides, altogether without grace or meaning, and dependent merely on certain applications of upholstery; which, curiously enough, are always in worse taste than even those of our drawing-rooms. Nor do I understand how our congregations can endure the aspect of the wooden sounding-board attached only by one point of its circumference to an upright pillar behind the preacher; and looking as if the weight of its enormous leverage must infallibly, before the sermon is concluded, tear it from its support, and bring it down upon the preacher's head. These errors in taste and feeling will however, I believe, be gradually amended as more Gothic churches are built; but the question of the position of the pulpit presents a more disputable ground of discussion. I can perfectly sympathise with the feeling of those who wish the eastern extremity of the church to form a kind of holy place for the communion table; nor have I often received a more painful impression than on seeing the preacher at the Scotch church in George Street, Portman Square, taking possession of a perfect apse; and occupying therein, during the course of the service, very nearly the same position which the figure of Christ does in that of the Cathedral of Pisa. But I nevertheless believe that the Scotch congregation are perfectly right, and have restored the real arrangement of the primitive churches. The Chevalier Bunsen informed me very lately, that, in all the early basilicas he has examined, the lateral pulpits are of more recent date than the rest of the building; that he knows of none placed in the position which they now occupy, both in the basilicas and Gothic cathedrals, before the ninth century; and that there can be no doubt that the bishop always preached or exhorted, in the primitive times, from his throne in the centre of the apse, the altar being always set at the centre of the church, in the crossing of the transepts. His Excellency found by experiment in Santa Maria Maggiore, the largest of the Roman basilicas, that the voice could be heard more plainly from the centre of the apse than from any other spot in the whole church; and, if this be so, it will be another very important reason for the adoption of the Romanesque (or Norman) architecture in our churches, rather than of the Gothic. The reader will find some farther notice of this question in the concluding chapter of the third volume. Before leaving this subject, however, I must be permitted to say one word to those members of the Scotch Church who are severe in their requirement of the nominal or apparent extemporization of all addresses delivered from the pulpit. Whether they do right in giving those among their ministers who _cannot_ preach extempore, the additional and useless labor of committing their sermons to memory, may be a disputed question; but it can hardly be so, that the now not unfrequent habit of making a desk of the Bible, and reading the sermon stealthily, by slipping the sheets of it between the sacred leaves, so that the preacher consults his own notes _on pretence_ of consulting the Scriptures, is a very unseemly consequence of their over-strictness. 6. APSE OF MURANO. The following passage succeeded in the original text to § XV. of Chap. III. Finding it not likely to interest the general reader, I have placed it here, as it contains matter of some interest to architects. "On this plinth, thus carefully studied in relations of magnitude, the shafts are set at the angles, as close to each other as possible, as seen in the ground-plan. These shafts are founded on pure Roman tradition; their bases have no spurs, and the shaft itself is tapered in a bold curve, according to the classical model. But, in the adjustment of the bases to each other, we have a most curious instance of the first beginning of the Gothic principle of aggregation of shafts. They have a singularly archaic and simple profile, composed of a single cavetto and roll, which are circular, on a square plinth. Now when these bases are brought close to each other at the angles of the apse, their natural position would be as in fig. 3, Plate I., leaving an awkward fissure between the two square plinths. This offended the architect's eye; so he cut part of each of the bases away, and fitted them close to each other, as in fig. 5, Plate I., which is their actual position. As before this piece of rough harmonization the circular mouldings reached the sides of the squares, they were necessarily cut partly away in the course of the adjustment, and run into each other as in the figure, so as to give us one of the first Venetian instances of the continuous Gothic base. "The shafts measure on the average 2 ft. 8½ in. in circumference, at the base, tapering so much that under the lowest fillet of their necks they measure only 2 feet round, though their height is only 5 ft. 6 in., losing thus eight inches of girth in five feet and a half of height. They are delicately curved all the way up; and are 2½ in. apart from each other where they are nearest, and about 5 in. at the necks of their capitals." 7. EARLY VENETIAN DRESS. Sansovino's account of the changes in the dress of the Venetians is brief, masterly, and full of interest; one or two passages are deserving of careful notice, especially the introductory sentence. "For the Venetians from their first origin, having made it their aim to be peaceful and religious, and to keep on an equality with one another, that equality might induce stability and concord (as disparity produces confusion and ruin), made their dress a matter of conscience, ...; and our ancestors, observant lovers of religion, upon which all their acts were founded, and desiring that their young men should direct themselves to virtue, the true soul of all human action, _and above all to peace_, invented a dress conformable to their gravity, such, that in clothing themselves with it, they might clothe themselves also with modesty and honor. And because their mind was bent upon giving no offence to any one, and living quietly as far as might be permitted them, it seemed good to them to show to every one, even by external signs, this their endeavor, by wearing a long dress, which was in no wise convenient for persons of a quick temperament, or of eager and fierce spirits." Respecting the color of the women's dress, it is noticeable that blue is called "Venetian color" by Cassiodorus, translated "turchino" by Filiasi, vol. v. chap. iv. It was a very pale blue, as the place in which the word occurs is the description by Cassiodorus of the darkness which came over the sun's disk at the time of the Belisarian wars and desolation of the Gothic kingdom. 8. INSCRIPTIONS AT MURANO. There are two other inscriptions on the border of the concha; but these, being written on the soffit of the face arch, which, as before noticed, is supported by the last two shafts of the chancel, could not be read by the congregation, and only with difficulty by those immediately underneath them. One of them is in black, the other in red letters. The first: "Mutat quod sumsit, quod sollat crimina tandit Et quod sumpsit, vultus vestisq. refulsit." The second: "Discipuli testes, prophete certa videntes Et cernunt purum, sibi credunt ese futurum." I have found no notice of any of these inscriptions in any Italian account of the church of Murano, and have seldom seen even Monkish Latin less intelligible. There is no mistake in the letters, which are all large and clear; but wrong letters may have been introduced by ignorant restorers, as has often happened in St. Mark's. 9. SHAFTS OF ST. MARK. The principal pillars which carry the nave and transepts, fourteen in number, are of white alabaster veined with grey and amber; each of a single block, 15 ft. high, and 6 ft. 2 in. round at the base. I in vain endeavored to ascertain their probable value. Every sculptor whom I questioned on this subject told me there were no such pieces of alabaster in the market, and that they were to be considered as without price. On the façade of the church alone are two great ranges of shafts, seventy-two in the lower range, and seventy-nine in the upper; all of porphyry, alabaster, and verd-antique or fine marble; the lower about 9 ft., the upper about 7 ft. high, and of various circumferences, from 4 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. round. There are now so many published engravings, and, far better than engravings, calotypes, of this façade, that I may point out one or two circumstances for the reader's consideration without giving any plate of it here. And first, we ought to note the relations of the shafts and wall, the latter being first sheeted with alabaster, and then the pillars set within two or three inches of it, forming such a grove of golden marble that the porches open before us as we enter the church like glades in a deep forest. The reader may perhaps at first question the propriety of placing the wall so close behind the shafts that the latter have nearly as little work to do as the statues in a Gothic porch; but the philosophy of this arrangement is briefly deducible from the principles stated in the text. The builder had at his disposal shafts of a certain size only, not fit to sustain the whole weight of the fabric above. He therefore turns just as much of the wall veil into shaft as he has strength of marble at his disposal, and leaves the rest in its massive form. And that there may be no dishonesty in this, nor any appearance in the shafts of doing more work than is really allotted to them, many are left visibly with half their capitals projecting beyond the archivolts they sustain, showing that the wall is very slightly dependent on their co-operation, and that many of them are little more than mere bonds or connecting rods between the foundation and cornices. If any architect ventures to blame such an arrangement, let him look at our much vaunted early English piers in Salisbury Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, where the small satellitic shafts are introduced in the same gratuitous manner, but with far less excuse or reason: for those small shafts have nothing but their delicacy and purely theoretical connection with the archivolt mouldings to recommend them; but the St. Mark's shafts have an intrinsic beauty and value of the highest order, and the object of the whole system of architecture, as above stated, is in great part to set forth the beauty and value of the shaft itself. Now, not only is this accomplished by withdrawing it occasionally from servile work, but the position here given to it, within three or four inches of a wall from which it nevertheless stands perfectly clear all the way up, is exactly that which must best display its color and quality. When there is much vacant space left behind a pillar, the shade against which it is relieved is comparatively indefinite, the eye passes by the shaft, and penetrates into the vacancy. But when a broad surface of wall is brought near the shaft, its own shadow is, in almost every effect of sunshine, so sharp and dark as to throw out its colors with the highest possible brilliancy; if there be no sunshine, the wall veil is subdued and varied by the most subtle gradations of delicate half shadow, hardly less advantageous to the shaft which it relieves. And, as far as regards pure effect in open air (all artifice of excessive darkness or mystery being excluded), I do not know anything whatsoever in the whole compass of the European architecture I have seen, which can for a moment be compared with the quaint shade and delicate color, like that of Rembrandt and Paul Veronese united, which the sun brings out, as his rays move from porch to porch along the St. Mark's façade. And, as if to prove that this was indeed the builder's intention, and that he did not leave his shafts idle merely because he did not know how to set them to work safely, there are two pieces of masonry at the extremities of the façade, which are just as remarkable for their frank trust in the bearing power of the shafts as the rest are for their want of confidence in them. But, before we come to these, we must say a word or two respecting the second point named above, the superior position of the shafts. It was assuredly not in the builder's power, even had he been so inclined, to obtain shafts high enough to sustain the whole external gallery, as it is sustained in the nave, on one arcade. He had, as above noticed, a supply of shafts of every sort and size, from which he chose the largest for his nave shafts; the smallest were set aside for windows, jambs, balustrades, supports of pulpits, niches, and such other services, every conceivable size occurring in different portions of the building; and the middle-sized shafts were sorted into two classes, of which on the average one was about two-thirds the length of the other, and out of these the two stories of the façade and sides of the church are composed, the smaller shafts of course uppermost, and more numerous than the lower, according to the ordinary laws of superimposition adopted by all the Romanesque builders, and observed also in a kind of architecture quite as beautiful as any we are likely to invent, that of forest trees. Nothing is more singular than the way in which this kind of superimposition (the only right one in the case of shafts) will shock a professed architect. He has been accustomed to see, in the Renaissance designs, shaft put on the top of shaft, three or four times over, and he thinks this quite right; but the moment he is shown a properly subdivided superimposition, in which the upper shafts diminish in size and multiply in number, so that the lower pillars would balance them safely even without cement, he exclaims that it is "against law," as if he had never seen a tree in his life. Not that the idea of the Byzantine superimposition was taken from trees, any more than that of Gothic arches. Both are simple compliances with laws of nature, and, therefore, approximations to the forms of nature. There is, however, one very essential difference between tree structure and the shaft structure in question; namely, that the marble branches, having no vital connexion with the stem, must be provided with a firm tablet or second foundation whereon to stand. This intermediate plinth or tablet runs along the whole façade at one level, is about eighteen inches thick, and left with little decoration as being meant for hard service. The small porticos, already spoken of as the most graceful pieces of composition with which I am acquainted, are sustained on detached clusters of four or five columns, forming the continuation of those of the upper series, and each of these clusters is balanced on one grand detached shaft; as much trust being thus placed in the pillars here, as is withdrawn from them elsewhere. The northern portico has only one detached pillar at its outer angle, which sustains three shafts and a square pilaster; of these shafts the one at the outer angle of the group is the thickest (so as to balance the pilaster on the inner angle), measuring 3 ft. 2 in. round, while the others measure only 2 ft. 10 in. and 2 ft. 11 in.; and in order to make this increase of diameter, and the importance of the shaft, more manifest to the eye, the old builders made the shaft _shorter_ as well as thicker, increasing the depth both of its capital and the base, with what is to the thoughtless spectator ridiculous incongruity, and to the observant one a most beautiful expression of constructive genius. Nor is this all. Observe: the whole strength of this angle depends on accuracy of _poise_, not on breadth or strength of foundation. It is a _balanced_, not a propped structure: if the balance fails, it must fall instantly; if the balance is maintained, no matter how the lower shaft is fastened into the ground, all will be safe. And to mark this more definitely, the great lower shaft _has a different base from all the others of the façade_, remarkably high in proportion to the shaft, on a circular instead of a square plinth, and _without spurs_, while all the other bases have spurs without exception. Glance back at what is said of the spurs at p. 79 of the first volume, and reflect that all expression of _grasp_ in the foot of the pillar is here useless, and to be replaced by one of balance merely, and you will feel what the old builder wanted to say to us, and how much he desired us to follow him with our understanding as he laid stone above stone. And this purpose of his is hinted to us once more, even by the position of this base in the ground plan of the foundation of the portico; for, though itself circular, it sustains a hexagonal plinth _set obliquely to the walls of the church_, as if expressly to mark to us that it did not matter how the base was set, so only that the weights were justly disposed above it. 10. PROPER SENSE OF THE WORD IDOLATRY. I do not intend, in thus applying the word "Idolatry" to certain ceremonies of Romanist worship, to admit the propriety of the ordinary Protestant manner of regarding those ceremonies as distinctively idolatrous, and as separating the Romanist from the Protestant Church by a gulf across which we must not look to our fellow-Christians but with utter reprobation and disdain. The Church of Rome does indeed distinctively violate the _second_ commandment; but the true force and weight of the sin of idolatry are in the violation of the first, of which we are all of us guilty, in probably a very equal degree, considered only as members of this or that communion, and not as Christians or unbelievers. Idolatry is, both literally and verily, not the mere bowing down before sculptures, but the serving or becoming the slave of any images or imaginations which stand between us and God, and it is otherwise expressed in Scripture as "walking after the _Imagination_" of our own hearts. And observe also that while, at least on one occasion, we find in the Bible an indulgence granted to the mere external and literal violation of the second commandment, "When I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing," we find no indulgence in any instance, or in the slightest degree, granted to "covetousness, which is idolatry" (Col. iii. 5; no casual association of terms, observe, but again energetically repeated in Ephesians, v. 5, "No covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ"); nor any to that denial of God, idolatry in one of its most subtle forms, following so often on the possession of that wealth against which Agur prayed so earnestly, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, 'Who is the Lord?'" And in this sense, which of us is not an idolater? Which of us has the right, in the fulness of that better knowledge, in spite of which he nevertheless is not yet separated from the service of this world, to speak scornfully of any of his brethren, because, in a guiltless ignorance, they have been accustomed to bow their knees before a statue? Which of us shall say that there may not be a spiritual worship in their apparent idolatry, or that there is not a spiritual idolatry in our own apparent worship? For indeed it is utterly impossible for one man to judge of the feeling with which another bows down before an image. From that pure reverence in which Sir Thomas Brown wrote, "I can dispense with my hat at the sight of a cross, but not with a thought of my Redeemer," to the worst superstition of the most ignorant Romanist, there is an infinite series of subtle transitions; and the point where simple reverence and the use of the image merely to render conception more vivid, and feeling more intense, change into definite idolatry by the attribution of Power to the image itself, is so difficultly determinable that we cannot be too cautions in asserting that such a change has actually taken place in the case of any individual. Even when it is definite and certain, we shall oftener find it the consequence of dulness of intellect than of real alienation of heart from God; and I have no manner of doubt that half of the poor and untaught Christians who are this day lying prostrate before crucifixes, Bambinos, and Volto Santos, are finding more acceptance with God, than many Protestants who idolize nothing but their own opinions or their own interests. I believe that those who have worshipped the thorns of Christ's crown will be found at last to have been holier and wiser than those who worship the thorns of the world's service, and that to adore the nails of the cross is a less sin than to adore the hammer of the workman. But, on the other hand, though the idolatry of the lower orders in the Romish Church may thus be frequently excusable, the ordinary subterfuges by which it is defended are not so. It may be extenuated, but cannot be denied; and the attribution of power to the image,[163] in which it consists, is not merely a form of popular feeling, but a tenet of priestly instruction, and may be proved, over and over again, from any book of the Romish Church services. Take for instance the following prayer, which occurs continually at the close of the service of the Holy Cross: "Saincte vraye Croye aourée, Qui du corps Dieu fu aournée Et de sa sueur arrousée, Et de son sanc enluminée, Par ta vertu, par ta puissance, Defent mon corps de meschance, Et montroie moy par ton playsir Que vray confes puisse mourir." "Oh holy, true, and golden Cross, which wast adorned with God's body, and watered with His sweat, and illuminated with His blood, by thy healing virtue and thy power, defend my body from mischance; and by thy good pleasure, let me make a good confession when I die." There can be no possible defence imagined for the mere terms in which this prayer and other such are couched: yet it is always to be remembered, that in many cases they are rather poetical effusions than serious prayers; the utterances of imaginative enthusiasm, rather than of reasonable conviction; and as such, they are rather to be condemned as illusory and fictitious, than as idolatrous, nor even as such, condemned altogether, for strong love and faith are often the roots of them and the errors of affection are better than the accuracies of apathy. But the unhappy results, among all religious sects, of the habit of allowing imaginative and poetical belief to take the place of deliberate, resolute, and prosaic belief, have been fully and admirably traced by the author of the "Natural History of Enthusiasm." 11. SITUATIONS OF BYZANTINE PALACES. (1.) _The Terraced House._ The most conspicuous pile in the midmost reach of the Grand Canal is the Casa Grimani, now the Post-Office. Letting his boat lie by the steps of this great palace, the traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a building with a small terrace in front of it, and a little court with a door to the water, beside the terrace. Half of the house is visibly modern, and there is a great seam, like the edge of a scar, between it and the ancient remnant, in which the circular bands of the Byzantine arches will be instantly recognized. This building not having, as far as I know, any name except that of its present proprietor, I shall in future distinguish it simply as the Terraced House. (2.) _Casa Businello._ To the left of this edifice (looking from the Post-Office) there is a modern palace, on the other side of which the Byzantine mouldings appear again in the first and second stories of a house lately restored. It might be thought that the shafts and arches had been raised yesterday, the modern walls having been deftly adjusted to them, and all appearance of antiquity, together with the ornamentation and proportions of the fabric, having been entirely destroyed. I cannot, however, speak with unmixed sorrow of these changes, since, without his being implicated in the shame of them, they fitted this palace to become the residence of the kindest friend I had in Venice. It is generally known as the Casa Businello. (3.) _The Braided House._ Leaving the steps of the Casa Grimani, and turning the gondola away from the Rialto, we will pass the Casa Businello, and the three houses which succeed it on the right. The fourth is another restored palace, white and conspicuous, but retaining of its ancient structure only the five windows in its second story, and an ornamental moulding above them which appears to be ancient, though it is inaccessible without scaffolding, and I cannot therefore answer for it. But the five central windows are very valuable; and as their capitals differ from most that we find (except in St. Mark's), in their plaited or braided border and basket-worked sides, I shall call this house, in future, the Braided House.[164] (4.) _The Madonnetta House._ On the other side of this palace is the Traghetto called "Della Madonnetta;" and beyond this Traghetto, still facing the Grand Canal, a small palace, of which the front shows mere vestiges of arcades, the old shafts only being visible, with obscure circular seams in the modern plaster which covers the arches. The side of it is a curious agglomeration of pointed and round windows in every possible position, and of nearly every date from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. It is the smallest of the buildings we have to examine, but by no means the least interesting: I shall call it, from the name of its Traghetto, the Madonnetta House. (5.) _The Rio Foscari House._ We must now descend the Grand Canal as far as the Palazzo Foscari, and enter the narrower canal, called the Rio di Ca' Foscari, at the side of that palace. Almost immediately after passing the great gateway of the Foscari courtyard, we shall see on our left, in the ruinous and time-stricken walls which totter over the water, the white curve of a circular arch covered with sculpture, and fragments of the bases of small pillars, entangled among festoons of the Erba della Madonna. I have already, in the folio plates which accompanied the first volume, partly illustrated this building. In what references I have to make to it here, I shall speak of it as the Rio Foscari House. (6.) _Casa Farsetti._ We have now to reascend the Grand Canal, and approach the Rialto. As soon as we have passed the Casa Grimani, the traveller will recognize, on his right, two rich and extensive masses of building, which form important objects in almost every picturesque view of the noble bridge. Of these, the first, that farthest from the Rialto, retains great part of its ancient materials in a dislocated form. It has been entirely modernized in its upper stories, but the ground floor and first floor have nearly all their original shafts and capitals, only they have been shifted hither and thither to give room for the introduction of various small apartments, and present, in consequence, marvellous anomalies in proportion. This building is known in Venice as the Casa Farsetti. (7.) _Casa Loredan._ The one next to it, though not conspicuous, and often passed with neglect, will, I believe, be felt at last, by all who examine it carefully, to be the most beautiful palace in the whole extent of the Grand Canal. It has been restored often, once in the Gothic, once in the Renaissance times,--some writers say, even rebuilt; but, if so, rebuilt in its old form. The Gothic additions harmonize exquisitely with its Byzantine work, and it is easy, as we examine its lovely central arcade, to forget the Renaissance additions which encumber it above. It is known as the Casa Loredan. * * * * * The eighth palace is the Fondaco de' Turchi, described in the text. A ninth existed, more interesting apparently than any of these, near the Church of San Moisè, but it was thrown down in the course of "improvements" a few years ago. A woodcut of it is given in M. Lazari's Guide. 12. MODERN PAINTING ON GLASS. Of all the various principles of art which, in modern days, we have defied or forgotten, none are more indisputable, and few of more practical importance than this, which I shall have occasion again and again to allege in support of many future deductions: "All art, working with given materials, must propose to itself the objects which, with those materials, are most perfectly attainable; and becomes illegitimate and debased if it propose to itself any other objects, better attainable with other materials." Thus, great slenderness, lightness, or intricacy of structure,--as in ramifications of trees, detached folds of drapery, or wreaths of hair,--is easily and perfectly expressible in metal-work or in painting, but only with great difficulty and imperfectly expressible in sculpture. All sculpture, therefore, which professes as its chief end the expression of such characters, is debased; and if the suggestion of them be accidentally required of it, that suggestion is only to be given to an extent compatible with perfect ease of execution in the given material,--not to the utmost possible extent. For instance: some of the most delightful drawings of our own water-color painter, Hunt, have been of birds' nests; of which, in painting, it is perfectly possible to represent the intricate fibrous or mossy structure; therefore, the effort is a legitimate one, and the art is well employed. But to carve a bird's nest out of marble would be physically impossible, and to reach any approximate expression of its structure would require prolonged and intolerable labor. Therefore, all sculpture which set itself to carving birds' nests as an end, or which, if a bird's nest were required of it, carved it to the utmost possible point of realization, would be debased. Nothing but the general form, and as much of the fibrous structure as could be with perfect ease represented, ought to be attempted at all. But more than this. The workman has not done his duty, and is not working on safe principles, unless he even so far _honors_ the materials with which he is working as to set himself to bring out their beauty, and to recommend and exalt, as far as lie can, their peculiar qualities. If he is working in marble, he should insist upon and exhibit its transparency and solidity; if in iron, its strength and tenacity; if in gold, its ductility; and he will invariably find the material grateful, and that his work is all the nobler for being eulogistic of the substance of which it is made. But of all the arts, the working of glass is that in which we ought to keep these principles most vigorously in mind. For we owe it so much, and the possession of it is so great a blessing, that all our work in it should be completely and forcibly expressive of the peculiar characters which give it so vast a value. These are two, namely, its DUCTILITY when heated, and TRANSPARENCY when cold, both nearly perfect. In its employment for vessels, we ought always to exhibit its ductility, and in its employment for windows, its transparency. All work in glass is bad which does not, with loud voice, proclaim one or other of these great qualities. Consequently, _all cut glass_ is barbarous: for the cutting conceals its ductility, and confuses it with crystal. Also, all very neat, finished, and perfect form in glass is barbarous: for this fails in proclaiming another of its great virtues; namely, the ease with which its light substance can be moulded or blown into any form, so long as perfect accuracy be not required. In metal, which, even when heated enough to be thoroughly malleable, retains yet such weight and consistency as render it susceptible of the finest handling and retention of the most delicate form, great precision of workmanship is admissible; but in glass, which when once softened must be blown or moulded, not hammered, and which is liable to lose, by contraction or subsidence, the fineness of the forms given to it, no delicate outlines are to be attempted, but only such fantastic and fickle grace as the mind of the workman can conceive and execute on the instant. The more wild, extravagant, and grotesque in their gracefulness the forms are, the better. No material is so adapted for giving full play to the imagination, but it must not be wrought with refinement or painfulness, still less with costliness. For as in gratitude we are to proclaim its virtues, so in all honesty we are to confess its imperfections; and while we triumphantly set forth its transparency, we are also frankly to admit its fragility, and therefore not to waste much time upon it, nor put any real art into it when intended for daily use. No workman ought ever to spend more than an hour in the making of any glass vessel. Next in the case of windows, the points which we have to insist upon are, the transparency of the glass and its susceptibility of the most brilliant colors; and therefore the attempt to turn painted windows into pretty pictures is one of the most gross and ridiculous barbarisms of this pre-eminently barbarous century. It originated, I suppose, with the Germans, who seem for the present distinguished among European nations by the loss of the sense of color; but it appears of late to have considerable chance of establishing itself in England: and it is a two-edged error, striking in two directions; first at the healthy appreciation of painting, and then at the healthy appreciation of glass. Color, ground with oil, and laid on a solid opaque ground, furnishes to the human hand the most exquisite means of expression which the human sight and invention can find or require. By its two opposite qualities, each naturally and easily attainable, of transparency in shadow and opacity in light, it complies with the conditions of nature; and by its perfect governableness it permits the utmost possible fulness and subtlety in the harmonies of color, as well as the utmost perfection in the drawing. Glass, considered as a material for a picture, is exactly as bad as oil paint is good. It sets out by reversing the conditions of nature, by making the lights transparent and the shadows opaque; and the ungovernableness of its color (changing in the furnace), and its violence (being always on a high key, because produced by actual light), render it so disadvantageous in every way, that the result of working in it for pictorial effect would infallibly be the destruction of all the appreciation of the noble qualities of pictorial color. In the second place, this modern barbarism destroys the true appreciation of the qualities of glass. It denies, and endeavors as far as possible to conceal, the transparency, which is not only its great virtue in a merely utilitarian point of view, but its great spiritual character; the character by which in church architecture it becomes most touchingly impressive, as typical of the entrances of the Holy Spirit into the heart of man; a typical expression rendered specific and intense by the purity and brilliancy of its sevenfold hues;[165] and therefore in endeavoring to turn the window into a picture, we at once lose the sanctity and power of the noble material, and employ it to an end which is utterly impossible it should ever worthily attain. The true perfection of a painted window is to be serene, intense, brilliant, like flaming jewellery; full of easily legible and quaint subjects, and exquisitely subtle, yet simple, in its harmonies. In a word, this perfection has been consummated in the designs, never to be surpassed, if ever again to be approached by human art, of the French windows of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. FOOTNOTES [163] I do not like to hear Protestants speaking with gross and uncharitable contempt even of the worship of relics. Elisha once trusted his own staff too far; nor can I see any reasonable ground for the scorn, or the unkind rebuke, of those who have been taught from their youth upwards that to hope even in the hem of the garment may sometimes be better than to spend the living on physicians. [164] Casa Tiepolo (?) in Lazari's Guide. [165] I do not think that there is anything more necessary to the progress of European art in the present day than the complete understanding of this sanctity of Color. I had much pleasure in finding it, the other day, fully understood and thus sweetly expressed in a little volume of poems by a Miss Maynard: "For still in every land, though to Thy name Arose no temple,--still in every age, Though heedless man had quite forgot Thy praise, _We_ praised Thee; and at rise and set of sun Did we assemble duly, and intone A choral hymn that all the lands might hear. In heaven, on earth, and in the deep we praised Thee, Singly, or mingled in sweet sisterhood. But now, acknowledged ministrants, we come, Co-worshippers with man in this Thy house, We, the Seven Daughters of the Light, to praise Thee, Light of Light! Thee, God of very God!" _A Dream of Fair Colors._ These poems seem to be otherwise remarkable for a very unobtrusive and pure religious feeling in subjects connected with art. * * * * * CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT. Page 58: 'endeavoring to imagine its aspect' corrected from 'aspeet.' Page 84: 'inadmissible altogether, or objectionable' from 'objecjectionable.' Page 179: 'the surface sculpture will' corrected from 'wiil.' Page 188: 'central class will always' originally 'aways.' Page 191: 'with the rest of the spirit' originally 'spirt.' Page 204: 'the heart of that languor' originally 'langour.' Page 263: 'merely noting this one assured fact' changed from 'nothing.' Footnote 130: Appendi corrected to Appendix. 
40394	----	Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. This book uses the ~ over occasional letters to represent scribal abbreviations. This is indicated as (for example) p[~r]b. _BY THE SAME AUTHOR._ Historical and Architectural Sketches; CHIEFLY ITALIAN. ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR. BEING A _Companion Volume to 'Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice.'_ Crown 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._ "A historian is not always an antiquary, even less frequently is an antiquary a historian; by combining the two characters, he thereby redeems his historical writings from the dangers of shallowness and inaccuracy, and his antiquarianism from pedantry and dryness.... From the information afforded by the essays themselves, we may gather much which should heighten the enjoyment of visits to the inexhaustible architectural treasures of the Italian Peninsula."--_The Times._ "For these essays we have only words of unqualified praise; they are full of valuable information, and are delightfully interesting." --_Westminster Review._ "Full of valuable teachings and suggestions to all who are ready to profit by them."--_Academy._ "Those who know Italy will retrace their steps with delight in Mr. Freeman's company, and find him a most interesting guide and instructor, not merely in the architectural, but in the history of the various Italian towns that he deals with.... One of the most interesting features of the volume are the illustrations, twenty-two in number, from the author's own pencil."--_Examiner._ MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON, W.C. WORKS BY E. A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D. HISTORY OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM THE FOUNDATION of the ACHAIAN LEAGUE TO THE DISRUPTION of the UNITED STATES. Vol. I. General Introduction.--History of the Greek Federations. 8vo. 21_s._ HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF WELLS, as illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ OLD ENGLISH HISTORY. With Five Coloured Maps. _New Edition, Revised._ Extra fcap. 8vo. 6_s._ HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Third Edition._ 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._ CONTENTS:--The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early English History--The Continuity of English History--The Relations between the Crown of England and Scotland--St. Thomas of Canterbury and his Biographers, &c. HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Second Series. Second Edition_, with additional Essays. 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._ CONTENTS:--Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy--Mr. Gladstone's Homer and the Homeric Ages--The Historians of Athens--The Athenian Democracy--Alexander the Great--Greece during the Macedonian Period--Mommsen's History of Rome--Lucius Cornelius Sulla--The Flavian Cæsars, &c. HISTORICAL ESSAYS. _Third Series._ 8vo. 12_s._ CONTENTS:--First Impressions of Rome--The Illyrian Emperors and their Land--Augusta Treverorum--The Goths at Ravenna--Race and Language--The Byzantine Empire--First Impressions of Athens--Mediæval and Modern Greece--The Southern Slaves--Sicilian Cycles--The Normans at Palermo. THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES. _Third Edition._ Crown 8vo. 5_s._ THE HISTORY AND CONQUESTS OF THE SARACENS. Six Lectures. _Third Edition_, with New Preface. Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ THE OTTOMAN POWER IN EUROPE: its Nature, its Growth, and its Decline. With Coloured Maps. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ GENERAL SKETCH OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. _New Edition._ Enlarged, with Maps, &c. 18mo. 3_s._ 6_d._ (Vol. I. of Historical Course for Schools.) COMPARATIVE POLITICS. Lectures at the Royal Institution. To which is added "The Unity of History." 8vo. 14_s._ MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON, W.C. SKETCHES FROM THE SUBJECT AND NEIGHBOUR LANDS OF VENICE. [Illustration: PERISTYLE AND CATHEDRAL TOWER, SPALATO.] SKETCHES FROM THE SUBJECT AND NEIGHBOUR LANDS OF VENICE. BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D., HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. London: MACMILLAN AND CO. 1881. [_All Rights reserved._] PREFACE. This volume is designed as a companion and sequel to my former volume called "Architectural and Historical Sketches, chiefly Italian." Its general plan is the same. But more of the papers in the present volume appear for the first time than was the case with the earlier one, and most of those which are reprinted have been more largely changed in reprinting than those which appeared in the former book. This could hardly be otherwise with the pieces relating to the lands east of the Hadriatic, where I have had to work in remarks made during later journeys, and where great events have happened since I first saw those lands. The papers are chiefly the results of three journeys. The first, in the autumn of 1875, took in Dalmatia and Istria, with Trieste and Aquileia. At that time the revolt of Herzegovina had just begun, and Ragusa was crowded with refugees. Some of the papers contained references to the state of things at the moment, and those references I saw no reason to alter. But I may as well say that the time of my first visit to the South-Slavonic lands was not chosen with reference to any political or military object. The journey was planned before the revolt began; it was in fact the accomplishment of a thirty years' yearning after the architectural wonders of Spalato, which till that year I had been unable to gratify. If that visit taught me some things with regard to our own times as well as to earlier times, it is not, I think, either wonderful or blameworthy. In 1877 I visited Dalmatia for the second time, and Greece for the first. I should be well pleased some day to put together some out of many papers on the more distant Greek lands. In this volume I have brought in those on Corfu only, as that island forms an essential part of my present subject. In the present year 1881 I again visited Dalmatia and some parts of Istria and Albania, as also a large part of Italy. This has enabled me to add some papers on the Venetian possessions both in northern and southern Italy, as also one on the Dalmatian island of Curzola, which on former visits I had seen only in passing. The papers headed "Treviso," "Gorizia," "Spalato revisited," "Trani," "Otranto," "Corfu to Durazzo," and "Antivari," are all due to this last journey, and have never been in print before. That on "Curzola" appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for September 1881. Those headed "Udine and Cividale," "Aquileia," "Trieste to Spalato," "Spalato to Cattaro," "A trudge to Trebinje," appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in 1875. The rest appeared in the _Saturday Review_ in 1875 and 1876. But many of them have been so much altered that they can hardly be called mere reprints; they are rather recastings, with large additions, omissions, and changes, such as the light of second and third visits seemed to call for. I made none of these journeys alone, and I have much for which to thank the companions with whom I made them. In 1877 I was with the Earl of Morley and Mr. J. F. F. Horner. And I must not forget to mention that it was Lord Morley who at once read and explained the inscription in the basilica of Parenzo, when Mr. Horner and I had seen that Mr. Neale's explanation was nonsense, but had not yet hit upon anything better for ourselves. In a great part of my two later journeys I had the companionship of Mr. Arthur Evans, my friend of 1877, my son-in-law of 1881. How much I owe to his knowledge of South-Slavonic matters, words would fail me to tell. I had seen Dalmatia for the first time, and I had begun to write about it, before I knew him and, I believe, before he had published anything; otherwise I should almost feel myself an intruder in a province which he has made his own. One out of many points I may specially mention. It was Mr. Evans who found and explained the two missing capitals from the palace at Ragusa, which are at once so remarkable in themselves and which throw so much light on the history of the building. The illustrations to my former volume met with some severe criticism. But I am bound to say that of that severe criticism I agreed to every word. Only I thought that the critics would perhaps have been less severe if they had seen my original drawings themselves. The illustrations to the present volume have been made by a new process, partly, as before, from my own sketches, but partly also from photographs. I trust that they will be found less unsatisfactory than those that went before them. As there are in these papers a good many historical references, some of them to rather out-of-the-way matters, but matters which could not always be explained at length in the text, I have drawn up a chronological table of the chief events in the history of the lands and cities of which I have had to speak. I need hardly say that this volume, though I hope it may be useful to travellers on the spot, is not strictly a guide-book. But a good guide-book to Istria and Dalmatia is much needed. I am not joking when I say that the best guide to those parts is still the account written by the Emperor Constantino Porphyrogenitus more than nine hundred years back. But it is surely high time that there should be another. The attempts made in one or two of Murray's Handbooks are very poor. Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and Montenegro," published more than thirty years ago, is an admirable book, and one to which I owe a very deep debt of gratitude. It first taught me what there was to see in the East-Hadriatic lands. But it is over-big for a guide-book. Mr. Neale's book contains some information, and, even in its ecclesiastical grotesqueness, it is sometimes instructive as well as amusing. But we can hardly take as our guide one who leaves out the Ragusan palace and who, when at Spalato, does not think of Diocletian. It would be in itself well if Gsel-fels, the prince of guide-book-makers, would do for Dalmatia as he has done for Sicily; but one would rather see it done in our own tongue. SOMERLEAZE, WELLS, _September 20th, 1881_. CONTENTS. THE LOMBARD AUSTRIA:-- PAGE TREVISO 3 UDINE AND CIVIDALE 24 GORIZIA 41 AQUILEIA 52 TRIESTE 70 TRIESTE TO SPALATO:-- TRIESTE TO SPALATO 85 PARENZO 97 POLA 109 ZARA 121 SPALATO AND ITS NEIGHBOURS:-- SPALATO 137 SPALATO REVISITED 149 SALONA 156 TRAÜ 175 SPALATO TO CATTARO:-- SPALATO TO CATTARO 189 CURZOLA 200 RAGUSA 218 RAGUSAN ARCHITECTURE 240 A TRUDGE TO TREBINJE 260 CATTARO 271 VENICE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE NORMANS:-- TRANI 287 OTRANTO 313 FIRST GLIMPSES OF HELLAS 332 CORFU AND ITS NAMES 343 CORFU AND ITS HISTORY 353 CORFU TO DURAZZO 365 ANTIVARI 381 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE PERISTYLE AND CATHEDRAL TOWER, SPALATO _Frontispiece_ PORTA GEMINA, POLA 113 TOWER OF SAINT MARY'S, ZARA 132 SAINT VITUS, ZARA, AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, CATTARO 133 THE TOWER, SPALATO 145 CATHEDRAL, TRAÜ 182 SAINT JOHN BAPTIST, TRAÜ 185 TOWER OF FRANCISCAN CHURCH, RAGUSA 242 PALACE, RAGUSA 245 DOGANA, RAGUSA 253 CABOGA HOUSE, GRAVOSA 255 CATHEDRAL, TRANI 299 CATHEDRAL, TRANI, INSIDE 305 CHURCHES AT CORFU 358 SAINT JASON AND SAINT SOSIPATROS, CORFU, INSIDE 363 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. B.C. Foundation of Korkyra _c._ 734 Foundation of Epidamnos _c._ 627 War between Corinth and Korkyra about Epidamnos 435 Colonization of Pharos and Issa 385 Korkyra held by Agathoklês 300 Korkyra held by Pyrrhos 287 First Roman war with Illyria, time of Queen Teuta and Demetrios of Pharos 229 Korkyra, Epidamnos, and Apollonia become allies of Rome 229 Second Illyrian War 219 Foundation of Aquileia 181 First Roman Conquest of Illyria 168 First mention of Tragyrion (Traü) 158 First Dalmatian War 156 Salona the head of Dalmatia 117 Roman Conquest of Istria 107 Foundation of Forum Julii _c._ 45 Colony of Tergeste fortified by Augustus 32 Foundation of Pietas Julia _c._ 30 A.D. Final conquest of Dalmatia 6 Martyrdom of Saint Caius 296? Diocletian retires to Salona 305 Crispus put to death at Pola 326 First church of Aquileia built by Fortunatian _c._ 347 Gallus put to death at Pola 354 Aquileia destroyed by Attila 452 Dalmatia under Marcellian 454-468 Dalmatia under Odoacer _c._ 480 Dalmatia under Theodoric 488 The Emperor Glycerius Bishop of Salona 474 Nepos killed near Salona 480 Salona recovered to the Empire 535 Building of the church of Parenzo 535-543 Belisarius sails from Salona 544 Narses sails from Salona 552 Schism in the church of Aquileia 557 Beginning of the Patriarchate of Grado 606 Lombard conquest of Italy begins 568 Slavonic settlements under Heraclius _c._ 620 Salona destroyed by the Avars 639 Inland Dalmatia under Charles the Great; the coast cities left to the Eastern Empire 806 The church of Pola built by Bishop Handegis 857 Cattaro taken by the Saracens 867 Saracen siege of Ragusa 867 First Venetian conquest of Dalmatia 997 Poppo Patriarch of Aquileia; rebuilding of the church 1019-1042 First authentic mention of Gorizia 1051 Croatian kingdom of Dalmatia 1062 Foundation of Saint Nicolas at Traü 1064 Corfu conquered by Robert Wiscard 1081 Corfu recovered by the Empire 1085 Exploits of the English exiles at Durazzo 1086 Magyar kingdom of Dalmatia 1102 The tower of Saint Mary's at Zara built by Coloman of Hungary 1105 Beginning of the Counts of Gorizia 1120 Corfu held by Roger of Sicily 1147-1150 Dalmatia restored to the Eastern Empire 1171 Corfu conquered by William the Good 1186 Corfu, Durazzo, etc., held by Margarito as a kingdom dependent on Sicily 1186 Richard the First at Ragusa 1192 Taking of Zara by the Crusaders 1202 Venetian Counts at Ragusa 1204 Corfu and Durazzo first occupied by Venice 1206 Building of Traü cathedral 1215-1321 Corfu and Durazzo recovered by Michael of Epeiros 1216 Durazzo recovered by the Empire 1259 Corfu and Durazzo ceded to Manfred 1268 Consecration of Saint Anastasia at Zara 1285 Durazzo under Servia 1322 Durazzo restored to the Kings of Naples 1322 Pola submits to Venice 1331 Neapolitan duchy of Durazzo 1333-1360 Treviso first occupied by Venice 1338 Building of the Archbishop's castle at Salona 1347 Treviso besieged by Lewis of Hungary 1356 Dalmatia ceded to Lewis of Hungary 1358 Durazzo the capital of an Albanian kingdom 1358-1392 Complete independence of Ragusa 1359 Markquard, Patriarch of Aquileia; recasting of the church 1365-1381 Gradual advance of Venice in Dalmatia 1378-1444 Treviso ceded to Leopold of Austria 1381 Trieste commends itself to Austria 1381 Final acquisition of Corfu by Venice 1386 Venetian occupation of Argos 1388 Treviso restored to Venice 1388 Second Venetian acquisition of Durazzo 1392 Building of the palace at Ragusa 1388-1435 Butrinto and Parga commend themselves to Venice 1407 Consecration of Saint Chrysogonos at Zara 1407 Sebenico annexed by Venice 1412 Building of the cathedral at Sebenico 1415-1555 Cattaro becomes Venetian 1419 Traü annexed by Venice 1420 Curzola finally submits to Venice 1420 Dominions of the Patriarch of Aquileia annexed by Venice 1420 Udine annexed by Venice 1420 Lesina occupied by Venice 1424 The city of Aquileia left to the Patriarchs 1451 Argos ceded by Venice 1463 Fluctuations between Venice and the Turk in Dalmatia 1465-1718 Date of the cloister at Badia 1477 Otranto taken by the Turks 1480 Otranto recovered by Alfonso 1481 Veglia annexed by Venice 1481 Monopoli stormed by the Venetians 1495 Trani, Otranto, and other cities pledged to Venice by Ferdinand of Naples 1496 Durazzo and Butrinto lost by Venice 1500 Gorizia annexed to Austria by Maximilian 1500 Treviso besieged by Maximilian 1508 Trani, etc., recovered by Ferdinand of Aragon 1509 Building of the Dogana at Ragusa 1520 Trani, etc., recovered by Venice 1528 Trani, etc., restored to Charles the Fifth 1530 Aquileia annexed to Austria 1544 Mark Anthony de Dominis Archbishop of Spalato 1622 Building of the gate at Curzola 1643 The great earthquake at Ragusa 1667 Prevesa won and Butrinto recovered by Venice 1685-1699 The Emperor Leopold repairs the castle of Gorizia 1660 Athens taken by Morosini 1687 Abolition of the patriarchate of Aquileia; Udine and Gorizia become metropolitan sees 1751 Peace of Campo Formio; fall of Venice: Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia, except Ragusa, occupied by Austria 1797-8 The Ionian Islands and the Venetian outposts ceded to France 1797 Septinsular Republic under Ottoman overlordship 1798 Prevesa stormed by Ali of Jôannina 1798 Venetia, Istria, Trieste, and Dalmatia ceded to the French kingdom of Italy; Dalmatia partly occupied 1805 The Republic of Ragusa suppressed by Buonaparte 1808 Various points occupied by England 1810-1814 Cattaro delivered from France by England and Montenegro; Cattaro, capital of Montenegro 1813 Dalmatia recovered by Austria, Ragusa also occupied by Austria for the first time 1814 Venetia, Istria, and Trieste recovered by Austria 1814 English occupation of Curzola 1813-1815 The Ionian Islands under British protection 1815 Surrender of Parga to the Turk 1819 Liberation of Venice and recovery by Austria 1848-9 The Ionian Islands added to free Greece 1864 Final liberation of Venetia 1866 Austrian attempt to infringe the liberties of the Bocchesi; defeat of the Austrians 1869 Beginning of the war in Herzegovina 1875 Servian and Montenegrin war; recovery of Antivari, Dulcigno, and Spizza by Montenegro 1876-7 Congress of Berlin; Dulcigno restored to the Turk; Spizza taken by Austria; Antivari left to Montenegro; the Turk "invited" to cede Epeiros to free Greece 1878 The liberation of Epeiros decreed the second time 1880 Dulcigno recovered for Montenegro 1880 Liberation of Thessaly, but not of Epeiros 1881 THE LOMBARD AUSTRIA. TREVISO. 1881. The north-eastern corner of Italy is one of those parts of the world which have gone through the most remarkable changes. That it has often changed its political masters is only common to it with the rest of Italy, and with many other lands as well. The physical changes too which the soil and its waters have gone through are remarkable, but they are not unparalleled. The Po may perhaps be reckoned as the frontier stream of the region towards the south, and the many paths by which the Po has found its way into the Hadriatic need not be dwelled on. We are more concerned with rivers further to the north-east. The Isonzo no longer represents the course of the ancient Sontius; the Natisone no longer flows by fallen Aquileia. The changes of the coast-line which have made what is left of Aquileia inland have their counterparts at Pisa and at Ravenna. In the range of historical geography, the most curious feature is the way in which certain political names have kept on an abiding life in this region, though with singular changes of meaning. The land has constantly been either Venetian or Austrian; sometimes it has been Venetian and Austrian at once. But it has been Venetian and Austrian in various meanings. It was Venetian long before the name of Venice was heard of in its present sense; it was Austrian long before the name of Austria was heard of in its present sense. The land of the old Veneti bore the Venetian name ages before the city of Venice was in being, and it keeps it now that Venice has ceased to be a political power. Venetian then the land has ever been in one sense, while a large part of it was for some centuries Venetian in another sense, in the days when so many of its cities bowed to Saint Mark and his commonwealth as its rulers. Austrian the land was in the old geographical sense, when it formed the Lombard _Austria_--the eastern half, the _Eastrice_--that form would, we suspect, come nearer to Lombard speech than _Oesterreich_--of the Lombard realm. But if the Lombard realm had its Austria and its Neustria, so also had the Frankish realm. Wherever a land could be easily divided into east and west, there was an _Austria_, and its negative a _Neustria_. Lombardy then had its Austria, and its _Austria_ was found in the old and the new Venetian land. No one perhaps ever spoke of the Karlings as the House of Austria, or of their Empire as the dominions of the House of Austria. And yet the name would not have been out of place. Their dominion marked the predominance of the eastern part of the Frankish realm--its _Oesterreich_, its _Austrasia_, its _Austria_--over the Neustrian power of the earlier dynasty. The Lombard Austria became part of the dominions of those who were before all things lords of the Frankish Austria. And in later times, when the Lombard and the Frankish Austria were both forgotten, when the name clave only to a third Austria, the more modern Austria of Germany--the Eastern mark called into being to guard Germany from the Magyar--the Venetian land has more than once become Austrian in another sense; some of it in that sense remains Austrian still. Dukes of the most modern Austria--plain dukes who were satisfied with being dukes--archdukes who were Emperors by lawful election--archdukes who have had a strange fancy for calling themselves Emperors of their archduchy--have all of them at various times borne rule over the whole or part of the older Austria of Lombardy. To-day the north-eastern corner of Italy, land of Venetia, the once Lombard Austria, is parted asunder by an artificial boundary between the dominions of the Italian King and the lord of the later Austria. And, what a passing traveller might not easily find out, in this old Venetian land, in both parts of it, alike under modern Italian and under modern Austrian rule, besides the Latin speech which everywhere meets the eye and the ear, the speech of Slavonic settlers still lingers. Settlers they are in the Venetian land, no less than its Roman or its German masters. It is hard to say who the old Veneti were, perhaps nearer akin to the Albanians than to any other European people. At all events there is no reason for thinking that they were Slaves. The presence of a Slavonic speech in this region is a fruit of the same migration which made the land beyond Hadria Slavonic. But to hear the Slavonic and the Italian tongues side by side is so familiar a phænomenon under modern Austrian rule, that its appearance at Aquileia or Gorizia may with some minds seem to give the land a specially Austrian character, and may help to shut out the remembrance that at Aquileia and Gorizia we are within the ancient kingdom of Italy. Nay it may be a new and strange thing to many to hear that, even within the bounds of the modern kingdom of Italy, there are districts where, though Italian is the cultivated tongue, yet Slave is the common peasant speech. But besides physical changes, changes of name, changes of inhabitants, we are perhaps yet more deeply struck with the fluctuations in the history of the cities of this region. In this matter, throughout the Venetian land, the first do indeed become last and the last first. No city in this region has kept on that enduring life through all changes which has belonged to many cities in other parts of Europe. We do not here find the Roman walls, or the walls yet earlier than Roman days, fencing in dwelling-places of man which have been continuously inhabited, which have sometimes been continuously flourishing, through all times of which history has anything to tell us. We need not take our examples from Rome or Athens or Argos or the Phoenician Gades. It is enough to look to one or two of the capitals of modern Europe. At the beginning of the fifth century, London and Paris, not yet indeed capitals of kingdoms, were already in being, and had been in being for some centuries. But far above either ranked the great city of north-eastern Italy, then one of the foremost cities of the world, the ancient colony of Aquileia, keeper of one of the great lines of approach towards Italy and Rome. No one city had then taken the name of the Venetian land; no wanderers from the mainland had as yet settled down like sea-fowl, as Cassiodorus puts it, on the islands of the lagoons. By the end of the fifth century both London and Paris had passed from Roman rule to the rule of Teutonic conquerors. London, we may conceive, was still inhabited; at all events its walls stood ready to receive a fresh colony before long. Paris had received one of those momentary lifts of which she went through several before her final exaltation; the city which had been favoured by Roman Julian was favoured also by Frankish Chlodwig. But Aquileia had felt the full fury of invaders who came, not to occupy or to settle, but simply to destroy. As a city, as a bulwark of Italy, she had passed away for ever. But out of her fall several cities had, in the course of that century, risen to increased greatness, and the greatest of all had come into being. The city was born which, simply as a city, as a city bearing rule over distant lands, must rank as the one historic peer of Rome. Not yet Queen of the Hadriatic, not yet the chosen sanctuary of Saint Mark, not yet enthroned on her own Rialto, the settlement which was to grow into Venice had already made its small beginnings. But the fall of Aquileia, the rise of Venice, are only the greatest examples of a general law. A nearer neighbour of Aquileia at once profited by her overthrow; Grado, on her own coast, almost at her own gates, sprang up as her rival; but the greatness of Grado has passed away only less thoroughly than the greatness of Aquileia. So the Venetian Forum Julii gave way to its more modern neighbour Udine. It lost the name which it had given to the land around it. Its shortened form _Friuli_ lived on as one of the names of the surrounding district, but Forum Julii itself was forgotten under the vaguer description of _Cividale_. Gorizia has been for ages the head of a principality; in later times it has been the head of an ecclesiastical province. But Gorizia is absolutely unknown till the beginning of the eleventh century, and it does not seem even to have supplanted any earlier city. It is thus a marked peculiarity of this district that the chief towns, with Venice itself at their head, have not lived on continuously as chief towns from Roman or earlier times. West of Venice the rule does not apply. Padua and Verona are old enough for the warmest lover of antiquity, and Vicenza, going back at least to the second century B.C., must be allowed to be of a respectable age. That the chief cities of a district should date from early mediæval, and not from Roman times, is a feature which at once suggests analogies with our own island. Both in Venetia and in Britain we are struck with the prevalence of places which arose after the fall of the elder Roman power, in opposition to most parts of Italy and Gaul, where nearly every town can trace back to Roman days or earlier. But the likeness cannot be carried out in detail. In the district which we have just marked out it is absolutely the greatest cities--one of them so great as to be put out of all comparison with the others--which are of this comparatively recent date. In England, though the great mass of the local centres are places of English foundation and bearing English names, yet the greatest and most historic cities still carry the marks of Roman origin about them. Some Roman cities in Britain passed utterly away; others lived on, or soon came to life again, in the forms of York, London, and Winchester. But in Venetia it is the cities which answer to York and London which have lost their greatness, though they have not utterly passed away. This last fact is one of the characteristics of the district; the fallen cities have simply fallen from their greatness; they have not ceased to be dwelling-places of man. Aquileia and Forum Julii have ceased for ages to be what Aquileia and Forum Julii once were, but they have not become as Silchester, or even as Salona. Of the position of all these places there is no manner of doubt. They are there to speak for themselves; even Julium Carnacum, whose site has had to be looked for, still abides, though those who have reached it describe it as a small village. Aquileia under its old name, Forum Julii under its new name, are still inhabited, they still hold the rank of towns; but while they still abide, the rule that the first should become last and the last first is carried out among them. As ancient Aquileia was far greater than ancient Forum Julii, so modern Aquileia, though it keeps its name, is now far less than modern Cividale, from which the name of Forum Julii has passed away. Aquileia then, once the greatest city of all, is the city that has come nearest to being altogether wiped out of being. Venice, afterwards the greatest of all, is the city which may most truly be said to have been called out of nothing in after-times. Among the other cities the change has been rather a change of relation and proportion, than a case of absolute birth and death. Cividale is still there, though it is but a poor representative of Forum Julii. Udine has taken its place. But Udine, though its importance belongs wholly to mediæval times, was not strictly a mediæval creation. It is just possible to prove the existence of _Vedinum_ in Roman days, though it is only its existence which can be proved; it plays no part whatever in early history. The case is slightly different with another neighbouring city, the Roman Tarvisium, whose name gradually changed to _Treviso_. Tarvisium was of more account than Vedinum, but it first comes into notice in the wars of Belisarius, and its position as an important city playing a part in Italian history dates only from the days of the Lombard League. And its general history is one in which the shifting nomenclature of the district may be read with almost grotesque accuracy. It has not only been, like its neighbours, Venetian and Austrian in two widely different senses--it has not only been Venetian in the old geographical sense, and Venetian in the sense of being subject to the commonwealth of Venice--it has not only been Austrian in the old Lombard sense, and Austrian in the sense of being subject to the Dukes of the German Austria--but it has also shifted backwards and forwards between the rule of the Serene Republic and the rule of the Austrian Dukes, in a way to which it would not be easy to find a parallel even among the old revolutions of its neighbours. * * * * * Treviso and its district, the march which bears its name, was the first possession of Venice on the true mainland of Italy, as distinguished from that mere fringe of coast along the lagoons which may be more truly counted as part of her dominion by sea. That Treviso lay near to Venice was a truth which came home to Venetian minds at a very early stage of Venetian history. Even in the eleventh century, the earliest authentic chronicler of Venice, that John whose work will be found in the seventh volume of Pertz, speaks with some significance, even when recording events of the time of Charles the Great, of "quædam civitas non procul a Venetia, nomine Tarvisium." When strictly Italian history begins, Treviso runs through the ordinary course of a Lombard city; it takes its share in resistance to the imperial power, it falls into the hands of tyrants of the house of Romano and of the house of Scala. Along with Padua, it is the city which is fullest of memories of the terrible Eccelinò. Won by the Republic in 1338 from its lord Mastino della Scala, the special strangeness of its fortunes begins. The modern House of Austria was already in being; but its Dukes had not yet grown into Emperors, one only had grown into an acknowledged King. They had not won for themselves the crowns of Bohemia or Hungary, though, by the opposite process, one Bohemian king, the mighty Ottocar, had counted Austria in the long list of his conquered lands. But presently Treviso becomes the centre of events in which Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and the Empire, all play their parts. It is perhaps not wonderful when the maritime republic, mistress of the Trevisan march, vainly seeks to obtain the confirmation of her right from the overlord of Treviso though not of Venice, Charles of Bohemia, King of the Romans and future Emperor. But the old times when Huns, Avars, Magyars, barbarians of every kind, poured into this devoted corner of Italy, seem to have come back, when in 1356 we find Treviso besieged by a Hungarian king. But the Hungarian king is no longer an outside barbarian; he is a prince of the house of Anjou and Paris. If Lewis the Great besieged Treviso, it was not in the character of a new Attila or Arpad; he attacked the now Venetian city as part of the war which he so successfully waged against the Republic in her Dalmatian lands. Not thirty years later we find the Doge Andrew Contarini, with more wisdom perhaps than the more famous Foscari of the next age, considering that to Venice the sea was greater than the land, and therefore commending her new conquest on the mainland to Duke Leopold of Austria. The words of the chronicler Andrew Dandolo are worth remembering. They express the truest policy of the Republic, from which she ought never to have gone astray. "Ducalis excellentia prudentissima, meditatione considerans proprium Venetorum esse mare colere, terramque postergare; hinc enim divitiis et honoribus abundat, inde sæpe sibi proveniunt scandala et errores." But Leopold, he who fell at Sempach, had not the same passion for dominion south of the Alps as some of his successors. He wisely sold Treviso to the lord of Padua, Francesco Carrara, from whom, after a moment of doubt whether the prize would not pass to the tyrant of Milan, the Republic won it back after eight years' separation. Henceforward Treviso shared the fate of the other Venetian possessions which gradually gathered on each side of her. Having had for a moment its share of Austrian dominion in the fourteenth century, Treviso was able, in the wars of the sixteenth century, to withstand the same power in a new shape, the power of Maximilian, Austrian Archduke and Roman King. In later times nothing distinguishes the city from the common course by which Treviso and her neighbours became Austrian, French, and Austrian again, till, by the happiest change of all, they became members of a free and united Italy. * * * * * In the aspect of the city itself, the Roman Tarvisium has left but small signs of its former being. All that we see is the Treviso of mediæval and later times. The walls, the bell-towers, the slenderer tower of the municipal palace, the arcaded streets, the houses too, though they are not rich in the more elaborate forms of Italian domestic art, have all the genuine character of a mediæval Italian town. Not placed in any striking position, not a hill-city, not in any strictness a river-city, but a city of the plain looking towards the distant mountains--not adorned by any building of conspicuous splendour--Treviso is still far from being void of objects which deserve study. As we look on the city, either from the lofty walk into which so large a part of its walls have been turned, or else from the neighbourhood of its railway station, its aspect, without rivalling that of the great cities of Italy, is far from unsatisfactory. But the character of the city differs widely in the two views. From the station the ecclesiastical element prevails. The main object in the view from this side is the Dominican church of Saint Nicolas, one of those vast brick friars' churches so characteristic of Italy, and to which the praise of a certain stateliness cannot be denied. Saint Nicolas, with its great bell-tower, groups well with the smaller church and smaller tower of a neighbouring Benedictine house. In short, the towers of Treviso form its leading feature, and that, though several of the greatest, above all the huge campanile designed for the cathedral church, have never been finished. In the view from the railway Saint Nicolas' tower is dominant; the tall slender tower of the municipal palace, loftier, we suspect, in positive height, fails to balance it. In the other view, from the wall on the other side, the municipal tower is the leading object, which it certainly would not have been if the bell-tower of the _duomo_ had ever been carried up. There is a great friars' church on this side too, the desecrated church of Saint Francis; but, though a large building with marked outline, it does not stand out at all so conspicuously as its Dominican rival on the other side. The _duomo_ itself, with its eccentric cupolas, goes for less in the general view than either. On the whole, the aspect of Treviso is very characteristically Italian; it would be yet more so if it sent up its one great campanile to mark its site from afar. Still, even as it is, this city of the Lombard Austria proclaims itself as one of the same group as those cities further to the west which we look down on side by side from the castle-hill of Brescia. Treviso, so near a neighbour of Venice, the earliest of her subject cities of the mainland, does not fail to proclaim the relation between the subject and the ruling commonwealth in the usual fashion. The winged lion, the ensign which we are to follow along so many shores, appears on not a few points of her defences. Over the gate of Saint Thomas the badge of the Evangelist appears in special size and majesty, accompanied, it would seem, by several younger members of his family whose wings have not yet had time to grow. And Treviso too in some sort calls up the memory of its mistress in the abundance of streams, canals, and bridges. It has at least more right than some of the towns to which the guide-books give the name, to be called a little Venice. But the contrast is indeed great between the still waters of the lagoons and the rushing torrents which pass under the walls and turn the mills of Treviso. Venice, in short, though her name has been rather freely scattered about hither and thither, remains without likeness or miniature among either subjects, rivals, or strangers. The heart of an Italian city is to be looked for in its town-house and the open space before it. It is characteristic of the mistress of Treviso that her palace, the palace of her rulers, not of her people, stands somewhat aside from the great centre of Venetian life. The church of the patron saint who had become identified with the commonwealth takes in some sort the place which in more democratic states belongs to the home of the commonwealth itself. Technically indeed Saint Mark's is itself part of the palace; it answers to Saint Stephen's at Westminster, not to Saint Peter's; but nowhere else among commonwealths does the chapel of the palace in this sort surpass or rival the palace itself. The less famous Saint Liberalis, patron of the city and diocese of Tarvisium, does not venture, after the manner of the Evangelist, thus to supplant Tarvisium itself. The commonwealth fully proclaims its being in the group of municipal buildings which surround the irregular space which forms the municipal centre of the city. One alone of these, at once in some sort the oldest and the newest, calls for special notice. The former _palazzo della Signoria_, now the palace, the centre, in the new arrangement of things, not only of the city of Treviso but of the whole province of which it is the head, has been clearly renewed, perhaps rebuilt. But it keeps the true character of a Lombard building of the kind, the simpler and truer forms which were in vogue before the Venetian Gothic set in. It marks the true position of that style that, though we cannot help admiring many of its buildings when we look at them, we find it a relief when we come to something earlier and more real. The buildings of which Venice set the type are very rich, very elegant; but we feel that, after all, England, France, Germany, could all do better in the way of windows, and that Italy left to herself could do better in the way of columns and arches. Old or new, rebuilt or simply repaired, there is nothing very wonderful in the municipal palace of Treviso; but in either case it is pleasing as an example of the genuine native style of Italy. It has arcades below, groups of round-headed windows above, and the tower looks over the palace with the more effect, because it is not parallel to it. The arcades of the palace, continued in the form of the arcades of the streets, are a feature of Treviso, as of all other southern cities that were built by rational men in rational times, and were designed, unlike Venice and Curzola, for the passage of carriages and horses. At Treviso we have arcades of all kinds, all shapes, all dates, some rude enough, some really elegant, but all of them better than the portentous folly which has offered up modern Rome and modern Athens as helpless victims to whatever powers may be conceived to preside over heat, dust, and their consequences. Treviso is not a first-class Italian city; it is hardly one of the second class; but it is pleasant to thread one's way through the arcades, to try to spell out the geography of the streams that are crossed by many bridges; it is pleasant to mount here and there on the wall, to look down on the broad foss below, and across it on the rich plain with its wall of mountains in the distance. In the ecclesiastical department what there is of any value above ground belongs mainly to the friars. The interest of the _duomo_, as a building, lies wholly in its crypt, a grand and spacious one, certainly not later than the twelfth century. It may be that some of the smaller marble shafts which support its vault had already done duty in some earlier building, and there is no doubt as to the classical date of a fragment of a large fluted column which in this same crypt serves the purpose of a well. The church above has been mercilessly Jesuited; yet, as it keeps more than one cupola, those cupolas give it a certain dignity; the stamp of Constantinople and Venice, of Périgueux and Angoulême, is hard wholly to wipe out. Otherwise a few tombs and a fine piece of mediæval gilded wood-carving are about all that the church of Treviso has to show. The great Dominican church has been more lucky. The guide-book of Gsel-fels, commonly the best of guide-books, but which cuts Treviso a little short, rather sets one against it by saying that it has been wholly modernized within. Repaired and freshened up it certainly has been; but it can hardly be said to have been modernized; the old lines seem not to have been tampered with. And there is something far from lacking in dignity in the effect of its vast interior, even though its style be the corrupt Gothic of Italy. One merit is that the arches which spring from the huge pillars, though wide, are not sprawling--not like those which those who do not dare to think for themselves are called on to admire in the nave of the Florentine _duomo_. Unlike the work of Arnolfo, the Dominican church of Treviso does not look one inch shorter or lower than it is. It has too the interest of much contemporary painting and other ornamental work. The smaller Benedictine church hard by, whose bell-tower groups so well with Saint Nicolas, employs in that bell-tower a trefoil arch, a strange form to spring from mid-wall shafts. Within there is not much to look at, beyond a tablet setting forth the glories of the Benedictine order, how many emperors, empresses, kings, queens, popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and so forth, belonged to it. Dukes, marquesses, counts, and knights, were unnumbered. It is a strange thought that to that countless band Bec added the full manhood and long monastic life of Herlwin, that Saint Peter of Shrewsbury and Saint Werburh of Chester had severally the privilege of enrolling Earl Roger and Earl Hugh, each for a few days only, as members of the brotherhood of Benedict and Anselm. The other friars' church, that of Saint Francis, has been less lucky than its Dominican rival. Desecrated and partitioned, its inside is now inaccessible; the outside promises well for a church of its own type. Yet how feeble after all are the very best of these Italian buildings which forsook their own native forms for a hopeless attempt to reproduce the forms of other lands. We are always told that Italian Gothic cannot be Northern Gothic, because Italy is not like Northern lands. True enough; but what that argument proves is that Italy should have kept to her own natural Romanesque, the true fruit of her own soil, and should never have meddled with forms which could not be transplanted in their purity. The great fact of Italian architectural history is that the native style never was thoroughly driven out, but that, alongside of the sham Gothic, true Romanesque lived on to lose itself in the earlier and better kind of _Renaissance_. The open arcades of streets and houses, and the bell-towers of the churches, largely remain really Romanesque in style at all dates. For the working out of the same law in greater buildings we must make our way south-eastward. The chronicler of the eleventh century hinted that Treviso was near to Venice, and the men of the fourteenth century acted on the hint. But the wise Doge, who a generation later told his people to stick to the sea and leave the land behind, knew better where the true subject and neighbour lands of Venice lay. We cannot fully obey him as yet, as we have still points on the Italian mainland to visit. But we may still keep the true goal of our pilgrimage before our eyes, and we may remember that the lands which were most truly near to Venice were those lands, subject and hostile, to which the path lay by her own element. The lessons of which we begin to get a glimpse at Treviso we shall not learn in their fulness till we have reached the other side of Hadria. UDINE AND CIVIDALE. 1875--1881. Ought the antiquarian traveller who has taken up his quarters at Udine and has thence made an expedition to Cividale to counsel his fellow-inquirers to follow his example in so doing or not? The answer to this question may be well made largely to depend on the state of the weather. It would be dangerous to say, from an experience of two visits only, that at Udine and Cividale it always either rains or has very lately rained; but those are the only two conditions in which we can speak of those places from personal knowledge. Now it is wonderful how a heavy rain damps the zeal of the most inquiring spirit, especially if he be carrying on his inquiries by himself. If he has companions, a good deal of wet may be shaken off by the process of talking and laughing at the common bad luck. If he be alone, every drop sticks; he has nothing to do but to grumble, and he has nobody to listen to his grumblings but himself. The land may be beautiful, but its beauties are half hid; the buildings may have the most taking outlines, but it is impossible to make a drawing of them. Even interiors lose their cheerfulness; the general gloom makes half their details invisible; and his own depression of spirit makes the inquirer less able than usual to understand and appreciate what he can see. Udine and Cividale on a fine day are something quite unlike Udine and Cividale in the rain. But even in this more cheerful state of things, when the rain has to be spoken of in the past tense, it may happen that the past puts serious difficulties in the way of the enjoyment of the present. Cividale is undoubtedly more pleasant and more profitable to see when the rain is past than when the rain is actually falling. But then, to judge from our two experiences, Cividale is easier to get at while the rain is actually falling than when it has ceased to fall. What in the one state of things is the half-dry _ghiara_ of an Alpine stream becomes a flood covering the road for no small distance, and suggesting, to all but the most zealous, the thought of turning back. It is only those for whom the attractions of the spot which once was the Forum Julii are strong indeed, who will pluck up heart to go on when their carriage has sometimes to be helped on by men who are used to wade through the flood, or else is forced to leave what should have been the high road for a narrow and difficult path across the fields. It is well to record these things, that those who stay at home may be put in mind that, even in perfectly civilized lands, topographical knowledge is not always to be got without going to some little trouble in the search after it. We have seen Udine and Cividale wet, and we have seen them dry, but then it was when they had been wet only a very short time before. We are tempted to think that we might understand them better at some time when the rainfall was neither of the present nor of the very recent past. One thing however is certain, that, wet or dry, not many Englishmen make the experiment of trying to find out what this corner of Italy may have to show. Not an English name, save that of one specially famous and adventurous traveller, was to be seen in the visitors' book, either in Albergo dell' Italia at Udine or in the Museum at Cividale. The true traveller is always in a doubtful state of mind when he finds a place of interest neglected by his own countrymen. On the one hand he is personally relieved, as being set free from the gabble of English tourists at _tables d'hôte_ and the like. But how far ought he to proclaim to the world the merits of the place which he has found out for himself? How can he draw the line, so as to lead travellers to come, without holding out the least inducement to mere tourists? But perhaps the danger is not great; tourists will go only where it is the fashion to go, and the historical traveller must not think of himself more highly than he ought to think or fancy that it is for such as he to create a fashion. * * * * * We will suppose then that our traveller has started from Treviso, and has reached the frontier town of Italy in the modern sense of the name. We have seen that the existence of the place in Roman times under the name of Vedinum can be proved and no more. The importance and history of Udine, _Utinum_, are wholly mediæval. It takes the place of Forum Julii as the capital of Friuli the district which keeps the name which has passed away from the city. It is one of the eccentricities of nomenclature that the other Forum Julii in southern Gaul has kept its name, but in the still more corrupted shape of _Fréjus_. The new head of the Venetian borderland--Venetia in the older sense--went through the usual course of the neighbouring cities with one feature peculiar to itself. Not a patriarchal see, Udine was a patriarchal capital, the capital of the patriarchs of Aquileia in that temporal character which for a long while made the bishops of the forsaken city the chief princes of that corner of Italy. Like Treviso, but somewhat later, Udine had to undergo a Hungarian siege, when the Magyar crown had passed by marriage from the house of Anjou to the house of Luxemburg. But we may mark how the different powers which had something to do with the lands with which we are concerned are already beginning to gather from the same hands. Lewis, the enemy of Treviso in 1356, purely western in origin, was purely eastern in power--King of Hungary and of the lands round about Hungary, King of Poland by a personal union. Siegmund, the enemy of Udine in 1411, was already King of Hungary, Margrave of Brandenburg also, in days when, as Hungary had nothing to do with Austria, so Brandenburg had nothing to do with Prussia. He was already chosen but not crowned King of the Romans; he was to be, before he had done, King of Bohemia, reformer of the Church, and Emperor, last crowned Emperor not of the Austrian house. Presently the city passed away from the rule of the patriarchs, but it could hardly be said to pass from a spiritual to a temporal lord when it came under the direct superiority of the Evangelist and his Lion. In the war of the League of Cambray it passed for a moment into the hands of an Austrian Archduke, but one who wore the crown of Aachen, and bore the titles of Rome without her crown. The first momentary master saw from the German Austria that Udine was Maximilian, King of Germany and Emperor-elect. In the eighteenth century the patriarchs of Aquileia had become harmless indeed, so harmless that their dignity could be altogether swept away, and their immediate province divided between the two new archbishoprics of Udine and Gorizia. Thus Udine, having once been the temporal seat of an ecclesiastical prince of the highest rank, came, as a subject city, to hold the highest ecclesiastical rank short of that which was swept away to make room for its elevation. * * * * * Udine is one of those places which keep fortifications of what we may call the intermediate period, what, in this part of the world, is specially the Venetian period. Such walls stand removed alike from those which, even when not Roman in date, closely follow the Roman type of defences, and from fortifications of the purely modern kind. The walls of Udine are well preserved and defended with ditches, and, as they fence in a large space and as there is comparatively little suburb, they form a prominent feature in the aspect of the town. Within the town, towering over every other object, is the castle or citadel, as unpicturesque a military structure as can be conceived, but perched on a huge mound, like so many of the castles of our own land. Here is work for Mr. Clark. Is the mound natural or artificial? Tradition says that it was thrown up by Attila, that he might stand on it and see the burning of Aquileia. Legendary as such a tale is on the face of it, it may perhaps be taken as some traditional witness to the artificial nature of the mound. It would be dangerous to say anything more positively without minute knowledge both of the geology and of the præ-historic antiquities of Venetia; but analogy always suggests that such mounds are artificial, or at least largely improved by art. Anyhow there the mound is, an earthwork which, if artificial it be, the Lady of the Mercians herself need not have been ashamed of. Some of the guide-books call Udine "a miniature Venice;" it is not easy to see why. There are some canals and bridges in Udine, but so there are in Milan, Amiens, and countless other towns. There is even a Rialto; but one hardly sees how it came by its name. The true "piccola Venezia" is far away in Dalmatia, floating on its islands in the bay of Salona. The point of likeness to Venice is probably found in the civic palace and the two neighbouring columns. But these last are only the usual badges of Venetian rule, and the palace, though it may suggest the dwelling of the Doges, has no more likeness to it than is shared by many other buildings of the same kind in Italy. But, like or unlike to Venice, there is no doubt, even on a rainy day, that the palace of Udine is a building of no small merit; on a fine day it might perhaps make us say that it was worth going to Udine to see it. It is, of course, far smaller than the Doges' palace; and if it lacks the wonderful intermediate story of the Venetian building, it also lacks the ugly story above it. The point of likeness, if any, lies in the arcades, with their columns of true Italian type, slenderer than those at Venice, and using the pointed arch in the outer and the round arch in the inner range. But the columns at Udine are not a mere range like those at Venice. They stand row behind row, almost like the columns of a crypt, and they supply a profitable study in their floriated capitals. The pillared space forms the market-place of the city, and a busy place it is at the times of buying and selling, filled with the characteristic merchandise of the district, the golden balls of silk, for whose presence the Venetian land may thank the adventurous monks of Justinian's day. Some of the columns, and a large part of the rest of the building, had been renewed between 1875 and 1881. Between those years the palace had been nearly destroyed by fire. Here was a case of necessary restoration. No rational person could have been better pleased, either if the palace had been left in ruins or if it had been repaired in some incongruous fashion. In such a case as this, the new work is as much in its place as the old, and the new work at Udine is as worthy as any new work is ever likely to be to stand side by side with the old. At Udine again, as in many other places, the thought cannot fail to strike us how thoroughly these grand public palaces of Italy do but set before us, on a grand scale and in a more ornamented style, a kind of building of which a humble variety is familiar enough among ourselves. Many an English market-town has an open market-house with arches, with a room above for the administration of justice or any other public purpose. Enlarge and enrich a building of this kind, and we come by easy steps to the palace of Udine and to the palace of Venice. The civic palace is the only building of any great architectural value in Udine. The metropolitan church contains little that is attractive for antiquity or for beauty of the higher kind. But the interior, though of mixed and corrupt style, is not without a certain stateliness, and its huge octagonal tower would have been a grand object if its upper stages had been carried up in a manner worthy of its basement. The streets are largely arcaded; and if the arcades of Udine supply less detail than those of some other Italian cities, any arcade is better than none. Udine can at least hold its head higher than modern Bari, modern Athens, modern Rome. Still at best Udine in itself holds but a secondary place among Italian cities, and its main historic interest consists in the way in which the utterly obscure _Vedinum_ contrived to supplant both Aquileia and Forum Julii. As things now are, Forum Julii, dwindled to Cividale, has become a kind of appendage to Udine, and we must make our way thither from what is now the greater city. * * * * * Let us here put on record the memories of an actual journey, as strengthened and corrected by a later one made under more favourable circumstances. The accounts in the common guide-books are so meagre, and it is so impossible to get any topographical books in Udine, that our inquirer sets out, it must be confessed, with the vaguest notions of what he is going to see. Gsel-fels was not in those days, and, now that he has come into being, he has treated the lands at the head of the Hadriatic a good deal less fully than he has done most other parts of Italy. The traveller then is promised a store of Roman remains by one guide-book, and an early Romanesque church by another. He knows that the greatness of Forum Julii has gone elsewhere, and he is perhaps led to the belief that he is going to see a fallen city, perhaps another Aquileia, perhaps even another Salona. One thing is clear, even in the rain--namely, that the natural surroundings of Forum Julii are of the noblest kind. The grand position of the place itself he will not find out till later; but the mist half hides, half brings out, the fact that Udine lies near, and Cividale lies nearer, to the great range of the Julian Alps. Here and there their outlines can be made out; here and there a snowy peak shows itself for a moment in the further distance. A fertile plain with a mountain barrier, with broad and rushing rivers to water it--it was clearly a goodly land in which the old Veneti had fixed themselves, and in which Rome fixed the Forum of Julius as a colony and garrison to keep their land in obedience. A long and flat road, but with the mountains ever in front, leads on by several villages with their bell-towers, over what, according to the accidents of weather, may be either a half-dry _ghiara_ or a deep flood, till the traveller reaches the place which was Forum Julii, and which is Cividale. Here he finds himself--a little to his amazement--in a living town, with walls and gates and towers, with streets and houses and churches, none of them certainly of the Julian æra. The town is not very large; it is not a local capital like Udine; still it is a town, not a village among ruins and fragments like Aquileia and Salona. But it is plain that Cividale has not forgotten what she once was; the traveller is set down at the _Grande Albergo al Friuli_, and the _albergo_ stands in the _Piazza Giulio Cesare_. He remembers the like name at Rimini, and he begins to cherish hopes that the treasures of Rimini may have their like at Cividale. In utter ignorance of what the place may really contain, he seeks for a bookseller's shop, hoping that some guide-book or plan of some kind may still be found. The bookseller is soon found, but his shop contains nothing of the least profit to an inquirer into the remains of Forum Julii. But the traveller hears that there is a museum; that promises something: besides the treasures which the museum itself may contain, such a place commonly implies an intelligent keeper, who sometimes proves to be a scholar of a high order. But he takes a wrong turn; no great harm however, as he thereby learns sooner than he otherwise would have learned the noble natural site of Cividale, planted on the rocky banks of the rushing stream of the Natisone. He sees two or three unpromising churches, and looks into the chief of them, a building of strange and mixed style, but not without a certain stateliness of general effect. He sees the _Via Cornelio Gallo_, which promises something, and the _Via del Tempio_, which promises more. Visions of Nîmes, Vienne, and Pola rise before him; he follows the track, but he finds nothing in the least savouring of Jupiter or Diana, and he learns afterwards that the _Tempio_ from which the street is called is the great church, known, it seems, in a special way, as _Templum Maximum_. Still the museum is not reached; but a second inquiry, a second journey to quite another end of the town, leads to it. The museum is examined; it contains a considerable stock of objects of the usual kind, fragments of architecture and sculpture, which witness to the former greatness of Forum Julii. More remarkable are the specimens of Lombard workmanship, in various forms of armour and ornament, to say nothing of the actual tomb of the Lombard Duke Gisulf. At the museum he is put under the friendly guidance of a kindly priest, by whose care many matters are cleared up. Roman remains, strictly so called, there are none to see. There have been diggings, and the walls have been traced out, but all has been covered up again; outside the museum there is nothing in the pagan line left. But of Romanesque work the remains, though neither large nor many, are of high interest. Buried in an Ursuline nunnery, of which the good father opens the door, is a small Romanesque church of most singular design, built, so he tells us, in 764, but which, if so, must have received some further enrichment in the twelfth century. The sculptures in the western wall are surely of the later date; but the shell, parts of which in their coupled Corinthian columns strongly call to mind some of the ancient churches of Rome, may well be of the earlier date, of the last days of the Lombard kingdom. Here at last something of no small value has been lighted on. As a matter of architecture, this church is by far the best thing in Cividale. Indeed, as a matter of architecture strictly so called, it is the only thing of any importance. But let the other churches be gone through again, perhaps only with that relief of the mind which follows the discovery of an intelligible clue, yet more when old memories are revived and strengthened by a second visit, and, though they are of no great value as buildings, they are found to be of no small interest in other ways. The _Templum Maximum_ indeed, late and corrupt as is its style, is not without a certain grandeur of internal effect, and it contains more than one object which calls up historic memories. There is the chair which cannot in strictness be called patriarchal, but which was doubtless used by patriarchs when the spiritual shepherds of Aquileia fled from their wasted home to the safer shelter of Forum Julii, and ruled its chief church as provosts. There too on the altar we may see the silver image work of the twelfth century, the gift of one of the two patriarchs who bore the name of Peregrinus. And there too is a wonderful object, the indoor baptistery--for it is more than a font--repaired two years after Charles the Great had added the style of King of the Lombards to his Frankish kingship and his Roman patriciate. We may then believe that, in the columns and round arches of its octagon, we see work of the date when the land of Forum Julii was still the Austria of an independent Lombard realm. Other objects of early days are to be found in even the less promising churches, specially an altar, rich with the goldsmith's craft, which suggests, though it does not rival, the altar of Saint Ambrose at Milan. But first among the treasures of Cividale must rank the precious volume which is still guarded in the treasury of the great church. This is an ancient book of the gospels, now of three gospels only, for some zealous Venetian, eager for the honour of Saint Mark, deemed that the pages which contained his writings were out of place anywhere except in the Evangelist's own city. The highest historical value of the book consists in the crowds of signatures scattered through its margin, signatures of persons great and small, known and unknown, from the days of the Lombard princes to the Empress-Queen of the last age and the Bourbon pretender of the present. When we have grasped the fact that the popular speech of the surrounding district is Slavonic, we are less surprised than we otherwise might be to find that a large proportion of the signatures come from eastern Europe. Among them are a crowd of signatures from Bulgaria, headed by Michael their king. It is for palæographers to judge of the date by the writing. And palæographers say that, of the ancient names, none are earlier than the end of the eighth century or later than the end of the tenth. Otherwise we might have been driven to see in this Michael nothing greater than a fourteenth century king of an already divided Bulgaria. But the great Simeon of an earlier day left a son Michael, a monk, who left his monastery to strive vainly for his father's crown. Yet, if the witness of wise men as to the dates of the writing may be trusted, it must be either the signature of this Michael or else an utter forgery. But the unenlightened in such matters asks how the signatures of men of so many lands and ages got there. Did those whose names were written--for of course few, if any, would write them themselves--come to the book, or did the book go to them? The earlier signatures at least are said to be the names of reconciled enemies who took the holy book to witness that their enmities were laid aside. This we can neither affirm nor deny, but it surely cannot apply to all the signatures in the book. The treasury contains other ancient books, and other objects which are well worth notice, but this strange and precious relic is the chiefest of them all. Altogether then there turns out to be a good deal to see on the site which once was Forum Julii. What is to be seen is perhaps not exactly of the kind which the traveller may have fancied in his dreams. He can hardly have come expecting to find a stately mediæval or modern city. He may have come expecting to find the walls of a Roman city sheltering here and there either Roman fragments or modern cottages. He will find neither of these; but he will find a town whose natural position is far more striking than could have been looked for in the approach from Udine, and whose chief merit is that it shelters here and there, in corners where they have to be sought for, several objects, neither Roman nor mediæval, but of the darker, and therefore most instructive, period which lies between the two. GORIZIA. 1881. At Udine and at Cividale we are still in Italy in every sense which that name has borne since the days of Augustus Cæsar. But the fact which may have startled us at the last stage of our course, the fact that a Slavonic tongue is to be heard within the borders of both the old and the new Italian kingdom, may suggest the thought that we are drawing near to parts of the world which are in some respects different from Treviso and the lands to the west of it. We are about to pass from the subject lands of Venice to the neighbour lands. We shall presently reach the borders which modern diplomacy has decreed for the Italian kingdom, seemingly because they were the borders of the territory of the Venetian commonwealth on the mainland. Venice, as Venice, has passed away, but it is strange to see how one of the most artificial of her boundaries survives. The present arrangements of the European map seem to lay down as the rule on this frontier that nothing that was not Venetian can be Italian. The rule is purely negative; no weight at all is given to the converse doctrine that whatever was Venetian should be Italian. Nor is it necessary to plead for any such doctrine, a doctrine which nationality and geography, as well as practical possibility, would all decline to support. Still it is hard to see why the negative doctrine should be so strictly pressed, and why Italian lands should be forced to remain under a foreign dominion, simply because they never came under the dominion of Venice. If any argument grounded in this way on facts which have long since ceased to have a meaning were urged on the Italian side, it would be at once scouted as pedantic and antiquarian. But it would seem that even pedantry and antiquarianism are welcomed when they tell on behalf of the other side. For surely it is the height of pedantry and antiquarianism to argue that, because a land was never numbered among the subject provinces of Venice, it therefore may not be numbered among the equal members of a free Italian kingdom. It is certainly hard to find any other reason, except that the advance of Venice stopped at a certain point, to account for the fact that the dominions of a foreign prince come so awkwardly near to Verona, for the fact that Trent and Roveredo look to Vienna and not to Rome. Such are our thoughts on one line of journey; on our present course the same question suggests itself again. We pass a frontier where it is not at first sight easy to see why any frontier should be there. We journey from Udine to Gorizia, still keeping within the old Lombard Austria, but between Udine and Gorizia lies Cormons, and after Cormons we find ourselves in a new Austria. We speak with geographical accuracy. We might not say, as some would, that we were in Austria if we were at Cattaro or at Tzernovitz, but in the land which we have now entered, we are, not indeed in the archduchy of Austria, but within the circle of Austria according to the arrangements of Maximilian. And in truth we do soon mark a change. We soon come to feel more distinctly than before that we are in a land where more tongues than one are spoken. We may have found out that round about Cividale all is not Italian in speech; but the Slavonic tongue of those parts is modest and retiring. It does not thrust itself into print or show itself flauntingly on doors or windows. But when we pass the border, when we are in the land which is Austrian both in the oldest and the newest sense, the presence of a twofold, even of a three-fold, speech makes itself very clear. At Cividale, if Slavonic was to be heard, it was at least not to be seen. In the city which we next reach, Italian and Slavonic are both to be seen openly, and a third tongue is to be seen alongside of them. Are we to seek here for the justification of the frontier which struck us as artificial and needless? Is the fact that the Slavonic tongue is spoken in or close by the city which we next reach a proof that that city ought to remain outside the Italian kingdom? If so, the argument might be thought to prove too much; it might be thought to prove that Cividale ought not to be counted to Italy any more than its neighbour. But any one who took up this line of argument would hardly be led by it to approval of things as they are. The Panslavist who should go the length of arguing that neither Gorizia nor Cividale ought to look to Rome as its head would hardly argue that either of them ought to look to Vienna. We have written the name _Gorizia_; but we have written it with fear and trembling. For we have now reached a city where we have three names to choose from. Shall we say _Görz_, _Gorizia_, or _Gorici_? All three names will be found carefully displayed side by side in public notices. One is tempted, by the analogy of a crowd of Slavonic names in other places, to suggest _Goritaz_ instead of any of them. But _Gorici_ is the Slavonic form as by law established, and to that rule both natives and visitors may do well to bow. In any case there is little doubt that on this spot of many names we have reached a place which, though Italian in geography, though for ages German in allegiance, was in truth Slavonic in origin. A charter of Otto the Third speaks of "una villa quæ Sclavonica lingua vocatur Gorizia." This is the earliest certain mention of the place. There is indeed a document which tells us how in the year 949 Bishop John of Trieste was borne down by many troubles, and how one source of his troubles was a heavy debt to David the Jew of Gorizia. But wise men reject the document which asserts this piece of episcopal mismanagement. And the way in which the place is spoken of in the eleventh century does not sound as if it could have been a spot whose wealth could have drawn Jews thither in the tenth. In any case the Slavonic _villa_ grew into a town and a county of the Empire, and late in the fifteenth century the Counts of Gorizia became the same persons as the Archdukes of Austria. But long after the beginning of that union, the distinction between Austria and Gorizia was still strongly drawn. How much Gorizia still thought of itself, how much its prince still thought of himself in his local character, is made plain by the most prominent feature of the chief building of the place. Over the gateway of the castle is an inscription recording repairs done in the year 1660 by the reigning Count Leopold. That Count bore higher titles, and he does not fail to record them on the stone; but they are recorded in an almost incidental way. Letters boldly cut, letters which catch the eye at some distance, proclaim that the work was done by LEOPOLDUS COMES GORITIÆ. Go near, and you may literally read between the lines, in smaller letters and abbreviated words, that this Count Leopold happened to be also Emperor of the Romans, King of Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia, Archduke of Austria, and--in his own eyes at least--Duke of Burgundy. But here at Gorizia he reigned and built directly as Count of Gorizia, and he proclaimed himself primarily by his local title. In an inscription such things could be done; heraldry hardly admitted of any such ingenious devices. The bird of Cæsar must bear the hereditary shield of the prince who has been chosen to the imperial office, and on that hereditary shield the bearings of the Gorizian county cannot displace those of duchies and kingdoms. While therefore the legend proclaims the doer of the repairs of 1660 as before all things a hereditary local count, the shield proclaims him as before all things a Roman Emperor-elect. Yet one may believe that most of those who pass under the imperial bird over the gateway deem him all one with his bastard likeness over the tobacco-shops. Some may even fail to see that, among the many hereditary bearings of the elective Cæsar, the lion of the Austrian duchy keeps his proper place. That lion is so apt to pass out of sight, men are so ready to cry "Austria" when they see the eagle of Rome, so little ready to cry "Austria" when they see Austria's own bearing, that it may be kind to point out one place where his form and his occasional destiny may best be studied. The true Austrian beast is plainly to be seen on the walls of the _Schlachtkapelle_ near Sempach, and his presence there is explained by the legend, thrilling to the federal and democratic mind, "Das Panier von Oestreich ist gefangen, und ist nach Uri gekommen." The eagle of Rome over the gateway, in a place where in these regions we look almost mechanically for the lion of Saint Mark, reminds us yet again that we have passed from the subject into the neighbour lands of Venice. And various inscriptions, public and private, bring no less clearly home to our minds that we are in a land of more than one tongue. Of the three names of the town, that by which we have hitherto spoken of it, that which it bears in the earliest trustworthy charter, that which differs by one letter only from its more ordinary Latin shape as seen over the gate, is also the name which the traveller will most frequently hear in its streets and will see universally written over its shops. As far as one can see at a glance, German is at _Görz_ the tongue of hôtels, _cafés_, public departments of all kinds. Italian is the tongue of the citizens of _Gorizia_ whose shops are sheltered by its street arcades. Slavonic, we conceive, will some day be the tongue of the little children who, in all the joy of a state of nature, as naked as any other mammals, creep, as merrily though more slowly than the lizards, over the grass and stones of the castle-hill of _Gorici_. Anyhow Gorizia is, like Palermo of old, the city of the threefold tongue. But the place itself is, considering its history, a little disappointing. Nothing indeed is lacking in the way of position. Mountains on all sides, except where the rich plain of the swift Isonzo stretches away to the sea, fence in the city, without hemming it close in as in a prison. One hill is crowned by the castle, whence we look out on another crowned by the long white line of the Franciscan convent, suggesting memories of the banished king who was the last to receive the consecrating oil of Rheims. Houses, churches, villages, are thickly scattered over the plain and the hill sides. The vines and the mulberry-trees, the food of the silkworm whose endless cocoons choke up the market-place, witness to the richness of the land. But there is a strange lack of buildings of any importance in this capital of an ancient county, this resort which boasts itself as the "Nizza Austriaca," the "Oesterreichische Nizza"--in such formulæ the third tongue of the spot is not called into play. A Nizza without any Mediterranean may seem as strange as the Rialto which we saw at Udine without any Grand Canal. But Gorizia as a modern town is not striking. Its best features are the old arcades in some of its streets and markets. Such arcades must be bad indeed to be wholly unsatisfactory, and some of those at Gorizia are very fairly done. But there is no grand church, no grand municipal palace; the castle itself is not what on such a site it ought to be. The castle is the kernel of the whole place. Gorizia is not a hill-town, nor can we call it a river-town. There is the castle on the hill, and the town seems to have gathered at its foot. The castle soars so commandingly over the country round that we wish here, as at Udine, that there was something better to soar than the ugly barrack which forms its uppermost stage. There are indeed better things within Count Leopold's gateway. The outer court is laid out in streets, and contains several houses with architectural features. One, bearing date 1475, with respectable columns and round arches below, and with windows of the Venetian type above, might pass for a very humble following, not of the palaces of Venice or Udine, but of the far nobler pile which is in store for us at Ragusa. A small church too strikes us, with its windows projecting like oriels, one of them indeed rising from the ground. This last, when we enter, proves to be the smallest of side-chapels set on this fashion. In some cities such a small eccentricity would hardly deserve any notice; but at Gorizia we learn to become thankful for rather small mercies. In the lower town what little interest there is gathers round the pieces of street arcades; the churches go for next to nothing. Yet Gorizia ranks as an ecclesiastical metropolis, and it has its metropolitan church no less than Canterbury or Lyons. Nor is this merely one of those arrangements of the present century which have stripped Mainz and Trier of their immemorial dignity, and which have given us archbishops of such unexpected places as Munich and Freiburg-im-Breisgau. The style of Archbishop of Gorizia is at least several generations older than the style of Emperor of Austria. The church of Gorizia rose to metropolitan rank, at the same time as the church of Udine, when the patriarchate of Aquileia came to an end, and its province was divided between the two new metropolitans thus called into being. But the seat of the modern primacy is hardly worthy of a simple bishopric. There is nothing in the building of any antiquity but a choir, German rather than Italian, and of no great antiquity either. The rest of the church is of a gaudy _Renaissance_; yet it deserves some notice from the boldness of its construction. It is designed, within and without, of two stories: that is, the upper gallery is an essential part of the building. The principle is the same as in Saint Agnes and Saint Laurence at Rome, and as in German churches like the Great Minster at Zürich; but the feeling is quite different. Still, if a church is to be built in a _Renaissance_ style and to receive two sets of worshippers, one over the heads of the other, it must be allowed that the object is thoroughly attained in the metropolitan church of Gorizia, and its architect is entitled to the credit of having successfully grappled with the problem immediately set before him. Gorizia then can hardly claim, on the ground either of its history or its buildings, to rank among cities of the first, or even of the second class. Its natural position far surpasses all that has been done in it, and all that has been built in it. But there is no spot on which men have lived for eight or nine hundred years which does not teach us something, and Gorizia has its lessons as well as other places. It would hardly be worth making a journey thither from any distant point to see Gorizia only; but the place should be seen by any one whose course takes him through the lands at the head of the Hadriatic. Udine, Cividale, and Gorizia are places which have in some sort partitioned among them the position of fallen Aquileia. From the children, we might perhaps say the rebellious children, we must go on to the ancient mother. AQUILEIA. 1875--1881. We have already, in our course through the lands at the head of the Hadriatic, had need constantly to refer to the fallen city which once was the acknowledged head of those lands, the city whose fame began as a great Roman colony, the bulwark of Italy at her north-eastern corner, and which lived on, after the fall of its first greatness, in the character of the nominal head alike of a considerable temporal power and of an ecclesiastical power whose position and history were altogether unique. We have noticed that, while the cities of this region rise and fall, still even those which fall are not wholly swept away. Aquileia has always lived, though, since the days of Attila, the life of the actual city of Aquileia has been a very feeble one indeed. But though Aquileia, as a city, practically perished in the fifth century, yet it continued till the eighteenth to give its name to a power of some kind. Its temporal position passed to Forum Julii, and Udine succeeded to the position alike of Forum Julii and of Aquileia. But the patriarchs grew into temporal princes, and their style continued to be taken from Aquileia, and not from Forum Julii or Udine. On the ecclesiastical side, the patriarchal title itself arose out of a theological and a local schism. And, while the bishops of Aquileia thus rose to the same nominal rank as those of Constantinople and Alexandria, they had, as the result of the same chain of events, to see--at least, if they had gone on living at Aquileia they would have seen--a rival power of the same rank spring up, at their own gates, in the form of the patriarchs of Grado. This last was surely the greatest anomaly in all ecclesiastical geography. He who is not familiar with the Italian ecclesiastical map may be surprised to find Fiesole a separate bishopric from Florence. Even he who is familiar with such matters may still be surprised to find Monreale a separate archbishopric from Palermo. But even this last real anomaly seems a small matter, compared with the arrangement which placed one patriarch at Aquileia itself, and another almost within a stone's throw at Aquileia's port of Grado. At every step we have lighted on something to suggest the thought of the ancient capital of the Venetian borderland; we have now to look at what is left of the fallen city itself. Setting aside the actual seats of Imperial power, Rome Old and New, Milan, Trier, and Ravenna, few cities stand out more conspicuously than Aquileia both in general and in ecclesiastical history. The stronghold by which Rome first secured her power over the borderland of Illyria and Cisalpine Gaul--the city which grew under the fostering hand of Augustus into one of the great cities of the Empire--the city whose overthrow by Attila was one of the causes of the birth of Venice--might have claimed for itself no mean place in history, even if it had never become one of the special seats of ecclesiastical rule and ecclesiastical controversy. To see such a city sunk to a mean village, to trace out the remains of its ancient greatness and splendour, is indeed a worthy work for the historical traveller. But how shall the traveller find his way to Aquileia? Let us confess to a certain degree of pious fraud in our notices of Treviso, Udine, and Gorizia. We have, for the general purposes of the series, conceived the traveller as starting from Venice, while in truth those notices contained the impressions of journeys made the other way, with Trieste as their starting-point. The mask must be thrown off, if only because the journey to Aquileia always calls up the memory of an earlier visit to Aquileia when it was also from Trieste that another traveller set forth. We have before us a record of travel from Trieste to Aquileia, in which the pilgrim, finding himself on the road "in a capital barouche behind two excellent horses," tells us that "the idea of thus visiting a church city, which seemed a mere existence of the past, had something so singular and inappropriate as to seem an ecclesiastical joke. When at the octroi," he continues, "our driver gave out his destination, the whole arrangement produced the same effect in my mind as if Saint Augustine had asked me to have a bottle of soda-water, or Saint Jerome to procure for him a third-class ticket." Without professing altogether to throw ourselves into enthusiasm of this kind, the ecclesiastical history of the city, its long line of patriarchs, schismatical and orthodox, is of itself enough to give Aquileia a high place among the cities of the earth. But why Aquileia should be called "a church city" as if it were Wells or Lichfield or Saint David's, cities to which that name would very well apply--why going thither should seem an "ecclesiastical joke"--why Saint Augustine, if he were still on earth, should be debarred from the use of soda-water--why Saint Jerome should be condemned to a third-class ticket, while his modern admirer goes in a capital barouche behind two excellent horses--all these are mysteries into which it would not do for the profane to peer too narrowly. But the traveller from whom we quote was one in whose mind the first sight of Spalato called up no memory of Diocletian, but who wandered off from the organizer of the Roman power to an ecclesiastical squabble in which the British Solomon was a chief actor. We quote his own words. As he first saw the mighty bell-tower, he asks, "What were our thoughts? What but of poor Mark Antony de Dominis?" Our ecclesiastical traveller who went straight from Trieste to Aquileia in the barouche with the excellent horses made his pilgrimage before the railway was opened. As it is, the more modern inquirer is more likely to take the train to Monfalcone--perhaps humbly, like Saint Jerome, by the third class, perhaps otherwise, according to circumstances. He will pass through a land of specially stony hills coming down near to the sea, but leaving ever and anon, in the most utter contrast, green marshy places between the stones and the water. Some may find an interest in passing by Miramar, the dwelling of the Maximilian who perished in Mexico; some may prefer to speculate about Antenor, and to wonder where he found the nine mouths of Timavus. But it is still possible to go by the same path as our predecessor, and that antiquated course has something to be said for it. The road from Trieste to Aquileia is, for some while at least, not rich in specially striking objects, but it passes over lofty ground whence the traveller will better understand the geography of the Hadriatic, and will come in for some glimpses of the inland parts of this region of many tongues. For here it is not quite enough to say that native Italian and Slave and official German all meet side by side. We are not far off from the march-land of two forms of the Slavonic speech; the tongue of Rome too is represented at no great distance by another of its children, distinct from the more classic speech of Italy. We remember that the Vlach, the Rouman, the Latin-speaking remnant of the East, has settled or has lingered at not very distant points. We are tempted to fancy--wrongly, it may be--that some of them must almost come within the distant landscape. One thing is certain; bearers far more strange of the Roman name, though no speakers of the Roman tongue, are there in special abundance. Those whom sixteenth century Acts of Parliament spoke of as "outlandish persons calling themselves Egyptians," though they certainly now at least no more call themselves Egyptians than Englishmen ever called themselves Saxons, are there as a distinct element in the land. The traveller who comes on the right day may come in for a gipsy fair at Duino; he may hear philologers whose studies have lain that way talking to them in their own branch of the common Aryan tongue. He himself meanwhile, driven to look at their outsides only, perhaps thinks that after all gipsies do not look so very different from other ragged people. Certainly if he chances to be making his way, as it is possible that he may be, from Dalmatia and Montenegro, he will miss, both among the gipsies and the other inhabitants of the land, the picturesque costumes to which he has become used further south. Duino itself, a very small haven, but which once believed that it could rival Trieste, will, to the antiquary at least, be more interesting than its gipsy visitors. A castle on rocks, overhanging the sea--a castle, so to speak, in two parts, one of which contains a tower which claims a Roman date, while the other is said to have sheltered Dante--will reward the traveller who still keeps to the barouche and the horses on his journey to the "church city," instead of making use of the swifter means which modern skill has provided for him. * * * * * At last, by whichever road he goes, the traveller finds himself at the little town of Monfalcone, and there he who comes by the railway must now look for the capital barouche and the excellent horses, or such substitutes for them as Monfalcone can supply. A small castle frowns on the hill above the station, but the town contains nothing but an utterly worthless _duomo_ and some street arcades, to remind us once more that, if we are under the political rule of the Apostolic King, we are on soil which is Italian in history and in architecture. After a railway journey which has mainly skirted the sea, perhaps even after a journey over the hills during a great part of which we have looked down on the sea, we are a little surprised at finding that the road which leads us to what once was a great haven takes us wholly inland. We pass through a flat and richly cultivated country, broken here and there by a village with its campanile, till two Corinthian columns catch the eye in front of a modern building, which otherwise might be passed by without notice. Those two columns, standing forsaken, away from their fellows, mark that we have reached Monastero; in the days before Attila we should have reached Aquileia. We are now within the circuit of the ancient colony. But mediæval Aquileia was shut up within far narrower limits; modern Aquileia is shut up within narrower limits still. Within the courtyard of the building which is fronted by the two columns, we find a large collection, a kind of outdoor museum, of scraps of architecture and sculpture, the fragments of the great city that once was. We go on, and gradually our approach to the centre is marked by further fragments of columns lying here and there, as at Rome or Ravenna. A little farther, and we are in modern Aquileia, "città Aquileia," as it still proudly calls itself in the official description, which, as usual, proclaims to the traveller the name of the place where he is, and in what administrative division of the "Imperial and Royal" dominions he finds himself. Of the village into which the ancient colony has shrunk up we must allow that the main existing interest is ecclesiastical. So far as Aquileia is a city at all, it is now a "church city." The patriarchal church, with its tall but certainly not beautiful campanile, soars above all. But, if it soars above all, it still is not all. Here and there a fragment of a column, or an inscription built into the wall, reminds us of what Aquileia once was. One ingenious man has even built himself an outhouse wholly out of such scraps, here a capital, there a bit of sculpture, there inscriptions of various dates, with letters of the best and of the worst kinds of Roman lettering. Queer and confused as the collection is, the bits out of which it is put together are at least safe, which they would not be if they were left lying about in the streets. Another more regularly assorted collection will be found in the local museum, which has the advantage of containing several plans, showing the extent of the city in earlier times. At last we approach the church, now, and doubtless for many ages past, the one great object in Aquileia. In front of it a single shattered column marks the place of the ancient forum. To climb the tower is the best way of studying the geography of Aquileia, just as to climb the tower of Saint Apollinaris is the best way of studying the geography of Ravenna. In both cases the first feeling that comes upon the mind is that the sea has become a distant object. Now the eye ranges over a wide flat, and the sea, which once brought greatness to Aquileia, is far away. A map of Aquileia in the fifteenth century is to be had, and it is wise to take it to the top of the tower. There we may trace out the churches, gates, and other buildings, which have perished since the date of the map, remembering always that the Aquileia of the fifteenth century was the merest fragment of the vast city of earlier times. A good deal of the town wall of the mediæval date may still be traced. It runs near to the east end of the church, acting, as at Exeter and Chichester, as the wall at once of the town and of the ecclesiastical precinct. The church itself, the patriarchal basilica of Aquileia, is a study indeed, though the first feeling on seeing it either within or without is likely to be one of disappointment. We do not expect outline, strictly so called, in an Italian church; when we come in for any grouping of towers, such as we see at Saint Abbondio at Como and at more wonderful Vercelli, we accept with thankfulness the boon which we had not looked for. So we do not complain that the basilica of Aquileia, with its vast length and its lofty tower, is still, as judged by a northern eye, somewhat shapeless. But in such a place we might have expected to find a front such as those which form the glory of Pisa and Lucca, such a tower as may be found at Pisa and Lucca and at a crowd of places of less renown. We enter the church, and we find ourselves in a vast and stately basilica; but one feature in its architecture at once amazes us. There are the long rows of columns with which we have become familiar at Pisa and Lucca, at Rome and Ravenna; but all the main arches are pointed. And the pointed arches are not, as at Palermo and indeed at Pisa also, trophies of the vanquished Saracen; their details at once show that they are actual mediæval work. We search the history, for which no great book-learning is needed, as inscriptions on the walls and floor supply the most important facts. The church was twice recast, once early in the eleventh century, and again in the fourteenth. The pointed work in the main building is of course due to this last change; the crypt, with its heavy columns and rude capitals, looks like work of the eleventh century, though it has been assigned to the fifth, and though doubtless materials of that date have been used up again. And in the upper church also, the columns of the elder building have, as so often happens, lived through all repairs. Their capitals for the most part are mediæval imitations of classical forms rather than actual relics of the days before Attila. But two among them, one in each transept, still keep shattered Corinthian capitals of the very finest work. The fittings of the church are largely of _Renaissance_ date, but the patriarchal throne remains, and there are one or two fragments of columns and the like put to new uses. On the north side of the nave is a singular building, known as the _sacrario_, of which it is not easy to guess the original purpose. It is a round building supporting a miniature colonnade with a conical roof above, so that it looks more like a model of a baptistery than anything else. Those who see Cividale before Aquileia may be reminded of the baptistery within the _Templum Maximum_. But the Forojulian work is larger than the Aquileian, and we can hardly fancy that this last was really designed to be used for baptism; at all events there is a notable baptistery elsewhere. In the basilica of Aquileia we have three marked dates, but we may call it on the whole a church of the eleventh century, keeping portions of a church of the fourth, and itself largely recast in the fourteenth. Thus, setting aside later changes, the existing church shows portions of work a thousand years apart, and spans nearly the whole of Aquileian history. When the rich capitals of the transepts were carved, the days of persecution were still of recent memory; when pointed arches were set on the ancient columns, the temporal power of the patriarchate was within a century of its fall. The first church of Aquileia is assigned to the bishop Fortunatian, who succeeded in 347, the last prelate who held Aquileia as a simple bishopric without metropolitan rank. The builder and consecrator of the present church--for present we may call it, though it shows less detail of his work than of either earlier or later times--was Poppo or Wolfgang, patriarch from 1019 to 1042, a man famous in local history as the chief founder of the temporal power of the patriarchate. His influence was great with the Emperors Henry the Second and Conrad the Second; he accompanied the latter prince to his Roman coronation, and must therefore have stood face to face with our own Cnut. The name of this magnificent prelate suggests his namesake, who at the very same moment filled the metropolitan throne of Trier, and was engaged in the same work of transforming a great church of an older day. If we compare Trier and Aquileia, we see how men's minds are worked on by local circumstances and local associations. Poppo of Aquileia and Poppo of Trier were alike German prelates, but one was working in Germany and the other in Italy. The northern Poppo therefore gave the remodelled church of Trier a German character, while the remodelled church of Aquileia remained, under the hands of the southern Poppo, a church thoroughly Italian. We may even say that the essential character of the building was not changed, even by the still later remodelling which brought in the pointed arches; these were the work of Markquard of Randeck, who was translated from Augsburg to the patriarchal see in 1365, and who held it till 1381. He brought in the received constructive form of his day, but he did not by bringing in pointed arches turn the building into Italian Gothic. The church of Markquard remained within and without a true basilica, keeping the general effect of the church of Poppo, perhaps even of the church of Fortunatian. The walls of the church moreover show inscriptions of much later date, recording work done in the church of Aquileia in the days of Apostolic sovereigns of our own time. The newest of all, which was not there in 1875, but which was there in 1881, bears the name of the prince who has ceased to be lord of Forum Julii, but who still remains lord of Aquileia. But the basilica itself is not all. A succession of buildings join on to the west: first a _loggia_, then a plain vaulted building, called, but without much likelihood, an older church, which leads to the ruined baptistery. The old map shows this last with a high roof or cupola, and then the range from the western baptistery to the great eastern apse must have been striking indeed. Fragments of every kind, columns, capitals, bits of entablature, lie around; and to the south of the church stand up two great pillars, the object of which it is for some local antiquary to explain. The old map shows that they stood just within the court of the patriarchal palace, which was then a ruin, and which has now utterly vanished. They are not of classical work; they are not columns in the strict sense; they are simply built up of stones, like the pillars of Gloucester or Tewkesbury. Standing side by side, they remind us of the columns which in towns which were subject to Venice commonly bear the badges of the dominion of Saint Mark. But can we look for such badges at Aquileia? The lands of the patriarchate, in by far the greater part of their extent, did indeed pass from the patriarch to the Evangelist. But had the Evangelist ever such a settled possession of the city itself as to make it likely that columns should be set up at Aquileia as well as at Udine? The treaty which confirmed Venice in the possession of the patriarchal state left the patriarchal city to its own bishop and prince. Was the winged lion ever set up, and then taken down again? The old map which represents Aquileia in the fifteenth century shows that, as the pillars carry nothing now, so they carried nothing then. Again, would Venetian taste have allowed such clumsy substitutes for columns as these? And, if they had been meant as badges of dominion, would they not have stood in the forum rather than in the court of the Patriarch's palace? We are far from having exhausted even the existing antiquities of Aquileia, further still from exhausted its long and varied history. Within the bounds of the fallen city pleasant walks may be taken, which here and there bring us among memories of the past. Here is a fine street pavement brought to light, here a fragment of a theatre. But men do not dig at Aquileia with the same vigour with which they dig at Silchester and at Solunto. The difference between the diggings at the beginning and the end of a term of six years is less than it should be. But we have perhaps done enough to point out the claims of so wonderful a spot on those who look on travelling as something more than a way either of killing time or of conforming to fashion. Aquileia has a character of its own; it is not a ruined or buried city; nor is it altogether like Trier or Ravenna, which, though fallen from their ancient greatness, are cities still. In the general feeling of the spot it has more in common with such a place as Saint David's in our own island, that thorough "church city," where a great minster and its ecclesiastical establishment still live on amid surrounding desolation. But there is no reason to believe that Saint David's, as a town, was ever greater than it is now. Still Saint David's keeps its bishopric, it keeps its chapter; at Aquileia the patriarch with his fifty canons are altogether things of the past. We must seek for their surviving fragments at Udine and Gorizia. Aquileia then, as regards its present state, has really fallen lower than Saint David's. But then at Aquileia we see at every step, what could never at any time have been seen at Saint David's, the signs of the days when it ranked among the great cities of the earth. Aquileia, in short, is unique. We turn away from it with the feeling that we have seen one of the most remarkable spots that Europe can show us. It may be that our horses, excellent or otherwise, take us back to Monfalcone, and that from Monfalcone the train takes us back to Trieste. In theory, it must be remembered, we have not been at Trieste at all; we are going thither from Venice, by way of Treviso, Udine, Gorizia, and Aquileia. In going thither, we shall outstrip the strict boundary of the Lombard Austria, though we shall keep within the Italy of Augustus and the Italy of Charles the Great. On the other hand, in matter of fact it may be that, as we have come by the older mode of going from Trieste to Aquileia, we go on to make our way by the same mode from Aquileia to Gorizia. In favourable states of the astronomical world, we may even be lighted on our way by a newly-risen comet. We follow the precedent of our forefathers: "Isti mirant stellam." Such a phænomenon must, according to all ancient belief, imply the coming of some great shaking among the powers of the world. In such a frame of mind, the gazer may be excused if he dreams that the portent may be sent to show that the boundary which parts Aquileia and Gorizia from Udine and Treviso need not be eternal. TRIESTE. 1875--1877--1881. We have already learned, at Gorizia and at Aquileia, that, whether in real travel or on the map, the subject lands of Venice cannot be kept apart from those neighbour lands which were not her subjects. The Queen of the Hadriatic could at no time boast of the possession of the whole Hadriatic coast; could she now be called up again to her old life, to her old dominion, she would feel very sensibly that she had only a divided rule over her own sea. She would find her peer in a city, a haven, all claim to dominion over which she had formally resigned more than four hundred years before her fall. Facing her from the other side of her own watery kingdom, she would see a city too far off to be an eyesore, but quite near enough to be a rival. She is fronted by a city which hardly comes within the old Venetian land, though it comes within the bounds of the old Italian kingdom, a city which for five hundred years has been parted from Venetian or Italian rule, emphatically a city of the present, which has swallowed up no small share of the wealth and prosperity of the city of the past. _Tergeste_, Trieste, stands forth as a rival of Venice, which has, in a low practical view of things, outstripped her. Italian zeal naturally cries for the recovery of a great city, once part of the old Italian kingdom, and whose speech is largely, perhaps chiefly, Italian to this day. But, cry of _Italia Irredenta_, however far it may go, he must not go so far as this. Trieste, a cosmopolitan city on a Slavonic shore, cannot be called Italian in the same sense as the lands and towns so near Verona which yearn to be as Verona is. Let Trieste be the rival, even the eyesore, of Venice, still Southern Germany must have a mouth. We might indeed be better pleased to see Trieste a free city, the southern fellow of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg; but it must not be forgotten that the Archduke of Austria and Lord of Trieste reigns at Trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns at Cattaro and Spizza. The present people of Trieste did not choose him, but the people of Trieste five hundred years back did choose the forefather of his great-grandmother. Compared with the grounds on which kingdoms, duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in that neighbourhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to be respectable indeed. The great haven of Trieste may almost at pleasure be quoted as either confirming or contradicting the rule that it is not in the great commercial cities of Europe that we are to look for the choicest or the most plentiful remains of antiquity. Sometimes the cities themselves are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities themselves, as habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the hoariest antiquity, but the remains of their early days have perished through their very prosperity. Massalia, with her long history, with her double wreath of freedom, the city which withstood Cæsar and which withstood Charles of Anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days. She has been the victim of her abiding good fortune. We can look down from the height on the Phôkaian harbour; but for actual memorials of the men who fled from the Persian, of the men who defied the Roman and the Angevin, we might look as well at Liverpool or at Havre. Genoa, Venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of her inland sea, with her harbour full of the ships of every nation, her streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example of the rule or an exception to it? No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and new, wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step. Compare Trieste with Ancona; we miss the arch of Trajan on the haven; we miss the cupola of Saint Cyriacus soaring in triumph above the triumphal monument of the heathen. We pass through the stately streets of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps of ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet us at every step in so many of the cities of Italy. Yet the monumental wealth of Trieste is all but equal to the monumental wealth of Ancona. At Ancona we have the cathedral church and the triumphal arch; so we have at Trieste; though at Trieste we have nothing to set against the grand front of the lower and smaller church of Ancona. But at Ancona arch and _duomo_ both stand out before all eyes; at Trieste both have to be looked for. The church of Saint Justus at Trieste crowns the hill as well as the church of Saint Cyriacus at Ancona; but it does not in the same way proclaim its presence. The castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the church; and the _duomo_ of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek cross and cupola of Ancona. Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of a truth it cannot compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange or with Aosta. But the _duomo_, utterly unsightly as it is in a general view, puts on quite a new character when we first see the remains of pagan times imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile, still more so when we take our first glance of its wonderful interior. At the first glimpse we see that here there is a mystery to be unravelled; and as we gradually find the clue to the marvellous changes which it has undergone, we feel that outside show is not everything, and that, in point both of antiquity and of interest, though not of actual beauty, the double basilica of Trieste may claim no mean place among buildings of its own type. Even after the glories of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a kind of transformation of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply another example. * * * * * Whatever was the first origin of Tergeste, whoever, among the varied and perplexing inhabitants of this corner of the Hadriatic coast, were the first to pitch on the spot for a dwelling-place of man, it is plain that it ranks among the cities which have grown up out of hill-forts. Trieste in this affords a marked contrast to Marseilles, as it supplies a marked analogy to Cumæ and Ancona. The site of the Phôkaian settlement marks a distinct advance in civilization. The _castellieri_, the primitive forts, in the neighbouring land of Istria, were, according to Captain Burton, often made into places of Roman occupation, and something of the same kind may have been the case with Tergeste itself. The position of the cathedral church, occupying the site of the capitol of the Roman colony, shows of itself that Tergeste was thoroughly a hill-city. It has spread itself downwards, like so many others, though this time, not into the plain, but towards the sea. Standing on the border-land of Italy and Illyria, its destiny has been in some things the same as that of its neighbours, in others peculiar to itself. It must not be forgotten that, setting aside the coast cities, the land in which Trieste stands has for ages been a Slavonic land, except so far as it is also partly a Rouman land. How far the Italian and the Rouman elements may have been originally the same, is a puzzling question on which it would be dangerous to enter here. But one thing is certain, that, if the present inhabitants of the Tergestine city had obeyed the call of Garibaldi, "Men of Trieste, to your mountains," they would have found Slavonic possessors claiming those mountains by the strongest of all titles. For we have now distinctly passed the national border. We have come to the lands where the body is Slavonic, where the Italian element, greater or smaller, is at most only a fringe along the coast. Tergeste with the neighbouring lands formed part of the dominion of Theodoric and of the recovered Empire of Justinian; but it never came under the rule of the Lombard. Its allegiance to the lords of Constantinople and Ravenna, lords whose abiding power in this region is shown in the foundation of the Istrian Justinopolis, lasted unshaken till the Frank conquest, when Tergeste became part of the Italian kingdom of the Karlings. From that time to the fourteenth century, its history is the common history of an Italian city. It is sometimes a free commonwealth, sometimes subject to, or claimed by, the Patriarch of Aquileia or to the Serene Republic itself. By the treaty of Turin in 1381, the independence of the commonwealth of Trieste was formally acknowledged by all the contending powers. The next year the liberated city took the seemingly strange step of submitting itself to the lordship of a foreign prince. Leopold, Duke of Austria, he who died at Sempach, he to whom Venice resigned Treviso, was received by a solemn act as Lord of Trieste, and that lordship passed on to the Dukes, Archdukes, Kings, and Emperors of his house, and from them to their Lotharingian successors. Thus, unlike Treviso and Udine, Trieste has been Austrian in one sense only. Never forming a part of the Austria of Lombardy, it has had a far more abiding connexion with the Austria of Germany. The lordship which Trieste acknowledged was of course at first only an overlordship, and the Council and Commons of the city still continued to act as a separate commonwealth. But an union of this kind is one of those fatal partnerships between the stronger and the weaker which can lead only to bondage. Trieste has ever since remained Austrian in allegiance, save during the chaos of the days of the elder Buonaparte. Those days are commemorated by an inscription on the _duomo_, which tells of the expulsion of the French from the castle by an allied force, whose name of "Austro-Angli" might almost suggest some unrecorded tribe in our own island. * * * * * It is certainly hard to conceive a building more uninviting without than the cathedral church of Saint Justus. But Sokratês was not to be judged by his outside, neither is the _duomo_ of Trieste. A broad and almost shapeless west front is flanked by a low, heavy tower, not standing detached as a campanile, as it should stand in Italy, not worked into the church as it would be worked in England or Germany, but standing forward in a kind of Scotch fashion, like Dunkeld. The only architectural feature seems to be a large wheel window, which it would be unfair to compare to that of Saint Zeno. But the next moment will show, built in at the angle of the church and the tower, a noble fluted column with its half-defaced Corinthian capital, which is enough to show what has been. We are carried back to Rome, to Saint Mary _in Cosmedin_ and Saint Nicolas _in Carcere_, as we trace out in the lower stage of the tower the remains of the temple of Jupiter which has given way to the church of Justus. Imbedded in its walls are pilasters, columns, and their basement, showing that Jupiter of Tergeste must have lifted his pillared portico above the sea as proudly as Aphroditê of the Doric Ankón. Fragments of entablatures, trophies, sepulchral monuments, are built up in the wall. The western doorway of the church is made out of a huge tomb of the Barbii--a _gens_ which we do not elsewhere remember--deliberately cut in two, and set up the wrong way. The building or rebuilding of the tower in 1337 is commemorated by an inscription in letters of that date--"Gothic" letters, as some call them--out of a mutilated part of which the earlier Tergestine antiquaries spelled out that the tower was rebuilt, in 556, after a destruction by the Goths. As the letters ..LVM.. were enough to create the new saint Philumena, the letters ..OT... could easily be filled up into "a Gothis eversa"--quite evidence enough to lead a zealous Italian to lay the destroying deeds of his own forefathers on the Gothic preservers of the works of the elder day. As soon as we pass the doorway with the heads of the Barbii on either side, we forget the wrongs alike of Jupiter and of the Goths. The wonderful interior of the double basilica opens upon us. The first feeling is simply puzzledom. A nave of vast width seems to be flanked by two ranges of columns on either side, columns varying even more than is usual in their height and in the width of the arches which they support. When we look within the two lateral ranges, we are not surprised to find each ending in an apse with a noble mosaic; we are surprised to find the southern range interrupted by a cupola. This last phænomenon will help us to the explanation of the whole mystery. The church is in fact two churches thrown into one. When they were distinct, they must have stood even nearer than the old and new minsters at Winchester; indeed a plan in a local work shows, with every probability, their walls as actually touching in one point. The northern church was a basilica of the ordinary type, made up of columns--some of them of very fine marble--put together, as usual, without much regard to uniformity. All bear Corinthian capitals of different varieties, and all carry the Ravenna stilt in a rude form without the cross. The wall rose high above the arcade, and was pierced with a range of narrow clerestory windows, but with nothing else to relieve its blankness. This church the Tergestine antiquaries attribute, but, as far as we can see, without any direct evidence, to the reign of Theodosius. The southern church is, in its original parts, the same in style as the northern, but it is much smaller and, in its plan at least, thoroughly Byzantine. It was a small cross church, with a central cupola, and its north transept seems to have touched the south aisle of its northern neighbour. It is perhaps on the strength of the plan that the church is assigned to the reign of Justinian. But there is nothing Byzantine in the details; where the original capitals remain, they are of the same somewhat rude Corinthian character as those in the northern church; they have the same stilt, and under the cupola there is even a bit or two of entablature built up again. But the building went through much greater changes than the northern church did in the work of throwing the two into one whole. The date of this change seems to be fixed by a consecration recorded in the local annals in 1262. The south aisle of the northern church, the north aisle and north transept of the southern one, were pulled down, and the space which they had covered was roofed in to form the nave of the united building, while the two earlier basilicas sank into the position of its aisles. In the northern church this involved no change beyond the disappearance of the south aisle and the blocking of its clerestory; the smaller church to the south had to suffer far more. It had to be raised and lengthened; a quadrangular pier on the south side marks the original length, and the increase of height of course destroys the proper effect of the cupola. Then, as the cupola of course rested on columns with wider arches, its northern arch was filled up with two smaller arches and an inserted column, so as to make something like a continuous range. Still, late in the thirteenth century, they again used up the old marble columns; but they now used a flat capital, by which the additions of this time may be distinguished from the genuine basilican work. Probably no church anywhere has undergone a more singular change than this. It is puzzling indeed at first sight; but, when the key is once caught, the signs of each alteration are so easily seen. The other ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one side it keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded in a house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close together and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch cannot be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and with Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine fancy has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is _Arco Riccardo_. Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that the antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but, in the case of the _duomo_ at least, of surpassing interest in their own way. But the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has in itself, its church, its arch, its noble site. Placed there at the head of the gulf, on the borders of two great portions of the Empire, it leads to the land which produced that line of famous Illyrian Emperors who for a while checked the advance of our own race in the world's history, and it leads specially to the chosen home of the greatest among them. The chief glory of Trieste, after all, is that it is the way to Spalato. TRIESTE TO SPALATO. TRIESTE TO SPALATO. 1875. Given such weather as suits fair-weather sailors, there can hardly be any enjoyment more thoroughly unmixed than a sail along the coast of Dalmatia. First of all, there is a freshness about everything. Here is a portion of land which is thoroughly unhackneyed; the coasts, the islands, the channels, of Dalmatia are as yet uninvaded by the British tourist. No Cook's ticket can be taken for Spalato; no hotel coupon would be of the slightest use at Sebenico. The land is whatever its long and strange history, old and new, has made it. It has gone through many changes and it has put on many shapes, but it has escaped the fate of being changed into a "playground of Europe." The narrow strip of land on the eastern side of the Hadriatic on which the name of Dalmatia has settled down has a history which is strikingly analogous to its scenery. A coast for the most part barren and rocky, but with its barrenness and rockiness diversified by a series of noble havens, is fenced off by a range of mountains from a boundless inland region. Each of these havens, with the cities which from early days have sprung up on each, has always been an isolated centre of civilization in a backward land. As a rule, broken only during a few centuries of the universal sway of Rome, the coast and the inland country have been the possession, by no means always of different nations, but most commonly of different governments. On the coast the rule of the Venetian has been succeeded by the rule of the Austrian, while in the inland region the rule of native Slavonic princes has been succeeded by the rule of the Turk. Yet the Slave, though an earlier settler than the Turk or the Venetian, was himself only a settler in comparatively recent times. Native Illyrians, Greek colonists, Roman colonists, the rule of the Goth from Ravenna, the rule of the Eastern Roman from Constantinople, had all to take their turn before the land put on its present character of a more or less Italianized fringe on a Slavonic body, of a narrow rim of Christendom hemming in the north-eastern conquests of the once advancing and now receding Mussulman. So it is with Dalmatian history. As the cultivation and civilization of the land lies in patches, as harbours and cities alternate with barren hills, so Dalmatia has played a part in history only by fits and starts. This fitful kind of history goes on from the days of Greek colonies and Illyrian piracy to the last war between Italy and Austria. But of continuous history, steadily influencing the course of the world's progress, Dalmatia has none to show. Salona plays its part in the wars both of Cæsar and of Belisarius; Zara reminds us of the fourth crusade; the whole history of Ragusa claims a high place among the histories of independent and isolated cities; Lissa recalls the memory of two times of warfare within our own century. But if there was any time when Dalmatia really influenced the history of the world, it was when Dalmatia had no national being, when it was merely a province of an universal dominion along with Britain and Egypt. Of the great Emperors of the third century, who called the Roman power into new life and checked the ever-advancing wave of Teutonic invasion, many came from the Illyrian lands, several came from the actual Dalmatian coast. And the most famous among them--Docles, Diocletian, Jovius--not only came forth from Dalmatia to rule the world, but went back to Dalmatia to seek rest when weary of the toil of ruling it. But in our immediate point of view we must never forget that our course now lies wholly, not only by subject lands of Venice, but by lands where Venice appears in her highest character as the bulwark of Christendom against the misbeliever. The shores and cities by which we pass, were subject to the Serene Republic, but subjection to the Serene Republic was their only chance of escaping subjection to the Ottoman Sultan. Every town, every fortress, almost every point of ground along this whole coast, has been fought for, most of them have been won and lost, over and over again, in the long crusade which Venice waged, if for herself, yet for Europe also. Her rule was an alien rule, but it was still European and Christian; it shut out the rule of the barbarian. It was a rule better and worse in different times and places, but it had always the merit of shutting out a worse rule than itself, which was ever ready to take its place. Whenever we see the winged lion keeping guard, the thought should rise that he kept guard over spots which he alone kept for Christendom, which he alone saved from barbarian bondage. * * * * * The visitor to Dalmatia may be conceived as setting forth from the harbour of Trieste--from Trieste with its houses climbing up to the church and castle on the hill, with the background of mountains growing in the far distance into snowy Alps. From the Dalmatian coast itself no snowy Alps are seen; but the whole land is only a mountain slope, and the cities are cities on a smaller scale than Trieste, and which seldom run so high as Trieste does up the hill-side. But we must not forget that, even at Trieste, Dalmatia is still a distant land. There is the Istrian peninsula to be skirted, the peninsula whose coast was so long counted among the subject lands of Venice, while the inland region, under the rule of counts of Gorizia and dukes of Austria, counted only among the neighbours of the Republic. The Istrian coast, largely flat, is marked here and there by small towns standing well on high points over the sea, or seen more faintly in the more distant inland region. But we know that inland Istria is a hilly land, and, even from the sea, the mountain wall may still be seen skirting the horizon. Darkness has come on by the time we reach the harbour of Pola, once Pietas Julia, now the chief station of the infant navy of Austria. But the darkness is not so great but that the dim outline of the vast amphitheatre can be seen, and the arrangements of the Austrian Lloyd's steamers allow time enough to go on shore and take in the general effect both of the amphitheatre and the other buildings of Pola. We here get our first impression of the Venetian towns beyond the Hadriatic, all of which seem to attempt in some sort to reproduce their mistress, so far as Venice can be reproduced where there are no canals and therefore no gondolas. But all have the same narrow, paved streets, the same little squares, and, if the passage of horses and wheels is not so utterly unknown as it is at Venice, their presence is, to say the least, rare. The lion of Saint Mark is to be seen everywhere else; by daylight therefore he is to be seen at Pola also. But the Lloyd's arrangements condemn Pola, in the early part of October at least, to be seen only by dim glimpses, while Zara has an ample measure of daylight. Let no one however blame a time-table which will bring him into Spalato with the setting sun, and will allow him to take his first glance of Diocletian's palace by the rising moon. In the night we pass by several islands, but none are of any historic importance. Veglia lies out of our path, or we might muse on the evil deeds of the last independent Count, at least as they were reported by his Venetian enemies, who were eager to get possession of his island. The tale will be found in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's "Dalmatia and Montenegro," a book which no traveller in these lands should be without. The next morning's light shows us genuine Dalmatia, its coast at this stage marked by the barren hills coming down to the sea and the range of higher mountains further inland. We skirt among endless islands, most of which seem barren and uninhabited; we pass along the channel of Zara, and come to anchor off the city itself, standing on its peninsula crowned with its walls--Venetian and later--and with the towers of its churches rising above them. Here a stay of several hours allows a pretty full examination of our first Dalmatian city--a city however more Italian and far less thoroughly Dalmatian than other cities to which our further course will lead us. There is time to visit the _duomo_ and the smaller churches--to mark the two surviving Roman columns--to thread the narrow streets, with their occasional scraps of Venetian architecture--to stroll by the harbour, under the gateways marked by the lion of Saint Mark, one of which so oddly proves to be really a Roman gate with a Venetian casing. We may even, if we so think good, climb the mound which, though crowned by a not attractive Chinese pagoda, nevertheless supplies the best view of Zara and her two seas. The _Albergo al Cappello_--the sign of the Hat--supplies food certainly not worse than an Italian town of the same class would set before a passing traveller. The meal done, to sit out of doors in a _café_ is nothing new to any one who has crossed the straits, not of Zara but of Calais; but it is a new feeling to do so in the narrow streets of a Dalmatian town, and to add the further luxury of maraschino drunk in its native land. Night is now passed on board, and Zara is left by sunrise. Islands and hills again succeed on either side, till we enter a narrow strait and find ourselves in a noble harbour with a town in front, lying, like most Dalmatian towns except Zara, at the foot of the mountains. We are in the haven of Sebenico, but the haven of Sebenico is by no means the whole of the inlet, which runs much further inland in the shape of a narrow creek. We land, and give such time as is allowed us to a sight of the little hill-side city. Shall we give Sebenico the last place among the cities which we stay and examine in detail, or the first place among the lesser cities to which we give such time as we can in passing by? We are driven to this last course, not forgetting, if we are minded to turn away from history and art to look for a while on a striking natural object, that it is from Sebenico that we may best make our way to the great waterfall of Kerka. And, as far as those who have made no special study of Alpine matters may speak, the falls of Kerka, rushing down in a company of torrents side by side, look as if they had a right to take a high place among the falls at least of the old world. But Sebenico is not simply the way to Kerka; there is something to see in Sebenico itself. It is a hill city, but it is emphatically not a hill-top city, but a hill-side city. We climb up through the inhabited town to the castle, and when we reach the castle, we are far from having reached the hill top. And to those who make Sebenico their second halting-place on the strictly Dalmatian coast it will have a special interest. Much smaller than Zara, it is far more thoroughly Dalmatian; costume is more marked, and its position gives it that peculiar air of quaintness which is shared by all places where narrow streets run up a steep hill. And those streets moreover are rich with architectural features, graceful windows and the like, which witness to the influence of the ruling city. And there is something not a little taking in the small _piazza_ of Sebenico--the arcaded _loggia_ on the one side, the cathedral on the other, with its mixed but stately architecture, its waggon-roof of stone standing out boldly without either buttress or external roof. Mr. Neale, whom, as he does not rule Sebenico to be a "church city," we may now quote seriously, holds that the cathedral of Sebenico is "in an exclusively architectural view the most interesting church in Dalmatia." He adds that "in truth it is one of the noblest, most striking, most simple, most Christian of churches." This is high praise, especially when bestowed by Mr. Neale on a church which was consecrated so lately as 1555. But there is no denying that, strangely confused as is its style, the church of Sebenico is, both inside and out, not only a most remarkable, but a thoroughly effective building. The internal proportions are noble; the height is great; the columns, though their arches are pointed, might have stood in any basilica at Rome or Ravenna; the barrel vaulting carries us away to Saint Sernin at Toulouse and to the Conqueror's Tower. The details are a strange mixture of late Gothic and _Renaissance_, very rich and somehow very effective. It is not exactly like that class of French churches of which Saint Eustache at Paris is the grandest example, where a thoroughly mediæval outline is carried out with _Renaissance_ detail. At Sebenico we see side by side, a bit in one style and a bit in the other, and yet the two contrive to harmonize. We go down again to the haven; we mark a few classical capitals preserved, as we here preserve ammonites and pieces of rock-work; we start again to make the second portion of our second day's voyage, and to reach the most marked and memorable spot in our whole course. After Sebenico the coast is for a while almost free from islands. Presently we pass along among a few small ones, and Lissa, famous for piracies two thousand years back and for more regular warfare in our own century and in our own day, shows itself in the distance. Our course has by this time turned nearly due east. We pass by Bua, hardly conscious that it is an island. We pass by the mouth of the bay which Bua guards, hardly conscious of the depth of the inlet into which it leads, or that two cities--Traü and fallen Salona--are washed by its waters. For the child of Salona, the great object of a Dalmatian voyage, is coming within sight far away. The mighty campanile of Spalato rises, kindled with the last rays of sunlight; presently the cupola of the metropolitan church, the long line of the palace wall, the buildings of what is plainly no inconsiderable city, stand out against their mountain background. The sun has gone down behind the western headland, but we can get our first glimpse of the city, its arcades and tower and temples, by that moonlight which is as good at Spalato as at Melrose. We have been in the home of Diocletian, and we go back to our ship, for the next day to bring us to the one city along these shores which the might of Venice could never bring into subjection. * * * * * In such a voyage as this many points necessarily escape notice, and the great objects of study are well reserved for the return journey. In all travelling for instruction's sake, it is a point specially to be insisted on that every place should, whenever it is possible, be seen twice. Nothing fixes a thing so well in the memory as going through the process of recollection. And, in such a voyage as this, it is no bad way to go at once to the furthest point, to see on the way so much of the several points as the arrangements of the steamers allow, and to stop a longer time at the important places coming back. In this way a general notion of Dalmatia and its cities is gained first of all--a notion which may be enlarged and corrected by more minute examination of the chief places, and of course, foremost among them, of Spalato itself. But Spalato, though the great object of a Dalmatian voyage, is by no means its final object. When we have reached Spalato, we have not yet gone through half our course. Before we can come back to study its wonders more worthily, we have to spend a day in the archipelago of larger islands, nearly each of which, unlike their northern fellows, has some old historical memory. We have for part of another day to sail along that still narrower strip of Christendom which fences off Ragusa from the Mussulman, to thread our way through the lovely Bocche of Cattaro, till we reach the furthest of Dalmatian cities, with the path to unconquered Montenegro over our heads. PARENZO. 1875. Parenzo, the ancient colony of Parentium, is likely to be, for many travellers in Istria and Dalmatia, their first point of stoppage after leaving Trieste. To such travellers it will be the beginning of the dominion of Venice in spots lying wholly beyond the Hadriatic, the first glimpse of the long series of lands and cities, from Istria to Cyprus, which once "looked to the winged lion's marble piles," and where the winged lion still abides in stone to keep up the memory of his old dominion. The short voyage is a lovely one. Looking back, there is Trieste on her hill-side, with her suburbs and detached houses spreading far away in both directions, and backed by the vast semicircle of the Julian Alps, with the snowy peaks of their higher summits soaring above all. The northern part of the Istrian peninsula, as we see it from the sea, has a strikingly rich and picturesque look, which is lost as we follow the coast towards the south. The small Istrian towns, each one of which has its civil and ecclesiastical history, jut out, each one on its own smaller peninsula; and in this part of the voyage the spaces between them are not lacking in signs of human dwelling and cultivation. Capo d'Istria, once Justinopolis, lies in its gulf to the left, to remind us that we have passed into the dominions of the Cæsars of the East. Forwards, Pirano stands on its headland, its _duomo_ rising above the water on arcades built up to save it from the further effects of the stripping process which is so clearly seen along the coast. The castle, with its many towers capped with their Scala battlements, rises over town and church, with a picturesqueness not common in Italian buildings. The church, on the other hand, is as far from picturesque as most Italian churches are without, and the detached campanile is simply, like many other Istrian bell-towers, a miniature of the great tower of the ruling city. But neither Capo d'Istria nor Pirano is so likely to cause the traveller bound for Dalmatia to halt as the other and more famous peninsular town of Parenzo. Long before Parenzo is reached, the Istrian shore has lost its beauty, though the Istrian hills, now and then capped by a hill-side town, and the higher mountains beyond them, tell us something of the character of the inland scenery. At last the Parentine headland is reached; the temples which crowned it are no longer to be seen, but the campanile of the famous _duomo_, with its Veronese spire, and one or two smaller towers, have taken their place as the prominent objects of the little city. On the side which would otherwise be open to the Hadriatic, the isle of Saint Nicolas shuts in the haven guarded by a round Venetian tower. The other side of the peninsula is washed by the mouth--here we must not say the estuary--of a stream yellow as Tiber, which comes rushing down by a small waterfall from the high ground where the Parentine peninsula joins the mainland. On this peninsula stood the older _municipium_ of Parentium, and the colony, some say the Julian Colony of Augustus, others the Ulpian Colony of Trajan. The zeal of Dr. Kandler, the great master of Istrian antiquities, made out the position of the forum, patrician and plebeian, of the capitol, the theatre, and the temples. The traveller will probably need a guide even to the temples, though one of them keeps the greater part of its stylobate, and the other one has two broken fluted columns left. A single inscribed stone in the ancient forum he can hardly fail to see; but the truth is that the Roman remains of Parentium are such as concern only immediate inquirers into local Parentine history. At Pola it is otherwise; there the Roman remains stand out as the great object, utterly overshadowing the buildings of later times; but at Parenzo the main interest, as it is not mediæval so neither is it pagan Roman. As at Ravenna, so at Parenzo, the real charm is to be found in the traces which it keeps of the great transitional ages when Roman and Teuton stood side by side. Against the many objects of Ravenna Parenzo has only to set its one. It has no palace, no kingly tomb--though the thought cannot fail to suggest itself that it was from Istrian soil that the mighty stone was brought which once covered the resting-place of Theodoric. Parenzo has but a single church of moment, but that church is one which would hold no mean place even among the glories of Ravenna. The capitol of Parentium has given way to the episcopal precinct, and the temple of the capitoline god has given way to the great basilica of Saint Maurus, the building which now gives Parenzo its chief claim to the study of those for whom the days of the struggle of Goth and Roman have a special charm. * * * * * As to the date of the church of Parenzo there seems little doubt. It is a basilica of the reign of Justinian, which has been preserved with remarkably little change, and which will hardly find, out of Rome and Ravenna, any building of its own class to surpass it. With the buildings of Ravenna it stands in immediate connexion, being actually contemporary with the work both at Saint Vital and at Saint Apollinaris in Classe. Its foundation is a little later, as the church of Parenzo seems to have been begun after the reconquest of Italy and Istria by Belisarius, while both Saint Vital and Saint Apollinaris, though finished under the rule of the Emperor, were begun under the rule of the Goth. There are points at Parenzo which connect it with both the contemporary churches of Ravenna. The pure basilican form, the shape of the apse, hexagonal without, though round within, are common to Parenzo and Classis; the capitals too have throughout the Ravenna stilt above them; but of the capitals themselves many take that specially Byzantine shape which at Ravenna is found only in Saint Vital. That the founder was a Bishop Euphrasius is shown by his monogram on many of the stilts, by the great mosaic of the apse, in which he appears holding the church in his hand as founder, and by the inscription on the disused tabernacle, which is engraved in Mr. Neale's book on Dalmatia and Istria. At Parenzo, as at Sebenico, Mr. Neale was in a serious mood; but, though he copied the inscription rightly or nearly so, he misunderstood it in the strangest fashion, and thereby led himself into much needless puzzledom. Euphrasius, according to Dr. Kandler, having been before a decurion of the town, became the first bishop in 524, when the Istrian bishoprics were founded under Theodoric. The church would seem to have been built between 535 and 543. The inscription runs thus:-- Famul[us] . D[e]i . Eufrasius . Antis[tes] . temporib[us] . suis . ag[ens] an[num] . xi. hunc. loc[um] . fondamen[tis] . D[e]o . jobant[e] . s[an]c[t]e . æc[c]l[esie] Catholec[e] . cond[idit]. The church was therefore begun in the eleventh year of the episcopate of Euphrasius; that is, in 535. Dr. Kandler prints, unluckily only in an Italian translation, a document of 543, the sixteenth year of Justinian, who appears with his usual titles, in which Euphrasius makes regulations for the Chapter, and speaks of the church as something already in being. Mr. Neale quotes from Coletti, the editor of Ughelli's _Italia Sacra_, part of a document in Latin which is obviously the same, but which is assigned to 796, the sixteenth year of Constantine the Sixth. The difference is strange; but the date of the document does not directly affect the date of the church, and, whatever be the date of either, Mr. Neale needlessly perplexed himself with the inscription. He says that the inscription commemorates a certain Pope John, and wonders that Euphrasius, who took part in the Aquileian schism about the Three Chapters--the Three Chapters which readers of Gibbon will remember--should record the name of a Pope with whom he was not in communion. But this difficulty is got rid of by the simple fact that there is nothing about any Pope John in the inscription. Mr. Neale strangely read the two words DO . IOBANT .--the words are carefully marked off by stops--that is, in the barbarous spelling of the inscription, DEO IVVANTE, into the four words "Domino Johanne Beatissimo Antistite." We therefore need not, in fixing the date of the church of Parenzo, trouble ourselves about any Popes. There can be no doubt that it is the work of Euphrasius, and that Euphrasius was one of those who opposed Rome about the Three Chapters. In any case, the _duomo_ of Parenzo has the interest which attaches to any church built while our own forefathers were still worshipping Woden; and we may safely add that it has the further interest of being built by a prelate who threw off all allegiance to the see of Rome. The church is indeed a noble one, and its long arcades preserve to us one of the most speaking examples of the forms of a great basilica. Every arch deserves careful study, because at Parenzo the capitals seem not to have been the spoil of earlier buildings, but to have been made for the church itself. Some still cleave to the general Corinthian type, though without any slavish copying of classical models. Animal forms are freely introduced; bulls, swans, and other creatures, are made to do duty as volutes; and when bulls and swans are set on that work, we may be sure that the Imperial bird is not left idle. Others altogether forsake the earlier types; it perhaps became a church built in the dominions of Justinian while Saint Sophia was actually rising, that some of its capitals should adopt the square Byzantine form enwreathed with its basket-work of foliage. But all, whatever may be their form in other ways, carry the Ravenna stilt, marked, in some cases at least, with the monogram of the founder Euphrasius. Happily the love of red rags which is so rampant on either side of Parenzo, at Trieste and at Zara, seems not to have spread to Parenzo itself, and the whole of this noble series of capitals may be studied with ease. The upper part, including the arches, has been more or less Jesuited within and without, but enough remains to make out the original arrangements. The soffits on the north side are ornamented like those in the basilica of Theodoric, a style of ornament identical with that of so many Roman roofs; above was a simple round-headed clerestory, and outside are the same slight beginnings of ornamental arcades which are to be seen at Saint Apollinaris in Classe. The apse, with its happily untouched windows and its grand mosaic, also carries us across to Ravenna. Besides the founder Euphrasius, we see the likeness of the Archdeacon Claudius and his son, a younger Euphrasius, besides Saint Maurus the patron and other saintly personages. Below is a rich ornament, but which surely must be of somewhat later date, formed largely of the actual shells of mother-of-pearl. The Bishop's throne is in its place; and, as at Ravenna and in the great Roman basilicas, mass is celebrated by the priest standing behind the altar with his face westward. Such was doubtless the usage of the days of Euphrasius, and in such an old-world place as Parenzo it still goes on. But if, in this matter, Parenzo clings to a very ancient use, we may doubt whether, at Parenzo or anywhere else, the men who made these great apses and covered them with these splendid mosaics designed them to be, as they so often are, half hidden by the _baldacchini_ which cover the high altar. Even in Saint Ambrose at Milan, where the apse is so high above the altar and where apse and _baldacchino_ are of the same date, we feel that the view of the east end is in some measure interfered with. Much more is this the case at Parenzo, where the apse is lower and the _baldacchino_ more lofty. But the Parenzo _baldacchino_, dating from 1277, is a noble work of its kind, and it is wonderful how little change the course of seven hundred years has made in some of its details as compared with those of the great arcades. The pointed arch is used, and the Ravenna stilt is absent; but the capitals, with their animal volutes, are almost the same as some of those of Euphrasius. Between the date of Euphrasius and the date of the _baldacchino_ we hear of more than one consecration, one of which, in 961, is said to have followed a destroying Slavonic inroad; but it is clear that any works done then must have been works of mere repair, not of rebuilding. No one can doubt that the columns and their capitals are the work of Euphrasius, and by diligently peeping round among the mass of buildings by which the church is encumbered, the original design may be seen outside as well as in. But the church of Parenzo is not merely a basilica; it has all the further accompaniments of an Italian episcopal church. West of the church stands the atrium, with the windows of the west front and the remains of mosaic enrichment rising above it. An arcade of three on each side surrounds the court, a court certainly far smaller than that of Saint Ambrose. Two columns with Byzantine capitals stand on each side; the rest are ancient, but those of the west side are a repair of the present king, or by whatever title it is that the King of Dalmatia and Lord of Trieste reigns on the intermediate Istrian shore. To the west of the atrium is the roofless baptistery, to the west of that the not remarkable campanile. We have thus reached the extreme west of this great pile of building, which, after all--such is the difference of scale between the churches of northern and southern Europe--reaches only the measure of one of our smallest minsters or greatest parish churches. The basilica of Parenzo, with all its accompaniments, measures, according to Mr. Neale's plan, only about 240 feet in length. But, if we have traced out those accompaniments towards the west, we have not yet done with those towards the east. A modern quasi-transept has been thrown out on each side, of which the northern one strangely forms the usual choir, much as in St. Peter's at Rome. These additions have columns with Byzantine capitals, like those in the atrium, copied from the old ones. But beyond this choir, and connected with the original church, is a low vaulted building of the plainest round-arched work, called, as usual, the "old church," the "pagan temple," and what not, which leads again into two chapels, the furthest having an eastern apse. Now these chapels have a mosaic pavement, and it is most remarkable that, below the pavement of the church, is a pavement some feet lower, which evidently belongs to some earlier building, and which is on the same level as the pavement of these chapels. It is therefore quite possible that we have here some remains of a building, perhaps a church, earlier than the time of Euphrasius. Between Constantine and Justinian there was time enough for a church to be built at Parentium and for Euphrasius to think it needful to rebuild it. Lastly, among the canonical buildings on the south side of the church is one, said to have been a tithe barn, with a grand range of Romanesque coupled windows, bearing date 1250. They remind us somewhat of the so-called John of Gaunt's stables, the real Saint Mary's Guild, at Lincoln. In short, so long as any traces are left of the style once common to all Western Europe, England and Italy are ever reminding us of one another. Such is the church of Parenzo, and at Parenzo the church is the main thing. As we pass away, and catch the last traces of the church of Euphrasius rising above the little peninsular city, our thoughts fly back to the other side of the Hadriatic, and it seems as if the men who came to fetch the great stone from Istria to Ravenna had left one of the noblest basilicas of their own city behind them on the Istrian shore. POLA. 1875--1881. After Parenzo the most obvious stopping-place on the Istrian shore will be Pola; and at Pola the main objects of interest for the historical student will be classed in an order of merit exactly opposite to those which he has seen at Parenzo. At Parenzo the main attraction is the great basilica, none the less attractive as being a monument of early opposition to the claims of the Roman see. Beside this ecclesiastical treasure the remains of the Parentine colony are felt to be quite secondary. At Pola things are the other way; the monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the basilica, though not without a certain special interest, comes long after them. The character of the place is fixed by the first sight of it; we see the present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is to be seen, and the amphitheatre is to be seen. But intermediate times have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything very taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the works which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. The _duomo_ should not be forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a glance; but it is in the remains of the Roman colony, in the amphitheatre, the arches, the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as at Nîmes, for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of Pola lies. There is no need to go into the mythical history of the place. Tales about Thracians and Argonauts need not be seriously discussed at this time of day. Nor can there be any need to show that the name Pola is not a contraction of Pietas Julia. Save for the slight accidental likeness of letters, so to say is about as reasonable as to say that London is a corruption of Augusta, or Jerusalem of Ælia. In all these cases the older, native, familiar, name outlived the later, foreign, official, name. When we have thoroughly cleared up the origin of the Illyrians and the old Veneti, we may know something of the earliest inhabitants of Pola, and possibly of the origin of its name. But the known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria in 178 B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought on it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of the Carolingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient to put out of the way. Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of mediæval Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of its own neighbourhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante sang. Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found rest, the rest of bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark in 1331. Since then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has been a falling city. Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France, from France to Austria again. It is under its newest masters that Pola has at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence Belisarius sailed forth has again become a haven in more than name, the cradle of the rising navy of the united Austrian and Hungarian realm. [Illustration: PORTA GEMINA, POLA.] That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to see the huge mass of the amphitheatre at Pola seeming to rise at once out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheatre is the one monument of its older days which strikes the eye in the general view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the once forsaken city has entered on its new career. But in the old time Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony of Rome. The amphitheatre of course stood without the walls; the city itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall still stand; one of its gates is left; another has left a neighbour and a memory. At the north side of the capitol stands the _Porta Gemina_, leading from it to the amphitheatre. The outer gateway remains, a double gate-way, as its name implies, with three Corinthian half-columns between and on each side of the two arches. But here steps in a singular architectural peculiarity, one which reminds us that we are on the road to Spalato, and which already points to the arcades of Diocletian. The columns support an entablature with its frieze and cornice, but the architrave is wanting. Does not this show a lurking sign of what was coming, a lurking feeling that the arch itself was the true architrave? Be this as it may, there it stands, sinning, like so many other ancient works, against pedantic rules, but perhaps thereby winning its place in the great series of architectural strivings which the palace of Spalato shows us the crowning-point. The other arch, which is commonly known as _Porta Aurea_ or _Porta Aurata_, conforms more nearly to ordinary rules. Here we have the arch with the coupled Corinthian columns on each side of it, supporting, as usual, their bit of broken entablature, and leaving room for a spandril filled in much the same fashion as in the arch of Severus at Rome. Compared with other arches of the same kind, this arch of Pola may certainly claim to rank amongst the most graceful of its class. With Trajan's arch at Ancona it can hardly be compared. That tallest and slenderest of monumental arches palpably stands on the haven to be looked at; while the arch of Pola, like its fellows at Rimini and Aosta, and like the arch of Drusus at Rome, is a real thoroughfare, which the citizens of Pietas Julia must have been in the daily habit of passing under. And, as compared with the arches of Rimini and Aosta, its design is perhaps the most pleasing of the three. Its proportions are better designed; the coupled columns on each side are more graceful than either the single columns at Rimini or the pair of columns which at Aosta are placed so much further apart. The idolater of minute rules will not be offended, as at Aosta, with Doric triglyphs placed over Corinthian capitals, and the lover of consistent design will not regret the absence of the sham pediment of Rimini. But it must be borne in mind that the arch of Pola did not originally stand alone, and that its usual name of _Porta Aurea_ is a misnomer. It was built close against the _golden gate_ of the city, whose name it has usurped. But it is, in truth, the family arch of the Sergii, raised in honour of one of that house by his wife Salvia Postuma. As such, it has a special interest in the local history of Pola. Ages afterwards, as late as the thirteenth century, Sergii appear again at Pola, as one of the chief families by whose dissensions the commonwealth was torn in pieces. If there is authentic evidence to connect these latter Sergii with the Sergii of the arch, and these again with the great Patrician _gens_ which played such a part in the history of the Roman commonwealth, here would indeed be a pedigree before which that of the house of Paris itself might stand abashed. A curious dialogue of the year 1600 is printed by Dr. Kandler in his little book, _Cenni al Forrestiere che visita Pola_, which, with a later little book, _Pola und seine nächste Umgebung_, by A. Gareis, form together a very sufficient guide for the visitor to Pola. From this evidence it is plain that, as late as the end of the sixteenth century, the ancient buildings of Pola were in a far more perfect state than they are now. Even late in the next century, in the days of Spon and Wheler, a great deal was standing that is no longer there. Wheler's view represents the city surrounded with walls, and with at least one gate. The amphitheatre stands without the wall; the arch of the Sergii stands within it; but the theatre must have utterly vanished, because in the references to the plan its name is given to the amphitheatre. And it must have been before this time that the amphitheatre had begun to be mutilated in order to supply materials for the fortress on the capitoline hill. Indeed it is even said that there was at one time a scheme for carrying off the amphitheatre bodily to Venice and setting it up on the Lido. This scheme, never carried out, almost beats one which actually was carried out, when the people of Jersey gave a _cromlech_ as a mark of respect to a popular governor, by whom it was carried off and set up in his grounds in England. Of the two temples in the forum, that which is said to have been dedicated to Diana is utterly masked by the process which turned it into the palace of the Venetian governor. A decent Venetian arcade has supplanted its portico; but some of the original details can be made out on the other sides. But the temple of Augustus, the restorer of Pietas Julia, with its portico of unfluted Corinthian columns, still fittingly remains almost untouched. Fragments and remains of all dates are gathered together within and without the temple, and new stores are constantly brought to light in digging the foundations for the buildings of the growing town. But the chief wonder of Pola, after all, is its amphitheatre. Travellers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without reason, that all amphitheatres are very like one another. At Pola this remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheatre there has several marked peculiarities of its own. We do not pretend to expound all its details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who dispute--if the dispute still goes on--about various points as regards the Coliseum at Rome will do well to go and look for some further lights in the amphitheatre of Pola. The outer range, which is wonderfully perfect, while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on the side towards the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with square-headed openings above them. But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four tower-like projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive. But the main peculiarity of this amphitheatre is that it lies on the slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on one side only. But this same position swallowed up the lower arcade on this side, and it hindered the usual works underneath the seats from being carried into this part of the building. In the other part the traces of the underground arrangements are very clear, especially those which seem to have been meant for the _naumachiæ_. These we specially recommend to any disputants about the underground works of the Flavian amphitheatre. The Roman antiquities of Pola are thus its chief attraction, and they are enough to give Pietas Julia a high place among Roman colonies. But the ecclesiastical side of the city must not be wholly forgotten. The _duomo_, if a small matter after that of Parenzo, if absolutely unsightly as seen from without, is not without its importance. It may briefly be described as a church of the fifteenth century, built on the lines of an ancient basilica, some parts of whose materials have been used up again. There is, we believe, no kind of doubt as to the date, and we do not see why Mr. Neale should have wondered at Murray's Handbook for assigning the building to the time to which it really belongs. No one could surely have placed a church with pointed arches, and with capitals of the kind so common in Venetian buildings, more than a century or two earlier. There is indeed an inscription built into the south wall which has a special interest from another point of view, but which, one would have thought, could hardly have led any one to mistake the date of the existing church. It records the building of the church by Bishop Handegis in 857, "Regnante Ludowico Imperatore Augusto in Italia." The minute accuracy of the phrase--"the Emperor Lewis being King in Italy"--is in itself something amazing; and this inscription shares the interest which attaches to any memorial of that gallant prince, the most truly Roman Emperor of his line. And it is something to mark that the stonecutter doubted between "L_o_dowico" and "L_u_dowico," and wrote both letters, one over the other. But the inscription of course refers to a reconstruction some hundred years earlier than the time when the church took its present shape. Yet these basilican churches were so constantly reconstructed over and over again, and largely out of the same materials, that the building of the fifteenth century may very well reproduce the general effect, both of the building of the eighth and of the far earlier church, parts of which have lived on through both recastings. The ten arches on each side of the Polan basilica are all pointed, but the width of the arches differs. Some of them are only just pointed, and it is only in the most eastern pair of arches that the pointed form comes out at all prominently. For here the arches are the narrowest of the series, and the columns the slightest, that on the south side being banded. The arch of triumph, which is round, looks very much as if it had been preserved from the earlier church; and such is clearly the case with two columns and one capital, whose classical Corinthian foliage stands in marked contrast with the Venetian imitations on each side of it. The church, on the whole, though not striking after such a marvel as Parenzo, is really one of high interest, as an example of the way in which the general effect of an early building was sometimes reproduced at a very late time. Still at Pola, among such wealth of earlier remains, it is quite secondary, and its beauties are, even more than is usual in churches of its type, altogether confined to the inside. The campanile is modern and worthless, and the outside of the church itself is disfigured, after the usual fashion of Italian ugliness, with stable-windows and the like. Yet even they are better than the red rags of Trieste and Zara within. Such is Pola, another step on the road to the birthplace of true grace and harmony in the building art. Yet, among the straits and islands of the Dalmatian coast, there is more than one spot at which the traveller bound for Spalato must stop. The first and most famous one is the city where Venetians and Crusaders once stopped with such deadly effect on that voyage which was to have led them to Jerusalem, but which did lead them only to New Rome. After the glimpses of Istria taken at Parenzo and Pola, the first glimpse, not of Dalmatia itself, but of the half-Italian cities which fringe its coast, may well be taken at Zara. ZARA. 1875--1877--1881. The name of Zara is familiar to every one who has read the history of the Fourth Crusade, and its fate in the Fourth Crusade is undoubtedly the one point in its history which makes Zara stand out prominently before the eyes of the world. Of all the possessions of Venice along this coast, it is the one whose connexion with Venice is stamped for ever on the pages of universal history. Those who know nothing else of Zara, who perhaps know nothing at all of the other cities, at least know that, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the possession of Zara was claimed by Venice, and that the claim of Venice was made good by the help of warriors of the Cross who thus turned aside from their course, not for the last time, to wield their arms against a Christian city. It is as Zara that the city is famous, because it is as Zara that its name appears in the pages of the great English teller of the tale. And perhaps those who may casually light on some mention of the city by any of its earlier names may not at once recognize Zara under the form either of _Jadera_ or of _Diadora_. One is curious to know how a city which under the first Augustus became a Roman colony by the name of _Jadera_ had, in the time of his orthodox successors in the tenth century, changed its name into anything with such a heathenish sound as _Diadora_. Yet such was its name in the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus; and the Imperial historian does not make matters much clearer when he tells us that the true Roman name of the city was "Jam erat," implying that the city so called was older than Rome. Let us quote him in his own Greek, if only to show how oddly his Latin words look in their Greek dress. [Greek: To kastron tôn Diadôrôn kaleitai tê Rhômaiôn dialektô iam erat, hoper hermêneuetai aparti êton; dêlonoti hote hê Rhômê ektisthê, proektismenon ên to toiouton kastron. esti de to kastron mega; hê de koinê synêtheia kalei auto Diadôra.] Yet the name of the colony of Augustus lived on through these strange changes and stranger etymologies, and even in the narrative of the Crusade it appears as _Jadres_ in the text of Villehardouin. The history of the city in the intermediate ages is the usual history of the towns on the Dalmatian coast. They all for a while keep on their formal allegiance to the Eastern Empire, sometimes being really its subjects, sometimes being practically independent, sometimes tributary to the neighbouring Slaves. Still, under all changes, they clave to the character of Roman cities, just as they still remain seats of Italian influence in a Slavonic land. Then came a second time of confusion, in which Zara and her sister cities are tossed to and fro between another set of contending disputants. The Eastern Empire hardly keeps even a nominal claim to the Dalmatian towns; the Slavonic settlements have grown into regular kingdoms; Hungary on one side, Venice on the other, are claiming the dominion of the Dalmatian coast. The history of Zara now consists of conquests and reconquests between the Republic of Saint Mark and the Hungarian and Croatian kings. The one moment when Zara stands out in general history is the famous time when one of the Venetian reconquests was made by the combined arms of the Republic and the Frank Crusaders. The tale is a strange episode in a greater episode--the episode of the conquest of the New Rome by the united powers which first tried their 'prentice hand on Zara. But the siege, as described by the Marshal of Champagne and the many writers who have followed him, is not easy to understand, except by those who have either seen the place itself or have maps before them such as are not easily to be had. Like so many other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, Zara stands on a narrow peninsula, lying east and west. It has on its north side an inlet of the sea, which forms its harbour; to the south is the main sea, or, more strictly, the channel of Zara lying between the Dalmatian coast and the barren islands which at this point lie off it. Villehardouin describes the port as being guarded by a chain, which was broken by the galleys of the Crusaders. They presently landed on the opposite coast, so as to have the haven between them and the town ("et descendirent à terre, si que di porz fu entr' aus et la ville"). That is to say, they landed on the mainland north of the haven. The Frank army then besieged the city by land--that is, from the isthmus on the east, and perhaps also from the shore of the haven; while the Venetians, though their ships anchored in the haven ("le port ou les nés estoient"), made their assault on the side of the open sea ("devers la mer"). On the spot, or in reading the narrative of Villehardouin by the light of remembrance of the spot, the description becomes perfectly clear. Zara still keeps its peninsular site, and the traveller, as he draws near, still marks the fortifications, old and new, the many towers, no one of which so predominates over its fellows as to make itself the chief object in the view. Either however the modern Venetian and Austrian fortifications of Zara are less formidable, in appearance at least, than those which the Crusaders found there, or else they seemed more terrible to those who had actually to undertake the business of attacking them. Villehardouin had never seen such high walls and towers, nor, though he had just come from Venice, could he conceive a city fairer or more rich. The pilgrims were amazed at the sight, and wondered how they could ever become masters of such a place, unless God specially put it into their hands. The modern traveller, as he draws nearer, soon sees the signs of the success which the pilgrims so little hoped for. He sees the badge of Venetian rule over the water-gate, and most likely he little suspects that the outer arch, of manifest Venetian date, masks a plain Roman arch which is to be seen on the inner side. There is another large Venetian gate towards the inlet; and the traveller who at Zara first lands on Dalmatian ground will find on landing much to remind him that Dalmatian ground once was Venetian ground. The streets are narrow and paved; they are not quite as narrow as in Venice, nor is the passage of horses and all that horses draw so absolutely unknown as it is in Venice. Still the subject city comes near enough to its mistress to remind us under whose dominion Zara stayed for so many ages. And the traveller who begins his Dalmatian studies at Zara will perhaps think Dalmatia is not so strange and out-of-the-way a land as he had fancied before going thither. He may be tempted to look on Zara simply as an Italian town, and to say that an Italian town east of the Hadriatic is not very unlike an Italian town on the other side. This feeling, not wholly true even at Zara, will become more and more untrue as the traveller makes his way further along the coast. Each town, as he goes on, will become less Italian and more Slavonic. In street architecture Zara certainly stands behind some of the other Dalmatian towns. We see fewer of those windows of Venetian and Veronese type which in some places meet us in almost every house. The Roman remains are not very extensive. We have said that Jadera still keeps a Roman arch under a Venetian mask. That arch keeps its pilasters and its inscription, but the statues which, according to that inscription, once crowned it, have given way to another inscription of Venetian times. Besides the _Porta Marina_, two other visible memorials of earlier days still exist in the form of two ancient columns standing solitary, one near the church of Saint Simeon, presently to be spoken of, the other in the herb-market between the _duomo_ and the haven. But the main interest of Zara, apart from its general and special history, and apart from the feeling of freshness in treading a land so famous and so little known, is undoubtedly to be found in its ecclesiastical buildings. The churches of Zara are certainly very much such churches as might be looked for in any Italian city of the same size. But they specially remind us of Lucca. The cathedral, now metropolitan, church of Saint Anastasia, has had its west front engraved in more than one book, from Sir Gardner Wilkinson downwards; it is a pity that local art has not been stirred up to produce some better memorial of this and the other buildings of Zara than the wretched little photographs which are all that is to be had on the spot. But perhaps not much in the way of art is to be looked for in a city where, as at Trieste and Ancona and Rome herself, it seems to be looked on as adding beauty to the inside of a church to swathe marble columns and Corinthian capitals in ugly wrappings of red cloth. This at least seems to be an innovation since the days of the Imperial topographer. Constantine speaks of the church of Saint Anastasia as being of oblong, that is, basilican, shape--[Greek: dromikos] is his Greek word--with columns of green and white marble, enriched with much ancient woodwork, and having a tesselated pavement, which the Emperor, or those from whom he drew his report of Zara, looked on as wonderful. It is very likely that some of the columns which in the tenth century were clearly allowed to stand naked and to be seen have been used up again in the present church. This was built in the thirteenth century, after the destruction wrought in the Frank and Venetian capture, and it is said to have been consecrated in 1285. It is, on the whole, a witness to the way in which the Romanesque style so long stood its ground, though here and there is a touch of the coming pseudo-Gothic, and, what is far more interesting to note, here and there is a touch of the Romanesque forms of the lands beyond the Alps. The church is, in its architectural arrangements, a great and simple basilica; but, as might be expected from its date, it shows somewhat of that more elaborate way of treating exteriors which had grown up at Pisa and Lucca. The west front has surface arcades broken in upon by two wheel windows, the lower arcade with round, the upper with pointed, arches. Along the north aisle runs an open gallery, which, oddly enough, is not carried round the apse. The narrow windows below it are round in the eastern part, trefoiled in the western, showing a change of design as the work went on. Near the east end stands the unfinished campanile; a stage or two of good Romanesque design is all that is finished. The one perfect ancient tower in Zara is not that of the _duomo_. On entering the church, we at once feel how much the building has suffered from puzzling and disfiguring modern changes. But this is not all; the general effect of the inside has been greatly altered by a change which we cannot bring ourselves wholly to condemn. The choir is lifted up above the crypt as at Saint Zeno and Saint Ambrose; the stone chair still remains in the apse; but the object which chiefly strikes the eye is one which is hardly in harmony with these. The choir is fitted up with a range of splendid _cinque cento_ stalls--reminding one of King's College chapel or of Wimborne as it once was--placed in the position usual in Western churches. This last feature, grand in itself, takes away from the perfection of the basilican design, and carries us away into Northern lands. Of the church which preceded the Venetian rebuilding, the church described by Constantine, little remains above ground, allowing of course for the great likelihood that the columns were used up again. There is nothing to which one is even tempted to give an early date, except some small and plain buildings clinging on to the north side of the choir, and containing the tomb of an early bishop. But in the crypt, though it has unluckily lost two of its ranges of columns, two rows, together with those of the apse, are left, columns with finished bases but with capitals which are perfectly rude, but whose shape would allow them to be carved into the most elaborate Byzantine forms. The main arcades of the church form a range of ten bays or five pair of arches, showing a most singular collection of shapes which are not often seen together. Some are simple Corinthian; in others Corinthian columns are clustered--after the example of Vespasian's temple at Brescia; others have twisted fluting; one pair has a section, differing in the two opposite columns, which might pass for genuine Northern work; while--here in Dalmatia in the thirteenth century--not a few shafts are crowned with our familiar Norman cushion capital. Yet the effect of the whole range would be undoubtedly fine, if we were only allowed to see it. The hideous red rags have covered even the four columns of the _baldacchino_, columns fluted and channelled in various ways and supporting pointed arches. They have also diligently swathed the floriated cornice above the arcade; in short, wherever there is any fine work, Jaderan taste seems at once to hide it; but nothing hides the clerestory with its stable windows or the flat plastered ceiling which crowns all. The triforium has an air of Jesuitry; but it seems to be genuine, only more or less plastered; six small arches, with channelled square piers, which would not look out of place at Rome, at Autun, or at Deerhurst, stand over each pair of arches. With all its original inconsistencies and its later changes, the _duomo_ of Zara, if it were only stripped of its swaddling-clothes, would be no contemptible specimen of its own style. [Illustration: TOWER OF ST. MARY'S ZARA.] But Saint Anastasia is not the only, it is hardly the most interesting, church in Zara. Saint Chrysogonos, monk and martyr, was held in reverence at Diadora in the days of Constantine, where his tomb and his holy chain were to be seen. Perhaps they are to be seen still; certainly his name is still preserved in an admirable church of the same general Lucchese type as the _duomo_, but which surpasses it in the exquisite grace of the three apses at its east end, after the best models of the type common to Italy and Germany. Within, the arrangement of the triapsidal basilica is perfect; the range of columns is, as is so often found, interrupted by two pairs of more massive piers, making groups of three, two, and two arches. It is almost startling to find that the date of the consecration of this exquisite Romanesque church is as late as 1407; but the fact is only one example out of many of the way in which in some districts, in Dalmatia above all, the true style of the land stood its ground. In Dalmatia the Italian pseudo-Gothic, common in houses, is but little seen in churches at any time. Another church, Saint Simeon, called after the Prophet of _Nunc dimittis_, boasts of its gorgeous shrine borne aloft behind the high altar, the gift of Elizabeth of Bosnia, the wife of Lewis the Great. The church itself is of the same basilican type as the other, but in less good preservation. Saint Mary's, a church of nuns, is itself of a rather good kind of _Renaissance_, but its chief merit is that it keeps the only finished ancient tower in Zara, a noble campanile of the best Italian type, thick with midwall shafts, which every Englishman will feel to be the true kinsman of our own towers at Lincoln and Oxford. Its date is known; it is the work of King Coloman of Hungary, in 1105. But, after all, the most interesting architectural work in Zara is one which, as far as we have seen, is not noticed in any English book, but which was described by the Imperial pen in the tenth century, and which has in our own days been more fully illustrated in the excellent work of Eitelberger on the Dalmatian buildings. Close by Saint Anastasia there stood in the days of Constantine, and there still stands, a round church, lately desecrated, now simply disused, which was then called by the name of the Trinity ([Greek: heteros naos plêsion autou eilêmatikos, hê hagia Trias]), but which now bears that of Saint Donatus. Its dome and the tower of Saint Mary's are the two objects which first catch the eye in the general view of Zara. Tradition, as usual, calls the building a pagan temple, in this case of Juno; but it has in no way the look of a temple, nor does the Emperor who describes it with some minuteness give any hint of its having been such. Yet it is plain that, if it was not itself a pagan building, the spoils of pagan buildings contributed to its materials. Formed of two arcaded stages, the whole pile rises to a vast height, and the height of the lower stage alone is very considerable. The arches of the round rest on heavy rectangular piers of truly Roman strength, save only two vast columns with splendid Composite capitals--which mark the approach to the triapsidal east end. This building, lately cleared from the disfigurements and partition of its profane use, forms one of the noblest round churches to be found; the so-called house of Juno at Zara is almost a rival of the so-called house of Jupiter at Spalato. The upper stage is of the same general type as the lower, having again two columns left free and uninjured, but not rivalling the splendour of those which are in bondage below. Zara had lately another desecrated church of extreme interest, but of quite another type from Saint Donatus. This was the little church of Saint Vitus, a perfect example of the genuine Byzantine arrangement on a very small scale. The ground-plan was square; four arms, square-ended without, quasi-apsidal within, bore up the cupola on perfectly plain square-edged piers. Between our first and second visits to Zara, between 1875 and 1877, this charming little piece of Byzantine work was swept away to make a smart shop-front. It was a recompense no more than was due to find on our third visit that the round church had been cleared out. [Illustration: SAINT VITUS, ZARA, AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, CATTARO.] * * * * * Such is Zara, a city in which, as at Parenzo, the ecclesiastical element distinctly prevails, as contrasted with the mainly pagan interest of Pola. Such is equally the case in our next Dalmatian city also. But the main interest of Sebenico is of a different kind from that of any of its fellows. We go there to study a church, but, as we have seen, a church which has little in common with other churches in Dalmatia or anywhere else. At Zara, at Spalato, at Ragusa, we study buildings which all in some sort hang together. At Sebenico we stop our course to study something which stands altogether aloof from all. SPALATO AND ITS NEIGHBOURS. SPALATO. 1875. The main object and centre of all historical and architectural inquiries on the Dalmatian coast is of course the home of Diocletian, the still abiding palace of Spalato. From a local point of view, it is the spot which the greatest of the long line of renowned Illyrian Emperors chose as his resting-place from the toils of warfare and government, and where he reared the vastest and noblest dwelling that ever arose at the bidding of a single man. From an oecumenical point of view, Spalato is yet more. If it does not rank with Rome, Old and New, with Ravenna and with Trier, it is because it never was, like them, an actual seat of empire. But it not the less marks a stage, and one of the greatest stages, in the history of the Empire. On his own Dalmatian soil, Docles of Salona, Diocletian of Rome, was the man who had won fame for his own land, and who, on the throne of the world, did not forget his provincial birthplace. In the sight of Rome and of the world Jovius Augustus was more than this. Alike in the history of politics and in the history of art, he has left his mark on all time that has come after him, and it is on his own Spalato that his mark has been most deeply stamped. The polity of Rome and the architecture of Rome alike received a new life at his hands. In each alike he cast away shams and pretences, and made the true construction of the fabric stand out before men's eyes. Master of the Roman world, if not King, yet more than King, he let the true nature of his power be seen, and, first among the Cæsars, arrayed himself with the outward pomp of sovereignty. In a smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark of weakness, a sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and trappings. Such could hardly have been the motive in the man who, when he deemed that his work was done, could cast away both the form and the substance of power, and could so steadily withstand all temptations to take them up again. It was simply that the change was fully wrought; that the chief magistrate of the commonwealth had gradually changed into the sovereign of the Empire; that Imperator, Cæsar, and Augustus, once titles lowlier than that of King, had now become, as they have ever since remained, titles far loftier. The change was wrought, and all that Diocletian did was to announce the fact of the change to the world. So again, now that the Roman city had grown into the Roman world, a hill by the Tiber had long ceased to be a fit dwelling-place for rulers who had to keep back hostile inroads from the Rhine and the Euphrates. This fact too Diocletian announced to the world. He planted his Augusti and his Cæsars on spots better suited for defence against the German and the Persian than the spot which had been chosen for defence against the Sabine and the Etruscan. Jupiter of the Capitol and his representatives on earth were to be equally at home in every corner of their dominions. Nor is it wonderful if, with such aims before him, he deemed that a faith which taught that Jupiter of the Capitol was a thing of naught was a faith which it became his votary to root out from all the lands that bowed to Jove and to Jovius. What if his work in some sort failed? what if his system of fourfold rule broke up before his own eyes--if his Bithynian capital soon gave way to the wiser choice of a successor, if the faith which he persecuted became, almost on the morrow, the faith of his Empire? Still his work did not wholly fail. He taught that Empire was more than kingship, a lesson never forgotten by those who, for fifteen hundred years after him, wore the diadem of Diocletian rather than of Augustus. In some sort he founded the Roman Empire. What Constantine did was at once to undo and to complete his work by making that Empire Holy. Such a man, if not actually a creator, yet so pre-eminently one who moulded the creations of others into new shapes, might well take to himself a name from the supreme deity of his creed, the deity of whom he loved to be deemed the special votary. The conception which had grown up in the mind, and had been carried out by the hand, of the peasant of Salona might well entitle him to his proud surname. Nor did the organizing hand of Jovius confine its sphere to the polity of the Empire only. He built himself an house, and, above all builders, he might boast himself of the house that he had builded. Fast by his own birthplace--a meaner soul might have chosen some distant spot--Diocletian reared the palace which marks a still greater epoch in Roman art than his political changes mark in Roman polity. On the inmost shore of one of the lake-like inlets of the Hadriatic, an inlet guarded almost from sight by the great island of Bua at its mouth, lay his own Salona, now desolate, then one of the great cities of the Roman world. But it was not in the city, it was not close under its walls, that Diocletian fixed his home. An isthmus between the bay of Salona and the outer sea cuts off a peninsula, which again throws out two horns into the water to form the harbour which has for ages supplanted Salona. There, not on any hill-top, but on a level spot by the coast, with the sea in front, with a background of more distant mountains, and with one peaked hill rising between the two seas like a watch-tower, did Diocletian build the house to which he withdrew when he deemed that his work of empire was over. And in building that house, he won for himself, or for the nameless genius whom he set at work, a place in the history of art worthy to rank alongside of Iktinos of Athens and Anthemios of Byzantium, of William of Durham and of Hugh of Lincoln. And now the birthplace of Jovius is forsaken, but his house still abides, and abides in a shape marvellously little shorn of its ancient greatness. The name which it still bears comes straight from the name of the elder home of the Cæsars. The fates of the two spots have been in a strange way the converse of one another. By the banks of the Tiber the city of Romulus became the house of a single man; by the shores of the Hadriatic the house of a single man became a city. The Palatine hill became the _Palatium_ of the Cæsars, and _Palatium_ was the name which was borne by the house of Cæsar by the Dalmatian shore. The house became a city; but its name still clave to it, and the house of Jovius still, at least in the mouths of its own inhabitants, keeps its name in the slightly altered form of Spálato. He placed his home in a goodly land, on a spot whose first sight is striking at any moment; but special indeed is the good luck of him who for the first time draws near to Spalato at the hour of sunset. It is a moment to be marked in a life, as we round the island headland, one of the stony Dalmatian hills rising bleak and barren from the sea, and catch the first glimpse of the city, the tall bell-tower, the proud rampart of mountains which forms its background. But the sight is more spirit-stirring still if we come on that sight at the very moment when--in sight of the home of the great persecutor we may use the language of mythology--the sun-god has just sunk into its golden cup. The sinking sun seems no unfit symbol, as we look on the spot where the lord of the world withdrew to seek for rest after his toils. Another moment, the headland is rounded; its top is kindled like Vesuvius in the last rays of the sunlight; the lesser light is kindled before the greater has wholly failed us, and, by the light of sun and moon together, we can trace out the long line of the sea-front of the palace which became a city. No nobler site could surely have been found within the bounds of the Empire of the two Augusti and their Cæsars. The sea in front, the mountains behind, the headlands, the bays, the islands scattered around, might indeed have formed a realm from which the prince who had there fixed his home would have been unwise to go forth again to wrestle with the storms of the world which lay beyond its borders. The mountains have drawn nearer to the shore; the islands have gathered round the entrance of the haven, as if to shut out all but the noble bay and its immediate surroundings, as if to fence in a dominion worthy of Jovius himself. We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us, the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian was seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over York and Trier. Dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but not destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the Tabularium of Rome's own Capitol. We pass under gloomy arches, through dark passages, and presently we find ourselves in the centre of palace and city, between those two renowned rows of arches which mark the greatest of all epochs in the history of the building art. We think how the man who re-organized the Empire of Rome was also the man who first put harmony and consistency into the architecture of Rome. We think that, if it was in truth the crown of Diocletian which passed to every Cæsar from the first Constantius to the last Francis, it was no less in the pile which rose into being at his word that the germ was planted which grew into Pisa and Durham, into Westminster and Saint Ouen's. There is light enough to mark the columns put for the first time to their true Roman use, and to think how strange was the fate which called up on this spot the happy arrangement which had entered the brain of no earlier artist--the arrangement which, but a few years later, was to be applied to another use in the basilica of the Lateran and in Saint Paul without the walls. Yes, it is in the court of the persecutor, the man who boasted that he had wiped out the Christian superstition from the world, that we see the noblest forestalling of the long arcades of the Christian basilica. It is with thoughts like these, thoughts pressing all the more upon us where every outline is clear and every detail is invisible, that we tread for the first time the Court of Jovius--the columns with their arches on either side of us, the vast bell-tower rising to the sky, as if to mock the art of those whose mightiest works might still seem only to grovel upon earth. Nowhere within the compass of the Roman world do we find ourselves more distinctly in the presence of one of the great minds of the world's history; we see that, alike in politics and in art, Diocletian breathed a living soul into a lifeless body. In the bitter irony of the triumphant faith, his mausoleum has become a church, his temple has become a baptistery, the great bell-tower rises proudly over his own work; his immediate dwelling-place is broken down and crowded with paltry houses; but the sea-front and the Golden Gate are still there amid all disfigurements, and the great peristyle stands almost unhurt, to remind us of the greatest advance that a single mind ever made in the progress of the building art. [Illustration: THE TOWER, SPALATO.] At the present time the city into which the house of Diocletian has grown is the largest and most growing town of the Dalmatian coast. It has had to yield both spiritual and temporal precedence to Zara, but, both in actual population and all that forms the life of a city, Spalato greatly surpasses Zara and all its other neighbours. The youngest of the Dalmatian towns, which could boast neither of any mythical origin nor of any Imperial foundation, the city which, as it were, became a city by mere chance, has outstripped the colonies of Epidauros, of Corinth, and of Rome. The palace of Diocletian had but one occupant; after the founder no Emperor had dwelled in it, unless we hold that this was the villa near Salona where the deposed Emperor Nepos was slain, during the patriciate of Odoacer. The forsaken palace seems, while still almost new, to have become a cloth factory, where women worked, and which therefore appears in the Notitia as a Gynæcium. But when Salona was overthrown, the palace stood ready to afford shelter to those who were driven from their homes. The palace, in the widest sense of the word--for of course its vast circuit took in quarters for soldiers and officials of various kinds, as well as the rooms actually occupied by the Emperor--stood ready to become a city. It was a _chester_ ready made, with its four streets, its four gates, all but that towards the sea flanked with octagonal towers, and with four greater square towers at the corners. To this day the circuit of the walls is nearly perfect; and the space contained within them must be as large as that contained within some of the oldest _chesters_ in our own island. The walls, the towers, the gates, are those of a city rather than of a house. Two of the gates, though their towers are gone, are nearly perfect: the _porta aurea_, with its graceful ornament; the _porta ferrea_ in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on its top. Within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large parts of which still remain. Diocletian, in short, in building a house, had built a city. In the days of Constantine Porphyrogenitus it was a [Greek: kastron]--Greek and English had by his day alike borrowed the Latin name; but it was a [Greek: kastron] which Diocletian had built as his own house, and within which was his hall and palace. In his day the city bore the name of Aspalathon, which he explains to mean [Greek: palation mikron]. When the palace had thus become a common habitation of men, it is not wonderful that all the more private buildings whose use had passed away were broken down, disfigured, and put to mean uses. The work of building over the site must have gone on from that day to this. The view in Wheler shows several parts of the enclosure occupied by ruins which are now covered with houses. The real wonder is that so much has been spared and has survived to our own days. And we are rather surprised to find Constantine saying that in his time the greater part had been destroyed. For the parts which must always have been the stateliest remain still. The great open court, the peristyle, with its arcades, have become the public piazza of the town; the mausoleum on one side of it and the temple on the other were preserved and put to Christian uses. We say the mausoleum, for we fully accept the suggestion made by Professor Glavinich, the curator of the museum of Spalato, that the present _duomo_, traditionally called the temple of Jupiter, was not a temple, but a mausoleum. These must have been the great public buildings of the palace, and, with the addition of the bell-tower, they remain the chief public buildings of the modern city. But, though the ancient square of the palace remains wonderfully perfect, the modern city, with its Venetian defences, its Venetian and later buildings, has spread itself far beyond the walls of Diocletian. But those walls have made the history of Spalato, and it is the great buildings which stand within them that give Spalato its special place in the history of architecture. In the face of them we hardly stop to think of the remains of Venetian or even of earlier times. Yet both within and without the palace walls, scraps of Venetian work may be found which would attract the eye on any other spot, and hard by the north-western tower of Diocletian there remains a small desecrated church of the Byzantine type, which out of Spalato might be set down as a treasure. But, as we stand beneath the arcades of Jovius, things which would elsewhere be treasures seem as nothing. They, and the other buildings which stand in artistic connexion with them, form an epoch in the history of art, apart from the general history and general impression of the city which they have at once created and made famous. SPALATO REVISITED. 1877--1881. I thought it right to reprint the foregoing sketch of Spalato, the record of my first visit there in 1875, exactly as it was first written, with the change of two or three words only. It seemed worth while to keep the first impressions of such a place as they were set down at once after the first sight of it. Instead therefore of recasting this piece, as I have done several of the others, I will mention a few points on which later visits and further reading might have led to some change in what I first wrote nearly on the spot. Another paper of a strictly architectural character, headed "Diocletian's Place in Architectural History," has been reprinted in the third series of my Historical Essays, as an appendix to the essay headed "The Illyrian Emperors and their Land." First, with regard to the name of the place itself. I seem, when I wrote my paper of first impressions, to have had no doubt as to the received derivation from _Palatium_. That derivation is wonderfully tempting, and it enables one to make an epigrammatic contrast between the _Palatium_ of Rome and the _Palatium_ of Spalato, between the city which became a house and the house which became a city. But the fact remains the same, whatever may be the name. The city did become a house, and the house did become a city, whether the two were called by the same name or not. And I am now convinced, chiefly by Mr. Arthur Evans, that the name of Spalato has nothing to do with _Palatium_. I began to doubt rather early, as I did not see how the =s= could have got into the name; in a Greek name the origin of the =s= would have been plain enough, but it seemed to have no place in a Latin name. And I was staggered by the form _Aspalato_ found as early as the Notitia Imperii. Nothing goes for less than the etymologies of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and anyhow it is hard to see how [Greek: Aspalathon], the form which he uses, could mean [Greek: mikron palation]. But, as I had nothing better to propose, I thought it better, when I wrote the fuller paper which appears in the Historical Essays, to say nothing about the matter either way. I need not stop to dispute against the intrusive r in the vulgar form _Spalatro_, as both Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Mr. Neale have done that before me. But it is wonderful to see how early it got in. It is as old as the Ravenna Geographer, who has three forms--_Spalathon_, _Spalathron_, and _Spalatrum_. I need hardly say that the _r_ is unknown in the country, unless perhaps now and then in the mouth of some one who thinks it fine. So one has known people in England destroy etymology, by sounding _Waltham_ as if it had a _thorn_, and _Bosham_ with the sound of the German _sch_. I am now fully convinced that the name has nothing to do with _Palatium_. It is plain that the oldest form that we can find is _Aspalathum_, and I am inclined to accept the view of Mr. Evans, who connects the name with _Aspalathus_, or perhaps with [Greek: asphaltos]. But I must not venture myself in any quarter which savours of botany or geology. With the newer lights which I have made use of in Historical Essays, I think I should no longer speak of Diocletian as "the great persecutor." Galerius ought in fairness to take that name off his shoulders. Mr. A. J. Mason has certainly proved thus much; and it is a great comfort to think so in visiting Spalato. Nor should I have spoken of him as a native of Salona. He was of Doclea, Dioclea, however we are to spell it, within the present bounds of Tzernagora. Those who at various times have spoken of Saint Alban as "protomartyr _Anglorum_," and of King Lucius as becoming "a _Swiss_ bishop," might also speak of Diocletian as a Montenegrin. I was doubtless right in saying that no Emperor, strictly so called, inhabited the Palace after Diocletian. In strictness indeed no Emperor ever inhabited it at all, as Diocletian had ceased to be Emperor when he went there. But I think that, at the time of my first visit, I had not fully taken in the story of Nepos and his father Count Marcellian. One is strongly tempted to think that, when Nepos was killed "haud longe a Salonis, sua in villa," the place meant is the palace of Spalato. On the other hand, we have the earlier entry in the Notitia, which certainly looks as if the palace had already become a kind of Imperial factory. But Nepos would hardly live in the same style as Jovius, and the palace is quite big enough to lodge the deposed Emperor and the work-women at the same time. On the special importance of Spalato in the history of architecture I have spoken in several places, specially in the paper in my Historical Essays to which I have already referred. My main position is that, in the palace at Spalato, after a series of approaches, many of which may be seen in the building itself, Diocletian or his architect hit on the happy device of making the arch spring directly from the capital of the column. To merely classical critics this seems to mark the depth of degradation into which art had fallen in Diocletian's day. To me it seems to be the greatest step ever taken, the beginning of all later forms of consistent arched architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, or any other. The importance of the step is of course the same whoever took it; and if the same feature can be shown in any building earlier than Spalato, we must transfer our praises from, the designer of Spalato to the designer of that building. Spalato would in that case lose something of its strictly architectural interest; but that would be all. But, as far as I know, no such rival has appeared. If the same form really was used in the baths of Diocletian at Rome, that would not be a rival building, but a case of the same mind working in the same way in two places. And to establish an earlier use of the form, it would be needful to show that it was deliberately employed in some considerable building. There is nothing commoner in the history of architecture than the casual and isolated appearance of some form, which the designer had not so much chosen as stumbled on, long before the time when it really came into use. I put in this caution, because I know that there is a kind of feeble approach to the arrangement at Spalato in one or two buildings at Pompeii. And, great as was the advance at Spalato, it had, like many other cases of advance, its weak side. The Ravenna stilt and the Byzantine double capital were both of them shifts to relieve, as it were, the light abacus of the Corinthian capital from the weight which the arch laid upon it. The heavy abacus of Pisa and Lucca was a better escape from this difficulty. Again, the lightness of the columns used at Spalato and in the basilicas which followed its model forbade the use of the vault, and condemned the roofs of the basilicas to be among their poorest features. In the peristyle itself of course no roof was needed, though to an eye used to Rome and Ravenna it has so much the air of an unroofed basilica that it is really hard to believe that it was always open. But, though the basilican arrangement forbade the use of the vault, yet the step taken at Spalato was not without its effect on later vaulted buildings. When the vault came in again, as in the heavier forms of the German Romanesque, men had learned that the arch and its pier, whether that pier was a light column or a massive piece of wall, were enough for all artistic purposes, without bringing in, as in the classical Roman, purely ornamental features from a style which followed another system of construction. I came to my belief in the architectural importance of Spalato thirty years before I saw the building itself, and, now that repeated visits have made the peristyle of Diocletian as familiar to me as Wells cathedral, I admire and approve just as much, though of course I cannot undertake to be quite as enthusiastic now as I was on the evening when I first saw it. When I was last at Spalato, a process was going on which always makes one tremble. The peristyle and the inside of the mausoleum were surrounded by scaffoldings. As for the mausoleum, it was perhaps a mistake ever to make it into a church; but, as it has been made into a church, the additions and changes which were needed for that purpose have become part of the history, and ought not to be meddled with. It must always have been nearly the smallest, and quite the darkest, metropolitan church in Christendom; but that it is so is part of the wonder of the place. And, if some of the details were restored in plaster at the time of a certain famous royal visit, it seems hardly worth while to knock them away, with the chance of knocking away some of the genuine stone along with them. That royal visit is commemorated in a tablet at the end of the peristyle, which professes great loyalty to a personage described as "Franciscus Primus, Austriæ Imperator et Dalmatiæ Rex." The man so labelled in Diocletian's own house had been the last successor to Diocletian's empire. In the changes which are being made in the peristyle, it is said that this tablet was first taken down as being modern, and then set up again, because official loyalty overrode all considerations of what was old and what was new. But some care should be taken in removing what is modern in such a place as Spalato. It is very well to get rid of some mean excrescences; but, where the arches have been filled up by Venetian buildings of respectable work, it would seem to be a great mistake to open them, to say nothing of the chance that such opening may endanger the columns and arches themselves. Though built up, they are not so blocked as to hinder a full study of their details. Indeed the building up, both of the arches of the peristyle and of the heavier arches in the other parts of the palace, is really a part of the history which should be preserved. It marks the distinctive character of Spalato as the house which became a city. That city, as it now stands, stretches, I need hardly say again, a long way beyond the bounds of the ancient house. Yet one cannot conceive Spalato without Diocletian's palace. It is something much more than the chief object and ornament of Spalato, as this or that building is the chief object and ornament of any other city. It is more than the castle or monastery round which a city has often grown. It is not merely that, but for the existence of the palace, the city would never have come into being; the palace still is the city in a sense in which we could hardly use those words of any other building elsewhere. Yet there are things to see at Spalato besides the palace. The museum is eminently a thing to see; but then it is within the palace, and moreover, though it is locally placed at Spalato, it belongs historically to Salona. There is a good deal of pretty Venetian work scattered up and down, both within the walls of Diocletian and without them. The piazza just outside the gate of iron, where the traveller will most likely seek his breakfast, his coffee, and his maraschino, would have some attractions in itself, if it did not lie just outside the gate of iron. The eye naturally turns to the gate, and to the little campanile perched on it; otherwise it might very fairly rest on the Venetian _loggia_, with its columns and their wide--yet not sprawling--pointed arches. It might rest none the less because the building so strongly suggests that class of English town-halls or market-houses of which I said something when speaking of Udine. The octagonal tower too, and the remains of the Venetian fortifications generally, are worth a glance. The difficulty is, in the home of Jovius, to give even a glance to anything but the works of Jovius. The mausoleum, now the once metropolitan church, and the temple, now the baptistery, have both of them become churches by accident. Besides these, the first impression is that Spalato has little to show in the ecclesiastical line. And further examination will not take away that impression as to quantity, though it will modify it somewhat as to quality. The little desecrated church which in 1875 I saw just within the palace walls, embodied in military buildings, I could not find in 1881. I was told that it had been burned, and there certainly was a burned building thereabouts; but I did not feel quite sure that I had hit upon the right site, and whether the church that I was looking for might not still be there, imprisoned in some of the queer devices of Austrian occupation. But in 1881 I and my companion lighted by way of recompense on one most curious building which neither of us had seen in earlier visits. This is the little church of Saint Nicolas in the suburb on the slope of the hill. It is very small, of a rude kind of Byzantine type, with four of the very strangest columns I ever saw. Save that they have a mighty _entasis_, they really have more of an Egyptian cut than anything Greek, Roman, Gothic, or any of the forms to which Aryan eyes are used. The Franciscan church at the foot of the hill, with its cloister, would be worth a glance for its own sake; and it is worth much more than a glance on account of the precious sarcophagus which the cloister shelters. But this, like the objects in the museum, is an outlying fragment of Salona, to be talked of there. To the modern church on the other side of the city it would be only kindness to shut our eyes. But we cannot help looking at it; it aims at the style of the place, and clearly fancies itself to be Romanesque, if not Roman. We look at its tower, and we look back to the mighty campanile within the walls. Somehow the fourteenth century could adapt itself to the fourth; but the nineteenth cannot adapt itself to the fourteenth. Yet it is something for Spalato to say that it contains the noblest and the most ignoble of all towers that do profess and call themselves Romanesque. Eitelberger has well hit off the character of the three chief Dalmatian cities in three pithy epithets. Zara is _bureaukratisch_; Spalato is _bürgerlich_; Ragusa is _alt-aristokratisch_. The burghers seem to make more progress than either the foreign officials or the native patricians. Both better quarters and better dinners can be had at Spalato in 1881 than were to be had there in 1875. In 1881 we can walk on shore, while in 1877 boats were needed. And in 1881 the railway--a wonder in Dalmatia--was ready to carry us to Salona or even to Sebenico, but not to Traü. On the other hand in some other respects, if not Spalato, at least its foreign rulers, seem to advance backwards, if they advance at all. Those who dwell under the shadow of Apostolic Majesty are used to the daily suppression of such newspapers as venture to proclaim inconvenient truths. At Spalato that Apostolic and constitutional power has gone a step further by suppressing the municipality. With us, when a Stewart king suppressed an ancient corporation, he at least set up another of a new Stewart fashion. But at Spalato the _podestà_--the _potestas_ still lingers in Dalmatia, while in Italy only syndics are tolerated--and the other elders of the city seem to have become altogether things of the past, no less than Jovius and his Empire. SALONA. 1875--1877--1881. The strictly classical student will perhaps be offended if any one, on reading the name at the head of this article, should ask him where the place is, and how its name is to be pronounced. Salona, he will answer, is in Dalmatia, and how can there be more than one way of sounding the _omega_ in the second syllable? And so far he will be right. The Salona of which we speak is in Dalmatia, and, as its most usual Greek forms are [Greek: Salôna] and [Greek: Salônai], there can be no doubt as to the rights of that particular _omega_. But those who have gone a little deeper into the geography of south-eastern Europe will know that, besides the Dalmatian Salona, there is another within the Greek kingdom, which has taken the place of the Lokrian Amphissa. As we write the names of the two, we make no difference between them, and we fear that most Englishmen will make as little difference in sounding the two names as in writing them. Yet, as Boughton in Northamptonshire and Boughton in Kent are, by those who have local knowledge, sounded in two different ways, so it is with the Lokrian and the Dalmatian Salona. [Greek: Sálona] and [Greek: Salôna] differ to the eye; and, among those with whom Greek is a living tongue, they differ to the ear also. But it is not with the Lokrian Sálona, but with the Dalmatian Salóna, that we are here concerned. We need not disturb the feelings of the late Bishop Monk, whose one notion of accentual reading was that those who follow it must "make some strange false quantities." The classical purist may make the _omega_ in the Dalmatian Salóna as long as he pleases. Only, if he pronounces the Lokrian Sálona in the same fashion, he will wound the ears of those to whom the chief notion of (so-called) quantitative reading is that those who follow it must make some strange false accents. At Salona we are in one of the subject lands of Venice, but we cannot say that we are in one of her subject cities. For Salona, as a city, had passed away before the Serene Republic bore rule on these coasts, in truth before the Serene Republic was, while the lagoons still sheltered only those few settlers whom the minister of Theodoric likened to waterfowl on their nests. As a city, it passed away as few cities have passed away. Others indeed have perished more thoroughly; of some the very sites have been lost; but there is no city whose name survives which has left so little trace of what it was in the time of its greatness. For it is not like those cities whose very name and memory have perished, which are wholly ruined or buried, which have no modern representatives, or whose modern representatives bear wholly different names. Salona is still an existing name, marked on at least the local map; but, instead of the head of Dalmatia, one of the great cities of the Roman Empire, a city which was said to have reached half the size and population of the New Rome itself, we find only a few scattered houses, which hardly deserve the name of a village. By the side of modern Salona, modern Aquileia looks flourishing, and modern Forum Julii might pass for a great city. For Aquileia is not wholly dead as long as the patriarchal basilica still stands, if only to discharge the functions of a village church. But at Salona the traveller hardly notices whether there be any church in use or not. Of modern objects the one which is most likely to catch his eye is the building which at least proclaims, in the name of "Caffè Diocleziano," that Salona in her fall has not forgotten the man who commonly passes for her greatest son, who, according to some, was her second founder, and who, in any case, was her most renowned neighbour. By a strange piece of good luck, the citizen and sovereign of Salona who came back to spend his last days in his own land had reared at no great distance from her the house which, when Salona fell, stood ready to receive her inhabitants, and to take her place as a new city. There is a marked difference between the position of the older and that of the newer city. Spalato stands indeed on a bay, but it is a bay which, in that region of channels and islands, may pass for the open sea. Salona lay at the innermost point of the deep gulf which bears her own name, the gulf which forms one side of the peninsula on which Spalato stands, and which is shielded from the main sea by the island of Bua. It is curious to compare the real geography with the way in which the land and sea are laid down in the Peutinger Table, where Bua seems nearer to the coast of Italy than it is to Salona. Sir Gardner Wilkinson appositely quotes the lines of Lucan:-- "Qua maris Hadriaci longas ferit unda Salonas, Et tepidum in molles Zephyros excurrit Iader." _Longæ_ certainly well expresses the way in which the city must have spread itself along the mouth of the river, and the northern side of the bay. And, more than this, the idea of length must have been deeply impressed on Salona by the long walls which, as we shall presently see, yoked the city to something or other beyond her own immediate defences. Salona, like most of the older cities, was not at all like one of our square _chesters_ which rose up at once out of some military necessity. The Dalmatian capital had grown up bit by bit, and its walls formed a circuit almost as irregular as that of Rome herself. The site was a striking one. As we set forth from the comparatively flourishing daughter to visit the fallen mother, the road from Spalato leads us over a slight hill, from the descent of which we look on the bay with its background of mountains, a view which brings before us two strongly contrasted sites of human habitation. In advance of the mountain range stands the stronghold of Clissa, so famous in later wars--a stronghold most tempting in a distant view, but utterly disappearing when we come near to it. The seat of the Uscocs has nothing to show but its site and an ugly fortress; yet the hill is well worth going up, for the site and the view from it, a most instructive geographical prospect over mainland, sea, and islands. We turn to our Imperial guide, and we find that [Greek: Kleisa] was so called because it kept the key of the passage over the mountains. It was the [Greek: Kleisoura], so called [Greek: dia to synkleiein tous dierchomenous ekeithen]. He has to tell us how it was taken by invaders, whom he speaks of as the Slaves who were called Avars ([Greek: Slaboi, hoi kai Abaroi kaloumenoi]). The ethnological confusion is like that of another self-styled Imperial personage, who thought that he could get at a Tartar by scratching a Russian. But in both cases the confusion is instructive, as pointing to the way in which Slavonic and Turanian nations were mixed up together, as allies and as enemies, in the history of these lands. Far below, on the bosom of the bay, a group of small islands are covered by a small village, which seems to float on the water, and which well deserves its name of _Piccola Venezia_. Between the height and the sea lay Salona, on a slight elevation gently sloping down to the water; here, as so often on the Dalmatian coast, it needs somewhat of an effort to believe that the water is the sea. To the right of the road, we see the ruins of the aqueduct which brought water to the house of Diocletian--an aqueduct lately repaired, and again set to discharge its ancient duties. Ancient fragments of one kind or another begin to line the road; an ancient bridge presently leads us across the main stream of the Giadro, Lucan's Iader, which we might rather have looked for at Zara. We mark to the right the marshy ground divided by the many channels of the river; we pass by a square castle with turreted corners, in which a mediæval archbishop tried to reproduce the wonder of his own city; and we at last find ourselves close by one of the gates of Salona, ready to begin our examination of the fallen city in due order. The city distinctly consists of two parts. A large suburb has at some time or another been taken in within the walls of the city. This is plain, because part of a cross wall with a gate still remains, which must have divided the space contained within the outer walls into two. This wall runs in a direction which, without professing to be mathematically correct, we may call north and south. That is, it runs from the hills down towards the bay or the river. Now, which was the elder part of the two? that to the east or that to the west? In other words, which represents the præ-Roman city, and which represents its enlargement in Roman times? By putting the question in this shape, we do not mean to imply that any part of the existing walls is of earlier than Roman date. The Roman city would arise on the site of the earlier settlement, and, as it grew and as its circuit was found too narrow, it would itself be further enlarged. The cross wall with the gate in it must of course have been at some time external; it marks the extent of the city at the time when it was built; but in which way has the enlargement taken place? It used to be thought that the eastern, the most inland division, was the elder, and that the city was extended to the west. And it certainly at first sight looks in favour of this view that, in the extreme north-west corner, an amphitheatre has clearly been worked into the wall, exactly in the same way in which the _Amphitheatrum Castrense_ at Rome is worked into the wall of Aurelian. How so keen an observer as Sir Gardner Wilkinson could have doubted about this building being an amphitheatre, still more how his doubts ended in his positively deciding that it was not, seems really wonderful. It has all the unmistakeable features of an amphitheatre, and we can only suppose that a good deal has been brought to light since Sir Gardner Wilkinson's visit, and that what is seen now was not so clearly to be seen then. As amphitheatres were commonly without the walls, this certainly looks as if the eastern part were the old city, and as if those who enlarged it to the west had made use of the amphitheatre in drawing out their new line of fortification, exactly as Aurelian in the like case made use of amphitheatre, aqueducts, anything that came conveniently in his way. But, on the other hand, Professor Glavinivc, whom we have already referred to when speaking of Spalato, and whose keener observation has come usefully in the wake of the praiseworthy researches of Dr. Carrara, has pointed out with unanswerable force that the gate has two towers on its eastern side, showing that that side was external, and that therefore the western part must be the older and the eastern the addition. This is evidence which it is impossible to get over. Clearly then the space to the west of it was once the whole city, and the far greater space to the east once lay beyond the walls. The gate must have been a grand one; but unluckily its arches have perished. There was a central opening, along which the wheel-tracks may still be traced, and a passage for foot-passengers on each side. The large rectangular blocks of limestone of which it is built have been encrusted in a singular way with some natural formation, which might almost be mistaken either for plaster or for some peculiarity of the stone itself. In the northern wall of the eastern part is an inscription commemorating the building or repair of the wall in the time of the Antonines. This by itself would not be conclusive; for the wall might very well have been rebuilt in their day and the city might have been enlarged to the west in a still later time. But the position of the gate is decisive, and the position of the amphitheatre is a difficulty that can easily be got over. If, besides the great enlargement to the east, we also suppose an enlargement to the west which would take the amphitheatre within the city walls, this will be quite enough. We may rule then that the Illyrian city, the earlier Roman city, stood to the west of the cross wall, and that it was enlarged at some time earlier than the reigns of the Antonines by taking in an eastern suburb larger than the original town. The walls of both parts may be traced through a large part of their extent. The outer gate to the east was flanked by octagonal towers, and both a square and an octagon tower may be traced near the north-east corner. But the most remarkable thing about the walls of Salona is that, besides the walls of the city itself, there are long walls, like those of Athens and Megara, reaching from the western side of the city for a mile and more nearly along the present road to Traü. They have not been traced to the end; but there can be no doubt that they were built to make long Salona yet longer by joining the town to some further point of the coast. Nothing is more natural; the water of the bay by Salona itself is very shallow; when the city became one of the great maritime stations of the world, it was an obvious undertaking to plant a dock at some point of the coast where the water was deeper. And to one who comes to Salona almost fresh from the hill-cities of central Italy, from the strongholds of Volscians, Hernicans, and Old-Latins, from Cora and Signia and Alatrium, it becomes matter of unfeigned surprise to find Dalmatian antiquaries speaking of these walls as "Cyclopean." The name "Cyclopean," though as old as Euripides, is as dangerous as "Pelasgian" or "Druid;" but, if it means anything, it must mean the first form of wall-building, the irregular stones heaped together, such as we see in the oldest work at Cora and Signia. Here we have nothing of the kind. The blocks are very large, and the outer surface is not smooth; but all of them are carefully cut to a rectangular shape, and they are laid with great regularity. There seems no kind of temptation to attribute them to any date earlier than the Roman conquest of Illyricum. The style of building is simply that which is made natural by the kind of stone. And the same kind of construction, though with smaller blocks, is that which prevails throughout the walls of Salona, except where later repairs have clearly been made. This has happened with the outer wall to the west, where some earlier fragments have even been built in. Otherwise, by far the greater part of the walls, towers, and gates of Salona, not forgetting a gate which has been made out in the long walls themselves, all belong to one general style of masonry. * * * * * Within the walls of Salona the general effect is somewhat strange. The city is pierced by the road from Spalato to Traü; in these later times it has been further pierced by the railway--strange object in Dalmatia, strangest of all at Salona--which starts from Spalato, but which does not find its way to Traü. The greater part of the space is still covered with vineyards and olive-trees; systematic digging would bring a vast deal to light; but a good deal positively has been made out already. The amphitheatre has been already spoken of; the road cuts through the theatre. But, as becomes the history of the city, the greater part of the discoveries belong to Christian times, to the days when the bishopric of Salona was a post great enough to be employed to break the fall of deposed emperors. But we may doubt whether the head church of Salona, the church which held the episcopal chair of Glycerius, has yet been brought to light. Near the north-western corner of the eastern division of the city the foundation of a Christian baptistery has been uncovered. The site of the baptistery, according to all rule, must be near to the site of the great church of the city. Now the baptistery stands near the wall; is it fanciful to think that at Salona, as well as at Rome, it was not thought prudent in the earliest days of the establishment of Christianity to build churches in the more central and prominent parts of the city? The baptistery of Salona keeps--the great basilica must therefore have kept--under the shadow of the wall of the extended city, exactly as the Lateran basilica and baptistery do at Rome. Of the baptistery it is easy to study the plan, as the foundations and the bases of the columns, both of the building itself and the portico in front of it, are plainly to be seen. Many of their splendid capitals are preserved among the rich treasures of the museum at Spalato. These are of a Composite variety, in which the part of the volute is played by griffins, while the lower part of the capital is rich with foliage of a Byzantine type. West of the baptistery, but hardly placed in any relation to it, are the remains of a small church, which seems to have been a square, with columns to the east and an apse to the north. Whatever this building was, it surely can never have been the great church of Salona. That must have been a basilica of the first class; and we may hope that future diggings may bring that to light also. But outside the city to the north, successive diggings have made precious discoveries in the way of Christian burying-places and churches. Since the last researches have been made, it is perfectly clear that here, outside the walls, like the basilicas of the apostles at Rome, there stood a church of considerable size, that it had supplanted a smaller predecessor, and that it had another smaller neighbour hard by. It is now easy--but it is only very lately that it has become easy--to see nearly the whole outline of a church measuring--speaking roughly--about 120 feet long. It ranged therefore with the smaller rather than the larger basilicas of Rome. It had two rows of large columns, which, from their nearness to one another, look as if they had supported an entablature rather than arches, with a transept, with the arch of triumph opening into it, and the apse beyond, to the east. There are also, in front of the arch of triumph, foundations which look most temptingly like those of _cancelli_, like those of Saint Clement's at Rome, but which seem too narrow for such a purpose. It is also plain, from the base of a smaller column at a lower level, that this comparatively large church was built on the remains of an earlier one. And this is borne out by the discovery of pavements at more than one level, which supported sarcophagi, which are still to be seen, and of which an inscription shows that the lowest level was of the time of Theodosius the Second and Valentinian the Third. This thrusts on the building of the upper and greater church to a later time, surely not earlier than the reign of Justinian. It must therefore have still been almost in its freshness when the last blow fell on Salona. And at such a time we can better take in the full force of the inscription which stood over the west door: "Dominus noster propitius esto reipublicæ Romanæ." The church, it should be noted, has been, at some time or other before it was quite swept away, patched up or applied to some other use. A later wall runs across the western face of the transept. An endless field for guessing is hereby opened; but it is more prudent not to enter upon it. Another smaller ruined church stands close by, with its apse pointing to the north. This and the eastern part of the larger church are filled with sarcophagi of all kinds and sizes, reminding us of the newly-opened basilica of Saint Petronilla by the Appian Way. Among these is the tomb of an early _Chorepiscopus_. A crowd of architectural fragments are scattered around, among which one splendid Corinthian capital bears witness to the magnificence of the upper church. But the real wealth of Salona, both sepulchral and architectural, is not to be looked for in Salona itself, but in the museum at Spalato. There are a crowd of superb tombs, pagan and Christian, and the splendid capitals from the baptistery. There are stores of inscriptions, Latin and Greek, which would make the place where they are preserved a place of no small interest, even if that place were not Spalato. But one sarcophagus of pagan date still stays in its place, a little way beyond the city, because, being hewn in the limestone rock, it could not be taken away. This is that which is described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, which has some of the exploits of Hêraklês carved on its one face, and which has been so oddly changed in modern times into the altar of the canonized Pope Saint Caius. For he, like the Emperor under whom he suffered, passes for a native of Salona. And a no less precious sarcophagus of Christian days is preserved in the cloister of the Franciscan church at Spalato. This represents the crossing of the Red Sea. The Pharaoh looks very much as if he were in a Roman triumphal chariot, trampling a genius or two of the waters under his wheels. His warriors follow, looking, according to the eyes with which we look at them, like Romans in military dress or like Albanians in the immemorial fustanella. The Aryan mind is offended at seeing men of another continent clothed in such a very European garb; it is for Egyptologers to say whether the sculpture is correct. The sea is very narrow; it swallows up the Egyptian chariots with great force, and the rescued Hebrews stand on the other side, Miriam just about to begin her hymn of victory. The subject of the sculpture is obvious; but it seems that nobody understood it till it was expounded by an exalted lady at that royal visit of 1818 which at Spalato is commemorated oftener than enough. The expounder was the wife of the man who had once been the last successor of Diocletian and Augustus; whether his queen had any claim to rank either as a successor of Prisca and Livia or as the doubtful mother-in-law of a conqueror from Ajaccio, we have not looked in any pedigree-book to find out. One would really have thought that the loosing of the knot was so easy that it might have been unravelled by the hand of a subject; but a book which we have before us by a local antiquary goes off into raptures at the surprising keenness of Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic eyes. The chapel of Saint Caius, with its heathenish altar, brings our thoughts back to the long walls below it, the walls which yoked the ancient Salona to the deeper sea. It must not be forgotten that, in the days of its greatness, Salona was one of the chief ports of the Hadriatic, the greatest on its own side of it. After shifting to and fro from one port to another, that position has come back, if not to Salona itself, yet to its modern representative. If we distinguish the Hadriatic from the Gulf of Trieste, Spalato is undoubtedly its chief port; but the smallness of Spalato, as compared with the greatness of ancient Salona, is a speaking historical lesson. We see the difference between the place in Europe which is held by the Illyrian lands now and the place which they held in the days of the Roman peace. Then Salona was one of the chief cities of the Roman world, placed on one of the most central sites in the Roman world, the chief port of one of the great divisions of the Empire, and one of the main highways between its eastern and western halves. Such could be the position of a Dalmatian city when Dalmatia had a civilized mainland to the back of it. Salona therefore kept up its position as long as the Empire still kept any strength on its Illyrian frontier. It played its part in both the civil wars. Cæsar himself enlarges on the strength of the city--"oppidum et loci natura et colle munitum." In after-times it was a special object of the regard of its own great citizen, who took up his abode so near to its neighbourhood. According to Constantino Porphyrogenitus, Salona was pretty well rebuilt by Diocletian. Its importance went on in the time of transition, as is witnessed by the growth of its ecclesiastical buildings, and by the high position held by its bishopric. Like the rest of the neighbouring lands, it passed under the dominion, first of Odoacer and then of Theodoric, and it was the first place which was won back to the Empire in the wars of Justinian. Lost again and won back again, it appears throughout those wars as the chief point of embarcation for the Imperial armies on their voyages to Italy. This was the last century of its greatness; in the next century the modern history of Illyria begins. The Slaves were moving, and the Avars were moving with them. Salona fell into the hands of these last barbarians; it was ruined and pillaged, and sank to the state in which it has remained till our own time. Since the seventh century Salona has ceased to rank among the cities of the earth, but the house which had been raised by its greatest citizen stood ready hard by to supply a shelter to some at least of its homeless inhabitants. Things were wholly turned about on the bay of Salona and on the neighbouring peninsula. Down to the days of Heraclius, Salona had been a great city, with the vastest house that one man ever reared standing useless in its neighbourhood. From his day onwards the house grew into a city, and the city became a petty village, where, of all the places along that historic coast, the traveller finds least to disturb him in the pious contemplation of ruins. The only danger is that his meditations may be broken in upon by sellers of coins and scraps of all ages, dates, and values. Coins at Salona hardly need the process once known at the Mercian Dorchester as "going a-Cæsaring." Cæsars seem to be picked up from under and off the ground with much less trouble than hunting for truffles. And even he who is no professed numismatist or collector of gems will be pleased to give a few _soldi_, perhaps even for a very clear image and superscription of "Constantinus Junior Nob[ilissimus] C[æsar]," much more for any image and superscription of Jovius himself. It may have neither rarity nor value in the eyes of the numismatically learned; but it is something to carry away from Salona itself the head of the foremost local worthy in Salona's long annals. TRAÜ. 1875--1877--1881. The visitor to Spalato and Salona should, if possible, not fail to pay a visit to Traü. To most readers the very name will doubtless be strange. Yet Tragurium is an old city, a city old enough to be named by Polybios, to say nothing of later Greek and Latin writers. As in countless other cases, many readers may have passed by the name without any notice at all; others may have turned to the map, and, having once found Tragurium, may have presently forgotten that Tragurium was anywhere recorded. The case may be different with those who carry on their studies so far as to have dealings with the Imperial topographer. In his pages the name of the city has got lengthened into [Greek: Tetrangourion], and we are told that it was so called [Greek: dia to einai auto mikron dikên angouriou]. We are not ashamed to confess that the word [Greek: angouriou] gave us no meaning whatever, and that we had to turn to our dictionary to find that [Greek: angourion] means a water-melon. But where the point of likeness is between the town of Traü and a water-melon, and why the name should have been lengthened, so as to suggest, if anything, the notion of four water-melons, we are as much in the dark as before. Those therefore who have made acquaintance with the city in the shape of [Greek: Tetrangourion] will have a chance of keeping it in their minds. But with those who light only either on Tragurium or on Traü, it will most likely happen as most commonly happens with places which play no great part in general history. The name passes away as a mere name, till something happens to clothe it with a special meaning. Salona the parent and Spalato the child are names which never can become meaningless to any one who has a decent knowledge of the history of the world. But the name of Tragurium, Traü, will probably always be purely meaningless, save to those whom anything may have led to take a special interest in Dalmatian matters. Tragurium has a history--no place is without one--but its history is purely local and Dalmatian. As far as one can venture to judge, the great course of human affairs would have been much the same if Tragurium had never become a city. But there it stands, and, as it stands, its position, its buildings, even its local history, combine to give it no small interest. They make it no contemptible appendage even to the famous spots in its immediate neighbourhood. Whatever was its origin, Tragurium became a Roman town, and it was one of those places on the Dalmatian coast which so long and steadily clave to their allegiance to the Eastern Cæsars. As the Byzantine power declined, the town was disputed between the Kings of Hungary and the commonwealth of Venice, and once at least it is said to have felt the hand of Saracen plunderers. By each of the Christian powers by which it was disputed it was won and lost more than once, till it finally became Venetian in 1420. Perhaps the point of greatest interest in these dates is that Traü was a Hungarian possession at the time of the building of its cathedral church in the thirteenth century. It is said to have points of likeness to other great Hungarian churches of the same date. The approach to Traü is a speaking commentary on the state of things in days when no one but the lord of a private fortress could be safe anywhere except within a walled town. The road from Spalato to Traü goes through Salona, through the heart of the ruined city, as does the railway which the traveller may use for part of his journey. The railway turns off; the road keeps on alongside of the bay, with the water on one side and the mountains on the other. This road passes through the district of the _castelli_, forts with surrounding villages, which various lords, spiritual and temporal, held of the Serene Republic by a feudal tenure. Things were under the oligarchy of Venice as they were under the democracy of Athens. A private fortress within either city was unheard of; neither Demos nor the Council of Ten would for a moment have endured the existence of such towers as we still see at Rome and at Bologna. But in the outlying possessions of either commonwealth greater licence was allowed. Alkibiadês had his private forts in the Thracian Chersonêsos, and a string of Venetian nobles and subjects of the Republic were allowed to have their private forts along the shores of the bay of Salona. The points which they occupied still remain as small towns and villages, some of them with their little havens on the lake-like sea, where the traveller whom the railway has forsaken may haply light on a small steamer to take him on. But none of those among the _castelli_ which we can ourselves speak of from our own knowledge possess any architectural interest. When at last we reach Traü, we see further how needful it was, even in the case of a walled city, to plant it in the position best suited for defence. Traü, now at least, belongs to the class of island cities. At the point where the large island of Bua comes nearest to the mainland, a small island lies between it and the shore, leaving only a narrow channel on each side, spanned in each case by a bridge. But the language of the Emperor who likens the city to a water-melon might suggest the idea that the site was once, not insular, but peninsular. Constantine places his [Greek: Tetrangourion] on a small island, but the small island has a neck like a bridge which joins it to the mainland ([Greek: mikron esti nêsion en tê thalassê, echon kai trachêlon heôs tês gês stenôtaton dikên gephyriou, en hô dierchontai hoi katoikountes es to auto kastron]). This somewhat contradictory way of speaking sounds as if, as in the case of some other peninsular cities, a narrow isthmus had been cut through. In the Peutinger Table too, "Ragurio" is made distinctly peninsular. Now at least the likeness of a bridge is exchanged for the reality; the island is an island, and on this island is built the main part of the city of Traü. A small part only spreads itself on to Bua, where it begins to climb the hills, though it goes up only a very little way, by paths almost as rugged as though they were in Montenegro. This outlying part, which contains two churches, may pass as a suburb, a _Peraia_; for Bua may reckon as a mainland when compared with the neighbouring islet, and the real mainland of Dalmatia seems to have been carefully avoided by the builders of Tragurium. The view in Wheler would give no one any idea of the size of Bua, any more than the Peutinger Table would give any idea of its position. But Wheler's view well brings out the relative positions of mainland, islet, and island, and it shows how strongly Traü was fortified in his day. Such a site as this was a valuable one in days when security was the main object; but it hardly tends to prosperity in modern times, and Tragurium must be reckoned among the cities whose day is past. While Spalato is putting on the likeness of a busy modern town, Traü has nothing to show but its ancient memories. Traü, as we now see it, is indeed an old-world place. Even the new-made railway, which has appeared long since our first visit, and which startles the quiet of Salona and some of the _castelli_, keeps away from the city of the four water-melons. Strangers come but seldom, and they are remembered when they do come; a visitor showing himself again after some years is greeted in friendly guise as "one of the three Englishmen with red beards." And the city looks like one of the ends of the world. Owing to the peculiar position of Traü, the fashion of narrow streets, common to all the Dalmatian towns, is here carried to an extreme point. Indeed the crooked alleys through which the visitor has to thread his way, and the dark arches and vaults under which he has to pass, give the place a Turkish rather than a Venetian look. The explorer of Traü might almost fancy himself at Trebinje. One wonders how the Tragurians manage to live; it is only on the quay and in the open place by the cathedral that there seems room to breathe. Yet, uninviting as the streets of Traü are in their general effect, they are far from being void of objects of interest. As elsewhere in Dalmatia, we ever and anon light on ornamental doorways and windows. In Traü some of these show better forms than those of the familiar Venetian Gothic; one or two windows are in style, whatever they may be in date, genuine Romanesque. Of the Venetian defences some considerable portions remain; close by the water, at the south-western point of the smaller island, is a castle bearing the badge of Saint Mark, whose chief feature is a tower of irregular octagonal shape, singularly and ingeniously vaulted within. Of civic buildings the chief is the Venetian _loggia_, now dirty and uncared for. But it still keeps at its east end what at first sight seems like an altar, dedicated, not to the Evangelist but to his lion, but which really marks the judgment-seat of the representative of the Republic in Traü. The building was repaired over and over again, the last renovation dating early in the seventeenth century; but it keeps a colonnade, which, whenever it was put together, was put together out of materials of far earlier date. Some of the capitals seem to be late; but there is one of true Corinthian form, which seems closely akin to those in Diocletian's peristyle; another capital is covered with rich foliage of a type rather Byzantine than classical. And on either side of the _loggia_, forming a strange contrast to one another, one of them utterly hidden from view, the other proclaiming itself as the main ornament of the town, stand the two most important ecclesiastical buildings of Traü. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRAÜ.] The chief architectural ornament of the city is undoubtedly the formerly cathedral, now only collegiate, church. This is a work of the thirteenth century, with a stately bell-tower of the fourteenth or fifteenth. But the tower of Traü is no detached campanile, such as we have seen at Zara and Spalato. It forms part of the building; it occupies its north-western corner, and was designed to be one of a pair, after the usage of more northern lands. The inscription on the southern doorway gives 1215 as its date; one on the great western doorway names 1240, and adds the name of Raduanus as its artist. Looked at from the outside, the work is of the best and most finished kind of Italian Romanesque; and we have here, what is by no means uncommon in Dalmatia, an example of the late retention of the forms of that admirable style. The tower palpably belongs to a later date, as it shows the distinct forms of the Venetian Gothic, though, as usual in Dalmatia, in a not unpleasing form. Eitelberger quotes an inscription which gives the date as 1321, while in his text he speaks of it as 1421, just after the Venetian capture of the town. And the course of Dalmatian architecture is so capricious, forms are found at dates when one would so little have looked for them, that we really cannot undertake to decide between the two. The inside of the church is striking, with its round arches resting on massive square piers of German rather than Italian character, and with its clerestory and vault, in which the round and pointed arch are struggling for the mastery. By a freak almost more unaccountable than the red rags of Zara, the piers have very lately been taught to discharge the perhaps useful, but rather incongruous, function of a catalogue of the bishops of Traü, bishops whose succession has come to an end. The pulpit, the stalls, and other fittings, are also striking in many ways, and the triapsidal east end shows us a rather simple Romanesque style in all its purity. But the glory of Traü is at the other end. The stately portico veils the still more stately western doorway, in which, if the purity of the architectural style is somewhat forsaken, we forgive it for the richness and variety of its sculpture. The scriptural scenes in the tympanum, the animal forms, the statues of Adam and Eve, the crouching turbaned figures, the strange blending together of sculpture and architectural forms, make together a wonderful whole, none the less wonderful because it is clear that everything is not exactly in its right place, but that there has been a change or removal of some kind at some time. The details of this splendid doorway, and of the church in general, must be studied in the elaborate memoir of Eitelberger, which, with its illustrations, goes further than most memoirs of the kind to make the building really intelligible at a distance. The turbaned figures are far older than the appearance of the Ottoman in the neighbourhood of Traü, or indeed in any part of Europe. Are they Saracens whose forms record the memories of some returning Crusader? Or are we to believe that the Morlacchi used the turban as their head-dress before the Ottoman came? But the _duomo_ is not all that Traü has to show in the way of churches. On the other side of the Venetian loggia stands, hidden among other buildings, a church which is in its way of equal interest with its greater neighbour, which certainly shows us a purer form of Romanesque. This is the little desecrated church of Saint Martin, now called Saint Barbara, one of those domical buildings on a small scale of which we have seen other varieties at Zara and at Spalato. Its height and the tall stilts on its columns would, if the building were cleared out, make it one of the most striking instances of its style and scale. Nearer to the water, south-east from the cathedral, is another small Romanesque church, almost as striking without as Saint Barbara is within. This is the small church of Saint John Baptist, which, except that it has a square east end, might pass for an almost typical Romanesque church on a small scale. Nearly opposite to Saint Barbara is the most striking house in Traü, with an open galleried court; and not very far off, hidden in the narrow streets, is the Benedictine monastery of Saint Nicolas, the foundation of the local saint John Orsini in 1064. The points to be noticed are not in the church but in the adjoining buildings. There, besides some pretty Venetian windows and doorways, is an arcade which looks as if it were of genuine Romanesque date, though perhaps hardly so old as the saint himself. A walk outside the walls in the direction of the Venetian castle leads to other churches, one of which, attached to a house of Dominican nuns, surprises the visitor, like the ruined chapel of the Gaetani by the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, by its almost English look. A few hours may well be spent in examining the antiquities of this strange little island city, and in taking in the varied views of land and sea which are to be had alike from the lofty bell-tower and from the higher ground on Bua. The journey back again shows us objects which have become familiar to us, but which are now seen in a reverse order. We mark the ever shifting outlines of the hills, the islands and the bay which they surround, the ruins of fallen Salona, Clissa on its peak, the stream of Giadro, the aqueduct of Diocletian, till we again mount and descend the little hill on the neck of the isthmus, and find ourselves once more under the shadow of the palace-walls of Spalato and of the bell-tower which soars so proudly over them. [Illustration: SAINT JOHN BAPTIST, TRAÜ.] SPALATO TO CATTARO. SPALATO TO CATTARO. 1875. [I have not thought it needful to strike out of this paper a few allusions to the times when it was written, the early days of the revolt in Herzegovina with which the war of 1875-1878 began.] As Spalato must be looked on as the great object of a Dalmatian voyage, it may also be looked on as its centre. After Spalato the coast scenery changes its character in a marked way. Hitherto hills, comparatively low and utterly barren, come down straight to the sea, while the higher mountains are seen only farther inland. From this point the great mountains themselves come nearer to the water. We are thus reminded of the change in the political boundary, how from this point the Hadriatic territory of Austria and of Christendom becomes narrower and narrower, till we reach the stage when the old dominion of Ragusa becomes a mere fringe between the sea and the Turk, fenced in from the former land of Saint Mark by the two points at either end where the less dangerous infidel was allowed to spread himself to the actual sea-board. But as the mountains come nearer to the sea, a fringe of cultivation, narrower or wider, now spreads itself between them and the water. Small towns and villages, detached houses, land tilled with the vine and the olive, now skirt the bases of the mountains, in marked contrast to the mere stony hills of the earlier part of the voyage. The islands too among whose narrow channels we have to make our way change their character also. After Spalato, instead of mere uninhabited rocks, we come to islands of greater size, some of them thirty or forty miles long, islands several of which have a distinct place in history, islands containing towns and cities, and which are still seats of industry and cultivation. These are the islands which give such a marked character to the map of this part of the Hadriatic, and they form the most marked feature in the fourth day's voyage of the course from Trieste to Cattaro. The endless islands which we have seen along the northern part of the Dalmatian shore, bare and uninhabited rocks as many of them are, are without history. Some of the Croatian islands indeed have somewhat of a history; but with these we are not dealing; the barren archipelago of Zara could never have had any tale to tell. First we pass through the channel which divides the mainland from the large island of Brazza, distinguished at a glance by its solid shape from its endless long and narrow fellows. Dreary and rocky as it seems, it is the most populous and industrious of the group, and at one point of its coast, San Pietro, the steamer makes a short halt. So it does at the picturesque little port of Almissa on the mainland, a nest of houses and trees at the mountain's foot, standing so invitingly as to make the traveller wish for a longer sojourn. Then comes Makarska, where we are allowed a short glimpse of the little hill-side town, smaller and more Dalmatian than any that we have yet seen. Presently we plunge into the full intricacies of the Dalmatian seas. We pass through the narrow channel which parts the mainland from the eastern promontory of the long, slender island of Lesina--the _awl_. Here we come within old Hellenic memories. We are now within the full range of Greek colonization, though of Greek colonization only in its latest stage. Issa, now Lissa, Black Korkyra, now Curzola, amongst the islands, and Epidauros on the mainland, were all of them undoubted Greek settlements. But Issa and Pharos, the only ones to which we can fix a positive date, were colonized only in the first half of the fourth century, and Dionysios of Syracuse had a hand in their colonization. Lesina is Pharos, the ancient colony of the Ægæan Paros, whose name still lives on Slavonic lips in the shape of _Far_ or _Hvar_. It plays a considerable part in the history of Polybios, as the island of that Dêmêtrios whose crooked policy formed an important element in the affairs of mankind in the days when Greek and Roman history began to flow together into one stream. These islands form one of the highways by which Rome advanced to the possession of Illyricum, Macedonia, and Greece. But we see neither the ancient nor the modern city, neither Pharos nor Lesina; we merely skirt the island to find ourselves in the channel of Narenta. That name suggests yet another pirate power, later than that of Tenta and Dêmêtrios, that power of the old Pagania against which Venice, in her early days, had to wage so hard a struggle. We seem to be pressing on between the mainland and a long, slender, mountainous island; but our course suddenly turns; the seeming island is no other than the long peninsula of Sabioncello, a peninsula not Venetian but Ragusan. We get merely a glimpse down the gulf, at the end of which Turkish Klek once divided the possessions of the two maritime commonwealths, and still, nominally at least, breaks the continuity of Austrian dominion. But, if the peninsula was Ragusan, a narrow channel only parts it from an island which was a chief seat of the power of the rival city. We skirt the western horn of Sabioncello, and another turn leads us through the channel--narrower than any through which we have passed--which divides it from Curzola, Black Korkyra of old. We stop for a little while off the island capital, the fortress of Curzola, which was to the declining navy of Venice what Pola now is to the rising navy of Austria. This channel passed, we come to the last of the great islands. For miles and miles we skirt the Ragusan island of Meleda, long, slender, with its endless hills of no great height standing up like the teeth of a saw--a true sierra in miniature. Here volumes of scriptural controversy are open to us. As we are not tossed up and down in Hadria, but are floating along as on a lake or a river, we muse on the claims which all local and some independent authorities have set up for Illyrian Meleda, as against Phoenician Malta, to be the true seat of the shipwreck of Saint Paul. But Meleda can have its claims admitted only on the condition of being shut out from Hellenic fellowship, even though its barbarians were of a mood which led them to show no little kindness to strangers. It is hard also to understand how those who were making their way from Meleda to any point of Italy could have any possible business at Syracuse. At all events, with Meleda the island history ends, though the island scenery does not end as yet. Several islands, smaller than these more famous ones, but not so small as they look on the map, fringe the coast till we enter the haven of Gravosa, the port of modern Ragusa, with its thickly wooded shores, a marked contrast to the bleakness and barrenness of so many other points of the Dalmatian coast. Ragusa, the city of argosies, the commonwealth which so long was the rival of Venice and which never stooped to be her subject, so thoroughly suggests maritime enterprise by her very name, that we are surprised to find that Ragusa herself has ceased to be a port of any moment. Her mighty walls, her castles, her more distant forts, still rise out of the sea, and the mightier wall of mountains just behind her still fence off her land, as the narrowest rim of Christendom, from the land of the infidel beyond. All this is as it was; modern military art has added to the defences of Ragusa, but it has not taken away her elder bulwarks. But her haven is now of the very smallest, and admits only vessels of the smallest size. The modern haven is at Gravosa, and the road which Sir Gardner Wilkinson describes as so well kept, but as useless because no carriages went upon it, is still as good and more useful. At this moment Ragusa bears the honourable character of a city of refuge for the unhappy ones who seek shelter under the government of a civilized state from the barbarian rule beyond the mountains. Her suburbs are crowded with women and children flying from the seat of war, for whom the charity both of the state and of private persons is doing much, but whose sufferings--as one who has seen them can bear witness--cry for the sympathy and help of all who have hearts and who have not invested in Turkish bonds. As we pass by and look on the city--no city surely fronts the sea more proudly than Ragusa--as we turn round to the island of La Croma, lying off what was Ragusa's harbour, the island which suggests the names of Richard of Poitou and of Maximilian of Mexico--the scene is so peaceful and lovely, the warlike defences look such mere things of the past, that it is hard indeed to believe that, just beyond the mountain barrier, warfare is going on in its bitterest and yet its noblest form--the struggle of an oppressed people to cast off the yoke of ages. This form of speech may grate somewhat on the received phrases of Western diplomacy; but, however we might be bound to write in England, in Dalmatia--so close to the facts--we may be allowed to write as all men in Dalmatia think and speak. We pass La Croma, and our time among the islands is over; no other that can be called more than a mere rock meets us between Ragusa and Cattaro. At last we enter the loveliest of inlets of the sea, the _Bocche di Cattaro_. A narrow strait leads us between points of land which were once Ragusan on the west and Venetian to the east, into the winding gulf, girded by mountains, and now for nearly its whole extent fringed by towns, villages, houses, cultivation in every form--a land where the sublimity of the rugged mountain has come into close partnership with the loveliness of the smiling dwelling-places of man. As we pass through the strait, a piece of barren mountain to the left marks the second piece of territory where the Turk was allowed to isolate the two commonwealths, and where, in name, his dominion still reaches to the shore of the lovely gulf. We pass on, as on the smoothest of lakes, round mountain headlands, with their rich fringe of life, by towns and villages, many of which have their own local history both in earlier and later times, till we reach the most distant of Dalmatian cities, Cattaro at the innermost point of her own unrivalled _Bocche_. Hemmed in between the mountains and the sea--though it seems almost strange to apply the word sea to the gentle waters of her harbour--with the mountains again rising on the other side, Cattaro seems indeed to be the end of its own world. Yet in the days of Venetian greatness, Cattaro was far indeed from being the last point of the dominion of Saint Mark. Climb the heights above the city, and the eye stretches far away along the Albanian coast, a coast along which many a city and island once bowed to the winged lion, till in fancy we track our course, as by stepping stones along the sea, to distant Crete and to more distant Cyprus. Cattaro, the end of the outward journey, will also be the beginning of the journey back again. The little town, with its narrow paved streets, its little piazze, still keeps up the same Venetian tradition as elsewhere. And the walls of the fortress climbing far up the mountain show how firm was the grasp of the ruling city over its subjects. But at Cattaro and throughout the Bocche another feature strikes us which we do not see either at Spalato or at Ragusa. The churches do not all belong to one denomination; the Eastern, the Orthodox, Church, holds its own in this corner of Venetian or Austrian rule at least as firmly as its Latin rival. The fact is, what is forced upon our notice at every step, that, the further we go along this coast, the Italian element dies out and the Slavonic element grows. It is so in language, in dress, in everything. Zara, Spalato, Ragusa, Cattaro, each city is less and less Italian according to its geographical position. The inland country is, of course, Slave throughout. But at Cattaro the Slave element distinctly predominates, even in the town; Italian can hardly be said to be more than the best known among foreign languages. The pistol and yataghan worn in the belt, a general costume essentially the same as that of the Montenegrin, has gradually been growing upon us; here in Cattaro it is the rule, almost more than the rule. In short, the Bocchese, the Montenegrin, the Turkish rayah of Herzegovina, really differ in nothing but the difference of their political destinies. They are members of the same immediate family, whose fortunes have led them in three different directions. Now the religious tendency of the south-eastern Slaves, as is only natural from their geographical position, has always been towards the Eastern Church rather than the Western, towards the New Rome rather than towards the Old. Here, where the Slavonic element is so distinctly the stronger, the religious developement has taken its natural course, and the Orthodox population in Cattaro and all the coasts thereof is always a large minority, and in some places it actually outnumbers the Latins. We have professed to give only the impressions of the outward voyage, though our account may have here and there been influenced by later impressions drawn from fuller observation on the way back. But the way back, and the fuller knowledge gained in its course, only brings out more strongly the intense charm of Dalmatian coast and mountain scenery, fitly united with the deep historic interest of cities which, though they seem to form a world apart by themselves, have played their part in the world's history none the less. No one can visit Dalmatia once without a wish that his first visit may not be his last; no one can take a glimpse of any of her cities without the desire that the glimpse may be only the forerunner of more perfect knowledge. CURZOLA. 1881. We part from Spalato; by the time that we have made two or three voyages in these seas, we shall find that there are several ways of reaching and parting from Spalato. We speak of course of ways by sea; by land there is but one way, and that way leads only to and from places at no great distance, and it does not lead to or from any place in the direction in which we are now bent. By sea the steamer takes two courses. One keeps along the mainland, that which allows a glimpse of the little towns of Almissa and Makarska, both nestling by the water's edge at the mountain's foot. Of these Almissa at least has an historical interest. Here Saint Mark was no direct sovereign; his lion, if we rightly remember, is nowhere to be seen, a distinction which, along this whole line of coast, Almissa alone shares with greater Ragusa. Was it a commonwealth by itself, cradled on the channel of Brazza like Gersau on the Lake of the Four Cantons? Or was it the haven of the inland commonwealth of Polizza, which, like Gersau and a crowd of other commonwealths, perished at the hands of their newborn French sister for the unpardonable crime of being old? But far more interesting is the other route of the steamers, that which leads us among the greater islands. Here, as soon as we pass Spalato, as soon as we pass the greatest monument of the dominion of Rome, we presently find ourselves in a manner within the borders of Hellas. We pass between Brazza and Solta, we skirt Lesina and think once more of its old Parian memories. We look out on Lissa, where the Hellenic name lives on with slighter change, but we are more inclined to dwell on those later memories which have made its name an unlucky one in our own day, a far luckier one in the days of our grandfathers. At last we make our first halt for study where a narrow strait divides the mainland, itself all but an island, from another ancient seat of Greek settlement, the once renowned isle of Curzola. Curzola--such is its familiar Italian form--is the ancient Black Korkyra, and on Slavonic lips it still keeps the elder name in the shape of _Kerker_. But the sight of [Greek: hê melaina Korkyra] suggests a question of the same kind as that which the visitor is driven to ask on his first sight of Montenegro. How does a mass of white limestone come to be called the Black Mountain? Curzola can hardly be called a mass of white limestone; but the first glance shows nothing specially black about it, nothing to make us choose this epithet rather than any other to distinguish this Hadriatic Korkyra from the more famous Korkyra to the south. That some distinguishing epithet is needed is shown by the fact that, not so very long ago, a special correspondent of the _Times_ took the whole history of Corfu and transferred it bodily to Curzola. The reason given for the name is the same in Curzola and in Montenegro. The blackness both of the island and of the mountain is the blackness of the woods with which they are covered. True the traveller from Cattaro to Tzetinje sees no woods, black or otherwise; but he is told that the name comes from thick woods on the other side of the principality. So he is told that Black Korkyra was called from its thick woods, its distinctive feature as compared with the many bare islands in its neighbourhood. But no black woods are now to be seen in that part of the island which the traveller is most likely to see anything of. There were such, he is told; but they have been cut down on this side, while on the other side they still flourish. As things are now, Curzola is certainly less bare than most of its fellows; but the impression which it gives us is, of the two, rather that of a green island than of a black one. It is not green in the sense of rich verdure, but such trees as show themselves give it a look rather green than black. At any rate, the island looks both low and well-covered, as compared with the lofty and rocky mountains of the opposite peninsula of Sabioncello. The two are at one point, and that a point close by the town of Curzola, separated by a very narrow strait. And the nearness of the two formed no inconsiderable part of their history. There was a time when Curzola must have been, before all things, a standing menace to Sabioncello, and to the state of which Sabioncello formed an outpost. Sabioncello, the long, narrow, stony peninsula, all backbone and nothing else, formed part of the dominions of the commonwealth of Ragusa. Curzola was for three centuries and a half a stronghold of that other commonwealth which Ragusa so dreaded that she preferred the Turk as her neighbour. Nowhere does the winged lion meet us more often or more prominently than on the towers and over the gates of Curzola. And no wonder; for Curzola was the choice seat of Venetian power in these waters, her strong arsenal, the place for the building of her galleys. If Aigina was the eyesore of Peiraieus, Curzola must have been yet more truly the eyesore of Sabioncello. It is only of what must have been the special eyesore of its Ragusan neighbours, of the fortified town of Curzola and of a few points in its near neighbourhood, that we can now speak. Curzola is one of the larger Dalmatian islands; and it is an island of some zoological interest. It is one of the few spots in Europe where the jackal still lingers. Perhaps there is no other, but, as we have heard rumours of like phænomenon in Epeiros, a decided negative is dangerous. We believe that, according to the best scientific opinion, "lingered" is the right word. The jackal is not an importation from anywhere else into Curzola; he is an old inhabitant of Europe, who has kept his ground in Curzola after he has been driven out of other places. But he who gives such time as the steamer allows him in the island to the antiquities of the town of Curzola need cherish no hope or fear of meeting jackals. He might as soon expect to meet with a horse. For, true child of Venice, Curzola knows neither horse nor carriage. Horses and carriages are not prominent features in any of the Dalmatian towns; but they may be seen here and there. They are faintly tolerated within the walls of Ragusa, and we have certainly seen a cart in the streets of Zara. But at Curzola they are as impossible as at Venice itself, though not for the same reason. Curzola does not float upon the waters; it soars above them. The Knidian emigrants chose the site of their town in the true spirit of Greek colonists. It is such another site as the Sicilian Naxos, as the Epidauros of the Hadriatic, as Zara too and Parenzo, though Zara and Parenzo can lay no claim to a Greek foundation. The town occupies a peninsula, which is joined to the main body of the island by a narrow isthmus. The positive elevation is slight, but the slope close to the water on each side is steep. From the narrow ridge where stands the once cathedral church, the streets run down on each side, narrow and steep, for the most part ascended by steps. The horses of the wave are the only steeds for the men of Black Korkyra, and those steeds they have at all times managed with much skill. The seafaring habits of the people take off in some measure from the picturesque effect of the place. There is much less to be seen, among men at least, of local costume at Curzola than at other Dalmatian towns. We miss the Morlacchian turbans which become familiar at Spalato; we miss the Montenegrin coats of the brave _Bocchesi_, which fill the streets of Cattaro, not without a meaning. Seafaring folk are apt to wear the dress of their calling rather than that of their race, and the island city cannot be made such a centre for a large rural population as the cities on the mainland. But, if the men to be seen at Curzola are less picturesque than the men to be seen at Spalato or Ragusa, their dwellings make up for the lack. Curzola is a perfect specimen of a Venetian town. It is singular how utterly everything earlier than the final Venetian occupation of 1420 has passed away. The Greek colonist has left no sign of himself but the site. Of Roman, of earlier mediæval, times there is nothing to be seen beyond an inscription or two, one of which, a fragment worked into the pavement of one of the steep streets, records the connexion which once was between Curzola and Hungary. With præ-Venetian inscriptions we may class one which is post-Venetian, and which records another form of foreign dominion, one which may be classed with that of Lewis the Great as at least better than those which went between them. From 1813 to 1815--a time memorable at Curzola as well as at Cattaro--the island was under English rule, and the time of English rule was looked on as a time of freedom, compared with French rule before or with Austrian rule both before and after. It is not only that an official inscription speaks of the island as "libertate fruens" at the moment when the connexion was severed; we believe that we are justified in saying that those two years live in Black-Korkyraian memory as the one time for many ages when the people of Black Korkyra were let alone. The formerly cathedral church is the only building in the town of Curzola which suggests any thought that it can be older than 1420. Documentary evidence, we believe, is scanty, and contains no mention of the church earlier than the thirteenth century. In England we should at first sight be tempted to assign the internal arcades to the latter days of the twelfth; but the long retention of earlier forms which is so characteristic of the architecture of this whole region makes it quite possible that they may be no earlier than the Venetian times to which we must certainly attribute the west front. Setting aside a later addition to the north, which is no improvement, this little _duomo_ consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, ending in three round apses. Five bays we say, though on the north side there are only four arches; for the tower occupies one at the west end. The inner arcades and the west doorway are worthy of real study, as contributions to the stock of what is at any rate singular in architecture; indeed a more honourable word might fairly be used. The arcades consist of plain pointed arches rising from columns with richly carved capitals, and, like so many columns of all ages in this region, with tongues of foliage at their bases. Above is a small triforium, a pair of round arches over each bay; above that is a clerestory of windows which within seem to be square, but which outside are found to be broad pointed lancets with their heads cut off. In England or France such a composition as this would certainly, at the first sight of its general effect, be set down as belonging to the time of transition between Romanesque and Gothic, to the days of Richard of Poitou and Philip Augustus. And the proportions are just as good as they would be in England or France; there is not a trace of that love of ungainly sprawling arches which ruins half the so-called Gothic churches of Italy. But, when we look at the capitals, we begin to doubt. They are singularly rich and fine; but they are not rich and fine according to any received pattern. They are eminently not classical; they have nothing more than that faint Corinthian stamp which no floriated capital seems able quite to throw away; they do not come anything like so near to the original model as the capitals at Canterbury, at Sens, or even at Lisieux. But neither do they approach to any of the received Romanesque or Byzantine types, nor have they a trace of the freedom which belongs to the English foliage of days only a little later. They are more like, though still not very much like, our foliage of the fourteenth century; there is a massiveness about them, a kind of cleaving to the shape of the block, which after all has something Byzantine about it. Those on the north side have figures wrought among the foliage; the four responds have the four evangelistic symbols. Here then we cannot fail to find the lion of Saint Mark, but we find him only in his place as one of a company of four. Would the devotion of the Most Serene Republic have allowed its patron anywhere so lowly a place as this to occupy? Otherwise the character of the capitals, which extends to the small shafts in the triforium, might tempt us to assign a far later date to these columns and arches than their general effect would suggest. But at all events they are thoroughly mediæval; there is not the faintest trace of _Renaissance_ about them. Outside the church, the usual mixed character of the district comes out more strongly. The addition to the north, and the tower worked in instead of standing detached, go far to spoil what would otherwise be a simple and well-proportioned Italian front. Both the round window--of course there is a round window--and the great doorway are worthy of notice. The window is not a mere wheel; the diverging lines run off into real tracery, such as we might see in either England or France. The doorway is a curious example of the way in which for a long time in these regions, the square head, the round arch, and the pointed arch, were for some purposes used almost indifferently. The tradition of the square-headed doorway with the arched tympanum over it never died out. We may believe that the mighty gateways and doorways of Diocletian's palace set the general model for all ages. But when the pointed arch came in, the tympanum might be as well pointed as round. Sometimes the pointed tympanum crowns a thoroughly round-headed doorway, and is itself crowned with a square spandril, looking wonderfully like a piece of English Perpendicular. In the west doorway at Curzola things do not go quite to such lengths as this; but they go a good way. The square doorway is crowned by a pointed tympanum, containing the figure of a bishop; over that again is a kind of canopy. This is formed of a round arch, springing from a pair of lions supported on projections such as those which are constantly used, specially at Curzola, for the support of balconies. The lions which in many places would have supported the columns of the doorway seem, though wingless, to have flown up to this higher post. For here the doorway has nothing to be called columns, nothing but small shafts, twisted and otherwise, continued in the mouldings of the arch. The cornice under the low gable is very rich; the tower is of no great account, except the parapet, and the octagon and cupola which crown it, a rich and graceful piece of work of that better kind of _Renaissance_ which we claim as really Romanesque. In the general view of the town from the sea this tower counts for more than it does when we come close up to it in the nearest approach to a _piazza_ which Curzola can boast. It is the crown of the whole mass of buildings rising from the water. At Curzola the fortifications are far more to the taste of the antiquary than they are at Ragusa; they fence things round at the bottom, instead of hiding everything from the top. We may shut our eyes to a modern fort or two on the hills; the walls of the town itself, where they are left, are picturesque mediæval walls broken by round towers, on some of which the winged lion does not fail to show himself. He presides again over a _loggia_ by the seashore, one of those buildings with nondescript columns, which may be of any date, which most likely are of very late date, but which, because they are simply straightforward and sensible, are pleasing, whatever may be their date. Here they simply support a wooden roof, without either arch or entablature. And while we are seated under the lion in the _loggia_, we may look down at another lion in a sculptured fragment by the shore, in company with a female half-figure, something of the nature of a siren, Nereid, or mermaid, who seems an odd yoke-fellow for the Evangelist. He seems more in his natural place over the gate by which we shall most likely enter the town, a gate of 1643, itself square-headed, but with pointed vaulting within. Its inscriptions do not fail to commemorate the Trojan Antênor as founder of Black Korkyra, along with a more modern ruler, the Venetian John-Baptist Grimani. To the right hand, curiosity is raised by a series of inscriptions which have been carefully scratched out. About them there are many guesses and many traditions. One cannot help thinking that the deed was more likely to be done by the French than by the Austrian intruder. To scratch out an inscription is a foolish and barbarous act; but it implies an understanding of its meaning and a misapplied kind of vigour, which, of the two stolen eagles, was more likely to flourish under the single-headed one. The double-headed pretender, by the way, though he is seen rather too often in these parts, is seldom wrought in such lasting materials as Saint Mark's lion. So, when the good time comes, the stolen badge of Empire may, at Curzola as at Venice and Verona, pass away and be no more seen, without any destruction of monuments, old or new. We are now fairly in the town. The best way to see Curzola thoroughly is for the traveller to make his way how he will to the ridge of the peninsula, and then systematically to visit the steep and narrow streets, going in regular order down one and up another. There is not one which does not contain some bit of domestic architecture which is well worth looking at. But he should first walk along the ridge itself from the gate by the isthmus to the point where the ground begins to slope to the sea opposite Sabioncello. Hard by the gate is the town-hall, _Obcina_, as it is now marked in the native speech. The mixed style--most likely of the seventeenth century--of these parts comes out here in its fulness. Columns and round arches which would satisfy any reasonable Romanesque ideal, support square windows which are relieved from ugliness by a slight moulding, the dentel--akin to our Romanesque billet--which is seen everywhere. But in a projecting building, which is clearly of a piece with the rest, columns with nondescript capitals support pointed arches. Opposite to the town-hall is one of the smaller churches, most of which are of but little importance. This one bears the name of Saint Michael, and is said to have formerly been dedicated to Orthodox worship. It shows however no sign of such use, unless we are to count the presence of a little cupola over the altar. We pass along the ridge, by a house where the projection for balconies, so abundant everywhere, puts on a specially artistic shape, being wrought into various forms, human and animal. Opposite the cathedral the houses display some characteristic forms of the local style, and we get more fully familiar with them, as we plunge into the steep streets, following the regular order which has been already prescribed. Some graceful scrap meets us at every step; the pity is that the streets are so narrow that it needs some straining of the neck to see those windows which are set at all high in the walls. For it is chiefly windows which we light upon: very little care seems to have been bestowed on the doorways. A square or segmental-headed doorway, with no attempt at ornament, was thought quite enough for a house for whose windows the finest work of the style was not deemed too good. Indeed the contrasts are so odd that, in the finest house in Curzola, in one of the streets leading down eastward from the cathedral, a central story for which _magnificent_ would not be too strong a word is placed between these simple doorways below and no less simple square-headed windows above. This is one of the few houses in Curzola where the windows are double or triple divided by shafts. Most of the windows are of a single light, with a pointed, an ogee, or even a round head, but always, we think, with the eminently Venetian trefoil, and with the jambs treated as a kind of pilaster. With windows of this kind the town of Curzola is thick-set in every quarter. We may be sure that there is nothing older than the Venetian occupation, and that most of the houses are of quite late date, of the sixteenth and even the seventeenth century. The Venetian style clave to mediæval forms of window long after the _Renaissance_ had fully set in in everything else. And for an obvious reason; whatever attractions the _Renaissance_ might have from any other point of view, in the matter of windows at least it hopelessly failed. In the streets of Curzola therefore we meet with an endless store of windows, but with little else. Yet here and there there are other details. The visitor will certainly be sent to see a door-knocker in a house in one of the streets on the western slope. There Daniel between two lions is represented in fine bronze work. And some Venetian effigies, which would doubtless prove something for local history, may be seen in the same court. Of the houses in Curzola not a few are roofless; not a few have their rich windows blocked; not a few stand open for the visitor to see their simple inside arrangements. The town can still make some show on a day of festival; but it is plain that the wealth and life of Curzola passed away when it ceased to be the arsenal of Venice. And poverty has one incidental advantage; it lets things fall to ruin, but it does not improve or restore. Two monasteries may be seen within an easy distance of the town. That of Saint Nicolas, approached by a short walk along the shore to the north-west, makes rather an imposing feature in the general view from the sea; but it is disappointing when we come near. Yet it illustrates some of the local tendencies; a very late building, as it clearly is, it still keeps some traces of earlier ideas. Two equal bodies, each with a pointed barrel-vault, might remind us of some districts of our own island, and, with nothing else that can be called mediæval detail, the round window does not fail to appear. The other monastery, best known as the _Badia_, once a house of Benedictines, afterwards of Franciscans, stands on a separate island, approached by a pleasant sail. The church has not much more to show than the other; but it too illustrates the prevalent mixture of styles which comes out very instructively in the cloister. This bears date 1477, as appears from an inscription over one of its doors. But this doorway is flat-headed and has lost all mediæval character, while the cloister itself is a graceful design with columns and trefoil arches, which in other lands one would attribute to a much earlier date. The library contains some early printed books and some Greek manuscripts, none seemingly of any great intrinsic value. A manuscript of Dionysios Periêgêtês is described as the property of the Korkyraian Nicolas and his friends. ([Greek: Nikolaou Kerkyraiou kai tôn philôn.]) Nicolas had a surname, but unluckily it has passed away from our memory and from our notes. But the local description which he has given of himself makes us ask, Did the book come from Corfu, or did any citizen of Black Korkyra think it had a learned look so to describe himself? On the staircase of the little inn at Curzola still hangs a print of the taking of the arsenal of Venice by the patriots of 1848. Strange that no Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic official has taken away so speaking a memorial of a deed which those who commemorate it would doubtless be glad to follow. RAGUSA. 1875--1877--1881. The voyage onward from Curzola will lead, as its next natural stopping-place, to Ragusa. At Curzola, or before he reaches Curzola, the traveller will have made acquaintance with what was once the territory of the Ragusan commonwealth, in the shape of the long peninsula of Sabioncello. He will have seen how all the winged lions of Curzola look out so threateningly towards the narrow tongue of land which bowed to Saint Blaise and not to Saint Mark. He will pass by Meleda, that one among the larger islands which obeyed Ragusan and not Venetian rule. After Meleda the islands cease to be the most important features in the geography or in the prospect. They end, so far as they give any character to the scene, in the group which lies off the mouth of the inlet of Gravosa and Ombla, the ordinary path to Ragusa. But he who would really take in the peculiar position of Ragusa will do well to pass by the city on his outward voyage, to go on to Cattaro, and to take Ragusa on the way back. The wisdom of so doing springs directly out of the history of the city. The haven, which is said--and we have no better derivation to suggest--to have given its name to _argosies_, could certainly not give shelter to a modern argosy. Nothing but smaller craft now make their way to Ragusa herself; steamers and everything else stop at the port of Gravosa. It has been only quite lately, long since the earlier visits which gave birth to the present sketches, that Ragusan enterprise has so far again awakened as to send a single steamer at long intervals from the true Ragusan haven to Trieste. He therefore who visits Ragusa on his outward voyage has to land at Gravosa and to make his way to Ragusa by land. He thus loses the first sight of the city from the sea which he has had at Zara and Spalato, and which at Ragusa is, setting special associations aside, even more striking than at Zara and Spalato. Before he sees Ragusa from the water, as Ragusa was made to be seen, he has already made acquaintance with the city in a more prosaic fashion. He will not indeed have had his temper soured by the inconveniences which Sir Gardner Wilkinson had to put up with more than thirty years ago. There is no more delay at the gate of Ragusa, there is no more difficulty in finding a carriage to take the traveller from Gravosa to Ragusa, than there is in the most frequented regions of the West. Still, in such a case, the traveller sees Ragusa for the first time from the land, and Ragusa of all places ought to be seen for the first time from the sea. Seen in this way, the general effect of Ragusa is certainly more striking than that of any other Dalmatian city; and it is so in some measure because the effect of Ragusa, whether looked at with the bodily eye or seen in the pages of its history, is above all things a general effect. There is not, as there is at Zara and at Spalato, any particular moment in the history of the city, any particular object in the city itself, which stands out prominently above all others. We draw near to Zara, and say, "There is the city that was stormed by the Crusaders," and, though we find much at Zara to awaken interest on other grounds, the crusading siege still remains the first thing. We draw near to Spalato; we see the palace and the campanile, and round the palace and the campanile everything gathers. We draw near to Ragusa; the eye is struck by no such prominent object; the memory seizes on no such prominent fact. But there is Ragusa; there is the one spot along that whole coast from the Croatian border to Cape Tainaros itself, which never came under the dominion either of the Venetian or of the Turk. Ragusa will be found at different times standing in something like a tributary or dependent relation to both those powers, but it never was actually incorporated with the dominions of either. In this Ragusa stands alone among the cities of the whole coast, Dalmatian, Albanian, and Greek. Among all the endless confusions and fluctuations of power in those regions, Ragusa stands alone as having ever kept its place, always as a separate, commonly as an independent, commonwealth. It lived on from the break-up of the Byzantine power on those coasts till the day when the elder Buonaparte, in the mere caprice of tyranny, without provocation of any kind, declared one day that the Republic of Ragusa had ceased to exist. This is the history of Ragusa, a history whose general effect is as striking as any history can be. It is a history too which, if we dig into its minute details, is full of exciting incidents, but not of incidents which, like the one incident in the history of Zara, stand out in the general history of Europe. There is, to be sure, one incident in Ragusan history which may claim some attention at the hands of Englishmen, and ought to claim more at the hands of Poitevins. Count Richard of Poitou, who was also by a kind of accident King of England, and who in the course of his reign paid England two very short visits, paid also a visit to Ragusa which was perhaps still shorter. But this again is an incident of mere curiosity. The homeward voyage and captivity of Richard had some effect on the general affairs of the world; his special visit to Ragusa affected only the local affairs of Ragusa. Ragusan history then may either be taken in at a glance, and a most striking glance it is; or else it may be studied with the minute zeal of a local antiquary. There is no intermediate point from which it can be looked at. In the general history of Europe Ragusa stands out, as the city itself stands out to the eye of the traveller, as that one among the famous cities of the Dalmatian and Albanian coast where the Lion of Saint Mark is not to be seen. As is the history, so is the general effect. As we sail past Ragusa, as we look at the city from any of the several points which the voyage opens to us, we say at once, Here is one of the most striking sights of our whole voyage; but we cannot at once point our finger to any one specially striking object. There are good campaniles, but there is nothing very special about them; there are castles and towers in abundance, but each by itself on any other site would be passed by without any special remark. What does call for special remark and special admiration is the city itself, at once rising from the sea and fenced in from the sea by its lofty walls. It is the shore, with its rocks and its small inlets, each rock seized on as the site of a fortress. It is the background of hills, forming themselves a natural rampart, but with the artificial defences carried up and along them to their very crest. Here we are not tempted, as we are tempted at some points of our voyage, to forget that our voyage is one by sea, and to fancy that we are floating gently on some Swiss or Italian lake. Ragusa does not stand on a deep inlet like Cattaro, on a bay like Spalato, on a peninsula like Zara, fenced in by islands on one side and by the opposite shore of its haven on the other. Ragusa does indeed stand on a peninsula, but it is a peninsula of quite another kind; a peninsula of hills and rocks and inlets, offering a bold front to the full force of the open sea. One island indeed, La Croma, lies like a guard-ship anchored in front of the city, but we feel that La Croma is strictly an island of the sea. The islands of the more northern coast form as it were a wall to shelter the coast itself. And such a function seems specially to be laid upon the small islands which lie off the mouth of Ragusa's modern haven at Gravosa. Covered indeed as they are with modern fortifications, it is not merely in a figure that it is laid upon them. But La Croma fills no such function. The city of argosies boldly fronts the sea on which her argosies were to sail, and fiercely do the waves of that sea sometimes dash upon her rocks. Ragusa seems the type of a city which has to struggle with the element on which her life is cast, while Venice is the type of a city which has, in the sense of her own yearly ceremony, brought that element wholly under her dominion. As we look up from the sea to the mountains, we feel yet more strongly how purely Ragusa was a city of the sea. Venice was an inland power on that Italian land off which she herself lay anchored. She might pass for an inland power even on the Ragusan side of the Hadriatic. The Dalmatian territory of Venice looks on the map like a narrow strip; but, compared with the Ragusan coast, the Venetian coast has a wide Venetian mainland to the back of it. But Ragusa lies at the foot of the mountains, and the crest of the mountains was her boundary. She has always sat on a little ledge of civilization, for four centuries on a little ledge of Christendom, with a measureless background of barbarism behind her. Those hills, the slopes of which begin in the streets of the city, once fenced in a ledge of Hellenic land from the native barbarians of Illyricum. Then they fenced in a ledge of Roman land from the Slavonic invader. Lastly, when we first looked on them, when we first crossed them, they still fenced in a ledge of Christian land from the dominion of the Infidel. And the newest arrangements of diplomacy make it still not wholly impossible to use the language which we used then. The Archduke of Austria and King of Dalmatia is immediate sovereign of Ragusa and her ancient territory; when we cross the line between Ragusa and Herzegovina, he rules only in the character familiar to some even of his Imperial forefathers, that of the man of the Turk. The Christian prince simply "administers;" it is the Infidel Sultan who is still held to reign. To form such a boundary as this has been no mean calling for the heights which look down upon Ragusa. It is well to climb those heights, best of all to climb them by the road which so lately led, which we might almost say still leads, from civilization to barbarism, from Christendom to Islam, and to look down on the city nestling between the sea and the mountains. The view is of the same kind as the view of the city from the sea. Rocks, inlets, walls, and towers, come out in new and varied groupings, but there is still no one prominent object. La Croma indeed, with its fallen monastery--its fortress is not seen--now comes in as a prominent object. But it shows by its very prominence the difference between this part of the Dalmatian coast, with its one island, all but invisible on the map, lying close to the shore, and the two archipelagos, one of small and obscure, one of great and historic islands, which the voyager has already passed by. It would thus be well if we could look on Ragusa both from the sea and from the mountains before we approach the city by the one possible to reach it, by the road which leads from its port of Gravosa. This last is a picturesque haven of thoroughly Dalmatian character, lying on a smooth inlet with a small fertile fringe between the water and the mountains. The road, rising and falling, looking out on both the mountains and the sea, leads along among villas and chapels which gradually grow into a suburb till we reach the gate. Here we see not a few ruined houses, houses which have remained ruined for nearly seventy years, houses whose ruin was wrought by Montenegrin hands in the days when Ragusa was an unwilling possession of France and Montenegro a valued ally of England. But, before we reach the gate, we see what there was not in the time of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, carriages standing for hire, carriages no very long drive in which will take us over the late borders of Christendom. In that suburb too the traveller will most likely take up his quarters--quarters, it may be, looking down straight on the rocks and waves. And there, when war was raging at no great distance, and when Ragusa was the special centre of the purveyors of news, he was sure to hear both the latest truths and the latest fables. But he is still outside the city. No city brings better home to us than Ragusa the Eastern hyperbole of cities great and fenced up to heaven. We must leave the military architect to discuss their military merits or demerits. To the non-professional observer they seem to belong to that type of fortification, between mediæval and modern, which in these lands we naturally call Venetian, inapplicable as that name is at Ragusa. But they have clearly been strengthened and extended in more modern times. The city lies in a kind of hollow between the lower slopes of the mountain on one side, and a ridge which lies between the mountain and the sea, and which thus adds greatly to the appearance of the fortifications as seen from the sea. The one main street of Ragusa, the _Stradone_, thus lies in a valley with narrow streets running down towards it on both sides. Indeed, before the great earthquake of 1667 which destroyed so much of old Ragusa, part at least of this wide street was covered with water as a canal. It is so pent in with buildings that we hardly feel how near we are to the sea; yet the small port, the true port of Ragusa, is very near at hand. The two ends of the Stradone are guarded by gates, which lead up--for the ascent is considerable--to the outer gates at either end, still strong and still guarded, reminding us that we are in what is still really a border city. And over those gates we see, not the winged lion for which we have learned to look almost instinctively everywhere on these coasts, but the figure of Saint Blaise, _San Biagio_, the patron of Ragusa, whose relics form some of the choicest treasures in the rich hoard of her once metropolitan church. We pass under the saintly effigy, and we find that within the walls the general aspect of the city is comparatively modern. Most of the buildings, the metropolitan church among them, were rebuilt after a great earthquake in 1667. Such remains however of old Ragusa as are still left are of such surpassing interest in the history of architecture that we must keep them for a more special examination. * * * * * The history of Ragusa, as we have already said, is of a kind which must either be taken in at a glance or else dealt with in the minutest detail. All Dalmatian history for a good many centuries wants a more thorough sifting than has ever been brought to bear upon it. It wants it all the more because it is so closely connected with early Venetian history, than which no history is more utterly untrustworthy. But we may safely gather that Ragusa had its origin in the destruction of the Greek city of Epidauros, now _Ragusa Vecchia_. The old Epidaurian colony fell, like Salona, before the barbarians. Its inhabitants had no ready-made city to flee to, but they founded a city on the rocks which became Raousion or Ragusa. Whether any part of the Ragusan peninsula had ever become a dwelling-place of men at any earlier time it is needless to inquire. It is enough that Ragusa now became a city. As to the name of the city, our Imperial guide helps us to one of his strange etymologies. With him Epidauros has sunk into [Greek: Pitaura]--the _t_ seems to have supplanted the _d_ at a much earlier time--and the city on the rocks which its exiles founded was first called from its site [Greek: Lausion], which by vulgar use ([Greek: hê koinê synêtheia, hê pollakis metaphtheirousa ta onomata tê enallagê tôn grammatôn]) became [Greek: Rhaousion]. He tells us that, [Greek: epei epanô tôn krêmnôn histatai legetai de Rhômaisti ho krêmnos lau, eklêthêsan ek toutou Lausaioi, êgoun hoi kathezomenoi eis ton krêmnon]. What tongue is meant by [Greek: Rhômaisti]? It is only because the strange form [Greek: lau] seems to come one degree nearer to [Greek: laas anaidês] than to anything in Latin, that it dawns on us that it means Greek. But, under whatever name, the city on the rocks, small at first, strengthened by refugees from Salona, grew and prospered, and remained one of the outlying Roman or Greek posts which in the days of Constantine, as now, fringed the already barbarian land. For some centuries after the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the history of Ragusa defies abridgement. It is one web of intricate complications between the Emperors of the East and West, the Republic of Venice, the Kings of Hungary, Dalmatia, and Bosnia. Somewhat later the story begins to be more intelligible, when the actors get pretty well reduced to Venice, the Turk, and the Empire in a new form, that of Charles the Fifth. The republic of Ragusa contrived, which must surely have needed a good deal of skill, to keep on good terms at once with Charles and his son Philip and with their Turkish enemies. Yet Ragusa, though never incorporated by anything earlier than the dominion of Buonaparte, stood at different times in a kind of dependent relation both to Venice and to the Turk. At an earlier time the commonwealth for a short time received a Venetian Count. He was doubtless only meant to be like a foreign _podestà_, but Venice was a very dangerous place for Ragusa to bring a _podestà_ from. In her later days Ragusa must be looked on as being under the protection of the Porte; but it was a protection which in no way interfered with her full internal freedom--such freedom at least as is consistent with the rule of an oligarchy. The geography of Dalmatia keeps to this day a curious memorial of the feeling which made Ragusa dread the Turk less than she dreaded Venice. To this day the Dalmatian kingdom does not extend continuously along the Dalmatian coast. At two points territory which till late changes was nominally Turkish, which is still only "administered," not "governed," by its actual ruler, comes down to the Hadriatic coast. These are at Klek, at the bottom of the gulf formed by the long Ragusan peninsula of Sabioncello, and at Sutorina on the _Bocche_ di Cattaro. These two points mark the two ends of the narrow strip of coast which formed the territory of Ragusa. Rather than have a common frontier with Venice at either end, Ragusa willingly allowed the dominions of the Infidel to come down to her own sea on either side of her. At last all dread from Venice passed away, but only because Saint Mark gave way to a more dangerous neighbour. The base conspiracy of Campoformio gave Venetian Dalmatia to an Austrian master, and the strips of Turkish territory which had once sheltered Ragusa from the Venetian now for a while sheltered her from the Austrian. Then the dividers of the spoil quarrelled; the master of France took to himself what France had betrayed to Austria. Presently he disliked the small oasis of independence, and added Ragusa to the dominion which was presently to take in Rome and Lübeck. Lastly, when the days of confusion were over, and order came back to the world, order at Ragusa took the form of a new foreign master. The Austrian, who had reigned for a moment at Zara and Cattaro, but who had never reigned at Ragusa, put forth his hand to filch Ragusa as he has since filched Spizza. The motive need not be asked. The pleasure of seizing the goods of a weaker neighbour is doubtless enough in either case. One point in the history of Ragusa which needs a more thorough explanation than it has yet found is the fact that the Roman or Greek city, founded by men who had escaped from barbarian invaders--who must surely have been largely Slavonic--has become so pre-eminently a Slavonic city. There is no Italian party at Ragusa. Not that the city is strongly Panslavonic; the memory of local freedom has survived through both forms of foreign rule. The Ragusan aristocracy is Slavonic, and the Slavonic language holds quite another position at Ragusa from what it holds, for example, at Spalato. There all that claims to be literature and cultivation is Italian; at Ragusa, though Italian is familiarly spoken, the native literature and cultivation is distinctly Slave. The difference is marked in the very names of the two cities. Spalato is in Slavonic _Spljet_, a mere corruption of the corrupt Latin name. But Ragusa, on Slavonic lips--that is on the lips of its own citizens speaking their own language--is _Dubrovnik_, a perfectly independent Slavonic name. It may be the name of some Slavonic suburb or neighbouring settlement--like the _Wendisches Dorf_ at Lüneburg--but at all events it is no corruption, no translation, of Latin _Ragusa_ or of Constantine's _Raousion_. * * * * * As for King Richard, the Ragusan story is that he built the cathedral which was destroyed in 1667. It is said that he vowed to build a church on the island of La Croma, and that this purpose was changed into building one in the city instead of the former cathedral, while the commonwealth of Ragusa built a church on the island. La Croma thus becomes connected with the memory of two princes who died of thrusting themselves in matters which did not concern them. Richard, Count and King, might have lived longer if he had not quarrelled with his vassal at Limoges; Maximilian, Archduke and self-styled Emperor, was perfectly safe at La Croma, but when he took up the trade of a party-leader in Mexico, he could hardly look for anything but a Mexican party-leader's end. Of the monastery which formed his dwelling-place the great church is so utterly desecrated and spoiled that hardly anything can be made out. But a good deal remains of the cloister, and at a little distance stand the ruins of a beautiful little triapsidal basilica, which surely, all save a few additions, belongs to the age of the Lion-hearted King. Indeed we should be tempted to fix on this, rather than any other church of Ragusa or its island, as the work of Richard himself. It looks greatly as if a Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine had had a hand in it. A single wide body, with three apses opening into it, is not a Dalmatian idea, as it is not an English idea. But something like it might easily be found in Richard's own land of southern Gaul. That Richard did come to Ragusa and to La Croma seems plain from the narrative in Roger of Howden. He hired a ship at Corfu expressly to take him to Ragusa. He landed "prope _Gazere_ apud Ragusam." _Gazere_ suggests Jadera or Zara, but "Gazere apud Ragusam" can hardly fail to mean La Croma. "_Gazere_" is the Arabic name for _island_--the same which appears in _Algesiras_--one of the Eastern words which passed into the _lingua franca_ of the Crusaders. After all, Ragusa gives more interest to Richard than any that it takes from him. Born and twice crowned in England, he had little else to do with England than to squeeze money out of it. It mattered little to Englishmen--or to Normans either--whether their Poitevin lord was astounding the world at Acre, at Chaluz, or at La Croma. * * * * * Two other rather longer excursions than that to La Croma may be profitably made from Ragusa. There is, first of all, the short voyage to the site of the city which Ragusa supplanted, the Dalmatian Epidauros, now known by the odd name of _Ragusa Vecchia_. Beyond a few inscriptions, there is really next to nothing to be seen of the ancient city besides its site; but the site is well worthy of study. It is thoroughly the site for a Greek colony, and it has much in common with the more famous site of Korkyra and Epidamnos. The city occupied a peninsula, sheltered on the one hand by the mainland, on the other by another promontory, forming the outer horn of a small bay. In this position the town had the sea on every side; it had a double harbour, and was at the same time thoroughly sheltered on both sides. Such a site was the perfection of Greek colonial ideas. We have now got far away indeed from the earliest type of city--the hill-fort which dreads the sea, and which finds the need of the haven, and of the long walls to join the haven to the city, only in later times. The highest point of the promontory, the akropolis--if we can use that name in a city of such late date--is now forsaken, crowned only by a burying-ground and sepulchral church. The view is a noble one, looking out on the mainland and the sea, with the neighbouring island crowned by a forsaken monastery, and directly in front Ragusa herself on her rocks, with the beginnings of the Dalmatian archipelago rising in the distance. The modern town, which is hardly more than a village, with two or three churches and a small amount of fortification, covers the isthmus and the lower ground of the promontory. Such is all that is left of the northern city of Asklêpios, the city which played its part alike in the wars of Cæsar and in the wars of Belisarius, which in the great revolution that followed the Slavonic inroads perished to give birth to the more abiding city from which it has strangely borrowed its later name. That Ragusa Vecchia has so little to show is no ground for despising it or passing it by; the very lack of remains in some sort adds to the interest of the spot. The voyage from New to Old Ragusa is not a long one. A shorter land journey on the same side of the city will lead to the sea-side village of Breno, which will not supply the traveller with anything in the antiquarian line, but which will reward him with a good deal of Dalmatian mountain and land scenery, especially with a waterfall, though one not quite on the scale of Kerka. And, to those who peer pryingly into all corners, the little inn of the place will suggest some memories of very modern history. That piece of history it has been the interest of exalted personages to keep unknown, and their efforts have been crowned with a remarkable degree of success. As the inn at Curzola contains picture memories of an unsuccessful struggle for freedom in 1848, so the inn at Breno contains picture memories of a more successful struggle waged twenty-one years later in the same cause and against the same enemy. When in 1869 the present ruler of Austria and Dalmatia strove, in defiance of every chartered right and every royal promise, to trample under foot the ancient rights of the freemen of the Bocche di Cattaro, the troops of the foreign intruder were driven back in ignominious defeat by the brave men of the mountains, and the master who had sent them was forced to renew the promises which he had striven to break. People still chatter about the mythical exploits of Tell, but hardly any one has heard of this little piece of successful resistance to oppression done only twelve years back. The deed is not forgotten by the neighbours of those who did it, and in the inn at Breno rude pictures may be seen showing the victorious Bocchese driving the troops of the stranger down those heights which at Vienna or at Budapest it seemed so easy a matter to bring into bondage. Strange to say, the pictures which record this Slavonic triumph have the legend beneath them in the High-Dutch tongue. Stranger still, it is the eye only and not the ear by which any knowledge of the matter is to be picked up. The wary native, even when spoken to in his own tongue, will not enlarge on the subjects of those pictures to a man in Western garb. It is perhaps not without reason if a stranger in Western garb is suspected in those parts to be a spy of the enemy. If the voyage from New to Old Ragusa is not a long one, the sail on the other side of the city up the river's mouth to Ombla is shorter still. Its starting-point will be, not Ragusa itself but its port of Gravosa. Here the main object is scenery; but several houses, one at least of which will deserve some further mention, a nearly forsaken monastery with a good bell-tower and a not ungraceful church, and one or two living or forsaken chapels may be taken in, and they help us to complete some inferences as to the architecture of the district. But our business at this moment is mainly with the basin which lies at the foot of the limestone rock. The hills of Greece and Dalmatia constantly suggest, to one who knows the West of England, the kindred, though far lowlier, hills of Mendip. As the gorge under the akropolis of Mykênê at once suggests the gorge of Cheddar, so the basin of the Trebenitza at Ombla suggests, though the scale is larger, the basin of the Axe at Wookey Hole. The river runs out from the bottom of the rocks, and, to those who have been adventurous enough to cross the heights and to make their way through the desolate land of Herzegovina--the very land of limestone in all forms--as far as Trebinje, the river that reappears at Ombla is an old friend. There seems no doubt that it is the Trebenitza which, after hiding itself in a _katabothra_, comes out again to light in the Ombla basin. The journey to Trebinje itself is in its own nature less exciting now than it was in 1875. What it was when the drive thither from Ragusa enabled the traveller to say that he had been into "Turkey," and that he had seen a little of a land in a state of warfare, may perhaps be worth some separate mention. At present it is reported that Trebinje is cleaner than it was then, that it has been adorned with a _Rudolfsplatz_, and that justice is there administered to its Slavonic folk, Christian and Mussulman, in the tongue of which _Rudolfsplatz_ is a specimen. It would therefore seem that the direct rule of the stranger is at least better than his "administration." At Ragusa men are allowed to speak their own tongue in which they were born. RAGUSAN ARCHITECTURE. 1875--1877--1881. We have spoken in a former article of the general aspect and the historical position of the city and commonwealth of Ragusa, her hills, her walls, her havens, her union of freedom from the lion of Saint Mark with half dependence on the crescent of Mahomet. But this ancient and isolated city has yet something more to tell of. There are several of the municipal and domestic buildings of the fallen republic, buildings which, as far as we know, have never been described or illustrated in detail in any English work, and of which no worthy representation can be found on the spot. In the work of Eitelberger much will be found; but for the ordinary English student there is no help at all. Yet, on the strength of these buildings, Ragusa may really claim a place among those cities which stand foremost in the history of architectural progress. And this fact is the more remarkable, and the more to be insisted on, because of the seemingly general belief that there is little or nothing to see at Ragusa in the way of architecture. But the truth is that far more of the old city escaped the earthquake of 1667 than would be thought at first sight. Because the cathedral is later, because the general aspect of the main street is later, the idea is suggested that nothing is left but the municipal palace. That alone would be a most important exception, but it is by no means the only one. If the traveller leaves the main street and turns up the narrow alleys which run from it up the hills on either side, alleys many of them which, at present at least, lead to nothing, he will find many scraps of domestic architecture which must belong to times earlier than the great blow of the seventeenth century. Signs of that blow are seen in many places in the form of scraps of detail of various kinds irregularly built up in the wall; but there are a great number of pointed doorways still in their places which no man can think are later than 1667. Some of these are simply pointed; others combine the pointed arch with the tympanum, sometimes with both the tympanum and the spandril. There is also a not unpleasing type of _Renaissance_ doorway, a lintel resting on two pilasters with floriated capitals, which one can hardly believe are due to a time so late as the days after the earthquake. At all events, if they are later than the earthquake, they only go to strengthen the general position which we have to lay down, namely the way in which early forms lived on at Ragusa to an amazingly late date. This same examination of the narrow streets will also bring to light a few, but only a few, windows of the Venetian Gothic. The strength of Ragusa, as far as scraps of this kind are concerned, undoubtedly lies in its doorways. [Illustration: TOWER OF FRANCISCAN CHURCH, RAGUSA.] In the churches too there is more left than the mere scraps which are built up again. Parts at least of the tall towers--neither of them detached--of the Franciscan and Dominican churches, the former in the main street, the latter near the eastern gate, are also earlier. In the former the line of junction between the older tower and the ugly church which has been built up against it is clearly to be seen. The upper stage of this tower, and the small cupola which crowns it, _may_ be later than the earthquake; but if so, they have caught the spirit of earlier work in an unusual degree, and all the lower part is in a form of Italian Gothic less unpleasing than usual. Both this tower and that of the Dominican church show how long the general type of the earliest Romanesque campaniles went on. Save in the small cupola, this tower has the perfect air, and almost the details, of a tower of the eleventh century: three ranges of windows with mid-wall shafts rise over one another; only they are grouped under containing arches in what in England we should call a Norman fashion. But, as this tower forms part of a Dominican monastery, it cannot be earlier than the thirteenth century, and its smaller details also cannot belong to any earlier date. Yet the general effect of this tower, even more than of the other, is that of a tower of the Primitive type. The Dominican church also keeps some details of Italian Gothic which must be older than the earthquake, and the cloister is one of the best specimens of that style. Its groupings of tracery under round arches, the poverty of design in the tracery itself, strike us as weak, if our thoughts go back to Salisbury or to Zürich; but the general effect is good, and the cloister--as distinguished from the buildings above it--may almost be called beautiful. Of more importance in the history of Ragusan architecture is the Franciscan cloister. Being Franciscan, it cannot be earlier than the thirteenth century, and it may well be much later. But it is essentially Romanesque in style. The general effect of the tall shafts which support its narrow round arches differs indeed a good deal from the general effect of the more massive Romanesque cloisters to which we are used elsewhere. But it is essentially one with them in style, and it is one of the many witnesses to the way in which at Ragusa early forms were kept in use till a late time. But the architectural glory of Ragusa is certainly not to be looked for among its churches. The most truly instructive work that Ragusa has to show in any of its ecclesiastical buildings does not show itself at first sight, and its full significance is not likely to be understood till the civic and domestic buildings of the city and its suburbs have been well studied. When this has been done, it will be easily seen that certain arches and capitals in the subordinate buildings of the Dominican church have their part in the history of Ragusan art; but the great civic buildings must be seen and mastered first. Of these two of the highest interest escaped the common overthrow. They both show the Italian Gothic in its best shape; but they also show something else which is of far higher value. They show that peculiar form of _Renaissance_ which can hardly be called _Renaissance_ in any bad sense, which is in truth a last outburst of Romanesque, a living child of classical forms, not a dead imitation of them. Examples of this kind often meet us in Italy; we see something of it in the north side of the great _piazza_ at Venice as compared with the southern side; but the Ragusan examples go beyond anything that we know of elsewhere. Give the palace of Ragusa--the palace, not of a Doge, but of a Rector--the same size, the same position, as the building which answers to it at Venice, and we should soon see that the city which so long held her own against Venice in other ways could hold her own in art also. The Venetian arcade cannot for a moment be compared to the Ragusan; the main front of the Ragusan building has escaped the addition of the ugly upper story which disfigures the Venetian. As wholes, of course no one can compare the two in general effect. Saint Blaise must yield to Saint Mark. But set Saint Blaise's palace on Saint Mark's site; carry out his arcade to the same boundless extent, and there is little doubt which would be the grander pile. The Venetian building overwhelms by its general effect; the Ragusan building will better stand the test of minute study. [Illustration: PALACE, RAGUSA.] The palace of the Ragusan commonwealth was begun in 1388, and finished in 1435, in the reign, as an inscription takes care to announce, of the Emperor Siegmund. What name shall we give to the style of this most remarkable building, at all events to the style of its admirable arcade? Here are six arches--why did not the architect carry on the design through the whole length of the building?--which show what, as late as the fifteenth century, a round-arched style could still do when it followed its natural promptings, instead of either binding itself by slavish precedents or striving after a helpless imitation of foreign forms. Never mind the date; here is Romanesque in all its truth and beauty; here, in the land which gave Rome so many of her greatest Cæsars, the arcade of Ragusa may worthily end the series which began with the arcades of Spalato. Siegmund, the last but one to wear the crown of Diocletian in the Eternal City, has his name not quite unworthily engraved on a building less removed in style than a distance of more than eleven centuries would have led us to expect from the everlasting house of Jovius. Does some pedantic Vitruvian brand the columns as too short? The architect has grasped the truth that, as the arch takes the place of the entablature, the height of the arch may fairly be taken out of the height of the column. Does he blame the massive abaci? They are wrought to bear the greater immediate weight which the arch brings upon the capital, and they avoid such shifts as the Ravenna stilt and the Byzantine double capital. Does he blame the capitals, which certainly do not follow the exact pattern of any Vitruvian order? Let us answer boldly, Why should art be put in fetters? A Corinthian capital is a beautiful form; but why should the hand of man be kept back from devising other beautiful forms? The Ragusan architect has ventured to cover some of his capitals with foliage which does not obey any pedantic rule; in others he has ventured--like the artists of the noble capitals which may still be seen in the Capitol and in Caracalla's baths--to bring in the forms of animal and of human, as well as of vegetable, life. In one point his taste seems slightly to have failed him; on some of the capitals the winged figures with which they are wrought savour a little of the vulgar _Renaissance_. But who shall blame the capital long ago engraved and commented on by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in which however a neighbouring inscription shows that tradition was right in seeing the form of Asklêpios, and not that of a mere mortal alchemist, though tradition was certainly wrong in believing that Asklêpios had been brought ready made from his old home at Epidauros? And the capitals bear arches worthy of them, round arches with mouldings and ornaments, which thoroughly fit their shape, though, like the capitals, they do not servilely follow any prescribed rule. Altogether this arcade only makes us wish for more, for a longer range from the same hand. Compare it with the vulgar Italian work of the two neighbouring churches. Pisa and Durham might have stretched out the right hand of fellowship to Romanesque Ragusa before the earthquake; they would have held it back from Jesuited Ragusa after it. The rest of the front cannot be called worthy of this admirable arcade. The windows behind the arcade are of the worse, those above it are of the better, kind of Italian Gothic. These last in fact are about as good as Italian Gothic can be. They are well proportioned two-light windows with Geometrical tracery, and in the general effect they really agree better than could have been looked for with the admirable arches below. Still they are Italian Gothic, and at Ragusa we should not welcome the loveliest form of tracery that Carlisle or Selby could give us. A Pisan arcade, pierced for light wherever light was wanted, would have been the right thing for the columns and arches to bear aloft. He who duly admires the arcade will do well to shut his eyes as he turns round the corner by the west front of the cathedral; but let him go inside, and the court, if not altogether worthy of the outer arcade, is no contemptible specimen of the same style. It contains one or two monuments of Ragusan worthies. The figure of Roland, which lay there neglected when we first saw Ragusa, has since been set up again in the open _piazza_. And, strange to say in these lands, it ventures to proclaim itself as having been set up, as it might have been in the old time, by the free act of the _commune_ of Ragusa, without any of those cringing references to a foreign power which are commonly found expedient under foreign rule. The court is entered by a side door with two ancient knockers, one of them a worthy fellow of the great one at Durham or of that which we saw more lately at Curzola. But its chief interest comes from its strictly architectural forms, and from the comparison of them with those which are made use of on the outside. The court is very small, and it is surrounded on all sides, save that which is filled by the grand staircase, by an arcade of two, supporting a second upper range. The composition is thus better than that of the front itself, as there are two harmonious stages in the same style, without any intrusion of foreign elements, like the pointed windows in the front; but the arcades themselves, though very good and simple, do not carry out the wonderful boldness and originality of the outer range. Columns with tongues to their base with flowered capitals, showing a remembrance, but not a servile remembrance, of Corinthian models, support round arches. Over these is the upper range of two round arches over each one below, resting on coupled shafts, the arrangement which, from the so-called tomb of Saint Constantia, has spread to so many Romanesque cloisters and to so many works of the Saracen. Were this range open, instead of being foolishly glazed, this design of two stages of a true Romanesque, simpler, but perhaps more classical, than the outer arcade, would form a design thoroughly harmonious and satisfactory. Now when we come to examine this inner court more minutely, we shall find that it is certainly of later date than the outer arcade, and that it supplanted earlier work which formed part of the same design as the outer arcade. It is impossible to believe that the court is later than the great earthquake; but 1667 was not the only year in which Ragusa underwent visitations of that kind; and it is an allowable guess that a rebuilding took place after an earlier earthquake in the beginning of the sixteenth century. That some change took place at some time is certain. There are preparations for spanning arches at one point of the outer wall of the court, which could never have agreed with the position of the present columns. And we have a most interesting piece of documentary evidence which carries us further. In a manuscript account of the building of the palace, it is mentioned that at the entrance were two columns, on the capital of one of which was carved the Judgement of Solomon, while the other showed the Rector of Ragusa sitting to administer justice after the model of Solomon. Now this cannot refer to the outer arcade, where none of the capitals show those subjects. Still less is there anything like it in the arcade of the court, nor can there have been since the present arrangement was made. But the description is no freak of the imagination; both capitals are in being; one of them is still within the palace. The capital showing the Rector in his chair dispensing justice to his fellow-citizens is built in at a corner in the upper story of the court. And a capital of exactly the same style, and with the Judgement of Solomon carved on one face of it, may still be seen in the garden of a house outside the city of which we shall have presently to speak. It is thus perfectly plain that the inner court was rebuilt at some time later than the days of Siegmund, and that this rebuilding displaced an inner design more in harmony with the outer arcade, and of which these two capitals formed a part. To our mind this palace, to which Sir Gardner Wilkinson hardly does justice, and of which Mr. Neale takes no notice at all, really deserves no small place in the history of Romanesque art. It shows how late the genuine tradition lingered on, and what vigorous offshoots the old style could throw off, even when it might be thought to be dead. One or two capitals show that the Ragusan architect knew of the actual _Renaissance_. But it was only in that one detail that he went astray. In everything else he started from sound principles, and from them vigorously developed for himself. And the fruit of his work was a building which thoroughly satisfies every requirement of criticism, and on which the eye gazes with ever increased delight, as one of the fairest triumphs of human skill within the range of the builder's art. But the palace must not be spoken of as if it stood altogether alone among the buildings of the city. There is another civic building, which, though it does not reach the full perfection of its great neighbour, must also be treated as a true fruit, in some sort a more remarkable fruit, of the same spirit which called its greater neighbour into being. This is the building which acted at once in the characters of mint and custom-house, the second character being set forth by its name wrought in nails on the great door. This building stands just where the main street and the _piazza_ join, close by the arch leading to the town-gate. Here we have an arcade of five, the columns of which are crowned with capitals, Composite in their general shape, but not slavishly following technical precedents, nor all of them exactly alike. They have a heavy abacus, which, as well as the soffit of the round arch, is enriched with flowered work. One or two of them are none the better for being new chiselled in modern times. Here is something which is quite unlike Northern Romanesque, but which still is absolutely identical with it in principle. The column and the round arch are there in their purity, and the enrichment is of a kind which we instinctively feel is in place at Ragusa, though it would be out of place at Caen or Mainz or Durham. Whatever the date may be, the thing is thoroughly good, incomparably better than either the Italian Gothic or the cosmopolite Jesuit style. Above the arcade are windows with the usual Venetian attempt at tracery, a large square window between two with ogee arches; above is a stage with square windows, which we may hope is a later addition. The merits of the three stages lessen as they get higher. Yet from the date, when we come to find it out, it seems not impossible that the arcade and both the stages above it may really be of the same date. In the inner court there are no such discordant elements as there are without, though the forms of different styles are quite as much mingled. Octagonal piers support round arches; pointed doorways with thoroughly Ragusan tympana open into the chamber behind them. On this arcade rests another, with round arches on the short sides of the court, and pointed arches on the long sides, rising from columns and square piers alternately. Above is a range which might as well be away. Square windows, round Ragusan windows, might well be endured; but _Renaissance_ shields and _Renaissance_ angels show that the infection had begun. Now this beautiful piece of Romanesque work--we give it that name in defiance of dates--was finished in 1520, when the world on the southern side of the Alps was, for the most part, running after the dreariest forms of the mere revived Italian. This amazingly late date makes this building even more wonderful than the palace, though it certainly is not its rival in beauty. The arcades, good as they are, cannot be compared to those of the palace, and the Venetian work above is still more inferior. Still, the later the date, the more honour to the architect who designed such a work at such a time. And the later the date, the more likely that he built his arcade according to the promptings of his own genius, and added the two ranges of windows in deference to the two rival fashions of his time. [Illustration: DOGANA, RAGUSA.] The arcade of this building, taken alone without reference to the windows above, is the last link in a chain which shows that the preservation of good architectural ideas at so late a time is no mere accident. Indeed, if we pass from public buildings within the city to private buildings outside of it, we shall begin to doubt whether the _dogana_ is the last chain, and whether there are not still later buildings which are fairly entitled to the Romanesque name. The best of the houses of the Ragusan patricians are to be found, not within the city, but by the port at Gravosa, and further on on the way to Ombla. Several of those, while their other features are Venetian Gothic, or even later still, have--commonly in their upper _loggie_--a column or two supporting a round arch, which are certainly not vulgar _Renaissance_, and which keep on the sound tradition of the palace and the _dogana_. The finest of these is the house of the Counts Caboga, known as Batahovina, on the coast on the way to Ombla. Here, as in the palace, as in the _dogana_, an arcade of this late local Romanesque supports an upper story of Venetian Gothic, very inferior and most likely much later than that in either of the civic buildings. It has however at each end an open _loggia_ matching the arcade below. The columns, plain and with twisted flutes--distant kinsfolk of Waltham, Durham, Dunfermline, and Lindisfarn--have capitals such as we might look for in much earlier Romanesque. [Illustration: CABOGA HOUSE, GRAVOSA.] This, we may note by the way, is the house in whose garden the column from the palace, wrought with the Judgement of Solomon, still lies hid. Indeed we might go further away from the palace than the _loggie_ of the houses. At Ragusa art extends itself to objects which might have been thought hardly capable of artistic treatment. Stone is common, and it is used for all manner of purposes. Among other things stone vine-props are common. In not a few cases these take the form of columns, slenderer doubtless than the rules of classical proportion, realizing the description of Cassiodorus about the tall columns like reeds, the lofty buildings propped as it were on the shafts of spears. Sometimes the columns are fluted or twisted; in a great many cases they have real capitals, with various forms according to taste. It often happens that a row of such columns, whether on a house-top or in a vineyard, really becomes an architectural object, a genuine colonnade. Here the style, the construction at least, is Greek rather than Romanesque; but the principle is the same. A good and rational artistic form is kept in use, and is applied to a purpose for which it is fitted. All these examples, the palace, the _dogana_, the houses, the remains in the Dominican church, we might almost say the vine-props, look one way. All point to the existence of a Ragusan style, to an unbroken Romanesque tradition, which could not wholly withstand the inroads of the _pseudo_-Gothic of Italy, but which could at least keep its place alongside of the intruder. All help us to see how instructive must have been the course of architectural developement at Ragusa, and how much has been lost to the history of art by the destruction of so many of the buildings of the city in the great earthquake. It is easy to see that for a long time the struggle between the genuine Romanesque tradition, the Italian Gothic, and the new ideas of the _Renaissance_, must have been very hard. How long real Romanesque went on, bringing in new developements of its own, but remaining still as truly Romanesque by unbroken succession as anything at Pisa or Durham, is shown by the noble arches of the palace, and the still later _dogana_. The slight touch of _Renaissance_ in some of the capitals of the palace in no sort takes away from the general purity of the style. Still over these noble arcades are windows of Venetian Gothic, and one of the most characteristic features of the Ragusan streets are the flat-headed doorways. But these, alternating as they do with pointed ones, help to make out our case. On the other hand, it is equally plain that in some cases the _Renaissance_ came in early. A little chapel by the basin at Ombla, bearing date 1480, is in a confirmed _Renaissance_ style, and looks more like 1580. Yet of true _Renaissance_ there is very little. One large house in the city, older than the earthquake, stands quite alone as the kind of thing which might easily have been built in Italy or copied in England. But at Ragusa, in the near neighbourhood of several native doorways of different shapes, of many native vine-props, of several native wells--for wells too take an artistic style and copy the form of a capital--the regular trim Palladian building looks strangely out of place. Even in the _Stradone_, where in the houses there is little architecture of any kind, a touch of ancient effect is kept in the form of the shops, with their arches and stone dressers, thoroughly after the mediæval pattern. And some architectural features never died out. The round window with tracery goes on long after every other feature of Romanesque or Gothic is forgotten. It is to be seen in endless little chapels of very late date in the city and suburbs, sometimes standing apart, sometimes attached to private houses. The plain conclusion from all this is that at Ragusa the use of the round arch for the chief arcades never went out of use; that it always remained as a constructive feature, passing from Romanesque to _Renaissance_, if fully developed _Renaissance_ can at Ragusa be said to exist at all, without any intermediate Gothic stage, and continuing to invent and adopt any kind of ornament which suited its constructive form. In windows and doorways, on the other hand, the forms of the Italian Gothic came in and stood their ground till a very late date. In most cases we wish the Venetian features away; in the upper story of the palace they may be endured; but conceive palace, _dogana_, Caboga house, with smaller arcades and windows to match the great constructive arches. Such buildings as these, now so few, make us sigh over the effects of the great earthquake, and over the treasures of art which it must have swallowed up. If Ragusa, in her earlier day, contained a series of churches to match her civic arcades, she might claim, in strictly artistic interest, to stand alongside of Rome, Ravenna, Pisa, and Lucca. Her churches of the fifteenth century must have been worthy to rank with anything from the fourth century to the twelfth. One longs to be able to study the Ragusan style in more than these few examples. It is not indeed absolutely peculiar either to Ragusa or to Dalmatia. Many buildings in Italy and Sicily show a good native Romanesque tradition, holding its own against the sham Gothic, and showing a good fight against the _Renaissance_. Not a few arcades, not a few cloisters, of this kind may be found here and there. But it would be hard to light on another such group of buildings as the palace, the _dogana_, and their fellows. In any case the Dalmatian coast may hold its head high among the artistic regions of the world. It is no small matter that the harmonious and consistent use of the arch and column should have begun at Spalato, and that identically the same constructive form should still be found, eleven ages later, putting forth fresh and genuine shapes of beauty at Ragusa. A TRUDGE TO TREBINJE. 1875. [This paper, as giving the impressions of a first visit to the soil of Herzegovina, during an early stage of the war, has been reprinted, with the change of a few words, as it was first written.] The first step which any man takes beyond the bounds of Christendom can hardly fail to mark a kind of epoch in his life. And the epoch becomes more memorable when the first step is taken into an actual "seat of war," where the old strife between Christian and Moslem is still going on with all the bitterness of crusading days. In Europe it is now in one quarter only that such a step can be made by land with somewhat less of formality than is often needed in passing from one Christian state to another. It is now only in the great south-eastern peninsula that the frontier of the Turk marches upon the dominions of any Christian power; and, now that Russia and the Turk are no longer immediate neighbours, the powers on which his frontier marches are, with one exception, states which have been more or less fully liberated from his real or asserted dominion. That exception is to be found in the Hadriatic dominions of Austria; and certainly no more striking contrast can be imagined than that which strikes the traveller as he passes on this side from Christian to Moslem dominion. Let us suppose him to be at Ragusa, with his ears full of tales from the seat of war, all of which cannot be true, but all of which may possibly be false. The insurgents have burned a Turkish village. No; it was a Christian village, and the Turks burned it. The Turks have murdered seven Roman Catholics. The Turks have murdered seventy Roman Catholics--a difference this last which may throw light on some cases of disputed numbers in various parts of history. The Turks have threatened Austrian subjects. Austrian subjects have attacked the Turks. An Italian has had his head cut off by the Turks just beyond the frontier. A Turkish soldier has been found lying dead in the road a little further on. These two last stories come on the authority of men who have seen the bodies, so that we have got within the bounds of credible testimony. Meanwhile the one thing about which there is no doubt is the presence and the wretchedness of the unhappy Herzegovinese women and children whose homes have been destroyed either by friends or by enemies, and who are seeking such shelter as public and private charity can give in hospitable Ragusa. All these things kindle a certain desire to get at least a glimpse of the land where something is certainly going on, though it may not be easy to know exactly what. Between Ragusa and Trebinje there is just now no actual fighting; the road is reported to be perfectly safe; only it is advisable to get a passport _visé_ by the Turkish consul. The passports are _visé_, but, so far for the credit of the Turks, it must be added that, though duly carried, they were never asked for. The party, four in number--three English and one Russian--presently set forth from Ragusa. It is now as easy to get a carriage at Ragusa as in any other European town. So our party sets out behind two of the small but strong and sure-footed horses of the country, to get a glimpse of what, to two at least of their number, were the hitherto unknown lands of Paynimrie. As long as we are on Austrian territory there is nothing to fear or to complain of but those evils which no kings or laws can cure. The day was rainy--so rainy that a word was once or twice murmured in favour of turning back; but it was deemed faint-hearted to turn again in an undertaking which had been once begun. On the Austrian side the rain was certainly to be regretted, as damping the charm of the glorious prospect from the zigzag road which winds up from Ragusa to the frontier point of Drino. Ragusa, nestling among hills and forts and castles, the isle of La Croma keeping guard over the haven which has ceased to be a haven, the wide Hadriatic stretching to the horizon, form a picture surpassed by but few pictures even in the glorious scenery of the Dalmatian coast. On the other side, it was perhaps no great harm if the rain made the savage land between Drino and Trebinje seem more savage still. At the top of the height the Austrian guard-house is reached, a guard-house which the line of the frontier causes to be overlooked by a Turkish fort above it. The guardians of the borders of Christendom look wild enough in their local dress; but the wildness is all outside, though one certainly does not envy them their watch on so dreary a spot. Hard by is the place where the Italian lost his head; but the Italian was openly in the ranks of the insurgents; so, though the thought is a little thrilling, our present travellers feel no real danger for their heads. The frontier is now passed; we are in the land where the Asiatic and Mahometan invader still holds European and Christian nations in bondage. We see no immediate sign of his presence. The Turkish guard-house is at some distance from the Austrian, in order to watch the pass on the other side, where the road begins to go down towards Trebinje, as the Austrian guards the road immediately up from Ragusa. But, if as yet we see not the Turk, we feel his presence in another way. In one point at least we have suddenly changed from civilization to barbarism. The excellently kept Austrian road at once stops--that is to say, its excellent keeping stops; the road goes on, only it is no longer mended in Austrian but in Turkish fashion--a fashion of which the dullest English highway board would perhaps be ashamed. We presently begin to see something cf the land of Herzegovina, or at least of that part of it which lies between Ragusa and Trebinje. It may be most simply described as a continuous mass of limestone. The town lies in a plain surrounded by hills, and it would be untrue to say that that plain is altogether without trees or without cultivation. Close to the town tobacco grows freely, and before we reach the town, as we draw near to the river Trebenitza, the dominion of utter barrenness has come to an end. But the first general impression of the land is one of utter barrenness, and for a great part of our course, long after we have come down into the lower ground, this first general impression remains literally true. It is not like a mountain valley or a mountain coast, with a fringe of inhabited and cultivated land at the foot of the heights. All is barren; all is stone; stone which, if it serves no other human purpose, might at least be used to make the road better. That road, in all its Turkish wretchedness, goes on and on, through masses of limestone of every size, from the mountains which form the natural wall of Trebinje down to lumps which nature has broken nearly small enough for the purposes of MacAdam. Through the greater part of the route not a house is to be seen; there are one or two near the frontier; there is hardly another till we draw near to the town, when we pass a small village or two, of which more anon. Through the greater part of the route not a living being is to be seen. In such a wilderness we might at least have looked for birds of prey; but no flight of vultures, no solitary eagle, shows itself. As for man, he seems absent also, save for one great exception, which exception gives the journey to Trebinje its marked character, and which brings thoroughly home to us that we are passing through a seat of war. It will be remembered that, early in the war, the insurgents were attacking the town of Trebinje, and, among later rumours, were tales of renewed attacks in that quarter. But at the time of our travellers' journey the road was perfectly open, and no actual fighting was going on in the neighbourhood. Trebinje however was on the watch: the plain before the town was full of tents, and, long before the town or the tents were within sight, the sight of actual campaigners gave a keen feeling of what was going on. Flour is to be had in the stony land only by seeking it within the Austrian frontier, and to the Austrian frontier accordingly the packhorses go, with a strong convoy of Turkish soldiers to guard them. Twice therefore in the course of their journey, going and coming back, did our travellers fall in with the Turkish troops on their way to and from the land of food. For men who had never before seen anything of actual warfare there was something striking in the first sight of soldiers, not neat and trim as for some day of parade, but ragged, dirty, and weather-stained with the actual work of war. And there was something more striking still in the thought that these were the old enemies of Europe and of Christendom, the representatives of the men who stormed the gates of the New Rome and who overthrew the chivalry of Burgundy and Poland at Nikopolis and at Varna. But the Turk in a half-European uniform has lost both his picturesqueness and his terrors, and the best troops in Europe would be seen to no great advantage on such a day and on such a march. And perhaps Turkish soldiers, like all other men and things, look differently according to the eyes with which they are looked at. Some eyes noticed them as being, under all their disadvantages, well-made and powerful-looking men. Other eyes looked with less pleasure on the countenances of the barbarians who were brought to spread havoc over Christian lands. All however agreed that, as the armed votaries of the Prophet passed before them, the unmistakeable features of the Æthiop were not lacking among the many varieties of countenance which they displayed. But the Paynim force, though it did no actual deed of arms before the eyes of our party, did something more than simply march along the road. The realities of warfare came out more vividly when, at every fitting point, skirmishers were thrown off to occupy each of the peaked hills and other prominent points which line the road like so many watchtowers. The armed force went and came back that day without any need for actually using their arms. Insurgent attacks on the convoys are a marked feature of the present war; but our travellers had not the opportunity of seeing such a skirmish. Still before long they did see one most speaking sign of war and its horrors. By the banks of the Trebenitza a burned village first came in sight. The sight gives a kind of turn to the whole man; still a burned village is not quite so ugly in reality as it sounds in name. The stone walls of the houses are standing; it is only the roofs that are burned off. But who burned the village, and why? He would be a very rash man who should venture to say, without the personal witness of those who burned it, or saw it burned. Was it a Christian village burned by Turks? Was it a Turkish village burned by Christians? Was it a Christian village burned by the insurgents because its inhabitants refused to join in the insurrection? Was it a Christian village burned by its own inhabitants rather than leave anything to fall into the hands of the Turks? If rumour is to be trusted, cases of all these four kinds have happened in the course of the war. All that can be said is that the village has a church and shows no signs of a mosque, and that, while the houses were burned, the church was not. The burned village lay near a point of the river which it is usually possible to ford in a carriage. This time however, the Trebenitza--a river which, like so many Greek rivers, loses itself in a _katabothra_--was far too full to be crossed in this way, and our travellers had to leave their carriage and horses and get to Trebinje as they could. After some scrambling over stones, a boat was found, which strongly suggested those legends of Charon which are far from having died out of the memory of the Christians of the East. A primitive punt it was, with much water in it, which Charon slowly ladled out with a weapon which suggested the notion of a gigantic spoon. Charon himself was a ragged object enough, but, as became his craft, he seemed master of many tongues. We may guess that his native speech would be Slave, but one of the company recognized some of his talk for Turkish, and the demand for the two oboli of old was translated into the strange phrase of "dieci groschen." To our travellers the words suggested was the expiring coinage of the German Empire; they did not then take it how widely the _groat_ had spread its name in the south-eastern lands. At first hearing, the name sounded strange on the banks of the Trebenitza; but in the absence of literal _groats_ or _groschen_, the currency of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was found in practice to do just as well. Then our four pilgrims crossed and crossed again, the second time with much gladness of heart, as for a while things looked as if no means of getting back again were forthcoming, and it was not every one of the party that had a heart stout enough even to think of trying to swim or wade. Charon's second appearance was therefore hailed with special pleasure. From the crossing-place to Trebinje itself our travellers had to trudge as they could along a fearfully rough Turkish path--not rougher though than some Dalmatian and Montenegrin paths--till they reached the town itself, which this delay gave them but little time to examine. The suburbs stretched along the hillside; below, the tents of the Turkish troops were pitched on one side; the Mahometan burial-ground lay on the other. After so much time and pains had been spent in getting to Trebinje, a glimpse of Trebinje itself was all that was to be had. But even a glimpse of Eastern life was something, particularly a glimpse of Eastern life where Eastern life should not be, in a land which once was European. It is the rule of the Turk, it is the effect of his four hundred years of oppression, which makes Trebinje to differ alike from Tzetinje and from Cattaro. The dark, dingy, narrow, streets, the dim arches and vaults, the bazaar, with the Turk--more truly the renegade Slave--squatting in his shop, the gate with its Arabic inscription, the mosques with their minarets contrasting with the church with its disused campanile, all come home to us with a feeling not only of mere strangeness, but of something which is where it ought not to be. It is with a feeling of relief that, after our second trudge, our second voyage, our second meeting with the convoy, we reach the heights, we pass the guard-houses, and find ourselves again in Christendom. Presently Ragusa comes within sight; we are in no mood to discuss the respective merits of the fallen aristocratic commonwealths and of the rule of the Apostolic King. King or Doge or Rector, we may be thankful for the rule of any of them, so as it be not the rule of the Sultan. The difference between four hundred years of civilized government and four hundred years of barbarian tyranny has made the difference between Ragusa and Trebinje. CATTARO. 1875. [I have left this paper, with a few needful corrections, as it was published in March 1876. Since then, it must be remembered, much has changed, especially in the way of boundaries--to say nothing of a carriage-way to Tzetinje. Neither Cattaro nor Budua is any longer either the end of Christendom or the end of the Dalmatian kingdom of the Austrian. That kingdom has been enlarged by the harbour of Spizza, won from the Turk by Montenegrin valour and won from the Montenegrin by Austrian diplomacy. But Christendom must now be looked on as enlarged by the whole Montenegrin sea-coast, a form of words which I could not have used either in 1875 or in 1877. Of this sea-coast I shall have something to say in another paper.] The end of a purely Dalmatian pilgrimage will be Cattaro. He who goes further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he has hitherto traced from Zara--we might say from Capo d'Istria--onwards. We have not reached the end of the old Venetian dominion--for that we must carry on our voyage to Crete and Cyprus. But we have reached the end of the nearly continuous Venetian dominion--the end of the coast which, save at two small points, was either Venetian or Ragusan--the end of that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they kept down to their fall in modern times, and in which they have been succeeded by the modern Dalmatian kingdom. After Cattaro and the small district of Budua beyond it, the Venetian territory did indeed once go on continuously as far as Epidamnos, Dyrrhachion, or Durazzo, while, down to the fall of the Republic, it went on, in the form of scattered outposts, much farther. But, for a long time past, Venice had held beyond Budua only islands and outlying points; and most of these, except the seven so-called Ionian Islands and a few memorable points on the neighbouring mainland, had passed away from her before her fall. Cattaro is the last city of the present Austrian dominion; it is, till we reach the frontier of the modern Greek kingdom, the last city of Christendom. The next point at which the steamer stops will land the traveller on what is now Turkish ground. But the distinction is older than that; he will now change from a Slavonic mainland with a half-Italian fringe on its coast to an Albanian, that is an Old-Illyrian, land, with a few points here and there which once came under Italian influences. It is not at an arbitrary point that the dominion in which the Apostolic King has succeeded the Serene Republic comes to an end. With Cattaro then the Dalmatian journey and the series of Dalmatian cities will naturally end. Cattaro is commonly said to have been the Ascrivium or Askrourion of Pliny and Ptolemy, one of the Roman towns which Pliny places after Epidauros--that Epidauros which was the parent of Ragusa--towards the south-east. And, as it is placed between Rhizinion and Butua, which must be Risano and Budua, one can hardly doubt that the identification is right. But though Ascrivium is described as a town of Roman citizens, it has not, like some of its neighbours, any history in purely Roman times. It first comes into notice in the pages of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and it will therefore give us for the last time the privilege of studying topography in company with an Emperor. In his pages the city bears a name which is evidently the same as the name which it bears still, but which the august geographer seizes on as the subject of one of his wonderful bits of etymology. Cattaro with him is Dekatera, and we read: [Greek: hoti to kastron tôn Dekaterôn hermêneuetai tê Rhômaiôn dialektô estenômenon kai peplêgmenon.] We are again driven to ask, Which is the dialect of the Romans? What word either of Greek or of Latin can the Emperor have got hold of? At the same time he had got a fair notion of the general position of Cattaro, though he runs off into bits of exaggeration which remind us of Giraldus' description of Llanthony. The city stands at the end of an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty miles long, and it has mountains around it so high that it is only in fair summer weather that the sun can be seen; in winter Dekatera never enjoys his presence. There certainly is no place where it is harder to believe that the smooth waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with mountains on each side which it seems as if one could put out one's hand and touch, are really part of the same sea which dashes against the rocks of Ragusa. They end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think of Bourget or Trasimenus rather than of Hadria. The Dalmatian voyage is well ended by the sail along the _Bocche_, the loveliest piece of inland sea which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural beauty. The general history of the district consists in the usual tossing to and fro between the various powers which have at different times been strong in the neighbourhood. Cattaro--[Greek: ta katô Dekatera]--was in the reign of Basil the Macedonian besieged and taken by Saracens, who presently went on unsuccessfully to besiege Ragusa. And, as under Byzantine rule it was taken by Saracens, so under Venetian rule it was more than once besieged by Turks. In the intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and of subjection to all the neighbouring powers in turn, till in 1419 Cattaro finally became Venetian. At the fall of the Republic it became part of the Austrian share of the spoil. When the spoilers quarrelled, it fell to France. When England, Russia, and Montenegro were allies, the city joined the land of which it naturally forms the head, and Cattaro became the Montenegrin haven and capital. When France was no longer dangerous, and the powers of Europe came together to part out other men's goods, Austria calmly asked for Cattaro back again, and easily got it. To this day the land keeps many signs of the endless changes which it has undergone. We enter the mouth of the gulf, where, eighty years ago, the land was Ragusan on the left hand and Venetian on the right. But Ragusa and Venice between them did not occupy the whole shore of the _Bocche_; neither at this day does the whole of it belong to that Dalmatian kingdom which has taken the place of both the old republics. We soon reach the further of the two points where Ragusan jealousy preferred an infidel to a Christian neighbour. At Sutorina the Turkish territory nominally comes down to the sea; nominally we say, for if the soil belongs to the Sultan, the road, the most important thing upon it, belongs to the Dalmatian King. And if the Turk comes down to the _Bocche_ at this end, at the other end the Montenegrin, if he does not come down to the water, at least looks down upon it. In this furthest corner of Dalmatia political elements, old and new, come in which do not show themselves at Zara and Spalato. In short, on the _Bocche_ we have really got into another region, national and religious, from the nearer parts of the country. We have hitherto spoken of an Italian fringe on a Slavonic mainland; we might be tempted to speak of Italian cities with a surrounding Slavonic country. On the shores of the _Bocche_ we may drop those forms of speech. We can hardly say that here there is so much as an Italian fringe. We feel at last we have reached the land which is thoroughly Slavonic. The _Bocchesi_ at once proclaim themselves as the near kinsmen of the unconquered race above them, from whom indeed they differ only in the accidents of their political history. For all purposes but those of war and government, Cattaro is more truly the capital of Montenegro than Tzetinje. In one sense indeed Cattaro is more Italian than Ragusa. All Ragusa, though it has an Italian varnish, is Slavonic at heart. At Cattaro it would be truer to speak of a Slavonic majority and an Italian minority. And along these coasts, together with this distinct predominance of the Slavonic nationality, we come also, if not to the predominance, at all events to the greatly increased prominence, of that form of Christianity to which the Eastern Slave naturally tends. Elsewhere in Dalmatia, as we have on the Slavonic body a narrow fringe of Italian speech, art, and manners, so we have a narrow fringe of the religion of the Old Rome skirting a body belonging to the New. Here, along with the Slavonic nationality, the religion of Eastern Christendom makes itself distinctly seen. In the city of Cattaro the Orthodox Church is still in a minority, but it is a minority not far short of a majority. Outside its walls, the Orthodox outnumber the Catholics. In short, when we reach Cattaro, we have very little temptation to fancy ourselves in Italy or in any part of Western Christendom. We not only know, but feel, that we are on the Byzantine side of the Hadriatic; that we have, in fact, made our way into Eastern Europe. And East and West, Slave and Italian, New Rome and Old, might well struggle for the possession of the land and of the water through which we pass from Ragusa to our final goal at Cattaro. The strait leads us into a gulf; another narrow strait leads us into an inner gulf; and on an inlet again branching out of that inner gulf lies the furthest of Dalmatian cities. The lower city, Cattaro itself, [Greek: ta katô Dekatera], seems to lie so quietly, so peacefully, as if in a world of its own from which nothing beyond the shores of its own _Bocche_ could enter, that we are tempted to forget, not only that the spot has been the scene of so many revolutions through so many ages, but that it is even now a border city, a city on the marchland of contending powers, creeds, and races. But, if we once look up to the mountains, we see signs both of the past and of the present, which may remind us of the true nature and history of the land in which we are. In some of the other smaller Dalmatian towns, and at other points along the coast, we see castles perched on mountain peaks or ledges at a height which seems almost frightful; but the castle of Cattaro and the walls leading up to it, walls which seem to leap from point to point of the almost perpendicular hill, form surely the most striking of all the mountain fortresses of the land. The castle is perhaps all the more striking, nestling as it does among the rocks, than if it actually stood, like some others, on a peak or crest of the mountain. One thinks of Alexander's Aornos, and indeed the name of Aornos might be given to any of these Dalmatian heights. The lack of birds, great and small, especially the lack of the eagles and vultures that one sees in other mountain lands, is a distinct feature in the aspect of the Dalmatian hills and of their immediate borders, Montenegrin and Turkish. But, while the castle stands as if no human power could reach it, much less fight against it, there are other signs of more modern date which remind us that there are points higher still where no one can complain that the art of fighting has been unknown in any age. Up the mountain, during part of its course skirting the castle walls, climbs the winding road--the staircase rather--which leads from Cattaro to Tzetinje. On it climbs, up and up, till it is lost in the higher peaks; long before the traveller reaches the frontier line which divides Dalmatia and Montenegro, long before he reaches the ridge to which he looks up from Cattaro and its gulf, he has begun to look down, not only on the gulf and the city, but on the mountain castle itself, as something lying far below his feet. From below, Cattaro seems like the end of the world. As we climb the mountain paths, we soon find that it is but a border post on the frontier of a vast world beyond it, a world in whose past history Cattaro has had some share, a world whose history is not yet over. * * * * * The city of Cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge between the gulf and the base of the mountain. It carries the features of the Dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen Traü will call their extreme point. But, though the streets of Cattaro are narrow, yet they are civilized and airy-looking compared with those of Traü, and the little paved squares, as so often along this coast, suggest the memory of the ruling city. The memory of Venice is again called up by the graceful little scraps of its characteristic architecture which catch the eye ever and anon among the houses of Cattaro. The landing-place, the _marina_, the space between the coast and the Venetian wall, where we pass for the last time under the winged lion over the gate, has put on the air of a _boulevard_. But the forms and costume of _Bocchesi_ and Montenegrins, the men of the gulf, with their arms in their girdles, no less than the men of the Black Mountain, banish all thought that we are anywhere but where we really are, at one of the border points of Christian and civilized Europe. If in the sons of the mountains we see the men who have in all ages held out against the invading Turk, we see in their brethren of the coast the men who, but a few years back, brought Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic Majesty to its knees. The same thought is brought home to us in another form. The antiquities of Cattaro are mainly ecclesiastical, and among them the Orthodox church, standing well in one of the open places, claims a rank second only to the _duomo_. Here some may see for the first time the ecclesiastical arrangements of Eastern Christendom; and those who do not wish to see a church thrown wide open from end to end, those who would cleave alike to the rood-beam of Lübeck, the _jubé_ of Albi, and the _cancelli_ of Saint Clement, to the old screen which once was at Wimborne and to the new screen which now is at Lichfield, may be startled at the first sight of the Eastern _eikonostasis_ blocking off apse and altar utterly from sight. The arrangements of the Eastern Church may indeed be seen in places much nearer than Cattaro, at Trieste, at Wiesbaden, in London itself; but in all these places the Eastern Church is an exotic, standing as a stranger on Western ground. At Cattaro the Orthodox Church is on its own ground, standing side by side on equal terms with its Latin rival, pointing to lands where the _Filioque_ is unknown and where the Bishop of the Old Rome has ever been deemed an intruder. The building itself is a small Byzantine church, less Byzantine in fact in its outline than the small churches of the Byzantine type at Zara, Spalato, and Traü. The single dome rises, not from the intersection of a Greek cross, but from the middle of a single body, and, resting as it does on pointed arches, it suggests the thought of Périgueux and Angoulême. But this arrangement, which is shared by a neighbouring Latin church, is well known throughout the East. The Latin _duomo_, which has been minutely described by Mr. Neale, is of quite another type, and is by no means Dalmatian in its general look. A modern west front with two western towers does not go for much; but it reminds us that a design of the same kind was begun at Traü in better times. The inside is quite unlike anything of later Italian work. It seems like a cross between a basilica and an Aquitanian church. It is small, but the inside is lofty and solemn. The body of the church, not counting the apses and the western portico, has seven narrow arches, the six eastern ones grouped in pairs forming, as in so many German examples, three bays only in the vaulting. The principal pillars are rectangular with flat pilasters; the intermediate piers are Corinthian columns with a heavy Lucchese abacus, enriched with more mouldings than is usual at Lucca. As there is no triforium, and only a blank clerestory, the whole effect comes from the tall columns and their narrow arches, the last offshoots of Spalato that we have to record. For the ecclesiologist proper there is a prodigious _baldacchino_, and a grand display of metal-work behind the high altar. A good deal too, as Mr. Neale has shown, may be gleaned from the inscriptions and records. The traveller whose objects are of a more general kind turns away from this border church of Christendom as the last stage of a pilgrimage unsurpassed either for natural beauty or for historic interest. And, as he looks up at the mountain which rises almost close above the east end of the _duomo_ of Cattaro, and thinks of the land and the men to which the path over that mountain leads, he feels that, on this frontier at least, the spirit still lives which led English warriors to the side of Manuel Komnênos, and which steeled the heart of the last Constantine to die in the breach for the Roman name and the faith of Christendom. VENICE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE NORMANS. TRANI. 1881. The solemn yearly marriage between the Venetian commonwealth and the Hadriatic sea had much more effect on the eastern shore of that sea than on the western. On the eastern side of the long gulf there are few points which have not at some time or other "looked to the winged lion's marble piles," and for many ages a long and nearly continuous dominion looked steadily to that quarter. On the western shore Venice never established any lasting dominion very far from her own lagoons. Ravenna was the furthest point on that side which she held for any considerable time, and at Ravenna we are hardly clear of the delta of the Po. In the northern region of Italy her power struck inland, till at last, defying the precepts of the wise Doge who could not keep even Treviso, she held an unbroken dominion from Bergamo to Cividale. That she kept that dominion down to her fall, that that dominion could live through the fearful trial of the League of Cambray, may perhaps show that Venice, after all, was not so unfitted to become a land-power as she seems at first sight, and as Andrew Contarini deemed her in the fourteenth century. Yet one might have thought that the occupation of this or that point along the long coast from Ravenna to the heel of the boot would have better suited her policy than the lordship over Bergamo and Brescia. And one might have thought too that, amid the endless changes that went on among the small commonwealths and tyrannies of that region, it would have been easier for the Republic to establish its dominion there than to establish it over great cities like Padua and Verona. Yet Venice did not establish even a temporary dominion along these coasts till she was already a great land power in Lombardy and Venetia. And then the few outlying points which she held for a while lay, not among the small towns of the marches, but within the solid kingdom which the Norman had made, and which had passed from him to kings from Swabia, from Anjou, and from Aragon. It is this last thought which gives the short Venetian occupation of certain cities within what the Italians called _the Kingdom_ a higher interest in itself, and withal a certain connexion in idea with more lasting possessions of the commonwealth elsewhere. At Trani and at Otranto, no less than in Corfu and at Durazzo, the Venetian was treading in the footsteps of the Norman. Only, on the eastern side of Hadria the Republic won firm and long possession of places where the Norman had been seen only for a moment; on the western side, the Republic held only for a moment places which the Norman had firmly grasped, and which he handed on to his successors of other races. And, if we pass on from the Norman himself to those successors, we shall find the connexion between the Venetian dominion on the eastern and the western side of the gulf become yet stronger. The Venetian occupation of Neapolitan towns within the actual Neapolitan kingdom seems less strange, if we look on it as a continuation of the process by which many points on the eastern coast had passed to and fro between the Republic and the Kings of Sicily and afterwards of Naples. The connexion between Sicily and southern Italy on the one hand and the coasts and islands of western Greece on the other, is as old as the days of the Greek colonies, perhaps as old as the days of Homer. The singer of the Odyssey seems to know of Sikels in Epeiros; but, if his Sikels were in Italy, we only get the same connexion in another shape. A crowd of rulers from one side and from the other have ruled on both sides of the lower waters of Hadria. Agathoklês, Pyrrhos, Robert Wiscard, King Roger, William the Good, strove alike either to add Epeiros and Korkyra to a Sicilian dominion or to add Sicily to a dominion which already took in Epeiros and Korkyra. So did Manfred; so did Charles of Anjou. And after the division of the Sicilian kingdom, the kings of the continental realm held a considerable dominion on the Greek side of the sea. And that dominion largely consisted of places which had been Venetian and which were to become Venetian again. To go no further into detail, if we remember that Corfu and Durazzo were held by Norman Dukes and Kings of Apulia and Sicily--that they were afterwards possessions of Venice--that they were possessions of the Angevin kings at Naples, and then possessions of Venice again--it may perhaps seem less wonderful to find the Republic at a later time occupying outposts on the coasts of the Neapolitan kingdom itself. It was not till the last years of the fifteenth century, when so many of her Greek and Albanian possessions had passed away, that the Republic appeared as a ruler on the coasts of Apulia and of that land of Otranto, the heel of the boot, from which the name of Calabria had long before wandered to the toe. It was in 1495, when Charles of France went into southern Italy to receive for himself a kingdom and to return,--only to return without the kingdom,--that the Venetians, as allies of his rival Ferdinand, took the town of Monopoli by storm, and one or two smaller places by capitulation. What they took they kept, and in the next year their ally pledged to them other cities, among them Trani, Brindisi, Otranto, and Taranto, in return for help in men and money. These cities were thus won by Venice as the ally of the Aragonese King against the French. But at a later time, when France and Aragon were allied against Venice, the Aragonese King of the Sicilies, a more famous Ferdinand than the first, took them as his share in 1509. We cannot wonder at this; no king, or commonwealth either, can be pleased to see a string of precious coast towns in the hands of a foreign power. Again in 1528 Venice is allied with France against Aragon and Naples, and Aragon and Naples are now only two of the endless kingdoms of Charles of Austria. For a moment the lost cities are again Venetian. Two years later, as part of the great pageant of Bologna, they passed back from the rule of Saint Mark to the last prince who ever wore the crown of Rome. So short an occupation cannot be expected to have left any marked impress on the cities which Venice thus held for a few years at a late time as isolated outposts. These Apulian towns are not Venetian in the same sense in which the Istrian and Dalmatian towns are. In those regions, even the cities which were merely neighbours and not subjects of Venice may be called Venetian in an artistic sense; they were in some sort members of a body of which Venice was the chief. Here we see next to nothing which recalls Venice in any way. The difference is most likely owing, not so much in the late date at which these towns became Venetian possessions, as to the shortness of time by which they were held, and to the precarious tenure by which the Republic held them. As far as mere dates go, Cattaro and Trani were won by Venice within the same century. But, as we have seen, the architectural features which give the Dalmatian towns their Venetian character belong to the most part to times even later than the occupation of Trani. Men must have gone on building at Cattaro in the Venetian fashion for fully a century and a half after Trani was again lost by Venice. There are few Venetian memorials to be seen in these towns; and if the winged lion ever appeared over their gates, he has been carefully thrust aside by kings and emperors. More truly perhaps, kings and emperors rebuilt the walls of these towns after the Venetian power had passed away. Still the occupation of these towns forms part of Venetian history, and they may be visited so as to bring them within the range of Venetian geography. Brindisi is the natural starting point for Corfu and the Albanian coast, and Brindisi is one of the towns which Venice thus held for a season. The two opposite coasts are thus brought into direct connexion. The lands which owned, first the Norman and the Angevin, and then the Venetian, as their masters, may thus naturally become part of a single journey. We may have passed through the hilly lands, we may have seen the hill-cities, of central Italy; we may have gone through lands too far from the sea to suggest any memories of Venice, but which are full of the memories of the Norman and the Swabian. We find ourselves in the great Apulian plain, the great sheep-feeding plain so memorable in the wars of Anjou and Aragon, and we tarry to visit some of the cities of the Apulian coast. The contrast indeed is great between the land in which we are and either the land from which we have come, or the land whither we are going. Bari, Trani, and their fellows, planted on the low coast where the great plain joins the sea, are indeed unlike, either the Latin and Volscian towns on their hill-tops, or the Dalmatian towns nestling between the sea and the mountains. The greatest of these towns, the greatest at least in its present state, never came under Venetian rule. Bari, the city which it needed the strength of both Empires to win from the Saracen, is said to have been defended by a Venetian fleet early in the eleventh century, when Venetian fleets still sailed at the bidding of the Eastern Emperor. Further than this, we can find few or no points of connexion between Venice and these cities, till their first occupation at the end of the fifteenth century. But that short occupation brings them within our range. We are passing, it may be, from Benevento to fishy Bari, as two stages of the "iter ad Brundisium." Thence we may go on, in the wake of so many travellers and conquerors, to those lands beyond the sea where the Lords of one-fourth and one-eighth of the Empire of Romania, and the Norman lords of Apulia and Sicily, the conquerors of Corfu and Albania, were alike at home. Between Benevento and Bari the eye is caught by the great tower of Trani. Such a city cannot be passed by; or, if we are driven to pass it by, we must go back to get something more than a glimpse of it. And Trani is one of the towns pledged to Venice by Ferdinand of Naples. In the midst of cities whose chief memories later than old Imperial times carry us back to the Norman and Swabian days of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, we find ourselves suddenly plunged into the Venetian history of the end of the fifteenth. * * * * * Trani then will be our introduction to the group of towns with which we are at present concerned. At the present moment, it is undoubtedly the foremost among them; but it is hard to call up any distinct memory of its history till we reach the times which made it for a moment a Venetian possession. Trani, like other places, doubtless has its history known to local inquirers; but the more general inquirer will very seldom light upon its name. It is hard to find any sure sign of its being in Roman times, but it must be the "Tirhennium quæ et Trana" of the geographer Guido. Let us take such a common-place test as looking through the indices to several volumes of Muratori and Pertz till the task becomes wearisome. Such a task will show us the name of Trani here and there, but only here and there. We do by searching find it mentioned in the days of King Roger and in the days of the Emperor Lothar, but it is only by searching that we find it. The name of Trani does not stand out without searching, like so many of the cities even of southern Italy. Yet Trani is no inconsiderable place; it is an archæpiscopal see with a noble metropolitan church; and in our own day, though much smaller than its neighbour Bari, it seems to share in the present prosperity of which the signs at Bari are unmistakeable. The visitor to Trani will find much to see there, but he will not find the stamp of Venice on the city. Trani, like its fellows, had received its distinctive character long before it had to do with Venice, and that character was not one that was at all marked by Venetian influences. The city is not without Venetian monuments; the memory of its Venetian days is not forgotten even in its modern street nomenclature. There is a _Piazza Gradenigo_, and an inscription near one of the later churches records the name of Giuliano Gradenigo as the Venetian governor of Trani in 1503, and as having had a hand in its building. The castle might be suspected of containing work of the days of the Republic; but a threatening man of the sword forbids any study of its walls even with a distant spy-glass; not however till the chief inscription has been read, and has been found to belong to days later than those of Venetian rule. There is no knowing what may not happen to places when they have once fallen into the hands of soldiers; to the civilian mind it might seem that, when a king writes up an inscription to record his buildings, he wishes that inscription to be read of all men for all time. It is hard too to see how an antiquary's spy-glass can do anything to help prisoners confined within massive walls to break forth, as Italian--at least Sicilian--prisoners sometimes know how to break forth. The metropolitan church of Trani is happily not in military hands; neither are the streets and lanes of the city, the houses, the smaller churches, the arcades by the haven, the buildings of the town in general. All these may therefore be studied without let or hindrance; civil officials, even cloistered nuns, see no danger to Church or State if the stranger draws the outside of a window or copies an inscription on an outer wall. But though we may find at Trani bits of work which might have stood in Venice, it is only as they might have stood in any other city of Italy. There is nothing in Trani, besides the memorial of Gradenigo, which brings the Serene Republic specially before the mind. The great church, the glory of Trani, bears the impress of that mixed style of art which is characteristic of Norman rule in Apulia, but which is quite different from anything to be found in Norman Sicily. It has some points in common with its neighbours at Bitonto and Bari, and some points very distinctive of itself. It is undoubtedly one of the noblest churches of its own class. If we were to call it one of the noblest churches of Christendom, the phrase would be misleading, because, to an English ear at least, it would suggest the thought of something on a much greater scale, something more nearly approaching the boundless length of an English minster or the boundless height of a French one. In southern Italy bishops and archbishops were so thick upon the ground that even a metropolitan church was not likely to reach, in point of mere size, to the measure of a second-class cathedral or conventual church in England or even in Normandy. But mere size is not everything, and, as an example of a particular form of Romanesque, as an example of difficulties ably grappled with and thoroughly overcome, the church of Trani might almost claim to rank beside the church of Pisa and the church of Durham. And higher praise than that no building can have. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRANI.] Fully to take in the effect of this grand church, it will be well not to hurry towards it on reaching the city. Go straight from the railway-station towards another bell-tower, not to that of the _duomo_. That course will lead to the so-called _villa_ or public garden. The suppressed Dominican convent close by its gate has no attractive feature except its tower, one of the usual Italian type, only with pointed arches. But the grounds of the _villa_, raised on the ancient walls of the monastic precinct, look down at once on the waves of Hadria. In the northern view we look out on lands and hills beyond the water; but no man must dream that the eastern peninsula of Europe is to be seen from Trani. We look out only over the gulf of Manfredonia--the name of the Hohenstaufen king is as it were stamped upon the waters--to the Italian peninsula of Mount Garganus. Hence, on our way to the metropolitan church, we pass by the basin which forms the haven of Trani, a basin which reminds us of the _cala_ which is all that is left of the many waters of Palermo. The distant view clearly brings out its main outline; above all, it brings out those arrangements of the eastern end which form the most characteristic feature. We see the tall tower at the south-west corner; we see the line of the clerestory with its small round-headed windows; above all, we see--so unlike anything in Northern architecture--the tall transept seeming to soar far above the rest of the church, with the three apses, strangely narrow and lofty, treated simply, as it would seem, as appendages to the transept itself. Those who have not seen Bitonto and Bari will not guess how great a danger these soaring apses have escaped. The Norman of Apulia did not, like the native Italian, deal in detached bell-towers; he clave to the use of his native land which made the tower or towers an integral part of the church. But he seems to have specially chosen a place for them which is German rather than Norman, and then to have treated them in a way which is neither German, Norman, nor Italian. At Bitonto and in the two great churches of Bari, a pair of towers flanks the east end. In Italy it might be safer to say the apse end; but we think that in all these cases the apse end is the east end or nearly so. Such pairs of eastern towers are common in Germany; but there the great apse projects between them. At Bari and Bitonto the whole apsidal arrangement is masked by a flat wall. The towers rise above the side apses; the great central apse is hidden by the wall carried in front of it. We thus get at the east end a flat front, like a west front; we lose the curves of the apses, and with them the arcades and grouped windows which form so marked a feature in the ordinary Romanesque of Germany and Italy. A single window, of larger size than Romanesque taste commonly allows, marks the place of the high altar. And this window is adorned with shafts and mouldings of special richness, and with animal figures above and below the shafts. Now here at Trani, though all the apses stand out, yet a like arrangement is followed. The central apse has only a single window of the same enriched type; the side apses have also only a single window each, but of a much plainer kind. Thus much, without taking in every detail, we can mark in our distant view; we can mark too somewhat of the unusually rich and heavy cornice of the transept, and the upper part of the transept front, the wheel window and the two rich coupled windows beneath it. We can mark too the arrangements of the great square tower, crowned with its small octagonal finish; and even here we can see that, with all its majesty of outline, it is far from ranking in the first class of Italian bell-towers. Its composition lacks boldness and simplicity, while it has nothing remarkable in the way of ornament. Saint Zeno among the simpler towers, Spalato among the more elaborate, stand indeed unrivalled. But the cathedral tower of Trani, when closely examined, is less satisfactory than its own majestic neighbour at Bari. It is not merely that the pointed arch, always out of place in an Italian bell-tower, is used in the upper stages. The pointed arch is used with better effect, both far away in the noble tower of Velletri, and close by at Trani itself, in the far humbler tower of the Dominican church. The fault lies in this, that the windows, instead of being spread over the whole face of each stage, are gathered together in the centre of each, while two of them have rather awkward pointed canopies over the groups of windows. Still, seen from far or near, it is a grand and majestic tower, though its faults, which catch the eye at a distance, become more distinct as we draw nearer. The road by which we approach the _duomo_ will give us no view of it from the west, and, till we come quite near to the church, we shall hardly see how closely it overhangs the sea. We take our course by the harbour, for part of the way is under heavy and dark arcades which remind us of Genoa. Presently, before we reach the great church, we come across the east end of a smaller one, with which we shall afterwards become better acquainted from its western side. At this end it seems to be called _Purgatorio_; at the other end we shall find that its true name is _Ogni Santi_--All Hallows. Here there is no transept; still the three apses may pass for a miniature of those in the metropolitan church; there is the same single large and elaborate window in the mid apse, the same smaller single windows in the side apses. We go landwards for a short way, and we presently find ourselves on a terrace overlooking the sea, close under the east end of the _duomo_. We now better take in both the grandeur and the singularity of the building whose general effect we have studied from a distance. We take in some fresh features, as the tall blank arcades along the walls, a feature shared by Trani with Bari, and we guess that the extraordinary height of the apses must be owing to the presence of a lofty under-church. We see signs too at the east end which seem to show that at some time or other there was a design for some other form of east end, inconsistent with the present design. The visitor will now perhaps be tempted to go at once within, though he ought in strictness to pass under the tower in order to finish his outside survey at the west end. It is curious to see how the same feeling which prevails in the east end prevails in the west front also. Here we have no continuous arcades like Pisa, Lucca, and Zara--happily we have no sham gables like the great one at Lucca; we have again the single great window with the small ones on each side. Only here the mid window has over it a rich wheel, the favourite form of the country, a form which the apsidal east end would not allow. And it is treated in exactly the same way, with the same kind of surrounding ornaments, as the single-light windows. This west front, as it now stands, has a rather bare look; the windows have too much the air of being cut through the wall without any artistic design, and there is too great a gap between the windows and the west doorway with its flanking arcades below. But this last fault at least is not to be charged on the original design, which clearly took in a projecting portico. We may doubt however whether the portico could have been high enough to have much dignity, and we shall find this feature far more skilfully treated in the other smaller church of which we have already spoken. And here we must confess that it is possible to make two visits to Trani, and each time to make a somewhat careful examination of its great church, and yet to miss--not at all to forget to look for, but to fail to find--the bronze doors which form one of the wonders of Trani. This may seem incredible at a distance; it will be found on the spot not to be wonderful. We will not describe the doors at second-hand; we will rather hasten within to gaze on the surpassing grandeur of an interior, which, as an example of architectural design, may, as we have already hinted, rank beside the church by the Arno and the church by the Wear, beside the Conqueror's abbey at Caen and King Roger's chapel at Palermo. We say King Roger's chapel advisedly; for the palace chapel of Palermo, were every scrap of its gorgeous mosaics whitewashed over, would still rank, simply as an architectural design, among the most successful in the world. And the chapel of Palermo has points which at once suggest comparison and contrast with the great church of Trani. We see the traces of the Saracen in both; but at Palermo the building itself is thoroughly Saracenic, at Trani the Saracen contributes only one element among others. In Sicily, where the Saracen was thoroughly at home, the Norman kings simply built their churches and palaces in the received style of the island, a style of which the pointed arch was a main feature. In southern Italy, where the Saracen was only an occasional visitor, a style arose in which elements from Normandy itself--elements, that is, perhaps brought first of all from northern Italy--are mixed with other elements to be found on the spot, Italian, Saracenic, and Byzantine. The churches of Bari, Bitonto, and Trani, all show this mixture in different shapes. One feature of it is to take the detached Italian bell-tower, and to make it, Norman fashion, part of the church itself. In such cases the general character of the tower is kept, but Norman touches are often brought into the details; for instance, the common Norman coupled window, such as we are used to in Normandy and England, often displaces the oecumenical _mid-wall_ shaft which the older England shared with Italy. Thus here at Trani, the tower joins the church, though it is not made so completely part of its substance as it is at Bari and Bitonto. The inside of the church shows us another form of the same tendency. The Norman in Apulia could hardly fail to adopt the columnar forms of the land in which he was settled; but he could not bring himself to give up the threefold division of height and the bold triforium of his own land. An upper floor was not unknown in Italy, as we see in more than one of the Roman churches, as in Saint Agnes, Saint Laurence, and the church known as _Quattro Coronati_, to say nothing of Modena and Pisa, and _Sta. Maria della Pieve_ at Arezzo. But in some of these cases the arrangement is widely different from the genuine Norman triforium, and the threefold division certainly cannot be called characteristically Italian, any more than characteristically Greek. But it is characteristically Norman; and when we find it systematically appearing in churches built under Norman rule, we must set it down as a result of special Norman taste. At Trani each of the seven arches of the nave has a triplet of round arches over it, and a single clerestory window above that. The Norman in his own land would have made more of the clerestory; he would have drawn a string underneath it to part it off from the triforium; he would have carried up shafts to the roof to mark the division into bays. But the triforium itself, as it stands at Trani, might have been set up at Caen or Bayeux, with only the smallest changes in detail. But where in Normandy, where in England, where, we may add, in Sicily, is there anything at all like the arcades which in the church of Trani support this all but thoroughly Norman triforium? These have no fellow at Bitonto; they have hardly a fellow at Bari. In those cities the Norman adopted the columnar arcades of the basilica, while in Sicily the Saracen still at his bidding placed the pointed arch on the Roman column. At Trani too we see the work, or at least the influence, of the Saracen; but it takes quite another form. The pointed arch would have been out of place; in Normandy and England it is ever a mark of the coming Gothic, and there is certainly no sign of coming Gothic at Trani. But the coupling of two columns with their capitals under a single abacus--sometimes rather a bit of entablature--to form the support of an arch, is a well-known Saracenic feature. Not that it was any Saracen invention. In architecture, as in everything else, the Saracen was, as regards the main forms, only a pupil of Rome, Old and New; but, exactly like the Norman, he knew how to develope and to throw a new character into the forms which he borrowed. The coupled columns may truly be called a Saracenic feature, though the Saracen must have learned it in the first instance from such buildings as the sepulchral church known as Saint Constantia at Rome. We may fairly see a Saracenic influence in a crowd of Christian examples where this form is used in cloisters and other smaller buildings where the arches and columns are of no great size. It is even not uncommon in strictly Norman buildings in positions where the shafts are merely part of the decorative construction, and do not actually support the weight of the building. It was a bolder risk to take a pair of such columns, and bid them bear up the real weight of the three stages of what we may fairly call a Norman minster. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL, TRANI, INSIDE.] But the daring attempt is thoroughly successful; there is not, what we might well have looked for, any feeling of weakness; the twin columns yoked together to bear all that would have been laid on the massive round piers of England or their square fellows of Germany, seem fully equal to their work. It may be that the appearance of strength is partly owing to the use of real half-columns, and not mere slender vaulting-shafts, to support the roofs of the aisles. But the slender shaft comes in with good effect to support both the arch between the nave and the transept, and the arch between the transept and the great apse. The lofty transept is wholly an Italian idea; but the general idea of these two tall arches is thoroughly Norman. In looking at such a church as this, so widely different from any of the many forms with which we are already familiar, there is always a certain doubt as to our own feelings. We admire; as to that there is no doubt. But how far is that admiration the result of mere wonder at something which in any case is strange and striking? how far is it a really intelligent approval of beauty or artistic skill? Both feelings, we may be pretty sure, come in; but it is not easy to say which is the leading one, till we are better acquainted with the building than we are likely to become in an ordinary journey. It is familiarity which is the real test. It is the building which we admire as much the thousandth time as the first which really approves itself to our critical judgement. We have not seen Trani for the thousandth time; but we did what we could; we were so struck with a first visit to Trani that, at the cost of some disturbance of travelling arrangements, we went there again, and we certainly did not admire it less the second time than the first. And, whatever may be the exact relation of the two feelings of mere wonder and of strictly critical approval, it is certain that a third feeling comes in by no means small a measure. This is a kind of feeling of historic fitness. The church of Trani is the kind of church which ought to have been built by Normans building on Apulian ground, with Greek and Saracen skill at their disposal. But at Trani, as commonly in these Apulian churches, it is not enough to look at the building from above ground. The great height of the apses will have already suggested that there is a lower building of no small size; and so we find it, conspicuously tall and stately, even in this land of tall and stately under-churches--crypt is a word hardly worthy of them. The under-church at Trani shows us a forest of tall columns, some of them fluted, with a vast variety of capitals of foliage. A few only can be called classical; some have the punched ornament characteristic of Ravenna. A good many of the bases have leaves at the corners, a fashion which in England is commonly a mark of the thirteenth century, but which in Sicily and Dalmatia goes on at least till the seventeenth. * * * * * But the metropolitan church is not all that Trani has to show. In some of the buildings which we pass by in its narrow streets, we see some good windows of the style which it is most easy to call Venetian, though it might be rash hastily to refer them to the days of Venetian occupation. And there are other windows seemingly of earlier date, certainly of earlier character, which bear about them signs of the genuine Norman impress. But the strength of Trani, even setting aside the great church, lies in its ecclesiastical buildings; the best pieces even of domestic work are found in one of the monasteries. Two smaller churches deserve notice; one of them deserves special notice. This is the church of All Saints, of which we saw the east end on our way to the great minster, and on whose west end we shall most likely light as we come away from it. That west end is covered by a portico, or rather something more than a portico, as it contains a double row of arches. The front to the street forms part of a long and picturesque range of building, of which the actual arcade consists of four arches. One only of these is pointed, and that is the only one which rests on a column, the others being supported by square piers. But beyond this outer range, the vaulted approach to the church displays a grand series of columns and half-columns, with capitals of various forms. One is of extraordinary grandeur, with the volutes formed of crowned angels; the forms of the man and the eagle, either of them good for a volute, are here pressed into partnership. Within, the church is a small but graceful basilica, which, notwithstanding some disfigurements in 1853 which are boastfully recorded, pretty well keeps its ancient character, its columns with their capitals of foliage. He who visits Trani will doubtless also visit Bari, and such an one will do well both to compare the great church of Trani with the two great churches of Bari, and to compare and contrast this smaller building with the smaller church at Bari, that of Saint Gregory. Besides this little basilica, Trani possesses, not in one of its narrow streets, but in its widest _piazza_, a church, now of Saint Francis, but which, among many disfigurements, still keeps the form of the Greek cross within, and some Romanesque fragments without. Here, as also at Bari and at Bitonto, oriental influences--something we mean more oriental than Greeks or even than Sicilian Saracens--may be seen in the pierced tracery with which some of the windows are filled. In these cases this kind of work suggests a mosque; with other details, it might have carried our thoughts far away, to the great towers of the West of England. * * * * * Among the other members of this group of cities we might have expected to find Brindisi, so famous as a haven of the voyager in Roman days, and no less famous in our own, fill a high, if not the highest, place among its fellows. And Brindisi has its points of interest also, one of them of an almost unique interest. Over the haven rises a commemorative column--its fellow has left only its pedestal--which records, not the dominion of Saint Mark, but the restoration of the city by the Protospatharius Lupus. Is this he whose name has been rightly or wrongly added to certain annals of Bari? Anyhow there the column stands, one of the few direct memorials of Byzantine rule in Italy. There is the round church also, the mosaic in the otherwise worthless cathedral, and one or two fragments of domestic work. The lie of the city and its haven is truly a sight to be studied; we see that in whatever language it is that _Brentesion_ means a stag's horn, the name was not unfittingly given to the antler-like fiords of this little inland sea. We trace out too the walls of Charles the Fifth, and we see how Brindisi has shrunk up since his day. But we are perhaps tempted to do injustice to Brindisi, to hurry over its monuments, when we are driven to choose between Brindisi and the greater attractions of the furthest city of our group, in some sort the furthest city of Europe. We pass by Lecce, which lies outside our group, as between Trani and Brindisi we have been driven to pass Monopoli, the spot which saw the first beginnings of the short Venetian rule in these parts. Everything cannot be seen, and we shall hardly regret sacrificing something to hasten to a spot which may well call itself the end of the world, and which forms the most fitting link between the central and the eastern peninsulas of Europe. OTRANTO. 1881. Hydrous, Hydruntum, Otranto, has as good a claim as a city can well have to be looked on as the end of the world. It is very nearly the physical end of the world in that part of the world with which it has most concern. When we have reached Otranto, we can go no further by any common means of going. It may pass for the south-eastern point of the peninsula of Italy: it is the point where that central peninsula comes nearest to the peninsula which lies beyond it. It is the point where Western and Eastern Europe are parted by the smallest amount of sea. It has therefore been in all times one of the main points of communication between Eastern and Western Europe. The old Hydrous appears as a Greek colony, placed, as one of the old geographers happily puts it, on the mouth either of the Hadriatic or of the Ionian sea. Hydruntum appears in Roman days as a rival route to Brundisium for those who wish to pass from Italy into Greece. A city so placed naturally plays its part in the wars of Belisarius and in the wars of Roger. Held by the Eastern Emperors as long as they held anything west of the Hadriatic, it passed, when the Norman came, into the hands of Apulian Dukes and Sicilian Kings, and it remained part of the continental Sicilian kingdom, save for the two moments in its history which bring it within our immediate range. Otranto is the one city of Western Europe in which the Turk has really reigned, though happily for a moment only. It is one of the cities in this corner of Italy which formed, for a somewhat longer time, outlying posts of Venetian dominion; and it is a spot where the memory of the Turk and the memory of the Venetian are mingled together in a strange, an unusual, and a shameful way. In most of the other spots which have seen the presence of the Turk and the Venetian, the commonwealth which was the temple-keeper of the Evangelist shows itself only in its nobler calling, as "Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite." At Otranto, Venice appears in a character which is more commonly taken by the Most Christian King. Before Francis and Lewis had conspired with the barbarian against their Christian rivals, the Serene Republic had already stirred him up to make havoc of a Christian city. At Otranto then we finish our journey by land, and from Otranto, as Otranto is now, we have no means of continuing it by sea. We cannot sail straight, as men did in old times, either to Corfu or to Aulona. To make our way from the central to the south-eastern peninsula, we have to make the "iter ad Brundisium" back again from the other side. It is the natural consequence of being at the end of the world, that when we reach the point which holds that place, we have to go back again. And when we find ourselves at Otranto, the fact that we are at the end of the world, that we have reached the end, not only of our actual journey, but of any possible journey of the same kind, is forcibly set before us as a kind of symbol. We have come to an end, to a very marked end, of the great railway system of central Europe. From any place within that system we can find our way to Otranto by the power of steam. Beyond Otranto that power can take us no further; indeed we have so nearly reached the heel of the boot that there is not much further to go by the help of any other power. We are at the end of Italy, at the end, that is, of the central peninsula of Europe, in a sense in which we are not even at more distant Reggio. For Reggio is before all things the way to Sicily, and Sicily we must allow to be geographically an appendage to Italy, strongly as we must assert the right of that great island to be looked on historically in quite another light. And that at Otranto we have distinctly reached the end of something is clearly set forth by the arrangements of the railway station itself. The rails come to an end; the buildings of the station are placed, not at the side of the line, but straight across it, a speaking sign that we can go no further, and that the thought of taking us further has not entered the most speculative mind. At Otranto then we have come to the end of one of the great divisions of the European world; it is therefore a fitting point to form a main point of connexion between that division and another. Otranto and its neighbourhood are the only points of the central peninsula from which we can, as a matter of ordinary course, look across into the eastern peninsula. We say as a matter of ordinary course. There are Albanian or Dalmatian heights from which it is said that, in unusually favourable weather, the Garganian peninsula may be descried; so it may be that the Garganian peninsula is favoured back again with occasional glimpses of south-eastern Europe. But a stay of even a few hours at Otranto shows that there south-eastern Europe comes within the gazer's ordinary ken. It is easy to see that it does not so much need good weather to show it as bad weather to hinder it from being shown. Before we reach Otranto, while we are still on the railway, the mountains of Albania rise clearly before our eyes; from the hill of Otranto itself they rise more clearly still. And even to those to whom those heights are no unfamiliar objects from nearer points of view, it is a thrilling and a saddening thought, when we look forth for the first time from a land of which every inch belongs to the free and Christian world, and gaze on the once kindred land that has passed away from freedom and from Christendom. From the soil of free Italy we look on shores which are still left under the barbarian yoke, shores where so many whose fathers were sharers in the European and Christian heritage have fallen away to the creed of the barbarian and to all that that creed brings with it. On the other hand, it is said that there are more favourable moments when it is possible to look from free Italy into free Greece. It is said that, sometimes perhaps Corfu itself, more certainly the smaller islands which lie off it to the west, may be seen from the hill of Otranto. If so, we look out from that one spot of the central peninsula, from that one spot of the general western world, where the Turk can be said to have really ruled, for however short a time, and not simply to have harried. And we look out on that one among the many islands which gird the eastern peninsula, which has gone through many changes and has bowed to many masters, but where alone the Turk has never ruled as a master, but has shown himself only as a momentary besieger. The Turk then was never lord of Corfu; he was for a while, though only for a very little while, lord of Otranto. The winged lion floated over Corfu while the crescent floated for a season over Otranto. It was therefore perhaps not wholly unfitting that, for another somewhat longer season, the winged lion should float over Corfu and Otranto together. But it was not in his nobler character that the winged lion floated over Otranto. It would have been a worthy exploit indeed, if the arms of Venice, by that time a great Italian power, had driven out the Turk from his first lodgement on Italian soil. But instead of Venice driving the Turk out of Otranto, it was the common belief of the time that it was Venetian intrigue which had let him in. Nay more, if there was any truth in other suspicions of the time, the good old prayer of our forefathers, which prayed for deliverance from "Pope and Turk," might well have been put up by the people of Otranto and all Apulia in the year 1480. Not only the commonwealth of Venice, but the Holy Father himself, Pope Sixtus the Fourth, was believed to be an accomplice in the intrigues which enabled the infidel to establish himself on the shores of Italy. A time came, almost within our own day, when Pope and Turk were really leagued together, and when the Latin Bishop of the Old Rome owed his restoration to his seat to the joint help of the Mussulman Sultan of Constantinople and the Orthodox Tzar of Moscow. But in the fifteenth century we need hardly expect even such a Pope as Sixtus of deliberately bringing the Turk into Italy. His own interests both as priest and as prince were too directly threatened. But it is hard to acquit the Venetian commonwealth, under the dogeship of Giovanni Mocenigo, of risking the lasting interests of all Christendom, and of their own Eastern dominion as part of it, to serve the momentary calls of a petty Italian policy. We even read that Venetian envoys worked on the mind of the Sultan by the argument that it was the part of the new lord of Constantinople to assert his claim to all that the older lords of Constantinople had held east of the Hadriatic. No argument could be more self-destructive in Venetian mouths. If the Turk had inherited the rights of Eastern Cæsar in the Western lands, how cruelly was Venice defrauding him of a large part of the rights of the Eastern Cæsar in his own Eastern lands. * * * * * The conquest of Otranto was the last of the conquests of him who rightly stands out in Ottoman history as pre-eminently the Conqueror. The second Mahomet, he who completed the conquest of Christian Asia by the taking of Trebizond, who crowned the work of Ottoman conquest in Europe by the taking of Constantinople, who by the taking of Euboia dealt the heaviest blow to the Venetian power in the Ægæan, who brought under his power, as a gleaning after the vintage, the Frank lordship of Attica and the Greek lordship of Peloponnêsos, in his last days stretched forth his hand to vex Western Europe as he had so long vexed Eastern Europe and what was left of Christian Asia. He was in truth attacking both at the same time; he won Otranto almost at the moment when he was beaten back from Rhodes. Each scene of his warfare illustrates the nature of the Ottoman power at that moment, how it was by the hands of her own apostate sons that Christendom was brought into bondage. Against Rhodes the infidel host was led by a Greek, against Otranto by an Albanian, both renegades or sons of renegades. And under the first Ferdinand of Aragon such was the state of things in the land which had once been ruled by good King William that soldiers of the Neapolitan King were willing to pass into the service of the Turk. Nay, the inhabitants in general seemed ready to believe the Turk's promises and to accept his dominion as likely to be milder than that of their own stranger king. The invader was his own worst enemy. A contemporary writer witnesses that the prisoners taken by Achmet _Break-Tooth_--such is said to be the meaning of his surname _Giédek_--pointed out to him that by his cruelties at Otranto he was losing for his master a province which otherwise might have been won with little effort. But happily things took another turn. Otranto was in the Western world what Kallipolis--the Kallipolis of the Thracian Chersonêsos--had been in the Eastern. It was the first foothold of the barbarian, the gate by which he seemed likely to open his way to the possession of the central peninsula of Europe, as he had by the gate of Kallipolis opened his way to the possession of the eastern peninsula. Otranto was the last of the conquests of the great Conqueror; what if he had been longer-lived? what if the second Bajazet had deserved the name of Thunderbolt like the first? Would the threat of the first Sultan have been carried out, and would the Turk have fed his horse on the high altar of Saint Peter's? The eastern peninsula fell by internal division, and the central peninsula, as his very entrance into it shows, was fully as divided as the eastern. The French conquests presently showed how little prepared Italy was to withstand a vigorous attack, and Mahomet the Conqueror would have been another kind of enemy from Charles the Eighth. But all such dangers were warded off. The Turk still showed himself once and again in northern Italy, but only as a momentary plunderer. Otranto remained his only conquest on Italian ground, and that a conquest held for thirteen months only. Alfonso, who bears so unfavourable a character from other sides, must be at least allowed the merit of winning back the lost city for his father's realm. Otranto, and Otranto alone of Italian cities, belongs to, and heads, the list on which we inscribe the names of Buda and Belgrade and Athens and Sofia, on which it may now inscribe the names of Arta and Larissa, but from which hapless Jôannina and twice-forsaken Parga are still for a while shut out. It was not therefore till the Turk had been driven out, not until southern Italy had been more thoroughly but not much more lastingly overrun by the armies of France, that Otranto passed for a while under the rule of Venice. The Serene Republic hardly deserved to rule in a city which she had so lately betrayed; the place seems never to have recovered from the frightful blow of the Turkish capture. The town now shows no sign either of the short Venetian occupation or of the shorter Turkish occupation. From the side of military history, this last fact is to be regretted. We must remember that in that day the Ottomans, pressing and hiring into their service the best skill of Europe, were in advance of all other people in all warlike arts. So Guiccardini remarks that the Turks, during their short occupation of Otranto, strengthened the city with works of a kind hitherto unknown in Italy, and which, as he seems to hint, Italian engineers would have done well to copy, but did not. The present fortifications date from the time of Charles the Fifth. Their extent shows at once how far the Otranto of his day had shrunk up within the bounds of the ancient city, and how far again modern Otranto has shrunk up within the walls of the Emperor. It is said that, before the Turkish capture, Otranto numbered twenty-two thousand inhabitants; it has now hardly above a tenth part of that number. As the military importance of the place has passed away, military precautions seemed to have passed away with it; the castle stands free and open; no sentinel hinders the traveller from wandering as he will within its walls. But the traveller will gain little by such wanderings except the look-out over land and sea. The town stands close upon the sea, on a small height with a valley between it and the railway station. It is entered by a gateway of late date, but of some dignity; but it is not much that the frowning entrance leads to. The visitor soon finds that Otranto, which gave its name of old to the surrounding land, which still ranks as a metropolitan city, has sunk to little more than a village. It seems to have had no share in the revived prosperity of the other towns along this coast. Its one object of any importance is the metropolitan church, and this is at once the only monument of the ancient greatness of the place, and also in a strange way the chief memorial of its momentary bondage to the barbarian. * * * * * In order thoroughly to take in the position of the great church of Otranto in its second character, as a memorial of bondage and deliverance, it may be well to pass it by for a moment and to go first to the castle, and look out on one of the points of view which it commands. Any local guide will be able to show the traveller the Hill of the Martyrs. It stands at no great distance beyond the town, and is held to mark the site of a pagan temple. There the Turks, after their capture of the city, did as they have done in later times. Some eight or nine hundred of the people of Otranto were massacred. Their bodies lay unburied so long as the Turk kept possession; on the recovery of the city, the bodies of the martyrs, as they were now deemed, were gathered together, and a special chapel was added to the metropolitan church to receive them. There they may still be seen, piled together in cases, with inscriptions telling the story. There are skulls, legs, arms, bones of every part of the human body, some still showing the dents of barbarian weapons, some with barbarian weapons still cleaving to them. There we look on them, ghastly witnesses that, neither in their days nor in ours, is the Æthiopian at all disposed to change his skin or the leopard his spots. What the Turk did at Otranto he has done at Batak; he may, if the freak seizes him, do the like at Jôannina. Only the deeds of Otranto were at least done by the Turk as a mere outside barbarian; he was not licensed to do them by the united voice of Europe. It is only in these latest times that the Turk has been fully authorized, under all the sanctions of so-called international right, to renew at pleasure the deeds of Otranto and of Batak in lands to which Europe has twice promised freedom. The martyrs of 1480, their sufferings, their honours, have made so deep an impression on the mind of Otranto that the metropolitan basilica has popularly lost its name of _Annunziata_, and is more commonly spoken of as the church of the martyrs. But the great church of Otranto, the church of the prelate whose style runs as "archiepiscopus Hydrutinus et primas Salentinorum," is a building of deep interest on other grounds. Like so many Italian churches, it is not very attractive without, nor is there anything specially to tarry over in its bell-tower. But even outside we may mark one or two signs of the restoration which the church underwent after its deliverance from the Turk. The west window is of that date, one of those rose-windows to which Italian, and still more Dalmatian, taste clave so long, even when all other mediæval fashions had vanished away. Of the same date is the north door, showing, like the great doors at Benevento, the Primate of the Salentines attended by the bishops and chief abbots of his province. As we go within, our first feeling is one of wonder that so much should have lived through the infidel storm and occupation. But, according to the usual practice of Mussulman conquerors, the head church of the city was turned into a mosque; there was therefore, after the first moment of havoc had passed by, no temptation on the part of the new occupants to damage the essential features of a building which had become a temple of their own worship. It is therefore not wonderful that the main features of the basilica are still there, either untouched or most skilfully restored. Seven arches rise from columns, perhaps of classical date, with capitals, mostly of different kinds of foliage, but one of which brings in human figures, after the type which was so well set in Caracalla's baths. But a more interesting study is supplied by the great crypt, or rather under-church. At Otranto, as in some of its neighbours, the craftsmen who worked below clearly allowed themselves a freer choice of forms in the carving of capitals than they ventured on above ground. The vault of the under-church rests on ranges of slender columns, with heavy abaci and with an amazing variety in the capitals. None perhaps can be called classical; but very few are simply grotesque. The few that are so are found--one does not quite see the reason of the distinction--among the half-columns against the walls. Most of them show various forms of foliage and animal figures; the old law that almost any kind of man, beast, or bird, can be pressed to serve as the volute at the corner of a capital is here most fully carried out. But the further law, that that duty is most worthily discharged by the imperial eagle, can be nowhere better studied than in the Hydrantine under-church. In some capitals again, especially in the columns of the apses, the bird of Cæsar is perched as it were on Byzantine basket-work, clearly showing which Augustus it was to whom the Salentine Primate bowed as his temporal lord. Other capitals again are much simpler, but also savouring of the East; the plain square block has mere carving on the surface. Then, of the columns themselves, some are plain, some are fluted, some are themselves carved out with various patterns. In short a rich and wonderful variety reigns in every feature of the under-church of Otranto. Our comparison of the columns and capitals has carried us underground; but the really distinctive feature of the basilica of Otranto is above. Other churches of southern Italy have wonderful crypts; none, we may feel sure, has so wonderful a pavement. And here we do wonder that the Turks did not do incomparably more mischief than they did do. Some mischief they did; but the archbishops and canons of Otranto seem--perhaps unavoidably--to have done a great deal more by destroying or covering the rich pavement to make room for the furniture of the church. It would surely be hard to find another example of a pavement whose design is spread over the whole ground-floor of a great church. The pictures are in mosaic, rough mosaic certainly, of the second half of the twelfth century, when Otranto formed part of the Sicilian realm, and when that realm was ruled by William the Bad. Luckily inscriptions in the pavement itself have preserved to us the exact date, and the names of the giver and the artist. One tells us in leonine rimes: "Ex Ionathi donis per dexteram Pantaleonis Hoc opus insigne est superans impendia digne." Another stoops to prose: "Humilis servus Ionathas Hydruntinus archieps. jussit hoc [~o]p fieri per manus Pantaleonis p[~r]b. Anno ab Incarnatione Dn[~i] Nr[~i] Ihu. Xr[~i] MCLXV indictione XIV, regnante Dn[~o] nostro W. Rege Magnif." The design of the priest Pantaleon, wrought at the bidding of Archbishop Jonathan in the last year of the first William, is of a most extensive and varied kind. Scriptural scenes and persons, figures which seem purely fanciful, the favourite subject of the signs of the zodiac, all find their place. We meet also with one or two heroes of earlier and later times whom we should hardly have looked for. The main design starts, not far from the west end, with a tree rising from the backs of two elephants. The huge earth-shaking beast, the Lucanian ox, is, it must be remembered, a favourite in southern Italy; he finds a marked place among the sculptures of the great churches of Bari. The tree--one is tempted to see in it the mystic ash of Northern mythology--sends its vast trunk along the central line of the nave, throwing forth its branches, and what we may call their fruit, on either side. Here are strange beasts which may pass either for the fancies of the herald or for the discoveries of the palæontologist; but in the lion with four bodies and a single head we must surely look for a symbolical meaning of some kind. He is balanced, to be sure, by other strange forms, in which two or three heads rise from a single body. Here are figures with musical instruments, here a huntress aiming at a stag; and in the midst of all this, not very far from the west end, we find the figure of "Alexander Rex." To the left we have Noah, making ready to build the ark--the story begins at the beginning, like the building of the Norman fleet in the Bayeux Tapestry. Four figures are cutting down trees, and the patriarch himself is sawing up the wood, with a saw of the type still used in the country. The centre of the pavement is occupied by the zodiac; each month has its befitting work assigned to it according to the latitude of Otranto. Thus June cuts the corn. July threshes it, neither with a modern machine, nor with the feet of primitive oxen, but with the flail which many of us will remember in our youth. August, with his feet in the wine-press, gathers the grapes. December carries a boar, as if for the Yule feast of Queen Philippa's scholars. Each month has its celestial sign attached; but it would seem that the priest Pantaleon was in a hurry in putting together his kalendar, and that he put each of the signs a month in advance. Beyond the zodiac, near the entrance of the choir, and partly covered by its furniture, is a figure, which startles us with the legend "Arturus Rex." If we were to have Alexander and Arthur, why not the rest of the nine worthies? If only a selection, why are the Hebrews defrauded of their representative?--unless indeed Samson, who appears in the form of a mutilated figure, not far from the left of Arthur, has taken the place of the more familiar Joshua, David, and Judas. Here is a witness to the early spread of the Arthurian legends; here, in 1165, within the Sicilian kingdom, the legendary British hero receives a place of honour, alongside of the Macedonian. Nor is this our only witness to the currency in these regions of the tales which had been not so long before spread abroad by Walter Map. By this time, or not long after, the name of Arthur had already found a local habitation on Ætna itself. Among other scriptural pieces in different parts, we find of course Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel; there is Jonah too, far to the east; and in the eastern part of the north aisle, the imagination of Jonathan or Pantaleon has forestalled somewhat of the Dantesque conception of the _Inferno_. "Satanas" is vividly drawn, riding on a serpent, and other figures armed with serpents are doing their terrible work in the train of the "duke of that dark place." The whole work is strictly mosaic, and the design, though everywhere rude, is carried out with wonderful spirit. We may indeed rejoice that the hoofs of Turkish horses and the improvements of modern canons have left so much of a work which, even if it stood by itself, it would be worth while going to the end of railways at Otranto to see. * * * * * Such is now the one city in which the Turk ever ruled on our side of Hadria. In earlier times we might have passed straight from Otranto to the lands where he still rules, or to the island where he never ruled. But now he who looks out for Otranto on the heights of Albania, and whose objects call him to the nearer neighbourhood of those heights, must go back to Brindisi to find his way to reach them. FIRST GLIMPSES OF HELLAS. 1875--1881. In our present journey we draw near to the eastern peninsula, to the Hellenic parts of that peninsula, by way of the great island--great as compared with the mass of Greek islands, though small as compared with Sicily or Britain--which keeps guard, as a strictly Hellenic outpost, over a mainland which was and is less purely Hellenic. From Brindisi we sail to Corfu, the elder Korkyra, as distinguished from the black isle of the same name off the Dalmatian shore. In so sailing, we specially feel ourselves to be sailing in the wake of the conquerors who made Corfu an appendage to the Sicilian realm; we are passing between spots on either side which have known both a Norman and Venetian master. But it may be that we may have already drawn near to Greece by another path. It is easy to prolong the voyage which took us from Trieste to Spalato, from Spalato to Cattaro, by a third stage which will take us from Cattaro to Corfu. In this case we may have already studied the Albanian coast, and that with no small pleasure and profit. We may have marked a point not long after we had left Dalmatia behind us, and that where a line may well be drawn. There is a geographical change in the direction of the coast, from the shore of Dalmatia, with its islands and inland seas, its coast-line stretching away to the south-east, to the nearly direct southern line of the shore of Albania. In modern political geography we pass from the dominion of Austria to the dominion of the Turk. In the map of an earlier day, we pass from the all but wholly continuous dominion of the two commonwealths of Venice and Ragusa. In modern ethnology we pass from the Slave under a certain amount of Italian influence to the Albanian under a certain, though smaller, amount of influence, Italian or Greek, according to his local position and his religious creed. In modern religious geography we pass from a land which is wholly Christian, but where the Eastern form of Christianity, though still in the minority, makes itself more deeply felt at every step, to a land where Islam and the two great ancient forms of Christianity are all found side by side. In the geography of earlier times this point marks the frontier of a land intermediate between the barbaric land to the north, with only a few Greek colonies scattered here and there, and the purely Greek lands, the "continuous Hellas," to the south. We find on this western shore of the south-eastern peninsula the same feature which is characteristic of so large a part of the Ægæan and Euxine coasts, both of the south-eastern peninsula itself and of the neighbouring land of Asia. The great mainland is barbarian; the islands and a fringe of sea-coast are Greek. As we draw nearer to the boundary of Greece proper, the Hellenic element is strengthened. Thesprotians, Molossians, Chaonians, were at least capable of becoming Greeks. Epeiros, [Greek: Êpeiros], _terra firma_, once the vague name of an undefined barbarian region, became the name of a Greek federal commonwealth with definite boundaries. And the character of a barbarian land, fringed with European settlements and looking out on European islands, did not wholly pass away till almost our own day. A few still living men may remember the storming of Prevesa; many can remember the cession--some might call it the betrayal--of Parga. It was only when Parga was yielded to the Turk that this ancient feature of the Illyrian and Epeirot lands passed away. What Corinth had once been Venice was. Corinth first studded that coast with outposts of the civilized world. Venice held those outposts, sadly lessened in number, down to her fall. And the men of Parga deemed, though they were mistaken in the thought, that to the mission of Corinth and Venice England had succeeded. From whichever side our traveller draws near to Corfu, he comes from lands where Greek influence and Greek colonization spread in ancient times, but from which the Greek elements have been gradually driven out, partly by the barbarism of the East, partly by the rival civilization of the West. Whether we come from Otranto and Brindisi or from the Illyrian Pharos and the Illyrian Korkyra, we are coming from lands which once were Greek. But Otranto and Brindisi, Pharos and Black Korkyra, even Epidamnos and Apollonia, were scattered outposts of Greek life among barbarian neighbours; as the traveller draws near to the elder Korkyra, he finds himself for the first time within the bounds of "continuous Hellas." He may have seen in other lands greater and more speaking monuments of old Hellenic life than any that the island has to show him; he may have seen the lonely hill of Kymê, the hardly less lonely temples of Poseidônia; but those were Greece in Italy; now for the first time he sees Greece itself. Whatever we may say of the mainland to the left, there can be no doubt, either now or in ancient times, of the Hellenic character of the island to the right. There are the small attendant isles; there are the great peaks of Korkyra--not the lowlier peaks which gave city and island their later name--but the far mightier mountains which catch the eye as we approach the great island from the north. That island at least is Hellas--less purely Hellenic, it may be, than some other lands and islands, but still Hellenic, part of the immediate Hellenic world of both ancient and modern days. It was and is the most distant part of the immediate Hellenic world; but it forms an integral part of it. The land which we see is Hellenic in a sense in which not even Sicily, not even the Great Hellas of Southern Italy, much less then the Dalmatian archipelago, ever became Hellenic. From the first historic glimpse which we get of Korkyra, it is not merely a land fringed by Hellenic colonies; it is a Hellenic island, the dominion of a single Hellenic city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the beginning of recorded history, either actually Hellenic or so thoroughly hellenized that no one thought of calling their Hellenic position in question. Modern policy has restored it to its old position by making it an integral portion of the modern Greek kingdom. And, if in some things it is less purely Greek than the rest of that kingdom, what is the cause? It is because, if Corfu may be thought for a while to have ceased to be part of Greece, it never ceased to be part of Christendom. It was for ages under alien dominion, but it never was under the dominion of the Turk. The Venetian could to some extent modify and assimilate his Greek subjects; the Turk could modify or assimilate none but actual renegades. And, after all, the main influence has been the other way. If Italian became the fashionable speech, even for men of Greek descent, men on the other hand whose names distinctly show their Italian descent have cast in their lot with their own country rather than with the country of their forefathers. Shallow critics have mocked because men with Venetian names have been strong political assertors of Greek nationality. They might as well mock whenever a man of Norman descent shows himself a patriotic Englishman. They might as well hint that Presidents and Ministers of France and Spain, who have borne names which proclaim their Irish origin, were bound or likely to follow an Irish policy rather than a French or a Spanish one. The first aspect, indeed every aspect, of the island of Corfu and the neighbouring coast of Epeiros is deeply instructive. The island and the mainland come so close together that, till the eye has got well used to the outline of particular mountains, it is not easy to tell how much is island and how much mainland. A statesman of the last generation twice told the House of Lords that Corfu lay within a mile of the coast of Thessaly. We cannot say, without looking carefully to the scale on the map, how many miles Corfu lies from the coast of Thessaly, any more than we can say offhand how many miles Anglesey lies from the coast of Norfolk. It is a more practical fact that some parts of Corfu lie very near indeed to the coast of Epeiros, though not quite so near as Anglesey lies to the coast of Caernarvonshire. The channel must surely be everywhere more than a mile in width; certainly it could nowhere be bridged, as in the case of Anglesey, or in the cases of Euboia and nearer Leukas. Both coasts are irregular, both coasts are mountainous, and the mountains on both sides fuse into one general mass. Above all, prominent from many points, soars the famous range where, with a singular disregard of later geography, "Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains." Snow of course is in these lands to be had only at a much higher level than the snow-line of the Alps, so that the couch of Arethousa stands out yet more conspicuously over the neighbouring heights than it might have done in a more northern region. The inhabitants of Corfu are fond of pointing to the contrast between the well-wooded hills and valleys of their own fertile island and the bare, almost uninhabited, land which lies opposite to them. And of course they do not fail to point the inevitable moral. As in most such cases, there is truth in the boast, but truth that needs some qualifications. Corfu, through all its changes of masters, has always been under governments which were civilized according to the standard of their own times. It has fared accordingly. Epeiros has been handed over to a barbarian master, and it has also been largely colonized by the least advanced of European races. Besides having the Turk as a ruler, it has had the Albanian, Christian and Mussulman, as a settler. In Corfu the Albanian is a frequent visitor; his sheepskin and _fustanella_ may be constantly seen in the streets of Corfu; but he has not--unless possibly in the shape of refugees from Parga--formed any distinct element in her population. It is only in the nature of things that Greeks under successive Venetian, French, and English rule should do more for their land than Albanians under Turkish rule. But we may doubt whether any people under any government could have made the land opposite to Corfu like Corfu itself. Had the mainland shared the successive destinies of the island, it would doubtless have been far better off than it has been. But it could hardly have been as the island. One point of advantage for the island was the mere fact that it was an island. In all but the highest states of civilization, this is an advantage beyond words; and the ancient colonists fully understood the fact. Still it is a striking contrast to pass across the narrow sea from Corfu to what was Butrinto. Buthrotum, the mythical city of the Trojan Helenos, has a more real being as a Roman colony, and as one of those outposts on the mainland in which Venice succeeded the Neapolitan Kings, and which she kept down to her own fall. Butrinto was once a city no less than Corfu; to Virgil's eyes it was the reproduction of Troy itself. Now we cross from the busy streets and harbour of Corfu to utter desolation at Butrinto. The desolation is greater in one way than any that Helenos or any other primitive settler could have found, because it is that form of desolation which consists in traces of what has been. We enter the mouth of the river, with rich trees and pasturage between its banks and the rugged mountains; we mark ruins of fortresses and buildings on either side, till we come to the ruined castle at the mouth of the lake. The lake is a carefully preserved fishery, and permission is needed to enter it. A few dirty-looking men assemble at the door of a tumble-down building standing against the ruined castle. But among them are personages of some local importance. One is the lessee of the fishery, whose good will is of special importance. There is also a Turkish officer of some kind--more likely a Mussulman Albanian than an Ottoman--with his small and not threatening following. There are one or two native Christians; and it brings the varied ethnology of the land more deeply home to learn that they are neither Greeks nor Albanians, but that they belong to the scattered race of the Vlachs, the Latin-speaking people of the East, whose greatest settlement, far away from Butrinto, has now grown into an European kingdom. It is well to be reminded at such a moment that the Rouman principality, though the greatest, is only one among many, and that the latest, of the settlements of this scattered people. And it brings home the fact to us when we see here, in a land where Greek and Albanian--that is, Hellên and Illyrian--are both at home, the third of the great primitive races of the peninsula, the widely spread Thracian kin, the people of Sitalkês and Kersobleptês, so far away from the land in which alone political geography acknowledges them. One feeling however the group, so small, but differing so widely in race and creed, seem all to share very deeply. This is a devout reverence for the image of George King of the Greeks, when graven on a five- (new) drachma piece, and held up in the hand of one of the representatives of Corfu in the Greek Parliament. We remember the ancient power of much smaller coins--[Greek: hôs mega dynasthon pantachou tô dy' obolô]--and we begin to doubt whether a smaller sum might not have done the work as well. Anyhow his Hellenic Majesty's countenance, in this attractive shape, acts as a talisman on all, private and official, Christian and Mussulman; it buys off all questions or searchings of any kind, and wins free access to the beautiful scenery of the lake, full licence to poke about among what little there is to poke about in the shattered castle. The thought cannot help coming into the mind that those who so greatly respect the image and superscription of King George would have no very violent dislike to become his subjects. Still it is not without a certain feeling of having escaped out of the mouth of the lion that we cross once more over the channel, and find ourselves at the hospitable door of a Greek gentleman of Koloura. CORFU AND ITS NAMES. 1875. The great argument to establish the fact of a long-abiding Slavonic occupation in Greece has always been the changes in local nomenclature, the actual Slavonic names and the Greek names which have displaced older Greek names. The former class speak for themselves; the latter class are held to have been given during the process of Greek reconquest. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that there is a large amount of truth in this doctrine, if only it is kept in moderation, and is not pressed to the extreme conclusions of Fallmerayer. But it is important to note that the change from one Greek name to another has taken place also in cases when there has been no foreign settlement, no reconquest, no violent change of any kind. One of the greatest of Greek islands has lost one Greek name and has taken another, without the operation of any of the causes which are said to have brought about the change of nomenclature in Peloponnêsos. Crete and Euboia, we may say in passing, seem to have changed their names, when in truth they have not; but Korkyra really has changed its name. It had, for all purposes, become Corfu--in some spelling or other--till the modern revival--unwisely, we must venture to think--brought back, not the true local _Korkyra_ ([Greek: Korkyra]), but the Attic and Byzantine _Kerkyra_ ([Greek: Kerkyra]). City and island alike are now again [Greek: Kerkyra]; or rather we cannot say that the city is again [Greek: Kerkyra], as the modern city never was [Greek: Kerkyra] at all, nor even [Greek: Korkyra]. The modern town of Corfu--in its best Greek form [Greek: Koryphô]--stands on a different site from the ancient town of Korkyra, and there can be little doubt that the change of name is connected with the change of site. The legendary history of the island goes up, we need not say, to the Homeric tales. That Korkyra was the Homeric Scheriê was an accepted article of faith as early as the days of Thucydides. His casual phrase goes for more than any direct statement. He connects the naval greatness of the Korkyraians of his day with the seafaring fame of the mythical Phaiakians ([Greek: nautikô poly proechein estin hote epairomenoi kai kata tên tôn Phaiakôn proenoikêsin tês Kerkyras kleos echontôn ta peri tas naus]). Nearly a thousand years later Prokopios is equally believing, though he goes into some doubts and speculations as to the position of the isle of Kalypsô. His way of describing the island should be noticed. With him the island is the Phaiakian land, which is now called _Korkyra_ ([Greek: hê Phaiakôn chôra, hê nyn Kerkyra epikaleitai]). Against this description we may fairly balance that of Nikêtas ([Greek: hê Kerkyraiôn akra, hê nyn epikeklêtai Koryphô]), with whom the promontory of the Kerkyraians is now called _Koryphô_. The two answer to each other. To talk of [Greek: Kerkyraiôn akra] was as much an archaism in the eleventh century as to talk of [Greek: Phaiakôn chôra] was in the sixth. The everyday name of the island in the days of Prokopios was still [Greek: Korkyra] or [Greek: Kerkyra]. In the days of Nikêtas it was already [Greek: Koryphô]. We put the two phrases of Prokopios and Nikêtas together, because they are turned out as it were from the same mould. But there is no doubt that the change of name had happened a good while before Nikêtas, and there is some reason to believe that it was the result of causes which are set forth in the narrative of Prokopios. The earliest mention of Corfu by its present name seems to be that in Liudprand, who calls it "Coriphus" in the plural, the Greek [Greek: Koryphous]. The change therefore happened between the sixth century and the tenth, the change doubtless of site no less than the change of name. And no time seems more likely for either than the time which followed the wasting expedition of Totilas which Prokopios records. Then doubtless it was that the old city, if it did not at once perish, at least began to decay; a new site began to be occupied; a new town arose, and that new town took a new name from its most remarkable physical feature, the [Greek: koryphô], the two peaks crowned by the citadel, which form the most striking feature in the entrance to the harbour of modern Corfu. One argument alone need be mentioned the other way, and that is one which perhaps is not likely to present itself to any one out of Corfu itself. The local writer Quirini quotes a single line as from Dionysios Periêgêtês, which runs thus:-- [Greek: keinên nyn Korphyn nautai diephêmixanto.] Dionysios is a writer of uncertain date; but he may safely be set down as older than Prokopios. If then he used the later name, and used it in a form more modern than the [Greek: Koryphô] of Nikêtas, the whole argument would be set aside, and the name of Corfu would be carried back to a much earlier time. But where Quirini got his verse is by no means clear. We have looked in more than one edition of Dionysios, and no such verse can we find. The only mention of Korkyra is in a verse which runs thus:-- [Greek: kai liparê Kerkyra, philon pedon Alkinooio.] Nor does the commentator Eustathios say one word as to the change of name. We can only conceive that the line must have been added as a gloss in some copy, printed or manuscript, which was consulted by Quirini. We will assume then that, as far as the island is concerned, Korkyra and Corfu--in its various spellings--are two successive names, one of which supplanted the other, while, as far as the city is concerned, they are strictly the names of two distinct though neighbouring cities, one of which fell as the other rose. And now the question comes, Is the island of Korkyra the Scheriê of Homer? Is his description of Scheriê and the city of Alkinoos meant for the description of Korkyra or any part of it, whether the historical city or any other? We must remember that the general witness of antiquity in favour of Korkyra being Scheriê loses a good deal of its weight when we consider that the ancient writers felt bound to place Scheriê somewhere, while no such necessity is laid upon us. Bearing this in mind, the plain case seems to be that it is far more likely that Scheriê was nowhere at all. In dealing with Scheriê and its inhabitants, we are not dealing with an entry in the Catalogue of the Iliad, the Domesday of the Mykênaian empire; we are simply dealing with a piece of the romantic geography of the Odyssey. Everything about the Phaiakians and their land reads as if the whole thing was as purely a play of the imagination as the Kyklôpes and the Laistrygones. It is indeed quite possible that, even in describing purely imaginary lands, a poet may bring in his remembrance of real places, just as the features of a real person may be reproduced in the picture of an imaginary event. The poet, in painting Scheriê, may have brought in bits of local description from Korkyra or from any other place. But that is all. As we read the story, it seems quite as reasonable to look on the map for Nephelokokkygia as to look on the map for Scheriê. The thinkers of the days of Thucydides or of some time before Thucydides, deeming themselves bound to place Scheriê somewhere, fixed it at Korkyra. The reason doubtless was that the Phaiakians are spoken of as the most distant of mankind, far away from any others, and that Korkyra really was for a long time the most distant of Greek settlements in this region. When Korkyra was once ruled to be Scheriê, the process of identification naturally went on. Spots received Homeric names. Alkinoos had his grove and his harbour in the historical Korkyra. All this is the common course of legend, and proves nothing for either geography or history. Yet the tale of Scheriê, of Alkinoos, Arêtê, and the charming Nausikaa, is not simply one of the loveliest of tales. Scheriê knew the use of wheeled carriages; therefore Scheriê had roads. Alkinoos, the head king, was chief over twelve lesser kings. Here we get real history, though history neither personal nor local. Scheriê itself may safely be looked for in the moon; but the roads of Scheriê and the _Bretwalda_ of Scheriê have their place in the early history of institutions. Other names of the island are spoken of, as Drepanê and Makris, descriptive names which perhaps never were in real use, and which, if they were, were supplanted by the historical name of Korkyra. We must again repeat that _Korkyra_, not _Kerkyra_, is the genuine local name. It is the spelling on the coins of the country; it is the spelling of the Latin writers, who would get the name from the island itself; it is the spelling of Strabo. But it is equally plain that in Greece generally the spelling [Greek: Kerkyra] prevailed. It is so in Herodotus and the Attic writers; it is so in Polybios; it is so in the Byzantine writers, who of course affect Attic forms. It must never be forgotten that, from the time of Polybios, perhaps from an earlier time than his, down to the present moment, written Greek has been one thing, and spoken Greek another. Polybios wrote [Greek: Kerkyra], while its own people called it [Greek: Korkyra], just as he wrote [Greek: Êlis], while its own people called it [Greek: Walis]. The difference has been thought to have its origin in some joke or sarcasm--some play on [Greek: kerkos, kerkouros], and the like. But the literary form may just as likely be simply a tempting softening of the local form. One point only is to be insisted on, that the syllable [Greek: Kor] in [Greek: Korkyra], and the syllable [Greek: Kor] in [Greek: Koryphô], have nothing to do with one another. The latter name is no corruption of the elder; it is a genuine case of one Greek name supplanting another--perhaps rather a case of a Greek name, after so many ages, supplanting a name which the first Greek colonists may have borrowed from earlier barbarian inhabitants. In this case the change implies no change of inhabitants, no change of language. It is a change within the Greek language itself, which can be fully accounted for by historical causes. It therefore teaches that changes of name, such as the Slavonic theory insists on in Peloponnêsos, though they do often arise from new settlements and reconquests, do also come about in other ways. It is for the mythologist to find out whether Homer had Korkyra in his eye when he described the mythic Scheriê. This, be it again noted, is a perfectly reasonable subject for inquiry, and in no way implies any historical belief in the legend. It is simply like asking whether the real Glastonbury at all suggested the mythic Avalon. History begins to deal with Korkyra in the eighth century B.C., when the settlement of the Corinthian Chersikratês added the island to the Greek world. From that day onward the island has a long and eventful story, reaching down to our own times. But, before that story begins, the historian may fairly ask of the ethnologist what evidence, what hints of any kind, there are as to the people whom the Corinthian colonists found settled in the island. It is not likely that they found so promising a site wholly uninhabited. Some branch of the great Illyrian race, the race which is still so near to the island, and which still supplies it, if not with inhabitants, at least with constant visitors, may well be supposed to have made their way into so tempting an island. The harbours of Corfu would surely attract the seafaring Liburnians. We are then brought to the common conditions of a Greek colony, planted, as usual, among pre-existing barbarian inhabitants, and, as Mr. Grote has so strongly enforced, sure to receive a dash of barbarian blood among some classes of its members. The _dêmos_ of Korkyra may well have been far from being of pure Hellenic descent--a fact which, if it be so, may go far to explain the wide difference between the _dêmos_ of Korkyra and the _dêmos_ of Athens. Since the time of the Corinthian settlement, the island has undergone endless conquests and changes of masters, each of which has doubtless brought with it a fresh infusion into the blood of its inhabitants. But since the time of Chersikratês there has been nothing like extirpation, displacement, or resettlement. Korkyra has ever since been an Hellenic land, though a succession of foreign occupations may have marred the purity of its Hellenism. And one point at once distinguishes it from all the neighbouring lands. Among all the changes of masters which Korkyra or Corfu has undergone, they have always been European masters. It is the one land in those parts that has never seen the Turk as more than a momentary invader, to be speedily beaten back by European prowess. So much for the origin and the name of the greatest of the group which in modern geography has come by the strange name of the Ionian Islands. The only sense in which that name has any meaning is if it be taken as meaning the Islands of the Ionian Sea. It ought to be needless to remind any one that the word in that sense has nothing whatever to do with the real Ionians, with the Ionic dialect or the Ionic order. It certainly has an odd effect when one hears the people of Doric Korkyra spoken of as "Ionians;" and we have even seen the whole group of islands spoken of as "Ionia," to the great wrong of Chios, Samos, Ephesos, and others of the famous Ionian twelve. But having said so much about names, we must in another paper say something of the long series of revolutions which mark the history of Korkyra under its two names, and of their effect on its present state. CORFU AND ITS HISTORY. 1875. We have already spoken of the singular change of name which has befallen the most famous and important, though not the largest in superficial extent, of the group known as the Ionian Islands. The change of name, as we hold, followed naturally on the change of site of the city. The new city took a new name, and the island has always followed the name of the city. The old city and the new both occupy neighbouring points in a system of small peninsulas and havens, which form the middle of the eastern coast of the long and irregularly-shaped island of Korkyra. There, to the south of the present town, connected with it by a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive-trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies one of its two forsaken harbours. Between the old and the new city lies the so-called harbour of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbour, bearing the name of one of the three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian commonwealth. But the physical features of the country have greatly changed since Chersikratês led thither his band of settlers twenty-six centuries back. It is plain that both harbours once came much further inland than they do now, that they covered a great deal of the low ground at the foot of the peninsular hill. The question indeed presents itself, whether the two did not once meet, whether the peninsula was not once an island, whether the original colony did not occupy a site standing to the mainland of Korkyra in exactly the same relation in which the original insular Syracuse, the sister Corinthian colony, stood to the mainland of Sicily. The physical aspect of the country certainly strongly suggests the belief. And though Thucydides does not directly speak of the city as insular, though his words do not at all suggest that it was so, yet we do not know that there is anything in his narrative which directly shuts out the idea. Anyhow, the great change which has happened is plain when we see how utterly the great Hyllaic haven has lost the character of a haven. It is now called a lake, and exists only for purposes of fishing. We may believe that these physical changes had a great deal to do with the removal of the city to another site, with the change from Korkyra to Corfu. The description which Thucydides gives of the great sedition brings out a fact which we should at first sight hardly have expected, the fact that the aristocratic quarter of Korkyra was on the lower ground by the harbour, while the upper part of the town was occupied by the _dêmos_. To one who thinks of Rome, Athens, and ancient cities generally, this seems strange. But arguments from the most ancient class of cities do not fully apply to cities of the colonial class. These, where commerce was so great an object, were no longer, as a rule, placed on heights; convenient access from the sea was a main point, and we can therefore understand that the ground by the coast would be first settled, and would remain the dwelling-place of the old citizens, the forefathers of the oligarchs of the great sedition. There on the lower ground was the _agora_, where the Epidamnian exiles craved for help, and pointed to the tombs of their forefathers. The impression of the scene becomes more lively when we see not far off an actual ancient tomb remaining in its place, though it could hardly have been the tomb of the forefather of any Epidamnian. This is the tomb of Menekratês of Oianthê, honoured in this way by the people of Korkyra on account of his friendship for their city, a plain round tomb with one of those archaic inscriptions in which Korkyra is rich. Archaic indeed it is, written from right to left, in characters which mere familiarity with the Greek of printed books or of later inscriptions will not enable any one to read off with much ease. It formed doubtless only one of a range of tombs, doubtless outside the city, but visible from the _agora_. An orator in the Roman forum could not have pointed to the tombs of forefathers by the Appian Way. The position of the quarter of the oligarchs by the modern suburb of Kastrades seems perfectly clear from Thucydides. The _dêmos_ took refuge in the upper part of the city and held the Hyllaic harbour; the other party held the _agora_, where most of them dwelled, and the harbour near it and towards the continent ([Greek: hoi de tên te agoran katelabon, houper hoi polloi ôkoun autôn, kai ton limena ton pros autê kai pros tên êpeiron êpeiron]). This district marks out the haven by Kastrades, looking out on the Albanian mountains, as distinguished from the Hyllaic haven shut in by the hills of Korkyra itself. But where was the Hêraion, the temple of Hêrê, which plays a part in more than one of the Thucydidean narratives? and where was the island opposite to the Hêraion--[Greek: pros to Hêraion]--and the isle of Ptychia, both of which appear in his history? The answer to the former question seems to turn on another. Was the present citadel, the true [Greek: Koryphô], itself always an island, as it is now? The present channel is artificial--that is to say, it is made artificial by fortifications--but it may after all have been a natural channel improved by art. And that is the belief of some of the best Corfiote antiquaries. If so, this may well be the [Greek: nêsos pros to Hêraion], and Ptychia may be the isle of Vido beyond. The Hêraion would thus stand on the north side of the old Korkyra, looking towards the modern city; it would stand in the oligarchic quarter on the low ground near the _agora_. It was therefore neither of the two temples of which traces remain. One, of which the walls can be traced out nearly throughout, and of which a single broken Doric column is standing, overlooks the open sea towards Epeiros. Another on the other side overlooked the Hyllaic harbour. This in course of time became a church, a now ruined church, but which keeps large parts of its Hellenic walls and some windows of beautiful Byzantine brickwork. It seems hardly possible in any case that the Hêraion could have been at quite the further end of the peninsula, and that the island [Greek: pros to Hêraion] could be either of the small islands, each containing a church, which keep the entrance of the Hyllaic harbour. Such then was old Korkyra, the colony of Chersikratês, the Korkyra which figures in the tale of Periandros, the Korkyra which played such a doubtful part in the Persian War, which gained so fearful a name in the Peloponnesian War, and which, within two generations, had so thoroughly recovered itself that in the days of Timotheos it struck both friends and enemies by its wealth and flourishing state. It is the Korkyra of Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, the Korkyra which formed one of the first stepping-stones for the Roman to make his way to the Hellenic continent, the Korkyra whose history goes on till the wasting inroad of Totilas. Then, as we hold, ancient Korkyra on its peninsula began to give way to Koryphô (Corfu) on another peninsula or island, that to which the two peaks which form its most marked feature gave its name. * * * * * [Illustration: CHURCHES AT CORFU.] This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world, with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark. Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which the Tzar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern Greek kingdom. But Corfu has never for a moment been under the direct rule of the Turk. The proudest memory in the later history of the island is the defeat of the Turks in 1716. Peloponnêsos, the conquest of Morosini, had again been lost, and the Turk deemed that he might again carry his conquests into the Western seas. The city was besieged by land and sea; the two fleets, Christian and infidel, stretched across the narrow channel between the island and the mainland, the left wing of the Turkish fleet resting strangely enough on Venetian Butrinto, while the ships of Venice and her allies stretched from Vido to the Albanian shore. The statue of Schulemberg, set up as an unparalleled honour in his lifetime, adorns the esplanade of the city which he saved. Unless we count the Turkish acquisition of the Venetian points on the mainland, which, though done under the cover of a treaty, took at Prevesa at least the form of an actual conquest, this was the last great attempt of the Turk to extend his dominion by altogether fresh conquests at the expense of any Christian power. Korkyra thus gave way to Corfu, and the endless fortifications of Corfu of every date were largely built out of the remains of Korkyra which supplied so convenient a quarry. None but an accomplished military engineer could attempt to give an account of the remains of all the fortifications, Venetian and English, dismantled, ruined, or altogether blown up. But the kingdom of which Corfu now forms a part still keeps the insular citadel, the outline of the two peaks being sadly disfigured by the needs of modern military defence. Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they present but few architectural features, and we find none of those various forms of ornamental window, so common, not only in Venice and Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they will give to many their first impression of Orthodox arrangement and Orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of its own. Of one, known as [Greek: hê Panagia tôn blachernôn], we have already spoken; another, known specially as Our Lady of _Oldbury_ ([Greek: hê Panagia palaiopoleôs]), is unattractive enough from any point from which the spectator is likely to see it. Its form is by courtesy called basilican; but, if so, it is like the basilica of Trier, without columns or arches. Within it is a dreary building enough, but it presents one object of interest in a side-altar, a Latin intrusion into the Orthodox fabric. But the west end is one of the most memorable things to be found in Corfu or anywhere else. Two columns, not of the usual early Doric of the island, but with floriated capitals, though not exactly Corinthian, are built into the wall with a piece of their entablature. On this is graven a Christian inscription, which is given in an inaccurate shape by Mustoxidi (_Delle cose Corciresi_, p. 405), who has further improved the spelling. The spelling is in truth after the manner of Liudprand and the modern shoe-makers of Corfu, and is therefore instructive. At the top come the words of the Psalmist; "This is the gate of the Lord; the _writeous_ shall enter into it":--[Greek: hautê hê pylê tou Kyriou, dikeoi eiseleusontai en autê.] Below come four hexameters:-- [Greek: pistin echôn basilian emôn meneôn sunerithon, soi makar hypsimedon tond' hieron ektisa naon, Hellênôn temenê kai bômous exalapaxas, cheiros ap' outidanês Iobianos edôken anakti.] Who was this Jovianus? Clearly a Christian as zealous as his Imperial namesake; for he cannot be the Emperor himself, as some have thought. He thought it glory and not shame to destroy the works of the Gentiles--the [Greek: Hellênes]--and to turn them to the service of the royal faith. But are we to take the "royal faith" in the same sense as the "royal law" of the New Testament? or does it mean the "royal faith," as being set up under some orthodox Emperor, when the orthodoxy of Emperors was still a new thing? Anyhow the plunderer of Gentile temples and altars could not keep himself from something of the Gentile in the ring and the language of his verses. And had he made use of his spoil to rear a basilica like those of Constantine and Theodoric, we should, from a wider view than that of the mere classical antiquary, have but little right to blame him. The rest of the columns, besides the two that are left, would have well relieved the bareness of his interior; better still would it have been if Saint Peter _ad Vincula_ had found a rival in two arcades formed out of the Doric columns whose fragments lie about at Corfu, almost as Corinthian and Composite fragments lie about at Rome. The third church, that which professes to be the oldest in the island, that which bears the name of the alleged apostles of the island, the Jasôn and Sosipatros of the New Testament, is a more successful work. Brought to its present form about the twelfth century by the priest Stephen, as is recorded in two inscriptions on its west front, it is, allowing for some modern disfigurements, an admirable specimen of a small Byzantine church. It will remind him who comes by way of Dalmatia of old friends at Zara, Spalato, and Traü; but it has the advantage over them of somewhat greater size, and of standing free and detached, so that the outline of its cross, its single central cupola and its three apses, may be well seen. This church, like most in the neighbourhood, has a bell-gable--[Greek: kôdônostasion]--with arches for three bells, of a type which seems to be found of all ages from genuine Byzantine to late _Renaissance_. [Illustration: SAINT JASON AND SAINT SOSIPATROS, CORFU.] To go back to earlier times, the museum of Corfu contains an inscription, [Greek: boustrophêdon] inscription, rivalling that of Menekratês in its archaism, attached to a Doric capital, of far later workmanship, one would have thought, than the inscription. The building art had clearly outstripped the writing art. The military cemetery contains some beautiful Greek sepulchral sculptures from various quarters, not all Korkyraian. And at some distance from the city, near the shore of Benizza--a name of Slavonic sound--is a Roman ruin with mosaics and hypocaust, whose bricks we think Mr. Parker would rule to be not older than Diocletian. In Corfu such a monument seems at first sight to be out of place. For Hellenic remains, for Venetian remains, we naturally look; still it is well to have something of an intermediate day, something to remind us of the long ages which passed between the revolutions recorded by Polybios and the revolutions recorded by Nikêtas. CORFU TO DURAZZO. 1881. We start again from Corfu, and this time our course is northward. A survey of Greece as Greece would lead us southward and eastward. So would even a complete survey of the subject lands of Venice. For that we must go on to the rest of the western islands, to not a few points in the Ægæan, to the greater islands of Euboia and Crete, to Saint Mark's own realm of Cyprus, which the Evangelist so strangely inherited from his daughter and her son. Not a few points of Peloponnêsos for some ages, all Peloponnêsos for a few years, Athens itself for a moment, comes within the same range. We might write the history of Argos from the Venetian point of view, a point of view which would shut out the history of Mykênê, and would look on Tiryns only as _Palai-Nauplia_, the precursor of Napoli di Romania. But no man could journey through Greece itself with Venice in this way in his thoughts. Far older, far nobler, memories would press upon him at every moment. The mediæval history of Greece is a subject which deserves far more attention than it commonly gets, and in that history Venice plays a prominent part. But it is hard, in a Greek journey, to make the mediæval history primary, and even in the mediæval history Venice is only one element among others. A large part of Greece fairly comes under the head of the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice; but we cannot bring ourselves to make that the chief aspect in which we look at them. It is otherwise with the Dalmatian and Albanian possessions of the Republic. There, though other points of view are possible, yet the special Venetian point of view is one which may be both easily and fairly taken. So too with Corfu; thoroughly Greek as the island is, it still lies on the very verge of continuous Greece. In its history and geography it is closely connected with the more northern possessions of the Republic; its Venetian side is at least as important as any other side; we can without an effort bring ourselves to treat it in a way in which we could hardly bring ourselves to treat Argos. We can then fairly take Corfu into our special Venetian survey; but we can hardly venture to carry that survey further. The rest of Greece, though it has its Venetian side, though it is important that its Venetian side should not be forgotten, can never be looked on in this way as an appendage to the Hadriatic commonwealth. We cannot go through the earliest homes of European civilization and freedom, and keep our mind mainly fixed even on the days when Rome had made them members of her Empire, and when their influence had gone far to make the later power of Rome at least as much Greek as Roman. Still less can we go through them with our mind mainly fixed on the days when so large part of Greece had passed under the rule of a city which was in truth a revolted member of the Empire which it helped to split in pieces. We start then again from Corfu, with our faces turned towards our old haunts among the Illyrian coasts and islands. In so doing, we pass for a while out of the Christian and civilized world, to skirt along the coasts where Europe is still in bondage to Asia. The wrong is an old one, as old as the days when Herodotus put on record how Greek cities for the first time passed under the rule of a barbarian master. From his day, from times long before his day, from the days of Agamemnôn, perhaps from the days of the brave men who lived before him, the same long strife has been going on, the same "eternal Eastern question" has been awaiting its "solution." And nowhere does that abiding struggle come more fully home to us than in the lands where the Eastern question has become a Western question. The Greek cities whose bondage to the barbarian was recorded by Herodotus were Greek cities on barbarian ground. They were outposts of Europe on the soil of Asia; they were spots in winning which the Asiatic might deem that he was winning back his own. And after all, the barbarian whose conquest of the Greek cities of Asia marks one important stage in this long strife, was a barbarian of another kind from the barbarians whom European lands have in later times been driven to receive as masters. Croesus worshipped the Gods of Greece, and Greek poets sang his praises. It may even be that the Lydian, like the Persian who succeeded him, was not a barbarian at all in the strictest sense, but that there was some measure of kindred, however distant, between him and his European subjects. It is another kind of master, another kind of bondage, which has fallen to the lot of the lands along whose coast we are now sailing. Here we do indeed see the West in bondage to the East, we do indeed see Europe on her own soil bowed down beneath the yoke of Asia. We pass by coasts which look to the setting sun no less than our own island, but which the Asiatic intruder still holds beneath the yoke,--over some of which he has pressed the yoke for the first time within the memory of living men. On these coasts at least we think of Venice only in her nobler character. Here indeed every island, every headland, which owned her rule, was something saved from the grasp of the enemy; it was indeed a brand plucked from the burning. As we sail northward, we leave spots behind us, memorable in past times, memorable some of them in our own day. We leave behind us Prevesa, where, till almost within our own century, Saint Mark still held his own, hard by the City of Victory of the first Emperor. We remember how Prevesa was torn away from Christendom by the arms of Ali of Jôannina, and how within the last three years freedom has been twice promised to her but never given. We leave behind us more famous Parga, where, within the lifetime of many of us, stout hearts could still maintain their freedom, in the teeth alike of barbarian force and of European diplomacy--Parga, whose banished sons bore with them the bones of their fathers rather than leave them to be trampled on by the feet of the misbelievers. There must be men still living who had their share in that famous exodus, and who have lived to see Europe first decree that their land should be again set free, and then thrust it back again beneath the yoke. We leave behind us Butrinto, happier at least in this, that there no promise of later days has been broken. There we have passed the point beyond which assembled Europe ruled that even the dreams of freedom might go no further. And as we sail between the home of freedom and the house of bondage, our thoughts overleap the mountain wall. They fly to the heights where Souli, birth-place of Botzarês, is left to the foes against whom it so long and so stoutly strove. They fly to Jôannina, so long the home of light and comparative freedom amid surrounding darkness and bondage, but which now, instead of receiving the twice-promised deliverance, is again thrust back into bondage for a while. We pass on by the High Thunderpeaks, fencing in the land of Chimara, famous in the wars of Ali. We double the promontory of Glôssa, and find ourselves in the deep bay of Aulôn, Aulona, Valona, with the town itself high on its hill, guarding the entrance to the gulf from the other side. Here is a true hill-city, unlike Korkyra, unlike even Buthrotum; but while Korkyra and Buthrotum, each on its shore, has each its history, Aulôn on its height has none. We pass by the mouths of the great Illyrian rivers, by Aoos and Apsos, and we leave between them the place where once stood Apollonia, another of the paths by which Rome made her way into the Eastern world. At last we find ourselves in another bay, wider, but not so deep as the bay of Aulôn. Here we look out on what remains of a city whose earlier name dwells in the memory of every reader of the greatest of Greek historians, a city whose later name, famous through a long series of revolutions, ought to be ever fresh in the minds of Englishmen, as having become by a strange destiny the scene of one stage of the same struggle as Senlac and York and Ely. The city on which we look was, under its elder name of Epidamnos, that famous colony of Korkyra which gave an occasion for the Peloponnesian war. Under its later name of Dyrrhachion or Durazzo it beheld Englishmen and Normans meet in arms, when Englishmen driven from their homes had found a shelter and an honourable calling in the service of the Eastern Cæsar. The city on which we gaze, though it is only by a figure that we can be said to gaze on the original Epidamnos, is one of those cities which, without ever holding any great place themselves, without being widely ruling cities, without exercising any direct influence on the course of the world's history, have given occasion for the greatest events through their relations to cities and powers greater than themselves. Under none of its names was Epidamnos the peer of Corinth in the elder state of things, or of Venice in the later. Yet events of no small moment came of the relations between Epidamnos and Corinth, of the relations between Durazzo and Venice. Greater events still came of the relations between Dyrrhachion and Rome. The three names, though of course the third is a simple corruption of the second, are convenient to mark three periods in the history of the place, just as one of the great Sicilian cities is conveniently spoken of at three stages of its life as Akragas, Agrigentum, and Girgenti. When and how the name changed from Epidamnos to Dyrrhachion is not clear, nor are the reasons given for the change satisfactory. In practice, Epidamnos is its old Greek name, Dyrrhachion its Roman, Durazzo its mediæval name. But the name Dyrrhachion can be Roman only in usage; the word itself is palpably Greek. In strictness it seems that Epidamnos was the name of the city, and Dyrrhachion the name of the peninsula on which the city was built. The change then has some analogy with the process by which the tribal names in northern Gaul have displaced the elder names of their chief cities, or with the change among ourselves by which Kingston-on-Hull, as it is still always called in formal writings, is in common speech always spoken of as "Hull." Anyhow, under Roman rule, the name of Dyrrhachion altogether displaced Epidamnos. The new name gradually came to be mispelled or Latinized into _Durachium_ and _Duracium_, and, in that state, it supplied the material for more than one play upon words. When Robert Wiscard came against it, he said that the city might indeed be _Duracium_, but that he was a _dour_ man (_durus_) and knew how to _endure_ (_durare_). The Norman made his way by this path into the Eastern lands, as the Roman had done before him; but as his course was quicker, his stay was shorter. Epidamnos, along with Apollônia and Korkyra, were the first possessions of Rome east of the Hadriatic. They were possessions of the ruling city where dominion was for a long time disguised under the name of alliance. But, under whatever name, Rome, Old and New, held them till the Norman came. But the Norman did not hold them till the Venetian came. In a few years after the coming of Robert Wiscard, Durazzo and Corfu were again cities of the Eastern Empire. Amidst all the revolutions which this little peninsula has gone through, one law seems to hold. Under all its names, it has had in a marked way what we may call a colonial life, in the modern sense of the word _colonial_. It has ever been an outpost of some other power, of whatever power has been strongest in those seas, and it has been an outpost ever threatened by the elder races of the mainland. Herein comes one of the differences between this Albanian coast and the Dalmatian coast further north. The Roman Peace took in all; but in the days before and after the Roman Peace, the settlements of Corinth, Venice, or any other colonizing and civilizing power, along the coast of which Durazzo was the centre, were merely scattered outposts. There never was that continuous fringe of a higher culture, Italian or Greek, which spread along the whole coast further north. As a colony, an isolated colony, Epidamnos or Durazzo was always exposed to the attacks of barbarian neighbours. And in this land the barbarian neighbours have always been the same. The old Illyrian, the Albanian, the Arnaout, the Skipetar--call him by whichever name we will--has here lived on through all changes. He has indeed a right to look on Greek, Roman, Norman, Angevin, Servian, Venetian, and Ottoman, as alike intruders within his own immemorial land. It was danger from the Illyrian that led to the disputes which open the history of Thucydides, when Corinth and Korkyra fought over their common colony. It was danger from the Illyrian which drove Epidamnos into the arms of Rome. It was the Illyrian under his new name who in the fourteenth century for a moment made Durazzo the head of a national state, the capital of a short-lived kingdom of Albania. Twice conquered by the Normans of Apulia and Sicily, twice by their Angevin successors, granted as part of a vassal kingdom by the Norman and as a vassal duchy by the Angevin, twice won by the Venetian commonwealth, held by the despots of Epeiros, by the restored Emperors of Constantinople, by the kings of Servia, by the native kings of Albania, no city has had a more varied succession of foreign masters; but, save in the days of the old Epidamnian commonwealth and in the days of the momentary Albanian kingdom, it has always had a foreign master of some kind. But in the endless succession of strangers which this memorable spot has seen, as masters, as invaders, as defenders, it is the Englishman and the Venetian who can look with most satisfaction on their share in its long history. Englishmen had the honour of guarding the spot for the Eastern Cæsar; Venice had the honour of being the last Christian champion to guard it against the Ottoman Sultan. * * * * * We stand then gazing from our ship on what is left of the city which Robert Wiscard crossed the sea to conquer, which Alexios came with his motley host to defend, and to find that in all that host the men whom he could best trust were the English exiles. There, as in their own island, the English axe and the Norman lance clashed together; there the stout axemen alone stayed to die, while the other soldiers of the Eastern Rome, the Greek, the Turk, and the Slave, all turned to fly around their Emperor. We look out, and we long to know the site of the church of Saint Michael, which our countrymen so stoutly guarded, till the Normans, Norman-like, took to their favourite weapon of fire. But may we confess to the weakness of looking at all these things only from the deck of the steamer? Perhaps there are some who may be forgiven if they shrink from thrusting themselves alone, with no native or experienced guide, into the jaws of the present masters of Durazzo. They may be the more forgiven when those who have the care of their vessel and its temporary inhabitants utter warnings against any but the most stout-hearted trusting themselves to the boats which form the only means of reaching the Dyrrhachian peninsula. Strengthened in weakness by such counsels, there seems a kind of magnanimity in the resolution to abide in the ship, to say that we have landed at free Corfu, that we shall land at recovered Antivari, but that we will not betweenwhiles set foot on any soil where the Turk still reigns. And the time of distant gazing is not wasted. Without risking ourselves either on Turkish ground or on the rough waves of the Epidamnian bay, a fair general view of the city may be had from the steamer. The wide curve of the bay has for the most part a flat shore, with a background of mountains in the distant landscape. Towards the north-west corner, a promontory of a good height, backed by a comb-like range of peaks, rises at once from the water. This is the peninsula of Dyrrhachion, once crowned by the Epidamnian city. The modern town is seen on a small part of the tower slope of the hill. The walls can be traced through the greater part of their circuit; a huge round bastion by the sea, more than one tower, round and square, teach us that Durazzo has been strongly fortified. If we may eke out our own distant impressions by the help of an old print showing what Durazzo was in times past, we see that it was fortified indeed. We can recognize in the picture most of the towers which we have seen with our own eyes, and there is shown also another tower far greater, a huge square tower of many stages, which no imagination of the artist can have devised out of anything which now comes into the sea-view of the city. But that view enables us to trace out a few buildings within the wall. We mark the distinctive symbols of the two stranger forms of worship, from the East and from the West, which have, each in its turn, supplanted or dominated the native Church. The Latin church, with its conspicuous bell-tower, carries on the traditions of Angevin and Venetian rule; the mosque, with its more conspicuous minaret, speaks of the more abiding dominion of the representative of the False Prophet. The native church meanwhile lurks significantly unseen in the general view. Our teacher on board our ship assures us that Durazzo is not without an Orthodox place of worship; but he cannot point out its whereabouts. And it may be that it is no common anniversary on which we look out on the land which has passed into bondage. Looked at by the evening light of the twenty-ninth day of May, the group of buildings at Durazzo, alike by what is present to the eye and by what is absent, brings to the mind the fate of a greater city than Durazzo was in its proudest day. It makes us muse how, after four hundred and eight and twenty years, we have still to repeat the Psalmist's words: "O God, the heathen have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones." Durazzo has not indeed, like some other cities under the yoke, sunk to a heap of stones; but it is easy to see how the Turkish town has shrunk up within the Venetian walls, and again how narrow must be the circuit of Venetian Durazzo compared with the Epidamnos of the days of Thucydides, or even with the Dyrrhachion beneath whose walls our banished kinsmen so well maintained the cause of the Eastern Augustus. For the church that they so stoutly defended we need not say that it is vain to look in such a Pisgah view of the city as is all that we can take. But to the left of the present wall, where the hill soars, one stage upon another, far above the height of Durazzo that now is, we must surely place the site of the akropolis of the old Korkyraian settlers. Such a post, looking over the wide bay and commanding its mouth, would be just what would commend itself to the Greek colonists for the site of their new stronghold, while the lower city would naturally be spread over the more sheltered ground which holds all that is left of Durazzo under the rule of the Turk. Pausanias indeed implies that there had been a change of site before his time, that the Dyrrhachion of his day did not stand on exactly the same ground as the elder Epidamnos. No doubt the loftier site was the older; men came down from the hill-top as they did at Athens and Corinth. Thus much the passing stranger can see of this historic spot, even without setting his foot on the soil which the barbarian has torn away from Christendom. His course will bear him on to the place of his next halt, to the spot which, only a few months back, was the last soil which Christendom had won back from the barbarian. Since then, if another land has been denied the promised freedom, in a third the boon has been actually bestowed. And we may comfort ourselves by thinking that, while the shame of what is left undone belongs to others, the praise of what is done belongs to our own land only. We may comfort ourselves too by further thinking that right and freedom are powers which have an awkward way, when they have taken the inch, of going on to take the ell. The wise men whose wisdom consists in living politically from hand to mouth, are again crying out against "re-opening the Eastern question." In sailing along the shores, in scanning their history in past and present times, we feel how deep a truth was casually uttered in the shallow sneer which called that question "eternal." We feel how vain is the dream of those who think that this or that half-measure has solved it. As we gaze on enslaved Durazzo, with free Greece behind us, with free Montenegro before us--as we run swiftly in our thoughts over the long history of the spot--as we specially call up the deeds of our own countrymen on the shore on which we look--we feel that something indeed has been done, but that there is yet much more to do. Before us, behind us, are lands to which England, and England only, has given freedom. A day must come when, what England has done for Corfu, for Arta, and for Dulcigno, she must do for Jôannina and for Durazzo. ANTIVARI. 1881. We wind up our course with one more of the once subject cities of Venice, one where we can hardly say that we are any longer following in Norman footsteps, but whose history stands apart from the history of Dalmatia and Istria, while it has much in common with our last halting place. But here the main interest belongs to our own day. It is with new and strange feelings that we look out on a land which, when we last passed by it, was still clutched tight in the grasp of the barbarian, but to which we can now give the new and thrilling name of the sea-coast of Tzernagora. And yet it is with mingled feelings that we gaze. We rejoice in the victories, in the extension, of the unconquered principality, the land which has shown itself a surer "bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite" than Hungary or Poland, or even Venice, ever proved. We rejoice that the warriors of the mountain, long shut in by force and fraud, have again, with their own right hands, cut their way to their own sea. And yet we feel that, though the sea to which they have cut their way is truly their own sea, their own ancient heritage, yet the coast and the havens which they have won are not the coast and the havens which they should have won. If all had their own, Dulcigno, Antivari, and the ewe lamb which the rich man stole at Spizza, would be the havens of the free Albanian, while the free Slave would have his outlet to the Hadriatic waters at his own Cattaro and at Ragusa too. In such an ideal state of things, the present lord of Cattaro and Ragusa might reign peaceably and harmlessly in the duchy of his grandmothers, happy in deliverance from the curses of those whom he now keeps back from union with the brethren whom they love and with the one prince whom they acknowledge. The Montenegrin, in short, kept back by wrong from winning his way to the sea by peaceful union with those who yearn for his presence, has been driven to win his way to the sea by the conquest of lands which were once the heritage of his race, but from which his race has now passed away. Forbidden to be the deliverer of the Slave, he has been forced to be the conqueror of the Albanian. The Albanian Mussulman himself has practically gained by being conquered; still, as we said, if every one had his own, arrangements would be different. The blame indeed lies, not with the people who extend their borders when to extend their border is a matter of national life, but with those who, not in the interest of any people, nation, or language, but in the private interest of their own family estate, sit by to hinder them from extending their borders in the right way. We rejoice then as we look for the first time on the sea-coast of Montenegro; but we mourn that the sea-coast of Montenegro lies where it does and not elsewhere. We mourn too that the enlargement of Christendom, the falling back of Islam, has been bought only by the destruction of an ancient and beautiful city from which the memorials at least of Christendom had not wholly passed away. Antibaris, Antivari, in the tongues of the land, _Bar_ and _Tivari_, is perhaps rather to be understood as meaning "the Bari on the other side" than "the city opposite Bari." But there is no doubt that its name contains, in one way or another, a reference to the more famous Bari, "Barium piscosum," on the other side of the Hadriatic. And Antivari is the opposite to Bari in a sense which was certainly not meant; no two sites can well be more unlike one another than the sites of Bari and of Antivari. The Apulian Bari lies low on a flat shore, with not so much as a background of hills; the Albanian Bari crowns a height, with a wall of more soaring heights on each side of it. The Apulian Bari had no chance of occupying such a position as this; the marked difference between the two coasts of the Hadriatic forbade it. But the site of Antivari is hardly less unlike most of the other sites on its own coast. Zara, Salona and its successor Spalato, Epidauros and its successor Ragusa, Cattaro, Durazzo, and a crowd of others of lesser name, are none of them placed on heights. Some of them nestle immediately at the foot of the mountain; some have thrown out their defences, older or newer, some way up the side of the mountain; in none is the city itself perched high on the hills. For a parallel to Antivari on this coast we have to go back to the mountain citadel of Aulona. The position and the name of Antivari seem to point to a state of things differing both from the days of the Greek and Roman foundations, and from the days of the cities which arose to shelter their fugitives in the day of overthrow. Long Salona stood low on the shore; the house of Jovius stood low on the shore also; it did not come into the head of the founders of either to plant city or palace on the height of Clissa. When Antivari arose, it would seem that men had gone back to that earlier state of things which planted the oldest Argos, even the oldest Corinth, on mountain peaks some way from their own coasts. The inaccessible height had again come to be looked on as a source of strength. Antivari may take its place alongside of the mediæval Syra, the Latin town covering its own peaked hill--a _mons acutus_, a Montacute, by the shore--while the oldest and the newest Hermoupolis lies on the shore at its feet. The town does not even look down at once on the haven; it has to be reached in a manner sideways from the haven. It is true indeed that the sea has gone back, that the plain at the foot of the mountains between the town and the shore was smaller than it now is, even in times not far removed from our own. But Antivari was never as Cattaro; it always stood on a height, with some greater or less extent of level ground between the town and its own haven. The city thus placed has gone through its full share of the revolutions of the eastern coasts of the Hadriatic. Once a commonwealth under the protection of the Servian kings and tzars, it came late under Venetian rule. But it remained under that rule down to a later time than any other of the possessions of the Republic on this coast, save those which came within the actual Dalmatian border and those detached points further to the south which have a history of their own in common with the so-called Ionian Islands. It was for a while in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, what Budua was for so long afterwards, the furthest point of the continuous rule of Saint Mark, a city which remained part of Christendom after Durazzo and Skodra had passed into the hands of the infidel. In earlier times, when Antivari had a separate being, its tendency was rather to a connexion with Ragusa than with Venice. Ragusa, though the nearer of the rivals, was the weaker, the less likely to change alliance or protection into dominion. Antivari too, like most other city-commonwealths, had its patricians and plebeians, its disputes between the privileged and the non-privileged order. As the justice of either side at home was distrusted, it was agreed that the decision of some classes of causes should be referred to the courts of Ragusa. Such a settlement, though taking another and more dangerous form, is the same in principle as the favourite Italian custom of choosing a foreign _podestà_, as the earlier usage by which cities which had won their independence in all other points were still willing to receive a criminal judge of the Emperor's naming. In all these cases alike, the stranger is looked on as more likely than the native to deal out even-handed justice amid the disputes and rivalries of persons and parties. Though Antivari stands on a hill, it does not crown any such height as those of Cortona or Akrokorinthos, nor does it call for any such journey as that which leads to the spot which masters of the high-polite style will now doubtless call its "metropolis" at Tzetinje. It stands on an advanced point among the mountains, one easily commanded from higher points, as was soon found in the siege of 1877. A road of no astonishing steepness leads us up to the town--or more strictly to its ruins. We look down on a church in the valley, whose air proclaims it as belonging to the Orthodox communion; and that church seems to be the only untouched building within sight. It is not till we get within the walls that we take in the full measure of the destruction which has been wrought; but the first glance shows that Antivari has suffered not a little from the warfare of our own times. The walls and towers are there; but we see that they fence in only roofless buildings; the mosques, with their minarets, several of them shattered, remind us that we are drawing near to a city which has been won for Christendom from Islam, as a nearer view reminds us that it is a city which had before been won for Islam from Christendom. We halt at a small _café_ outside the walls, where we receive a friendly greeting from the representatives of Montenegrin authority in the new conquest. Here too is the club and reading-room of Antivari, supplied with newspapers in the Slavonic, Italian, and Turkish tongues; the really prevailing speech of the district, the immemorial Skipetar or Albanian, hardly boasts of a representative in the press. Here too are gathered a few fragments from the ruins, a few capitals, sculptures, and inscriptions, all or most of Venetian times. Among them is the winged lion himself, and the epitaph of a local dignitary who bears the very English-sounding title of "justitia pacis." Even among ourselves embodied righteousness sometimes takes the same abstract form, instead of the more mortal and fleshly "justitiarius." A slight descent and a steep ascent leads us through a rebuilt suburb, which now forms the only part of Antivari which serves as a dwelling-place of man. A line of shops, or rather booths, supplies the needs of the neighbouring people, among whom Christians and Mussulmans, Slaves and Albanians, seem pretty equally mingled. A Montenegrin sentinel, whose national coat must once have been whiter than it now is, guards the gate, a Venetian gate where inscriptions in the Arabic character record the dominion of the late masters of Antivari. We enter, we gaze around, we climb a tower for a better view, and we look on a scene of havoc which is startling to men of peaceful lives, and which, one would think, must be unusual even in the experience of men of the sword. We believe that we are speaking the truth when we say that every building within the enclosed space has become uninhabitable; certainly not one seemed to be inhabited. This destruction is indeed not wholly the immediate result of the siege. A powder-magazine was afterwards struck by lightning, and its explosion destroyed whatever the siege had spared. But the havoc wrought by the siege itself must have been fearful. Antivari is as strictly a collection of ruins, and of nothing but ruins, as Ninfa at the foot of the Volscian hills, looking up at the mighty walls of Norba. But Ninfa was simply forsaken some ages back. Its inhabitants fled from an unhealthy site, and left their houses, churches, and military defences, to crumble away. But at Antivari we see the work of destruction in our own day, almost at the present moment. Four years back, the traveller passing along the Albanian coast was shown where Antivari, then an inhabited town, nestled among its rocks. The war was then raging inland; the Montenegrin was then defending his own heights against Turkish invasion; he had not yet come down to win back a fragment of his ancient coast from one of the two intruders who kept him from it. The traveller comes again; this time he does not only look from afar, but examines on the spot with his own eyes. But he finds only the shattered fragments of what four years before was a city of men. And, small as Antivari must have been even in its most flourishing times, it is no mean city that it must have been. It must be remembered that Antivari, though it was a Mussulman town under Turkish rule, was never in any strict sense a Turkish town. Its history is that of Albania generally, as it is the history of large classes of men in Bosnia. Antivari was easily won by the Turk, and it remained in the hands of its old inhabitants, Christian Albanians and Venetian settlers. Gradually, for the sake of their temporal interests, they conformed outwardly to the religion of their conquerors, and so passed from the subject to the ruling order. At first, this was a mere outward conformity for worldly ends; men still hoped that some chance of warfare would bring back the rule of Saint Mark. If so, they were ready to return to the faith which they still secretly held. But the happy revolution never came; new generations sprang up with whom Islam was an hereditary creed, and Antivari became a Mussulman city. But it never became a Turkish city. The descendants of the once Christian inhabitants lived on in their fathers' houses, and worshipped in the same temples as their fathers, though they were now turned to the use of another faith. Each church had a minaret added, and it became a mosque. In most cases of Mahometan conquest, the conquerors took the head church of the city as a trophy of their own faith, but left the subject Christians in possession of one or more of the lesser churches. So, in this same region, it was at Durazzo; so it was at Trebinje; in both there was a church, or more than one, within the walls. Here at Antivari, as the inhabitants gradually embraced Islam, all the churches became mosques; and thus, for the very reason that there was less of violent disturbance than in most cases of Turkish conquest, Antivari, while never becoming Turkish, became more strictly Mussulman than most cities under Turkish rule. The churches, or rather their ruins, still stand, examples of the usual churches of the country, none of them remarkable for size or antiquity or architectural splendour; but still essentially churches, with their fabrics untouched, save only the inevitable addition of the minaret. Some of them even keep memorials of their earlier use of which one would have expected Mussulman zeal to wipe out every trace as monuments of idolatry. Intruding Turks or Saracens would doubtless have done so; but the Mahometan descendants of the Christian citizens of Antivari still felt a tenderness for the works of their forefathers. Even pictures of Christian subjects have been spared. In one case especially, in a church which does not seem ever to have been a mosque, but, as having perhaps been a private chapel, to have formed part of a private house, among other kindred pictures, the baptism of our Lord in Jordan is still almost as clear as when the painter first traced it on the wall. Old ancestral memories, perhaps the vague feeling that after all a day of change might come--the feeling which led Bosnian beys, while holding their Christian countrymen in bondage, to keep Christian patents of nobility and even concealed objects of Christian worship--were clearly stronger in Antivari than any strict regard to the Mussulman law. And as it was with the churches, so it was with the houses. Antivari never became, like Trebinje, a tumble-down Eastern town, nor, like Butrinto, a collection of beggarly huts, not fit to be called a town at all. It was a small, but well-built city, after the pattern of the other cities on the eastern coast of the Hadriatic. There was clearly no moment of general havoc; the Mussulman lived on in the house of his Christian father. Some of those houses must have been still almost new when their owners embraced the faith of their conquerors. At every step we see among the shattered houses some pretty scrap, door or window, of the style which we commonly call Venetian; we see some too which belong to the confirmed _Renaissance_, and which can hardly be older than the sixteenth century. One stately building indeed seems to have perished. An old print of Antivari, in a book called _Viaggio da Venetia a Costantinopoli_, a book without date but which has an air of the sixteenth century, shows what is plainly meant for a municipal palace, after the same general type as the bigger one at Venice and the more beautiful one at Ragusa. It has arcades below and windows above. Still as we tread, even in their state of ruin, the streets, the little _piazze_, of what once was Antivari, we see that the city perched on its Albanian height must have been no unworthy fellow of its neighbours on the Dalmatian shore. It is sad that the enlargement of Europe and of Christendom, the winning back of their ancient coast by the valiant warriors of the Black Mountain, should have been bought only at such a price as the destruction of this interesting and really beautiful little city. The loss, it may be feared, cannot be repaired. A gently working hand might possibly set up again the ruined houses and churches nearly as they once were. Or it might at first sight seem a more obvious work to forsake the ruined hill-town, and to build another by the haven, a new Montenegrin Cattaro, to make up as far as may be for the city by the _Bocche_ so cruelly torn away from its free brethren. But either scheme seems to be forbidden by the growing unhealthiness of the spot. The place has been for some while getting more and more fever-stricken, and the disease has now--seemingly since the siege--spread upwards to the hill-town itself. It is for medical knowledge to judge whether, as is said to be the case in some parts of the Roman _Campagna_, sudden colonization, the settlement of a large number of new inhabitants at once, could do anything to check the evil. Failing this chance, it would seem as if Antivari was doomed utterly to perish. A new Montenegrin town and haven may arise, but not on the site of the ancient town and haven of the eastern Bari. On whom rests the blame? Surely not on the conquerors, whose warfare was waged in the noblest cause for which man can fight, for their faith, their freedom, their national life, the extension of freedom and national life to their brethren under the yoke. Nor can we say that it rests with the men who fought against them, who, from their own side, were fighting for faith and freedom and national life fully as much. It rather rests with the dangerous neighbour of both, whose very existence is founded on the trampling down of freedom and national life among all its neighbours. It rests with the power which takes care to strike no blows itself, but which knows how to suck no small advantage from the blows which are struck by others on either side. The ruin of Antivari is in truth the work, though the indirect work, of the power hard by, the power which was not ashamed to stretch forth its hand for such a spoil as Spizza, the hard-won earnings of its poor neighbour. The guilt of ruined Antivari rests with those who drove its conquerors to conquest in the wrong place by hindering them from peaceful advance in the right place. It rests with those who stirred up its defenders to a hopeless resistance by promises which never were fulfilled. When we see how in 1878 Montenegro was allowed to keep possession of ruined and almost worthless Antivari, but was forced to give up its other comparatively flourishing conquests of Spizza and Dulcigno, we better understand how the rule of doing as one would be done by is looked on in the council-chamber of an Apostolic King. And we see too, with some comfort, how England, as one of her first national acts when England found herself once more under English leadership, knew how to step in, with vigour and with patience, to undo at least one part of the wrong which had been done. THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
41195	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) [Illustration: _Shrine of Edward the Confessor._ WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] Historical Description OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY; ITS Monuments and Curiosities. [Illustration] PRINTED FOR THE VERGERS IN THE ABBEY, BY JAS. TRUSCOTT AND SON, SUFFOLK LANE, CANNON STREET, CITY. OF ADMISSION. _The North and West doors are open to Visitors. Guides are in attendance, from nine until six every day, except_ SUNDAY, CHRISTMAS DAY, _and_ GOOD FRIDAY. _The Abbey is not open to Visitors after the Afternoon Service during the Winter Months._ THE SERVICES. _On Sunday the entrance to the Abbey is by the North and South Transepts. Divine Service at_ 8 A.M., _at_ 10 A.M., _and at_ 3 P.M.; _and from Easter to the end of July, at_ 7 P.M. _At the usual Sunday Services, and on Saint and Holy Days, at_ 10 A.M., _there is a Sermon. The Holy Communion is celebrated on the first Sunday in the month, at the_ 10 A.M. _Service, and on other Sundays (except when otherwise ordered) at_ 8 A.M. The names of the several Chapels, beginning from the south cross, and so passing round to the north cross, are in order as follows:--1. St. Benedict; 2. St. Edmund; 3. St. Nicholas; 4. Henry VII.; 5. St. Paul; 6. St. Edward the Confessor; 7. St. John; 8. Islip's Chapel, dedicated to St. John the Baptist; 9. St. John, St. Michael, and St. Andrew. The three last are now laid together. The Chapel of Edward the Confessor stands, as it were, in the centre, and is enclosed in the body of the Church. Keep on your right, and the Chapel of St. Benedict is adjoining the Tombs-gate, in which Chapel several Deans were buried. Dean Ireland was buried in front of Camden's monument, in the same grave with Mr. Gifford, his associate through life. Several men intercept all persons as they approach the Abbey, to show them the Courts of Law, Westminster Hall, &c., which are open all day; persons attending to them are oft-times prevented from seeing the Church for that day, as the hours of service intervene. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Of the Foundation of the Abbey. Of the Founding of an Abbey on Thorney Island, where that of Westminster now stands, there are so many miraculous stories related by monkish writers, that the recital of them now would hardly be endured. Even the relations of ancient historians have been questioned by Sir Christopher Wren, who was employed to survey the present edifice, and who, upon the nicest examination, found nothing to countenance the general belief, "that it was erected on the ruins of a Pagan Temple." No fragments of Roman workmanship were discovered in any part of the building, many of which must undoubtedly have been intermixed among the materials, if a Roman temple had existed before on the same spot. Nor is the dedication of the first Abbey less involved in mystery than the founding of it. The legend says that Sebert, King of the East Saxons, who died in 616, ordered Melitus, then Bishop of London, to perform the ceremony; but that St. Peter himself was beforehand with him, and consecrated it in the night preceding the day appointed by his Majesty for that purpose, accompanied by angels, and surrounded by a glorious appearance of burning lights. That this legend continued to be believed after the building itself was destroyed, will appear by a charter which we shall have occasion to mention hereafter; and though nothing can with certainty be concluded from these fictions, yet it may be presumed, that both the ancient church dedicated to St. Paul, in London, and this dedicated to St. Peter, in Westminster, were among the earliest works of the first converts to Christianity in Britain. With their new religion, they introduced a new manner of building; and their great aim seems to have been, by affecting loftiness and ornament, to bring the plain simplicity of the Pagan architects into contempt. Historians, agreeable to the legend, have fixed the era of the first Abbey in the sixth century, and ascribed to Sebert the honour of conducting the work, and completing that part of it, at least, which now forms the east angle, which probably was all that was included in the original plan. After the death of that pious Prince, his sons, relapsing into Paganism, totally deserted the church which their father had been so zealous to erect and endow; nor was it long before the Danes destroyed what the Saxons had thus contemptuously neglected. From this period to the reign of Edward the Confessor, the first Abbey remained a monument of the sacrilegious fury of the times; but, by the prevailing influence of Christianity in that reign, the ruins of the ancient building were cleared away, and a most magnificent structure, for that age, erected in their place. In its form it bore the figure of a cross, which afterwards became a pattern for cathedral-building throughout the kingdom. That politic Prince, to ingratiate himself with his clergy, not only confirmed all former endowments, but granted a new charter, in which he recited the account of St. Peter's consecration, the ravages of the Danes, and the motives which prompted him to restore the sacred edifice to its former splendour, and endow it with more ample powers and privileges. This charter concluded with solemn imprecations against all who should in time to come, dare to deface or to demolish any part of the building, or to infringe the rights of its priesthood. Henry III. not only pulled down and enlarged the plan of this ancient Abbey, but added a Chapel, which he dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; but it was not till the reign of Henry VII. that the stately and magnificent Chapel now known by his name was planned and executed. Of this Chapel, the first stone was laid on the 24th January, 1502, and when completed was dedicated, like the former Chapel, to the Blessed Virgin. Henry, designing this as a burying-place for himself and his successors, expressly enjoined by his will, that none but those of the blood-royal should be inhumed therein. From the death of Henry VII. till the reign of William and Mary, no care was taken to repair or preserve the ancient church. By the robberies made upon it by Henry VIII., and the ravages it sustained during the unhappy civil commotions, its ancient beauty was in a great measure destroyed; nor did their Majesties go about to restore it, till it became an object of parliamentary attention, and till a considerable sum was voted for that purpose only. This vote being passed, Sir Christopher Wren was employed to decorate it and give it a thorough repair, which that able architect so skilfully and faithfully executed, that the building is thought at this day to want none of its original strength, and to have even acquired additional majesty by two new towers. In 1803 the lantern of the Abbey was destroyed by fire, owing to the negligence of the plumbers, who were employed in repairing the lead flat. This part being the junction of four long timber roofs, it was a merciful providence the whole of this much-esteemed, august, and venerable pile, had not been utterly consumed. The young gentlemen of Westminster School highly distinguished themselves by their exertions for the preservation of the church. The room is handsomely finished, and more suitable with the rest of the building than the old one. _General Admeasurements of the Interior of the Abbey._ Ft. In. Length from East to West 375 0 Breadth from North to South 200 0 Do. of Nave and Aisles 75 0 Height from Pavement to Inner Roof 101 0 Do. do. to the Roof of the Lantern 140 0 The new Choir, designed by Mr. Blore, Architect to the Abbey, is in the style of architecture which prevailed during the reign of Edward the Third; and executed by Mr. Ruddle, of Peterborough, in 1848. The Dean and Sub-dean's stalls are on either side of the arch, and are alike in general design, but that of the Dean being more elaborate in ornamental detail. They are octagonal in plan, and have projecting groined canopies, with pediments springing from moulded shafts with carved caps; above the canopies rise an octagonal turret with a spire. The arch is enclosed under a triangular pediment, the space between the pediment and the arch being filled with tracery; the centre of which is a cinque foil enclosing a shield bearing the arms of Edward the Confessor; the ground of this is carved, and the hollows of the pediment and arch mouldings are filled with four-leaved flower peculiar to the style. The Canons' stalls have groined canopies with pediments, and the space between the pediment and canopy filled with open tracery; the canopies spring from slender moulded shafts with carved capitals, and are separated by buttresses terminating in pinnacles between the pediments. The pew fronts are worked in tracery with deep mouldings, and the panels are divided into compartments by buttresses decorated with tracery, crockets, and finials. The caps and poppy-heads of the desk ends, and the ornamental accessories of the stall work and pews, are carved to represent the foliage of ivy, maple, oak, willow, hop, vine, &c. The carving and tracery exhibit a great variety of design, and are entirely the production of hand labour; the total number of stalls is fifty-two. The Organ, which formerly stood in the centre, and consequently obstructed the view from west to east, was, in 1848, entirely rebuilt by Mr. Hill, New Road, London. It is placed on the north, south, east, and west sides of the screen, and has three cases. The two principal cases, viz., those under the north and south arches, contain, respectively, the "great" and "swell": the "solo" and part of the "pedal" organs being placed on the west side, and the small case on the east side of the screen facing the choir contains the "choir" organ. The organist sits behind the latter organ, where the manuals, or key boards, are placed. It may easily be imagined, that to connect these distinct organs with the manuals and pedals, and thus bring them under the command of the performer, was an undertaking of no ordinary difficulty. It has, however, been successfully accomplished by Mr. Hill, who has, by means of a nice mechanical adjustment, succeeded in producing a perfectly easy and light touch. The instrument is now considered one of the finest, as regards tone and construction, in the kingdom. Number of stops, fifty-five, the majority of the pedal stops, being on the great organ sound board. The marble pavement of the choir was given by Dr. Busby, who was buried beneath it in 1695. The length of the choir, from iron-gate to altar-rail, is one hundred and sixteen feet six inches; sacrarium, twenty-four feet six inches; altar, fourteen feet six inches; full length, from iron-gate to altar screen, one hundred and fifty-five feet six inches; breadth, thirty-five feet six inches. The New Reredos. The Reredos, which is recently put up, is chiefly of white and coloured alabaster from Staffordshire, but combined with a reddish spar from Cornwall: the latter material being adopted from its hardness to give greater strength to the more prominent parts, and from its deeper tone to give a variety of colour to some of the features of the work, which, if it had been made wholly of one material, would have appeared monotonous. It consists of a facade occupying the whole space between two main pillars, having two doors, one on each side of the altar, giving access to the shrine behind. The doorways are arched and richly moulded, and the hollows are filled with bold carving deeply undercut. On either side of each door is a large canopied niche with pedestal, in which are figures of Moses, St. Peter, St. Paul, and David; and on the inner side of each large niche are two smaller ones placed vertically. These niches are all most elaborately wrought with tabernacle work, richly groined and surrounded with pierced tracery, carved bratishing, and complexly terminated with pinnacles, flying buttresses, and spires, all profusely crocketed and finialed. The whole is surmounted with a carved and sculptured cornice of bold proportions. The sculpture, which lies in a large and deep hollow moulding, contains, like the side towards the shrine, fourteen subjects, but they are all scriptural. They are as follow:--1. The Annunciation; 2. The Birth; 3. The Adoration; 4. The Baptism; 5. The First Miracle; 6. Preaching to the Multitude; 7. Gathering the Fragments; 8. Raising of Lazarus; 9. Triumphal Entry; 10. Agony in the Garden; 11. The Crucifixion; 12. The Resurrection; 13. The Ascension; 14. The Gift of Tongues. Among these are interspersed on shields in trefoils the following monograms and emblems:--Alpha and Omega, Agnus Dei, The Chalice, I.H.C., Instruments of the Passion, A Glorified Cross, The Descending Dove. Above the sculpture is a hollow moulding filled with richly carved foliage deeply undercut, and above all is a rich course of carved strawberry-leaf bratishing. In the space between the inner niches and above the table is a recess wherein is placed an elaborate and minutely finished picture of the Last Supper, in Venetian glass mosaic. It is of large size, and is admirably designed and executed. The table, which is composed of black and green marble, stands on an elaborately wrought frame of cedar wood. Besides five sculptured panels, and figures of the Evangelists between pillars, it is otherwise richly carved and studded with inlays. The subjects are:--1. Adam and Eve in Paradise; 2. Their Expulsion; 3. The Crucifixion; 4. The Resurrection; 5. The Ascension. To complete the altar table, there has recently been added a super-altar or shelf of cedar wood, embellished with panels of foliage and monograms, richly carved and gilt. And to complete the Reredos and the mosaic picture, there has been added rich surroundings of cedar wood. Below is a base containing seven zigzag panels of eight points, filled with pictures in mosaic and enamel, and studded with gems. The pictures are, the Annunciation in the centre, and portraits of holy women of Scripture: Ruth, Anna, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene, Martha, and Dorcas. On this base are pilasters at the ends of similar work, and between are two slender detached pillars, all supporting seven canopies of rich tabernacle work, the central one over the principal figure being the largest. All are profusely gilt. The floor in front of the reredos is wholly new. That of the upper dais is composed of pleasing patterns of inlaid marble work combined with gold glass. That of the lower dais, and of the dais of the sedilia, is composed of rich and varied patterns of red, green, grey, and buff patterns, in every tone of those colours; the three large circular discs are of purple porphyry, rosso antico, similar to the slabs which decorate the shrine and the tomb of Henry the Third. The steps and bands which surround the patterns are all of Purbeck marble. The stone seat on the south side, which was lately hidden, has now been restored to its original state and use, and the old wood canopies all forming the sedilia, have been lowered on to the seat of stone and made complete. Viewed as a whole, the rich colours of the alabaster and spar, with its delicate and intricate tabernacle work, the interesting sculpture, the glorious mosaic picture, the richly wrought table below, and the elaborate inlaid marble floor in front, all combine to give an impression of the greatest grandeur, the utmost durability, and the highest art. The whole was executed under the direction and superintendence of G. G. Scott, Esq., R.A. The mosaic picture was designed by Mr. Clayton, and executed at Venice by Dr. Salviati. The table was executed by Messr. Farmer and Brinley, the sculpture of the cornice by Mr. Armstead, and the alabaster and marble work by the Abbey masons, Henry Poole and Sons. It may not be uninteresting here to add that, in the exploration to which this work gave opportunity, there were discovered on the north side of the sacrarem and lower dais, about three feet below the pavement, the bases of three piers which were left here of the old Abbey of the Confessor. They are of early Norman character, and, from their position, shew that that early structure was nearly equal in size to the present structure of Henry the Third. They possess such great interest that means have been adopted so to cover them with the pavement that they can be uncovered and exposed to view. On the sides of the altar are the curious and ancient monuments of King Sebert; Ann of Cleves, Henry the Eighth's wife; Aveling, Countess of Lancaster; Aymer de Valence; and Edmund Crouchback. The mosaic pavement was done by Richard de Ware, Abbot of Westminster in the year 1260, who brought from Rome the stones, and workmen to set them; it is much admired; and there were letters round it in brass, which composed Latin words. The design of the figures that were in it was to represent the time the world was to last, or the _primum mobile_, according to the Ptolemaic system then in vogue, and was given in some verses, formerly to be read on the pavement, relating to those figures. The following explanation is given of them:-- If the reader will probably revolve all these things in his mind, he will find them plainly refer to the end of the world. The threefold hedge is put for three years, the time a dry hedge usually stood; a dog, for three times that space, or nine years, it being taken for the time that creature usually lives; a horse, in like manner, for twenty-seven; a man, eighty-one; a hart, two hundred and forty-three; a raven, seven hundred and twenty-nine; an eagle, two thousand one hundred and eighty-seven; a great whale, six thousand five hundred and sixty-one; the world, nineteen thousand six hundred and eighty-three; each succeeding figure giving a term of years imagined to be the time of their continuance, three times as much as that before it. In the last four verses, the time when the work was performed, and the parties concerned in it, are expressed; that Henry III. was at the charge; that the stones were purchased at Rome; that one Oderick was the master workman; and that the Abbot of Westminster, who procured the materials, had the care of the work. The solemn offices of crowning and enthroning the sovereigns of England takes place in the centre of the sacrarium, and beneath the lantern is erected the throne at which the peers do homage. When the crowns are put on, the peers and peeresses put on their coronets, and a signal is given from the top of the Abbey for the Tower guns to fire at the same instant. To take an advantageous view of the inside, you must go to the west door, between the towers; and the whole body of the church opens itself at once to your eye, which cannot but fill the mind of every beholder with the awful solemnity of the place, caused by the loftiness of the roof, and the happy disposition of the lights and of that noble range of pillars, by which the whole building is supported. The pillars terminate towards the east by a sweep, thereby enclosing the Chapel of Edward the Confessor in a kind of semicircle, and excluding all the rest. On the arches of the pillars are galleries of double columns, fifteen feet wide, covering the side aisles, and lighted by a middle range of windows, over which there is an upper range of larger windows: by these and the under range, with the four capital windows, the whole fabric is so admirably lighted, that the spectator is never incommoded by darkness, nor dazzled with glare. Painted Glass. Within the last five years twenty-two windows have been enriched with stained glass: eight in the Lantern or Central Tower; six in the South Clerestory of the Nave; one in the Apse; seven in the North Transept. The object has been to lay the foundation of a general design illustrative of a portion of the "Te Deum." The eight windows in the Lantern or Central Tower represent angels, and round the sustaining arches is inscribed,--"To Thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein; To Thee cherubin and seraphin continually do cry: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory." The six windows in the South Clerestory, west of the Transepts represent Prophets, in illustration of that verse in the "Te Deum:"--"The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee." It is hoped that this commencement may lead not only to the completion of what has been begun, but also to the enrichment of the corresponding windows on the north side of the Nave, in illustration of the "Noble Army of Martyrs." The Clerestory windows eastward of the Transepts offer the means of representing the "Glorious Company of the Apostles." In the east window in the Apse, below the Clerestory, are the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul. This window was enriched to the "Glory of God's House," and as a token of respect and affection for the Venerable WILLIAM H. E. BENTINCK, M.A., Archdeacon of Westminster, who, in 1859, completed his fiftieth year as a dignitary of this Collegiate Church. The next thing observable is the stained glass in the three windows at the east end, containing each two figures. In the left window, the first figure represents our Saviour; the second, the Virgin Mary; the third, Edward the Confessor; the fourth, Henry III.; the fifth, St. Augustine; the sixth, Melitus, the Bishop of London, in the right hand window. The window of stained glass in Henry V.'s Chantry, was at Dean Ireland's expense, by Willemont; the arms are those of Edward the Confessor, Henry III., Henry V., Dean Ireland's, and the Abbacy of Westminster. I.--Chapel of St. Benedict. [Illustration] 1. Archbishop Langham, 1376. 2. Countess of Hertford, 1598. 3. Dr. Goodman, Dean of Westminster, died 1601. 4. Son of Dr. Sprat, 1683. 5. Cranfield, Earl and Countess of Middlesex, 1645. 6. Dr. Bill, first Dean under Q. Elizabeth, 1561. Under the Monuments of Deans Goodman and Sprat, was interred (Dean Vincent), the late Dean, 1815. In the Chapel of St. Benedict is an ancient tomb of stone, having formerly a canopy of wood, on which lies the effigy of Archbishop LANGHAM, who, as the Latin epitaph round his tomb sets forth, "was Monk, Prior, and Abbot of this Abbey; afterwards elected Bishop of London; but Ely being then also vacant, he made choice of that see; that he was Primate and Chancellor of England; Priest-Cardinal, afterwards Bishop-Cardinal, of Preneste, and Nuncio from the Pope; and that he died on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalen, in the year 1376, on whose soul God have mercy, and grant him the joys of heaven for the merits of Christ." On the east, where stood the altar of St. Benedict, is a fine monument to the memory of Lady FRANCES, Countess of Hertford. The Latin inscription sets forth, "that she was wife to the noble Earl of Hertford, son to the renowned Prince Edward, Duke of Somerset, Earl of Hertford, Viscount Beauchamp, and Baron Seymour; that she was daughter to the noble Lord William, Baron Howard of Effingham, Knight of the Garter, High Admiral to Queen Mary, and Lord Chamberlain and Privy Seal to Queen Elizabeth, &c.; that, for her many graces, both of mind and body, she was highly favoured by her gracious Sovereign, and dearly loved by her noble Lord, who, in testimony of his inviolate affection, consecrated to her memory this monument. She died in the forty-fourth year of her age, May 14, 1598." On the south side is a monument to the memory of Dr. GABRIEL GOODMAN. The Latin inscription intimates, "that he was the fifth Dean of this Church, over which he presided for forty years with much applause; that he founded an hospital, and instituted a school at Ruthin, in Denbighshire, where he was born; that he was a man of regular and devout life, and that he died in 1601, aged seventy-three." On the same side is a monument to the memory of GEORGE SPRAT, second son of Dr. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, and Dean of Westminster, by his wife Helena, descended from the ancient and honourable family of the Wolseleys, in Staffordshire, who lies interred in the Chapel of St. Nicholas. He died an infant of a year old, in 1683. In the centre is a monument erected in memory of LIONEL CRANFIELD, Earl of Middlesex, by his relict, Lady Ann. The Latin inscription on this monument is to this effect;--"Sacred to the memory of Lionel Lord Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, who by that discerning prince, King James I., being called to court, was for his excellent parts bountifully rewarded, both with honours and fortune; being made Master of the Requests, and of the Wardrobe, President of the Court of Wards, and Privy Councillor. The new and illustrious, as well as difficult province of Lord Treasurer of England, he filled, which services how indefatigably he underwent, his title of Knight, Baron Cranfield, and, lastly, Earl of Middlesex, with various other honours, abundantly testify. He died the 6th of August, 1645, aged about seventy. He was twice married. By his first wife he had three daughters; Elizabeth, Countess of Mulgrave; Martha, Countess of Monmouth; and Mary, who died unmarried. By the second, who survived him, he had three sons, and two daughters; James, heir to the honours of Earl of Middlesex, Lyonel, and Edward; Frances, Lady Buckhurst; and Susannah, who died an infant." Near Bishop Langham's tomb, is a table monument, inlaid with a brass plate, designed for Dr. WILLIAM BILL, Dean of Westminster, Master of Eton College, Head of Trinity in Cambridge, and Chief Almoner to Queen Elizabeth, as appears by his inscription. He died July 5, 1561. On a brass plate are some Latin verses, setting forth "that he was a good and learned man, and a friend to those that were so; that he was just and charitable; and that the poor, as well as the three Colleges over which he presided, sustained an irreparable loss by his death." Besides those above recited, there lie interred in this Chapel, CATHERINE, daughter of Dr. Dolben, Bishop of Rochester, Dean of Westminster, and afterwards Archbishop of York; a Countess of Kildare, in Ireland; and Dr. JOHN SPOTSWOOD, Lord Archbishop of St. Andrew's, Primate and Lord Chancellor of Scotland, who died in 1640. On the left of the gate of entrance to the Chapels, is the ancient monument to SEBERT, King of the East Saxons, who first built a church nearly on this site, and died July, 616; also of ATHELGODA, his Queen, who died September 13, 615. It may here be observed, and to some will no doubt be interesting, that as the date of King Sebert is the _earliest_ known respecting the Abbey, George II. was also the _last_ King buried in Westminster, including in all thirteen English Sovereigns whose remains repose within these venerable walls (and fourteen Queens, that is, once reigning sovereigns, or the consorts of kings) embracing a period of more than twelve hundred years. The Kings buried in the Abbey--Sebert, Edward the Confessor, Henry III., Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., Henry V., Edward V., Henry VII., Edward VI., James I., Charles II., William III., George II., all of which can of course be ascertained by a careful perusal of this guide book. Over the tomb of Sebert, enclosed under glass, is an elaborate work (measuring about eleven feet in length, and three feet in height), which appears to have originally formed part of an altar decoration of the fourteenth century; the ground-work is oak; over the joinings, and on the surface of some mouldings, strips of parchment were glued. On this framework, covered with a gesso ground, various ornamental compartments and architectural enrichments are completed in relief. The work is divided into two similar portions; in the centre is a figure which appears to be intended for Christ, holding the globe, and in the act of blessing; an angel with a palm branch is on each side. The single figure on the left is St. Peter; the figure that should correspond on the right, and all the scripture subjects on that side, are gone. In the compartments to the left, portions of three subjects remain; one represents the Adoration of the Kings; another, apparently the Raising of Lazarus; the subject of the third is doubtful, though some figures remain; the fourth is destroyed. The small compartments in the architectural enrichments are filled with variously-coloured pieces of glass inlaid on tinfoil, and have still a brilliant effect. The compartments not occupied by figures were adorned with a deep blue glass resembling lapis lazuli, with gold lines of foliage executed on it. The smaller spaces and mouldings were enriched with cameos and gems; some of which still remain. This interesting work of art lay neglected in a Chapel near the North Transept, till Mr. Blore, with the permission of the Dean and Chapter, had it placed for security in the case in which it is now seen. It is supposed to have originally formed part of the decoration of the high altar. Its date may be fixed at the close of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. Between this Chapel and the next, is a monument of Mosaic work, erected for the children of Henry III. and Edward I. This certainly was once a rich and costly monument; for in the records of the Tower, there is the King's order for erecting such a one in this place, and for allowing Master Simon de Wells five marks and a half to defray his expenses in bringing from the city a certain brass image to set upon the tomb of his daughter Catherine, and for paying to Simon de Gloucester, the King's goldsmith, seventy marks, for a silver image for the like purpose. On the left, before you enter the Chapel of St. Edmund, is a large stone, once plated with brass, under which was interred Sir JOHN GALOFRE; he was famous in the reign of Richard II., for his wisdom and valour, and was prosecuted by the discontented Lords. He died at Wallingford, in Berkshire, in 1396. The tombstone, with inscription on a brass plate of Dr. BILLSON, is seen on the floor, next that of Sir John Galofre. He died in 1616. II.--Chapel of St. Edmund. [Illustration] _Left Hand._ 1. John of Eltham, Son of Edward II. 1334. 2. Earl of Stafford, 1762. 3. Monck, Bishop of Hereford, 1661. 4. Children of Edward III., 1350. 5. Duchess of Suffolk, 1563. 6. Holles, Son of Earl Clare, 1662. 7. Lady Jane Seymour, 1560. 8. Lady Katharine Knollys, 1568. 9. Lady Elizabeth Russel, 1601. 10. Lord John Russel, 1584. 11. Sir Bernard Brocas, 1339. 12. Sir Humphrey Bourgchier, 1471. 13. Sir Richard Pecksall, 1571. 14. Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, 1617. 15. Earl of Pembroke, 1296. 16. Robert de Waldeby, 1397. 17. Duchess of Gloucester, 1399. 18. Countess of Stafford, 1693. 19. Dr. Ferne, Bishop of Chester, 1661. 20. Above the Duchess of Suffolk's Monument is one to Mary Countess of Stafford and her Son, 1719. On the left as you enter is a monument sacred to the memory of JOHN of ELTHAM, second son of Edward II., and so called from Eltham, in Kent, the place of his nativity, where our English Kings had once a palace. His statue is of alabaster, the head encircled in a coronet of large and small leaves, remarkable for its being the first of the kind. His habit is that of an armed Knight. He died in Scotland, in 1334, at the age of nineteen, unmarried, though three different matches had been proposed to him; the last of which, to Mary, daughter of Ferdinand, King of Spain, he accepted, but lived not to consummate it. At the foot of this is a monument with the following inscription:--"In this Chapel lies interred all that was mortal of the most illustrious and most benevolent JOHN PAUL HOWARD, Earl of Stafford, who in 1738 married Elizabeth, daughter of A. Ewens, of the county of Somerset, Esq. His heart was as truly great and noble as his high descent. Faithful to his God. A lover of his country. A relation to relations. A detester of detraction. A friend to mankind. Naturally generous and compassionate, his liberality and his charity to the poor were without bounds. Being snatched away suddenly by death, which he had long meditated and expected with constancy, he went to a better life the 1st of April, 1762, having lived sixty-one years nine months and six days." The figures round the inscription are the ancient badges of honour belonging to the Stafford family, who descended by ten different marriages from the royal blood of England and France.--_Invented and stained by Chambers._ Next to this is a small table monument, on which lie the figures of WILLIAM of WINDSOR, sixth son of Edward III., who died in his infancy; and of BLANCH of the TOWER, sister to William, who likewise died young, having obtained their surnames from the places of their nativity. About 1350. Against the wall is a monument of NICHOLAS MONCK, Provost of Eton, Bishop of Hereford, and brother of George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, &c. He died December 11, 1661, aged fifty.--_Woodman, sculptor._ On an altar tomb lies the effigy of LADY FRANCES, Duchess of Suffolk. She was the daughter of the famous Charles Brandon, by Mary, the French Queen, daughter to Henry VII., and became herself Duchess of Suffolk, by marrying Henry Grey, then Marquis of Dorset, but upon her father's decease created Duke of Suffolk, and afterwards beheaded for being concerned in dethroning Queen Mary. She died in 1558-9. Against the wall above is a monument to the memory of MARY, Countess of Stafford, and of HENRY, Earl of Stafford, her son, who died abroad in 1719, and was buried in this Chapel. The next, representing a youth in Grecian armour sitting on a Greek altar, to the memory of FRANCIS HOLLES, by John, Earl of Clare his afflicted father. This brave youth, after returning home from a campaign in Flanders, died August 12, 1622, aged eighteen. His epitaph is thus written:-- "What so thou hast of nature or of arts, Youth, beauty, strength, or what excelling parts Of mind and body, letters, arms, and worth, His eighteen years beyond his years brought forth; Then stand and read thyself within this glass, How soon these perish, and thyself may pass: Man's life is measured by the work, not days; Not aged sloth, but active youth, hath praise." --_N. Stone, sculptor._ Next are two tablets, one to the memory of the Right Honourable the Lady KATHERINE KNOLLYS, chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth, and wife to Sir Francis Knollys, Knt., Treasurer of her Highness's household. She died January the 15th, 1568. This Lady Knollys and Lord Hunsdon, her brother, were the only children of William Carey, Esq., by Lady Mary, his wife, one of the daughters and heirs of Thomas Bulleyne, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, and sister to Anne Bulleyne, Queen of England, wife to Henry VIII., father and mother to Queen Elizabeth. What is farther remarkable, Lady Knollys' only daughter was mother of the favourite Earl of Essex. The other to Lady JANE SEYMOUR, daughter of Edward, Duke of Somerset, who died March 19, 1560, aged nineteen. On an altar sits, in a sleeping posture, the figure of Lady ELIZABETH RUSSEL, daughter of Lord John Russel, in alabaster. She pricked her finger with a needle, which is supposed to have caused a lock-jaw, and occasioned her death. On the plinth of the pedestal is--"_Dormit, non mortua est_"--(She is not dead, but sleepeth). Died 1601. Lord JOHN RUSSEL, second son of Francis, second Earl of Bedford, and his son FRANCIS, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, Knt., and widow of Sir Thomas Hoby, Knt. He died in 1584. He is represented in a cumbent posture, habited in his coronation robes, with his infant son at his feet. His lady was esteemed the Sappho of her age, being well versed in the learned languages, and an excellent poet; five of the epitaphs on this tomb are of her composition, of which three are in Latin, one in Greek, and the other in English, which is here transcribed as a specimen, the rest being to the same purport:-- "Right noble twice, by virtue and by birth, Of heaven lov'd, and honour'd on the earth, His country's hope, his kindred's chief delight, My husband dear, more than this world's light, Death hath me reft. But I from death will take His memory, to whom this tomb I make. John was his name (ah, was! wretch, must I say?) Lord Russel once, now my tear-thirsty clay." Next is a very ancient monument, representing a Gothic chapel, and in it the figure of a Knight in armour, in a cumbent posture, with his feet resting on a lion's back. This was erected for Sir BERNARD BROCAS, of Baurepaire, in the county of Hants, Chamberlain to Ann, Queen of Richard II. But this Princess dying, and Richard falling under the displeasure of his people, who deposed him, Sir Bernard still adhered to his Royal master in his misfortunes, which cost him his life. He was publicly beheaded on Tower Hill, January, 1399, and here buried. In front of this is a low altar tomb, on which has been, in plated brass, the figure of a Knight in armour, his head reclining upon his helmet, and one of his feet placed upon a leopard, the other on an eagle. By the Latin inscription this Knight was HUMPHREY BOURGCHIER, son and heir to John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, who espousing the cause of Edward IV. against the Earl of Warwick, was slain in the battle of Barnet Field, on Easter-day, 1471. Next is the monument of Sir RICHARD PECKSALL, Knt., Master of the Buckhounds to Queen Elizabeth; first married to Alianer, the daughter of William Paulett, Marquis of Winchester, by whom he had four daughters; and afterwards to Alianer, daughter of John Cotgrave. On the bases of the pillars are Latin verses thus translated:-- "Death can't disjoin whom Christ hath joined in love; Life leads to death, and death to life above. In heaven's a happier place; frail things despise: Live well to gain in future life a prize." He died 1571. The next is a most magnificent monument to the memory of EDWARD TALBOT, eighth Earl of Shrewsbury, and his lady, JANE, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Cuthbert, Baron Ogle, whose effigies in their robes lie on a black marble table, supported by a pedestal of alabaster. He died February 8, 1617, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. In front of this is the gravestone to the memory of EDWARD, Lord Herbert, Baron of Cherbury, in England, and of Castle-Ireland, in Ireland, who died December 9, 1678, aged forty-six. On the right is the ancient monument of WILLIAM DE VALENCE, Earl of Pembroke, lying in a cumbent posture on a chest of wainscot, placed upon a tomb of freestone; the figure is wood, covered originally with copper gilt, as was the chest on which it lies. In the year 1296, he was slain at Bayonne treacherously. His body was afterwards brought to England, and honourably buried in this Chapel, and an indulgence of one hundred days granted to all devout people who should offer up prayers for his soul. On the floor is a tomb to MARY, Countess of Stafford, wife to the unfortunate Viscount Stafford, beheaded in the reign of Charles II., on Tower Hill, Dec. 29, 1680. She was lineally descended from the Barons and Earls of Stafford, and was daughter and heiress to the noble house of Buckingham. She died Jan. 1693. The next is a tomb on which is a lady in a widow's dress, with a barb and veil, cut in brass, round which is an inscription in old French, importing that ALIANER DE BOHUN, daughter and heiress of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hertford, Essex, and Northampton, and wife to the mighty and noble Prince of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Essex and Buckingham, son of Edward III., lies interred here. This lady, who was the greatest heiress in England, was deprived of her husband by the cruelty of his nephew, Richard II., who, jealous of his popularity, most treacherously betrayed him by a show of friendship; for coming to visit him at Plashy, a pleasant seat of his in Essex, and staying supper, in duty he thought to attend his Majesty to town; but at Stratford was suddenly surrounded by an ambush of armed men, who privately hurried him on board a ship, and carried him to Calais, where, by the King's order, he was stifled between feather beds in 1397. After this melancholy circumstance, his lady spent the rest of her days in the nunnery at Barking, and died October 3, 1399; from whence her remains were brought and here interred. There is also an Archbishop buried here, as appears by a very antique figure in a mass habit, engraven on a brass plate, and placed on a flat stone in the pavement, over the remains of ROBERT DE WALDEBY, who, as appears by the inscription, was first an Augustine monk, and attended Edward the Black Prince into France, where, being young, he prosecuted his studies, and made a surprising progress in natural and moral philosophy, physic, the languages, and in the canon law; and, being likewise an elegant preacher and sound divine, was made Divinity Professor in the University of Toulouse, where he continued till called by Richard II. to the Bishopric of Man; from whence he was removed to the Archbishopric of Dublin; but not liking that country, upon the first vacancy he was recalled, and advanced to the see of Chichester, and afterwards to the Archbishopric of York. Such is the history of this great man, who died May 29, 1397, as gathered from an inscription formerly very legible, but now almost obliterated. At the foot of Waldeby is a blue marble slab, which covers the remains of Dr. HENRY FERNE, inlaid with five shields in brass, surrounded with an inscription. He was Chaplain Extraordinary to Charles I.; by Charles II. made Bishop of Chester, which he lived to enjoy about five weeks, dying March 16, 1661. Also a black marble slab which covers the remains of EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. Born 25th May, 1803; died 18th January, 1873. 1831-1841, Member of Parliament for St. Ives and for Lincoln; 1838, Baronet of the United Kingdom; 1852-1856, Knight of the Shire of the County of Hertford; 1858, one of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, Knight Grand Cross of St. Michael and George; 1866, Baron Lytton of Knebworth. Laborious and distinguished in all fields of intellectual activity, indefatigable and ardent in the cultivation and love of letters. His genius as an author was displayed in the most varied forms, which have connected indissolubly with every department of the literature of his time the name of Edward Bulwer Lytton. In this Chapel lies interred Abbot CROKESLEY, who died July 18, 1258. On the right, on leaving this Chapel, is a fine bust of RICHARD TUFTON, third son of Sir John Tufton, Bart., and brother of Nicholas E. Thanet. He died October 4, 1631. III.--Chapel of St. Nicholas. [Illustration] _Begin on your Left._ 1. Lady Cecil, 1591. 2. Lady Clifford, 1679. 3. Countess of Beverley, 1812. 4. Duchess of Somerset, 1587. 5. Westmoreland Family, 1618. 6. Baron Carew, 1470. 7. Nicholas Bagenall, 1688. 8. Lady Burleigh, 1589, and the Countess Oxford, 1588. 9. Dudley, Bishop of Durham, 1483, and Lady St. John, 1614. 10. Daughter of Christopher Harley, Ambassador of France: her heart in the Urn, 1665. 11. Lady Ross, 1591. 12. Marchioness of Winchester, 1586. 13. Duchess of Northumberland, 1776. 14. Philippa, Duchess of York, 1433. 15. Sir George Villiers, and his lady, Countess of Buckingham, 1605 and 1632. 16. Sir Humphrey Stanley, 1505. On the left, as you enter this Chapel, is a monument erected for LADY CECIL, a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth, and daughter of Lord Cobham, who having married Sir Robert Cecil, son of William Lord Burleigh, Treasurer of England, died in childbed two years after, viz. in 1591. Next is a monument on which a long inscription in English is fairly written, setting forth the descent and marriage of Lady JANE CLIFFORD, youngest daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and wife of Charles, Lord Clifford and Dungarvon, who died Nov. 23, 1679, aged forty-two. On a small tablet is this inscription, with the motto--"_Esperance de Dieu_. ISABELLA SUSANNAH, wife of Algernon Percy, Earl of Beverley, died Jan. 24, 1812, aged sixty-one." On a gravestone in front of this monument, engraved on brass, is the figure of Sir HUMPHREY STANLEY, knighted by Henry VII., for his gallant behaviour under his cousin, Lord Stanley, at the battle of Bosworth Field. He died March 22, 1505. Near this is the monument of ANN, Duchess of Somerset, wife of Edward, Duke of Somerset, brother of Henry VIII.'s third wife, Queen Jane Seymour, and uncle to Edward VI., and sometime Regent during his minority, but afterwards disgraced; accused of treasonable and felonious practices against the King and Council, tried by his Peers, acquitted of treason, but condemned of felony in levying armed men contrary to law, for which crime he was sentenced to be hanged; but, in respect to his quality, was beheaded on Tower Hill, Jan. 22, 1551. She died April 16, 1587, at Hanworth, aged ninety. On the right, Sir GEORGE and Lady ELIZABETH FANE, who are represented kneeling on each side a desk. She was the daughter of Robert, Baron Spencer, of Wormleighton, and wife of Sir George Fane, of Buston, in Kent, remarkable, says her inscription, for her ancient descent, but more for her own virtues. She died in 1618, aged twenty-eight. Beneath this is an ancient monument placed over Nicholas, Baron Carew, and the Lady MARGARET, his wife, daughter of Lord John Dinham, and, it is thought, mother of Sir Nicholas Carew, beheaded in Henry VIII.'s time, for holding a correspondence with Cardinal de la Pole. He died December 6, 1470, she December 13, the same year. In the front of this is a pyramid erected to the memory of NICHOLAS BAGENALL, a child of two months old, overlaid by his nurse, the 7th of March, 1688. Next to this is one of the most magnificent monuments in the Abbey, erected by the great Lord Burleigh to the memory of MILDRED, his wife, and their daughter Lady ANN, Countess of Oxford. On this tomb is a Latin inscription, explaining the figures, and setting forth their respective virtues and accomplishments, particularly those of Lady Burleigh, who, says the inscription, "was well versed in the sacred writers, and those chiefly of the Greeks, as Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Gregory, Nazianzen, &c." She gave a scholarship to St. John's College, in Oxford, legacies to the poor of Romford, where she was born, and to those of Cheshunt, where she lived, and left money at both places to be distributed every year to poor tradesmen. She died, after being forty years married, April 4, 1589, aged sixty-three. Her daughter Ann married, at fifteen, Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, and died June 5, 1588, seventeen years after, leaving three daughters. Next to this is a monument to the memory of WILLIAM DE DUDLEY, alias SUTTON, son of John, Lord Dudley; he was Archdeacon of Middlesex, Dean of Windsor, and, in 1476, Lord Bishop of Durham. On the tomb was inlaid a brass figure, in episcopal vestments. He died in 1483. The effigy of Lady St. JOHN lies in this recess. She was daughter of Sir William Dormer, and widow of John, Lord St. John, of Bletsoe. She died on the 23rd of March, 1614. Near this is a pyramid to the memory of ANNA SOPHIA HARLEY, a child of a year old, daughter of the Hon. Christopher Harley, Ambassador from the French King, whose heart, as appears by the inscription, he caused to be enclosed in a cup, and placed upon the top of the pyramid. She died in 1601. The next is a monument to the memory of Lady WINIFRED, married first to Sir Richard Sackville, Knt., and afterwards to John Paulet, Marquis of Winchester. The Latin epitaph imports, that she was descended of illustrious parents, and married first a gentleman of an ancient house, whose ancestors were renowned before the Conqueror's time; that her second husband was of noble blood; and that being severed from both by death, her soul will rejoice in Christ for ever. She died in 1586. Above is an ancient monument to the memory of Lady ROSS, daughter of Edward, Earl of Rutland. She died April 11, 1591. Next to this is a monument to the memory of the late Duchess of NORTHUMBERLAND. The figures on each side are Faith and Hope; and those above are two weeping Genii over her urn, mourning for her loss. The inscription, after reciting her Grace's illustrious descent and titles, concludes with her character, who, "having lived long an ornament of courts, an honour to her country, a pattern to the great, a protectress to the poor, ever distinguished for the most tender affection for her family and friends, she died December 5, 1776, aged sixty, universally beloved, revered, and lamented. The Duke of Northumberland, inconsolable for the loss of the best of wives, hath erected this monument to her beloved memory."--_Read, sculptor._ Against the screen is a Gothic monument with the effigy of a lady in robes, very antique. The lady, by the inscription, appears to be PHILIPPA, second daughter and co-heiress of John, Lord Mohun, of Dunstar; married first to Sir Walter Fitzwalter, Knt., secondly to Sir John Galofre, Knt., and lastly to Edward Plantagenet, Duke of York, who was slain in the battle of Agincourt, 25th of October, 1415. She died in 1431, without issue. In the middle of the Chapel is a fine monument to the memory of Sir GEORGE VILLIERS, who died Jan. 4, 1605, and his lady, MARY BEAUMONT, created Countess of Buckingham in 1618. She died on April 19, 1632, aged sixty-two, whose son, by the favour of James I., was advanced to the dignity of the Duke of Buckingham.--_Stone, sculptor._ KATHARINE VALOIS, Queen of Henry V., who died at Bermondsey Abbey, Southwark, in January, 1437, was buried in the Chapel of our Lady at the east end of the Abbey, where she remained till her grandson, Henry VII., built his chapel, when her remains were placed near to her husband in a chest, and finally deposited under Sir George Villiers' tomb in 1776. In this Chapel lies interred, THOMAS SPRAT, Bishop of Rochester, and Dean of Westminster, who died May 20, 1713. Also his son, THOMAS SPRAT, Archdeacon of Rochester, who died May 10, 1720, aged forty-one. Also many other persons of distinction, of the Percy, Seymour, and Burleigh families, which we have not space to insert. At the door of this Chapel was buried that great and learned antiquary, Sir HENRY SPELMAN, who died in 1641. On leaving this Chapel, opposite to you, there is affixed to the corner of Henry V.'s Chantry, a bust with Latin inscription, to the memory of Sir ROBERT AITON, Knt., who, in the reign of James I., was in great reputation for his writings, especially in poetry. He died in 1638. On the right, against the screen of the Chapel of St. Nicholas, is a monument erected to the memory of Sir THOMAS INGRAM, Knt., Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Privy Councillor to Charles II. He died February 13, 1671. [Illustration: CENTRE, HENRY VII'S CHAPEL.] IV.--Chapel of Henry the Seventh. [Illustration: The Gates are Brass.] 1. Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 1628. 2. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, 1720. 3. The Duke de Montpensier, 1807. 4. An Urn containing the heart of Esme Stuart, son of the Duke of Richmond, 1661. 5. Lodowick Stuart, Duke of Richmond, 1623. 6. Henry VII. and Queen, 1503 and 1509. 7. The Royal Vault of George II., 1760. 8. Augusta Elizabeth Frederica, 5th daughter of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and Kincardine. The beloved wife of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of this Collegiate Church. For thirty years the devoted servant of Queen Victoria and the Queen's mother and children; for twelve years the unwearied friend of the people of Westminster and the inseparable partner of her husband's toils and hopes, uniting many hearts from many lands, and drawing all to things above. Born April 3, 1822. Died March 1, 1876. "We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren." The ascent to this Chapel is from the east end of the Abbey, by steps of grey marble, under a stately portico, which leads to the gates opening to the body, or nave of the Chapel. Before you enter you may observe a door on each hand, opening into the side aisles, for it is composed of a nave and side aisles, every way answering to the plan of a cathedral. The gates by which you enter the nave are all well worth your observation; they are of brass, most curiously wrought, in the manner of frame work, and the panels being filled with the portcullis and crown; three fleur-de-lis; falcon and fetterlock; the union of the roses of York and Lancaster entwined in a crown; the thistle and crown; the initial R. H. and a crown, and the three lions of England. Being entered, your eye will naturally be directed to the lofty ceiling, which is in stone, wrought with such astonishing variety of figures, as no description can reach. The stalls are of brown wainscot, with Gothic canopies, most beautifully carved, as are the seats, with strange devices, which nothing on wood is now equal to. The pavement is of black and white marble, done at the charge of Dr. Killigrew, once Prebendary of this Abbey, as appears by two inscriptions, one on a plate of brass, infixed in the rise towards the founder's tomb, the other cut in the pavement. The east view from the entrance presents you with the brass chapel and tomb of the founder; and round it, where the east end forms a semicircle, are the Chapels of the Dukes of Buckingham and Richmond. The walls of the nave and aisles are wrought in the most curious figures imaginable, and contain one hundred and twenty large statues of Patriarchs, Saints, Martyrs, and Confessors, placed in niches, under which are angels, supporting imperial crowns, all of them esteemed so curious, that the best masters have travelled from abroad to copy them. The windows, which are fourteen in the upper, and nineteen in the lower range, including the side aisles and portico, were formerly of painted or diapered glass, having in every pane a white rose, the badge of Lancaster, or an H, the initial letter of the founder's name, and portcullises, the badge of the Beauforts crowned, of which a few only are now remaining. In the upper window, east end, Henry VII. is represented in stained glass. The ceiling is of stone, and persons can walk between the roof and ceiling, where there is a spacious room, lighted by Gothic openings through the wall. _General Admeasurement of the Interior._ Ft. In. Length of the Nave 103 9 Breadth of ditto 35 9 Height of the Nave to vortex of the Vaulting 60 7 Length of the Aisles 62 5 Breadth of ditto 17 2 Entire Breadth of the Chapel 70 1 Height of West Window 45 0 Breadth of ditto 31 0 _Entrance Porch or Vestibule._ Extent from North to South 28 4 Breadth 24 9 SOUTH AISLE. [Illustration] 1. Lady Margaret Douglas, 1577. 2. Mary, Queen of Scots, 1587. 3. Margaret, Countess of Richmond, 1509. 4. Lady Walpole, 1737. 5. General Monck, Duke of Albemarle, 1670. In front of this Monument is the Old Royal Vault, containing Charles II., 1685, King William III., 1702, Prince George of Denmark, 1708, and Queen Anne, 1714. Here is a handsome monument, on which lies a lady finely robed, to Lady MARGARET DOUGLAS, daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scots, by the Earl of Angus. This lady, as the English inscription says, had to her great-grandfather, Edward IV.; to her grandfather, Henry VII.; to her uncle, Henry VIII.; to her cousin-german, Edward VI.; to her brother, James V. of Scotland; to her son, Henry I. of Scotland; to her grandson, James VI.; having to her great-grandmother and grandmother, two Queens, both named Elizabeth; to her mother, Margaret, Queen of Scots; to her aunt, Mary, the French Queen; to her cousins-german, Mary and Elizabeth, Queens of England; to her niece and daughter-in-law, Mary, Queen of Scots. This lady, who was very beautiful, was privately married in 1537, to Thomas Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, upon which account both of them were committed to the Tower by Henry VIII., her uncle, for affiancing without his consent, and he died in prison; but this Margaret being released, was soon after married to Matthew, Earl of Lennox, by whom she had the handsome Lord Darnley, father of James I., whose effigy is foremost on the tomb, in a kneeling posture. There are seven children besides round the tomb of Margaret, of whom only three are mentioned in history, the rest dying young. This great lady died March 10, 1577. Next is the magnificent monument to MARY STUART, Queen of Scots, erected by her son, James I., soon after his accession to the English throne. This princess was born Dec. 7, 1542. She was daughter and heiress of James V. of Scotland, who, dying when she was only a week old, succeeded to the crown. Married first, April 28, 1558, at fifteen years of age, Francis, Dauphin of France; secondly, Henry, Lord Darnley, July 29, 1565; and thirdly, Bothwell. Her subjects becoming offended, she was compelled to resign her crown to her infant son, James, by Lord Darnley; she eventually sought refuge in England, but Queen Elizabeth committed her as prisoner to the Earl of Shrewsbury at his houses of Hardwicke and Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, where she remained seventeen years a captive. She was thence transferred to the custody of Sir Amias Paulet, and shortly afterwards tried and condemned for engaging in a treasonable correspondence with the Queen's enemies. She was beheaded in the hall of Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, February 8, 1587. Her remains were first buried in Peterborough Cathedral; but James had her body privately removed to this Church, in Oct., 1612, under the superintendence of Neile, then Dean of Westminster, and buried in a vault beneath this monument.--_Stone, sculptor._ HENRY, Prince of Wales, eldest son of James I., born Feb. 19, 1593, and after giving great promise of a blessing to his country, died of a fever at St. James's palace, Nov. 6, 1612, in the 19th year of his age, and was buried by the side of his grandmother. In the same tomb are the remains of ARABELLA STEWART, four children of Charles I.: ELIZABETH of Bohemia, daughter of James I.; Prince RUPERT her son; ANN HYDE, first wife of James II., and ten of his infant children; WILLIAM, Duke of Gloucester, son of Ann, and seventeen of her infant children. The next is the monument of MARGARET, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., by Edmund Tudor, son of Owen ap Tudor, who married the widow of Henry V. of England, and daughter of Charles VI. of France. This lady was afterwards married to Humphrey Stafford, a younger son of Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, and lastly, to Thomas Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby; but by the two last had no children. The inscription mentions the charities of this excellent Princess; such as giving a salary to two monks of Westminster; founding a grammar-school at Wimbourne, and two colleges, one to Christ, the other to St. John his disciple, at Cambridge. Of this lady's bounty, forty poor women partake every Saturday afternoon, in the College Hall; each of them has twopence, one pound and a half of beef, and a fourpenny loaf of bread. She died in July, 1509, in the reign of her grandson, Henry VIII.--_Torrigiano, sculptor._ Opposite is a figure to the memory of Lady WALPOLE, with the following inscription:--"To the memory of Catherine, Lady Walpole, eldest daughter of John Shorter, Esq., of Bybrook, in Kent, and first wife of Sir Robert Walpole, afterwards Earl of Orford, Horace, her youngest son, consecrated this monument. She had beauty and wit, without vice or vanity, and cultivated the arts without affectation: she was devout, though without bigotry to any sect; and was without prejudice to any party, though the wife of a minister, whose power she esteemed but when she could employ it to benefit the miserable, or to reward the meritorious; she loved a private life, though born to shine in public: and was an ornament to Courts, untainted by them. She died August the 20th, 1737."--_Valory, sculptor._ At the end, a monument to the memories of GEORGE MONCK, and CHRISTOPHER, his son, both Dukes of Albemarle; also, ELIZABETH, Duchess Dowager of Albemarle and Montague, relict of Christopher. George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, was younger son of Sir Thomas Monck, born at Potheridge, Devon, December 6, 1608. He entered the army as a volunteer in 1625, under Sir Richard Grenville. At the death of Cromwell he took an active part in the restoration of Charles II., for which he was loaded with honours, and died in the esteem of his sovereign, in 1670, in the sixty-second year of his age.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ At this end is the Royal Vault, as it is called, in which are deposited the remains of CHARLES II., who died February 2, 1685; WILLIAM III., who died March 8, 1702, and Queen MARY, his consort, who died December 28, 1694; Queen ANNE, died August 1, 1714; and Prince GEORGE, who died Oct. 28, 1708. THE NAVE. From this aisle you enter the nave of the Chapel, the stone ceiling of which is curious, and the gates are brass. Here were installed, with great ceremony, the Knights of the most Honourable Order of the Bath, which order was revived in the reign of George I., in 1725. In their stalls are placed brass plates of their arms, &c., and over them hang their banners, swords, and helmets. Under the stalls are seats for the esquires; each Knight has three, whose arms are engraven on brass plates. The small shelving stool which the seats of the stalls form when turned up is called a _miserere_. On these the monks and canons of ancient times, with the assistance of their elbows on the upper part of the stalls, half supported themselves during certain parts of their long offices, not to be obliged always to stand or kneel. It is so contrived, that if the body became supine by sleep, it naturally fell down, and the person who rested upon it was thrown forward on the middle of the choir. In the centre, between the Knights' stalls, is the Royal Vault, where their Majesties GEORGE II. and Queen CAROLINE are buried; the Prince and Princess of WALES, two Dukes of CUMBERLAND, the Duke of YORK, Prince FREDERICK WILLIAM, the Princesses AMELIA, CAROLINE, ELIZABETH, LOUISA, ANNE; and the two infant Princes, ALFRED and OCTAVIUS, children of George III., were removed in January, 1820, to the new royal vault at Windsor. What is chiefly to be admired here, as well for antiquity as fine workmanship, is the magnificent tomb of HENRY VII. and ELIZABETH his Queen, the last of the house of York who wore the English crown. This tomb stands in the body of the Chapel, enclosed in a curious chantry of cast brass, most admirably designed and executed, and ornamented with statues, of which those only of St. George, St. James, St. Bartholomew, and St. Edward, are now remaining. Within it are the effigies of the Royal pair, in their robes of state, lying close to each other, on a tomb of black marble, the head whereof is supported by a red dragon, the ensign of Cadwallader, the last King of the Britons, from whom Henry VII. was fond of tracing his descent, and the foot by an angel. There are likewise other devices alluding to his family and alliances; such as portcullises, signifying his relation to the Beauforts by his mother's side; roses twisted and crowned, in memory of the union of the two Royal Houses of York and Lancaster. There are six compartments, three on the north, and as many on the south side of its base. The first compartment on the south side contains the figures of the Virgin Mary with our Lord in her arms, and that of the Archangel St. Michael. The figures in the scales, though now mutilated, were meant for personal representations of moral good and evil; the Saint is weighing them in his balance; the good preponderates; but the Devil, who is represented by the figure under his feet, is reaching with one of his clawed feet at the scale which contains the figure of Evil, in order, by the addition of his own force, to render that the heaviest. The first figure in the second compartment is doubtless intended for St. John the Baptist, he having a book in his left hand, with an _Agnus Dei_ impressed upon it. The other is a figure of St. John the Evangelist, and the figure of the eagle. The first figure of the third compartment is intended for St. George; the other figure, from the pig's head visible near him, the frequent symbol by which he is denoted, is intended for St. Anthony of Vienna. The first figure in the fourth compartment, north side, is meant for Mary Magdalen, supposing her to hold the box of ointment. The other figure represents St. Barbara, who was the daughter of a Pagan, and dwelt with her father in a certain tower. To this tower adjoined a garden, in which the father determined to build a bath, with the necessary accommodation of rooms, and therein to make windows to the number of two only. Being about to undertake a journey, he left his instructions with the artificers, which his daughter presumed to vary, by directing them instead of two to make three. Upon her father's return, he inquired into the reason of this deviation from his orders; and being told that in allusion to three persons of the Holy Trinity his daughter had directed it, he found that she was become a convert to Christianity; and being exasperated thereat, stimulated the Emperor to a persecution of the Christians, in which she became a martyr to the faith. The first figure in the fifth compartment is intended for St. Christopher, bearing our Saviour upon his shoulder. The other figure is thought to be St. Anne. In the sixth and last compartment, the first figure is intended for King Edward the Confessor; the other figure is a Benedictine Monk. Henry VII. died April 21st, 1509, and his Queen, February 11th, 1502.--_The work of Torrigiano._ EDWARD VI., grandson of Henry VII., who died July 6th, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age, and seventh of his reign. On the holy table is the following inscription in Latin:--"In place of the ancient altar, destroyed in the civil wars, to the honour of God and in pious memory of Edward VI., who is buried beneath, this holy table, in a gentler age, was placed by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. 1870." On the south side of the tomb of Henry VII., in a small chapel, is a monument to LEWIS STUART, Duke of Richmond, and FRANCES, his wife. The brass effigies are represented as lying on a marble table, under a canopy of brass, curiously wrought, and supported by the figures of Faith, Hope, Charity, and Prudence. On the top is a fine figure of Fame, taking her flight, and resting only on her toe. This illustrious nobleman was son to Esme Stuart, Duke of Lennox, and grandson of James, nephew of James I., to whom he was First Gentleman of the Bedchamber and Privy Councillor, a Knight of the Garter, and Ambassador to France on behalf of Scotland. He died Feb. 16, 1623. His lady was daughter of Thomas, Lord Howard of Bindon, son of the Duke of Norfolk, by Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. She died Oct. 8, 1639.--You will likewise see here a pyramid, supporting a small urn, in which is contained the heart of ESME STUART, son of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox, by Lady Mary, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham. He died in France, August 15, 1661, aged eleven years, and was succeeded in all his titles by Charles, Earl of Lichfield, his cousin-german, who died December 12, 1672, and is here interred. This monument was originally of great splendour, hardly surpassed by any in the Abbey, being wholly composed of jet black marble and bronze gilt. The combined effects of neglect, corrosion, and spoliation had at last rendered it an unsightly wreck, when, in 1874, its almost complete restoration was undertaken by the direction and at the sole cost of the Earl of Darnley, who is a lineal descendant in the female line of the ancient Stuart family. A monument to the DUKE DE MONTPENSIER, who is represented with ducal coronet and robes, and his remains are beneath. On the front of this tomb is the following inscription:--"The most illustrious and Serene Prince, ANTHONY PHILIP, Duke of Montpensier, descended from the Kings of France, second son of the Duke of Orleans, from his earliest youth bred to arms, and even in chains unsubdued; of an erect mind in adversity, and in prosperity not elated; a constant patron of the liberal arts, polite, pleasant, and courteous to all, nor ever wanting in the duties of brother, neighbour, friend, or in the love of his country. After experiencing the vicissitudes of fortune, he was received with great hospitality by the English nation, and at length rests in this asylum for kings. Born July 3, 1775. Died May 18, 1807, aged thirty-one. Louis Philip, Duke of Orleans, erects this monument in memory of the best of brothers."--_Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor._ The next is an excellent monument to the memory of JOHN SHEFFIELD, Duke of Buckingham, where, on an altar, lies his Grace's effigy, in a Roman habit, with his Duchess, Catherine, natural daughter of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., sitting at his feet weeping. In the reign of Charles II. as the inscription sets forth, he was General of the Dutch troop of horse, Governor of Kingston Castle upon Hull, and First Gentleman of the Bedchamber; in that of James II., Lord Chamberlain; and in that of Queen Anne, Lord Privy Seal, and President of the Council. He was in his youth an excellent poet, and, in his more advanced years, a fine writer. His love of poetry is conspicuous, by the esteem and regard he had for the two great masters of it, who flourished in his own time, Dryden and Pope, to the first of whom he extended his friendship, even after death, by erecting a monument to his memory. To the latter he did honour, by writing a poem in his praise. Over his Grace's effigy are inscribed in Latin, sentences to the following import:--"I lived doubtful, not dissolute--I die unresolved, not unresigned. Ignorance and error are incident to human nature. I trust in an almighty and all good God. O! thou Being of Beings, have compassion on me;" and underneath it.--"for my King often, for my Country ever." His Grace died in the seventy-fourth year of his age, Feb. 24, 1720, leaving the publication of his works to the care of Mr. Pope.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ The remains of JAMES I. are in the tomb of Henry VII. This Prince reigned over Scotland 59 years, and over England 22 years. He was son to Lord Darnley, by Mary Queen of Scots. He died March 16, 1625, aged 61, after a long and peaceable reign. The remains of his Queen, ANN of Denmark, are in the tomb in front of the monument of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham. She died March 2, 1619. On the north side of Henry the Seventh's Chantry, in a chapel, is a very antique monument, decorated with several emblematical figures in brass, gilt, the principal of which is Neptune, in a pensive posture, with his trident reversed, and Mars with his head crouched. These support the tomb on which lie the effigies of GEORGE VILLIERS, Duke of Buckingham, and his Duchess, the great favourite of James I. and Charles I., who fell a sacrifice to national resentment, and perished by the hands of Felton, August 23, 1628, who had no other motive of action but the clamours of the people. CATHERINE, his Duchess, was interred in the same vault, April 8, 1643. CROMWELL, four of his family, and six officers were buried in the vault at the end of this chapel. Their remains were removed at the Restoration. The following are also interred in this portion of the Chapel:--JOHN CAMPBELL, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, 1743. EDWARD VI., ELIZABETH CLAYPOLE, second daughter of Oliver Cromwell, 1658. NORTH AISLE. [Illustration] 1. Monument to Queen Elizabeth, 1602, and her Sister Queen Mary, 1558. 2. Mary, Daughter of James the First, 1607. 3. Edward the Fifth and Duke of York, 1483. 4. Sophia, Daughter of James the First, 1606. 5. Marquis of Halifax, 1695. 6. Earl of Halifax, 1715. From hence you pass to the North Aisle, by a door on the right hand, where is a monument to the memory of CHARLES MOUNTAGUE, the first of this family that bore the title of Lord Halifax, son of George Mountague, of Horton. In the reigns of William III. and George I. he was placed at the head of the Treasury, where, undertaking the reformation of the coin, which in those days was most infamously clipped, to the great loss of the public, he restored it to its proper value. For these and other public services, he was first created Baron, and then Earl of Halifax, and died May 19, 1715. In front of this monument was buried JOSEPH ADDISON; to mark the spot a slab of white marble, inlaid with solid brass letters and devices, has recently been placed by the Earl of Ellesmere. The very appropriate epitaph was the effusion of Addison's friend and contemporary, Thomas Tickle:-- ADDISON. "Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation, came a nobler guest; Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade. Oh, gone for ever! take this long adieu, And sleep in peace, next thy lov'd Mountague." Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere, Born 1672, Died 1719. P.C. 1849. _Poole, mason_. Also one to the memory of Sir GEORGE SAVILLE, created by Charles I. Baron of Eland, and Viscount Halifax, afterwards Earl, and lastly Marquis of Halifax. He was Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal for some time in the reigns of Charles II., James II., and William III.; and, at the beginning of the reign of James II., he was, for a few months, Lord President of the Council. He died April 5, 1695. Here is the lofty and magnificent monument of Queen ELIZABETH, erected to her memory by James I., her successor. The inscription speaks her character, high descent, and the memorable acts of her glorious reign:--"That she was the mother of her country, and the patroness of religion and learning; that she was herself skilled in many languages; adorned with every excellence of mind and person, and endowed with princely virtues beyond her sex; that in her reign, religion was restored to its primitive purity; peace was established; money restored to its just value; domestic insurrections quelled; France delivered from intestine troubles; the Netherlands supported; the Spanish Armada defeated; Ireland, almost lost by the secret contrivances of Spain, recovered; the revenues of both Universities improved, by a law of provisions, and, in short, all England enriched; that she was a most prudent Governess, forty-five years a virtuous and triumphant Queen, truly religious, and blessed in all her great affairs; and that after a calm and resigned death, in the seventieth year of her age, she left the mortal part to be deposited in this Church, which she established upon a new footing. She died March 24, 1602, aged seventy." Queen MARY, whose reign preceded that of Queen Elizabeth, was interred here likewise. She died Nov. 17, 1558.--_Stone, sculptor._ At the end of this Aisle is a small tomb over which is a figure of a child, erected to the memory of MARY, third daughter of James I., born at Greenwich in 1605; and soon afterwards committed to the care of Lady Knevet, in whose house at Stainwell she died, December 19, 1607, at two years old. And a child in a cradle, erected to the memory of SOPHIA, fourth daughter of the same King, born at Greenwich in 1606, and died in three days. Against the end wall is an altar, raised by Charles II. to the memory of EDWARD V. and his brother, who, by their treacherous uncle, Richard III., were murdered in the Tower. The inscription, which is in Latin, gives a particular account of their sad catastrophe, and is in English thus:--"Here lie the relics of Edward V., King of England, and Richard, Duke of York, who, being confined in the Tower, and there stifled with pillows, were privately and meanly buried, by order of their perfidious uncle, Richard, the usurper. Their bones, long inquired after and wished for, after laying 191 years in the rubbish of the stairs (_i.e._, those lately leading to the Chapel of the White Tower), were, on the 17th of July, 1674, by undoubted proofs, discovered, being buried deep in that place. Charles II., pitying their unhappy fate, ordered these unfortunate Princes to be laid among the relics of their predecessors, in the year 1678, and the thirtieth of his reign." It is remarkable, that Edward was born November 4, 1471, in the sanctuary belonging to this Church, whither his mother took refuge during the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster; at eleven years of age, upon the death of his father, 1483, he was proclaimed King; and on the 23rd of June, in the same year, was murdered in the manner already related. Richard, his brother, was born May 28, 1474, and married, while a child, to Ann Mowbray, heiress of Norfolk. In front of Queen Elizabeth's tomb are the bodies of GEORGE MONCK, Duke of Albemarle, 1670. EDWARD, Earl of Sandwich, 1672. V.--Chapel of St. Paul. [Illustration] _Begin on your left._ 1. Sir Henry Belasyse, 1717. 2. Colonel Macleod. 3. Sir John Puckering, 1596. 4. Sir James Fullerton. 5. Lord Chancellor Bromley, 1587. 6. Sir Dudley Carleton, 1631. 7. Countess of Sussex, 1589. 8. Lord and Lady Cottington, 1631. 9. James Watt, 1819. 10. Sir Giles Daubeny, 1507. 11. Lewis Robsart, Standard Bearer to Henry V., 1431. Lord Delaval and Lord Tyrconnel's Banners hang over the place of their interment. On your left hand is a monument to the memory of Sir HENRY BELASYSE, Knt., Lieutenant-General, some time Governor of Galway in Ireland, and afterwards of Berwick-on-Tweed, in the reign of William III. He died December 16, 1717, aged sixty-nine. Bridget, wife of his only son, W. Belasyse, Esq., died July 28, 1735, aged twenty.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ Next this, one--"To the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel CHARLES MACLEOD, who fell at the siege of Badajos, aged twenty-six years. This monument is erected by his brother officers. In Lieutenant-Colonel Macleod, of the forty-third Regiment, who was killed in the breach, his Majesty has sustained the loss of an officer who was an ornament to his profession, and was capable of rendering the most important services to his country." Vide Marquis Wellington's Dispatch, 8th April, 1812.--_Nollekens, sculptor._ Sir JOHN PUCKERING, Knt., and his Lady, remarkable, as his inscription sets forth, for his knowledge in the laws, as well as piety, wisdom, and many other virtues. He was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England four years, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in which office he died, April 30, 1596. His epitaph, in Latin, over his effigy, is thus translated:-- "The public cares and laws engaged my breast; To live was toilsome, but to die is rest. Wealth, maces, guards, crowns, titles, things that fade, The prey of time and sable death are made. VIRTUE INSPIRES MEN. His wife this statue rears to her loved spouse, The test of constancy and marriage vows." "I trust I shall see the Lord in the land of the living." Sir JAMES FULLERTON and his Lady, with an epitaph:--"Here lie the remains of Sir James Fullerton, Knight, First Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles the First (Prince and King), a generous rewarder of all virtue, a severe reprover of all vice, a professed renouncer of all vanity. He was a firm pillar to the Commonwealth, a faithful patron to the Catholic Church, a fair pattern to the British Court. He lived to the welfare of his country, to the honour of his Prince, to the glory of his God. He died _fuller_ of faith than of fear, _fuller_ of consolation than of pains, _fuller_ of honour than of days." In the middle of this Chapel is a table monument, on which lie the effigies of Sir GILES DAUBENY, created Lord Daubeny in the first year of the reign of Henry VII., and Dame ELIZABETH, his wife. He seems to have been a man of great authority in the reign of Henry VII., as he was Lord Lieutenant of Calais, in France, Lord Chamberlain to his Majesty, Knight of the Most noble Order of the Garter, and father of Henry Lord Daubeny, the first and last Earl of Bridgewater of that surname, by Elizabeth, of the ancient family of the Arundels, in Cornwall. He died May 22, 1507, and his lady in 1500. JAMES WATT: he is represented with compasses forming designs, seated on an oblong pedestal. The inscription as follows:--"Not to perpetuate a name, which must endure while the peaceful arts flourish, but to show that mankind have learned to honour those who best deserve their gratitude, the king, his ministers, and many of the nobles and commoners of the realm, raised this monument to James Watt, who, directing the force of an original genius, early exercised in philosophical research, to the improvement of the steam-engine, enlarged the resources of his country, increased the power of man, and rose to an eminent place among the most illustrious followers of science, and the real benefactors of the world. Born at Greenock, 1736, died at Heathfield, in Staffordshire, 1819."--_Chantrey, sculptor._ Sir THOMAS BROMLEY, Knight, Privy Councillor to Queen Elizabeth, and eight years Chancellor, in which office he died, April 12, 1587, to the grief of all good men. The eight children depicted on this tomb, were all by his Lady, Elizabeth, of the family of Fortescue. Sir DUDLEY CARLETON, afterwards made Viscount Dorchester, for his eminent services to Charles I. and his father, both abroad and at home. He was a person versed in the languages, customs, and laws of most of the European nations, and was entrusted both by James I. and his successors, with the most important foreign negotiations. After the death of James I., he was sent to Holland, and was the last deputy who voted in the Assembly of the States, which great privilege the crown of England possessed from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign to this period. He died Feb. 15, 1631, aged fifty-seven. FRANCES, Countess of Essex. This great lady was the wife of Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Knight of the Garter, &c., and daughter of Sir William Sidney, of Pensehurst, Knight. By her last will, having outlived her husband, she instituted a divinity lecture to be read in this Collegiate Church, gave 5,000_l._ towards the building of a new College in Cambridge, now called Sidney Sussex College; and left a sufficient yearly revenue for the maintenance of one master ten fellows, and twenty scholars, either in the said new college, or else in Clare Hall. She died April 15, 1589, aged fifty-eight. Next to this is a monument of black marble, very remarkably different from every other in the Abbey. On the top of it is a circular frame of gilt brass, enclosing the bust of ANN, Lady Cottington, wife of Francis, Lord Cottington, Baron of Hanworth, so created by Charles I. She was daughter of Sir William Meredith, of Denbighshire, by Jane, his wife, of the family of the Palmers, in Kent, and died February 22, 1633, in the thirty-third year of her age, having had four daughters and a son, all of whom died before their father, who, on a table monument beneath, lies in effigy, resting on his left arm; and over a satyr's head is this inscription in English: "Here lies Francis, Lord Cottington, of Hanworth, who, in the reign of Charles I., was Chancellor of his Majesty's Exchequer, Master of the Court of Wards, Constable of the Tower, Lord High Treasurer of England, and one of the Privy Council. He was twice Ambassador in Spain, once for the said King, and a second time for Charles II., now reigning, to both of whom he most signally showed his allegiance and fidelity, during the unhappy civil broils of those times; and for his faithful adherence to the Crown (the Usurper prevailing) was forced to fly his country; and, during his exile, died at Valladolid, in Spain, June 19, 1652, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, whence his body was brought, and here interred, by Charles Cottington, Esq., his nephew and heir, in 1679." The next is a very old Gothic monument, erected to the memory of LEWIS ROBERT, or ROBSART, a foreigner, but standard bearer to Henry V., a Knight of the Bath, and afterwards of the Garter, and at length created Lord Bourchier. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of St. Bartholomew Bourchier, and probably a relation to Geoffrey Chaucer, the old English poet. On leaving this Chapel, on your right is a monument to the memory of WILLIAM PULTENEY, Earl of Bath, with a medallion and urn, supported by Wisdom and Poetry. The inscription is as follows:--"Erected to the memory of William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, by his brother, the Hon. Harry Pulteney, General of his Majesty's Forces, 1764, Ob. July 7, 1767, �t. eighty-one."--_Wilton, sculptor._ [Illustration: CHAPEL OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, LOOKING WEST.] CHARLES HOLMES, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the White; who is represented in a Roman habit, leaning against a cannon mounted on a sea carriage; an anchor, cable, and flag in the back ground.--"He died the 21st of Nov., 1761, Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's fleet stationed at Jamaica, aged fifty. Erected by his grateful nieces, Mary Stanwix and Lucretia Stowe."--_Wilton, sculptor._ In front of the monument to Admiral Holmes, is an old gravestone, plated with brass, with Latin inscription, to JOHN of WINDSOR, nephew of Sir William of Windsor, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the reign of Edward III. He died April 4, 1414. Near this spot was buried JOHN PYM, the celebrated Parliamentary orator, who died December 13, 1643; and also JAMES USHER, Archbishop of Armagh, 1656. VI.--Chapel of St. Edward. [Illustration] 1. Henry the Third, 1272. 2. Queen Eleanor, 1290. 3. Henry the Fifth, 1423. 4. Queen Phillippa, 1369. 5. Edward the Third, 1377. 6. Margaret Woodville, Daughter of Edward the Fourth, on which is placed a Sword and Shield of State, carried before Edward the Third, 1316. 7. Richard the Second and Queen, 1399, 1394. 8. Coronation Chair of Edward the First, 1297. 9. Coronation Chair made for Mary, Wife of William the Third. 10. Tomb of Edward the First, 1307. 11. Shrine of Edward the Confessor, 1065. 12. Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, 1397. 13. John of Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, 1388. Pavement laid down in 1260. The first curiosity that commands your reverence is the ancient venerable shrine of ST. EDWARD, once the glory of England, but now defaced and robbed of its beauty, by the devotees of this extreme pious man, all of whom were proud to possess some stone or dust from his tomb. This shrine was erected by Henry III. in 1269, to receive the remains of St. Edward, upon his translation from the shrine built by Henry II., upon the canonization of Edward, King of England (third of that name, and the last of the Saxon race), by Pope Alexander III., in 1163, who caused his name to be placed in the catalogue of saints, and issued his bull to the Abbot Laurentius, and the Convent of Westminster, enjoining, "That his body be honoured here on earth, as his soul is glorified in heaven." He died in 1065. How costly the shrine, &c., was, appears by a record in the Tower.--_Parl. Roll. 51st of Henry III._ "Henry III., with consent of the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, pledged the jewels belonging to the body and shrine of Edward the Confessor to foreigners, being necessitated on account of heavy emergencies; the value of the said jewels amounted to £2,557. 4_s._ 8_d._" On the south side of the shrine, EDITHA, daughter of Goodwyn, Earl of Kent, and Queen of St. Edward, lies interred. The writers of those times commended her for beauty, learning, prudent economy, gentle manners, and inimitable skill in needlework, having wrought with her own hands the curious and magnificent robes the King used to wear on his collar days. She died at Winchester, Jan. 15, 1073. Part of a Latin epitaph on this excellent Princess has been handed down, and is to this effect:-- "Success ne'er sat exulting in her eye, Nor disappointment heaved the troubled sigh; Prosperity ne'er sadden'd o'er her brow, While glad in trouble she enjoyed her woe: Beauty ne'er made her vain, nor sceptres proud, Nor titles taught to scorn the meaner crowd. Supreme humility was awful grace, And her chief charm a bashfulness of face." Near this was buried MATILDA, Queen of England, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scots, and wife to Henry I. She died May 1, 1118. This Queen would, every day in Lent, walk from her palace to this church barefoot, and wearing a garment of hair. No verse or stone to mark the place of interment are to be found. On the north side of this Chapel is an ancient tomb of admirable workmanship and materials, the panels being of polished porphyry, and the Mosaic work round them of gold and scarlet; at the corners of the table are twisted pillars, gilt and enamelled, and the effigy of HENRY III. upon it is of gilt brass, finely executed. He died in 1272, after a troublesome reign of fifty-six years, aged sixty-five, and was buried by the Knights Templars, of whose order his father was the founder, with such splendour, that Wykes, the Monk, says, he made a more magnificent figure when dead, than he had done while living.--_Cavalini._ Near that of Henry III. is a small monument in memory of ELIZABETH TUDOR, second daughter of Henry VII., who died at Eltham, in Kent, Sept. 14th, 1495, aged three years, from whence she was removed in great funeral pomp, and here buried. At the feet of Henry III. is an ancient monument of ELEANOR, Queen of Edward I. On the sides of this monument are engraven the arms of Castile and Leon, quarterly, and those of Fontheiu, hanging on vines and oak leaves; and round the copper verge is embossed this inscription, in Saxon characters: "Ici gist Alianor iadis Reyne de Engletere femme al Rey Edeward Fiz (lerey Henry efylle alrey deespaygne econtasse de) puntif del alme deli Deu pur sa pite eyt merci. Amen." Translation:--_Here lies Eleanor, formerly Queen of England, wife to King Edward son of King Henry, daughter of the King of Spain, and Countess of Ponthieu; upon whose soul may God for His pity have mercy. Amen._ The upper line is visible on the south side, the words within brackets are concealed under the tomb of King Henry V., the remainder is on the north side. It is remarkable, the body only of this Queen lies here interred, and her heart in the choir of the Friars Predicants in London. She died Dec. 27, 1290.--_Cavalini._ The chantry of Henry V. is next, on each side of which are images as large as life, guarding, as it were, the staircases ascending to it. Beneath is the tomb of that glorious and warlike Prince, HENRY of MONMOUTH (so called from the place of his nativity). On the upper slab lies a headless and otherwise mutilated figure of the King, carved in oak, which was originally covered with silver; the head appears to have been cast in silver; but this, Camden says, "was gone when he wrote his Britannica, in the reign of Elizabeth." This Prince was guilty of great extravagances in his youth, and is said, with Sir John Falstaff, to have belonged to a gang of sharpers; yet, upon his advancement to the crown made a most excellent King, and, by the memorable battle of Agincourt, acquired to himself and the English nation immortal glory. He died in France, Aug. 31, 1422, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the tenth of his reign. In the chantry above, is the saddle, helmet, and shield, supposed to have been used at Agincourt, brought here at his interment.--_John Anderne, sculptor._ The next is an ancient tomb to the memory of PHILLIPPA, third daughter of William, Earl of Hainault, and Queen of Edward III., with whom she lived forty-two years, and bore him fourteen children. Harding tells us, that when an embassy was sent to choose one of the Earl's daughters, a certain English Bishop advised to choose the lady with the largest hips, as promising a numerous progeny. She died August 15, 1369; and the King, her husband, bestowed a profusion of expense in performing her exequies and erecting her tomb, round which were placed as ornaments the brazen statues of no less than thirty kings, princes, and noble personages, her relations. Adjoining to this is the tomb of EDWARD III., which is likewise covered with a Gothic canopy. On a table of grey marble lies the effigy of this Prince, though his corpse was deposited in the same grave with the Queen's, according to her request on her death-bed. This tomb was surrounded, like the former, with statues, particularly those of his children, six of which remain on the south side of the tomb; viz., Edward, Joan-de-la-Tour, Lionel, Edmund, Mary, and William. He died June 21, 1377, aged sixty-four. Here is likewise a monument in memory of MARGARET, daughter of Edward IV., by Elizabeth Woodville, his Queen, which had once an inscription upon it, showing her name, quality, and age, being only nine months. She died April 19, 1472. Between the Chairs are placed the shield and sword carried before Edward III., in France. The sword is seven feet long, and weighs eighteen pounds. Under a large stone, once finely plated with brass, lies the great THOMAS of WOODSTOCK, Duke of Gloucester; he was brother to the Black Prince, and sixth and youngest son of Edward III. He was murdered at Calais, Sept. 8, 1397. Next adjoining to this is a tomb, erected to the memory of RICHARD II. and his Queen; over which is a canopy of wood, remarkable for a curious painting of the Virgin Mary and our Saviour still visible upon it. This Richard was son of Edward the Black Prince, and grandson of Edward III., whom he succeeded at eleven years of age. He was murdered on St. Valentine's day, 1399. In the same tomb lies his Queen, ANNE, daughter of Charles IV., and sister of Wenceslaus, Emperor and King of Bohemia, who brought him neither dowry nor issue. She died at Shene, June 7, 1394, after being married twelve years. THE CORONATION CHAIRS.--The most ancient of them was made to enclose the stone (which is reported to be Jacob's Pillar), brought with regalia from Scotland, by Edward I., and offered to St. Edward's shrine, in the year 1297 (after he had overcome John Baliol, King of Scots, in several battles). In this chair all the reigning Sovereigns have been crowned since Edward I. The other chair was made for Queen Mary II. At the coronation, one or both of them are covered with gold tissue, and placed before the altar, behind which they now stand, surrounded by several monarchs, who seem to guard them even in death. Above those chairs, along the frieze of the screen of this Chapel, are fourteen legendary sculptures, respecting the Confessor. The first is the trial of Queen Emma; the next the birth of Edward; another is his coronation; the fourth tells us how our saint was frightened into the abolition of the Dean-gelt, by his seeing the devil dance upon the money casks; the fifth is the story of his winking at the thief, who was robbing his treasure; the sixth is meant to relate the appearance of our Saviour to him; the seventh shows how the invasion of England was frustrated by the drowning of the Danish King; in the eighth is seen the quarrel between the boys Totsi and Harold, predicting their respective fates; in the ninth sculpture is the Confessor's vision of the seven sleepers; the tenth, how he met St. John the Evangelist in the guise of a pilgrim; the eleventh, how the blind were cured by their eyes being washed in his dirty water; the twelfth, how St. John delivers to the pilgrims a ring; in the thirteenth they deliver the ring to the King, which he had unknowingly given to St. John as an alms, when he met him in the form of a pilgrim; this was attended with a message from the saint, foretelling the death of the King; and the fourteenth shows the consequential haste made by him to complete his pious foundation. Before leaving this Chapel you will observe a large plain tomb, composed of five slabs of grey marble; two make the sides, two the ends, and one the cover. This rough unpolished tomb enclosed the body of the glorious King EDWARD I., of whom we have just been speaking. He was son of Henry III., and born at Westminster, June 17, 1239, named Edward, in honour of St. Edward, his father's patron and predecessor, and afterwards Longshanks, from his tall and slender body. He is called Edward I., because he was the first of that name after the Conquest. He died July 7, 1307, after a reign of thirty-four years, and a life of sixty-eight. This tomb was opened in 1774, by permission of Dr. Thomas, then Dean of Westminster, granted to the Society of Antiquaries, a deputation of whom, with the Dean, attended the process. The body was perfect, having on two robes, one of gold and silver tissue, and the other of crimson velvet; a sceptre in each hand, measuring near five feet; a crown on his head, and many jewels; he measured six feet two inches. Near this tomb is a large stone, plated with brass, to the memory of JOHN of WALTHAM, the twenty-sixth Bishop of Salisbury, anno 1388. He was master of the Rolls in 1382, then Keeper of the Privy Seal, in the year 1391, and died Lord High Treasurer of England to Richard II., in 1395. In this Chapel was interred the heart of HENRY D'ALMADE, son of Richard, King of the Romans, brother of Henry III. He was sacrilegiously assassinated in the Church of St. Silvester, at Viterbo, as he was performing his devotions before the high altar. Simon and Guido Montford, sons of Simon de Montford, Earl of Leicester, were the assassins, in revenge for their father's death, who, with their brother Henry, was slain in the battle of Evesham, in fighting against their lawful sovereign. The picture of this murder the inhabitants had painted, and hung up in the church, where we are told it still remains. This murder happened in 1270, and in the year after the body of Henry was brought to England, and buried in the monastery of St. Helen's; but his heart was put in a cup, and placed near St. Edward's shrine, of the removal of which we have no account. Upon a careful perusal of the guide-book to this portion of the Abbey, it will not be uninteresting to observe that the bodies of six kings, five queens, two princesses, a duke, and a bishop are deposited in this remarkable receptacle of the dead. Before entering the Chapel of St. John, on the right or east side of the door, is a monument erected to the memory of JANE, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Pulteney, and wife of Sir Clippesby Crewe, Knt. She died Dec. 2, 1639, aged twenty-nine. On the left, or west side of the door, is a monument to the memory of JULIANA, only daughter of Sir Randolph Crewe, Knt., Lord Chief Justice of England. She died unmarried April 22, 1621. Over the door is the monument of the Right Rev. Dr. BARNARD, Lord Bishop of Londonderry, who died in London, January 10, 1768, aged seventy-two, and was here buried. VII.--Chapel of St. John. [Illustration] _Begin on your Left._ 1. Sir Thomas Vaughan. 2. Colonel Popham, 1651. 3. Carey, Son of the Earl of Monmouth, 1648. 4. Hugh de Bohun, and Mary his Sister, grandchildren of Edward the First. 5. Carey, Baron of Hunsdon, 1596. 6. Countess of Mexborough, 1821. 7. William of Colchester, Abbot of Westminster, 1420. 8. O. Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, 1524. 9. Thomas Millyng, Bishop of Hereford, 1492. 10. Abbot Fascet, 1500. 11. Mrs. Mary Kendall. 12. Cecil, Earl of Exeter, 1622, and Lady, 1608. On the left, in this Chapel, is an ancient monument to the memory of Sir THOMAS VAUGHAN, Knight, Chamberlain to Edward, Prince of Wales, and Treasurer of Edward IV. On the top are the mutilated remains of a brass plate of the Knight. In the recess of this tomb is a bust to the memory of FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. Born August 29th, 1805; died April 1st, 1872; buried at Highgate. "God is Light." "He was sent to bear witness of that Light."--_T. Woolner, R.A._ Next to this, proceeding on your left hand, is a monument to the memory of Colonel EDWARD POPHAM, an officer in Oliver Cromwell's army, and his Lady. The inscription on this monument was erased at the Restoration, otherwise it would have been removed. He died at Dover, August 19, 1651. A tablet to the memory of THOMAS CAREY, second son of the Earl of Monmouth. He was gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles I.; and is said to have died of grief, in 1648, at the age of thirty-three, for the unhappy fate of his Royal Master. Under this is a tombstone of grey marble, to the memory of HUGH DE BOHUN, and MARY, his sister, grandchildren to Edward I. The next monument is to the memory of HENRY CAREY, first cousin to Queen Elizabeth, created Baron of Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire, in 1558; was some time Governor of Berwick, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth, Privy Councillor and Knight of the Garter; but not being preferred as he expected, he laid the disappointment so much to heart, that he languished for a long time on a sick bed, at which the Queen being moved too late, created him an Earl, and ordered the patent and robes to be laid before him, but without effect. He died July 23, 1596, aged seventy-two. In the middle of the Chapel is the tomb of THOMAS CECIL, Earl of Exeter, Baron Burleigh, Knight of the Garter, and Privy Councillor to James I.; whereon is his effigy, with a lady on his right side, and a vacant space on his left for another. He died February 7, 1622. The lady on his right side is Dorothy Nevil, his first wife, daughter and co-heiress of the Noble Lord Latimer, who died May 22, 1608; and the vacant space was left for his second wife, Frances Bridget, of the noble family of Chandos; but as the right side was taken up, she gave express orders, by her will, not to place her effigy on his left; notwithstanding which, they are all buried together in one vault, as the inscription expresses. She died in 1663. In the corner to the left is a tablet:--"Sacred to the memory of the Right Hon. ELIZABETH, Countess of Mexborough, who departed this life June 7, in the year of our Lord 1821, aged fifty-nine. Her afflicted husband, John, Earl of Mexborough, hath erected this monument to her memory, in token of his deep sorrow for her loss, and of his sincere love and affection." WILLIAM of COLCHESTER, Abbot of Westminster, who died in the year 1420, has also an ancient stone monument in this chapel, whereon lies his effigy, properly habited, the head supported by an angel, the feet by a lamb. THOMAS RUTHALL, made Bishop of Durham by Henry VIII. He had been a Secretary of State to Henry VII., and was by Henry VIII. made a Privy Councillor, and sent on several embassies abroad. He died, immensely rich, in 1524. A third is that of GEORGE FASCET, Abbot of Westminster, in the time of Henry VII., of whom we can find nothing material. He died in the year 1500. On this monument stands the stone coffin of THOMAS MILLYNG, Bishop of Hereford, some time Abbot of Westminster, and Privy Councillor to Edward IV., who died in 1492. Facing you is a monument to the memory of Mrs. MARY KENDALL, daughter of Thomas Kendall, Esq., and of Mrs. Mary Hallett, his wife, of Killigarth, in Cornwall, who died in her thirty-third year. Her many virtues, as her epitaph sets forth, "rendered her every way worthy of that close union and friendship in which she lived with Lady Catherine Jones; and in testimony of which, she desired that even their ashes, after death, might not be divided, and therefore ordered herself here to be interred, where she knew that excellent lady designed one day to rest near the grave of her beloved and religious mother Elizabeth, Countess of Ranelagh. She was born at Westminster November 8, 1677, and died at Epsom, March 4, 1710." Above is a monument to ESTHER DE LA TOUR DE GOUVERNET, the Lord Eland's lady. The inscription is in Latin and English, and contains an encomium on her many excellent virtues. She died in 1694, aged twenty-eight.--_Nadaud, sculptor._ VIII.--Chapel of Islip, otherwise Saint John the Baptist. In the middle of this Chapel formerly stood the monument of Abbot ISLIP; it consisted of a ground plinth, or basement, on which was an alabaster statue of the Abbot, who was represented as a skeleton in a shroud or winding sheet. Over this was a canopy, on which was anciently a fine painting of our Saviour on the Cross, destroyed by the Puritans in Cromwell's time, who were enemies to everything that favoured Popish idolatry, though ever so masterly. Islip was a great favourite with Henry VII., and was employed by him in decorating his new chapel, and in repairing and beautifying the whole Abbey. He dedicated his own chapel to St. John the Baptist, and died May 12, 1532, and was buried in his own chapel. On the right is the tomb of Sir CHRISTOPHER HATTON, and his Lady, in reclining attitudes on cushions. Sir Christopher died September 10, 1619; and his widow erected this memorial of his virtues and of their own affectionate union. On the left, opposite the Chapel of Islip, are two very ancient monuments of Knights Templars. The first, that of EDMUND CROUCHBACK, son of Henry III., so called, as some affirm, from the deformity of his person; but according to others from his attending his brother in the holy wars, where they wore a crouch or cross on their shoulders as a badge of Christianity. From this Prince the House of Lancaster claimed their right to the crown. On the base, towards the area, are the remains of ten knights, armed, with banners, surcoats of armour and cross-belted, representing, undoubtedly, his expedition to the Holy Land, the number exactly corresponding with what Matthew Paris reports, namely, Edward and his brother, four Earls, and four Knights, of whom some are still discoverable, particularly the Lord Roger Clifford, as were formerly, in Waverley's time, William de Valence, and Thomas de Clare. The next ancient monument is to the memory of AYMER DE VALENCE, second and last Earl of Pembroke of this family; he was third son of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, "whom he succeeded in his estates and honours. He was employed in the Scottish wars in the reigns of Edward I. and II. Edward II., in 1314, appointed him general of all his forces from the Trent to Roxborough. He was appointed to attend Isabel, the Queen Mother, to France, and there murdered, on June 23rd, 1323." The Countess of Lancaster's tomb is seen from the choir, but from this part is hid by the monument of Lord Ligonier; it is canopied with an ancient Gothic arch, the sides of which were decorated with vine branches in relief, the roof within springing into many angles, under which lay the image of a lady, in an antique dress, her feet resting upon lions, and her head on pillars, supported by angels on each side. This monument covered the remains of AVELINE, Countess of Lancaster, daughter of William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle and Holdernesse, by Isabella daughter and heiress of Baldwin, Earl of Devon. This lady married Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, son of Henry III., but died the very year of her marriage, Nov. 4, 1293. On the right is a monument to the memory of General WOLFE, who was killed at the siege of Quebec, 1759. He is represented falling into the arms of a grenadier, with his right hand over the mortal wound: the grenadier is pointing to Glory in the form of an angel in the clouds, holding forth a wreath ready to crown him, whilst a Highland sergeant looks sorrowfully on: two lions watch at his feet. The inscription as follows:--"To the memory of James Wolfe, Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the British Land Forces on an expedition against Quebec, who, after surmounting, by ability and valour, all obstacles of art and nature, was slain in the moment of victory, on the 13th of September, 1759, the King and the Parliament of Great Britain dedicate this monument."--_Wilton, sculptor._ On the right hand wall, side of Wolfe, is a monument to the memory of Bishop DUPPA, tutor to Charles II., a man of such exemplary piety, lively conversation, and excess of good nature, that when Charles I. was a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, he thought himself happy in the company of so good a man. He was born at Greenwich, and educated first at Westminster School, and then at Christ Church College, Oxford, of which he was afterwards Dean; and being selected for the Preceptor to the then Prince of Wales, was first made Bishop of Chichester, from thence translated to Salisbury, and after the Restoration to the See of Winchester. He died March 26, 1622, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.--_Burman, sculptor._ Beneath is a tablet, "Sacred to the memory of JOHN THEOPHILUS BERESFORD, eldest son of Marcus Beresford, and the Lady Frances, his wife, Lieutenant in the eighty-eighth regiment of foot, who died in the twenty-first year of his age, at Villa Formosa, in Spain, of wounds received from the exploding of a powder magazine, at Ciudad Rodrigo, after he had passed unhurt through eight days of voluntary service, of the greatest danger during the siege, for which he received the thanks of the Commander-in-Chief. Brave and zealous in his military duties, animated by a strong feeling of piety to God, and distinguished by his ardent filial affection and duty towards a widowed mother, he has left to her the recollection of his rising virtues as her only consolation under the irreparable loss she has sustained by his death. Born, Jan. 16, 1792, and died Jan. 29, 1812; interred with military honours, in the fort of Almeida.--'_Yea, speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul._'--Wisdom of Solomon, chap. iv., verse 11."--_Westmacott, sculptor._ Next to this is a tablet to the memory of Sir JAMES ADOLPHUS OUGHTON, Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in North Britain. The inscription is a recital of his military employments, and a record of his death, which took place April 14, 1780, in the sixty-first year of his age.--_Hayward, sculptor._ On the floor is the image of an Abbot in his mass habit curiously engraved on brass, representing JOHN DE EASTNEY, who died March 4, 1498. By the records of the Church he appears to have been a great benefactor to it; he ornamented the grand west window with some noble paintings on glass of which some little still remains. He gave the screen to the Chapel, and presented two images gilt for the altar of St. Peter and St. Paul, and one for the chapter house. He paid the King 1,000_l._ on account of the merchants, and 3,700_l._ to the Court of Rome, due for the confirmation of abbots. A little to the left, on another gravestone, plated with brass, is the figure of an armed Knight, resting his feet on a lion, and his head on a greyhound, which, as the register informs us, represents Sir JOHN HARPEDON, Knight, who died in 1457. Adjoining this is a gravestone, on which have been the figures, in brass, of THOMAS BROWNE and HUMPHREY ROBERTS, two monks of this Church, who died in 1508. On the right as you enter the Chapel is another gravestone, on which has been the effigy of Sir THOMAS PARRY, Knight, Treasurer of the Household, Master of the Court of Wards and Liveries to Queen Elizabeth. He died December 15, 1560. IX.--Chapels of St. John the Evangelist, St. Andrew, and St. Michael. [Illustration: CHAPELS OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, ST. ANDREW, ST. MICHAEL, NOW ONE CHAPEL] _Begin on the left._ 1. General Villettes, 1808. 2. General Sir Charles Stuart, 1801. 3. Two Sons of General Forbes, 1791 and 1799. 4. Admiral Kempenfelt, 1782. 5. Earl and Countess of Mountrath, 1751 and 1766. 6. Admiral Totty, 1802. 7. Earl and Countess of Kerry, 1518. 8. Mr. Telford, 1834. 9. Dr. Baillie, 1823. 10. Miss Davidson, 1767. 11. Dr. Young, 1829. 12. Lord and Lady Norris and Family, 1601. 13. Mrs. Ann Kirton, 1603. 14. Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, 1692. 15. Nightingale Family, 1734 and 1752. 16. Admiral Sir George Pocock, 1792. 17. Sir George Holles, son of Sir Francis Vere, 1626. 18. Captain Edward Cook, 1799. 19. Sir Humphry Davy, 1829. 20. Sir Francis Vere, 1608. Turning round on your right is an unique monument to the memory of Sir FRANCIS VERE, a gentleman of the first reputation, both for learning and arms, "one of the most accomplished soldiers of Queen Elizabeth's reign, having the command of the auxiliary troops in the Dutch service, nearly twenty years." He died August 28, 1608, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. Loose armour is represented being supported by four armed knights. On the back of General Wolfe's monument is a tablet to the memory of Sir HUMPHREY DAVY, Bart., distinguished throughout the world "by his discoveries in chemical science; President of the Royal Society; Member of the National Institute of France. Born 17th December, 1778, at Penzance. Died 29th May, 1829, at Geneva, where his remains are interred." A monument is here erected, by the East India Company, as a grateful testimony to the value and eminent services of Captain EDWARD COOKE, Commander of his Majesty's ship Sybille, who on the 1st of March, 1799, after a long and well-contested engagement, captured La Forte, a French frigate of very superior force, in the Bay of Bengal; an event not more splendid in its achievement, than important in its result to the British trade in India. He died in consequence of the severe wounds he received in this memorable action, on the 23rd of May, 1799, aged twenty-seven.--_Bacon, sculptor._ The next is a monument to the memory of Sir GEORGE HOLLES, nephew of Sir Francis Vere, and a Major-General under him. He died May, 1626, aged fifty. This monument was erected by John, Earl of Clare.--_Nicholas Stone, sculptor._ Adjoining is a monument to the memory of Sir GEORGE POCOCK, K.B., Admiral of the Blue, who distinguished himself at the taking of Geriah, and in leading the attack at the reduction of Chandernagore; afterwards, with an inferior force, he defeated the French Fleet under M. D'Ache in three several engagements; returning from his successful career in the East, he was appointed to command the fleet upon the expedition against the Havannah, by his united efforts in the conquest of which, he added fresh laurels to his own brow, and a valuable possession to this kingdom. A life so honourable to himself, and so endeared to his friends and his family, was happily extended to the age of eighty-six, and resigned, in the year 1793, with the same tranquil and serene mind which peculiarly marked and adorned the whole course of it.--_Bacon, sculptor._ A monument to the memory of JOSEPH GASCOIGNE NIGHTINGALE, and his Lady. The lady is represented expiring in the arms of her husband; beneath, slyly creeping from a tomb, the King of Terrors presents his grim visage, pointing his unerring dart to the dying figure, at which sight the husband, suddenly struck with astonishment, horror, and despair, seems to clasp her to his bosom to defend her from the fatal stroke. Inscription:--"Here rest the ashes of Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale, of Mamhead, in the county of Devon, Esq., who died July 20, 1752, aged fifty-six; and of Lady Elizabeth, his wife, daughter and co-heiress of Washington, Earl of Ferrars, who died August 17, 1734, aged twenty-seven. Their only son, Washington Gascoigne Nightingale, Esq., in memory of their virtues, did by his last will, order this monument to be erected."--_Roubiliac._ Next to this is a monument of note, sacred to the memory of SARAH, Duchess of Somerset, relict of John Seymour, Duke of Somerset, daughter of Sir Edward Alston, Knt. On the base of this monument are two charity boys, one on each side, bewailing the death of their benefactress, who is represented in a modern dress, resting upon her arm, under a canopy of state, and looking earnestly up at a group of cherubims issuing from the clouds above her. Underneath is a Latin inscription to this effect:--"Here lies the late illustrious Duchess of Somerset, celebrated for charity and benevolence, who erected a grammar school for boys at Tottenham, in Middlesex, enlarged the income of the Green-coat Hospital at Westminster, largely endowed Brazenose College, in Oxford, and St. John's, in Cambridge, for the education and instruction of youth in good piety and literature. She was likewise an encourager of trade and handicrafts, and had a tender regard to old age, by erecting an almshouse at Froxfield, in Wiltshire, for thirty widows. She was very charitable to the poor of St. Margaret's, Westminster, where she instituted a lecture, and gave many stately ornaments to the Church." She died October 25, 1692. Against the east wall is a tablet erected to the memory of ANN, wife of James Kirton, of Castle Carey, Somersetshire, Gent. She died September 7, 1603. Sir HENRY NORRIS, his Lady, and six sons. He was ancestor of the present Earl of Abingdon, and for his valour in the Low Countries, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was created Lord Norris of Ricot. He died in 1601. His six sons are represented kneeling round the tomb; viz., William, John, and Thomas, on the south side; Henry, Edward, and Maximilian, on the north side. On the south side of the canopy in alto-relievo is represented the march of an army of horse, with an encampment in the back ground, together with the standard of the Belgic States, and a soldier bearing a shield, with the Norris's arms. On the summit is a small statue of Fame. Up against the wall is a tablet to the learned Dr. YOUNG, M.D. The inscription sets forth that he was eminent in every department of human learning; and that, by abstruse investigation of letters and science, he at length unveiled the obscurity which had rested upon the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Died May 10, 1829, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ Next is a full length statue of Mrs. SIDDONS, a celebrated actress, as Lady Macbeth, in the Night Scene. Erected by subscription.--_Thomas Campbell, sculptor._ Contiguous is the statue of her brother JOHN KEMBLE, in the character of Cato, by Flaxman. Born at Prescott, Feb. 1, 1757; died at Lausanne, Feb. 26, 1823. Here is also a very neat monument to the memory of SUSANNA JANE DAVIDSON, only daughter of William Davidson, of Rotterdam, merchant, whom it pleased the Almighty to visit in the bloom of life with a lingering disease, of which she died at Paris, January 1, 1767, aged twenty.--_Hayward, sculptor._ "MATTHEW BAILLIE, Fellow of the Royal College of London and Edinburgh (born at Lanark, in Scotland), of the Literary Institutions of Oxford and Glasgow, Professor of Anatomy; of great medical skill, of strict integrity, of sincere mind, and liberal simplicity. This bust was put up by his medical associates. Died 9th of Oct., 1823, aged 62."--_Chantrey, sculptor._ A colossal figure of "THOMAS TELFORD, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, born at Glendinning, in Eskdale, Dumfriesshire, in 1757; died in London, 1834. The orphan son of a shepherd, self educated, he raised himself by his extraordinary talents, and integrity, from the humble condition of an operative mason, and became one of the most eminent Civil Engineers of the age. This marble has been erected near the spot where his remains are deposited, by the friends who revered his virtues; but his noblest monuments are to be found amongst the great public works of this country."--_Baily, sculptor._ Near this is a marble tomb, which encloses the body, and has a tablet over it decorated with a coronet, and curtains festooned, on which is the following inscription:--"To the affectionately-beloved and honoured memory of ANASTATIA, Countess of Kerry, daughter of the late Peter Daly, Esq., of Quansbery, in the county of Galway, in Ireland, who departed this life on the 9th, and was deposited here on the 18th day of April, 1799. FRANCIS THOMAS, Earl of Kerry, died July 4, 1818, aged seventy-eight. His remains, according to his wish, are here deposited in the same tomb with his affectionately-beloved Anastatia, whose loss he long and deservedly deplored."--_Buckham, sculptor._ The next is a neat monument, representing a ship at sea, firing minute guns at the death of THOMAS TOTTY, of Cornist, in the county of Flint, Esq., Rear-Admiral in his Majesty's Navy, who having, on the 17th November, 1801, been appointed Commander-in-Chief on the Leeward Island station, was, soon after his arrival at Martinique, severely attacked by the malignant fever peculiar to that climate, and expired at sea, on the 2nd of June, 1802, in the fifty-seventh year of his age.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ On the floor is the stone of Abbot KIRTON, which had several labels in black letter all round the portrait, which stood upon eagles crowned, alluding, perhaps, to his high descent from the ancient and illustrious family of Codilbic. He appears to have been a person of great eminence. He died October 3, 1466. The next monument is to the Earl and Countess of MOUNTRATH. The figures represent an angel lifting the lady up to a vacant seat by the side of her husband, surrounded with cherubs, &c. The inscription is in Latin, thus translated:--"Sacred to the memory of Algernon, Earl of Mountrath, and Diana, his Countess, who, surviving him, caused this monument to be erected in 1771. "Thus while on earth, who joy in mutual love, Beyond the grave shall find their joys improve." --_Wilton, sculptor._ The next is to the memory of RICHARD KEMPENFELT, Esq., Rear-Admiral of the Blue, who was lost in his Majesty's ship Royal George, which overset and sunk at Spithead, on the 29th August, 1782, by which fatal event about nine hundred persons were launched into eternity, and his king and country deprived of the services of a great and meritorious officer, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. This monument was erected pursuant to the will of his brother, Gustavus Adolphus Kempenfelt, Esq., who died at his seat, Lady-place, Hurley, Berkshire, on the 14th of March, 1808, aged eighty-seven, of whose philanthropy and humanity, his liberal subscriptions and bequests to most of the charitable institutions in this country, will be lasting records.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ The next consists of a delicate female figure, mourning over two urns, holding a scroll, on which is expressed--"I shall go to them, but they shall not return to me.--2 Sam. xii. 23." BENJAMIN JOHN FORBES, late Lieutenant in his Majesty's seventy-fourth regiment of foot; and RICHARD GORDON FORBES, late Lieutenant in the first regiment of Foot Guards, the eldest sons of Lieutenant-General Gordon Forbes, Colonel of the twenty-ninth regiment of foot, and Margaret, his wife, eldest daughter of the late Benjamin Sullivan, Esq., of Dromenagh, in the county of Cork; both of whom fell in the service of their king and country, deeply regretted by their regiments and the detachments of the army in which they served. The former at the assault of Kistnagherry, in the East Indies, 12th November, 1791, aged nineteen years; the latter near Alkmaar, in North Holland, the 19th of September, 1799, aged twenty years. This monument, no less a tribute of justice to exemplary merit, than a record of the tenderest parental sense of filial piety, is erected and dedicated A.D. 1803.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ A third, to the memory of General STUART, having a fine medallion of him; the Latin inscription is to the following purport:--"In memory of a man truly noble, the Honourable Sir CHARLES STUART, Knight of the Bath, fourth son of John, Earl of Bute, who began his military career in America; and was afterwards sent, during the raging of the war with France, Commander-in-Chief against Corsica and Minorca, both which he happily subdued. He was again called forth, agreeably to the wishes of all good men, and already destined, by the favour of his Sovereign, to greater appointments, but died at Richmond, in the year of our Lord 1801, aged forty-seven, leaving the public, as well as his friends, to deplore, and that deeply, the loss of so great a man, on whose extraordinary talents, military conduct, and approved valour, whether dangers were to be averted, or her wrongs avenged, his country could at all times rely with the greatest security and confidence."--_Nollekens, sculptor._ The last in this Chapel is one to the memory of Lieutenant-General WILLIAM ANNE VILLETTES, second son of Arthur Villettes, Esq., his late Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Turin, and Helvetic Cantons, who died near Port Antonio, on the 13th July, 1808, aged fifty-four years. "The sculptur'd marble shall dissolve in dust, And fame, and wealth, and honour pass away Not such the triumphs of the good and just, Not such the glories of eternal day." W. Cartwright, T. Bowdler, J. Cazenove, have erected this tablet as a tribute of friendship.--_Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor._ At the north end of this Chapel is an elegant painted window, representing St. Cecilia playing upon an organ, accompanied by three angels, in memory of Mr. VINCENT NOVELLO, by Lavers and Barraud. Born 1781; died 1861. Opposite to you, on leaving this Chapel, is the monument to the memory of Field-Marshal Lord LIGONIER, which has a striking likeness of his Lordship, in profile, and the medallions of Queen Anne, George I., II., and III., under whom his Lordship served. The inscription is only a recital of his titles and places, his age ninety-two, and his death the 28th of April, 1770. On the scroll held by History, is the following list of battles:--Schellenberg, Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudinarde, Taniere, Malplaquet, Dettingen, Fountenoy, Rocoux, and Laffeldt.--_Moore, sculptor._ NORTH TRANSEPT. Passing through the gate, immediately on your right is a pedestal of rich grey marble, on which is placed a statue of the late Right Honourable Sir ROBERT PEEL, Bart., represented in the costume of a Roman Orator, in the act of addressing the Commons House of Parliament, where he had so greatly distinguished himself for a period of more than thirty years; and although past the middle age of life, the death of this great statesman may be considered as premature, he having been thrown from his horse while riding up Constitution-hill, which caused his death in a few days afterwards, viz., on the 2nd day of July, 1850.--_Sculptured by Gibson, at Rome._ Sir GILBERT LORT.--This monument is chiefly ornamented with cherubs and family arms, and is inscribed to the memory of Sir Gilbert Lort, of Stockpole, in Pembrokeshire, Bart., by his sister, Dame Elizabeth Campbell, relict of Sir Alexander Campbell, of Calder, in Scotland, Bart. Sir Gilbert died Sept. 19, 1698, in his twenty-eighth year. She died Sept. 28, 1714, in her forty-ninth year. Above is a small monument, consisting of a bust and naval ornaments, to the memory of JOHN STORR, Esq., of Hilston, in the county of York, Rear-Admiral of the Red Squadron of his Majesty's Fleet. He was born Aug. 18, 1709; died Jan. 10, 1783, and interred near this place.--_Tyler, sculptor._ A small tablet, up high, with an inscription in Latin to the following effect:--"William Vincent, D.D., Dean of this Collegiate Church, caused this tablet to be erected a perpetual monument of his affection. Sacred to the memory of HANNAH, his most beloved wife; the fondest and most prudent mother, handsome without pride, pleasant without levity, a good Christian without superstition; descended from a respectable family of the Wyatts, of Whichwood, in Oxfordshire, daughter of George Wyatt and Hannah Wood. Born August 3, 1735; married August 15, 1771; died Feb. 17, 1807."--_Gayfere, sculptor._ Admiral Sir PETER WARREN.--The back ground is a large flag spreading in natural folds behind the whole monument; before it is a fine figure of Hercules, placing Sir Peter's bust on its pedestal; and on the other side is the figure of Navigation, with a laurel wreath in her hand, gazing on the bust with a look of melancholy, mixed with admiration. Behind her a cornucopia pours out fruit, corn, &c., and by it a cannon, an anchor, and other decorations. The inscription is as follows:--"Sacred to the memory of Sir Peter Warren, Knight of the Bath, Vice-Admiral of the Red Squadron of the British Fleet, and Member of Parliament for the city and liberty of Westminster. He derived his descent from an ancient family in Ireland; his fame and honours from his virtues and abilities. How eminently these were displayed, with what vigilance and spirit they were executed, in the various services wherein he had the honour to command, and the happiness to conquer, will be more properly recorded in the annals of Great Britain. On this tablet, Affection with truth must say, that, deservedly esteemed in private life, and universally renowned for his public conduct, the judicious and gallant officer possessed all the amiable qualities of the friend, the gentleman, and Christian; but the Almighty, whom alone he feared, and whose gracious protection he had often experienced, was pleased to remove him from a life of honour to an eternity of happiness, on the 29th of July, 1752, in the forty-ninth year of his age."--_Roubiliac, sculptor._ GRACE SCOTT.--Affixed to the adjoining pillar is a neat tablet, on which is this inscription:--"Grace, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Mauleverer, of Alterton Mauleverer, in Yorkshire, Bart., born 1622, married to Colonel Scott, a member of the Honourable House of Commons, 1644, and died February 24, 1645: "He that will give my _Grace_ but what is hers, Must say her death has not Made only her dear _Scott_, But Virtue, Worth, and Sweetness, widowers." Above, is a little tablet to the memory of CLEMENT SAUNDERS, Esq., Carver in ordinary to Charles II., James II., and William III., son of Sir W. Saunders, Knight, of the county of Northampton. Died August 10, 1695, aged eighty-four. Sir JOHN MALCOLM.--His figure is in full uniform, on a pedestal.--"In memory of Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B., &c., born at Burnfoot of Eske, Dumfriesshire, 1769, died in London, 1833, employed confidentially in those important wars and negociations which established British supremacy in India. By the indefatigable and well directed exertions of those extraordinary mental and physical powers with which Providence had endowed him, he became alike distinguished as a statesman, a warrior, and a man of letters; disinterested, liberal, and hospitable; warm in his affections, and frank in his manners; the admirer and patron of merit. No less zealous during the whole of his arduous and eventful career, for the welfare of the natives of the East, than for the services of his own country, his memory is cherished by grateful millions; his fame lives in the history of nations. This statue has been erected by the friends whom he had acquired by his splendid talents, eminent public services, and private virtues."--_Chantrey, sculptor._ WILLIAM CAVENDISH, Duke of Newcastle.--This monument is a stately piece of architecture. Under a rich canopy of state, lie in a cumbent posture, on a double mat, "the loyal Duke of Newcastle (as the inscription beneath sets forth), and his Duchess, his second wife, by whom he had no issue; her name was Margaret Lucas, youngest sister of Lord Lucas, of Colchester, a noble family; for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous. This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned lady, which her many books do well testify; she was a most virtuous, loving, and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his banishment and miseries; and when he came home, never parted from him in his solitary retirements."--So far the English inscription. The Latin shows farther, "that he was Knight of the Bath and Baron Ogle in right of his mother; Viscount Mansfield, and Baron Cavendish of Bolsover, Earl of Ogle, Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Lord Lieutenant of the counties of Nottingham and Northumberland, First Lord of the Bedchamber to King James I., Guardian to Prince Charles, Privy Councillor, and Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter; that for his fidelity to the King, he was made Captain-General of the forces raised for his service in the North, fought many battles, and generally came off victorious; that when the rebels prevailed (being one of the first designed a sacrifice) he left his estate, and endured a long exile. By his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress to W. Basset, of Staffordshire, Esq., he had two sons and three daughters; Charles, who died without issue, and Henry, heir to his honours; Jane, married to C. Cheyne, of Chesham, Bucks; Elizabeth, to John, Earl of Bridgewater; and Frances, to Oliver, Earl of Bolingbroke. He died December 25, 1676, aged eighty-four." A statue of EARL CANNING, Viceroy of India, son of George Canning Foley. On the left is one to the memory of GEORGE CANNING, born April 11, 1770; died August 8, 1827:--"Endowed with a rare combination of talents, an eminent statesman, an accomplished scholar, an orator, surpassed by none, he united the most brilliant and lofty qualities of the mind, with the warmest affections of the heart; raised by his own merit, he successfully filled important offices in the state, and finally became first minister of the Crown. In the full enjoyment of his sovereign's favour, and of the confidence of the people, he was prematurely cut off, when pursuing a wise and large course of policy, which had for its object the prosperity and greatness of his own country, while it comprehended the welfare and commanded the admiration of foreign nations." This monument was erected by his friends and countrymen. The figure is on a pedestal, and represents him speaking in the House of Parliament.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ The next is a magnificent monument to JOHN HOLLES, Duke of Newcastle, whose effigy rests upon a sarcophagus of darkish-coloured marble, having in his right hand a general's staff, and in his left a ducal coronet. On one side of the base stands the statue of Wisdom; on the other of Sincerity. On the angles of the upper compartment sit angels in no very meaning attitude; and on the ascending sides of the pediment sit cherubs, one with an hour glass, alluding to the admeasurement of man's life by grains of sand; the other pointing upwards, where his life shall be no longer measured by duration. On the base of this monument is this inscription:--"John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, Marquis and Earl of Clare, Baron Haughton, of Haughton, and Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, whose body is here deposited under the same roof with many of his noble ancestors and relations of the families of Vere, Cavendish, and Holles, whose eminent virtues he inherited, and was particularly distinguished for his courage, love to his country, and constancy in friendship, which qualities he exerted with great zeal and readiness, whenever the cause of religion, his country, or friends, required. In the reign of Queen Anne he filled with great capacity and honour, the several employments of Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and Privy Councillor; Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Middlesex and Nottingham, and of the county of the town of Nottingham, and of the East and North Ridings of the county of York; Lord Chief Justice in Eyre, north of Trent, and Governor of the town and fort of Kingston-upon-Hull; to all which titles and honours his personal merit gave a lustre, that needed not the addition of the great wealth which he possessed. He was born January 9, 1661-2, and died, July 15, 1711. He married the Lady Margaret, third daughter and heiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, by whom he left issue only one child, the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles Harley, who caused this memorial of him to be here erected in 1723."--_Bird, sculptor._ Admiral VERNON.--On a pedestal is a bust of that gallant Admiral, with a fine figure of Fame crowning him with laurels. This monument is elegantly ornamented with naval trophies. Beneath is the following inscription:--"Sacred to the memory of Edward Vernon, Admiral of the White Squadron of the British Fleet. He was the second son of James Vernon, who was Secretary of State to King William III., and whose abilities and integrity were equally conspicuous. In his youth, he served under the Admirals Shovell and Rook. By their example he learned to conquer; by his own merit he rose to command. In the war with Spain of 1739, he took the fort of Porto Bello with six ships--a force which was thought unequal to the attempt. For this he received the thanks of both houses of Parliament. He subdued Chagre, and at Carthagena conquered as far as naval force could carry victory. After these services he retired, without place or title, from the exercise of public, to the enjoyment of private virtue. The testimony of a good conscience was his reward--the love and esteem of all good men his glory. In battle, though calm, he was active, and though intrepid, prudent; successful, yet not ostentatious, ascribing the glory to God; in the senate, he was disinterested, vigilant, and steady. On the 30th day of October, 1757, he died as he had lived, the friend of man, the lover of his country, and the father of the poor, aged seventy-three. As a memorial of his own gratitude, and the virtues of his benefactor, this monument was erected by his nephew, Francis, Lord Orwell, in 1763."--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ Sir CHARLES WAGER.--On this elegant monument, the principal figure is that of Fame, holding a portrait of the deceased in relief, which is supported by an infant Hercules. The enrichments are naval trophies, instruments of war, navigation, &c., and on the base, in relief, is the representation of the destroying and taking the Spanish galleons in 1708:--"To the memory of Sir Charles Wager, Knight, Admiral of the White, First Commissioner of the Admiralty, and Privy Councillor: a man of great natural talents, who bore the highest commands, and passed through the greatest employments, with credit to himself, and honour to his country. He was in his private life humane, temperate, just, and bountiful: in public station, valiant, prudent, wise, and honest; easy of access to all; plain and unaffected in his manner, steady and resolute in his conduct; so remarkably happy in his presence of mind, that no danger ever discomposed him. Esteemed and favoured by his King, beloved and honoured by his country, he died May 24, 1743, aged seventy-seven."--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ Lord PALMERSTON.--A magnificent statue, representing the distinguished statesman in the robes of a Knight of the Garter.--Erected by authority of Parliament to Viscount Palmerston, in testimony of the public admiration and attachment and heavy loss which the country sustained by his death.--_R. Jackson._ The Right Hon. WILLIAM PITT, First Earl of Chatham. He is represented as speaking in the Houses of Parliament. At his feet are figures of Prudence and Fortitude; below is a figure of Britannia, with the trident supported by Earth and Ocean. On the base is the following inscription:--"Erected by the King and Parliament as a testimony to the virtues and ability of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, during whose administration, in the reigns of Geo. II. and III., Divine Providence exalted Great Britain to a height of prosperity and glory unknown to any former age. Born November 15, 1708. Died May 11, 1778."--_Bacon, sculptor._ Lord ROBERT MANNERS, aged 24; Captain WILLIAM BAYNE, aged 50; Captain WILLIAM BLAIR, aged 41. Upon a rostral column decorated with the hulks of three seventy-four gun ships, Genius has hung three medallions, containing the portraits of the Captains. Neptune is sitting upon a sea-horse, pointing them out as examples for posterity to emulate, and worthy of being recorded in the annals of their country, to Britannia, whose majestic figure, accompanied with a resemblance of a lion, supporting a shield of the arms of Great Britain, is standing on the opposite side beholding them with a fixed countenance, expressive of sorrow; while Fame is standing upon the top of the column, with a wreath of laurel to crown Lord Robert Manners, Captains Bayne and Blair, who were mortally wounded in the course of the naval engagements under the command of Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney, on the 9th and 12th of April, 1782. In memory of their services, the King and Parliament of Great Britain caused this monument to be erected. The basement is adorned with different naval implements, the whole highly executed by Mr. Nollekens. In front of this monument is a highly polished slab under which lie the remains of LORD PALMERSTON. Died Oct. 18, 1865, aged 81. And LADY PALMERSTON. Died Sept. 11, 1869. Near this spot lie the remains of the Marquis of Londonderry, Pitt, Wilberforce, Canning, Fox, and Grattan. The next monument consists of a fine statue, full life size: in one hand is placed a scroll, on which is inscribed, "Peace of Paris, 1814;" the other supporting the Robes of the Garter. The pedestal bears the following inscription:--"This statue is erected to the memory of Robert, second Marquis of Londonderry and Viscount Castlereagh, K.G. Born A.D. 1769; died Aug. 12th, 1822. History will record the success and splendour of his public career during a period of unexampled difficulty in the annals of Europe, in which he successively filled the highest offices under the Crown; and Ireland will never forget the statesman of the Legislative Union. This tribute to the best of brothers and friends is placed in Westminster Abbey by Charles William Vane, third Marquis of Londonderry."--_J. Evan Thomas, sculptor._ Lord MANSFIELD'S monument:-- "Here MURRAY, long enough his country's pride, Is now no more than Tully or than Hyde." Foretold by Pope, and fulfilled in the year 1793, when WILLIAM, Earl of Mansfield, died full of years and of honours: of honours he declined many; those which he accepted were the following:--He was appointed Solicitor-General, 1742; Attorney-General, 1754; Lord Chief Justice and Baron Mansfield, 1756; Earl of Mansfield, 1776. From the love which he bore to the place of his early education, he desired to be buried in this Cathedral (privately), and would have forbidden that instance of human vanity, the erecting a monument to his memory; but a sum, which, with the interest, has amounted to £2,500, was left for that purpose by A. Bailey, Esq., of Lyon's Inn, which, at least well-meant, mark of esteem he had no previous knowledge or suspicion of, and had no power to prevent being executed. He was the fourth son of David, fifth Viscount Stormont, and married the Lady Elizabeth Finch, daughter to Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, by whom he had no issue; born at Scone, 2nd March, 1704; died at Kenwood, 20th March, 1793. The Earl is represented sitting on a seat of judgment; on his right hand Justice holds the statera, or balance, equally poised; on his left hand Wisdom opens the book of Law. Between the statues of Wisdom and Justice is a trophy composed of the Earl's family arms, surmounted by the coronet, the mantle of honour, the fasces, or rods of justice, and curtana, or sword of mercy. On the back of the chair is the Earl's motto--_Uni �quus Virtuti_--"Equal to Virtue only," enclosed in a crown of laurel: under it is a figure of Death, as represented by the ancients--a beautiful youth leaning on an extinguished torch: on each side of the figure of Death is a funeral altar, finished by a fir apple. This monument is the first that was placed between pillars, so as to walk round it.--_Flaxman, sculptor._ The beautiful north window was put up in the year 1722, and represents our Saviour, the twelve Apostles, and four Evangelists; the latter with their emblems, lie down, two on each side. It is much to be desired that they who wish to record in Westminster Abbey their estimation of the character or public services of their relatives or friends, would adopt this manner of perpetuating their memory, as combining with their special object the further enrichment of the noblest Cathedral or Collegiate Church in England, and so contributing to the completion of the general design, by representing that "the Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge God." A commencement in this direction has been made in the seven memorial windows in the North Transept, of which a special description is subjoined. The object of the painted glass in the seven Lancet Windows in the North Transept and West Aisle of the same is briefly stated in the inscriptions on the floor immediately beneath the windows. "To the glory of God, and in memory of Major-General Sir HENRY W. BARNARD, K.C.B.; Lieutenant-Colonel CHARLES JOHN WOODFORD, Rifle Brigade; Captain WILLIAM FREDERICK THYNNE, Rifle Brigade; Captain WILLIAM ROBERT MOORSOM, thirteenth Light Infantry, D.A.Q.M. General; LOVICK EMILIUS COOPER, Ensign, Rifle Brigade; WILLIAM GEORGE HAWTREY BANKES, Cornet, seventh Hussars; who died in the service of the Queen and their country in India, in 1857 and 1858, the six lancet windows of this Transept were enriched with stained glass by their relatives or comrades of Sir James Outram's division, 1860." And in the West Aisle of the North Transept, a similar inscription states the window to be enriched in memory of Brigadier the Hon. ADRIAN HOPE, C.B., by his relatives. The general design throughout the windows is, by the representation of certain chosen men by whom Almighty God is recorded in the Holy Scriptures to have effected the deliverance of the Israelites out of the hands of their enemies, to illustrate the power of God, and attribute to His mercy the wonderful success of the British forces in the suppression of the Indian rebellion, in which service the officers above named, with many others, fell. The first figure on the right hand is designed to represent Moses as the leader and commander of the army of the Israelites. In the medallion beneath, he is shown with his hands stayed up by Aaron and Hur, as described in Ex. xvii. 12. This window is erected by Lady Barnard, widow of Sir Hy. Wm. Barnard, K.C.B. The second figure is that of Joshua, and the medallion is intended to describe the appearance of the "Captain of the Lord's Host" to him.--Joshua v. 13, 14. This window is erected by General Sir Alexander Woodford, G.C.B., father of Lieutenant-Colonel C. J. Woodford, Rifle Brigade. The third figure is Caleb, and the medallion represents his victory over the sons of Anak.--Joshua xv. 14. This window is erected by the Reverend Lord John Thynne, Canon of Westminster, father of Captain William F. Thynne, Rifle Brigade. The fourth figure is Gideon, and in the medallion he is occupied in threshing the corn, as when he received his call and commission to deliver Israel from the Midianites.--Judges vi. 11. This window is erected by the comrades of Captain William Robert Moorsom, forming the first division of the army in Oude, under the Command of Sir James Outram, of which he was Deputy-Assistant Quartermaster-General. The fifth figure is David, and the medallion exhibits his triumph over Goliath.--1 Sam. xvii. 15. This window is erected by the Rev. T. Lovick Cooper, Vicar of Empingham, Rutlandshire, father of Lovick Emilius Cooper, Rifle Brigade. The sixth window is Jonathan, and the medallion refers to the account of his surprising and discomfiting the garrison of the Philistines, with no other assistance than of his armour-bearer.--1 Sam. xiv. 4-6. This window is erected by Mrs. Bankes, mother of William George Hawtrey Bankes, Cornet, seventh Hussars. The seventh window in the West Aisle of the North Transept is erected in memory of Brigadier the Honourable Adrian Hope, by his relations, and is illustrative of those passages in the career of Asa, as recorded in 2 Chronicles xiv. 5. 11, 12. His destruction of idols in the city of Judah, verse 5; his prayer, verse 11; his victory over the Ethiopians, verse 12. Sir WILLIAM WEBB FOLLETT, Knt., who was at the time of his decease representative in Parliament for the City of Exeter, and Attorney-General to Queen Victoria. Of unblemished conduct in every relation of life, of manners gentle and prepossessing, combining with great legal knowledge extraordinary powers of persuasive eloquence, he attained, with the esteem, admiration, and good-will of all who witnessed his brilliant career, the highest eminence as an advocate and a Parliamentary speaker. The general hope and expectation that he was destined for the highest honours of the law were blighted by his untimely death. Died June 28, 1845, aged forty-eight. A bust to the memory of GEORGE GORDON, Earl of Aberdeen, K.T., K.G. Born January 28th, 1784; died December 14th, 1860. Ambassador, Secretary of State, Prime Minister.--_M. Noble, S.C._ Next to this on your left is a monument sacred to the memory of ELIZABETH WARREN, daughter of Henry Southwell, Esq., of Wisbeach, in the county of Cambridge, and widow of the Right Rev. John Warren, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Bangor:--"She was distinguished for the purity of her taste, and the soundness of her judgment; her prudence and discrimination were in no instances more conspicuous, than in selecting the objects of her extensive charity. The widow and the fatherless were protected and relieved, and the virtuous who had fallen from prosperity, had peculiar claims to her benevolence. Though mild and gentle in her manners, yet she was remarkable for the firmness and vigour of her mind. Stedfast in the faith of Christ, she lived to illustrate his precepts, and died reposing on his merits and intercession. She departed this life, March 29, 1816, aged eighty-three. Her surviving sister, Mary, widow of the Right Honourable Sir James Eyre, Knt., Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in testimony of her sincere affection, has erected this monument to her memory."--It represents a houseless wanderer with an infant in her arms, on a square pedestal; the figure with its draperies is very generally admired.--_Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor._ Sir HENRY BLACKWOOD, with this inscription:--"Sacred to the memory of Vice-Admiral the Honourable Sir Henry Blackwood, Bart., K.C.B., G.C.H., who died December, 13, 1832, aged 63 years, 51 of which he had spent in the active service of his profession, distinguished by his energy, promptitude, and bravery, qualities which derived additional lustre from the virtues which adorned his personal character; with valour combining a strong sense of religion, and the elevation of an upright noble mind, with all the endearing feelings of a manly, generous, and benevolent heart. This tribute of sorrow and affection to the memory of one so justly honoured and beloved, is offered by his deeply afflicted widow and his surviving children."--_Behnes, sculptor._ In memory of the Right Honourable Sir GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS, Baronet, of Harpton Court, in the County of Radnor; successively Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for the Home and War Departments. The bust is erected by many friends, to mark their affectionate esteem and admiration, and to record his honoured name among the illustrious dead who lie buried within these walls. Born April 21, 1806; died April 13, 1863.--_Weekes, R.A., sculptor._ A monument erected by the East India Company, as a memorial of the military talents of Lieutenant-General Sir EYRE COOTE, K.B., Commander-in-chief of the British forces in India, who, by the success of his arms, in the year 1760 and 1761, expelled the French from the coast of Coromandel. In 1781 and 1782 he again took the field in the Carnatic, in opposition to the united strength of the French and Hyder Ally, and in several engagements defeated the numerous forces of the latter; but death interrupted his career of glory, on the 27th April, 1783, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. It consists of two figures as large as life; one a Mahratta captive, weeping beside a trophy of Persian armour, represents a province subdued; he is holding a cornucopia inverted, the contents of which are falling into a Britannia's shield. The other, a Victory, having erected a trophy, is decorating it with the portrait of Sir Eyre Coote, by hanging it on a palm-tree, which rises from behind the armour. The elephant on the sarcophagus marks the scene of action. The Mahratta figure is particularly admired.--_Banks, sculptor._ A bust with the following inscription:--"Amidst the memorials of maturer greatness, this tribute of private affection and public honour records the talents, virtues, and early death of the Right Honourable CHARLES BULLER, who, as an independent Member of Parliament, and in the discharge of important offices of state, united the deepest human sympathies with wide and philosophic views of government and mankind; and pursued the noblest political and social objects, above party spirit, and without an enemy. His character was distinguished by sincerity and resolution, his mind by vivacity and clearness of comprehension; while the vigour of expression and singular wit that made him eminent in debate, and delightful in society, were tempered by a most gentle and generous disposition; earnest in friendship and benevolent to all. The British Colonies will not forget the statesman who so well appreciated their desires and their destinies; and his country, recalling what he was, deplores the vanished hope of all he might have become. He was born August, 1806; he died Nov. 29, 1848." A bust sacred to the memory of the Right Honourable WARREN HASTINGS, Governor-General of Bengal; Member of his Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, LL.D., F.R.S., descended from the elder branch of the ancient and noble family of Huntingdon. Selected for his eminent talents and integrity, he was appointed by Parliament, in 1773, the first Governor-General of India, to which high office he was thrice re-appointed by the same authority. Presiding over the India Governments during thirteen years of a most eventful period, he restored the affairs of the East India Company from the deepest distress to the highest prosperity, and rescued their possessions from a combination of the most powerful enemies ever leagued against them. In the wisdom of his counsels, and the energy of his measures, he found unexhausted resources, and successfully sustained a long, varied, and multiplied war with France, Mysore, and the Mahratta states, whose power he humbled, and concluded an honourable peace, for which, and for his distinguished services, he received the thanks of the East India Company, sanctioned by the Board of Control. The kingdom of Bengal, the seat of his Government, he ruled with a mild and equitable sway, preserved it from invasion, and, while he secured to its inhabitants the enjoyment of their customs, laws, and religion, and the blessings of peace, was rewarded by their affection and gratitude; nor was he more distinguished by the highest qualities of a statesman and a patriot, than by the exercise of every Christian virtue. He lived for many years in dignified retirement, beloved and revered by all who knew him, at his seat of Daylesford, in the county of Worcester, where he died in peace, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, August 22, 1818. This memorial was erected by his beloved wife and disconsolate widow, M. A. Hastings. Over the inscription is a bust, greatly like him, executed by Mr. Bacon. A statue to the memory of FRANCIS HORNER, who, by the union of great and various acquirements, with inflexible integrity, and unwearied devotion to the interests of the country, raised himself to an eminent station in society, and was justly considered to be one of the most distinguished members of the House of Commons. He was born at Edinburgh in 1778, was called to the bar both of England and Scotland; and closed his short but useful life at Pisa, in 1817. His death was deeply felt, and publicly deplored in Parliament. His affectionate friends and sincere admirers, anxious that some memorial should exist of merit universally acknowledged, of expectations which a premature death could alone have frustrated, erected this monument, A.D. 1823.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ Brigadier-General HOPE, Lieutenant-Governor of the province of Quebec, where he died in 1789, aged forty-three years. The design of it is simply an Indian, whose affection has drawn her to the monument; she kneels on the pedestal, and bending over the sarcophagus, expresses that sorrow which the loss of such a benefactor has occasioned. A rudder is introduced, emblematical of his situation as Governor: the serpent and mirror, engraved thereon, point out the prudence of his administration; and a cornucopia conveys the idea of the felicity of it.--_Bacon, sculptor._ To the memory of JONAS HANWAY, Esq., celebrated for his universal feeling for the distressed, having been an active friend to the following charities, viz.,--the Foundling, Magdalen, and Marine Society. The expense was defrayed by voluntary subscriptions. On a sarcophagus, the Society is here represented in bas-relief; viz.,--Britannia, with her emblems of Government, Peace, War, Trade, and Navigation, who, with benign countenance, distributes clothes to poor boys to be trained to sea; over this a medallion of the deceased is fixed on a pyramid, upon the top of which is a lamp, emblematic of perpetual light,--"Sacred to the memory of Jonas Hanway, who departed this life September 5, 1786, aged seventy-four; but whose name liveth, and will ever live, whilst active piety shall distinguish the Christian, integrity and truth shall recommend the British merchant, and universal kindness shall characterize the citizen of the world. The helpless Infant, nurtured through his care; the friendless Prostitute sheltered and reformed; the hopeless Youth rescued from misery and ruin, and trained to serve and to defend his country, uniting in one common strain of gratitude, bear testimony to their benefactor's virtues: this was the friend and father of the poor."--_F. Moore, sculptor._ Sir CLIFTON WINTRINGHAM, Bart., is represented visiting a sick and distressed family; underneath is the figure of his lady, kneeling and bewailing her loss.--"Sacred to the memory of Sir Clifton Wintringham, Bart., M.D., who, no less eminent as a physician, both at home and in the army, than beloved on account of his virtuous life and engaging manners, died lamented by all, January 10, 1794, aged eighty-three. His widow, Ann Wintringham, caused this monument to be erected, as a last testimony of her love for him when living, and of the sincere regret she feels for her loss."--_Banks, sculptor._ A truly admirable bust of the late RICHARD COBDEN. Born June 3, 1804; died April 2, 1865, and was buried at West Lavington, in Sussex.--_Thos. Woolner, sculptor._ A bust to the memory of Major-General Sir HERBERT BENJAMIN EDWARDS, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.C.L., LL.D., who in early life, as a Subaltern of the East Indian Company's Army, by his fertility of resource, and in promptitude in action, struck the first victorious blow at the Insurrection in the Punjab in 1848. Who in later years, by his courage, sagacity, and mastery over men, ever animated by Christian principle, won an enduring place in the affections of the people to whose welfare he had long devoted himself, and in 1847, at a time of unexampled danger, greatly contributed to the security of the Frontier, and to the salvation of the British Empire in India. Born November 12th, 1819; died December 23rd, 1868. To the memory of Major-General COOTE MANNINGHAM.--"Sacred to the memory of Major-General Coote Manningham, Colonel of the ninety-fifth, or Rifle Regiment of Infantry, and Equerry to the King; in testimony of a friendship which commenced in early youth, was matured and confirmed by time, remains unchilled by death, and humbly looks for a reunion in eternity. The distinguished soldier to whom friendship erects this inadequate memorial, began his career of military action at the siege of Gibraltar, and concluded it at the victory of Corunna, to which his skill and gallantry conspicuously contributed. He fell an early victim to the vicissitudes of climate, and the severities of war, and died 26th Aug., 1809, aged forty-four. Yet, reader, regard not his fate as premature, since his cup of glory was full, and he was not summoned till his virtue and patriotism had achieved even here a brilliant recompense: for his name is engraved on the annals of his country. In him the man and the Christian tempered the warrior, and England might proudly present him to the world as the model of a British soldier." Erected by Lieutenant-General Thomas Hislop, Commander-in-Chief, &c., at Bombay, in the East Indies, anno 1813.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ GEORGE MONTAGUE DUNK, Earl of Halifax.--His Lordship's bust conveys a very striking likeness of the original. It is supported by two emblematical figures, one holding a mirror, supposed to be Truth, with his foot on a mask, trampling on Falsehood; the other, Honour, presenting the ensigns of the Garter. It is also decorated with various other emblems, alluding to the different public posts of honour which his Lordship held at different times. The inscription is as follows:--"Sacred be the monument which is here raised by gratitude and respect, to perpetuate the memory of George Montague Dunk, Earl of Halifax, Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, whose allegiance, integrity, and abilities, alike distinguished and exalted him in the reigns of George II. and George III. In the year 1745 (an early period of his life), he raised and commanded a regiment, to defend his King and country against the alarming insurrection in Scotland. He was soon after appointed first Lord of Trade and Plantations in which department he contributed so largely to the commerce and splendour of America, as to be styled, 'Father of the Colonies.' At one and the same time he filled the united great offices of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Principal Secretary of State, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He was afterwards appointed Lord Privy Seal; on the resignation thereof he was recalled to the important duties of Principal Secretary of State, and died (in possession of the Seals) June 8, 1771. His worth in private life was eminent and extensive, and was best testified in the honour and esteem which were borne him living, and the lamentations bestowed upon his ashes. Among many instances of his liberal spirit, one deserves to be distinctly recorded: during his residence in Ireland, he obtained the grant of an additional 4000_l._ per annum for all subsequent Viceroys, at the same time nobly declining that emolument himself."--_Bacon, sculptor._ Over the north door is a magnificent monument to the memory of Admiral WATSON, where you see, in the centre of a range of palm-trees, an elegant figure of the Admiral in a Roman toga, with a branch of palm in his right hand, receiving the address of a prostrate figure, representing the genius of Calcutta, a place in the East Indies memorable for the imprisonment of the English garrison in a black hole, where most of them perished, and where those that survived were released by the Admiral, and the town retaken from the Nabob, in January, 1757. On the other side is the figure, in chains, of a native of Chandernagore, another place taken by the Admiral the March following. On the front is this inscription:--"To the memory of Charles Watson, Vice-Admiral of the White, Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's navy forces in the East Indies, who died at Calcutta, August 16, 1757, aged forty-four. The East India Company, as a grateful testimony of the signal advantages which they obtained by his valour and prudent conduct, caused this monument to be erected."--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ Against the wall, on a small tablet, is the bust of Sir WILLIAM SANDERSON, Knt., with an inscription in Latin, showing that he was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles I.; and wrote the lives of Mary Queen of Scots, James, and Charles I.: that he sustained great hardships from the tyranny of the rebels; but that, having bravely surmounted all difficulties, he lived to the age of ninety, and died July 15, 1676. General GUEST.--On a base and pyramid of most beautiful marble, are the first enrichments and busts that are to be seen in the whole church. The inscription is short, but manly--"Sacred to those virtues that adorn a Christian and a soldier, this marble perpetuates the memory of Lieutenant-General Joshua Guest, who closed a service of sixty years, by faithfully defending Edinburgh Castle against the rebels in 1745." Admiral Sir JOHN BALCHEN, Knt.--On this fine monument, in relief, is the representation of a ship perishing in a storm. The inscription, which is historical, is here inserted:--"To the memory of Sir John Balchen, Knt., Admiral of the White Squadron of his Majesty's fleet in 1744. Being sent out Commander-in-Chief of the combined fleets of England and Holland, to cruise on the enemy, was, on his return home in his Majesty's ship the Victory, lost in the Channel by a violent storm; from which sad circumstance of his death we may learn that neither the greatest skill, judgment, or experience, joined to the most firm, unshaken resolution, can resist the fury of the winds and waves; and we are taught by the passages of his life, which were filled with great and gallant actions, but ever accompanied with adverse gales of fortune, that the brave, the worthy, and the good man, meets not always his reward in this world. Fifty-eight years of faithful and painful services he had passed, when, being just retired to the government of Greenwich Hospital to wear out the remainder of his days, he was once more, and for the last time, called out by his King and country, whose interest he ever preferred to his own, and his unwearied zeal for their service ending only in his death; which weighty misfortune to his afflicted family became heightened by many aggravating circumstances attending it; yet amidst their grief, had they the mournful consolation to find his gracious and Royal Master mixing his concern with the general lamentations of the public, for the calamitous fate of so zealous, so valiant, and so able a commander; and, as a lasting memorial of the sincere love and esteem borne by his widow to a most affectionate and worthy husband, this honorary monument was erected by her. He was born Feb. 2, 1669, married Susanna, daughter of Colonel Aprice, of Washingly, in the county of Huntingdon. Died Oct. 7, 1744, leaving one son and one daughter, the former of whom, George Balchen, survived him but a short time; for being sent to the West Indies in 1745, Commander of his Majesty's ship the Pembroke, he died at Barbadoes, in December the same year, aged twenty-eight, having walked in the steps, and imitated the virtues and bravery of his good but unfortunate father." When the Victory was lost she had on board near one thousand souls, one hundred of whom were gentlemen volunteers.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ Bishop of BANGOR.--The figure of Religion is represented in a mournful attitude, leaning on a rock, whereon is writ the inscription, holding in her hand a cross; on the other side is represented an angel pointing to the cross, as a source of consolation whereby we are saved--why weep? the rock implies firmness of faith. A mitre, crozier, &c., are at the bottom.--"Near this place are interred the remains of the Right Rev. John Warren, D.D., Bishop of St. David's in 1779, and translated to the see of Bangor in 1783. These episcopal stations he filled for more than twenty years, with great ability and virtue. His charity, liberality, candour, and benevolence, will long be remembered; his eminent learning and unwearied application rendered him highly serviceable to the laws, as well as the religion of his country, towards which he was most sincerely attached. He was son of Richard Warren, D.D., Rector of Cavendish, and Archdeacon of Suffolk, and brother of Richard Warren, M.D., celebrated for his knowledge and successful practice, and many years Physician in Ordinary to his Majesty. He married Elizabeth Southwell, daughter of Henry Southwell, Esq., of Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire, who, fully sensible of his many distinguished virtues, has offered this grateful tribute to his memory, with the most unfeigned sincerity and respect. He died Jan. 27, 1800, in the seventy-second year of his age."--_Westmacott, jun., sculptor._ Lord AUBREY BEAUCLERK.--This monument is ornamented with arms, trophies, and naval ensigns; and in an oval niche, on a pyramid of dove-coloured marble, is a beautiful bust of this young nobleman. On the pedestal is this historical inscription:--"The Lord Aubrey Beauclerk was the youngest son of Charles, Duke of St. Albans, by Diana, daughter of Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford. He went early to sea, and was made a commander in 1731. In 1740 he was sent upon that memorable expedition to Carthagena, under the command of Admiral Vernon, in his Majesty's ship the Prince Frederick, which, with three others, was ordered to cannonade the Castle Bocachica. One of these being obliged to quit her station, the Prince Frederick was exposed not only to the fire from the Castle, but to that of Fort St. Joseph, and to two ships that guarded the mouth of the harbour, which he sustained for many hours that day, and part of the next, with uncommon intrepidity. As he was giving his command upon deck both his legs were shot off; but such was his magnanimity, that he would not suffer his wounds to be dressed till he had communicated his orders to his First Lieutenant, which were--_To fight his ship to the last extremity_. Soon after this he gave some directions about his private affairs, and then resigned his soul, with the dignity of a hero and a Christian. Thus was he taken off in the thirty-first year of his age; an illustrious commander of superior fortitude and clemency, amiable in his person, steady in his affection, and equalled by few in the social and domestic virtues of politeness, modesty, candour, and benevolence. He married the widow of Colonel F. Alexander, a daughter of Sir H. Newton, Knt., Envoy-Extraordinary to the Court of Florence and the Republic of Genoa, and Judge to the High Court of Admiralty." His epitaph over the inscription:-- "While Britain boasts her empire o'er the deep, This marble shall compel the brave to weep: As men, as Britons, and as soldiers mourn-- 'Tis dauntless, loyal, virtuous Beauclerk's urn. Sweet were his manners as his soul was great, And ripe his worth, though immature his fate; Each tender grace that joy and love inspire, Living, he mingled with his martial fire; Dying, he bid Britannia's thunder roar, And Spain still felt him when he breathed no more." --_Scheemakers, sculptor._ The stained window above commemorates the foundering of H.M.S. _Captain_, on September 7th, 1870, when Capt. Hugh Burgoyne, V.C., Capt. Cowper Coles, C.B., with 49 officers, and 402 men and boys, perished off Cape Finisterre, in the service of their country. The names are inscribed on brasses in St. Paul's Cathedral. The subjects of the window are--The Sea giving up her Dead; The Passage through the Red Sea; The Fleet of Solomon; Building the Ships of Tyre; Jonah delivered from the Whale; Christ Stilling the Tempest; Christ Walking on the Sea; Christ Teaching from the Ship; The Miraculous Draught; and the Shipwreck of St. Paul. PERCY KIRK, Esq.--On each side of a fine bust of this gentleman is a winged seraph; one having a dagger in his right hand inverted, and in his left a helmet; the other resting on a ball, and holding in his left hand a torch reversed. The inscription says, he was Lieutenant-General of his Majesty's armies; that he died January 1, 1741, aged fifty-seven; and that he was son of Percy Kirk, Esq., a Lieutenant-General in the reign of James II., by the Lady Mary, daughter of George Howard, Earl of Suffolk. Diana Dormer, his niece and sole heiress, died February 22, 1743, aged thirty-two.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ RICHARD KANE.--On this tomb is a curious bust of this gentleman, of white marble, upon a handsome pedestal, whereon are inscribed the most striking passages of his life. He was born at Down, in Ireland, Dec. 20, 1666. In 1689, he first appeared in a military capacity at the memorable siege of Derry; and after the reduction of Ireland followed William III. into Flanders, where he distinguished himself, particularly by his intrepid behaviour at the siege of Namurre, where he was severely wounded. In 1702, he bore a commission in the service of Queen Anne, and assisted in the expedition to Canada; from whence he again returned to Flanders, and fought under the Duke of Argyle, and afterwards under Lord Carpenter. In 1712 he was made Sub-Governor of Minorca, through which island he caused a road to be made, before thought impracticable. In 1720 he was ordered by George I. to the defence of Gibraltar, where he sustained an eight months' siege against the Spaniards, when all hope of relief was extinguished; for which gallant service he was, by George II. rewarded with the government of Minorca, where he died, Dec. 19, 1736, and was buried in the Castle of St. Philip.--_Rysbrack, sculp._ Bishop BRADFORD.--The inscription is in Latin, surrounded with the arms and proper ensigns of his several dignities. He was some time Rector of St. Mary-le-Bow, from thence advanced to the See of Carlisle and afterwards translated to that of Rochester, with the Deanery of this Church, and that of the Hon. Order of the Bath annexed. He died May 17, 1731, in the seventy-ninth year of his age.--_Cheere, sculptor._ Dr. BOULTER, Archbishop of Armagh.--The bust of the Archbishop is very natural; his long flowing hair and solemn gracefulness excite a kind of reverential respect in an attentive beholder. The ensigns of his dignity, with which his monument is ornamented, are most exquisitely finished. The inscription is enclosed in a beautiful border, and is as follows:--"Dr. Hugh Boulter, late Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland, a Prelate so eminent for the accomplishment of his mind, the purity of his heart, and the excellency of his life, that it may be thought superfluous to specify his titles, recount his virtues, or even to erect a monument to his fame. His titles he not only deserved, but adorned; his virtues are manifest in his good works, which had never dazzled the public eye, if they had not been too bright to be concealed; and as to his fame, whosoever has any sense of merit, any reverence for piety, and passion for his country, or any charity for mankind, will assist in preserving it fair and spotless, and when brass and marble shall mix with the dust they cover, every succeeding age may have the benefit of his illustrious example. He was born January 4, 1671; was consecrated Bishop of Bristol, 1718; translated to the Archbishopric of Armagh, 1723; and from thence to heaven, Sept. 27, 1742."--_S. H. Cheere, sculptor._ North Aisle. Looking back on your left is a new monument to the memory of Sir THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, Bart., born April 1, 1786; died Feb. 19, 1845. Endowed with a vigorous mind, of dauntless courage and untiring energy, he was early led by the love of God to devote his powers to the good of man. In Parliament he laboured for the improvement of prison discipline; for the amendment of the criminal code, for the suppression of Suttees in India, for the liberation of the Hottentots in Southern Africa; and, above all, for the emancipation of eight hundred thousand slaves in the British dominions. In this last righteous enterprise, after ten years of arduous conflict, a final victory was given to him and his coadjutors "by the grace of our God," on the memorable 1st of August, 1834. The energies of his mind were afterwards concentrated on a great attempt to extinguish the slave trade in Africa, by the substitution of agriculture and commerce, and by the civilizing influence of the Gospel. Exhausted in mind and body, "he fell asleep," reposing in faith on his Redeemer, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. This monument is erected by his friends and fellow-labourers at home and abroad, assisted by the grateful contributions of many thousands of the African race.--_Thrupp, sculptor._ Next against the screen of the choir is a fine old monument, whereon lies the effigy of a gentleman at full length in a tufted gown; and underneath, upon the base, was a lady kneeling. By the inscription, these appear to represent Sir THOMAS HESKETH, Attorney of the Court of Wards of Liveries in Queen Elizabeth's time; and JULIAN, his wife, who caused this monument to be erected. He died October 15, 1605. Dame MARY JAMES.--A very neat monument, being an urn, wreathed, and crowned with a Viscount's coronet, on a handsome pedestal. By the inscription, it appears that this lady was the wife of Sir John James, of the ancient family of the Lords of Hosterick, in Holland, and daughter of Sir Robert Killigrew, Vice-Chamberlain to Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I. She died Nov. 6, 1677. HUGH CHAMBERLAIN, M.D., and F.R.S.--The principal figure on this monument lies, as it were, at ease, upon a sarcophagus, leaning on his right arm, with his hand upon his cap and his head uncovered. In his left hand he holds a book, indicating thereby his intense application to study. On each side are the emblems of physic and longevity; and over his head is Fame descending with a trumpet in one hand, and in the other a wreath. On the top are weeping cherubs, and on the pedestal a long inscription in Latin, setting forth his vast knowledge and industry in his profession, his humanity in relieving the sick, and his connections and affinities in social and private life. This gentleman was famous for the improvements he made in midwifery, the practice of which, since his time, has been studied by the faculty to great advantage. He died June 17, 1728, aged sixty-four.--_Scheemakers and Delvaux, sculptors._ Doctor SAMUEL ARNOLD, late Organist of this Church, died October 22, 1802, aged sixty-two years. This monument was erected by his afflicted widow:-- "Oh, let thy still-loved Son inscribe thy stone, And with a Mother's sorrows mix his own." A sickle cutting the lyre is represented below. Turning round on your right is-- Captain PHILIP DE SAUSMAREZ.--The inscription on this monument is a recital of the deceased's naval exploits, one of those few whose lives ought rather to be measured by their actions than their days. From sixteen to thirty-seven years of age he served in the navy, and was often surrounded with dangers and difficulties unparalleled, always proving himself an able, active, and gallant officer. He went out a lieutenant on board his Majesty's ship the Centurion, under the auspicious conduct of Commodore Anson, in his expedition to the South Seas. He was commanding officer of the same ship when she was driven from her moorings at the Isle of Titian. In the year 1746, being Captain of the Nottingham, a sixty gun ship, he (then alone) attacked and took the Mars, a French ship of sixty-four guns. In the first engagement of the following year when Admiral Anson defeated and took a squadron of French men-of-war and Indiamen, he had an honourable share; and in the second, under Admiral Hawke, when the enemy, after a long and obstinate resistance, was again routed, in pursuing two ships that were making their escape, he gloriously, but unfortunately fell. He was the son of Matthew de Sausmarez, of the Island of Guernsey, Esq., by Ann Durell, of the Island of Jersey, his wife. He was born November 17, 1710, killed October 14, 1747, and buried in the Old Church at Plymouth, with all the honours due to his distinguished merits. This monument was erected by his brothers and sisters.--_S. H. Cheere, sculptor._ Doctor CHARLES BURNEY.--A tablet with the following inscription, written by his daughter:--"Sacred to the memory of Charles Burney, Mus. D., F.R.S., who, full of years and full of virtues, the pride of his family, the delight of society, the unrivalled chief and scientific historian of his tuneful art--beloved, revered, regretted, breathed in Chelsea College his last sigh; leaving to posterity a fame unblemished, raised on a noble basis of intellectual attainments. High principles and pure benevolence, goodness with gaiety, talents with taste, were of his gifted mind the blended attributes; while the genial hilarity of his airy spirits animated or softened his every earthly toil: and a conscience without reproach, prepared in the whole tenor of his mortal life, through the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, his soul for heaven. Amen. Born April 7, O.S., 1726; died April 12, 1814." JOHN BLOW, Doctor in Music.--Under the tablet is a canon in four parts, set to music, with enrichments, cherubs, and flowers. In the centre is an English inscription, by which it appears he was Organist, Composer, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal thirty-five years, and Organist to this Abbey, fifteen years; that he was scholar to Dr. Christopher Gibbons, and Master to the famous Mr. Purcell, and to most of the eminent masters of his time. He died Oct. 1, 1708, in his sixtieth year. WILLIAM CROFT.--On the pedestal of this monument, in bas-relief, is an organ, and on the top a bust of the deceased, who was Doctor in Music, Master of the Children, Organist and Composer of the Chapel Royal, and Organist of Westminster Abbey. He died August 14, 1727, aged fifty. DR. MONK, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.--This ecclesiastic is represented in a fine brass in the centre of the aisle, holding a crosier surmounted with the paschal lamb, the four corners representing the evangelical emblems, while the inscription informs us that he was Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, Canon of Westminster, Dean of Peterborough, and Regius Professor at Cambridge, and died June 6, 1859, aged seventy-four.--_Hardiman._ On your left, on the choir side, against the column, is a small tablet to the memory of HENRY PURCELL, Esq., with the following inscription:--"Here lies Henry Purcell, who left this life, and is gone to that blessed place, where only his harmony can be exceeded." A short, but comprehensive epitaph, expressive of his great merit. He died Nov. 21, 1695, in his thirty-seventh year. Sacred to the memory of Captain GEORGE BRYAN, late of His Majesty's Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, son of the Rev. John Bryan and Eliza Louisa, his wife, of Hertford, in the island of Jamaica. He fell in the month of July, 1809, in the twenty-seventh year of his age, at the battle of Talavera, in Spain, so glorious in the annals of British valour, but so deeply afflicting to a widowed mother. His remains were interred, with every military honour, in the garden of the convent of St. Jeronimo, when even the officers of the enemy joined in evincing respect to his memory and sympathy for his untimely fate. The monument represents a mourner reclining on the basement of a column that holds an urn, over which is the name of Talavera. Military trophies and implements of war are introduced.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ Sir THOMAS STAMFORD RAFFLES: his figure is seated on a handsome moulded pedestal in serious contemplation; the following inscription underneath:--"To the memory of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, LL.D., F.R.S., Lieutenant-Governor of Java, and first President of the Zoological Society of London; born in 1781, died in 1826. Selected at an early age to conduct the Government of the British conquests in the Indian Ocean, by wisdom, vigour, and philanthropy, he raised Java to happiness and prosperity unknown under former rulers. After the surrender of that Island to the Dutch, and during his government in Sumatra, he founded an emporium at Singapore, where he established freedom of person as the right of the soil, and freedom of trade as the right of the port, he secured to the British flag the maritime superiority of the Indian Seas. Ardently attached to science, he laboured successfully to add to the knowledge and enrich the museums of his native land: in promoting the welfare of the people committed to his charge, he sought the good of his country and the glory of God."--_Chantrey, sculptor._ ALMERICUS DE COURCY, Baron of Kinsale.--His Lordship is here represented in full proportion, reposing himself, after the fatigues of an active life, under a rich canopy, finely ornamented and gilt. He was descended, as his inscription shows, from the famous John de Courcy, Earl of Ulster, who, in the reign of John, in consideration of his great valour, obtained that extraordinary privilege to him and his heirs, of standing covered before the King. This nobleman was greatly in favour with Charles II. and James II., and commanded a troop of horse under the latter. He died Feb. 9, 1719, aged fifty-seven. "To the memory of WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, born in Hull, August 24, 1759, died in London, July 29, 1833. For nearly half a century a member of the House of Commons, and for six parliaments during that period one of the two representatives for Yorkshire. In an age and country fertile in great and good men, he was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of their time; because to high and various talents, to warm benevolence, and to universal candour, he added the abiding eloquence of a Christian life. Eminent as he was in every department of public labour, and a leader in every work of charity, whether to relieve the temporal or the spiritual wants of his fellow men, his name will ever be specially identified with those exertions which, by the blessing of God, removed from England the guilt of the African Slave Trade, and prepared the way for the abolition of slavery in every colony in the empire. In the prosecution of these objects, he relied not in vain on God: but in the progress, he was called to endure great obloquy and great opposition. He outlived, however, all enmity, and in the evening of his days withdrew from public life and public observation to the bosom of his family. Yet he died not unnoticed or forgotten by his country: the Peers and Commons of England, with the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker at their head, in solemn procession from their respective houses, carried him to his fitting place among the mighty dead around, here to repose, till, through the merits of Jesus Christ his only Redeemer and Saviour, whom in his life and in his writings he had desired to glorify, he shall rise in the resurrection of the just." His figure is seated on a pedestal, very ingeniously done, and truly expressive of his age, and of the pleasure he seemed to derive from his own thoughts.--_Joseph, sculptor._ Above is Dr. PLENDERLEATH.--A medallion of the deceased is fixed up with ribbon, under which is Hygeia, the cup of health, a serpent twining round, and a bough of cypress lying on it. Below is written in a book--"He healed--'many that were sick of divers diseases.'" (St. Mark, i. 34.) Under the book is an �sculapius as an emblem of physic. "In memory of Dr. John Plenderleath, third son of John Plenderleath, Esq., of Glen, in Tweedale, Scotland, Physician to the forces serving under the Marquis of Wellington in Portugal, who died at Coimbra, of a typhus fever, on the 18th of June, 1811, aged twenty-eight years. He was eminently distinguished by the strength of his mental faculties, his great classical and professional knowledge; and no less by the humanity of his heart, which manifested itself on all occasions, and especially towards the numerous sick and wounded, both of his countrymen and of the enemy, which were committed to his care. In commemoration of his public virtues, and of his many amiable qualities in private life, this monument is erected as a small tribute of parental affection."--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ A monument to Sir THOMAS DUPPA, prettily ornamented with flowers and foliage, and on the top with an urn wreathed. The inscription shows that Sir Thomas in his youth waited on Charles II. when he was Prince of Wales. He was afterwards made Gentleman Usher and Daily Waiter, and then Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, in which office he died, April 25, 1694, aged 75. Behind you, looking upwards, in the window is a monument to the Rev. EVELYN LEVETT SUTTON, M.A., Prebendary of Westminster, Rector of High Holden, in the Isle of Thanet. Born 1777. On Sunday, 25th January, 1834, when reading the Ninth Commandment, suddenly fell down, was removed from the choir to his house, where he died the same evening. The inscription is as follows:--"The learning of the scholar, the benevolence of the Christian, obtained the esteem of the wise and the good, while his graceful wit, classic elegance of mind, and gentle and generous heart, made him the delight of all that knew him; his widow, now happiest when recalling her husband's worth and love, seeks, on this monument, to record her loss and her affection." A female is represented in front of the pedestal, resting her head on books of divinity.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ "To the memory of Sir GEORGE LEONARD STAUNTON, Bart., of Cargin, county of Galway, Ireland. His life was devoted to his country's service, in various parts of the globe; his conduct on all occasions was distinguished by firmness, prudence, and integrity, and in a peculiar manner displayed in the treaty of peace concluded with Tippoo Sultan, in 1784, by which the British interests in India were promoted and secured. Born 19th April, 1737; died 14th January, 1801." Sir George seems expounding the law to a native. A tiger is represented at the east end of the monument.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ Beneath is a fine bust of Admiral WEST.--The inscription is remarkable for historical relation, viz.:--"Sacred to the memory of Temple West, Esq., who, dedicating himself from his earliest youth to the naval service of his country, rose with merit and reputation to the rank of Vice-Admiral of the White. Sagacious, active, industrious, a skilful seaman, cool, intrepid, and resolute, he proved himself a gallant officer. In the signal victory obtained over the French, May 3, 1747, he was Captain of the ship which carried Sir Peter Warren, and acquired peculiar honour, even on that day of general glory. In the less successful engagement near Minorca, May 20, 1756, wherein, as Rear-Admiral, he commanded the second division, his distinguished courage and animated example were admired by the whole British squadron; confessed by that of France; and, amidst the national discontent which followed, rewarded, as they deserved, by the warmest applauses of his country, and the just approbation of his Sovereign. On the 17th November following, he was appointed one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. He adorned his station by a modesty which concealed from him his own merit, and a candour which disposed him to reward that of others. With these talents he possessed the milder graces of domestic life: to the frank and generous spirit of an officer, he added the ease and politeness of a gentleman; and with the moral and social virtues of a good man, he exercised the duties of a Christian. A life so honourable to himself, so dear to his friends, so useful to his country, was ended at the age of forty-three, A.D. 1757. To preserve to posterity his fame, and his example, this monument was erected by the daughter of the brave unfortunate Balchen, the wife of Temple West, A.D. 1761." On the next monument are placed the arms of RICHARD LE NEVE, Esq., with the instruments of war. The English inscription informs us, that being made commander of his Majesty's ship the Edgar, he was unfortunately killed in the twenty-seventh year of his age, in that sharp engagement with the Hollanders, on the 11th August, 1673. Sir EDMUND PRIDEAUX, Bart.--Near this monument, in one grave, in the middle aisle, are deposited the remains of Sir Edmund Prideaux, of Netherton, in Devonshire, Bart., and Dame ANN, his second wife. He departed this life, February 26, 1728, in his fifty-fifth year; and she the 10th May, 1741, aged fifty-five years. Their daughter Ann erected this monument to their memories.--_Cheere, sculptor._ Dame ELIZABETH CARTERET.--She was daughter of Sir Edward Carteret, Knight, Gentleman Usher to Charles I., and second wife and relict of Sir Philip de Carteret, and by him mother of Sir Charles Carteret, her only son, by whose death was extinguished the eldest branch of the ancient family of the Carterets, Signeurs of St. Owen, in the Isle of Jersey. She died March 26, 1717, aged fifty-two. Opposite is the tablet of Dr. PETER HEYLIN, on the top of which are the arms of Heylin. On the face of the tablet is a long Latin inscription greatly to his praise. Died May 8, 1662, aged 63. A tablet to CHARLES WILLIAMS, Esq.--The scrollwork and scalloping are somewhat remarkable. The inscription tells us that the deceased was of Caerleon, in Monmouthshire, a strenuous defender of the Church and public liberty, and a good and generous man. He died August 29, 1720, aged eighty-seven. CHARLES AGAR, D.D.--This monument consists of a fine representation of the Archbishop relieving the poor, who are also finely executed, and the clergy of the diocese on the right hand, with the following inscription:--"Sacred to the memory of Charles Agar, D.D., Earl of Normanton, and Archbishop of Dublin. He was educated at Westminster School, and was a student of Christ Church, Oxford; in 1768, he was consecrated Bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and translated from thence to the Archbishoprick of Cashel, in 1779; in 1795, he was created Baron Somerton, of Somerton, in the county of Kilkenny, and Viscount Somerton, in 1800; in the following year he became Archbishop of Dublin, and in the year 1806, was created Earl of Normanton. He departed this life, July 14, 1809, aged seventy-two years, and rests near this spot, in the same grave with his uncle, the Right Hon. Wellbore Ellis, Baron Mendip. In the course of his episcopal labours, not less than seventeen churches, and twenty-two glebe-houses, for the residence of his clergy, were built under his direction and assistance; and he erected, principally at his own expense, the Cathedral Church of Cashel. As a statesman and a prelate, he was an able and zealous supporter of the religion which he professed and taught, and of the country at whose councils he assisted. His care for the welfare of the Church, is testified by the numerous acts of Parliament he framed for its permanent regulation and support. The perfect state in which his dioceses were left, and the veneration impressed by his talents and virtues on the hearts of those over whom he presided, are far nobler monuments than any which can be erected to his memory."--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ In the window is the following inscription:--"To the memory of the most affectionate of brothers, GEORGE LINDSAY JOHNSTONE, Esq., this monument is erected by his afflicted sister." His remains are interred in the South Cloister. Grief is represented in a mournful posture over a coffin, on the side of which is a medallion of the deceased.--_Flaxman, sculptor._ ROBERT, Lord CONSTABLE.--On the face of the monument is this inscription:--"Near this lies the Right Hon. Robert, Lord Constable, Viscount Dunbar, who departed this life November 23, 1714, in his sixty-fourth year. Also his second wife, the Right Hon. DOROTHY BRUDENELL, Countess of Westmoreland, who departed this life January 26, 1739, aged ninety-one." Here you pass through the gate. THOMAS LIVINGSTONE, Viscount Teviot.--The top of this monument is decorated with the arms, supporters, and crest of this nobleman, and with military trophies, alluding to his profession of a soldier. On the face of the monument is a long Latin inscription, showing that he was born in Holland, but descended from the Livingstones in Scotland; that from his childhood he was trained to arms; that he attended the Prince of Orange into Britain as a Colonel of Foot; that he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and General of the Scotch forces; was made Master of the Ordnance, and a Privy Councillor; that he secured Scotland to the King, by one decisive action on the Spey, for which he was advanced to the dignity of Viscount. He died January 14, 1710, aged sixty. EDWARD DE CARTERET.--This neat monument is ornamented with cherubs, and with festoons of leaves and fruit, finely embossed, and was erected to the child whose name is inscribed upon it, who died in the eighth year of his age, Oct. 30, 1677. He was son of Sir Edward de Carteret, Gentleman Usher to Charles II. PHILIP CARTERET.--Figure of Time, standing on an altar, and holding a scroll in his hand, whereon are written, in sapphic verse, lines to the following import, which he is supposed to be repeating:-- "Why flow the mournful Muse's tear, For thee, cut down in life's full prime? Why sighs for thee the parent dear, Cropt by the scythe of hoary time? Lo! this, my boy's, the common lot; To me thy memory entrust; When all that's dear shall be forgot, I'll guard thy venerable dust. From age to age, as I proclaim Thy learning, piety, and truth, Thy great examples shall enflame, And emulation raise in youth." Over all is the bust of the noble youth here alluded to, who was son of Lord George Carteret, and died a King's scholar, at Westminster, ripe for the University, March 19, 1710, aged nineteen.--_David, sculptor._ Above is a memorial window put up by friends of the great engineer, ROBERT STEPHENSON--George Stephenson, Telford, Smeaton, Robert Stephenson, Watt, Rennie:--Bonha Bridge, over the Nile; William of Wykeham; Britannia Bridge (tubular), over the Menai Straits; Hiram; Building of the Second Temple; Bezaleel; Building of the Temple by Solomon; Noah; The Erection of the Tabernacle; Tubal Cain; Building of the Ark by Noah; Victoria Bridge, over the St. Lawrence; Sir C. Wren; High Level Bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Mch. Angelo; The Colosseum at Rome; Archimedes; Building of a Roman Aqueduct; Euclid; Treasure Cities of Egypt; Cheops; Building of Nineveh. The next is to the memory of JOSEPH LOCKE, R.A., and President of the Society of Engineers:--Our Lord in Majesty; The Lord healing the impotent at Bethesda; Our Lord healing the withered hand; Resurrection of Our Lord; Our Lord and disciples walking in the corn-field. Above is a little monument, consisting of an urn over a tablet that has a Latin inscription, reciting the high character of Sir JAMES STEWART DENHAM, Bart., who died Nov. 26, 1780, aged sixty-seven. Suspended by a knot of ribbons, fastened to a pyramid of various-coloured marble, is a fine medallion, with the words--"HENRY PRIESTMAN, Esq." round the head. Underneath are naval trophies and sea instruments, most admirably sculptured, and upon the base an inscription, showing that the person to whose memory the monument is erected, was Commander-in-Chief of a squadron of ships of war in the reign of Charles II., a Commissioner of the Navy, and one of the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of England, in the reign of William III. He died August 20, 1712, aged sixty-five.--_Bird, sculptor._ A rostral column of curiously-veined marble, on which are depicted the prows of galleys, a Medusa's head, naval and military trophies, &c., with this short inscription:--"To the memory of JOHN BAKER, Esq., Vice-Admiral of the White Squadron of the British Fleet, who, when he commanded in the Mediterranean, died at Port-Mahon, November 20, 1716, aged fifty-six. He was a brave, judicious, and experienced officer, a sincere friend, and a true lover of his country. _Manet post funera virtus!_"--_Bird, sculptor._ A monument to the memory of RICHARD MEAD, M.D., on which are his bust and various emblematical devices, expressive of his great learning and physical knowledge, for which he was eminent. He was of an ancient family in Buckinghamshire, was Physician in Ordinary to his Majesty, Fellow of the College of Physicians, and of the Royal Society; a great promoter of the Foundling Hospital, and well known to the world by his writings. He died the 14th of March, 1754, aged eighty-one.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ On the column, on your right hand, is a small tablet erected to the memory of GILBERT THORNBURGH, Esq., an honest courtier, faithful to his God, his Prince, and his friends, who died October 6, 1677, aged fifty-six. In the window is a monument--"To the memory of the Right Honourable SPENCER PERCEVAL, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and First Lord of the Treasury. This monument was erected by the Prince Regent and the Parliament, to record their deep sense of his public and private virtues, and to mark the nation's abhorrence of the act by which he fell. Born 1st November, 1762; assassinated within the walls of the House of Commons, 11th May, 1812." In bas-relief he is represented falling into the arms of the officers of the House of Commons in the lobby of the House, where the members are seen rushing forward to witness the sad catastrophe: the second figure to the left represents the assassin (Bellingham). A figure of Mr. Perceval is lying on a mattress, under which is a sarcophagus, the figure of power (with the fasces) weeping over him. At his feet are two figures, Truth (with the mirror), Temperance (the bridle).--_Westmacott, sculptor._ ROBERT and RICHARD CHOLMONDELEY.--The Latin inscription informs us that the second and fourth sons of Robert Viscount Cholmondeley, lie here interred. Robert, a King's scholar, died at fourteen, February 4, 1678; Richard died June 9, 1680. Both youths of promising genius. EDWARD MANSELL, eldest son of Sir Edward Mansell, of Margam, in Glamorganshire, Bart., who died June 20, 1681, aged 15. Against a pillar, on a tablet of white marble, is a long inscription in English, setting forth the descent of EDWARD HERBERT, Esq. He was lineally descended from Sir George Herbert, of Swansea, in Glamorganshire, first sheriff of that county after the union of the principality of Wales in 1542. He died Sept. 18, 1715, aged twenty-three, leaving one son, Thomas, then two years old. A double monument, being two oval tables between three wreathed pillars, neatly ornamented and inscribed; the first to the memory of WILLIAM MORGAN, second son of William Morgan, of Tredegar, in Monmouthshire, who died February 1, 1683, in the nineteenth year of his age; the other, THOMAS MANSEL, eldest son of Busy Mansel, of Britain's Ferry, Glamorganshire, who died December 13, 1684, aged thirty-eight. Mrs. JANE HILL.--This lady, who is here represented on a pedestal, in the ancient dress of her time, appears by the inscription to have been the daughter of Thomas Stoteville, of Brinkley, in Cambridgeshire, and wife, first to Edward Ellis, of Chesterton, and then to Othowell Hill, LL.D., and Chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln. She died April 27, 1631, aged seventy-eight. In the window above, is a monument to the memory of Miss ANN WHYTELL, who died 17th August, 1788. Upon an urn are leaning two figures of Innocence and Peace, having the emblems in their hands, the dove and olive-branch.--_Bacon, sculptor._ Above is a monument erected--"To the memory of JOHN STEWART, Esq., Captain in the Royal Navy; son of William Stewart, Esq., of Castle Stewart, in Wigtownshire, and Euphemia, daughter of Lord Fortros. He entered the Navy at an early age, and distinguished himself in every rank and branch of the service, particularly when in command of the Seahorse, of thirty-eight guns, with which single ship he totally defeated a Turkish squadron, and captured the Bedere Zaffer, carrying fifty-one guns. He died in London, on the 25th October, 1811, aged thirty-six years. The knowledge, decision, and coolness which he displayed as an officer, won him the confidence of all who served with him; the gaiety and cheerfulness of his temper, the frankness of his disposition, and the warmth and goodness of his heart, rendered him the delight of all who approached him, and made his death an equal loss to private society and to his country." On the left is a handsome monument of Governor LOTEN, consisting of a single figure, representing Generosity, attended by a lion, who is sustaining a medallion, with his portrait upon a pedestal, on which is inscribed, in Latin, his great character, and the high offices he exercised over the Dutch settlements in India, where he arrived in the year 1732; married Henrietta Beaumont, August 24, 1733, who died August 10, 1755. He returned to Europe in 1758, married in England July 4, 1765, to Lætitia Cotes, of Cotes, in Staffordshire, and died at Utrecht, May 25, 1789, ætatis eighty. The lower inscription is the fifteenth Psalm, except the last verse, and concludes--"Such was John Gideon Loten."--_Banks, sculptor._ Mrs. MARY BEAUFOY.--The principal figure is represented in a devout posture, with cherubs crowning her; on each side are Cupids lamenting the early decay of virgin beauty; and underneath, the arms of her family, quarterly, upheld by cherubs. The inscription on the base:--"_Reader!_ whoe'er thou art, let the sight of this tomb imprint on thy mind, that young and old (without distinction) leave this world; and therefore fail not to secure the next." This lady was only daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Beaufoy, of Guy's Cliff, near Warwick, by the Hon. Charlotte Lane, eldest daughter of George, Lord Viscount Lansborough. She died July 12, 1705.--_Grinling Gibbons, sculptor._ "ROBERT KILLIGREW, of Arwenack, in Cornwall, Esq.; son of Thomas and Charlotte; Page of Honour to Charles II.; Brigadier-General of Her Majesty's Forces; killed in Spain, in the battle of Almanza, April 14, 1707, _ætatis suæ_ forty-seven. _Militavit annis_ twenty-four." A fine piece of sculpture, cut out of one stone. The embellishments are distinct and very picturesque, and the inscription modest and soldierlike.--_Bird, sculptor._ In front of this monument Ben Jonson was buried. On a small tablet is the following inscription:--"In memory of THOMAS BANKS, Esq., R.A., Sculptor, whose superior abilities in his profession added a lustre to the arts of his country, and whose character as a man reflected honour on human nature. His earthly remains were deposited by his desire on the north side of the churchyard at Paddington. His spirit is with God. He died Feb. 2, 1805, aged seventy years." JOHN HUNTER.--The remains of this celebrated anatomist were removed from the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields to the Abbey in 1859. "The Royal College of Surgeons of England have placed this Tablet over the grave of Hunter, to record their admiration of his genius as a gifted interpreter of the Divine power and wisdom at work in the laws of organic life, and their grateful veneration for his services to mankind as the founder of scientific surgery." Born, 1728; died, 1793. Sir ROBERT WILSON and Lady.--A very fine brass beside that of Hunter. He was born in 1777, died 1849. Colonel JAMES BRINGFIELD.--This monument is ornamented with military trophies, cherubs, &c., and surrounded by a mantling, enclosing a table on which are written the deceased's military preferments, the manner of his death and burial, and the praises of his piety and virtue. He was born at Abingdon, Equerry to Prince George of Denmark, and Aid-de-Camp to the great Duke of Marlborough; was killed by a cannon ball, as he was remounting his General on a fresh horse, at the battle of Ramilies, on Whitsunday, May 12, 1706, and was interred at Barechem, in the province of Brabant, aged fifty. One of the windows in the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey has recently been filled with stained glass in memory of the late Mr. BRUNEL. Along the bottom of the window (which consists of two lights, each 23 feet 6 inches high, and 4 feet wide, surmounted by a quatrefoil opening, 6 feet 6 inches across) is the inscription, "In memory of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Civil Engineer. Born April 9, 1806. Died September 15, 1859." Over this are four allegorical figures (two in each light): Fortitude, Justice, Faith, and Charity. The upper part of the window consists of six panels, divided by a pattern-work of lilies and pomegranates. The panels contain subjects from the history of the Temple. The three subjects in the western light represent scenes from the Old Testament: viz., the Dedication of the Temple by Solomon, the Finding of the Book of the Law by Hilkiah, and the Laying the Foundations of the Second Temple. The subjects in the eastern light are from the New Testament: viz., Simeon Blessing the Infant Saviour, Christ Disputing with the Doctors, and the Disciples pointing out to Christ the Buildings of the Temple. In the heads of the lights are angels kneeling, and in the quatrefoil is a representation of Our Lord in Glory, surrounded by angels. The work was placed in the hands of Mr. R. Norman Shaw, of the firm of Nesfield & Shaw, Architects, who prepared the general design, arranged the scale of the various figures, and designed the ornamental pattern work. The figure subjects were drawn by Mr. Henry Holyday, and the whole design was executed in glass by Messrs. Heaton, Butler, & Bayne, of Garrick Street, Covent Garden. "To the memory of WILLIAM LEVINZ, Esq., grandson of Sir Cresswell Levinz, Knt., who was Attorney-General in the reign of Charles II., and afterwards one of the Justices of Common Pleas, from which station he was displaced in the reign of James II. for opposing the dispensing power, and was one of the counsel for the seven Bishops. William Levinz, the son of Sir Cresswell, represented the county of Nottingham in Parliament, as did his son, William Levinz, till the year 1747, when he was appointed a Commissioner of his Majesty's Customs, and in 1763, Receiver-General of the said revenue, in which office he died, the 17th of August, 1765, aged fifty-two years."--_R. Hayward, sculptor._ HENEAGE TWYSDEN.--This monument is to the memory of a young hero slain in the battle of Blarignies, in Hainault, while Aid-de-Camp to John, Duke of Argyle, who commanded the right wing of the confederate army. He was the seventh son of Sir William Twysden, Bart., a youth of the greatest expectations, had not the fortune of war put an early stop to his rising merit, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, 1709. Above this are two small monuments to the memory of two of his brothers, JOSIAH and JOHN. Josiah was a Captain at the siege of Agremont, in Flanders, and slain by a cannon shot, in 1708, aged twenty-three. John was a Lieutenant in the Admiral's ship under Sir Cloudesly Shovel, and perished with him in 1707, aged twenty-four. JOHN WOODWARD, M.D.--This is an elegant monument, and the figures most admirably finished. The head of the deceased (who was Professor of Physic in Gresham College) in profile, is very masterly, and the lady that holds it inimitable. The inscription is a kind of panegyric upon the great parts and learning of the deceased, which entitled him to the distinction he received. He died in May, 1728, aged sixty-three.--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ MARTHA PRICE.--This monument is ornamented with festoons of fruit, flowers, and foliage, and the inscription shows that she was the wife of Gervase Price, Esq., who served Charles II. in the double capacity of Sergeant-Trumpeter and Gentleman of the Bows. She died April 7, 1678. Above is a monument to the memories of Captains HERVEY and HUTT, who were engaged in the naval action under Lord Howe. It is principally composed of two colossal figures, Britannia and Fame, placed one on each side a large vase, on which are portraits of the deceased Captains. Britannia is decorating the vase with laurel, while Fame is pointing to the names of the heroes engraven on the base which supports the vase.--_Bacon, jun., sculptor._ Beneath is the effigy of ANNE, Countess Dowager of CLANRICKARD, resting upon a tomb, and under it is the following inscription:--"Here lies the Right Honourable Anne, Countess Dowager of Clanrickard, eldest daughter of John Smith, Esq., who is interred near this place. She married first, Hugh Parker, Esq., eldest son of Sir Henry Parker, of Honington, in the county of Warwick, Bart., by whom she had the present Sir Henry John Parker, Bart., three other sons, and three daughters. By her second husband, Michael, Earl of Clanrickard, of the kingdom of Ireland, the head of the ancient and noble family of the Burkes, she had Smith, now Earl of Clanrickard, and two daughters, Lady Anne and Lady Mary. She died January 1, 1732, in her forty-ninth year." GENERAL LAWRENCE.--This monument was erected at the expense of the East India Company, in memory of the man who, by the conquest of Pondicherry, and the defence of Tritchinopoly, reduced the power of the French in the East, and paved the way for one of the richest empires that ever a trading people aspired to command, which, however, was in the year 1783, in so lamentable a situation, wasted by war, and oppressed by European plunderers, that, from being one of the richest countries in the world, it became the most deplorable. On the top is an admirable bust of the General, to which the genius of the Company is pointing, while Fame is declaring his noble exploits, at the same time holding in her hand a shield, on which is written:--"For discipline established, fortresses protected, settlements extended, French and Indian armies defeated, and peace concluded in the Carnatic." Close under the bust is written: "Born March 6, 1697; died January 10, 1775." On a table of beautiful marble in relief, is represented the siege of a great city, and under it is the word TRITCHINOPOLY.--_Tayler, sculptor._ Up high is a tablet to Colonel JOHN DAVIS, President of the Council of the Island of St. Christopher, who died December 13, 1725, aged sixty-three. PENELOPE EGERTON.--The lady for whom this monument was erected, was daughter of Robert, Lord Nedham, Viscount Kilmurray, and wife of Randolph Egerton, of Bentley, in Cheshire, an eminent Loyalist, Major-General of Horse to Charles I., and Lieutenant-Colonel to Charles II.'s own troop of Guards. She died in child-bed, April 13, 1670. A tablet placed high above to the memory of JAMES EGERTON, son of Major-General Egerton, who died April 13, 1687, aged nine years. The west window is filled with painted glass: the figures of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, and the twelve Patriarchs; the arms of Sebert, Edward the Confessor, Queen Elizabeth, George II., and Dean Wilcocks, Bishop of Rochester: date 1735. In the window at the end of the North Aisle, is a figure in stained glass (supposed to be Edward the Confessor), but the colours being of water blue, no particular face can be distinguished. In the window of the South Aisle, the figure is supposed to be that of Edward the Black Prince. North-West Tower. The Right Honourable CHARLES JAMES FOX is represented on a mattress, falling into the arms of Liberty. Peace (with the olive branch and dove) is reclining on his knee. An African thanking him for the part he took in the cause of Freedom. Born Jan. 24, 1749; died Sept. 13, 1806, aged fifty-seven.--_Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor._ In the North-west Tower is a monument to Captain MONTAGUE. He fell with Captains Hervey and Hutt in Earl Howe's engagement, on the 1st of June, 1794, when a signal and important victory was obtained over the French fleet. The King and Parliament, in consequence, directed this monument to be erected. The Captain is represented with his hand resting on his sword; Victory, alighting, is waving the laurel crown over his head; a trophy of naval flags hangs over a basso-relievo of prisoners behind; on the front of this pedestal is the engagement; on the right side is Neptune's trident, and a crown of oak; on the left, a wreath of laurel containing the word "Constitution;" the base is guarded by two lions.--_Flaxman, sculptor._ On the right, upon a pedestal with appropriate emblems, is an exceedingly animated and life-like bust of the Right Hon. Sir JAMES MACINTOSH, M.P., one of the most distinguished men of his time, and who attained to great eminence in literature, philosophy, history, and politics. He was born at Aldonric, on the banks of Lochness, Scotland, on the 24th October, 1765; was knighted in 1804; in 1830 he was appointed to a seat at the Board of Control, and died 30th May, 1832, regretted (it is said) with more sincerity, and admired with less envy than any man of his age.--_Theed, sculptor._ At the back is a monument sacred to the memory of the Honourable GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK LAKE, late Lieutenant-Colonel in his Majesty's twenty-ninth Regiment of Foot, who fell at the head of his Grenadiers, in driving the enemy from the heights of Roliea, in Portugal, on the 17th of August, 1808. This stone is erected to his memory by the officers, non-commissioned officers, drummers, and privates of the corps, as a testimony of their high regard and esteem.--_Smith, sculptor._ Beneath is a monument to the Right Hon. GEORGE TIERNEY, whose bust is placed on a pedestal, with the following inscription:--"To the memory of the Right Honourable George Tierney, born in 1762; died in 1830. A man equally distinguished for the disinterested integrity of his public conduct, and the unpretended virtues of his private life. In Parliament he was long conspicuous for a style of oratory peculiarly his own; plain, familiar, forcible, and persuasive, abounding in proofs of natural shrewdness, and strokes of original learning, and sustained throughout by an accurate knowledge of details, and an unostentatious command of clear language. Without having obtained the rewards of wealth or station, he secured the respect and esteem of his contemporaries, by the consistency of his political principles, and his unwearied activity in supporting them; by the simplicity of his manners, and the benevolence of his character; and by an unaffected reverence for religion. His surviving friends have raised this monument, to be a testimony of their affection, and a reward of his talents and virtues."--_Westmacott, jun., sculptor._ Next is a new monument to the memory of HENRY RICHARD VASSAL FOX, Baron Holland, born November 23, 1773, and died October 22, 1840, aged sixty-seven. On the steps that lead up to the door of a vault are three figures; on the left hand of the spectator is Genius, with his old funeral emblem, the reversed torch; climbing the steps to the right are, in rich combination, Literature and Science. A scroll is in the hands of Literature, and that of Science rests upon her wheel. Over the doorway of the tomb, the key-stone, enriched by a coiling serpent (the old emblem of eternity), assists to support the cornice, from which rise a rusticated pediment and pedestal; on the latter is placed a colossal bust of the deceased Lord, and on either side of the tomb are bassi-relievi, representing severally Charity and Justice. The monument is twenty feet high, eleven feet six inches wide, and has six feet of projection from the wall. The architectural portions are of Sicilian marble. Without inscription.--_Baily, sculptor._ On the left is a monument erected by the corps of Royal Engineers, to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir RICHARD FLETCHER, Knight and Baronet, who, after highly-distinguished services, as Commanding Royal Engineer, with the army under the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War, was killed at the storming of St. Sebastian, 1812, in the forty-fifth year of his age.--_Baily, sculptor._ Above is a tablet with naval trophies, sacred to the memory of Rear-Admiral Sir GEORGE HOPE, K.C.B., erected by several Captains in the Royal Navy, who served under him as Midshipmen.--_Turnerelli, sculptor._ A small tablet to the memory of the Hon. CHARLES BANKS STANHOPE, second son of Charles, Earl of Stanhope, and nephew of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Major of the fiftieth Regiment of Foot, who in the act of gallantly encouraging his men, fell by a musket-shot in the battle of Corunna. This tablet is affectionately inscribed by his afflicted sister, who can neither do justice to his virtues, nor sufficiently deplore his loss. Born 3rd June, 1785; died 16th January, 1809. WILLIAM HORNECK, Esq.--This monument is embellished with books, plans, and instruments of fortification, alluding to the employment of the deceased as Chief Engineer to the Royal Train. The inscription informs us that he learned the art of war under the great Duke of Marlborough. He died May 9, 1746, aged sixty-two. Beneath, to the right, is a bust erected to Major JAMES RENNELL, who died March 29, 1830, in his eighty-eighth year. His useful life, firm character, and high talents, are amply exhibited in his works, and need no other monument. This tablet, therefore, merely records, that this celebrated man was buried near this spot.--_Baily, sculptor._ ZACHARY MACAULAY.--A bust on a pedestal; the inscription as follows:--"In grateful remembrance of Zachary Macaulay, who, during a protracted life, with an intense but quiet perseverance, which no success could relax, no reverse could subdue, no toil, privations, or reproach could daunt, devoted his time, talents, fortune, and all the energies of his mind and body to the service of the most injured and helpless of mankind; and partook for more than forty years in the counsels and in the labours which, guided and blessed by God, first rescued the British empire from the guilt of the Slave Trade, and finally conferred freedom on 800,000 slaves; this tablet is erected by those who drew wisdom from his mind, and a lesson from his life, and who humbly rejoice in the assurance that, through the Divine Redeemer, the foundation of all his hopes, he shares in the happiness of those who rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." He was born at Inverary, North Britain, on the 2nd of May, 1768, and died in London on the 13th May, 1838.--_Weekes, sculptor._ THE NAVE. The Organ Screen was erected by the Dean and Chapter in 1831, designed by Mr. Blore, Architect to the Abbey, and executed with great precision. Four pilasters with decorated finials divide the Screen into three compartments, the centre for the gate of entrance to the choir from the west, the other two contain the monuments of Sir Isaac Newton and Earl Stanhope; on each of the pilasters are projecting pedestals, on which are the figures of Henry III. and his Queen, Edward the Confessor, and his Queen, and Edward I. and his Queen. Sir ISAAC NEWTON.--This is a grand and expressive monument, every way worthy of the great man to whose memory it was erected, who is sculptured recumbent, leaning his right arm on four folios, thus titled--_Divinity, Chronology, Optics, and Phil: Prin. Math:_ and pointing to a scroll supported by winged cherubs. Over him is a large globe, projecting from a pyramid behind, whereon is delineated the course of the comet in 1680, with the signs, constellations, and planets. On the globe sits the figure of Astronomy with her book closed. Underneath the principal figure is a most curious bas-relief, representing the various labours in which Sir Isaac chiefly employed his time: such as discovering the causes of gravitation, settling the principles of light and colours, and reducing the coinage to a determined standard. The device of weighing the sun by the steelyard has been thought at once bold and striking; and, indeed, the whole monument does honour to the sculptor. The inscription on the pedestal is in Latin, short, but fall of meaning; intimating that, by a spirit nearly divine, he solved, on principles of his own, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of the comets, and the ebbing and flowing of the sea; that he discovered the dissimilarity of the rays of light and the properties of colours from thence arising, which none but himself had ever thought of; that he was a diligent, wise, and faithful interpreter of nature, antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures; that by his philosophy he maintained the dignity of the Supreme Being; and by the purity of his life, the simplicity of the Gospel. The inscription concludes with a beautiful exclamation--"How much reason mortals have to pride themselves in the existence of such and so great an ornament to the human race!" He was born December 25, 1642, and died March 20, 1726.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ JAMES, Earl STANHOPE.--This monument, in which, likewise, the principal figure leans upon his arm in a cumbent posture, holding in his right hand a general's staff, and in his left a parchment scroll. A Cupid stands before him, resting himself upon a shield. Over a martial tent sits a beautiful Pallas, holding in her right hand a javelin, and in the other a scroll. Behind is a slender pyramid. On the middle of the pedestals are two medals, and on each side of the pilasters one. Under the principal figure is a Latin inscription, setting forth the merits of this great man, as a soldier, a statesman, and a senator. In 1707, he concluded an advantageous treaty with Spain, and in the same year was sent Ambassador to Charles III. In 1708, he took Port-Mahon. In 1710, he forced his way to the gates of Madrid, and took possession of that capital. In 1714, he impeached the Duke of Ormond. In September, 1715, he was made Secretary at War. In December, 1716, he was made Secretary of State. In 1717, he was made First Commissioner of the Treasury, and Chancellor of the Exchequer; and in July following created a Peer. In March, 1718, he was a second time made Secretary of State. In 1720, he died, in his forty-seventh year.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ "To the memory of PHILIP (second) Earl STANHOPE, conspicuous for universal benevolence, unshaken public integrity, and private worth. Deep were his researches in philosophy, and extensive his ideas for his country's good. He was ever a determined supporter of the Trial by Jury, of the freedom of Elections, of a numerous and well-regulated Militia, and of the liberty of the Press. On the 7th day of March, 1786 (and in the seventy-second year of his age), he terminated an honourable life, spent in the exercise of virtue, in the improvement of science, and in the pursuit of truth. In respectful remembrance of him, the above lines are inscribed by his affectionate son, Charles, Earl Stanhope." The Pulpit, in the Nave, is used only for the special evening services, and is composed of variegated marbles interspersed with rich foliage and some very tasteful mosaics, and around it are six excellent figures of St. Paul, St. Peter, and the four Evangelists, and in a medallion in front, a head of the Saviour _surrounded_ with thorns, and pointing upwards with his right hand from his left shoulder. The following is painted on one side:--"This Pulpit is presented to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster by a few friends, in grateful commemoration of the Opening of the Nave for public worship and preaching, in January, 1858. 'As ye go, preach, saying the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'" (St. Matt., chap. 10, v. 7.)--_Field, sculptor._ ROBERT STEPHENSON.--Nearly in front of the new pulpit, upon the floor, is a brass figure of life-size upon a rich foliage diaper over the remains of this eminent engineer, in addition to which has just been erected a superb painted window illustrative of his fertile genius. He died 12th October, 1859, aged fifty-six. At the foot of R. Stephenson's grave is a slab of black Irish marble inlaid with brass, sacred to the memory of Sir CHARLES BARRY, Knt., R.A. and F.S.A., and Architect of the New Palace of Westminster and other buildings, who died A.D. 1860, aged 64 years, and lies buried beneath this brass, which represents the Victoria Tower and the Ground Plan of the Houses of Parliament. Nearly opposite this slab is a granite tombstone, upon which is the following inscription:--"Beneath this stone rest the remains of COLIN CAMPBELL, Lord Clyde, who by his own deserts, through fifty years of arduous service, from the earliest battles in the Peninsular War to the Pacification of India, in 1858, rose to the rank of Field-Marshal and the Peerage. He died lamented by the Queen, the army, and the people, August the 14th, 1863, in the seventy-first year of his age."--_Gaffin, fecit._ Field-Marshal Sir GEORGE POLLOCK, Bart., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., Constable of the Tower. Died 6th October, 1872, aged 86 years. "O God the Lord, the strength of my salvation, Thou hast covered my head in the day of battle."--Psalm cxl. 7. A little to the west of the latter is the tombstone of TOMPION and GRAHAM, the celebrated chronometer inventors. Tompion died 1713, aged seventy-five. Graham died 1751, aged seventy-eight. Beside Tompion is the grave of LIVINGSTONE, over which there is a large black marble slab, with the following inscription: "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, here rests David Livingstone, Missionary, Traveller, Philanthropist. Born March 19th, 1813; died May 1st, 1873, at Chetamba's village, Ulala. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the Native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa, where, with his last words, he wrote: 'All I can add in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.' 'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice.'" The Latin verses are from Lucan the Roman poet, who, in his "Pharsalia," describes the aspiration of Julius Cæsar to solve the problem, even then before the world, of the causes and source of the Nile. The verses may be thus translated:--_So great is my love of truth that there is nothing I would rather know than the causes of the river that have lain hid through so many ages...._ On the right of the West door, in the middle of a pyramid, is a large medallion of brass, resting on a cherub below, and suspended by another at the top. Round the medal is a Latin inscription, thus translated:--"JOHN CONDUIT, Master of the Mint." This gentleman succeeded his relation, the great Sir Isaac Newton, in that office, and desired to be buried near him, as appears by a long Latin inscription on the base. Died May 23, 1737, aged forty-nine. Catherine, his wife, died Jan. 20, 1739, aged fifty-nine, and lies interred in the same tomb.--_Cheere, sculptor._ A stone arch has been turned over the west door, on which is erected a monument, voted by Parliament to the memory of the Right Hon. WILLIAM PITT. This illustrious statesman is represented habited in the robes of Chancellor of the Exchequer. To the right of the base of the statue, is History recording his speeches, whilst Anarchy, on the left, lies subdued, and writhing in chains at his feet. The Statues composing this group are nine feet in height. Inscription:--"This monument is erected by Parliament to William Pitt, son of William Earl of Chatham, in testimony of gratitude for the eminent public services, and of regret for the irreparable loss of that great and disinterested Minister. He died Jan. 23, 1806, in the forty-seventh year of his age."--_Sir Richard Westmacott, R.A., sculptor._ On the left is a lofty pyramid of a bluish coloured marble, to the memory of Sir THOMAS HARDY, Knt., whose effigy is reclining upon a tomb of elegant workmanship, with a naked boy on his left side weeping over an urn. The inscription, a little history of the deceased's life, is here copied:--"Sir Thomas Hardy, to whose memory this monument was erected, was bred in the Royal Navy from his youth, and was made a Captain in 1693. In the expedition to Cadiz, under Sir George Rook, he commanded the Pembroke; and when the fleet left the coast of Spain to return to England, he was ordered to Lagos Bay, where he got intelligence of the Spanish galleons being arrived in the harbour of Vigo, under convoy of seventeen French men-of-war. By his great diligence and judgment he joined the English fleet, and gave the Admiral that intelligence which engaged him to make the best of his way to Vigo, where all the aforementioned galleons and men-of-war were either taken or destroyed. After the success of that action, the Admiral sent him with an account of it to the Queen, who ordered him a considerable present, and knighted him. Some years afterwards he was made a Rear-Admiral, and received several other marks of favour and esteem from her Majesty, and from her Royal Consort, Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral of England. He died August 16, 1732, aged sixty-seven."--_Cheere, sculptor._ Captain JAMES CORNEWALL.--This noble monument, which is thirty-six feet high, has a large base and pyramid of rich Sicilian marble. Against the pyramid is a rock (embellished with naval trophies, sea weeds, &c.) in which are two cavities; in the one is a Latin epitaph; in the other, a view of the sea-fight before Toulon, in bas-relief, on the foreground whereof the Marlborough, of ninety guns, is seen fiercely engaged with Admiral Navarre's ship, the Real, of one hundred and fourteen guns, and her two seconds, all raking the Marlborough fore and aft. On the rock stand two figures; the one represents Britannia, under the character of Minerva, accompanied with a lion: the other figure is expressive of Fame, who, having presented to Minerva a medallion of the hero, supports it whilst exhibited to public view. The medallion is accompanied with a globe and various honorary crowns as due to valour. Behind the figure is a lofty spreading palm-tree (whereon is fixed the hero's shield or coat of arms), together with a laurel-tree, both which issue from the naturally barren rock, as alluding to some heroic and uncommon event. The inscription:--"Amongst the monuments of ancient merit in this sacred Cathedral, let the name of James Cornewall be preserved, the third son of Henry Cornewall, of Bradwarden Castle, in the County of Hereford, Esq., who, from the very old and illustrious stock of the Plantagenets, deriving a truly ancient spirit, became a naval commander of the first eminence; equally and deservedly honoured by the tears and applause of Britons, as a man who bravely defended the cause of his country in that sea-fight off Toulon, and being by a chain-shot deprived of both his legs at a blow, fell unconquered, on the 3rd of February, 1743, in the forty-fifth year of his age, bequeathing his animated example to his fellow sailors as a legacy of a dying Englishman, whose extraordinary valour could not be recommended to the emulation of posterity in a more ample eulogy, than by so singular an instance of honour; since the Parliament of Great Britain, by an unanimous suffrage, resolved that a monument, at the public expense, should be consecrated to the memory of this most heroical person."--_Tayler, sculptor._ South Aisle. At the back of Cornewall's, is the monument to the Right Honourable JAMES CRAGGS, who was made Secretary at War in April, 1717, and one of his Majesty's Privy Council and Secretary of State, in March, 1718. The statue of this gentleman, large as the life, is finely represented as leaning on an urn, which has upon it in golden characters, an inscription, showing that he was principal Secretary of State, and a man _universally beloved_, which is there particularly marked, because, as he was of low extraction, being only a shoemaker's son, it is the more admirable, that in the high station to which his merit had raised him, he should escape envy, and acquire the general esteem. He died February 16, 1720, aged thirty-five. Upon the base of the monument is this epitaph, written by Mr. Pope:-- "Statesman, yet friend to truth, of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear! Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, Who gained no title, and who lost no friend. Ennobled by himself, by all approv'd, Prais'd, wept, and honour'd, by the muse he lov'd." --_Signor Guelphi, sculptor._ A statue of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, placed here by the friends and admirers of the late Poet. Mr. Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770, and died at Rydal Mount, Ambleside, Westmoreland, on April 23, 1850. The statue is much admired; and the meditative attitude in which the Poet is represented, and the quiet and sacred spot in which it is placed, apart from the crowd, and in a peaceful retirement of its own, harmonize with and are expressive of, the tranquil tenour of his life, and the thoughtful, sublime, and philosophic character of his works. Next to this is a bust of KEBLE, by T. Woolner. It occupies the middle of the three arcades on the west side of the South Tower, and adjoins the monument of Wordsworth. It has a pedestal of alabaster containing a black marble inscription panel, on either side of which is a green marble pillar, between the carved capitals of which is seated a vesica-shaped panel of alabaster, richly moulded, carved, and studded with gems of blue fluor-spar within ovals of gilt beads. Above this is placed a Calvary cross of alabaster with gemmed and inlaid arms and trefoiled ends. The internal part of the vesica panel is occupied with the white marble bust, life size, placed on an enriched corbel of alabaster, on which corbel are inclined pillars which support a trefoiled and gabled canopy overhanging the bust. The total height of the work is nine feet, and its width three feet. A small tablet to HENRY WHARTON, remarkable only by the great name inscribed upon it, who was Rector of Chartham, in Kent; Vicar of the Church of Minster, in the Isle of Thanet; Librarian to Archbishop Sancroft, and one of the most voluminous writers of his years, perhaps, in the world. He died March 3, 1694, aged only thirty-one, and was an universally respected by the Bishops and clergy, that Archbishop Tillotson, and several other Prelates, with a vast body of clergy, the choir and King's scholars, all in solemn procession, attended his funeral, and joined in the anthems composed on this occasion by the great Purcell. Above this tablet of Wharton is a gallery, used by the Royal Family to see the procession of the Knights of the Bath: they enter at Poets' Corner door, and proceed round the West end, and up the North Aisle, into Henry VII.'s Chapel, where the installation takes place. In an oval frame is a half-length marble portrait of WILLIAM CONGREVE, Esq., placed on a pedestal of the finest Egyptian marble, and enriched with emblematical figures alluding to the drama. Underneath is this inscription in English:--"Mr. William Congreve, died January 19, 1728, aged fifty-six, and was buried near this place, to whose most valuable memory this monument is set up by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, as a mark how dearly she remembers the happiness she enjoyed in the sincere friendship of so worthy and honest a man, whose virtue, candour, and wit, gained him the love and esteem of the present age, and whose writings will be the admiration of the future."--_Bird, sculptor._ A bust of JOHN FRIEND, M.D., on a pedestal of fine white veined marble; and beneath is a long Latin inscription, setting forth his great and distinguished acquirements. He was a physician of the first rank for knowledge and experience; was no less successful in his practice than ingenious in his writings. He was first educated at Westminster School, and afterwards at Christ Church College, Oxford, where his learning soon made him conspicuous. On his leaving the University, and adopting the profession of physic, he was chosen a member of the College of Physicians in London, and soon after a Fellow of the Royal Society. His writings are lasting monuments of his extensive genius. He died July 26, 1728.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ Sir LUMLEY ROBINSON, Baronet.--This monument is neatly designed and ornamented; the columns are supported by Death's heads, and the arms upon the base by a cherub. On the top was a vase, and, rising to the pediments, enrichments of laurel branches, &c. The inscription has nothing remarkable. He was of Kentwall Hall, in Suffolk, and died August 6, 1684, aged thirty-six.--_Settie, sculptor._ THOMAS SPRAT, D.D.--This monument seems to have been designed principally for the sake of the inscriptions, which are in Latin. Underneath are the arms of the deceased, and on the top his arms, with those of the see of Rochester, quarterly, between enrichments of books, &c. The first inscription informs you,--"That Dr. Sprat was the son of a clergyman in Dorsetshire; and that he was educated at Wadham College, Oxford; that he first applied himself to poetry, but quitted that study to pursue the beauties of prose, and polish the English language; that he was early made known to George, Duke of Buckingham, and by him recommended to Charles I., who made him a Prebendary of Westminster, and of Windsor; from which preferments he soon rose to be Dean of Westminster, and Bishop of Rochester; but at length, from his firm integrity to the Church and Monarchy, was brought in danger of his life. He died in 1713, aged seventy-seven." The second inscription shows--"That the remains of THOMAS SPRAT, A.M. (son of the Bishop), Archdeacon of Rochester, and Prebendary of the Churches of Rochester, Winchester, and Westminster, lie near those of his father. He died May 10, 1720, aged forty-one." The third inscription imports--"That John Friend, M.D., to show his respect for those two worthy personages, had caused this monument to be erected jointly to their memories."--_Bird, sculptor._ Dr. JOSEPH WILLCOCKS.--Two angels holding a scroll, mitre, collegiate cap, &c., bas-relief, exterior view of Westminster Abbey. On each side are two beautiful figures of Faith and Hope. This Rev. Prelate was Chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, afterwards Preceptor to the Princess, and Prebendary of this Church; in 1721, consecrated Lord Bishop of Gloucester; in 1721, translated to Rochester, also made Dean of this Church, and of the most Honourable Order of the Bath. He died March 9, 1756, aged eighty-three, and is buried in a vault in the Ecclesiastical Court, with his wife Jane, daughter of John Milner, Esq., Consul at Lisbon. She died March 27, 1725, aged twenty-eight; with Ann, their daughter, who died in her infancy.--_Cheere, sculptor._ Above is a curious monument, sacred to the memory of RICHARD TYRRELL, Esq., who was descended from an ancient family of Ireland, and died Rear-Admiral of the White, 26th June, 1766. Devoted from his youth to the naval service of his country, and being formed under the discipline, and animated by the example of his renowned uncle, Sir Peter Warren, he distinguished himself as an able and experienced officer in many gallant actions, particularly on the 20th of November, 1758, when commanding the Buckingham, of sixty-six guns, and one hundred and seventy-five men, he attacked and defeated three French ships of war; one of them was the Florin, of seventy-four guns, and seven hundred men; but the Buckingham being too much disabled to take possession of her, after she had struck, the enemy, under cover of the night, escaped; during the action he received several wounds, and lost three fingers of his right hand. Dying on his return to England from the Leeward Islands, where he had for three years commanded a squadron of his Majesty's ships, his body was, by his own desire, committed to the sea, with the proper honours and ceremonies. On a piece of rock--"_The sea shall give up her dead, and every one shall be rewarded according to his works._" The figures History, Navigation, and Hibernia, are well cut; they are represented among the rocks, with the sea above their heads, the Admiral himself ascending amidst heavy clouds.--_Nathaniel Read, sculptor._ On a pedestal stands the bust of Dr. ZACHARY PEARCE. The features bear a striking resemblance to those of the original. On each side are the ensigns of his prelatical dignities; and underneath is a Latin inscription, of which the following is a translation:--"Sacred to the memory of the most Reverend Zachary Pearce, S.T.P., Bishop of Rochester, Dean of this Church, and of the most Honourable Order of the Bath. The seeds of learning, which were early sown at Westminster School, he cultivated to maturity at Cambridge: how rich the produce, both as a critic and divine, his works, already printed and published, will abundantly show. At length, growing fond of retirement, and earnestly desirous of leisure for elucidating the Scriptures, he resigned the Deanery of Westminster, as he wished to have done that of his Bishoprick, could it have been permitted. Having lived to finish what was the wish of his heart,--his Commentary on the Holy Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles,--he rested from his labours, June 29, 1774, aged eighty-four."--_Tyler, sculptor._ "In memory of the Very Rev. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D.D., F.R.S., Dean of Westminster, and of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, formerly Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, Trustee of the British Museum, First Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the University of Oxford; founder of the Museum of Geology, which he bequeathed to that University. Endued with superior intellect, he applied the powers of his mind to the honour and glory of God, the advancement of science, and the welfare of mankind. Born March 12, 1784; died August 14, 1856, aged seventy-two. 'For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.'--_Prov._ xi. ver. 6. Erected by his children."--_H. Weekes, A.R.A., sculptor_, 1859. The next is a bust, highly finished, and emblems of sacred offices. The Latin inscription is to the following purport:--"Sacred to the memory of the Reverend JOHN THOMAS, LL.D., Bishop of Rochester, Dean of this Collegiate Church, and of the most Honourable Order of the Bath. Having passed through the school at Carlisle with reputation, he proceeded to Oxford, to gather a more abundant harvest of knowledge, where he became both the ornament and patron of genius, good morals, and of polite, as well as of profound learning. With increasing fame everywhere spreading itself, he did honour to dignities by his merit, improved riches by bestowing them, presided over the Church with wisdom, defended it by his authority, regulated it by his example; ever active in duties, and unwearied in attentions, added to the strictest economy; till, after a well-spent life, himself exhausted, but not his patience, by a long and painful illness, he resigned his soul to God, August 20, 1793, aged eighty-one years. His nephew, G.A.T., A.M., to whose lot it fell to perform it, offers this unavailing tribute, as a testimony, though small, of Duty and Affection."--_Bust by Nollekens._ KATHARINE BOVEY.--The principal figures here are Faith, with her book closed, and Wisdom, lamenting the death of her patroness; between which is a lady's head in an amulet of black marble, curiously veined. Over it is an English inscription, giving a character of the deceased, who died January 21, 1727, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. Mrs. Mary Pope, who lived with her near forty years in perfect friendship, erected this monument to her memory.--_Gibbs, sculptor._ Lord Viscount HOWE.--The emblematic representation on this monument is a figure of the Genius of the Province of Massachuset's Bay, in a mournful posture, lamenting the fall of this hero, and the family arms, ornamented with military trophies. Beneath is the following inscription, in large characters:--"The Province of Massachuset's Bay, in New England, by an order of the Great and General Court, bearing date February 1, 1759, caused this monument to be erected to the memory of George, Lord Viscount Howe, Brigadier-General of his Majesty's Forces in North America, who was slain, July 6, 1758, on the march of Ticonderoga, in the thirty-fourth year of his age; in testimony of the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command." He lived respected and beloved: the public regretted his loss: to his family it is irreparable. Beneath is a bust to the memory of JOHN IRELAND, D.D.--The Latin inscription sets forth, that he was a native of Ashburton, Devon. Having pursued his studies at Oriel College, in the University of Oxford, he was, in 1802, enrolled amongst the Prebendaries of this Church; and afterwards, in 1816, raised to the Deanery of the same. Deeply sensible of the benefits that were divinely showered upon him in early life, he sought in after years to prove that he was not unmindful of them. Whilst still among the living, he annually gave liberal prizes for the encouragement of youthful studies, both at Oxford and in the Royal School at Westminster. He also, by his last will, bequeathed a munificent pecuniary legacy, partly to endow a Professorship of Theology at Oxford, partly towards the support of needy students of Oriel College, and partly that some assistance might be furnished for rightly educating his townsmen of Ashburton. He died September 2, 1842, aged eighty.--_Turnouth, sculptor._ A neat tablet erected to the memory of Dr. ROBERT CANNON, Dean of Lincoln, and Prebendary of this Church, who died March 28, 1722, aged fifty-nine. Over the West Cloisters door is a most stately monument to the memory of General GEORGE WADE. In the centre is a beautiful marble pillar, enriched with military trophies highly finished. The principal figures represent Fame preventing Time from defacing his military honours. The whole is finely executed, and cannot be too much admired. The General's head is in a medallion; and the inscription runs thus:--"To the memory of George Wade, Field Marshal of his Majesty's Forces, Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, Colonel of his Majesty's Third Regiment of Dragoon Guards, Governor of Fort William, Fort Augustus, and Fort George, and one of his Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council. He died March 14, 1748, aged seventy-five."--_Roubiliac, sculptor._ A monument of General Sir JAMES OUTRAM, with the following inscription:--"To the memory of Lieutenant-General Sir James Outram, G.C.B., K.S.I., &c., a soldier of the East India Company, who, during a service of 40 years in war and in council, by deeds of bravery and devotion, by an unselfish life, by benevolence, never weary of well-doing, sustained the honour of the British nation, won the love of his comrades, and promoted the happiness of the people of India. This monument is erected by the Secretary of State for India in Council. Born January 29, 1803; died March 11, 1863. Interred in this Abbey at the public cost, March 25, 1863." Under the bust is represented in high relief an exquisite sculpture of Lord Clyde and Outram shaking hands, with General Havelock between them and other figures in the background; and on each side two figures of the Scinde and Bihil tribes, lamenting the death of their "great friend."--_Noble, sculp._ CHARLES HERRIES, Esq., Colonel of the Light Horse Volunteers of London and Westminster, died April 3, 1819, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. So much was he respected, that the regiment followed him to the grave with filial reverence; and as a lasting tribute of honour to his memory, raised this record at his virtues and their affection. The monument consists of a bust, a strong resemblance; on the base is represented a female, seated on bales, as the city of London, over whom a warrior is holding a shield; by him stands his horse, which he seems ready to mount for defence.--_Chantrey, sculptor._ CAROLA HARSNET.--This tomb has two learned inscriptions upon it, one in Hebrew, the other in Greek; and was erected to the memory of the wife of Sir Samuel Morland, Baronet, who died in child-bed of her second son, Oct. 10, 1674, in the twenty-third year of her age. The inscriptions are thus translated:--"Blessed be the Lord, my wife was precious! Blessed be thy remembrance, oh, virtuous woman!" Thus far the Hebrew. The Greek thus:--"When I think on thy mildness, patience, charity, modesty, and piety, I lament thee, oh, most excellent creature! and I grieve exceedingly; but not like such as have no faith, for I believe and expect the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ."--_Stanton, sculptor._ A beautiful monument to JOHN SMITH, Esq. The design is a pyramid and altar, on which sits a lady veiled, mournful, and disconsolate, resting her right arm on a fine bust in relief. On the base is a Latin inscription, setting forth his descent from the Smith's in Lincolnshire: and issue, viz., two daughters, Ann, the eldest, first married to Henry Parker, Esq., son of Sir Harry Parker, of Warwickshire, and afterwards to Michael, Lord Dunkellin, eldest son of the Earl of Clanrickard; and Mary, the youngest, married to Edward Desboverie, of Langford, in Wilts, Bart. John Smith died July 6, 1718.--_Gibbs, sculptor._ Above is a monument erected to the memory of JAMES FLEMING, Major-General of his Majesty's Forces, and Colonel of a Regiment of Foot, who, having served forty-four years a commissioned officer, died March 17, 1750, aged sixty-eight. At the top of a beautiful pyramid of marble, is a medallion of this General, at the base of which are the figures of Minerva and Hercules, employed in binding the emblems of Wisdom, Prudence, and Valour together, as characteristics of the hero. The decorations are military trophies.--_Roubiliac, sculptor._ ANN FILDING.--This tomb, on which are two very learned inscriptions, one in Hebrew, the other in Ethiopic, is erected to the memory of the second wife of Sir Samuel Morland, Baronet. The Hebrew inscription is to this effect:--"Oh, thou fairest among women! oh! virtuous woman! the hand of the Lord hath done this! the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." The Ethiopic inscription is thus translated:--"Come, lament o'er this monument with a beloved husband, for thee; but in certain hope that thou art united with Christ. This lady was truly religious, virtuous, faithful, mild as a dove, and chaste; while she continued in life, she was honoured, and is happy, through mercy, in death." This is one of Mr. Addison's _modest inscriptions_, that has not, perhaps, been three times read in more than threescore years. Under the Ethiopic is this inscription:--"Ann, daughter of George Filding, Esq., and Mary, his wife, the truly loving (and as truly beloved) wife of Samuel Morland, Knight and Baronet, died February 20, 1679/80, ætatis nineteen."--_Stanton, sculptor._ DIANA TEMPLE.--This old-fashioned monument seems to have been designed not for one person, but for all Sir William Temple's family, as appears by the inscription, written by Sir William himself, in which is mentioned Diana Temple, who died at fourteen; Dorothy Osborn, probably Sir William's lady, aged sixty-six; William Temple, aged seventy; and Martha Giffard, called Lady Giffard, Sir William's sister, aged eighty-four. Sir CHARLES HARBORD, Knight, and CLEMENT COTTRELL, Esq.--On the base of this double monument is represented in relief, a dreadful sea-fight; and on the top, in a wreath of laurel, this inscription:--"To preserve and unite the harmony of two faithful friends who lost their lives at sea together, May 28, 1672." These two young gentlemen, of the most promising expectations, both perished in the Royal James, with the Earl of Sandwich, who commanded in her as Vice-Admiral against the Dutch, in that memorable fight off the coast of Sussex, in Charles the Second's time. The Royal James being set on fire, Sir Charles Harbord, First Lieutenant, though he might have saved himself by swimming, yet out of pure affection to his worthy Commander, chose to die with him. Young Cottrell was a volunteer; and having returned to his ship unwounded, from being the first man that had boarded a Dutchman of seventy guns, and pulled down the ensigns of her with his own hands, perished also with his friends. This gentleman understood seven languages, though but twenty-two years of age. This moving story is recited at large on the monument, but too long to copy. Above is the monument of WILLIAM HARGRAVE, Esq., Lieutenant-General of his Majesty's forces, Colonel of the Royal English Fusileers, and Governor of Gibraltar, who having been fifty-seven years a commissioned officer, died 21st January, 1750, aged seventy-nine. The figure of Time is represented to have overcome Death; he is breaking the dart of Death across his knee; the pyramid is destroyed at the sound of the trumpet, the dead rising, and the crown of Death is fallen to the ground.--_Designed and executed by Roubiliac._ A fine bust to SIDNEY, Earl GODOLPHIN, with a rich cravat. In 1661, he was Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles II.; 1679, Commissioner of the Treasury; in 1684, Secretary of State, and the same year created Baron of Rialton, in Cornwall, by James II. After the Revolution he was made First Commissioner of the Treasury, and soon after Lord High Treasurer, which office, as his inscription shows, together with that of Chief Minister, he held during the first nine glorious years of Queen Anne's reign. He died Sept. 15, 1712, aged sixty-seven.--_Bird, sculptor._ Colonel ROGER TOWNSHEND.--Here is a sarcophagus, supported by two Indians, on the front of which is represented in bas-relief, the fall of this great commander, with his officers attending him in his dying moments. This monument is decorated with military trophies, and beneath is the following inscription.--"This monument was erected by a disconsolate parent, the Lady Vicountess Townshend, to the memory of her fifth son, the Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Townshend, who was killed by a cannon-ball, July 25, 1759, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, as he was reconnoitring the French lines at Ticonderagoe, in North America. From the parent, the brother, and the friend, his social and amiable manners, his enterprising bravery, and the integrity of his heart, may claim the tribute of affection. Yet, stranger, weep not! for though premature his death, his life was glorious, enrolling him with the names of those immortal Statesmen and Commanders, whose wisdom and intrepidity, in the course of this comprehensive and successful war, have extended the commerce, enlarged the dominion, and upheld the majesty of these kingdoms, beyond the idea of any former age."--_Eckstein, sculptor._ Above is a tablet to Mrs. BRIDGET RADLEY, wife of Charles Radley, Esq., Gentleman Usher and Daily Waiter of James II., who erected this monument to her memory. She died November 20, 1769. A monument to Sir JOHN CHARDIN, Bart., and is very emblematical, alluding to the travels of this gentleman, by which, as his motto expresses, "_he acquired his fame_." The globe, round which a number of geographical instruments are represented, exhibits a view of the different countries through which he travelled; and the motto beneath refers to the dangers he providentially escaped, for which he ascribes to God the glory. A journal of his travels into the Eastern countries he has published--a book in high esteem.--_Henry Cheere, sculptor._ Beneath is a monument with this inscription:--"Sacred to the immortal memory of Sir PALMES FAIRBORNE, Knight, Governor of Tangier, in the execution of which command he was mortally wounded by a shot from the Moors then besieging the town, in the forty-sixth year of his age, October 24, 1680." The following is the epitaph, written by Mr. Dryden:-- "Ye sacred reliques which our marble keep Here, undisturb'd by wars, in quiet sleep, Discharge the trust which (when it was below) Fairborne's undaunted soul did undergo, And be the town's Palladium from the foe! Alive and dead, these walls he did defend: Great actions great examples must attend. The Candian siege his early value knew, Where Turkish blood did his young hands imbrue; From thence returning, with deserv'd applause, Against the Moors his well-flesh'd sword he draws, The same the courage, and the same the cause. His youth and age, his life and death combine, As in some great and regular design, All of a piece throughout, and all divine. Still nearer heaven, his virtues shone more bright: Like rising flames expanding in their height, The martyr's glory crowns the soldier's flight. More bravely British Gen'ral never fell, Nor Gen'ral's death was e'er reveng'd so well, Which his pleas'd eyes beheld before their close, Follow'd by thousand victims of his foes. To his lamented loss, for times to come, His pious widow consecrates this tomb." On a lofty dome is the deceased's arms, with this motto, "_Tutis si Fortis_." Over it a Turk's head on a dagger, by way of crest, which he won by his valour in fighting against that people in the German war.--_Bushnall, sculptor._ Major ANDRE.--On a moulded panelled base and plinth stands a sarcophagus, on the panel of which is inscribed:--"Sacred to the memory of Major John André, who, raised by his merit, at an early period of life, to the rank of Adjutant-General of the British Forces in America, and employed in an important, but hazardous enterprise, fell a sacrifice to his zeal for his King and country, on the 2nd October, 1780, aged twenty-nine, universally beloved and esteemed by the army in which he served, and lamented even by his foes. His gracious Sovereign, King George III., has caused this monument to be erected;" and on the plinth--"The remains of the said Major André were deposited on the 28th November, 1821, in a grave near this monument." This is the third head now placed on General Washington's figure; several others are new, the originals, being so well executed, were too great a temptation for the curious pilferer to withstand. The projecting figures: one of them (with a flag of truce) is presenting to General Washington a letter, which André had addressed to his Excellency the night previous to his execution, worded thus:--"Sir, buoyed above the terror of death, by the consciousness of a life devoted to honourable purposes, and stained with no action which can give me remorse, I trust that the request which I make to your Excellency at this serious period, and which is to soften my last moments, will not be rejected; sympathy towards a soldier will surely induce your Excellency, and a military tribunal, to adapt the mode of my death to the feelings of a man of honour; let me hope, Sir, that if aught in my character impresses you with esteem towards me,--if aught in my misfortunes mark me as the victim of policy and not of resentment,--I shall experience the operations of those feelings in your breast, by being informed I am not to die on a gibbet. I have the honour to be, your Excellency, John André, Adjutant of the British Forces in America."--_Van Gelder, sculptor._ Against the organ gallery is the monument to THOMAS THYNNE, Esq.--The principal figure is represented in a dying posture, and at his feet a cherub weeping. It has this inscription:--"Thomas Thynne, of Longleate, in Co. Wilts, Esq., who was barbarously murdered on Sunday, the 12th February, 1682;" which murder was conspired by Count Koningsmarck, and executed by three assassins, hired for that purpose, who shot him in Pall-Mall, in his own coach. The motive was to obtain the rich heiress of Northumberland in marriage, who, in her infancy, had been betrothed to the Earl of Ogle, but left a widow, and afterwards married to Mr. Thynne.--_Quellin, sculptor._ Opposite, is a tablet of fine marble to General STRODE, decorated with military trophies, and bearing this inscription:--"Near this place lie the remains of William Strode, Esq., Lieutenant-General of his Majesty's Forces, and Colonel of the sixty-second Regiment of Foot. He departed this life, January 14, 1776, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, who constantly attended his duty both at home and abroad, during a course of sixty years' service. He was a strenuous asserter of both civil and religious liberty, as established at the glorious Revolution of William III. Military reader! go thou and do likewise."--_Hayward, sculptor._ Above is a tablet to Captain WILLIAM JULIUS, who commanded the Colchester man-of-war, and died Oct. 3, 1698, aged thirty-three. GEORGE CHURCHILL, second son of Sir Winston Churchill, of Dorsetshire, Knight, and brother of John, Duke of Marlborough. He was early trained to military affairs, and served with great honour by sea and land under Charles II., James II., William and Anne. He was Captain in the English fleet, at burning the French at La Hogue in William the Third's reign; and for his bravery there made one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. In the succeeding reign he was made Admiral-in-Chief. He died May 8, 1710, aged fifty-eight. An oval tablet to the memory of Major RICHARD CREED, enriched with military trophies; and on it there is this inscription:--"To the memory of the honoured Major Richard Creed, who attended William III. in all his wars, everywhere signalizing himself, and never more himself than when he looked an enemy in the face. At the glorious battle of Blenheim, 1704, he commanded one of those squadrons that began the attack; in two several charges he remained unhurt, but in the third, after many wounds received, still valiantly fighting, he was shot through the head. His dead body was brought off by his brother at the hazard of his own life, and buried there. To his memory, his sorrowful mother erects this monument, placing it near another, which her son, when living, used to look upon with pleasure, for the worthy mention it makes of that great man, Edward, Earl of Sandwich, to whom he had the honour to be related, and whose heroic virtue he was ambitious to imitate. He was the eldest son of John Creed, of Oundell, Esq., and Elizabeth, his wife, only daughter of Sir Gilbert Pickering, Bart., of Titmarsh, in Northamptonshire." Also a tablet in memory of Lieutenant RICHARD CREED, of the Bombay Artillery, who was killed in Upper Scinde, on the 20th of February, 1841, whilst fighting at the head of a party of volunteers from his troop, whom he had gallantly led to the assault of the fort Hujjack; thus prematurely closing, in the twelfth year of his services in India, and the twenty-eighth of his age, a career of high credit and brightest promise, throughout which, his ability, prudence, and devotion to duty, secured not less the esteem of his superiors, than his uniform kindness and conciliatory demeanour won the confidence and marked attachment of his humbler companions in arms. This tablet was erected by the officers of his regiment, to whom his generous nature, amiable deportment, and Christian virtues have, in no common degree, endeared his memory.--_Thomas, sculptor._ Above, on a plain marble stone, is an English inscription, reciting the military glories of Sir RICHARD BINGHAM, who was of the ancient family of the Binghams, of Bingham Melcomb, in Dorsetshire; and served in the reign of Queen Mary, at St. Quintin's; in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at Leith, in Scotland; in the Isle of Candy, under the Venetians; at Cabo Chrio, and in the famous battle of Lepanto, against the Turks; in the civil wars of France in the Netherlands, at Smerwick. After this he was made Governor of Connaught, in Ireland, where he overthrew the Irish Scots, expelled the traitor O'Rourke, suppressed the rebellion, and was finally made Marshal of Ireland, and Governor of Leinster. He died at Dublin, January 19, 1598, aged seventy; from whence he was brought, and here interred, by John Bingley, some time his servant. Above is a monument erected to the memory of MARTIN FOLKES, of Hillington, in the county of Norfolk, Esq., who, under the auspices of Newton, happily employed his talents, industry, and time, in the study of sublime philosophy. He was chosen President of the Royal Society in 1741, and calmly submitted to the common lot of man on the 28th June, 1754, at the age of sixty-three. He is represented sitting, with his hands resting on a book, shut, as if contemplating; above is an urn, covered with drapery, that a boy holds up; there are two more boys, one of whom seems much surprised, from looking through a microscope, while the other, with a pair of compasses, is measuring the globe.--_Ashton, sculptor._ Opposite, on your left, is a monument--"Sacred to the memory of General Sir THOMAS TRIGGE, Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath, Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance, and Colonel of the forty-fourth Regiment of Foot; who spent a long life in active service, and enjoyed the uniform approbation of his sovereign and of his country to his latest hour. He begun his career as Ensign in the twelfth Regiment; served during the seven years' war in Germany; was present at the battles of Minden, Fellinghausen, Williamsdahl, and others: he commanded the same regiment during the whole of the memorable defence of Gibraltar, and was afterwards many years Lieutenant-Governor of that fortress. While Commander-in-chief in the West Indies, he captured Surinam, and various islands; and for his services was made K.B. He lived respected and beloved, and departed this life in his seventy-second year, on the 11th January, 1814."--_Bacon, sculptor._ THOMAS OWEN, Esq.--On this monument is a fine figure of a Judge in his robes, leaning on his right arm, and over him an inscription, showing that he was the son of Richard Owen, by Mary, daughter and heiress of Thomas Otley, of Shropshire, Esq.; that from his youth he had applied himself to the study of the laws, and was first made Serjeant temp. to Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards a Justice of the Common Pleas. He died Dec. 21, 1598. PASQUALE DE PAOLI.--A bust strongly resembling the deceased, with the following inscription under it:--"To the memory of Pasquale de Paoli, one of the most eminent and most illustrious characters of the age in which he lived. He was born at Rostino, in Corsica, April 5, 1725; was unanimously chosen, at the age of thirty, Supreme Head of that island, and died in this metropolis, February 5, 1807, aged eighty-two years. The early and better part of his life he devoted to the cause of liberty, nobly maintaining it against the usurpation of Genoese and French tyranny. By his many splendid achievements, his useful and benevolent institutions, his patriotic and public zeal, manifested upon every occasion, he amongst the few who have merited so glorious a title, most justly deserves to be hailed the father of his country. Being obliged by the superior force of his enemies, to retire from Corsica, he sought refuge in this land of liberty, and was here most graciously received, amidst the general applause of a magnanimous nation, into the protection of his Majesty, King George III., by whose fostering hand and munificence he not only obtained a safe and honourable asylum, but was enabled, during the remainder of his days to enjoy the society of his friends and faithful followers in affluent and dignified retirement. He expressed to the last moment of his life the most grateful sense of his Majesty's paternal goodness towards him, praying for the preservation of his sacred person, and the prosperity of his dominions."--_Flaxman, sculptor._ Against the pillar is an oval tablet to JAMES KENDALL, Esq., supported by a Death's head. He was chosen a member of the last Parliament of James II., and served in several Parliaments afterwards in the reign of William III., by whom he was made Governor of Barbadoes, and one of the Commissioners of the Admiralty. He died July 10, 1708, aged sixty. Then turning yourself, you see opposite-- A little monument of white marble, erected to the memory of Dr. ISAAC WATTS. It is divided by a fascia, over which a bust of that eminent divine is exhibited, supported by Genii, who seem pleased with the office to which they are allotted. Underneath, in a circle, is a fine figure of the Doctor sitting on a stool, in the attitude of deep contemplation, which is finely expressed by an Angel opening to him the wonders of creation, while in one hand he holds a pen, and with the other points to a celestial globe. His name, the dates of his birth and death, are inscribed on the plinth:--"Isaac Watts, D.D., born July 17, 1674. Died November 25, 1748."--_Banks, sculptor._ GEORGE STEPNEY, Esq., descended from the Stepneys of Pendergraft, in Pembrokeshire, but born at Westminster, 1663, elected into the College of St. Peter's, at Westminster, 1676, and entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1682. In 1692 he was sent Envoy to the Elector of Brandenburgh; in 1696 and 1697, to the Electors of Mentz, Triers, Cologne, Palatine, Landgrave of Hesse, and to the Congress of Frankfort, on his return from which he was made Commissioner of Trade; in 1698, was sent a second time Envoy to the Elector of Brandenburgh; in 1699, in the same quality to Poland; in 1701, a second time to the Emperor; and lastly, in 1706, to the States General. All these several embassies he conducted with such integrity, application, and ease, that he generally exceeded the expectations of his sovereigns, William and Anne, by whom he was employed. He died at Chelsea, 1707. Above is a monument erected to the memory of JOHN METHUEN, Esq., who died in the service of his country, in Portugal, July 13, 1706, and was here interred, September 17, 1708.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ Also to that of his son, the Right Hon. Sir PAUL METHUEN, of Bishop's Canning, Wilts, one of his Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, and Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath, who died April 11, 1757, aged eighty-five. Beneath is a bust--"To the memory of CHARLES BURNEY, LL.D., L.D., F.S.A., et R.S., in the Royal Academy, London, Professor of Greek and Latin, Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty George III., Prebendary of the Church of Lincoln, Rector of Cliff, and of St. Paul, Deptford, in the county of Kent, eighteen years master of Greenwich School. He died on the 28th Jan. 1818, in his sixty-first year, and was buried at Deptford." The Latin inscription sets forth, that "he was a man of various and deep learning, of a judgment of critical nicety and elegance of style, polished by unremitting exercise, and in solving difficulties in metrical composition, of exquisite skill. His pupils, from a collection raised amongst themselves, caused this monument to be erected."--_Gahagan, sculptor._ JOHN WESLEY, M.A. Born June 17, 1703; died March 2, 1791. CHARLES WESLEY, M.A. Born December 13, 1708; died March 29, 1788. "The best of all is, God is with us." "I look upon all the world as my parish." "God buries His workmen, but carries on His work." THOMAS KNIPE, S.T.P.--This monument was erected by Alice, second wife of this learned man, who, for fifty years, was employed in Westminster School, sixteen whereof as Head Master. He was also a Prebendary of this Cathedral. The long Latin inscription contains nothing more than a laboured recital of a good man's virtues, and that he died August 8, 1711, aged seventy-three. At his feet is the grave of his affectionate scholar, WILLIAM KING, LL.D., without any inscription. Here hath been lately added an inscription in memory of two brothers, who both died in the service of their country: Captain JOHN KNIPE, 90th regiment, at Gibraltar, October 25, 1798, in the twenty-second year of his age; Captain ROBERT KNIPE, 14th Light Dragoons, at Villa Formosa, May 17, 1811, aged thirty-two. Opposite, on your left, is the monument to Dame GRACE GETHIN.--This lady, married to Sir Richard Gethin Grot, in Ireland, was famed for exemplary piety, and wrote a book of devotion, which Mr. Congreve complimented with a poem. She died October 11, 1697, aged twenty-one. ELIZABETH and JUDITH FREKE.--A long inscription, setting forth the descent and marriage of these two ladies, whose busts in relief ornament the sides. They were, as the inscription says, the daughters of Ralph Freke, of Hannington, in Wilts, Esq. Elizabeth was married to Percy Freke, of West Belney, in Norfolk, and died April 7, 1714, aged sixty-nine. Judith married Robert Austin, of Tenterden, in Kent, and died May 19, 1716, aged sixty-four. They were both great examples to their sex; the best of daughters, the best of wives, and the best of mothers. Opposite is a monument to WILLIAM WRAGG, Esq.: in the centre of which is represented the fatal accident that happened to the ship in which he was embarked, when he, with many more, was drowned, September 3, 1777. His son, who accompanied him, was miraculously saved on a package, supported by a black slave, till he was cast on shore, on the coast of Holland. "Sir CLOUDESLY SHOVELL, Knight, Rear-Admiral of Great Britain, and Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, the just rewards of his long and faithful services. He was deservedly beloved of his country, and esteemed, though dreaded, by the enemy, who had often experienced his conduct and courage. Being shipwrecked on the rocks of Scilly, in his voyage from Toulon, October 22, 1707, at night, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, his fate was lamented by all, but especially by the seafaring part of the nation, to whom he was a generous patron, and a worthy example. His body was flung on the shore, and buried with others, on the sand; but being soon after taken up, was placed under this monument, which his Royal Mistress had caused to be erected, to commemorate his steady loyalty and extraordinary virtues." A recumbent figure of the Admiral lies under a tent; beneath, in bas-relief, is the wreck of the Association.--_Bird, sculptor._ Above is a monument to Sir GODFREY KNELLER, Bart., under a canopy of state, the curtains whereof are finely gilt, and tied up with gold strings; and on each side of the bust is a weeping cherub, one resting on a medallion of his lady, the other pointing to Sir Godfrey. On the pedestal is a Latin inscription, signifying that Sir Godfrey Kneller, Knt., who lies interred here, was painter to Charles II., James II., William III., Anne, and George II. Born in 1646, died in 1723, aged seventy-seven. He was knighted March 3, 1691, and created a baronet May 24, 1715. Among his most excellent works are the "Beauties of the Court of Charles I." This monument was designed by Sir Godfrey himself. Bust by Rysbrack. Underneath is his epitaph, written by Mr. Pope:-- "Kneller, by Heaven, and not a master, taught, Whose art was nature, and whose pictures thought-- When now two ages he had snatched from fate Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great-- Rests, crowned with princes' honours, poets' lays, Due to his merit and brave thirst of praise: Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and dying, fears herself may die." Sir JOHN BURLAND, Knt., LL.D.--One of the Barons of his Majesty's Court of Exchequer; as a man, valued and beloved; as a judge, honoured and revered. He died suddenly, on the 29th of February, 1776, aged fifty-one years. On a pyramid of black marble is represented his profile in a medallion of statuary marble, decorated with emblems alluding to the qualities for which he was eminent, particularly the caduceus, denoting his eloquence, and the scales, expressive of justice. On the left is a neat tablet, which contains the following inscription:--"To the memory of WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, Midshipman, eldest son of Sir John Dalrymple, Bart., one of the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, and of Elizabeth Hamilton Macgill, representatives of the Viscounts of Oxford; who, though heir of ample estates, preferred to a life of indolence and pleasure the toilsome and perilous profession of a seaman when his country was in danger. At the age of eighteen, he was killed, off the coast of Virginia, in a desperate engagement, in which Captain Salter, in the Santa Margaretta, took the Amazone, a French ship of superior force, almost in sight of the enemy's fleet; receiving in the public despatches of his skilful and generous Commander, the honourable testimony that he was a worthy and deserving youth, who, had he lived, would have been an ornament to his profession; and leaving to his once happy parents, in whose fond eyes he appeared to promise whatever could be expected from genius, spirit, and the best gift of God, a kind and melting heart, the endearing remembrance of his virtues. Father of all! grant to the prayers of a father and mother, that their surviving children may inherit the qualities of such a brother, and that there may never be wanting to the British youth, the spirit to pursue that line of public honour which he marked out for himself and for them. Obit 29th July, 1782." An oval tablet, thus inscribed:--"Near these steps lies the body of Mrs. ANN WEMYSS, daughter of Dr. Lodowick Wemyss, some time Prebendary of this Cathedral, and of Mrs. Jane Bargrave, his wife, who departed this life, December 19, 1698, in her sixty-seventh year." SOPHIA FAIRHOLM.--This lady, her monumental inscription informs us, was born in Scotland, and was mother to the Marquis of Annandale, who, as a mark of his duty and gratitude, caused this monument to be erected to her memory. It is the representation of an ancient sepulchre, over which a stately edifice is raised, ornamented at top with the family arms. She died December 13, 1716, aged forty-nine. Above are inscriptions to the memory of Rear-Admiral JOHN HARRISON, who was Captain of the Namur, under Sir George Pocock, in several successful engagements with the French Fleet, commanded by Monsieur D'Aché, in one of which he was wounded. He conducted, under the same British Admiral, the armament against the Havannah, and brought the fleet and treasure safe to England. In consequence of excessive fatigue, soon after his return, he lost the use of one side by a paralytic stroke, and remained helpless twenty-eight years. He was firm in action, prudent in conduct, polished in society, generous and humane in a profession, and upon an element, where human virtue is of the most rigid kind, and human nature is most severely tried; his modesty was equal to his virtues. He died October 15, 1791, aged sixty-nine years. Above and below are expressed, in Latin, the following words:--"_God is my port and refuge: God hath shown His wonders in the deep_." Opposite, on your left, is the monument to Sir THOMAS RICHARDSON.--There is an effigy, in brass, of a Judge in his robes, with a collar of SS., representing Sir Thomas Richardson, Knight, "Speaker of the House of Commons in the twenty-first and twenty-second year of James I., Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and, lastly, by Charles I., made L.C.J. of England. He died in 1634, in his sixty-sixth year." _So far the inscription._ This is that Judge Richardson who first issued out an order against the ancient custom of wakes, and caused every minister to read it in his church, which the Bishop of Bath and Wells opposing, complaint was made against the order in the Council-chamber, where Richardson was so severely reprimanded, that he came out in a rage, saying--he had been almost choked with a pair of lawn sleeves.--_Huber le Seur, sculptor._ An ancient monument of marble and alabaster, gilt, on which lies a warrior at full length, representing WILLIAM THYNNE, of Botterville, Esq., a polite gentleman, a great traveller, and a brave soldier. In 1546 he was, by Henry VIII., made receiver of the marches, and fought against the Scots at Musselburgh. But his latter days were spent in retirement and devotion in this Church, to which he constantly repaired, morning and evening. His brother was Sir John Thynne, Secretary to the Duke of Somerset, from whom descended that unhappy gentleman whose story we have already related. He died March 14, 1584. Rev. Dr. ANDREW BELL, LL.D., Prebendary of this Church, the eminent founder of the Madras, now the National System of Education, throughout the British dominions. He is represented examining the boys under his system. Died 27th January, 1832.--_Behnes, sculptor._ Here you pass through the gate; the monument of Garrick is on your right. South Transept; or, Poets' Corner. A bust of GEORGE GROTE, Historian of Greece. Born 17th November, 1794; died 18th June, 1871. "To the memory of DAVID GARRICK, who died in the year 1779, at the age of sixty-three. "To paint fair Nature, by Divine command-- Her magic pencil in his glowing hand-- A Shakspeare rose; then, to expand his fame, Wide o'er this 'breathing world,' a Garrick came. Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew; Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day; And till eternity, with power sublime, Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, Shakspeare and Garrick like twin stars shall shine, And earth irradiate with a beam divine."--PRATT. "This monument, the tribute of a friend, was erected in 1797."--_Webber, fecit._ Garrick's throwing aside the curtain, which discovers the medallion, is meant to represent his superior power to unveil the beauties of Shakspeare. Tragedy and Comedy are assembled with their respective attributes, to witness and approve the scene. JOHN ERNEST GRABE: a curious figure, large as life, representing him sitting upon a marble tomb, contemplating the sorrows of death, and the sorrows of the grave. He was a man deeply skilled in Oriental learning. He died Nov. 3, 1711, aged forty-six, and was buried at Pancras, near London.--_Bird, sculptor._ Sir ROBERT TAYLOR, Knight, who was a famous architect. He died on the 26th of September, 1788, aged seventy years. WILLIAM CAMDEN, the great recorder of our antiquities, who is represented in a half length, in the dress of his time, with his left hand holding a book, and in his right his gloves, resting on an altar, on the body of which is a Latin inscription, setting forth his "indefatigable industry in illustrating the British Antiquities, and his candour, sincerity, and pleasant good-humour in private life." He was son to Samson Camden, citizen of London, and paper-stainer; was born in the Old Bailey, May 2, 1551, and received the first rudiments of his education at Christ Church Hospital. In 1566, he entered himself of Magdalen College, Oxford, but afterwards removed to Pembroke, where he became acquainted with Dr. Goodman, Dean of Westminster, by whose recommendation, in 1575, he was made second master of Westminster School, and began the glorious work of his Antiquities, encouraged thereto and assisted by his patron, Dr. Goodman. In August, 1622, he fell from his chair, at his house, in Chiselhurst, in Kent, and never recovered, but lingered till Nov. 9, 1623, and then died, aged seventy-four. _This monument was repaired and beautified at the charge and expense of the University of Oxford._ In front of Camden's monument lie the remains of JOHN IRELAND, Dean of Westminster, and in the same grave those of his friend, WILLIAM GIFFORD, a distinguished critic, satirist, and dramatic annotator. In private life Mr. Gifford was modest and unassuming, and amongst the numerous parties, poetical, political, or religious, none of them ever ventured to recriminate by attacking the moral character of the Editor of the Quarterly Review. He was born at Ashburton, in 1757, and died 1826. ISAAC CASAUBON.--This monument was erected by the learned Dr. Moreton, Bishop of Durham, to the memory of that profound scholar and critic, whose name is inscribed upon it, and who, though a native of France, and in his younger years Royal Library Keeper of Paris, yet was so dissatisfied with the ceremonial part of the Romish worship, that upon the murder of his great patron, Henry IV., he willingly quitted his native country, and at the earnest entreaty of James I., settled in England, where, for uncommon knowledge, he became the admiration of all men of learning. He died, 1614, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. The monument to Casaubon is not without interest to the mind of the curious, as upon close inspection may be seen the initials and date of "good old Izaak Walton" (I. W., 1658), Author of "The Complete Angler." This renowed piscator has somewhere said that he went into Westminster Abbey to visit the tomb of his departed friend, Casaubon, and while there, in contemplation before his monument, he ventured to scratch his own initials and date upon it. Sir RICHARD COXE, who was taster to Queen Elizabeth and James I., and to the latter, Steward of the Household; a man commended in his epitaph for his religion, humanity, chastity, temperance, friendship, beneficence, charity, vigilance, and self-denial. He was third son of Thomas Coxe, of Beymonds, in Hertfordshire, and died a bachelor, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, December 13, 1623. A small tablet to the memory of JAMES WYAT, Esq., who was architect of this church, and Surveyor-General of His Majesty's Board of Works. Departed this life on the 4th day of Sept., 1813. Above is a monument to Sir JOHN PRINGLE, Bart. The inscription sets forth that he was Physician to the Army, the Princess of Wales, and their Majesties; President of the Royal Society. He was born in Scotland, in April, 1707; and died in London, in January, 1782. EDWARD WETENHALL, M.D., an eminent Physician, who died August 29, 1733. His father was Dr. Edward Wetenhall, who was first advanced to the See of Cork, in Ireland, but was afterwards translated from thence to Kilmore and Ross. He died November 12, 1713, aged seventy-eight. Dr. STEPHEN HALES.--Here are two beautiful figures in relief, Religion and Botany; the latter holds a medallion of this great explorer of nature to public view; Religion is deploring the loss of the divine; and at the feet of Botany, the winds are displayed on a globe, which allude to his invention of the ventilator. The Latin inscription is to the following effect:--"To the memory of Stephen Hales, Doctor of Divinity, Augusta, the mother of that best of Kings, George the Third, has placed this monument, who chose him, when living, to officiate as her chaplain; and after he died, which was on the 4th of January, 1761, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, honoured him with this marble. "About the tomb of Hales, whose fair design And polish great Augusta caus'd to shine, Religion, hoary Faith, and Virtue wait, And shed perpetual tears in mournful state. But of the preacher, render'd to his clay, The voice of Wisdom still hath this to say-- He was a man to hear affliction's cry, And trace his Maker's works with curious eye. O Hales! thy praises not the latest age Shall e'er diminish, or shall blot thy page; England, so proud of Newton, shall agree She had a son of equal rank in thee."--_Wilton, sculptor._ THOMAS TRIPLETT, D.D., who was born near Oxford, and educated at Christ Church, where he was esteemed a wit, a good Grecian, and a poet. In 1645, he was made Prebendary of Preston, in the Church of Sarum, and had also a living, which being sequestered in the Rebellion, he fled to Ireland, and taught school in Dublin, where he was when Charles I. was beheaded. Not liking Ireland, he returned to England, and taught school at Hayes, in Middlesex, till the Restoration, when he was made Prebendary of Westminster, and of Fenton in the Church of York. He died at a good old age, July 18, 1670, much beloved and lamented. A bust of Dr. ISAAC BARROW, representing this truly great man, who, as the inscription shows, was Chaplain to Charles II., Head of Trinity College, Cambridge; Geometrical Professor of Gresham College, in London, and of Greek and Mathematics at Cambridge. His works have been said to be the foundation of all the divinity that has been written since his time. He died May 4, 1677, aged 47. Above this monument the arch is plastered and painted with the figure of a stag, which was done by order of Richard II.; the following motto was on the collar:-- "When Julius Cæsar first came in, About my neck he put this ring; Whosoever doth me take, Use me well for Cæsar's sake." It is said he lived three or four hundred years. WILLIAM OUTRAM, D.D.--The Latin inscription sets forth that he was born in Derbyshire, fellow of Trinity and Christ Church Colleges in Cambridge, Canon of this Abbey, and Archdeacon of Leicester; an accomplished divine, a nervous and accurate writer, an excellent and diligent preacher, first in Lincolnshire, afterwards in London, and lastly at St. Margaret's, Westminster, where he finished his life with great applause, August 23, 1679, aged fifty-four. The inscription on the pedestal shows farther, that after a long and religious life, and forty-two years of widowhood, Jane, his wife, died Oct. 4, 1721. A fine figure of JOSEPH ADDISON, Esq., on a circular basement, about which are small figures of the nine muses. The Latin inscription is to the following purport:--"Whoever thou art, venerate the memory of Joseph Addison, in whom Christian faith, virtue, and good morals, found a continual patron; whose genius was shown in verse, and every exquisite kind of writing; who gave to posterity the best examples of pure language, and the best rules for living well, which remain, and ever will remain sacred; whose weight of argument was tempered with wit, and accurate judgment with politeness, so that he encouraged the good, and reformed the improvident, tamed the wicked, and in some degree made them in love with virtue. He was born in the year 1672, and his fortune being increased gradually, arrived at length to public honours. Died in the forty-eighth year of his age, the honour and delight of the British nation."--He was buried in front of Lord Halifax's monument, north aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel.--_Sir Richard Westmacott, sculptor._ LORD MACAULAY.--The body of this eminent historian is deposited close to the statue of Addison. Born October 25th, 1800; died December 28th, 1859. Near the statute of Addison are two fine busts, one on each side, of LORD MACAULAY, by Burnard; and THACKERAY, by Marrochetti. GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL.--This is the last monument which that eminent statuary, Roubiliac, lived to finish. It is affirmed that he first became conspicious, and afterwards finished the exercise of his art, with a figure of this extraordinary man. The first was erected in the gardens at Vauxhall, therefore well known to the public. The last figure is very elegant, and the face is a strong likeness of its original. The left arm is resting on a group of musical instruments, and the attitude is very expressive of great attention to the harmony of an angel playing on a harp in the clouds, over his head. Before it lies the celebrated Messiah, with that part open, where is the much-admired air,--"_I know that my Redeemer liveth_." Beneath, only this inscription:--"George Frederick Handel, Esq., born Feb. 23, 1684. Died April 14, 1759." Sacred to the memory of Major-General Sir ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, Knight of the Bath, M.P., Colonel of the seventy-fourth Regiment of Foot, Hereditary Usher of the White Rod for Scotland, late Governor of Jamaica, Governor of Fort St. George, and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces on the coast of Coromandel, in the East Indies. He died equally regretted and admired for his eminent civil and military services to his country; possessed of distinguished endowments of mind, dignified manners, inflexible integrity, unfeigned benevolence, with every social and amiable virtue. He departed this life March 31, A.D. 1791, aged fifty-two. "Alas, piety! alas, fidelity! like that of old, and warlike courage! when shall you have his equal?"--_Wilton, sculptor._ Here also lies the body of his nephew, Lieutenant-General Sir JAMES CAMPBELL, Bart., G.C.H., and C.SS., F.M., who served during the whole of the last war in many distinguished situations; was Commander of the Forces in the Ionian Islands at the general peace of 1814, and died at London upon the 6th of June, 1819, aged fifty-four. [Illustration: POET'S CORNER, _p. 103_.] On a tablet is the following inscription:--"To the memory of MARY HOPE, who died at Brockhall, in the county of Northampton, on the 25th of June, 1767, aged twenty-five, and whose remains lie in the neighbouring church at Norton, this stone, an unavailing tribute of affliction, is by her husband erected and inscribed. She was the only daughter of Eliab Breton, of Forty Hill, Middlesex, Esq., and was married to John Hope, of London, Merchant, to whom she left three infant sons, Charles, John, and William. "Tho' low in earth, her beauteous form decay'd, My faithful wife, my lov'd Maria's laid. In sad remembrance, the afflicted raise No pompous tomb inscrib'd with venal praise. To statesmen, warriors, and to kings, belong The trophied sculpture, and the poet's song; And these the proud expiring often claim, Their wealth bequeathing to record their name. But humble virtue, stealing to the dust, Heeds not our lays, or monumental bust. To name her virtues ill befits my grief-- What was my bliss can now give no relief; A husband mourns--the rest let friendship tell; Fame, spread her worth! a husband knew it well!" Sir THOMAS and Lady ROBINSON.--This monument to the memory of the Dowager Baroness Lechmere, eldest daughter of Charles Howard, third Earl of Carlisle, and widow of Nicholas Lord Lechmere, afterwards married Sir Thomas Robinson, of Rookby Park, in the county of York, Baronet, on October 28, 1728, and died April 10, 1739, aged forty-four. Sir Thomas, after enjoying many honourable and lucrative employments in the State, spent the latter part of his life in retirement, dying March 3, 1777, aged seventy-six.--_Walsh, sculptor._ EDWARD ATKYNS and his ancestors. The first was Sir Edward Atkyns, one of the Barons of the Exchequer in the reigns of Charles I. and II., and of such loyalty as to resist the most splendid offers of the Oliverian party. He died in 1669, aged eighty-two. The second, Sir Robert Atkyns, was created Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles II.; was afterwards L.C.B. of the Exchequer under William III., and Speaker of the House of Lords in several Parliaments; a person of eminent learning, as his writings abundantly prove. He died in 1709, aged eighty-eight.--The third, Sir Edward Atkyns, was L.C.B. of the Exchequer at the time of the Revolution; but not approving that measure, he retired from public business to his seat in Norfolk, where his chief employment was healing breaches among his neighbours, which he decided with such exemplary justice, that none refused his reference, nor did the most litigious men appeal from his award. He died in 1698, aged sixty-eight.--The fourth, Sir Robert Atkyns, was versed in the Antiquities of his country, of which his History of Gloucester was a proof. He died in 1711, aged sixty-five years.--The inscription sets forth, that in memory of his ancestors, who have so honourably presided in Westminster Hall, Edward Atkyns, Esq., late of Kettringham, in Norfolk, second son of the last-named Sir Edward, caused this monument to be erected. He died Jan. 20, 1750, aged seventy-nine years.--_Cheere, sculptor._ A medallion and inscription--"To the memory of the Right Honourable JAMES STUART MACKENZIE, Lord Privy Seal of Scotland, a man whose virtues did honour to humanity. He cultivated and encouraged science; and during a long life, was generous without ostentation, secretly charitable, friendly, hospitable, and ever ready to oblige. He was beloved and revered by all: he had many friends, and not one enemy. He died the 6th of April, 1800, in the eighty-second year of his age. He was married to Elizabeth, daughter of John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, his uncle."--_Nollekens, sculptor._ JOHN, Duke of ARGYLE and GREENWICH.--On one side of the base is the figure of Minerva, and on the other of Eloquence; done by Roubiliac, particularly expressive. Above is the figure of History, with one hand holding a book, with the other writing on a pyramid the titles of the hero, whose actions are supposed to be contained in the book, on the cover of which, in letters of gold, are inscribed the date of his Grace's birth, Oct. 10, 1680, and time of his death, Oct. 4, 1743. The principal figure is spirited, even to the verge of life. On the pyramid is this epitaph, said to be written by Paul Whitehead, Esq.:-- "Briton! behold, if patriot worth be dear, A shrine that claims a tributary tear; Silent that tongue admiring senates heard, Nerveless that arm opposing legions fear'd. Nor less, O Campbell! thine the power to please, And give to grandeur all the grace of ease. Long from thy life let kindred heroes trace Arts which ennoble still the noblest race; Others may owe their future fame to me, I borrow immortality from thee." Underneath this, in great letters, is written--"JOHN, DUKE OF ARGYLE AND GR--" at which point the pen of History rests. On the base of the monument is this inscription:--"In memory of an honest man, a constant friend, John, the great Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, a General and Orator, exceeded by none in the age he lived, Sir Henry Fermer, Bart., by his last will, left the sum of 500_l._ towards erecting this monument, and recommended the above inscription." Over the door of the Chapel of St. Faith, is the monument of OLIVER GOLDSMITH, M.D., representing the portrait of the Doctor in profile. A festoon curtain, olive branches, and books, are the chief ornaments. Underneath is a Latin inscription, of which the following is the import:--"That he was eminent as a Poet, Philosopher, and Historian; that he scarcely left any species of writing unattempted, and none that he attempted, unimproved; that he was master of the softer passions, and could at pleasure command tears, or provoke laughter; but in everything he said or did, good nature was predominant; that he was witty, sublime, spirited, and facetious; in speech pompous; in conversation elegant and graceful; that the love of his associates, fidelity of his friends, and the veneration of his readers, _had raised this monument to his memory_. He was born in Ireland, November 29, 1731, educated at Dublin, and died at London, April 4, 1774, and was buried in the Temple burial ground."--_Nollekens, sculptor._ Near to the door of the Chapel of St. Faith is a black marble slab, which covers the remains of CHARLES DICKENS, born Feb. 7th, 1812, died June 9th, 1870. And near to him are the remains of Handel, Cumberland, Macaulay, Sheridan, Garrick, Samuel Johnson, and Thomas Parr, of the county of Salop, born 1483, who lived in the reign of ten Princes: viz., Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. He died Nov. 15th, 1635, at the age of 152. A monument erected to the memory of JOHN GAY, by the bounty and favour of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who were the great encouragers of his genius. The masks, tragedy, dagger, and instruments of music, which are blended together in a group are emblematical devices, alluding to the various ways of writing in which he excelled: namely, farce, satire, fable, and pastoral. The short epitaph on the front was written by himself. It is censured by some for its levity,-- "Life is a jest, and all things show it: I thought so once, but now I know it." Underneath are these verses, by Mr. Pope, who lived always in great friendship with Mr. Gay: "Of manners gentle, of affections mild; In wit a man, simplicity a child; With native humour temp'ring virtuous rage, Form'd to delight at once and lash the age; Above temptation in a low estate, And uncorrupted e'en among the great; A safe companion and an easy friend, Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end; These are thy honours; not that here thy bust Is mix'd with heroes, or with Kings thy dust; But that the worthy and the good shall say, Striking their pensive bosoms--Here lies Gay!" He died December 4, 1732, aged forty-five.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ NICHOLAS ROWE, Esq., and his only daughter. On the front of the pedestal is this inscription:--"To the memory of Nicholas Rowe, Esq., who died in 1718, aged forty-five; and of CHARLOTTE, his only daughter, wife of Henry Fane, Esq., who, inheriting her father's spirit, and amiable in her own innocence and beauty, died in the twenty-second year of her age, 1739." Underneath, upon the front of the altar, is this epitaph:-- "Thy reliques, Rowe! to this sad shrine we trust, And near thy Shakspeare place thy honour'd bust. Oh! next him skill'd to draw the tender tear, For never heart felt passion more sincere; To nobler sentiment to fire the brave, For never Briton more disdained a slave; Peace to thy gentle shade, and endless rest, Blest in thy genius, in thy love, too, blest! And blest, that timely from our scene remov'd, Thy soul enjoys that liberty it lov'd! To these so mourn'd in death, so loved in life, The childless parent and the widow'd wife, With tears inscribed this monumental stone, That hold their ashes, and expects her own." Mr. Rowe was Poet Laureate, and author of several fine tragedies; and, just before his death, had finished a translation of Lucan's Pharsalia.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ JAMES THOMSON, author of the Seasons, and other Poetical Works. The figure of Mr. Thomson leans its left arm upon a pedestal, holding a book in one hand, and the Cap of Liberty in the other. Upon the pedestal, in bas-relief, are the Seasons; to which a boy points, offering him a laurel crown, as the reward of his genius. At the feet of the figure is the tragic mask and the ancient harp. The whole is supported by a projecting pedestal, and in a panel is the following inscription:--"James Thomson, _�tatis 48, Obit 27 August, 1748_. Tutored by thee, sweet Poetry exalts her voice to ages, and informs the page with music, image, sentiment, and thought, never to die!" Erected 1762.--_Spang, sculptor._ WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.--Both the design and workmanship of this monument are extremely elegant. The figure of Shakspeare, and his attitude, his dress, his shape, his genteel air, and fine composure, all so delicately expressed by the sculptor, cannot be sufficiently admired; and those beautiful lines of his that appear on the scroll are very happily chosen:-- "The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And, like the baseless fabric of a vision, Leave not a wreck behind."--_The Tempest._ The heads on the pedestal, representing Henry V., Richard III., and Queen Elizabeth (three principal characters in his plays), are likewise proper ornaments to grace his tomb. In short, the taste that is here shown does honour to those great names under whose direction, by the public favour, it was so elegantly constructed: namely, the Earl of Burlington, Dr. Mead, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Martin. It was designed by Kent, executed by Scheemakers, and the expanse defrayed by the grateful contributions of the public, 125 years after his death. He died April 24, 1617, in his 53rd year, and was buried in the great church at Stratford. In front of this monument are buried Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Henderson, Sheridan, Campbell, and Cary. "To the memory of Mrs. PRITCHARD, this tablet is here placed by a voluntary subscription of those who admired and esteemed her. She retired from the stage, of which she had long been the ornament, in the month of April, 1768, and died at Bath in the month of August following, in the fifty-seventh year of her age. "Her comic vein had every charm to please, 'Twas nature's dictates breathed with nature's ease: E'en when her powers sustain'd the tragic load, Full, clear, and just, the harmonious accents flow'd; And the big passions of her feeling heart Burst freely forth and shamed the mimic art. Oft on the scene, with colours not her own, She painted Vice, and taught us what to shun; One virtuous track her real life pursu'd, That nobler part was uniformly good; Each duty there to such perfection wrought. That, if the precepts fail'd, the example taught." _W. Whitehead, P.L._ _Hayward, sculptor._ Above is a bust to ROBERT SOUTHEY (Poet Laureate); born August 12, 1774; died March 21, 1843.--_Weekes, sculptor._ THOMAS CAMPBELL, LL.D., Author of "The Pleasures of Hope," thrice Lord-Rector of the University of Glasgow, founder of the Polish Association, &c. He was born July 27, 1777; died at Boulogne, June 15, 1844; and was buried with great public solemnity, near this spot, on the 3rd of July following. As a classic poet, a warm philanthropist, a staunch friend of literary men, he possessed the highest qualities of mind and heart. His Patriotic Lyrics breathe the very spirit of British freedom and independence; while his other poems--all models of composition--are richly imbued with the spirit of moral and religious sentiment. This statue, from the classic chisel of W. C. Marshall, R.A., was erected on the 1st of May, 1855. The pedestal as it now stands, was the gift of a lady (sister-in-law of Dr. Beattie, the Poet's physician and biographer). The highly appropriate Lines inscribed upon it are taken from "_The Last Man_:"-- "This spirit shall return to HIM Who gave its heavenly spark; Yet think not, sun, it shall be dim When thou thyself art dark! No--it shall live again, and shine In bliss unknown to beams of thine, By HIM recall'd to breath Who captive led captivity. Who robbed the Grave of Victory, And took the sting from Death!" The statue represents the Poet in his academic robes of Lord-Rector and the relieved figure, with the torch, the triumph of immortal HOPE, as described in the following lines:-- "Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of Time, Thy joyous youth began, but shall not fade.-- When all the sister planets have decayed, When wrapped in fire, the realms of ether glow, And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below, Thou, undismayed, shall o'er the ruins smile, And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile!" "_Pleasures of Hope._" [For these and the preceding lines, see Campbell's Poems.] Affixed to the pillar is a tablet--"Sacred to the memory of CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY, Esq., formerly a scholar at Eton, and fellow of Trinity College, in Cambridge: a very elegant poet, who held a distinguished pre-eminence, even among those who excelled in the same kinds of his art. About the year 1770, he exchanged his residence in Cambridgeshire for Bath, a place above all that he had long delighted in. The celebrated poem that he wrote, under the title of the Bath Guide, is a sufficient testimony; and after having lived there thirty-six years, died in the year 1805, aged eighty-one, and was buried in Walcot Church, Bath."--_Horwell, sculptor._ A tablet with a fine medallion,--"Sacred to the memory of GRANVILLE SHARP, ninth son of Dr. Thomas Sharp, Prebendary of the Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches of York, Durham, and Southwell, and grandson of Dr. John Sharp, Archbishop of York. Born and educated in the bosom of the Church of England, he ever cherished for her institutions the most unshaken regard, whilst his whole soul was in harmony with the sacred strain--'Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men;' on which his life presented one beautiful comment of glowing piety and unwearied beneficence. Freed by competence from the necessity, and by content from the desire, of lucrative occupation, he was incessant in his labours to improve the condition of mankind. Founding public happiness on public virtue, he aimed to rescue his native country from the guilt and inconsistency of employing the arm of Freedom to rivet the fetters of Bondage, and established for the Negro Race, in the person of _Somerset_ (his servant), the long disputed rights of human nature. Having, in this glorious cause, triumphed over the combined resistance of Interest, Prejudice, and Pride, he took his post amongst the foremost of the honourable band associated to deliver Africa from the rapacity of Europe, by the abolition of the Slave Trade; nor was death permitted to interrupt his career of usefulness, till he had witnessed that Act of the British Parliament by which 'The Abolition' was decreed. In his private relations he was equally exemplary; and having exhibited through life a model of disinterested virtue, he resigned his pious spirit into the hands of his Creator, in the exercise of Charity, and Faith, and Hope, on the 6th day of July, A.D. 1813, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Reader, if on perusing this tribute to a private individual, thou shouldest be disposed to suspect it as partial, or censure it as diffuse, know that it is not panegyric, but history.--_Erected by the African Institution of London_, A.D. 1816."--_Chantrey, sculptor._ Above is a bust of CHARLES DE ST. DENIS, Lord of St. Evremond.--This gentleman was of a noble family in Normandy, and was employed in the army of France, in which he rose to the rank of Marshal; but retiring to Holland, he was from thence invited by Charles II. into England, where he lived in the greatest intimacy with the King and principal nobility, more particularly with the Duchess of Mazarine. He had a very sprightly turn both in conversation and writing. He lived to the age of ninety, and was carried off at last by a violent fit of the stranguary, September 9, 1703. Though he left France, as it may be imagined, on account of religion, yet in his will he left twenty pounds to poor Roman Catholics, and twenty pounds to poor French refugees; besides other legacies to be disposed of to those in distress, of what religion soever they might be. MATTHEW PRIOR.--The bust was done by order of the King of France. On one side of the pedestal stands the figure of Thalia, one of the nine Muses, with a flute in her hand; and on the other, History, with her book shut; between both is the bust of the deceased, upon a raised altar of fine marble; on the outermost side of which is a Latin inscription, importing that while he was busied in writing the history of his own times, Death interposed, and broke both the thread of his discourse and of his life, Sept. 18, 1721, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Over the bust is a pediment, on the ascending sides of which are two boys, one with an hour glass in his hand, run out, the other holding a torch reversed; on the apex of the pediment is an urn, and on the base of the monument a long inscription, reciting the principal employments in which he had been engaged; particularly that, by order of King William and Queen Mary; he assisted at the Congress of the Confederate Powers of the Hague, in 1690; in 1697 was one of the Plenipotentiaries of the Peace of Ryswick: and in the following year was of the embassy to France and also Secretary of State in Ireland. In 1700, he was made one of the Board of Trade; in 1711, First Commissioner of the Customs; and lastly, in the same year, was sent by Queen Anne to Louis XIV. of France, with proposals of peace. All these trusts he executed with uncommon address and abilities, and had retired from public business, when a violent cholic, occasioned by a cold, carried him off; by which the world was deprived of an invaluable treasure, which he was preparing to lay before the public.--_Rysbrack, sculptor. Bust by Coizevox._ "Sacred to the best of men, WILLIAM MASON, A.M., a Poet, if any, elegant, correct, and pious. Died 7th of April, 1797, aged seventy-two."--It is a neat piece of sculpture. A medallion of the deceased is held up by a figure of Poetry, bemoaning the loss.--_Bacon, sculptor._ THOMAS SHADWELL.--This monument was erected by Dr. John Shadwell, to the memory of his deceased father. The inscription sets forth that he was descended from an ancient family in Staffordshire, was Poet Laureate and Historiographer in the reign of William III., and died November 20, 1692, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. He was author of several plays, and was satirized by Dryden, under the character of Ogg, in the second part of Absalom and Architophel. He died at Chelsea, by taking opium, and was there buried.--_Bird, sculptor._ JOHN MILTON.--He was a great polemical and political writer, and Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell; but what has immortalized his name, are those two inimitable pieces, Paradise Lost and Regained. He was born in London in 1604, and died at Bunhill (perhaps the same as Bunhill Fields) in 1674, leaving three daughters behind him unprovided for, and was buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In 1737, Mr. Auditor Benson erected this monument to his memory.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ Under Milton is an elegant monument erected to the memory of Mr. GRAY. This monument seems expressive of the compliment contained in the epitaph, where the Lyric Muse, in alt-relief, is holding a medallion of the Poet, and at the same time pointing the finger up to the bust of Milton, which is directly over it. "No more the Grecian muse unrival'd reigns; To Britain let the nations homage pay: She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray." Died July 30, 1771, aged fifty-four, and was buried at Stoke.--_John Bacon, sculptor._ SAMUEL BUTLER.--This tomb, as by the inscription appears, was erected by John Barber, Esq., Lord Mayor of London, _that he who was destitute of all things when alive, might not want a monument when dead_. He was author of Hudibras, and was a man of consummate learning, wit, and pleasantry, peculiarly happy in his writings, though he reaped small advantages from them, and suffered great distress by reason of his narrow circumstances. He lived, however, to a good old age, and was buried at the expense of Mr. Longueville, in the churchyard of St. Paul, Covent Garden. He was born at Strencham, in Worcestershire, in 1612, and died in London, 1680. EDMUND SPENCER.--Beneath Mr. Butler's, there was a rough decayed tomb of Purbeck stone, to the memory of Mr. Edmund Spencer, one of the best English poets, which being much decayed, a subscription was set on foot, by the liberality of Mr. Mason, in 1778, to restore it. The subscription succeeded, and the monument was restored as nearly as possible to the old form, but in statuary marble. His works abound with innumerable beauties and such a variety of imagery, as is scarce to be found in any other writer, ancient or modern. On this monument is this inscription:--"Here lies (expecting the second coming of our Saviour Christ Jesus) the body of Edmund Spencer, the Prince of Poets in his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works which he left behind him. He was born in London in 1553, and died in 1598." BEN JONSON.--This monument is of fine marble, and is very neatly ornamented with emblematical figures, alluding, perhaps, to the malice and envy of his contemporaries. His epitaph--"_O Rare Ben Jonson!_"--is cut in the pavement where he is buried in the North Aisle. He was Poet Laureate to James I., and contemporary with Shakspeare, to whose writings, when living, he was no friend, though, when dead, he wrote a Poem prefixed to his Plays, which does him the amplest justice. His father was a clergyman, and he was educated at Westminster School while Mr. Carden was Master; but after his father's death, his mother marrying a bricklayer, he was forced from school, and made to lay bricks. There is a story told of him, that at the building of Lincoln's Inn, he worked with his trowel in one hand, and Horace in the other; but Mr. Carden, regarding his parts, recommended him to Sir Walter Raleigh, whose son he attended in his travels, and upon his return entered himself at Cambridge. He died the 16th of August, 1637, aged sixty-three.--_Rysbrack, sculptor._ [Illustration: POETS CORNER WESTMINSTER ABBEY] On the left is a monument to MICHAEL DRAITON. The inscription and epitaph were formerly in letters of gold, but now almost obliterated, and therefore are here preserved:--"Michael Draiton, Esq., a memorable Poet of his age, exchanged his laurel for a Crown of Glory, anno 1631. "Do, pious marble, let thy readers know What they, and what their children, owe To _Draiton's_ name, whose sacred dust We recommend unto thy trust: Protect his mem'ry, and preserve his story; Remain a lasting monument of his glory; And when thy ruins shall disclaim To be the treasure of his name, His name, that cannot fade, shall be An everlasting monument to thee." This gentleman was both an excellent poet and a learned antiquarian. Over the monument to Ben Jonson is a window given by Dr. Rogers; it represents David and St. John, the poets of the Old and New Testaments.--_Clayton and Bell._ BARTON BOOTH, Esq., elegantly designed and well executed. His bust is placed between two cherubs, one holding a wreath over his head in the act of crowning him: the other in a very pensive attitude, holding a scroll, on which is inscribed his descent from an ancient family in Lancashire, his admission into Westminster School, under Dr. Busby, his qualifications as an actor, which procured him both the royal patronage and the public applause. He died in 1733, in the fifty-fourth year of his age; and this monument was erected by his surviving widow in 1772.--_W. Tyler, sculptor._ Mr. JOHN PHILLIPS.--The bust of this gentleman, in relief, is here represented as in an arbour interwoven with laurel branches and apple trees; and over it is this motto--"_Honos erat huic quoque Pomo_;" alluding to the high qualities ascribed to the apple, in that excellent poem of his called Cider. He was son of Stephen Phillips, D.D., Archdeacon of Salop; was born at Bampton, in Oxfordshire, December 30, 1676, and died at Hereford, Feb. 15, 1708, of a consumption, in the prime of life. GEOFFREY CHAUCER.--This has been a very beautiful monument in the Gothic style, but is now much defaced, and is generally passed over with a superficial glance, except by those who never suffer anything curious to escape their notice. Geoffrey Chaucer, to whose name it is sacred, is called the Father of English Poets, and flourished in the fourteenth century. He was son of Sir John Chaucer, a citizen of London, and employed by Edward III. in negociations abroad relating to trade. He was a great favourite at court, and married the great John of Gaunt's wife's sister. He was born in 1328, and died Oct. 25, 1400. This monument was erected by Nicholas Bingham, of Oxford, in 1556. The memorial window to CHAUCER, immediately over his tomb, is intended to embody his intellectual labour, and his position amongst his contemporaries. At the base are the Canterbury Pilgrims, showing the setting out from London, and the arrival at Canterbury. The medallions above represent Chaucer receiving a commission, with others, in 1372, from King Edward III. to the Doge of Genoa, and his reception by the latter. At the apex, the subjects are taken from the moral poem entitled "The Floure and the Leafe." "As they which honour the Flower, a thing fading with every blast, are such as look after beauty and worldly pleasure; but they that honour the Leaf, which abideth with the root, notwithstanding the frost and winter storms, are they which follow virtue and during qualities, without regard to worldly respects." On the dexter side, dressed in white, is the Lady of the Leafe, and attendants; on the sinister side is the Lady of the Floure, dressed in green. In the spandrils adjoining are the Arms of Chaucer. On the dexter side, and on the sinister, Chaucer impaling these of (Roet) his wife. In the tracery above, the portrait of Chaucer occupies the centre, between that of Edward III. and Philippa his wife; below them Gower and John of Gaunt, and above are Wickliffe and Strode, his contemporaries. In the borders are disposed the following arms, alternately: England, France, Hainhault, Lancaster, Castile, and Leon. At the base of the window is the name Geoffrey Chaucer, died A.D. 1400, and four lines selected from the poem entitled, "Balade of Gode Counsaile." "Flee fro the prees, and dwell with soth fastnesse, Suffise unto thy good though it be small;" * * * * * "That thee is sent receyve in buxomnesse; The wrastling for this world asketh a fall." This window was designed by Mr. J. G. Waller, and executed by Messrs. Thomas Baillie, and George Mayer, 118, Wardour Street, London, 1868. EXPLANATION OF THE SUBJECTS.--The Pilgrims are arranged in the following manner:--The Departure from the Tabard, thus: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1. The Reve. |4. The Knight. |7. The Serjeant of Law. 2. The Manciple. |5. The Yeoman. |8. The Shipmanne. 3. Chaucer. |6. The Squire. |9. The Doctor of Physick. The Arrival at Canterbury, thus: 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 10. The Somptnour. |13. The Monk. |16. The Frankelein. 11. The Pardoner. |14. The Prioress. |17. The Plowman. 12. The Parson. |15. The Nun. |18. The Clerk of Oxenforde. _Arrangement of Portraits in Tracery._ Wickliffe. Strode. Edward III. Chaucer. Philippa. Gower. John of Gaunt. Above is a neat monument to the memory of John Roberts, Esq., the very faithful Secretary of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham, Minister of State to George II. This marble was erected by his three surviving sisters, in 1776.--_Hayward, sculptor._ ABRAHAM COWLEY.--This monument, though apparently plain, is very expressive; the chaplet of laurel that begirts his urn, and the fire issuing from the mouth of the urn, are fine emblems of the glory he acquired by the spirit of his writings. The Latin inscription and epitaph on the pedestal is thus translated into English:--"Near this place lies Abraham Cowley, the Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England; and the delight, ornament and admiration of his age:-- "While, Sacred Bard, far worlds thy works proclaim. And you survive in an immortal fame, Here may you, bless'd in pleasant quiet, lie! To guard thy urn may hoary Faith stand by! And all thy fav'rite tuneful Nine repair To watch thy dust with a perpetual care! Sacred for ever may this place be made, And may no desp'rate hand presume t' invade With touch unhallow'd this religious room, Or dare affront thy venerable tomb! Unmov'd and undisturb'd, till time shall end, May Cowley's dust this marble shrine defend!" "So wishes, and desires that wish may be sacred to posterity, George, Duke of Buckingham, who erected this monument to that incomparable man. He died in the forty-ninth year of his age, and was carried from Buckingham House, with honourable pomp, his exequies being attended by persons of illustrious characters of all degrees, and buried August 3, 1667." His grave is just before the monument, as appears by a blue stone, on which is engraven his name.--_John Bushnell, sculptor._ Affixed to the pillar, on the left, is a tablet to the memory of Mrs. MARTHA BIRCH, who was daughter of Samuel Viner, Esq., and first married to Francis Millington, Esq., afterwards to Peter Birch, Prebendary of this Abbey. She died May 25, 1703, in the fiftieth year of her age. The next monument was erected to the memory of Mr. JOHN DRYDEN, by the late Duke of Buckingham, who valued his writings so much that he thought no inscription necessary to spread his fame.--"J. Dryden, born 1632, died May 1, 1700. John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, erected this monument, 1720."--_Scheemakers, sculptor._ Against the screen of the Choir, is the monument of ROBERT SOUTH, D.D., who is represented in a cumbent posture, in his canonical habit, with his arm resting on a cushion, and his right hand on a Death's head. In his left he holds a book, with his finger between the leaves, as if just closed from reading; and over his head is a group of cherubs issued from a mantling, beneath which is a long Latin inscription, showing that he was scholar to Busby, and student at Christ Church, Oxford, and Public Orator of that University; that, by the patronage of Lord Clarendon, he was made Prebendary both of Westminster and Christ's, and afterwards Rector of Islip, where he rebuilt the parsonage-house, and founded and endowed a school. His sermons have a peculiar turn, and are still much admired. He died July 8, 1716, aged eighty-two.--_Bird, sculptor._ Between this and Dr. Busby, a small portion of ANN of CLEVES' monument is to be perceived. She was sister of the Duke of Cleves, was contracted in marriage to Henry VIII., and received with great pomp on Blackheath, January 3, 1539, married to the king on the 9th, and in July following divorced, with liberty to marry again; but being sensibly touched with the indignity put upon her, she lived retired in England, with the title of Lady Ann, of Cleves, and saw the rival who supplanted her suffer a worse fate. She survived the King four years, and died in 1557. A still more unfortunate Queen lies near this last, without a monument; viz., ANNE, Queen of Richard III., and daughter of Nevil, the great Earl of Warwick. This lady was poisoned by that monster of cruelty, her husband, to make way for his marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of his brother, Edward IV., and sister of the unhappy youths he had caused to be murdered in the Tower, which marriage he never lived to consummate, being slain at the battle of Bosworth Field. Above is a tablet to Dr. Vincent, with the inscription thus translated:--"Here rests whatever is mortal of WILLIAM VINCENT, who having received his education in this College, returned to it when he had completed his academical studies, and from the situation of Junior Usher, arose to that of Head Master; he was at length exalted to the office of Dean of the Church, for which he entertained the greatest affection: on the subject of his life, his literary attainments, and his moral character, let this monumental stone be silent. He owes his origin to the respectable family of the Vincents, of Shepy, in the county of Leicester; he was born in London, 2nd November, 1739, and died on the 21st December, 1815." Doctor RICHARD BUSBY.--On this fine monument is the effigy of this learned grammarian in his gown, looking earnestly at the inscription. In his right hand he holds a pen, and in his left a book open. Underneath, upon the pedestal, are a variety of books, and at the top are his family arms. The inscription is very elegantly written, and highly to his praise; intimating that whatever fame the school of Westminster boasts, and whatever advantage mankind shall reap from thence in times to come, are all principally owing to the wise institutions of this great man. He was born at Lutton, in Lincolnshire, September 22, 1606; made Master of Westminster College, December 23, 1640; elected Prebendary of Westminster, July 5th, 1660, and Treasurer of Wells, August 11th, the same year; and died April 5th, 1695.--_Bird, sculptor._ Affixed to the pillars in this cross are two tablets; one to the memory of Dr. ANTHONY HORNECK, who was born at Wettenburgh, in Zealand, but educated at Queen's College, Oxford; was King's Divinity Professor and Chaplain, a Prebendary of this Church, and Preacher at the Savoy. He died of the stone, January 31, 1696, aged fifty-six. The other to the memory of Dr. SAMUEL BARTON, a Prebendary of this Church, and a person of admirable genius and learning. He died September 1715, aged sixty-eight. In front of Dr. Barrow's monument, lies the remains of that once celebrated poet, Sir WILLIAM DAVENANT, who, upon the death of Ben Jonson, succeeded him as Poet Laureate to Charles I., but having lost his nose by an _accident_, was cruelly bantered by the wits of the succeeding reign. He was a vintner's son at Oxford, whose wife, being a woman of admirable wit and sprightly conversation, drew the politest men of that age to their house, among whom Shakspeare was said to be a frequent visitor. His education was at Lincoln College, where he became acquainted with Endimion Porter, Henry Jermain, and Sir John Suckling. He died in 1668, aged sixty-three. Not far from Davenant lies Sir ROBERT MURRAY, a great Mathematician, and one of the founders of the Royal Society, of which he was the first President, and while he lived the very soul of that body. He died suddenly, July 4, 1673, in the garden at Whitehall, and was buried at the King's expense. In front of Dryden's monument, is an ancient stone, on which, by the marks indented, has been the image of a man in armour. This covers the body of ROBERT HAULE, who, at the battle of Najara, in Spain, in Richard II.'s time, together with John Shakel, his comrade, took the Earl of Denia prisoner, who, under pretence of raising money for his ransom, obtained his liberty, leaving his son as a hostage in their hands. Upon their coming to England, the Duke of Lancaster demanded him for the King; but they refused to deliver him up without the ransom, and were therefore both committed to the Tower, from whence escaping, they took sanctuary in this Abbey. Sir Ralp Ferreris and Alan Buxal, the one Governor, the other Captain of the Tower, with fifty men, pursued them, and having, by fair promises, gained over Shakel, they attempted to seize Haule by force, who made a desperate defence, but being overpowered by numbers, was slain, August 11, 1378, in the choir before the prior's stall, commending himself to God, the avenger of wrongs. A servant of the Abbey fell with him. Shakel they threw into prison, but afterwards set him at liberty, and the King and Council agreed to pay the ransom of his prisoner, 500 marks, and 100 marks a-year. Some years afterwards Shakel died, and was buried here in 1396. Under the pavement, near Dryden's tomb, lie the remains of FRANCIS BEAUMONT, the dramatic writer, who died in London in 1628, and was buried here, March 9, without tomb or inscription. The new stained glass windows at the south end of the Transept of the Abbey were executed by Messrs. Thomas Ward and J. H. Nixon, 1847: description as follows:-- In the centre of the Rose Window, the name "JEHOVAH;" in the circle surrounding the figures of angels. In the large circle of surrounding lights are thirty-two separate subjects taken from the principal incidents, miracles, and events in the life and sufferings of our blessed Redeemer. The height of the figures are nearly three feet. The subjects selected for this circle are as follows: 1. The nativity of Jesus Christ.--_Luke_ ii. 7, &c. 2. Simeon's prophecy.--_Luke_ ii. 25. 3. Jesus reasoning with the doctors.--_Luke_ ii. 46. 4. The baptism of St. John the Baptist.--_Matt._ iii. 13. 5. The preaching on the Mount.--_Matt._ v. 1, &c. 6. Water made wine.--_John_ ii. 4. 7. The money changers expelled from the Temple.--_Matt._ xxi. 12. 8. The woman of Samaria.--_John_ iv. 7. 9. Walking on the sea.--_Matt._ xiv. 29. 10. Raising of Jairus' daughter.--_Mark_ v. 41. 11. The pool of Bethesda.--_John_ v. 4, &c. 12. The Centurion's faith.--_Matt._ viii. 8, &c. 13. John's disciples sent to Christ.--_Matt._ xi. 2, &c. 14. The Magdalen anointing the feet of Christ.--_John_ xii. 3. 15. The Syrophenician woman.--_Matt._ xv. 15. 16. The feeding of the multitude.--_Matt._ xiv. 15. 17. The lunatic boy cured.--_Matt._ xvii. 14, &c. 18. Peter, the fish, and Temple tribute.--_Matt._ xvii. 27. 19. The blind man healed.--_Mark_ viii. 25. 20. Lazarus raised.--_John_ xi. 43. 21. The entry into Jerusalem.--_Matt._ xxi. 1. 22. The tribute to Cæsar.--_Matt._ xxii. 15 and 21. 23. Little children brought to Christ.--_Mark_ x. 13. 24. The young rich man's question.--_Mark_ x. 17. 25. The widow's son restored.--_Luke_ vii. 11. 26. The agony in the garden.--_Matt._ xxvi. 39. 27. Jesus Christ captive before Pilate.--_Matt._ xxvii. 1, 2, &c. 28. Jesus Christ shown to the people.--_John_ xix. 5. 29. The Crucifixion.--_John_ xix. 25, &c. 30. The Resurrection.--_Matt._ xxviii. 1, &c. 31. Appearance to Mary Magdalen.--_John_ xx. 11. 32. The Ascension.--_Acts_ i. 9, &c. The decorations which surround this circle are scrolages and ornaments of mosaic work on coloured grounds suited to the rest, among which are also interwoven the following symbols:-- 1. I.H.S. at the Nativity. 2. The angel, the symbol of St. Matt. 3. The Paschal Lamb. 4. Cherub's head. 5. The pelican, as symbol of the Church. 6. Cherub's head. 7. The lion, the symbol of St. Mark. 8. The triangle, the symbol of the Trinity. 9. The hart, athirst for the water brooks. 10. The ox, the symbol of St. Luke. 11. Cherub's head. 12. The sacramental cup. 13. Cherub's head. 14. The dove descending. 15. The eagle, the symbol of St. John. 16. [Greek: A.�.] In the left quatrefoil, at the corner, are the arms of the Abbacy; in the right the arms of the reigning sovereign; in the head of the arches beneath are figures of angels holding scrolls. The subjects for the twelve lower windows are selected from the Old Testament, and are as follows:-- 1. Noah's sacrifice.--_Gen._ viii. 20. 2. Abraham and the angels.--_Gen._ xviii. 1. 3. Jacob's dream.--_Gen._ xxviii. 12. 4. Joseph interpreting Pharoah's dream.--_Gen._ xli. 25. 5. The finding of Moses.--_Ex._ ii. 5. 6. Moses before the burning bush.--_Ex._ iii. 2. 7. Moses striking the rock.--_Ex._ xvii. 5. 8. Moses with the tables of the law.--_Ex._ xx. 20. 9. David chosen from among his brothers, and anointed by Samuel.--_1 Sam._ xvi. 13. 10. Dedication of the Temple by Solomon.--_1 Kings_ viii. 22. 11. Elijah's sacrifice.--_1 Kings_ xviii. 37, &c. 12. Josiah renewing the Covenant.--_2 Kings_ xxii. 3, &c. Having thus noticed what is usually considered most interesting in the interior, we will take a glance at the exterior. We have already observed that the form of the Abbey is that of a cross, in which you are to consider Henry the Seventh's Chapel has no part. The south side answered exactly to the north in the original plan, by attending to which, you will be able to form a true judgment of the whole. The cloisters on the south side were added for the conveniency of the monks, and the contiguous buildings are of a still later date. What will principally engage your attention, in viewing the outside of this building (the new towers excepted), is the magnificent portico leading to the north cross, which, by some, has been styled the _Beautiful_, or _Solomon's Gate_. This portico is Gothic, and extremely beautiful; and over it is a most magnificent window of modern design, admirably executed. The entire height of the north front to the top of the centre pinnacle is one hundred and seventy feet. The north side of the Church, between the west front and the Transept, is supported by nine graduated buttresses; each has a turreted niche, wherein are placed full length statues of the founders and principal benefactors of this Church. The towers at the west end were raised under the directions of Sir Christopher Wren, and terminate with pinnacles at the height of two hundred and twenty-five feet. _The Exterior_ length of the Abbey is four hundred and sixteen feet; including Henry Seventh's Chapel, five hundred and thirty feet. * * * * * Having now pointed out what is accounted most worthy of observation in the construction of this ancient Abbey, both without and within it, we shall next say a word or two of-- Henry Seventh's Chapel. This _wonder of the world_, as it well may be styled, is adorned without with sixteen Gothic towers, beautifully ornamented with admirable ingenuity, and jutting from the building in different angles. It is situated on the east of the Abbey to which it is so neatly joined, that at a superficial view it appears to be one and the same building. It is enlightened by a double range of windows, that throw the light into such a happy disposition, as at once to please the eye and inspire reverence. An author some years ago, has very highly, and yet not undeservedly expressed the beauty of this Chapel in the following words:--"It is the admiration of the universe; such inimitable perfection appears in every part of the whole composure, which looks so far exceeding human excellence, that it appears knit together by the fingers of angels, pursuant to the direction of Omnipotence." And here we cannot help taking notice of a most beautiful window that was designed for this Chapel. It was made by order of the magistrates of Dort, in Holland, and designed by them as a present to Henry VII., but that monarch dying before it was finished, it was set up in Waltham Abbey, where it remained till the dissolution of that monastery, when it was removed to New-Hall, in Essex, then in possession of General Monk, and by him preserved during the civil wars. Some years ago, John Olmius, Esq., the then possessor of New-Hall, sold it to Mr. Conyers, of Copt-Hall, who resold it to the inhabitants of St. Margaret's parish, in 1758, for four hundred guineas; and it now adorns St Margaret's Church. Thus it has arrived near to the place for which it was originally intended, but is never likely to reach it. The grand subject is that of our Saviour's crucifixion; but there are many subordinate figures: those at the bottom of the two side panels represent Henry VII., and his Queen, and were taken from the original pictures sent to Dort for that purpose. Over the King is the figure of St. George, and above that a white rose and a red one. Over the figure of the Queen stands that of St. Katharine of Alexandria; and in the panel over her head appears a pomegranate _vert_, in a field of _or_, the arms of the kingdom of Grenada. _General Admeasurements of the Exterior of Henry VII.'s Chapel._ Ft. In. Extreme Length 115 2 Breadth to the Extremities of the Buttress Towers 79 6 Height of the Buttress Towers 70 8 Do. to the Apex of the Roof 85 6 Do. to the Top of the Western Turrets 101 6 Of the Monuments in the Cloisters. There are many persons of distinction buried in the Cloisters, as will appear from the number of inscriptions, many of which are almost obliterated from wear or time; we shall therefore only notice a few of the most particular. The most ancient are in the South Walk of the Cloisters, towards the east end, where you will see the remains of four Abbots, marked in the pavement by four stones. The first is inscribed to the Abbot VITALIS, who died in 1082; and was formerly covered with plates of brass. The second is a stone of grey marble, to the memory of GESLEBERTUS CRISPINUS, who died in 1114. The third is a raised stone, of Sussex marble, under which lies interred the Abbot LAURENTIUS, who died in 1176, and is said to have been the first who obtained from Pope Alexander III. the privilege of using the Mitre, Ring, and Glove. The fourth is of black marble, called Long Meg, from its extraordinary length of eleven feet ten inches, by five feet ten inches, and covers the ashes of GERVASIUS DE BLOIS, natural son of King Stephen, who died 1106. All these seem to have had their names and dates cut afresh, and are indeed fragments worthy to be preserved. In 1349 twenty-six of the monks of this Abbey fell victims to a dreadful plague which at that period had extended its ravages over great part of the globe, and are reported by Fuller to have been buried all in one grave in the South Cloisters, under the remarkable large stone called Long Meg. Against the wall is a monument to PETER FRANCIS COURAYER, a Roman Catholic clergyman, born at Vernon, in Normandy, 1681. He was Canon and Librarian of the Abbey of Geneviève, at Paris. He translated and published several valuable works. In 1727 he took refuge in England, and was well received, and presented by the University of Oxford with the degree of D.D. On his dedicating a book to Queen Caroline, his pension was augmented to £200 per annum from £100 which he had obtained before from the court. He died, in 1776, after two days' illness, at the age of ninety-five. At the end of this walk is the monument of DANIEL PULTENEY, who served the court several years; abroad in the reign of Queen Anne, and at home in the reign of George I. The following is the inscription:--"Reader, if thou art a Briton, behold this tomb with reverence and regret! Here lie the remains of Daniel Pulteney, the kindest relation, the truest friend, the warmest patriot, the worthiest man! He exercised virtues in his age, sufficient to have distinguished him even in the best. Sagacious by nature, industrious by habit, inquisitive with art, he gained a complete knowledge of the state of Britain, foreign and domestic; in most, the backward fruit of tedious experience; in him, the early acquisition of undissipated youth. He served the court several years; abroad, in the auspicious reign of Queen Anne; at home, in the reign of that excellent Prince, George I. He served his country always; at court independent, in the senate unbiassed. At every age, and at every station, this was the bent of his generous soul, this the business of his laborious life; public men and public things he judged by one common standard--_the true interest of Britain_; he made no other distinction of party; he abhorred all other. Gentle, humane, disinterested, benevolent, he created no enemies on his own account; firm, determined, inflexible, he feared none he could create in the cause of Britain. Reader, in this misfortune of thy country, lament thy own; for know, the loss of so much private virtue is a public calamity." EAST WALK. Near the iron gate is a tablet sacred to the memory of the Rev. THOMAS VIALLS, of Twickenham, Middlesex, A.M., many years vicar of Boldre, in the New Forest, who departed this life May 7, 1831, aged sixty-two. To the left is a very beautiful arch, beneath which is a doorway leading to the Chapter House and Library; in front of which was buried Abbot BYRCHESTON, who died of the plague, May 15, 1349; but no stone left to mark the place of his interment. Against the wall, in the centre of the East Walk, is a monument to the memory of GEORGE WALSH, Esq., with the following inscription:--"Near this place are deposited the remains of George Walsh, Esq., late Lieutenant-General of his Majesty's Forces, and Colonel of the forty-ninth Regiment of Foot, who died October 23, 1761, aged seventy-three. "The toils of life and pangs of death are o'er, And care, and pain, and sickness, are no more." To the memory of JAMES WILLIAM DODD, who for thirty-four years was one of the Ushers of Westminster School, the duties of which he discharged with consummate ability. The Westminsters, his pupils, resident at the boarding-house under his immediate care, have, bewailing his loss, caused this tablet to be erected. He died on the 29th day of August, 1818, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Beneath is a monument to preserve and unite the memory of two affectionate brothers, valiant soldiers and sincere Christians: SCIPIO DUROURE, Esq., Adjutant-General of the British Forces, Colonel of the twelfth Regiment of Foot, and Captain or Keeper of his Majesty's Castle of St. Mawes, in Cornwall, who, after forty-one years' faithful services, was mortally wounded at the battle of Fontenoy, and died May 10, 1745, aged fifty-six years, and lies interred on the ramparts of Aeth, in the low Countries; and ALEXANDER DUROURE, Esq., Lieutenant-General of the British Forces, Colonel of the Fourth, or King's own Regiment of Foot, and Captain or Keeper of his Majesty's Castle of St. Mawes, in Cornwall, who, after fifty-seven years of faithful services, died at Toulouse, in France, on the 2nd January, 1795, aged seventy-four years, and lies interred in this Cloister. In the next arch has been lately erected a tablet, sacred to the memory of WALTER HAWKES, who, serving in the East Indies, and having deserved well during the space of more than twenty-seven years, almost worn out with sickness and wounds, as he was now returning to his native country, being overtaken by a storm in the Indian Ocean, was, together with his dearest wife, the partner of his life and danger, alas! swallowed up, and perished by shipwreck, never to be too much lamented, the year of our Lord 1808. Struck with so sad a fate of his companion, William Franklin put up this stone; for both were King's scholars in this school, brought up in the same studies, together endured arduous warfare. NORTH WALK. On the left, near the door, is a marble slab to the memory of JOHN CATLING, who died March 3, 1826, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. He was Verger and Sacrist, successively, of this Collegiate Church under five Deans, the duties of which he performed with the most zealous and undivided attention, for the long period of fifty-two years, respected by his superiors for the fidelity, respectability, and humility, with which he filled the offices, and beloved by all who knew him in private life, for the many virtues which adorn the man. Lady LONDONDERRY was buried underneath it. A tablet to the memory of HARRIET, wife of the Rev. John Bentall, one of the Ushers of Westminster School. She died August 7, 1838. The next is an epitaph remarkable for its quaintness, and inscribed to the memory of WILLIAM LAURENCE, in these lines:-- "With diligence and truth most exemplary, Did William Laurence serve a Prebendary; And for his pains, now past, before not lost, Gain'd this remembrance at his master's cost. Oh! read these lines again!--you seldom find A servant faithful, and a master kind. Short-hand he wrote; his flower in prime did fade, And hasty death short-hand of him hath made. Well couth he numbers, and well-measured land; Thus doth he now that ground whereon you stand, Wherein he lies so geometrical: Art maketh some, but thus doth nature all." _Ob. Dec. 28, 1628, �tat. 29._ A tablet to the Rev. GEORGE PRESTON, A.M., who was several years Under-Master of Westminster School. He died September 8, 1841, aged fifty-two. Near to this is a tablet lately erected to the memory of WILLIAM MARKHAM, D.D., Archbishop of York, who died November, 1807, aged eighty-eight, and was buried near this spot. On your left is a tablet to the memory of EDWARD AUGUSTUS WEBBER, a King's scholar, son of James Webber, D.D., Dean of Ripon, and Canon of this Church; who was drowned in the River Thames, June 11, 1833, aged seventeen, and buried near this spot. The inscription is as follows:--"H.S.M. Edoardus Augustus Webber, Jacobi Webber, S.T.P., ecclesæ Riponensis Decani, et hujusce Præbendarii filius natu secundus in amne Thamesi, eversa turbine navicula e quatuor mersis adolicentibus unus periit die 11 Junii, 1833, anum agent 17mo. Alumno suavissimo desideratissimo, id quod parentes miseri perferre nequibant, præceptores condiscipulique tranquam fratrem lugertes ademptum pro more ac pietate Westmonasteriensi exequias reddiderunt." The last worthy of note in this Walk is that to the memory of WILLIAM EGERTON GELL, Esq., who, after a long and severe affliction, departed this life on the 17th of May, 1838, aged fifty-six years; in him many will have to deplore the loss of a generous and kind-hearted friend. "Comfort the soul of thy servant, for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul."--_Cundy, sculptor._ WEST WALK. On the left door of the Abbey is a monument, erected by John English Dolben, Esq., "To the memory of EDWARD WORTLEY MONTAGUE, who was cast away, on his return to England, in 1777, from the East Indies, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. In memory of their friendship, which commenced at Westminster School, continued for some time at Oxford, not diminished by the greatest distance, scarcely dissolved by death, and if it please God, to be renewed in heaven.--J. E. D., to whom the deceased bequeathed his books (and appointed joint residuary legatee), erected this monument." FRANCIS SMEDLEY.--Adjoining the Godolphin monument is a neat tablet to the memory of the above, who was High Bailiff of Westminster for twenty-two years. Born September 15, 1791; died February 25, 1859. The next is a monument that deserves particular attention, as it commemorates a charity, which otherwise might, in time, like many others, be perverted or forgotten. The inscription is as follows:--"Here rest, in hope of a blessed resurrection, CHARLES GODOLPHIN, Esq., brother of the Right Honourable Sydney, Earl of Godolphin, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain, who died July 16, 1720, aged sixty-nine; and Mrs. GODOLPHIN, his wife, who died July 29, 1726, aged sixty-three; whose excellent qualities and endowments can never be forgotten, particularly the public-spirited zeal with which he served his country in Parliament, and the indefatigable application, great skill, and nice integrity, with which he discharged the trust of a Commissioner of Customs for many years. Nor was she less eminent for her ingenuity, with sincere love of her friends, and constancy in religious worship. But as charity and benevolence were the distinguishing parts of their characters, so were they most conspicuously displayed by the last act of their lives: a pious and charitable institution, by him designed and ordered, and by her completed to the glory of God, and for a bright example to mankind; the endowment whereof is a rent-charge of one hundred and eighty pounds a-year, issuing out of lands in Somersetshire, and of which, one hundred and sixty pounds a year are to be ever applied, from 24th June, 1726, to the educating eight young gentlewomen, who are so born, and whose parents are of the Church of England, whose parents or friends will undertake to provide them with decent apparel; and after the death of the said Mrs. Godolphin, and William Godolphin, Esq., her nephew, such as have neither father or mother; which said young gentlewomen are not to be admitted before they are eight years old, nor to be continued after the age of nineteen, and are to be brought up in the city of New Sarum, or some other town in the county of Wilts, under the care of some prudent governess or schoolmistress, a communicant of the Church of England; and the overplus, after an allowance of £5. a-year for collecting the said rent-charge, is to be applied to binding out one or more poor children apprentices, whose parents are of the Church of England. In perpetual memory whereof Mrs. Frances Hall, executrix to her aunt, Mrs. Godolphin, has, according to her will, and by her order, caused this inscription to be engraven on their monument, 1772." The next is a neat tablet, in memory of the Rev. EDWARD SMEDLEY, A.M., Rector of Powderham, and of North Bovey, in the county of Devon, and from 1774 to 1820, one of the Ushers of Westminster School; born Nov. 5, 1750, died August 6, 1825. Also of HANNAH, his wife, daughter of George Bellas, Esq.; born August 21, 1754, died October 17, 1824. This tablet is erected by their surviving children. "To you, dear names, these filial thanks we give, For more than life, for knowledge how to live-- For many a rule with holy wisdom fraught, And works embodying the creed you taught; For faith triumphant, tho' the lips which told Its glowing lessons, now, alas! are cold; Faith, which proclaiming that the dead but sleep, Invites us home to those whom here we weep." --_Westmacott, jun., sculptor._ On the left is a tablet with a coat of arms over, and a music-book under it:--"Near this place are deposited the remains of BENJAMIN COOKE, Doctor in Music of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Organist and Master of the Choristers of this Collegiate Church for above thirty years. He departed this life on the 14th of September, 1793, and in the fifty-ninth year of his age." ENOCH HAWKINS, Esq., Gentleman of her Majesty's Chapel Royal, and Vicar Choral of this Collegiate Church, who died on the 9th January, 1847, aged fifty. Upon a tablet that has emblems of music,--"To the memory of JAMES BARTLEMAN, formerly a Chorister and Lay-Clerk of Westminster Abbey, and Gentleman of his Majesty's Royal Chapel. He was born the 19th of September, 1769, died the 15th of April, 1821, and was buried in this Cloister, near his beloved master, Dr. Cooke." In this walk is erected a monument to W. BUCHAN, M.D., author of the Domestic Medicine, who died in 1805. A tablet with inscriptions, to Mr. JOHN BROUGHTON, and his wife Elizabeth; she died in 1714, and himself in 1789. Also R. MONK, Esq., died in 1831; his wife CATHERINE, 1832. "WILLIAM WOOLLETT, born August 22, 1735, died May 22, 1785." The genius of engraving is represented handing down to posterity the works of painting, sculpture, and architecture. A monument with his bust on the top. Near to this will be seen a tablet in memory of ELIZABETH WOODFALL, younger daughter of the late Henry Sampson Woodfall, having lived many years in Dean's Yard, contiguous to the Abbey, and died 12th February, 1862, at the age of ninety-three. Having exceeded the bounds at first intended, we shall conclude in the words of an ingenious writer on the subject of this Abbey:--"I have wandered," says he, "with pleasure into the most gloomy recesses of this last resort of grandeur, to contemplate human life, and trace mankind through all the wilderness of their frailties and misfortunes, from their cradles to their graves. I have reflected on the shortness of our duration here, and that I was but one of the millions who had been employed in the same manner, in ruminating on the trophies of mortality before me; that I must moulder to dust in the same manner, and quit the scene to a new generation, without leaving the shadow of my existence behind me; that this huge fabric, the sacred depository of fame and grandeur, would only be the stage for the same performances; would receive new accessions of noble dust; would be adorned with other sepulchres of cost and magnificence; would be crowded with successive admirers; and, at last, by the unavoidable decays of time, bury the whole collection of antiquities in general obscurity, and be the monument of its own ruin." The Chapter House and Ancient House of Commons. On the left as you enter the Chapter House is a stone coffin which was found on the removal of the accumulated earth and rubbish which for many years had hidden the lower parts of the buttresses of the north side of the building; some ancient walls of considerable extent were discovered, and about five or six feet below the surface an ancient stone coffin was brought to light. It possesses great interest from its being the only Roman remains yet discovered. One side of it is beautifully wrought, with a sunk panel, having at each end the conventional Roman ornament called the Amazon shield, while the panel itself is occupied with the following inscription, in the best style of the old Roman lettering-- +-------------------------------+ | MEMORIAE·VALER·AMAN | | DINI·VALERI·SVPERVEN | |TOR·ET·MARCELLVS·PATRI·FE[CE]R.| +-------------------------------+ from which it appears to show that it is in memory of one Valerius Amandinus, and that his two sons made it to his honour. The lid is wrought with a slight cope, having a Maltese cross, terminating at the foot with a trefoil. There can be no doubt that the coffin once contained the body of this Valerius, which was afterwards displaced for the reception of an ecclesiastic, when the old lid was made in its present shape. The date of the first interment may be ascribed to the 3rd century, while the latter may belong to the 12th century. The skeleton within the coffin is in good preservation, considering the great lapse of time. There was nothing to indicate the rank of the ecclesiastic, for such he probably was; but he must have been a tall man, of great vigour, and barely of middle age. The Chapter House of Westminster was built in 1250, by Henry III., on the site of the earlier Chapter House belonging to the Abbey, as founded by Edward the Confessor. It was, from its beauty, called "The Incomparable Chapter House." It has been used for three purposes. I. It was the chamber in which the Abbot and Monks, in the times of the ancient monastery, held their "Chapter," or meeting for discussion and business; their meetings were held once a week. The Abbot and the four chief officers of the convent sat in the ornamented stalls opposite the entrance. The Monks sat on the stone seats round. The culprits, if there were any, knelt to receive their judgment before the Abbot's seat, and were scourged before the central pillar. II. Almost from the time of its first erection, it was used for the sittings of the House of Commons. The House of Commons came into existence in 1265, and at first sat in Westminster Hall with the House of Lords; but in 1282 they parted, and from that time for nearly 300 years its meetings were held in the precincts of Westminster Refectory (now destroyed), but usually in the Chapter House, which was lent to the Commons by the Abbot for that purpose. The Speaker probably sat in the Abbot's stall, and the Members of Parliament in the seats of the Monks, and on the floor of the house. To the central pillar were attached placards and notices relating to the business or the conduct of the Members. Here were the debates on all the Acts of Parliament, passed from the time of Edward I. till the Reformation. There also were, from time to time, convened other assemblies for special purposes. Henry V., in 1421, summoned a meeting of 60 Abbots and Priors, and 300 Monks to discuss the reform of the Benedictine order; and Wolsey, as Cardinal Legate, in 1523, summoned the convocations of Canterbury and York, in order to be on a spot beyond the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The last Parliament which is known to have sat here was that which was assembled on the last day of the reign of Henry VIII. It will be seen that this building, from having for three centuries been the seat of the House of Commons, has been the scene of the chief acts which laid the foundation of civil and religious liberty of England, and was the cradle of representative and constitutional government, of Parliament, Legislative Chambers, and Congress throughout the world. III. On the dissolution of the Ancient Monastery in 1540, the Chapter House passed into the possession of the Crown; from that time the Dean and Chapter of Westminster have held their meetings in the Jerusalem Chamber. In 1547, the first year of Edward VI., the House of Commons was transferred to the Chapel of St. Stephen in the Palace of Westminster, in which they remained till it was burned down in 1834. From that time till 1863 the Chapter House was used as the depository of the public records. During this period it was fitted up with book-shelves, which disfigured and concealed its beauties; its roof was taken down; its windows were filled up; and it was divided into two stories. In 1865, after the removal of the records to the Rolls House, in the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the Chapter House, in the 600th anniversary of the House of Commons, which it had so long sheltered, its restoration was undertaken at the request of the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by Mr. Cowper Temple, as First Commissioner of Works, and the requisite sum granted by Parliament for the repairs, which, under Mr. Gilbert Scott, have restored it as nearly as possible to its original state. The roof has been entirely rebuilt. The paintings, which were concealed by the book-shelves, are now disclosed; those at the east end, over the stalls of the Abbot and his four chief officers, are of the 14th century, and represent seraphs round the Throne of the Saviour. Those round the walls were painted in the 15th century, by one of the monks of the convent, named John of Northampton, and represent scenes from the Revelation of St. John, with pictures of fishes, birds, and beasts underneath. The figures on each side of the entrance, representing the Angel and the Virgin Mary, are ancient. The central figure is modern, but represents what was formerly there. The tiles on the floor, covered with curious heraldic emblems, are also now seen for the first time. The tracery of the windows has been restored after the model of the one which had been left uninjured on the northwest side. It still remains for them to be filled with stained glass, according to the original design. INDEX. Abbey founded, 3 ---- rebuilt and endowed, 4 ---- pulled down and enlarged, 4 ---- Admission, Hours, &c. of, 2 Aberdeen, Earl of, 54 Addison, Joseph, 28, 101 Agar, Doctor, 69 Aiton, Sir Robert, 20 Albemarle, Dukes of, 24, 30 ---- Duchess of, 24 Alfred, Prince, 25 Altar Decoration, 12 Amelia, Princess, 25 André, Major, 91 Anne, Queen, James II.'s Daughter, 24 ---- Princess, 25 ---- Queen of James I., 27 ---- Queen of Richard II., 36 ---- Queen of Richard III., 113 Anstey, Christopher, 107 Argyle, Duke of, 28, 104 Arnold, Dr. Samuel, 64 Athelgoda, Queen of King Sebert, 11 Atkyns, Edward, and Sons, 103 Bagenall, Nicholas, 19 Baillie, Dr. Matthew, 45 Baker, John, 71 Balchen, Admiral, 59 Banks, Thomas, 73 Bankes, Cornet W. G. Hawtrey, 53 Barnard, Bishop, 37 ---- Major-Gen. Sir H. W., 53 Barrow, Isaac, D.D., 101 Barry, Sir Charles, 80 Bartleman, James, 123 Barton, Samuel, D.D., 114 Bath, Earl of, 32 Beauclerk, Lord, 61 Beaufoy, Mrs., 73 Beaumont, Francis, 115 Belasyse, Sir Henry, 30 Bell, Dr. Andrew, 98 Bentall, Harriet, 120 Bentinck, Archdeacon, 9 Beresford, Lieutenant, 41 Beverley, Countess of, 18 Bill, Dr. William, 11 Billson, Dr., 12 Bingham, Sir Richard, 93 Birch, Martha, 113 Blackwood, Sir Henry, 55 Blair and Bayne, Captains, 51 Blanch of the Tower, 14 Blois, Gervasius de, 118 Blow, John, Doc. Mus., 65 Bohun, Hugh de, and Mary, Grandchildren to Edward I., 38 Booth, Barton, 111 Boulter, Archbishop, 62 Bourchier, Lord, 32 Bourgchier, Sir Humphrey, 15 Bovey, Katherine, 86 Bradford, Bishop, 62 Bringfield, Colonel, 73 Brocas, Sir Bernard, 15 Bromley, Sir Thomas, 31 Broughton, John and Wife, 123 Browne, Thomas, 42 Brunel, I. K., 73 Bryan, Captain, 65 Buchan, Dr., 123 Buckingham, Countess of, 20 ---- Dukes of, 27 ---- Duchess of, 27 Buckland, Very Rev. W., D.D., 86 Buller, Right Hon. C., 56 Burland, Sir John, 97 Burleigh, Lady, 19 Burney, Dr. Charles, LL.D., 95 ---- Chas. Mus. D., 64 Busby, Richard, D.D., 114 Butler, Samuel, 110 Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 63 Byrcheston, Abbot, 119 Campbell, Sir Archibald, 102 ---- Sir James, 102 ---- Thomas, LL.D., 107 Camden, William, 99 Canning, George, 49 Canning, Lord, 49 Cannon, Robert, D.D., 87 Carew, Baron, and Lady, 19 Carey, Thomas, 38 ---- Henry, Baron of Hunsdon, 38 Caroline, Queen, 25 ---- Princess, 25 Carteret, Philip, 70 ---- Edward de, 70 ---- Elizabeth, Lady, 68 Casaubon, Isaac, 100 Catling, John, 120 Cecil, Lady, 18 Chamberlain, Hugh, M.D., 63 Chapel of St. Benedict, 10 ---- St. Edmund, 13 ---- St. Nicholas, 18 ---- Henry VII., 21, 117 ---- St. Paul, 30 ---- St. Edward (& Shrine), 33 ---- St. John, 40 ---- Islip, Abbot, 40 ---- St. John the Evangelist, 42 ---- St. Andrew, 42 ---- St. Michael, 42 Chardin, Sir John, 90 Charles II., 24 Chatham, Earl of, 51 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 111 Cherbury, Baron of, 16 Children of Henry III. & Edw. I., 12 Choir, New, 5 Cholmondeley, Viscount & Sons, 71 Churchill, George, 92 Clanrickard, Countess of, 75 Claypole, Elizabeth, 28 Cleves, Ann of, 113 Clifford, Lady, 18 Clyde, Lord, 80 Cobden, Richard, 57 Colchester, William of, 39 Conduit, John, 81 Congreve, William, 84 Cook, Benjamin, Doc. Mus., 122 Cooke, Captain Edward, 43 Cooper, Ensign Lovick Emilius, 53 Coote, Sir Eyre, 55 Cornewall, Captain, 82 Coronation Chairs, 36 Cottington, Lord and Lady, 32 Cottrell, Clement, 89 Courayer, Peter Francis, 118 Courcy, Almericus de, 66 Cowley, Abraham, 112 Coxe, Sir Richard, 100 Craggs, Secretary, 83 Creed, Richard, Major, 92 ---- Richard, Lieutenant, 93 Crewe, Lady Juliana, 37 ---- Jane, 37 Crispinus, Geslebertus, 118 Croft, William, Doc. Mus., 65 Crokesley, Abbot, 17 Crouchback, Edmund, 40 Cumberland, Dukes of, 25 D'Almade, Henry, 37 Dalrymple, William, 97 Daubeny, Lord, and Lady, 31 Davenant, Sir William, 114 Davidson, Susannah Jane, 44 Davis, Colonel, 75 Davy, Sir Humphrey, 43 Denham, Sir James Stewart, 70 Dickens, Charles, 105 Dimensions, 4, 22, 118 Dodd, James William, 119 Dorchester, Viscount, 32 Douglas, Lady Margaret, 22 Draiton, Michael, 110 Dryden, John, 113 Dudley, William de, 19 Dunbar, Viscount, 69 Duppa, Bishop, 41 ---- Sir Thomas, 67 Duroure, Scipio and Alexander, 120 Eastney, Abbot, 41 Editha, Qn. to Edward the Confessor, 34 Edward the Confessor, 38 ---- I., 37 ---- III., and Children, 35 ---- V., 29 ---- VI., 26, 28 Edwardes, Sir H., 58 Egerton, James, 76 ---- Penelope, 75 Eland, Lady, 39 Eleanor, Queen to Edward I., 34 Elizabeth, Queen, 29 ---- Princess, 25 ---- of Bohemia, 23 Eltham, John of, 13 Essex, Countess of, 32 Evremond, Lord of St., 108 Exeter, Earl of, 39 Fairborne, Sir Palmes, 90 Fairholm, Sophia, 97 Fane, Sir George, and Lady, 19 Fascet, Abbot, 39 Ferne, Bishop, 17 Filding, Ann, 89 Fire, 4 Fleming, James, 88 Fletcher, Lieutenant-Colonel, 77 Folkes, Martin, 93 Follett, Sir William Webb, 54 Forbes, Benjamin and Richard, 46 Fox, Right Hon. Charles James, 76 Frederick William, Prince, 25 Freke, Elizabeth and Judith, 96 Friend, John, M.D., 84 Fullerton, Sir James, and Lady, 31 Galofre, Sir John, 12 Garrick, David, 99 Gay, John, 105 Gell, William Egerton, 121 George II., 25 ---- Prince, 24 Gethin, Grace, 96 Gifford, William, 99 Gloucester, Duke of, 23, 36 ---- Duchess of, 16 Godolphin, Earl, 90 ---- Charles, and Wife, 121 Goldsmith, Oliver, M.D., 104 Goodman, Gabriel, D.D., 10 Grabe, John Ernest, 99 Gray, Thomas, 109 Grote, George, 99 Guest, General, 59 Hales, Stephen, D.D., 100 Halifax, Earls of, 28, 58 ---- Marquis of, 29 Handel, George Frederick, 102 Hanway, Jonas, 57 Harbord, Sir Charles, 89 Hardy, Sir Thomas, 81 Hargrave, General, 89 Harley, Anna Sophia, 19 Harpedon, Sir John, 42 Harrison, John, Rear Admiral, 98 Harsnet, Carola, 88 Hastings, Warren, 56 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 40 Haule, Robert, slain in the Choir, 115 Hawkes, Walter, 120 Hawkins, Enoch, 123 Henry III., 34 ---- VII. and his Queen, 25 ---- of Monmouth, 35 ---- Prince of Wales, 23 Herbert, Edward, 72 Herries, Charles, 88 Hertford, Countess of, 10 Hervey and Hutt, Captains, 75 Heskett, Sir Thomas, and Lady, 63 Heylin, Peter, D.D., 68 Hill, Jane, 72 Holland, Baron, 77 Holles, Francis, 14 Holles, Sir George, 43 Holmes, Admiral, 33 Hope, Admiral Sir G., 77 ---- Brigadier the Hon. Adrian, 53 ---- General, 57 ---- Mary, 103 Horneck, Dr., 114 ---- William, 78 Horner, Francis, 56 Howe, Lord Viscount, 87 Hunter, John, 73 Hyde, Ann, Wife of James II., 23 Ingram, Sir Thomas, 20 Ireland, Dean, 87, 99 Islip, Abbot, 40 James I., 27 James, Dame Mary, 63 Johnstone, George Lindsay, 69 Jonson, Ben, 110 Julius, Captain William, 92 Kane, Richard, 62 Keble, John, 83 Kemble, John, 44 Kempenfelt, Admiral, 46 Kendall, Mrs., 39 ---- James, 94 Kerry, Earl and Countess of, 45 Kildare, Countess of, 11 Killigrew, Robert, 73 King, William, 96 Kirk, Percy, 62 Kirton, Abbot, 45 ---- Ann, 43 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 96 Knights of the Bath, installation of, 24 Knipe, Thomas, 95 ---- Captains John and Robert, 96 Knollys, Lady, 14 Lake, Colonel, 77 Lancaster, Countess of, 40 Langham, Archbishop, 10 Laurence, William, 120 Laurentius, Abbot, 118 Lawrence, General, 75 Legendary Sculptures, 36 Le Neve, Richard, 68 Levinz, William, 74 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 55 Ligonier, Field-Marshal Lord, 47 Livingstone, Doctor, 80 Locke, Joseph, R.A., 70 Londonderry, Marquis of, 52 Londonderry, Lady, 120 Lort, Sir Gilbert, 47 Loten, John Gideon, 72 Louisa, Princess, 25 Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 17 Macaulay, Lord, 102 ---- Zachary, 78 Macintosh, Sir J., 76 Mackenzie, Hon. James Stuart, 104 Macleod, Lieutenant-Colonel, 30 Malcolm, Sir John, 48 Manners, Lord, 51 Manningham, General Coote, 58 Mansell, Thomas, 72 ---- Edward, 72 Mansfield, William, Earl, 52 Margaret, Edward IV.'s Daughter, 36 Markham, William, 121 Mary I., Queen, 29 ---- II., 24 ---- Queen of Scots, 23 Mary, Daughter of James I., 29 Mason, William, 109 Matilda, Queen of England, 34 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 38 Mead, Richard, M.D., 71 Methuen, John, 95 ---- Sir Paul, 95 Mexborough, Countess of, 39 Middlesex, Earl of, 11 Millyng, Bishop, 39 Milton, John, 109 Miserere, description of, 24 Monck, Bishop, 14 Monk, Bishop, 65 ---- R., and Wife, 123 Montague, Captain, 76 ---- Edward Wortley, 121 Montpensier, Duke of, 27 Moorsom, Capt. William Robert, 53 Morgan, William, 72 Mountrath, Earl and Countess of, 45 Murray, Sir Robert, 114 Newcastle, Dukes of, 49, 50 Newton, Sir Isaac, 78 Nightingale, J. Gascoigne, & Lady, 43 Norris, Lord, 44 North Aisle, 63 ---- Transept, 47 North-west Tower, 76 Northumberland, Duchess of, 20 Novello, Vincent, 47 Octavius, Prince, 25 Organ, 5 Oughton, Sir James, 41 Outram, William, D.D., 101 ---- General, 87 Owen, Thomas, 94 Oxford, Countess of, 19 Painted Glass, 9, 53, 73, 115 Palmerston, Lord, 51, 52 Paoli, Pasquale de, 94 Parry, Sir Thomas, 42 Pearce, Bishop, 85 Pecksall, Sir Richard, 15 Peel, Right Hon. Sir R., 47 Pembroke, Earl of, 16, 40 Perceval, Right Hon. Spencer, 71 Phillippa, Queen, 35 Phillips, John, 111 Pitt, Right Hon. William, 51, 81 Plenderleath, Dr. John, 67 Pocock, Sir George, 43 Pollock, Sir George, 80 Popham, Colonel, 38 Preston, George, 121 Price, Martha, 75 Prideaux, Sir Edmund, and Wife, 68 Priestman, Henry, 71 Pringle, Sir John, 100 Prior, Matthew, 108 Pritchard, Mrs., 106 Puckering, Sir John, 31 Pulpit, 80 Pulteney, Daniel, 118 Purcell, Henry, 65 Pym, John, 33 Radley, Bridget, 90 Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford, 65 Rennell, Major, 78 Reredos, New, 6 Richard II., 36 Richardson, Sir Thomas, 98 Richmond, Duke of, 26 ---- Duchess of, 26 ---- Countess of, 23 Roberts, Humphrey, 42 ---- John, 112 Robinson, Sir Thomas and Lady, 103 Robinson, Sir Lumley, 84 Ross, Lady, 20 Rowe, Nicholas and Daughter, 105 Rupert, Prince, 23 Russel, Lady, 14 ---- Lord, and Son, 15 Ruthall, Bishop, 39 St. John, Lady, 19 Sandwich, Earl of, 30 Sanderson, Sir William, 59 Saunders, Clement, 48 Sausmarez, Captain Philip de, 64 Scott, Grace, 48 Screen at the back of the Organ, 78 Sebert, King, 11 Seymour, Lady Jane, 14 Shadwell, Thomas, 109 Shakspeare, 106 Sharp, Granville, 108 Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 96 Shrewsbury, Earl of, and Lady, 15 Siddons, Mrs., 44 Smedley, Rev. Edward and Wife, 122 ---- Francis, 121 Smith, John, 88 Somerset, Duchess of, 18, 44 Sophia, Daughter of James I., 29 South Aisle, 83 ---- Transept, 99 South, Robert, D.D., 113 Southey, Robert, 107 Spelman, Sir Henry, 20 Spencer, Edmund, 110 Spotswood, Archbishop, 11 Sprat, Bishop, 20, 84 ---- Archdeacon, 20, 85 ---- George, 11 Stafford, Earls of, 13, 14 ---- Countess of, 14, 16 Stag, Motto on a, 101 Stained Glass Windows, 53 Stanhope, Earls of, 79 ---- Charles Banks, 78 Stanley, Lady Augusta, 21 Stanley, Sir Humphrey, 18 Staunton, Sir George, 67 Stephenson, Robert, 70, 80 Stepney, George, 95 Stewart, Arabella; 23 ---- Captain John, 72 Storr, Admiral, 47 Strode, General, 92 Stuart, Hon. Sir Charles, 46 ---- Esme, heart of, 26 Suffolk, Duchess of, 14 Sussex, Countess of, 32 Sutton, Rev. E. L., 67 Sword and Shield, 36 Taylor, Sir Robert, 99 Telford, Thomas, 45 Temple, Diana, 89 Teviot, Viscount, 69 Thackeray, W., 102 Thomas, Bishop, 86 Thomson, James, 106 Thornburgh, Gilbert, 71 Thynne, Capt. William Frederick, 53 ---- Thomas, murdered, 92 Thynne, William, 98 Tierney, George, 77 Tompion and Graham, 80 Totty, Admiral, 45 Townshend, Colonel, 90 Trigge, General Sir Thomas, 93 Triplett, Thomas, D.D., 101 Tudor, Elizabeth, 34 Tufton, Richard, 17 Twysden, Heneage, 74 Tyrrell, Admiral, 85 Usher, Archbishop, 33 Valence, William de, 16 Valois, Katharine, 20 Vaughan, Sir Thomas, 38 Vaults, Royal, 25, 26 Vere, Sir Francis, 43 Vernon, Admiral, 50 Vialls, Thomas, 119 Villettes, Lieutenant-General, 46 Villiers, Sir George, 20 Vincent, Hannah, 47 ---- William, 114 Vitalis, Abbot, 118 Wade, General, 87 Wager, Admiral, 51 Waldeby, Robert de, 16 Wales, Prince and Princess of, 25 Walpole, Lady, 24 Walsh, General, 119 Waltham, Bishop, 37 Warren, Sir Peter, 48 ---- Bishop, and Lady, 54, 60 Watson, Admiral, 59 Watt, James, 31 Watts, Isaac, D.D., 94 Webber, Edward Augustus, 121 Wemyss, Ann, 97 Wesley, John and Charles, 95 West, Admiral, 68 West End of the Nave, 78 Westmoreland, Countess of, 69 Wetenhall, Edward, M.D., 100 Wharton, Henry, 83 Whytell, Ann, 72 Wilberforce, William, 66 Willcocks, Bishop, 85 William III., 24 Williams, Charles, 69 Wilson, Sir A. and Lady, 73 Winchester, Marchioness of, 19 Windsor, William of, 14 ---- John of, 33 Wintringham, Sir Clifton, 57 Wolfe, General, 41 Woodfall, Elizabeth, 123 Woodford, Lieut.-Col. Charles J., 53 Woodward, John, M.D., 74 Woollett, William, 123 Wordsworth, William, 83 Wragg, William, 96 Wyat, James, 100 York, Duke of, 25 ---- Duchess of, 20 Young, Dr., 44 [Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with transliterations in this text version. The original text includes a letter "E" inside of a letter "C". This is represented as [CE] in this text version. 
41781	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). [oe] represents the oe ligature. Friendly Contributions for 1842. THE COUNTRY HOUSE, (WITH DESIGNS,) Edited by LADY MARY FOX. London: J. Murray, Albemarle Street. MDCCCXLIII. C. Whittingham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane. [Heading illustration] PREFACE. Hitherto the Contributions have appeared in a small volume: but a friend having furnished me with the Manuscripts of the following Letters, in order to do justice to the beautiful designs, it has been necessary to increase the size of the work. I trust that the merit of the drawings will reconcile my subscribers to the increased price. The observation on the style fittest for domestic architecture, the description of the proposed house and the designs, are by Monsieur De Chateauneuf; to these, Mr. Eastlake kindly added a very valuable Letter on the Principles of Interior Decoration. Monsieur De Chateauneuf is already known in this country by his elegant work, ARCHITECTURA DOMESTICA, and his design for the new Royal Exchange; all who have visited Hamburg must be well acquainted with the refined taste which characterizes the buildings erected under his superintendance. It is but justice to M. De Chateauneuf to state that his letters were written merely as matter of amusement, and arose out of a discussion with a friend, as to which was the best style to be adopted for domestic architecture; the letters have been translated from the German, and unfortunately have not had the advantage of being submitted to the writer for correction. It is proposed that the next volume should contain a reprint of the late Mr. Whately's admirable work on Modern Gardening; this it is hoped will be considered as a fit companion to the "COUNTRY HOUSE." I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. C. Knight and Mr. Jackson, who kindly furnished me with the blocks from which the vignettes have been printed. MARY FOX. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] ROYAL SCHOOLS OF INDUSTRY, AT KENSINGTON, THE POTTERIES, AND SHEPHERDS' BUSH. Patron: HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. Patronesses: LADY ELIZABETH WHITBREAD, LADY AUGUSTA GORDON, LADY MARY FOX, LADY (V) HOLLAND. HONOURABLE MISS FOX, LADY CALCOTT, MRS. VALPY. IT is now ten years since the first of these Schools was established, and instruction is now afforded to nearly _one hundred and fifty_ children of the poorer class, who, but for this aid, would linger on in idleness and ignorance. The teaching is not merely confined to reading and writing; the main object of the Schools is to inculcate habits of industry, and to teach the principles and practice of the Christian Religion. On the formation of the Schools, the plan of self-support was adopted, each child contributing a weekly payment--Infants, 1_d._; Girls who are taught to work, and the younger Boys, pay 2_d._; and the elder Boys, who are taught to write, 3_d._ Although these payments go some way towards the maintenance of the Establishment, yet the funds hitherto have been found very inadequate, and the deficiency has been supplied by voluntary contributions, the produce of bazaars, ladies' work, &c. One of the most successful sources of profit has been a small Volume, printed under the title of "Friendly Contributions;" the profits from the sale of this Work have been applied to the support of the Schools: three Volumes have already appeared, and the present forms the fourth. It is conceived that it is unnecessary now to urge one word in favour of the absolute necessity of affording education to all; the question is narrowed to the consideration of what are the most efficient means by which this great object is to be accomplished; it is hoped that, notwithstanding the many excellent charities which claim the attention of the benevolent, few will be found unwilling to aid an Institution which, in addition to teaching to read and write, instils habits of industry and inculcates the principles of Christianity amongst the children of one of the poorest and most populous districts around London. LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS. THE QUEEN (five copies). H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT. THE QUEEN ADELAIDE (ten copies). THE DUCHESS OF KENT. H. R. H. THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. H. R. H. THE DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER (five copies). THE DUCHESS OF INVERNESS. THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. EARL AMHERST. LORD ASHBROOK. JOHN ALLEN, ESQ. SIR H. BUNBURY. LADY BUNBURY. MRS. BASSET. MRS. BLAKE. MRS. BETHUNE. THE ARCHDEACON BERENS. HENRY BERENS, ESQ. RICHARD BERENS, ESQ. JACOB HANS BUSH, ESQ. ROBERT BICKNELL, ESQ. CHARLES DACRES BEVAN, ESQ. ROBERT BEVAN, ESQ. EDWARD BLORE, ESQ. MISS HARRIET CLARKE. THE COUNTESS OF CARNARVON. LORD COLBORNE. HON. R. CLIVE. DR. CHAMBERS (two copies). LADY MARY COLE. I. G. TIMURAN. MESSRS. COUTTS AND CO. (five copies). MRS. BEAUMONT COLES. RICHARD D. CRAIG, ESQ. JOHN BONHAM CARTER, ESQ. C. ROBERT COCKERELL, ESQ. R. A. B. BOND CABBELL, ESQ. THE HON. ANNABELLA CREWE. DAVID DUNDAS, ESQ. F. D. DANVERS, ESQ. CHARLES PALMER DIMOND, ESQ. SAMUEL DUCKWORTH, ESQ. LEWIS DUVAL, ESQ. MRS. LEWIS DILLWYN. MRS. DIMSDALE. MRS. GENERAL DORRIEN. WILLIAM EASTLAKE, ESQ. CHARLES LOCK EASTLAKE, ESQ. R. A. GEORGE EASTLAKE, ESQ. GEORGE EASTLAKE, ESQ. JUNIOR. WILLIAM ETTY, ESQ. R. A. HON. MISS FOX (two copies). COLONEL FOX (three copies). B. FRERE, ESQ. MRS. B. FRERE. J. B. FREELAND, ESQ. LADY E. GOWER. MRS. R. HANBURY GURNEY. MISS GURNEY. SIR J. L. GOLDSMID, BART. G. B. GREENOUGH, ESQ. J. R. GOWAN, ESQ. J. R. GARDINER, ESQ. HENRY GAWLER, ESQ. MISS GORDON. MISS GULSTON. MISS STEPNEY GULSTON. LADY (V) HOLLAND. MRS. HOLLAND. LORD HATHERTON. MRS. HUSKISSON. LIEUT.-GENERAL HUSKISSON. RICHARD HARRISON, ESQ. MRS. CHARLES HALL. MRS. HOUSEMAN. MRS. JOHN HOUSEMAN. THE COUNTESS OF KERRY (two copies). THE EARL OF ILCHESTER. MRS. GEORGE JENNER. DAVID JARDINE, ESQ. SIR JAMES KEMPT. MRS. H. BELLENDEN KER. THE MARQUISS OF LANSDOWNE. THE MARCHIONESS OF LANSDOWNE. LADY ELIZABETH LEVISON. SIR THOMAS BARRETT LENNARD, BART. THOMAS BARRETT LENNARD, ESQ. SIR DENIS LE MARCHANT, BART. JOHN GEORGE LEFEVRE, ESQ. EDMUND LUDLOW, ESQ. HENRY LOWE, ESQ. JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. JAMES LONSDALE, ESQ. DOWAGER COUNTESS MONSON. LADY MACDONALD. LADY MAYO. CAPTAIN MEYNELL. MRS. MITCHELL. THE HON. MRS. OFFLEY. OLD WINDSOR BOOK CLUB. LADY JANE PEEL. LADY PELLEW. LADY PECHELL. MISS PRICE. MR. PANIZZI. F. PIGOU, ESQ. J. DELAFIELD PHELPS, ESQ. LOUIS HAYES PETIT, ESQ. REV. J. LEWIS PETIT (two copies). FRANCIS BARLOW ROBINSON, ESQ. SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. MISS ROGERS. JOHN RICHARDS, ESQ. SIR JAMES SOUTH. LADY SOUTH. RIGHT HON. V. SMITH. MRS. V. SMITH. CHARLES STOKES, ESQ. CHARLES SWEETING, ESQ. REV. CLEMENT STRONG. THOMAS TEESDALE, ESQ. J. THOMSON, ESQ. (Clitheroe.) FRANCIS CHARLES TROWER, ESQ. W. H. TINNEY, ESQ. REV. T. M. TREHERNE. MRS. TREHERNE. SIR CHARLES VAUGHAN. R. VALPY, ESQ. MRS. VALPY. M. VANDE WEYER (two copies). LADY WALPOLE. LADY ELIZABETH WHITBREAD. W. WINGFIELD, ESQ. MRS. WICKHAM. MRS. WIMBERLY. MISS WALLS. R. WHITE, ESQ. J. WINTLE, ESQ. [Heading illustration] LETTER I. DEAR SIR, AS I am about to build a new house, I have determined to avail myself of your assistance, should it be convenient to you to give it. I do not by so doing intend that it should be supposed I think that the many very intelligent architects in this country are incapable of giving me good advice; but independently of my friendship for you, and great respect for your talents, I wish to consult one who is not likely to be so much wedded to the routine of modern Italian villas, Elizabethan houses, and thatched cottages, as is the case with most of our English professors: not that I mean to say anything in disparagement of a Palladian villa, always beautiful, though not always best suited to our climate. I am also fully sensible of many of the beauties of the old Elizabethan houses, and also of some of the imitations of them; and a small thatched cottage is very pretty. I shall begin by stating the sort of house we want, and give a short description of the ground on which it is proposed to build it, in order that you may in the first place, give your notions as to the site, and the style which you would recommend. On the style, perhaps you would give us your views in detail, pointing out, as far as your leisure and inclination will permit, the merits of each, and which on the whole you prefer. As regards the ground, we have no park, but sufficient extent of land to make a large paddock very park-like: it would not suit our views to have a park: the situation is not romantic; but as the ground is poor and wild, we shall command more ornament than profit. To the north or north-west there is a rising terrace, well sheltered with high trees; this slopes down for about a quarter of a mile into the valley of the Cray; the aspect is therefore south-east, and this comes best according to the slope of the ground. If you prefer that the house should stand high, you may have in front a good terrace of at least two hundred yards long and eight feet high; if lower down the hill (half way), the terrace will not be so good, but there will be better shelter from the north wind, and at the back there will be rising ground, through which the walks of the pleasure ground may be conducted, and still the house will be well above the valley. In front, looking over this valley, and across some fine orchards (for which Kent is celebrated) and some waving fields of corn, there is a mass of wood on a rising hill, about equal to the hill on which we are situated; on the right there is a fine view of Knocholt beeches; in the valley there is the town of Footscray, seen through the orchard at about half a mile distant, and by a little dexterous cutting and levelling we shall be able to get a glimpse of the small winding river. On the right of the hill on which we are to build, there is a small spring at present rising in some swampy ground covered with alders; this we propose to clear, and shall be enabled, if you think it worth while, to enlarge into a small sheet of water. With this general view, you will see that we are well off as to aspect, have woods in the distance, and a valley (of no great beauty indeed, but still a valley) with a quiet stream, and this is always pleasing. I think it may be considered as a fair average specimen of English scenery, such as is met with in the southern counties. Now as regards the house. There must be a good dining-room, a good general morning room, which will serve as drawing-room, and a large library; one or two small rooms, in which to receive persons on business, &c. As regards bed-rooms, offices, &c. this will be matter of future consideration, when we have settled the important matter of site and style. I should, however, mention, that, as circumstances may make it desirable to add to the size, it will be advisable that there should be that irregularity in the plan as will admit of this, so that it may be in the end, a house costing from £10,000 to £12,000. With respect to the offices, I think we make a great mistake in England, as we manage to hide them, and lose all the benefit of increasing the size and importance of the house by these additions. I know, however, this is a very difficult point to manage, and merely throw it out for your consideration. The general building material in this part of the country is brick, though we are enabled, at no very great cost, to get some stone for window or door frames, &c. I have been reading a little about the sites of ancient villas, but shall not trouble you with my views until I receive your answer: recollect we have a bad and variable climate, though we go out as much in the winter as summer; so that there must be at once shelter from the sun for our short summer, and warmth and shelter during the long winters and cold springs. H. B. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] LETTER II. FOR your letter, accept my thanks. It is doubly flattering to me, being a foreigner, to be commissioned to make the designs for the country house you intend to build. Yet while I derive great satisfaction from the task, I am impressed with the difficulties attending it, one of which is, that I am at present prevented by business from discussing the matter with you in person, and am therefore compelled to put my ideas upon paper. Simple as the commission appears, it however involves considerations of some moment, and which render it necessary that I should previously state to you my opinion in detail in regard to the style I propose to adopt. I have not forgotten what you once said to me, namely, that in order to make himself intelligible to others, it is essential that the artist should be clear as to his own meaning. I even suspect that opinions once defined, if not clearly and sincerely put down, may lead to misapprehension, and (inasmuch as they commit the person who gives them) to the misleading of the artist himself. You invite me, however, to give my opinion, and having freely stated the difficulties of the undertaking, I begin with more confidence. What then, with a view to your individual taste, is the style I would recommend as most suitable for the intended situation and purpose? And if such a question is now become not an uncommon one, you must allow that, sixty years ago, no one would have thought of proposing it to an architect for his consideration. Every architect would then have at once answered it by saying, "In that style which is in general use, and according to my own particular views of it." Or during any of the various epochs of the art, would any one have thought of suggesting to a Greek, an Italian, or native of the north of Europe, &c. to build in any other style than that belonging to their respective countries? It ought also to be borne in mind, that if we occasionally meet with an intermixture of styles, it is only in buildings of _transition periods_, during the change from one mode to another; and such periods were of only short duration, because the previous style had already outlived itself. Circumstances are now totally altered. We recognize and practically adopt various styles indiscriminately: nor is it difficult to explain how it happens that we now employ one and then another. For this, two reasons may be assigned: the first (a very meritorious one) is, that we with a generalizing view, anxiously study and investigate the most difficult examples of art. The second reason however, is of a very unsatisfactory nature, which is that in our weak hands no style has been so naturalized among us as to constitute a permanent canon by which to regulate the modifications of any and every architectural purpose. This is the cause of that indecision of style which manifests itself more or less in modern edifices, and of that changeableness of taste which has hitherto hindered us from establishing the art upon fixed principles, regulated according to the high requisites which our modern cultivation requires. We seem to be of opinion that variety of character is attainable only by variety of style: hence our Museums are classically _antique_, our churches after the mode of the middle ages, and so forth, according as the buildings happen to belong to the class in which any particular period was most distinguished for buildings of that class. The character of such examples strikes us by its expressiveness; nor do we find it difficult, with models before us that we are now acquainted with and understand, to produce the same kind of effect and expression by merely copying their physiognomy and style. He, however, who is well grounded in the study, is aware that at different periods the art was treated according to its own principles as resulting from different modes of culture; and that consequently the adoption of a style previously discarded, though it may suit the vitiated taste of the artist, as the _haut gout_ pleases the fastidious palate of the Epicure, yet it can never be pleasing to a really cultivated taste. You may think me somewhat fantastical, but it appears to me that we cannot read Homer with perfect relish in a saloon à la Louis Quatorze, or Shakespeare beneath the roof of a Grecian impluvium; and that it is only where the character of the surrounding forms and objects in some degree accord, at least do not harshly contrast with our mental occupation, that we can fully abandon ourselves to the imaginings of genius. I might, however, without impropriety, substitute "_character_" for "_style_" in the question you put to me, and my answer would then be: Let it be as noble and as cheerful as possible. Still the making a distinction between style and character does not entirely get rid of the difficulty; for a person who is as intelligent as you are in matters of art will say, "Even if you hit the character, the mere _desire_ to invent an appropriate style does not of itself satisfy me, and on this account I wish you to state more explicitly which of former styles you intend mainly to select." This I will now attempt to do, and begin by stating it as my opinion, that the most perfect architectural style is that which admits at the same time of a refined style both of sculpture and of painting:--that which, while it serves as the vehicle of graceful embellishment, can maintain an equal excellence in itself. Such, as it appears to me, is the ideal which an architect of the present day ought to keep in his mind's eye. Yet before we proceed to inquire which of the principal styles we are acquainted with possesses such a quality in the most eminent degree, it will be proper to consider what is the kind of relationship which the three separate arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture, bear to each other. According to the usual metaphor, the consanguinity is that of sisterhood. Yet in my opinion this is somewhat incorrect. In its origin and development every organic style of architecture has preceded the other two arts, consequently the relationship in which it stands to them may more properly be termed maternal, it being under her fostering protection that they have afterwards grown up: nor would it be difficult to exemplify this sort of connexion between the three arts by instances taken from different styles of architecture; and one who has applied himself to studying the motives and principles governing the formation of those different styles, will easily follow me in my remarks. The two daughter arts were unknown to, or did not exist for the earliest Asiatic architecture; on which account, imposing as its gigantic remains are, they oppress the mind by the feeling they excite of stern and monstrous vastness. In the Egyptian style the growth of the children arts appears to have been stunted and repressed by the servitude in which they were kept; nor have any later race or nation attempted to rival the massiveness of its edifices, tattooed over with hieroglyphics. It is only in the genuine architecture of ancient Greece itself, and in the Italian style of the fifteenth century, that we meet with all the three arts growing up to completeness together, and as is universally acknowledged, brought to a very high degree of refinement and perfection. Notwithstanding the long continued progressive formation and manifold development of Gothic architecture, that style failed to attach to, and as it were to incorporate with itself the two kindred arts, which were checked both by unfavourableness of climate, and by war and political disturbances. Architecture was therefore compelled to trust chiefly to its own power and resources, employing sculpture and painting merely as subordinate decoration. And who shall say that this style, so full of creative power, would not have preserved itself more pure, have avoided falling into the cold and gloomy on the one hand, the bizarre and overloaded on the other, could it have availed itself of the assistance of sculpture and painting, so that they should have accompanied it in all the varieties of its times and developments? This was to an extent the case with Arabian architecture,[1] which, both in regard to the dominion it obtained and its organization, has many points of similarity with the nearly contemporary Gothic style, notwithstanding the marked distinctions which prevail between them. This reminds me of the remark of a poetical friend, who once said to me, "Like a rainbow on the horizon of art, Gothic architecture stretches itself across Europe from Byzantium to Portugal; while Arabian architecture may be compared to its reflection, somewhat flattened however, commencing from the same point, and crossing along the north coast of Africa till it reaches Spain: or to a reflection in the water, whose wavy surface occasions some little difference of appearance; and in fact we behold both styles united together in the amphibious city of Venice." This simile would be more literally appropriate had the uses to which the two styles were applied been more nearly alike. [1] As regards _Arabian architecture_, the parent art may be said to have been entirely childless, depending entirely on its own resources, discarding all representation of animal life, whether in painting or sculpture. With respect to modern architecture, it may be said that it has quite rejected the services of the other two arts, and, as I fear, greatly to its own detriment; while these latter arts, notwithstanding the eminence they have attained apart from architecture, are not so solidly united as they otherwise would be, nor capable of so completely developing their powers, had the union of the three been complete. It is well known that, owing to the fetters imposed upon them in Egypt by the religion of the people and its priesthood, it was only in Europe that sculpture and painting could at different epochs attain to maturity. But it is not perhaps so generally known or considered, that it is one characteristic mark of European architecture, that it has at all times, whether those of its progress and advancement, or its decline, availed itself of natural forms, both vegetable and animal, for purposes of decoration; while the Asiatic styles were confined to geometrical figures for the ornaments. The above cursory glance at the history of the art, may at least serve to shew how incumbent it is upon the architect of the present day to make himself acquainted with the creative power and processes of his art, by studying them as they actually manifest themselves at different epochs, and according to the different views and purposes to which the art was applied. By so doing, however, he is in some danger of being worked upon by conflicting impressions, occasioned by the diversity of styles and the opposite tastes they exhibit. Yet, unless I am greatly mistaken, the whole system of the art, as developed in the different styles, must henceforth have considerable influence upon our modern architecture. Limiting our views for the present to those architectural productions in which a union with the other arts is more directly attainable, we find Grecian or early Italian architecture the predominating style. The last grafted on the former, may be said to be more or less complete in the greater or less proportion in which it derives its nourishment from the parent stem. If we look, for example, to the progress or course of painting in Italy, that art flourished there in proportion to the nourishment it derived from the antique. The works of Mantegna, M. Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael bear testimony to this; and those great men would probably have attained to a higher degree of excellence, had they been as well acquainted with the sculptures of the Parthenon, and the Greek bronzes, as they were with the works of the Romans. Most assuredly a knowledge of the architecture of the time of Pericles, or of that of Pompey, would not have been without its influence upon such men as Bramante, San Gallo, and Baldassore Peruzzi, nor have failed of being turned to account by them: observe, however, that this remark is not intended to depreciate what they actually accomplished, nor to disparage the style which they formed. These explorers had unquestionably discovered new veins in the rich mine which had been opened by the Greeks; as the Romans, who were the immediate imitators of the Greeks, had already extended the one first of all worked. In all subsequent operations, as in what the French term the _Renaissance_ style, nothing more was done than to go on excavating, seldom, however, with sufficient pains or caution, so as to separate completely the gold from the dross. When, therefore, I propose to make a design in the "Greek style," I wish you to observe that I understand by this term a striving after the purity of this canon, but at the same time with a reserved right to the free use of those modes and motives with which later European architecture supplies us. If a determinate name must be given to the style, I propose I should call it, "the Renaissance style of the nineteenth century." But many may say, "How conveniently he contrives to get rid of the Gothic architecture!" while others will exclaim, "According to such principles, a very pretty sort of medley is likely to be produced." In answer to the first set of objections I reply: "If you can introduce modern sculpture and painting into Gothic architecture without prejudice to _them_ or _it_, I will say that you have attained a great end." To the others I should reply: "You misunderstand or pervert my meaning. I have not spoken of a merely mixing up of different styles, but of compounding them together; between which two processes there is, I conceive, a wide difference, the ingredients being merely put together in the one case, without losing their respective qualities; while in the other they amalgamate with each other, and produce an entirely new combination: and it is in accomplishing combinations of this kind that the power of genuine art manifests itself; and the distinction may be likened to the difference between a mechanical and a chemical combination. Nor are some compound styles of architecture less beautiful than others which are quite unmixed." I know not whether these remarks will prove of much service to you, but I trust they will at least enable you, after seeing what are my views generally on the subject, to make your own suggestions in return for my further guidance. I am, &c. A. C. [Heading illustration] LETTER III. DEAR SIR, THANKS for your letter in answer to mine, or rather in part answer to it, for you have confined yourself solely to a discussion of the style to be selected. A subject which has hitherto, I think, not been sufficiently considered; at least in England. I believe that amateurs order a Grecian Palladian, or Elizabethan house without having much speculated on what are the different merits or demerits of each, but merely with reference to some one example which may be in their recollection, and which may have pleased them; or what is oftener the case, they submit to be guided by the bent of their architect, who in general, are wedded to some particular favourite style. Thus, we have Mr. ----, all Gothic and Elizabethan; Mr. ----, all Italian, with a dash of the Byzantine, Renaissance, &c. I am, I own, much pleased as well as instructed by this discussion, and I hope you will not consider me as intruding too much upon your time and patience, if I venture to seek further elucidations of some of the positions in your letter. I quite agree it is clear that as yet we have a style to choose, and that in future ages, no architect will be able to apply any definite character to our present mode of building. I must, however, premise what indeed my letter will fully prove, that your partiality has induced you to give me credit for greater knowledge in matters of art, especially as regards architecture, than I possess. I agree that the style which best admits of being combined with the sister arts (or filial if you please) of painting and sculpture, must be the one to adopt, and that it is clear their union is always a mutual improvement. It seems you come to the conclusion that the pure Greek style of architecture is that which best admits of this union. Now, as regards domestic architecture, I am not sure that I have any very clear perception of what is pure Greek style. I suspect our notion as regards a house of pure Greek style, is a cube of building of mock stone with a portico, if a large house; or if a small one, with some thin paste-like pilasters, and a certain number of parallelogram holes cut into the walls for windows, with two smaller cubes for wings; and, in the inside, a repetition of the outside, in the shape of the rooms; that is, two oblong rooms for dining and drawing rooms, with an oblong hall placed the other way: the usual accompaniment of folding doors, and two or three small and often dark rooms at the back. There are certainly some changes rung on these forms, but the theme is always the same. I call Sir R. Smirties' Post Office a gigantic small Grecian house. I am aware that the Palladian improvements, or additions, (which ever you will) have multiplied the resources, and have given us much to delight; namely, the circular dome, pillars, and gallery, and the consequent change in the disposition of the apartments. I mention these points to let you see the nakedness of the land, and trust to your kindness for better instruction. You assume that the Grecian style is the best adapted to pictorial and sculptural decoration, but I do not see the reason of this; in fact, without a more precise definition of what you mean by Greek style, as adapted to domestic architecture, I do not see how this can be shewn. You state that the Gothic style is not so well adapted to the union with the filial arts, and that hitherto when so used they were subordinate only. I shall be the more ready to agree when I have some further exposition on this point. Though not so distrustful as our Royal Society who adopt "_Nullius in verba_" as their motto, yet cling to an old monkish law maxim of Lord Coke; I may say of your position what he says of law, "_Lex plus laudatur quando ratione probatur_." I am aware that the Gothic churches are often overloaded with ornament, and that the sculpture often seems as if merely stuck on, and the pictures are hung up as ornaments, not as part and parcel of the building; and, I believe, that tapestry was often called in aid to decorate our cathedrals, and with great effect; but is it of necessity so? Are there no exceptions? at all events, it is not so in the Byzantine style, which approaches so nearly to the Gothic; and, as regards the Arabian, (take for instance the Alhambra) the fair daughters unite in great harmony with their beautiful mother. You have besides omitted, I think, one point in which Gothic architecture has been greatly aided by the pictorial art, namely, the painted windows: With hues romantic tinged the gorgeous pane, To fill with holy light this wondrous fane, To aid the builder's model richly rude, By no Vitruvian symmetry subdued. I begin to feel that it is probable I have entirely mistaken what you mean by Grecian style, and that it does not preclude the use of arches, groined ceilings, domes, &c. I have been the more diffuse on this point because I own I have a leaning to what we have called ELIZABETHAN; conceiving, whether true or not, that there is more fitness in it for domestic architecture than in the Grecian style; that the regularity and repetition of form, which in a great building is delightful, in a small one does not please from the diminutive size of the objects. And, again, as regards the material and colour, as we use Grecian style in this country, the material is either white stone or white stucco, which in our climate appears cold, and does not give half so much the notion of warmth and comfort as the fine rich-toned red brick; and what refers to the exterior, is perhaps equally applicable to the interior. Although in a building on a grand scale the mind is pleased with symmetry and regularity, "in little" this is irksome, and gives the notion of poverty, in fact, too soon lets you into the secret of the whole house; there is no surprise, no discovery to make. Shew me a Palladian villa a mile off, and I could draw you the plan of the inside at once. Indeed, I could walk blindfolded into the drawing-room, dining-room, library, and boudoir, and go up to bed in the best bed-room, without a guide, or a light. Here are no Rich windows that exclude the light, And passages that lead to nothing. A good deal also, I am willing to own, arises from association and national prejudices; some of our most delightful houses are built in this style, and they have, at all events within, signs of harmony in the style of decoration, and in the accessories. The gardens and out-buildings were often made more appropriate and better suited to the house than in any other architectural attempts that we have made; and, I believe, no Englishman ever fancied building a house that did not have the large bay window and the large fireplace (against all principles of good grates and Arnott's stoves I admit,) and the low groined passage and the panelled hall in his mind. But it seems you think it most difficult ----------"To reconcile The willing graces to the Gothic pile," or rather say coy than willing. I beg you will not suppose I am opposing your views, all I mean is to canvass and to be sure that I understand them. I have to repeat that I agree entirely that the style is best which is most susceptible of uniting the three arts; but I only wish to know why the Greek is most susceptible; and what is the kind of sculpture and painting you wish to unite; in order to see that such a union is suitable to our climate, and can be obtained at a reasonable cost, for you must bear in mind that I want to build a country-house, not a palace! It is a long time since I was in Italy, and when I was there I did not pay so much attention to architecture as I should do, if I were to go over the same ground again, now that I have got a house to build; but there is a strong impression on my mind that the other parts of Europe may rival or surpass us in palaces and grand architectural monuments, yet that there is no country which would present so many good hints in domestic architecture as England; always referring to the great points, convenience, and comfort; for I own, as _fitness_ is the guiding principles of all perfection in building, I conceive it essential in purely domestic architecture, that a character of fitness for habitation and comfort should always be prominent. I am a great admirer of Balzac, and I think one of his best descriptions of still life is the account of the house in his "Recherche de l'absolu;" it is so good that I should be tempted, if it were not too long for a letter, to copy and send it to you as a model, if not of what a house should be, at least of how one should be described.[2] Yours, &c. H. B. [2] Unfortunately these letters were written long before the appearance of Mr. Fonnereau's very intelligent and instructive Observations on Architecture were printed. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] LETTER IV DEAR SIR, BUT for the trouble of answering your letter I should have been much amused by your remarks upon what, at no very distant period, used to pass for Grecian architecture; but thank heaven we have passed over that barren tract of human invention. Continuing in the same strain, you would fain have me believe you are one of those pilgrims to the shrine of art, who fancy they have now luckily gained a verdant and flowery oasis; or rather that they have discovered the true Eden itself, which it seems is no other than the Elizabethan style; and to complete all, you treat me as the evil spirit, harbouring deadly enmity against this fair paradise. It is easy enough for you to give your opinions off-hand on these matters, but with us the case is different: the architect finds it less difficult to exhibit his ideas in his design, than to explain all the motives which lead to it,--how the ideas exactly arose, and how far they may have been influenced, either by our studies or our fancy. I must be allowed, therefore, to return to my former examination of the subject of style, and my deduction from such examination. You will call to mind that the principal different manners which have prevailed in Europe, are, first the Greek style, and the additions made to it by the Roman adaptation of it, then the Gothic in its different periods, and the different treatments of such periods in the different countries; and under this period may be added the partial adoption of the Arabian style in the south. Then this great æra of the revival or Renaissance style, as it seemingly arose in Italy, France, Germany, Flanders, and England. This being, as regards England, your boasted Elizabethan style. It is only very recently that my attention has been bestowed on that style which in the north of Europe succeeded to the Gothic; whereas, till then, it had been all along imagined that the Italians alone had comprehended the spirit of the antique, and been able to revive it in a newer form of their own; an error against which we should be upon our guard. Why should we not recognize the various modes of treating the antique, as we find them in different countries; and admit them to be all emanations from one common source and principle. In like manner, the Gothic principle or style was in common adopted and worked out through the whole of Europe, and was in common consentaneously abandoned wherever it had flourished; and the elements of ancient architecture became as commonly substituted for it. And this abandonment of the Gothic, it may be remarked, is the first instance in all history, when the creative power of a people (and, by people, I do not mean a single nation, but the whole of Christendom, united by one common religion) has survived the style of architecture, originally invented and brought to perfection by themselves. This last subject would be an interesting and fertile one to investigate, and would throw considerable light on the development of the human mind throughout Europe. Such consideration, even confined merely as regards architecture, would be one too far from the present subject now to discuss. Since, however, the Gothic as well as the revival of the antique principle have extended over all Europe, in order to attain a knowledge of either, we should not confine ourselves to isolated specimens of particular countries. It is only by taking a survey of the entire field of Gothic architecture, that we can rightly comprehend its varied powers. Is it possible I would ask, from the mere acquaintance with English Gothic to imagine, or from its elements to compose a tower like that of the Minster of Freiburg in Brisgau, or a loggia of similar character to that called the Loggia da Orcagna, at Florence? On the other hand an acquaintance with continental Gothic alone will furnish no idea of the peculiar character of the English perpendicular class. The Renaissance style which is fraught with so much plasticity and variety, springs also but from one root. In like manner as it is impossible for a botanist to understand all the species of one particular family without tracing all that are found in different parts of the globe; so too, is it impossible to become acquainted with the power of any one style of architecture without a similar comparative study of all its specimens, as exhibited in the works of different nations which have adopted it. To the north of Europe must justly be allowed the merit of having exhausted the whole circuit of Gothic architecture, and the application of its principles; this was certainly not accomplished in Italy. It is therefore on this side of the Alps that we observe many of the motives and principles of the Gothic retained to a very late period not disturbed, as was the case in Italy, by types from the antique. At the same time it must be admitted, that when the style founded upon this latter, began to find its way northwards, the two sister arts, painting and sculpture, though they followed in the train of architecture, did not strike root very deeply, but were for the most part treated capriciously and mechanically as mere handicrafts; and this was especially the case in England. It is therefore remarked with some truth, that the Renaissance style is characterized in Italy by greater delicacy and beauty than elsewhere; in France and the Low countries by greater richness, and in England by capriciousness and extravagance. Lest, however, the term itself, Renaissance, should be thought too loose and vague, it may be proper to define it as used to signify "that style which everywhere succeeded immediately to the Gothic." In Italy, this first period of the proper application of the antique terminates with the tendency of Michael Angelo, to destroy the true proportions of his buildings by colossal details; on the other parts of the continent it disappeared in consequence of the diffusion of M. Angelo's taste by the Jesuits; and in England it terminated at the time of Wren. Accordingly, this architectural period extends very little beyond a single century, commencing in other countries about the time when it was already on the decline in Italy. In what I have just been stating, I must be understood to allude to one uniform aim, namely, the free appropriation and adaptation of the elements of the antique style to modern purposes; consequently it is evident that the so-called Elizabethan style is only one of the links of a progressive series of such attempts. You must, therefore, admit that architecture which is capable of producing independent works out of its own resources, and from its own principles, is degraded to what is little better than mere decoration and scene painting, when, (apprehensive of falling into contradiction and want of harmony, unless it retains all the individual particulars of extant examples,) it timidly strives to imitate the dialect of a single province. How short a time, however, must the impression produced by such mummery last! and how long the impression of a work of architecture is destined to remain! It is because we are ashamed of, or mistrust the results of our own study and conviction, that we venture to exhibit ourselves to posterity, merely as the copyists of examples; the repute of which is already established, and which may be learnt and repeated by rote? At various periods men have shewn themselves either barbarous or puerile in their notions on art; yet never till now such slavish copyists, such mere plagiarists, such mocking-birds in style. You may judge by this sally in what an ill humour I am, at finding that you would shut me up in a cage and there make me sing. If you examine your Elizabethan architecture with some little critical attention, you will hardly fail to perceive that, with all its richness of expression, the elementary sounds are no more harmonious than the crowing of a cock, or the braying of an ass. All this concerns merely the STYLE, as style; for in other respects we often meet with much that deserves praise; convenient arrangement, and contrivance, striking effect, and much cleverness of construction and execution, although so far from being pure or refined, the taste displayed may be decidedly vulgar and coarse. I freely confess that the merits I have just mentioned, were retained in the architecture of the north of Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: I say retained, because the Gothic style that was then abandoned, had been treated with masterly and skill, and shewed disciplined artificers in all that belongs to mechanical execution; consequently, the ability thus produced had only to employ itself upon a fresh task. At the end of the last century, on the contrary, so completely had every thing like a school of the art disappeared, that at the University of Gottingen, architecture was taught as supplementary to the elementary course of mathematics. Is it then to be wondered at that we should have been filled with stupid wonder at the sublime works then newly brought to light, or that we should have set about copying them for the nonce, out of the affectation of classical purity, but without bestowing any study on the peculiar motives to be detected in them, or on the necessary alterations to be made in consequence of new exigences? If we allow that as far as it proceeded, Grecian architecture is stamped by perfect beauty, it is of little moment to our argument whether it was so comprehensive as it might have been, and had sufficiently developed itself for those purposes which we now more especially require; since the perfection it did actually attain in the direction it took, ought to be sufficient to inspire the artist. It was not necessary that the latter should surrender up the freedom belonging to him as such, and confine himself to following Grecian motives and intentions. In fact, the peculiar charm,--the grace and freshness of Grecian architecture become withered as soon as we begin to treat it according to dry systematic rules. The Vitruvius, capable of legislating for it according to its genius and true spirit perhaps is not yet born! For indulging at such length in these somewhat abstract remarks upon style alone, I must again entreat your pardon. You ask for some more distinct and explicit ideas on the subject; and are apparently, like many others, of opinion, that the remains of a few temples, such as we behold in Stuart and Revett, comprise nearly the whole of Greek architecture. The chief point for our present consideration is, how far it had accommodated itself to buildings for domestic purposes: and here I must remind you that Pliny's description of his villas are still extant. It must, indeed, be confessed that those two residences do not belong to the epoch of Pericles; yet they belong nevertheless to that same series of actual Greek plans and constructions which have been preserved to us at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and which Sir W. Gell's tasteful delineations have rendered so familiar to all. Many remains of the same class in the vicinity of Rome, and more especially in the Golfo di Gaeta, at Puzzoli, and in the environs of Naples, sufficiently attest the fancy and variety with which the ancients availed themselves of the conditions imposed by peculiarities of ground and locality,--contrived to combine the advantages of coolness and shade on the one hand, with the glow of sunshine on the other; to provide a frame and foreground for the prospect from the house; and to produce happily imagined effects and picturesqueness of character by means of the irregularity and declivity of the ground. Each of those ancient villas presents us with a new idea, and may be taken as an architectural study. Look, for instance, at those examples of the kind on the Lake of Albano and the Gulf of Gaëta, where the dwelling itself is connected with grottoes offering cool retreats, either for sitting in or for the purpose of baths, and upon entering which the visitor is so fascinated by the magic effect of reflected light from the water, that he almost fancies the whole scene to be a visionary and unearthly one. Water, it may be observed, either gushing in a stream, or exhibiting an expanded mirror-like surface, appears to have been considered by the ancients indispensable to the charm of a villa residence. In both the destroyed cities, even the smallest town houses offered upon entering them the reflection of the sky on the surface of the water contained in the basin of the impluvium. In larger dwellings, water was introduced more abundantly, and also in greater variety of modes; and residences upon the coast were built out quite into the sea. Besides much else that they have derived from the ancients, the modern Italians have retained this fondness for the combination of water and architecture, as many of their villas testify. For examples of the kind I refer you to the Villa Madama near Rome, and also to several at Frescati; and yet there the water and the architecture are not so intimately connected as in the villas and houses of the ancients. The climate of the north, in a great measure, prevents our availing ourselves of water as a means of producing reflection of light in the interior; but we may imitate this principle in a due arrangement of light and shade, and also in some cases by the use of mirrors in place of water. Another very great, though little regarded point of excellence and architectural effect in the latter consists in the covered ambulatories and porticoes, which, indeed, were intended chiefly as a defence against heat and sun, yet recommend themselves equally to us, as affording protection from rain and wind. Nevertheless it is rarely but in cloisters that we find this architectural convenience retained. Great attention seems also to have been paid by the ancients to planning the internal communication in such a manner, that the domestics could pass to and fro, and have access to the different rooms, without incommoding those occupying any of the suite; and in this sort of arrangement they frequently exhibit so much ingenuity and contrivance, that we may study for some time ere we shall be able to surpass them. For the present, these few hints and suggestions must suffice; but I could discourse to you for days together of the varied effects of light, the manifold diversity of form, the richness of play in regard to decoration, and all the combinations and beauties, both with respect to circumstances of locality and arrangement, that are to be met with in the remains of ancient domestic architecture. Among other questions which you have submitted for my consideration, is, whether pure Greek architectural forms and details will bear to be united with such a material as coloured brickwork? And by way of removing your doubts, I beg to remind you of the highly praised brick edifices of King Mausolus, described by Vitruvius. Texture and colour of materials are to be considered merely as the vehicle made use of by the artist, and may be employed in one style almost equally as well as in another. Another doubt suggested, is whether arches and vaulting can properly be admitted into the style above-named? Now, were you to consult the Delphic oracle, it would probably return you some such answer as the following: _When the edge of an aperture in a wall forms a right angle, the archivolt may still descend to the base without being interrupted by an impost. In vaulting, the diagonal crossing lines must be considered as secondary ones._ Perhaps this will but ill satisfy you, and you will say that, instead of solving one enigma, I have merely added another. Yet of one thing you may be assured, namely, that those difficult problems and mysteries in art, which have been expounded in formal terms, have been already actually decyphered, and explained more clearly by the practical solution of them in productions of art. It seems you think I have not yet given you any satisfactory reason for my position, that the present improved state, both of painting and sculpture, renders it difficult to reconcile them with the conditions required by Gothic architecture. I admit this would be otherwise were we to go back to the hard dry style of the Van Eyck school. I can only say that such an attempt has been made by some of the best artists in Germany, and that after persisting in the trial for some time, they have now abandoned the imitation of the early German style, and have preferred the Italian. At any rate, my opinion is not contradicted by history, since the latter informs us that the powerful impression produced by the broad handling and simple masses of the ancient works of sculpture, then first discovered in various parts of Italy, had the effect of giving the representation of nature an entirely new direction. It is also a striking circumstance that, owing to the fresh impulse which both painting and sculpture hence received, not only the taste for Gothic architecture declined, but the system itself was opposed both by painters and sculptors, who attempted to make architecture subsidiary to their productions. Such being the case, as they alleged, in regard to ancient art. With what eagerness not only the learned men of Italy, and the architects who were urged on by them to the study of classical antiquity, but also both sculptors and painters, entered the lists against Gothic art, is sufficiently evident from Ghiberti's journal; and again afterwards, when a decided victory had been already obtained over it, from Raphael's report to Leo X. on the ancient edifices and other remains at Rome. It is perhaps not so generally known, that in more northern countries it was the painters who set up for reformers in architecture. Holbein, there is reason to think, erected the first specimen of the antique in England: the portal of Wilton House, for his patron the Earl of Pembroke, still existing. About a hundred years later, Rubens, with the view of giving the death-blow to the still lingering taste for Gothic architecture in the Netherlands, made drawings of the Palaces of Genoa, and caused them to be disseminated in engravings. At the present day, indeed, we may be excused for smiling at the classical zeal of the worthy Peter Paul, who, in his preface to that collection of designs, inveighs against Gothic architecture as barbarous, at the same time that the plates themselves which he gives, are little better than hideous caricatures of the modern Genoese style, which, at the best is by no means remarkable for purity of taste. Should Gothic architecture, which is just now employed upon a liberal scale, and with more or less of true feeling for it, in your country ever obtain firm footing there again, depend upon it my professional brethren who have, I think, adopted it without due consideration of the present condition of the other fine arts, will have to encounter serious, and, perhaps, unforeseen difficulties from the painters and sculptors. Were some gifted sculptor to apply himself to architecture, I am persuaded he would drive us all out of the field, for the charm with which that art is capable of investing architecture by a skilful union of the flesh-like sculpture with the hard bones of architecture, would produce an irresistibly fascinating effect. From this long letter you will collect that, whilst on the other hand I do not mean to be confined either to a servile imitation of a pure Pompean house; so, on the other, I do not mean to be tied down to repeat your Elizabethan architecture, or the Gothic of Germany or England. Nor do I propose to give you a fac-simile of any building of the Renaissance school. To the best of my power, I propose (as the best style) that which adopts the pure broad principles of beauty in building, and which were, I sincerely believe, best propounded by the Greeks; and which all experience has shewn to be best suited to receive addition from the highest style of painting and sculpture; and which are, in fact, parts of architecture. How far I may succeed is another point. It is indeed difficult in all cases, even to select what is best; but with the most lofty aspirations, I am aware that I may indeed fall very short of the execution of my wishes; perhaps, I have already done myself some harm in this very discussion of style, by preparing you to expect too much. Yours, &c. A. C. [Heading illustration] LETTER V DEAR SIR, THE letter you send in answer to mine, on the question of the most preferable style, I must allow, contains many good reasons in support of your opinion and views; and laying aside prejudice and early associations, I am willing to admit that it is wise to adopt that style which possesses the most completely the elements of beauty, and which is most susceptible of being united to painting and sculpture, essential accessories of architecture, or rather, important branches of that art. Some of the facts which you mention are very interesting and striking, indeed, convincing; and the more I have reflected on the subject, the more I feel the advantage of breadth, and the superior beauty of the simple and grand lines of Grecian architecture; and my curiosity to see the mode in which you will follow out your precepts by your example, is hourly increasing, although I am quite aware that one specimen of a building will not be sufficient to illustrate the general positions you have, I think, so well established. I almost wish that you had been tempted to extend your letter, already long, for the purpose of entering still further into a subject of such interest. I should be curious to learn to what extent the arts of painting and sculpture had been applied, in conjunction with the Gothic; and where they had most failed, and to ascertain whether those instances fully corroborate your positions. As regards your oracular distinction between the two styles, I am not sure I quite understand you. I shall, however, leave this till the termination of the discussion of the plan. The merits of the arrangements and contrivances of the ancient villas, as ascertainable from the descriptions extant, and the plans of those of Pompeii had not entirely escaped me. In addition to the published information, I recollect to have received, many years since, much information and instruction on the subject from Mr. Cocherell, soon after his return from Italy; he having devoted much attention to the arrangement of ancient villas, and having selected some very interesting materials to illustrate the ingenuity of the contrivances, and the judicious selection of the sites, &c. Every part of your letter is tantalizing, and makes me regret that you have merely touched on subjects of such deep interest; whilst reading it, I forgot that I had commissioned you to give me the plan of a house, not to write a complete treatise on ancient and modern architecture. Conceding to you the choice of the style, convinced by your reasons and arguments in favour of its superior beauty and capability, I own to you I do so reluctantly, not without a sigh, and not without much hesitation. Although, abstractedly, a building constructed on the principles you advocate, may have more beauty than our own Gothic or Elizabethan, and may be more susceptible of a union of the three arts; yet there is one part of the subject to which you have not adverted, and on which, perhaps, you are not likely to feel so strongly as we do in England, the most aristocratic country in the world. Some of our most beautiful houses are in this the rejected style, and with them are connected all the prejudices and associations of antiquity, of ancestral dignity and greatness; and a house of this kind carries the mind back to other times, and awakens recollections that it has been enjoyed by a long line of ancestry, and hence, perhaps, has in a great degree arisen the desire of many who have built modern houses, to imitate those of the elder time; not indeed from any attempt actually to devise and construct a forgery, but to avail themselves to a certain degree of the associations to be derived from the recollections associated with the buildings of former ages, and in the construction of which, at least, the most skill and talent had been employed; and again perhaps, the very clumsy and unsuccessful adaptation of the principles of the revived Grecian and Roman, or Palladian architecture, to our modern houses, (especially in the smaller ones,) may have tended to keep alive the prejudice in favour of that style, which even if it were not the best, was at least the best executed; more especially in its adaptation to the fitness of domestic arrangements and comfort. Whilst I have been advocating the merits of our Elizabethan houses, you must not suppose I refer to the multitudes of grotesque little villas which grow up every summer round London; or to those alterations and adaptations, by which one sees Gothic spires, plastered over with stucco, starting up out of one half of an old farm house; the walls notched into battlements, and uncouth animals set a grinning against each other over the gate posts, and the hall crammed and fortified with rusty swords and pikes of all ages and fashions. And on the other half, Venetian windows slices of pilasters, balustrades, and other parts of Italian architecture. Although I have not such a greedy appetite for every thing Gothic, as Horace Walpole had, yet I own I partake somewhat of his feelings, as expressed in a letter from Stowe, when he says, "The Grecian Temple is glorious, this, I openly worship, but in the heretical corner of my heart I adore the Gothic building." Though I own the character he gives of the Gothic building he so adores is barbarous enough, for he says, "That some unusual inspiration of Gibbs has made it _pure_ and venerable, with a propensity to the Venetian, or Moresque Gothic; and the great column near it puts me in mind of the Place of St. Mark." Strawberry Hill, however, is a sufficient proof of his knowledge and taste for pure Gothic. There is one point on which I entirely agree, which is that the style of decoration should be consistent with the style of the architecture. I think we have been more deficient in attention to the style of decoration, than even to the choice of the style of the building itself; and nothing is now more common than to plaster the walls of a modern London house with the Gothic paper of Henry VII.'s Chapel, and to fill it with a load of old carving of all ages and times; and to finish with a cartload of Louis XIV.'s clocks, and other similar ornaments: but of this, more when we come to discuss the decoration of your rooms. [Heading illustration] LETTER VI. BY my first letter you will see I have explained to you the _site_, and I think the next point which we have to settle will be the advantages and disadvantages of _aspect_; and whether the house should be placed at the top of the low hill I have mentioned to you, or half way down, or at the bottom. I think in general, the modern fashion has been to seek a lofty spot, without reference to shelter; so that the architect's work should shew well to the surrounding country. My object is that the house should be placed in the most convenient spot as to _shelter_, with the best aspect suitable to our uncertain climate, always taking care that there be sufficient drainage, an essential, though often a neglected point. Having explained the essential, I come next, to the ornamental; I do not think it is so necessary that the house should form a handsome feature of the surrounding landscape, as that it should form an harmonious picture in combination with the grounds in immediate connexion with it; I must refer you again to a description of the _locale_. I have nothing to add to this. You will see that the spot I have chosen has somewhat of an amphitheatrical shape, and that I have the means of making a terrace; that I am well backed at the north by trees and hill, and open well to the south-east. You have the choice of aspect within the range of south-east to south-west; yet the house, for meteorological reasons, should not be placed too low down in the valley. I refer you to Mr. Professor Daniell's essays on the subject of the difference of temperature between the top and bottom of a hill; this, though it applies principally to the position of a garden, has some weight even in the site of a house. It will be necessary that the approach should be from the south-west; and as regards plantations and protection from wood, I am well defended on all sides. I had meant to have added some observations on the _picturesque_, of which we fancy we are the discoverers; but at present, I have not time. I may, perhaps, (if I find you inclined to enter into the subject,) send a few remarks on this; particularly, as I believe it is considered that the ancients did not, in the situations of their houses or buildings, consult those principles of taste which we call the picturesque. I think Dr. Copplestone, in his lectures on ancient poetry, states this, and yet one should judge otherwise, from seeing the sites of many of the Roman buildings in this country. That at Bignor in Sussex is particularly beautiful, nay, grand; but yet it was low: perhaps, the advantage of a running stream was the general cause in former times of building quite down in the valley. I think it will be an object to have as much veranda as possible, closed in and very wide, but not, perhaps, in front of the best windows; but somewhere so as to have both a shaded and a winter's sheltered walk. I must apologize for the indefiniteness of this letter, but I think I have given enough to serve as a text for the answer. The style and site settled, I propose we should at once come to materials to be used, ground plan and elevation. As regards offices, I will mention such as are essential; as you may, in consideration of the plan, like to know this; there will be one small lodge at the entrance on the south-west, and should have no objection to a back entrance at the north; as this may be used as a labourer's cottage. There will be a double coach-house, stables for six horses; a small ice-house and gardener's cottage. The two latter may be arranged so as to form part of the garden wall. I mean the kitchen garden, which will be at some small distance from the house, at the back, or north; but I mean it to be connected with the house by the flower-garden and plantations. Yours, &c. H. B. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] LETTER VII. DEAR SIR, WE come now to fix upon a part of the grounds that shall appear most healthy, neither too confined nor too exposed; commanding a good prospect, yet well sheltered. This is a very material point, and not indeed altogether free from difficulty; nevertheless, proper attention to the two circumstances just mentioned would perhaps, in the generality of cases, lead at once to the selection of the most favourable site for building upon; both as regards prospect from the house, and the view towards it; so that as regards the latter, it would display itself to the utmost advantage. With respect to the mode of combining buildings with the surrounding scenery, the following principles and directions are laid down by the ablest of our writers in the German language, on the subject of landscape gardening.[3] "If due care be taken to distribute the masses of light and shade, so that they shall judiciously relieve and balance each other, satisfactory effect, as regards the general grouping and composition of the scenery, can hardly fail to be secured. Grass, water, and level lawns, which throw no shadow upon other objects, but merely receive those which the latter cast upon them, are to be considered as _lights_ in landscape gardening, while trees, woods, buildings, and rocks, (should there be any) afford the artist his _shadows_ and darker tints. In making use of these contrary elements, care must be taken lest breadth of effect be destroyed, and a disagreeable spottiness substituted for it; in consequence of there being too many separate and partial effects independent of each other; or else by there being too great a proportion of unbroken _light_. On the other hand an equal fault is committed, if a few dark masses of shadow are allowed so to predominate, as to overpower all besides; or again, if lawn and water exhibit naked unbroken surfaces of light too harshly defined; whereas they ought to be left partially to lose themselves in indistinctness, or the shadow of deep vegetation; or to detach themselves from a darker background as brilliant lights opposed to it. With respect to buildings, these ought never to stand perfectly isolated, because in that case they become spots, and look as if they had no business there, nor belonged to any of the rest. Besides, a partial concealment is always advantageous to every kind of beauty, and it is highly desirable that the imagination should be interested by there being something for it to exercise itself upon, and to divine. The eye frequently rests with more satisfaction upon a chimney peeping out in the distance, and emitting a gray volume of smoke from amidst the dense foliage of trees that embower and exclude from sight the building whose presence is so indicated, than it does upon a large formal mansion standing fully exposed to view, with no shelter or skreen on any side, with nothing to break its outline, with nothing to render it an appropriate and consistent feature in the general scene." From the beginning of what I have here extracted, you perceive that this writer treats the subject in a masterly manner, taking a comprehensive view, and is guided by such sound theoretical principles, as to be able to determine beforehand, the results of his art with almost as much certainty as an architect can judge of an intended building from its ground plan. [3] Prince Puchler Muskau. Andenkungen über Landshaftgärtnerei. Stuttgart, 1834. Having determined upon the precise site, that which seems most recommended by considerations of healthiness, convenience, &c.; we have next to attend to what appertains exclusively to architectural treatment and character. The general idea of the building, as to its chief masses and parts, extent and arrangement, being sketched out, regard must be had to the greater or less space of the immediate site; to obtaining for it due effect of light and shade, and a background calculated to set it off, upon all which circumstances, it depends nearly as much as a work of sculpture does. In like manner as statues in general have only three sides from which they are calculated to be seen, so also have buildings; nor can I help being of opinion that much harm has been done of late years, both in architecture and sculpture by the attempt at equal display on all sides. The greater part of antique statues were evidently intended to have a wall or background behind them; nor is there, perhaps, any thing more at variance with the effect which statues ought to produce, than the present frequent practice of erecting them in the centre of large squares. Nearly all productions of architecture, more especially structures adapted for habitation, offer one side stamped as the principal or front, and another, which is its reverse; in which respect they bear a greater analogy to living beings than to plants; the latter having no definite foreside, on the contrary, any part becoming the front, that is towards the spectator. Such being the case, the same rules that are to be observed for displaying a statue, or representation of a living figure to advantage, ought to be attended to in regard to the position of buildings. Agreeing with you that a sheltered situation is the most desirable for your intended villa, I will attempt to explain it upon the theory of the following general principles; namely, upon our beholding any building of the kind, it ought immediately to be evident wherefore it is so placed, and that by being placed precisely where it is, it is part and parcel of its immediate vicinity. But to confine myself to our particular instance. I think I shall be able to provide an exceedingly agreeable site for your residence, as I learn that a supply of water may be obtained in the grounds, capable of floating superficies of about fifty thousand square feet, and depth in proportion. Accordingly I propose, after the manner shewn in the accompanying ground sketch, (Plate I.) to avail myself of this circumstance, in order to give animation to the now comparatively tame and lifeless character of the place. The reservoir on the upper terrace would keep the basin constantly filled to the level of the lower terrace, before the water escapes into the valley below. By this means, a sheet of water may be provided almost in the centre of the grounds, and my plan suggests, that the house itself should be erected immediately on the north shore of this artificial lake. On the spot where I have placed it, the ground floor would be about fifty feet above the level of the brook itself, and that part of the grounds through which it runs, consequently would not be exposed to any injurious exhalations from the lower grounds. I need hardly point out to you the unusual agreeableness and even piquant effect of a residence so situated; and when I send my plans for the house itself, you will see what are the apartments that will occupy this side of the building, and what a charming prospect they will command of the lake immediately below, and the grounds on its opposite banks. At present I will only remark as regards the increased effect thus to be gained, that a building immediately on the edge of a piece of water appears more considerable than in any other situation; and that the reflected image of the architecture will form a brilliant contrast to the darker reflections of trees and foliage. Besides which, the most favourable point of distance for viewing the building itself on this side, would thus become fixed--being that from the opposite bank of the lake. A very cursory examination of the plan of the ground will convince you, that the whole of the buildings you require are massed together in one group. Such an arrangement certainly contributes to convenience; and I agree with you by shewing the various offices, instead of attempting to mask or screen them, the house itself may be made to possess greater importance and apparent extent; that is, you will get a large looking country house at a small cost. It may be further remarked, that by adopting such treatment of the plan, some kind of architectural foreground is introduced into the prospects seen from the house itself, together with much contrast and variety, and that too without incurring unnecessary or extra expense, since the same accommodation must be provided. Another advantage is, that the subordinate buildings of this kind attached to the main structure, may be made use of as a kind of connecting link between the more artificial and studied regularity of the latter, and the natural objects in its immediate vicinity; without which sort of intermediate transition, a house is apt to have the appearance of a mushroom structure that has over night started up out of the ground. From the north east angle of the house, the stables extend northwards, while the conservatories run in an eastern direction from the same point. By this means an open avenue is left before the north side of the house: and on the east side a flower garden, which is screened towards the north. The piece of ground enclosed on two sides by the stables and hothouses or conservatories, and therefore not exposed to view from the house itself, would be occupied as the stable-yards, &c. Further on, towards the upper terrace, is the fruit and kitchen garden, stretching out more eastward. At the end of the conservatories is the gardener's lodge, the upper part of which forms a small dovecot. [Illustration: Plate I. Drawing of the ground plan and upper story.] I have not yet said any thing of the west side of the house, although it forms one of the principal elevations of the external designs, the carriage entrance porch being placed there; the approach to which latter is over a bridge, and by the road which runs to the south-west towards the village. You therefore perceive that, before they actually arrive, visitors will obtain a distinct view, across the lake, of the entire range of the buildings from east to west; from the gardener's lodge and tower along the line of south front and terrace, to the bridge itself; of which group of architecture, the greater part, would be reflected in the water, from which it appears immediately to rise up. You will observe, I have _not_ carried the approach to the house in a curved or serpentine direction line, as is generally done, whereby the object to which the visitor is hastening, is now seen and now again suddenly lost sight of; but in a _straight line_, so that the building displays itself more and more plainly to the eye at every step. From the high road, the approach is on the north-east; and of the portico lodge and gate at that entrance into the grounds, the sketch prefixed to this letter will afford you an idea. The direction of the drives and paths, the arrangement of the plantations and groups of trees, wherein I have taken care that the greater part of the fine elms shall remain untouched. The source of the stream and the weir, from which the superfluous water finds its way into the lower valley, would almost of course suggest the propriety of erecting seats at those points of the grounds. A more detailed description of the house follows by next post, with the plans and elevations.[4] Yours, &c. A. C. [4] Plate I. shews the ground plan, &c. [Heading illustration] LETTER VIII. AT length I have sent my notions on the site, and _generally_ as to the house with which I trust you are satisfied. Now that I come to more particular description, and to speak of my design in detail, my confidence is somewhat abated, it being exceedingly problematical how far my ideas will accord with your own wishes and expectations. To the best of my ability I have endeavoured to meet both; to fulfil the conditions belonging to the particular subject and occasion; for be it remarked, every production of art is like every poem, a composition on some particular occasion or theme; and if it fails of its purposed aim as such, it may be said to be a failure altogether, and doomed to oblivion; or rather, in my case, to be stuck up as a monument of my ignorance. All that I dare hope as yet, is that the drawings have not been met with a hasty and decided "It won't do;" but that you at least suspend your judgment until I explain more fully my ideas and the motives which have guided me. The principal sitting-rooms face the south, by which means they will have not only the most favourable aspect, but as it so happens, the best prospect also; therefore, so far you are not likely to start any objection; neither, I presume, will any exception be taken at the situation and aspect of the dining-room, which is towards the east; which last circumstance has induced me almost, as a matter of course, to place the entrance at the west, or opposite end of the house, it being on many accounts objectionable; (with regard to quiet and privacy,) to make the corridor, or inner vestibule running behind and serving as the communication between the principal apartments immediately connected with, or in continuation of the first entrance into the house from the open air; for one reason, because it is hardly possible in such case to prevent a continual current of cold air through the whole of that part of the building. Another point here attended to, is to place the dining-room beyond the other sitting apartments, so that it shall be the last and the most distant from the entrance. Attention to these circumstances have led to that arrangement of the space afforded by the plan which I have adopted. In order both to give some play to that part of the plan, and to avoid all sky-lights, I have broken the north side of the plan by a small court; surrounded on three sides by the house, in such manner that from the corridors, &c. turned towards it, a free prospect of the court and grounds shall present itself from various points of view; whereby an architectural foreground, and the natural scenery beyond it are combined; so that you feel yourself in every part of the house quite in the country. Permit me now to receive you at the entrance, and be your _cicerone_ over the building; in which character I must, before we proceed further, call attention to the exterior of this part, as you will have perceived by the designs it is carried up loftier than the rest, for the purpose of breaking the outline, and of providing a conspicuous and important feature in a distant view of the building. This tower-like portion of the structure does not carry with it any formidable appearance; it has neither battlements nor watch-turrets, for which there exist no historical grounds. On the contrary, crowned by a rich cupola roof, and ornamented with statues, it serves to announce that the house belongs to a lover of the arts and muses, who may be supposed here to enjoy at once, the refinements of literature and art, and the beauties of cultivated nature. The ground floor of this mass of the building is occupied by the entrance vestibule, which has a vaulted ceiling whose arches descend rather low, and which is lighted directly, by only a single small window at some distance from the floor, but which receives a strong reflected light through the doorways. It is highly desirable that a vestibule, entered immediately from the open air, should be moderately lighted, in order that the eyes may not be too much strained at first, but accustom themselves to in-door light; and also that the other rooms may derive additional effect from the contrast. Most assuredly too, a subdued degree of light will suffice for a vestibule which is not intended for a sitting-room, nor for reading, writing, or any other occupation, consequently, it very properly admits of a kind of Rembrandtish effect, which here becomes rather a merit than a defect; especially as it tends to set off all that follows. A group of statues against the wall facing the entrance, would here produce a good effect on account of the stream of light which would fall upon it from the window, and would make a pleasing impression on the visitor as soon as he had crossed the threshold. Instead of seeing from this vestibule any of the other parts of the house, the situation of the rooms, or those who may be passing through the corridors, we have first to turn to the left, where we perceive the staircase, not however exposed to full view, but merely so as to allow the upper part of it to be seen through a screen, formed of columns placed upon a lofty stylobate; which I conceive would produce a more than ordinary picturesque bit of interior architecture. We do not, however, enter the staircase, but pass on to the hall or inner vestibule, which affords immediate access to the sitting-rooms. Perhaps I may as well mention here, that the servants' hall, &c. for the men-servants would be in the basement at this end of the house, consequently would be just by the entrance. The hall or inner vestibule is a spacious room overlooking the small flower-court above mentioned, the avenue leading to the stables, and the larger trees on the north side of the house. A small door opens into the court, while one of rich architectural character forms the entrance to the suite of rooms occupying the south or water front of the building. This last mentioned doorway leads into a small anti-room, right and left of which are two moderate sized drawing-rooms, capable of being used as one when the company is numerous. The folding doors being thrown open, and the smaller intermediate room becoming the centre-piece of the triple apartment thus formed. In front of these three rooms is an open loggia on a somewhat lower level, there being a descent to it of four steps, looking immediately upon the water; this loggia would form a sheltered terrace immediately connected with the sitting-rooms which it would also serve to screen from the sun. The library, which, according to your wishes, is made one of the principal suite of rooms, is the last of those in this front, it being on the south-east angle. It has an alcove or deeply recessed bay with a window in it, which not only affords a very agreeable little snuggery, bower, or whatever else you may term it, for reading or studying, or meditating in apart, but also gives additional spaciousness and variety to the whole apartment. From this room a jib or concealed door opens to the small private staircase, and another of the same kind leads into the flower garden. The larger door on the north side of the room, is that by which we enter the dining-room, to which, as it is upon a lower level, there is a descent of a few steps. The reason for this difference of level is that the room being more spacious requires to be of more height than the others, and also that it may be upon the same level as the terrace looking out upon the flower garden. Beyond the dining-room, is the serving room, and behind that the kitchen, which, however, does not form part of the body of the house, but is included in the same range of buildings as the stables, being under the same roof. Attached to it is a kitchen court, and it is connected with the rest of the house by the servants' staircase, which last leads both down to the cellars and rooms in the basement, and to those above for the female domestics, to the childrens' rooms, &c. The stables and conservatories call for no other explanation than what the drawings themselves supply; we will therefore now return to the principal staircase, on one side of which are two rooms not yet mentioned, one of which may be used as a business room. On ascending the stairs, we have first two stranger's rooms on the left, on the right a billiard-room in the tower, and an upper hall or corridor over that below, and of the same size though not so lofty; this would serve for the children to play in and exercise themselves in winter or bad weather. On the south side of this are two sleeping, and two sitting-rooms, the larger of which might be used as a winter breakfast-room. The larger of the two sleeping-rooms, namely, that over the library is the one you would yourself occupy, it being adjoining the private staircase. On the south side of it is an alcove, raised a few steps above the rest of the floor; and on the east a small dressing-room looking out upon the flower garden. The upper part of the tower contains two other handsome sleeping-rooms, which, as they command a fine prospect, may be appropriated either to visitors or to the grown up members of your family. It has been my endeavour to give an agreeable variety, play and contrast to the different parts of the interior, which I hope will not displease you; and I trust that the drawings and descriptions of the several apartments, their architectural character and decoration, which will form the subject of my next letter, will shew that while I have adhered to one uniform style throughout, I have neglected neither the variety in the individual parts, nor harmony and unity of expression in the ensemble, but have reconciled together those two, somewhat contrary, yet highly desirable qualities.[5] Yours, &c. A. C. [5] N.B. The Plates II. III. and IV. shew the south, north, and east elevations. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] LETTER IX. MY DEAR SIR, FROM the two letters, and the accompanying plans, I think I fully understand your views. On the whole I am much pleased with the design, and own your example has fully supported your precepts; and bating all pleasure to be derived from associations, as I have before noticed, I willingly subscribe to your views, as to the beauty of the principles of Grecian architecture applied as they have been in your pleasing design. There are only two points on which, perhaps, you have allowed your imagination to carry you too far: first, you have taken rather a poetical notion of the means to be applied in building, what will, I fear be a very expensive structure, and larger than was intended; and next as regards the lake, on the borders of which you propose to place the house. I fully subscribe to your notions as to the beauty which would be gained by the proposed sheet of water, and feel all the advantages of the broad expanse of light, and the extent and variety to be derived from the reflection of the building in this natural mirror, &c.; but there are disadvantages, some of which are not to be overcome, and others, of which in my opinion, more than counterbalance all that is to be gained in beauty and variety. I suspect you have been misinformed as to the possibility of making the lake as you propose, and next the expense to execute this perfectly and so as to ensure that it should always be filled with fresh and transparent water, would be very considerable, and indeed at times it would be impossible to accomplish this at any cost. But our climate I think is an insuperable objection to have a house actually bordering on still water; recollect how few months in the year the notion of the coolness of water would add pleasure to the prospect from the library or drawing-room window, and how often one should shudder at the very notion of it; moreover that according to our apportionment of the seasons for town and country those very months will be passed in London,--April, May, June, and generally July, being the time when "every body is in town." Although I believe the neighbourhood of water may not always be unwholesome, still there is much prejudice to overcome on this subject; not a toothache, cold, or rheumatic twinge would be felt by a person in the family, from the stable to the drawing-room, but would be attributed to the _pond_, for when angry, nobody would call it the LAKE; malignant malaria would be discussed in every variety of tone and phrase, and Dr. Chambers would think it his duty to enter his protest against any patient of his ever venturing to make a visit of twenty-four hours to the proscribed spot. I am, however, not sorry that you had conceived the notion of the lake, because it has given an opportunity of shewing what a beautiful accessory water becomes to a house, applied as you have suggested, and because I believe you will have no difficulty in substituting some broad expanse either of turf or gravel, which, though it will not give you the reflections of the buildings and the play of light you require, will still afford a flat surface for the receiving the shadows, and will not interrupt the harmony and simplicity of the general lines of your building. The loggia though it may not look out upon the water as you propose, will always be delightful as affording shelter in the winter, and shade in the summer; and the portico is, I think, a valuable addition. Our unhappy rage for adaptation or rather perversion of the Grecian portico; hitherto the portico has increased rather than diminished, the distance which has to be traversed in cold and rainy weather, from the door to the carriage. The perfection of this maladaptation is to be seen in our unfortunate National Gallery, where is annually erected a tarpaulin lean-to in order to prevent people being drenched in rainy weather in their progress to the entrance door, the access to which is opposed by an inaccessible portico. I quite agree with you that there being no historical associations connected with the site, it is right that the tower should have no battlements, and should not show any angry front where no defence against invading enemies, (whether chartists, socialists, or bread-taxing tories), is intended. I agree in the advantage to be derived from the variety of line and the grandeur of the tower, and am willing that the ornaments you propose of statues should indicate (as it will truly) the propensities of the owner, especially as terra cotta affords the means at a small cost, of obtaining examples of fine statues. However, as regards the shape of the tower, and especially the cupola, some doubts of its beauty have been expressed, more however by others than myself, though I cannot help feeling that, if this part partook more of the tall tower of the modern Italian buildings, finishing with the nearly flat roof and long projecting eaves, the effect would be more picturesque and less pretending. I mention this merely for your consideration, and am quite willing that your greater knowledge and better taste should determine its shape. As regards the exterior in general, I have little or nothing further to suggest, except that I may observe that I have remarked in most of the best modern houses the cornices and ornaments are in my opinion too thin and minute, and this, I take it, is owing to the too servile copying from buildings designed for a country where the sun shines nearly throughout the year, and where the light colour of the material (unstained by damp or weather) marks more sharply and completely the light and shade than is the case in our gloomy season, and where the walls are soon disfigured and weather-stained. Although I assume that the project of the lake is to be abandoned, yet I should wish still that the ground floor should be at least raised as much above the level as it at present is. Although every facility of access to the gardens and grounds is desirable in a country house, yet I think it is disagreeable to be on an actual level with the walks; both from the interior and from the exterior, it gives the notion of the house springing from the earth as a mushroom, as you have observed. I will now follow you through the building at your invitation, observing that I agree as to the choice of aspects and the arrangements of the rooms. With reference to this, the west is well arranged so as to avoid that aspect for any of the rooms to be generally inhabited, and I subscribe to the notion that the entrance should be somewhat gloomy, at least enough so, as to create a feeling of pleasure on emerging into more light. As regards the large hall, perhaps for the size and style of the house there is a little too much sacrificed to it; but as I think it is an object of importance to obtain an open and airy access to the whole suit of rooms, and as this will afford ample scope for ornament, and casts of statues and bas-reliefs, and perhaps fresco ornamental painting, I am willing that some sacrifice should be made. The two rooms beyond the staircase will be useful, and indeed are necessary. I have already appropriated one as a gun room and audience chamber for those whose shoes may not be clean enough to be admitted to the best library. I like the disposition of the two drawing-rooms; perhaps, however, it may be worth consideration whether it may not be better to make some sacrifice of symmetry, and convert them into two rooms, one large and one small; keeping the small one at the end next the staircase, and making it either octagon or circular; either shape is pleasing, and admits of variety in decoration. In that case it would be advisable to make separate entrances to each room for the interior hall: indeed, if the present arrangement is retained, this may be desirable, so as to avoid using the middle room entirely as a passage room. As regards the library, I have no observation to make on its shape or disposition. I assume that the two windows will sufficiently light it. At first I thought that it might be advisable to have the means of shutting off the recess by sliding doors from the large room, making a kind of inner library or study of it; but I presume, as this would leave but one window, the large room would be too dark. I think it would be desirable that there should be an entrance to the dining-room across the hall and through the corridor, as well as through the library. There might be occasions where it may be inconvenient to pass through the library to the dining-room, although this might be considered as the usual and grand entrance. I do not see where you have placed your fire-place in the library. I should conceive from its size, that you might want either two fire-places, or at least one stove and one fireplace to warm so large a room. The mention of fireplaces reminds me that I see no chimneys in the drawing, I suppose they are hidden by the balustrade. I shall be glad if this is so, as it will be well to get rid of so unsightly an object as chimneys generally are. As regards the kitchen, it certainly is well placed with reference to the convenience of access to the dining-room; but though not under the same roof with the house, I should fear that not only the smell of the cooking, but the noise of the offices may reach the dining-room. This is a common evil, and one which it is essential to avoid. When we come to discuss the offices more in detail, this point must be well considered. I approve of the dining-room windows opening on the flower-garden, as this will also (unless when we are alone) be the breakfast room, and occasionally the morning room in hot weather; perhaps, however, to avoid any notion of coldness, only _one_ of the three windows should go down to the floor and open on the garden. As regards the kitchen, there must be added some additional offices, such as scullery, out-door's larder, &c. &c. but as I see space sufficient for these in the direction of the orangery, this will make no material alteration in your plan. In addition to the wine and beer cellars, I think the servants' offices may be well included in the space under the east and south fronts, particularly as I think it will be necessary that some sleeping rooms for servants should be obtained in the attics, and I presume your plan will admit of this without deranging your elevation; though I am aware something must be sacrificed in the height of the rooms; but though there may, for the purpose of protection of the lower part of the house, be a sleeping room for one or two men-servants, yet I think the women's sleeping apartments will not be conveniently arranged on the basement story. As it is important to economize, I should suggest to you that it will not be necessary to continue the basement story on the west front, and perhaps not under the interior or large hall. As regards the arrangement of the sleeping-rooms, if the attics are obtained, I think those you propose sufficient. If any more should be required, perhaps the large corridor or hall might be abridged, and at all events the billiard room may be made into another bed-room, and the billiard table taken down to the hall: increasing moral habits and the spread of useful knowledge, prevents our employing so much time as formerly in mere games of amusement, and I observe that the billiard room is somewhat going out of fashion, and that where it remains, is rarely used. I should, however, be sorry to give it up altogether. It is a very useful and innocent assistant with a dull party on a rainy day, or during a long evening at Christmas; and occasionally is a good "bore escape." The dressing-room at the east angle is inaccessible except through the bedroom, but this is an evil which cannot be in all cases avoided. I have thus given you in detail the observations which occur to me on going over your plan, and except such alterations as occur to you as necessarily arising out of the rejection of the lake, I would not wish that any alteration should be made, and I shall be glad to receive from you the details as to the interior, and your opinion as to the few alterations I have suggested. You have not stated to what use you design to put the building at the top of the north-east end; this, I presume, is to remain open, and so merely designed as a balance for the tower. Perhaps, however, it may be put to some use, either as a store or lumber room: I think it adds much to the picturesque appearance of the whole. Although I have rejected the lake, I should be sorry to lose the bridge in the approach, but as the ground in front slopes, a terrace may be well substituted, and perhaps the bridge may remain as passing over some road, or may form some part of the arrangement as to the angles of the terrace. As regards your observations of the position of the house, I agree with what you state, but when I consult you in detail on the order and disposition of the grounds, I propose to make some suggestions on the subject. With respect to the materials, I assume you mean to have light coloured brick with stone at the angles, and for the moulding. I presume the additions of painting and sculpture (one of the grounds for the rejection of the Gothic) will play their proper part in the interior; as in the exterior, except in respect of the figures in the tower, no addition is gained from them in the elevation. Yours, &c. H. B. [Decorative illustration] [Heading illustration] LETTER X. THANKS for your letter approving of my design in the principal parts of the interior; I shall now briefly point out the materials which I would recommend to be employed for the floors, walls, and ceilings. For the entrance hall, I propose that the doorcases, chimney-piece, and the socle or dado should be carried up about four feet high, and should be of yellowish Derbyshire marble, and the walls in stucco, but made to show the joints of different courses, and marbled in fresco of a lighter tint than the rest, while the vaulted ceiling should have the ribs coloured white and brown upon a pale blue ground; for here in the lower part of the tower it will, I conceive, be most proper to indicate as forcibly as possible to the eye, solidity of material and construction. In the second or inner hall, which we enter from the preceding one, and beyond which is obtained a view of the staircase, as seen through the columns placed on a stylobate, serving as a screen to the stairs, the walls might be marbled of a light greenish tint, intermixed in the socle with brown lines. The columns and entablature should be white; and the ceiling panelled in wainscot, with coffers or compartments containing ornaments in relief on a green ground. As regards this part of the interior, I would remark that should such be deemed preferable, there would be no objection to filling in the upper part of the screen (that is, the openings between the columns) with glass. While this would prevent all draught from the staircase, and in some degree intercept sound also, it would not in anywise affect the general design; but rather might be made to conduce to it, by adopting some ornamental pattern, of course in a corresponding style. Both in this and the preceding vestibule, the floor should be paved with marble or coloured stone, as should also that of the corridors; but the large hall should have a parquetted wood flooring, because that room will occasionally be made use of for dancing. In this last, the walls should be wainscoted and panelled with oak, to the height of about seven feet; and the doorway which forms the entrance to the suite of sitting-rooms should be distinguished by richness of carved decoration in the same material. I further recommend the application of embellishment of inlaid woods or marquetrie of different colours, for the cornice or upper mouldings of this wainscoting, so as to produce a rich border or band along the walls, above which there will remain space for pictures in frames, (inclining forwards) and even if these paintings are of no very great value in themselves as works of art, they will be of use as contributing to the general design, and add greatly to its effect. The upper part of the walls might be painted in fresco in imitation of grey marble streaked with red, which last mentioned colour should be that of the coffers in the wainscoted ceiling. The ante-room or first room of the suite being smaller than the others, should have a coved ceiling, in order to diminish its apparent height; and this might be painted with Arabesque ornaments on a white ground, somewhat after the manner of several of the ceilings of Julio Romano in the Villa _Lanti_. The walls of this and of the two adjoining rooms should be hung with silk or other stuff of a quiet sober hue, so as to give the greatest relief to the pictures, I taking it for granted that you would be inclined to place here the principal part of such pictures as you may possess. Though the ceilings of the two drawing-rooms should not be much ornamented, yet they may be relieved by the introduction of gilding in parts. For all these rooms I propose that the doors, &c. should be white with gilt mouldings. In the library, the ribs or bands of the vaulted ceiling should be gilt upon a white ground; and as regards the bookcases or shelves for books, they ought to be of some light coloured wood, highly polished, and not go higher than the corbels or consoles from which the vaulting springs, in order that there may be sufficient space for busts, vases, and other ornaments of that kind upon the cornices; and this will avoid the inconvenience of having the upper shelves quite out of reach, except with the help of high library steps--always inconvenient. For the lunettes or arched spaces between the corbels, I have not proposed any particular decoration, as they might be filled up by reliefs and casts let into the wall. The dining room with the arcs-doubleaux and compartments of its vaulted ceiling afford scope for fresco painting of a superior style; and the pencil of our friend Eastlake, who has already shown so much classical talent in decorating the dining-room in London, might render this one of the most striking and charming apartments of its kind in England. It is true that fresco is so little practised in your country, and consequently its process so imperfectly understood, that he would probably have to encounter some difficulties at the outset; but I flatter myself I could be of considerable assistance to him, as regards the practical details, having already succeeded in introducing that mode of painting in spite of most unfavourable circumstances. I would advise that the pictures should be confined to the ceiling and the lunettes, and that the walls should be merely stuccoed, as being upon the whole more in accordance with the destination of the room itself, and affording a quieter background to the company seated around the dinner-table; at the same time that the frescoes in the upper part of the room would thereby show to greater advantage. You will observe that the fresco requires a bold broad style, and has an advantage over oil, as it is very effective even when not seen by a strong or favourable light. Should somewhat more of decoration be thought advisable, I would suggest the adoption of glass-mosaic in narrow upright pannels at intervals. Of this species of embellishment, which was much used by the Romans, and after, much in vogue throughout Italy during the middle ages, for pulpits, monuments, &c. I have lately introduced an application in a room fitted up by myself, the effect of which is allowed to be singularly striking and good. The remaining drawing shows the large corridor on the upper floor. I need hardly remark that these designs are only intended to convey an idea of the general character and style of the different rooms, as submitted to you for consideration. Much yet remains to be definitively settled, there being a variety of circumstances with which I am at present but imperfectly acquainted; nor can I possibly say what modifications of the plan I should advise, until I know wherein you consider it objectionable, or wherein it fails to meet your precise wishes. Some objections I may probably be able to combat; others may possibly, by leading me to consider the points in difference afresh, enable me to hit upon variations that may not immediately occur to me. Much will depend upon your collection of works of art, which is as yet but imperfectly known to me; much also upon my meeting with clever workmen, capable, not only of entering into my ideas, and executing without further trouble any piece of decoration that may be required, but also, as has not seldom happened to me, of suggesting valuable hints during the progress of the work. So far indeed am I from wishing you to decide at once in favour of what I propose, I am most of all solicitous that you should as completely comprehend not only the general scheme, but the contemplated effect of every part. Undoubtedly it is very pleasant to an architect to meet with an employer disposed to give him _carte-blanche_ and permission to follow out his own ideas unrestrictedly; yet it is still more delightful to meet with one who, instead of merely passively acquiescing, assents from conviction after deliberate study of the ideas submitted to him, and from the lively interest he takes in them. If I have ventured to propose marble, gilding, fresco painting, and glass-mosaic, do not be alarmed at the seeming extravagance, or imagine that any great expense will be incurred. In architecture the most durable materials are the most economical, and they carry with them a nobleness of appearance not attainable by even lavish ornaments, costly at first, yet of a perishable nature. Consider what large sums are expended in the course of a few years in keeping up houses that have to be repaired or refitted up from time to time as regards all but their bare walls, in consequence either of the materials getting soiled and shabby, or of the changes of fashion, which having been the only guidance in matters of taste at first, must continue to be consulted and conformed to, otherwise the whole looks out of date; whereas, that which is originally beautiful, independently of any particular fashion of the day, will so remain, let the caprice of fashion change as it will. I do really believe there are many rooms that would have cost their owners less, had they been entirely lined with marble, and otherwise ornamented with fresco painting and mosaic, than they have done in consequence of being furbished up every now and then by decorators and paper-hangers, and often in very questionable taste, while after all, the effect for the time is at the best of an inferior kind. Besides by economy and a little dexterity of management even materials may be obtained at a comparatively moderate cost: works in _Carrara_ marble, for instance, may be executed in Italy from designs sent over for that purpose, at about half the price, including freight and duty, which they would cost in England. The only inconvenience is that they cannot be furnished so promptly, it being requisite that the orders for them should be given some time beforehand. You will perhaps recollect the circumstance I have stated in respect to this matter in my "ARCHITECTURA DOMESTICA." As to gilding--oil-gilding is cheaper than water-gilding; which last has only the advantage of looking more brilliant than the former at first. Fresco painting, again is less expensive than any mode of painting in oil; for it necessarily demands far greater rapidity of execution, and the effect being produced at once, instead of the work proceeding through all the different stages from dead colouring to the last finishing. How very poor a succedaneum for fresco painting is Gobelius tapestry! in which latter the execution is entirely mechanical, giving a mere soulless plodding transcript of the original, while as some of the colours fade sooner than the rest, the whole becomes in a short time quite inharmonious. I am moreover convinced that there are many able artists now living, who would execute designs in fresco for the same price that is paid for designs in tapestry; so that durability being considered, the saving accruing from the former would be considerable. Nor is it the least important consideration of all, that art itself would be extensively benefited by the adoption of such practice. I at least am thoroughly convinced, that a single room painted in fresco by an able artist would do more for the advancement of sound art in England than a score of commissions for oil-pictures, or than a hundred so called illustrated editions of popular works, with wood cuts. Pre-eminently gifted as is England with a true feeling for colouring, there is no doubt but that her school would be able to impart a fresh vigour to fresco painting, and would set a bright example to the continent in this branch of the art. Yours, &c. A. C. N.B. Some further observations of M. de Chateauneuf's, in defence of his views regarding the fit style of architecture for a modern house, and also his design for the interior, have been omitted: I regret this, and so, I think, will the reader; the additions, however, would have made the work too expensive. The plates at the end will give a clear idea of the general plan and the elevation, and the last plate contains the proposed alteration of the tower, and omitting the lake. _Editor._ [Heading illustration] LETTER XI. TO CHARLES LOCK EASTLAKE, ESQ. R.A. ETC. MY DEAR SIR, AT length I write to claim the performance of your promise, viz. that you would give me your advice as regards the decoration of the house designed by M. de Chateauneuf, the drawings and plans for which you have seen. After some discussion, and a struggle on my part in favour of the Elizabethan, the Perpendicular-gothic, or whatever the style is to be designated, M. de Chateauneuf has triumphed, and the Italian, or revived antique, (essentially the Grecian,) has been finally agreed on. You are aware how strongly I feel that one of the best modes of advancing the fine arts, is by paying greater attention to the interior decorations of our houses, than has hitherto been the fashion in England. The best proof of your own opinion on this subject, is the kindness with which you devoted much time and labour to the designing and executing for me the Pompeian room so deservedly admired. Entertaining this view on the subject of ornament, makes me the more anxious to take all possible pains in selecting the style of decoration, so as the house should prove that its owner is a lover of art, and that it should, as far as is compatible with a reasonable economy, be considered in some degree as a pattern of what might be accomplished in the matter of decoration. I never think on the subject without calling to mind the principles laid down for the ornamenting a country house, in Mr. Rogers's "Invitation to a Friend:" indeed, looking to his intimate knowledge of the whole circle of fine arts, and lastly, the specimen of refined taste which his own town house exhibits, my _beau ideal_ is a house decorated under his direction; but as this cannot be obtained, I trust that you, who possess so much of his spirit and refinement, will, as far as may be compatible with your engagements, afford me the benefit of your assistance. Although the subject of decoration, both as regards houses and public buildings, has been hitherto much neglected in this country, I think now every one is becoming fully alive to its importance. The establishment of the Government School of Design, in which, for the first time in England, the art of design, as applied to decoration, is systematically taught;--the opportunity afforded by the building of the Houses of Parliament;--the Committee of the House of Commons, which has already reported on the subject of their decoration;--and the Royal commission entrusted with the further consideration of the subject,--cannot fail to produce within a few years a great alteration in the views and taste of the public. I may here observe, that the School of Design, and the training of young workmen, will mainly tend to assist those who may be inclined to give up the ornamenting their saloons and halls with cheap printed papers, by producing persons who will be able, at a moderate cost, to execute the original designs of eminent artists, or to copy the great works of antiquity. Hitherto, except when foreigners were introduced, it has been scarcely possible to obtain the assistance of workmen capable of executing anything beyond the commonest and simplest scrolls or straight lines; or if such assistance were obtained, it could only be procured at a cost which put any extensive scale of decoration beyond the reach of any but the affluent. As regards the style and mode of execution of the proposed decorations, I should, of course, wish to be guided by your judgment. Whether it may be expedient merely to copy or adapt from known examples, such as the baths of Titus, and the paintings of Pompeii, or from the great masters of modern times, such as the designs of Raphael and Giulio Romano;--or whether an entirely new style, founded on a study of the general principles of art as applied to decoration, should be attempted, is for you to determine. Again, it may be a question, whether in different rooms a different course should be pursued, for the sake of variety. Respecting the vehicle, whether encaustic, fresco, or oil, or all three, should be used, must be determined by you. You will observe there is the outer hall, and staircase, the inner hall, the library, the two drawing rooms, and the dining room, all requiring your attention. The library, I should wish to be devoted as far as possible to art, especially as the books it will contain relate principally to painting and sculpture. I remain yours very sincerely, H. B. * * * * * P. S.--I should state that this application is made to you, with the perfect assent, nay, indeed, at the request of M. de Chateauneuf, who is desirous that his design should have the benefit of your advice, as regards its ornament: the specimen given in M. de Chateauneuf's work on Domestic Architecture, of the embellishment of the house executed by him at Hamburgh, and indeed some observations he has sent to me, sufficiently prove that he is in nowise deficient in this important branch of an architect's duty. [Decorative illustration] [Decorative illustration along left margin] LETTER XII. MY DEAR SIR, I SHOULD willingly refer you to abler advisers if M. de Chateauneuf's house were as real as it deserves to be; but although the conditions which you and the architect have proposed to yourselves have led to very definite arrangements in the structure itself, a pleasing uncertainty may be assumed to exist with regard to the decorations: in a word, I can scarcely shrink from a responsibility as ideal as the subject of our speculation. I am sorry you have again referred to a certain "Pompeian" room; believe me, too much has been said of what you know was a rough experiment, to see the effect of a particular kind of decoration for small rooms, and which, as regards its details, can only deserve attention from the skill with which Mr. Harvey executed the animals that are introduced. The word "decoration," however appropriate to fantastic ornaments, and in some degree to insulated figures, has, as you know, been considered vilifying when applied to works that are addressed to the mind. But, as we have no other term, we must consent to use it in both meanings. It is, indeed, important to remember, that no works of art, however elevated, can dispense with the appeal, the impressive or winning appeal, to the eye. Thus much for our definition of terms. As a general principle in decoration, I would recommend that the eye should be solely or chiefly addressed where a passing glance only can be given to the work, and that the attention should be more taxed where leisure and surrounding circumstances permit or invite contemplation. The reverse of this would be manifestly wrong; but the recommendation itself is not to be understood too literally. Every display has its legitimate exuberance: the "over and above" in decoration can only be that of quality, for mere taste is supposed to define all that relates to quantity. As common poetic description sometimes exalts its subject less by accumulation than by supposing costly materials where mean ones would do, so in art the augmenting excellence ascends from sense to thought. If, therefore, the intention to afford mental pleasure is very apparent even in situations where this may appear superfluous and in a manner thrown away, the impression must of itself be elevating. But the indispensable condition is, that a gradation should still be maintained; that higher excellence should still be in reserve. What must be the character of works of art to which Raphael's Corridor in the Vatican forms the mere approach? The answer is given by the perfection of the works in the Stanze. All that is to be insisted on, therefore, is a due gradation in conformity with the principle first proposed. In the remarks that follow, I cannot strictly follow the plan of the house, but must often generalize; the observations submitted, if tenable at all, will, however, be easily applicable to your purpose. The pavement of the halls might be enriched, but I can hardly approve the occasional practice of the ancients in placing mosaic "histories" under their feet:[6] the objections are sufficiently obvious. The forms and hues employed should be merely calculated to gratify the sight. Among other preliminary considerations, I would also include the nature of the mere surface, as well as the distinction of every apartment. Thus a pavement, however decorated, should still express the character of firmness and solidity. For this reason I would banish even the lowest kind of life, (that of plants,) and every approach to perspective. Geometrical forms would thus be alone admissible: the variety is infinite; but even here I would again exclude abrupt and irregular contrasts of colour, which have sometimes the effect of making the evenness of the surface doubtful: the last consideration is even applicable to carpets. With respect to the classic fashion of inscriptions on the threshold,[7] I merely remark, that letters are only ornamental in architecture when disposed symmetrically, and enclosed in a regular frame-work. [6] The passion for this kind of decoration was carried so far that the ornamented floor of the dining-room sometimes represented the scattered fragments of a repast. _Plin._ I. xxxvi. c. 25. [7] Even the Mosaic floor at the entrance to bed-rooms, had inscriptions; a pavement of this kind was found at Brindisi, wit the words BENE DORMIO. In approving the common practice of placing statues and bas-reliefs in the principal hall, I do not depart from the spirit of our first principles. A statue has generally the advantage of being seen in various points of view, and thus commands attention in situations where paintings could not. The rich effect of bas-reliefs is sufficient to recommend them; associations of classic taste are naturally connected with the classic materials of marble or bronze; and architecture, when displayed as such, seems to acquire additional solidity by the presence of sculpture. But works of sculpture of the first excellence should be admitted to the library or drawing room, and even fragments of rare beauty should be enshrined with like distinction. For the present, however, we are in the hall. I do not recommend mixing mural painting and sculpture: no painted devices should compete injudiciously with the bas-reliefs. But let us suppose that your bas-reliefs are in the outer hall, and that you have only some sculptured vases on detached pedestals in the inner hall or corridor, then by all means decorate the walls of the latter with arabesques: to these we shall return. In the staircase, also, it will be necessary to make your election between the two arts. I will assume that you decide for painting. Few people linger in a staircase; still fewer break their necks to look at a painted ceiling. If the scene affects the eye and the imagination agreeably, this may be considered sufficient. When we see the whole Pantheon on the ceiling and walls of great staircases, this undoubtedly might be defended on the ground that a mere passing impression of magnificence is intended: but the exuberance of quantity rather than of quality is here obvious. In whatever mode the walls of the staircase are adorned, the decoration should be entirely subservient to the architectural effect. This involves a more radical objection to the mythologic crowds before alluded to, because they have frequently the effect (and intentionally so) of destroying all idea of the angles of the building. I am of opinion, on the contrary, that the decorator should dispose his paintings in shapes which shall appear to grow out of and complete the architecture. The inclination of the panelling of the wall to agree with the line of the stairs, may be considered incompatible with paintings: a horizontal termination, perhaps level with the chief landing-place, is essential, and the triangular spaces, or sections of such spaces, between this and the stairs, had better be left nearly plain, and not very light in colour. Of all mistakes, that of introducing painted figures, sometimes the size of life, where living figures must so often come in contact with them, is the worst. The compartment or compartments above the horizontal line might be painted in fresco, certainly not in oil on the wall, nor in the newly revived encaustic, at least not till it has been further tried. The figures should not extend to the angles of the walls where the staircase turns; the pseudo or real compartments which form the frames might finish at a little distance from the angle; the real wall is, in short, never to be lost sight of; and whatever merits ocular illusion may have in paintings generally, it would be injudicious to attempt it here. Where the light is unfavourable for painting, the flattest style of bas-relief is still admissible. But as you are especially desirous of having your staircase coloured, I really can propose nothing fitter to gratify the eye and imagination merely, than the more refined and at the same time familiar subjects of the Greek mythology; such as the personifications of Poetry, the progress of the Hours and of Light, and so forth. Such subjects afford the best materials for mere beauty of line and drapery, for composition generally, and, if not too statue-like, for colour; and even when they suggest no profounder range of thought, (not that their import is necessarily thus superficial,) they leave an elegant impression on the mind. The objection is, that they are old; but there would be some novelty in treating them as detached compositions, instead of beclouding and peopling the whole space in the style of the seventeenth century. It is to be remarked, that Raphael and Michael Angelo bounded their compositions of this kind by definite forms, especially on ceilings. Pietro da Cortona and the machinists generally, were as intent on destroying the connection between painting and architecture as the great masters were to preserve it. But this separation of the compositions into compartments supposes at once a great latitude in the choice of subjects. Milton's smaller poems, and many other English sources, might be preferred to classic inventions; only it should be remembered, that fresco, from the nature of its means, is privileged to aim at the ideal rather than the actual world, and that the character of the decorations required for the place must necessarily influence the selection and treatment of the subjects. Dark effects are equally unfit for the situation and for the powers of fresco. In the ornamented divisions of the compartments, perhaps partial gilding might be employed with better effect than colours; on the ceiling both might be introduced, (in merely decorative forms,) unless your staircase ends in light, in which case your glass must of course be ornamented, even if colourless. Dining rooms, strictly so called and employed, are generally unadorned with pictures: this hardly seems necessary. In theory we may admit that subjects requiring some contemplation would be out of place in a room exclusively devoted to "the table;" but portraits of celebrated individuals, and landscapes, although they cannot be duly examined in such moments, may convey associations, to which the spectator, even if not particularly conversant in pictures, is supposed to be alive at all times. Portraits of the class alluded to, as historic texts, are connected with _time_; and landscape, especially if founded on actual scenes, suggests the conditions of _place_. A room used for the purpose in question, and for _nothing else_, is, however, not the place where fine works of art should be bestowed; and I incline to think that this is the fittest field for small frescos and arabesques. This, in short, is one of the occasions to please the eye and the imagination merely. Accordingly, in the mode proposed, no definite idea is presented to the mind, but an air of elegant and festive splendour surrounds the guests. There should, however, be endless variety; scarcely a form should be repeated in the details, although an architectural symmetry is, as usual, to be preserved in the masses. A dining room _per se_ is not uncommon; but a professed and exclusive breakfast room supposes a degree of order in the family migrations, to which the muses could hardly be expected to accommodate themselves. Nevertheless, to complete my catalogue, I will suppose one; or rather I will suppose that one of your drawing rooms is used chiefly as a morning room. Indeed, without condemning a family to betake themselves to particular rooms at stated hours, it may be allowable to decorate and furnish apartments on such a supposition, by way of ensuring a marked and agreeable variety of character. Lucullus had even a series of dining rooms from the "Apollo" downwards; and we learn from Vitruvius,[8] that the opulent Romans changed the scene of their banquets according to the season of the year. The morning has its own feelings even for those whom affluence frees from any kind of labour. The purposes of the day are unfinished--every thing is contingent. Under such circumstances the character or subject of pictures is to be adapted to the mind--not the mind to the subject. The open face of nature by sea and land may here enliven the walls, and agree with the excursive feelings of the hour. The chase and its incidents may here triumph. The English pastoral is here strictly in its place. Solemn themes, solemn effects, should not be admitted; while all that responds to buoyancy of spirit would, on the contrary, be appropriate. It need not be gravely objected, that accidental or even average states of feeling may be little in unison with the impressions which the arts profess to give; for the same objection is frequently applicable to all of the accompaniments of civilized life, nay, to the beauties of nature, which so often appeal even to cultivated human sympathies in vain. The occasional contradiction is unavoidable, where, of two conditions, one is permanent, the other mutable. [8] De Architect, 1. vi. c. 7. Corridors on the ground-floor, or even upstairs in houses where pictures do not abound, may be fitly decorated with arabesques. The same kind of ornament might be applied to garden pavilions, and, in the present instance, even to your portico next the lake, if there are no statues there, but not to conservatories, where the conventional forms and tints of art would contend injudiciously with nature. In these decorations it is absolutely necessary to set out with an architectural scheme, and subdivide the spaces with some attention to congruity and subordination. In the details, pleasing masses and forms are essential, because here nothing can be concealed; there is, strictly speaking, no chiaro-scuro, no perspective: form and colour are the chief means. The possibility of approaching and even coming in contact with the painted wall, suggests the necessity of a small scale in the objects, and of precision and delicacy of outline; yet, from the circumstance of the forms and hues being relieved on a light ground, they are at the same time effective at a considerable distance.[9] Stucco ornaments in very low relief, mixed with the painting, are admissible, (as they can hardly be said to come under the head of sculpture,) but they require a strong light to display them. [9] The best examples of decorations of this kind are now accessible to all, in a recently published work by Thurmer and Gutensohn, containing the arabesques of the Vatican, the Farnesina, the Villa Lanti, and the Villa Madama: edited by Ludwig Gruner, to be had of Mr. Murray, Albemarle Street: with this work may be classed the publications of Zahn, on the ornamental inventions of Giulio Romano at Mantua, and on the decorations of Pompeii. I cannot recommend frescos for the sitting rooms of dwelling houses. The sum of enjoyment to be derived from one or two large paintings is not to be compared to that which the contributions of various schools can afford, even assuming the highest merit. It is true, frescos like those of the Villa Madama near Rome, from the school of Raphael, may be beautifully executed in a small size, but they still seem fitter for open galleries than for rooms. (I have only ventured to except the dining room.) The impossibility of change in such situations is an unpleasant feeling; in a public building, on the contrary, it is satisfactory, and a staircase approaches this character. I may here observe, that a staircase covered with ancient family portraits is seldom agreeable to the eye; indeed if it were a desirable kind of decoration, centuries must often elapse before the materials would be ready. The first impression on seeing a quantity of portraits in a staircase is, that it is an accidental if not a troublesome accumulation, and that there is no room for the pictures in better situations. Far be it from me to speak with any disrespect of the taste for family portraits so peculiar to the English. The domestic "charities," it has been often observed, are pleasingly fostered by them; but I hold it not always necessary to place the portraits of the household in prominent situations. The interest such works inspire is in most cases strictly domestic and private. The portrait has, in short, no pretension to be conspicuous to all eyes till the individual is celebrated, or till the work of art is canonized. These conditions, I admit, may often exist from the first; but then, _à fortiori_, a staircase is not the place for such a production. The Romans appropriated one of the most public rooms of the house (the _tablinum_) to genealogies, records, and inscriptions relating to the family history, and covered the remaining space--often the _atrium_ as well--with the portraits and busts of their ancestors.[10] This does not appear to have been the custom with the Athenians. [10] Juv. Sat. 8; Plin. 1. xxxv. c. 2. We have decided against frescos in what are called sitting rooms: your oil pictures are, however, to be selected. I shall consider the library as distinct from the drawing rooms; but it is quite possible to blend their character. The library in the ducal palace at Urbino, had a room or study adjoining it, decorated with portraits (in this case, by the way, they appear to have been frescos) of learned men of all ages. In a library, literally to be used as such, pictures of extensive interest seem to be inappropriate. They may be said to divert the attention from the business or amusement of the place. But the portrait of the poet, or the sage, is a source of pleasing and elevating associations, and may sometimes command a deep interest. The library may contain the cabinets of gems and medals, the collections of engravings, the terra cottas, &c.; or if the drawing room is ample enough, all these treasures of virtù may be deposited there. I prefer a library without coloured decorations; the wood-work may be carved in flat relief, even to the panels of the walls; a mode of decoration now beautifully supplied by embossed leather, which need not be dark in colour. Whatever colour appears, except in the portraits, miniatures, or illuminations hung around, should be in the books; these should strike the eye, and be, so to speak, in the foreground of the picture. Vases, or busts, may surmount the cases. The ancients preferred the latter; and many, like Asinius Pollio, collected in their libraries the authentic, and even imaginary, portraits of great men. Among the latter was the bust of Homer.[11] The light is generally so unfavourable in the upper part of modern rooms, that busts when placed so high, are reduced to mere ornaments, and require the addition of names. This, indeed, is not objectionable in any case, for the interest of a portrait commonly depends on historical associations. I see no objection even to inscribing both the subject and the name of the master under works of art generally: a volume bears its title and author's name; and pictures, to many, are as sealed books till inquiry is stimulated or interest quickened by similar means. When the description is too long to admit of this, the words "see Catalogue, No. --" might be added. [11] Plin. 1. xxxv. c. 2. If colour is admitted any where in the library, it might be in subjects on the ceiling, allowable here, if at all, in the region of easy chairs and occasional meditation; perhaps too, to a certain extent, in the windows. The introduction of subjects on ceilings has not been recommended generally, but in the system of arabesque painting the universal decoration of the walls requires to be carried into the ceiling. Sculpture, from the reasons already given, or rather in accordance with the same taste, is quite admissible in the library. Cicero frequently writes to his friend at Athens, to send him any good works in sculpture, fit to adorn the library and residence of a man of letters.[12] [12] Epist. ad Attic. 1. i. c. 3, 8, 9, 10, &c. It is remarkable that a bas-relief, in the finest Greek style, representing a philosopher reading, was found in the ruins of Cicero's Tusculan villa. Some English sculptors and myself, during an excursion from Rome, first, I may almost say, discovered this marble, walled into the staircase of the Episcopal palace at Grotta Ferrata. A mould was afterwards taken from it, through the exertions of Mr. Gibson, and the cast is now common in Rome. The marble was, I think, afterwards removed to the Vatican. But the choicest works of taste should unquestionably be in the room most occupied in hours of calm seclusion and leisure; and in order to find wall enough for the pictures, this may be assumed to be the principal drawing room. Here, therefore, may be the best specimens of painting, and even of sculpture, if the space permits: here, the chimney-piece may be by Flaxman, and the doors of the print-case by Stothard. The pictures cannot be very large, on account of their number and the size of the room. This, the objection which in a great measure excludes the grandest works from our dwelling houses, was met by the Italians, and by Nicolo Poussin, by reducing the grand to domestic conditions. If you have only small pictures, however, you cannot cover the upper part of the walls, for you are not supposed to have any work of art _here_ which can be sacrificed. Enlightened connoisseurs see excellence both in the Dutch and Italian schools, but they are often embarrassed in arranging them together. I am convinced, however, from instances I have seen, that this is to be accomplished satisfactorily. It is sometimes argued, that no one reads Milton and Crabbe alternately; but this is hardly a parallel case. Many go to a gallery to look at a particular picture, and see nothing else; the eye is blind when the attention is not actively exerted. So in a room, the spectator selects his favourites--his favourites at least for the time, and scarcely looks beyond them. At another moment, he will perhaps direct his undivided attention to works which he passed over on a former occasion. A certain congruity is sometimes to be accomplished, by attending to impressions rather than names and schools. Many an Italian picture would not be out of place with the Flemish and Dutch school; while Vandyck, Rembrandt, Cuyp, and others, might sometimes harmonize in many respects with the genius of the south. The arrangement of pictures comprehends some of the difficulties which the artist experiences in the production of _one_; for a certain balance and repose are as essential for the eye, as an harmonious impression for the mind. Much must, therefore, depend on the nature of the materials; and the (assumed) different character of your two drawing rooms may here be an advantage. You, I know, will not ask whether the productions of the English school are admissible in this "Tribune" as well as elsewhere. Such is the variety of English art, that the more refined Dutch, the Flemish, and the Italian taste, may be recognized in it by turns, and no modern pictures harmonize with the scheme of colour and effect which characterize the master-works of former ages so well as the English of the last century. Thus much of schools, and those we have not mentioned may be tried by the same tests. With regard to subjects, the mind as well as the eye must be respected: the _ethos_ of painting is quite compatible with familiar and homely subjects; and, on the other hand, the greatest Italian masters have sometimes sought for poetic impressions in regions where it would be unsafe to follow them. But, with this reservation, you must not be exclusive: various minds, or the same mind in various moods, will like variety of aliment. In other situations, which we have had occasion to consider, the subject has been in a great degree calculated on the probable feelings of the spectator; here, the subject is independent, because the attention is free, and the whole art appeals by turns to the whole range of thought. The leisure of cultivated human beings should be so far complimented as to assume that all the strivings of the mind are worthy to be ministered to. It is a mistake to suppose that solemn or even terrible themes are always objectionable; I believe it will be found that the grander efforts of invention (I speak of works by the ancient masters) are very generally appreciated by the gentler sex. On the other hand, the fondness for humbler subjects is not always referable to the homeliness of the incident represented. The subject often acquires elevation, and commands respect, by the evidence of mental labour and power in the artist. To a true connoisseur, this skilful application of principles derived from universal nature, supersedes the mere subject; and the idea which he recognizes, whatever may be its vehicle, is grand and poetical. Less experienced observers are often deceived by the title of pictures: "A Court Yard" (de Hooghe) sounds unpromising enough; but when it is seen that the painter has represented _daylight_ with magical truth, and that all is subservient to this, his aim must be acknowledged to be dignified. It is to be observed too, that the influence of this high aim on the part of the artist, often extends itself to the treatment of the materials which constitute his ostensible subject. It is easy to see from the unaffected feeling, as well as from the _relative_ character of the execution in some (though not all) of the Dutch masters, that the real subject of their meditation was noble. I should like to see a _catalogue raisonné_ on the principle to which I have alluded, distinguishing the title of a picture from the real intention of the artist. Many frequenters of the National Gallery criticise Reynolds's Three Graces, whence it appears they are not sufficiently aware that the personages in question are portraits of three fashionable ladies of the day, under the name of the Graces, &c. If some titles were translated, what a contrast the real import of the work would present to the actual name! What a change, for instance, from the modesty of some of ----'s titles, "Crossing the Brook,"--"Coal-barges in the Thames: Night," to the beauty and grandeur that would have to be clothed in language! But what language would be adequate? With respect to the colour of the walls on which pictures are hung, my opinion is singular without being novel. I am quite aware that it is necessary to consider wall, pictures, gold frames, and all, in relation to general effect: the gold, especially, is to be treated as part of the coup d'[oe]il. But, though I remember examples of light walls hung with pictures, producing an agreeable effect, I prefer a colour which displays the pictures more, and must also maintain, that living pictures are seldom seen to the best advantage against a bright ground; the quantity of actual light (it may always be assumed) making reflected light unnecessary: my idea, in one word, is, that the wall should not be so light as the lights of the pictures; and this supposes a sufficiently low tint. Of such colours, the most agreeable is the long established rich red, which might be sufficiently allied to purple, to give value to the gold frames and the warm colour of the pictures. I need not recommend you to avoid too much unbroken polish in the frames, since this is now very generally disapproved of. I have, as you see, exercised, apparently without scruple, the dictatorial authority with which you have invested me; but the frequent recurrence of "my opinion" becomes painful even to the arbiter who has a _carte blanche_ to lay down the law. As a relief, I intended to have given you some extracts from an Italian ethical work (printed about the middle of the 16th century[13]) in which there is a chapter on the "ornamenti della casa;" but they would have been, perhaps, little suited to your purpose, and I have already far exceeded the space I ought to occupy. As I may not, however, again have an opportunity of alluding to this work, which is not unimportant in the history of Italian art, I wish briefly to advert to one or two points. [13] Castiglione Saba, Ricordi ovvero Ammaestramenti, &c. Milano, 1559. The list of pictures given seems to prove that the Italians long remained faithful to the older masters. The names of Titian and Coreggio do not appear! (I hope you will not follow the Catalogue in such defects.) This is not to be explained, by supposing that the writer speaks for himself only; for he repeatedly says, "Some like to ornament their rooms with the works of ----, others, with those of ----," and so on, as if professing to give a variety of tastes. I can only account for this in one way: the author lived in Milan, and it would appear that the taste of Leonardo, closely allied as it was to that of the schools of Central Italy, long continued to influence the Milanese amateurs as well as the Milanese painters. I pass over the musical instruments, which, beside their chief use, "piacciono assai al'occhio," especially when made by Lorenzo da Pavia, or Bastiano da Verona. Donatello, Michael Angelo, Alfonso Lombardi, and Cristoforo Romano, are the sculptors he enumerates. The terra cottas are by Pagaino da Modena; the bronzes by Verocchio and Pollaiuolo. Beside antique medals, he admires those of Giovanni Corona of Venice, together with the chasings of Caradosso. Among the works of the latter, he mentions a silver inkstand in basso rilievo, "fatica d'anni venti sei! ma certo divina." Cameos and intaglios should be, he thinks, by the hand of Pietro Maria, Tagliacarne, &c. but above all by Giovanni di Castello. Now for his list of painters: Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, although, he adds, he left but few works.[14] Then follow the younger Lippi, and Perugino, and, heralded with appropriate honours, Raphael, accompanied by Giulio Romano. Pietro della Francesca, and Melozzo da Forlì, are characterized well, as indeed are all the painters. He next mentions some artists, all monks, who wrought in inlaid wood; (commesso, tarsia;) but his highest praises in this department are reserved for Fra Damiano da Bergamo, the artist of the choir of S. Domenico at Bologna. The engravings he speaks of are by Albert Durer and Lucas van Leyden. [14] The author says he was an eye-witness of the Gascon crossbowmen making a target of Leonardo's model for the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza. Tapestries from Flanders, carpets from Syria, Turkey, and Barbary, figured leather from Spain, are all admitted to be desirable ornaments: "Tutti questi ornamenti ancora commendo perchè arguiscono ingegno, politezza, civilità e cortegiania." The author next describes his own treasures; but, except a head by Donatello and some rare books, he has nothing to boast of. His tastes are characteristic of the age: though a priest, his ambition is to have a collection of arms and armour, if wrought by a good Italian or German armourer; and above all, he aspires to the possession of a large steel mirror, of the kind made by Giovanni della Barba, a German: the mirrors of glass then in use, were, it appears, very small and imperfect. The author's judicious observations (to which I refer you) on the chief use of mirrors, may reconcile you to their occasional introduction over chimney pieces, which, for the rest, are by no means the best places for pictures. The chapter ends with a pleasing story about a mirror and a lady, and Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, a story not unworthy to be a _pendant_ for "Collalto,"[15] and which might have furnished a subject for the graceful pencil of Stothard; but it is time to make an end. I am yours faithfully, C. L. EASTLAKE. [15] See Rogers's Italy. FINIS. [Illustration: _Maistre, il sembleroit que ne fussiez grandement sage de nous escrire ces balivernes!_] LONDON: C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. [Illustration: Plate II. South elevation.] [Illustration: Plate III. North elevation.] [Illustration: Plate IV. East elevation.] [Illustration: Plate V. Proposed alteration of the tower.] Transcriber's note: Text in small capitals was transformed to all capitals. The following corrections have been made: p. 22: "expect too much" Period added after much; "pure Pompean house" Pompean changed to Pompeian; p. 36: "into a small anti-room" anti-room changed to ante-room; p. 40: "not a toothach" toothach changed to toothache; p. 42: "statues and bas reliefs" bas reliefs changed to bas-reliefs; p. 48: "particlar fashion of the day" particlar changed to particular; p. 50: "LOCK EASTLAKE, ESQ," Comma after ESQ replaced with period; p. 55: A misplaced line. The original text is [relevant part enclosed by number signs (#)]: "In approving the common practice of placing statues and bas-reliefs in statue has generally the advantage of being seen in various points of view, and thus commands attention in situations where paintings could not. The rich effect of bas-reliefs is sufficient to recommend them; associations of classic taste are naturally connected with the classic materials of marble or #the principal hall, I do not depart from the spirit of our first principles. A# bronze; and architecture, when displayed as such, seems to acquire additional" This part was moved to after "In approving the common practice of placing statues and bas-reliefs in" Footnote 8: "De Architect." Period replaced with comma; Everything else retained as printed. 
43530	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A carat character is used to denote superscription. A single character following the carat is superscripted (example: R^d). The numbers of the original pages are enclosed in curly brackets to facilitate the use of the index. [Illustration: Beverley Minster] WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES I.--Stalls and Tabernacle Work II.--Bishops' Thrones and Chancel Chairs by FRANCIS BOND M.A., Lincoln College, Oxford; Fellow of the Geological Society, London Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects Author of "Gothic Architecture in England," "Screens and Galleries in English Churches," "Fonts and Font Covers," "Westminster Abbey," "Misericords" Illustrated by 124 Photographs and Drawings Henry Frowde Oxford University Press London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne 1910 {vii} PREFACE ------ The subject dealt with in this volume, so far as the writer knows, is virgin soil; no book has appeared, here or abroad, on the subject of stallwork. Abroad, the great mass of stallwork has perished; sometimes at the hands of pious vandals, often through neglect, more often still through indifference to or active dislike of mediaeval art. In the stallwork of Belgium not a single tabernacled canopy remains; in France and Italy the great majority of the Gothic stalls have been replaced by woodwork of the Classical design that was dear to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; only in Spain can the wealth and splendour of English stallwork be rivalled. In England a great amount of magnificent stallwork still remains; on the stallwork indeed and the concomitant screens time and labour and money were lavished without stint in the last two centuries of Gothic art. Hitherto, however, this important department of English mediaeval design has almost wholly lacked recognition and appreciation; attention had not been called to its value in the study of artistic woodwork, and even the most splendid examples of this branch of English art have been passed over with uncomprehending indifference. Yet it is no overstatement to say that there is nothing in this country more consummate in design or execution than the stallwork of Lancaster, Chester, Ripon, and Manchester. To most of the readers of this volume the illustrations which have been here gathered together will come as a revelation of beauty and interest. It is to be hoped that the book will help to inform those who are heritors of a great artistic past, will make them proud of their heritage as Englishmen, and faithful to preserve it and hand it on in turn unimpaired to their successors. The art is in the main English {viii} art, as English as the timber in which it is wrought, and deserves the attention of all English-speaking people the world over, who inherit equally with ourselves the good things that remain from the England of old. This book, like the others in the series, owes much of any value it may possess to the generous and ready co-operation of many lovers of mediæval art. For photographs and drawings the writer is indebted to the Rev. G. B. Atkinson, Mr A. W. Anderson, A.R.I.B.A., Mr J. H. Bayley, Mr C. E. S. Beloe, Dr G. G. Buckley, Dr Oscar Clark, Mr F. H. Crossley, Rev. E. Hermitage Day, Mr W. Marriott Dodson, Mr G. C. Druce, Mr A. Gardner, Mr S. Gardner, Mr G. F. Gillham, Mr C. Goulding, Mr Charles de Gruchy, Mr F. J. Hall, Mr J. F. Hamilton, Mr P. Mainwaring Johnston, F.S.A., Professor Lethaby, Mr W. Maitland, Mr Hugh McLachlan, A.R.I.B.A., Mr C. F. Nunneley, Mr H. Plowman, Rev. G. H. Poole, Mr Alan Potter, Miss E. K. Prideaux, Rev. G. W. Saunders, Mr S. Smith, Mr J. C. Stenning, Mr F. R. Taylor, Mr G. H. Tyndall, Mr G. H. Widdows, A.R.I.B.A., Rev. W. E. Wigfall, Mr A. J. Wilson, Mr E. W. M. Wonnacott, F.S.I. The writer is indebted to the Society of Antiquaries and to the Wiltshire Archæological Society for the use of original drawings. The revision of the proofs has kindly been undertaken by Rev. R. A. Davis and Rev. C. A. Norris; to the former and to the Rev. A. Bayley the writer is indebted for many valuable suggestions with respect to changes of orientation and the arrangements of chancels. The illustrations are reproduced by the Grout Engraving Company. The text is preceded by a bibliography and lists of measured drawings, and is followed by an index to places and illustrations and a subject index. {ix} The following is a list of the series of Church Art Handbooks in course of publication by the Oxford University Press:-- CHURCH ART IN ENGLAND. 1. SCREENS AND GALLERIES IN ENGLISH CHURCHES. By Francis Bond. 6s. _Published._ 2. FONTS AND FONT COVERS. By Francis Bond. 12s. _Published._ 3. WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES: I. MISERICORDS. By Francis Bond. 7s. 6d. _Published._ 4. WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES: II. STALLWORK, THRONES, AND CHAIRS. By Francis Bond. 6s. _Published._ 5. WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES: III. CHURCH CHESTS, ALMERIES, ORGAN CASES, DOORS, ALMS AND COLLECTING BOXES. By P. M. Johnston. _In preparation._ 6. WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES: IV. BENCH ENDS, POPPY HEADS, AND PEWS. By Alfred Maskell. _In preparation._ 7. THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH MONUMENT. By James Williams. _In preparation._ _Uniform with the above._ 8. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. By Francis Bond. 10s. _Published._ 9. MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. By A. Hamilton Thompson. _In preparation._ * * * * * CONTENTS PART I CHAPTER PAGE I. DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, AND COST OF STALLS 1 II. POSITION, NUMBER, AND ARRANGEMENT OF STALLS 16 III. CANOPIED STALLS 29 IV. TABERNACLED STALLS 51 V. RENAISSANCE STALLWORK 75 VI. STALLS IN PARISH CHURCHES 85 PART II VII. BISHOPS' THRONES 101 VIII. CHAIRS IN CHANCELS 111 * * * * * {xiii} BIBLIOGRAPHY ABERDEEN. Macgibbon and Ross in _Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland_, ii. 105. BEVERLEY MINSTER. T. T. Wildridge on the Misericords. Hull, 1879. BLOMFIELD, REGINALD. _History of Renaissance Architecture in England._ 2 vols. London, 1897. BURY, T. T. _Remains of Ecclesiastical Woodwork._ London, 1847. CANTERBURY. Professor Willis' _Canterbury Cathedral_. 1845. CAMBRIDGE, KING'S COLLEGE. Willis and Clark in _Architectural History of the University of Cambridge_. 1886. CARLISLE. R. W. Billings. _Carlisle Cathedral._ 1840. CARYL COLEMAN on "Episcopal Thrones and Pulpits" in _Architectural Record_, xi. 1. CARTMEL PRIORY CHURCH. Paper by F. A. Paley; and James Stockdale's _Annales Caermoelenses_. Ulverston, 1872. CHESTER. Dean Howson's _Handbook on Chester Cathedral_; Appendix iii. Measured Drawings of Stalls by J. McLachlan in _Builder_, 10. iii. 1900. COX AND HARVEY. _English Church Furniture._ 1907. DUNBLANE. Macgibbon and Ross in _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, ii. 105. DURHAM. R. W. Billings. _Durham Cathedral._ 1843. ELY. Rev. D. J. Stewart. _Ely Cathedral._ 1868. GOTCH, J. A. _Early Renaissance Architecture in England._ 1901. HALIFAX. Pamphlet on the Woodwork of Halifax Parish Church, by Dean Savage. LINCOLN MINSTER. Prebendary Wickenden in _Associated Societies' Reports_, xv. 179; and _Archæological Journal_, 1881, pp. 43-61. {xiv} MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL. J. S. Crowther. Plates 24-26 and 30. Manchester, 1893. NORWICH CATHEDRAL. Rev. D. J. Stewart in _Archæological Journal_, xxxii. 18; and Henry Harrod in _Castles and Convents in Norfolk_; Norwich, 1857. RIPON MINSTER. J. T. Fowler in _Surtees Society_. Vols. 64, 74, 78, 81. ROCHESTER. W. H. St John Hope's _Rochester Cathedral_. 1900; and _Spring Gardens Sketch Book_, ii. 46. ST ASAPH. Murray's _Welsh Cathedrals_, 267. ST DAVID'S CATHEDRAL. Murray's _Welsh Cathedrals_, p. 134. ---- Jones and Freeman's _St David's_. 1856. SHAW, HENRY. _Ancient Furniture._ London, 1836. VIOLLET-LE-DUC on _Stalle_, in vol. viii., p. 464, of the _Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française_. WELLS CATHEDRAL. Canon Church in _Archæologia_, lv. 319. WINDSOR, ST GEORGE'S CHAPEL. W. H. St John Hope in _Archæologia_, liv. 115. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Neale and Brayley's _History of Westminster Abbey_: London, 1818. Pugin's _Specimens of Gothic Architecture_, 1821. Lethaby's _Westminster Abbey_, 1906. MEASURED DRAWINGS IN "ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SKETCH BOOK." BEVERLEY ST MARY. C. de Gruchy. 3. vii. 9-11. BOSTON. A. S. Anderson. 1. x. 8. BROADWATER, Sussex. A. H. Hart. 2. vii. 9. CHESTER CATHEDRAL. H. B. Bare. 1. v. 24. CHICHESTER HOSPITAL. H. Goodall. 1879. ---- P. D. Smith. 2. x. 10, 11. CLIFFE, Kent. H. Goodall. 2. 1. 15. {xv} DUNBLANE. T. MacLaren. 3. v. 6. FAIRFORD, Gloucester. J. H. Bryan. 1. vi. 15. HEMINGBOROUGH, Yorks. C. de Gruchy. 3. x. 40. HIGHAM FERRERS. Lacy W. Ridge. 1. iii. 71. HOLDENBY, Northants. T. Garratt. 1. ix. 20, 21. IRCHESTER, Northants. H. B. Bare. 1. v. 24. LANCASTER. J. Strong. 3. 1. 36, 37. ---- E. E. Deane. 2. iv. 23. LINCOLN MINSTER. T. C. Yates. 1. xii. 25-27. ---- C. A. Nicholson. 2. xii. 32. LYNN ST MARGARET. C. A. Nicholson. 2. xii. 20. MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL. J. Harold Gibbons. 3. ix. 29, 30. MONTGOMERY, Wales. Sydney Vacher. 2. iv. 33. RICHMOND, Yorks. E. Eldon Deane. 2. iii. 25. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. G. P. Bankart. 2. ix. 26. SHIMPLING, Norfolk. E. C. Lee. 1. iii. 23. WARWICK, Beauchamp Chapel. G. Somers Clarke. 1. ix. 3. WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. L. G. Detmar. 3. vii. 59. ---- J. H. Gibbons. 3. vii. 60. MEASURED DRAWINGS IN "SPRING GARDENS SKETCH BOOK." CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL. G. G. Scott, jun. i. 28, and ii. 61, 62, 63. CONWAY, North Wales. A. Baker, v. 71. IRTHLINGBOROUGH, Northants. J. Medland. i. 58. REEPHAM, Norfolk. J. Medland. iii. 41. ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL. J. T. Micklethwaite. ii. 46. {xvi} SALL, Norfolk. H. Walker, viii. 20-22. ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, London. S. Clarke and J. S. Middleton. 1878. WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL; LADY CHAPEL. W. Niven. vi. 67-72. WINTHORPE, Lincolnshire. H. Vaughan. vi. 53. MEASURED DRAWINGS IN "JOHN O' GAUNT'S SKETCH BOOK." ST MARY, LANCASTER. W. Goddard. i. 9-13. LANCHESTER, DURHAM. C. C. Hodges, ii. 16. MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL. A. Mattinson. i. 35 and 36. * * * * * {1} STALLS AND TABERNACLE WORK IN ENGLISH CHURCHES PART I ------ CHAPTER I STALLS IN CHURCHES OF MONKS AND CANONS In all churches of monks and canons, whether secular canons or canons following the Augustinian, Premonstratensian, Gilbertine or other Rule, stalls were placed in the choir. These stalls were occupied either by the monks or by the canons and their deputies and by men singers and choristers; there was also a limited lay use. The stalls had seats; these, however, were occupied for but short portions of a service: during the greater part of each service the occupants of the stalls stood or knelt. The seats turned up on a pivot, as may be seen by comparing those of Beverley St Mary (2) with those of Christchurch (2); and when they were turned up, a small ledge underneath the seat gave a little support to any one standing in the stall; for his comfort also there was usually a circular projecting ledge behind him, against which he could lean his back; _e.g._, at Beverley St Mary, but not at Balsham (3); also he could rest his hands on the shoulders of the stall, when standing, as at Beverley St Mary and Balsham. An elbow was often provided lower down, for use when he was seated; as in the two above-mentioned churches. Above was usually some form of canopy, varying from a cornice of slight projection, as at Balsham, to such tabernacled spires as those of Beverley Minster (27). In front of the stalls, except sometimes the front stall occupied by choir boys, was a desk for service books. Every part of the stallwork was carefully designed; and parochial, collegiate and monastic stalls alike were constantly growing in importance and loveliness up to the Dissolution. {2} [Illustration: Christchurch] [Illustration: Beverley St Mary's] {3} [Illustration: Balsham] [Illustration: Beverley Minster] {4} [Illustration: St Luke] [Illustration: St Matthew] [Illustration: St John] [Illustration: St Mark] Christ Church, Newgate Street {5} [Illustration: Lincoln] The upper shoulder was usually simply molded, as at Beverley St Mary; it rarely took the form of an animal, as at Balsham. Usually the lower elbow was simply molded, as in Beverley Minster (3); sometimes it terminated in a mask, an animal or foliage; as in the lower range of stalls at Christchurch (2) and at Cartmel (80); in Beverley St Mary there is an angel in front of each of the lower elbows. As a rule, the projecting ends of the elbows were carried down as supports, _e.g._, at Beverley Minster; sometimes, however, a shaft or pair of shafts is introduced, as at Balsham, Beverley St Mary, Hereford All Saints (44); Dunblane (67) and Christchurch (2), where they are highly enriched. The upper part of the back of the stall is usually panelled; _e.g._, Winchester (35), Chichester (36). Hereford All Saints (44), Balsham (3). In the sixteenth century, however, panelling became less common; at Dunblane the stall backs are plain (67); at Cartmel they are filled in with scrolls and fretwork (80); at King's College, Cambridge, with coats of arms (78); at Christchurch with carvings of masks and animals (76). In Wren's church at Christ Church, Newgate Street, the panels of the stalls have fine carvings of St Matthew (4), St Mark (4), St Luke (4), St John (4), the Last Supper and other subjects. The desks also usually have traceried panelling in front and at their ends, which is often of much importance in helping to fix the date of the stalls; _e.g._, at Chester (24), Manchester (6), Trunch (85) and Stowlangtoft (91). At Lincoln the panels of the lowest rows of desks contain alternately the figures of a king and of an angel with a musical instrument (5). On the stall ends was lavished the best artistic talent of the day; there are magnificent examples at Chester (9), Ripon (8) and Beverley Minster (7); very fine also are those in Bishop Tunstall's chapel in Durham castle. On the example from Manchester is an impaled shield, displaying on the dexter half the letters I. B. (_i.e._, John Beswick, donor {6} of the northern stalls), a cross intervening, and beneath on a chevron seven nails or cloves. The sinister half is occupied by a demi-virgin issuing out of an orle of clouds. The illustrations from Ripon shew the stalls of the Archbishop of York and the Mayor of the city (8). In the former the poppy head takes the form of an elephant holding a man in his trunk, and carrying a castle filled with soldiery; in front of the elephant is a centaur (renewed); below is a large mitre studded with precious stones (_mitra preciosa_) above a shield charged with the three stars of St Wilfrid, the patron saint of the Minster, and supported by two angels, between whom is a scroll with the date 1494. Attached to the latter is a collared baboon; beneath is a shield charged with the arms of the see of York, two keys in saltire. Of the two examples illustrated from Chester (10), one represents the Annunciation; the other is a most elaborate Jesse Tree (9). [Illustration: Manchester] The ends of the desks usually terminate in poppy heads; at {7} Chester, Ripon, Manchester and Beverley there are magnificent examples. At Blythburgh, Suffolk (11), is a foliated poppy head with a lion in front; in front of the desks and those on the opposite side of the chancel are niches containing statuettes of the apostles; these stalls were brought into the chancel from the Hopton chapel, which is said to have been founded in 1452; the Hopton arms appear on the bench end. There are interesting desks in the great church of Walpole St Peter, Norfolk (12). When Edmund the King of the East Saxons was shot to death by the Danes and afterwards beheaded, his head was guarded by a wolf; the scene is depicted here and up and down all East Anglia; the whole story is told in six foliated capitals in the north porch of Wells cathedral, which is early in the thirteenth century. At Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, the poppy head consists of a vested priest reading at a lectern or altar (91). [Illustration: Beverley Minster] Besides stalls for monks, clergy and singers, benches or {8} stalls are sometimes found for members of a church gild, as at Fressingfield, Suffolk; or those now used by almsmen at Etwall, Derbyshire, on which the date 1635 is inscribed; the Jacobean armchair motif is prominent; nevertheless there is Gothic cusping at the back; pegs are thoughtfully provided for the almsmen's hats (13). [Illustration: Ripon] [Illustration: Ripon] {9} [Illustration: Chester] {10} The stalls are generally constructed very solidly. The ends of a row are inserted in a strong sill, into which the standards for the supports of the book board are also inserted. The elbows are in one solid piece and are framed into the backs of the stalls; they are further secured by the heavy capping above, which admirably connects and strengthens the work. On either side the elbow is sunk to enable the seat to be turned up on its hinges and to afford it support when down. The seats are generally about an inch in thickness, the misericords projecting about five inches. As the entire seat is got out of one solid piece of wood, the time expended on each must have been very considerable; and difficulties in the grain without doubt frequently added immensely to the labour. The work is often cut across the grain and worked with much skill. Great care was taken in some instances to match the wood; _e.g._, in the panelled backs of the stalls in Henry the Seventh's chapel.[1] [Illustration: Chester] The construction of the tabernacled canopies is well seen in the set of illustrations from Chester cathedral. In Lincoln Minster, where they are of somewhat simpler type, they may be described as follows. The canopies are hexagonal, supported on shafts, which have clustered niches above their proper capitals; the stalls of the Chancellor and Treasurer, which are at the extreme east on either side of the choir, have winged seraphs in their capitals. The niches have ogee canopies bowing forward in front of their true gables, with various small heads and faces on the hip-knobs. A second story of the canopy contains a niche, square in plan, but set lozenge wise, covered with a lofty pinnacle, and flanked by open screenwork with high flying buttresses, nearly all of which have lost their crockets. All the niches originally contained statues. The loss of these greatly damaged the general effect--the alternation of light and shadow, the play of line and the added mass. Now that the statues have been replaced, the general character intended to be impressed on the design can be well realised (52).[2] {11} [Illustration: Blythburgh] The cost of woodwork so elaborate as that of the later stalls, especially those with tabernacled canopies, was very great. At Wells the stalls, destroyed in 1848--another example of "restoration"--were begun in 1325; each resident canon paid 30 _solidi_ for his own stall, and the stalls were to cost altogether £1,200. The non-resident canons, having subscribed little or nothing, were ordered in 1337 to make up a deficit of £200 for the completion of the stalls.[3] As the number of stalls needed at Wells would be about sixty, it follows that the expenditure on each stall was to be £20, which in our money might be £300; giving a grand total of about £18,000. The stalls at Amiens number 116, and were put up between 1508 and 1522. Viollet-le-Duc computes that in 1866 they could not have been put up for less than £20,000.[4] But they do not possess tabernacled spirelets, {12} having a comparatively simple horizontal cresting. At Windsor in 1483 six canopies cost £40; thus sixty would cost £400, or in our money about £4,800; _i.e._, about £80 each; but this expenditure relates to the canopies only, and not to the stalls or the misericords, or the lower stalls and desks; if the cost of these be added, the cost might be as great as at Wells. Few probably realise the vast expenditure which our forefathers gladly undertook not only on the building but the equipment of their churches: in a church of the first rank, such as Exeter cathedral, the cost of the altar, reredos, sedilia, bishop's throne, canopied stalls and pavement would hardly fall short of £30,000 of our money; which is exclusive of the cost of the masonry, vault, timber roof and leading, and stained glass. [Illustration: Walpole St Peter's] As regards the arrangement of the stalls, as many as there were room for were placed at the back of the choir screen, usually two or three on either side of the western doorway of the choir. The juxtaposition of screen and stalls gives some very beautiful effects, _e.g._, at Chaddesden, Derbyshire (99); still more so is this the case when screen and stalls are of the same design, as at Chester (24), where the screen was designed in accordance with the stallwork by Sir Gilbert Scott. {13} [Illustration: Etwall] As to the _place of honour_ in the stalls, that raises some interesting points. There were no less than three places of honour in a chancel; in each case the place of honour was to the right, because it was written in the Psalms, "Sit thou on my _right hand_"; and because of the words of the Creed, "sitteth on the _right hand_ of God the Father Almighty"; first, the right hand or north side of the altar, facing the west; second, the first seat to the right, or on the south side, of the entrance to the chancel through the choir doorway; thirdly, the extreme right to the east, or nearest the altar, of the south row of stalls. In the sanctuary the Lord Christ was conceived to be in real, corporeal presence, face to face with His people, His right hand to the north, His left hand to the south. In the sanctuary therefore the place of honour was on the north; and to this day when a bishop visits a parish church, his chair is placed north of the altar; the gospel also is read on the north side, the epistle on the south. In several churches in Derbyshire there are stone "gospel-desks" affixed to the north wall of the chancel. Turning to the choir, things are different. When the procession enters the choir from the nave through the screen doorway, the right of the return stalls is the place of honour. Here in a cathedral of the old foundation, _i.e._, one which has always been served by secular canons, such as Lincoln, Wells, Hereford, the dean sits on the right, and the subdean or the precentor on the left of the gangway. In a monastic church the abbot sat on the south, the prior on the north side. But sometimes a monastic church, _e.g._, Ely, Winchester, Norwich, was also the cathedral of a bishop, who was _ipso facto_ abbot. In such a church the bishop should sit on the right-hand side of the return stall; at Ely there is no bishop's throne, and he occupies that position to this day. {14} [Illustration: Beverley Minster] [Illustration: Beverley Minster] {15} Where a bishop's throne was erected, it was placed on the south side of the choir, which is ecclesiastically always favoured more than the north. Of the stalls on the south side of a choir the one most to the right is of course the easternmost; and it is here that the ancient thrones remain of the bishops of Exeter, St David's and Durham. Again, even if it was not a cathedral church, there were occasions when it was not convenient for an abbot to be so remote from the altar as the return stalls, _e.g._, at certain portions of the Mass; for such occasions alternative seats were provided for the abbot and prior; the former occupying the easternmost stall on the south side, the prior that on the north. At Peterborough there is evidence that the abbot's seat was on the south, at the east end of the choir, near the _ostium presbyterii_.[5] At Ripon the bishop occupies the easternmost stall in the south side, which from the carving of a mitre at the back appears to have been originally assigned to the Archbishop of York; the place of honour opposite is occupied by the Wakeman or Mayor of the city. * * * * * {16} CHAPTER II POSITION, NUMBER AND ARRANGEMENT OF STALLS The history of the changes of position of the stalls of the clergy is one of the most curious and least understood episodes in ecclesiology; it may be worth while therefore to go into it somewhat at length, and to begin at the beginning. As regards what was at all times the main service in the church, the Mass, there were two conditions which it was desirable to bear in mind in church planning. One was that the celebrant should face to the East; the other that the congregation should face to the East. In the earliest Christian days the latter was most often disregarded. The earliest arrangement, normally, of a Christian church was that the sanctuary, containing the altar, should be to the west, and that the laity should be in the nave occupying the eastern portion of the church. At this time the western portion of the church consisted of a semicircular apse. This apse had a double function. On the chord of it was placed the High altar (in the earliest days it was the only altar); and to the west of it stood the celebrant facing east and facing the congregation, as he does to this day at St Ambrogio, Milan, and other churches which retain this primitive plan. Behind the altar, ranged round the apse, were the seats of the clergy, having in the centre the throne of the bishop. Thus the apse, like the chancel of an English parish church, had a double function; the portion containing the altar was the sanctuary, the portion containing the seats of the bishop and his presbyters was the choir; basilicas so orientated were divided into nave, sanctuary, choir; whereas English parish churches divide into nave, choir, sanctuary. Many examples of basilicas with eastern nave and western choir still survive in Rome, Dalmatia, and Istria. To this day in Milan cathedral and St Mark's, Venice, the stalls of the clergy and singers are placed on either side of and at the back of the high altar; the apse, with infinite loss to the dignity of the services, being made to serve both as sanctuary and choir. {17} [Illustration: Lincoln] {18} [Illustration: York Minster] {19} There is, however, an alternative plan, which may have been in use from the first simultaneously with the other. At any rate it can be but little later, for in 386 was begun the important church of St Paul _extra muros_ at Rome, with apse to the east and nave to the west. By this alteration, if no further change had been made, the congregation would face eastward, but the celebrant and the bishop with his presbyters westward. Strangely enough, this curious arrangement was actually adopted at least once in England. In the walling of the semicircle of the cathedral apse at Norwich there still remains the bishop's throne and portions of the seats of his clergy. And since Norwich cathedral is not orientated to the west, but to the east, it follows that the people faced east and the bishop and clergy west; it is hardly conceivable, however, that the celebrant can have faced west. Such a disposition can never have been but rare. A new arrangement was made; in the first place the celebrant was made to face eastward, with his back to the congregation, thus permanently obscuring their view of the altar and of many portions of the office; in spite of its obvious and great disadvantages this position has been retained in the vast majority of Western churches ever since. There remained the question of the seating of the bishop and presbyters. The remedy adopted was to transfer them from the apse to the nave; the result being that they sat to the west instead of to the east of the altar. In this second position for some considerable time the seats of the clergy remained. At S. Clemente, S. Maria in Cosmedin,[6] and other basilican churches in Rome, the seats of the clergy still remain in the eastern bays of the nave, separated off, however, all round by low marble screens, which, at S. Clemente, are mainly those of the sixth century church. Great was the revolution wrought in church planning by the determination that the laity, clergy, and celebrant should all alike face East. To the Catholic believer nothing was of more mystic import than the orientation of the church. He prayed toward the East, toward the Holy Land where his Lord lived and died and was buried; he looked forward to the dawn of that day when He should come from the East to judge the quick and dead. "Our life lies eastward; every day Some little of that mystic way By trembling feet is trod; In thoughtful fast and quiet feast Our heart goes travelling to the East To the incarnate God; {20} Still doth it eastward turn in prayer And rear its saving altar there; Still doth it eastward turn in creed, While faith in awe each gracious deed Of her dear Saviour's love doth plead; Still doth it turn at every line To the fair East, in sweet mute sign That through our weary strife and pain We crave our Eden back again."[7] The next step appears first in ninth century churches, and in the plan of the monastery of St Gall. It involved no change in the position of the stalls of the clergy; but instead of being placed in the eastern bays of the nave, the sanctuary was lengthened to contain them. And so we reach the familiar parochial chancel, with its western portion forming a choir, and its eastern a sanctuary. The clergy left the nave and the laity in the midst of whom they had so long sung and prayed, and removed to the chancel, where to the north and south were solid walls, while to the west, no doubt very shortly, was added a screen guarding the entrance to the chapel. Though the new plan made no alteration in the relative position of the stalls of the clergy, it was nevertheless a real revolution. The chancel became practically a secluded, closed chapel; the offices and services which had been performed in the midst of the laity became more and more the prerogative of a privileged ecclesiastical order; in the end, in the greater churches, special altars were put up for the laity in the nave; except in the parish churches, laymen lost the right to participate in services at the High Altar. {21} [Illustration: Carlisle] In our great monastic and collegiate churches it was long before the ninth century innovation--viz., the insertion of the choir in the eastern limb of the church--was generally adopted; in some it was never adopted at all. The typical Cistercian churches, _e.g._, Kirkstall, reverted to the Early Christian arrangement, by which the eastern division of the church was appropriated exclusively to the sanctuary; and this was the case with many Benedictine and collegiate churches also. Till ignorant and incompetent "restorers" were let loose on them, the eastern limb of the cathedrals of the Secular Canons of Wells and Hereford, that of the Benedictine cathedral of Ely and others formed one vast sanctuary, the stalls being placed under the central tower and in the eastern part of the nave; at Wells the choir had a length of 47 feet, but the sanctuary of 67 feet. The reason why a sanctuary so long was required was no doubt that it was desired to place in it two altars; one, the "choir" or "matins" altar, for ordinary services; the other, the High altar, more to the east, reserved for High Mass.[8] {22} [Illustration: Durham] {23} In some cases, _e.g._, at Westminster, in many Cistercian churches, and in Spanish cathedrals, the stalls were not placed under the central tower, but still more to the west, wholly in the nave. In Gothic days, however, in English plans--Westminster is French in plan--the tendency was more and more to place the choir of the monastic and collegiate churches in the eastern limb, just as in a parish church. In the cathedrals the precedent was first set at Canterbury, where in 1096 Prior Ernulph set out a new eastern limb consisting of an eastern apse preceded by no less than nine bays. Sometimes there was a special reason for the removal of the choir from the crossing and the nave. In several cases--in pious recollection of the burial of many a martyr in Early Christian days down in the catacombs of Rome--the Italian practice of constructing a crypt beneath the eastern limb was followed. This had been so as early as St Wilfrid, 671-678, whose crypts at Ripon and Hexham still survive, and in the Anglo-Saxon cathedrals of Winchester, Worcester, Rochester, Gloucester, Canterbury, York, and Old St Paul's. And when these were remodelled by the Norman conquerors, in all cases the crypt was reproduced. Such crypts of course necessitate the building of the eastern limb at a higher level than crossing and nave; in some cases, _e.g._, at Canterbury, the difference in height is very considerable. The result must have been that where as at Canterbury the sanctuary was a long one, the High altar at its east end must have been invisible, or nearly so, to monks seated in the crossing and nave. Consequently, first at Canterbury _c._ 1100, in the thirteenth century at Rochester, Old St Paul's and Worcester, and in the fourteenth century at Winchester and York, the stalls were removed to the eastern limb, the western portion of which now became choir. The only exception among cathedrals with crypts is Gloucester, where the crypt is low and the eastern limb is short and where the stalls remain to this day beneath the central tower. The example set by cathedrals with crypts was soon followed by churches of every degree which had none; whether Benedictine, such as at Chester, Augustinian, as at Carlisle, or served by Secular Canons, as at Exeter. And so in the churches of monks, regular canons and secular canons alike, most of the ecclesiastical authorities reverted to what had been all along the normal plan of the English parish church, viz., an eastern limb containing choir as well as presbytery.[9] {24} [Illustration: Chester] {25} The length of the stalled choir varied of course with the number of monks or canons serving the church. In a church of the first rank, such as Lincoln or Chester, about sixty stalls seems as a rule to have been found sufficient. These would generally occupy three bays; where more than three bays are occupied with stalls, it is usually because more stalls have been added at some later period, as at Lincoln, Norwich, and Henry the Seventh's chapel, Westminster. In the centre, between the stalls, a considerable space had to be left free, in order to leave room for processions from the High Altar to the lectern and to the ecclesiastics in their stalls; as well as for processions of the whole ecclesiastical establishment on Palm Sunday, Corpus Christi day, Easter Sunday and other festivals, and on every Sunday in the year. The lectern also was often of great size, and a gangway had to be left on either side of it. In Lincoln Minster the space from one chorister's desk to the chorister's desk opposite is 18 feet: from the back of the northern to the back of the southern stalls is 40½ feet, which is above the average breadth of an English cathedral or monastic choir. The breadth of the choir conditioned the whole of the planning of the church; for as a rule the nave and transepts were naturally given the same breadth as the choir, in order that the central tower should be square. As for the number of rows of stalls on either side of the choir, it was usually three, rising successively in height; at Lincoln the floor of the uppermost row is 2 feet 6 inches above that of the choir; the canopies rise 22 feet above the floor. At Lincoln modern additions have been made; at present the upper row consists of 62 canopied stalls; 12 of them being "return" stalls facing east; 25 facing north and 25 facing south. Below them is a row of stalls without canopies; of these lower stalls there were originally 46; in front of these again are the seats of the "children of the choir." The number of stalls in the uppermost row was regulated in a collegiate church by the number of prebends founded in the church; in a monastic church by the number of monks in the monastery. At Westminster the number of monks between 1339 and 1538 varied from 49 to 52, 47, 30; in the upper stalls there was accommodation for 64. At Southwell there were 16 prebendaries; at times some of these were foreigners, and never visited Southwell or England; the rest stayed in their country parishes, and it was sometimes with great difficulty that a single prebendary could be got together to take charge of the Minster services; they had, however, deputies; and for them and their masters the two western bays of the present choir were probably appropriated. And for the meetings of this collegiate body, which were held seldom, and which hardly ever had an attendance of more than a half dozen prebendaries, one of the most magnificent Chapter houses in {26} England was built. At Wells there were 54 canons or prebendaries, each with his own separate estate or prebend; the greater number of them resided on their prebendal estates in the country; only on rare occasions did they come up to Wells, and then probably only for the time occupied by some important meeting; even on such occasions there seem never to have been more than 20 canons present.[10] Nevertheless stalls were duly provided for the whole 54, and the Psalter was divided into 54 portions for daily recitation by the Bishop and his canons. Each of these absentee canons at Wells had or was expected to have a deputy in the form of a "vicar choral" who was paid by him a small stipend called "stall-wages." A beautiful street of little houses--one of the loveliest things in that loveliest of English cities--built for the vicars, still survives at Wells; others at Hereford, Lincoln, Chichester and elsewhere. At Wells the first and highest row of stalls was in practice occupied by the senior canons, the priest-vicars and deacons; the second row by junior deacons, subdeacons and others; the third row by choristers on the foundation; in front of that was a seat for choristers on probation. The seating of the choirs, however, naturally differed with the constitution of the collegiate body. Beverley Minster was not a cathedral proper; but its church and its establishment were on cathedral scale, and there are no less than 68 stalls. At Beverley the exact position in the upper row of the provost, treasurer, chancellor, clerk of the works, and other dignitaries was definitely settled in 1391 by Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of York. He directed that the clerks or vicars should occupy the lower stalls, each in front of the canon, his master; and that the choristers should sit in front of the clerks. "Clerici vero et omnes et singuli in secunda forma qui libet coram magistro suo. Pueri vero seu choristae ante clericos predictos loca sua teneant ut fieri consuevit etiam ab antiquo."[11] At the back of the canons' stalls in many churches, _e.g._, Chester and Norwich cathedrals (48), may still be seen painted the name of the country parish where the canon's prebend lay. Appointments to such canonries are still regularly made; but it has become usual to style the occupants "honorary canons" or "prebendaries." As a matter of fact they are just as much canons as the residentiaries. The difference is that the latter come into residence for three months a year or longer, while the former need not come at all; and if they did come, there is no house to receive them nor any stipend. How the cathedral and collegiate establishments lost, long before the Reformation, the services of the great majority of their staff cannot be told here; partly it arose from sheer neglect of duty, partly it was imposed on the canons by the necessity of serving in their parish churches and of superintending their estates. {27} [Illustration: Beverley Minster] {28} At the backs of canons' stalls is sometimes painted the verse of a psalm. This refers to a very ancient usage. The daily recitation of the whole Psalter by the members of a cathedral chapter, according to the psalms attached to their respective prebends, formed part, in the opinion of Mr Henry Bradshaw, of the _Consuetudines_ introduced by the Norman bishops in the twelfth century. In the _Liber Niger_ or _Consuetudinary_ of Lincoln Minster, copies of which, earlier than 1383, remain in the Muniment Room, it is stated that "it is an ancient usage of the church of Lincoln to say one mass and the whole psalter daily on behalf of the living and deceased benefactors of the church." At Wells also the whole Psalter was recited daily for the same pious purpose. At Lincoln tablets still are to be seen on the backs of the stalls giving the initial verse in Latin of the psalms which the holder of the prebend is bound to recite daily: and at the installation of each prebendary, the Dean calls his attention to the tablet and admonishes him not to discontinue the obligation (52). Even at St Paul's, though the original stalls all perished in the fire of 1666, fifteen of the present stalls on each side are inscribed with the Latin words with which various psalms commence; the Psalter here being divided into thirty portions. * * * * * {29} CHAPTER III CANOPIED STALLS It is probable that all the back stalls of monastic and collegiate churches had originally some form of canopy. For this there was a very practical reason, in the desire of the occupants of the stalls to have their tonsured heads protected from down draughts, which from open triforium chambers imperfectly tiled must often have been excessive. A great number of these canopies have been destroyed, usually in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to make room for galleries, _e.g._, at Wells in 1590 and 1690, and Hexham in 1740.[12] In Belgium not a single set of stalls retains canopies. When the galleries were removed in modern restorations, the ancient forms of canopy were frequently not replaced, but something of modern design was put up. This should be borne in mind in examining the cresting of the stalls as it is at present; much of it is not original either in material or design. The following is a list approximately in chronological order of some of the finest sets of stalls in cathedral, monastic, collegiate and parochial churches. Rochester Cathedral 1227 Winchester Cathedral 1305 Chichester Cathedral 1335 Ely Cathedral begun in 1338 Lancaster Church 1340 Gloucester Cathedral 1350 Lincoln Minster 1370 Abergavenny 1380 Hereford Cathedral 1380 Hereford All Saints 1380 Chester Cathedral 1390 Nantwich 1390 Stowlangtoft 1400 Wingfield, Suffolk 1415 Higham Ferrers 1415 Norwich Cathedral 1420 Carlisle Cathedral 1433 Sherborne Abbey 1436 Hereford St Peter 1450 St David's 1470 Windsor 1480 Ripon 1500 Manchester 1508 Westminster 1509 Christchurch 1515 Bristol 1520 Dunblane 1520 Beverley Minster 1520 Newark 1525 King's College, Cambridge 1533, 1633, 1676 Aberdeen 1520 Cartmel 1620 Brancepeth 1630 Durham Cathedral 1665 Bishop Auckland Chapel 1665 Sherburn Hospital, Durham 1665 Sedgefield 1680 St Paul's Cathedral 1697 Canterbury Cathedral 1704 {30} [Illustration: Rochester] {31} The stalls of the churches of Ratzburg illustrated by M. J. Gailhabaud, vol. iv., seem to be of the middle of the twelfth century; they are of clumsy design and in a fragmentary condition. At Hastières and Gendron-Celles, both near Dinant, Belgium, are simple stalls of the thirteenth century.[13] In France the chief examples are those in Notre Dame de la Roche; fragments occur also in Poitiers cathedral and the church of Saulieu.[14] The earliest stallwork of which we have remains is in Rochester cathedral (30). From fragments which remained it was found that the stalls had been about 3 feet 6 inches high, and had hinged seats only 13½ inches from the floor; there was a space of 2 feet 9 inches between the seat and the form in front, and the seat was 2 feet deep.[15] There was but a single row of stalls, and the forms were very low; only 22¼ inches above the platform on which they stood. They are too low to have been used as book rests; which indeed would have been unnecessary, as the monks knew the Psalter and their services by heart; the only service books employed being the big books which lay on the great lectern in the gangway of the choir. It is probable that the forms were of use at certain parts of the service when the monks were _prostrati super formas_.[16] [Illustration: Westminster] At Westminster the original stallwork of the choir has perished; fortunately, however, a sketch of a portion of it has been preserved (31).[17] That the sketch is trustworthy may be seen by comparing it with the description of the stalls by Dart in his _Westmonasterium_ (1742), who says that "the stalls were crowned with acute Gothic arches supported by pillars." The sketch shews slender shafts with molded capitals, neckings and bases, supporting lancet arches which are without cusps; at the back are trifoliated lancets. The work belongs to the period when the eastern bays of the nave were built, viz., 1258 to 1272. In Henry VII.'s chapel are two misericords of conventional foliage; no doubt they belonged originally to Henry the Third's choir. A valuable and little known example of a thirteenth century stall survives at Hemingborough, Yorkshire (87). At Peterborough also fragments of stalls of the same century remain; but they have backing of Jacobean character (32). At Gloucester a fragment of a thirteenth century stall has been preserved behind the seat of the Canon in residence. {32} [Illustration: Peterborough] {33} Apart from the above, we seem to have no stallwork of earlier date than the fourteenth century. Of that period the earliest and perhaps the most beautiful is that in Winchester cathedral. The pulpit was given by Prior Silkstede, whose name is inscribed on it; he was prior from 1498 to 1524; the desks and stools of the upper tier have the date 1540. The canopies are of one story. Each is surmounted by a straight sided gable or pediment, which is crocketed and finialled and has compound cusping. The upper part of each gable is perforated with a multifoiled trefoil. Below, the stall is spanned by a broad pointed arch, which is subdivided into two pointed and detached arches, with foliated cusps. These two minor arches carry circles with varying tracery. At the back of each stall (35) is a broad arch containing a pair of detached pointed trifoliated arches supported by shafts whose capitals are alternately molded and foliated. These two small arches carry a circle within which is inscribed a cinquefoil, cusped and foliated. The spandrils between each pair of containing arches at the back of the stalls are occupied by foliage admirably carved, in which are figures of men, animals, birds, &c. There is no pronounced ogee arch anywhere, though there is a suspicion of one where the open trefoils of the gables rest upon the containing arches. The tracery too of all the circles is geometrical, _i.e._, composed of simple curves; there is no flowing or ogee tracery with compound curves. It may be assumed therefore that the work is earlier than _c._ 1315. On the other hand the foliage of the spandrils has pronounced bulbous or ogee curves and the pediments contain compound cusping; both features being characteristic of ornament of the first half of the fourteenth century. {34} [Illustration: Winchester Cathedral] {35} [Illustration: Winchester Cathedral] {36} Taking all into account, 1305 may be taken as an approximate date for this superb work. It is usually assigned to the year 1296, on the ground of similarity of design to that of the Westminster tomb of Edmund Crouchback who died in that year; but that is to forget that he died in debt, leaving instructions that he was not to be buried till his debts were paid: it is likely therefore that his tomb is several years later than 1296; indeed, except that its main arch has not ogee arches in its cusping, it is not much earlier in design than the adjoining tomb of Aymer de Valence, who died in 1324. Comparison may be made also with the monument in Winchelsea church of Gervase Alard, who was still alive in 1306; and with the monuments in Ely cathedral of Bishop Louth (_ob._ 1298) and in Canterbury cathedral of Archbishop Peckham (_ob._ 1292). [Illustration: Chichester] On the other hand in Chichester cathedral (36), the ogee motive is supreme. There are no more pointed arches; every arch is an ogee; and the cresting consists of wavy tracery surmounted by a battlement. The cusping of the upper ogee arches is compound; the foliage of pronounced bulbous character. It is unlikely that this work can be much earlier than that of the Ely stalls, which were not begun till 1338. On the evidence of costume and armour it would seem that the misericords were in course of execution between _c._ 1320 and _c._ 1340; the stallwork would probably be the last part of the work; and {37} as the Chichester Records are reported to assign the work to Bishop John Langton, who died in 1337, we may assign 1335 as an approximate date to the stalls. [Illustration: Ely] When we come to Ely, we deal with ascertained dates; it is known that the stalls were commenced in 1338. They are on {38} a noble scale, but have been "improved" by restorers, who among things have actually inserted Belgian carvings in the upper niches. These stalls have two distinct tiers of canopies, so that they rise to a considerable height. Each of the lower canopies has a pointed arch with compound ogee cusping; above each of these is a niche with three gabled canopies carrying a low spirelet which is flanked by ornate pinnacles; the whole forming a very beautiful composition. It is a great advance from the one-story design of Chichester (36), to the two stories of Ely. [Illustration: Gloucester] The great east window of Gloucester choir was glazed _c._ 1350; by which date half of the stalls were ready. The northern stalls are the work of Abbot Staunton (1337-1351); the southern of Abbot Horton (1351-1377); they replace thirteenth century stalls erected by Elias de Lideford. The design of the stalls is curious and interesting. In the canopy the leading motif is the "bowing ogee," repeated twice; it is well seen in the contemporary work of the Percy monument at Beverley and the arcading of Ely Lady Chapel. The upper and acutely pointed ogee is finialled, and is flanked by battlemented and crocketed pinnacles; behind is a battlemented, crocketed and finialled spirelet. Behind the spirelets is arcading composed of window tracery; and above the arcading is a crested horizontal cornice. At first sight the design looks no more advanced than that of Ely; but if the tracery of the arcading be examined, it will be found that the three lower lights have supermullions, and that the centre-pieces are straight-sided. In woodwork, as in stone, it was at Gloucester that the reign of the straight line commenced (38). {39} [Illustration: Lancaster] {40} Then comes a group of stalls which it is not easy to date, but all of which are redolent of fourteenth century inspiration; those of Lancaster church, those of the cathedral and All Saints' church at Hereford, and those of Abergavenny priory and Norwich cathedral. The Lancaster stalls are the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of English woodwork, wonderful alike in design and execution; in woodwork they must have been in their day unrivalled; in stone they find a compeer in the marvellous detail of the Percy monument and in the still finer work at the back of the reredos in Beverley Minster. They do not shew the slightest sign of the revolution of design which had commenced in Gloucester transept _c._ 1330, and which by the end of the century was to overspread all England; they are the natural development of the design of the first half of the fourteenth century carried forward to an extent for which the only parallel is to be found in the highly developed Flamboyant detail of French, Spanish, and Flemish design of the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century. So inordinately Flamboyant are the traceries (41, 42) that one would unhesitatingly ascribe them to Continental artists did one not see the touch of the English craftsman everywhere; compare for instance the tracery shewn at the top of page 42 with that of the west window of the far-away church of Snettisham, Norfolk.[18] One hesitates to assign to the Lancaster work such an early date; but if the Percy monument was in course of erection, as we know it was, soon after 1340, it is quite possible that the Lancaster stalls also date before the arrival of the Black Death in 1349-50. After that date a great change came over design; the rich exuberance of Ely Lady Chapel, the Easter sepulchres, sedilia and piscinas of mid-Lincolnshire and the Percy monument at Beverley, appear no more. Any lingering hesitation one may have, however, is removed by a scrutiny of the moldings, especially those of the capitals, neckings and bases;[19] they are just those which were in fashion _c._ 1340. {41} [Illustration: Lancaster] [Illustration: Lancaster] {42} [Illustration: Lancaster] {43} The Lancaster stalls may be regarded as the Flamboyant version of the stallwork of Winchester cathedral, with which they should be compared (34). Like the Winchester stalls, they are but one story high; they do not aspire to the two stories of Ely and Norwich. There is a tradition, unsubstantiated, that these stalls came from Cockersand abbey in 1543. But St Mary's, Lancaster, was a priory church attached, first, to the abbey of St Martin, Sées, in Normandy, and then, when alien priories were suppressed, transferred to Sion abbey, Middlesex. In 1367 Lancaster priory had a revenue of £80, say £1,200 per annum, and was quite able to provide stalls for itself. [Illustration: Hereford Cathedral] The lower part of each canopy consists of an ogee arch; this is somewhat low, but in compensation is surmounted by an exceptionally lofty pediment. Both ogee arch and straight-sided pediment are filled with perforated tracery. All this tracery, both above and below, differs from bay to bay; the craftsman would not and could not repeat them; he was simply overflowing with inventive design. The tracery of the ogee arch rests on an arch, usually an ogee arch, which is cusped in ogee, semicircular or segmental curves, tipped with charmingly diversified pendants of faces, fruits and foliage; the interval between {44} the two arches is filled with a network of compound curves--a labyrinth of beautiful forms--enticing the eye to attempt to follow their ramifications by ever new routes; each little pattern is cusped, and each has the ogee curve at one end or both ends, or at one side (41). Equally ingenious and diversified is the tracery which fills up the tall pediment. The broad band of foliated ornament, which forms a kind of continuous crocketing, in spite of much mutilation remains the richest example in English woodwork.[20] Notice too the little masks which immortalise the features of the Lancaster men of 1340; sometimes no doubt they represent the carvers themselves. [Illustration: Hereford All Saints'] {45} [Illustration: Hereford All Saints'] In Hereford cathedral the stalls are of one story and have a horizontal cresting. At the back of each stall is an ogee arch, and in front a bowing ogee arch; there is some lack of contrast. The sides of the upper ogees are prettily flanked by graduated window tracery; and the great multiplication and predominance of the vertical line makes it likely that the stalls were put up rather after than before the Black Death (43). {46} [Illustration: Abergavenny] [Illustration: Wingfield] {47} At All Saints', Hereford, is a range of stalls of remarkable beauty. They have the bowing ogees, the compound cusping, the intersecting wavy tracery of the first half of the fourteenth century; yet the cusping and tracery are not in the early manner. In the cathedral the bowing ogees meet at an angle of nearly 45°; at All Saints', they project but slightly, meeting with a very obtuse point. All Saints' has ogee canopies under a coved horizontal tester with supporting shafts, as in the cathedral. In the latter the cornice of the tester on the south side has a perforated battlemented parapet; that on the north (43) has brattishing; at All Saints' both sides have brattishing, but the pattern is not the same. Hereford suffered much from the Black Death of 1350, and it is not likely that a parish church would be able to afford such costly stalls before the last quarter of that century. We may suggest 1380 as a probable date. It must be remembered that nearly all changes in mediæval design originated with the stone mason; it was some time before they were caught up by the craftsmen in other materials (44). To the exquisite stallwork of Abergavenny the remarks made on that at All Saints', Hereford, again apply; it is redolent of the inspiration of the first half of the fourteenth century; but its effects are gained in a totally different way: this also may be assigned to the last quarter of the fourteenth century;[21] say _c._ 1380 or later (46). The stalls at Wingfield, Suffolk, might date from 1362, when the church was made collegiate; but much work was done in the time of Michael de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, and his wife, Catherine Stafford; he died in 1415; the badges of Wingfield and Stafford--a wing and the Stafford knot--are seen on the arches between the de la Pole chapel and the chancel. The design of the stalls and desks is such as might be expected early in the fifteenth century, especially in East Anglia, where fourteenth century design lingered long (46). {48} [Illustration: Norwich Cathedral] At first sight the Norwich stalls might seem to belong to the first half of the fourteenth century; as in the stalls of Chichester, the lower canopies have ogee arches; while there is a second story above, as at Ely. The exuberance of earlier design is present in the cusping and the crockets; notice how the crockets vary from bay to bay, one set being actually composed of hawks. Nevertheless supermullions rise from the apex of each minor arch of the window tracery of the spandrils, and are conclusive evidence that the date is considerably later. The stalls and misericords below are of two periods. In the earlier set of twenty-four the seats are polygonal; the armour depicted is that of the last half of the fourteenth century, and there are arms of donors who died respectively in 1380, 1400 and 1428; so that we may assign the approximate date of 1390 to this set of misericords. The remaining thirty-eight misericords have seats curved on plan, and, according to Mr Harrod, are not later than the middle of the fifteenth century. Now the canopies extend above both sets of misericords; the probability therefore is that they were put up together with the second set of misericords. But there is one curious bit of evidence in the canopy work itself, which is here illustrated (48); viz, that one set of crockets consists of hawks with jesses. Now on the arms of John Wakering, who was bishop from 1416 to 1425 are three hawks' lures;[22] that being so, the probability is that the whole of the canopies, and the second set of misericords as well, are {49} of the approximate date of 1420. Though so much later than the Ely stalls, the absence of the spirelet and the retention of the horizontal cornice marks this, in spite of much beauty of detail, as a retrogressive design. The stalls of Sherborne abbey, Dorset, are somewhat of a puzzle (49). The arch design, with the compound cusping, is in accordance with that of the lower story of the Ely stalls of 1338, except that the arches are semicircular or nearly so; but fourteenth century exuberance and versatility have faded away; the design is regular, symmetrical, prim. There was a great fire in Sherborne Minster in 1436; the piers of the choir are still reddened with the flames; the former stalls would certainly be consumed, and these no doubt are their successors. [Illustration: Sherborne] The stalls at Hereford St Peter and Stowlangtoft are illustrated to shew that not only monastic and cathedral churches, but parish churches also possessed abundance of fine stallwork. Stowlangtoft is a remote Suffolk village; but possesses a magnificent set of the original carved benches in the nave and stalls in the chancel (91). The woodwork is probably of the {50} date of the church, which seems to have been rebuilt late in the fourteenth or early in the following century; the Hereford church is a town church; its stalls appear to be well on in the fifteenth century (89). In Bristol cathedral the stalls consist of a range of traceried panels surmounted by a horizontal coved cornice. There are now twenty-eight stalls. They bear the arms and initials of Abbot Elyot (1515-1526). At St David's a totally new departure occurs in stall design; the motif now being clearly taken from an oak screen surmounted by a parapetted loft (109). In the fourteenth century stalls illustrated the ogee arch was the characteristic feature; in the fifteenth century the fashion was to take an elongated ogee arch, and truncate it, employing only the upper portion with the concave curve; these semi-ogees occur everywhere both in stone and wood; they are well seen at St David's in the backing of the stalls. This work has superseded that which was ordered to be put up in 1342 by Bishop Gower, only one fragment of which remains; it was found above the present canopy and consisted of a finialled ogee canopy, agreeing nearly in detail and character with those portions of the Bishop's throne which are of Gower's time.[23] The present stalls, misericords, stall backs and canopy are all fifteenth century work; on the dean's stall (in this cathedral, as nowadays at Southwell, the bishop was also dean) are the arms of Bishop Tully (1460-1481), and on the Treasurer's stall is the name of POLE, who was treasurer in the bishop's latter days. The parapets above cannot have been added till the sixteenth century; for they terminate to the east in scrolls of the form common in cinquecento work. * * * * * {51} CHAPTER IV TABERNACLED STALLS In the latter years of the fourteenth century we come to a new form of stall design; one in which the English carvers won their greatest triumphs, and which became the standard and typical design for English stalls. It is seen in the magnificent tabernacled stalls of Lincoln, Chester, Nantwich, Carlisle, Windsor, St Asaph, Ripon, Manchester, Westminster, Beverley and Durham. To distinguish this group, we may term it "stallwork with tabernacled canopies," or, more shortly, "tabernacled stalls." Though new, it is, like all design, based on earlier models. At Ely (37) two distinct and conflicting designs are combined; to those two the Lincoln carvers gave unity (17). The stallwork at Ely is in two stories; but they are not correlated in any way. The upper story consists of canopied niches, now containing figures, formerly probably occupied by paintings. At Lincoln the lower story was omitted, reducing the elevation to a single story; while the niches of the Ely upper story were brought low down, and made to enshrine the vested canons below. The Lincoln niches, however, are of more elaboration than those of Ely; in the latter each niche was fronted by three straight-sided pediments; in the former the pediments are hollow-sided, and in front of each is a bowing ogee arch. Then these niches are repeated above, except that each niche is single instead of being triple, and enshrines a statuette of wood, and is flanked by window tracery. Moreover, above each upper niche, as at Ely, rises a lofty spirelet with crockets and finials, encircled by a coronal of ogee gables and flanked by tall slender pinnacles, themselves also ornamented with miniature niches, crockets and finials. Also the upper portions of the shafts below are niched, crocketed and battlemented. Thus the Ely design becomes thoroughly harmonious and at one with itself. {52} [Illustration: Lincoln] {53} [Illustration: Chester] As a rule, design did not originate with the wood carver; it first found expression in stone. And it well may be that to earlier work executed in stone rather than to the stallwork of Ely the Lincoln design is to be attributed. At any rate, the tabernacled canopies of wood are anticipated in most marked fashion in the monument of Archbishop Stratford in Canterbury cathedral. He died in 1348; his monument is therefore earlier than any of the tabernacled canopies in wood. It consists of two stories, with three gables below and a single niche above; then come spirelets with pinnacles between.[24] There is a similar monument to Archbishop Kemp, who died in 1454. Of the Lincoln work Mr A. W. Pugin said that "the stalls are executed in the most perfect manner, not only as regards variety and beauty of ornamental design, but in accuracy of workmanship, which is frequently deficient in ancient examples of woodwork.... They are certainly superior to any other choir fittings of that period remaining in England. The misericords also are all varied in design, and consist of foliage, animals, figures and even historical subjects, beautifully designed, and executed with surpassing skill and freedom." As the work was begun by the treasurer, John of Welbourn, who died in 1380, we may give it the approximate date of 1370. This is borne out by the fact {54} that on the base of the Dean's stall are the bearings of Dean Stretchley, who died in 1376.[25] Judging from the armour represented on the misericords the design of the Lincoln stalls was copied very soon afterwards, say _c._ 1390, in Chester cathedral, but with a magnificence of foliated ornament which is reminiscent of the glorious stalls of Lancaster. For the main lines of the design, however, the new type of canopy which had been worked out at Lincoln was taken as a model; the details only are those of Lancaster, the general design is from Lincoln. As at Lincoln, the lower canopy has duplicated gables in front of each of the three faces of the main structure of the canopy. This main structure starts from between pinnacled buttresses, as it were, separating each canopy; then is brought forward like an oriel window, having square-headed traceried windows, the whole surmounted by a battlemented pierced parapet. In front of each face of the oriel is first a truncated ogee arch, and second, a complete ogee arch, both springing from a battlemented and pinnacled corner buttress. These buttresses, whether between the canopies or in front of the corners of the oriels, are truncated, the former rising not from the shoulders of the stalls below but from angels, the latter from carved bosses or paterae. The gables at the back spring from a higher level than those in front, and, as at Lincoln, are truncated ogee arches. The three front gables are complete ogee arches, which differ from those in the Lincoln stallwork in that their lower convex curve spreads outward again. This is an important matter; for though this compound ogee arch is not employed in the Lincoln stalls, yet it occurs up and down the cathedral in the stonework of the fourteenth century; _e.g._, in the arcading under the western towers[26] put up by the same treasurer who paid for the stalls. It is so special and characteristic to Lincoln that its presence at Chester may be taken as a decisive proof of Lincoln influence in the design of the stalls. In the upper story is a central niche, flanked by window tracery, as at Lincoln. Above rises a lofty spirelet, encircled at its base by "Lincoln ogee" gables. Between the spirelets, as at Ely and Lincoln, are tall pinnacles. The leafage of the lower canopies should be compared with that of Lancaster. In the five examples illustrated (53, 55, 56) it will be seen how consummate and versatile in design were these mediæval craftsmen; they were bubbling over with design, and could not repeat themselves if they wished.[27] {55} [Illustration: Chester] [Illustration: Chester] {56} [Illustration: Chester] [Illustration: Chester] {57} [Illustration: Nantwich] [Illustration: Nantwich] {58} The magnificent church of Nantwich, Cheshire, was in building before the Black Death of 1349; the work was then stopped; and when it was resumed, it was carried out in a different style. To this later period belong the south transept and the east window of the chancel with rectilinear tracery; it is probable that the pulpit and stalls also belong to this second work, _c._ 1400. The design connects itself with that of the Lincoln and Chester stalls in the absence of any line of demarcation between the upper and lower portions; but while that of Chester is reminiscent of early fourteenth century work, that of Nantwich is well advanced toward normal fifteenth century design. It is also much richer than either, the lower stage being a mass of niches and pinnacles, with angel corbels below. The great novelty at Nantwich is the absence of spirelets, the absence of which is nobly compensated for by the increased height and prominence given to the central of the three upper niches (57). [Illustration: York Minster] The stalls of York Minster were destroyed by fire in 1819. Both in the treatment of the supporting shafts and in the design of the single upper niches flanked by window tracery they closely resembled the Lincoln stalls, on which they were probably modelled; above the upper niches rose spirelets flanked by pinnacles. There is a marked horizontal line midway, dividing the composition into two stories (58). The presbytery of York Minster was built between 1361 and 1370; the choir between 1380 and 1400; we may therefore take 1390 as the approximate date of the stalls. They are a little later than the Lincoln stalls, and probably contemporaneous with those of Chester. A general view of the stalls appears in Drake's _Eboracum_, page 522 (18). {59} [Illustration: Carlisle] At Carlisle the stalls were erected by Bishop Strickland (1399-1413); Prior Haithwaite is said to have added the tabernacle work after the year 1433:[28] it would therefore be about forty years later than that at Chester (21). The lower canopy, as before, has triple gables, which are truncated ogees, but the additional front gable of Lincoln and Chester is omitted, while the pinnacled buttresses separating the canopies are carried by shafts standing on the shoulders of the stalls. The line of demarcation between the two stories, which the Lincoln and Nantwich designs had minimised, is now emphasised by making the band of quatrefoils continuous. The upper story, which in the earlier designs had had insufficient dominance, is now heightened and enlarged; it consists of three pedestalled niches instead of one; and the flanking window tracery of Lincoln and Chester, with its makeshift look, is reduced in importance, forming merely the backing of the three upper niches. The spirelet above is also greatly enriched, and additional pinnacles are introduced. A little prim the design may be in comparison with the exuberance of Lincoln, Chester and Nantwich, but the proportions are fine, and were the statuettes once more in their niches, it would be a very satisfactory composition. Such work as this has well been resembled to "a whole wood, or say a thicket of old hawthorn with its topmost branches spared, slowly growing into stalls." {60} [Illustration: Ripon] {61} At St Asaph's cathedral the stalls and part of the canopies are ancient.[29] The cathedral was gutted by fire in 1402, and the stalls were not re-erected till 1471-1495. Fifty years later than the Carlisle stalls were put up those of Ripon Minster (60). As two of the misericords are inscribed 1489 and 1494, they cannot be earlier than the latter year. Just as the Chester stalls were a criticism of those of Lincoln, and the Lincoln stalls of those of Ely, so the stalls of Ripon are a criticism of those of Nantwich and Carlisle. In the latter the upper story had been emphasised; at Ripon the bottom story is given the dominance; compared with the simplicity of the Carlisle design, the lower stage at Ripon, as at Nantwich, is surpassingly rich; gables and pinnacles and window tracery are loaded with beautiful detail, cusped arches are added below; finally figure sculpture is called in, and capitals and corbels are beset with tiny angels. In the string-course between the two stories quatrefoils are abandoned; it is molded, foliated and battlemented. In the upper story reappears the forest of pinnacles of Carlisle and the window tracery of Lincoln. Here, as elsewhere, the design suffers grievously from the loss of the statuettes which once ranged continuously in the upper story. {62} [Illustration: Manchester] {63} [Illustration: Beverley Minster] Some twenty years later, stallwork was put up in the collegiate church of Manchester. On the north side of the choir is a curious shield with the initials of Richard Beck, a Manchester merchant, by whom all the stalls on that side were erected: the southern stalls were erected by Bishop Stanley, and at the west end of them is the shield of Stanley with the Stanley legend of the eagle and child. At Manchester craftsman ambition had to surpass Ripon and Nantwich. But the lower stages of Nantwich and Ripon were unsurpassable; so they were copied, angelettes included. The string-course is strengthened and improved by additional battlements; but undue emphasis is prevented by making it discontinuous. In the upper story, by way of change, there is a reversion to the single niche, flanked by window tracery, of Lincoln and Chester; finally, originality is asserted by surmounting the whole, in somewhat doubtful propriety, with a continuous tester, so that the canopies that cover the stalls are themselves covered and protected. This tester has a horizontal cornice with brattishing above and cornice braces between pendant pieces below. To make room for this the spirelets so much in vogue are replaced, as at Nantwich, by canopies with horizontal cresting--taking it altogether, a magnificent design, if only the Ripon stalls had not existed (62). {64} [Illustration: Beverley Minster] [Illustration: Beverley Minster] {65} [Illustration: Beverley Minster] [Illustration: Beverley Minster] Then come the stalls of Beverley Minster, misericords of which are inscribed with the dates 1520 and 1524; the stalls are therefore about a dozen years later than those of Manchester. They are modelled closely on those of Manchester and Ripon. It is quite conceivable that some of the carvers may have worked successively at Ripon (1500), Manchester (1508) and Beverley (1520). As at Ripon, the lower story is made predominant, the little angels being replaced, however, by human busts--no great improvement; not that they are not full of life and interest (27, 63). The string-course is that of Manchester. The upper story has single niches flanked by window tracery, as at Manchester. The horizontal canopy of Manchester now remains over the return stalls only. On the whole it must be admitted that these stalls mark no advance. A bit of original design indeed appears at one point, where low, heavy straight-lined gables are introduced quite out of harmony with the curving ogee arches (64). {66} [Illustration: Durham] Then comes the Dissolution; a long list of Tudor monarchs reign and pass away; Stuarts take their place; Civil War follows; at length at the Restoration of 1660 the Church comes to her own again, and John Cosin ascends the episcopal throne of Durham. True to the Church of England and loyal to Gothic Architecture, he reverts to the consecrated form, and tabernacled stalls are reared once more--one of his many contributions to the cathedral and diocese of Durham (22). Nor is the design an unworthy one; nay, rather it is a distinct improvement on that of Carlisle, Ripon, Manchester and Beverley; for by abolishing the string-course, he reduces the design to the unity with which it started at Lincoln. Moreover, tall pinnacles had flanked the spirelets of Ely, Lincoln, Chester, Carlisle, Ripon and Beverley, so that really one could not see the wood for the trees; these pinnacles are now omitted, and the spirelets get their full value. Altogether a very fine design; and the little bits of Renaissance detail which here and there creep in, as in the bishop's {67} magnificent font cover,[30] only add to its charm (66). Other examples of John Cosin's time are to be seen at Brancepeth where he was formerly rector from 1626 to 1633; the stalls, screens and pulpit of that church are simply delightful (93). More of this work is to be seen in the chapel of the Bishop's palace at Bishop's Auckland; in the church of his son-in-law at Sedgefield and at Sherburn hospital. So Gothic in spirit is this work that it has been again and again ascribed to Elizabethan times, _e.g._, by Billings in his _County of Durham_. In spite of the coarseness of some of the detail and that here and there a bit of Classical detail creeps in, it is most interesting and enjoyable; would that we had more of these delightful admixtures of Classic and Gothic forms; plentiful in Spain and France, they are rare with us. [Illustration: Dunblane] The stalls in Dunblane cathedral are thought by Messrs Macgibbon and Ross[31] to have been put up in the time of Bishop James Chisholm (1486-1534). In that case they would be _c._ 1520. "The work is rather rough in execution, not to be {68} compared with the more characteristic woodwork of King's College, Aberdeen"; nevertheless it is very picturesque and interesting. The introduction of the centaurs indicates Renaissance influence; the foliage carving is a rather curious mixture of late Gothic and Classic forms, such as we find elsewhere in Scottish carved work of this period. The Scottish thistle is one of the chief motifs (67). In the chapel of King's College, Aberdeen, is a considerable amount of fine oak carved work, by far the most extensive and best of its kind in Scotland. The chapel itself, in some of its features, bears the character of the parish church at Stirling and other Scottish works of the beginning of the sixteenth century. The carved stalls, monuments, and decorative work of the interior are of the same period, but may possibly have been brought from a distance, or executed by foreign workmen engaged (like the English plumber) by the bishop. The panels are all of different design, and shew a great deal of variety combined with a sufficiently uniform effect when the work is viewed as a whole. In some of them the details are based on floral forms--thistle, vine, oak, &c.--while the conventional French fleur-de-lis is also introduced.[32] At this point arises the question how far our stallwork was influenced by foreign design. It may be stated at once with confidence that of the great majority of the stalls the design is as thoroughly English as the oak of which they are built. We have seen that the flowing and ogee forms of the Ely tracery were designed not later than 1338, which is at least sixty years earlier than any work of the sort in France. We were able to see how by gradual modifications of the Ely design the craftsmen were able to advance slowly but assuredly to the stallwork of Lincoln, Chester, Nantwich, Carlisle, Ripon, Manchester, Beverley, Durham; the glorious chain of artistic success is complete; every link is there. But there are facts on the other side which, at any rate at Melrose, are beyond dispute or controversy. In 1846 a document was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, London, from West Flanders, relating to a dispute at Bruges between William Carebis, a Scotch merchant, and John Crawfort, a monk of Melrose, on the one hand, and Cornelius de Aeltre, citizen and master of the art of carpentry of Bruges, on the other hand. The latter had contracted to supply certain stalls and to erect them in the abbey church of Melrose, after the fashion of the stalls of the choir of the abbey church of Dunis in Flanders, with carving similar to that existing in the church of Thosan near Bruges. The stipulated price had been paid, and the master carpenter was called to account for delaying to complete the work; whereupon he pleaded various excuses, stating that the work had been impeded by popular commotions at Bruges, during which he had been deserted by his workmen and had suffered heavy losses. It was decided that Melrose abbey should bear the cost of its transport to the town of Sluys and embarkation there for Scotland, and should make some allowance to Cornelius towards his journey to Melrose; and that they should give him and his chief carver (_formiscissori_) a safe-conduct for their journey and return. This document was dated 7th October, 1441.[33] {69} [Illustration: Windsor] {70} No such wholesale example of foreign design occurs in England; nevertheless there are two important instances in which Flemish design is to be suspected; viz., in the Royal chapels at Windsor and Westminster. As regards the stalls in St George's chapel, Windsor, it is known that the tabernacled canopies were begun in 1477 and were completed in 1483; thus they took six years to make (69).[34] The canopies are known to have been made in London; the carvers being Robert Ellis and John Filles, apparently Englishmen. On the other hand the great Rood, with the statues of St George and St Edward and others, was made by Diricke Vangrove and Giles Vancastell, who are just as evidently Dutchmen; for four images the two Dutchmen were paid at the rate of 5s. per foot; for six canopies the two Englishmen received £40, say £480; _i.e._, about £80 of our money for each canopy. Now here we have Dutch and English carvers engaged together on what was practically one work: moreover the more artistic and difficult part of the work, the figure sculpture, is entrusted to the Dutchmen. It is to the latter probably that the general lines of the design are due. The detail is sufficiently English; not so the general design. For the Windsor stallwork is intermediate between that of Chester (_c._ 1390) and Carlisle (1433) on the one hand, and Ripon (_c._ 1490) and Manchester (1508) on the other. But it is not a development arising out of either of the earlier designs, nor was the stallwork of Ripon and Manchester in any way a development from that of Windsor. {71} [Illustration: Windsor] {72} All the larger stallwork of the fifteenth century was, as we have seen, designed in two stories, rising into spirelets and pinnacles; at Windsor the double story, the spirelet and the pinnacle are all alike lacking. It is true that the original canopies were designed quite as much for the Knights of the Garter as for the Windsor Canons, and in the case of the former the design had to be accommodated to provide supports for the knights' helmets, mantles and swords; nevertheless this might have been accomplished without utterly breaking away from current design. The Windsor design, so far as English work goes, has no ancestry; its origin no doubt is to be found in the Netherlands. The Windsor stalls have been much tampered with. As Hollar's engraving in Ashmole's _Institution of the Order of the Garter_ (1672) shews, over the westernmost bay on either side of the choir the canopies contained imagery and had a horizontal cresting; and all the other canopies consisted alternately of towers and spirelets; the knights being seated under the towers and the canons under the spirelets; but since the enlargement of the Order in 1786 all the spirelets have been converted into towers (71). All these towers are surmounted by wooden busts, of which the earliest go back to the time of Edward IV.; on the bust were placed the knight's helmet, crest and mantlings, which hid the busts from view; lower down, in front, hung his sword; banners were not added till a later period. At first the real sword and helm were put up; later, they were theatrical properties. [Illustration: Bishop Langton's Chapel] In Winchester cathedral is stallwork of rare beauty in the Lady Chapel, which was built in the time of Bishop Courtenay, 1486-1492. In some of its details it resembles the Windsor stalls, which were completed in 1483; it is therefore feasible that some of the Windsor carvers went on to Winchester (73). South of the Lady Chapel is the chantry chapel of Bishop Langton, 1493-1500, where also the screen and coved panelling are of great excellence (72); there are no stalls. {73} [Illustration: Winchester Cathedral] [Illustration: Westminster Abbey] {74} Henry the Seventh's chapel at Westminster was built partly as a Lady Chapel, partly to be the mausoleum of Henry VII. and his Queen, and of Henry VI.[35] Here the canopies with tower-like form and single story and with the absence of pinnacle are plainly reminiscent of those of Windsor, and as plainly distinct from current English design, as seen at Manchester in 1508 and Beverley Minster in 1520; the Westminster and Manchester canopies were being made together; but those of Westminster have no connection with the grand Northern series of consecutive designs (131). Besides Windsor influence there may be direct influence from the Netherlands; for some of the misericords are evidently from the design of a painter or engraver, the subjects being too crowded to be properly carved in wood in so limited a space. Mr J. Langton Barnard says,[36] "While looking over some engravings on copper of Albert Durer, I came across one which strikingly resembled the third misericord in the upper row on the north side; the resemblance was extremely close, especially in the arrangement and folds of the woman's dress; this is stated by Bartsch in his _Catalogue_ (vii. 103 and 93) to be one of his earliest plates. Another plate of Albert Durer closely resembles the corresponding misericord in the lower row on the south side, as regards the position of the limbs and the folds of the drapery; while the seventh misericord of the lower row on the south side almost exactly resembles a plate by Israel van Meckenern, of two monkeys and three young ones." These stalls formerly occupied only the three western bays of the chapel; another bay was filled with stalls when the Order of the Bath was revived by King George the First; the canopy-fronts for an additional bay on each side being got by sawing off canopy-backs and putting them up as fronts. The tabernacle work is of the richest and most diversified character, varying in every canopy (73). * * * * * {75} CHAPTER V RENAISSANCE STALLWORK Thus far the stallwork has been wholly of Gothic design, or nearly so. We now come to the great change of style, the reversion to the Classic art of ancient Rome, which goes by the name of the Renaissance. Of this the chief representatives left to us are the stalls of Christchurch, Hants; King's College, Cambridge; and Cartmel, Lancashire. The stalls and misericords of Christchurch, as we see them now, are a patchwork of portions of work of several periods framed together at some more or less recent epoch; there are at least two styles of Renaissance work, and three or more of Gothic. The earlier Renaissance work, which is seen in most of the misericords and on the stall backs is that of William Eyre who was Prior from 1502 to 1520 (2). There are fifty-eight stalls; of the misericords twenty-six have been stolen or destroyed. The early date of this work makes it of exceptional importance in the history of the introduction of Renaissance art into England. One special feature of the work is the portrait panels. These also occur in a cupboard preserved in Louth church, Lincolnshire, where the panels have what look very much like portraits of Henry VII. and his queen, Elizabeth of York. It goes by the name of the "Sudbury hutch" and was the gift of Thomas Sudbury, who was vicar from 1461 to 1504: it is therefore of the time of Henry VII. These "portrait cabinets" had a great vogue in the reign of Henry VIII., and throughout the sixteenth century. Then come three important tombs by Torrigiano, executed between 1509 and 1518, that of Henry VII. and his Queen and that of Margaret Beaufort at Westminster and that of Dr Young in the Rolls chapel. Almost as early, if not quite so, is Prior Eyre's work at Christchurch. Then comes Cardinal Wolsey's work at Hampton Court, 1515 to 1525; the beautiful Marney tomb at Layer Marney, Essex, 1523; the mortuary chests in the cathedral, and the screen work both in the cathedral and in St Cross, Winchester, _c._ 1525; the chantry chapel of Prior Draper at Christchurch, 1529, and that of Lady Salisbury, which may be a year or two earlier; and the screen at Swine church, Yorkshire, dated 1531. Then follow Henry VIII.'s hall at Hampton Court, 1534; and the screen at King's College, Cambridge, 1533. {76} [Illustration: Christchurch] {77} [Illustration: Christchurch] So that the Christchurch work stands very high on the list and deserves much more attention than it has received. The general outline of the stalls themselves is Gothic, the chief divergency being in the supports of the elbow rests and seats. Among the shafts are examples of the honeycomb form which is almost the only bit of Renaissance detail in the canopies of the Westminster stalls. At the back of the stalls are very vigorous carvings of classical dragons, serpents, hounds and human faces (76). To these last fanciful attributions have been made; _e.g._, one has been imagined to represent Catharine of Arragon between Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio (77). These portrait busts have a wide distribution; they occur in wood, stone and terra cotta. Noble examples are those in terra cotta at Hampton Court, which were undoubtedly imported by Cardinal Wolsey direct from Italy.[37] Others no doubt are the work of Italians resident in England in the first half of the sixteenth century, when Italian art and Italian literature were equally the fashion with the cognoscenti led by Henry VIII. and Wolsey; _e.g._, the fine bust of Sir Thomas Lovell by Torrigiano, now in Westminster Abbey.[38] These portrait busts have a wide range--from Essex westward to Somerset, Devon and Cornwall; _e.g._, North Cadbury, Somerset; Lapford, Devon, and Talland, Cornwall; several also occur at Hemingborough, Yorkshire. The probability is that the Italian artists entered the kingdom at Southampton; and that a few found work at Christchurch and in the south-west, but that the main body proceeded eastward to Winchester, Basing, London and Layer Marney; they have left one memorial at Oxford beneath a window at Christ Church.[39] {78} [Illustration: King's College, Cambridge] {79} Next come the famous screen and stalls of King's College, Cambridge--"the finest woodwork this side of the Alps." Harmonious as is the general effect of the stallwork, it was executed at three different periods. The stalls were ordered to be made by Henry VI. in his will, but were not put up till much later. About 1515 an estimate was obtained for 130 stalls, which it was found would cost about £12,000 of our money, _i.e._, about £92 each. On the screen, which is part of the same work, are the arms, badge and initials of Anne Boleyn, who was at the height of her influence between 1531 and 1535; the stallwork may be ascribed to the same period, but as yet the stalls had plain backs. In 1633 Mr Thomas Weaver presented the large coats of arms which are seen on the backs of the stalls (78). The cresting was made between 1675 and 1678 by Thomas Austin, following more or less the style of the work below.[40] The screen is more completely Italian in treatment than any other work of the time, all the moldings being Classic; it is practically certain that the general design and most of the work must have been done by Italians. The design of screen and stalls alike is to be regarded as an isolated example, complete in itself. It did not grow out of anything that went before it in England, nor did it develop into anything else in England afterwards.[41] More Classical still in design--an entablature with architrave, frieze and cornice superseding the semicircular arches of the Cambridge stalls--is the superb woodwork at Cartmel, Lancashire. From the Dissolution up to 1620, the choir of Cartmel priory church was roofless; the canopies of the stalls must have perished; the stalls themselves remain, bearing the mark of long exposure to the weather. In 1620 it is recorded[42] that George Preston of Holker, who died in 1640, not only reroofed the chancel, "but decorated the quire and chancel with a profusion of curiously and elaborately carved woodwork" (80). {80} [Illustration: Cartmel] {81} [Illustration: Cartmel] {82} Cartmel was a priory church of Austin Priors, with an income at the Dissolution of £90, say £1,000. There are twenty-six stalls; above the doorways are inscriptions in gold letters from the Psalms. The architrave is supported by shafts which have Corinthian capitals, round which cling in delightful fashion delicate tendrils and fruit of the vine. On the shafts also are emblems of the Passion; in the illustrations may be recognised the cross, the ladder, the buffet, the pillar of scourging, the hammer and the nails. At the back is delicate tracery work, reminding one of the Gothic tracery of the screen of St Catharine's chapel in Carlisle cathedral. The whole design is full of grace and charm; above all in the delicate tendrils of the vine coiling round the shafts; one's first thought is to class it with the exquisite scrollwork of the churches of S. Maria dei Miracoli at Brescia and Venice, and with the work of the Italian artists in England in the time of Henry VIII. For as a rule, says Mr Gotch,[43] "with the close of the first half of the sixteenth century we come to the end of pronounced Italian detail such as pervades the tiles at Lacock abbey and characterises other isolated features in different parts of the country. The nature of the detail in the second half of the sixteenth century," and in the seventeenth century, "is different; it no longer comprises the dainty cherubs, the elegant balusters" (_cf._ the King's College stalls) "vases and candelabra, the buoyant dolphins and delicately modelled foliage which are associated with Italian and French Renaissance work, but indulges freely in strapwork curled and interlaced, in fruit and foliage, in cartouches and in caryatides, half human beings, half pedestals, such as were the delight of the Dutchmen" who had superseded the Italian artists. In the Cartmel stalls the one feature which is pre-eminently Jacobean is to be seen in the character of the busts in the frieze; if they are compared with those at Christchurch (77), they are seen at once to be of seventeenth and not of sixteenth century design. Setting those aside, the design is purely that of the Early English Renaissance, as practised by Italian artists. It is one of the most remarkable examples of "survival" in design in the range of English art, and as beautiful as it is belated--a whole century behind the times. {83} [Illustration: St Paul's Cathedral] {84} In 1697 the choir of St Paul's cathedral was opened for public worship. The stalls differ considerably in type from those of Pre-Reformation days, as it was necessary to provide seats for the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London as well as closets at the back to accommodate the wives and families of the canons. By the removal of the western screen in the time of Dean Melvill, appointed 1856, the appearance of the choir has been completely changed. The exquisite carvings of Grinling Gibbons, says Dean Milman,[44] are not merely admirable in themselves, but in perfect harmony with the character of the architecture. He even goes so far as to say that they rival, if they do not surpass, all mediæval works of their class in grace, variety and richness; and keep up an inimitable unison of the lines of the building and the decoration. In the words of Horace Walpole, "there is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and changed together the various productions of the elements with a fine disorder natural to each species." It is doubtful whether Grinling Gibbons was of Dutch or English birth. He was discovered by Evelyn in a poor solitary thatched house near Sayes Court carving a Crucifixion after Tintoretto. In this piece more than a hundred figures were introduced; "nor was there anything in nature so tender and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it; and yet the work was strong." He asked Evelyn £100 for it. The frame, says Evelyn, was worth as much. Evelyn introduced "the incomparable young man" to the King and to Wren, and his fortune was made. Malcolm in his _Londinium Redivivum_ calculates that the payments made to Gibbons for his work in St Paul's amounted altogether to £1,337. 7s. 5d.[45] Space fails to tell of many noble examples of eighteenth century stallwork.[46] In spite of an enormous amount of destruction, _e.g._, by the vandals in charge of Canterbury cathedral, much still remains and awaits the historian. A fine drawing of the stallwork put up in 1704 in Canterbury choir will be found in Dart's _Canterbury_. The throne, carved by Grinling Gibbons, was given by Archbishop Tenison; the pulpit, two of the stalls and other fittings by Queen Mary II.;[47] all this has been swept away, except some pieces worked into the return stalls, to make way for stalls of the usual brand of Victorian Gothic. * * * * * {85} CHAPTER VI STALLS IN PARISH CHURCHES [Illustration: Sall] [Illustration: Trunch] Stalls are found, but rarely with canopies, in many parochial, as well as in monastic, collegiate and cathedral churches. In the latter of course the object of them is obvious; they were intended to accommodate a large body of monks or canons with their vicars and the choristers. But they are found sometimes in the churches of quite small parishes, _e.g._, Sall, Trunch, Ludham, Burlingham St Edmund's in Norfolk, Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset, Norton in Suffolk, Ivychurch[48] in Romney Marsh, where it is pretty certain that in most cases the church was served by a single parish priest merely. At Ingham, a parish in the Norfolk Broads, there are ten stalls in the chancel; at Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, there are six stalls; and so with numerous others. How early parochial chancels had stalls is difficult to say. No existing examples are earlier than the thirteenth century. But a curious fact about the growth of our parish churches, to {86} which attention has not hitherto been directed, may throw some light on the subject. In early Anglo-Saxon days the normal and most common type of parish church was one which had an aisleless nave and chancel. In early Norman days also this was the most common type. In all the above churches, whether Anglo-Saxon or Norman, the chancel, whether rectangular or apsidal, was quite small. Comparatively few, however, of these chancels remain small. In the vast majority of cases they have been enlarged. Either the old chancel has been retained but has been lengthened, or it has been broadened as well as lengthened, thus producing an entirely new chancel. In most cases it happened that, in the long history of the church, aisles were thrown out afterwards, or transepts, that later the nave was lengthened westwards and was heightened to accommodate clerestory windows, and still later a western tower was added and perhaps a spire. But the enlargement of the chancel sometimes took place without any of the other alterations, and where that is so, _i.e._, where the church retains a comparatively small nave, the enlarged chancel bulks up very lofty and spacious, seemingly quite out of scale to the rest of the church: in some examples the chancel is actually loftier than the nave. A church with a chancel so disproportionate strikes the attention at once as one demanding explanation. Large numbers of such abnormally big chancels survive. In Kent and Sussex many of them are of the thirteenth century; _e.g._, Littlebourne; while over England one is struck with the very large number of lofty and spacious chancels of the fourteenth century; _e.g._, Norbury, Derbyshire; Oulton, Suffolk. In numerous cases the enlargements of the chancel took place more than once. At Boston the church was rebuilt with a fine chancel _c._ 1330; but by the end of the century even this vast chancel was judged inadequate, and it was extended still further to the east. {87} [Illustration: Hemingborough Church] {88} What then is the explanation of this furore for enlargement of chancels? In considering the answer, it must be borne in mind that, ritualistically, the English parish church was always tripartite; consisting of nave, choir and chancel. In churches of the Iffley type, _i.e._, with a central tower, it was also architecturally tripartite. But even in churches which architecturally were bipartite, _i.e._, which consisted merely of a nave and chancel, the chancel was divided into two parts, choir and sanctuary, the distinction between them being marked by a change of level. Which part then was it that was found inadequate, the sanctuary or the choir? Not the former; it was not then cumbered with altar rails; the purpose they serve nowadays was served by the screen which every church possessed, guarding the entrance to the chancel; and the sanctuary was quite large enough for the celebrant at the Mass, with as a rule a solitary assistant, the parish clerk. It must have been the choir that was too small for the seats which it was desired to place in it. We conclude therefore that seats were common even in small village churches as early as the thirteenth century, if not before. Documentary evidence to that effect we have not. But in later days there is definite evidence as to the practice of putting stalls in the chancels of parish churches. In Hemingborough church, Yorkshire, there remain stalls of graceful thirteenth century design (87). Now this church in the thirteenth century was parochial; it did not become collegiate till 1426. A series of entries of the cost of choir stalls is preserved for the parish church of St Mary at Hill in the City of London. In the year 1426 there was "paid to three carpenters for the stalls of the quire, 20d." In the following year there was paid "for the stalls of the quire" the large sum of £12 (= £150); it would seem that it was about this time that a complete new set of stalls was put into the choir. In the same year, 1427, there was "paid for stalls in the quire, 16s. 6d."; and "for a quire stool, 7s. 10d." In 1501 a payment was made "for mending of desks in the quire"; in 1509 "for nails and mending of a bench in the quire, 1d." In 1523 there was "paid for a long desk for the quire, 3s."; in 1526 "for the stuff and making of a double desk in the quire, 5s." Then, in Protestant days, there was "paid for mending the desk and settles in the chancel, 2s." At this church the lower part of the bench was made to form a box or chest. {89} [Illustration: Hereford St Peter's] Who then sat in these stalls? The common theory is that they were intended for the use of the rector or vicar and the parish clerk, and of any chantry priests who might be attached to the church. This no doubt is true as far as it goes. At St Maurice, York, a complaint was made at the visitation in 1416 to the effect that the desks in the choir, viz., those where the parish chaplain and the parish clerk were wont to sit, are unhandsome and in need of repair: "Dicunt quod deski in choro, tam ex una parte quam ex alia, ubi saltem capellanus parochialis et clericus parochialis sedere usi sunt, nimis deformes et indigent reparacione."[49] To many churches also, but by no means to all, chantry endowments were made; _i.e._, money was left that masses might be said for ever for the repose of the soul of the donor by a priest, other than the rector or vicar, specially appointed for that purpose. It is commonly supposed that these chantry priests were concerned only with the special altars at which they ministered. But that this was not the case, at any rate universally, is apparent from the terms of the institution of the Willeby chantry in Halifax parish church. The deed is dated 10th June 1494. Amongst other regulations it contains the provision that the chaplain is to attend in person in the choir of the church on every Sunday and Holy Day in his surplice, at matins, mass and vespers, and to take his part in the reading and chanting, as directed by the vicar, and in accordance with the constitutions of the Metropolitan Church. "Item volo et ordino quod predictus Tho. Gledhill, Capellanus modernus, et omnes alii Capellani, ... temporibus futuris nominandi, singulis diebus dominicis et festivis personaliter sint presentes in choro ejusdem Ecclesie temporibus matutinarum missarum et vesperarum, suis suppeliciis induti, et legant et psallent, prout Vicario ejusdem Ecclesie pro tempore existenti decenter et congrue videbitur expedire, ut in constitutionibus Ecclesie Metropolitane proinde constitutis plenius liquet." Assuming {90} then that the same rule applied also to the incumbents of the other chantries, there would be a regular body of clergy to take part in the choir offices.[50] Instances might be multiplied to any extent of the obligation laid on chantry priests to attend and assist the rector or vicar in the services. Thus at Rothwell in 1494 the chantry priest attached to the altar of Our Lady was not only required by the foundation deed to celebrate Mass and other service daily at this altar, but was directed to be in the high choir all festival days at matins, Mass, and evensong. In 1505 Margaret Blade, widow, endowed a chantry of Our Lady in Kildewick parish for a priest who, in addition to his special duties, was to help Divine service in the choir and to help the curate in time of necessity.[51] Sometimes quite a considerable number of chantry priests were attached to a parish church. When all chantry endowments were confiscated by Edward VI., the loss of the services of the chantry priests was in many cases severely felt. At Nottingham indeed the parishioners of St Mary's made formal protest; stating that in their parish there were "1,400 houseling people and that the vicar there had no other priest to help but the two chantry priests."[52] We may take it therefore that seats in the chancel were required not only for the parish priest and the parish clerk, but in some cases for chantry priests as well. But the above explanation does not cover the whole ground. There are often many more stalls than could be used as above. And in some churches there were no chantry priests at all, and yet there are stalls. Who else then occupied seats in the chancel? Some of the stalls probably, usually but a few, may have been occupied by laymen even so early as the thirteenth century. {91} [Illustration: Stowlangtoft] As regards the occupancy of seats in the chancel it is quite clear that it has always been the wish of the Church that they should be reserved for the clergy and that no laymen should be admitted. It is equally clear that the Church has never been able to carry out the injunction. In the Trullan Council of 683 or 692 it was laid down, "Nulli omnium liceat, qui quidem sit in laicorum numero, intra septa sacri altaris ingredi, nequaquam tamen ab eo prohibita potestate et auctoritate imperiali, quandoquidem voluerit Creatori dona offerre, ex antiquissima traditione"; _i.e._, "No layman may enter the chancel, except the Emperor, who by venerable tradition is allowed to do so when he wishes to present offerings to his Maker." But this does not explicitly allow the Emperor to sit down in the chancel. And even this much was objected to by many; for a gloss follows: "Nemo liceat laico intra, &c." ... "Adulatione et timore victi, per gravem errorem concedunt imperatori, quod magna cum laude sanctorum patrum Ambrosius Theodosio negavit"; _i.e._, "The permission given to the Emperor was given under the influence of adulation and timidity, and the action of St Ambrose in refusing it to the Emperor Theodosius was greatly applauded by the Fathers." But it was a perilous thing to exclude emperors, and what was conceded to emperors was claimed by princes, and what was conceded to princes was claimed by and had to be conceded to the nobility generally. So in Scotland in 1225 by an episcopal order the King and his nobles also were allowed to stand and to sit in the chancel: "Ne laici secus altare, quum sacra mysteria celebrantur, stare vel sedere inter clericos presumant, excepto domino rege et majoribus regni, quibus propter suam excellentiam in hac parte duximus referendum." And if the nobles, then certainly the patron of the living could not be excluded from a parochial chancel. So in the diocese of Worcester in 1240 a canon was agreed to that patrons as well as high personages might stand in the chancel: "nec laici stent in Cancellis dum celebrantur divina; salva tamen reverentia patronorum et sublimium personarum"; in Lincoln diocese also Bishop Grosstête in 1240 restricts the permission to the patron. Again in 1255 in Lincoln diocese the patron or any other "venerable" person was allowed to sit and stand in the chancel. Archbishop Greenfield of York (1304-1315) found it necessary to make a rule against laymen intruding into the choir during service. So also at Ely, Simon Langham in 1364 wrote: "Lay people are not to stand or sit amongst the clerks in the chancel during the celebration of divine service, unless {92} it be done to shew respect or for some other reasonable and obvious reason; but this is allowed for the patrons of churches only."[53] Then what had been claimed successfully by those of noble birth, and by patrons in particular, was claimed with equal success by any good Churchman of consideration and wealth, especially if he were a benefactor of the church. For in the fourteenth century Alan de Alnewyk of York, goldsmith, wills that his body be buried _in the quire_ of St Michael Belfry near the place _where I used to sit_ ("ubi sedere solebam"). Another century later, Robert Constable of Bossall, leaves this direction in 1454: "First, I devise my soul to God Almighty and his mother Blessed Saint Mary and to Saint Botolph and to the holy court of heaven; and my body to be buried in the quire afore the place _where my seat is_."[54] In 1511 Robert Fabyan, the chronicler, citizen and draper of London, devises as follows: "I will that my corps be buried between my pew and the high altar, _within the quire_ of the church of Allhallows, Theydon Gardon, Essex." Finally, at Yatton, Somerset, in 1529, 2s. was "paid for a sege in ye chaunsell."[55] It is to be remembered moreover that though it may have been unusual for laymen to have seats in the chancel, yet it was by no means uncommon for them to stand or kneel there; there are enough representations of laymen so standing to establish that point satisfactorily: they are shewn standing or kneeling, sometimes with lighted tapers in their hands. At a St Martin's mass in France in the fourteenth century,[56] two women are shewn near the altar steps, one standing and attending to her duties, the other inattentive and seriously distracting the attention of an acolyte kneeling near. We know definitely that in Salisbury cathedral laymen were allowed to be present in the sanctuary before the Sunday procession; for after the hallowing of the water it was ordered that the priest should asperge the laity in the presbytery as well as the clergy in the choir. "Post aspersionem clericorum laicos in presbiterio hinc inde stantes aspergat."[57] At Salisbury the Sunday procession was marshalled in the ample space between the choir and the high altar, which space the laity entered in order to follow the clerks in the procession. {93} [Illustration: Brancepeth] For women it was more difficult to get admission to the chancel. Tradition and usage were against them. As early as A.D. 367 the Council of Laodicea passed a canon that women ought not to come near the altar or enter the apartment where the altar stands. In the ninth century a canon was passed at Mantes that women must not approach the altar or act as "server" to the celebrant or stand in the chancel. Among the canons of the time of King Edgar is one: "Docemus ut altari mulier non appropinquet dum Missa celebratur"; "a woman must not come near the altar at Mass." In laying down regulations for the services in Ripon Minster Archbishop Greenfield says, "We permit no women at all, religious or secular, unless great ladies or ladies of high rank or others of approved honour and piety, to sit or stand in a stall or elsewhere in the choir while the divine offices are being celebrated." "Nullas omnino mulieres, religiosas vel seculares, nec laicos nisi magnas aut nobiles {94} personas aut alias quarum sit honestas et devocio satis nota, in stallo vel alibi in choro inter ministros ecclesiae stare vel sedere dum divina celebrantur officia permittimus."[58] The story told about Sir Thomas More shews that while he himself sat in the chancel, Lady More sat in the nave. "During his high Chancellorship one of his gentlemen, when service at the church was done, ordinarily used to come to my Lady his wife's pew-door and say unto her 'Madame, my Lord is gone.' But the next holy day after the surrender of his office of Lord Chancellor, and the departure of his gentlemen from him, he came unto my Lady his wife's pew himself, and, making a low courtesy, said unto her, 'Madam, my Lord is gone.' But she, thinking this at first to be but one of his jokes, was little moved, till he told her sadly he had given up the Great Seal." And many other good Churchmen at all times have retained the ancient usage of the exclusion of women from the stalls in the chancel. At Great Burstead, in Essex, in 1661, an applicant was authorised to build a pew at the entrance to the chancel for the use of himself and sons and companions and friends of the male sex; but to build another in the nave for his wife and her daughters and companions and friends of the female sex. King Charles I. in 1625 wrote, "For mine own particular opinion I do not think ... that Women should be allowed to sit in the chancel, which was instituted for Clerks"; and in 1633, when he visited Durham cathedral, the choir was cleared of all the seats occupied by the Mayor and Corporation and the wives of the Dean and Prebendaries and other "women of quality," and his Majesty gave orders that they should never again be erected, "that so the Quire may ever remain in its ancient beauty." Even to this day in some cathedrals it is the usage to allow women to sit only in the lower desks of the choir and not in the stalls above. Nevertheless in plenty of instances the pertinacity of women prevailed; and where the husband sat in the chancel, there the wife insisted on sitting beside him. Thus in a suit instituted by Lady Wyche in 1468, the lady put it on record that she had a seat in the chancel: "jeo aye un lieu de seer en le chauncel." In 1468 two ladies had seats in the chancel of Rotherham church; for the master of the grammar school willed that he be buried in south chancel[59] near the stall in which the wife of the Bailiff of Rotherham and the testator's wife sit. In 1553 a new pew was made for Sir Arthur D'Arcy and his wife at St Botolph, Aldgate: "Paid to Mattram, carpenter, for three elm {95} boards for the two new pews in the quire where Sir Arthur Darsey and his wife are set ... ijs. viijd." The same parish in 1587 gave Master Dove permission to "build a pew for himself, another for his wife to sit in, being in the chancel." Therefore we come to the conclusion that at any rate from the thirteenth century onward more and more seats were provided in the chancel for lay folk. Where, as in the parish church of Boston, the stalls are very numerous--at Boston there are sixty-four--it is likely that a considerable number of them were appropriated to various important gilds connected with the church. But there is another purpose which parochial stalls subserved, and that is the most important of all: viz., to accommodate a surpliced choir. The introduction of surpliced choirs into chancels in modern days was an innovation at first deeply resented, and seems to have been usually made in ignorance of the existence of mediæval precedent. Precedent there is, however, in abundance. England was a merry, tuneful land before the Reformation, and nowhere more than in the churches. The musical part of the service grew more and more ornate, especially in the last years immediately preceding the Dissolution; the parishes--village and town parishes alike--delighted in "the cheerful noise of organs and fiddles and anthems," and spent on music a very large part of the church income. The early years of the sixteenth century were a glorious time for church music; the parishioners loved it and would have it, and were willing to pay for it; it was not forced on them from above; it was the people and the people's churchwardens who would have it. What a joyful sound we should hear from the church doors if we could enter once more an English church of the sixteenth century and hear the surpliced men and boys a singing in the choir, accompanied by organs and citterns and fiddles and crowdes and dulcimers and all instruments of music in the rood loft, with perhaps an anthem or a solo on high festival days from distinguished vocalists of the neighbouring villages; those were happy times. Take the churchwardens' accounts of St Mary at Hill, London.[60] In this church in 1523 there was "paid 15d. for 6 round mats of wicker for the clerks." If we assume six more for the boys, we get a regular choir of six men and six boys. But besides these an extra choir of choirmen and boys was engaged for special days. In 1527 there was "paid 9d. at the Sun tavern for the drinking of Mr Colmas and others of the King's chapel {96} that had sung in the church of St Mary at Hill." In 1553 there was "paid 16d. to the gentlemen of the Queen's chapel for singing a mass at St Mary at Hill." Again, in 1527 there was "paid 7s. for bread, ale and wine for the quire, and for strangers at divers feasts in the year past"; these "strangers" would probably be singers hired from other churches. The above entry shews that the choir was paid in kind as well as in money. The choirmen received quite handsome salaries. In 1524 Morres, the bass, was receiving from the parish 20 nobles a year. John Hobbes was the most expensive member of the choir. In 1556 there was paid to John Hobbes 56s. 8d., being one quarter's wages, for his services in the choir. This choirman therefore had a salary of £11. 6s. 8d. per annum, which would be equivalent to about £113 of our money. Sir John Parkyns, a bass, received a quarterly salary of 15s. 8d. "for the help the quire when Hobbes was dead, and to have 8d. a day every holy day and Sunday." On the other hand there was "paid 12s. to Mr Hilton, priest, for three quarters of a year, for keeping daily service in the quire in 1528"; this was at the rate of 16s. per annum; this compares remarkably with John Hobbes' salary of £11. 6s. 8d. per annum; even allowing for the fact that Mr Hilton had other sources of revenue, we cannot but infer that priests were cheap and good singers dear in the sixteenth century. The parishes were quite willing to pay for good music. At Braunton, Devon, _c._ 1580, _i.e._, after the Reformation, the churchwardens were still paying four or five expensive choirmen, as well as singing boys; the highest salary for a choirman was 26s. 8d.; say £13. 6s. 8d. per annum; the choir in this village church could not have cost the parish less than £100 per annum of our money. In all the choirs there seem to have been "singing boys" as well as men. We hear in 1477 of four choristers being brought over to St Mary at Hill for a special service, for which they received the modest sum of 1d. each. At this church it was finally arranged to have a permanent choir, and what we should call a choir school was established, with John Norfolk, the organist, at the head of it to train the boys: for there "was paid for making clean of a chamber in the Abbot's Inn to be a school for Norfolk's children." The same year "Mr parson gave the boys a playing week to make merry," and the churchwardens kindly presented the boys and choirmen with 3s. 4d. to spend on their holiday. Next year there was again a payment of 3s. 4d. "in the playing week after Christmas to disport them." Both the boys and the men wore surplices, bought at the expense of the parish. In 1496 there were at St Mary at Hill "8 surplices for the quire, of which {97} 2 have no sleeves; and 7 rochets for children, and 6 albs for children." In 1499 there was "paid 12d. for the making of 6 rochets for children that were in the quire." At St Nicholas', Bristol, in 1521 there was paid "1d. for making a child's surplice belonging to the quire"; and in 1542 iiis. viid. for material "to make 2 lads' surplices." An inventory of Huntingfield church, Suffolk, shews that the church possessed "vii rochettys ffor men and vii for chyldern," and that the material of the rochets cost 6d. each; it would seem that this Suffolk village had seven men and seven boys in the church choir. At St Mary at Hill there was paid in 1523 "for making 12 surplices for men at 6d. each, 6s.; and for 12 surplices for children at 5d. each, 5s."; this was a rich city parish, and could afford to have a pair for each choir man and boy, one to be in use, the other at the wash. Then music had to be paid for. In the same church in 1523 there was paid "for 4 hymnals and a processioner, noted, for the clerks in the quire, 6s. 8d."; in the same year there was paid "for two quires of paper to prick songs in, 8d." In 1555 at St Mary the Great, Cambridge, there was "paid 3s. 4d. for the copy of the service in English set out by note; and 1s. 4d. for writing and noting part of it to sing on both sides of the quire"; _i.e._, they sang antiphonally. There are numerous entries as to the cost of the organ and of the constant repairs which it required. Lastly, there was the organist's salary, which if it was anything like the sum received by John Hobbes, would be a heavy item. An eminent organist like John Norfolk, who was in charge of a choir school, would expect and no doubt get a large salary. In village churches, however, the boys would be trained, sometimes by a chantry priest if he was under statutory obligation to do so, more often by the parish clerk. The latter was a permanent official with a freehold, as he is still, and a person of much importance and dignity. Before the Reformation, in addition to serving at the daily Mass in a village church, carrying holy water and "blessed bread" round the parish, and many other functions, he was more especially in charge of the musical part of the services. He was expected to sing or chant himself, especially the psalms; he had to read the epistles; and, at any rate in the sixteenth century, he had to train the choir boys. It was ordered at Faversham in 1506 that "the clerks, or one of them, so much as in them is, shall endeavour themselves to teach children to read and sing in the quire." And at St Giles', Reading, in 1544 there was a payment of 12s. "to Whitborne the clerk towards his wages, and he to be bound to teach 2 children for the quire." {98} [Illustration: Hambleton] Beside the professional choirmen and the parish clerks there were sometimes amateurs also giving help. Sir Thomas More used to sing in Chelsea church like any parish clerk. "God's body," said the Duke of Norfolk, coming on a time to Chelsea and finding him in Chelsea church, singing at Mass in the choir, "God's body, my Lord Chancellor, what turned parish clerk?" Put these items together--the wages of choirmen and boys, and now and then of extra help, the making, mending and washing of surplices, the cost of music, the salaries of the organist and parish clerk and the cost of the choir school, and it will be seen that the services of a large town church must have been, musically, on quite a grand scale; it is equally plain that the love of church music and the willingness to pay for it were equally great in the villages. It is not possible here to go further into this matter of the church music. It may be said briefly, however, that the plain chant of the Divine Office and of the Mass would be sung in the chancel, and that for this the permanent village choir of men and boys would suffice. Every parish that could afford it seems to have had a rood loft and an organ in it. But the organ would not be used to accompany the plain song, but for what we call "voluntaries" in the various intervals of the Mass and other services. The {99} organ again would be employed when there was singing of "motets," _i.e._, anthems, whether the singers were in the choir or the rood loft. On great days when minstrels playing all manner of instruments were got together to help out the organ, they would no doubt be placed in the rood loft, with any extra vocalists for whom place could not be found in the choir below. [Illustration: Chaddesden] Summing up, we may say that in a parochial chancel seats were required (1) for the parish priest, the parish clerk and any chaplains or chantry priests; (2) for the patron and a few of the leading churchfolk of the village; (3) for a choir of men and boys which was occasionally enlarged by choirmen and choristers borrowed from neighbouring churches. Altogether quite a considerable number of seats would be required; and we need not be surprised that there are so many stalls in small village churches, but rather that they are not more; no doubt, however, additional forms or benches would be introduced on days of great festival. Not every parish church could afford to have a set of stalls made, cathedral fashion, for its chancel. In many cases probably the seats were but benches or settles; and the naked, desolate {100} look of many spacious chancels is no doubt due to the removal of these seats. Desks, or as they were Latinised "deski," there must have been, at least one at each side, on which to place the anthem book, processioner and other music. We hear of a double desk at St Mary at Hill; but only the richest parishes seem to have provided desks for the choir boys as well as for the men. In poor parishes the men had not armed stalls, but merely a bench to sit on.[61] The boys sometimes had a bench; sometimes, as at Stowlangtoft, Suffolk (91), the bench was framed into the desk behind. At the back of the choirmen's seats, there might be bare wall; or it might be panelled, as at Sall, Norfolk (85), or arcaded, as at Chichester Cathedral (36). In richer examples there might be above the panelling a coved cornice, as at Stowlangtoft and Balsham, Cambridge (3). A still more sumptuous design was to erect a horizontal canopy above the stalls, as at St Peter's (89) and All Saints' (45), Hereford, and Brancepeth, John Cosin's church, Durham (93). The return stalls, facing east, would be those of the parish priest and his clerical helpers, and were often more spacious and lofty than the rest, and backed on to the screen, as at Chaddesden, Derbyshire (99), and Trunch, Norfolk (85). The workmanship of the best stalls is quite first rate. At All Saints', Hereford, the timber of the stalls is "good sound English oak, all either cleft or cut in the quarter, proving that the trees were converted into the smallest possible sizes before being sawn from either end, the very rough saw-kerfs meeting at an angle in the centre of the board."[62] The stalls frequently stand on stone plinths, pierced for ventilation; _e.g._, at Sall and Trunch (85). * * * * * {101} PART II ------ CHAPTER VII BISHOPS' THRONES In the next chapter we deal with movable chairs and thrones, descendants more or less of the "_sella curulis_" and the "_sella gestatoria_." More important still are the fixed thrones of Early Christian days. These were not of wood or ivory, but of masonry, usually marble. In shape they were just high-backed chairs of marble. Now countless numbers of such marble chairs or stalls were in use in the theatres, thermæ and amphitheatres of Pagan Rome; the thermæ of Caracalla alone possessed 600 such marble stalls. Doubtless many a bishop's throne, like those at St John Lateran, St Clement and Cosmedin, Rome, was actually taken from one of the Roman thermæ. Similar bishops' chairs, cut out of the solid rock, occur in the catacombs of Rome. The position of the fixed marble throne of an Early Christian bishop was high up in the centre of the back wall of the apse of the church. In Dalmatia and Istria several thrones retain their original position. At Parenzo there remains the semicircle of marble seats for the clergy with the episcopal throne in the centre; a work of the first half of the sixth century. At Aquileia, in the centre of the east end, is the Patriarch's throne of veined white marble, inlaid with serpentine; it is made up of portions of an older throne of genuine Byzantine work. At Grado the marble throne at the east end of the church seems to have been made up in the ninth century; it is surmounted by a stone tester. At Zara in the same position is another marble chair, raised on five steps. At Trau the bench of the clergy remains, but the bishop's throne has been destroyed. At Ossero also is a marble throne made up of fragments of older work.[63] In the apse of the twelfth century church of S. Stefano, Bologna, is a bishop's throne ten steps above the choir. Another remains _in situ_ in Vaison cathedral, Provence. Another episcopal chair of marble is now placed on the north side of the sanctuary of Avignon cathedral; on it are carved the emblems of the Evangelists (104). {102} [Illustration: Exeter] {103} [Illustration: Exeter] {104} In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a throne, painted and gilded, dated 1779, from a church in Cyprus. In Norwich cathedral in the centre of the apse wall of the presbytery there are the fragments of the original stone seat built for the use of the bishop, and on the pavement and adjoining piers there are traces of the steps by which his throne was reached. When Blomfield wrote his _History of Norfolk_, 1739-1775, the steps of the throne had not been disturbed; "the ancient bishop's throne ascended by three steps," and when built, before a rood screen was erected, the bishop had an uninterrupted view down the whole church to the west end of the nave.[64] [Illustration: Avignon] In Canterbury cathedral is a stone chair, which as at Norwich was originally at the back of the High altar; it was removed from that position by Archbishop Howley _c._ 1840, but has recently been replaced; it consists of three blocks of Purbeck marble (105). The chronicler Eadmer, writing of the Pre-Conquest cathedral burnt down in 1067, says that "the pontifical chair in it was constructed with handsome workmanship and of large stones and cement." The description would apply very well to the present chair: but the monk Gervase states that in Lanfranc's cathedral, finished in 1077, "the patriarchal seat, on which the archbishops were wont to sit during the solemnities of the Mass, until the consecration of the Sacrament, was of a single stone." It would seem therefore that the Anglo-Saxon chair perished in the fire of 1067, and that its successor experienced the same fate in 1174. The probability is therefore that the present chair was made between the fire of 1174 and the consecration of 1184. A decisive argument against a Pre-Conquest date is the fact that the throne is made of Purbeck marble--for this material seems not to have come into use till after the middle of the twelfth century in the Norman house at Christchurch on the Avon, in St Cross', Winchester, and in William of Sens' work at Canterbury. {105} [Illustration: Canterbury] The position of the pontifical throne at Canterbury has varied at different periods. Eadmer states that the cathedral burnt down in 1067 was orientated to the east, where was the presbytery containing the High altar. But at the west end of the church was the altar of Our Lady, and behind this altar was the throne adjoining the west wall. This unusual position is only explicable by the assumption that the first cathedral at Canterbury was orientated to the west, and that the site occupied in 1067 by the altar of Our Lady was originally that of the High altar. The western position so postulated for the High altar and the throne was originally that of most of the Early Christian basilicas at Rome, in particular the ancient basilica of St Peter. At a later period the orientation was often reversed, _e.g._, in St Paul _extra muros_, Rome; what happened in this latter church seems also to have happened in Anglo-Saxon times at Canterbury. A similar change has occurred in the French cathedral of Nevers; where, however, though in Gothic days a presbytery and High altar were constructed at the east end of the church, the early {106} Romanesque presbytery, crypt, and two bays of the nave have been allowed to remain to this day. [Illustration: Beverley Minster] What looks like a survival of the marble chair of the bishop is to be seen in the frithstols of Hexham and Beverley (106). These also are of masonry, and are so similar in design to the ancient marble thrones that one is tempted to speculate that the original usage of sanctuary was for the offender to fly to and occupy the actual throne of the bishop or archbishop. As has been said, in the Early Christian churches both the altar and the seats of the bishop and his clergy were usually at the west end of the church to the west of the High altar, so that the clergy faced towards the east, while the congregation faced towards the west. But early examples occur of churches with the modern orientation. When this was the case, the congregation faced east; and where the ancient position of the throne and benches was retained, the clergy were left in an anomalous position facing west. This led, first to the clergy, then the bishop, migrating elsewhere. The higher clergy took up their position in the return stalls of the choir, facing east; the lower clergy occupied stalls north and south of the choir. As for the bishop, he could not seat himself as before, facing the altar, for his throne would have blocked the entrance into the presbytery. He therefore set up his throne on the south side of the choir, at the eastern end of the southern range of stalls. And this is where we find him in Gothic days. There is one chief exception. In cathedrals served by monks, the bishop was the titular abbot of the house, though the superintendence of the monastery had necessarily to be left mainly in the hands of the prior; and so to this day in some churches the bishop has no throne, but occupies the ancient abbot's stall--at Ely the stall of the Benedictine abbot, at Carlisle the stall of the Augustinian abbot. {107} [Illustration: Durham] The change of position from the back of the High altar to the front of it was a complete break with tradition. Equally complete was the break in design. In the design of the Gothic throne there is no reminiscence whatever of the marble chairs of the Early Christian basilicas and the Pagan Thermæ. The Gothic thrones are but glorified versions of such stalls and spirelet-tabernacles as those of Lincoln; they are spacious stalls, sometimes, as at St David's, big enough to hold a bishop and two chaplains, and crowned with a spire of open woodwork. The earliest and grandest is that of Exeter cathedral; the Fabric Rolls shew that in 1312 during the episcopate of Bishop Stapledon there was paid "for timber for the bishop's seat £6. 12s. 8½d." The oak was kept four years before it was used. Then £4 was paid to Robert de Galmeton "for making the bishop's seat by contract." There was also a charge of 30s. for {108} painting, and there must have been one for carving the statues in the canopy. The whole cost would be about £13; say £200 in our money; a sum surprisingly small for work of such magnitude and delicate detail. The throne was evidently intended to have a chair placed under it, and probably seats for the bishop's chaplains to the right and left. It is 57 feet high; at present its niches look somewhat unsubstantial and meagre; but that is because all the niches were tenanted with statues, and all have disappeared. The carved foliage is of exceptional excellence, and the corners of the pinnacles are occupied with small heads of oxen, sheep, dogs, pigs, monkeys and other animals (102). [Illustration: St David's] {109} [Illustration: St David's] {110} Not much later is the throne in Hereford cathedral. That at Wells is fifteenth century work, and by a pretty fancy of the "restorers" its tracery is filled with modern plate glass, and the door is a solid swinging stone! That at St David's is nearly 30 feet high. Of the throne erected by Bishop Gower _c._ 1342 there remains _in situ_ only the low partition surrounding it; the present throne was probably put up by Bishop Morgan between 1496 and 1504 (109).[65] The throne at Durham is of masonry, and in two parts of different dates. The lower portion contains an altar tomb surmounted by a recumbent effigy of the bishop in richly worked robes beneath a rich lierne vault. No doubt Bishop Hatfield as usual put this up during his lifetime; he was bishop from 1345 to 1381. This lower part is an exquisite example of the design in vogue before the advent of the Black Death of 1349-50. On the tomb is the pulpit, which bears unmistakable marks of the change of style which became general after 1350. The drawing shews the throne as it was in 1843 (107). * * * * * {111} CHAPTER VIII CHAIRS IN CHURCHES Hardly anything in a cathedral has so venerable a history as the throne and chair of the Bishop, of wood or ivory. The origin of this type of Bishop's chair goes back to Pagan Rome. There the greater officials had two official chairs, both portable; one, the "_sella curulis_" in which they sat while administering justice; the other, the "_sella gestatoria_" in which they were carried in procession. The "_sella curulis_" was a folding chair with crossed legs like the chair of Dagobert in the Hotel Cluny, Paris: chairs of this form are still in use in many Continental cathedrals. The "_sella gestatoria_" was a kind of sedan chair, shaped like a settle; with high back and usually without arms; it was provided with rings through which were passed staves when it was borne in procession. Similar is the Pope's chair in St Peter's, Rome, last shewn in 1867 (112). It is said to have belonged to the Senator Pudens and to have been used by St Peter. Whether that be so or not, it is undoubtedly very ancient, and its legs may be of the Apostolic age; they are of yellow oak, worm-eaten, and chipped by pilgrims who carried away bits as relics; the seat and back are of acacia wood and are of a later period. This back is ornamented with ivory panels carved to represent the Labours of Hercules; the panels are probably of the ninth century, for among the decorations is a bust with a crown bearing _fleurs de lis_, and what seems to be a portrait of Charles the Bald.[66] Very similar is the chair in which St Silvester is represented as seated in the dome of the apse of St John Lateran, where the mosaics are those of 1291, copied probably from the original ones executed in 428. Similar chairs also appear in the mosaics of Sta. Pudentiana and other Roman basilicas, and in those of Santa Sophia, Constantinople. {112} [Illustration: Pope's Chair] {113} In the Archbishop's chapel at Ravenna is preserved a chair made for Maximian who was Archbishop of Ravenna from 546 to 556. It is in wood entirely covered with plaques of ivory, arranged in panels, with Scriptural subjects--among others the story of Joseph--and figures of saints richly carved in high relief. The plaques have borders with foliated ornaments, birds and animals, flowers and fruit, filling the spandrels. [Illustration: Pope's Chair] At Lincoln is a wooden chair, which appears to be _c._ 1300; it has recently been placed in the Chapter House and is now used by the bishop at diocesan synods (114). It is possible that since several Parliaments met at Lincoln, between 1265 and 1327, that this may be the royal chair: it may well have been used also at the great trial of the Knights Templars, which was held in the Chapter House in 1310. It is only original up to the level of the arms; the lions, the back and the canopy are modern. {114} [Illustration: Lincoln] [Illustration: Hereford Cathedral] {115} In Hereford cathedral is an ancient wooden chair, once coloured in red and gold; it is composed of fifty-three pieces; not counting the seat of two boards and the two circular heads in front; it has been variously ascribed to the twelfth or fourteenth century; but no doubt is Jacobean, belonging to the same class of chairs as those enumerated in the following paragraph (114).[67] At Stanford Bishop church, Hereford, is a rude chair or settle, of oak without nails. It is said to have been traditionally called "Old Horstin's chair," and therefore has been supposed, very improbably, to be the identical chair seated on which St Augustine received the British bishops in Herefordshire _c._ 600 A.D., greatly exciting the ire of the irascible Celts by not rising from his seat to receive them. In the Canterbury Museum Dr Cox has recently deposited a mediæval chair believed to be of great antiquity.[68] [Illustration: Wells] [Illustration: Wells] A few examples remain of what are supposed to have been abbots' chairs. In the Bishop's Palace at Wells is preserved a chair of remarkable type, said to have been used by the Abbot {116} of Glastonbury. In the College, Manchester, is or was an ancient chair of the same baluster shape; and a very similar one formerly was to be seen in Agecroft Hall, Manchester. In the cottage at Zaandam, Holland, is a baluster chair, formerly used by Peter the Great. Another chair of this type, but of simpler form, is that once used by John Bunyan, and now preserved, together with his pulpit, in the meeting house of the Independent Congregation at Bedford. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is an arm-chair with balusters of turned ash. All these chairs are of seventeenth century date; no abbot of Glastonbury can have sat in the chair in the Bishop's Palace at Wells (115, on the left). [Illustration: Dunmow] [Illustration: Winchfield] A chair from Glastonbury, bearing an inscription, and in date _c._ 1530, is now in the chapel of the Bishop's Palace at Wells; modern copies of it may be seen in hundreds of churches. It is inscribed _Monachus Glastonie_ and _Johannes Arthurus_; a similar chair was formerly in Southwick Priory, Hampshire (115). An abbot's chair, reputed to have belonged originally to Peterborough cathedral, stands in the south chapel of Connington church, Hunts, where it is said to have been brought from the collegiate church of Fotheringhay, and is said to have been the last chair in which Mary, Queen of Scots, sat previous to her execution. From Little Dunmow priory came the chair now in Great Dunmow church, Essex; its trefoiled arcading shews that it was made in the thirteenth century. In it, up to 1907, were chaired the married couple "who had not repented them, sleeping or waking, of their marriage in a year and a day." The first recorded claim for the happy-marriage prize was made at the Priory in 1445 (116). {117} [Illustration: Coventry] {118} [Illustration: Bishop's Cannings] {119} A magnificent and well-preserved seat is to be seen in St Mary's Hall, Coventry, and is assigned to the middle of the fifteenth century: it is of oak. From the mortices at one end and the discontinuance of the lower pattern it would seem to have been attached to a set of stalls, and to have belonged therefore originally to some church or chapel (117).[69] [Illustration: Jarrow] [Illustration: Beeston Regis] In Bishop's Cannings church, Wiltshire, is a remarkable seat believed to be a "carrel," or desk and seat, such as used to be employed by monks when at study in their cloister; it may have been brought from some monastic house. "It consists of an upright panel, with some fifteenth century moldings at the {120} top and sides; against this panel is constructed a seat, facing sideways, with a flooring, a back the ordinary height of a pew, a door facing the panel, and a sloping desk facing the seat." With this description may be compared that of the monastic carrels given in the _Rites of Durham_; "In the north side of the cloister from the Corner over against the Church Door to the corner over against the Dorter door was all finely glazed from the height to the sole within a little of the ground into the cloister garth, and in every window three pews or carrels where every one of the old monks had his Carrel, several by himself, that when they had dined they did resort to that place of cloister, and there studied upon their books, every one in his carrel, all the afternoon unto evensong time; this was their exercise every day. All their pews or Carrels was all finely wainscotted and very close, all but the forepart, which had carved work that gave light in at the carrel doors of wain scot. And in every Carrel was a desk to lie their books on; and the Carrels was no greater than from one stanchion of the window to another." [Illustration: Lutterworth] On the inner side of the large panel are a variety of brief admonitory sentences, painted in Latin black letter on the thumb and four fingers of a rudely outlined hand, inscribed at the cuff _Manus meditationis_; beginning on the thumb with _Nescis quantum, Nescis quoties, Deum offendisit_. Below the hand with its pious sentences on the respective points of each finger, two cocks are painted, the one white and the other black; from their beaks proceed two labels, bearing further ejaculations (118).[70] {121} [Illustration: Westminster Abbey] {122} [Illustration: Winchester Cathedral] In St Paul's church, Jarrow, is a very rude seat known as the chair of the Venerable Bede; he was a monk of Jarrow, and died in 742; only the sides and seat and the crossbar at the top are original. Mr Mickethwaite was of opinion that it was originally a settle; and it seems hardly likely that the chair can have survived from the eighth century, especially as the monastery of Jarrow was repeatedly burnt by the Danes; but it is of an exceptionally hard oak, and bears marks of fire, and has had its present designation for several centuries.[71] It will be noticed that the standards have been whittled away by relic hunters (119). At Lutterworth is a well-known chair; the tradition is that it was used by John Wyclif, and that he was smitten with paralysis while sitting in it hearing mass, on Holy Innocents' day, 1384, and was carried in it to the rectory hard by, where he died on the last day of that year. A brass plate on it records the tradition; but the chair is plainly Jacobean and of domestic origin; there is another chair in the chancel of exactly the same shape and pattern (120). {123} [Illustration: Mainwaring Chapel] [Illustration: Higher Peover] {124} At Kidderminster Baxter's chair is preserved; on it is the following inscription:--"Rev. R^d Baxter born n^r Shrewsbury in 1615 and died at London in 1691. Chaplain to King Charles II. Rev. T. Doolittle, M.A. S^r H. Ashurst B^t, Kidderminster, A. 1650 D." Baxter speaks of Mr Thomas Doolittle, born in Kidderminster, as "a good schollar, a godly man, of an upright life and moderate Principles, and a very profitable serious Preacher." To Sir Henry Ashurst, Bart., Sylvester dedicated his _Reliquiae Baxterianae_, 1696. He also stood by Baxter in the day of his trial and distress, paid the fees for his six counsel, and when the trial before Judge Jeffries was over, led Baxter through the crowd, and conveyed him away in his coach. He was also Baxter's executor, and it is possible the chair may originally have belonged to him. At Beeston Regis, Norfolk, is a fine old seat, now used by the parish clerk (119); it would seem to be of the period of the work at Balsham and elsewhere (3). At Winchfield, Hampshire, is another old seat of rude and early design (116). [Illustration: Puddletown] Stone seats are occasionally found. Where they are placed south of the altar, they are probably sedilia; but not when they are placed in the western bay or bays of the chancel or in the nave. At Barnack the remains of a stone seat were found on the west wall of the Pre-Conquest tower; it had formerly an oak seat and oak slabs on either side: a stone seat occurs also in the west wall of the nave of Old Radnor church. A stone seat is not uncommon in the western bays on the south side of chancels; the object of this is not clear; perhaps it was to provide a seat for the priest while reading his office; in later days, as we have seen, oak stalls were common in parish chancels, and the priest would read his office in one of these. Several examples occur. There is a rude example in the Pre-Conquest church of Corhampton, Hampshire. Others, probably {125} of thirteenth century date, occur at Warlingham, Surrey, and Halsham and Sprotborough, Yorkshire. At Lenham, Kent, is one with solid stone arms, and with a cinquefoiled canopy of later date. [Illustration: Redenhall] [Illustration: Redenhall] Last, we have the Coronation chair at Westminster,[72] which has a long, if somewhat unreliable history behind it. The stone beneath it is said to have been the one on which Jacob's head rested at Bethel; from whence it travelled to Egypt, and thence to Spain, Ireland and lastly Scotland. King Kenneth of Scotland had the following inscription engraved on it in Latin verse:-- "Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum Invenient lapidem regnare tenentur ibidem"; a prophecy curiously fulfilled on the accession of James I. to the English throne (121). On the upper surface of the stone is a rectangular groove large enough to receive an inscribed plate. Edward I. found the stone in 1296 at Scone abbey, where the Scotch kings had always been crowned on it. He carried it to London, and in 1300 Master Adam, the king's goldsmith, was working at a bronze chair to hold it. But when this was nearly {126} finished, the king altered his mind and had a copy of it made in wood--the present chair--which cost 100s., by Master Walter, the king's painter. The chair has lost the quatrefoils in front, and the lions are of recent date. It originally stood in the same position as a bishop's chair, _i.e._, at the back of the High altar and in front of the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and facing to the west. It is made of oak, fastened together with pins; the surface was first covered over with the usual gesso; then gold was applied by means of white of egg, and burnished; then minute dots, forming diapers of foliage, beasts, birds, &c., were pricked on the surface of the gold, taking care not to penetrate it, with a blunt instrument before the ground and gilding had lost their elasticity; a most tedious and delicate process. A second chair, modelled on the older one, was made on her coronation for Mary II., Queen of William III. It used to stand by the side of the king's chair, but has been moved to the easternmost recess of Henry VII.'s chapel. In Winchester cathedral is the chair which was used by Mary I. on her marriage with Philip of Spain, which was solemnised in the Lady chapel: it is now placed in Bishop Langton's chapel (122). Very similar is a chair preserved in York Minster, which, owing to the shield attached in front, is probably not older than the time of Richard II.:[73] the cushion is stuffed, and covered with green velvet; the shield also is covered with leather, the upper part of which has been torn away, and the lines upon it are but slightly stamped. At Constance is shewn a similar chair of Martin V., who was elected Pope there in 1417. [Illustration: Much Hadham] {127} [Illustration: Cartmel] In addition to the above, chairs are often placed in the presbytery to the north of the altar. These were occupied by the preacher during morning or evening service, till his turn came to ascend the pulpit and deliver the sermon. Of these the greater number no doubt have been presented by the owner of some manor house or parsonage, or have been picked up in recent years in some second-hand furniture shop. This is probably the case with the interesting chair which is known to have been for nearly a century in the Mainwaring chapel of Higher Peover church, Cheshire; it bears not only the name, but the portrait and initials of the owner. The inscription is DORATHY MAYNWARING; she married Sir Richard Mainwaring of Ightfield, Salop, High Sheriff of that county in 1545. Most of the chair is older than her time; Dorothy seems to have had it put together of old bits of carving, adding her name and portrait, and the raven, the crest of her father, Sir Robert Corbet. She lived at Ightfield, and it was probably when that branch of the family became extinct that the chair was brought to Higher Peover church, and placed in the Mainwaring chapel. At the top are holes for holding sconces in which tapers would be placed (123). {128} [Illustration: Suffolk] [Illustration: Halsall] At Penshurst there used to be a chair with a bust on the inner panel of the back; the tradition was that it belonged to Sir Philip Sidney.[74] At Puddletown, Dorset, a chair has been in the chancel for very many years; it is of Elizabethan date, and was probably brought from some hall or manor house. "The tall narrow back, the broadening seat, the vertically straight, but horizontally angled arms are those of the French caqueteure type rarely seen in England. The strap carving of the back is of the best; while the twin greyhounds with averted heads that fit the curved top of the chair no doubt have reference to the original owner" (124).[75] At Upton, near Castor, there {129} are two chairs in the chancel; on one of which is inscribed "A.D. 1700--Joane Browne--Want Not." The other has the initials J. D.; the Doves were Lords of the Manor at that time (130).[76] In Redenhall church, Norfolk, is one of two chairs brought there from Canterbury cathedral by Archbishop Sancroft on his expulsion from the see in 1615; it is of a curious pattern common in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in which the back is hinged and can be turned over to convert the chair into a table. Archbishop Sancroft is buried at Redenhall, which, by the way, possesses perhaps the finest church tower of any village in England and an exceptionally fine ring of ancient bells. The other chair is kept at Gawdy Hall, the seat of the Sancrofts (125). In many cases the chair is a composite product, made up of fragments of screens, bench ends and the like; this seems to be the case with the chairs in the churches of Bridford, Devon, and Othery, Somerset; that at Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, appears to be put together out of the fragments of a screen (126). In the Chapter House of Gloucester cathedral are two chairs, on the inner panels of the back of which are carved "The Last Supper" and "The Ascension" respectively; the panels were presented in the time of Dean Law, and, provided with a framework, now form part of two chairs. [Illustration: Combmartin] Where, however, the chair has a representation of some ecclesiastical subject, the presumption is that it was made for the church in which it is placed. In Cartmel Priory church is a fine chair on the back of which is represented the Resurrection; below are seen the Roman soldiers; above, Christ shews the wounds in His hands (127). At Sanderstead, Surrey, Abraham {130} with uplifted sword is about to slay Isaac; on the right is shewn the ram, on the left an angel. The same subject appears, better carved, on the back of one of two chairs brought from a church in Suffolk, now pulled down; on the other chair is a representation of what looks like the Temptation (128). In Halsall church, Lancashire, are two beautiful chairs with the initials IHS; beneath them is a scroll on which is inscribed _Ecce quomodo amabat_ (128). In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a similar "winged" chair, which bears the initials IPI and the date 1670. In the chancel of Combmartin church, Devon, is a mahogany chair with wheat and grapes, apparently referring to the sacramental bread and wine; it had been for many years in the family of the present incumbent, Rev. F. W. Jones, and was presented by him to the church; it is possible that it was originally made for a church (129). [Illustration: Upton] {131} [Illustration: Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster] * * * * * {133} INDEX TO PLACES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ------ _Numbers followed by the name of the Photographer or the Draughtsman refer to Illustrations_ ------ Aberdeen, King's College, 29, 68 Abergavenny Priory, Monmouth, 46, G. G. Buckley. 29, 40, 47 Amiens, 11 Aquileia, 101 Avignon, 104, F. Bond. 104 Balsham, Cambs., 3, G. G. Buckley. 1, 5, 100, 124 Barnack, Northants, 124 Basing, Hants, 79 Bedford, 116 Beeston Regis, Norfolk, 119, C. F. Nunneley. 124 Belgium, 29, 31 Beverley Minster, Yorks., 3, 14, 14; C. Goulding. 7, Alan Potter. 27, 63, 64, and frontispiece; W. E. Wigfall. 64, 65, 106; F. H. Crossley. 5, 7, 26, 29, 40, 51, 65, 66, 68, 74, 106 Beverley St Mary, 2, F. H. Crossley. 1, 5 Bishop Auckland, Durham, 31, 67 Bishop Cannings, Wilts., 118, Wilts. Archæological Society. 119 Blythburgh, Suffolk, 11, S. Gardner. 7 Bologna, St Stefano, 101 Bossal, Yorks., 92 Boston, Lincs., 86, 95 Brancepeth, Durham, 93, F. Bond. 31, 67, 100 Braunton, Devon, 96 Brescia, Sta. Maria dei Miracoli, 82 Bristol Cathedral, 29, 50. St Nicholas, 97 Bruges, 68, 70 Burlingham St Edmund, Norfolk, 85 Cambridge, Great St Mary, 97. King's College Chapel, 78, F. R. Taylor. 5, 29, 75, 77, 79, 82 Canterbury Cathedral, 105, S. Gardner. 23, 31, 36, 53, 84, 104, 115 Carlisle Cathedral, 21, R. Billings. 59, F. Bond. 23, 29, 51, 58, 61, 66, 68, 70, 82, 106 Cartmel, Lancashire, 80, 81, 127; F. H. Crossley. 5, 31, 75, 79, 129 Chaddesden, Derbyshire, 99, G. H. Widdows. 12, 100 Chelsea, 94, 98 Chester Cathedral, 9, W. M. Dodson. 10, 24, 53, 55, 56; F. H. Crossley. 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 23, 26, 29, 51, 54, 58, 61, 66, 68, 70 Chichester Cathedral, 36, P. M. Johnston. 5, 26, 29, 36, 38, 47, 100 Christchurch, Hants, 2, G. F. Gillham. 76, 77; F. H. Crossley. 1, 5, 29, 75, 77, 79, 82, 105 Cockersand Abbey, Lancs., 43 Combmartin, Devon, 129, W. M. Dodson. 130 Connington, Hunts., 116 Constance, 126 Constantinople, Santa Sophia, 111 Corhampton, Hants, 124 Coventry, St Mary's Hall, 117, Anon. 119 Cyprus, 104 Dalmatia, 16, 101 Dinant, 31 Dunblane, Scotland, 67, W. Maitland. 5, 29, 67 Dunis, Flanders, 68 Dunmow, Essex, 116, F. R. Taylor. 116 {134} Durham Cathedral, 22, 107; R. Billings. 66, F. Bond. 15, 31, 51, 66, 68, 94, 110. Castle, 5 Ely Cathedral, 37, G. H. Tyndall. 13, 20, 29, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 47, 49, 51, 61, 66, 68, 91, 106 Etwall, Derbyshire, 13, G. H. Widdows. 8 Exeter, 102, E. K. Prideaux. 103, G. H. Widdows. 12, 15, 23, 107 Faversham, Kent, 97 Flanders, West, 68, 70 Fotheringhay, Northants, 116 France, 31, 67, 68, 92, 105 Fressingfield, Suffolk, 8 Gawdy Hall, Norfolk, 129 Gendron-Celles, 31 Glastonbury, Somerset, 115, 116 Gloucester Cathedral, 38, Oscar Clark. 23, 29, 33, 38, 40, 129 Grado, 101 Great Burstead, Essex, 94 Halifax, 89 Halsall, Lancashire, 128, G. G. Buckley. 130 Halsham, Yorkshire, 125 Hambleton, Worcester, 98, G. H. Poole. 100 Hampton Court, Middlesex, 75, 77 Hastières, 31 Hemingborough, Yorks., 87, C. de Gruchy. 33, 77, 88 Hereford Cathedral, 43, G. B. Atkinson. 114, A. J. Wilson. 13, 20, 26, 29, 40, 44, 108, 115. All Saints', 44, G. G. Buckley. 45, W. M. Dodson. 5, 29, 40, 47, 100. St Peter, 89, G. G. Buckley. 29, 49, 100 Hexham, Northumberland, 23, 29, 106 Higham Ferrers, Northants, 29 Higher Peover, Cheshire, 123, F. H. Crossley. 127 Huntingfield, Suffolk, 97 Iffley, Oxon., 86 Ightfield, Salop, 128 Ingham, Norfolk, 85 Istria, 16, 101 Ivychurch, Kent, 85 Jarrow, Durham, 119, W. Maitland. 120 Kidderminster, 122 Kildwick, 90 Kilpeck, Herefordshire, 122 Kirkstall, Yorks., 20, 23 Lacock, Wilts., 82 Lancaster, 39, 41, 42; F. H. Crossley. 29, 40, 54 Lapford, Devon, 77 Layer Marney, Essex, 75, 79 Lenham, Kent, 125 Lincoln Minster, 5, 52, 114; S. Smith. 17, Hugh McLachlan. 5, 10, 13, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 51, 54, 58, 59, 61, 66, 68, 91, 106, 113 Littlebourne, Kent, 86 London, 70, 79. Christ Church, Newgate Street, 4, F. R. Taylor. 5. Hampton Court, 75, 77. Rolls Chapel, 75. St Botolph, Aldgate, 94. St Mary-at-Hill, 88, 95, 96, 97, 100. St Paul's, 83, F. J. Hall. 28, 31, 82. Old St Paul's, 23. Victoria and Albert Museum, 104, 116, 130. See Westminster Abbey Louth, Lincs., 75 Ludham, Norfolk, 85 Lutterworth, Leicester, 120, E. H. Day. 122 Manchester Cathedral, 6, 62; F. H. Crossley. 5, 7, 29, 51, 61, 65, 66, 68, 70, 74. Agecroft Hall, 116. College, 116 Mantes, 93 Melrose, 68 Milan, St Ambrogio, 16 Much Hadham, Herts., 126, A. W. Anderson. 129 Nantwich, Cheshire, 57, F. H. Crossley. 29, 51, 58, 59, 61, 68 Nevers, 105 Newark, 29 Norbury, Derbyshire, 86 North Cadbury, Somerset, 77 Norton, Suffolk, 85 Norwich, 48, S. Gardner. 13, 19, 25, 26, 29, 40, 43, 47, 104 Notre Dame de la Roche, 31 Nottingham, 90 {135} Old Radnor, Radnorshire, 124 Ossero, 101 Othery, Somerset, 129 Oulton, Suffolk, 86 Oxford, 29, 79 Parenzo, 101 Paris, Hotel Cluny, 111 Penshurst, Kent, 128 Peterborough, 32, H. Plowman. 15, 33, 116 Poitiers, 31 Puddletown, Dorset, 124, W. Wonnacott. 128 Ratzburg, 31 Ravenna, 113 Reading, St Giles', 97 Redenhall, Norfolk, 125, C. F. Nunneley. 129 Ripon Minster, 8, W. Maitland. 60, J. H. Bayley. 5, 6, 7, 15, 23, 26, 29, 51, 61, 65, 66, 68, 70, 93 Rochester Cathedral, 30, P. M. Johnston. 23, 29, 31 Rome, 16, 19, 23, 101, 105, 111. Baths of Caracalla, 101. S. Clemente, 19, 101. St John Lateran, 101, 111. S. Maria in Cosmedin, 19, 101. St Paul extra Muros, 19. St Peter's, 111. Old, 105. Sta. Pudentiana, 111 Rotherham, Yorks., 94 Rothwell, Northants, 90 St Asaph, 51, 61 St David's, 108, 109; W. M. Dodson. 15, 29, 50, 107, 110 St Gall, 20, 23 St Paul's, 83, F. J. Hall. 28, 31, 82 Salisbury, 92 Sall, Norfolk, 85, F. Bond. 85, 100 Sanderstead, Surrey, 129 Saulieu, 31 Scotland, 67, 68, 91 Sedgefield, Durham, 31, 67 Sees, St Martin, Normandy, 43 Sherborne, Dorset, 49, G. G. Buckley. 29, 49 Sherburn Hospital, Durham, 31, 67 Sion Abbey, Middlesex, 43 Sluys, 70 Snettisham, Norfolk, 40 Southampton, 79 Southwell, Notts., 25, 26, 50 Southwick Priory, Hants, 116 Sprotborough, Yorks., 125 Stanford Bishop, Herefordshire, 115 Stirling, 68 Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, 91, C. F. Nunneley. 5, 7, 29, 49, 85, 100 Suffolk, 128, J. C. Stenning. 49, 85, 130 Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, 84 Swine, Yorks., 77 Talland, Cornwall, 77 Theydon Gardon, Essex, 92 Trau, 101 Trunch, Norfolk, 85, F. Bond. 5, 85, 100 Upton, Northants, 130, G. C. Druce. 128 Vaison, Provence, 101 Venice, St Mark's, 16. Sta. Maria dei Miracoli, 82 Walpole St Peter, Norfolk, 12, S. Gardner. 7 Warlingham, Surrey, 125 Wells Cathedral, 115, G. W. Saunders. 7, 11, 13, 20, 26, 28, 29, 110. Bishop's Palace, 115, 116 Westminster Abbey, 31, Sandford. 121, A. Gardner. 21, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 51, 77, 125, 73; Henry VII.'s Chapel, A. W. Pugin, 73; D. Weller, 131. 10, 25, 70, 74, 75. Weston in Gordano, Somerset, 85 Winchelsea, Sussex, 36 Winchester Cathedral, 34, 122; C. E. S. Beloe. 35, S. Gardner. 72, J. F. Hamilton. 73, J. Britton. 5, 13, 23, 29, 33, 40, 43, 72, 75, 79, 126. St Cross, 75, 105 Winchfield, Hants, 116, G. C. Druce. 124 Windsor, St George's Chapel, 69, Lysons' _Magna Britannia_. 71, Alan Potter. 12, 29, 51, 70 Wingfield, Suffolk, 46, C. F. Nunneley. 29, 47 Worcester, 23, 84, 91 Yatton, Somerset, 92 York Minster, 18, 58; J. Britton. 23, 58, 126. St Maurice, 88. St Michael Belfry, 92 Zara, 101 Zaandam, Holland, 116 * * * * * {136} INDEX RERUM Abbot, place in choir, 13, 106 Accounts (_see also_ Cost), 95 Arcading, 40, 54, 100 Arms and armour, 36, 48, 54 (_see also_ Heraldry) Arrangements of stalls, 12, 16, 26 Back of Stalls, 5, 10, 15, 26, 28 (_see_ Panelling) Badges, 47 Baluster chairs, 115, 116 Bath, order of the, 74 Battlements, 36, 38, 47, 51, 54, 61 Baxter's chair, 124 Benches, 49, 99 Benefactors, 92 Bishop's chair, 13, 19 ---- throne, 101 Black Death, 40, 47, 58, 110 Boys, 96 (_see_ "Children of the Choir") Brattishing, 47, 63 Busts, 70, 77 Buttresses, 54 Canons, resident and non-resident, 11, 25, 28 Canopies, construction of, 1, 10, 33, 54 ---- ogee, 10, 33, 36, 43, 45, 47, 50, 53, 54, 59, 65, 68 ---- bowing ogee, 10, 38, 45, 47, 51 ---- compound ogee, 54 ---- "Lincoln" ogee, 54 ---- tiers or stories of, 38 ---- varieties of, 1, 29, 51, 74, 100 Capitals, 10, 61, 82 Capping, 10 Carrel, 119 Carvers, 68, 70, 74, 77 Carving, 5, 33, 38, 53, 54, 61, 68, 70, 77, 79, 82, 108 Centaurs, 68 Chairs, abbots', 115 ---- bishops', 13, 111 ---- church, 111 ---- marble, 101 ---- popes', 111 ---- stone, 101, 124 ---- winged, 130 Chancels, 16, 20 ---- enlargement of, 86 Chantries and Chantry priests, 8 "Children of the Choir," 25, 96 Choir, 13, 16, 20 Choristers, 1, 25, 26, 85, 95 Chronological order of stalls, 29 Churchwardens' accounts, 95 (_see_ Cost) Classical design, 67, 79 Clerk, parish, 97, 124 Construction of stalls and canopies, 1, 8, 10, 33, 54 (_see also_ Canopies) Cornice, 1, 40, 47, 49, 50, 63, 100 Coronation chair, 125 Cost, 11, 79, 84, 88, 107 Costume, 36 Cresting, 29, 36, 45, 65, 72, 79 Crockets, 10, 33, 44, 47, 51 Crossing, 20, 23 Crypts, 23 Cusps, 33, 36, 43, 47, 49, 61 Dagobert, chair of, 111 Dates of stalls, 5, 29 Dean's stall, 13, 50, 54 Design, 10, 38, 68, 70, 74 Desks, 1, 5, 7, 47, 88, 100, 119 Dorothy Mainwaring, 79, 127 Dove, 95, 129 ---- of St Botolph's, Aldgate, 95 ---- of Upton, 129 Dutch carvers, 70 Edmund Crouchback, 33 Edmund, Saint, 7 Elbows of stalls, 1, 5, 10, 77 Ends of stalls, 5, 8 Entablature, 79, 82 Epistle, place of reading, 13 {137} Finials, 33, 51 Flamboyant, 40 Flemish work, 68, 70 Fleur de lis, 68 Flying buttresses, 10, 54 Foreign design and workmen, 68, 77, 79, 82 Frithstols, 106 Gables, 10, 33, 54, 61, 65 (_see_ Canopies) Galleries, 29 Garter, Knights of Order of, 72 Gilds, 8, 95 Glastonbury chairs, 116 Gospel, desks, and place of reading, 13 Grinling Gibbons, 84 Hawks, 47 Heraldry, 5, 6, 47, 48, 50, 79 Hipknobs, 10 Honeycomb, 77 Honour, place of, 13 Inscriptions, 26, 28, 82 Italian workers, 77, 79, 82 Jacobean chairs, 115, 122 Kemp, Archbishop, 53 Knights of the Bath, 74 Knights of the Garter, 72 Laity, 1, 16, 19, 90 "Lincoln ogee," 54 Mainwaring, Dorothy, 79, 127 Marble chairs, 101, 106 Masks, 5, 44 Mayor's stall, 6, 15, 82, 94 Maximian, chair of, 113 Minstrels, 99 Misericords, 1, 48, 50, 53, 54, 61, 65, 74, 75 Moldings, 40 More, Sir Thomas, 94, 98 Music in churches, 95 Niches, 10, 38, 51, 54, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65 Nobility in chancel, 91 North side, 13, 15 Number of stalls, 25, 26, 50, 75 Oak, 68 Occupants of stalls, 1, 88 Ogee, 10, 33, 36, 43, 45, 47, 51, 53, 54, 59, 65, 68 Orientation, 16, 105 Organs and Organists, 96, 98 Panelling, 5, 50, 68, 74, 100 Parish churches, planning, growth of, 16, 23, 25, 85, 86 (_see_ Chancel) ---- stalls in, 49, 85 Parish clerk, 97, 124 Passion, emblems of, 82 Patrons, in chancels, 91 Pediment, 33, 43, 51 Pews in chancels, 95 Pinnacles, 10, 38, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59, 61, 66, 74, 108 Place of honour, 13 Planning, 16, 20, 23, 25, 85 Plinth, 100 Poppyheads, 6, 7 Portrait busts, 77 ---- panels, 75 Position of stalls, 1, 16 Prebendaries, 25, 28 Processions, 13, 25, 92 Projection of canopies, 47 Psalter, recitation of, 26, 28 Purbeck marble, 105 Removals from other churches, 43 Renaissance, 66, 75 Restorers and restorations, 20, 29, 38, 84 Return stalls, 12, 13, 25, 100, 106 Rochets, 97 Rood loft, 95, 98 Rows of stalls, 25 Sancroft, Archbishop, 129 Screens, 10, 12, 19, 20, 50, 75, 79, 100 Scrollwork, 5, 82 Seats, 1, 10, 48, 77 ---- marble and stone, 111, 124 Sedilia, 124 Sella curulis and gestatoria, 101, 111 Shafts, 10, 33, 51, 59, 77, 82 Shields, 5, 6 Shoulders of stalls, 1, 5, 59 Singers, 1, 16, 95 (_see also_ Boys, "Children of the Choir," Choristers) {138} South side, 13, 15 Spires and spirelets, 1, 11, 38, 40, 49, 51, 53, 54, 58, 61, 63, 66, 72, 106 Stalls in greater churches, 1, 13 ---- in parish churches, 49, 85, 90 ---- object of, 85 Stall-wages, 26 ---- work, earliest, 31 ---- thirteenth century, 31, 88, 90 ---- fourteenth century, 33, 50, 51, 53, 58 ---- fifteenth century, 48, 50 ---- sixteenth century, 79 ---- Renaissance, 66, 75 ---- eighteenth century, 84 Standards, 8 Stanley legend, 61 Statues, 10, 51, 61 Stone chairs and seats, 101, 124 ---- _versus_ wood, 51 Stories of stalls, one, 38, 43, 44, 51, 59, 72, 74 ---- two, 10, 38, 47, 51, 53, 58, 61, 65, 72 String-course, 58, 59, 61, 65, 66 Sudbury hutch, 75 Sunday and other processions, 25, 92 Supermullions, 40, 47 Supports, 5, 77 Surplices, 89, 96 Tabernacled spires and canopies, 1, 10, 51, 53, 66, 106 Tester, coved, 47, 63 Thirteenth century work, 31, 88, 90, 116, 125 Thistle, Scottish, 68 Three-gabled canopies, 38, 51, 54, 59 Throne, bishop's, 13, 16, 19, 101, 105 Tiers of canopies, 38 Tracery, 33, 36, 40, 43, 45, 51, 54, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 68, 82 Vicars choral, 26 Ventilation, 100 Vine, 68 Winged chairs, 130 Women in stalls, 92 Wood _versus_ stone, 51 Workmanship, 100 Wyche, Lady, 94 Wiclif, 122 ------ _Printed at_ THE DARIEN PRESS, _Edinburgh_. * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR SCREENS AND GALLERIES IN ENGLISH CHURCHES A HANDSOME VOLUME, CONTAINING 204 PP., WITH 152 ILLUSTRATIONS, REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEASURED DRAWINGS. OCTAVO, STRONGLY BOUND IN CLOTH. PRICE 6S. NET. LONDON: HENRY FROWDE, Oxford University Press ---------- SOME PRESS NOTICES _Builder._--"When we look at the detailed photographs we realise the richness of the field which Mr Bond has traversed, and congratulate him on the choice of his subject. His method is one of singular thoroughness from the ecclesiological standpoint." _Journal of the Architectural Association._--"As a record of the screens remaining in our churches it cannot be valued too highly. No book till now has brought such a number together, or traced their development in so full and interesting a manner.... A most delightful book." _Builders' Journal._--"The author may be congratulated on the production of a book which, in text as well as in illustrations, is of striking and inexhaustible interest; it is the kind of book to which one returns again and again, in the assurance of renewed and increased pleasure at each reperusal." _Tablet._--"The numerous excellent illustrations are of the greatest interest, and form a veritable surprise as to the beauty and variety of the treatment which our forefathers lavished upon the rood screen." _British Weekly._--"The book abounds with admirable illustrations of these beautiful works of art, so perfect even in the minute details that any one interested in the art of woodcarving could reproduce the designs with ease from the excellent photographs which occur on almost every page. There is also a series of 'measured drawings' of great beauty and interest." _New York Nation._--"It is not easy to praise too highly the simple and effective presentation of the subject and the interest of the book to all persons who care for ecclesiology or for decorative art." _Bibliophile._--"This excellent book is a sign of the times; of the reawakened interest in the beautiful and historic.... A model of scholarly compression. Of the finely produced illustrations it is difficult to speak in too high terms of praise." _Daily Graphic._--"Mr Bond has produced a work on our ecclesiastical screens and galleries which, like his larger work on the 'Gothic Architecture of England,' is in the first degree masterly. His knowledge of his subject, exact and comprehensive, is compressed into a minimum amount of space, and illustrated by a series of photographs and measured drawings which render the work of permanent value." _Bulletin Monumental._--"Après avoir analysé, aussi exactement que possible, l'intéressant étude de M. Bond, nous devons le féliciter de nous avoir donné ce complément si utile à son grand ouvrage." * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR FONTS & FONT COVERS A HANDSOME VOLUME CONTAINING 364 PAGES, WITH 426 ILLUSTRATIONS REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEASURED DRAWINGS. OCTAVO, STRONGLY BOUND IN CLOTH. PRICE 12S. NET. LONDON: HENRY FROWDE, Oxford University Press ---------- SOME PRESS NOTICES _Guardian._--"Mr Bond is so well known by his monumental work on 'Gothic Architecture in England,' and by his beautiful book on 'Screens and Galleries,' that his name alone is a sufficient guarantee for this new volume on 'Fonts and Font Covers,' the most complete and thorough that has yet appeared." _Church Times._--"The finest collection of illustrations of fonts and font covers yet attempted.... A real delight to the ecclesiologist." _Commonwealth._--"A sumptuous monograph on a very interesting subject; complete and thorough." _Church Quarterly Review._--"It is most delightful, not only to indulge in a serious perusal of this volume, but to turn over its pages again and again, always sure to find within half a minute some beautiful illustration or some illuminating remark." _Irish Builder._--"This book on 'Fonts and Font Covers' is a most valuable contribution to mediæval study, put together in masterly fashion, with deep knowledge and love of the subject." _Westminster Gazette._--"Every one interested in church architecture and sculpture will feel almost as much surprise as delight in Mr Bond's attractive volume on 'Fonts and Font Covers.' The wealth of illustrations and variety of interest are truly astonishing." _Journal of the Society of Architects._--"The book is a monument of painstaking labour and monumental research; its classification is most admirable. The whole subject is treated in a masterly way with perfect sequence and a thorough appreciation of the many sources of development; the illustrations, too, are thoroughly representative. To many the book will come as a revelation. We all recognise that the fonts are essential, and in many cases beautiful and interesting features in our ancient churches, but few can have anticipated the extraordinary wealth of detail which they exhibit when the photographs of all the best of them are collected together in a single volume." _Outlook._--"Mr Francis Bond's book carefully included in one's luggage enables one, with no specialist's knowledge postulated, to pursue to a most profitable end one of the most interesting, almost, we could say, romantic, branches of ecclesiastical architecture.... This book, owing to its scholarship and thoroughness in letterpress and illustrations, will doubtless be classic; in all its methods it strikes us as admirable. The bibliography and the indexes are beyond praise." * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR VISITORS' GUIDE TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY 93 PAGES OF TEXT, ABRIDGED FROM THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CHAPTERS OF THE AUTHOR'S LARGER WORK ON "WESTMINSTER ABBEY," CONSISTING CHIEFLY OF DESCRIPTION OF THE TOMBS, MONUMENTS, AND CLOISTERS, WITH 15 PLANS AND DRAWINGS AND 32 PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS. PRICE 1S. NET. LONDON: HENRY FROWDE, Oxford University Press ---------- SOME PRESS NOTICES _Guardian._--"There is probably no better brief handbook. Mr Bond's qualifications for the task are beyond question. By the use of varied type, ingenious arrangement, and excellent tone-blocks and plans, the book attains a high standard of lucidity as well as of accuracy." _Building News._--"This little work is characterised by its terseness, directness, and practical treatment. A carefully compiled and scholarly guide-book." _Architect._--"This book will excellently and admirably fulfil its purpose.... A splendid itinerary, in which almost every inch of the way is made to speak of its historical connections." _Birmingham Daily Post._--"Concise, informative, reliable, and admirably illustrated." _Western Morning News._--"By his key plan and very clear directions as to where to find the numerous side chapels, historic monuments, and other objects of interest, Mr Bond makes it possible for a visitor to find his way round the building at his leisure. It refreshes one's knowledge of English history, and is supplemented by thirty-two excellent plates, which by themselves are worth the shilling charged for it." _Scotsman._--"A more complete and dependable guide to the National Pantheon could not be desired." _Architectural Review._--"This is an excellent little text-book. Mr Bond is to be congratulated in having introduced into it an interesting element of history. The notes in small print should make the visit to the Abbey both more profitable and more interesting. The key plan and the numerous small plans are extremely clear and easily read. The information given is concise and to the point, and a word of special praise must be given to the plates at the end; the subjects of these are well chosen and are illustrated by very good photographs." _Antiquary._--"This little book, strongly bound in linen boards, gives concisely and clearly all the information the ordinary visitor is likely to require. Cheap, well arranged, well printed, abundantly illustrated and well indexed, this handy book, which is light and 'pocketable,' is the best possible companion for which a visitor to our noble Abbey can wish; it is an ideal guide." * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR WESTMINSTER ABBEY A HANDSOME VOLUME, CONTAINING 348 PAGES, WITH 270 PHOTOGRAPHS, PLANS, SECTIONS, SKETCHES, AND MEASURED DRAWINGS. OCTAVO, STRONGLY BOUND IN CLOTH. PRICE 10S. NET. LONDON: HENRY FROWDE, Oxford University Press ---------- SOME PRESS NOTICES _Oxford Magazine._--"All who love the Abbey will be grateful for the skill and affection bestowed on this admirable work." _Birmingham Post._--"With the history of the Abbey the author interweaves the life of the Benedictines, peopling the building with its occupants in the centuries when England was a Catholic country, and does it with such skill than one can almost imagine oneself at the services." _Englishman._--"The writer handles his subject with consummate skill, and his reward will lie in the unmeasured praise of his many readers." _Guardian._--"A book which brings fresh enthusiasm, and will impart a new impetus to the study of the Abbey and its history." _Scotsman._--"At once instructive and delightful, it more than justifies its existence by its historical and architectural learning." _Liverpool Daily Courier._--"We found the earlier parts of the book most fascinating, and have read them over and over again." _Architectural Association Journal._--"Bright and interesting; evincing the author's invariable enthusiasm and characteristic industry." _Western Morning News._--"To say that the book is interesting is to say little; it is a monument of patient and loving industry and extreme thoroughness, an inexhaustible mine of delight to the reader, general or technical." _Outlook._--"The author discusses the architecture with a minuteness that might terrify the inexpert if it were not for the sustained ease and interest of his style; great is the fascination of the expert hand when its touch is light." _Saturday Review._--"Mr Bond leaves us more than ever proud of what is left to us of the stately Benedictine house of God, which is to the entire English-speaking world a common bond and home." _Antiquary._--"It has a wealth of capital illustrations, is preceded by a bibliography, and is supplied with good indexes to both illustrations and text." _Journal des Savants._--"Certains clichés, comme ceux des voûtes, des tombeaux et de quelques détails de sculpture sont de véritables tours de force. Le choix des illustrations est très heureux, comme d'ailleurs dans les autres ouvrages de M. Bond." * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR WOOD CARVINGS IN ENGLISH CHURCHES I. MISERICORDS A HANDSOME VOLUME, CONTAINING 257 PAGES, WITH 241 ILLUSTRATIONS. OCTAVO, STRONGLY BOUND IN CLOTH. PRICE 7S. 6D. NET. LONDON: HENRY FROWDE, Oxford University Press ---------- SOME PRESS NOTICES _Morning Post._--"The subject is one of the first importance to mediæval popular history, and we welcome this very admirable and thorough monograph with special gratitude." _Athenæum._--"Mr Bond has put his rare industry in all that pertains to ecclesiology to excellent service in his latest book on Misericords." _Antiquary._--"An authoritative and, at the same time, delightful and instructive volume. Really the first attempt to deal comprehensively with the great variety of carvings on misericords." _New York Herald._--"One of the quaintest, most fascinating, and at the same time most learned volumes that a reader would happen upon in a lifetime." _Church Times._--"An indispensable guide to the subject. The illustrations are worthy of all praise." _Architectural Association Journal._--"The blocks, taken from photographs, are of an excellence really amazing, when the difficulties such subjects present to the camera are considered. A most delightful book." _Yorkshire Post._--"Another of the valuable series of monographs on Church Art in England, and the most entertaining of all." _Architects' and Builders' Journal._--"An exceedingly interesting volume both in illustrations and subject-matter, and full of curious information." _Glasgow Herald._--"Mr Bond's scholarly and most interesting book brings us very near to popular life in the Middle Ages." _Liverpool Courier._--"Another of the admirably written and illustrated art handbooks for which the author is famous." _Birmingham Post._--"This well illustrated volume is not only a valuable technical monograph, but also an important contribution to the history of social life and thought in the Middle Ages. Mr Bond's treatment of the subject is exceptionally charming and successful. The general excellence of the book is great." _Outlook._--"Many there must be to whom Mr Bond's new book will be welcome. Into all the details of this varied and most puzzling subject he goes with thoroughness and a pleasant humour. The bibliography and indexes, as usual in Mr Bond's work, are admirable." * * * * * Notes [1] Harry Sirr in _Art Journal_, 1883, 329. [2] Wickenden, _Archæological Journal_, 1881, pp. 43-61. [3] Canon Church in _Archæologia_, lv. 326. [4] _Dictionnaire raisonné_, viii. 464. [5] C. R. Peers in _Victoria County History of Northants_, ii. 445. [6] Illustrated in the writer's _Screens and Galleries_, 2. [7] Faber's _Poems_, pp. 227-229. [8] See the writer's _Westminster Abbey_, 48. [9] For plans of St Gall, Kirkstall, Westminster, Canterbury, Exeter, York, see the writer's _Gothic Architecture in England_. [10] For an account of the working of the system of Secular Canons in the English cathedrals see Canon Church's paper in _Archæologia_, lv.; Professor Freeman's _Cathedral Church of Wells_; Mr A. F. Leach on _Beverley Minster_ in vols. 98 and 100 of the Surtees Society, and on _Southwell Minster_ in the 1891 volume of the Camden Society; and Rev. J. T. Fowler, D.C.L., on _Ripon Minster_ in vols. 64, 74, 78, 81 of the Surtees Society. [11] See Mr A. F. Leach's _Memorials of Beverley Minster_, Surtees Society, vols. 98 and 108. [12] Views of galleried choirs may be seen in Britton's _Cathedral Antiquities_; Norwich, ii. 13, Oxford, ii. 10. [13] Illustrated in Maeterlinck, _La genre satirique dans la sculpture flamande et wallonne_, page 12. [14] See Viollet-le-Duc's _Dictionnaire_, viii. 464. [15] See C. R. B. King in _Index_ to _Spring Gardens Sketch Book_, ii. 46, and Plate XLVI. [16] Hope's _Rochester Cathedral_, pp. 110, 111. [17] It is illustrated in Professor Lethaby's _Westminster Abbey_, p. 23, from Sandford's _Coronation of James II._, and is reproduced above. [18] Illustrated in _Gothic Architecture in England_, 481. [19] See _John O'Gaunt's Sketch Book_, vol. i. [20] Here, as always, one has to recognise the technical and artistic excellence of Mr Crossley's photography; he has even reproduced the cobwebs. [21] They are ascribed to the fourteenth century by Mr Octavius Morgan in _Monuments of Abergavenny Church_. [22] My attention was directed to these arms by Mr W. H. St John Hope. [23] Jones and Freeman's _St David's_, pp. 87 and 91. [24] Illustrated in Dart's _Canterbury Cathedral_, 145 and 160. [25] E. Mansel Sympson's _Lincoln_, 277. [26] Illustrated in the writer's _Gothic Architecture in England_, p. 269. [27] A photograph of the north range of the Chester stalls forms the frontispiece of the writer's _Misericords_. [28] Mr C. H. Purday. [29] Illustrated in Murray's _Welsh Cathedrals_, page 267. [30] Illustrated in the writer's _Fonts and Font Covers_, 296. [31] _Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland_, ii. 105. Drawings by Mr J. B. Fulton appeared in the _Builder_, 1st Oct. 1898 and 2nd Dec. 1893; and by Mr A. S. Robertson in the _Builders' Journal_, 14th Jan. 1903. [32] Macgibbon and Ross. _Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland_, v. 543; and _Builder_, lxxv. 293, in which are measured drawings by Mr J. B. Fulton. [33] _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_, i. 112. [34] For information relating to the Windsor stalls I am indebted to Mr W. H. St John Hope: see his paper "On a remarkable series of Wooden Busts surmounting the stall-canopies in St George's chapel, Windsor," in _Archæologia_, liv. 115, and the building accounts to be published in his forthcoming work on _Windsor Castle_. [35] See the writer's _Westminster Abbey_, 146. [36] _Sacristy_, i. 266. [37] The Hampton Court busts are by Giovanni de Majano, who in 1521 demanded payment for ten "medallions of terra cotta." They cost £2. 6s. 8d. each. R. Blomfield's _History of Renaissance Architecture in England_, 3. [38] Illustrated in the writer's _Westminster Abbey_, 197. [39] See also the illustration of the chair made _c._ 1545 for Dorothy Mainwaring, page 123. [40] See Willis and Clark, i. 516-522. [41] Gotch's _Early English Renaissance_, 29, 254. [42] _Annales Caermoclenses_, by James Stockdale; Ulverston, 1872, p. 76. [43] _Early Renaissance Architecture in England_, 38. [44] _Annals of St Paul's_, 447. [45] Measured drawings of the stalls of St Paul's by Mr C. W. Baker appeared in the _Building News_, 1891, pages 108 and 358. [46] The Renaissance woodwork ousted from Worcester cathedral by Sir Gilbert Scott found a resting-place in the church of Sutton Coldfield (R. A. D.). [47] Willis' _Canterbury Cathedral_, 107. [48] These are illustrated in _Archæologia Cantiana_, vol. xiii. [49] _York Fabric Rolls_, 35, 248. [50] Canon Savage's pamphlet, 369. [51] Cutts' _Parish Priests_, 466. [52] Gasquet's _Parish Life in Mediæval England_, 96. [53] Gasquet, _Parish Life in Mediæval England_, 45. [54] It is of course possible that both Alan de Alnewyk and Robert Constable sat in the chancel in surplice either as a member of a gild or of the choir. [55] This, however, may have been for one of the choirmen or choristers. [56] Reproduced in Gasquet, _ibid._, 47, from Didron. [57] Wordsworth's _Salisbury Ceremonies and Processions_, 20. [58] Inhibitions of Archbishop William of York in 1308 and 1312 in Rev. Dr Fowler's _Memorials of Ripon Minster_, Surtees Society, vol. 78. [59] "South chancel" may mean "the chapel south of the chancel." [60] Admirably edited by Mr Littlehales for the Early English Text Society; vols. 20 and 24. [61] At Hambleton (98) the chancel was remodelled, and the simple desks with linen pattern may be of that date. But the seats behind were never more than rough movable benches.--G. H. P. [62] R. H. Murray on _Ancient Church Fittings_, 12. [63] Mr T. Graham Jackson's _Dalmatia_: iii. 319, 427, 105: i. 272 and ii. 123. [64] Stewart in _Archæological Journal_, xxxii. 18. [65] Jones and Freeman's _St David's_, 90-93. [66] Padre Garrucci in _Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries_, iv. 40, and illustrations in _Vetusta Monumenta_, vol. vi. The perspective sketch is by Carlo Fontana and is in the Royal Library at Windsor; the measured drawing is by Signor S. A. Scardonelli, and was made in 1784. [67] Measured drawings of the Hereford chair by Mr W. H. Brierley appeared in the _British Architect_, xxiii. 114. [68] Described by Dr Cox in _English Church Furniture_, p. 250. [69] Shaw's _Ancient Furniture_, 31. [70] _Wiltshire Archæological Society's Magazine_, vi. 147-149, quoted in _English Church Furniture_, 253. [71] _Archæologia Æliana_, xvii. 47, and _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_, xvii. 238. There are four similar chairs at Kilpeck. [72] For descriptions and illustrations see Mr J. Hunter's "Edward the First's Spoliations in Scotland, A.D. 1296" in _Arch. Journal_, vol. xiii.; Mr W. Burges' paper in "Gleanings from Westminster Abbey," p. 121; and Mr Lethaby's _Westminster_, pp. 18, 265, 297. [73] Henry Shaw's _Ancient Furniture_, Plate VI. [74] Illustrated in Hone's _Year Book_, 143. [75] Rev. Arthur Helps from _Country Life_, 12th March 1910. [76] Communicated by Rev. R. M. Serjeantson 
47687	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900 LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS. CARVING. Carved Arm-piece of Choir Stall, Sixteenth Century, Cathedral of Genoa 123 Carved Choir Stall, Modern (1856) Baptistery, Pisa, 131 Carving, Detail of, Twelfth Century, Church of S. Ginsto, Lucca 127 CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND, THE. Canterbury Cathedral: The Choir 185 Chichester Cathedral from Northeast 183 Hereford Cathedral from Northeast 187 Lincoln Cathedral: The Choir 193 Norwich Cathedral from East 185 Peterborough Cathedral: The Choir 189 St. Albans Abbey from Southwest 199 Wells Cathedral: The Choir 197 Wells Cathedral: West Front 195 Winchester Cathedral: West Front 193 Worcester Cathedral: The Choir 191 Worcester Cathedral from Southwest 181 CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD, THE. Lantern of the Great Staircase 151 Plan 155 View of Chambord (1576) 157 CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS. Chippendale Chairs, Chinese Pattern 77 Chippendale Chairs 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83 DUCAL PALACE: VENICE, ITALY. Ceiling, Detail of, Ante-Chamber of Chapel 139 Fireplace in Doge's Bed-chamber 141 Piazetta and Sea Façades 137 DUOMO AND THE CAMPANILE, THE. FLORENCE, ITALY. Plan 93 Window, The Campanile 91 ENGLISH CARVED FIREPLACES. Mantelpiece, Montacute House 63 Mantelpiece, Restoration House, Rochester 59 Mantelpiece, Standish Hall 61 Mantelpiece, Stokesay Castle 65 Mantelpiece, Wraxhall Manor 67 GROTESQUES FROM NOTRE DAME, PARIS. 95, 97, 99 GUILD HALLS OF LONDON, THE. Butcher's Hall, Board Room 121 HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: BOURGES, FRANCE. Bird'seye View (After Viollet-le-Duc) 105 JAPANESE GARDENS. Fukagawa, Detail of Garden 27 Hill Garden, Model of 35 Lanterns, Garden, Typical Varieties of 31 Merchant's Villa Garden, Detail, Fukagawa 29 Model Pine Tree 25 Stepping Stones, Arrangement of 31, 33 Tea Garden, Inner Enclosure, Tamagawa 33 LOUIS XVI. SCONCES. Douai 161 Fontainebleau 161, 163 Versailles 161, 163 PETIT TRIANON, VERSAILLES. Temple of Love 57 SPANISH WROUGHT-IRON SCREENS. Chapel Screen, Seville Cathedral 41 Pulpit, Avila Cathedral 47 Screen, Louvre 47 Screen, Zaporta Chapel, Church of La Seo, Saragossa 45 SPECIMENS OF GOTHIC WOOD CARVING. Gothic Carved Woodwork of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Bavarian National Museum, Munich 111, 113, 115 Gothic Carved Woodwork of Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Germanic Museum, Nuremberg 109 TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS IN THE UNITED STATES. City Hall, New York City 19 Congressional Library, Approach, Washington 11 Madison Square Garden, New York City 13, 15 Madison Square Garden, New York City (Detail) 15 National Capitol, Washington 3, 5 Public Library, Boston, Entrance 7 St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City 17 St. Patrick's Cathedral, Façade, New York City 17 St. Patrick's Cathedral, Interior, New York City 19 Trinity Church, Boston 7 Trinity Church, New Porch, Boston 9 Trinity Church, Tower, Boston 9 TWELFTH CENTURY CAPITALS FROM THE BENEDICTINE MONASTERY, MONREALE, SICILY. Capitals from Monreale 49, 51 TYPES OF ITALIAN GARDEN FOUNTAINS. Fountain by Bernini, Villa Borghes 145 Fountain, Garden of Vatican, Rome 147 Fountain, Villa Andobrandini, Frascati 147 Fountain, Villa Medici, Rome 145 WORK OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. Greenwich Hospital from the River 173 Hampton Court Palace, Fountain Court 179 Kensington Palace, Entrance 173 Monument, The, London 171 St. Bride's Church Steeple: London 175 St. Dunstan's-in-the-East Steeple: London 175 St. Stephen's Walbrook Steeple: London 177 Trinity College Library: Cambridge, England 169 LIST OF SUBJECTS. Bourges: House of Jacques Coeur 103 Campanile, The: Florence, Italy 87 Capitals, Twelfth Century: Benedictine, Monastery, Monreale, Sicily 49 Carved Fireplaces, English 65 Carving, Specimens of Gothic Wood 115 Cathedrals of England, The (See List of Plates) 183 Chairs, English, Chippendale 71 Chambord, Chateau of: France 151 Chateau of Chambord: France (See List of Plates) 151 Chippendale Chairs (See List of Plates) 71 Coeur, Jacques, House of: Bourges, France 103 Competitions, Brochure Series. Competition O (Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States) 3 Competition P (Photographs for Brochure Series) 131, 143 Ducal Palace, The: Venice, Italy (See List of Plates) 135 Duomo and the Campanile, The: Florence, Italy (See List of Plates) 87 English Carved Fireplaces 65 English Cathedrals 183 English Chippendale Chairs 71 England, Guild Halls of London 119 Florence, Italy, The Duomo and the Campanile 87 Fountains, Italian Garden 145, 147 France, The Chateau of Chambord 151 France, House of Jacques Coeur: Bourges 103 France, Petit Trianon: Versailles 55 Gardens, Italian Fountain 145, 147 Gardens, Japanese 23 Gothic Wood Carving, Specimens of 115 Grotesques from Notre Dame, Paris 95 Guild Halls of London, England, The (See List of Plates) 119 Hamlin, Professor A. D. F. (Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States) 5 House of Jacques Coeur: Bourges, France (See List of Plates) 103 Italian Garden Fountains 145, 147 Italy, The Campanile: Florence 87 Italy, The Ducal Palace: Venice 135 Italy, The Duomo and the Campanile: Florence 87 Japanese Gardens (See List of Plates) 23 London, The Guild Halls of 119 Louis XVI. Sconces 161 Monreale, Sicily, Twelfth Century Capitals from the Benedictine Monastery 49 Notre Dame, Paris, Grotesques from 95 Paris: Grotesques from Notre Dame 95 Petit Trianon, The: Versailles (See List of Plates) 35 Sconces, Louis XVI 161 Screens, Spanish Wrought-Iron 39 Sir Christopher Wren, Work of 167 Spanish Wrought-Iron Screens (See List of Plates) 39 Specimens of Gothic Wood Carving 115 Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States, The A discussion by Prof. A. D. F. Hamlin 5 Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States, The (See List of Plates) 3 Twelfth Century Capitals from the Benedictine Monastery, Monreale, Sicily 49 Types of Italian Garden Fountains 145, 147 United States, Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the 3 Venice, Italy, The Ducal Palace 135 Versailles, France: The Petit Trianon 55 Wood Carving, Gothic 115 Work of Sir Christopher Wren (See List of Plates) 167 Wren, Sir Christopher, Work of 167 Wrought-Iron Screens, Spanish 39 [Illustration: PLATE I NATIONAL CAPITOL, WASHINGTON] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. JANUARY No. 1. THE TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS IN THE UNITED STATES. During the Autumn of the past year a voting contest was proposed to the readers of THE BROCHURE SERIES with the object of determining by the consensus of votes, which, in their opinion, were the Ten Most Beautiful Buildings now existing in the United States. The only condition imposed was that no reader should enter more than one list. A lively interest was taken in the contest, and over two hundred votes were received,--the voters being almost entirely either architects or professed students of architecture. The following ten buildings, named in the order of preference, are those which received the greatest number of votes in this contest; and the appended percentages show approximately what proportion of the total number of votes each received:-- I. NATIONAL CAPITOL, WASHINGTON. Hallet, Thornton, Hadfield, Hoban, Latrobe, Bulfinch, Walter and Clark, Architects. About 99%. II. BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOSTON. McKim, Mead & White, Architects. About 97%. III. TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON. Gambrel & Richardson, Architects. About 96%. IV. CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON. Smithmeyer, Peltz and Edward P. Casey, Architects. About 75%. V. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, NEW YORK CITY. McKim, Mead & White, Architects. About 70%. VI. TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY. Richard Upjohn, Architect. About 55%. VII. MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, NEW YORK CITY. McKim, Mead & White, Architects. About 45%. VIII. ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, NEW YORK CITY. James Renwick, Architect. About 35%. IX. "BILTMORE HOUSE," BILTMORE, N.C. R. M. Hunt, Architect. About 29%. X. CITY HALL, NEW YORK CITY. Mangin and Macomb, Architects. About 29%. [Illustration: NATIONAL CAPITOL WASHINGTON] In the article which follows, Prof. A. D. F. Hamlin comments upon the above list, and draws some interesting conclusions from the comparison of it with a similar list, compiled fifteen years ago in the same way by the readers of _The American Architect_. The announcement of the award of the prizes in this Competition will be found on the publishers' page of this issue. [Illustration: PLATE II BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOSTON] "THE TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS." A DISCUSSION OF THE VOTE BY A. D. F. HAMLIN, PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR OF "HAMLIN'S HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE." A final and absolute verdict upon the relative merits of works of art is in most cases an impossibility. Since there is no such thing as an absolute objective standard of comparison for all works of a given class, the personal equation and the time equation must always enter largely into critical estimates by individuals or groups of individuals. Least of all are we likely to pass correct judgments on contemporary works, because we measure them wholly or mainly by the dominant taste or fashion of our time, instead of by that larger experience and more impartial judgment which comes with the lapse of decades and centuries. When, however, a large number of intelligent and presumably competent critics are found in agreement as to the merits or defects of a given work, it is safe to conclude that there is some ground for the verdict; and when the agreement extends to a number of buildings (in the verdict about to be discussed we are dealing with buildings) it is reasonable to draw definite inferences as to the grounds of the agreement, both in relation to the works so judged and in relation to the view-point and taste of those who have pronounced the opinion. [Illustration: NATIONAL CAPITOL WASHINGTON] Of course in such a vote as that by THE BROCHURE readers on the "Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States," the result can only be a composite,--a consensus reached by the fusing together and averaging of a great number of widely diverse estimates. The very terms of the vote will be variously interpreted according as the expression "the most beautiful building" is made to apply to the exterior alone, or to the plan, the decorative detail, the scale, or other elements of architectural design, or to include all; and according to the varying values assigned to dignity, simplicity, richness, grandeur, refinement, and other qualities, by the several voters. But, having made all these allowances, there is much instruction and suggestion in the vote, both as to the tendencies of taste among the constituency of THE BROCHURE SERIES, and as to the progress and tendencies of American architecture, especially in the light of the vote of 1885 in _The American Architect_. [Illustration: PLATE III TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON] As a preface to the comments about to be made on these tendencies, it is in order to present a few statistics with regard to the vote and the buildings voted on. In these I shall call the BROCHURE'S list of the ten buildings receiving the highest number of votes the "First" list; the supplementary list of the ten coming next in popularity, the "Second" list, and that published in _The American Architect_ in 1885, the "1885" list. (The "Second" and the "1885" lists are printed on page 17.) [Illustration: BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, ENTRANCE BOSTON] A comparison of the styles represented in these three lists is interesting, after making all allowances for doubtful classifications of some of the examples. I. (_a_) RENAISSANCE GROUP: "FIRST." "SECOND." "1885." Classic 2 1 1 French 3 2 1 Italian 2 2 0 Spanish 0 1 0 Modern American 0 1 0 (_b_) MEDIÆVAL GROUP: Romanesque 1 2 5 Gothic 2 1 3 -- -- -- 10 10 10 The percentages of the total number of votes won by buildings in the different styles in the "First" list were as follows: Classic 16.9 French 15.6 Italian 12.0 Romanesque 9.6 Gothic 9.0 ---- 63.1 These percentages are only approximate, and the apportionment would vary with a different classification; but they show, in a rough way, that the ten buildings ranking highest received about 63 per cent of all the votes, and that the seven in the Renaissance group obtained 44.5 per cent of all the votes. [Illustration: TRINITY CHURCH BOSTON] Comparing next the classes of buildings represented, we have this result: "FIRST." "SECOND." "1885." II. Government Buildings, 2 3 6 Churches 3 0 2 Libraries 3 0 0 Museums 0 2 0 Club Houses 0 2 0 Hotels 0 1 0 Private Houses 1 1 1 Amusement Buildings 1 0 0 Commercial Buildings 0 1 0 Educational 0 0 1 -- -- -- 10 10 10 [Illustration: PLATE IV CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON] Comparing the geographical distribution, we have: "FIRST." "SECOND." "1885." III. New York City 5 4 3 Washington 2 1 1 Boston 2 0 1 Biltmore, N.C. 1 0 0 Chicago 0 1 0 Albany 0 1 2 St. Augustine 0 1 0 Pittsburgh 0 1 0 Hartford 0 1 1 Cambridge 0 0 1 North Easton 0 0 1 -- -- -- 10 10 10 Of the ten buildings in the "1885" list but three appear in the "First" list, and two in the "Second"; so that only five of the ten buildings adjudged in 1885 to be the most beautiful in the United States are included in the _twenty_ given the leading rank in 1899 by the BROCHURE readers. Of these twenty, six in the "First" list and five in the "Second" have been built since the 1885 vote. Of the remaining four in the "First" list, three, as we have seen, figure in that of "1885"; the fourth--the New York City Hall--was not in 1885 considered worthy of a place among the ten--a significant suggestion as to changing tastes since that date. [Illustration: TRINITY CHURCH, TOWER BOSTON] The first and most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the above statistics is that American architects, so far as they are represented in the BROCHURE vote, have no hide-bound traditions or ingrained prejudices as to style. There is in the list selected by them a preponderance, it is true, of buildings in the various styles of the Renaissance and Classic Revival--seven out of ten. But the third in the list, with 96 per cent of unanimity in its favor, is a Romanesque building, Trinity Church, Boston. Two others, standing sixth and eighth, are Gothic,--Trinity and St. Patrick's Churches in New York. The remaining seven, although they may all be included under a broad extension of the term "Renaissance," exhibit wide divergencies of style. The Capitol at Washington and the Columbia Library represent two different phases of the Classic Revival, nearly a century apart in date; the New York City Hall, a version of the style of Louis XVI. The Boston Public Library was avowedly inspired from the "nèo-Grec" Bibliothèque St. Genéviève of Labrouste, as far as its façades are concerned, and yet differs from that building more than it resembles it; and although, in the foregoing tables, both this and the Biltmore mansion are classified as in the French Renaissance style, they are really much farther apart than the classic Capitol and the Louis Seize City Hall. The Congressional Library follows Italian rather than French precedents, and the Madison Square Garden suggests both Italian and Spanish prototypes. Evidently our architects are not bound by allegiance to any one style or kind of beauty, but are ready to find subjects for admiration in buildings of the most diverse character, and to recognize beauty alike in pointed and round arches, in domes and in spires, in acanthus leaves and crockets, in new buildings and in old. This catholicity of taste is interesting, and on the whole hopeful, for it suggests the ability and readiness to appreciate realities instead of names, style rather than any particular historic dress, essentials rather than externals;--an eclecticism which recognizes beauty, quality, excellence, wherever they can be found, and adopts what is best without regard to names or categories. And if we consider the buildings themselves, instead of the motives of the voters, the same statistics indicate, as we might expect, a like catholicity of taste in the designs of recent American buildings, and--what is more to the point--a conspicuous measure of success in fusing together and adapting to modern American needs the multifarious suggestions of the "historic styles," so that the results are neither copies nor patchwork, but consistent, intelligent and harmonious units. [Illustration: NEW PORCH, TRINITY CHURCH BOSTON] Taking next the second comparative table, we find that in the "First" and "Second" lists taken together, 20 per cent of the names are those of government or administrative buildings; 15 per cent are churches, with the same number of libraries (three of each, all on the "First" list). There are two each of museums, club houses and private residences; and one each of office buildings, hotels, and amusement houses. Here again we encounter the same breadth of judgment as in the first comparison. The BROCHURE readers, and presumably our architects generally, are willing to discover beauty alike in public, private, religious, and commercial architecture. [Illustration: PLATE V COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, NEW YORK CITY] It is a significant fact that churches and libraries constitute 60 per cent of the "First" list, and that there is but one residence, and not a single commercial edifice among the ten buildings it enumerates. Apparently it is religion and education which inspire and call forth the highest results in architecture, rather than the private and commercial luxury of which we hear so much in these days. If to these sources of architectural inspiration we add that of civil government, it appears that we owe 80 per cent of the "First" list to government, religion and education--the three highest activities of the community. This is not merely due to the fact that the architectural requirements of churches and civic buildings are such as favor monumental results; for both in size and cost, and hence in the opportunity for an ample and sumptuous architectural treatment, these are often surpassed by banking and office buildings, private palaces and rich men's clubs. The presence of three truly magnificent public libraries of recent erection in the "First" list seems to me particularly encouraging, as a symptom of the extent to which the wealth of the country is being devoted to the higher interests of the people, and at the same time to the promotion of high art. That this is a correct symptom, is confirmed by such buildings, erected or about to be erected, as the Chicago Library, the magnificent New York Public Library, the new libraries at Milwaukee, Providence, Newark, N.J., Jersey City, and Washington; by the Art Museum at Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, the new wing to the Metropolitan Museum at New York, the Phebe Hearst competition for the University of California, and other like enterprises. The most important architectural enterprises in New York today are the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the vast palace of the Brooklyn Institute, of which a new wing is about to be erected. Evidently our art has not fallen wholly a prey to commercialism and private luxury. The geographical distribution of the buildings chosen is interesting. In 1885 but three out of ten were in New York City, and Albany stood ahead of Boston. In the "First" list New York has one-half of the ten, and in the "First" and "Second" lists, jointly, nine out of twenty buildings. Boston and Washington divide the second place, with two each on the "First" list. In the two lists together there are nine cities and towns represented, of which five are in the northeastern states, with fourteen out of twenty buildings; one in the nearer west (Chicago); and three in the south (if we include Washington among southern cities). Of course the fact that New York, Boston and Washington are old cities, as cities go among us, counts for much in the way of maturity of civilization and accumulation of architectural resources; and it is only natural that the wealthiest city in the New World should possess the greatest number of important buildings. But it is also very possible that the majority of the BROCHURE readers are in the northern and eastern states, and therefore more familiar with eastern and northern than with southern and western buildings. Allowing for this, they may draw their own conclusions from this table. [Illustration: CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, APPROACH WASHINGTON] If now, we turn to inquire what are the qualities which have won for these buildings a place on this list, and to what tendencies, either of progress or retrogression, do the votes point, two facts stand out very clearly. The first is, that each of the ten buildings, whatever its style or purpose, represents a conception clearly thought out, simply and forcibly expressed, and treated with monumental dignity, quite irrespectively of the amount or richness of its decoration. The second is, that there has in recent years been a notable advance in all that concerns the interior decoration of important buildings. In 1877 Trinity Church in Boston stood alone as an example of really high art in interior decoration. The three most recent buildings on the list--all three by the way, public libraries--are conspicuous instances of the sumptuous and dignified treatment of interior design, with the help of all the resources of decorative art; and here again, other buildings now being erected or about to be built confirm this conclusion, that our architects and the public are beginning to appreciate the importance both of the interior design of a building and of the collaboration of all the arts,--as for instance, in the new Appellate Court in New York. [Illustration: PLATE VI TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY] Comparing the list of 1899 with that of 1885, the progress of our national architecture in fourteen years becomes very evident. The United States Capitol and the Trinity Churches in New York and Boston are the only buildings common to both lists. Six of the buildings on the BROCHURE list were, in 1885, either incomplete or not yet begun: these are the Boston, Congressional and Columbia Libraries, the Madison Square Garden, St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Biltmore residence. The Cathedral, however, wanted only its spires; but its appearance on the BROCHURE list is undoubtedly due to the spires more than any other element in its design. In 1885 Mr. H. H. Richardson was the one bright and particular star on the architectural horizon in the United States: one-half of the "1885" list of buildings were his work. Only one of these remains on the new list,--Trinity Church in Boston, doubtless on the whole his greatest work. The style which he made his own, and which was then at the height of popular favor, borne on the wave of admiration for the real strength and originality of his works, has waned, as all fashions must wane which are not the result of a spontaneous movement of taste, but ride into favor on the back of some passing whim or on the merit of the achievements of some one person or coterie. No architectural period can be truly great that depends upon one man or set of men for its great works. It is perhaps not amiss to say a few words regarding buildings of secondary merit and of minor importance in cost and size. These may be as significant criteria of architectural taste and progress as those most conspicuous for grandeur and beauty. It is quite possible for the architectural energy of one place or period to be concentrated on a small number of great works, and for an equal amount of energy and ability in another place or period to be expended on a larger number of less important buildings. The average quality of our architecture, and the quality of our ordinary every-day architecture, are perhaps as important as that of the ten most beautiful buildings; and the fact that the west and south have so small a representation in the BROCHURE lists by no means argues a corresponding deficiency of good architecture. Yet after all, when all is said, the great and noble buildings, the highest and grandest triumphs of architecture are the only ones which profoundly affect the imaginations and kindle the artistic aspirations of men; and when a community becomes so pervaded with the artistic spirit that works of art furnish the readiest, most natural and complete expression of its ideals and enthusiasms, great works will result whenever there are enthusiasms and ideals worthy of monumental expression. From this point of view the Columbian and Omaha Expositions, and the New York Naval Arch of Triumph--which, owing to their transitory and temporary character, no doubt, have found no place on the BROCHURE lists--seem to me in the highest degree significant and encouraging. And the public libraries, St. John's Cathedral and the Phebe Hearst competition are further evidence in the same direction. [Illustration: MADISON SQUARE GARDEN NEW YORK CITY] A word might also be said for certain buildings which found no place on either the "First" or "Second" list, but which competent critics might assign to one or the other list in preference to some that appear on them. There is for instance, Mr. Richardson's Woburn Library, which some consider his most beautiful work next to Trinity Church; the new State Capitols of Minnesota and Rhode Island (the latter not quite finished); the Treasury Building and White House at Washington; the Temple Emmanuel; the Metropolitan Life Building; Metropolitan Club and Cornelius Vanderbilt's residence in New York; the University group at Charlottesville, Va.; the Omaha Exposition and the Dewey Arch. [Illustration: PLATE VII MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, NEW YORK CITY] But the task assigned me was the discussion of the BROCHURE lists, not of other possible lists; and I close with the suggestion that a vote every ten or every five years would afford a most valuable and interesting gauge of the movements of taste and of the progress of architecture in the United States. [Illustration: MADISON SQUARE GARDEN NEW YORK CITY] The following list names, in order of preference, those ten buildings which received the highest number of votes _after_ the first ten named in the list given on page 3. I. CORCORAN ART GALLERY, WASHINGTON, D.C. Ernest Flagg, Architect. II. HOUSE OF W. K. VANDERBILT, NEW YORK CITY. Richard M. Hunt, Architect. III. FINE ARTS BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL. Charles B. Atwood, Architect. IV. NEW YORK STATE CAPITOL, ALBANY, N.Y. H. H. Richardson and others, Architects. V. HOTEL PONCE DE LEON, ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA. Messrs. Carrère and Hastings, Architects. VI. COURT HOUSE AND JAIL, PITTSBURGH, PA. H. H. Richardson, Architect. VII. CENTURY CLUB, NEW YORK CITY. McKim, Mead & White, Architects. VIII. STATE CAPITOL, HARTFORD, CONN. H. H. Richardson, Architect. IX. AMERICAN SURETY BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY. Bruce Price, Architect. X. UNIVERSITY CLUB, NEW YORK CITY. McKim, Mead & White, Architects. * * * * * In 1885, fourteen years ago, the readers of _The American Architect_ (Boston) were invited to name, by a consensus of votes, their choice of the then most beautiful buildings in America. The voting resulted in a list of the following ten buildings:-- I. TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON. Gambrill & Richardson, Architects. II. UNITED STATES CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D.C. Hallet, Thornton, Hadfield, Hoban, Latrobe, Bulfinch, Walter and Clark, Architects. III. HOUSE OF W. K. VANDERBILT, NEW YORK. R. M. Hunt, Architect. IV. TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK. Richard Upjohn, Architect. V. JEFFERSON MARKET COURT-HOUSE, NEW YORK. F. C. Withers, Architect. VI. STATE CAPITOL, HARTFORD, CONN. Richard Upjohn, Architect. VII. CITY HALL, ALBANY, N.Y. H. H. Richardson, Architect. VIII. SEVER HALL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. H. H. Richardson, Architect. IX. STATE CAPITOL, ALBANY, N.Y. H. H. Richardson and others, Architects. X. TOWN HALL, NORTH EASTON, MASS. H. H. Richardson, Architect. * * * * * [Illustration: MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, DETAIL NEW YORK CITY] The CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON is 751 feet in length and 121 to 324 feet wide, consisting of a main edifice of sandstone, painted white, and of two wings of white marble, and covers an area of 3-1/2 acres. The site was selected by a French engineer, Peter Charles L'Enfant in 1791, and the design for the first building--a compromise between the plans of Stephen Hallet and Dr. William Thornton,--was chosen by competition in 1792. In 1795 George Hadfield was placed in charge of the work, and was succeeded in 1798 by James Hoban, neither of whom made important changes in Thornton's designs. In 1814 the building consisted of two small wings connected by a wooden bridge; and in that year the structure was damaged by fire set by the British. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who was appointed in 1803, continued in charge until 1817, when he resigned, turning over his post and plans to Charles Bulfinch of Boston,--the first American-born architect of the Capitol. Bulfinch completed the central structure, and crowned it with the original low dome. In 1828 the old capitol was substantially completed, and the office of architect abolished. In 1843, it being necessary to enlarge the former structure, plans were advertised for, and in 1850 those of T. U. Walter of Philadelphia were accepted. The additions made the old dome look insignificant, and Walter designed the present one, which was completed in 1863. The terraces and the approaches, begun in 1882, are the work of Edward Clark. [Illustration: PLATE VIII ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, NEW YORK CITY] The BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, begun in 1888, was completed in 1895. The building is 225 feet long, 227 feet deep, and 70 feet in height from the sidewalk to the top of the cornice. The material of which the exterior is constructed is grayish-white Milford granite. Although the architects of this building were officially the firm of Messrs. McKim, Mead & White of New York City, the senior member, Mr. McKim, was the actual architect. Charles Follen McKim was born in Pennsylvania in 1847. He studied at the Harvard Scientific School, in a New York architect's office, and in a Parisian _atelier_ connected with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. William Rutherford Mead was born in Brattleboro, Vt., in 1846, and graduated from Amherst College in 1867. For some years he studied in an architect's office in New York, and then went to Paris, studying there and elsewhere in Europe. Stanford White was born in New York City in 1853. He grew up in the office of Gambrill & Richardson, and between 1878 and 1880 studied in Europe. The present firm of McKim, Mead & White was formed in 1880. [Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL NEW YORK CITY] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON, Henry Hobson Richardson, architect, was completed in 1877. It is in the shape of a Latin Cross with a semi-circular apse added to the eastern arm. A central tower, 211 feet high, rises from piers at the crossing of the nave and transepts. The chapel is connected with the main structure by an open cloister. The extreme width of the church is 121 feet; the extreme length, 160. The material employed in the body of the structure is Dedham granite, with brown freestone trimmings, and it is roofed with red tiles. The porch, shown in the small view on page 9, was contemplated in Mr. Richardson's original design, and was added in 1897-8 from his sketches, by his successors, Messrs. Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge of Boston. Henry Hobson Richardson was born in Louisiana in 1838. He was educated at Harvard, and matriculated in 1859, and immediately after his graduation went to Paris to study architecture. A year later he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying in the _atelier_ of André. During the war his father lost his property, and Richardson was forced to support himself by working as a draughtsman in the offices of French architects; and it was only in 1865 that he returned, and chose New York as the place in which to try his fortunes. His first commission, won in competition for the design of a church in Springfield, Mass., came to him only after he had been a year at home, but this brought other work; and by 1866 he was fairly launched in professional life. In 1867 he entered partnership with Charles Gambrill in New York. After the dissolution of this partnership in 1878, he removed to Brookline, Mass., and there he remained until his death in 1886. THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON. In 1873 Congress passed a bill inviting plans in competition for the proposed building, and those of Messrs. John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Peltz, both of Washington, were selected. But between the years 1874, when they were officially recognized as architects of the building, and 1886, when Congress finally appropriated money to begin it, they had to endure great political pressure, and their plans underwent many modifications and improvements. Finally in 1886, after a bitter fight, they were installed as architects of the new building. Before the structure had risen above the foundations, however, a new act of Congress repealed all that had previously been legislated about the building, and put its construction under the sole control of the chief engineer of the army, General Casey. Mr. Smithmeyer was discharged as architect, but his partner, the artistic member of the firm, Mr. Peltz, was retained. In the spring of 1892, when the structure had reached little more than half its intended height, Mr. Peltz's connection with the work ceased; and he was succeeded by Mr. Edward P. Casey of New York, who continued as architect of the building until its completion in February, 1897. The library is 470 feet long and 340 deep, and occupies, exclusive of approaches, three and three-fourths acres. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY was completed in 1898. The architects are Messrs. McKim, Mead & White, who have been referred to above. [Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, FACADE NEW YORK CITY] TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY, was finished in 1848. Richard Upjohn, its architect, born at Shaftsbury, Eng., in 1802, was given a common-school education, and afterwards apprenticed to a builder, and engaged in this occupation until 1829, when he emigrated to America, settling in New Bedford, Mass. Here he pursued his trade until 1833, when he went to Boston, and made some architectural drawings for a city court-house. He thereafter continued the practice of architecture with increasing reputation, until, in 1839, he was called upon to rebuild Trinity Church, New York, which work gained him a national reputation as a church architect. [Illustration: PLATE IX "BILTMORE HOUSE," BILTMORE, N.C.] MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, NEW YORK CITY, McKim, Meade & White, architects, is 465 feet long and 200 feet wide, and its walls are 65 feet high. The roof is nearly flat, but the sky-lines are broken by a colonnade which rises above the roof at the Madison Square Avenue end, and extends along either side for 100 feet, by six open cupolas with semi-spherical domes, which rise above the colonnade, by two towers at the Fifth Avenue corner, and by a great square tower which rises from the Twenty-sixth Street side with its lines unbroken for 249 feet, and then in a series of open cupolas. Along the Madison Avenue end, and extending along either side for a distance of 150 feet is an open arcade, which covers the sidewalk, and the roof of which rests upon pillars of polished granite and piers of brick. The top of the arcade is laid out as a promenade. On the top of the tower is poised a heroic figure of Diana, 332 feet from the sidewalk, designed by St. Gaudens. The materials of the building are buff brick and terra-cotta. It was completed in 1890. [Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, INTERIOR NEW YORK CITY] ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, NEW YORK CITY, was opened in 1879, although the spires were not finished until 1887. Built of white marble, its main dimensions are: length 306 feet, breadth, including chapels 120 feet, length of transepts 140 feet, height of nave 108 feet. The principal front on Fifth Avenue consists of a gable, 156 feet in height, flanked by twin spires, 330 feet high. James Renwick, the architect, was born in New York City in 1818. At the age of sixteen he graduated from Columbia College, and, following an inherited taste, entered the engineering department of the Croton Aqueduct. His training in architecture was entirely self-acquired. He early manifested a fondness for the Gothic style, and as there were then no Gothic buildings of merit in America, his knowledge of it was derived entirely from books. With such scanty preparation he designed Grace Church in New York. Later, Mr. Renwick travelled in Europe, and became still more impressed with the beauty of Gothic architecture. In 1858 the corner-stone of St. Patrick's Cathedral was laid, and it was mainly through this church that his reputation as an architect was established. It was his life work; he regarded it as his favorite child, and never ceased to grieve that his original plan, which contemplated a central lantern and a chevet, and which would have covered the entire block between Fifth and Madison Avenues, had been cut down for reasons of economy. Mr. Renwick died in 1895. "BILTMORE HOUSE," at BILTMORE, N.C., the residence of Mr. George Vanderbilt, was completed in 1897. Its main general dimensions are, 152 by 373 feet. Indiana limestone was used in its construction. Richard M. Hunt, its architect, was born in Brattleboro, Vt., in 1827. He graduated from the Boston High School in 1843, and in the same year, having already chosen his profession, he went to Europe. In 1845 he entered the _atelier_ of Hector Lefuel in Paris, and for nine years pursued his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1854 his _patron_ having been put in charge of the new work on the Louvre, Hunt was appointed inspector, and under Lefuel designed the Pavillion de la Bibliothèque. In 1855 he returned to New York, and began his American career, toward 1870 taking up the class of work by which he is best known. He died at Newport in 1895. [Illustration: CITY HALL NEW YORK CITY] The third and present CITY HALL OF NEW YORK CITY was projected in 1802, when a premium was publicly offered for the best design. The award was given to Messrs. Mangin (a Frenchman) and Macomb,--architects concerning whom very little authentic information is obtainable. It was finished in 1812. The corner-stone of the building was laid by Mayor Edward Livingstone. The building consists of a central structure of two stories and an attic, surmounted by a cupola, and two wings of two stories each. The architects' original design provided a pediment for the base of the cupola, showing the city arms and bas-reliefs. The City Hall, when cross-sectioned, north and south, resembles the Register office in Edinburgh, designed by the Brothers Adam. The front and sides are of white marble, with brown freestone basement. Freestone was used for the rear because the building then stood so far out of town that it was thought not worth while to build it of marble. A broad flight of steps leads from the south to an Ionic colonnade. The cupola is surmounted by a statue of Justice. [Illustration: PLATE X CITY HALL, NEW YORK CITY] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
43517	----	[Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH (SOUTH SIDE). _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] THE CHURCH OF ST. MARTIN CANTERBURY AN ILLUSTRATED ACCOUNT OF ITS HISTORY AND FABRIC BY THE REV. C. F. ROUTLEDGE, M.A., F.S.A. HON. CANON OF CANTERBURY [Illustration: Arms of the See] LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1898 W. H. WHITE AND CO. LTD. RIVERSIDE PRESS, EDINBURGH PREFACE The associations connected with St. Martin's Church are manifold, and of universal interest. During recent explorations so much fresh matter has been brought to light that it has become almost necessary to re-write the structural description of the building, and to re-consider the date of its foundation. We have endeavoured to lay before our readers a plain summary of the discoveries that have been made, and to elucidate them, as far as possible, from the pages of history--for (in the words of a sound antiquary) "It is every day more true that people _want_ history in guide-books. The tourist is a much better informed person than he used to be, and desires to be still more so." Charles F. Routledge. CANTERBURY, _May 1898_. CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--Introduction 3 Early Christianity in Britain 6 CHAPTER II.--History of the Church 14 Roman Canterbury 15 The Saxon Invasion 21 The Mission of St. Augustine 24 Baptism of Ethelbert 31 Bishops of St. Martin's 34 CHAPTER III.-- Description of the Church--Exterior 41 Dedication 41 Walls 45 Buttresses 48 Doorways 51 Description--Interior 62 Font 67 West Wall of Nave 71 Norman Piscina 74 Chancel 76 Chrismatory 83 APPENDIX A: List of Rectors 93 B: Date of Church 94 C: Eastern Apse, etc. 99 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE St. Martin's Church (South Side) _Frontispiece_ East End of Church (Cathedral in Distance) 2 West Front of Church (Exterior) 15 Plan of Roman Canterbury 16 Church in 1840 (Interior) 39 Plan of Church 42 S.-E. Angle of Nave (Foundations) 49 Stukely's Engraving of Church 50 Foundations (under Panel) 51 Mrs Parry's Sketch of S.-W. of Chancel 53 Wall above Adjunct 55 Saxon Doorway (Interior) 57 Saxon Doorway (Exterior) 59 Font 65 West Wall of Nave 69 Roman Window 72 Norman Piscina 75 Chancel (Photo) 77 Sedile 79 Queen Bertha's Tomb 81 Chrismatory (Shut) 83 Chrismatory (Open) 85 St. Martin's (from Old Print) 91 Tracings of Apse--Appendix C 99 [Illustration: EAST END OF CHURCH (SHOWING CATHEDRAL IN THE DISTANCE). _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION St. Martin's Church, both from its history and structure occupies a unique position. It is at once the cradle of purely _English_ Christianity, and also a witness of that earlier Christianity which existed in Britain during the period of the Roman occupation. At the recent commemoration of the thirteen-hundredth anniversary of the "coming of St. Augustine," a solemn pilgrimage was made by the Archbishops and Bishops of the Anglican communion to this venerable church as being the _one_ remaining building that could certainly be associated with St. Augustine's preaching; the _one_ spot that without doubt felt his personal presence, whatever we may think of the more or less strong claims put forth on behalf of Ebb's Fleet, Richborough Castle, the ruins of St. Pancras, or the site of Canterbury Cathedral. In a prayer specially written for that occasion occurs the following passage: "We give Thee, O God, hearty thanks that by the preaching of Thy Blessed Servant Augustine, especially in this Holy House in which we are gathered together in Thy Name, Thou didst bring home the truth of the Gospel to our English forefathers, and didst call them out of darkness into Thy marvellous Light." At the same time, those who were somewhat jealous of the claims of St. Augustine to be considered (as he often is by modern Roman Catholics) "the introducer of Christianity into this island," could point to the fact that, though the _ecclesia vetusta_ of Glastonbury had disappeared, and its later abbey was in ruins, there was _here_ some portion at least of an actual edifice stated by the Venerable Bede to have been "dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, and built of old, while the Romans were still occupying Britain,"--that is, at least 200 years before the advent of the Italian Mission. Beyond this authentic passage, the proofs of its pre-Augustinian origin can be gathered only from the evidence of archaeological research, upon which we shall enter hereafter: and we must to a great extent depend upon this same evidence for its subsequent history after 597 A.D., though it undoubtedly gave the title of "Bishops of St. Martin's" to some _chorepiscopi_ before the Norman Conquest. The interesting detailed references to individual churches, usually gleaned from ancient Archidiaconal Visitation Registers, are wanting in this case, because the church is, and always has been, exempt from the jurisdiction of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, and we can derive little or no information from the archives at Lambeth, since the Archiepiscopal visitations were, as a rule, merely diocesan and not parochial. The church is situated on a gently-sloping hill, about a thousand yards due east of the cathedral. To one looking from the elevated terrace which bounds its churchyard, the panorama is exceedingly picturesque and beautiful. In the distance rises a range of low wooded hills that almost encircle Canterbury, and the conspicuous building of Hales' Place, now the Jesuits' College; while beneath is spread in a hollow the city itself, with its red-tiled roofs interspersed with patches of green, the library and twin towers of St. Augustine's Abbey, and above all the massive cathedral, with "Becket's Crown" in the foreground, and the central "Bell Harry" tower lifting out of the morning's mist its magnificent pinnacles and tracery. The prospect to Dean Stanley's eye was "one of the most inspiriting that could be found in the world," because of its religious associations, and its reminder that great and lasting good could spring from the smallest beginning. But even in its physical aspect, it is one that, in England at least, can seldom be surpassed; and in olden times the view must have been even more grand and extensive than it is at present, as the church stood in almost solitary grandeur, a permanent brick and stone edifice, above the wooden buildings nestling among thickets of ash--fit emblem of the durability of Divine, as compared with the perishable nature of human, institutions. It must even then have been somewhat of a marvel, on account of the rare mode of its construction, for at that early epoch churches were usually built of hewn oak, and the stone church of St. Ninian's at Whithern is specially mentioned by Bede as having been erected "in a manner unusual among the Britons." The hill itself, on its northern and eastern sides, is honey-combed with springs, from which down to a late period the city was supplied with water. We can imagine it studded here and there with Roman villas, of which some remains in the shape of tesselated pavements were discovered two or three centuries ago--and crowned possibly by a small Roman encampment; while the church, situated only a few yards off the road to Richborough, would frequently have been seen and admired by soldiers on their march from the sea coast to the great fortress of London, or to the southern stations at Lympne and Dover. Imagination would picture to itself the reverence felt for so sacred and venerable a spot, yet the fact remains, that up to a recent date the present church was regarded simply as a memorial of the past, a monument erected on the site of the ancient edifice, and reproducing some of its characteristic materials. Mr Matthew W. Bloxam, for instance, in his preliminary observations to the "Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture," after giving a sketch of its history and ancient fame, declares that it was _rebuilt_ in the twelfth or thirteenth century, though to all appearance with the materials of the original church. Even Dean Stanley, who cherished for it a fond and enthusiastic love, assures us that, old as the present church is, "it is of far later date than Bertha's Chapel"; while so close an observer of archaeological facts as the late Mr Thomas Wright sweeps away all question as to its traditional continuity by stating boldly that "not a trace of Christianity is found among the innumerable religious and sepulchral monuments of the Roman period in Britain!" It has been pertinently observed, that "these are conclusions too hastily arrived at; and antiquaries should ever remember that their facts of to-day may receive fresh additions, illustrations, and corrections from the discoveries of to-morrow,"--for since 1880 a series of explorations arried out both above and below ground, and a minute investigation into the character of the existing masonry, have made it more than probable that parts of the original structure mentioned by Bede are still standing, and that the present walls were not only consecrated by the preaching, and actually touched by the hand, of St. Augustine, but may be traced back to a considerably earlier period. The church has survived its period of apparent disuse after the Roman departure from Britain. It escaped the destructiveness of the Jutes, and the devastation inflicted on Canterbury by the Danish invaders, and has been preserved to us (as we hope to show hereafter) a venerable and genuine relic of Romano-British Christianity. It suffered, indeed, after the Norman Conquest, both from centuries of neglect and also from so-called restoration--becoming at one time what Mr Ruskin would call "an interesting ruin," at another time being plastered and modernised till its ancient features were almost obliterated; but even when enemies were attacking religion from without, and faith grew cold within, the worship of Almighty God was carried on continuously under the shadow of its sacred walls, and on its altar for more than thirteen centuries has been offered the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. History is silent as to its builder--silent as to the exact date of its foundation. In the simple words of Fuller, "The Light of the Word shone here, but we know not who kindled it." The mere fact of the existence of such a church involves of necessity the further question as to its immediate origin, whether it be attributed to Roman Christians, or to British converts working under the influence, if not the direct superintendence, of their conquerors. And in discussing this, we must perforce touch lightly the fringe of that well-worn, yet ever-fascinating, inquiry respecting the "earliest introduction of Christianity into Britain"--difficult as it is in ancient traditions and allusions to dissociate fact from fiction, genuine documents from forgeries, history from legend, so eager were the so-called writers of ecclesiastical history to advance their theories, even at the expense of truth. We may indeed derive some assistance from the fact which we learn from secular historians, that in Apostolic times there was frequent communication between Rome and Britain. After the first conquest of Britain, Roman governors were sent in almost uninterrupted succession, and with them would come, of course, legions and cohorts, perhaps even some of the Prætorian soldiers in whose company the apostle St. Paul lived for a time during the reign of Nero. British chieftains were taken prisoners to Rome, and their sons left there as hostages. Some few Romans, too, such as Seneca, the brother of Gallio, held large possessions in the island. People and places connected with Britain are mentioned by the Roman poets Martial and Juvenal, and by the historian Tacitus. With such constant intercourse as there must have been, stories at least and reports of Christianity would have been brought over to the island as early as the first century, and there were probably individual Christians either among the numerous soldiers quartered here, or among returned captives. We may be doubtful whether at so early an epoch, save perhaps in a few exceptional cases, they formed themselves into regular societies or congregations, and it is not likely that they erected for themselves permanent places of worship. No such antiquity as this can be claimed even for the remains of the Roman church found amid the ruins of Silchester; and church building, as it is generally understood, did not begin at Rome before the fourth century, and it would have taken a few years to spread thence to Gaul, and from Gaul to Britain. That Christianity did exist in Britain from early times, in a more or less settled form, is no longer a matter of dispute. In the words of Gildas, "Christ, the true Son, offered His rays (_i.e._ His precepts) to this island, benumbed with icy coldness, and lying far distant from the visible sun. I do not mean from the sun of the temporal firmament, but from the Sun of the highest arch of heaven, existing before all time." Relative to this fact there are a few statements of ancient writers given at dates which are precisely known, during the third century and subsequently: and these statements are familiar to all students, so that they need not be recapitulated at any length. Tertullian (in 208), Origen (in 239), Eusebius (about 320), allude in unmistakable terms to the existence of British Christianity, however rhetorical the passages may appear. There is, too, the account of the martyrdom of _St. Alban_, recorded at length in the pages of Bede, which cannot be treated as an idle legend. It took place at Verulam during the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian, somewhere about 303. Although the record does not rest on contemporary evidence, the story was fully believed at Verulam itself as far back as 429 A.D. (_i.e._ within a hundred and twenty-six years of the traditional date) and is accepted by Constantius in the fifth, as well as by Gildas and Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth, century--while the difficulty of believing in the possibility of a persecution in Britain, which was then under the kindly and tolerant rule of Constantius, seems to us purely imaginary. It is hardly probable that Constantius would have been able to restrain the persecuting zeal of subordinates, in face of the superior authority of Maximian, who is said by Gibbon to have "entertained the most implacable aversion to the name and religion of the Christians." Dean Milman sees no reason for calling in question the historic reality of the event, and suggests that the probable fact of St. Alban being a Roman soldier may have been an additional reason for his not having received the "doubtful protection" of Constantius. But after this period we come to even surer ground--and from the beginning of the fourth century we find a Christian church fully organised in Britain. At the Council of Arles (in 314) three British bishops were present, whose very names and dioceses are recorded--viz. Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius of Caerleon-on-Usk or Lincoln. British bishops took part in the Councils of Sardica (347) and Ariminium (359), and probably also in the great Council of Nicæan (325). We have also testimony to a regular organisation in the pages of St. Chrysostom, Jerome, Theodoret, etc., ranging from the end of the fourth to the beginning of the fifth century. The conversion of the Southern Picts by Ninian, Bishop of Whithern--the visits of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, to Verulam and elsewhere--the missions of Palladius and Patrick to Ireland--the pilgrimages of British Christians to the Holy Land--and even the fact of the Pelagian heresy being propagated by a Briton--all equally bear witness to the prevalence of Christianity in these early centuries, so that Gildas may not be drawing entirely on his imagination when he describes the Church as "spread over the nation, organised, endowed, having sacred edifices and altars, the three orders of the ministry and monastic institutions, embracing the people of all ranks and classes, and having its own version of the Bible, and its own ritual." Now, in view of these facts, many writers have not unnaturally endeavoured to trace the introduction of Christianity to some great man, or to some special effort. It seemed so impossible that a complete organisation should have sprung up without a definite founder--and claims have been made on behalf of St. Peter, St. John, Simon Zelotes, and Aristobulus, though without even a shadow of probability to recommend them. Something, indeed, may be urged in favour of the pious belief that St. Paul made his way to this island between his first and second imprisonment. St. Clement of Rome says that he preached "to the extreme boundary of the West"; St. Chrysostom, that from Illyricum "he went to the very ends of the earth"; and Theodoret, that the Apostles, including St. Paul, "brought to all men the laws of the Gospel, and persuaded not only the Romans ... but also the Britons, to receive the laws of the Crucified," while the theory has received the support of Soames, Bishop Burgess, Collier, and other ecclesiastical writers--even Bishop Lightfoot thinking it "not improbable that the western journey of St. Paul included a visit to Gaul," from which an extension of his journey to Britain would not of course be impossible. It is true, too, that (as with the closing years of St. Peter) there is an interval of time after St. Paul's first imprisonment (variously estimated as from four to eight years) which cannot be accounted for; and that the mere fact of silence as to St. Paul having preached in this island need not be unduly pressed, because Britain was at that time an obscure and unimportant province at the extremity of the Roman empire. But the critical historian cannot accept what is, after all, a mere conjecture, unsupported by long tradition or any positive evidence--any more than he can lay stress upon what is only a curious coincidence, between the mention by Martial of Claudia, a British lady in Rome newly married to Pudens--and the salutation of "Claudia and Pudens" in St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy, written from Rome. The theory as to this identification, is based on a string of hypotheses, called by Dean Farrar "an elaborate rope of sand." Similar remarks would also apply to the legend that the father of Caractacus, King of the Silures, called Bran the Blessed, was converted to Christianity when captive at Rome (A.D. 51-58) and introduced the Gospel into his native country on his return, though there is a tradition to that effect incorporated into the Welsh Triads, which are probably none of them earlier than the fourteenth century. Tacitus (Ann. xii. 35) only mention the "wife, daughter and brothers" of Caractacus as having surrendered with him, and he would scarcely have omitted the "father," if he had shared their captivity. There is, indeed, one story which we are very loath to surrender--viz. the story that St. Joseph of Arimathea was sent, with twelve companions, to Britain by the Apostle St. Philip (about 63 A.D.) settled in the Isle of Avalon or Glastonbury, and founded there a monastery, striking his staff into the earth, and making it burst, like Aaron's rod, into leaf, and bloom with the blossom of the Holy Thorn. This legend, indeed, is not actually recorded in writing before William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century, but it may have rested on earlier local tradition. We know that Glastonbury was a Christian sanctuary before the Saxons conquered the district, and Bishop Browne (of Bristol) reminds us that Domesday Book speaks of the "twelve _hides_ (the portions of land said to have been granted to St. Joseph's companions) which never have been taxed," and that at the Council of Basle in 1431 the English Church claimed and received precedence as founded by St. Joseph of Arimathea in Apostolic times. The tradition, too, that the first British Christians erected at Glastonbury a church made of twigs or wattlework (called afterwards the _Vetusta Ecclesia_, and only destroyed by fire in 1184) has been illustrated, if not confirmed, by recent discoveries at Glastonbury (among the ruins of British houses burned with fire) of baked clay showing the impress of wattlework. There is no known fact connected with the life of St. Joseph of Arimathea that would negative the conclusion that he might have been sent to Britain as a missionary. Some difficulties would be solved if we could believe the tale about Lucius, a British King, having requested Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome from 171 to 185, to send someone to teach his people Christianity. This legend is recorded by Bede, partly confirmed by Nennius, and accepted by William of Malmesbury. And the name of Lucius has been variously associated with Winchester, Gloucester, Llandaff, St. Peter's Cornhill, St. Martin's Church, St. Mary's Church in Dover Castle, and even the church on the site of Canterbury Cathedral. The story probably owed its origin to a note in _Catalogus Pontificum Romanorum_, but it does not occur in the earlier catalogue written about 353, and was added to it nearly two hundred years later, with the object apparently of connecting the primitive growth of Christianity in Britain with the See of Rome. Though this ancient story cannot be considered as historical, it is not altogether impossible that it had some foundation in an application from a British prince to receive instruction in Christianity about the end of the second century: and this would give point to the statement of Tertullian (in 208) that "the kingdom and name of Christ were venerated in districts of Britain not yet reached by the Romans." There is much force in the conclusion arrived at by Bishop Browne, that, "with Gaul so close at hand, its people so near of kin, its government so identical with theirs, the Britons would learn Christianity from, and through, Gaul," to whose church ours should occupy the position of a younger sister. At the same time, this fact must be considered--viz. that the earliest bishops mentioned as having attended the Council of Aries are anterior in point of time to the dated bishops in a great majority of the dioceses of Gaul adjacent to this island, so that we should not too readily abandon the possible belief that there was an independent church in Britain, though we know not _when_ or _by whom_ it was founded. It only remains in this chapter to mention a few of the traces of British Christianity as supplied by monumental or other evidence well attested. We may believe, with Bede, that over St. Alban's tomb at Verulam, "when the peace of the Christian times returned, a church was built of wonderful workmanship, and worthy of that martyr"; and three churches are spoken of at Caerleon, two of which were dedicated to Julius and Aaron, said to have been martyred in the Diocletian persecution; another at Bangor Iscoed, near Chester; besides one at Candida Casa or Whithern, and the Vetusta Ecclesia at Glastonbury, our own church of St. Martin, and the foundations of that lately discovered in Roman Silchester. This is a fair number, even if we pass over for the time any possible claims to Roman origin on the part of Brixworth, Lyminge, Reculver, and St. Mary's Church in Dover Castle, all of which are ascribed to the Saxon period by Mr J. T. Micklethwaite in his interesting paper read at Canterbury in 1896 before the meeting of the Royal Archæological Institute--though we need not allow that his reasoning is in all cases indisputable. We possess, too, some sepulchral monuments and inscriptions (not at present very extensive, but probably greatly to be multiplied as fresh excavations and explorations are made) at St. Mary le Wigfred, Lincoln, Caerleon, and Barming, and the _Chi-Rho_ monogram (which was first introduced as a Christian symbol by the Emperor Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century) on various rings, stones, and tesselated pavements, also crosses on pavements at Harpole and Harkstow, and various Christian formulas such as "Vivas in Deo," "In pace," etc. The dogmatism and incredulity of antiquaries may well be illustrated in the case of Mr T. Wright ("The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon"). He disbelieves in all traces of Christianity said to be found among monuments of the Roman period; and his scepticism is thorough and comprehensive--more extreme in our opinion than the credulity which he denounces. He allows, indeed, the possibility of there having been some individuals among recruits and merchants and settlers who had embraced the truths of the Gospel, but with a qualification. He thinks the early allusions made by Tertullian, Origen, Jerome, and others are "little better than flourishes of rhetoric." The list of British bishops at the Council of Aries seems to him "extremely suspicious, much like the invention of a later period." He disbelieves the whole account of the Diocletian persecution having extended to Britain, even partially or locally. He doubts the authenticity of the work attributed to Gildas, though his objections have been met and set at rest, for most people, by such competent authorities as Dr Guest and others. But, as an instance of what I cannot but designate as far-fetched scepticism, we may note his explanation of the Christian monogram found on the pavement of a Roman villa at Frampton. He does not question its genuineness, but explains it by surmising that the beautiful villa had probably belonged to some wealthy proprietor, who possessed a taste for literature and philosophy, and with a tolerant spirit, which led him to surround himself with the memorials of all systems, had adopted, among the rest, that which he might learn from some of the imperial coins to be the emblem of Christ--Jesus Christ standing, in his eyes, on the same footing as Pythagoras or Socrates. Surely we have here a warning against the dogmatism which is often indulged in by archaeological experts, and it may be extended from monuments and remains to legends and traditions, which are often of great weight, even when they cannot be historically proved. It is not unnatural that many people should have become impatient and wearied of such purely negative criticism. CHAPTER II HISTORY OF THE CHURCH Before coming to the more immediate history of St. Martin's Church, we must say a few words about the Roman occupation of Canterbury, and the events preceding the landing of St. Augustine. The city is mentioned in the second "iter" of Antonine's Itinerary, under its ancient name of Durovernum or Duroverno, a word supposed to be compounded of _dour_, "water," and _vern_, which has been variously interpreted to mean "temple," "marshes," or "alders." Its position is described as fifty-two miles distant from London, fourteen from Dover, sixteen from Lympne, and twelve from Richborough; and the road from London to each of these last-named places divided itself at this point into three, crossing the ford of the River Stour, so that it would be a natural station for troops on the march. The Egyptian geographer, Ptolemy, apparently writing about the middle of the second century, gives Dur[)e]num as one of the three cities of the Cantii; while in the fragmentary map known as the _Tabula Peutingerii_ (called so from Conrad Peutinger, in whose library it was found, and supposed to have been compiled about the time of the Emperor Theodosius the younger) it is put down as "Buroaverus," evidently a corruption of copyists, with the conventional mark usually attached to a city or fortress of considerable size. Horsley, in his _Britannia Romana_, suggests that Canterbury was the fortress taken by the seventh legion after Julius Cæsar's second landing; but this is purely conjectural, and founded on the mistaken belief that Cæsar landed at Richborough. Even though the fact is not directly mentioned in the "Notitia Imperii" (enumerating the garrisons of the Empire), it is far from impossible that at some period or other during the first four centuries there were some Roman soldiers quartered for a considerable time at Canterbury. If not wholly or partially surrounded by walls (which is more than probable), the city was at any rate defended by earthworks, and we have evidences of a fortified position held by the Romans immediately above the Whitehall marshes, north-west of the city; and of a stronghold or fort of masonry on the so-called Scotland Hills overlooking the Reed Pond. [Illustration: WEST FRONT OF ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH. (From an Old Print.)] Whether much stress be laid on this or not, one fact is absolutely certain, that the extensive Roman foundations discovered by Mr Pilbrow while constructing the deep-drainage system of the city in 1868, the number of Roman tesselated pavements, coins, and other relics found at various periods, and the traces of Roman cemeteries, abundantly prove that Durovernum developed at length into a large and populous place. Among various discoveries may be enumerated Samian ware, coffins, conduit pipes, rings, bottles, urns, Upchurch pottery, spoons, arrowheads, and skeletons, as well as indications of a large iron foundry; and a long list of gold ornaments includes portions of châtelaines, fibulæ, studs, purses, combs; and (what is especially germane to this history) a purple enamelled Roman brooch of circular shape, and a looped Roman intaglio, found near St. Martin's Church. All these appear to show that the Roman occupation of Canterbury was at once complete and continuous. Of Roman secular buildings above ground there are indeed no remains, and the ancient city must be traced some eight feet below the present level. But in St. Margaret's and in Sun Street there are undoubted evidences of Roman walls. It is not impossible that, when first occupied, the town of Durovernum was very small, consisting of a citadel surrounded by earth mounds, and that it gradually extended itself afterwards beyond its original limits. The elegance of some of the enamelled brooches and rings, together with other discoveries, point to a considerable degree of luxury and civilisation. One writer fancied that he detected the remains of raised seats for spectators at a circus or amphitheatre in the so-called Martyr's Field, near the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Station. The exact dimensions and extent of the city are open to some doubt. Mr T. Godfrey Faussett fixed the site of the four gates as follows:--(1) _Worth Gate_, at the end of Castle Street; (2) _Riding Gate_, on the old road to Dover; (3) _North Gate_, near the present south-west tower of the Cathedral; and (4) a gate _at the Ford_, in Beer Cart Lane. Tracing the walls that lie between them, he concluded that the shape of the Roman town was an irregular oval, different from the usual square or rectangle, but accounted for by the low swampy ground that surrounded it, and not unlike the shape of Verulam and Anderida. The city's length, according to his plan, must have been nearly exactly double its breadth--namely 800 yards by 400. [Illustration: FROM A PLAN DRAWN BY T. GODFREY FAUSSETT.] For actual existing buildings that may possibly have been connected with the Roman occupation, we must have recourse to the _churches_, which supply us with traces of early Christianity more rich and numerous than that of any other town in England. These are to be found in St. Martin's, St. Pancras, and a church on the site of the present Cathedral. Detailed investigation of them would bring us to some controversial points, for the discussion of which one must be thoroughly conversant with all the recent discoveries and explorations that have been made. But we may, at any rate, state the _documentary_ evidence. With regard to _St. Martin's_ Church, we have already quoted the statement made by the Venerable Bede. The same historian also informs us that Augustine, "when the Episcopal See was granted to him in the royal city, recovered therein, supported by the king's assistance, a church which, he was informed, had been built by the ancient work of Roman believers; and consecrated it in the name of our Holy Saviour, God and Lord, Jesus Christ." He does not mention _St. Pancras_, but we are indebted for an account of it (evidently based on older traditions) to Thorn, a Benedictine monk of St. Augustine's, in the fourteenth century. "There was not far from the city towards the east, as it were midway between the Church of St. Martin and the walls of the city, a temple or idol-house, where King Ethelbert, according to the rites of his tribe, was wont to pray, and with his nobles to sacrifice to his demons, and not to God--which temple Augustine purged from the pollutions and filth of the Gentiles; and having broken the image which was in it, changed it into a church, and dedicated it in the name of the martyr St. Pancras; and this was the first church dedicated by St. Augustine." St. Pancras, a Roman boy of noble family, was martyred under Diocletian at the age of fourteen, and was regarded as the patron saint of children. Dean Stanley reminds us that the monastery of St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill, from which St. Augustine came, was built on the very property which had belonged to the family of St. Pancras, so that the name would have been quite familiar to the Roman missionary. Now, these are the written traditions with regard to the early churches of Canterbury. How far, then, are they confirmed by actual discoveries? A great deal of light has been thrown upon the point within the last few years. In the course of explorations conducted in the Cathedral crypt by Canon Scott Robertson, Dr Sheppard, and myself, there was found at the base of the western wall some masonry of Kentish ragstone covered by a smooth facing of hard plaster, manifestly older than the columns of Prior Ernulf's vaulting shafts, and than Lanfranc's masonry in the upper portion of the wall. We may, therefore, consider it as more than probable that a portion of this wall (which was laid bare to the length of twenty-seven feet) formed part of the original building granted to St. Augustine by King Ethelbert. The ruins of St. Pancras have also been carefully and minutely investigated, and traces have been found there of both an undoubtedly Roman, and a somewhat later, building. Though Mr J. T. Micklethwaite has satisfied himself that the present foundations can only be assigned to an Early Saxon period, asserting, indeed, that "we have evidence that it was used by St. Augustine himself," his arguments can not yet be accepted as conclusive, and much may be said on the other side. We may observe an apparent difference in the shapes of these three churches. Of _St. Martin's_ we shall speak at length hereafter, but we may note that, besides the different width of the nave and chancel, there is no sign of an apse at the west end, while indications of an eastern apse are more or less conjectural. In the plan of the original _Cathedral_, conjecturally drawn by Professor Willis from Edmer's description, and which he supposes was the old Christian church preserved by St. Augustine, the building was a plain parallelogram, with apses at both the east and west ends. The choir was extended into the nave, enclosed by a high breast-wall, and about the middle of the church (on the north and south) were two towers, the tower on the south side containing an altar, and also serving as a porch of entrance. This church was built, according to Edmer, "Romanorum opere," and in imitation of the Church of St. Peter, chief of the apostles, meaning the Vatican Basilica. In _St. Pancras_ there is a tower, or square porch, at the west end, and two transepts of the same size branching off from the centre of the nave, while the foundations of the chancel walls start farther in than those of the nave wall; and, at the distance of twelve or thirteen feet from the point of junction, can be detected the commencement of an apse. In this church we have discovered no doorways, except the one at the west end through the tower, and the possible indications of one leading into the southern transept, where we may yet see remains of an interesting altar (size, 4 ft. 4 by 2 ft. 2), which, if not the identical one that St. Augustine erected on the site occupied by the idol of Ethelbert, is at any rate a very ancient memorial of it. It is worthy of remark that these three churches are situated in almost a direct line from east to west, and were all outside the Roman walls, and apart from the Roman cemeteries. The orientation of all of them is nearly perfect. * * * * * In treating of the time between the departure of the Romans in 410 and the mission of St. Augustine in 597, we must remember that _history_ is almost silent; only a meagre outline of facts is given us, and these often of a very contradictory character. We must endeavour, however, to give a brief sketch of this intervening period as far as it concerns the south-eastern portion of our island, and of necessity, therefore, includes the fortunes of Canterbury. To account for the comparatively easy conquest of Britain in the middle of the fifth century, we are bidden to remember that the Roman rule, which had at first been of a civilising character, and had fostered commerce and the various arts, had in its latter period degenerated into corruption. Town and country alike were crushed by heavy taxation, aggravated by the arbitrary and ruinous oppression of the tax-gatherers. The population, too, had gradually declined as the estates of landed proprietors grew larger. Moreover, the Roman government had disarmed and enervated the people, and, by crushing all local independence, had crushed all local vigour, so that men forgot how to fight for their country, and constant foreign invasions found them without hope or energy for resistance. Bishop Stubbs (in his "Constitutional History") remarks on the great contrast between the effects of the Roman occupation in Gaul and Britain. Gaul had so assimilated the cultivation of its masters, that it became more Roman than Italy itself, possessing more flourishing cities and a more active and enlightened church, as well as a Latin language and literature; while Britain, though equally under Roman dominion, had never become Roman. When the legions were removed, any union that may have existed between the two populations absolutely ceased. The Britons forgot the Latin tongue; they had become unaccustomed to the arts of war, and had never learnt the arts of peace, while their clergy lost all sympathy with the growth of religious thought. They could not utilise the public works, or defend the cities of their masters, so that the country became easy to be conquered just in proportion as it was Romanised. After a continuance of internal dissensions, described by Gildas in high-flown and rhetorical language, the native chiefs were once more troubled by piratical attacks, and by their Irish enemies. It was impossible to resist this combination by the forces of the province itself, and so, imitating that fatal policy of matching barbarian against barbarian, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire, the Britons summoned to their aid a band of English or Jutish warriors, to whom they promised food, clothing, pay, and grants of land. And this application for help was not unnatural, as there was probably in many of the towns a leaven of Teutonic settlers, especially along the "Saxon shore," who had maintained a steady intercourse with their kinsmen that remained behind, and some of whom may have been German war-veterans, pensioned off by successive Roman emperors. The statement by Mr Green that the "History of England begins in 449 with the landing of Hengist and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet" is principally applicable to the _Kingdom of Kent_, for the Jutes had been preceded by Angles in the north, who seem to have been for some time in more or less undisputed possession of the country between the mouth of the Humber and the wall of Antoninus; and the eastern shores of the island were to a great extent colonised by kindred tribes. The leaders in this expedition naturally sent for reinforcements after their first successes, and it is probable that their followers were at the beginning contented with a settlement in the Isle of Thanet, where they would be secure against any possible treachery from the Britons, and would be near the sea, whence their compatriots would bring them aid if necessary--yet they gradually advanced, and their subsequent exploits culminated in the victory of Aylesford, six years after their landing, and the alleged death of the warrior Horsa. This victory, it is said, was followed in Kent by a dreadful and unsparing massacre. The Jutes, merciless by habit, were provoked by the sullen and treacherous attitude of their victims, and destroyed all the towns which they captured. Some of the wealthier landowners of Kent fled in panic over the sea, but many of the poorer folk took refuge in forests, or escaped to Wales and Cornwall. Famine and pestilence devoured some, others were ruthlessly slaughtered. There was no means of escape, even by seeking shelter within the walls of their churches, since the rage of the English burnt fiercest against the clergy. The priests were slain at the altar, the churches burnt, and the peasants rushed from the flames, only to be cut down by the sword. The above is the generally accepted theory, but probably in many respects it is an exaggerated account, such as is common in the traditions of conquered nations, and should be accepted with very great hesitation. A few years after the victory of Aylesford, Richborough, Lympne, and Dover fell permanently into the hands of the invaders. The Jutes, with whom Kent is more immediately concerned, were the northernmost of the three tribes of the Germanic family. They lived in the marshy forests and along the shores of the extreme peninsula of Denmark, which retains the name of Jutland to the present day. We know little of their early history, but it is probable that the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, although speaking the same language, worshipping the same gods, and using the same laws, had no national or political unity--and the separate expeditions, resulting in the final conquest of Britain, were unconnected with one another, though almost continuous in point of time. It is certain that the invaders to a large extent declined to amalgamate with the people whom they had conquered; nor would they consent to tolerate their existence side by side. A few may have lingered on in servitude round the homesteads of their conquerors, but a large portion of the survivors (as we have said) took refuge in Western Britain. As to their _religion_, we know that England for nearly a century and a half was almost entirely a heathen country, represented on a map as a black patch between the Christians of Gaul and the Christian Celts of our island. While the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Franks in other parts of the Roman empire soon became Christians, the English went on worshipping their false gods, such as Woden, Thor, and others, who gave their names to river, homestead, and boundary alike, and even to the days of the week. And yet their mythology was not so degraded but that it presented in fragments the outlines of Christianity. This was recognised afterwards by Pope Gregory's wise counsel to Augustine not to interfere needlessly with the religious faith of his pagan converts, but allow them to worship the old objects under new names; not to destroy the old temples, but to consecrate them as Christian churches, the reason being that "for hard and rough minds it is impossible to cut away abruptly all old customs, because he who wishes to reach the highest place must ascend by steps and not by jumps." Kemble (in his "Saxons in England") gives an insight into the character of their religion, and accounts for the ultimately rapid spread of Christianity among them by this process of adaptation, and also because the moral demands of the new faith did not seem to the Saxons more onerous than those to which they were previously accustomed. Bede not unnaturally reproaches the Britons for refusing or failing to convert their enemies to the true faith, whereas it had been the habit elsewhere for the Christian priesthood to act as mediators between barbarian invaders and the conquered. _Canterbury_ seems to have been at once abandoned by the vanquished, because it would have been utterly untenable owing to its position on the main road between the sea-fortresses of Kent and the rest of the kingdom; and it was probably at first unoccupied by the Jutes, so that it remained for many long years uninhabited and desolate. We know that the very name of Durovernum had become forgotten, while the fortresses of the coast still retained their former names without any radical change. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that, while numerous Saxon cemeteries have been found in East Kent--such as at Ash, Kingston, Sarre, etc.--none whatever have been discovered in the district immediately round Canterbury, though the soil has been thoroughly and completely turned over for the purposes of road and drain making, as well as for pits of gravel, sand, and chalk. Moreover, not a single street of our city is on the site of a Roman street, with the partial exception of Watling Street and Beer Cart Lane. Probably in the early days of the Jutish conquerors Richborough would have been their headquarters, as being conveniently near the coast; and it was not till they had pretty well settled themselves in the country that they fixed on a new capital, to which they gave the name of _Cantwarabyrig_, "the city of the men of Kent." The curtain of Christian history is not again lifted over England till the year 597, when, according to the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," "Gregory the Pope sent into Britain very many monks, who gospelled God's Word to the English folk." And, connected closely as the mission was with St. Martin's Church, we must enter into it with some detail, though it is an oft-told story, and is familiar even to those who have never visited Canterbury, and know little else of ecclesiastical history. Gregory had been appointed at an early age "Praetor of the City" by the Emperor Justin II., and had afterwards been sent by Benedict I. and Pelagius II. to Constantinople, where he resided for many years as the representative of the Bishop of Rome. He returned to Rome in 585, and it was near this date that the event occurred which we are now about to narrate. He was at that time about forty-five years old, a monk in the great monastery of St. Andrew on the Coelian Hill, which he had himself founded; and we may believe that he was remarkable, then as afterwards, for his comprehensive policy, his grasp of great issues, and his minute and careful attention to details in secular as well as religious matters. The vast slave trade prevalent in Europe was to him a special cause of sorrow; and for the purpose of trying to check the evil, to redeem the captives, or to mitigate their sufferings, he was wont to resort to the market-place in Rome whenever a new cargo of slaves arrived from distant countries. One day, on his visit to the Forum of Trajan, he observed some (traditionally, _three_) boys with fair complexions, comely faces, and bright flowing hair, exposed for sale. When he saw them, he asked from what region or country they had been brought, and on being told "from the island of Britain, whose inhabitants were of similar appearance," inquired whether these islanders were Christians, or still involved in pagan errors. The answer was, "They are pagans." Then he heaved deep sighs from the bottom of his heart and said: "Alas! that men of such bright countenance should be subject to the author of darkness, and that such grace of outward form should hide minds void of grace within." Being told further, in answer to his question, that they were called _Angles_, "Rightly so called," said he, "for they have the faces of _Angels_, and are meet to be fellow-heirs with the angels in heaven. But what is the name of the province from which they were brought?" "_Deira_" (the land between the Tees and the Humber), said the merchant. "Right again," was the reply, "from wrath (_de ira_) shall they be rescued, and called to the mercy of Christ." Lastly, on hearing that the king of that province was named Ælla, he exclaimed: "Alleluia! the praise of God the Creator shall be sung in those parts." Gregory went from the Forum to the Pope (probably Pelagius), and asked him to send to the English nation some minister of the word, by whom the island might be converted to Christ, saying that he himself was prepared to undertake this work with the assistance of the Lord. But though the Pope gave his consent, so great was the love of the Roman people for him, that he was obliged to start from the monastery in the strictest secrecy, accompanied by a few of his comrades. When his departure became known, the people were much excited, and, dividing themselves into three companies, assailed the Pope as he went to church, crying with a _terrible voice_ "What hast thou done? Thou hast offended St. Peter, thou hast destroyed Rome, since thou hast sent Gregory away." The Pope, greatly alarmed, despatched messengers with all possible speed to recall Gregory to Rome. He had already advanced three days along the great northern road when the messengers arrived, and led him back to the city. Gregory afterwards become abbot of the monastery, and, much against his will, was elected Pope on the death of Pelagius, and consecrated on September 3, 590. But he never forgot his project for the conversion of England, and in 595 wrote to Candidus, a priest in Gaul, directing him to use part of the Papal patrimony to purchase English youths of the age of seventeen or eighteen years, to be educated in monasteries, no doubt with the intention of sending them afterwards as missionaries to their countrymen. It was not, however, till the following year that he was able to fulfil the desire of his heart, when he selected as the head of a mission to England Augustine, Prior of St. Andrew's Monastery, and charged him with letters to Vigilius, Bishop of Arles, to the Kings Theodoric and Theodebert, and to their grandmother, Queen Brunehaut or Brunichild. In the course of their journey, however, this missionary band was so terrified by the rumours they heard that they became faint-hearted on the road, and despatched Augustine to Rome to beg that they might be recalled. But Gregory would have no withdrawal, and sent him back again with letters of encouragement to his colleagues. So they went on, crossed the sea from Boulogne, and, either in the autumn of 596 or the early spring of 597, landed in England, somewhere in the Isle of Thanet. The King of Kent at this time was _Ethelbert_, who was the most powerful King in England (reckoned by some as the third Bretwalda), and had established his supremacy over the Saxons of Middlesex and Essex, as well as over the English of East Anglia as far north as the Wash: and had driven back the West Saxons when, after an interval of civil feuds, they began again their advance along the Thames, and marched upon London. Ethelbert began to reign in 561. He was believed to be great-grandson of Eric, son of Hengist, a "son of the ash-tree." He had previously, when quite young, been engaged in an encounter with Ceawlin, King of Wessex, and been defeated at Wimbledon. But Ceawlin himself was worsted in 591 by his nephew Cedric at Woodnesbury, in Wiltshire; and Ethelbert had now asserted his supremacy. Unlike most English kings then, and for a long time afterwards, he had married a foreign wife, Bercta, or _Bertha_, daughter of Charibert, one of the kings of the Franks in Gaul, reigning in Paris. Bertha was a Christian, and, as Ethelbert was a heathen, it had been expressly stipulated, either by her father, or by her uncle and guardian Chilperic, King of Soissons, that she should enjoy the free exercise of her religion, and keep her faith inviolate. Bertha is one of the most interesting and romantic characters in English history--our first Christian Queen--possessing apparently much the same influence over Ethelbert as Clotilda had done over Bertha's great ancestor, Clovis, and (though not able to convert him yet) without doubt disposing him favourably towards the new religion. It is variously conjectured that she was born about 555 or 561. We do not know much of her early life, but St. Gregory of Tours, in his contemporary pages, informs us that King Charibert took to wife, Ingoberga, by whom he had a daughter, who afterwards "married a husband in Kent." Charibert was not a man of good character, and being annoyed with his wife Ingoberga, he forsook her, and married Merofledis, the daughter of a certain poor woolmaker in the queen's service. The unfortunate queen was thereupon obliged to fly, and, taking up her abode at Tours, devoted herself to a life of religious seclusion, bringing up her daughter Bertha under the direction of Bishop Gregory, and preparing her thus for the part she afterwards filled in the conversion of England. We may mention here that King Charibert, after the death of Merofledis, proceeded to marry her sister, for which outrage he was solemnly excommunicated by St. Germanus; and, refusing to leave her, "perished, stricken by the just judgment of God." Ingoberga died at the age of seventy, in the year 589. Bertha was accompanied to England by her chaplain, Liudhard, who was sent with her to preserve her faith. Of Liudhard we know very little that is certain. His name is variously spelt Leotard, Liudhard, or even Liupard. By some he was supposed to be Bishop of Senlis, but his name does not occur in the list of bishops of that see, though it is inserted with a mark of interrogation in Gow's _Series Episcoporum_. By others he has been entitled Bishop of Soissons, though without any documentary authority. We may probably accept the notion that he was one of the "wandering bishops" who were very numerous at a later period in Gaul. Gocelin calls him the "faithful guardian of the queen." It seems strange that he, who could speak a language akin to that of the English, did not convert some of them previously to the coming of Augustine, who only spoke Latin, and was obliged to converse with them at first through the medium of an interpreter. However that may be, he was undoubtedly the "harbinger" of Augustine, and had probably endeavoured to stir up his brother prelates of Gaul on behalf of the English, since Pope Gregory, writing at this time to Theodoric and Theodebert, severely condemns the supineness of the Gallic Church, in neglecting to provide for the religious wants of their neighbours, whose "earnest longing for the grace of life had reached his ears." We may mention here that a coin was found some years ago in the churchyard of St. Martin's, with the inscription, "Lyupardus Eps"--and the Rev. Daniel Haigh (in his notes on the Runic monuments of Kent) says that he has no doubt that this coin belongs to Liudhard, who is called Liphardus in Floras' addition to Bede's _Martyro-logia_. Queen Bertha and her chaplain used to worship in the little church of St. Martin, going there daily from Ethelbert's palace, near the site of the present cathedral, through the postern gate of the precincts opposite St. Augustine's gateway. To this circumstance, though by a somewhat fanciful etymology, is attributed its name of _Queningate_. Owing to long disuse, it is probable that the church had fallen into a state of partial decay, but it was again restored and made suitable for Christian worship--though the Queen, with her chaplain and attendant maidens, may only have used a portion of the ancient building. But we must now return to Augustine. "On the east of Kent," says Bede, "is the large Isle of Thanet, containing, according to the English way of reckoning, six hundred families, divided from the mainland by the river Wantsum," which at that time was a channel nearly a mile in width, running from Richborough to Reculver, though it has since become a narrow ditch. Here was a small place called Ebbsfleet, still the name of a farmhouse, rising out of Minster Marsh, but, owing to the retreat of the sea, now situated among green fields. There is little to catch the eye in Ebbsfleet itself, which is a mere spit of higher ground, distinguished by its clump of trees, but must then have been a headland, running out into the sea. "Taken as a whole," says Mr Green, "the scene has a wild beauty of its own. To the right, the white curve of Ramsgate Cliffs looks down on the crescent of Pegwell Bay. Far away to the left, across grey marshlands, where smoke-wreaths mark the sites of Richborough and Sandwich, rises the dim cliff-line of Deal." It is unnecessary to enter into the controversy whether Augustine first set foot on English ground here or at Stonar, or beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of Richborough, as apparently stated by Thorn. The whole question is fully discussed in an appendix to the "Mission of St. Augustine," carefully compiled by Canon Mason. The missionaries had no sooner landed than one or two of their body proceeded to Canterbury, where they duly acquainted King Ethelbert with the fact and object of their arrival. The king gave the messengers a favourable hearing, but bade them remain where they were, saying that he himself would visit them--making, however, this curious stipulation, that they should not hold their first interview under a roof, lest they should practise on him spells and incantations--"though they came," adds Bede, "furnished with Divine and not with magic power." After some days, the king came to the island, where the interview took place, possibly under a large oak tree close to Cottington Farm, where a Sandbach Cross has been erected by the late Earl Granville as a memorial of the event--and it was at this place that the commemoration of the "Coming of St. Augustine" was held in 1897, by the bishops of both the Anglican and Roman communions. Other traditions name the centre of the island, or the walls of Richborough--but, where-ever it was, the missionaries, on hearing of the king's arrival with his attendant thanes, came to meet him, chanting litanies, with a tall silver cross before them, and a figure of the Saviour painted on an upright board. Besides Augustine himself, who was of great stature, head and shoulders taller than anyone else, were Laurence, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, Peter, who became first Abbot of St. Augustine, and nearly forty others. When the procession stopped, and the chant ceased, Ethelbert courteously bade the missionaries be seated. Then Augustine, through the medium of a Frankish interpreter, having preached to the king the Words of Life and the mercies of the Saviour, was answered by the king in the well known passage:--"Fair indeed are your words and promises, but as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot assent to them so far as to forsake that which I have so long held in common with the whole English nation. But because you have come as strangers from afar into my kingdom, and are desirous to impart to us those things which you believe to be true and most beneficial, we will not do you any harm, but rather receive you in kindly hospitality, and take care to supply you with necessary sustenance. Nor do we forbid you to preach, and win over as many as you can to the faith of your religion." The king was as good as his word. Before his return to Canterbury, he gave orders that a suitable abode should be prepared for the missionaries near the "Stable Gate," which stood not far from the present church of St. Alphege. From the Isle of Thanet, Augustine and his companions crossed the ferry to Richborough. Thence they proceeded for about twelve miles almost due west to Canterbury, passing by Ash and Wingham, and then between the villages of Wickham and Ickham, till they came to St. Martin's Hill. There they would catch sight of the little church of St. Martin, which (as they well knew) had been consecrated afresh to the worship of Jesus Christ, and of the city below with its wooden houses dotted about among the ash-groves. As soon as they beheld the city, they walked in procession down the hill, bearing aloft the silver cross and the painted board--and as they passed St. Martin's Church, the choristers, whom Augustine had brought from Gregory's school on the Coelian Hill, chanted one of Gregory's own litanies, "We beseech Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, let Thy wrath and anger be turned away from this city and from Thy holy house, for we have sinned. Alleluia!" We can well imagine that the heathen inhabitants of Canterbury must have been struck with astonishment at the unwonted sight, as well as at the swarthy complexions and strange dress of the Roman missionaries. And we may believe that Queen Bertha came forth to meet the band with a feeling of intense joy. Whether Bishop Liudhard was still alive or not, we have no evidence to determine. Bede tells us that they began at once to imitate the course of life practised in the primitive church, with frequent prayer, watching, and fasting, preaching the word of life to as many as they could, receiving only necessary food from those whom they taught, living themselves conformably to their teaching, being always prepared to suffer, even to die, for the truth which they preached. In St. Martin's Church they met, sang, prayed, celebrated mass, preached, and baptised. And soon the first fruits of their mission began to appear in the conversion and baptism of Ethelbert. Ethelbert was baptised, according to an early tradition, on the Feast of Pentecost (June 2nd) in the year 597--but where? Of one thing there can be little doubt, that we should certainly expect him to have been baptised in St. Martin's Church. It was here that his queen had worshipped for so many years. It was here that Augustine is distinctly stated by Bede to have baptised--and so it was here (we may conclude with little hesitation) that the baptism of Ethelbert took place--even though we can find no direct statement to that effect earlier than that of John Bromton, writing at the end of the twelfth century, who says that "_there_ (_i.e._ in St. Martin's) the king was baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity and the faith of the Church." The rumours of the king's conversion had probably brought a vast multitude of strangers to the city, not only from other parts of Kent, but also from distant quarters. We cannot doubt that, as in the case of the baptism of Clovis, the ceremony was performed with much pomp, to impress the minds of the heathen Saxons. "On that occasion the Church was hung with embroidered tapestry and white curtains: odours of incense like airs of paradise were diffused around, and the building blazed with countless lights." While Ethelbert remained at the entrance, Queen Bertha, with her attendants, repaired to her customary place of devotion. A portion of the service was performed at the altar, and then Augustine descended to the font, chanting a litany, and preceded by two acolytes with lighted tapers. Then followed prayers for the benediction of the font and the consecration of the water, over which Augustine makes the sign of the Cross three times. Then (according to one variation of the ancient Gallican rite) the two tapers are plunged into the font, and Augustine breathes into it (_insufflat_) three times, and the Chrism is poured into the font in the form of a Cross, while the water is parted with his hand. Ethelbert at this point is interrogated in the following simple form:--"Dost thou believe in God the Father Almighty? Dost thou too believe in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born and suffered! and Dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, and the Resurrection of the flesh?" To each of which questions the king answers, "_I believe_." Here follows the actual _baptism_, after which Ethelbert is signed on the forehead with Chrism in the form of a Cross. Augustine returns to his seat, and another litany is chanted. Had Augustine been at that time a bishop, he would now have administered to the king the Sacrament of Confirmation, but he was not consecrated bishop of the English till a few months afterwards. It has indeed been objected that the ceremony could not have taken place in St. Martin's Church, because at that time baptism was administered by immersion. This was indeed the general rule, and such expressions as being "let down into the water," "stepping forth from the bath," "coming up from the font," and so on, occur in the writings of Tertullian, Jerome, the Gelasian and Leontine Sacramentaries; and octagonal or circular baptisteries are found in ancient churches, sometimes as much as twenty feet in diameter and five feet deep, erected for this purpose. On the other hand, this practice was by no means universal, and even as early as the second century _affusion_ was frequently used, with or without immersion. A picture of our Lord's baptism in the baptistery of St. John's at Ravenna (about 450) represents Jesus as standing in the water, and the Baptist pouring water over him from a shell. There is a similar representation in the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin (about 550), and one of earlier date in a fresco from the cemetery of St. Callixtus. On two sarcophagi, mentioned by Ciampinus, representations of a like character are engraved, supposed to be the Baptism of Agilulfus and Theodolinda (about 590), and of Arrichius, second Duke of Beneventum (591). In the latter case a man somewhat advanced in years, kneels to receive baptism, which is administered by _affusion_ only. Both of these are assigned to the same decade as that of King Ethelbert. We may conclude, therefore, that both forms of administering the rite were practised from early times, and it is by no means impossible that Ethelbert was baptised by _affusion_. It was probably not from the existing font, even though in the seal of N. de Battail, Abbot of St. Augustine's (1224-1252) and in the common seal of St. Augustine's Abbey, the king is represented as standing in a font, resembling in many respects the present one--while the baptism of Rollo, the first Christian Duke of Normandy, is illustrated in an early MS. of the twelfth-century Chronicle of Beuvit de St. More, with Rollo standing (or sitting) naked in a similar tub-like font. _St. Martin's_, "a small and mean church," as it is unkindly called by Stukely, after the death of Augustine, Ethelbert, and Bertha, relapses into comparative obscurity, and its history is gathered chiefly from the testimony of architecture. We may, however, mention, as connected with the immediately succeeding period, that there were dug up in the churchyard (besides the Roman ornaments already described) a Saxon or Frankish circular ornament set with garnets, and other things which were of too costly a description to have belonged to any but persons of distinction, with whom they had probably been interred--also three gold looped Merovingian coins, fully described by Mr Roach Smith. The first historical post-Augustinian record that we find in connection with the church is the well-known charter of 867 (from the Cottonian MSS. Augustus II. 95) granted, when the Kentish Wittenagemot was held at Canterbury, by King Ethelred, and entitled "Grant of a _sedes_ in the place which is called St. Martin's Church, and of a small enclosure pertaining to the same _sedes_ by King Ethelred to his faithful friend Wighelm, priest," endorsed in a contemporary hand, "An sett æt sc'e Martine." In this document Ethelred, King of the West Saxons and Kentishmen, gives and concedes to Wighelm a _sedes_ and _tun_ or enclosure pertaining thereto, of which the boundaries are named, but the Latin is very provincial and obscure. The grant is given to Wighelm for his life, and after his death to his heirs, and the king in strong language lays injunction on his successors "by the faith of St. Martin, confessor of Christ," not to presume to infringe the grant. Now this charter is one of the most remarkable in the whole series of Anglo-Saxon documents, and confessedly one of the most difficult to comprehend, especially as to the word _sedes_, which is variously interpreted to refer to the episcopal character of St. Martin's, or to some official appointment in the church, or to a shop, dwelling, or stall for market purposes, in the parish. Whatever be the meaning of many difficult expressions, the charter is important as giving what is probably a complete list of the Canterbury clergy, all of whom attested it. _Archbishop_ Ceolnoth. _Abbot_ Biarnhelm. _Archdeacons_ Sigefred, Bearnoth, Herefreth. _Priests_ Nothheard, Biarnfreth, &c. &c. &c. It is also attested by King Ethelred, Duke Eastmund, Abbot Ealhheard, and many others, and is confirmed "in Jesus Christ with the sign of the Holy Cross" in the year 867. We can hardly doubt that the church suffered some injury at the hands of the Danes, by whom Canterbury was wasted in 851 and again in 1009, though the most serious devastation took place in 1011, when, in the reign of Ethelred the Second, the Danes laid siege to, and captured, the city. On that occasion Archbishop Elphege was seized, bound, and dragged to the Cathedral to see it in flames. He was then carried off, and eventually murdered at Greenwich. Not very long after this period we discover mention of the suffragan "Bishops of St. Martin's," who were evidently _Chorepiscopi_, an ancient order of bishops, dating from the third century, who overlooked the country district committed to them, ordaining readers, exorcists and subdeacons, but not (as a rule) deacons and priests, except by express permission of the diocesan bishop. It has been wrongly supposed, without any evidence or tradition, that the bishops of St. Martin's belonged to the great church at Dover, or the Oratory of St. Martin at Romney. It is said by Battely that the succession of these bishops lasted for the space of nearly four hundred years; but of this there is no proof, and the idea may have sprung from the charter which we have discussed above, while the actual tradition is first mentioned in the "Black Book of the Archdeacons of Canterbury" (probably compiled in the fourteenth or fifteenth century), wherein it is said that "In the time of St. Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, to the time of Archbishop Lanfranc of blessed memory, there was no archdeacon in the city and diocese of Canterbury. But from the time of Archbishop Theodore, who was sixth from St. Augustine, to the time of the aforesaid Lanfranc, there was in the church of St. Martin's, a suburb of Canterbury, a bishop ordained by Theodore, under the authority of Pope Vitalian, who in all the city and diocese of Canterbury undertook duties in the place of the archbishop, conferring holy orders, consecrating churches, and confirming children during his absence." Archbishop Parker speaks of the Bishop of St. Martin's as performing in all things the office of a bishop in the absence of the archbishop, who, for the most part, attended the king's court. "The bishop, himself being a monk, received under obedience the monks of Christ Church, and celebrated in the Metropolitical Church the solemn offices of Divine worship, which being finished he returned to his own place. He and the Prior of Christ Church sat together in synods, both habited alike." The names of only two bishops are preserved to us--that of _Eadsi_ or _Eadsige_ (1032-38), subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury, who, soon after he had received the pall from the Pope, was afflicted with a loathsome disease which incapacitated him for a time; though he afterwards recovered and administered the see until his death on the fourth day before the Kalends of November in 1050. The other Bishop was _Godwin_, appointed in 1052 by Archbishop Robert of Jumiéges, who died, according to the Saxon Chronicle, in 1061. The Bishop of St. Martin's was practically merged into the Archdeacon of Canterbury in the time of Lanfranc, who refused to ordain another bishop, saying that "there ought not to be two bishops in one city." After the Conquest, St. Martin's was partially restored by the Normans, and the interior of the church underwent considerable alteration in the thirteenth century. The list of the rectors is given in an appendix. They were not persons of any distinction, but from time to time we glean a few interesting details concerning them. Thus, for instance, in 1321, a dispute arose between _Robert de Henney_, rector of St. Martin's, and Randolph de Waltham, master of the Free Grammar School of the city of Canterbury, about the rights and privileges of their respective schools. A Special Commission was appointed by the Archbishop, including the chaplain of St. Sepulchre's, the vicar of St. Paul's, the rector of St. Mary de Castro, rector of St. Peter's, and others. The point of dispute was whether in the St. Martin's School (within the church fence or boundary) there should be more than thirteen _grammar_ scholars. The rector was limited to this number for fear of infringing on the privilege of the City Grammar School, though he was entitled to take as many scholars in reading and singing as he pleased. In fact, however, the rector took as many grammar boys as he could get, it being necessary only that when his school was visited by the city schoolmaster or his deputy, the surplus should conceal themselves for the time being. An injunction, however, was granted in the Archbishop's Court to restrain the rector from taking more than his bare thirteen. This is an extremely interesting record, because it shows that there were two flourishing public schools in Canterbury, probably the most ancient Grammar Schools in England, early in the fourteenth century; and that the pupils _paid_ for their teaching, and learnt other subjects besides grammar. Thorn, the monk of St. Augustine's, tells us also an amusing story of how _John de Bourne_, rector of St. Martin's, aided in the escape of one Peter de Dene from St. Augustine's Monastery by placing ladders against the monastery walls. They then rode on horseback together to Bishopsbourne, but Peter was at length recaptured. In the fourteenth century we find no less than three rectors who were instituted to St. Martin's by the Prior of Christ Church during a vacancy in the see of Canterbury. We have already mentioned the difficulty of obtaining information concerning the church in the Middle Ages, owing to its being exempt from the jurisdiction of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, and therefore not included in the Archidiaconal Registers, while the Archbishop's Visitations of the diocese were not, as a rule, parochial. By a lucky chance, however, we find some entries in Archbishop Warham's Visitation in 1511, one of which is to the effect that the churchwardens had not furnished accounts for five years, though they had received various monies for keeping graves in order. They were ordered to furnish accounts before the Feast of Purification, under pain of excommunication, &c. There are many details of interest to be found in the pre-Reformation wills of parishioners, which are preserved in the "Consistory Court." In them we find bequests to the Light of the Holy Cross, the Light of the Blessed Mary, the Light of St. Martin, the Light of St. Christopher, the Light of St. Erasmus, for daily masses before the image of St. Nicholas, to the High Altar, for the purchase of a new Cross, for various ornaments, for paving,--together with tenements, real estate, legacies for the benefit of the poor, and sundry curious personal gifts which wonderfully illustrate the habits and customs of the period. And from an inventory of Parish Church goods in Kent, made in 1552, we find the following entry relating to St. Martin's under the head of "19th July vi., Edward vi.":-- Bartylemewe Barham gent. and Stevyn Goodhewe, churchwardens. _Ffirst_, one chalys with the paten of sylver. _Item_, one vestment of blewe velvett with a cope to the same. _Item_, one vestment of whyte braunchyd damaske with a cope to the same. _Item_, one other olde vestment with a cope to the same. _Item_, two table clothes. _Item_, one long towell, one short towell. _Item_, ij corporas with their clothes. _Item_, one velvet cushon and one saten cushon. _Item_, ij chysts, iiij surplysys. _Item_, iij bells and one waggerell bell in the steple. Whereof left in the churche for the mynystracion of dyvyne service: The chalys with the paten of sylver, one cope of blewe velvett, one cope of whyte braunchyd damaske, ij albes, ij table clothes, one long towell, and one short towell, iiij surplysys, the bells in the steple. For any further particulars concerning the Church after the Reformation we may refer to the meagre account given by William Somner, and the additions made to his history by Nicholas Battely, who states that "St. Martin's claims the priority in the catalogue of Canterbury parish churches upon several titles of antiquity and dignity." He says that he cannot pretend that the present fabric is the same building which was erected in or near the days of King Lucius, or which was repaired and fitted up for Queen Bertha. "But yet it has at this day the appearance of ancientness, not from the wrinkles and ruins of old age, but from the materials (_i.e._ Roman bricks) used in the repairing or re-edifying of it." He then goes on to make the erroneous statement that "in the porch of this church were buried Queen Bertha, and Liudhard, Bishop of Senlis, and (Thorn saith) King Ethelbert." About ninety years after the time of Battely we come to a description of the church in the pages of Hasted, who, without assigning any reason, ventures on the suggestion that "the _Chancel_ was the whole of the original building of this church or oratory, and was probably built about the year 200: that is, about the middle space of time when the Christians, both Britons and Romans, lived in this island free from all persecutions." Hasted's history is, as a rule, extremely valuable, not only from the style of his writing, but from his extraordinary general accuracy, and the minuteness of his original researches: and we are often at a loss to imagine from what source he could have derived so much information, which at that period was not so accessible as at present. _Gostling_, a minor canon of the cathedral, writes also at the end of the last century ("Walks in and about Canterbury"), but he adds nothing fresh except that "if the church was larger and more magnificent (as Mr Battely seems to believe) this might tempt the Danish invaders to make a ruin of that, but they had no provocation here!" and he calls it elsewhere "an obscure chapel." It is probable that the church was much neglected during the last, and the first forty years of the present, century. Its existence was almost forgotten by the public at large. From an historical edifice it sank into the insignificance of a small parish church in a small village. It was the _site_ of great events, but only a site: and its condition is faithfully described in some verses beneath an old print now hanging in the vestry. "A humble church recalls the scenes of yore To present memory, yet humbled more By lapse of years, by lack of reverent care, And ill-advised expedients for repair. Oh! would this age its taste and bounty blend, The faults of bygone ages to amend! And lib'rally adorn this lowly pile Where sleeps the first Queen Christian of our isle." [Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH (in 1840). (From a Water-colour Drawing.)] CHAPTER III DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCH We come now to a description of the church, which consists of a rectangular _Nave_, 38 ft. long by 25 ft. wide; a _Chancel_ (in its present form) 40 ft. by 14 ft.; a tower built in the fourteenth century, and a modern organ chamber and vestry. The chancel originally was not as large as it is now, and probably extended only 18 or 20 ft. from the present chancel arch. An external buttress on the south side marks its termination, beyond which it has been conjectured that there was an Eastern apse, as sketched in the annexed plan. The first question that naturally suggests itself is with regard to the =Dedication=. Battely, followed by Hasted, was of opinion that the church was originally dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and afterwards re-dedicated to St. Martin by Bishop Liudhard. For this statement there is apparently no authority, yet we must remember that the earliest dedications of churches were either to the Saviour, the Blessed Virgin, or one of the twelve Apostles. That the Italian Mission followed generally this ancient practice is shown in their dedication of the cathedrals of Canterbury, Rochester, London, and York to Christ, St. Andrew, St. Paul, and St. Peter respectively--of St. Augustine's Abbey church to St. Peter and St. Paul, of another church in the same abbey to the "Holy Mother of God," and also of the early Saxon church in Lyminge to St. Mary; but it is unnecessary to multiply further instances, the very rare exceptions to the rule (such as St. Pancras) applying principally to churches which contained the relics of martyrs. This exception would not embrace St. Martin's--and Battely's statement, therefore, from whatever source he derived it, is not intrinsically impossible. We can say nothing more positive in its favour--but assuming it to be true, and that the original dedication was forgotten, nothing would be more natural than that the re-dedication of the church should be to the saintly Bishop of Tours, made either by Germanus in 429, or Bishop Liudhard, or even Augustine himself. It is marvellous how widespread was the influence of St. Martin's name. Nearly 4000 churches are dedicated to him in France alone, and the largest number of these (in a comparison of dioceses) is in the part of France nearest to English shores. [Illustration: PLAN OF ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY, by G. M. Livett. _Dimensions:_ Nave, 38 by 25 ft.; Chancel, 40 by 14 ft.] But, supposing we take literally the words of Bede, that the church "dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, was built of old, while the Romans still occupied Britain," we are met by this apparent difficulty. If (as is maintained) the church was built in the fourth century, how came it to be dedicated to St. Martin, who died about 397? Some colourable support to the possibility of this can be derived from the fact that the first stone church built in Scotland (at Whithern) by St. Ninian was certainly dedicated to the same saint. There are indeed, in that case, some special reasons, because St. Ninian, a personal friend of St. Martin, called on him at Tours, and received from him workmen accustomed to the Roman method of building, with whom he returned home. As the church was in course of erection, the news of St. Martin's death reached him, and the church was in consequence dedicated in 398 to his memory. There need be no difficulty on the doubtfulness of such an early _Canonization_. The first formal act of canonization by a Pope did not take place till the ninth or tenth century. Before this, it was done in a somewhat irregular manner by the bishop of the diocese, who recited the names of the departed martyrs, or holy men, in the _Canon_ of the mass, not for invocation, but in memory of those who had finished their course, and for an example to others. It has been asserted that St. Martin was the first person to be honoured as a confessor, that is, that he was the first who was treated as a saint without being a martyr. In the antiphon to the Magnificat on his festival we have, "sanctissima anima, quam etsi gladius persecutoris non abstulit, palman tamen martyrii non amisit." Though there were _other_ St. Martins, such as the Bishop of Vienne, a Bishop of Tongres at the end of the third century, and a Bishop of Trêves, yet there can be little doubt that the one alluded to by Bede was the Bishop of Tours, whose fame had completely overshadowed the rest. Now there is one suggestion that deserves a passing notice, and that is, the possibility of St. Martin himself having been the founder of the church; even in a closer sense than by merely sending masons from his monastery, as he did to St. Ninian. In the constant interchange of communication between Britain and Gaul, not only for commercial but for military purposes, it may have happened that Christians had migrated, or been transferred, from Tours to Kent--and for the benefit of Christian soldiers, St. Martin, once a soldier himself, may have urged the erection of a church. It is unnatural to suppose that St. Martin, who travelled over a great part of Gaul, did not in some way associate himself with Britons, with whom he would have been brought into contact. We know this, at any rate, that during the latter year of his episcopate he exercised great influence over the Emperor Maximus and his Empress--and Maximus had resided for several years in Britain, was proclaimed emperor there in 383, had thence invaded Gaul with a fleet and army, which were long afterwards remembered as the "emigration of a considerable part of the British nation," and finally settled at Trêves, where he was more than once visited by St. Martin. Some of these British emigrants or soldiers would very naturally have returned to their native country and brought Christianity with them. There is no conclusive reason why St. Martin himself, either prompted thereto by Maximus, or yielding to the entreaties of Britons whom he met at Trêves or elsewhere in Gaul, should not have visited Canterbury in person, and there founded the church. It is remarked by Haddan and Stubbs that "it was a peculiarity of British Christians that churches were not dedicated to any saint already dead, after the fashion then beginning to be common, but were called by the name of their living founder." Or the original dedication made by St. Martin (acting either directly or indirectly) may have fallen into popular disuse, and been supplanted by his own name, as was the case with the church of St. Gregory on the Coelian Hill, which St. Gregory had dedicated to St. Andrew, but which soon after came to be called after himself, though he was not buried there. And attention may be directed to instances of a similar kind at Rome, where the names of founders lingered on in churches like the Basilica Constantiniana, Basilica Liberiana, and St. Lorenzo in Damaso. We may also note the fact, that a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, originally dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, soon acquired the name of its founder, St. Anselm, and even the great Cathedral itself, the "Church of Christ," was popularly known in the Middle Ages as the Church of St. Thomas. These latter instances are not indeed exactly parallel, because the relics of the name-saints were actually buried in these places, but they may be quoted as showing how readily the original dedication may have been subsequently changed; and it would not be difficult to give additional examples. Before proceeding to a minute description of the principal objects of interest outside the church, we may say a few words about the =walls=, which, however, have been so patched and repaired in successive ages, that they have lost all signs of uniformity. The thickness of the walls is, on an average, about 2 ft., and this dimension is noticeable, because we meet with it over and over again in Roman villas. The materials, too, are similar, and resemble what have been found in villas--a mass of rather rough walling, partly of brick, partly of stone, evidently intended to be plastered on both sides, and, to a great extent, built with hard "sea-shore" mortar. This mortar is composed of pebbles, small shells, etc., and is of such remarkable solidity and strength that, although the walls of the church are thin and lofty, they have sustained without any injury, and with comparatively low buttresses, the thrust of a high-pitched Gothic roof. It was not uncommon for churches to be erected on the site of, and using part of the structure of, Roman secular buildings, or temples. And we give for what it is worth the opinion of Mr Roach Smith, an experienced antiquary, who gave special attention to Roman work, and who states in a letter written on January 6, 1883: "There are many examples of churches being built upon the remains of Roman buildings, no doubt often _temples_, and not unfrequently of a small size. Some instances are very remarkable, as that of Britford, near Salisbury, at old Verulam, etc. I have ever had a belief that St. Martin's Church is founded upon, or built upon, or built into, a Roman temple." The walls of the church form an interesting study, not only for their venerable aspect, but also for their irregularity. The brick courses in the =Nave= are pretty general throughout, sometimes at 9 inches apart, sometimes as much as 20 inches, or even more. A great deal of old plaster is found externally in the middle of the south wall of the _nave_, and there are masses of Roman bricks congregated at the east and west ends of the same wall (the angles of the walls in public buildings being often composed entirely of bricks); and we find also, in parts, large blocks of grey stone, as well as pieces of travertine, tertiary sandstone, Kentish rag, red sandstone, Purbeck marble, chalk, and many other geological specimens. Here and there, interspersed with Roman bricks, are patches of "chequy" masonry, the stones being placed at wide intervals, notably on the south-east corner, and on the north side. The masonry of the early =chancel= is, however, entirely different, being composed of Roman bricks laid evenly upon one another with narrow joints, averaging four bricks to a foot. In many instances the arrises of these bricks are sharp and true, showing no sign of having been taken from any other building; in other cases they are more fragmentary, but we can have no hesitation in saying that the walling of the early chancel is well-built, satisfactory to a professional eye. We have then these two distinct modes of building (1) Roman bricks laid evenly and closely upon one another, (2) stone-work with courses of Roman brick at various intervals. And we shall have to consider hereafter whether these are genuine Roman walls, or are merely composed of Roman materials used up for the second time, as at St. Albans and elsewhere. We learn from competent authorities that there were five or six kinds of Roman wall-building--(_a_) The _quadrangular_, with masses of square or oblong stones laid alternately lengthwise and cross-wise, not cemented by mortar, but bound together by leaden clamps, such as is found in the so-called wall of Romulus on the Palatine; (_b_) _polygonal_ masonry, where the stones are irregular, and with small stone splinters wedged into the joints where necessary; (_c_) _concrete_--rude, without ornamentation, which has at a distance the appearance of being panelled, since beams of timber are let in to strengthen it, or sometimes thin layers of brick to prevent settlement in the concrete from the shrinking of the lime when it cools and dries; (_d_) _opus reticulatum_, which consists of stone net-work of diamond-shaped blocks, as in the "Muro Torto" at Rome; (_e_) _opus lateritium_, the ordinary construction of bricks laid evenly upon one another (_f_) _mixture_--_i.e._ stones bonded together with courses of bricks, sometimes at regular, often at irregular, intervals. Mr Parker, in his "Archæology of Rome," referring to the _mixture_ (_i.e._ the style of the building used in the nave) which is so constant in Roman wall-work, in England and Northern Europe generally, says that in itself it is no evidence of date as to the period of Roman work, since other things must be taken into account: but that it is found in the circus of Maxentius, and many other places. It is usually attributed to the beginning of the fourth century, but it occurs also at Pompeii, in parts of the substructure of the walls of Aurelian, in tombs of the second century at Ostia, and in some of the foundations of Hadrian's villa near Tivoli. With regard to the comparative antiquity of the nave and chancel, no positive judgment has yet been arrived at. Hasted, indeed, ventured on the opinion that the latter was the more ancient, but he also believed that the chancel was built about the year 200 A.D., and had not the benefit of the recent explorations, so that his opinion is, in itself, of little value. But it has been adopted on scientific and architectural grounds by the Rev. G. M. Livett (who has paid careful attention to the architecture and masonry of the church) and by other distinguished antiquaries. Their arguments are very forcible, and there is much reason for believing that the theory will hereafter find general acceptance, although at present further investigation is necessary before it can be pronounced as incontrovertible. We know indeed that some of the earliest Roman buildings were constructed of Roman bricks or tiles laid evenly upon one another (the _opus lateritium_), but the tiles of the first two centuries were remarkably thin, as contrasted with later specimens. They vary, at different periods, in length from 15 inches to 2 feet, and in thickness from ¾ inch to 3 inches. Unfortunately little credence is now given to the ingenious rough-and-ready rule, formulated by Mr Parker, that where (including mortar) there are ten bricks to one foot, the wall is of the _first_ century, as in the arches of Nero; where eight bricks, of the _second_ century, as in the villa of Hadrian; where six bricks, of the _third_ century, as in Aurelian's wall; where four bricks, of the _fourth_ century. We may lament the non-acceptance of this rule, for, were it true, we might confidently assign the early wall of the chancel (containing four bricks to a foot) to the _fourth_ century, which is the exact date that is claimed for it! With regard to the =foundations=, those in the chancel are of flint-stones and mortar, with a footing of a single course of Roman bricks, while in the nave we find a mixture of sandy mortar and crushed flint, topped with courses of Kentish rag-stone, and one or sometimes two courses of brick. Closely connected with the walls are the =buttresses=. Of flat pilaster buttresses there are at the present moment (_a_) one on the south side of the chancel; (_b_) two at the south-east corner of the nave, at right angles to each other; (_c_) one at the north-west corner of the nave, the corresponding buttress at this place having been cut away. In addition to these, there is an evidently later one on the north-east of the nave, and a semi-circular buttress in the middle of the south wall. They have all been repaired very frequently, especially at the top, and it is difficult to determine which stones are original, and which have been inserted afterwards. The sole remaining buttress in the chancel has been mutilated in a painful manner. Not so many years ago, before the modern quoins of Caen stone were added, it was largely composed of Roman bricks similar to the walling. The other flat buttresses on the south side project 6 inches from the wall, and, as we see them at present, consist of blocks of rough-hewn Caen stone to the height of 4 ft. 6 in., and, above that, of Roman brick, considerably patched. In themselves flat pilaster buttresses furnish no evidence as to date, since they are found alike in Roman, Saxon, and Norman buildings. It is contended by Mr Livett that the buttresses in the nave are Norman, or (at any rate) insertions of a later date than the adjacent wall--but only those at the south-east angle have been explored, where the foundations seem to be of a whiter, harder mortar than those of the wall, containing large stones, but no small angular flints. It is too early as yet to pronounce any positive opinion on the point. [Illustration: 2 S.-E. angle of nave, looking East (Buttress.)] Special attention has often been called to the semi-circular buttress, because this shape is uncommon, though something like it is found at St. Peter's, Northampton, at the Church of St. Remi at Rheims, and elsewhere. The outstanding portion of it measures almost exactly three feet in circumference. It cannot have been made (as some have supposed) to contain a staircase, because there seems no reason whatever for a staircase at this particular place, the rood-loft being several feet eastwards. Others have conjectured that the old church might have ended somewhere near this point, and that then the buttress would have had something to do with the support of the western front, or have been a staircase up to the old belfry. But there is no foundation for this surmise, which is disproved by the fact that the external plaster extends on each side of the buttress, and the character of the south wall is absolutely unbroken. This external plaster, indeed, is probably not Roman, though it is composed to some extent of pounded brick. The buttress bears little or no resemblance to the lofty semi-circular projection occasionally found in Saxon towers. Its object must be left in a state of obscurity, and it may perhaps have been a mere freak of the builder. [Illustration: Erudito viro et Amicissimo Johi Hardy de Nottingham. _Tabulam hanc vevet W. Stukley_ Date 1722.] At a distance of 10 ft. 6 in. from this circular buttress we come to a _nearly circular panel_, immediately behind the Norman piscina, which has always been a puzzle to antiquaries. The dimensions of it, as now seen, are roughly 4 ft. by 3 ft. 8 in. It is sunk 6 in. into the wall, is unevenly splayed, and in parts plastered. In Stukely's engraving of the church (1722 A.D.) it is represented as a round-headed doorway, but there are no voussoirs or arch stones. The result of excavations beneath the surface are doubtful. Generally speaking, there are courses of two Roman bricks running along this part of the nave wall, below which are Kentish rag stones, and a foundation of concrete. Singularly enough, the _top_ row of Roman bricks (just below the opening) has been interrupted for a space of 3 ft. 8 in., and it looks at first sight as if the _lower_ row were the sill of a doorway, from which a slight suspicion of a rough vertical joint goes upwards for a little distance. But against this theory we must state that the _one-brick_ course does not extend the whole width of the panel. The immediate back of the Norman piscina was discovered on investigation, not to be of stone, as we might have expected, but of coarse thin plaster, and it is not impossible that this back was taken out sometime in the Early English period, and that the opening thus made was used as a hagioscope. No plausible theory has been advanced as to the use of this _panel_. It was once suggested that it was a niche for a churchyard-light, which would shine on the south side of the church. This, sometimes consisting of a covered lamp, would be used to light at night the mortuary convoys that came from afar, and could not always arrive in the daytime. It was also a sort of homage rendered to the memory of the dead, a signal recalling to passers-by the presence of the departed, and inviting prayers for them. But this is entirely a fanciful idea. [Illustration: 1. Section of foundation of nave-wall (under panel)] The =doorways= are the next feature of interest. With them St. Martin's is extremely well supplied, as (counting both ancient and modern ones) there are no less than six, though they were doubtless not all used at the same period. It would seem as if the architects of one age found a positive pleasure in blocking up and replacing doorways of preceding ages! At the south-west corner of the nave, immediately outside the font, is an Early English doorway or porch, seven feet wide, probably built in the thirteenth century, and now closed up with blocks of chalk, in the middle of which is inserted part of a two-light window. This may have been substituted for the usual Saxon "south-door." On the north side of the nave there are also traces of an Early English porch, which was only taken down during the present century within the memory of persons still living. The peculiarity of this porch is that it was added on to what we believe to be an older Norman doorway, which will be spoken of when we describe the interior of the church. Proceeding to the south side of the chancel and its adjacent portion of the east wall of the nave, we come upon three curious openings. Two of them are square-headed, (1) The one at the south-east corner of the nave is 6 ft. high, and splayed externally, being 2 ft. 8 in. wide inside, and 3 ft. wide outside the church. It has a lintel and threshold of Roman brick, and has been blocked up with masses of chalk and rubble. The plaster on the splays is still _in situ_, and was considered, at a meeting of the British Archæological Society, to be "most probably Roman." But it has been clearly demonstrated that it is a later insertion in the wall. Its position at the east angle of the nave is very peculiar, and its use has not yet been ascertained. At the beginning of the extensive explorations that have been lately carried out, when it was believed by some antiquaries that there was a _Western apse_ similar to that in the Christian church at Silchester, and that the arch (described hereafter) was the opening into this apse, this south-eastern doorway was supposed to have been one of the entrances either to the church, or the _Narthex_ (vestibule), there being some indications of a corresponding doorway in the north-eastern angle of the nave. This theory appears to be now generally abandoned, but it is quite possible that it may be revived when further excavations are made beneath the tower. (2) The other opening at the south-west of the chancel, 6 ft. high and 3 ft. 4 in. wide externally, has jambs of Roman bricks, with a lintel and sill formed of massive blocks of green sandstone, much worn by weather. Internally it seems 4 ft. 7 in. at the top, but this may be accounted for by the fact that in later times it was partially blocked up by a stone sarcophagus, and other material: and on one side of the upper portion of the doorway, and extending beyond it towards the west, there was opened a low side-window, the western splayed jamb of which is still remaining, with the original plaster. This may perhaps have been a "Lepers' window" commanding a view of the altar of St. Mary, occupying the site of the present pulpit. This square-headed doorway is certainly contemporaneous with the surrounding wall. When it was first exposed, we found in it the skeleton of a sparrow! [Illustration: S.-W. EXTERIOR OF CHANCEL. (From a water-colour by Mrs M. Parry.)] [Illustration: St. Martin's, Cant.--Adjunct. Section of foundations & portion of wall, with face of chancel wall above shewing signs of the bonding.] Near these square-headed doorways there were discovered underground the remains of two walls, running at right angles to the chancel, and forming two sides of an _adjunct_ or side chapel, the southern side of which has been destroyed in the process of digging graves. These walls are 4 ft. 9 in. apart, and are each of them 26 in. wide, built entirely of Roman bricks. The western wall runs eight inches beneath the eastern angle-wall of the nave. Between the walls there is still existing part of a flooring of _opus signinum_. There can be no doubt that this _adjunct_ is of the same workmanship, and the same date, as the early brick wall of the chancel. The foundations of both are precisely similar, and are constructively bonded together--the walls rest upon a footing-course of one brick, which forms the top of a shallow foundation of flints and stones. The brick-footing is continued along the chancel wall under the sill of the square-headed doorway, and is irregular in its projection. A careful examination of the existing face of the chancel wall above the remains (which was made by Mr Livett), shows that the eastern wall of the _adjunct_ above ground, now destroyed, was originally bonded into the chancel wall. Every alternate course shows a broken brick, and every intermediate course the clean edge of a brick. This bonding cannot be traced above a line on a level with the lower edge of the lintel of the square-headed doorway of the chancel. What the purpose of this _adjunct_ was, we cannot positively determine. It was suggested by the late Archbishop of Canterbury (who took the warmest interest in the church, and also keenly watched the progress of the excavations) that it was used as a place for baking the holy bread employed at the celebration of the Mass. It is more probable, however, notwithstanding its diminutive size, that it was a side-chapel with its altar. At a distance of 4 ft. 2 in. eastwards of the square-headed doorway is a _semi-circular_ one. It is 6 ft. high and 2 ft. 1 in. wide. The arch is mostly formed of converging blocks of Kentish rag, generally about one inch apart, though somewhat closer at the crown. The span at the springing is an inch or two wider than the span of the jambs. The imposts are formed of two Roman tiles, the upper one overhanging the lower, and the lower overhanging the jamb. The doorway is lined throughout with plaster. The jambs _internally_ are of Roman bricks with occasional pieces of Kentish rag. _Externally_, they are almost entirely of Roman bricks, though under the west impost, 3 ft. 10 in. above the sill, there has been inserted a fragment of freestone about 2-½ inches high, brought from elsewhere. On this are parts of an inscription, which has been supposed by many people to date from the ninth or tenth century, though this date cannot be accepted as proved. The letters HONORE.. STÆ.. ET OMN[=I][=V] S[=C][=O]R[=V] are still decipherable, and the whole may perhaps be read as "To the honour of Saint (Mary?) and All Saints." This may have been the dedication-stone of a church, or not impossibly the dedication-stone of an altar, as an order was issued in the ninth century by a Saxon archbishop, that a stone should be placed at the corner of each altar, specifying the name of the saint or saints to whom it was dedicated. A parallel to this has been found in the discovery of a stone from the Saxon Church of Deerhurst, the fragmentary inscription on which has been conjecturally read as "In honore Sanctæ Trinitatis hoc altare dedicatum est." [Illustration: SAXON DOORWAY IN CHANCEL (INTERIOR). (From a Drawing by Mrs M. Parry.)] [Illustration: SAXON DOORWAY (EXTERIOR). (From a Photograph by the Author.)] This round-headed doorway has been hitherto supposed to be of the same date as the wall, but closer investigation has clearly proved that it is a later insertion, probably made in the Saxon period, possibly as early as St. Augustine. While in the surrounding wall there are _four_ Roman bricks to the foot, there are in the jambs of the doorway _six_ bricks to the foot; and at the time of the insertion, nearly one foot of the surrounding wall was broken away, as will be noticed by any experienced observer. At 4 ft. 8 in. eastward of this doorway, we come to the chancel-buttress which has been already described. A hole has been pierced in the wall immediately east of the buttress, and a clean face of Roman brick has been traced for 26 inches, in continuation of the east face of the buttress, running therefore at right angles to the outer wall, thus clearly showing that there was no buttress on the east side of the angle of the original wall. The whole controversy as to the existence of an Eastern apse is so interesting and important, but at the same time so technical for the ordinary reader, that we have placed, in Appendix C, a contribution which Mr Livett has kindly sent to us, with the hope that it may be extensively read and pondered by all those, whether antiquaries or otherwise, who desire to weigh every point connected with the architecture and plan of the church. While still examining the exterior of the church, we may notice on the east wall of the present chancel a nearly square insertion, measuring 14-½ by 13-½ inches. The matrix seems to represent traces of a brass, with a kneeling female figure, carrying a child in her arms, with an inscription underneath; and it may have been connected with a tomb in that portion of the churchyard. It is of the fifteenth century, but there is no evidence of its origin, though it has probably been in its present position for a considerable period. The date of 1662, and many subsequent dates and initials, have been cut into the stone, showing the continuous existence of that pernicious class of tourists who make a point of leaving their mark in places of interest! Passing down the north side of the church, we may observe on the chancel wall a piece of masonry, composed of Roman bricks, which is a good imitation of Roman work; next the modern vestry which has no merit except that of utility, and the traces of the Early English porch, which has been described above--and then, rounding the north-west angle, we come to a curious Norman squint or hagioscope, partially hidden by the tower. The opening, sunk some three or four inches in the outer wall, is of an oblong character. The sides are formed of worked chalk and Kentish rag, with traces of a hinge and receptacle for a bolt, while the lintel is composed of a piece of oak greatly decayed by age. The squint is partially splayed on both sides, rather more on the right side than the left, extends 18 inches into the interior of the church, and commanded apparently a view of the high altar. Whether it was a lychnoscope, or leper's window, or used by penitents standing under cover of a porch, there are no grounds for determining. The actual opening does not measure more than 12 inches by 8, and was lined originally with Norman plaster. On the inside, where it is 15 inches across, it was till recently concealed by the woodwork of a pew, but this has happily been removed. The masonry inside is of a rugged character, and was evidently disturbed when the interior of the church was covered by thick coats of plaster. Among the fillings-up of the squint, we found three curious circular stones, each with an ornamental _volute_ at the end. They are of oolite, and probably formed parts of a scroll at the top of a Roman (heathen) altar, and one of the fragments had small pieces of salmon-coloured mortar adhering to it. We may refer to an opening in the church of St. Mary, in Dover Castle, as being in a somewhat similar position, but there it is generally supposed to be a lychnoscope for the use of soldiers in the guard-room, so that they might watch the light burning at the altar on the south-east of the nave, which was specially reserved for them. There is a great difference of opinion as to the proper name of these openings, two of which are certainly, and another possibly, found in St. Martin's Church. We are told that the squint is not to be confounded with low side-windows or lychnoscopes, originally unglazed. Squints, as a rule, may be defined as inside the church, and the others outside, primarily for the purpose of enabling persons in the aisles to see the elevation of the Host at the high altar, though they are sometimes found connected with a side-chapel, a parvise, or a tower-chamber. Their usual height is about 4 ft. from the ground, extending upwards from 2 to 10 ft. Narrow at first, they were gradually enlarged and broadened, as at St. Clement's and St. Peter's churches in Sandwich. Sometimes when near a side-altar they were utilised as a credence, or had a _piscina_ sunk in them (_cf._ Crawley Church in Hampshire)--and it is not impossible that the only real squint or hagioscope in St. Martin's Church was through the back of the existing piscina. The other openings, as I have said, might have been used as lepers' windows, or for penitents. The tower was added in the fourteenth century. It is somewhat squat, and crowned with a pyramidal top. It measures 16 ft. by 13 ft. 3 in. in length and width, with two large buttresses on the west side, each projecting 4 ft. 3 in. It is built principally of flint with a slight intermixture of thin mediæval tiles, and has three louvre windows, one of which, with the peculiar "long and short" features of Saxon stone work, may have been transferred there from some other portion of the church. The building of this tower has probably destroyed some interesting feature, that stood at the west end of the original church. This may have been a western apse (so common in early basilicas) or perhaps a baptistery, or a chamber with an arch on each of its four sides. Whatever it be, is at present a matter of conjecture, but further explorations may solve the mystery; and wise men will forbear to dogmatise, when their positive theories may at any moment be overthrown. =Description of the interior.=--The gradual ascent to St. Martin's Church from the lych-gate is somewhat remarkable. After turning a sharp corner in the churchyard path, you walk up nine steps to the Western Door, and from this door there is an ascent of eleven steps to the altar. This much resembles what is so noticeable a feature in Canterbury Cathedral. On the south wall of the tower-porch there is inserted a monumental stone, about which there has been a good deal of discussion. It has been described as a piece of a Roman coffin, but this is clearly a mistake. Both the character of the inscription, and the chamfering of the upper part, not unlike the tomb of Stephen Langton in St. Michael's Chapel in the Cathedral, show that it may be attributed to the thirteenth century. The letters are fragmentary, and slightly indistinct. We can, however, make out [dagger] [iota] [reverse solidus], and on the other side [reverse epsilon] ARISCVS. It has been suggested that this word may have been "Mariscus," and then the stone might possibly have been the boundary-stone of a marsh; but I think there can be no doubt that it is an ordinary sepulchral slab. Till two years ago, the first feeling of visitors to the church was one of profound disappointment. They had been informed that St. Martin's was the oldest church in England; but the proofs of antiquity were not obvious at a casual glance, and the Early English chancel arch presented itself most obtrusively to the view, the walls of the nave, too, being covered with a thick layer of modern-looking yellowish plaster. It is rather amusing, sometimes, to hear the comments and to observe the behaviour of casual visitors. Many of them are from the United States of America, where the church is placed on the "list of sights" to be seen during their European tour. A few of the more unintelligent put their heads inside the building for two or three minutes, say to one another "this is an interesting old church," and then walk away with a proud consciousness that they have _done_ St. Martin's. The present writer remembers lionising a party of Americans, and completely failing to engross their attention by any historical or antiquarian description. At last, in despair, he asked them to write their names in the visitors' book kept in the vestry, where it so happened that the last names written were those of the Duchess of Edinburgh and her children. Then their interest was at once aroused, and they went away in a state of perfect happiness because their autographs were inscribed in the same page as those of Royalty! At another time the writer was preaching a sermon, on the festival of St. Martin, bishop and confessor. He was surprised to notice an allusion to his sermon in one of the leading London newspapers on the following day, with a general tone of satisfaction that Protestant England still entertained such devotion and reverence for the great _Martin Luther_, to whom (in the correspondent's imagination) the church was dedicated! Happily such ignorance is scarcely now possible, and the stripping of the plaster from the nave, and also from the lower portion of the chancel, reveals at once the antiquity of the church, so that the attention of every one of the 10,000 tourists who annually visit it is arrested (whether they will or no) by the rough uncoated walls. This manifest improvement has been carried out with the kind consent and cordial assistance of the Rev. L. J. White-Thomson, the present rector. It is very difficult now to realise what the church must have looked like in the earliest times. Even its shape then has been a fierce subject of dispute. Whether the chancel was added to the nave, or the nave to the chancel, or whether there was only the present chancel extended for a considerable distance westward, we may perhaps assume, in the light of very recent investigation, that there was an original chancel arch built of Roman bricks, not unlike the arch in St. Mary's Church at Dover Castle--and in the small, possibly apsidal, chancel the high altar would have stood, about 18 to 20 feet eastward of the arch. At a later period there was a _Rood-beam_ mentioned in the "Cross Light on the Rood-loft," and alluded to in the burial of John Hougham "before the High Cross in the Nave." The holes made for the insertion of this Rood-beam may still be seen in the north-east and south-east angles of the nave, about 6 ft. distant from the joints of the chancel arch, and 10 ft. above the ground. It at one time occurred to us as possible that the "High Cross in the Nave" might have had a parallel in the great stone cross found in front of the central arch between the nave and chancel at Reculver. "One of the fairest and most stately Crosses (says Leland) I ever saw--nine feet, as I guess, in height. It standeth like a fair column." In mediæval times, we learn from the wills of parishioners that there were in the church images of St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Christopher, St. Nicholas and St. Erasmus; and each of them had a light burning before it. How these images were distributed we have no evidence to determine, but (perhaps) they were arranged in the following manner:--Image of St. Martin at the east end, of St. Mary and St. Nicholas in the nave on each side of the chancel arch, and the images of St. Christopher and St. Erasmus at the west end of the church. The high altar, according to custom, was evidently dedicated to St. Martin, the altar on the north-east side of the nave to the Blessed Virgin, and that on the south-east side to St. Nicholas. We read that William Harry left money for a waxlight burning before the image of St. Nicholas, "where the priest was to sing the testator's daily mass"; and there was a "Brotherhood of St. Nicholas," at whose cost fifteen masses were to be said for the soul of Thomas Fayrhand (A.D. 1505). Some astonishment may be caused, at first sight, by the mention of _St. Erasmus_, but we learn from other sources that he was a popular saint in England. Some glass, for instance, in the church of St. Botolph, Lullingstone, represents a legend of his martyrdom, his prostrate body lying beneath a windlass, by the winding of which the saint is being disembowelled. He is reported to have suffered death in the Diocletian persecution at Formiæ, where Gregory the Great testifies that his body was still remaining, though it was afterwards translated to Cajeta. Under the appellation of St. Elmo, he is still invoked by Mediterranean sailors. [Illustration: THE FONT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] Though by no means the earliest feature in point of date, yet the =Font= is the most conspicuous object to one entering the church. It stands now at the south-west corner, but, until fifty years ago, it stood in the middle of the nave. We know its exact position because Stephen Fokys or Falkes (1506) directed that he should be buried "before the font," and his gravestone, with a small brass inserted, is still remaining. This brass bears the following inscription:--"Pray for the souls of Stevyn Falkes and Alys his wife: the which deceased the 10th day of May the year of our Lord 1506. On whose souls Jesu have mercy." The _Font_ is circular or tub-shaped, 2 ft. 5 in. high, excluding the base on which it stands: or 3 ft. 1 in. with the base, which looks like an old Norman mill-stone, and was probably added when the font was moved to its present position. On examining the inside of the font a few years ago, for the purpose of inserting a small leaden pipe to carry away the baptismal water, we found that this base-stone had a square opening in the centre, and bore Norman toolmarks, which it would probably not have done had it not been originally exposed to external view. The diameter of the inner basin of the font is 1 ft. 10 in., that of the outside 2 ft. 6-½ in., the circumference round the outside being 8 ft. 2 in. It consists of a rim and three tiers. The three tiers are made up of some twenty-two distinct stones, rounded externally, and fitted in their place. The _lower_ tier is embellished with a continuous pattern of scroll-work: the _second_ with groups of circles intertwining one another (what Hasted calls a hieroglyphical true-lover's knot), with the exception of one stone, which has six comparatively plain circles carved upon it: the _third_ tier is of a different character, exhibiting arches intersecting each other. At the top is a _rim_, the ornamentation of which corresponds with that of the two lower tiers, except one part in which there is a kind of dog-tooth work, like stars cut in half. It has been suggested that the upper portion of this rim was cut away for the purpose of forming a ledge on which a tall cover might firmly rest. There are still remains of the staple by which the cover was secured, and the font may have been locked up in the time of Cromwell, to prevent its desecration. The font was for a long time covered with a thick coat of whitewash. It is lined with lead, extending downwards to a depth of 14 inches, and the space between the lead and the bottom of the font is now filled up with rough blocks of Caen stone and rubbish. It has probably been taken to pieces and moved more than once. An attempt was made, by drawing tracings of the several stones separately, to reorganise it (on paper) in a consistent and continuous pattern, but, unfortunately, there are two or three stones that will not fit in with the rest. Now, as to the =date of the Font=, there is great diversity of opinion. The character of the carving naturally suggests that it is of the later Norman period, and is similar to that found in St. Clement's Church, Sandwich, in the cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, and elsewhere. But this is by no means conclusive; for, if the font was an historical or unusually ancient one, some pious person might have been inclined to do honour to it by decoration. It may be pointed out that this decoration is not _carving_ at all, but has been done with a small chisel of not more than a quarter of an inch, and by no able hand. Instances have been adduced of "smartening up" of a similar character. It is certain that the composition of the font is most unusual. The Norman fonts were, as a rule, scooped out of a single stone, as we see, _e.g._ at Lincoln Cathedral, Sapcote, Green's Norton, Belton, Aswarly, Darenth, and several other places. Moreover, if (which is somewhat uncertain) St. Martin's font is of Caen stone, which the Normans possessed abundantly, and which is easily worked, it appears improbable that they would have built it up in such a rude manner of twenty-two separate stones Is there any other existing font composed in the same manner? It was said that there is, or was, at Lewknor and at Woburn. But the vicar of Lewknor, examining his font at our request, writes that, so far as he can see, it is made of _one_ stone: while the church at Woburn has been rebuilt during the last thirty years, and no one knows what has become of the original font. A general statement that we have no Saxon fonts existing is valueless, and incapable of proof; and we are more inclined to agree with Mr F. A. Paley ("Introduction to Illustrations of Baptismal Fonts") that "we cannot doubt that a considerable number of fonts now exist in England, wherein the Saxon infant received the waters of baptism." [Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. MARTIN'S (SHOWING WEST WALL OF NAVE). _Noakes, Canterbury, Photo._] The most ancient form of fonts was octagonal, or tub-shaped, built like a tower, as described by St. Paulinus of Nola. Some Norman fonts are round; more often, perhaps, they are of square form, sometimes profusely decorated with grotesque imagery, and supported by a central massive circular stem. If we take away the sketchy chiselling, for which we have suggested a possible reason, no one would consider the St. Martin's font to be of Norman workmanship. Moreover, the sides of the font internally are extremely rough, and it is unlike the Normans to bestow so little in the way of finish. We may conclude (as I have said) with some confidence that Ethelbert was baptised in St. Martin's Church. No traces have been discovered there of a baptistery--nor, indeed, of any in England before that erected (about 750) by Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the east of the Cathedral. But this does not militate against the theory that he was baptised by _affusion_, even though not from the present font notwithstanding traditional evidence to this effect in the seals before alluded to. Reverence and probability alike protest against the idea, entertained by one or two distinguished antiquaries, that the font is nothing but the circular erection once surrounding the top of a well, or _puteus_, as depicted by Eadwin (1130-1174) in his plan of the herbarium of the cathedral. [Illustration: Window openings in West wall of St. Martin's, Cant. (By G. M. Livett.)] Next to the font, we must direct attention to the "=West Wall of the Nave.=" Rugged and uneven as it now appears, there is still method in its building. Its general character is that of roughly-hewn Kentish rag-stones (with occasional blocks of chalk) bonded together by Roman bricks, arranged in sometimes a single, sometimes a double or even triple, course. Here and there a single course of stones lies between the courses of bricks, which are then 9 ins. apart. In other portions of the wall five or six courses of stone intervene between the courses of bricks, so that the courses of stones and bricks do not alternate regularly. The original face of the wall is much obscured by sundry patchings and repairs, and (on the north side) by the erection of a monumental tablet, lately removed to the tower-porch. In the centre, over the present doorway, is an _arch_ or opening, now filled up with courses of Roman bricks and rubble of chalk or flint. The arch reaches to a height of 17 or 18 ft. above the floor level, a few inches of the crown having been cut away, and is on an average 7 ft. 2 in. wide. Whether it reached originally down to the ground, or was merely an opening of the nature of a window, cannot be positively settled, as the fillings-up have not yet been removed. On either side of the arch, at a distance of 2 ft., are two _windows_ (the upper 18 ins. of which, as they now appear, are an extension made in Saxon or Norman times). The original windows (below this extension) have their jambs of chalk-blocks filled in with _white_ mortar, while the arches are turned in Roman bricks and rough voussoirs of Kentish rag-stone, with interstices of bright _pink_ mortar. These windows are certainly built _more Romano_, and no sufficient evidence has yet been brought forward to upset the opinion strongly held by many archæologists--that they are _Roman_. The variation of the mortar used in their construction from _white_ mortar in the jambs to _pink_ mortar in the voussoirs of the arch is a very noticeable feature, and can be exactly paralleled in the Roman Pharos at Dover. It is certainly _prima facie_, a strong evidence of Roman workmanship. The windows are 2 ft. 8 in. wide, and would have measured 4 ft. from sill to crown. Their jambs are splayed at an angle that would allow about 12 ins. for the actual opening on the outer face of the wall. Their sills are respectively 9 ft. 9 in. and 10 ft. above the ground level, and the lower portion of the south window is filled up with thin mediæval tiles, such as we find here and there in the fourteenth-century tower, during the building of which the _extended_ windows were undoubtedly blocked up. These _extended_ windows have no voussoirs, but were cut out of the original walling, and simply plastered. Near them are portions of pink plaster still adhering to the wall. Excavations have been made below the northern portion of this western wall in hopes of finding some of the original flooring of the church, but could not be further prosecuted because vaults, and even detached skeletons, were met with at a distance of only one foot below the existing pews. The style of the north and south walls of the nave is much the same as that of the western wall; and behind the wood-work are considerable pieces of pink plaster, remarkable both for its hardness and texture. About this plaster we must say a few words, as it is, in our opinion, an important piece of evidence. It is composed of carbonate of lime imperfectly burned, of silicious sand, and pounded Roman brick, in almost equal proportions. It is true that some examples of this plaster have been occasionally found in Saxon, Norman, and even Early English buildings, but they are feeble imitations, distinguishable by the greater preponderance of sand, neither so bright nor crisp in section, more soft and pliable, and of a dullish colour. Two pieces of plaster were put side by side, one from St. Martin's and another from a Roman villa at Wingham, and to an experienced eye the texture was identical, except that the latter was rather thinner. And on our sending to such an undoubted expert as Mr J. T. Irvine (who had previously expressed much scepticism as to the Roman claims of St. Martin's, though he candidly confessed that he had not seen our recent explorations) a specimen of this plaster, he wrote in reply that, "both as regards texture of tile and lime mixture, and the colour produced thereby in section, it certainly seem to accord with that of _good Roman date_." About the middle of the north wall of the nave is a doorway, 4 ft. 2 in. wide, with jambs of Caen stones of irregular size, some of them showing marks of axe-tooling. The date of this doorway is uncertain. The head is destroyed and the rubble filling-up irregular, but the general appearance seems to favour the theory that it is Norman. On the east side of the doorway is a =stoup= for Holy Water, certainly of great antiquity. The shape is not regular, but it may be described roughly as measuring 20 by 17 inches. At the south-east corner is the celebrated Norman =piscina=, said to be one of the earliest and most beautiful in England. The size of the actual opening is 13 by 7-½ inches with additional 4 inches to the top of the tympanum. Its jambs are of Caen stone, with the usual tool-marks. In it are three curious holes, two above and one below, penetrating about 2 inches into the stone. What these holes were intended for has been a great puzzle, but perhaps short poles were inserted in them which supported an ornamental canopy. It is not impossible that the piscina was originally placed somewhere nearer the east wall of the nave. [Illustration: NORMAN PISCINA. (From a Photograph by Miss M. Bruce.)] On the removal of the flooring beneath the piscina there was found a hole measuring 2 ft. by 1 ft. 8 in. and 5 ins. deep with a bottom of rough concrete, and 3 feet away were some =foundations of a wall= running parallel to the south wall. These foundations, chiefly consisting of flint, are about 18 ins. wide and 15 in. deep, though in parts rather fragmentary, and they were at first supposed to be connected with the parclose of the Altar of St. Nicholas, which formerly stood there. But Mr Livett opens out another possibility. He writes to us as follows:--"The portion of the east wall of the Nave, into which the south respond of the Chancel Arch is bonded, is similar in character and material to the brick walling of the western part of the _Chancel_, with which therefore, rather than with the _Nave_, it must be identified in date and construction. The same may be said of the corresponding bit of wall on the north side, which, however, has been more interfered with by the bondings of later work. In the face of the bit of wall on the south side, though rough and plastered with hard cement, may be detected the broken bonders of a wall that formerly ran westwards from it, and exactly in a line with the south wall of the Chancel. The vertical line of the junction of the southern face of the destroyed wall with the bit of wall under examination can be traced clearly. It has all the proper signs of bonding, precisely similar in treatment to the signs of bonding seen on the face of the south wall of the Chancel immediately above the foundations of the Adjunct. The foundations discovered under the flooring of the Nave are in a position to have carried this destroyed wall. Though they are fragmentary, their material and depth correspond exactly with the foundations of the Chancel wall below the brick footings thereof. I drew Mr W. H. St. John Hope's attention to the signs of bonding which I have described, and from recent correspondence with him I infer that he accepts the evidence as sufficient to prove the former existence of a destroyed wall. The recovery of this wall running in the direction described, and contemporaneous in date with the western part of the Chancel, is an important factor in the consideration of the relative dates of the existing Chancel and Nave." Before quitting the nave, the beautiful open roof of which deserves admiration, we must say a few words about a door or window opening from the west wall into the tower. This is of the Decorated period, and was perhaps connected with a tower-chamber (used in many old churches, both as a sleeping-room, and for a study); or the watchers, who guarded the church, would be able to see from thence the shrines with their relics and jewels, or it may have been to enable the sacristan to know the exact moment for ringing the Sanctus bell at the elevation of the Host, so that the sick in their chambers, the labourers in the fields, and the faithful in the church might join in a common act of adoration. Let us now proceed to the =chancel=. The whole of the modern stalls were temporarily removed with a view of facilitating further investigations underground; but here, as in the nave, the excavations were almost entirely put a stop to by the existence of vaults and graves, extending right up to the walls on either side. [Illustration: CHANCEL OF ST. MARTIN'S (SHOWING SEDILE, SAXON DOORWAY, etc.). _Noakes, Canterbury, Photo._] Owing to various circumstances, it has not been considered advisable, for the present, to strip the plaster from the chancel walls above the height of seven or eight feet, or east of the altar rails. Enough, however, has been done to show clearly that the present chancel may be assigned to two, and probably to three, distinct periods. For a distance of twenty feet eastward on each side of the chancel arch, the walls are built of Roman bricks laid evenly upon one another, _four bricks_ (as I have before said), with their interstices of mortar, occupying _one foot_. This portion of the church shows very careful workmanship. It has been attributed by some to the time, and even the personal supervision, of St. Augustine himself, but we think that with greater probability it may be considered as _Roman_ building. [Illustration: SEDILE. (From a Photograph by Miss M. Blore.)] We have already described the square-headed doorway, but may add that (during the present spring) the lepers' window has been traced inwards to a depth of 1 ft. 8 in. from the exterior of the wall. From this _square-headed_ doorway the _semi-circular_ one (commented on in our description of the exterior of the church) is 4 ft. 2 in. distant. Beyond this the early brick wall extends eastward for 6 ft. 9 in. till we reach a break in it, which was clearly the termination of the original chancel. For the last two feet the work is somewhat irregular, and from this circumstance, and from some evidence discovered at this spot on the outside, it has been conjectured that here we have the beginning of a Roman apse (_cf._ Appendix C). Eastward of this break, the walling is of different workmanship, showing with the mortar-joints six bricks to a foot, and after 3 ft. 5 in. we come to a =Sedile=, which was blocked up with mediæval brickwork, and opened out a short time ago. It had apparently a slightly pointed arch, of which about five inches have been cut away. The springing line is about 2 ft. 9-½ in. above the seat; the radii are about 3 ft. 9 in., their centres being on the springing line. This would fix its measurements as follows:--Span, 5 ft.; depth, about 1 ft. 3 in.; height from seat to springing line, 2 ft. 9-½; in.; and from seat to apex, about 6 ft. 4 in. A difficulty has arisen as to the date of the sedile from the fact that the top of it has been cut away by the insertion of a lancet window, appearing at first sight to belong to the Early English period, so that the sedile would seem as if it must be of an earlier date than the window. But Mr Livett, though believing it not impossible that the sedile and lancet window were built at the same time, and the sill of the window altered afterwards, thinks it more probable that the sedile and its adjoining brickwork were built late in the twelfth century, and the lancet window inserted subsequently, perhaps in the fourteenth century. The position of the sedile would seem to point out that the high altar stood, in Early English times, immediately east of the step whereon the present altar rails are placed. The east wall of the church was partially pulled down and rebuilt about fifty years ago, to which period we owe the pseudo-Norman work of the reredos. The lancet windows were filled at that time with an ill-drawn representation of the Crucifixion in the centre, and on each side with the Ten Commandments, which were slowly fading away. Inside the altar rails is an =aumbry=, 15 by 14 inches, with a wooden door of "linen pattern," dating probably from the time of Henry VII. The recess inside the door extends to a depth of 18 inches, and is still in use. On the north side of the chancel is an arch surmounting a tomb, the oolite slab of which measures 6 ft. 6 in. long by 2 ft. wide at the top, and 1 ft. 6 in. wide at the foot. This tomb is apparently ancient. On the slab is an incision that probably contained a cross. At the back of the recess, in the wall, is an elegant Latin inscription, composed by Bishop Claughton (of St. Albans) and placed on a brass there by Canon Chesshyre, a former rector, to this effect: "If by chance anywhere near here lie the remains of Bertha, wife of King Ethelbert, let them rest in peace till the last coming of the Lord Jesus." [Illustration: (SO-CALLED) QUEEN BERTHA'S TOMB.] The arch above the tomb is a poor imitation of a Norman one, and stands under a curious round-headed opening in the wall, which may mark the position of a Norman window. This tomb was always shown as "Queen Bertha's," and is still often called so even in the present day, owing to the statement that the queen was buried "in porticu Sancti Martini"; but this, of course, refers to the apse or transept of St. Martin's Chapel in the monastery church of St. Augustine, where Bertha was laid on the south side of the altar. The tomb was opened on January 12th, 1883, and beneath the covering slab of oolite was discovered a coffin of stone, hollowed out into the shape of the body, and having a small semi-circular opening (about 9 inches in diameter) for the head of the corpse. This latter opening had been bricked off from the rest of the tomb, and was thus formed into a receptacle for fragments of bones and other human remains, the rest of the coffin being filled up with flints, bricks, and rubbish. The bones were pronounced by a surgeon who was present to be probably those of an elderly man, aged about seventy years, and of small proportions. This was an apparent confirmation of a theory previously broached--viz. that the tomb possibly contained the remains of the restorer of the church in the thirteenth century. But alas for hasty conclusions! We have since ascertained that the tomb had been opened before 1844, and, so far as one can trust to oral tradition, it was then empty, except for a little human dust. Our informant also told us that there was a small cross, made of grass, which crumbled away when exposed to the air, but he was evidently confusing this with the cross made of two twigs that was found at the opening of Henry IV.'s tomb in the Cathedral. Where, then, did the bones come from? There is an arch of an Edwardian monument in the vestry, but no coffin underneath; and our conjecture is that, when the present vestry (a kind of recess) was thrown out from the church, the tomb, which stood in the way, was moved back to its outer wall, and the bones were transferred to the so-called tomb of Queen Bertha. It is possible that the coffin-lid found in the square-headed Roman doorway was also taken from the same source. So far as we can ascertain, no authentic records were kept at the time of the restoration of the church in 1844-45, which was done without a faculty. There is no doubt that its condition then was very dilapidated, and that we owe almost its actual preservation to the munificent liberality of Mr Daniel Finch and the careful judgment of its rector, Canon Chesshyre; but we must necessarily regret the absence of full particulars, and the opportunities that were then lost of exploring thoroughly the walls, floors, and general antiquities of the church. [Illustration: CHRISMATORY (SHUT). (From a Photograph by Mrs W. A. Lochée.)] On the top of the wall-plate was found a very interesting =chrismatory=, lately in the possession of Mrs Chesshyre of Barton Court, but now placed in a vestry-drawer used as a museum for curiosities connected with the church. It cannot lay claim to the same renown as the =ampulla= said to have been used at the baptism of Clovis, when legend relates that the clerk who bore the chrism was prevented by the crowd from reaching his proper station, and, as the moment of unction arrived, St. Remi raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, "when lo! suddenly a dove, white as snow, flew towards him, bearing down in his beak an ampulla filled with chrism from above." Not even the most enthusiastic devotee of St. Martin's could claim this chrismatory as having been used at the baptism of Ethelbert, for it is clearly of the date of the fourteenth century. At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 16th, 1880, it was thus described:--"It is a brass box 6 inches long, 2 inches broad, and 2 inches high. The lid is high-pitched, with slanting gable-ends nearly equilateral, and surmounted by a vertical crest or ridge pierced with quatrefoils. The extreme height of the lid is 2-3/8 inches; that of the vertical crest is 7/8 inch. The lid is attached behind by two hinges, each ½ inch broad, and of which the raised plates are riveted to the back and lid of the box. The lid is fastened, not locked, by a hasp attached by a plate, and dropping on to a moveable catch on the face of the box. The upper and lower edges of the box, and its ridge, are mounted with mouldings attached by rivets. On opening the lid we found three oil-pots, all of them in fragments, and to none of them are the lids still remaining. At the bottom of the pots, however, are traces of some fibrous material. The pots, unlike the box itself, are of pewter." The necessity of keeping the three oils--(1) the holy chrism, (2) the oil for the sick, (3) the oil for catechumens--in distinct compartments is insisted upon by Archbishop Ælfric: "Ye ought to have three flasks ready for the three oils, for we dare not put them together in one oil vessel, because each of them is hallowed apart for a particular service." The oil was contained in tow or cotton wool on a metal prong, and so moistened either the thumb of the priest or the person of the sick. On the wall pierced through by the new vestry arch some remains were discovered of an old fresco, which represents the Crucifixion of our Lord, with St. John and the Blessed Virgin standing before the Cross. From the character of the painting (which was copied at the time), we are inclined to assign it to the fourteenth century. At the same part of the church, while an opening was made ten years ago for the organ pipes, we came across some solid oak beams running horizontally. They are extremely hard, though worm-eaten on the surface: and resting as they were on the top of the wall (which consisted of eight feet of Roman brick and six feet of apparently rough Saxon work), at the height of fourteen feet from the ground, they may have formed portions of a Saxon roof. [Illustration: CHRISMATORY (OPEN) SHOWING THE THREE OIL-POTS.] The floor of the chancel is in part occupied by sepulchral slabs; one to Sir John Finch (whose monument is described below), which has the following inscription:--"Here is committed to the Earth, that it may return to Earth, whatever was mortal of John Finch, Baron Fordwich, of the ancient and noble family of Eastwell, whom it pleased, in preference to any epitaph, to have this inscribed on his sepulchral stone, 'Here lies the most humble servant of the best of Kings.'" Another is that of Sir Henry Palmer of Howletts, father of thirteen children, obiit December 10th, 1659. A third of Maria, wife of Edward Keddell, of the Society of New Inn, London, obiit 1659, ætat: twenty. The descendants of this Keddell are now flourishing in America. The latter stone was removed when the new tile pavement was laid down, and placed in the immediately adjacent wall. It is described in a record of the last century as having been at that time in the _Nave_. There are also two brasses, side by side, in a state of perfect preservation. The one to the south is in memory of Michael Fraunces, with a Latin inscription: "Here rest beneath this marble the bodies of Michael Fraunces, gentleman, and of Jane his wife, daughter of William Quilter, Esquire. The wife died on the 4th, the husband on the 10th, of January 1587. Their souls are in the enjoyment of heaven." The brass on the north side contains an effigy, and the following words written underneath: "Here lyeth Thomas Stoughton, late of Ashe, in the countie of Kent, gentleman, who _depted_ this life the xii^{th} of June 1591." Between and around these brasses is a tesselated pavement, not unlike a Roman pattern. A great part of it is modern, but some portion was pronounced by Mr Minton's chief workman to be very old, and it is not impossible that a few of the tiles may date from a pre-Norman period. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Fig. 2.] There is also, just at the entrance to the Sacrarium, a small cross let into the floor, which is apparently the one described by Hasted, who speaks of it as a "Cross of white marble, which has been much noticed by the curious as of great antiquity. It is about nine inches long and six wide." He gives a representation of it, which, however, is inaccurate, for he represents it as of this shape, as fig. 1, whereas in reality it is as fig. 2, and its dimensions are 18 inches by 6-½ inches. We can only account for this variation by supposing that the upper part of the cross had been in his time sunk into the ground, and partially covered by the pavement. The largest, and perhaps the principal, monument on the walls is a cumbrous one on the south of the Sacrarium, to John Finch, Baron Fordwich, who is described as Advocate-General and Chancellor of Queen Henrietta Maria, Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, Privy Councillor, and Keeper of the Great Seal. He is remarkable in history as having been the Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of Charles I., who was held down in his chair by Hobbes and others, in order that the protest against the infraction of the Petition of Right might be passed. "Full of offices, full of days, he migrated hence to the Ancient of Days," aged 77, on November 20, 1660. Beneath the monument there used to stand an altar-tomb enclosed with iron rails, and on a tablet near some Latin verses, composed by Charles Fotherby in the time of Charles II., "to a very noble and distinguished man." The other monuments in the church are not of any general interest. Several of those mentioned by Hasted have already disappeared, including one to Giles Talbot, rector, in 1524. The =Bells= are three in number. One of them has no inscription, the second bears simply the date 1641, and on the third, in old English characters, is the legend "Sancta Caterina, ora pro nobis." Little need be said about the modern restorations and additions. The panelling of solid foreign oak, including the pews, was inserted by Mr Daniel Finch in 1844. A new pulpit and stone credence-table have also been added: the floor of the chancel has been re-tiled; the former vestry has been turned into an organ-chamber, and, where the organ once stood, a new vestry has been made. In it are placed old engravings of the church and a copy of the fresco which has already been described. In the drawer-museum there are kept, besides the chrismatory, some Saxon beads, fac-similes of the Merovingian coins, portions of the Roman (heathen) altar, and some pieces of pink plaster. The altar, altar cross, candlesticks, etc., are new, as well as a large majority of the stained glass windows, in which the leading idea has been, as far as possible, to perpetuate events or persons connected with early Christian history. The three lights of the east window represent St. Augustine (1) landing at Ebb's Fleet, (2) entering Canterbury down St. Martin's Hill, and (3) baptising King Ethelbert; also (4) Queen Bertha attending Christian worship. In other windows of the chancel are pictures of the death of St. Martin, and the closing scene in the life of the Venerable Bede; while in the vestry are two single figures, erroneously supposed to be those of Pope Gregory and Bishop Lindhard, which were purchased some fifty years ago in Wardour Street. On the south side of the =Nave= is a window representing various scenes in the Life of St. Martin--_e.g._ his entrance into the army, his consecration as bishop, his healing a leper, etc.--while in the baptistery is the well-known incident in the Forum at Rome, "Non Angli sed Angeli." In a memorial window on the north side, near the pulpit, are four female figures--Queen Bertha, her daughter St. Ethelburga, St. Dorothea, and St. Margaret of Antioch; and in the north-west a picture of St. Martin dividing his cloak, probably copied from Vandyke. This latter window, as well as one in the tower, was painted in 1851 by a Miss Harriet Ludlow Clarke, who died at Cannes in 1866, and was a lady of some taste and distinction. The =Churchyard=, practically the only one now in use in Canterbury, though St. Gregory's and St. Dunstan's churchyards are open for occasional interments, has come to be regarded as the "Campo Santo" of the city. In modern times the ground has been opened to receive the remains of many distinguished priests and laymen, among whom we may mention Dean Alford, Dean Payne-Smith, Bishop Parry and Canon Robertson (the ecclesiastical historian). Not very far from the lych-gate is a curious floriated cross, the legend on which seems to have puzzled many writers on the history of the church, though it bears distinctly on the front "Hew Whyte," and on the back "and Alys his wife." It is very probable that this is not a memorial cross, but a finial gable cross removed from the east of the chancel roof, and originally placed there in 1484 by Hew Whyte, who was a benefactor to the church. The cross has had many adventures. It was taken from the churchyard during the last century, and about thirty years ago was reposing as an ornament in the garden of a Canterbury citizen, but was brought back in 1876, and mounted on a pedestal. In the _Valor Ecclesiasticus_, compiled in the twenty-sixth year of King Henry VIII., the value of the living for "tithes predyall and personal, oblations, and other spiritual yearly profits" is estimated at £9, and the yearly tenths at 18s., which, in the first year of Edward VI., were reduced to £6, 5s. and 12s. 2d. respectively. Hasted remarks that in 1588 it was valued at £20, and there were 71 communicants. In 1640 it was valued at £40, with 70 communicants. And it appears by the Survey of the King's Commissioners in the second year of the reign of Edward VI. that there were _obit_ lands given and bequeathed by divers persons, that one yearly _obit_ should be kept in this church for ever: the yearly value of which lands was 23s. 4d., of which the distribution to the poor was 12d., and outgoings 21d., leaving 20s. 7d. clear. Among the =charities= bequeathed we find (1) _Stephen Falkes_ (1506) ordered that the yearly rents and profits coming off the little messuage, with its appurtenances, in which Gregory Bradley then dwelt, should wholly remain to the churchwardens of St. Martin's for ever, for the reparation of the church. (2) _Sir Henry Palmer_, Knt., of Bekesbourne (probably the father of the Sir Henry Palmer now interred in the chancel), by his will in 1611 gave 10s., to be yearly paid out of his Manor of Well Court, to the minister and churchwardens of the parish towards the relief of the poor of St. Martin's. Both these charities have disappeared, but there are still in existence (3) the bequest of _Dame Mabella Finch_ of £100, to be paid into the hands of Mr Bingham, and three such other of the ablest inhabitants of the parish of St. Martin, to be by them and the churchwardens and overseers of it, and their successors for ever, employed for the use and benefit of the then and hereafter poor of this parish. (An annuity of £10 bequeathed at the same time to the rector, and his successors, has disappeared.) (4) _James William Bain_ left (in 1861) the sum of £100 Consols, the proceeds to be expended for the repair of his tomb from time to time, and any residue for the benefit of the poor of the parish. The population of the parish at the last census was 211, and the nett annual value of the benefice is estimated at £220. The =Registers= date only from 1662, the preceding Registers having been lost. No entries whatever are found in them except the bare enumeration of births, marriages, and deaths. The church was originally exempt, and is still exempt (as we have stated before), from the jurisdiction of the Archdeacon of Canterbury. The patronage of the living continued solely in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury till the church was united, in 1681, with the neighbouring church of St. Paul, by the mutual consent of the Archbishop and the Chapter of Canterbury, the patrons of the latter. For nearly two hundred years after this time the patronage was vested in the Archbishop, and Dean and chapter, alternately, until a few years ago, when it was transferred back to the Archbishop alone. Hasted gives a full account of the manor of Caldicot, lying within the _Borough of St. Martin_, which was part of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, and is thus described in Domesday Book: "The archbishop himself holds the Ville, which is called St. Martins: it belongs to Estursete, and lies in that hundred; it was taxed at one suling and one half ... In demesne there are two carucates and thirty-six borderers. To this land there belong seven burgesses in Canterbury, paying eight shillings and fourpence: there are five mills of twenty shillings, and a small wood." Canon Scott Robertson contended, in an able article on the "Saxon Ville of St. Martin," that, as this is contained in the survey of Aldington, the said ville was a limb of the manor of Aldington, and is therefore connected with the oratory of St. Martin at Romney. But he was clearly mistaken--the ville is distinctly said to "pertain to Estursete, and to lie in that hundred," which is now named Westgate, in Canterbury. When Lanfranc divided the estates of the archbishop from those of the newly-formed chapter, the different estates were variously grouped together under the larger manors, and sometimes shifted from one to another, for the convenience (no doubt) of their management. The manor was appropriated afterwards to the use of the archbishop's table, till Archbishop Reynolds gave it, at the earnest desire of the monks, "to the Prior and Convent, inasmuch as it was a convenient place for them to retire to, and recreate themselves, when they were wearied out and tired, it being at no great distance from their Monastery." In the time of Edward I. a question arose whether the _Borough of St. Martin's_ was within the Liberties of the city, and the jury found "that in future it should be subject and answerable with the rest of the Citizens in all those matters which belong to the Crown: that all residents and dwellers in the borough ought to come four times a year to the hundred of Burgate, at the summons of the bailiffs of the city. And in like manner that they ought to come to the Portmote of the City, as often as the citizens should cause a common meeting to be summoned by the blowing of the horn." [Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S. (From an Old Print.)] "And so we leave _St. Martin's_. Only we wish that for the venerable antiquity of the Church and some time Episcopal estate of the place--things that have much dignified both--it may always flourish in the maintenance of its due rights and respects." With these words of an old writer, we may conclude our description of the church. In an =Appendix= we have summed up a few remarks on the controversy that has been raging for the last few years as to the exact origin of the building. Those who argue against its Roman date bid us be content with the assurance that it is undoubtedly the oldest church in England, and tell us that, when St. Augustine knew it, it was small, but quite large enough for the small body of Christians who came over here with Queen Bertha, that it was probably built for her and them, though it may have been on the site of a British church. This gives us a continuous record of 1300 years and more. But we are _not_ content! for we believe that it is the oldest existing church in _Europe_. Older than the churches of St. Maria Maggiore and St. Pudenziana in Rome; than St. Croce, St. Francisco, St. Vitale, St. Apollinare in Classe and St. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna. Such churches as St. John Lateran, St. Paolo fuori le Mura and St. Clemente cannot enter into the comparison, for they have been almost entirely rebuilt--and in France and Germany nothing has survived down to our own time, except a few fragments of the many large churches constructed during the Roman occupation. We all desire that _truth_ should prevail; but that truth must be established by intimate acquaintance with every detail of the building and a knowledge of the latest explorations, and not depend on facts accepted from hearsay, or a desire to establish any preconceived theory. Whatever be the decision ultimately arrived at, none can doubt that _St. Martin's_ is one of our grandest historical monuments. Small as it is, it may yet vie with the magnificent cathedral of Christ Church in the glorious associations that have clustered round its hallowed walls, and in point of antiquity surpasses it by several centuries. It has witnessed the progress of the English nation from barbarism to civilisation. The ever-widening stream that has continued to flow from that tiny spring cannot fail to impress the earnest Christian with a lesson of trust in the mysterious ways of Providence. It has preserved its light burning almost continuously from the time of the small band of British Christians, of the worship of pious Queen Bertha and the great St. Augustine, down to that solemn commemoration of 1897, when within its sacred walls were gathered the representatives of the English Church which has spread into all quarters of the civilised and uncivilised world. APPENDIX A LIST OF RECTORS. PROBABLE DATE OF INSTITUTION John de Charleton 1314 Robert de Henney 1316 John de Bourn 1330 William de Castro 1333 John de Byngham 1349 Richard de Camsale 1349 Robert Hayward 1381 Thomas Bolter 1392 John Vag 1392 Robert Hubbyn 1408 John Lovelych 1419 Thomas Wotten 1428 William Welton 1434 Robert Hunt No Date John Bernard 1448 John Skye 1456 John Browne 1466 Giles Talbot 1509 William Heynys 1524 John Hichecocke 1539 Thomas Nicholls 1547 John Smyth 1552 David Robson 1560 Adam More 1576 Eustace Ffrensham 1578 John Mugge 1578 John Stubbs 1587 Richard Genvey 1591 Matthew Warner 1611 Rolando Vaughan 1637 William Osborne 1661 William Osborne (jun.) 1665 Owen Evans 1681 Thomas Lamprey 1743 John Airson 1761 Thomas Freeman 1788 Thomas Antony Mutlow 1808 J. E. N. Molesworth 1829 J. Stratton 1839 W. J. Chesshyre 1842 Thomas Hirst 1859 A. B. Strettell 1874 Leslie E. Goodwin 1882 Leonard J. White-Thomson 1894 =Thomas Bolter= exchanged with =John Vag=, who was incumbent of the chantry in the hospital of St. Thomas at Eastbridge, in the city of Canterbury. =John Skye= exchanged with =John Bernard=. He had formerly been rector of Dibdin, Hants. =John Browne=, a chaplain, became rector on the resignation of John Skye. =William Heynys= signed the Renunciation of the Papal Supremacy in 1534-5. =Eustace Ffrensham= became insane. APPENDIX B DATE OF THE CHURCH The revelation of fresh features of interest in the church by the recent explorations has attracted wide attention, and revived the controversy as to the probable date of the building. The whole subject was discussed in the spring of 1896 at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in London, after an able paper read by Mr W. H. St. John Hope. The question was also brought prominently forward at the Canterbury meeting of the Royal Archæological Institute in July 1896. What the newspapers called "The Battle of St. Martin's" raged with unabated vigour during the week, and, although many opinions were expressed with that _positiveness_ which is said to mark the true antiquary (a positiveness not always founded on personal knowledge), yet by some well-known experts no pains were spared, and no special and professional attainments were wanting, to determine the issue on a scientific basis. It may be true to the experience of human nature, but yet it seems a feeble conclusion, if we confess that after all this apparently exhaustive debate, the controversy on the main point is as much alive as ever. Premising that by "the Chancel" is meant the original chancel extending 20 feet eastward from the nave, we may state the following four as the only theories that now hold the field:-- (1) A Roman date for the chancel, and a later Roman date for the nave. (2) A Roman date for the nave, and a later Roman date for the chancel. (3) A Roman date for the chancel, and a Saxon date for the nave. (4) An early Saxon date for the chancel, and a later Saxon date for the nave. Many of the architectural details bearing on the subject are so minute, and so highly technical, that they are not suitable to the character of this Appendix. We propose, therefore, to confine ourselves chiefly to broad general features, and to narrow the controversy, in the first place, to the question whether there still exists in the church any _Roman_ workmanship, or whether even the most ancient part of it must be assigned to the _Saxon_ period. It is difficult to avoid recapitulation of many points alluded to in the handbook, but we may summarise the principal arguments in favour of the _Roman_ date of portions of the church as follows: (1) =History.=--It is distinctly mentioned by Bede that there was (in 597) a church dedicated to St. Martin, built while the Romans still occupied Britain. Now this is direct testimony, to which great weight must be assigned, when we consider the character and authority of the writer. He was born in 673--_i.e._ only seventy-six years after the mission of Augustine, and sixty-nine years after his death, and wrote his "Ecclesiastical History" in the first part of the eighth century, taking the greatest possible pains to make it worthy of his subject. His information with regard to the history of Christianity in Kent was derived from Albinus, Abbot of St. Augustine's, who was himself a pupil of Theodore (Archbishop of Canterbury in 668) the great consolidator of the English Church. We are told that Albinus referred to the records in his keeping, and sent Nothelm, a priest of London, to search the Archives at Rome, where were preserved many valuable letters of Gregory the Great and subsequent Popes. Considering, then, the extreme carefulness of Bede, and the sources from which he derived his materials, we cannot imagine any evidence (short of first-hand) more trustworthy and valuable. That he should have written as he did, making a positive statement that the Church was built during the Roman occupancy of Britain, while all the time it owed its foundation to Queen Bertha or Augustine, is perfectly incredible. The theory as to its foundation by Queen Bertha has nothing whatever to justify it; and were the idea, that it was founded by Augustine, true, would it not in Bede's time have been an easily ascertained fact, capable probably of documentary proof, especially among those who were inmates of Augustine's own monastery, and would have claimed St. Martin's Church as a precious inheritance--the legacy of their founder? No one impugns the general accuracy of Bede's narrative, and the value of such historical evidence cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for it is infinitely more weighty than any _a priori_ arguments or negative criticism. Let us then assume that there was a Roman church in existence on St. Martin's Hill when Augustine came to Canterbury. Is there any evidence to strengthen this assumption in the present building? And, first, as regards the Nave. We have already alluded to what we consider the valuable evidence supplied by the style and texture of the _pink_ plaster, also the variation of the mortar in the construction of the west windows from _white_ mortar in the joints to _pink_ mortar in the voussoirs of the arch, as well as the Roman-like character of the windows themselves. The objection that "Roman windows were never splayed" may be met (_a_) by the general statement that the introduction of light by means of a splay is so natural that the idea could not have escaped a Roman builder, especially in countries where there was less light than in Italy. Isidore of Seville, a contemporary of Gregory the Great, living in the midst of Roman work, must be describing what were the distinctive features of windows around him when he says "Fenestræ sunt quibus pars exterior angusta, et interior diffusa est"; and (_b_) Mr Roach Smith, in his "_Collectanea Antiqua_" gives several illustrations of Roman splayed windows at Aries, Vienne, etc., and we are informed that there is one at South Shields, mentioned by Mr Robert Blair, F.S.A. The character of the walls in the nave of St. Martin's seems to us to agree pretty closely with the technical description of Roman masonry in this country as "chiefly constructed of stone or flint, according to the part of the country in which one or the other material prevailed, embedded in mortar, and bonded at certain intervals throughout with regular courses or layers of large flat bricks or tiles, which, from the inequality of thickness and size, do not appear to have been shaped in any regular mould." The _Nave_ then has strong claims to Roman origin, without any reference to the _Chancel_. Mr Livett, however, claims that, whatever be the date of the nave, the brickwork of the original _Chancel_ is certainly earlier, and contends that "the oldest portion of the existing building comprises (1) the side walls of the chancel, extending for 20 feet; (2) the foundations of the destroyed Adjunct that once stood on the south side of the chancel; (3) a portion of the east wall of the nave on either side of the chancel-arch, and (4) certain foundations under the floor of the nave, supposed to be a continuation of the chancel side-walls." It is possible that he is rather too sanguine in concluding that a general agreement has been reached on these points. But, assuming (for the sake of argument) that the chancel is the earlier, then, if we can establish a reasonable probability of a Roman date for the nave, _cadit quæstio_, so far as the "pro-Saxon" controversialists are concerned. On the other hand, even though it be proved that the _Nave_ is post-Roman, yet still the _Chancel_ may be Roman, since it is in their opinion of confessedly greater antiquity. Is there anything in the _Chancel_ to militate against its Roman origin? It is built in _opus lateritium_, bricks laid evenly upon one another, an ordinary style of Roman masonry; for instances of which we may refer to remains found at the Roman villas at Wingham and Darenth, at the Studfall Roman castrum at Lympne, the blocked sluice-gate in the Silchester city wall, and countless other places. Allusion has been already made to Mr Micklethwaite's paper on "Saxon Church Building," in which, perhaps somewhat too confidently, he assigns to the Saxon periods the churches of Reculver, Brixworth, St. Pancras, etc. etc. It is a remarkable fact that the plan of St. Martin's Church (either with or without its reputed eastern apse) does not in many essential points agree with the plan of a single one of the churches therein described. And yet, if we accept the date of St. Martin's as post-Roman, it must have been built within less than a hundred years of most of them. He lays special stress on the apparent identity of character between the work at _St. Pancras_ and in the _Chancel of St. Martin's_, saying that the "date of one must be very near to that of the other," and as he does not believe that St. Pancras can be Roman, therefore the same may be predicated of St. Martin's. But he makes many assumptions to prove this, taking imaginary sketches and theories for ascertained facts. Even so, the shape of the supposed apse is different in the two, and there is no north porch at St. Martin's as there is at St. Pancras, and if it can be established (as seems likely from recent discoveries) that there was an original chancel-arch at St. Martin's west of the side-chapel, the dissimilarity is even more apparent. It is outside our purpose to discuss the date of St. Pancras, though many authorities maintain the possibility of its Roman origin. But, granting (for the moment) that St. Pancras' Church was built or restored by Augustine (and this is the latest date assigned to it), the identity in plan and character of the two churches is disputable. Of course, taking St. Martin's as it now exists, there is no similarity whatever, either in regard to the masonry of the nave, or the general outline. There is more similarity (with the exception of the points above mentioned) between St. Pancras and the assumed shape of St. Martin's chancel. But here, too, are points of difference. The walls of _St. Pancras_ are only _1 ft. 10 in._ in thickness; they are constructed almost entirely of broken bricks, roughly cut to a triangular shape and fitted together in the core, the interstices being filled up with small bits of brick. The walls of St. Martin's chancel are _2 ft. 2 in._ thick, and contain a much larger proportion of whole bricks, about 12 inches wide, laid side by side in each course, the interval between them being filled up with mortar and small stones. We may mention also the difference in the treatment of the division between nave and chancel. In the churches of St. Pancras, Reculver, Brixworth, Peterborough, Lympne, and Rochester there was a triple chancel-arch. In St. Martin's the space is too narrow to admit of any such arrangement. If we carry back the original building of St. Pancras to Roman times (and we must remember that King Ethelbert is said by Bede to have allowed the Italian Missionaries to build and repair _churches_ in all places) we do away with the difficulty as "to the temple of the heathen god being built after the fashion of a Christian church." We may pass over, as unworthy of serious discussion, the argument that St. Martin's cannot be a Roman church, because no existing Roman churches have yet been discovered in this country! and that it is not Roman because its ground-plan does not tally with the ground-plan of the Roman Church at Silchester. In the first place, we do not know what the original ground-plan of St. Martin's was, and it has not yet been definitely settled whether it may not have possessed side-aisles. And secondly, to contend that it cannot be Roman because it is unlike the church at Silchester would be to limit the capabilities of Roman builders to one monotonous design, perpetually and exactly reproduced for a century or more, which would be contrary both to reason and experience. There is, however, one objection remaining which must be faced, because it is put forward with all the professional knowledge of a skilful architect. The nave of the church is described as "being built of old stuff used anyway just as it came to hand, and tells of a time when there were ruins near, at which the builders were free to help themselves--a state of things unlikely in Roman Kent, but likely enough after, the wars which accompanied the English occupation." This seems a forcible argument, but it is not altogether borne out by facts, neither is it a fair description. That a great part of St. Martin's Nave is patchy and rudely built no one can deny; but let us consider what periods of destructiveness and neglect it would have passed through, supposing it to have been built in Roman times. Durovernum (Canterbury) was abandoned by the Britons flying before the Jutish invasion, and was at first left unoccupied by the conquerors themselves. Its site lay for many a year uninhabited and desolate; its very name was forgotten, and the church would naturally have fallen into a state of partial ruin. Restored at the coming of Queen Bertha, probably ravaged by the Danes, repaired and enlarged to a great extent in the Early English period, gradually falling once more into decay, in what condition should we expect its walls to be? Even within the last thirty years some interesting features have been destroyed, and the walls have been carelessly patched. When we consider all this, are we surprised if parts of it look like old stuff used anyway? But (as we have stated) this is not a correct description of the lower portion of the walls, especially where they have been comparatively preserved behind the woodwork of the present pews. And even if the description "old stuff," etc., be applicable to portions of the nave walling, the same description would equally apply to the undoubted Roman work in the Pharos at Dover. Is there not, too, such a thing as a period of decadence in any style? Just as there is good and bad Saxon work, good and bad Norman work, so must there have been good and bad Roman work. We are told in an account of the Roman excavations at Silchester that "examination showed that the rubble masonry of the whole western range (of the basilica) was of a _very poor character_." "The stones (in a part of the Roman wall of London) form a mere skin, between the tile bonding courses, to the thick _irregular_ rubble core." In the same wall, above the bonding course of three rows of tiles at the ancient ground-level, "the body of the wall is composed throughout its height of masses of ragstone, with now and then a fragment of chalk, bedded _very roughly_ in mortar which has been pitched in, not run in, sometimes with so little care as to leave occasional empty spaces amongst the stones." It seems useless to multiply quotations for the purpose of establishing an obvious fact--viz. that granting a general _idea_ and method pervading a building (as, we believe, there is clearly in St. Martin's nave), it is quite possible that at a time of decadence, and in the hands of inferior (perhaps British) workmen, this idea should be somewhat roughly carried out. This would be eminently the case if we attribute the erection of the nave towards the close of the fourth century--not so very long before the Roman evacuation of Britain. Since writing the above, we have been informed by Mr Micklethwaite that he places the nave of St. Martin's as dating from the seventh century--but he gives no reason for doing so, except that he thinks the form of the western windows and some other things about the work indicate that period--and he acknowledges that there is nothing to fix the date closer. We have, however, at some length, pointed out reasons that seem to us to militate against his theory, and they need not be re-stated. Though his opinion is deservedly weighty, he has not been able to be present at any of the excavations. APPENDIX C EASTERN APSE, ETC. Mr Livett has addressed to us the following communication with reference to the probability of there having been an eastern apse in the church, and has furnished the subjoined sketches to illustrate his remarks:-- [Illustration: Tracings of Apse (Livett's three sketches)] "No doubt exists in my mind that in the western half of the chancel we have the oldest part of the existing church of St. Martin's, and I am inclined to think that it is part of the first church built upon the site. We must recognise, however, the possibility that the foundations of a still earlier church remain undiscovered, either under the present nave or elsewhere in the churchyard. "The form of the _ground-plan_ of the _early-brick_ building (a term we have agreed to use in reference to the masonry at the western half of the existing chancel) has not been positively determined. Its eastern termination was destroyed in the extension of the building in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, and its western end disappeared at a far earlier date. "The probability that this early-brick building terminated eastward in an apse is established by a careful consideration of the existing remains of the south-east angle of that building, marked at the present time by a narrow pilaster-buttress facing south, near the middle of the south wall of the chancel. This buttress has been modernised, with its Caen-stone quoins: but its foundations, lately exposed, prove that it accurately represents, in dimension and position, an original early-brick buttress. The sketches (given above) illustrate the features which indicate an apsidal termination of the original building. _No. 1_ is a plan of part of the existing south wall of the chancel. It shows the buttress, and, immediately east of it, the junction of the twelfth-century wall with the early-brick wall. To complete the description of existing features, it may be added that the inner face of the wall (above some apparent foundations there underneath the floor of the chancel) is rough--an evident sign that early-brick masonry attached to this face was removed when the extension of the chancel was made. Towards the east there are no signs to indicate where the destroyed masonry stopped; but towards the west there are, in the arrangement of the bricks, marks of a vertical bonding-line, exactly corresponding in position with the western face of the buttress on the outside. In that place, then, the destroyed masonry originally rose with a clear face looking west. How far that masonry ran towards the north there is nothing to show. It is a significant fact--proved by the hole lately made through the twelfth-century wall, at its junction with the earlier work--that the end of the early-brick wall is in plane with the eastern face of the external buttress, and that no buttress ever existed on the eastern face of the angle. "All these features are consistent with the supposition that the early-brick building terminated eastwards in an apse, and consistent with that supposition only. Had the east end been square, the natural treatment would have been as shown in _Sketch No. 2_--there would remain indications of a buttress on the eastern side of the angle, the vertical bonding-joint would be seen farther west, to allow for an end wall of the same thickness (2 ft. 2 in.) as the side-wall--and the existing buttress, instead of being narrow, would probably be of the same breadth as the walls. "_Sketch No. 3_ shows the natural treatment of an apsidal termination. It explains the absence of a buttress on the eastern face of the angle, such buttress being unnecessary in the case of an apse: and it explains the use of the existing narrow buttress on the southern face, as serving to counter-act the thrust of the facing-arch of the apse. No argument can be drawn from the patch of foundations found under the floor near the wall--and they do not at present run across the chancel; but probably they did so run originally, whether the end were square or apsidal, and have been removed in the centre, to make room for burials. "The position and arrangement of the west end of the early-brick building cannot at present be determined. That there was a cross-wall along the line of the present chancel-arch is certain. This is sufficiently proved by unmistakable signs of a vertical bonding-joint on the face of the north wall of the chancel, 2-½ inches from the east face of the northern joint of the chancel-arch. This joint allows for a cross-wall of exactly the normal thickness of the early-brick walling. Moreover, you tell me that you have seen bricks in such a position under the floor in this corner as to suggest a cross-wall. All signs of the corresponding vertical bonding-joint on the opposite side of the chancel have been removed in the patching of alterations which need not here be discussed ... I omitted to say that the evidence of the cross-wall is further strengthened by the remains of an external buttress embedded in the east wall of the nave on the south side. Similar evidence on the north side has been destroyed by the insertion of the small doorway leading from the nave into the modern vestry. "With regard to the original arrangement of this part of the early-brick building, I am unable to make any conjecture that would satisfactorily explain all these features. The cross-wall may possibly have been the west wall of a small church: in which case the signs of building to the west of it must be connected with a porch or _atrium_. I think it more likely, however, that the cross-wall was the original division between the chancel and a destroyed nave, and contained a single chancel-arch. The original line of division between chancel and nave has, in most cases, though not invariably, been preserved throughout all enlargements of our churches. It may simply be said that there was a cross-wall as described: the evidence for it is final. "The _adjunct_, the foundations of which were recently exposed, on the south side is important in this consideration: but I have not referred to it, partly because it has been fully dealt with elsewhere, and partly because (as I have said) I have no satisfactory suggestion for the entire restoration of the ground-plan; nor do I venture to suggest dates either for the early-brick building or for the nave. I am convinced that the nave is of later date than the early-brick work" (of the chancel). * * * * * Transcriber's Note: On page 56 of the original, in the description of a Saxon doorway, the author reproduces an inscription using the letters I, V, C, and O with overbars, or macrons. These have been transcribed here using the conventions [=I], [=V], [=C], and [=O]. On page 62, again while reproducing an inscription, the author used graphic symbols which have been recorded here as [dagger], [iota], and [reverse epsilon]. 
47688	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES Japanese Gardens FEBRUARY, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XI DAIMIO'S GARDEN AT SHINJIKU] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. FEBRUARY No. 2. JAPANESE GARDENS. The Japanese garden is not a flower garden, neither is it made for the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig of green; some (although these are exceptional) have nothing green at all and consist entirely of rocks, pebbles and sand. Neither does the Japanese garden require any fixed allowance of space; it may cover one or many acres, it may be only ten feet square; it may, in extreme cases, be much less, and be contained in a curiously shaped, shallow, carved box set in a veranda, in which are created tiny hills, microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges, while queer wee plants represent trees, and curiously formed pebbles stand for rocks. But on whatever scale, all true Japanese gardening is landscape gardening; that is to say, it is a living model of an actual Japanese landscape. But, though modelled upon an actual landscape, the Japanese garden is far more than a mere naturalistic imitation. To the artist every natural view may be said to convey, in its varying aspects, some particular mental impression or mood, such as the impression of peacefulness, of wildness, of solitude, or of desolation; and the Japanese gardener intends not only to present in his model the features of the veritable landscape, but also to make it express, even more saliently than the original, a dominant sentimental mood, so that it may become not only a picture, but a poem. In other words, a Japanese garden of the best type is, like any true work of art, the representation of nature as expressed through an individual artistic temperament. Through long accumulation of traditional methods, the representation of natural features in a garden model has come to be a highly conventional expression, like all Japanese art; and the Japanese garden bears somewhat the same relation to an actual landscape that a painting of a view of Fuji-yama by the wonderful Hokusai does to the actual scene--it is a representation based upon actual and natural forms, but so modified to accord with accepted canons of Japanese art, so full of mysterious symbolism only to be understood by the initiated, so expressed, in a word, in terms of the national artistic conventions, that it costs the Western mind long study to learn to appreciate its full beauty and significance. Suppose, to take a specific example, that in the actual landscape upon which the Japanese gardener chose to model his design, a pine tree grew upon the side of a hill. Upon the side of the corresponding artificial hill in his garden he would therefore plant a pine, but he would not clip and trim its branches to imitate the shape of the original, but rather, satisfied that by so placing it he had gone far enough toward the imitation of nature, he would clip his garden pine to make it correspond, as closely as circumstances might permit, with a conventional ideal pine tree shape (such a typical ideal pine tree is shown in the little drawing on page 25), a shape recognized as the model for a beautiful pine by the artistic conventions of Japan for centuries, and one familiar to every Japanese of any pretensions to culture whatsoever. And, as there are recognized ideal pine tree shapes, there are also ideal mountain shapes, ideal lake shapes, ideal water-fall shapes, ideal stone shapes, and innumerable other such ideal shapes. [Illustration: PLATE XII "RIVER VIEW," KORAKU-EN, KOISHIKAWA] In like manner in working out his design the gardener must take cognizance of a multitude of religious and ethical conventions. The flow of his streams must, for instance, follow certain cardinal directions; in the number and disposition of his principal rocks he must symbolize the nine spirits of the Buddhist pantheon. Some tree and stone combinations are regarded as fortunate, and should be introduced if possible; while other combinations are considered unlucky, and are to be as carefully avoided. [Illustration: MODEL PINE TREE] But endless and complex and bewildering to the western mind as are the rules and formulæ, æsthetic, symbolistic and religious, by which the Japanese landscape gardener is bound, it is apparent that most of them were originally based upon purely picturesque considerations, and that the earliest practitioners of this very ancient art, finding that certain types of arrangement, certain contrasts of mass or line, led to harmonious results, formulated their discoveries into rules, much as the rules of composition are formulated for us today in modern artistic treatises. Moreover, as Japanese gardening was at first, and for many years, practised only as a sacred art and by the priests of certain religious cults, it was but natural that they should impart to these laws which they had discovered symbolic and religious attributes. To preserve the arts in their purity, and to prevent the vulgar from transgressing æsthetic laws, combinations productive of beauty were represented as auspicious, and endowed with moral significance, while inharmonious arrangements were condemned as unlucky or inauspicious. It is one of the cardinal principles of Japanese philosophy, for example, that the inanimate objects of the universe are endowed with male or female attributes, and that from a proper blending of the two sex essences springs all the harmony, good fortune and beauty in this world. When, therefore, two contrasting shapes, colors, or masses, such as those of the sturdy pine tree and the graceful willow, were found conducive of a pleasing combination, they were named respectively male and female, and it became almost a religious observance to thereafter place them together in their attributed sex relations. It will be apparent, therefore, that with an art of such antiquity, originally practised as a religious ceremony, and in a country in which inherited tradition has such binding force, that there should have grown up around the craft of landscape gardening, a code of the most complex laws, rules, symbolism, formulæ and superstitions, which the artistic gardener is bound to learn and to implicitly obey. And yet it must not be considered that the art of the Japanese gardener has, through the accumulation of its limiting rules, become a mere science, or that its practice is only a mechanical expression of pre-established artistic conventions. On the contrary, the landscape gardener must be, first of all, a student and lover of nature, for his art is founded on nature; he must be next a poet, in order to appreciate and re-express in his garden the moods of nature, and he must thereafter be a lifelong student of his craft, that he may design in accordance with its established principles. But the very number of these precepts makes a wide range of choice among them possible; and in almost every instance, even the most apparently superstitious and fanciful of them will be found, upon examination, to make in some way for beauty in the final result. To those who can understand it, moreover, the mystical symbolism of a Japanese garden design is an added source of pleasure, just as a knowledge of symphonic form makes a symphony more enjoyable to the musician. "After having learned," writes Mr. Lafacdio Hearn, "something about the Japanese manner of arranging flowers, one can thereafter consider European ideas of floral decoration only as vulgarities. Somewhat in the same way, and for similar reasons, after having learned what a Japanese garden is, I can remember our costliest and most elaborate gardens at home only as ignorant displays of what wealth can accomplish in the creation of incongruities that violate nature." The Japanese artist who is called upon to design a new garden will first examine the site, and confer with his patron regarding its proposed size and character. If the site be large, and already furnished with natural hills, trees and water, the gardener will, of course, take advantage of these features. If it possess none of them, he will inquire the amount of money that can be placed at his disposal for the construction of artificial hills, lakes and the like; and this amount of money will also determine another important point, namely, the degree of elaboration with which the whole is to be treated. For all works of Japanese art whatsoever are rigorously divided into three styles, the "rough" style, the "finished" style and the "intermediate" style; and the adoption of any one style governs the degree of elaboration to which any part of the design may be carried. If the "rough" style is chosen, even the smallest accessory detail--a rustic well, or a stone lantern--must be rude to harmonize; if the "finished" style, no detail that does not correspond can be admitted,--a restriction greatly conducive to harmony, and one to which the almost invariable congruity and unity of Japanese compositions is due. [Illustration: PLATE XIII DAIMIO OF SATSUMA'S GARDEN, KAGOSHIMA] Knowing, then, the size and character of the site, and his patrons' wishes as to expense and elaboration, the landscape gardener will next choose the model landscape, or landscapes, upon which he is to base his design. He will find them divided by convention into two classes: those representing "Hill Gardens" and "Flat Gardens." (There is a third class, the "Tea Garden," but as this is of a separate genus altogether, it will be considered later.) [Illustration: DETAIL OF GARDEN, FUKAGAWA Showing some important features of arrangement close to a dwelling,--the water basin with its rock-hidden drain, the lantern, with its fire-box partially concealed by the trained branches of the pine tree.] The "Hill Garden" class is the more elaborate of the two, and that best adapted for large gardens, and for those where the natural site is undulating, or where money can be spent in artificial grading. The "Hill Garden" has many different species, such, for instance, as the "Rocky-ocean" style, which represents in general an inlet of the sea surrounded by high cliffs, the shores spread with white sea-sand, scattered with sea rocks and grown upon with pine trees trained to look as if bent and distorted with the sea wind; or the "Wide-river" style, showing a spreading stream issuing from behind a hill and running into a lake; or the "Reed-marsh" style, in which the hills are low, rounded sand dunes bordering a heath or moor in which lies a marshy pool overgrown with rushes; and many other such "styles," all well recognized, all carefully discriminated and all modelled upon actual landscapes. In any case, however, the true "Hill Garden" must present, in combination, mountain or hill, and water scenery. If on the contrary the site be small and flat, and the garden is to be less elaborate, the "Flat" style is usually chosen. The "Flat Garden" is generally supposed to represent either the floor of a mountain valley, a moor, a rural scene, or the like; and as in the case of "Hill Gardens," there are a number of well recognized and classical examples. Having, then, determined that the garden is to be of one of these types, and having also determined the degree of elaboration with which it is to be treated, the gardener will next proceed to fix the scale upon which it is to be constructed,--and this scale (a most important factor) is decided by the size of the garden area, and the number of features which must be introduced into the scene; for it is clear that if the site be large, and one in which natural hills or large bodies of water are already present, the scale will be a normal one; whereas if a whole valley, with hills, a river, a water-fall, a lake and a wooded slope is to be presented in a space of some fifty or sixty square yards, the scale of the whole must be miniature. But whatever scale is adopted, every tree, every rock, every pool, every accessory detail must be made exactly to correspond to it. A hill that might in a large garden be a natural elevation of considerable size, with full sized trees planted upon it, might in a smaller one modelled after the same design, be only a hillock, planted with dwarfed trees or shrubs; or in a still smaller area become only a clump of thick-leaved bushes trimmed to resemble a hill-shape, or even a large boulder flanked by tiny shrubs. So skilfully and completely do Japanese gardeners carry out any scale that they have determined upon, however, that Mr. Hearn describes a garden of not much above thirty yards square, that when viewed through a window from which the garden alone was visible, seemed to be really an actual and natural landscape seen from a distance,--a perfect illusion. [Illustration: PLATE XIV MERCHANT'S GARDEN, AWOMORI] Having determined upon the natural model and the scale for it, the gardener will begin by imitating on the given site the main natural land conformations of his original, building hills or grading slopes, excavating lake basins and cutting river channels. These natural features he will next proceed to elaborate, and it is in this process of elaboration that he must most carefully observe all those complex laws and conventions to which we have before alluded. [Illustration: DETAIL OF A MERCHANT'S VILLA GARDEN, FUKAGAWA Showing some characteristic garden accessories,--stepping-stones, a lantern, a common variety of bamboo fence. The lantern and plum tree conventionally mark the approach to a little shrine reached through a Shinto archway by means of a row of stepping-stones.] Almost every Japanese garden, be it hilly or flat, large or small, rough or elaborate, must be made to contain, in some form, water, rocks and vegetation, as well as such architectural accessories as bridges, pagodas, lanterns, water-basins, stepping-stones and boundary fences or hedges. Water may be made to present the sea, lakes, rivers, brooks, water-falls, springs, or combinations of them. It is not, of course, possible to imitate the open sea with any degree of realism; and when a coast scene is presented, it is customary to fashion the body of water as an ocean inlet, the supposed juncture with the sea being hidden by a cliff or hill. Lake scenes are much more common. There are six "classical" shapes into which lake forms are divided, some of them more formal for use near buildings, others more natural for use in wilder landscapes. It is an axiom that every lake, or pool, or stream represented must have both its source and outlet indicated. Sometimes the inflow is indicated by a stream issuing from behind a hillock which conceals its artificial source, sometimes a deep pool of clear water may suggest a spring, sometimes a water-fall (at least ten individual and distinct forms of water-fall are recognized as admissible into a properly planned garden) supplies the water; but water showing no inflow or outlet is termed "dead" water, and is regarded with the contempt bestowed upon all shams and falsities in art. In cases where it is impossible to introduce actual water into a garden its presence is often imitated by areas of smooth or rippled sand, the banks of the sand bed treated to simulate the banks of a natural lake or stream, and islands and bridges introduced to further the illusion. [Illustration: PLATE XV SHIRASE-NO-NIWA, NIIGATA] Extreme importance is attached to the use in gardens of natural stones, rocks and boulders; and some teachers of the craft go so far as to maintain that they constitute the skeleton of the design, and that their proper disposition and selection should receive the primary consideration. In large gardens there may be as many as one hundred and thirty-eight principal rocks and stones, each having its special name and function; but in smaller ones as few as five rocks will often suffice. Whatever the style of landscape composition, three stones, the "Guardian Stone," the "Stone of Worship," and the "Stone of the Two Deities" must never be dispensed with, their absence being regarded as inauspicious. On the same principle there are certain stone forms which are considered unlucky, and are therefore invariably avoided. The raised parts of a Japanese garden are supposed to represent the nearer eminences or distant mountains of natural scenery, and the stones which adorn them are intended to imitate either minor undulations and peaks, or rocks or boulders on their slopes. In like manner there are no less than twenty "water" stones, which have their places in lake and river scenery, as well as nine varieties of "cascade" stones alone. There are also sixteen stones which have their functions solely in the adornment of islands. After the contours of land and water and the principal rocks and stones have been arranged, the distribution of garden vegetation is considered; for the garden rocks form only the skeleton of the design and are only complete when embellished with vegetation. [Illustration: TYPICAL ARRANGEMENTS OF STONES WITH FOLIAGE] In the grounds of the larger temples, avenues and groves of trees are planted with the same formality adopted in Western gardens, but in true landscape gardening such formal arrangements are never resorted to. Indeed it is an axiom that when several trees are planted together they should never be placed in rows, but always in open and irregular groups. The rules for planting the clumps are rigidly determined; and these clumps may be disposed in double, triple or quadruple combinations, while these combinations may be again regrouped according to recognized rules based upon contrasts of form, line and color of foliage. Occasionally, when it is the designer's purpose to represent a natural forest or woodland, formulas are, of course, disregarded, and the trees are grouped together irregularly. [Illustration: TYPICAL VARIETIES OF GARDEN LANTERN] The architectural accessories of the Japanese garden,--bridges, pagodas, lanterns, water-basins, wells and boundary fences or hedges, we have no space to consider in detail. It must suffice to say that their use is rather ornamental than to aid in the landscape imitation, and that they are generally placed in the foreground of the scene. There are many beautiful designs for each of them, and their use and disposition is formally regulated. [Illustration: PLATE XVI PUBLIC GARDEN OF SHUZENJI, KUMAMATO] Important accessories in the Japanese garden are Stepping-Stones. Turf is not used in the open spaces, but these are spread with sand, either pounded smooth or raked into elaborate patterns. This sand, kept damp at all times, presents a cool and fresh surface, and to preserve its smoothness, which the marks of the Japanese wooden clogs would sadly mar, a pathway is invariably constructed across such areas with stones called "stepping-stones," or "flying stones" as they are occasionally termed, on account of the supposed resemblance in their composition to the order taken by a flight of birds. In the simpler and smaller gardens such stones form one of the principal features of the design. As nothing could be less artistic than a formal arrangement of stones at regular intervals, not to speak of the difficulty of keeping one's balance while walking upon them, the Japanese gardener therefore uses certain special stones and combinations having definite shapes and dimensions, the whole being arranged with a studied irregularity. The sketch on this page exhibits three typical arrangements. The left hand group shows stepping-stones as arranged to lead from a tea room. The centre group shows stepping-stones combined with a "pedestal stone" which marks the point from which a typical cross view in the garden is to be observed. The right hand group shows the stones near a veranda with a "shoe-removing" stone terminating the series. [Illustration: ARRANGEMENTS OF STEPPING-STONES] A third main type of garden, neither "Flat" nor "Hilly," to which we have before referred, properly speaking, is called the "Tea Garden." "Tea Gardens" are used for the performance of the "tea ceremony," and to explain the principle of its design would require a preliminary explanation of the intricacies of that ceremony itself, to which an entire volume might easily be devoted. A most cursory indication of the principal use and requirements must here suffice. "Tea Gardens" are divided into outer and inner inclosures separated by a rustic fence. The outermost inclosure contains a main entrance gate, and behind this there is often a small building in which it is sometimes the custom to change the clothing before attending the ceremony. The outer inclosure also contains a picturesque open arbor, called the "Waiting Shed," which plays an important part in tea ceremonies, for here the guests adjourn at stated intervals to allow of fresh preparations being made in the tiny tea room. The tea room is entered from the garden through a low door, about two and one-half feet square, placed in the outer wall and raised two feet from the ground, through which the guests are obliged to pass in a bending posture indicative of humility and respect. The rustic well forms an important feature of the inner garden, as do the principal lantern and the water-basin. A portion of the inner inclosure of a "Tea Garden" in the Tamagawa, or Winding-river style, showing the stream, bridge, lantern, water-basin, and an arrangement of stones, including the indispensable "Guardian Stone," is represented in the drawing on this page. All these separate features are connected, according to very rigid principles, by stepping-stones which make meandering routes between them, and form the skeleton of the whole design. [Illustration: INNER INCLOSURE OF A TEA GARDEN, "TAMAGAWA" STYLE] We can, perhaps, no better summarize this necessarily sketchy review of a complex subject, than by reproducing here, from Professor Conder's very elaborate monograph, "Landscape Gardening in Japan," (Tokio, 1893)--from which most of the information in this article has been derived, and to which the student of the subject is referred,--a figured model of an ordinary "Hill Garden" in the finished style. The numbers refer to the titles of the principal hills, stones, tree clumps and accessories, the positions of which are all relatively established by rule. [Illustration: PLATE XVII DAIMIO OF MITO'S GARDEN, HONJO] [Illustration: FIGURED MODEL OF AN ORDINARY HILL GARDEN IN THE FINISHED STYLE HILLS: 1, Near Mountain. 2, Companion Mountain. 3, Mountain Spur. 4, Near Hill. 5, Distant Peak. STONES: 1, Guardian Stone. 2, Cliff Stone. 3, Worshipping Stone. 4, View Stone. 5, Waiting Stone. 6, "Moon-Shadow" Stone. 7, Cave Stone. 8, Seat of Honor Stone. 9, Pedestal Stone. 10, Idling Stone. TREES: 1, Principal Tree. 2, "View Perfecting" Tree. 3, Tree of Solitude. 4, Cascade-Screening Tree. 5, Tree of Setting Sun. 6, Distancing Pine. 7, Stretching Pine. ACCESSORIES: A, Garden Well. B, Lantern. C, Garden Gate. D, Boarded Bridge. E, Plank Bridge. F, Stone Bridge. G, Water Basin. H, Lantern, I, Garden Shrine.] Hill 1 represents a mountain of considerable size in the middle distance, in front of which should be placed the cascade which feeds the lake; while Hills 2 and 3 are its companions, the depressions between them being planted with shrubs giving the idea of a sheltered dale. Hill 5 represents a distant peak in the perspective. The model shows ten important stones. The "Guardian Stone," 1, representing the dedication stone of the garden, occupies the most central position in the background, and in this case forms the flank of the cliff over which the cascade pours. The broad flat "Worshipping Stone," 3, indicating the place for worship, is placed in the foreground, or some open space. The "Moon-Shadow Stone," 6, occupies an important position in the distant hollow between two hills and in front of the distant peak, its name implying the sense of indistinctness and mystery attached to it. The term "tree" as used in the diagram often refers to an arrangement or clump of trees. The "Principal Tree," 1, is placed in the centre of the background, and is usually a large and striking specimen. The "View Perfecting Tree," 2, generally stands alone, and its shape is carefully trained to harmonize with the foreground accessories. The "Tree of Solitude," 3, is a group to afford a shady resting place. The "Tree of the Setting Sun," 5, is planted in the western part of the garden to intercept the direct rays of the sunset. The titles of the other features in the model will probably be found self explanatory. Errata. By an unfortunate misprint in the preceding issue of THE BROCHURE SERIES, Prof. A. D. F. Hamlin, author of the article on the "Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States," was announced as Professor of Architecture in "Cornell" University, instead of in "Columbia" University. Mr. Hamlin's correct title is: "Adjunct-Professor of Architecture, Columbia University." In the same issue (page 15), it was stated that the terraces and approaches to the Capitol at Washington were the work of Mr. Edward Clark. This was an error: they were designed by Mr. Frederick Law Olmstead, and elaborated by Mr. Thomas Wisedell under Mr. Olmstead's supervision. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII DAIMIO'S GARDEN, KANAZAWA] Transcriber's Note: Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
44192	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). * * * * * [Illustration: Transverse Section of the Building, showing the Interior completed.] The Crystal Palace: Its Architectural History and Constructive Marvels. By Peter Berlyn, and Charles Fowler, Junr. London: James Gilbert, Paternoster Row. mdcccli. ---- PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION BY JAMES GILBERT, 49 PATERNOSTER ROW, (UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME), The Curiosities and Wonders contained within The Crystal Palace. BY PETER BERLYN, ESQ. Illustrated by Several Hundred Engravings. ---- [Illustration] TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT, The Following Pages, DESCRIPTIVE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE MARVELS OF THE STOREHOUSE OF THE WORLD'S WONDERS OF ART, SCIENCE, AND MANUFACTURE, ARE, BY PERMISSION, MOST HUMBLY DEDICATED, AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE OF THE ADMIRATION AND GRATITUDE WHICH, IN COMMON WITH THE WHOLE CIVILIZED WORLD, ARE AMPLY SHARED IN BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S MOST DEVOTED, FAITHFUL, AND OBEDIENT SERVANT, THE PUBLISHER. ---- Contents. PAGE. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1 COMMITTEE FOR ALL MATTERS RELATING TO THE BUILDING 2 LABOURS OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE 3 THE COMPETITION DESIGNS 6 BUILDINGS USED FOR PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS IN FRANCE, GERMANY, AND ENGLAND 15 DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE'S DESIGN 21 OPPOSITION TO THIS DESIGN 24 THE TENDERS 24 HISTORY OF MR. PAXTON'S DESIGN 27 GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING 33 THE PAXTON'S GUTTERS 40 THE SASH-BARS 44 THE RIDGES 46 THE GLASS 46 THE BOX GUTTERS 47 THE ROOF GIRDERS 47 THE IRON DRILLING MACHINE 49 THE PUNCHING MACHINE 50 THE ADZING AND PLANING MACHINE 51 THE COLUMNS AND CONNECTING-PIECES 52 THE BASE-PIECES 53 THE CAST-IRON GIRDERS 54 THE GALLERIES 55 TESTING THE CAST-IRON GIRDERS 55 ROOF OF TRANSEPT 58 THE FACEWORK 59 THE DIAGONAL BRACING 60 THE STAIRCASES 60 THE FLOOR AND FOUNDATIONS 62 FIRST OPERATIONS ON THE GROUND 63 SETTING-OUT THE GROUND 64 FIXING THE BASE-PLATES 65 HENDERSON'S DERRICK CRANE 67 RAISING AND FIXING THE COLUMNS AND GIRDERS 68 HOISTING THE ROOF TRUSSES 69 PROVISION FOR EXPANSION OF GIRDERS 70 GLAZING THE ROOF 71 STAGE FOR REPAIRING THE GLASS, ETC. 73 HOISTING THE RIBS FOR TRANSEPT ROOF 73 GLAZING THE TRANSEPT ROOF 76 THE PAINTING 76 THE HAND-RAIL MACHINE 78 GENERAL VIEW OF THE WORKS 79 PAYING THE WORKMEN 80 GENERAL STATISTICS 82 THE PARTI-COLOURED PAINTING 83 THE WATER SUPPLY 87 THE STABILITY OF THE BUILDING 87 TESTING THE GALLERIES 88 GENERAL ADVANTAGES OF THE BUILDING 89 CONCLUSION 89 APPENDIX:-- LIST OF COMPETITORS FOR THE BUILDING i LIST A.--COMPETITORS ENTITLED TO FAVOURABLE MENTION vi LIST B.--COMPETITORS ENTITLED TO FURTHER HIGHER HONORARY DISTINCTION viii THE TWO COMPETITION DESIGNS SPECIALLY MENTIONED BY THE BUILDING COMMITTEE ix MEMORANDUM ON THE SITE xi REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS, PRESENTED TO HER MAJESTY ON THE OPENING OF THE BUILDING xvii List of Illustrations. PAGE. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE BUILDING, SHOWING THE INTERIOR COMPLETED-- _frontispiece_. PLAN OF THE BUILDING FOR THE FRENCH EXPOSITION IN 1849 16 VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE OF THE SAME 17 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE "PALACE" 18 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE CATTLE-SHED 19 VIEW OF KROLL'S WINTERGARTEN AT BERLIN _facing_ 19 PLAN OF KROLL'S WINTERGARTEN 20 VIEW OF THE BIRMINGHAM EXPOSITION BUILDING 20 GROUND-PLAN OF THE DESIGN OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE _facing_ 22 EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE SAME _facing_ 24 COMMON MODE OF GLAZING ROOFS 28 METHOD BY RIDGE AND FURROW 29 CUTTERS OF MR. PAXTON'S SASH-BAR MACHINE 30 THE VICTORIA REGIA HOUSE, CHATSWORTH 32 INTERIOR OF THE SAME 33 GROUND-PLAN OF THE BUILDING FOR THE EXHIBITION 34 VIEW OF ONE 24-FEET SQUARE BAY OF ROOF PARTLY COMPLETED 36 PORTION OF THE LOWER STOREY OF THE PRINCIPAL ELEVATIONS 37 VIEW OF THE INTERIOR OF THE TRANSEPT _facing_ 38 VIEW OF GLASS ROOF FROM THE LEAD FLAT _facing_ 39 GENERAL VIEW OF THE BUILDING FROM THE SOUTH-WEST _facing_ 40 THE EXTERNAL RAILING 40 SECTION OF THE PAXTON'S GUTTER, WITH THE STRONG SASH-BAR 41 THE CIRCULAR PLANING MACHINE 41 PORTION OF THE SAME SHOWING DETAIL 41 SECTIONS OF THE PAXTON'S GUTTER, SHOWING DIFFERENT STAGES IN THE MACHINE 42 THE GUTTER-CUTTING MACHINE 42 MACHINE FOR FINISHING ENDS OF GUTTERS AND RIDGES 43 MACHINE FOR CUTTING OUT SASH-BARS 44 THE SASH-BAR DRILLING MACHINE 45 PORTION OF THE SAME, ENLARGED 46 SECTION OF THE RIDGES, ETC 46 DIAGRAM OF 48-FEET GIRDER 48 DIAGRAM OF 72-FEET GIRDER 48 THE IRON DRILLING MACHINE 50 THE PUNCHING MACHINE AND SHEARS 50 THE ADZING-CUTTERS 51 THE ADZING AND PLANING MACHINE 52 SECTION OF A COLUMN 52 A BASE-PIECE 54 VIEW OF THE INTERIOR FROM THE LEVEL OF GALLERIES _facing_ 55 FRAME AND HYDRAULIC PRESS FOR TESTING THE GIRDERS 56 INTERIOR VIEW OF THE CENTRAL AVENUE TOWARDS THE WEST _facing_ 58 LOUVRE FRAME 60 VIEW OF STAIRCASE 61 FIXING CAST-IRON DRAIN-PIPE 62 VIEW OF CRANE AND PROVING-PRESS 66 HENDERSON'S DERRICK CRANE 67 PORTIONS OF THE SAME 67 FIXING THE GIRDERS 68 GENERAL VIEW OF THE WORKS IN PROGRESS _facing_ 69 HOISTING THE 72-FEET TRUSSES 70 GLAZING-WAGGON FOR FLAT ROOF 72 A PAIR OF RIBS PREPARED FOR RAISING 74 HOISTING THE RIBS FOR THE TRANSEPT ROOF _facing_ 75 STAGE FOR GLAZING TRANSEPT ROOF 76 THE SASH-BAR PAINTING MACHINE 77 PORTION OF THE SAME IN DETAIL 77 THE HAND-RAIL CUTTING MACHINE 78 PORTION OF THE SAME 78 THE BRASS TICKETS FOR WORKMEN 80 THE INTERIOR OF THE PAY-OFFICE 81 THE MEN TAKING THEIR WAGES 81 THE WORKMEN WAITING TO BE PAID 82 VIEW OF THE BUILDING FROM THE NORTH BANK OF THE SERPENTINE _facing_ 86 TESTING AN EXPERIMENTAL BAY OF THE GALLERY FLOOR _facing_ 88 VIEW OF THE BOILER-HOUSE, ETC. _facing_ 88 VIEW OF SOUTH FRONT OF THE BUILDING 92 APPENDIX:-- EXTERIOR VIEW OF MONS. HOREAU'S DESIGN FOR THE BUILDING _facing_ ix INTERIOR OF THE SAME _facing_ ix VIEW OF EXTERIOR FROM ONE END OF MESSRS. TURNERS' DESIGN FOR THE BUILDING _facing_ x TRANSVERSE SECTION AND VIEW OF THE INTERIOR OF THE SAME _facing_ x INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. So much has already been said and written, both wisely and well, upon the marvellous edifice which has just been reared with such magical rapidity to enshrine the results of the skill and industry of all nations, that it would appear an almost hopeless task to present the subject in any new point of view to the reader. If, therefore, the authors cannot lay claim to novelty or originality in the execution of the pleasurable work which they have undertaken, they are not without hopes that, from their having been connected with this gigantic undertaking during the greater part of its progress, they will be enabled to trace in a more detailed and consecutive manner than has yet been attempted the history of the design and execution of the building up to the period of its completion. A great deal has been lately said upon the want of distinctive character in almost all the buildings of the present day; and it is certainly a striking fact that in scarcely any of our important modern structures does the exterior appearance in any way lead the spectator to form an idea of the purposes or arrangement of the interior, the former being apparently governed by fancy, or the fashion for some particular style, while the latter only, is accommodated to the peculiar requirements of the case. Thus we have porticos which do not shelter from the weather, or in which no one is allowed to walk; Venetian palaces appear piled upon a substructure of plate-glass; baronial castles prove to be model prisons; and richly-decorated mansions, from the time of "Good Queen Bess," or fanciful Italian villas, are made to serve for the accommodation of paupers. The ancients appear to have been more careful in this respect, so that the form and external arrangement afforded in most cases a ready key to the purposes of their structures. Their temples, their fora, theatres and amphitheatres, baths, and other public edifices, seem each to have been stamped with their own characteristic features, at the same time without in any way producing a monotonous uniformity among the different examples of the same class of building. Now, if this criterion of excellence be applied to the remarkable building recently erected in Hyde Park, it will be found that the constructive arrangement of the interior is plainly expressed without, and it must be conceded that it possesses at least those elements of beauty arising from consistency and simplicity which, in combination with its vast size, give it also that of grandeur. That it is faultless it would be needless to assert, or to imagine that, from its example, a new style of architecture will originate; but that it is admirably suited to its purpose, that it is a remarkable specimen of the constructive skill of this country, and that it will certainly form one of the most interesting objects of the Great Exhibition by which it has been called into being, if not the most interesting of all, must, we think, be admitted by all candid observers. Although the building in its present form was designed, as well as carried out, in a singularly short space of time, this could not have been accomplished but for the great amount of thought and labour which had been previously bestowed upon the subject. In order, therefore, to trace the whole of the progress of the design, it will be necessary briefly to advert to the early labours bestowed upon the project. On the 5th of January, 1850, the Royal Commission for carrying out this great scheme was gazetted; its first and second meetings, which were respectively held on the 11th and 18th of the same month, were entirely devoted to preliminary arrangements, and determining the mode of conducting its proceedings. Among the most urgent matters calling for the attention of the Commissioners, the subject of the building early presented itself, as it was of the utmost importance that the longest possible time should be allowed for its erection; and, accordingly, at the third meeting, held on the 24th of January, the following noblemen and gentlemen were appointed to act as a Committee for all Matters relating to the Building. His Grace the Duke of BUCCLEUCH, K.G., F.R.S. The Right Hon. the Earl of ELLESMERE, F.S.A. CHARLES BARRY, Esq., R.A., F.R.S. WILLIAM CUBITT, Esq., F.R.S., Pr. of J.C.E. ROBERT STEPHENSON, Esq., M.P., F.R.S. C. R. COCKERELL, Esq., R.A. I. K. BRUNEL, Esq., F.R.S. THOMAS L. DONALDSON, Esq., M.I.B.A. From which list it will be seen that some of the very highest professional talent in the country was enlisted on behalf of the undertaking. Labours of the Building Committee. The first point to be ascertained by this Committee was where to find an eligible site; for although they were not able at that early stage of their labours to determine the exact amount of space that would be required, they appear to have been of opinion that, from the general data before them, about sixteen acres would be necessary--an amount which has been subsequently considerably exceeded, but which was already an enormous area to be covered by one building; and in dealing with it the Committee must have felt that a very heavy amount of responsibility rested upon them, as appears, indeed, from their recommendation to the Royal Commission given below. After about a month of attentive deliberation, the Committee made a report upon this part of their labours. With regard to the site, it had appeared to the Committee that--firstly, the north-eastern portion of Hyde Park; secondly, the long space between her Majesty's private road and the Kensington road, in the southern part of Hyde Park; and thirdly, the north-western portion of Regent's Park, were the only available spaces about the metropolis which would afford the necessary accommodation; and it was believed that the order in which they were named represented also their relative eligibility. As regarded the first, the Committee had been informed by the Chief Commissioner of her Majesty's Woods and Forests that considerable objections would arise to its occupation for such a purpose, and that no such objections would be raised to the use of the second; and the Committee, therefore, recommended the adoption of this site, which, amongst other advantages, is remarkable for the facility of access afforded by the existing roads. As regarded the extent of the building, the Committee were not yet in possession of sufficient data to enable them to determine this accurately, but, from such information as they had before them, they thought that it might be assumed, for the present, that about sixteen acres of covered space would be required. And finally, as regarded the mode of proceeding to determine the general interior arrangements or ground-plan of the building, a subject to which they had given much consideration, they resolved, "That, in their opinion, it was desirable to seek, by public competition, for suggestions as to the general arrangements of the ground-plan of the building." It was deemed by the Committee that the peculiar object for which the building was required, namely, the encouragement of the widest and most liberal competition in all the branches of arts and manufactures--the circumstance of the cost of the erection being defrayed by the public--the peculiar character of the building, for the designing of which were especially required judgment and contrivance in the detail of arrangement, and experience in the management of large crowds, and for the construction of which the mechanical skill and knowledge of the application and of the economical use of materials now so generally possessed by builders and practical men were necessary--all seemed, in the opinion of the Committee, to be reasons for recommending that the designs for the general arrangements should, as far as practicable, be the result of public competition, and that the actual construction should be so to the fullest extent. The Committee were, moreover, of opinion that the general design or arrangement of such a building was one of those subjects, perhaps few in number, on which many good ideas may be elicited by a general contribution of plans; and that a mode might be adopted of obtaining such plans, and collecting useful suggestions from them, which should not eventually lead to any loss of time, or be attended with those delays which too frequently render ordinary competition inconvenient. Great objections were made in some quarters to the proposed site in Hyde Park; but as they were not raised on really public grounds, they were gradually overcome by the interest which the public at large manifested in the success of the undertaking. In consequence of the latter recommendation in the Report which was adopted by the Royal Commissioners, the following document was published by them on March 13th, 1850, copies of which appear to have found their way into almost every corner of Europe:-- "The Committee appointed by the Royal Commission to advise on 'all matters relating to the building,' having received the sanction of the Commission, are desirous of obtaining from all parties who are disposed to assist them suggestions for the general arrangement of the buildings and premises required for this Exhibition. Upon the general form of the building in plan, the distribution of its parts, the mode of access, and the internal arrangements and contrivances, will depend the convenience and general fitness of such a building; and it is upon these points that the Committee seek information and suggestions, and wish to encourage the most extended competition in the preparation of plans. The Committee do not propose to offer any pecuniary reward for such plans--they rely upon the desire which men of all countries will feel to forward the objects of the proposed Exhibition. The Committee think it probable that, when the plans are received, they may not be limited to the selection of any one plan, but may derive useful ideas from many; and that the best plan may be determined upon by the help of this general assistance. As the credit of any such plan will be due solely to the contributors, the Committee propose to make a report, in which they will acknowledge by name those whose plans had been wholly or partially adopted, or who had afforded the most useful suggestions; and the Committee hope to be able to offer such other honorary distinction to the successful contributors as the circumstances may appear to warrant. In order to guide the contributors in the preparation of such plans and designs, and to facilitate the examination and the comparison of them when received, the Committee have enumerated concisely the principal 'desiderata' for such a building, and have laid down certain rules and conditions to which they earnestly request the contributors to conform, as the Committee will be under the necessity of abiding strictly by the regulation of not acknowledging any plans which may be sent in a form inconsistent with these rules. Copies of the engraved plan of the ground referred to may be had on application to the secretaries of the Commission, at the New Palace at Westminster." An engraved plan of the site which had been fixed upon, together with the subjoined regulations, which all competitors would be expected to observe, were subsequently issued to all applicants:-- "1. The communications from contributors must consist of a single sheet of paper, not larger than the accompanying engraving, with a simple ground-plan upon a scale of 1·1000 of the full size, with such elevations and sections only of the building, and on the same sheet, as may be necessary to elucidate the system proposed--such elevations and sections not being intended to convey more than a general idea of the building, and not entering into details of construction or of architectural decoration--to be accompanied by a short, clear-written explanation of the system recommended, on a separate sheet. Any contributor wishing to send two designs must send separate and distinct communications, each conforming to the above conditions. No communications made inconsistent with these conditions, or any plan prepared upon a different scale from that prescribed, can be received. The plans, &c., must be sent on or before the 8th of April next, addressed to the Secretaries of the Exhibition, New Palace at Westminster, London. It is suggested that the most convenient mode of preparing the plan, elevation, and section, would be to draw them upon one of the engraved copies of the plan of the ground which accompany these instructions.--2. The building is to be erected on the space marked A B C D, and must not extend beyond the boundaries of the shaded portion. The groups of trees shown on the plan must be preserved. The principal public approaches are by the roads E F and G H. The road K L will be available only for foot-passengers. There will be no objection to the formation of cross-roads between the two last, G H and K L, if the design of the building requires it.--3. The roofed portion of the building is to cover a space of 700,000 square feet, or about 65,000 square metres; and the whole building must not occupy, including open spaces, an area of more than 900,000 square feet, or about 84,000 square metres. The building generally will be of one storey only.--4. No space will be required for cattle, or for shrubs or flowers.--5. It may be assumed, so far as it affects the ground-plan, that the light will be obtained entirely from the roof, and the building will be constructed of fire-proof materials. "The general requirements are--simplicity of arrangement; economy of space; capability of extending or curtailing the building without destroying its symmetry as a whole, or interfering with the general arrangement, it being impossible to determine the exact extent of roof required until a late period of construction. Adaptation for the erection of separate portions of the building at different periods. Conveniences of ingress and egress, with facilities of access to all parts of the Exhibition, either from the exterior or interior. Means of classification of the various objects of different departments. Wall-space for the display of articles requiring it. Means of affording private access and accommodation for exhibitors, with counting-houses, if required. Committee-rooms, council-rooms, public refreshment-rooms, and all other public and private accommodation. (This portion of the building may be in two or more storeys if required.) Internal arrangements, by which, under proper regulations, large crowds of visitors may circulate freely, and have convenient access to all parts of the Exhibition, and uninterrupted means of examining the various objects exhibited." The Competition Designs. Though the time allowed for the preparation of drawings was but short, being only about one month, no less than 233 designs were sent in, many of them of an elaborate architectural character. Of these, thirty-eight, or one-sixth of the whole, were received from the different foreign countries of Europe (France, twenty-seven; Belgium, two; Holland, three; Hanover, one; Naples, one; Switzerland, two; Rhine Prussia, one; Hamburgh, one); 138, or more than half the entire number, from London and its vicinity, where the interest excited was naturally more immediate; fifty-one from the provincial towns of England; six from Scotland, and three from Ireland. Seven were sent anonymously. The small number contributed by the sister kingdoms seems rather remarkable. The greater part of these designs were, of course, contributed by members of the architectural and engineering professions, but some were the productions of amateurs, and one among them purported to be the suggestion of a lady. Here, then, was matter enough not only to assist, but even, from its great variety, to perplex the Committee, since at once every possible variety of style in decoration, material in construction, and system in arrangement, were strenuously recommended by the authors of the respective designs as the great ultimatum sought for. To Mr. Digby Wyatt, whose services were to a great extent withdrawn from the Executive Committee, in order that his professional knowledge of the subject might be placed at the disposal of the Building Committee, was intrusted the arduous task of examining and classifying these incongruous materials, and of eliminating from them such general principles of arrangement as seemed most worthy of the attentive consideration of the Committee. The result of this gentleman's minute examination was embodied in a Report, upon the basis of the recommendations contained in which the subsequent utilitarian portions of the design of the Building Committee would appear to have been founded. After holding about fifteen protracted sittings, the Committee presented the following Report to the Royal Commission on the 9th of May:-- "May it please your Royal Highness, "_My Lords and Gentlemen_, "We have the honour to report that we have examined the numerous plans so liberally contributed by native and foreign architects in accordance with the public invitation. "Exhausting in their numerous projects and suggestions almost every conceivable variety of building, the authors of those designs have materially assisted us in arriving at the conclusions which we have now the honour to report. "We have been aided in our analysis of this subject by a great amount of thought and elaboration thus brought to bear upon it from various points of view. "We have, however, arrived at the unanimous conclusion, that able and admirable as many of these designs appeared to be, there was yet no single one so accordant with the peculiar objects in view, either in the principle or detail of its arrangements, as to warrant us in recommending it for adoption. "In some of the least successful of the designs submitted, we find indicated errors and difficulties to be avoided, whilst in the abler and more practicable of them, there are valuable conceptions and suggestions which have greatly assisted us in framing the plan we have now the honour to lay before you. In preparing this design we have been governed mainly by three considerations:-- "1. The provisional nature of the building. "2. The advisability of constructing it as far as possible in such a form as to be available, with the least sacrifice of labour and material, for other purposes, as soon as its original one shall have been fulfilled, thus insuring a minimum ultimate cost. "3. Extreme simplicity, demanded by the short time in which the work must be completed. "For the arrangements of the plan we rely for effect on honesty of construction, vastness of dimension, and fitness of each part to its end. "The principal points of excellence we have endeavoured to attain are-- "1. Economy of construction. "2. Facilities for the reception, classification, and display of goods. "3. Facilities for the circulation of visitors. "4. Arrangement for grand points of view. "5. Centralisation of supervision. "6. Some striking feature to exemplify the present state of the science of construction in this country. "The first of these, ECONOMY, is attained by doing away with any internal walls (all divisions being made by the necessary stalls), by reducing the whole construction, with the exception of the dome, to cast iron columns, supporting the lightest form of iron roof in long unbroken lines, and by the whole of the work being done in the simplest manner, and adapted in all respects to serve hereafter for other purposes. "The second, facilities for the RECEPTION, CLASSIFICATION, and DISPLAY of goods. The main central entrance for the reception of objects for exhibition will probably be that most approachable from the public road. All cases accompanying goods will be examined, registered, catalogued, &c., in the offices of the Executive; the packing-cases will then be put upon a truck running on a line of rails laid down temporarily, and conveyed to the centre turn-table, from which they may be carried by a line of rails at right angles to the first, to the end of the transverse gallery, in which they may be destined to be placed. "The most important condition to insure successful _classification_ is, that those to whom the duty of arrangement may be confided should be hampered by no fixed limits of space, such as would have been the case had the building been divided into a number of halls, sections, or chambers. The plan submitted fulfils this condition perfectly; as objects can be arranged just as they are received, and moved, if necessary, from gallery to gallery with great facility. "The successful display of the goods would be best insured by leaving, under certain general restrictions, the fitting up of each stall to the Exhibitor or his Agent, floor-space only being allotted to each; and stands, frames, brackets, shelves, &c., being put up by a contractor's carpenter, at a fixed tariff. "The best light is provided, and the most economical wall-space is proposed to be furnished by connecting pillar to pillar transversely, on the extreme north and south sides of the building, by rods, from which draperies, &c., can be suspended. "The third, FACILITIES FOR THE CIRCULATION OF VISITORS, is thus attained. The visitor, on arrival at the central hall, proceeds at choice to any one of the four sections. He will, most probably, desire either to follow the whole course of the section selected, or will wish to go at once to some particular class or object. He will be enabled to do either the one or the other, without interfering with the general current, by means of gates or other arrangements, which shall insure the current of visitors passing in one direction. If he desire to proceed rapidly from one end of the building to the other, and finds the great central gangway at all blocked up, he will, no doubt, be able to get on by either the north or south corridors, fifteen feet wide. Numerous doors of egress in these latter afford ready means of exit for a large number of persons. Seats are provided in the middle of the great central gangway for those who may desire to rest. "The fourth, ARRANGEMENT FOR GRAND POINTS OF VIEW. The view from or to the centre of the building will, from its extent, be necessarily imposing. The seats and main avenues are arranged so that, on the occasion of the distribution of the prizes, an immense number of persons may be accommodated. Most interesting views might be obtained from galleries constructed at either end of the building and around the dome, for the admission of the public to which some small charge might be made. "The fifth, CENTRALISATION OF SUPERVISION. All the business of the Exhibition will be carried on in one spot, and be readily under control. The Royal Commission, the principal Committees, Clerks, Accountants, Police, &c., would be together, and in so large an establishment it would be absolutely necessary, or much time would be wasted in walking from one point to another. Passages running behind the money-takers' boxes, with glazed doors into them, would enable each accountant to detect anything improper that might be going on, and to exchange and balance checks, money, &c., at any moment. Telegraphic communication with each of the four pay-places will permit orders to be given, cash accounts, &c., to be issued and returned, from and to the head-accountant's office, as often as may be necessary. "Four Committee-rooms, one for a Jury in each section, have been provided at the extreme east and west ends. The duties of such Committees being deliberative, and not executive, it is not necessary that they should be accommodated in the Central Establishment, where they would be more liable to be disturbed than at the extremity of the building. "A policeman stationed in each gallery would, from his elevated position, be enabled to observe much which might escape detection if he mingled only with the crowd. "The sixth, SOME STRIKING FEATURE TO EXEMPLIFY THE PRESENT STATE OF THE SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION IN THIS COUNTRY. In order that the building, in which England invites the whole world to display their richest productions, may afford, at least in one point, a grandeur not incommensurate with the occasion, we propose, by a dome of light sheet iron 200 feet in diameter, to produce an effect at once striking and admirable. From calculations which have been made of the cost of so grand a Hall, we have reason to expect that it may be executed for a sum not greatly exceeding the cost of the simplest form of roof likely to be adopted to cover the same area. "It is to be borne in mind that a considerable amount of any such difference may be recovered, should this portion of the building be converted hereafter to other purposes, which is more than probable. This vast dome it is proposed to light mainly from one circle of light in its centre, and thus the sculpture will be pleasingly and suitably lit. "Six out of the eight openings in the cylinder of the dome would be well adapted for the exhibition of stained glass windows of great extent, while the two remaining arches will open to the main central gallery. The lower part of some of the voids will admit the eye to turf and shrubs, and produce a great freshness of effect. "The immense continuity of the Central Avenue will be broken and relieved by a variation in the roof opposite the openings to the second and third sets of refreshment-rooms, and windows for the reception of Stained Glass may be placed at the ends of each transverse gallery, thus terminating the vista for each. "It now only remains to explain the course of action we would recommend for adoption as soon as the principles of the plan, &c., shall be positively decided. "We consider this to be an occasion upon which the greatest amount of intellectual and commercial ingenuity and ability should be called out; and that a generous rivalry among those best fitted to execute the principal portions of this vast structure may lead to results which no amount of detailed study that we could possibly give to this matter would supply. "We would therefore recommend that every advantage should be taken of the accumulated and experimental knowledge and resources of intelligent and enterprising contractors, and that every opportunity should be afforded to them of DISTINGUISHING THEMSELVES. We would therefore recommend as the best means of enlisting their services the following course of action: "Adopting the approved design as a basis, we would proceed immediately to prepare such working-drawings and specifications as may be necessary, and to issue invitations for tenders to execute Works in accordance with them, requesting from competitors, in addition, such suggestions and modifications, accompanied with estimates of cost, as might possibly become the means of effecting a considerable reduction upon the general expense. The following Report of the Committee on the competition plans submitted, and which was so unfavourably received by the public, and more particularly by the profession, was presented to the Royal Commission on the 16th of May:-- "May it please your Royal Highness, "_My Lords and Gentlemen_, "Your Committee beg leave to report, that the invitation issued by the Commissioners, requesting information and suggestions for the general arrangement of the Building and premises required for the Exhibition of 1851, has been responded to in the most ample and satisfactory manner, both as respects the variety of useful ideas presented to their consideration, and the liberality with which many experienced and skilful men of foreign countries, no less than of our own, have contributed their valuable time to this great undertaking, thereby evincing their entire sympathy both with the great cause of Arts and Industry in which her Majesty's Commissioners have embarked, and with the arduous labours of the Directors of the undertaking. "The Designs and Specifications transmitted to the Committee amount to the surprising number of 233, offering an aggregate of professional sacrifice of very considerable importance; for, not confining themselves to suggestions only, which were invited by the Programme, a large proportion of them are remarkable for elaboration of thought and elegance of execution. "Penetrated with admiration and respect for these gratuitous and valuable contributions, unexampled, they believe, in the history of competition, your Committee have devoted the most careful attention to the collection of these projects, and hasten to offer those acknowledgments which are due to their merits, and to the generous motives which have led to their execution; and they trust that the public may shortly be witnesses of the effect of this very noble emulation of the skill of all countries, by the public exhibition of these designs, offering the opportunity, in the true spirit of the whole undertaking, of mutual improvement, respect, and friendship amongst the cultivators of the liberal arts in the several countries of Europe. "It is remarkable that, while many of these contributions may be attributed to the laudable motive of professional reputation and advancement on the part of practitioners not yet sufficiently known to the public, a great number are from Gentlemen whose position in the confidence of their respective Governments or in the Republic of Arts and Letters is of the highest eminence, and who can have been actuated by no such personal motives. Already entitled to respect and admiration, they could have little to gain, while they have something to lose, in the competition for glory. The kind and frank communication, therefore, of their thoughts and experience towards this great work is to be the more highly commended. Every possible mode of accomplishing the object in view has been displayed by the respective contributors as regards economy of structure and distribution, and these qualities are united with various degrees of architectural symmetry and features in many designs. Our illustrious continental neighbours have especially distinguished themselves by compositions of the utmost taste and learning, worthy of enduring execution--examples of what might be done in the architectural illustration of the subject, when viewed in its highest aspect, and, at all events, exhibiting features of grandeur, arrangement, and grace which your Committee have not failed to appreciate. "Amongst these several classes of design, the practical character of our own countrymen, as might have been expected, has been remarkably illustrated in some very striking and simple methods suited to the temporary purposes of the Building, due attention having been paid to the pecuniary means allotted to this part of the undertaking. The principle of suspension has been applied in a single tent of iron sheeting, covering an area averaging 2,200 feet by 400 feet by a lengthened ridge, or in separate tents on isolated supports. Others display the solution of this problem by the chapter-house principle, and a few by the umbrella or circular locomotive-engine-house system of railway-stations, either with a central column or groups of columns sustaining domes or roofs to the extent of four hundred feet diameter. "Grandeur and simplicity of distribution are carried out with great architectural effect in other compositions, and the general arrangement by columnar supports has been also variously and elegantly developed. The system of iron roofing, with all the architectural powers of which that material is susceptible, has been adopted by some with signal enterprise, ingenuity, and power. "In another class of design the authors have viewed with enthusiasm the great occasion and object of the proposed Exhibition, and have waived all considerations of expense. They have indulged their imaginations, and employed the resources of their genius and learning, in the composition of arrangements which present the utmost grandeur and beauty of architecture, suited to a permanent Palace of Science and Art. These, as addressed to the architectural Student, are of the highest value, reminding him of all the conditions of his art--the Egyptian hypostyle, the Roman thermæ, or of the Arabian or Saracenic inventions. And though their expense has placed them beyond reach, they cannot fail to inspire and elevate the treatment of the reality. They at all events confer great obligations on the lovers of the Fine Arts, for the authors have evidently felt that, if one of the results to be expected from the proposed Exhibition may be to prove that the simplest object of ingenuity and skill should not be devoid of some of the attractions of taste, the Building itself ought to be an illustration of that important principle. "The Committee, however, have been unable to select any one design as combining all the requisites which various considerations render essential. But the judgment and taste evinced by a large number of the contributors have enabled the Committee to arrive more promptly at their conclusions, and they have freely availed themselves of most valuable suggestions in directing the preparation of a fresh design for the proposed building. "They have consequently been most earnest in the desire to fulfil the just expectations of the various competitors, and feel assured that your Royal Highness and the Commission will be of opinion that the most unreserved and handsome acknowledgments are due to those able men of science and art who have in so disinterested a manner submitted such admirable projects for the consideration and assistance of the Committee. They beg, therefore, to submit, as their opinion, that the following gentlemen are entitled to honourable and favourable mention, on account of architectural merit, ingenious construction or disposition, or for graceful arrangement of plan. "And they cannot conclude without calling attention to the designs, accompanied by models, of M. Hector Horeau, Architect of Paris, and of Messrs. Turner, of Dublin, as evincing most daring and ingenious disposition and construction.[1] Some of the strongest objections to this Report are very fairly urged in a letter which appeared in the _Builder_ of the 15th of June, a part of which is subjoined:-- "Part II. of the Report contains what I suppose is to be taken as the best exposition of the merits of contributors that the Committee can give, which commences by stating, in a tone of commendation, that, 'not confining themselves to SUGGESTIONS ONLY, which were invited by the PROGRAMME, a large proportion of them are remarkable for elaboration of thought and elegance of execution.' This, I would contend, is clearly a breach of the specified conditions, viz., that SUGGESTIONS ONLY were to be given--that the plan or drawing sent in was to be A MERE OUTLINE SKETCH, upon a SINGLE SHEET; and the Committee even recommended that it would be most convenient merely to trace it upon the common paper on which the 'plan of site' was supplied to the public, a space being left upon the sheet for SKETCHING any sections or elevations that might be necessary to illustrate the design; and that a written description, limited also to 'a single sheet,' was all the exposition of their ideas that authors would be allowed to give. The Report goes on to state, that 'our illustrious continental neighbours have especially distinguished themselves [in designing a temporary building for an exhibition] by compositions of the utmost taste and learning, worthy of enduring execution--examples of what might be done in the ARCHITECTURAL illustration of the subject [the conditions strictly enjoined contributors not to enter into architectural detail] when viewed in its highest aspect, and, at all events, exhibiting features of grandeur, arrangement, and grace which your Committee have not failed to appreciate.' It then places in contradistinction to these no doubt admirable but out-of-place productions of architectural genius, the 'practical character of the designs of our own countrymen,' which it states, 'as might have been expected, has been remarkably illustrated in some very striking and simple methods, suited to the temporary purposes of the building, due attention having been paid by them to the pecuniary means allotted to this part of the undertaking.' Yet, notwithstanding this comparison, clearly and indisputably in favour of our own countrymen, as regards the object sought and the conditions stipulated by the Committee, we find by the selected list of those authors who are to receive 'the highest honorary distinction' the Commissioners can award, that the Committee can only discover, out of 195 English and 38 foreign contributors, THREE Englishmen entitled to reward, the remaining FIFTEEN out of the eighteen selected being foreigners; or, as regards the whole numbers, in proportion of 1 to 65 of 'our own countrymen,' the authors of the 'striking and simple,' so admirably 'suited to the temporary purpose of the building,' and 1 to about 2½ of foreigners, who, in designing for a temporary building, to be simple, cheap, and readily constructed, have so overshot the mark as to produce 'compositions' commendable only for the 'utmost taste and learning, and worthy of enduring execution.' Surely something must be wrong here, either the Report or the selected list--possibly both. "In conclusion, I cannot help avowing the opinion that a wrong, though I believe unintentionally, has been done to many of the 233 who so readily and 'generously' responded to the call for their ideas; more particularly as I know, from personal inspection, that at least ONE of the plans altogether omitted from the Report contains FIVE of the leading features of the approved design." But to judge of this matter fairly, it must be mentioned that, although the number of foreign competitors was small, the majority of them were men already well known for their talents and professional skill; in all cases their designs evinced considerable study of the subject (both architecturally and in a practical point of view), and manifested a desire to exhibit to English professional men the proficiency of their continental brethren. On the other hand, many of the designs from the competitors at home were much slighter suggestions presented in a less elaborate form. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that those eminent men of the technical professions who, on this occasion, came forward with practical suggestions for the assistance of the Committee, and designs calculated rather to assist with thoughts than to charm by the graces of elegant drawing or symmetrical disposition, should seem to have been found wanting in this first trial with all the world. It should further be borne in mind, that the nature of competitions is not so well understood in some foreign countries, where they are of less frequent occurrence, than with us. It must at the same time be admitted that the practice of disregarding and exceeding the instructions in competitions is too much a matter of general complaint in England to be brought forward as a new grievance against our continental brethren. After the publication of the above Report, the competition designs were all exhibited in the rooms of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in Great George-street, which were liberally placed at the disposal of the Committee for this purpose; and of those who visited this interesting exhibition, many, no doubt, must have sympathised with those feelings which dictated the decision of the Committee. From an attentive examination of these designs, presenting the subject in such exceedingly varied forms, one of the peculiar difficulties of the case becomes apparent, namely, the total absence of any precedent to guide or afford suggestions to the designer; for the small number of buildings erected or adapted for a similar purpose have been on so limited a scale that their example could not afford much assistance in designing a structure to meet all the requirements of the present case. This building differed from all previous ones in being intended to accommodate the products of all nations, instead of being confined to those of one only; in which case the arrangement would have been more certain and more readily provided for. Buildings used for previous Exhibitions. As a comparison of some of these earlier buildings with the first erected in London for a similar purpose cannot fail to be interesting, a short notice of them may not be deemed out of place. The most important amongst them are those temporary structures which have been erected in Paris for the periodical Industrial Expositions, with reference to the last of which we cannot do better than quote, from Mr. Digby Wyatt's instructive and masterly Report, that part where the building is treated of:-- "The vast edifice which has been erected to contain the specimens of manufacture selected for exhibition in the year 1849 is situated on the same site as that occupied by a similar building in the year 1844. The Carré de Marigny, on which it has been placed, is a large oblong piece of ground, abutting on the main avenue of the Champs Elysées, and as a site offers every possible advantage, being of a gravelly soil, already efficiently drained, and standing on the line of a continually moving series of public conveyances. The Champs Elysées, though at some considerable distance from the great centre of Parisian population, are still so universal a place of resort, that they may be fairly assumed to be "in the way" of even the poorest classes of the community. The elevation may be admirably seen from all the approaches to the building, and it has the advantage of being in immediate proximity to the residence of the President of the Republic. PLAN OF THE BUILDING FOR THE FRENCH EXPOSITION IN 1849. [Illustration] 1. Cattle-shed. 2. Machinery. 3. Chemical Products. 4. Metal Works. 5. Productions of Parisian Industry. 6. Horticulture. 7. Woven Goods. 8. Principal Entrance. 9. Guard-house. 10. Fountain. 11. Reservoir of Rain Water. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE.] "The whole plot of the present building (exclusive of the agricultural department) covers a vast parallelogram of 206 metres by 100 (about 675 by 328 feet English), round the outline of which runs a gallery about 90 feet wide, divided into two avenues by a double range of pilasters. In the centre of each avenue is a set of stalls, placed back to back, for the exhibition of merchandise; and both between the central pilasters, and round, and upon the walls, other objects are placed, so that on traversing either of the four gangways (each about ten feet wide) the public have upon their right and left hands objects for inspection. In the part of the building appropriated to large machinery, of course this system cannot be carried out with the same regularity. The vast parallelogram, inclosed by a somewhat similar gallery in the year 1844, was left as one magnificent hall, within which were placed the most important objects; in the present building we find it divided by two transverse galleries, similarly arranged to those we have described, forming three court-yards; the central one being about 140 feet square, and the two lateral ones 80 feet by 140. The central court-yard is open to the sky; in the middle rises an elegant fountain placed on a platform of turf, and around are disposed sheds for the exhibition of flowers and horticultural ornaments and implements. One of the lateral courts (inclosed) receives a large collection of objects in metal-work, cast-iron, &c., and the other contains an immense reservoir, in which all the drainage from the roofs is collected, so as to form a supply of water immediately serviceable in case of fire. In addition to this great building, which corresponds with that previously erected, there is this year constructed a vast shed for the exhibition of agricultural produce and stock. It extends to a length rather greater than the width of the great parallelogram, and is about 100 feet (English) wide. Its construction is ruder than that of the 'Palace,' but it is not on that account less effective. It appears to have been originally contemplated to fill the whole of this gigantic hall with cattle, &c., and to place the agricultural implements in a long narrow gallery intervening between it and the main building; but as the stock of animals forwarded for exhibition has not proved so large as was anticipated, it has been half-filled with semi-agricultural machines, and the whole of the long narrow gallery alluded to crammed with stoves, and miscellaneous domestic mechanism. "The whole of the building is constructed of wood, the roofs being covered with zinc: of the latter material 400,000 kilogrammes, equal to nearly 4,000 tons, are stated to have been used; and of the former, nearly 45,000 pieces of timber. "It is hoped that the accompanying plan and views will convey a tolerably good idea both of the exterior and interior arrangements of the Exhibition. They will serve to show, at least, that a somewhat unnecessary expenditure has been gone into, and to manifest the possibility of constructing a much more simple building, possessing all the advantages of this one, at a far less cost. "Both externally and internally there is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament; all the pilasters are papered and painted in a species of graining to imitate light oak, and even the ceiling is covered over with the same work. Large 'carton pierre' trusses apparently support the timbers, and a painted bronze bas-relief fills the tympanum of the pediment, at the principal entrance. The architecture of the whole is 'mesquin,' although the gigantic scale of the building necessarily elevates the general effect into something of impressiveness; not, however, to nearly the extent which the same outlay might have produced." [Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF THE "PALACE."] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CATTLE-SHED.] Mr. Wyatt further states that the total cost of this building was about 450,000 francs, or about 18,000_l._, which, however, he considers was an unnecessarily large outlay. He mentions, also, that the building erected on the previous occasion, in 1844, was in some respects more suitable for the purpose, especially from its greater simplicity of arrangement, a remark it will be well to bear in mind in considering the various designs for the building in Hyde Park. The accompanying plates will enable the reader readily to follow all the details of the description. The permanent building erected by the King of Bavaria at Munich, likewise for periodical Exhibitions, is on a much smaller scale than those in Paris, and must be regarded rather as having afforded an opportunity for that manifestation of architectural display in public buildings for which its Royal projector was so well known, than as being peculiarly fitted for its purpose. It is divided internally into various halls for the different classes of objects; but as the proportion of these must necessarily vary at every Exhibition, such an arrangement cannot be deemed the most suitable for the purpose. At Berlin, where several Industrial Exhibitions have taken place, no distinct building has been provided, but some already existing one has been temporarily adapted and fitted up for the purpose; thus, on the last occasion, Kroll's WINTERGARTEN, a large establishment for public amusement, which has been recently destroyed by fire, was made use of. The large central saloon, with the smaller ones flanking it, forming, in fact, one space 310 feet long, and 82 feet broad at the widest point, afforded a very good opportunity for the arrangement of the objects to be exhibited, some of which were placed in the gallery of the large saloon. [Illustration: View of Kroll's Wintergarten at Berlin.] PLAN OF KROLL'S WINTERGARTEN, BERLIN. [Illustration] 1. Electric Telegraph. 2. Chemical Products. 3. Porcelain and Bronzes. 4. Machinery. 5. Hardware. 6. Zinc Works. 7· Plate and Jewellery. 8. Lithography. 9. Watches, &c. 10. Cutlery. 11. Scientific Instruments. 12. Bookbinding. 13. Embroidery. 14. Ornamental Blinds. 15. Silks and Velvets. 16. Furs. 17. Pianofortes. 18. Carriages. 19. Furniture. 20. Lamps, &c. 21. Turned Articles. 22. Woollen Fabrics. 23. Leather Articles. 24. Hats & Felt Articles. 25. Machinery. 26. Carriages. On a previous occasion a part of the Royal Arsenal building was appropriated, and the Exhibition embraced two storeys. In our own country, exhibitions of manufactures have taken place in several of the most important towns, generally in spaces only temporarily adapted; but in 1849 the first building in this country intended solely for the purpose of an exhibition of manufactures was erected at Birmingham, on the occasion of the meeting of the British Association in that town. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE BIRMINGHAM EXPOSITION BUILDING.] The building alluded to included a space extending to 10,000 square feet, and a corridor, giving additional accommodation of 800 square feet, connected the temporary exhibition-room with Bingley-house, within the grounds of which the building was erected; and including the rooms of the old mansion, the total area covered by the Exhibition was equal to 12,800 feet, or only about one-seventeenth of the area covered by the last building erected in the Champs Elysées. The cost of this building was about 1,300_l._ It was opened to the public on the 3rd of September, 1849. In most of the buildings alluded to above, the principal defect seemed to be that a definite and fixed subdivision of space was made for a classification of objects which was necessarily uncertain. This appears to have determined the Committee in the arrangement of the plan which they presented in a general form to the Royal Commission at the same time with the Report already quoted; and although the design was slightly modified during the progress of the working-drawings subsequently made, this is, perhaps, the best place for introducing a description of it. It has been already mentioned that at the time the Committee received the competition designs, they obtained the assistance of Mr. Digby Wyatt, the secretary to the Executive Committee, to aid them in the preparation of drawings, although Mr. Scott Russell officially filled the post of secretary to the Building Committee. At a somewhat later stage of the Committee's proceedings, when the general design for the proposed building had been approved by the Royal Commission, and it became necessary to prepare working drawings for the same with extraordinary despatch, Mr. Charles Heard Wild, as engineer, and Mr. Owen Jones, as architect, were appointed to co-operate with Mr. Wyatt in carrying out this object. Description of the Building Committee's Design. The site to have been occupied by the building designed by the Committee was the same as that on which the building has been actually erected, namely between Rotten-row and the drive in Hyde Park, but the area proposed to be covered was somewhat larger, the length of the building being about 2,200 feet, and the greatest width nearly 450 feet. The central space was occupied by an immense rotunda 200 feet in diameter, the cupola rising to a height of more than 160 feet, and exceeding the span of that of St. Peter's at Rome by 61 feet, and of St. Paul's in London by 88 feet. The dome for covering this rotunda consisted of wrought-iron ribs, supporting a covering of corrugated iron, the whole resting on a wall or drum of brickwork, about 60 feet high; a large opening in the centre was to be glazed for the admission of light. This large open area was intended for the exhibition of groups of sculpture, fountains, and other objects requiring great space in order to be seen to advantage; at the same time the cupola would have presented a striking instance of the constructive skill of this country. The remaining area of the building was divided into avenues 48 feet wide, by iron columns 24 feet apart, this dimension having been determined on as that most likely to work in well for the division of the counters and passages. One of the 48-feet avenues on the main axis of the building was spanned by semicircular ribs of wrought iron supporting the roof, which rose here to a greater height than the rest of the building; the other avenues were covered with roofing very similar to that commonly seen in railway-sheds, the whole being rendered as light as possible, and constructed in iron covered with slating; the light being in all cases admitted by a range of sky-lights at the apex of the roof, which was also adapted for ventilation. The height of the main avenue was 52 feet, and of the others 36 feet, from the floor throughout. A corridor of communication 15 feet wide was carried round the whole of the building, interrupted only by the open courts; this, with the main avenue, afforded the visitor to the Exhibition the means of reaching any particular point without threading a maze of small passages. The inclosing walls were to be of brick, relieved externally by panels in two colours; but there were to be no internal division walls except those necessary to surround the various courts which were left on account of the trees. The executive offices were grouped on either side of the principal entrance, which was placed immediately opposite Prince's Gate; and at this, as well as at the entrances at either end and on the north front, large arched recesses were introduced which served as vestibules, and formed at the same time prominent and striking features to relieve the necessarily monotonous aspect of the building. Along the whole of the principal front and at the ends of the building a pent or overhanging roof projected about 15 feet, to enable visitors in bad weather to be set down under cover, and the exit-doors, of which there were altogether 24, were further protected by porches. The water was to be conveyed from the roof through the columns which supported it, and which were for this purpose connected with the necessary drain-pipes, &c. Very ample accommodation was provided for refreshments in the open courts which were necessarily left for the preservation of the trees, particularly in that at the western end of the building, where there was proposed to be placed a large establishment, comprising two storeys, with somewhat the arrangement of the French cafés, including a fine saloon on the first floor, upwards of thirty feet wide and nearly one hundred feet long; separate spaces were also provided for the accommodation of exhibitors. This was the only part of the building, with the exception of the executive offices, which was to have an upper storey. GROUND PLAN OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE'S DESIGN. [Illustration] 1. Machinery in Motion. 2. Other Machinery. 3. Seats for Visitors. 4. Refreshment Courts. 5. Raw Materials. 6. Manufactures. 7. Sculpture and the Plastic Arts. 8. Small Court. 9. The Rotunda. 10. Principal Entrance and Executive Offices. 11. The Other Entrances. 12. The Drive in the Park. 13. The Kensington Road. 14. The Queen's Private Road. An objection might, perhaps, be raised to this part of the building, that it was too commodious, and that there might be some danger of its being converted into a lounge, while it was occupying too much of the space intended for the Exhibition, for a secondary, though certainly necessary purpose; it was, however, considered by the Committee, that of the vast number of visitors that might be expected to be in the building at one time, so many would avail themselves of the accommodation provided as to render a less amount undesirable. The principal courts were surrounded by a covered way, where refreshments were also to be served at long counters, in the manner of the railway-stations. All these arrangements will readily be understood by a reference to the plan of the design we have been describing, which plan, together with a view taken from the south-east angle of the building, will place before the reader the result of the labours of the Committee. The materials proposed for the construction of this building were fire-proof throughout, with the exception of the floor and its supporting timbers. The above design, at least in all its leading features, for some of the details were subsequently added, was laid before the Royal Commission, at the same time with the Report already quoted, and was by them approved, and the Committee proceeded to prepare the necessary working-drawings and specifications for the execution of the work. These proceedings of the Committee occupied until the 24th of June, when large lithographed copies of the most important of the drawings, together with printed copies of the specifications and other details, were issued from the offices of the Executive, contractors having been some time previously invited by public advertisement to send in tenders for the execution of either a part or the whole of the work. The tenders were to be on two systems, one on the supposition that the Royal Commission were to become the _bona fide_ purchasers of the building; the other, that the contractors were to erect and maintain the building during the time of the Exhibition, after which they were to remove it and take back the materials at their own risk, receiving a proportionably diminished sum. It has been considered necessary to describe thus minutely the labours of the Committee and the design in which they resulted, in order to show how far it paved the way for that which was subsequently adopted, and to give them that credit which they undoubtedly deserve for devoting so much of their valuable time for the furtherance of a great public undertaking. Opposition to this Design. The design of the Building Committee, when published to the world, met with anything but public approbation; some of the objectors called in question the practicability of the execution of the enormous dome, at least within the time assigned; others complained that the outlay would be unnecessarily large for a purpose avowedly temporary, and expressed their fears that so costly a structure once erected, there would be the less probability of its subsequent removal; but the objection which appeared to have most weight with the public at large was, the great amount of solid brick construction in the walls, &c., which, it was urged, would require a longer time than could be allowed for their erection, and that the carting of the materials would cause serious injury in the Park and the surrounding neighbourhood. This strong current of objection seemed to bid fair to overwhelm the much-abused design. To increase the difficulties which seemed to gather round the progress of this noble undertaking, an exceedingly vexatious and factious agitation was got up in opposition to the proposed site in Hyde Park, and petitions and counter-petitions were presented to both Houses of Parliament, and much of the time of the Legislature was wasted in fruitless discussion on the subject. The Building Committee thought it desirable, under these circumstances, to lay before the public their reasons for recommending the site in the Park, and therefore issued a memorandum of the grounds on which it had been selected.[2] The result was, that the opposition was defeated in the Legislature, and finally crushed by the force of public opinion. The Tenders. In the mean time the competing contractors had been obliged to strain every nerve to get their tenders ready by the 10th of July, when, altogether, nineteen were sent in, but eight only were for undertaking the whole of the work; the amounts of these are stated to have ranged between 150,000_l._ and 120,000_l._, and this for the use only of the materials for the building. But, at the same time, in accordance with the recommendation and invitation contained in the last part of the Report already quoted, Messrs. Fox, Henderson and Co. presented a tender upon a design entirely different in construction and appearance, though resembling that of the Committee in the general arrangement of the plan. [Illustration: Exterior View of the Building Committee's Design] This design was by Mr. Joseph Paxton, and resembled in its general form the building as it is now executed, with the exception of the transept and semicircular roof, which were subsequently added, and were suggested by Mr. Barry. The result of the tenders appears to have been unfavourable to the Committee's design; and in their Report to the Royal Commission on the subject, made a few days afterwards, they proposed to omit the great dome and some portions of the design which were not essential, by which they considered that the cost of its execution might be reduced below 100,000_l._; at the same time, they made special mention of Mr. Paxton's design, which, however, they considered would prove more expensive. Mr. Paxton's design had been brought before the public before this period; for, considering that his best road to success would be to get a favourable verdict from that many-headed jury, he published a view and description of it in the _Illustrated News_, and, through the influence of Mr. Stephenson, he got his plans laid before the Royal Commission, in consequence of which he obtained an interview with his Royal Highness the President. The encouragement given him by the attention bestowed upon his design by the Royal Commission, and the favourable opinion of the public, had determined him to procure a tender for the execution of the work, to be sent in with those upon the Committee's design. This he was enabled to do by the great energy and promptitude of the contractors, Messrs. Fox and Henderson, to whom he applied at the eleventh hour. The difficulties that had to be overcome, owing to the shortness of the time remaining for the estimates to be made up, can scarcely be better laid before the reader than they have been by an able writer in "Household Words:"-- "It was now Saturday, and only a few days more were allowed for receiving tenders. Yet before an approximate estimate of expense could be formed, the great glass-manufacturers and iron-masters of the north had to be consulted. This happened to be _dies mirabilis_ the third; for it was the identical Saturday on which the Sunday postal question had reached its crisis, and there was to be no delivery the next day! But in a country of electric telegraphs, and of indomitable energy, time and difficulties are annihilated; and it is not the least of the marvels wrought in connexion with the great edifice that, by aid of railway-parcels and the electric telegraph, not only did all the gentlemen summoned out of Warwickshire and Staffordshire appear on Monday morning at Messrs. Fox and Henderson's office, in Spring Gardens, London, to contribute their several estimates to the tender for the whole, but within a week the contractors had prepared every detailed working-drawing, and had calculated the cost of every pound of iron, of every inch of wood, and of every pane of glass. "There is no one circumstance in the history of the manufacturing enterprise of the English nation which places in so strong a light as this its boundless resources in materials, to say nothing of the arithmetical skill in computing at what cost and in how short a time those materials could be converted to a special purpose. What was done in those few days? Two parties in London, relying on the accuracy and good faith of certain iron-masters, glass-workers in the provinces, and of one master-carpenter in London, bound themselves for a certain sum of money, and in the course of some four months, to cover eighteen acres of ground with a building upwards of a third of a mile long, and some four hundred and fifty feet broad. In order to do this, the glass-maker promised to supply, in the required time, nine hundred thousand square feet of glass (weighing more than four hundred tons), in separate panes, and these the largest that ever were made of sheet glass; each being forty-nine inches long. The iron-master passed his word in like manner to cast in due time three thousand three hundred iron columns, varying from fourteen feet and a half to twenty feet in length: thirty-four miles of guttering-tube, to join every individual column together under the ground; two thousand two hundred and twenty-four girders (but some of these are of wrought iron); besides eleven hundred and twenty-eight bearers for supporting galleries. The carpenter undertook to get ready within the specified period two hundred and five MILES of sash-bar, flooring for an area of thirty-three millions of cubic feet, besides enormous quantities of wooden walling, louvre-work, and partition.[3] "It is not till we reflect on the vast sums of money involved in transactions of this magnitude that we can form even a slight notion of the great, almost ruinous loss, a trifling arithmetical error would have occasioned, and of the boundless confidence the parties must have had in their resources and in the correctness of their computations. Nevertheless, it was one great merit in Mr. Paxton's original details of measurement that they were contrived to facilitate calculation. "There was little time for consideration, or for setting right a single mistake, were it ever so disastrous. On the prescribed day the tender was presented, with whatever imperfections it might have had, duly and irredeemably sealed. But after-checkings have divulged no material error." The Royal Commission appear from the first to have been favourably impressed with Mr. Paxton's design, partly, no doubt, because its adoption would at once silence the great bricks-and-mortar objection to the occupation of the site in Hyde Park; and the result was that, on the 16th of July, Messrs. Fox and Henderson's tender of 79,800_l._ for Mr. Paxton's design was verbally accepted, and, as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, the contract was formally concluded. History of Mr. Paxton's Design. As Mr. Paxton himself has stated, the design for a building of such magnitude could not have been produced in so short a space of time without the aid of the experience he had gained in constructing other great buildings of a somewhat similar character; the progress of this experience Mr. Paxton has described in the lecture he delivered to the Society of Arts on the 13th of November, 1850, from which we have made the following extracts; and we hope to be excused by the reader for their copiousness, on the ground that no man can so well relate his own doings as the actor himself:-- "The Great Industrial Building now in the course of erection, and which forms the subject of the present paper, was not the production of a momentary consideration of the subject. Its peculiar construction, in cast-iron and glass, together with the manner of forming the vast roof, is the result of much experience in the erection of buildings of a similar kind, although on a smaller scale, which has gradually developed itself through a series of years. It may not, therefore, be uninteresting to give a brief account of the reasons which led me to investigate the subject of glass roofs and glass structures generally, and which have resulted in the Exhibition Building. "In 1828, when I first turned my attention to the building and improvement of glass structures, the various forcing-houses at Chatsworth, as at other places, were formed of coarse thick glass and heavy woodwork, which rendered the roofs dark and gloomy, and, on this account, very ill suited for the purposes they were intended to answer. My first object was to remove this evil, and, in order to accomplish it, I lightened the rafters and sash-bars, by bevelling off their sides; and some houses which were afterwards built in this manner proved very satisfactory. I also at this time contrived a light sash-bar, having a groove for the reception of the glass; this groove completely obviated a disadvantage connected with the old mode of glazing, namely, the putty becoming continually displaced by sun, frost, and rain, after the sashes had been made for a short time, and the wet by this means finding its way betwixt the glass and the wood, and producing a continual drip in rainy weather. "About this period the desire for metallic roofs began to extend in every direction; and as such structures had a light and graceful appearance, it became a question of importance as to the propriety of using metal sashes and rafters, instead of wooden ones, for horticultural purposes. After carefully observing the effects of those built by various persons, it became apparent to me that the expansion and contraction of metal would always militate against its general adoption, as at no season of the year could the sashes and rafters be made to fit. "The extra expense, also, of erecting metallic-roofed houses was a consideration. In 1833 I contemplated building a new range of hot-houses; and being desirous of knowing how much they would cost, if erected of metal, a plan of the range was prepared and sent to Birmingham, and another to Sheffield, with a desire to be furnished with estimates for that purpose. The estimate from Birmingham was 1,800_l._; and the other, from Sheffield, was 1,850_l._ These appeared to me such enormous sums, that I at once set about calculating how much the range would cost if built of wood under my own inspection; and the result was, that I was able to complete the whole range, including masonry (which was omitted in the metal estimates), for less than 500_l._ "Besides the extra cost of metallic roofs, we must add the extreme heat of such houses in hot weather, and their coldness in times of frost; the liability to breakage of glass from expansion and contraction of the metal; the very limited duration of the smaller portions, as sash-bars, from corrosion, by exposure to the alternations of heat, cold, and moisture, inseparable from gardening operations, and which could only be prevented by making use of the expensive material, COPPER; and the difficulty, when compared with wood, of repairing any damages, as a wooden roof could at any time be set to rights by a common carpenter. These different items formed in my mind so many objections to its use, and the same disadvantages soon became generally apparent. "It was now thought advisable by some parties that, in order to obviate the many disadvantages in the use of metal, the rafters and frame-work of the sashes ought to be made of wood, and the sash-bars of metal. This plan certainly presented more advantages than the other, yet it was quite obvious that materials so incongruous could never give satisfaction; and accordingly, in a few years, as I had anticipated, the rage for these structures gradually subsided, and the use of wood again became resorted to by most persons, as the best material for horticultural purposes. [Illustration: COMMON MODE OF GLAZING ROOFS.] "In the construction of glass-houses requiring much light, there always appeared to me one important objection, which no person seemed to have taken up or obviated; it was this. In plain lean-to or shed roofs, the morning and evening sun, which is on many accounts of the greatest importance in forcing fruits, presented its direct rays at a low angle, and, consequently, very obliquely to the glass. At those periods most of the rays of light and heat were obstructed by the position of the glass and heavy rafters, so that a considerable portion of time was lost both morning and evening; it consequently became evident that a system by which the glass would be more at right angles to the morning and evening rays of the sun would obviate the difficulty, and remove the obstruction to rays of light entering the house at an early and late hour of the day. [Illustration: METHOD BY RIDGE-AND-FURROW.] "This led me to the adoption of the ridge-and-furrow principle for glass roofs, which places the glass in such a position that the rays of light in the mornings and evenings enter the house without obstruction, and present themselves more perpendicularly to the glass at those times when they are the least powerful; whereas at mid-day, when they are most powerful, they present themselves more obliquely to the glass. Having had this principle fixed in my mind, and being convinced of its importance, I constructed a pine-house in 1833 as an experiment, which still exists unimpaired, and has been found fully to answer the purpose. "In 1834 I resolved to try a further experiment on a larger scale, on the ridge-and-furrow principle, in the construction of a green-house of considerable dimensions, which also remains and answers admirably. For this building I made a still lighter sash-bar than any I had previously used; on which account the house, when completed (although possessing all the advantages of wood), was as light as if constructed of metal. The whole length of this structure is 97½ feet, and its breadth 26 feet; the height at the back is 16 feet 9 inches, and in the front 12 feet 3 inches. A span so large as 26 feet could not be safely covered with a roof constructed in the ordinary way, unless the sash-bars were stronger, and the assistance of heavy rafters and numerous supports was afforded. The house presents a neat and light appearance, and consists of 15 bays, and pediments in front, supported by 16 slender reeded cast-iron columns. Whilst it makes an admirable green-house, it is also an economical building; for, at the period of its construction, notwithstanding the heavy tax on glass (since removed), it only cost at the rate of twopence and a fraction per cubic foot. At the present time, considering the change in the price of material, and the removal of the glass-tax, it could be constructed at a considerably smaller amount. "Having in contemplation the erection of the Great Conservatory in its present form, it was determined, in 1836, to erect a new curvilinear hot-house 60 feet in length and 26 feet in width, with the elliptical roof on the ridge-and-furrow principle, to be constructed entirely of wood, for the purpose of exhibiting how roofs of this kind could be supported. The plan adopted was this: the curved rafters were composed of several boards securely nailed together on templets of wood cut to the exact curve; by this means a strength and firmness were obtained sufficient to support an enormous weight. "In 1837 the foundations of the Great Conservatory were commenced; and in constructing so great a building it was found desirable to contrive some means for abridging the great amount of manual labour that would be required in making the immense number of sash-bars requisite for the purpose. Accordingly, I visited all the great workshops in London, Manchester, and Birmingham, to see if anything had been invented that would afford the facilities I required. The only apparatus met with was a grooving-machine, which I had at once connected with a steam-engine at Chatsworth, and which was subsequently so improved as to make the sash-bar complete. [Illustration: CUTTERS OF MR. PAXTON'S SASH-BAR MACHINE.] "For this apparatus the Society of Arts, in April, 1841, awarded me a medal; and this machine is the type from which all the sash-bar machines found in use throughout the country at the present time are taken. As the Conservatory was erected under my own immediate superintendence, I am able to speak accurately as to the advantages of the machine: it has, in regard to that building alone, saved in expenses 1,400_l._ The length of each of the bars of the Conservatory is 48 inches; only one inch shorter than those of the Exhibition Building. The machine was first used in its present form in August, 1838; and its original cost, including table, wheels, and everything complete, was 20_l._ The motive power is from a steam-engine employed on the premises for other purposes; and any well-seasoned timber may be used. The attendants required are only a man and a boy, and the expense of the power required for it when in use is comparatively trifling. The sash-bars may be made of any form, by changing the character of the saws. "There is one particular feature in working the machine, namely, the bar is presented to the saws below the centre of motion, instead of above it (as is usual); and to the sides of the saw which are ascending from the table, instead of those which are descending. These arrangements were necessary to suit the direction of the teeth to the grain of the wood; for when the bars were presented to the saws in the usual way, the wood was crushed instead of being cut and cleaned. It is essential that the machine should revolve 1,200 times in a minute to finish the work in a proper manner. "The glass and glazing of the Chatsworth Conservatory caused me considerable thought and anxiety, as I was very desirous to do away altogether with the numerous overlaps connected with the old system of glazing with short lengths. This old method, even under the best of management, is certain, in the course of a few years, to render unsightly any structure, however well built. "In the course of my inquiries, I heard that Messrs. Chance and Co., of Birmingham, had just introduced from the Continent the manufacture of sheet glass. Accordingly, I went to see them make this new article, and found they were able to manufacture it three feet in length. I was advised to use this glass in two lengths, with one overlap; but to this I could not assent, as I observed, that since they had so far advanced as to be able to produce sheets three feet in length, I saw no reason why they could not accomplish another foot; and, if this could not be done, I would decline giving the order, as, at that time, sheet glass was altogether an experiment for horticultural purposes. These gentlemen, however, shortly afterwards informed me that they had one person who could make it the desired length, and, if I would give the order, they would furnish me with all I required. "It may just be remarked here that the glass for the Exhibition Building is forty-nine inches long--a size which no country except England is able to furnish in any large quantity, even at the present day. "In 1840 the Chatsworth Conservatory was completed and planted. The whole length of this building is 277 feet; its breadth, 123 feet over the walls; and the height, from the floor to the highest part, 67 feet. "Notwithstanding the success which attended the erection of these buildings, it became to me a question of importance how far an extensive structure might be covered in with _flat_ ridge-and-furrow roofs; that is, the ridge-and-valley rafters placed on a level, instead of at an inclination, as in the green-house, or curvilinear, as in the Great Conservatory. I therefore prepared some plans for an erection of the kind for the Earl of Burlington, somewhere about ten years ago; but, on account of the lamented death of the Countess, the design of erection was abandoned. However, from that time I felt assured, not only that it could be done satisfactorily, but that the most appropriate manner to form and support level glass roofs, to a great extent, was that adopted this year for the New Victoria House at Chatsworth, which may be considered a miniature type of the Great Industrial Building. "Before describing this house, however, it may be well to notice two instances in which the flat roofs had been previously tried, and in both cases with the most perfect success. "The first of these was a conservatory attached to a villa in Darley Dale, only a short distance from Chatsworth. This building is divided into five bays, with a glass door in the centre, and glass pilasters separating the bays; the ridge-and-furrow roof covers an opening of seventeen feet in the clear. The ventilation is simultaneously effected by a lever connected with a rod, which is attached to all the ventilators.... [Illustration: THE VICTORIA REGIA HOUSE, CHATSWORTH.] "The second instance is this. In the spring of 1848, plans were prepared for the erection of an ornamental glass structure, to cover the conservatory wall at Chatsworth. This wall was previously a plain flued structure, devoted to the growth of rare and choice plants. The new erection is 331 feet in length, and 7 feet in width. It is divided into ten bays, with an ornamental centre projecting beyond the general line of the building. Each bay is subdivided by smaller bays, which are separated by glass pilasters; the glass sashes are so arranged that they can be removed in summer, and the whole thrown open to the gardens, whilst in winter the building affords an extensive promenade under cover. The ground on which this structure is built has a fall of 25 feet 6 inches in its whole length; consequently, there is a proportionate fall at each bay, which gives great variety, and obviates the monotony that would be exhibited in a building of such length and dimensions placed on a uniform level. The lower side of each bay is finished by a glass pilaster, three feet in width, and surmounted by a vase on the wall behind. The roof is on the ridge-and-furrow principle, with the rafters on a very slight inclination; and the ventilation is effected in a similar but more perfect manner than that already described as in use at the conservatory at Darley Dale. "The new Victoria Regia House, which presents a light and novel appearance, is 60 feet 6 inches in length, and 46 feet 9 inches in breadth. Although, when compared with the Great Industrial Building, the Victoria House is a very diminutive structure, yet the principles on which it is constructed are the same, and may be carried out to an almost unlimited extent. The form of the roof, the general elevation, the supports, and the mode of construction, are all quite simple, and yet fully answer the purposes for which they were intended. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF VICTORIA REGIA HOUSE.] "The Victoria House, however, was so built as to retain as much moisture and heat as possible, and yet to afford a strong and bright light at all seasons; whilst, on the contrary, the Industrial Building, being intended to accommodate a daily assemblage of many thousands of individuals, and a vast number of natural and mechanical productions, many of which would be destroyed by moisture and heat, is constructed so as fully to answer that end." This, then, was the experience which enabled Mr. Paxton to conceive his design for the "Crystal Palace," a description of which as it has subsequently been carried out we must now proceed with. General Description of the Building. The plan forms a parallelogram, 1,848 feet long and 408 feet wide, besides a projection on the north side, 48 feet wide and 936 feet long. A main avenue, 72 feet wide and 66 feet high, occupies the centre through the whole length of the building. Flanking this on either side are smaller avenues alternately 24 feet and 48 feet wide; the two first on either side of the centre are 43 feet, and the remainder 23 feet high. About the centre of the entire length, at a point determined by the position of a row of large trees, which it was resolved to inclose, these avenues are crossed by a transept of the same width as the main avenue, or 72 feet, and 108 feet high; two other groups of trees on the ground give occasion for open courts, which are inclosed within the building. The area thus inclosed and roofed over amounts to no less than 772,784 square feet, or about 19 acres;[4] the building is, therefore, about four times the size of St. Peter's at Rome, and more than six times that of St. Paul's, London. Three entrances lead to this vast interior, one in the centre of the principal or south front, and one at either end of the building. The number of these is necessarily small, in order to facilitate the arrangements for the money-taking, and to avoid having too large a staff of officers; on the other hand, it was equally desirable to afford the most ample opportunities of egress for visitors, and accordingly fifteen exit doors are placed at frequent intervals. GROUND-PLAN OF THE BUILDING. [Illustration] A. Principal Entrance. B. West Entrance. C. East Entrance. D. Refreshment Courts. E. Entrance. F. Gentlemens' Ante-rooms. G. Ladies' Ante-rooms. H. Pay Place. I. Accountant. K. Exits. L. Ante-rooms. M. Committee Waiting-room. N. Royal Commission. O. Clerks. P. Stairs. Q. Engine House. It will be well to mention here that the horizontal measure of 24 feet, which we have seen as the unit in the plan of the Building Committee, is also preserved in the present plan; every horizontal dimension of which is either a certain number of times or divisions of twenty-four feet. The avenues into which the plan is divided are formed by hollow cast-iron columns twenty-four feet apart, which rise in one, two, and three storeys respectively, to support the roof at the different heights given above; in the lower storey these columns are nineteen feet high, and in the two upper ones seventeen feet. Between the different lengths of the columns short pieces are introduced, called "connecting-pieces," from the office they perform; these are three feet long, and are so contrived that they serve to support girders in horizontal tiers, dividing the greatest height into three storeys as already mentioned. The girders, of which some are of cast and some of wrought iron, are all of the same depth, namely, three feet, with the exception of four, to be specially named hereafter, and by this arrangement the same horizontal lines are preserved throughout the whole of the building. They are also all similar in appearance, forming a kind of lattice-work, by which construction they do not look too heavy for the slight supports; and large solid masses are avoided, practically showing how great strength may be combined with elegance and lightness. The first or lower tier of these girders, in parts of the building more than one storey in height, forms the support for the floor of the galleries, which are twenty-four feet wide, and extend the whole length of the building in four parallel lines, intercepted only by the transept, round the ends of which they are continued. Numerous cross galleries connect each pair of longitudinal lines on either side of the centre avenue, which remains uninterrupted from end to end, and can only be crossed on the gallery-floor at the extremities. These galleries are reached by eight double staircases, of easy ascent and ample width, which are placed between the lines of gallery so as to communicate equally readily with either, and are so distributed as to give two to each quarter of the building; in the eastern or foreign half two supplementary staircases of smaller dimensions have been added. In those parts of the building more than two storeys in height, the second horizontal tier of girders does not support a gallery, but serves only to give stiffness to the columns. The upper tier of girders, in all cases, supports the roof, which is one of the most peculiar features in the structure. In its general form the roof is flat; but it is made up of a series of ridges and furrows, the rise and fall of which is but small, and is thus arranged: the roof-girders or trusses being twenty-four feet apart, and lying in the transverse direction of the building, the space between them is spanned by light beams or rafters, which are cambered or bent upwards, and are hollowed out in a groove on the top to form a gutter. The rafters are placed eight feet apart, their ends resting on the roof-girders, and lying, therefore, in the opposite direction to them, that is, in the direction of the length of the building; these rafters are commonly called the Paxton's Gutters. Between the rafters so described, _ridges_ are supported by light sash-bars sloping up to them, at an inclination of two-and-a-half to one, and the rafter itself forms the bottom of the _furrow_. The advantage of this form of roofing is the facility it affords for the escape of the water, which runs from the surface of the roof into the Paxton's gutters; from them it is discharged into the main gutters resting on the roof-girders, by which it is conducted to the hollow columns, and passes down through them into the drains. A drop of water falling on the most distant point from the discharge would only have to traverse a distance of forty-eight feet; but in most cases the length to be passed over before reaching the down pipe would be considerably less.[5] The covering of the roof is glass, fixed between the sash-bars, which are grooved to receive it; and in order to carry off the moisture arising from condensation on the inner surface of the glass, the rafters have a small groove on each side, which makes the Paxton's gutter complete, and from which the moisture is also discharged into the main gutters. The essential portions of the roof may therefore be considered as a network of gutters; one set, the main gutters, lying in a transverse direction, and the others resting on them, and lying in the direction of the length of the building; by which arrangement any amount of surface can always be covered by roofing of a small span. The principle is precisely the same as that of subdividing large fields of arable land into strips or "lands" with furrows between them, in order to facilitate the surface-drainage. [Illustration: VIEW OF ONE 24-FEET SQUARE BAY OF ROOF PARTLY COMPLETED.] The outer inclosure, on the ground-floor, is formed by dividing each 24-feet bay between the columns into three 8-feet bays by half columns of wood, between which is placed boarding, held in its place by iron clips and bolts; a plinth, four feet high, is formed immediately above the floor by frames, filled with what are commonly called louvre-blades, which are hung on pivots, and of which a large number can be moved simultaneously for the admission of air; similar ventilating-frames, three feet deep, are introduced at the top of each storey round the entire circuit of the building, and by this means a ventilating-surface of no less than 40,800 square feet is obtained, or rather more than one acre. [Illustration: PORTION OF THE LOWER STOREY OF THE PRINCIPAL ELEVATIONS.] Externally some light arches are inserted, and open panels form the inclosure for the upper louvre-frames. The details we have been describing may be readily traced in the engraving of a portion of the lower storey as seen from the outside. The exit doors occupy one of the 8-feet bays opening about six feet wide. The inclosure to the upper storeys closely resembles those of the ground-floor, but glazed sashes are substituted for the close boarding, and the plinth is omitted. Each storey is crowned externally with a cornice and cresting ornament, and over the columns posts are carried up, to which flagstaffs will be fixed. To return to the interior. The whole of the floor is boarded; that below is laid with an interval of half an inch between the boards, to allow the passage of dust from the millions of feet by which it will be trod; the gallery floor, on the contrary, has iron tongues between the boards to prevent the dust from coming through on the heads of the visitors below. The roof of the transept, which we have described as crossing the building about the centre of its length, differs from that of the other parts, its general form being semicircular instead of flat, and rising above the rest of the building so as to show the whole of the semicircle externally. This roof is supported by arched timber ribs placed twenty-four feet apart, or one over every column, which forms a socket, into which the foot of the rib is fitted and secured by iron straps. Between the ribs, timbers are fixed which carry minor ribs at a distance of eight feet apart, and upon these the ridge-and-furrow roofing is constructed in the manner that has been described for the flat roofing, but following the curve of the arched ribs. At the springing or foot of the arch on either side of the transept there is a range of louvre-frames to assist in the ventilation of the building, and on the top of the arch externally a narrow passage is formed to give access to the different parts of this roof. On the inner side of the arch diagonal tie-rods are introduced between the main ribs, which, while they serve to increase the strength of the construction by tying together all the parts from end to end, produce an agreeable play of lines forming a kind of network over the whole of the surface. The ends of the transept are closed in with fan-like tracery, reminding the spectator of the magnificent wheel windows of our Gothic cathedrals; this elegant feature is not visible in our interior view, but will be seen in some of the exteriors. There is, perhaps, no part of this interesting building in which the great size and singular lightness, almost airiness, of the construction are so strikingly displayed as in the TRANSEPT, inclosing as it does a row of fine old elm-trees, as if to protect them in their venerable age from the smoke of the thousands of chimneys that have been gradually forming a destructive circle around them. The only portion of solid untransparent roofing in the whole of this building is formed on either side of the arched roof just described, where there is a lead flat twenty-four feet wide. This was partly required for a platform to serve for carrying on the works for the arched roof, and was also exceedingly useful in giving access to the other roofs on either side; it likewise afforded the opportunity of giving some additional strength at the springing of the arched ribs to resist any possible tendency they might have to spread outwards. [Illustration: View of the Interior of the Transept.] [Illustration: View of Glass Roof from the Lead Flat.] As the weight of such lead roofing considerably exceeds that of the glass ridge-and-furrow covering, it was necessary at the point where it crosses the wide span of the main avenue to introduce some stronger roof-girders than those used elsewhere; of these there are two on either side of the transept, the inner one of which has also to sustain two of the large arched ribs with their superincumbent roofing, and its strength is therefore increased in proportion to the additional load placed upon it. The extra-strong roof-girders are six feet deep, or twice that of the others; but their general construction is similar, the diagonal ties forming a kind of latticework, and thus keeping up the same character. These, like all the roof-girders of large span, are constructed principally of wrought-iron. Those who visited the building during its erection, and were among the fortunate few who were enabled to ascend to the "lead-flat," must have been very much struck with the singular appearance presented by the great expanse of acres of glass stretching in long lines of "ridge-and-furrow" roofing on each side of the centre, while the eye, penetrating the transparent covering, became lost in endeavouring to follow the apparently intricate lines of the interior. Such a view might fairly be said to justify the title of "Crystal Palace," by which this building is so commonly known; and it would require no great stretch of imagination to believe that it had been reared by fairy hands, as a votive offering at the world's jubilee of labour. But we must descend again to the interior, to point out the arrangement of the offices for the staff of the Executive. The principal of these are naturally placed in the centre, on either side of the principal entrance, where they occupy in two storeys the space underneath the gallery, which is continued uninterrupted over them. The entrances at the end are also flanked by offices of less extent. The outer inclosure of these spaces is formed with glazed sashes, similar to those which are placed on the exterior of the building, and boarded partitions divide the interior. The rooms are arranged to be heated and lighted by gas when required, and ample means of ventilation are provided. The simplicity of the construction renders it very easy to extend or contract the accommodation much more readily than would be possible under ordinary circumstances. It now remains to notice the arrangements provided for refreshments, which are introduced in connexion with the open courts left on account of the groups of trees. These happen to occur towards the ends of the building, and on the north side of the main avenue; the space at the north end of the transept, next to the inclosed trees, is also appropriated for this purpose. The roofing over these parts is a continuation of that over the rest of the building; and the partitions necessary for inclosing the different spaces are formed chiefly with glazed sashes, avoiding as much as possible any solid construction, which would appear out of character. The open courts are inclosed with sashes and doors, rendered necessary by the uncertain nature of our climate. A small detached building which has not been mentioned serves for the boiler-house, and is placed near the west end of the building. As it had been determined to afford the means of exhibiting some of the machinery in actual motion, it was necessary to erect boilers to supply the steam to the different machines, as it would clearly be inadmissible for each to generate steam for its own use in the building. The house to contain the boilers is ninety-six feet long and twenty-four feet wide, and is placed as near as practicable to the machinery-department; but at the same time it is quite detached from the main building to avoid risk from the fires. In appearance it resembles the one-storey portion of the main building, but it is constructed entirely of fire-proof materials. It contains five boilers, each to supply steam for twenty-horse power, which is distributed by a pipe to the different machinery. [Illustration: General View of the Building from the South-West.] An ornamental cast-iron railing designed by Mr. Owen Jones incloses the building, being placed at a distance of about eight feet from it along the principal fronts, but carried much further off at the ends, so as to inclose a considerable space, which will thus be available for exhibiting any large objects that will bear exposure to the weather, if there should not be sufficient room in the interior of the building. Gates are placed opposite all the entrances and exits, and these are so arranged that when closed they are uniform in appearance with the rest of the railing. [Illustration: EXTERNAL RAILING.] Having thus given a general sketch of the arrangement and appearance of the building, we shall proceed to describe somewhat more minutely the various details of the construction, of which the essential parts are few in number compared with the great repetition of each individually. To assist in this multiplied reproduction of the same form, some exceedingly ingenious machinery has been employed, which will therefore be described in connexion with the parts it has been used to form; and thus these will be traced through their various stages, from the raw material to their finished state as portions of the building. The greater part of this machinery has been used in shaping out those parts which are of wood, and particularly the different portions of the roof, with which we will therefore commence. The Paxton's Gutters. It has been mentioned that the rafters which span the space between the roof-girders serve, at the same time, as gutters, for which purpose they are hollowed out on the upper face, besides having smaller grooves at the sides to take the condensation-water. The bottom of the gutter is of a circular form, which is universally considered the best for conveying liquids with the least amount of friction, and therefore the least liable to obstruction from an accumulation of dirt. [Illustration: SECTION OF THE PAXTON'S GUTTER, WITH THE STRONG SASH-BAR.] [Illustration: THE CIRCULAR PLANING-MACHINE.] [Illustration: PORTION OF PLANING-MACHINE, WITH THE REVOLVING ARM AND CUTTERS.] A section of the gutter, as finished, is shown. To bring it into this form, after the timbers had been sawn into the requisite general dimensions they were brought under the action of the planing-machine, where they were planed on the four sides. This machine is patented by W. Furness, of Liverpool, and was worked at the Chelsea Wharf Saw-mills. The operation was effected by cutters (_a_) attached to the ends of an arm revolving with great rapidity in a horizontal plane; the timbers to be planed were wedged up into a frame (_b_) traversing on rails, and as this was passed under the revolving cutters the upper surface was removed by them, at the same time the timbers were held down upon the frame by a large iron disc (_c_) pressing upon their upper surface. The disc, together with the revolving arm carrying the cutters, was capable of being adjusted vertically to the exact dimensions of the timber. The traversing-frame was slowly propelled by the machinery, and three widths of timber were operated upon at one time. On leaving the planing-machine these quarter baulks were passed on to the gutter-cutting machine. Four different cutters were required to form the section, as shown above; they were placed one behind the other, so that the piece of timber, which was presented to their action above the centre of motion, passed over each of them in succession. The first set, which revolved in a vertical plane, roughly hollowed out the larger groove to the section shown in Fig. 1; the two next were counterparts, and formed the same section in opposite directions; they were set at an inclination to the upright of about 45 degrees, the one to the right, the other to the left; and each hollowed out one of the small side grooves, and one side of the larger gutter, leaving the section of the timber respectively of the forms shown in Figs. 2 and 3. Fig. 4 shows the form of its section after it had passed both; the fourth set of cutters again revolved vertically, and gave the gutter its finished form, as shown above. As the timber passed over the cutters it was supported at the ends on revolving rollers, and was held in its place by guiding grooves, being pressed gradually forwards against the cutters. [Illustration: SECTIONS OF THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE PAXTON'S GUTTERS.] [Illustration: THE GUTTER-CUTTING MACHINE.] In this manner forty-two lengths of solid gutter, each twenty-four feet and a fraction long, were completed in a day of ten hours; and as the machine was worked double time, a length of more than 2,000 feet was turned out daily ready for use: this, it has been calculated, would have required the labour of about three hundred men to be employed for the same length of time. The absolute necessity for such rapid production will be evident when it is known that no less than 110,000 feet, or about twenty miles length, of such gutters were required--very nearly the distance from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle. Finished as described above, the Paxton's gutters arrived at the building, where the first operation they underwent was that of cutting them to the exact length requisite. This was a nice operation, as the smallest deviation would have caused a difficulty in fitting them into their place, and to perform it a framework was constructed by which the solid gutter could be bent to the same curve it would have when fixed; a precaution that was necessary in order that the ends might be cut off quite vertically so as to fit together when in their place. At one end of this frame-work was placed a circular saw, twenty inches diameter, hung with a pulley and balance weight, so as to be moved up and down by means of a lever. The gutter being fixed in the frame by means of hinged guage-plates, one end was cut by the circular saw being brought down upon it; and at the same time another operation was performed: two cutters, placed in the centre of the circular saw, were so arranged that when brought down upon the end of the solid gutter they cut out a semi-circular notch, so that when the ends of two gutters were afterwards placed together there was a circular hole left, through which the water passed down into the main gutter. When these operations were completed at one end of the gutter, the guage-plates were taken off, and the timber was swung round on a pivot or crutch in the centre, and the same process gone through as before; the whole scarcely occupying two minutes. We shall presently have to return to this piece of machinery, as it was also used in finishing the ridge rafters. [Illustration: MACHINE FOR FINISHING ENDS OF GUTTERS AND RIDGES.] The solid gutter was now transferred to the hands of the carpenter, who fixed at each end, on the under-side, a small cast-iron shoe; and two struts, nine inches long, were placed so as to divide the whole length into three equal parts--the struts spread out at the top in order to present a large surface of pressure against the under-side of the gutter; and tenons projected upwards, which were fitted into mortices cut into the timber. The lower end of the struts were formed so as to give them a firm hold upon a wrought-iron rod, thirteen-sixteenths of an inch diameter, which was passed under them and through the shoes, where it was screwed up with nuts; and the struts pressing up against the timber produced the requisite bend or camber. Twenty-seven notches, to receive the sash bars, were marked with a templet and cut out on each edge of the upper-side of the gutter; and a small cast-iron plate having been fitted on the under-side at each end, the Paxton's gutter was complete and ready for fixing. The under-trussing of the rafters increased their strength considerably, so that a weight of one-and-a-half tons was required to break one which was experimented upon. The Sash-bars. We will next consider the sash-bars which support the ridge of the roof and receive the glass. The total length which was required of these amounts to about two hundred miles; it will, therefore, be easily understood that mechanical contrivance for cutting them out became an absolute necessity; this Mr. Paxton appears to have discovered in his works at Chatsworth, as he mentions in his lecture. [Illustration: MACHINE FOR CUTTING OUT SASH-BARS.] The sash-bars are one inch thick and one-and-a-half inches deep, and are grooved on each side, besides having all the four edges bevelled or chamfered; all which was done in one passage through the machine. The plank which was to form the sash-bars was passed in at one end of the machine, between pressure-rollers; it then passed between cutters placed both above and below it, which made about twelve hundred revolutions per minute, and hollowed out the different grooves; and, lastly, it passed between circular saws which divided it into separate sash-bars, after which they had only to be cut into their proper lengths.[6] The exact length of each sash-bar when finished is four feet one inch. In this state the skylight bars were sent to the building, where they underwent several finishing operations, necessary to make the ends fit down into the notches prepared in the ridges and gutters. Thirty of the bars were first placed together in a horizontal traversing-frame on a saw-table, on each side of which circular saws were fixed at the distance of the required length of the sash-bar; the frame was then moved forward against the saws, so that both ends of the whole set of bars were cut off simultaneously, and at the same time a cut was made at one end half-way through the bar, in order to form the shoulder against the gutter. They were then removed to another bench, where the end of the bar was bevelled and the shoulder formed by means of a small instrument having a handle with two projecting jaws fitting into the ends of the glass grooves of the bars; between these there was a small blade which, being pressed down, cut out the shoulder which had been sawn through in the other direction, and another blade was placed at the proper angle to remove the bevelled piece at the end of the bar. [Illustration: THE SASH-BAR DRILLING-MACHINE.] One more process made the sash-bars complete for fixing--this was the drilling a hole at each end to nail them down on the gutter and ridge; and this was also done by machinery, to insure all the holes being drilled at the same angle. On one side of a horizontal bench were placed a set of four-inch driving pulleys (_a a_), with as many horizontal drills projecting towards the other side of the bench; a wooden traversing-plate (_c_) opposite each drill, and working towards it, received one end of the sash-bar, while the other rested in an inclined position against a wooden rail (_b_) placed longitudinally above the pulleys, having as many sinkings thereon as there were drills. The traversing-plate being then pushed forward, the sash-bar was perforated by the drill; the plate was then drawn back, and the same operation repeated with the other end of the bar, which left it ready for fixing. The action of the traversing-plate (_c_) is shown more distinctly in the second engraving.[7] One out of every nine of the sash-bars of the roof is stronger than the rest, to serve for fixing the ridge previous to glazing. These extra-strong bars are two inches wide and one inch and a half deep, and were formed by the same machinery already described, by an adjustment of the different cutters and saws. [Illustration: PORTION OF SASH-BAR DRILLING-MACHINE.] The Ridges. The total length of these required was about sixteen miles. They are cut out of timber three inches square, in section, and are of the form shown in the diagram, with a groove on each side to receive the glass. This was also done by machinery which, with about five-horse power, turned out one hundred lengths of twenty-four feet in a day of ten hours, allowing the time for the necessary stoppages. After they had been delivered at the building, these ridge-pieces were cut to the exact lengths by means of the same apparatus used for the solid gutters which has already been described. At each end of the ridge-piece two holes were also drilled to receive dowells to connect it with the adjoining length. By no other than mechanical means could the immense number of holes thus drilled have been placed so exactly that those in the opposite ends of any two ridge-pieces should correspond precisely. [Illustration: SECTION OF RIDGE AND ORDINARY SASH-BAR.] The different essential component parts of the roof having thus been described, we propose to take the different members of the construction in succession downwards. The Glass. But first it may be mentioned here that the glass used throughout the building is sheet, on an average about one-sixteenth of an inch thick, and weighing one pound per foot superficial. This gives an aggregate weight of about four hundred tons for the whole of the work, the greater part of which was supplied by Messrs. Chance and Co., of Birmingham. Each square is forty-nine inches long and ten wide, the greatest length of sheet glass that has ever been made in this country. The manufacture of this kind of glass is of comparatively recent introduction into England, though practised for some time on the Continent; and the rapid progress made by the manufacturers alluded to must be in a great measure attributed to the wise removal of the fiscal burden on the article, made by the late Sir Robert Peel. That lamented statesman, with his usual foresight, doubtless contemplated that great social benefits would follow from that enactment; and it is, perhaps, not too much to say that, but for Sir Robert's enlightened measure, this "huge pile of transparency" would never have been reared. The Box Gutters. It has been mentioned that the triple gutters deliver the water into main gutters running in the transverse direction of the building; these are formed of wood, with a bottom piece, into which are grooved two upright sides, they are firmly bolted down upon the upper flange of the roof-girders, and where these are quite horizontal the fall in the gutter is given by a false bottom laid to a slope. Of these gutters there is a length of about five-and-a-half miles in the building, which, added to the aggregate length of the Paxton's gutters, makes a total of about twenty-five-and-a-half miles of gutter. Roof Girders. These are of cast-iron, where not more than twenty-four feet long, and the rest of wrought-iron. The cast-iron ones are precisely the same in appearance as those used for the galleries, but lighter in metal; a separate description of them is not, therefore, necessary. The weight of each of these girders is twelve cwt., and each was proved to nine tons previously to being used; but it is calculated that the greatest weight they may have to bear will not exceed five tons: the total number required was about 470. The wrought-iron girders, or trusses, are partly forty-eight and partly seventy-two feet long, to span the avenues of those respective widths; the principle of the construction is the same in each. The top rail (if it may be so called) of the truss is formed with two pieces of [L section] iron placed back to back [double L sections], and the bottom rail with two flat bars [parallel flat bars], the total depth being three feet; at the ends these bars are riveted on to cast-iron standards, and the intermediate distance is divided into eight-feet lengths by other cast-iron standards, to which the bars are also riveted, and thus a framework of rectangles is formed. In the trusses forty-eight feet span there are, therefore, six such divisions in the length, and nine in those of seventy-two feet span. These are then divided in the direction of ONE of the diagonals by a flat bar passing between and riveted to those forming the top and bottom rails. This completes the constructional part of the truss; but to render the appearance more uniform with that of the cast-iron girders, a flat bar of wood (shown by the dotted lines) is made to form the other diagonal of the rectangles. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF 48-FEET GIRDER.] The trusses for a span of seventy-two feet are cambered or bent upwards about ten inches, which both adds to their strength and improves the appearance. The form and arrangement of these roof-trusses may be clearly traced in several of the views of the interior which are presented to the reader. The weight, when completed, of each of the trusses of seventy-two feet span is about thirty-five cwt., and of those of forty-eight feet span about thirteen cwt. It has been already mentioned that four of the roof-trusses vary from the rest on account of the greater load they have to sustain. The depth of these exceptional trusses is six feet, and their length seventy-two feet, or the width of the main avenue, which they bridge over. The principle of their construction is similar to that employed in the lighter trusses; but the arrangement of the parts is somewhat modified. The top rail consists of two pieces of [L section] iron, placed, as before, back to back; but they are further connected on the top by a flat piece [double L sections with flat]. The lower rail is formed by two flat bars placed upright [parallel flat bars], and these are riveted at the ends to standards of cast-iron, which, however, are considerably heavier in construction than those before described; and they have also in the centre, at (_a_) two slots, or sinkings, into which the ends of two of the diagonal bars are riveted. The whole length is then divided into three equal parts, each 24 feet long, by strong CAST-iron standards at (_b_) the ends of which are riveted between the rails, and these spaces are again subdivided into three eight-feet lengths by WROUGHT-iron standards at (_c c_). The top of each standard is next connected with the foot of the next but one to it by diagonal flat bars, which, together with the short pieces fastened into the slots at (_a_), complete the figure of the whole, forming a kind of trellis-work, two diamonds in depth. In the diagram only half the length of the girder is shown. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF ONE-HALF OF 72-FEET GIRDER.] The dimensions of the different bars of iron in this piece of construction are proportional to the amount of strain they have to bear. The two heavier out of the four trusses just described weighed when completed eight tons each, and the other two, which are of rather lighter construction, six tons each. The riveting together of the wrought-iron trusses was performed on horizontal supports, on which the curve that they were to be made to was marked out. The bars having been previously cut to the requisite lengths, and punched and drilled with holes for the rivets, were laid out on the stages in the proper forms with the cast-iron standards, which were temporarily kept in place by bolts passed through some of the rivet-holes. The whole framework was then riveted up with red-hot rivets supplied from small portable furnaces, several sets of men being employed upon each truss, by which means as many as sixteen were completed in one day. The whole of the trusses, three hundred and seventy-two in number, required for the building were put together on the ground, and several ingenious mechanical contrivances were made use of to facilitate and hasten the work. To form some idea of the amount of labour that had to be performed, it may be mentioned that each of the trusses forty-eight feet in length, or the smallest, is held together by more than fifty rivets, requiring more than twice that number of holes to be made in bars of iron varying in thickness from a quarter of an inch upwards. About 25,000 rivets were thus required for the whole of the work. Iron Drilling Machine. The holes for the rivets were made partly by drilling and partly by punching. In the machine used for the former the bar to be bored was laid upon a flat surface forming part of the solid cast-iron stand of the machinery; the drilling-point worked vertically, and could be moved in that direction to suit the different thicknesses of iron brought under its operation. It was suspended at one end of a lever, with a counterpoise at the other. This lever was also connected by a rod and crank, with another near the ground, one end of which was formed into a tread to be worked by the foot. The workman, when he had arranged the iron in the right position under the drill, pressed his foot upon the tread; thus raising the counterpoise end of the upper lever, and pressing the point of the drill, which was of a spear-head form, down upon the iron. Underneath the iron to be drilled was placed a piece of wood to protect the point of the drill when it had passed through the iron. It was also necessary to moisten the iron during the operation, in order to keep the drill-point cool. Three men were required to attend to this work, which was not so rapid as the other method of making the holes by punching. [Illustration: THE DRILLING-MACHINE.] The Punching Machine. [Illustration: THE PUNCHING-MACHINE AND SHEARS.] The enormous power exerted by this piece of machinery renders it necessary that the stand containing the punch, &c., should be exceedingly solid, and it is formed accordingly by a heavy mass of cast-iron, in which there are two indentations, as seen by the engraving. In the lower of these the punching operation is performed, and in the upper there are shears for cutting off the ends of the bars when required. The motion is communicated to each of these by means of a cogged wheel at the back; but both the punch and the shears work in a vertical direction, slowly moving up and down with irresistible force. There is no sudden blow or jerk, which makes the effect the more striking, as the unpractised eye has no means of discovering the amount of the force which is being put in operation. It is, however, so great that, although the punching of a hole scarcely occupies two or three seconds, the iron becomes quite hot from the effect of the pressure. In using this machine, the workman arranges the iron bar on a solid rest, placing it so that when the punch descends it makes the hole in the position required. As soon as the punch has passed through the bar, the action of the machinery is reversed, and the instrument ascends again; during which time the bar is re-arranged, and the operation is thus continually repeated. This piece of machinery also requires three men to work it, if the bars to be punched are of considerable length, so as to require the ends to be held up; otherwise, one alone is sufficient; and in the course of a ten-hours day about three thousand holes can be punched out--the number, of course, varying according to the thickness of the bars. Neither of the mechanical contrivances just described are novel inventions, though they are thus, perhaps, brought for the first time under the notice of many of our readers, to whom they may be so far rendered interesting from their being connected with the execution of THE building of the day. The Adzing and Planing Machine. [Illustration: THE ADZING-CUTTERS.] At the Chelsea Saw-mills, where the reader has already seen the Paxton's gutters shaped out, another interesting piece of machinery was in use for these works, for the purpose of finishing planks to a certain size and thickness, called the adzing and planing machine. An adze is a tool used by carpenters to remove any unevenness in the surface of a board in a particular spot. In this piece of machinery two cutters are fixed to a revolving arm, under which the plank is made to pass; and as it does so the cutters remove a certain thickness from the whole of the surface. The arrangement of these cutters is very plainly shown in the annexed engraving. On the under-side of the same bench to which this apparatus is fixed, three planes are set, each at an angle of about 5 degrees, by which the under-side of the plank is brought to an even face, while the upper surface is operated on by the adzing-cutters, and in this manner the plank is reduced to an even thickness throughout. As it passes on it is brought between two circular saws, which are adjusted to the width which it is desired to give to the plank. It is dragged forward towards the planes and cutters by means of an endless chain, composed of open links; which chain passes over a wheel provided with projecting pegs, so arranged as to fit into the links. The plank is kept down upon the planes, and otherwise held in position, by pressure-rollers. [Illustration: THE ADZING AND PLANING MACHINE.] The Columns and Connecting Pieces. [Illustration: SECTION OF COLUMN.] The columns in the building perform three important offices. They support the roof and the galleries, and serve as pipes to convey the rain-water from the roofs. Their form, which is beautiful, both mechanically and artistically, was suggested by Mr. Barry; it is a ring, eight inches in diameter externally, the thickness varying in the different columns, according to the weights they have to support respectively. Four flat faces, about three inches wide, are added on the outside of this ring, so that when the column is in its place, they face nearly north, south, east, and west. The column may therefore be considered as a hollow tube, of the section just described, and of the same form at each end, having at its extremities horizontally projecting rings called SNUGS, through which the bolts are passed, to fasten the columns to the connecting-pieces and base-pieces. That the hollow form adopted for the columns is that best suited to obtain the greatest strength with the least amount of material has been abundantly shown by experiments, as even two straws placed in an upright position will bear a very considerable weight; it is that also seen in the structure of the bones of animals. Of these columns there are 3,300 in the whole building. Those portions of the height of the columns which correspond with the depth and position of the girders form separate lengths, which are called connecting-pieces, as they unite the lengths of columns of the different storeys. These connecting-pieces have the same sectional form as the columns themselves, and, like them, are the same at each end, where there are projections cast on, which serve to support the girders, and which are provided with holes through which the bolts pass to connect them with the columns. These holes alternate with the projections to receive the girders, which projections are so formed that they clip others cast on to the ends of the girders, which will be hereafter described. In the centre of each projection there is formed a small notch which receives the key or wedge for fixing the girders. The meeting faces of the columns and connecting-pieces were all turned in a lathe, in order that, when set up, they might fit so precisely as not to require any packing to adjust them in an upright position; and only in the cases of those columns which serve as water-pipes is any such packing introduced. In those a piece of canvass, with white lead, is put into the joint. An enormous amount of additional labour was involved by this proceeding, as no less than twelve hundred of such faces had to be operated on; but this did not deter the enterprising contractors, who were fully alive to the importance of the object to be attained. When fixed, the projecting "snugs," with the bolts passing through them, were covered by ornamental caps and bases of cast-iron, fixed after the rest of the work was completed. The Base Pieces. The lower storey of columns in every case stands upon base-pieces of which the upright portion is a continuation of the column, with "snugs" at the top, to correspond with those of the column, and standing on a horizontal bed-plate, from which "shoulders" rise to strengthen the upright portion. These bed-plates vary in size from three feet by two feet to one foot six inches by one foot, in proportion to the weight which the several superincumbent columns have to sustain. The longest dimension of the bed-plate is in the transverse direction of the building, in which the greatest overturning strain might be expected to act upon the columns. From the vertical portion of the base-pieces, sockets six inches in diameter project, in the direction of the length of the building, into which are fitted the cast-iron drain-pipes, which convey away the water brought down by the columns from the roof. The height of the base-pieces varies to suit the different levels at which the floor is supported above the ground. These levels had therefore to be determined in every individual instance previous to the castings being made. It was done, however, with such precision that, when they came to be used, they were all found to be of the exact length required for their situation. Of these base-pieces, 1,074 were required for the building. [Illustration: BASE-PIECE.] Cast-iron Girders. It has been mentioned that the columns supported girders at three different heights, dividing the greatest altitude of the building into three storeys; and that the lower tier of girders, where the building consisted of more than one storey, served to support a gallery. These gallery girders are all twenty-four feet long and three feet deep, the upper and lower "flanges" or rails having a [T section] formed section with standards at the ends of similar section. The rectangular space between them is then divided into three equal parts, by uprights having a [+ section] form of section, and the three smaller spaces thus obtained have diagonal "struts" in each direction. The girder thus described forms a double truss, in which the diagonal braces are subjected both to the strain of compression and tension. At the top and bottom of the end-standards small projections are cast on, by which the connecting-pieces hold the girders; and at each end of the flat portion of the top and bottom rails small sinkings are cast, by means of which the girder is keyed up to its position. The flat portion of the upper and lower "flanges" of the girder is swelled out in width from the ends towards the centre, in order to increase the quantity of metal in that part where the strain is greatest. The description just given of the gallery girders will apply to all the cast-iron girders throughout the building, of which there are 2,150; the only difference between them being, that those for the roofs or other internal portions, where no gallery is to be supported, are cast with a less amount of metal. The form of girder just described, which is unusual, was the result of several experiments performed under the superintendence of Messrs. W. Cubitt, C. H. Wild, C. Fox, and other gentlemen, previous to the commencement of the building; and the thickness of metal for the different parts of these, as well as for all the other cast-iron work in the building, was minutely calculated and determined by Mr. C. H. Wild and Mr. C. Fox, under the supervision of Mr. Cubitt, the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, to whom the Royal Commission had intrusted the responsible duty of the chief superintendence of the whole of the work. [Illustration: View of Interior from the Level of Galleries.] The Galleries. To proceed to the gallery itself, supported by the girders just described. The timbers supporting the floor are so arranged that the weight of each bay of twenty-four feet square is distributed equally to the four girders inclosing it, and in such a manner as to bear upon them at the points immediately over the vertical standards. In the transverse direction of the building two pairs of joists, eight feet apart in each bay, are formed into trusses by tie-rods, 1-3/8 inches diameter, passed through a cast-iron shoe at each end, and pressing up two "struts," which are made to bear against the under-side of binding-timbers running longitudinally, or crossing the joists, and immediately under them. The cast-iron shoes for the trusses are bolted down to the girders, and serve at the same time to receive the standard supports of the gallery railing. The ends of the binding-timbers are secured by bolts and oak suspension-pieces to the other two girders inclosing the square. Joists about two feet six inches apart bear from girder to girder parallel to the trusses, and resting on the binding-timbers. On these is laid the floor, 1¼ inches thick, grooved and iron-tongued. A light cast-iron railing, forming a kind of trellis-work, is fixed between the columns, and is capped with a round mahogany hand-rail. From the view at page 60 the arrangement of the galleries will be readily understood. Testing the Cast-iron Girders. From the very important office which the girders perform throughout the building, but more particularly those supporting the galleries, it was of the utmost importance that, previously to their being fixed in their places, the soundness of the casting should be proved; for it could hardly be expected that so large a number of girders could be produced without some of them being defective. The ordinary means of testing girders, by loading them with weights, would have occupied far too much time; and therefore an ingenious apparatus was devised by Mr. C. H. Wild for this purpose, by the use of which the testing of a girder occupied but a few minutes. [Illustration: FRAME AND HYDRAULIC PRESS FOR TESTING THE GIRDERS.] It consisted of a very strong cast-iron frame rather longer than the girder, the bottom of which was formed by two fixed beams placed eight inches apart, and supported a few inches above the ground. At each end of these a cast-iron standard was firmly bolted between them and rose to a height rather greater than the depth of the girder to be tested; on the inner faces of these standards two "shoulders" were formed, which received the projections cast on the ends of the girder, as before mentioned. Between the fixed beams below, at two points dividing the whole length into three equal parts, were placed strong cylinders, with rising pistons connected with a forcing-pump, together with which they formed a Bramah's hydraulic press. A girder being placed in this frame, in an inverted position, the force applied by means of the pistons rising from the cylinders acted upon it precisely at those points, and in the same manner, as the load from the gallery or the roof would do when afterwards fixed in its place. The essential parts of the Bramah's press may be thus briefly described. It consists of two cylinders, the diameter of one being considerably larger than that of the other. The smaller cylinder is fitted with a solid plunger or piston, by means of which water may be forced from it into the larger; this being also fitted with a rising piston, the force is communicated by it to the weight which it is desired to raise. The power obtained by means of this apparatus arises from the distributive power of fluids and the practical incompressibility of water, and it is proportioned to the difference of the diameters of the two cylinders; so that if a pressure of one pound per square inch be applied on the surface of the piston in the smaller cylinder, and the piston in the larger cylinder present a surface ten times greater, the power is multiplied by that number; whilst, in addition, the lever power used in applying the pressure to the smaller piston is obtained. The cylinders are fitted with valves, so arranged as to prevent the return of the water from the larger to the smaller, while the apparatus is in action, and thus the power is accumulated in the former. In the instance before us, the two 3-inch cylinders already alluded to in the proving-frame took the place of the larger cylinder of the ordinary apparatus; and they were connected with the forcing-pump by a strong metal tube. When a girder had been fixed in the frame for proving, the force-pump was worked till the pistons underneath the girder carried it off its lower bearings and pressed it upwards against the "shoulders," by which it was firmly held, and the pressure was then continued until the amount previously fixed upon as necessary for proof had been obtained. This was ascertained by means of a self-adjusting apparatus attached to the hydraulic press. An iron cylinder 1½ inches diameter was placed in communication with the pipe connecting the pump and the press, so that the pressure obtained in it was, in proportion to its diameter, the same as that in the large cylinder; and it was fitted with a piston-rod, working in a vertical direction. This piston-rod was connected with a lever, from the end of which a scale-pan was suspended, at a distance from the fulcrum ten times greater than that of the point of attachment of the piston from the same. The weight of the scale-pan and lever were balanced by a large mass of iron at the other end. In the scale-pan a certain weight was placed, proportioned to the proof desired to be obtained; and the action of the pump was continued until the water, rising in the iron cylinder just described, forced up the lever, and with it the weight attached; and thus indicated that the pressure to which it was desired to subject the girder had been reached. The weight to be placed in the scale-pan was thus determined: the diameter of the lever cylinder being 1½ inches, and that of each of those in the proving-frame three inches, the pistons or "rams" in the latter presented together eight times the surface of that in the lever cylinder; which being multiplied by the difference of length of the two parts of the lever, determines the weight for the scale-pan to be one-eightieth of that to which it was desired to prove the girder. The ordinary gallery girders were tested with a pressure equivalent to a weight of fifteen tons; but it was calculated that, when fixed, the greatest weight they would have to sustain would be seven-and-a-half tons. In one instance, for the sake of experiment, the pressure was continued beyond the proof weight of fifteen tons, to see what amount of strain the girders would bear without fracture, and it was found that a strain of thirty tons produced no injurious effect; but the girder broke with an additional weight of half a ton. Roof of Transept. We will now return to describe that portion of the roof which varies in form and arrangement from the rest, namely, the semicircular covering of the transept. This is supported by arched ribs, placed twenty-four feet apart, and constructed of Memel timber, in three thicknesses; the centre-piece four inches thick, with a 2-inch piece on each side of it. They are formed in lengths of about nine feet, placed so as to break joint; that is, the joints of the outer pieces fall upon the centre of the inner one. The thicknesses are fastened together by bolts passing through them about two feet six inches apart, besides being nailed at other points. On the inner circumference of the rib thus constructed there is then placed a piece of timber moulded to correspond with the form of the columns; and on the outer circumference two boards, each one inch thick, are bent round and attached to the rib with strong nails. On both the outer and inner circumference a flat bar of iron is secured by bolts passing through the whole depth of the rib, which, thus finished, measures eighteen inches in depth by eight inches in thickness. The ends of the ribs are fitted into sockets, formed by the upward continuation of the columns, to which they are attached by iron straps. The ribs, which are supported by the trusses over the main avenue, have their ends bolted down upon a piece of timber secured on the upper portion of the truss; and they are further fixed in their places by oak brackets, forming a spreading foot on each side upon the same piece of timber. Between these large ribs horizontal timbers, called "purlins," are fixed about nine feet apart, by means of cast-iron shoes, bolted both to them and to the ribs. These serve to support the minor or intermediate ribs, occurring at distances of eight feet apart; which consist of a single square piece of timber, having the two thicknesses of 1-inch board bent round their outer circumference, as on the main ribs. The boards form the gutters or furrows between which rise the ridges, in the same manner as in that portion of the roof which is horizontal. The ridges, in this case, instead of being cut out of solid pieces, are formed in three thicknesses, bent round to the requisite curve, and so retained by small bolts tying them down to the "purlins." The sash-bars which receive the glass form, as elsewhere, the sloping rafters or supports of the ridge. [Illustration: Interior View of the Central Avenue towards the West.] The space below the first "purlin" or plate at the springing of the arch, down to the level of the lead-flat beneath it, is fitted with louvre-frames for ventilation. The diagonal bracing between the main ribs has been already alluded to. Each set consists of four wrought-iron rods three quarters of an inch in diameter, having eyes at one end, by means of which they are secured with bolts, passing through the thickness of the ribs; in the centre they meet in a cast-iron ring, on the inner side of which the ends are screwed up with nuts. The semicircular ends of the transept are filled in with tracery, formed by radiating timbers, strutted apart with short pieces placed in concentric rings. The circular heads of the openings are formed by iron castings screwed into their places, and the eye from which the radiating lines of the tracery proceed is also formed by solid iron castings bolted together. On the outer face the ribs of the tracery are moulded, and on the inner side glazed sashes are fixed, filling in the openings. The lead-flat, twenty-four feet wide, extending the whole length of the transept, on either side of the semicircular roof, is constructed in a similar manner to the floor of the galleries, by under-trussing two pairs of joists in each bay. In the width of the lead-flat roof a horizontal truss is formed by flat bars of iron fixed in the direction of the diagonal of the 24-feet square bays, to resist any possible thrust or tendency of the ends of the ribs to open outwards at the springing. The Facework. The external inclosures of the building, on the levels of the different storeys, require but little description in detail beyond that already given. The sash-bars dividing the sashes of the upper tiers are grooved for glass similarly to those used in the roof, and were cut out by the same machinery. The glass was put in after they were framed together, so that it was necessary to arrange the ends of the bars that it could be slipped in at one end. As the bars of these sashes were of slight dimensions and considerable length, they were strengthened by wrought-iron rods passed through the sash-frame and the bars, and screwed up at the ends, causing the whole to work together. The sashes are held in their position by small cast-iron clips, which are bolted on to the columns; and as the surface presented to the wind by the upright sides of the building is of such considerable extent, wooden bridges are fixed against the sashes on the inside, by small cast-iron shoes bolted to the columns; and at the internal angles, where the wind would exert its greatest force, these bridges are further strengthened by wrought-iron rods half an inch in diameter, pressing against the back of them, which is grooved for the purpose, and screwed up at each end in the cast-iron shoes. In this manner a connected chain of resistance to any external pressure is established round the whole circuit of the building. [Illustration: THE LOUVRE-FRAME.] The louvre-frames, which form part of the face-work in all the different storeys, consist of a deal frame in which bent louvre-blades are hung on pivots at each end. These blades are of galvanised iron of an [S section] form. On the back of each blade is fixed a loop of thin iron, to which a rack is fitted; and by these means all the blades in each frame are moved simultaneously. A considerable number of these racks may also be connected, so that a large area of ventilation may be regulated at once. The Diagonal Bracing. From the total absence in this building of any internal division-walls, which in ordinary structures considerably add to their stability, it was thought desirable to introduce into the construction something to compensate for this deficiency. At several points in the length of the building, where a continuous connexion could be established transversely, the squares formed by the columns and girders on the different storeys have their four corners connected by diagonal rods, seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, having eyes at the ends, by which they are secured to the bolts connecting the different parts of the columns. In the centre of the square the four rods meet in a cast-iron ring, and are screwed up with nuts; ornamental faces are fitted into the rings, so that this addition to the construction is by no means detrimental to the general effect. In a similar manner this diagonal bracing is introduced in a horizontal direction immediately under the floor of some portions of the galleries; of these there are twenty-two sets, and of those placed vertically there are, altogether, 220 sets in the building, and the manner of their introduction will be readily understood from the views of the interior. The Staircases. The double staircases, of which it has been mentioned there are eight in the building, consist each of four flights, about eight feet wide; two parallel ones, leading from the ground-floor to a landing, at the half-height, and the other two branching in opposite directions from the landing to the two galleries. The treads of the steps are made of a species of mahogany called sabicu, which is much harder than oak, and therefore peculiarly suited to the purpose for which it is here employed. The risers, or faces of the steps, are of deal. The stairs are supported by cast-iron girders, following the slope, the lower ones being fixed at the foot to stout timbers under the flooring, and the upper ends bolted to the cast-iron columns which support the landing. These columns are of the same pattern as the rest throughout the building, but only five inches in diameter. They are supported on concrete, and eight of them are required for each staircase. The floor of the landing is carried by lesser cast-iron girders, with flooring-joists. [Illustration: VIEW OF STAIRCASE.] The girders carrying the upper flights spring from the landing girders, and have their upper ends bolted on to the main girders supporting the galleries, which are varied in pattern for this purpose. The railing of the staircase is formed in separate cast-iron standards, one to each step, which are bolted on to the top flange of the girders; and the foot of the standard is so continued that the ends of the treads are fitted into it, and are thus supported. The pattern of these standards is assimilated to that of the gallery railing. The hand-rail is formed of Honduras mahogany, with carved ends. On each side of the upper flight, which occupies the centre of a 24-feet space, connecting-galleries about eight feet wide are carried, establishing a communication between the two lines of gallery without descending to the level of the landing and then re-ascending. The landing is sufficiently high above the ground-floor to give ample headway for passing underneath it; so that the space occupied by the staircases on the ground-floor is but small. The Floor and Foundations. It now only remains to mention briefly the construction of the floor of the building, and the foundations for the base-pieces. The substratum of the site consists of gravel of an excellent quality, and sufficiently dense to have sustained, perhaps without any preparation, the load brought upon it by the bases of the columns. A thickness of concrete, proportioned in all cases to the amount of the weight to be borne by the superincumbent columns, and of such a size as to be two feet in each direction larger than the bed-plates, was placed upon the gravel, and the upper surface was finished with a bed of fine mortar to receive the bed-plates. In this manner it was calculated that in no case would a greater weight than two-and-a-half tons be borne by each foot superficial of the gravel--previous experiments having shown that a considerably larger weight could be placed upon it without any injurious effect. The timbers supporting the joists for the floor are also placed upon small blocks of concrete, about one foot cube, at a distance of eight feet apart. On these are fixed the flooring-joists, and a deal floor an inch and a half thick is laid on them, as has been already mentioned, with intervals of about half an inch between the boards. [Illustration: FIXING CAST-IRON DRAIN-PIPE.] In order to carry off the water brought down from the roof by every alternate longitudinal row of columns, 6-inch cast-iron pipes are fitted into the sockets described in the base-pieces, and are carried in the lines of those columns through the whole length of the building, with discharges into the larger drains at the centre and at each end; the natural slope of the ground gives a sufficient fall to the pipes. Having thus described in detail all the different portions of the construction of the building, we must proceed to give some account of its actual erection, which will enable us to mention many very ingenious mechanical contrivances which were employed in the course of its progress. The First Operations on the Ground. From the great extent of the area required for the building, it was not to be expected that any site would be found of the necessary size, perfectly level. On the ground occupied by the building there is a difference of level between the two extreme ends of about eight feet. In consequence of this fall of the natural surface from west to east, and in order to avoid having a considerable flight of steps at one end of the building to compensate for it, it was determined to arrange the floor with an inclination following nearly that of the ground, such fall being at the rate of one inch in twenty-four feet. All the lines of the building which would be called horizontal in fact follow this line of the floor, and those which are supposed to be upright are placed at right angles to the floor, and therefore slightly inclined from the perpendicular towards the east. The deviation, however, is so exceedingly small as to be perfectly imperceptible even to those who are aware of the fact; and no one who was not previously informed of it would be able to detect it. It has been mentioned that Messrs. Fox and Henderson's tender for the building was verbally accepted on the 16th of July, 1850, and on the 30th of that month they obtained possession of the site from the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. The first proceeding was to inclose the whole area (including a considerable space at each end more than would be covered by the building) with a hoarding about eight feet high, put together in a very simple manner, so that the boards were afterwards available for the flooring. The supports for the hoarding consisted of pieces of timber fixed in the ground in pairs, at intervals of the length of the boards, leaving a narrow space between them, into which the boards were dropped, and thus held in their place without any nails. Temporary offices were then erected in a convenient portion of the site, and were covered with a roofing which was a specimen of that to be used in the building itself. Considerable ranges of carpenters' sheds were also put up, and even stables for twenty or thirty horses, which were required in the progress of the works. Setting out the Ground. The first thing to be done towards the building itself was to set out accurately all the points where the columns would stand, as well as the general outline of the building. It will be readily understood that this was an exceedingly important part of the work, as upon its accuracy depended the fitting together of the various parts that had afterwards to be put in place. This part of the work was executed with great precision by Mr. W. G. Brounger. He commenced by determining the four extreme angles of the building, and the centre lines of the main avenues. These formed fixed points from which were determined the whole of the centres for the columns. Our readers will recollect that the dimension of twenty-four feet occurs horizontally throughout the building, either in multiples or sub-multiples. In order to measure off the different distances, rods of American pine were made, into which, near the ends, pieces of metal were fixed, having corresponding notches at the exact distance of twenty-four feet apart. By these means the lengths were measured off with great accuracy, as the wood used is not liable to alteration in the length of its fibre; and by means of the metal notches the rods were sure to be placed correctly together. It was necessary to make these sockets or notches of metal, from the great amount of work the rods had to perform. In determining the length of the rods, the standard of the Astronomical Society was used; and this was referred to in all important measurements for the castings and other parts of the building, to insure their precise eventual agreement in length. This will hardly be considered to have been unnecessary when it is remembered that, from the great length of the building, a very minute error in any of the parts would have been so multiplied as sensibly to throw out the ends. To those who are unacquainted with the fact, it may be well to mention that the standard of length referred to is obtained from a pendulum, which oscillates seconds, in the latitude of London, in a vacuum, at the level of the sea, at a certain fixed temperature. The length of this pendulum is then divided into a certain registered number of feet and inches. The rods above described were carried along the centre lines of the columns, and the position of each column was marked by a small stake driven into the ground; and in order still more accurately to fix the centre, a long nail was driven into the head of the stake. In this manner the position of every column throughout the building was determined. The level at which the floor was to be fixed was the next point determined by the ordinary method of levelling, and stakes, with a [T section] piece at the top, called boning-sticks, were fixed in different parts of the building; by the aid of which the tops of the base-pieces for the columns were all afterwards fixed in one plane of the required slope. Fixing the Base Plates. The next proceeding was to excavate the holes for the concrete, on which the base-pieces were to stand. To do this, the stakes marking the centres of the columns had to be removed, and it was therefore necessary to adopt some method of finding those centres again with precision. For this purpose a large carpenter's square, as it is called, was made. This instrument forms a right-angled triangle, and in this instance was used in the following manner:--The centre of its longest side, or hypothenuse, was marked by a line, which, if continued, would pass through the right angle of the triangle, and at an equal distance along each of the other sides of the triangle from the right angle an upright saw-cut or notch was made. The square was then placed horizontally, so that the line marked on the hypothenuse coincided with that of the centres of a row of columns, and so that the right-angled corner of the square touched the nail marking the exact site of a column. Two small stakes were then driven under the notches in the short arms of the square, and nails were driven into them through the notches. It will be seen that by these means the site of the first stake could easily be again ascertained after its removal. The holes for the concrete were then dug of an oval form and of the various sizes and depths required, and the concrete filled in to the proper height. The gravel used for the concrete was raised in a pit at one end of the ground. Next to the setting out of the positions of the columns, perhaps the operation of fixing the base-pieces was that in which the greatest accuracy was required; for as there were in some parts three storeys of columns to be fixed over them, any inaccuracy as to their level or position would be very much increased at the top of the building. To fix the base-pieces over the centres that had been determined for the columns, another carpenter's square was made use of, like that already described, but having the right-angled corner cut out to the form of the section of a column. This square being placed with the notches in its short sides over the two stakes already described, the upright portion of the base-piece was fitted into the notch at the angle; and as the reader will at once see, if he has followed us in the description of the various processes, its correct position was thus exactly found. In order to determine the level of the top of the base-pieces, boning-sticks were placed in the lines of the columns, and when the base-piece had been approximately fixed, a piece of wood was placed on it edgeways, the top of which was to range with the top of the boning-sticks. This was easily arranged by looking along them; and the workmen drove down the base-piece with a wooden mallet till the desired level was obtained. From what has been previously stated, it may be gathered that the base-pieces had to be fixed truly upright in one direction, but slightly inclined in the other; and to effect this a plumb-rule was made, on which the deviation from the perpendicular line was marked; and this, when applied to those faces of the base-pieces which were to incline, served to show when the proper inclination was arrived at, whilst an ordinary plumb-rule applied to the other upright faces tested their vertical position. The first column was raised on the ground on the 26th of September, but little more than two months after the tender had been accepted. In the meantime, many of the different castings had already arrived on the ground, and a considerable advance had been made in the carpenter's work for the gutters and other parts. The semi-circular ribs for the transept roof were also being put together, and stacked in such a manner as not to stand in the way of the other works. [Illustration: VIEW OF CRANE AND PROVING-PRESS.] We may mention here that every casting, as it came on to the ground, was weighed and registered, and every girder proved, as already described; in doing which considerable assistance was derived from one of Mr. Henderson's patent Derrick cranes, which was erected near the proving-apparatus. By its means a girder was raised from the waggon in which it arrived, placed on the weighing-machine, weighed, removed to the proving-press, tested, raised again, and deposited on the ground in a stack, in less than four minutes. Henderson's Derrick Crane. [Illustration: (FIG. 1.) HENDERSON'S DERRICK CRANE.] [Illustration: (FIG. 2.) PART OF HENDERSON'S DERRICK CRANE.] [Illustration: (FIG. 3.) PART OF HENDERSON'S DERRICK CRANE.] A brief description of this useful engine may not be out of place here. It consists of an upright mast (E), steadied when the crane is in use by two sloping stays (F F). These stays are fixed into horizontal timbers (G) on the ground, connected with the foundation-plate (H) on which the mast turns. At the foot of the mast is fixed a combination of wheels and working handles for raising the weight, technically called a crab. A beam (A) working at the bottom in a socket (B, Fig. 3) fixed to the foot of the mast, but hanging out from it in a sloping direction, is called the DERRICK, and forms the principal peculiarity of the crane, as it can be raised more to the upright line, or lowered to slope more outwards, as may be desired, by means of the chain (C). The advantage of this is obvious; for a weight may thus be raised from or deposited at any point within a circle of a certain radius, depending on the length of the derrick; whereas, in an ordinary crane, the weight can only be placed at points upon the circumference of that circle. The whole engine revolves on a pivot (H, Fig. 2) at the foot of the mast. Cranes of this description are made varying in power from one to forty tons, and with derricks ranging from twenty to sixty feet radius. Raising and Fixing the Columns and Girders. Many of the persons who visited the building during the progress of its erection were heard to inquire "where was the scaffolding;" and others even imagined that the skeleton framework they saw was, in fact, only the scaffolding for the building, and not parts of its actual construction. This leads us to point out one of the most interesting peculiarities of the structure; namely, that it formed, as it were, the scaffolding for its own erection. In order to raise the columns upon the base-pieces, two poles were placed upright, connected by a horizontal piece, forming what is called shear-legs; the whole being steadied in its position by ropes from the summit fixed to the ground in various directions. A rope with pulleys fixed to the horizontal piece served to hoist the column, and sustain it in a vertical position until the bolts were passed through the projecting rings at the bottom of the column and the corresponding ones at the top of the base-piece, and screwed up. When two columns had been thus fixed, a connecting-piece was attached to each end of a girder, and the whole raised by the same apparatus, and fixed on the top of the columns; bolts being passed through the holes in the projections of the connecting-pieces, corresponding with those on the top of the columns. The shear-legs were then moved on twenty-four feet to perform the same duties to another pair of columns; and two sides of a 24-feet bay were thus formed. To complete the square, two more girders were raised in a similar manner, and fixed between the connecting-pieces over the columns. The square bay then became a firm structure, requiring no further support; and by repeating these operations all the smaller avenues of the building were erected, of the different heights of one, two, or three storeys. The greatest number of columns thus fixed in one week was 310. [Illustration: FIXING THE GIRDERS.] [Illustration: General View of the Works in Progress.] Hoisting the Roof Trusses. The wrought-iron roof-trusses over the 48-feet avenues were raised in a similar manner to the columns and girders; and in all cases horses were employed to run out the end of the fall-rope, which was passed through a pulley or catch-block at the foot of the shear-legs, in order to change its direction from vertical to horizontal. For raising the roof-trusses of seventy-two feet span over the main avenue a somewhat different method was employed. A single mast or derrick, more than seventy feet high, was placed in the centre of the avenue, and steadied in an upright position by guide-ropes spreading from the top in various directions. Near its summit the hoisting-tackle was firmly lashed on. The trusses to be hoisted were brought from the places where they had been put together, and placed across the main avenue at the points where they were to be fixed. Two ends of a stout chain were passed round the upper portion of the truss, at points dividing its length into about three equal parts. To this chain the hoisting-tackle was attached, guide-ropes being further fastened to each end of the truss to steady it in its ascent. In order to stiffen the truss horizontally, struts were attached at the centre projecting on each side, and held in their place by tie-rods attached to the upper part of the truss, and forming a triangle on each side. Before the truss, therefore, could bend in a horizontal direction, the attachment of these tie-rods must have given way. Six horses drew out the end of the fall-rope, and in the course of a very few minutes the truss was hoisted to its giddy height, and each end slipped in between the projections made in the connecting-pieces to receive it. The animated scene presented by these operations was highly interesting from the number of men employed, both on the ground and for fixing the trusses in their position aloft, and from the rapid progress so many hands made. Each gang of men was managed by a foreman, who was obliged to issue his orders through a speaking-trumpet, to enable his voice to be heard in the din caused by the other works going on around. Besides the two large gangs of men engaged in the hoisting of the trusses, other smaller gangs were at work at different points getting up the columns and girders. In one part, the roofing of which was completed as early as practicable, a crowd of carpenters were preparing the Paxton's gutters and other portions of the work. In another place, as soon as a sufficient space could be roofed over and a temporary floor laid, various parts of the machinery we have already described were fitted up and worked by portable steam-engines. Of these there were three in different parts: one drove the machinery for finishing the sash-bars, gutters, ridges, &c.; another worked the drilling, punching, and other machinery connected with the iron-work; and a third was used for working circular saws. Of the number of trusses that were hoisted as above described, in only one instance (and that the first) was the result otherwise than perfectly successful. The first truss was raised by its ends, instead of from the centre; but that method was afterwards abandoned, from the difficulty of maintaining the truss in an upright position during its ascent; which was important, as, if it turned on its side, its lateral strength was not sufficient to prevent it from bending, which would have destroyed the joints of the work. One of the tall masts was worked on each side of the transept, from the centre to the ends of the building, being maintained constantly in an upright position, while traversing from point to point, by alternate slackening and hauling up of the ropes which steadied it; and it was curious to witness the motion of these tall giants, as they slowly progressed from one point to another, in the performance of their important office. Stout planks were laid along the ground, upon which the foot of the mast was forced forward by crowbars and levers; the planks served also to distribute the weight, which would otherwise have sunk the end into the ground. As many as seven trusses were hoisted in one day by each derrick, which had therefore to travel a distance of 168 feet. So careful were the men, under the direction of the manager (to whom was intrusted the active superintendence of the whole erection of the building), that no accident of importance occurred in these difficult operations. [Illustration: HOISTING THE 72-FEET TRUSSES.] Provision for Expansion of Girders. In connexion with the fixing of the girders, it may be desirable to mention the provision that was made for the expansion and contraction of the iron, which in so great a length as that of the building might have otherwise produced results prejudicial to its stability. Between the projections cast on to the connecting-pieces and those projecting from the ends of the girders which they were made to clip, sufficient space was left for the introduction of oak keys, by driving in which the girder was fixed in its place, whilst the compressibility of the wood left sufficient play for the expansion of the metal. In describing the girders, it was mentioned that in the upper and lower flat flanges small sinkings were cast near the ends. Corresponding with these sinkings, a notch was left in the projection which came out from the connecting-piece; and when the girder was put into its place, iron wedges were driven in between the notch and the sinking, by which means any lateral motion of the girder was prevented. It was a great advantage to have the means of fixing the girders of so simple a nature, as any arrangement presenting the least complication, or requiring great nicety, would have materially retarded the progress of the work. The wrought-iron trusses were held by the connecting-pieces in a similar manner to the cast-iron girders; but, as an additional security, bolts were passed through holes provided in the standards at the ends, and through the connecting-pieces, where they were screwed up with nuts. The raising and fixing of the extra-strong roof-trusses crossing the main avenue near the side of the transept required particular care, from their great weight; the heaviest being, as we have before mentioned, no less than eight tons. These trusses were the first that were fixed across the central avenue, and about 150 men were engaged in the hoisting of each one. They are secured to the columns by four strong bolts passing through the end-standards. In order to provide additional support for the great weight brought upon the last-mentioned trusses by the transept roof, extra columns were introduced underneath them. These were built up in storeys corresponding with those of the other columns, with which they were connected, at the levels of the girders, by bolts and straps. A cast-iron shoe, fixed on the top of the columns, provided a bearing for the ends of the truss. The columns just described project slightly into the main avenue from the line of the other columns; and this is the only instance in the interior of the building of the iron columns occurring at a less distance than twenty-four feet apart. Glazing the Roof. We have now traced the erection of the building up to the level of the roof, in which it will be readily conceived the operation of glazing was one of extreme difficulty, there being no scaffolding to aid the workmen in conducting their operations. When the glazing was first commenced a light scaffolding was suspended from the rafters; but this was found to be too tedious and troublesome a method of proceeding for so large an extent of roofing. It was, moreover, of great importance that some means should be devised for completing this part of the construction independently of the weather; a matter of some moment, when it is remembered that the work had to be done in the winter, when in our climate such operations are liable to be very much impeded by heavy rain. The arrangements made to meet this difficulty, as well as some others for carrying on the works, are very clearly described in a paper by Mr. Digby Wyatt, read at the Institution of Civil Engineers, on the 14th January, 1851, from which we quote some passages, by permission, for the benefit of our readers. With reference to the means employed for glazing the roof he says: "To effect this purpose, a travelling stage was devised by Mr. Fox, which superseded the necessity of any scaffolding for glazing, and by means of seventy-six of these machines nearly the whole of the work has been executed. The stage was about eight feet square, and rested on four small wheels travelling in the Paxton's gutters. It thus embraced a width of one bay of eight feet of the roof, with one ridge and two sloping sides. Each bay in width required, therefore, a separate stage." "Each stage was occupied by two workmen, and was covered by an awning of canvass stretched over hoops, to protect them in bad weather, and was further provided with a box on each side to contain a supply of glass. The sash-bars and other materials were piled upon the stage itself, the centre of the platform being left open for the convenience of hoisting up materials, for which purpose there was a small iron arm with a single block pulley." [Illustration: GLAZING-WAGGON, FOR FLAT ROOF.] "Whilst working, the men sat at one end of the platform (the ridge having been previously fixed in position by means of the extra-strong sash-bars), and they fixed the glass in front of them, pushing the stage backwards as they completed each pane. On coming to the strong sash-bars previously fixed, they temporarily removed them to allow the stage to pass. In this manner each stage travelled, uninterruptedly, from the transept to the east and west ends of the building, and the glaziers were enabled to follow up the previously-fixed work very closely. The average amount of glazing done by one man per day was fifty-eight squares, or about 200 superficial feet; and the largest amount done by any one man in a working-day was 108 squares, or 367 superficial feet." The mode of fixing the squares of glass was this: a sash-bar having been nailed down between the ridge and the gutter, the workman inserted one long edge of a square of glass into the groove in the sash-bar, he then placed a loose bar against the other long edge of the glass and brought the whole down to bear upon the ridge and gutter, the second sash-bar fitting into the notches prepared for it; the glass was then pressed up a little, in order to insert its upper edge into the groove in the ridge, and the workman then filled in the grooves on the outside of the glass with putty, the lower edge of the glass having been also bedded on putty where it bears on the edge of the gutter. The ends of each sash-bar were fixed with a nail driven into the holes previously drilled. Stage for Repairing Glass. As it might naturally be expected that out of the thousands of panes of glass employed, particularly in the flat roof of the building, many would be broken in the course of the works, subsequently to their being fixed, it was necessary that a ready means should be devised for repairing any such damage, as the glazing-waggons used for the first execution of the work would not be available for that purpose. A light stage was therefore constructed, travelling with wooden wheels upon the ridges instead of in the gutters; and from this the men were able to perform their work without walking along the narrow gutters, which would have been attended with much risk. This stage was also used for fixing the canvass on the outside of the roofing, where it is nailed along the ridges, and allowed to bag down slightly between them. The object of the canvass, which covers externally the whole of the roof except the transept, is twofold: it preserves the glass from damage, and also protects the objects exhibited from the direct rays of the sun, which would, of course, in many instances, be very prejudicial; for the latter purpose the upright sashes on the south side are also covered with canvass on the inside. Hoisting the Ribs for Transept Roof. One of the most interesting operations which attracted the attention of the numerous visitors to the works was the raising the ribs for the semicircular roof of the transept, the description of which we give from Mr. Wyatt's paper:-- "The operation about which most anxiety had been felt was the hoisting of the arched ribs of the transept. These ribs were constructed on the ground horizontally, and when completed with all their bolts, two of them were reared on end, and maintained in a vertical position, at a distance of twenty-four feet from each other, by guy-ropes. As the ribs singly possessed little lateral stiffness, they were framed together in pairs with the purlins, intermediate small ribs and diagonal tie-rods, forming a complete bay of the roof twenty-four feet long; two complete sets of temporary ties were also introduced to provide for the strains incident to the variations in position of the ribs during the hoisting. The feet of the ribs were bolted on to a stout piece of timber, and the lower purlins strutted up from the same." In this state the framework is shown in the engraving. [Illustration: A PAIR OF RIBS PREPARED FOR RAISING.] "The whole framework was then moved on rollers to the centre of the square formed by the intersection of the transept and the main avenue, where it was afterwards hoisted. All the ribs were landed over this square, and were afterwards moved on a tramway formed of a half baulk of timber constructed over the columns on either side of the transept, at a height of about four feet above the lead-flat. The hoisting-tackle consisted of four crabs, each one being placed on the side of the transept opposite to the part of the ribs to be lifted by it, so that the men at the crabs might watch the effect of their exertions with greater convenience." "The hoisting-shears were placed on the lead-flat immediately over the deep trusses of seventy-two feet span; each set consisted of three stout scaffold-poles, lashed together at the top, and footed on planks laid across the flat, and secured by the necessary guy-ropes. The hoisting-rope passed from each of the crabs across the transept horizontally, to a leading block attached to the foot of the opposite angle column of the square; it then passed up to a treble block fastened to the shears on the flat, and from thence down to a double block secured by chains to the bottom part of the ribs." [Illustration: Hoisting the Ribs for the Transept Roof.] "There was a peculiar difficulty to be overcome in this operation, which arose from the circumstance that the width of the framework was greater than that of the transept, the extreme width of the framework to be hoisted being seventy-four feet, and the clear width apart of the trusses above which it had to be hoisted being only seventy-one feet four inches. It was therefore necessary to raise one side to a height of thirty-five feet before raising the other, so as to diminish the horizontal width of the whole, the diameter of the semicircle being maintained at this angle; the whole was then hoisted, until the highest end could clear the tramway." This accounts for the slanting position in which the ribs are shown in the view given. "The foot of the ribs on one side was then passed over the tramway sufficiently to allow the other side to clear the opposite truss; after which the whole was hoisted to the full height, and rested on rollers of hard wood placed between the sills attached to the framework and the tramway, by means of which it was moved to its permanent position. There it was again raised by another set of shears, while the sill and tramway were removed from under it; and the ribs were then lowered into the sockets prepared for them, formed by the continuation of the columns above the level of the lead-flat." "Each successive pair of ribs was fixed at a distance of twenty-four feet, or one bay from the preceding one; and the purlins, &c., were fixed in the intervening space without any scaffolding from the ground, by means of jointed ladders, which were adjusted to the form of the roof." The first pair of ribs was hoisted December 4th, and the eighth pair on December 12th. The operation, which was one of great excitement and considerable anxiety, was personally superintended by the contractors, aided by their most able foremen and assistants; and a crowd of visitors, including many of the illustrious promoters of the undertaking, watched with intense interest the steady ascent of the apparently unwieldy piece of construction, and every spectator seemed astonished at the mechanical regularity with which the whole operation proceeded. It took about one hour to raise a pair from the ground to the level of the lead-flat, and the whole was done without any accident whatever. About sixty men were employed in the hoisting, there being eleven men to each crab, and the remainder on the lead-flats. Glazing the Transept Roof. The semicircular form of the transept roof rendered it necessary to adopt a different mode of operation for glazing it to that used in the horizontal portion. A stage, thirty-two feet long and about three feet wide, with a protecting rail at the side, was constructed, so that it rested upon rollers, travelling on the ridges. It was slung by ropes from the crown of the arched roof, and could be raised and lowered at pleasure. It accommodated eight workmen, with the necessary quantity of materials in sash-bars and glass; and they thus performed, with ease and rapidity, an operation which before the fitting-up of the stage appeared at least extremely difficult, and to the uninitiated next to impossible. [Illustration: STAGE FOR GLAZING THE ROOF OF TRANSEPT.] The men commenced fixing the glass at the bottom or springing of the arch, and as they completed their work the stage was raised at intervals by labourers stationed on the lead-flat. A portion of the glazing at the crown of the arch was effected by men working on a light scaffold, suspended within from the temporary ties mentioned as having been attached to the ribs; whilst those upon the stage worked upwards till they joined the portion done from the top. The Painting. A portion of the work which necessarily occupied a very large amount of time was the painting, which was necessary for the preservation of all the parts, as well as for their appearance; and when it is considered that every portion required to be gone over four times, it must be evident that it was highly desirable to adopt some means for facilitating the operation. It was found that the sash-bars of the roof, being in short lengths and of small dimensions, could readily be operated upon by some mechanical contrivance. [Illustration: THE SASH-BAR PAINTING-MACHINE.] A wooden trough was made sufficiently long to receive the sash-bars, and this was filled with paint; a number of the bars were then put into it, and upon being taken out separately, they were passed through a frame into which a set of brushes were fixed in such a manner as to clear off all the unnecessary paint. Two small brushes, placed where the bar first entered the frame, cleared out the grooves. One workman pushed the bar in at one end of the frame, which was about two feet six inches long, and another drew it out at the other end, where a trough was placed to receive any droppings of paint. The bars were then stacked upright, until they were sufficiently dry for the next coat. The first coat only was put on by this apparatus, the second being done in the ordinary manner, and the last not till after the work was all fixed in its place. By means of this apparatus a workman could perform at least ten times the amount of work done in the ordinary way. [Illustration: THE FRAME-WORK WITH BRUSHES.] The finishing the painting of the various parts of the roof internally, after they had been put together, was very ingeniously managed, so that while the workmen were able to work with ease to themselves, the scaffolding on which they stood required no supports from the ground, where they would have been much in the way of other operations; loops of wrought-iron were hooked on to the roof-trusses, and by means of these a perfect cloud of scaffold-boards was suspended, enabling between 400 and 500 men to be at work at one time. The roof of the main avenue, particularly, presented a very singular appearance, as nearly one half of the entire length was thus covered at one time, and a crowd of painters were at work over the heads of many, perhaps unconscious exhibitors, who were arranging their goods undisturbed below. The Hand-rail Machine. One of the mechanical contrivances which were put up on the ground during the works, for saving labour and increasing the rapidity of production, remains to be mentioned; it was contrived for turning out the rounded mahogany hand-rail for the gallery railing as well as that for the staircases. The mahogany being supplied in slabs of the requisite thickness, these were first cut up by circular saws into pieces of a square section, and the angles of these were then bevelled off by the same means; the lengths were afterwards transferred to the hand-rail cutting machine to be rounded. [Illustration: THE HAND-RAIL CUTTING MACHINE.] [Illustration: PART OF HAND-RAIL MACHINE.] The principal portion of the machine consists of a hollow cast-iron cylinder, round which a strap may be passed to drive it. At one end of this cylinder four cutters are fixed, so that a piece of wood passing between them and through the cylinder, as it revolves, is rounded off to a true circular form of section, and is turned out so smoothly finished as to require scarcely any further work upon it before fixing. In advance of the cutters pressure-rollers are placed, furnished with teeth; and these, as they are turned round by a cranked handle, seize upon a piece of mahogany and force it forward against the cutters, which form, as it were, the jaws of the hollow cylinder, which thus seems to be constantly swallowing lengths of rough mahogany, which escape from it finished. The wooden rail is passed up to the cutters along a groove, the end of which is shown in the small engraving; and opposite each end of the revolving cylinder springs are fixed, which prevent the rail from shifting its position. The hand-rail was all turned out in 21-feet lengths, of which about thirty were completed in the day. General View of the Works. We have mentioned that the actual commencement of the building was made by fixing one of the columns on the 26th of September; and, within a few weeks, more than a thousand men were at work, though, from the great extent of the ground they were spread over, it was difficult to estimate their number, which was, however, made apparent by the rapidity with which the building began to grow. The place presented an animated and interesting scene, which attracted a great number of visitors; and crowds of the fair sex were not deterred by the rough state of the ground from endeavouring to satisfy their proverbial thirst for knowledge. In one part of the ground might be seen the putting together of the wrought-iron roof-girders to the deafening tune of more than a hundred hammers; in another place gutters were being put together by the mile, for which some hundred or two of sawyers were cutting up ship-loads of timber. Three portable steam-engines in various parts were driving the different machinery already described, which, however, was mostly grouped in one place near the transept. The central avenue formed, of course, the great thoroughfare, where teams of horses were constantly passing, dragging the slender columns, or unwieldy-looking girders, to their places, while other teams were engaged in running them up to their final position. Over-head, too, the glaziers' waggons, dotted about the roof, seemed to be running on some new aerial railways; in every direction that the eye turned the busy scene extended. For carrying on these extensive works an immense number of men were necessarily employed on the spot, besides those occupied in preparing the various parts at different places. The greatest number of men on the ground in any one week was 2,260; and the season of the year frequently rendered it necessary for the workmen to continue their labours after dark, which they did partly by the light of huge bonfires of shavings and odd scraps of wood. The effect of these great fires, which were generally lighted in some part of the main avenue, was exceedingly grand. The light of the tall flames was reflected from the glass of the roof far away into the darkness which concealed all the other parts; whilst occasionally a lantern carried by a workman engaged in fixing the upper columns, or some part of the roof, glimmered like some new star. On one occasion, when the greatest efforts were being made to push on the progress of the works, no less than twelve large bonfires lighted the men at their midnight toil; and had the building been formed of combustible materials, a passing observer would have imagined that the whole was in flames. Paying the Workmen. The process of distributing their wages among so large a number of men, on every recurring Saturday evening, was one which could only be effected within a reasonable time by some systematic arrangement; and to such perfection was this brought in the course of the works, that the whole number of 2,000 men or upwards were sometimes paid in little more than an hour; though at first it occupied a considerably longer time. The mode in which this was effected was as follows:--When a workman was engaged his name was entered in a book against a certain number, which was stamped on several brass tickets, three of which were given to each workman before leaving the ground in the evening. [Illustration: THE BRASS TICKETS AND MONEY-BOX.] Every man had to enter the premises three times in the course of the day; namely, the first thing in the morning, after returning from breakfast, and after returning from dinner. On each occasion he was required to deposit at the gate one of these tickets, which were afterwards sorted by the clerks, and entered in the time-book. In this way, if a man failed to come to his work, his ticket would be missing, and the time during which he was absent would not be entered; a corresponding amount being deducted from his week's wages. On the Saturday, each man's time was made up from the book; and his wages calculated accordingly, and the amount entered against his name. The money due to each man was then counted out and placed in a small tin box, with a ticket, on which was written the man's name and number, and the amount of wages paid to him. [Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF THE PAY-OFFICE.] All this was done in the time-keeper's office, which was conveniently placed near the entrance to the works. When all the preliminary arrangements had been completed, the workmen's bell was rung, and they assembled (a motley and sometimes clamorous crowd) round the pay-office, which was provided with two small openings through which the payments were made. [Illustration: THE MEN TAKING THEIR WAGES AT THE PAY-OFFICE.] Two men stationed outside the office then called over the numbers of the workmen, who presented themselves, in the order in which they were called, at the pay-windows, where each man took the small box passed out to him with the money, and left the box in passing out at the gate. If any man considered the amount of wages paid to him not correct, he presented the ticket given to him with the wages at the office on the Monday morning following, when the matter was arranged by the time-keeper. [Illustration: THE WORKMEN WAITING TO BE PAID.] Any person acquainted with the irregular habits of vast numbers of our workmen, who will often be absent from their work a quarter of a day, and at other times a whole day, thus varying the amount of wages due at the end of the week to almost every man, will at once see that, without a well-arranged system, such as that described, the payment of so large a body of men would have occupied as many days as it really did hours. The engravings annexed, in illustration of this part of our subject, will convey to the reader some idea of the scene we have endeavoured to describe, though it must fall far short of the picturesque reality. General Statistics. It is with great pleasure that we are able to mention that, notwithstanding the difficult character of some of the work, and the extreme rapidity with which it was carried on, very few accidents of importance occurred; a circumstance which must be ascribed to the great care taken by the contractors for the safety of the men while engaged in their work: and in the cases where the accidents that occurred were of a serious or fatal kind, their origin was mostly to be traced to a neglect of those precautions which the men were constantly urged and ordered to take. A few statistics of the quantities of different parts of the work not already mentioned will complete this portion of our subject. The whole amount of iron-work in the building is stated at about 4000 tons; and about 1,200 loads of timber were required for the wood-work. There are 2,941 trussed gutters in the roof, and 1,495 glazed sashes were required to inclose the sides of the building. As many as 316 iron girders were cast, in one week, and 442 lengths of the Paxton's gutters were cut out by the machinery in the same time. No less than 18,392 squares of glass, containing 62,508 feet superficial, or about one-and-a-half acres, were also fixed in one week. It may be further mentioned that the weight of the different parts forming the flat ridge-and-furrow roofing amounts to three-and-a-quarter pounds per foot superficial, on the whole surface; the weight of the arched roof of the transept, including the ribs, amounts to five-and-three-quarter pounds per superficial foot; and the timbers and boards of the gallery floor weigh eight-and-a-half pounds to the superficial foot: from these data the actual weight on the different girders may be calculated. The light iron-work, with the exception of some of the gallery railing, was cast at the works of the contractors near Birmingham; and the remainder, including the columns, girders, &c., was distributed between their own foundry, and those of the Messrs. Cochrane, of Wood Side, and Mr. Jobson, of Holly Hall, both near Dudley. The wrought-iron was supplied by Messrs. Fothergill, and the timber by Messrs. Dowson and Co. The Parti-coloured Painting. The coloured decoration introduced in finishing the painting of the building is a subject which has been much discussed, and many suggestions have been made by persons generally received as authorities on the subject. The system adopted was proposed by Mr. Owen Jones, under whose active superintendence it has been carried out. That gentleman explained his reasons for its adoption, and the effect which he expected it to produce, in a lecture at the Institute of British Architects, on the 16th of December, 1850, some portions of which are submitted to our readers:-- "It is not necessary for me to describe the building, the painting of which we are now about to discuss, as it is well known to most of you by its marvellous dimensions, the simplicity of its construction, and the advantage which has been taken of the power which the repetition of simple forms will give in producing grandeur of effect; and I wish now to show that this grandeur may be still further enhanced by a system of colouring which, by marking distinctly every line in the building, will increase the height, the length, and the bulk. "The very nature of the material of which this building is mainly constructed, viz., iron, requires that it should be painted. On what principle shall we do this? Should we be justified in adopting a simple tint of white or stone colour, the usual method of painting iron? Now, it must be borne in mind that this building will be covered on the south side, and over the whole of the roof, with canvass, so that there can be but little light and shade. The myriads of similar lines, therefore, of which the building is composed, falling one before the other, would lose all distinctness, and form, in fact, one dull cloud overhanging the Exhibition. "A line of columns (as it may be seen even now at the building) would present the effect of a white wall, and it would be impossible, in the distance, to distinguish one column from another. This mode of painting would have the further disadvantage of rendering the building totally unconnected with the various objects it is to contain. "May the building be painted of a dark colour, like the roofs of some of our railway-stations? This, equally with the white method, would present one mass of indistinctness; the relief of the cast-iron would disappear, and each column and girder would present to the eye but a flat silhouette. "Let us now consider the building as painted with some pale neutral tint, dull green or buff. In doing this we should be perfectly safe, as, provided the colours were not too pale so as to be indistinct, or too dark so as sensibly to affect the eye, we could hardly make a mistake. Yet how tame and monotonous would be the result! It would be necessary that this tint, whichever we might choose, should be of a very subdued neutral character, in order to avoid the difficulty well known to mounters of drawings and painters of picture-galleries, viz., that in proportion as you incline to any particular shade of colour, so in that exact proportion you injure or destroy those objects it is intended to relieve which may have similar colour. To this, then, we should be reduced--a dull monotonous colour without character. How unworthy this would be of the great occasion! How little would it impress the public! How little would it teach the artist! It would be to cut instead of patiently to unravel the knot. "We are now brought to the consideration of the only other well-defined system which presents itself, namely, parti-colouring. This, I conceive, if successfully worked out, would bring the building and its contents into perfect harmony, and it would fitly carry out one of the objects for which this Exhibition was formed, namely, that of promoting the union of the fine-arts with manufactures. It would be an experiment on an immense scale, which, if successful, would tend to dispel the prejudices of those whose eyes are yet unformed to colour, to develope the imperfect appreciations of others, and to save this country from the reproach which foreign visitors, more educated in this particular than ourselves, would not fail to make were the building otherwise painted; it would everywhere bring out the construction of the building, which, as I said before, would also appear higher, longer, and more solid." Mr. Jones then adduced the practice of the ancient and mediæval artists, and explained the kind of colours they generally adopted, mentioning that in the best periods of art the primary colours were chiefly or exclusively used. "In the decoration of the Exhibition building I therefore propose to use the colours blue, red, and yellow, in such relative quantities as to neutralise or destroy each other; thus no one colour will be dominant or fatiguing to the eye, and all the objects exhibited will assist, and be assisted by, the colours of the building itself. "In house-decoration we occasionally find a run on one colour; thus we have a green room, a pink room, and a red room; but it would obviously be unwise to adopt any one colour for this building, whose contents will be of all imaginable hues from white to black. Discarding, on the other hand, the perfect neutral white as unfit for the occasion, we naturally adopt the colours blue, red, and yellow, in or near the neutral proportions of eight, five, and three; but to avoid any harsh antagonism of the primary colours when in contact, or any undesired complementary secondaries arising from the immediate proximity of the primaries, I propose, in all cases, to interpose a line of white between them, which will soften them and give them their true value. "As one of the objects of decorating a building is to increase the effect of light and shade, the best means of using blue, red, and yellow is to place blue, which retires, on the concave surfaces; yellow, which advances, on the convex; and red, the colour of the middle distance, on the horizontal planes; and the neutral white on the vertical planes. "Following out this principle on the building in question, we have red for the under-side of the girders, yellow on the round portions of the columns, and blue in the hollow parts of the capitals. "Now, it is necessary not only to put the several colours in the right places, but also to use them in their due proportions to each other. "Mr. Field, in his admirable works on colour, has shown by direct experiment that white light consists of blue, red, and yellow, neutralising each other in the proportions of eight, five, and three. It will readily be seen, that the nearer we can arrive at this state of neutrality the more harmonious and light-giving will a building become; and an examination of the most perfect specimens of harmonious colouring of the ancients will show that this proportion has generally obtained among them; that is to say, broadly, there has been as much blue as the yellow and red put together, the light and the shade balancing each other. "Of course, we cannot in decorating buildings always command the exact proportions of coloured surface which we require; but the balance of colours can always be obtained by a change in the colours themselves. Thus, if the surfaces to be coloured should give too much yellow, we should make the red more crimson and the blue more purple; that is, we should take the yellow out of them. So, if we had too much blue, we should make the yellow more orange, and the red more scarlet. "A practised eye will as readily do this as a musician can tune a musical instrument; it is here that science abandons the artist, who must trust to his own perceptions, cultivated by renewed trials and repeated failures." In concluding, Mr. Jones said, with reference to some specimens of the proposed decoration which had been executed, "I would ask you to banish from your minds the glare of light by which this decoration is now seen--to forget the rough foreground, where men are engaged in every variety of occupation for the completion of this great building; and I would ask you to fill it in imagination with the gorgeous products of every clime. I would ask you to picture to yourselves in the foreground the brilliant primaries, blue, red, and yellow--the rich secondaries, purple, amber, and green, moulded in forms of every conceivable diversity; and, lastly, against them the darker tertiaries fading into neutral perspective. "The conception of such an effect, difficult even to the artist accustomed to abstract his attention from present interruptions and to calculate future harmonies, is impossible to the uninstructed spectator, who, from the experimental decoration of a single column, draws a premature and, necessarily, a fallacious inference as to the collective effect of the whole. "From my brother architects I hope for a more patient, a more comprehensive, and a fairer appreciation; for myself, I have a confident hope, grounded on the experience of years devoted to this particular branch of art, that the principles and plans I have had the honour to propose to the Royal Commission, for the decoration of this magnificent structure, will be found, when complete, not to disappoint the public expectations, or to prove wholly unworthy of the great occasion." In this lecture, Mr. Owen Jones asked his hearers, and the public generally, to suspend their final judgment upon his system of colouring until the whole should be completed, and the building filled with the objects to be exhibited, as he considered that many of the objections which were raised to his proposition resulted from a want of consideration of the ultimate effect to be produced by the whole, when completed and occupied; and so far as this effect has been realised, we believe it has inclined the public opinion more in favour of the coloured decoration than originally, when it was undoubtedly very strongly commented upon in various quarters. Without venturing to express any opinion ourselves, we may trust that Mr. Owen Jones's fondest hopes will be fully realised. [Illustration: View of the Building from the North Bank of the Serpentine.] The Water Supply. The supply of water necessary both for the protection of this enormous building from fire, and for the use of fountains and machinery to be exhibited, is furnished at a very liberal rate by the Chelsea Waterworks' Company. It is brought into the building by a 9-inch main pipe, at about the centre of its length, branching out into three 6-inch pipes, which extend throughout the whole length of the building. Short pipes branch off from these, terminating in fire-cocks, placed at such distances that a circle of 120-feet radius from any one of them will touch a similar circle described round the adjacent ones; by which means the whole extent of the building may be brought under the action of hose attached to each of the fire-cocks. The water is supplied at a pressure equal to a column of about seventy feet, so as to work the fountains that will be exhibited, and to play efficiently from hose in case of any accident by fire. The quantity which the Company have undertaken to supply is 300,000 gallons a day. The Stability of the Building. The subject of the strength and stability of the building is one on which considerable anxiety has been felt, both by the public at large and by those professional bodies more capable of forming a correct judgment upon it. In the prolonged discussion which followed the reading of Mr. Wyatt's paper at the Institution of Civil Engineers, many points of objection were raised which seemed at first sight of a very serious nature; but, in most cases, the answers that were given to them were perfectly satisfactory. The two greatest difficulties raised were, firstly, the enormous surface presented by the exterior to the pressure of the wind, with apparently but a slight power of resistance; and, secondly, the construction of the galleries, which, it was thought, would not be able to resist the vibratory motion likely to be produced by great numbers of people walking upon them. The results of several calculations were adduced on the occasion alluded to in support of the objections on the first point; but perhaps the best answer that could be given to them was the circumstance mentioned by Mr. Fox--that on the 5th of that month (January) the pressure of the wind, which blew a perfect gale, was not only much above the average, but very nearly reached the greatest amount known within a considerable period in London--about 25lbs. per square foot; and that as the building, although in an incomplete state, had resisted that pressure without receiving any injury, it was fair to conclude that, when finished, it would be able to sustain the greatest force which the wind could be reasonably expected to exert upon it. The question of the strength of the galleries was one of even greater importance than the other, as, in case of any failure in that part of the building, human life must almost inevitably have been sacrificed to a great extent. It was therefore deemed necessary to ascertain, as far as was practicable, by experiment, that their strength was abundantly sufficient; and in Mr. Wyatt's paper, as printed, the following description of the experiments instituted for this purpose will be found. Testing the Galleries. In the interval between the reading of this paper and its going to press a series of experiments have been tried to ascertain the action of these galleries under the strain of a moving load. A complete bay, twenty-four feet square, was constructed, raised slightly from the ground, consisting of the four cast-iron girders, with the connecting-pieces at the angles, and on this the timbers and boards of the flooring. Rows of planks the full width of the platform led up to it and down from it, so that a body of men as wide as the gallery might be able to march up and down in close rank. "The area of the platform was first covered over with labourers packed as closely together as possible; but no action of walking, running, or jumping that 300 men could perform did any injury whatever to it, and the greatest deflection of the girders did not exceed a quarter of an inch. Soldiers of the corps of Royal Sappers and Miners were then substituted for the contractors' men; and although the perfect regularity of their step in marking time sharply appeared a remarkably severe test, a minute examination of the construction after the completion of the experiments showed that no damage whatever had been done by their evolutions. "But as the Commissioners were deeply impressed with the necessity of thoroughly convincing the public, who should visit the Exhibition, that they might feel perfectly secure in every part of the building, it was deemed desirable to apply a still further test to the actual galleries as they stand; as it might perhaps be said that the single bay which had been experimented upon was not similarly circumstanced to those forming parts of the building. [Illustration: Testing the Gallery Floor.] [Illustration: View of the Boiler House.] "For this purpose a very ingenious apparatus was devised by the late Mr. Field, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, for testing the stability of the galleries _in situ_, and on being applied over the greater part of the building not a single bolt or girder gave way under its action. This apparatus consisted of eight square wooden frames divided into thirty-six compartments, each just capable of containing and allowing to rotate a 68-pounder shot. The surfaces of the balls placed in each of these compartments came in contact with the gallery floor, the frames themselves being attached to one another and running along the floor by means of castors fixed at the angles; the whole apparatus being drawn along by a number of men. Two hundred and eighty-eight 68-pound shot confined in a limited area were thus set rolling over more than half the extent of the galleries; when, not the slightest mishap having occurred, the experiment was considered decisive, and a persistence in it deemed unnecessary." The pressure obtained in this experiment amounted to about a hundred pounds per square foot, and it had been ascertained that the greatest pressure caused by packing men together as closely as possible was equal to about ninety-five pounds per square foot; so that the testing force applied was considered amply sufficient, as a considerable portion of the surface of the gallery will be occupied by light articles exhibited in the cases and stalls which are placed along the centre of the gallery, where a great weight would have most effect. This ingenious method of proving the strength of the galleries _in situ_, without endangering those engaged in the experiment, is admirable; and the result of the proof will no doubt allay all fear in the mind of the public as to the safety of this portion of the building. General Advantages of the Building. It is always much easier to point out the defects of any work than its excellences; whilst we may, therefore, safely leave the former, as regards our present subject, to be discovered and enlarged upon by those who may be perhaps more competent than ourselves, we will attempt to point out what we conceive to be some of the advantages obtained in the present building. One of the principal of these, considering throughout the purpose of the structure, is, perhaps, the uninterrupted view of the interior which the spectator may obtain from any point of the building--a matter of great importance to the general grandeur of its effect. From the galleries more particularly, which will be less obstructed by large objects, the eye of the spectator will be able to range from end to end of the vast edifice; while the transparency of the material used for the roof allows every object to be brilliantly illuminated. The slender lines of the supports, though they serve to sustain a protecting covering, scarcely interrupt the view of the objects protected, and the absence of any fixed divisions or partitions enables all the articles exhibited to be so arranged as to suit the peculiar requirements of each particular class; while the ample space between the supports has admitted of the formation of large open avenues for the free passage of visitors, who may thus reach as readily the remotest corners of the building as those situated near the entrances; and whenever the visitor may find himself fatigued by the labour of sight-seeing, he will be sure to find himself near one of the numerous exit-doors, whereby he may immediately free himself from the crowd of spectators. From the simplicity of the details of the construction, and their constant recurrence, it will be seen that so long as the ends of the building were left incomplete, its size could easily be limited or expanded, so as to include that precise amount of space which, up to the last moment when the point could be kept open, appeared most likely to be required. This simplicity of arrangement will also be found very advantageous in case the building is removed after the termination of its present temporary purpose; as the parts may be easily separated without much injury, and as readily re-erected, either as a whole, or even in many separate buildings, having the same arrangement of parts, without the same general form or appearance. It has been calculated that the passages remaining in the building, after deducting the space appropriated to the objects exhibited, will hold more than 100,000 persons; though it is not to be expected that half that number will be collected there at one time. The ventilation and supply of fresh air for so vast a throng was therefore a matter of the first importance; and the means already described for accomplishing this great object are so ample, that any inconvenience from oppressive heat or foul air can hardly be expected. The canvass with which the roof is covered will not only serve to modify the heat of the sun in the interior, but it is expected that if it be watered by the hose of engines, it may even reduce the temperature within to considerably below that of the external air. From his experience in glass-houses for horticultural purposes, Mr. Paxton speaks confidently on this point. The arrangement of the construction of the building resting on isolated instead of continuous supports, will enable all traces of it to be readily effaced from the site if it is removed; and, on the other hand, if it remains, it is evidently peculiarly suited to form a vast winter-garden and public promenade. Conclusion. Before taking leave of the reader who may have patiently followed us thus far, a few words may be necessary on the general arrangement of the articles to be exhibited in the building whose outline and details we have been endeavouring to trace. The first classification is geographical. All the western half of the building is given to England, and the eastern, which is rather the larger of the two, to foreign countries; the space assigned to each country being distinctly defined, so as to avoid the possibility of any disputes. As far as it was possible, the space for each country is so arranged as to have a frontage towards the main central avenue, and in most cases occupies a strip the whole width of the building; the visitor, therefore, passing up and down the length, will not miss out any country. In the central avenue, and immediately on either side of it, are placed the most remarkable specimens of objects coming under the class of fine-arts, or otherwise sufficiently remarkable to entitle them to such a prominent place. Behind these, in the side avenues, will be found the various specimens of manufactured articles; and along the outside longitudinal avenues are placed, on the south side, those belonging to the class of raw products (a portion being devoted to agricultural implements), and the projecting portion of the building on the north side forms the hall of machinery, which is separated by a partition of glazed sashes from the rest of the building. Many of the articles will be grouped in courts, an arrangement which the construction particularly leads to; and these will probably form some of the greatest attractions in the Exhibition, each being, as it were, complete in itself, and the inclosures preventing the eye from being distracted by distant objects. To enter further into the detail of this part of the subject would be foreign to the purpose of this work, the building itself being our text. We have now, we believe, completed the pleasant task we proposed to ourselves at the outset, and we hope that in doing so we may have been able to render interesting to our general readers this description of operations, usually occupying the attention of the technical professions only. With this intention, we have avoided as far as possible the use of technical terms, which would be a dead letter to the uninitiated, at the risk, perhaps, of being considered inaccurate by those acquainted with all the details of the subject. So many men whose eminent talent is well known and appreciated by the public have been engaged in perfecting the designs and carrying out the erection of this vast structure, that the critic should be one of no mean reputation who would venture to raise even a small voice of individual criticism on its merits. We have considered it, therefore, to be our part rather to record the opinions of others on any points where a discussion has been raised than to trouble the reader with any personal views, which would, perhaps, have only appeared impertinent. The nature and extent of the difficulties which have been successfully surmounted in carrying out this great work can only be fully appreciated by those intimately acquainted with all its structural details and with its rapid progress; and its completion in so short a period must be regarded as a striking instance of the productive power and spirit of commercial enterprise of this country, while the fact of its being defrayed by the voluntary contributions of the people will illustrate in an interesting manner to our continental visitors that principle of self-government which forms the basis of all our institutions, and the spirit of private enterprise which characterises most of our great undertakings. The illustrative engravings with which we have endeavoured to render more interesting the descriptive details, necessarily somewhat dry to the general reader, are only intended to convey general ideas, without attempting that minute accuracy which would be required in a more technical work; and with reference to some of them we take this opportunity of acknowledging the assistance our artists have derived from views already published elsewhere, others having been exclusively drawn for the present work. We have much pleasure in presenting our readers, in the Appendix, with views and descriptions of two of the most striking designs sent in the first competition for the building, the materials for which have been kindly afforded us by their respective authors; and we may remind the reader that these two designs were specially mentioned by the Building Committee in their Report already quoted. In the same place some interesting documents connected with the building will also be found, which we were unable to insert in the text. [Illustration: VIEW OF SOUTH FRONT OF THE BUILDING.] APPENDIX. LIST OF COMPETITORS FOR THE BUILDING PROPOSED TO BE ERECTED IN HYDE PARK. Mons. Acollas, Architecte, 33, Rue Lafayette, à Paris. Messrs. Aickin and Capes, 1, Clarence-street, Islington. W. Albon, Esq., 32, Abingdon-street, Westminster. C. B. Allen, Architect, 9, Great College-street, Westminster. F. C. Anderson, Esq., 9, Holles-street, Cavendish-square. _Architekton_ (W. Bardwell, 4, Great Queen-street, Westminster). Henry Ashton, Esq., 50A, Lower Brooke-street. John S. Austin, Architect, Bedford. William Austin, Esq., High-street, East Dereham, Norfolk. C. Badger, Esq., Architect, 40, Rue Blanche, Paris. R. Baly, Esq., 14, Buckingham-street, Adelphi. Alfred Beaumont, Architect, 5, Warwick Chambers, Beak-street. Richard Bell, Architect, Pope's Head Chambers, Cornhill. W. Bell, Esq., Clift Cottage, Coronation-road, Bristol. Thomas Bellamy, Esq., 8, Charlotte-street, Bedford-square. Mons. Felix Belleflamme, Brussels. J. S. Benest, Esq., 21, Rutland-street, Hampstead-road. J. H. Bertram, M. Inst. C. E., Reading. John Black, Esq., 33, Ernest-street, Regent's Park. E. Blatchley, Esq., Jun., 362, Oxford-street. Mons. Alphonse Botrel, Architecte, 121, Rue Poissonnière, Paris. A. W. Boulnois, Esq., Bazaar, King-street, Baker-street. W. Boyle, Esq., 5, Little George-street, Westminster. R. Brandon, Architect, 11, Beaufort-buildings, Strand. R. Broad, Esq., Horseley Works, Tipton. B. Broadbridge, Architect, 35, Ladbroke-square, Notting-hill. F. Brown, Esq., Francis-street, Torrington-square. R. Brown, Esq., 41, Lord-street, Liverpool. J. B. Bunning, Esq., Guildhall. George A. Burn, Architect, George-place, Hammersmith. H. P. Burt, Esq., 238, Blackfriars-road. John G. Grace, Esq., 14, Wigmore-street. E. I. C., Alnwick. Mons. J. Cailloux, 25, Marché St. Honoré, Paris. A. F. Campbell, Esq., 104, Pall Mall, Reform Club. Henry Case, Esq., 19, Hanover Villas, Kensington Park. James Catt, Esq., Blackheath Park. Mons. J. Charpentier, Architecte, 15, Rue Larochefoucalt, Paris. J. Claringbull, Esq., 95, Herbert-street, New North-road. Mons. Henri van Cléemputte, Laon, France. Mons. J. P. Cluysenaar, Architecte, Bruxèlles. J. Colshurst, Esq., 36, Jermyn-street, St. James's. John Colson, Architect, Winchester. Mons. J. W. Conrad, Chief Engineer, La Haye, Holland. C. E. Coote, Esq., Clifton. W. R. Corson, Architect, 3, Albion-place, Leeds. H. Courtney, Esq., 39, Awylne-road, Canonbury-square, Islington. David Cowan, Esq., 9, Hungerford-street, Strand. Mons. Crémont, 10, Place des Vosges, Paris. W. Cruikshank, Esq., 24, Duke-street. Mons. E. Damas de Culture, 20, Rue Mazayran, Paris. G. J. Darley, Esq., C.E., 7, Kildare-street, Dublin. Mons. A. Delaage, 6, Place de l'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris. W. Dennis, Esq., Church-street, Hackney. Charles Downes, Esq., 29, Coleshill-street, Eaton-square. Francis Drake, Esq., 11, Calthorpe-street, Gray's-inn-road. Henry Duesbury, Architect, Kensington Gore. Mons. Duflocq, 96, Rue Rochechouart, Paris. Mons. Dupuy, 9, Rue Duplessés, Versailles. Mons. Dusillion, Architecte, Thoune Suisse, Faubourg St. Germain, Paris. Mons. A. Durand, Moulins, France. O. C. Edwards, Esq., Gloucester. J. Eldudge, Esq., 16, Somerset-place, New Road, Commercial-rd. East. J. Elliott, Architect, 28, Portland-terrace, Southampton. M. G. Fétar van Elven, Architecte, Amsterdam. D. Erskine, Esq., 58, Clerk-street, Edinburgh. W. J. Everitt, Esq., 1, Garden-street, Stepney-green. Mons. Théodore Faure, 2, Little Argyle-street, Regent-street. Mons. F. Desaint Félix, and E. E. White, Architects, Ipswich. Mons. Henri Fevre, Architecte, 41, Rue de Vaugirard, à Paris. F. Finlay, Esq., 26, Duke-street, Westminster. Charles Folkard, Esq., C.E., 56, King-street, Whitehall. David Colin Forbes, Esq., Stirling. James Forrest, Esq., C.E., 25, Great George-street. W. Freebody, Esq., 9, Duke-street, Westminster. S. C. Fripp, Architect, Bristol. L. Fürges, Architecte, Crefeld. C. E. G., Warwick. A. Garrard. Esq., Surveyor. Mons. Gaulle, 81, Rue Française, à Calais. Arthur Gearing, Esq., 2, Ranelagh-street, Leamington Spa. William Geggie, Esq., Knaresbro'. J. Gibson, Esq., Great Western Railway, Paddington. Robert Gilingham, Esq., 31, Clarence-road, Kentish Town. Mons. Godeboeuf, Architecte, 12, Place Breda, à Paris. C. W. Gooch, Esq., 42, Connaught-terrace, Edgeware-road. John Gould, Esq., Tottenham Park, Wiltshire. Richard Greene, Esq., F.S.A., Sec. to Lichfield Architectural Society. Edmund W. Grubb, Esq., Newnham, Gloucestershire. Robert S. Grubb, Esq., Newham-on-Severn, Gloucestershire. T. R. Guppy, Esq., Naples. J. C. Haddan, Esq., 29, Bloomsbury-square. Thomas Roberts Hannaford, Architect, 21, Trigon-terrace, Kennington. O. Hansard, Architect, 2, Kensington-gardens-terrace, Hyde Park. Robert Hardy, Carpenter, 32, North Conduit-street, Bethnal-green. John Thornhill Harrison, Esq., East Bolden, near Gateshead. J. P. Harrison, Esq., 11, Chancery-lane. Thomas Haw, Esq., 27, Prospect-terrace, Globe-road, Mile-end. Thomas Hayes, Esq., 7, St. George's-terrace, Hyde Park. Samuel Heilton, Esq., 54, Red Cross-street, City. Mons. J. Henard, 98, Rue St. Lazarre, Paris. James Hendrey, Esq., 4, Pancras-lane, Cheapside. J. Hewitt, Esq., Oxford. W. S. Hollands, Esq., 37, King William-street. Mons. Hector Horeau, 70, Rue Richelieu, Paris. George Horton, Esq., 6, Green-street, Grosvenor-square. Albert P. Howell, Architect, 2, Holywell-street, Westminster. Mons. C. Huchon, 28, Rue Meslay, Paris. Benjamin Hurwitz, Esq., 1, Brydges-street, Strand. John Imray, Esq., Engineer, 12, Howley-street, Lambeth. A. Jackson, Esq., Barkhart House, Orpington, Kent. Mons. Ch. Schoech Jaquet, 238, Rue de la Vertasse, Geneva. Charles Jayne, Architect, 7, Chancery-lane. Adam Jizkowski, Architect to the Government, Warsaw. Joseph Jopling, Esq., Felton Villa, Finchley-road. H. J. Kaye, Esq., 63, Sloane-street, Knightsbridge. G. P. Kennedy and R. Kennedy, Esqrs., Sussex Chambers, Duke-street, St. James's. J. T. Knowles, Esq., 1, Raymond-buildings, Gray's Inn. Herr Friedrich Krahe, Brunswick. Louis Kûhne, Brunswick. A Lady with great diffidence submits this plan. M. Laves, Architect to the King of Hanover, Hanover. Mons. A. G. Ledrut, Claremont. S. W. Leonard, Assistant-Curator Micrological Society, 11, Upper Stamford-street, Waterloo-road. W. B. Lewis, Esq., Rainbow-hill, Worcester. R. Lobb, Esq., 8, Goulden-terrace, Barnsbury-road, Islington. Locke Brothers, New Peckham. Henry Lockwood, F.S.A., and William Mawson, Architects, Bradford. Henry Lote, Esq., 51, Brompton-row. R. Lovely, Esq., C.E., 1, Victoria-terrace, Queen's-road, Nottingham. George Mackenzie, Esq., 3, Claremont-row, Barnsbury-road, Islington. Messrs. Magni and Thummeloup, 26, Boulevard du Temple, Paris. R. Mallet, Esq., Victoria Foundry, Dublin. Mansell and Elliott, Architects, Halkin-street West, Belgrave-square. R. M. Marchant, Esq., 18, Great George-street. P. J. Margary, Esq., Dawlish, Devonshire. W. P. Marshall, Esq., Temple-buildings, New-street, Birmingham. D. Mickle, Esq., 37, Queen-square, Bloomsbury. Joseph Mitchell, Architect, St. James's-street, Sheffield. J. Montheath, Esq., 10, Stanley-street, Paddington. James Moon, Architect, 1, Millman-street, Bedford-row. Captain W. S. Moorsom, 17½, Great George-street. G. Morgan, Architect, 6, Charles-street, Westminster. J. H. Muller, Gaes, Holland. Charles C. Nelson, Esq., 30, Hyde-park-gardens, London. Mons. C. Frédéric Nepveu, 13, Place d'Armes, Versailles. W. Nethersole, Esq., C.E., 73, Oakley-square, St. Pancras. I. W. Newberry, Esq., Hook Norton, Chipping Norton, Oxon. Francis B. Newman, Architect, 14, Heathcote-street, Mecklenburgh-sq. C. H. Newton, Esq., 92, Camden-road Villas, Regent's Park. Mons. Paliard, 23, Rue d'Enghein, Paris. E. Paraire, Architect, 16, Woodstock-street, Bond-street. Mons. Henri le Pâtre, 47, Grande Rue de la Chapelle, St. Denis, Paris. Thomas Peacock, Esq., High-street, Kensington. J. D. Pemberton, Esq., Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. G. Perry, Architect, 42, Newington-place, Kennington. Mons. Casimir Pétiaux, Paris. William Radley, Chemical Engineer, Regent-street, Lambeth. W. Railton, Esq., 12, Regent-street. W. Rankin, Esq., Stirling. W. Reed, Esq., Cannon Cottage Hill, Southampton. Messrs. Reid and Butcher, Architects and Surveyors, 38, Red Lion-square, London. Stanley Reilly, Architect, 3, Upper Kennington-green, Kennington. George Banks Rennie, Esq., Whitehall-place. Harry Ralph Ricardo, Esq., Beaulieu Lodge, Norwood, Surrey. W. Riddle, Esq., East Temple Chambers, Whitefriars, Fleet-street. H. S. Ridley, Architect, 31, Vincent-square, Westminster. J. B. Roberts, Architect, Sleaford, Lincolnshire. R. Roberta, Esq., Globe Works, Manchester. Andrew John Robertson, Esq., C.E., Newcastle-upon-Tyne. William Robertson, Esq., 12, Gordon-street, City-road. A. Rosengarten, Architect, Hamburg. Alex. M. Ross, Esq., 3, Parliament-street, Westminster. Rough Draught, 42, Stainford-street. Henry Rouse, Esq. H. H. Russell, Esq., C.E., M.R.S.A. W. Russell, Esq., 3, Frederick-street, Hampstead-road. E. Ryde, Esq., 14, Upper Belgrave-place, Eaton-square. George Sanderson, Esq., 136, Solly-street, Sheffield. Charles Sanderson, Esq., Friar-street, Reading. Robert Sandeman, Architect, Greenside, Edinburgh. H. Savage, Esq., 22, Beaumont-street. Mary-le-bone. W. Scurry, Esq., 7, Denbigh-place, Pimlico. Sed quis custodiet Custodes. J. P. Seddon, Esq., Gray's-inn-road. J. R. Sewell, Esq., Carrington, near Nottingham. Mons. A. Slater, Architecte, Elève de Mons. l'Architecte Cluysenaar. E. Smallwood, Architect, 86, Park-street, Camden Town. F. Smallman Smith, Esq., 18, Brunswick-st., Barnsbury-road, Islington. C. H. Smith, Esq., 29, Clipstone-street. J. M. Smith, Esq., 1, Chapel-place, Duke-street, Westminster. W. J. Smith, Esq., 18, Bond-street, Commercial-road, Lambeth. G. Campbell Smith, Esq., Banff. Messrs. Soyer and Warrener, Reform Club. Paul Sprenger, Esq., Architect to the Government, Vienna. Herr Friederich Stammann, Hamburg. Francis Sternitz, Esq., 10, Berner-street, Commercial-road East. W. Stewart, Esq., Seacombe, Cheshire. M. J. Stutely, Architect, 4, Doughty-street, Mecklenburgh-square. H. Suckling, Esq., 1, Conduit-street, Regent-street. George Tate, Esq., Bawtry, Yorkshire. J. Taylor, Architect, 22, Parliament-street. T. Taylor, Architect, 33, Clarendon-street, Oakley-square. J. H. Taunton, Esq., 2, Gordon-place, Kensington. D. W. Thomas, Esq., 20, St. Petersburg-place, Bayswater. R. M. Thompson, Esq., 46, Leicester-square. P. Thompson, Architect, 1, Osnaburgh-place, New-road. F. Thompson, Esq., 15, Trafalgar-square, Peckham. James Thrupp, Architect, 2, Park-place, Bath. H. W. Todd and W. Allingham, 91, Newman-street, Oxford-street. Richard Turner and Thomas Turner, Hammersmith Works, Dublin. Henry Turner, Esq., Low Heaton, Haugh, Newcastle-on-Tyne. F. Tyerman, Jun., Architect, 14, Parliament-street. Mons. Véron, 2, Quai des Armes, Paris. John Walker, Esq., Crooked-lane Chambers, King William-street. George Wallis, Artist, and Henry Summers, Architect, 14, College-place, Camden Town. J. N. Warren, Esq., C.E., 18, Adam-street, Adelphi. J. E. Watson, Esq., 74, Grey-street, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Henry Whitcombe, Esq., Slough. George Wightwick, Architect, 3, Athenæum-terrace, Plymouth. George Wilkie, Esq., C.E., 8, Powell-street West, King's-square. George Wilkinson, Esq., Horsham. S. J. Wilkinson, Esq., 7, Jeffry's-square, St. Mary Axe. James Williams, Esq., 18, Westgate-buildings, Bath. George Wilson, Esq., Knaresbro', Yorkshire. Ralph Wilson, Architect, 16, Bridge-street, Westminster. James G. Wilson, Esq., 18, Great George-street, Westminster, Richard Winder, Esq., Fenchurch-street. R. A. Withall, Architect, 80, Cheapside. W. H. Wontner, Architect, St. Ann's-road, North Brixton. Frederick Wood, Esq., 6, Franklin-road, Queen's-road, East Chelsea. Thomas Worthington, Architect, 54, King-street, Manchester. James Wylson, Architect, 112, Fyfe-place, Glasgow. ---- LIST A. ENTITLED TO FAVOURABLE AND HONOURABLE MENTION. C. B. Allen, Architect, Great College-street, Westminster. W. Allingham (and Todd), 91, Newman-street, Oxford-street. _Architekton_ (W. Bardwell, 4, Great Queen-street, Westminster). H. Ashton, 50A, Lower Brooke-street. C. Badger, Architect, Rue Blanche, Paris. B. P. Baly (four designs). R. Bell, Architect, Pope's Head Chambers, Cornhill. Thomas Bellamy, Architect, Charlotte-street, Bedford-square. J. H. Bertram, C. E., Reading. A. Botrel, Architect, 121, Rue Poissonnière, Paris. R. Brandon, Architect, Little Beaufort-buildings, Strand. F. Brown, Francis-street, Torrington-square. J. B. Bunning, Architect, Guildhall, City of London. G. A. Burn, Architect, George-place, Hammersmith. J. Cailloux, Architect, 25, Marché St. Honoré, Paris. H. Case, 19, Hanover Villas, Kensington Park. J. Charpentier, Architect, 15, Rue Larochefoucalt, Paris. Henri Van Cléemputte, Architect, Laon, France. J. P. Cluysenaar, Architect of King of the Belgians, Brussels. J. W. Conrad, Chief Engineer, La Haye, Holland. H. Courtney, Esq., 39, Alwyne-road, Canonbury-square, Islington. Mons. Crémont, Architect, 10, Place des Vosges, Paris. W. Cruikshank, 24, Duke-street. A. Delaage, Architect, 6, Place de l'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris. C. Downes, Coleshill-street, Eaton-square. A. Durand, Moulins, France. Mons. Dusillion, Architect, Thoune Suisse, Faubourg St. Germain, Paris. M. G. Fétar Van Elven, Architect, Amsterdam. H. Fevre, Architect, 41, Rue de Vaugirard, à Paris. S. C. Fripp, Architect, Bristol. Mons. Gaulle, 81, Rue Française, Calais. A. Gearing, 2, Ranelagh-street, Leamington Spa. Eugene Godeboeuf, 12, Place Breda, Paris. J. T. Harrison, East Bolden, near Gateshead. T. Hayes, 7, St. George's-terrace, Hyde-park. J. Henard, Architect, 98, Rue St. Lazarre, Paris. H. Horeau, 70, Rue Richelieu, Paris. C. Huchon, 28, Rue Meslay, Paris. J. Imray, C. E., Howley-street, Lambeth. Ch. Schoech Jaquet, 238, Rue de la Vertasse, Geneva. Louis Kûhne, Brunswick. J. T. Knowles, Architect, 1, Raymond-buildings, Gray's Inn. M. Laves, Architect of the King, Hanover. A. G. Ledrut, Clermont, France. W. B. Lewis, Rainbow-hill, Worcester. C. C. Nelson, 30, Hyde-park-gardens, London. C. F. Nepveu, 13, Place d'Armes, Versailles. Mons. Paliard, Rue d'Enghein, Paris. H. le Pâtre, Architect, 47, Grande Rue de la Chapelle, St. Denis, Paris. Casimir Pétiaux, Paris. H. S. Ridley, Architect, 31, Vincent-square, Westminster. J. B. Roberts, Architect, Sleaford, Lincolnshire. A. Rosengarten, Architect, Hamburg. H. Rouse, Esq. W. Russell, 3, Frederick-street, Hampstead-road. H. Savage, 22, Beaumont-street, Marylebone. J. P. Seddon, Esq., Gray's-inn-road. A. Slater, Architect, Elève de Mons. Cluysenaar. F. Smallman Smith, 18, Brunswick-street, Barnsbury-road, Islington. C. H. Smith, Clipstone-street, London. Paul Sprenger, Architect, Vienna. H. Sumners, Architect, 14, College-place, Camden Town. Richard and Thomas Turner, Hammersmith Works, Dublin. F. Tyerman, Jun., Architect, 14, Parliament-street. Mons. Véron, 2, Quai des Ormes, Paris. J. Watson, 74, Grey-street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. W. H. Wontner, Architect, St. Ann's-road, North Brixton. T. Worthington, Architect, King-street, Manchester. ---- LIST B. ENTITLED TO FURTHER HIGHER HONORARY DISTINCTION. C. Badger, Architect, Rue Blanche, Paris. Thomas Bellamy, Architect, Charlotte-street, Bedford-square. J. H. Bertram, C. E., Reading. A. Botrel, Architect, 121, Rue Poissonnière, Paris. J. Cailloux, Architect, 25, Marché St. Honoré, Paris. Henri Van Cléemputte, Architect, Laon, France. Mons. Crémont, Architect, 10, Place des Vosges, Paris. A. Delaage, Architect, 6, Place de l'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris. M. G. Fétar Van Elven, Architect, Amsterdam. J. Henard, Architect, 98, Rue St. Lazarre, Paris. H. Horeau, 70, Rue Richelieu, Paris. C. Huchon, 28, Rue Meslay, Paris. A. G. Ledrut, Clermont, France. H. le Pâtre, Architect, 4K, Grande Rue de la Chapelle, St. Denis, Paris. Casimir Pétiaux, Paris. Paul Sprenger, Architect, Vienna. Richard and Thomas Turner, Hammersmith Works, Dublin. Mons. Véron, 2, Quai des Ormes, Paris. [Illustration: Mons. Hector Horeau's Design for the Building. Exterior] [Illustration: View of the Interior.] TWO OF THE COMPETITION DESIGNS. ---- The following descriptions and plates of two of the designs sent in competition for the Building, and specially mentioned by the Committee in their Report, are given from information obligingly furnished to us by their respective authors. DESIGN BY M. HECTOR HOREAU, ARCHITECT, OF PARIS. This was one of the most striking of all that were submitted to the Commission; it formed one immense hall, or shed, more than 2000 feet long, by about 270 feet wide throughout, with several small detached buildings on the north side, for refreshments, &c. The interior of the main building was divided into five avenues, the centre one about ninety feet wide, those next adjoining rather more than fifty feet, and the outside ones about forty feet wide. Iron columns, about twenty-three feet apart, formed these avenues and supported arched ribs for the roof. One end of the building was semicircular, the other forming an ornamental façade, and about the centre of the length a transept was formed. M. Horeau says: "Simplicity, grandeur, ready means of construction, and of increasing or diminishing the accommodation, and of removal if required, forming altogether a specimen of the most recent improvements introduced into the art of building--these are the principal objects which it has been sought to attain. The whole of the construction is of iron, without a single piece of wood, the foundation being executed in brick; the façade to be in metal, porcelain, and glass, the floor of asphalte, the roof to be principally covered with ornamental thick glass, in large dimensions, or ground glass with patterns. "Of the trusses or arched ribs supporting the roof there were to be but three varieties, each in three pieces, with which the whole of the building could be erected. This subdivision of the roof-trusses would have facilitated the conversion of the building for other purposes; for, taken singly, or in various combinations, they would have formed many kinds of buildings for ordinary purposes. The attached buildings placed on the north side would have shown several modes of effecting this. The ornamental spandrils of the roof-trusses would be formed in stamped-work out of copper, and gilt. "The façade shows at a glance the purpose of the building, as well as its interior disposition, in which the different widths of avenues would afford space for objects of all varieties of dimensions. The façade itself was to be formed with tracery or trellis-work of cast-iron, the lower part being covered with sheet-iron; the cornice and ornamental panels of porcelain; the medallions in coloured stone-ware; the doors and inclosures of metal, silvered and gilt; the ornamental details to be either cast or stamped; the scrolls in the panels being in coloured glass or mosaic. "The pediment is crowned with a group of figures representing the Genius of Industry crowning the Arts and Sciences; in the cornice are placed the names of all the principal cities of the world, and the names of eminent men in panels. In the medallions are represented allegorical figures of the different branches of science and industry. At the angles of the building are placed trophies, the base of which would serve as guard-houses." The engravings will serve to show the general effect of this design in its interior and exterior. ---- DESIGN BY MESSRS. R. AND T. TURNER, OF DUBLIN. In this design also the interior was arranged as one uninterrupted space, about 1,940 feet long, and 408 wide, the roof in one span rising about 120 feet above the floor; the supports, consisting of semicircular ribs, forming the interior into three avenues, the centre one 200 feet wide and the full height, the side ones 104 feet wide and about sixty feet high. In the centre of the length a transept was proposed, and the square area at the meeting of that with the central avenue was to be covered with a glass dome. The ends of the building, as well as those of the transept, were to be filled in with tracery in the upper part, a colonnade below protecting the entrances. Galleries, if necessary, were to be placed in the side avenues. The construction of this building was proposed to be principally of wrought iron, which would have given to the circular ribs and other parts a great lightness of effect; but, on the other hand, the difficulties of producing and putting together such an enormous amount of wrought-iron work in so short a space of time as that required was considered an almost insuperable objection to the design. Large portions of the roof were to be covered with glass, so as to admit an abundance of light into the interior. The accompanying views of the exterior and interior of this design, from the simplicity of the arrangement, consisting of a repetition of similar parts, require but little description for their elucidation. [Illustration: Messrs. R and T. Turner's Design. View of Exterior from one end.] [Illustration: Messrs. R. and T. Turner's Design. Transverse Section, and View of the Interior.] MEMORANDUM ON THE SITE. _Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 1st July, 1850; for_ COPY of a LETTER addressed by the Commissioners of the EXHIBITION of 1851 to the Lords of the Treasury, inclosing Memorandum as to the Site of the Exhibition Building in Hyde Park. ---- SIR,--I am directed by her Majesty's Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 to transmit to you herewith, for the information of the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury, a memorandum of the grounds on which the present site has been selected for the Exhibition, and of the proceedings that have been taken in consequence of that selection.--I have, &c. The Right Honourable W. G. Hayter, M.P., &c. &c. &c. ---- Memorandum of the grounds on which the site has been selected for the Exhibition of 1851, and of the proceedings which have been taken in consequence of that selection, prepared for the information of the Lords of the Treasury by the Royal Commissioners for promoting the Exhibition. 1. It is within the knowledge of the Lords of the Treasury, that from the time of the earliest announcement of the proposed Exhibition it has always been intended that it should take place in the Metropolis. Not only was such an intention matter of notoriety at the time that the question of issuing a Royal Commission was under consideration, but the Commission itself, when issued formally recited that it was proposed "To establish an Enlarged Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, to be holden in London, in the year 1851;" and it was to further the holding of such an exhibition that the present Commissioners were specially appointed. 2. Considering the importance of the undertaking, and the circumstances attending its promulgation, the selection of the Metropolis as its intended locality appears to have been both natural and proper. It will be borne in mind that the exhibitions which have from time to time been held in foreign countries have generally, and, as the Commissioners believe, invariably, been held in the capitals of the respective countries. In the present case it was peculiarly important that an undertaking which required the constant superintendence of a body of Commissioners, whose occupations for the most part confine them to London, should be carried on within their immediate cognisance, and not removed to a distant situation. 3. It being thus distinctly evident that the Exhibition ought to take place in London, it is further obvious that the actual site which may be selected for it should be within the precincts of, or in the closest vicinity to, the most central and accessible parts of the Metropolis itself. It need hardly be pointed out that it would be objectionable to impose upon persons who may have come to London from a great distance the necessity of an additional journey to visit the Exhibition; a consideration which has already been urged upon the Commissioners by the representatives of several of the most important provincial towns, who are apprehensive of the inconvenience to which artizans in particular might thus be subjected. Moreover, the removal of the Exhibition to any distance sufficient to diminish the number of visitors would not only militate against its essential character of general accessibility, but might most seriously affect the receipts upon which its self-supporting character must depend, a point upon which it appears that much stress has been laid. 4. Although Hyde Park, and even the particular space now in question, had been already mentioned before the issue of the Commission, and indeed so far back as October, 1849, as a probable site for the Exhibition, it is unnecessary to assure the Lords of the Treasury that the Commissioners approached the question of the site after their appointment without having in any degree prejudged the merits of particular localities. On the 14th of February, their attention having been directed to the importance of determining the site by the Committee then recently appointed for all matters relating to the building, they deputed two Commissioners, namely, Lord Granville and Mr. Labouchere, to wait upon the Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and to confer with him upon the subject. The result of this conference is set forth in the Report presented by the Building Committee at the next meeting of the Commissioners (Feb. 21), of which the following is the portion which relates to the question of the site:-- "With respect to the site, it has appeared to your Committee that, firstly, the north-eastern portion of Hyde Park; secondly, the long space between her Majesty's private road and the Kensington-road, in the southern part of Hyde Park; and, thirdly, the north-western portion of Regent's Park, are the only available spaces about the Metropolis which would afford the necessary accommodation; and it is believed that the order in which they have been named represents also their relative eligibility. As regards the first, the Committee are informed by the Chief Commissioner of her Majesty's Woods and Forests, that considerable objections would arise to its occupation for such a purpose, and that no such objections would be raised to the use of the second; the Committee, therefore, recommend the adoption of this site, which, amongst other advantages, is remarkable for the facility of access afforded by the existing roads. Upon this occasion a letter was received from the Westminster Committee, stating that the local Commissioners for Westminster had visited the site in Hyde Park, and a site suggested in the Regent's Park, and that they were of opinion that the site in Hyde Park was the preferable one." The recommendation of the Building Committee having been agreed to, a form of advertisement, requesting plans and suggestions for the building, was, at the next meeting (28th February), submitted for approbation, and was ordered to be immediately issued in the English, French, and, German languages. To this advertisement was appended a ground-plan of the site in Hyde Park for the guidance of those to whom the advertisement was addressed. The details of this plan were discussed in the presence of the Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and were settled in conformity with his lordship's wishes. 5. In consequence of the advertisement thus issued, no less than 248 plans and suggestions, many of them the productions of foreign artists, were sent in to the Commissioners. A large number of these were of a very elaborate character, and bore evident marks of considerable application and ability. 6. Soon after the site had been selected, some other important arrangements having also by this time been made, the Commissioners prepared and published a statement (21 February) explanatory of the nature and objects of the Exhibition, which was widely circulated in this country, was forwarded to our consuls abroad and to the foreign consuls in England, and was officially transmitted by the Secretary of State to all Foreign Governments, and to all the Governors of the British Colonies, as well as to India. In this statement it was announced that "Her Majesty had been graciously pleased to grant a site for the purpose (of the Exhibition) on the south side of Hyde Park, lying between the Kensington Drive and the ride commonly called Rotten Row." 7. The site having been thus deliberately chosen and formally announced, all subsequent proceedings connected with the building have been taken with direct reference to it. The plans have been prepared with a view to its peculiarities, and the form of the building and its internal as well as its external arrangements have been determined by them. The amount of space available for the display of articles has been calculated upon the data afforded by the site, and from a calculation of this amount the Commissioners have been able to assign to each foreign country a definite space for the arrangement of its own productions. All the necessary working-drawings and specifications have been prepared with very great labour and at considerable expense, and have now been issued in a form which will insure to the Commissioners the certainty of obtaining, within a few days, _bonâ fide_ tenders for the execution of a design presenting every facility for construction within the time prescribed. The mechanical difficulties have been surmounted, and all the preliminary arrangements, even to the extent of provision for an effective drainage and a sufficient water supply, have been entered into. The whole of these preparations have reference to this particular site only, and are inapplicable or unsuitable to any other. 8. From what has been already stated, it will be seen that the present site was not selected without consideration, and that the proceedings which have been taken with respect to it were not commenced until the Commissioners had good ground for believing that there would be no objection to its occupation. The attention, however, which has lately been directed to the point, has caused them anxiously to reconsider the whole subject, and renders it now necessary for them to enter into somewhat more of detail as to the grounds upon which they have come to the conclusion which they have formed, that this is the only site in or about the Metropolis which is at once suitable and practically available for the purposes of the Exhibition. 9. Of the other sites which have been suggested, the following are the only ones deserving of particular consideration:-- (_a_) The North-eastern portion of Hyde Park. (_b_) The North-western portion of Regent's Park. (_c_) Battersea Park. (_d_) Victoria Park. (_e_) Wormwood Scrubbs. 10. The north-eastern portion of Hyde Park would, in the opinion of many members of the Building Committee, be a very eligible situation; but, as has been already mentioned, an objection was taken to this locality on the part of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, on the ground that the building would interfere with some important thoroughfares in that part of the park, and on account of other considerations of public importance; and the idea was abandoned in consequence. 11. The site suggested in the Regent's Park has been found, since it was visited by the Building Committee, not to be available, as the leases under which the houses in the neighbourhood are held contain a clear and stringent provision that no new building of any kind shall be erected within the limits of the park. 12. With regard to the ground in the neighbourhood of Battersea proposed to be purchased by the Government, and to be converted into a park to be called Battersea Park, the Lords of the Treasury are of course aware that only a small proportion of the whole area has as yet been purchased; and the Commissioners found on inquiry that this proportion consists of numerous small detached pieces, utterly insufficient to accommodate a building of the contemplated size, and separated from each other by intervening plots of ground, many of them in a state of high cultivation, and belonging to a great number of different proprietors, with whom it would be absolutely impossible to effect arrangements within any time which would afford the slightest chance of the Commissioners being put in possession of a site in time to complete their building by the spring of next year. It should be added that the site of this district is very low, a great portion of it being some feet under high-water mark, and that the nature of the soil presents serious objections to its use as a building-ground. 13. Victoria Park is situated in an inconvenient and not very accessible part of the town. It would, moreover, be impossible to erect in it a building of the required size without most seriously interfering with the plantations and ornamental water which have been recently laid out there; thus inflicting on the classes for whose recreation that park has been opened an inconvenience infinitely more serious than could be caused to the frequenters of the very much larger area of Hyde Park by the proposed occupation of a comparatively small portion of it. 14. Lastly, as regards Wormwood Scrubbs, besides that the distance is a very serious objection, the rights of the commoners in that locality would prevent its appropriation; and the Commissioners are advised that it would be impossible to erect the building there without risk, as any single commoner would have it in his power to interrupt the proceedings, and to cause them to be discontinued at any stage of the work, however advanced. Similar objections apply to Wandsworth and some other commons in the neighbourhood of London, which have been occasionally mentioned as possible sites. 14_a_. As regards Primrose Hill and the Isle of Dogs, the want of level space on the former, and the objectionable situation and dampness of the latter, render them so obviously unsuitable as to make any particular observations unnecessary. 15. But even could the objections to any of these sites be removed, or could another and an unobjectionable site be pointed out, the Commissioners feel hound to state, from their experience of the time, thought, and labour necessarily consumed in the investigation, arrangement, and preparation of the great mass of detail requisite to enable them to carry out this extensive work, that they are fully convinced of the impossibility of now adapting their plans to any other site, with any reasonable prospect of being able to complete the work within the time to which they stand pledged in the face of the world; and they could only regard a change of site, particularly if it should involve a change of plan, as tantamount to the postponement of the Exhibition till another year. And the Commissioners cannot shut their eyes to the fact, that a postponement of the Exhibition would, under the circumstances, certainly lead to its entire abandonment. 16. In order to give the Lords of the Treasury some idea of the consequences of an abandonment of this scheme, the Commissioners would in the first place direct their attention to the large amount of money already subscribed towards its completion (which is at present nearly 64,000_l_.), to the number of local committees (now about 240) which have been called into existence throughout the country, to the funds now being raised by subscriptions out of their wages among the working-classes in all parts of the country towards enabling them to visit an Exhibition to which they are anxiously looking forward, and the abandonment of which would be a great disappointment to numbers, and still more to the extensive preparations which are now making for the supply of articles for exhibition. It is within the knowledge of the Commissioners that several individuals in this country have incurred several thousand pounds' expense in such preparations, besides the anxiety which they have occasioned. 17. But the evils which would result from postponement, so far as this country is concerned, are as nothing when compared with those which would arise in the case of foreign nations and the colonies. The plan of the Exhibition has been widely circulated for several months, and the following States have already signified, through their respective Governments, that they have appointed Committees or Commissioners, consisting of the most distinguished individuals in those countries, to co-operate with the Royal Commissioners in this country:-- Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, Saxony, Austria, Bavaria, Hanover, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Hanse Towns, France, Holland, Belgium, Spain, The United States, Turkey, Sardinia, Venezuela, Switzerland, Nassau, Anhalt, Dessau, &c. Besides which it may be mentioned that special Commissioners have been sent to this country by France, Russia, and one or two other States; and that in most cases the Governments have undertaken the collection and the transmission to this country, at their own expense, of the articles intended for exhibition, for which, of course, their preparations are now made. 18. In all the countries which have been mentioned active preparations for the Exhibition are now going on, and in some considerable expense is known to have been incurred. The Russian Government has announced that the goods intended for exhibition will be shipped from that country in the autumn of this year, and questions pointing to a similar arrangement have recently been put by the Government of Denmark. The Austrian Government have given notice, that the Great Exhibition which was to have been held at Vienna in the year 1851 has been postponed till the year 1852, in order not to clash with the Exhibition in London. All these circumstances tend to show that the postponement of the Exhibition would be seriously inconvenient to many countries, and would probably occasion considerable and natural irritation at what would appear like national vacillation, besides the certainty of rendering these countries unwilling to run the risk of a second disappointment, and of deterring them from continuing their preparations for a later period. 19. These inconveniences would be felt also by the British Colonies. Committees have been announced as formed in Malta, Ceylon, Nova Scotia, Barbadoes, Guiana, and several of the West India Islands, and it is probable that others have been appointed elsewhere. In India most extensive preparations are being made, and the East India Company have incurred very great expense by their exertions to contribute to the Exhibition. 20. After what has been said, it is unnecessary that the Commissioners should enlarge any further upon the consequences to be apprehended from the postponement which would be occasioned by an alteration of the site of building. They will proceed to offer a few remarks upon some of the objections which have been taken to that at present proposed. 21. An idea appears to prevail in some quarters that the occupation of the Park is intended to be of a permanent, and not, as has been repeatedly announced, of a merely temporary character, and the Commissioners are given to understand that by proposing to construct a building into which a good deal of brickwork is to enter, they have shown an intention at variance with their professions. Upon this point they have to remark, in the first place, that, although the eminent architects and engineers whom they have consulted, and to whom they have uniformly given instructions to prepare plans suitable to a temporary structure, have agreed to recommend the use of brick and other durable materials, they have left it perfectly open to contractors to send in their tenders for the execution of the work in any material or materials whatsoever, and have notified their readiness to entertain such tenders, on the single condition of their being "accompanied by working-drawings and specifications, and fully priced bills of quantities." It is probable that some such tenders will be made, and if made they will be impartially considered; but the Commissioners must protest against the supposition that it is necessarily more judicious to construct a temporary building of perishable than of enduring materials. The first requisite of the building is, that it should be suitable for its purpose, capable of protecting the valuable goods deposited in it from injury of every kind--as, for instance, from the weather, from the effects of the dampness of the soil, from the danger of fire, and so forth, and that it should be strong enough to avert all risk of accidental damage. Its next requisite is, that it should be economical, and in estimating its cost regard must be had not only to the expense of erection, but to the facility of removal and the value of the materials when removed, as a building may easily be conceived to be cheaper which should cost 100,000_l._ to erect, but of which the materials could afterwards be sold for 50,000_l._, than another would be which cost but 80,000_l._ in the first instance, but of which the materials should become so far deteriorated as to produce only 20,000_l._ when taken down. It is the opinion of those who have devised the plans in the present case, that a building constructed of durable materials will in the end be cheaper than one constructed of such as are more perishable; particularly as a considerable portion of the building, namely, the iron roofing, will be of a kind which is generally used in the construction of railway-stations, and will probably be disposed of for that purpose after the close of the Exhibition, as its temporary application to the purposes of the Exhibition will be of no detriment to its being so. An opportunity of testing the correctness of this opinion will be given when the tenders are received, as, in addition to the customary form, it has been required that they should also be sent upon the understanding that the materials shall remain the property of the contractor, and shall in fact only be hired for the purposes of the Exhibition. The third requisite of the building is, that it should be at least seemly, though it may not be necessary that it should be highly ornamental. The Commissioners trust that it will fulfil this condition, while they would at the same time point out that no expense is to be incurred for merely ornamental purposes, unless it should be thought desirable to select a dome for covering in the large space which must necessarily be left in the centre of the building to suit the internal arrangements. A cheaper mode of covering in this space will probably be resorted to, and the Commissioners have directed that a special estimate of the cost of the dome should be laid before them when the tenders are complete, in order that they may judge of the propriety of sanctioning its erection. Having offered this short explanation, they can only repeat once more the assurances they have already given, that the building is not intended to be permanent, and that it will be entirely removed, in accordance with the conditions prescribed by the Lords of the Treasury on yielding up the site, within seven months after the closing of the Exhibition, which cannot be deferred after the 1st of November, and will probably take place at an earlier period in the autumn of next year. 22. Another ground of apprehension is stated to be, lest the Park should be injured by the erection of the building, and the injury should continue after the structure is removed. This apprehension is, however, groundless; a small clump of ten trees has been allowed to be removed, in compensation for which, it is proposed by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to plant another clump elsewhere. It is not intended to cut down any more than that clump. As regards the surface of the ground to be occupied, it will not only not be injured, but will ultimately be materially improved by being drained and freshly sown with grass seed. It will be a strict condition with the contractors for the building that they shall, on its removal, restore the ground to its present condition. 23. Some dissatisfaction has been expressed at the prospect of a furnace being erected to heat the boiler and drive the steam-apparatus. It is however, intended to construct such furnace on the principle of consuming its own smoke, or to burn coke instead of coal, should that, upon the whole, appear the best mode of preventing annoyance. Care will also be taken not to erect any chimney of an unsightly character. 24. As regards the amount of traffic which will be occasioned by the transport of materials and goods to the site, the Commissioners have been furnished by the Building Committee with an approximate estimate that it will not in the whole exceed the ordinary amount of three weeks' general traffic of a single railway-station, and as this traffic will be spread over a period of more than six months, it is manifest that its amount has been enormously exaggerated by public estimation. 25. The Queen's Ride, though in the immediate vicinity of the site, will not be in any degree interfered with, except that it may be advisable to rail off a strip not exceeding ten feet, or one-sixth of the whole in width, for foot-passengers, in order to prevent the inconvenience of crowding the space open to riding parties. By this arrangement the riders will be secured from annoyance. 25 _a._ It has been said that the effect of the erection of the building will be to drive the inhabitants of London out of their Parks. The Commissioners think it right to draw the attention of the Lords of the Treasury to the following statistics:-- The area of Hyde Park is 387 acres. " Kensington Gardens 290 " " Regent's Park 403 " " St. James's Park 83 " " Green Park 71 " " Victoria Park 160 " " Greenwich Park 174 " making a total of 1,568 acres, while only twenty acres are proposed to be taken or the purposes of this Exhibition. 26. In conclusion, the Commissioners think it desirable to call attention to the fact, that the three last Exhibitions of this nature which have taken place in Paris have been held on a site (the Champs Elysées) very closely corresponding to our own Hyde Park in many respects, and particularly resembling it in being the most fashionable and the most frequented promenade in Paris--more frequented, indeed, than the particular spot selected on the present occasion has ever been, or is likely to be; and yet it does not appear that the Parisians have had occasion to complain of those annoyances which are now apprehended by some persons in this country. And the Commissioners are informed, that the Exhibition in Vienna was held in the Prado, the principal public place in that city; and that the Exhibition in Berlin was held in the Thiergarten, which is not only the principal public place within the city, but is remarkable as being the only open Park of any sort within several miles. 27. In the foregoing observations the Commissioners have thought it right to confine themselves strictly to a discussion of the practical difficulties which would attend a change of site. They cannot, however, but express their decided opinion, that the renouncement of the selection of the most beautiful park in London for the scene of the Exhibition may be looked upon as indicating a diminution of interest in the undertaking, and would materially detract from that appearance of hospitality on the part of England which has been one great cause for the very favourable reception which this proposal has everywhere secured. They must add, that the possibility that the bringing the Exhibition into Hyde Park should be considered as an interference with the enjoyment of that Park by the public has never entered their minds. They have, on the contrary, always intended it as a means of recreative and intellectual enjoyment for the greatest portion of her Majesty's subjects: and they have hitherto had reason to believe that it has been so regarded by the country in general. ---- REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSIONERS, PRESENTED TO HER MAJESTY ON THE OPENING OF THE BUILDING. The following Report, together with her Majesty's Answer, on the occasion of the inauguration of the building, cannot fail to be interesting as a brief record of the proceedings connected with this noble undertaking up to that period:-- "May it please your Majesty,--We, the Commissioners appointed by your Majesty's royal warrant of the 3rd of January, 1850, for the promotion of the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, and subsequently incorporated by your Majesty's Royal Charter of the 15th of August in the same year, humbly beg leave, on the occasion of your Majesty's auspicious visit at the opening of the Exhibition, to lay before you a brief statement of our proceedings to the present time. "By virtue of the authority graciously committed to us by your Majesty, we have made diligent inquiry into the matters which your Majesty was pleased to refer to us, namely, into the best mode of introducing the productions of your Majesty's colonies and of foreign countries into this kingdom, the selection of the most suitable site for the Exhibition, the general conduct of the undertaking, and the proper method of determining the nature of the prizes and of securing the most impartial distribution of them. "In the prosecution of these inquiries, and in the discharge of the duties assigned to us by your Majesty's Royal Charter of Incorporation, we have held constant meetings of our whole body, and have, moreover, referred numerous questions connected with a great variety of subjects to committees, composed partly of our own members and partly of individuals distinguished in the several departments of science and the arts, who have cordially responded to our applications for their assistance at a great sacrifice of their valuable time. "Among the earliest questions brought before us was the important one as to the terms upon which articles offered for exhibition should be admitted into the building. We considered that it was a main characteristic of the national undertaking in which we were engaged that it should depend wholly upon the voluntary contributions of the people of this country for its success; and we therefore decided, without hesitation, that no charge whatever should be made on the admission of such goods. We considered, also, that the office of selecting the articles to be sent should be intrusted in the first instance to local committees, to be established in every foreign country, and in various districts of your Majesty's dominions; a general power of control being reserved to the Commission. "We have now the gratification of stating that our anticipations of support in this course have in all respects been fully realised. Your Majesty's most gracious donation to the funds of the Exhibition was the signal for voluntary contributions from all, even the humblest, classes of your subjects, and the funds which have thus been placed at our disposal amount at present to about 65,000_l._ Local committees, from which we have uniformly received the most zealous co-operation, were formed in all parts of the United Kingdom, in many of your Majesty's colonies, and in the territories of the Hon. East India Company. The most energetic support has also been received from the Governments of nearly all the countries of the world, in most of which Commissions have been appointed for the special purpose of promoting the objects of an Exhibition justly characterised in your Majesty's royal warrant as an Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations. "We have also to acknowledge the great readiness with which persons of all classes have come forward as exhibitors. And here again it becomes our duty to return our humble thanks to your Majesty for the most gracious manner in which your Majesty has condescended to associate yourself with your subjects by yourself contributing some most valuable and interesting articles to the Exhibition. "The number of exhibitors whose productions it has been found possible to accommodate is about 15,000, of whom nearly one-half are British. The remainder represent the productions of more than forty foreign countries, comprising almost the whole of the civilised nations of the globe. In arranging the space to be allotted to each, we have taken into consideration both the nature of its productions and the facilities of access to this country afforded by its geographical position. Your Majesty will find the productions of your Majesty's dominions arranged in the western portion of the building, and those of foreign countries in the eastern. The Exhibition is divided into the four great classes of--1, Raw Materials; 2, Machinery; 3, Manufactures; and 4, Sculpture and the Fine Arts. A further division has been made according to the geographical position of the countries represented; those which lie within the warmer latitudes being placed near the centre of the building, and the colder countries at the extremities. "Your Majesty having been graciously pleased to grant a site in this your royal Park for the purposes of the Exhibition, the first column of the structure now honoured by your Majesty's presence was fixed on the 26th of September last. Within the short period, therefore, of seven months, owing to the energy of the contractors and the active industry of the workmen employed by them, a building has been erected, entirely novel in its construction, covering a space of more than eighteen acres, measuring 1,851 feet in length, and 456 feet in extreme breadth, capable of containing 40,000 visitors, and affording a frontage for the exhibition of goods to the extent of more than ten miles. For the original suggestion of the principle of this structure the Commissioners are indebted to Mr. Joseph Paxton, to whom they feel their acknowledgments to be justly due for this interesting feature of their undertaking. "With regard to the distribution of rewards to deserving exhibitors, we have decided that they should be given in the form of medals, not with reference to merely individual competition, but as rewards for excellence in whatever shape it may present itself. The selection of the persons to be so rewarded has been intrusted to juries equally composed of British subjects and of foreigners, the former having been selected by the Commission from the recommendations made by the local committees, and the latter by the Governments of the foreign nations the productions of which are exhibited. The names of these jurors, comprising, as they do, many of European celebrity, afford the best guarantee of the impartiality with which the rewards will be assigned. "It affords much gratification that, notwithstanding the magnitude of this undertaking, and the great distances from which many of the articles now exhibited have had to be collected, the day on which your Majesty has been graciously pleased to be present at the inauguration of the Exhibition is the same day that was originally named for its opening, thus affording a proof of what may, under God's blessing, be accomplished by goodwill and cordial co-operation among nations, aided by the means that modern science has placed at our command. "Having thus briefly laid before your Majesty the results of our labours, it now only remains for us to convey to your Majesty our dutiful and loyal acknowledgments of the support and encouragement which we have derived throughout this extensive and laborious task from the gracious favour and countenance of your Majesty. It is our heartfelt prayer that this undertaking, which has for its end the promotion of all branches of human industry and the strengthening of the bonds of peace and friendship among all nations of the earth, may, by the blessing of Divine Providence, conduce to the welfare of your Majesty's people, and be long remembered among the brightest circumstances of your Majesty's peaceful and happy reign." Her Majesty returned the following gracious answer:-- "I receive with the greatest satisfaction the address which you have presented to me on the opening of this Exhibition. "I have observed with a warm and increasing interest the progress of your proceedings in the execution of the duties intrusted to you by the Royal Commission, and it affords me sincere gratification to witness the successful result of your judicious and unremitting exertions in the splendid spectacle by which I am this day surrounded. "I cordially concur with you in the prayer, that by God's blessing this undertaking may conduce to the welfare of my people and to the common interest of the human race, by encouraging the arts of peace and industry, strengthening the bonds of union among the nations of the earth, and promoting a friendly and honourable rivalry in the useful exercise of those faculties which have been conferred by a beneficent Providence for the good and the happiness of mankind." THE END. SALISBURY, PRINTER, PRIMROSE-HILL, SALISBURY-SQUARE, FLEET-STREET. * * * * * * THE FOLLOWING INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS AND MAPS ARE PUBLISHED BY JAMES GILBERT, 49, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON, Wholesale and Retail Bookseller, Publisher, and Newsvendor. * * * * * * NOW READY, in 200 pages, demy 18mo, with Illustrations, price, in fancy binding, only 1s. 6d., or post free, 2s., the SECOND EDITION, DEDICATED TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT, GILBERT'S POPULAR NARRATIVE OF THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, PROGRESS, & PROSPECTS OF THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION, 1851: With a Guide to the future Rules and Arrangements. BY PETER BERLYN, ESQ. ---- OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. ATHEN�UM. "A well-written volume. A useful record of the history and progressive development of the marking incident of our age and nation. Mr. Berlyn was, we believe, officially employed by the Executive Committee in the earlier stages of their labours; his statements, therefore, are on good authority and may be relied on. The narrative is sufficiently full in its details for the general public now and hereafter." EXAMINER. "This is a clever book, full of timely and interesting matter, and with sufficient merit as a record of the origin and history of the Great Exhibition to outlive the mere curiosity of the hour. Mr. Berlyn has had official opportunities of becoming well acquainted with the subject, and has not neglected them. He puts his materials together with spirit and intelligence, and indulges a hopeful strain of anticipation and prophecy very properly befitting his theme." LITERARY GAZETTE. "Within a small compass we have here gathered together all that is interesting in connexion with the great undertaking of the present year--an undertaking which must form a most important chapter in the world's history. We are bound to say that the work has been judiciously done, and the result is a very satisfactory review of all that has been effected in the way of Industrial Exhibitions up to the present time." MORNING CHRONICLE. "GILBERT'S POPULAR NARRATIVE OF THE EXHIBITION.--With this title a small work has just been published, written by Mr. Peter Berlyn, from authentic and official sources, tracing the origin, history, and progress, and pointing to the prospects, of the Great Exhibition. The author has carefully avoided all speculation and gossip on the subject, and has applied himself with very considerable ability to the statement and elucidation of all those facts, derived from authentic records, which bear upon the progress of this most important national movement. Many interesting facts are stated in connexion with the previous expositions which have taken place on the Continent and in this country, and the difficulties with which, upon its first announcement, the present undertaking had to contend, and the means by which the Executive were enabled to overcome them, are clearly and consecutively stated. The work also contains some valuable statistical and other information connected with the building, and copies of the most recent of the regulations issued by the Executive. We would cordially recommend this very interesting work." EXPOSITOR. "The volume before us has fair claim to its title of a Narrative of the Exhibition. It commences with an account of such British and foreign exhibitions as may be supposed to have led to the idea of the great international show of industry to be held in the present year. The work also contains a complete account of how the world's industrial products have come to be housed in the present building; gives all the rules and orders of the Commissioners and Executive Committee; special instructions to colonial and foreign exhibitors and Custom-house authorities; names of authorised agents for foreign countries; Custom-house agents recommended by the Royal Commissioners; and such other information as renders it a really useful volume of practical information to all exhibitors and visitors at the Exhibition." SUN. "Within the compass of an elegant pocket-volume the author of the present narrative has contrived to furnish his readers with a very copious history of the origin, progress, and prospects of the Great Exhibition. Throughout the work he has written with an especial regard at once to simplicity and perspicuity, so that we rest satisfied his labours will prove eminently successful, the book being incontestibly _the_ narrative of the Great Industrial Exposition. Beginning with all the preliminary particulars, which are absolutely essential for the comprehension of the entire scheme of the Prince Consort, the narrative describes very lucidly the growth of the first crude idea to its present gigantic dimensions. The share taken in the project by the Society of Arts is duly celebrated, and the influence of the successive expositions of French industry especially notified. The volume is altogether a very clever and most complete work." WEEKLY DISPATCH. "Works upon the above subject will become highly popular from the very necessity of the case; and consequently that which the public must chiefly look for amidst all the competition that will ensue will be correctness and compactness combined with economy. Mr. Peter Berlyn's book combines every requisite information regarding the Exhibition from first to last. Its clever compilation, tasteful form, quantity and variety of information, and the dependance that may be placed upon it for correctness, combine with its early appearance to render it one of the most valuable hand-books that are likely to be generally used." ART JOURNAL. "A very useful and sound history of the rise and progress of the Great International Exhibition of 1851, in which the first movements towards it are carefully and ably detailed; and a very good analysis is given of all preceding industrial exhibitions, at home and abroad, as well as a large amount of information connected with the construction of the building itself, and abstracts of official documents connected with the entire movement. The author has done justice to the efforts which have been made to interest the English manufacturer, and stimulate him in his artistic endeavours; and we feel bound to acknowledge his courteous notice of the exertions made by 'The Art Journal' in helping forward its consummation in 1851." LEADER. "For those who wish to know all about the rise and progress of the Great Exhibition and its Crystal Palace this neat hand-book is the very thing. Mr. Berlyn has performed his task with laudable industry. He has drawn together and arranged a large amount of scattered information regarding the Exhibition in a pleasant form. As an elegant and trustworthy hand-book, the narrative deserves to be popular." OBSERVER. "This neat volume gives a history of previous Exhibitions--some on small, some on large scales--that have taken place in divers parts of Europe of late years. It then points out the precise origin of the Exhibition of all Nations, snowing the share his Royal Highness Prince Albert had in it; its history and progress are thus minutely detailed, and its prospects are foreshadowed without exaggeration. We cordially recommend it as a pocket-companion necessary to all those who have not as yet mastered the chief facts connected with the erection of the Palace of Industry." JOHN BULL. "An able and complete history of the scheme, which we have all to accept as _un fait accompli_, and a useful guide to the transparent mazes of the Crystal Palace." WEEKLY NEWS. "Of the works already published, and professing to treat of this gigantic undertaking in its national, social, scientific, and artistic light, we have not met with one so completely pervaded by a spirit of universality as this book of Mr. Berlyn's. In matters of detail and relation his narrative is explicit and lucid; where he has touched on the history of an art or a manufacture he is correct in his data; and in tracing the Exhibition to its true source he has displayed a highly philosophical insight into the spirit of the age. Within the pages of his book will be found a faithful record of the most important meetings of the Royal Commissioners, as well as those convened by the corporations of cities, by societies, or by private individuals, for the furtherance of the great work in hand. To these is appended a verbatim report of the speeches delivered at these meetings by the distinguished men who were invited to preside over them; and the enlightened, liberal, and hopeful spirit which pervades their addresses forms a cheerful contrast to the ominous predictions of certain political and theological fanatics. After a full discussion of what may be termed the _business_ portion of the subject, Mr. Berlyn closes his excellent little book with a brief but eloquent and comprehensive consideration of the beneficial results which are likely to accrue from this great national undertaking, not only to ourselves but mankind in general. The entire absence of partiality or prejudice throughout the book, and the very interesting information contained in it for all matters directly or indirectly connected with the Exhibition, induce us to recommend the author to publish editions of it in the French and German languages. By this means he would be conferring a boon on our country's guests." LADY'S NEWSPAPER. "Mr. Peter Berlyn has produced a well arranged, clear, and concise hand book to this wonder of the world, in which he traces its origin, progress, and prospects, in a pleasing and interesting manner. This must have been a most difficult task, as the materials out of which he has formed his narrative are so widely scattered that it requires some one who perfectly and profoundly understands the subject (as we are convinced Mr. Berlyn does) to collect and arrange them in so satisfactory a manner. The ladies also will hail this work with pleasure, because, though containing every information on the subject, it is at the same time light, interesting, and infinitely superior to the dry and prosy style usually adopted in similar works. It is tastefully illustrated, has an elegant fancy binding, and forms a guide-book either for the library or the pocket." NOTES AND QUERIES. "A volume carefully compiled from authentic sources of information upon the several points set forth in its ample title page." GARDENER AND FARMERS' JOURNAL. "We do not go out of our province as horticultural journalists in noticing a work recently issued by Mr. Gilbert, of Paternoster-row. Our friends in the provinces will do well to study beforehand as many of the probable incidents of their trip as possible; and, though innumerable prints and tabular descriptions of the Exhibition Building have been issued, we have not had anything before like a connected history of the great project itself. The work before us is called 'A Popular Narrative of the Origin, History, Progress, and Prospects of the Great Exhibition of 1851; and we think the author, Mr. Berlyn, has treated his subject in perfect accordance with the title. More than this it is quite unnecessary to say as to the merits of the work; but we may just notice that the 'getting-up' has evidently been intrusted to careful hands. The binding is neat and tasteful, and, besides a ground-plan, a perspective view of the building is given." MINING JOURNAL. "This volume, which unostentatiously treats on the highly interesting subjects indicated in the title, is based on records of unimpeachable value. All speculation has been wisely avoided, and its pages present an unvarnished history of one of the most extraordinary undertakings of which the history of the world can boast; extraordinary in the fact of the people of this little island challenging the people of the universe to meet on its shores with specimens of their several productions of industry; and extraordinary in the magnitude, decidedly novel, and inconceivably rapid erection of the building for their reception. The history of every similar exhibition is traced back to its source; those of Manchester, Birmingham, London, and France are minutely recorded; the growing interest which followed every subsequent exposition statistically described, and every detail connected with the Royal Commission, the arrangements, the building, future rules, throughout a space of 200 pages, and finishing with a list of the local committees, conveys a vivid and correct picture of this vast national undertaking." CHURCH AND STATE GAZETTE. "A work that was wanted. It puts the public in full possession of every iota of intelligence in connexion with the Great Exhibition worth having, and has some very sensible remarks on the prospects of home exhibitors, especially at the forthcoming display. It is indispensable to all interested in the subject." GUARDIAN. "'A Popular Narrative of the Great Exhibition' was really needed, explaining its whole history from its first conception in the Prince Consort's brain, and Mr. Berlyn's book has amply supplied the need. It is a very smart volume, and the writer is duly impressed with the grandeur of his theme." LEIGH HUNT'S JOURNAL. "We can hardly speak too highly of this elegant and useful volume. Mr. Berlyn has done his part admirably, and the publisher has seconded him in the business department no less satisfactorily. All the floating and disconnected accounts that have hitherto been brought before the public from time to time are here collected and arranged in a very popular and lucid manner, while a mass of fresh information, entirely new and authentic, renders this book the only complete compendium of the Exhibition in all its bearings. The history of its origin is written with a graphic power and a narrative vigour very surprising on such a subject. You are carried along with as much interest as if reading a work of fiction. The contents fully justify the ample title, and in that tact lies more of eulogy than columns of praise could say." THE EVENING EXPRESS. "A neatly-printed volume on the History of the Exhibition; containing a careful digest of all the documents which the Commissioners have issued." THE TABLET. "Mr. Berlyn's book is an elegant volume by way of a guide to the Crystal Palace. It contains a well-condensed summary on everything connected with the subject of the Exhibition." MORNING ADVERTISER. "A gaily-boarded volume, nattily emblazoned on the outside with colours, with a tinted frontispiece of the Glass House from the same familiar aspect. It is dedicated to Prince Albert, and contains an elaborate introduction, in which the by-past expositions of Paris, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin, &c. are duly noticed. It is as a whole a neat mode of preserving all the 'printed gossip,' as well as weightier reports of Commissioners, relating to the preparations of the shell of the Exhibition." MARK-LANE EXPRESS. "A most interesting record of the history and opinions as to the probable results of the World's Fair, to be held in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park. The author has condensed into a most readable work every transaction which has given rise to this exhibition of the choice products of the world." THE BUILDER. "This book gives, in a concise and agreeable manner, a narrative of the progress of the scheme towards fruition, and an account of the building. The account is put together pleasantly, and makes a pretty book." CHRISTIAN TIMES. "A valuable and elegant introduction to the Great Industrial Exhibition. It contains much useful information, lucidly and carefully arranged." NORTHERN STAR. "Mr. Berlyn's book is all it professes to be. It contains an ample and popular narrative of the circumstances connected with the conception and ultimate realisation or the idea; and incidentally throws much light upon the progress and effects of similar exhibitions abroad. The author deserves the greatest credit for the lively, interesting, and accurate manner in which he has recorded all the leading events connected with the Exhibition. In doing this we are happy to perceive also that he has the manliness to do justice to those who first introduced the idea of such Exhibitions into this country, and who had to struggle with all the difficulties which usually dog the footsteps of innovators and inventors. The first exhibitions had to encounter prejudice and apathy, and the funds for carrying them out were comparatively small, and difficult to be procured; they had not the _prestige_ of princely and titled names, to give them acceptance with the vulgar herd, who eagerly copy the fashion set by the great. They were the production of a pure love of art, and science, and industry, and a desire to promote the improvement of public taste and skill. One of the first promoters 'of the plan of National Expositions, similar to those on the Continent,' was Mr. George Wallis, formerly master of the Manchester School of Design; of whose exertions Mr. Berlyn makes honourable mention. It is exceedingly interesting to have presented at one view the gradual expansion of the original idea, through a succession of varied phases, to its ultimate development as an Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations. It appears clear that Prince Albert is entitled to the merit of giving it this cosmopolitan character; other exhibitions have always been either local, provincial, or national. The idea of making that of 1851 universal is due to the Prince Consort alone. The circumstances under which Mr. Paxton conceived the idea of the structure which now attracts the admiration of every beholder, in Hyde Park, read more like a sketch of the imagination than a sober reality; and the almost incredible rapidity with which the plan has been translated into a great fact is one of the proudest testimonies that can be borne to the industrial resources, skill and enterprise of this country. Of all the marvels that will be exhibited at the World's Fair next May, none will be so marvellous as the structure in which they are collected; and we confidently commend Mr. Berlyn's book as an agreeable companion and guide to every visitor, as well as a record of the growth of the Exhibition, well deserving of preservation on account of its intrinsic merits and historical value." MANCHESTER EXAMINER AND TIMES. "Mr. Berlyn (whom many of our readers will remember as an active and earnest promoter of the interests of our Athenæum, in his character of honorary secretary to that institution), having held an official situation in connexion with the Royal Commission for carrying out the business detail of the intended Exhibition, finds means to present us with an extremely able and instructive volume. His narrative is cleverly written, and affords ample information of the origin and progress of a movement which has already acquired a world-wide fame. The gradual advance of public opinion and feeling in reference to the study of art, and to the more general cultivation of a love for the ideal and the beautiful among the people, are care fully traced, and we have every reason to believe that credit is justly given to the humble but earnest workers in the cause." LEEDS MERCURY. "A popular narrative of the origin, history, progress, and prospects of the Great Exhibition, with a guide to the future rules and arrangements, by Peter Berlyn, has just been published by Gilbert, of Paternoster-row. It is a very able and useful volume, beautifully got up, and at a cheap rate." LEEDS TIMES. "Mr. Berlyn's book supplies a _desideratum_. It is the first attempt, so far as we know, to give a consecutive narrative of the circumstances which have given birth to the great design, whose realisation is to illustrate the history of the present year. He has done his work well. The narrative is entirely derived from authentic and official sources, to which Mr. Berlyn, from his connexion with the undertaking, had peculiar opportunities of access. The author regards the Exhibition, not as a sudden individual thought, but as the natural result of certain industrial ideas and tendencies which have been gradually developing themselves during several years; and this view leads him to trace the history of various prior exhibitions on a minor scale in this country, such as the polytechnic exhibitions in different towns, and the exhibitions of art and manufactures which have taken place, many years, in Manchester, Birmingham, and the metropolis. The proceedings more immediately connected with the great World's Exhibition now in preparation are then related from the commencement, and in a manner at once concise and complete. Finally, we have a full account of the rules and regulations determined on for the conduct of this remarkable undertaking. The volume contains several excellent illustrations, is tastefully bound, and in a portable form." LIVERPOOL COURIER. "This is an exceedingly interesting and useful book. It has been got up as a hand-book for the visitors to the Great Exhibition, but its object is more to give a condensed account of the history of the event than to serve as a guide within the building. The writer, who treats his subject most clearly and ably, enters into a brief narrative of all that has been hitherto done, in this and other countries, to foster national taste in connexion with these public displays. In our own countries he goes on, at length, into an investigation of what may be termed the initiatory exhibition lately held at Birmingham, and which, in its results, far exceeded the expectations of its founders. He also gives a concise history of the proceedings relative to the 'Palace of Glass,' from the time that its erection was a dreamy idea until it rose in its gigantic transparency to astonish the world." LIVERPOOL ALBION. "This is a book for the times and to the purpose. Its title-page tells with what object it has been written, and is well borne out by its contents. When we open it we find a concise and faithful account of the causes and progress of the world's gathering which is just upon us. In preparing his volume the author has taken care to avoid all 'culling of simples,' and to give only such information as may be depended upon, and which possesses more than ephemeral interest. It abounds also, in practical suggestions and philosophical observations. We will only say further that the publisher, although he does not puff the work by talking of giving it away, certainly comes as near as possible to that point in the price which he has fixed upon it. We can safely recommend it." BIRMINGHAM JOURNAL. "A cleverly-written and carefully-condensed little volume, containing all that has been done, and much that should be known, respecting the great event of the year. The author culls with great judgment from the addresses delivered at various meetings held throughout the country; the regulations issued by the Executive Committee are also introduced. Altogether, a more complete record, within the same amount of space, it would be impossible to find; it confers great credit upon the writer, who in addition is evidently an enthusiast in the work about which he writes so well." LEICESTERSHIRE MERCURY. "This volume should be in the hands of all who take an interest in the great event of this _annus mirabilis_, 1851. What it promises in the title-page it performs in those which follow. It contains an accurate and deeply interesting record of the causes and progress of the preparation for that gathering of the nations of the earth which we are about to witness, and chronicles all the official information on the subject which is worth preserving. The practical suggestions and observations to be found in it are greatly to the credit of the writer. We must also give our praise to the publisher, Mr. Gilbert, for the manner in which he has brought it out, and the low price at which he offers it to the buyer." LIVERPOOL TIMES. "Of course we are already deluged with hand-books, guide-books, &c., to the Exhibition. Such little works, properly compiled, will not only be interesting, but absolutely serviceable, to the country visitor. We have had oceans sent to us, varying in price as in truthfulness and English grammar. The best we have seen is a 'Popular Narrative of the Exhibition,' by Peter Berlyn, published by Gilbert, of Paternoster-row; a book distinguished not only by correctness and labour, but also by very considerable literary merit." LINCOLNSHIRE TIMES. "What the flower-garden is to the bees, attracting them to gather honey from its sweets, the Grand Exhibition has been to many a candidate anxious to take his place in the ranks of authorship. The book before us is one of the proofs of its stimulating powers. It fully and ably accomplishes all which the title-page leads us to expect, setting forth the causes and progress of that wondrous festival of industry at which the world is to meet in Britannia's Crystal Palace. The information which it contains may be relied upon as derived from the best sources; the practical suggestions are valuable; and the observations are penned in a highly philosophical spirit. We can safely recommend the work to our readers, and we are quite certain that everybody who buys it will be satisfied that his money has been well laid out. We speak not from our own authority only, but have our verdict backed by the opinion of persons competent to pronounce upon the merits of the volume before us." INVERNESS COURIER. "This little volume has a merit which belongs to but few books published in the present age. It is wanted. There has no doubt been a great deal written on the subject of which it treats, as well as a great deal spoken; but till now we have had only scattered and almost inaccessible information on the one hand, or mere catchpenny pamphlets on the other. Mr. Berlyn's excellence is, that he is honest; that his work fulfils the promise of its title-page. Officially connected from its outset with the great scheme which he describes, he has enjoyed peculiar facilities for this task, has known where to look for materials, and been able to judge of their relative usefulness and importance. Of these opportunities he has diligently availed himself, and the result is to be seen in the elegant book before us. Simple and popular in style, it is comprehensive and instructive in its contents; we therefore recommend it." * * * * * * _Beautifully printed in 8vo, price only 7s. 6d., or postage free, 8s. 6d., Illustrated by Eighty very splendid Pictures, engraved by George Measom,_ DEDICATED TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT, GILBERT'S DESCRIPTION OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE, Its Architectural History and Constructive Marvels. BY PETER BERLYN & CHARLES FOWLER, JUN., ESQRS. The Engravings will depict the various peculiarities and novelties of this wonderful Building as well as the Machinery, &c., used in its construction. The combined efforts of the Proprietor, as well as the Authors and Artists, are to produce a work worthy to be purchased and preserved by every visitor to the Great Exhibition. ---- GILBERT'S VISITOR'S ILLUSTRATED MAP OF LONDON, DRAWN ON A NEW PRINCIPLE, HAVING IN VIEW THE DEPICTING OF THE PRINCIPAL ROADS AND STREETS OF THE METROPOLIS, _With Illustrations of its most Important Buildings and Sights,_ Engraved on their exact Localities. This novel Map will be found an interesting, intellectual, and practical guide to all Visitors who may wish to proceed readily to the more Important Sights and Attractions of London. The price, in sheet, coloured, with Letter-press Keys and References, is 1s. 6d.; or in Case for the pocket, 2s.; postage free, 3s. ---- GILBERT'S GUIDE TO THE STREETS OF LONDON, AS A COMPANION TO THE "VISITOR'S ILLUSTRATED MAP." WITH FIVE THOUSAND REFERENCES; Frontispiece and Tables of Cab Fares; the Rules and Laws relative to Metropolitan Conveyances; and Explanations in four Languages--to enable the Visitor to find his own way throughout the length and breadth of the Metropolis.--Price 6d; or postage free, 1s. * * * * * * _Price 1s. 6d., or 2s. bound; postage free, 6d. extra,_ GILBERT'S GUIDE TO LONDON, WITH MAP, &C. This original work, which has long been in full preparation for publication, is especially intended as a useful and indispensable pocket companion to every visitor to the Metropolis during the Great Exhibition of 1851. *** Separate Editions of the book issued in the French and German Languages, price 6d. each extra. ---- "Contains much useful information for residents as well as visitors. It has also a good Map, and is very moderate in price."--_English Churchman._ "A very useful companion throughout the streets and sights of London."--_Lady's News._ "The distinguishing excellences of this guide are, that it is cheap, and that it is written especially for the benefit of the visitors to London during the Great Exhibition."--_Standard of Freedom._ "A publication prompted by the Great Exhibition: it is a plain and business-like affair, giving a good deal of information upon various subjects connected with the comfort of visitors, as well as directions for sight-seeing."--_Spectator._ "This hand-book contains the most complete information connected with the localities, customs, public buildings, amusements, and resources of the capital city of this kingdom; and for travellers or foreigners we say it is an indispensable work, if they desire to possess an accurate knowledge of London during their visit to the Great Exhibition."--_Mark-lane Express._ "Unquestionably the most useful little work of its sort we have met with. It abounds with accurate, ample, and valuable information respecting London and its suburbs. We know of no more interesting or cheaper publication."--_Catholic Standard._ ---- _Price, on a large sheet, only 6d.; in case, 1s. 6d.; or on roller, varnished, 3s. 6d.,_ GILBERT'S KEY TO LONDON, ON ONE LARGE SHEET; Containing particulars of its Palaces, Public Buildings, Religious Edifices, Hospitals, Inns of Court, Parks, Gardens, Bridges, Museums, Literary Institutions, Theatres, Public Amusements, Exhibitions, Cab Fares, Railway Stations, Ambassadors, Bankers, Hotels, Docks, Arcades, Private Galleries, Curiosities, Churches and Chapels, Cab, Omnibus, and Coach Rules and Laws, Omnibus Routes, Environs, Post-offices, Steamers, Foreign Money Tables, &c. ---- _Price, coloured and mounted in cloth case for the pocket, only 1s.; or paper case, 6d.; in sheet, 4d._ GILBERT'S MAP OF LONDON, BEAUTIFULLY ENGRAVED ON STEEL, WITH A KEY TO THE STREETS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS. * * * * * * THE GREAT EXHIBITION IN 1851. ---- _Just Published, size of the Engraving 18 inches by 10, printed on paper, size 21 inches by 14½,_ GILBERT'S NEW PICTORIAL VIEW OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE, FOR THE GREAT INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION, 1851. With several Hundred Scenic and Characteristic Figures, beautifully and accurately Drawn from the Official Documents, BY JOSEPH PAXTON, ESQ., F.L.S. _With Statistical Details in English, French, and German._ ---- The exciting interest which the Exhibition creates throughout the world, has prompted the production of this carefully-executed, large, and beautiful Illustration of the Exhibition Building. It is got up in first-rate style, printed on the best paper, and published at the low price of SIXPENCE; or coloured, ONE SHILLING. The special object of its combined beauty and cheapness is not only to command sale in the United Kingdom, but to induce our Merchants, Manufacturers, and all interested in this glorious Institution to send this Illustration of the Building to every part of the world. It may also be had in a neat gilt frame and glazed, price only 5s.; or stretched on a frame and varnished, price 3s. Either of these two can also be had packed in a deal box for transit by railway, or other conveyance, at 1s. extra; or the 6d. and 1s. 6d. editions packed on roller, for transit by post free, at 8d. each extra. ---- GILBERT'S EXHIBITION LETTER-PAPER, 4to post size, of superior quality, with a beautiful Illustration of the Building printed in tints. Price 2s. per quire, or 34s. per ream. GILBERT'S EXHIBITION NOTE-PAPER, 8vo post, of superior quality, with a beautiful Illustration of the Building. Price 1s. 6d. per quire, or 21s. per ream. GILBERT'S EXHIBITION CARD, With a View of the Building. Price One Penny. Size, 4½ inches by 3. GILBERT'S LARGE EXHIBITION CARD, With a View of the Building. Price Twopence. Size, 7 inches by 4½. * * * * * * _Just Published, in Thirty-Six Sheets, of different Subjects, at the extremely low price affixed,_ JERRARD'S COLOURED PICTURES OF GROUPS AND BOUQUETS OF FLOWERS, FRUITS, BIRDS, LANDSCAPES, &c. &c. ---- These beautiful Pictures are on folio-sized drawing-paper, and produced in the first-rate style, being most beautiful and successful imitations of Original Drawings. They are admirably adapted for framing; would also form a tasteful ornament to Ladies' Portfolios, or as patterns for Drawing in colours. ---- Sheet 1, price only 2s.--Fruit: Peaches, Purple Grapes, Green Grapes. Flowers: Moss Rose, Campanula (Canterbury-bell), Wallflower, Convolvulus. Sheet 2, price 1s. 6d.--Poppy, Ranunculus, Pæonia, Hollyhock, Convolvulus, Anagallis, Rosebud. Sheet 3, price 1s. 6d.--White Rose, Red Rose, Anemone, Single Dahlia, Cineraria, Nastertium, Auricula, Veronica. Sheet 4, price 1s. 6d.--Passion Flower, Rose, Tulip, Geranium, Pinks, Convolvulus. Sheet 5, price 1s. 6d.--Anemone, Petunia, Mountain Aster, Heartsease, Viola Tricolor, Anagallis. Sheet 6, price 1s. 6d.--White Lilies, Tiger Lily, Tulip, White Fuschia. Sheet 7, price 2s.--Fruit: Peach, Apple, Pineapple, Purple Grapes, Green Grapes, Egg Plum, Red Currants, White Currants. Flowers: Rose, Convolvulus. Sheet 8, price 2s.--Fruit: Peach, Apple, Pear, Plums, Red Grapes, Green Grapes. Flowers: Lilium Lancifolium, Picotee, Fuschia, Scarlet Geranium, Marigold Sonicera. Sheet 9, price 1s. 6d.--Ipomæa Horsfallii, Ipomæa Rubro-cærulea. Sheet 10, price 1s. 6d.--Hibiscus Splendens. Sheet 11, price 1s. 6d.--Ipomæa. Sheet 12, price 1s. 6d.--Yellow Hibiscus. Sheet 13, price 2s.--Fruit: Peaches, Plums, Red Grapes, White Currants. Flowers: Convolvulus Major, White Rose, Heartsease, Fumaria Anagallis. Sheet 14, price 1s. 6d.--Noisette Rose. Sheet 15, price 1s. 6d.--Orange Lily, Geranium, White Pink, Mule Pink, Petunia, China Aster, Yellow Mallow, Anagallis, Malvi, Primula, Mouse-ear, Tropæolum. Sheet 16, price 1s. 6d.--Anemones, Tulip, Jonquil, Aster, Marigold, Semi-double Rose, Yellow Rose, Convolvulus Minor, Auricula, Nastertium, White Rose. Sheet 17, price 2s.--Fruit: Melon, Pomegranate. Flowers: Tulip, Honeysuckle, Lily of the Valley. Sheet 18, price 1s. 6d.--Pinks, Carnations. Sheet 19, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Bullfinches, Nest, Eggs, and Flowers. Sheet 20, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Greenfinches, Nest, Eggs, and Flowers. Sheet 21, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Goldfinches, Nest, Eggs, and Flowers. Sheet 22, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Titmouse on the Stump of a Tree. Sheet 23, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Redstarts, with Nest, Eggs, and Flowers. Sheet 24, price 1s. 6d.--A pair of Chaffinches, with Nest, Eggs, and Flowers. Sheet 25, price 1s. 6d.--A View of the Castle of Chillon, Lake of Geneva. Sheet 26, price 1s. 6d.--A View of Tintern Abbey. Sheet 27, price 1s. 6d.--View of Caerphilli Castle and Vale. Sheet 28, price 1s. 6d.--View of Snowdon from the Valley of Dolydellan. Sheet 29, price 1s. 6d.--View of Llangollen, Castle Dinas-Bran. Sheet 30, price 1s. 6d.--View of Fountain, St. Mary-le-Wigford, Lincoln. ---- It must be distinctly observed that the whole of the above are in full colours, and most successful imitations of original drawings, the price of each sheet being also fixed at extremely low prices. A variety of other sheets are in active preparation. * * * * * * STEREOTYPED EDITION. _The 53rd Thousand, price only 1s. sewed, or 1s. 6d. bound (postage free, 4d. extra)_, With a very useful steel-plate Genealogical Chart of the Sovereigns of England, OUTLINES OF ENGLISH HISTORY, WITH INTERESTING Remarks on Manners, Customs, Arts, Dresses, &c. BY HENRY INCE, M.A. ---- *** In consequence of the rapidly extended sale and approval of this Work, every page of the present Edition has been carefully enlarged and much improved. By a judicious enlargement of the width and length of the page, one-third more letter-press is introduced without any increase of price. ---- "In the system of Education sufficient regard is not always paid to impressing on the pupil's mind the leading points in a branch of study. His memory is confused with a too great variety of details. This manual of Mr. Ince's is well calculated to counteract this defective method, by affording a well-digested outline, which should be carefully committed to memory, and afterwards filled up by means of oral instruction or reference to larger works. Lively chapters of historical memoranda, and brief sketches of manners and customs, are appropriately introduced. We can cordially recommend this well-digested manual."--_Sharpe's Magazine._ "A neat and accurate compendium, and written with perspicuity. The events of each reign are arranged under different heads, so as to give at a glance a comprehensive view of the whole."--_Athenæum._ "A new edition, with improvements. It is a little 'Rapin' in its way, a history condensed into a nutshell; and we feel assured will, with its companion works, form the future text-books of the young of both sexes. Works intended for the mental culture of the young are sure to meet our approval when properly deserving it; and in the present instance we feel inclined to extend the usual limit of our remarks in favour of the lucid and well-arranged books which Mr. Ince has issued for the rising generation. We could not forbear a smile, on glancing over their contents, at the recollection of the sundry fat quartos and huge folios through which in boyhood we were obliged to wade for the acquirement of a less amount of information than is here presented within the space of one hundred pages."--_The Mirror._ "Well-digested and useful outlines of our History, and deserves to be a standard educational work."--_Eclectic Review._ "Superior to anything of the kind; here is a clear and comprehensive outline of the whole History of England. We cordially recommend it."--_Wesley Banner._ "The leading points are clearly traced, and adapted for easy transmission to the mind."--_Mark-lane Express._ "A valuable addition to those books specially designed for education."--_Bell's Messenger._ "These 'Outlines' are particularly well done."--_Bankers Magazine._ "A good compendium; it contains the essence of very many volumes, serving not only as helps for the education of youth, but as refreshers to the memory to those who are old."--_Sunday School Magazine._ "This book is not undeserving of the popularity it has obtained: it is full of information, and contains the substance of more knowledge of the social progress, manners, and customs of our ancestors than many works of far larger pretensions."--_The third review of the Athenæum._ "A great deal of information in a small compass, and the author has availed himself of the latest authorities. We prefer the form of Outlines to Catechisms. It contributes to the formation of more logical views, both by the teacher and scholar. Catechisms are the school-books of parrots."--_Spectator._ "Both the plan and style are perspicuous; it is admirably adapted for what it is intended."--_The Times._ "Contains a vast amount of interesting and useful knowledge, and admirably adapted as helps to parents and teachers of youth."--_Tait's Magazine._ "A well-digested little book."--_Literary Gazette._ "A very useful book for the instruction of youth, being a complete _resumé_ of the whole History of England."--_Metropolitan._ "Well adapted for the education of the young."--_New Monthly Magazine._ "The brief statements of the principal events of each Sovereign's reign are neat and succinct."--_The Economist._ "An improved edition of Mr. Ince's very useful book."--_The Rambler._ "Ince's 'Outlines' is a very excellent book to put into the learner's hands: it is clear and well-arranged."--_Author's Institute Circular._ ---- _In 18mo, price 1s., 1s. 6d. bound (postage free, 4d. extra)_, THE SIXTH EDITION OF OUTLINES OF FRENCH HISTORY, WITH NOTICES OF THE MANNERS, CUSTOMS, ARTS, ETC., OF THE DIFFERENT PERIODS. BY HENRY INCE, M.A. "It affords a very pleasing view of the whole History of France. The author being gifted with a philosophical mind and a classical taste, the subjects, though treated in a detached, are far from being treated in a dry and unentertaining manner."--_The Times._ "It is embellished with some capital engravings, and abounds in the narration of those romantic events which form the groundwork of so many delightful works."--_The Mirror._ "Mr. Ince is not of those men who speak much without saying anything; he says much in a few words."--_French Paper._ "A very useful educational work."--_Literary Gazette._ * * * * * * _Price 1s. sewed, or 1s. 4d. bound (postage free, 4d. extra), the Eleventh Thousand of_ OUTLINES OF GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. 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[5] It is perhaps necessary to mention here, that the leakage of the roof which was at first much complained of was owing to incomplete construction, and not to any defect in the principle, or in the manner in which it has been carried out. [6] About three hundred planks were passed through the machine in a working-day of ten hours, allowing the necessary stoppages for sharpening the cutters; and if only three widths of sash-bar were produced out of each blank, the quantity finished per diem would amount to about two miles and three quarters. This machinery, as well as that for grooving and moulding the ridges, was worked at the Phoenix Saw-mills, Cumberland-basin, Regent's Park, belonging to Mr. Birch. [7] A This piece of machinery is only novel in its application, as it is similar to that used by brush-makers for drilling a number of small holes in close and regular arrangement. 
47689	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES Spanish Wrought-Iron Screens XII. Century Capitals from the Benedictine Monastery, Monreale MARCH, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XIX SCREEN, ROYAL CHAPEL, GRANADA CATHEDRAL] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. MARCH No. 3. SPANISH WROUGHT-IRON SCREENS. From earliest times the numerous iron mines which exist in Spain, especially in the Cantabrian provinces, have been worked, and their presence has developed in that country excellent objects of art in metal at all times; but owing to the perishable character of iron, the slight intrinsic value of the material, and the little care taken of such fabrics, examples of very early specimens, with the exception of a few interesting ones which have reached us from the Spanish Arabs, have disappeared. The most interesting examples of Moorish manufacture which have survived are some iron keys of most delicate tracery. Their perfect state of preservation shows that they were used only as symbols of cities or fortresses, and, on given occasions, offered to kings or great people, and even in the present day in Spain this ceremony is kept up, and a key signifying the freedom of the palace, is offered to the foreign princes who stay at the royal residence in Madrid. In a similar manner, as far back as the middle ages, keys have been presented to Spanish sovereigns on occasions of their visits to such towns as Toledo and Seville; and a ceremony of swearing them to uphold the accorded privilege is gone through with,--a reminiscence probably of what occurred when these towns were conquered from the Moors. One of these keys at Valencia, belonging to Count de Trignona, measures nine and-a-half inches long, and was originally gilt. Its handle is closed and covered with delicate work in relief, and the wards are ornamented in the same manner with a combination of several words written in Cufic letters of difficult interpretation; but around the handle we can read distinctly in arabic the name of the artist: "It was made by Ahmel Ahsan." This key appears to date from the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, and two similar ones exist in the Town Hall of Valencia. Worthy objects of iron work must have been made by Christian artists of this period in Spain, for, although no specimens have come down to us, we have historical information which confirms such a conclusion. In the ordinances of Barcelona we find it recorded that the iron-smiths formed an extensive guild in the thirteenth century, and that in 1257 four of its members were officers of the Chief Municipal Council; and other similar records substantiate the fact that this guild increased in importance during the succeeding centuries. The ordinances of Seville of the fifteenth century, which were reformed in 1502, and those of Toledo, also revised in 1582, will give the student an idea of what was done by workers of metals at this period, the method of workmanship and other interesting details. The ordinances of Seville mention _rejas_ made in Biscay, and give a good idea of the styles adopted by the iron-masters there, and the ordinances of Granada repeat, almost exactly, the former descriptions. [Illustration: PLATE XX SCREEN, "ALTAR DE LA GAMBA," SEVILLE CATHEDRAL] The modern history of iron work in Spain begins, however, with the second half of the fifteenth century. From this period on, the art continued to progress, and in the sixteenth century Spain produced works of art in wrought iron which were unrivalled in Europe. The most beautiful and characteristic productions of the Spanish iron-smiths were the openwork screens or grilles, especially the _rejas_, or chancel screens, enclosing the chapels in the cathedrals; and these last deserve special attention, from the beauty of their forms, the quality of their workmanship and the intrinsic variety of their models. [Illustration: CHAPEL SCREEN SEVILLE CATHEDRAL] The interior arrangement of Spanish cathedrals differs somewhat from that of churches in other parts of Europe. In Spain, the choir proper, or _coro_, is transferred to the nave, of which it commonly occupies the western half, and a passage, usually protected by low iron or brass railings, leads from the eastern gate of the _coro_ to the screen in front of the high altar. This arrangement is necessary because, as the choir proper is deep, the people must be kept from pressing on the clergy as they pass to and fro, during the service, in the long passage from the altar to the _coro_. High metal screens or _rejas_ are also placed across the entrance to the choir or "capilla mayor," as its eastern part is called. Owing to this form of interior arrangement the cathedrals and churches of Spain lent themselves admirably to the construction of objects of all kinds in ornamental iron work; and from the earliest times when such records were kept, we meet with many names of iron-masters who were apparently attached to the different cathedrals in the same manner as were the painters and artists. One of the finest specimens of this artistic industry (and we place it first because it is a typical example) is the splendid _reja_ which divides the nave from the "Royal Chapel" in the Cathedral of Granada (Plate XIX). This Cathedral is, on the whole, the best Renaissance building in Spain, and in plan one of the finest churches in Europe; and the "Royal Chapel" is the most interesting feature of its interior. This Chapel was erected in the late Gothic style, in 1506-17, for the reception of the tombs of the "Catholic Kings," and was afterwards enlarged by Charles V., who found it "too small for so great glory." Besides the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella it contains those of the parents of Charles V. [Illustration: PLATE XXI CHAPEL SCREEN, SEVILLE CATHEDRAL] The _reja_ which guards it was completed about 1522, by the celebrated Bartolomé of Jaen, who also worked at Seville, and whom the records of the time describe as "sculptor and iron-master." Its important size enabled the artist to carry out a splendid scheme of ornamentation in the "plateresque" style, combined with reliefs, on a large scale, of figures of apostles and saints, terminating at the upper part with a wide ornamental band of conventional floral decoration in relief, crowned with a Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Saint John on either side. The ornamentation was originally gilded and the figures painted in oil colors. The balustrades and supports are forged with the hammer. The figures and circular piers are formed of large plates, _repoussé_ and carved in a most admirable manner, and an examination of them will give a good idea of the technical mastery over the material which the artists of this time had attained long before the various mechanical facilities of the present day existed. This _reja_ at Granada is entirely of iron, which most Spanish _rejas_ are not, and is the earliest specimen of anything like equal importance in Spain. It has been chosen as the first specimen to be here described, not only because of the early date of its construction, but because it excellently illustrates the salient merits of the best type of Spanish cathedral screen. The first of these merits is a general transparency,--a highly important quality in a wrought-iron screen so placed, for if such a screen be covered with sufficient ornament to arrest the eye on its surface when viewing the interior of the cathedral as a whole, it detracts from the general architectural effect, serving indeed, to block the nave as a wall where no wall was intended. In such a screen as the present one, however, the slight vertical piers almost disappear unless the sight be focussed upon them, while the ornamental portions seem apparently suspended in mid air and do not in any way injure the general architectural scheme or decrease the apparent space. The rectangularity of the design gives great repose; and the division into departments, which allows of the concentration of strength in skeleton lines, affords sufficient constructional stiffness without involving too much formality. The design is both beautiful and appropriate. At the summit the crucifixion, below the leading incidents of biblical history, and, in a central panel about twenty feet square, grouped in a decorative design, the full heraldic insignia of the monarchs who repose in the tombs which the screen guards. The lock bears a small inscription giving the name of the artist, "Maestro Bartolomé me fec." To consider in detail the multitude of similar rich and beautiful railings which happily survive in Spanish cathedrals and churches, would be impossible, even were it possible to illustrate them; but, for the most part, they have never been drawn or photographed, and a brief description of those illustrated in our plates must here suffice. The Cathedral of Seville is undoubtedly one of the largest, handsomest and richest Gothic churches in Christendom, and was once a veritable museum of works of art. An old saying groups the chief churches of Spain together as "_Toledo la rica, Salamanca la fuerte, Leon la bella, Oviedo la sacra, e Sevilla la grande_." It originally contained some very beautiful _rejas_, including two famous ones by Sancho Muñoz; but these with many other art treasures, were destroyed by the twice falling of the dome, first in 1511 and again in 1888, due to earthquake shocks. The three chapel screens shown in our illustrations (Plates XX., XXI., and page 41) remain, however, to show how rich in iron work this Cathedral originally must have been. The names of the artists of these screens are not certainly known. The "Altar de la Gamba," shown in Plate XX., derives its curious name, "The Altar of the Leg," from the finely painted leg of Adam in the picture which adorns the shrine, representing our first parents adoring the Virgin. The Cathedral of Barcelona, one of the noblest creations of Spanish Gothic, stands upon the highest point of the ancient city, on a site originally occupied by a Roman temple and later by a Moorish mosque. On the southwest the cathedral is adjoined by magnificent Gothic cloisters, finished in 1448. Along the northwest side of these cloisters is a row of chapels, placed back to back with the chapels of the southwest aisle of the church. The entrances to these chapels are closed by iron grilles of simple but dignified design. One of them is shown in our illustration (Plate XXII.). Although the cathedral of Avila was commenced in 1091 its general character is that of the end of the twelfth or early part of the thirteenth century, though the solemn and dignified interior is designed in a style of a later date. Besides the beautiful _reja_ here shown (Plate XXIII.), which divides the high altar from the church proper, it contains a fine iron pulpit (page 47.) [Illustration: PLATE XXII CLOISTER SCREEN, BARCELONA CATHEDRAL] Iron pulpits, so rare elsewhere, have been made in Spain with great success. The one here illustrated shows a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance detail, but the whole is of contemporary workmanship, and presents an interesting example of the transitional style. The primitive method of working through thin plates superimposed to form tracery is here adhered to, and the whole is applied to a wooden framework. The pulpit was originally gilt. It dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and shows the influence of the Flemish masters who at about that period set so many fashions in Burgos and its vicinity. The wrought-iron screen (shown on page 47), now preserved in the collection of the Louvre, belongs to the same time, and is of the same style of workmanship. [Illustration: SCREEN, ZAPORTA CHAPEL CHURCH OF LA SEO, SARAGOSSA] The interior of the cathedral of Burgos is, from its lofty spacious proportions, one of the finest in Spain, and is surrounded, unsymmetrically but not unpicturesquely, by fourteen chapels, all distinguished by some particular beauty of construction or ornamentation. The chief of these chapels, situated at the east end of the cathedral, is the gorgeous "Capilla del Condestable," built for Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, hereditary Constable of Castile, in 1487. This chapel contains superbly sculptured tombs of the Constable and his wife, and the lofty _reja_ (Plate XXVI.) which guards the entrance to it has been considered one of the finest specimens of its kind, owing to the perfection with which every detail is carried out. It is the master-piece of Cristoval de Andino, and was constructed in 1523. A contemporary writer describing it says: "Good workmen, and those who wish that their work may have authority and be blameless, must endeavor to be guided by ancient models, as was your fellow citizen Cristoval de Andino; and his works are thereby more elegant and excellent than any others which I have seen up to the present time. If you think otherwise, judge of his work by looking at the _reja_ which he is making for your lord, the Constable, which is undoubtedly superior to all those that have hitherto been made in Spain." The centre of the upper part of the _reja_ bears the signature of the artist, "Ab. Andino, A.D. MDXXIII." [Illustration: PLATE XXIII SCREEN, AVILA CATHEDRAL] The famous University of Salamanca was originally built in 1415, but in 1480 the upper part was entirely reconstructed in the most brilliant "plateresque" style, by the "Catholic Kings." The various offices of the University are grouped around a simple, cloister-like court; and on the west side of the second floor is the Library, which contains 80,000 volumes, and is said to have been founded by Alfonso the Learned in 1254. The entrance to this Library is closed by the beautiful wrought grille shown in Plate XXIV. The exact date and the authorship of the grille are unknown. The Church of San Juan de la Penitencia is a jumble of curious styles. Built by the Cardinal Ximenez in 1514, a semi-Moorish palace was partially incorporated with it, and it contains much interesting Moorish decoration. The ceiling of the nave and choir is Moorish, the portal and choir windows are Gothic, several of the altars are baroque, and the elaborate _reja_, here reproduced (Plate XXV.) is a fine specimen of "plateresque" iron-work. [Illustration: SPANISH WROUGHT-IRON SCREEN LOUVRE] The old Cathedral of Saragossa is called "La Seo," par excellence, to distinguish it from the other called "del Pilar," "seo" being the usual term for the principal church. It was erected in 1119-1520 on the site of the principal mosque of the Moors, and the general arrangement of the interior resembles that of a mosque. The sides are flanked with chapels; and the Chapel of Zaporta (Zaporta was a rich citizen of the city who died early in the sixteenth century) is shut off by an iron screen, of excellent workmanship in the less elaborate "plateresque" style, shown in the small engraving on page 45. [Illustration: WROUGHT-IRON PULPIT AVILA CATHEDRAL] After the sixteenth century smiths' work in Spain declined in artistic interest and importance. The abilities of the iron-workers were devoted to constructing objects on a smaller scale, such as door locks, clock ornaments and the like; the arts of inlaying iron-work with gold and silver sprung into prominence, and Spanish artists practically ceased to undertake the great carved and chiselled grilles which have formed the subject of this paper. S. F. N. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV SCREEN, ENTRANCE TO LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF SALAMANCA] XII. Century Capitals from the Benedictine Monastery, Monreale The Cathedral church of Santa Maria Nuova, with its adjoining Benedictine monastery and cloister, were erected at Monreale (pronounced Mur-ri-a-li by its Sicilian inhabitants) by William II. of Sicily in 1174-82. [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] This splendid work of Norman-Sicilian artists is Latin in its shape, Roman in its colonnade, Byzantine in its mosaics, Greek in its sculpture, Saracenic and Norman in its many mouldings, exhibiting a most curious combination of styles. The names of the architects are unknown (the näive Vasari attributes this to "their stupidity or contempt of fame"), but the evidence afforded by a careful examination of the mosaics, establishes the conclusion that King William intrusted the embellishment to Greek, that is to say, Byzantine, artists or to their Sicilian disciples. At any rate, the artists who embellished Monreale in the latter part of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries were in every way the equals in artistic abilities of the Italian masters who lived and worked a century later; and when we talk of the Renaissance we should not forget that long before its advent these Sicilian artists had here produced work that today challenges the wonder and admiration of critics. [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] "Other cathedrals," says Mr. Symonds, "may surpass that of Monreale in sublimity, bulk, strength or unity of plan. None can surpass it in the strange romance with which the memory of its many artificers invests it. None can exceed it in the richness and glory, the gorgeousness of a thousand decorative elements." [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] Of the original buildings of the Benedictine monastery which formed a part of the church, and were built at the same time, none but the cloister remains. This cloister is in its kind one of the most superb examples of twelfth century architecture to be found in Europe, and is one of the largest as well as one of the most beautiful in the world. The cloisters of St. John Lateran, St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls, Ste. Scholastica, at Subiaco, are all admirable, but they are inferior to that of Monreale, both in detail and in grandeur of total effect. [Illustration: PLATE XXV SCREEN, CHURCH OF SAN JUAN DE LA PENITENCIA, TOLEDO] [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] Imagine a vast central space, one hundred and sixty-nine feet square,--not a flat grass-plot scattered with decaying tombs, nor planted with the severe box-wood and funereal cypresses that give so gloomy an aspect to most cloisters, but a blooming garden, adorned with shrubs and flowering vines, laid out in parterres of exquisite verdure, where, in the shade of myrtle and citron trees, fountains play, their jets caught in marble basins, only to overflow and nourish the living green about them. This garden is walled in by four long corridors, sheltered by arcades of small pointed arches with something Oriental in their curves, supported by two hundred and sixteen coupled columns of white marble, with a group of four at each angle, all of them surmounted by carved capitals of different designs, the slender shafts ornamented with mosaics and incrusted with precious marbles, some patterned in lozenges, some curved with floral designs, some fluted after the antique manner, some wound with capricious spirals,--a file of shining columns of fairy-like aspect. And, looking at this perennial garden with its ever-running fountains, surrounded by so Oriental an arcade, one might fancy one's self transported to a monastic Alhambra, or the interior of an Arabian-Night's palace. [Illustration: CAPITAL FROM MONREALE] The capitals of the shafts that uphold the arcade (and from the slenderness of these shafts it is probable that they were inserted some time after the heavier arcade was originally built), are all different. A number of them are here illustrated. In their design the sharp acanthus foliage of the Greeks is commingled with the emblems of Christianity, such as the circle, the cross, the vine and the dove, with infinitely ingenious grotesques of birds and animals, and with human figures. The latter are represented in Byzantine costume, and Greek inscriptions everywhere appear. The workmanship of these capitals, the delicate detail of the carving, showing the constant employment of the circular drill, the almost entire concealment of the background, are tokens of the craftsmanship of the twelfth century Byzantine Greeks Contemporary personages, scenes from the old and new Testaments, real and fantastic animals, leaves, flowers, fruit,--all are represented with a wonderful liveliness of expression and with prodigious fecundity of imagination. They exhibit, as M. Dantier has said: "_Toute la foi, toute la poésie du temps sculptées sur la pierre._" The cloister at Monreale has been illustrated, and other examples of its capitals shown, in THE BROCHURE SERIES, Volume 1895, No. 3, and in Volume 1898, No. 1. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI SCREEN, CHAPEL OF THE CONSTABLE, BURGOS CATHEDRAL] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47879	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Petit Trianon: Versailles English Carved Fireplaces APRIL, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XXVII CHATEAU, PETIT TRIANON] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. APRIL No. 4. THE PETIT TRIANON: VERSAILLES. During the first years of his reign, Louis the XIV. of France resided, as his predecessors had, at St. Germain in summer; but for some reason--it is alleged that it was because the windows of the palace commanded a view of St. Denis, the royal mausoleum--he conceived a dislike to it, and resolved to build another summer palace for himself at some spot not far from Paris. Why he chose Versailles is incomprehensible. Whatever may have been the motive, however, he decided to erect upon this desolate, waterless and uninhabited site a vast palace to be surrounded by a park. The cost of accomplishing this project was fearful, not in money alone (although this was more than one thousand million francs), but in human life. In 1681 twenty-two thousand soldiers and six thousand horses were employed on the work, and so unhealthy was the site that the workmen died by thousands. Writing in 1767, Madame de Sévigné says: "The King is in haste that Versailles should be finished; but it would seem that God is unwilling. It is almost impossible to continue the work owing to the fearful mortality among the workmen. The corpses are fetched away by cartfuls during the night,--night being chosen that they who still live may not be terrified into revolt by the sight." But no difficulty, nor the pestilence, nor the ruin of the treasury was allowed to interfere with the King's pleasure. The palace rose; the stately gardens, peopled with statues, spread about it; and a royal city sprang up where before had been only a desolate forest; and, after 1682, Versailles became the permanent headquarters of the Court. In the immense park, some three-quarters of a mile northwest from the terraces of the palace, Louis XIV. built a little palace to gratify Madame de Maintenon, which, from the fact that it stood on the site of the parish of Trianon, which was demolished to make a site for it, and because its façade was ornamented with porcelain plaques of blue and white faience ware, was called the "Trianon de Porcelaine"; but in 1687 Louis, who had as Saint-Simon said, "a rage for building," demolished this frail structure and replaced it with another, designed by Mansart, which we now know as the "Grand Trianon." This building was the King's delight for a few years, but after 1700 he wearied of the plaything, and turned all his attention to his new château at Marly. [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII "GROTTO" AND "BELVEDERE," PETIT TRIANON] During the Regency the Trianon was almost abandoned; but when, under Louis XV., the Court returned to Versailles, the building became a favorite refuge for the King; and he later gave it to his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, for her own. She, being at her wits' end to devise some new scheme to distract the daily increasing melancholy of the King, hit upon the expedient of establishing in the grounds which were attached to the Grand Trianon, a real practical dairy and farm; and for that purpose imported from Holland a herd of fine cows, and collected a number of rare varieties of hens and pigeons, which Louis amused himself for some time in breeding. But in 1754 the royal caprice again changed, and Louis abolished the farm, and made the land into a botanical garden. Here he established conservatories for raising fruits out of their natural seasons, and collected a great number of exotic trees and shrubs of every variety and species. Taking great delight in this garden, which was some distance from the Grand Trianon, he conceived the notion of building in the midst of it a still smaller château, modelled upon the Grand Trianon as that itself had been a miniature of Versailles. This château, the Little Trianon, was erected in 1766 by the royal architect, Gabriel, and was given by the King to the mistress who had succeeded Madame du Pompadour in his favor, Madame Du Barry. It was while staying at the Petit Trianon that Louis was attacked by the small-pox, of which he died. [Illustration: "TEMPLE OF LOVE" PETIT TRIANON] The château of the Petit Trianon is an interesting building, architecturally, marking, as it does, the transition stage between the styles of Louis XV. and Louis XVI.--a return to purer classical traditions. The façade is ornamented by a portico with four detached Corinthian columns, and the whole is surmounted by a balustrade. The reception and billiard rooms occupied the first floor, while the second was occupied by the private apartments. While Marie Antoinette was still the Dauphine, she had often expressed a desire to have a château, apart from the palace, for her own, where, free from the intolerable restraints of Court etiquette, she might amuse herself as she chose; and shortly after his accession to the throne, Louis XVI. is said to have presented her with the Trianons with the words, "They have always belonged to the King's favorites, and should therefore now be yours." The Queen answered laughingly that she would gladly accept the Little Trianon, but only upon the condition that it should be unreservedly her own, and that even the King should come there only upon her express invitation. [Illustration: PLATE XXIX "QUEEN'S HOUSE" AND "BILLIARD HALL," PETIT TRIANON] Marie Antoinette's first wish, after becoming mistress of her new domain, was to establish there a garden after the English style. The rage for the English garden had just then seized French society, for it was believed to be a return to Nature--Nature which Rousseau just then had made it the fashion to adore, and the nobility were all for playing at rusticity, and full of sentimental admiration for the country. The King humored the whim, and gave orders that the gardens already existing at the Trianon should be remodelled, that the strip of land joining it should be added, and the whole surrounded with a wall, and the work pushed as rapidly as possible. The plans for the English garden were drawn by Comte de Caraman, an officer who had already arranged such a garden in connection with his own residence, and this garden the Queen had visited. In 1775 the new royal architect, Mique, seconded by the painter, Hubert Robert, the sculptor, Deschamps, and the landscape gardener, Antoine Richard, joined in working out the plans of the Comte de Caraman, and created an English garden after the Queen's fancy. Unhappily, however, in order to create this new garden it became necessary to destroy a large part of the botanical garden which had before existed; but many of the fine exotic trees were employed in working out the new design, and these trees still remain the finest ornaments of the park. The plan for the English garden was comprised as follows: In the more formal portions of the grounds near the château an artificial grotto and a "Belvedere," and, shadowed by overhanging trees, a little "Temple de l'Amour." Separated from these classical constructions by an artificial lake, bordered with rustic paths and intended to represent a bit of natural country, was erected a picturesque miniature hamlet of nine or ten rustic cottages in which the court ladies, under the lead of the Queen, might play at peasant life. The grotto was a work of some elaboration, and it was said that no less than seven relief models of it were made before the Queen expressed herself as satisfied with the design. It is an arrangement of artificial rocks covered with moss, through which flows the outlet stream of the little lake. It was at one time proposed, after the then fashion in English gardening, to build on the top of the grotto a picturesquely contrived ruin, but this project was abandoned. Near the grotto stands the Belvedere--a coquettish little octagonal pavilion set on a stone platform. Four windows and four doors are set alternately in its eight surfaces, and a balustrade surrounds the domed roof. The interior was ornamented in delicately frescoed stucco. The Temple of Love consists of twelve Corinthian columns supporting a cupola. The pavement is of white blue-veined marble. In the centre is a carved pedestal on which stands a statue of Cupid drawing his bow, modelled by Bouchardon. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE RESTORATION HOUSE, ROCHESTER] The most picturesque feature of the garden was, however, the village or hamlet, and it is here the life of the Trianon centered in the time of the Queen. The houses with which the hamlet was comprised were situated on the farther shore of a small artificial lake; and were divided into two groups separated by a running stream. The first group was made up of the "Queen's House" and its connected "Billiard Hall," and the "Mill": the second originally comprised five buildings;--a "Gardener's Lodge," a "Poultry House," a tower, called "Marlborough's Tower" with a "Dairy" attached to it, and, at some distance from these, a "Farm House" with its dependencies. We have preferred in the description to adhere to the names by which these buildings were originally called rather than to adopt the more fanciful nomenclature given to them later by an imaginative German, Dr. Meyer, who visited France in 1796 and who invented the story that the Queen, playing at rural life, had entrusted the King with the rôle of the farmer, while she became the farmer's wife and the Count d'Artois the huntsman, the Comte de Provence the miller, and the Cardinal de Rohan the curé of this tiny community. In accordance with this unfounded tale the Queen's house has been nicknamed the "Maison du Seigneur," the poultry house the "Presbytère" and so forth,--and these nicknames have clung to them ever since. [Illustration: PLATE XXX "QUEEN'S HOUSE," PETIT TRIANON] The simplicity of the buildings of the hamlet makes it unnecessary to describe them in detail. They were erected during the years 1783, 1784 and 1785 from designs by the architect Mique. The exteriors were covered with stucco to represent old brick, weather-worn stone and worm-eaten wood, and all of them, with the exception of the "Queen's House" which was partly covered with tiles, were roofed with thatch. The "Queen's House" and "Billiard Hall" were connected by a rustic gallery, painted olive-green. The former contained a dining-room and some private apartments. The "Billiard Hall," as its name implies, was mainly occupied by a billiard room over which were sleeping chambers. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE STANDISH HALL] The "Mill" was at one time furnished with a mill-wheel and actually and practically used to grind grain for the inhabitants of the tiny village. The "Gardener's House" has been demolished. The "Poultry-House" was at one time used for the care of fowls and pigeons of which the Queen had a large number. [Illustration: PLATE XXXI "DAIRY" AND "MARLBOROUGH'S TOWER," PETIT TRIANON] As we have said, an almost indispensable feature of the English garden of this time was an artificial ruin; but although many models were made for the erection of such a ruin at the Petit-Trianon, none was ever erected. As a substitute however, a round tower was built, and in honor of the original the "Chanson de Marlborough," with its simple and plaintive air, which had just then been revived in popular favor, was named "Marlborough's Tower." It is probable that the building was supposed to suggest that tower from which Marlborough's widow saw the page "_tout de noir habillé_" who came to tell her of her husband's death. The tower ascended by an exterior staircase, and at the top was a circular balcony from which a view of the whole domain was visible, and from which signals might be exchanged with the palace at Versailles. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE MONTACUTE HOUSE] The tower was connected by a passage with the "Dairy,"--an actual and practical creamery on a small scale, in which the Queen and her ladies played at making butter and cheese. The walls and floor were tiled with marble, and the tables on which the pans and utensils--all of decorated porcelain--were set out were also of marble. A running stream of water was conducted through the dairy to keep it cool. The "Farm" buildings comprised a group of constructions, in which the farmer lodged, and in which were stables for cows of which the Queen had a splendid Swiss herd. The completed gardens of the Little Trianon excited the most lively praise. The poet, Chevalier Bertin, dedicated a whole elegy to them; the Prince de Ligne wrote, "Here truly one may breathe air of happiness and liberty. One might believe one's self a hundred leagues from the Court." The village presented a real aspect of a rural hamlet. Indeed the Queen had under her eyes a living picture of the country, whence she could see the cows grazing, peasants laboring in the fields, the cultivation of gardens, the pruning of trees, the cows coming to drink at the lake, the washwomen washing their clothes at the stream which flowed from the mill, and the little mill itself, grinding grain for the inhabitants of this miniature village. It was at this Trianon that Marie Antoinette spent her happiest days. "The Queen," writes Madam Campan, "spent sometimes an entire month together at the Little Trianon, where she had established her pianoforte and tapestry frames." There were but few apartments in the château of the Little Trianon and although Madame Elizabeth usually accompanied the Queen here, the ladies of honor could not be accommodated, and unless by special invitation from the Queen it was the rule to come from Versailles only at the dinner hour. The King and the Princess came regularly to sup. A white muslin and a straw hat was the accustomed dress of the princesses, and the pleasure of running about the little village to see the cows milked and to fish in the lake, enchanted the Queen, and with every successive year she showed less inclination for the stiff etiquette of the Court. Here on the 5th of October, the news was brought her of the arrival at the Court of the crowd of women from Paris, and she was forced to go immediately to Versailles to meet them, never again to see her little domain. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII "THE MILL," PETIT TRIANON] English Carved Fireplaces In adopting the Renaissance style as a motive in interior decoration, England lagged behind the Continental nations. Such English mansions and furniture as remained after the Wars of the Roses were all of the Gothic type; and with no other models available, it was but natural that the first efforts of English workmen, after art began to revive, should be Gothic in feeling. Moreover, for a long time most of the carved wood-work and furniture in the new style with which England was supplied, was imported from Holland, and it is in some measure to Dutch example that the heavy character of the Elizabethan style in furniture and carving must be attributed. The style was, therefore, neither Classic nor Gothic, but a mixture of the two, tinged with Dutch and Flemish influence; and yet, mongrel as it was, it had an individuality of its own--a certain, royal, dignified and stately charm. The first distinguishing feature of Elizabethan ornamental carving is "strap-work," a term which exactly describes this elaborate tracery,--an imitation of straps and buckles, varied sufficiently to atone for the meagreness of the type, and relying for its decorative value upon its repetition and symmetry. There are many rooms in old English houses where this strap-decoration is carried out with so delicate and fanciful a use of the interlacing line as to be nearly as satisfying as the Saracenic work of the same type; but it is, after all, nothing but a play of line, and, while allowing the greatest scope to the individuality of the artist, requires genius to properly develop it. Too frequently it is but the merest medley of uninteresting sequences; and when the shield-work (and pierced shield-work at that) was superadded, it sometimes became mere confusion. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE STOKESAY CASTLE] Another distinguishing motive of shield-work,--the cartouch--is simply what its name implies, the representation of the armorial shield with its supports. The supports were pierced in every conceivable manner with circles, lozenges, crescents and all sorts of openings. "The Elizabethan, pure and simple," writes Mrs. Spofford, "has this strap-work sometimes finished off with slight scrolls--'foliages,' the Italians called them--and associated with some classical ideas not yet very exclusively or carefully managed; straps appearing well riveted to the middle of classic ornaments, and antique shapes rising, from the curious Renaissance pilaster, which was neither a vase nor a pilaster, in truth, broken as it is half way by the rising shape, like those of the Termae, with which the ancients made their boundaries sacred, smaller at the base than anywhere else, and bearing straps, arabesques and rosettes on its face." You will sometimes find an Elizabethan chimney-piece, the fluted and channelled columns, and the entablature of which are almost quite pure in style, and yet, almost invariably, somewhere about their length strap-ornament is sure to be introduced. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII "FARM HOUSE," PETIT TRIANON] With the accession of James I. to the English throne a new influx of foreign influence made fresh havoc with such Gothic as remained. The shield, which, through a preference for the strap had been but sparsely used in the preceding reign, came now to be the centre of all decoration, and was lavished everywhere in a wild whirl of flourishing curves, together with the previously common straps and buckles and general tackle of war. Its universal use gave a somewhat less interesting air to the decoration than when the purer interlacing of the strap, with but here and there the convolutions of the shield, supplied its place. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE WRAXHALL MANOR] But the Jacobean by no means contented itself with this simpler form of the Renaissance. In other characteristics it tended more and more to the Classic, though never arriving at purity. In construction, the horizontal of the antique mingled with the vertical of the mediæval, and a volute upheld the pointed arch; in ornament, the Tudor leaf with a Grecian frieze, with other equally inappropriate arrangements. It was not for a hundred years thereafter that pure Classic came to be understood in England. The scallop shell seems, at this period, to have caught the fancy of the designers as a motive, and they used it at every turn. These shell forms and the shell in decoration disputed with cartouch and straps, with rosette and scroll, with the fabulous griffins, and with grotesque mermaids, whose tails, turning into scrolls, are seen dividing to the right and left in the ornamentation of Jacobean furniture and chimney-pieces. [Illustration: MANTELPIECE WRAXHALL MANOR] But the influence of the Italian form of the Renaissance, through the filter of the Flemish, made itself very distinctly felt in the Jacobean style; not so much in the effort of the Italian toward æsthetic perfection, as in the play of fancy, stimulated by the sight of new forms, but unacquainted with the laws that should control them. Upon whatever architectural or decorative scheme it was based, however, the carving of this period was extremely rich and beautiful; and in consequence the time has come to be known as the "Cinquecento period" in English art, which corresponds in many of its characteristics to the style known in other countries by the same name. The illustrations show the development of these styles and the main characteristics which have been pointed out. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIV "POULTRY HOUSE," PETIT TRIANON] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47893	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES Chippendale Chairs MAY, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XXXV CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. MAY No. 5. CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS. It is only within recent times that movable chairs have become common and indispensable. Seats of some kind must have been used from the time when houses were first built, but it is not until the civilization of the last two or three centuries had transformed the old ways of living that we begin to find them in common use. Representations of seats are found in the sculptures and paintings of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and all through the middle ages--many of them elaborate and luxurious--but their use was confined to the noble and wealthy. In church furniture chairs are familiar throughout the middle ages, but they were usually fixed parts of the building. The seats of the common people were probably constructed of rude blocks, or of single planks joined together with little finish or skill. In England, even so late as the sixteenth century, chairs as we know them were of so rare occurrence as to be handed down from generation to generation, and of such importance as to be frequently mentioned in wills and deeds. Such chairs were of the rudest forms, ornamented, however, with embroideries and costly stuffs. In the middle of the seventeenth century it was customary even at royal banquets for all but the king and queen to be seated upon benches without cushions. In the reign of Charles I., however, with the encouragement of luxurious living, chairs became more common among the favored classes, and under the Commonwealth, with its levelling of class distinctions, their use was extended. But in the latter period the revulsion against unnecessary ornament and display simplified the models. With the Restoration there was a return to the opposite extreme. The growing taste for ease and luxury brought into requisition the richest fabrics obtainable, and we find stuffed seats and backs, with Turkish embroideries and heavily brocaded velvets. Chairs were elaborately carved and gilded. French furniture was imported and copied, and the influence of Indian art, through the recent acquisition of Bombay, can be easily traced. Of the simpler patterns, those made of turned spindles became common at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Forms were borrowed and adapted from many sources, from France, Spain and Holland. In the time of William and Mary, under Dutch influence, the seats and backs were broadened, colored inlay introduced, and the "cabriole" legs commonly employed, suggesting the forms later adopted in the Chippendale period. The strong point of English furniture was not its originality, but its catholicity. It was a mirror which reflected the outcome of other times and countries in a frame of its own. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVI CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] The period when Chippendale appeared on the scene seems to have been one very favorable to the success of his enterprise. The middle classes were already accumulating wealth and beginning to assume numerical and political importance. The troubles of civil war were over, the reigning dynasty had successfully overcome the last attempt at revolution, and the situation promised an age wherein the comforts of life might again be enjoyed in security. English trade with Holland, doubtless very largely fostered by the Dutch proclivities of William III., had helped to disseminate a love for pottery and lacquer work of the East; artificial works were multiplying, and the middle classes, above all, wanted for the furnishing of their rapidly rising, substantial dwellings something more sumptuous than the humble simplicity of the common Jacobean--something which would have a taste, at least, of the luxurious extravagances of the French reigning style. [Illustration] English furniture of the time of Chippendale had profited by the best of the past and of the present. It closely resembled the French work of Louis XIV., but it had reached such a stage of perfection, though still made up of heterogeneous elements, that it was for the first time valued above the productions of other countries, and was even taken abroad to be copied, while the books of designs published by the English cabinet-makers were translated into other languages. In the preface to Hepplewhite's book of designs, published in 1789, there is this statement, which is of interest as indicating the esteem in which English cabinet work was held abroad, viz.: "English taste and workmanship have of late years been much sought for by surrounding nations; and the mutability of all things, but more especially of fashions, has rendered the labours of our predecessors in this line of little use; nay, in this day can only tend to mislead those foreigners who seek a knowledge of English taste in the various articles of household furniture." [Illustration: PLATE XXXVII CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Oak had been the prevailing material up to this time, but now mahogany took its place. An interesting account of the introduction of mahogany for furniture is given by Frederick Litchfield in his "History of Furniture." He says, "Mahogany may be said to have come into general use subsequent to 1720, and its introduction is asserted to have been due to the tenacity of purpose of a Dr. Gibbon, whose wife wanted a candle-box, an article of common domestic use at the time. The doctor, who had laid by in the garden of his house in King Street, Covent Garden, some planks sent to him by his brother, a West Indian captain, asked the joiner to use a part of the wood for this purpose; it was found too tough and hard for the tools of the period, but the doctor was not to be thwarted, and insisted on harder-tempered tools being found, and the task completed. The result was the production of a candle-box which was admired by every one. He then ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion." [Illustration] The Jacobean and cognate styles, consisting fundamentally of "framing" based on rectangular forms and decorated with characteristic carving and turning, may be described as essentially suitable for oak, of which the open character of the grain forbids any extreme minuteness of detail. The particular qualities of the work of Chippendale and his successors demanded, on the other hand, the use of a very different material. Chippendale's delicate carving and his free use of curves, even in constructive members of his design, could have only been satisfactorily wrought out in a wood of fine, hard and close grain, and one which also possessed great lateral tenacity, such as mahogany. It is scarcely too much to say that, but for the introduction of this beautiful wood the specialty in the work of the cabinet-makers of the eighteenth century would have been impossible. Together with the refinement of design came a perfection of construction and workmanship which has rendered the furniture of this period practically indestructible. It is said that Chippendale never carved a fret without gluing together three thicknesses of wood with opposing grain, and his work is so joined with tenons and pegs that it stands as well today as when first put together. Sheraton devoted whole pages of his book to constructive directions for the most simple table. This excellence of construction, and the eminently practical and usable character of the best of the eighteenth century work have been potent factors in helping to preserve the many examples of it which we fortunately possess today. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] It will probably be a surprise to the reader who has had no occasion to inquire especially into the history of household furniture to know that a century and a half ago furniture makers, in England and elsewhere, resorted to much the same method of securing customers, by publishing illustrated catalogues, as do our own enterprising manufacturers. Among the earliest of these trade catalogues, as we now call them, was that of Thomas Chippendale, the first edition of which was published about 1750 (the exact date is in doubt), and two later editions are known. This catalogue has been reproduced in recent years and many of the plates have been frequently copied, until the Chippendale designs have become familiar, and the name applied broadly but loosely to all of the work of the period, including a great deal which by right has no connection whatever with Chippendale. The illustrations in this catalogue were elaborately engraved on copper, and it was entitled "The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director." It contained over two hundred engravings of useful and decorative designs, some of which, however, were probably never executed. It included designs "in the most fashionable taste" for a great variety of furniture "calculated to improve and refine the present taste, and suited to the fancy and circumstances of persons in all degrees of life." A great deal of the design is traceable to French influence, and may have been borrowed directly from similar books by French cabinet-makers. [Illustration] [Illustration: "CHINESE" PATTERN CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Of Chippendale himself little of a personal nature is known. Both he and his father were carvers, and it is no doubt true that to the repute established by his father as a basis, he added superior skill and taste, and the shrewdness of a tradesman. It is by no means certain, however, that in his time, or immediately after it, his reputation was greater than that of other cabinet-makers. His present celebrity depends more upon the survival and later reproduction of his book of designs than upon any contemporary fame. That he had refinement of taste is proved by his designs; but that he was anxious, above all, to secure patrons is hardly open to question. Mr. J. A. Heaton ("Furniture and Decoration in England during the Eighteenth Century") calls him a "vulgar hawker" ready to make anything that would fill his purse. His book, the text of which is written in the bombastic style of the period, begins with an explanation of the classical orders of architecture, holding them up as the only basis of true design in furniture; but he later refers to certain designs "in the Chinese manner"--which were made, quite certainly, in response to the fashion introduced in England by Sir William Chambers,--as the most appropriate and successful of his whole collection. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIX CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Although much of the furniture of the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century is wrongly attributed to Chippendale, and he is now popularly held responsible for many excellencies as well as many faults which do not belong to him, the evidence of his book goes to prove that his work at its best was superior to that of his contemporaries, and vastly superior to that which either preceded or followed it. [Illustration] [Illustration] Chippendale's ordinary furniture may be conveniently classified under three heads of very various artistic value. The first is the pure rococo. In this class of work we find, as Mr. Basil Champneys has happily described it, "intemperately flowing lines, wantonly twisting volutes, fantastic and unmeaning forms, suggestive about equally of organic and inorganic nature, bursting here into a gryphon's or sphynx's head, or there into a bunch of flowers; writhing into a mermaid, or culminating in a trophy; here the volutes are propped with an utterly dissipated and abandoned Gothic shaft, there is the ghost of a classic pediment; here a whole piece of ruin is bodily foisted in; a fortuitous interval is occupied by a sportsman or a flirtation, or by the conventional Chinaman, with an impossible mustache and inconceivable hat. The two sides of the design are seldom alike; symmetry is ostentatiously avoided; everything twists, twirls, writhes, changes, gets distorted like the images in a dyspeptic dream over a book of travels, from which the reader will be glad to awake." [Illustration: PLATE XL CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Fortunately for Chippendale's fame this class of work forms but an insignificant portion of the remains of his furniture now extant--a fact which is owing in some measure to its constructive weakness. Its merits are purely those of a skilful carver. [Illustration] A second important characteristic style was that which may be described as "fret work." Some pieces coming under this description, shelves and cabinets for china, amongst others, are constructed almost wholly of thin slabs of wood pierced with a great variety of small patterns, many of them very intricate. These are dainty pieces of furniture, well suited for the drawing-room and boudoir; and it speaks volumes for the care and finish in the workmanship that any of them have been handed down to us in a perfect state during so long an existence. What is sound of the reputation that Chippendale has earned, however, apart from the excellence of his workmanship, lies in the furniture coming under the last head of our division--in pieces wherein we find the decoration applied, a little lavishly it is true, with a certain admixture of straight lines and plain surfaces with which to contrast it. In these, members otherwise square and straight are enriched with delicate and shallow sunk carved work, sometimes based on geometrical patterns. The backs of chairs, although consisting of curved forms, have commonly a rectilinear disposition of the principal lines, and the curvatures of the constructional members are so subtle and restrained that the impression of strong wooden construction is not wholly destroyed. The supporting members, such as legs of tables and chairs, are often kept straight, and the carving, where applied, is kept so shallow that it does not interfere with the apparent or real capacity of the parts for the function for which they are designed. In appraising his merits it must always be remembered that Chippendale was pre-eminently a _carver_; and as a carver producing work applied to objects of utility he holds an unchallenged position. [Illustration: PLATE XLI CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Mr. K. Warren Clouston, describing the work of this period (_The Architectural Record_, Vol. VIII.), says: "Chippendale, above all things, was a chairmaker, and his chairs are full of variety, at first with the high back, cabriole leg and claw-and-ball foot of the so-called Dutch taste; then rising to lighter fancies, either with vase-shaped ornament, flowing ribbon bows, interlacing frets of Gothic tracery. But what matters it whether the rococo ornament then prevailing on the continent, the Chinese leanings of Sir William Chambers, or Strawberry Hill Gothic were adopted, when the different sources are blended in one harmonious whole? We give Chippendale the first place simply from his book, for the squat backs and ungainly chairs of Manwaring and the Society of Upholsterers, and the badly designed seats of Ince and Mayhew only serve to accentuate the work of the master hand." [Illustration] The chairs chosen for illustration in this number are of the simpler patterns. It will be seen that they have very little ornament, and that this is almost entirely confined to the backs, the legs being in most cases square and plain. In the backs the same lines occur as in those made in the time of William III., but instead of the frame of the back being covered with silk, tapestry or other material, Chippendale's are cut open with fanciful patterns. Those with cabriole legs usually have claw feet and a shell or leaf at the top. The chairs in Chippendale's book are much more elaborate than those here illustrated or than those he ordinarily produced. This is naturally accounted for by the desire to induce customers to purchase the more expensive pieces. The simple square leg without taper is one of the distinctive marks of Chippendale's time. Later in the century, in the work of Hepplewhite and others, the legs were made more tapering and the whole chair much lighter and more elaborately ornamented to correspond with the Renaissance forms then in vogue. The turned leg is rarely found, although much used later. The shaping and ornamentation is generally confined to the front legs. Mahogany, as has been stated, was the wood most used, and the ornamentation was confined as a rule to carving. Inlay and marquetry, brass and ormolu were employed on other articles of furniture, but the chairs rarely have such ornament. The rococo of Chippendale's earlier work, corresponding to the French of Louis XV. and XVI., was succeeded by a modification tending towards the severer Renaissance, influenced by the designs of the architects, Robert and James Adam, who gave their attention to the minutest details of interior decoration and furnishing, as well as the larger problems of architecture. Of Chippendale's contemporaries, Ince and Mayhew, who also published a book of designs, are now looked upon as most deserving to share his fame, although there are records of many others. Hepplewhite forms a connecting link between this period and that of the more severe lines of Sheraton and Shearer. Sheraton was a skilled and cultivated man and an excellent draughtsman. Among the subscribers to his book, "The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book," published in 1793, are the names and addresses of no less than four hundred and fifty cabinet-makers, chairmakers and carvers, not including musical instrument makers, upholsterers and other kindred trades. This gives some idea of the extent to which such books were then employed, and the number of makers whose work is not now distinguishable and whose names are lost in oblivion. Following the work of these men came the "Empire" style introduced in France after the French Revolution. Readers interested in the subject of the furniture of the Georgian period are referred to the recently published large collection of photographic plates, entitled "English Household Furniture" (see announcement in our advertising pages) from which our present illustrations have been reproduced. NOTE.--The illustrations in this issue are reduced from large photographic plates in the recently published work, entitled "ENGLISH HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, MAINLY DESIGNED BY CHIPPENDALE, SHERATON, ADAM AND OTHERS OF THE GEORGIAN PERIOD. 100 PLATES, ILLUSTRATING 348 EXAMPLES." Bates & Guild Company, publishers, Boston. See advertisement on another page. [Illustration: PLATE XLII CHIPPENDALE SETTEE AND CHAIR] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
42007	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). A carat character is used to denote superscription. A single character following the carat is superscripted (example: y^r). Multiple superscripted characters are enclosed by curly brackets (example: ma^{tie}). The right-hand pages of the original text used italicised page headings to indicate the current topic. These have been retained and placed at the start of the paragraph where the topic is addressed, using square brackets, e.g.: [_OLD FAMILY MOTTO._]. A lengthy paragraph may have multiple topics, and each is placed separately. There are several Greek citations, which are rendered here using a simplified transliteration, denoted with square brackets, as [Hoti anestê Basileus...]. There is also a Maltese Cross which is likewise rendered as [Maltese Cross]. For detailed information about any corrections made, consult the tenscriber's note at the end of this text. [Illustration: CHRISTOPHER WREN, D.D. DEAN OF WINDSOR.] [Illustration: MATTHEW WREN, D.D. LORD BISHOP OF ELY.] [Illustration: S^R. CHRIS. WREN K^T] SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN His Family and His Times. With Original Letters and a Discourse on Architecture Hitherto Unpublished. 1585-1723. by LUCY PHILLIMORE, Author of 'Bishop Wilberforce, a Sketch for Children' etc. 'The modest man built the city, and the modest man's skill was unknown.'--_The Tatler_, No. 52. With Two Engravings. [Illustration] London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1 Paternoster Square. 1881. (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved) TO CATHERINE PIGOTT, THE LAST DIRECT DESCENDANT OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, THESE MEMOIRS OF HER ANCESTORS ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. The materials necessary for writing a life of Sir Christopher Wren are so difficult of access as possibly to explain the unsatisfactory character of such biographies as do exist. Mr. James Elmes, who venerated Wren's genius, published in 1823, a Life which contained a careful if a dry account of Wren's architectural works and of some of his scientific discoveries. He also published a smaller work, 'Sir C. Wren and his Times,' intended perhaps to give a flavour of personal interest to the other volume. Neither book succeeds in doing this, and both have suffered from the circumstance that Mr. Elmes' failing eyesight did not permit him to correct the proofs of either work, and accordingly many serious errors as to names and dates stand unaltered in them. There is a sketch of Wren in the British Family Library, one published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and one in the 'Biographica Britannica,' but in them all it is with some of the works of the great architect that we become acquainted, not with himself. The chief authority to which any biographer of Wren must perforce turn is, the 'Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens: viz., of Matthew, Bishop of Ely; Christopher, Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter; but chiefly of Sir Christopher Wren.' This work, a folio, with portraits[1] of the three whose lives it records, was published in London in 1750, dedicated to Mr. Speaker Onslow. It was chiefly written by Christopher, the eldest surviving son of Sir Christopher Wren, finished and finally published by Stephen Wren, M.D., the second and favourite, son of the Mr. C. Wren above mentioned, 'with care of Joseph Ames,' a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Several copies were presented to the University of Oxford. The 'Parentalia,' of which but a small edition was published, is now scarce and little known. It is put together, not quite at hap-hazard, but with no real method or order: digression ensues upon digression until all clue to the original date or subject is lost. Nor is the very imperfect 'index of names' of any real assistance in the labyrinth thus created. Yet, with all its faults, the book is of great interest, and bears amidst all errors and omissions an unmistakably genuine stamp. 'Bishop Wren's Diary,' reference to which will be frequently found in the following pages, was kept by him in the blank leaves of 'Pond's Almanack,' after this fashion: 'August 30.--_Per vim hostilem eripior domo meâ._ 1642.' These entries cease with the death of his wife in 1646; even his own release from prison is not mentioned. The old heirloom copy of the 'Parentalia' intrusted to the writer of these pages contains a large additional number of prints and wood engravings by Virtue, Vandergucht, Loggan, and others, some printed accounts of the City Churches, and several letters, rough drafts of treatises, Garter records, and other MSS. in the handwritings of the Bishop, the Dean, Sir Christopher himself, and of some of their correspondents. Among the curious omissions of the 'Parentalia' are the maiden name of Bishop Wren's wife, the date of the death of Sir Christopher's mother, Mrs. Mary Wren, and the places and the dates at which either of Sir Christopher's two weddings took place. Some of these and other gaps I have, by the aid of 'Notes and Queries,' been able to supply. Wren's son and grandson are both alike silent on all political matters subsequent to the Restoration. The Popish Plot, the Trial of the Seven Bishops, King James's Abdication, the Landing of William of Orange are all passed by in perfect silence. The traditional politics of the Wrens were certainly those of the loyal Cavalier party, and they were in favour at the Court of the Stuarts. It is curious how all political colouring disappears from the record after the period of the Restoration. Yet Sir Christopher, his cousins, and the very Mr. Wren who writes the book were all in Parliament, and that in more or less critical times. Such accidental hints as there are point, I think, to Sir Christopher as adhering, though very quietly, to the politics of his ancestors; and assuredly neither he nor his descendants had any cause to love the house of Hanover! Wren was a steady Churchman, bred up in that school of Andrewes, of Laud, and of Matthew Wren, which, if it was anti-Puritan, was equally and emphatically anti-Roman. For this reason, if for no other, after the trial of the Seven Bishops had shaken the confidence of every Churchman in the country, Wren may have acquiesced in a settlement which appeared to promise protection to the Church without finally excluding the Stuart line. The 'Parentalia,' published five years after the last Jacobite rising in 1745, preserves, as has been said, a political silence which may be that of discretion or of disappointment. One word should be said as to Gresham College, where Wren held his first professorship. It was founded in 1579 by the will of Queen Elizabeth's great merchant Sir Thomas Gresham. The college was no other than his own house in Bishopsgate, forming a quadrangle round a large garden. The seven professors, each of whom gave a lecture a day in term time, had a salary of 50_l._ a year and were lodged in the house. Gresham College escaped the Fire, and gave lodgings at that time to the Lord Mayor and the aldermen, who had been less fortunate. In 1768 it was pulled down by Act of Parliament, to give a site to the new Excise Office, and the original collegiate scheme was destroyed, though the lectures are still given in a lecture hall. Little is known of Wren in his Masonic capacity. He is said to have been a member and a master of the 'Old Lodge of S. Paul,' now known as the 'Lodge of Antiquity.' All the records of the Lodge belonging to that time have unfortunately been lost, so that they cannot be consulted with reference to this matter. The question has been raised whether Wren was a Freemason or not. On this point the 'Parentalia' makes no explicit statement, though it appears to imply Wren's connection with the Order. The Duke of Sussex caused a plate to be engraved in 1827 and affixed to the mallet which Sir Christopher was said to have presented to the Lodge, with this inscription:--'A. L. 5831. A.D. 1827. To commemorate that this, being the same mallet with which His Majesty King Charles II. levelled the foundation stone of S. Paul's Cathedral, A. L. 5677, A.D. 1673. Was presented to the Old Lodge of S. Paul, now the Lodge of Antiquity, acting by immemorial constitution, by Brother Sir Christopher Wren, R.W.D.G.M., Worshipful Master of this Lodge and Architect of that Edifice.' The statement respecting King Charles's presence is probably an erroneous one. The Lodge possesses also three gilt wooden candlesticks in the form of columns, inscribed 'Ex dono Chr. Wren Eq. A. L. 5680.' Where quotations have been made directly from the Wren MS., from the 'Parentalia,' or from Evelyn's Diary, the spelling and stopping of the originals have been faithfully reproduced. For the rest, the writer can only hope that these pages may serve as a contribution towards that full and worthy biography of the great architect which may yet, she trusts, be written before London is finally robbed of the Churches with which Wren's genius endowed her. _August 1, 1881._ FOOTNOTES: [1] From which the three vignettes in this volume are taken. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. 1585-1636. PAGE Ancestry of the Wrens--Matthew Wren--Travels to Spain with the Prince of Wales--Interview at Winchester House--Bishop Andrewes' Prophecy--Wren made Master of Peterhouse--Bishop of Hereford--Consecration of Abbey Dore--Office of Reconciliation--Foreign Congregations and the Norwich Weavers--Result of 'a Lecturer's' Departure. 3 CHAPTER II. 1636-1640. Dr. C. Wren--Birth of his Son Christopher--East Knoyle--Order of the Garter--How a Murderer was Detected--Christopher at Westminster--A Latin Letter--Diocese of Ely--Impeachment of Lord Strafford--Of Archbishop Laud--Articles against Bishop Wren--Resigns the Deanery of the Chapels Royal. 31 CHAPTER III. 1641-1647. Bishop Wren accused--Westminster Abbey attacked--Imprisonment of the Bishops--Bishop Wren's Defence--'Utterly Denieth all Popish Affections'--The Garter Jewels--Archbishop Laud Murdered--Christopher at Oxford--Philosophical Meetings. 55 CHAPTER IV. 1647-1658. Death of Mrs. M. Wren--King Charles Murdered--A monotonous Walk--Inventions--A Dream--All Souls' Fellowship-- Beginnings of the Royal Society--Astronomy--An Offer of Release--The Cycloid--Cromwell's Funeral--Letters from London. 85 CHAPTER V. 1659-1663. Apostolical Succession--Difficulty of preserving it--Letters from Lord Clarendon--Bishop Wren's Release--The Restoration--Convocation--Savilian Professorship--Royal Society--'Elephant in the Moon'--Pembroke Chapel begun. 109 CHAPTER VI. 1664-1667. Repair of S. Paul's--Sheldonian Theatre--The Plague--A Letter from Paris--Consecration of Pembroke Chapel--Fire of London--Bishop Wren's Death--His Family. 139 CHAPTER VII. 1668-1672. Patching S. Paul's--Sancroft's Letters--Wren's Examination of S. Paul's--Salisbury Cathedral--London as it might have been--Letter to Faith Coghill--Wren marries her--Temple Bar--S. Mary-le-Bow--Artillery Company--Gunpowder used to remove Ruins. 165 CHAPTER VIII. 1672-1677. Birth of his eldest Son--S. Stephen's, Walbrook--S. Bennet Fink--Plans for S. Paul's--The Excavations--Son Christopher born--Death of Faith, Lady Wren--Second Marriage--City Churches--The Monument--Tomb of Charles I.--Remains of the little Princes in the Tower. 191 CHAPTER IX. 1677-1681. Emmanuel College--Greenwich Observatory--Birth of Jane and William Wren--S. Bartholomew's--Portland Quarries--Dr. and Mrs. Holder--Death of Lady Wren--Popish Plot--Papin's Digester--Sir J. Hoskyns--All Hallow's, Bread Street--Palace at Winchester. 215 CHAPTER X. 1681-1686. Chelsea College--S. James's, Westminster--A hard Winter--Chichester Spire--An Astronomical Problem--A Seat in Parliament--More City Churches--A curious Carving. 239 CHAPTER XI. 1687-1696. Parliament dissolved--Church building--Acquittal of the Seven Bishops--James the Second's Flight--William and Mary--College of Physicians--Hampton Court--Greenwich Hospital--Richard Whittington--S. Paul's Organ. 259 CHAPTER XII. 1697-1699. Opening of S. Paul's Choir--A moveable Pulpit--Letter to his Son at Paris--Order against Swearing--Peter the Great--S. Dunstan's Spire--Morning Prayer Chapel opened--Westminster Abbey. 279 CHAPTER XIII. 1700-1708. Member for Weymouth--Rising of the Sap in Trees--Prince George's Statue--Jane Wren's Death--Thanksgiving at S. Paul's--Letter to his Son--Son marries Mary Musard--Death of Mr. Evelyn--Queen Anne's Act for Building fifty Churches--Letter on Church Building. 297 CHAPTER XIV. 1709-1723. Private Houses built--Queen Anne's Gifts--Last Stone of S. Paul's--Wren deprived of his Salary--His Petition--'Frauds and Abuses'--Interior work of S. Paul's--Wren Superseded--Purchase of Wroxhall Abbey--Wren's Thoughts on the Longitude--His Death--Burial in S. Paul's--The End. 317 APPENDIX. I. Reverendo Patri Domino Christophoro Wren S.T.D. et D. W. Christophorus Filius Hoc Suum Panorganum Astronomicum D.D. xiii. Calend. Novem. Anno 1645. 337 II. Churches, Halls, Colleges, Palaces, other Public Buildings, and Private Houses built and repaired by Sir Christopher Wren. 338 III. A Discourse on Architecture, from Original MS. 340 INDEX 351 [Illustration: THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN FROM A DRAWING BY C. R. COCKERELL, R.A.] CHAPTER I. 1585-1636. ANCESTRY OF THE WRENS--MATTHEW WREN--TRAVELS TO SPAIN WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES--INTERVIEW AT WINCHESTER HOUSE--BISHOP ANDREWES' PROPHECY--WREN MADE MASTER OF PETERHOUSE--BISHOP OF HEREFORD--CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE--OFFICE OF RECONCILIATION--FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS AND THE NORWICH WEAVERS--RESULT OF 'A LECTURER'S' DEPARTURE. Time, like an ever-rolling stream Bears all its sons away. The name of Christopher Wren is no doubt familiar to the great majority of English people, and to Londoners especially; but it is to many of them little more than a name with which is connected S. Paul's Cathedral and a now, alas! diminished number of City churches. Yet the great architect's ninety-one years of life were passed among some of the most stirring times of our history, in which his family played no inconsiderable part, and he himself was not only the best architect of his day, but was also the foremost in many other sciences. A singularly patient and far-seeing intellect aiding a strong religious faith enabled him 'to keep the even tenour of his way' through a life of incessant labour and considerable temptation. It has been truly said, 'It seems almost like a defect in such a biography as that of Wren, that it presents nothing of that picturesque struggle, in the rise from a lower to a higher condition, which has so commonly attended the conquest of genius over difficulty.'[2] Far otherwise, the Wren family was an old one, tracing its descent from the Danes; one of the house fought in Palestine under Richard I., and his fame long survived, as in Charles I.'s time it was quoted against one of the knight's descendants. In 1455, during the reign of Henry VI., in the Black Book (or register) of the Order of the Garter, mention is made of a Wren who probably belonged to this family:-- 'The Lord of Winchester, Prelate of the order, performed the Divine Service proper for S. George the Martyr, but the Abbots Towyrhill and Medmenham being absent, were not excused, in whose stead Sir William Stephyns read the gospel and Sir W. Marshal the epistle, both of them singing men of the king's choir. The dean of the same choir presented the gospel to the sovereigne to be kissed, and the next day celebrated Mass for the deceased, Sir J. Andevere and John Wrenne assisting in the reading of the epistle and gospel. The reader of the gospel, after censing the reader of the epistle, reverently tendered the heart of S. George to the sovereigne and knights in order to be kissed.' The heart of S. George was presented by Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, on his admission to the Order of the Garter. The spelling of 'Wrenne' was a very common form of the family name, and it seems very likely that John Wrenne belonged to this family, who were much connected with S. George's, Windsor. [_OLD FAMILY MOTTO._] William Wren was in Henry VIII.'s time the head of the family; his younger brother Geoffrey, who was a priest, was of Henry VII.'s privy council, and was confessor both to him and to Henry VIII. He held the living of S. Margaret's, Fish Street, in the City of London, from 1512 till his death.[3] Geoffrey Wren was also a canon of S. George's at Windsor, where he founded the seventh stall. There he died in 1527, and was buried in the north aisle of the chapel under a brass bearing his effigy in the Garter mantle, with this inscription at his feet: 'Sub saxo ponor, et vermibus ultimis donor, Et sicut ponor, ponitur omnis honor.'[4] This tomb and brass have disappeared, as has the 'South Lodge' with its window displaying his coat of arms and emblem; the latter, a wren holding a trefoil in its claw, and his motto--'Turbinibus superest coelo duce praescius.' Dean Wren explains this emblem as chosen because, 'the trefoil or clover shrinking before a storm foretold a change of weather,' and the wren was supposed to have the same prescience. Both motto and emblem were changed by the descendants of the family. William Wren's grandson, Francis, was born 1552, two years before the close of Queen Mary's reign, at Monk's Kirby in Warwickshire, where the family had property. He was a mercer and citizen of London, and was steward to Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity in England. He married Susan, daughter of William Wiffinson; they lived in the parish of S. Peter's Cheap, and had three children: a daughter Anna, and two sons; Matthew, born 1585, and Christopher, born 1589. Both were educated at the Merchant Taylors' School, and there Matthew especially attracted the notice of Lancelot Andrewes, then Dean of Westminster, who frequently came to the school where he had been bred, and examined the boys in various subjects, particularly in the Hebrew Psalter. He was struck by the proficiency of the eldest of the Wrens, and obtained for the boy a scholarship at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, of which he was himself master. From that time Dr. Andrewes appears never to have lost sight of Wren, but to have guided his studies and fostered 'the most passionate affection for the ministry of the Church' which the young man showed. Nor was Wren's university life undistinguished, for he became Greek scholar of his college, and when King James visited Cambridge, Matthew Wren, then in priest's orders, 'kept the Philosophy Act' before him with great applause. The subject given was, 'Whether dogs were capable of syllogisms.' Old Fuller says of this extraordinary 'Act,' 'he kept it with no less praise to himself than pleasure to the king; where if men should forget even dogs should remember his seasonable distinction what the king's hounds could perform above others by virtue of their prerogative.'[5] Probably this speech and its ready wit remained on the mind of the King, who dearly loved a compliment to the royal prerogative, and determined him to favour Matthew Wren. [_MATTHEW WREN._] Lancelot Andrewes, who had been Bishop of Chichester, was in 1609 translated to Ely, and so enabled to watch over the University and 'to search out,' as he entreated his friends to do also, 'hopeful and towardly young wits,' and train them up for Holy Orders.[6] He made Matthew Wren his chaplain, gave him the living of Feversham in Cambridgeshire, and some years later made him a canon of Winchester. But very different duties from the ordinary ones of a parish priest devolved upon Wren. King James planned for the Prince of Wales the famous 'Spanish match,' and gave a most reluctant consent to the Duke of Buckingham's scheme, that the Prince should himself go to Spain to fetch home his bride. Two of his chaplains were to attend the Prince, and by the advice of Bishop Andrewes and of Laud, then Bishop of S. David's, Dr. Leonard Maw, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Dr. Matthew Wren were chosen. The Prince and Buckingham departed hastily, leaving the chaplains and suite to follow as they could. King James had no sooner allowed the expedition than he repented of it, and being unable to recall his permission, was tormented by a thousand fears for the Prince's safety. The nation was in a state of ferment, persuaded that the Prince's faith would be tampered with as well as his person endangered. Thus the two chaplains had by no means an enviable post. They went down to Newmarket, took their leave of the King and received his last instructions:-- 'So as all their behaviour and service should prove decent and agreeable to the purity of the Primitive Church, and yet so near the Roman form as can lawfully be done; "for," said he, "it hath ever been my way to go with the Church of Rome _usque ad aras_."'[7] 'The two bishops gave them also written and detailed instructions that there might appear a face of the Church of England in all forms of worship; that in the sermons there may be no polemical preachings to inveigh against the Romanists or to confute, but only to confirm the doctrine and tenets of the Church of England by all positive arguments either in fundamental or moral points.' A full list followed of vestments for the clergy, ornaments and hangings for the altar, and altar lights, Latin service books, directions for a room to be adorned chapel-wise, and for frequent services, all to be read in Latin so that the Spaniards might comprehend them. All this careful provision seems to have been defeated by the fact of the Prince and his suite being lodged in the palace at Madrid, so that there was no public service, only bed-chamber prayers. Contemporary letters show that the chaplains' position was not an easy one, though the Prince remained steadfast, and in the congenial atmosphere of the dignified Spanish court became every day more gracious. 'Dr. Wren forbears,' says one of these letters, 'to write any particulars, but intimates all is not as it should be.' It was no doubt a necessary precaution on the chaplain's part to preserve this discreet silence, but it is tantalising to have only a hint concerning the transactions in Spain. How the negotiations were delayed, how the King recalled the Prince and the marriage was broken off, are historical facts too well known to need repetition here. One result seems to have been a strong bond of affection between the Prince and those who went with him on this singular expedition. [_RETURNS FROM SPAIN._] That his departure was attended with some sea-peril appears from one of Edmund Waller's[8] early poems on 'the Danger which His Majesty, being Prince, escaped in the Road at S. Andero':-- 'Now had his Highness bid farewell to Spain, And reached the sphere of his own pow'r, the main; With British bounty in his ship he feasts The Hesperian princes his amazed guests, To find that wat'ry wilderness exceed The entertainment of their great Madrid.' A description follows of the Prince being rowed in a barge to his own ship, a sudden storm arises in which there is a great difficulty in making the ship; at length the Fates allow the rope to be successfully thrown, knowing it to be for England:-- 'Whose prince must be (as their own books devise) Lord of the scene where now his danger lies.' On October 8, 1623, Dr. Wren's diary records 'we landed at Portsmouth,' and his first and only journey out of Great Britain was over. The sea-voyage, probably a stormy one, made an impression on his mind and he preached before the Universities on the text 'One deep calleth to another.' This is said to have been a remarkable sermon, and old Fuller declares that he became an excellent preacher. The one sermon of his now extant, preached at a later date, on the text 'Fear God, honour the King,' shows that he modelled his style greatly on that of Bishop Andrewes, though without attaining to the same excellence. The sermon is a bold and outspoken one, and has its striking passages. King James, in testimony of his approval of Dr. Wren's conduct as his son's chaplain, bestowed on him the valuable living of Bingham, in Nottinghamshire, to which he was inducted during the next year, resigning his fellowship of Pembroke and the living of Feversham. [_AT WINCHESTER HOUSE._] Previous to this event, and soon after the Prince's return, a singular incident occurred. Wren, who had been down to Cambridge, came up, as he says, 'suddenly' to London, and as it was late, lodged with his sister in Friday Street, instead of going to Winchester House, where the Bishop kept 'three rooms near the garden' fitted and reserved for him, and where he had lodged twice or thrice. He had, however, seen the Bishop twice, also the Bishops of Durham and S. David's, had taken leave of them on a Saturday, and was prepared to return to Cambridge on the Monday morning following. His journey was, however, delayed by an event which shall be given in his own words:--[9] 'On Monday morne by break of the day there was a great knocking at the door where I lay. And at last the apprentice (who lay in the shop) came up to my bedside, and told me there was a messenger from Winchester House to speak with me. The business was to let me know, that my Lord, when he came from Court last night, had given his steward charge to order it so that I might be spoken with, and be required as from him without fail to dine with him on Monday; but to be at Winchester House by ten of the clock, which I wondered the more at, his lordship not using to come from his study till near twelve. My businesse would hardly permit this, yet because of his lordship's importunity, I got up presently, and into Holborn I went, and there used such despatch, that soon after ten of the clock, I took a boat and went to Winchester House, where I found the steward at the water gate waiting to let me in the nearest way; who told me that my lord had called twice to know if I were come. I asked where his lordship was? He answered, in his great gallery (a place where I knew his lordship scarce came once in a year), and thither I going, the door was locked, but upon my lifting a latch, my lord of St. David's opened the door, and, letting me in, locked it again. 'There I found but those three Lords, who causing me to sit down by them, my Lord of Durham began to me: "Doctor, your Lord here will have it so, I that am the unfittest person must be the speaker. But thus it is. After you left us yesterday at Whitehall, we entering into further discourses of those things which we foresee and conceive will ere long come to pass, resolve to again to speak to you before you went hence. '"We must know of you, what your thoughts are concerning your master the Prince. You have now been his servant above two years, and you were with him in Spain. We know he respects you well; and we know you are no fool, but can observe how things are like to go." "What things, my Lord?" (quoth I). "In brief," said he, "how the Prince's heart stands to the Church of England, that when God brings him to the Crown we may know what to hope for." 'My reply was to this effect, that however I was most unfit of any opinion herein, attending but two months in the year and then at a great distance, only in the closet and at meals; yet, seeing they so pressed me, I would speak my mind freely; so I said, "I know my master's learning is not equal to his father's, yet I know his judgement to be very right; and as for his affection in these particulars which your Lordships have pointed at, for upholding the doctrine and discipline and right estate of the Church, I have more confidence of him than of his father, in whom they say (better than I can) is so much inconstancy in some particular cases." [_BISHOP ANDREWES' PROPHECY._] 'Hereupon my Lords of Durham and St. David's began to argue it with me, and required me to let them know upon what ground I came to think thus of the Prince. I gave them my reasons at large; and after many replyings, (above an hour together,) then my Lord of Winchester (who had said nothing all the while) bespake me these words:-- '"Well, Doctor, God send you may be a good prophet concerning your master's inclinations in these particulars, which we are glad to hear from you. I am sure I shall be a true prophet: I shall be in my grave, and so shall you, my Lord of Durham; but my Lord of St. David's and you, Doctor, will live to see that day that your master will be put to it, upon his head and his crown, without he will forsake the support of the Church." 'Of these predictions made by that holy father,' adds the writer, 'I have now no witness but mine own conscience and the Eternal God who knows I lie not; nobody else being present when this was spoken but these three Lords.' After this the four friends separated and Wren returned to Cambridge. In two years from the time of that conference King James died, in the following year the saintly Bishop Andrewes, the kind and unfailing friend of both the Wrens, died also. It is to the great discredit of James I., and probably was the inconstancy to which Dr. Wren alluded, that, as has happened in our own day, the greatest Prelate, the 'incomparable preacher,' the truest and wisest champion of the Church, was passed over when the archbishopric was vacant, an inferior man put above him, and at last the see of Winchester offered to him in tardy amends. At Archbishop Bancroft's death in 1610, everyone's eyes had turned to Bishop Andrewes as his natural successor: but, in the words of a contemporary letter from Lord Baltimore (then Mr. Calvert) to Sir T. Edmonds, 'The Bishop of London (Abbot) by a strong north wind blowing out of Scotland is blown over the Thames to Lambeth; the king having professed to the Bishop himself as also to all the Lords of this council that it is neither the respect of his learning, his wisdom nor his sincerity (although he is well persuaded there is not any one of them wanting in him), that hath made him to prefer him above the rest of his fellows, but merely the recommendation of his faithful servant Dunbar that is dead, whose suit on behalf of this Bishop he cannot forget, nor will suffer to lose his intention.'[10] [_MASTERSHIP OF PETERHOUSE._] The consequences of such an ecclesiastical appointment made for so insufficient a reason were disastrous indeed. Had Andrewes succeeded Bancroft, and had Laud succeeded Andrewes, 'the Church had been settled on so sure a foundation that it had not easily been shaken.'[11] There was general lamentation when Andrewes died, and few can have mourned him more sincerely than Matthew Wren, whom he had loved as a son. Wren attended the funeral, received the gold ring which was the Bishop's bequest to him, and composed the Latin epitaph for his tomb in S. Saviour's, Southwark, which is no unworthy tribute to the holy Bishop. During this year Dr. Wren was elected, by the unanimous wish of the fellows, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he 'exercised such prudence and moderation in his government that he reduced all the fellows to one sacred bond of unity and concord.' Besides this he rebuilt the college in great part from the ground, and perceiving that the absence of a chapel was a great obstacle in the way of reverent and frequent services, he did not rest until he had raised subscriptions enough to build a handsome chapel, and to ornament it richly.[12] The wood-panelled hexagonal roof, the marble steps on which the altar stands, flanked by two tall candlesticks, give a character to the interior enhanced by the east window, which is in part a copy of that famous picture of the Crucifixion, then just finished, by Rubens, at Antwerp. This window was carefully taken down in the Rebellion before the college was visited, and hidden away in boxes. A wise precaution, for the commissioners destroyed all the other ornaments, pulling down 'two mighty angels with wings, divers other angels, the four evangelists, and Peter with his keys on the chapel door, together with about a hundred cherubim and many superstitious letters in gold. Moreover,' they say, 'we found six angels on the windows which we defaced.' After the Restoration the hidden glass was brought forth again and put back in its place over the altar.[13] While Dr. Wren was thus adorning his college chapel King Charles did not show himself forgetful of Bishop Andrewes' well-loved pupil and chaplain, but in 1628 appointed him Dean of Windsor and registrar of the Order of the Garter. The year after this appointment the peace between England and France was solemnly ratified in the chapel at Windsor and Dean Wren administered the oath to the French ambassador, the Marquis de Châteauneuf. About this time, as his diary says, he was 'joined together in happy matrimony.' His wife was Eliza Brownrigg, the widowed daughter of Thomas Cull, Esquire, of Ipswich; she had one daughter by her first marriage, and seems to have been possessed of some property in Suffolk. The marriage was in truth as happy as the cruel times in which their lot was cast would allow, though chequered with many sorrows; for of the twelve children whose birth Wren records in his diary, six died while very young. When King Charles journeyed to Scotland for his coronation he summoned Wren to attend him. No shadow of the coming trouble showed itself then. The young King was everywhere received with enthusiasm. Whether Dr. Wren, mindful of Andrewes' words, suspected what lay under this fair show, there is no record left to tell us. In after years Sir Thomas Widdrington's venomous attack on himself must have strangely recalled his tones when on this occasion he addressed the King in terms of fulsome adulation at Berwick. On his return from Scotland the King passed the holy week at York, where on Maunday Thursday Dr. Wren washed the feet of thirty-nine poor old men in warm water, drying them with a linen cloth, and Dr. Curle, Bishop of Winchester, washed them over again in white wine and then kissed them. [_BISHOPRIC OF HEREFORD._] Shortly after this, Dr. Lindsell, the Bishop of Hereford, died, and Matthew Wren was appointed (1634) to the vacant see. He thereupon resigned the Mastership of Peterhouse, probably with much regret, for all his life he retained a strong affection for his University. His successor was one whose name is well known in church history, Dr. John Cosin, afterwards Dean of Durham and Bishop of Peterborough, a great authority on the ritual and ornaments of the Church. The King would not then suffer Wren to resign the Deanery of Windsor. When Dr. Juxon, who was Clerk of the Closet, was made Bishop of London, the King showed how highly he valued and esteemed Bishop Wren by giving him the post which Juxon resigned, and Dr. Wren then gave up his Deanery. His new post was one of great nearness to the King; to fill it well required great tact and a discreet deafness to the whispers of court intriguers. King Charles was well aware of this, and as soon as Wren had settled himself in his new post said to him:[14] 'Now you are at my elbow there will be many devices to set you and the Archbishop (Laud) at odds. But I warn you of it that you suffer no such trick to be put on you, and therefore I require you both, by that faith which I am sure you will both perform to me, to bind yourselves mutually neither of you to believe any report against the other; and if you meet with any such thing, believe it not, yet presently impart it to each other.' The wisdom of the King's counsel was quickly shown, for when Dr. Hackett came in his turn of office as the next month's chaplain, he told Wren how they had expected him to be made Bishop of London, and but for the Archbishop preferring Juxon, as a man of whom he had experience and on whom he could rely, it would have been done. Wren paid no regard to these suggestions, suspecting them to be the device of some discontented courtier in order to make him the Archbishop's enemy. To keep his faith with the King and the Archbishop, he presently told them what had passed. The King praised his conduct and told him, 'there was no truth in the report, but only a plot to kindle coals between them two.' [_CONSECRATION OF ABBEY DORE._] Bishop Wren began vigorous work in Hereford, holding a visitation, collecting and setting in order the statutes of the cathedral, which were in a state of great confusion. Another congenial piece of work came also into his hands. John, Viscount Scudamore, a friend of Laud's, had inherited, with other property, the old Cistercian abbey of Dore, near Monmouth; the building had been greatly damaged in the reign of Henry VIII., but the transepts, chancel, and lady chapel still stood, as they do now, and Lord Scudamore was minded to restore the building to its true use. He accordingly repaired it, setting up again the old stone altar on its four pillars, and providing the church with everything needful for service. Bishop Wren was unable to consecrate the building himself, being in constant attendance on the King, but he busied himself in drawing up an office for the occasion, like, but not identical with, that used by Bishop Andrewes, and commissioned Bishop Field of S. David's to act for him. Bishop Wren was, as Lord Clarendon testifies, 'much versed in the old liturgies, particularly those of the Eastern Church.' He employed himself, at Laud's request, in preparing a service for the reconciliation of those who had apostatised when in slavery with the Moors, and when released wished to return to the faith. The merchants and seamen who were taken by 'Barbary pirates,' and when released came sadly back to England with their story of cruel sufferings undergone and faith reluctantly forsworn, were numerous enough to require a special provision to be made for them. Knolles' quaint 'Historie of the Turks' shows that they even made descents on the western coasts of England and carried off men, women, and children into slavery. In 1636, with some of the much-grudged 'ship-money,' a very successful expedition was made under Lord Rainsborough against Sallee, which resulted in the release of large numbers of captives and a promise from the Moorish king to suppress Christian slavery. It is significant that the real leader of the expedition was John Dunton, a reformed renegade taken _off the Isle of Wight_ in command of a Sallee ship. He was tried and condemned, but saved his life by offering to show the assailable points of the Barbary ports, and sailed as master on Lord Rainsborough's ship.[15] ['_RECONCILIATION OF A RENEGADO._'] The 'Form of Penance and Reconciliation of a Renegado or Apostate from the Christian Religion to Turcism,'[16] which Wren and Laud prepared together, is a very striking one. First came the solemn excommunication, then for two Sundays the penitent came to the door of his parish church in a white sheet carrying a white wand, craving the prayers of all 'good Christians for a poor wretched renegado;' on the second Sunday he was allowed to enter and kneel by the font and pray to be 'restored to the rights and benefits of the blessed sacrament which I have so wickedly abjured,' and then return to the church porch as before. On the third Sunday, when the Apostles' creed had been said, after being publicly put in mind of his sin, and advised 'that a slight and ordinary sorrow is not enough for so grievous an offence,' the penitent, kneeling eastward, and bowing to the very pavement, was to confess his sin and declare his sorrow and repentance, and to ask the prayers of the congregation. Also to 'thank God for His mercies, especially for the divine ordinance of His Holy Sacraments, and of His heavenly power committed to His Holy Priests, in His Church for the reconciliation of sinners unto Himself and the absolving them from all their iniquity.' 'Then,' says the rubric, 'let the Priest come forth to him, and stand over him, and laying his hand on his head, say, as is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, thus:-- Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners which truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and, by His authority committed unto me, I absolve thee from this thy heinous crime of renunciation, and from all thy other sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' After this follows, with slight alteration, a collect, also from the Visitation of the Sick, and then the priest was to take the penitent by the hand, take away from him the white sheet and the wand, and address to him, once again as dear brother, an affectionate exhortation to walk worthy 'of so great a mercy,' and promise him re-admission to the Holy Communion on the next opportunity. How often this service was employed does not appear. The whole form is so beautiful that it is matter for regret it should be so much forgotten. Wren had been Bishop of Hereford but one year, when the Bishop of Norwich, Dr. R. Corbet, was translated to Oxford, and Bishop Wren translated in turn to the vacant see. It is easy to see Laud's hand in this. Norwich was a large wide diocese, much shaken by schism and faction and abounding with lecturers who were the torment of the Church at that time and were not unaptly compared 'to bats or reremice, being neither birds nor beasts, and yet both together,'[17] i.e. neither clerk nor layman. They were not unfrequently men who had been ordained without cure of souls and served as chaplains in gentlemen's houses, or men whose orders were doubtful, or mere laymen who had failed in other callings. They were all strong Calvinists, seldom read the services, but called a fast, quite irrespective of those of the Church, and gave a lecture. This speedily became a 'running lecture,' i.e. was not confined to one place but ran from parish to parish. Every possible check was put by the Archbishop upon these lectures, which were fatal to the proper order of the parishes and all church discipline. Private gentlemen were forbidden to have chaplains, all who preached were compelled to wear a surplice and first to read the Church Service, and in the afternoon to teach the Church Catechism. Wren, Mainwaring, Corbet, Montague, and other like-minded bishops set themselves vigorously to enforce the Archbishop's plans, esteeming the discipline and doctrine of the Church more valuable than the popularity which their firmness forfeited. Norwich presented an especial difficulty to the Bishop in the great number of weavers and other workmen who had taken refuge there from the Low Countries in times of persecution, and who still kept up their schismatic services. As his treatment of the Norwich weavers has always been the principal ground of attack against Wren, from Lord Clarendon down to writers of the present time, it is needful to enter somewhat into the question, and to see where the truth lies. [_FOREIGN CONGREGATIONS._] These foreign workmen had settled in England at various times, escaping from persecutions in the Low Countries and in France, and, though they had never had any distinct permission to use their own services, their doing so had been winked at by Queen Elizabeth and King James. Now they had reached a third generation and continued to profit by an exemption which was enjoyed by no other body of the kingdom. It will be borne in mind that as the laws then ran and were understood, every English subject was required to be also a member of the Church of England. The first generation of refugees were an exception, but when they reached a second and third generation, had their own ministers and pretended to the power of Ordination, they became an anomaly, and as Laud, when Bishop of London, said, 'The example is of ill-consequence in Church affairs to the subjects of England, many being confirmed by it in their stubborn ways and inconformities.' The matter was not likely to be mended by Archbishop Abbot; but when Laud succeeded him he addressed himself, in 1634, vigorously to the business, and set out this dilemma: 'If they were not of the same religion' (as the Church of England), 'why should they, being strangers, born in other countries, or descending from them, expect more liberty of conscience than the Papists had, being all natives, and descending from English parents? If of the same, why should they not submit to the government and forms of worship, being the outward acts and exercises of the religion here by law established?' Every art that could be used was employed by the congregations to avoid returning an answer to the Archbishop's inquiries, whether the English-born members would conform and use the Liturgy in their own language. The two congregations in Norwich resisted vehemently and remonstrated with Bishop Corbet, who was then bishop of the diocese; but Archbishop Laud himself visited the diocese and caused the injunction to be published in the congregations. It had been modified until it only ordered that, while strangers, as long as they were strangers, might use their own discipline, yet that the English Liturgy should be translated into French and Dutch for the better fitting of their children to the English Government. In Canterbury, he kept them 'on a harder diet,' and allowed only the translated Liturgy. All this took place before Bishop Wren came to Norwich, so it is manifestly unjust to accuse him of having set the measure, moderate as it was, on foot. The congregations remained a focus of Calvinism and discontent, secretly encouraged by all the leading Puritans, and envied by the lecturers who wished themselves in the like case. [NORWICH CLOTH WEAVERS.] Another trouble in Norwich, was the failure of business amongst the cloth weavers, whose trade was the chief industry of the town; the failure appears to have been, in a great measure, caused by the plague, which raged in London in 1636,[18] and put a stop for a considerable time to the weekly traffic between it and Norwich. Many of the workmen in consequence betook themselves to Holland, to obtain the means of livelihood. The same thing had happened in Bishop Corbet's time, but as in this instance it coincided with Wren's first visitation, there were not wanting those who said that his severity in enforcing conformity was the main reason of their departure. This accusation seems never to have been made at the time, but only later on, when every conceivable charge was being raked up against the Bishop. He truly says, that, often as at the council board the failure of the weaving trade and the emigration of the skilled workmen to Holland was lamented, it was never suggested that his severity was in any way the cause of it. In his defence, prepared for the House of Commons, the Bishop, besides accounting for much of the emigration by the failure of trade, consequent on the plague, reduces the number, by comparing it with the records kept at the various ports, from the alleged 3,000 to about 300, and drily says: 'The defendant humbly conceiveth that the chiefest cause of their departure was the small wages given to the workmen, whereby the workmasters grew rich, and the workmen were kept very poor.' [Sidenote: 'NO LECTURE, BUT VERY MUCH PEACE.'] The charge has been often revived, the more so as though the accusation is well known enough, the defence, only to be found in the 'Parentalia,' is hardly known except to the few who have threaded the labyrinth of that scarce volume. That Wren was a great upholder of discipline and authority, a man of a fiery energetic temper, decided opinions, and an unyielding, perhaps a severe, disposition, is certainly true; but it is also true that he practised, as Laud and Strafford did, an even-handed justice, laying his hand on rich and poor alike, and would not turn aside for any suggestion of policy or expediency. It should, however, in fairness be added, that though he made his authority felt and obeyed, he did not press matters to extremity against any clergyman without grave cause, and was very ready to receive those who showed any readiness to submit. Of the 1,300 clergy in the diocese, not including those attached to the Cathedral or the schoolmasters, in spite of 'many disorders,' there were in 1636 but thirty excommunicated or suspended, some for contumacy, some for obstinately refusing to publish the King's declaration, some 'for contemning all the Orders and Rites of the Church and intruding themselves, without licence from the Ordinary, for many years together.' His returns to the Archbishop show how very thoroughly and diligently he, to use a modern phrase, 'worked his diocese,' visiting parish after parish, causing the fabrics to be repaired,[19] the clergy to reside, to hold the appointed services and to catechise the children. Here and there a lecturer who promised conformity was allowed to remain, but generally they were checked and discouraged. Great Yarmouth must have gladdened the Bishop's heart, as, two years before Bishop Wren came to the Diocese, the lecturer had gone to New England, 'since which time,' the Bishop says, 'there hath been no lecture and very much peace in the town and all ecclesiastical orders well observed.' It was in truth a great undertaking to bring the Diocese of Norwich into order; but Wren did not shrink from the task, and had all the support which the King and the Archbishop could give, a support afterwards imputed as a crime both to those who gave and to him who received it. FOOTNOTES: [2] _Warwickshire Worthies_, p. 845. Article by C. Wren Hoskyns, Esq., M.P. [3] S. Margaret's, standing close to Pudding Lane, where the Fire of London began in 1666, was the first church consumed. Its site is now occupied by the Monument, and the parish incorporated with that of S. Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge. [4] Laid under the stone, For the worms alone, All mortal pride Is laid aside. (G. A. D.) [5] Bishop Andrewes was so well pleased that he 'sent the moderator (Dr. Meade), the answerer (Mr. M. Wren), the varier, and one of the repliers that were all of his house (i.e. Pembroke), twenty angels apiece.' _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. xxi. [6] _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. xvii. [7] _Cypr. Ang._, p. 100. Heylin. [8] Edmund Waller, born March 3, 1605. He was connected by his marriage with Cromwell, and wrote one of his best poems as a panegyric on the Protector, but was supposed to be a Cavalier at heart and rejoiced at the Restoration; died 1687. [9] 'A transcript of a certain narrative written by the late Bishop of Ely (Dr. Matthew Wren) with his own hand, of that remarkable conference, which after his return from Spain with Prince Charles, 1636, he had with Dr. Neile, then Bishop of Durham, Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Laud, Bishop of S. David's, touching the said Prince, whereat something prophetical was then said by that Reverend Bishop of Winchester.' Printed from a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum. _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. lvii. [10] _Life of Bishop Andrewes_, Lib. Anglo-Catholic Theology, p. x. [11] _Cypr. Ang._, p. 59. Heylin. [12] Evelyn, who visited Cambridge in 1655, says of Peterhouse, 'a pretty neate college having a delicate chappell.' The chapel, especially the west front, of S. Peter's College, is one of the best specimens of the Renaissance Art at Cambridge.--_Hist. of Modern Architecture_, p. 275. Fergusson. [13] _Beauties of England and Wales_ (Cambridgeshire). [14] _Life of Archbishop Juxon_, p. 27. Rev. W. H. Marah. [15] _Annals of England_, p. 407. [16] _Eccles. Hist._, vol. ix. p. 388, ed. 1841, Collier, where the office may be found entire. [17] _Cypr. Ang._, introduction, p. 9. Heylin. [18] 'On August 29, 1636 (the plague then raging in London), King Charles, the Queen, and the Court arrived at Oxford. The Chancellor (Archbishop Laud), the Vice-Chancellor, and numerous doctors and masters went out to meet the royal retinue. The Chancellor, accompanied by the Lord Treasurer (Bishop Juxon), the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Curle), the Bishop of Norwich (Dr. M. Wren), and the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Bancroft), rode in a coach.' The Court was entertained with very brilliant festivities, and a series of masks and interludes arranged by Inigo Jones.--_Oxfordshire Annals_, p. 25, by J. M. Davenport. [19] The state of the diocese is vividly shown in Bishop Corbet's charge of 1634 (for the repairs of old S. Paul's Cathedral). 'Some petitions,' he says, 'I have had since my coming to this diocese, for the pulling downe of such an isle [aisle] or for changing lead to thatch, soe far from reparations that our sute is to demolish.... Since Christmas I was sued to and I have it yett under their hands, the hand of the minister and the hand of the whole parish, that I would give way to their adorning their church within and out, to build a stone wall round the churchyard which now had but a hedg. _I took it for a flout at first_, but it proved a very sute; they durst not without leave mend a fault forty yeares ould.' The spire of Norwich Cathedral where Bishop Corbet was preaching had fallen in, and during three years but two yards had been rebuilt. See _Documents relating to S. Paul's_ by Dr. Sparrow Simpson, p. 137. Camden Society. CHAPTER II. 1630-1640. DR. C. WREN--BIRTH OF HIS SON CHRISTOPHER--EAST KNOYLE--ORDER OF THE GARTER--HOW A MURDERER WAS DETECTED--CHRISTOPHER AT WESTMINSTER--A LATIN LETTER--DIOCESE OF ELY--IMPEACHMENT OF LORD STRAFFORD--OF ARCHBISHOP LAUD--ARTICLES AGAINST BISHOP WREN--RESIGNS THE DEANERY OF THE CHAPELS ROYAL. Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry A gospel-preaching ministry, And some for old suits, coats, or cloak, No surplices nor service-book. A strange harmonious inclination Of all degrees to Reformation. _Hudibras_, pt. i. canto 2. Less is known of the early years of Christopher Wren than of his brother's more eventful life. Christopher went to Oxford, to S. John's College, was admitted to Holy Orders, and, like his brother, became chaplain to Bishop Andrewes, from whom in 1620 he received the living of Fonthill Bishops in Wiltshire. It may be said in passing, that to receive preferment from Lancelot Andrewes was in itself a proof of merit, for it was his especial care, in the three dioceses which he successively governed, only to promote able and good men to 'such livings and preferments as fell within his gift, and to give Church preferment to _none that asked for it_.' To this rule he rigidly adhered, and his disciple, Matthew Wren, followed the same plan when he became a Prelate of the Church. Christopher did not hold this living more than three years, and then received, also from Bishop Andrewes, the neighbouring living of East (or Bishop's) Knoyle, very near Fonthill Abbey, afterwards a place famous for its beauty and its curiosities, then the property of a Mr. Robert Cox. This gentleman had an only child, Mary, who inherited his property; she became the wife of Christopher Wren, probably a few years after his appointment to East Knoyle, where their seven children were born--five girls, of only one of whom there is any subsequent record, and two sons. A Christopher, baptized in the November of 1630, who probably died very young, as in the register the record stands, 'Christopher, first sonne of Doctor Wren,' 'first' is added above in another hand. The next baptism is, 'Christopher, 2nd (_sic_) sonne of Christopher Wren, Dr. in Divinitie and Rector now.' This is in the entries for 1631 (O.S.), followed by those for March, and is dated only '10th.' This 'second Christopher' is the one who was to make the name afterwards so famous; but the date is very perplexing. Dr. Wren and his son both reckoned the latter's age from his birthday, October 20, 1632, as appears again and again in the 'Parentalia,' notably in Dr. Wren's own MS. note to a letter from his son.[20] The East Knoyle Register would, if the baptism is rightly put among the entries for _March_ 1631 (O.S.), make the birthday October 20, 1631; but it seems more likely that this is an error, and 1632 the correct date. [CHANCEL AT EAST KNOYLE.] At East Knoyle Dr. Wren appears to have passed most of his time, leaving it occasionally, as he had done his previous living, to attend on Bishop Andrewes. He was a good scholar, if less deeply learned than his brother; a mathematician, a good musician, and had besides some knowledge of drawing and architecture. He employed himself in decorating East Knoyle chancel, and to him, in all probability, are owing the[21] 'flower borders, figures, and texts of Scripture in raised plasterwork' which, though much defaced, still cover the chancel. The subjects are--'Jacob's Dream,' 'The Ladder with the Angels,' 'Jacob anointing the Pillar.' Over the chancel arch 'The Ascension of our Lord.' Round the capitals of the columns are quaint inscriptions: Sic ae Am a pr sis. a. A Deo pta.[22] ut o or o 'Unum necessarium.' The texts of holy Scripture, which are very well chosen, are all quoted from that earlier translation known as the 'Bishops' Bible,' to which the Psalms, Offertory sentences, and 'Comfortable Words' of the Prayer Book belong. Besides this, Wren contrived a new roof for the church, as the old one was falling into decay. In the hall of the rectory he put up the following inscription: 'In quamcunque domum introeritis primum dicite: paX sIt hVIC DoMVI Tam solenni præcepto, tempestivo voto Subscripsi introiens C. W. RECTOR, Julii 28. Anno dicto.'[23] The inscription is not a little characteristic of the gentle, peace-loving nature of Christopher Wren, and the quaint conceits in which the wits of the time delighted. This form of chronogram was one which he frequently used. His second daughter, Susan, was born in 1627, and as she and the 'second Christopher' clung closely together in after life, and the others are never mentioned, it seems likely that they two were the only survivors of the seven children. Christopher was a very delicate, weakly boy, who early gave promise of brilliant abilities. No records say when Mrs. Wren died, but various things seem to show that she died when her children were still very young. Dr. Wren had been one of the King's chaplains in ordinary since 1628, and so well did he acquit himself that when his brother the Bishop resigned the deanery of Windsor and the registrarship of the Garter, the King appointed Christopher to the vacant post. It was an appointment which suited him well; he took up with equal energy his brother's work, of arranging the documents and records, and continuing the history of the Order. Two autograph letters relating to this are preserved in the 'Parentalia,' one from the chancellor of the Garter, Sir Thomas Rowe:-- 'Reverend Sir,--I had wayted on you before this tyme, but that I have been punished with Lamenes, both for my owne advantage to learne of y^u and to acquaint y^u with some orders I have received from his ma^{tie} and to give y^u ye summe of ye last chapiter as I conceived it.' [GARTER RECORDS.] Sundry particulars follow, and he promises a record of the members of the Garter from its foundation. The King, he says, is anxious that every 'chapiter of the Order' should be fully recorded. Sir Thomas asks for 'the papers of Sir John Fynnet' in order to send them to King Charles, 'who is very curious of them.' 'On all occasions,' the letter concludes, 'I shall be glad to give y^u ye testimonye of my desire to be esteemed and to be y^r affectionate friend to serve y^u, 'THO. ROWE. 'Cranford, 9 Jan. 1636 (O.S.)' The Dean's answer comes promptly:-- 'Jan. 10, 1636 (O.S.) 'Honorable Sir,--How much you obliged me I shall endeavour to demonstrate to you upon better opportunities. For ye present I returne y^r books and promise you ye sight of another some^{wt} of them(?) w^{ch} phaps you will not dislike, though I begin to think your exact diligence hath lefte none of those monuments lye undiscryed, where they might be gained. I send back likewise Sir John Finet's Paps; whereof I reserve ye copyes. And now that I begin to finde a little respiration, I will draw y^m up into acte. Till I had y^m I could not well begin, and now that you are pleased to send me ye last, drawne up into forme, I shall ye better accomplish ye whole business of my little time. Whereof I will send you ye whole contextures, Deo dante, ere longe. I should however give you a formall thanks that you imploy yourselfe soe largely, soe nobly for me in present, and in promise more. Knowing your reality in all worth, I abstain from other compliments then those wherein Affection must pforce speake yf she speake at all. Once for all, that branch of our comon oath is never out of my minde: Sustentabis Honores hujus Ordinis atq. omni^m qui in eo sunt. Of w^{ch} omni^m you are Pars Magna and shall ever be to your affectionate ob: servant friend, 'CHR. WREN. 'To the Honble Sr. Tho. Row Chancelor of ye most Honble Order of ye Garter.' The Garter history appears to have been carefully continued, and Dean Wren describes, in a long picturesque account, the admission on May 19, 1638, of the Prince of Wales, then but eight years old, as a 'companion of the Garter.' The little Prince, Dean Wren says, acquitted himself admirably during the three days of intricate ceremonial, doing his part with accuracy and spirit, a sweet dignity, and an unwearied patience until all was completed. He must have been a very hopeful, engaging, boy, and it is sad to think how little his after life fulfilled its early promise: had he remained in his father's care a very different record might have been left of him in English history. The Service of Admission is a curious one, and the prayers on the putting on the Garter, the ribbon, the collar, and the mantle have considerable beauty. On this occasion the festival was celebrated with great splendour. King Charles presented two large silver flagons, cunningly carved and very richly gilt, offering them on his knees with these words: 'Tibi, et perpetuo Tuo servitio, partem bonitatis Tuae offero Domine Deus Omnipotens.'[24] These were added to the treasury of the Garter, which contained many articles of great value. There was a set of triple gilt silver plate wrought by Van Vianen[25] of Nuremberg, estimated at over 3,000_l._, several other pieces of plate, Edward IV.'s steel armour, gilt, and covered with crimson velvet embroidered with pearls, rubies and gold, fifteen rich copes embroidered in gold, altar-cloths and hangings worked with the same costly material. [GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.] There was also the blue velvet mantle, the George and Garter of Gustavus Adolphus, each letter of the motto made in diamonds. These had been sent to the King of Sweden by Charles I. at the close of the campaign in 1627 as a mark of friendship and respect for his valour, and were the richest ever sent even to a sovereign. After the heroic king's death on the field at Lutzen, in 1634, a solemn embassy brought the mantle and the jewels back to England, when they were consigned to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, with a charge from King Charles to lay them up in the treasury 'for a perpetual memorial of that renowned King, who died in the field of battle wearing some of those jewels, to the great honour of the Order, as a true martial prince and companion thereof.' A few years later King Charles presented Dean Wren to the rectory of Great Haseley[26] near Oxford, with a fine old church containing two crusaders' tombs. In the parish of Haseley is the manor of Ryecote (or Ricot), which by marriage had become the property of Sir Henry Norris, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador to France, whom she created Baron Norris (or Norreys) of Ryecot, and whose descendants, now the Earls of Abingdon, possess the manor to this day. During Dr. Wren's incumbency, a strange event took place. Among the retainers of Lord Norris was an old man who had charge of the fish ponds; he had one nephew, who was the heir of all his uncle's possessions and savings. The nephew enticed the old man out one night, waited till he fell asleep under an oak tree, murdered him by a blow on the head, dragged the body to one of the ponds, tied a great stone to the neck and threw the corpse in. There it lay _five weeks_, during which time Lord Norris and all the neighbours wondered what had become of the old man. At length the body was found by the men who were about to clean the pond, and were attracted to the spot by the swarms of flies; they raised the corpse with great difficulty and recognised it. [AN AWFUL WITNESS.] The stone tied to the neck was evidence of foul play, though no one could guess at the murderer. Lord Norris, in order to detect the criminal, after the usual manner, commanded that the corpse, preserved by the water from the last extremity of decay, should on the next Sunday be exposed in the churchyard, close to the church door, so that everyone entering the church should see--and touch it. The wicked nephew shrank from the ordeal, feigning to be so overwhelmed with grief as to be unable to bear the sight of his dearest uncle. Lord Norris, suspecting that the old man had been murdered by the one person whom his death would profit, compelled him to come, and to touch with his finger, as so many had willingly done, the hand of the dead. At his touch, however, 'as if opened by the finger of God, the eyes of the corpse were seen by all to move, and blood to flow from his nostrils.' At this awful witness the murderer fell on the ground and avowed the crime, which he had secretly committed and the most just judgment of God had brought to light. He was delivered to the judge, sentenced, and hanged. The event must have made a deep impression on Dean Wren, who recorded it at length in Latin and signed the record to attest its truth. He also mentions that in the east window of the church was the 'Coat of France azure fretté and semé of Flower de Lyces or, put there together with his own coat by Lord Barentine, knight of Rhodes and a great benefactor to that church. A man of great valour and possessions in France as well as in England, his tomb at the north-east side of the chancel shows he was of a gigantic stature; and his statue of one entire stone, which I digged out of a heap of rubbish there, makes it appear he was (not two inches lower than) seven foot high.' Dr. Wren seems to have divided his residence between Haseley and Windsor, probably spending most of his time at the Deanery, where many of the learned men and philosophers of the day sought his society. Among these was the Prince Palatine Charles, who was a frequent guest at the Deanery, enjoying its learned quiet, and interested in his host's young son, whose great gifts were early remarkable. Many a little note did Dean Wren make of curious things that came under his observation, particularly of an oak that grew in the New Forest and sent out young fresh leaves on Christmas Eve. So much discussion was raised about it at court and King James would so little believe it, that good Bishop Andrewes sent a chaplain on Christmas Eve to the forest, who gathered about a hundred fresh shoots, stuck them into wet clay, and sent them straight to the court, where Dr. Wren witnessed the opening of the boxes. The tree was then cut down by some spiteful fellow, 'who,' says the Dean, 'made his last stroke on his own leg, whereof he died, together with the old wondrous tree.' King Charles engaged Dr. Wren to make an estimate for a building at Windsor for the use of the Queen; it was to be of considerable size, containing a chapel, a banqueting room, galleries and rooms for the Lord Chamberlain and court officials. The estimate exists in business-like detail, the total amounting to 13,305_l._; but it was probably not even begun. [CHRISTOPHER AT WESTMINSTER.] To his other employments the Dean added the tender care of his young son. Christopher's case was one of those rare ones in which a precocious child not only lives to grow up, but also amply fulfils his early promise. His delicate health was the cause of much anxiety to his father and to his sister Susan, and it may be that the skill in nursing and medicine for which she was afterwards famous, had their beginning in her watchful care of her little brother. His frail health seems to have been rather a spur than a hindrance to his studies, and when very young he had a tutor, the Rev. W. Shepheard, who prepared him for Westminster, where he was sent in his ninth or tenth year. Westminster was then under the rule of its famous headmaster Dr. Busby, to whose especial care young Christopher was committed. The school with its stir of life, the grand abbey, the Houses of Parliament then empty and silent, Lambeth, from which his uncle's friend, Archbishop Laud, might be seen frequently coming across the river in his barge; the whole surroundings must have been wonderful to the country-bred boy who was one day to connect his name indissolubly with that of London. Did he, one cannot but wonder, ever on a holiday take boat down the river, shooting the dangerous arches of London Bridge, and look at S. Paul's with its long line of roof, its tall tower and shattered spire; little S. Gregory's nestling by its side, and all the workmen busied on the repairs which had been begun after King James's solemn thanksgiving in 1620? Laud, while Bishop of London, had carried on the works with a vigour that had given them a fresh impetus, and was one great cause of his unpopularity. Inigo Jones had superintended them and finished the interior, and at the west end, the stately portico of Portland stone, which, though incongruous, was in itself beautiful, was being erected by King Charles's orders. How little could the boy have guessed at the ruin which was approaching those pious builders, or the desecration and destruction that awaited the fine old building itself! At school no pains were spared with so promising a pupil as young Wren soon showed himself to be. His sister Susan married, in 1643, Mr. William Holder, subdean of the Chapel Royal, of a Nottinghamshire family, a good mathematician, and one 'who had good skill in the practic and theoretic parts of music'[27] Susan Wren was sixteen when she married, and though childless the marriage was a very happy one. Mr. Holder early discerned his young brother-in-law's talent for mathematics and gave him private lessons. Mr. Holder was subsequently appointed to the living of Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire, which he held until 1663. [THE FIRST FRUITS OF HIS PAINS.] Among the few autograph letters of Christopher Wren's which remain in the family, is one written to his father from Westminster in a boy's unformed hand, the faintly ruled lines still showing. [28]'Venerande Pater,--Sententia apud antiquos vulgata est, quam ex ore tuo me habuisse memini, Parentibus nihil posse reddi æquivalens. Frequentes enim curae et perpetui labores circa pueros sunt immensi quidem amoris indicium. At praecepta illa mihi toties repetita, quae animum ad bonas Artes, & Virtutem impellunt, omnes alios amores superant. Quod meum est, efficiam, quantum potero ne ingrato fiant hac munera. Deus Optimus Maximus conatibus meis adsit et Tibi, pro visceribus illis Paternae Pietatis, quae maximè velis praestet. 'Id orat Filius tuus, Tibi omni obsequio devotissimus, 'CHRISTOPHORUS WREN. 'Has tibi primitias Anni, Pater, atq. laborum Praesto (per exiguas qualibet esse sciam) Quas spero in messem posse olim crescere, vultu Si placido acceptes tu, foveasque sinu. 'To you, Deare Sir, your Son presenteth heere The first-fruits of his pains and of the yeare; Wich may (though small) in time an harvest grow, If you to cherish these, your favour shew. 'E. Musaeo Meo. 'Calendis Januarii 1641 (1642 N.S.)' [DIOCESE OF ELY.] While young Christopher was thus delighting his father with his 'first-fruits,' his uncle the Bishop was encountering many adversities. While he was busied in Norwich, and in the midst of his work, Dr. White, Bishop of Ely, died; he had resided mostly in London, as was then too commonly the habit of the bishops, and it is to be supposed that there was plenty of work to be done in the diocese. Laud reckoned it as a very important one on account of its university, and could think of no one so well suited to the post as Bishop Wren, who was a distinguished Cambridge scholar. To Ely accordingly the Bishop was translated, May 5, 1638, and rejoiced in renewing his connection with the university where his early years had been spent. The expenses attending so many removals must have fallen heavily upon him; all the more, as in Norwich the palace was out of repair and he lived for some time in a house of his own at Ipswich, which was probably a part of Mrs. Wren's property, finding that much attention was required by that part of his diocese. Prynne was born at Ipswich, and though shut up in the Tower of London,[29] retained friends in his native town; thus the Bishop knew he was entering a hornet's nest. Prynne speedily produced his 'Quench-Coal,' which professed to answer a tract called 'A Coal from the Altar,' wherein were explained the reasons for placing the Holy Table altarwise, and railing it in. Next came 'The News from Ipswich,' which reviled all bishops under the names of 'Luciferian Lord Bishops, execrable Traytors, Devouring Wolves,' and the like; especially attacking Wren, and declaring, that, 'in all Queen Marie's time, no such havoc was made in so short a time of the faithful ministers in any part, nay in the whole Land, than had been made in his Diocese.' There was one great riot at Ipswich, which the Bishop was able to quell. Prynne was fined, branded, and imprisoned in Carnarvon Castle, and the town was for the time tranquil, but Prynne was destined to be a deadly and utterly unscrupulous enemy. For nearly two years after his translation to Ely, Dr. Wren was able to govern his new diocese in comparative peace. Little opposition seems to have been made, for the factious spirit which was rampant in Norfolk and Suffolk was less violent here. In his beloved university there were many points which needed amendment. When he was master of Peterhouse and built the chapel, he gave it that which many colleges then lacked, and were lacking still when he returned, to visit Cambridge. The churchyards of the parish churches had been in many instances encroached upon and profaned, and in most of the chancels were 'common seats over high and unfitting that place.' 'In all these businesses,' says Archbishop Laud in his yearly report to the King, 'the Bishop hath been very tender, both out of his respect to his mother the University of Cambridge, and because divers of the benefices are impropriations belonging to some of the Colleges there.' Nor was Wren's care alone for the fabrics of the Church; he was careful to secure resident and diligent clergy in all the parishes as far as he could and to see that they did their duty. His advice and help were readily given. A clergyman, Mr. John Bois, applied to him for advice in the case of a woman of twenty-nine, of whom no one knew whether or no she was baptized. Mr. Bois had applied by letter and word of mouth to the previous Bishops of Ely (Bishops Buckeridge and White), and could get no answer. Bishop Wren replied to him promptly, directing him to baptize her forthwith, which was accordingly done.[30] Upon these peaceful labours the long-pending storm broke and called Wren to harder duties. In 1640 the discontent of the times declared itself openly in Scotland, where the Puritan party took up arms against the King, and began to league themselves with the party in England whose opinions or prejudices coincided with their own. King Charles had summoned a parliament, and again dismissed it, having obtained no assistance against the Scotch. 'The minds of men had taken such a turn,' says Hume, 'as to ascribe every honour to the refractory opposers of the King and the ministers. These were the only patriots, the only lovers of their country, the only heroes, and perhaps, too, the only true Christians.' The mob of sectaries in London, encouraged by the successes obtained by the Scotch, burst into S. Paul's, where the High Commission then sat, and tore down the benches, with cries of 'No Bishops--no commission!' Before this they had attacked Lambeth Palace, threatening to tear the Archbishop in pieces, and would probably have done so had he not been prepared for them. From that time he knew his life to be in constant peril. An unknown friend had written to warn him that the Scotch Puritans justified assassination, and openly hoped the Primate might meet the same fate as his early friend and patron, the Duke of Buckingham. His integrity and singleness of mind, to which Clarendon gives high testimony, had made him bitter enemies. A hasty temper and sharp mode of speech alienated many who could not but respect him. The difficulties of his task had been doubled by the lax, un-Catholic rule of his predecessor at Lambeth. Both Puritans and Romanists alike reckoned him as their greatest opponent. He was nearly seventy years old, and sadly felt that 'there wanted not many presages of his ruin and death.' The King's return, on October 30, brought a gleam of sunshine. [A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.] Evelyn[31] says:-- 'I saw His Majesty (coming from his Northern expedition) ride in pomp and a kind of ovation with all the markes of a happy peace, restored to the affections of his people, being conducted through London with a most splendid cavalcade; and on 3 November following (a day never to be mentioned without a curse), to that long, ungrateful, foolish, and fatal Parliament, the beginning of all our sorrow for twenty years after, and the period of the most happy monarchy in the world.' In truth its opening augured ill for the country and for the Church. Lord Strafford was impeached and sent to the Tower, and the Archbishop next attacked. Sir Harbottle Grimston, in a virulent speech, vented his hatred against Archbishop Laud; 'and those prelates he hath advanced--to name but some of them: Bishop Manwaring, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Bishop of Oxford, and Bishop Wren--the last of all those birds, but one of the most unclean ones.' The debate which followed ended--as in the temper of the House it was certain to do--in a vote that the Archbishop was a traitor. Allowed the afternoon at Lambeth to collect papers for his defence, he attended the evening prayers for the last time in the chapel that he had repaired and adorned with loving care. The service, which he had restored to its full beauty, soothed that bitter hour. 'The Psalms of the day (December 18) and chapter l. of Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me worthy to receive it,' he wrote in his diary. The poor thronged round Lambeth Palace, and bitterly lamented the departure of their best friend, showering blessings on his head as he was carried away. He remained in the custody of Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, ten weeks, compelled to pay 436_l._ for his charges, besides a fine of 500_l._ He was then transferred to the Tower. [WREN UNDER CENSURE.] The Archbishop being secured, the Bishops were next attacked. Hampden came to the Lords with a message to acquaint their lordships that the Commons had received matters of a high kind against the Bishop of Ely, for the 'setting up of idolatry and superstition in divers places, and acting the same in his own person;' adding that he was intending to escape from England, and that they therefore desired he might be put in security, to be forthcoming and abide the judgment of Parliament. Bishop Wren was in his place in the House when this summons came, and was ordered to find bail for 10,000_l._; helped by three of the bishops, he managed to do so. When the Primate was in custody, and Wren under censure, at the beginning of the next year Lord Strafford was attacked. Dr. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, not long released from the Tower, anxious to please the Commons, declared that the canon law forbade the Bishops to sit as judges in a case of blood. He spoke in the name of the other Bishops; and the decision was too welcome to Strafford's enemies not to be agreed to instantly; but it was a concession afterwards very dangerous to those who made it. The issue of that iniquitous trial, perhaps as great a perversion of justice as England had ever then known, needs no repetition here. The King's best advisers were in prison or under restraint, except good Bishop Juxon, who bravely told him he ought not, upon any considerations in the world, to do anything against his conscience; and Bishop Williams, who hated Strafford and Laud alike, sent by the Commons to induce the King to sign the death-warrant, had a fatal success. Bishop Wren came to Windsor after this to marry Princess Mary, the King's eldest daughter, to William, eldest son of Henry Frederick, Prince of Orange, whom he succeeded in six years. The alliance was one which gratified the Parliament, being so Protestant a connection. Little, however, could they have guessed how deadly an enemy Princess Mary's son would prove to the house of Stuart. Ten days after this wedding came May 12, when 'the wisest head in England was severed from the shoulders of Lord Strafford.' So writes John Evelyn. To the Archbishop, his friend's death must have been a terrible blow. He was just able to bestow a parting blessing through his prison window, and to hear Lord Strafford say, 'Farewell, my lord. God protect your innocency.' The Princess's marriage was the last occasion on which Bishop Wren was to officiate as Dean of the Chapels Royal. The Commons had been industriously at work against him since the first attack in December, and as Archbishop Laud said of Prynne, 'by this time their malice had hammered out somewhat.' The committee sent in a report, charging the Bishop with 'excommunicating fifty painful ministers, practising superstition in his own person, placing "the table" altarwise, elevation of the elements, the "eastward position," as it is now called, at the Eucharist, bowing to the Altar, causing all seats to be placed so that the people faced east, employing his authority to restrain "powerful preaching," and ordering catechising in the words of the Church Catechism only, permitting no prayer before the sermon but the bidding prayer (canon 5), publishing a book of articles, to which the churchwardens were sworn, containing 187 questions.' [BISHOP WREN'S RESIGNATION.] Upon this report a debate ensued, ending in a vote that it was the opinion of the House that Matthew Wren was unworthy and unfit to hold or exercise any office or dignity in the Church, and voting that a message be sent to the House of Lords to desire them to join the Commons in petitioning his Majesty to remove Bishop Wren from his person and service. Evelyn's expression, 'to such an exorbitancy had the times grown,' aptly describes the state of matters when, for details such as these of the government of a diocese, and for practices which, if they had been proved, were both legal and reasonable, an assembly of laymen presumed to pronounce a bishop unfit for his office in the Church. Whether the petition ever came before the King does not appear, but Wren thought it best to take the initiative; for he writes in his diary five days after the debate: 'I hardly obtained leave from the King to resign the deanery of the Chapels Royal.' FOOTNOTES: [20] _Vide infra_, p. 43. [21] I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev. R. N. Milford, rector of East Knoyle, for this account. See Sir R. C. Hoare's History of Wiltshire. The inscriptions on the columns have been destroyed. [22] So guide and govern as to profit souls. Love, Pray. One thing needful. Ask fit things from God. [23] Into whatsoever house ye enter, first say Peace be to this house. To so solemn a precept, by a seasonable vow, I, entering, have set my name. C. W. Rector. July 28. In the said year, i.e. MDCXVVIII. [24] 'To Thee, and to Thy service for ever, I offer a portion of Thy bounty, O Lord God Almighty.' [25] Christian Van Vianen was an embosser and chaser of plate, much esteemed by Charles I. The gilt plate above mentioned was wrought at the rate of 12_s._ per oz.--_Anecdotes of Painting_, Walpole, vol. ii. p. 323. [26] William Lenthall (born at Henley-on-Thames 1591), Speaker of the House of Commons 1640-1653 and 1660, lived chiefly at Lachford Manor in Great Haseley parish, which had been in his family since the reign of Edward IV. The property was sold by his eldest son. It may have been owing to the influence of the Speaker that Dean Wren escaped imprisonment during the Rebellion. [27] Wood, _Fasti Oxon._, p. 139. [28] 'Revered Father,--There is a common saying among the ancients which I remember to have had from your mouth; there is no equivalent that can be given back to parents. For their cares and perpetual labours concerning their children are indeed the evidence of immeasurable love. Now these precepts so often repeated, which have impelled my soul towards all that is highest in man, and to virtue, have superseded in me all other affections. What in me lies I will perform, as much as I am able, lest these gifts should have been bestowed on an ungrateful soul. May the good God Almighty be with me in my undertakings and make good to thee all thou most desirest in the tenderness of thy fatherly love. Thus prays thy son, most devoted to thee in all obedience, 'CHRISTOPHER WREN.' 'Script. hoc, A^o Ætatis suae, Decimo. Ab Octobris 20^o elapso' is the note in different hand of Dean Wren, who may very probably have felt that in the fast-rising storm all this fair promise might be swept away. [29] Heylin, _Cypr. Ang._, p. 309. [30] _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 336. Peck. It will be borne in mind that the Office for the Baptism of such as are of Riper Years was only added to the Prayer Book at the last revision in 1662. Mr. John Bois was made a Prebendary of Ely by Bishop Andrewes, and was one of the translators of the Bible (1604-1611); he was on the Cambridge Committee, and assisted in the translation of the Apocrypha.--_Key to the Holy Bible_, p. 28. Rev. J. H. Blunt. [31] _Diary_, October 30, 1640. CHAPTER III. 1641-1647. BISHOP WREN ACCUSED--WESTMINSTER ABBEY ATTACKED--IMPRISONMENT OF THE BISHOPS--BISHOP WREN'S DEFENCE--'UTTERLY DENIETH ALL POPISH AFFECTIONS'--THE GARTER JEWELS--ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED--CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD--PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS. For though outnumber'd, overthrown, And by the fate of war run down, Their duty never was defeated, Nor from their oaths and faith retreated; For loyalty is still the same, Whether it win or lose the game; True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shined upon. _Hudibras_, pt. iii. canto 2. The concession Bishop Wren had thus made did not satisfy the Commons, and on July 20 they drew out the report into twenty articles of accusation, containing all the former charges and several additional ones, among which were the setting up of altar-rails, ordering the Holy Communion to be received kneeling, ordering the reading of the 'Book of Sports,' and preaching in a surplice; causing by prosecutions 3,000 of the King's poor subjects to go beyond the sea. For these offences they prayed that Bishop Wren might answer, and suffer such punishment as law and justice required. The articles were transmitted to the House of Lords at a conference, and were read by Sir T. Widdrington, Recorder of York,[32] who prefaced them by a venomous speech against the Bishop of Ely, whom he compared to 'a wolf devouring the flock; an extinguisher of light; a Noah, who sent out doves from the ark, and refused to receive them back unless they returned as ravens, to feed upon the carrion of his new inventions, he himself standing with a flaming sword to keep such out of his diocese.' He accused the Bishop of raising fines for his own profit; called him a great robber, a malefactor, 'a compleat mirror of innovation, superstition, and oppression: an oppugner of the life and liberty of religion, and a devouring serpent in the diocese of Norwich.' These are but a few phrases from Sir Thomas's speech; he used no argument, adduced no proof, but contented himself simply with clamour and reviling, and these were amply sufficient. In the Long Parliament it was enough to accuse anyone, especially a bishop, of Popery, superstition and 'innovation'--which was a term invented by Bishop Williams, then as now commonly applied to the oldest dogmas and practices of the Church--to insure his imprisonment, or at the least a heavy fine. In Wren's Diary opposite the day of the month is merely, 'Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.' Dr. Pierce, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was attacked at the same time; but at first no active steps were taken against them, perhaps because the Commons found matters not yet ripe for a wholesale imprisonment of the Bishops. Dr. Wren well knew that matters would not stop here, and while awaiting the next attack began to prepare his Defence against the Articles of Accusation. The mob in the meanwhile were encouraged by caricatures, libels, and invectives to rail against the Bishops and impute every misfortune and every trade failure to them, by which means the Puritan leaders contrived to stir up a yelling mob of men and women. [ATTACK ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.] [THE DECOY DUCK.] All petitions against the Church were received and the petitioners encouraged and praised. The populace insulted the Bishops whenever they appeared, and threatened their lives. Westminster Abbey was attacked, when the Bishops were there, by a violent mob, led by Wiseman, a knight of Kent. The officers and choirmen of the Abbey with the boys of the School, among whom must have been Christopher Wren, defended it gallantly, and the fray ended when Wiseman was killed by a tile thrown from the battlements by one of the defenders. After this the Bishops who were in London met in the Deanery at Westminster, the lodging of Williams, Archbishop of York, who had just been translated from Lincoln to York, in succession to the late Archbishop Neile,[33] to consult what should be done. At the Archbishop's suggestion, they drew up a paper, remonstrating against the abuse offered them, and the manner in which they had been hindered from coming to the House of Lords, their coaches overset, their barges attacked and prevented landing, and they themselves beset and threatened. They claimed their right to sit in the House of Lords and vote, and protested against all that had been done since the 27th of that month (December, 1641), and all that should hereafter pass in time of this their forced and violent absence. This paper was signed by the Archbishop and eleven Bishops, of whom Bishop Wren was one, and presented to the King, who delivered it to Littleton, the Lord Keeper, to be communicated next day to the Peers. The Lord Keeper, who had already deserted his benefactor, Lord Strafford, contrary to the King's orders showed the paper first to 'some of the preaching party in both Houses,' and then to the Peers. Upon the reading a conference was desired between the Houses, and the Lord Keeper declared that the Bishops' paper contained 'matters of high and dangerous consequence, extending to the deep intrenching upon the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament.' The Commons, whose part, like that of the Lord Keeper[34] was pre-arranged, impeached the Bishops of high treason; the usher of the Black Rod was despatched to find and bring them before the House. They, lodging in different parts of London, were not all collected until eight o'clock on the winter's night, and then, their offence being signified, were committed to the Tower.[35] The Bishops of Durham and Lichfield, both aged and infirm, obtained leave to be in the custody of the Black Rod. The other bishops were carried to the Tower on the following morning. A libellous pamphlet was published at this time, entitled 'Wren's Anatomy, discovering his notorious Pranks &c., printed in the year when Wren ceased to domineer,' has in the title-page a print of Bishop Wren sitting at a table; out of his mouth proceed two labels: on one, 'Canonical Prayers;' on the other, 'No Afternoon Sermon.' On one side stand several clergy, over whose heads is written 'Altar-cringing Priests.' On the other, two men in lay habits, above whom is this inscription, 'Churchwardens for Articles.' It serves to show what were considered as really the Bishop's crimes, and that he had a fair proportion of faithful clergy.[36] The Archbishop of York had served the Commons' turn in procuring the King's assent to Lord Strafford's death-warrant, and had enjoyed for a short time a remarkable though transient popularity both on that account and as Laud's bitter opponent. The Commons were, however, soon weary of him, and gladly availed themselves of the pretext afforded by the protest to throw him aside. A pamphlet was published, which had a great success, entitled the 'Decoy Duck,' in allusion to the fens of his former diocese of Lincoln, in which he was represented as only released from the Tower in order to decoy the other bishops there. It was thought prudent that the bishops should make no attempt either to see each other, or Archbishop Laud, who had preceded them to that dreary lodging, so that only loving messages passed between the prisoners. So many bishops being in custody, and five sees vacant, the Commons took their opportunity, and brought in a Bill depriving the Bishops of their seats in Parliament, and of the power of sitting as judges or privy councillors. It was feebly opposed by the Churchmen, who had been alienated by the prelates' desertion of Lord Strafford, and was finally carried. The remark made a little later by Lord Falkland on Sir E. Deering's 'Bill for the Extirpation of Episcopacy,' when the Churchmen, weary of their attendance, left the House at dinner-time, and did not return--'Those who hated the bishops, hated them worse than the devil, and those who loved them did not love them so well as their dinner,'--appears to have been applicable to this occasion also. Not very long after the first-named Bill had passed, some of the bishops were set at liberty, but Bishop Wren was not released until May 6, 1642. [IMPRISONMENT.] It was a brief respite. He went down to his diocese, to a house at Downham, near Ely, where his wife and children were living, and there, August 17, he kept the last wedding-day that he and his wife were ever to celebrate together. On August 25 King Charles set up his standard at Nottingham and the Civil War began. On the 30th of the month Bishop Wren's house was entered by soldiers and he was taken prisoner, without, it will be observed, the shadow of a legal charge against him. On September 1st he was again thrown into the Tower, leaving Mrs. Wren with a daughter only eight days old and mourning for their son Francis, who had died in the previous month. Matthew, the eldest son, was then only thirteen years old. Bishop Wren's was a singularly steadfast, hopeful nature, and it may be that he expected to be speedily released by the victorious Royalist armies. Could he have foreseen the duration of his imprisonment and the miseries which were to befall the Church and the country, even his dauntless spirit might have been crushed. He did not seek an interview with Archbishop Laud, lest they should be accused of plotting, and so each injure the other. Otherwise it would not have been difficult, as the Archbishop was at first carelessly watched, in the hope that he would, by escaping, rid the Commons of a difficulty. The Archbishop 'would not, at seventy years, go about to prolong a miserable life by the trouble and shame of flying,' though Grotius sent him an intreaty to copy the example of his own marvellous escape from Loevenstein Castle twenty-one years previously.[37] The services in the Tower Chapel, where they probably met at first, could have given them little comfort, marred and mangled as the services were by the intruders, who came often with no better object than to preach insulting sermons against the prelates. Dr. Wren busied himself in the completion of the 'Defence,' to which allusion has been made in the first chapter.[38] It is too long to allow of being set out in full, but a few points may be touched upon. Of the 'fifty painful ministers' whom he was said to have excommunicated, for some of the sentences there was, as has been said, very sufficient reason. As the Bishop says, 'Excommunication doth by law fall upon those that are absent, either from visitation, or synods; and suspension is a censure which in the practice of those courts is incurred in one hour and taken off in another, and is of little or no grievance at all except it be wilfully persisted in.' He complains of so vague a charge, not stating who the clergy were, and proceeds as well as he can recollect to mention those who had fallen under his censure. For those whose licence to preach had been withdrawn, the greater number ought never to have received it at all; one had been a broken tradesman in Ipswich, one a country apothecary, another a weaver, another 'no graduate, not long translated from common stage-playing to two cures and a publick lecture.' Yet still when all were reckoned who had ever been censured or admonished, the Bishop thinks that the fifty will hardly be made up.[39] [BOWING TO THE ALTAR.] It is a curious instance of the temper of the times that one head of so serious an indictment should be that 'To manifest his Popish Affections, he in 1636, caused a crucifix to be engraven upon his Episcopal seal.' Bishop Wren carefully addresses himself to the defence of this point, and to that of bowing at the name of our Lord, and to the Altar. 'He began so to do by the example of that learned and holy Prelate Bishop Andrewes, now with God, under whom this defendant was brought up from his youth, and had depended upon him more than forty years since, and constantly and religiously practised the same upon all occasions ... as his own years and studies increased he found first, the bowing at the name of the Lord Jesus, had not only been practised by the clergy but had also been enjoined to all the people, ever since the first reformation, as appeareth by the Injunctions, 1^o Eliz. Cap. 52, thereby to testify our due acknowledgment that the Lord Jesus Christ, the true and Eternal Son of God, is the only Saviour of the world, in whom alone the mercies, graces and promises of God to mankind for this life and the life to come are fully and wholly comprised, 1^o Jac. Can. 18.' For bowing to the Altar, while setting out how old a practice of the Church it was, designedly continued at the Reformation, how a like reverence was paid always to the King, or to his chair of estate if he was not in the Presence Chamber, 'No Christian would ever deny that bowing or doing adoration, was to be used as a part of God's worship, the affirmative act being necessarily included in the negative precept, "Non adorabis ea, ergo adorabis Me."' 'No more as he humbly conceiveth is it any superstition, but a sign of devotion, and of an awful apprehension of God's divine Presence, to do Him reverence at the approach into the House of God, or unto the Lord's Table.... For the crucifix-- 'He utterly denieth all popish affections, and saith that the figure of Christ upon the Cross may be had without any popish affection, and that the said figure upon his seal did itself declare what affection it was to manifest. For there was this posy engraven with it, "[Greek: En hô kosmos emoi kagô tô kosmô]," being taken out of S. Paul, Gal. vi. 14.... In an holy imitation whereof this defendant beareth divers coats of arms (as the use is) upon the said seal, to wit, the arms of the See of Norwich, and the arms of the See of Hereford, and of the Deanery of Windsor, and of the Mastership of Peterhouse, together with his own paternal coat of an ancient descent; he, considering with himself, that these were emblems all, and badges but of worldly and temporal glories, and desiring that the world should have a right apprehension of him, and to testify that he did no way glory in any thing of this transitory world, but humbly endeavoured to wean himself from all temporal and vain rejoycing, he therefore caused such a small figure of Christ on the Cross to be set over all the said coats.' He adds that he principally used it in signing 'presentments of Popish recusants.' ... not to say that although the said seal lay all the year long locked up in a chest, but at the time of sealing, and that when any sealing there was no worship done by any; yet nevertheless, as soon as he understood that any had taken scruple at it, he presently, to avoid all pretence of scandal, caused the said seal to be altered and the figure of Christ to be wholly omitted.'[40] [_EASTWARD POSITION._] The part of the Defence, which has been most challenged, is that for the use of the 'Eastward position.' It is, however, important to remember that the Bishop had to defend himself against the charge, that once, while celebrating in the Tower Church at Ipswich, he had 'used idolatrous actions' in administering the Holy Communion, Consecrating the Elements with his face eastward, elevating the Paten and Chalice 'above his shoulders and bowing low either to or before them when set down on the Table.' The charge of 'idolatry' divides itself into three heads. The last two Wren met by a full denial, the first he confesses, while explaining his reason for his position in _that special instance_, when, as he says, the Elements being on the middle of the Holy Table, 'were farther from the end thereof than he, being but low of stature, could reach over his book unto them and yet still proceed in reading the words without stop or interruption and without danger of spilling the Bread and Wine ... and he humbly conceiveth that although the Rubrick[41] says that the Minister shall stand at the north side of the Table, yet it is not so to be meant as that upon no occasion during all Communion time he shall step from it.' For the rest, the whole tone of the Defence is brave and dignified; and despite the knowledge that his life was at stake, despite of the 'humbly conceiveth' which runs through it, it is evident that the Bishop considered his position to be in reality unassailable, and that he was more or less condescending in making these explanations. There is an irony in the studied simplicity with which the scholar and theologian explains elementary truths and ordinary rules of church discipline to a House of Commons who certainly stood in need of instruction in such matters. The Bishop, when his part was done, and he had received notice to prepare for trial on a day appointed, put his manuscript, with an injunction of secresy, into the hands of a lawyer who was supposed to be friendly, that he might give his advice on the technical and legal parts. 'The person,' says the 'Parentalia,' 'thus intrusted discovering (on the perusal) matters of such moment, as he conceived might be very expedient for the Prosecutors to be forewarned of, betrayed his trust, and to ingratiate himself treacherously delivered up the Bishop's papers to the chief persons in power of the governing faction. The consequence thereupon was--that the resolution which had been taken to bring him to trial for life was suddenly countermanded and an order by the House of Commons made to continue him in prison during their pleasure.' [_GARTER JEWELS._] So began the long years of Bishop Wren's captivity. Few trials could have been harder for a man of vigorous active nature to bear than this one which rendered him powerless, when all he held dear was at stake, loaded him with calumnies and prevented his uttering a word in his defence. The diary gives no hint of what his feelings were. In silence he resigned himself, resolved to afford no triumph to his enemies. Dean Wren was somewhat better off, though he had his share of misfortunes. The valuable plate and treasures belonging to the Order of the Garter were a serious responsibility, and, though the treasure-house was strong, he could not feel that it offered a sufficient security. The plate and armour were not easily hidden, but the Diamond George and Garter of Gustavus Adolphus he determined, if possible, to save. Accordingly, with the help of one trustworthy person and every precaution for secresy, he dug a hole in the treasury floor and there deposited them, concealing the place with the utmost care, and leaving a note in the hand of one worthy person intimating where the jewels might be found in the event of his death. He had good cause to rejoice in this precaution, for a few months later, in October 1642, down came 'one Captain Fogg pretending a warrant from the King and demanding the keys of the Treasury, threatening if they were denied him by the Dean and Prebendaries, to pull the Chapel about their ears.' As his threats had no effect, he forced the stone jambs of the doorway with crowbars, and carried off all the treasures except those which the Dean had buried. These, however, did not long remain secure, for in 1645 they were discovered and placed in the keeping of Colonel Ven, then governor of Windsor Castle, and finally, through several hands, reached the trustees of the Long Parliament, who sold the jewels to Thomas Beauchamp, their clerk. The Deanery was not spared during the first pillage of the chapel, though the Dean possessed a formal protection from the Committee of Public Safety, but was ransacked by the soldiers, and the Registry of the Garter, sealed by order of the House of Lords, broken open, and the records stolen. Dean Wren lost many things of value--books and manuscripts dear to the careful scholar, and also plate, including two large silver tankards, the gifts of the Elector Palatine. Of his own effects the Dean was only able, after an interval of six years, to recover one harpsichord valued at ten pounds; but he succeeded, after much expense and frequent attendances at Somerset House, by the favour of the trustees' chairman, Major Wither, in regaining the registers of the Order of the Garter, known from the colours of the velvet in which they were bound as 'the Black, the Blue, and the Red,' though not until a considerable space of time had passed; they contained all the principal records of the Order, and were therefore very valuable. The diamonds however, he was never able to regain, or the Altar Plate. After the first plunder of the Chapel and the Deanery Dr. Wren appears to have left Windsor and to have followed the Court for a time. Christopher, meanwhile, was at Westminster advancing steadily in learning, while the loyal principles of his family must have been confirmed by the whole tone of the school which was ardently royalist. South, in a sermon for January 30, says,[42] speaking of Westminster: 'Upon that very Day, that black and eternally infamous Day of the King's murder, I myself heard, and am now a witness, that the King was publickly prayed for in this School but an hour or two (at most) before his sacred head was struck off.' [_INCREASING TROUBLES._] Whether at this period Christopher ever saw his uncle in the Tower does not appear. The Bishop's position was sad enough. During 1643 and 1644 his diary records the death of five of his children; in the monotony of his prison life these sorrows must have pressed on him with double force. Nor was there any consolation to be derived from public matters. The royal cause, prosperous at first, grew less and less so, as the King's lack of money became an ever-increasing difficulty. Another grief, keenly felt by all Churchmen, was the order of the Parliament for the abolition of the Prayer Book and the alteration of the Thirty-nine Articles in a sense pleasing to the Puritans. Then came the long-deferred trial of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was treated with a cruel disregard of his high position and of his age, every kind of insult and indignity being offered him. He however rose superior to it all, and defended himself with an eloquence, vigour, and courage which dismayed and enraged his enemies, though it could not change their purpose. The Bishop of Ely's name was frequently mentioned, and his promotion objected to as one of the Archbishop's crimes; but no further steps were taken against him then, as he was safe in custody, and the Commons had enough on their hands. In his defence, the Archbishop thought it prudent to say nothing respecting the Bishops whose advancement was objected against him, deeming it for their interest to entangle them as little as possible in his misfortunes. They were able to speak for themselves he said, but the memory of the dead Archbishop Neile he warmly defended. The trial was long protracted in order to give a specious colouring of justice to the predetermined sentence. For this Prynne 'kept a school of instruction' for the witnesses, and tampered with the Archbishop's papers, of which he had forcibly possessed himself. The spirit that guided the whole trial was shown in his reply to one who said the Archbishop was a good man. 'Yea, but we must make him ill.' The Peers raised a feeble opposition. The King, whose consent the Parliament had not attempted to procure, sent to the Archbishop by a sure hand, from Oxford, a full pardon under the Great Seal, but neither received the least attention. [_ARCHBISHOP LAUD MURDERED._] On January 10, on Tower Hill, the unjust sentence was fulfilled. Few things are more touching than the account given by his chaplain and biographer, Heylin, of the way in which the Archbishop met that cruel fate. It is some comfort to remember that, though the Church Services were then forbidden, yet his enemies did not interfere, but suffered the Burial Service to be read in All Hallows, Barking, where he was first interred. After the Restoration, the coffin was removed to S. John's College, Oxford, and buried under the altar in the chapel. He left Bishop Wren and Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, executors of his will. It contained a great number of bequests for charitable foundations, especially for his native town of Reading; but as his whole estate had been taken from him, these were unfulfilled. His murder was an immense triumph to all the Sectarians in England and Scotland, who probably considered it as a death-blow to the Church. The Bishop of Ely in his cell must have listened in grief and horror to the tolling of the Tower bell which proclaimed the bloody death of the friend with whom he had laboured for many years, latterly his patient fellow-prisoner. The entry in the diary is brief: 'Parce, O Deus Requisitor sanguinis.' The same fate seemed very near to himself, and he was ready to follow the Archbishop; but he had eighteen years of close imprisonment to endure, and a different work to do. Early in 1644, George Monk, then a colonel in the King's service, was taken prisoner by Fairfax in his attack upon the army besieging Nantwich, in Cheshire. He was imprisoned first at Hull, and then, as he was thought too important to be exchanged except for some considerable prisoner, he was sent to the Tower, and there remained two years. The Tower charges were high, and a long confinement in its walls was a strain upon the resources of a prisoner, which reduced those, whose fortune, like that of Monk, was scanty, to extreme poverty. The King, who knew Monk's condition, contrived to send him a hundred guineas, and upon this he existed for some time, and resisted the offers of Cromwell, then rapidly rising in power and authority. Somehow or other, Monk contrived to obtain several interviews with Bishop Wren, who did his best to confirm the soldier in his loyalty. He perceived that Monk, whose popularity with the army was very great, and whose military talents were thought to be of a high order, might one day be a valuable ally, and a useful counterpoise to Cromwell. At length, when the King's cause appeared for the time lost, and Monk himself was reduced to extreme poverty, he yielded to Cromwell's request, and accepted a commission in the Irish army, under his kinsman Lord Lisle. Before his release, Monk had a final interview with the Bishop of Ely, and, as he knelt to ask the Bishop's blessing, bound himself with a solemn engagement never to be an enemy to his king, and said he was going to do his majesty the best service he could against 'the rebels in Ireland, and hoped he should one day do him further service in England.' Bishop Wren held firmly to his trust in Monk's loyalty, though many things might well have shaken his confidence. In the curious life of Dr. John Barwick, one of the King's most faithful agents, from whom Sir Walter Scott may have taken many of the features of his indefatigable plotter 'Dr. Rochecliffe,' it is said that[43] 'he' (Dr. Barwick) 'often heard the Right Reverend Bishop of Ely promise himself all he could wish from the General's fidelity.' As Monk gave no other hint of his intentions, refusing even to receive Charles II.'s letters, this assurance was precious to the Royalists. [_CHRISTOPHER AT OXFORD._] In 1646, Christopher Wren left Westminster, and at the age of fourteen went up to Oxford, and was entered as a Gentleman Commoner at Wadham College. He had, young as he was, distinguished himself at Westminster, inventing an astronomical instrument, of which no description remains, and dedicating it to his father in a short Latin poem,[44] which has been often praised for the flow and smoothness of its lines; a set of Latin verses in which the signs of the Zodiac are transformed into Christian emblems, is, in spite of its ingenuity, much less successful; a short poem on the Nativity also in Latin, belongs probably to the same date, and is of the same order of poetry. Far more graceful are the playful lines cut on the rind of an immense pomegranate sent to 'that best man, my dearest friend E. F., by Christopher Regulus,' in which on the 'Pomo Punico,' as he calls it, Christopher rings the changes on 'Punic gifts' and 'Punic faith,' and declares his pomegranate is connected neither with the one nor the other. One English poem, an attempt to paraphrase the first chapter of S. John's Gospel, fails of necessity from the impossibility of such an attempt, and Wren handles the English verse far more stiffly and uneasily than he did the Latin. What however is striking is the penmanship of the 'Parentalia' autograph; the writing, the capital letters, and the little flourishes are executed with a delicate finish really remarkable. There is no date to this autograph, but the handwriting appears firmer and more regular than that of the dedication to his father, and it was probably an Oxford composition. Christopher came up to Oxford a slight, delicate boy, with an understanding at once singularly quick and patient, readily seconded by very dexterous fingers, and keen powers of observation. He brought with him a reputation for, in the phrase of the day, 'uncommon parts,' and speedily showed that besides a classical education, he had acquired a strong bent for the experimental philosophy of the 'New learning.' Oxford, when Wren came there, was not only the seat of learning, it was a Court and a Camp as well, to which all the Royalist hearts in England turned. In the midst of these curiously differing influences, Christopher pursued his studies under the care of the 'most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins,'[45] as Evelyn calls him, a man as devoted to experiments as Christopher himself. Dean Wren had been in Bristol with his daughter and son-in-law, accompanying Prince Rupert, and on the Prince's unexpected surrender of the town to Fairfax (1645), seems to have returned with Prince Rupert and Mr. and Mrs. Holder, either to his own living of Great Haseley, or to Mr. Holder's at Bletchingdon. [_KING CHARLES LEAVES OXFORD._] In those times no place could long be a tranquil habitation. The King's affairs went from bad to worse, and at length the near approach of Fairfax with his victorious army made it evident that Oxford could no longer be a safe refuge for the Court. King Charles accordingly left Oxford in disguise, and, attended only by Mr. Ashburnham and Dr. Michael Hudson,[46] who was well acquainted with the lanes and byeways of the country, proceeded by Henley-on-Thames and St. Albans, to Southwell in Nottinghamshire, throwing himself on the loyalty of the Scots, then encamped at Newark. How unworthy of his confidence they proved to be, and how they finally sold him to the Parliament, are matters of history too notorious for repetition here. Oxford, thus saved from the ruin of a siege, capitulated to Fairfax June 24, 1646, on the express condition that the University should be free from 'sequestrations, fines, taxes and all other molestations whatsoever.' But the Parliament was not famous for keeping its engagements, and at once proceeded to break through those made with Oxford and reduce it to the same condition as Cambridge, which they had devastated in 1642. A passage from 'Querela Cantabrigiensis,' which is supposed to be written by Dr. Barwick, gives some idea of what this condition was: 'And therefore,' he says, 'if posterity shall ask "Who thrust out one of the eyes of this kingdom, who made Eloquence dumb, Philosophy sottish, widowed the Arts, and drove the Muses from their ancient habitation? Who plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of their chairs, and silenced them in prison or their graves? Who turned Religion into Rebellion, and changed the apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy, and tore the garland from the head of Learning to place it on the dull brows of disloyal ignorance?" If they shall ask "Who made those ancient and beautiful chapels, the sweet remembrances and monuments of our fore-fathers' charity and the kind fomenters of their children's devotion, to become ruinous heaps of dust and stones?"... 'Tis quickly answered--"Those they were, who endeavouring to share three Crowns and put them in their own pockets, have transformed this free kingdom into a large gaol, _to keep the liberty of the subject_: they who maintain 100,000 robbers and murderers by sea and land, _to protect our lives and the propriety of our goods_ ... they who have possessed themselves of his majesty's towns, navy, and magazines, _to make him a glorious king_; who have multiplied oaths, protestations, vows, leagues and covenants, _for ease of tender consciences_; filling all pulpits with jugglers for the Cause, canting sedition, atheism, and rebellion, _to root out popery and Babylon and settle the kingdom of Christ_:... The very same have stopped the mouth of all learning (following herein the example of their elder brother the Turk), lest any should be wiser than themselves, or posterity know what a world of wickedness they have committed."'[47] [_PHILOSOPHICAL MEETINGS._] Wadham College probably suffered less than many, as its head, Dr. Wilkins, who had married Cromwell's sister, was very submissive to the then Government. As matters settled down somewhat at Oxford towards 1648, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, Dr. Wallis, Mr. Theodore Hank, who came from the desolated Palatinate, and Mr. S. Foster, the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, met together weekly, 'to discourse and consider,' writes Dr. Wallis, '(precluding theology and state affairs), of philosophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto: as physick, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks, chymicks, mechanicks, and natural experiments with the state of those studies as then calculated at home and abroad.' The meetings, at which Christopher Wren, young as he was, appears to have been a constant attendant, were frequently held at the house of Dr. Goddard for the convenience of his having there a workman skilled in the nice work of grinding glasses for microscopes and telescopes. Dr. Goddard became body physician to Cromwell, was by him made Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and subsequently represented the university in Parliament. Dr. Wallis, a famous Oxford mathematician, was employed by the Parliament to decipher the King's cabinet of letters taken at Naseby, and also was proved by Matthew Wren, the son of the Bishop, to have deciphered several very important letters sent by Charles II. to England, and intercepted at Dunkirk. As by degrees these meetings were more largely attended, and men came who held very different opinions from those of Dr. Goddard and Dr. Wallis, the exclusion of theology and politics from the discussions was a needful precaution. Many inventions of Christopher's date from this time, a design for a reflecting dial for the ceiling of a room, ornamented with quaint figures and devices, some Latin lines ending in a chronogram of his age, and the date of the invention, suggested probably by the one in the rectory at East Knoyle, which he had known from a child; an instrument to write in the dark; and an instrument of use in gnomonics.[48] At the same time he had attracted the notice of Sir Charles Scarborough, a friend of Dean Wren's, then just rising to fame as a surgeon. Christopher, whose health, as has been said, was delicate, fell dangerously ill and considered that he owed his life to the skilful care of his new friend. Dr. Scarborough, who could recite in order all the propositions of Euclid and Archimedes, and could apply them, found in his patient a kindred spirit, and induced Wren, young as he was, to undertake the translation into Latin of the 'Clavis Aurea,' by the Rev. W. Oughtred, a mathematical treatise of great reputation. [_MR. OUGHTRED._] That Christopher was able to satisfy the old man is evident from the preface, even while making allowance for the complimentary style of the time. Mr. Oughtred speaks of-- 'Mr. Christopher Wren, Gentleman Commoner of Wadham College, a youth generally admired for his talents, who, when not yet sixteen years old, enriched astronomy, gnomonics, statics and mechanics, by brilliant inventions, and from that time has continued to enrich them, and in truth is one from whom I can, not vainly, look for great things.'[49] Mr. Oughtred was a Canon of Chichester, and after the siege of the city and the wanton sack of the cathedral by Sir E. Waller in 1642, deprived and heart-broken, wandered to Oxford, refusing the offers of home and emolument which came to him from France, Italy, and Holland. He gladly availed himself of young Wren's services in the work of translation, which he had not energy to undertake himself, and waited, hoping for better times. When at length they drew near, and he heard of the vote passed at Westminster (May 1, 1660), for the Restoration of the Royal Family, the relief was too great, and Mr. Oughtred 'expired in a sudden ecstasy of joy.'[50] Dean Wren, in the meanwhile, though deprived of his living, does not seem to have been in any personal danger, having a protection from Parliament, possibly obtained by his friend the Elector Palatine, or Speaker Lenthall, by favour of which he boldly attended the Committee Meetings at Somerset House. He made an attempt to gather together the Knights of the Garter, and addressed the following petition, an autograph copy of which is contained in the 'Parentalia': '_To ye Right Honble ye Knights of ye Most Noble Order of ye Garter._ 'Dr. C. Wren Register and Secretarye of ye sd Most Noble Order of ye Garter in discharge of his sworne service. 'Prayeth, that according to ye commission directed to all ye Honble Peers of ye said Most Noble Order or to any Three of them [to muster and consult in ye absence of ye Sovraine upon all such emergent occasions as may concerne ye advancement or indemnity of ye said Most Noble Order] 'It may therefore please your Honors to give yr. consent for some sett Time and Place of meeting with such convenient speed as may best stand with ye great Affairs. That yr. humble Servant ye Register may Represent to yr. Honors some few Things, w^{ch} hee humbly conceaves may much concerne ye Honor & Interest of ys. Most Honble Order to bee provided for.' 'I delivered this Petition in ye Parliament Howse before they sate, Jan. 23d. 1647.' (O. S.) [_GOD'S PRISONER._] A copy of this Petition he sent to the Deputy Chancellor. It would seem to have startled the Knights, and Dr. Wren evidently wishes the way smoothed. His letter, also an autograph, is headed 'Copye of my letter sent to the Deputie Chancelor for removal of some scruples w^{ch} arose among ye Knights of ye Order before ye Time of their meeting in Council.' 'Honble Chancelor.--I have no pticular aime in this my humble suite to ye Lords of ye Order to propose any private or Personal Interest of my owne, or any other man's, much lesse to engage their Honors in anything that may seeme to contest w^{th} or dissent from ye Highe Court of Parliament wherein they now sit & from whence I am not ignorant ye Most Honble Society of ye Most Noble Order receaved as at first Life and Being soe now holds its establishment. My humble & earnest desires, are to represent such Things only as I humbly conceave may nearly concerne ye Honor & Interests of their Most Noble Order. To w^{ch} (next as yr. Selfe Honored Sir) I am by oath obliged: (to preserve ye Honor thereof, & of all in itt to my utmost Power) For zeale of this duty w^{ch} upon ye intimation of what I here profess, I presume they will not reject, I beseech you to give y^m this assurance as yf itt were from ye tender of my owne mouthe, who am at this period God's Prisoner, & under Him, 'Yr servant, C. W.' Whether the Dean succeeded in gathering the Knights together, and what the 'Things nearly concerning their Honor' may have been if they were _not_, as the letter implies they were not, the King's deliverance, the 'Parentalia' does not say, neither does it give any hint of the illness to which the end of the Dean's letter appears to point. FOOTNOTES: [32] _Vide supra_, p. 17. [33] R. Neile, successively Bishop of Rochester, Lichfield, Lincoln, Durham and Winchester, and Archbishop of York, died 1640. Godwin speaks strongly of his loyalty to Church and King, and the hatred borne to him by the Puritans.--_Praesul. Ang._ [34] 'The Commons not being able to come at their intended alterations in the Church while the Bench of Bishops remained entire in the House of Peers, formed several schemes to divide them.'--_Hist. of the Puritans_, vol. ii. p. 388. Neale. [35] 'We, poor souls,' says Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, in his _Hard Measure_, 'who little thought we had done anything that might deserve a chiding, are now called to our knees at the bar, and charged severally with high treason, being not a little astonished at the suddenness of this crimination compared with the perfect innocency of our own intentions, which were only to bring us to our due places in Parliament with safety and speed, without the least purpose of any man's offence; but now traitors we are in all the haste, and must be dealt with accordingly. For on December 30, in all the extremity of frost at eight o'clock on the dark evening, are we voted to the Tower; only two of our number had the favour of the Black Rod, by reason of their age, which though desired by a noble lord on my behalf would not be granted; wherein I acknowledge and bless the gracious Providence of my God, for had I been gratified I had been undone both in body and purse; the rooms being strait, and the expense beyond the reach of my estate.'--_Annals of England_, p. 420. [36] _Biographical History of England_, vol. ii. p. 157. Grainger. [37] _Vide Life of Barnevelde_, vol. i. p. 408. Motley. [38] P. 26. [39] 'Certainly,' says Nalson, 'notwithstanding this black accusation (he is speaking of the 'fifty painful ministers'), there cannot be a greater demonstration of the innocence of this worthy prelate than the very articles; and that this accusation wanted proof to carry it further than a bare accusation, and a commitment to the Tower, where, with the courage and patience of a primitive Christian, he continued prisoner till the year 1660.'--_History of the Puritans_, vol. ii. p. 223. Grey, Examination of Neale's. [40] It is curious that nearly as violent an attack was made a hundred years later upon Bishop Butler (the author of the _Analogy_), because, when Bishop of Bristol, he put up a plain, inlaid, black marble cross in the Chapel of the Palace there. He died 1752. [41] The Rubric before the Prayer of Consecration in the Prayer Book of 1559-1604, was simply:-- 'Then the Priest, standing up, shall say as followeth.' The first rubric of position at the beginning of the service had placed him 'at the north side of the Table.' For a full and very interesting defence of Bishop Wren, see _Worship in the Church of England_, Right Honourable A. B. B. Hope, and, _Dean Howson 'Before the Table,'_ by the same author, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, January, 1876. [42] South's _Sermons_, vol. v. p. 45, ed. 1727. [43] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 267, ed. 1724. [44] See _Appendix I._ [45] Dr. Wilkins published a book (_A Discovery of a New World_), concerning the art of flying, in which he said he did not question but in the next age it will be as usual to hear a man call for his wings when he is going a journey, as it is now to call for his boots. The Duchess of Newcastle objecting to Dr. Wilkins the want of baiting places on the way to his New World, he expressed his surprise that the objection should be made by a lady who had all her life been employed in building castles in the air. (_The Guardian_, No. 112. Addison.) This scheme does not seem to have reached the length of an experiment! [46] A most zealous Royalist; King Charles called him 'my plain-dealing chaplain,' because Dr. Hudson told him the truth when others would not. He was murdered at Woodcroft House, Northamptonshire, 1648. _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 378. Peck. [47] _Annals of England_, p. 432. [48] i.e. the art of dial-making. [49] _Lives of the Gresham Professors._ Ward, p. 96. [50] _Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 290. CHAPTER IV. 1646-1658. DEATH OF MRS. M. WREN--KING CHARLES MURDERED--A MONOTONOUS WALK--INVENTIONS--A DREAM--ALL SOULS' FELLOWSHIP--BEGINNINGS OF ROYAL SOCIETY--ASTRONOMY--AN OFFER OF RELEASE--THE CYCLOID--CROMWELL'S FUNERAL--LETTERS FROM LONDON. La Royauté seule, depuis vingt ans, n'avait pas été mise à l'épreuve; seule elle avait encore à faire des promesses auxquelles on n'eut pas été trompé.... On y revenait enfin, après tant d'agitations comme au toit paternel qu'a fait quitter l'espérance et où ramène la fatigue.--_Monk_, par M. Guizot, p. 69. A heavy sorrow fell upon the imprisoned Bishop of Ely at the close of 1646. His wife was worn out by grief for the loss of her children and anxiety for her husband, for whom Laud's fate seemed but too probable, and the Bishop's diary records that on 'December 8, 1646, Ad Christum evolavit pia anima conjugis E. mediâ post 5^{vum} matutinam.'[51] The diary contains no remark, no murmur, though this loss left Bishop Wren very desolate and full of anxiety for his seven surviving children, of whom the eldest, Matthew, was but seventeen. Upon such troubles as these prison life must have pressed heavily, and if Bishop Wren's captivity was half as strict as was that of Dr. John Barwick, who was consigned to the Tower in 1650,[52] it was a sufficient hardship. Every rumour which reached his ears from the tumultuous world outside must have added to his grief. The King's affairs grew more desperate, and the shadow of Cromwell loomed larger and larger. Probably the Bishop did not expect a long captivity. It must have come to his ears that in the proposed treaty of Newport (1648), 'the persons only who were to expect no pardon were the Princes Rupert and Maurice; James, Earl of Derby; John, Earl of Bristol; William, Earl of Newcastle; Francis, Lord Cottington; George, Lord Digby; Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,' and some fifty others.[53] Condemned thus without a trial, without a chance of his vindication being known, the Bishop betook himself to prayer, and to writing a commentary on the Holy Scriptures, a task for which, as a fine Hebrew, Greek and Latin scholar, he was well qualified. In this work he found solace and support, and quietly waited until the tyranny should be overpast. There is no need to recall in detail the thickcoming sorrows of that time; it is but too easy to guess how doubly galling imprisonment must have been to Bishop Wren when the royalists who were at liberty were straining every nerve, exhausting every device to save if possible their beloved King from his fate. In vain--at length came the fatal January 30 (1649), and King Charles, attended by Bishop Juxon, walked to the scaffold and uttered his final words, 'I have a good cause and a gracious God on my side; I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.' There was one of the King's loyal subjects who, we may well believe, envied Bishop Juxon his privilege of attendance on his master to the last--Bishop Wren, who had been with him in bright early days, had attended him when Prince of Wales, on his romantic journey to Spain, and, when the weight of the corruptible crown first came upon the prince's head, had accompanied him on the journey to Scotland for his coronation at Scone, who ever since then had been so trusted by him. No word of his own grief, of his unavailing longing to see his King once more, and once more kiss his hand, is expressed in the brief record in his diary. It is simply 'A sanguinibus, O Deus!' [_A MONOTONOUS WALK._] Horror at the crime, at the stain of innocent blood which now defiled his country, seems to have swallowed up all expression of personal feeling. By degrees the rigour of his imprisonment appears to have been a little relaxed, and by the connivance of his gaoler he obtained the opportunity, rarely granted to prisoners, of walking upon the leads of one of the towers. Thither he daily went for his exercise, and, says the writer of the 'Parentalia,' 'by a just computation, he walked round the world. The earth being affirmed to be 216,000 miles in compass (at a calculation of sixty miles to a degree);[54] if it were possible to make a path round the earth, an able footman going constantly twenty-four miles a day, would compass it in 900 days, and so on in proportion of time and miles.' It would seem that the Bishop, finding his life was for the time spared, and having a steady conviction that the evil days would pass, had determined to keep himself ready in body, as in soul, for what work the future might bring. A prison life leaves little to be recorded; the days wore away in the Tower, divided between devotion, study, and that unchanging monotonous walk which at least gave the prisoner a distant glimpse of the world from which he was excluded. He was allowed the Bible and paper and ink, but no other books. It is the testimony of one who has studied Bishop Wren's manuscript-- 'He wrote in an exquisite hand, in very fair Latin, a commentary on much of Holy Scripture enough to fill an oak box of no mean dimensions. This box he committed to the care of Dr. Beaumont, master of S. Peter's College.[55] Had the Puritans read the MS. they would have found some antidote to their poison.' Two sermons and some treatises were also written during his captivity. Probably suspicion attached to anything that he did, for it is said to have been all written by stealth. His nephew's life differed as widely from his own as did their characters. Christopher was at Oxford, deep in the experiments of the 'New learning,' and in the inventions which it suggested to his ready brain and dexterous fingers. [_DIPLOGRAPHIC PEN._] One invention which he was at the time proud of was that of a-- 'diplographic instrument for writing with two pens,' whose uses he thus describes; 'by the help of this instrument, every ordinary penman may at all times be suddenly fitted to write two several copies of any deeds and evidences, from the shortest to the longest length of lines, in the very same compass of time, and with as much ease and beauty, without any dividing or ruling; as, without the help of the instrument, he could have despatched but one.' So successful was this instrument, that he obtained a patent for it for seventeen years. In the same year an exact duplicate of this invention was brought from France, and another patent taken out for the same number of years, by Mr. William Petty,[56] who claimed to be the inventor. Wren was indignant at the notion that he had copied another person's idea, and gives good reasons for his belief that his own instrument had been described to Petty by a friend of his. Three years later Wren wrote of it as 'an obvious Thing, a cast-off Toy;' ending, 'Indeed though I care not for having a Successor in Invention, yet it behoves me to vindicate myself from the Aspersion of having a Predecessor.' Another invention Wren describes as a 'weather clock.' It consisted of a clock affixed to a weather cock that moved a rundle covered with paper, upon which the clock moved a black-lead pencil, so that the observer, by the traces of the pencil on the paper, might certainly conclude what winds had blown in his absence for twelve hours' space. The 'Parentalia' contains a careful drawing in pen and sepia of this invention elaborately worked out and remarkable for the truth and finish of the drawing. Some of these designs, and an instrument for sowing corn, nearly identical with a modern 'drill,' he dedicated in a quaintly formal letter to his father's friend, the Prince Palatine. He appeared before the Prince in another character, due probably to his Westminster training. A play was performed (about 1652) at Oxford before the Prince, Dr. Seth Ward,[57] and several others, entitled 'Hey for Honesty, down with Knavery,' translated by Thomas Randolph from the Plutus of Aristophanes, in which Christopher sustained the part of Neanias.[58] It is provoking to have this bare record merely, and no clue as to the success or failure of any part of the performance, especially where the young actor was concerned. To about the same date belongs a Latin letter written by Christopher to his father, signed 'Christophorus Regulus,' describing in glowing terms a visit paid in the spring to a friend's house. Some pretty touches give 'the lofty woods with their clamorous republic of rooks, the great fountains, the placid pools--without, you might say a terrestrial paradise, but within, heaven itself.' It may have been, though there is nothing in its favour but conjecture, that this was Bletchingdon House, and that among 'the virgins singing holy psalms,' whom he mentions, was his future bride Faith, (or as she spelt it, 'ffaith') Coghill. The letter says much, as does all that passed between them, for the warm affection existing between father and son, and the sincerely religious tone of Christopher's mind. [_BATTLE OF WORCESTER._] The desperate efforts of the Royalists shortly after this period to overthrow Cromwell's tyranny and to put Charles II. on the throne, received a cruel check in the disastrous battle of Worcester (1651), Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' This crushed the hopes of the Royalists and obliged them to turn their every effort and thought to effecting the escape of their prince. He must have passed very near Knoyle Hill, when he crossed Salisbury Plain and met at Stonehenge the friends who at last succeeded in conveying him to the coast. Knoyle Hill had its own fugitive to shelter. Aubrey, the Wiltshire Antiquary, gives the account of a vivid dream which Christopher Wren had, when staying, in the autumn of 1651, with Dean Wren at Knoyle. He 'dreamed he saw a fight in a great market-place, which he knew not, where some were flying and others pursuing; and among those who fled, he saw a kinsman of his, who went into Scotland with the King's army. They heard in the country that the King was come into England, but whereabouts he was they could not tell. The next night came his kinsman to Knoyle Hill, and brought with him the disastrous news of Charles II.'s defeat at Worcester.'[59] It seems likely that this 'kinsman' was Bishop Wren's son Matthew, who afterwards went to the Hague. There also, when his escape had been with great difficulty contrived, went King Charles, as his brother-in-law, the Prince of Orange, was his steady friend. In the hope of utterly putting down the Cavaliers, the greatest severity was shown at this time to all who had helped the King, and even to those who merely boasted of their good will towards him. Among those who suffered was Inigo Jones, who had been architect to James I. and to Charles I., had been steadily loyal to the Stuarts, and was therefore an object of suspicion. He lived to see what was thought the utter downfall of the monarchy, and following upon this the desecration and ruin of the finest churches in England. S. Paul's, on which he had spent much labour and skill, was, as being connected with Archbishop Laud, an object of special hatred to the Puritans. It suffered every possible injury. The fine portico designed by Inigo Jones was filled with stalls, blocked up by booths, and used as a market-place. The year after the battle of Worcester, Inigo Jones died, poor and lonely, in a lodging close to the defaced cathedral. He and Christopher Wren must probably have met. Wren had a sincere admiration for his predecessor's skill, and spoke of the S. Paul's portico as 'an exquisite piece in itself.' [_MAKING HIMSELF._] In the autumn of 1653, Wren, then just twenty-one, was elected to a fellowship at All Souls, and happy in the comparative tranquillity of Oxford, pursued the various studies which he loved. All this time he was 'making himself,' as was said of Sir Walter Scott in his childhood on the Scotch hills, though perhaps at the time no one could have guessed the particular manner in which he would distinguish himself. In the following summer he made acquaintance with John Evelyn, who had come up to Oxford to hear the 'Philosophy Act.' Evelyn mentioned that after a dinner at All Souls he 'visited that miracle of a youth Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely.'[60] 'A day or two later Evelyn dined with 'that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins at Wadham College, who showed him his "transparent apiaries, built like castles, and so ordered one upon another as one might take the honey without hurting the bees," his "hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words, by a long, concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at good distance;" and his gallery filled with mathematical and other curiosities; a "thermometer," still a curiosity, though fifty-two years had elapsed since Galileo invented the first; a "way-wiser," which, when placed in a coach, exactly measured the miles it travelled, and showed them by an index; "a monstrous magnet," and many other inventions, most of them of his owne and that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble which he had stained with a lively red very deepe, as beautiful as if it had been natural.' The acquaintance thus made with Christopher Wren ripened into a friendship lasting until Evelyn's death in 1706. Dr. Wilkins was also of Evelyn's friends, though he was very submissive to Cromwell.[61] It is curious to contrast two accounts which occur in the same page of Evelyn's diary. '_December 25, 1655._ There was no more notice taken of Christmas Day in churches. I went to London, where Dr. Wild preached the funeral sermon of Preaching, this being the last day, after which Cromwell's proclamation was to take place, that none of the Church of England should dare either to preach or administer Sacraments, teach schoole etc. on paine of imprisonment or exile. So this was the mournfullest day that in my life I had seene, or the Church of England herselfe since the Reformation; to the greate rejoicing of both Papist and Presbyter. So pathetic was his discourse (on 2 Cor. xiii. 9) that it drew many teares from the auditory. Myself, wife, and some of our family received the Communion; God make me thankfull that hath hitherto provided for us the food of our soules as well as bodies! The Lord Jesus pity our distressed Church, and bring back the captivity of Sion! '_February 10, 1656._ I heard Dr. Wilkins preach before the Lord Mayor in S. Paul's, shewing how obedience was preferable to sacrifice. He was a most obliging person, who had married the Protector's sister, and tooke greate paines to preserve the Universities from the ignorant sacrilegious commanders and souldiers, who would faine have demolished all places and persons that pretended to learning.' [_GERM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY._] Dr. Wilkins appears, like too many of that time, to have regarded the Church as utterly overthrown, and probably believed honestly in his peculiar interpretation of the text upon which he preached. Much credit is however due to him for the idea of the Oxford meetings, and for the hospitality which he showed. These meetings were the germ of the Royal Society, and to them Dr. Thomas Sprat (afterwards Bishop of Rochester), a great friend of Christopher Wren's, bears testimony:-- 'Wadham College,'[62] he says, 'was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men. Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet, one with another, without being engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal age. And from the institution of that assembly it had been enough if no other advantage had come but this; that by these means there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds receiving from them their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed against all the enchantments of enthusiasm.... It was in good measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest, that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline and order, was saved from ruin.... Nor indeed could it be otherwise, for such spiritual frenzies, which did then bear rule, can never stand long before a clear and deep skill in nature. It is almost impossible, that they who converse much with the subtilty of things, should be deluded by such thick deceits. There is but one better charm in the world than real philosophy, to allay the impulses of the false spirit, and that is the blessed Presence and assistance of the True.' In 1656, on the 29th of May, Dean Wren died. Sorrow and anxiety, the desolation of the Church, the apparent ruin of the monarchy, had worn out his gentle spirit; and probably little thinking how great a change was approaching to free the country, he passed away, aged 69, at the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Holder, and was buried in the chancel of Bletchingdon Church.[63] When we look back to the years of the Rebellion, their darkness is lightened for us by the knowledge that the Restoration came at last, and it is difficult to realise fully how the times appeared to those who actually lived in them, to whom the years brought only fresh losses and sorrows, and the sickness of hope deferred. Knowing how, on the 29th of May, but four years later, all England was welcoming back the King to 'enjoy his own again,' one can hardly forbear wishing that Dean Wren might have been spared to see that day; yet those who loved him best cannot have grudged him the fulness of that peace which all his life he had desired, and which he had invoked upon his first home. Christopher was very warmly attached to his father, as all his letters show, and must have grieved greatly for his death. [_ASTRONOMY PROFESSORSHIP._] Soon after this he was summoned to London. The Gresham professor of astronomy, Mr. Laurence Rooke, retired in 1657, and the chair was offered to Wren. He was but twenty-four and doubted whether he should accept such a post while so young, and he clung to Oxford and his studies there. The friends whom he consulted advised him differently; accordingly he came up to London and delivered his opening address to a considerable audience. It was in Latin, and after a brief apology for his youth passed into a sketch of the history of astronomy. He dwells on the great riches of the science, how it is the handmaid of theology, the queen of sciences, speaks of the vast discoveries made by its means, touches upon Copernicus, whose mind first grasped the idea that the earth moved round the sun, then upon Kepler and upon Galileo, and the storms that had arisen, when in 1632 he had demonstrated that truth at which Copernicus had guessed; he praises highly Galileo's invention of the telescope, pays a tribute to the great men who had lectured at Gresham on these subjects, and especially to his own predecessor, Rooke, and winds up with an eloquent description of London as a Pandora of cities to whom each of the choir of planets gave a peculiar blessing, on whom the sun shines benignly, who possesses more inhabitants than any city in the world, a healthy air, a fertile soil stretching far around her, beautiful buildings springing as of themselves from the earth, and, lastly, is blessed by the moon, 'the governess of floods,' who alluring the seas thus far inland by means of the beloved Thames, makes her the city which nourishes the best seamen of the world. The rough draft of this address, written by Christopher in a bold hand with a few changes and corrections, is preserved in the 'Parentalia.' This professorship obliged him to come up to London and give a course of lectures every Wednesday in term time at Gresham College. None of these lectures have been preserved, and it seems from a hint in one of Dr. Sprat's letters, that Wren was in the habit of lecturing from rough notes merely, and used no pains to keep any record of them. ['_HE MAY COME OUT AN HE WILL._'] At this time he made acquaintance with Richard Claypole, who was married to Elizabeth, Cromwell's favourite daughter; both she and her sister, Lady Falconbridge, were faithful members of the persecuted Church of England. Dr. Hewet still read the Prayer Book services in S. Gregory's Church, which adjoined S. Paul's, and there the two sisters resorted, there Dr. Hewet secretly married Mary Cromwell to Lord Falconbridge, as neither would be satisfied with the ceremony performed by an independent preacher. Cromwell's daughters used all their influence with their father on the side of mercy, but when the excellent Dr. Hewet fell under his displeasure they pleaded in vain for his life.[64] Mr. Claypole professed a fondness for mathematical science and frequently invited Christopher Wren to his house. On one of these occasions when Wren was dining there, Cromwell himself entered, and, as was his custom in his own family, sat down to table without speech or ceremony. After a while he fixed his eyes on Christopher and said, 'Your uncle has been long confined in the Tower.' 'He has so, sir,' said Wren; 'but he bears his afflictions with great patience and resignation.' 'He may come out an he will,' was Cromwell's unexpected reply. 'Will your Highness permit me to take him this from your own mouth?' said Wren, hardly able to believe his ears. 'Yes, you may,' said Cromwell briefly. At the earliest possible moment Christopher hurried to the Tower to communicate to his uncle the tidings that the long years of his imprisonment were over. When he had poured out his news the Bishop replied warmly that it was not the first time he had received the like intimation from that miscreant, but he disdained the terms proposed for his enlargement, which were a mean acknowledgment of his favour and an abject submission to his detestable tyranny; that he was determined to tarry the Lord's leisure, and owe his deliverance, which was not far off, to Him only. Such an answer must have been startling enough to Christopher, and may have opened his eyes to the causes of Cromwell's seeming leniency. He left the brave old man to await the deliverance which the keen sight of faith showed him as drawing near, and returned to his own work. The death of Mrs. Claypole in the following summer must have checked an intimacy upon which Bishop Wren looked with little favour. She died of a terrible illness, and in the paroxysms of her pain bitterly reproached Cromwell for the innocent blood that he had shed, and particularly for that of Dr. Hewet. At about this period some experiments were made by Wren's philosophical friends wherein he took a principal part, and to which the barometer, now in common use, is mainly due. The first instrument of the kind was invented by Torricelli, the pupil of Galileo, who used it in order to ascertain the pressure of the air on fluids, the supposed cause of which pressure was the passing by of the body of the moon. Pascal, in those earlier days when his great genius employed itself on natural philosophy, made several experiments at Rouen, in 1646, with a friend, M. Petit, using 'Torricelli's tube,' as it was called. Similar trials were afterwards made by M. Perier, his brother-in-law, among the mountains of Auvergne. They then discovered that the rising and falling of the mercury was due not to the moon, but to the differences in the specific gravity of the atmosphere. Wren's experiments led him to the same conclusion, and at a later period he and Robert Boyle continued them until they produced the barometer, though it was not used commonly as a weather-glass until a much later date. Pascal did not pursue his discovery, but was satisfied with having proved the point for which he was contending. [_THE CYCLOID._] Though Wren and Pascal never met, some communication passed between them. Pascal, who was Wren's senior by eleven years, propounded a problem, under the name of Jean de Monfert, to the mathematicians of England, adding a challenge to them to solve it by a given day. Christopher sent a solution, and in his turn propounded a problem which seems never to have been answered. Pascal is said to have considered Wren's solution very carefully, but the promised prize of twenty pistoles was withheld by some trickery. Besides this, Wren wrote four mathematical tracts on the cycloid, and sent them to Dr. J. Wallis, who was publishing a book on mathematics. He corresponded with Pascal,[65] who was writing on the cycloid by the name of _la Roulette_, the problem being 'to determine the curve made in the air by the nail of a coach wheel from the moment it rises from the ground, till the moment when the continual rolling of the wheel brings it back to the ground, after a complete turn, supposing the wheel a perfect circle and the ground perfectly level.' [_CROMWELL'S FUNERAL._] Wren was engaged also in a series of observations on the planet Saturn. These pursuits were, however, interrupted by an event that convulsed all England. On September 3, 1658, during a fearful storm which swept over London, Oliver Cromwell died. Hume[66] gives a terrible account of the state of constant suspicion and fear of assassination in which Cromwell passed the last year of his life; the secret armour which he wore, his constant guard of soldiers wherever he moved, his fears on a journey, his habit of never returning the way he had come, nor by the direct road, seldom sleeping above three nights together in the same chamber, or in any he did not choose himself, or without sentinels. His body lay in state for a considerable time. The funeral, on October 22, Evelyn calls 'superb.' He says:-- 'I saw the Protector carried from Somerset House on a velvet bed of state drawn by six black horses, houss'd with the same; the pall held up by his new lords; Oliver lying in effigie in royal robes, crown'd with a crown, sceptre, and globe like a king ... a knight of honour armed _cap-à-pie_, and, after all, his guard, soldiers, and innumerable mourners. In this equipage they proceeded to Westminster; but it was the joyfullest funeral I ever saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a barbarous noise, drinking and taking tobacco in the streets as they went.' Under the feeble rule of Richard Cromwell at first and then under the multiform tyranny of the reassembled 'Long Parliament,' every kind of disorder and oppression had free course. Monk grievously disappointed the Royalist hopes by proclaiming Richard Cromwell. The day of deliverance appeared more than ever distant. [_LETTERS FROM LONDON._] The Gresham Professors were all driven out of the college except Dr. Goddard, Cromwell's physician, and the place was garrisoned by soldiers, who did it great damage. Matthew Wren made an attempt two days after Cromwell's funeral to enter the college, and sent a curious account to Christopher, who had returned to All Souls at Oxford. He writes: 'Dear Cousin,--Yesterday being the first of the term, I resolved to see whether Dr. Horton[67] entertained the new auditory at Gresham with any lecture, for I took it for granted that if his divinity could be spared your mathematics would not be expected. But at the gate I was stopped by a man with a gun, who told me there was no admission upon that account, as the college was reformed into a garrison. Then changing my pretension, I scarce got permission to go in to Dr. Goddard, who gave me assurance enough that none of your colleagues intend to appear this term unless the soldiers be removed, of which there is no probability. Upon these premises it is the opinion of all your friends that you may save that journey hither, unless some other occasion calls you; and for these I expect you will make me your agent, if they be such as I am capable of despatching. 'But it will not perhaps be amiss to take from hence the occasion of a short and civil letter to the Committee, signifying that you hope you have not deceived their expectations in choosing you, and that you are ready to attend your duty but for this public interruption and exclusion from your chamber; or what else you will that looks towards this. 'I know no more domestic news than what everybody talks of. Yesterday I was in Westminster Hall, and saw only Keudigate and Windham in the two courts, and Wild and Parker in the Exchequer. In the Chancery none at all; Bradshaw keeps the seal as if it were to be carried before him in the other world, whither he is going. Glyn and Fountain pleaded at the bar. They talk much of the mediation of the two Crowns, and proceed so far as to name Marshall Clerambault for the Embassador who is to come hither from France. My service to all friends. Dear Cousin, your most humble servant, 'M. W. 'London, October 25, 1658.' Dr. Sprat[68] writes also to Christopher at about the same time: 'Dear Sir,--This day I went to visit Gresham College, but found the place in such a nasty condition, so defiled, and the smells so infernal that if you should now come to make use of your tube, it would be like Dives looking out of hell into heaven. Dr. Goddard, of all your colleagues, keeps possession, which he could never be able to do had he not before prepared his nose for camp perfumes by his voyage into Scotland, and had he not such excellent restoratives in his cellars.' FOOTNOTES: [51] 'December 8, 1646. The pious soul of my wife Eliza flew up to Christ at half-past five in the morning.' [52] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, ed. 1724, p. 122. [53] Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol. iii. p. 333. [54] It is really 24,899 miles. [55] The box is, I believe, in Peterhouse Library to this day, but a portion of the Commentary was published as a treatise against the Socinians by the Bishop's son Matthew, under the title of _Increpatio Bar Jesu, sive polemicae adsectiones locorum aliquot S. Scripturae ab imposturis perversis in Catechesis Racoviana collectae._ [56] Petty's history is a curious one. The son of a clothier of Rumsey; he educated himself; was some years in the navy; became Gresham professor of music; then a physician of some fame; was also Henry Cromwell's secretary; was a commissioner for Ireland, and married Sir Hardress Waller's daughter. Soon after the Restoration he was knighted by Charles II. Petty invented a 'double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and tide; it was flat-bottomed, had two distinct keels cramped together with huge timbers, so as a violent stream run between: it bore a monstrous broad sail.' It excited much interest at the time, made one very successful voyage, and was afterwards wrecked in a frightful storm. Its model is still preserved at the Royal Society, of which he became a member. He died in 1687. _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, p. 217. Ward. See also Evelyn's _Diary_ of March 22, 1675, for an interesting account of Petty's career. [57] Seth Ward, born 1617. Was Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford and an active member of the Royal Society. Afterwards Bishop of Exeter and then of Salisbury; died 1689. [58] _Life of Sir C. Wren_, by J. Elmes, p. 12. The full title of the play was '[Greek: Ploutophthalmia Ploutogamia],' a pleasant comedy intituled _Hey for Honesty_, &c., augmented and published by F. J. A copy, published in 1651, and containing a MS. note saying that Wren took the part of 'Neanias Adolescens,' was in the possession of Isaac Reed, a commentator on Shakespeare and a great book collector, who died in 1807. His epitaph (given in _Notes and Queries_, series v., xiii. p. 304) was as follows:-- 'Reader of these few lines take heed, And mend your ways for my sake; For you must die like Isaac Reed, Tho' you read till your eyes ache.' T. Randolph was a friend and pupil of Ben Jonson's; he published _The Muses' Looking Glass_, which satirised the Puritans; died 1634. [59] Miscellanies, ed. 1696. [60] _Diary_, July 13, 1654. [61] _Præsul. Ang._, p. 779. Godwin. [62] _Hist. of Royal Society._ Bishop Sprat, ed. 1722, p. 53. [63] 'Dr. Christopher Wren, Deane of Windsor, was buried June 3, 1656,' is the entry in the register; there does not appear to be any monument or brass to his memory. The _Parentalia_ and Elmes's Life give 1658, but the dates are frequently inaccurate in both books. [64] Evelyn's _Diary_, March 31, 1658. 'That holy martyr Dr. Hewer condemned to die, without law, jury or justice by a mock council of State as they called it. A dangerous, treacherous time. June 8, _ib._ That excellent preacher and holy man Dr. Hewer was martyred for having intelligence of his Majesty, through the Lord Marquess of Ormond. He was beheaded on Tower Hill. The name was spelt Hewer, Hewet, and Hewett. [65] Pascal is said to have written his treatise on the cycloid from a religious motive. It was a common opinion in France that the study of natural sciences, especially of mathematics, led to infidelity. Accordingly Pascal, writing for geometricians and mathematicians, wished to show, by the solution, vainly sought before, of this problem, that the same man who wrote the _Lettres à un Provincial_ could also instruct them in abstract science, and he published his treatise in the intervals of writing the _Pensées_. See _Vie de Pascal, par sa soeur Mad. Perier, Pensées de Pascal_, p. 13, ed. 1839. [66] _Hist. of England_, vol. vii. ch. lxi. p. 292. [67] Gresham Professor of Divinity, confirmed in his post by Cromwell. [68] Thomas Sprat, D.D., Dean of Westminster, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester; was an active member of the Royal Society, and was educated at Wadham College with Sir C. Wren, whose intimate friend he was: born 1636; died 1713. CHAPTER V. 1659-1663. APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION--DIFFICULTY OF PRESERVING IT--LETTERS FROM LORD CLARENDON--BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE--THE RESTORATION--CONVOCATION--SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP--ROYAL SOCIETY--'ELEPHANT IN THE MOON'--PEMBROKE CHAPEL BEGUN. Yet bethink thee that the spirit whence those princely bounties flowed To the ties of private feeling all its force and being owed; Severed from the bonds of kindred, taught his lonely heart to school, By his Father's chastening kindness or his Church's sterner rule; Oft to spots by memory cherished, where his earliest love began, In his age's desolation, fondly turned the childless man. _Phrontisterion_, by Dean Mansel. All was confusion, doubt and anxiety in the country; the Royalist plots failed; the Parliament was powerless; no one knew whether Monk intended, as was still hoped by a few, to bring back the King, or to support the Parliament, or to make himself dictator; those were keen eyes which could discern through the darkness any ray of approaching light. Nowhere perhaps did matters seem more desperate than in the Church. Her discipline and order, barely revived by the murdered Archbishop, had been for eighteen years trampled upon and neglected; 'by the licentiousness of the times,' many were growing up unbaptised and ignorant of Christianity. The number of bishops living was but small, many sees being already vacant when the Civil War broke out, and imprisonments and hardships had so reduced the Prelates that, in 1659, but ten survived, one of whom, Dr. Brownrigg, Bishop of Exeter, very soon died. Of the nine others, many were very old; the Bishop of London (Juxon) was very ill, and the Bishop of Ely was in prison. How was the succession to be preserved if the troubles of the times continued? The Scotch Church had been reduced by persecution; the Irish Bishops were in as evil a plight as their English brethren, and the difficulty of communication was great. There was then no daughter Church in America or in the Colonies to render back in time of need the grace they had themselves received. It was hardly possible for the English Bishops to meet for consultation; but the indefatigable Dr. Barwick was authorised[69]-- 'not only to ride about among them all, and by proposing and explaining to each what was thought for the Church's Service; to collect the opinions and resolutions of every one of them upon all difficult affairs; but also to procure the communication of all that was needful between their lordships and His Majesty, which he frequently did by letters written in characters' (_i.e._ cypher). [_LETTERS IN CYPHER._] Great difficulties lay in the way of the first step--a canonical election--and in the face of the watchful enmity of the Church of Rome, no doubtful step could be taken; and even were this difficulty surmounted and three Bishops got together, the risk of imprisonment and death to both consecrators and consecrated needed no one to point it out. The two with whom Dr. Barwick principally consulted were the Bishops of Ely and Salisbury. Many letters passed between Dr. Barwick and Mr. Hyde,[70] at Brussels, in one of which, written on July 8, 1659,[71] the latter speaks of-- 'much preferring the Bishop of Ely's judgment and advice in that point (the method of election) before any man's. I pray remember my service with all imaginable reverence to my Lord of Ely and assure him, that the King will always return that candour, benignity and equality to both the Universities, which he wishes; and I hope all who shall be entrusted by him in that great affair will be as just and dispassioned in all their interpositions and look upon them as equal lights to learning and piety and equally worthy of all encouragement and protection. And if at present my Lord of Ely will recommend any person to his Majesty for the Bishoprick of Carlisle, he shall be approved. And if my Lord will transmit a list of persons to be specially recommended to the King for any dignities of the Church, I dare promise the persons shall find that they could not have been better recommended. I know not what more to add but my hearty service to your sick friend,[72] whose health I pray for as a publick concernment. To yourself I shall say no more but that I shall think myself very faulty if I do not serve you very heartily, and if you do not with the first receive some evidence of the sense the King hath of your service. 'I am very heartily, Sir, your most affectionate servant, 'HYDE.' These letters, thirty-six in number, were transmitted in cypher, and with the utmost precaution and considerable delay in awaiting a safe opportunity; the one quoted from is endorsed 'Received not till Aug. 29.' Nor was the cypher, however carefully contrived, always a security when the letters fell into the wrong hands. Dr. Wallis, the mathematician, was a most skilful decypherer, and was the person who decyphered the King's papers taken in his cabinet at Naseby, though the Royalists considered this a vain boast until Matthew Wren, the Bishop's eldest son, obtained the proof of it from Dr. Wallis himself. One important letter from Dr. Barwick to Mr. Hyde fell into Dr. Wallis' hands; Mr. Allestry his coadjutor coming from Brussels was seized and imprisoned as soon as he landed. Bishop Morton of Durham, the last surviving Prelate of the province of York, had died, as his epitaph says, 'deprived of all his goods except a good name and a good conscience.' The rising in Cheshire had been unsuccessful. Monk refused to give even his brother any hint of his intentions, and made no reply to the letter which King Charles sent to him from Breda. In short, matters were as adverse as it was possible for them to be, but yet Dr. Barwick was undiscouraged; with fresh precautions the correspondence with Mr. Hyde was resumed, and in truth the matter pressed; 'for,' says Dr. Barwick, writing in Sept. 1659, after mentioning his circuit among some of the surviving Bishops,[73] 'I fear this winter will go hard with some of them that may worst be spared in the due performance of such a work.' It is evident that Dr. Barwick was able to see and consult the imprisoned Bishop of Ely whenever it was needful. These hurried meetings, full of anxiety and peril as they were, must have been a great refreshment to the Bishop, who thus still took part in the work of the Church. He declined to send any list of names to the King, though he pressed Dr. Barwick to accept the Bishoprick of Man. Mr. Hyde[74] wrote a letter in September, which was not received till November 10, where he says:-- ['_WHAT IS TO BECOME OF THE CHURCH?_'] 'The King hath done all that is in his power to do; and if my Lords the Bishops will not do the rest, what is to become of the Church? The conspiracies to destroy it are very evident; and if there be no combination to preserve it, it must expire. I do assure you the names of all the Bishops who are alive, and their several ages, are as well known at Rome as in England, and both the Papist and the Presbyterian value themselves very much upon computing in how few years the Church of England must expire.' ... And again: 'His Majesty is most confident that the Bishop of Ely will give all the assistance and advice which his restraint will permit him to do.... I do beseech you,' says the next letter, 'present my humble service to my Lord of Ely, whose benediction, I do hope to live to receive at his own feet. I pray send me word our sick friend is in perfect health.' But little progress appears to have been made, since Mr. Hyde writes, Nov. 28:-- 'I can say no more with reference to the Church, but that if there be nothing hinders it but the winter it be quickly over, whilst preparations are making; and yet, God knows, it will be almost a miracle, if the winter doth not take away half the Bishops that are left alive; and I must still lament that some way is not found that the Bishop of Ely may be at liberty; which would carry on this work more than any expedient that I can think of.' An entry in Evelyn's diary shows the general state of affairs at this time:-- '_October 11._ The armie now turned out the Parliament. We had now no government in the nation; all in confusion; no magistrate either own'd or pretended but the souldiers, and they not agreed. God Almighty have mercy on and settle us!' Evelyn was not slack in doing what in him lay towards this much-desired settlement:-- '_November 7._ Was published my bold "Apologie" for the King in this time of danger when it was capital to speake or write in favour of him. It was printed twice, so universally it took.' A fast was kept in secret, apparently about once a fortnight, by the Churchmen in London to pray 'for God's mercy to our calamitous Church.' On _February 3, 1660_, Evelyn writes:-- 'General Monk came to London from Scotland, but no man knew what he would do or declare. Yet he was met on all his way by the gentlemen of all the counties which he passed, with petitions that he would recall the old, long-interrupted Parliament, and settle the nation in some order, being at this time in most prodigious confusion and under no government, everybody expecting what would be next and what he would do.' Later in the same month Mr. Hyde wrote almost in despair to Dr. Barwick:[75] 'It would be very good news if I could hear of my Lord of Ely being in full liberty, to whom I pray present my humble service. The truth is I have but little hope of the business of the Church but by his being at liberty, and therefore I hope he will make no scruple of accepting it if it be offered, or if it can be reasonably obtained.' The suspense which Evelyn describes had not long to be endured. On February 11, the very day after Monk had dismayed the city by breaking down its gates and allowing the soldiers to march about it in triumph, he turned out the Parliament then sitting at Westminster, and called together the former one, to the great joy of the people. From this moment all hearts and wishes turned to the exiled royal family as the one hope left of tranquillity and order; thus suddenly, when the royalist hopes were lowest, their hearts' desire was given to them. [_BISHOP WREN'S RELEASE._] Monk, now in supreme power, did not forget the Bishop of Ely, whose fellow-captive he had been and who must have rejoiced to see Monk at last justify his confidence. On March 15 the lieutenant of the Tower received the order 'That Dr. Wren, Bishop of Ely, be discharged from his imprisonment.' Thus the eighteen years of captivity came to an end, and the Bishop came forth from the Tower, an old man of seventy-five, broken by many sorrows. It cannot have been with unmixed joy that he once more trod another path than that wonted one on the leads of the Tower. True, the King was coming home in peace to a people longing to receive him. This return was a promise of deliverance for the Church, and an end to that difficulty of preserving the Apostolical Succession which had so nearly proved a fatal one. And yet, the flood, which in those eighteen years had passed over the land, had swept away many whom the Bishop loved well. The King might return in triumph, but he was not the sovereign whom, from his youth, Bishop Wren had loved and served. The primate with whom he had worked, had been cruelly murdered; and none could restore the wife and children who had pined and died during the long years of his imprisonment. The Church, however, remained, and for her Bishop Wren would work while life lasted. Part of his employment in the Tower had been the writing of treatises and sermons, one of which on the Scotch Covenant, from the text 'Neither behave thyself frowardly in the covenant,' he dispersed over the dioceses of Norwich and Ely, lodging the while where he could in London, as he was not yet allowed to go back either to Downham in Suffolk or to Ely House in Holborn. It appeared, as was truly said, as if he had not been 'so much released as thrust out of prison.' Homeless and penniless as he then seemed, Bishop Wren's spirit was in no respect daunted; when he left in safety the Tower where he had once thought to lay his head on the block, he planned the thank-offering which he would make to God. His children, from whom he had been so long separated, who were scattered everywhere and had been reduced to the greatest straits, he with much difficulty gathered together again, and they awaited the event of Monk's decision. [_THE RESTORATION._] At length came that 29th of May so often described in history and fiction. Evelyn's[76] account of it is interesting, as that of an eyewitness:-- 'This day his majestie Charles II. came to London, after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the king and church, being seventeen yeares. This was also his birthday; and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foote, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the wayes strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streetes hung with tapestry, fountaines running with wine; the maior, aldermen, and all the companies in their liveries, chaines of gold, and banners; lords and nobles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windowes and balconies well set with ladies: trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven houres in passing the citty, even from two in afternoone till nine at night. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed God. All this was don without one drop of bloudshed, and by that very army which rebelled against him.' By degrees, matters settled down to a more ordinary level. The Church Service was restored at Whitehall, and on June 28 Pepys mentions[77] 'poor Bishop Wren going to chapel, it being a thanksgiving day for the King's returne.' The vacant sees were now filled up as speedily as possible. Bishop Juxon was translated to Canterbury, Sheldon succeeding him as Bishop of London; the northern province, then wholly without bishops, had its losses supplied. The Prayer Book was not by any means commonly used again for some time. Pepys characteristically says--[78] '_July 1._--This morning come home my fine camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit which cost me much money, and I pray God make me able to pay for it. In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet.' In the following November, to quote the same writer, 'men did begin to nibble at the Common Prayer.' Matters were really progressing, the cathedrals and the court chapels as well as those in the Bishop's palaces setting the example. In February (1661) Evelyn heard 'Dr. Baldero preach at Ely House on St. Matthew vi. 33; after the sermon the Bishop of Ely gave us the blessing very pontifically.'[79] [_ELY HOUSE._] Ely House was an ancient possession of the see,[80] the gift of William de Ludd, who in the reign of Edward I. gave the house and endowed it with his manor of Ouldbourne, a name which soon grew into Holbourn. The garden and its strawberries are immortalised by Shakespeare. It was leased to Sir Christopher Hatton by Bishop Cox in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and a struggle between the Hatton family and the Bishops of Ely then began which lasted until 1772.[81] In Wren's time, the Bishops had recovered some of the buildings, and he had lived here before the rebellion. During that time the house had been used as a prison for 'malignant priests,' especially those of the city of London, and he must have found the whole building sorely defaced and injured. The chapel, dedicated to S. Etheldreda, is a beautiful piece of Gothic architecture; and there, when it had been cleansed and restored to some order, many of the new bishops were consecrated, and Bishop Wren assisted at that preservation of the Apostolical Succession which but two years before had seemed well-nigh hopeless. Much was done at Ely House. In the May of 1661 the Convocation of Canterbury met in S. Paul's, its marred, plundered condition not inaptly showing the adversities through which the Church of England had passed. The Convocation had much work before it, the most pressing being to prepare a service for the baptism of those of riper years and for May 29. In order to this a committee of both Houses of Convocation was formed, which met at Ely House, and of which Bishop Wren appears to have been the ruling spirit. Many were still half afraid of their true position and afraid of the Puritan party; eighteen years of confusion and persecution had slackened all discipline, and many things seemed natural to the new generation which neither Bishop Andrewes nor Archbishop Laud would have tolerated for a day. It is implied in Dr. Barwick's Life that many of those who should have upheld the Church discipline were willing, from a mistaken notion of conciliation and peace, to let it go. Bishop Wren set his face resolutely against this doctrine. [_REVISION OF THE PRAYER BOOK._] In November the Convocation met again. Dr. John Barwick had been appointed to the deanery of S. Paul's, and in spite of very failing health, had resumed the weekly Communions, daily prayers, and musical services of the cathedral, and had succeeded in making the choir, where the Puritans had stabled their horses, once more fit for Divine service. At this session of Convocation the Prayer Book was finally revised, after the Bishops had heard at the Savoy Conference all that the Puritans could urge against it. Bishop Wren had been actively engaged in this work, and suggested a considerable number of alterations and additions, many of which were adopted. A large number of grammatical errors had crept in to the old book: for example, 'which' instead of 'who' was in almost all the collects and the Apostles' creed. It still, by some oversight, survives in the Lord's Prayer.[82] 'The altering whereof,' says Bishop Wren, 'if it may seem strange at first to unskilful ears, yet will it not be a nine days' wonder, but for ever after a right expression in all our addresses unto God.' Page after page he corrected with the utmost care, from the very title-page and calendar to the end. July has the characteristic note, 'Out with Dog-days from amongst the Saints.'--A considerable number of his suggestions are part of the Prayer Book to this day. The final clause of the prayer for the Church Militant beginning 'We also bless, etc.,' though not Bishop Wren's composition, as he intended to have replaced the Commemoration of the Saints and the Thanksgiving as it stood in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., is yet due to his suggestion. The whole series of notes and emendations is very interesting, though they are more than can be given here. Two things plainly appear: that he wished to return as nearly as possible to the first Prayer Book of Edward VI., as the one most closely resembling the offices of the Early Church; that he was very desirous to have the book made as full, as plain, and as clear as the English language could make it. He was anxious that no needless stumbling-blocks should remain in the path either of Churchmen or of Nonconformists, but at the same time he had no intention of bartering any portion of Church truth or discipline for the doubtful advantages of 'comprehension.' It is a proof that he was not, with all his high-minded firmness, the persecuting prelate of Puritan pamphleteers, or the sour and severe man which, in early days, Lord Clarendon thought him, that both in Norwich, his former diocese, and in the one he then ruled, most of the clergy renounced the Covenant.[83] S. Bartholomew's day, 1662, was the time fixed for those who refused to conform to the Church to resign their livings. It has been easy to represent this as a piece of cruel tyranny, as the turning out of a body of pious men who were labouring in the work which others neglected. In truth, as even Milton says, they were 'time-servers, covetous, illiterate persecutors, not lovers of the truth, like in most things whereof they had accused their predecessors.' To this grave indictment must be added that they were, in the strictest sense, intruders, thrust into charges by Cromwell's authority, while the true priests were imprisoned, fined, forbidden to minister, or even to teach as schoolmasters, and literally left to starve. 'The majority of these were dead and none had been ordained to fill up the gaps, during all the long years since the Church's overthrow.... Of the eight thousand intruding Nonconformists, a bare two thousand--1700 would probably be nearer the number--refused conformity. 'In other words, the Church of the Restoration had to begin her work with a clergy of whom at least three-fourths were aliens at heart to her doctrine and her discipline. To the politician this result was most satisfactory; to the Church little short of disastrous.'[84] [_GARTER RECORDS RESTORED._] One of the earliest appointments made at the Restoration was that of Dr. Bruno Ryves[85] to be Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter. In the August of 1660, Christopher Wren went to Windsor, and solemnly delivered to the Dean the three registers and the note books of the Order of the Garter, which Dean Wren had, with so much difficulty, recovered and hidden carefully until, at his death, he transferred the charge to his son. Dean Ryves gave a written acknowledgment to Christopher that he had safely received the books, and the service his father had done in preserving them was fully admitted. Gresham College had been cleansed and set in order after the Restoration, and Christopher resumed his lectures there, which were largely attended. After one of these lectures given in November, Lord Brouncker, Mr. Robert Boyle, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Petty, Dr. Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray and others withdrew with Wren to his room, where they discussed a project for a philosophical College or Society. It was not an entirely new idea, for it had been a favourite scheme of Evelyn's, also of the poet Cowley's.[86] It was not a matter to be arranged in one sitting, and accordingly they settled to meet weekly in Wren's rooms after his lectures, and agreed that for incidental expenses each should pay down ten shillings and subscribe a shilling weekly. A list was made of between thirty and forty probable members, among them those previously mentioned, and Christopher's old friend Sir C. Scarborough, Dr. Seth Ward, Matthew Wren, Cowley, Sir Kenelme Digby, Mr. Evelyn and others. Sir Robert Moray undertook to explain the project to King Charles, and brought back a gracious message that he well approved of it, and would be ready to give it every encouragement. One of the first orders of the Society was that Wren should at the next meeting of the Society bring in his account of the pendulum experiment, with his explanation of it: this experiment related to 'the determination of a standard measure of length by the vibration of a pendulum.'[87] There followed experiments for the improvement of shipping, in which Wren worked with Dr. Petty and Dr. Goddard. It was a question to what mechanical powers sailing, especially when against the wind, was reducible; 'he showed it to be a wedge; and he demonstrated how a transient force upon an oblique plane would cause the motion of the plane against the first mover. He made an instrument that mechanically produced the same effect and showed the reason of sailing to all winds.' But to give all Christopher's experiments would be to write over again the already well-told history of the Royal Society. It had few more assiduous members. [_SAVILIAN PROFESSORSHIP._] In 1661, Christopher resigned his Gresham Professorship, in order to accept the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy, at Oxford.[88] It had been held by Dr. Seth Ward, who was soon afterwards made Bishop of Salisbury in succession to Bishop Hyde. Shortly after his appointment, Christopher had a command from the King to make him a lunar globe, according to the observations made with the best telescopes. He constructed one 'representing not only the spots and various degrees of whiteness on the surface, but the hills, eminences, and cavities moulded in solid work.' This curious toy was highly admired, placed in the King's cabinet at Whitehall, and esteemed a great 'rarity.' In this year Wren took his degree as Doctor of Civil Laws, Oxford, and received a similar honour from the University of Cambridge. King Charles purposed paying a visit to Oxford, and the Philosophical Society both there and in London resolved to give him an entertainment. Lord Brouncker wrote from London to Wren to consult him. Wren wrote back:-- 'My Lord,--The Act and noise at Oxford being over, I retir'd to myself as speedily as I could to obey your Lordship and contribute something to the collection of Experiments designed by the Society, for his Majesty's Reception. I concluded on something I thought most suitable for such an occasion; but the stupidity of our artists here makes the apparatus so tedious that I foresee I shall not be able to bring it to anything within the time proposed. What in the meanwhile to suggest to your Lordship I cannot guess.'... 'Geometrical problems, and new methods, however useful, will be but tasteless in a transient show.' He enumerates various things which he had thought of and rejected: 'designs of engines, scenographical tricks, designs of architecture, chymical experiments, experiments in anatomy, which last are sordid and noisome to any but those whose desire of knowledge makes them digest it.' 'Experiments of Natural Philosophy are seldom pompous, and certainly Nature in the best of her works is apparent enough in obvious things, were they but curiously observed; and the key that opens treasures is often plain and rusty, but unless it be gilt it will make no show at Court.' He proposed to show an experiment with a 'weather wheel to measure the expansions of air.' Another--'no unpleasing spectacle--of seeing a man live without new air as long as you please;' this was to be effected by an instrument of Wren's invention which cooled, percolated, and purified the air. Also 'an artificial eye truly and dioptrically made as big as a tennis-ball.' ['_SO MUCH TATTLE._'] 'My Lord,' the letter ends, 'if my first design had been perfect I had not troubled your Lordship with so much Tattle, but with something performed and done. But I am fain, in this letter, to do like some chymist who when Projection (his fugitive darling) hath left him threadbare, is forced to fall to vulgar Preparations to pay his Debts.' The King appointed Wren as assistant to Sir John Denham, the Surveyor-General of Works. Sir John had been appointed by Charles I., in reversion during the lifetime of Inigo Jones, surveyor at that time, and had succeeded, at Inigo Jones's death, to what was then but a barren honour. Evelyn, who had a dispute with Sir John about the placing of Greenwich Palace in that very year, says: 'I knew him to be a better poet than architect, tho' he had Mr. Webb[89] (Inigo Jones's man) to assist him.' Of this Charles II. was probably aware, and anxious to supply his deficiency. That his choice should have fallen upon Wren, unless Evelyn's friendship suggested it, is remarkable, as, until then, Wren seems to have made no special study of architecture. No doubt the practical experience learned in the details of the assistant-surveyor's work was afterwards very serviceable to him. He appears to have had a most retentive memory as well as a very quick eye and power of apprehension. In spite, however, of these calls on his time he was assiduous at the Society's meetings. The death of Laurence Rooke, his friend and fellow-labourer, threw more work on his hands. Rooke was succeeded in the Geometry Professorship by Isaac Barrow, afterwards a well-known divine who, in his first Latin oration, eulogised the Savilian Professor as 'formerly a prodigy of a boy, now a miracle of a man, and a genius among mortals. Lest I should appear to speak falsehood, it will be enough for me to name to you the most ingenious and excellent Christopher Wren.'[90] It was a high compliment, but Barrow knew that his audience would heartily re-echo it. It is to be hoped that Barrow's lectures were somewhat shorter than his sermons, which, fine as they are, were not always listened to with patience. [_A LONG SERMON._] 'On one occasion, when he was long preaching in the Abbey on a holiday, the servants of the Church, who on those days showed the tombs and effigies in wax of the Kings and Queens to the common people, fearing to spend that time in hearing which they might more profitably employ in receiving, caused the organs to blow until they had blowed him down.'[91] On March 25, 1663, the Society was finally incorporated by a charter from the King, with a preamble written by Christopher Wren, explaining its objects. The style of the preamble is far more florid than is usual in Wren's writing: it has in it the exultation of one who is accomplishing a long-cherished scheme. One paragraph is evidently intended as a defence against certain attacks which were made upon the English philosophers as they had been in past times against Galileo:-- 'Not that herein we would withdraw the least ray of our influence from the present established nurseries of good literature and education, founded by the piety of our royal ancestors and others, and whose laws which as we are obliged to defend, so the holy blood of our martyred Father hath especially endeared to us, but, that we purpose to make further provision for this branch of knowledge likewise, Natural Experimental Philosophy.'... 'Taking care as in the first place for Religion so next for the riches and ornaments of our kingdoms, as we wear an Imperial Crown in which flowers are alternately intermixed with the ensigns of Christianity.' King Charles, the Duke of York, and Prince Rupert, always a lover of experiments, were among the first members of the Society, and its beginning was prosperous enough; but Court favour has always created some envy. It happened that in the self-same year Butler,[92] then secretary to Jeremy Taylor's friend, Lord Carbery, published his famous 'Hudibras.' It created a great sensation; the Court read it, the town read it; Pepys, hearing 'the world cry it up so mightily, tried twice or three times reading to bring himself to think it witty.' It was in everyone's mouth, and Butler naturally thought himself sure of promotion. None, however, came to him, and he directed his bitter wit against those more fortunate than himself, the members of the new Royal Society, and Bishop Sprat in particular, in a poem called 'The Elephant in the Moon,' which opened as follows:-- ['_THE ELEPHANT IN THE MOON._'] 'A learn'd Society of late, The glory of a neighbouring state, Agreed upon a summer night To search the moon by her own light, To take an invent'ry of all Her real estate and personal. * * * * * To observe her country how 'twas planted, With what she abounded most or wanted, And make the proper'st observations For settling of new plantations, If the Society should incline T' attempt so glorious a design.' With sharp touches indicating the various Members of the Society the satire continues, telling how they see in the moon, through the telescope, marvellous things, and an appearance of an immense elephant; they agree that a record must be made, and during the discussion who is to write it, one of the servants peeping through the telescope discovers that a _mouse_ has got in between the two glasses! It, and a swarm of small flies, are the causes of the mysterious phenomena, the vast beast, the marching and countermarching armies which have been so learnedly explained![93] The Society does not seem to have paid much attention to the poet, and the experiments went on as usual. A different task was presently offered to Wren by the King. When he married Catharine of Portugal, he received Tangiers, Tripoli, and Bombay as part of her dowry. Tangiers was reckoned as a very important place to the English, whose sailors were still constantly harassed by the Moorish pirates, and the fortifications of the town were a pressing care. King Charles offered, through Matthew Wren, then Lord Clarendon's secretary, a commission to Christopher Wren, as one of the best geometricians in Europe, to survey and direct the works at the mole, harbour, and fortifications of Tangiers, offering him an ample salary, leave of absence from his Professorship, and a reversionary grant of Sir John Denham's office. Flattering though the offer was, Christopher declined it on the ground of his health, and begged the King to command his duty in England. [_A WARM FRIEND._] He no doubt judged wisely, and the refusal gave no offence at Court. Perhaps the leave of absence might not have been easily obtained, for the following letter from Dr. Sprat shows that Wren was already embarrassed by the difficulty of being in two places at once:-- 'My dear Sir,--I must confess I have some little Peek against you--therefore am not much displeased, that I have this occasion of telling you some ill news. The Vice-Chancellor did yesterday send for me to inquire where the _Astronomy Professor_ was, and the reason of his absence so long after the beginning of the _term_. I used all the arguments I could for your Defence. I told him that _Charles the Second_ was King of _England_, _Scotland_, _France_ and _Ireland_; and that he was by the late _Act of Parliament_ declared absolute Monarch in these his dominions: and that it was this mighty Prince who had confined you to _London_. I endeavour'd to persuade him that the drawing of lines in _Sir Harry Savill's_ school was not altogether of so great a concernment for the benefit of Christendom as the rebuilding of _St. Paul's_ or the fortifying of _Tangier_; (for I understood those were the great works in which that extraordinary Genius of yours was judg'd necessary to be employ'd). All this I urged, but after some Discourse, he told me, that he was not now to consider you as _Dr. Bayly_[94](for so he ow'd you all Kindness) but as _Vice Chancellor_, and under that Capacity he most terribly told me that he took it very ill you had not all this while given him any Account of what hinder'd you in the Discharge of your Office. This he bid me tell you, and I do it not very unwillingly because I see that our Friendships are so closely ty'd together that the same Thing which was so great a Prejudice to me (my losing your Company all this while here) does also something redound to your Disadvantage. And so, my dear Sir, now my Spite and Spleen is satisfied, I must needs return to my old Temper again, and faithfully assure you that I am with the most violent Zeal and Passion, your most affectionate and devoted Servant, 'THO. SPRAT.' Wren had also employment at Cambridge, of a kind he would have been loth to put in other hands. His uncle, the Bishop of Ely, had instantly on his release determined to give a chapel to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he had been a scholar under Launcelot Andrewes,[95] and he employed his nephew as his architect. Upon this work and its endowment the Bishop expended 5,000_l._, the first money he received after his release. His personal habits were austerely simple; for the last twenty years of his life he drank no wine, and only ate off a wooden trencher, practising fasting and abstinence with great strictness. He had never spent any of the revenues of his see upon his children, and now he made the chapel his heir, bestowing upon it an estate at Hardwick in Cambridgeshire. The chapel, which has a peculiar interest as Wren's first architectural work, is built in the classical style he was to make famous in England, and bears his mark in its beautiful proportions, the richness of its stucco ceiling and the pannelled wood-work. The plain glazing of the windows and a something of bareness about the whole, are probably to be accounted for by the necessity of limiting the expense to a fixed sum. Its first stone was laid May 13, 1663, by the Master, Dr. Frank, acting for Bishop Wren, who was not present.[96] [_A SAD RETURN._] It was probably at the same time that Wren executed some repairs in Ely Cathedral which had suffered, like every other grand church, from the fury of the Puritans. Bitter indeed must have been the regret with which the surviving clergy returned to find the fabrics of their churches plundered and laid waste, and their flocks scattered or corrupted. FOOTNOTES: [69] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 201. [70] Afterwards Lord Clarendon. [71] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 424. [72] Probably Bishop Juxon, more than once alluded to under this name in these letters. [73] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 437. [74] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 449. [75] _Life of Dr. Barwick_, p. 496. [76] _Diary_, May 29, 1660. [77] _Diary_, vol. i. p. 112, ed. 1828. [78] Ib., p. 114. [79] _Diary._ [80] _Repertorium_, vol. ii. p. 273. Newcourt. [81] In that year the last Lord Hatton died; the bishops resigned Ely House to the Crown, and received No. 37 Dover Street in exchange. The chapel, after years of neglect, has also been suffered to pass out of the hands of the Church into those of the Romanists. See _Walks in London_ by A. C. Hare, vol. ii. pp. 196-201. [82] _Fragmentary Illustrations of the History of the Book of Common Prayer_, edited by the Bishop of Chester, p. 47, _et seq._ [83] Bishop Kennet says, 'One particular will appear' (from Bishop Wren's _Register_), 'that there were but few of the parochial clergy deprived in this diocese (Ely) in 1662, for not submitting to the Act of Uniformity, though more of the old legal incumbents had been sequestered about 1644 than in proportion within any other diocese.'--Grey's Examination of Neale's _History of the Puritans_, vol. iv. p. 328. From the same authority it appears that most of the clerks deprived in 1662 had other callings, _e.g._ cobbling, gloving, skinning, bookselling, husbandry, and to these they generally returned. Some of his clergy had come to him in the Tower for institution, in the early part of his imprisonment, and that many were faithful to him is evident from the fact they were expelled their livings for 'following Bishop Wren's fancies,' no other crimes being pretended against them.--_Annals of England_, p. 392. [84] See an interesting article, _The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century_, in the _Church Quarterly Review_, July, 1877, p. 321, _et seq._ It is not however quite accurate to say '_none_ were ordained,' for Bishop Duppa held secretly 'frequent ordinations of young loyal church scholars,' among whom was Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.--_History of the Book of Common Prayer_, Lathbury, p. 296. [85] Dr. Bruno Ryves, Dean of Chichester in 1642, was in the city during Sir William Waller's siege, and left a description of the sack of the cathedral and robbery of its plate by the commander and his troops. Dean Ryves was fined 120_l._ and deprived.--_Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 286. [86] Abraham Cowley, born 1618; educated at Westminster; was the intimate friend of Lord Falkland and of the poet Crashaw. Cowley followed Henrietta Maria to Paris, remaining steadily loyal. He died 1667. [87] _History of the Royal Society_ (by C. R. Weld), p. 96. Galileo is said to have first discovered the use of the pendulum as a measure of time, while watching the oscillations of the bronze lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. A pendulum clock was long reckoned a 'rarity.' Bishop Seth Ward presented one, made by Fromantel, to the Society in 1662, in memory of his friend Mr. Laurence Rooke, late Astronomy Professor at Gresham College. [88] Founded 1619 by Sir Henry Savile. He required that the Professor should explain the Ptolemaic and Copernican and other modern astronomical systems, should teach and read on Optics, Dialling, Geography and Navigation. He was to be of any nation in Christendom, provided he was of good reputation, had a fair knowledge of Greek, and was twenty-six years of age. If an Englishman he must have taken his M.A. degree. The choice of a professor was to lie with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the University, the Bishop of London, the principal Secretary of State, Chief Justices, the Lord Chief Baron, and Dean of Arches. _Oxford_, vol. ii. p. 188. Ayliffe. [89] He married Inigo Jones's daughter. [90] _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, Ward, p. 97. [91] Isaac Barrow, born 1630. He was so little studious as a boy, and so fond of fighting, that his father used often solemnly to wish that if it should please God to take one of his children it might be his son Isaac. When, however, in 1677, he did really die, the Lord Keeper (Lord Nottingham) sent his father a message of condolence, importing that 'he had but too great reason to grieve, since never father lost so good a son.' Dr. Isaac Barrow, Bishop of Man, 1663, and S. Asaph, 1669, was his uncle. _Life of Dr. Barrow_, vol. i. p. ix., ed. 1830. Among his poems is the following, which seems to be incomplete:-- AD. DD. CHR. WREN. Ad te, sed passu tremulo vultuque rubenti, Fertur ad ingenii culmen, opella levis, Nec quid vult aliud (quid enim velit haud tibi notum) Quam ut justum authoris deferat.--_Ib._ vol. viii. p. 541. [92] Samuel Butler, born 1612, died, it is said, in great poverty, and was buried in S. Paul's, Covent Garden, 1680. [93] Wren's lunar globe will be remembered. _Vide supra_, p. 125. The satire made some sensation and caused La Fontaine to write _Un Animal dans la Lune_, in which, courtier like, he pays a compliment to Charles II., and hints at the happiness of England at peace and able to give herself 'à ces emplois,' while France was at war with Holland, Spain, and the Empire. [94] Dr. Richard Bayley, President of S. John's College. [95] Bishop Andrewes bequeathed 332_l._ to the library of Pembroke College. [96] Some alterations have recently been made at Pembroke, in which, under the late Sir G. Scott's orders, the chapel has been lengthened by about 20 feet, the stucco of the exterior stripped, and the red brick pointed. CHAPTER VI. 1664-1667. REPAIR OF S. PAUL'S--SHELDONIAN THEATRE--THE PLAGUE--A LETTER FROM PARIS--CONSECRATION OF PEMBROKE CHAPEL--FIRE OF LONDON--BISHOP WREN'S DEATH--HIS FAMILY. Yet, London, Empress of the Northern Clime, By an high fate thou greatly didst expire, Great as the world's, which, at the death of time, Must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire _Annus Mirabilis_, ccxii. Dryden. The repairs of S. Paul's Cathedral could not be delayed. Wren, as Sir John Denham's assistant, was greatly occupied about the matter, which was one of no ordinary difficulty. The responsibility was really his, for Sir John went out of his mind, and though he recovered, probably did but little business. When Inigo Jones built his portico, he cased the nave with Portland stone, and rebuilt the north and south fronts. In doing so he pared down the original pointed architecture, until little of its beauty or character remained. His work had in its turn been damaged by the Puritans, who set up booths in the portico, and dug sawpits in the cathedral inclosure. Besides these injuries Christopher Wren's accurate eye detected graver faults in the original design, some of which he enumerates. 'The pillars of the nave, though eleven feet in diameter, were only cased with stone, and filled up with rubbish inside. The roof was always too heavy for them, so that they are bent outwards on both sides, so that the roof already cracked will finally fall in.' He proposed to substitute a roof[97] of 'a light, thin shell of stone, very geometrically made.' The tower leant much to one side, and was propped with arches and buttresses, so as to block the view from the west end. Upon this tower, which he despairingly calls 'a heap of deformities,' there had been formerly a tall, thin, wooden spire, which was destroyed by lightning. For this he wished to substitute 'a dome or rotunda, and upon the cupola for outward ornament, a lantern with a spring top to rise proportionately.' He hints that when the dome was finished the rest of the cathedral should be harmonised with it, almost impossible though the task appeared. He expected great difference of opinion, and that 'some would aim at a greater magnificence than the age would afford, and some might fall so low as to think of piecing up the old fabric here with stone, there with brick, and covering all faults with a coat of plaster, to leave it still to posterity as an object of charity.' The miserable state of the building is implied in the epitaph of its Dean, Dr. Barwick, who in 1664, 'Inter sacras Ædis Paulinæ ruinas reponit suas (utrasque resurrecturas securus)'.[98] [_SHELDONIAN THEATRE._] Another work upon which Wren was engaged was the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. Sheldon, who succeeded Archbishop Juxon in the see of Canterbury in 1663, was determined to free S. Mary's Church from the profane uses to which it was put when the various 'Acts' were kept there, and any kind of jesting and buffoonery was considered allowable. He had had experience of Wren in the discussions about S. Paul's, and now engaged him as architect. The building is too well known to need a description; the roof was reckoned a triumph of skill because of 'the contrivance of supporting the same without the help of any beam, it being entirely kept up by braces and screws; and is the subject of an excellent mathematical treatise by that prodigy of the age, Dr. Wallis.'[99] It was six years building, and cost 25,000_l._ Evelyn, with whom Wren had often discussed the plans, went to Oxford on purpose to be present at the opening on July 9, 1669. 'In the morning,' he says, 'was celebrated the Encenia of the New Theater ... it was resolved to keep the present Act in it and celebrate its dedication with the greatest splendor and formalitie that might be, and therefore drew a world of strangers and other companie to the Universitie from all parts of the nation. The Vice Chancellor, Heads of Houses and Doctors, being seated in magisteriall seates, the Vice Chancellor's chaire and deske, Proctors etc. covered with Brocatall (a kind of Brocade) and cloth of gold; the Universitie Register read the founder's grant and gift of it to the Universitie upon these solemn occasions. Then followed Dr. South, the Universitie's orator, in an eloquent speech which was very long and not without some malicious and indecent reflections on the Royal Society as underminers of the Universitie, which was very foolish and untrue, as well as unseasonable. But, to let that pass from an ill-natured man, the rest was in praise of the archbishop and the ingenious architect.' Dr. Plot, the historian of Oxfordshire, who was a member of the Royal Society, in his quaint book gives a careful technical description of the construction of the theatre by Wren, and his assistant, 'Richard Frogley, an able carpenter.' During the years that the theatre was building Wren did not intermit his attendance at the Royal Society; amongst other inventions he produced a machine for drawing in perspective, which was exhibited at one of the meetings. [_THE PLAGUE._] A frightful interruption came to these and to all other pursuits in London. In 1665, the plague, which had more than once afflicted England, broke out with fearful force in London, where the dark narrow streets with their houses meeting overhead, and the foul state of the entire town, gave every encouragement to its ravages. Pepys, who stayed in London all through the worst time of the plague, gives many a record of this visitation.[100] '_June 7th._--The hottest day that ever I felt in my life. This day, much against my will I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors and "Lord have mercy upon us!" writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. '_August 16th._--To the Exchange, where I have not been a great while. But Lord! how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people and very few upon the 'Change! Jealous of every door that one sees shut up lest it should be the plague, and about us two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up. '_September 3rd_ (Lord's Day).--Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very fine, and my new periwigg, bought a good while since, and durst not wear because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done as to periwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague. My Lord Brouncker, Sir J. Minnes and I up to the Vestry' (he was then at Greenwich) 'at the desire of the justices of the peace, in order to the doing of something for the keeping of the plague from growing; but Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town who will, because they are forbid, come in crowds along with the dead corpses to see them buried; but we agreed on some orders for the prevention thereof. Among other stories, one was very passionate, me-thought, of a complaint brought against a man in the town for taking a child from London from an infected house. Alderman Hooker told us it was the child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street' (Gracechurch Street), 'a saddler, who had buried all the rest of his children with the plague, and himself and his wife being now shut up and in despair of escaping, did desire only to save the life of this little child; and so prevailed to have it received stark naked into the arms of a friend who brought it, having put it into fresh clothes, to Greenwich, where upon hearing the story we did agree it should be permitted to be received and kept in the town.' So the days went on and the grass waved in Whitehall Court, and to quote Pepys again: 'Lord! how everybody's looks and discourse in the streets is of death and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.' None but those whom absolute necessity kept in London stayed in the infected air; the works at S. Paul's were stopped; all meetings and lectures ceased, with good reason, since to gather people together was but to spread the infection. Christopher Wren profited by the cessation of his London work, to travel abroad. Before going he had much to settle; to help Mr. Evelyn find a tutor, 'a perfect Grecian and more than commonly mathematical,' for his son. This youth went two years later, at the age of thirteen, to Trinity College, Oxford, 'being newly out of long coates.' ['_THE WORLD GOVERNED BY WORDS._'] Wren's Oxford Professorship, and his works, both there and at Cambridge, required to be set in good order before he could go. At Oxford he was engaged on the repairs of Trinity College, for his friend Dr. Bathurst.[101] On June 22, 1665, Wren writes to them as follows:-- 'My honoured Friend,--I am convinced with Machiavel or some unlucky fellow, 'tis no matter whether I quote true, that the world is generally governed by words. I perceive the name of a quadrangle will carry it with those whom you say may possibly be your benefactors, though it be much the worse situation for the chambers, and the beauty of the college, and of the particular pile of building. If I had skill in enchantment to represent the pile, first in one view, then in another, I should certainly make them of my opinion; or else I will appeal to Mons. Mansard or Signor Bernini, both of which I shall see at Paris within this fortnight. 'But, to be sober, if anybody, as you say, will pay for a quadrangle, there is no dispute to be made; let them have a quadrangle, though a lame one somewhat like a three-legged table.'... Some technical details for the builder follow, and then: 'You need not use any apologies to me, for I must beg you to believe you can command me in things of greater moment, and that I love to serve you as your most faithful and affectionate Friend and Servant, 'CHRISTOPHER WREN.' The College was repaired by Sir Thomas Pope, it having been left in a very ruinous condition, but the ornamental part is due to Dr. Bathurst, aided by munificent Archbishop Sheldon and other old members of the College. He was making considerable additions to Trinity College at Cambridge: to this date belongs the library, which he added to the beautiful western Quadrangle known as Nevile's Court. 'A building,' said Wren, in a letter to the Master of Trinity, 'of that consideration you go about, deserves good care in the design and able workmen to perform it; and that he who takes the general management upon him may have a prospect of the whole, and make all parts inside and outside correspond well together.' Very full directions and six drawings follow, explaining the plan and its details. 'I suppose,' he ends, 'you have good masons; however, I would willingly take a farther pains to give all the mouldings in great; we are scrupulous in small matters and you must pardon us, the architects are as great pedants as critics and heralds.' [_WREN AT PARIS._] It was not until midsummer that Wren was able to start on his journey: he went at once to Paris to the Earl of S. Albans, the English ambassador, to whom he had letters. Lord S. Albans had lived at Paris in great ease and luxury all through the Rebellion, far more so, Evelyn indignantly says, than had the King. He was supposed to be privately married to the Queen Dowager, Henrietta Maria. He was what was then called a great virtuoso, a friend of Cowley and of other wits, and entertained Wren with much courtesy and hospitality. Wren's name was, in itself, a sufficient introduction to the scientific men and philosophers of the city, in whose society he took great pleasure. He had long been a Member of the Order of Freemasons, and had distinguished himself by the attention he gave to the lodges under his care: at the time of his journey to France he was Deputy Grand Master under Earl Rivers; no doubt he availed himself to the full of the opportunities which Freemasonry afforded him for observing the details of the work and becoming acquainted with the workmen, the architects, and the sculptors, whom Louis XIV. had brought in great numbers to Paris. It would have been interesting had Wren left us a record of his impressions of Paris from a political point of view. It was the brief interval of peace between England and France before the war of the Netherlands. Louis XIV., climbing upwards to the zenith of his brilliant reign, keeping the supreme power in his own hands since Mazarin's death (in 1661), with the wise Colbert for his financier, surrounded by all the great captains, statesmen, wits and artists who made up the 'Siècle de Louis XIV.,' must have been a very interesting subject for the observation of a philosopher like Wren, whose youth had been passed among terrible political storms. There is, however, but one slight hint in his journal, but one suggestion that he discerned the true value of much of the glitter and veneer of universal, if temporary, success. Pascal, with whom he had corresponded, and between whose brief career and his own there is a curious resemblance, had died three years before Wren took his one foreign journey. The 'Académie Royale des Sciences,' which had just received the formal sanction of Louis XIV., had begun much like the English Royal Society, by small meetings and conferences at Paris amongst scientific men, and in these conferences, Pascal, while very young, had taken a brilliant place. His father, Etienne Pascal, when he found it a vain attempt to withhold mathematical science from his son, cultivated the boy's genius to the utmost, beyond, perhaps, what the very feeble physical frame could bear. One cannot doubt that Wren was introduced to this society, and took an interest in its discussions, though his attention seems most of all to have been given to architecture. [_THE LOUVRE._] In a journal written for a Dr. Bateman, the friend who gave him the letters to Lord S. Albans, he says: 'I have busied myself in surveying the most esteemed Fabrics of Paris, and the country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily object where no less than a thousand hands are constantly employed in the works; some in laying mighty Foundations, some in raising the stories, columns, and entablements &c. with vast stones, by great and useful engines, others in carving, inlaying of marbles, plaistering, painting, gilding &c., which altogether makes a School of Architecture, the best probably at this day in Europe. The college of the Four Nations,[102] is usually admired, but the Artist had purposely set it ill-favouredly that he might shew his wit in struggling with an ill-convenienced situation. An Academy of Painters, Sculptors, Architects and the chief Artificers of the Louvre, meet every first and last Saturday of the month. Mons. Colbert, Surintendant, comes to the works of the Louvre every Wednesday, and if business hinders not, Thursday. The Workmen are paid every Sunday duly. Mons. Abbé Charles introduced me to the acquaintance of Bernini,[103] who showed me his designs of the Louvre, and of the King's Statue. Abbé Bruno keeps the curious rarities of the Duke of Orleans' library, well filled with excellent Intaglios, medals, books of Plants and Fowls in miniature. Abbé Burdelo keeps an Academy at his house for Philosophy every Monday afternoon. But I must not think to describe Paris, and the numerous observables there in the compass of a short letter. The King's Houses I could not miss, Fontainbleau has a stately wildness and vastness suitable to the Desert it stands in. ['_TO PRY INTO TRADES AND ARTS._'] 'The antique mass of the Castle of S. Germains and the hanging gardens are delightfully surprising (I mean to any man of judgement), for the pleasures below vanish away in the breath that is spent in ascending. The Palace, or if you please the Cabinet, of Versailles call'd me twice to view it; the mixtures of brick, stone, blue tile and gold make it look like a rich livery: not an inch within but is crowded with little curiosities of ornaments: the women as they make here the language and fashions and meddle with Politics and Philosophy, so they sway also in Architecture; works of Filgrand and little Knacks are in great vogue; but Building certainly ought to have the attribute of Eternal and therefore the only thing uncapable of new Fashions. The masculine furniture of _Palais Mazarine_ pleased me much better, where is a great and noble collection of antique Statues and Bustoes, (many of porphyry), good Basso-relievos: excellent pictures of the great masters, fine Arras, true Mosaics, besides _pièces de Raport_[104] in compartiments and pavements, vases of porcelain painted by Raphael, and infinite other rarities. The best of which now furnish the glorious appartment of the Queen Mother at the Louvre which I saw many times. After the incomparable villas of Vaux and Maisons, I shall name but Ruel, Coutances, Chilly, Essoane, St. Maur, St. Mande, Issy, Meudon, Rincy, Chantilly, Verneuil, Liancour, all which, and I might add many others, I have surveyed, and that I might not lose the impressions of them, I shall bring you all France on paper. Bernini's design of the Louvre I would have given my skin for; but the old reserved Italian gave me but a few minutes' view; it was five designs on paper, for which he hath received as many thousand pistoles. I had only time to copy it in my fancy and memory, and shall be able, by discourse and a crayon, to give you a tolerable account of it. I have purchased a great deal of taille-douce, that I might give our countrymen examples of ornaments and grotesques, in which the Italians themselves confess the French to excel. I hope I shall give you a very good account of all the best artists of France; my business now is to pry into trades and arts. I put myself into all shapes to humour them; it is a comedy to me, and though sometimes expenseful, I am yet loth to leave it.' There follows a long list of what he calls 'the most noted artisans within my knowledge or acquaintance,' in which is many a famous name, Bernini, Poussin, Mignard, Mansard, &c., and then he says, 'My Lord Berkeley returns to England at Christmas, when I propose to take the opportunity of his company, and by that time to perfect what I have on the anvil--observations on the present state of architecture, arts, and manufactures in France.' With the great men Latin was probably the common tongue, but with the artizans he must have talked in French, and have either possessed or acquired no small mastery of the language and of the technical terms of their various trades. The 'observations' were either never hammered into the shape Wren wished, or else were subsequently lost or copied by someone else, as frequently happened to one so careless of his own fame as was Wren. In January 1666, the English Ambassador was recalled from Paris, and the war began between England, and the Netherlands with France for their ally. [_A THANKOFFERING._] Pembroke Chapel was meanwhile completed, and 'being beautified with splendid and decorous furniture and amply endowed with an annual revenue, was upon the feast of S. Matthew' (the Bishop's patron saint) '1665, solemnly consecrated and dedicated by Bishop Wren in person and by his Episcopal authority to the honour of Almighty God. A noble and lasting monument of the rare piety and munificence of that great and wise Prelate and in every point accorded to his character, which was so well known that the sole nomination of the founder was a sufficient account of the magnificence of the foundation. Before evening service the exterior or outer chapel and the cloister leading to it (a new fabrick of Sir R. Hitcham's foundation) were by his Lordship also consecrated for places of sepulture for the use of the Society, together with a cell or vault at the East end of the chapel under the altar for a dormitory for his Lordship.'[105] Bishop Wren must have looked with joy on the completion of his thankoffering, and may have guessed, as he surveyed its beautiful proportions, that he had set his nephew, its young architect, on the road to fame. Very little is told us of the latter years of Wren's Episcopate; one or two stories are given in the 'Parentalia' and then contradicted, but it seems he kept his old firmness. In 1662 he held the second Visitation of his Diocese and the articles of inquiry and directions show no change in his opinions and no deference to Puritan notions. It was by a stretch of his power as Visitor that he admitted Dr. Beaumont to be master of Peterhouse, though the college had nominated two other deserving persons, of whom Cosin was one. The choice proved, in the end, a very wise one. He could be lenient also when he thought it right, and admitted several Fellows of Jesus College who came to him, in some fear of a refusal, for institution. He 'was very fair and civil towards them, despatched them without the usual height of the fees and persuaded them to studiousness and peace against all animosities.' So says a contemporary letter quoted in the 'Parentalia.' Wren had come home at Christmas to find London comparatively free from the plague, and people gradually returning. The Royal Society, whose meetings had of course ceased during the infection, busied themselves in investigations as to the plague, and the possible methods of preventing it. It still raged in the country, and especially at Cambridge, driving Isaac Newton from his lectures there to the garden at Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire, where the idea of the law of gravitation first occurred to his mind. The repair of S. Paul's was again discussed and commissioners appointed in 1666, among whom were Evelyn, Wren, Dean Sancroft, and the then Bishop of London, who was Humphrey Henchman, the early friend of George Herbert. [_FIRE OF LONDON._] On August 27th they inspected the cathedral. Two of the commissioners, Mr. Chichley and Mr. Prat, evidently wished to do as little as possible, declaring, when the nave was proved to lean outwards on both sides, 'it was so built for an effect of the perspective,' and proposing to repair the steeple on its old foundations. Wren thought very differently, insisted on new foundations, renewed his former proposal of 'a noble cupola' which was strongly supported by Evelyn, who had never forgotten the grandeur of S. Peter's just completed when he went to Rome as a young man in 1644. They retired to the Deanery to give their opinions in writing, promising to send estimates of the cost of their several plans. Six days later a new disaster overwhelmed London and solved the question of repairing the cathedral. On the night of September 2nd the Fire of London began; for three days and four nights it burned unchecked, having gained such strength during the first panic that it could not be beaten back, the sparks constantly kindling new centres of flame. 'All the skie,' says Evelyn,[106] 'was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like who now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that at last one was not able to approch it, so that they were forc'd to stand still and let the flames burn on, which they did for neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clowds also of smoke were dismall and reached upon computation neere fifty-six miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom, or of the last day. '_Sept. 4._--The burning still rages and it was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple; all Fleet Streete, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paules' Chaine, Watling Streete now flaming and most of it reduced to ashes; the stones of Paules flew like granados, the mealting lead running downe the streetes in a streame and the very pavement glowing with fiery rednesse so as no horse nor man was able to tread them and the demolition had stopped all the passages so as no help could be applied. The Eastern wind still more impetuously driving the flames forward. Nothing but the Almighty power of God was able to stop them, for vaine was the help of man.' At last the people were roused to take some steps. King Charles, who showed on this occasion great courage and presence of mind, got by water to the Tower and insisted on the houses near being blown up so as to prevent the flames from reaching the powder magazine. [_ITS LONG CONTINUANCE._] Pepys gives a vivid account of the dismay and confusion; the goods removed and removed again as the fire reached what had been thought to be places of safety; the rain of fire drops, and the ever-new places in which the fire broke out, and his own difficulties of getting anything to eat but the cold remains of his Sunday's dinner! On September 17 he went by water to Greenwich--'seeing the City all the way, a sad sight much fire being in it still.' S. Paul's suffered terribly; the Portico was split and rent, nothing but the inscription remaining, of which each letter was perfect. The heat had calcined the largest blocks of stone, the Portland stone flew off wherever the flames touched it; the lead roof (no less than six acres by measure[107]), melted and fell in, and carrying everything with it in its fall, broke into S. Faith's, the crypt below the choir, where the books belonging to the Stationers' Hall had been carried for safety. They caught fire and continued burning for a week. The altar and roof above it, though of lead, remained untouched, and one Bishop's tomb.[108] When at length the fire burnt out, the city was a 'ruinous heap,' the air still so hot as almost to singe the hair of those who sought amongst the ruins for some remains of former wealth. In the fields all round were two hundred thousand people of all classes equally destitute, silent from the very greatness of their calamity and asking no relief. The King did his utmost for them, and a proclamation was made for the country to come in and refresh them. Most fortunately the weather was warm and fair. For a few days their stupor lasted, when it was broken into by a general alarm that the Dutch were in the river burning all the shipping. When this was at length appeased, the people flocked back to what had been the city, and either set up little sheds where their houses had been or took refuge with friends whose dwellings were uninjured, so that in four days' time of the hundreds who had thronged the fields not one remained. To rebuild the city was an urgent necessity, and while the flames were in parts still burning Wren and Evelyn had both made plans for a new city and presented them to the King. Wren's was the first shown to King Charles, and though there is much resemblance between it and that of Evelyn, yet Wren's is evidently the more useful, as well as the finer plan of the two, and was the one which the King accepted. All persons were agreed that to allow the old, narrow, filthy streets, with their magazines of oil and rosin, and their wooden houses touching each other overhead, to be put back was only to insure another plague and another fire, but the manner of rebuilding was in as great dispute as was the origin of the fire. Pepys believed that it was caused by the Dutch, who in the following year did venture into Chatham and burnt several men-of-war as they lay at anchor there; but the popular idea was that it was caused by the French and the Roman Catholics, and there were plenty ready to swear that they had seen foreigners kindling the flames in fresh places by throwing fire-balls into the houses. Some said it was done by the Puritans, and very few appear to have accepted the theory, probably the true one, that it was caused by the over-heating of a baker's oven. Christopher Wren began his work by having the ruins cleared away. It was no easy task, especially as every now and then the flames would break out anew when the air reached the cellars where they had been smouldering. But it was a mere matter of necessity, as until this was done it was not possible to pass to and fro or take the necessary levels and measurements. He also repaired a portion of the west end of S. Paul's, which best permitted it, for divine service. It was employment enough for one man, but as the evenings grew longer, in the intervals of elaborating his plans for the new city, he returned to the Royal Society and attended all its meetings. Improvements in building naturally occupied much of the Society's attention. Mr. Hooke produced a scheme for a better method of brick-making;[109] new models for the London granaries were required, and Wren gave an account of those at Dantzic. [_DEATH OF BISHOP WREN._] On April 24, 1667, his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, died, at the age of eighty-one, at Ely House, in Holborn, which had probably been his chief abode, though he left it on occasions for the work of his diocese and for the consecration of the chapel at Pembroke Hall. Back to his well-loved University, and to the resting-place he had prepared for himself underneath the altar of the chapel, the Bishop's remains were slowly borne during the first bright days of May, attended by 'his children, his alliance, and his family.' The Heralds' College conducted the funeral with full dignity and solemnity. When they reached Cambridge the Vice-Chancellor and the whole university met the procession, which was headed by Rouge Dragon, Pursuivant-at-arms, carrying the silver-gilt Crozier, and Norroy, King-at-arms, carrying the silver-gilt Mitre, both of which, as well as a pair of massive silver altar candlesticks, the Bishop had provided a year before. On May 9, with the same attendance, which included 'twenty-four scholars of S. John's, Peter House, and Pembroke who were his relations,'[110] the coffin was borne to Pembroke Chapel from the Registry, at the end of the Regent's Walk, where it had lain in state for two days, and after Evening Service had been said was laid in a 'coffin of one fair whole stone,' in the vault of the chapel. Dr. Pearson pronounced a Latin oration over it, recalling the chief events of the Bishop's long and troubled life, describing his high-minded character, his resolute self-denial, and contrasting his conduct in never seeking, or by the least word asking, for promotion, but rather being besought to accept it, with those who gaped for church preferment, and rather snatched honours than received them. Dr. Pearson dwelt on his liberality to the University, on his never enriching his family out of the revenues of the sees he had ruled; and paid a warm tribute to the courage and faith with which he had fought for the Church, and either alone, or amongst very few, had understood her discipline and dared to revive it. [_BISHOP WREN'S SONS._] Of the four sons who survived the Bishop, Matthew, the eldest, early attracted notice by an answer to Harrington's 'Commonwealth of Oceana' and by a pamphlet 'Monarchy asserted,' a vindication of a former work written in 1659. He was highly thought of by the Royalists, and was a member of the Parliament which met in 1661. He was Lord Clarendon's secretary, remained loyal to him during his unmerited disgrace, and was then taken by the Duke of York as his secretary. Matthew remained with the Duke until 1672; when he died and was buried in the vault at Pembroke Chapel. He had taken a share in most of the political events of his day, always with honour and credit. Thomas, the next brother, left the profession of medicine, received holy orders, and was given the Rectory of Littlebury in Essex by his father; a preferment that he held until his death in 1680. Bishop Wren also made him Archdeacon of Ely. He was a great musician and a member of the Royal Society. The two younger sons, Charles and William, were both Oxford scholars, and received degrees at the Restoration. Charles sat for Cambridge in the Parliament of 1685, called by James II. on his accession. All these three younger sons received degrees in 1660, with many others who had been ejected by the Parliamentary Visitors in 1648-9. William Wren, who was made a knight, was a barrister of the Middle Temple, and enjoyed the questionable advantage of Judge Jeffreys' acquaintance. Jeffreys, then Lord Chancellor, writing to Pepys[111] in 1687, says:-- 'My most Hon^{ed} Friend,--The bearer, Capt. Wren, came to mee this evening, with a strong fancy that a recommendation of myne might at least entitle him to your favourable reception; His civillities to my brother and his relation to honest Will Wren, and you know who else, emboldens me to offer my request on his behalfe. I hope he has served our M^r. well, and is capable of being an object of the King's favour in his request; however, I am sure I shall be excused for this impertinency, because I will gladly, in my way, embrace all opportunities wherein I may manifest myselfe to be what I here assure you I am, Sir, 'Your most entirely affectionate 'Friend and Servant, 'JEFFREYS, C.' William Wren died in 1689 and was buried in the Temple Church. There is no mention of the marriage of any of the Bishop's children, and respecting the daughters I can find no record whatever, so it seems that that branch of the Wren family died out. Captain Wren was probably one of the Durham Wrens, or of those who lived at Withibrook in Warwickshire and are mentioned by Dugdale. FOOTNOTES: [97] For an account of the great rarity of stone roofs see Fergusson's _Illustrated Handbook of Architecture_, vol. ii. p. 879. It is said that Wren used often to look at the beautiful roof of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and say he would build such another if anyone would tell him where to put the first stone. [98] 'Among the sacred ruins of S. Paul's Church laid down his own (sure that both will rise again).' Sancroft, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeded him. [99] _Oxford_, vol. i. p. 473. Ayliffe. [100] _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 273, _et seq._, ed. 1828. [101] Dr. Ralph Bathurst, born 1620, educated at Coventry and Oxford. Was ordained, but during the rebellion maintained himself by the practice of medicine. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1688 its president. He was president of Trinity from 1644 till his death in 1704. He was Dean of Wells, and was offered the bishopric, but refused it as taking him from his college and hindering the improvements he was making there. Evelyn speaks highly of his preaching and his admirable parts and learning.' [102] Wren refers to the University of Paris, which was divided into four faculties--arts (letters and science), theology, civil and canon law, and medicine. The faculty of arts was divided into four _nations_. That of France divided again into five provinces or tribes, that of Picardy divided in the same way, that of Normandy, and that of Germany which was divided into two tribes, that of the continents (divided into two provinces), and that of the islanders, which included Great Britain and Ireland.--_Dictionnaire Historique de la France_, par L. Lalanne. [103] Gio. Bernini was born at Naples 1598 and was a great sculptor as well as architect. He made a bust of Charles I. of England after a picture by Vandyke. When the bust was carried to the king's house at Chelsea his Majesty with a train of nobles went to view it, and as they were viewing it a hawk flew over their heads with a partridge in his claw which he had wounded to death. Some of the partridge's blood fell on the neck of the bust, where it always remained without being wiped off. This bust, with the picture from which it was taken, is thought to have perished in the fire at Whitehall, 1697.--_Biographical History_, vol. ii. p. 88. Grainger. Bernini was splendidly received at Paris and employed in several works of sculpture, among which was a bust of Louis XIV., probably the one to which Wren refers. His design for the Louvre was accepted, and he had just begun to work it out at the time Wren wrote, but Colbert and the two Perraults stirred up so many difficulties that Bernini abandoned the task, and the Louvre was left in the hands of Claude Perrault. Bernini returned to Rome and died there in 1680. [104] _i.e._ Mosaic. [105] Wood. _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, vol. i. p. 735. He used certain peculiarities in the Act of Consecration which have been repeated at the consecration of the addition to the chapel, March 25, 1881. [106] _Diary_, September, 1666. [107] Evelyn's _Diary_, September, 1666. [108] That of Robert de Braybrook (Bishop of London 1382 and 1405). The tomb of Donne (Dean of S. Paul's 1621-1631) was not entirely destroyed. [109] The bricks, which were temporarily used in the building of S. Paul's, were of so good a quality that Richard Jennings, Wren's master carpenter, bought and transported them by water to Henley-on-Thames (his native town), and with them built a house a mile from Henley, which, bearing the name of 'Badgemore,' is still to be seen. The bricks of which it is built are often admired. [110] _Desiderata Curiosa_, p. 545. Peck. [111] Pepys' _Diary_, vol. v. p. 326. CHAPTER VII. 1668-1673. PATCHING S. PAUL'S--SANCROFT'S LETTERS--WREN'S EXAMINATION OF S. PAUL'S--SALISBURY CATHEDRAL--LONDON AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN--LETTER TO FAITH COGHILL--WREN MARRIES HER--TEMPLE BAR--S. MARY-LE-BOW-- ARTILLERY COMPANY--GUNPOWDER USED TO REMOVE RUINS. Methinks already from this chymic flame, I see a city of more precious mold, Rich as the town which gives the Indies name, With silver pav'd, and all divine with gold. Already, labouring with a mighty fate, She shakes the rubbish from her mounting brow, And seems to have renewed her charter's date, Which heaven will till the death of time allow. Dryden, _Annus Mirabilis_, ccxciii. After the death of Bishop Wren, Christopher was a frequent attendant at the Royal Society, where several experiments were made of raising weights by means of gunpowder, a matter which Wren was anxious to investigate before trying to remove the mass of ruins which had been S. Paul's. Much very tedious work of carting away rubbish and opening roadways still pressed on Wren and his assistants before even the necessary levels could be taken and adjusted or any building could be begun. In spite of Wren's previous statement, and that of Evelyn and Sancroft, in spite of the immense additional damage which the conflagration had caused, attempts were still made to patch up the remains of S. Paul's Cathedral. As has been said, something was done in order to make it possible to hold Divine Service in the ruins, and there Sancroft ministered, and there possibly he preached before the King on the occasion of the solemn fast held for the fire on October 10, 1666.[112] Parts of the sermon rise to real eloquence, and he admonishes King Charles and his luxurious Court with singular courage and directness. So matters remained with the Cathedral until the spring of 1668. ['_INDISPENSABLY NECESSARY._'] Wren was at Oxford, delivering his Astronomy Lectures, when he received the following letter from the Dean of S. Paul's:[113] 'What you whispered in my ear, at your last coming hither, is now come to pass. Our work at the west end of S. Paul's is fallen about our ears. Your quick eye discerned the walls and pillars gone off from their perpendiculars and I believe other defects too, which are now exposed to every common observer. About a week since, we being at work about the third pillar from the west end on the south side, which we had new cased with stone, where it was most defective almost up to the chapiter, a great weight falling from the high wall, so disabled the vaulting of the side aisle by it, that it threatened a sudden ruin so visibly that the workmen presently removed, and the next night the whole pillar fell, and carried scaffolds and all to the very ground. 'This breach has discovered to all that look on it two great defects in Inigo Jones' work; one that his new case of stone in the upper walls (massy as it is) was not set upon the upright of the pillars, but upon the core of the groins of the vaulting; the other that there were no keystones at all to tie it to the old work; and all this being very heavy with the Roman ornaments on the top of it, and being already so far gone outwards, cannot possibly stand long. In fine, it is the opinion of all men, that we can proceed no farther at the west end. What we are to do next is the present deliberation, in which you are so absolutely and indispensably necessary to us that we can do nothing, resolve on nothing without you.'... 'You will think fit, I know, to bring with you those excellent draughts and designs you formerly favoured us with; and, in the mean time, till we enjoy you here, consider what to advise that may be for the satisfaction of his Majesty and the whole nation, an obligation so great and public, that it must be acknowledged by better hands than those of 'Your affectionate Friend and Servant, 'W. SANCROFT.' Wren seems to have been unable to come up to London, and to have written an answer to Dean Sancroft reiterating his opinion, while the attempt at repairs continued. At the beginning of July Sancroft wrote to him again:-- 'Sir,--Yesterday my Lords of Canterbury, London, and Oxford met on purpose to hear your letter read once more, and to consider what is now to be done in order to the repairs of S. Paul's. They unanimously resolved, that it is fit immediately to attempt something, and that, without you, they can do nothing. I am therefore commanded to give you an invitation hither in his Grace's name, and the rest of the commissioners, with all speed, that we may prepare something to be proposed to his Majesty (the design of such a quire, at least as may be a congruous part of a greater and more magnificent work to follow); and then, for the procuring of contributions to defray this, we are so sanguine as not to doubt of it, if we could but once resolve what we would do, and what that would cost; so that the only part of your letter we demur to, is the method you propound of declaring first what money we would bestow, and then designing something just of that expense: for quite otherwise--the way their lordships resolve upon, is to frame a design, handsome and noble, and suitable to all the ends of it, and to the reputation of the city and the nation; and to take it for granted that money will be had to accomplish it: or, however, to let it lie by, till we have before us a prospect of so much as may reasonably encourage us to begin. 'Thus far I thought good to prepare you for what will be said to you when you come, that you may not be surprised with it: and, if my summons prevail not, my lord the Bishop of Oxford hath undertaken to give it you warmer, _ore tenus_,[114] the next week, when he intends to be with you, if, at least, you be not come towards us before he arrives, which would be a very agreeable surprise to us all, and especially to your very affectionate, humble Servant, 'W. SANCROFT.' [_THE STATE OF S. PAUL'S._] Wren obeyed this intreaty, came up from Oxford, made a thorough examination of the Cathedral, and wrote a report for the commissioners. 'What time and weather,' he says, 'had left entire in the old and art in the new repaired parts of this great pile of S. Paul's, the calamity of the fire hath so weakened and defaced, that it now appears like some antique ruin of two thousand years' continuance, and to repair it sufficiently will be like the mending of Argo-nairs,[115] scarce anything at last will be left of the old.' He enumerates the various 'decays' of the building from the date of the fire in Queen Elizabeth's reign which burnt the whole roof and caused 'the spreading out of the walls above ten inches from their true perpendicular'--up to the last fire, of which he says-- 'The second ruins are they that have put the restoration past remedy, the effects of which I shall briefly enumerate. 'First, the portico is nearly deprived of that excellent beauty and strength which time alone and weather could have no more overthrown than the natural rocks; so great and good were the materials, and so skilfully were they laid after a true Roman manner. But so impatient is Portland stone of fire that many tons are scaled off and the columns flawed quite through.' Then follows an account of the injuries to the rest of the building, but as they have been already touched on in the extracts from Evelyn's Diary and Sancroft's letters, they shall not be repeated here. 'Having shown in part,' he continues, 'the deplorable condition of our patient, we are to consult of the cure, if possible art may effect it. And herein we must imitate the physician, who, when he finds a total decay of nature, bends his skill to a palliative to give respite for the better settlement of the estate of the patient. The question is then, where best to begin this sort of practice; that is to make a new quire for present use.' The only part of the cathedral where this could be safely and easily done was at the eastern end of the nave:-- 'Since,' he said, 'we cannot mend this great ruin, we will not disfigure it, but that it shall still have its full motives to work, if possible upon this or the next ages: and yet prove so cheap, that between three and four thousand pounds shall effect it all in one summer. 'And, having with this ease obtained a present cathedral, there will be time to consider of a more durable and noble fabric, to be made in the place of the lower and eastern parts of the Church, when the minds of men, now contracted to many objects of necessary charge, shall by God's blessing be more widened, after a happy restoration, both of the buildings, and the wealth of the city and nation. In the meantime to derive, if not a stream, yet some little drills of charity this way; or, at least, to preserve that already obtained from being diverted, it may not prove ill-advised to seem to begin something of the new fabric. But I confess this cannot well be put in execution without taking down all that part of the ruin; which whether it be yet seasonable to do we must leave to our superiors.' [_SALISBURY CATHEDRAL._] Many meetings and much discussion ensued, and Wren's opinion at last prevailed; the King issued an order in council for taking down the walls at the east end, the old choir, and the tower, and for clearing the ground in order to lay a fresh foundation. While this was being done, Wren prepared sketches and designs for a new S. Paul's. He had also an engagement out of London: his friend Dr. Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury, an active member of the Royal Society, asked Wren to survey his beautiful cathedral, which had suffered much in the civil wars, and lately by lightning and tempest. Though the architecture of the cathedral was not of the kind which he considered the best, Wren had too fine a taste, too quick an eye for beauty of form, not to admire it heartily, and in his report he pronounced that 'the whole pile was large and magnificent, justly accounted one of the best patterns of the age wherein it was built.' He praised the pillars and mouldings, 'the stately and rich plainness' to which the architect had trusted. He made a thorough examination of the whole, especially the spire, which had declined to the south-west, and had caused great alarm. Wren was of opinion that the architect had not laid as sufficient foundations, especially under the pillars, as he should have done, considering the marshy nature of the soil, the frequent inundations, the great weight that the pillars had to bear, and that they themselves were too slight, particularly those under the spire. To prevent further mischief to the spire, he ordered some timbers in it, and in the tower, to be cut away, and put in bands and braces of iron wrought by anchor smiths who were accustomed to great work for ships. He then had a plummet dropped to the pavement, from the highest possible part of the spire, the height of which he reckoned at 404 feet from the ground, to see exactly what the decline was, and ordered this trial to be repeated at certain times to see if the decline increased. When, nearly 200 years later, Mr. Wyatt made the trial, he found that the decline was unaltered, so true had Wren's science proved. [_LONDON AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN._] Both this year and the previous one had, so far as London was concerned, been taken up by the business of levelling, marking out streets, and adjusting the claims of such as had had houses in the city before the fire. Wren had laid before the King and Parliament a model of the city as he proposed to build it, with full explanations of the details of the design; the model probably does not exist, but the ground-plan has been preserved, and suggests a London very different to the present one. The street leading up Ludgate Hill, instead of being the confined, winding approach to S. Paul's that it now is, even its crooked picturesqueness marred by the viaduct that cuts all the lines of the Cathedral, gradually widened as it approached S. Paul's, and divided itself into two great streets, ninety feet wide at the least, which ran on either side of the Cathedral, leaving a large open space in which it stood. Of the two streets, one ran parallel with the river until it reached the Tower, and the other led to the Exchange, which Wren meant to be the centre of the city, standing in a great piazza, to which ten streets, each sixty feet wide, converged, and around which were placed the Post Office, the Mint, the Excise Office, the Goldsmiths' Hall, and the Ensurance, forming the outside of the piazza. The smallest streets were to be thirty feet wide, 'excluding all narrow, dark alleys without thoroughfares, and courts.' The churches were to occupy commanding positions along the principal thoroughfares, and to be 'designed according to the best forms for capacity and hearing, adorned with useful porticoes and lofty ornamental towers and steeples in the greater parishes. All churchyards, gardens, and unnecessary vacuities, and all trades that use great fires or yield noisome smells to be placed out of town.' He intended that the churchyards should be carefully planted and adorned, and be a sort of girdle round the town, wishing them to be an ornament to the city, and also a check upon its growth. To burials within the walls of the town he strongly objected, and the experience derived from the year of the plague confirmed his judgment. No gardens are mentioned in the plan, for he had provided, as he thought, sufficiently for the healthiness of the town by his wide streets and numerous open spaces for markets. Gardening in towns was an art little considered in his days, and contemporary descriptions show us that 'vacuities' were speedily filled with heaps of dust and refuse. The London bank of the Thames was to be lined with a broad quay, along which the halls of the city companies were to be built, with suitable warehouses in between for the merchants, to vary the effect of the edifices. The little stream whose name survives in _Fleet_ Street was to be brought to light, cleansed, and made serviceable as a canal one hundred and twenty feet wide, running much in the line of the present Holborn Viaduct.[116] These were the main features of Christopher Wren's scheme, and had he been allowed to accomplish it, we can imagine what the effect of London might have been without its noisome smells, without its dark crooked lanes, without its worst smoke, its river honoured not only with the handsome quay it has at length obtained, but with a line of beautiful buildings and fair spires, and above all S. Paul's, with an ample space around it, giving free play to its grand proportions. Wren, with a perfect knowledge of his own powers, which he considered as dispassionately, and knew as accurately as any matter of mathematical science, was ready to undertake and perform his scheme to the uttermost. [_PREOCCUPIED GROUND._] The difficulties were however considerable: there were the endless quarrels about property, the reluctance to part with an old site, and, chief difficulty of all, the utmost hurry of rebuilding in order to house the people before the approaching winter. Pepys[117] says that in April 1667:-- 'Moorefields have houses two stories high in them, and paved streets, the city having let leases for seven years, which will be very much to the hindering of the building of the city; but it was considered that the streets cannot be passable in London till the whole street be built; and several that had got ground of the city for charity to build sheds on, had got the trick presently to sell that for 60_l._ which did not cost them 20_l._ to put up; and so the city being very poor in stock, thought it as good to do it themselves and therefore let leases for seven years of the ground in Moorefields.' Thus Wren had by no means clear ground on which to work, and an opportunity was forfeited, which, _absit omen_, may never recur, of making London one of the beautiful cities of the world. Important sanitary improvements were, however, made: the houses were not built of wood; the principal streets were less narrow; and, above all, the lingering contagion was burnt away. Nothing less would probably have availed; but the fire was a cleansing one, and left behind it this blessing, that though more than two hundred years have elapsed the plague has not, as yet, reappeared. The Custom House of London was one of the first buildings to be restored, and Wren began it in 1668. It was a stately stone edifice, built in three sides of a square, with an open court in front. The same fate befell this building which had overtaken its predecessor; in 1719 it was burnt down. [_FAITH COGHILL._] Besides all these architectural and scientific cares, Wren had business of his own on hand, and was at this time engaged to be married to a lady four years younger than himself, whom probably he had known for some time. His bride was Faith, daughter of Sir Thomas Coghill and Elizabeth his wife, who lived at Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire. Sir Thomas was sheriff of the county in 1633, and was knighted at Woodstock in that year, the same in which King Charles was crowned in Scotland. Sir Thomas was a grandson of Marmaduke Coghill,[118] of Coghill, Knaresborough. He married, in 1622, Elizabeth Sutton, the heiress of Horsell and some lands in Surrey. Faith, their daughter, was born on March 17, 1636, and baptized in the same month at Bletchingdon by her relation the Rev. John Viell, the then rector. It seems likely that Wren made her acquaintance while both were children when staying with his sister Susan and her husband, Dr. William Holder, at Bletchingdon Rectory. It may have been Faith who comforted him when, on June 3, 1656, they laid Dean Wren in the chancel of Bletchingdon Church. One letter to Faith Coghill from her lover, exists among the curious autographs of the 'Parentalia,'[119] its delicate, finished and yet firm writing, eminently characteristic of Christopher Wren: it is as follows-- 'Madam,--The artificer having never before mett with a drowned watch, like an ignorant physician has been soe long about the cure that he hath made me very unquiet that your commands should be soe long deferred; however, I have sent the watch at last and envie the felicity of it, that it should be soe neer your side, and soe often enjoy your Eye, and be consulted by you how your time shall passe while you employ your hand in your excellent workes. But have a care of it, for I put such a Spell into it that every Beating of the Ballance will tell you 'tis the pulse of my Heart which labours as much to serve you and more trewly than the watch; for the watch I believe will sometimes lie, and sometimes perhaps be idle and unwilling to goe, having received so much injury by being drenched in that briny bath, that I dispair it should ever be a trew servant to you more. But as for me (unlesse you drown me too in my teares) you may be confident I shall never cease to be, 'Your most affectionate humble servant, 'CHR. WREN. 'June 14. 'I have put the watch in a box that it might take noe harm, and wrapt it about with a little leather, and that it might not jog, I was fain to fill up the corners either with a few shavings or wast paper.' On December 7, 1669, Christopher Wren and Faith Coghill were married in the Temple Church in London. Of their married life there is absolutely no record; they probably lived chiefly in London, as Wren had a house in Scotland Yard, which went with the office of Surveyor-General. One of Wren's early works was the rebuilding, on a somewhat larger scale, of the Royal Exchange. 'Charles II. went to the Exchange with his kettle-drums and trumpets to lay the first stone of the new building of the Exchange on the 23rd of October 1667.'[120] Wren's own wish had been, as has been said, to make it the nave or centre of the town, in which case he meant to contrive it after the form of a Roman Forum with double porticoes. Thwarted in this, he restored it as much as possible to what it had previously been, replacing the statue of Sir Thomas Gresham, the only thing in the building uninjured by the Fire. It is curious that this restoration should have begun just a hundred years from the time when Queen Elizabeth was feasted by Sir Thomas Gresham at his house, visited the new building, and caused it to be proclaimed 'the Royal Exchange' by the sound of the trumpet. The rebuilding was very quickly performed, though at considerable cost.[121] Readers of the _Spectator_[122] will remember Addison's fine description of the Exchange, and 'the grand scene of business which gave him an infinite variety of solid and substantial entertainments.' [_TEMPLE BAR._] Next came Temple Bar, which was begun in 1670, and finished in 1672. It was built of Portland stone, and had in its four niches statues of James I. and Anne of Denmark on the west side, Charles I. and Charles II. on the other.[123] Blackened and defiled as it was, and disfigured by the neighbouring houses, it was one of the picturesque, characteristic buildings of London, now disappearing with alarming rapidity, and had seen many a generation pass in triumph or in sorrow under its archway. The thanksgiving for the Prince of Wales's recovery (1872) was the last historical spectacle with which Temple Bar was connected. On that occasion the City was moved to wipe off some of the smoke of two hundred years, and to let Temple Bar be seen somewhat as it must have been when the great architect finished it, as the entrance to a city which, in spite of all drawbacks, might be fairly called his creation. Wren attempted to prosecute his design for the quay along the northern bank of the Thames, but the ground was being rapidly encroached upon by buildings, some few of which were tolerable, but the greater part unsightly. Various interests;--the immense water traffic, doubled, one can believe, at a time when the city streets were still impassable; the uncertain support given by the King--all combined to defeat his plan. Could he now walk along that glorious achievement the Embankment, what would not his feelings be on seeing the hideous buildings which it has revealed! The Surveyor-General's office was one which entailed endless work. There was not a street laid down, hardly a house built, in any part of the town, without the surveyor being first consulted;--now about 'a parcel of ground bought by Colonel Panton' (the present Panton Street, S.W.); now about the houses pulled down for the safety of Whitehall during the Fire.--Into every case Wren made careful inquiry, visiting the places himself, and insisting on the buildings being of stone or brick, with proper paving in the streets, and having a due regard to health. In spite of his care several wretched buildings were put up in places which, as a few surviving names testify, were then fields near the City. ['_MEAN HABITATIONS._'] When Wren found that the owners persisted in erecting such shabby buildings he presented a petition to the King, as follows:-- 'To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. The humble petition of Christopher Wren, sheweth. That there are divers buildings of late erected, and many foundations laid, and more contrived in Dog's Fields, Windmill Fields, and the fields adjoining to Soe Hoe,[124] and several other places without the suburbs of London and Westminster; the builders whereof have no grant nor allowance from Your Majesty, and have therefore been prohibited and hindered by your petitioner as much as in him lieth. Yet, notwithstanding, they proceed to erect small and mean habitations which will prove only receptacles for the poorer sort, and the offensive trades, to the annoyance of the better inhabitants, the damage of the parishes already too much burthened with poor, the rendering the government of these parts more unmanageable, the great hindrance of perfecting the city buildings, and others allowed by Your Majesty's broad seal; the choking up the air of Your Majesty's palace and park, and the houses of the nobility; the infecting or total loss of the waters which by many expenseful drains and conduits, have formerly been derived from these fields to Your Majesty's palace of Whitehall and to the mewes; the manifest decay of which waters (upon complaint of your serjeant plumber) the office of Your Majesty's works by frequent views and experiments have found. 'May it, therefore, please Your Majesty to issue a royal proclamation, to put stop to these growing inconveniences and to hinder the buildings which are not already or shall not be licensed by Your Majesty's grant; and effectually to empower your petitioner to restrain the same or otherways to consider of the premises as in Your Majesty's wisdom shall seem most expedient. 'And your Petitioner, &c.' The petition was considered by the King in council, a proclamation was issued, and full powers were given to the surveyor, backed by commands that he should take effectual care that the proclamation was obeyed. This Wren was very ready to do: with all his gentleness and courtesy he had inherited much of Bishop Wren's firmness, and had no intention of swerving from his point. The churches of the City began to rise gradually. Pepys says:[125]-- 'It is observed, and is true, in the late fire of London, that the fire burned just as many parish churches as there were hours from the beginning to the end of the fire; and next that there were just as many churches left standing as there were taverns left standing in the rest of the City that was not burned, being, I think, thirteen in all of each: which is pretty to observe.' There has been much dispute as to whether or not Wren repaired S. Sepulchre's Church. Mr. Elmes and others declare that he repaired it in 1671, but Mr. Hoby, one of its churchwardens, who made a careful study of all the parchments and papers belonging to S. Sepulchre's, gives it as his deliberate opinion that-- 'The church was not destroyed, but very much injured, by the Fire of London, in 1666. The inhabitants would not wait until Sir C. Wren could attend to them, but repaired their own church, and did it so badly that a long time elapsed before he would grant the certificate necessary to enable them to obtain the money from the commissioners.'[126] As has been said, such unauthorised building and patching took place pretty frequently, and all that recent researches have brought to light goes to prove that Wren had very little to do with S. Sepulchre's. [_S. MARY LE BOW._] S. Mary le Bow, with its proverbial bells,[127] was begun in this year and finished five years later, on a very old foundation. The first S. Mary's was built by William the Conqueror,[128] on marshy land, and stood upon arches of stone, whence the church took the name of S. Maria de Arcubus or le Bow. The 'great bell of Bow' was, in 1469, ordered by the common council to be rung at nine o'clock every evening, and money was left for this object; when the church was burnt in the Great Fire it had twelve very melodious bells hung in its steeple. When Sir Christopher came to rebuild the church he found an older foundation to work upon than even that in 1100. In clearing the ground he came upon a foundation firm enough to build upon, which on examination proved to be the 'walls, with windows and pavement, of a Roman temple.' Upon these walls he built the body of the church, but for its beautiful steeple it was necessary to buy the site of an old house and to advance about forty feet to the line of the street. Here the workmen dug through about eighteen feet of made earth, and then, to Wren's surprise and their own, came to a Roman causeway of rough stone firmly cemented, about four feet thick, underneath which lay the London clay. With this foundation Wren was content and built up what has ever ranked as one of his finest churches. A good judge of architecture has pronounced that the steeple is 'beyond all doubt the most elegant building of its class erected since the Reformation ... there is a play of light and shade, a variety of outline, and an elegance of detail, which it would be very difficult to match in any other steeple.'[129] The Arches Court of Canterbury derived its name from this church, where, until the fire, its sittings were held. The court then sat at Exeter House in the Strand, then at Doctors' Commons, and finally in Westminster Hall. The vane which completes the spire is the City dragon, with a cross on either wing, curiously chased in gilt copper. The ancient Church of S. Christopher le Stocks in Threadneedle Street suffered severely in the Fire, only the mere shell of the building remaining; it had been made a storehouse for a quantity of papers hastily rescued from some merchant's office and placed in S. Christopher's, where they perished and greatly damaged the church. It had been lately repaired and was endowed with 20_l._ in trust 'for a minister to read divine service there daily at 6 o'clock in the morning for ever. 50_s._ each yearly to the clerk and the sexton for their attendance, and 5_l._ yearly to provide for lights in winter time.' In 1671, Wren finished the repairs of the church, carefully preserving its pinnacled Gothic tower; in 1696 he further adorned the interior. It is curious that the first church which came under Wren's hands should have been one dedicated to his patron saint; curious also that this should have been the first of the churches destroyed by those who should have been their guardians. S. Christopher's was literally sacrificed to Mammon; it was destroyed for the enlargement of the Bank of England in 1781. [_JOINS THE ARTILLERY COMPANY._] In 1669 Wren appears in a new character as a member of the Honourable Artillery Company. He was admitted at their festival on August 17, when the company marched in state to a church in Broad Street, probably one of the many temporary ones put up after the Fire, and rewarded Dr. Waterhouse for his sermon with three of the newly-coined guinea pieces. A great banquet in the Clothworkers' Hall in Mincing Lane, where the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other distinguished persons were present, concluded the festival.[130] It is hardly conceivable that Wren could have found time to be more than an honorary member, but scattered notices here and there of observations made when 'firing off my piece' seem to point to his having attended the drills of the company. One wishes there was a portrait extant of Sir Christopher in his uniform, wearing the red-plumed high hat which appeared on gala days! In 1673 Wren resigned the Savilian astronomy professorship, to which the pressure of his architectural work made it impossible he should any longer attend. No doubt it was with great regret that he gave up the post, with all its curious speculations, its boundless possibilities of discovery, and turned himself from the study of the heavens to the dust and turmoil, the endless difficulties and petty quarrels, which thwarted him at every step of his London labours. In truth, the pressure of business was enormous. Not a moment could be spared while the population of the City had neither churches, places of traffic, nor houses to dwell in; and the architect, whose plan had been marred, had to do the best he could in the midst of every kind of incongruity. The futile attempts to patch up S. Paul's were in 1673 at last abandoned, and Wren ordered the ground to be cleared that new foundations might be laid. A great mass of material for building had had to be disposed of while the repairs were going on. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Winchester, and Oxford, and the Lord Mayor, were commissioners for the repair of S. Paul's; from them Wren obtained an order that-- 'The clerk of the works shall be required to dispose of and sell the stone, chalk, timber and free stone for, and towards, the rebuilding of the parochial churches and to _no other use whatsoever_, as he shall be directed, at merchantable rates to the masons and carpenters that build the said churches by order of Sir Leoline Jenkins (judge of the Admiralty Court), Dr. Sancroft, and Dr. Wren, or any two of them.' The money thus collected was put aside for the fabric of the Cathedral. [_USE OF GUNPOWDER._] Though much of the old material was removed in this manner, and yet not diverted from its proper purpose, the ground was by no means clear. Wren, appointed under the Great Seal, architect of S. Paul's, and one of the commissioners in the new commission for its rebuilding, had to take down by degrees what portions of the old building were still standing. Warped and cracked as they were, the walls, eighty feet high and five thick, were yet strong enough to make the process of pulling down both difficult and tedious. Wren determined to avail himself of the knowledge he had acquired in the Royal Society's recent experiments in raising weights by means of gunpowder. Houses, it is true, had been blown up in several places during the Fire in order to protect the Tower of London and Whitehall, but the use of gunpowder to raise a definite weight, and throw it a fixed distance and no farther, was a novel experiment. When the labourers reached at last the old central tower, the walls of which were two hundred feet high, they were afraid to go up to the top, as they had done elsewhere, and work with their pickaxes, while those below shovelled away the stones and mortar that they threw down into separate heaps. This was the time for Wren's experiment. With great precautions, and the use of eighteen pounds of gunpowder only, he blew up the north-western angle of the tower, so contriving it that, while he raised more than three thousand tons weight, it was not scattered and no damage was done, though the shock made the neighbours imagine it to be an earthquake. Encouraged by this success, Wren had another mine prepared, but unluckily was obliged to go out of town himself and to leave it in the charge of his next officer. The man, thinking to improve upon his master, increased the quantity of powder, caused an explosion which shot stones far and wide, and though no lives were lost, terrified the City, all the more that an old superstition declared that the tower of S. Paul's and the City of London would fall together. Forbidden, owing to the panic thus caused, the use of this modern method, Wren betook himself to ancient times, and devised a gigantic battering ram, with a great spike at one end. Thirty men, fifteen on each side, worked the ram against one place in the wall, Wren watching and encouraging them when, disheartened by a day's work without visible result, they were ready to give up in despair. On the second day the wall fell. Wren made great use of this machine and 'pleased himself that he had recovered so notable and ancient an engine.' FOOTNOTES: [112] 'Lex Ignea, or the School of Righteousness.'--_Life of Sancroft_, vol. ii. p. 355. Doyley. [113] _Life of Sancroft_, vol. i. p. 141. Doyley. [114] i.e. by word of mouth. [115] Probably a misprint for 'Argo-navis,' referring to the frequent repairs of the Argo. [116] In 1672 a bridge, with a beautiful arch resembling those that cross the canals at Venice, was built over 'the Ditch,' opposite Bridewell Hospital. One or two other bridges were built, and the stream made navigable, but apparently not 'cleansed,' which in time rendered it a nuisance. The bridges were taken down and the stream reduced to a drain in 1765.--_Ann. Reg._, 1765, p. 136. [117] _Diary_, vol. iv. p. 8. [118] The Coghills of Glen Barrahane, county Cork, are descended from the elder branch of this family. Captain Coghill, who died with Lieutenant Melville, having carried off the colours from the battle of Isandula, January 1879, was the eldest son of the present head of the family. [119] Never before printed. [120] Pepys' _Diary_, vol iv. p. 241. [121] This building was destroyed by fire 1838, and rebuilt from designs by Mr. Tite 1844. [122] _Spectator_, vol. i. No. 69. [123] They were the best work of John Bushnell, an eccentric and half-crazy sculptor, who died in 1701. [124] 'Soe Hoe' became a favourite residence. In November 1689, Evelyn came up 'with his family to winter at Soho in the Great Square.' Some handsome houses are still standing. [125] _Diary_, Jan. 31, 1667-8. [126] _Restoration of the Church of St. Sepulchre, London._ A. Billing. [127] It is said that in the children's game of 'Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of S. Clement's, &c.' the best peals of bells in London are enumerated. I do not know the date of the game. [128] _Repertorium_, vol. i. p. 437-440. Newcourt. [129] _Hist. of Modern Architecture._ Fergusson, pp. 306-307. [130] _Hist. of the Honourable Artillery Company._ Captain Raikes, vol. i. p. 194. CHAPTER VIII. 1672-1677. BIRTH OF HIS ELDEST SON--S. STEPHEN'S, WALBROOK--S. BENNET FINK--PLANS FOR S. PAUL'S--THE EXCAVATIONS--SON CHRISTOPHER BORN--DEATH OF FAITH, LADY WREN--SECOND MARRIAGE--CITY CHURCHES--THE MONUMENT--TOMB OF CHARLES I.--REMAINS OF THE LITTLE PRINCES IN THE TOWER. _K. Rich._ But didst thou see them dead? _Tyr._ I did, my lord. _K. Rich._ And buried, gentle Tyrrel? _Tyr._ The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them, But where, to say the truth, I do not know. _Richard III._, Act 4, scene 3. Early in October, 1672, Christopher Wren's eldest son was born, and baptized by the name of Gilbert, at S. Martin's-in-the-Fields, a very different-looking building from the present S. Martin's with its stately portico. Wren and his wife lived in the house in Scotland Yard, and, avoiding the uneven, difficult streets, could daily go by water, then the favourite way of transit for a Londoner, to examine and superintend his works in the city. Later on Wren built himself a little house of red bricks in the yard of the Falcon Inn at Southwark, and watched from its window the progress of S. Paul's and of his other buildings in the city. Besides the churches already begun, three new ones were taken in hand that year. S. Mary-at-Hill[131] was only partially destroyed by the fire. Upon it Wren first tried his plan of a domed roof, and succeeded in making it, at any rate within, a beautiful little church. S. Michael's, Cornhill, of which only the tower was left standing, was rebuilt that year; its situation threw a great difficulty in the architect's way, as it could only be lit from one side; this difficulty Wren overcame and produced an interior[132] equally light and good. The tower was taken down in 1722, and rebuilt from designs of Wren's. These designs were taken from the tower of Magdalen College at Oxford, and instance Wren's power of producing a bold, rich effect in a style of architecture altogether foreign to his taste. Perhaps the most beautiful of all Wren's churches is S. Stephen's, Walbrook, begun at this same time, and finished seven years later. The outside, cramped by its situation, and overshadowed by tall houses, is not handsome, but within, the church is as original as it is graceful and beautiful:-- 'The circular dome, placed on an octagonal base supported by eight pillars, was an early, and long a favourite, mode of roofing in the East.... Wren, however, is the only European architect who availed himself of it ... he certainly has produced the most pleasing interior of any Renaissance church which has yet been erected.'[133] So great was the fame, and such the charm of the building that when the great sculptor Canova[134] visited England, and was asked should he ever wish to return to the country? he answered, 'Yes, that I might again see S. Paul's Cathedral, Somerset House, and S. Stephen's, Walbrook.' [_SIR ISAAC NEWTON._] In the midst of so much work it is not wonderful that, for the moment, Wren's diligent attendance at the Royal Society slackened somewhat, though at the end of 1672 his name occurs among those of the Society who cordially welcomed Isaac Newton to their fellowship. Wren bestowed especial praise on Newton's invention of a refracting telescope. Friends they appear always to have remained, and their dispositions were not unlike, though the travels and varied experiences of Wren's early years had quickened his faculties, and prevented that entire absorption in one idea which is evident from many stories about Isaac Newton. As, for instance, when one of Newton's philosophical friends abroad-- 'Sent him a curious prism, at that time a rarity in England, it was taken to the Custom House and Newton claimed it. The officers asked him to set some value upon it that they might regulate the duty. Newton, rating the prism by his own idea of its use and excellence, replied, "The value is so great I cannot ascertain it." They pressed him again to set some estimate on it, but he still replied, "I cannot say what it is worth, for the value is inestimable." The honest Custom House officers took him at his word, and made him pay an exorbitant duty for the prism, which he might have taken away upon only paying a rate according to the weight of the glass!'[135] The Royal Society was at this time put to serious inconvenience, as more than half of the members failed in paying their weekly money. Wren, who, as might be expected, was one of those who paid most punctually, was re-elected a member of the council, and agreed to serve on a committee for this special matter. The death of his friend and cousin, Matthew, in the summer of 1672, was a grief to him, as well as a loss to the Royal Society, of which he had been a member from its beginning. On the 20th of November, 1673, Wren received the well-earned honour of knighthood from King Charles at Whitehall. No details of any kind respecting the ceremony are to be found in the chary family record. S. Bennet Fink, a very graceful and original composition despite the corner into which it was squeezed; and S. Olave's, Jewry, built of brick and stone with a good pinnacled stone tower, were begun at this period, and finished three years later. S. Dionysius, or, as it was commonly called, S. Dionis, Back Church Street, was one of the first completed; its Ionic eastern façade was in Wren's most classical style; the pulpit was carved by Grinling Gibbons. Its tower and steeple, according to a frequent custom of Wren's, were added some years later. S. Dionis has, alas! now been swept away, and its site, where the original church was consecrated in 1288, desecrated.[136] The beautiful little S. Bennet's has shared the same unholy fate. S. George's, Botolph Lane, built also in 1674, a handsome stone church with a vaulted roof and good oak fittings, though threatened, still fortunately survives. [_GRINLING GIBBONS._] Grinling Gibbons, whom Wren continually employed, was introduced to him by Evelyn, who found the young man in a cottage at Deptford carving a copy of Tintoretto's beautiful Crucifixion. Evelyn showed Wren the carving and besought him to give some employment to a man of such genius. This he gladly promised, and accordingly, many a little known city church is adorned with carvings so light and so graceful that it is hard to believe that they are cut out of wood. Some works in stone Gibbons also did for Sir Christopher, but wood appears to have been the material he preferred. In 1674 Wren had the satisfaction of restoring Le Soeur's[137] beautiful statue of King Charles to its place at Charing Cross. In the Rebellion it had been overthrown by order of the Parliament, who directed that it should be broken up. John Rivet, a brazier in Charing Cross, purchased it, hid it in the vaults of S. Paul's, Covent Garden, and, to divert suspicion, sold bronze medals and knife-handles, professedly made from its metal. After the Restoration, he produced it intact, and, under Wren's direction, it was placed on its present pedestal, which was carved by Gibbons, whose handywork is easily recognised in the free, flowing lines of the deeply-cut carving, much as time, aided by London atmosphere, has eaten the very stone away. The poet Waller wrote an epigram[138] on its restoration, which, besides its intrinsic merit, is interesting in connection with the statue:-- That the first Charles does here in triumph ride, See his son reign where he a martyr dy'd; And people pay that rev'rence as they pass, (Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass, Is not th' effect of gratitude alone, To which we owe the statue and the stone. But heav'n this lasting monument has wrought, That mortals may eternally be taught Rebellion, though successful, is but vain, And kings so kill'd rise conquerors again: This truth the royal image does proclaim Loud as the trumpet of surviving Fame. [_HIS FAVOURITE DESIGN._] It was about this period that Wren rebuilt the theatre in Drury Lane, which had fallen a prey to its usual enemy, fire. It was reopened in 1674 with a play whose epilogue was written by Dryden. The 'old theatre in Salisbury Court,' as Horace Walpole calls it, was also built by Wren. During this time Sir Christopher, now formally appointed architect of S. Paul's with a modest salary of 200_l._ a year, had busied himself in designs for the future cathedral. Everyone, whether qualified or not, gave their opinion about the designs. The first, which was 'a fabrick of moderate bulk, but of good proportion, a convenient quire with a vestibule and portico, and a dome conspicuous above the houses,' was planned by Wren at a time when the Cathedral fund was very small, and the chances of increasing it appeared but slender. This design was rejected as deficient in size and grandeur. After this, in order to find out what style of building was really desired, Wren made several sketches 'merely for discourse sake,' and perceiving that the generality had set their hearts upon a large building, he designed one with which he was himself satisfied, considering it 'a design antique and well studied, conformable to the best style of Greek and Roman architecture.' The design was greatly admired by those who understood the matter, and they begged Sir Christopher to let them see it in a model.[139] Wren accordingly made a large one, apparently with his own hands, in wood, with all the intended ornaments properly carved. Its ground plan was that of a Greek cross, the choir was circular, it had a very short nave, and no aisles. Externally there was a handsome portico, one small dome immediately behind it, and over the centre of the cross a larger dome. Within it would have been as beautiful as it was original, with the eight smaller domes, not seen outside, encircling the central dome. The Duke of York on seeing the plan complained much of the absence of side oratories, such as are common in most foreign cathedrals, and insisted upon their being added. Sir Christopher knew that such a change would cramp the building and break the beauty of the design to a degree that went to his heart. He shed tears in attempting to change the Duke's opinion. The latter was, as ever, obstinate, and the change had to be made. The outside, with the two hollow curves joining the transepts with the nave, and the two different-sized domes, would probably have been disappointing; but one speaks with diffidence, for this was Sir Christopher's favourite design, the S. Paul's which he told his son he would most cheerfully have accomplished. When the time came for working out the design, it is very likely that he would have remedied many of the defects which critical eyes now see in the model; but no such opportunity ever came. Preparations were indeed made, in May 1674, for a building after this design; but the clergy were startled by the novelty of the plan, the circular choir, and the absence of aisles, and the architect was compelled to give up his cherished scheme. Several designs, none equal to the first, were produced by Sir Christopher, the large central dome appearing in each of them. Upon this feature he had determined, even in the days before the fire, when the old pointed choir still stood. [_THE CROWN OF LONDON._] At length Wren grew weary of criticism and showed his designs no more to the public. King Charles decided on one,[140] and issued a warrant for its erection, stating that the duty on coal[141] amounted to a considerable sum, and saying:-- 'Among the designs we have particularly pitched on one as well because we found it very artificial, proper and useful as because it was so ordered that it might be built and finished by parts.' The east end was to be begun first. Liberty was left to Wren 'to make some variations rather ornamental than essential as from time to time he should see proper,' and the whole was left to his management. This design is wholly unlike the present Cathedral, and is inferior to any of Wren's other buildings. 'Artificial' in the modern sense of the word, it undoubtedly is. The west end much resembles old S. Paul's as Inigo Jones left it, and is poor and flat; there is a low flat dome, then a lantern with ribbed vaulting, surmounted by a spire something like S. Bride's, but thin and ungraceful. One feels that Wren must have been disgusted with the design when finished, and could only have done such a thing at a time when his genius was rebuked and harassed by vexatious limitations and interference. Accepted, however, the design was, and Wren, provided with funds and ordered to begin, shook off the fetters which had so cramped him, and by a series of alterations, which certainly reversed the King's order, being essential rather than ornamental, he by degrees worked out the plan of the beautiful S. Paul's which is the crown of London. No objection seems to have been raised to these changes. He had a large staff of workmen under him, and an assistant surveyor, John Oliver, who directed the workmen, measured the masons' work, bought in materials, and examined the accounts; a clerk of the works, Laurence Spenser, who overlooked the men, saw that they did their work as directed, and made up the accounts; each of these was paid 100_l._ a year, half as much as the salary of the architect himself; a clerk of the cheque, Thomas Russell, who called over the labourers three times a day, and kept them to their business. Besides these, there was the master-mason,[142] Thomas Strong, the master-builder of S. Stephen's, Walbrook, frequently employed by Wren, and the master-carpenter, Richard Jennings; all were carefully chosen, and were devoted to Sir Christopher, whose great genius, gentle disposition, and steady equable mind made him much beloved and respected. On June 21, 1675, the first stone of S. Paul's was laid by Sir Christopher and his master-mason, not by King Charles, as is sometimes said.[143] In the previous year Wren had lost his son Gilbert, who was buried in S. Martin's on March 23. In the February following another son was born and baptized by the name of Christopher. This son survived his father and began the collection of letters, papers, and miscellaneous facts about the Wren family which was afterwards published under the name of 'Parentalia; or, Memoirs of the Wrens.' It is, in truth, little but a heap of materials amongst which each fact has to be sought for and its proper place ascertained. [_EXCAVATIONS._] It has been truly said that the accounts of the building of S. Paul's are meagre in the extreme. A little is, however, known. As Wren had foretold, there was much 'to be done in the dark;' the old foundations were not to be trusted, and immense excavations had to be made. In the course of this work, he discovered 'graves of several ages and fashions, in strata or layers of earth, one above another, from the British and Roman times.' The 'Parentalia' describes 'a row of Saxon graves, the sides lined with chalk stones, below were British graves, where were found ivory and wooden pins of a hard wood, seemingly box, about six inches long; it seems the bodies were only wrapped up and pinned in woollen shrouds, which being consumed the pins remained entire. In the same row and deeper were Roman urns intermixed.' Below this was hard 'pot-earth,' which Wren thought would be sufficiently firm to bear the great weight about to be laid upon it, but to ascertain its depth he had dry wells dug, and found it very unequal, in one place hardly four feet; he searched lower and found loose sand, then sand and shells; he speaks of them as sea shells, but it is now thought that they were probably river; below this again hard beach, and then London clay. He took great precautions when he laid any foundations here, fearing lest the sand should slip. The bed of sand is a danger still, for if pierced by a drain or other underground works the sand might run off, leaving a hollow under the pot-earth. The Cathedral authorities are accordingly wisely jealous of any excavations near S. Paul's. When the north-east portion of the choir was reached, in digging the foundations a pit was found, from which all the pot-earth had been taken, containing many fragments of vases and urns, all of Roman pottery. This pit was a very serious difficulty, occurring as it did at the very angle of the choir. Sir Christopher's assistants suggested to him to drive in piles of timber; but he knew that, though timber lasted well under water, yet in this case, where it would be half in dry and half in wet sand, it would rot in the course of time, and 'his endeavours were to build for eternity.' He dug down more than forty feet, till he came to the hard beach, below which was the London clay, and upon the beach built a pier of solid masonry ten feet square, till within fifteen feet of the ground, and then by turning an arch brought it level with the rest of his foundation. The theory commonly received was that a temple of Apollo stood where Westminster Abbey now stands, and that the site of S. Paul's Cathedral was occupied by a temple of Diana. Wren, however, believed in neither legend. The temple of Apollo he thought was invented merely that the monks of Westminster might not be behind the Londoners in antiquities. In spite of the horns of stags, tusks of boars, and the like, said to have been found during former repairs of S. Paul's, in spite of an image of Diana dug up hard by and in the possession of Dr. Woodward,[144] he wrote to Bishop Atterbury[145] that he 'changed all the foundations of old S. Paul's, and rummaged all the ground thereabouts, and being very desirous to find the footsteps of such a temple, I could not discover any, and therefore can give no more credit to Diana[146] than to Apollo.' In the September of 1675, when the work with which her husband's name is for ever connected was but little advanced, Lady Wren died, and was buried, as her son Gilbert had been, in the chancel of S. Martin's-in-the-Fields, leaving her husband with a baby son hardly seven months old. The 'Parentalia,' with characteristic carelessness, gives neither the date of her death nor the place of her burial. [_SECOND MARRIAGE._] No hint even is to be found of how this loss affected Sir Christopher, but whether it was from the desolate state of his home, or the helplessness of a widower left with an infant son, or from other causes, he was not long in marrying again. His second wife was Jane Fitzwilliam, daughter of the second Baron Fitzwilliam, her mother was an heiress, the daughter of Hugh Perry _alias_ Hunter, a sheriff and alderman of London. Lord Fitzwilliam died in 1643, the same year that he had succeeded to his father, and the widowed Lady Fitzwilliam died twenty-seven years later at 'Dutchy House in the Savoy,' the family house; so Jane Fitzwilliam had been some years an orphan when she was married to Sir Christopher in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall, on February 24, 1676-7. In this year Wren rebuilt S. Magnus, London Bridge,[147] which having escaped one 'most dismal fire' in 1633, was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. Sir Christopher rebuilt the church with Portland stone and oak timber, adding to it a picturesque tower with a cupola and a peal of ten bells. London Bridge, then covered with little houses and shops, would, Sir Christopher foresaw, require alteration, and he, anxious that S. Magnus should not suffer when the time came, proposed to leave space by it for a footway. The churchwardens overruled him. The improvement Wren expected has since been made, and when the workmen came to make a pathway under the portico they discovered to their great surprise that Sir Christopher had made the necessary arches, though bricked up, and left them to be in readiness for the change which he foresaw, though the churchwardens of S. Magnus did not. The state of London Bridge was very unsatisfactory; constant repairs were needed, and to shoot the narrow arches and not be swamped by the fall of the water was no easy feat. Wren had a plan for saving repairs and improving the water way by wide Gothic arches, taking away every other arch, and making the two into one, which would reduce the fall to nine inches at the most. This seems to have remained a scheme only. [_MODERN DESECRATION._] S. Mildred's in the Poultry was also begun in this year, a small stone church with a tower and cupola. It was destroyed in 1872,[148] and the details of its removal are instructive as well as painful, and may well be contrasted with the account of the manner of removing the remains of old S. Paul's.[149] S. Stephen's, Coleman Street, on the site of an old Jewish synagogue, is of the same date; it is a neat small church mostly built of stone, with a curious old stone carving, in high relief, of the Last Judgment, over the door leading to the churchyard. S. Lawrence, Jewry, 'that new and cheerful pile,'[150] is a large well-proportioned building in the Corinthian style, with a tower and spire, built in the following year. It had been repaired by the parishioners in 1618, and boasted among its vicars three who had become bishops: Edward Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich, one of those who, during the Rebellion, sided strongly with the Presbyterians, and conformed at the Restoration; Dr. Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter and Salisbury, who has been mentioned before; and Wren's other scientific friend, Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, who was buried in the chancel of S. Lawrence's Church in 1672. S. Lawrence's possesses some excellent stone carving of fruit, possibly from Gibbons' chisel. S. Nicholas, Coleabbey, was built this year by Sir Christopher on the site of a church so ancient that it stood some feet below the street, and was entered by steps descending down to the floor; its most recent addition was in Richard II.'s reign, though the whole building was repaired in 1630. Wren's is a well-proportioned brick and stone church with a square tower and short fat steeple. S. Mary's, Woolnoth, was only repaired by Sir Christopher; it was afterwards rebuilt entirely by his clerk and pupil, Nicholas Hawksmoor,[151] in 1719. S. Mary's, Aldermanbury, a fine bold stone church, its nave and aisles divided by well-sculptured columns; and S. Michael's, Queenhithe, belong also to this busy year. S. Michael's, standing close to the river, built of stone with plenty of space and room in it; its slender graceful spire ever beckoning to the swarming river and riverside population, might, one would have imagined, have been invaluable in zealous hands, but it has been swept away and the opportunity is lost. [_THE MONUMENT._] It was also in 1677 that Sir Christopher completed the column generally known to Londoners as 'the Monument.' He began it in 1671; but the work had been much hindered by the difficulty of getting blocks of Portland stone of sufficient size. There had been great debate about the ornament for the summit. Wren wished it to be a large statue, as 'carrying much dignity with it, and being more valluable in the eyes of forreigners and strangers.' It was to be fifteen feet high, cast in brass, at a cost of 1,000_l._ The expense was one reason why this was given up, and the present ornament, a flaming vase of gilt bronze, substituted. Cibber[152] carved a basso-relievo on one side, representing King Charles in a Roman costume, protecting the ruined city. The four dragons at the base were carved by Edward Pierce,[153] a sculptor and architect who frequently worked for Wren. The other three sides have Latin inscriptions, of which one is an account of the fire, accusing the _furor Papisticus_ as its cause; a brief inscription in English, lower down on the pedestal, repeats the same charge against the 'treachery and malice of the Popish faction.' Sir Christopher had written a Latin one for the column, which spoke of the fire as originating in a humble house, and briefly recounted its ravages; he added, as he was well entitled to add, that the city was rebuilt 'not with wood and mud as before, but with edifices, some brick and some stone, and adorned with such works that it was seen to rise fairer from its ruins far than before.' As he wrote, he must have given a sigh of regret to the perfection of his unused plan. The accusation against the Romanists appealed powerfully to the inveterate prejudices of the multitude. It was accordingly insisted upon and ordered to be put up. James II. had the inscription effaced, but in William III.'s reign it was re-cut deeper than before, and so remained to justify Pope's well-known lines:-- ----London's column pointing to the skies, Like a tall bully lifts the head and lies.[154] It is a curious retribution that the Monument designed by so great an architect as Wren, to commemorate such an event as the burning of London, and the singular courage and energy of its citizens, is now more generally connected in men's mind with falsehood and calumny than with a great historical event. The column was at first used, as Wren had intended it should be, as a place for certain experiments of the Royal Society; but the vibration of the column during the ceaseless traffic of London proved too great to allow of the experiments being successfully carried on. Evelyn, with much sense, wished that the column had been placed where the fire ended, and a 'plain lugubrious marble' where it began; and says:-- 'I question not but I have the architect himself on my side, whose rare and extraordinary talent and what he has performed of great and magnificent, this column and what he is still about and is advancing under his direction, will speak and perpetuate his memory, as long as one stone remains upon another in this nation.'[155] [_A TARDY HONOUR._] The King had proposed to Sir Christopher a very congenial piece of work. The remains of Charles I., which had been hastily buried in S. George's Chapel at Windsor, were to be removed to what was known as the tomb-house at the east end of the chapel, re-interred there with the solemn service that had been denied to them before, and a grand tomb built over them. Lord O'Brien proposed in the House of Commons a grant of money for the purpose, and the House voted 70,000_l._ to be raised by a two months' tax. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, preaching before the Commons on the following day, the anniversary of King Charles's death, alluded to the tardy honour done 'by that much-desired, long-expected vote.' Sir Christopher prepared designs for a splendid monument. It was to take the form of a Rotundo with a beautiful Dome and Lantern, and a Colonnade without, like that of the Temple of Vesta at Rome. Mosaic work was to be freely used, black and white marble and gilded brass; the cupola was to be painted in fresco. In the central niche fronting the entrance was the King's monument. Four statues, emblems of heroic virtues, standing on a square plinth, and pressing underneath the prostrate figures of Rebellion, Heresy, Hypocrisy, Envy and Murder, support a large shield, on which is a statue erect of King Charles in modern armour, over his head a group of angels bearing a crown, a cross, and branches of palm. Two designs were made, one for brass work, one for marble: one design is drawn by Grinling Gibbons, whom Wren meant to employ for the carving. The other is by Wren himself, drawn with extraordinary care, in delicate pen and ink, and they yet remain with his note upon them. 'Alas! for the state of the times!--not yet erected.' The failure of his design was a great annoyance to Wren, who was most anxious to have paid this tribute to the King's memory. Why the plan was never executed it is hard to say. Charles II. kept the designs for some time and then returned them, begging Wren to keep them carefully; but the moment for their use never arrived. Though he was not allowed to honour King Charles, curiously enough, it fell to Wren's lot to provide a tomb for two other murdered Princes of England. [_THE REMAINS OF THE PRINCES._] Some repairs were being made in the Tower of London under the orders of Wren, who was at that time repairing what is known as the White Tower, one of the oldest parts of the fortress. As the workmen were removing some stairs which led from the Royal lodgings to S. John's Chapel, they came upon a wooden chest, which proved to contain the remains of two children, exactly corresponding in age and state of decay with the date of the murder of Edward V. and his brother Richard Duke of York in 1573. The place also corresponded in every respect with the traditions respecting the murder:[156] it was said to have been done in the Bloody Tower--the spot where the bones were found is but seventy yards distant; they were always said to have been buried in consecrated ground by the Priest of the Tower--the place where the remains were was just within S. John's Chapel. The discovery caused considerable interest, and was fully represented to the King, who desired that the bones should be laid, under the Surveyor's directions, in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey in a white marble coffin with a suitable monument. Wren designed a pedestal and urn of white marble surmounted by twin crowns and palms. No doubt the monument accords better with the taste of the age in which it was erected than with that of the building in which it is placed, but it has an interest of its own. By the King's wish a mulberry-tree was planted on the spot where the bones were discovered, but subsequent buildings at the Tower destroyed the tree, and even its stump has perished. FOOTNOTES: [131] To this church and parish belongs the honourable distinction of having successfully resisted the encroachments of the railway company which recently attempted to desecrate the church. 'The City Church and Churchyard Protection Society'--alas! that any such society should be needed--which fought this battle, must have the best wishes of any biographer of Christopher Wren. [132] The interior has been lately altered. [133] _History of Modern Architecture._ Fergusson, p. 307. [134] Antonio Canova, born 1757, died 1822. He had come to England to see the Elgin Marbles. [135] _History of the Royal Society_, p. 237. Weld. The anecdote is taken from an article in an old _Gentleman's Magazine_, written professedly by one who knew Sir I. Newton. [136] Destroyed 1876. [137] Hubert Le Soeur was a pupil of John of Bologna; he came to England in 1630. The statue of Lord Pembroke at Oxford, and that of King Charles, which has Le Soeur's name on the horse's hoof, are all that now remain of his works. [138] On the statue of King Charles I. at Charing Cross in the year 1674. E. Waller. [139] The model was long preserved in what was called the Trophy Room of S. Paul's. 'It unfortunately has suffered much from neglect, decay, and the uncontrolled mischief of visitors; that which was one of its noblest features, its long stately western portico, has entirely disappeared. The model was lent to and still remains in the Architectural Exhibition at South Kensington, on condition of repairing some of its reparable parts (a condition but imperfectly fulfilled).'--_Annals of S. Paul's Cathedral_, Dean Milman, p. 40. [140] An engraving giving a section of this very curious design is to be found at page 97 of Mr. Longman's exhaustive and interesting _Three Cathedrals dedicated to S. Paul's in London_. [141] The fourth portion of the tax on coal granted for the public buildings of the City was given for the rebuilding of S. Paul's. [142] Thomas was the son of Mr. Valentine Strong, a well-known master-mason of Hertfordshire; his six sons were all engaged in the same trade as himself. _Life of Sir C. Wren_, p. 316. Elmes. [143] Sir C. Wren gave the mallet and trowel used on this occasion to the Freemasons' lodge of which he was master, then called after his name, now the 'Lodge of Antiquity, No. 21.' [144] J. Woodward, the founder of the Cambridge Geological Professorship, was born 1665, published a series of curious geological speculations under the name of _A Natural History of the Earth_. In 1707 he published _An Account of Roman Urns and Antiquities lately dug up near Bishopsgate_, addressed to Sir C. Wren, whom, as I have said, he did not convince. Woodward was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the College of Physicians. He died 1728. [145] Francis Atterbury, born 1662, made Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester 1715; was a strong Jacobite, and was banished in 1723: died 1732. [146] A stone altar was however found during some excavations in Foster Lane in 1830, at no great distance from the Cathedral, with an image of Diana about which there can be no misapprehension, as it closely resembles the Diana of the Louvre.--_Annals of S. Paul's_, p. 7. [147] Jack Cade's instruction to his followers on reaching London was 'Up Fish Street, down _S. Magnus_ corner. Kill and knock down, throw them into the Thames.' _Henry VI._, part ii. act iv. scene 8. [148] The following interesting anecdote was related to one of the Honorary Secretaries (Mr. Wright) by a member of the Society (Mr. Fytche):--'Walking one fine summer morning in June 1872 down to the Mansion House, on reaching the Poultry I was surprised to see a man on the top of the tower of S. Mildred's Church hammering away at the stones with a crowbar; so, finding the door open, I went up the stairs of the tower and said to my friend of the crowbar, "Why, you are pulling the church down!" "Ay," says he, "it's all to be down and carted away by the end of July." "I suppose it's going to be rebuilt elsewhere!" "_Built_ anywhere? No; my master has _bought_ it." "Who is your master?" "Don't you know him? Mr. So-and-So, the great contractor." "What's he going to do with it?" "Do with it? Why, he's twenty carts and forty horses to lead it away to his stoneyard, and he's going to grind it up to make Portland cement!" So I asked him of the crowbar to show me round the church. "Would your master sell the stones instead of grinding 'em up?" I asked. "Sell 'em? Yes, he'll sell his soul for money!" So I made an appointment for his master to come up to the Langham Hotel next morning, and we agreed about the purchase--he to deliver the stones at a wharf on the Thames, and they were brought down in barges and landed at the head of a canal on the east coast of Lincolnshire, and are now lying in a green field near my house, called S. Katherine's Garth, from an old Priory of S. Katherine, which formerly stood there, and which I hope some day to rebuild as my domestic chapel.'--_Report of the City Church and Churchyard Protection Society_, 1880. [149] _Vide supra_, p. 186-7. [150] Evelyn's _Diary_, May 28, 1682. [151] Nicholas Hawksmoor, born the year of the fire, became Wren's pupil in 1683 and helped him in many of his works. Hawksmoor built several churches under Queen Anne's Act; they are original, but heavy, and not always in good taste. He died 1736. [152] Caius Cibber, born 1630. The statues of Melancholy and Madness at Bedlam were his greatest works: died about 1700. [153] He did much of the work of S. Clement Danes under Wren's directions, and made a bust of Sir Christopher, now at All Souls: died 1698. [154] _Moral Essays_, Ep. iii. [155] _Of Medals_, p. 162, ed. 1697. Evelyn. [156] For an interesting account of these see _The Tower of London_, by Lord de Ros, p. 417. CHAPTER IX. 1677-1682. EMMANUEL COLLEGE--GREENWICH OBSERVATORY--BIRTH OF JANE AND WILLIAM WREN--S. BARTHOLOMEW'S--PORTLAND QUARRIES--DR. AND MRS. HOLDER--DEATH OF JANE, LADY WREN--POPISH PLOT--PAPIN'S DIGESTER--SIR J. HOSKYNS--ALLHALLOWS, BREAD STREET--PALACE AT WINCHESTER. Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?--POPE, _Moral Essays_. Great as was the pressure of Wren's London work, he did not confine himself to that city alone, but in 1677, we find him at Cambridge, busied with buildings there. The beautiful chapel of Emmanuel College, which still stands unaltered as he left it, was Sir Christopher's work in that year. More than thirty years before, Bishop Wren, when Bishop of Ely, had instanced amongst the irregularities to be amended at Cambridge the absence of a chapel at Emmanuel College,[157] and it well became his nephew to supply this lack. Sancroft had first set the plan on foot, and when he was removed in 1665 to S. Paul's--a removal so costly that, little knowing, he consoled himself by thinking the next would be to his grave--his successor, Dr. Breton, continued his work. A picturesque cloister runs north and south across the façade built of stone instead of the brick with stone dressing as Wren at first intended; within the chapel the rich stucco ceiling, the pannelling and wood carving, the tall columns which support a pediment behind the altar, as well as the bold metal scroll-work of the altar rails, all show Wren's hand and eye. In the manuscript list of Wren's architectural works in the 'Parentalia' the Chapel of Queen's College at Oxford is assigned to him as built at about this time; but it does not appear in the more accurate printed list, and is not generally reckoned amongst his works. The Observatory at Greenwich, known by the name of Flamsteed House, was being completed. It was built at the suggestion of Sir Jonas Moor, the Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, for the purpose of ascertaining the motions of the moon and the places of the fixed stars, in order, if possible, to discover accurately the longitude at sea.[158] Wren, confessedly one of the best astronomers in England, was on the commission for building the Observatory, and was its architect. Greenwich was chosen as the site at his suggestion; the King, who took a great interest in the project, allowed 500_l._ towards it, and Sir Christopher used in the work some spare wood, iron, and lead from the Tower Gatehouse, and the bricks taken from Tilbury, the fort built by Elizabeth to repel the Spanish Armada. The Observatory was begun in June, 1675, and roofed in at the Christmas of the same year, and Flamsteed shortly afterwards installed there. [_A COLLECTION OF 'RARITIES.'_] The Museum at Oxford, known as the Ashmolean, was Sir Christopher's work in 1677. It contained a collection of objects of natural history which was then reckoned a very good one: it had been collected by John Tradescant, and bequeathed by him to Mr. Elias Ashmole, the historian of the Order of the Garter, who made the whole over to the University, endowing a lecture upon them. The collection contained several curious specimens of Roman, Indian, and other weapons, some clothing made of feathers; among other 'rarities,' a 'toad included in amber,' and a 'habit of feathers from the Phoenix wing as tradition goes.'[159] Ashmole was of the Royal Society and a student of astrology. In the November of this year, Sir Christopher's only daughter Jane was born, and was baptized at S. Martin's, probably by the Rev. William Lloyd, then the vicar, who bore the high character of 'an excellent preacher, a man of great integrity and piety, one who thoroughly understood all the parts of his function and had a mind fully bent to put them in execution.' Wren's fourth and youngest child was born in June, 1679, and baptized, also at S. Martin's, by the name of William. Sir Christopher's good friend Evelyn was one godfather, the other was Sir William Fermor, the head of an old Cavalier family of Northamptonshire, whose father, all but ruined in the civil wars, survived to attend as one of the Knights of the Bath at Charles II.'s coronation. Sir William, who was by his mother's side first cousin to Lady Wren, was a friend of Evelyn's, whose tastes he shared. He was created Lord Lempster[160] by William and Mary. The other sponsor was Lady Newport, daughter of the Earl of Bedford, and wife of the Lord Treasurer, Lord Newport, who, greatly distinguished by his loyalty and his suffering in the Civil War, was made Comptroller of the Household, and in 1672 Lord Treasurer, an office which he held under the two succeeding monarchs.[161] Lord Newport was a friend both of Wren and of Evelyn, and entertained them, Prince Rupert, and others at his house, where he had a fine collection of pictures. Wren began five of his churches in this year: one was the little square church of SS. Anne and Agnes, Aldersgate, with its four Corinthian columns and decorated ceiling. 'There is a constant tradition in the parish that SS. Anne and Agnes were two sisters who first built this church at their own charge,'[162] but at what date is not said. It once bore the name of 'S. Anne-in-the-Willows,' from the willow-trees that grew hard by. S. Bartholomew's, Bartholomew Lane, near the Exchange, had been consumed all but its old square tower, which must have been a striking object standing up tall and fire-scathed amongst the ruins. To this tower Wren added a sort of crown of open arches, but he carefully preserved the tower, itself a curious relic of London before the fire. Internally it was a handsome basilican church, effective from the good keeping and harmony of all its parts. Its date of consecration went back to the beginning of the fourteenth century. Bishop Miles Coverdale[163] was buried there. Alas! that all must be written in the past tense! The church has been destroyed because its site was wanted for the Sun Fire Office! It is a cruel fate, having been rebuilt after the Great Fire to be destroyed for a Fire Insurance Office. S. Michael's, Bassishaw, or Basinghall, taking this name from the great merchant family of Basing, several of whom were sheriffs, and others lord mayors of London, was rebuilt of brick and stone with a curious little stone spire. [_LONDON STONE._] S. Swithin's in Cannon Street is reckoned a model of excellence in construction; it is of stone with a tower and spire, and domed roof; the curious relic known as 'London Stone,' is built into the church wall; it was formerly fixed in the ground in the street. Many different opinions have been advanced about it--that it was the centre of the City, which however it was not, being too near the river; that it was a place for tendering money before the Exchange existed; and, most prosaic of all, that it was set up by one named London Stone who lived there![164] All agreed that it had been there since the time of the Saxon kings. S. Bride's, Fleet Street, was begun in this year, but not entirely finished until twenty years later; on it Wren lavished considerable care and skill, securing a spacious handsome interior, and a richly carved oak altar-piece. The bold tower and steeple,[165] with its graceful diminishing circles with their open arcades, are thought to rival S. Mary's, Bow, but the latter is perhaps the more poetical of the two. The great work at S. Paul's was the while proceeding. In 1676 Compton, Bishop of London, issued an Address, urging the claims of the Cathedral, not on the citizens alone, but upon the country at large; he insisted with some eloquence that all churches should as much as possible imitate the 'exceeding magnifical' temple of Solomon in their beauty and grandeur, and especially the cathedral of wealthy London. His address, his warm interest in the work, and that of Dean Sancroft, who was a contributor until driven from his archbishopric, brought many contributions: among them may be mentioned Morley, Bishop of Winchester, who gave 1,800_l._; Dr. John Fell, who gave 100_l._, 'in lieu of his consecration dinner and gloves' when consecrated Bishop of Oxford, 1680; Bishop Ken, who gave the same sum at his consecration, 1685, also in lieu of the dinner and gloves; Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man, who gave from the quarries of the island the dark stone steps which lead to the west doors. Though hampered often, the architect was never actually stopped by lack of money. He himself out of his scanty salary gave 50_l._ towards the expenses. [_PORTLAND QUARRIES._] In a letter speaking of his progress in building S. Paul's he says, 'I have received a considerable sum, which, though not proportionable to the greatnesse of the work, is notwithstanding sufficient to begin the same--and with all the materials and other assistances which may probably be expected, will put the new quire in great forwardness.' The materials referred to are probably such parts of the old building as it was possible to use again; and it may here be said that Wren had the control of the quarries of Portland stone.[166] In 1669, King Charles issued a proclamation that-- 'Whereas great waste had been for many years past made of our quarries in the Isle of Portland, ... and the great occasion we have of using much of the said stone, both for the building and repairing our houses and for the repaire of S. Paul's, our pleasure is ... that all persons forbeare to transport any more stone from our Isle of Portland without the leave and warrant first obtained from Dr. Christopher Wren, Surveyor of our Works, as hath been formerly accustomed in that behalf.' Wren must have commanded an army of quarrymen in the little island, not then grim with convicts and with a prison; but nevertheless he had, as in the case of the Monument, not seldom to pause in his work before he could get blocks of the size he required. As the choir rose the time came in which the space for the great Dome was to be marked out. The architect stood watching with some of his friends, and called to one of the workmen to bring him a stone to mark a special spot; when the man obeyed, Wren saw that the stone thus brought had an inscription upon it--the single word 'Resurgam.'[167] It was looked upon by Sir Christopher as a singularly happy omen, and he took great pleasure in telling the anecdote. [_DR. HOLDER AND DR. WALLIS._] In the meantime a sharp controversy was going on within the Royal Society between Dr. Wallis and Sir Christopher's brother-in-law, Dr. Holder. Dr. Holder had a living in Hertfordshire and had received from Bishop Henchman a canonry in S. Paul's. In 1678 he brought out a book called 'The Elements of Speech' with an appendix concerning 'Persons deaf and dumb.' In this book he described the cure he had himself performed when at Bletchingdon of a young gentleman, Mr. Alexander Popham, the son of a certain Edward Popham, admiral in the service of the Long Parliament, whom, though born dumb, he had gradually taught to speak. The youth, taken away before the cure was quite finished, lost the lately acquired power of speech, but on being sent to Dr. Wallis recovered it; thereupon Dr. Wallis claimed the entire credit. In his book Dr. Holder took occasion to speak of the Royal Society as originating in meetings held at Oxford. Upon this Dr. Wallis wrote a pamphlet entitled 'A Defence of the Royal Society in reply to some cavils of Dr. W. Holder.' The quarrel appears to have been a hot one, turning chiefly on the credit of curing Alexander Popham. Wood, the antiquary,[168] speaks of Dr. Wallis 'as one that can make black white, and white black, for his own ends, and hath a ready knack of sophistical evasion (as the writer of these matters doth know full well),' and gives the credit to Dr. Holder. Wallis was little loved by any royalist because of his conduct in decyphering King Charles I.'s papers at Naseby.[169] In the 'Parentalia' are two finger alphabets, with two hands drawn in Indian ink, the fingers of which have different letters assigned to the different joints; one is an ordinary and simple way, the other, more elaborate, is entitled 'An arte to make the Dumbe to speake, the Deafe to heare. To speake amongst others unseen and unhearde. Learned in an howre.' Minute directions are given, but the system is so elaborate that it is very sanguine to think it could have been 'learned' under several hours. The writing is not like Christopher Wren's, and I think it must belong to Dr. Holder's scheme. Mrs. Holder went on in her tranquil course, ministering to the poor around her. In early days she had made a careful study of such medical science as was then known. Barbarous as the surgery was, the remedial part of medicine appears to have been somewhat better understood. The circulation of the blood had very lately been discovered by Harvey; and whether it was the efficacy of the herbs and simples used, or the faith of the patients, or both, it is certain that many cures were made and much suffering alleviated. It is said of Mrs. Holder that 'she happily healed thousands.' She cured Charles II. of a hurt in his hand, whether in his early days of peril and wandering, or in later life, is not said. After the Restoration she was connected more or less with the Court, as her husband was subdean of the Chapels Royal, and she healed Queen Catharine and many of the Court. When one reads in Evelyn's or in Pepys' diary of the frightful remedies used: the 'hot fire pans' applied to the head in cases of apoplexy, the constant bleeding, the roughness of the entire treatment, one is thankful to think that they were occasionally ministered to by the gentler hand of a woman. A taste for the science of medicine seems to have been common in the Wren family. Sir Christopher studied it at Oxford under Sir Charles Scarborough and drew the plates for Dr. Thomas Willis' 'Cerebri Anatome,' which was in great repute. His cousin, Thomas Wren, made it a matter of serious study, probably living by it as a profession at the time when Bishop Wren's imprisonment left his younger children penniless. The same honourable calling was chosen by Sir Christopher's grandson, Stephen Wren. Among all the patients whom good Mrs. Holder tended and cared for, in none could she have taken more pride than in the brother over whose sickly childhood she had watched, and whose fame she saw daily increasing. Nor was there any drawback to her delight: loving, gentle, modest, and courteous he had been as a boy, and the famous successful architect possessed those qualities still. In a corrupt age, all testimony leaves him spotless; in positions of great trust and still greater difficulty his integrity was but the more clearly shown by the attacks made against him; among the foremost philosophers of his age, he was a striking example that 'every good gift and every perfect gift is from above;' no child could hold the truths of Christianity with a more undoubting faith than did Sir Christopher Wren. ['_I THINK THEY ARE HIGH ENOUGH._'] His personal appearance is only known to us from pictures: it seems he was 'thin and low of stature,' and it is recorded that when he was building a hunting palace at Newmarket for Charles II., the King came to see it, looked round, and was well satisfied with the general effect, but said he thought the rooms were too low. Wren, who knew the King well, and could hold his own when needful, looked up to the ceiling, and said quietly: 'Sir, I think they are high enough.' On hearing this, King Charles stooped till he was the architect's height, crept about the room in this attitude, and said laughing, 'Ay, Sir Christopher, I think _they are high enough_.'[170] The beautiful S. Stephen's, Walbrook, was finished in 1679, and the parishioners, aware that their church was a gem of no common order, offered 'a purse of twenty guineas to the Lady of Sir Christopher Wren, as a testimony of the regard that the parish has for the great care and skill that Sir Christopher Wren showed in the rebuilding of our church.'[171] Lady Wren did not long survive to share in her husband's fame and to sympathise in his work. Early in October she died and was buried in S. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where Dr. Thomas Tenison[172] had succeeded Dr. Lloyd, when the latter was made Bishop of S. Asaph. He, too, was a hard-working parish priest, though neither so zealous nor so whole-hearted a churchman as the former vicar. He communicated to Evelyn[173] his plan 'of erecting a library in S. Martin's parish for the public use, and desired his assistance with Sir Christopher Wren about the placing and structure thereof.' Dr. Tenison said that he had 'between thirty and forty young men in orders in his parish either governors to young gentlemen, or chaplains to noblemen, who being reproved by him on occasion for frequenting taverns or coffee-houses, told him they would employ their time better if they had books.' Wren fell readily into a scheme so congenial as this, and in a very few days the two friends were together at Dr. Tenison's making a drawing and estimate of the library to be begun in the spring of that same year. [_POPISH PLOT._] In 1678, the nation was excited to absolute frenzy by the declarations of the infamous Titus Oates concerning the 'Popish Plot.' In the same spirit as that in which they had laid the burning of London at the door of the Romanists, the mob lent greedy, credulous ears to the tales of Oates, and were encouraged by Lord Shaftesbury and his party, who made political capital out of this madness. Looking back, it is difficult to understand how such manifest falsehoods could have obtained credit; but it should be borne in mind that only seventy-three years had passed since the Gunpowder Plot had all but succeeded, and despite its failure left a mark in popular feeling which, however obscured and travestied, remains to this day. That it was fresh in the minds of the Members of Parliament may be seen from their insisting that a guard should be placed in the vaults over which they sate. Bedloe, Oates' villainous ally, having declared that an army of thirty thousand pilgrims was coming from Spain to join forty thousand who were ready to rise in London, the House of Lords insisted that a communication between the Spanish ambassador's house and that of his neighbour Mr. Weld should be secured. No less a person than Sir Christopher himself was to be despatched by the Lords' committee to see to this matter. Wren took the matter quietly enough; went with Mr. Edward Warcup, one of his assistants, and sent in a report stating that they had caused 'padlocks to be hung on all such dores as open out of Mr. Weld's house into the Spanish Embassador's house;' had then 'acquainted his Excellency Count Egmont, who with great civility gave permission for all things necessary to be done on his side.' They locked the doors on his side, barred some with iron, and handed over the keys to the Clerk of the Parliament, which no doubt felt itself more secure after this precaution. Evelyn, it is plain from passages in his diary, disbelieved and distrusted Oates, and Wren, who gave no heed to panics, was probably of the same opinion. One wishes that Pepys had not been compelled in 1669, by failing eyesight, to give up keeping his most amusing diary, that he might have recorded his impressions of this time of frenzy. He, however, was a sufferer by it, being clapt into the Tower on a charge of 'Popery, felony, piracy, and treason,' in 1679. The 'treason' charged seems to have been that he sent information to the French Court about the state of the English navy. The 'Popery,' from which he was certainly free, was probably thrown in to give a flavour suited to the times. It is an incredible charge, and Pepys, who defended himself in a spirited letter to the Duke of York, was discharged in the following February. The Royal Society, despite all these storms, kept its even course. Wren, who had been Vice-President, was elected President in 1680. With all his work, he contrived to take the Chair frequently at the meetings. Their discussions were very varied:--observations with the barometer, ways of sounding the sea, the curve described by a granado shot into the air, an account of the anatomy of the otter, and its power of diving;--Sir Christopher hereupon described the seal which was in S. James's Park, as having muscles by which it could contract and dilate its nostrils, and by such means sink itself and lie at the bottom of the pool made for it, for a great while together, and that it ate its food at the bottom of the river. [_A PHILOSOPHICAL SUPPER._] A new discovery by a French doctor named Papin[174] of a 'digester' for softening bones, caused much discussion at the Society. Wren inquired whether a contrary process to M. Papin's could not be devised to harden bones, but Papin could give no answer. Two years later M. Papin gave a supper to which several of the Society went. Evelyn says, it was[175]-- 'All dress'd, both fish and flesh, in M. Papin's Digestors, by which the hardest bones of beef itselfe and mutton were made as soft as cheese, without water or any other liquor, and with lesse than eight ounces of coales producing an incredible quantity of gravy; and, for close of all, a jelly made of the bones of beef, the best for clearness and good relish, and the most delicious that I had seene or tasted. We eat pike and other fish bones, and all without impediment; but nothing exceeded the pigeons, which tasted just as if baked in a pie, all these being stewed in their own juice, without any addition of water, save what swam about the Digestor, as _in balneo_; the natural juice of these provisions acting on the grosser substances, reduced the hardest bones to tenderness; but it is best descanted with more particulars for extracting tinctures, preserving and stewing fruite, and saving fuel, in Dr. Papin's booke[176] published and dedicated to our Society, of which he is a member.... This philosophical supper caus'd much mirth amongst us, and exceedingly pleased all the company. I sent a glass of the jelly to my wife, to the reproch of all that the ladies ever made of the best hartshorn.' [_SIR JOHN HOSKYNS._] The Royal Society had another foreign visitor, M. Chardin,[177] the Persian traveller. Sir Christopher, Sir John Hoskyns, and Evelyn[178] went to visit him when he arrived in England in 1680, and invited him to honour the Royal Society with his company. They found him dressed in his Eastern habit, speaking Latin, and understanding Greek, Arabic, and Persian from his eleven years of travel in those parts. He was a well-bred, modest man 'not inclined to talk wonders.' Chardin was a fair draughtsman and had besides taken two artists with him to draw landscapes, to measure and design the palaces and temples burnt at Persepolis. He was then on his way to France, but on his return promised to show the drawings. He returned, finding the persecution of the Protestants still hot in France, and Sir Christopher proposed him as a member of the Royal Society. His book, 'Travels of Sir John Chardin,' was published in London and is still in high esteem both for its special interest and the accuracy of its statements. Evelyn assisted him in engraving the plates and in the translation of the book. Charles II. made him a knight, and he was employed in Holland as the agent of the English East India Company. At the meeting of the Royal Society on November 30, 1681, Wren was re-elected President and chose Sir John Hoskyns as Vice-president.[179] Sir John Hoskyns, who, like Wren, had been educated at Westminster, was a Master in Chancery highly thought of for his legal attainments and his integrity; he and Wren appear always to have been friends; and when Wren resigned the presidency, Sir John succeeded him. Tradition[180] says that Sir John 'affected plainness in his garb, walked in the street with a cudgel in his hand and an old hat over his eyes. That he was often observed to be in a reverie; but when his spirits were elevated over a bottle, he was remarkable for his presence of mind and quickness of apprehension and became a most agreeable and instructive companion.' It also says that he bore an irreproachable character. The great western front of Christ Church, Oxford, was at this time occupying Wren's attention. Wolsey had laid the foundations of the gateway, but it had been left unfinished until Wren took it in hand and built the grand gateway and noble tower which are among the features of Oxford. The churches which at this time were building in London were All Hallows, Bread Street; the original church dated back to the beginning of the thirteenth century. Lyndwode, the author of the 'Provincial Constitutions,' was rector there in 1418. The poet Milton was baptized there December 20, 1608. An inscription on a tablet at the west end of the church recorded this, and also Dryden's lines:-- Three Poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the other two. Here also it is supposed that Sir Isaac Newton was buried, though the exact spot was not known. Wren built on the old site a stone church of considerable beauty, whose tall pinnacled tower had a singular grace of its own. All, alas! destroyed, the ancient site desecrated, and the materials sold, no matter for what purpose. [_CHURCH BUILDING._] S. Peter's, Cornhill, a small compact brick and stone church with a low tower and a key for its vane and camerated roof, was rebuilt in this year. Several small charitable legacies belong to this church: Sir B. Thorowgood settled three shops, at the west end of the churchyard, upon the parish for the maintenance of an organist to play on Sundays and Holydays for ever. In 1700 these shops were all three let for 24_l._! S. Clement Danes in the Strand, which had been patched up in 1674, was taken down and rebuilt, being finished in 1682. Sir Christopher, who received the moderate salary of 100_l._ for the rebuilding of the _City_ churches, had nothing necessarily to do with S. Clement's, but yet, as is recorded on a marble slab on the north side of the chancel, he 'freely and generously bestowed his great care towards the contriving and building.' It stands in too frequented a place and is too well known to need description, and will, I think, be readily admitted to bear Wren's mark. Evelyn calls it 'that pretty and well-contrived church.' The steeple surmounting the tower was added by Wren's pupil Gibbs[181] in 1719. S. Antholin's, Watling Street, was entirely consumed by the fire, so that all its registers perished, a misfortune which happened to but few of the churches. Sir Christopher spent especial care upon it. The roof was a cupola adorned with rich festoons; the octagonal spire was built of freestone, with three circles of windows and considerably ornamented, was the chief feature of this beautiful little church. At the time of its building the spire was much remarked, and must have formed a pleasant contrast to the little neighbouring church of S. Augustine in the same street, with its tower cupola and small steeple, which was added in 1695. This church was finished in 1683 and survives S. Antholin's, which has shared the evil fate of All Hallows, Bread Street. The hunting palace at Newmarket, of which mention has been made, was accidentally burnt down, and this made King Charles more anxious to have a palace in the ancient city of Winchester. Lands were bought for a park, a river was to have been brought from the downs with a thirty-foot cascade in the park, and a broad street planned to lead to the cathedral from the future palace. Wren designed a magnificent palace,[182] with a great cupola which would have been seen far out at sea, and laid the first stone on March 23, 1683. The work was much pressed forward both by King Charles and by the Duke of York, who frequently stayed at Winchester for a considerable time watching the progress of the building, and hunting in the forest. At such times the King was lodged in the Deanery and his train in the houses of the close, where most of them were sufficiently incongruous inmates. Ken, then a prebendary of the Cathedral, utterly refused to give a lodging in his house to the notorious Nell Gwynne. Winchester had many associations for Wren, to whom the name of Lancelot Andrewes must have been a household word from childhood, and it is pleasant to think that he at this time became acquainted with the saintly Ken. The palace, which was finished as far as the shell in 1685, was never used either by Charles II. or his successors, though Queen Anne made one visit to Winchester, and was so much struck with the situation and the shell of the building as it stood awaiting completion, the marble pillars sent by the Duke of Tuscany for the great staircase lying on the ground, that she resolved to finish it as a jointure house for Prince George, but his death and the cost of the great war made her give up the scheme. Sir Christopher seems to have hoped that George I. might finish it. It is, however, now used as a barrack. [_PALACES AT WINCHESTER._] Dr. Morley, Bishop of Winchester, had also engaged Sir Christopher's assistance; and having pulled down a part of the old episcopal palace, he began to build another; he died when but one wing was erected and left sufficient money to finish it. Bishop Mew, his successor, as the 'Parentalia' says, 'never minded it;' but it was finished, apparently not under Wren's auspices, by Sir Jonathan Trelawney. He became Bishop of Winchester in 1707; as Bishop of Bristol he was one of the famous 'Seven Bishops.' FOOTNOTES: [157] It was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, a great supporter of the Puritans. In Bishop Corbet's poem, _The Distracted Puritan_, the hero says:-- 'In the house of pure Emmanuel I had my education, Where my friends surmise I dazel'd my eyes With the sight of Revelation.' Evelyn, who visited it in September 1655, says: 'That zealous house ... the Chapel (it was but a room) is reformed _ab origine_, built N. and S. as is the Librarie.' [158] _Vide infra_, p. 331-3. [159] Evelyn's _Diary_, September 17, 1657, and July 23, 1678. [160] His son Thomas was created Earl of Pomfret by George I., 1721; the title is extinct. [161] He appeared for the seven bishops on their trial, greatly angering King James thereby. He voted for William and Mary, and was by them created Earl of Bradford, 1694. [162] _Repertorium_, vol. i. p. 276. Newcourt. [163] Born 1437. Assisted Tindal in translating and printing the Bible. Died 1568. [164] _New View of London_, vol. i. p. 14. E. Hatton. [165] The steeple has been slightly lowered by Sir W. Staines in recent years: it was 234 feet high. When this was done, it was discovered that an old hawk had inhabited the two upper circles, the open arcades of which were filled with masses of bird's bones, chiefly those of the city pigeons upon which he had preyed. [166] There is a quantity of stone quarried for S. Paul's still lying at the back of the island, ready for transportation. [167] _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, vol. ii. p. 310. Seward. It is supposed to have been part of the gravestone of Dr. John King, Bishop of London, 1611-21, called by King James 'the _King_ of preachers.' 'He was a most solid and profound divine of great gravity and piety, and a most excellent volubility of speech.'--_Repertorium_, vol. i. p. 29. Newcourt. Bishop King preached at S. Paul's Cross before King James I. and all his Court when James the First began the restoration of the Cathedral under Inigo Jones. A quaint print of this scene still exists.--_Three Cathedrals of S. Paul_, p. 20. Longman. [168] _Fast. Oxon._, vol. i. p. 139. Wood. [169] _Vide supra_, pp. 77, 78. [170] _Biographical History of England_, vol. iii. p. 327. Noble. [171] _Lives of the Gresham Professors_, p. 104. Ward. The church has been lately cleansed, but the disfiguring pews most unfortunately still encumber the area. [172] Thomas Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury; his endowments were munificent: died 1715. [173] _Diary_, February 15, 1684. The very valuable library which Dr. Tenison founded was, alas! sold by Act of Parliament, 1861, and the proceeds ordered to be applied to middle-class education, which was hardly what the donor intended. [174] Denys Papin, born at Blois, was an M.D. of Paris; came to England, and in 1680 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He died in 1710. [175] _Diary_, April 12, 1684. [176] _The New Digester, or Engine for the Softening of Bones_, 4to. A modification of Papin's 'digester kettle' still exists, and goes by his name, though used far less than it deserves. [177] Born in Paris, 1643. The son of a Protestant jeweller, he went to Persia in search of diamonds, amassing a considerable fortune. He married in England in 1681, and died there in 1735. He was buried at Chiswick, but his monument is in Westminster Abbey. 'Sir John Chardin. _Nomen sibi fecit eundo._'--_Life of Sir C. Wren_, p. 419. Elmes. [178] _Diary_, August 30, 1680. [179] The friendship and connection with Sir Christopher is curious, for in 1857 Mr. Chandos Wren Hoskyns married Theodosia Anne Martha Wren, only surviving child of Christopher Roberts Wren, of Wroxall Abbey in Warwickshire, who was himself the great-great-grandson of Sir C. Wren, Mr. Chandos Hoskyns being the direct descendant of Sir J. Hoskyns mentioned above. To their only child, now the wife of the Rev. C. F. C. Pigott, Rector of Edgmond, Salop, and Prebendary of Lichfield, I am indebted for the use of many valuable family papers. [180] _Biog. Hist._, vol. iii. p. 371, vol. iv. p. 314. Grainger. [181] James Gibbs, a Scotch architect who built S. Mary-le-Strand, S. Martin's-in-the-Fields, &c.; born 1674, died 1754. [182] _Life of Bishop Ken,_ by a layman, ed. 1854, p. 186. CHAPTER X. 1681-1686. CHELSEA COLLEGE--S. JAMES'S, WESTMINSTER--A HARD WINTER--CHICHESTER SPIRE--AN ASTRONOMICAL PROBLEM--A SEAT IN PARLIAMENT--MORE CITY CHURCHES--A CURIOUS CARVING. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.--_Merchant of Venice_, act i. scene ii. Charles II.'s gift of Chelsea College to the Royal Society had proved a gift of greater magnitude than they had been able to deal with, and the building had remained unused since 1669. Nor did their funds allow them to make use of Mr. Howard's donation of a piece of land, though the ever-ready Sir Christopher produced a design for it of some size, on the principle 'that a fair building may be easier carried on by contribution with time, than a sordid one.' At last, in 1681, he proposed the sale of Chelsea College back again to King Charles, and Wren and Evelyn undertook to manage what must have been rather a delicate transaction. During the negotiation Sir Stephen Fox came to Evelyn and proposed that the King should buy it, and build there a hospital for soldiers. The proposal came well from Sir Stephen, who, originally a chorister of Salisbury Cathedral, by the favour and help of Bishop Duppa first, and then by that of the King, and most of all by his own honesty and dexterity, became paymaster to the whole army and acquired an honest and unenvied fortune. The King agreed to the plan, and the matter was arranged by Wren, Evelyn, and Fox, who was a liberal benefactor to the college. The three men went across to Lambeth to their old friend Sancroft and acquainted him with the plan, and received his approval. Wren set instantly to work, and in August 1682 the foundations were being laid; the whole building was not completed until William and Mary's reign; but during all that time Wren's energy and care never flagged, but were extended even to the minutiæ of the regulations, all of which he drew up, for the health, comfort, and economy of the building. As architecture the building has been severely criticised; but when the worst is said, it still remains picturesque, cheerful and spacious, and a beautiful object as seen from the Thames. The Royal Society continued its meetings at Gresham College, which it did not quit until, in 1710, the members purchased a house in Crane Court, which has only very lately been pulled down. The next year saw many of Wren's churches finished. All Hallows the Great, in Thames Street, a plain brick and stone edifice with a strong square tower, was then completed: it, like by far the greater number of the City churches, had been repaired and beautified under the vigorous rule of Laud while Bishop of London. Thomas White, who came into the living a few months only before the Fire, was afterwards as Bishop of Peterborough one of the famous 'Seven Bishops.' At the time when Wren rebuilt the church the living was held by the learned church historian, Dr. William Cave.[183] S. Mildred's, Bread Street, is another church belonging to this date. It is so hidden by the tall warehouses that have sprung up round it that it is but little known; but its red brick tower, tall spire, and, above all, its most light and graceful dome, are all after Wren's best manner. The destruction of this beautiful little church has actually been threatened, but it has been ably defended, and it is to be hoped it will not add another name to the black list of desecrated City churches. [Sidenote: _S. JAMES'S, WESTMINSTER._] A third church belonging to this year is S. James's, Westminster, then called 'in the fields,' from the large parish of S. Martin's, out of which it was taken. It was built principally at the expense of Henry Jermyn, Earl of S. Albans, Wren's Paris friend, who gave his name to Jermyn Street, where the church stands. The proportions of S. James's and the technical skill displayed in building it, especially the construction of the roof, have been always admired. Wren, who was allowed but a moderate sum to expend upon it, was proud of having combined beauty with 'the cheapest of any form I could invent.'[184] When the church was newly done, with its bricks red instead of darkly grimed with smoke, with the handsome pillared entrance to the south aisle, a flight of steps leading up to it, which have vanished, leaving only as a mark the closed iron gates in the railings, without the strange excrescence that now does duty as a porch--its exterior must have been far more attractive than it is now; the little pinched steeple[185] is said, as indeed one would imagine, to be no building of Wren's. Within, Evelyn[186] gives us his description of the effect. 'I went to see the new church at S. James's elegantly built; the altar was especially adorned, the white marble inclosure curiously and richly carved, the flowers and garlands about the walls by Mr. Gibbons in wood; a pelican with her young at her breast, just over the altar in the carved compartment and border, invironing the purple velvet fringed with I.H.S. richly embroidered, and most noble plate were given by Sir R. Geere to the value (as was said) of 200_l._ There was no altar anywhere in England nor has there been abroad more handsomely adorned.' The font, now well placed in a baptistery beneath the tower, is one of Gibbons' few works in marble. It represents Adam and Eve, two detached statuettes standing on either side of the Tree of Knowledge, the branches of which support a bowl whereon are finely cut in low relief the Ark of Noah, and the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. With all this, and without the high, stiff indevout pews which now disfigure the church--pews that Sir Christopher did not put there, and to the presence of which in any of his churches he always strongly objected, it must have been a decidedly handsome edifice. The organ, built by Renatus Harris, was made for James II.'s timber chapel at the camp on Hounslow Heath; after the King's flight Wren obtained the organ from Queen Mary for S. James's Church. [Sidenote: _S. BENNET, PAUL'S WHARF._] Dr. Tenison, who then held S. James's jointly with S. Martin's, obtained the timbers of the chapel and used them in erecting the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Conduit Street,[187] which was also included in the enormous parish of S. Martin. S. Bennet, Paul's Wharf,[188] was finished in this year; picturesque and characteristic in its red brick, stone carving, well suited to its situation, then less cramped and overshadowed than it is now. Its rector, Mr. Peter Lane, had experienced all the greater perils that had lately befallen the City; presented to the living in 1662, he steadily ministered there through the terrible time of the plague, and was then burnt out by the Great Fire. He lived, however, to return and to minister for five years in the new church built by Sir Christopher. In this church Inigo Jones was buried, in the darkest days of the Rebellion. The handsome Church of S. James's, Garlickhithe, with its curious columnated steeple, and its projecting clock surmounted by a figure, is also of this date. It was well that Sir Christopher had been able to get even this much of his numerous works finished, for the winter of 1683-4 was of exceptional severity. On December 23 the Thames was frozen over; on January 9, Evelyn[189] 'went crosse the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to beare not only streetes of booths in which they roasted meate and had divers shops of wares, quite acrosse in a towne, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over.' Evelyn himself drove across it to Lambeth to dine with Archbishop Sancroft, who had succeeded Sheldon in 1677. 'London,'--says Evelyn a few days later in words which, alas, still describe but too vividly a genuine 'London fog,'-- 'by reason of the excessive coldnesse hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steame of the sea-coale that hardly could one see crosse the streetes, and this filling the lungs with its grosse particles exceedingly obstructed the breath so as one could scarcely breathe. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and other tradesmen worke, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents.' In addition to this dismal state of things 'the small pox was very mortal.' For eight weeks no foreign posts reached the city, for 'the very sea was so locked up with ice that no vessell could stir out or come in.' It was not until April was advanced that there was any sign of spring. It was certainly no building weather, and must have sharply tried the rising Choir of S. Paul's. Sir Christopher made a journey to Chichester on the invitation of the old Bishop, Guy Carleton, to examine the spire of the Cathedral. The whole building had suffered terribly under the wanton sack of Sir William Waller and his men, and required extensive repair. Sir Christopher 'for about two hours viewed the tower at the north west angle both without and within, and above and below, and observed the great want of repairs especially in the great western tower; made his report; proposing to clear away the ruin of the fallen tower; to pull down the south western tower; to shorten the nave by one arch, and to substitute a fair built west end of his own.'[190] [_CHICHESTER SPIRE._] He next examined the beautiful spire, well known as a landmark to sailors in the channel, sister spire to that most perfect one at Salisbury which he has preserved to this day. He adopted a different plan with the Chichester spire to that which he had formerly pursued, for he took down the top of the spire, and fastened to the finial within an immense pendulum of yellow fir wood, which in great gales preserved exactly the balance of the spire. This lasted till 1813, when the pendulum was repaired by Mr. Elmes, and so remained until, after a great gale in 1861, the spire fell in; it has since been rebuilt, and is now rather higher than it was formerly. The other part of Wren's scheme was not acted upon. At this time he built Fawley Court in Oxfordshire: the place had lain in ruins since the civil war, when it suffered, though the property of Sir Bulstrode Whitelock, even more from Cromwell's troops than from those of Prince Rupert. Sir Bulstrode's descendants sold the property to Mr. William Freeman, who pulled the ruins down and got Sir Christopher to build the present Court, with its four fronts, handsome hall, and characteristic festoons of flowers in the ceiling. In this same year Wren was made Controller of the Works, for which he received a salary of 9_l._ 2_s._ 6_d._ a year; not a very magnificent sum considering that a good deal of petty work and cares went with the office. It was necessary to see that this person had not incroached on the castle stables, or that person on the castle ditch; to measure and plan, and settle little quarrels and disputes in a way infinitely tormenting, one would think, to a man who had already such enormous works to consider. But Wren's genius was a patient one, and had a great grasp of details; he dealt with point after point as it arose, and no one seems ever to have complained of his breaking an engagement or neglecting to settle their difficulties. While this work was going on all London was startled by the tidings of Charles II.'s sudden illness and death, when all the luxury of the Court was at its height. With all his grave faults, the King's death caused considerable grief throughout England; to both Wren and Evelyn he had been always kind and friendly, and both looked with great anxiety to the reign of his successor. The Royal Society certainly lost a steady friend in Charles II. and was soon to see its court favour fade away. It was, however, much occupied with a discussion between Newton and Robert Hooke concerning the planetary motions. The question was one which deeply interested Wren, and which hitherto he had not been able to answer. As he and Hooke were walking together--Wren, whom one can never imagine but with all the courtesy and refinement of a finished gentleman, and Hooke half a miser, utterly slovenly, and jealous of any rising fame--they were met by Dr. Halley, an astronomer of some note even then, who was struggling with this problem and confessed that he had hitherto failed. Wren promised a book worth forty shillings to whoever should solve the problem, whereupon Hooke declared he understood it from Kepler's 'Law of Periods and Distances,' and would show his solution some day to Wren; this he never did, and very soon Newton published his 'Principia,'[191] in which he solved this problem, acknowledging freely that Wren and Halley had independently deduced the law of gravity from Kepler's second law. He had a great quarrel with Hooke, the less to be wondered at, as, excepting Sir Christopher, Hooke quarrelled with everybody and was a philosopher of the sourest type. In 1685 Sir Christopher was returned to Parliament for the borough of Plympton S. Maurice, in Devonshire, a Parliament in which his cousin Charles also sat. The elections in Devonshire are supposed to have been specially influenced by the Court. The 'Parentalia' gives no hint even of what his politics were, whether he spoke often or how he voted. And yet it was a stormy time. The Parliament had not sat a month before Monmouth's brief rebellion began, to be bloodily quenched; public feeling was in a state of irritation and suspense, no one feeling sure what King James might not do. He did continue Wren unmolested in the S. Paul's commission, and the progress of the building was steady, though probably its architect thought with no light anxiety that it might be used for services other than those for which it was designed. The same doubt may have clouded his satisfaction in the many churches which were finished in this and the immediately following years. S. Martin's on Ludgate Hill, closely wedged in by the neighbouring houses, with its little tapering spire, of which that of S. James's, Westminster, appears a caricature, should have had its place among the churches of the previous year. It harmonizes beautifully with the great dome of S. Paul's. Sir Christopher bestowed on the inside much of the ornament, the festoons and the carving, which its situation did not allow him to bestow on the outside; in those days it had daily services and may well have stood open, offering 'a shadow from the heat' to the incessant passers-by. S. Alban's, Wood Street, is in the pointed style of architecture in which Wren's genius generally felt fettered, though, as in the case of S. Michael's, Cornhill, he sometimes dealt very successfully with it. [Sidenote: '_AN ALTAR-PIECE._'] S. Mary Magdalene's, Fish Street,[192] is more after Wren's usual manner, with its good proportions, its highly ornamented round-headed windows, its stone balustrade and solid square stone tower, with the little steeple rising from it on seven steps. Within, carving in 'right oak' was bestowed with no sparing hand, especially in the altar-piece. And here one may say that, while defects in church arrangement, such as galleries, pews, and the like, are invariably laid on Sir Christopher and said to be the inevitable concomitants of his style, it should be borne in mind that in many and many an instance the churchwardens during the eighteenth century repewed and 'beautified' the churches which Wren had left as completed; in what style, and on what principle one can readily guess. It should be remembered also that an 'altar-piece,' as the old books call it, was an invariable part of his design. If there was rich carving, if there was black and white marble, he placed it there; the altar was the principal part of the church in his eyes, even though he did not often avail himself of the dignity given by a flight of steps. The close altar rails which are now not admired, were, it must be remembered, ordered by Archbishop Laud to protect the Holy Table from profanation, and were always so placed by Wren. S. Mary Magdalene's included the parish of S. Gregory, the little church which nestled by old S. Paul's, so that Fuller described the Cathedral as 'the mother church, having a babe in her arms.'[194] S. Bennet's, Gracechurch Street, or Grasschurch Street, as it was really named, from a herb market formerly held hard by, is, or rather was, of the same date. It was well placed at the corner of two streets, and stood boldly out with a tall tower crowned with a cupola and slender spire; the interior was full of carving and ornament. S. Bennet's is, however, a thing of the past; the building is gone, the site desecrated, and the memory of such an edifice alone survives in the names of the streets which formerly led to and now usurp its place. The little plain Church of S. Matthew, Friday Street, close pressed by neighbouring houses, is the last completed in this year. Obscure as the street where it stands may have been, it was full of associations for Wren. In Friday Street was the house where his aunt Anna lived, and where his uncle Matthew 'lay,' when summoned to that memorable conference with Bishop Andrewes. Hard by in the parish of S. Peter's, Eastcheap, now incorporated with that of S. Matthew, Christopher's merchant grandfather had lived and died, and there his own father had been born. S. Peter's churchyard was preserved, and its single plane-tree is carefully protected. [_COMPLAINTS FROM WINCHESTER._] S. Matthew's has a less pleasant association: the living was for a time held by the notorious Henry Burton,[195] the friend and ally of Prynne. Burton was at first designed to accompany the Prince of Wales to Spain, but doubts of his principles arising, he was rejected and dismissed from his attendance as the Prince's chaplain. This formed one strong motive for the bitter spite he bore to the church of his ordination. It is likely also that he stirred Prynne's malice against Bishop Wren, who appears to have been Burton's successor in the vacant chaplaincy. The lesser details of the Surveyor-General's work must this year have been a burden. There were complaints from Winchester, where the sudden stoppage of the buildings and plans for the palace caused great inconvenience; a complaint from Catherine Barton, the beautiful niece of Sir Isaac Newton, widow of Colonel Barton, who sold her farm to Charles II., and by the trickery of the agent never received her money; and a complaint of the same kind from Sir Richard Tichbourne's son. Sir Christopher examined both these cases carefully, and compelled the agent to submit, and to satisfy the parties. Then there were troubles with the Duke of Buckingham and the 'chaos' he had made in Spring Gardens, that chaos so vividly described in 'Peveril of the Peak.' Nobody but Wren could give the estimates for the new stables at S. James's Palace, or order the new planting at Hampton Court and in Greenwich Park, or secure the proper tithes for the Rector of S. Thomas's, Winchester. Again, there was Verrio the painter's account for work done at Whitehall and Windsor to be examined. For the chapel at Whitehall Verrio demanded 1,250_l._, and, says Wren, 'I suppose when the rest of the ceiling and walls are finished, as they ought to be, it may fully deserve it.' The whole bill was 2,050_l._, of which Verrio had received already more than 1,400_l._, so that he may be reckoned as fortunate. It is not wonderful that in 1686, Wren attended no meeting of the Society. Two churches were finished this year: S. Clement's, East Cheap, and S. Mary's, Abchurch, in Cannon Street. S. Clement's, with its square tower and balustrade, has within a great deal of fine oak carving, and its ceiling adorned with one great circle with an outer line of curious fretwork. Bishop Pearson was rector before the Fire, and the famous treatise on the Nicene Creed is dedicated to his parishioners there. S. Mary's, with its quaint little round windows and flat-topped roof, is not externally beautiful, but within it is one of the gems which Wren bestowed on out-of-the-way nooks: its cupola[196] is gracefully supported on eight arches and pendentives, the east end is rich with Gibbons' carving of festoons of fruit, palm leaves and a pelican in her piety. Much handsome work has also been bestowed on the inside doorcases. [_CARVERS IN WOOD._] Wren's promise to Evelyn to employ Gibbons was certainly redeemed; for, besides the works which have been glanced at, Gibbons was busied on the stalls of S. Paul's choir, where, darkened but uninjured by time, his work stands out in all the peculiar grace and tenderness which his chisel could give to wood. The angels which cluster beneath the great organ seem themselves to be taking part in the music which flows from it, and are as unlike as possible to the lumps of marble or wood with which other hands too often deform a church, and which the old guide-books term 'Cupids'! Still, it is a physical impossibility that all the work which bears Gibbons' name is by him and him only. [_MAKING A FORTUNE._] The fame of the Cathedral, its architect, and its carvings, was widely spread, and brought many from the country to seek for work on the new building. Of one of these a curious account remains.[197] A young man, named Philip Wood, of Sudbury, Suffolk, who had great skill in carving, came up to London to make, if he could, sufficient fortune to enable him to marry the daughter of his patron, a retired London merchant named Haybittle. After long waiting in London, without work, till his money was all but spent, he, remembering the rich wood work which abounded in the churches of his native Suffolk, bethought himself that in the Cathedral, whose progress he daily watched, 'they would surelie put carvings.' The foreman to whom he spoke repulsed him, saying 'We want no carpenters here.' Undiscouraged, the young man came again day after day for a week, till at length Sir Christopher noticed him, and learning from the foreman that he was 'a country fellow who troubled them to give him some of the carving to do,' beckoned to Wood to come and speak to him. As the young man approached full of hope, he said, 'Friend, you want carving work--what have you been used to carve?' At this critical, long-desired moment the poor youth lost his presence of mind, and instead of mentioning the 'sundry figures of lions and elephants' that he had carved for Mr. Haybittle's house, stammered out, 'Please your worship, I have been used to carve troughs.' 'Troughs!' said Sir Christopher; 'then carve me as a specimen of your skill, a sow and pigs (it will be something in your line), and bring it to me this day week. I shall be here.' So he went away, with a smile at the presumption which could aspire to step straight from such work to that of adorning S. Paul's. Distracted at his own folly and the loud laughter of the workpeople, Wood rushed back to his lodging, and but for the kind advice of his Quaker landlady, would have given up all for lost. She wisely told him to take Wren at his word and carve the best sow and pigs that he could make. He obeyed her exactly, spent his last guinea on a block of pear-wood, and wrought with all his might to get it ready by the appointed day. Sir Christopher was showing the building to a party of friends, but as soon as he saw Wood with his carving hidden in an apron, he beckoned him forward. Wood produced his carving; Wren looked at it a moment in silence, and then said, 'I engage you, young man; attend at my office to-morrow forenoon.' Shortly afterwards he came to Wood again and said, 'Mr. Addison[198] wishes to keep your carving, and requests me to give you ten guineas for it;' then with his gentle courtesy, he added, 'Young man, I fear I did you some injustice, but a great national work is entrusted to me, and it is my solemn duty to mind that no part of the work falls into inefficient hands. Mind and attend me to-morrow.' Wood was employed for seven years in the Cathedral, and received considerable sums of money; and it is pleasant to know that he did marry Hannah Haybittle. Thus some of his work is in S. Paul's, and to him London streets were indeed paved with gold. Yet one cannot but think sadly, for one who thus succeeded, what numbers then and now come full of hope, to the great city, and without help or friends lose their all, and are left without even the means of returning. To the number of these the House of Charity, which occupies one corner of Wren's once handsome Soho Square, can bear but too true a testimony. FOOTNOTES: [183] He wrote _Primitive Christianity, Lives of the Fathers_, &c.; was a Canon of Windsor, where he died in 1713. [184] _Vide infra_, p. 310 [185] Newcourt says, 'A lofty spire was at first built, but the tower not proving strong enough, it was taken down, and another sort of spire built.' It is said to be by Willcox, a carpenter. [186] _Diary_, December 7, 1684. [187] It was private property and never consecrated, and has within the last few years been pulled down and the site used as a shop. [188] _Repertorium_, p. 367. Newcourt. Now used by the Welsh congregation. [189] _Diary_, January 9, 1684. [190] _Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 306. [191] The title of Newton's book is _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_. The MS. is in the possession of the Royal Society. [192] Matthew Griffiths, the favourite and the pupil of Dean Donne, held this living through the Rebellion, and being a hearty Episcopalian was sequestered, plundered, and twice imprisoned; he returned to London and read the Prayers of the Church in the obscure church of S. Nicholas Olave's,[193] hard by his own church, to the poor Cavaliers; for this he suffered seven violent assaults and five imprisonments; the last for preaching before General Monk a strong Royalist sermon before Monk had declared himself. Mr. Griffiths was speedily released and restored to his benefice. [193] S. Nicholas Olave was burnt to the ground and the parish incorporated with that of S. Nicholas Coleabbey.--Newcourt's _Rep._, p. 305. [194] It would seem from the S. Gregory's vestry books that Sir C. Wren put up at the request of the parishioners 'a wooden tabernacle' for the use of both parishes. It was set up in S. Paul's Churchyard, and taken down after a time as interfering with the building of the Cathedral. [195] _Repertorium_, p. 475. Newcourt. [196] _Walks in London._ A. Hare, vol. i. p. 331. [197] For this anecdote (taken from MS. in the British Museum) I am indebted to a number of the _British Workman_ for 1877. It is, I think, the foundation of Mr. J. Saunders' graceful story of _Jasper Deane_. [198] Probably the father of the great writer. CHAPTER XI. 1687-1696. PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED--CHURCH BUILDING--ACQUITTAL OF THE SEVEN BISHOPS--JAMES II.'S FLIGHT--WILLIAM AND MARY--COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS--HAMPTON COURT--GREENWICH HOSPITAL--RICHARD WHITTINGTON--S. PAUL'S ORGAN. Be it enacted then By the fair laws of thy firm-pointed pen, God's services no longer shall put on A sluttishness for pure religion; No longer shall our churches' frighted stones Lie scattered like the burnt and martyr'd bones Of dead devotion. _On a treatise on Charity._ RICHARD CRASHAW. Wren's parliamentary career was soon interrupted, for King James dissolved, in 1687, an assembly which had done so little to forward his views. Church building went on apace. S. Andrew's, Holborn, which, though the fire had not reached it, was in a ruinous state, was rebuilt and made a large handsome stone church, with an interior very like that of S. James's, Westminster. The tower was merely repaired and not rebuilt. Christ Church, Newgate, on the site of the old Franciscan Monastery of Grey Friars, had formerly been a magnificent edifice: the choir only was rebuilt by Wren, and sufficed to make a large parish church, which was filled with handsome carving; a graceful pillared steeple was added in 1704. S. Margaret Pattens,[199] in Rood Lane, was finished in 1687: built of brick and stone with a tall tower and graceful spire, and much enriched by carving within. Its existence has been threatened, but it stands out an honourable, though fortunately not at all a solitary example, of a well-worked, and therefore well-filled, City church, and it is to be hoped may defy its threatened destroyers. Early in the following year came the trial of those Seven Bishops who refused to publish in church the King's declaration of liberty of conscience.[200] It was perhaps the most unwise thing that James II. ever did, and as the Bishops passed to the barge that was to take them to the Tower, rank upon rank of kneeling people besought their blessing. It was an event to move Wren greatly: he could remember when a child hearing of Archbishop Laud's imprisonment, and the long years of Bishop Wren's captivity were frequently cheered by his nephew's visits to the Tower. Most of those who now passed to that ill-omened abode were his friends or acquaintance. Bishop Turner of Ely was on the S. Paul's Commission; Bishop Lloyd of S. Asaph while rector of S. Martin's had baptized Wren's daughter and youngest son; Bishop White he had known in the days when he was rector. Bishop Ken at Winchester, and Archbishop Sancroft had been for years his steady friends. If he failed in dignity at one crisis, there is abundant material in Sancroft's letters, and in the rest of his life, to show he must have been a charming companion and capable of inspiring sincere affection. [_DEATH OF MRS. HOLDER._] They remained in the Tower about a week, and on June 29 were triumphantly acquitted. The story of their acquittal has been told once for all by Lord Macaulay and need not be re-told here. London was full of illuminations, the favourite device being seven candles--the tallest central one representing the arch-bishop--and all the newly-hung bells of the city were set ringing. Wren had private sorrows to hinder him from entering into the public rejoicing: his only surviving sister, Susan, died just at this time, and Wren must have been watching by her on the very day of the Bishops' acquittal. A little later, he, and her husband, Dr. William Holder, brought her body to the crypt of S. Paul's and laid her there. The epitaph, on a marble monument, is written with all the diffuseness of style common to those of that time, but is touching from its real affection. The crypt of S. Paul's was of course the part of the building first finished. Long ago Wren had spoken of 'the quantity of work to be done in the dark,' and it certainly proved enormous. The crypt of S. Paul's is one of the largest and most intricate that exists, extending under the entire church, not the choir only, as is the case in S. Peter's at Rome. The dimness of a London atmosphere renders it hard to get much effect of light and shade, but on a clear day the curious twilight effect is striking. There are all the tombs which were preserved from the old cathedral, there are now the remains of some of our greatest dead, and there is the Church of S. Faith, the floor of which is now being slowly covered with a beautiful mosaic.[201] When, however, Sir Christopher laid his sister there, all was empty and not fully complete; the cluster of pillars and arches that sustain the great dome with their massive strength must have been but newly finished. Only one church was completed by Sir Christopher in this troubled year, that of S. Michael, Crooked Lane; a handsome stone church with a stately tower and spire. It contained the tomb of a famous city worthy, Sir William Walworth: Who with courage stout and manly might Slew Wat Tyler in King Richard's sight.[202] This association had no value in the eyes of the Corporation of London, with whom it might have weighed: they were as indifferent to this lesser reason as to the infinitely higher claim of consecrated ground, and in 1830 the church was swept away for the new London Bridge. All through the year the relations between King James and his people were growing more and more strained. Messages were passed and repassed between many of the high officials and the Prince of Orange, and in their dread of the Church of Rome, the people forgot what they had suffered under the tyranny of the Puritan sects. Hurry and confusion were everywhere; as the year advanced the Prince of Orange's landing was hourly reported on all parts of the coast. Too late King James took some of the measures which, taken earlier, might have saved all; and on November 5, 1688, the Prince landed at Brixham in Torbay. [_WILLIAM AND MARY._] For some time all was confusion and all private business was suspended. Early in the next year a convention was called of the Lords and Commons, and the crown offered to William and Mary. The Queen's behaviour, the absence of even the show of feeling for her father, were much remarked on at the time and are a great stain on her memory. A Parliament was called on the 13th of February, to which Sir C. Wren was returned for the borough of New Windsor. His election was set aside for a technical error in the manner of his return, but he was instantly re-elected. It is evident from this that he took the new oath of allegiance, probably holding, with Evelyn and other honourable men, that King James had abdicated and that therefore the throne was vacant. The S. Paul's commission was renewed, and amid all the changes the work there went on; making in its steady, undeviating progress, its unity of design, a fair type of the growth of the spiritual church, despite the sharp contrast apparently existing between the peaceful, regular growth of the material edifice, and the hindrances and trials that beset the spiritual one. Those were the days when some of the best and most learned churchmen, unable to reconcile the contradiction of the two oaths, lost high office, honours, and all prospects of worldly success by becoming 'non-jurors.' It should be borne in mind that it was on no doctrinal ground that they left the Communion of the Church in England, but simply because, considering James II. still as King, they could not honestly take an oath of allegiance to William as his successor, or attend services where an usurper was prayed for as the rightful sovereign. It was a most grievous blow to the Church, by no means recovered from the struggle with Puritanism or from the semi-Puritan clergy she had been constrained to accept. Yet, in the midst of all these misfortunes, thus much at least was gained; men were forced to understand the true grounds of their position and to learn, as the Church in Scotland learnt by a sharper lesson, that State aid, and State protection, are not among the essentials of the Church. The misfortune of so many friends, and especially that of good Archbishop Sancroft, must greatly have moved Wren, and it is provoking that his grandson has given no intimation of his ancestor's views, not even saying on which side he voted in the Convention Parliament, which offered the crown to William and Mary. Wren certainly knew how to manage his Windsor constituents. He had erected from time to time several buildings there, among which was the Town Hall, built upon arches, with a wide vaulted space below, which is now used as the Corn Exchange. When all was finished, the mayor and corporation came in state to inspect the new building, and to stamp with their approval another of the great architect's works. Much seems to have been approved of, but one member of the municipality declared in alarm that the room above the vaulted space was inadequately supported and would one day fall in. [_ADDITIONAL PROPS._] In vain Wren, who had built vault after vault and knew to a nicety what weight each of his arches would bear, explained the perfect security of the upper room; the anxious man could not be pacified and the architect promised to put two columns below. He did so, and the alderman was calmed, little knowing that Sir Christopher's columns when complete had about half an inch of space between themselves and the ceiling they were supposed to support! Wren must many a time have laughed to himself when he passed that way. Two other buildings of his, one of which is called 'the Bank House,' stand in Windsor not far from what are known as 'The Hundred Steps.' There is another house there of his design, now used by the freemasons and the volunteers. Wren sent his eldest son to Eton, where the boy was at this time, and afterwards to Pembroke College, where his name alone was a recommendation. In 1689 Wren finished building the College of Physicians in Warwick Lane; as far as the confined space would admit, the front was handsome, but the dome and its ornament provoked the satire of Garth in the opening lines of his 'Dispensary':[203] Not far from that most celebrated place,[204] Where angry justice shows her awful face, Where little villains must submit to fate That great ones may enjoy the world in state; There stands a dome majestic to the sight, And sumptuous arches bear its oval height; A golden globe, placed high with artful skill Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill. Whatever its exterior defects may have been, the theatre within was arranged with masterly skill so as to enable all the students to see and hear during the lectures and demonstration. The difficult science of acoustics was one to which Wren gave much attention, and his churches are, in this respect, very successful. The Physicians retained the college Wren built for them until very recent times, when they moved into the present building which does not adorn Trafalgar Square. Not all the Halls belonging to the City Companies perished by the fire, though many suffered severely. Wren, and Jarman, the City Architect, rebuilt and repaired some seventy-nine of them.[205] Of these, a large number have been altered or pulled down, but a few may be mentioned. The Mercers' Hall in Cheapside; the Grocers', a portion of which was long used by the Bank of England; the Haberdashers', where the rich ceiling was its great ornament; the Tallow Chandlers', with its interior colonnade and its fountain; the Apothecaries', one of the largest in the City; the Stationers'; and, last but not least, the Alderman's Court adjoining Guildhall, rebuilt almost immediately after the fire; a very handsome room, rich in carving, and finely proportioned. S. Edmund the King, in Lombard Street, was finished this year. The necessities of the site caused Wren to build it north and south, the altar being at the north end. The front to Lombard Street, the only part of the outside visible, is of stone and very picturesque with its belfry and little domed spire. The interior has been lately re-arranged with a wise treatment of the old work and carving. The 'marble font possesses, like that of S. Mary Abchurch, a very beautiful canopied cover; it is in two stages, the lower being domed, and above are four seated figures of the Cardinal Virtues; it is railed in and is on the west side of the church.'[206] S. Margaret's, Lothbury, belongs to the same date, and was rebuilt of stone. Some years later Wren bestowed much rich wood carving on the interior. He chose the Corinthian style for this building and handled it with considerable skill. [_HAMPTON COURT._] Queen Mary, who had the Stuart love for genius, was invariably gracious and even friendly to Wren, with whom she held many a conversation on matters of art and science. He considered her to be very well versed in all these subjects and enjoyed discussing them freely with her. Queen Mary was much charmed with the situation of Cardinal Wolsey's old palace of Hampton Court, and engaged Wren to make alterations there. The old buildings were accordingly in part pulled down and two sets of royal apartments built; Queen Mary, though she amused herself with planning the gardens and making suggestions, had yet the wisdom to defer to Wren's better taste and knowledge. Her husband, with characteristic obstinacy, insisted on his own ideas, thereby dwarfing the cloisters and marring much of the architecture. It is, however, fair to say that King William always owned that the defects[207] were his, the merits, Wren's; and these merits are very great, as anyone who knows the fine old palace with its rich red brick, its arcades, and the quaint formal gardens will readily allow. He built, at about the same time, the Pavilion and Ranger's House in Bushey Park. Kensington Palace was also under Wren's hands. It had been the property of Lord Chancellor Finch, and was sold by his son to William III. Wren added another story to the old house, which forms the north front of the palace, and also built the south front. The defect of the building as seen at the end of the long avenue of Kensington Gardens is its want of height, but on a nearer approach this fault is much diminished. King William was in the midst of his Irish campaign while the work went on, but found time to send back repeated inquiries as to its progress, and complaints when that did not answer his expectations. There, five years later, Queen Mary died, to the regret of all her subjects, and even of her cold-hearted husband. [_GREENWICH AS A HOSPITAL._] Nor were these the only palaces which Wren contrived for Queen Mary. That of Greenwich had been begun by Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria, and a wing had been built for Charles II., but it had been left unfinished. Wren, who knew Greenwich well from his visits to the Observatory, and who took a great interest in sailors, observing the entire lack of any refuge for them in illness, proposed to Queen Mary the magnificent plan of making the palace into a seaman's hospital. The Queen willingly entered into the idea, and proposed to add to the Queen's House, as it was called, so as to make it a dwelling for herself, at the same time. Evelyn, Sir Stephen Fox and others, came readily into the scheme and contributed liberally. Wren's contribution, though not in money, was a liberal one also; for he gave his time, labour, skill and superintendence, despite his innumerable other works. The plans were prepared and money collected, but nothing was actually done until some years later. Wren's eldest son had in the meantime finished his Eton and Cambridge career and had obtained, by his father's interest, the post, which must surely have been a sinecure! of Assistant Deputy Engrosser. He does not seem to have inherited any of the brilliant genius of his father, though apparently of very fair abilities and with much taste for antiquities. Far more like Sir Christopher was his daughter Jane, who shared his tastes and studies and took a vivid interest in his work. She added to her other accomplishments that of being a very skilful musician. She was never married, but remained all her life her father's affectionate companion. Wren's old friend, Dr. Bathurst of Trinity College, Oxford, appealed to him, in the spring of 1692, for help in the buildings which were still going on there. 'Worthy Sir,--When I sent Mr. Phips (the surveyor of the buildings) to wait on you with a scheme of our new building, he told me how kindly you was pleased to express your remembrance of me, and that you would send me your thoughts concerning our design; and particularly of the pinnacles, the which as they were superadded to our first draught, so I must confess I would be well content to have omitted with your approbation. The season for our falling to work again will now speedily come on; which makes me the more hasten to entreat from you the trouble of two or three lines in relation to the promises whereby you will farther oblige, 'Sir, your old friend, and ever faithful servant, 'R. BATHURST.' Wren's answer comes promptly, and shows his generous readiness to help the schemes of others, no matter how pressing his own work was. [_HE SENDS HIS THOUGHTS._] 'Sir,--I am extremely glad to hear of your good health, and, what is more, that you are vigorous and active, and employed in building. I considered the design you sent me of your Chapel which in the main is very well, and I believe your work is too far advanced to admit of any advice: however, I have sent my thoughts, which will be of use to the mason to form his mouldings. 'He will find two sorts of cornice; he may use either. I did not well comprehend how the tower would have good bearing upon that side where the stairs rise. I have ventured a change of the stairs, to leave the wall next the porch of sufficient scantling to bear that part which rises above the roofs adjoining. 'There is no necessity for pinnacles, and those expressed in the printed design are much too slender. 'I have given another way to the rail and baluster, which will admit of a vase that will stand properly upon the pilaster.[208] 'Sir, I wish you success and health and long life, with all the affection that is due from, 'Your obliged, faithful friend, and humble servant, 'CHRISTOPHER WREN. 'P.S. A little deal box, with a drawing in it, is sent by Thomas Moore, Oxford carrier.' In the same year the Church of S. Andrew by the Wardrobe[209] was finished; recent alterations in the city have benefited this building; it now stands well above a flight of steps, with its square tower, and the red brick which contrives to be red and not black, and stone dressings. Two years later Wren rebuilt All Hallows, Lombard Street, on an ancient foundation: outside it is one of his plainest and most solid churches, inside he spent upon it much rich work and curious carving both in stone and wood. S. Michael Royal, College Hill, belongs to this same date, and was built under Wren's directions by Edward Strong, his master-mason. It is a well-lit, handsome church with a tower at one corner, and contains an altar-piece of singular beauty, carved by Grinling Gibbons in 'right wainscot oak.' The old church was founded and made a collegiate church of S. Spiritus and S. Mary by no less a person than Sir Richard Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London (1397, 1406, 1419), whose fame, with that of his cat, survives in the well-known story. He founded also another college, known as the Whittington College, and endowed it with a divinity lecture 'for ever.' Edward VI., however, suppressed both the colleges and the lecture, though the Whittington College was allowed partially to survive as almshouses for poor men. Whittington[210] was buried in this church, but his monument perished in the Fire. In the following year Wren added a well-proportioned, peculiar steeple, the gift of the parishioners, to the little stone Church of S. Vedast[211] in Foster Lane, a church to which a painful interest now attaches from the recent persecution and imprisonment of its rector, the Rev. T. P. Dale. The church was decorated, as was Wren's custom, with fret-work, carving, and stucco, but is not otherwise remarkable. S. Mary's, Somerset, or Somers'hithe, was likewise finished in this year: a stone church with two aisles surmounted by a handsome cornice and balustrade; its great feature was the beautiful pinnacled tower, which, though the church is gone, still stands a perpetual memorial of that reckless disregard of God's honour, which has counted any common want, any farthing of money, of more importance than the claims of His service, or than gifts solemnly offered to Him.[212] [_CLIPT WINGS._] [_A GRAND DESIGN._] The Cathedral meanwhile grew slowly, though many a hindrance annoyed its architect. The Parliament took part of the fabric money and applied it to the expenses of King William's wars, so that, as Sir Christopher complained, his wings were clipt and the Church was deprived of its ornaments.[213] The organ was another annoyance. Sir Christopher's wish and intention was to place the organ where it now is, on either side of the choir, in order to leave the vista clear from the west door to the altar, which in his design stood grandly raised under a handsome canopy. This was overruled, and the organ was to be placed in a gallery cutting right across the entrance of the choir. With his wonted philosophy, Wren bent his mind to reducing as much as possible the injury to the architectural effect, by keeping the pipes as low as he could. But in the builder of the organ, Bernard Smith, or 'Father' Smith, as he is called, Wren had a difficult person to deal with. Far from lowering the pipes, Smith made them higher than in his estimate, so that the case and ornaments had to be enlarged, and Sir Christopher complained bitterly that the Cathedral 'was spoilt by that box of whistles.' The rival organ builder, Renatus Harris, if indeed he was the author of an anonymous paper, called 'Queries about the S. Paul's Organ,[214] was not sparing in his criticisms. One query asks 'Whether Sir C. Wren wou'd not have been well pleas'd to have receiv'd such a proposal from the organ builder of S. Paul's, as shou'd have erected an organ, so as to have separated twenty foot in the middle, as low as the gallery, and thereby a full and airy prospect of the whole length of the church, and six fronts with towers as high as requisite?' This question is easy enough to answer, and fortunately Wren's wishes have been at last fulfilled by that division of the organ, which now leaves the desired clear view from the great western doors to the altar. Harris, in 1712, proposed to erect a great organ over the west doors of the Cathedral, 'study'd to be in all respects made the most artful, costly and magnificent piece of organ-work that ever has hitherto been invented. The use of it will be for the reception of the Queen, on all publick occasions of thanksgivings for the good effect of peace or war, upon all state days, S. Cecilia's Day, the entertainment of foreigners of quality, and artists, and on all times of greatest concourse etc., and by the advice and assistance of Sir C. Wren, the external figure and ornaments may be contrived so proportionable to the order of the building, as to be a decoration to that part of the edifice and no obstruction to any of the rest.... Sir Christopher Wren approves it.' Alas! at that time Wren's approval was enough to determine the majority of the commission to reject any plan thus sanctioned, and Renatus Harris's grand design survives on paper alone. FOOTNOTES: [199] The name is often supposed to originate in the patten-makers who are said to have lived near, but its origin is more probably 'S. Margaret _with the Paten_.' [200] 'Not,' says Evelyn (_Diary_, May 18, 1688), 'that they were averse to the publisheing of it for want of due tendernesse towards Dissenters ... but that the Declaration being founded on such a dispensing power as might at pleasure set aside all laws ecclesiastical, it appeared to them illegal and ... a point of such consequence that they could not so far make themselves parties to it as the reading of it in church during the time of Divine Service would have done.' They were sent to the Tower June 8, for refusing to give bail for their appearance. They refused on the ground that to do so would have prejudiced their peerage. The bishops were Francis Turner of Ely, William Lloyd of S. Asaph, Thomas Ken of Bath and Wells, John Lake of Chichester, Sir Jonathan Trelawney of Bristol, Thomas White of Peterborough, and William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury. [201] The mechanical part is done by the women convicts of Woking Gaol. [202] _New View of London_, vol. ii. p. 423. [203] Canto i. Samuel Garth, a physician of some fame, who provided for Dryden's funeral in Westminster Abbey. Died 1718. [204] Newgate. [205] See Appendix ii. [206] R. I. B. A. Sessional Papers, 1876-7, p. 162. [207] Horace Walpole says that Wren's descendant assured him that Sir C. Wren had prepared a far better design for Hampton Court which Queen Mary preferred, but it was overruled by William III. This may only mean the cloisters, as Walpole is not accurate.--_Anec._, vol. iii. [208] This plan was adopted. Dr. Bathurst died in May 1704 at the age of 86. [209] So called from being in the street where formerly was a strong tower where several kings, and Queen Philippa, Edward the Third's wife, lodged, also called the Queen's Wardrobe, as the building near S. Andrew's was the King's Wardrobe.--_New View_, vol. ii. p. 427. [210] 'The said Sir R. Whittington, as he was three times Lord Mayor, was as often buried in this church; first, by his executors under a fine monument; second, by the avaricious parson for the riches he hoped to find; and a third time by his friends, to interr him in lead under his monument as at first.'--_New View_, p. 428. [211] 'S. Vedast was Bishop of Arras, A.D. 484, a man of great holiness and charity. Once he met with a cruel bear prowling in the ruins of an old Christian church; at his command the bear departed into the wilderness and never returned there again. S. Vedast is usually pictured with a bear.'--_Repertorium_, Newcourt, vol. i. p. 563. [212] Fourteen churches (eleven of which were built by Wren) have been destroyed since 1781; during which time the increase of the City population has been by hundreds of thousands. The only attempt at an apology for this destruction has been based on the fact that on _Sundays_ the City is empty. On so poor a plea as this the churches have been closely shut throughout the other days of the week, their incumbents have lived far away, leaving their parishioners uncared for; and then, when a grudgingly given Sunday service has been poorly attended, have hastened first to close and then to help in destroying the buildings which reproached them; and have called it 'thinning the City churches.'--See on this subject, _Sessional Papers_, 1876-7, R. I. B. A. [213] _Three Cathedrals_, Longman, p. 151. [214] _Documents illustrating the History of S. Paul's_, p. 165-72. CHAPTER XII. 1697-1699. OPENING OF S. PAUL'S CHOIR--A MOVEABLE PULPIT--LETTER TO HIS SON AT PARIS--ORDER AGAINST SWEARING--PETER THE GREAT--S. DUNSTAN'S SPIRE--MORNING PRAYER CHAPEL OPENED--WESTMINSTER ABBEY. Home-keeping youth have ever homely wit. _Two Gentlemen of Verona._ One serious trouble and hindrance in all public works was the state of the coinage. The money had been so clipped and defaced, that no coin was worth its professed value, and for some time the expedients used by the Government failed to lighten the pressure. In paying such an army of workmen as those employed about S. Paul's, the inconvenience must have amounted to positive distress. Scattered here and there through Evelyn's diary are many references to the 'great confusion and distraction' it occasioned. A sudden subsidence of a large part of the ground at Portland, close to the quarries set apart for Wren's use, caused an inconvenient delay in bringing the stone to London, but yet the work progressed, and on December 2nd, 1697, the choir was opened for service. It was the occasion of the thanksgiving for the peace of Ryswick, which, though it brought little glory to England, was yet heartily welcomed as the close of a long and exhausting war. King William went to Whitehall, and heard Bishop Burnet's flattering sermon, while Bishop Compton preached for the first time in the new S. Paul's. No report of his sermon has come down to us. The choir was not yet enriched with the carvings of Gibbons; but the pulpit appears to have been very remarkable in its way: Sir Christopher had placed it _on wheels_, perhaps with a design of using it afterwards, for services under the dome, not unlike those we are now familiar with. A pulpit on wheels was a novelty, which gave rise, we can well believe, to many squibs, one of which has been preserved. _A faithful copy of the Verses, lately fastened upon the pulpit of S. Paul's Choir._ TO THE ARCHITECT UPON HIS HAPPY INVENTION OF A PULPIT ON WHEELS FOR THE USE OF S. PAUL'S CHOIR. This little Structure (Excellent Sir Kit) _Holds forth to us_ that You bestowed more Wit In Building it than on all Paul's beside; _This_ shows the _Principles_, that but the _Pride_ Of its _Inhabitants_; True Sons of _Saul_, For he (Good Man) _became All things to All, That by all Sorts of Means he might gain some_. _They_ too for _Gain_ would follow him to _Rome_, This _Passively Obedient_ thing will go as They'd have it, or to _Mecca_, _Rome_, or _Troas_; All one to it, if forward Hawl'd or back, 'Twill run a Holy Stage for _Will_ or _Jack_; And truckle to and fro' 'twixt Cause and Cause, Just as Strongest Pull of _Interest_ draws. But if the Pulpit be a Vital Part O' th' _Church_, or as the Doctors say her Heart, Why don't you fix _that_ also on a Rock And let the Steeple Roost the _Weather-Cock_? Where if a Puff of Strong Temptations blow, It might remind the Staggering Saints and _Crow_. _Improve the Thought, Dear Sir, and let_ St. Paul's _Wise Fane be this new_ Going Cart _for Souls_.[215] It hardly needs the hint that these lines were affixed to 'the _Dean's_ side of the pulpit,' to read in them a bitter satire on Dean Sherlock, whose sudden change of front relative to the non-jurors, and acceptance of the Deanery of S. Paul's, laid him open to the grave suspicion of having acted from interested motives, and stirred up much vehement animosity. A spirited, if not an impartial, account of this controversy, is given by Lord Macaulay.[216] Sir Christopher's remarkable invention appears to have survived the laughter against it, and to have remained in the Cathedral until 1803. The vaults of S. Paul's were opened shortly after this thanksgiving to receive the body of Dr. White, the non-juring Bishop of Peterborough, whose funeral was attended by Bishop Turner, Bishop Lloyd and forty nonjuring clergymen. [_A FOREIGN TOUR._] At the beginning of the following year, as soon as travelling was possible, Wren sent his son Christopher to Paris; not indeed with the intention of his making that grand tour which a few years later was supposed to finish a young gentleman's education, but that he might acquire a little experience and knowledge of the world. The young man, evidently, had other ideas, spent a good deal of his money, and then wrote home to his family a letter complaining in true English fashion, of the climate and the cookery of France, and asking leave to continue his journey to Italy. Sir Christopher's reply has been preserved; and in its folio sheet and brown ink exists in the 'Parentalia.' It is, I think, so charming as to double one's regret that so very few of his letters have been preserved. ['_I WILL NOT DISCONTENT YOU._'] [217]'Whitehall, March 7. 'My dear Son,--I hope by this time you are pretty well satisfied of the condition of the climate you are in; if not, I believe you will ere Lent be over; and will learne to dine upon sallad; and morue with egges will scarce be allowed: if you thinke you can dine better cheape in Italy you can trie, but I think the passing of the Alpes and other dangers of disbanded armies and abominable Lodgings will ballance that advantage; but the seeing of fine buildings I perceive temptes you, and your companion, Mr. Strong, whose inclination and interest leades him, by neither of which can I find you are mov'd; but how doth it concerne you? You would have it to say hereafter that you have seen Rome, Naples and a hundred other fine places; a hundred others can say as much and more; calculate whither this be worth the expence and hazard as to any advantage at youre returne. I sent you to France at a time of businesse and when you might make your observations and find acquaintance who might hereafter be usefull to you in the future concernes of your life: if this be your ayme I willingly let you proceed, provided you will soon returne, for these reasons, the little I have to leave you is unfortunately involved in trouble, and your presence would be a comfort to me, to assist me, not only for my sake, but your own that you might understand your affaires, before it shall please God to take me from you, which if suddenly will leave you in perplexity and losse. I doe not say all this out of parsimony, for what you spend will be out of what will in short time, be your owne, but I would have you be a man of businesse as early as you can bring your thoughts to it. I hope, by your next you will give me account of the reception of our ambassador;[218] of the intrigues at this time between the two nations, of the establishment of the commerce, and of anything that may be innocently talked of without danger, and reflection, that I may perceive whither you look about you or noe and penetrate into what occurres, or whither the world passes like a pleasant dream, or the amusement of fine scenes in a play without considering the plot. If you have in ten weeks spent half your bill of exchange besides your gold, I confesse your money will not hold out, either abroad for yourself or for us at home to supply you, especially if you goe for Italy, which voyage forward and backward will take up more than twenty weekes: thinke well of it, and let me hear more from you, for though I would advise you, I will not discontent you. Mr. Strong hath profered credit by the same merchant he uses for his son, and I will thinke of it, but before I change, you must make up your account with your merchant, and send it to me. My hearty service to young Mr. Strong and tell him I am obliged to him for your sake. I blesse God for your health, and pray for the continuance of it through all adventures till it pleases him to restore you to your Sister and friends who wish the same as doth 'Your most affectionate Father, 'CHR. WREN. 'P.S. Poor Billy continues in his indisposition, and I fear is lost to me and the world, to my great discomfort and your future sorrow.' What answer the younger Christopher sent does not appear; but his father did not 'discontent' him; the young man did make the journey to Italy, then such a formidable undertaking, and was ever after reckoned a very accomplished and travelled gentleman. 'Young Mr. Strong' must have been the son of Sir Christopher's faithful master-mason, Edward Strong, one of a great family of builders and stone-cutters; I suppose the 'poor Billy' of the postscript to have been the writer's youngest son, then nearly nineteen, who however recovered and outlived his father by about fifteen years. The Royal Society had sustained a severe loss by Charles II.'s death, and if King James took little interest in their discussions, William III. was utterly indifferent. Still it had won a certain position of its own, and was able to keep its steady course. Wren remained one of the members who attended most regularly and contributed to discussions on a variety of subjects, though not perhaps on the 'jessamine-scented gloves,' which figure so often in Pepys' diary, the secret of whose perfumery Wren once undertook to find out. He was again chosen Grand Master of the Freemasons, and continued in that office until 1702. [_ORDER AGAINST SWEARING._] His friend and fellow-member in the Royal Society, Robert Boyle, had written a book called 'A Free Discourse against Swearing,' which was published after his death. Wren followed this up by an order which he had affixed in many parts of S. Paul's, while the building went on:-- 'Whereas, among labourers, &c. that ungodly custom of swearing is too frequently heard, to the dishonour of God and contempt of authority; and to the end, therefore, that such impiety may be utterly banished from these works, intended for the service of God and the honour of religion--it is ordered that customary swearing shall be a sufficient crime to dismiss any labourer that comes to the call, and the clerk of the works, upon sufficient proof, shall dismiss them accordingly, and if any master, working by task, shall not, upon admonition, reform this profanation among his apprentices, servants and labourers, it shall be construed his fault; and he shall be liable to be censured by the Commissioners.' Such was Sir Christopher's care for his grand work: it was intended for the service of God, and therefore was to have no blemish which Wren's diligence could avoid. He was constantly there and shrank neither from fatigue nor from risk. The famous Duchess of Marlborough, in her quarrels with Vanbrugh over the building of Blenheim, complained bitterly that he asked 300_l._ a year for himself and a salary for his clerk, 'when it is well-known that Sir Christopher Wren was content to be dragged up in a basket three or four times a week to the top of S. Paul's, and at great hazard, for 200_l._ a year.' Probably it was because her Grace considered his charges so moderate that, after her last quarrel with Vanbrugh, she engaged Sir Christopher to build Marlborough House, at the corner of Pall Mall. The site presented great difficulties, but the building in red brick and stone was a handsome one, and lately has been much enlarged. Vanbrugh's first start in life was his being engaged by Wren to act as clerk of the works to the buildings at Greenwich. Gibbs and Hawksmoor were also pupils of Wren's, and worked under him at some of the innumerable works on which he was engaged. The building of Greenwich was vigorously continued, and in 1705,[219] 'they began to take in wounded and worn-out seamen, who are exceedingly well provided for.' At the beginning of 1698, Peter the Great made his extraordinary voyage to England and took possession of Evelyn's house, Sayes Court, at Deptford, in order to be near the dockyard and inspect the ship-building. He was anything but a desirable tenant. 'There is a house full of people and right nasty,' wrote Evelyn's servant. 'The Czar lies next your library, and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o'clock and six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King's yard, or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day, the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained. The King pays for all he has.'[220] The Czar's three months' occupancy of Sayes Court left it a wreck, and Evelyn got Sir Christopher, and the Royal gardener, Mr. Loudon, to go down and estimate the repairs which would be necessary. They allowed 150_l._ in their report to the Treasury, but could not by any money replace the beautiful holly hedge through which Peter the Great had been trundled in a wheel-barrow, or repair the garden he had laid waste. [_S. DUNSTAN'S SPIRE._] In 1699, Wren finished the last of those City churches which the Fire had injured or destroyed. S. Dunstan's in the East had suffered severely by the Fire: the walls of the church had not fallen, but the interior had been much damaged and the monument to the famous sailor and discoverer, Sir John Hawkins, who was buried there, perished. The old church had a lofty wooden spire cased with lead, which of course fell and was consumed. When Sir Christopher had repaired the body of the building the parishioners were anxious to have back the spire also, and Dame Dionis Williamson, a Norfolk lady, who had been a great benefactress to S. Mary's, Bow, gave 400_l._ towards this object. It is one of the most curious of all Wren's spires, as it rests on four arches springing from the angles of the tower. Three more such spires exist, two in Scotland and one at Newcastle. Tradition says that the steeple of S. Dunstan's was the design or the suggestion of Wren's daughter Jane. Perhaps, like the leaning tower of Pisa, it is more wonderful than satisfactory to the eye, but Sir Christopher was certainly proud of it and confident in its stability. Great crowds assembled to see the supports taken away, and Wren watched with a telescope, says the story, on London Bridge for the rocket which announced that all was safely done, but it is hardly probable that he was anxious about the result. Four years later, when the tempest known as the 'great storm' raged in England, destroying twelve ships in the Royal navy, many merchant vessels, and a great number of buildings, some one came with a long face to tell Sir Christopher, that '_all_ the steeples in London had suffered;' he replied at once, 'Not S. Dunstan's, I am sure.' He was perfectly right, and the account given of the others was an exaggeration. On February 1, 1699, the Morning Prayer Chapel of S. Paul's was opened for service. Later in the same month, a fire broke out at the west end of the choir, where 'Father Smith' was still at work. It caused considerable alarm, and was got under with some damage, especially to two of the pillars, and to a decorated arch. The gilding also lost some of its brightness. A nameless poem[221] fixes the date of this fire, which has been much disputed. It may have been in consequence of this alarm that Sir Christopher covered all the woodwork of the upper parts of the Cathedral with 'a fibrous concrete' said to resist fire so well that faggots might be kindled below it with impunity. [_WESTMINSTER ABBEY._] While S. Paul's was thus advancing towards its full beauty, the care of Westminster Abbey was assigned to Wren. Little or no attention seems to have been spent on it between the time of Charles I.'s reign and that in which it was handed over to Wren. With the energy which his sixty-seven years had not checked, he examined the grand building where he had worshipped as a schoolboy, and instantly ordered some of the most needful repairs. In 1713 he sent in a statement to Dr. Atterbury, who was both Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, having in that year succeeded to Wren's old friend, Bishop Sprat: from this paper, though it is anticipating the date, some extracts are here given. 'When I had the Honour to attend your Lordship, to congratulate your Episcopal Dignity, and pay that Respect which particularly concerned myself as employed in the chief Direction of the Works and Repairs of the Collegiate-Church of S. Peter in Westminster, you was pleased to give me this seasonable admonition, that I should consider my advanced Age; and as I had already made fair steps in the Reparation of that ancient and ruinous Structure, you thought it very requisite for the publick Service, I should leave a Memorial of what I had done, and what my Thoughts were for carrying on the Works for the future.' Then follows the history of the building of the abbey up to the reign of Henry III., who rebuilt it 'according to the Mode which came into Fashion after the Holy War. 'This we now call the _Gothick_ manner of Architecture (so the Italians called what was not after the _Roman_ style), tho' the _Goths_ were rather Destroyers than Builders; I think it should with more Reason be called the _Saracen_ Style; for those People wanted neither Arts nor Learning, and after we in the West had lost both, we borrowed again from them, out of their Arabick Books, what they with great Diligence had translated from the _Greeks_.... They built their Mosques round, disliking the _Christian_ form of a Cross: the old quarries whence the Ancients took their large blocks of marble for whole Columns and Architraves were neglected, for they thought both impertinent. Their carriage was by camels, therefore their Buildings were fitted for small stones, and Columns of their own fancy consisting of many pieces, and their Arches were pointed without key-stones which they thought too heavy. The Reasons were the same in our Northern Climates abounding in free stone, but wanting marble.... The Saracen mode of building seen in the East, soon spread over Europe and particularly in _France_, the Fashions of which nation we affected to imitate in all ages, even when we were at enmity with it.'... Wren laments over the mixture of oak with the less-enduring chestnut wood in the roof of the Abbey, and the use of Rygate stone which absorbed water, and in a frost scaled off. He says he cut all the ragged ashlar work of Rygate stone out of the east window, replacing it with durable Burford stone, and secured all the buttresses on the south side. The north side of the Abbey is so choked up by buildings, and so shaken in parts by vaults rashly dug close to its buttresses, that he can do little. 'I have yet said nothing of King Henry VIIth's Chapel, a nice embroidered Work and performed with tender Caen stone, and though lately built in comparison, is so eaten up by our Weather, that it begs for some compassion, which I hope the Sovereign Power will take as it is the Regal Sepulture.' [_THE ORIGINAL INTENTION._] The most necessary outward repairs of stone-work, he says, are one-third part done; the north front, and the great Rose Window there are very ruinous; he has prepared a proper design for them. Having summed up the repairs still essential for the security of the building, he proceeds to state what are, in his judgment, the parts of the original design for the Abbey still unfinished. 'The original intention was plainly to have had a Steeple, the Beginnings of which appear on the corners of the Cross, but left off before it rose so high as the Ridge of the Roof, and the Vault of the Quire under it, is only Lath and Plaister, now rotten and must be taken care of. * * * * * I have made a Design, which will not be very expensive but light, but still in the _Gothick_ Form, and of a Style with the rest of the structure, which I would strictly adhere to, throughout the whole intention: to deviate from the old Form would be to run into a disagreeable mixture which no Person of a good Taste could relish. I have varied a little from the usual Form, in giving twelve sides to the Spire instead of eight, for Reasons, to be discerned upon the Model. 'The Angles of Pyramids in the Gothick Architecture were usually enriched with the Flower the Botanists call the Calceolus, which is a proper form to help workmen to ascend on the outside to amend any defects, without raising large scaffolds upon every slight occasion; I have done the same, being of so good Use, as well as agreeable Ornament.... It is evident, as observed before, the two West Towers were left imperfect, and have continued so since the Dissolution of the Monastery, one much higher than the other, though still too low for Bells, which are stifled by the Height of the Roof above them; they ought certainly to be carried to an equal Height, one story above the ridge of the Roof, still continuing the Gothick manner, in the stone-work, and tracery.... It will be most necessary to rebuild the great North Window with Portland stone, to answer the South Rose Window which was well rebuilt about forty years since; the stair-cases at the corners and Pyramids set upon them conformable to the old style to make the whole of a piece.... For all these new Additions I have prepared perfect Draughts and Models, such as I conceive may agree with the original scheme of the old architect, without any modern mixtures to show my own Inventions: in like manner as I have among the Parochial Churches of _London_ given some few Examples (where I was obliged to deviate from a better style), which appear not ungraceful, but ornamental to the East part of the city; and it is to be hoped, by the publick care, the West part also, in good time will be as well adorned: and surely by nothing more properly than a lofty Spire and Western Towers to Westminster Abbey.' With this, still unfulfilled hope, Wren's interesting paper closes. Nine years afterwards he did, however, finish the north front, commonly known as Solomon's Porch. ['_MODERN MIXTURES._'] Wren is so commonly spoken of as having built--and spoilt--the western towers, that it is well here to mention that his share in them is very small; he only restored with a careful hand the lower portion of the towers then standing.[222] They were continued by Hawksmoor after Wren's death, and by two other architects in succession after the death of Hawksmoor in 1736. No one of these had, as Wren had, the high-minded desire to do justice to 'the original architect without any modern mixtures of my own.' FOOTNOTES: [215] Given in _Documents illustrating the History of S. Paul's_, p. 157. [216] _History of England_, vol. iv. p. 44-51. Sherlock was born 1641, died 1707. [217] The year is not given in the MS. original, but it must be 1698. [218] William, Earl of Portland, whose embassy was of extraordinary splendour. Of intrigues there must have been plenty, for at the very moment that Louis XIV. was for the first time recognising the Prince of Orange as King of England, King James II. was residing at S. Germains, surrounded by his own Court. [219] Evelyn's _Diary_, June, no date of day. [220] Evelyn's _Diary_, Jan. 30, 1698. [221] _Documents illustrating_, etc., p. 158. [222] _Three Cathedrals_, Longman, p. 86-88. CHAPTER XIII. 1700-1708. MEMBER FOR WEYMOUTH--RISING OF THE SAP IN TREES--PRINCE GEORGE'S STATUE--JANE WREN'S DEATH--THANKSGIVING AT S. PAUL'S--LETTER TO HIS SON--SON MARRIES MARY MUSARD--DEATH OF MR. EVELYN--QUEEN ANNE'S ACT FOR BUILDING FIFTY CHURCHES--LETTER ON CHURCH BUILDING. 'The old knight turning about his head twice or thrice to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how thick the City was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this side Temple Bar. "A most heathenish sight!" says Sir Roger; "there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new churches will very much mend the prospect, but church work is slow, church work is slow."'--_The Spectator_, No. 383. In 1700 Wren was returned by the boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis to a somewhat stormy Parliament. He was finishing several of the City churches by the addition of towers to some, where, as at S. Magnus, London Bridge, and S. Andrew's, Holborn, the main parts had been previously built. He gave a design for All Saints' Church, Isleworth; it was, however, reckoned too costly, and nothing was done until, in 1705, Sir Orlando Gee left a legacy of 500_l._ towards the rebuilding of the church, when Wren's design was partially adopted, and the work done by his faithful master-mason, Edward Strong.[223] With all this work, Wren yet found time to write a treatise on 'The rising of the sap in trees.' It is a short treatise, evidently copied by a copyist, though a little indian-ink drawing at the side is probably Wren's own. The question in dispute seems to have been whether this natural rising of the sap contradicted the newly discovered law of gravity. 'It is wonderful,' he says, 'to see the rising of the sap in Trees. All will bleed more or less when they are tapped by boring a hole through the Bark, some very considerably, as Birch, which will afford as much liquor every day almost as the milke of a cow; in a Vine when a bough is cut off it will if not stopped bleed to death. Now by what mechanisme is water raised to such a height, as in Palmitos to 120 foot high? A skillfull Engineer cannot effect this without great force and a complicated engine, which Nature doth without sensible motion; it steals up as freely as the water descends: the reason of this is obscure as yett to naturalists.' After some discussion of various theories, he proceeds to show by the help of the little drawing, 'that the onely Vicissitudes of heat and cold in ye aire is sufficient to raise the sap to the height of the loftiest trees.' Then follows the proof of this by mechanics refuting the notion of 'a secret motion in nature contrary to that of the gravity, by which plants aspire upwards. 'But though I have shown how the sap may be mechanically raised from the Root to the top of the loftiest trees, yett how it comes to be varyed according to the particular nature of the Tree by a Fermentation in the Root; how the Raine water entering the Root acquires a spirit that keeps it from freezing, but also gives it such distinguishing tastes and qualities is beyond mechanical Philosophy to describe and may require a great collection of Phenomena with a large history of plants to shew how they expand the leaves and produce the Seed and Fruit from the same Raine water so wonderfully diversified and continued since the first Creation.' Another paper of the same date was written 'On the surface of the terrestrial Globe,' but this does not appear to have been preserved. Many of Sir Christopher's writing's and many also of his inventions were lost by Mr. Oldenburg, the Royal Society's secretary, of whom Wren frequently complained that he not only neglected to enter them on the Society's Register, but conveyed them to France and Germany, where they appeared, attributed as inventions to those who had stolen them. One cannot but admire the versatility of mind which enabled Wren, in the midst of great architectural works, and endless business details, to write papers such as these, and to digest and decide upon Flamsteed's long letters on the Earth's motion, his quarrels with Mr. Halley, and his measurement of the height of the Welsh hills. [_LONDON AS IT WAS._] The progress of Greenwich and Chelsea Hospitals, the growth of his beautiful S. Paul's, the repairs of the Abbey, were now the absorbing interests of Wren's life. From the house in Whitehall which he occupied with his daughter he could easily reach the two former by water, or the latter on foot. Two most interesting pictures by Canaletto,[224] giving a general view of the city and of Westminster, enable us to realise what the whole effect must have been in an atmosphere far clearer than at present, before the river was cut by iron bridges, or the city robbed of steeple or tower. The death of King William and the accession of Queen Anne in the spring of 1702 made little difference to Wren, except to his advantage. He appears to have been on very good terms with her, and with her Danish husband. He is said to have built S. Anne's, Soho,[225] and to have made it externally to resemble a Danish church as much as he could, out of compliment to Prince George. He also gave to the Town Hall of Windsor, a statue of Prince George, to correspond with that of Queen Anne. The Prince is dressed in a Roman costume, and the pedestal has the following inscription: SERENISSIMO PRINCIPI GEORGII PRINCIPI DANIAE HEROI OMNI SAECULO VENERANDO CHRISTOPHORUS WREN, ARM: POSUIT MDCCXIII. One marvels how 'Est-il possible' came to merit such an inscription as this! [THANKSGIVING AT S. PAUL'S.] In 1702 Sir Christopher suffered a grievous loss by the death of his only daughter, Jane, on the 29th of December. She was laid in the vault of S. Paul's close to the graves of Dr. and Mrs. Holder,[226] and her father wrote the short Latin inscription which records her virtues, her skill in music, and implies how loving and how congenial a companion he had lost in her. She was but twenty-six when she died. The sculptor, Bird,[227] of whose power Wren had a good opinion, carved a monument in low relief, representing Jane Wren playing on an organ; a harp and a spinnet are beside her, and a group of angels in the clouds above, one of whom holds the music. It is but an ordinary piece of monumental sculpture, now much obscured by dust. Jane Wren's death must have left a great blank in the life of the father whose interests and pursuits she had shared, and one wishes she could have lived long enough to see the top stone laid on the dome of S. Paul's. The Duke of Marlborough's brilliant victory at Blenheim, on Aug. 13, 1704, brought Queen Anne and all her court in their utmost splendour to a thanksgiving at S. Paul's on the 7th of September. 'The streets were scaffolded from Temple Bar, where the Lord Mayor presented her Majesty with the Sword, which she returned. Every Company was ranged under its banners, the Citty Militia without the rails, which were all hung with cloth suitable to the colour of the banner. The Lord Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen were in their scarlet robes, with caparisoned horses; the Knight Marshall on horseback, the Foot Guards; the Queen in a rich coach with eight horses, none with her but the Duchess of Marlborough in a very plain garment, the Queene full of jewells. Music and trumpets at every Citty Company. The great Officers of the Crown, Nobility and Bishops, all in coaches with six horses, besides innumerable servants, went to S. Paul's where the Deane preached. After this the Queen went back in the same order to S. James's. The Citty Companies feasted all the nobility and Bishops, and illuminated at night. Music for the Church and anthems by the best masters. The day before wet and stormy, but this was one of the most serene and calm days that had been all the year.'[228] No doubt it was a splendid pageant, the grandest that had been seen since those which celebrated the Restoration, and S. Paul's, despite the scaffolding still round the dome, must have looked magnificent. In 1705, Sir Christopher's eldest son went abroad again, travelling this time to Holland, where in the excitement of Marlborough's brilliant campaign he very nearly joined the army as a volunteer. [_BARCELONA._] A letter[229] to him from Sir Christopher is extant; the handwriting is not quite so steady as in the former letter, but still clear. 'Whitehall, Oct. 11, 1705. 'Dear Son,--I received at once three of y^r le^{trs}: one from Harlem, Sep. 26, another from Amsterdam of Sep. 28, O.S., a third of Oct. 13, N.S., by all which I rejoyced in your good Health & your recovery from your cold. I am very well satisfied you have layd aside your designe for the Army; which I think had not been safe or pertinent, at least not soe much as Bookes & Conversation with ye learned. Your Traffic for good Bookes I cannot disapprove. You tell me Gronovius[230] is 25 volumes, I am told they are 26, and that the last is the best & comonly sold by its selfe, you will have a care [a word seems to be omitted] being imposed upon. Mr. Bateman in his (?) will give you advice how you may get them into the Secretary's packets. You remember how much trouble Mr. Strong was put to at Dover by the impertinence of the Customer there. I hope this may bee prevented. Wee have not yet rejoyced for Barcelona[231] though you have; though wee doe not doubt it and wagers are layd 6 to one: last night the seales were given to Mr. Cowper & changes are made of Lord Lieutenants. Give my Service to Mr. Roman & thanks for his Civilities to you. I am importuned to take a little journy to my cosin Munson's to christen her 8^{th} son. Wee are told here that my L^d D. of Marlborough goeth certainly to Vienna, & you resolve well to wait on him before he goes, & then I thinke you have little else to doe but to take the best opportunity to returne, which I am told may happen if you come with my L^d Woodstock[232] who will have convoy. Wee are all in good health at both Houses and wish you happinesse w^{ch} wee also contrive for you. 'I am, dear Son, your affectionate Father, 'CHR. WREN.' I suppose the mention of 'both houses,' and the hint of happiness being contrived, refer to young Christopher's marriage, which took place in the following year. He married Mary,[233] daughter of Mr. Philip Musard, jeweller to Queen Anne, by whom he had a son, a fourth Christopher Wren. Wren lost a faithful and valued friend in Mr. Evelyn, who died in the February of 1706, at the age of eighty-five. If Evelyn's diary, of which such frequent use has been made in these pages, is not the same entire revelation of the man himself as is the diary of his friend Pepys, it yet possesses a singular charm in its refinement of thought, and, when the veil is raised, shows us a gentleman and a Christian to be respected as well as loved. He had kept up a steady friendship with Sir Christopher since the day when they first met at Oxford, and had the highest opinion of his powers: 'an excellent genius had this incomparable person,' is his remark after a conversation with Wren. Evelyn was on the S. Paul's Commission from the first, and Wren was destined, a few years later, sorely to miss the support of this constant friend. The needful sum for covering in the dome of S. Paul's was voted by Parliament in 1708. The question of using copper or lead was greatly discussed; lead was finally chosen; it does not clearly appear which way Sir Christopher's judgment inclined. Probably to the lead, as he considered it susceptible of much ornament, and the lead covering of S. Paul's dome is peculiarly beautiful. Bird in this year finished the statue of Queen Anne, which is in the fore court of the Cathedral, and is not without merit. He also carved the relief of the Conversion of S. Paul above the western portico: the height is too great for it to be possible to judge of the goodness of the sculpture. [_FIFTY NEW CHURCHES._] The Act known as 'Queen Anne's Act for building Fifty New Churches' was passed in this year, and Wren was of course one of the commissioners. At the age of seventy-six he could not undertake the designing of these new churches. They were principally built by Gibbs, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh and others. S. George's, Hanover Square, S. Anne's, Limehouse, S. George's, Bloomsbury, S. Leonard's, Shoreditch, are some of those built under this Act. Perhaps the best specimen is the beautiful S. Mary-le-Strand, built by Gibbs, on an old site stolen from the Church by the Duke of Somerset in the reign of Henry VIII. Recent careful painting and gilding and the removal of pews have made S. Mary's a charming example of the amount of decoration which can be advantageously bestowed on a Paladian church. Wren wrote on this occasion a letter to a friend on the Church-building Commission in which he gives the result of his great experience in building town churches. The letter is given with a few omissions. I fear that few of the Queen Anne churches were built strictly on the principles he here lays down; certainly the hint as to pews was disregarded, and grievous indeed have been the results of such disregard. It has been a common fallacy that all Wren's churches were built for pews, and that anything but high pews would ruin the architectural effect. What was Wren's own opinion is manifest from the letter; the actual effect can be seen, for instance, in a print of S. Stephen's, Walbrook, where this gem of all his churches is represented, just after its completion, with the area clear; or in S. Mary's, Bow, where the pews have lately been diminished into just such 'benches' as the great architect desired. 'Since Providence,' he writes, 'in great mercy has protracted my age, to the finishing the Cathedral Church of S. Paul, and the parochial churches of London, in lieu of those demolished by the fire, (all which were executed during the fatigues of my employment in the service of the Crown from that time to the present happy reign); and being now constituted one of the Commissioners for building, pursuant to the late Act, fifty more Churches in London and Westminster; I shall presume to communicate briefly my sentiments, after long experience, and without further ceremony exhibit to better judgement, what at present occurs to me, in a transient view of this whole affair; not doubting but that the debates of the worthy Commissioners may hereafter give me occasion to change, or add to these speculations. '1. I conceive the Churches should be built, not where vacant ground may be cheapest purchased in the extremities of the suburbs, but among the thicker inhabitants, for the convenience of the better sort, although the site of them should cost more; the better inhabitants contributing most to the future repairs, and the ministers and officers of the church, and charges of the parish. [_CEMETERIES._] '2. I could wish that all burials in churches might be disallowed, which is not only unwholesome, but the pavements can never be kept even, nor pews upright; and if the churchyard be close about the church, this also is inconvenient, because the ground being continually raised by the graves, occasions, in time, a descent by steps in the church, which renders it damp, and the walls green, as appears evidently in all old churches. '3. It will be enquired, where then shall be the burials? I answer, in cemeteries seated in the outskirts of the town.... 'A piece of ground of two acres in the fields will be purchased for much less than two roods among the buildings; this being enclosed with a strong brick wall, and having a walk round, and two cross walks decently planted with yew trees, the four quarters may serve four parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the pleasure of the sexton or piled four or five upon one another, or bones thrown out to gain room.... It may be considered further, that if the cemeteries be thus thrown into the fields, they will bound the excessive growth of the city with a graceful border, which is now encircled with scavengers' dung-stalls. '4. As to the situation of the churches, I should propose they be brought as forward as possible into the larger and more open streets; not in obscure lanes, nor where coaches will be much obstructed in the passage: nor are we, I think, too nicely to observe east or west in the position, unless it falls out properly; such fronts as shall happen to lie most open to view should be adorned with porticoes, both for beauty and convenience; which together with handsome spires or lanterns, rising in good proportion above the neighbouring houses (of which I have given several examples in the City of different forms), may be of sufficient ornament to the town, without a great expense for enriching the outward walls of the Churches, in which plainness and duration ought principally, if not wholly, to be studied.... [_CHURCHWARDEN'S CARE DEFECTIVE._] '5. I shall mention something of the materials for public fabrics. It is true, the mighty demand for the hasty works of thousands of houses at once after the Fire of London, and the frauds of those who built by the great,(?) have so debased the value of materials, that good bricks are not to be now had without greater prices than formerly, and indeed, if rightly made, will deserve them; but brickmakers spoil the earth in the mixing and hasty burning, till the bricks will hardly bear weight; though the earth about London, rightly managed, will yield as good bricks as were the Roman bricks (which I have often found in the old ruins of the City), and will endure, in our air, beyond any stone our island affords; which, unless the quarries lie near the sea, are too dear for general use. The best is Portland or Roch-Abbey stone; but these are not without their faults. The next material is the lime: chalk-lime is the constant practice, which, well mixed with good sand, is not amiss, though much worse than hard stone-lime. The vaulting of S. Paul's is a rendering as hard as stone: it is composed of cockle-shell lime well beaten with sand: the more labour in the beating, the better and stronger the mortar. I shall say nothing of marble (though England, Scotland, and Ireland afford good, and of beautiful colours); but this will prove too costly for our purpose, unless for Altar-pieces. In windows and doors Portland stone may be used, with good bricks and stone quoins. As to roofs, good oak is certainly the best, because it will bear some negligence. The churchwardens' care may be defective in speedy mending drips; they usually whitewash the church, and set up their names, but neglect to preserve the roof over their heads. It must be allowed, that the roof being more out of sight, is still more unminded. Next to oak, is good yellow deal, which is a timber of length, and light, and makes excellent work at first; but, if neglected, will speedily perish; especially if gutters (which is a general fault in builders) be made to run upon the principal rafters, the ruin may be sudden. Our sea-service for oak, and the wars in the North Sea, make timber at present of excessive price. I suppose, ere long, we must have recourse to the West Indies, where most excellent timber may be had for cutting and fetching. Our tiles are ill made, and our slates not good: lead is certainly the best and lightest covering, and being of our own growth and manufacture, and lasting, if properly laid, for many hundred years, is, without question, the most preferable; though I will not deny but an excellent tile may be made to be very durable: our artisans are not yet instructed in it, and it is not soon done to inform them.... Now, if the churches could hold each 2,000, it would yet be very short of the necessary supply. The churches, therefore, must be large; but still, in our reformed religion it should seem vain to make a parish church larger than that all who are present can both hear and see. The Romanists, indeed, may build larger churches; it is enough if they hear the murmur of the Mass, and see the elevation of the Host; but ours are to be fitted for auditories. I can hardly think it practicable to make a single room so capacious, with pews and galleries, as to hold above 2,000 persons, and all to hear the service, and both to hear distinctly, and see the preacher. I endeavoured to effect this in building the parish Church of S. James, Westminster, which, I presume, is the most capacious, with these qualifications, that hath yet been built; and yet, at a solemn time, when the church was much crowded, I could not discern from a gallery that 2,000 were present. In this church I mention, though very broad, and the middle nave arched up, yet as there are no walls of a second order, nor lanterns, nor buttresses, but the whole roof rests upon the pillars, as do also the galleries, I think it may be found beautiful and convenient, and, as such, the cheapest of any form I could invent. '7. Concerning the placing of the pulpit, I shall observe a moderate voice may be heard fifty feet distant before the preacher, thirty feet on each side, and twenty behind the pulpit; and not this unless the pronunciation be distinct and equal, without losing the voice at the last word of the sentence, which is commonly emphatical, and, if obscured, spoils the whole sense. A Frenchman is heard further than an English preacher, because he raises his voice, and sinks not his last words: I mention this as an insufferable fault in the pronunciation of some of our otherwise excellent preachers, which schoolmasters might correct in the young as a vicious pronunciation, and not as the Roman orators spoke: for the principal verb is, in Latin, usually the last word; and if that be lost, what becomes of the sentence? '8. By what I have said, it may be thought reasonable, that the new church should be at least sixty feet broad, and ninety feet long, besides a chancel at one end, and the belfry and portico at the other. [Sidenote: '_NO PEWS, BUT BENCHES._'] 'These proportions may be varied; but to build more than that every person may conveniently hear and see is to create noise and confusion. A church should not be so filled with pews, but that the poor may have room enough to stand and sit in the alleys; for to them equally is the Gospel preached. It were to be wished there were to be no pews, but benches; but there is no stemming the tide of profit, and the advantage of pew-keepers; especially since by pews, in the chapel of ease, the minister is chiefly supported. It is evident these fifty churches are enough for the present inhabitants, and the town will continually grow: but it is to be hoped, that hereafter more may be added, as the wisdom of the Government shall think fit; and, therefore, the parishes should be so divided as to leave room for subdivisions, or at least for chapels of ease. [_CLEAR BUILDING GROUND._] 'I cannot pass over mentioning the difficulties that may be found in obtaining the ground proper for the sites of the churches among the buildings, and the cemeteries in the borders without the town; and, therefore, I shall recite the method that was taken for purchasing in ground at the north side of S. Paul's Cathedral, where, in some places, houses were but eleven feet distant from the fabric, exposing it to the continual dangers of fires. The houses were seventeen, and contiguous, all in leasehold of the Bishop, or Dean alone, or the Dean and Chapter, or the petty-Canons, with divers under-tenants. The first we recompensed in kind, with rents of like value for them and their successors; but the tenants in possession for a valuable consideration; which to find what it amounted to, we learned by diligent inquiry, what the inheritance of houses in that quarter were usually held at; this we found was fifteen years' purchase at the most, and, proportionably to this, the value of each lease was easily determined in a scheme, referring to a map. These rates, which we resolved not to stir from, were offered to each; and, to cut off much debate, which it may be imagined everyone would abound in, they were assured that we went by one uniform method, which could not be receded. We found two or three reasonable men, who agreed to these terms; immediately we paid them, and took down their houses; others, who stood out at first, finding themselves in dust and rubbish, and that ready money was better, as the case stood, than to continue paying rent, repairs, and parish duties, easily came in. The whole ground at last was cleared, and all concerned were satisfied, and their writings given in.... This was happily finished without a judicatory or jury; although, in our present case, we may find it perhaps, sometimes necessary to have recourse to Parliament.' FOOTNOTES: [223] _Environs of London_, vol. iv. p. 450. Lysons. [224] In the possession of H.M. the Queen. [225] I can find no proof of this, and it is not mentioned in any list of his buildings that I have seen. [226] Dr. Holder died 1694. [227] Francis Bird, born in London 1667. His masterpiece was the monument to Dr. Busby. He died in London 1731. A stonecutter of the same name at Oxford is mentioned by Plot in connection with an invention for staining marbles and cutting them like a cameo, who I am inclined to think was a relation. [228] Evelyn's _Diary_, September 7, 1704. [229] Hitherto unpublished. [230] G. F. Gronovius, 1613-1672. He was the author of many works, chiefly annotations of the classics, and succeeded Heinsius in the Greek chair at Leyden. [231] Barcelona was taken by Lord Peterborough and Sir Cloudesley Shovel, October 4, 1705, in the war of the Spanish Succession. [232] The eldest son of the Earl of Portland, afterwards created Duke of Portland. [233] A portrait of this lady in full profile, with a pale face and black hair, painted somewhat in the style of Sir Peter Lely, is in the possession of Mrs. Pigott. CHAPTER XIV. 1709-1723. PRIVATE HOUSES BUILT--QUEEN ANNE'S GIFTS--LAST STONE OF S. PAUL'S--WREN DEPRIVED OF HIS SALARY--HIS PETITION--'FRAUDS AND ABUSES'--INTERIOR WORK OF S. PAUL'S--WREN SUPERSEDED--PURCHASE OF WROXHALL ABBEY--WREN'S THOUGHTS ON THE LONGITUDE--HIS DEATH--BURIAL IN S. PAUL'S--THE END. Heroick souls a nobler lustre find, E'en from those griefs which break a vulgar mind. That frost which cracks the brittle, common glass, Makes Crystal into stronger brightness pass. Bp. Thos. Sprat, quoted in _Parentalia_. The year 1709 passed in steady work, and has little but finishing touches to the churches to be recorded, unless some of the various private houses built by Wren belong to this period. A house for Lord Oxford, and one for the Duchess of Buckingham, both in S. James's Court; two built near the Thames for Lord Sunderland and Lord Allaston; one for Lord Newcastle in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury; and a house, so large and magnificent that it has been divided in late years into four, in Great Russell Street. This house was afterwards occupied by Wren's eldest son, and in turn by his second son Stephen. Sir Christopher himself, while keeping the house in Whitehall from which his letters are dated, had received from Queen Anne the fifty years' lease of a house at Hampton Green at a nominal rent of 10_l._ a year;[234] he must have found great refreshment in going there occasionally by the then undefiled Thames, to country rest and quiet. Queen Anne was uniformly gracious and friendly to her Surveyor, and presented him with a buhl cabinet inlaid with red tortoiseshell of remarkably handsome work and design.[235] The following year saw the crown put to the labour of thirty-five years. Mr. Christopher Wren, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the Dome of S. Paul's in the presence of his father, Mr. Strong the master-builder, his son, and other free and accepted masons, most of whom had worked at the building. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the words of Dean Milman:[236] 'All London had poured forth for the spectacle, which had been publicly announced, and were looking up in wonder to the old man ... who was on that wondrous height setting the seal, as it were, to his august labours. If in that wide circle which his eye might embrace there were various objects for regret and disappointment; if, instead of beholding the various streets of the city, each converging to its centre, London had sprung up and spread in irregular labyrinths of close, dark, intricate lanes; if even his own Cathedral was crowded upon and jostled by mean and unworthy buildings; yet, on the other hand, he might survey, not the Cathedral only, but a number of stately churches which had risen at his command and taken form and dignity from his genius and skill. On one side the picturesque steeple of S. Mary-le-Bow; on the other the exquisite tower of S. Bride's, with all its graceful, gradually diminishing circles, not yet shorn of its full and finely-proportioned height. Beyond, and on all sides, if more dimly seen, yet discernible by his partial eyesight (he might even penetrate to the inimitable interior of S. Stephen's, Walbrook), church after church, as far as S. Dunstan's-in-the-East, perhaps Greenwich, may have been vaguely made out in the remote distance; and all this one man had been permitted to conceive and execute;--a man not originally destined or educated for an architect, but compelled as it were by the public necessities to assume the office, and so to fulfil it, as to stand on a level with the most consummate masters of the art in Europe, and to take his stand on an eminence which his English successors almost despair of attaining.' [_THE WORK OF ONE MAN._] There then the Cathedral stood, complete externally in its stately beauty, the work of one man, who, it has been truly said, 'had the conception of a painter as well as an architect.' View the Cathedral when and where we will, with every disadvantage of smoky atmosphere and lack of space, it yet fascinates the eye by the perfection of its lines and the majesty of the whole effect, so as to leave no power of criticising petty defects. Such was the triumphant success achieved by Wren's patient genius, but Envy will merit as its shade pursue; and a series of troubles fell upon him. There will always be a number of people who imagine that anything can be procured by money, and that for the sake of money anything and everything will be done. People of this mind considered that Sir Christopher Wren prolonged the process of building S. Paul's in order to prolong his own enjoyment of the 200_l._ a year which was the salary he had himself chosen, though it was considered utterly inadequate by the Commissioners when first the work began. Accordingly in 1696-7, a clause was inserted in the Act 'for the completing and adorning S. Paul's' 'to suspend a moiety of the Surveyor's salary until the said Church should be finished; thereby the better to encourage him to finish the same work with the utmost diligence and expedition.'[237] No doubt they considered that the Cathedral could be finished off regardless of details, and so left like the shell of an ordinary house to be adorned by any chance person; and to this end they offered their grim 'encouragement'! It was an insult to a man like Wren, who had again and again--as in the case of Greenwich--given his skill for nothing, and it was doubly unjust because, what delays there were, sprang from the conceit and ignorance of the S. Paul's Commission. Wren protested, but took no active step until he had seen the Dome of his beloved Cathedral completed. Then he sent in a petition to Queen Anne as follows:-- 'The most humble petition of Sir Christopher Wren 'Sheweth, 'That there being a Clause in an Act of Parliament which suspends a moiety of your Petitioner's salary at S. Paul's, till the building be finished, and being obstructed in his measures for completing the same, by the arbitrary proceedings of some of the Commissioners for that fabric,-- 'Your Petitioner most humbly beseeches your Majesty graciously to interpose your Royal Authority so as that he may be suffered to finish the said building in such manner and after such designs as shall be approved by your Majesty or such persons as your Majesty shall think fit to appoint for that purpose; and your Petitioner, etc., 'CHRISTOPHER WREN.' ['_FRAUDS AND ABUSES._'] This petition was sent to the Commissioners, whose reply was, that when Sir Christopher had acted without their approbation his performances had proved very faulty;(!) they then digressed into remarks on their own devotion to the Queen's service, and into a series of petty charges against some of the workmen employed in the Cathedral, especially the bell-founder, Richard Phelp, and Richard Jennings the master-carpenter, whom they charged with a variety of frauds and abuses, and begged should be at once dismissed; they also venture to assert that 'Sir Christopher, or some employed by him, may be supposed to have found their advantage in this delay.' There is little attempt at proof in this reply of the Commissioners, but much supposition and conjecture. A pamphlet, 'Frauds and Abuses at S. Paul's,' published anonymously at this time, sets out all their suspicions in detail. Sir Christopher replied in a pamphlet entitled 'An Answer to Frauds and Abuses in S. Paul's,' and laid a petition before the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, in which he sets out his grievances, how little power had been really given to him and how far he had 'been limited and restrained.' 'However,' he says, 'it has pleased God so far to bless my sincere endeavours, as that I have brought the building to a conclusion so far as is in my power, and I think nothing can be said now to remain unperfected, but the iron fence round the Church, and painting the Cupola, the directing whereof is taken out of my hands, and therefore I hope I am not answerable for them, nor that the said suspending clause can, or ought, to affect me any further on that account. As for painting the Cupola, your Lordships know that it has been long under consideration; that I have no power left me concerning it; and that it is not yet resolved in what manner to do it, or whether at all. And as for the iron fence, it is so remarkable and so fresh in memory, by whose influence and importunity it was wrested from me, and the doing of it carried in a way which I venture to say will ever be condemned. I have just this to observe further, that your Lordships had no hand in it; and consequently ought not share in the blame that may attend it.' He then asks them for their warrant for the payment of the arrears, amounting to more than 1,300_l._, which were due to him, and says he will ever be ready in the future, to give his advice and assistance in anything about the said Cathedral. Archbishop Tenison and Bishop Compton laid Wren's petition before the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Northey, who pronounced 'that Sir Christopher Wren's case was very hard, but that the terms of the Act were so positive that it could not be overridden, but the Commissioners ought in justice to find some remedy.' Wren then addressed the House of Commons in a petition in which he repeats that his 'measures for completing the Cathedral are wholly over-ruled and frustrated.' [_A REMEDY FOUND._] The House considered the matter, and cut the knot by declaring the Cathedral to be finished, and directing the payment of all the arrears of the architect's salary. Their prompt decision gratified Sir Christopher, who contrasts it with the conduct of the Commission, 'which was such as gave him reason enough to think that they intended him none of the suspended salary if it had been left in their power to defeat him of it.' The attacks on Jennings, whom Wren firmly defended, fell to the ground: they probably had as little foundation as the 'Screw Plot,' by which at a Thanksgiving, by one man's moving a few of the bolts and screws, the whole dome was to fall in.[238] The bell-founder Phelps, who had removed the faulty bell put up by Wightman under the direction of the Commissioners, also triumphed: he offered to give a bond to the Dean and Chapter to recast the bell at his own expense if, after a year's trial, they were dissatisfied with it: as this offer was never claimed, Wren justly says that they were either content with the bell or else showed great neglect. Until the last few years it was the only bell possessed by the Cathedral. To perfect S. Paul's some things had still to be done, and, rather than these should suffer, Wren was willing still to undergo the slights and annoyances of the other S. Paul's Commissioners, amongst whose names one wishes that of Sir Isaac Newton did _not_ appear, without clear evidence that he stood by his early patron and friend. One hopes it may have been so, certainly he was not a frequent attendant at the meetings. [_DECORATION OF S. PAUL'S._] Within the Cathedral there was some important work to do. Gibbons' carving had to be completed, and the beautiful iron-work gates on either side of the choir had yet to be set up. For this work Wren employed a M. Tijou, at that time a famous worker in iron, though no account of him is to be obtained at the present day. Possibly he was one of the French refugees. Wren saw both the carving and the gates successfully finished. But for the east end of the Cathedral he had a magnificent design which is unfulfilled to this day. He intended to inlay the columns of the apse with rich marble, to use a considerable amount of colour and gilding, and to place over the Altar a hemispherical canopy supported on four writhed pillars of the richest Greek marbles, with proper decorations of architecture and sculpture: he had prepared his model and the needful drawings, Bishop Compton had even received some specimens of marble from a Levant merchant in Holland, but unluckily the colours and the class of marble were not what Wren desired, and the plan waited for a better opportunity, which, in Wren's lifetime, never came. Thus, of all this grand design, the only trace is the painting of the apsidal pillars, in imitation of lapis lazuli, which was meant as a temporary experiment, and the model of the canopy in the possession of the Dean and Chapter. Hardly anything could be done which would more enhance the interior beauty of S. Paul's than the erection of this canopy. Besides the adornment of the east end of the Cathedral there was also that of the dome to be accomplished. The decoration of S. Paul's is so vexed a question that one almost fears to touch upon it, but the statement in the 'Parentalia' is explicit. 'The judgement of the Surveyor was originally, instead of painting in the manner it is now performed, to have beautified the inside of the Cupola with the more durable ornament of mosaic work, as it is nobly executed in the Cupola of S. Peter's in Rome, which strikes the eye of the beholder with a most magnificent and splendid appearance; and which, without the least decay of colour, is as lasting as marble, or the building itself. For this purpose he had projected to have procured from Italy four of the most eminent artists in that profession; but as this art was a great novelty in England, and not generally apprehended, it did not receive the encouragement it deserved; it was imagined also that the expense would prove too great, and the time very long in execution; but though these, and all objections were fully answered, yet this excellent design was no further pursued.' In weighing the value of this evidence as to Sir Christopher's views, it is important to remember that the 'Parentalia' was, though edited by Stephen the grandson, actually written by Christopher, the son who was constantly with his father and shared in his interests, and had himself seen, and no doubt described to Sir Christopher that very cupola of S. Peter's, of which he speaks. The question of the iron fence round the Cathedral, of which Wren made mention in his petition, was much in his thoughts; he wished it to be low, and made of hammered iron, the Commissioners were determined that it should be high, and made of cast iron. Wren, who doubtless intended to employ Tijou, and have a low, graceful railing which would throw up the height and solid grandeur of the Cathedral, repeatedly expressed his opinion; but the majority overruled him, and the Cathedral was imprisoned by a high, heavy, clumsy fence, the gates of which were sedulously closed, and were but too apt an emblem of the manner in which the Cathedral was soon shut off from its true uses. A century later, and Bishop Blomfield could say, 'I never pass S. Paul's without thinking how little it has done for Christianity.' Now the iron fence has departed,[239] and with it all possibility of such a reproach. During all this time Wren was engaged on the Abbey repairs and the affairs of Chelsea College. The Duke of Ormonde sends him a summons in November, 1713, the more pressing, as several Commissioners are out of town, to meet him 'at twelve of the clock at his Grace's house at the Cockpitt, in order to give directions for the cloathing of the Invalide Companys who are in a perishing condition for want thereof, not having been cloathed for near these three years past.' The death of Evelyn and that of Sir Stephen Fox had lost to Chelsea Hospital its two best friends, but doubtless the Duke and Sir Christopher were able to provide for this emergency. We hear of Wren at this time busied as of old for the Royal Society, going, with his son and Sir Isaac Newton, to inspect a house in Crane Court,[240] and finally buying it as a residence for the Society. Again he appears with Newton, and the son who seems to have been his constant companion, going down to Greenwich as visitors of the Royal Observatory there and making their report upon it. As Flamsteed hated Newton, and greatly resented any formal visitation, the expedition must have taxed even Wren's peace-making powers, but Flamsteed never seems to have quarrelled with him. [_DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE._] In the summer of the following year 'good Queen Anne' died, and with her all real chance of the return of the Stuart family, despite the gallant and devoted attempts made for 'Prince Charlie' in 'the '15' and 'the '45.' The sixth and last English reign which Wren was destined to see began in 1714 with the accession of George I. The S. Paul's Commission was renewed, with, of course, Wren's name upon it, but the annoyances of his position increased. In his design, S. Paul's stood complete with a plinth over the entablature, and with statues on the four pediments only. The Commissioners took it into their heads that a balustrade with vases was greatly needed, and that it should be put up, unless Wren could 'set forth in writing, under his hand, that it is contrary to the principles of architecture and give his opinion in a fortnight's time.' This looks very like a device for tormenting the old man of eighty-five, and revenging themselves for their previous defeat. Exactly within the fortnight Wren sent an answer which certainly shows no trace of failing powers. 'I take leave, first, to declare that I never designed a balustrade. Persons of little skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something they had been used to in Gothick structures; and ladies think nothing well without an edging. I should gladly have complied with the vulgar taste but I suspended for the reasons following.' The technical reasons are given, and he adds: 'that as no provision was originally made in my plan for a balustrade, the setting up one in such a confused manner over the plinth must apparently break into the harmony of the whole machine, and, in this particular case, be _contrary to the principles of architecture_.' Nothing daunted, either by Wren's reasons or his sarcasm, and regardless of their implied promise, the wise Commissioners of the Cathedral set to work on their balustrade. [_DISMISSED FROM HIS OFFICE._] This transaction belongs to the autumn of 1717. In the April of the ensuing year, George I., who cared nothing about art or architecture, and who only wished to gratify his German favourites, was easily prevailed upon to dismiss Sir Christopher Wren from that post of Surveyor-General which he had held for forty-eight years, and to bestow it upon William Benson, a favourite's favourite, as ignorant and incapable as he was grasping and unscrupulous. There was probably but little outcry, for, as Steele[241] had truly said, 'Nestor,' under which name he described Wren, 'was not only in his profession the greatest man of that age, but had given more proofs of it than any man ever did; yet for want of that natural freedom and audacity which is necessary in commerce with men, his personal modesty overthrew all his public actions.' The person least disposed to make a complaint was Wren himself. Finding his patent superseded, he quietly retired to his house at Hampton Court, saying, 'Nunc me jubet Fortuna expeditius philosophari.[242] One other comment he made, as a note to the date (April 26, 1718) of this dismissal: '[Greek: Hoti anestê Basileus hetepos hos ouk êdei ton Iôsêph: kai ouden toutôn tô Galliôni emelen.][Maltese Cross]'[243] It is some satisfaction to know that Benson so disgraced himself as in five years' time to be dismissed, and narrowly escaped a prosecution by the House of Lords. Pope held him up to deserved scorn in the 'Dunciad,' where he also says: While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends, but this, one is glad to think, tells rather what might have been Sir Christopher's state of mind than what it really was. Wren had had the interest of watching his eldest son's career in Parliament as member for that borough of Windsor which he had himself represented. This son's wife had died, and in 1715 he married again. His second wife was Constance, daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton, and widow of Sir Roger Burgoyne; by this marriage he had another son, named Stephen. On this occasion Sir Christopher bought the estate of Wroxhall Abbey[244] in Warwickshire, which had belonged to the Burgoynes and was heavily encumbered. Sir Christopher is said to have stayed at the Abbey occasionally, and to have designed the kitchen garden wall which is built in semicircles. It was probably when he thus became a Warwickshire Squire that he gave the designs for S. Mary's Church at Warwick, designs entirely different from those adopted in the present building, which is said to have been designed and built by one Francis Smith, a mason in the town. [_LONGITUDE AT SEA._] But the greater part of Wren's declining years was spent at Hampton Court, from which he went up to London to watch the progress of the works at Westminster Abbey, the surveyorship of which he still kept. A report was spread that the ceiling of the Sheldonian Theatre, in which, as a piece of mechanical construction, Sir Christopher took great pride, was giving way. Careful examination proved this to be a perfectly groundless rumour, and no further annoyance arose to disturb the calm evening of the old man's life. To be 'beneficus humano generi,' as he said, had ever been his aim and wish. He now employed his leisure in looking over old papers on astronomy and mathematics and the method of finding out the longitude at sea. It had been long considered by the general world as impossible to find out as was the secret of perpetual motion, and the attempt at either discovery was treated with equal ridicule. The merchants, and captains of merchant ships were, however, from bitter experience of vessels and crews wrecked or lost, aware of the immense importance of the discovery of the longitude, if it could be made. They presented, in 1714, a petition to Parliament, begging that a reward might be offered 'for such as shall discover the same.' This, after due consideration, was done by a Bill, passed rapidly through both Houses, offering a reward of 20,000_l._. for the discovery.[245] The subject was one which greatly occupied Wren, who all his life had been interested in sailors and sea matters. He amused himself by throwing his latest thoughts on the longitude into the form of three cryptographs:[246] 1. OZVCVAYINIXDNCVOCWEDCNMALNABECIRTEWNGRAMHHCCAW. 2. ZEIYEINOIEBIVTXESCIOCPSDEDMNANHSEFPRPIWHDRAEHHXCIF. 3. EZKAVEBIMOXRFCSLCEEDHWMGNNIVEOMREWWERRCSHEPCIP. A copy, signed by Halley as a true one, of this cipher was sent to the Royal Society in 1714 by Wren's son. Probably Sir Christopher had not perfected his instruments sufficiently to proclaim his discovery, and did not wish either to lose his idea, or, when later on he disclosed it, to appear as a plagiarist in case a similar method had suggested itself to anyone else. Old age had weakened Wren's limbs, but had had little effect on his clear understanding; his scientific pursuits interested him still, and were among the employments of those few leisure years which closed a life of incessant work. He gave, however, the greater part of his time and care to the diligent study of the Holy Scriptures, which all his life he had loved; and thus, serene and gentle as ever, waited for his summons. [_HIS DEATH._] Once a year it was his habit to be driven to London, and to sit for a while under the dome of his own Cathedral. On one of these journeys he caught a cold, and soon afterwards, on February 25, 1723, his servant, thinking Sir Christopher slept longer after dinner than was his wont, came into the room and found his master dead in his chair, with an expression of perfect peace on the calm features. They buried him near his daughter in the south-east crypt of S. Paul's, by one of the windows, under a plain marble slab with this inscription: 'Here lieth Sir Christopher Wren, the builder of this Cathedral Church of S. Paul, &c., who died in the year of our Lord MDCCXXIII., and of his age XCI.' The spite of those who had hampered his genius in life showed itself again after his death. The famous inscription, written by his son:--'Subtus conditur hujus Ecclesiae et Urbis Conditor Christophorus Wren, qui vixit annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi, sed bono publico. Lector, si Monumentum requiris circumspice.'[247]--was placed in the crypt, and in the Cathedral itself there was nothing to preserve the memory of its architect. This has in later years been remedied and the inscription is now in gold letters over the door of the north transept. Some of Sir Christopher's plans have, as has been shown, been executed; and further, the Cathedral has been set in green turf, and all around it is cared for instead of neglected, the once empty campanile is filled by twelve bells, whose music floats down over the roar of London, as if out of the sky itself, and the Dome is filled by vast congregations in the way which Sir Christopher almost foresaw. In the Cathedral his memory is cherished; but in the city of London, which he rebuilt from its ashes, no statue has been erected to him, no great street has been honoured by taking as its own the name of Christopher Wren, though a name On fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. FOOTNOTES: [234] This lease was renewed to his eldest son in 1737 for 28-1/2 years, running on from 1758. [235] Now in the possession of Mrs. Pigott. [236] _Annals of S. Paul's_, p. 432. [237] It must be to this that Wren refers in his letter to his son, p. 282. [238] _Documents illustrating, &c._, p. 62. [239] The Dean and Chapter of S. Paul's removed the fence in 1874, and substituted the present open, low one, thus removing a blemish from the exterior of the Cathedral. [240] The Royal Society occupied this house, till 1847, when it was pulled down to make room for the new Record Office.--_Hist. R. S._, p. 399. Weld. [241] _The Tatler_, No. 52, 1709. Both the paper and its note contain eloquent tributes to Wren. It is remarkable that Steele wrote this at the very time Wren's salary was first 'suspended.' [242] 'Now Fortune commands me to apply myself more closely to Philosophy.' [243] 'Then another king arose which knew not Joseph.'--_Acts_ vii. 18. 'And Gallio cared for none of these things.'--_Acts_ xviii. 17. [244] Now spelt Wroxall. This property remained in the hands of Sir Christopher's direct lineal descendants (five Christophers held it in succession) until 1861. Wren's son and heir died in 1747, and is buried in Wroxhall Abbey; his son Christopher displeasing him, he left away much of the estate to his stepson, Sir Roger Burgoyne. At the death of the elder Christopher many of the great architect's plans and drawings were bought by Mr. Justice Blackburn, who presented them to All Souls' College. The _Parentalia_ was principally written at Wroxhall by Sir Christopher's son Christopher, and was published by his second son Stephen Wren, M.D., in 1750. See _Worthies of Warwickshire_, p. 852, and _Biog. Hist. of England_, vol. iii. p. 329. Noble. [245] The reward was adjudged in two portions of 10,000_l._, to Mr. J. Harrison in 1726 and 1775, for making two chronometers, which gave the longitude within 10' 45" of the truth. Rewards were offered for further discoveries. The Board of Longitude was abolished in 1828.--_Life of Sir Isaac Newton_, vol. ii. p. 258-267. Sir David Brewster. [246] These cryptographs were first published by Sir David Brewster in his _Life of Sir Isaac Newton_, vol. ii. p. 263, ed. 1855. No key was found until Mr. Francis Williams, of Grange Court, Chigwell, sent the following: 1. WAcCHhMArGNwETrICeBAnLAmNCdEWcOUcNDxINiVAvCUzO. Wach magnetic balance wound in vacuo. (One letter a misprint). Omitted letters make CHR. WREN, MDCCXIV. 2. FIcXHhEArDHwIPrPEeSHnANmDEdSPcOIcSExTUiBEiONiEYieZ. Fix head hippes handes poise tube on eye. (One letter a misprint). Omitted letters make CHR. WREN, MDCCXIIII. 3. PIcPEhSCrRewWErMOeVInNGmWHdEEcLScFRxOMiBEvAKzE. Pipe screwe moving wheels from beake. Omitted letters make CHR. WREN, MDCCXIV. The three last omitted Z,s occurring in the first part of each cipher to show that that part must be taken _last_.--_Report of the British Association for 1859._ [247] 'Beneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the good of the State. Reader, if thou ask for a monument, look around thee.' APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. _REVERENDO PATRI DOMINO CHRISTOPHORO WREN, S.T.D. ET D. W. CHRISTOPHORUS FILIUS HOC SUUM PANORGANUM ASTRONOMICUM D. D. XIII. CALEND. NOVEM. ANNO 1645_, p. 73. Si licet, et cessent rerum (Pater alme) tuarum Pondera, devotae respice prolis opus. Hic ego sidereos tentavi pingere motus, Coelicaque in modulos conciliare breves. Quo (prolapsa diù) renoventur tempora gyro, Seculaque, et menses, et imparilesque dies. Quomodo Sol abeat, redeatque, et temperet annum, Et (raptum contra) grande perennet iter; Cur nascens gracili, pleno orbe refulget adulta, Cur gerat extinctas menstrua luna faces. His ego numinibus dum cito, atque ardua mundi, Scrutor, et arcanas conor inire vias, Adsis, O! faveasque, pater, succurre volanti Suspensum implumis dirige prolis iter, Ne male, praecipiti, nimium prae viribus audax (Sorte sub Icarea) lapsus ab axe ruam: Te duce, fert animus, studiis sublimibus hisce Pasci, dum superas detur adire domos. APPENDIX II. _CHURCHES, HALLS, COLLEGES, PALACES, OTHER PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND PRIVATE HOUSES, BUILT AND REPAIRED BY SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN._ _Churches._ S. Alban, Wood Street. | S. Lawrence, Jewry. * All Hallows, Bread Street. | S. Magnus, London Bridge. " Lombard Street. | S. Margaret Lothbury, Pattens, " Upper Thames St. | Rood Lane. All Saints, Isleworth. | S. Martin, Ludgate Hill. S. Andrew, Holborn. | S. Mary, Abchurch. " by the Wardrobe. | " Aldermanbury. SS. Anne & Agnes. | " Aldermary. S. Anne, Soho (?). | " at Hill. * S. Antholin, Watling St. | " le Bow. S. Augustine. | * " Somerset. * S. Bartholomew, Bartholomew | " Woolnoth. Lane. | S. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish St. * S. Benedict, Gracechurch Street.| S. Matthew, Friday Street. * " Fink, Threadneedle | S. Michael, Bassishaw. Street. | " Cheapside. S. Benedict, Paul's Wharf. | " Cornhill. S. Bride, Fleet Street. | * " Crooked Lane. Chichester Cathedral. | * " Queenhithe. Christ Church, Newgate. | " Royal, College Hill. * S. Christopher, Threadneedle | S. Mildred, Bread Street. Street. | * " Poultry. S. Clement Danes, Strand. | S. Nicholas, Cole Abbey. " Eastcheap. | S. Olave, Jewry. Dartmouth Chapel, Blackheath. | S. Paul's Cathedral. * S. Dionysius, Back Church. | S. Peter's Abbey, Westminster. S. Dunstan in the East. | " Cornhill. S. Edmund the King, Lombard | Salisbury Cathedral. Street. | S. Stephen, Coleman Street. S. Faith (Crypt of S. Paul's). | " Walbrook. S. George, Botolph Lane. | S. Swithin, Cannon Street. S. James, Garlickhithe. | S. Vedast, Foster Lane. " Westminster. * Signifies that the church has been destroyed. _Halls._ Mercers Company. | Saddlers Company * Grocers " | Cordwainers " Drapers " | Paper Stainers " * Fishmongers " | Curriers " * Goldsmiths " | Masons " Skinners " | * Plumbers " Merchant Taylors " | Innholders " Haberdashers " | Founders " * Salters " | Coopers " Ironmongers " | Tilers and Bricklayers " Vintners " | Joiners " * Dyers " | Weavers " Brewers " | Plasterers " * Leathersellers " | Stationers " Cutlers " | Apothecaries " Bakers " | Pinmakers " Tallow Chandlers " | Coachmakers " Girdlers " | Many of these buildings have been considerably altered since Wren's time, and many are now let as warehouses, or turned to other uses. _Colleges._ Christ Church, Oxford. | Pembroke, Cambridge. Emmanuel, Cambridge. | * Physicians, Warwick Lane, Holy Trinity " London. " Oxford. | Queen's (?) Oxford. Morden, Blackheath. | Sion, London. _Palaces._ Hampton Court. Kensington. * Newmarket. Winchester. _Other Public Buildings._ Alderman's Court, Guildhall. | Middle Temple, front of. Archbishop Tenison's Library. | Monument, the. Ashmolean Museum. | Monument { to Edward V. & Bohun's Almshouses, Lee. | { Richard, Duke of York Bushey Park, { Pavilion. | { Ranger's house at.| Observatory, Greenwich. Chapter House, S. Paul's. | * Royal Exchange, London. * Custom House, Port of London. | Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Deanery, St. Paul's, London. | Temple Bar. Hospitals, { Chelsea College. | Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. { Greenwich. | Theatre in Salisbury Court. London, City of. | Tower of London. Merchant Taylors' Almhouses, | Windsor, Town Hall. London. _Private Houses._ Allaston's, Lord, London. | Fawley Court, Oxon. Bloomsbury, two in. | Marlborough's, Duchess of, London. Buckingham's, Duchess of, | Oxford's, Earl of, London. London. | Sunderland's, Lord, London. Chichester, two at. | Windsor, two at. Cooper's, Madam, London. This list, which is, I fear, imperfect, only professes to give such buildings as were actually built or repaired; there are, besides, a large number of unexecuted designs. * Signifies that the building has been destroyed. APPENDIX III. Sir Christopher Wren left the rough drafts of four tracts on architecture, which are printed in the 'Parentalia,' and a few notes on Roman and Greek buildings, some of which Mr. Elmes transcribed in his 'Life;' they are for the most part very technical and are incomplete. The copy of the 'Parentalia' now in my hands contains the autograph draft of a Discourse on Architecture, which, as I think, has never been printed; it appears to me to be of great interest. It is therefore given entire, though I regret I cannot give the quaint prints of Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, Babylon, &c., with which the original is illustrated. The two former prints tally so exactly with the descriptions in the 'Discourse'--the print of the ark containing a small section, an elevation, and a vignette of a man feeding one of the creatures, besides a large drawing of the floating Ark--that I incline to think they were engraved, either by Wren himself, or from his drawings. Engraving was an art he well understood. He divides with Prince Rupert the honour of the invention of mezzo-tint. The prints are numbered Pl. IV. and V. respectively, and have no signature. _Discourse on Architecture._ Whatever a man's sentiments are upon mature deliberation, it will be still necessary for him in a conspicuous Work to preserve his Undertaking from general censure, and so for him to accomodate his Designs to the gust of the Age he lives in, thô it appears to him less rational. I have found no little difficulty to bring Persons, of otherwise a good genius, to think anything in Architecture would be better then what they had heard commended by others, and what they had view'd themselves. Many good Gothick forms of Cathedrals were to be seen in our Country, and many had been seen abroad, which they liked the better for being not much differing from ours in England: this humour with many is not yet eradicated, and therefore I judge it not improper to endeavour to reform the Generality to a truer taste in Architecture by giving a larger Idea of the whole Art, beginning with the reasons and progress of it from the most remote Antiquity; and that in short touching chiefly on some things, which have not been remarked by others. The Project of Building is as natural to Mankind as to Birds, and was practised before the Floud. By Josephus we learn that Cain built the first City, _Enos_, and enclosed it with Wall and Rampires; and that the Sons of Seth, the other son of Adam, erected two Columns of Brick and Stone to preserve their Mathematical Science to Posterity, so well built that thô ye one of Brick was destroy'd by the Deluge, ye other of Stone was standing in ye time of Josephus. The first Peece of Naval Architecture we read of in Sacred History was the _Arke_ of _Noah_, a work very exactly fitted and built for the Purpose intended. It was by measure just 6 times as Long as Broad, and the Heighth was 3/5 of the Breadth. This was the Proportion of the Triremes afterwards. The Dimensions, and that It was 3 Stories high, and that It had a Window of a Cubit Square is only mention'd; but many things sure were of necessity to be contrived for Use in this Model of the Whole Earth. First, One small Window was not sufficient to emit the Breath of all the Animals; It had certainly many other Windows as well for Light as Air. It must have Scupper-Holes and a large Sink and an Engin to Pump It; for It drew, as I compute, with all its Cargo and Ballast, at least 12 foot Water. There must be places for Insects the only Food of some Birds and Animals. Great Cisterns for Fresh Water not only for Land Animals, but for some Water fowl and Insects. Some Greens to grow in Tubs, the only food of Tortoises and some Birds and Insects; since we certainly have learnt that nothing is produced by Spontaneous Generation, and we firmly believe there was no new Creation. I need not mention stairs to the several Stories, with many other things absolutely necessary for a year's Voyage for Men and Animals, thô not mention'd in the Story, and Providence was the Pilot of this Little World, the Embrio of the next. Most certainly Noah was divinly qualified not only as a Preacher of Righteousness but the greatest Philosopher in the 'Historia Animalium' that ever was; and it was Work enough for his whole Family to feed them, and take care of the young Brood; for in a year's time there must be a great increase in the Ark, w^{ch} was food for the Family, and the Beasts of Prey. The first Peece of Civil Architecture we meet with in Holy Writ is the Tower of Babel. Providence scatter'd the first Builders, so the Work was left off, but the Successors of Belus the son of Nimrod probably finished It and made it His Sepulchre, upon his Deification. It was built of Burnt Brick Cemented with Bitumen. Herodotus gives us a surprizing Relation of it w^{ch} being set down by measure is not beside our subject to observe. It consisted of Eight several Stories; the First was one Stade, or 625 foot square, and of the same measure in Height upon which were rais'd seven more, w^{ch} if they were all equal with the First would amount to 2,500 foot, which is not credible: the Form must be therefore Pyramidal and being adorn'd on the outside with Rows of Galleries in divers stories diminished in Height in Geometrical Proportion; so the whole Mass would have the Aspect of Half an Octaedron, which is that of all the Egyptian Pyramids. These Corridors being Brick wasted in more than 1600 years: and it was these which Alexander actually began to Repair, not the whole Bulk, as I suppose. How Herodotus had his measures I question, for He flourish'd but 100 years before Alexander's Conquests of Babylon, so it was then 1500 years Old. I proceed next to those mighty Works of Antiquity the Wonderful _Pyramids_ of Egypt yet remaining without considerable decay after almost 4000 years: for 2000 years agoe, they were reckon'd by Historians of Uncertain Original. I cannot think any Monarch however Despotick could effect such things meerly for Glory; I guess there were reasons of State for it. Egypt was certainly very early Populous, because so Productive of Corn by the help of Nile, in a manner without labour. They deriv'd the River when it rose, all over the Flat of the Delta; and as the People increas'd, over a great deal of Land that lay higher. The Nile did not always Flow high enough for a great Part of the then inhabited Country, and without the Nile, They must either Starve or prey upon those who had Corn; This must needs create Mutiny and Bloodshed, to prevent which it was the Wisdom of their ancient Kings and Priests to Exact a certain Proportion of Corn, and lay it up for those who wanted the benefit of the Rivers when it disappointed their sowing. Thus Joseph lay'd up for seven years, and sur'ly He was not first: this Provision being ever so essentially necessary to support the Popularity and consequently the Grandure of the Kingdom; and continued so in all Ages, till the Turks neglected all the upper Canales except one which still suppli'd Alexandria. Now what was the consequence? It was not for the Health of the Common People nor Policy of the Government for them to be fed in Idleness: great Multitudes were therefore imploy'd in that which requir'd no great Skill, the Sawing of Stone Square to a few different scantlings, nor was there any need of Scaffolding or Engines, for hands only would raise them from step to step: a little teaching serv'd to make them set Line: and thus these great Works in which some Thousands of hands might be imploy'd at once, rose with Expedition: the difficulty was in mustering the men to move in order under proper Officers, and probably with Musick, as Amphion is said much about the same Age to have built the walls of Thebes with his Harp; that is Musick made the Workmen move exactly together without which no great weight can be moved, as Seamen know, for the Sheet Anchor will by no means be moved without a fiddle to make men exert their United force in equal time: otherwise they pull one against another and lose great part of their force. The next observable Monument of great Antiquity which yet remain is the Pillar of Absolom. By the description given of it, and what I have learnt from Travellers who have seen it, we must allow it to be very Remarkable though not great. It is compos'd of seven Pillars six about in a Hexagon, and one in the middle and the Tholus solid, a large Architrave, Frize and Cornice lie upon the Pillars which are larger in proportion to their height then what we now allow to the Tuscan order, so likewise is the Entablature larger. This whole composition though at least 30 foot high, is all of the one Stone, both Basis, Pillars and Tholus cut as it stood out of the adjacent Cliff of white Marble. I could wish some skilful Artist would give us the exact dimensions to inches, by which we might have an idea of the Antient Tyrian manner; for it was probable Solomon by his correspondence with King Hiram employ'd the Tyrian Artists, in his Temple; and from the Phoenicians I derive as well the Arts as the Letters, of the Graecians, thô it may be, the Tyrians were Imitators of the Babylonians, and they of the Egyptians. Great Monarchs are ambitious to leave great Monuments behind them, and this occasions great Inventions and Mechanick Arts. What the Architecture was that Solomon used we know little of, though Holy Writ hath given us the general dimensions of the Temple, by which we may in some manner collect the Plan but not of all the Courts. Villapandus hath made a fine Romantick Piece after the Corinthian Order, which in that age was not used by any Nation: for the First Ages used grosser Pillars then Dorick. In after Times they began to refine from the Dorick, as in the Temple of Ephesus (the United Work of all Asia) and afterwards improved into a Slenderer Pillar, and Leavy Capital of various inventions which they called Corinthian. So that if we run back to the Age of Solomon, we may with reason believe they used the Tyrian manner, as gross at least as the Dorick, and that the Corinthian manner of Villapandus is meer fancy: Nay when long after Herod built the _Atrium Gentium_, he that carefully considers the description in Josephus will find it to be a Tripple Portico, and thick Pillars of the grosser Proportions which being whole stones of an incredible Bulk--our Saviour's Disciples admired them: _Master_, said they, _see what stones are here_! Titus would have sav'd this noble structure, but a soldier throwing a torch upon the Roof which was Cedar planks covered with Bitumen, it easily took Fire and consumed the whole Building. All the City was thus covered flat with Bitumen (easily gathered from the Lake of Sodom) and upon the flat roofs the Jews celebrated under Palm-boughs the Feast of Tabernacles. The Body of the First Temple was gilt upon Bitumen, which is good Size for gilding and will preserve the timber. The Roof and Cedar Wainscot within being carved with Knotts was gilded all over with a thick Leaf, so I understand the word _Overlay'd_; for if it was cover'd with plate apply'd over the knots and Imbossments the gold nails to fix it on would have increased the Weight of the plate, whereas the quantity of the Nails is reckoned but small in Proportion. The Doors might be plated over and nail'd, and the Hinges and Bars, called Chains, might be solid; for these were afterwards stripp'd when the Egyptians pillaged the Temple in the Reign of Rehoboam. That Herod did more than the Upper Portico doth not appear, for the substruction under the Portico was certainly Solomon's Work. The whole Hill Moriah was wall'd upright by him from the bottom of the Valley which render'd a broad Area above for all the Buildings of the Courts. This is the work in which were us'd stone of 10 and 12 Cubits, call'd as well they might _Costly Stones_. Now it may well be inquired how in an uneven craggy Country, as it is about Jerusalem, such mighty Loads of Stone could be brought. I shall give my thoughts. Solomon had an Army of Labourers in his Works; now suppose 12 Cubits long and 2 broad, and 1 thick, this would amount to 648 of our solid feet, which in marble would be 64 Tuns and more. Eight men can draw a Tun, but the ground being hilly, we will allow 10 men to a Tun which would be 640 men. Now how all these men can be brought to draw together I show as follows. First, 10 men draw in a Rope (as bargemen with us) at the end of this Rope is a Spring-tree (as our Coachmen use for ye two fore Horses) to each end of which is a rope so 20 men can draw in the second rank; each rope hath again its Spring-tree, and so on to a sixth rank each rank doubling the number and supposing 10 men to govern the rest (possibly with Musick) makes the number 640 men; and this will be found readier than capsterns, and by this means much vaster stones may be mov'd and even by Barbarous People without Engins. I cannot otherwise see what need Solomon had of such great multitudes of Labourers as _Threescore and ten Thousand Bearers of Burdens_, and _Fourscore Thousand Hewers of stone in the Mountains_, &c. Probably too they were employ'd by Months, and the rest were by turns to till the ground and bring food for the Labourers that the Country Work might proceed. The Walls of Babylon were most stupendious Works, built with Brick and Cement with Bitumen; the Height of them, according to Herodotus, was Two Hundred Royal Cubits, and the Breadth Fifty; which in our measure (reckoning every Royal Cubit with Herodotus 1 foot 9 inches which is 3 inches above the common cubit measure) makes the Height 375 foot and the Breadth 93 ft. 9 in. In these Walls were one hundred gates of Brass with Ornaments in Architecture of the same metal. Besides the first Wall, (which was encompassed with a wide and deep Foss always supply'd with water the sides of which were Lin'd with Brick) was an inner Wall built of near the same strength, thô not altogether of the same Breadth. The extent of the City must add to the Surprise which being a Square contained a Front on every Side of one hundred and Twenty Stadia, that is Fifteen of our miles, and makes up in the whole Threescore miles. Another stupendious Fabrick of I think also Tyrian architecture, was the monument of Porsenna, King of Etruria. This Sepulchre we have describ'd by Pliny, with the particular Dimensions in Feet which I have accordingly Delineated. First, a Basis of squar'd stone fifty foot high rais'd the Pile above any vulgar contiguous Buildings which being solid only in those Parts that bore weight was so contriv'd within-side as to form a very intricate Labyrinth, into which whoever enter'd without a clew of thread would not be able to find the way out. Upon this Basis stood five Pyramids of 150 foot high; Four in the Angles, and one in the Centre; Bodies call'd Pyramids thô it is manifest they must have been so cut off as to have a large space on the Top to carry a Second Story of Four more lofty Pyramids of 100 foot high; and over them a third Order of Five more. Now how these could be borne is worth the consideration of an architect. I conceive it might be thus perform'd securely. Set half Hemispherical Arches, such as we make the heads of Niches, but lay'd back to back, so that each of these have its Bearing upon three Pyramids of the Lower Order, that is two angular ones and the middle Pyramids; and these cutting one another upon the Diagonals will have a firm bearing for all the Works above. Pliny mentions a Brass Circle and Cupola, lay'd upon the Five Lower Pyramids, not I suppose to bear anything, but chiefly for Ornament, and to cover the stone work of the Arches upon the strong Spandrells of which if another Platform were rais'd upon that might the upper structure be built and the whole have a stupendious effect, and seemingly very open. Pliny took his Description of this extraordinary Pile from the Measures set down by Varro, a diligent and therefore credible author, who probably might have taken his Dimensions when it was standing before the absolute conquest of Etruria by the Romans; the summary then of this prodigious Edifice (erected to show the Vanity of the Eastern Monarchy could be exceeded by the Italians) may be thus compriz'd. The Basis of the whole was 300 ft. square, and 50 ft. high; upon which stood Five Pyramids each of 75 ft. square at 150 ft. high; upon which rested the Brazen Circle and Cupola, stil'd by Pliny _Petasus_, (which I take to be a Brass Covering securing the Arches) from which hung little Bells by Chains, which sounded as they mov'd by the Winds. The Four Pyramids of the Second Order of 100 ft. high standing upon the Circle or Brim of the _Petasus_ as upon an Entablature, were evidently the Four First Angular Pyramids continu'd to an Apex, or near to a Point, so each will be in all from the Basis 450 ft. high, and rise as high as the _Petasus_; above which was again a Platform containing the Third Order of Five more Pyramids, of which the four angular Pyramids rested firmly upon the keys of the Diagonal Sections of the half Hemispherical Vaultings, which were called by the Ancients _Conchae_ resembling the heads of Niches joyn'd back to back. This Platform I take to have been round as being the Horizontal Section of the _Petasus_; and the Bases of the Five Upper Pyramids would be contiguous, and thus would be of the same shape and as high as the same below, as Varro asserts with some suspicion, fearing how they would stand, but I with confidence, the Proportions persuading, which indeed are very fine. The Heighth to the Breadth of the Basis is 6 to 1. The Heighth of the Pyramids to the Brass _Petasus_ is 2 to 1, but taking in their whole heighth it would have 4 to 1, but allowing the Point of the Pyramid to be taken off (as it ought) and allowing for the Brasen Brim and Bells it will be 250 foot, above which was the Floor that bore the Five upper Pyramids of 4 to 1, so the Heighth is 550 foot as 6 to 11. I have ventured to put some Ornaments, at ye Top belonging to the Tuscan superstition, (They then us'd not Statues) They are Golden Thunderbolts, so the whole will be 600 foot high, that is double to the Basis and the Heighth to the Brass circle will appear half the Face, or like the Façade of a Tuscan Temple, to which the Breadth of the Brim of the _Petasus_ and the Bells supply the Place of an Entablature: I have been the longer in this Description because the Fabrick was in the Age of Pythagoras and his School, when the World began to be fond of Geometry and Arithmetick. N.B. In all the Editions of Pliny for _Tricenum_ read Tricentinûm as the sense requires. At the end of the Discourse on Architecture is an elevation, drawn in pen and sepia, of the tomb of Mausolus, as Sir Christopher supposed from Pliny's account that it must have been constructed. It is drawn to a scale, with indications of statues, of which he supposed there to have been forty-eight. It is remarkable how closely Sir Christopher's conjectural elevation tallies with what recent excavations have brought to light. INDEX. Abbot, Bishop of London, 11, 14; Archbishop of Canterbury, 24 Académie Royale des Sciences, 148 Addison, 74, 179 All Hallows, Bread Street, rebuilt by Wren, 232; destruction of, 232, 234 -- -- Lombard Street, rebuilt by Wren, 271, 272 -- -- Thames Street, 240 All Saints, Isleworth, 298 Andrewes, Lancelot, Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, of Winchester, kindness of, to Matthew Wren, 6, 7; his prophecy, 10, 13; his death, 14; funeral of, at St. Saviour's, Southwark, 15; care of, in giving church preferment, 31; chaplain sent to the New Forest by, 40; appointment of Mr. Bois by, 46; quoted by Bishop Wren, 62; church views of, 120; legacy of, to Pembroke College library, 134 'Annals of England,' 20, 58, 77, 122 Anne, Queen, 300, 301, 305, 317, 320, 327 'Annual Register,' the (1765), 174 Arches Court, The, origin of the name, 184 Architecture, 119, 148, 150, 171, 184, 197, 240, 268, 290, 329; Discourse on, by Sir C. Wren. _See_ Appendix III., 340 Artillery Company, the, 185 Ashburnham, Mr., 75 Ashmole, Mr. Elias, founder of the Ashmolean Museum, 217 Atterbury, Dean of Westminster, and Bishop of Rochester, 203, 209 Aubrey, the Wiltshire Antiquary, 91 Ayliffe's 'Oxford,' 125, 141 Bancroft, Archbishop, 14 Barrow, Dr. Isaac, eulogy of, on Christopher Wren, 128, 129 Barwick, Dr., Dean of Durham, of S. Paul's, 'Life of,' 72, 76, 85, 110, 112, 115, 120, 140 Bathurst, Dr., 144, 145, 270, 271 'Beauties of England and Wales,' 16 Bedloe, witness in the Popish plot, 227 Benson, William, appointed by George I. to supersede Wren, 329, 330 Bernini, Giov., 145, 149 Billing, A., 'Restoration of the Church of S. Sepulchre,' 183 Bird, Francis, sculptor, 300, 304 'Black Book of the Garter,' the, 4, 68 Blenheim Palace, building of, by Vanbrugh, 286 Blenheim, victory of (1704), 301 'Blue Book of the Garter,' the, 68 Blunt, 'Key to the Holy Bible,' 46 Bois, Mr. John, 46 Bow Church. _See_ S. Mary-le-Bow Boyle, Robert, 283 Brewster, Sir David, 'Life of Newton,' 330 British Association, the, report of, for 1859, 333 Brouncker, Lord, 124, 126, 143 Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, 279 Burton, Henry, 251 Busby, Dr., head-master of Westminster, 41, 300 Bushnell, John, 179 Butler, Bishop of Bristol, 65 Butler, Samuel, 130 Cambridge, 6, 15, 45, 216 Canova, Antonio, 192 Catechism, the, clergy compelled to use, 22, 50 Cave, Dr. William, 240 Cemeteries, Wren's plan for placing outside London, 307 Chardin, Sir John, 230, 231 Charles I., his journey to Spain as Prince of Wales, 7-9; his coronation in Scotland, 16; sets up his standard at Nottingham (1642), 60; sends a pardon to Laud, 70; his flight from Oxford, 75; his death, 86; his bust by Bernini, 149; proposed monument to, 209, 210 Charles II., escape of, after the battle of Worcester, 91; letter of, to Monk from Breda, 112; entry of, into London, 117; encouragement given by, to the founding of the Royal Society, 124, 130; spirited behaviour of, at the Fire of London, 156; first stone of the Royal Exchange laid by, 178; portion of the tax on coal given to building of S. Paul's by, 198; palace at Newmarket built for, 225; death of, 246 Chelsea College, building of the hospital at, 239, 240, 300, 326, 327 Chichester, sack of, by the Parliamentary troops, 79, 123 -- cathedral of, spire repaired by Wren, 243 Christ Church, Newgate, repaired by Wren, 260 Christ Church, Oxford, gateway at, built by Wren, 232 'Church Quarterly Review,' the, 65, 123 Cibber, Caius, 207 City churches, the. _See_ Names of Churches. For complete list of, see Appendix II., 338 City Church and Churchyard Protection Society, 191; Report of, 205 City companies' halls rebuilt by Wren, 266. For list of, see Appendix II., 339 Clarendon, Lord, 19, 20, 23, 47, 110, 121, 160 Claypole, Richard, 99 Coal, portion of tax on, granted for the rebuilding of S. Paul's, 198 Coghill, Faith, 91, 176, 177 Collier, 'Ecclesiastical History,' 20 Common Prayer. _See_ Prayer Book Compton, Bishop of London, 220, 279, 323, 324 Convocation, meeting of, in S. Paul's (1661), 119, 120 Corbet, Bishop of Norwich, of Oxford, 22, 24, 27, 215 Cosin, Dean of Peterborough, Bishop of Durham, 153 Coverdale, Bishop Miles, 219 Cowley, Abraham, 124, 147 Cromwell, Oliver, 9, 91, 99, 102 Cromwell, Richard, 103 Custom-house, the, rebuilt by Wren, 176 Dale, Rev. T. P., rector of S. Vedast's, Foster Lane, imprisonment of, 273 Davenport, 'Oxfordshire Annals,' 25 'Decoy Duck,' the, a pamphlet against Archbishop Williams, 59 Denham, Sir John, 127, 139 De Ros, Lord, 'The Tower of London,' 211 Dore, Abbey of, 19 Doyley, 'Life of Sancroft,' 165, 166 Dunton, John, leader of the expedition against the Sallee pirates, 20 Duppa, Dr. Brian, Bishop of Salisbury, appointed executor of Archbishop Laud's will, 71; Archbishop Tenison secretly ordained by, 123 East Knoyle, living of, held by Dr. Wren, 31, 32, 33 Elmes, 'Life of Sir C. Wren,' 90, 97, 200, 230 Ely, 44, 45 Ely House, 118, 119 Ely, Bishop of. _See_ Wren; Turner Emmanuel College, Chapel of, built by Wren, 215, 216 Evelyn, John, 'Diary' of, 15, 49, 50, 51, 89, 93, 94, 95, 99, 114, 117, 118, 127, 145, 146, 154, 155, 181, 206, 209, 215, 217, 226, 228, 229, 230, 242, 244, 260, 286, 287, 302 -- -- death of, 304 Exchange. _See_ Royal Exchange Fawley Court built by Wren, 245 Fell, Bishop of Oxford, 220 Fergusson 'Hist. of Architecture,' 15, 184, 192 -- 'Illustrated Handbook of Architecture,' 139 Fifty new churches, Act for building the, 305 Fire of London, the, 155, 159, 175, 184, 185, 187, 191, 192, 204, 219, 243, 288 Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal, 216, 299, 327 Fogg, Captain, pillage of S. George's Chapel by, 67 Fox, Sir Stephen, 239, 269, 327 'Fragmentary Illustrations of the History of the Book of Common Prayer,' 120 Freemasons, the Order of, 147, 200, 285 Frogley, Richard, Wren's carpenter, 142 Fuller, Dr. Thomas, 6, 10 Garter, the Order of the, 4, 5, 16, 34-36, 67, 68, 80, 81, 123, 217 Garth, Samuel, physician and poet, 265 George I., 329 George, Prince, 235, 300 Gibbons, Grinling, 194, 195, 242, 252, 253, 324 Gibbs, James, pupil of Wren's builder of S. Mary-le-Strand and S. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 233, 286, 305 Goddard, Dr., Warden of Merton College, 77, 78, 103, 104, 105, 124, 125 Godwin, 'De Præsulibus Angliae Commentarius,' 57, 94 Grainger, 'Biographical History of England,' 59, 149, 231 Great Haseley, detection of a murder at, 38 Greenwich Hospital, 269, 299 -- Observatory, 216, 327 -- Palace, 127 Gresham College, London, 98, 103, 105, 123, 240 Gresham Professors. _See_ Ward's 'Lives of' Grey, 'Examination of Neale's Hist. of the Puritans,' 62, 86, 122 Griffiths, Matthew, Rector of S. Mary Magdalene's, Fish St. 248 Gustavus Adolphus, his George and Garter, 37, 67 Hackett, Dr., 18 Hall, Bishop of Norwich, 58 Halley, Dr., 247, 299, 333 Hampton Court Palace, Wren's alterations at, 267, 268. Hare, A. C., 'Walks in London,' 119, 252 Harris, Renatus, builder of the organ at S. James', Westminster, 243; at S. Paul's, 274, 275 Hatton, E. 'New View of London,' 219, 262, 271, 272 Hawkins, Sir John, monument of, at S. Dunstan's-in-the-East, 287. Hawksmore, Nicholas, a pupil of Wren's, 206, 286, 293, 305 Henchman, Bishop of London, 154, 222 Henley-on-Thames, 38, 75, 159 Henry VI., 4 Hewet, Dr., 99 Heylin, 'Cyprianus Anglicus,' 15, 22, 44 Hoare, Sir R., 'History of Wiltshire,' 33 Holder, Dr. 42, 177, 222, 223, 261, 300 Holder, Mrs., 42, 176, 223, 224, 225, 261, 300 Hooke, Robert, 159, 246, 247 Hope, Right Honourable, A. J. B. B. 'Worship in the Church of England,' 65 Hoskyns, C. Wren, 3, 231 Hoskyns, Sir John, 231 Hudson, Dr., chaplain to Charles I., 75 Hume, 'History of England,' 102 Hyde, Mr., 110, 111, 112, 113, 115. _See_ Clarendon. Inigo Jones, 42, 93, 127, 166, 243, 269 Ipswich, Disturbances at, stirred up by Prynne, 44, 45; Tower church at, 65. James I., visit of, to Cambridge, 6; plans the Spanish match, 7; his opinion of Bishop King, 222 James II., Inscription on Monument effaced by, 208; continues Wren on S. Paul's commission, 248; Declaration by, of liberty of conscience, 260; Abdication of, 263; Residence of, at S. Germain's, 283 Jarman, the city architect, 266 Jeffreys, Judge, his letter to Pepys, 161, 162 Jennings, Richard, Wren's master carpenter, 159, 200, 321, 323 Juxon, Bishop of London, 17, 49, 86, 109; Archbishop of Canterbury, 118 Ken, Prebendary of Winchester, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 220, 234, 260 Kennet, Bishop, 122 Kensington Palace, additions to, made by Wren, 268 King, Bishop of London, his gravestone, 222 Knolles, 'Historie of the Turks,' 19 Lake, Bishop of Chichester, 260 Lalanne, L., 'Dictionnaire Historique de la France,' 149 Lambeth Palace, 41, 47, 48, 239 Lane, Mr. Peter, Rector of S. Bennet's, Paul's wharf, 243 Lathbury, 'History of Book of Common Prayer,' 123 Laud, Bishop of S. David's, of London, Archbishop of Canterbury, advice of, respecting chaplains for the Prince of Wales, 7; form of penance, and reconciliation for a renegado prepared with Bishop Wren by, 20; measures taken by, against the lecturers, 22; his treatment of the foreign congregations, 23, 24; works at S. Paul's carried on by order of, 41, 42; yearly report of, to the King, 45; impeachment and imprisonment of, in the Tower, 48, 50; his refusal to escape, 61; Trial of, 69, 70; his execution on Tower Hill, 70; order of, respecting altar-rails, 249 Lecturers, measures taken against, 22, 27 Lenthall, William, Speaker of the House of Commons, 38, 79 Le Soeur, Hubert, his statue of King Charles, 195 Littleton, Lord Keeper, 57 Lloyd, Bishop of S. Asaph, 217, 226, 260, 281 Longitude, the, attempts to discover accurately, 215, 331, 332 London, city of, 25, 41, 98, 142, 154, 155, 179, 186, 188, 335. _See_ Fire; Plague; Tower. London Bridge, 204, 262, 288 -- Stone, 219 Long Parliament, the, 56, 68, 103 Longman, 'Three Cathedrals dedicated to S. Paul's in London,' 198, 222, 273, 293 Louvre, the, 148, 149 Lysons, 'Environs of London,' 298 Macaulay, 'History of England,' 261, 281 Marah, 'Life of Archbishop Juxon,' 18 Marlborough, Duchess of, 285, 286 -- Duke of, 301, 302 Mary, Princess, her marriage, 49 -- Queen, her arrival in England, 263; employs Wren to rebuild Hampton Court, 267; her death, 268 Maw, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 7 'Memorials of the See of Chichester,' 79, 123, 245 Merchant Taylors' School, 6 Milford, Rev. R.N., 33 Milman, 'Annals of S. Paul's Cathedral,' 197, 203, 318 Milton, 122, 232 Monk, George, afterwards General, 71, 72, 103, 112, 114 Monument, the, built by Wren, 207; inscriptions on, 207, 208 Morley, Bishop of Winchester, 220 Morton, Bishop of Durham, 112 Motley 'Life of Barnevelde,' 61 Neale, 'History of the Puritans,' 58 Neile, Bishop of Rochester, of Lichfield, of Lincoln, of Durham, of Winchester, and Archbishop of York, 10, 11, 13, 57, 70 Newcourt, 'Repertorium,' 118, 183, 218, 222, 241, 243, 249, 250, 273 Newmarket, hunting palace built for Charles II. at, 225 Newport, Lord, 218 Newton, Sir Isaac, 154, 193, 232, 246, 247, 324, 327 Noble, 'Biographical History of England,' 225, 330 Non-jurors, the, 264, 281 Norris, Lord, 38, 39 Norwich, diocese of, overrun with lecturers, 22; weavers at, Bishop Wren's treatment of, 23, 25 Notes and queries, 90 Oates, Titus, 226 Oldenburg, Mr., Secretary of the Royal Society, 299 Oughtred, the Rev. W., 78; his death from joy at the Restoration, 79 Oxford, 25, 31, 74, 75, 90, 93, 140, 144, 192, 217, 232 Papin, Denys, inventor of Papin's Digestor, 229, 230 Parentalia, the, 26, 32, 34, 66, 74, 82, 87, 90, 98, 153, 154, 155, 177, 200, 201, 203, 223, 235, 247, 281, 325, 326, 330 Pascal, 101, 102, 148 Pearson, Dr., His sermon at Bishop Wren's funeral, 160 Peck, 'Desiderata Curiosa,' 46, 75, 160 Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 6, 134; Consecration of chapel of, 162; Bishop Wren buried at, 160; Matthew Wren buried at, 161; Sir C. Wren's son educated at, 265 Pepys' Diary, 118, 142, 143, 144, 156, 158, 161, 175, 178, 182, 228 Perier, Madame, 'Vie de Pascal,' 102 Peter the Great at Sayes Court, 286, 287 Peterhouse, Cambridge, 15, 17, 45, 88, 153, 160 Petty, Dr., afterwards Sir William, 89, 124, 125 Phelp, Richard, bell-founder, 321, 323 Philosophical Society, the, 126 Philosophy Act, the, kept at Cambridge, 6; at Oxford, 93 Physicians, College of, built by Wren, 265 Pierce, Edward, sculptor under Wren, 207 Pigott, Mrs., only surviving descendant of Sir C. Wren, 231, 304, 317 Plague, the (in 1636), 25; (in 1665), 142, 143, 144, 154, 243 Plot, Dr., 142, 300 Pope, 'Moral Essays,' 208 -- 'Dunciad,' 330 Popish Plot, the, 227 Portland, Earl of, 282, 303 Portland quarries, the, 221, 279 Prayer Book, the, 65, 69, 118 -- of Edward VI., the first, 121 Prynne, William, 44, 45, 50, 70 'Quench Coal,' pamphlet by Prynne, 44 'Querela Cantabrigiensis,' 76 Raikes, Captain, 'History of the Honourable Artillery Company,' 185 Randolph, Thomas, 90 Red Book of the Garter, the, 68 Renegado, form of penance and reconciliation for, 19, 20 Restoration, the, 79 Rooke, Laurence, Astronomy Professor at Gresham College, 125, 128 Rowe, Sir Thomas, 34, 35 Royal Exchange, the, rebuilt by C. Wren, 178 Royal Society, the, 95, 124, 129, 141, 145, 154, 159, 193, 194, 203, 208, 222, 223, 228, 230, 231, 239, 240, 246, 284, 299, 327, 333; 'History of,' by Sprat, 95 -- 'History of,' by Weld, 124, 327 Ryswick, peace of (1697), 271 Ryves, Dr., Bruno, Dean of Chichester, and of Windsor, and Registrar of the Garter, 123 S. Alban's, Lord, 146, 148, 241 -- Alban's, Wood St., rebuilt by Wren, 248 -- Andrew's, Holborn, rebuilt by Wren, 259, 297 -- Andrew's-by-the-Wardrobe, rebuilt by Wren, 271 SS. Anne and Agnes' Church, rebuilt by Wren, 218 S. Anne's, Soho, 300 -- Antholin's, Watling St., rebuilt by Wren, 233; destruction of, 234 -- Augustine's Church, 234 -- Bartholomew's, Bartholomew Lane, rebuilt by Wren, 218; destroyed to give site for the Sun Fire-office, 219 -- Bartholomew's Day (1662), 122 -- Bennet's, Gracechurch St., rebuilt by Wren, 250; destruction of, 250 -- Bennet's, Paul's Wharf, rebuilt by Wren, 243 -- Bennet Fink, rebuilt by Wren, 194; destruction of, 194 S. Bride's, Fleet St., rebuilt by Wren, 219, 220 -- Christopher-le-Stocks, repaired by Wren, 185 -- Clement Danes, rebuilt by Wren, 233 -- -- Eastcheap, rebuilt by Wren, 252 -- Dionysius or S. Dionis, Back Church, rebuilt by Wren, 194; destruction of, 194 -- Dunstan's in the East, repaired by Wren, 287, 288 -- Edmund the King, rebuilt by Wren, 267 -- Faith (crypt of S. Paul's), built by Wren, 262 -- George's, Botolph Lane, rebuilt by Wren, 194 -- George's Chapel, Windsor, 4, 5, 67, 68, 209 -- Gregory's Church, 41, 99, 250 -- James's, Garlickhithe, rebuilt by Wren, 243 -- -- Westminster, built by Wren, 241, 242, 310 -- John's College, 31, 71 -- Lawrence, Jewry, rebuilt by Wren, 206 -- Magnus, London Bridge, 5; rebuilt by Wren, 204, 297 -- Margaret's, Fish St., 5 -- -- Lothbury, rebuilt by Wren, 267 -- -- Pattens, rebuilt by Wren, 259 -- Martin's-in-the-Fields, 191; rebuilt by Gibbs, 233 -- Martin's, Ludgate Hill, rebuilt by Wren, 248 -- Mary's, Abchurch, rebuilt by Wren, 252 -- -- Aldermanbury, rebuilt by Wren, 207 -- -- -at-Hill, 191 -- -- -le-Bow, rebuilt by Wren, 183 S. Mary-le-Strand, built by Gibbs, 233, 305 -- -- Somerset, rebuilt by Wren, 273 -- -- Woolnoth, repaired by Wren, rebuilt by Hawksmore, 206 -- -- Magdalene, Fish St., rebuilt by Wren, 248 -- Matthew's, Friday St., rebuilt by Wren, 250 -- Michael's, Bassishaw, rebuilt by Wren, 219 -- -- Cornhill, rebuilt by Wren, 191 -- -- Crooked Lane, rebuilt by Wren, 262; destruction of (1830), 262 -- -- Queenhithe, repaired by Wren, 207 -- Mary's, Royal College Hill, rebuilt by Strong, Wren's master-mason, 272 -- Mildred's, Bread St., rebuilt by Wren, 240 -- -- Poultry, rebuilt by Wren, 205; destruction of, in 1872, 205 -- Nicholas, Cole Abbey, rebuilt by Wren, 206 -- Olave's, Jewry, rebuilt by Wren, 194 -- Paul's Cathedral, old, repairs of, 41, 42; attacked by the Puritan mob (1640), 46-47; meeting of the Convocation of Canterbury at (1661), 119; Wren's proposed repairs of, 139, 140, 154; burning of, in the Great Fire (1666), 156, 158; removing the ruins of, 165; Sancroft's letters to Wren respecting, 166, 168; Wren's account of the effect of the fire upon, 169, 170, 171; sale of the ruins of, for the rebuilding of parochial churches, 186, 187; ruins of, blown up with gunpowder, 187, 188; New or present building, different designs for, and Wren's model of, 196, 197; first stone of, laid by Wren, 200; Wren's care in laying the foundations of, 201; Bishop Compton's address to obtain contributions for, 220; quarries of Portland stone set apart for, 221; the crypt of, finished, 261, 262; part of the money for, taken by Parliament for the expenses of King William's wars, 273; placing of the organ in, 273, 274, 275; opening of the choir of, 279; Wren's order against swearing among the workmen in, 285; morning-prayer chapel of, opened, 288; burial of Jane Wren in, 300; thanksgiving for the victory of Blenheim at, 301; covering of the dome of, with lead, 303; last stone of, laid by Wren's son, 318, 319; the iron gates set up in, 324; Wren's design for east end of, 324, 325; iron fence round, 326; design of the commissioners to put up a balustrade, in, 328; late improvements in, 334 S. Peter's, Cornhill, rebuilt by Wren, 233; charitable legacies belonging to, 233 -- Sepulchre's Church, 182, 183 -- Stephen's, Coleman St., rebuilt by Wren, 205 -- -- Walbrook, rebuilt by Wren, 192, 225, 226 -- Swithin's, Cannon St., rebuilt by Wren, 219 -- Vedast's, Foster Lane, steeple of, added by Wren, 273 Salisbury Cathedral, Wren's work at, 17 Sancroft, Dr., Dean of S. Paul's and Archbishop of Canterbury, appointed a S. Paul's commissioner, 154; sermon of, after the Fire, 1, 5; letters of, to Sir C. Wren, 166-168; contributions of, to the building of S. Paul's, 220; imprisonment of, in the Tower, 260, 261; refuses to take the oath of allegiance to William III., 264 Savoy conference, the, 120 Sayes Court occupied by Peter the Great, 286, 287 Scarborough, Sir Charles, 78, 224 Scudamore, Lord, 19 'Sessional Papers, R. I. B. A.,' 267, 268 Seven Bishops, the, trial of, 235, 260 Seward, 'Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons,' 222 Sheldon, Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, 140, 146 Sheldonian Theatre, the, built by Wren, 140, 331 Sherlock, Dean of S. Paul's, 281 Simpson, Dr. Sparrow, 'Documents illustrating the History of S. Paul's,' 27, 274, 280, 288, 323 Smith, Bernard, or Father, builder of organ at S. Paul's, 275, 288 South, Dr., 69, 141 Spain, expedition of the Prince of Wales to, 7, 9 'Spectator, the,' 179 Sprat, Dr., Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Rochester, his account of the meetings of the Royal Society, 95; 'History of Royal Society,' 95; letters of, to Christopher Wren, 105, 132, 133; his sermon before the Commons, 209; is succeeded by Atterbury, 289 Steele, Sir R., 'The Tatler,' 239 Strafford, Lord, 48, 49, 50 Strong, Edward, Wren's master-mason, 272, 284, 297, 303 -- Thomas, brother of Edward, 200 Tangiers, fortifications of, 132 Tenison, Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury, his secret ordination by Bishop Duppa, 123; founding of a library at S. Martin's by, 226; building of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, Conduit St., by, 243 Temple Bar, built by Wren, 179 Tijou, M., worker in iron, maker of the gates in S. Paul's, 324, 326 Tilbury Fort, 216 Torricelli, his invention of the barometer, 100, 101 Tower of London, the, 44, 58, 59, 69, 71, 87, 114, 115, 187, 210, 211, 260, 261 Tradescant, John, collector of the objects of natural history in the Oxford Museum, 217 Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, 235 Trinity College, Oxford, 144, 145, 146 Trinity College, Cambridge, 146 Turner, Bishop of Ely, 260 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 286, 305 Van Vianen, Christian, 37 Ven, Colonel, 68 Verrio, painter, his work at Whitehall and Windsor, 252 Wadham College, Oxford, 73, 77, 79, 93, 95, 105 Waller, Edmund, 9, 196 Waller, Sir William, sack of the city of Chichester by, 79, 123 Wallis, Dr., 77, 78, 112, 141, 222, 223 Walpole, 'Anecdotes of Painting,' 37, 268 Walworth, Sir William, his tomb, 262 Ward, 'Lives of the Gresham Professors,' 79, 89, 128, 226 Ward, Dr. Seth., Bishop of Exeter, of Salisbury, 90, 124, 125, 171, 206 'Warwickshire Worthies,' 3, 330 Weather-clock, the invention of, by Wren, 89 Weavers, the, at Norwich, 23 Weld, 'History of the Royal Society,' 124, 193, 327 Westminster Abbey, 57, 230, 289, 293, 320, 331 -- School, 41, 57, 69, 90, 231 White, Bishop of Peterborough, 260, 281 Whitehall, 144, 149, 252, 299, 317 Whittington, Sir Richard, 272 Wilkins, Dr. John, Bishop of Chester, 74, 77, 93, 94, 95, 124, 206 William, Prince of Orange, 49 William III., 208, 263, 268, 299 Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and Archbishop of York, 57, 59 Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, 220 Winchester, Wren's scheme for palace at, 234, 235 -- House, conference at, 10, 11 Windsor, 4, 16, 37, 40, 68, 263, 264, 265, 300 Wiseman, attack of the mob on Westminster Abbey, led by, 57 Wood, 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' 153 -- 'Fasti,' 223 Wood, Philip, carvings of, 253-255 Woodward, Dr., 202, 203 Worcester, battle of (1651), 91, 93 'Workman, the British,' 253 Wren, Capt, 161, 162 -- Charles, son of Bishop Wren, 161 Wren, Christopher, Dr., birth of, 5; education of, 31; given the living of Fonthill Bishops, 31; of East Knoyle, 31; made Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter, 34; made rector of Great Haseley, 38; building at Windsor for Charles I. designed by, 40; his care for the treasures of the Order of the Garter, 67; letter of, to the Knights of the Garter, 80, 81; death of, 96 Wren, Sir Christopher, birth of, 32; sent to school at Westminster, 41; his Latin letter to his father, 42, 43; goes to Oxford, 73, 74; his life there, 77, 78; his translation of the 'Clavis Aurea,' 78, 79; his early Inventions, 88, 89, 90; friendship of, with Evelyn, 93, 94; made Gresham professor of astronomy, 97; his first lecture, 97, 98; discovery of the barometer by, 101; origin of the Royal Society in meetings in his rooms, 124; is made Savilian professor, 125; and doctor of civil laws at Oxford and Cambridge, 126; his letter to Lord Brouncker on Experiments, 126, 127; writes the preamble to the Charter of the Royal Society, 129; declines the commission to direct the fortifications of Tangiers, 132; his designs for the chapel at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 134; his letter to Dr. Bathurst, 144; his journey abroad, 146; his journal, 149-152; his return to London and inspection of S. Paul's, 154; his plan for rebuilding the city after the fire, 157, 158, 172, 173; Sancroft's letters to him as to the patching of S. Paul's, 166-171; his work at Salisbury Cathedral, 171; letter of, to Faith Coghill, 177; his marriage, 178; rebuilding of the Exchange by, 178; building of Temple Bar by, 178; petition of, to Charles II., 180-182; rebuilding of Bow Church by, 183-184; of S. Christopher-le-Stocks, 184; is made a member of the Honourable Artillery Company, 185; resigns the Savilian astronomy professorship, 186; appointed architect of S. Paul's, 187; clears away the ruins of old S. Paul's, 187; his experiment in blowing up the tower with gunpowder, 188; his use of a battering ram, 188; birth of his eldest son, 191; repair of S. Mary-at-Hill by, 191; building of S. Stephen's, Walbrook, by, 192, 225; knighted by Charles II., 194; rebuilding of Drury Lane by, 196; salary as architect of S. Paul's, 196; his model for S. Paul's, 196-198; lays the first stone of S. Paul's, 200; death of his wife, 203; his second marriage, 203; rebuilding of eight city churches by, 204-207; building of the Monument by, 207; his designs for a monument to Charles I., 209; building of the chapel at Emmanuel College by, 216; of the Observatory at Greenwich, 216; birth of his daughter Jane, 217; rebuilding of five more city churches by, 218, 219; the marking out of the dome of S. Paul's by, 222; death of his second wife, 226; elected President of the Royal Society, 228; Christ Church gateway built by, 232; All Hallows, Bread Street, rebuilt by, 232; S. Peter's, Cornhill, and S. Clement Danes rebuilt by, 233; his design for a palace at Winchester, 234, 235; Chelsea Hospital built by, 240; S. James's, Westminster, built by, 241; Chichester Cathedral repaired by, 245; Fawley Court built by, 245; made Controller of the Works, 246; elected member for Plympton, 247; eight more city churches built by, 248-252; death of his sister Susan, 261; buildings by, erected at Windsor, 264, 265; College of Physicians built by, 265; halls of city companies rebuilt by, 266; Hampton Court palace rebuilt by, 257, 268; scheme of, for Greenwich Palace, 269; his difficulties in placing the organ of S. Paul's, 273; invention by, of a pulpit on wheels, 280; letter of, to his son in Paris, 282, 283; chosen Grand Master of the Freemasons, 285; Marlborough House built by, 286; S. Dunstan's-in-the-East repaired by, 287, 288; statement of, as to repairs of Westminster Abbey, 289-293; elected member for Weymouth, 298; death of his daughter Jane, 300; second letter of, to his son, 302, 303; letter of, on church building, 305-313; private houses built by, 317; last stone of S. Paul's laid by his son, 318; attack on, by S. Paul's Commissioners, 320; his petition to Queen Anne, 320, 322; his unfulfilled design for east end of S. Paul's, 324, 325; dismissal of, by George I., from the post of surveyor-general, 329; purchase of Wroxhall Abbey by, 330; his studies and papers in cipher respecting the longitude at sea, 331, 332; his death 333; his burial and monument, 334 Wren Christopher, son of Sir C. Wren, 200, 265, 269, 281, 282, 283, 302, 303, 304, 318, 330 Wren, Francis, 5 -- Geoffrey, 4, 5 -- Jane, daughter of Sir C. Wren, 217, 269, 288, 300, 301 -- Matthew, birth and education of, 6; sent with the Prince to Spain, 7, 8; return and statement of, to three Bishops respecting the Prince of Wales, 10-13; elected Master of Peterhouse, 15; made Dean of Windsor, 16; his marriage, 16; made Bishop of Hereford, 17; Clerk of the Closet, 17; service composed by, for the Reconciliation of Renegados, 19, 20; made Bishop of Norwich, 23; translated to Ely, 44; his care for his diocese, 45, 46; Sir Harbottle Grimston's and Hampden's attack upon him, 48, 49; officiates at the marriage of Princess Mary, 49; resigns the Deanery of the Chapels Royal, 51; articles of accusation drawn up against him in the Commons, 55; his imprisonment, 58; his defence, 61-66; death of his wife, 85; his life in the Tower, 86; refuses freedom on Cromwell's terms, 100; his conferences with Dr. Barwick, 110-113; released from prison, 115, 116; revision of the Prayer Book by, 120; consecration and dedication of Pembroke Chapel by, 152; second visitation, 153; death and funeral of, 159, 160, 161 Wren, Matthew, son of Bishop Wren, 60, 78, 85, 88, 92, 103, 112, 124, 160, 161, 194 -- Stephen, grandson of Sir C. Wren, 224 -- Susan, daughter of Dean Wren, 34, 41. _See_ Holder. -- Thomas, son of Bishop Wren, 161, 162, 224 -- William, 4, 5 -- Sir William, son of Bishop Wren, 161, 162 Wrenne, ancient form of spelling Wren, 4 Wrenne, John, 4 Wroxhall Abbey, purchase of, by Sir C. Wren, 330 York, Duke of, 160, 185, 228, 234. _See_ James II. LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET * * * * * Transcriber's note: Separate characters 'oe' are used for the 'oe' ligature. Each chapter begins with a separate chapter page and summary, followed by a separate epigraph page, and an additional chapter heading. The redundant chapter headings have been removed. Quoted matter was printed with a reverse, or hanging indentation, with the first line of each quotation on the normal margin and the remaining lines indented. This indentation was repeated on each new page. These quotations are rendered here by simply indenting all the quoted matter. The reference made in Archbishop Laud's diary, quoted on p. 48, would seem to be to Isaiah 50 (i e., 'l'). Words found only when hyphenated across lines were handled according to modern usage. A number of words are found both with and without hyphens in mid-line, and are left as printed. Irregularities in the punctuation of the Index have been corrected. The entry for Nicholas Hawksmore was incorrectly placed, and has been moved to its proper position. An incorrect page reference for the Tower of London (pp. 211, 212) was changed to pp. 210, 211 where the White Tower is discussed. The following corrections, most of them sins of omission, presumably by the printer, are corrected, except as noted. There is a discrepancy in the quotation marks on p. 64 which is not readily resolved, and has been left as printed. Corrections: p. 32 _March_ 1631[.] (O.S.) Removed. p. 43 foveasque sinu.['] Removed. p. 64 of Popish recusants.['] ... not to say _sic?_. p. 76 propriety of our goods[.] Removed. p. 89 n. 56 an interesting [a]ccount Added. p. 127 made as bi[g] as a tennis-ball Added. p. 149 n.102 in the fire[ ]at Whitehall Space added. p. 153 n. 105 repeated at [t]he consecration Added. p. 167 [']Sir,--Yesterday my Lords of Canterbury Added. p. 245 n. 190 _Memorials of the See of Chichester_, p. 306[.] Added. 
43477	----	[Illustration: LINCOLN FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo_.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF LINCOLN A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A LIST OF THE BISHOPS BY A. F. KENDRICK, B.A. WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: Arms of the See] LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1902 _First Published July 1898_ _Reprinted, with corrections, 1899, 1902_ THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED EDINBURGH GENERAL PREFACE This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide-books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of Archæology and History, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--(1) the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; (2) the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the Transactions of the Antiquarian and Archæological Societies; (3) the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls; (4) the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and (5) the very excellent series of Handbooks to the Cathedrals originated by the late Mr John Murray; to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. AUTHOR'S PREFACE The literature on the subject of Lincoln Minster is considerable, but scattered. The valuable researches of the late Precentor Venables published chiefly in the _Archæological Journal_, claim the first place among authorities consulted in the preparation of the present handbook. The works of Freeman, Scott, Rickman, and Parker have also been referred to. For the Episcopal Visitations, Prebendary Perry's account in the thirty-eighth volume of the _Archæological Journal_ has been followed; and for the Inventories of the Treasures, that of Prebendary Wordsworth in the fifty-third volume of the _Archæologia_. Holinshed's "Chronicles," Bright's "Early English Church History," and the topographical works of Leland, Dugdale, Camden, and Stukeley, contain useful information on the subject. In the Rolls series, the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, Roger de Hoveden, and Giraldus Cambrensis, as well as the annals of various reigns and the "Magna Vita" of St. Hugh, have been consulted. A number of old guides in the Library of the British Museum contain useful MS. notes. Some of the other works referred to have been acknowledged in the pages of this book. The author has to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr J. Shillaker and Mr G. H. Palmer for kind suggestions. Mr P. G. Trendell has prepared the list of the Bishops, and has given valued help in other ways. The illustrations are largely taken from photographs reproduced by the kindness of the Photochrom Co., Messrs S. B. Bolas & Co., Mr F. G. M. Beaumont, and Mr H. C. Oakden; others are from the Lincoln volume of the Proceedings of the Archæological Institute (1848). A. F. K. _May 1898._ CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER I.--The History of the Building 3 CHAPTER II.--The Exterior 43 The West Front 44 The Western Towers 55 The Galilee Porch 57 The Chapter Archives 59 The Central Tower 59 The Bells in the Central Tower 61 The Presbytery 65 The Chantry Chapels 68 The East End 71 The Minster Yard 74 The Palace of the Bishops 76 The Deanery 78 The Cantelupe Chantry House 78 The Vicars' Court 80 CHAPTER III.--The Interior, including the Cloisters and Chapter-house 82 The Ground Plan 83 The Vestibule 83 The Nave 86 The Nave Pulpit 93 The Central Tower 93 The Western Transept 94 The "Dean's Eye" and the "Bishop's Eye" 96 The Screen 99 St. Hugh's Choir 103 The Choir Stalls 105 The Bishop's Throne and the Pulpit 107 The Reredos 108 The Easter Sepulchre 109 The South Aisle 110 The Shrine of the Little St. Hugh 110 The North Aisle 112 The Eastern Transept 112 The Dean's Chapel 115 The Choristers' Vestry 118 The Angel Choir 121 The Lincoln Imp 125 The Stained Glass 91, 126 The Fleming Chantry 126 The Russell Chantry 128 Bishop Longland's Chantry 128 The Monuments 92, 129 The Cloisters 137 The Library 141 The Chapter-house 144 CHAPTER IV.--List of the Bishops of Lincoln 145 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Lincoln from the South-West _Frontispiece_ The Cathedral from the South-West 2 Old Map of Lincoln 7 Seals of William De Roumara, Earl of Lincoln, and of Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln 12 Seal of Henry De Lacy, Earl of Lincoln 13 Monumental Crocket 16 The Cathedral in the Seventeenth Century 21 Early English Pier 25 The West Front and the Exchequer Gate, by P. De Wint 33 The Observatory Tower, Lincoln Castle 39 The Stone Bow 42 The West Front 45 Carved Work of the Central Doorway at the West End 49 The Minster from the Castle, by F. Mackenzie 53 Galilee Porch, and South Side of the Nave 58 The Central Tower, from the South 60 The Minster from the Cloisters, by F. Mackenzie 63 South-East Porch, with the Chantry Chapels of Bishops Longland and Russell 66 Cast of the Figure of Christ, in the South-East Porch 67 View from the South-East 69 North Doorway of the Angel Choir 73 North Side of the Angel Choir 75 Elevation of the former Chapel of the Bishop's Palace, with Bishop Alnwick's Tower 77 Plan of the Bishop's Palace, Lincoln, on the level of the Hall Floor 79 View of the Ancient Deanery 80 Part of the Ancient Deanery, with Dean Fleming's Tower 81 Elevation of One Bay on the North Side of the Nave 84 Half Section of the Nave, looking West 85 The Nave, looking West 87 Part of the Double Arcading of St. Hugh 89 The West Transept, looking South 94 Aisle Doorway, North of St. Hugh's Choir 100 The Choir, looking East 101 The East Transept, looking North 113 Triforium on the West Side of St. Hugh's Transept 117 North Side of the Angel Choir 119 East End of the Angel Choir 123 The Lincoln Imp 125 Triforium of the Angel Choir 127 Tomb of Sir Bartholomew Burghersh 133 Bishop Wordsworth's Tomb 138 The Cloisters, from the North-East Corner 139 Arcade in the Chapter-house 141 Capital in the Chapter-house 142 The Chapter-house 143 PLAN OF THE CATHEDRAL 150 [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SOUTH-WEST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] LINCOLN CATHEDRAL CHAPTER I THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING The venerable walls of Lincoln Minster look down from their proud position upon a city far more ancient than themselves. Long before the arrival of the Saxons and Angles, the spot on which Lincoln Minster and Castle stand, had been occupied by a settlement bearing a name which has survived through various changes to the present day. "Lincoln" is "Lindum Colonia": the latter word dates from the Roman occupation of Britain, and is sufficient to show the importance of the city at such an early period; the former carries us back further still to the times of the ancient Britons, whose dwelling on the "dun" or hill, was named "Llin-dun," from the "llin" or mere at its foot. The hill is that on which the minster now stands, and the mere still survives in the harbour of Brayford. The limits of the Roman city on the summit of the hill were marked by massive quadrangular walls, of which fragments may be seen at the present day. These walls were pierced with four gates; the position of the east and west gates is marked by the streets bearing these names; the southern gateway was still in existence at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but was battered down by a man named Houghton about the year 1707. The old Roman road to the north still passes under the northern or "Newport" gate. The city occupied a proud position, and its importance in Roman times is shewn by the fact that it was the meeting-point of five main roads, two of which, the Foss Way and Ermine Street, met a little south of the present church of St. Botolph, and formed what is now the High Street of the city. Remains of Roman Lincoln are abundant, and some are preserved within the minster precincts. Passing on to the time of the Saxons, we read that the indefatigable missionary Paulinus, Bishop of York, journeyed into the neighbouring district of Lindsey, and "preached in the old Roman hill-town of Lincoln." His labour was rewarded by the conversion (about the year 628) of its "prefect" Blaecca, who immediately set about building "a stone church of noble workmanship" for the use of the converts to the new faith. But it is not directly to the preaching of Paulinus, nor to the energy of Blaecca, that we owe the foundation of the minster. The "stone church" is now almost certainly represented by the church of St. Paul, in Bailgate, a church which still retains the name, though in a corrupted form, of the first great Christian missionary to the people of Lincoln. In this church Honorius was consecrated by Paulinus to succeed Justus as Archbishop of Canterbury. The little village of Stow, eleven miles to the north-west of the city, has been identified by Professor Freeman as "the ancient Sidnacester," and can thus claim to be the original seat of the diocese of Lincoln. The venerable church of St. Mary at Stow was called by Camden "the mother-church to Lincoln." In the year 678, when the huge Northumbrian diocese of Wilfrid was divided, Egfrid of Northumbria built a church at Sidnacester. This church was made the "bishopstool" of the new diocese of Lindsey, and the line of bishops may be traced for two hundred years, from Eadhed to Berhtred. During the bishopric of the latter, about the year 870, the church at Stow was burnt in an invasion of the Northmen, and in consequence of their ravages the see remained vacant for a period of eighty years. Lincoln itself fell into the hands of the invaders, and became the chief of the "Five Boroughs" of the Danish Confederation. From this time until the Norman invasion the borough continued to be governed by its twelve hereditary Danish law-men. About the middle of the tenth century, the seat of the bishops of this district was removed for security to Dorchester-on-Thames, in the very farthest corner of the vast diocese, where it was protected by the fortified camp. The Mercian see of Leicester was here united with that of Sidnacester, and in the next century Eadnoth, the second of the name, is styled Bishop of Dorchester, Leicester, and Sidnacester. The little city by the Thames was not long to enjoy the honour of being the "bishopstool" of the largest diocese in England. As the Saxons gave way before their Norman conquerors, the Saxon bishop of Dorchester was succeeded by the Norman bishop of Lincoln. William the Conqueror brought many prelates in his train, and not the least conspicuous among them was Remigius, who was destined soon to share largely in the spoils of the newly-conquered country. This man was Almoner of Fécamp on the coast of Normandy. His offer, for the projected invasion, of a single ship with twenty knights, procured him the promise of the first English bishopric vacant, and the Conqueror redeemed his word on the death of Wulfwig, Bishop of Dorchester. In the first years of his episcopate, Remigius commenced to build on a stately scale at Dorchester, but it seemed to him inconvenient, so Henry of Huntingdon records, that the see should be in a corner of the diocese. Remigius had already begun to look on the "distinguished city of Lincoln" as being more worthy to be the seat of a bishop, when in the year 1072 a council held at Windsor decreed that bishops should fix their sees in walled towns instead of villages. Remigius would naturally turn to the district of Lindsey, whence his predecessors had come, and with his choice of Lincoln begins the history of our minster. The city at this time, according to the Domesday record, boasted eleven hundred and sixty inhabited houses. The Conqueror, "in feare of rebellious commotions," had already commenced the erection of a castle there to overawe the surrounding country. For this purpose, one hundred and sixty-six houses were destroyed on the top of the hill, within the bounds of the Roman walls. Their inhabitants were driven beyond the Witham to found a new town in the plain beneath, where the land belonged to Coleswegen, an English favourite of the king. The towers of St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts stand to this day as the venerable relics of the churches built by him for these new tenants of his estate. They are extremely valuable records, being monuments of the earlier--Saxon--style of architecture, reared by Englishmen, while the castle and cathedral in the more advanced Norman style were rising on the height above. The following is Henry of Huntingdon's account of the transference of the see, translated by Precentor Venables:--"The king" (William the Conqueror) "had given Remigius who had been a monk at Fescamp the bishopric of Dorchester which is situated on the Thames. This bishopric being larger than all others in England, stretching from the Thames to the Humber, the bishop thought it troublesome to have his episcopal see at the extreme limit of his diocese. He was also displeased with the smallness of the town, the most illustrious city appearing far more worthy to be the see of a bishop. He therefore bought certain lands on the highest parts of the city, near the castle standing aloft with its strong towers, and built a church, strong as the place was strong, and fair as the place was fair, dedicated to the Virgin of Virgins, which should both be a joy to the servants of God, and as befitted the time unconquerable by enemies." The transference of the see must have taken place between 1072 and 1075, since at the council held in the former year at Windsor, Remigius signed himself "Episcopus Dorcacensis," and three years later at the council of London "Episcopus Lincolniensis." Lincoln thus became the centre of a diocese comprising an enormous area, including the ten following counties:--Lincoln, Northampton, Rutland, Leicester, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford and Hertford. In the strong city beneath the massive walls of William's castle, Remigius could build in safety, not hindered, as his predecessors at Stow had been, by the fear of fierce invaders from across the sea. The piece of ground purchased by Remigius lay a few hundred yards to the east of William's castle, just within the Roman wall of the upper city. It was the site of an earlier church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, which was no doubt entirely destroyed to make room for the prouder edifice of Remigius, and for the next 250 years, the parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene retained the right of assembling in the nave of the minster. The building thus served a double purpose until the time of Bishop John de Dalderby (1300-20), who completed the arrangements begun by his predecessor for the union of the parish of St. Mary Magdalene with that of All Saints. [Illustration: OLD MAP OF LINCOLN. (From Stukeley's _Itinerarium Curiosum_, 1722.)] The church of Remigius was cruciform, with a short eastern limb, terminating in a semi-circular apse, which, unlike those of Norwich and Gloucester, was destitute of aisles. In the west front, with its three deep and lofty arches, and its two niche-like recesses, we still see the work of the first bishop, but the structure has been twice extended in an easterly direction--once by Bishop Hugh of Avalon, who built the present choir; and the second time to receive that bishop's miracle-working relics, and to afford room for the large and increasing throng of pilgrims that visited his shrine. The existing portions of the fabric built by Remigius are the west front, part of the first bay of the nave, and the side walls now enclosed in Early English chapels. The black basalt font in the nave is of the same period. On the erection of St. Hugh's choir, at the end of the twelfth century, the whole eastern limb of the original structure was removed. But the foundations remained, and were discovered in 1852 by Mr. T. J. Willson, architect, of Lincoln, under the floor of the present choir. The apse was found to have extended a little way beyond where the litany-stool now stands in the choir. The foundations of the lateral walls were also laid bare for some distance. Just beyond the springing of the apse on the north side, there are traces of a pilaster buttress, and on the inside of the lateral walls, sixteen feet from the springing of the apse, the foundations still exist of the piers of the great transverse arch which divided the presbytery from the choir of the Norman church. The measurement of these foundations, as well as the still-existing west front, are sufficient to show the sturdy strength of the early church. The walls of the apse must have been about eight feet thick. There appears to have been a lantern of some kind over the crossing, since the tower which fell in 1237-9 was called _Nova turris_. The edifice was begun and completed by the energetic bishop, and was ready for consecration within twenty years of its commencement. To judge from the portions yet remaining, the building must have been severely plain; not a moulding softens down the rugged edges in those parts which are still as Remigius left them. But it was solid and strong, built to stand the wear and tear of many centuries. In fact, so like a fortress was it, that Stephen used it as such fifty years after, when the castle opposite was held by his enemies. Precentor Venables thus gives the dimensions of Remigius' church--300 feet in interior length, 160 feet less than at present; 28 feet in breadth, as against 38 feet at present, and 60 feet in height to the level of the ceiling. The roof was undoubtedly of wood, and probably a flat one of painted boards, like those of the transepts at Peterborough. The contemporary church at Canterbury, built by the primate Lanfranc, was roofed in this way. The present nave is 82 feet high, and the choir 74 feet; the comparison of these dimensions with those already given shew that the old church was in every way smaller. And this is only natural. In Norman churches, the stalls for the choir and clergy were usually placed under the lantern or in the first bays of the nave, as at Westminster, Norwich, Winchester and other places. For this and for other reasons the naves were long. The eastern limbs, however, were short, and it remained for later builders to extend them for the transference of the stalls to this part, and to erect Lady Chapels beyond. Remigius was not destined to witness the consecration of the cathedral he had reared. At the council of Windsor in the year 1072, Thomas, archbishop of York, had laid claim to a jurisdiction over the diocese of Lindsey, which claim had been disallowed. When the question of the consecration of the new cathedral arose, Thomas renewed his pretensions, and the ceremony was thus delayed. We learn from Roger de Hoveden that Remigius, feeling the day of his death draw near, wished to have the church consecrated as soon as possible, and that Rufus was finally won over by a sum of money from the bishop. A date was fixed, the 9th of May, 1092, and all the bishops throughout the country were summoned to be present for the occasion. But on Ascension-day, three days before, Remigius died. He was buried in his own church, before the Altar of the Holy Cross, which stood in front of the screen that carried the rood. The character of the energetic bishop is given in a few words by the historian Henry of Huntingdon--small in stature, but great of heart, swarthy in colour, but comely in deeds (_statura parvus, sed corde magnus, colore fuscus, sed operibus venustus_). His successor was Robert Bloet, Chancellor to William Rufus, but Thomas of York objected to his consecration as bishop of Lincoln. "He might be Bishop of Dorchester, like his predecessors; but Lindesey, part of the spiritual conquest of Paulinus, was of ancient right subject to the metropolitan authority of York. This claim came to nothing, and Thomas found better scope for his energies in the reform of his own church." [1] A present from Bloet of £5000 to the king set matters right, and the ceremony so long delayed was at last performed. The bishop does not appear to have made any addition to the fabric before his death, which occurred suddenly, while riding with the king in a "deer-fold" at Woodstock (10th January 1123). It was quite otherwise with his successor, Alexander the Magnificent, nephew of the princely Roger of Salisbury. Alexander had already shewn his love of building by the erection of strong castles at Newark, Banbury and Sleaford, when a fire which destroyed the roof of the cathedral about the year 1141, gave him an opportunity of exercising his talent in a direction more fitting to his office. Giraldus Cambrensis relates that in this fire the burning beams fell from the roof and broke the slab of Remigius' tomb. This fact is interesting as adding support to the opinion that the slab now replaced in the nave of the minster was really that which covered the original burial-place of the bishop. Of the stone vaulting with which Alexander replaced the wooden roof after the fire, not a fragment remains; but the lines of the vault may be traced at the western end of the nave and against the two west towers. In addition to this, we learn from Henry of Huntingdon that he so remodelled the church by his "subtle artifice," that it looked more beautiful than in "its first newness," and was not surpassed by any building in England. The difference between the work of Remigius and Alexander is well seen in the west front, where the three great uncompromising arches of the earlier bishop are pierced by the rich and elaborate doorways of the later. We are fairly safe in assigning these to Alexander, and they probably formed part of the work he did, according to Roger de Hoveden, in the year 1146. The intersecting Norman arcade along the west front, just above the work of Remigius, may also be ascribed to Alexander, as well as the lower portions of the two western towers. The connection of these towers with the original west front was unfortunately hidden by the erection of the present Gothic screen-wall. It will be noticed, however, that gables are added at the sides to the Norman work, and traces may be seen which prove that similar gables decorated their western faces. There was probably another gable of larger dimensions in the centre. Precentor Venables thus conjectured the appearance of the west front as begun by Remigius and completed by Alexander: "It was furnished with three gables, like the façade of the cathedral of Ferrara, behind which rose the low Norman towers still existing, richly ornamented with three tiers of arcades, ... and terminated with low spires of timber covered with lead, similar to those which once covered the western towers of Durham, or those still nearer, which have recently been replaced, with happy effect, at Southwell. The angular turrets would also be terminated in a similar manner, giving a picturesque combination of spires." In the time of the "magnificent" bishop, Lincoln was the scene of stirring events, in which the minster played a curious part. The lamentable war between Stephen and Matilda produced a miserable state of confusion and bloodshed in every corner of the land. The strong castle of Lincoln was seized by William de Roumara, Earl of Lincoln, and Ranulph, Earl of Chester, and held for Matilda. The citizens and Bishop Alexander sent word to the king, who hastened to their relief. The king's eye fell on the massive walls of the minster, in such a convenient position opposite the stronghold of the earls. The sacred fabric was seized, and, according to William of Malmesbury, garrisoned as a fortress. Such a proceeding could bring no good fortune to the king, and omens of evil soon followed. As he offered a wax candle in the minster, Henry of Huntingdon tells us, it broke just when Bishop Alexander was about to take it. The chain too, by which the pyx was suspended, snapped asunder, and the sacred vessel fell, in the presence of the bishop. The decisive contest took place soon after; Stephen was left a captive in the hands of his enemies, and the city was taken and plundered. Two years before these events, in 1139, Alexander and his uncle Roger, bishop of Salisbury, had been treacherously seized by the king, and deprived of their treasures and castles. Roger died insane at the end of the same year, and Alexander regained his liberty on resigning his castles. In 1144 Stephen was again at Lincoln, besieging the castle, where his enemies repulsed every attack. Two years later, at Christmas time, the king appeared crowned within the city, in defiance of an ancient superstition which foretold evil to any English sovereign who should do so. Eleven years after, Henry II. out of deference to this tradition, was crowned outside the walls, in the suburb of Wikeford. In 1167, on the death of Bishop Chesney, the king seized the revenues, and the see remained vacant for many years. A prophecy that it would never again be filled seemed likely to prove true, when Geoffrey Plantagenet, a natural son of the king, was elected in 1173. He was never consecrated, and resigned nine years later. During his term of office, Geoffrey gave to the minster "two great sonorous bells," which were probably hung in one of the western towers. [Illustration: Seals of William De Roumara, Earl of Lincoln, and of Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln.] The fabric of the church is considered to have remained as left by Alexander until the year 1185. On the 15th April of this year occurred the great earthquake mentioned by Roger de Hoveden. He tells us that it was felt throughout almost the whole of England, and was of such a severity as had not been known in the land "_ab initio mundi_." The minster was cleft from the top to the bottom. The disasters of this year were more than compensated in the next, when a man was consecrated to the bishopric who has left a name as great as any that figure in the ecclesiastical history of England. St. Hugh of Lincoln was a son of a Lord of Avalon, near Grenoble. At an early age he entered a priory, a dependency of the cathedral church of Grenoble, and near his father's castle and land. About 1160 he was received into the Grand Chartreuse, where he became eventually the procurator or bursar. Henry II. of England, hearing of his fame, sent the bishop of Bath and other ambassadors to the great Carthusian monastery, begging that Hugh should come to England, and take charge of the newly-established monastery of the Carthusians at Witham in Somersetshire. The prior was not at all inclined to part with Hugh, but the matter was settled by the bishop of Grenoble, and Hugh crossed over to England. [Illustration: Seal of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.] At Witham Hugh became a great favourite with the king, who, about ten years after his arrival in this country, offered him the vacant bishopric of Lincoln. The prior was not, however, dazzled by the prospect of a bishop's mitre, and the king had to tax his persuasive powers before he could induce him to exchange Witham for Lincoln. When once installed, Hugh, like Thomas of Canterbury, soon made it clear that he would become no tool in the hands of the king. Henry's chief forester was excommunicated for an offence against the church, and Hugh refused to bestow a vacant prebend on a courtier recommended by the king. The bishop was summoned to the royal presence, Henry instructing his courtiers not to salute him when he entered. Hugh found the king sewing a bandage round a wounded finger, and apparently so occupied as not to notice his approach. The bishop, not at all disconcerted, made some witty remark about the king reminding him of his ancestor of Falaise; whereupon Henry burst into laughter, and explained the joke to his courtiers. In the year 1198, in a council held at Oxford, Hugh and the bishop of Salisbury stood alone in opposing a grant for the king's foreign wars; "the saint of Lincoln, grown into an Englishman on English ground, spoke up for the laws and rights of Englishmen." Richard was furious, and ordered the confiscation of his property; but Hugh stood firm, and the king at last gave way. Yet this dignified assertion of his rights was not accompanied by an arrogant spirit. The miracles which, in an ignorant and superstitious age, were attributed to many who had a reputation for piety, were strenuously disclaimed by him. Such was the man who, in 1186, became bishop of the vast diocese of Lincoln. The building was in a most deplorable state, and Hugh had thus an opportunity of becoming, so to speak, the second founder of the church. He quickly resolved to commence the building entirely afresh from the foundations. The sum of money necessary for this purpose was large, and Hugh proposed to retire to Witham until the accumulated revenues of the see should reach the amount required. Although he was not permitted to do this, he often visited the little Somersetshire monastery, where he would remain for a month or two at a time, doing the duties of a simple monk, and practising all the austerities of the Carthusian order. For six years Hugh diligently collected the materials for carrying out his great scheme, and at last the foundations of a new choir were laid. The year 1192 marks an epoch, not only in the history of Lincoln Minster, and of English architecture, but in that of Gothic architecture generally. "What Diocletian did at Spalato for the round arch, Saint Hugh did at Lincoln for the pointed arch.... We have seen how, while the elder church of Remigius was rising in the stern grandeur of early Norman times, men were still found who clave to the older traditions of independent England. So, while its eastern limb was giving way to the new form which rose at the bidding of Saint Hugh, men were still rearing the naves of Peterborough and Ely, works which shew in their details some signs of the change which was beginning, but which, in their leading lines and proportions, vary not at all from the earlier works which they continue." "St. Hugh was strictly the first to design a building in which the pointed arch should be allowed full play, and should be accompanied by an appropriate system of detail.... To Hugh of Avalon, neither from the West-Saxon nor the Ducal-Burgundian Avalon, ... French and English forms would be alike foreign, and he doubtless gave full play to the taste of his architect, a taste which did nothing less than develop on the soil of Lindesey the first complete and pure form of the third great form of architecture, the architecture of the pointed arch." [2] Who was this architect? What nation did he belong to? These questions are of considerable interest. The first it is easy to answer. In the "_Magna Vita_" of St. Hugh we read that the architect was Geoffrey de Noyers (_Gaufrido de Noiers_). The name certainly looks like that of a foreigner, but from a letter contributed by M. Viollet le Due to the _Gentleman's Magazine_ in May 1861, we must conclude that he was in all respects an Englishman, though doubtless of foreign descent. The letter contains such interesting remarks on the characteristic differences between French and English Gothic, that it may be worth while to quote it in full-- "I expected from what I had heard in England to find at Lincoln the French style of architecture, that is to say, some constructions of the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth which would shew the evident influence of a French architect. But after the most careful examination I could not find in any part of the cathedral of Lincoln, neither in the general design, nor in any part of the system of architecture adopted, nor in the details of ornament, any trace of the French school of the twelfth century (the lay school from 1170 to 1220), so plainly characteristic of the Cathedrals of Paris, Noyon, Senlis, Chartres, Sens, and even Rouen. The part of the cathedral of Lincoln in which the influence of the French school has been supposed to be found, has no resemblance to this. I speak of the choir. On the exterior the choir of the cathedral of Lincoln is thoroughly English, or Norman if you will: one can perceive all the Norman influence; arches acutely pointed, blank windows in the clerestory, reminding one of the basilica covered with a wooden roof; a low triforium; each bay of the aisles divided into two by a small buttress; shafts banded. In the interior, vaults which have not at all the same construction as the French vaults of the end of the twelfth century; arch-mouldings slender, and deeply undercut; the abacus round; the tooth-ornament; which do not at all resemble the ornaments which we find at Paris, Sens, St. Denis, &c. "As to the large rose window of the north transept, which is said to have been executed between 1190 and 1200, without disputing that date, which appears to me rather an early one for it, I cannot consider it as a French composition. In the first place, I do not know a rose window of that period in France which is divided into four compartments; the centre of this window does not resemble the arrangement adopted in France; and as to the decoration with small roses which cover the mouldings, they are a very characteristic English ornament. "Nowhere in France do we find between 1190 and 1200 pillars similar to those at Lincoln, with the crockets placed between the shafts; nowhere in France do we find crockets carved like these; nowhere shafts with hexagonal concave section; nowhere capitals or abacus similar to those of these pillars. [Illustration: Monumental Crocket.] "Moreover, I confess that I cannot believe readily in the date of 1190 to 1200 for the different parts of this choir; but that the date of 1220, or 1210 at the earliest, seems to me to agree better with the architectural character. We have in Normandy, especially in the cathedral of Rouen and the church of Eu, architecture of the date of 1190; it is purely French, that is to say, it corresponds exactly with the architecture of the 'Isle de France' except in certain details. At Eu, at the cathedral of Le Mans, at Seez, we have architecture which resembles that of the choir of Lincoln, but that architecture is from 1210 to 1220, it is the Norman school of the thirteenth century. There is, indeed, at Lincoln, an effort at, a tendency to originality, a style of ornament which attempts to emancipate itself; nevertheless the character is purely Anglo-Norman. "The construction is English, the profiles of the mouldings are English, the ornaments are English, the execution of the work belongs to the English school of workmen of the beginning of the thirteenth century." Sir G. G. Scott was entirely in agreement with the eminent French authority on this point. And the matter was summed up by Precentor Venables in the following words[3]:--"Regarding the choir and eastern transept of Lincoln, as we are fully justified in doing, as an English work, great and peculiar interest attaches to it as the earliest dated example of pure Gothic architecture, without any lingering trace of Transitional feeling; the first perfect development of what is known as the Early English style. Other examples of this style might, it is true, were their dates known, prove to have been earlier in execution. But their exact age is unrecorded, and Lincoln stands the foremost of all whose dates we know. Its fully developed style makes the work at first sight, as Sir G. G. Scott has said, seem almost 'an anachronism,' and has caused some, especially M. Viollet le Due, to imagine that it must be 'antedated.' But there is no building in England of which the precise age is more certainly known, and of the date of which the evidence is more indisputable. No one has ever doubted the early date of Bishop de Lucy's eastern chapels at Winchester. The commencement of these is placed by Professor Willis on documentary evidence in 1202, only ten years after the foundation of the Lincoln choir, while their character is even more advanced than that which is found at Lincoln. One leading characteristic of advance at Lincoln is the circular abacus of the columns, which is found throughout." The work of St. Hugh at Lincoln is of such extraordinary importance to the student of architecture, that it may be well to closely follow an eminent authority in tracing the parts which date from this bishop's time. J. H. Parker, who remarked that the architecture of Lincoln Minster was his favourite study for thirty years, carefully investigated the matter, and the results were published in the 43rd volume of the _Archæologia_. He says that "the work of the time of St. Hugh, A.D. 1192-1200, is pure early English Gothic, and is the earliest building of that style in the world. The French have nothing so early, not even in the royal domain, which is usually cried up as the district of the earliest Gothic in the world. The best-informed French archæologists admit that they have nothing of the character of Lincoln for twenty or thirty years after the time of St. Hugh.... The portion of the cathedral (erected by St. Hugh) consists of the choir ... the aisles to it and the smaller or eastern transept, with the apsidal chapels on the eastern side of that, also two bays on each side of the chancel arch in the great transept; but the walls of the eastern side of that transept only--the the two ends with the wheel windows and the western walls of the transept are of later periods. The original work had thin walls only, with flat buttresses on the outside, and one of the elegant wall-arcades on the lower part of the inside, making the wall still thinner." Mr. Parker also considered that the vaults were insertions of subsequent periods, and that the original building had only a timber roof and a flat wooden ceiling, similar to that which remains at Peterborough. "When the vaults were added it was found necessary to make the walls thicker, and this was done by a casing on the inside; but the builders being unwilling to conceal the beautiful wall-arcade, made another similar to it in the lower part of the new inner wall, exactly like the earlier one against which it is built, but in such a manner as not to conceal it. This arrangement is proved by a flat vertical joint up the middle of the wall, ... not content with this, when the vaults were inserted the architect also placed vaulting-shafts to help to carry those of the aisles, and these descend to the ground. This accounts for the three shafts one in front of the other, which have so long been a puzzle to architects and to students of architectural history. The walls were further strengthened by solid square buttresses built up against the flat ones; these now strong buttresses receive and support the thrust of the vault of the choir, which is carried over the aisle by flying buttresses, with circular openings over the vault of the aisle, built against the inner flat buttress of the inner wall, which had been sufficient to carry the wooden roof, but would not have carried the vault." It may be well to remark here that some authorities have not agreed with Mr. Parker with respect to the stone vault and the double wall-arcade, but have considered that the intention was from the beginning to construct them as they now are seen. In addition to the work still existing, St. Hugh united the north and south limbs of his eastern transept by a most remarkable apse. To learn the character of this work we must again trace the foundations beneath the floor. In the year 1791 the choir and presbytery were repaved, when parts of the foundations of Hugh's apse were discovered. The Rev. John Carter, who was master of the Lincoln Grammar School at the time, made a sketch and notes of the discovery. The drawing was lithographed and published in the "Associated Societies' Reports" for 1857. Far more important revelations were made in 1886, when it became necessary to take up a portion of the pavement at the south-west end of the south aisle of the presbytery. Precentor Venables had long desired an opportunity of investigating on this spot, and readily gave permission to have the pavement removed, at the same time instructing that an effort should be made to find the foundations of the destroyed apse. The work began in November, and in consequence of the discovery of part of the south wall, it was decided to systematically proceed with the investigations. The result was highly satisfactory. A detailed account was published in the _Archæological Journal_ for 1887, vol. xliv. From this it appears that the apse was almost in the form of a triangle, of which the apex was cut off by a short wall, so as to form a half-hexagon with two long sides, and a shorter one at the end. In each of the longer sides were two chapels, the walls of one in the form of three-fourths of a circle, having a diameter of 18 feet, and the other, a smaller one, having straight side walls and rounded ends; a half-hexagonal chapel with an internal diameter of 23 feet occupied the centre of the apse at the extreme east. It was at first thought that the smaller chapels at the sides might indicate stair-turrets, which would occupy a similar position to those in the apse at Peterborough, but no trace of the foundations of a newel could be found in either case. The apse extended to the second bay of the present Angel Choir, 48 feet short of its eastern end. Throughout almost the whole of the investigations, only the rude concrete foundations were found remaining, their upper surface being about 16 or 17 inches below the existing pavement; in parts, however, fragments of the walling were also discovered. The eight years during which Hugh carried on the work were busy ones at Lincoln. Contemporary records enable us to picture him encouraging the workmen by his presence and example, even shewing his zeal by carrying the stones on his own shoulders. He did not live to see his work completed, as Remigius had done. But he had set the example and given the pattern, and the work was continued by his successors until the building was again entire. Hugh had already finished the apse, the eastern transept, the choir, and part of the western transept (_i.e._ the whole eastern portion of the church) when he fell ill. Finding his death approaching, he sent for his architect Geoffrey de Noyers, and enjoined him to hasten the completion of the altar of St. John the Baptist, his patron. He then gave directions for his funeral, and instructions that he was to be buried in the mother-church of his diocese dedicated to the Mother of God, near the altar of St. John the Baptist. The personality of the great bishop comes vividly before us when we read that he also wished his tomb to be placed near the wall, in a convenient place, lest it should be a stumbling-block to those approaching. On the 16th November 1200, Hugh breathed his last, lying, as he had wished, on the bare ground, on a cross of consecrated ashes. "A more self-denying, earnest, energetic, and fearless bishop has seldom, if ever, ruled the diocese of Lincoln, or any other diocese whatever" (_Dimock_). His instructions regarding the funeral were carried out; but such a light as Hugh's could not be hid, and within a century we find his remains enclosed in a costly golden shrine, borne on the shoulders of kings and bishops, and placed at last in a structure erected specially for their reception, "one of the loveliest of human works," the celebrated Angel Choir. The original place of Hugh's burial has been somewhat disputed. The "_Magna Vita_" tells us that he was buried near the altar he had named, "_a boreali ipsius aedis regione_." On the east side of the eastern transept, Hugh had placed four apsidal chapels, two north and two south of the central apse. From the words above quoted, it has been considered that the northernmost of these chapels was the site of his tomb. The chapel was greatly enlarged about twenty years after Hugh's death, by the removal of the apse and the extension of the side walls about 50 feet, the chapel being finished with a square east wall.[4] This fact would certainly add support to the theory that Hugh was buried here, the enlarged chapel forming a sort of intermediate stage between the narrow apse and the splendid Angel Choir. But Mr. T. J. Willson has pointed out[5] that this place was hardly large enough to be a chapel at all, especially as it had a doorway in the north wall, leading from the common room. He considers that the altar of St. John the Baptist was in the central chapel of the great apse, corresponding to its later position in the Angel Choir, and that the coffin found in the north side of this chapel, when the pavement was removed in the year 1886, was the original tomb of St. Hugh. The words "_a boreali ipsius aedis regione_" would then refer, not to the northern side of the church, but merely to the northern side of the chapel in which the bishop was buried. Mr. Willson's assumption certainly throws light on one difficulty, that the northern chapel was called by Bishop Sanderson and others "_capella beatae Mariae Virginis_." The matter is of no great importance, since neither of the chapels exists as it was at the time of Hugh's burial, and whichever of them contained his remains, it did not hold them long. Roger de Hoveden records that King John, on the day before the funeral, offered a golden chalice at the altar of St. John the Baptist, _quod est in novo opere_. [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. (From an Old Print.)] Of all the great names connected with Lincoln, none are worthy of higher honour than that of the sainted bishop, whose zeal and energy has left so conspicuous a mark on the present fabric, whose shrine was a continual source of revenue for more than three centuries, and whose memory will be revered as long as the walls of Lincoln Minster shall stand. Although it is somewhat uncertain where the bishop's body was laid, some interesting details of the ceremony have been recorded. Hugh having died in London, the hearse travelled by road to Lincoln, where it was met by King John himself, attended by a numerous retinue of counts and barons. Three archbishops and thirteen bishops were also present at the ceremony. The body was borne by the king and his nobles to the entrance of the minster, where it was received by the archbishops and bishops, who carried it on their shoulders to the choir. The entombment took place next day (24th November). _O quantus luctus omnium, O quanta lamenta, praecipue clericorum._ An old legend relates that, at the burial of St. Hugh, "A' the bells o' merrie Lincoln Without men's hands were rung, And a' the books o' merrie Lincoln Were read without man's tongue; And ne'er was such a burial Sin' Adam's days begun." The work of St. Hugh at Lincoln is chiefly of importance as marking an epoch in the history of Gothic architecture. As the earliest known example of the pointed style carried out consistently in its details, the choir of Lincoln Minster cannot be too carefully studied. Close attention will, of course, make more evident its defects; the stone vault, which has the appearance of being all askew, is especially unsuccessful, but the perfection of the Angel Choir could not be attained all at once, and the faults of the earlier work serve but to emphasise the beauties of the later. At Hugh's death the work did not lie neglected long, if at all. A letter was issued in December 1205, appealing for help on behalf of the _novum opus_ at Lincoln. The "Brotherhood of the Church of Lincoln" was offered to those who would contribute; in this way they became enrolled for a certain number of years among those who were specially named in the prayers of the church. The western transept was completed during the early years of the thirteenth century, and the nave constructed, replacing the Norman work of Remigius. The designers here profited by the experience of the past. The vaulting shews a great improvement, and the whole work is of such superior skill as to earn the high praise of the late Professor Freeman, who says that "there are few grander works in the style of the thirteenth century than Lincoln nave, few that shew greater boldness of construction and greater elegance of detail." The nave appears to have been carried steadily onwards to the completion of the first five bays, at which point a curious irregularity is perceptible. The vault suddenly falls two feet lower, and its axis is turned slightly northwards, ultimately falling in with the old west front. The span of the last two bays is also lessened. Perhaps a slight error was made in the direction of the nave at first, which became more evident as time went on, so as to necessitate the change. It has, however, also been suggested that the first intention may have been to remove the west front of Remigius altogether, and to build another at a somewhat different angle farther westwards. If this was the case, economical reasons probably occasioned the change of design, and secured the preservation of a most interesting relic of Remigius' church. It should be remarked that some authorities consider these narrow bays to be no later than the others, and that the work was carried on at both ends of the nave simultaneously, finally meeting towards the middle. There is no document remaining which records the precise date of the erection of the nave at Lincoln, but it would not be difficult to shew that the first half of the thirteenth century practically covers the whole period of its construction. Very little, if any at all, can have been built before the death of St. Hugh in the year 1200, and it was undoubtedly finished before the Angel Choir was begun in 1255. Precentor Venables mentions that Bishop Hugh de Wells, in his will dated 1233, bequeaths 100 marks to the fabric of his church at Lincoln, as well as all the felled timber of which he might die possessed, through all his episcopal estates. He draws the conclusion that the legacy of so large a quantity of timber points to there being a good deal of roofing going on at the time. A new central tower was also begun about this time; it fell in 1237-9, and was replaced by a third, which still stands. As the new nave was approaching completion, the bishopric of Lincoln was conferred on a man who was destined to play a part second only to that of St. Hugh in the history of the diocese. It has been said that probably no one had greater influence on English thought and literature for the next two centuries than Robert Grosseteste, the friend of Roger Bacon. It is to Grosseteste that Tyssyngton refers when he speaks of "_Lincolniensis, cujus comparatio ad omnes doctores modernos est velut comparatio solis ad lunam quando eclipsatur._" Of humble birth, Grosseteste rose to be one of the greatest scholars of his day, and the boldest defender of the rights and liberties of the Church of England. In the first year of his episcopacy (1235) he visited the monastic establishments of his diocese, and found it necessary to remove no fewer than seven abbots and four priors. Such a proceeding was, of course, much resented, but when the bishop meditated a still bolder stroke, and contemplated a Visitation of the cathedral, the opposition was brought to a climax. He says: "In my first circuit some came to me finding fault and saying, 'My Lord, you are doing a thing new and unaccustomed.' To whom I answered 'Every novelty which does good to a man is a blessed novelty.'" Grosseteste wrote a pamphlet in defence of his claim, in answer to which the cathedral body produced a charter, altogether a forgery, purporting to give authority to the dean to govern all things, requiring an appeal to the bishop only if his own discipline failed. The matter was referred to the Pope, and finally decided by a Bull of Innocent IV., in 1245, in the bishop's favour. Amongst his reforms was the suppression of the "execrable custom" known as the "Feast of Fools," when the "House of God" was turned into a "house of joking, scurrility, and trifling." It was enjoined that the minster authorities should "by no means permit to be holden this Feast of Fools, since it is full of vanity and defiled with pleasures, in the church of Lincoln on the venerable feast of the Circumcision of our Lord." But there were troubles to come from higher quarters still; Grosseteste had put his hand to the plough, and was determined not to look back. Six years after his triumph over the chapter, he was temporarily suspended by the Pope for refusing to induct an Italian, ignorant of the English tongue, into a rich benefice in his diocese. In the year 1253, the Pope again required him to appoint an Italian (this time his nephew, Frederick di Lavagna) to a canonry, and he again refused. In spite of a sentence of excommunication for this offence, Grosseteste fearlessly continued his episcopal duties. [Illustration: Early English Pier.] The new nave was completed during this episcopate. It soared high above the west front of Remigius, which had to be patched up in a most unfortunate manner before it could do duty under the altered conditions. The experiment was tried of putting a piece of new cloth upon an old garment, and, so far as appearance was concerned, it was a failure. The old Norman work was surrounded by a huge arcaded wall, dislocating the whole façade from the structure behind, and hiding the lower portions of the western towers. The deep recess in the centre was raised far higher, and finished with a pointed arch. The only piece of honesty about the new front was the gable in the middle, which certainly did follow the line of the roof. The wall was flanked by two octagonal turrets, each surmounted by a statue. Beyond the aisles of the nave, two chapels were erected on either side, enclosing the outside walls of the last bay of Remigius' church and together forming what might almost be called a third transept. On the south side of the minster, the canons' vestry was added to the eastern transept, and the Galilee porch to the western. Lastly, the lower portion of the magnificent central, or "Broad," tower was erected, taking the place of the tower which had fallen soon after Grosseteste's appointment. Matthew Paris tells us a curious story that one of the canons of the minster was declaiming from the pulpit against the actions of Bishop Grosseteste; as he uttered the words "If we were to be silent, the very stones would cry out for us," the new central tower came crashing down, burying several people in the ruins. This catastrophe he assigns to the year 1239. The Chronicles of the Abbot of Peterborough record the event as occurring in the year 1237. There the accident is ascribed, with far greater probability, to the insecurity of the foundations (_propter artificii insolentiam_). The Annals of Dunstable give the same date as Matthew Paris. The fall of the tower crushed part of the vault of St. Hugh's choir, and injured some of the piers, which had to be reconstructed. We may be quite safe in assuming that the new tower was begun soon after, and the reticulated pattern which covers its lower part, both inside and out, may be taken as a mark of Grosseteste's work. The tower was afterwards made higher, and a timber spire added; but Grosseteste's tower was also finished with a spire of timber and lead; the stump of the central shaft may still be seen in the clock chamber. The ten-sided chapter-house, formerly attributed to St. Hugh, was constructed while the nave was in progress. It bears the characteristics of a later period than St. Hugh's choir, and since it is mentioned in the "Metrical Life of S. Hugh," written between 1220 and 1235, it could not have been erected after the latter date. The bishop died in 1253, leaving the church again complete, though not quite as it is now. The cloisters had not been erected, nor the towers carried to their full height. The eastern end still retained the apsidal form given to it by St. Hugh, and of the demolition of this part of the building it is now time to speak. The fame of the bishop grew fast, and annually attracted to Lincoln a vast crowd of pilgrims seeking bodily or spiritual benefit. Twenty years after his death, a decree of Pope Honorius III. announced his canonisation, and directed that the body should be removed to a more honourable place. Whether the immediate outcome of this was the extension of the semi-circular chapel at the north-eastern angle of the eastern transept, it is difficult to decide, but it is certain that before very many years had passed the fame of St. Hugh gave rise to the destruction of the apse which he himself had reared, and the demolition of part of the ancient city wall. This apse, did it still exist, would be the most remarkable eastern end of any cathedral in England; the one which replaced it is perhaps the most beautiful. Thus the Angel Choir of Lincoln was erected to contain the shrine of one of Lincoln's noblest bishops, and one of England's greatest saints; whose lowly tomb, placed in a corner at his own desire, for fear of its being in the way, had become the resort of such a vast concourse of pilgrims as to require the transformation of the eastern arm of the minster. In 1255, licence was obtained from Henry III. for the removal of part of the eastern city wall, which stood in the way, and in the next year the Angel Choir was probably begun. The work was carried on so rapidly, that within a quarter of a century the translation took place. The choir "was not, however, fully completed till the fourteenth century was well on its way, The work evidently lagged; episcopal appeals, letters of indulgence, and injunctions to the Rural Deans for its completion were issued by Bishop Oliver Sutton in 1297 and 1298, and by Bishop John de Dalderby, at various dates between 1301 and 1314. In 1306 a contract for the '_novum opus_' was entered into between the Chapter and Richard of Stow, or Gainsborough, '_cementarius_,' the plain work to be done by measure, and the carved work and sculpture by the day." [6] Richard of Gainsborough now lies buried in the cloisters of the minster. To those who have visited the Abbey of Crowland, on the southern borders of the county, the following statement by Sir G. G. Scott may be of interest. In speaking of the old ruined western front, he says that the details "are hardly to be surpassed, and are the more interesting as having been evidently the work of the architect of the eastern part of Lincoln Cathedral. Even the stone is from Lincoln" ("Lectures on Mediæval Architecture," vol. i. p. 194). Like the choir of St. Hugh, the Angel Choir stands at the threshold of a new period in architecture. "The style is the earliest Geometrical, of which the triforium and windows are among the best examples in the world." [7] No hard-and-fast line can be drawn, of course, between the different phases of English Gothic, and when we consider that the period during which the Angel Choir was being built includes the last years of the earliest style, and carries us well into the style which followed, it is not difficult to reconcile the words of two eminent authorities on the subject. Fergusson says that "true geometric (window) tracery is ... seen in perfection in the Angel Choir at Lincoln," whilst in Rickman's book we read that we have here the "richest ... and latest work" of the Early English style. Both writers would undoubtedly agree that it is "one of the most beautiful examples of the best period of English art," "simply perfect in its proportion and details." It may be hardly necessary to remark that the name is due to the beautiful sculptured angels filling the spandrels of the triforium. The 6th October 1280 was the proudest day in the history of the city. Perhaps never, before or since, has such an august assembly gathered within her walls. The body of the Saint of Lincoln was to be translated to the costly shrine in the centre of the Angel Choir. The ceremony was magnificent. Edward himself was present, and supported on his own shoulder the saint's remains as they were carried to their new resting-place; with him was his beloved queen Eleanor, whose effigy was so soon to be placed beneath the same roof. The king and queen were accompanied by Edmund, Earl of Kent, brother of Edward, and his wife; the Earls of Gloucester and Warwick; the Archbishop of Canterbury; the bishops of Lincoln, Bath, Ely, Norwich, Worcester, Llandaff, Bangor, and St. Asaph; the bishop-elect of Exeter; and two hundred and fifty knights. The shrine, ornamented with gold and silver and precious stones, was raised on a lofty stone pedestal, and about thirty years after was protected by an iron grille, wrought by Simon the Smith. It is recorded that the fastenings of the grille were still to be seen in the pavement at the middle of the last century, but all traces have now entirely disappeared. It must have been soon after the translation that the head was removed from the body, and enclosed in a metal case, enriched with gold and silver and precious stones. A keeper was appointed to guard the precious relic during the day, and two had this charge at night. Yet, in spite of all such precautions, it was stolen from the church in the year 1364; the head was thrown into a field, and the case sold in London for twenty marks. The thieves were robbed of their ill-gotten gains on their way back, and were afterwards convicted of the crime, and hanged at Lincoln. The head was found and restored to the cathedral. The treasurer John de Welburne (d. 1380) either restored the old shrine or made a new one of the same materials. The accounts for many years of the receipts and expenditure at the half-yearly opening, when the relics were exhibited to stimulate the offerings of the faithful, are preserved in the muniment room. At Pentecost 1364 (the year of the theft) the amount received was £36, 2s. 3d., and at Pentecost 1532 it had fallen to £2, 2s. 5d., a sure sign of the decline of relic worship. In the year 1540, this shrine shared the fate of so many other precious relics, finding its way to the melting-pots of King Henry VIII. By the erection of the Angel Choir, the ground plan of the minster was completed almost as it is now. Since that time, the three towers have been raised to a greater height, the cloisters and library constructed, the minster yard protected by gates, and several alterations made in the details of the main building. In the year of the translation of St. Hugh's remains, Oliver Sutton succeeded Richard de Gravesend as bishop. He removed the canons' stable, which stood in close proximity to the minster, and began the erection of the cloisters, starting the work, as his registrar, John de Schalby tells us, by a gift of fifty marks from his own purse. Since Lincoln was a secular foundation, and was never the church of a monastery, there was no absolute need of the cloisters at all, but it is a pity, since they were undertaken, that the work was not more substantially done. Three walks still remain, after having been strengthened by buttresses, and finally reconstructed, owing to the insecurity of the original foundations; the fourth has quite disappeared, and has been replaced by a most incongruous classical structure, after the design of Sir Christopher Wren. The date of the cloisters can be given approximately; they are mentioned as being in progress in a letter of Bishop Sutton's, dated August 23rd, 1296, and such a flimsy structure would probably not take long to finish. Up to this time the central tower still remained as it had been left by Grosseteste. But in the year 1307 Bishop Dalderby issued letters of indulgence for raising it to a greater height. The work was begun on the 14th March in that year, and was probably completed during the next four years, since in 1311 a question arose regarding the cords for two bells which had been lately hung in the tower. A tall spire of wood, coated with lead, was afterwards added. A Lincoln historian of the early part of the present century assigns this spire to Bishop Dalderby, but little reliance can be placed in his testimony, since he ascribes the companion spires on the west towers to the same bishop, and the upper storeys of these towers were not added until a century later. During this episcopate occurred the trial of the Knights Templars in the chapter-house. A Bull of Pope Clement V., the creature of the French king, who feared the immense power of the knights, pronounced the suppression of the Order in the year 1309. The cruelties with which this was carried out abroad were avoided in this country. The English Templars were put under custody in London, Lincoln, and York. From Lincoln the larger number were transferred to the Tower of London, but Bishop Dalderby was reluctantly compelled to preside at the trial of the others. In order to trace the history of the walls and gatehouses protecting the close, it is necessary to go back a few years. Edward I. had, in 1285, received a petition from the canons, praying that the close might be fortified. Their plea was, that it had become positively dangerous to attend the midnight services of the church, owing to the number of evil-doers who thronged the precincts. The licence from the king in the year 1285 to the dean and chapter, giving them permission to erect the close wall, is still preserved at Lincoln. The wall was commenced, and in the thirteenth year of Edward II. (1319), permission was given for the addition of towers. Double gateways were erected to guard the approaches. Before we come to speak of the upper storeys of the western towers, a few less important matters may be recorded. It is not difficult to see that the tracery which fills the round window, "the Bishop's eye," of the southern limb of the great transept, does not accord in style with its surroundings. The flowing lines mark a period subsequent to the geometrical forms of the Angel Choir, and later by more than a century than the wall in which the window is placed. This window and that in the gable above, the latter only to be seen from the outside, must be assigned to about the middle of the fourteenth century. About this time, Lincoln received a treasurer, who has left abiding traces in the minster. John de Welburne has already been mentioned as having restored the precious shrine of St. Hugh. Perhaps the greatest of his benefactions are the present magnificent choir-stalls, the finest examples in the kingdom. He also constructed the vaulting of the central and western towers, and placed over the great west door the respectable row of royal statues. Welburne died in the year 1380; this we learn from a volume relating to his chantry and other foundations, written in 1382. The tracery of the three west windows has been assigned by some to him, and by others to a bishop who lived more than half-a-century later. They may be considered as belonging to the end of the fourteenth century, and mark the entrance into the next stage of Gothic architecture, the Perpendicular. The two western towers, St. Mary's and St. Hugh's, had been awaiting their completion for many years. They were now raised to a height of nearly 200 feet, by the addition of early Perpendicular storeys, constructed immediately above the Norman work of Alexander the Magnificent. These towers, as well as the centre one, were crowned by tall spires of wood, coated with lead. The height of these timber spires was 89 feet from the base to the ball, and another 12 feet to the top of the vane; their fate will be recorded later. Besides the three west windows, and the upper portions of the western towers, the only other parts of the minster in the Perpendicular style are the three chantry-chapels added to the Angel Choir. The first of these was built by Bishop Fleming (d. Jan. 1430-1), and stands on the north side. Bishop Russell (d. 1494) added another opposite to it on the south side. The third chapel was constructed by Bishop Longland (d. 1547). It is a copy of Bishop Russell's, and stands on the same side of the choir, to the west of the doorway. The old library, of which a fragment only remains, was erected in the year 1442 over the east walk of the cloisters. In the year 1609 it suffered severely from fire, and in 1789 all that remained was taken down, with the exception of the part forming a vestibule to the new library. Turning from the building itself to the internal history of the minster, we find that, towards the middle of the fifteenth century, dissensions had arisen among the cathedral body, which, if not of such historical importance as the differences under Grosseteste, are of sufficient interest to be worth recording. They give considerable insight into the ecclesiastical life of the time. John Mackworth, the dean, was a man of violent temper. In 1435, having some difference with the chancellor, Peter Patrick or Partridge, he entered the church one day during vespers, attended by ten armed servants. The chancellor was dragged from his stall in the choir, brutally assaulted, and left in a wounded condition on the pavement of the church. It is said that over this affair the point was raised during the trial at Westminster, whether the Cathedral Close was in the _county_ or the _county of the city_ of Lincoln; the delinquents had been described as of the former, and since this was not legally correct, they escaped the punishment they richly deserved. Matters came to a crisis, and the chapter brought before the bishop, William Alnwick, forty-two charges against their dean. The following are sufficient to shew Mackworth's haughty temper:--He would not walk in processions in a straight line; he had fraudulently kept back from the chapter 25s. 8d.; he came to the chapter attended by armed men to the great terror of the canons; at vespers and prime he made the bell stop before the officiating priest had arrived, but made the choir wait for him, if he was late; he had pulled down part of the wall of the cloister to build a stable. The dean in return accused the chapter of appropriating to their own use the cloth bought out of the common funds of the church for clothing the poor. The matter was settled in 1439 by a "Laudum" of the bishop, who set himself the task of constructing a new body of statutes for governing the church; these are still in use. Dissensions, however, did not end here, and we find a complaint made to the bishop four years later, that the dean had, in the choir, called the precentor a "buffoon" and a "vile tailor," and had offered personal violence to him. In 1449 the bishop issued a commission for the trial of the dean, but died before it could take place. [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT AND THE EXCHEQUER GATE. (From a Water-colour Painting by Peter De Wint, in the South Kensington Museum.) _W. Giles, Photo._] Before speaking of the grievous losses which the minster sustained under Henry VIII., it may be well to refer to a Visitation which was undertaken by Bishop Smyth in the first year of the sixteenth century. The charges then brought against the dean, George Fitzhugh, shew the deplorable negligence of the cathedral body with regard to the sacred building under their care. The dean stated that all was right in the cathedral, but from the following statements it would appear that there were several abuses which might with advantage have been corrected. It was affirmed (1) that the chaplains often resorted to a chantry within the church, and there played at dice, bones, and cards in questionable company, often staying till after midnight; (2) that the servants of the dean and other residentiaries did great mischief to the fabric of the church, by breaking the glass windows and the stone tracery with their arrows and crossbow bolts, and by piercing the lead on the roof with their missiles. In the examination that followed it was found that, though large sums had been spent on the fabric, there was still urgent need of further repairs, and an appeal to the public was necessary. We may well be grieved at "the great mischief" done at this time, which would partly account for the dilapidated state of some of the stained glass windows; but the minster was to suffer far more severely under Henry VIII. In the Chapter Acts of 1520 we find mentioned the "head of seint hugh closed in silver gilt and enamelled." The treasure belonging to it is also carefully detailed, down to "a littil blew stone" and "ij qwysshyns of silk." Thus zealously had it been guarded ever since the mishap of 1364, but its doom was now pronounced. At the end of a "Registre and Inventarye of all Jewell Westimentes and other ornamentes in the yere of ow^r lorde god m.ccccc.xxxvj," is "A Copye of the Kinges Lettres by force whereof the shrynes and other Jewels were taken" [1540]. Part of the letter may be given here: "For as moch as we understand that there ys a certain shryne and di[vers] fayned Reliquyes and Juels in the Cathedrall church of Lyncoln with [which] all the symple people be moch deceaved and broughte into greate su[per]sticion and Idolatrye to the dyshonor of god and greate slander of th(is) realme and peryll of theire own soules, "We Let you w[~y]t that (we) beinge mynded to bringe o^r lovinge subiectes to y^e righte knowledge of y^e truth by takynge away all occasions of Idolatrye and supersticion. For y^e especiall trust (and) confidence we have in yowr fydelytyes, wysdoms and discre[~c]ons, have (and) by theis presentes doe aucthorise name assign and appointe you fowre or three of you that immediatelye uppon the sighte here of repairinge to y^e sayd Cathedrall church and declaringe unto y^e Deane Recydencyaryes and other mynisters there(of) the cause of yowr comynge ys to take downe as well y^e sayd shryne and supersticious reliquyes as superfluouse Jueles, plate copes and other suche like as yow shall thinke by yowr wysdoms not mete to contynew (and) remayne there, unto the wych we doubte not but for y^e considera[~c]ons rehersed the sayde Deane and Resydencyaryes w^th other wyll be conformable and wyllinge thereunto, and so yow to precede accordingly. And to see the sayd reliquyes, Juels and plate safely and surely to be conveyde to owr towre of London in to owr Jewyll house there chargeing the m^r of owr Jewyls w^th the same. "And further we wyll that you charge and co[~m]ande in owr name the sayd Deane there to take downe such monumentes as may geve any occasioñ of memorye of such supersticion and Idolatrye hereafter...." Underneath is the following "memorandum," proving how great was the treasure possessed at that time by the authorities of the minster:--"Memorandum that by force of the above wrytten comyssyoñ there was taken owt of ye sayd Cathedrall church of Lyncoln at that tyme in gold ij^{m}vj^{c}xxj oz (2621 oz.), in sylver iiij^{m}ij^{c}iiij^{xx}.v oz (4285 oz.); Besyde a greate nombre of Pearles & preciouse stones wych were of greate valewe, as Dyamondes, Saphires Rubyes, turkyes, Carbuncles etc. There were at that tyme twoe shrynes in the sayd Cath. churche; the one of pure gold called S^t Hughes Shryne standinge on the backe syde of the highe aulter neare unto Dalysons tombe, the other called S^t John of Dalderby his shryne was of pure sylver standinge in y^e south ende of the greate crosse Ile not farre from the dore where y^e gallyley courte ys used to be kepte." Harry Lytherland was the last treasurer of Lincoln. As he saw the last of the treasures carried away, he cried "ceasing the Treasure, so ceaseth the office of the Treasurer," and flinging down the keys on the pavement of the choir, he walked out of the church. This occurred on the 6th June 1540; Lytherland never sat in his stall again. Of the risings in 1536, resulting from the religious changes, Lincoln was one of the chief centres. The Lincolnshire insurgents, assembled at Horncastle, sent six demands to the king, the last being that Bishop Longland should be deprived. The Chancellor of Lincoln was captured and conveyed to Horncastle, where he was killed, and his garments and money were distributed among the rebels. The Abbot of Barlings rode into Lincoln with his canons in full armour. A number of insurgents gathered in the city, and the bishop's palace was attacked and plundered. The rebel council was sitting in the chapter-house when the messenger arrived from the king. His answer was characteristic; he reproved them for "their presumptuous follie and rebellious attempt," called the shire "one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm," and summoned the people to depart quietly to their homes. An attempt on the part of the gentlemen to read the letter secretly caused a panic among the commons, who decided to kill them all. The gentry hurriedly escaped into the chancellor's house, where they barricaded the door. Shortly after, the commons, deserted by their leaders, and "each mistrusting other, who should be noted the greater meddler, suddenlie ... began to shrinke, and got them home to their houses without longer abode" (Holinshed's "Chronicles "). On the arrival of a royal force, the cathedral was "turned into an arsenal, fortified and garrisoned." Lord Hussey, a prominent Lincolnshire noble, was executed, and the Abbot of Barlings was hanged, together with the Abbots of Whalley, Woburn, and Sawley. Another event which occurred towards the end of the same reign should not pass unnoticed. Anne Askew was a member of an old Lincolnshire family, being the daughter of Sir William Askew or Ayscough; her birthplace was probably Stallingborough, near Grimsby. "When she was at Lincoln," we are told, "she was seen daily in the Cathedral reading her Bible, and engaging the clergy in discussions on the meaning of particular texts." Her bold opinions at last brought her to the stake in 1546, at the age of twenty-five, a martyr to the doctrines of the Reformation. A few possessions of value appear to have survived the reign of Henry, but these were sacrificed to the rapacious greed of the unscrupulous ministers of his son and successor. The following statement occurs in "An Historical Account of the Antiquities in the Cathedral Church of St. Mary, Lincoln," published in that city in 1771:--"A second Plunder was committed in this Church Anno 1548, during the Presidence of Bishop Holbech, who being a zealous Reformist, gave up all the remaining Treasure which Henry had thought proper to leave behind; this Bishop together with George Henage Dean of Lincoln, pulled down and defaced most of the beautiful Tombs in this Church; and broke all the Figures of the Saints round about this Building; and pulled down those [of] our Saviour, the Virgin, and the Crucifix; so that at the End of the Year 1548, there was scarcely a whole Figure or Tomb remaining." Henry Holbeach became Bishop of Lincoln in the year of Henry VIII.'s death, and soon after that event he surrendered to the Crown twenty-six (or according to Strype thirty-four) rich manors belonging to the see. He died at Nettleham in 1551. Passing on to the beginning of the next century, a fire which broke out in the year 1609 partly destroyed the old library over the east walk of the cloisters; little further damage appears to have been done. The turbulent times of the Civil War were disastrous for Lincoln in common with so many other places. An account of the troubles which the struggle brought upon the city is given by Mr. Edward Peacock in the thirty-eighth volume of the _Archæological Journal_. The shire appears to have been distinctly Puritan, and up to July 1643, at any rate, the city was in the hands of the Parliamentarians. John Vicars, the author of "Jehovah Jerah. God in the Mount or England's Parliamentarie Chronicle," printed in London in the year 1644, gives an account of an unsuccessful attempt of the Royalists to capture the city about that time. "And as proeme and preamble to the ensuing tragedie or treacherie, Serjeant Major Purfrey had let into the town, at a back gate, about sixty bloodie cavaliers, all of them disguised in countrie marketmen's habits, who were all hid and sheltred (as it was credibly enformed) in the Deane's house in Lincolne." The attempt was unsuccessful, but the city soon after fell into the Royalists' hands, an event of unhappy interest for our subject, as it gave rise to an attack (in April of the following year) of the Parliamentarians under the Earl of Manchester. The capture of the city was soon followed by the mutilation of its most glorious monument. Through the misguided zeal of the rude soldiers of the Parliament, the stained glass of the minster was nearly all broken, the tombs were injured, and the brasses torn from their matrices. It should yet be remembered that considerable damage had already been done under Henry VIII., and even earlier, and that the injuries of 1644 were not so great as it might appear at first sight. Lincoln was again attacked by the Royalists in 1648, when the bishop's palace was stormed and taken, and the city given over to plunder. In a description of the minster, published in 1771, the following account of the injury is given:--"Bishop Winniff had little Enjoyment of his Honor in presiding over this See; for in the Year 1645 ... he had the Mortification to see all the Brass Work of the Gravestones pulled up, the rich Brass Gates to the Choir and divers of the Chantries pulled down, and every regaining Beauty defaced; and his Church made Barracks; for the prevailing Parties in that unhappy Reign, and his Episcopal Palace totally destroyed, both at Lincoln and Buckden." During the time of the Commonwealth, the minster passed through a crisis such as it had never before experienced, and such as we may hope it will never experience again. "Certain godly ones," we are told, were "then gaping after its stone, timber, and lead," and the minster was in great danger of being demolished altogether. This fact has been recorded by the late Precentor Venables, who states that the fabric was "only rescued from threatened destruction by the civic worthy, Mr. Original Peart (Mayor in 1650 and Member of Parliament in 1654 and 1656), who represented to Cromwell that 'if the minster were down Lincoln would soon be one of the worst towns in the county.'" [Illustration: THE OBSERVATORY TOWER, LINCOLN CASTLE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] In 1654, on the 19th August, Evelyn visited the city. He has left to us in his Diary an interesting record of the Lincoln of the Commonwealth:--"Lincoln is an old confused town, very long, uneven, steep, and ragged, formerly full of good houses, especially churches and abbeys. The minster almost comparable to that of York itself, abounding with marble pillars, and having a fair front (here was interred Queen Eleanora, the loyal and loving wife who sucked the poison out of her husband's wound); the abbot founder, with rare carving in the stone; the great bell, or Tom, as they call it. I went up the steeple, from whence is a goodly prospect all over the county. The soldiers had lately knocked off most of the brasses from the gravestones, so as few inscriptions were left; they told us that these men went in with axes and hammers, and shut themselves in, till they had rent and torn off some barge-loads of metal, not sparing even the monuments of the dead; so hellish an avarice possessed them: besides which, they exceedingly ruined the city." At the Restoration, Robert Sanderson was rewarded for his long faithfulness to the royal house by the bishopric of Lincoln. He had been a chaplain to Charles I., who is reported to have said, "I carry my ears to hear other preachers, but I carry my conscience to hear Dr. Sanderson." Sanderson died in 1663. Four years later, William Fuller, the antiquarian, was appointed bishop. "He bestowed very much in adorning his church," and restored many of the monuments and inscriptions. Fuller's efforts at restoring something like order to the grievously ill-used fabric were seconded by those of Dean Honywood, who in 1674 caused the present arcade to be constructed on the north side of the cloisters, with the library above it. Sir Christopher Wren, the architect, did not take the least care to let his work harmonise with its surroundings. From the times of Fuller and Honywood to our own, there have been many whose energy has led them to undertake various works in and about the minster. Some have undoubtedly worked with mistaken zeal; but, taken as a whole, Lincoln has escaped with less injury than many others of our public monuments. In the year 1727 an attempt to remove the timber spires of the western towers, resulted in a serious riot (see p. 56), and the townspeople were only pacified by a promise that the spires should not be touched. No such disturbance occurred when they were finally removed in 1807, the excuse then being that they were very insecure, and would cost much to repair. But it seems that even at this time the removal was not entirely approved of; a lament, clothed in ridiculous rhyme, was published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of January 1808, and a local writer two years later relates how the "lofty spires" were "levelled by tasteless inconsiderate improvers." Early in the 18th century the western towers began to shew signs of instability, and caused considerable anxiety. An architect named John James was employed about 1730 to strengthen the towers by constructing arches underneath, which formed a kind of triple porch just inside the church. The materials of the chapel of the old bishop's palace were employed in the construction of these arches. The central porch was reconstructed by James Essex about thirty years later. An anonymous historian of about forty years ago quotes the following extract from a letter written by Sympson, at one time clerk of the works to the fabric, to Browne Willis:--"Before I make an end of this long letter, I must acquaint you that I took down the antient image of St. Hugh, which is about 6 foot high, and stood upon the summit of a stone pinnacle at the south corner of the west front, in the month of June last (_i.e._ 1743), and pulled down 22 foot of the pinnacle itself, which was ready to tumble into ruins, the shell being but 6 in. thick, and the ribs so much decayed, especially on the east side, that it declined visibly that way.... I hope to see the saint fixed upon a firmer basis before winter." The date of this work coincides with that of the appointment of Bishop Thomas (1743-61), who appears to have zealously applied himself to the repair of the fabric. The historian of 1771 writes as follows:--"During the Presidence of Bishop Thomas, and towards the first of the present Bishop Dr. Green, over this See, this Church was repaired and modernised in the State which it is this Day seen. Also, during the Presidence of Bishop Thomas, he set on Foot the appropriating the tenth of the Fines arising from the renewal of the Leases of their respective Estates, as a Fund for the continual Repair of this Church, himself setting the Laudable Example." The "scraping process" to which the exterior of the minster was subjected under the late John Chessel Buckler of Oxford is within the memory of many. It caused much angry discussion and bitterness at the time, and resulted in the publication of a book, in which Buckler undertook to justify his work on the minster. The chief part of this volume consists in long chapters of abuse, written with a most extraordinary flow of language, and directed against all who ventured to object to the way in which his work had been done. Under the late consulting architect to the chapter, J. L. Pearson, R.A., many necessary strengthenings and restorations were carried out; but as no radical changes are in progress they do not call for detailed notice in this place. [Illustration: THE STONE BOW IN THE HIGH STREET. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] CHAPTER II THE EXTERIOR The external beauty of Lincoln Minster is rendered doubly impressive by the dignity of its position. While so many of our cathedrals are at a disadvantage in this respect, the site at Lincoln, as at Durham and Ely, was most happily chosen. Had it been less exposed, the spires would probably have yet been standing, but these are a small loss compared with the advantages gained. Especially when glowing with the rays of the setting sun, the three noble towers, each a conspicuous object for miles around, create an impression not soon forgotten. The distant view of the minster has inspired the enthusiastic utterances of many writers; but it may be enough for us to describe it in the words of one of the most eminent among them. "Throughout a vast district around the city," says _Freeman_, "the one great feature of the landscape is the mighty minster, which, almost like that of Laon, crowns the edge of the ridge, rising, with a steepness well-nigh unknown in the streets of English towns, above the lower city and the plain at its feet. Next in importance to the minster is the castle, which, marred as it is by modern changes, still crowns the height as no unworthy yoke-fellow of its ecclesiastical neighbour. The proud polygonal keep of the fortress still groups well with the soaring towers, the sharp-pointed gables, the long continuous line of roof, of the church of Remigius and Saint Hugh." Such words need no comment; it only remains to point out the positions from which the minster is seen at its best. The view from the opposite side of the river, in a south-easterly direction, is good. The long straight line of roof is broken by the bold projection of the transepts; the faultiness of the west front is not apparent, and the grouping of the three towers with their numerous pinnacles appears to advantage. The view from Brayford, too, is fine, although in this case the foreground is perhaps not so picturesque as it might be. From nowhere does the minster look more imposing than from the towers of the castle; a water-colour by Frederick Mackenzie (see p. 53), painted from the roof of "Cobb Hall," admirably illustrates this. For a closer prospect, the best position is undoubtedly the north-east corner, especially when the sun is setting behind the western towers. Lastly, the view from the High Street, beyond the Stonebow, should not be forgotten. The minster is built of Lincoln stone, a hard limestone, well capable of resisting the action of the weather. It yet remains to be proved whether the fast-increasing number of tall smoking chimneys will have the undesired effect of blackening the exterior and destroying the sharpness of its lines. [Illustration: THE WEST FRONT. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The =West Front= is massive and imposing, and possesses some features of considerable interest; beyond this, little can be said for it, as it is architecturally somewhat of a sham. Why the architects threw away the opportunities they had, and finished off the western end of the church with an enormous screen wall, it is now difficult to say. The Norman front was originally furnished with three gables, one in the centre, following the line of the old nave roof, the others in front of the Norman towers, and similar to those which may still be seen on the outer sides of these towers. The greater height of the Gothic nave necessitated the raising of the central gable, and this was done; but instead of preserving the gables in front of the towers and adding two more for the side chapels, a huge flat wall was constructed, masking the lower parts of the towers, and altogether hiding the western chapels. The result is that the towers appear too close together, and lose all connection with the façade, which should rather set off their proportions than conceal them. There seems, too, no reason for the great width of the façade, until one passes round and sees the low side-chapels hidden behind it. Turning, however, to details, there are points which are deserving of close attention. The severe and strong wall in the centre, with a fragment of the first bay behind it, is the only part which now remains of the first Cathedral of Lincoln. In gazing on this massive work, so fortress-like and forbidding, we are reminded of the warrior-bishop who first chose this spot for his cathedral, making it so solid and strong, that it was at one time seized and fortified, under circumstances already related (p. 11). The great central recess has been heightened several feet, but the two side-recesses and the lofty semi-circular niches beyond remain almost as Remigius left them. It is probable that the plainness of this bishop's work was originally relieved by colouring. The slits in the jambs of the great arches and on the front serve to light the passages and chambers, which are constructed in all directions within the thick walls of this part of the façade. The original use of these chambers cannot very well be determined; they are accessible only from the inside of the minster, and may be reached from the sills of the great west windows. There is a great difference in style between the features of this wall and those of the three elaborate doorways with which it is pierced. They are assigned to Bishop Alexander the Magnificent, and have been called by Sir G. G. Scott "truly exquisite specimens of the latest and most refined period of Romanesque, just before its transition into the Pointed style." The central doorway has four columns on either side, carved with diaper ornament and grotesque figures; elaborate mouldings are carried round the arch. The side doorways are of similar style, but with three columns instead of four to support the arches. Some of the ornament was restored between thirty and forty years ago by the architect, J. C. Buckler of Oxford, partly to take the place of the plain pillars inserted by Essex a century before, and partly to replace decayed work. The arcade of intersecting arches along the top of the Norman front is also assigned to Bishop Alexander. It has been pointed out that this bishop's work may be distinguished from that of Remigius by its being _fine-jointed_, whilst the other is _wide-jointed_. A most interesting, though perplexing, band of sculpture runs horizontally across the front; it commences just above the side niches, and is continued in the jambs of the great arches. It is most probable that the sculptures originally formed a consecutive pictorial illustration of many of the chief incidents recorded in the Old and New Testaments, but they are in no order now, and there is no doubt that they have at some time or another been rearranged--or rather disarranged. The rarity of such work as this greatly increases the importance of these Lincoln sculptures. They have been considered by some to be of Saxon origin, and either to have belonged to the earlier church of St. Mary Magdalene, which stood on this spot, or to have been brought by Remigius from Dorchester. They do not, however, appear from their style to be earlier than the eleventh century, and since Remigius would have most probably arranged them differently, had they been specially sculptured for their present position, it is possible that they were inserted later than his time. That they were there not very long after, is proved by the fact that one relief on the south side of the southern tower is now enclosed in the Early English chapel, which we know to have been built before the middle of the thirteenth century, The sculptures are illustrated in the _Archæological Journal,_ vol. xxv., from photographs procured when the repair of the west front was going on. The subjects were at the same time identified by Archdeacon Trollope (afterwards Bishop of Nottingham). The band is about 3 ft. 6 in. in depth, and is protected by a plain cornice. The traces of paint still seen on some of the reliefs would lead to the conclusion that the whole series was once bright with glowing colours. Parts of the original reliefs are now represented by modern copies. Commencing over the northern niche, the first subject is the Torments of the Lost, who are seen in the clutches of demons; next is Christ standing at the jaws of hell, on the prostrate form of Satan. On the northern jamb of the recess are two more reliefs, one representing six saints, the other identified by Trollope as "Christ the Custodian of all faithful souls." Our Saviour is seated on a throne, holding a sheet before Him, in which are the souls of four personages; the symbols of the Evangelists appear at the corners. Opposite to these are two other reliefs; one represents Christ sitting at meat with the two disciples at Emmaus, the table at which the three figures are seated being placed beneath an arcade capped by turrets with conical roofs. This relief is in very good preservation, and the architectural features furnish a guide to the date of the series. The next subject is the Blessed End of the Righteous and the Torments of the Lost. On the front of the pier is a fragment of a draped figure. The next relief should be the first of the series; it represents Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, and is placed on the southern jamb of the central recess. On the front of the pier are two men tilling the ground, probably typifying the Condemnation of Man to Labour, while the hand grasping a bag above would symbolise God's providing care for His people; along the top is a band of foliage. There are two reliefs on the jambs of the southern recess; the first is mutilated and obscure, but is probably intended for Hannah with the Infant Samuel, and Samuel announcing God's revelation to Eli, On the other side of the recess is Christ instructing a disciple, probably either Nicodemus or Peter. The three other reliefs, over the southern niche, are:--(1) The Building of the Ark: Noah is seen with a hammer, and another figure, probably one of his sons, with an axe, the ark being visible behind; (2) Daniel in the Lions' Den, this subject made conspicuous by a moulding all round it; (3) The Entry into, and Departure from, the Ark: to the left the ark is seen, with Noah, his wife, and three sons (?) inside, while a procession of animals in miniature is advancing towards the vessel; to the right of this are eight figures leaving the ark, with the Almighty Father beyond, apparently making the covenant with Noah. The last relief, hidden by the chapel at the south-west corner, represents the Deluge: three half-submerged figures are clinging to trees or rocks; the prow of the ark is seen to the left. [Illustration: CARVED WORK OF THE CENTRAL DOORWAY AT THE WEST END. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The Gothic arcading which covers the later portions of the façade varies considerably in detail; this is particularly noticeable on the north and south ends, where narrow lancet doors in deep porches give access to the western chapels. These porches were at one time walled up. They are not shewn in Hollar's plate in Dugdale's "_Monasticon_," nor in Wild's or Coney's plates of 1819. The chapels are lighted by the circular windows above the doors. It has been considered by some that the Gothic part of the façade is of different periods, and that St. Hugh commenced building here at the same time as at the eastern end of the church. Others have thought that the first idea was to do away with the old front altogether, in which case the enlargement would not have commenced until later. At any rate, we may be fairly sure that the Gothic portions were all constructed some time during the first half of the thirteenth century. We can get a little nearer than this with regard to the gable in the middle and the arch beneath it, where the trellis ornament is supposed to mark the work of Bishop Grosseteste (1235-53). This bishop appears to have removed the central Norman arch, and to have carried the recess up to its present height, piercing the head with the cinquefoil window, outlined by a band of finely-carved scroll foliage. Rickman calls attention to the "exquisite workmanship" of the mouldings of this window. The rest of the arch is filled with trellis-work, quatrefoils, trefoils and circles, while at the crown there is a large carved boss. In the spandrels are two niches with royal statues. The gable contains seven arches below, two of them pierced with windows. The two at the ends contain statues, and in the centre is a fragment of a carved subject. Above is another arch, over which are two angels with heads bent downwards. One of the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum contains certain "Observations" by Dr. Edward Brown in 1662. Speaking of the west front at Lincoln, the writer says that "almost at the top are four or five fine pictures, but broken down in the late troubles, but with small dexterity and by as bad a handicraft." The vast façade is finished off at the ends by two octagonal stair-turrets, capped by tall, pyramidal roofs. On the top of the southern turret is Bishop St. Hugh, with staff and mitre; on the other is the Swineherd of Stow, whose reputed gift of a peck of silver pennies towards the building of the minster has secured for his statue a position as exalted as that of the great bishop himself. The first statue is the original one, though it was once taken down and afterwards refixed on a firmer basis (see p. 41). The other is a copy of the original Swineherd, now preserved in the cloisters. The suggestion that this statue represents Bishop Bloet, the horn having reference to the bishop's name ("blow it"), is hardly worthy of serious attention. The row of canopies above the central door contains eleven royal statues, ranging from William the Conqueror to Edward III., the sovereign on the throne when the figures were placed there by Treasurer John de Welburne (d. 1380); they are all bearded, very similar to one another, and of the tamest possible character. They were originally coloured and gilt. There was a great outcry in the last century at the report that they had been removed to make room for a list of the subscribers to the iron railings which until quite recently enclosed the minster front. The following is a memorandum of Dr. Stukeley's, found in his copy of Browne Willis's "Cathedrals," when sold in 1766:--"In the beginning of 1753, the wicked chanter, Dr. Trimnell, of his own authority pulled down the eleven fine images of kings over the door of Lincoln Cathedral, to put up a foolish inscription of the names of the subscribers to the new iron rails." It is unlikely, however, that the statues were ever removed. [Illustration: THE MINSTER FROM THE CASTLE. (From a Water-colour Painting by Frederick Mackenzie, in the South Kensington Museum.) _F. G. M. Beaumont, Photo._] The tracery of the great windows in the three recesses may be considered to date from the end of the fourteenth century. The three massive oak doors are studded with iron bolts and carved with Perpendicular tracery. The two statues of bishops, one on either side of the great central recess, are evidently restored. In 1796, in the _Vetusta Monumeuta_, the statues are described as "lately put up, and had been in some other place before." They must have replaced earlier figures, since old engravings shew these places to have been occupied by statues. The parapet along the top of the façade belongs to the fourteenth century, and is similar to that along the south side of the nave. It is worthy of mention that some critics have not been so severe on this façade as others. Setting aside absurd comparisons of the last century, the late Sir G. G. Scott has stated that it always struck him as being very impressive. From behind the parapet the two fine western =towers= look out of keeping. The gables on the west faces, by which the towers were originally connected with the old front, are now hidden from view, but three rows of Norman arcading of the time of Bishop Alexander (1123-48) still project above the parapet. The details of the arcading differ in the two towers, and it will be noticed that the octagonal turrets at the corners were carried higher in the southern tower than in the northern. They seem to have remained as left by Alexander (most probably with pyramidal roofs) for two centuries and a half; Perpendicular storeys were then added to them. On each side of these upper storeys are two lofty windows, of which the lower parts are now walled up. The octagonal turrets at the corners were continued to the tops of the towers: they are crowned by wooden pinnacles, coated with lead, which are not nearly so graceful in appearance as those on the central tower, partly owing to the coating of dark paint with which they are covered. In the northern, or St. Mary's, tower was placed the original "Great Tom of Lincoln," as well as its successor, until removed in 1834, to be recast a larger size and hung in the central tower. The southern, or St. Hugh's, tower, has a ring of eight =bells=. It is not known when, or by whom, the ring was formed, but the tower must have been used for bells very anciently. Until recently four of the bells were dated 1702, and the others 1593, 1606, 1717 and 1834; one was recast in 1895. The fifth bell is rung daily at morning and evening; at six in the morning, from Lady Day to Michaelmas, and at seven for the rest of the year; in the evening it is rung at eight all the year round. The day of the month is tolled after each ringing. These towers, as well as the central one, were originally crowned with tall spires of timber, coated with lead. The central spire had been blown down in a gale nearly two hundred years before it was decided by the cathedral body to remove those on the west towers, the excuse being that they had fallen into disrepair. The work of destruction was commenced on the 20th September 1726 or 1727. As the citizens in the town below saw the workmen engaged in this way, cries of indignation were raised, and towards evening a crowd of 500 men assembled to prevent the removal of the spires. The main gates of the minster yard were secured against them, but the small postern on the south side was apparently forgotten. To this the besiegers turned their attention, and, rushing up the "Grecian" stairs, they soon battered down the gate, and entered the close. One of the "Old Vicars," named Cunnington, appears to have suffered especially at their hands, whether he was the chief culprit or not. He is said to have been dragged from his house in the Vicars' Court, and compelled to dance on the minster green in the midst of the mob. The crowd only dispersed on the promise that the spires should be allowed to remain. The next day, the Mayor and Aldermen were requested by the minster authorities to send the bellman round the city with the following message:--"Whereas there has been a tumult, for these two days past, about pulling down the two west spires of the church, this is to give notice to the people of the city, that there is a stop put to it, and that the spires shall be repaired again with all speed"; "after which," we are told, "the mob with one accord gave a great shout, and said, 'God bless the King.'" The spires remained during the lifetime of these zealous townsmen, but their descendants seem either to have been more indifferent in the matter, or else to have been wanting in a similar courage, when the spires were finally removed in 1807. A foolhardy feat was performed in the year 1739 by a man named Robert Cadman, who "did fly from one of the spires of the minster, by means of a rope, down to the Castle Hill, near to the Black Boy public-house." Cadman met his death in the next year at Shrewsbury, while attempting a similar performance there. On passing round to the south side of the minster, the artificial nature of the west front becomes plainly apparent. We now get a much clearer idea of what the Norman towers were originally like. The gable, with its intersecting Norman arcades and diaper-work, is doubtless similar to that originally on the western face. In front of the towers is St. Hugh's or the ringers' chapel, with its single window to the south. Next is the chapel used as the Consistory Court, with two windows facing south, and two others facing east. The gable of this chapel is worthy of notice. At the head of its tall central lancet is a grotesque figure, commonly pointed out as the "Devil looking over Lincoln"; there appears to be no satisfactory solution of the origin of this phrase. The most curious legend is that which describes the devil as _still inside_ the minster, and afraid to come out for fear of being blown away! At the heads of the the two side windows are sculptured figures which have been considered to represent pilgrims. The seven bays of the nave are indicated by stout buttresses with triangular heads carried up clear above the parapet of the aisle, over the roof of which flying buttresses are thrown. The clerestory windows are divided into groups of three, and the two windows in each bay of the aisle are separated by a slender buttress. The wavy parapet over the clerestory is of the fourteenth century, and above it stand six canopied niches for statues, with grotesque figures projecting from their bases. The cornice below has been restored at the eastern end, shewing the heads and bosses with which it appears to have been decorated for its entire length. The lofty panelled buttresses of the western side of the great transept are surmounted by tall pinnacles with niches. These pinnacles are of later date than the transept. A grotesque figure projects from each corner of their slender crocketed roofs. At the south-west corner of this transept is the =Galilee Porch=. It will be remembered that the same name is also borne by two other celebrated porches in England, at Ely and Durham. Both of these are, however, at the western end of their respective churches. The origin of the name "Galilee" has had so many different explanations, that it would be tedious to give them here, but the name may have some reference to the room above the porch, in which the judicial Court of the Dean and Chapter was formerly held. The Galilee at Durham was built for women, who were not allowed to use the church. The porch at Lincoln was constructed about the year 1230, as a state entrance for the bishop, whose palace lay on the south side of the minster yard. The plan is in the form of a cross, and the porch may be entered at the south and west ends, both of which are open. An arcade of slender arches runs round the walls. At the end of the north limb the arches are open, and rest upon a low wall. [Illustration: GALILEE PORCH, AND SOUTH SIDE OF THE NAVE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The two stone coffin-covers in the pavement do not appear to have been originally placed here; they apparently date from the twelfth or thirteenth century. The porch has a stone vault, with a profusion of tooth ornament on the groins and elsewhere. Someone has left it on record that there are 5355 dog-tooth pyramids used in the decoration of the Galilee Porch alone. Two massive oak doors at the east end open into the transept; the doorway is richly carved with foliage and tooth ornament. In an engraving of the year 1672 this fine porch is shewn as walled up; it was used, in the last century, as a work-shop for the plumbers of the cathedral. The ground round the minster has been considerably lowered in recent years, and in this way the proportions of the building are displayed to greater advantage. In Wild's plan of 1819, a flight of steps is indicated by which the Galilee Porch was entered, but the lowering of the ground has caused their removal. Above this porch is the room in which the =Chapter Archives= are carefully preserved. An account of these is given by the Rev. Prebendary Wickenden in the thirty-eighth volume of the _Archæological Journal_. The cathedral plumbers seem to have been accommodated here after the porch below was reopened, until the year 1851, when the chamber was appropriated as the muniment room. For nearly a century before this the documents had been kept in what is now the singing-school over the vestry. The plan of the room is =T=-shaped, and it is lighted by eleven lancet windows rising from the floor; the walls are covered with Early English arcading. The documents have suffered considerably from damp and neglect, and some of them still bear traces of the time when George Huddleston, a priest-vicar in the early part of the seventeenth century, kept pigeons in the muniment room. The two most precious documents are now preserved in the cathedral library; one of the few existing contemporary copies of the Magna Charta, and a copy, made early in the twelfth century, of the Charter of William the Conqueror for the transference of the see from Dorchester to Lincoln. A charter from Edward I., of the year 1285, is also still preserved, by which permission is given to build walls round the close, and to shut the gates of the same at night. Lastly may be mentioned a series of Chapter Acts, nearly complete from 1305 to the present time, and audit accounts covering the same period. The embattled parapet which surrounds the low modern roof is in the Perpendicular style, and is, of course, later than the structure itself. [Illustration: THE CENTRAL TOWER, FROM THE SOUTH. _Photochrom Co. Ltd. Photo._] From a point a little westward of the Galilee Porch, the =Central Tower= is seen to advantage. Its early name of the "Rood Tower," from the rood-screen which fills the easternmost of the four great interior arches supporting it, has been corrupted into "Broad Tower." Very excellent authority could be brought forward for calling this the finest central tower of any English cathedral. The height to the top of the corner pinnacles is 271 feet, an altitude which is exceeded by only two cathedral _spires_ in England, those of Salisbury and Norwich. The tall spire of timber, covered with lead, which originally crowned this tower reached an altitude, it is said, of 525 feet; but this is doubtful. This spire was blown down during a tempest in January 1547-8. The outside measurement of the sides of the tower is 54 ft. 6 in. This is not the first central tower of Lincoln. The original tower, of Norman work, was succeeded by a _nova turris_, which fell about the year 1237. The celebrated Grosseteste was bishop at the time, and the work of reconstruction would appear to have been begun almost immediately. The lower part of the present tower, both inside and out, bears the peculiar lattice-work ornament which has been noticed in the gable of the west front. Here, as there, it may be considered a mark of Grosseteste's time. The tower was then carried as high as the top of the arcading just over the ridge of the nave roof, and a wooden spire was added. In this state it appears to have remained for at least half-a-century. When the work was again taken in hand, in 1307, it was speedily completed, and by 1311 the tower was raised as high as we now see it. The two lofty windows which occupy each side of the upper storey, with their crocketed pillars and canopied heads, are extremely beautiful. At the four corners are octagonal panelled turrets, surmounted by wooden pinnacles coated with lead. The spire which fell in 1547-8 carried the parapet with it. In February 1715 three of the pinnacles were blown down; their re-erection was completed in 1728. Nearly fifty years later, the dean wrote to James Essex, the architect, asking his opinion about the erection of a stone spire. He replied that the height was too great and the situation too exposed, but recommended, instead, battlements and four stone pinnacles. In 1775, Essex was employed to erect the present open parapet. The western side was blown down in December 1883, but, falling inwards, it did little damage, and was easily replaced. The following details concerning the tower are copied from a pocket-guide to Lincolnshire by the late Sir Charles Anderson, Bart, (third edition, revised by Canon Maddison), a most interesting book containing much useful information:--"It was a bold undertaking, and executed with marvellous skill, for, in order to lessen the additional weight without building strengthening arches below, which would have injured the interior effect, as at Salisbury and Wells, two thin walls are tied together at intervals, so as to leave a vacuum between, bound by squinches at the top corners.... Compared with the great Victoria Tower of Westminster, which, from many points of view, looks broader at the top than the bottom, the Lincoln tower is the perfection of symmetrical proportion; the reason is that it is gathered in about 2-½ inches, 25 feet below the parapet, which shews upon what trifles, as they might be called, beauty and proportion depend." Wallcott describes this tower as "so full of state, and dignity, and majestic grandeur, that no church in England, or on the continent, can be cited in the same description." =Bells in the Central Tower=.--The tower is the abiding-place of the present "Great Tom of Lincoln"; but before describing him and his companions, we must give an account of his predecessors of the same name in the north-west tower, as well as of the former occupants of his present abode. We find that in 1311 a question arose respecting new ropes for the two bells lately hung in the new tower. These were not the first bells possessed by the minster, as there is a record in the works of Giraldus Cambrensis of "_duas campanas grandas atque sonoras_" given by Geoffrey Plantagenet, who held the temporalities of the see from 1173 to 1182. The number was afterwards increased to six, although it is not known when. They were called the "Lady Bells," and were rung for the minster service. The largest Lady Bell was tolled forty times at the shutting of the church doors every night, after which the searchers of the church partook of bread and beer provided for them under the watching chamber in the east transept; they then walked round and searched the church. When the Lady Bells were taken down in 1834, four were found to be dated 1593, one 1633, and one 1737. The original "Great Tom" was hung in the north-west tower. It is not known how it was acquired; some say it was a gift, others say it was stolen from the Abbey of Beauchief, Derbyshire, or from Peterborough. The origin of its name, too, has been a subject of dispute. Stukeley considered it possible that it had been consecrated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Others think it took its name from that of the old bell of Christ Church, Oxford, which bore the curious inscription, _In Thomae laude, resono Bim Bom sine fraude_. It should be remembered that Oxford was in the diocese of Lincoln in olden days, and that several Bishops of Lincoln were chancellors of Oxford. Wherever the first "Great Tom" came from, it was recast in the minster yard by two bell founders from Nottingham and Leicester early in the seventeenth century, when the weight was increased from 8743 pounds to 9894-½ pounds. "The bell was cast and hung upp and upon Sonday the xxvij of this month [January 1611] ronge owte and all safe and well." It was tolled until 1802, when it was found that this process shook the tower too much. The following extract from the _Stamford Mercury_ of the 6th August 1802, is given by North in his "Church Bells of Lincolnshire":--"Great Tom o' Lincoln is to be rung no more! The full swing of four tons and a half is found to injure the tower where he hangs. He has therefore been chained and rivetted down; so that instead of the full mouthful he has been used to send forth, he is enjoined in future merely to wag his tongue." Towards the end of the year 1827 experienced ears detected that something was wrong, and by Christmas it became plainly evident that the bell was cracked. It was finally decided to have it recast in a larger size. For this purpose it was broken to pieces with its own clapper, and sent to London. To provide the extra metal, the six Lady Bells were unfortunately sacrificed. The cathedral thus lost the distinction of being the only one in the kingdom possessed of two rings of bells. "Great Tom" was recast by Thomas Hears at the Whitechapel Bell foundry on the 15th November 1834. It was taken by road to Lincoln, drawn by eight horses, and raised to its new position in the central tower. Two new quarter bells, cast at the same time, were also hung in this tower. The number of quarter bells was increased in 1880 to four, one new bell being given by Mr. Nathaniel Clayton, and the other by Mrs. Seely, The present "Great Tom" weighs 5 tons 8 cwts., is 6 ft. 0-¾ in. high, with a circumference at the base of 21 ft. 6 in., and is in size the fourth bell in the kingdom. The hours are struck upon it with a hammer weighing 224 lbs. [Illustration: THE MINSTER FROM THE CLOISTERS. (From a Water-colour Painting by Frederick Mackenzie, in the South Kensington Museum.) _F. G. M. Beaumont, Photo._] The chief feature of the south side of the western transept is the beautiful round window, "the bishop's eye," with its delicate leaf-like tracery. From the outside, this window would look much better if it were a little higher up, but the reason of its position is sufficiently evident from the inside, where it is quite clear of the vault, while the admirable round window on the north side is spoilt by not being completely visible until you approach it very closely. Above "the bishop's eye" is a horizontal band of seven elaborately-carved quatrefoils, considered to have formed part of the tracery of the earlier round window. They are enough to shew that the window was different to "the dean's eye" at the other end of the transept. The window in the gable, though much too large for its position, is nevertheless worthy of notice on account of its fine flowing tracery, which was inserted, like that of the round window below, about the middle of the fourteenth century. This window is not visible from the inside. The gable is outlined by a curious band of open Gothic tracery, surmounted by a cross. This band was erected by the architect to the fabric, named Hayward, in the year 1804. It is a copy of the original (see old view, p. 21), constructed about the time of the insertion of the window below. This was blown down on the 20th January 1802. It fell at about eleven o'clock in the morning, but fortunately did little damage. It will be noticed that the two turrets are different: the western is octagonal and crocketed; the other is shorter, plainer, and four-sided. Near the top of the last buttress on the east side of the transept is a stone with the date 1746, apparently a record of restoration. The roof of the choir of St. Hugh, the earliest Gothic portion of the building, is somewhat lower than that of the nave; the clerestory windows are remarkably slender. The narrow buttresses are later additions, constructed to resist the thrust of the stone vault. In the corner of the east transept is a small stone flue from the old fireplace in the choristers' vestry. At the south-west corner of this transept is the canons' vestry; the buttresses, which appear above, pass right down to the ground, and are seen inside the vestry, clearly shewing this to be a later addition to the transept. Over this vestry is the room where the muniments of the chapter were kept until they were removed to the chamber above the Galilee Porch. The room they had occupied was then appropriated as a singing-school, and a small organ was erected in it, which is still there. The vestry is plain and unpretending, but it would have been a pity if, as was at one time proposed, it had been altogether removed. In 1854 it was thoroughly restored under the architect, J. T. Willson, when the present parapet was added. Underneath are seen the low windows of an old vaulted crypt, which was probably used as a treasury. The south face of the slender transept of St. Hugh looks very different to that of the western transept; its many windows leave but little wall space. First is a pair of lancets, then two rows of three above them, and lastly three narrow lights to fill the gable. On either side are two octagonal turrets, with pyramidal roofs surmounted by sculptured figures of angels. On the east side of the transept are seen the two semi-circular chapels of St. Hugh's design. On the buttress at the south-eastern corner of the transept are two sundials, with inscriptions, one being the familiar quotation from Martial--_Pereunt et imputantur_; the other is _Cito ætas præterit._ The =Presbytery=, or eastern limb of the minster, is the finest example of the best period of English Gothic. Its crocketed gables and pinnacles, its panelled buttresses, its elaborate tracery, and, above all, its wealth of sculpture, form a striking contrast to the simplicity of St. Hugh's work. The choir is divided into five bays, indicated by the boldly-projecting buttresses, once covered with statues; the canopies and pedestals still remain, within arches supported by tall clustered pillars with foliaged capitals. The buttresses are crowned by slender crocketed gables, at the bases of which grotesque figures project. One of these, an imp on the back of a witch (on the third buttress), serves, like the sculpture in the gable of the consistory court, for the "devil looking over Lincoln." [Illustration: SOUTH-EAST PORCH, WITH THE CHANTRY-CHAPELS OF BISHOPS LONGLAND AND RUSSELL. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] [Illustration: Cast of the Figure of Christ, in the South-East Porch. (Taken before the Porch was restored.) _F. G. M. Beaumont, Photo._] Both in the aisles and in the clerestory, broad windows, filled with elegant geometric tracery, take the place of the plain lancets seen in other parts. The most magnificent exterior feature of the eastern arm is undoubtedly the sculptured doorway on the south side. Leland, in the time of Henry VIII., writes: "There is a very faire Doore in the upper part of the Churche Southward to go into the Close, and againe this lyith the Byshop's Palace hangginge _in declivio_." It was probably constructed, like the Galilee doorway, as a state entrance for the bishop. The porch fills the third bay, and projects as far as the buttresses; its sides recede inwards to the pair of doors giving access to the Angel Choir. Although the doorways of our cathedrals, as a rule, cannot in any way be compared with the magnificent portals to be seen in France, yet this single example at Lincoln would be quite enough to prove that English architects were capable of designing a really magnificent doorway. In the tympanum is the subject of the Last Judgment in relief. A majestic figure of Christ the Judge occupies the central space, with an angel on either side swinging a censer. He is surrounded by a quatrefoiled aureole supported by angels. To the left, the dead are rising from their tombs, and are borne aloft by angels; on the other side demons are dragging the condemned down to the jaws of hell, which gape wide open beneath the Saviour's feet. The archivolt is richly decorated with sculpture. In the inner band is a row of niches with twelve seated figures, apparently kings and queens: next a double band of delicate open-work foliage; outside this a row of sixteen slender standing figures enclosed by interlacing stems, richly decorated with foliage. The doorway is formed of two cinquefoiled arches, separated by a central pillar having the canopy and base for a figure of the Virgin, which has been removed. On either side of the doorway is a triple canopy for statues, and behind this a row of slender columns with foliated capitals. The hand of the restorer might well have spared this beautiful porch, where the question of the stability of the fabric did not in any way arise. But, unfortunately, an attempt was made about thirty years ago to restore the mutilated figures, and further restorations are now [1897] being carried out. A cast of the headless figure of Christ, with the two angels at the sides, has recently been acquired by the South Kensington Museum. It is valuable as shewing the state of the central figure before restoration (see illustration, p. 67). It is believed that Essex also had tampered with this door in the last century. On the buttresses on either side of the doorway are four headless statues, resting on corbels supported by projecting figures. The two small =chapels= which stand to the right and left of the doorway are those built as chantries by Bishops Russell and Longland. The one on the eastern side is that of Bishop Russell (d. 1494). The mullions which run from top to bottom of the three windows, dividing them into vertical strips, are sufficient to mark this building as of the Perpendicular period. Between the windows there is only just room for the panelled buttresses which separate them. The embattled parapet, far more conspicuous and elaborate than one of an earlier period would have been, is covered with tracery, and broken by crocketed pinnacles. The whole shews on a small scale the extravagance into which Gothic architecture had lapsed, and contrasts unfavourably with the sober dignity of the structure to which this small chapel is attached. The other chapel to the west was built half-a-century later by Bishop Longland (d. 1547). Although an imitation of Bishop Russell's, it shews points of difference both inside and outside. Leaving these chapels, we notice on the second buttress from the east a queenly figure. On the eastern buttress is a statue of Edward I., trampling on a Saracen, and by his side is his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, whose effigy is to be seen inside this choir. [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE SOUTH-EAST. _Photocrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The =east end=, in spite of its defects, is perhaps the finest in the country, and the broad expanse of the minster green offers exceptional opportunities for seeing this part of the building to advantage. An excellent general view may be had from the south-east, in the direction of Pottergate. The main feature is the magnificent central window in the geometrical Decorated style. Above this is another fine window of the same period. The latter looks somewhat awkward on account of its position, balanced, so to speak, on the apex of the window below; like the window over the "bishop's eye," it is far too large for the gable in which it is placed. In the trefoil over the top is a figure of the Virgin with the Infant Saviour, and on either side of the gable is a turret with a richly crocketed pyramidal roof. The aisle windows (the two which are filled with the beautiful early stained glass) look very small when compared with the giant central window, from which they are separated by panelled buttresses of bold projection. We have already noticed the insincerity of the west front of the minster, and the same charge must be brought against this eastern end, although the deception here is not so extensive. The two panelled gables over the aisle windows are shams; there is nothing behind them, and they appear to have been only designed for the sake of effect. The northern gable is higher than the other, and the tracery is not quite the same. An arcade runs right across the lower part of the front, beneath the three principal windows. Another short arcade is seen beneath the sham gables. The hexagonal stone structure at the north-east corner, with a pyramidal roof, covers the minster well. This stonework is presumably not very ancient; in a view of Hollar's in Dugdale's "_Monasticon Anglicanum_," the well is covered by a wooden shed. On the north side of the angel choir, the second bay contains the chantry chapel of Bishop Fleming (d. Jan. 1430-1), which formed a model for the two chapels on the other side of the choir. The parapet is panelled, and the buttresses contain niches for small statues. In the next bay is a door leading into the choir; its position corresponds to the sculptured porch on the other side, but it is much smaller and plainer. One of the mouldings of the arch is of oak; in the tympanum is an aureole with a bracket for a figure. The doorway is divided by a central shaft, an addition of the latter part of the fourteenth century. The shield of arms in front of the capital is that of Richard II. (1377-99); quarterly, first and fourth, the mythical Arms of Edward the Confessor; second and third, the Royal Arms of England. The supporters are--dexter, a lion; sinister, a bull. It will be noticed that the next window of the aisle, and the buttress beyond it, are much plainer than the rest, left so doubtless owing to their having been to a great extent hidden by the walls of the lengthened chapel (see p. 20). In the year 1875 the ground round the chapter-house was lowered, and the foundations of the chapel were laid bare. They extend as far as the second buttress of the angel choir. A general idea of the appearance of this chapel may be had from a view of Hollar's, in Dugdale's "_Monasticon_." There were two windows in the east wall, and above these a blind arcade. The roof was pointed; its outline may still be traced on the transept wall. Between this chapel and the vestibule of the chapter-house is the old common chamber, of which parts are now used as a lavatory. The position of the ten-sided chapter-house, like that of the neighbouring cloisters, is somewhat unusual. Two windows, with a lozenge-shaped panel above them, occupy each of the sides. The buttresses attached to the walls at the angles were originally crowned by pedimental gables, all but the two westernmost of which have been replaced by crocketed pinnacles of the Decorated period. The pressure of the stone vault, which was added some time after the chapter-house was built, necessitated the strengthening of the walls, which was done by means of flying buttresses attached to eight huge blocks of masonry, standing about 20 feet from the walls. The roof is pyramidal, and is surmounted by a cross. A guide-book of 1810 states that there was "originally a fine spire rising from the roof, but was taken down not long since, being greatly decayed." This apparently refers to an alteration made by James Essex in 1761-2, when the roof was "reduced to an ugly hipped shape." It was again altered to its original form in the year 1800. A wall, which is shewn in early prints, between some of the outer buttresses was removed in 1806. On several of the buttresses the marks may still be seen of houses once built against them. These houses have now been all removed, and a delightful view of the minster has been obtained by clearing away all the dwellings which stood until quite recent years on the now vacant piece of ground beyond the chapter-house. [Illustration: NORTH DOORWAY OF THE ANGEL CHOIR. _H. C. Oakden, Photo._] The north side of the minster is, to a large extent, blocked by the deanery, but a fine general view may be had from the road at the north-east corner, with the chapter-house just in front, surrounded by its massive supporters. The transept of St. Hugh, beyond this, is hidden by the chapter-house vestibule and the cloisters. At the end of the western transept is the circular window, the "dean's eye," with the large quatrefoil in the middle, surrounded by a band of sixteen small circles. Above, in the gable, is a lancet window of five lights. The difference between these two windows and those inserted in a corresponding position on the south side of the transept, is very noticeable. The southern pair are over a century later in date. Both the turrets on the north side are octagonal, but neither of them is crocketed. The view from this spot at sunset is particularly fine. After passing the deanery, and turning to the left, it will be noticed that the north side of the nave has not a row of niches such as has been seen on the south side. The tower at the west end has a gable on its north face, similar to that on the opposite side of the companion tower. A visit to the minster would not be complete without a climb to the breezy top of the great central tower. The ascent is not difficult, and may be made for a small fee. The clock was made by William Potts & Sons of Leeds, in 1880, and weighs about four tons. It took the place of one made in 1775 by Thwaites, and afterwards improved by Vulliamy. The Cathedral Close, or =Minster Yard=, as old-fashioned Lincoln people still love to call it, was first protected by a wall in the last years of the thirteenth century. The licence from Edward I. to the Dean and Chapter, giving them permission to undertake this work, dates from the year 1285. Edward's successor granted a further licence in the year 1319 to fortify the walls; the two ruined towers in the chancery garden are relics of the fortifications begun about this time. Massive double gateways were erected to protect the approaches, except in one instance, where a steep ascent was considered to justify the erection of a single gateway only. Unfortunately, these gateways were for the most part destroyed early in the present century. The principal one remaining is that opposite the western end of the minster, known as the "Exchequer Gate." Indeed, even when all the gateways were standing, this seems to have been the chief. [Illustration: NORTH SIDE OF THE ANGEL CHOIR. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] Leland, who was at Lincoln in the latter part of Henry VIII.'s reign, writes thus: "Al the hole Close is environid withe an highe stronge wawle havynge dyvers Gats in it, whereof the principall is the Escheker gate." Of course, when Leland wrote, the companion outer gateway was yet standing, and it remained so until early in the present century. It had then fallen into disrepair, and does not seem to have been considered worth renovating. An idea of the appearance of the Exchequer Gate will be gained from De Wint's picture, reproduced on p. 33. Like its former companion, it has a large archway in the middle and a postern on either side; above are two storeys of rooms, formerly let as dwellings. A guide-book of the year 1810 mentions that a public-house was at that time "kept in the apartment to the north of the southern postern." Another gateway of the same period (early fourteenth century) is still standing near the top of the New Road, at the south-east corner of the close. This was the only single gateway. It is now called "Pottergate Arch." A little westward of this gate, a flight of steps, with a postern at the top, leads up to the minster yard from the New Road. Respecting its name, the "Grecian Stairs," much has been written. It may be sufficient here to remark that the old name appears to have been simply "The Greesen," from the early English _gree_, a step. "a sentence Which, as a grize or step may help these lovers." ("Othello," Act I. sc. iii.). The "Priory Gate" to the north-east, near the chapter-house, is a plain modern arch, a poor substitute for the two gateways destroyed in the year 1815. In addition to those already mentioned, there were anciently two other double gateways to the close. One of them stood between the White Hart and Angel Inns, at the west end of Eastgate; the other was near the deanery, at the end of East Bight. The venerable ruins of the old =Palace of the Bishops= at Lincoln bear sufficient testimony to long years of neglect. But it is gratifying to know that this beautiful spot has been restored in recent years to its ancient use, and that a new bishop's palace now occupies an appropriate place beside the ruins of the old. It lies on the south side of the close, and anciently commanded a lovely view over the straggling city in the valley beneath, and over the surrounding country. The prospect is now marred by a fast-increasing number of tall, smoking chimneys, signs of awakening activity; but it is still beautiful, and the view of the minster from the palace grounds is as fine as ever. [Illustration: ELEVATION OF THE FORMER CHAPEL OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE, WITH BISHOP ALNWICK'S TOWER. [completed from Buck's Print, 1726.]] Special permission is necessary to visit the ruins. The entrance gateway, at the corner of the Vicars' Close, bears the arms of Bishop Smyth. The chapel used to stand on the left, where the coach-house and stable now are. In front is Bishop Alnwick's tower, which was restored by the late bishop, Dr. Wordsworth. Just westward of the tower are the ruins of the hall, extending in a southerly direction towards the ruins of the kitchen. The present chapel of the bishops stands between the ancient hall and kitchen, and has been quite recently erected. There are also remains of buildings of less importance. =The Deanery= lies on the north side of the minster, just beyond the cloisters. The present house, built half-a-century ago, replaced a much finer building, with a quadrangular central court. The commencement of the old deanery is dated as far back as the end of the twelfth century, but the chief part was the work of Dean Fleming (1451-83). Leland seems to imply that there were traces of more ancient buildings. "Where the Deane of Lyncolnes Howse is," he says, "and there about was a Monasterye of Nunes afore the time that Remigius began the new Mynstar of Lyncolne: and in this Howse yet remayne certayne tokens of it." The demolition, towards the end of the year 1847, of the fine tower built by Dean Fleming caused much regret. It used to be called "Wolsey's tower," from the popular opinion that it was built by that celebrated prelate when bishop of Lincoln. In the painting by Mackenzie, reproduced on p. 53, the tower is shown, to the left of the chapter-house. The new deanery lies a little to the eastward of its predecessor. The most interesting of all the old houses around the minster yard is the =Cantelupe chantry house=, which stands almost opposite to the south-east doorway of the minster, near the entrance to the Vicars' Court. This house was originally the residence of the clergy who served at the altar of St. Nicholas in the minster, where Nicholas, Lord Cantelupe, founded a chantry in the year 1355, with an endowment for the maintenance of three priests. It is probable that the house was erected by Lord Cantelupe's widow eleven years later, when the foundation was enlarged by her for a warden and seven chaplains. The house is of stone, with a fine oriel window, which has, however, been much mutilated. The two shields of arms, one on either side of this window, are those of the Cantelupe and Zouche families. In the gable above is a niche, with a seated figure of Christ. Several windows of the house have been filled in, and the interior has been completely transformed. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE, LINCOLN, ON THE LEVEL OF THE HALL FLOOR.] [Illustration: VIEW OF THE ANCIENT DEANERY.] Close by is the entrance to the =Vicars' Court=, founded by Bishop Oliver Sutton (1280-99); the work was continued by his successor, John de Dalderby, and taken up again by Bishop John Buckingham (1363-1397), The entrance gateway is the work of Bishop Buckingham, and bears his shield of arms. Some houses on the east side of the court also bear these arms, and date from the same bishop's time. Part of Bishop Button's work is to be traced in a house on the south side. The other buildings are of later date. The residence of the chancellor, on the eastern side of the close, near the south end, may be recognised by its fine old red-brick front, dating from the latter part of the fifteenth century; parts of the house are of earlier date. The precentory stands on the south side of the close, next to the Exchequer Gate. Very little now remains of the ancient building; the present front was designed by J. L. Pearson, R.A. The next house eastward, the sub-deanery, has more extensive remains of early work; a bay window of the fifteenth century should in particular be noticed. In the year 1884, when the eighteenth century railings at the western end of the minster were removed, and the ground round this part lowered, the sub-deanery was considerably altered to allow of the widening of the road. [Illustration: PART OF THE ANCIENT DEANERY, WITH DEAN FLEMING'S TOWER.] CHAPTER III THE INTERIOR, INCLUDING THE CLOISTERS AND CHAPTER-HOUSE A detailed description of the interior of Lincoln minster may be fittingly preceded by a brief review of its chief features. As regards the Presbytery or Angel Choir, no one, with the exception of a recent American critic, has ventured to lower the just reputation of this lovely work, distinguished for a rare combination of beauty of architecture and sculpture. The next place in point of architectural excellence must be assigned to the Nave, a harmonious and characteristic example of the Early English style. But the unique position the choir of St. Hugh holds in the history of Gothic architecture should not be lost sight of. The principal interior defect, and this rendered all the more conspicuous by the general gracefulness of other parts, is the lowness of the vault. But, after all, there are only four loftier vaults in England, and one of these is only higher by two feet; nevertheless the defect is conspicuous, and is a serious one. Of the windows, the most noticeable are the great east window and the two "eyes," and these are equal to any in their respective styles in the country. The modern coloured glass which fills the former, as well as many lesser windows in the minster, brings out in greater contrast the loveliness of even the wrecks of the early stained glass still remaining in some others. Considering that Lincoln once possessed the monuments of a queen, of another direct ancestress of our Royal family, and of two bishops whose fame has spread to the farthest limits of Christendom, as well as of others of more local celebrity, it must be confessed that the monuments at present in the minster are disappointing. That of Queen Eleanor is represented by a modern reproduction; Catherine Swynford's is mutilated almost beyond recognition; those of St. Hugh and Grosseteste are gone altogether; and the ancient monuments which are left retain very little of their original splendour. The =Ground Plan= illustrates the lengthening process to which the building has been subjected. It is a double cross, with side chapels extended beyond the nave walls at the western end. The lesser transept has four apsidal chapels towards the east, and the great transept has a single eastern aisle divided into six chapels. The symmetry of the presbytery has been disturbed by the addition of projecting chantry-chapels, one on the north side and two on the south. The cloisters are accessible from the eastern transept, and the chapter-house from the cloisters. The westernmost bay of the nave has been formed into a kind of =vestibule= by means of the archways constructed, during the last century, to strengthen the towers at that end. The vestibule is in three compartments, two of which, under the western towers, are square. The centre one is the most interesting, since it preserves to us a portion of the first bay of Remigius' nave. High up in the side walls is a Norman arch, part of the original clerestory. Below this we can trace the outline of a wider arch (now filled in), which belonged to the triforium. Considerable alterations were made in these walls by Treasurer Welburne in the second half of the fourteenth century, and the arches were filled in during the early part of the eighteenth century, owing to the instability of the towers. The arch dividing the vestibule from the nave was constructed by an architect named John James (apparently not James Gibbs, as some have supposed) about the year 1730, and altered by James Essex thirty or forty years later. In the time of Bishop Grosseteste (1235-53) the side walls were carried above the Norman clerestory to the height of the present nave, and covered with the characteristic lattice-ornament which we have already seen in the central arch outside. The great west window was also inserted in Grosseteste's time, as well as the cinquefoil window above. The tracery now filling the former is in the Early Perpendicular style, and dates from the end of the fourteenth century. From the broad sill of this window a good view of the interior can be obtained, and a much finer one still from the passage which runs beneath the other window above. From the latter position we have an uninterrupted view of the entire length of the minster, which looks longer than it really is, from the fact that the vaulting is carried at an almost uniform height throughout. [Illustration: Elevation of One Bay on the North Side of the Nave.] In the floor are slabs bearing the names of Chancellor Reynolds (d. 1766) and of Precentor Trimnell (d. 1756), the "chanter" who was accused of removing the statues over the central doorway outside. On the wall at the north-east corner is a tablet to the memory of the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of the 10th or North Lincolnshire regiment of infantry, who died in the campaigns of the Sutlej (1845-46) and of the Panjab (1848-49); the tablet was erected by their surviving comrades. The compartments under the western towers were vaulted by Treasurer Welburne (ab. 1350-80), to whom is also due the tracery which covers the walls. The curious chambers constructed in the thickness of the old Norman west front are accessible from the sills of the western windows, these being joined by narrow passages in the wall. On the north side we are able in the same way to reach a long narrow chamber, which probably served as a treasury, constructed in the north wall of the tower. The chamber was originally lighted by four small round-headed windows. One of them, on the west side, is still open; the two facing northwards, formerly outside windows, are now enclosed by the northwest chapel, and blocked up; the fourth, on the east, is also blocked. A square hole in the floor formed at one time the only means of access to the chamber beneath, which may now be reached by a doorway from the porch. In the north wall of this lower chamber is a low semi-circular arch, supposed to have been constructed by the Norman builders, in order to avoid some obstacle in the way of the foundations. This arch was filled in with masonry, now pierced by a doorway. The north-west chapel, which is entered by this doorway, encloses the outer wall of St. Mary's tower. [Illustration: Half Section of the Nave, looking West.] The corresponding chapel on the south side of the minster is sometimes called the "Ringers' Chapel." On its walls is painted a seventeenth century list of the "Names of the Companie of Ringers of our Blessed Virgen Marie of Lincolne." In one place we see "Edward Whipp 1617 at the kings coming to Lincolne." This refers to the visit of King James I. in March of that year, when he visited the minster, and touched a number of persons for the evil. His Majesty went also to a cock-fight at an inn near the Stone-bow, and to a horse-race on the Heath. Edward Whipp was evidently one of those who rang the bells in honour of the royal visit. The Ringers' Chapel encloses part of the south wall of St. Hugh's tower, which has a large arched recess and a niche, similar to those in the west front. The curious "stone beam," about which so much has been conjectured, and so little is known, is constructed between the walls of the two western towers, just above the stone vault of the nave. It is really an arch of very slight curvature, composed of twenty-three stones of unequal length, but of uniform depth and breadth. Examination has proved that there is nothing but mortar in the joints, and there are no traces of iron having been used in the construction. When jumped upon, the "beam" vibrates appreciably. It has been suggested that it was constructed in order to try whether the towers were capable of supporting the additional weight of upper storeys, but nothing appears to be satisfactorily known as to the purpose it served or the date of its erection. The =Nave= was constructed, together with the two chapels at its western end, during the first half of the thirteenth century. Attempts have been made to distinguish earlier and later features in different parts. For example, the morning chapel on the north side is considered to be somewhat earlier than the consistory court opposite to it; but there being no documentary evidence to guide us, all that we may safely say is, that the nave is later than the time of St. Hugh (d. 1200), and was practically completed before the death of Bishop Grosseteste, which occurred in 1253. Taken as a whole, it is one of the best examples of the Early English style we possess. The late Sir G. G. Scott, in his lectures on Mediæval Architecture, thus speaks of it--"It exhibits an Early English style in its highest stage of development: massive without heaviness, rich in detail without exuberance, its parts symmetrically proportioned and carefully studied throughout, the foliated carving bold and effective, there seems no deficiency in any way to deteriorate from its merits." In dignity especially, the eminent architect considered the nave to be superior to all other parts of the cathedral. [Illustration: THE NAVE, LOOKING WEST. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The general complaint against the interior--the lowness of the vault--is applicable here. The architects were, undoubtedly, influenced by the vault of St. Hugh's choir, which is 8 feet lower than that of the nave. According to the measurements in Lord Grimthorpe's "Book on Building," the height is 82 feet--21 feet less than is found at Westminster, 11 feet less than at York, 6 feet less than at Ripon, and 2 feet less than at Salisbury. Lincoln comes fifth of the English cathedrals in interior height, but since this height is maintained almost uniformly throughout, the vault looks lower than it really is. For this reason the defect is not so noticeable in looking westward from beneath the great tower. Another complaint, which appears hardly so justifiable, is the remarkable lightness of the piers, and the great width of the arches. Many, in fact, might be inclined to agree with Mr. F. C. Penrose, who points out that the effect of this lightness is an increase in the dignity and apparent size of the nave, which would be felt to a much greater extent if the windows had their original stained glass, and thus admitted less light than at present. Mr. Penrose has investigated the matter, and given the result in the Lincoln volume (1848) of the Archæological Institute. He states that "the ratio of voids to solids appears to be more remarkable than is to be found in any vaulted building in Europe; at least, among the larger structures." The piers, we are told, are quite secure. The greatest care was taken in their foundations, and the footing courses extend so as to reach those of the side walls. The nave is in seven bays, the two westernmost of which are conspicuously narrower than the others. The reduction is a little more than 5 feet, the measurements being 26.6 feet, and 21.3 feet. Another peculiarity, already noticed, is that these two western bays are not quite in a straight line with the others (see p. 23). The vault drops about 2 feet, and turns slightly northwards. Each pier of the nave is surrounded by eight circular shafts, some more slender than the others; the slender ones are separately banded in the middle. The shafts are principally of Purbeck marble, which is capable of receiving a fine polish. This marble has been used extensively throughout the interior. It has, however, become much decayed, and in many parts has had to be renewed; whilst in some cases it appears to have been replaced by the far more durable Lincoln stone. Many of the Purbeck shafts in the minster are being polished up or restored. The bases of the nave piers are seen to be higher on the north side than on the south. This peculiarity is also found in the western transept, in St. Hugh's choir, and in the Angel Choir beyond. The "dean's eye," too, on the north, is higher than the round window at the southern end of the transept, and on the west front of the minster, the lower rows of arcading on the north side are at a higher level than the corresponding rows on the south. It has been conjectured that this peculiarity was owing to the inequality of the ground. If it had been a mere freak of St. Hugh's architect, it seems, hardly probable that the succeeding architects would have imitated it for another century. Turning again to the nave, a difference will be noticed in the foliage of the capitals on the two sides. The arch mouldings, like those of St. Hugh's choir, were considered "beautiful specimens" by Rickman. They are deeply cut, and throw good, bold shadows. In the triforium, each bay contains two arches, supported by clustered columns with foliaged capitals. The spandrels are decorated with sunk trefoils or quatrefoils. In most cases the arches are each divided into three sub-arches with clustered shafts, the tympanum being pierced with quatrefoils. A difference is noticeable, however, in the easternmost arch, and the two westernmost bays (five arches altogether) on both sides. Here the sub-arches are only two in number. The narrowness of the two western bays accounts for the variation at that end. The clerestory is the same throughout its length, having three tall narrow windows in each bay, with slender banded shafts. In the nave we have, according to Fergusson, "a type of the first perfected form of English vaulting." He calls it "very simple and beautiful." At the junctions of the ribs are elaborate bosses of foliage. The compartments are covered with plaster, once decorated in colours and gold. In the second bay from the east is the name: W. L. PARIS:--evidently intended as a record of some repairs to the vault. The springers rest on clusters of three long slender vaulting-shafts, rising from foliaged corbels just above the capitals of the nave piers. [Illustration: PART OF THE DOUBLE ARCADING OF ST. HUGH. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] In the aisles, each bay has two lancet windows, except the easternmost bay on the south side, which has only one. In the jambs are slender Purbeck shafts, twice banded. Just beneath these windows, an arcade of trefoiled arches runs along the whole length of the nave, being continued on the screen walls to the western chapels. The arches are deep, with bold mouldings, and are supported by clustered columns. There are five arches in each bay, but they are not placed in the same manner on both sides of the nave. On the south, the arches are arranged in groups of five, with blank spaces of wall between, in front of which pass the vaulting-shafts. On the north, the arcade is continuous, and is so arranged that each cluster of shafts supporting the vault passes in front of an arch. The work on the south side is more elaborate; tooth ornament is used, a string-course runs along at the height of the capitals, and foliaged bosses are found in the lower corners of the spandrels. In addition to the clustered vaulting-shafts already mentioned, there is a single vaulting-shaft in the centre of each bay, between the windows, rising from a corbel above the wall-arcade. On the north side these corbels merely have plain mouldings, but on the south side they are foliated. The arrangement of the vaulting-ribs is different in the north and south aisles; and in the latter it will be noticed that some of the bosses have figure-subjects, besides the foliage met with on the north side. The _Agnus Dei_ carved on the boss in the fourth bay from the west should be noticed. To such minor differences, continually found in the corresponding parts of a Gothic edifice, the style undoubtedly owes a peculiar charm. In the case of the nave at Lincoln, they probably indicate a slight difference in the date of erection, but they certainly point to a far greater scope for individuality being accorded to the masons than was allowed in the rigidly symmetrical styles of the Renaissance. The chapel at the south-west corner of the nave is used as the Consistory Court, and that opposite to it was reappropriated to its ancient use as the Morning-Prayer Chapel by the late Archbishop Benson, when Chancellor of Lincoln. A small brass tablet to his memory has recently been fixed to the wall by the side of the altar. Both chapels are stone-vaulted, but the northern has a feature which is not found in the Consistory Court. This is the slender Purbeck column in the centre, erected to support the vaulting. In this chapel was formerly placed the massive font of black basalt, which was removed in 1874 to its original position in the second bay from the west on the opposite side of the nave. The font is of Norman workmanship, and apparently dates from the time of Remigius (1067-92). There is another of a similar character in the cathedral at Winchester. The basin is square, and rests on a massive circular drum in the centre and four small columns at the corners, supported by a square base. Round the sides of the basin, a row of grotesque monsters, some winged, is carved in bas-relief. The font is now raised on steps. It was used by the parishioners of St. Mary Magdalene's, whose church was destroyed to make room for the minster. They were allowed to worship in the nave until the time of Bishop John de Dalderby (1300-20), when a new church was built for them. The old pavement of the nave was removed towards the end of the last century (about 1782), when many of the grave-slabs it contained were taken away.[8] It was in the nave that the gorgeous processions of olden days were formed, and the original pavement was marked with two rows of circles to indicate the different positions of the clergy. The pavement of the north aisle is considered by some to have been slightly raised; from it the populace might then have watched these processions. Of English cathedrals, Lincoln comes next to Canterbury for the richness of its stained glass, but there is little in the nave which is worthy of notice. Almost all that escaped the stray arrows and bolts from the bows of dwellers round the close appears to have been destroyed during the disastrous times of the Civil War in the seventeenth century, when the mere beauty of a work of art appears to have often served as a sufficient excuse for its destruction. In the windows of the aisles the glass is all coloured, but modern. The lower lights of the great west window are also filled with modern glass, the work of two amateurs, the Revs. Augustus and Frederick Sutton, who produced many others of the coloured glass windows in the minster; the upper lights contain fragments of glass of the same date as the tracery (latter part of the fourteenth century). The cinquefoil window above has been filled with modern glass, inserted in 1859 in honour of the founder, Remigius, who is seen in the centre, holding his church in one hand, and his bishop's staff in the other. The windows of the clerestory are plain. The nave has very few monuments. Of those which remain, the foremost place must certainly be taken by the dark mutilated slab under the easternmost arch on the north side. Remigius, it will be remembered, was originally buried near the altar of the Holy Cross, where his tomb-slab was broken by the beams which fell in flames from the roof of the Norman church. Some years ago, a monumental slab, in two parts, with carved subjects, which might very well date back to the time of Remigius, was brought to light in the cloisters. Canon Massingberd had this removed to the spot where it now lies, not far from the original burial-place of the bishop. The carving consists of various scriptural subjects in low relief; it is now much worn. The surrounding inscription records the foundation of the cathedral by Remigius in the year 1072, and the restitution of the tomb-slab in 1872. On the opposite side, at the end of the aisle wall, is a marble tablet in memory of Michael Honywood (b. 1597: d. 1681), who was made Dean of Lincoln in the year of the Restoration. The present library was erected by him at a cost of £780, and received his collection of books. Near the western end of the nave are slabs in the floor, marking the burial-places of Bishops Smyth (d. Jan. 1513-14), Alnwick (d. 1449), and Atwater (d. Feb. 1520-1). Bishop Smyth was the founder of Brasenose College, Oxford. Bishop Alnwick was buried in the place where he used to stand when processions were formed in the nave. Besides the slabs in the pavement, other monuments of a more conspicuous character appear to have once adorned the nave. A century ago, beneath the easternmost arch on the south side there stood "a raised Altar Tomb of grey marble, this for Dean Mackworth; it was once very costly adorned with figures of Brass Work, but defaced in the time of Cromwell." No altar-tomb now recalls the memory of the dean who refused to walk in a straight line in processions, and brought armed men into the chapter-house to lend weight to his arguments. The carved mahogany =Pulpit= against the second pillar from the east on the north side has been moved to its present position from the choir. It may be hardly necessary to remark that the idea held by some, that this pulpit dates from the time of James I., is quite erroneous; the slightest examination will shew that very little, if any, could be of so early a period. The details of the ornament are of the last century. It is hexagonal, and is supported on open arches of ogee form. A sounding board has recently been suspended above. The brass eagle lectern was given as a memorial of the late Dean Butler (d. 1894), whose recumbent effigy now rests in the angel choir. Before passing under the central tower, an irregularity at the western end should be noticed. The great arch which spans the nave, separating it from the vestibule, is not placed in the centre; it will be seen that there is more wall space on the south side than on the north. The =Central Tower= rests on four lofty arches supported by massive piers. These piers were enlarged to carry the additional weight of the upper storeys of the tower, and are surrounded by banded shafts, chiefly of Purbeck marble. The foliage at the crown of each arch should be noticed; the same occurs on the great central arch of the west front. Above the spandrels, which are covered with the trellis-work also seen elsewhere, are two rows of arcading, with slender clustered shafts. There is a passage all round the upper arcade, and the wall behind is pierced with four windows on each side. The vaulting, like that of the western towers, was erected by Treasurer Welburne (d. 1380); it is 125 feet high. The iron rings in the great piers, two or three feet from the ground, were used for fastening the ropes of the Lady Bells, which were hung in the tower above, and were rung before service by the four choristers in black. The =Western Transept= is considered to be the least satisfactory part of the interior of the minster. The lowness of the vault is especially noticeable. In fact, it had to be raised in the last bay to the north, in order to include the whole of the circular window, part of which would otherwise have been cut off. Yet the transept possesses features of considerable interest. It was planned and commenced by St. Hugh and continued by his immediate successors. A low aisle runs along the eastern side, divided into six chapels, which are dedicated respectively (beginning at the north end) to St. Nicholas, St. Denis, St. James (or St. Thomas), St. Edward the Martyr, St. John the Evangelist and St. Giles. To the walls of these chapels we must look in order to trace the limit of St. Hugh's labours. A characteristic of the bishop's work is the curious double arcading on the walls he built (see p. 89). It is found in the choir and the eastern transept. Mr. Parker's theory that the front arcade was an afterthought, put up when the original flimsy walls were strengthened to support the vault, has been already given in his own words (p. 18). To whatever circumstance the feature may be due, its effect is certainly very good. It will be noticed that the two chapels nearest the choir, and parts of the two chapels next to them, have this double arcading, in which a slight difference has been pointed out. On the north side, the trefoiled arch is against the wall, and the simple arch in front; on the other side the order is reversed. This fact seems rather to strengthen the opinion of those who consider the double arcade to have been designed as such from the beginning. The end of this arcading must be taken to mark the limit of St. Hugh's work. An arcade of single arches is seen in the last chapel on each side, and this simpler design is continued round the other walls of the transept, the arches varying in breadth and resting on clustered shafts. The chapels each occupy one bay of the aisle, and are formed by projecting "perpeyn" walls of stone, originally continued to the piers by wooden screens. The arcading of these walls is deserving of attention. It now remains to notice the screens placed between the piers, to separate the chapels from the transept. The most interesting is that of the chapel nearest the choir on the south side, sometimes called the "Works Chantry." The endowment of this chapel was to provide for prayers on behalf of the benefactors of the church, both living and dead. The screen is of carved stone; round the arch is the inscription "Oremus _pro benefactoribus_ istius Ecclesie" in Gothic characters. On each side are two small kneeling figures, representing the chaplains who served the chantry. Above is a canopy with a seated figure of a bishop and the Royal Arms of England. The shield of arms is a help in assigning a date to the screen. It contains the _fleurs-de-lys_ as assumed by Edward III. in the year 1338, when he laid claim to the French crown. The screen was probably erected soon after this date. It could not have been much later, since Henry IV., towards the end of his reign, reduced the number of _fleurs-de-lys_ to three, in imitation of the French king, Charles V. The corresponding chapel on the other side has a feeble imitation of this screen in pine-wood, a work of the end of the last century. The other screens are of oak, carved with Perpendicular tracery, partly in openwork; they apparently date from the latter half of the fifteenth century. The altars are no longer standing, but in the middle chapel to the north the sockets for the pillars which supported the altar-slab may still be seen. In one of the pavement-slabs in the next chapel to the south, nine holes are pointed out, which served a very different purpose. They are said to have been used for games by some of the officials (choir-boys, one would suppose) connected with the minster. [Illustration: THE WEST TRANSEPT, LOOKING SOUTH. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The two large round windows in the end walls are the most interesting features of this transept. That on the north, the "=Dean's Eye=," is of the same date as its surroundings, and may be placed about the year 1220. The tracery of the southern window, the "=Bishop's Eye=," is much later; it is of the Decorated period, and was probably inserted soon after the middle of the fourteenth century. It has already been remarked that the row of quatrefoils above the window _outside_, are relics of the earlier tracery. Near this window was John de Dalderby's shrine. Although this bishop's admirers could not bring forward a record of sufficiently numerous miracles to procure his canonisation at the papal court, yet he was revered as a saint by the people, and it has been suggested that the offerings at his shrine may have supplied the means to insert the tracery of this window, as well as the one above, which lights the roof, and can only be seen from the outside. The round window has been sometimes called the "Prentice's Window"; but this name is never heard now, and the two "eyes" of the minster will always retain the name which they have borne for more than six hundred years. The "dean's eye" and the "bishop's eye" are both mentioned in the "Metrical Life of St. Hugh," which, it will be remembered, was written sometime between the years 1220 and 1235. The simplest explanation of the names seems to be that the one faces the deanery and the other faces the bishop's palace, but a far more poetic interpretation than this has been devised. The north is the region of Lucifer, and in that direction the dean's eye must look to guard against his approach. Meanwhile the bishop's eye is turned towards the sunny south, the region of the Holy Spirit, whose sweet influence alone can overcome the wiles of the wicked one. Both windows are filled with fine early glass. The "dean's eye" presents a most magnificent example of early thirteenth century stained glass, earlier than most of the glass at Canterbury, which is the richest of all our cathedrals in works of this nature. The subject has been described by C. Winston in the Lincoln volume (1848) of the Archæological Institute. It represents the Church on Earth and the Church in Heaven. In the centre is our Saviour seated in the midst of the Blessed in Heaven. Around are four large compartments, containing portions of different subjects, which do not appear to have all originally belonged to their present positions. The most interesting is that shewing the translation of the relics of St. Hugh, represented as borne on the shoulders of crowned and mitred personages. Of the sixteen outer circles, the topmost represents our Saviour seated on a rainbow; on either side are angels with the instruments of the Passion; in the next circles St. Peter and other saints are conducting holy persons to heaven; below these is the General Resurrection; the lowest five circles each contain the figure of an archbishop or bishop. The subjects can be best seen from the neighbouring triforium or from the passage which runs just beneath the window; it will be noticed that the glass in some of the compartments is much mutilated, as might naturally be expected, considering its antiquity. From below, the subjects are confused and not easy to distinguish, but the rich and harmonious blending of the colours can be seen to the fullest advantage, and the general effect is much finer. Rickman believes the form of the tracery to be quite unique in England, but states that there is a window exactly similar at Laon. Beneath the window is an arcade of seven lancet arches; the wall behind five of them is pierced with windows, which are filled with old glass, chiefly medallions and fragments. Below are two larger lancet windows, one on each side of the dean's doorway. That to the west represents angels seated amid foliage and playing musical instruments; the three lowest figures are quite distinct, but the two above are confused. These fragments have been removed from some other part of the minster, probably from the west window of the nave; they date from the end of the fourteenth century. The more easterly window is filled with old geometrical patterns and fragments. The doorway leads to the deanery, and has a porch outside. Over the door, inside, is a modern clock, with a carved wood canopy which, according to the tablet below, had been originally placed over an earlier clock in the minster. Thomas of Louth, Treasurer of Lincoln, gave a clock to the church in 1324, considered to be the one formerly at the south end of this same transept. The canopy was for some years in the church at Messingham, and was removed thence to its present position, on the north side. The "bishop's eye" on the south side is filled with delicate and beautiful flowing tracery, which has been compared to the fibres of a leaf. Rickman considers it to be the richest remaining example of its period. It is enclosed within a kind of arch formed by two rows of openwork quatrefoils; an open framework of a similar nature is often to be seen round circular windows in French cathedrals. The glass consists of fragments from other windows, chiefly of the Early English period. Although the pieces are placed quite at random, forming no subject whatever, yet the effect of the colouring is good, especially when seen from the opposite end of the transept. Of all the modern windows in the minster, with their elaborate subjects, it may safely be said that not one can be compared in effect with this mass of glowing colour. The glass in the four lancet windows below also dates from the Early English period. It chiefly consists of medallions containing various subjects, collected from other windows. The rest of the stained glass in the transept is modern. Towards the north, the ribs and bosses of the vaulting were decorated some years ago with colours and gold, in imitation of the original colouring. The southern limb of the transept was the site of a shrine which shared with those of the two St. Hugh's the attention of the numerous pilgrims to Lincoln. In the pavement near the western wall towards the Galilee Porch is a slab with the inscription _D'Alderby Episc._ MCCCXIX. His monument is said to have consisted of an altar-tomb of "rare marble," surmounted by a rich canopy. The shrine, of "massey silver," was enriched with diamonds and rubies, and encompassed with rails of silver-gilt. It went with the other valuables to replenish the coffers of the spendthrift Henry VIII. Leland mentions that Dalderby's "Tumbe was taken away _nomine superstitionis_." Two stone shafts belonging to the monument, and a fragment of a third, still remain against the wall. It will be remembered that it was through the energy of this bishop that the upper portion of the present central tower was erected. On the west wall, against the Galilee door, is a marble slab with a bust in relief of Dean Samuel Fuller (b. 1635: d. 1700), who received the appointment, according to Kennet, through the interest of the lay lords, who loved him for his hospitality and his wit. In the southernmost chapel, on the opposite side of the transept, is an altar-tomb against the south wall. Its date is about the end of the fifteenth century, and it is probably the tomb of Sir George Talboys. A stone screen filling the eastern tower arch separates St. Hugh's choir from the transept. The screen is a magnificent example of Decorated work, dating from about the end of the thirteenth century. It originally carried the crucifix or _rood_, which from the other end of the nave must have stood out clearly against the soft glowing colours of the great east window. On either side of the central doorway are four deep arches supported by detached pillars, decorated with grotesque heads and small figures of bishops. The wall behind is richly carved with diaper designs, shewing much freedom and variety. This screen was once decorated with colours and gilding, traces of which are still visible. It appears to have suffered a good deal at the hands of iconoclasts; many statues have doubtless been removed, and one must be very cautious with regard to the decoration which remains, as it was considerably restored by a mason named James Pink during the second half of last century. The screen now carries the organ erected in 1826, "when also the church underwent a thorough cleaning." The organ has since been enlarged. The richly-carved case was designed in the Gothic style by the architect E. J. Willson of Lincoln. In olden days the organ filled the easternmost arch on the north side of St. Hugh's choir. Hollar's view of the year 1672, in Dugdale's "_Monasticon Anglicanum_" shews it in this place. In its present position it serves to break the long _vista_, which otherwise might be somewhat monotonous, from the extreme west end of the nave. A new organ is in course of erection at a cost of £4000; yet it seems hardly likely that instrumental music will become a prominent feature in the minster services, so long as the singing retains that high pitch of excellence which it acquired under the late Mr. Young, and maintains under his successor, Dr. Bennett. The two side doorways leading into the north and south aisles of the choir are somewhat earlier than the screen between them. They are beautiful examples of carving, dating from the end of the Early English period. The exquisite openwork foliage which runs round the arch is executed with the utmost skill and care, and is without the laboured effect of so much of our later stone-work. The injured parts were carefully restored about 1770 by James Pink, who was also employed by Essex on the canopy of the reredos. The doorways have modern iron gates: it is probable that the "brass gates" carried away by the Parliamentarian soldiers used to be here. It is well worth while to notice the gorgeous effect of the early glass in the end windows of the aisles, as seen through these doorways. The soft harmony of their lovely transparent mosaic contrasts greatly with the washed-out appearance of the glass in the large window between them. [Illustration: AISLE DOORWAY, NORTH OF ST. HUGH'S CHOIR. _H. C. Oakden, Photo._] [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The ritual choir occupies the four bays built by St. Hugh, crosses the eastern transept, and includes two bays of the Presbytery, or Angel Choir beyond. Passing through the central doorway of the rood-screen, the choir before us is historically of the highest interest, both on account of its architecture and of its builder. One gazes with a feeling of peculiar veneration on the walls which we know St. Hugh to have planned and reared. It is easy to imagine with what just pride and satisfaction the great bishop must have regarded these very walls, the earliest example of the pure Gothic style in this country or in any other (see p. 14). Although worthy of the closest examination, it can hardly be said that, taken as a whole, the work is beautiful; its importance is much greater from an archæological than from an artistic point of view. Certain details are of the highest excellence; but the vault, as so many have pointed out, is positively ugly, and the squat form of the great arches only serves to shew how little reliance can be placed on the outline of an arch as a guide to the date of its erection. =St. Hugh's choir= is in four bays, the westernmost of which is somewhat narrower than the others. In the original piers, the central column was diamond-shaped, surrounded by eight circular shafts, which were detached, a mark of their early period. "The foliage of the capitals is exquisitely beautiful, and though distinguished technically by the name of _stiff-leaf foliage_, because there are stiff stalks to the leaves rising from the ring of the capital, the leaves themselves curl over in the most graceful manner, with a freedom and elegance not exceeded at any subsequent period. The mouldings are also as bold and as deep as possible, and there is scarcely a vestige of Norman character remaining in any part of the work" (_Rickman_). In each bay of the triforium there are two arches, both divided into two sub-arches, with a solid tympanum pierced with a trefoil or quatrefoil. The eastern bay of the triforium on each side is of simpler design than the rest. In the clerestory, there are three windows to three bays, and two to the fourth, on each side. The fall of the central tower in 1237-9 worked great havoc in this part of the building. The vault was crushed, and the western bays were much weakened and damaged. The original slender shafts round the two westernmost piers on each side were converted into clumsy columns without capitals; this no doubt added considerable strength, but rendered them far from beautiful. The arches, too, had to be partly reconstructed. In the first arch on the south side, the rings of stone across the mouldings mark the point where the later work joined the earlier, but did not quite fit. A similar example of faulty jointing will be seen on the corresponding arch on the north side towards the aisle. Turning to the triforium, we see that in the western bays clumsy eight-lobed pillars have taken the place of the original clustered shafts. These have been compared by Precentor Venables to "pounds of candles." They are certainly very ugly, and were probably intended only as a temporary makeshift. The crooked state of some of the trefoils and quatrefoils of the tympana is probably due to the same cause. The vault is most remarkable, and is fortunately unique. "The architect has made each cell strike obliquely to points dividing the central ridge of the bay into three equal parts, so that neither the cells nor the diagonal ribs from either side ever meet one another, but each cell is met by an intermediate or an oblique transverse rib from the opposite side" (_Scott_, "Lectures on Mediæval Architecture"). As this vault appears to have been constructed after the fall of the tower, we can hardly consider the deviation to be the result of inexperience, and there seems to be no excuse for this extraordinary freak. The shafts supporting the vault are alternately hexagonal and circular. They were originally carried down to the springing of the great arches, and thence continued in front of the piers to the ground. When the choir-stalls were added, these shafts were cut away to make room for them, and finished off with panelled corbels. This part of the building, which had received such a severe shaking by the fall of the tower, was further strengthened by the erection of the arcaded screens between the piers. They fill all four arches on both sides, dividing the choir from the aisles to the north and south. The next bay eastward, which crosses the lesser transept, is filled on both sides by screens of wrought ironwork, having that scrolled pattern so often found in early examples. They are illustrated in the South Kensington Museum Handbook on Ironwork, by Mr. Starkie Gardner, who calls them the best preserved specimens of their style now existing in England. The screens are apparently thirteenth-century work, and they might be as early as the time of St. Hugh. The awkward row of gas-jets along the top is in strange contrast to these fine screens. Above the latter, on each side, two constructive beams of oak stretch across the arch. One is at the height of the pier capitals, and the other on a level with the base of the triforium arcade. An attempt was made in the last century to mask their ugliness by encasing them in Gothic work of carved wood. The magnificent series of oak =Choir-Stalls=, with their forest of pinnacles rising to the height of the pier-capitals, forms one of the chief glories of the minster. They were considered by Pugin to be the finest examples in the kingdom. Their erection, in the third quarter of the fourteenth century, is due to the munificence of the treasurer, John de Welburne, a great benefactor of the minster. A full list of the carvings was given by the late Canon Wickenden in the thirty-eighth volume of the _Archæological Journal_. The stalls are in two rows, the upper of 62 seats, and the lower of 46; the former number has now been increased by six, and the latter by two. The upper stalls have elaborate trefoiled canopies, surmounted by an intricate maze of buttresses and pinnacles, rising to a height of 24 ft. 6 in. above the choir floor. The niches above the canopies have recently been filled with statues of saints in the Anglican Calendar. The stalls in both rows are provided with hinged seats or _misereres_, intended to serve as supports in the long services during which the occupants of the stalls were required to stand. These seats, as well as the elbow-rests and finials, are richly carved with those grotesque subjects in which the mediæval artist so greatly delighted. The carver has given full scope to a most fertile imagination. Scriptural subjects do certainly occur on some of the _misereres_ in the upper row, but others are of a playful character. The fox is seen preaching to birds and beasts, and then running riot among them; monkeys are at play, or occupied in the more serious business of hanging one of their number and burying him afterwards; we also find men fighting with wild animals; the labours of husbandry; kings, knights, ladies, dragons, griffins, lions, hogs, and wyverns. Whether there is a hidden meaning in any of these quaint subjects, it is perhaps difficult now to say, but the preaching fox is certainly suggestive. To raise each _miserere_ in order to examine the subject underneath would not only prove to be a somewhat tedious and dusty task, but in some cases would lead to disappointment, when nothing but a plain block is seen where the carved subject ought to be. A few of the original _misereres_ in the lower row are missing, and have been replaced in this way. Those who have not the time or the inclination to examine all the subjects, may take the following as representative examples of the whole series. They are all in the upper row; the lower _misereres_ are, as a whole, inferior, and are restored to a much greater extent. Commencing with the precentor's stall on the north side of the door in the rood-screen, the poppy-head in front is carved with the monkey episode referred to above. The numbers in the following list are counted from the precentor's stall; the names are those inscribed on the tablets hung up at the back of the stalls. The subjects are in each case those carved underneath the _misereres_:-- (2) Archdeacon of Lincoln--a fine head and two roses. (4) Archdeacon of Bedford--foliage. (5) Archdeacon of Huntingdon--a man beating down acorns, and pigs feeding. (8) Milton Manor--the gateway of a castle, and the heads of two warriors in armour. (10) Bedford Manor--grotesque winged monsters. (12) Welton Beck--a boy riding on the back of a bird. (18) Welton Rivall--a mermaid with comb and mirror. (22) Biggleswade--two men with a plough, drawn by two bullocks and two horses; to the left, a man with a harrow; to the right, sacks of corn. (31) Carlton cum Dalby--an Ascension, with two angels swinging censers. This is the last stall on the north side before the new ones, which were erected to cover a residence pew, in the year 1778, at the same time as the bishop's throne opposite. Turning to the south side, and numbering from the dean's stall to the west, the following are worthy of notice:-- (1) Dean--the Resurrection of Christ. (2) Sub-dean--a knight on horseback. (4) Norton Epi.--the Coronation of the Virgin, and angels with musical instruments. (9) Leicester St. Margaret's--the Adoration of the Magi. (16) Ketton--two monkeys, one riding on a lion, and the other riding on a unicorn. (26) Asgarby--a king enthroned under a canopy. (28) Corringham--a lion fighting with a winged monster. The front panels of the vicars' stalls and the choristers' desks in the lower range are carved with Gothic tracery, in the panels of which are angels with musical instruments, saints and kings. An engraving in Wild's "Lincoln Cathedral" gives a good idea of the appearance of the choir when the old box pews were still existing. They were extremely ugly, and not only did they hide much of the fine carved work of the stalls, but their erection led in some cases to parts of the older work being cut away. Between forty and fifty years ago, when the organ was enlarged, the stalls underwent some slight repairs, and were oiled. In 1867-8 they were again strengthened and restored. The wooden tablets hung at the backs of the stalls are inscribed with the Latin titles of certain psalms. It is recorded in the "Black Book" or "Consuetudinary" of the cathedral that "It is an ancient usage of the church of Lincoln to say one mass and the whole psalter daily, on behalf of the living and deceased benefactors of the church." To ensure the complete performance of this duty, the bishop, and each member of the chapter, was made responsible for the repetition of one particular portion of the psalms. The tablets record the psalms which the occupants of the several stalls are bound to recite. At the installation of each prebendary, the dean or his representative still calls the attention of the newly-installed to the titles of the psalms hanging over his head, and reminds him of the obligation to repeat them "daily if nothing hinders." The custom is exceedingly old. A MS. in the chapter library, considered to be not later than the end of the twelfth century, gives a list of persons, with the special psalms which each should repeat. Further information on this point will be found in Canon Wickenden's article referred to above (p. 105). The usage was adopted by the late Archbishop Benson at Truro. The =Bishop's Throne= and the =Pulpit= are modern. The former is at the east end of the stalls on the south side. It was carved in wood by Lumby, in 1778, from a design by James Essex. It has a tall Gothic canopy, with a figure of Christ holding a lamb in His arms; and is further ornamented with small carved figures of saints and angels; the panelled front is new. The earlier throne, which the present one replaced, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The pulpit opposite is still later in date. It was erected in recognition of the services of Prebendary Trollope (afterwards Bishop of Nottingham) to the cause of architecture in the diocese of Lincoln. It was designed by the late Sir G. Gilbert Scott, and executed in 1863-4 by Messrs. Ruddle of Peterborough. The pulpit is of oak, with scriptural subjects in relief and statuettes. It has an elaborate Gothic canopy of wood, and a marble base. On the whole, it can hardly be said to be worthy of imitation. The subjects are carved with little regard to durability; some of the most delicate parts project so considerably that small portions have already been knocked off. The canopy, too, awkwardly fixed to the pillar behind, looks like a huge extinguisher, threatening to descend on the head of the preacher. In the middle of the choir is the litany desk, with the old stone beneath, inscribed with the words _Cantate hic_. The foundations of the eastern limb of Remigius' church lie beneath the floor; the semi-circular apse stretched a few feet beyond the spot where the litany desk now stands. A little way to the east is a fine brass chandelier, suspended from the vault by means of an iron rod, partly gilt. It has scrolling branches, supporting sixteen lights, and bears the date 1698. The brass lectern is of the eagle form, and was made in London, as an inscription records, in the year 1667. The following are the inscriptions it bears:--ECCLES CATHED B MARIÆ LINCOLN--DD. IOHANNES GOCHE ARMIGER AN. DOM. 1667; and above--GVLIELMVS BORROVGHES LONDINI ME FECIT 1667. The dates of these two fine specimens of brasswork suggest that they may have taken the place of earlier pieces removed by the soldiers of the Parliament. The stone =Reredos= is enriched with Gothic arcading in the Decorated style. Parts of it belong to the latter half of the thirteenth century, but it dates principally from the time of James Essex. The original reredos was double, with a space in the middle used as a sacristy. Essex's screen was preceded by one of classical style, erected soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. It is shewn in Hollar's plate of the year 1672 in Dugdale's "_Monasticon Anglicanum_." This screen was removed to Sleaford Church, and was used in the chancel there until about fifty years ago. The tall central canopy of the present screen was designed by James Essex in the style of the monument of Bishop William of Louth (De Luda, 1290-98) in the choir of Ely Cathedral; it was carved by James Pink, in the year 1769. An altar-piece in oils formerly occupied the middle arch at the back of the canopy. It was painted and given by the Rev. William Peters, LL.B., and bears his signature, with the date 1800. The subject is the Annunciation. It is called "a beautiful picture" in a guide-book of the year 1810, but modern critics might form a somewhat different opinion; those who wish to judge for themselves may find the picture in a dusty corner of the triforium, where it is now very appropriately stowed away. The late J. C. Buckler removed the solid wall at the back of the canopy, and inserted the mullions and tracery. The first arch to the east of the lesser transept on the north side is occupied by the =Easter Sepulchre=, probably erected by someone who intended the western portion for his own tomb. It is a fine piece of stone-carving in the Decorated style, and dates from about the end of the thirteenth century. It is in the form of six slender canopies, with trefoiled arches. The three sleeping soldiers in the right-hand lower panels should be noticed. A Latin inscription was placed by Bishop Fuller on the middle one of the three left-hand panels, stating that this was the burial-place of Remigius. Of course, it is quite impossible that the bishop should have been originally buried at this spot, and it is improbable that the body was ever removed here. In Sanderson's survey is the following record:--"In the choir, on the north side, two tombs, not known. But it is famed that one of them is Remigius, whose bare sheet of lead is now (1658) to be seen. No inscription, coat, or other mention of anyone." There is some well-carved foliage on the side panels beneath the canopies. Two mutilated tombs are now squeezed together under the corresponding arch on the south side of the choir, beneath a flat-arched canopy, dating from the second half of the seventeenth century. These tombs have been robbed of their brasses. The first is that of Catherine Swynford, daughter of Sir Payne Roet, and widow of Sir Hugh de Swynford of Kettlethorpe. She afterwards became the third wife of John of Gaunt, who was made Earl of Lincoln in 1362, and was for a long time resident in the city. Henry Beaufort, son of John of Gaunt and Catherine, was bishop of Lincoln at the time of his mother's death, which occurred in 1403. The other tomb under the same canopy is that of Henry's sister, Joan Beaufort, who became the wife of Sir Robert Ferrers, and afterwards of Sir Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Before being placed as they are at present, the tombs stood side by side in this same bay. Leland, the historian of the time of Henry VIII., gives the following account of them, which shews that they cannot now be far from their original position:--"In the Southe Parte of the Presbytery lyithe in two severalle high marble Tumbes in a Chapell Catarine Swineforde the 3. Wife to John of Gaunt Duke of Lanceaster, and Jane her Daughter Countes of Westmerlande." After having been robbed of all that was considered valuable by the soldiers of the Parliament, the tombs were left in a neglected condition, until at the Restoration they were placed under this arch, and the canopy was erected over them. The brasses, of which the matrices are still seen, no doubt formed part of the "bargeload" which was floated down the Witham to the sea. The brass gas-standards behind the altar-rails were designed by J. L. Pearson, R.A. The =South Aisle= is separated from the choir by the stone screens already mentioned. The opposite wall has a double arcade, such as we have seen in some of the chapels of the western transept. The arcading of the two westernmost screens dates from the time of Bishop Grosseteste (1235-53). That of the fourth screen is slightly later in date. The third screen is in the Decorated style, and formed a back to the famous =Shrine of the Little St. Hugh=, a boy who was said to have been crucified by the Jews in the year 1255. It is difficult now to say whether there is any truth at all in such legends, which, it need hardly be remarked, are not confined to Lincoln, nor even to England. The story of St. William of Norwich is a similar one, and there were strong communities of Jews in both cities. As the thrifty habits of these people, often untrammelled by conscientious or humane motives, caused them to grow rapidly wealthy, the hatred with which they were commonly regarded increased in corresponding measure. The Jews were not likely to get a fair hearing anywhere, and any accusations against them were readily accepted and eagerly spread. There is evidence in the poems of Chaucer that the popular prejudice was deeply rooted-- "O yonge Hugh of Lincoln, sleyn also With cursed Iewes, as it is notable, For it nis but a litel whyle ago." ("Prioress' Tale.") There are several versions of the legend, one of which begins thus-- "The bonnie boys o' merrie Lincoln Were playing at the ba', And wi' them stude the swete Sir Hugh The flower among them a'." It goes on to relate how the ball strayed into the Jew's garden, into which the little Hugh was wiled, and "slicked like a swine." Hugh is said to have been about eight years old at the time of his death. Matthew Paris mentions the legend, and says that many Jews came together to Lincoln on the occasion. They appointed a Jew as judge, to represent Pilate, and by this man's sentence the boy was afflicted with various torments before being put to death. The boy being missed, inquiries were made by his mother, and the body was at last found at the bottom of a well belonging to a Jew's house. It was given to the Canons of Lincoln, who honourably buried it as that of a martyr, in their Cathedral. According to Matthew Paris, the name of the Jew who took a leading part in the affair was Copin. He was tied to a horse's tail, dragged to Canwick Hill, and there hanged. Many other Jews were executed as accomplices, and a large number imprisoned. Traditions say that Copin lived in one of the still remaining "Jews' houses" in the Steep. The terrible massacre of the Jews in Lincoln, Norwich, York, and other towns in the time of Richard I., was probably instigated by such tales as this. The shrine, which remained perfect until the Civil War of the seventeenth century, was in the Decorated style. The base still remains, and on it has been placed a fragment of the original canopy. The arcade behind, of five arches, is carved with the ball-flower, a distinctive mark of the period; traces of colouring and gilding still remain. The stone coffin below was opened in the year 1791, when it was found to contain the skeleton of a child, 3 ft. 3 in. long, encased in lead. An inscription in the pavement of the aisle marks the burial place of Henry of Huntingdon (b. between 1080 and 1085: d. about 1155). This famous chronicler, who has recorded many interesting facts concerning the history of Lincoln, was probably brought up in the household of Bishop Bloet. In 1109 or the following year he was made Archdeacon of Huntingdon (then in the diocese of Lincoln). It was at the request of Bishop Alexander the Magnificent that he undertook the "_Historia Anglorum_," which he carried down to the year 1154. The =North Aisle= has the double wall-arcade of St. Hugh on the one side, and the arcaded screens on the other. Three of the screens are of Grosseteste's time (1235-53); that in the easternmost bay is a slightly later work. At the western end, an oak screen, carved with Gothic tracery and the linen pattern, separates the aisle from the chapel of St. James. The two westernmost piers on the south side shew the clumsy way in which they were restored after the fall of the central tower. On the side of the third pier is a carved head supporting a bracket in Purbeck marble. The =Eastern Transept= is also the work of St. Hugh. There have been alterations made at a later period; these will be pointed out. The four semi-circular chapels on the east side were considered by Professor Willis to have been finished after the death of St. Hugh, though no doubt forming part of the original design. There hardly appears to be any necessity to assign them to a later date than the rest of the transept. The northern arm is in two bays, with the two semi-circular chapels on its eastern side, and a chamber, misnamed the "Dean's Chapel," to the west. [Illustration: THE EAST TRANSEPT, LOOKING NORTH. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The end bay of the transept is cut off by an arch, carrying a wall above which reaches to the vault. The wall is pierced by openings similar to those of the triforium and clerestory, but they are unglazed, and through them we can see the windows of the outer wall. The compartment which this end bay thus forms has a stone vault at the height of the lower arch, leaving the part above open to the roof. Thus it happens that, looking from below through the upper openings, we are able to see right through to the massive wooden beams which support the outer roof. This is the only part of the interior from which the roof can be seen. It is interesting to notice the rows of windows in the north wall, culminating in the narrow lancets which fill the gable. The triforium is very similar to that of the choir. Each bay contains two arches, themselves divided into two sub-arches. The tympana are pierced, as before, with trefoils and quatrefoils, except in the case of the first bay on the eastern side, where they are plain. This is an interesting point, and is considered to mark the earliest existing part of St. Hugh's work. The clerestory is formed of narrow single lancets. The double arcading of St. Hugh is seen to the left of the doorway, in the north wall, which leads to the cloisters. Two columns of extraordinary design occur in this transept. One is at the south-east corner of the "Dean's Chapel," and the other is in a corresponding position on the other side of the church. Each consists of an octagonal pier in the centre, with crockets running up four of its sides; these are protected by four circular shafts of Purbeck marble, which stand before them and alternate with hexagonal fluted shafts. The crockets form "a remarkable and uncommon feature, which seems to have been in use for a very few years; it occurs also in the west front of Wells Cathedral, the work of Bishop Joceline, a few years after this at Lincoln" (_Rickman_). The original purpose of the square chapel, constructed not long after the transept was built, is not known. Its name, the =Dean's Chapel=, appears to be given without reason. The oak door by which we enter from the transept has some fine hinges and bands of wrought ironwork, dating from the thirteenth century. The chamber was originally in two compartments, one above the other. The upper one was reached by a newel staircase to the north; this is now blocked up. The dividing floor has been removed, but the line may be traced on the walls, and the curious triangular-headed recesses above look like the cupboards of a dispensary. It has been suggested that the upper chamber served this purpose. There appears to be nothing which would give a clue as to the use to which the lower chamber was put. It is lit by two rough square-headed windows, cut in the double arcade of the western wall. The south window has still the original oak shutters, with wrought-iron hinges and bands. The tie-beams of the east and south arches of the compartment still remain, and are now built up in the walls. The more northern of the semi-circular chapels is the one that was lengthened in the early part of the thirteenth century; the present eastern wall is entirely the work of James Essex, who, it will be remembered, reconstructed the chapel in 1772. It would be difficult to trace the history of this chapel. Whether it was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and was consequently the original burial-place of St. Hugh, or whether it was (as Dugdale called it) the chapel of the Virgin Mary, is a question still undecided.[9] Like its neighbour, it is divided off from the transept by an oak screen carved with Gothic tracery (partly in openwork), and the linen pattern, constructed probably about the end of the fifteenth century. In the north wall there was originally a doorway, now walled up, leading into the Common Room. Fragments of the monument of Bishop Grosseteste, which stood in the south arm of the transept, are now stored away in this chapel. Each chapel has arcading round its walls, and is lit by two windows. On the wall which separates the "Dean's Chapel" from the transept are painted full-length figures of Robert Bloet and the three bishops who came after him--Alexander the Magnificent, Robert de Chesney, and Walter de Coutances. They are said to have been buried near here; if so, their tombs must have been removed from some other spot, as the transept was not built until a later period. They are marked in the plan of the year 1672 in Dugdale's "_Monasticon Anglicanum_." The bishops are represented beneath Gothic arches, and have their names inscribed above them. They were painted in the year 1728, by a Venetian artist named Vincenzo Damini, aided by his pupil, Giles Hussey (b. 1710: d. 1788). Two years later Hussey accompanied his master to Italy; Damini decamped at Bologna with all Hussey's property, and the latter was obliged to obtain relief from Signor Chislonzoni, a former Venetian ambassador in London. "Time," eighty years after, was "fast destroying the tints," and another eighty years has continued the work of destruction. From what still remains, it seems that it will be no great loss when the pictures are entirely effaced. [Illustration: TRIFORIUM ON THE WEST SIDE OF ST. HUGH'S TRANSEPT. _H. C. Oakden, Photo._] The southern arm of the transept has been considerably altered since it was first built. It is in two bays, with two apsidal chapels to the east, and the choristers' vestry and an ante-vestry to the west. At the south-west corner, the large square canons' vestry has been built out at a later period. There are indications which shew that the end bay was cut off by an arch, in the same way as the northern bay of the transept. These are noticeable in the column between the two apsidal chapels, and the lines of the original low vaulting of this end bay may still be traced on the south and west walls. When the arch and vault were removed, it would appear that the upper part of this end of the transept was rebuilt. The last bay of the triforium on the west has four narrow arches of equal height, whereas the adjoining bay does not differ from that in the northern arm. In the south wall there are two rows of three windows instead of two rows of two. The chief indications of a later date are, however, in the smaller details. Tooth ornament is used to a greater extent than in the rest of the transept, and the wall spaces between the clerestory windows and the vault are covered with diaper work. This profusion of ornament would not be consistent with the time of St. Hugh. The alteration appears to have been made about the middle of the thirteenth century. Precentor Venables considered that its object was to throw a brighter light upon St. Peter's altar, which stood in the southern apsidal chapel, and was, next to the high altar, the chief altar in the church. The companion chapel has an oak screen with Gothic tracery, and a similar screen opposite divides the choristers' vestry from the transept. They both appear to date from about the end of the fifteenth century. The southern chapel has a low iron screen of modern workmanship. This chapel was the scene of the murder of Subdean William Bramfield or Bramford, by one of the vicars of the church, in 1205; the murderer was tied to the tail of a horse, dragged to Canwick Hill and there hanged. The recumbent effigy in marble of John Kaye, bishop of the diocese from 1827 to 1853, by Westmacott, is now placed in the chapel; it formerly stood in the transept, and was removed here for protection. At Cambridge, Kaye was Senior Wrangler, Senior Chancellor's Medallist, and Junior Smith's Prizeman. In 1814 he was appointed master of Christ's College; six years later he became Bishop of Bristol, whence he was transferred to Lincoln in 1827. The walls of both chapels are lined with arcading. The southern, unlike the other apsidal chapels, has three windows. The south wall of the transept has the double arcading, with figures of angels projecting from the small compartments formed by the intersecting arches. The =Choristers' Vestry= occupies the corner nearest the south aisle of St. Hugh's choir, from which it is separated by a stone screen of the Decorated period, excellently carved on both sides with diaper designs. The screen reaches to the crocketed column before referred to. The long stone lavatory within the vestry appears to be of the same date as this screen, against which it is placed. Below the trough is a row of Gothic arcading. In the corner is an old fireplace, the stone flue of which can be seen outside. The double arcading along the west wall is less injured than elsewhere; the sculptured angels which fill the spaces formed by the intersecting arches are in fair preservation. Between this vestry and the canons' vestry are two narrow chambers, one of which is used as an ante-vestry. In the year 1805, between the 10th and the 15th January, the communion plate belonging to the cathedral was stolen out of one of the vestries. It consisted of one large dish, three plates, two large flagons, and two cups with covers, all of silver gilt. A reward was offered for their recovery, but without success. [Illustration: NORTH SIDE OF THE ANGEL CHOIR. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] A stone in the pavement in front of the chapel containing the effigy of Bishop Kaye, marks the position of the tomb of Grosseteste. Leland, in the time of Henry VIII., mentions that "Robert Grosted lyethe in the hygheste South Isle with a goodly Tumbe of Marble and an Image of Brasse over it." The monument was wrecked in the wars of the following century. Fragments of the stone canopy are still preserved; they are now deposited in the northernmost semi-circular chapel of this transept. The general effect of the interior of the minster would undoubtedly have been better, had the original apse of St. Hugh still remained; the monotony of the continuous line of vaulting, carried to such a great length at an almost uniform height, would then have been avoided. But, taken by itself, there is no structure of modest dimensions in the whole range of Gothic architecture which is more beautiful in its details or more majestic in its effect than Lincoln's =Angel Choir=. Architecture and sculpture of the highest excellence are here united in a single work. Sir G. G. Scott in his Lectures on Mediæval Architecture, speaks of the angel choir in the following words:--"It is the most splendid work of that period which we possess, and, did it not lack internal height, I do not think it could be exceeded in beauty by any existing church." The period during which it was in great part erected (1256-1280) was favourable to such an undertaking. The primitive simplicity of the Early English Gothic was giving way to the more elaborate forms of the Decorated period. During this time, when tracery had not yet reached the flowing lines of the later phases of Decorated work, Gothic architecture, and in fact Gothic art generally, was at its best in our land. The angel choir was called by Fergusson "the most beautiful presbytery in England." It is in five bays, carried eastward at a uniform height and breadth with the choir of St. Hugh. Lincoln stone is used throughout; relieved with shafts and capitals of Purbeck marble. A better idea of the piers can be gained from the accompanying illustration than from any description. The spandrels of the great arches, which are plain in other parts of the building, are here decorated with sunk geometrical forms. Each bay of the triforium is divided, as elsewhere, into two arches, both of which enclose two sub-arches; but the details are richer than in the earlier parts of the minster. The clerestory has one window of four lights in each bay, with an eight-foil and two trefoils in the head. The compartments of the vault were originally coated with plaster, which has been scraped away so as to shew the stone surface underneath. It is a question whether it does not now look better than with the old plaster, and the gaudy colouring which once, most probably, decorated it. The springers of the vaulting are supported by slender shafts, which rest on elaborately foliaged corbels in the spandrels of the great arches. The beautiful foliaged bosses along the ridge rib are best seen from the triforium or the clerestory. The great east window is considered to be the finest example of its style in the kingdom. It is of eight lights, "formed by doubling the four-light," and has a great circle in the head, filled with a six-foil surrounded by half-a-dozen quatrefoils. "Bar-tracery being fully developed," we read in a note to Rickman's "Gothic Architecture," "the general appearance of the window is rather Decorated than Early English, but the mouldings still belong to the earlier style." "This window ... together with the whole of that part of the choir is singularly and beautifully accommodated to the style of the rest of the building." The aisle windows are each of three lights, with three circles in the head, two filled with cinquefoils and one with a quatrefoil. The two east windows of the aisles are similar to the others. The wall below the windows is decorated all round with arcading of a richer design than that in the nave. Two trefoiled arches are included in a larger arch, with a quatrefoil within a circle filling the head. The spandrels have sunk trefoils. The bosses of the stone vaults to the aisles are carved with sacred subjects, foliage, and grotesque figures. [Illustration: EAST END OF THE ANGEL CHOIR. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The sculptured angels, from which this part of the minster derives its name, fill the spandrels of the triforium, occupying a length of 118 feet on each side. It has been suggested that the idea may have been taken from the angels in St. Hugh's double wall-arcading, remains of which are still seen in different parts. The whole series has been fully illustrated, and exhaustively described and interpreted by Professor C. R. Cockerell, in the Lincoln volume (1848) of the Archæological Institute. Two hands of different merit are recognised by him in the work; he considers Nos. 4 to 18 (counting round from the south-east corner) to be amongst the best. The others are of inferior execution, though often of excellent design. They were carved before being placed in their present positions, as is evident from No. 11, the joints of which are not perfectly adjusted, and they are of the same stone as was employed in the architecture of the cathedral. Could it have been Richard of Stow or Gainsborough, the _cementarius_, who was employed to execute these sculptures? [Illustration: The Lincoln Imp. Drawn by H. P. Clifford.] A description of Lincoln minster would not be complete without a reference to a small sculptured figure of vastly different character to the choir of angels--that delightfully grotesque little specimen of ugliness, known as the =Lincoln Imp=. He is to be seen on a spandrel on the north side, squatting under the corbel above the easternmost pier. The broad grin, the two short horns behind the ears, the hairy body, and the cloven hoofs all combine to form a characteristic record of the exuberant fancy of our mediæval artists. The incised lines in the pavement of the south aisle, just where it joins the eastern transept, mark the position of the foundations of St. Hugh's apse. The first window in this aisle, just over Bishop Longland's chantry, is inscribed with the names and dates of the Chancellors of Lincoln. The series commences at the end of the eleventh century, and the last name recorded is "Edw. White Benson, S.T.P. 1872." The east windows of the north and south aisles are filled with beautiful =stained glass= of the Early English period. The subjects are arranged within medallions, and, though somewhat difficult to decipher, appear to represent scenes in the lives of two saints whose story has many points of resemblance--St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Hugh of Lincoln. The glass is said to have been moved about the end of the last century from the windows of the nave aisles. The date of the medallions may be placed towards the middle of the thirteenth century, about the time of the erection of the nave, and, of course, earlier than the windows which they now occupy. The _grisaille_ into which they are now reglazed, is considered by Westlake to be the earliest in England. The great east window is filled with modern glass. It is believed to have originally contained the arms of many of the English nobility. In the year 1762 it was reglazed by Peckitt of York; the design of that time seems to have been chiefly, if not entirely, of geometrical forms. Portions of Peckitt's glass now occupy a place in the north wall of the eastern transept. The arrangement of the subjects in the present window is due to the late Dean Ward. The compartments contain subjects illustrating the life of Christ, and various scenes from the Old Testament history. The window was executed by Ward and Hughes about the middle of the present century. [Illustration: TRIFORIUM OF THE ANGEL CHOIR. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The three chantries in the Perpendicular style which have been added to the angel choir were constructed at different periods by bishops of the diocese. The earliest of these, the =Fleming Chantry=, is on the north side. Richard Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford, was appointed Bishop of Lincoln in the year 1419, and occupied the see for twelve years. In earlier years he was known as a zealous supporter of many of the doctrines of Wyclif, but was afterwards called upon, as Bishop of Lincoln, to give effect to the council of Constance by exhuming the bones of the reformer from the churchyard at Lutterworth, burning them and casting them into the River Swift; "as the Swift bare them into the Severn, and the Severn into the narrow seas, and they again into the ocean, thus the ashes of Wycliffe is an emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed over all the world" (_Fuller_). The front of the chapel facing the choir is formed by a broad flat arch enclosing the founder's tomb, with a narrow entrance at the side. The door is of carved oak, with an ancient iron handle. On the tomb is the effigy of the bishop, restored not long since to this its original place. It presents a recumbent figure holding in the left hand a pastoral staff; the mitre is held by two angels, and at the bishop's feet is a dragon. Underneath is a horrible emaciated figure intended to represent the body of the bishop after death. Such figures are not uncommon; perhaps the best known example is in the choir of Canterbury Cathedral--the figure of Archbishop Chichele. Some authorities have considered that the figure at Lincoln does not represent Bishop Fleming, but that it formed part of an earlier monument. The chapel has been restored in memory of the late Sir Charles H. J. Anderson, Bart. (d. 1891), a native of Lincolnshire, and the author of an entertaining pocket guide to the county. The roof is of oak, carved with vine and oak foliage. The =Russell chantry=, occupying a corresponding position on the opposite side of the choir, was built by Bishop John Russell, who held the see from 1480 to 1494. He is called by Sir Thomas More "a wise manne and a good ... and one of the best-learned men, undoubtedly, that England had in hys time." He was Chancellor of England under Richard III., and also held the post of Chancellor of Oxford University for some years. He died at Nettleham in 1494. The chantry is similar in style to Bishop Fleming's; its roof is of oak. The incised brass of the tomb has gone the way of all the minster brasses. =Bishop Longland's chantry= is on the other side of the south door. The general design is an imitation of Bishop Russell's chantry, but the details are much more elaborate. Over the flat archway facing the choir is the punning inscription, "Longa Terra Mensura Eius Dominus Dedit," borrowed from the Vulgate version of the book of Job (ch. xi., ver. 9). Round the inside walls of the chapel is an unfinished row of stone niches, with elaborately carved canopies; there is a panelled oak ceiling. This chapel was not erected until some time after the others; John Longland was Bishop of Lincoln from 1521 to 1547. He held, like Russell, the post of chancellor of the University of Oxford, but does not seem to have been very popular there, since on one occasion he was pelted with stones. When Henry VIII. visited Lincoln in 1541, he was received at the western end of the minster by this bishop, and stayed as his guest in the palace. Longland died in 1547, at Woburn, leaving instructions that his bowels were to be buried there; his heart at Lincoln; and his body in the chapel of Eton College. The building of the chapel at Lincoln seems to have been commenced soon after the bishop's accession to the see. Leland says "Byshope Russell, and Longland, now Byshop, Tumbes be in to Chapells cast out of the uppar Parte of the Southe Wall of the Churche." The chapel underwent a restoration in 1859. The two chief =monuments= in the angel choir were the shrine of St. Hugh and the monument of Queen Eleanor. The former, of silver gilt, fell a victim to the royal greed of Henry VIII.; the latter, of more humble material, survived those perilous times, only to be destroyed by the rude soldiery of the Civil Wars in the seventeenth century. A description of the monument has, fortunately, been left to us by Bishop Sanderson, and the gilt brass effigy of the Queen in Westminster Abbey was the work of the same artist as that at Lincoln, and most probably a duplicate of it. Eleanor was the daughter of Ferdinand III. of Castile, and in 1254 was married to Henry III.'s eldest son, afterwards king as Edward I. Her attachment to her husband led her to accompany him on his adventurous expedition to the Holy Land with Louis IX. (St. Louis) of France in 1270. The king and queen seem to have travelled much together. They were both present at Lincoln at the translation of St. Hugh's relics in 1280, and ten years later, were again travelling northward, when Eleanor fell ill of a slow fever, and had to be lodged at Hardeby (Harby), just within the borders of Nottinghamshire. Lincoln was five miles off, and medicines were procured in the city from Henry de Montepessulano, to whom the sum of 13s. 4d. was paid. These remedies, however, proved of no effect, and on the 28th November 1290 the queen died, in the presence of her husband. Her body was embalmed and carried to Lincoln, where the viscera were buried in the minster, and a noble monument was raised. On the 4th December, the funeral procession left Lincoln, and journeyed to London. The heart, at the queen's own desire, was deposited in the church of the Friars Predicants in London, and the body was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 17th December, the Bishop of Lincoln officiating. There the monument was raised which still exists. The famous crosses, twelve in number, were erected at the different places on the route where the body rested for a night, doubtless in imitation of those in memory of the king's old crusader friend. St. Louis had died at Tunis, and the body was taken back to Paris, whence it was borne on the shoulders of men to the venerable resting-place of the French kings at St. Denis. Crosses were erected where the bearers rested in the journey from Paris to St Denis. The first of the Eleanor crosses was at Lincoln, and there are records of payments to the "cementarius" Richard de Stow for the work. The last was at Charing. With reference to the monument in Lincoln minster, we learn from Bishop Sanderson's description that it was an altar monument of marble, "whereon was a Queen's effigies in gilded brass," and had the following inscription in "Saxon" characters:--_Hic sunt Sepulta viscera Alienorae quondam Reginae Angliae uxoris Regis Edwardi filii Regis Henrici, cujus animae propicietur Deus.--Amen._ The marble tomb was executed by Dymenge de Legeri and Alexander de Abyngton, who received £25 for the work; Roger de Crundale had £1, 16s. 8d. for marble; William de Suffolk was paid 8 marks for three little images of the queen, cast in metal, to be placed near the tomb. William de Suffolk also produced some small images for the church of the Friars Predicants in London. The effigies of the queen both at Westminster and Lincoln, were cast by Master William Torel, goldsmith and citizen of London. For the gilding, Flemish coin were procured from the merchants of Lucca. A modern stone monument, with a bronze effigy of Queen Eleanor on the top, has recently (in 1891) been placed under the great east window, near the Cantelupe monument. It is due to the munificence of Mr. Joseph Ruston, and is a copy, as near as one can now tell, of the original monument. In the north-east corner of the choir is a group of monuments to a family which derived its name from Burghersh or Burwash in Sussex. Here was the chantry of St. Catherine, founded by Bartholomew, Lord Burghersh, for the soul of his brother Henry and their father, Robert Burghersh. The chaplains lived in the Burghersh chantry house in James Street. Leland, in referring to the "Burwasche" family, says that "they foundyd 5. Prists, and 5. pore Scollars at Gramar Schole in Lyncolne." Henry Burghersh was Bishop of Lincoln from 1320 to 1340. He was the third or fourth son of Sir Robert Burghersh, Lord Burghersh. Like many of our mediæval bishops, he appears to have been much more of a statesman than an ecclesiastic. For some time he was Chancellor of England under Edward III., whose son, the Black Prince, he baptised. He was a principal adviser of the king in foreign affairs, and died at Ghent in the year 1340, while there engaged in business of State. The monument is of stone, with a fine recumbent effigy of the bishop on the top, now much defaced. His mitre is supported by two angels. Along the north side of the monument runs an arcade of five arches, within each of which are two seated figures, whose armorial shields appear in the spandrels above. First (at the head) is Edward III.; then follow his four sons: Edward, the Black Prince, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, John of Gaunt, and Edmund, Duke of York; next is Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose daughter, Blanche, married John of Gaunt. The other effigies are those of persons allied with the Burghersh family. On the other side of the monument are four panels of Gothic tracery with shields of arms. The legend runs that at Tinghurst, in Buckinghamshire, Bishop Henry Burghersh, "by mere might against all right and reason," enclosed the land of many poor people, without recompense, in order to complete his park. The ghost of the bishop could not rest after his death, but appeared to the canons of Lincoln in hunting dress, telling them he was appointed keeper of the park, and beseeching them to throw it open. The canons, thus warned, restored the land to its rightful possessors. Next to this is another Burghersh monument, which authorities do not seem to be quite agreed about. Leland, after speaking of the bishop's tomb, says: "there is also buried at his Fete, Robart, _his Brothar_, a Knighte of great Fame in the Warrs." But the general opinion seems to be that Robert was not the brother, but the father, of Henry and Bartholomew. This tomb is of similar style to the former, having figures beneath arches on one side, and shields of arms on the other. The effigy is gone from the top. The elaborate Gothic canopies which originally surmounted both tombs were much injured by boys clambering upon them, and, becoming unsafe at last, were removed in the early part of the present century. Against the opposite wall, within a recessed arch under the easternmost window, is the monument of Henry's elder brother, Bartholomew, Lord Burghersh (d. 1355)--a soldier of much renown, who had a share in the victory of Creçy. He held the important office of constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports. In the year 1329, he was sent on a mission to the Pope to plead for pecuniary aid from the revenues of the English church; a tenth of them was granted to the king for four years. The base of the monument has an arcade of six arches, each having two small pedestals, for figures which are now gone. The armorial shields of the persons originally represented beneath the arches still remain in the spandrels. The effigy shows him clad in plate armour, and reclining on his helmet; two angels at the head uphold the shield of his family, and two others at the foot bear away in a cloth the deceased warrior's soul. The canopy over the tomb bears the arms of Edward III. and his four sons (the same as on the tomb of his brother the bishop), together with the shield of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and Lincoln. A detailed account of the shields of arms on the Burghersh tombs may be found in the Lincoln volume (1848) of the Archæological Institute. [Illustration: TOMB OF SIR BARTHOLOMEW BURGERSH. _H. C. Oakden, Photo._] Joined on to the end of Bishop Burghersh's tomb is the lofty base of a portable shrine. It has three niches, two on the north side and one in the front, for worshippers to kneel in. Over the arches are shields bearing the Instruments of the Passion. It is apparently of the same date as the bishop's monument. The old pavement slab, worn away by the feet of those who visited the shrine, has been left in front. Opposite to the Burghersh monuments, just to the south of the great east window, is the monument of Nicholas de Cantelupe, third Baron Cantelupe, who died in 1355. This warrior was much occupied in the wars of Edward II. and his successor, Edward III. He founded Cantelupe College, a college of priests to celebrate at the altar of St. Nicholas,[10] which stood near the tomb, at the eastern end of the south aisle. Baron Cantelupe's widow, Joan, enlarged the foundation, and probably built the Cantelupe chantry house in the minster yard. The effigy, in armour, is now headless and legless. Round the base, on the south and west sides, are shields of arms in panels, which shew traces of colouring. The monument has a lofty Gothic canopy. Just westward is buried Prior Wimbische (or Wymbysh, d. 1478) "in a fayre Highe Tombe." This monument, like the adjoining one, has shields of arms on the base, and a rich canopy above; the effigy is headless. Near these tombs, at the south-east corner of the choir, is the monument to William Hilton, R.A. (b. 1786: d. 1839), and his brother-in-law, the famous water-colour painter, Peter De Wint (b. 1784: d. 1849). Hilton lived in a house, still standing, not far from the minster. His friend De Wint greatly loved the level plains of Lincolnshire and the surrounding country, and no artist was better able to depict its peculiar charms. The minster was one of his favourite subjects, and he painted it from several different points. The principal of these is a large water-colour in the South Kensington Museum, taken from near the castle gateway (see illustration, p. 33). The ancient houses seen near the Exchequer Gate are an interesting record of old Lincoln. The marble relief on the west side of the monument is copied from this picture. On the front are three marble reliefs from pictures by Hilton--the Woman with the alabaster box of ointment, the Crucifixion and the Raising of Lazarus. They are signed "I. Forsyth sculp." The monument is of stone, with Gothic tracery, and has four kneeling angels at the corners. It was erected in the year 1864 by the bereaved sister and widow, Harriet De Wint. Across the middle of the choir, just behind the reredos, is a row of four table-tombs. The first of these, to the north, was erected by Bishop Fuller soon after the Restoration, to mark the supposed burial-place of Bishop St. Hugh. The saint's shrine was in the centre of the choir, but it is supposed that when the shrine was melted down the body was removed and placed somewhere else, perhaps in this spot marked by Bishop Fuller. The tomb was opened in the year 1886, when the stone coffin was found to contain nothing but decaying vestments. In Leland's time, St. Hugh lay "in the Body of the Est Parte of the Chirche above the Highe Altare." The next monument is that of Bishop Fuller himself, who was summoned _ex ultimâ Hiberniâ_, as the epitaph records, to preside over the See of Lincoln. William Fuller was a chaplain of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, but, as a steady Royalist, lost his post during the war. At the Restoration he was rewarded with the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, and became soon after Bishop of Limerick. In the year 1667 the bishopric of Lincoln was vacant. There were two candidates for the appointment, Dr. Glenham, Dean of Bristol, and Dr. Rainbow, Bishop of Carlisle. Fuller, hearing of this, suggested that the difficulty should be solved by his own transference from Limerick to Lincoln, and his suggestion was carried out. Pepys, a friend of Fuller's, mentions the fact with delight. The new bishop did his utmost to repair the injuries perpetrated during the Civil War. He restored many monuments, and was meditating other works in the same direction, when he died at Kensington, 23rd April 1675. The third monument is that of Bishop Gardiner, who presided over the see for ten years, dying in March 1704-5. This bishop, in a visitation of the diocese, found a bad state of affairs in several churches where the chancels were disused and left "in a more nasty condition than the meanest cottage," while the holy table was brought down into the mid-aisle. The Latin inscriptions on the monuments of Bishops Fuller and Gardiner are somewhat quaint. The last of the four monuments is that of Subdean Gardiner (d. 1731-2), and his only daughter Susanna, who died a year later. Near the monument of Bishop Gardiner is a slab in the pavement, marking the tomb of "Michael Honywood, D.D., who was grandchild and one of the 367 persons that Mary, the wife of Robert Honywood Esq., did see before she dyed lawfully descended from her." The elaborate stone monument in the third bay on the north side is in memory of Bishop Wordsworth (b. 1807: d. 1885), a nephew of the poet. The base is decorated with Gothic arcading, and has figures of the twelve apostles. On it rests the recumbent effigy of the bishop, clad in a cope and mitre. At his head are two angels, and a dragon lies beneath his feet. Above is a lofty and intricate Gothic canopy, with a figure of Christ in the centre. A monument to Dean Butler (d. 1894) has recently been placed near the tomb of Subdean Gardiner. It is of alabaster and red marble, with a recumbent effigy of the dean, who is buried in the cloister garth. In the next bay eastward is a slab which marks the burial-place of Oliver Sutton (bishop of the diocese from 1280 to 1299), by whom the cloisters were built. The slab, of Purbeck marble, was raised in the year 1889 by workmen engaged in repairing the pavement. Beneath was an oblong stone chest, lined with sheets of lead, enclosing the skeleton of the bishop, which lay in a mass of decaying vestments. On the right side of the skeleton a silver-gilt chalice was found, with a paten laid upon it, covered with a piece of fine linen. The chalice stands 4-½ in. high, with a broad shallow bowl, 4 in. in diameter. The foot is circular, of the same diameter as the bowl, and the knop projects ½ in. from the stem. It is entirely destitute of ornament. The paten is 4-¾ in. in diameter, with the _Manus Dei_ in the act of benediction, issuing from conventional clouds. The large finger-ring of the bishop was also discovered. It is of pure gold, with a massive hoop; a large piece of rock-crystal is set in the oval bezel. These extremely interesting relics are preserved in the Cathedral Library, where are also the rings of Bishops Gravesend and Grosseteste. On the left side of the skeleton lay the mouldering remains of a wooden crozier, carved with leaf ornament. In the north aisle is buried Robert Dymoke (d. 1735), a member of the ancient family who held for nearly five centuries the office of King's Champion. It was the champion's duty to ride on his horse into Westminster Hall at the coronation banquet, and three times to challenge to combat any person who disputed the sovereign's title. A member of this family, Henry Dymoke, acted as champion at the coronation of George IV. (19th July 1821), the last occasion on which this custom was observed. The =Cloisters= are reached by a doorway in the north wall of the eastern transept. The door is of oak, with some ancient wrought ironwork scrolls on the outer side. A narrow barred window over the door lights a small room anciently used as a watching-chamber. A long, narrow vestibule leads to the cloisters; it has a stone vault, rendered conspicuous by modern colouring; the bosses are carved with foliage and figures. The windows are filled with tracery similar to that in the cloisters, but they are glazed, as the cloister windows probably were originally. [Illustration: BISHOP WORDSWORTH'S TOMB. _H. C. Oakden, Photo._] [Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, FROM THE NORTH-EAST CORNER. _S. B. Bolas & Co., Photo._] The cloisters are in an unusual position; they were generally built on the south side of the church, against the wall of the nave, where they would be protected from the cold north and east winds. At Lincoln they are on the north side, opposite the choir, and stand away from the walls of the church. Lincoln had no need of cloisters, any more than York or Lichfield, all three being secular churches. There seems to have been no idea of their erection before the end of the thirteenth century. The colonnade which has taken the place of the north walk, together with the Library above it, was erected from the designs of Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. The cost was paid by Dean Honywood, who also gave to the chapter his collection of books. [Illustration: Arcade in the Chapter-House.] An account of the contents the =Library= is given by Beriah Botfield in his "Notes on the Cathedral Libraries of England" (1849). The MS. library includes several Latin Bibles and Psalters, as well as a most valuable MS. of Old English Romances, c. 1430-40, collected by Robert de Thornton, who was Archdeacon of Bedford in 1450, and lies buried in Lincoln Cathedral. Some time between the years 1816 and 1828, all the Caxtons and many early volumes were sold, the proceeds being devoted to the purchase of more modern works of which the Library stood in need. A number of useful books were thus added to the collection, but only by the sacrifice of works which it would be quite impossible to replace. At the time of Botfield's visit, the library contained 4451 volumes, relating to theological, classical and historical subjects. Among the English versions of the Bible were found Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Cranmer's, Matthew's, the Bishops' Bible and the Genevan Bible. The library contains a portrait, said to be by Cornelis Janssens, of its great benefactor. The authorship of this painting is very doubtful, since Janssens left England in 1648, and Honywood was dean from 1660 to 1681. [Illustration: Capital in the Chapter-House.] The inside measurement of the cloisters is 120 feet from east to west, and 90 feet from north to south. In the middle of the south walk there is a doorway in the wall. A good view of the north side of St. Hugh's choir, the side walls of the transepts, and the central tower, can be had from the doorway. An old cast lead cistern in the corner is worth noticing. It is cylindrical, with bands of vine-stems in relief. In the wall to the left of the door are the fragments of the monumental slab of Richard of Gainsborough (d. 1300). He is probably the same man as Richard of Stow (a village not far from Gainsborough), who was engaged on the carved work of the angel choir, and was also employed on the crosses in memory of Queen Eleanor. On the other side of the door is a restoration of the slab in plaster, and another restoration is in the pavement. The mason, with a carpenter's square by his side, is represented beneath a Gothic canopy; around is the inscription "Hic jacet Ricardus de Gaynisburgh olym cementarius istius ecclesie qui obiit duodecim kalendarum junii Anno domini MCCC." In the north walk beneath the library is the original Swineherd of Stow, which for many centuries crowned the northern turret of the west front. A modern copy has now taken its place. At the east end of the walk, near the library staircase, are several fragments of ancient carving, chiefly of the Norman period. A stone coffin, carved with interlacing circles, probably goes back to Saxon times. From this point may be had the best view of the north end of the great transept, with its fine round window. Some interesting relics of Roman Lincoln are placed on the floor at the foot of the library staircase; they have been described by Precentor Venables. Along the east walk of the cloisters is a row of wall-arcading, with Purbeck shafts and tooth ornament. [Illustration: THE CHAPTER-HOUSE. _Photochrom Co. Ltd., Photo._] The vault of the three ancient walks is of oak, with stone springers. There is a fine series of oak bosses, carved with figures, grotesque heads, animals and foliage. An interesting set of photographs was taken from these bosses when the cloister was in process of reconstruction a few years ago; they are reproduced in the _Builder_ of July 19th, 1890. In the cloister garth are the tombs of Dean Butler (to whose memory a monument has recently been placed in the angel choir) and his wife, and Precentor Venables (d. 1895) and his daughter. The late precentor will be long remembered by those who are interested in the history of the minster; the results of his patient investigations, published chiefly in the _Archæological Journal_, cannot fail to be of great service to any who are desirous of information with respect to the architecture of the minster, or the antiquities of the city. The cloisters still bear marks of the rough usage they received in the last century, when they served the purpose of sheds for scaffolding and building materials. The doorway opening into the vestibule of the chapter-house is in the east walk. The oak door is a gift of the present bishop (Dr. King). Over the door inside is an arcade of slender arches with a large round window above, which would look better filled with coloured glass. The =Chapter-house= is one of the earliest of the series of polygonal chapter-houses in England, dating from the early part of the thirteenth century. It is a decagon with two windows in each bay; nearly all of these have now been filled with stained glass, in memory of different dignitaries connected with the minster. The glass is by Clayton and Bell, and deals with the history of the minster from its foundation. Below the windows an arcade runs right round the walls, with Purbeck shafts, foliaged capitals (see page 142), and a profusion of tooth ornament. Below the arcading is a projecting stone seat. The stone vault is a little later than the rest of the chapter-house. It is supported by a cluster of shafts, against the wall, in each angle, resting on corbels carved with foliage. Besides these, there is a massive central column, surrounded by ten hexagonally-fluted Purbeck shafts, banded in the middle. Greater experience was necessary before the Gothic architects were able, as at York, to dispense with this central pillar, and to produce a perfect Gothic dome of such large dimensions. A corbel, carved with oak foliage, formerly supporting a figure of the Virgin Mary, is attached to the eastern side of this central column. In front of this is a socket in the pavement for holding a processional cross. The dean's chair, at one time in the library, is a fine piece of early fourteenth-century carved woodwork. On the arms are crouching lions; the front panel below the seat is carved with rows of quatrefoils. The canopy over the chair is modern. The chapter-house was restored under the directions of the late consulting architect to the chapter, J. L. Pearson, R.A. CHAPTER IV LIST OF THE BISHOPS OF LINCOLN =Remigius=--Rémi--(1067-1092), Almoner of Fécamp, in Normandy; made Bishop of Dorchester by William the Conqueror, and soon after transferred the see to Lincoln. =Robert Bloet= (1094-1123), brother of Hugh, Bishop of Bayeux; Chancellor of England under William the Conqueror and William Rufus; Justiciary under Henry I. =Alexander=--"the Magnificent"--(1123-1148), nephew of Roger, Bishop of Salisbury; Archdeacon of Sarum, 1121; rebuilt chancel of St. Mary's at Stow; bequeathed certain books of the Bible to the Dean and Chapter; gatehouse of Eastgate in Lincoln granted to him as an episcopal residence by Henry I. =Robert de Chesney= (1148-1166), Archdeacon of Leicester; founded Gilbertine priory of St. Catherine outside south Bar-gate; bought site for episcopal residence at Lincoln in 1155, and commenced building palace; purchased previous to 1162 "The Old Temple" in parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, as London residence of bishops. The see was vacant until 1173, when Geoffrey Plantagenet, natural son of Henry II., was appointed. He was never consecrated, although he retained the temporalities for nine years. =Walter de Coutances=--de Constantiis--(1183-1184), Vice-Chancellor of England, Canon and Treasurer of Rouen Cathedral, 1173; Archdeacon of Oxford, 1175; translated to Rouen, 1184; d. 1207. See vacant, 1184-1186. =Hugh of Avalon=--St. Hugh of Lincoln--(1186-1200), Procurator of monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, 1170; Prior of Carthusian monastery at Witham, in Somerset, 1175-6 to 1186; commenced the great hall in the bishop's palace at Lincoln. =William de Blois= (1203-1206). See vacant, 1206-1209. =Hugh de Wells= (1209-1235), Prebendary of Louth in the Cathedral, 1203; Archdeacon of Wells, 1204; built kitchen and completed hall in bishop's palace at Lincoln; also built manor-house at Buckden. =Robert Grosseteste= (1235-1253), Archdeacon of Wilts, 1214 and 1220; of Northampton, 1221; first Rector of Franciscans at Oxford, 1224; Prebendary of Empingham in the Cathedral, afterwards exchanged for Archdeaconry of Leicester. =Henry de Lexinton= (1253-1258), Treasurer of Salisbury, 1241; Prebendary of North Muskham at Southwell previous to 1242; Dean of Lincoln, 1245. =Richard de Gravesend= (1258-1279), Dean of Lincoln, 1254; Treasurer of Hereford previous to 1258; absent from diocese about 1267-1269, when John de Maidenstone was in charge. =Oliver Sutton= (1280-1299), Dean of Lincoln; built the cloisters. =John de Dalderby= (1300-1320), Canon of St. David's; Archdeacon of Carmarthen, 1283; Chancellor of Lincoln, 1293; one of the Commissioners in 1309 in proceedings against the Knights Templars. (Dalderby is a village in Lincolnshire.) =Henry Burghersh= (1320-1340), Prebendary of Riccall, in York Minster, 1316; Treasurer and Chancellor of England, 1328; deprived of chancellorship, 1330; re-elected Treasurer, 1334; dismissed, 1337; obtained right of sanctuary for bishop's palace and canons' houses at Lincoln. =Thomas Bek= (1341--Feb. 1346-7), Doctor of Canon Law; Prebendary of Clifton in the Cathedral, 1335. =John Gynwell= (1347-1362), Archdeacon of Northampton. =John Buckingham=--Bokyngham--(1363-1397), Prebendary of Lichfield and Dean, 1349; Archdeacon of Northampton, 1351; Prebendary of Gretton in the Cathedral, 1352; Keeper of Privy Seal to Edward III.; translated to Lichfield, 1397; retired to monastery of Christ Church at Canterbury; d. 1398. =Henry Beaufort= (1398-1404), Prebendary of Thame, 1389; of Sutton in the Cathedral, 1391; Dean of Wells, 1397; translated to Winchester, 1404; d. 1447. =Philip Repyngdon=--Repington--(1405-1419), Augustinian Canon of St. Mary de Pré, Leicester, previous to 1382; excommunicated for Wiclifite heresy, July 1382; abjured, Nov. 1382; Abbot of St. Mary de Pré, 1391; Chancellor of Oxford University, 1397, 1400-1402; Chaplain and Confessor to Henry IV.; Cardinal, 1408; resigned, 1419; d. 1424. =Richard Fleming= (1419--Jan. 1430-1), Prebendary of Langtoft, in York Minster, 1415; Rector of Boston; founder of Lincoln College, Oxford. =William Gray= (1431-1436), Bishop of London, 1426-1431. =William of Alnwick= (1436-1449), Keeper of the Privy Seal; Archdeacon of Salisbury; Bishop of Norwich, 1426-1436; built east wing of bishop's palace at Lincoln, with chapel and dining-parlour and a gateway tower. =Marmaduke Lumley= (Jan. 1449-50--Dec. 1450), Treasurer of England; Chancellor of Cambridge University; Precentor of Lincoln, 1425; exchanged for rectory of Stepney, 1427; Bishop of Carlisle, 1430--Jan. 1449-50. =John Chadworth= (1452-1471). =Thomas Rotherham=--Scot--(1472-1480), Archdeacon of Canterbury, 1467; Bishop of Rochester, 1468-1472; translated to York, 1480; d. 1500; second founder of Lincoln College, Oxford. =John Russell= (1480-1494), Archdeacon of Berkshire, 1466; Bishop of Rochester, 1476-1480; first of "perpetual Chancellors" of Oxford. =William Smyth= (1496-1514), Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1493-1496; co-founder of Brasenose College, Oxford, with Richard Button. =Thomas Wolsey= (1514), Dean of Lincoln, 1508; Canon of Windsor; Dean of York; translated to Winchester and York, 1514; Cardinal, 1515; Papal Legate and Lord Chancellor, 1516; d. 1530. =William Atwater= (1514--Feb. 1520-1), Chancellor of Lincoln, 1506-1512; Prebendary, Oct. 1512. =John Longland= (1521-1547), Confessor to King Henry VIII.; Prebendary of Lincoln; built chantry chapel in Cathedral, =Henry Holbeach=--Rands--(1547-1551), Prior of Worcester, 1536; Suffragan Bishop of Bristol to see of Worcester, 1538-1540; Dean of Worcester, 1540; Bishop of Rochester, 1544-1547. =John Taylor= (1552-1554), deprived by Queen Mary. =John White= (1554-1556), Prebendary of Winchester; translated to Winchester, 1556; deprived by Queen Elizabeth, 1559. =Thomas Watson= (1557-1559), Dean of Durham; deprived by Queen Elizabeth. =Nicholas Bullingham= (Jan. 1559-60--Jan. 1570-1), translated to Worcester, Jan. 1570-1; d. 1576. =Thomas Cooper=--Couper--(1570-1--1584), Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, 1566; Vice-Chancellor of the University; Dean of Gloucester, 1569; translated to Winchester, 1584; d. 1594. =William Wickham= (1584-1594), Dean of Lincoln; translated to Winchester, 1594; d. 1595. =William Chaderton=--Chatterton--(1595-1608), President of Queen's College, Cambridge, 1568; Archdeacon of York; Prebendary of Westminster, 1576; Bishop of Chester, 1579-1595; resided at Southoe. =William Barlow= (1608-1613), Bishop of Rochester, 1605-1608. =Richard Neile= (1614-1617), Bishop of Rochester, 1608-1610; of Lichfield and Coventry, 1610-1614; of Durham, 1617-1627; of Winchester, 1627-1631; Archbishop of York, 1631-1640; d. 1640. =George Montaigne=--Mountain--(1617-1621), Dean of Westminster, 1610; translated to London, 1621; to Durham, Feb. 1627-8; to York, July 1628; d. Oct. 1628. =John Williams= (1621-1641), Dean of Westminster and Salisbury; Precentor of Lincoln; Lord Keeper under James I.; translated to York, 1641; d. 1650. =Thomas Winniffe= (1642-1654). Bishop's palace at Lincoln demolished during this episcopacy. =Robert Sanderson= (1660-1663), Regius Professor at Oxford, 1642 and 1660; restored episcopal residence of Buckden at his own cost; transcribed monumental inscriptions in the Cathedral. =Benjamin Laney= (1663-1667), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1632-1633; Dean of Rochester, July 1660; Bishop of Peterborough, Dec. 1660-1663; translated to Ely, 1667; d. Jan. 1674-5. =William Fuller= (1667-1675), Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, July 1660; Bishop of Limerick, Mar. 1663-4--1667; repaired damage done to the Cathedral, and restored monuments of Remigius and St. Hugh, supplying epitaphs; bequeathed books to Cathedral library. =Thomas Barlow= (1675-1691), buried at Buckden. =Thomas Tenison= (1691-1694), Archdeacon of London; translated to Canterbury, 1694; d. 1715. =James Gardiner= (Mar. 1694-5--Mar. 1704-5), Sub-Dean of Lincoln, 1671; rebuilt episcopal residence, ruined by storming of Castle and Close in 1644. =William Wake= (1705-1715), Dean of Exeter; translated to Canterbury, 1715; d. 1737. =Edmund Gibson= (1716-1723), Archdeacon of Surrey, 1710; translated to London, 1723; d. 1748. =Richard Reynolds= (1723--Jan. 1743-4), Dean of Peter borough, 1718; Bishop of Bangor, Dec. 1721-1723. =John Thomas= (1744-1761), translated to Salisbury, 1761; d. 1766. =John Green= (1761-1779), Dean of Lincoln and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, 1756; Resident Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, 1771. =Thomas Thurlow= (1779-1787). =George Pretyman Tomline=, baronet (1787-1820), translated to Winchester, 1820; d. 1827. =George Pelham= (1820-1827), Resident Canon of Chi-chester Cathedral, 1790; Prebendary of Winchester, 1797-1803; Bishop of Bristol, 1803-1807; of Exeter, 1807-1820. =John Kaye= (1827-1853), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1815; Bishop of Bristol, 1820-1827; resided at old palace of Buckden until 1837, when he removed to the newly-erected palace at Riseholme. =John Jackson= (1853-1868), Canon of Bristol, 1853; translated to London, 1868; d. 1885. =Christopher Wordsworth= (1868-1885), Headmaster of Harrow School, 1836-1844; Archdeacon of Westminster, 1865; resided at Riseholme. =Edward King= (1885), Bishop's palace at Lincoln restored to its ancient use. DIMENSIONS. Total Interior Length--482 feet. Nave--Length to Screen, 252 feet. Width, including Aisles, 80 feet. Height of Vault, 82 feet. Choir--Length, 158 feet. Height of Vault, 74 feet. Presbytery--Length, 72 feet. Height of Vault, 74 feet. West Transept--Length, 222 feet. Width, 61 feet. East Transept--Length, 170 feet. Width, 36 feet. Central Tower--Height, 271 feet. Height of Vault, 125 feet. West Towers--Height about 200 feet. Chapter-house--Diameter, 60 feet. AREA--44,400 square feet. [Illustration: PLAN. _See Key, next page._] KEY TO PLAN. A. North-West Chapel. B. Ringers' Chapel. C. Morning Prayer Chapel. D. Consistory Court. E. Chapel of St. Nicholas. F. Chapel of St. Denis. G. Chapel of St. James. H. Chapel of St. Edward the Martyr. I. Chapel of St. John the Evangelist. J. Chapel of St. Giles. K. "Dean's Chapel." L. Choristers' Vestry. M. Ante-Vestry. N. Canons' Vestry. O. Chapter-house Vestibule. P. Old Common Chamber. Q, R, T, U. Hugh's Semi-circular Chapels. S. Foundations of Lengthened Chapel. V. Longland Chantry. W. Fleming Chantry. X. Russell Chantry. Y. Presbytery. TOMBS, MONUMENTS, ETC. 1. Robert Burghersh. 2. Bishop Burghersh. 3. Queen Eleanor. 4. Sir N. Cantelupe. 5. Prior Wimbische. 6. Sir B. Burghersh. 7. Bishop Wordsworth. 8. Table Tombs (see p. 135). 9. Dean Butler. 10. Bishop Kaye. 11. Bishop Fleming. 12. Countess of Westmorland. 13. Catherine Swynford. 14. Litany Desk. 15. Remigius (?). 16. Font. 17. Easter Sepulchre. 18. Little St. Hugh. 19. Sir G. Talboys (?). * * * * * FOOTNOTES [Footnote 1: Freeman, "Norman Conquest."] [Footnote 2: Freeman, "Norman Conquest."] [Footnote 3: _Archæological Journal_, vol. xl. p. 179.] [Footnote 4: The chapel was reconstructed according to its original form in 1772.] [Footnote 5: _Archæological Journal_, vol. li. p. 104.] [Footnote 6: Venables, _Archæological Journal_ vol. l.] [Footnote 7: Professor E. A. Freeman, "York, Lincoln, and Beverley."] [Footnote 8: In Gough's edition [1806] of Camden's "Britannia," is a plan giving the positions of the grave-slabs in the old pavement.] [Footnote 9: The matter is referred to on p. 20.] [Footnote 10: What has become of the "merveylows fair and large Psaltar, full in the Margin of goodly Armes of many Noble Men," mentioned by Leland as being "in S. Nicholas Chapell"?] 
47894	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Duomo and the Campanile: Florence. Grotesques from Notre Dame, Paris. JUNE, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XLIII THE DUOMO AND THE CAMPANILE] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. JUNE No. 6. THE DUOMO AND THE CAMPANILE: FLORENCE. "It was in the middle of the thirteenth century," writes Symonds, "during the long struggle for independence carried on by the republics of Lombardy and Tuscany against the Empire and the nobles, that some of the most durable and splendid public works were executed. The domes and towers of Florence and of Pisa were rising above the city walls, while the burghers who subscribed for their erection were staining the waves of Meloria and the cane-brakes of the Arbia with their blood. Sismondi remarks with just pride, that these great works were republican. They were set on foot for the public use, and were constructed at the expense of the commonwealths. It is, however, right to add that what the communes had begun the princes continued. The Despots held their power at the price of magnificence in schemes of public utility. So much at least of the free spirit of the communes survived in them, that they were always rivalling each other in great works of architecture. Italian tyranny implied æsthetic taste and liberality of expenditure." "In the year 1294," wrote Giovanni Villani, who was a youth in Florence at the time, "the city of Florence being in a state of tranquility, the citizens agreed to rebuild the chief church, which was very rude in form and in small proportion to such a city, and that it should be enlarged, and that it should be made all of marble and with carven figures. And the foundation was laid on the day of St. Mary, in September, by the Cardinal Legate of the Pope, in the presence of all the ranks of the Signory of Florence. And it was consecrated to the honor of God and St. Mary, under the name of St. Mary of the Flower (Santa Maria del Fiore). And for the building of the church taxes were ordered, and the Legate and bishops bestowed great indulgences and pardons to everyone who should contribute aid and alms to the work." The design for the new cathedral was entrusted to Arnolfo di Cambio, who was at that time the official architect of the Commune of Florence,--a remarkable man to whom Florence in a great measure owes her present physiognomy; for not only are the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce and the bulk of the Duomo his, but Giotto's Campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola and the church of Or San Michele are placed where he had planned. [Illustration: PLATE XLIV FACADE OF THE DUOMO AND THE CAMPANILE] In the design for Santa Croce, Arnolfo had shown a preference for the Gothic forms, then newly imported into Italy, and he now projected a design for the new Cathedral in which the pointed should take the place of the round arch, the stone vaulted roof should be substituted for the flat timber ceiling, and the façade should form a splendid screen, adorned with gable and pinnacle, rich with carving, glowing with mosaics and shining with gold. That the Florentines approved his project is evident from a decree passed before the work had been long in progress, in which "Master Arnolfo" is declared to be exempt from any civic tax during his life, because of his design for the Cathedral, "since" reads the Chronicle, "judging from the magnificent and visible beginnings of the new church, the Commune and people of Florence are like to have a more beautiful and honorable temple than any other in the region of Tuscany." But before the work had far advanced the building came almost to a standstill, for the strife of parties, which had been but temporarily smothered, broke out anew in Florence, and for some thirty years work on the Cathedral was suspended. Meantime Arnolfo had died, but he left the building so far advanced that his successors would find little difficulty in continuing the main parts of the construction according to his design. In 1331, however, a portion of the communal tax was set apart for the prosecution of the work, and Giotto di Bondone, already the most famous painter of all Italy, was appointed architect of the Cathedral. "It is not often," says Mrs. Jameson, "that a man takes up a new trade when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar routine. But Giotto seems to have turned without a moment's hesitation from his paints and panels to the less easily wrought materials of the builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise or doubting his own power to do it." "To his new charge," writes Mr. C. E. Norton, "Giotto gave himself with the effectual ardor of genius. No written record of his work on the Duomo remains, but the walls themselves seem to bear witness to it. Stretches on the north and south, running eastward from the façade, more beautiful in composition and design than the later work joined to it, may be assigned with probability to the period of his oversight. "But Giotto's labor was not limited to the Duomo alone. He now designed and speedily began the construction of the most exquisite building of modern times, the one in which the quality of classic art is most completely and beautifully harmonized with the spirit and fancy of modern times. The unsurpassed bell-tower of the Duomo, known and admired by all men as the Campanile of Giotto, is the most splendid memorial of the arts of Florence. In 1334, scarcely three months after his appointment, the foundations of the Campanile were laid with great pomp and ceremony. The tower, so quickly begun, was so vigorously lifted that it may have reached somewhat more than a third of its proposed height, when in 1337 Giotto died." He was buried in the unfinished Cathedral on the side nearest the Campanile. "In its first appeal to the stranger's eye," says Mr. Ruskin in writing of the Campanile, "there is something unpleasing; a mingling, it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those gray walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, colored like a morning cloud and chased like a sea shell. And this, I believe to be the model and mirror of perfect architecture...." [Illustration: PLATE XLV REAR OF THE DUOMO] "Considerable size exhibited by simple terminal lines; projection towards the top; breadth of flat surface; square compartments of that surface; varied and visible masonry; vigorous depth of shadow, exhibited especially by pierced traceries; varied proportion in ascent; lateral symmetry; sculpture most delicate at the base; enriched quantity of ornament at the top; sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings, complete in animal forms, both to be executed in white marble; vivid colors introduced in flat geometrical patterns, and obtained by the use of naturally colored stone,--these characteristics occur more or less in different buildings, some in one, some in another--but all together and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto." [Illustration: WINDOW THE CAMPANILE] After Giotto's death there is a wide gap in the annals of the Duomo, for in 1348 the great plague desolated Florence, and the work came to a standstill. After it had passed, however, there followed, as a natural consequence, a sudden outbreak of pious superstition. Immense sums had been bequeathed by dying men to the Church to purchase salvation; and the Duomo, begun sixty years before, seemed hardly to correspond with the demands of the present age. It was accordingly resolved to adopt a new design for it on a grander scale than that planned by Arnolfo; and while the breadth was to remain the same, the height and length were to be increased, and the eastern end of the church to be larger. The oversight of the work was entrusted to Francesco di Talenti, and in 1357 the new foundations were begun. The main forms of the new building were, in great part, determined by such of the old structure of Giotto's time as was left standing, and by the original scheme of Arnolfo. But the taste of the age had changed, and in grafting the newly arisen classical ideas upon the original, the architects achieved a result which was neither good Gothic nor good Classic. For some years the work was now carried slowly but steadily forward, and in 1407 the eastern tribune with its five chapels was completed, and the work was ready to be crowned by a dome. But here a great difficulty was encountered. The increase in the original dimensions and the height of the walls had made it necessary to span an enormous space, for the diameter of the octagon to be covered was now one hundred and thirty-five feet. The records of architecture could show no such dome as this must be. The overseers of the work were confounded, and knew not how to proceed; and, in their desperation made a public proclamation in 1418, that whoever wished, might make a model for the dome, or of anything pertaining to its construction. Fifteen models were presented, and over them there were months of public deliberation and discussion. It was not until March, 1420, that a final conclusion was reached, and the celebrated plan of Filippo Brunelleschi was adopted. No more characteristic or remarkable design was produced during the whole period of the Renaissance than this, with which its great architectural achievements began. Not only were apparently insurmountable difficulties of construction overcome, but the new dome was also to be a masterpiece of beauty. The great domes of former times--the dome of the Pantheon, the dome of Aya Sophia--had been designed solely for their interior effect; they were not impressive or noble structures from without. But Brunelleschi had conceived a dome which, grand in its interior aspect, should be even more superb from without, and which, in its stately dimensions and proportions, in its magnificent lift above all the other edifices of the city of which it formed the centre, in its absolute unity and symmetry, in the beautiful shape and proportions of its broad divisions, the strong, simple energy of its upwardly converging lines, should be such that, more than a century later, when Michelangelo was told that he had an opportunity to surpass it in his cupola of St. Peter's at Rome, he replied sadly, with a shake of his head,-- "_Io farò la sorella Più grande già; ma non più bella!_" "I will make her sister dome Larger, indeed, but not more beautiful!" Brunelleschi's plan was to build _two_ octagonal domes, separated by a space wide enough for a passage and stairways, and united by eight strong ribs of masonry at the angles. The inner and smaller dome was for constructive purposes, to bridge the vault and to furnish a support for the outer, which was to be merely a light shell to secure the magnificent swelling lines. The whole was to be crowned by a lantern. We have not space to quote Vasari's animated account of Brunelleschi's difficulties in persuading the authorities of the practicability of his plan, of his jealous bickerings with his troublesome and incompetent confrère, Ghiberti, of the obstacles, difficulties and persecutions that he underwent,--suffice it to say that, in 1434, under his untiring supervision, just fourteen years from its beginning, the splendid dome closed over the central space of the Duomo, and Brunelleschi's fame was forever established. [Illustration: PLATE XLVI INTERIOR OF THE DUOMO] Without waiting for the completion of the cupola and lantern, the Florentines took advantage of the presence in their city of Pope Eugenius IV., to have him consecrate the Cathedral in person, with most impressive ceremony, on the Florentine New Year's day, the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 1436. Not long after the consecration of the Duomo, the work on the cupola was completed (August, 1436), and to the fulfilment of Brunelleschi's plan remained only the construction of a surmounting lantern. But for some undiscovered reason there was delay for year after year, and it was fated that Brunelleschi should not see the completion of his work, for "finally," says Vasari, "Filippo Brunelleschi being now very old, that is sixty-nine years old in the year 1446, on the 16th of April, went to a better life, after having toiled greatly in the performance of works which made him deserve on earth an honored name, and obtain in heaven an abode of peace." More than twenty years passed after Brunelleschi's death before the lantern was at last completed. On the 23d of April, 1467, the last and highest stone was set. Meantime, not until some twenty years after the death of Giotto had work on the unfinished façade been recommenced. The design for it, which was Gothic, with columns and niches containing statues of the Madonna and Child, of saints and prophets, and even of distinguished Florentine citizens, was the joint composition of several architects, among them Orcagna, Gaddi and Tommasi. But this façade had only reached one-third of the height of the edifice, when, for some unexplained reason it was abandoned, and remained in an unfinished state until the reign of the Grand Duke Francis I. (1575-1587), when it was demolished to make way for the accomplishment of a new design, one which was, however, never executed; and the whole face of the Cathedral remained a bare expanse of rubble and cement until, in 1689, it was painted and frescoed to represent columns and other architectural decorations. Shortly after Tuscany was incorporated with the kingdom of Italy, the Florentine municipality again took up the matter, and invited architects to submit designs for a new façade. The design of Commendatore de Fabris, a Florentine, was selected. In 1875 the scaffolding was erected, and white marble from Seravezza, red marble from Montiere and green marble from Prato were brought to Florence to begin the façade which now exists, and which was completed and unveiled in 1887. [Illustration: PLAN OF DUOMO AND CAMPANILE] Writing of the Duomo as a whole, Mr. C. E. Norton says: "Its size gives it dignity, and its effect is powerful from the simplicity and largeness of its design. A nave of four enormous bays is stopped upon a vast octagonal space, from which, at the east, the north, and the south, are built out three pentagonal tribunes or apses, which, as seen on the outside, give to the church the common cruciform shape. The proportions of the interior are on an enormous scale, by which the apparent size of the building is diminished rather than increased. There is nothing either in the general conception or in the working-out of the details which corresponds with that principle, characteristic of the best Northern Gothic, of complex organization, in which each minor part contributes to the vital unity of the whole edifice. The Duomo presents, on the contrary, an assemblage of separate vast features arbitrarily associated, rather than united by any law of mutual relation into a completely harmonious whole. It does not display that lavish wealth of fancy in ever-changing variety and abundance of detail which gives inexhaustible charm to a true Gothic edifice. But it is impressive within from its vast open spaces, and from the stately and simple, though barren, grandeur of its piers and vaults and walls. [Illustration: PLATE XLVII NORTH DOOR OF THE DUOMO] "The effect of the building from without is imposing from its mass, but, in a near view, it is only on the east that the lines compose into forms of beauty. The side walls are incrusted, after the old Tuscan style, with simple rectangular patterns of white and red marble, interrupted by the rich decoration of gable and pinnacle over the doors and windows. [Illustration: PLATE XLVIII FACADE OF THE DUOMO] "It is when seen from a distance that the full worth and power of the great Cathedral force themselves upon the beholder. Looking down upon Florence from one of the neighboring heights, the beautiful city seems to lie gathered under the shelter of its mighty Duomo. The stretch of its wall is ample for the house in which the whole people shall gather, and, lifting itself above the clustering towers and belfries of palaces and churches, the unrivalled dome crowns the edifice, and with its noble elliptic lines not merely concentrates the scattered forms of the buildings beneath and around it far and near, but to the inward eye seems equally to concentrate all the divergent energies of the historic life of Florence, and lift them along its curves to the foot of the cross upon its heaven-reaching summit. It seems of equal date with the mountains that close the background to the landscape of which it forms the central interest; and they seem to look down upon this work of man as one not unworthy of their guardianship." [Illustration: PLATE XLIX CENTRAL PORTAL, FACADE OF THE DUOMO] Grotesques from Notre Dame, Paris. The representation of physical beauty being with the Gothic carver subordinated to the purpose of enforcing the idea that the soul is superior to the body, and of illustrating the doctrine of the salvation of the soul by goodness of life, and the loss of the soul by evil life, it was necessary that beings and objects not beautiful should enter into his sculptured ornamental schemes. The evils that beset the lives and tempt the souls of men had to be in some way set forth, no less than the human virtues and the heavenly ideals. The unhappy lot of the wicked had to be figured as well as the felicities of the good. Hence figures which embody the mediæval notions of the monstrous and the grotesque are conspicuous elements in Gothic sculpture, especially after the beginning of the thirteenth century. The grotesque, in the finest Gothic art, while often apparently introduced in a playful spirit, had thus primarily a serious purpose. [Illustration: GROTESQUE NOTRE DAME, PARIS] [Illustration: GROTESQUES NOTRE DAME, PARIS] The Romanesque imagery, consisting of fantastic creations of animal life which embodied distorted traditions of the Roman mythology, combined with forms originating in the rude imagination of the Northern races, was largely rejected by the early Gothic artists. The imaginary creatures which they sometimes introduced were, for the most part, confined to the symbolic animals of the Bible--such as those seen by St. John in the Apocalypse. But by degrees other imaginary creations were introduced, until finally, during the thirteenth century, the grotesque animal life of the Gothic edifice became even more extended in range than that of the richest Romanesque monuments had been, and an imaginary fauna was created, which, while it derived much from the older conceptions, embodied so much that was new as to constitute a distinctly Gothic class. This development grew primarily out of the old popular belief in the symbolic character of animals and imaginary creatures. As symbols of human qualities, both good and evil, these animals, real and imaginary, were now wrought, for encouragement and for warning, upon the stones of the sacred edifice. A further purpose of this fauna, as of the sculpture of the human figure and the flora with which it was associated, apparently was that the Gothic monument might present a compendious illustration of the known world of creation, imagination and faith. [Illustration: GROTESQUE NOTRE DAME, PARIS] [Illustration: GROTESQUE NOTRE DAME, PARIS] A remarkable quality of the grotesque creations of Gothic art is the close and accurate observation of nature which they, no less than the images of real things, display. However fabulous the imagined creature may be, the materials out of which he is made are derived from nature, and manifest a keen appreciation of animal structure. Vertebra or claw, wing or beak, eye or nostril, throat or paw,--every anatomical member displays an intimate familiarity with real organic form and function, and an imaginative sense of its possible combinations in creative design. Take, for instance, those strange beasts, or terrible demons of the parapet of the Cathedral of Paris. Each of them seems animated with a living spirit, and has an almost startling appearance of reality. And besides this lifelikeness and functional truth, a highly ornamental play of lines, and a subtle elaboration of finely modelled surfaces, are shown in these grotesque forms. In the early and early mature periods they exhibit a noticeable restraint of posture and movement; extravagantly contorted forms and violent movements occur, for the most part, only in the decline of Gothic, when jaded sensibilities had ceased to appreciate the value of moderation in design.--CHARLES H. MOORE: "_Gothic Architecture_." * * * * * In addition to Notre Dame at Paris, the churches of Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Laon, Vézelay, Auxerre and the religious edifices throughout Poitou, Saintonge, Guyenne and Burgundy, and the borders of the Loire, in France are rich in examples of grotesque animal sculpture. [Illustration: GROTESQUES NOTRE DAME, PARIS] [Illustration: GROTESQUES NOTRE DAME, PARIS] [Illustration: PLATE L THE CAMPANILE] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
42469	----	available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 42469-h.htm or 42469-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42469/42469-h/42469-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42469/42469-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/convenienthouses00gibs [Illustration: FIGURE A.] CONVENIENT HOUSES With Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper Architect and Housewife--A Journey Through the House--Fifty Convenient House Plans--Practical House Building for the Owner--Business Points in Building--How to Pay for a Home by LOUIS H. GIBSON Architect New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Copyright, 1889, By Louis H. Gibson. C. J. Peters & Son, Typographers And Electrotypers, 145 High Street, Boston. PREFACE. When the reader is familiar with the writer's general purposes, it is easier to understand the details of his work. This book is intended to deal with houses in a housekeeping spirit. In doing this, the architect has in mind convenience, stability, and that ideal of housekeepers, beauty of surroundings. In carrying out this idea, the relation of architecture to good and economical housekeeping is first considered. Following this division is "A Journey through the House." It begins at the porch, moves through the different rooms, and stops to consider the various details. This brings about not only a consideration of the general arrangement of a house, but such details as kitchens and pantries, plumbing, laundry, and heating. These first two sections of the book--"The Architect and the Housewife," and "A Journey through the House"--are, in a measure, educational. After this, and in keeping with the general principles that have been set forth, plans of fifty convenient houses are illustrated and described. For the most part, they are houses that have been built. The next section is devoted to practical house-building. It is constructed by taking a complete specification for everything which may concern a dwelling-house, and ridding it, as far as possible, of all technicalities; thus putting in form all practical house-building questions for the benefit of the owner. Following this is the consideration of business points in building, which sets forth methods of letting contracts with the view of securing the best results without waste of money. The closing section is devoted to the getting of a home,--how to arrange the monthly-payment schemes, building-association plans, and other methods for getting a house on easy instalments. LOUIS H. GIBSON, ARCHITECT. INDIANAPOLIS, IND., September, 1889. CONTENTS. _THE ARCHITECT AND THE HOUSEWIFE._ CHAPTER I. THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE ARCHITECT.--FLOOR-PLANS AS RELATED TO GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.--LABOR-SAVING DEVICES.--ECONOMY AND GOOD CONSTRUCTION.--COMPACT HOUSES NOT NECESSARILY CROWDED.--WOOD-WORK THAT IS READILY CLEANED 11-15 CHAPTER II. HOUSEKEEPING OPERATIONS.--THE WORK OF THE HOUSEKEEPER.--THE AVERAGE HOUSEWORK OF A WEEK.--THE ARCHITECT'S LESSON THEREFROM 16-20 CHAPTER III. MODERN CONVENIENCES.--A LITTLE HISTORY.--PLANS THAT MAKE EXTRA WORK.--MODERN CONVENIENCES ENUMERATED 21-25 CHAPTER IV. MODERN ARCHITECTS AND THE HOUSEKEEPER.--MISPLACED HOUSES.--OLD COLONIAL POVERTY IN MODERN COLONIAL HOUSES.--AFFECTATION IN DESIGN.--NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.--AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE AND AMERICAN HOMES 26-28 _A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOUSE._ CHAPTER V. JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOUSE.--PORCH.--VESTIBULE.--HALL.--LONG HALLS AND SQUARE HALLS.--THE HALL THAT IS A ROOM.--RECEPTION-HALL.--PARLOR.--SITTING-ROOM.--DINING-ROOM 31-38 CHAPTER VI. KITCHENS.--THE KITCHEN A WORKSHOP.--WORK TO BE DONE IN A KITCHEN.--A PLAN.--FITTINGS.--DISH-WASHING CONVENIENCES.--SINK AND TABLES.--CHINA-CLOSET.--PANTRY. --COMBINATION PANTRY.--PANTRY FITTINGS.--WORK IN A PANTRY.--A DOUGH-BOARD.--FLOUR-BIN.--PANTRY STORES.--CUPBOARD.--REFRIGERATOR ARRANGEMENTS.--PANTRY UTENSILS.--A DRY-BOX.--SOAP-BOX.--VENTILATION OF KITCHEN.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF KITCHEN PLANNING 39-50 CHAPTER VII. CELLAR.--FUEL DEPARTMENTS.--FURNACE CONVENIENCES.--COAL-BINS. --CEMENT FLOORS.--LIGHT IN THE CELLAR.--A CELLAR-CLOSET. --OUTSIDE CELLAR-DOOR 51-53 CHAPTER VIII. A LOW-COST LAUNDRY.--BLUE MONDAY.--BASEMENT LAUNDRY.--LOW-COST CONVENIENCES.--INEXPENSIVE LAUNDRY FITTINGS.--HOT AND COLD WATER ARRANGEMENTS.--A LABOR-SAVING LAUNDRY.--A PLACE TO DO FRUIT-CANNING 54-58 CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND FLOOR.--STAIRWAYS.--THE COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--IDEAL NUMBER OF BEDROOMS.--LARGE CLOSETS AND PLENTY OF THEM.--A LINEN CLOSET.--PLACING OF GAS-FIXTURES.--SERVANT'S ROOM.--BATH-ROOM.--AN ATTIC.--ATTIC CLOSETS.--ATTIC ROOMS 59-63 CHAPTER X. PLUMBING.--IS PLUMBING ENTIRELY SAFE?--COMPLETENESS IN PLUMBING APPARATUS.--LABOR-SAVING PLUMBING APPARATUS.--SEWER CONNECTIONS.--SOIL PIPE.--A TRAP.--ACCIDENTS TO TRAPS.--FREQUENT USE OF PLUMBING APPARATUS DESIRABLE FOR SAFETY.--WATER-CLOSETS.--SIMPLICITY IN PLUMBING.--DRAIN CONNECTIONS.--TO KEEP PLUMBING APPARATUS FROM FREEZING.--CISTERN WATER SUPPLY.--GREASE SINK.--FLUSHING OF DRAIN.--BATH-TUB 64-74 CHAPTER XI. HEAT AND VENTILATION.--COMMON HEATING ARRANGEMENTS.--PRESENT METHODS GENERALLY UNSATISFACTORY.--IDEAL CONDITIONS.--PROPER AMOUNT OF MOISTURE RARELY ATTAINED.--A FURNACE DEFINED.--METHODS OF REACHING BEST RESULTS.--SUPPLY OF PROPER AMOUNT OF MOISTURE.--REMOVAL OF FOUL AIR.--SUPPLYING FRESH AIR WITH PROPER MOISTURE FROM STOVES.--STEAM AND HOT-WATER HEATING.--DIRECT AND INDIRECT RADIATION.--LOW-COST HEATING APPARATUS 75-82 CHAPTER XII. HEATING DEVICES AS WE FIND THEM.--FURNACE ESTIMATES.--COMBINATION HOT AIR AND HOT WATER.--DISH-WARMING ARRANGEMENTS.--HOW TO GET A GOOD HEATING APPARATUS 83-85 CHAPTER XIII. THE HOUSE AND ITS BEAUTY.--ARTISTIC SURROUNDINGS.--BEAUTY MORE A MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE THAN MONEY.--VESTIBULE DECORATIONS.--BEAUTY IN THE RECEPTION-HALL.--MANTELS AND GRATES.--FRET-WORK AND PORTIÈRES.--SPINDLE WORK.--SIMPLE FORMS OF GOOD DECORATION.--WOOD-CARVING.--DOOR AND WINDOW CASINGS.--A CONSERVATORY.--STAINED GLASS.--A CABINET ON THE MANTEL.--TINTED PLASTERING. --FRESCOING.--SAFETY IN THE SELECTION OF COLORS.--AN ATTRACTIVE SITTING-ROOM.--THE PARLOR.--A RECEPTION-ROOM. --PARLOR HISTORY.--THE IDEAL PARLOR.--THE LIBRARY.--A PLACE OF QUIET AND REST.--LIBRARY FURNISHINGS.--THE DINING-ROOM.--SOCIAL RELATIONS OF THE DINING-ROOM. --DINING-ROOM DECORATIONS.--CONSERVATORY AND DINING-ROOM. --A WOOD CEILING.--BEAUTY IN BEDROOMS.--QUIET AND LIGHT 86-100 CHAPTER XIV. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL DESIGN.--AN OLD TOPIC BEFORE THE PEOPLE.--THE ARCHITECTURAL STUDENT'S DREAM.--A BEAUTIFUL HOME THE HOUSEKEEPER'S AMBITION.--IT COSTS NO MORE TO HAVE A HOUSE BEAUTIFUL THAN UGLY.--ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION.--CHARLES EASTLAKE'S BOOK.--VULGAR ARCHITECTURAL REVIVALS.--THE GROWTH OF THE ARTISTIC IDEA.--BEAUTY A MATTER OF REFINEMENT 101-105 _PLANS OF FIFTY CONVENIENT HOUSES._ CHAPTER XV. EVOLUTION OF A HOUSE-PLAN.--RESPECTABLE DIMENSIONS FOR A MODERATE PRICE.--SIX PLANS.--COSTS FROM $1,500 TO $2,600 109-117 CHAPTER XVI. A SMALL POCKET-BOOK AND A LARGE IDEA.--AMBITION, DOLLARS, AND A GOOD HOUSE.--THE GROWTH OF THE HOUSEKEEPER'S IDEAS.--POINTS ABOUT THE HOUSE.--$2,900 118-125 CHAPTER XVII. "WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT."--A CONVENIENT PLAN.--MEETING THE WANTS OF PEOPLE WHO BUILD 126-130 CHAPTER XVIII. TWO GOOD ROOMS IN FRONT.--THE COMBINATION PANTRY.--TOO MUCH CELLAR A BURDEN.--$2,500 131-134 CHAPTER XIX. SITTING-ROOM AND PARLOR IN FRONT.--A CONNECTING VESTIBULE.--A CENTRAL COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--GOOD ROOMS IN THE ATTIC 135-138 CHAPTER XX. A COMPACT PLAN.--AN ISOLATED RECEPTION-ROOM.--COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--DESCRIPTION OF THE FLOOR-PLAN.--CELLAR ARRANGEMENT.--DINING-ROOM AND CONSERVATORY.--ANOTHER PLAN 139-144 CHAPTER XXI. WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR $1,600?--THE CLOSET IN THE HALL.--A SMALL, CONVENIENT KITCHEN.--CLOSETS IN THE BEDROOMS 145-151 CHAPTER XXII. OUTGROWTHS OF ONE IDEA.--EVERYTHING COUNTS AS A ROOM.--ONE CHIMNEY.--CONVENIENCES OF A CONDENSED HOUSE.--COST FROM $1,600 TO $2,800 152-156 CHAPTER XXIII. ONE-STORY PLANS.--DESCRIPTION OF FLOOR-PLANS.--BATH-ROOM NEXT TO KITCHEN FLUE.--KITCHEN, PORCH, AND PANTRY.--THE EXTERIOR.--ENLARGEMENTS ON THIS PLAN.--OTHER ONE-STORY HOUSES 157-163 CHAPTER XXIV. SIDE-HALL PLANS.--PLANS WITH BEDROOM ON FIRST FLOOR 164-170 CHAPTER XXV. MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION.--SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF ELEVEN HOUSE-PLANS.--VARYING COSTS.--SQUARE PLANS.--ONE-CHIMNEY PLANS.--REAR AND SIDE HALL 171-181 CHAPTER XXVI. EIGHT PLANS.--EACH SUITED TO FAMILY REQUIREMENTS.--DOUBLE HOUSES.--AN ELABORATE FLOOR-PLAN.--A SHINGLE HOUSE.--A BRICK HOUSE 182-193 _PRACTICAL HOUSE-BUILDING._ CHAPTER XXVII. PRACTICAL POINTS.--WATER.--LOCATION OF HOUSE ON LOT. --DRAINING THE CELLAR.--MASON WORK.--FOUNDATIONS.--WALKS. --PIERS.--FLUES.--CISTERNS.--DAMP COURSE 197-200 CHAPTER XXVIII. BRICK FOUNDATIONS.--LAYING BRICK.--COLORED MORTARS.--COLORED BRICKS.--BRICK VENEERING.--HOT-AIR FLUES.--DETAILS OF BRICK CONSTRUCTION.--CHIMNEYS AND FLUES.--HOLLOW WALLS.--CELLAR.--ASH-PITS.--GRATES 201-206 CHAPTER XXIX. STONE MASONRY.--CUT STONE.--TERRA COTTA.--PRIVY VAULTS. --CISTERNS.--FILTERS FOR CISTERNS.--BRICK PAVEMENTS.--CEMENT PAVEMENTS 207-212 CHAPTER XXX. CARPENTER-WORK.--FRAMING.--SIZE OF TIMBERS.--HEIGHT OF STORIES.--JOIST.--STUD WALLS.--OUTSIDE SHEATHING. --BUILDING-PAPER.--ROOFS.--OUTSIDE FINISH.--OUTSIDE SHINGLE WALLS.--OUTSIDE CASINGS.--WINDOWS WITH BOX FRAMES.--HINGED OR PIVOTED WINDOWS.--OUTSIDE SHUTTERS. --PORCHES.--LATTICE PORCHES 213-221 CHAPTER XXXI. INSIDE WOOD-WORK.--FLOORS.--SOFT AND HARD WOOD FLOORS. --TABULATED STATEMENT OF INSIDE FINISH.--DIFFERENT KINDS OF WOOD.--DOORS AND FRAMES.--FLY SCREENS.--INSIDE CASINGS.--WAINSCOTING.--INSIDE SHUTTERS.--WOOD-WORK FOR PLUMBING.--KITCHEN SINK AND FITTINGS.--KITCHEN TABLES.--CELLAR-SINK FITTINGS.--WOOD-WORK FOR BATH-TUB.--WATER-CLOSETS.--WASH-STANDS.--TANK.--PICTURE MOULDING.--CLOSET FITTINGS.--BROOM-RACK.--CEDAR-CLOSET. --DRY-BOX.--CLOCK SHELF.--CHINA-ROOM FITTINGS.--PANTRY FITTINGS.--STAIRWAYS 222-235 CHAPTER XXXII. PLASTERING.--GRAY FINISH.--WHITE HARD FINISH.--BACK PLASTERING.--GAS-PIPING.--TIN WORK.--GUTTERS.--VALLEYS. --DOWN SPOUTS.--GALVANIZED IRON-WORK.--HOT-AIR PIPES. --THIMBLES.--PAINTING.--STAINING.--OIL FINISHING.--INTERIOR STAINING.--FLOOR FINISH.--GLAZING.--PLATE-GLASS.--BEVELLED GLASS.--CATHEDRAL GLASS.--HARDWARE 236-246 CHAPTER XXXIII. PRACTICAL PLUMBING.--WOOD-WORK FOR PLUMBER.--EXCAVATING FOR PLUMBER.--WATER DISTRIBUTION.--OUTSIDE FIXTURES. --HYDRANTS.--STREET-WASHERS.--SOFT-WATER SUPPLY.--HOT-WATER SUPPLY.--SOIL PIPE.--INSIDE FIXTURES.--KITCHEN SINK.--CELLAR SINK 247-254 CHAPTER XXXIV. PLUMBING WORK CONTINUED.--BATH-TUBS.--BATH-SPRINKLERS. --FOOT-TUBS.--SAFES.--WATER-CLOSETS.--WASH-STANDS.--LAUNDRY FITTINGS.--SET TUBS.--OUTSIDE DRAINS.--GREASE SINKS.--NICKEL FITTINGS 255-263 CHAPTER XXXV. COST OF A HOUSE.--SCHEDULES OF COSTS.--WHAT GOES INTO A HOUSE.--SCHEDULE "B."--COST DETAILS 264-269 CHAPTER XXXVI. VARYING BUILDING VALUES.--COST OF APPURTENANCES.--PRICES OF LABOR AND MATERIAL ON WHICH ESTIMATES ARE BASED. 270-274 _BUSINESS POINTS IN BUILDING._ CHAPTER XXXVII. LOW-COST HOUSES.--METHODS OF MAKING CONTRACTS.--ARCHITECTS' ESTIMATES.--BUILDING BY THE DAY.--THE SAFEST PLAN.--GUARDING AGAINST LIENS 277-287 _HOW TO SECURE A HOME._ CHAPTER XXXVIII. MONTHLY PAYMENTS.--CALCULATIONS ON A LONG-TIME PLAN.--PURCHASE ON A RENTAL BASIS.--HOW IT MAY BE WORKED OUT 291-294 CHAPTER XXXIX. BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS.--WHY DIVIDENDS ARE LARGE AND INTEREST LOW.--BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS AND SAVINGS BANKS.--ASSOCIATION SECURITIES.--BUILDING-ASSOCIATION METHODS.--DIFFERENT PLANS.--BORROWING FROM A BUILDING ASSOCIATION.--A BUILDING-ASSOCIATION REPORT 295-311 CHAPTER XL. PURCHASE OF A LOT.--THE BEST THE CHEAPEST.--A GOOD LOT AS A BASIS OF SECURITY.--THE BASIS OF VALUE IS THE RENTAL 312-316 THE ARCHITECT AND THE HOUSEWIFE. CONVENIENT HOUSES. CHAPTER I. THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE ARCHITECT.--FLOOR-PLANS AS RELATED TO GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.--LABOR-SAVING DEVICES.--ECONOMY AND GOOD CONSTRUCTION.--COMPACT HOUSES NOT NECESSARILY CROWDED.--WOOD-WORK THAT IS READILY CLEANED. There is a definite relation between the work of the housekeeper and that of the architect. This is the text of this book. It is a part of the business of the architect to do what he can to make housekeeping easy. He can do a great deal. He should understand the principles and practice of good housekeeping. This knowledge is something which cannot be derived from the architectural schools or offices; it must come from a home. The public press of the country has had a great deal to say about the artistic qualities of domestic architecture, a great deal to say about house decoration, and, altogether, has furnished much valuable matter. Little, however, has been said as to the relation of architecture to good housekeeping. The artistic element should not be neglected. There must also be considered the question of convenient arrangement, economy and ease, for the housekeeper. Washing dishes is disagreeable work, but the architect can do his part toward making it easier. If we take a conglomerate mass of china, knives, forks, and spoons, pots, pans, and kettles, and bring them together on one small kitchen table, which has a dish-pan on one end and a wooden water-bucket at the back, with a scarcity of everything to facilitate the progress of the work, we have a condition quite different from that wherein there is a roomy sink with a table on each side of it, and plenty of hot and cold water above. An architect may plan a kitchen so that all of these conveniences are possible. He may plan it so they are impossible. The floor-plan of a house has a definite relation to house keeping requirements, which is not fully appreciated. The difference between a good floor-plan and a poor one may make the difference of three or four tons of coal in the heating of a house during the winter. It may influence the keeping of a servant, the wages to be paid, or may control the necessity for one or more than one. It makes more difference to a man who lives in a house that costs two thousand dollars or three thousand dollars, as to whether he burns seven or ten tons of coal in warming it, than it does to the man who lives in a ten-thousand-dollar or twelve-thousand-dollar house as to whether he burns fourteen or twenty tons. The cost of fuel is of more importance to a man of moderate means than to one of wealth. Then in the matter of service: it is difficult to keep a good servant in a bad kitchen, or in a badly planned house where there is a vast amount of sweeping and other work to be done every day. Those who plan factories and mills arrange them with reference to the saving of labor. The idea in saving labor is to save money. One can build a better house for a given sum of money at this time than ever before. The real reason for this is to be found outside the fact that material and labor are cheaper now than they have been in the past. It is because of the thought that is put into the planning and arranging of dwellings. It is the thought that saves the money. It adds external and internal attractiveness, convenience, labor-saving devices, and arrangements. Thought helps to make housekeeping easier. Economical housekeeping can be most readily carried on in a compact house. To say that a house is compact does not necessarily imply that it is crowded, or that any of the conditions of comfort are neglected. If we avoid waste space, such as is frequently assigned to large halls and passages, we merely take away something that is not needed. It frequently happens that a man and his wife go through life with the hope of building a better house "some day." They are economical; they live carefully; they live in a small house; they are crowded. At last, by dint of hard work and careful management, enough money is accumulated to build the new home. This is the great event which has been thought about for so many years. The idea in building this house is invariably to get something as different from the old house as possible. It was square; the new building must be irregular. It had no front hall; the new house must have a large one. There were no grates in any of the rooms; in the new house there must be one in each. In the old building the rooms were very small; in the new house they must be very large. There was no porch before; now there must be one running across the front and along one side of the house. Altogether, the idea of the old house and that of the new are in direct opposition to each other. In one instance they were crowded; in the other they have plenty of room. There can be no doubt about the abundance of room. The building is finished; they move into it. Almost the first person to leave it is the servant whom they had in the old house. She sees the amount of work which she will have to do. It was easy enough to sweep the old house, with its small, compact plan. Housekeeping was relatively a small matter; but with the habits of economy, which rendered the new home possible, they will not employ additional help. The work which is left over by the servant falls to the mistress. Strange as it may appear under such circumstances, it takes the mistress a long time to find the cause of the trouble. It is the house. It was planned with an entire disregard for the work which was to be done. It had not been thought of. The idea was merely to get something which was different from the disagreeable features of the old home. They thought that everything would be easier and pleasanter and more agreeable in every way. The only trouble with the old home was that they were too much crowded. In the new they are not, but have an impossible amount of work to do every day. The difference between what they wish to do and what is done, is represented by fretfulness in addition to the natural weariness at the end of the day. What has this to do with architecture and economical house-building? Simply this. The house which is economically planned is economical as to money, carpets, sweeping, and strength. The architect may do a great deal for housekeepers by keeping this thought in mind. To recur to the idea of economical house-building in a direct sense, it may be borne in mind that economy and good construction go hand in hand; that none of the conditions of permanency are sacrificed for the sake of cheapness. Of two houses which cost the same, one may be far more convenient and roomy by an avoidance of waste space and unnecessary material. Evidently one flue-stack will cost less than four. Therefore, if a house can be constructed which has only one flue-stack, it will cost less than one which has four; but the demands of the housekeeper, and those who live in the house, are that the one stack afford the conveniences of four. People do not like compromises in house-building, especially when they are building a home. The compromises come easier when one is planning property for rental. Evidently a house in which one-fifth of the floor space is given up to halls is more expensive than one which contains a smaller proportion of such space. According as one is able to diminish the amount of passage room, and yet meet all of the conditions of good and economical house-keeping, he can reduce the cost of the house as to its building, its furnishing, and the amount of labor required in caring for it. Thus economy in construction, and convenience and ease in general housekeeping movements, go hand in hand. Parallel illustrations might be carried forward, so as to include each detail of the house. The architect may do a great deal for the housekeeper by making his mouldings and interior wood-work so that they will not catch dust, and can be readily cleaned. Some of our friends, who have studied the artistic qualities of house-building to the exclusion of all other considerations, will say that a regard for housekeeping requirements, in the matter of interior decorations and construction, is placing too great a limit upon their work. They will say that beauty and general artistic qualities are not always consonant with the means which will make easy housekeeping,--that they are limited by such considerations. This need not be so; it is simply a question of ingenuity and thoughtfulness. One may be careless of utility, and make very beautiful things. Another may be thoughtful and careful as to housekeeping requirements, and design something quite as beautiful and attractive as the former. In the above statements will be found the guiding principles which affect all of the work of this book. CHAPTER II. HOUSEKEEPING OPERATIONS.--THE WORK OF THE HOUSEKEEPER.--THE AVERAGE HOUSEWORK OF A WEEK.--THE ARCHITECT'S LESSON THEREFROM. With the architect a house has been too often considered as something to be looked at. No one is disposed to criticise an architect for making houses pretty and attractive. It is true, however, that many houses are nothing more than pretty; they are not convenient. They are not built with a regard to the requirements of housekeeping. A lady once said to the writer, that an architect would never live up to his opportunities until he had associated himself with a housekeeper, who would be strong enough, in her control over him, to see that the housekeeping conditions and conveniences were kept constantly in mind. In order fully to reach the housekeeping idea, it will be convenient to consider in detail what is meant by housekeeping. Primarily, a house is a place in which to eat and sleep. The present requirements of comfort and luxury suggest that all should not eat and sleep in the same room. Originally this was the case. The primitive man needed only a hut or a cave, or the protection of a rude shed. Later on, he was satisfied with a hut with one or two rooms. If the weather was cold, the occupants would huddle around the fire, and eat and sleep without regard to other surroundings. A bath in cold weather was unnecessary. During the summer this was regarded more as a matter of recreation than of necessity. A neighboring stream served the purpose of more modern arrangements. Housekeeping operations under such conditions were light indeed. There are many homes of this kind in America to-day. If we take the case of our Indians, we find that the squaws have time for much else than the absolute duties of camp-life and the care of children. There is much other labor which falls to their lot, house-work being regarded, as it is, insignificant. This is one extreme. There are various gradations which come with the instincts of a higher civilization. Education, and other conditions which go with it, increase housekeeping requirements, and thus far have not furnished to the majority compensating conditions in labor-saving devices. At the present time, the natural and affected requirements of housekeeping make the life of many a woman one of the extremest drudgery and hardship. Her condition is almost that of a slave; and this at a time when she is surrounded by many of the elements of a higher civilization. Her children and those around her frequently live under the shadow of her uncomfortable condition. The Indian's home, in the rest and peace which it affords, is often preferable. This condition is brought about by the increasing requirements upon the housekeeper, without the presence of other compensating conditions. Assuming that an architect may do something to make the care of a house lighter, it remains to call attention to the modern requirements of a housekeeper, with a view of simplifying her work. Let us watch her work for a week; we will begin on Monday morning during the month of January, and assume that there is one servant in the house to help,--bearing in mind, at the same time, that it often happens that the work which is here outlined is done by the housekeeper herself, with possibly only the help of a wash-woman. First, the house is to be warmed, the kitchen fire to be kindled, the living-rooms to be swept and dusted, the washing to be started, the children to be dressed, breakfast to be cooked and put on the table, and, in many cases, all of this done before seven o'clock. The serving of breakfast is no small task to the housekeeper. The coffee is to be poured, food prepared for the children, and many other things done which no man can specify. As soon as breakfast is over the men are out of the house, but not usually before making more than one demand upon the time of the housekeeper. Then the dishes are to be washed, and the children made ready and started to school. Next, the grocery and butcher supplies must be cared for. Possibly they are ordered from the boy who calls at the door. In some instances a trip for this purpose is required. Next, the dining-room must be arranged, the dishes put in place, the chamber-work attended to, beds made, children's things put away, sweeping done, slops disposed of, fires looked after. Some time or in some way the clothes worn by the children on Sunday must be especially looked after, stitches taken, a little darn here and there, and then put away. During this time there may be the demands of one or more babies to be met. In this there is no compromise. With the completion of other work dinner time is approaching, for, with the majority, this is a noon meal. The cooking must be done, and yet nothing else must be allowed to lag. The children in their confusion are home from school. Then dinner. Every one is in a hurry to get away. The children are sure they are going to be late. There is more work for them and the men, and then they are gone. Dinner dishes are washed, and the laundry work continues. The afternoon is little different from the morning; there is a little less rush and confusion, but a continuance of regular work. Before supper the evening supply of fuel must be provided. In the mean time the children are home from school with their demands. Now supper must be in mind. Where there are children in the house, this is one of the most trying times of the day. They are tired, hungry, and sleepy. Supper is over. The children go to bed at intervals during the evening. The men have a place by the fire. The housekeeper often feels it incumbent upon her to mend, darn, or sew, if no heavier work presents itself. Tuesday morning calls for a repetition of the former day's work, with ironing substituted for washing. There is the carrying-out of ashes and the bringing-in of coal, and the same routine during the day. On the part of the housekeeper regular sewing-work is taken up as opportunity presents, and possibly calls are made or received. Wednesday, the same. Thursday, the servant, if one is kept, is out for the afternoon. Other regular work must progress. Compromises are not thought of. Friday is general sweeping-day, in which everything is thoroughly gone over. The housekeeper must find time to go down street one or more times during the week, for the purpose of doing necessary shopping. Saturday brings its scrubbing and cleaning. During the week must come the window-washing, cleaning of silver, baking, and many things besides. Sunday is often the hardest day of all; the children require especial care. There is church in the morning, Sunday school in the afternoon, and, in many cases, church at night. In the mean while the children are on hand all the time. Where is the man who will say that his business life is as exacting or as harassing as the work which is here outlined? In the pages which follow it is the intention to bear the housekeeper and her requirements in mind, and to suggest what is properly due her in the way of labor-saving devices, with a view to facilitate the manifold operations of housekeeping. CHAPTER III. MODERN CONVENIENCES.--A LITTLE HISTORY.--PLANS THAT MAKE EXTRA WORK.--MODERN CONVENIENCES ENUMERATED. Most of the conveniences of housekeeping are modern. It is only within the past few years that the demands of the housekeeper for helps or aids in making her work easier were thought worth considering. Even now we occasionally meet men who think that anything that was good enough for their mothers is good enough for their wives. We have in mind a farmer who, during fifteen years, purchased three large farms. He buried a wife for every farm. Their death was the result of more than slavish work. The disposition which leads in this direction often continues after the time when economy does not demand close living. The man who moves west to a new country cannot pay for many of the modern conveniences. The demand for them is not great. Such a man usually builds a house of two or three rooms. The family cook and eat in the kitchen; they sit there between meals. The other rooms are for beds. There is not a great deal of house-work to be done in a house of this kind. The trouble comes when the pioneer becomes wealthier, and builds a large house "in town" or on the farm. Possibly his wife or daughters do the work as they did in the smaller house. If not, it is done by one servant. The work in this house is a great deal harder. There is a great deal more of it than there was in the two or three room house, which was built during their earlier life. In the former house, if they had coffee, it was poured from the pot in which it was made directly into the cups which were on the table. The meat was taken from the skillet in which it was cooked and put into the plates of those who ate it. If they had pancakes, the wife would sit with her back near the stove, where she could easily reach the griddle to grease it and turn the cakes while she was eating her meal. There was no formal dessert. The pie was eaten from the same plates as the rest of the food. There were no napkins; often, no tablecloth. It did not take long to wash the dishes after a meal of this kind--there were not many of them. In from fifteen to twenty-five minutes after the meal was over, the wife could be seen sitting by the kitchen stove, sewing or knitting. The pans and the kettles were out of the way, and the kitchen was turned into a sitting-room. If the weather was cold, the door into the bedroom was open; the whole house was warm and comfortable. Wood was plenty and cheap. This woman's troubles began when her husband, by dint of hard work and close economy, found himself in a position to gratify his pride in his accumulated wealth by building a new house. It was a big white house with green blinds. The stories were twelve or thirteen feet high; a large hall ran through the centre; the kitchen had nothing in it but doors and windows and a stove-hole; there was no sink, no conveniences of any kind. They now had a separate dining and sitting room, and an awful parlor with brussels carpet on it, which had red and green flowers all over it. The bedrooms were upstairs. They were all large; wood-work painted white. In the winter they were cold. The old habits of economy which made this house possible had so fixed themselves upon the occupants that they would not build a fire in the bedrooms. They said that they "didn't think it healthy to sleep in a warm room." People go to see Mrs. Green in her new house. They go through and look at it, and say, "Oh, how nice." But they find a tired woman. She doesn't sit down to sew or knit in a few minutes after the meal is over, as she used to. She is at work all the time. The children must have clothes to fit the house. There is more sweeping and dusting to do; there are more dishes to wash; there is more of everything to do. Still, she came into the new house expecting to find things different and easier than they were before. The modern conveniences are those arrangements and appliances which make it possible for people to live comfortably in a larger house, without seriously increasing the cares which they had in a smaller one. In the old house of two or three rooms the mother would bathe the children once a week in a tub by the kitchen fire. The tub would be dragged out the door, which was not very high above the ground, and the water emptied into the yard. In the new house it is different. The water is carried from the pump in the back yard, and from the kitchen stove, upstairs into one of the rooms. Then it has to be carried down again, emptied into the alley or the yard. The living habits are all changed without the compensating conveniences which naturally belong to them. It is probable that Mrs. Green keeps a "girl," but even then she has infinitely more work to do than ever belonged to the old home. She cannot understand it. She has a new house and a girl, and yet she is always tired. Most of the houses in the newer cities and towns are, in a measure, similar to this. Nearly every one attempts to live up to the mark set by those who have all of the appliances of modern housekeeping. Coal and water have to be carried all over the house. Slops and ashes have to be carried downstairs and out of the building. By attracting attention to the inconveniences of housekeeping, we may see and understand the full meaning of the term "modern conveniences." There is a natural call for dish-washing arrangements to take the place of the square table, with the dish-pan, the tea-kettle, and the water-bucket. In its place, we have at one side of the kitchen, a sink, with cocks for hot and cold water immediately over it. The tables and drain-board are arranged to simplify the operations of dish-washing. The water, instead of being carried to the yard or alley, finds its way naturally into the drain through the sink. Modern laundry arrangements make it unnecessary to carry great tubs of water outside, or to delay wash-day on account of the weather, or to bring in the frozen clothes during the cold winter days. The bath-room, with the tub, the water-closet, and the wash-stand, is on the second floor. This saves a great deal of work. The water does not have to be carried upstairs nor the slops down. There is hot and cold water within easy reach of all the rooms. Often it happens that there are stationary wash-stands in the various bedrooms, though this is only usual in the most expensive houses. The amount of work which a furnace saves is not readily estimated. It also saves money. Others of the modern conveniences are "places to put things;" large closets in the bedrooms, well supplied with drawers, shelves, and hooks; a general closet on the upper floor, which is accessible from all of the rooms, for bedding and other articles of common use; a ventilated closet in the bath-room, in which soiled linen may be put without contaminating the atmosphere. There should be a closet or place on the second floor for brooms, dust-pans, and dusters. Where there is no particular place for these articles, the housekeeper or the servant has to use time in searching, or in going up and down stairs. Anything which saves labor may be regarded as a modern convenience. CHAPTER IV. MODERN ARCHITECTS AND THE HOUSEKEEPER.--MISPLACED HOUSES.--OLD COLONIAL POVERTY IN MODERN COLONIAL HOUSES.--AFFECTATION IN DESIGN.--NATURAL DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.--AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE AND AMERICAN HOMES. No one ever heard of the matter of house-planning being discussed in a convention of architects. Their reports will show that a great many subjects are handled, but none so near home as this. Sometimes there is an effort to discover that America has a style of architecture peculiar to itself. When such a thing becomes true, the effort to find it will not be necessary. An American architecture will have its growth in American necessities, and not through the blind copying of foreign styles and architecture. Nor to have an American style does it necessarily mean that we should ignore foreign precedent. It means that we should consider foreign architecture intelligently. Everything that is good should be adopted, no matter whence it comes. Those of us who see what is going on in the architectural world frequently notice English houses designed and built for those who live in the cold Northwest. In many of them the broad, English casement windows and general style of architecture, which is suited to the gloomy light and the mild temperature of Great Britain, is placed in the bright, cold climate of the Northwest. Nothing could be more out of place; it is an affectation, an exhibition of bad taste and poor sense. The cold Northwest, with its bright, clear atmosphere, presents its own architectural conditions. The work of blind copyists, those who have so strong a regard for precedent, is ridiculous. In one of the Eastern magazines there was an illustration showing what purported to be an old colonial cottage, situated possibly at Newport. The architect had copied the old colonial details, the old colonial forms, which were very nice, but he had also copied an idea which had its outgrowth in extreme poverty. He had placed a rain barrel at the side of the house, and had set it up on a rustic-looking bench or support, all of which was very ridiculous. This had been done in an old colonial house, and had its origin in old colonial poverty. Now, this architect, in his respect for that which was past, copied the faults, the inconveniences, and arrangements which belonged to those earlier times. A course of this kind, carried out to its fullest extent, would lead us to barbarism. In the same magazine was another house which was designed with great respect for precedent. In it was a front door which was divided about half-way up, so that the lower part might be shut and the upper part opened. Houses have been seen where something of this kind was reasonable, where it had its advantages. There are many places in this country where a door of this kind is almost a necessity; but it isn't on the seashore. If one has a house in the country, or in a small country town, where the horses and pigs, geese, chickens, and other animals, are allowed to roam about in the front yards, a door of this kind has its uses. In the summer time the upper part can be thrown back and the lower part closed, so that the most a horse can do in the way of getting into the house is to stick his head over the top rail and look in. In the country mills doors of this kind have a very proper and apt name; they are called pig-doors. They keep the pigs off the mill floor, and, at the same time, allow the light and air to come from above. But there is no necessity for a pig-door at Newport or Long Branch, or other seaside resort. Their use is a silly affectation. There is no beauty in them. There is no convenience which would lead to their use. It is performances such as the above which retard the natural development of American architecture. American architecture will be simply carrying out, in an architectural way, the requirements of the American people in their buildings. From their homes the march of progress will be through the kitchens, pantries, and dining-rooms. It will unite with the parlor and sitting-room ideas, which have been more clearly worked out. The exterior will be formed in a natural way by the requirements of the interior, and by the variations of climate, and it will be decorated in a rational, artistic manner. We will not hamper the interior by the adoption of doors and windows which possibly belonged in a cathedral of the twelfth or thirteenth century, or the richer details of the later time, which had their special uses and forms as the development of the necessity and requirements of that particular period. The doors and windows of the nineteenth century should have their own special forms and positions. They should be decorated with a true regard for precedent so long as precedent does not influence the arrangements suited to modern times. The American style of architecture will not be developed through grand public buildings and enormous cathedrals, or expensive dwellings. In this country every one is imbued with the idea of having a home of his own, and he desires to have it nice, convenient, and attractive. The average home is in a small, inexpensive house. The proper construction of these buildings, their arrangement with reference to their housekeeping requirements, their tasteful external designs considered in a rational way, will develop American architecture. It will be the expression of American wants in a natural, artistic spirit. A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOUSE. CHAPTER V. JOURNEY THROUGH THE HOUSE.--PORCH.--VESTIBULE.--HALL.--LONG HALLS AND SQUARE HALLS.--THE HALL THAT IS A ROOM.--RECEPTION HALL.--PARLOR.--SITTING-ROOM.--DINING-ROOM. In this section of the book we will make a journey through the house, stopping at various points of interest long enough to give general consideration to the details. From the principles herein derived, the plans subsequently given are constructed. Every house should have a front porch. It should be wide,--if possible, eight feet, that one may sit at a distance from the railing and afford a space for others to pass behind. The porch is a protection to the front part of the house from the sun, wind, and, partially, from the cold. Nothing can be pleasanter than to sit on a shady porch during the warm part of the day or in the evening. It is an auxiliary to the vestibule. The front door should be wide--three or three and a half feet. Double doors look very nice from the outside, but they are not as convenient or as easily handled as the single door. The door-bell should be at the right-hand side. The threshold should be elevated from three to six and a half inches above the porch floor. VESTIBULE. In the plans that are given, various arrangements of vestibules are shown. In a few instances, direct entrances into the hall and reception-room are indicated, but such an entrance is not as desirable as where there is a vestibule. The arrangement of a vestibule for hat-rack, umbrella-stand, and other conveniences, changes the hall into an available room. Take, for instance, plan No. 16, page 153. At the right, as one enters, is a little closet; in it are hooks. At one side is an umbrella-stand; on the floor is a place for overshoes. Here one may arrange himself before going into the hall or reception-room. This is altogether better than having to pass across to one side of the hall or room, in order to find a place to deposit overshoes, wraps, umbrellas, etc. It saves work. If this vestibule have a hard-wood floor, and on it is placed a rug, one may stand there and divest himself of that which he would not carry into the house, and go into the room in good order, leaving the muddy overshoes, and the possible dampness of his umbrella and overcoat, behind him. This arrangement saves work; mud is not carried into the room. It is a very simple matter to care for the vestibule; the rug on the floor may be taken to the outside, and the deposit of mud and dust readily removed. It is well to have a small mirror at the side, or in the rack. The plan mentioned is merely suggestive, and does not apply to all houses. By looking through the plans given, various arrangements may be seen. In some of them there is no vestibule. Not all housekeepers want the same arrangement. Again, others do not care to pay for a vestibule. In other instances, the hall is too small to admit of one. As said before, a good vestibule changes the hall into a room. It makes a reception-hall tolerable, because it is not necessary to deposit there many things which should have another location. A vestibule does not properly serve its purpose where there is no room or arrangement for depositing wraps, etc. The closet part of the vestibule, shown in the cut, can, perhaps, be omitted, and hooks arranged around the wall sides. A curtain could be hung across the space occupied by the closet door: however, all these details are matters of taste and disposition. In the opening between the hall and vestibule may be placed tapestry curtains; these are sufficient storm protectors from the outside door, especially if the hall register is placed near it. No one who has not tried it, can realize the amount of protection from the weather that is afforded by a heavy curtain. It is not necessary or desirable that a door be placed in the opening from the vestibule to the hall. HALL. This part of the house may be hall, reception-hall, or room. It is a hall or passage frequently, and not provided with a vestibule. It may be a hall from its shape; it may be a room for the same reason. It may be of no use as a room, if the stairway is improperly placed. The house arranged with a long, narrow hall, having the stairway at the side, is essentially wasteful of room. Such hall space is usually dark and gloomy as well as crowded. A hall eight feet wide and twenty feet long, contains one hundred and sixty square feet of floor-surface, though only a limited portion of it is available, on account of the shape of the space which remains after the stairway is placed. A hall twelve by thirteen feet contains one hundred and fifty-six square feet, but a great deal more available room. The space not occupied by the stairway is in better shape. A hall of this shape partakes of the nature of a room, and may be used as such. In the plan referred to a window-seat is shown. This window-seat may be used as a seat in warm weather, and, if the front is in the proper direction, as a conservatory in the winter. There are many such arrangements as this shown in the book. The hall, in most of the plans, is a key to the whole arrangement. It has been a common, objectionable practice during the past few years to build houses of moderate cost, so that the hall is along one side with its entrance to the front, and the parlor next to it; back of the parlor is the sitting-room, and the hall opens into the dining-room; back of the dining-room is the kitchen, and so on to the extreme rear with summer-kitchen, pantry, etc. This makes a long house with only one room in front on the first floor, and one chamber and alcove facing the street on the second. Thus the hall serves only as a passage-way. The living-room has no front view. To obviate this, the halls in the plans, that are considered with most favor, are arranged to be used as rooms, and the vestibules are built so that such a thing is possible. If the hall is to be used as a vestibule, the hat-rack and other arrangements for hanging wraps, and the umbrella-stand, etc., are placed as near the front as possible. Where this is not done there must necessarily be a track from the front to the back, as a mark of travel. The stairway may start at one side, and should lead towards the centre of the house. The nearer it can be started to the rear of the hall, the better; this gives more room in front. Sometimes the stairway is started immediately in the rear of the reception-hall, or from an alcove space at one side; these are good arrangements, depending, of course, upon other conditions. Upon one side, or in the rear, should be placed a grate. Nothing can be pleasanter when coming in from a disagreeable outside than an open-grate fire; this needs no argument. Under the stairway, or in some convenient nook, it is well to have a lavatory. The hall should be arranged as a centre from which to pass to the parlor, living-room, and dining-room. It is important to consider in this connection that the hall, and the stairway in it, should be placed so that the stair-landing above is in the centre of the house. Thus we have in the centre of the building only a small hall as a starting-point; hence less waste room. When the stairway lands near the front wall on the second floor, a passage must be provided to the rear of the house. Where the landing is in the centre, we have only to pass into rooms without extra steps through long halls. For example, see plan No. 1, page 110. Not every one cares to use the front hall as a reception-room. There is certainly no objection to naming and using it otherwise. RECEPTION-HALL, PARLOR, AND SITTING-ROOM. During recent years there is more of a disposition to live all over the house; one reason for this is the improved heating arrangements. The terms sitting-room, parlor, reception-room, mean less in a distinctive sense, and are used largely for the purpose of classification. We will consider the parlor and the sitting-room in the same connection. The parlor has lost the awful stiffness of times past. It is now a reception-room. In a house where there is a reception-hall in front, and the sitting-room to one side, both having a distinct front view, as is shown in many of the plans, a lady may occupy the front room and have her children and work around her, if desirable. A caller may be received in the reception-room; these, however, are matters of individual preference. The vestibule may be planned so that it will have an entrance to both reception-room and sitting-room. In some instances the arrangement of sitting-room and reception-hall are reversed. The hall is the sitting-room, and the other room the parlor. If doors are used between hall and sitting-room, they should be sliding; the effect is better, and the separation of the rooms as complete as necessary. Such doors should always be hung from the top. The sitting-room should certainly be as good a room as any in the house; as well located. There should be a closet on the first floor, and, if possible, it should communicate with this room; if not that, with the dining-room or reception-hall next to it. Certainly the sitting-room should always be provided with a grate. A window-seat in the hall, parlor, reception, or other room, is really a great addition in more ways than one. It is not only attractive, but it adds to the availability of a room. Where there is space for three or four people to sit, in case of necessity, it is like seating that number of people outside of the room. They are comfortable, and the room has that much added to its seating capacity. A bay window arranged in this way is pleasant indeed. Wall space is of great importance in these rooms. In planning a house, the piano, pictures, lounges, book-shelves, book-cases, bric-à-brac, etc., should be in mind. In a house of moderate size, it is, ordinarily, not necessary that the reception-hall, parlor, or sitting-room should be wider than thirteen and a half feet, and from fifteen to eighteen feet in length. However, this is not wide enough for those who entertain largely. A room thirteen and a half feet, with much furniture in it, is not wide enough for dancing. A house arranged with a reception-hall, parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, etc., is used when it is desired to entertain a great deal; but for those who are living economically, whose means are limited, one of these rooms may be omitted. In many of the modern houses the number of rooms on the first floor has been decreased and their size increased. Oftentimes there is a reception-hall, a small library, and a dining-room only, as belonging to the living part of the house on the first floor. An arrangement of this kind belongs more particularly to a house which is occupied during only a part of the year; say as summer cottages in the North, and winter houses in the South. Modern ways of living make a larger number of rooms less desirable. When it is possible, it is pleasant to have a little room off from the library as a study, or for a doctor as a reception-room or office. Where one does work at home, it is advantageous to have a private room that insures isolation, be it never so small. Often the library, so called in an ordinary sense, is not a library at all. There may be a few books in it, but it is used as a sitting-room or passage, and has no distinct necessity or use. Additional rooms require more work than the same amount of floor space in a less number of rooms. The addition of rooms multiplies corners, windows, doors, etc., and adds more cost and labor, than does mere additional space. The availability of a room is not always dependent upon its size. A good deal depends upon the arrangement of wall space. A room may be large and still have no room for the furniture that is to go into it. It may be small and still have room enough. DINING-ROOM. A good width for a dining-room is thirteen feet. Where one can afford it, it should be from fifteen to twenty feet in length; larger than this is a luxury. Its location, for the most part, is back of the sitting-room or hall. A grate in the dining-room is not altogether desirable; it is always at somebody's back. Again, a grate does not heat a room uniformly. It is very common to provide sliding-doors to connect the dining-room with other parts of the house, even with the parlor; but they are not the best kind to use. Sound and the odors of the food are more readily communicated through sliding-doors than others. For that reason they should not be used. A large, single door, three and a half feet wide, is preferable, though it does not always give the desired opening. Generally speaking, it is easier to provide wall space when planning a dining-room than in any of the other rooms in the house. A large number of windows is not necessary, and one of them can be placed high, and thus afford space for a sideboard. This sideboard should be placed at the end of the room nearest the entrance to the kitchen and china-closet, where such is used. The sideboard has various uses, according to the plans of the housekeeper. In some cases it is merely a place to display dainty china and other table furniture. Below are places for linen and table cutlery. In other cases, the sideboard is used as a buffet; as a place from which to serve the food. Sometimes this is carried to the extremest degree, and includes the carving, and the serving of that which goes with the meats. It was very common in times past to use a slide connecting kitchen and dining-room. A passage is much better. The slide is worse than a door in communicating sounds and odors. In some of the plans in this book, doors are shown opening directly into the kitchen. This is done under protest; the owner of the house would have it so. The sideboard may be built as a part of the house. This is well enough when the question of cost is not important. From the dining-room we will pass to the kitchen. CHAPTER VI. KITCHENS.--THE KITCHEN A WORKSHOP.--WORK TO BE DONE IN A KITCHEN.--A PLAN.--FITTINGS.--DISH-WASHING CONVENIENCES.--SINK AND TABLES.--CHINA-CLOSET.--PANTRY.--COMBINATION PANTRY.--PANTRY FITTINGS.--WORK IN A PANTRY.--A DOUGH-BOARD.--FLOUR-BIN.--PANTRY STORES.--CUPBOARD.--REFRIGERATOR ARRANGEMENTS.--PANTRY UTENSILS.--A DRY-BOX.--SOAP-BOX.--VENTILATION OF KITCHEN.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF KITCHEN PLANNING. The kitchen existed in its state of greatest cleanliness and order a good many years ago in New England, where it was largely used as a sitting and dining room. As people became more prosperous, they moved out of the kitchen; they had a separate sitting-room. It was then that the kitchen began to decline. After this it was often literally as well as figuratively separated from the living part of the house. The public has not suffered through lack of information on cookery and general housekeeping topics. Little has been said, however, about the house itself, with regard to its arrangements for facilitating the manifold operations of housekeeping. The subject is a broad one, and may be treated with some respect to detail. As the heart of the house, the kitchen may be given serious consideration. In the modern house the kitchen is merely the place where the food is prepared for the table. The controlling idea and its arrangements should be to afford facilities for doing the work with as little labor as possible. The kitchen is the workshop of the house. It should be arranged and planned according to the same general principles as any other workshop. A manufacturer arranges his foundry, his mill, or his printing-house, with reference to the saving of labor, for the purpose of saving money. When we save labor in a kitchen, we save the energy of the housekeeper, and, possibly, money. An article on this subject was probably never written that did not pretend to describe the "model kitchen." It is safe to say that no such kitchen was regarded as "model" by all readers. A model kitchen is something which is out of reason. No two housekeepers have the same requirements. Housekeeping practice varies greatly. Again, the kitchen that can be built to one floor-plan cannot be built to another. In describing a kitchen, it is in mind to set forth certain general principles for the benefit of those interested. There is little difference between the requirements of a kitchen for a house of moderate cost and an expensive house. Work of the same general character is done in every kitchen. The conveniences are more a matter of thought than of money. Elaborate details add much to the cost, but little to the convenience. There is little or no difference between the cost of a well-planned kitchen and one which is poorly planned. To state the case broadly, a kitchen should be arranged solely with reference to the work which is to be done in it: the cooking, dish-washing, the care of the kitchen itself, and possibly the laundry work. This latter work should be removed from the kitchen--in any event, the washing should be done elsewhere--when it is at all possible. The steam and odor from the washing, which not only fill the kitchen but permeate the house, are enough to render whatever food there is in the kitchen unfit for use. It is altogether possible to arrange in the cellar of any house that is being built, and in many that are already built, at a trifling cost, a laundry in which the washing and ironing may be comfortably done. Of course this does not contemplate set tubs; but set tubs are not found in houses where the washing and ironing are done in the kitchen, and it is possible to do this work both well and easily without their use. There is little or no objection to doing the ironing in a well-ventilated kitchen. It is clean work, and while doing it the servant may attend to any cooking which is necessary, and see that the other work of the house moves forward. [Illustration: Fig. 2.] The kitchen the plan of which is here given (Fig. 2) has been in use for three years under the varying conditions of one or two servants, and at times none at all. These are the conditions under which most housekeepers operate. There have been no emergencies in which the kitchen and pantries have not proven themselves ample, and none in which the housekeeper thought that they were too large and complicated. It is as necessary in houses where the means for maintenance is simply moderate, that a kitchen should not be too large as that it should afford ample facilities for accomplishing any work which may be done. The kitchen itself is thirteen and one-half by fourteen and one-half feet. In it are placed the range, tables, sink, drain-board, etc., and the kitchen safe. The room has been found large enough for the work which is to be done there, and not so large that the tables, range, and safe are so far apart that time and strength are wasted moving from one to another. The kitchen has one large window in it, which is three feet from the floor. This permits the placing of a table, ironing-board, or chair under it, and thus gives additional wall space. There are two windows in the pantry, and a draught is secured through them, the kitchen window, and the transom over the door. The door is glazed. The most disagreeable work of a kitchen, and that which takes much time, is the dish-washing. It is possible to make this work lighter and pleasanter than is usual. The necessary conditions are plenty of water, hot and cold, a place where the dishes will drain themselves, an abundance of table room for them both before and after washing. In the kitchen given the sink is placed next the kitchen flue. This gives a place for the pipe duct next the warm bricks, which prevent freezing even in severe cold weather. During the three years in which this kitchen has been in use they have never frozen, even when the temperature was twenty degrees below zero. The exact construction of this kitchen pipe-duct and other kitchen wood-work is given elsewhere. The range, which is usually next the flue, is, in this instance, placed at some distance from it. There is no reason why this should not be done, as it has been in many instances, with no disagreeable results. The sink is not enclosed, but stands upon legs. Enclosed sinks are places which cannot be kept clean even with the utmost vigilance. The brushes, scrub-rags, and buckets, which are usually kept there, are in this kitchen provided a place elsewhere. [Illustration: Fig. 3.] At the left of the sink is a table; at the right, a drain-board, which is inclined toward the sink, and provided with grooves. At the right of this is a swing-table on the same level. The soiled dishes are placed on the table at the left, washed in the sink, which is provided with cocks for hot and cold water, drained on the drain-board, and, when wiped, placed on the table at the right. A glance at the plan will show that they are then beside the door which leads to the china-closet, and may be quickly placed where they belong. It may be well to say a few words about the china-closet. The shelves are placed in a passage which leads from the kitchen to the dining-room, and are separated from the passage by doors. This passage is lighted by a window, and has two doors leading into it--one from the dining-room, and one from the kitchen (Fig. 2). These doors are swung on double swinging hinges, so that they may be opened by merely pushing against them, and will then swing back noiselessly into a closed position. One may pass through doors of this kind with a tray full of dishes without touching them with the hand. This arrangement dispenses with the necessity for a slide, and also does away with the noises and odors from the kitchen, which so readily find their way to the rest of the house where a slide is used. However, if a slide is really desired, it can be placed over either the table at the left of the sink or over the swing-table at the right, and be convenient from both kitchen and dining-room. The china-pantry could be readily enlarged into a butler's pantry, by extending it across the end of the dining-room, and placing the end window of this room on one side, thus bringing two windows on the same wall. There is a movable shelf under one of the permanent shelves in this china-closet, which can be drawn out in order to place a tray of dishes on it while they are being put away, and which can be pushed out of the way when not in use. This shelf is also of service as a place upon which to arrange the different dishes needed for the several courses of a meal, and in this way facilitates the table service. In Fig. 4, the combination idea is carried out in pantry and china-closet. The pantry-cupboard projects into the room in a way to form a partition between the pantry and china-closet, and, at the same time, admits of a passage between the kitchen and dining-room with a separation of two doors. Fig. 5 indicates an approved form of construction of china-closet and pantry, such as may be used in most of the pantries and china-rooms which are in this book. [Illustration: Fig. 4.] The work which takes the most time is the preparation of food, and every well-planned kitchen has its arrangements for lightening this burden. The first consideration is the location of the utensils, and the table and sink where the meats and vegetables are prepared. All should be near enough to the range so that there are no unnecessary steps to be taken. The number that are taken where the sink is in one corner of the kitchen, the table in another, and the range removed from both, is innumerable. In this kitchen the table proper and the sink are together, and they are but a step from the range. There is a small swing-table attached to the wall at one side of the range. This provides a place for utensils, such as spoons, and forks, and dishes, such as those holding pancake batter, which are in constant use during cooking, and which cannot be held in the hand while the cooking is in progress. This alone saves many steps. The drain-board is a good place for draining vegetables, and to place utensils which are used in the preparation of food. Above the sink are hooks, etc., upon which to keep small utensils. In localities where there is much dust coming in from the outside these utensils must be kept elsewhere, behind closed doors. [Illustration: Fig. 5.] For the preparation of bread, cake, pastries, etc., the pantry is provided. In it are places for everything which can be used for such preparation. One can go out of the heat and noise of the kitchen into a little room which holds everything that can possibly be needed, and there prepare those articles of food which take the most time and careful attention. In Fig. 2 are two windows; under one is the dough-board. This is a table fastened to the wall at a convenient height for moulding and general work of this character. On one end is a piece of marble, twelve inches wide by sixteen long, which is used for moulding purposes. The advantages of such a piece of marble are numerous. It is as easily cleaned as a dish and requires no scouring, and, as dough does not readily stick to it, moulding can be done without the trouble which comes from the use of a board. This piece of marble is not fastened to the dough-board, as is sometimes done. Where it is set into the board there will always be creases in which dough will lodge, and it can only be cleaned with the greatest trouble. Where it is free, it can be raised from the board occasionally, and everything thoroughly cleaned. At the right of the board is the flour-bin, which contains places for various kinds of flour and meal. Next to it is the refrigerator. Over the refrigerator is a window which opens on the porch, and through which the ice may be placed without the iceman going through the kitchen with his wet feet and dripping load. At the left of the dough-board are shelves for keeping stores. The lower shelves are enclosed by doors and provided with a lock, so that extra stores may be placed there for safe keeping, where this is found desirable. The upper shelves are exposed. On them are kept sugar, tea, coffee, baking-powder, and kindred stores, which are in every-day use, and can be reached easier if there are no doors to be opened and closed. They should be kept in air-tight cans, which prevent their exposure to dust, insects, and air. Back of the door opening into the kitchen are hooks for the utensils which more properly belong in the pantry than the kitchen. Many housekeepers prefer to keep the refrigerator in the cellar, on account of the waste in the ice. This waste, to the mind of the writer, is a small matter. The time spent by either housekeeper or servant in going into the cellar could much better be occupied in doing something else which would save more than does keeping the refrigerator below. Then, again, when it is kept in the pantry it can readily be provided with a zinc drain to the outside, which saves some little labor. In the cellar such a drain would only be possible where sand could be reached. A refrigerator should never, under any circumstances, be drained into the sewer, as is sometimes done. The utensils which properly belong to the kitchen are kept in an old-fashioned kitchen safe, rather than in a closet opening out from the kitchen. A safe is more readily cleaned than a closet, and the perforated metal doors render the upper part of it an excellent place for storing cold food, which it is not desirable to keep in the refrigerator. Then if, as may happen in any kitchen which is left to the care of servants, vermin should take possession, the safe can be moved from the room, and trouble from this source avoided. The entrance to the cellar is near the table, as marked. At the head of the cellar are placed brooms, mops, and dust-pans, and above these, well away from the head when going below, is a shelf upon which two buckets can be placed. Back of the range is a small wooden box, thirty inches long by twenty-two inches wide and twelve inches deep, which is provided with a door and shelves. These shelves, as well as the top and bottom, have holes bored through them in order to allow the passage of hot air. In this box scrubbing-rags and brushes dry at once, and never have a bad odor. The box is of the same wood as the other kitchen finish, and looks as if it were a part of it. A soap-box, with construction similar to the above, may be provided. It should have a tin-pipe connection with flue or other ventilating apparatus. It will dry the soap and render its use less wasteful. The ventilation of the kitchen is an important matter. The ideal kitchen has no rooms over it, and has ventilators in the ceiling. But this is not possible in most houses, and a substitute must be provided. An inverted sheet-iron hopper placed over the range, with an opening into either the flue or the outside of the house, will carry out the odors from cooking. An opening into the pipe-duct which holds the plumbing pipes will keep them from freezing in cold weather at the same time that it helps ventilate. An important consideration in a kitchen is to build it so that it will not readily accumulate dirt, and can be easily cleaned. A large amount of time is spent in every well-kept house in cleaning the kitchen. The floor should be of oak, maple, or other hard wood, oiled, waxed, or finished with regular floor-finishing. The casings and doors are, of course, kept in better condition, with less labor, when of hard wood. Where this is not attainable, poplar, or other similar wood, finished with a varnish which will stand warm water, will prove a very good substitute. The tables should be either of oak, which requires little scrubbing, or poplar, which is so easily scrubbed that it is always white enough to delight the heart of the most particular housekeeper. A kitchen finished in this way is much less care than when the floor is of soft wood, and the finish a soft wood painted. All kitchens in this book are planned according to the principles here set forth. They do not pretend to be exactly like this one, but the same general principle runs through all. There are very good reasons why wainscoting should not be used in a kitchen, and no compensating advantages. The bead-joints and extra wood-work thereof make labor in the impossible task of keeping it clean. The less wood-work there is in a kitchen, the better. There are various kind of water-proof proprietary plaster finishes which may be used in finishing the walls and ceiling of a kitchen. Where they are not used, a white skim coat should be put on and painted after about a year's use. CHAPTER VII. CELLAR.--FUEL DEPARTMENTS.--FURNACE CONVENIENCES.--COAL-BINS.--CEMENT FLOORS.--LIGHT IN THE CELLAR.--A CELLAR-CLOSET.--OUTSIDE CELLAR-DOOR. The cellar was originally a hole in the ground. In the modern house, that is arranged to please the house-keeper, it is well lighted; provided with a smooth cement floor that is easily cleaned; is not open as one room, but has apartments--one for a laundry, another for fuel and furnace, and still others for fruits and general stores. In the matter of fuel there is no reason why the entire winter supply should not be in the basement. It is certainly a great deal worse to go outside of the house in winter time from a hot, steaming kitchen, than it is to go into the basement for the fuel. However, there is some objection to storing wood in the cellar, for the reason that it brings bugs, ants, and vermin into the house. Coal-bins should be constructed with hopper bottoms,--with bottom and sides slanting from level of outside grade-line to cellar floor,--where the location will admit of it. When there is not a cellar under all of the house, it is generally possible to arrange the coal-bin under the part without cellar, and slanting down to the part so used. This is illustrated in plan No. 11, Chapter XX. There the coal is put through the windows into the bins, and slides down to the opening in cellar. For each shovelful of coal taken away from the lower opening, another will take its place. This is particularly true with crushed coke, or anthracite coal, or nut and egg sizes of other fuel. The lump sizes require a larger opening than the usual twenty-inch-square opening for the coal mentioned. These bins should be lined on the bottom preferably with bricks laid in cement. If this is not used, two-inch oak boards will do. Partitions of the same material should be used to separate the various bins. With an arrangement of this kind a large amount of storage capacity can be provided. Under some circumstances this plan cannot be adopted. In such a case the ordinary bins may be used. As houses are now planned, the first tier of joists are placed from twenty to twenty-four inches above the grade-line. Where it is not possible to secure that height for cellar-windows, areas may be built of brick or stone, and additional light provided. Light is the enemy of disorder and uncleanliness; where there is exposure there will be less disorder. It is not necessary to have the cellar under the whole house, for reasons as mentioned, and on account of the cost. It is sometimes important that savings of all kinds be made. The furnace may be set in a pit with its face directed to the cellar. It is best that the opening from the hoppered coal-bins, above described, be close to the furnace. If it can be opened at the side, so that one can stand in the pit and throw coal in the fire-box, it is better than any other arrangement. The ordinary cellar is seven feet in the clear, and, for this reason, it is nearly always necessary to pit the furnace. This is done by digging an extra depth, and lining the area and opening with brick. Near enough to the furnace to be warm, should be a closet for canned fruit, made of flooring-boards, if not of more substantial material, and provided with a door and lock. It should be shelved with board about seven inches apart. Other winter stores, like potatoes, cabbage, etc., should be kept in a dark cellar with an earth floor. It is the opinion of farmers and others that vegetables keep best when lying next the ground. The cellar-involving arrangements here outlined may be seen in plan No. 11. The outside door, which leads into the cellar, should bolt on the inside, and the upper cellar door on the outside. There should be doors provided to separate the different rooms. Where cost is an item, they may be made of two thicknesses of flooring. Cellar-windows should be hung on hinges, and provided with bolt fastenings; catches are not secure. CHAPTER VIII. A LOW-COST LAUNDRY.--BLUE MONDAY.--BASEMENT LAUNDRY.--LOW-COST CONVENIENCES.--INEXPENSIVE LAUNDRY FITTINGS.--HOT AND COLD WATER ARRANGEMENTS.--A LABOR-SAVING LAUNDRY.--A PLACE TO DO FRUIT-CANNING. The term "Blue Monday" probably originated on account of its being general wash-day, and a day in which everybody about the house undertook to do an impossible amount of work with limited resources. Most of the washings in this country are done in the kitchen. The wash-boiler is on the stove, and the servant or mistress of the house, or both, attempt to wash and do their cooking without seriously disturbing the routine of meals. There is a fussiness about everything pertaining to that day, which creates an atmosphere of blueness which is proverbial. The steamy, crowded kitchen, the almost inevitable wetness or slipperiness, the great physical exertion required, the carrying of water, the lifting of tubs, are all uncomfortable, and the work is done at a great disadvantage. In an expensive house, where there is plenty of money, Monday is not so blue. Immunity is purchased. Possibly the clothes are sent from the house to be washed in somebody else's kitchen; maybe to be worn by some one else before they are returned, and often to be injured or destroyed by the strong washing-mixtures and soaps, which are made to save rubbing. This kind of immunity is expensive. It is too expensive for the large majority of people. It is annoying to all alike. Laundry work will sometime be done at a cost which will admit of people of moderate means having this work done at a public laundry. At present, the general laundry work of an ordinary household cannot be done in this way, on account of the expense. The general public laundry, where arrangements are made to do the entire family washing at a low cost, is a complete solution of the Blue-Monday problem; but until the laundry is an accomplished fact, such work will be done at home, and a family laundry must be considered in house-building. It would be a very easy matter to arrange a laundry which would meet all the desired conditions, if we were to operate independent of cost, but the large majority of people are not independent in this way. If it were not a matter of cost, we would have an independent room for the laundry work, with porcelain tubs, and hot and cold water running into all of them; we could have a steam-drier, and many other things, which it is useless to mention here. It is the laundry of the moderate-cost house which interests the largest number of people. We must have a place to do laundry work which is a compromise between the foggy kitchen and the laundry with porcelain tubs. As houses are now built, the first floor is usually from two and a half to three feet above the grade. This affords abundant opportunity of getting a well-lighted basement. If the basement is dark, put more windows in it, and whitewash the walls and ceilings. Cement the floor. Put in a slop sink, and give it a trapped connection with the vault or sewer. Provide a pump over this sink to connect with the cistern. If the city water is soft, this will be used and no pump will be required. Then a laundry stove is to be provided. Thus we have everything ready for use without much labor, and certainly at a very low cost. The basement should be light under any circumstances. The floor should be cemented, the joists should be whitewashed, so that the only additions necessary to make the laundry work easy are a laundry stove, a place to throw waste water, and a supply of hot and cold water. If one does not care to heat the water in the ordinary boiler, there is a very simple device for heating water which may be placed in any laundry. An open tank, which will hold two or three barrels of water, can be placed over the stove and next to the joist. From it a connection can be made with the laundry stove by means of lead and iron pipe. This pipe should start from the bottom of the tank and connect with an iron pipe which enters the stove, and passes around the inside of the fire-pot, then to the outside and connects with another lead pipe, which empties into the tank again on a level above the first opening. Thus the cold water would come from the bottom of the tank, through the stove where it would be heated, thence upward and into the tank. This would give a hot-water circulating connection, and in this way provide hot water for use in the laundry. This arrangement would require a low-cost force-pump to force the water to the tank. There are many kinds of these pumps, which are substantial and can be secured at a low cost. The pipe from the stove could be supplied with a compression cock from which the water could be drawn into the tubs. The better way would be to have an independent tank connection. Lead pipe was mentioned as being the pipe to use in making the connection with the iron pipe in the laundry stove. Galvanized iron pipe would answer every purpose and cost a little less. Where set tubs are not used, the water could be readily distributed by means of a hose pipe. If the above arrangement is too expensive, the stove only can be used for heating water. Set tubs might be used instead of the ordinary wooden ones which were contemplated, and would save a good deal of labor, but the cost is something which all cannot afford. The arrangement described here can be reached by nearly every one of moderate means. It provides a place to throw slop water, and brings hot and cold water close at hand. It isolates the washing from the cooking, and the smell of washing from the whole house. It is very different from the conditions in most houses, where the water has to be carried from the backyard into the house, lifted to the stove, poured into the tubs, and afterward carried out, a bucket at a time, and emptied over the back fence, if the tub is not dragged out and emptied into the yard. It is well in building a new house to have an outside cellar-way to facilitate the use of the laundry below. In such a case the clothes can be carried into the yard without being taken through the kitchen. There will be times when the weather will not permit taking the clothes outdoors. In very cold weather it should never be done. It is murderous for a woman to have to carry clothes from a hot, steamy laundry or kitchen at eighty degrees to the cold, dry air of the outside. There is no woman so strong that she can stand this. All the clothes can be readily dried in the basement. Here is presented another argument in favor of the laundry below. The washing can always be done at the appointed time in spite of the weather. When one goes into a large attic he is apt to say, "What a splendid place to dry clothes." People who dry clothes in the attic usually do the washing in the kitchen. A basement laundry is a cool place in summer and a warm one in winter. There is no better place for ironing in warm weather, for even with a fire the basement is always cool. Nor can there be a better place for canning fruit. The conveniences of plenty of water, a fire, and yet a cool place for doing this extremely laborious work, will be readily appreciated. CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND FLOOR.--STAIRWAYS.--THE COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--IDEAL NUMBER OF BEDROOMS.--LARGE CLOSETS AND PLENTY OF THEM.--A LINEN-CLOSET.--PLACING OF GAS-FIXTURES.--SERVANT'S ROOM.--BATH-ROOM.--AN ATTIC.--ATTIC CLOSETS.--ATTIC ROOMS. In many houses a combination stairway is used. By this is meant one in which the front and rear stairways run together in a common landing. In this case, there should be doors separating the rear from the front stairway, one at the beginning, and one at the end of the rear part. The combination stairway is a compromise. Oftentimes, however, one can secure other things which are desirable by its use. There are other compromises more objectionable than the combination stairway. A stairway of this kind is not used as the most desirable thing, but as the least objectionable of other compromises; for instance, if one can secure, for a given cost, an additional room or two by using a combination stairway, the room is frequently preferable. No one can doubt but that a front stairway, entirely separated from the one in the rear, is the best thing to have; however, it is easy to understand that a combination stairway may be used for reasons above stated. In some of the plans a stairway is shown, starting from a stair-hall in the rear of reception-hall or room. Under such circumstances, a combination is not necessary. One can come from the kitchen and go upstairs without being observed from the other parts of the house. Again, combinations are sometimes used so that they apply to the servant's room as a continuous stairway, and as a combination to the other parts of the house. This is true of several plans given. It is almost superfluous to say that a stairway should be easy, still it is known that not all are so. The one in the front part of the building should always be made without winders; that in the rear, the same way if possible. Landings are preferable, and make a staircase beautiful. Stairways may be considered from a hygienic standpoint. This, however, is not necessary in this connection. Where there is only one stairway, it is not uncommon to have it start from the dining-room, and, if one stops to think about it, this is not a bad arrangement. The dining-room is centrally located, and the stairway may be used by the servants when this room is not otherwise in use. Certainly it is less objectionable than placing it in a hall through which all have to pass, or where it is necessary to pass through other rooms to reach the second floor from the rear. A combination stairway, or one that starts up from the dining-room, is less objectionable in a house where there is a bath-room on the second floor than it would otherwise be. Where the bath-room is so placed, it is not necessary that the slops be carried down or the water carried up stairs; and, in other respects, it is less necessary to use the stairway in a disagreeable way. The rear stairway should be connected with the front part of the house by means of a hall on the second floor. It is generally found desirable to have a girl's room near the rear stairway, and to cut off that part of the house from the front by means of a door. There should be means of lighting, artificial and otherwise, at the beginning and landings of all stairways. In a young and growing family, five is the ideal number of rooms for the second floor. This number may be increased or decreased according to the size and development of the family. Where there are five rooms it affords, first, a family room in front, built over the parlor or sitting-room; next to that is a room in front for the very young children, and afterwards for the girls; then the room in the rear of the family room may be for the boys; the fourth room for guests, and the fifth for the servant. The guest-room view is to the side and the rear. There are cases where one must accommodate a large number of people with a smaller number of rooms, and, again, a larger number of rooms is thought indispensable. In connection with the size of bedrooms, we may say what was said before,--that their availability does not depend entirely upon their size. A room may be large and still not contain a place for a bed or other furniture. It may be moderately small and yet have space for all. The more we think about the arrangement of houses, the larger appear the number of indispensables. It used to be thought unnecessary to have a closet in every bedroom; one was certainly enough in the family room. Now it is almost a necessity that there be two closets in the family room--one for the lady, and a smaller one for the gentleman. There should certainly be one closet in every bedroom, and, in addition to that, one which opens from the hall, to be used for bed-linen and general bedroom supplies. A suitable place for brooms and dust-pans is the attic stairway when a special closet is not provided. In lighting bedrooms there should be at least one window for each outside exposure. Where the size will admit, there should be two windows placed so that the dressing-case can be set between them, either in the corner or otherwise. Most bedrooms are lighted artificially by bracket lights instead of the centre light. There should be one bracket on each side of the dressing-case; if not, a pendent light immediately over it. Centre connections for gas-fixture are usually provided, but in practice many houses are not supplied with the fixture. Grates on the second floor make work: carrying of fuel and ashes is always disagreeable in the extremest degree. The placing of ash-pits in the cellar may make it unnecessary to carry the ashes, but still grates make work. At the same time it is very pleasant to have a grate in the bedroom; they are the best means of ventilation known. The servant's room is not usually very large, seldom large enough. It should be provided with a closet, the same as other rooms. The window in that room should be set high enough from the floor so as to admit of the placing of a trunk under it, without interfering with the light or in other ways appearing uncomfortable. The bath-room and general plumbing work are considered in detail in the following chapter. It is sufficient to say that there should be as little wood-work as possible in the bath-room. Water-proof plastering should be used, and when this becomes soiled it can be washed and painted. There is nothing a housekeeper appreciates more than a good attic and an easy stairway leading to it. Often attics are not plastered; they should always be floored at the same time the house is built. Where it is not possible to make divisions by plastering, and other substantial material, light wooden partitions will serve the purpose of providing means of classifying that which is stored in the attic, and prevent it from being in a continual state of disorder. The rooms may be fitted with shelves, closets, etc. Where it is possible so to do, the attic room should be plastered. It makes the rooms below appreciably cooler in summer. In most of the plans herein illustrated, the roof is high enough to provide space for good rooms, with ceilings as high and as square as those of the rooms below. It is cheaper to provide rooms in this way than to spread over more ground; and there is certainly no valid objection to their use by the boys of the family. CHAPTER X. PLUMBING.--IS PLUMBING ENTIRELY SAFE?--COMPLETENESS IN PLUMBING APPARATUS.--LABOR-SAVING PLUMBING APPARATUS.--SEWER CONNECTIONS.--SOIL PIPE.--A TRAP.--ACCIDENTS TO TRAPS.--FREQUENT USE OF PLUMBING APPARATUS DESIRABLE FOR SAFETY.--WATER-CLOSETS.--SIMPLICITY IN PLUMBING.--DRAIN CONNECTIONS.--TO KEEP PLUMBING APPARATUS FROM FREEZING.--CISTERN WATER SUPPLY.--GREASE SINK.--FLUSHING OF DRAIN.--BATH-TUB. In considering the plumbing apparatus of a house, the question is often asked, "Are these things safe? Do they not endanger the health of the occupants of the house?" The answer is, The plumbing apparatus may be entirely safe. That it is not always so, we all know. We hear of many cases of typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and other diseases, which are traceable to, or aggravated by, defective plumbing. In some sections of the country so much trouble has been caused by poor plumbing, that the people, as a class, have come to be suspicious of all. The reason for this is the effort to cheapen the work. Suffering from bad work has led to safety. In larger cities this work is under the control of the city government. It may be said that it is possible so to arrange the fixtures and apparatus appertaining to plumbing that it is entirely safe. The question naturally follows, "How is this done?" It may be said that good work is not a great deal more expensive than poor work. Again, good work is not always a question of money. It is one of knowledge or inclination on the part of the plumber. One in moderate circumstances, who builds a house to cost from twenty-five hundred to four thousand dollars, should have well water or city water, and hot and cold cistern water in the sink in the kitchen. There should be at least a slop-hopper in the laundry. In the bath-room a water-closet, a tub, and generally a wash-stand. This latter feature is not absolutely necessary, as will be explained later. In the attic there should be a tank to hold the cistern water, which is connected with the fixtures using soft water below. A force-pump, or water-motor, may be located in the kitchen or basement to lift the water to tank. In more elaborate houses a completer plumbing apparatus may be used. There may be an especial sink in the china-closet. There may be wash-stands in the various chambers, and one on the first floor. There may be, also, an additional water-closet on the first floor, or in the cellar, located where it is accessible to the members of the family. There are many ways of expending money in plumbing fixtures; but, with those first mentioned, one may be entirely comfortable, and derive all of the housekeeping benefits which may be expected from such conveniences. Unless the house be large, an increase in the number of fixtures would increase the amount of work done in keeping them clean, rather than save labor. In the matter of safety, another question, which sometimes arises, is as to the danger from the plumbing apparatus where there is no sewer connection, or where it has to be made with a vault. The protection against sewer-gas is not from the sewer itself or the vault. It is entirely through protective apparatus in the house, and the manner of the connection with the vault or sewer. One may consider the conditions of safety in plumbing apparatus under two general heads. First, as to the workmanship; second, as to design or plan of the apparatus. Nothing need be said as to the workmanship, excepting that the execution of the design, or the benefits to be derived from it, maybe entirely lost by defective workmanship. If the work is not properly executed, the design need not be considered. The result will be bad irrespective of the plan. In considering the design of the apparatus, we will take into account the arrangement of the connections and fixtures. By the latter expression is meant the tub, the water-closet, the wash-bowl, and the sink, pump, etc. The connections which have to do with the safety of the apparatus are the traps and the waste pipes, or pipes which connect with the vault or sewer. The main waste pipe inside the house is called the soil pipe. The smaller waste pipes from the fixtures connect with it. The soil pipe is of cast-iron, and usually four inches in diameter on the inside. It connects, full size, with the water-closet. Most other wastes are of lead, and are usually an inch and a half in diameter. In the soil and waste pipes there will naturally be the odors from the vaults and sewer, or from the foul matter which is in or passing through the pipes. Therefore, there must be means in each waste pipe, which connects a fixture with the main soil pipe, of preventing the passage of gas or air from it into the house. This is done by means of what is called a trap. The "S" trap is the commonest form; this name is given it from its shape, and illustrates its construction. If we take a letter S and turn it sideways we will get the form of such a trap. The right side or end would continue directly down toward the drain or soil pipe, and the left side would continue upward and connect with the fixture (see Fig. 6). The water from the fixture comes down and is forced upward through the bend by the pressure of water above, and from thence runs into the soil pipe or drain. Thus it will be seen that there is always a seal of water in the trap. There is always water in the trap as indicated by the depth of the bend of the S. There are hundreds of different forms of traps, but they are all constructed on the same principle; the idea being that the gas or air from the pipe would have to pass through the water in order to get into the house. The water in the trap is called the seal; it seals the passage of air as stated. [Illustration: Fig. 6.] There are many conditions under which a trap may fail to do its full duty. It may be foul in itself, or it may be rendered foul by the bad air in the drain. The trap may be siphoned by a heavy flow of water through the main drain, or it may be siphoned by a string or a rag which may readily find its way into the trap, and hang over the bend so that all of the water will run out. Again, the water in the trap may evaporate. All these dangers may be guarded against. In the first place, there should be means which allow fresh air to pass through all that portion of the main drain or soil pipe which is in or close to the house. The means of accomplishing this are various. The soil pipe is ventilated by continuing up through and well above the roof with a full opening at the top. The smaller drains should be ventilated in the same way when far removed from main soil pipe or other connection. The traps should be ventilated by 1-1/2-inch or two-inch connections with the outer air, as shown by cut. Frequent use of plumbing fixtures contributes to safety. It causes a large volume of water to pass through the pipes. The flushing of the pipes and drains in this way makes them cleaner and thus safer. It is frequently said by those who have plumbing fixtures in their houses that they use them as little as possible, because they are afraid of them. Nothing worse could be done. The water in the traps evaporates or becomes foul, and thus the gas has a free entrance to the house. A water-closet helps greatly to cleanse the soil pipe and outside drain. It discharges a large volume of water into it suddenly, in a way to keep it clean. It is not a bad plan to use the closet at least once a day, solely for the purpose of flushing the drain. In houses where there are a number of wash-stands distributed through the various chambers and halls there is danger from neglect in using them. The water seal in the traps may evaporate, and thus give direct sewer-air connection with the house. Particularly is this so in the guest's room. A wash-stand is a more dangerous fixture for this reason than any other in the house. [Illustration: Fig. 7] The water-closet problem has received a great deal of attention. A few years ago they were quite complicated, there being levers and pipes, pans, springs and weights, to a degree of complexity which caused a great deal of trouble. There has since been a return to first principles and great simplicity. The water-closet of to-day is nothing more or less than a large bowl connected by means of an "S" trap four inches in diameter with the soil pipe, and provided with means of flushing with large volumes of water. Such a closet is known as the "washout closet." In other closets there is an intermediate plunger-valve separating the hopper from the trap. The plunger-valve is defined by its name. It is a large stopper which plunges into and closes up the opening to the trap by means of its own weight when released. That which makes one closet different from another has to do more with means of flushing than anything else. By flushing is meant the pouring into and distribution of water in the hopper. The most popular closets, those which have given the most satisfaction, are "washout" closets, made entirely of white earthenware, not alone the bowl, but the trap and connecting neck. Closets are best flushed from an independent tank, which is placed about seven feet above the closet and connects with it by means of 1-1/4-inch pipe. The height gives it a strong flush of water, which cleanses it thoroughly. In the past it has been usual to conceal the earthenware or iron body of the closet. It is best to leave it entirely open around the sides, that the entire apparatus may be exposed. Sometimes it is necessary to support the flap and seat by legs, though the modern closets are arranged so that all of the woodwork may be secured to the upper part of the hopper or the wall. There should be the solid flap covering to the wooden seat with the opening in it, both of which should be hinged, so as to allow them to be thrown back. It is convenient to use the water-closet as a slop hopper. In order to do this the seat should be hinged, so that it may be thrown back out of the way. One frequently hears it said by those who exercise their authority over household matters that they do not allow anything to be put into the water-closet except that which is naturally intended for it; meaning that they do not allow the slop water to be put into it. There is no reason in this. The closet that cannot be used for this purpose cannot, with safety, be allowed in the house. The use of the water-closet as a slop sink is not only legitimate but desirable. It flushes the drain. There is a movement toward simplicity in general plumbing apparatus. At the time the water-closets were in the complicated state mentioned, everything pertaining to plumbing was in the same general condition. It was thought necessary to fill a house with a wilderness of pipes and traps to have it safe or satisfactory. The very complexity of the arrangement made it not only unsafe but expensive to maintain. We have all heard a great deal about the expense of maintaining a plumbing plant, if it may be so called. There is no reason why there should be constant repairs and expense. It is pleasant to know that additional expense is not necessary to secure immunity from trouble. The idea of simplicity in arrangement, general excellence in the fixtures, material, and labor, which go to form the completed work, has to be borne in mind. The arrangement of the plumbing apparatus has to be planned with the same care and thoughtfulness as the other parts of the house. It should be remembered that if the pipes are placed in a position where the temperature is liable to fall below thirty-two degrees the water in the pipes will freeze. Thus it is suggested that all pipes should be on an inside wall,--if possible, next to the kitchen flue,--and that there be here arranged an especial pipe duct of wood to ventilate the kitchen, and, at the same time, keep the pipes from freezing by means of the warm air which will pass through it. This duct should be covered on the face with a wide board, which can be readily removed by taking out a few screws. Thus the pipes may be exposed at any time desirable. If the hot-water boiler in the kitchen is surrounded by an enclosure which has an opening in the bottom, and which connects from above with the pipe duct previously described, there will be a current of warm air passing upward through the pipe duct as long as there is warm water in the boiler. The water in the boiler will be warm long after everything else is cold. This will insure safety from freezing when other helps fail. The cistern water is supplied to the bath-room, and to the hot-water reservoir, by means of a tank placed in the attic, or at least above the highest fixture. It sometimes happens that the supply pipe from the tank above the attic floor freezes. All this may be prevented by enclosing the tank, and the pipe which connects with it, with a large box or canvas covering which is six or eight inches larger than the tank. This confines the warm air from the duct mentioned, so that as long as there is heat it will always be in this enclosure. The outside drain, which connects with the vault or sewer, is, in some instances, trapped previous to its entrance to the sewer or vault. In such cases, this trap should have a connection with the outer air, and on the side of the trap towards the house. Sometimes this outer-air connection is made into the water spout from the roof; but this is not proper, for the reason that the sewer gas, or the gas from the vault, is almost certain to destroy the spout. Again, this spout may come out near a dormer, or may pass near a window, and in either case may contaminate the air in the house. It is better that this ventilating connection should be in the yard, at some distance from the house, or, better yet, that there should be a long iron pipe extending well above the ground. It should be understood that this vent has no direct connection with the sewer, but merely with the soil pipe and drain back of the trap; with that part of it which is nearest to, and in, the house. Sometimes it is necessary to run the down spouts into the sewer connection; in such a case one should be certain that the down-spout openings are not near the dormers, and that they have no connection whatever with the cistern. It is common to have a switch or cut-off in the down spout, so that the latter may be connected either with the cistern or sewer. This is very bad practice. While it is connected with the sewer or with the drain pipe, the down spout is contaminated with all the foulness of the air of the drain. On its being connected with the cistern, the water is poisoned. Immunity from sewer gas in the house is largely dependent upon the flushing and ventilation of the drain and the soil pipe. In the case of a drain which is trapped as described, there is an air connection through the vent before the trap; then the soil pipe which is in the house should continue upward through the roof. Thus there is a fresh air inlet through the drain, and upward through the soil pipe of the house. Such a connection prevents the possibility of siphoning the traps, as it gives an outward air connection. The water passing through the drain or soil pipe can draw its supply of air from the upward soil vent, rather than through the traps which contain water. When there is no upward vent of the soil or drain, the water in the traps which connect therewith will be drawn out by the passage of water through the drain where fixtures are used. There are those who maintain that there should be no trap in the yard or adjacent to the house, but that there should be a straight run from the soil pipe to the sewer or vault, and upward through the roof and above the house. It is good practice to use the trap as described for sewer connections, but not for open vault connections. A grease sink is frequently placed in the drain to intercept the passage of grease into the vault. It is so placed and connected that only the water from the kitchen sink, or other fixtures where the water contains grease, may enter it. It is made of brick, and is usually of six or eight barrels capacity. A four-inch pipe connects it with the kitchen waste, and if the grease sink is placed adjacent to the main drain, there can be a similar connection between it and the main drain. It should be a siphon connection, so that the sink will become nearly full before it discharges. When it discharges through the siphon the water will go out with a rush and leave the grease in the sink. This makes an intermittent discharge into the main drain, which flushes or cleanses it thoroughly and is much better than a constant small flow of water. This grease sink must be cleaned from time to time. Small cast-iron grease sinks are sometimes placed under kitchen sinks in very large dwellings or hotels. Nothing particular need be said in regard to wash-stands more than has been said, excepting, possibly, that the drain should be trapped, ventilated, and connected with the soil pipe; also that there should be a lead safe or safety pan on the floor under the wash-stand when they are enclosed; it is preferable that they should remain unenclosed. It has been common to connect this safe with the soil pipe. It is only intended that it should be useful in cases of accidental overflow; but, notwithstanding the fact that there be a trap in the safe waste or drain, it would be empty most of the time, because of the evaporation of the water. It is proper to make direct connection with the cellar or kitchen sink. The bath-tub should have the same-sized drain connection as the wash-stand; that is, one and one-half inch in diameter, trapped. The overflows from both the wash-stand and tub should be flushed with hot water quite frequently, to avoid the soap smells which are so common to bath-rooms. It often happens that those who have bath-rooms in their houses imagine that they smell sewer gas, when it is nothing more or less than the smell of rancid soap. CHAPTER XI. HEAT AND VENTILATION.--COMMON HEATING ARRANGEMENTS.--PRESENT METHODS GENERALLY UNSATISFACTORY.--IDEAL CONDITIONS.--PROPER AMOUNT OF MOISTURE RARELY ATTAINED.--A FURNACE DEFINED.--METHODS OF REACHING BEST RESULTS.--SUPPLY OF PROPER AMOUNT OF MOISTURE.--REMOVAL OF FOUL AIR.--SUPPLYING FRESH AIR WITH PROPER MOISTURE FROM STOVES.--STEAM AND HOT WATER HEATING.--DIRECT AND INDIRECT RADIATION.--LOW-COST HEATING APPARATUS. It is only within a short time that the heating and ventilation of buildings of any kind have been in any measure satisfactory. This applies only to the largest buildings; the heating and ventilating of smaller structures are still in an unsatisfactory condition. Most dwelling-houses are heated with stoves, which, as now arranged, are not successful. The same air is heated over and over again. Fresh air in the proper quantities or from the proper source is not supplied to the interior of the building. Grates are very well in their way in that they take large quantities of air from the room. Thus far they ventilate. The supply of air is necessarily irregular, unless special means are provided. Furnaces are used for heating a very large number of houses. While they are satisfactory in some respects, they are deficient in others. The same thing may be said of steam, hot-water, or other heating apparatus. As the statement has been made that heating systems in general, as applied to dwelling-houses, are unsatisfactory, it may be well to state the fault, and what is to be desired. It is not the purpose to consider this question chemically, or from a highly scientific standpoint; there is no occasion for it. It is well to bear in mind that we are considering the heating and ventilating of a house during cold weather, and not its ventilation during the summer, when natural means are to be relied upon. Then it may be asked, What is to be done? Primarily the air should be at the proper temperature at all times; it should be in its pure state, as found on the outside of the building, and not contaminated with any of the gases of combustion. It should be supplied with its proper equivalent of moisture at the temperature at which we find it in the room. As it becomes impure from natural causes, there should be some means of effecting its withdrawal. These are the ideal conditions. How far do they exist in practice? The temperature is ordinarily high enough. The air of the room is apt to be contaminated by the gases of combustion, and vitiated by breathing and otherwise. Rarely indeed does it contain its proper equivalent of moisture; it is dry and parched. Now that we know the conditions in their ideal state and as they exist in fact, we will consider in detail what may be done to bring about more satisfactory results. If the heating apparatus be a furnace, it should be constructed of steel or wrought-iron plate, the joints thoroughly riveted and calked; or, if of other material, it should certainly be gas-tight. Every precaution should be taken to prevent the passage of the air of combustion from the furnace to the warm-air chambers and from thence to the rooms above. The furnace is nothing more or less than a large stove with various radiating arrangements, surrounded by an iron or brick enclosure, with a supply of fresh air from the outside, and with connecting tin pipes to the rooms above. It is important that the inner parts, the fire-pot, the radiating surface, etc., be thoroughly well built and gas-tight, to prevent the heated air from becoming contaminated by the gases of combustion. The supply of outer air should be ample. It should be so arranged that it can never be entirely cut off. The furnace should be of sufficient capacity so that means of reducing the outer air supply should not be necessary. However, if such arrangements are made, they should be limited. The proper equivalent of moisture should be given to the air at the temperature at which it reaches the room. It may be said that there is a water-pan connected with every furnace, that will do everything necessary in supplying moisture. This is a mistake. So far as I know, the furnace or other heating apparatus for dwellings has not been constructed which is provided with a proper evaporating apparatus. The pan is set in the side of the furnace, with an opening to the outside into which water may be poured. It is small, and has very little evaporating surface on the inside. Oftentimes the joints at the outside are so poorly made that the cold air from the cellar may be drawn in over the water in the pan, and in that way prevent its proper evaporation. Winter air heated to a summer temperature is dry and parched, whereas natural summer air contains the proper amount of moisture. The outer air during the winter time has its proper equivalent of moisture for the winter temperature, which is a much smaller amount than would belong to it at a higher temperature. Therefore when we take winter air into the furnace or other heating apparatus, raise it to a summer temperature, and carry it into a room, we have a very dry air, which seeks its equivalent of moisture from the occupants of the room, from the furniture, carpets, walls, ceiling, and everything in it. The air will not take additional moisture unless that moisture be supplied after it has reached a higher temperature. For instance, if a spray or a series of wet blankets be arranged in the cold-air duct, before the air gets to the furnace, the air will not take the moisture from that spray or from the damp blankets. The moisture must be supplied after the air is heated. Where the water-pan is set on the side of the furnace, and where there is a supply of air through the pan from the cellar, as there frequently is, evaporation is naturally retarded by the cold air, as indicated. Again, if this pan be never so well protected, it is small, the proper amount of evaporating surface is not presented. An evaporating pan or other device should be placed above the fire-pot and should occupy a large proportion of the area of the heating chamber. The supply of water should not be dependent upon some one's attention. It should be constant by means of a ball-cock or otherwise. It should run into or drip into a shallow pan, or should be supplied to sheets of felt or blanket so that the air will come in contact with the moist surfaces, at the temperature at which it is to go into the room. Thus it has the proper amount of moisture which belongs to it at that temperature. In this way we have winter air from the outside going into the room at a summer temperature and with a summer equivalent of moisture; that is, we have summer air in the winter time. People sometimes undertake to get around this by putting water-pans in the registers, but they are rarely ample. They are neglected, or they interfere with the supply of warm air, and are abandoned. Where a furnace is already in a house, or where it is not possible to make elaborate arrangements for providing the air with moisture, there is a very simple makeshift which is quite effective. It consists in suspending in the registers in the floor small water receptacles--a quart bucket answers every purpose--in which is placed a broad strip of linen. This cloth should go to the bottom of the receptacle and be long enough to hang over and below it for several inches. When the bucket is filled with water this piece of cloth acts as a siphon, and carries the water, a drop at a time, into the furnace-pipe, where it is converted into steam. A piece of old table-linen is the best material to use, for the reason that it carries the water fast enough, that the heat from the furnace does not dry it out before it can drop into the pipe; otherwise the cloth becomes dry at the end, and the siphonage ceases. For the same reason it should be broad,--about twelve inches. Where a moderate heat is carried through the furnace-pipe, three quarts of water may be evaporated in this way in twenty-four hours from each bucket. A bucket of the size mentioned does not in any way interfere with the passage of heat. The next point for consideration is the means of getting the foul, contaminated air to the outside. One way is through the use of grates. Another is by means of ducts in the wall, opening near the floor, which draw the foul air from the room to the outside. These should consist of heated flues, with connecting registers in the ceiling and floor, which may be open when necessary. Under any circumstances, the grate is best. Sometimes the flue may be heated by a supply of warm air from the furnace, or by a steam-pipe in case steam is used for heating the house. In natural-gas regions, the supply of additional heat in a flue from a furnace or by a jet would be a small matter. We have mentioned heating by stoves, grates, and furnaces. The same principles which apply to the furnishing of fresh air to a furnace may be applied to a stove. The fact is, they never have been. A stove should be made, and will be made some day, that is surrounded on the outside by a second jacket, the space between being connected with the outer air by means of a tin tube to the under side of the stove. The supply of cold air could be so arranged as to be shut off when there was no heat in the stove. The warm air would pass out at the top of the jacket. On top of the stove could be placed an evaporating pan, and the supply of moisture come therefrom. In connection with the stove-pipe, which should be jacketed, a second ventilating flue, starting from the floor and having an opening both above and below, could be arranged, and in that way the supply of fresh air and withdrawal of impure air could be accomplished. Next we may speak of steam and hot-water heating. So far as a change of air and the ventilation of the room are concerned, heating by direct radiation, that is, by radiators placed in the room, is no better than stove heating. It may be that the air is not so severely parched by the extreme heat, also the escape of steam may contribute somewhat to the moisture of the air; but the escape of steam is not agreeable, and is not allowed to exist to any great extent;--its odor is not always pleasant. Certainly the addition of moisture to the air by this means would be a mere makeshift and unsatisfactory. Hot-water coils act the same as steam radiators in that they heat the same air over and over again, and are no better than stoves, so far as the provision for fresh air, at proper temperature and humidity, is concerned. A steam or hot-water apparatus, with indirect radiation, is superior to furnace heat as ordinarily provided. The means of supplying moisture to an indirect steam apparatus, as ordinarily constructed, are not convenient. There is a radiator for each hot-air connection above, that is, a radiator for each register, with a distinct and direct supply of outer air thereto. Sometimes there are two registers connecting with a single radiator. But under any circumstances the radiators are somewhat separated, having steam or water connection with the boiler at the proper point. Steam apparatus for public buildings has been constructed where the radiators have been bunched, that is, put into a single chamber, the air passing through the chamber containing the radiators, where it is heated to the proper temperature, and the moisture afterwards supplied before it enters the room. Where this arrangement is used, there must be conductors, tin or otherwise, from the chamber to the register, as in the case of a furnace. Again, it will be found that the supply of air will not be uniform through all of the openings; for instance, the register that is farthest removed from the warm-air chamber may fail to act. In this event, auxiliary radiators may be placed under that register, and the operation of the heating apparatus greatly facilitated thereby. This plan is superior to a furnace, and can be applied to hot-water or steam apparatus in dwellings. The reason that it is superior to a furnace is that the supply of heat is more uniform. It does not require the constant firing or attention that is necessary in the case of a hot-air furnace. It may be known that the temperature does not change with the pressure of steam or in the same proportion. There are inexpensive automatic arrangements in connection with furnaces and steam apparatus, which control the dampers and keep the steam pressure measurably uniform, as long as there is fuel of sufficient quantity in the fire-pot. The hot-water apparatus is more uniform in its operation than steam, and for that reason more satisfactory. A furnace plant is the most inexpensive apparatus that may be used for general heating; the steam apparatus is next higher as to first cost, though no more expensive in amount of fuel used. The hot-water apparatus costs more than steam, and is somewhat more economical in the cost of maintenance. It is probable that a house of moderate size can be warmed all over at a less cost, as far as fuel is concerned, by a furnace or a steam or hot-water heating apparatus than by stoves and grates. However, grates are generally used in addition to these for the purpose of comfort and appearance, and for ventilating. Under such circumstances, they consume very little fuel. CHAPTER XII. HEATING DEVICES AS WE FIND THEM.--FURNACE ESTIMATES.--COMBINATION HOT AIR AND HOT WATER.--DISH-WARMING ARRANGEMENTS.--HOW TO GET A GOOD HEATING APPARATUS. For the present, people who build must take things as they find them, and use heating and ventilating apparatus as regularly manufactured. Experiments are uncertain. The theory of the proper heating and ventilating of a house as set forth in previous chapter is correct. The fulfilment of the ideas in dwelling-house heating remains to be practically worked out. It is not the business of the architect, or the housewife, or the owner of the house, to work out these mechanical details. It will be done in time by competent mechanical experts. In the estimates subsequently given, the furnace is the only means considered for general heating. However, this does not indicate a prejudice in favor of that particular method. The furnace is considered and figured upon as the ordinary method of heating houses of moderate cost. It is the least expensive plant to be used for general heating. Indirect radiation from hot water or steam is to be preferred to a furnace. A combination of a hot-air furnace with hot water, or steam, is used with fair success. In this case, a hot-water coil is placed in an ordinary furnace, which connects with hot-water radiators in a conservatory or other room for the purpose of contributing a uniform degree of heat to that room. The water supply is a tank, located well above the level of the radiators, and connecting through an inlet pipe with the coil in the furnace. The proper means of supplying this tank with water is through a ball-cock or float-cock, the float of which opens the valve when the water gets low in the tank. Thus the supply is as constant as the source. A hot-water radiator of this kind may be used in connection with a device for warming dishes or keeping food warm. The heat is gentle, uniform, and constant. This is a general advantage of all hot-water heating. Aside from the automatic arrangements for controlling the steam or water pressure in the heating apparatus, and thus measurably controlling the temperature in the building, other more positive automatic arrangements are provided which undertake to maintain any fixed temperature. These are proprietary devices, patented and advertised. Complaints are made of the general inefficiency of everything under the sun: hence, furnaces and other heating apparatus come in for their share. An architect is sometimes asked how he would heat a certain building. He answers, "Hot water, steam, or furnace."--"Oh, I wouldn't have steam. My uncle had a steam plant in his house, and they nearly froze to death all last winter; and they burned over a ton of coal a week." The same things are said, and truly, of every kind of heating apparatus made, when we consider them in general classes. General complaints of a similar nature are made of everything. In regard to the steam plant or hot-water apparatus, or anything else of which this thing may have been said, one may first acknowledge its truthfulness, and then consider what it all means. Something is at fault. It may be that the whole design of the apparatus is faulty. The design may be right, and the construction bad. Everything else may be right, but the apparatus too small; or there may be some little defect which has to do with the placing of the apparatus in the house. Sometimes, when everything is in good form, the apparatus does not receive proper attention: hence trouble. It may be asked how one is to get a good heating apparatus for a dwelling-house. The first thing to be determined is, the particular kind to be used: whether hot-water, steam, or hot-air furnace. There are many manufacturers of the various apparatus, who are regularly in the business. To these may be submitted plans of the building, and a request for estimates and suggestions. It is the experience of an architect that one who is putting money regularly in the manufacture or production of anything will not waste his energies for a great length of time on a bad thing, if he knows it. The evidence that an establishment has been putting up good furnaces or other heating apparatus is long-continued business success. If the owner of a house writes to an old-established, wealthy concern, and sends his plans, he is as certain to get a reliable proposition as he can be of anything. A local agent of an establishment of this kind may misrepresent, unintentionally or otherwise. The surest way is to go to headquarters. The local agent does not always know exactly what should be done. A competent architect can settle all these matters for an owner. However, if an architect says there are only one or two furnaces or heating apparatus which are all right, he is either ignorant or dishonest. There are many different kinds which will give fair satisfaction. The idea in this chapter is to take things as we find them, and suggest what may be done. The theories outlined in the previous chapter may be correct, but they do not amount to anything to a man who is building to-day. The only purpose of this chapter is to suggest to those who are building that they go to a first-class house, pay a fair price, and get the best possible apparatus regularly in the market. CHAPTER XIII. THE HOUSE AND ITS BEAUTY.--ARTISTIC SURROUNDINGS.--BEAUTY MORE A MATTER OF INTELLIGENCE THAN MONEY.--VESTIBULE DECORATIONS.--BEAUTY IN THE RECEPTION-HALL.--MANTELS AND GRATES.--FRET-WORK AND PORTIÈRES.--SPINDLE WORK.--SIMPLE FORMS OF GOOD DECORATION.--WOOD-CARVING.--DOOR AND WINDOW CASINGS.--A CONSERVATORY.--STAINED GLASS.--A CABINET ON THE MANTEL.--TINTED PLASTERING.--FRESCOING.--SAFETY IN THE SELECTION OF COLORS.--AN ATTRACTIVE SITTING-ROOM.--THE PARLOR.--A RECEPTION-ROOM.--PARLOR HISTORY.--THE IDEAL PARLOR.--THE LIBRARY.--A PLACE OF QUIET AND REST.--LIBRARY FURNISHINGS.--THE DINING-ROOM.--SOCIAL RELATIONS OF THE DINING-ROOM.--DINING-ROOM DECORATIONS.--CONSERVATORY AND DINING-ROOM.--A WOOD CEILING.--BEAUTY IN BEDROOMS.--QUIET AND LIGHT. The journey through the house is hardly complete until we abandon the material view, and consider it from the standpoint of beauty. As is said in another connection, the architect does not do his full duty in making a house a model of convenience and utility. The housekeeper always looks toward a beautiful home, something that will be recognized for its beauty and elegance. A house that is beautiful and attractive gives pleasure to all who see it, as well as to the occupants. A beautiful, artistic house is a source of education to the occupants. A porch with clumsy columns, rude mouldings, heavy ceiling, coarse details of all kinds, cannot but affect one's living. One that is fine in detail, generous in size, decorated in artistic spirit, must of necessity not alone contribute to the comfort of those who live in the house, but serve to lift them from that which is common and ordinary. People may be surrounded by that which is beautiful and artistic, and for a time fail to realize its true excellence, or they may be surrounded with that which is homely and crude without knowing the full measure of its ugliness. The time must come, however, when the truth will be realized to a certain extent. If it is in the direction of the appreciation of what is beautiful, it must necessarily bring about a higher state of mind. No man can walk across a front porch, time after time, and take hold of a beautiful door, without being affected by it. For this reason the vestibule, the front door, and all that belongs to it, should be designed in a thoughtful spirit, with the idea that it is the first of all things that will impress those who enter the house. There may not be much money to put into this door, but what there is may as well bring something beautiful as something ugly. The same money that will make an ugly detail will make a beautiful, artistic one. If the glass of this door must be inexpensive, let it be the ordinary cathedral glass. Instead of being brilliant in color, select a soft, mild tint,--a light amber or a straw color. If there are divisions in the door so that a number of sheets may be used, two tints at most are all that are necessary. It is best that they should be quiet in tone. If money is more abundant, and an elaborate stained-glass design may be had, put the work in the hands of an artist, one who is well known, and the result cannot but be satisfactory. As to the door itself, nothing can be nicer than natural wood, properly finished. The detail of the design should be refined; there should be an avoidance of all that is clumsy and heavy. The spirit of the interior may be stamped upon this door. Where one cannot encompass the expense of an artistically designed glass for the door or vestibule opening, a very pretty effect may be secured by the use of a plain sheet of plate-glass; or, if desired, a slight additional expense will give glass with bevelled edges. Sometimes this bevelled glass is in small squares, with leaded joints. This gives a very simple and rich effect from either side. As one opens this door and steps into the vestibule, there may come to his sight a beautiful mantel and grate-fire in the reception-hall beyond. This is particularly beautiful when shown through the folds of a tapestry curtain which separates the vestibule from the reception-hall. Sometimes this vestibule is arranged so that there is a small window at one side of it. Nothing can be nicer than to have this filled with glass, of the same general design as that of the door. The hooks for wraps should be of polished brass, secured to a natural-wood strip. An umbrella-stand of the same material is attractive. The floor is best of hard wood, all but covered with a heavy rug. This is a pleasant place to stop a moment, with a more beautiful view beyond. A reception-hall is, from an architectural standpoint, the easiest room in the house to handle; that is, it can easily be made to look well. This is because of its connection with the vestibule, the stairway, the grate, often a window-seat, the large openings into the other rooms, and the portières which go with them. All these things combine well to make a pretty room. Stairways, as now designed, are much more beautiful than those made a few years ago. Then it was a habit to start at one end of the hall and continue to the second floor in a single run, with winders only at the upper end, to change the direction of the movement. Now it is common to have at least two landings in each run; oftentimes there will be only two or three steps, then a landing, from which steps lead to another near the top. At the beginning of the stairway there are the newel posts, and at each landing a corner post. This arrangement frequently admits of the placing of a seat along one side of the outer part of the lower landing. If not that, possibly one along the side of the stairway, below the run of steps which starts from the lower landing. The space between the railing and the steps is usually occupied by turned balusters, though there are many forms of filling and decorating this space. Sometimes it is of turned spindle-work, scroll-work, fret-work, and squares or panels, arranged in different forms. It is not unusual to have stained-glass windows at each landing. These windows are not necessarily large, and are usually hung on hinges. Sometimes a small bay-window projection is made from one or both of these landings. In them may be placed seats, and in this way add beauty and convenience to the room. It is quite usual to cover the reception-hall with rugs rather than carpets. The hard-wood floor idea probably had its origin in the reception-hall. If it ever takes its departure it will be first from this room. If a hard-wood floor is not largely covered with rugs it requires a great deal of labor. The mantel in the reception-hall should be of wood. It is pleasant to have the larger part of the entire setting made of tile. These tiles are now made in most beautiful designs and colorings. Beautiful figured designs may be had, if not for the entire facing, for certain parts. It is not uncommon that only a narrow margin of wood-work borders the sides of a mantel of this kind. The shelf and cabinet above may be as ornamental as desired. No treatment of wood-work can add to the beauty of a large surface of tile facing. In some instances, no shelf is provided; simply a bevelled facing, with a margin of woodwork, not over an inch wide, to cover the joint where the tiling comes in contact with the plaster. The hearth should be large. The grate border is best of brass. The walls of the reception-hall may have a gray plaster finish, or be tinted or papered, as desired. The picture moulding may come pretty well down from the ceiling; certainly not higher than the tops of the doors. The part below may be tinted in one color, and the upper, in another. The picture moulding should always be of the same kind of wood as the finish, and not gilded or treated in any other highly artificial manner. The openings into other rooms, even where sliding or hinged doors are used, are frequently filled a short distance from their top with what is popularly called fret-work. It may be fret-work, pure and simple, or spindle-work, or simply scroll-work. It is a very pleasing form of ornamentation. The curtains come below. In one of the plans furnished, the entire vestibule is made up of turned work, which, with a curtain, is the only separation from the main hall. Sometimes arches are decorated in the same manner, and the space between the circle and frame is filled with these ornamental forms. A very simple way of making screens is by the use of thin quartered oak-strips, woven into basket patterns of ornamental form. Only one general design of door and window casings is shown in this book. There is no limit to the ornamental forms which may be used in decorating casings of any kind. During recent years, many ladies have used their energy and ability in the direction of wood-carving, and, under competent instruction, have done good work. For the most part, the patterns are in low relief. The designs are frequently conventionalized, foliated patterns. In the smaller communities it is hardly possible to get good carving through ordinary channels, for the reason that there is not a sufficient amount of this kind of work to be done to justify a high grade of talent in occupying so unprofitable a field. It is unfortunately true, however, that very few workmen who can carve at all, but have an idea that they do this kind of work exceedingly well. No matter how crude their efforts may be, there is no lack of self-appreciation. They profess to be able to do that of which they are entirely ignorant. It is best to be content with the simple mechanical forms of interior wood-decoration, unless there are those of known and recognized ability, who are capable of executing the more artistic patterns. Door and window casings are made much narrower and less complex than was the custom several years ago. The sitting-room of the lower floor is more clearly defined by the term "living-room." It is a room with much more wall space than the reception-hall. It usually contains a grate and mantel; has a large window to the front, and one on the side. It is very nice if one of these windows can be arranged in the form of a bay, with or without a window-seat. In the latter case, it may serve the purpose of a conservatory in the winter and a window-seat in summer. The use of large quantities of stained glass in a sitting-room is objectionable. It is very well to have a certain amount of it in the upper sash of some of the windows. If the colors are mild, the effect upon the atmosphere of the room is pleasant indeed--the light coming through the soft amber or straw tints adds a mellowness and richness to the light of the room, which is opposed to the colder effects of light which comes through white glass. The mantel of the sitting-room may contain a large number of compartments in the form of small shelves, brackets, or cabinets, in which may be placed bric-à-brac of various forms. A little cabinet on each side of a mantel, with a high door, is a very pretty feature. A mirror between these cabinets gives a pleasing effect. This mantel, like the one in the reception-room, should be of wood with tile hearth and facings. If this room is plastered in a gray finish, the walls may be tinted in fresco colors, and, if desired, certain parts of it ornamented by stencilling or otherwise. Unless this ornamental work is done by an artist of recognized ability, it should be of the simplest character. One or two simple lines, or a series of short dashes, is much better than scrawling figures drawn by an untrained hand. The ordinary fresco done by the foreign artist is the ugliest, most ungraceful work possible. In the larger cities, there are usually a few artists who do very beautiful work, but the ordinary, cheap, conventional fresco stuff is barbarous. Plain tinted walls are preferable to such glaring monstrosities. There is not much risk, if one is careful in the selection of colors; the part above the picture moulding may be tinted differently from that below. There are very few people but feel themselves competent to select colors for the interior or exterior of a house. The fact is, there are very few who can do it with any assurance of success. It is well for those who have no special training in this line to pursue a safe plan in the selection of tints for the walls and ceilings. This may be done by choosing different shades of the same color for use in the room. Say one begins with a terra-cotta body for the part below the picture mould. That above the moulding may be a lighter terra-cotta with a tendency to a buff. Then the ceiling may be lighter still, or, to be entirely safe under almost any circumstances, a gray with a leaning towards the color of the wall. Other colors may be selected in the same way. Very light, vivid blues have frequently been selected for ceilings, presumably because of the supposed resemblance to the sky. It is certainly an illogical but by no means uncommon thought. Soft, undecided grays are much pleasanter to those of quiet tastes. There may be variations in it according to the character of the wall decorations and surroundings. If one without special knowledge wishes something more ambitious, he should consult some one of acknowledged ability in this particular line. One cannot afford to try experiments. Extremely beautiful wall decorations are to be had in wall-paperings, and, while rather expensive, are entirely satisfactory if carefully selected. Very little more may be said about the sitting-room, excepting to call to mind that a great deal depends upon the fittings and furnishings of the room, which, however, should not be glaring or rich. The quality of everything may be of the finest and best, yet this room should essentially be quieter in tone than the reception-hall or parlor, or even dining-room, which are not in constant use. Anything which is rich and in any way approaches the gorgeous is wearisome, and directly opposed to the idea of a sitting-room. The parlor may be merely a reception-room,--a room where a lady may receive her callers in the afternoon, or the more formal calls of ladies and gentlemen in the evening, or it may be one room in addition to the others in the lower part of the house. It may be the room which adds capacity to the lower floor during times of general entertaining. In some cases, particularly where the parlor is merely used as a reception-room, it need not be large. In such a case it is merely a place separated from the sitting-room, and in which to go for the purpose of receiving friends in a room somewhat removed from the slight confusion which may legitimately belong to a sitting-room. The parlor is made distinctive in its appearance from the sitting-room by its furnishings. It is not usual to have any great difference in the design of the wood-work in the different rooms of the lower floor. Generally speaking, the doors are of the same design, and likewise the casings, base, etc. The parlor belongs particularly to the society life of the occupants of the house. It is not generally a family room. It is removed from the ordinary home life except in so far as the general social conditions draw all together. The parlor, in its connection with the living-rooms of the house, and the house itself, is entirely legitimate. There is a good deal of sneering at the old parlor idea. This feeling has its origin in the memory of the parlors of a few years ago,--those which contained the one Brussels carpet, covered with red and green flowers, furnished with black hair-cloth furniture, chairs arranged around the wall in military style, a sofa--stiff of back and commanding an attitude--in a most conspicuous position; walls covered with coarse-figured, gilt paper, and rendered more offensive by cheap, family portraits in oil, and elaborately framed chromos. The parlor of to-day is still a formal room; it does not greatly differ from the older one in idea; it is the execution of the idea which has changed. There is a greater refinement in all the details; there is an artistic spirit which pervades everything. There is harmony of color, quietness in tone. The pictures are of a different character. The furniture is graceful and comfortable. It is rarely separated from the other part of the house. The doors leading into it are nearly always open. Oftentimes there are only portières of tapestry or lace to separate this room from the others which lead to it. It is a room which is made necessary by the social life of the time. The ideal parlor is a long room,--a large room. It is long in proportion to its width. Sometimes there is an archway near the middle, which suggests the division of the room into two parts. There is a mirror at the end, and, lending dignity to the room, there is the hall or library at one side. By its size, its arrangement, its dignity, it is inspiring to a congenial company. This is the ideal parlor, and the one of which the vulgarly furnished parlor of a few years ago was a corruption. The ideal parlor is shown in its completest original form in some of the old mansions of the East and South. Some of the old Virginia and Maryland houses carry out this idea in the completest way. In Natchez, Miss., are houses built long before the war, and designed by the French architects, which contain parlors of splendid proportions and most artistic details. These were designed in the purest classic architecture. The ceilings were high, the paintings rich. All this is somewhat removed from the common idea of a parlor as carried out at this time. However, it is a pleasant thing to look back upon, or, when the opportunity and means are at hand, a proper thing to enjoy in the reality. The library, as now understood, is, in the ordinary house, a room for books, papers, and magazines, in which the members of the family may gather, who have use for that which it contains. It should be a room which may be isolated from the other parts of the house; a room in which one may study or read or write, and have the quiet which belongs to such occupations. A room which may be used as a passage from one part of the house to another cannot be dignified by the name of library. In such a room there must be quiet. There are very few homes to which such a room would not be a material and practical addition. There are times when nearly every one desires the quiet and freedom from interruption which a room of this kind affords. It need not be a large room, but should contain all of the paraphernalia of work: a desk, conveniently arranged, bookshelves which are readily accessible, possibly portfolios arranged along the walls, drawers with proper compartments, cases for circulars and catalogues, and other "places for things." The nicest thing about book-cases is the books. Ornamental glass doors and rich trappings add nothing to the beauty of the library. People who make large use of books do not care to have them protected by glass cases. The other furnishings and fittings of a library should be quiet in tone, the chairs easy but not rich, the carpet of a neutral color, the wall decorations preferably without figured outlines, the pictures small and quiet. Sliding doors between the library and any other room of the house are not to be considered. Close-fitting doors on hinges are proper. They exclude the sound. Sliding doors permit the ready passage of sound, for the reason that they are more or less open at top, bottom, middle, and sides. A low ceiling in a library adds to the quiet and restful effect. One may have a low ceiling in a library, even if they are higher in other rooms, by studding down from above,--that is, putting in a false ceiling. The expense is light indeed, and by such means additional protection from the sounds above may be afforded. The dining-room, in many houses, is the room in which the entire family is gathered, perhaps for the only time during the day. In this sense it is an assembly room. There is in this busy country a growing respect for the social value of the dining-room. In the family meetings at the table, there may be an interchange of experiences that does not occur at other times, for the reason that there is no opportunity for it. After the meals the members of the family go to their various occupations, and probably do not come together until another meal. These facts may be considered in the planning of a dining-room. We have thought of this room before in its mechanical sense; we have looked at it through housekeeping eyes. We have now to consider its artistic and social features. We look at it as one of the family rooms. It has its shape or proportion suggested to it from the table. It is oblong. The light coming into it should be ample, but subdued in tone. It is pleasant, as one enters a dining-room, to come into full view of a sideboard which is decorated with that which belongs to this room in a utilitarian way--its china, cut glass, and beautiful linen, than which nothing can be more attractive. It is a pleasant thing to have a conservatory attached to one side or at a corner of the dining-room. The odor of flowers or plants may not be agreeable constantly in a sitting-room. The periodical occupation of the dining-room makes this pleasant rather than otherwise. Most of the plans which are shown will admit of the placing of a conservatory in connection with the dining-room in the manner indicated. The old English dining-room was large in its general proportions, and heavy and rich as to its details; it was so large and impressive that there was an offshoot which took form in a breakfast-room. In our homes at this time we have the compromise. Our habits of living do not demand the breakfast-room: all come to breakfast together, and the requirement is the same as for other meals. Where one wishes to have a wood ceiling panelled or with decorated beams, the dining-room, or the hall connecting with it, may be chosen as the proper place to be treated in this way. Where expense is not a great object, it is agreeable to have a large part of the walls finished in wood. A wood finish one-half to two-thirds the height of the wall, and a ceiling of wood above, with the intervening space finished in rough, tinted plaster, gives a very pleasing effect. Projecting from the top of the wood wall-finish may be a little shelf extending, say, five inches beyond the wall. It may have a simple moulded edge. In the top may be cut grooves; on the under edge may be arranged, at regular intervals, cup hooks, which may be used in part for suspending china, or, upon certain occasions, as a means of securing floral decorations--say, a little train of ivy or smilax. On the upper part of the shelf are placed pieces of china. This shelf may be placed in any dining-room; if not around the entire room, between two windows, or between the chimney breast and the adjacent wall. Six feet from the floor is a good height. If it is not overloaded, or if the idea is not generally overworked, the effect will be very satisfactory. The coloring of a dining-room may be a little heavier and richer than that of the other rooms. A very pretty feature which maybe introduced in a room of this kind is a china-closet, which opens into the dining-room as well as into the china-room adjoining. The dining-room side of the china-closet should be glazed with clear glass above its lower section, and the china-room or back side of the china-closet should be glazed with cathedral glass of a semi-transparent character. There are doors on hinges on each side. The drawers in the lower part, if provided, open from both sides. If doors are used they should be arranged in the same way, so that the lower shelves may be approached from both dining-room and china-room. The glass door on the dining-room side should not come down to the shelf at the top of the lower section, but should be arranged to leave an open space, as is indicated in the chapter on kitchens and pantries. However, the doors on the china-room side of this closet should come down, so as to cut off communication between dining-room and china-room at will. This space between the upper and lower section of the china-closet gives space in which to set a tray, and, by opening a door on the back, it acts as a slide between the china-room and dining-room. This arrangement is not only very beautiful, but very useful. See china-closet plan Fig. 5, page 46. The conservatory mentioned does not need to be in conventional conservatory form, which usually has cheap glazing and often common wood-work, but may be a bay-window with more than an ordinary amount of glass, preferably plate. The chambers and bedrooms, in their ideal form of arrangement, have an abundance of light and sun, ample means for ventilation, and a greater air of restfulness and airiness than the rooms below. The carpets are in lighter tints, the walls more nearly white, the windows not so heavily draped, the pictures and frames of a lighter character, the chairs not so heavy as those of the other rooms. From a chamber it is sometimes desirable to have a bay window projecting from side or front. It adds to the availability of the other floor space, affords additional light and ventilation. Nothing can be nicer than a grate fire in a bedroom. It should be surrounded with a wood mantel, with tile facing and hearth. Above the mantel it is useful to have a short plate-glass mirror. A dressing-case takes its proper place on the side wall between two windows, or in a corner with a window in each wall adjacent to it. Bedrooms are, for the most part, lighted with brackets rather than central lights. When attainable, a small dressing-room adds to the attractiveness of a chamber. In some houses there may be an alcove, a bay window, a window-seat, a conservatory, or something of this kind, from every principal room. These are features which add to the beauty and attractiveness of the house. While all of these things are not possible in every home, some one or two of them may be attainable. In mentioning the various details which go to make the beauty of a house, it is in mind that all these features can be taken into account in but a very small proportion of all the houses that are built, yet some one or more of them may be used in every house, and thereby add to its attractiveness. CHAPTER XIV. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL DESIGN.--AN OLD TOPIC BEFORE THE PEOPLE.--THE ARCHITECTURAL STUDENT'S DREAM.--A BEAUTIFUL HOME THE HOUSEKEEPER'S AMBITION.--IT COSTS NO MORE TO HAVE A HOUSE BEAUTIFUL THAN UGLY.--ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION.--CHARLES EASTLAKE'S BOOK.--VULGAR ARCHITECTURAL REVIVALS.--THE GROWTH OF THE ARTISTIC IDEA.--BEAUTY A MATTER OF REFINEMENT. It often happens when one gives especial attention to a particular branch of a subject his neglect in other lines is measured by the depth of his attention to the particular branch. Matters which have to do with the utilitarian features of house-building are considered in this work much more fully in the text, than has the appearance of the buildings. It is desired that this fact will not lead any one to believe that matters relating to the appearance of the exterior have been neglected. Domestic architecture is an old topic before the people. It is old in what has been said in regard to the appearance of the buildings. The subject, as a science to the architect, is new when considered from the standpoint of convenience. The architectural student's dream is not of kitchens, pantries, closets, convenient and economical arrangements of floor space, but is principally of large public buildings, libraries, court-houses, and cathedrals. When he descends to dwelling-houses, it is of something unique, or odd,--something that is pretty or rich. When it relates to details, it is hallways that are peculiar in their beauty, parlors and sitting-rooms that are full of odd conceits. There has been a tendency toward strange things during recent years. Matters of this kind have fed the fancy of many architects. The housekeeper has been neglected. Nothing attracts more attention than a beautiful house. It is a pleasure to every one. It is as important to have a house beautiful as it is that it should be convenient. The same education and thoughtfulness that will enable an architect to design a convenient house will make it beautiful. No one can be conscientious in the consideration of the comfort of the housekeeper and neglect the smallest detail leading to the beauty of the house. The housekeeper lives in the hope of having a beautiful home. It has been the purpose, in writing this book, to bear all this in mind, and to add the element of convenience to what has been said and done by others toward making beautiful houses. It costs no more to have a house beautiful than to have it ugly. Beauty, like convenience, is largely a matter of thoughtfulness and education. The only excuse for ugliness in house-building is ignorance. The student of architecture has had a great deal done for him. And, in considering that which has to do with appearance, he has only to accept the advantages of the best architectural schools and offices. Without these he cannot expect to succeed. To be a designer of beautiful houses, one must have had the same special training and advantages that are necessary for success in other lines of professional work. A physician must know the history of his profession, aside from the more formal knowledge which leads him through his practice. It is the same way with the student of architecture. The successful designer of a small cottage will do better from having a knowledge of the history of early architecture. Such a knowledge is indispensable, in order to reach the best results. One who has made a study of Greek architecture is much better equipped to design a beautiful low-cost cottage, of four or five rooms, than one who has not availed himself of these advantages. He will make a better house for the same money. He will do better work with simpler means. To take another illustration: We may suppose that an architect has a porch to design, and that the owner of the house does not have a great deal of money to put in it. There are four turned columns, a cornice, with a rafter finish, and underneath, a space in which may be inserted a small band of inexpensive scroll-work. A knowledge of the earlier architecture comes to his assistance in a wonderful way. For the turning on the columns the architect may select that from a column of the early English Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century. These are simple profiles, which can be turned at no greater cost, if the drawing is furnished, than some crude, modern invention of the turner or an uneducated designer. For the jig or scroll saw work, he can arrange figures from some of the earlier ornamental forms of the same period, and by drawing them full size the scroll-sawyer can reproduce a beautiful design, which has a history, with no more labor than he would give some corrupted design which has filtered through the minds of careless house-builders. For his rafter feet, this designer will have no difficulty in recalling some simple form which has had a refined development. This same line of procedure can be followed in all details of house-building, and not add one dollar to the cost of the structure. At the same time it brings about most beautiful results,--the results of successful experience. It may be said again that it takes no more money to make a beautiful detail--one which has been the development of experience and refinement--than it does something which is clumsy and coarse. It requires, however, a knowledge of what has been done,--a knowledge of the history of design. It requires the faculty of using intelligently the results of the past, not merely as they originally existed, but in their adaptation to the wants and conditions of the present. Several years ago Mr. Charles Eastlake wrote a book entitled "Hints on Household Taste." The book accomplished a great deal, by merely leading people to think. To this day there are a great many architectural features which, in the builder's parlance, go under the name of "Eastlake" designs. There are so-called Eastlake doors, Eastlake frames, etc. In truth, Mr. Eastlake had little to say about architecture in a distinctive sense, and many evil things have been perpetrated in his name. The best thing that Mr. Eastlake did was to teach people that the furniture and other things which they had around them could be beautiful and not expensive. That it was not necessary to have a chair or a piece of wood-work loaded down with something called ornament, in order to be beautiful. After this people lost confidence in the furniture manufacturer, and did not depend solely on the price of his wares as a measure of their elegance or attractiveness. This was the sole work of Charles Eastlake, with the masses of the people. He was a missionary in his way. A man of no particular knowledge in regard to architecture or design, yet one who was the means of doing a great deal for architecture. He taught people to look for beauty in simple things. After a time came a certain something in domestic architecture which was designated as the "Queen-Anne" style. We all know what it is, yet it is difficult to describe. The veritable Queen-Anne architecture meant something; the "Queen-Anne" architecture of a few years ago meant anything--particularly something that was pointed, erratic, and unusual. It, however, did a good work. It enabled the architects to get out of the old beaten paths. A great many beautiful houses were built, which, by the public, were said to be in this style. The name "Queen Anne" was the vehicle for the passage from an old conservatism, which had to do only with the commonplace, to something which was fresh and attractive. In this way a great many beautiful houses were built during this so-called Queen-Anne revival. More recently there has been a movement toward the revival of the old colonial architecture--a style that was developed by a class of educated builders among the earlier settlers of this country. Their knowledge was particularly of classic architecture of the period of the Italian renaissance. A great many strange and unusual things are being perpetrated in the name of old colonial architecture at this time. At the same time, a great deal that is beautiful and refined is being built in this style. In the work of the very recent period which has to do with this architecture, one may find a great deal of encouragement. It shows a decided re-action from the extravagant crudeness of the so-called Queen-Anne architecture, and in the end we will reach something that is rational and beautiful. Thus it is to be seen that, in whatever lines architecture is moving, we shall find good work; that it is not so much the style that it is named, as the resources of the designer: resources which have to do with his education, and his disposition to select that which is fine and beautiful--the sense which leads him to discriminate. [Illustration: FIGURE B.] PLANS OF FIFTY CONVENIENT HOUSES. CHAPTER XV. EVOLUTION OF A HOUSE-PLAN.--RESPECTABLE DIMENSIONS FOR A MODERATE PRICE.--SIX PLANS.--COSTS, FROM $1,500 TO $2,600. The number of times that a house has been built indicates the popularity of the plan. Plan No. 1, in one form or another, has been used oftener than any other in the book. Plans Nos. 1, 2, and 3 are more frequently selected by people who do not keep a servant. This arrangement makes a compact and low-cost house. There is a porch over which the small front bedroom extends on the second story. In Plan No. 1 the hall is seven and one-half by ten feet. There is a corner grate for the living-room and the parlor. A stove might be used in the dining-room in a way to moderate the temperature of the entire lower floor. There is one very large window opening into the dining-room. It is a very pleasing thing to have the upper sash of the dining-room glazed with simple colors of cathedral glass. This glass gives a very pleasant tone to the light of the room, and, at the same time, excludes the hot rays of the sun in summer. It is possible to dispense with outside shutters when cathedral glass is used in the upper sashes. A metal rod running across the window on the inside, on a level with the horizontal dividing-rail of the window, may be made to carry curtains which will exclude the view from the outside. Thus, in the glass, and by the aid of the curtains, we have much that might be expected from the shutters. There is a china-pantry between the kitchen and dining-room. It is lighted by a small window at one side. It serves as a passageway between these two rooms, and thus keeps the odor of the cooking from the front part of the house. The pastry pantry is immediately back of the china-pantry, and is entered from the kitchen. It is also provided with a small window. In the kitchen is a sink with a swinging table at one side, and room for a portable table on the other. At one side of the sink may be the cistern-pump, and on the other side the well-pump. It should be placed back against the wall, and with handles that are well out of the way when not in use. [Illustration: Plan No. 1.] It is entirely unnecessary to place the pumps in the yards of low-cost houses, as is so common. If a driven well is used, it could be driven so as to be next to the kitchen sink. If it is a dug well, it may be placed on the outside, and connected through lead pipes with the sink on the inside. The cistern may be connected in the same way. The entrance to the cellar stairs is conveniently placed in one corner of the kitchen. The cellar itself is under the sitting-room. The side-porch is large enough to be used as a summer kitchen. [Illustration: Plan No. 2.] It is to be noticed that there is no waste room in the upstairs hall. There is merely wall space enough to admit of doors leading into the various rooms. There is a small window which lights this hall; the window may be reached for cleaning from the stairway. This plan illustrates as clearly as possible the advantage of having the main stairway land in the middle of the house. There is no better way to economical use of space. From the second-floor hall there is a stairway leading to the attic. This passage is lighted in the same way as the second-floor hall. [Illustration: Plan No. 3.] It may be said that the bedrooms of this house are not large. The house is not large. The problem involved a low-cost, roomy house. We get a large number of rooms within a small enclosure, and, necessarily, some of them are small. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the value of a room is not dependent upon its size. A room may be of respectable dimensions, but yet not have the necessary wall space for the furniture. Such a room would not be as satisfactory as a smaller one, had care been taken to provide this space. In each bedroom there should be space for a bed, a wash-stand, and a dressing-case. The latter should be near a window. It will be found that there is room for such furniture in each of the bedrooms shown on this plan. All are provided with ample closets. In one of these houses which was built, there was a door between the bedroom in front and the chamber. In another case, there was a door connecting the two larger rooms. All these things are matters of personal preference, or special family requirements, depending upon the age and number of the children, and other family conditions. [Illustration: Plan No. 4.] Plan No. 2 is similar to No. 1, excepting that there are a few changes in detail. The rooms are smaller; the hall is relatively shorter; it illustrates the process of contraction. No. 3 is similar to No. 2, excepting that it has a front as well as a rear stairway, and the position of the dining-room is changed. No. 4 is a development of the same class of plans. There are the front and the rear stairways, also a bath-room over the kitchen, and a servant's room. The dotted lines running through the little bedroom on the second floor indicate the position of a hall, which may be constructed connecting the front and rear part of this house. As will be noticed, this is a nine-room house in a very economical form. [Illustration: Plan No. 5.] Plan No. 5 is a further development and improvement of the same idea. The objection that one may raise to any of the plans just described is, that one has to pass through the parlor, or the room in the rear of the hall, to reach the room back of the parlor. Plan No. 5 solves this problem. From the hall we can go into the living-room, the dining-room or parlor, without passing through another room. The second floor is an improvement over No. 4, in that the little bedroom in the rear is enlarged by allowing it to project over the room below the width of the hall. In the rear of this comes the bath-room. [Illustration: FIGURE 10.] As to cost. The building, without appurtenances, on the basis outlined in schedule "B," would cost as follows:-- Plan No. 1, $1,700; No. 2, $1,550; No. 3, $1,550; No. 4, $1,800; No. 5, $1,900. Figures 8 and 9 are elevations suited to these plans. [Illustration: Plan No. 6] Plan No. 6 had its origin in Plan No. 1, and was developed through the successive stages indicated in the description of plans from 1 to 5 inclusive. The position of the grate-stack has been changed, so that it acts for the reception-hall on one side, and the parlor on the other. The reception-hall, instead of receding, projects. In one corner thereof is arranged a vestibule, partitioned from the rest of the rooms by ornamental fret-work backed with curtains. This will make a very beautiful feature. It changes this hall into a room. From here we may pass to the parlor, sitting-room, and dining-room. In the rear of the sitting-room is a porch; at one side, a projecting window-seat. The sitting-room closet is cut off from the pantry. The dining-room is connected with the sitting-room by sliding-doors. A convenient china-closet connects the dining-room and kitchen. On one side of the china-room are arranged drawers. Under the china-closet proper are shelves enclosed by panelled doors; the china-shelves above being protected by glass doors, according to the general ideas previously expressed when considering the china-closet in particular. The kitchen is the same as others, which are described elsewhere in a more detailed way. There is a laundry in the basement, and an outside cellar-way connecting with the back yard. The inside cellar-way is shown. The next door is that which leads to the second floor. There are five bedrooms on this floor. The elevation of this house is shown in Fig. No. 11. The building, without appurtenances, according to schedule "B," costs $2,600. [Illustration: Fig. 8] [Illustration: Fig. 9] Elevations Nos. 1 and 2 indicate a simple form of exterior, which may go with either of these plans excepting No. 3. The photographic view, Fig. No. 10, shows an exterior of No. 1, as built at one time. [Illustration: Fig. 11.] CHAPTER XVI. A SMALL POCKET-BOOK AND A LARGE IDEA.--AMBITION, DOLLARS, AND A GOOD HOUSE.--THE GROWTH OF THE HOUSEKEEPER'S IDEAS.--POINTS ABOUT THE HOUSE.--$2,900. It is frequently said of those who would build, that their ideas are larger than their pocket-books. It is certainly not discreditable to any one that his ideas should be larger than his immediate resources. Such a condition causes the enlargement of the individual and his pocket-book at the same time. The man who says that he wants two thousand dollars' worth of house does not get as much for his money as he who in effect says, "I want three thousand dollars' worth of house for two thousand dollars." The latter is an ambitious man; the former has only a little ambition. He merely wants a house. Fortunately, however, there are few such people. It is more likely to happen that a man and his wife, who have worked hard for several years, get enough money together to build a home, and it is possible that this home has been talked about for several years previous to their building. In fact, they have been educating themselves in house-building. They have acquainted themselves with all of the modern conveniences. They have studied porches, vestibules, and stairways; they know how many rooms they want on the first floor and the bedrooms that they will have above. At first this house presents itself in a very crude form; but in the course of time the plan shows itself more clearly to them. They begin to place the furniture in the imaginary rooms, and as they do this their ideas enlarge. They add at first inches, and then feet, to the size of the various rooms. At first their ideas of a kitchen were quite moderate; in time a sink begins to assume certain vague outlines, then it takes definite form on one side of the room; then a pump is placed beside it; afterward the wife says, "How nice it would be if we could have a hot-water faucet over the sink." At first they shake their heads and say that it would cost too much; but in the course of a few evenings' talk on this and kindred subjects, they come to the conclusion that if the hot-water arrangements do not cost too much, they will have them; and that as things are so much cheaper than they used to be, they certainly ought to get all of these for about what they originally expected to pay for the house. Their ideas have been of slow growth, but continuous, and in the aggregate the growth has been great. During all the winter months, previous to the time when they would build in the spring, many sketches are made, of the floor-plans of the house that is to be. Finally the net result is handed to a builder or an architect,--more frequently the former, as most small houses are built without professional service. The figures from the builder come in, and are very much higher than was expected. It is quite a shock, for certainly there is nothing there that they can well do without. Everything has been thought of so much. Nothing that their plan contains appears to them to be less than a matter of necessity. Other builders are asked to figure with results little more satisfactory. In the end there must be a compromise; the builder and the owner both yield, and, as a result, a very satisfactory house is built. There are little things which they would have different, but, in the main, the house is satisfactory. This is the universal experience, and the effect upon the domestic architecture of this country has been very pronounced. We can now get a better house for a given sum of money than ever before. Better not only as to general construction, but as well on account of external appearance, and the convenience of its internal arrangements. One may get more of what are regarded as the little conveniences, which mean so much to the housekeeper. This is not altogether the result of lower prices of the material and labor which go to make a house, but is as well on account of the skill which has been developed in planning and arranging buildings, with reference to economy in space, and cost of general construction. The planning of houses has undergone a revolution within a few years past; and instead of having the long, narrow halls at the side and in the middle of a house, and the long halls and narrow passages through the upper floor, all of which was ugly and inconvenient, we now have the same area thrown in large square rooms, so as to be available. It may be known that chimney stacks are quite expensive. For this reason an effort has been made to group them, so that they may be made to answer for a number of rooms; and the success with which efforts in this direction have been attended has been wonderful indeed. The modern floor plan is altogether different from that of the past; it is more convenient and less expensive to build; and, as said before, this is largely the result of efforts of the owner, who has ideas larger than his pocket-book, and the architect or builder, who exercises his ingenuity to bring the ideas and the money together. [Illustration: Plan No. 7] Plan No. 7 is of an eight-room house, and is fairly representative of the ideas expressed. The general form, it will be seen, is square. It is a two-story house with a reception-hall, parlor, dining-room, kitchen, china-closet, pantry, and stair-hall on the first floor; there are three chambers, the servant's bedroom, the bath-room, and a communicating hall on the second floor. The first floor is ten feet six inches high, and the second, nine feet six inches. From the second floor there is a stairway going to the attic, which is large and roomy, and which may have various uses. The cellar is seven feet high, and is well lighted by having the joist set well up from the grade line. There may be a laundry here, and, separated from it by a door, we may have a coal-cellar and a furnace-room. As we approach the house, there is, first, a broad porch about eight feet in width, and fourteen feet in length. At a slight additional expense, say fifty dollars to sixty dollars, this porch might be extended across the entire front. Before reaching the front door, there is a small vestibule,--arranged with or without storm-doors, as may be thought desirable. It is the impression of the writer that storm-doors are seldom used. The distinctive feature of this house is the hall, which is large enough--thirteen feet six inches by fifteen feet--to be used as a sitting-room. In the front part of this hall, and at the right as we enter, are a window-seat and a broad window in front and immediately above it; this is slightly separated from the main room by the small pilasters or casings on each side. Immediately in front of the doorway, there are a grate and mantel set in one corner of the room. There are large doorways, five feet wide, leading into the stair-hall immediately back of this room, and into the parlor at the left as we enter. In this case there are merely door openings, portières or curtains taking the place of ordinary doors. Sliding-doors might be used in addition to the curtains, and thus have the advantage of both curtains and doors. From this room the outlines of the stair-hall and the stairway are visible or not, according to the arrangement of the portières. There is a side entrance into this hall, and from it one may go into the kitchen by passing through two doors. It is a good principle in planning a house always to have two doors between the kitchen and any other part of the house. One door could as well be used in this instance, but a second one is added to make the isolation more complete. In the plan here given, it may be noticed that there are cellar stairs passing under the main stairway in the hall. The dining-room may be entered either from the front parlor or from the stair-hall. In each case doors are used. It is always desirable to have a dining-room so arranged that it may be closed from the other parts of the house. There is a grate in each of the two principal rooms, the hall, the parlor, and the dining-room, and all communicate with a single stack. This is much more economical than having three distinct stacks, which are so frequently used for accomplishing the same result. The only other chimney stack is in the kitchen. The two answer every purpose. The outside corners of the dining-room are cut off at an angle of forty-five degrees, so that the end of the dining-room presents the form of a large bay window. In the middle space at this end may be placed the sideboard, in which event a window will be placed over it,--that is, well toward the ceiling. The dining-room communicates with the kitchen through a large pantry, eight feet square, or through a slide in the back of the china-closet. In the kitchen there are broad windows on the two sides, and a door leading into the back yard. In following the stairway to the second floor, it will be noticed that there is a broad landing something more than half-way up, and that there is a large window, slightly above it, which lights the hall below, and partially lights the one above. The advantages of having a stairway which lands approximately in the centre of the house, as does this one, is that no room is lost by having long halls which have to lead from the front to the rear of the house. All we need have is a short hall in the centre of the building, which will communicate with the rooms around it. Another convenience of this arrangement is that all of the front of the house is utilized for chambers. Where the stairway lands in the front of a house, there must either be a long hall, which is a waste of room, or one must pass through one or more chambers to get to others. In this plan the rooms are arranged around the hall, there being three large ones over the three principal rooms below. In each of these chambers there is abundant space for the usual bedroom furniture,--viz., a bed, dresser, wash-stand, and chairs. In these rooms there are closets, and at the end of the hall there is a store closet for bedding, etc. The servant's room, as shown, is over the kitchen, as is also the bath-room. [Illustration: Fig. 12.] It may be noticed that the fixtures in the bath-room--that is, the bath-tub and closet--are directly over the sink below, so that the pipes may have the most direct and the shortest runs possible, which is not only economical, but also safer from flooding in case of accident. The tank in the attic, which contains the soft or cistern water, is directly over the tub, and the laundry sink in the cellar is directly under the kitchen sink. Thus, from cellar to attic, all the plumbing fixtures are in line, and all pipes exactly vertical, excepting where it is desirable to take a short branch to connect the fixtures. Having the bath-room slightly separated, as it is, from the main hall, it is safer, from a sanitary point of view, than if it opened directly into the main hall. There is a closet for soiled linen next to the bath-room, which is accessible either from it or from the short hall leading to it. The stairs to the attic lead out of the hall, as shown. The attic is floored, but is otherwise unfinished. If found desirable, one or more rooms could be finished here, which would be quite as large and pleasant as any of the other rooms in the house. This house can be finished complete, including fences, sheds, walks, gas fixtures, plumbing, mantels, and furnace, for $2,900. Fig. No. 12 is an elevation. CHAPTER XVII. "WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT."--A CONVENIENT PLAN.--MEETING THE WANTS OF PEOPLE WHO BUILD. Floor plans develop from the varying necessities of those who build. There is no reason why the same arrangement should suit any large number of people. A floor plan, if carefully and thoughtfully made, will meet the requirements of the individuals whose wants are particularly considered. While there are certain general principles, which affect the value of a floor plan for good or evil, the detailed requirements are almost as varied as the tastes and dispositions of the occupants. A lady and gentleman come into an architect's office, and explain that they are intending to build, and want to look at something with a view of selecting a plan. The architect has a great many plans which he might show them, but he knows well enough that none of them will be selected. He says:-- "I shall be glad to show you anything I have, but not with the expectation of finding something that will please you. By doing so, I shall probably find out what you do not want, and in that negative way meet your requirements." "I think I know what we want," says the lady, "but I do not know just how to arrange it. The stairways bother me, and there are things which I do not get to suit me." "Well, tell me what, you want, and then we will make a sketch; and from that, corrections; and, in the end, we shall probably have something satisfactory, though not wholly so at once." "Before we go any farther," says the gentleman, "I want to say that we have only twenty-five hundred dollars to put into a house." "Yes, that is all we can afford," says the lady; "but I can tell you what we want." The architect reaches for a note-book and a piece of paper. "We want a reception-hall, with a grate and stairway in it. There must be a small vestibule, with a place for overshoes, hats, and overcoats. Somewhere near the reception-hall, or in it, I want a closet where I can put my own wraps, and those of the children, and other things which I do not care to keep upstairs, and yet wish to have out of the way. It does not need to be a large closet, but must not be unusually small. We want a parlor and dining-room, which connect with the reception-hall. The parlor will be used as a sitting-room not a little, but not in the ordinary way, for the reason that I stay upstairs with the children most of the time. I do my sewing there. If I should use the parlor regularly as the sitting-room, I could receive my callers in the reception-hall. It would be nice if we could have some kind of a window-seat in that room. We want a grate in the sitting-room, but not necessarily one in the dining-room. I want a back stairway, but it must not go up directly from the kitchen. The kitchen and pantry I want you to make as convenient as possible in a house of this cost." "How would a combination stairway do?" "Oh, I don't want that at all. It would be bringing the two together. I want the rear stairway in the rear of the house, and entirely separate from the one in front. It should land near the girl's room on the second floor, so that it can be cut off from the rest of the house. We must have plenty of closet-room upstairs." "How many children have you?" "Two: a baby and a little boy about six years old." "Then you must have at least four bedrooms," was suggested. "For the present, the baby can sleep in your room, and the boy in a room next to and connecting with it. There must also be a guest's room and a servant's room." "Yes, that will have to do for the present; but don't forget the bath-room, and be sure to have plenty of closets. There is one thing I had almost forgotten. There must be some arrangement so that the servant can get from the kitchen to the front door without going through the dining-room; but we don't want the smells of the kitchen to get into the front part of the house." After two or three sketches had been made, the result, as here illustrated, was reached. The architect has it in mind that the space at the right of the entrance door in the vestibule would serve as a place for overcoats and other winter equipments. He suggests that a portière be placed between the vestibule and the opening leading into the reception-hall. This will prevent draughts of cold air from making their way into the front room when the door is opened. It will also lend a certain amount of privacy. The porch is placed in front, as a matter of course. In the recess of the hall which is made by the vestibule a window-seat is placed. In the rear of the reception-hall is the closet required. As a means of getting from the kitchen to the reception-hall without passing through the dining-room, two doors are arranged leading to a passage under the stairs. This will prevent the passage of kitchen odors over the house. The parlor and dining-room are arranged as shown. Between the window and the door leading to the china-closet is space for the sideboard. The pantry is separated from the china-closet by the cupboard of the former. It has doors above and shelves below. The ice-chest is placed in the pantry. It is readily accessible from both china-closet and kitchen. [Illustration: Plan No. 8.] The passageway to the second floor is from this room, and, considering the limited means and large general requirements, this arrangement will no doubt be satisfactory. The stairway is accessible from both dining-room and kitchen. As there is a bath-room and water-closet above, there is no necessity for carrying slops downstairs and through the kitchen. The kitchen has the usual fittings. The passage to the cellar is under the front stairway. As will be remembered, there is a door shutting this passage from the reception-hall. Upstairs there is a closet in each room, two opening into the hall--one for bed linen, and one for dust-pans, brushes, etc. There is also a closet in the bath-room. The attic stairway is shown. An inspection of Plan No. 8 will show how all of the requirements were met. Cost, as per schedule "B," $2,200. CHAPTER XVIII. TWO GOOD ROOMS IN FRONT.--THE COMBINATION PANTRY.--TOO MUCH CELLAR A BURDEN.--$2,500. In Plan No. 9, the reception-room contains the front stairway. This stairway lands near the front of the house on the second floor, for which reason we are enabled to have in the front part of the house the two rooms which are most used on each floor. We have the two chambers above, and the reception-room and the sitting-room below. If we had a long, narrow stair hall constructed in the usual way, we should have the sitting-room towards the rear, and only a little alcove bedroom over the hall in front. The dining-room, which is a large room, is connected with the front part of the house by sliding-doors. It has a grate in one corner of it. On general principles, a grate has no business in the dining-room. It is nearly always at some one's back, and makes him uncomfortable at meal time. Being in the corner of the room, it is farther from any one than it would be if located on a side wall: hence it may be allowed. There is a porch in the rear of the dining-room, and between the door leading to it and the door to the china-closet there is a space for a side-board. There are two windows at the end of this dining-room. The door which passes into the pantry should be on double spring-hinges, so that it will swing both ways. One can push against it and open from either side, and when it is released it will take its natural position. [Illustration: Plan No 9.] The pantry is a large one. Pantries, in general, may be regarded as a kitchen annex--a store-room and preparing-room. This pantry is on the combination plan. It connects with the china-closet by means of a slide. Aside from this china-closet, which projects into it, there is a cupboard with double doors at one end, a flour-bin at the side, a pastry table next to it, and a refrigerator by the window. One reason for placing this refrigerator near the window is, that a flight of steps and a platform might be arranged on the outside, so that the iceman could put in the ice without going through the kitchen. We go down cellar from this pantry. [Illustration: Fig. 13.] There is a cellar under about half of this house--the kitchen and the dining-room. It should have a cemented floor, and numerous windows for lighting it. The part under the kitchen could be used for a laundry, that under the dining-room for coal storage and furnace. There could be an excavation under a part of the sitting-room for vegetable storage. "Why not put a cellar under the whole house? It would cost but little more," has been asked many times. It is the little things, the smaller economies, in a building of this kind which makes the difference between an expensive house and a house of moderate cost. Every foot of cellar space beyond what is needed for actual use is a burden to the housekeeper. The arrangement has more to do with the number of apartments than with the amount of space. We have a laundry-room, a place for furnace and fuel, and a room for vegetables, which is about all that can be used. From the cellar we can go up the stairway and into the kitchen, from the kitchen to the second floor, and from the second floor to the attic. It is a large attic, a place for large rooms if one should need them. Under any circumstances this attic should be floored. There could be no better place for general storage, and at times for drying clothes. It seldom happens that two houses from exactly the same plan are built. While this plan has pleased many people, there are others who would not be attracted by it; who would not care to build this house as their home. The universal floor plan has never been made, and never will be. There are general principles running through all plans which are valuable, and if rightly understood will contribute to the improvement of the homes of the people. Fig. 13 is an elevation. Cost, without appurtenances, $2,500, as per schedule "B." CHAPTER XIX. SITTING-ROOM AND PARLOR IN FRONT.--A CONNECTING VESTIBULE.--A CENTRAL COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--GOOD ROOMS IN THE ATTIC. When we say that the sitting-room should be in the front part of the house, it does not necessarily imply that the parlor should be disturbed. As shown in Plan No. 10, they may both be in front. The vestibule, which is large enough for a hat-rack, and for the occupants of the house to stand while putting on their overshoes and wraps, is in front of both parlor and reception-room, but yet in a way so as not to disturb the view to the street from either of these rooms. We cannot have all of the rooms in front. The kitchen we do not want there. The dining-room is convenient if placed immediately in the rear of the sitting-room. Thus we have two rooms in front and two in the rear. This is practically a square house. The old habit has been to place the stairway along one side of the parlor in the hall which served as a passageway from the front to the rooms immediately in the rear. This distribution of halls is what has thrown the sitting-room back of the parlor. In the plan here given the change has been made so that the hall has relatively the same position that did the sitting-room in the past, though it is by no means as large. It is essentially a stair-hall, and incidentally a passage. As placed, we may enter it from the parlor, sitting-room, dining-room, or kitchen. Its position is central. There are two doors between this stair-hall and the kitchen. The central position of the stairway has other advantages than those just stated. It makes long halls on the second floor entirely unnecessary. As will be seen by looking at the floor plan, it gives two good bedrooms in front. [Illustration: Plan No 10.] The dining-room is immediately in the rear of the sitting-room. There may be sliding doors connecting these two rooms. One door, three and a half feet wide, usually makes a sufficiently large opening for the dining-room connection. There are sliding doors between the parlor and sitting-room, and dining-room and sitting-room, as shown. The kitchen has the advantage of a certain amount of isolation from the rest of the house, for the reason that there are two doors between it and any other room. The pantries are arranged with reference to their most convenient use. In the kitchen-pantry there are places for a refrigerator, flour-bin, bread-board, and cupboard. The dining-room pantry is a china-closet, with glass doors above and closed doors below. The doors connecting the dining-room pantry or passage should be hung on double-spring hinges. In the plan of this house it is shown how we may go from the kitchen to the same landing that is used for the main stairway, and thus avoid the necessity for a distinctively back hall and back stairway. However, if it is so desired, it is easy to place a stairway in the rear, and thus have them entirely independent. In that event a room may be placed over the pantry, and be used by the servant. This part of the house could be cut off from the front rooms and the bath-room on the second floor by a door. But to take the house as it is, we have a combination stairway, there being two doors separating the kitchen approach from the common landing in the main stair-hall. On the second floor there is a hall about fourteen feet long from which we pass to two bedrooms in front, two in the rear, the bath-room and the store-closet. Each room is independent. They may be connected one with the other as family necessities suggest. The store-closet is accessible from the hall, as such a closet should be. This makes it available from any of the rooms. The bath-room is directly over the kitchen. In each bedroom there is a place for a bed, a dressing-case, and a wash-stand, which is not always the case in bedrooms. If there is a place for these things, if the dressing-case bears its proper relation to the sources of light, if it is so placed that the light from the window or from the gas shines in the face of the user, if the wash-stand is conveniently disposed, and there is room at the side of it for a slop-jar, if there is a large closet, then the architect has done his full duty in the arrangement of the bedroom. The room that is called the family room should be especially well cared for in the matter of closets. A hundred dollars would lath and plaster the entire attic of this house, and provide a room in the front part which could be used by the boys or the servant. There is no objection to this except in the necessity for climbing an extra pair of stairs. The mere mention of a bedroom in the attic is distasteful to many people. It arouses memories of hot, dusty, and uncomfortable places in which they have passed the night. All this depends on the attic. The roof in this house is pitched at an angle of forty-five degrees. The house at the narrowest point is 29. feet wide. This would make the attic at the highest point 14-1/2 feet. We can stud down from this and have a nine-foot story and at the same time a large room, one which would have none of the disadvantages of a half-story room, and which would have all the advantages of a well-ventilated, comfortable bedroom, for summer or winter. The plastering of the attic suggests neatness. Having it well lighted by dormers exposes all disorder. Cost, as per schedule "B," $2,600. CHAPTER XX. A COMPACT PLAN.--AN ISOLATED RECEPTION-ROOM.--COMBINATION STAIRWAY.--DESCRIPTION OF THE FLOOR PLAN.--CELLAR ARRANGEMENT.--DINING-ROOM AND CONSERVATORY.--ANOTHER PLAN. The floor plans in No. 11 are of a house of small area, 30 × 34-1/2 feet, for body of the structure. There is a porch in front, a circular bay window at one side, and a pantry and china-closet projecting at the rear. In the house there are eight available rooms besides the bath-room and the attic. In the attic, rooms quite as liberal as any in the house could be constructed at a small expense. On the first floor, as we enter, there is the reception or sitting hall, which is so common in the more modern arrangements of dwellings. This reception hall or room has a certain amount of isolation from the passage which leads from the vestibule to the stairway and the rear portion of the house. It may be separated therefrom by curtains or portières. It would be entirely possible to separate the two by means of sliding doors, in which event the opening from the room into the passage would have to be a little narrower than shown in the drawings. This room could be used as the office of a physician, or of a gentleman who did more or less business at home. By making the front vestibule about six inches deeper, a separate entrance to this room could be provided. In this event, a door from the room into the passage leading to the living part of the house would be a necessity. The circular bay end of this room would present an attractive feature. The windows in this part of the room could be placed about four feet from the floor, in which event book-shelves could be arranged below them. The window in front goes to within seventeen inches of the floor. Under the stairway, and leading from this room, may be placed a very liberal closet, in which there should be a small window. Leading from the passage is the stairway, and two closets. The little passage in which one closet is placed is separated from the hall by a door. There is another door opening from this passage into the kitchen. Thus there are two doors between the kitchen and the front part of the house. This arrangement has in mind the isolation of the kitchen from the other rooms in a way to prevent the passage of the usual kitchen odors. [Illustration: Plan No 11.] The stairways in this house are of the class known as combination stairways; while they are convenient and easy of construction, there is a certain amount of complication in their arrangement which makes them difficult of description so as to be understood by those not accustomed to examining floor plans. There is the stairway from the front hall to the floor above, and one from the kitchen to the landing of the front stairway. The landing of the front stairway and that from the kitchen stairway is in common; that is, it is the same. For the purpose of making this understood, it may be well to say that one may go up the stairway from the front hall to the landing, some eight steps, and from thence down into the kitchen, or he can turn right face and go to the landing on the second floor. This part of the stairs is used coming up from the kitchen as well as from the front hall. However, the kitchen stairway is separated from the landing by a door. There is another door at the foot of this kitchen stairway. In coming downstairs, one may turn to the right, open a door, and go down into the kitchen; or, he may turn to the left, and go down the front stairway into the hall. Thus it will be seen that the combination stairway is a front and rear stairway together, with separate entrance from both parts of the house,--one from the kitchen, and one from the front hall. It must be confessed that there is a certain amount of compromise in an arrangement of this kind, but it is a saving of both space and money, and is tolerable on this account. By this plan everything is concentrated, and without the serious drawback which extra cost, or a smaller number of rooms, would imply to those who have only a little over two thousand dollars to spend for a house, without appurtenances. The head room for the stairway, coming up from the kitchen, is secured under the bath-tub in the bath-room immediately above. The cellar stairway is clearly indicated as going down parallel to the kitchen stairs and under the front stairs. The cellar in this house should be under the kitchen, stairways, and the reception-hall; that is, it would occupy all of one side of the house. In this cellar plan the principles set forth in the previous chapter on cellars are carried out. [Illustration: Cellar Plan.] The parlor is thirteen and one-half by seventeen feet in size. It is connected with a hall by wide sliding doors, so that about one-half of this side of the room may be open. The grate opposite the sliding doors in the parlor would present a very beautiful view from the hall and stairway. The sliding doors between the parlor and dining-room are placed there more in deference to custom than through any personal sense of their fitness. Sliding doors do not have the quality of excluding sound or odors that is desirable. The ordinary hinged door is better in this respect. This room which would commonly be called a parlor would really be used as a living-room, excepting by those who use the dining-room or one of the second-floor chambers for that purpose. Our dining-room has an independent connection with the front hall, so that we do not have to go through the parlor or the sitting-room to reach it. A little extra money, say seventy dollars, would place a conservatory at one side, at one corner, or at the end of this dining-room. Fifty dollars would give a bay window. As it is, we have two windows of the ordinary kind at one side of the room, and none at the end. A very good arrangement, when bay or conservatory is not used, would be to take one of these windows at the side and place it at the rear end, though near the outside corner of the room. This would give space between the windows and the china-closet door for a sideboard. The window at the side of the dining-room, if the other were moved to the end, should be in the middle of the wall space; that is, opposite the centre of the flue. From the dining-room we go into the kitchen through the china-pantry, which is marked "passage." This china-pantry has a little window at one side, and at the end a separate apartment for chinaware, which is closed from the passage by means of glass doors. The doors leading from the passage into the dining-room and kitchen should be hung on double-swinging hinges. There are those who would say that there should be no door from the kitchen into the passage leading from the dining-room to the front hall. It would probably be well to retain this door in this position, and have a bolt on the side of the door toward the hall. Thus the mistress of the house can close it, and keep it closed at will. Another thing that might be done would be to place a strong spring on this door which would always keep it closed. The windows in this kitchen should be placed about three feet from the floor, so that tables may be placed under them. There is a place for a gas-stove between the two windows, or even under them if desirable. The porch at the rear of the kitchen may be enclosed with lattice work, or, what is better, coarse louvered slats, like those of a shutter. In either event, it could be covered with screen wire, and made a part of the kitchen in summer. In the plan, however, nothing of this kind is indicated. The door which leads from the porch into the pantry is a small one, placed above the ice-chest, and is for the use of the ice-man. [Illustration: Plan No 12.] The arrangement of rooms upstairs will be readily understood. Leading out of the hall is a store closet for bedding, etc. It is located so as to be accessible from all rooms. From the front end of the hall a door leads into the stair passage to the attic. Plan No. 12 is the outgrowth of Plan No. 11. In it there is a lift running from cellar to attic, as shown. The only important difference between it and No. 11 is in the size of the library. Cost, as per schedule "B," $2,600. Fig. 14 is an elevation: see page 147. CHAPTER XXI. WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR $1,600?--THE CLOSET IN THE HALL.--A SMALL CONVENIENT KITCHEN.--CLOSETS IN THE BEDROOMS. This house--Plan No. 13--was finished at a cost of less than $1,600. This included, besides the house itself, a woodshed, well, and cistern. There is a cellar under the hall and parlor. The building has a brick foundation, and the wood-work begins two feet above the grade. The stud-walls of the exterior are lined, first with dressed sheathing, then with heavy building-paper, and finally covered with weather-boarding. The first and second tiers of joists are two by ten inches; the ceiling-joists of the second story are two by eight inches. All of the studding is two by four inches. The windows have box frames with iron weights and cotton cords. The first story is ten feet high, the second eight and a half feet. These details of construction are mentioned so that any one interested may know that it is a substantial, well-constructed building. The interior finish is of pine, part of which is varnished and the remainder stained and varnished. The front door and stairway are of quartered oak. The front porch is 10-1/2 feet wide and 7-1/2 feet deep. It has a high roof over it, as will be seen by the elevation. The entrance, being at one side of the porch, gives more available space for uninterrupted use during the warm weather. The hall is 10 feet wide and 10-1/2 feet long. The stairway has first two steps to a broad landing, and then a continuous movement to the second floor. If this landing were reduced in size by making the approach more direct, say turning directly to the left as one enters the door and going through a landing the width of the stairway before making the general ascent, there would be more available room in the hall. It is shown this way in the drawing, because it is the way the house was built. There is a closet in this hall. There are many houses built without a closet on the first floor, but it is certainly better that one be provided. [Illustration: Plan No 13.] As will be seen, there are three rooms on the first floor, and four and a bath on the second. It is an easy house to care for, because there is no waste space, and all the rooms are readily accessible without extra steps. Waste room means waste of energy and waste of money in more ways than one--waste not only as to the unnecessary expenditure in the cost of building, but in carpets, and in the labor of sweeping and caring for them. [Illustration: Fig 14.] In the parlor at the right of the hall are two windows and a grate; one window is in front and the other at the side. The dining-room is similarly equipped. It has a large china-closet which connects with the table in the kitchen by means of a slide. There is also a door between the kitchen and dining-room. Eleven by twelve and a half feet is not large for a kitchen. The availability of kitchen space is not entirely dependent, however, on its dimensions, but rather upon the disposition of the wall-space and the conveniences which have to do with a kitchen. It will be seen that there is a space for the kitchen-range or stove near the flue which does not conflict with the use of any other part of the kitchen. Also there is a space between the door which leads into the pantry and an outside wall which gives place for a kitchen-safe, which may hold the kitchen utensils. It is out of the way and yet convenient to the range. The safe might be placed opposite the tables at the other end of the kitchen, if thought desirable. The kitchen window is placed about three feet above the floor. This gives wall-space under it. Where a safe is not used, a cabinet, to contain pots, kettles, etc., can be placed there. [Illustration: Plan No 14.] The pantry is quite convenient to the kitchen. There is an enclosed cupboard on one side which has doors and shelves above and below, and in the recess next to the dining-room wall is a place for open shelves. Near the pantry window is a dough-board and a place for flour. Here, also, is the entrance to the cellar. It will be seen that there is a door between the pantry and hall, which makes it possible to pass from the kitchen to the stairway or from the kitchen to the front hall without going through other rooms. The enclosed cupboard in the pantry makes it possible to keep it always tidy. There is a glazed door in the rear of the kitchen. [Illustration: Fig. 15.] It may be noticed that there is not a large hall to be carpeted or swept on the second floor. This hall is well lighted by a window at the side. From here one can go into any of the rooms on the second floor. As to the bedrooms, there is a convenient place for bedroom furniture in all of them. There is at least a choice of two places for each bed, a space for a dressing-case where it will get the best light, and room for a wash-stand. There is a closet in each bedroom, of ample capacity. The right-hand house in Fig. No. 10 shows the exterior of Plan No. 13. Plan No. 14 is another edition of Plan 15. The room lettered parlor is properly a sitting-room. By dispensing with the grate in the reception-hall this house could be built, as it was at one time, with a stairway meeting the one coming up from the dining-room and passing from thence to the second floor. The elevation of this house shows it with an attic, though the plan does not contemplate this arrangement. Without the attic and with a lower-pitched roof, this building, without appurtenances, can be finished for $1,500. Fig. 15 is an elevation of Plans No. 14 and 15. [Illustration: Plan No 15] Plans No. 13 and 15 belong to the same class. No. 15 is more elaborate in its details, and larger. From the sitting-room one passes to the landing where it meets a stairway coming up from the kitchen. From thence there is a common passage to the second floor. On this floor are four bedrooms, a bath-room, and a liberal supply of closets. One of the front chambers is supplied with two, and the hall with two. There is one in the bath-room, and each of the other rooms. The cellar and attic of this house are plastered. The building, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B," cost $2,550. Fig. No. 16 is an elevation of Plan No. 15. [Illustration: Fig. 16] CHAPTER XXII. OUTGROWTHS OF ONE IDEA.--EVERYTHING COUNTS AS A ROOM.--ONE CHIMNEY.--CONVENIENCES OF A CONDENSED HOUSE.--COST FROM $1,600 TO $2,800. Plans Nos. 16, 17, and 18 are all outgrowths of the same idea. It is the most economical general scheme for a house that is represented in this collection. In No. 16 there is not more than forty-eight square feet of hall space in the entire house. This is on the second floor. This plan was devised under an extraordinary pressure for a roomy house for a relatively small sum of money. Everything is made to count for a room. Twelve sets of plans of this general kind were made for as many different owners of houses during one season. This statement is made for the purpose of indicating its popularity. We will look through No. 16 with some respect to detail. It is a one-chimney plan. There are three grates with independent flues in the three principal rooms on the first floor, and two grates with their flues on the second floor. One among other points of economy is the stairway arrangement. It is a combination, front, rear, and cellar all in compact form. There are two doors between the kitchen and the landing of the main stairway. In this respect it is like other combination stairways which have been described. The front and rear stairway come to the same landing, and from thence to the second floor. The front stairway is provided with a railing, baluster, etc., and the one from the kitchen is within an enclosure. There may be portières between the landing and the reception-hall. Thus one may pass from the kitchen to the second floor without coming into view from this room. The cellar stairway goes down under the main stairway. The combination idea is carried out again in the pantry and china-closet. This pantry and its arrangement in detail are fully described in Chapter VI., and illustrated in Fig. 4. The vestibule next to the reception-hall is the one referred to in Chapter V. [Illustration: Plan No. 16] On the second floor are four bedrooms and a bath-room, which is immediately over the kitchen. There is a straight run of pipe in a pipe duct on the inside wall. Fig. 17 is a photographic view of the exterior. It is an ultra shingle design. [Illustration: Fig. 18.] [Illustration: Fig. 19.] [Illustration: Plan No. 17.] [Illustration: FIGURE 17.] Fig. 18 is an elevation of Plan No. 17. Fig. 19 of Plan No. 18. [Illustration: Plan No. 18.] No. 17 is the house in which the general plan was first worked out, and, in some respects, it shows that the idea was then in an experimental stage. However, it indicates a house of moderate size on this plan, whereas No. 16 is a large house. No. 18 is the small size of the same plan. It has been built many times as a rental house. With the furnace it is under lease, in one instance, for five hundred dollars a year. In other cases, without a furnace but including plumbing with the use of city water only, the rent is thirty-five dollars a month. Any of these plans can be worked into a double house by putting the bathroom on the outside, and adding to the amount of window space front and rear. The following is a list of costs, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B":-- No. 16, as a shingle house, $2,800; No. 17, $2,200; No. 18, $1,600. The latter figure includes soft-wood finish throughout. Other sizes of this house have been built where the general construction aggregated $2,400. CHAPTER XXIII. ONE-STORY PLANS.--DESCRIPTION OF FLOOR PLANS.--BATH-ROOM NEXT TO KITCHEN FLUE.--KITCHEN, PORCH, AND PANTRY.--THE EXTERIOR.--ENLARGEMENTS ON THIS PLAN.--OTHER ONE-STORY HOUSES. This house--Plan No. 19--has been built for $1,400. It is a one-story cottage, containing five rooms, a bath-room, and a pantry. Such a house is suited to young people of moderate means, or possibly to older ones, where there are no children, or where the housekeeper does her own work. It will be seen that it gives more of the conveniences of a larger house than are usually found in a cottage of this size. From the porch we pass into a little vestibule, which might be made larger by throwing into it the closet which opens from the sitting-room. From the vestibule we go either into the parlor or the sitting-room. This parlor could be used as the living-room of the house, and the sitting-room as the dining-room, and still meet all the conditions of good housekeeping. Off from the sitting-room is a projection, which could be very comfortably arranged as a window-seat. It could be used as such during warm weather, and as a place for plants in winter. In the corner of this room is a closet, which may be connected with the kitchen by a slide. There are sliding doors between the sitting-room and the bedroom. In the front part of the bedroom is a large closet. It is possible that many would prefer to have a window at this point, and have a smaller closet elsewhere; say, in the corner next to the sliding-door partition. The placing of a closet next to the rear wall would leave no place for a bed as the rooms are now arranged. If the door from the parlor to the bedroom were omitted the head of the bed might be placed against the sliding-door partition, and the closet cut out from the rear bedroom, with an opening leading into the front bedroom. [Illustration: Plan No. 19] [Illustration: Plan No. 20.] From the sitting-room, or from the front bedroom, we pass into a little hall; and from the hall into the kitchen, the bathroom, or the rear bedroom. Over each of the five doors leading into this hall there should be a transom; thus it would be well lighted. The placing of the hall in this way makes all of the rooms surrounding it independently accessible. The rear bedroom has a place for a bed, a large closet, and a wall space for necessary furniture. The availability of a bedroom is not always dependent upon its size. A room may be large, and yet not contain wall space for the furniture. A large bedroom may have a small closet. This bedroom has a large one. The bath-room comes next to the kitchen flue. This is important when we consider that the kitchen flue is frequently the last one in the house to get cool. As here arranged, the pipe connections with the bath-tub would all be short; they would all be near this flue, and on the inside wall. Hence the conditions would be against freezing. There is a hollow thimble in the pipe connections between the kitchen flue and the bedroom. The bath-room might connect with the same flue or flue-stack. Connecting with the bath-room there is a large linen-closet, which is about the proper size and form for folded bed-clothes. It is near the bath-room window, so that when the closet-door is open the contents will be plainly in view. There is a large window in one side of the kitchen, which should be placed three feet from the floor, so as to admit of a table being set under it. If the kitchen stove were placed next the wall separating the kitchen and sitting-room, it could be piped across to the kitchen flue, and in that way leave the wall space adjacent to that flue and near the bath-tub for the kitchen sink. This would bring all the plumbing work together. At one side of this sink could be placed a well-pump, and a cistern-pump at the other. In the rear of the kitchen are a porch and a pantry. We go down cellar directly from the kitchen. Over the headway of the cellar stairs could be placed a closet for various stores, such as canned fruit. This closet, of course, would be connected with the pantry, as shown. The necessity for head room in going into the cellar would make it necessary to place the floor of this closet three or four feet above the pantry floor. On the side of the pantry opposite this closet are two cup-boards, with doors and shelves above and below. There is a place for a flour-bin or flour-barrel under the dough-board, and space for an ice-box next to it. This box should have a drain connecting with the outside. It is intended to have the cellar under the kitchen and bath-room, though it might be extended under the sitting-room also. This part of the cellar might be used as a fuel-room, and thus dispense with wood and coal sheds. With the fuel and water in the house, the housekeeper would be saved much work. Where a kitchen sink is provided, it would be unnecessary even to carry out the dish-water. [Illustration: Fig. 20. FRONT ELEVATION.] There are two flue-stacks in this building. A base-burner would warm the sitting-room and bedroom and temper the air of the parlor. A grate fire in the parlor would complete the work of heating that room. The cut of the exterior, Fig. 20, tells its own story. The porch has turned columns, and a frieze decorated with scroll-work. The window seat may have a window at each end, as shown in the floor-plan, or panels, as indicated in the elevation. There is a gable at the side and over the window seat, which extends the full width of the sitting-room. Plan No. 20 is a development of Plan No. 19. Without appurtenances it cost $1,200. [Illustration: Plan No. 21] [Illustration: Plan No. 22] Plan No. 21 is an enlargement of No. 19. The pantry and china-room are arranged differently. The doors leading into the china-room are glazed in their upper panels with cathedral glass. This obscures the view, and gives sufficient light. These doors were hung on double-spring hinges, so frequently mentioned. Over the dining-room and chamber are two finished bedrooms. They are arranged in the high part of the roof, and, with dormers, would have only a small part of the upper corners clipped. There are two grates more than shown in Plan No. 19. The stairway arrangement may be reversed, so that one goes to the second floor from the hall rather than from the kitchen. This house cost, with two finished rooms on the second floor, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B," $1,700. Plan No. 22 can be built and finished for $800. The gable arrangement would be about the same as in Fig. No. 20. Plan No. 23 was built, including everything that went on to the lot, for $1,600. [Illustration: Plan No. 23] [Illustration: Plan No. 24] Plan No. 24, as per schedule "B," cost $1,100. Plan No. 25, without appurtenances, cost $1,400. One-story houses cost more for the accommodations which they afford than two-story buildings, for the reason that it takes the same foundation and roof for a one-story house that it does for one of two stories of the same area on the first floor. In fact, it usually takes more foundation and roof for a one-story house than it does for a two-story, for the reason that it covers more ground space than would be required for the same or a larger number of rooms in the two floors. [Illustration: Plan No. 25.] [Illustration: Plan No. 26.] No. 26. This is a peculiar type of a one-story house. There is a servants room over the kitchen. It is a very comfortable arrangement. The bath-room stands between the two bedrooms. There is a grate in each of the rooms on the lower floor. The kitchen-sink arrangements are not altogether satisfactory. It is a plan which will never be very popular. It is designed to be finished with shingles for the outside wall. The structure will cost about two thousand dollars, as per schedule "B." CHAPTER XXIV. SIDE-HALL PLANS.--PLANS WITH BEDROOM ON FIRST FLOOR. Plan No. 27 is a side-hall plan with a bedroom on the first floor. The parlor and sitting-room have views directly to the front. The dining-room has a bay end, and a good china-passage to the kitchen. There is a rear side-hall which is desired by a good many people in building a large house. On the second floor are four principal chambers, which are entirely cut off from the rear bedroom, by bolting a door into the rear hall. The bath-room is measurably detached from the rest of the house, which fact will have the quality of satisfying people who are suspicious of all plumbing. This building, without appurtenances, according to schedule "B," cost about three thousand dollars. [Illustration: Plan No. 27.] [Illustration: Plan No. 28.] Plan No. 28 has over two hundred dollars' worth of porch attached to it. It is a side-hall plan, with the entrance to the front. In it the combination stair idea is carried out in a way previously mentioned, but not before illustrated. The rear stairway is direct as to the servant's room, and combined with the central stairway only for entrance to the main part of the house on the second floor. The arrangement of rooms on the first floor makes this plan suitable for use by people who entertain in a small way. This is the plan to which reference is made in the special kitchen article, excepting that there is a change in the position of the cellar stairway. There are two closets and a wash-stand in the hall which connects the kitchen and sitting-room. This building, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B," cost between $2,800 and $2,900. [Illustration: Plan No. 29.] [Illustration: Plan No. 30] In Plan No. 29 the hall is in front, yet the entrance is at the side. The stairway is at the rear end of the hall. A little door is shown at the rear of the vestibule, leading under the stairway. The closet is not very high, yet it is high enough to use as a place to store a baby carriage or a small tricycle. The arrangement of the entrance and the stairs admits of the use of the hall as a room. In the house as constructed, there is a window seat in the octagon end. There is a double railing coming down into the hall. A part of the stairway is open on each side. Opposite is a grate. There are also grates in the parlor and sitting-room. By a little change in the kitchen arrangement, a bedroom could be placed back of the sitting room, and the rear and cellar stairway would occupy measurably the same position as now. The kitchen would have to be a little narrower, and, if desired, might be longer. The pantry and kitchen could both be pushed a little to the left of where they now stand. In this way space for a bedroom could be provided back of the sitting-room, with possibly only a small projection to the right. The rear vestibule could be cut out of the corner of the bedroom. To prevent this from injuring the appearance of the room, a corresponding space, to the left of this vestibule, could be arranged into passage and closets for the bedroom and sitting-room. In this event the rear bedroom wall would extend past the rear kitchen wall. Attention is called to the size of the closets on the second floor. By a slightly different arrangement of the bath-room an additional bedroom could be provided. There is a large attic over the front part of this house. The entire side walls are covered with shingles dipped in stain. There is a mild form of octagon tower over the front chamber. The building, as here planned, cost $2,600, without the appurtenances mentioned in schedule "B." [Illustration: Fig. 21.] No. 30. Plans with bedrooms on the first floor are frequently wanted. This requirement makes an ugly problem. It increases the number of rooms on the first floor, and oftentimes leaves a less number to be provided on the second story. In this plan, including the bath and reception-hall, there are six rooms on the first floor and three on the second, hence a good deal of waste. There is a sink in the rear hall, second floor, with water supply over it, to obviate the necessity of carrying slops down stairs. Cost of building in brick, $3,000. Fig. 21 is an elevation. [Illustration: Plan No. 31.] [Illustration: Fig. 22.] No. 31. This plan is of the same general character as No. 27, but is somewhat contracted. There is a wash-stand in the little room on the stair landing, a few steps above the reception-hall floor. This building, without appurtenances, cost $2,400, as per schedule "B." Fig. 22 is an elevation of this plan. CHAPTER XXV. MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTION.--SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF ELEVEN HOUSE PLANS.--VARYING COSTS.--SQUARE PLANS.--ONE-CHIMNEY PLANS.--REAR AND SIDE HALL. A great many people like a side-hall entrance, as well as one in front. Plan No. 32 gives it. On the second floor there are a large number of bedrooms. The rear stairway comes up in a manner to separate the servant's room from the front part of the house. A double store-closet is shown on the rear of the second floor. The front part of this closet may be left unlocked and the other portion made secure. The bath-room in the rear has direct connection with the water pipes as they come up from the kitchen. All the bedrooms have the proper plan for furniture. This house, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B," was built for about $4,000. Plan No. 33 was used three times in one season, in slightly differing forms, at a cost varying from $2,800 to $3,600, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B." In the matter of floor space it is not an economical house. It makes a very pretty arrangement of rooms on the first floor. There are five good bedrooms and a bath-room on the second floor. The rear part is measurably separated from the front by a door. A projecting bay window from the family bedroom is shown. [Illustration: Plan No. 32.] Plan No. 34. This is another plan that was made to order. It is an economical arrangement, and, in many respects, very convenient and satisfactory. The single stairway, passing from the dining-room, will be the least satisfactory feature about the whole house to the majority of people. However, the idea in this connection is a good one. It is economical in that it dispenses entirely with the hall. Furthermore, this stairway starts from a room which will be used less than any on the first floor. Few people will be inconvenienced by the use of the dining-room as a hall. Part of this stairway goes into a hall leading to the kitchen. The china-room and pantry arrangements in this house are very satisfactory. On the second floor are five bedrooms and a bath-room. The hall is lighted by a dormer over the stairway. This building, without appurtenances, would cost about $2,500, as per schedule "B." [Illustration: Plan No. 33.] Plan No. 35 is a house with a side entrance for small boys, which is sometimes wanted. This plan meets such a requirement. In the rear hall a coat closet is provided; also a rear stairway. The vestibule in front of the reception-hall is sufficiently large to admit of the placing of hat rack and other vestibule furniture. The stairway is a pretty feature, though not satisfactory to all. There is a closet in connection with the music-room. In actual construction one was provided from the kitchen. The second floor is self-explanatory. It was built, as per schedule "B," for $2,500. Plan No. 36. The requirements of the occupants of this building are peculiar. A large number of bedrooms are required. Other than bath and bedrooms, there are only the dining-room, parlor, and kitchen. There is no cellar. There is a combination stairway. One run starts from the front, and the other from the rear. The landing is in the centre on the second floor. Cost of this building, $2,000, as per schedule "B." [Illustration: Plan No. 34.] In No. 37 the stairway is back of the reception-hall. It is distinctively in the centre of the house, and is accessible from all rooms. There is a passage through two doors from the kitchen to the front part of the house. There is also the usual pantry passage. On the second floor there are four good bedrooms, a linen closet, and a bath-room. The cost of the building, without appurtenances, would be about $2,100, as per schedule "B." [Illustration: Plan No. 35.] [Illustration: Plan No. 36.] [Illustration: Plan No. 37.] Plan No. 38 is another square, one-chimney plan. The house is broad enough so that it gives a little better bath-room arrangement than is shown in some of the narrower plans. The great drawback to this house is that there is only one stairway, and that in front. If a cellar is wanted, the stairway can go down under the main stairs. Plan No. 39. This plan has six bedrooms on the second floor. The hall on the first floor has two closets in front. There is a projecting bay window from the first landing of the front stairway. [Illustration: Plan No. 38.] This house was built for a minister. The library room is shown. Projecting from it is a window-seat. On one side is a large fireplace. The dining-room is separated from the front part of the house by a hall. Both sitting-room and dining-room have bay ends of a form to give a view to the street in front. The side-hall communicates with the kitchen as well as the dining-room. In this hall is a closet, presumably for the boys. There is a liberal supply of closets on the second floor. The servant's room is cut off from the other part of the house. The attic is plastered. This building, without appurtenances described in schedule "B," cost $3,500. [Illustration: Plan No. 39.] Plan No. 40. The rear hall with the side entrance is the thing which will commend this house, as far as its floor plan is concerned. It is an old-style plan, and is wasteful of room. The building cost about $3,100, as per schedule "B." Plan No. 41 is an eight-room house with a simple stairway. The outside walls are of brick. It has a side entrance. The plan is a fairly good one. There are two closets on the first floor, opening from the hall. There is an abundant supply on the second floor. The building cost $3,400, as per schedule "B." [Illustration: Plan No. 40.] [Illustration: Plan No. 41.] [Illustration: Plan No. 42.] Plan No. 42 belongs to the centre hall type, which is less common now than in years past. The parlor, as here lettered, is in reality the sitting-room. A bedroom is shown on the first floor. In each of the four principal rooms a grate is indicated. A hall communicating with the second floor from the cellar is shown in the rear. The kitchen, pantry, and china-closet arrangements are such as have been fully described in other chapters. The side-porch, next to the pantry, affords means of putting ice into the refrigerator without coming into the room. The reception-hall and dining-room are connected by sliding doors. Five bedrooms and a bath-room and liberal closets are shown on the second floor. The front stairway to this floor is broad and easy. The details of the exterior of this structure were carefully rendered, and the appearance altogether satisfactory. An outline drawing of the front is shown. Small gables, similar in design to the one in front, show from the sides. The building, according to schedule "B," cost $2,800, without the appurtenances. [Illustration: Fig. 23.] CHAPTER XXVI. EIGHT PLANS.--EACH SUITED TO FAMILY REQUIREMENTS.--DOUBLE HOUSES.--AN ELABORATE FLOOR PLAN.--A SHINGLE HOUSE.--A BRICK HOUSE. Plan No. 43, while not economical as to arrangement, is well suited to the requirements of the people who own it. There are no children. The lady does not employ a servant. The cost of the building would be about $2,200. Plan No. 44. Double houses are not easy to plan where they are very long. This house was built, one part to live in and the other to rent. The living part has an entrance to the front; and the rental part one, removed from it, at the side. The centre partition is lined on both sides with sheathing lath; that is, sheathing with dovetails cut into it, so that the plastering will stick to it, which makes it solid, and, to a certain extent, deadens the sound. The lettering of the plan clearly indicates its arrangement. The cost, without appurtenances, as by schedule "B," is $5,000. Most of the plans given that are only two rooms deep may be made into double houses by enlarging the amount of window space front and rear, and placing the bath-room side of the house on the exposed side. This gives direct light. [Illustration: FIGURE 24.] Plan No. 45. This house is built on a plat of ground having about seventy feet frontage. The side-hall arrangements give two entirely independent rooms in front. There is a good closet in the hall. From here we pass to the dining-room, library, or parlor, and to the second floor. Only one stairway is used. The pantry and china arrangements are shown. We enter the cellar stairway from the pantry passage. The kitchen is planned according to the general principles previously set forth. [Illustration: Plan No. 43.] On the second floor are four bedrooms and a bath-room. Each room, including the bath, is supplied with closets, and there is a linen closet in the hall. A stairway leads to the attic, in which there is an abundance of room for other chambers, should they be needed. The building, without appurtenances, according to schedule "B," cost $2,100. Fig. 24 is a photographic view of exterior. [Illustration: Plan No. 44.] [Illustration: Plan No. 45.] Plan No. 46 is not greatly different in its general arrangement from others that have been shown. The details, however, are more complete, and it is generally more satisfactory than other houses of the same type. The vestibule arrangement in the front hall is very satisfactory. There is a window-seat under the stairs. The china-room arrangement is convenient. It has an open stairway running out of it to the rear of the second story. There is a laundry in the basement, and large closets on the second floor. [Illustration: Plan No. 46.] Fig. 25 is an elevation. It is a very picturesque house. Cost, as by schedule "B," $3,400. Plan 47. This house was designed for a west frontage. It has a porch in front, a pagoda extension on the south side, and a carriage-porch on the north side. There are a set of storm doors and double inside doors. The reception-hall is thirteen by fifteen feet in the clear. At one side of this hall is a grate. There is an archway over the front window. On each side of the mantel are shown seats, which may be treated as a part thereof. The stairway may be seen from this reception-hall. It is separated from it merely by an open-work screen. The parlor connects with the reception-hall by sliding doors. It has a large window in front, and two smaller ones at the side. [Illustration: Fig. 25.] The parlor connects with the sitting-room by sliding doors, as shown. There is a similar sliding door connecting the stair-hall and sitting-room. Thus the reception-hall and stair-hall, sitting-room and parlor, may be thrown together. There is a bay end at the south side of the sitting-room. Sliding doors are not indicated between the dining-room and sitting-room, or between the dining-room and hall. They could be so placed, if desired. There are two doors from the sitting-room to the dining-room, one on each side of the fireplace. There is sufficient wall space in the dining-room that these doors may be folded out of the way. The library connects with the stair-hall and rear hall. [Illustration: Plan No. 47.] There is a large closet room under the stairway. In it is a small closet, and places for a chest of drawers, and a wash-stand. This would be particularly useful in case the library were to be used as a bedroom. There is a door separating the rear from the front hall. There are two doors between the kitchen and the rear hall. The passageway between these doors is lighted by a window. The sideboard in the dining-room is built into one end of this room. The windows are placed about five feet above the floor, and would look well of stained glass. The kitchen is sixteen by sixteen feet. On one side are a table, sink, drain, and table, successively arranged as here named. In the china-closet is an extension of the last-named table. There is a slide which cuts off communication between the china-closet and the kitchen when this table is not in use. In the china-closet are another sink, table, etc., which could be used for washing and caring for the china, glass, and silver that one does not care to take into the kitchen. There is good ventilation in the kitchen. Back of the range are shown two flues. A dry-box is placed on a level with the top of the range, and has openings in the bottom and into the flue. In this way, any articles placed therein will be readily dried and ventilated. The warm air from the range passes through the box and into the flue. In the pantry are a dough-board and flour-bins, a cupboard for stores, and one for utensils. There is space for an ice-box or refrigerator next to the rear porch. It has a drain connection with the outside. The landing of the front stairway is in the front of the building, as shown. The rear stairway is separated by a door from the rear hall. In the bedrooms, the beds, dressing-cases, and wash-stands are indicated on the plan. The front chamber has a circular window in front. Each room can be entered from the hall without going through any other room. There is a grate in each chamber. The closets are all very large; in each of the front rooms they are three and one-half by four and one-half feet. In the south-side chambers one is three and one-half by four feet, and the other is four by four feet. In the rear hall there is a large closet which may be used for general purposes. In all closets on this floor there is abundant room for drawers, hooks, shelves, etc. [Illustration: Plan No. 48.] The bath-room arrangement is somewhat different from that in general use. It will be noticed that the water-closet is separated from the bath-room proper, though connected with it by a door. One can enter either the bath-room or this water-closet room from the rear hall. In the bath-room is a large closet in which may be arranged a chest of drawers, and, if desired, a ventilated receptacle for soiled linen. This closet is lighted by a window. Cost, as by schedule "B," $10,000. Plan No. 48 is of a house well suited to the requirements of the people who live in it. Fig. 26 is a view of the exterior. It is a shingle house of a severe type. The side projection is a combination of brick and stone. Cost, without appurtenances, $3,400. [Illustration: Plan No. 49.] Plan No. 49, without appurtenances, has been built for $3,400. It is finished in both stories in hard wood, has a front and rear stairway, and a side entrance. A central chimney contains four grates. The closet arrangement is as good as in any plan in this collection. Figs. 27 and 28 are elevations. Fig. 28 shows how the conservatory at the side is finished so as to appear with, and as a part of, the porch. [Illustration: FIGURE 26.] [Illustration: Fig. 27.] [Illustration: Fig. 28.] [Illustration: Plan No. 50.] Plan No. 50. This is a plan of a brick house, built, without appurtenances, as per schedule "B," for $10,000. The external walls are of selected dark cherry red brick, laid in red mortar. The stone work, where exposed above grade, is of Ohio red sandstone, quarry face. There is very little detail to the exterior. The general style of design is quiet and unobtrusive. Red sandstone is selected to go with the brick-work in order to present a solid mass of color, rather than a variation between a light stone and brick work. The interior is complete in all its details; the attic is finished as well as the parlor; all is of quartered oak. Over the butler's pantry, in the rear of the hall, is a balcony. Above this balcony is a large window, twelve feet wide and ten feet high, divided with narrow mullions, and glazed with artistic patterns of stained glass. At one side of the hall is a large fireplace, with panelled wood-work above to ceiling. The sides of the hall are wainscoted to the height of six feet with small panels. The ceiling is of oak. The dining-room and library are finished the same as hall, with oak ceiling omitted. Other details of the plan, in the light of what has been said in previous chapters, are self-explanatory. All has been planned according to the general principles set forth. The butler's pantry is arranged so that all china and glassware are cared for in that room rather than in the kitchen. Fig. 29 is an exterior view of this plan. [Illustration: Fig. 29.] PRACTICAL HOUSE-BUILDING. CHAPTER XXVII. PRACTICAL POINTS.--WATER.--LOCATION OF HOUSE ON LOT.--DRAINING THE CELLAR.--MASON WORK.--FOUNDATIONS.--WALKS.--PIERS.--FLUES.--CISTERNS.--DAMP COURSE. In this section of the book it is proposed to consider, in as plain a manner as possible, the construction of all the details of a house. LOCATING THE HOUSE. First is the placing of the house on the lot. If it have an east or a west front, it is common to set the north side of the house within a few feet of the north line. On a small lot this gives more south and sun exposure. The distance the house is set back from the front of the lot depends largely upon what one's neighbors have done or may do. In the case of a north or south frontage, the west side of the house is usually placed to the west line. This brings the east side of the house in the afternoon shade. Under any circumstances, there should never be less than eighteen inches of space beyond the north or west wall. If the projection of cornice is greater, there should be more than this. WATER. The next thing to do when one begins to build, is to provide water for the builder. This is from the city water service, if any; otherwise from a well. If a driven well is used, it is best to locate it on the inside of the house, near the kitchen sink, and allow the builder to provide a common pump for use during building operations. The cistern and well pumps should go into the plumber's contract. It is not necessary that all the plumbing contract be let at the time the city water service is supplied. The method of letting contracts is explained in another part of the book. EXCAVATING. In excavating for a house, the loam, or upper strata of earth, should be separated from that which comes below. After the walls are placed, the openings around the outside should not be filled at once; certainly not until the wall is dry and the mortar set. After this, the grading and filling should begin. The grade line of the house should be slightly above that of the sidewalk, and there should be a general slope to it. If there is an alley in the rear, the slope should be divided to reach it, if possible. The drainage, excavating and filling connected with the plumbing, gas supplies, etc., should be done early in the building period. Thus the entire surface becomes compact and natural by the time the building is finished. If it should become apparent that there will be superfluous earth, it should be removed from the lot. DRAINING. Where there is a clay soil, and in sections of the country where cellars are inclined to be damp, they should be drained. This is done in various ways; usually by running an open farm tile around and below the level of the cellar wall, which should have connection preferably with a dry well; but if nothing better presents itself, with the sewer drain, although a connection of this kind is not safe. The air which will come into this drain from the sewer will contaminate the soil, and in that way affect the health of the occupants of the building. In some instances a sewer connection from this drain is necessary, but only then should it be used. Another method of draining a cellar is to excavate below the level of lowest mason-work, and fill in a depth of about twelve inches with broken stone, which is given a drain connection with proper outlet. The space between stone particles acts as a drain. MASON-WORK. [Illustration: Fig. 30] The mason-work should be of brick or stone. First, we will consider that of brick, which is common to frame houses and is sometimes used for brick buildings. The foundations, walks, piers, and flues should be of hard burned brick. All should be laid wet, excepting in freezing weather, with lime mortar. The outside exposed brick should be preferably of a dark cherry-red color, laid in white or red mortar. The latter is in most general use. The joints for exposed work should be in form as indicated in Fig. 30; in mason's parlance, these are called "rodded joints." The joint is first cut down from above, with trowel, then the rod is placed along the upper edge of the joint, and the mortar is cut away with a knife in the form indicated. Then the vertical joints are trimmed in the same way; thus no mortar projects beyond the face of the brick. This form of joint is desirable for all kinds of exposed work, where one desires better work than is usual in foundations and other exposed brick work. Brick work should have struck or common joints in the cellar and outside exposed walls, only where small cost is of great importance. Brick work should be left rough where it is desired to plaster. Foundation walls and piers usually continue from sixteen to thirty inches above grade; twenty or twenty-four inches is most common. On this is placed a sill in most frame houses. Outside walls and piers generally begin from eighteen to thirty inches below grade line, where not influenced by the cellar. In an ordinarily cold climate the freezing line is four or five feet. Eighteen inches or two feet is usual, however, in the construction of frame buildings, and the results are not unsatisfactory. A damp-course of slate or hard limestone is sometimes placed just above the grade line, to prevent the passage of moisture from the brick wall below to that above. These general statements as to brick work apply alike to that used in brick and frame buildings, as do also the statements as to interior walls, chimneys, etc., which follow. To prevent the passage of moisture through brick walls below grade from the outside, a coating of Portland cement is sometimes used. Coal-tar is also used, but is not as good as the cement. CHAPTER XXVIII. BRICK FOUNDATIONS.--LAYING BRICK.--COLORED MORTARS.--COLORED BRICKS.--BRICK VENEERING.--HOT-AIR FLUES.--DETAILS OF BRICK CONSTRUCTION.--CHIMNEYS AND FLUES.--HOLLOW WALLS.--CELLAR.--ASH-PITS.--GRATES. A brick wall under a frame house is ordinarily nine inches thick; that is, it is called a nine-inch wall. In reality, it is the thickness of the length of a brick. Under these walls are placed footings. For a two-story frame house there are usually two footings of two courses each projecting two inches. Thus a nine-inch wall would have the bottom footing seventeen inches wide. In ordinary American brick work there is what is called a bond to each seventh course. The bond is made by laying the brick crosswise the wall rather than lengthwise. In that way it ties or bonds the wall together in the direction of its length. Below grade, where the brick work is not exposed, the bond is made by laying a continuous course of brick in this way. Above the grade, the bond is made by laying each alternate brick across the wall. This is called a header and stretcher bond. The stretcher is the brick which lies lengthwise the wall in the common way, and the header is the one which shows its head and runs crosswise the wall to form the bond. Thus there is a continuous row of alternating headers and stretchers in the bond course, which occurs, as said before, each seventh course. Another bond, by some brick-layers called the American bond, does not show on the outside. The corners of the inside of the outer row of bricks are clipped, so that the bond brick runs part way into the outside course, and thus is out of sight. It is an artificial arrangement and not satisfactory; it is not good construction. The header and stretcher bond is the best for exposed work, where both appearance and solidity are to be considered. There are other forms of bond,--the old English and the Flemish,--but they need not be considered here. All brick should be thoroughly "slushed" with mortar; that is, all spaces between brick should be thoroughly filled. The ideal condition would be to have all brick excepting the exposed faces entirely surrounded by mortar. The selection of the brick for the exposed fronts in a frame as well as a brick house should be made before the brick work is begun; at least a large supply should be selected and piled up. While the brick cannot all be of the same shade, different shades can be selected for different walls--a lighter shade for a north wall, and a darker for a south wall, a different shade for an east and a west wall. Very slight variations can be made in the ells and projections. This would apply to pressed, stock, or common brick, though pressed brick is usually selected before delivery. The best color for exposed work is a dark cherry red. The best-appearing work with indifferent brick can be made with the use of a reddish brown mortar. The use of this kind of mortar is increasing. White putty mortar is made in the ordinary way, excepting that white sand, similar to that from Lake Pontchartrain, rather than gray sand, is used. It contains more lime than ordinary mortar. The mortar is said to be richer. Black brick are made by heating and then dipping in coal-tar. Enamelled, glazed, and colored brick can be purchased in the larger markets as desired. Various forms of ornamental brick work are possible even where only the common brick are used. Moulded pressed brick are quite common, and the results of their use very satisfactory. Brick veneering is not unusual in sections of the country where brick is very expensive and the effect of a brick house desired. It is a four-inch brick wall anchored to a frame structure. The anchoring is sometimes accomplished by driving twenty-penny nails into wood-work in a way to project into joints. Hot-air flues in brick walls are sometimes tin-lined, though this is not necessary when they are smoothly plastered, providing it is possible to make them eight inches square. If they cannot be made deeper than the width of a brick, four inches, they should be tin-lined. A four-inch hot-air flue can be placed in a nine-inch wall by setting the two outside rows of brick on edge. Hollow walls have not been regarded with great favor during recent years, for the reason that it is difficult to secure their proper construction. A hollow wall is usually twelve inches in thickness, with the middle course of brick omitted excepting at the corners and adjacent to openings. Suitable ties are placed across the open space. CELLAR. It now is in order to consider various features of interior brick work and details which come in connection therewith. Cellars are usually from seven to eight feet deep. As this does not give all the height necessary for furnace or other heating apparatus, it is usually pitted; that is, it is let down into the cellar floor, and a brick area built around the opening to the furnace-door. Because of the necessity for pitting the furnace, the walls of the house adjacent thereto should continue eighteen inches below the level of other walls. Walls inside of cellar should continue to the top of joist. This completely separates the different compartments of the cellar, or from that part of the house where there is no cellar. There should be a man-hole opening to the parts under the house where there is no cellar. Lintels or wooden supports should be provided over all openings in cellar, and over all openings in inside brick walls. Wooden brick should be provided and built in where it is necessary to attach wood work to brick work. Usually this is about two feet six inches apart in a vertical or horizontal direction. The wooden brick should be the thickness of the brick itself and the mortar joints; that is, there should be no mortar above or below a wooden brick. Iron ventilators should be provided; one in each outside wall under each room where cellar windows are not provided. Windows are not usually provided where there is no cellar. CHIMNEYS. It is known that wood-work should not come directly in contact with chimneys. The framework should never rest on a chimney. There are reasons for this other than those which have a regard for safety from fire, one of which is that the chimney is not liable to settle. If it does not, the shrinkage of the wood-work, which in a two-story frame house will sometimes amount to two inches in the height of the building, makes a high place around the flues, where the frame comes in contact with or rests on the chimney. All chimney-stacks should extend above highest point of ridge of roof, and the extreme tops should be laid in Portland cement. All the exposed brick of the chimney should be hard-burned. If due regard were paid to these points, there would be no rickety chimney-tops. All flues should be thoroughly plastered on the inside. If chimneys were plastered on the outside, wherever they come in contact with the wood-work, the complaint of fires from defective flues would be hushed. Fig. 31 illustrates the common form of constructing a chimney breast where a grate is to be used. The flues are eight and one-half inches square. A passage to the ash-pit is shown. The grate opening is two feet wide; the jambs on each side are one foot six inches wide; thus the entire width of the breast is five feet. Other dimensions as indicated. Where there are grates on two floors of the house, one above the other, or where it is desirable for any reason to have a flue pass around a grate, it is necessary that the breast should be five feet wide. It is clear that the grate from below must have its own flue out to the top of the chimney. Thus the grate flue from the first story must pass around the grate of the second story, if there be one. If there is no grate above, or if it is not desired to pass a flue around the first-story grate, the chimney breast need be only four feet wide; that is, it would have the usual two-feet opening to the grate, and twelve rather than eighteen inch jambs on each side. On one side of the dotted line is indicated flue construction for a brick wall, and on the other for a wood wall. [Illustration: Fig 31] The hearth should rest on what is called a trimmer arch, which is made of brick. It springs from the chimney breast to the header of wood in front. It is four inches in thickness. It is laid in the ordinary way, and at the proper time is filled on the top with concrete by the mantel-setter. In case a grate on the second floor connects with the ash-pit, one of the flues at the side is used for this purpose. Fig. 32 indicates a common form of corner grate. The flues in this as well as Fig. 31 are drawn close together and come out through the attic and roof in a smaller stem. There should be distinct separation of flues. [Illustration: Fig 32] Ash-pits are frequently made of four-inch brick walls strengthened by brick pilasters. These pits are usually from three to four feet in depth and the width of the chimney breast, and nearly as high as the depth of the cellar. Where more than one grate empties into an ash-pit, it is common to divide it into compartments, one for each fire. The top of the pit is crowned with a brick arch. Ash-dumps are sometimes provided for the grate, depending, of course, upon the kind of grate used, and ash-pit doors of iron for the pits themselves. OUTSIDE CELLAR-WAY. The side walls of an outside cellar-way should continue to the bottom of cellar. It should be floored the same as the cellar itself. AREAS. Areas of brick should be provided around all cellar openings that continue below grade. The bottoms of these areas should be floored with paving-brick. This is better than cement, as it admits of natural drainage. CHAPTER XXIX. STONE MASONRY.--CUT STONE.--TERRA COTTA.--PRIVY VAULTS.--CISTERNS.--FILTERS FOR CISTERNS.--BRICK PAVEMENTS.--CEMENT PAVEMENTS. Stone foundations for dwelling-houses are usually made of native stone, and anything that may be said here must necessarily conform to general rather than special conditions. The best stone that can be used for this purpose is hard, non-absorbent limestone. There are many varieties of stone conglomerates throughout the country which are valuable for foundation uses. Stone should be laid up in lime mortar in the direction of its natural bed in the quarry, with a sufficiency of bond stone. For ordinary dwelling-house work there should be at least one footing eight inches in depth, and six inches projection on each side of the wall. Stone walls for foundations are usually made not less than eighteen inches in thickness. It is not easy to lay a good stone wall less than eighteen inches in thickness. While the same number of cubic feet of stone work may cost less than brick work, a stone foundation ordinarily would cost more than one of brick for the reason that a brick wall does not have to be so thick. It usually takes about half the number of cubic feet of brick work that it does of stone work to answer the same purpose. Where stone is available at low cost it is best to use it. Interior brick walls may rest on stone footings. The inside of stone walls should be neatly pointed after other work has been finished. Stone work above grade may be finished in many ways--random range work, rubble work, regular course range work, etc. After the other work has been finished, the mortar should be raked out a short distance and a finish joint added. CUT STONE. Cut-stone work is too large a subject to consider in detail. There are several points which cannot be overlooked. There should be drips cut under all projections, so that the water will not run down the other stone or brick work and stain it. A drip is merely a little V-shaped channel cut on the under side of the stone work. They are found on the under side of most window-sills. In door, window, or other openings, the stone work should underlie or overlie all wood work at least two inches. This may be explained by stating that the stone window-sill should underlie the wood sill two inches, and the window cap should overlie the wood cap at least two inches. Generally speaking, coping should project on each side of the wall about two inches. Sills should extend at least one inch beyond the face of the wall. Window-sills should be no less than five inches in thickness. Door-sills should generally be about seven or eight inches, and extend at least one inch beyond the face of the wall, and through its full thickness. The water table of the stone foundation usually forms the window cap of the cellar windows, and the cap course, which comes at the grade line, the cellar window-sills. In this case it is necessary that the stone should run farther into the wall where the openings occur. Stone steps are not over six and one-half to seven and one-half inches in thickness, with from nine to twelve inch treads. They underlie and lap about one inch, and have walls, the same material as the foundation, for lower supports. These walls should go to the full depth of the house walls with which they come in contact. Thus there is no danger of settling. Stone steps are frequently used in the front of the yard from the side-walk to the grade level where there is considerable elevation. In such cases it is necessary to use stone side pieces for the steps, to prevent caving and to make a neat finish. Where flagging is cheap, it is well to use it for walks and porch floors. TERRA-COTTA WORK. Terra cotta is the perfection of brick-making. It is the only building material which is not affected by changes of temperature, or other natural or artificial conditions to which the building may be subject. It may be described as being a very plastic material; that is, anything can be done with it. It can be worked into any form that is desired, excepting long lintels, and even in that case there are means of arriving at the desired result and giving a lintel form in a very proper manner. Ornamental terra cotta is modelled by artists before being burned, and the best results may naturally be expected. PRIVY VAULT. The size of the privy vault is usually three and one-half by four and one-half feet, elliptical, and from ten to twenty feet deep, according to the character of the soil. Usually it is walled up with four-inch dry brick wall. Piers should be provided at corners for privy building. In some instances it is required that the privy vault should be made water-tight. In that case it should be built the same as a cistern, with round bottom and cemented interior surface. When it is desired to connect the privy vault with the sewer, it should be cemented in the manner just described, with a siphon vitrified pipe connection with the drain to the sewer. The siphon prevents solid rubbish, which may be thrown into the vault, from getting into the drain and clogging it. CISTERN. The cistern is generally located near the rear kitchen wall, say ten or twelve feet therefrom. The walls, arch, and neck are usually four inches in thickness when capacity of cistern does not exceed one hundred and twenty-five barrels. Otherwise the brick work mentioned should be eight inches in thickness. The brick should be laid in domestic cement, and smoothly coated with Portland cement. It should be connected with the down spouts of the house by means of vitrified drain-pipe, the same as described in connection with plumbing work, though it has no connection therewith. The following table gives capacity of cisterns of various sizes. CAPACITY OF CISTERN IN GALLONS FOR EACH TEN INCHES IN DEPTH. +-------+----------++--------+----------++--------+----------+ | DIAM. | || DIAM. | || DIAM. | | | IN | GALLONS. || IN | GALLONS. || IN | GALLONS. | | FEET | || FEET. | || FEET. | | +-------+----------++--------+----------++--------+----------+ | 2 | 19·50 || 6-1/2 | 206·85 || 12 | 705·0 | | 2-1/2 | 30·50 || 7 | 239·88 || 13 | 827·4 | | 3 | 44·60 || 7-1/2 | 275·40 || 14 | 959·6 | | 3-1/2 | 59·97 || 8 | 313·33 || 15 | 1,101·6 | | 4 | 78·33 || 8-1/2 | 353·72 || 20 | 1,958·4 | | 4-1/2 | 99·14 || 9 | 396·56 || 25 | 3,059·9 | | 5 | 122·40 || 9-1/2 | 461·40 || 30 | 4,406·4 | | 5-1/2 | 148·10 || 10 | 489·60 || 35 | 5,990·0 | | 6 | 176·25 || 11 | 592·40 || 40 | 7,831·0 | +-------+----------++--------+----------++--------+----------+ FILTERS. There are various ways of forming a filter. One is to have a small cistern of eight or ten barrel capacity, located between the main cistern and house. It should be divided by a brick wall laid in mortar, but not cemented on either side. The water enters on one side, passes through the brick wall in the middle, and from thence to the cistern beyond. Another plan is to cement the wall, leave an opening at the bottom, and pack the side on which the water enters with charcoal, sand, and gravel. The water passes through this packing and the opening below to the other side of the filter, and then to the cistern. Still another plan is to build the partition as first described on the inside of the cistern proper. All of the water passes to one side of the divided cistern, and through the partition before being drawn out. Thus it has to pass through the brick before it is to be drawn out. Still another filter is made by building what is called a beehive in the bottom of the cistern. It is a beehive form of brick work, with the pump pipe leading to the inside, so that all water has to be drawn through the brick beehive before it is pumped out. According to this plan, as well as the others mentioned, the water is strained through the brick. It is best that the cistern and independent filter, when used, should be provided with iron rims and cast-iron covers. It is good practice to connect the cistern with a dry well, which is constructed the same as an open vault excepting that the top is arched. This dry-well connection is by means of five-inch vitrified pipe laid in the same manner as sewer pipe. There is a practice, altogether too common among builders, of connecting the cistern overflow with the vault or sewer. Nothing could be worse than this. The water is certain to be polluted. BRICK PAVEMENT. Brick pavements are used for walks around the house, and sometimes for cellar floors. Cement floors, however, are better for cellars. Brick pavement of all kinds should be made of hard-burned bricks, laid on a six or eight inch bed of sand. The brick walk should not be laid until after all the grading and filling of the lot has been done. It is best to leave the brick walks out of the general contract, so that this work can be delayed until after the house is finished. It is a good thing to have the sodding and the paving in the same contract. The contractor who attends to the sodding can work the two together to a better advantage than if the walks were placed and the sodding done afterwards. CEMENT PAVEMENT. Cement pavements are used for walks around the house, and for cellar floors. Cement is more expensive than brick. The surface to be covered should, first, be levelled, then saturated with water; after which is laid a three-inch bed of cement concrete, made of gravel, sand, and cement in proper proportions. Upon this is placed a three-fourth-inch layer of cement mortar. Ordinary American, hydraulic cement may be used for concrete, but for the three-fourth-inch layer nothing but best Portland cement should be considered. Sometimes the cement work in the cellar is done by the plasterer. Outside cement work for walks requires special skill. In most large cities there are those who make a business of doing this work. They have different formulas and methods of reaching the proper results. CHAPTER XXX. CARPENTER WORK.--FRAMING.--SIZE OF TIMBERS.--HEIGHT OF STORIES.--JOIST.--STUD WALLS.--OUTSIDE SHEATHING.--BUILDING-PAPER.--ROOFS.--OUTSIDE FINISH.--OUTSIDE SHINGLE WALLS.--OUTSIDE CASINGS.--WINDOWS WITH BOX FRAMES.--HINGED OR PIVOTED WINDOWS.--OUTSIDE SHUTTERS.--PORCHES.--LATTICE PORCHES. CARPENTER WORK. In considering carpenter work, we will first take up framing, and everything which pertains to the outside of the house. All material used for framing should be sound, square-edged material, free from imperfections tending to impair its use, durability, or strength. In different parts of the country, different kinds of lumber are standard for framing purposes. In the South and sections contiguous to it, yellow pine is used; in the North, white pine, hemlock, Norway spruce, poplar, and even hard wood. It is neither profitable nor desirable in this connection to indicate any particular material; it is natural to use the cheapest that is sufficiently strong for framing. The following table indicates the sizes of timber in common use in framing an ordinary dwelling. Sills, outside walls 6' × 8" Sills, inside walls 6 × 8 Lintels, over openings 6 × 10 Girders, over piers 6 × 10 Plates 4 thick Rafters, 20 on centres 2 × 6 Horizontal purlins, or roof supports 4 × 6 Roof posts 4" × 4" Bridging 2 × 4 Joists, 1st tier 2" × 10" × 16" on centres " 2d tier 2 × 10 × 16 " " " 3d tier 2 × 8 × 16 " " " deck 2 × 6 × 20 " " Studs 2 × 4 × 16 " " Rafters, or deck joist, 16" on centres, when to be plastered. Sizes here given may not be adapted to all sections. There is no occasion for being arbitrary. The sizes may be conformed to the material which is ordinarily used. Stories ten and a half feet high are generally considered the limit in an ordinary frame house at this time. Nine and a half and ten are more common. This is quite different from the general tendency to high stories a few years ago. Certainly, it is more rational. JOISTS. Joists are usually dressed, so that they have about one-half-inch crown or curve on their upper surface, which would make the centre of the room about one-half inch higher than the sides. They should be trimmed so that all are of the same width and form. Double trimmers and headers--that is, double joist--should be framed around all chimney-breasts, well-holes, scuttles, and openings in the wall. In dwelling-house work they should be mortised and tenoned together, as should be the pieces connecting therewith. In very cheap work headers and trimmers are sometimes spiked together. This is not good practice. For very good work, where heavy weights are to be carried, trimmers and headers should be supported on wrought-iron strips. This, however, is not necessary in ordinary dwelling-house work. Joists longer than eighteen feet should be twelve inches in width. Those running adjacent or parallel to partition or other walls should be firmly spiked thereto. Double joists should be placed under all partitions and supports having no support from below. Where the weight is extra heavy, the double joists should be trussed by a two-by-four-inch stud, spiked in truss form, between them. There should be one row of truss bridging to each span or tier, size as indicated. Header should be framed across pipe duct, about eighteen inches therefrom. STUD WALLS. See Fig. 33. Walls and partitions are usually of two-by-four-inch studding. In large houses it is best that the studding be two by six inches, and plates four inches in thickness and the width of the studding are commonly placed at the bottom and top of the walls of each story. Sometimes, however, the studding continues to the height of two stories, and the joists are supported on a one-by-six-inch "ribbon" piece let into the studding. [Illustration: Fig 33] Trusses or supports should be framed over all openings. Sliding-door pockets or runways should be lined with flooring. All corners and angles should be framed solid and have two-inch projections for lathing. Studding four by four inches thick should be framed around all window openings and on three sides of the door openings; bridging, two by two inches, one row for each story. Grounds should be placed on the inside openings, and elsewhere for plastering. The pipe duct, fourteen inches wide, should be placed between studding from kitchen to attic floor. All outside walls of frame houses should be diagonally sheathed with seven-eighths-by-six-inch dressed sheathing. Tongued and grooved material is best for this purpose, although it is not in common use. All sheathing should be covered with six-pound sized building-paper. Sometimes the insides of brick walls are furred. This means that they are lined on the inside with wood strips two inches in thickness, sixteen inches on centres, and then lathed and plastered. This prevents the passage of the moisture through the brick into the inside of the room. Various forms of sheathing lath for inside sheathing of a frame house are now in use. This form of lath contemplates a seven-eighth-inch tongued and grooved sheathing on the inside with dove-tailed channels cut into its surface, which form key-room for the plastering. ROOF. Most roofs can be formed with out-posts and purlins. All can be formed in this way where cost is not considered. An ordinary dwelling-house of the size given in these plans does not require separate posts and purlins. There should be double rafters around all chimneys and openings in the roof. The roof should be sheathed with seven-eighths by four-inch material; where exposed to view, with five-and-one-half-inch beaded flooring. Where deck framing is required, posts and purlins are necessary, size according to weight to be carried. Where shingles are used for roofing, they should be laid four and one-half inches to the weather for sixteen-inch shingles, with two nails to each. It is best that shingles should be dipped in stain, oil, or paint before they are put on the roof. The durability of shingles is not increased by being painted after they have been laid. The ridge finish of the shingle or slate roof should be of galvanized iron, with about four-inch lap on each side. It may be made as ornamental as desired. Wood should never be used for this purpose. Hips and ridges of slate or shingle roofs may be finished with tin or galvanized iron, lapped on each side about three and one-half inches. Gutters of galvanized iron set up on the first course of shingles or slate, with metallic support from above or below, are better than gutters of wood tin-lined. Where slate covering is used, any size slate desired may be employed, bearing in mind that the bond should not be less than three and one-half or four inches. There should be two nails to each slate. OUTSIDE FINISH. All lumber used for outside finish should be thoroughly seasoned, clear, smoothly dressed, and free from imperfections tending to impair its use, durability, strength, or appearance. Poplar is the ideal building material for outside finish. It takes paint better than other woods used for this purpose. However, pine is generally used, for the reason that it is cheaper. Weather-boarding is usually laid with an inch lap four and one-half inches to the weather; three and one-half inches is better. [Illustration: Fig 34] Drop siding, or German siding as it is sometimes called, makes a warmer and better wall than weather-boarding. It is usually six or eight inches wide, and in form and construction as indicated by Fig. 34. Outside shingle walls are now quite common. Shingles are used for ornamental purposes in a large proportion of the houses that are built; in some instances they are used exclusively for outside covering. In such cases they are undressed, and are stained commonly with one of the proprietary stains now on the market. Before being placed they are dipped into the stain for about eight inches from their buts, and are laid in piles to dry. Any desired color may be secured, and there are instances where stained shingled walls have gone without any attention or expense for eight or ten years. Dressed shingles are commonly painted. Their form may be as ornamental as desired. Outside shingles are sometimes laid five and one-half inches to the weather, but four and one-half is better. It is not uncommon at this time to leave all shingles unpainted and unstained. The effect is very agreeable when they become weather-stained. OUTSIDE CASINGS. All horizontal trimmings and casings should be bevelled on the top to shed the water. They should run back under the shingled weather-boarding or other outside covering. There should be tin covering for all projections in excess of one and three-eighths inch. Ordinary window or door casings outside are usually three-eighths inch thick. WINDOWS. All windows in the part of the house regularly occupied should have box frames. Pulley styles should be of hard wood, and the inside bead should be secured with round-headed screws. Sash for plate glass should be one and three-fourths inch thick; side rail, two and one-half inches in rabbet; bottom rail, three and one-eighth inches; and meeting rail, one and one-fourth inch in the rabbet. Sash for common glass may be one and three-eighths inch thick. Other sizes, as given. Sash, for rooms finished in hard wood is better when of the wood in which the room is finished. However, where there is great variation this is not necessary. Quartered oak is the material commonly used for hard-wood sash. Almost any hard wood is more liable to warp than pine. All box frames should be provided with turned axle pulleys. Nothing but the best plaited cotton sash-cord should be used. Necessary weights should be provided. In some of the plans where wide front windows are indicated, the design is called pocket head. There is a pocket above the head of the frame so that a high sash may be run into it. The sash may be pushed up into the pocket; that is, it runs into the wall above the head of the frame. Where the pocket-head window is used, it is necessary that there be a clear space above the frame for the sash to be run up equal to the height of the sash itself. Hinged or pivoted windows have rabbeted frames which are usually one and three-eighths inch thick. They are used for the most part in unfinished cellars, attics, and unoccupied parts of the house, and preferably for pantry, store-room, and, occasionally, bath-room windows. They may be hung on hinges or pivots. Hinges are better, for the reason that fly screens cannot be used where the sash is pivoted. Sills should slant twenty degrees, with drip piece secured to outside. This prevents the storm from blowing water to the inside. OUTSIDE SHUTTERS. Outside shutters are usually one and three-eighths inch thick, with movable slats; if more than six and one-half feet high, they should be made in three panels each. Arrangements are provided by various manufacturers of hardware for opening outside shutters from the inside of the room. They may be swung either from the sides or top at will. When they are suspended from above they act as an awning; they admit the air but not the rays of the sun. Sometimes shutters are cut at the meeting rail, so that the upper or lower section may be opened as desired. PORCHES. At this time it is not usual to provide special ceiling for porches. The rafters and all exposed material are dressed so that they may be painted or stained. Floor joists are not usually more than two by eight inches; sills, about six by eight. The floor should be inclined about one-eighth of an inch to the foot, and made of hard wood, tongued and grooved, not over two and three-fourths inches in width. Edges should be finished with nosings, which are rounded edges. The roof of the porch is usually the same as that of the body of the house. Gutters are similar to those on other roofs. Railing and turned balusters are usual, excepting where an opening for passage is desired. LATTICE PORCH. Framework of lattice porch is generally the same form as other porches. The covering is usually made with one-and-three-eighths-inch material, laid diagonal; openings, one and three-eighths inch. Door and hardware, same as used for other parts of the house, are generally provided. OUTSIDE STEPS. Outside steps of wood usually have hard-wood treads made of seven-eighths-by-two-and-one-half-inch pieces, with three- eighths-inch space between; carriages should be two by ten inches, about sixteen on centres. Railing and posts for steps should be provided if necessary. Lattice should be placed under porches and outside steps, and between all outside piers. Outside lattice-work in yard may be of the same general design as mentioned for lattice-work porches. General statements as to outside wood-work apply alike to brick or frame houses, with certain omissions that should be obvious to an intelligent reader. CHAPTER XXXI. INSIDE WOOD-WORK.--FLOORS.--SOFT AND HARD WOOD FLOORS.--TABULATED STATEMENT OF INSIDE FINISH.--DIFFERENT KINDS OF WOOD.--DOORS AND FRAMES.--FLY SCREENS.--INSIDE CASINGS.--WAINSCOTING.--INSIDE SHUTTERS.--WOOD-WORK FOR PLUMBING.--KITCHEN SINK AND FITTINGS.--KITCHEN TABLES.--CELLAR-SINK FITTINGS.--WOOD-WORK FOR BATH-TUB.--WATER-CLOSETS.--WASH-STANDS.--TANK.--PICTURE MOULDING.--CLOSET FITTINGS.--BROOM-RACK.--CEDAR-CLOSET.--DRY-BOX.--CLOCK SHELF.--CHINA-ROOM FITTINGS.--PANTRY FITTINGS.--STAIRWAYS. INSIDE WOOD-WORK. All material should be perfectly clear, first-class, thoroughly seasoned, kiln-dried, dressed material, free from imperfections tending to impair its use, durability, strength, or appearance. All inside finish excepting floors should be sand-papered. Where an especially good finish is desired, all should be scraped as well. FLOORS. In preparing for floors, it is not unusual to make arrangements for preventing the passage of sound. This is done by deadening. The usual method is to nail strips about two inches and a half from the top edge of the joist, on which are laid one-inch boards. This leaves an inch and a half between their surface and the upper edge of the joist. This may be filled in with concrete, mineral wool, or other non-conducting material. Either is very effective in preventing the passage of sound from the floors to the rooms below. In a dwelling-house where two floors only are in common use, it is only necessary to deaden the second floor. A permanent sheathing floor of the same material that is used for rough siding may be placed over all joists of first and second floors for a floor during the plastering of the house. This does not act as deadening, unless concrete or mineral wool be placed over it. It is well to have a floor of this kind for use during plastering. It also makes the lower floor warmer. It should be covered with building-paper before the finished floor is laid. Finished floors should extend throughout the first and second stories and the attic. They are commonly of pine or other soft wood. The material is tongued and grooved, secret-nailed, and should be smoothed off after laying. The boards should never be wider than five and a half inches, nor less in thickness than seven-eighths of an inch. They should be free from sap, large, loose, or black knots. Hard-wood floors may be of hard pine, oak, maple, or other hard wood that is readily obtainable or desirable. This material should not be more than two and three-fourths inches in width, nor less than seven-eighths of an inch in thickness, and should be tongued and grooved, secret-nailed, and smoothed off and scraped after laying. A better grade of pine flooring than that mentioned may be had if desired. It is best that all floors be laid after plastering. However, this is not the common practice. The carpenter should cut out flooring as directed, and prepare for hearths in proper places. Other inside dressed wood-work should never be placed in position until after the plastering is finished and dry. The following table is from a specification in use by myself, and shows the kind of lumber, style of doors, finish of wood, painters' finish, and rooms supplied with plate glass, and the general style of hardware. The detail specification makes clear the points here outlined. The filling out of the blanks indicates the range and style of finish which frequently occur. The lettering of the doors and finish refers to drawings and details, a part of which are given in this connection. +---------------+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-----+ | | | D F | T O D | P F | R W P | S H | | | | O I | H F O | A I | O I L | T A | | | | O N | I O | I N | O T A | Y R | | | | R I | C R | N I | M H T | L D | | | KIND | S S | K . | T S | S E | E W | | FLOORS. | OF | H | N | E H | - | A | | | LUMBER. | A . | E | R . | G | O R | | | | N | S | S | L | F E | | | | D | S | ' | A | . | | | | | | | S | | | | | | | | S | | | | | | | | . | | +---------------+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-----+ | FIRST FLOOR. | | | | | | | | Front Hall | Qu. Oak. | A | 1-3/4 | -- | -- | -- | | Parlor | " " | A | 1-3/4 |All Oil.| -- | -- | | Sitting-Room | " Sycamore.| A | 1-3/4 | -- | -- | -- | | Library | " " | A | 1-3/4 | -- | -- | -- | | Rear Hall | Gum. | A | 1-3/4 | -- | -- | -- | | Dining-Room | " | A | 1-3/4 | -- | -- | -- | | Chamber | -- -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | | Kitchen | Plain Oak. | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Bedrooms | -- -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | | Pantry | " " | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | China Room | " " | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | | | | | | | | | SECOND FLOOR. | | | | | | | | Front Hall | Gum. | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Chamber | Pine. | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | " | " | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | " | " | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | " | " | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Rear Bedroom | Poplar. | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Alcove | Pine. | E | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Bath-Room | Qu. Oak. | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Rear Hall | Pine. | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | | Other rooms | " | D | 1-3/8 | -- | -- | -- | +---------------+--------------+-----+-------+--------+-------+-----+ It may be said, in general terms, in regard to the different kinds of wood used in finishing a house, that, all things considered, hard wood of one kind or another is preferable, for the reason that it stands the general wear and tear of house-keeping with less evidence of the struggle. Soft wood--pine or poplar--is only to be used because it is cheaper than the other. Quartered oak, quartered sycamore, cherry, maple, walnut and chestnut may be classed as the hard woods in ordinary use in finishing houses of moderate cost. Gum is difficult to class. It is neither hard nor soft. Others might be mentioned in this same connection. Pine and other resinous woods are mentioned as soft woods; as is also poplar, called in some sections white-wood. Any of these woods may be oil-finished, according to the general formula indicated elsewhere, or any of them may be stained. Birch stains very nicely. DOORS AND FRAMES. Door-frames, when rabbeted, should not be less than one and three-eighths inch in thickness. Sometimes the strip is screwed to the frame. In that case the frame is often not more than one and one-eighth inch thick. One and three-eighths inch, however, is better. Front doors or principal entrance doors are frequently hard wood when all the others are soft wood. All outside doors are generally filled with glass in their upper panels. Sliding doors should be the same general design as other adjacent doors. One additional panel to each additional twelve inches in excess of width of other doors may be provided. Sliding doors should be hung from above. Hard-wood doors are usually solid. All excepting pine are best made of a veneer, one-fourth inch thick on a one-and-three-eighths-inch pine body, as indicated by Fig. 35. Sometimes doors are made in two thicknesses of hard wood. This is not as good as a single thickness. Three thicknesses are better. The only door to be recommended, however, is the veneered door. Such doors will not warp; others are liable to do so. Transoms may be hung on pivots, and should be provided with catches, and, if heavy or high, with adjustable lifts. Transoms are sometimes used in doors on the second floor, though this practice is less common than in the past. Where doors with transoms are used, it is not uncommon to have the closet doors extend to the full height of the transom tops, and provide additional top panels. Doors six feet ten inches in height, or less, and not more than one and three-eighths inch in thickness, may be hung on two three-and-one-half by three-and-one-half-inch buts. If higher than this or wider than three feet, they should be hung on three buts or hinges. [Illustration: Fig. 35] Doors in unfinished cellars may be made of two thicknesses of seven-eighths beaded flooring; frames the same as in rooms above. A seven-eighths batten door, with one-and-three-eighths-inch frame, should be provided for man-hole in cellar. Scuttle doors, where required, may be seven-eighths inch in thickness, battened. [Illustration: Fig. 36] Cuts 35, 36, 37 indicate ordinary style of inside door and window finish, the sizes and heights being marked. Doors from dining-room to china-closet and china-closet to kitchen should be hung on double-spring hinges, so that they will swing either way and come back to position. The slide from the kitchen to china-closet or dining-room should be hung the same as sash, with plaited cotton sash-cord, pulleys, and weights, and provided with lifts and bolt fastenings. [Illustration: Fig. 37] Frames should be provided for opening into bay windows, window-seats, alcoves, and pilasters. Stop beads for glazed and sliding doors should be secured with round-headed screws. There should be corner beads for external angles. FLY SCREEN. In the modern house all outside openings, from cellar to attic, are provided with fly screens. They are now made by concerns who make it a business to do this work, and are much better than those made by the ordinary carpenter. They are arranged so that they will slide up and down on the inside or outside stop, and are finished in every way to correspond with the other wood-work of the house. They need not be more than three-quarters of an inch in thickness if properly made. A small strip is secured to the stop bead, and a corresponding groove is cut in the screen frame. A spring therein holds it firm, and admits of their removal without trouble or waste of time. Special hardware is provided for door and window screens. INSIDE CASINGS. The commonest way of constructing casings at this time is indicated in Figs. 35 and 36, showing inside of doors and windows. This is one of the least expensive forms, and is adapted to all ordinary work. The casings are usually seven-eighths inch thick, the corner and plinth blocks one and one-eighth inch thick. The plinth block comes at the bottom of the casing. One reason that this form of casing is in such general use is, that the corner block conceals any slight shrinkage which there may be in the wood. Where there is a mitred or flush joint, the shrinkage is certain to show. Casings as elaborate as any one is inclined to pay for may be used. Window, door, alcove, and other casings are generally all of one design in a room. All girders and projections below ceilings should be cased. BASE. The base-board around the room should be plain, so that it may be readily cleaned. Where it is ornamented, it adds nothing to the appearance of the room. There should be a base for all plastered walls. Generally they should be not more than eight inches high, seven-eighths inch thick, bevelled at the top and a quarter round at the bottom. A five-eighths-inch adjustable lip may be put on at the top, to take up the inequalities in the plaster. The closet base may be formed of a quarter round only if it is plastered and skimmed to the floor. It is well to have as little wood-work as possible in the closet. WAINSCOTING. Wainscoting kitchen, bath, and other rooms is not as common as it once was. This is because wood-work is more difficult to keep clean than plastering. Wherever there is wainscoting, there must necessarily be joints. These are difficult to keep clean. Panel wood-work, or other form of decoration for wall or ceiling, may be used in rooms according to the disposition of the owner and the taste of the architect. INSIDE SHUTTERS. Inside shutters are not so universally used in good houses as they were a few years ago. Draperies, though more expensive, are preferred, and are taking their place. Inside sliding shutters, arranged in several sections and constructed according to the general plan described for fly-screens, are in more common use. Rolling slats which roll into a pocket are to be thought of only in connection with an expensive dwelling. The common inside shutter is ordinarily seven-eighths inch in thickness, four panels wide, beaded, and cut at the meeting rail; and the four centre panels are provided with movable slats. The special designs of inside shutters mentioned are manufactured by various establishments throughout the country, and are advertised in various magazines and periodicals. Under any circumstances the owner will have to investigate proprietary goods and special furnishings for himself. They are not to be considered in a work of this kind. WOOD-WORK FOR PLUMBING. All should be put up in a way to make plumbing readily accessible by the removal of screws. The pipe duct should be located as required in the kitchen, and pass from basement to attic floor. The inside measurement should be seven by twelve inches. It should be constructed of seven eighths-inch lumber. In case of stud partitions, the duct may be let into the wall the full depth allowed by studding. The front will project into the kitchen. All should be of clear lumber, the same as other wood used in finishing. A ventilating opening, five inches in diameter, may be provided at the top of the duct. This may be connected with pipe and funnel, or other device, placed over the kitchen range. The carpenter should provide pipe boards for all pipe runs. The following, in regard to wood-work for plumbing, is from the specification of an architect: KITCHEN SINK AND FITTINGS.--Wood rim, 7/8 by 2-1/2 inches; skirt, 7/8 by 6-1/2 inches; support on cleat at back, plain oak, 1-3/8-inch turned legs in front. SPLASH-BOARD.--7/8 by 14 inches, scurfed back; 7/8 by 2 inches, plain top. DRAIN-BOARD.--Shall be 22 inches long by 21 inches wide, 7/8 inch thick, 1 inch incline; channelled top; skirt, 3 by 7/8 cleated with two cleats at bottom. One end shall rest on sink, side on wall cleat, other end on turned leg. Full length of tables, sink, and drain. TABLES.--There shall be two tables connected with drain and sink, each 21 inches wide, 2 by 6 inches long, 7/8 thick; skirt, 3 by 7/8 inches. Cleated back. Secured and supported same as drain. OTHER SINKS:-- CELLAR SINK.--Provide 7/8-by-3-inch supporting rim, 2-1/2 inches by 7/8 inch top. 1-3/8 square legs. BATH-TUB.--Case sides and ends with 7/8-by-2-3/4-inch oak board, tongued and grooved material, secret-nailed. Batten foot-casing, and put in in one piece with round-headed blue screws. Cap top. SPLASH-BOARD.--Wainscoting same as tub casing, 6 inches high. Cap top in two members 7/8 inch thick. WATER-CLOSET.--Hinged flap and seat, each 7/8 inch thick; skirt, 7/8 by 5 inches; support on 1-3/8 turned legs in front, cleat at back. Case water-closet tank, mould top. WASH-STANDS.--Provide supports under marble top. Case sides same as specified for tub. Make cleated door in front of same material. Provide hinges and fastenings. TANK.--A tank shall be placed in attic; capacity, 8 barrels. Construct with 1-3/4-inch ploughed and tongued material, with two 3/8-inch rods, bolts, and nuts at each end, and cleats across top at middle. In this house there shall be the following plumbing fixtures, to be fitted up as above: 1 kitchen sink, cellar sink, sink, 1 bath-tub, 1 water-closet, 1 wash-stand. PICTURE MOULDINGS. Picture mouldings should be provided on all plastered walls excepting those of kitchen and pantries. It is usual to place the picture moulding on a line with the top of the door; that is, so that it comes just below the top of the corner block. CLOSET-FITTINGS. Shelves should be seven-eighths inch thick, number and arrangement as desired. The following is a schedule from closet-fittings. Provide hooks in closets as follows:-- One row to cleat on wall 5 feet 3 inches from floor. One row under side of shelf. One row to cleat on wall 3 feet 6 inches from floor in children's closets. DRAWERS FOR CLOSETS. Drawers for closets are best made by a cabinet-maker. If not, they should be modelled in all respects after cabinet work. Cedar closets are not as common as they once were. As people have more to place in them, there is less confidence in their efficacy. The following is from a specification:-- BROOM-RACK.--Provide in space as directed 1 broom-rack, with cast-iron broom-holder, for sweep-broom, whisk-broom; hooks for dust-pan and bucket. MEDICINE-CHEST.--Provide in closet a medicine-chest 8 by 10 by 16 inches, with 7/8 panelled and hinged door. Approved lock. Exposed wood-work thereof same as room in which closet is placed. CEDAR-CLOSET.--Closet shall be lined, ceiled, and fitted up with red cedar. DRY-BOX.--Secured on wall adjacent to kitchen range shall be placed a drying-box for scrub-rags, brushes, etc., 8 inches deep by 18 inches wide by 24 inches high, constructed with 7/8 material, inside measurements. Provide hinged 7/8-inch panelled door with fastening. Top, bottom, and shelves shall be perforated with 3/4-auger-holes for passage of warm air through the box. SOAP-BOX.--Constructed same as dry-box. Size, 9 inches deep, 20 inches wide, 30 inches high. Door, 7/8 inch thick, panelled. Provide approved lock. Shelves, 5/8 thick, set into sides, 3 inches apart. Perforate bottom and shelves with 3/4-inch auger-holes, and connect top with kitchen or vent-flue. CLOCK-SHELF.--Provide 8-inch moulded clock-shelf, 7/8 inch thick, in kitchen. VENTILATOR. CLOTHES-CHUTE. COAL-CHUTE. COAL-BINS IN CELLAR. CHINA-ROOM SPECIFICATION. CUPBOARD (see drawing, Chapter VII.).--Shelves as directed below and above. Lower shelves 7/8 inch thick. Lower doors 7/8 panelled, upper doors glazed. Provide hinges and fastenings for all. There shall be 8 inches space between 7/8-inch top of lower section and bottom shelf of upper section. Upper door shall not come below under side of this upper section shelf. TABLE.--Construction same as in kitchen. SINK. DRAWERS. PANTRY SPECIFICATION. CUPBOARD (see drawing, Chapter VII.).--As indicated. Doors below and shelves above, same as specified for china. No doors above. DOUGH-BOARD.--Provide constructed same as tables specified for kitchen, except that it shall be supported on brackets. FLOUR-BIN.--Shall be 18 inches deep by 24 inches high in front, 28 inches in rear, by ---- long, ---- compartments. Set 4 inches from floor. Top cleated and hinged. Lumber 7/8 inch thick. FLOUR-BIN. The flour-bin described in the specifications is the old kind with the hinged top. Another kind that has been used successfully is here illustrated. [Illustration: Flour-bin Section.] [Illustration: Flour-bin Front] The receptacle for flour is pivoted in the manner indicated by the section. The pivot position is indicated on the drawing by the point of the arrow. The dotted lines on the section indicate the position of the flour receptacle when it is open. It is pulled open by the hand. The knob is shown on the drawing of front. As soon as it is released it falls back into a closed position. It is pivoted so that it remains closed unless held open. The front drawing indicates a flour-bin of this kind with three receptacles; the larger one for flour, and the two smaller ones for meal and graham. The marble dough-stone can be placed on the top of a bin of this kind. If there is no other room for the bin it can be placed in the lower section of the pantry cupboard, and can take the space ordinarily given one of the doors. The pantry cupboard is illustrated and described in Chapter VII. BOXES FOR PANTRY SUPPLIES. These boxes are constructed on the same principle as the flour-bin, just described. They are pivoted and arranged in a row, and may be set on a pantry shelf. The drawing indicates eight of these boxes, four of them nine by twelve inches, and four five by three and three-fourths inches. These boxes are of tin, the frame only being of wood. The socket into which the pivot fits is open at the bottom, so that the box can be lifted off the pivot and taken out and washed. An arrangement such as this takes very little room, and the boxes are always closed unless held open. They are so pivoted that they fall into a closed position as soon as released. Two of these boxes in a china-closet would be convenient to hold bread and cake. [Illustration: Box for Pantry Supplies.] STAIRS. The wood-work of the stairway should always be of hard wood. Where hard wood is used for entire finish, the stairway is best of the same variety. The treads should always be one and one-eighth inch in thickness, and never less than ten inches in width. The risers may be seven-eighths inch thick and never more than seven and one-half inches in height; Square or turned newel posts are in common use. Winders should not be used for the main stairway. Square turns at the landing should be made. Sometimes the rear stairway is of the same general style and design as the front. When it is an open stairway, it is necessary that this should be the case. A rear box stairway, the cellar and attic stairway, or, in fact, any box stairway, should have the treads and risers the same thickness and general dimensions as those mentioned for the front. However, they need not be of hard wood. They should always be provided with hand-rails. All lumber for cellar or attic stairways should be clear and dressed, and quite as well finished as that of any other part of the house. When the cellar is not plastered, the side lining for cellar stairways should be seven-eighths-inch flooring below the first-story plastering. This flooring should be dressed on both sides. The outside cellar-way should have dressed treads and risers one and three-fourths inch thick. The wall should be capped, preferably with stone, and the outside cellar door should be of iron. Where economy is necessary, one-and-three-fourths-inch oak coping and doors may be used. CHAPTER XXXII. PLASTERING.--GRAY FINISH.--WHITE HARD FINISH.--BACK PLASTERING.--GAS-PIPING.--TIN WORK.--GUTTERS.--VALLEYS.--DOWN SPOUTS.--GALVANIZED IRON-WORK.--HOT-AIR PIPES.--THIMBLES.--PAINTING.--STAINING.--OIL FINISHING.--INTERIOR STAINING.--FLOOR FINISH.--GLAZING.--PLATE-GLASS.--BEVELLED GLASS.--CATHEDRAL GLASS.--HARDWARE. It is only within the last ten or fifteen years that it has been at all common to do two-coat work in plastering. Before that time three-coat work was almost universal. Most of the plastering done at this time is what is called "laid-on" work. The first two coats are put on at the same time. The last coat is put on after these are dry. The laths are nearly always of pine. There should be one nail for each contact with the wood-work; that is, four nails to each lath. The mortar should be made of the best quality of lime and sharp sand. A sufficient quantity of hair should be used. The mortar should be floated, or made smooth, and straightened to receive the wood-work. The last coat should be put on after the other is thoroughly dry. It should be trowelled to a smooth surface, and when completed should be free from chip cracks, stains, and improper mixing of sand. Three-coat work, where each coat is allowed to become thoroughly dry, is better than two-coat work. The last coat is usually a white plaster-of-Paris finish, put on with the skim. A gray finish is used more generally at the present time than in the past. It is put on in place of the white skim coat. The natural color is a pleasant gray tint. It may be made smooth enough for papering. The skim coat, white or gray, may be tinted with fresco color at less cost than it can be papered. Paper becomes necessary on a white skim finish after a short time. The hard white finish, which is not commonly used at the present time, is very satisfactory excepting for its extreme whiteness. This finish is made by the use of white sand and skim rubbed and floated down until only a sufficient amount of the lime or skim proper remains to cement the sand to the wall. The same kind of a finish with gray sand is very satisfactory. Proprietary finishes for plastered walls are now used to some extent in the better class of work. They are very hard, of waterproof texture and of any color desired. The coloring of finish for plastering is ordinarily not successful. However, some of the proprietary colored goods before the public are very satisfactory when well put on. The one difficulty in the way of their use is in getting the plasterer to handle properly a thing with which he is not familiar. Back plastering is common in very cold climates, and is done by plastering on the back of the sheathing between the studding. It is independent of the inside plastering. Cement pavements in floors are considered in the previous chapter. GAS-PIPING. Gas-pipes are placed in a house before lathing. The gas company which supplies the illuminating or fuel gas furnishes the inspection for each set of pipes. Below is given a form of specification in use by an architect in a natural-gas region. GAS. ILLUMINATING GAS.--Provide and fix gas-pipe and fittings according to gas company's regulations. All pipes shall be concealed, excepting where it is desired to attach a burner. Cap pipes. Lights to be placed as indicated by table below. FUEL OR NATURAL GAS.--Provide and fix pipe and fittings according to company's regulations. Company's certificate of approval will be required before payments are made. Cap pipes until mixers and burners are attached. Valves and connections shall be provided preparatory to mixer and burner connections. Provide connection with street mains. TABLE OF DISTRIBUTION. +-------------------------+-----------------+---------------+ | |ILLUMINATING GAS.| | | FLOORS. +-----------------+ NATURAL-GAS | | |CENTRE. |BRACKET.| FIRES. | +-------------------------+--------+--------+---------------+ | | | | | | FIRST FLOOR. | | | | | | | | | | Parlor or Reception Room| - | - | - | | Porch | - | - | - | | Sitting-Room | - | - | - | | Front Hall--newel | - | - | - | | Dining-Room | - | - | - | | Library | - | - | - | | Chambers--each | - | - | - | | Rear Hall | - | - | - | | Bedrooms--each | - | - | - | | Kitchen gas stove| - | - | Range. | | Pantry | - | - | - | | China-Room | - | - | - | | Cellar | - | - |{Furnace. | | | | |{Laundry stove.| | | | | | | SECOND FLOOR | | | | | | | | | | Chambers--each | - | - | - | | Bedrooms--each | - | - | - | | Alcove | - | - | - | | Front Hall | - | - | - | | Rear Hall | - | - | - | | Bath-Room | - | - | - | | Attic | - | - | - | +-------------------------+--------+--------+---------------+ TIN WORK. It is now entirely possible to get first-class tin plate for architectural uses. The process is very simple. Require and pay only for a tin plate stamped with a reputable maker's name and brand. There is a general effort upon the part of tin-plate dealers to raise the standard of tin in this way; and there are now a number of manufacturers of integrity who are pursuing the course of branding a first-class tin plate. All tin work should be painted on the under side before it leaves the shop. GUTTERS. In the matter of general utility the hanging gutter is ideal. It is below the eaves, where its overflow can injure nothing. It is easy to reach all parts of it in case of repair. If it is necessary to remove any of the shingles or other roof covering, the gutter need not be disturbed. There are those, however, who object to the appearance of a hanging gutter. A galvanized iron gutter made of No. 26 iron, in form as per Fig. 33, and which runs four inches above the overflow line at all times, may be placed on the first or second row of shingles or slate, and will give very good satisfaction. It is certainly much better than a wood tin-lined gutter. VALLEYS AND OTHER TIN WORK. All valleys should be lined with twenty-inch tin. The connection between all roof and vertical surfaces should be flashed and counter-flashed; that is, pieces of tin should be bent to conform to the vertical and horizontal surfaces, and slipped under the slate or shingles so as to lap both horizontally and vertically. This is the flashing. The counter-flashings are the lapped pieces of tin which extend into the vertical surfaces, and down over the flashings proper. All wood-work which projects in excess of one and three-eighths inch from any vertical surface, should be covered with tin. Hip and ridge coping should be covered with tin in the manner described in chapter where roofs are considered. Down spouts should be provided to carry the water from all roofs to the ground. The presence of more than one gable in the front part of the building frequently makes more than one down spout necessary. Where the house is not too large, one five-inch spout will usually take all of the water from the roof. For a small structure a four-inch spout will serve the same purpose. Three and four inches are in common use for carrying water from the main roof where the continuous course of the gutter is interrupted by gables or dormers. The cistern down-spout should be provided with cut-off or preferably a switch spout, which connects by a drain pipe with a dry well or street gutter. Such connections should never be made with the sewer where a down spout is intended to supply a cistern. In connecting a roof with a cistern it should be borne in mind that it is not always so much the size of the cistern which insures a constant supply of water, as it is the amount of roof surface connected with the cistern. Porches are usually provided with two or three inch down spouts according to the amount of roof to be drained. Flat roofs are best when made with a standing seam. It admits of the expansion and contraction of the tin without injury to the joint. Copper has been extensively used on the better class of buildings during recent years. The improvement in the quality of tin has rendered its use unnecessary excepting for down spouts and ornamental purposes. New processes in the manufacture of sheet copper, and the electroplating of other sheet metals with copper, promise to reduce the cost of that material for architectural purposes, so that it will be better and cheaper than tin. When such claims are substantiated the public will be informed thereof, through the usual channels. Galvanized iron does not have the general architectural uses that were common to it a few years ago. For down spouts in excess of four inches, No. 26 galvanized iron should be used. Hot-air pipes which connect the furnace pipes in basement with the second floor are usually three and three-fourths by twelve inches in size. Before they are placed, all contiguous wood-work should be lined with tin. In frame houses the pipes should be covered with iron lath. They should continue above baseboard, with register opening on second floor and below joist with collar in basement. Where pipes run in an outside wood wall, which they should do only in case of extremest emergency, the back and sides of the pipe should be lined with several thicknesses of asbestos paper. A zinc drain should be provided from the refrigerator to the outside of brick wall. This drain is one inch in diameter, and comes up through the floor with funnel-shaped opening at the top. An ordinary six-inch tin funnel let into the tube will answer every purpose. Thus the discharge pipe from the refrigerator may be readily placed over it. Thimbles should be provided for the plasterer when he is putting on the last coat. Flue stops should be placed therein after plastering is finished. These are for stove connections with brick flues. PAINTING. Painting is not so serious a problem as it once was. We hear about people buying their own paint, the lead and everything that goes with it, and having it mixed under their personal supervision. But even this is not satisfactory. After a short time the paint begins to look chalky and dingy. When the mixing of the paint is not done under the supervision of the owner, and the result is as above stated, the painter is often accused of dishonesty. A painter does not ordinarily have the facilities or knowledge for properly mixing colored paints. In order to get satisfactory results in painting, we may again fall back upon the integrity of an established manufacturer of proprietary goods,--that is, upon ready-mixed paints. Not all are good. Most of them are made as cheap and common as possible; but the best results can be secured from really good ready-mixed paints. Any large dealer of established reputation, who is not himself a manufacturer of a cheap paint, may ordinarily be relied upon for a correct opinion. Preparatory to painting, all knots should be coated with shellac. All work should be painted with three coats,--one priming, and two following. One can always be sure of getting the color wanted in ready-mixed paints of the best quality. All outside frames should be primed before setting. The painter should follow the carpenter, and prime all dressed wood-work as put up. Putty work may be done after first coat, or before final color is applied. There is no advantage to be derived in painting shingles after they are put on. The paint gathers in a heavy ridge on the shingle next to the butt of the one above it in a way to let the moisture lie therein, so that it will rot at this point. Brick-work may be painted as specified for wood-work, excepting that the first coat, or priming, should be put on very heavy. Tin and iron work should be painted with one coat of metallic paint as soon as put up. Tin unexposed to view should receive a second coat of metallic paint before the building is completed. Tin work exposed to view should have two coats of paint on a metallic prime, same as house. EXTERIOR STAINING. Shingles should be dipped in stain and then stood in a trough, so that they will drain to a barrel. Other external wood-work should have two heavy coats of stain applied with a brush. Weather-boarding is sometimes dipped into a trough filled with stain, and then set so that it will drain therein. Shingle stain is a proprietary finish, and regularly advertised in leading periodicals. INTERIOR STAINING. The staining of interior finish is now rendered simple and satisfactory by the use of proprietary stains. Sometimes the stain is put on direct, without first applying filler. At other times a filler of cornstarch and oil, or a proprietary mixture, which is preferable, is used. One or two coats of prepared oil-finish follows the application of the stain. The various manufacturers of interior stains furnish wood samples which indicate the variety of this material manufactured. OIL FINISHING. All wood to be oil-finished should first be filled. The antique and acid stained effects are derived by the use of different kinds of fillers, which close the pores of the wood and stain it the color desired. Proprietary fillers and oil finish may be most successfully used, for the reason that they are generally prepared by men who have put their capital into the business for the purpose of getting a return. Such people cannot put a bad article permanently on the market without feeling the result themselves. Therefore, those who are permanently successful in the manufacture of proprietary goods can generally be relied upon. In the finishing of wood-work all under coats should be rubbed with dry hair-cloth, burlap, or fine sand-paper. On top of the filler two coats of prepared oil finish should be applied; the first one rubbed as above, and, if desired, the last left bright. A dead finish may be secured by rubbing down the last coat with fine pumice stone and water or oil. External exposed wood-work and bath-rooms may be finished with a water-proof varnish by treating as above, excepting that the last coat should be a water-proof oil finish made by some well-known manufacturer. FLOOR FINISH. All manufacturers of first-class interior finishes prepare a special floor finish. It is usually applied in two coats over a filler as described. In such cases the filler is not stained. Each coat is thoroughly rubbed. A satisfactory floor finish may be made by washing the clean wood floor with a solution of salt and water, and afterwards saturating with paraffine wax, and then rubbing. GLAZING. All glass should be embedded in putty and secured with glazier's tacks and putty. American sheet glass is made in two thicknesses--single and double strength--and in four qualities. _A_ or _AA_ only should be used in a good house. Plate glass costs about five or six times as much as double-strength _A_ American sheet. A thumb rule for calculating the cost of plate glass, which is not strictly accurate but which gives a general idea, is to calculate on from fifty to seventy-five cents per square foot. CATHEDRAL GLASS. Of cathedral glass proper there is only one quality. In ornamental and colored glass work the different kinds of glass used will not be here enumerated. Bevelled plate is becoming quite common. Generally speaking, cathedral glass may be arranged in geometrical forms in sash with wood separations or muntins. Cathedral glass proper for such purposes costs from twenty-five to thirty-five cents a square foot. Cathedral glass leaded may cost almost any amount in excess of a dollar per square foot. In selecting cathedral glass for sash with wood separations, the best and most satisfactory results may be reached by choosing the lighter tints, and not having more than one or two colors to the window. HARDWARE. It is difficult if not impossible to write a general specification for the hardware which goes into a house. It cannot be done excepting by specifying particular goods, which cannot be done here. However, a few general statements in regard to hardware may not be amiss. The cheapest locks used should have brass fronts and bolts, and be of the mortise pattern. Night-locks should be provided as desired. Outside knobs of rear door and those inside the kitchen may be of bronzed iron. The price of bronzed-faced locks is not much greater than brass-faced locks. A good bronzed-iron knob has not been made up to this time. Therefore, the fixtures for the front door, if not all others, should be of real bronze. Butts of bronzed iron have been made which are very satisfactory. Sash locks should be provided for all windows. Sliding-door hardware should be of real bronze. The locks should be what is known as "astragal" fronts, and the trimmings flush. Sliding doors should be suspended from above on hangers. Bolts of wrought-iron should be placed on all outside rear doors, and, if desired, on the inside of all chamber and bedroom doors; always on the bath-room door. Such bolts may be mortised or otherwise, as desired. Foot and top bolts may be provided for double doors and for sash. Pivots should be provided for all transoms; transom lifts as desired, also sash lifts. There should be wooden base knobs with rubber buffers at all doors. Double-spring hinges should be provided for doors leading to and from kitchen and china-closet or passage. Necessary drawer hardware should be provided, and butts, knobs, and fastenings for inside shutters. CHAPTER XXXIII. PRACTICAL PLUMBING.--WOOD-WORK FOR PLUMBER.--EXCAVATING FOR PLUMBER.--WATER DISTRIBUTION.--OUTSIDE FIXTURES.--HYDRANTS.--STREET-WASHERS.--SOFT-WATER SUPPLY.--HOT-WATER SUPPLY.--SOIL PIPE.--INSIDE FIXTURES.--KITCHEN SINK.--CELLAR SINK. In a previous chapter plumbing was considered from a sanitary standpoint, and the conditions of safety set forth. In this chapter it remains to consider plumbing work in a more practical way; to consider it with reference to its execution, assuming that it is desired to reach the best results. This means, primarily, good work; then good work with the least expenditure of money. The carpenter usually provides all necessary wood-work for the plumber. This means boards and runs on which pipes are to be placed, the pipe duct and other wood finish. It is best that the carpenter should do this in order that it may be well done. There should be specified in the carpenter's contract exactly what he is to do, so that he may calculate on a definite basis. All of the cutting work, where cutting is necessary, should be done by the carpenter. The plumber is not usually supplied with tools of the right kind for doing this, and is as liable to botch carpenter work as a carpenter would be to botch the plumbing work. The plumber should do all of his own excavating. This includes trenches for pipes of all kinds to and from the house. After the pipes and drains have been placed therein, he should make fills and thoroughly tamp the earth so as to restore the surface to its original condition. This may be best done by putting in a small quantity of earth at a time, ramming it down and then pouring water on it. Even after this the drain space should be left with a slight crown, as the earth will settle a little more than it is possible to make it by artificial means. Superfluous earth should be removed from the building and lot. Plumber's excavating is not included in the general contract. If there is any superfluous earth in connection with his work, he, and not the general contractor, should remove it. Contracting methods are explained in another section of the book. WATER DISTRIBUTION. Lead should be used for all purposes where pipes are exposed to view and where they come in contact with the earth. This is common practice. Sometimes, however, brass or planished copper pipes and fittings are used where they are exposed to view. Brass makes very beautiful and satisfactory work. Iron pipe, galvanized inside and out, is occasionally used for exposed work. It does not look as well, however, as lead pipe. Galvanized iron pipe is also frequently used where not exposed to view, and where it does not come in contact with the earth. Objections will be made to this by plumbers who are used to doing lead work. In all hospitals where the best work is done iron or brass pipe is used, and lead pipe and connections are entirely dispensed with. However, the use of lead pipe where exposed to view and where in contact with the earth, and iron pipe galvanized for other places, makes most excellent and beautiful work for dwelling-houses. The connections between iron and lead pipe should be of brass. The water works of many cities and towns are from direct-pressure mains. It is common for such pressure to be forty pounds to the square inch under ordinary conditions. A fire pressure is much greater. Therefore, all direct-pressure pipes of lead should be extra strong. Tank-pressure pipes, those which connect with a tank in the attic or above a water-closet, may be medium strong. The terms "extra strong" and "medium strong," as here used, are definite in their meaning, and apply to regular grades of pipe. The interior fixtures of an ordinary dwelling-house are supplied with lead pipe five-eighths of an inch in diameter, or iron pipe three-quarters of an inch in diameter. In the above will be found all that applies in general terms to an ordinary specification for water distribution. Special mention will be made later. Stop-cocks should be provided sufficient entirely to disconnect and drain all pipes, fixtures, and connections. "Stop-and-waste" cocks should be provided at the bottom of all main risers where they cannot otherwise be drained. A "stop-and-waste" cock is one which shuts off the supply from its source, and drains the water from pipes above, so that it passes out to a receptacle provided for that purpose. In some instances it is allowed to run to a sink on the cellar floor, or it may be taken in a bucket. The city water-supply for an ordinary dwelling-house is generally through five-eighths-inch extra strong lead pipe, and is provided with a stop-box so that the water can be turned off from the house at the street. OUTSIDE FIXTURES. Outside fixtures which connect with the city water are a street-washer and a hydrant. The street-washer is usually placed in front, so that a hose may be attached to it for sprinkling purposes. There are many standard grades of street-washers carried in stock by all plumbers. The hydrant has about the same lower connections as the street-washer. The hose connection and opening stand well above the lot grade. It is usually placed in the back yard or stable. The outlet may have a hose coupling, and thus be used for sprinkling purposes in the back part of the lot or otherwise, as desired. Where there are no hydrants, it is common to run an iron pipe along the ground to connect the front and back yard. Thus it is not necessary to have so large a supply of hose. The pipe thus used is three-quarters of an inch in diameter. It is less expensive than rubber hose, and does not deteriorate. It should have a short hose connection in front, and hose coupling at the back. SOFT-WATER SUPPLY. In many cities the water from the public pipes contains too much lime to be used for bathing or washing. In such a case it is necessary to supply cistern water for that purpose. This is done by connecting the cistern in the yard with a tank in the attic, or some place above the highest fixture. To do this a force pump is placed in the kitchen. The best kind to use are those known as double-acting, horizontal, brass-cylinder force pumps. They may be screwed to the floor, and the handle come up next to the sink or between the drain-board and the dry-board. When not in use, this handle can be next to the wall and out of the way. A motor may be used in lieu of a pump. It is placed over the kitchen sink, and has connection with city water works. When it is desired to pump water to the attic, one can turn on the city water at the cock and let it run. Thus the city pressure is exerted through the motor to pump water to the attic, and the labor of pumping entirely done away with. The cost is about fifteen dollars more than a good pump. The suction of such a pump or motor should be one-and-one-half-inch strong lead pipe, and the supply to tank in attic one-and-one-quarter-inch lead or iron pipe where not exposed to view. Where the pump or motor is placed as indicated, it may be used to pump water directly to the kitchen sink, and it is generally best that such an arrangement be made. Of course, water may be drawn from the tank in the attic to this sink, if it is desired to so arrange it; but where this is done, it is necessary to pump all of the cold water used in the kitchen to the attic. This is unnecessary. The sink may have a direct pump connection by means of a five-eighths-inch strong lead pipe which connects with the tank supply. On the end of this lead pipe may be a brass or nickel compression cock over the sink. When it is desired to pump water into the tank this cock is closed, and the only connection is with the tank above. The common size for tank is eight barrels capacity. It should be constructed of inch-and-three-quarters ploughed and tongued material with two three-eighths inch rods, with bolts and nuts at each end, and cleats across top and bottom in middle. The inside should be lined with four-pound sheet lead; that is, sheet lead which weighs four pounds to the foot. There should be an inch tell-tale pipe of galvanized iron which connects with the sink nearest the pump. Sometimes an overflow which runs to the roof is used, in which case a smaller tell-tale, say one-half inch in diameter, will serve. There are instances where the tank in the attic is connected with a special gutter on the roof, above the line of the tank. Then the tank is provided with a large overflow so that it may not cause trouble. However, this is a little risky. The tank is connected with the hot and cold water system and fixtures subsequently named. The hot-water system is as simple as it is efficient. Usually a heavy-pressure galvanized-iron boiler, of from twenty-four to sixty-two gallons capacity, is located in the kitchen. It is connected with the tank by means of five-eighths-inch lead or three-quarters-inch iron pipe, and with fixtures subsequently named as being supplied with hot water in the same manner. The water is heated in the range by means of a water back or water front placed in the fire-box of the range. It is connected with the boiler by means of five-eighths-inch lead and three-quarters-inch iron pipe. One pipe from the lower part of the boiler takes the water to the back. The other carries it to the top of the boiler, the cold water naturally going to the bottom and the hot water passing to the top. The hot-water supply for fixtures is drawn from the top of the boiler. Any one may notice, by passing the hand up and down a boiler of this kind, that the top is always warmer than the bottom. Sometimes a wrought-iron pipe is used in a stove in lieu of a water back. It usually answers the same purpose, though its heating surface is not so great. It is best to use a pipe back where the boiler is not connected with soft water. The incrustation from the lime is such that the back soon becomes filled, and it is much more expensive to replace than one made of pipe. When the hot water is from the city water works, the supply is usually directly therefrom rather than from a tank in the attic. However, it is not uncommon to have a tank supply in the house where public-water supply is taken to the exclusion of all other, and it is a better system, though a little more expensive. The hot-water reservoir is usually placed on an iron stand near the stove. It should be provided with a draining connection for the purpose of drawing out all the water when desired. A vent connection from the reservoir to the tank in attic, or, in the event of no tank being used, to the roof above, is common as a guard against extra steam pressure. SOIL PIPE. Before considering other inside fixtures and fittings, the soil pipe should be mentioned. It is of cast-iron, light weight, and, when it is connected with a water-closet, should be four inches in diameter on the inside, and japanned inside and out. Joints are made at the hubs, and should be leaded and well calked. Connections with this pipe should be made by means of Y's of proper size, depending on the size of the drain which connects therewith. The soil pipe should continue upward and through the roof to a point at least four feet above the nearest ridge. Below, it should continue outside of the foundation wall to connect with the drain. Where there is a sink in the cellar, the soil pipe should be below the cellar floor. Vitrified or earthenware drain pipe should never be used inside the walls of a house. INSIDE FIXTURES. The kitchen sink may be considered first. They are usually of light cast-iron. Sometimes they are of pressed steel; again, they are of cast-iron with an interior porcelain finish. If a common cast-iron sink is painted, the paint soon wears off. The ideal sink, the one which is the best in every way, is of porcelain. It has the white, glazed surface of a fine dish, and is easily cleaned. Any kitchen sink should be eighteen inches wide, six inches deep, and from twenty-four to thirty-six inches in length. Thirty or thirty-six is the best. They are provided with a strainer in the bottom, and have one-and-one-half-inch light lead "S" trap connection with soil pipe or grease sink, subsequently considered. Where city water is at hand, the sink should be supplied through a five-eighths-inch brass or nickel-plated self-closing cock. Where the city water is hard, hot and cold cistern water in addition to city water should be supplied through five-eighths-inch brass or nickel-plated compression cocks. If the hot water is from the public water works, a self-closing cock should be used. All cocks should be screwed to a soldered nipple, and not "wiped" or joined directly to the lead pipe. In this way, it is not necessary to wipe a joint every time the cock gives out. A smaller sink, size as desired, may be used in the china-closet or butler's pantry. Such a sink is not in common use excepting in the more expensive houses. The cellar sink should be sixteen by sixteen inches, ten inches deep, and should be provided with strainer, and an inch-and-a-half light lead "S" trap connection with soil pipe. If city supply only is desired, it may be had through five-eighths-inch brass self-closing cock. Where connection is made with cistern, it may be by means of one-and-one-half inch pipe and a cast-iron pitcher pump; if not this, a well, driven or otherwise, may be similarly connected by means of a pitcher or lift pump. This cellar sink is the kind that may be used in connection with the laundry previously described. Where stationary tubs are used, this sink is not necessary. CHAPTER XXXIV. PLUMBING WORK CONTINUED.--BATH-TUBS.--BATH-SPRINKLERS.--FOOT-TUBS.--SAFES. --WATER-CLOSETS.--WASH-STANDS.--LAUNDRY FITTINGS.--SET TUBS. --OUTSIDE DRAINS.--GREASE SINKS.--NICKEL FITTINGS. The fittings of kitchen and other sinks are fully considered in Chapter V., which has to do with kitchens and pantries. It is sufficient to say, however, that the only visible wood-work is the rim and wooden legs, which support the sink proper, and the splash-boards at the side tables as described. BATH-TUBS. A great deal might be said on this subject, which must be left unsaid for the want of space. The ideal bath-tub, the one which in every way is the most satisfactory, is made of porcelain, same as the sinks described. They are beautiful in appearance, easily cleaned, and altogether very satisfactory. However, they are expensive. For the tub alone the cost is about one hundred dollars more than for one of copper. They are used in houses where the matter of cost is not of great importance. Cast-iron, porcelain-lined, and cast-iron tubs, painted, are used occasionally in dwellings. They are more expensive than the copper tubs. An iron porcelain-lined tub is much less expensive than solid porcelain, and is very satisfactory. The iron and porcelain tubs do not require side or end casings of wood. They stand clear of wall and floor. As is known, tubs are of varying sizes and forms, the usual length being from four and one-half to six feet. The tubs known as the "French" pattern are commonly four and one-half feet long, and deeper and wider than the ordinary copper tub. The weight of the copper varies from nine to sixteen ounces to the foot; fourteen-ounce copper tubs are in most general use. The French pattern of tub is coming into more general use than the others in the best class of work. As stated before, it is wider and deeper, though shorter than the old six-foot tub of the common pattern. It does not require as much water to get the same depth in the shorter tub as in one that is longer. As no one cares to lie down in the bath-tub, six feet in length is not necessary; four and one-half feet is ample. The ordinary fixtures which go with a bath-tub of moderate cost are the combination bath-cock with rubber hose and sprinkler, and a plug and chain. All the metal work is nickel-plated. A combination bath-cock connection with hot and cold water mixes the water as it passes into the tub, so that the proper temperature may be secured by the adjustment of the valves. The most objectionable feature to the tub of general construction is the overflow which connects with the waste. It is simply a tube which has a single opening below the bath-cock to the waste pipe. This soon becomes foul. Various ingenious devices have been arranged for doing away with this kind of overflow. Arrangements are provided which connect directly with the outlet, and which may be readily removed and cleaned. These prevent the passage of water to the drain when tub is in use. By a movement of a handle in the top the passage may be opened below to allow the water to pass out. There are many devices constructed on this principle. In some instances they add only two or three dollars to the cost of the plumbing outfit, and are certainly worth the extra expense. There are arrangements where the finish is more elaborate, the details more complete, and the cost largely in excess of the figure here named. The same device applies to the various tubs, porcelain, iron, or copper. Formerly it was common to have a large sprinkler connected with hot and cold water above the tub; this is now unusual. It was impossible to use this sprinkler without wetting the head. For that reason the hose and sprinkler has largely taken its place in ordinary work. However, the sprinkler is a very good thing, though it is not put in excepting where the hose attachment is also supplied. Another modern arrangement which has to do with the sprinkler is a surrounding rubber curtain, which is supported by a plated ring on a level with one's head when standing. This prevents the splashing of water out of the tub. It goes against the curtain, and is thus deflected into the tub. Various arrangements on this principle, looking to hot or steam baths, have been devised. They surround the person bathing, leaving only the head exposed, and discharge the warm water into the confined space surrounding the body. This is a makeshift to take the place of hot and steam baths. In some instances, one-third of the foot end of the tub is fitted with a copper-lined enclosure on three sides, with shower at top. One may stand in this space and use the shower as with the curtain. Additions are sometimes made to this arrangement, wherein the side spray or needle bath is provided. It is so called from the needle size of the streams, which are emitted from certain pipes. All of these showers are connected with regulating valves, so that any desired temperature of water may be maintained by proper adjustment. In some very elaborate bath-rooms showers are provided at the side of the room where there is a marble floor and marble wall surface. These things are arranged with a multiplicity of detail, showing the ingenuity of people who have given these matters much study, and which cannot be fully considered in this connection. Foot-tubs, with hot and cold water connections, are made of the same material that is used in bath-tubs, but are not considered in the plans furnished in this book, though they may be used at will. The bath-tub will serve the same general purpose. As stated, the bath-tubs connect with hot and cold water; they connect with soil pipe or drain by means of one-and-one-half-inch light lead waste pipe, which is trapped by means of an "S" or other trap. SAFES. A safe is simply a lead pan which may be placed under the bath-tub, or other enclosed fixture, to guard against accidents from overflow or leakage. They are made of four-pound sheet lead, and are usually turned up from two to four inches all around. The lead is formed to a bevelled strip at the sides and end, the size of the pan being that of the extreme outside of the fixture. There is usually an inch waste connection to the cellar or kitchen sink. It would be highly improper to connect a safe with the drain, trapped or otherwise, as its use under any circumstances will be occasional, and any water that there might be in the trap would be certain to evaporate, and in that way the safe waste would be the means of connecting the foulness of the drain with the house. Therefore, it is right and proper that it should connect with the sink or the cellar floor. In that way, any discharge therefrom would be readily noticed. Wastes are frequently placed under bath-tubs, generally under wash-stands, when they are enclosed, but rarely or never under a modern water-closet. They are frequently dispensed with entirely. WATER-CLOSETS. Fig. 7, page 68, indicates, in perspective and in section, the more common form of water-closet now in use, than which nothing-better has been devised. The details of the valve connection and general form of the closet itself, and the means of flushing it, are various, but the general principle is the same. It is nothing more or less than a large bowl having an "S" trap connection with soil pipe. The bowl and trap are of white porcelain ware, in one piece. The form, as here shown, is a washout closet, and is the one in most general use. Usually a connection with public water service is provided from a tank above. Trap vent, as shown, is connected with the outer air above the roof. The seat of the closet is usually supported from the wall at the back, and rests on the body of the porcelain, on rubber buffers, which prevent the liability of breakage or noise, if it falls. Under any circumstances, water-closets should never be enclosed. WASH-STANDS. It has been said that wash-stands are the most dangerous fixtures that go into a house, and for that reason the greatest care should be observed in their construction. The only material of which the bowl proper, for use in a dwelling-house, should be made is porcelain. The usual form is circular, and about fourteen inches in diameter. However, they are made in various forms. The details of their construction differ as greatly as those of the other fixtures which have been named. Bowls are made which have the same "patent" overflow arrangements as the bath-tub overflows that have been considered and described elsewhere. It is usual, however, to use a rubber plug and chain. The top and back of the wash-stand should be of marble. The top should be one and one-eighth inch thick, counter-sunk, so that the splashed water cannot run from it to the floor; the back need be only seven-eighths inch thick, and generally not more than ten inches high. Sometimes it may be less. The hot and cold water fixtures are nickel-plated; usually they are made self-closing, to prevent the waste of water. It is necessary that they should be so where city water is used. It is part of the city regulations that all connections of this kind be self-closing. Wash-stands need not be enclosed below. The marble top may be supported on iron brackets or turned wooden legs of hard wood. Traps and other drain connections can be neatly arranged so that their appearance is not in any sense objectionable in the bath-room or other place. The wash-stand should have one-and-one-half-inch light lead trapped connection with the drain or soil pipe. Generally speaking, it is not necessary for the trap to be ventilated, unless it so happen that it is some distance from the soil pipe or drain. The soil pipe, we know, is always ventilated, and if the wash-stand is situated some distance from it, it should have a direct communication with the outer air above the roof. Sometimes a pitcher-cock is placed on the wash-stand in the bath-room to enable the drawing of drinking water when the other connections are with the cistern, it being assumed in this instance that only the water from public water works is used for drinking purposes. The pitcher-cock is simply one with a long neck which extends above the bowl, and is directed into it, the pitcher being placed under it for the purpose of filling. LAUNDRY FITTINGS. The fittings for a simple laundry apparatus, that would go into a house of very moderate cost, have been described elsewhere. In this instance we will consider only the more elaborate arrangements which have to do with set tubs. They may be of porcelain or plain cast-iron, of cast-iron porcelain-lined, or of brown glazed earthenware. The porcelain is of the same general character as that mentioned for the bath-tub and sinks, and is an expensive and very elegant material. The porcelain-lined iron tubs are in more general use, for the reason that they are less expensive than those of all porcelain. Brown earthenware tubs are coming to be favorably considered, and are in every way satisfactory. Tubs made of wood, slate, or other material, where they are in several pieces, are objectionable. Those mentioned above are one-piece tubs, and are generally set three together. The porcelain or brown earthenware tubs usually have wooden rims. Sometimes these tubs are provided with covers, though it is usual and preferable that covers be not used, and that the water be supplied from above. The hot and cold water fixtures are nickel-plated compression cocks, which connect with hot and cold water sources. Generally speaking, it is best, where set tubs are used, that an independent apparatus for heating water be provided; that is, a laundry water heater, of which there are many different kinds, and which are constructed on the same general principle as the arrangement mentioned in connection with the kitchen and other water-heating apparatus. It is entirely possible, however, to make connections with the water-heating apparatus of the kitchen. The drain connections are of one-and-one-half-inch light lead, and are independently trapped for each tub. They lead to the main drain, connecting with sewer or vault. OUTSIDE DRAINS. Drains outside of the house should be of vitrified or glazed earthenware pipe, laid below the action of frost, with proper slant. They should be well bedded and have smoothly cemented joints. The slant need be very slight, eighteen inches in eighty feet or less may be used. It is especially desirable that the joints be thoroughly cemented, and that they be smooth on the inside, so that the foul matter passing through the interior will not lodge against any projections. The surface or ends of the pipe should never be clipped or cut for connections; "Y's" or "T's" are used for all connections with other drains. Drain pipes from a dwelling-house are usually five or six inches in diameter. It is quite as important that they be not too large as that they be large enough. Where a pipe is too large, there is not enough water in the bottom to keep it clean. The illustration here given will make clear this point. A six and eight inch drain is shown with the same quantity of water in each. It is common in cases of drain connection with a vault that no trap in the drain or soil pipe itself be used. Where sewer connection is made, a vitrified trap of the same size as the drain is used; and it is provided with a trap vent connection with the outer air by means of vitrified vent and grate opening at the top. [Illustration: Fig. 38] Storm-water connections may be made with the main sewer, but it is best that they be made between the house and the trap of main drain. In this way there is no danger of the sewer having connection with the down spouts in the event of the evaporation of the water in the trap of the storm-water connection. The modern plan of city sewer systems is to have independent service for storm water and house drain connections. GREASE SINKS. The grease sink is lined with brick, and is usually of four or five barrels capacity. It is cemented the same as the cistern, is generally twenty or twenty-five feet away from the house, and has a four-inch vitrified drain connection with the waste from the kitchen sink or other sink in which greasy water may be deposited. The sink itself has a siphon connection with the main drain or vault, and, being provided with an iron top, the deposit of grease or other material may be removed if necessary. In some instances a sink of this kind is required to be used to collect all solid matter before the drainage connection passes from the property. * * * * * The "S" trap only has been distinctly mentioned. There are hundreds of others, all constructed upon the same general principle. Some are provided with mechanical means of closing the opening leading to the source of supply, and, in addition to this, they are provided with a seal of water depending upon some form or condition of the "S" trap. This principle is invariable in the construction of traps. No trap should be used unless provided with a trap screw of the same size as the drain itself, which will admit of its being opened when necessary. It is not uncommon that rings or other jewelry get into the waste of wash-stand or bath-tub; they may be recovered by taking out the trap screw. Again, should the trap become fouled or clogged, the matter may be removed in the same way. NICKEL FITTINGS. For the kitchen sink, nickel fittings are preferable to brass, because they are more easily cleaned. CHAPTER XXXV. COST OF A HOUSE.--SCHEDULES OF COSTS.--WHAT GOES INTO A HOUSE.--SCHEDULE "B."--COST DETAILS. What makes the cost of a house? Everything that has been placed on the lot when the structure is completed. Below is a form or schedule, with blanks, filled out by an architect for a gentleman for whom he made plans. JOHN SMITH,--As I understand your wants, would estimate the cost of improvements contemplated on No. Delaware Street as follows:-- Building--1st floor finish hard wood, 2d floor finish poplar, $3,000 Privy and Vault $35 Cistern and Connections 50 Well, Connections, and Pump 35 Walks, 40 yards at 70 cents 28 Fences--Tight board, 160 feet at 25 cents, Picket none, 40 Illuminating-Gas Pipe 30 Plumbing--Cellar sink 1, Kitchen sink 1, Bath-tub 1, W. C. 1, W. S. 1, St. Washer 1, City and Cistern Water, 275 Natural-Gas Pipe, without burners or burner fittings 35 Gas Fixtures 50 Mantels and Grates 3, Average cost $40 120 Furnace 250 Plate Glass 50 Cathedral Glass 25 Electric Work--Door bell 2, Kitchen bell 1 25 ----- 1,128 ------ Without Architect's fee $4,128 Everything that goes into a house should be fully represented to the owner. Thus the costs may be fixed and the aggregate understood. If this were universally done, there would be less said about the unreliability of architects' estimates. If the architect is very careful to make known to the owner the quality of everything that he is to have, and, as well, the general quantities and costs, he is doing his full duty in this matter. Anything less than this is a neglect of duty. Furthermore, this should be made a matter of record, so that if changes are made and the cost altered, a basis for comparison may be at hand. It is the practice of the writer to use a specification which describes everything which may be a part of a brick or a frame house, and to stamp out the parts omitted. For example, in that specification there are specified brick and cemented floors for cellar. It is the custom to stamp the word "No" before the words brick floor, so that it reads "No brick floor in cellar." In other cases it may be "No lattice work in side yard," etc. Thus the owner of the house knows not only what he is to get, but what he is not to get, and the exact quality of that which is included as well as that which is omitted. He has positive and negative information with respect to his house. This form of specification has been in use three years, and has been uniformly satisfactory. The schedule filled out for Mr. Smith is a printed form, which is handed to the owner as soon as the building cost is determined. It is in addition to the detailed specification. In the schedule the cost of the building is put down at three thousand dollars. The appurtenances are the items mentioned below the line which gives the price of the building proper, and in this instance are estimated at $1,128. The house estimate is $3,000. This makes a total cost of $4,128. The house was a well-finished building of nine rooms. The parlor and hall were finished in quartered oak, the dining and sitting rooms in quartered sycamore, the rear hall in quartered oak, the china-room in sycamore, kitchen and pantry in plain oak. It would have cost about $125 less to finish the first floor of this house in soft wood. It is not possible to give general statements as to the difference in cost of finishing between hard and soft wood. Twenty to thirty-five dollars a room is generally ample, though the difference may be greater. The privy building was figured at twenty dollars, and the vault at a dollar a foot. The cistern and connections at fifty cents a barrel. Thus a hundred-barrel cistern costs fifty dollars. The well pump, which was located in the kitchen, was a cheap form of horizontal force-pump fastened to the floor, with the handle coming up near the kitchen table. It supplied water to the kitchen sink. It, as well as the cistern pump, was included in the plumbing contract. The walks were ordinary brick walks laid in sand. Tight-board fence was figured, as shown, at twenty-five cents a lineal foot. The illuminating-gas pipe was figured at a little less than the price given on schedule "B," but was ample. The same may be said of the plumbing work. The gas fixtures were neat brass goods that looked plain in the store surrounded with very elaborate ones, but were entirely satisfactory when in the house. The mantels and grates, as may be judged by their cost, were not very elaborate. However, they were of wood, the same style and finish as the room. There were bevelled-glass mirrors above the shelves. The hearth and facing were of unglazed tile, the grate-frame of brass, the grate itself club pattern, and altogether it was simple but pleasing. The furnace was of wrought-iron, riveted joints, with galvanized iron jacket. It would have cost about fifteen or twenty dollars more to set it in brick. This price included registers, pipes in the wall, and all connections. If the building had cost a thousand dollars more, or even two thousand, the appurtenances need not have cost more than a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars additional. There would probably have been a little more gas pipe, a few more fixtures, and the furnace would have been somewhat more expensive; or, if the house had cost five hundred dollars less, the appurtenances would not have represented in all more than seventy-five dollars difference, providing the general requirements had been the same. The following schedule was prepared for Mr. Brown. His was an eight-room house; smaller, less elaborate, but just as well built, as the one for Mr. Smith. He did not have quite as much plumbing, and reduced the other appurtenances somewhat. Altogether they represent $801. If his had been a fifteen-hundred-dollar house, and the same general conditions had been met, the appurtenances would not have cost any less. Likewise, if it had been a two-thousand-dollar house, they would have cost no more. Additions to size of rooms or a more elaborate finish would not have appreciably affected the cost of the appurtenances. It is well to bear this in mind when building. WILLIAM BROWN,--As I understand your wants, would estimate the cost of improvements contemplated on No. Alabama Street as follows:-- Building--1st floor finish hard wood, 2d floor finish poplar, $1,700 Privy and Vault $40 Cistern and Connections 40 No Well, Connections, and Pump Walks, 30 yards at 70 cents 21 Fences--Tight board, 100 at 25 cents, Picket none 25 Illuminating-Gas Pipe 25 Plumbing--Cellar sink none, Kitchen sink 1, Bath-tub 1, W. C. 1, W. S. 1, St. Washer 1, City Water 200 Natural-Gas Pipe, without burners or burner fittings 30 Gas Fixtures 35 Mantels and Grates 3, Average cost $40 120 Furnace 240 Plate Glass 20 Cathedral Glass none Electric Work--Door bell 1, Kitchen bell none 5 ____ 801 ______ Without Architect's fee $2,501 The two examples given show the method of filling out a cost schedule, which, by the way, is seldom presented in this form to the owner of a house by his architect. It now remains to indicate, in general terms, the basis of values as before given. It is not intended to form this book on the "every-man-his-own-architect" principle, but it is constructed on the idea that every one should know as much about the business in hand as is possible, before calling for other assistance. For this purpose certain prices are given which are a little in advance of those charged in the section of country to which they apply. This is done so that the errors, if any, may be on the side of safety. Generally speaking, there will not be any great difference in the cost of the appurtenances mentioned. It is the cost of the building proper which varies. The cost of the buildings illustrated is given, unless otherwise mentioned, on a basis of hard-wood finish for the first floor excepting kitchen, and soft wood above, all finished in oil. Below is the schedule "B," so frequently referred to in the description of house plans. SCHEDULE "B." Building.--First floor finish hard wood; second floor, soft wood. Where estimates are given in the book on the basis of schedule "B," they include only the building, as mentioned above, and do not include the following items:-- Privy building, $20; vault, $1 per foot for each foot in depth. Cistern and connections, $0.50 per barrel; pump, $5 to $35; well, $0.75 per lineal foot; pump and connections, $5 to $35. (Force pump included in plumbing contract.) Walks of brick, $0.70 per square yard; cement, $1.80 per square yard. Fences: tight-board, $0.25 per lineal foot; picket, $0.50 per lineal foot, painted three coats. Illuminating-gas pipe, $1.50 to $2 per connection. Plumbing--Cellar sink, plain iron set $10 Hot-water boiler and back " 25 Kitchen sink, city and hot and cold cistern water " 30 Force pump and tank " 50 Bath-tub, 14 oz. copper " 30 Wash-stand " 25 Water-closet "washout" " 40 Street-washer " 12 City service, $0.35 a foot, lineal, laid. Drain connection, $0.30 a foot, lineal, laid. [For other piping and connections add twenty per cent of above aggregate.] Natural-gas piping, without burners, $4 a fire. Gas fixtures, about $1.50 per burner. Mantels and grates, average cost, $40. Furnace, for all pipes and connections, nine registers, $240; add $16 for each additional second-story connection; $8 for first-story connection. Plate glass, $0.50 to $0.75 a square foot, according to size. Cathedral glass, plain, $0.30 a foot; leaded, from $1 upward. Electric work--door bells, each $6; kitchen bell, $6. CHAPTER XXXVI. VARYING BUILDING VALUES.--COST OF APPURTENANCES.--PRICES OF LABOR AND MATERIAL ON WHICH ESTIMATES ARE BASED. The cost of building varies in different sections. At the end of this chapter will be found a list of prices upon which the building estimates of this book are based. The plumbing schedule is formed so that one may see about what the different items of a completed plumbing outfit cost. Figuring sixty feet of service and seventy feet of drain, the plumbing outfit would cost, as indicated, $328. It has been furnished for less. The figures given in connection with plumbing work are not necessarily accurate. They are approximately so in detail. As no two plumbers or other mechanics will figure exactly the same on the same fixtures, or the same material and labor, it is not to be expected that an architect could form a thumb-rule schedule which would be satisfactory to plumbers and all others. In the class of work contemplated in this specification, the tendency of these figures is in the right direction. They are as nearly correct as general statements can be. It is known that a single bath-tub can be fitted up to cost more than the entire plumbing outfit here mentioned. It would afford no more conveniences to the occupant of the house, and would be no safer from a sanitary standpoint; and it probably would require more labor to care for than the one contemplated. The estimates are on the basis of a specification which would meet with the approval of the public sanitary inspectors in any of the large cities. Where there is a material reduction in the number of fixtures and connections from the list given, the percentage for other piping and connections will have to be increased. There are various ways of reducing the cost of the outfit. The best way is to have less of it; for instance, only city water may be used, or, possibly, only the cistern water. The completed plumbing outfit mentioned in schedule "B," with the exception of cistern-water connections, including hot and cold city water for sink, wash-stand, and bath-tub, has been put in, in plan No. 30, for $245. The natural-gas-piping figure, like the others, is liable to vary. Piping for five fires has been put in for $20, for $15, and for $30. The burners, the burner valves and mixers, usually cost from four to five dollars a fire. The gas-fixture schedule is priced by the burner, not by the connection. Each burner of each fixture is counted. Of course one may get a single fixture which will cost as much as the above rule would figure on a whole outfit, but that is unusual in moderate-cost houses. Some of the second-story brackets will cost from ninety cents to one dollar and a quarter apiece. This will increase the price of burner margin for the first floor, and allow more elaborate fixtures. The mantels are priced to include grate, hearth, facings, and everything that may go there, excepting fender and blower. One may get a mantel for $25 or $30, or he may use a grate setting without a mantel, or may go as far into the hundreds as his inclination and means will lead him. Very expensive mantels in moderate-cost houses are not in good taste. A $100 or $150 mantel in a room all of the other wood-work of which did not cost over half that sum, is in exceedingly bad form. The mantel appears like a monument; everything around it is insignificant. In buying mantels from stock in mantel stores, the cheaper ones are generally the best designed from an artistic standpoint. The furnace price is necessarily arbitrary. The owner of a house will be told that the price here given is too high and too low. A moderate-sized, two-story, eight-room house, which, counting the bath-room, would have nine connections, could be provided with a furnace of wrought-iron or steel, riveted joints, double galvanized-iron jacket, for $240. The same furnace brick-set will cost from fifteen to twenty dollars more. The owner of such a house can get a cheaper furnace, or he can get one which will be much more expensive. Oftentimes when an architect estimates the price of a furnace to the owner, the latter will respond with the statement that he has been offered a furnace complete for ninety dollars. Upon investigation it generally proves that the furnace is in some one's store ready for delivery; that it will cost extra to set it, and for all connections, fittings, registers, etc.; and that the furnace itself is of such a kind that ninety dollars is a high price for it. There is no doubt that the statement as to furnace prices will meet with general disapproval from manufacturers. Many will say that the prices given are ridiculously high, and others, ridiculously low. Other general statements as to heating apparatus may be found in a chapter given to that subject in that section of the book devoted to the Journey through the House. The estimates given on plate and cathedral glass are about as unsatisfactory as anything can be. They merely give the owner a general idea as to what to expect. Electric-work prices are approximately correct for localities where the facilities for doing this kind of work are at hand. Door and table bell outfits are now sold and arranged ready to be set up. The methods of their adjustment are so simple that any one who can read can put them in. The general statement may be made that these prices are approximately correct in all the larger markets; and that in cases where the building is far removed therefrom, there must necessarily be additions for travel of workmen, and other incidental expenses in the transportation of material and labor. The following is the list of prices of material and labor upon which the building estimates are based:-- Excavating, $0.25 a yard. Brick in the wall, $9 per M. Mason work, $5.50 a yard, laid up. Cement floors, $0.70 a square yard. Timber, joist, and scantling, less than eighteen feet long, $17 per M. No. 1 common boards, $18 per M. Select common pine flooring, count measure, $26 per M. Common flooring, count measure, $22.50 per M. First quality yellow pine flooring, face measure, $37.50 per M. Standard yellow pine flooring, face measure, $30 per M. No. 1 poplar flooring, face measure, $28.50 per M. No. 2 poplar flooring, face measure, $23.50 per M. No. 1 stock boards, $20 per M. No. 1 poplar siding or weather-boarding, $18 per M. No. 2, $16 per M. No. 1 pine siding, $22 per M. No. 2, $20 per M. Shingles, 16 inches clear butts, best, per M, $3.75. Shingles, 16 inches extra, 10 inches clear butts, $3.25. Pine lath, per M, $2.50. Poplar and pine finishing lumber, $3.75 to $6 per 100 feet. Oak or maple flooring, first class, $4 to $6 per 100 feet. Oak finishing lumber, $4 to $6 per 100 feet. Under certain conditions the above prices are subject to discounts. Plastering: three-coat work, plaster-of-Paris finish, $0.25 a yard; two-coat work, plaster-of-Paris finish, $0.20; gray floated sand finish, three cents extra on above prices. Painting, $0.06 per yard a coat. Labor: common labor, $0.15 an hour; bricklayers and masons, $0.35 to $0.45 an hour; carpenters, $0.20 to $0.30 an hour; tinners, $0.30 an hour; painters, $0.20 to $0.30 an hour; plumber and helper, $0.50 an hour. The above labor prices are those paid by the contractors. Rarely, however, are the maximum prices reached. There are few subjects on which ideas vary so greatly as values. This fact may be made apparent when we call to mind that bids on a house let for $3,000 frequently range $1,000 higher than this figure. BUSINESS POINTS IN BUILDING. CHAPTER XXXVII. LOW-COST HOUSES.--METHODS OF MAKING CONTRACTS.--ARCHITECTS' ESTIMATES.--BUILDING BY THE DAY.--THE SAFEST PLAN.--GUARDING AGAINST LIENS. A low-cost, well-built house is sought by all. The cost of a house is largely a question of business management,--one of knowledge. Before considering the details of contracting for the building of a house, there are a few general points which should be mentioned. First, it never pays to make a contract to have a house built for less than it is worth. In order to get a good house, it is necessary that there be a margin of profit for the builder. Second, a good house from a constructive standpoint can only be built by competent mechanics. One may contract for the building of a house for less than it is worth with parties who are incapable of doing first-class work, and require a bond to secure the faithful execution of the contract. A contract or a bond cannot make a man do good work if he does not know how to do it. It will not save anxiety or trouble. It may indemnify against actual damages, but never against trouble and vexation; nor can it compensate for poor work done in building a home. This matter is mentioned because it is the fault of a great many people, who are inexperienced in building, that they are disposed to have work done for less than it is worth. It does not pay. It may be remembered, however, that one builder may be able to build for less than another. One may have more energy, tact, or general ability than another. He may have better credit; may be a better buyer. The result is larger accomplishments. In speaking of low-cost houses or cheap buildings, it is not to be understood that they are cheap or low-cost in the sense of being common or frail. I mean first-class houses at a relatively low cost; low cost in a business sense, the best for the money. We often hear the statement made that one can tell nothing definite about the cost of a house until it is finished. One can come as near knowing what a house will cost, as he can to knowing what he wants before he begins. One can get prices on what he has in mind, if his ideas be expressed. He cannot get prices on the unknown. The expression of one's ideas of a house is through plans and specifications. The fact that architects' estimates are often too low is because the owner is not sufficiently informed in house-building to know what he wants until after the estimate is made. The owner usually expresses a price that he wishes to pay for his house before he expresses his idea. It may be well to illustrate this. One who wishes to build goes to an architect with some sketches or prints, which he has been collecting, lays them down and says,-- "We're thinking about building a house. We want something like this. Here are four rooms and a hall downstairs, and four rooms and a bath-room above. We want to build of wood, and wish to have the house warm and substantial. Can it be built for three thousand dollars? It's all we have to put in it." "Oh, yes," says the architect; and so it can. A good, comfortable, substantial house, from the plans indicated, can be built for three thousand dollars. The architect knows this, and says that the work can be done for that price. He is ordered to make the plans. In a day or two the owner comes into his office and says,-- "My wife and I were talking over the house last night, and concluded that we would like to have a bay window from the dining-room,--a place where we can sit in summer, and put flowers in the winter." "All right." "And she told me to ask where you were going to put a wash-stand downstairs. You know we will want some kind of a wash-room." "I hadn't thought anything about that," said the architect. "Nothing was said about it. I supposed that in a house of this size the bath-room was the only place where you would put a stationary wash-stand." "We have to have a place downstairs. We can't go upstairs every time we want to wash our hands." Another two or three days pass. The owner visits the architect again. It is the old story. He and his wife have been studying the house question in earnest. They are educating themselves in house-building. The more they think about it, the more they want, all of which is perfectly natural and right. It is in the natural order of things. It is the way the world moves. "We were talking about the house, and have about concluded that we will finish two front rooms upstairs in oak. What do you think it will cost?" "If you use oak for all the wood-work, it will cost between forty and fifty dollars." "That isn't much. We'll have it." And so the house grows as the owners grow, a little every day. The next day it is a little more plate glass at a cost of fifteen dollars. Again, it is bronze hardware at an extra cost of twenty dollars. Then it is bevelled-glass doors in the china-closet, plastering in the attic, a tile vestibule, a porch off from the dining-room, and so on. The three thousand dollars is exceeded, though probably by something less than the amount represented by the growth of the owner's ideas. The architect had made a certain allowance for this development, though it was not possible for him entirely to foresee it. Of those who build, the ones who take the greatest interest in the house, those who think the most about it, are usually the ones who exceed their original calculations by the largest amount. In building, it is important that the architect and the owner thoroughly understand each other before contracts with the builders are signed. The wants of the owner must be thoroughly understood, and carefully and accurately set forth. From the plans and specifications estimates for all parts of the work should be received, and the cost of everything known, before obligations are created. The process of making the plans and specifications, and taking the bids, is educational in its tendency. It brings to the owner's attention nearly everything that he may want. Frequently he will find that the first estimates which he gets are higher than the amount he cared to expend. This is on account of his growth. He can frequently reduce the cost without positive injury to the original scheme. We will consider how contracts are usually made. Sometimes it is by making plans and specifications for the entire house, and then asking for bids on the building as a whole. A general contractor makes his figures on the various parts of the work, then adds them together and makes a lump bid. If he is awarded the contract under such a system, he does part of the work himself and sublets the rest. Possibly he may be a carpenter; then he sublets the brick work, plastering, tinning, painting, etc., and, if possible, he makes a profit on all of these sub-contracts. It does not always happen that he makes figures on these various divisions of the contract himself when forming his original bid. He gets sub-bids from various mechanics and adds these to his own in making up a lump bid. It is known that there is a very wide range of difference between bids which come in this way. In a house to cost three thousand dollars the bids not infrequently vary twenty-five to thirty per cent. The highest bid may be over four thousand dollars. Another way of contracting is for the architect or owner, as the case may be, to take bids on the various details of excavating, stone work, brick work, carpenter work, painting, plastering, galvanized iron and tin, glass, plumbing, gas-fitting, etc.; in fact, to detail the work as much as possible and receive detailed bids. If the work costs too much, if the bids run too high, one can locate the excess. At times one can get a cheaper house by pursuing this plan. Another plan of building is by the day. Usually this means to employ carpenters and a foreman, take bids on the material that the carpenters use, and to sublet the mason work, excavating, painting, plastering, tin-work, plumbing, etc. Sometimes the mason-work is also done by the day. Each plan has its merits. The first mentioned, of letting most of the work in one contract, is the one in most general use. It is common practice in this connection to let excavating, mason work, carpenter work, plastering, tinning, painting, and hardware in one general contract; then the mantels, gas-fixtures, furnace, plumbing, electric work, and ornamental glass work are let in separate contracts. It is difficult for one to specify gas-fixtures, mantels, and similar fittings, excepting by price. There is no satisfaction in this, for the reason that the owner or his architect may be able to make quite as good or even a better bargain than the contractor. Then there is no opportunity for the builder to arrange for a relatively high price with those who furnish this class of goods. It is fair for the builder to assume that he is entitled to a certain percentage for selecting and negotiating for such articles. The owner may save this for himself by making his own purchases. Plumbing work is frequently separated from the general contract in order that the owner may exercise his discretion as to the workmen employed to do this important work. In such circumstances it is not altogether a matter of cost. It is of the utmost importance that the best of workmen be employed. The articles which cannot be directly specified should be secured outside the general contract. Altogether, the plan of letting most of the work in one contract, as outlined, is the best and safest for those to pursue who are not thoroughly familiar with building operations. The plan of subletting the separate contracts to the lowest bidders is not to be recommended to those without large experience. The difficulty in locating responsibility for delays is great. There is apt to be contention, annoyance, and sometimes loss, by this confusion. The plan of building by the day is more satisfactory for experienced builders than the one just mentioned, but it has the disadvantage of not fully representing to the owner before it is finished the cost of his structure. In nearly every city or town there are a number of good builders, not well supplied with means, who will take a contract for building a house, work on it themselves until it is finished, and then take another, never having more than one or two houses on hand. One can frequently get good work from such builders at a much less cost than from large contractors. The larger contractors employ a foreman at about the same price a day that the small contractors expect to get per day out of their entire contract. Then, in addition to that, they receive their profits of ten, fifteen, or other per cent for their time and attention. Any one building with the help of the smaller contractors must be very careful, or he will get into trouble on account of the small margin of profit. To recur to the method first mentioned. It is well that suggestions be made as to the course to be pursued in receiving bids on work, as classified in that suggestion. In the first place, there should be accurate plans and specifications made by an architect capable of doing that kind of work. Everything should be fully represented to the owner in both a positive and negative way; that is, not only as to what is to go into his house, but as to what is not to go into it. As soon as the architect or those in charge of the work begin to take bids, the owner should be provided with a complete copy of the plans and specifications, in order that he may be fully conversant with what is to be done. It was said that everything should be represented to the owner in both a positive and negative way. Not only should it be stated to him that the first floor of the house is to be plastered, but, if such is the case, that the cellar is not to be plastered. If the cellar floor is not to be cemented, it should be stated definitely to him in that way before beginning to take bids. If fly-screens are not included in the building contract, it should be so stated. Everything should be fully represented, and a record thereof placed before the owner, so that there can be not the slightest opportunity for misunderstanding or disagreement. Thus, if everything is presented to the owner, he will know what he is to have and what he is not to have, and his business will be done for him in a way satisfactory to all. When this is done, it is time to begin taking bids. In doing this there should be no favoritism. The builder should be allowed to take a copy of the plans and specifications with him to his office or place of business, and keep them a day or more, in order to take off his quantities and become thoroughly conversant with everything connected with them. Then he can return the plans, and, while others are doing the same thing, he can compile his figures. Generally it takes about a day for each contractor to get through with a set of plans; that is, if five bids are received, it generally takes five or six days, assuming that only one set of plans is in use. No one should be asked to figure on a building unless the owner is willing to award him the contract, providing his bid is the lowest. Anything else is unfair. When all the bids have been received in sealed envelopes, the architect and owner may open them. After selecting the lowest, they may add to that figure the cost of everything not included in that proposition,--the furnace, mantels, gas fixtures, ornamental glass, and anything else that has not been included in the bid. This may be readily done, if the architect provide a schedule, similar to schedule "B," of everything which may go into the house. In the matter of closing the contract, only general statements can be made. Where an architect is employed, he will give proper directions; but, as many houses are built without such assistance, it is proper to make general statements which will assist in this work. There are forms of building-contracts, or articles of agreement, which may be secured from various regular sources. It is proper to fix the time of the completion of the work, which will vary in different parts of the country according to general customs. A house to cost from fifteen hundred to four thousand dollars may be very easily finished, under favorable circumstances, in ninety to a hundred days. Such houses can be built in less time, but it is best to give the builder at least three months. He will do better work in that time than in less. For the higher figure named, or for those which approach it, it may be better to allow even a little more rather than less time. As a price for liquidated damages in event of delay in completion, the rental value of the property is the usual sum specified. There are various plans pursued in the matter of payments. Where there is an architect or superintendent, he usually issues orders on the owner for payment of material and labor furnished by a contractor less ten or fifteen per cent. Sometimes it is stated that two-fifths of the money will be paid when the building is enclosed and under roof; one-fifth additional when building is plastered, painted on exterior, all exterior appurtenances finished, the floors laid, and the house ready for other interior wood-work; and the remaining two-fifths when all work is finished. At times this apportionment is correct, and at other times not. However, it is a very good general rule. It is a good plan to add the ten per cent discount to it when possible. Sometimes an indemnifying bond is required of the contractor in order to secure the owner the proper execution of the contract. Otherwise the ten or fifteen per cent discount is relied upon to secure that end. The lien laws in the various States make it very important that the owner, or his agent in the matter of building, should be very careful to see that the contractor pays all his bills, or secures releases from those who have furnished material and labor on account of the building contract, before money is paid by owner. The law is different in various States, and renders the owner liable, under varying conditions, for material and labor furnished to contractor by others as employees or sub-contractor, even though payment has been made by owner to general contractor. Where a bond is not required, it is proper for the owner or his agent to exact releases in proper form from those who have furnished material and labor to contractor. The following form is in use by the writer:-- Work located The undersigned, in consideration of the personal credit extended by to , Contractor, hereby consent that may pay to said contractor any sum that may be now owing to, or may hereafter become due, said contractor, on account of contract for the construction of the above works, and we hereby waive all rights to Mechanics' Liens or other claims which we have, or may have, against said property, or owner, on account of labor or material furnished by us. INDIANAPOLIS, 1889. It is the custom to furnish the builder with a number of copies of the above release before it is time for him to secure an order on the owner for money. As the architect is in a position to know from whom material or labor is secured, it is possible for him to know if the list of releases is complete. If not complete, the party refusing to give a release is required to make statement as to the amount of the indebtedness for material and labor furnished on the contract. The general contractor is charged with the amount represented as being due until the matter is fully adjusted. As an additional safeguard, the contractor is at times required to fill out and make affidavit to the following:-- INDIANAPOLIS, ---- 1889. The undersigned, for the purpose of securing payment on account of contract with ----, for the construction of a ---- house, known as No. ---- on ---- Street, situated on Lot ----, Out-lot ----, ---- Division to City of Indianapolis, Marion County, State of Indiana, represents hereby that he has paid for all labor and material of every kind and nature had and procured therefor, excepting, however, that he is now owing the following sums to the respective parties hereinafter named for labor and materials for said building, and owes therefor no other amounts, to wit:-- In this connection it is not possible to consider all of the ramifications of the lien law. It is important to understand, however, that it is entirely possible for an owner to have to pay for part of or all of his house twice, if he is not careful in matters of this kind. HOW TO SECURE A HOME. CHAPTER XXXVIII. MONTHLY PAYMENTS.--CALCULATIONS ON A LONG-TIME PLAN.--PURCHASE ON A RENTAL BASIS.--HOW IT MAY BE WORKED OUT. It is a pleasant thought that every one can own a home of his own. With only a moderate salary, and little or nothing ahead, a thought of this kind may appear more pleasant than real. It may be affirmed, however, that, with few exceptions, any one who can pay rent may own his home. This will require certain sacrifices and at first great economy, but in the end the result justifies the means. There is no reason why any one should pay rent. Building associations are instrumental in securing more homes for people on a long-time plan than any other scheme. In the large towns, however, houses are sold on various kinds of instalment plans. By way of illustration, the writer calls to mind a five-room house, pleasantly situated, which was built about three years ago. This house is being paid for in instalments of $15 a month. An arrangement of this kind is good for all concerned. It is an easy way for one to get a home. It is a good use of money, from a business standpoint, for the one who has the money to invest. A little demonstration will make this plain. The lot on which the house was situated was valued at $400. The house, with walks, well, cistern, and outbuildings, cost $900. Here is a total investment of $1,300. The purchaser paid $300 in cash. There remained $1,000 unpaid. The interest on $1,000 for a year at six per cent is $60; but as the volume of interest is reduced as the payments are made, the actual interest for the full period averages about one-half of $60, or $30, per year. To make this point clear, I will state it in another way. The principal is being reduced as the monthly payments are made. As the payments advance, the amount of interest necessarily decreases, as there is not so much principal on which to pay interest. As a matter of fact, one pays six per cent interest on just one-half of $1,000 for the full period, or, what amounts to the same thing, the average interest on the full period is three per cent. Thus, one is paying an average interest of $30 per year; and, as he pays $15 a month, this would be $180 a year for principal and interest, $150 of which would apply to the principal. Thus it is that in six years and eight months the one paying $15 a month will own the house and lot. I know of other cases where less each month is paid and a longer time is taken. It would take $10.83[1] per month to pay for a house of this kind in ten years, with a cash payment of $300. It may be said that nobody but a philanthropist would sell property in this way. In the case of which I speak, the philanthropist is the manager of the property of a life-insurance company which owns quite a large amount of unimproved real estate in a Western city, and had a surplus capital on which it desired to realize. It is a good thing for the company. By this means it is enabled to dispose of its real estate, and to use its money profitably. This is not strictly architectural, but it may result in showing some one how to get a home, or others how to make use of idle capital in a safe and profitable way. It is better for one who has money to invest to sell houses in this way than it is to rent them. He gets profit on the sale, and interest on his money, which latter is all he expects under other circumstances, and disposes of the houses before they need repairs. This is the view which the capitalist takes of the situation. By looking into it a little further, he may see that he will not be troubled by insurance, a vacant house, or repairs. The cash payment is sufficient to protect the expense of foreclosing the mortgage and the rental of the house during the time of the redemption. In some instances the property is leased on the payment of a small cash bonus, with the stipulation that when one-third, one-fourth, or other agreed portion of selling price is paid in, that a deed will be given; further payment being secured by mortgage. Building associations are not common in all sections of the country. Those who are ambitious to build, and are not provided with facilities which a building association offers, may ask what to do. The answer is short: form an association. This can be done in a small community. Two hundred shares paid in, say, by fifty people, would represent a hundred dollars a week. Any one who wishes to do this can provide himself with text-books and other information on the subject, which are now published in different parts of the country. Any bookseller with a good catalogue can give the necessary information. It is sometimes assumed by those unfamiliar with building-association methods, that they only provide means for building small, low-cost houses. This is an error. It is not at all unusual that complete houses, costing from three to five thousand dollars, are built by men of large means, who secure their money from a building association. One has, say, forty or fifty thousand dollars profitably occupied in a regular business; he may not care to disturb this money except to buy a lot with which to establish a basis of credit with the building association. The price of the lot may vary from one-fourth to one-half the total investment. One wishes to borrow three thousand dollars from an association on the plan which is subsequently fully described. He would have to take out fifteen shares on a payment of fifty cents a share a week. This would represent seven dollars and a half weekly, or about thirty dollars a month. On the plan where the interest and premium are charged in addition to the regular weekly dues, a little over fifty dollars a month would be required to keep up the building-association charges. This would be less than house rent. These calculations are made assuming that the premium is not more than ten cents and the interest six per cent. CHAPTER XXXIX. BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS.--WHY DIVIDENDS ARE LARGE AND INTEREST LOW.--BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS AND SAVINGS BANKS.--ASSOCIATION SECURITIES.--BUILDING-ASSOCIATION METHODS.--DIFFERENT PLANS.--BORROWING FROM A BUILDING ASSOCIATION.--A BUILDING-ASSOCIATION REPORT. Building-association methods become more popular as they are better understood. Savings banks are unnecessary in communities where building associations are common. The savings bank will give place to the building association, for the reason that the latter affords greater security and more profit to the depositors at the same time that it affords greater conveniences to the borrowers. It is often asked by those not fully acquainted with building-association methods, "How is it that the association pays such large dividends, and the borrower such a small rate of interest? The profit is made by the loaning of money; and, consequently, the borrower must pay a high price for his money, or the association does not make large dividends." This appears to be a logical argument. However, it is not true that the borrower pays a high price for his money. The dividends declared are made from the borrowers, by the rapid compounding of interest and other sources of profit. Money paid in as interest is immediately re-invested as a loan, and thus pays interest the next week. The interest on this is at once put to use, and so on. It is compounded. The premium paid for money is another source of profit. This comes from the borrower, and represents a part of the cost of the money to him; but, unless the premium is excessive, the earnings on his stock counterbalance the amount paid as premium, so that in the end a borrower does not pay in excess of the regular rate for his money at the same time that the stockholder is more largely benefited. A building association has only a tithe of the expenses of a bank. The cost of doing business is very small. An association has a very great advantage over a bank in its earning capacity in that it does not have to carry a surplus. All of its money is invested at all times. Frequently it is receiving interest upon money that is not a part of its assets. This happens when an application for a loan has been accepted, a building is under way, and the money not all paid out. The percentage of loss in a building association is necessarily smaller than in the best-conducted bank. Its securities are all first mortgages on productive real estate, and loans are made to members only, and under the condition that the immediate repayment of the loan be commenced. The security begins to improve at once, by the repayment of a part of the principal each week. It is usual for each member of a family to become interested in the immediate repayment of a loan. The payment of building-association dues is constantly in mind; as they become due from week to week, they cannot be overlooked. The fact that the debt is growing less, and, as well, the incentive to avoid small fines in case of failure to make payment, contribute to the value of the security. A loan on an ordinary basis, secured from a savings bank, insurance or trust company for a long period, is not thought of in this way. The usual thought in such a case is to pay the debt in a large sum at a time in the future. The time of the repayment of an association loan is always present. The security afforded to building associations is much better than to savings banks and loan companies, even where the margin above the amount of loan is less because of this difference in plan of repayment. Again, the margin of security from the first is always sufficient to protect a mortgage and the payment of all foreclosure costs and charges. Furthermore, the rentals in case of foreclosure are, or should be, sufficient to pay all dues and other fixed charges. This will prevent loss, and in the end pay for the property. Another element of safety in building associations is the small risk of loss from the duplicity of the officers. This risk is unusually light, for the reason that in a well-managed building association there is little in sight to lose. The money is usually all invested. Any small amount in the hands of the officers is there for only a short time. There are demands in all well-managed building associations for all the money in hand. While this is true, it is always required that the officers who handle the association money give bond for a much larger sum than it is possible for them ever to have in charge. This makes the loss, if any, readily collectible. It may be well to illustrate building-association methods, and thus call attention intelligently to the points of superiority which one plan may have over another. The idea which first gave rise to associations is that of enabling persons belonging to a class whose earnings are small, to place themselves in a position where the process of gradual accumulation is, in a certain sense, compulsory. The method of operation is simple enough when it is understood. Say that a number of stockholders agree to form an association with a thousand shares, each share to represent $200. This would make a full capital stock of $200,000 when all paid in. The various individuals forming the association subscribe for as many shares as they feel competent to pay upon, it being agreed that for each share of stock subscribed, fifty cents per week shall be paid until the sum-total of the payments shall aggregate $200; at the end of which time a division shall be made according to the original subscription and subsequent payment. It is clear that if all are prompt in their payments, the treasury will be ready for distribution at the end of four hundred weeks. The period of four hundred weeks will, however, be shortened if all the money paid in is at once invested at interest upon safe securities, with the addition of interests compounded weekly, as is the case with these associations. For instance, it may appear that at the end of three hundred and twelve weeks, with a payment of fifty cents a week, and the accrued earnings that are credited to the shares, they are worth $200, the amount fixed for the value of the stock when it is paid up. At such a time the depositing members withdraw their funds, and those who are borrowers pay off their obligations to the association with stock, and the mortgages are released. Money in building associations is generally sold to the highest bidder; that is, those who want to borrow bid a premium for the money. For instance, a sale of money is advertised. Bids are then received on the money to be loaned, and it is given to the highest bidder after the security has been approved. Suppose one wishes to borrow a thousand dollars. If each paid-up share is to represent two hundred dollars, five shares must be taken out to represent the payment of principal on a thousand-dollar loan. It may appear that the premium bid was ten cents on each share. This means that the borrower must pay ten cents premium each week, on each share, during the course of the loan, or until the principal is paid out. Thus he would pay fifty cents a week as principal, and ten cents a week as premium, and the interest on two hundred dollars at six per cent, which would be twenty-four cents a week. Thus he would pay eighty-four cents a week on each share; or on five shares, four dollars and twenty cents a week. This would pay out in about five years, depending upon the average rate of premium, the cost of doing business, and other conditions which may be readily understood. When the principal paid in, together with the accrued earnings, represents two hundred dollars, the obligation to the building association is released. There are various plans of starting and arranging building and savings associations, which differ one from another only in matters of detail. The price of the share may be two, three, or four hundred dollars, or any other sum. The amounts paid in a week vary from ten cents to any larger sum. In the past, most associations have been started on the series plan, which is defined as follows by Henry S. Rosenthal of Cincinnati in his "Manual for Building Associations:"-- "In an association, organized on the terminating plan, all the stock is issued as of one date. A terminating association is organized on the presumption that all the stock will be subscribed for at the open meetings. This, however, is seldom done. The consequence is, that shares sold after the first meetings must be sold at such prices as to make them equal in value to those already issued. To do this a sum must be charged equal to the amount already paid in in instalments by the subscribers to the original shares. If the regular dues on shares should be one dollar per week, a person subscribing for a share after the association has been running ten weeks must pay ten dollars for the share. In like manner, if the association has been running for a longer period, he must pay an additional dollar for each additional week. Moreover, if he does not subscribe until after the profits have been declared, he must pay such an additional amount on his share as will correspond to the earnings of the original shares up to that time. The same rule holds through the entire existence of the association, each year making it more difficult to enter. After an association, organized on this plan, has run for a time, it is impossible for many persons, who would gladly become members, to raise a sufficient sum of money to pay up the back instalments, the initiation fees, the accrued profits, and other incidental expenses. In its practical workings, therefore, an association organized on this plan is not well adapted to meet the conditions of that particular class of persons who most need such an organization, and are most likely to be benefited by it. "In a terminating association all the shares are, of course, at all times of equal value. Whenever the total amounts of the dues paid in and of accumulated profits equal the par value of all the shares, the association terminates and its affairs must be wound up. Each stockholder who has not borrowed his money in advance receives the full value of his shares. To those who have secured their money in advance, their mortgages, cancelled and receipted in full, are returned. "PERMANENT ASSOCIATION. "Building associations were established originally on the terminating plan. It is obvious that working on this plan they cannot, in some respects, reach their greatest degree of popularity and usefulness. On this account there has been a gradual departure from this plan. The first departure from the terminating plan consisted in an arrangement for issuing the stock in series instead of all from the same date. Associations were chartered for a certain number of years, as before, and with a specified amount of capital stock. But instead of selling all the stock as of the same date, it was divided into series; one series being sold as of the date of the beginning of the first year, the second series as of the date of the beginning of the second year, and so on until all the shares were sold. The issuing of a new series does not necessarily occur annually, but at such periods as are made necessary or desirable by the business of the association. The serial issue may be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or otherwise, as the directors may determine. By the time the last series is issued and the stock is exhausted, the first one or two or more series of shares, if the business of the association has been prosperous, have usually reached their full value, and are paid back and cancelled. Associations conducted on this plan usually have the right to issue new stock to take the place of that which is cancelled from time to time, and thus their perpetuity is insured. A successful association working on this plan can usually secure the issue of a new charter, and can thus continue its existence. But there are manifest disadvantages and risks under which an association operating on this plan must labor. "Another plan of operation has been inaugurated which has proved very popular, and which is being generally adopted by the associations in the different States. Associations are granted perpetual charters, the amount of the capital stock being fixed at a certain sum. They are allowed to begin operations as soon as a certain amount of stock is subscribed. After the association is in operation, new subscribers are allowed to enter at any time on an equality with the original subscribers, the stock of each member dating from the time of his entry. Thus the business of the association runs along from year to year, until finally all of the stock is subscribed. After a time the shares first issued begin to reach their full value. As they thus mature, the owners draw out their money,--if they have not borrowed it in advance,--and their shares are cancelled, and their membership ceases. If they have borrowed their money in advance, their bonds and mortgages are returned to them receipted in full. If a member, whose stock has thus matured, has not borrowed his money in advance, and does not wish to draw it out, a certificate of paid-up stock is issued to him, and he leaves his money in the association as a matter of investment. An association operating on this plan may, after a time, when its original stock has all been subscribed through application to the incorporating authorities, secure the right to increase its stock. If, in the course of time, this increased stock becomes exhausted, another increase may be secured in a like manner, and so on indefinitely." Herewith is given an extract from the yearly report of a successful savings and loan association on the perpetual plan. It will illustrate more fully the method and results of this method than could a less formal description. It may be explained in this connection that in this society the payments are uniform for depositing and borrowing members; that is, instead of having the premium and interest added to the weekly dues, the amount of premium and interest is charged against the weekly payment of fifty cents. Ten cents is the limit of premium, the officers and stockholders believing that to be as much as any one should pay. OBJECT. THE PLYMOUTH SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION, NO. 2, is organized with two main objects in view:-- FIRST.--To furnish a convenient, safe, and profitable method of investing the savings of working people. Members can come in and go out at will. Subscriptions can commence at any time without having to pay back dues or wait for new series. Withdrawing members obtain their money without loss (fines excepted), and are paid as promptly as the finances of the Association will admit, without having to wait ninety days. In the history of the Association there have been no delays. SECOND.--To furnish persons who wish to borrow for any purpose the means for doing so at a reasonable rate of interest. In other words, it is an association composed of borrowers and lenders, and established for their mutual convenience. It gathers together the savings of the people, which, scattered and in small sums, could not be invested to advantage, and loans the money thus obtained on first mortgage security, and in sums to suit, to those who wish to build, to pay off mortgages, or for other purposes. All members of the Association are, therefore, divided into two classes:-- _First._--Those who desire to use the society as a means of saving or investing money. These are called _depositing members_. _Second._--Those who wish to make use of the organization as a means of borrowing money. These are called _borrowing members_. MANAGEMENT. THE PLYMOUTH SAVINGS AND LOAN ASSOCIATION is a strictly co-operative or mutual organization. All the shareholders are _pro rata_ owners of all the assets of the society. Every member is a partner in the enterprise in proportion to the amount paid in by him. He is entitled to his share of all the earnings of the Association, and he must also stand his share of the losses, if there be any. The By-laws contain the rules and regulations under which money is received and loaned, or otherwise disposed of, and the business of the society is carried on by a Board of Directors, elected annually by the members. SHARES AND SHAREHOLDERS. The amount of interest which each member has in the Association is indicated by the number of his shares. Shares are $200 each, and no member can hold more than twenty-five shares. The weekly payment required is fifty cents on each share of stock. When a member joins the Association he indicates the amount of weekly payment he desires to make by the number of shares for which he subscribes. He may, however, if he wishes, pay more than his shares call for, and such over-payments will receive dividends the same as the regular weekly instalments. Each member is supposed to keep up his payments until what he has paid in, together with the dividends declared thereon, shall amount to the face value of his shares, at which time he must cease payments, and either take his money out, or, if the society be willing, allow it to remain and draw dividends. DIVIDENDS. On the 1st of January and July of each year the net earnings of the Association are divided _pro rata_ among all the members, and the amount due each member is credited on his pass-book. Persons joining the association between January and July must continue payments until the following January before the dividend will be credited, and those joining between July and January must likewise pay until the following July; and if the money be withdrawn before that time, the dividend will be forfeited. The right to dividend also ceases from the date of the notice to withdraw the stock. When dividends are credited on the pass-books they are just like money paid, and are themselves entitled to draw dividends the same as cash payments. Thus it will be seen that all dividends compound semi-annually. The following table will show how long it takes to pay up a share to face value by paying the regular dues only, supposing the society to earn six per cent dividends per annum.[1] It also shows the value of each share at the close of each year:-- First year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 78 $26 78 ------ ------ Value at close of first year $26 78 Second year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 2 41 28 41 ------ ------ Value at close of second year $55 19 Third year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 4 53 30 53 ------ ------ Value at close of third year $85 72 Fourth year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 6 10 32 10 ------ ------- Value at close of fourth year $117 82 Fifth year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 8 34 34 34 ------ ------- Value at close of fifth year $152 16 Sixth year Dues $26 00 " Dividends 10 41 36 41 ------ ------- Value at close of sixth year $188 60 Seventh year (16 weeks) Dues $8 00 " Dividends 3 40 11 40 ----- ------- $200 00 Time, 6 years and 16 weeks. Total dues paid $164 00 Total dividends 36 00 ------- $200 00 [Footnote 1: The present rate of dividend is nine per cent, with an added surplus.] METHOD OF LOANING MONEY. The society loans money only to members. For each $200 share held by a member he may borrow $200, secured by first mortgage on real estate, interest on which is twenty-four cents per week. The right to precedence in borrowing is sold at auction at stated times at the office of the Association (notice of which is given beforehand) to the member who bids or agrees to pay the highest weekly premium in addition to the twenty-four cents per week interest. Ten cents per week is the average rate at which money was sold during the year 1887, and is now selling. Members not desiring or not able to attend the sale of money in person may have some one else bid for them, or they may leave a written bid with the Secretary, on blanks prepared for that purpose, who will make it for them at the sale. The society also loans to depositing members in sums equal to ninety per cent of the dues paid in. Security is had by the member pledging his stock for the payment of the loan and interest due (if any) on notes prepared for that purpose. Interest on such loans has for the present been placed at the rate of eight per cent per annum. PAYMENTS. The depositing and borrowing members alike pay fifty cents per week per share. There are no additions for expenses, interest, premiums, or fines. These are charged up at the close of each dividend period, or at the closing up of an account. Each borrower is required to pay at least fifty cents per week on each $200 of loan made to him, which is credited as follows:-- First the premium and interest are taken out, the interest being twenty-four cents. When the premium bid is ten cents, both together would amount to thirty-four cents. Then the balance, which in this case would be sixteen cents, is credited as a payment on the share on which the loan is taken. These payments are continued until the amount credited on the shares, together with the dividends thereon, will equal the amount loaned. For instance, suppose the loan to be $200, and the premium bid to be ten cents per week,-- The payment each week would be 50 cents The premium each week would be 10 cents The interest each week would be 24 cents --------- 34 cents -------- The credit on the share each week would be 16 cents These credits of sixteen cents per week begin to draw dividends on the succeeding dividend period, which are compounded semi-annually, and the weekly payments must be continued until the weekly credits of sixteen cents and the dividends thereon amount to $200. Members are at liberty to pay every two weeks or monthly, and as much beyond the required weekly payment as they may desire to. The overpayments are credited like any regular payment and share in the dividends. This enables borrowers to pay their loans off as fast as their circumstances will admit. This method is very helpful, as the interest and premium will be stopped on as many full shares as are paid off, and the cost of a loan is materially reduced thereby. The minimum payment only is fixed. The borrower may at any time pay the whole balance due on the loan and have it cancelled at once. It is always good policy for a borrower to pay more than the weekly dues if he can, in order that in case of sickness, loss of work, or other unforeseen hindrance, he may be paid ahead, and hence suspend payment for a time without being fined or in danger of losing his property. By the following table it is shown that with the premium at twenty-four cents on each $200, and that the society is able to earn six per cent per annum dividends (both of which are being done now[2]), and the required weekly dues only being paid, a loan will be paid up in fifteen years and six months. This time, as already mentioned, can be shortened at the will and ability of the borrower, and may be paid off at any time without any penalty whatever. This is a great advantage, and the society can do this only because of the great demand for loans, and the money does not have to lie idle if a loan is paid off, but is immediately loaned again. Here is a loan which you may take fifteen years to pay if you wish, or you may pay it off at any time. TABLE. SHOWING COURSE OF LOAN OF $1,000. Premium 50 cents per week. Interest $1.20 per week. Six per cent dividends compounded semi-annually. FIRST YEAR: Loan $1,000 00 Payments for year $130 00 Interest and premium $88 40 Less dividends 62 ------ Net cost of loan 87 78 ------ Principal reduced 42 22 [Footnote 2: Since this report was made the earnings have been nine per cent, with an added surplus.] SECOND YEAR: Balance due at end of first year $957 78 Payments for year 130 00 Premium and interest 88 40 Less dividends 3 18 ------ Net cost of loan 85 22 ------ Principal reduced 44 78 THIRD YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of second year $913 00 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 5 91 ------ Net cost of loan 82 49 ------ Principal reduced 47 51 FOURTH YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of third year $865 49 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 8 79 ------ Net cost of loan 79 61 ------ Principal reduced 50 39 FIFTH YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of fourth year $815 10 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 11 88 ------ Net cost of loan 76 52 ------ Principal reduced 53 48 SIXTH YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of fifth year $761 62 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 15 12 ------ Net cost of loan 73 28 ------ Principal reduced 56 72 SEVENTH YEAR: Balance due at end of sixth year $704 90 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 18 60 ------ Net cost of loan 69 80 ----- Principal reduced 60 20 EIGHTH YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of seventh year $644 70 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 22 26 ------ Net cost of loan 66 14 ------ Principal reduced 63 86 NINTH YEAR: ------ Balance due at end of eighth year $580 84 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 26 13 ------ Net cost of loan 62 27 ------ Principal reduced 67 73 TENTH YEAR: ------ Balance due at end of ninth year $513 11 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 30 27 ------ Net cost of loan 58 13 ------ Principal reduced 71 87 ELEVENTH YEAR: ------- Balance due at end of tenth year $441 24 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 34 65 ------ Net cost of loan 53 75 ------ Principal reduced 76 25 TWELFTH YEAR: ------ Balance due at end of eleventh year $364 99 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 39 30 ------ Net cost of loan 49 10 ------ Principal reduced 80 90 THIRTEENTH YEAR: Balance due at end of twelfth year $284 09 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 44 22 ------ Net cost of loan 44 18 ------ Principal reduced 85 82 FOURTEENTH YEAR: ------ Balance due at end of thirteenth year $198 27 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 49 41 ------ Net cost of loan 38 99 ------ Principal reduced 91 01 FIFTEENTH YEAR: ------ Balance due at end of fourteenth year $107 26 Payments for year 130 00 Interest and premium 88 40 Less dividends 54 99 ------ Net cost of loan 33 41 ------ Principal reduced 96 59 SIX WEEKS: ------- Balance due at end of fifteenth year $10 67 Payments for six weeks 15 00 Interest and premium 10 20 Less dividends 5 87 ------ Net cost of loan 4 33 ------ Principal reduced 10 67 ------ Time, fifteen years and six weeks. Total amount of payments $1,965 00 Total interest and premium 1,336 20 Total dividends 371 20 Net cost of loan 965 00 With the reasonable prospect in view that the Association will be able to pay larger dividends at some future time, it will be easy to understand that the cost and the time of payment of a loan will thereby be correspondingly reduced. MORTGAGES. All loans must be secured by first mortgage on real estate in Marion County, Ind. An appraising committee, consisting of three members of the Association, appraise the value of all real estate offered as security for loans and report to the board. No loan can be made until the security has been approved by the Board of Directors. This Association is now paying four per cent semi-annual dividends, and adding largely to its surplus. A new feature in building-association work has recently been put into practice. The association will buy for cash a house and lot, or buy a lot and build a house thereon, and sell at a fair price to the member whose application is accepted. Where the house and lot are bought at a cash price, it is usual to charge a ten per cent bonus when selling it on time to a member. The purchaser then completes the transaction by securing the purchase money to the association, the same as in case of a loan on any other property, except that instead of a deed from the association he will receive a lease, with an agreement to sell and convey to him the premises as soon as one-third of the purchase money shall have been paid in regular dues on his stock. His stock will be assigned as collateral security, and the payments will be credited as rent until the deed is made. Then the purchaser will execute his mortgage for the unpaid balance due on the property on the terms of his original bid for the money. It is usual to require a cash payment equal to the amount of the bonus; that is, ten per cent of the purchase price. This is a valuable feature in building-association methods. It adds to the profits of the association. This plan is adaptable to private enterprise, and is liberal in its terms to the purchaser. In most associations organized on the perpetual plan, as previously described, the demand for funds is greater than can be supplied from depositing members. This has given rise to the "paid-up stock" feature of building associations. Under this plan one may invest money in any sum according to the terms of the charter and secure from the association a certificate of paid-up stock which participates in the regular dividends of the company. In this way, funds in larger amounts may be secured than come from the ordinary payments by regular weekly dues. It is not unusual for individuals to purchase paid-up stock to the amount of several thousand dollars. This is a great help to an association which is short of funds, as it serves to increase its membership by addition of borrowers. There is no better place to invest trust funds than in the paid-up stock of well-managed building associations. Primarily, for the reason that each stockholder is pledged in the amount of his stock to pay principal and six per cent interest on all withdrawals; hence, the funds may be withdrawn at any time, and six per cent interest thereon demanded. Furthermore, building-association stock is not taxable in most States. Individual and moneyed corporations are coming to consider the matter of loans, and means leading to their repayment, on the building-association plan. This will be brought about largely by the low price of money throughout the country at this time. Savings banks, mortgage companies, and life-insurance organizations are finding it difficult to loan their funds at a price that will pay their fixed obligations; hence, they are seeking means which will lead to a more profitable investment of their funds. The building-association plan of loaning money is one solution of the problem. The low price of money is one of the elements which within the next few years will enable nearly every one who so desires to secure a home through the building association, or some plan which has its outgrowth therefrom. CHAPTER XL. PURCHASE OF A LOT.--THE BEST THE CHEAPEST.--A GOOD LOT AS A BASIS OF SECURITY.--THE BASIS OF VALUE IS THE RENTAL. There are many things to consider in connection with the building of a house other than those which are constructive. One may lay aside that which has to do with appearances, convenience, stability, and all that is architectural, and yet have food for thought in connection with the making of a home. For instance, the lot. No one can afford to build on one that is absolutely cheap, or one that is cheap because it is not well located or favorably thought of by the large number of people. A lot that is absolutely cheap is not often worth even what is paid for it. One of small means can least of all afford to put his money in a questionable piece of property. A lot may be relatively cheap, and be a good investment. For instance, there is a street lined with comfortable houses. On this street live people of more or less wealth and unquestioned ambition. Three or four squares beyond the last house of this street the lots may be relatively cheap. The sum asked for them is not great, for the reason that few care to go out so far. Still, by adopting a little of the pioneer spirit, one can make a purchase of these lots and be reasonably certain of being rewarded for his foresight. It is much better to buy such a lot, and live for a year or two without immediate neighbors, than to buy one which is absolutely cheap because the surroundings are positively unfavorable. A man of small means least of all can afford to buy a lot that cannot readily be sold for all it cost. We often hear people say, in regard to lots that are surrounded unfavorably, "What is the difference? It suits us; we can be as happy and comfortable there as any place. If we like it, why should any one else complain?" No one else will complain. It may occur that the owner of this absolutely cheap property may wish to sell. He may become embarrassed in his business, or one of many things may happen to cripple him financially. If he can sell at all, it is at a sacrifice. If a mortgage is foreclosed, there is no reasonable chance of redemption. If the lot is well located, and he becomes financially embarrassed, he can sell for full value and thus relieve himself. If there is danger of foreclosure, a sale can be readily effected, and thus all danger of loss be averted. The idea in buying a lot is to get one which can be readily sold. This is an important matter. In carrying out this principle, one of moderate means will often buy a lot of higher cost than is apparently justifiable. However, this may be the best thing for him to do. It may be good business. If he wishes to borrow money with which to build, he has a better basis for credit. If he puts his house on a good lot, there is opportunity of selling it because of its favorable location, and thus the danger of embarrassment is averted. One can afford to borrow money to build on a good lot, for the reason that there is little danger of losing either the lot or the money. The house and the lot, if it rates well in the public mind, can be easily sold. The lot should not be selected or the house built, if its sale is not entirely possible. There are towns as well as localities in which no one of moderate means can afford to buy or build. Yet such locations are often selected because they are cheap, and living is cheap. The fact of this cheapness is against it. The property is cheap because it is worth little or nothing. It is cheap because no one can get out what he puts into it. This may apply to a lot in a particular town, a particular part of a town, or to property in general in a county or a State. Thus it is that no one of moderate means can afford to buy absolutely cheap property. A young man once went to an architect to advise with him in regard to the selection of a lot. He said,-- "There are two lots on a certain street that I can get for $1,200 each. That is a little more than I want to pay, as even then I would have to borrow more money than I wish in order to build my house. One of the best lots I know anything about is on another street, but I can hardly think of that, for they ask $1,500 for it." "I know the lot," said the architect, "and the $1,500 lot is the one to buy. The $1,200 lots are of questionable value. The surrounding conditions are such that their value is not liable to increase. The $1,500 lot is in the swim; two squares below, lots cannot be bought for $2,400; in fact, they are not in the market. They are owned by people who desire to hold them. In two years you will be reasonably certain to realize at least twice the difference between the values of the $1,500 and the $1,200 lots. In one case, the value of the lot is not liable to increase; it may decrease. In the other instance, there is reasonable certainty of a large increase within a short time. It is on the edge of high values." "But I shall have to borrow so much money with which to build, if I take the high-priced lot." "What of it? Say your house is going to cost you $3,000. You say you have $2,800 in cash. In one instance you would have to borrow $1,400, and in the other $1,700. You are running much less risk in borrowing $1,700 than you are in borrowing $1,400. If you had to sell, there is a reasonable certainty that you could always make a profit on your $4,500 investment, and a very questionable probability as to the $4,200 investment." There are those who do some very remarkable things for the sake of keeping out of debt, which, in the end, develops into more loss than would be possible in the case of debt. For instance, one will buy a lot for $1,500, and put a $1,500 house on it. In time the value of the lot increases; at the same time the value of the house decreases. The lot in itself would be worth more if the house were off it. It is a cheap house on a good lot. Thus it is that such property is often sold and the improvements counted as nothing. Again, exactly the other thing may happen. An expensive house may be built on a cheap lot. When finished the house is worth much less than it cost because it is not well located. One cannot expect to get full value for the lot without moving the house, and altogether the situation is disagreeable. How much better it would be, from a business standpoint, not to build at all, use the money some other way, or borrow enough money to have the house and lot properly located. In one case there is positive loss; in the other, a reasonable certainty of profit. Another thing for a man of moderate means to bear in mind in building a house is, that the investments as to the house and lot should be such that in case of rental the return derived would pay a fair interest on the investment, and leave a sufficient margin for taxes and repairs. As long as this condition exists, there need be no fear of loss through foreclosure. The sale of the property may become necessary through embarrassment in business, loss of situation, or illness; but in such a case the property can either be sold without loss, or it can be rented at a figure that will pay all fixed charges, which fact in itself establishes a value above its cost price. If these principles are all carried out, there is little chance of loss. INDEX. "A" door, 226. Air supply to heating apparatus, 75-79. American architecture, 26-28. American architectural development, 104-105. Architects' estimates, 278-281. Architect, the, and the housewife, 9-27. Architectural design, 101-105. Areas, 206. Ash-pits, 206. Attic, 62. Attic bedrooms, 63, 138. Automatic heat regulators, 81. Back plastering, 237. Base, 228, 229. Basement, 56. Bath-tub, 73, 74, 230, 255-258. Bath-tub wood-work, 230, 231. Bedrooms, 60-63. Bedrooms in attic, 63. Bedroom closets, 61. Bedroom, first floor, 164. Bedrooms, grates in, 62. Bedroom for servants, 62. Bond in brick-work, 201, 202. Brick, hollow walls of, 203. Brick of wood, 204. Brick joints, 199. Brick pavement, 212. Brick piers, 200. Brick, selection of color, 202. Brick veneer, 203. Brick-wall foundations, 200-204. Brick-work, 199-206, 209-212. Brick-work bond, 201, 202. Broom closets, 61. Broom-rack, 232. "B" schedule, 268. Building associations and savings banks, 296, 297. Building association, a new feature in, 310. Building association, object, 302. Building associations, permanent plan, 300, 301. Building-association profits, 295. Building-association report, 302-310. Building associations, safety of, 296, 297. Building association, terminating plan, 299, 300. Building-association methods, 293-311. Building by the day, 281. Building contract, 284-287. Building material, cost of, 273. Business points in building, 275-287. Capacity of cistern, 210. Carpenter work, 213-235. Casings outside, 218. Cathedral glass, 245. Cedar closet, 232. Cellar, 51-53, 133. Cellar brick-work, 203, 204. Cellar closet, 52, 53. Cellar doors, 226, 227. Cellar laundry, 54-58. Cellar plan, 142. Cellar sink, 254. Cellar-sink wood-work, 230. Cellar-way, outside, 206. Cement pavement, 212. Chamber decoration, 99. Chimneys, 204-206. Chimney-breasts, 205, 206. Chimney tops, 204. China-closet fittings, 46. China-room, 44-46, 232. Cistern, 210, 211. Cistern filter, 211. Cistern-water supply, 71. Clock shelf, 232. Closets, bedroom, 61, 138. Closets, broom, 61. Closet fittings, 231, 232. Closet of cedar, 232. Coal-bins in cellar, 51, 52. Colored bricks, 202, 203. Colored plastering, 237. Color of mortar, 202. Combination stairs, 59, 60, 137-141. Combination pantry, 45, 132. Competition in building, 281-283. Conservatory, 99. Contracting methods, 277-287. Copper, 240, 241. Cost of appurtenances, 271, 272. Cost of building material, 273, 274. Cost of one-story houses, 163. Cost schedules, 264, 267-269. Cost of a house, 264-274. Cut stone work, 208, 209. Damp course, 200. "D" door, 227. Deck roof, 216. Depth of foundation, 200. Dining-room, 37, 38, 96-99. Dish-warming, arrangement for, 84. Dish-washing, 11, 42. Doors and frames, 225-227. Dough-board, 46, 47. Double joists, 215. Down spouts, 240. Draining, 198, 199. Drain board, 43, 230. Drain connections, 261. Drain from refrigerator, 241. Drain outside, 71. Drain ventilation, 71. Dressed shingles, 218. Drop siding, 217. Dry-box, 48, 232. "E" door, 227. Eastlake, Charles, 104. Estimates of architects, 278-281. Evaporation in traps, 67-68. Evolution of a house-plan, 109-117. Excavating, 198. Excavating for plumber, 247, 248. Fifty convenient houses, plans of, 107. Fig. "A," frontispiece. Fig. "B," 106. Fig. 2, 41. Fig. 3, 43. Fig. 4, 45. Fig. 5, 46. Fig. 6, 67. Fig. 7, 68. Fig. 8, 116. Fig. 9, 116. Fig. 10, photographic view (page 116). Fig. 11, 117. Fig. 12, 124. Fig. 13, 133. Fig. 14, 147. Fig, 15, 149. Fig. 16, 151. Fig. 17, photographic view (page 152). Fig. 18, 154. Fig. 19, 154. Fig. 20, 160. Fig. 21, 168. Fig. 22, 169. Fig. 23, 181. Fig. 24, photographic view (page 182). Fig. 25, 186. Fig. 26, photographic view (page 190). Fig. 27, 191. Fig. 28, 191. Fig. 29, 193. Fig. 30, 199. Fig. 31, 205. Fig. 32, 206. Fig. 33, 215. Fig. 34, 217. Fig. 35, 226. Fig. 36, 227. Fig. 37, 227. Fig. 38, 262. Filters for cisterns, 211. Finish of floor, 244. Finishing in oil, 243, 244. Fireplaces in bedrooms, 62. Fixtures in plumbing enumerated, 66. Flashings, 239. Flat roofs, 240. Floors, 222, 223. Floor of kitchen, 49. Floor finish, 244. Flour-bin, 47, 233, 234. Flues, 203. Fly screens, 228. Foundation depth, 200. Foundations, stone, 207, 208. Force-pump, 249. Framing, 213-219. Framing lumber, sizes of, 213, 214. Fresco tinting, 92. Freezing of plumbing, 70, 71. Fuel in cellar, 51, 52. Furnace, defined, 76. Furnace and hot-water combination, 83, 84. Furnace-room in cellar, 52. Galvanized iron, 241. Gas-piping, 237, 238. German siding, 217. Glazing, 244, 245. Grates in bedrooms, 62. Grease sink, 72, 73, 263. Gutters, 239. Hall, 33-35. Hall, reception, 35, 36. Hardware, 245, 246. Hard-wood floors, 223. Heating apparatus, how to get a good, 83, 85. Heating and ventilation, 75-85. Heating by hot water, 80, 83. Heating by steam, 80. Heating by stoves, 80. Heating, ideal conditions, 76. Heating plants, cost of, 81, 82, 83. Heat regulators, automatic, 81. Height of stories, 214. Hip coping, 240. Hip finish, 217. Hollow walls of brick, 203. Hot-air flues in brick walls, 203. Hot-air pipes of tin, 241. Hot-water boiler, 71. Hot water and furnace combination, 83, 84. Hot-water heating, 80. Hot-water plumbing, 70. Hot-water system, 252. House decoration, 86-100. House drain, 71. House ventilation, 75, 79. Housekeeper, the, and the architect, 11-15, 26-28. Housekeeping operations, 16-20. How to secure a home, 289-316. Humidity of air, 77, 81. Hydrant, 249. Inside casings, 228. Inside shutters, 229, 230. Inside finish, table of, 224. Inside wood-work, 222-235. Joints, rodded, 199. Joists, 214, 215. Journey, a, through the house, 29-105. Kitchens, 39-50. Kitchen fittings, 42, 43. Kitchen floor, 49. Kitchen plans, 41, 45. Kitchen pantry, 45-48. Kitchen plastering, 50. Kitchen safe, 48. Kitchen sink, 43, 253, 254. Kitchen tables, 43, 230. Kitchen utensils, 48. Kitchen ventilation, 49. Kitchen wainscoting, 49. Landings for stairs, 60. Lattice porch, 220. Laundry, 54-58. Laundry fittings, 260, 261. Laundry, low-cost, 55-58. Laundry stove, 56. Laundry tubs, 57. Library, 95, 96. Lien laws, 285, 286. Lighting bedrooms, 61, 62. Lintels in brick-work, 204. Locating the house, 197. Lot, purchase of, 312, 316. Low-cost laundry, 55-58. Lumber for framing, 213. Mantel costs, 271. Mason work, 199-209. Medicine-chest, 232. Modern architects and the housekeeper, 26-28. Modern conveniences, 21-25. Moisture in heated air, 77-81. Monthly payments, 291-293. Mortar, color of, 202. Mortgages, 310, 311. Motor, 251. Natural-gas piping, 238. Nickel fittings, 263. Oil finish, 243, 244. Old colonial houses, 26, 27. One-story houses, 157-163. Ornamental brick, 203. Outside cellar-way, 206. Outside finish, 217-221. Outside shutters, 219, 220. Outside steps, 220, 221. Painting, 242, 243. Paint, ready mixed, 242. Painting of shingles, 216. Pantry boxes, 234. Pantry, combination, 45, 132. Pantry fittings, 46. Pantry shelves, 47. Pantry specification, 233. Pantry utensils, 48. Parlor, 35-37, 93-95. Pavement of brick, 212. Pavement of cement, 212. Permanent plan, building associations, 300, 301. Picture mouldings, 231. Piers of brick, 200. Pipe boards, 230. Pipe duct, 70, 230. Plastering, 236. Plastering, back, 237. Plastering, gray, 236. Plastering in kitchen, 50. Plate-glass, 245. Plans of fifty convenient houses, 107. Plan No. 1, cost $1,700, 110. Plan No. 2, cost $1,550, 111. Plan No. 3, cost $1,550, 112. Plan No. 4, cost $1,800, 113. Plan No. 5, cost $1,900, 114. Plan No. 6, cost $2,600, 115. Plan No. 7, cost $2,900, 121. Plan No. 8, cost $2,200, 129. Plan No. 9, cost $2,500, 132. Plan No. 10, cost $2,600, 136. Plan No. 11, cost $2,000, 141, 142. Plan No. 12, cost $2,600, 144. Plan No. 13, cost $1,600, 146. Plan No. 14, cost $1,500, 148. Plan No. 15, cost $2,550, 150. Plan No. 16, cost $2,800, 153. Plan No. 17, cost $2,200, 154. Plan No. 18, cost $1,600, 155. Plan No. 19, cost $1,400, 158. Plan No. 20, cost $1,200, 158. Plan No. 21, cost $1,700, 161. Plan No. 22, cost $800, 161. Plan No. 23, cost $1,600, 162. Plan No. 24, cost $1,100, 162. Plan No. 25, cost $1,400, 163. Plan No. 26, cost $2,000, 163. Plan No. 27, cost $3,000, 165. Plan No. 28, cost $2,800, 165. Plan No. 29, cost $2,600, 166. Plan No. 30, cost $3,000, 167. Plan No. 31, cost $2,400, 169. Plan No. 32, cost $4,000, 172. Plan No. 33, cost $2,800, 173. Plan No. 34, cost $2,500, 174. Plan No. 35, cost $2,250, 175. Plan No. 36, cost $2,000, 175. Plan No. 37, cost $2,100, 176. Plan No. 38, cost $2,000, 177. Plan No. 39, cost $3,500, 178. Plan No. 40, cost $3,100, 179. Plan No. 41, cost $3,400, 179. Plan No. 42, cost $2,800, 180. Plan No. 43, cost $2,200, 183. Plan No. 44, cost $5,000, 184. Plan No. 45, cost $2,100, 184. Plan No. 46, cost $3,400, 185. Plan No. 47, cost $10,000, 187. Plan No. 48, cost $3,400, 189. Plan No. 49, cost $3,400, 190. Plan No. 50, cost $10,000, 192. Plumbing, 64-74. Plumbing costs, 268-270. Plumbing fixtures, 65. Plumbing, practical, 247-263. Porcelain water-closets, 69. Porches, 31, 220. Practical house-building, 195-274. Preface, 3, 4. Prevention of freezing in plumbing, 70, 71. Privy vault, 209, 210. Purchase of a lot, 312-316. Purchase on a rental basis, 291-293. Radiation, direct, 80, 81. Radiation, indirect, 80, 81. Ready mixed paint, 242. Rear stairway, 60. Reception-hall, 35, 36. Reception-hall decoration, 88, 89. Reception-hall mantel, 89. Refrigerator, 47. Refrigerator drain, 48, 241, Ridge coping, 240. Ridge finish, 216, 217. Rodded joints, 199. Roof, 216, 217. Safety in plumbing, 64. Safes, 258. Sash weights, 219. Savings banks and building associations, 296, 297. Schedule "B," 268. Sealed proposals, 284. Second floor, the, 59-63. Servant's bedroom, 62. Service pipes, 249. Sewer and vault connection, 65. Sewer connection, 72, 261, 262. Sewer gas, 66, 67, 72. Sheet glass, 245. Shower-bath, 257. Shingles, 216, 217, 218. Shingles, painting of, 216. Shingles, stained, 218. Shingle walls, 217. Shutters, outside, 219, 220. Shutters, inside, 229, 230. Siding, drop, 217. Siding, German, 217. Side-hall plans, 164-166. Sink in cellar, 254. Sink in kitchen, 43, 230, 254. Sitting-room, 35, 36, 91. Sizes for framing lumber, 213, 214. Sliding doors, 225. Soap-box, 48, 49, 232. Soft-water supply, 250. Soil pipe, 66, 67, 253. Splash board, 230, 231. Splash board in bath-room, 231. Spouts, 240. Staining, exterior, 243. Staining, interior, 243. Stained shingles, 218. Stairs, 234, 235. Stairs, combination, 59, 60. Stairways, 59, 60. Stairway, combination, 137, 140, 141. Stairway, rear, 60. Steam heating, 80. Stone foundations, 207, 208. Stone sills, 208. Stone steps, 208, 209. Stop beads, 227. Stop cocks, 249. Storm water connections, 262. Stories, height of, 214. "S" trap, 66, 67, 263. Street washer, 249. Stove heating, 80. Stud walls, 215, 216. Tables in kitchen, 230. Table of inside finish, 224. Tank wood-work, 231. Terminating plan in building associations, 299, 300. Terra cotta, 209. Tin hot-air pipes, 241. Tin-work, 239-241. Transoms, 226. Traps, 66, 67, 263. Traps fail to act, 76. Trap screws, 263. Trimmer arch, 205, 206. Trimmers, 214. Valleys, 239. Vault and sewer connection, 65. Veneered doors, 225, 226. Veneer of brick, 203. Ventilation and heating, 75-85. Ventilation, drain, 71. Ventilation, house, 75, 79. Ventilation of kitchen, 49. Vestibule, 31-33. Vestibule decoration, 87, 88. Wainscoting, 229. Wainscoting in kitchen, 49. Walls of shingles, 217. Wash-stand, 72, 259, 260. Wash-stand wood-work, 231. Waste pipe, 66, 67. Water-closets, 68, 69, 70, 259. Water-closets, porcelain, 69. Water-closet, washout, 68, 69. Water-closet wood-work, 231. Water distribution, 248. Water for builder, 197. Water for laundry, 56, 57. Water motor, 251. Water tank in attic, 71. Water seal, 67, 68. Windows, 218, 219. Wooden brick, 204. Wood carving, 90. Wood-work for bath-room, 231. Wood for inside finish, 225. Wood-work for plumber, 230, 231. Wood-work for water-closet, 231. * * * * * "_THIS BEAUTIFUL BOOK._" _--Standard Union._ BEAUTIFUL HOUSES. BY LOUIS H. GIBSON, ARCHITECT. AUTHOR OF "CONVENIENT HOUSES." WITH OVER 250 ILLUSTRATIONS. 8VO. CLOTH. $3.00. Since the publication of his "Convenient Houses" Mr. Gibson has been abroad, where he made a careful study of the national architecture of many countries. Mr. Gibson is remarkable for the skill with which he manages to utilize ordinary waste spaces, to place every possible convenience in the housekeeper's hands; in short, to apply common-sense in an uncommon manner. No one interested in building a new house, or altering over an old one, could fail to obtain valuable hints from his books. The volume is sumptuously illustrated, and will be a delight to all connoisseurs, both of architecture and of book-making. Contents of the Book. HOUSE-BUILDING AN ART. Ugly houses, uneducated architects, cost never measures the artistic, development of art in building, the primitive house, first principles, the Greek temple and the Indian hut, the old Roman and the Old Colonial, Romanesque architecture, Gothic architecture, decline of the Gothic, the Renaissance, modern architecture of Europe, characteristics of modern American architecture, etc. THE WORLD'S HOMES. French domestic architecture, twelfth century building, floor plans of domestic structures, picturesque stair towers, half-timber architecture of the twelfth century, our use of French examples, Breton customs, furniture, French chateaux, English domestic architecture, domestic buildings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, picturesque details, from the Gothic to the Renaissance, modern architecture of Germany, Swiss architecture, Old Colonial architecture, a classic development, characteristic New England architecture, luxurious character of the Old Colonial in the South, etc. SOME HOUSE PLANS. Relation of the exterior to the location, the dormers, the inside finish, mantels, a centre-hall plan, frame building, a little room for cloaks and wraps, decorative forms, interior photographs, external details, Greek mouldings, a wide central hall open at each end, large rooms, a picturesque stairway, color schemes in decoration, description of floor plan, a fine location, a river front, picturesque stair-hall, a smoking-room under the balcony, etc. MATERIALS AND DETAILS. Shingle-houses, the proper surroundings, the stains of time, artificial stain, examples, slate walls, fireplaces and mantels, character in mantels, tile facings, onyx and brick, doors, the defensive, hospitality, material, foreign examples, domestic doors, stairs, foreign examples, broad landings, Old Colonial stairways, iron railings, furniture, architects' designs, sideboards, bookcases, seats, lounges, screens, grilles, walls and ceilings, etc. THE ARCHITECT. The architect and the housewife, business and the arts, costs, proper understanding of the client's wishes, plenty of time to make plans. Press Notices. New York Sun. "A handsome book, copiously illustrated, giving foreign examples in domestic architecture, a collection of American house plans, and including a consideration of materials and details for the benefit of the artistic house-builder." Chicago Evening Post. "A most timely publication, and will find admirers among amateur builders as well as trained architects." Boston Advertiser. "Mr. Gibson's book is something more than an enunciation of theories. Under the headings 'Some House Plans' and 'Materials and Details,' there is a practical working out of the architect's general idea. This part of the work is most valuably suggestive, and the intending house builder will find it greatly to his interest to consult Mr. Gibson's books. The present volume is one in which marked utility is combined with great beauty." Detroit Free Press. "It would hardly seem possible that a work on house-building could be such pleasant reading as is this handsome volume." Congregationalist. "His former book met a real need. His present work is full of wise and practical suggestions as to securing beauty without sacrificing convenience or running into extravagance. All about to build or reconstruct a house will find it helpful." Indianapolis News. "This work is a credit to Mr. Gibson and to his profession. It is a reflection of deep knowledge of architecture, and of experience in the practice of the profession. The illustrations are abundant and excellent, and the whole is a beautiful piece of book-making. An appropriate cover is designed by David Gibson." Literary World. "The author is an architect of knowledge, ideas, and tastes.... To any family projecting a home of their own this volume will bring a multitude of helps." Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer. "One of the handsomest and at the same time most practical books ever published by the Crowells." _For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid by the Publishers on receipt of price._ T. Y. CROWELL & CO., New York and Boston. * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors have been corrected and missing punctuation has been added. Archaic words and misspelled words, as well as inconsistent hyphenation, have been retained with the exception of those listed below. Page 60: "the" added for continuity (The rear stairway should be connected with the front part of the house). Page 89: "of" added for continuity (This arrangement frequently admits of the placing of a seat along one side of the outer part of the lower landing.) Page 292: No footnote is included at the bottom of the page for the reference contained in the text. 
47904	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES House of Jacques Coeur: Bourges Gothic Carved Woodwork JULY, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LI HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: FACADE] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. JULY No. 7. HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: BOURGES. The house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges is, to architect and historian alike, one of the most interesting monuments which have survived from the Middle Ages,--interesting to the architect not only for its intrinsic beauty, but from the fact that it is the most complete and important specimen which remains of all the civil buildings in France of the Gothic period, and which, because of the brief time occupied in its construction, exhibits the style of the fifteenth century in unusual purity, and interesting to the historian from its connection with Jacques Coeur, one of the most picturesque and remarkable figures in French history. That Jacques Coeur was the son of a wealthy fur merchant of Bourges, and that he was born in 1395, are the only facts of importance in his eventful career that are known, until he first makes his appearance on the historical stage, under rather disadvantageous circumstances, in 1420. The Dauphin of France, driven across the Loire by the English and their Burgundian allies, had made Bourges the seat of his government, and had appointed a certain Ravant-le-Danois master of the Bourges mint,--a post of some importance. Ravant-le-Danois had taken into partnership (for at this time the coining of public moneys was farmed out to private enterprise) Jacques Coeur, and the two, finding that the profits of the business were not so large as they had expected, presently resorted to illegitimate methods of increasing them; and Coeur appears to have been active in the process of issuing money which was considerably under the standard weight. The fraud was discovered; but the kings of France themselves had been too often guilty of tampering with the coin of the realm for the offence to carry with it any deep disgrace; and, perhaps considering the state of the royal treasury, justice considered itself satisfied with a fine equal to about $7500. Thereafter, however, Jacques Coeur appears to have cast about for a more honorable channel into which to direct his energy. Enterprising, keen-eyed, determined by some means or other to make his fortune, he naturally turned his face eastward. The trade between Europe and the Levant had never been more active than it was in the early part of the fifteenth century, in spite of the ecclesiastical restrictions laid upon it. For the Church, still dreaming of new crusades and a Christian rule in the Holy Land, censured all peaceful dealings with the infidel. But the demand for Eastern luxuries--silks, gems, perfumes and spices--was immense, and the trade too lucrative to be renounced; and so Rome satisfied her conscience by allowing the traffic to be carried on by certain persons within certain well-defined limits, and was handsomely paid for the concession. The merchants of Montpellier in France had obtained a license from the pope to send one ship yearly to Eastern ports, and to their fraternity Jacques Coeur joined himself in 1432. He had chosen a propitious moment to begin his operations. France was beginning to recover from the prostrate condition in which the civil war had left her, and Coeur's ventures prospered marvellously. Before long he is the recorded owner of seven vessels, and employer of no less than three hundred agents who represented him in all the chief commercial centres in France and abroad. His ships sailed to the furthest harbors of the Levant, and his relations with the sultan assumed political importance. A contemporary chronicler describes him as "a second Jason, with Cairo for his Colchis strand." [Illustration: PLATE LII HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: ENTRANCE] A merchant of such wealth and importance could hardly be overlooked by Charles VII., who had a talent for putting the right man in the right place; and when in 1436 Paris at last consented to admit the king, he re-established an Hôtel des Monnaies in the capital, and gave the direction of it to the man who had managed his own monetary affairs with such striking results. It was in connection with this office that Coeur rendered his country his most important and permanent service. France was flooded with debased coin, English, Burgundian and French: indeed so little could the merchants depend upon the nominal value of the pieces which passed through their hands that they stipulated with each other for payment by weight instead of in the usual legal tender. Jacques Coeur recognized the disastrous effects of this system; and as soon as he became master of the Paris mint undertook to reform it. Money suspected of being under weight was arbitrarily seized, wherever it was found, and a new gold and silver coinage of full value was struck. "The new treasurer," says a chronicler, "believed that the way for the king to grow rich, as for other people, was to pay his debts." In 1440 so high did Jacques Coeur stand in royal favor that he was made a member of the King's Council, granted letters of nobility and created keeper of the privy-purse, a post which carried with it many valuable privileges connected with the court, and by which he profited to the fullest extent. He had the right of selling merchandise in the precincts of the royal residence to the nobles and courtiers, and to loan money to the whole court. There exist among the treasurer's papers of the time notes to the effect that the queen borrowed a sum equivalent to $700 from him and pledged a pearl for its repayment, and that the king's youngest daughter Madame Aragonde borrowed $650 "_pour avoir une robe_." His talents found recognition outside of the domain of finance. He served on royal commissions and went on important embassies. On one of these, his entry into Rome was so magnificent that the spectators declared "it was sixty years since they had seen the like, but that the expense of it was outrageous." All this time his wealth had continued to increase. Poets celebrated it in their verses; his rivals watched it with bitter envy. Exaggerated stories of his lavish expenditure became current. It was reported that the commonest utensils of his house were of silver, that even his horses were shod with it. From impoverished nobles, who were his debtors, he commenced to buy great estates all over France. It was at this time, in 1443, that he began to build his unrivalled house in Bourges, his native town, although he already possessed mansions at Marseilles, Montpellier, Beaucaire, Lyons, Tours, Béziers and Paris. [Illustration: BIRDSEYE VIEW: HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR (_After Viollet-le-Duc_)] When in 1449 the four years' truce with England was broken, the French threw themselves vigorously anew into the war, and Charles set himself with unusual energy to efface the last traces of his country's long humiliation. The campaign was actively planned, but there was no money in the royal treasury. The king appealed to the only man in France able to meet the urgent necessities of the case, the merchant Jacques Coeur. He was walking alone with the king when Charles broached the subject and asked him to advance the money for the Norman enterprise. "All that I have, sire, is yours," was the answer; and Charles had no further anxiety about the payment of his troops. The nominal loan, but virtual gift, of Jacques Coeur to the crown was an amount equivalent to $2,500,000 in our money. [Illustration: PLATE LIII HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: CHAPEL STAIRCASE] After a series of brilliant victories Charles at length triumphed, and the English empire in France ended. The part the treasurer had taken was not forgotten. In the triumphal entry into Rouen he rode, magnificent in crimson velvet and fur, beside Lieutenant-General Dunois, the hero of the day. Apparently he was in the heyday of his prosperity, and outwardly all continued to go well with him; but his downfall was pending. The whole court owed him money, and each debtor was a foe in ambush; the king, who invariably grew weary of those who were for long about him, was secretly not unwilling to sacrifice this man who had held so chief a part in his affairs for fifteen years, and Coeur had made two bitter enemies, high in court favor,--the Comte de Dammartin and Otto Castellani, an Italian, the latter of whom coveted the treasurer's office for himself. The blow fell at last, and with dramatic abruptness. In 1451 Jacques Coeur was arrested on the trumped-up charge of having poisoned the king's mistress, Agnes Sorel, who had died eighteen months before, and one of whose executors he had been. A special commission was appointed to try the case, and the first two names on the list of his judges were those of the Comte de Dammartin, president, and Otto Castellani! Before the trial began the prisoner's property was declared forfeit to the crown, and a first charge of $1,250,000 was levied upon it for the expenses of the war in Guienne. Jacques Coeur's generosity had redeemed one province; a second was to be recovered by his ruin. The accusation of poisoning was so obviously groundless that it was at once abandoned; but half a dozen other charges were quickly formulated against him, amongst them those of having exported French money to the East; of having sold arms to the infidel; of having administered the king's affairs fraudulently and tyranically in Languedoc, and of having issued light money from the mint. Coeur defended himself bravely, but he might have spared himself the trouble. His judges had already agreed upon a verdict. He was dragged from one prison to another, continually protesting his innocence, continually appealing to the Church for protection; till at last in 1453 he was brought into the torture chamber of the Castle of Tours and threatened with the rack. Weary and weak from twenty months of suspense and confinement, his heart failed him, and he agreed to admit all the charges against him except that of having poisoned Agnes Sorel. In consideration of the pope's intercession and of Coeur's former services his life was spared; but he was condemned to pay the king $1,250,000 as restitution money, and $2,500,000 as a fine, and to be banished forever from the kingdom. On being notified of the decree, Jacques replied that he could not possibly raise the sums demanded. He himself owed money which he had borrowed for the king's affairs, and his goods were not worth so much. He was accordingly thrown again into prison, and the procurer-general proceeded to sell, by public auction, all the property of the prisoner which, after diligent search, he could find throughout the kingdom, including the house at Bourges. Two years passed, and the sentence of banishment was not yet executed, perhaps because the fines were not yet paid. At the end of that time Coeur, by the help of one of his former clerks, contrived to escape from prison, and fled to Rome. [Illustration: PLATE LIV HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: CLOISTERS AND COURTYARD] The end of his life is almost as obscure as the beginning. It is clear however, that, though now a man of over sixty, whose last five years had been years of intense suffering, Coeur was recognized by the pope, Calixtus III., as a man of ability and spirit. Constantinople had fallen, and the pope was anxious to undertake a new crusade. But the days of crusades were over; and his envoys pleaded and reasoned with the sovereigns of Christendom in vain. At length, in despair, the pope fitted out sixteen galleys himself, and in 1456 sent them to succor the Christian colonies in the Archipelago. The patriarch of Aquileia was the nominal leader, but an actual leader was required, and Calixtus offered the secondary command to none other than the French exile, Jacques Coeur. Coeur accepted the post; but his new career was a very short one. The expedition sailed first to Rhodes and thence to Chios, and here Coeur fell ill as the result of a wound received in some skirmish on the way. He died on the 25th of November and was buried in the Franciscan church on the island, forgiving his enemies and his king with his last breath. As has been said, Jacques Coeur's most princely residence, that at Bourges, was begun in 1443, when he was at the height of his prosperity, and was nearly completed when in 1451 his downfall came. In spite of changes in the arrangement of the interior, in spite of a clumsy addition in the Renaissance style on the right of the courtyard, and in spite of some blunders in the restoration, which was undertaken by the government in 1858, the building has escaped any grave mutilation, and may be taken as a type of the princely residence of its century. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Germanic Museum: Nuremberg_] Owing to the loss of Coeur's personal papers in the confusion incident to his trial, the name of his architect is unknown. From the general style and especially on account of certain details of ornamentation it is possible that he was Jean Gaussel, the architect who built the façade of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois at Paris; but this is merely a surmise. As a site for this house Coeur had bought a domain, known as the _Fief de la Chaussée_, which bordered upon the ancient rampart of Bourges, and included two of the original towers of that rampart. These two towers he restored and heightened, and they served as a beginning for the new construction and were incorporated with it. The general plan of the whole is an irregular pentagon--a central court surrounded by unsymmetrical groups of buildings, according to the disposition of almost all mediæval civil and military buildings. It is clear that the architect sacrificed every consideration of symmetry to the exigencies of usefulness and convenience; but the resulting irregularity is quite in harmony with the Gothic style, and conduces not a little to the picturesqueness of the whole. [Illustration: PLATE LV HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: COURTYARD] The façade of the house (Plate LI.) faces a small square in which stands a modern statue of Jacques Coeur. The main feature of this façade is a central pavilion (Plate LII.) which contains the main portal of the house comprising two entrances, the larger for horsemen and guests, the smaller for tradesmen and servants. Above the portal is a niche sheltered by a carved canopy, wherein an equestrian statue of Charles VII. originally stood. The niche is flanked by two false windows, and out of each leans a stone figure, one representing a man-servant, the other a maid-servant, both dressed in the costumes of the time, who peer out into the street as if to watch for the return of their lord. On the left of the pavilion rises a beautifully elaborated prism-shaped tower, within which winds a spiral staircase leading to a chapel. This chapel occupies nearly the whole of the first story of the front, and a great window that lights it opens above the entrance. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] The coat of arms of Jacques Coeur--three black cockle-shells and three crimson hearts, the latter in punning allusion to his name, with his motto "_A vaillans coeurs rien impossible_," the word "_coeurs_" being represented by two hearts--is frequently repeated in the carvings of the façade. Indeed everywhere throughout the building we find these emblems,--in the windows, in all the carvings, above the mantlepieces, even on the tiles of the roof, and the bell of the chapel; and the nail-heads of the door-fastenings are shaped like hearts. The main entrance leads directly into the great courtyard, around which the various constructions which make up the whole are irregularly grouped. The design of the pavilion of the façade is repeated on the inner side, but in place of the statue of the king the niche was originally occupied by a statue of Jacques Coeur. To the left of the portal, under an arcade, is the entrance to the spiral stairway (Plate LIII.) which winds within the tower to the chapel. The tympana above the three openings to this stairway are carved in relief with rude but vigorous figures, the designs being appropriate to their situation. On the tympanum most plainly shown in our illustration, for example, the carving depicts three acolytes preparing an altar for service. Throughout the house the carvings are, after the same fashion, made characteristic of the rooms or entrances which they adorn: the carvings over the kitchen staircase represent culinary operations,--a roast hanging above the fire, a boy turning the spit, a woman washing plates, a cook grinding spices,--that leading to the dining-room is ornamented with fruit-trees, and so forth. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] The principal side of the court, architecturally considered, is opposite the main entrance (Plate LV.). The chief feature of this side is a great octagonal tower which contains the stairway leading to a dining-hall situated on the first floor and corresponding in position to the chapel in the front wing. The north and west sides of the courtyard are surrounded, on the ground floor, by cloisters (Plate LIV.) above which were the living-rooms and household offices. [Illustration: PLATE LVI HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: THE CHAPEL] The rear view of the building (Plate LVIII.) shows that part of the construction which was based upon the ancient rampart of the city. The two large towers are those before referred to, which were still standing as part of the rampart when the building of the house was begun. One was entirely reconstructed by Coeur, with the exception of the first story, which is of old Roman work as the layers of brick and masonry indicate; the other received only its crown and a new interior construction, and like the first, was flanked by a tower destined to serve as a cage for the stairway. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] The only room of architectural interest in the interior, which has been largely remodelled to serve the various public uses to which the building has since been put, is the chapel (Plates LVI. and LVII.). Here the side walls have suffered from too ardent restoration; but the splendid painted ceiling is intact. It is divided by ribs, the bosses of which are decorated with the arms of Jacques Coeur and those of his wife, into twelve triangles, four large and eight small ones; and within these triangles, relieved against a background of gold-starred blue, angels bearing ribbons inscribed with scriptural texts are painted. The breadth and beauty of the design, the sobriety and harmony of the color-scheme and the excellence of execution gives this ceiling first importance as a document in the history of French decorative painting. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] Taken as a whole this house, though rivalled by the Hôtel de Cluny at Paris and the Palais de l'Échiquier at Rouen, ranks as the most splendid civil construction antedating the Renaissance which remains in France. Its history is known without interruption from the beginning. Five years after its confiscation it was restored to Coeur's descendants. In 1501 it was sold by them, passing through several hands, until in 1682 it became the property of the city of Bourges and was made to serve as the Hôtel de Ville. In 1858 it was ceded to the State, and is now used as a Palais de Justice. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] [Illustration: PLATE LVII HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: CHAPEL CEILING] Specimens of Gothic Wood Carving Examples of decorative carving in wood dating prior to the Middle Ages are extremely rare. Some sculptured figures of saints, and other fragments of a more solid sort, have survived, but the more delicate ornamental work has disappeared. Indeed most of the ornamental wood-carvings which have come down to us even from the Middle Ages belong almost exclusively to the end of that period, when, especially in Germany, the art attained unrivalled productiveness and excellence. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the skill in technical workmanship was unsurpassed. By this time, too, the carvers had learned to adapt their designs most perfectly to the nature of their material; to avoid attempting to cut large curves, braces and other structural members out of wood,--which besides being wasteful of the material, since enormous balks were required when large curves were cut out of the solid wood, were constructionally weak,--and to design their larger pieces with straight lines for the main frame-work, using curves only on a smaller scale and in positions where they were not subjected to much strain. In design, the work of this period evinces great vigor and originality. The best workmen did not repeat predetermined patterns, but allowed the motives to grow under their hands, thus endowing even the smallest pieces with an individuality which makes the decorative effect as spirited and varied as it is graceful. The perfection of architectonic designs in the wood-carving of this time, was probably due rather to emulation of the lace-like and elaborate carving in stone which was being executed contemporaneously, than the imitation of it. The modern notion that carved wood should be left unpainted was quite foreign to Gothic designers. They preferred even a simple coating of white or red to the natural tone of the material, and commonly the chief members of all the mouldings were adorned with delicately painted patterns. Our "restorers" have in most cases, however, scraped off all that remained of this brilliant decoration. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] The excellent preservation of specimens of even the most fragile wood-carvings of this century is due doubtless to the extreme care with which the workmen selected and prepared their material. Oak was almost invariably employed; and it is evident that not only was it critically selected but that it was subjected to an elaborate process of preparation. It was probably left for long in damp places, sometimes even soaked in water, after which it was thoroughly dried in the open air and thereafter occasionally smoked, for the purpose of hardening the surface. S. F. N. [Illustration: PLATE LVIII HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: REAR] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. Ligatures [oe] have been converted into oe. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47914	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Guild Halls of London AUGUST, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LIX HABERDASHER'S HALL: GREAT HALL] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. AUGUST No. 8. THE GUILD HALLS OF LONDON. Perhaps there are no corporate bodies now existing in England which can trace their beginnings in a more unbroken line to the earliest recorded historical events of the country, and surely none which have exercised so great political and civic influence, as the famous trade-guilds of London. There now exist in that city about one hundred such associations, the twelve most prominent and influential of them being styled as the Twelve Great Livery Companies, and these associations exercise no slight share in the government of the world's metropolis. From rights which have survived to them from ancient charters, their members, although self-elected and not deriving their power from any popular suffrage, still choose the Lord Mayor of London from among the twenty-six aldermen of the city's wards, and his election takes place at the Guildhall, or central office of all the companies. The ceremony is a most interesting one. The floor of the Hall is strewn with aromatic herbs, which is perhaps the only survival of the mediæval method of carpeting a floor with rushes. The aldermen or heads of the city wards, gather in their scarlet gowns, and are met by the representatives of the companies, all clad in the robes or "liveries," which, by ancient grants bestowed upon them, they are privileged to wear, whence their name of "Liverymen" is derived. To this assembly the recorder or law officer of the city then makes a short, set speech, declaring that from the time of King John the liverymen have possessed the rights of election which they are now to exercise. The liverymen thereupon proceed to choose, by vote, two of the aldermen for the office of Lord Mayor, and from these two the incumbent Lord Mayor and the aldermen with formal ceremony select one, who is to become Lord Mayor of London for the ensuing term. This selection the liverymen must ratify by stating that the man named is their free choice. On the evening of his election the new Lord Mayor presides at a splendid feast in the Guildhall, and among the illustrious company assembled not the least picturesque figures are the liverymen of London in their gowns edged with fur, wearing the golden chain-like collars from which depend jewelled badges. [Illustration: PLATE LX ARMOURER'S HALL: BOARD ROOM] Not only do these private companies thus possess civic powers which are strange to Americans of more republican traditions, but they exercise other inherited privileges of no small importance. The Company of Stationers records and grants all copyright privileges in England. The Fishmongers Company controls and regulates the sale of fish in the metropolis. Every piece of gold or silver plate manufactured in London must be stamped or "hall-marked" at the Hall of the Goldsmiths with the crest of their order, the panther's head. The Company of Clothworkers still guard the silver yard-stick which is the standard for all English and American measures, and other companies possess and exercise similar public functions and authorities. [Illustration: BUTCHER'S HALL BOARD ROOM] Through the increase of their common funds and from the numerous legacies which have been left to them, these companies have become very wealthy. The corporate moneys of sixty-four of them amount to £484,475. The richest company is that of the Drapers, which administers £50,000 and the Mercers own, among one hundred ninety-five members, £4800. In addition, the trust incomes of fifty of the companies amount to £201,427 and the total income of all foots up to no less than £750,000. These incomes are, however, by no means considered by the companies as to be applied to their private uses. Much of the money is, as has been said, in the nature of trust funds which they are bound to disburse according to specified provisions; and in fact, with the exception of a comparatively small amount set aside for public entertainments, private feasts and ceremonies, and the maintenance of their halls, their general incomes are either administered for certain set purposes of trust, or expended in charities. Orphanages, almshouses, prisons, schools, hospitals, technical training colleges and the like, all share in the benefit of these funds. The Drapers gave £10,000 toward the building of the People's Palace, and support a large training school for boys in connection with it. Guy's Hospital was founded by a member of the Worshipful Company of Stationers. A member of the Mercers Company founded St. Paul's School; and the Mercers have recently opened a great technical institute for both sexes. As an example of the trusts which they administer, we may mention that the Apothecaries Company owns a large estate in Chelsea on which a botanical garden was founded in 1672, and given to the Company on condition that they should add to the garden at least fifty varieties of rare plants annually until the number reached two thousand. This they have done, making the most complete collection of medical herbs and simples in the world. It was in this garden that, in 1687, the first attempt was made to grow plants in an artificially heated atmosphere. It will thus be apparent that, though the members of these companies are self-elected, they are by no means unworthy of the public trusts and functions which under royal charters they still exercise. [Illustration: PLATE LXI BREWER'S HALL: GREAT HALL] Almost all these Guilds can trace their origins far back in English history, although many important records concerning them were destroyed in the great fire of London. The name "guild" is derived from the Saxon _gilden_ meaning to pay, and the original guilds were formed to comply with the exactions of a Saxon law, called "frank-pledge," by which it was ordained that every freeman over fourteen years of age should give securities to keep the peace. To afford such securities, groups of ten families entered into association, and bound themselves to produce any of their members who had committed offence, or, in default of this, to make satisfaction to the injured party. To provide for the payment of fines each guild maintained a common purse. Meantime, in order to better identify the members, as well as, probably, to keep a closer watch upon them, each association assembled at stated periods at a common feast. It is in these associations that we see the germ of the present trade guilds; and to this day the common purse and the feast at stated intervals are invariable institutions among them. Even during the Anglo-Saxon period a change in organization came about, and instead of being banded together by families they combined, as a more natural form of association, by trades; and such trade associations not only fulfilled their original purpose, but added other features for mutual protection and commercial advantage. At the time of the advent of the Normans so firmly were these trade guilds established in London that they forced William the Conqueror to recognize their corporate existence by giving them the first royal charter which is extant; and this charter still remains in the city archives, beautifully written in Anglo-Saxon characters on a slip of parchment. It may be thus translated:-- "William, the king, friendly salutes William the bishop and Godfrey the portreeve, and all the burgesses within London, both English and French. And I declare that I grant you all to be worthy, as you were in the days of King Edward; and I grant that every child shall be his father's heir, after his father's days; and I will not suffer any person to do you wrong. God keep you." [Illustration: CARVED ARM-PIECE OF CHOIR STALL CATHEDRAL OF GENOA SIXTEENTH CENTURY] Under the Norman rule, however, the growth of guilds was much interfered with at first. Henry I. commanded that all should receive royal license; and he subjected several guilds to heavy fines because they had been established without license, or exercised their functions independent of it. This penalty fell heavily on London, where the confraternities were very numerous. They were encouraged by Henry II.; but as they increased under this patronage, and were much given to parading with their respective uniforms or "liveries" and banners, collisions between rival trades became so frequent that at length, under Henry IV., they were forbidden to wear their liveries. In subsequent reigns they were permitted to appear in them at coronations, and finally it became necessary to obtain the royal license for appearing in public with their insignia. [Illustration: PLATE LXII BREWER'S HALL: COUNCIL ROOM] During the reign of Edward III. the fraternities or Companies of Liverymen as they had now come to be called, not only received specific charters, but the king, having found that they were the main-spring of trades in his kingdom, resolved to raise them in public estimation, and became himself a member of the Company of Merchant Tailors, an example which the nobility were not slow to follow; and it is a despised Company that cannot now-a-days boast of many names of rank upon its rolls. In the records of the thirty-sixth Parliament of Edward's reign, a petition from the commons is preserved, which shows not only how powerful these guilds had by that time become, but also that the evil of "trusts," recently so much lamented, is not of such modern origin as we may suppose. This petition recites that the Guild of Grocers had become so great and monopolistic as to threaten ruin to the numerous other fraternities that had now sprung up, and complains that they "engrossed all manner of merchandise vendible, suddenly raised the prices of such merchandise within the realm, and by ordinance made amongst themselves, in their own society, kept such merchandise in store to be sold at higher rates in times of dearth and scarcity." From this time forward we find many records of charters granted to these companies, and the granting of such charters, for which the guilds were made to pay liberally, became a strictly business transaction, being one of the methods by which the sovereigns raised money for their numerous wars in France and Scotland. From 1280 to 1420, twelve companies were chartered; from 1420 to 1740, ten companies received charters; during the fourteen years of Elizabeth's reign, five companies were incorporated; and with the arrival of the poverty-stricken Stuarts, a shower of charters were granted, James granting seventeen and Charles twenty-two. With the expulsion of the Stuarts, however, the granting of charters practically ceased, only one having been issued since that time, and that one, appropriately enough, to the Fan Makers in the bric-à-brac age of Queen Anne. Under the Restoration the guilds fared hard. The great fire of London destroyed their halls and warehouses. Charles's idiotic foreign policy, and the high-handed "quo warranto" proceedings which their wealth brought upon them, crippled their gains and liberties; and after the advent of the German dynasty, with its importation of the German aristocratic contempt for trade, the younger sons of nobles and country gentlemen ceased to enter mercantile pursuits. But we find--and to their credit be it said--that the guilds have on the whole, and throughout their history, devoted themselves wisely to the promotion of public advantage, always standing shoulder to shoulder against every attempt at royal encroachment upon the freedom of the commoner, advancing wise measures for the government of the city and the undisturbed conduct of business, and taking all proper care that no member of their fraternity or any merchant of their trade should sell under weight or produce articles below a certain standard of quality. The history of each of the companies is very similar. To briefly follow one of them, the Worshipful Company of Grocers, for example, let us quote the account recently given by Mr. Moore in the _Century Magazine_. "On June 12, 1345," he writes,"a number of pepperers, as the grocers were then styled, met together at dinner by agreement at the town mansion of the Abbot of Bury in St. Mary Axe. They talked their common affairs over, and agreed to form themselves into a voluntary association to settle trade disputes, to help poor members, and to say prayers for the souls of the departed members. They took St. Anthony for their patron, elected two wardens to preside over them and a chaplain to pray for them. Ever since, they have met each year on St. Anthony's day and dined together, electing new wardens and crowning them with garlands. In 1427 they bought some land in Old Jewry, a street leading out of Cheapside, there built a hall, and there remain to this day. After their association had been in existence eighty-four years, the Grocers obtained a charter from the king, in the year 1429; and soon after were given the public duty of inspecting and cleansing all the spices sold in London. King Charles II. became their master, and they always dine on the day of his birth, the 29th of May. At the end of his reign, in 1685, they were nearly destroyed by the tyrannical proceedings under which the king tried to seize their charters and abolish their privileges and those of London and other cities. They just managed to survive the horrors of the 'quo warranto,' as this proceeding was called, and joyfully elected William III. master when he came to the throne and made civil liberty once more secure. From this day to our own they have grown richer, while their functions as cleansers and inspectors of spices have slowly become obsolete. Now with much good fellowship and cheerful hospitality they administer charities, do good in other ways and harm to no one; so that all citizens may heartily join in their grace, 'God preserve the Church, the Queen, and the Worshipful Company of Grocers! Root and branch, may it flourish forever!'" [Illustration: PLATE LXIII CURRIER'S HALL: GREAT HALL] Such, with slight variations in detail, has been the history of the companies. Each began as a voluntary association, received in the fourteenth century, or later, a charter from the crown, exercised control over its especial trade, was nearly destroyed by Charles II., and has since steadily increased in riches; while, with a few exceptions, changes in the nature of commerce have worn away all its mediæval functions except the happy one of promoting good-fellowship among men. Membership in one of these companies was originally to be obtained only by going through a period of apprenticeship in its trade and by money payment. In later times, however, the actual apprenticeship became obsolete, so that the companies of London are now, in this respect, practically upon the same basis as ordinary clubs, to which an applicant who possesses the requisite qualifications may be elected upon payment of an admission fee. Places in the membership are also inherited from father to son, and families belong to certain companies for generations. It has also become unnecessary for an applicant to belong to the trade which the guild represents; and indeed only three of the greater companies, the Drapers, the Apothecaries and the Goldsmiths, retain more than a small minority of actual craftsmen among their members. [Illustration: DETAIL OF CARVING CHURCH OF S. GIUSTO, LUCCA TWELFTH CENTURY] With the exception of the public duties and the administration of the charities before mentioned, the only functions of the guilds at present are those of hospitality and good fellowship. The livery companies take it upon themselves to do much of the hospitality of the city of London. They give receptions to royalty and distinguished men; they take large part in such civic festivities as the Lord Mayor's show; they make gifts to the reigning family upon their marriages, and the fame of their city dinners has passed into a proverb. The same writer from whom we have just quoted thus describes one of these guild dinners:-- [Illustration: PLATE LXIV TALLOW-CHANDLER'S HALL: COURT ROOM] "Happy the man who is entertained by the Guild of the Body of Christ of the Skinners of London, as the company style themselves in all official documents. A beadle receives him with lofty courtesy and calls out his name as he ascends a handsome staircase. At the top the guest suddenly finds himself in the august presence of the master and wardens. They shake hands with him and bid him welcome as if he was the one guest who, long invited and never coming, had at last appeared and satisfied a lifelong wish on their part to see him. "The guest seems to have entered into their very hearts, when suddenly he feels that they can smile on him no more, and that the absorbing attention with which they receive him is exchanged in an instant for total neglect. It is merely that these high functioners are receiving another guest, and so another and another, till the list is complete and dinner is served. All dinners of all companies are noble feasts, and the tables of the great companies are brilliant with splendid pieces of plate. Among the skinners' plate are some curious flagons made in form of beasts and birds. The skinners like to tell how these are used. On the day of election of master and wardens, the court, or governing body of the guild, is assembled in the hall, and ten blue-coat boys, with the almsmen of the company, the master and wardens, all in procession, preceded by trumpeters blowing blasts, march round the hall. Three great birds of silver are brought in and handed to the master and wardens. The birds' heads are screwed off, and the master and wardens drink wine from these quaint flagons. "Three 'caps of maintenance' are then brought in. The old master puts one on. It will not fit him. He hands it to another, and he to another, and both declare that it does not fit. Then it reaches the skinner who is to be master for the year. Wonderful to relate it fits him to a nicety. The trumpeters flourish their trumpets, the skinners and the almsmen shout for joy. The wardens next find out whom the cap fits, with the other two caps of maintenance, and so the high authorities of the guild are installed for the year." The most expensive and magnificent of the feasts ever given by the united companies was that given to the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia and the Prince Regent in 1814, in celebration of the end of the Napoleonic wars. The associated merchants of London, whose gold had made these wars possible, invited to their table the three most powerful monarchs in Europe, and spent upon a single entertainment the sum of £25,000, while the gold and silver plate upon which the food was served was valued at equal amount, the larger part of it being the gift of kings, and some of it the work of Benvenuto Cellini's own hands. All of the most important of the companies possess halls of their own, and there are more than fifty of these halls in London, each of which contains something beautiful and curious. Most of them, as we have said before, were burned in the great fire, but were rebuilt upon the same sites. The fact that the interiors of these halls are so little known is due to the exclusiveness of the companies, which do not invite sight-seers. [Illustration: PLATE LXV COACHMAKER'S HALL: BOARD ROOM] In exterior they are generally plain and the door which leads to them is not labeled or in many cases to be distinguished from the doors of offices or warehouses near it. "In a few cases," writes Mr. Moore, "a small and insignificant brass plate near a bell-handle bears the word 'Beadle,' or sometimes even lifts the veil of mystery a little higher and records a name, as 'Weavers' Hall.' To ring the bell requires nearly as much courage as that of Jack the Giant-killer when he blew the horn that hung at the giant's gate. The beadle, or more often the sub-beadle,--for the beadle himself is too great to be lightly disturbed,--appears. You feel instantly that you are intruding, that you had no right to ring, and that you are in much the position of a man who has impertinently rung at the door of a private house and asked to see the drawing-room. If you have an introduction, above all, if you know any one on the court of the company, as its governing body is called, the beadle unbends a little, and you are admitted. You enter a great paneled hall decorated with armorial bearings, with portraits, and with banners. You are in the very heart of the city of London, where land is worth £100,000 or more an acre, yet there is a delicious garden, a court-yard recalling Italy, a splashing fountain, or a noble old tree. This element of surprise, of contrast between the rushing crowd in the street outside and the perfect fourteenth century stillness within the halls of these ancient guilds, adds much to the pleasure of seeing curious things at which you are not asked to look. You feel in a few minutes how great a thing it is to be a merchant tailor or a cloth-worker or a grocer, superlative and unattainable; and you walk round the hall with the beadle in a deferential, humble frame of mind only comparable to the sensation of a pilgrim who is just about to kiss or has just finished kissing the toe of his holiness the Pope. [Illustration: CARVED CHOIR STALL BAPTISTERY, PISA MODERN (1856)] "The halls of nearly all the companies were consumed in the great fire, so that most of their buildings date from the last years of the house of Stuart, and in later times some have been rebuilt in a style of profuse magnificence. Nevertheless, there is hardly one which does not contain some picturesque bit of architecture or wood-carving, curious portrait, quaintly carved figure, beautifully illumined charter, or splendid piece of plate. The wood-carving in many is superb,--in none finer than in the Brewers' Hall,--and the combination of the dark color of old oak with the bright tinctures of painted armorial bearings occurs in endless and always picturesque variety. The quite self-content and the half-private character of the guilds have prevented a thorough investigation of their history. They themselves feel, as any one who with the feeling of ownership dines often in such halls as theirs must come to feel, that no one but one of themselves could do them justice; that a haberdasher alone could write of haberdashers, a grocer of grocers, a vintner of vintners. One or two good histories of particular companies have been written by members, but all the general accounts are deficient in thoroughness. It must be remembered, too, that these ancient corporations suffered a terrible shock at the hands of the law-officers of Charles II., who forced open their muniment chests, asked why and wherefore about everything, and demanded their money or their lives. The 'quo warranto' was hardly forgotten when more modern attacks began; royal commissions were threatened, and the guilds which had never done harm, and thought that merit enough, were perpetually asked why they did not do good, and those who obviously did good, why they did not do more. "Thus assailed from time to time, but so far surviving assault, no wonder that the companies are a little suspicious of strangers and not too anxious to admit criticising historians." Brochure Series Competition "P." Readers of THE BROCHURE SERIES who are amateur photographers, as well as those who have made collections of architectural photographs, will be interested in our newly announced "Competition P," details of which are given, under that heading, in the advertising pages of this issue. [Illustration: PLATE LXVI STATIONER'S HALL: GREAT HALL] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47915	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Ducal Palace: Venice Types of Italian Garden Fountains SEPTEMBER, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LXVII COURT OF THE DUCAL PALACE] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. SEPTEMBER No. 9. THE DUCAL PALACE: VENICE "Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice," wrote Ruskin. To know its history would be to know the entire history of the Republic, for it was not alone the residence of her doges, but at different epochs her senate-house, her court of justice, a prison, and even a place of execution. Combining thus in one structure, as it does, the greatest architectural and the greatest historical importance, there is, perhaps, no more interesting monument now existing in the world. In his suggestive work upon Italy, Taine has vividly described the effect of a first sight of the Ducal Palace. "Like a magnificent jewel in a brilliant setting, it effaces its surroundings," he writes. "Never has like architecture been seen. All here is novel. You feel yourself drawn out of the conventional; you realize that there is an entire world outside the Classic or Gothic forms which we impose on ourselves and endlessly repeat; that human invention is illimitable, and that, like nature, it may break all the rules, and produce a perfect work after a model opposed in every particular to that to which we are instructed to conform. Every habit of the eye is reversed; and, with surprise and delight, we here see oriental fancy grafting the full on the empty instead of the empty on the full. A colonnade of robust shafts bears a second and lighter one decorated with ogives and trefoils, while upon this frail support expands a massive wall of red and white marble, whose courses interlace in designs and reflect the light. Above, a cornice of open pyramids, pinnacles, spiracles and festoons intersects the sky with its border,--a marble vegetation bristling and blooming above the vermilion and pearly tones of the façade. "You enter the courtyard, and immediately your eyes are filled with a new richness. Nothing is bare or cold. Erudite and critical pedantry has not here intervened, under the pretext of purity and correctness, to restrain lively imagination and the craving for visual enjoyment. The builders of Venice were not austere; they did not restrict themselves to the prescriptions of books; they did not make up their minds to yawn admiringly at a façade which had been sanctioned by Vitruvious; they wanted an architectural work to delight their whole sentient being. They decked it with ornaments, columns and statues, they rendered it luxurious and joyous. They placed colossal pagans like Mars and Neptune on it, and flanked them with biblical figures like Adam and Eve; the sculptors of the fifteenth century enlivened it with their lank realistic effigies, and those of the sixteenth with their animated and muscular statues. [Illustration: PLATE LXVIII SCALA DEI GIGANTI: DUCAL PALACE] "You mount the princely steps with a sort of timidity and respect, ashamed of the dull black coat you wear, and reminded by contrast of the embroidered silk robes, the pompous sweeping dalmatics, the Byzantine tiaras and brodekins,--all that seigniorial magnificence for which these marble stairways were designed. All the genius of the city at its brightest period assembled here to glorify imperial Venice in the erection of a memorial of her victories and an apotheosis of her grandeur." [Illustration: DUCAL PALACE[1] PIAZZETTA AND SEA FAÇADES] The history of the construction of the Palace is obscure and confusing,--a bald array of senatorial decrees and dates. The original Doges' Palace, probably a small fortified castle, was built early in the ninth century, and in the troublous period of early Venetian history was frequently burned and rebuilt. At the end of the twelfth century Sebastiano Ziani restored and enlarged it. The present palace was begun in 1300 by the building of the west façade, and was a slow growth extending over nearly three centuries, the older building of Ziani being gradually pulled down as room was required for the new work. About 1309 the arcaded sea-front was begun; and the design then adopted was accurately followed along the whole external façade. Towards the end of the fourteenth century the façade had been carried along the Piazzetta side as far as the tenth capital. At this point the work seems to have remained stationary for some years, and a considerable portion of Ziani's palace was still in existence. In 1422 a decree was passed that the new palace should be extended over the site of Ziani's building; and in a few years the remainder of the external façade was completed up to its juncture with the Church of St. Mark. The Porta della Carta, which unites the Palace with the Church, was added in 1439. The internal block in the great court, joining the Porta della Carta to the east façade was built about 1462. In 1479 a fire consumed part of the fourteenth century buildings along the east front, and this part was then rebuilt, mostly between 1480 and 1550. These, in brief, are the facts (for which we are indebted to the account of Prof. J. H. Middleton) upon which historians have in general come to agree, though there is still difference of opinion as to the exact portions of the structure to which the various decrees refer. [Illustration: PLATE LXIX SCALA D'ORO: DUCAL PALACE] An interesting theory concerning the design of the palace, and incidentally a critical estimate of its architecture, has been given us by Mr. George Edmund Street in his scholarly treatise upon "Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages." "The whole design" he writes, "is divided into three stages in height. The upper is nearly equal to the united height of the two lower stages, and is faced entirely with a delicate diaper of marble cut into small oblong pieces, which look save in their texture and color, only too much like bricks. In this marble-faced wall are pierced a number of windows with pointed arches--the tracery of which has been taken out--and in or near the centre of each façade is a much larger window and a balcony, which look as though they had been subsequently inserted. The lowest stage consists of a long and uniform arcade of very simple pointed arches resting upon circular columns with elaborately carved capitals; these columns have been shortened by some twenty inches of their old height by the rise of the water and the consequent elevation of the pavement, to the great damage of their effect. The intermediate stage is a magnificent arcade supporting very vigorous tracery and divided from the stages above and below it by large and pronounced lines of carved and moulded string-courses. [Illustration: DUCAL PALACE DETAIL OF CEILING, ANTE CHAMBER OF THE CHAPEL] "It is important to observe that up to the top of the second string-course the whole of the architecture is of the very best kind of Venetian pointed, and is, I believe, the very best and truest specimen of Gothic architecture south of the Alps. "Above this noble work comes the third stage; and I confess, to my eye, with patent marks in every stone of which it is composed that it was designed by some other hand than that which had been so successful below. There is something quite chilling in the great waste of plain, unbroken wall, coming above the extreme richness of the arcades which support it; and moreover this placing of the richer work below and the plainer above is so contrary, not only to all ordinary canons of architecture, but just as much to the ordinary practice of the Venetians, that I feel sure that the impression which I have had from my first acquaintance with drawings of it is substantially correct; viz., that the line at which alterations and additions have been made is to be looked for rather in a _horizontal_ than in a _vertical_ direction; that in all probability, consequently, the builders of 1309 commenced with some portion of the sea-façade, and gradually carried on the greater part of the building to the height of the two stages, as we now see them, leaving the building finished in precisely the same way as the corresponding halls at Padua and Vicenza--two stories in height, with arcades covering the outer walls of the upper as well as of the lower stage; and that when the council chamber was found to be too small and larger rooms were required, another architect suggested the advantage of obtaining them by raising an immense story above the others and without destroying much of his predecessor's work providing rooms on the most magnificent scale for the Doge and his council. [Illustration: PLATE LXX SALA DEL MAGGIOR CONSIGLIO: DUCAL PALACE] "No one can examine the building without seeing that there is, not only in the detail but equally in the general design, a marked difference between the two lower stages and the upper stage. In place of the extreme boldness which marks every part of the former, we see mouldings reduced in the latter to the smallest and meanest section possible; the windows of the upper stage are badly designed, whilst the traceries of the second stage are as fine as they can possibly be; the parapet too is not equal in its design to any of the lower work, and crowns with an insignificant grotesqueness the noble symmetry of the two lower arcades; and finally the chequer-work of marble, which forms the whole of the upper wall, is a mode of construction which I have not seen in any early work, though it is seen in the Porta della Carta, and in other late work. "Such, then, is the Ducal Palace,--a building certainly in some respects of almost unequalled beauty, but at the same time of unequal merit; its first and second stages quite perfect in their bold and nervous character, and, in the almost interminable succession of the same beautiful features in shaft and arch and tracery, forming one of the grandest proofs in the world of the exceeding value of perfect regularity, and of a repetition of good features in architecture, when it is possible to obtain it on a very large scale." The whole Palace forms three sides of an unsymmetrical hollow square, the back, or north side, abutting upon St. Mark's Church. The great internal Court (Plate LXVII.) was begun at the end of the fifteenth century, but then only partially completed. It is surrounded on the south, east and west sides by Gothic arcades of very similar style to those on the exterior. Even in the sixteenth century portion the same main outline was followed, though the detail is different. The entrance to the Courtyard, at the northwest angle adjoining St. Mark's, is through the Porta della Carta (so called because official notices were affixed to it), which was the last Gothic work added to the Palace. Across the court and opposite this entrance is a very beautiful staircase in the early-Renaissance style, built in the middle of the fifteenth century by Antonio Ricci. It is called the "Giant's Staircase" (Plate LXVIII.) from its two colossal and rather clumsy statues of Neptune and Mars. Between these statues the doges stood to be inaugurated. Reached by this staircase is a second, the so-called "Golden Staircase" (Plate LXIX.), which derives its name either from the fact that it was formerly accessible only to those whose names were entered in the "Golden Book"--a list of the Venetian nobility,--or from the richness of its decoration, and this leads to the great apartments in the interior. It was designed by Jacapo Sansovino, and completed in 1577. [Illustration: DUCAL PALACE FIREPLACE IN DOGE'S BED-CHAMBER] Owing to a great fire which gutted a great part of the Palace in 1574, the internal appearance of the council chambers and the state apartments of the doges was completely changed, and a splendid series of early Paduan and Venetian paintings which adorned the walls of the chief rooms was destroyed. The interiors were then redecorated with their present magnificence, some idea of which may be gained from a mere enumeration of those who shared in the work. As architects there were Palladio, Sansovino, Scammozzi, Lombardi and Antonio da Ponte; as sculptors and decorators Vittoria, Aspetti, Segala, Campagna, Bombarda and di Silo; as painters Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Vivarini, Palma, Tiepolo, and many others; so that each room became, as Ruskin has said, "a colossal casket of priceless treasure." [Illustration: PLATE LXXI SALA DELLO SCRUTINO: DUCAL PALACE] It will, however, be unnecessary to describe in detail each apartment illustrated by our engravings, even did space permit. Intended as spacious audience chambers to afford dignified and magnificent surroundings for the stately scenes which were to be enacted within them, they are all enriched in the same general style, with panelling, carving, and gilded mouldings of the later Renaissance; the architectonic decorations being chiefly designed as a setting for the multitude of noble pictures. The largest and most important of these apartments is the Hall of the Great Council (Plate LXX.), in which the entire body of the Venetian nobility met to consider questions of state. This immense room is fifty-five yards long, twenty-eight yards wide, and forty-seven feet high. The greatest of the Venetian masters were employed upon the ceiling; the entire east wall is occupied by Tintoretto's "Paradise"--said to be the largest oil painting in the world--and the walls are adorned with portraits of the doges and scenes from the history of the republic. In the Sala dello Scrutino or Voting Hall (Plate LXXI.), the forty-one nobles were elected by whom the doges were afterwards chosen. Opposite the entrance is a representation of the triumphal arch erected by the senate in 1694 to commemorate the conquest of Morea. The Sala del Senato (Plate LXXII.), was the hall in which the full senate assembled in formal session. It is also called the Sala dei Pregadi because originally notice was sent to each senator to _pregare_ or summon him to attend the meetings. Beyond this room, to the right of the throne, is an ante-chamber to the private chapel of the doges. A portion of the ceiling of this ante-chamber, executed in the seventeenth century, is shown on page 139. The Anticollegio (Plate LXXIII.), or waiting room for the ambassadors, was designed by Scammozzi, and contains Paul Veronese's celebrated painting, "The Rape of Europa." The Anticollegio leads to the Sala del Collegio (Plate LXXIV.), in which audiences were granted to foreign emissaries. On the raised platform stood the Doge's throne, and in the stall-like seats around it sat the state councillors. [Illustration: PLATE LXXII SALA DEL SENATO: DUCAL PALACE] [1] Other views of the exterior of the Ducal Palace will be found in No. 1, 1895 and No. 12, 1898 of this Series. A Change in The Brochure Series Beginning with the January issue for 1901, the first issue of its Seventh Volume, two changes will be made in THE BROCHURE SERIES. I. The magazine will be enlarged. Half as many full-page engravings and half as many illustrated text-pages as are included in the present issues will be added to each number. II. The price will be increased to $1.00 a year and to ten cents a copy. In general conduct, purpose, and in the character of material presented the magazine will be unchanged. The Publishers are led to take this step because they believe that the magazine has a value and a field which are all its own, and that its value in that field will be increased by its enlargement. The value of the magazine in its present form is proved by the fact that its subscription list has shown a constant increase from the first number to the present time, and was never so large as it is now; and it is hoped and confidently believed that every present subscriber to THE BROCHURE will approve of the change, for the enlarged form will afford an opportunity to present more material, to present it more attractively, and to cover a wider field of interest. Brochure Series Competition "P." In answer to inquiries regarding Competition "P," the details of which are announced on an advertising page of this issue, the editor begs to state that photographic prints of any size may be submitted. Small photographs, provided they are clear and well defined, can often be as successfully reproduced as large ones. [Illustration: PLATE LXXIII SALA DELL' ANTICOLLEGIO: DUCAL PALACE] Types of Italian Garden Fountains [Illustration: FOUNTAIN VILLA MEDICI, ROME.] [Illustration: FOUNTAIN BY BERNINI VILLA BORGHESE, ROME] [Illustration: FOUNTAIN VILLA ANDOBRANDINI, FRASCATI] [Illustration: FOUNTAIN GARDENS OF THE VATICAN, ROME] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIV SALA DEL COLLEGIO: DUCAL PALACE] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. Footnote is at the end of chapter. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47916	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Château of Chambord: France Louis XVI. Sconces OCTOBER, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LXXV CHAMBORD: SOUTHERN FAÇADE] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. OCTOBER No. 10. THE CHÂTEAU OF CHAMBORD: FRANCE The Château of Chambord is one of the most unique palaces of the Renaissance in existence. "It is," writes Jules Loiseleur, "the Versailles of the feudal monarchy; and was to the Château of Blois, that central residence of the Valois, what Versailles was to the Tuilleries,--the country-seat of royalty. Tapestries from Arras, Venetian mirrors, curiously sculptured chests, crystal chandeliers, massive silver furniture, and miracles of all the arts, were amassed in this palace during eight reigns, and dispersed in a single day by the breath of the Revolution. [Illustration: LANTERN OF THE GREAT STAIRCASE CHAMBORD] "It has often been asked why Francis I., to whom the banks of the Loire presented many marvelous sites, selected such a wild and forsaken spot in the midst of arid plains for the erection of the strange building which he planned. His peculiar choice has been attributed to his passion for the chase and also because of the memory of his amours with the beautiful Comtesse de Thoury, whom he had visited in that neighborhood before he ascended the throne. Independently of these motives, which no doubt counted in his selection, perhaps the very wildness of the place and its distance from the Loire, which reminded him too much of the cares of royalty, was a determining reason. Kings, like private individuals, and even more than they, experience the need at times of burying themselves, and therefore make a hidden and far-away nest where they may be their own masters and live to please themselves. Moreover, Chambord, with its countless rooms, its secret stairways, and its subterranean passages, seems to have been built for one who, tired of the blaze of royal glory, sought here for shadow and mystery. At the same time when he was rearing Chambord in the heart of the uncultivated plains of the Sologne, Francis I. built in the midst of the Blois de Boulogne a château, where, from time to time, he shut himself up with learned men and artists, and to which the courtiers, who were positively forbidden there, gave the name of Madrid, in memory of the prison in which their master had suffered. But Chambord, like Madrid, was not a prison; it was a retreat. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVI CHAMBORD: GENERAL VIEW] "That sentiment of peculiar charm which is attached to the situation of Chambord will be felt by every artist who visits this strange creation. At the end of a long avenue of poplars breaking through thin underbrush you see, little by little, peeping and mounting upward from the earth, a fairy building, which, rising in the midst of arid sand and heath, produces the most striking and unexpected effect. A _jinnee_ of the Orient, a poet has said, must have stolen it from the country of sunshine to hide it in the country of fog for the amours of a handsome prince. The park in which it is situated is twenty square miles in area, and is surrounded by twenty miles of walls." Francis I. had passed his early years at Cognac, at Amboise or Romorantin, and when he first saw Chambord it was only an old feudal manor house built by the Counts of Blois. There has been much question as to who the architect he employed to transform it really was, and the honor of having designed the splendid residence has been claimed for several of the Italian artists, who early in the sixteenth century came to seek patronage in France. It seems well established today, however, that Chambord was neither the work of Primaticcio, with whose name it is tempting to associate any building of this king's, nor of Vignola, nor of Il Rosso, all of whom have left some trace of their sojourn in France, for the methods of contemporary Italian architecture were totally different; but as M. de la Saussaye, the author of a very complete and concise history of the building, proves, it was due to the skill of that fertile local school of art and architecture around Tours and Blois, and more particularly to a comparatively obscure genius, whose name is also mentioned in connection with Amboise and Blois, one Pierre le Nepveu, known also as Pierre Trinqueau, who is designated in the papers which preserve in some degree the history of the origin of the edifice as the _maistre de l'oeuvre de maçonnerie_. "Behind this modest title apparently," writes Mr. Henry James, "we must recognize one of the most original talents of the French Renaissance; and it is a proof of the vigor of the artistic life of that period that, brilliant production being everywhere abundant, an artist of so high a value should not have been treated by his contemporaries as a celebrity. We manage things very differently today." Although Le Nepveu was the chief architect, Cousin, Bontemps, Goujon, Pilon and other noted artists were engaged in the decoration of Chambord. Many changes in the structure were afterwards carried out, especially by Louis XIV. and by Marshal Saxe, to whom that monarch presented it in 1749. From 1725 to 1733 Stanislaus Leszczynski, the ex-king of Poland, who spent the greater part of his life in being elected and in being ousted from his throne, dwelt at Chambord. During the Revolution the palace was as far as possible despoiled of every vestige of its royal origin, and the apartments to which upwards of two centuries had contributed a treasure of decoration and furniture were swept bare. In 1791 an odd proposal was made to the French Government by a company of English Quakers, who had conceived the bold idea of establishing in the palace a manufacture of some peaceful commodity not today recorded. Napoleon I. presented Chambord to Marshal Berthier, from whose widow it was purchased in 1821 for the sum of £61,000 raised by national subscription on behalf of the Duke of Bordeaux, formerly Comte de Chambord. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVII CHAMBORD: NORTHERN FAÇADE] The Château, only the north part of which is completed, consists of two square blocks, the larger of which, five hundred and twelve feet long by three hundred and eighty-five feet broad, encloses the smaller in such a way, that the northern façade of the one forms the centre of the northern façade of the other. The corners of each block terminate in massive round towers, with conical roofs crowned by lanterns, so that four of these towers appear in the principal façade. In plan it will be seen that Chambord resembles the typical French château; with the habitation of the seigneur and his family in the centre, and this habitation enclosed on three sides by a court, while like most feudal dwellings, the central donjon shares one of its sides with the exterior of the whole. The central part is adorned with an unexampled profusion of dormer-windows, turrets, carved chimneys and pinnacles, besides innumerable mouldings and sculptures, above all of which rises the double lantern of the tower containing the principal staircase. "It is a forest of campaniles, chimneys, sky-lights, domes and towers, in lace-work and open-work, twisted according to a caprice which excludes neither harmony nor unity," writes M. Loiseleur. "The beautiful open-work tower of the large staircase dominates the entire mass of pinnacles and steeples, and bathes in the blue sky its colossal fleur-de-lis, the last point of the highest pinnacle among pinnacles, the highest crown among all crowns. "We must take Chambord for what it is, an ancient Gothic château dressed out in great measure according to the fashion of the Renaissance. In no other place is the transition from one style to another revealed in a way so impressive and naïve; nowhere else does the brilliant butterfly of the Renaissance show itself more deeply imprisoned in the heavy Gothic chrysalis. Chambord, by its plan which is essentially French and feudal, and by its enclosure flanked with towers, and by the breadth of its heavy mass, slavishly recalls the mediæval _manoirs_. By its lavish profusion of ornamentation it suggests the creations of the sixteenth century as far as the beginning of the roofs; it is Gothic as far as the platform; and it belongs to the Renaissance when it comes to the roof itself. It may be compared to a rude French knight of the fourteenth century, who wears on his cuirass some fine Italian embroideries, and on his head the plumed felt of Francis I.,--assuredly an incongruous costume, but one not without character." "With a sympathetic denial of any extreme over-technical admiration," writes Mr. Cook in his _Old Touraine_, "Viollet le Duc gives just that intelligible account of the Château which is a compromise between the unmeaning adulation of its contemporary critics and the ignorance of the casual traveller. 'Chambord,' says he, 'must be taken for what it is; for an attempt of the architect to reconcile the methods of two opposite principles,--to unite in one building the fortified castle of the Middle Ages and the pleasure-palace of the sixteenth century.' Granted that the attempt was an absurd one, it must be remembered that the Renaissance was but just beginning in France; Gothic art seemed out of date, yet none other had established itself to take its place. In literature, in morals, as in architecture, this particular phase in the civilization of the time was evident, and if only this transition period is realized in all its meanings, with all the 'monstrous and inform' characteristics that were inevitably a part of it, the mystery of this strange sixteenth century in France is half explained." [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CHÂTEAU OF CHAMBORD] "At Chambord," writes Mrs. Pattison, in her _Renaissance of Art in France_, "which was building in 1526, the stories are, it is true, forcibly indicated, but the whole building is pulled together in Gothic fashion by the towers of the _corps de logis_, and by those which flank the pavilions or wings which stretch out on either side of the main body. In a building of the size of Chambord the result of this treatment is hardly satisfactory, for the lines of the wings to right and left of the main body seem to droop away from the heavy towers on either side. Inside the court, however, the unpleasant effect, even at Chambord, disappears, for the apparent length of the wings is greatly abbreviated by the effect of the two spiral staircases which run up outside the building at the internal angles on opposite sides. [Illustration: PLATE LXXVIII CHAMBORD: FRANCIS I. WING] "Chambord is, indeed, throughout truly typical of the earlier stage of the new Renaissance movement. In the general arrangement, in the _ordonnance_, late Gothic caprice and fantastic love of the unforeseen rule triumphant. The older portions of the Château, the seemingly irregular assemblages of half Oriental turrets and spires, are debased Gothic, full of audacious disregard of all outward seeming of order. The architect, instead of seeking to bring home to the eye the general law, the plan on which the whole is grouped, has wilfully obscured and concealed it beneath the obviousness of the wild and daring conceits heaped above. [Illustration: VIEW OF CHAMBORD (1576) ENGRAVING FROM DU CERCEAU] "But even at Chambord the mark is set which promises other days. It is the transition moment; Gothic fancy may wildly distribute ornament and obscure design, but the ornament which it distributes is Gothic no longer. The _obscæna_ which haunt the cathedrals of the middle ages, which infest the earlier towers of Amboise, and linger defilingly about Gaillon, are banished. In their place come faint foliated traceries and arabesques in low relief, enriching every surface, disturbing none, moving with melodious adaptation of subtle line, winding, falling, rising in sympathy with every swiftly ascending shaft or hollowing curve. "It is not now possible to approach Chambord carrying in our eyes a vision of the great Renaissance palace, as engraved by Du Cerceau in his _Plus excellens Bâtimens de la France_. Burdened by the weighty labors of Louis XIV., weakened by eight improving years at the hands of Stanislaus Leszczynski, mutilated by Marshal Saxe, the Chambord which we now go out from Blois to visit is not the Chambord of Francis I. The broad foundations and heaving arches which rose proudly out of the waters of the moat no longer impress the eye. The truncated mass squats ignobly upon the turf, the waters of the moat are gone; gone are the deep embankments crowned with pierced balustrades; gone is the no-longer-needed bridge with its guardian lions. All the outlying work which gave the actual building space and dignity has vanished, and we enter directly from the park outside to what was once but the inner court of the Château. "It is not until we stand within this inner court--until we have passed through the lines of building which enclose it on the western side, and which show the unmistakable signs of stupid and brutal destruction, that we can believe again in the departed glories of Chambord. Lippomano, ambassador from Venice to France in the reign of Henry III., turned out of his way to visit Chambord. 'On the 21st,' he says, 'we made a slight detour in order to visit the Château of Chambord, or, more strictly speaking, the palace commenced by Francis I., and truly worthy of this great prince. I have seen many magnificent buildings in the course of my life, but never anything more beautiful or more rich. They say that the piles for the foundations of the Château in this marshy ground have alone cost 300,000 francs. The effect is very good on all sides. The number of the rooms is as remarkable as their size, and indeed space was not wanting to the architect, since the wall that surrounds the park is seven leagues in length. The park itself is full of forests, of lakes, of streams, of pasture-land, and of hunting-grounds, and in the centre rises the Château with its gilt battlements, with its wings covered in with lead, with its pavilions, its towers and its corridors, even as the romancers describe to us the abode of Morgana or of Alcinoüs. More than half remains to be done, and I doubt it will ever be finished, for the kingdom is completely exhausted by war. We left much marvelling, or rather let us say thunderstruck.' [Illustration: PLATE LXXIX CHAMBORD: STAIRCASE, FRANCIS I. WING] "To destroy the character of Chambord from the outside was not difficult. It was not easy to tame the rude defiance of Vincennes, or give facility to the reserved and guarded approaches of Gaillon. Solid rectangular towers, heavy machicolations, and ponderous drawbridges offer a stubborn resistance to schemes of ruthless innovation; but Chambord was no fortress, it was a country house. The very site is motived by no other reason than the pleasures of the chase. The battlements of Gaillon gave back the echoes of the trumpet, but the galleries of Chambord resounded with the huntsman's bugle. "The construction of these galleries in itself points to the rapid progress of social change. There are not only such as may be called covered passages communicating from the spiral staircases with the rooms on each story; galleries which have their special cause in actual need and daily use; but the roofs of the range of one-storied buildings which connect the side wings on the north and south, and which run along the western front, are finished up from the cornice with a balustrade, and turned into a promenade for courtiers. "Yet in spite of these marked indications of change the ancient spirit lingers. The unrestrained freedom of grotesque caprice finds expression everywhere, even in those later portions which belong to another reign. Pierre le Nepveu has left on all his work the imprint of profuse and fantastic force; the outlines of his cupolas strike the sky with an audacity which seems to defy the adverse criticism of those who moved within the limits of more cautious rule. Symmetrical balance, for which the masters of a succeeding era sought, and by which they strove to harmonize every portion of their design, obliged them to reject the aid of those varied resources which Le Nepveu shrewdly marshaled with a vigorous hand. "Chambord is in truth a brilliant example of transition. The early Renaissance is there to be seen, taking on itself the burden beneath which the failing forces of the Gothic spirit had sunk. But the intention of the work is wholly foreign to the main direction taken by the new movement, and condemned, by its very nature, to remain, in spite of the wonderful genius lavished upon it, an unfruitful _tour de force_." The interior of the palace is now but a great wilderness of hewn stone. The sixteenth century treasures of art which had adorned it were all stolen or destroyed in the Revolution, the spoliation being so complete that it was stripped of even the carved wainscots, panels, doors and shutters, and the four hundred and forty enormous apartments now give only the impression of a vast and comfortless barrack. In the original arrangement of the interior all ideas of practical defense were sacrificed to produce a pleasure palace, and it was furnished with innumerable secret stairways (there are thirteen great staircases, not to mention numberless smaller ones) isolated turrets and a hundred facilities for what the gallant Viollet le Duc calls "_les intrigues secrètes de cette cour jeune et tout occupée de galanteries_." "On the whole," writes Mr. Henry James, "Chambord makes a great impression--there is a dignity in its desolation. It speaks with a muffled but audible voice of the vanished monarchy, which had been so strong, so splendid, but today has become a sort of fantastic vision. I thought, while I lingered there, of all the fine things that it takes to make up such a monarchy; and how one of them is a superfluity of mouldering empty palaces." A Change in The Brochure Series The attention of subscribers to THE BROCHURE SERIES is again called to the fact that, beginning with the Seventh Volume, January, 1901, the magazine is to be enlarged, and that the subscription price will then be increased to $1.00 a year, and the price of single copies to ten cents each. [Illustration: PLATE LXXX CHAMBORD: FROM THE WEST] LOUIS XVI. SCONCES [Illustration: FROM FONTAINEBLEAU] [Illustration: FROM VERSAILLES] [Illustration: FROM DOUAI] [Illustration: FROM FONTAINEBLEAU] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXI CHAMBORD: THE ROOFS] [Illustration: FROM FONTAINEBLEAU] [Illustration: FROM VERSAILLES] [Illustration: FROM VERSAILLES] [Illustration: FROM VERSAILLES] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXII CHAMBORD: DORMERS AND CHIMNEYS] Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. Ligatures [oe] have been converted into oe. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47921	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Work of Sir Christopher Wren NOVEMBER, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIII ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL: LONDON] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. NOVEMBER No. 11. THE WORK OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN During the reign of James I. the Renaissance style in England, which in Elizabeth's time had been mingled in picturesque combination with the Gothic, was further developed, losing year by year more of the Gothic features and becoming purer as the Classic models and literature became better known. The Anglo-Classic, or fully evolved English Renaissance style, arose only, however, with the advent of the celebrated Inigo Jones, who brought to his work the fruits of long study in Italy, and a thorough knowledge of the work of Palladio who was his master in design. During his life Jones' influence was paramount, and up to the time of the Commonwealth he had a practical monopoly of the architectural profession in England. His work was taken up where he left it by an architect on the whole, more remarkable--one of the most remarkable figures, indeed, that architecture has produced--Sir Christopher Wren, whose influence after the Restoration was even more complete than that of Jones had been before it. No building of importance was erected in England during the last forty years of the seventeenth century, of which Wren was not the architect. To Americans, moreover, Wren's work has an especial interest. Our own Colonial style, particularly in the architecture of churches, was in no slight degree based upon models which he originated, and he has not without justification been called the "father of the American Colonial style." Sir Christopher Wren was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on October 20, 1632. He was the son of Christopher Wren, rector of East Knoyle. He early showed a taste for natural science and mathematics, and up to his twenty-ninth year devoted himself with great genius to scientific pursuits. His fame rests chiefly on his architectural achievements, but had his philosophical pursuits not been interfered with by the arduous profession to which he later devoted himself he could not have failed of securing a scientific position higher than that attained by any of his contemporaries, with of course one exception, Newton. Hooke in his "Micrographia" wrote of him, "I must affirm that scarce ever met in one man such a mechanical hand and so philosophical a mind." He made elaborate drawings to illustrate the anatomy of the brain, invented an instrument for planting, a method of making fresh water at sea, produced a scheme for the graphical construction of solar and lunar eclipses and occultation of stars, and solved a problem proposed by Pascal to the geometers of England. The practical use of the barometer as connected with the weather is attributed to him, though it was not commonly used as a weather glass until a much later date. He invented a method for transfusion of blood, experimented scientifically in the force of gunpowder, and made innumerable other like experiments and inventions. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIV SOUTH FRONT, ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL: LONDON] The first definite information we have of his applying himself professionally to architecture, is his acceptance in his twenty-ninth year of an invitation from Charles II. to act practically as surveyor-general to his majesty's works, though nominally as assistant to Sir Charles Denham. It is clear, however, that he must have already given proof of fitness before such an appointment could have been offered. [Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY CAMBRIDGE] The two earliest original works we hear of are the chapel of Pembroke College Cambridge, built at the expense of his uncle, and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford. The chapel was finished in two years, but the Sheldonian Theatre not till 1669. We may therefore take Pembroke Chapel as his first original work, and it need occasion no surprise if we find in it signs of the 'prentice hand. Wren evidently felt the need of better opportunities for study, and took the earliest opportunity available to him to supply it by his journey to Paris in 1665, when ordinary business in London and in other parts of England was interrupted by the plague. This journey to France, where he seems to have resided for about six months, is the only one of which any information exists. The architectural detail of the Sheldonian Theatre, though still not commendable, is much in advance of that of Pembroke Chapel; but its completion did not take place until 1669, and Wren had had by then more time for education in correct classical expression. He was thus in some measure prepared both by study and by practical experience when the great opportunity of his life presented itself. The great fire of London broke out in 1666. Before the embers of the great fire had cooled, Wren, as virtual surveyor-general, had prepared a scheme for the rebuilding of the city. The fire raged from the second to the eighth of September, and during those six days, four hundred and sixty entire streets, eighty-nine churches, and over thirteen thousand houses were swept away. On the twelfth of September, Wren laid before the king a sketch plan of his design for the restoration of the metropolis. It is the plan of what would have become a magnificent city, but the public spirit which would have been required to carry it out would have demanded great sacrifices of present interest for the sake of future benefit; and a more hand-to-mouth expedient was necessarily adopted. But Wren found employment enough in his official capacity in designing, supervising and rebuilding a cathedral, more than fifty parish churches, thirty-six of the Companies' halls, the custom house, beside several private houses and provincial works. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV INTERIOR, ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL: LONDON] In regard to the Cathedral, Wren gave an unhesitating opinion that nothing but an entirely new structure ought to be contemplated. This advice was not at once taken, but the fall of a part of the Cathedral where repair was being attempted gave convincing proof of the wisdom of his judgment, and in 1668 he was summoned to London from Oxford (where he was still a professor of astronomy) to advise respecting a new edifice. The taking down of the old walls--in which Wren was wonderfully ingenious in inventing devices,--lasted through part of 1668; and in 1673 Wren, who had meantime been knighted, submitted his first design for the new Cathedral,--a design which he himself wrote that he considered "antique and well studied, conformable to the best style of Greek and Roman architecture." The king greatly approved of it, and a commencement of it was actually made, but so much clerical opposition was brought to bear on account of its being different from the usual cathedral shape that Wren was reluctantly obliged to turn his thoughts in another direction; and he proceeded with several trial plans in Gothic form. One of these was accepted, and he was ordered by a royal commission, dated May, 1675, to proceed with it. The authorization was accompanied by the permission to make variations, "rather ornamental than essential"; but happily, as the whole was left to his management, he found himself able to make use of this permission without troubling himself as to the qualification as to essentials. [Illustration: THE MONUMENT LONDON] There is no concealing the point that if the design which the king's warrant authorized had been carried out unaltered, St. Paul's would, externally at least, have proved a gigantic failure. In design we may perceive that there was in Wren's mind a struggle between two ideas as respects the great central feature of the dome,--namely, that of retaining the fine and well studied internal proportions of his first design, and at the same time attaining the quality of great loftiness demanded for the external appearance. This he proposed to attain by means of a lofty spire; but before long he abandoned this attempt and adopted the idea of general height as the leading principle, by which he ultimately arrived at the unrivalled exterior of the Cathedral. Now that he was fully authorized to proceed, Wren devoted all his energies to maturing his design, and many studies are extant which show the steps by which he arrived at the final result. He had no doubt a sufficiently clear general idea in his mind's eye of what the complete structure should be, but these studies show that the details of even such essential features as the profile of the dome and the western towers were not settled until the time approached when they would be required. For thirty-five years work was continued on the immense edifice, the third largest church in Christendom, under Wren's sole supervision, and in 1710 Sir Christopher, who had been a year old when the first stone was laid, now laid the last stone of the lantern above the dome. The scene could hardly be better painted than in the works of Dean Milman: [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVI SHELDONIAN THEATRE: OXFORD] "All London had poured forth for the spectacle, which had been publicly announced, and were looking up in wonder to the old man ... who was on that wondrous height setting the seal, as it were, to his august labors. If in that wide circle which his eye might embrace there were various objects for regret and disappointment; if, instead of beholding the various streets of the city, each converging to its centre, London had sprung up and spread in irregular labyrinths of close, dark, intricate lanes; if even his own Cathedral was crowded upon and jostled by mean and unworthy buildings; yet, on the other hand, he might survey, not the Cathedral only, but a number of stately churches which had risen at his command and taken form and dignity from his genius and skill. On one side the picturesque steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow; on the other the exquisite tower of St. Bride's. Beyond, and on all sides, if more dimly seen, yet discernible by his partial eyesight (he might even penetrate to the inimitable interior of St. Stephen's Walbrook), church after church, as far as St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, perhaps Greenwich, may have been vaguely made out in the remote distance; and all this one man had been permitted to conceive and execute; a man not originally destined or educated for an architect, but compelled as it were by the public necessities to assume the office, and so to fulfil it as to stand on a level with the most consummate masters of the art in Europe, and to take his stand on an eminence which his English successors almost despaired of attaining." [Illustration: GREENWICH HOSPITAL FROM THE RIVER] But though his most notable achievement, the building of St. Paul's had only absorbed a fraction of Wren's amazing energy, it would be impossible even to catalogue his achievements in our present space. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO KENSINGTON PALACE] Temple Bar was rebuilt from his designs about 1670-72. This historic Bar had formerly served as a sort of official entrance to the city, and when the reigning sovereign visited London on state occasions he was wont, in accordance with an ancient custom, to wait there till the Lord Mayor gave him permission to pass it,--a formal acknowledgment of the rights of the freemen of the city. (The photograph of Sir Christopher's Temple Bar shown in Plate LXXXIX. was made in 1877, one year before the arch was demolished to permit the widening of the street.) In 1684 Wren was appointed by Charles II. as comptroller of works in the Castle of Windsor, and besides all these spheres of activity he took some part in politics, and was three times elected to parliament. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVII STEEPLE, CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-BOW: LONDON] Of the fifty-two churches which Wren built in London, and of which a considerable number have been demolished, every one that remains is a valuable study in planning, and they show the greatest skill in their adaptation to irregular sites and their suitability for Protestant worship. In all of them the main proportions are excellent, but minor details are not in all good alike. Nothing that has been achieved in modern architecture has surpassed the beauty of their spires, not only from the elegance of each, but from their complete variety, and at the same time their harmony with one another. Indeed Wren may be called the inventor of the English Renaissance type of steeple, in which a conical or pyramidal spire is harmoniously added to belfry on a square tower with classical details. Two of these churches in particular are especially good examples of his genius,--namely St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Stephen's Walbrook. [Illustration: STEEPLE, ST. BRIDE'S CHURCH LONDON] St. Mary-le-Bow, or simply Bow church (so named after an earlier church on the same site, borne upon stone arches, or "bows"), was one of the most historic structures of old London. "Bow bells" hung in its tower, and served the city as a curfew; and persons born within the sound of them were considered true Londoners or "cockneys." Sir Christopher's church on the same site and called by the same name, was commenced in 1671 and completed six years later. The exterior is so much closed in with houses that only a plain solid outside was required, and Wren expended his chief architectural effort on a steeple, of which Mr. Fergusson has written: "There are errors of detail which probably the architect himself would have avoided in a second attempt, and, as they arose only from an imperfect knowledge of classical details, might easily be remedied at the present day. It only wants this slight revision to harmonize what little incongruities remain, and, if this were done, this steeple might challenge comparison with any Gothic example ever erected. No modern steeple can compare with it either for beauty of outline or the appropriateness with which classical details are applied to so novel a purpose." [Illustration: STEEPLE, ST. DUNSTAN'S-IN-THE-EAST LONDON] St. Stephen's Walbrook, commenced in 1672 and finished in 1679, like St. Mary-le-Bow has a plain exterior, and for the same reason; but Fergusson has rightly praised the interior for its originality, and as "the most pleasing of any Renaissance church that has yet been erected." The plain exterior tower was surmounted by a beautiful spire. One of Wren's principles was, that when sufficient funds were not available for the elaboration of the whole of a design, some one or more important features should be worked up to a higher standard than the rest, instead of adopting a lower standard for the whole. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVIII INTERIOR, CHURCH OF ST. STEPHEN'S WALBROOK: LONDON] Another of Wren's most admired steeples is that for St. Bride's in Fleet Street, built in 1701. The upper stories of it have, however, been criticised because of their sameness and the want of connection between them. Another famous spire is that which he built in 1699 for the church of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. In 1698 Wren was appointed surveyor to Westminster Abbey, and proceeded to carry out very important repairs. He built the central tower as we see it, and intended that it should have been surmounted by a lofty spire. The western towers which formed part of the project have been built, but not as he intended. The general proportion of the towers alone is Wren's. The "Monument," the Roman Doric column which commemorates the great fire, was built by Wren, between 1671 and 1678. He had at first intended that it should be left hollow from top to bottom to serve as a vertical telescope tube for astronomical purposes, but its height proved insufficient for this. There was great debate about the ornament for the summit. Wren wished it to be a large statue as "carrying much dignity with it, and being more valuable in the eyes of foreigners and strangers," but this project was abandoned on account of the expense, and the present ornament, a flaming vase of gilt bronze, substituted. "The great inequality of Wren's achievement," writes Fergusson, "is nowhere more marked than in a comparison of this Monument, which is one of the most successful Classical columns that have been erected in Europe, with Temple Bar, which is perhaps the most unsuccessful attempt ever made to reproduce a Classical triumphal archway." In 1677 he commenced the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. The work, which was not finished till 1692, is one of the handsomest buildings in England, remarkable externally for breadth and correctness of style, and internally as a model of excellent arrangement. In design it is not unlike the much admired Library of Ste. Genéviève in Paris. To Greenwich Hospital he contributed gratuitously the design for two noble blocks of buildings completely in harmony with the earlier portion by Inigo Jones. [Illustration: STEEPLE, ST. STEPHEN'S WALBROOK LONDON] He was long engaged on extensive works on Hampton Court Palace, where, at the desire of Queen Mary, the old buildings were in part pulled down and two sets of royal apartments built. The queen, though she amused herself with planning the gardens and making suggestions, had yet the wisdom to defer to Wren's better taste and knowledge. Her husband, with characteristic obstinacy, insisted on his own ideas, thereby dwarfing the cloisters and marring much of the architecture. It is, however, fair to say that King William always owned that the defects were his, the merits, Wren's; and these merits are very great, for in spite of defects of detail, the general design is one remarkable for dignity and breadth of conception. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIX TEMPLE BAR: LONDON] Having been appointed by the Stuarts to the office of surveyor-general, Wren retained the royal favor unclouded through the reigns of William and Mary, and Queen Anne; but on the accession of the Hanoverian family in 1714, the jealousies which his high position had created were able to prevail against him. At first he was subjected to repeated annoyances, but, after having endured these for four years, during which time he was able to complete the fabric of St. Paul's, he was finally superseded in 1718. Wren after this retired from practical business (he was eighty-six years old), retaining only the supervision of Westminster Abbey, which he held until his death. [Illustration: FOUNTAIN COURT HAMPTON COURT PALACE] For the last five years of his life Wren resided much at his house in Hampton Court, which he held on a lease from the crown. Once a year it was his habit to be driven to London and to sit for a while under the dome of his own Cathedral; on one of these journeys he caught a cold, and soon afterwards, on February 25, 1723, his servant, thinking Sir Christopher slept longer after dinner than was his wont, came into the room, and found his master dead in his chair. He was ninety-one years old. On the fifth of March he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, under the south aisle of the choir, and in his honor an inscription was placed at the entrance to the choir ending with the words, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." Sir Christopher's personal appearance is only known to us through pictures: it appears that he was mild yet dignified of countenance, and "thin and low of stature." "Though he did fail sometimes," writes Mr. Fergusson, "it cannot be denied that Wren was a giant in architecture, and, considering the difficulties he had to contend with, not only from the age in which he lived, but from the people he had to deal with, and the small modicum of taste or knowledge that prevailed anywhere, we may well be astonished at what he did accomplish that was good, rather than wonder at his occasional failures. His greatest praise, however, is, that though he showed the way and smoothed the path, none of his successors have surpassed--if, indeed, any have equalled--him in what he did, though more than a century has now elapsed since his death, and numberless opportunities have been offered in every department of architectural art." Brochure Series Competition "P." Competition "P." the details of which are printed on an advertising page of this issue, closes on Dec. 15, 1900. The prize awards will be announced in January. [Illustration: PLATE XC GARDEN FA�ADE: HAMPTON COURT PALACE] Transcriber's Note: Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
47922	----	THE BROCHURE SERIES The Cathedrals of England DECEMBER, 1900 [Illustration: PLATE XCI LITCHFIELD CATHEDRAL FROM NORTHWEST] THE BROCHURE SERIES OF ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATION. 1900. DECEMBER No. 12. THE CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND Such a general survey of the most representative English cathedrals as is undertaken in the present article naturally leaves no space for a detailed consideration of the various diversities of architecture that they present, and future issues of this series will be devoted to illustrating, individually, the various developments of the English Gothic style. The characteristic features of the English Gothic cathedrals, as compared with those of the Continent, and particularly with those in France, are as follows:-- The English minsters are long, narrow and low in contrast with the greater squareness and height of French contemporary churches. The English transepts have bolder projections, and the number of side chapels is smaller. The east end is almost invariably square. The aisles are practically always single; Chichester is the only example to the contrary. The central tower is a predominant feature; and a single western tower is characteristic of English early churches. Flying buttresses, though not uncommon, are not so prominent as in French cathedrals. Doorways are more simple, placed in less important positions, and often provided with a separate elaborate porch, as at Salisbury. Window traceries, though developing along the same lines as in France, finally evolve "Perpendicular" instead of "Flamboyant" tracery. The beautiful fan-tracery vaulting is an important feature of English Gothic, and is peculiar to it. The clustered shaft is a special feature of the style. Great emphasis was placed by the English architects on the development of mouldings; and the generally smaller scale of English work lead to greater refinement and attention to detail in carving. [Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL FROM NORTHEAST] Perhaps the most striking difference between the English and the Continental cathedral, is however, in its situation. Instead of being almost invariably pressed upon and crowded by the streets and shops of the city, the English minster is usually set about with great masses of foliage, and wide stretches of lawn. [Illustration: PLATE XCII CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTHWEST] The architectural significance of the various constructional dates given in the brief historical synopses which follow, will be made clear by reference to Mr. E. A. Freeman's tabulation of the English styles by dates. I. ROMANESQUE. Saxon before 1066. Norman 1066-1195. II. GOTHIC. Early English or "Lancet," 1189-1300. Decorated {Geometrical} 1300-1377. {Flowing } Perpendicular 1377-1547. III. RENAISSANCE. Including Elizabethan, Georgian, Palladian, etc. 1547 _et seq._ The last thirty years or so of each period may be described as a time of Transition from one style to the succeeding. [Illustration: NORWICH CATHEDRAL FROM EAST] In considering the English cathedrals the Saxon style may be disregarded, as there are no important remains which date prior to the coming of the Norman conquerors; and the only cathedral church of prominence in the Renaissance style is St. Paul's in London.[1] [Illustration: CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL THE CHOIR] [Illustration: PLATE XCIII DURHAM CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEAR RIVER] Litchfield Cathedral is sometimes styled the "Queen of English minsters," and, though surpassed by other cathedrals in age, size, grandeur of site and elaborate decoration, it has yet claim to the title because of the symmetry, proportion and picturesqueness of its general effect. It is built of red sandstone, and dates mainly from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries. The earliest structure on the present site was a Norman church dating from about 1100. The oldest part of the existing building is the lower part of the west half of the choir, erected about 1200. The transepts followed in 1220-40; the nave dates from 1250, and the west front from about 1280, while the Lady-Chapel belongs to the beginning of the fourteenth century. The cathedral close was formerly surrounded by a wall and moat; and in 1643 the cathedral was defended against the Puritans, who battered down the central tower and demolished many of the carvings, monuments and windows. It was, however, restored before the end of the century. The most conspicuous external features are the three beautiful spires and the fine west façade. This façade is one of the most graceful and harmonious in England; and it has the advantage over such a front as that of Peterborough in its organic connection with the rest of the building. It is covered with niches for about one hundred statues, almost all of which are now filled with modern carvings. [Illustration: HEREFORD CATHEDRAL FROM NORTHEAST] Chichester Cathedral was originally begun about 1085, completed in 1108 and burned down in 1114. In its present form it is substantially a Transitional Norman building of the twelfth century, with some pointed details introduced after a second fire in 1186. The Lady-Chapel dates from 1288-1304. The spire, erected in the fifteenth century, collapsed in 1861, and has since been rebuilt. The whole edifice has been restored since 1848. The detached Bell Tower, a feature peculiar to Chichester among English cathedrals, is, despite its weather-worn appearance, one of the most recent parts of the building, dating from the fifteenth century. Canterbury Cathedral, the third church erected on the same site, represents English architectural history from 1070 to 1495; but its general external appearance is that of a magnificent building in the Perpendicular style. The present structure was begun by Laufranc, the first Norman architect, and was finished in 1130. The choir of this Norman cathedral was burned in 1174, and the present choir, in the Transitional style from Norman to Early English, was erected by William of Sens (who may almost be said to have introduced the Pointed style into England), and by his successor, William the Englishman (1174-1180). The old Norman nave and transepts remained intact for two hundred years more, when in 1378-1410 they were replaced by the present Perpendicular structure. The great central tower was added in 1495. The northwest tower is modern, the older tower having been pulled down, with doubtful wisdom, to make room for one to match its southwest neighbor. In spite of its huge proportions the interior of the nave produces a wonderful effect of lightness. The choir, one hundred and twenty feet long, is the longest in England. The great Norman arches, supported by circular and octagonal piers alternately, furnish a striking contrast to the inner portions of the nave. [Illustration: PLATE XCIV PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT] Norwich Cathedral was begun in 1096, and has preserved its original Norman plan more closely than any other in England. The first Bishop of Norwich, Herbert de Losinga, completed the choir and transepts, and began the nave. The latter was finished by his successor about 1140. The clearstory of the choir was rebuilt in 1356-69, and the vaulting of the nave and choir were added in the fifteenth century. In the same century the west front was altered, and the spire rebuilt. The most prominent features of the exterior are the lofty spire and the unusual apsidal termination of the choir. [Illustration: PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL CHOIR] Durham Cathedral, locally known as "the Abbey," is usually ranked among the six finest English cathedrals, though, apart from its magnificent situation, the first impression made by the exterior scarcely seems to warrant so high a place. The composition of the east end is externally unsatisfactory; and the west front suffers from the difficulty of obtaining a good near view. The site was first built upon by the monks of Lindisfarne, who, in 999, chose it as a resting place for St. Cuthbert's remains. After the Norman conquest a new and larger church was begun, the choir of which seems to have been completed in 1093-95. The transepts and nave, also in the Norman style, were all finished by 1143. The cloisters and upper part of the central tower are Perpendicular (1400-80). A destructive restoration was carried out in 1778-1800, sweeping away many ancient details, and spoiling the exterior by scraping. Recently the entire building has been restored. [Illustration: PLATE XCV SALISBURY CATHEDRAL FROM NORTHWEST] Hereford Cathedral was begun in 1079, and not finished till 1530, and consequently shows an interesting mixture of architectural styles. The nave, south transept and piers of the tower are Norman, the Lady-Chapel is Early English; the north transept was rebuilt between 1250 and 1288; the north porch was erected about 1290. The tower dates from the fourteenth century. [Illustration: WORCESTER CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTHWEST] [Illustration: WORCESTER CATHEDRAL CHOIR] Peterborough Cathedral is one of the most important Norman churches left in England, though at first glance the exterior does not seem to bear out this assertion. The elaborate and somewhat foreign-looking west façade, with its recessed arches, gables and sculptures, is however an Early English addition of about 1220; and forms, as it were, a screen in front of the original west wall. The present building is the third church on this site. The first was destroyed by the Danes; the second was burned in 1116. The oldest part now standing is the choir, consecrated about 1140. The great transept dates from 1155-77, the late-Norman nave from 1177-93, and the west transepts, in the Transitional style, from 1193-1200. A series of uniform Decorated windows was added throughout the church in the fourteenth century. The spires and pinnacles of the flanking turrets of the west façade are of the Decorated and Perpendicular periods. The interior gives an impression of unusual lightness for Norman architecture, an effect enhanced by the color of the stone. In 1643 it suffered severely at the hands of the iconoclastic Puritans. The clearstory and triforium of the nave are impressive in size and effect. The painted wooden ceiling dates from the twelfth century. [Illustration: PLATE XCVI LINCOLN CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTHWEST] Salisbury Cathedral is a splendid example of pure Early English, having had the rare advantage of having been begun and finished within a period of forty years, 1220-1260, and is remarkable for the uniformity and harmony of its construction. Mr. Ferguson has pointed out that there is scarcely a trace of foreign influence in the building, the square east end taking the place of the apse of the Norman churches, and fixing the future character of English choirs; and he adds that it is "one of the best proportioned and at the same time most poetic designs of the middle ages." The various parts of the building all unite to lead the eye to the central point,--the richly adorned spire built in 1250, which is the loftiest in England. The sculptures on the beautiful west front were nearly all destroyed by the Puritans, but have recently been replaced. [Illustration: LINCOLN CATHEDRAL CHOIR] [Illustration: WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL WEST FRONT] Worcester Cathedral is in plan a double cross with very short transepts, and with a chapter-house and spacious cloisters on the south side. In general characteristics it is Early English, but includes specimens of all styles from the Norman down to the latest Perpendicular. The oldest parts of the present church are the choir and Lady-Chapel, which date from the first quarter of the thirteenth century. The north side of the nave belongs to the Decorated and the south side to the early Perpendicular period; but they are very similar in general appearance. The central tower shows traces of the transition from Decorated to Perpendicular. In the interior, the choir dates from the purest Early English period, and impresses by its richness and uniformity; and the magnificent groined roof, extending in an unbroken line for 420 feet, is a feature that perhaps no other cathedral can match. [Illustration: PLATE XCVII ELY CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT] Lincoln Cathedral, splendidly crowning the hill on which the city is built, may perhaps claim to be the finest church in Great Britain. Other cathedrals equal or surpass it in certain points; but in the combination of size, delicacy of detail, effectiveness of both interior and exterior, good preservation and grandeur of position, it has probably no rival. Of the original cathedral, built at the end of the eleventh century, the tower, a portion of the west front, and part of first bay of the nave remain. The Norman cathedral was injured by an earthquake in 1185, and its restoration was at once undertaken by Bishop Hugh, called "St. Hugh of Lincoln" (1186-1200), who finished the choir and east transepts--the earliest piece of Early English work of known date. The west transepts and chapter-house were completed soon after, and the nave, including the west front, by about 1250. The upper story of the central tower, which dates from about 1240-50, was added between 1300 and 1320. The upper parts of the west towers are late Decorated, dating from about 1380. Among the more noteworthy external features are the fine central and west towers, and the west façade, in spite of its mixture of styles and the fact that it is in some degree merely a screen. The choir of the interior is the oldest known example of the Early English style, and is separated from the nave by a decorated screen (1320) surmounted by the organ. Though the vaulting is too low the entire interior is harmonious and imposing. [Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL WEST FRONT] Winchester Cathedral is a stately edifice, incorporating every style of English architecture from the Norman to the Perpendicular. It was founded on a more ancient site in 1079. The choir and transepts were finished in 1093. The conversion of the nave from Norman to Perpendicular was begun by Bishop Edington before 1366, and the whole was completed in 1486. The builder of the greater part of the nave was Bishop William of Wickham, the renowned architect and statesman, who occupied the See from 1366 to 1404. The church is the longest in England, measuring 560 feet in all. The west façade, with its spacious portal, was begun in 1350, finished in the fifteenth century, and restored in 1860. [Illustration: PLATE XCVIII YORK CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT] Ely Cathedral is architecturally one of the most interesting in England. It occupies the site of an abbey founded by St. Ethelreda in 673. The existing building was begun in 1083 by the first Norman abbot, and the last half at least was completed in its original form when the see of Ely was created in 1109. The west part of the nave, including the west tower, was finished about 1180, and the west porch was added before 1215. The east end was added between 1229 and 1254. The central tower, which belonged to the original church, fell in 1322, and advantage was taken of this opportunity to construct the beautiful decorated octagon. A new spire was erected on the west tower at the end of the fourteenth century, the weight of which may have caused the collapse of the northwest transept, though some authorities think the latter was never finished. The whole building has been carefully restored. The most striking feature of the edifice is the castellated west tower, which is unlike any other cathedral tower in England, and to some extent suggests military rather than ecclesiastical architecture. The greater part of this tower is Transitional Norman (117-489), but the octagonal top and turrets were added in the decorated period. [Illustration: WELLS CATHEDRAL CHOIR] Wells Cathedral is, in its present condition, predominantly an Early English building, of the first half of the thirteenth century. It is the third church on the same site, and the foundation of the present edifice is commonly attributed to Bishop Joceline, 1206-1242. The church as he designed it was finished at the end of the thirteenth century. Thereafter a complete transformation of the east part was undertaken, the first step being the construction of the Lady-Chapel, about 1320, while the Presbytery dates from about 1350. The upper parts of the central tower also belong to the early fourteenth century. The upper parts of the west towers and cloisters are Perpendicular. The beautiful west façade, elaborately adorned with arcading and sculptures, is, like the west front of Lincoln, architecturally a mere mask. The choir, one of the most beautiful in England, is Early or Geometrical Decorated in the general effect. [Illustration: PLATE XCIX GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTHWEST] [Illustration: ST. ALBAN'S ABBEY FROM SOUTHWEST] York Cathedral is one of the largest and grandest of English minsters. The present structure is the third on the site, and was built by the first Norman bishop. The choir was rebuilt by Archbishop Roger, 1154-81, the south transept by Archbishop Gray in 1215-55, and the north transept about the same time, while the Norman nave was gradually replaced by the present one between 1290 and 1345. The Lady-Chapel was added in 1360-73, and the present choir substituted for Archbishop Roger's before 1400. The towers date from the fifteenth century, and the edifice as thus rebuilt was reconsecrated in 1472. In its present form, therefore, the minster shows examples of the Early English Decorated, and early and late Perpendicular styles. The most striking features of the exterior are the noble west façade in the Decorated and the imposing central tower in the Perpendicular style. Gloucester Cathedral stands on a site consecrated to religious purposes since the seventh century. The church was raised to cathedral dignity in 1541, having previously been included in the diocese of Worcester. In its present form the body of the church is the work of Abbot Serlo at the end of the eleventh century; but this Norman core was most skilfully altered and recased, chiefly in the fourteenth century, and in general external appearance is thoroughly Perpendicular. St. Albans Abbey, which was raised to the dignity of a cathedral in 1877, is one of the finest and largest churches in England. The earliest parts of the existing building date from the eleventh century; the choir was built in the thirteenth, and the Lady-Chapel in the fourteenth. The fine tower is Norman. An extensive, and not especially successful, restoration of the buildings including a new Early English west front with a large decorated window, has recently been completed. Exeter Cathedral, though comparatively small and unimposing, is, in virtue of its details, one of the most admirable examples in England of the Geometrical Decorated style. The oldest existing parts of the building are the transeptal towers, dating from the early part of the twelfth century, almost unique features in English churches. The rest of the cathedral was built, or, at any rate, altered from Norman to Decorated, between 1280 and 1370, mainly from designs of Bishop Quivil. The elaborate west façade was added by Bishop Brantyngham (1370-1394). The whole has been carefully restored. [Illustration: PLATE C EXETER CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT] [1] St. Paul's Cathedral was illustrated in THE BROCHURE SERIES for November, 1900. Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been rendered in full capitals. Footnote is at the end of chapter. A number of minor spelling errors have been corrected without note. 
48491	----	VIEWS OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL London WITH NOTES BY THE REV. SPARROW SIMPSON, D.D. PHOTOGRAPHED & PUBLISHED BY FREEMAN DOVASTON EALING, LONDON W. THE WESTERN FAÇADE. The first stone of S. Paul's Cathedral was laid by Sir Christopher Wren and his Master-mason on June 21, 1675; the last stone of the lantern above the Dome was laid in 1710, by Mr. Christopher Wren (who was born a year before the laying of the first stone), in the presence of Sir Christopher (his father), Mr. Strong (the Master-builder), and other Free and Accepted Masons. The dimensions of the Cathedral, as given in the Rev. Lewis Gilbertson's excellent Official Guide, are as follows:-- The exterior length, exclusive of the projection of the steps, 515 feet; the interior, 479 feet; the width across the Transepts, from door to door, 250 feet; width across Nave and Aisles, 102 feet; and between the stone piers, 41 feet; the Western front, 180 feet; the diameter of the octagonal area at the crossing of Nave and Transept, 107 feet; the diameter of the drum beneath the Dome, 112 feet; of the Dome itself, 102 feet. The height of the Central Aisle, 89 feet. The total height from the pavement of the Churchyard to the top of the Cross, 365 feet; the height of the Western Towers, 221 feet. The entire cost seems to have been about a million pounds. The exquisite Dome has been justly called "the very crown of England's architectural glory." As Mr. Fergusson has said, "its dimensions, the beauty of its details, the happy outline of the campaniles, the proportion of these to the façade, and of all the parts one to another, make up the most pleasing design of its class that has yet been executed." Strype says, "This Cathedral is undoubtedly one of the most magnificent modern buildings in Europe." [Illustration: THE WESTERN FAÇADE.] S. PAUL'S FROM THE SOUTH WEST. This fine view was taken from the top of the buildings of the Post Office Savings Bank in Queen Victoria Street: taken, fortunately, before the erection of the large block of warehouses at the south west of the Churchyard. Since these buildings have been completed the lower part of the Cathedral can no longer be seen from the position just indicated. The exquisite proportions of the Dome are here displayed to the fullest advantage. [Illustration: S. PAUL'S FROM THE SOUTH WEST.] S. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT, N.W. ANGLE. Here is seen a part of the Western Façade, with the noble flight of steps, the North Portico, and the North Eastern portion of the Churchyard. The columns with their capitals and the carving over the window in the lower part of the North Tower, are well displayed. In ancient times the Palace of the Bishops of London adjoined this tower. [Illustration: S. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT, N.W. ANGLE.] THE SOUTH TRANSEPT. The beauty of the South West Campanile is well displayed in the present view. To the east of the small entrance door, which gives access to the geometrical staircase, is the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, at one time used as the Consistory Court, in which ecclesiastical cases relating to the diocese were heard. Above the Chapel are seen the three windows of the Library. The Transept itself with its graceful pillars, its lofty pediment surmounted by colossal figures of the Apostles, is a very pleasing composition. Perhaps this particular campanile is seen to the best advantage as it is approached from Cannon Street on a summer's evening. The effect of the light of the westering sun is singularly charming. It should have been mentioned in the previous note, had space permitted, that the Choir was opened for Divine Service on December 2, 1697, on the Thanksgiving Day for the Peace after the Treaty of Ryswick; the Morning Prayer Chapel being opened a little later. [Illustration: THE SOUTH TRANSEPT.] THE WESTERN END OF THE NAVE. This portion of the Cathedral is of especial dignity. The great height of the entrance arch, the massive doors, the noble space, the fine view north and south of the lateral Chapels, with their carved oak screens, the broad span of the side arches, the height of the vaulting and its careful decoration, combine to make this entrance of the Cathedral very imposing. If the visitor enters by the great western doors, he cannot fail to be impressed by the grand view which presents itself, the fine Nave, the broad Transepts, the lofty Reredos, more than 400 feet distant; and, as he paces eastward, at every step some fresh beauty reveals itself. Most impressive of all it is to see, on the occasion of some great festival, the vast spaces of Choir, Transepts, Dome area, and Nave crowded with worshippers, every seat occupied, and hundreds of people filling such standing room as remains. In one of the Annual Musical Services a short pause is made for silent prayer, and the stillness of the great multitude, after the strains of Bach's immortal _Passion Music_, is wonderfully solemn. [Illustration: THE WESTERN END OF THE NAVE.] THE NORTH-WEST CHAPEL. At the western end of the North Aisle of the Nave is a spacious Chapel, used every day for the celebration of the Holy Communion at eight o'clock in the morning, for a short service at mid-day (at 1.15), and for an evening service at eight o'clock. The oak panelling is that originally introduced by Sir Christopher Wren; the mosaic at the west end commemorates Archdeacon Hale, who died in 1870; the large window on the north is a memorial to Dean Mansel, Dean of the Cathedral from 1868 to 1871; the beautiful mosaic in the eastern apse is a more recent addition. The Chapel was at first called the Morning Prayer Chapel, and was opened for use on February 1st, 1699, though the Cathedral itself was still far from completion. Here, for many years, Morning Prayers were said at an early hour: in 1699, at 6 o'clock in summer, and 7 o'clock in winter; at the present time prayers are said at 8 o'clock in the Crypt Chapel. [Illustration: THE NORTH-WEST CHAPEL.] THE TOMB OF GENERAL GORDON Has almost become a place of pilgrimage. His heroic character, his tragic end, have deeply touched the hearts of his countrymen, and, indeed, of countless strangers also. The Tomb is a finely conceived work of Sir Edgar Boehm. On the left is the Wellington Monument; on the right are seen the colours of the 57th and 77th Regiments borne by them in the Crimea. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF GENERAL GORDON.] THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT Is thus described by the Rev. Lewis Gilbertson in his _Authorized Guide to S. Paul's Cathedral_: "This is the most important work of Alfred Stevens; by far the finest monument in S. Paul's, and by many considered to be the best work of its kind done in England in the last three hundred years. It was originally designed to fill the eastern arch of the Nave on the north side, and was intended to be surmounted by an equestrian statue of the Duke; but the horse was vetoed, and the monument erected in the old Consistory Court. It has now been removed to the middle arch on the north side of the Nave, where possibly it may eventually be finished according to the artist's design. The bronze groups at the base of the pediment are especially fine. The subjects are: Virtue keeping Vice beneath its feet, and Truth pulling out the tongue of Falsehood." The actual tomb of the great Duke is in the Crypt of the Cathedral, a massive sarcophagus wrought from a boulder of porphyry found in Cornwall, resting upon a granite base. The simple grandeur of the monument is admirably in keeping with the character of the man whom it commemorates. The mortal remains of England's greatest General lie close to those of England's greatest Admiral. [Illustration: THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT.] ACROSS THE DOME TO THE NORTH TRANSEPT. Immediately facing the spectator is a screen which formerly supported the Organ, bearing a copy of the famous inscription to Wren, which is also found above his tomb. To the right and left are dimly seen the statues of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The broad area of the Dome, seen to the best advantage when crowded with worshippers (as it is three times every Sunday, and on many other occasions also) is very impressive. [Illustration: ACROSS THE DOME TO THE NORTH TRANSEPT.] INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST. This view exhibits the entire length of the choir, including the lofty Reredos. On the right and left are seen the Choir Stalls, Grinling Gibbons' famous work, and the two fine Organ cases. The fine Organ, originally the work of Father Smith, is a masterpiece of Mr. Willis, whose consummate skill, aided no doubt by the magnificent building in which the instrument stands, has found no higher expression than in this finished work. The Choir Aisles are entered through iron gates, of great delicacy and beauty, the work of M. Tijou. The marble Pulpit, from the design of Mr. F. C. Penrose, is a memorial to Captain Robert Fitzgerald. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE WEST.] THE MONUMENT TO LORD NELSON. "The funeral of Nelson was a signal day in the annals of S. Paul's. The Cathedral opened wide her doors to receive the remains of the great Admiral, followed, it might almost be said, by the whole nation as mourners. The death of Nelson in the hour of victory, of Nelson whose victories at Aboukir and Copenhagen had raised his name above any other in our naval history, had stirred the English heart to its depths, its depths of pride and sorrow. The manifest result of that splendid victory at Trafalgar was the annihilation of the fleets of France and Spain, and, it might seem, the absolute conquest of the ocean, held for many years as a subject province of Great Britain. The procession, first by water, then by land, was of course magnificent, at least as far as prodigal cost could command magnificence. The body was preceded to S. Paul's by all that was noble and distinguished in the land, more immediately by all the Princes of the blood and the Prince of Wales." This account is taken from Dean Milman's _Annals of S. Paul's_. The Dean, then a youth, was present at the funeral, and could remember the solemn effect of the sinking of the coffin to its resting place, and the low wail of the sailors who bore and encircled the remains of their admiral. The monument, by Flaxman, originally stood at the entrance to the Choir. When the Choir was extended westward in 1870, it was removed to its present much more favourable position in the South Transept. [Illustration: THE MONUMENT TO LORD NELSON.] THE NAVE SEEN FROM THE WESTERN END OF THE CHOIR. In this view the two portions of the organ are seen. These grand cases formed the eastern and western fronts of the instrument when it stood over the Choir Screen; they exhibit some of Grinling Gibbons' finest work. The projecting portion on the north side formerly contained the Choir Organ; the corresponding projection on the south is a copy of the original work. Looking westward the Great Entrance Doors are seen, and above them a large window of Munich glass, a memorial to Mr. Thomas Brown, a member of the great publishing firm of Messrs. Longman. The main subjects of the window are the conversion of S. Paul on the Damascus Road, and the restoration of sight to the Apostle by Ananias; right and left of the lower subject are kneeling figures of the donor and his wife. Two of the Mosaics in the pendentives of the Dome are faintly indicated. The eight pendentives exhibit the four greater Prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel; and the four Evangelists. The work was executed by Dr. Salviati of Venice. Above the Whispering Gallery, beyond the range of the picture, are carved stone figures of the four great Doctors of the Western and of the Eastern Church; for the Western Church, SS. Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Ambrose; for the Eastern, SS. Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius. [Illustration: THE NAVE SEEN FROM THE WESTERN END OF THE CHOIR.] THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST. The most prominent object in this view is the stately Reredos, the work of Messrs. Bodley & Garner. The following description of it was read by Mr. Garner before the S. Paul's Ecclesiological Society. "The design consists of a basement, against which the altar stands, with small doorways to give access to the apse behind. Over these doors which are of pierced brass, are angels supporting the crossed swords and keys, the arms of the diocese, and emblems of S. Paul and S. Peter, and they are flanked by sculptured festoons of fruit and flowers separated by marble panels. Above this is a range of sculptured panels, with coloured marble backgrounds supporting an open colonnade of semi-circular plan. A large group of sculpture, a sort of carved picture in bold relief, occupies the centre, flanked on each side by twisted columns of rich Brescia marble, wreathed with foliage in gilded bronze. These support an entablature and rich pediment. The frieze is of Rosso Antico, bearing the inscription _Sic Deus dilexit mundum_, 'So God loved the World,' in bronze letters. The whole is crowned with a central niche and surrounding statues, at a height of between sixty and seventy feet from the ground. "The general idea of the sculptured subjects is to express the Incarnation and Life of our Lord, beginning with the two figures at the extremities of the colonnade, which are those of the Angel Gabriel and S. Mary, and represent the Annunciation. The panel on the north side is the Nativity, the large subject in the centre the Crucifixion, with the Entombment beneath it; and the group on the south side the Resurrection. The panels of the pedestals are filled with Angels bearing instruments of the Passion. The niche above the pediment is occupied by the figure of S. Mary with the Divine Child in her arms; the statues of S. Paul and S. Peter on either hand. The figure on the summit of the niche is an ideal one of the Risen Saviour. "The entire Altar Screen is executed in white Parian marble, with bands and panels of Rosso Antico, Verdi di Prato, and Brescia marble. The enrichments are generally gilt, the steps in front of the Altar are of white marble, and the pavement of Rosso Antico, Brescia, and Verdi di Prato." See Rev. L. Gilbertson's _Guide_. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST.] THE BISHOP'S THRONE. Is placed on the south side of the Choir at the extreme east, and is occupied by the Bishop of London on great occasions. On ordinary days he sits in the central stall on the same side of the Choir. The Throne, like the stalls, is the work of Grinling Gibbons. Thirty of the stalls are set apart for the Prebendaries of the Cathedral, and on each is the name of the Prebend from which the income of each occupant was anciently derived, together with the opening words of the Psalm commencing the portion of the Psalter which each Prebendary was bound to recite daily; the Psalms being divided into thirty parts, and the whole Psalter being thus said every day. To the left, or east, of the Throne, is seen the extremely beautiful Grille or Screen of wrought iron enriched by gilded bronze. The greater part of the ironwork once formed the gates at the western entrance of the Choir. In the foreground appears a grand bronze Candelabrum, an exact copy of that in the Cathedral of S. Bavon, Ghent. There are four of these Candelabra at Ghent, which are said to have been removed from S. Paul's Cathedral. Copies of two of these now adorn the Sanctuary; one only is seen in the illustration. [Illustration: THE BISHOP'S THRONE.] THE NORTH AISLE OF THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST. Over the back of the Choir Stalls, which are seen on the left of the picture, rise a few of the pedal pipes of the Organ, the largest of which is thirty-two feet in length. Through the openwork of Tijou's beautiful iron gates, the view extends across the Dome to the extreme west of the Cathedral. At the end of the North Aisle of the Nave a glimpse is obtained of a window (presented by Mr. H. F. Vernon in 1861) containing a full length figure of S. Paul. [Illustration: THE NORTH AISLE OF THE CHOIR, LOOKING WEST.] THE CRYPT CHAPEL. In this Chapel Matins are said at eight o'clock in the morning on all week days throughout the year. In the foreground is the burial place of Dean Milman, marked by a slab with a cross wrought upon its surface. To the west of this, not shown, however, in the view, is the grave of Dr. Liddon. In the Aisles to the right and left are seen a few fragments of monuments from the old Cathedral, scanty relics, spared by the great fire of 1666 and by the ruthless hand of the destroyer. [Illustration: THE CRYPT CHAPEL.] THE CRYPT: NELSON'S TOMB. The present view represents one of the most picturesque scenes in the Crypt. Here, surrounded by an arcade, in the very heart of the Cathedral, immediately beneath the centre of the Dome, stands the tomb of England's greatest naval hero. The Sarcophagus itself has a strange history. It is usually said to have been designed by Torregiano as a portion of the memorial of Wolsey. "It lay for centuries neglected in Wolsey's Chapel at Windsor. Just at the time of Nelson's death, George III. was preparing to make that chapel a cemetery for his family. It was suggested as fit to encase the coffin of Nelson. It is a fine work marred in its bold simplicity by a tawdry coronet, but the master Italian hand is at once recognised by the instructed eye." So Dean Milman writes. Recent researches have shown that the Sarcophagus, which is of white and black marble, is the work of Benedetto da Rovezzano, by whom it was commenced in 1524 as part of a stately monument intended by Cardinal Wolsey as a magnificent memorial of himself. It appears that Henry VIII. took possession of the materials prepared for Wolsey's monument, and that Benedetto was commissioned to transform it into a memorial for the king. The sculptor spent upon it eleven years of labour, but the costly work was never completed. The body of Nelson rests, not in the Sarcophagus, but beneath it. [Illustration: THE CRYPT: NELSON'S TOMB.] THE CRYPT: WITH THE TOMB OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. Near the eastern end of the South Aisle of the Crypt, under a very simple tomb, lie the mortal remains of the great Architect of the Cathedral. On a black marble slab, part of which is seen in the picture, are the following words:--_Here lieth Sir Christopher Wren, Kt., the builder of this Cathedral Church of S. Paul, &c., who dyed in the year of our Lord MDCCXXIII, and of his age XCI_. A singularly modest epitaph for so great a man, and that, too, at a period when fulsome phrases abounded. A little westward of the tomb, on a tablet affixed to the wall, are the memorable words, admirable in their brevity and point:--_Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice_. The tomb itself, including the black marble slab, is only sixteen-and-a-half inches in height. Closely adjoining the tomb, on its northern side, are buried two eminent presidents of the Royal Academy, Sir Frederick Leighton and Sir John Millais; at the extreme distance are seen, on the left side the bust of Sir John Alexander Macdonald, late Premier of the Dominion of Canada; and on the right side, that of Sir Henry Smith Park, Minister Plenipotentiary in Japan and China. Nearer to the spectator, on the right, is the memorial to Archdeacon Claughton, Bishop of Colombo, whilst on the left, is dimly seen a monumental brass, commemorating the Special Correspondents who fell in the Campaign in the Soudan; opposite to which, on the right, is the bust of the painter, James Barry. [Illustration: THE CRYPT: WITH THE TOMB OF SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN.] THE LIBRARY. This noble room, situated at the west end of the Cathedral, immediately above the Chapel of the Order of S. Michael and S. George, contains an interesting and important collection of books; comprising a number of early English Bibles, a few ritual books, a large and valuable series of Sermons preached at Paul's Cross or in the Cathedral; a few plays acted by the "Children of Paul's," some royal and other important autographs, and over ten thousand printed books, besides as many separate pamphlets. In the view is seen a model of part of the Western Front of the Cathedral, once in the possession of Richard Jennings, the Master-builder of S. Paul's. In the case on which it stands is the superb large paper copy of Walton's Polyglot Bible (large paper copies are of great rarity); an exceedingly fine copy of the Prayer Book of 1662, and of the Bible of 1640, both of which belonged to Bishop Compton, the founder of the Library, whose portrait hangs upon its eastern wall. Just to the right of this case, is a cast of an important Danish Monumental Stone, found in 1852, in S. Paul's Churchyard: it bears a Runic inscription. In the glass case in the middle of the room are exposed to view a considerable number of interesting objects: copies of episcopal seals, a facsimile of the tonsure plate once used at S. Paul's, a chain with which a book was fastened to the Library shelves; some medals connected with the history of the Cathedral; and some curious books. The finely carved brackets which support the gallery, long ascribed to Grinling Gibbons, have been ascertained to be the work of Jonathan Maine, carver, in 1708. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY.] _Of the same Series, and Uniform with this Book:_ ST. BARTHOLOMEW THE GREAT, SMITHFIELD. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL (THE BLUE COAT SCHOOL, since demolished). LONDON. FAMOUS BUILDINGS AND STREET VIEWS. _Price 6d. each, post free 7d., from the Publisher,_ FREEMAN DOVASTON, EALING, LONDON, W. Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors in the original have been silently corrected. 
57632	----	[Illustration: Front cover] [Frontispiece: The Lincoln Imp Photographed in its actual position in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral by S. Smith] The Legend of the Lincoln Imp by H. J. Kesson (Ursus) Lincoln: J. W. Ruddock & Sons Ltd The Legend of the Lincoln Imp To my friend E. B. K. D. COPYRIGHT First edition 1904 Reprinted 1907, 1911, 1919, 1922, 1923, 1925, 1927, 1930, 1935, 1939, 1941, 1944. [Illustration: Lincoln Imp] [Illustration: The Legend of the Lincoln Imp] The Legend of the Lincoln Imp The devil was in a good humour one day, And let out his sprightly young demons to play. One dived in the sea, and was not at all wet, One jumped in a furnace: no scorch did he get; One rode on a rainbow; one delved in the dirt; One handled fork lightning, nor got any hurt; One strode on the wind as he would on a steed, And thus to old Lindum was carried with speed, Where aldermen heard him conceitedly say "There'll be, ere I leave it, the devil to pay." [Illustration: One strode on the wind as he would on a steed] "And now," says the Imp, "take me into the church; "His lordship of Lindum I'll knock off his perch; "I'll blow up the chapter, and blow up the dean; "The canons I'll cannon right over the screen; "I'll blow up the singers, bass, tenor, and boy; "And the blower himself shall a blowing enjoy; "The organist, too, shall right speedily find "That I'll go one better in raising the wind; "I'll blow out the windows, and blow out the lights, "Tear vestments to tatters, put ritual to rights! "And e'en the poor verger who comes in my road "Will find"--vulgar Imp!--"he may likewise be blow'd." [Illustration: "He may likewise be blow'd."] Now the wind has his faults, but you'll find on the whole If somewhat uncouth, he's an orthodox soul; He wouldn't blow hard on a monarch, I ween, Nor ruffle the robes of a bishop or dean; And if for dissenters he cares not the least, You won't catch him blowing up deacon or priest; The man in the street he may rudely unrig, But he snatches not judge's or barrister's wig. When he enters a church, as the musical know, 'Tis only to make the sweet organ-pipes blow: The toot on the "choir" or the "swell" or the "great," And hence at the Imp he was justly irate; So in sorrowful anger he said to the elf, "No! here I shall stop, you may go by yourself." The impudent elf in derision replied, "Such half-hearted folks are much better outside; "To force you to enter I cannot, but see, "Till I've finished my fun, you must wait here for me." [Illustration: "THE DEVIL LOOKING OVER LINCOLN" A grotesque sculpture on a pinnacle over the south porch of Lincoln Cathedral.] Then he entered the porch in an imp-ious way, Declaring the nave should be spelt with a K; He roamed through each transept, he strolled in each aisle, Then he thought in the choir he would romp for a while. As he passed 'neath the rood no obeisance he made; No rev'rence at all to the altar he paid; He thumbed all the canons' and choristers' books, And cast on the saints his most insolent looks; The chalice and patens were safe in a box, He was stopped in the act of unpicking the locks. He hacked at the lectern and chopped at the stalls; The tapestry tore from the sanctified walls; Incensed against incense, the thuribles he Demolished; the candlesticks broke on his knee. [Illustration: The candlesticks broke on his knee.] Then seeing some angels he cried, "Pretty things, "A sackful of feathers I'll pluck from your wings "To make me a couch when I'm tired of this joke," Ah! soon he was sorry that rudely he spoke; For the tiniest angel, with amethyst eyes And hair like spun gold, 'fore the altar did rise, Pronouncing these words in a dignified tone "O impious Imp, be ye turned into stone!" So he was, as you'll see when to Lincoln you stray: And the wind has been waiting outside till this day. You can't see the wind, but no matter for that Believe, or he'll rob you of cloak or of hat. [Illustration: He'll rob you of cloak or of hat.] MORAL This moral, I trust, you'll deduce from my lay-- If ever you're minded the mischief to play. Be sure that you're able the "needful" to find, In other words, certain of "raising the wind"; And then, when you're bent upon "going the pace," Don't count on the wind, or I pity your case. There are bikes at your service, and motors galore. Steam, gas, and electric machines by the score; Again, if for skittish amusement you search. Don't meddle, I pray, with affairs of the church. The puppets of politics--all will admit-- Are legitimate sport for exuberant wit; But if ever a trick on the clergy you play, You'll speedily find there's the "dickens to pay." [Illustration: There are bikes at your service, and motors galore.] To angels--when met--be extremely polite, Attentions too forward they'll keenly requite; Don't ruffle their feathers; just let them alone. Else, if you're converted, 'twill be into stone; Don't chum with low people, unruly and bold. And be left, when they've done with you, "out in the cold." Don't be far too clever; but seek to be good, And when you're at Lincoln behave as you should: Step into the Minster the Imp to behold. Who points to the truth of the tale that I've told. So visit old Lindum, a city most rare; Of course take a ticket, and pay the due fare! [Illustration: Of course take a ticket, and pay the due fare!] [Illustration: THE ANGEL CHOIR, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL The Imp is on the last column but one] [Illustration: THE SOUTH PORCH, LINCOLN CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: THE LINCOLN CATHEDRAL WEST FRONT] [Illustration: Rear cover] 
51001	----	THE MENTOR "A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend" Vol. I No. 33 BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS of the WORLD TAJ MAHAL SALISBURY CATHEDRAL THE ALHAMBRA [Illustration] CHÂTEAU de CHAMBORD AMIENS CATHEDRAL NEW YORK CITY HALL _By CLARENCE WARD_ _Professor of Architecture, Rutgers College_ Beauty in architecture is as difficult to define as beauty in nature. No single factor renders a building beautiful. Size and proportion, style and decoration, age and setting, all enter into account. And moreover there is the power a building possesses to appeal to the ideals of the beholder, to his mind as well as to his sight and touch. Even when judged from this broad viewpoint, the number of beautiful buildings in the world is legion. It would be impossible to point to anyone as the finest, or even to select a dozen without leaving a dozen more that were equally beautiful. Every age, and every nation, has left to us some crowning achievements of the builder's art. The following are therefore merely selections from this storehouse, illustrating to some degree the wealth of architectural treasures that is our heritage. Few if any buildings in the world have been the subject of such praise as that bestowed upon the Taj Mahal ("Gem of Buildings"). Travelers, painters, authors, and poets have all sought to express in word or color the indefinable charm of this gem of Indian art. Built at Agra, in India, by the great mogul of Delhi, Shah Jahan, as a tomb for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj is a veritable translation into stone of human remembrance and affection. It was begun in 1632, and was completed in twenty-two years. The material of which it is built is pure white marble, and inlaid in its walls are jaspers, agates, and other stones in marvelous designs. But it is perhaps the dome that gives the greatest beauty to this tomb. Of typical Eastern shape, it rises a mass of white against the deep blue of the Indian sky, or shines like silver in the radiance of the Indian moon. [Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL _The approach through the splendid gardens seen in the foreground is bordered by dark cypress trees, which contrast admirably with the color of the marble domes beyond._] THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL TOMB It cannot be denied that the Taj Mahal (tahzh mah-hahl´) owes much of its beauty to its setting. Not merely has it the contrast of the brilliant sky above, but also the deep green of the gardens at its feet, and more than this the four tall, graceful minarets standing like sentinels at the corners of the marble terrace on which the tomb is placed. The interior is scarcely less impressive than this outside view. Its subdued light serves only to show more clearly the beauty of the garlands of red and blue and green inlaid along its walls as never-withering memorials of the queen who sleeps beneath the lofty dome. It is perhaps beside her tomb that the traveler sees a vision of the proud and mighty Jahan, cruel in many ways, but steadfast in his love, building this glorious resting place for his fair consort, whom he called by the familiar name of Taj. One may see even farther still and picture to himself this once proud ruler, bereft of all his power and even of his throne, looking out from his chamber window toward this same Taj Mahal. Perhaps its wondrous dome gleamed in the moonlight on that last night before he came to rest beneath its shades as it gleams today to the enraptured gaze of thousands who take the pilgrimage to Agra to see this wonder of the Eastern world. THE PALACE OF THE MOORISH KINGS It is not such a step as it may seem from the Taj Mahal to the Alhambra (al-ham'-bra). Both are oriental. Both are the products of Mohammedan art, and mark in a way its Eastern and its Western expressions. As early as the eighth century of our era the Moors of northern Africa crossed to Spain and made the Iberian peninsula a Moorish califate or kingdom. Its capital and last stronghold was Granada. And here on a lofty hill, overlooking the city, King or Calif Al Hamar began the mighty fortress of the Alhambra in the early years of the thirteenth century. [Illustration: COURT OF THE MYRTLES, ALHAMBRA _The pool is bordered on both sides by beautiful old hedges._] As is the case with almost every Mohammedan building, its exterior is extremely plain. But once the door is passed one seems to have stepped from Europe to the Orient. Courtyards and porticos, halls and passages, open before the visitor in a truly oriental maze of color and decoration. The first important court is known as that of the Myrtles. In its center is a marble basin a hundred and thirty feet long, bordered with trees of myrtle and orange, and flanked at both ends by two-storied pavilions with slender marble shafts and graceful Moorish arches. From one of these pavilions opens the Hall of the Ambassadors, the throne room of the califs, and the largest chamber in the palace. THE ALHAMBRA'S BEAUTY But it is not its size that makes this room imposing. Here, as elsewhere in the palace, it is the decoration. Rising for three or four feet from the floor is a band of colored Moorish tiles. All the wall above is of stucco, molded in lacelike patterns and painted in blues and reds and brilliant golden yellows. The designs are largely geometrical or floral, frequently interspersed with Arabic inscriptions. Some of these when translated read, "God is our refuge," "Praise be to God," familiar phrases in Mohammedan faith, or "There is no conqueror but God." Add to this decoration of the walls imposing stalactite domes, and ceilings often of cedarwood inlaid with mother of pearl, and imagine the floors and windows again adorned with oriental rugs and hangings, and the beauty of the Alhambra will be easily understood. [Illustration: HALL OF REPOSE OF THE BATHS, ALHAMBRA] [Illustration: THE GATE OF JUSTICE _A part of the Alhambra palace not well preserved._] But neither the Court of the Myrtles nor the Hall of the Ambassadors is the crowning glory of the palace. This honor belongs to the Court of the Lions. One hundred and sixteen by sixty-six feet in size, this court compares with any apartment in the world for pure, exquisite beauty of design. An open portico, its ceiling borne on a hundred and twenty-four slender and beautiful marble columns and delicately ornamented arches, incloses the central space, in the middle of which rises a magnificent fountain, its basin cut from a single giant block of alabaster, and supported on the backs of twelve lions of white marble, emblems of courage and strength. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE ALHAMBRA _Arched window in the "Tower of the Captivity of Isabel."_] It is small wonder that the last of the Moorish kings, Boabdil (bo-ahb-deel´), looked back with many tears at this glorious palace as he surrendered it in 1492 to his Christian conqueror Ferdinand. Sadly indeed he and his followers must have crossed again to the dreary deserts of Africa, since they left behind them the whole fair land of Spain, which they had adorned not merely with the Alhambra, but with the Alcázar at Seville, the mosque at Cordova, and other monuments of their civil and religious greatness. THE GREAT CATHEDRALS At the very period when the Mohammedan conquerors of Spain were building their palace of the Alhambra, the Christians of northern France were erecting those vast cathedrals which stand today as the crowning achievements of the builder's art. Paris, Chartres (shahrtr), Bourges (boorzh), Rheims (reemz), Rouen (roo-ong´), Le Mans (lee-mong´), Beauvais (bo-vay´) and Amiens (ah-mee-ong´) are but a few of the long list of French Gothic cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From such a list it is most difficult to choose. Each one has its distinctive claim to recognition, and its distinctive features which are not surpassed in any of the others. This fact, indeed, has caused it to be said that the ideal cathedral should have the façade of Rheims, the spires of Chartres, the nave of Amiens, and the choir of Beauvais. But even such an ideal cathedral would not be perfect without the addition of features from each of the other churches in our list. Since, however, it is necessary to choose, let us choose Amiens; for perhaps this church is most widely acknowledged as the finest example of the Gothic style. Its façade is a masterpiece of decoration. Three deeply recessed portals in the lower story are covered with a wealth of sculptured figures in the round and in relief. Bible lessons and the events of human life and history, carved here in stone, taught the terrors of sin and hell and the joys of a godly life as preached in the church beyond these lofty doors. Nor is the decoration confined to sculpture; for the whole façade, and in fact the entire church, is a tracery of stone. THE GOTHIC GLORY OF AMIENS [Illustration: SOUTH PORTAL OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL _The statue of the Virgin which stands in the portal replaces that of St. Honoré, which was moved to the north transept. The carvings about the south portal are taken from the life of St. Honoré._] [Illustration: NAVE OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL] It is from a side view, however, that Amiens shows at its best the true glory of Gothic architecture. Nearly five hundred feet long and over two hundred feet to the ridge line of the roof, it rises high above the buildings of the city in which it stands, a symbol of the supremacy of spiritual over earthly things. To be sure it has its faults. The towers are too low and the central spire is of awkward shape; but the huge windows, with their tracery in geometric patterns, occupying the entire space between the buttresses, and these buttresses themselves with their soaring arches spanning the aisle roofs below, afford an unsurpassed example of beauty of design combined with the utmost structural daring. Moreover, the interior is even more imposing. Lofty piers and pointed arches separate the nave from the aisles. Slender shafts carry the ribs of the huge vaults of stone forty-three feet in span, which seem suspended in air one hundred and forty feet from the pavement below. In the support of these vaults lies the keynote of Gothic architecture. Though they seem hung as if by magic over walls of glass, with very little masonry for their support, their weight and thrust are borne by the sweeping arcs of the exterior flying buttresses and the huge piers of masonry from which they rise beyond the side aisle walls. Viewed from a central point, the majestic sweep of the nave, the soaring height of the eastern apse, the wondrous window of the northern transept, and the maze of piers and arches and chapels, all unite to produce a glorious whole which cannot be surpassed in any monument of any age. SALISBURY'S SIMPLE BEAUTY [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL _A view from the northeast, showing plainly the double-cross shape of the foundation._] [Illustration: NAVE OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL _A number of interesting monuments were placed between the columns by James Wyatt._] If the interior of Amiens personifies in the highest degree the majesty and glory of Christian faith, the spire of Salisbury may be said to embody its hope and aspiration. Rising four hundred and four feet from the ground, this spire has few to rival it in all the world. Other cathedrals might dispute its claim to first place among spires; but none is set upon a church so fine. That Salisbury is the most beautiful cathedral in England is not claimed. As was the case in France, so here, there are too many churches, each with its own distinctive points of beauty, for anyone to be the finest of them all. But Salisbury at least must find a place among the first, and is especially interesting because it is exactly contemporary as to date with Amiens in France. Architecturally both are Gothic; yet the difference in design is as great as the distance in miles between them. Low instead of lofty, with little decoration, and set in the midst of nature's grass and trees instead of in a crowded city, Salisbury's appeal is through the quiet beauty of its line, and the simplicity of its construction in contrast to the complex structure of the French cathedral. The Gothic of England was rarely the Gothic of carefully balanced thrust and pressures, of flying buttresses and huge window spaces. Here at Salisbury the walls are still quite heavy and the windows only moderately large. They have no tracery of stone; but are simple, narrow openings in the walls, with pointed heads so like a lance in shape that they have given the name of Lancet to this period of English Gothic architecture. Slow to throw off their earlier traditions, the English builders clung, even in Gothic days, to many of the characteristics of the Norman era, which had produced such masterpieces as Durham and Peterborough, Ely and Norwich, cathedrals. The result of this is especially evident in the interior of Salisbury; for here, in spite of the shafts of Purbeck marble, one for each hour in the year, and in spite of the rich moldings of the piers and arches, the lack of structural unity, and the comparative smallness of the windows and lowness of the vaulting cause Salisbury's nave to fall far short of that of Amiens in beauty of construction. Viewed from the west, the cathedral is also disappointing; for the façade is an ugly screen wall, badly decorated, and deserving of little praise. But when seen from north or south or east, with its spire rising from the very heart of the church, Salisbury is truly inspiring. In its quiet close it seems the very expression of the church at peace. CHÂTEAU de CHAMBORD [Illustration: CHÂTEAU de CHAMBORD _Showing the Mansard roof put on by the celebrated architect, Mansart, at the order of Louis XIV, to accommodate a large court._] [Illustration: HALL IN THE CHÂTEAU de CHAMBORD _The two stairways seen in the back wind around the same central shaft and never join._] Between the construction of Amiens and Salisbury and the building of the Château of Chambord (shong-bore´) lie two centuries of history. In them the spiritual power of the church, and the temporal power of the pope and clergy, which had been supreme throughout the Middle Ages, gave way to a large extent to a spirit of individualism and a rising power on the part of the king and nobles. This change had its effect upon the arts. The palace took precedence over the church in architecture as the secular took precedence over the religious in painting and the other arts. The Château of Chambord dates from the earlier stages of this new architectural era. Built by King Francis I in the early years of the sixteenth century, it is but one of the hundreds of châteaux erected by the kings and nobles of France, from Francis to the fall of the monarchy. Its architectural style is what is known as early Renaissance. The claim of Chambord to beauty is due, not so much to its decoration as to its imposing size, to the sense of spaciousness it conveys, and to the manner in which it reflects the spirit of its age. Four hundred feet square along its outer walls, this vast château was designed by Francis I merely as a hunting seat. The chief exterior attraction of the building lies in its roof. This is a very maze of gables, dormers, chimneys, and cupolas, dominated by the lantern that crowns the center stair, and in which lights were hung to guide belated hunters from the forest. THE STAIRWAY OF CHAMBORD [Illustration: TOWER OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE _Château de Chambord._] This stairway is the chief attraction of the interior. Sweeping round a central newel which forms an open well, it rises the full height of the building. Moreover, it is not a single flight of steps, but two, so placed that one person may go up and one come down, yet never meet. From this stairway four large halls open at every floor, and four hundred and forty rooms and fifty other stairs fill up the wings of this great palace. The interior, when richly furnished, must have been magnificent. In spite of its size, Chambord has little history of which to boast. Nothing of importance or even of special interest took place there. NEW YORK CITY HALL [Illustration: STAIRWAY IN THE NEW YORK CITY HALL.] We are fortunate indeed as a nation to have had in our earlier days an architecture that could boast of such pleasing monuments as the New York City Hall. Our ancestors in both the North and South were strongly influenced from the point of view of art by that English Renaissance which reached its culmination in the hands of Sir Christopher Wren. Many a New England church and many a Southern home boasts an architectural beauty of rare charm and in rare accord with the natural setting of this new land. Nor were we less fortunate in public works. The old and new statehouses in Boston, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and the Capitol in Washington are but a few of the early buildings in America that, like the New York City Hall, are worthy to rank among the best in beauty of design. The latter was the work of John McComb, Jr., and was built between 1803 and 1812 in a style based largely upon the Italian Renaissance. Though not of very great size, its proportions are remarkably fine, and its architecture beautiful. For good taste and for excellence of workmanship it is as worthy of the city of millions today as of the city of thousands for which it was first built. [Illustration: OLD COLONIAL CHAMBER _The office of the Borough President of Manhattan in New York City Hall._] That the source of beauty in architecture is indefinable, this brief account of six of the world's finest buildings has clearly shown. No two are alike; yet all are beautiful. And this quality lies not merely in size and proportions, in design and decoration, but in the appeal that each one makes to the mind as well as to the eye. Thus the Taj Mahal fairly speaks of human remembrance, the Alhambra is the embodiment of oriental luxury, Amiens affords a majestic picture of religious power, and Salisbury of quiet Christian worship, Chambord conjures up visions of gay kings and courtiers, while New York in its City Hall possesses a worthy monument of civic interest and pride. Many another building could be added to such a list as ours, and in the case of each it would be found that added to its visible and tangible beauty was an invisible character that marked it above its fellows. It is from this broad standpoint that all architecture should be judged. [Footnote: SUPPLEMENTARY READING:--"History of Architecture," Hamlin; "Indian and Eastern Architecture," Fergusson; "Medieval Architecture," Porter; "Handbook of English Cathedrals," Van Rensselaer; "Renaissance Architecture in France," Blomfield.] THE MENTOR ISSUED SEMI-MONTHLY BY The Mentor Association, Inc. 381 Fourth Ave., New York, N. Y. Volume I Number 33 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, FOUR DOLLARS. SINGLE COPIES TWENTY CENTS. FOREIGN POSTAGE, SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS EXTRA. CANADIAN POSTAGE, FIFTY CENTS EXTRA. ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y., AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER. COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. PRESIDENT, THOMAS H. BECK; VICE-PRESIDENT, WALTER P. TEN EYCK; SECRETARY, W. D. MOFFAT; TREASURER, J. S. CAMPBELL; ASST. TREASURER AND ASST. SECRETARY, H. A. CROWE. _Editorial_ A man much occupied in his business was asked how he came to know so much on so many different subjects. His answer was: "Not by study--I have had no time for that--I have got my knowledge from the men who could give it to me, and from the reading that they have suggested to me. When several of my friends who know a subject have told me about it, I have got it in a way that I could not get in study. I have got it from different points of view." *** These words were said in the course of a conversation about The Mentor. Someone had referred to the variety of subjects offered in the schedule of The Mentor Association, and had asked whether certain regular courses of reading could not be included with advantage. With the thought of that business man and others like him, we are aiming for something larger and more beneficial than a fixed set of reading courses. We have planned to give in The Mentor the broad, liberal knowledge that comes not from a strict course of study closely adhered to, but from contact with writers of authority in varied fields. The readers of The Mentor get the rich benefits afforded by many minds, and the year's reading is wide in its reach and well balanced. So much for the general plan of The Mentor Association. But there is something to be said for the reader who wants to have a logical course of reading through the seasons. So while we offer variety from week to week, we plan to cover the larger subjects in groups of articles that are definitely related to each other. *** If one wants to follow out a certain subject, whether it be travel, history, or art, he can take up the reading of his Mentors in groups. Look at the schedule of 1913. In the varied program of the year's reading you will detect numbers that naturally belong together. You can select a set of Mentors that will take you on a trip to interesting places, with Mr. Dwight L. Elmendorf as a companion. If literature is a subject of interest to you, you can select Mentors on literary matters prepared under the advice of, and some of them written by, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie. Suppose that history is what you are after; Professor Albert Bushnell Hart gives you the "Story of America" in several numbers. It is hardly necessary to point out what Professor John C. Van Dyke has done for fine art in the numbers of The Mentor prepared under his direction. And so groups of Mentors on other subjects may be brought together out of the schedule. *** In preparing the schedule for 1914 we have taken thought not only for the wide scope of the whole year's plan, but for the treatment of special subjects in a way that will form natural groups. We have found this condition has met with favor, and it seems worth while to assure ourselves that all the readers of The Mentor appreciate it. We are told that some are gathering the numbers relating to a single subject together so as to have a small library on each subject available for reference. Not a bad idea. Imagine what an attractive set of volumes could be made out of twenty or thirty Mentors on travel by Mr. Elmendorf! Think what a beautiful and valuable set of books could be had by binding up the art numbers! Keep your back numbers. They are just as valuable as the ones to come. [Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL] _Taj Mahal_ ONE At the top of a precipice overhanging the River Jumna in India stands the most poetic mausoleum in the world. The Taj Mahal, "a dream in marble, designed by Titans and finished by jewelers," is the tomb built by Shah Jahan, the Mogul emperor, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, whom he called Taj-Bibi. She was the loveliest beauty of the Indies, and Shah Jahan loved her so passionately that he thought of no other woman while she lived and was lost in grief after her death. He vowed that her tomb should be the most beautiful building in the world. The Taj is of snow-white marble outside and jeweled mosaic within. It was planned by a Persian, Ustad Isa, who designed in the Persian rather than the Indian style of architecture. Twenty thousand men worked twenty-two years to finish it. In the center of a great square, paved with white marble and having a slender tower of the same stone at each corner, rises the memorial of Taj-Bibi--not merely a masterpiece of architecture, but also a perfect interpretation of womanly nature. The spirit of Mumtaz Mahal seems to have been carved into the marble. The mosaic work of the interior is the finest to be found in any eastern country. Precious stones are used unsparingly--jasper and agate, carnelian and chalcedony. Marble lacework of wonderful lightness screens the windows and doorways. In the center are the tombs of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan; but their bodies, according to the Indian custom, lie in a vault beneath the building. Shah Jahan had begun a tomb for himself on the opposite side of the river, which he never finished because Aurantzeb, his son, rebelled against him and took away the empire. He was therefore buried by the side of his beloved wife. Shah Jahan was a cold and haughty man; but he ruled India well, and his pride was softened in later life by the death of his wife. It is said that during his reign he brought India peace and prosperity by putting all his rivals to death. Besides the Taj Mahal, two other famous buildings, the Pearl Mosque at Agra and the great mosque of Delhi, which were built by Shah Jahan, have made his reign one of the most memorable in Indian history. The emperor's treasury must have been practically unlimited; for the peacock throne, made during his reign, was estimated by Tavernier to be worth sixty million dollars. The festival at his coronation alone cost eight millions. There is a legend that when he had finished the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan ordered the architect to be thrown over the cliff into the River Jumna, for fear he might plan another building as beautiful as the Taj. [Footnote: PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. I, No. 33. SERIAL No. 33 COPYRIGHT. 1913. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.] [Illustration: THE ALHAMBRA--COURT OF THE LIONS] _The Alhambra_ TWO The people about Granada have always held that the Palace of the Alhambra was built under a magic spell. To their minds human workmanship and the power of wealth are too feeble for the erection of a structure so enduring and magnificent. Indeed, great architects can hardly conceive the skill that balanced those halls and gardens and towers one against the other with perfect symmetry, or the patience that worked out each interlaced design without error in either the art or the chiseling. Pains and expense were not spared in the construction, and it is no wonder that the Spaniards should have thought the work supernatural. Slim pillars of the rarest white marble give grace to every court of the palace. The carvings and designs are everywhere gilded, and where these are painted between the gilding, blue, red, and yellow, the purest colors only are used. The blue is ultramarine, made from a precious stone, the lapis lazuli of the Egyptians, which never fades. Besides warmth of color and grace of form, the Moorish architects worked for durability. The aqueducts they built still bring an abundant supply of water from the mountains to fill those baths, fountains and marble-bordered ponds for which the courts and gardens of the Alhambra are famous. In spite of earth-quakes the columns and arches have nearly all held their place and their perfect form. The palace that Charles V built there in a vain effort to rival the Moorish masterpiece, and for which he made room by removing part of the Alhambra palace, stands today an uncompleted and roofless ruin; while the much older Alhambra is still clothed in a glory of bright, fresh color. The Alhambra is not one building, but a collection of buildings on a high plateau. Long before the erection of the great palace the hilltop was surrounded by a wall with many towers for defense, and the Alcazaba, the first palace built on the Alhambra hill, was used as a residence by the early kings of Granada. Older than all, the "Vermilion Towers" stand on a neighboring hill, some distance outside the now ruined Alhambra wall. The Palace of the Alhambra is said to have been started by Mohammed: but the foundations were probably laid by Calif Al Hamar, who is also distinguished for having begun to pay a yearly tribute to the kings of Castile. The construction went on during several reigns, and was completed by Yusuf with the building of the Gate of Justice in 1348. All the later kings of Granada lived in it until 1492, when the Moorish power fell before Ferdinand and Isabella, and Boabdil was banished forever from the home of his fathers. [Illustration: AMIENS CATHEDRAL] _Amiens Cathedral_ THREE It was at Amiens that the renowned Saint Martin gave half of his cloak to a beggar who stood shivering by the roadside. Other saints in that city, though we know less of their life histories, must have exercised even more generosity during the Middle Ages to build and rebuild the old cathedral in the face of repeated misfortune. The patience and zeal with which those men of Amiens raised up their cathedral four times from its ashes, remain forever in the fame of this most perfect of French Gothic churches. When the Norsemen plundered the coast of France in 881 they sent a great fleet up the River Somme. Amiens, taken by surprise, fell before the attack of those reckless and powerful old Vikings, and the cathedral, then a flimsy wooden structure, was burned to the ground. A new building which the people of Amiens put up in the same place when they had sufficiently recovered from the losses of the invasion, was destroyed by lightning in 1019. The next structure was burned in 1107, and the one that replaced it was struck by lightning in 1218 and completely ruined. Then in 1220 the present cathedral was begun. Even that has not escaped entirely from the lightning and conflagration that had wrecked so many structures on the same spot. In 1258, before the work was completed, the woodwork caught fire, and was so badly charred that part of it had to be taken down and rebuilt. Traces of fire may still be seen on some of the arches. Later the slim central spire, which is one of the striking features of Amiens Cathedral, was so badly damaged by lightning that it had to be made over. The chief treasure of Amiens is part of the head of John the Baptist, naturally a religious relic of extraordinary interest. It is kept in the chapel of Saint John Baptist, and shown only at the most important ceremonies. All that remains is the front part of the skull, including the face, and this is inclosed in a hood of silver-gilt. The relic is said to have been kept for a long time in one of the churches in Asia, from which it was removed to Constantinople, and later taken from that city to Amiens, where it has rested ever since. [Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL] _Salisbury Cathedral_ FOUR The Cathedral of Saint Mary at Salisbury is not filled with gilding and warm color as the churches of southern Europe are. Its builders aimed rather at simplicity such as their forefathers used--plain gray walls, unornamented columns and arches, and few paintings. The edifice seems to reflect the antique dignity of those upright pillars of the Druids at Stonehenge, which is not far from Salisbury. Here we have the outcome of British race feeling in splendidly finished architecture placed almost side by side with that early crude expression of it. The cathedral was begun in 1220 by Richard Poore, the bishop at Old Sarum, who was so much annoyed by the officers of the king that he decided to move the church to a site on his own land which has since been named Salisbury. Old Sarum Cathedral, built on a bleak hill, had suffered for lack of water. In his choice of a foundation Bishop Poore went to the other extreme; for the swampy fields by the Avon, on which this new cathedral was erected, were so often flooded that services sometimes had to be suspended for days. The beautiful Lady Chapel was built in five years. The entire building, except the spire, which was not in the original plan, took only forty-six years to complete. It was consecrated in 1266. But when the spire was erected the architect in charge failed to strengthen the foundations sufficiently. The pillars and arches bulged; for they had never been intended to support such weight. In spite of arches walled up and buttresses built, the tower sagged nearly two feet toward the south, and has remained in that position ever since. Though simplicity and calmness are characteristic of the original Salisbury Cathedral, they have been emphasized to the point of bareness by the restoration of James Wyatt, who destroyed nearly all the stained glass windows, two chapels, and a belfry, and moved many of the tombs. There are niches in the cathedral for over a hundred statues, which for some reason were nearly empty at the middle of the last century. The statues now in place are almost all modern: sculptured, however, with a view to holding the original significance of the architecture. They are arranged to represent the Te Deum. [Illustration: CHATEAU DE CHAMBORD] _Château de Chambord_ FIVE In the park of the château, near the banks of the Loire, great ragged trees reach out across the sky, cutting off the faint light of the stars. It is midnight. Indistinctly from the direction of the château comes a baying of deerhounds. It passes overhead through the middle air, with trampling and the sound of horns, then dies away into the distance. The ghost of Tibault de Champagne, first hereditary Count Blois, a black hunter followed by black dogs, is chasing the stag. Each midnight, so the people of that country say, the grim old baron rides by with a full pack. Count Tibault had a castle there by the Loire, and for centuries his descendants used it as a hunting resort. In 1397 it passed into the hands of Louis d'Orléans. Francis I, a king of the house of Orléans, who knew the abandoned structure in his boyhood, developed in the country round this castle his well known passion for the chase, and that is why he chose the ruined feudal stronghold in the heart of a great forest for the site of his royal palace, when he might have built on any one of a hundred lovely spots not far away along the Loire. The king's taste did not please his courtiers, who were less found of hunting and solitude. They would have preferred a large city, or at least some fertile valley nearby. Chambord was a palace in the wilderness. It could not be seen from a distance, and the view from its windows was only a dreary wood. The building has been described as a dream from the Arabian Nights come true. Louis XIV made many alterations in the château. He ordered Mansart to construct rooms enough for the accommodation of a large court, and the architect, after racking his brains over the problem, cut up the roof for projecting windows in that style which has since become known as the Mansard roof. The principal door of the court is also Mansart's work. In 1793 the revolutionists sold everything of value that could be moved from the château, and Chambord was stripped of its glory in a few days. It has never been completely restored. Though by no means a ruin today, the château suffers for lack of the magnificent furnishings for which it was originally designed. [Illustration: CITY HALL, NEW YORK] _City Hall, New York_ SIX With the highest buildings in the world rising in rivalry nearby, attracting every eye because of their novelty, the New York City Hall often escapes notice, or is given shorter consideration than its excellent architecture and historical significance deserve. Though it is neither large nor expensive, it is better designed and more carefully executed than any of the older public buildings in the country. John McComb is generally accepted as the architect; but it would be safer to speak of him as the builder, since most of the designing seems to have been done by a French surveyor, Joseph Mangin. To Mangin are probably due that shapely and dignified architecture which gives it a place among beautiful buildings, and the skilful design of its decorations. McComb carried out the work of building with great care, receiving six dollars a day for his time. The construction was begun in 1803. The first intention was to use brownstone. McComb, however, saw that no meaner material than marble could do justice to the purpose or the workmanship of the proposed City Hall. Accordingly he persuaded the committee in charge to let him use marble on three sides. The stone was hauled over from the Berkshire Hilts by horses and oxen; for locomotives had not yet been invented. One room of the City Hall was set aside for the State governor's use; and it has lately been restored to the original condition. Many excellent portraits hang on the walls. The furniture of the Governor's Room was largely taken from Federal Hall, where Washington was inaugurated and the city government was located before the building of the City Hall. Federal Hall has unfortunately been destroyed. It stood at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets, and was built with stone from the wall that gave Wall Street its name. A number of years ago there was a proposal to remove the City Hall from its present position because it was no longer large enough for the city government and was too far from the center of Greater New York. Then, because of its architectural merit as well as its history, such protest was aroused that both building and park have been kept intact. In May, 1917, a fire burned the tower and destroyed the clock of the City Hall. Transcriber's Notes: 'inclose' is an older form of 'enclose', probably still in use when this book was written. Italic writing is shown like this: _italic_ 
59380	----	by The Internet Archive. Transcriber Note Text emphasis denoted by _Italics_ and =Bold.= Whole and fractional parts of numbers as 12-3/4. BUILDING with LOGS Miscellaneous Publication No. 579 U. S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service The art of log construction is relatively simple, once a few basic principles are understood. The pioneers who opened the lands beyond the eastern seaboard did not have boards with which to build such shelter as they needed. Logs were so plentiful in the forested area of our country that, with their resourceful ingenuity, the settlers built their homes in conformity with those principles of log construction which prevailed in the countries from which they migrated. Those principles have remained the same down through the years. The pioneer had but an ax for a tool and consequently made only those articles which could be hewed out of wood. Today there are many tools available, and to do a first class job of log construction one must know how to handle the double-bitted or single-bitted ax, the broadax, saw, adz, chisel, slick, ship auger, and drawknife. In this bulletin it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the ordinary frame building methods used where wood is the principal construction material. Washington, D. C. Issued September 1945 BUILDING WITH LOGS By Clyde P. Fickes, _Engineer_, and W. Ellis Groben, _Chief Architect, Forest Service_ Contents Page Building the foundation 1 Preparing the logs 1 Dimensions of the building 2 Framing the corners 3 Round-notch corner 4 Other log corners 7 Door and window jambs 12 Floor joists 12 Laying the wall logs 12 Window and door openings 14 Window and door frames 16 Roof framing 22 Shake roofs 23 Partitions 23 Flooring 24 Interior wood finishing 25 Calking 25 Chinking 27 Chinkless log cabin construction 28 Milled-log construction 31 Hewing timbers 31 Fireplace framing 31 Oiling and painting 35 The finished structure 35 Furniture 39 Chairs and stools 39 Bed and bunk 39 Chest and buffet 47 Settee 47 Dining table 49 Table, bench, book rack, and wood hod 50 Building plans 53 Additional information 56 BUILDING THE FOUNDATION A building should have a good foundation, and a log structure is no exception to the rule. For the sake of economy in labor and material it is sufficient, in some instances, to place small buildings on piers of concrete or rough native stone, but usually it will be more satisfactory to use continuous walls of stone masonry or concrete to provide uninterrupted support for the logs and thus avoid their tendency to sag. These walls, however, should be provided with small openings for the circulation of air to prevent the wood from dry rotting. Furthermore, the continuous foundation wall has the additional advantage of preventing rodents from getting under the building. In no case should the logs be placed directly upon the ground since wood tends to decay when in contact with the earth. The two end walls of the exterior foundation should be higher than the side walls in order to offset the difference in level of the logs on adjacent walls, the end-wall logs being half their thickness higher than those on the side walls. In building a log wall the chief problem is in closing the opening between each pair of logs. There are various ways of doing this, but only those regarded as most satisfactory will be described in this publication. The width of such openings is affected by several factors: (1) The manner of placing the logs upon each other; (2) the type of corner used where two walls meet; (3) the openings for doors and windows; and (4) the natural shrinkage of wood in the process of drying. PREPARING THE LOGS The selection of straight, smooth, even-sized logs is the prime consideration (fig. 1). Top diameters should be as uniform as possible, but as a rule not less than 10 nor more than 12 inches. (Slightly smaller or larger dimensions may be used if no others are available.) The taper should be as slight as possible. For logs longer than 40 feet, the top diameter may be less than 10 inches in order to avoid an excessive diameter at the large or butt end. [Illustration: Figure 1.--Starting to build the log cabin--laying the foundation.] Cedar, pine, fir, and larch, in the order named, are most desirable for log construction. All knots, limbs, or bumps should be trimmed off carefully when the log is peeled. It is best to cut the logs in late fall or winter, for two important reasons: (1) Logs cut in spring or summer peel easier, but crack or check to an undesirable degree while seasoning. (2) Insect activity is dormant during the winter months; hence, if the logs are cut and seasoned then, they are less liable to damage by insects or rot-producing fungi. Logs should be cut, peeled, and laid on skids well above the ground for at least 6 months before being placed in the building. This may not always be possible, but it is a good rule to follow. Logs should be stored in a single deck with 2 or 3 inches between them to permit complete exposure to the air. Logs having a sweep or curve should be piled with the curve uppermost so that their weight will tend to straighten them while they are drying. Where the skidding space is limited, logs may be double-decked, using poles between tiers. Unrestricted air circulation materially aids seasoning. Sort the logs carefully before starting construction, using the better ones in the front or other conspicuous walls of the building. If the logs are not uniform in size, the larger ones should be placed at the bottom of the walls. DIMENSIONS OF THE BUILDING For practical reasons the dimensions of a log building are the inside measurements taken from one log to the corresponding log in the opposite wall. Outside dimensions vary somewhat with the size of the logs, thus accounting for the use of inside measurements. Where projecting corners are desired, logs should be at least 6 feet longer than the inside dimensions of the building. In erecting the walls, the logs should be kept even or plumb on the inside faces if it is desired to finish the interior with wallboard or plaster. FRAMING THE CORNERS The corner is one of the most important aspects of log construction. On it the appearance and stability of the structure depend. Different types of corner construction are in use in the United States, each varying in accordance with local building customs or individual taste. [Illustration: Figure 2.--The round-notch or saddle corner. This is an unusually fine example of scribing and fitting logs together. The square-cut logs have yet to be dressed and shaped with the ax to give them a pleasing appearance.] [Illustration: Figure 3.--Ranger station, Gallatin National Forest, Mont., illustrating effective use of round-notch corners. _A_, and _B_, Dwelling under construction; _C_, barn.] Round-Notch Corner The round-notch, or saddle, corner (fig. 2) is generally considered the most satisfactory from every standpoint. This type of corner gives the most distinctive appearance because the logs project sufficiently beyond the corner not to appear dubbed off (fig. 3). It is a good, self-locking, mechanical joint, relatively easy to construct, and holds the logs rigidly in place. [Illustration: Figure 4.--Method of marking saddle corners.] In cutting the saddle, the material is taken out of the under side of the upper log without disturbing the top surface of the bottom log. All the moisture thus drains out at the corner and, consequently, the wood is much less subject to decay than if other types of corners were used. The shrinkage in the outer area of the log's circumference tends to open up the space between the logs. Finally, in the round-notch corner, one-half of the shrinkage between the logs is allowed to remain in the corner. The separation, therefore, is not as great as if each log had been cut down to the heartwood, a disadvantage common to most other types of corners. The tools required to make a round-notch or saddle corner are: A pair of log dogs to hold the log in place, 10- or 12-inch wing dividers with pencil holder and level-bubble attachment, sharp ax, 2-inch gouge chisel with outside bevel, crosscut saw, spirit level, and plumb board. The framing of this corner, described in figure 4, should be relatively easy. [Illustration: Figure 5.--Chopping the notch in a saddle corner.] First, the bottom logs should be set in place on opposite sides of the foundation. Hew a flat face of 2 to 3 inches in width on the under side of the log where it rests on the foundation, so that it will lay in place. Then place the bottom log on each end-wall and accurately center it so that the inside face of all four logs is to the exact interior dimensions of the building. Dog the logs into place so they will not move while being marked for the corner notch. The wing divider is now set for one-half the diameter of the side log. With the lower leg of the divider resting on the side of the under log and the other leg, with the level-bubble uppermost, resting against the bottom of the upper log and directly above the lower log, start moving the divider upward, with a side motion, so that the lower leg follows the curvature of the under log. The pencil point of the upper leg makes a mark on the surface of the upper log which will be the intersection of the surfaces of the two logs when the notch has been cut from the upper one. Repeat this operation four times to mark all four sides of the corner. A little practice will make you adept at keeping the points of the divider perpendicular to each other. After the notch has been marked at both ends of the log, turn it over on its back. It is a good idea to intensify the divider mark with an indelible pencil so that it will be easily followed. Chop the notch out roughly, as illustrated in figure 5, then chip down as closely as possible to the mark, supplying the finishing touches with a gouge chisel. The finished notch should be cupped out just enough to allow the weight of the log to come on the outside edges, thus insuring a tight joint. When the next side log is rolled into place, the dividers should be set apart for the width of the space between the top of the first and the bottom of the following log, and the marking repeated as before. If you wish to have the upper log "ride" the lower one a little, so that an especially tight joint is obtained, the dividers should be set a little wider apart than the space actually requires. Other Log Corners The dovetail, or box, corner (figs. 6 and 7) is a strong corner, and considerable experience is required in order to make a neat-looking job. This type has several undesirable features: (1) The logs are apt to develop a wide crack because the corner is framed from the part of the log in which the least shrinkage occurs, and (2) since the logs are hewed down to form the corner, the wood has a tendency to collect and retain moisture which soon results in decay. Also, this corner detracts noticeably from the "loggy" appearance so characteristic and desirable in log structures. The drawings in figure 6 show the most practical methods of marking and framing the dovetail, or box, corner. The flat, or plain, tenon corner (fig. 8), is also common. It may be made in two ways. In one, only the bearing surfaces are framed, while in the other, all four sides of the tenon are framed flat. The plain tenon corner does not have the highly desirable feature of being self-locking. However, it is simple to make and economical, and therefore especially suitable for temporary structures. The logs must be pinned together, as shown in figure 11. All the framing can be done on the ground, before the logs are put in place. Carefully fitted, this makes a neat-looking job. _Directions for constructing the flat, or plain, tenon corner._--Square one end of log, as in figure 8, at point _A_, then measure required length and saw the opposite end square, at _B_. If the log has any curvature, turn it on the skids until its back is up. Determine the thickness of the tenons, based upon the average top and butt diameters of the log. Then take an 18-inch length of board the same width as the thickness of the tenons, driving a nail through its center and into the center of the log. Place the spirit level on top of the board and mark lines on the log at the top and bottom edges. The width of a tenon varies with the diameter of the logs; 8- to 10-inch diameters will produce 6- to 7-inch wide tenons. [Illustration: Figure 6.--Marking and framing the dovetail, or box, corner.] [Illustration: Figure 7.--Ranger Station, Lolo National Forest, Mont. Note the meticulous construction of box corners.] [Illustration: Figure 8.--Framing the flat, or plain, tenon corner.] Nail a 1 inch by 1 inch cleat on the pattern board to points _C_ and _D_ and then make saw cuts on each end, cut chip off and smooth the surface. Turn log over and repeat on the other side. After framing out the sides of the tenon, the log is ready to be placed on the wall. Some fitting between corners is usually necessary but, if the logs are fairly straight and smooth, the work will be minimized. The upright, or groove-and-tenon, corner (fig. 9) is used to a considerable extent in the West. It has desirable features from a mechanical standpoint: (1) The weight of the building is carried on the full length of the logs and does not rest solely on the corners, as in other types, and (2) it makes a tight wall because no openings will develop between the logs. Although not difficult to construct, the upright corner requires considerable mechanical skill and accuracy. A good carpenter can frame the entire building on the ground before any logs are placed on the foundation, after which it can be erected in a very short time. Next to the round-notch corner the upright, or groove-and-tenon corner, probably has the best appearance. [Illustration: Figure 9.--Framing the upright, or groove-and-tenon, corner.] DOOR AND WINDOW JAMBS Door and window jambs should be framed just like the corners except that only the back should be grooved. The door side, or face, may be rabbeted or left smooth so that a separate wood door stop may be nailed in place. If the logs are reasonably dry, from 3 to 4 inches should be left at each corner for settlement due to shrinkage; otherwise, more or less space should be allowed, as conditions require. In about 6 months the cap log will come down and close this gap. Similar provisions should be made for settlement over door and window openings. FLOOR JOISTS As soon as the first round or tier of logs is laid, the floor joists should be set in place, notching them into the bottom side logs. If the building has a continuous masonry foundation, the joists may be set on top of it, as in a frame building. In order that the ends of the joists may have sufficient bearing on the wall, it is necessary either to notch the ends into the side logs or hew the latter off on the inside. A simple method is to cut the notches in the side logs before they are rolled into place. Pole joists should be from 4 to 8 inches in diameter and hewed level on the upper side to provide a solid bearing for nailing the flooring. Several different ways of framing the floor joists are shown in figure 10. LAYING THE WALL LOGS In laying the successive rounds of logs in the walls, several details must be observed to keep them lined up so that the top logs form a level seat for the roof framing. The corners should be kept as level as possible as each round is laid. This can be done by measuring vertically from the top of the floor joists, from time to time, as a check. A variation of 1 inch in height will not cause a serious difficulty. The height of the corner's is regulated in two ways: (1) By increasing or decreasing the depth of the notch, and (2) by reversing the top and butt ends of the logs when laying them in the wall. The logs should be fitted together as tightly as possible. In the case of somewhat irregularly surfaced logs, it may be necessary to smooth off certain portions of the under side of the upper log to secure a tight fit. Only in exceptional instances, however, should this be done to the top of the lower log. The face of the logs on the inside of the building must be kept plumb, that is, in the same vertical plane. An ordinary carpenter's, or spirit, level may be used, but a 6- to 8-foot plumb board is considered most satisfactory because of its greater length. The logs should be pinned together with a wooden pin or large spike (fig. 11). Spiking is done by boring a 3/4-inch hole halfway through the upper log and continuing with a 7/16-inch hole through the bottom half. Then drive a 10- or 12-inch spike into place, or until it penetrates half the next log below. The spikes should be staggered in alternate rounds or tiers of logs. If wooden pins are used, fir or oak logs are preferable. Neither wooden pins nor spikes, however, offer interference to the settling of the walls. [Illustration: Figure 10.--Framing floor joists.] The spike method is easier and quicker, and just as satisfactory as the wooden pin. The logs should be pinned approximately 2 feet from each corner and at each side of the window and door openings. For small structures, where the alignment of the walls is not so important, pinning may be eliminated, but it is essential to align larger buildings accurately in order to prevent individual logs from springing out of place. [Illustration: Figure 11.--Pinning logs together.] Where the use of logs having a decided curve, or sweep, is unavoidable they should be set in the wall with the bow or back up. Such logs may be straightened by making enough saw cuts in the upper side of the curved surface to allow them to straighten out. The cuts should be from one-third to one-half the depth of the log, or slightly more, if necessary (fig. 12). [Illustration: Figure 12.--Straightening a curved log.] WINDOW AND DOOR OPENINGS Early American log structures were characterized by relatively dark interiors because window openings, designed for protective purposes, were small and far apart. Since protection is no longer a consideration, window frames may be of standard size and located where they are most suitable for adequate day lighting. As soon as the first round of logs and the floor joists are laid in place, mark the location of door and window openings on the inside face. Next saw out the door openings and chop out the notch in the doorsill log to within an inch of the true or finished line, as shown in figure 13. Leave final cutting of the openings to the exact dimensions until the window and door frames are to be placed in position, thus insuring a good finished wood surface. Also, determine the height of the openings above the floor line and mark them in figures on the bottom log for reference from time to time. The necessary cuts should be made in the log directly over each opening before placing it in position. When the log which carries the window frame is reached, a notch must be made for it as for the doors. [Illustration: Figure 13.--Cutting window and door openings.] To provide the necessary doors and windows, openings must be cut in the walls after the logs have been placed in position. As soon as a log in the wall is cut in two, the problem arises of how to hold the loose ends in place. Also, the doors and windows require the proper kind of frames to insure airtight closure between the latter and the ends of the wall logs. The most practicable and satisfactory method is to frame a vertical notch in the ends of the wall logs, into which can be fitted a spline attached to the back of the jamb or side-pieces of the door and window frames. This method of framing holds the wall logs in place, allows them to shrink and settle without hindrance, and makes a weathertight joint between them and the door and window frames. The vertical notch in the end of the wall logs may be framed by boring a 2-inch auger hole in each log as it is laid in place. The hole should be located so that, when the wall logs are sawed out for the opening, the saw cut passes down through the edge of the hole nearest the opening. It is then a simple matter to frame the notch to take the spline. The inside face of the notch can be left rounded and the spline chamfered to fit. To keep the holes in line from log to log, use the plumb board illustrated in figure 14. [Illustration: Figure 14.--Method of marking openings.] WINDOW AND DOOR FRAMES There are two ways of making window and door frames--in three pieces (two side jambs and one head jamb), or in four pieces (two side jambs, one head jamb, and a sill piece). When a three-piece frame is used, the bottom log of the opening is cut or shaped to make the window or doorsill and the jamb pieces are then fitted to the sill. If the jambs are framed from pieces of log slabbed on two opposite sides, a presentable frame in keeping with the log character of the structure is obtained. The window or door face of the jamb pieces may be rabbeted for the windows and doors, respectively, or they may have separate wooden pieces, known as stops, nailed on. The spline on the back of the jamb may be rabbeted out, or a 2 inch by 2 inch piece of straight-grained wood nailed on. The head jamb can be framed in the same way; it does not require a spline on the back. Each side jamb has a dowel framed on each end. The bottom dowel fits into a mortise in the sill and the top dowel into a similar mortise in the head jamb. [Illustration: Figure 15.--Window frames.] In a four-piece frame, the sill log is cut with a slope, in the customary way, and the jambs are fitted as for a three-piece frame. Figure 15 illustrates the installation of three- and four-piece window frames. When the head jamb or top log over the opening is reached, the frames are ready for installation. The opening is now cut out, the sill fashioned, the vertical spline slot framed, and the head jamb log cut out to fit over the opening. At this point, the amount of settlement resulting from the shrinkage of the wall logs, as they dry out, must be determined and a corresponding allowance provided in the opening. This allowance is made between the upper side of the headpiece of the frame and the bottom of the log directly over the opening, and should be from 2-1/2 to 4 inches for a door 6 feet 8 inches to 7 feet in height, or 1-1/2 to 3 inches for an ordinary double hung window. The log over the opening should be notched out on the under side so that it can be dropped in place after the frame has been set in position. When the type of window or door frame here described is used, neither outside nor inside casings, sometimes called wood trim, are required. The logs selected for the jamb material should be from 2 to 3 inches larger in diameter than the wall logs, in order to fit properly. Also, they will be much easier to work if well-seasoned (fig. 16). [Illustration: Figure 16.--Log jamb window frame.] [Illustration: Figure 17.--Typical log-wall section, taken through window.] If standard mill work frames are used, false side jambs of sawed material, usually 2-inch planks, should be fitted in the openings to hold the logs in place. For a wall made of 10-inch logs, a plank 2 inches by 10 inches should be used for the jambs and the standard frame fitted in place between them after providing the necessary allowance for the wall logs to shrink or settle. The head casing ordinarily will cover the space allowed for shrinkage. Some kind of insulating material which will take compression, such as crumpled newspapers, asbestos wool fiber, or rock wool, may be used to fill the space over the head allowed for settlement. Insulating material must be installed loosely, so as not to take any weight as the headlog gradually settles. [Illustration: Figure 18.--Various ways of framing eaves. Despite the fact that sawed rafters, as shown above, are often used for convenience in framing the roof, sawed or milled material is incongruous in appearance in the exterior of log buildings Hence, pole rafters, hand-made shakes, and similar hand-riven features are preferred.] For the log-type frame, copper or galvanized steel flashing should be fastened to the bottom of the cut in the top log, leaving the lower edge of the flashing free to slide on the face of the log head jamb. As the wall settles, the bottom of the flashing can be trimmed off if too much of the face of the head jamb is covered. This makes a weathertight joint and protects the insulating material with which the shrinkage space has been filled. See figure 17, Head section. [Illustration: Figure 19.--Framing log purlins for shakes.] ROOF FRAMING Roofs may be framed in several ways, depending upon the kind of material available and the appearance desired. The framing for a shingle roof, whether of sawed material or round poles, is done in the same way as that of a frame building. The top log on the wall may be cut with a flat seat for the rafters to rest upon, as at _Y_, in figure 18, _A_ or notched out to receive them as at _Z_ in figure 18, _B_. The gable ends may be run up with the logs, which is preferable for architectural appearance, or framed like the gables of a frame structure, and then covered with wood siding, shingles, or shakes (fig. 19). The shingles may be laid over sheathing boards in the usual manner or on shingle strips placed across the roof rafters, parallel with the ridge and exactly spaced to receive them, commonly known as "barn-fashion." The particular method to be followed in framing the eaves depends largely upon their projection. Where the effect of a considerable overhang is desired, an eave purlin log may be used to support the projecting shakes as shown in figure 19, _A_. To support 30- to 36-inch long shakes having a 6-inch lap, the log purlins should be spaced at approximately 24-inch intervals, as in figure 19. In regions of heavy snows, the eave log may be placed slightly forward to help support the overhang, or an additional eave log may be placed in position, as shown in figure 19, _B_. The gable logs should be run up at the same time as the roof logs, and both rigidly framed together. [Illustration: Figure 20.--Splitting shakes with the froe.] Shake Roofs It is often desirable to use hand-split shakes for the roof covering. These are usually made from cedar, but may be of any straight-grained wood, free from knots, which splits easily. First, the logs are cut in lengths of 30 to 36 inches and then the shakes are split off with a tool called a froe (fig. 20). After the log cuts are set on end, the froe is held on the upper end of the block and then struck a blow with a wooden maul which causes a piece of the block or shake to split off. Being hand-split, the thickness varies somewhat; the minimum is 1/2 inch. A roof of thin shingles, lacking sufficient scale, is never as effective as a rough textured one, using 3/4- to 1-1/4-inch thick shakes, to harmonize with the sturdy appearance of the log walls. The width, normally 6 to 8 inches, is governed by the size of the blocks of wood and varies accordingly, while the length is governed by the spacing of the roof logs or purlins. Shakes are always laid on the purlins in single courses, lapping the sides 1-1/2 to 2 inches and over-lapping the ends at least 6 inches, as illustrated in figure 19. Nailing is usually done with six- or eight-penny galvanized box nails. Copper nails may be used for greater permanence. A good shake roof will not leak although from the inside of the building it may appear to have many holes. The ordinary, uninteresting, straight-line effect at the butts may be broken up by staggering them from 1 to 2 inches, as is often done with shingles. This method produces an effect more in keeping with the log walls. Although involving greater care and additional labor it is preferable, from an architectural point of view, to the more common custom of laying them to uniformly straight lines. At the ridge of the roof, where the shingles or shakes intersect, provisions must be made for weatherproofing. The shingled Boston ridge, comb intersection, or pole ridge, shown in figure 21 are practical and much more satisfactory from the standpoint of architectural effect than stock metal ridges, ridge boards, and other methods. [Illustration: Figure 21.--Ridge treatments.] PARTITIONS If the log building is to be divided into several rooms, at least two different methods may be used to construct the partition walls. If the log construction plan is to be carried throughout the structure by using interior log-wall partitions, these should be laid out and framed in, and the door openings cut in the same manner as previously described for exterior walls. If a log partition comes at a place in a cross wall where it is not considered desirable to have the log ends project into the room beyond the opposite face of the wall, they may be sawed off flush with the face of the cross wall, as shown at _X_, figure 22, Plan _A_. This will not weaken the joint since the logs are both pinned and locked in place. [Illustration: Figure 22.--Interior partitions.] Where frame partitions are used, they should be constructed as in a frame building. A gain or a 3- to 4-inch deep groove should be cut in the log wall into which the end studding of the frame partition is to be set (fig. 22, Plan _B_). The cut should be made in each log before it is placed in the wall. In no case should the studding at the ends of the partitions be nailed to the log walls which they intersect in order not to interfere with or be affected by their shrinkage and settlement. FLOORING A subfloor should be laid first using shiplap or sheathing. Over this a finished floor of such hardwoods as maple or oak, or the harder softwood species such as Douglas-fir, western larch, or southern pine, may be laid. Vertical grain and flat grain may be had in both softwood and hardwood, but the vertical grain shrinks and swells less than the flat, is more uniform in texture, wears more evenly, and the joints open much less. Finished flooring consists or tongue-and-groove material of various thicknesses and widths. Despite a slight tendency to splinter and wear irregularly over a period of years, plain wide planking of random-width boards makes an appropriate floor for a log building. An attractive effect may be had by using screws instead of nails, countersunk to a depth of 1/2 inch and concealed by inserting false wooden dowels glued in place as shown in figure 23, _B_. Keying the boards together with wood keys, at random along the edges, adds to the attractiveness of the flooring. INTERIOR WOOD FINISHING Hanging doors and windows, and many other customary details of building construction should be done in the usual manner in building with logs. Whenever cupboards or other built-in units are constructed, they must be framed to be independent or entirely free of the log walls, like the furniture. However, such fixtures as lavatories may be attached to two adjacent logs without any subsequent structural complications. [Illustration: Figure 23.--Flooring. _A_, Plain tongue and groove; _B_, random-width planking.] CALKING When round logs are laid up in a wall there is always an opening between them unless they are grooved on the under side to saddle the one below, as described later under chinkless log cabin construction. In exterior walls, this opening, or crack, must be closed in order to make the structure weathertight. There are several methods of doing this. If the logs are reasonably straight and uniform in size and the corners carefully made, the opening between them will be small, often barely perceptible. When this is the case, the openings should be filled with some sort of calking compound applied with either a pressure gun or a trowel (fig. 24). [Illustration: Figure 24.--Examples of tight joints well calked. _A_, Interior calking; _B_, exterior calking.] In recent years several kinds of calking material have been put on the market. They are applied best with a gun having a pressure-release trigger whereby the calking compound is forced through a nozzle made in various shapes and sizes to meet different requirements. These calking compounds are not adversely affected by heat or cold, retain their natural flexibility, and have an adhesive property which causes them to adhere to the surface to which they are applied. A good plastic compound will adhere to the logs under all conditions and can be patched easily by simply applying more material. A black fiber seal is not objectionable and, at the same time, gives a practical finish. The seal should be applied to both sides of the exterior and interior log walls, producing an almost hermetically sealed building. When applied with a pressure gun having a 3/8-inch nozzle, 1 gallon will fill about 300 linear feet of opening. If applied in cold weather, the material should be heated to a temperature of 60°F. CHINKING When using logs that are somewhat rough and irregular in shape, the resulting space between them may be so large that the calking material cannot be used satisfactorily to fill the opening. In such cases, it will be necessary to insert "chinking," which usually is applied to the interior and exterior walls in one of two ways: 1. _Split chinking._--Segments of a log are split out in sizes which fit the opening and, after being carefully shaped with the ax to make a tight fit, are securely nailed in position. This kind of chinking requires considerable work and patience to secure a good appearance. 2. _Pole chinking._--Small round poles may be used to fill the openings (fig. 25). Usually they are cut in sizes and lengths to fill the opening from wall to wall. This sort of chinking may be applied rapidly to either inside or outside walls and makes a neater job than the preceding method. Unless the logs are thoroughly seasoned these small poles sometimes have a tendency to pull away from the nails. When the chinking has been completed, the openings will have been reduced sufficiently in width to allow the calking material to be applied successfully. [Illustration: Figure 25.--Pole chinking.] It is always a serious problem in log construction to devise a practical method for permanently fastening the plaster daubing in place on both inside and outside walls. In some instances, shingle nails may be driven into the logs 2 to 3 inches apart for the full length of the opening or 2-inch wide strips of metal lath may be used and the plaster applied to fill it. Cattle hair may be added to the plaster to increase its adhesive consistency and thereby hold it more rigidly in place. Sometimes, wood strips are nailed on the lower log to hold the plaster in position, as shown in figure 26, but they are unsightly. [Illustration: Figure 26.--Wood daubing strips.] CHINKLESS LOG CABIN CONSTRUCTION Chinkless construction, associated with the building of log structures in Scandinavian countries, eliminates the chinking and mudding so prevalent in many log buildings. It consists of grooving the under side of every log in each tier so that it saddles the log beneath, making a close joint for its entire length. The groove is marked by a tool which, for convenience, may be called a cabin scribe or a drag (fig. 27). _Directions for chinkless log cabin construction._---Mark and cut out the notch just as is done for a round-notch corner. Next, dog the log in place and scribe, making the additional mark shown by dash line (_X_, fig. 27). Then, cut to line and, finally, drop log in position. The scribe is 12 inches long, made preferably of 3/8-inch square steel or iron bent in much the same manner as the spring in a steel trap; the two ends are turned down about 1-1/2 inches like two fingers, diverging to about 3/4 of an inch at the points, and then sharpened with a flat surface on the inside of the point toward the loop. The loop should be hammered out thin to provide sufficient flexibility to allow the points to spread or close easily. A ring is welded around the two halves of the tool which, when slipped up or down, makes it possible to adjust the points and thereby prevent any further spreading while the tool is in use. A link from a small chain, placed over the legs before the points are turned, will serve the same purpose and, to prevent the points from springing together, a small piece of wood may be forced between them. [Illustration: Figure 27.--Chinkless log cabin construction.] To fit a log, first frame it at the ends and then fit it down to within about 2 inches of the lower log where the opening is the widest It is difficult to do a good job of scribing when the logs are too close together. The scribe must then be adjusted at the point where the opening is the widest so that, when holding the tool parallel to the opening, the lower point of the scribe will ride on the surface of the bottom log. By exerting sufficient pressure, the upper point will score the top log. Repeat this operation to score the upper log on the other side. The corner tenons must be marked likewise. Next, turn the log over, work the tenons down and then cut a =V=-shaped groove to the marked lines in the remaining portion of the log, using a double-bitted ax. This groove should be cut deep enough along its center to permit the outer edge of the groove to rest continuously on the lower log. By removing the least amount of wood to make the smallest possible groove, the closest fit is obtained with the least effort. [Illustration: Figure 28.--Fine example of milled-log construction--ranger's dwelling, Whitman National Forest, Oreg.] The principle of the scribe is based on parallel lines, and it can readily be seen that if there is a hump on the lower log there will have to be a gouge in the upper one. When the work is done carefully, the space remaining is negligible. Where an airtight wall is desired, a strip of plumber's oakum should be laid on the bottom log before the upper log is dropped into place. If this material is not available, dry moss is a fairly practical substitute. Milled-Log Construction Sometimes it is feasible to take advantage of a portable mill to face the logs on three sides rather than to hew them by hand. The level beds seat the logs so well that calking is minimized, the smooth interior surfaces permit of easy finishing, particularly where wood wainscoting or plaster is used, while the round-log exterior effect is undisturbed, except where the logs project at the corners. Figure 28 illustrates a structure built in this way. HEWING TIMBERS The facing or hewing of round timbers to obtain one or two sides surfaced flat for framing purposes, as shown in figure 29, requires considerable skill in the use of the ax and broadax. There are, however, a number of mechanical aids (fig. 30) which should be used by anyone undertaking log construction in order to simplify the work as much as possible. The carpenter's spirit level, the steel square, and chalk line and chalk are necessary for laying off the lines to be followed in hewing timbers. In framing logs they should be laid up on skids, or sawhorses, dogged fast in place with iron dogs, and the dimensions laid off on each end of the log with the level and square to insure that the lines are parallel to each other. Then, with the chalk line, carefully snap lines on the side of the log connecting corresponding points at each end. For squaring the ends of a log and cutting pole rafters, use the miter box to guide the saw. To measure lengths accurately the steel tape, or a board pattern cut to the exact length, may be used. FIREPLACE FRAMING The living-room fireplace, invariably the most prominent interior feature, harmonizes best with a log interior if built of stone and provided with a crude log shelf. The fireplace itself may be either the traditional masonry type or the more modern metal-lined one equipped with a heatilator. The masonry of the fireplace and its chimney should always start on solid earth, below the frost line, like the foundations of the building itself. Masonry does not settle, unlike the surrounding log construction. Consequently, it is recommended that a self-supporting log framing be built around and entirely free of the masonry of the fireplace and chimney, as illustrated in figure 31. The opening should be framed in the same way as window and door openings. The fireplace and chimney masonry should not be erected until the opening has been framed for it. Upon completion, the intersection between the stone and wood should be thoroughly calked to make an airtight, weatherproof job. This method allows the wall logs to settle, because of the unavoidable shrinkage, without structural failure. [Illustration: Figure 29.--Framing hewed timbers.] [Illustration: Figure 30.--Mechanical aids in cutting timbers. Method: Cut both miter boxes at angle _X_ for 1/3 pitch. Fasten them securely to the floor or to a log, used as a sawhorse, and space exactly the required distance apart to insure that all rafters are cut alike. Then place each rafter in the boxes, back down if any curvature exists, dog rigidly in place and saw to the pattern. Line A represents the exterior wall face and, if sawed off on line _B_, parallel with the wall face, overhang of eave will be 1 foot, 6 inches. Any desired overhang may be had and sawing eliminated by fixing the distance _C_. The irregularly hewed rafter end is preferable to the uniform elliptical saw-cut ends. Finally, hew the upper surface of the rafters to a smooth even bearing to receive the roof sheathing boards.] [Illustration: Figure 31.--Framing around the fireplace. Framing logs around fireplace and chimney varies with the effect desired: (1) By using an exposed vertical slabbed log and spline, as at _A_, with space _X_, to allow for the shrinkage settling of the logs above the mantel, or (2) by using a concealed vertical slabbed log and spline, as at _B_, where the masonry is exposed above the mantel.] [Illustration: Figure 32.--A useful type of modern log dwelling--ranger station, Gallatin National Forest, Mont.] In building an ordinary fireplace, the firebox and inner hearth should be made of firebrick to withstand intense heat and the various parts proportioned in accordance with standard practice to insure efficient operation.[1] [1] For this purpose the following publication will be found useful: Farmers' Bulletin 1889, Fireplaces and Chimneys. The heatilator is a built-in recirculating steel unit consisting of metal sides and back to form a heating chamber, adjacent to the fire pit, which draws cold air through a register at each side near the floor and after the air is heated ejects it through similar registers above. It should be installed in conformity with the manufacturer's directions, taking care to select a stock-size unit suitable for the dimensions of the fireplace opening and to erect the surrounding masonry accordingly. OILING AND PAINTING After all the openings have been properly calked and the logs brushed clean, it is often desirable, although not absolutely necessary, to treat the log surfaces with some sort of preservative material. Logwood oil is excellent for the exterior. The colorless variety is preferable in most cases but, if some color is desired, add just enough burnt umber, or raw sienna paste, to give the proper shade. For interior finish, apply a coat of clear shellac and then one or two coats of dull varnish. The trim can be treated in a similar manner to preserve the pleasing effect produced by the natural surface and color of the wood. THE FINISHED STRUCTURE Examples of modern log construction are shown in figures 32, 33, and 34. Early types of log structures are illustrated in figure 35. [Illustration: Figure 33.--Modern structures showing effective use of log construction in recreation buildings on national forests in Montana. _A_, Dude ranch; _B_ and _C_, recreational and mess hall, Seely Lake.] [Illustration: Figure 34.--Organization camp at Seely Lake showing log work In greater detail. _A_, Entrance wing; _B_, cabin group. Note the wedges under porch post to provide for settling of walls. Wedges are gradually driven out as necessary.] [Illustration: Figure 35.--Early types of log structures built by the U. S. Forest Service in the West. _A_, Ranger station, Gallatin National Forest, Mont.; _B_, ranger's dwelling, Nezperce National Forest, Idaho; _C_, log cabin in Arizona.] FURNITURE The matter of interior furnishings is always of great concern to those who build log cabins. Odds and ends or too many "what-nots" may prove to be misfits. Pieces of Early American design are perhaps the most appropriate ready-made furniture, but sturdy, rustic pieces yield the greatest satisfaction. Many cabin owners have found a great deal of pleasure in making essential furniture, such as bunks, beds, tables, chairs, settees, and similar items. In the East, birch is preferred as a material, and in the West, lodgepole pine is most satisfactory. Other native species, however, will do just as well. In making furniture it is advisable to remove the bark from the logs because bark collects insects, causes the wood to deteriorate and eventually falls off, leaving imperfect, unsightly surfaces. Figures 36 and 37 show types of furniture suitable for log residences. For rustic effects, the use of a stain of the following proportions gives a satisfactory appearance: 2 quarts turpentine, 2 quarts raw linseed oil, and 1 pint liquid drier, to which add 1/2 pint of raw sienna, 1/2 pint of burnt umber, and a touch of burnt sienna. The top surfaces of tables, buffets, chests, and rawhide seats should have two coats of spar varnish. Where countersunk screws are used in connection with a stain finish, insert false wood, dowel-like plugs in preference to plastic wood to conceal the screwheads. Simplicity, both in construction and appearance, is the keynote for producing the most harmonious effects in furniture, in keeping with log interiors. Chairs and Stools Armchairs can be built with well-seasoned lodgepole or eastern pine, or birch (fig. 38). The cornerpieces should be mortised and tenoned to the frame and rail and anchored in place with 3/8- by 15-inch lag screws. The arms should be fastened to the cornerpieces with 3/8- by 5-inch carriage bolts and to the slab support with 3/8- by 4-inch lag screws. The vertical slab support should be rigidly secured to the frame with 3/8- by 3-inch carriage bolts. Cushions may be of the filler type, without springs, and covered with homespun fabric. Use 2-inch wide heavy canvas strips, securely fastened with furniture tacks, to support the cushions. Upright chairs and stools (fig. 39) can be made from the same material as the armchair. Cross the poles to impale the legs rigidly. The crosspieces of the chair back should be curved to fit the human back. The joints must be tightly glued, mortised, and tenoned. [Illustration: Figure 36.--Furniture suitable for log cabins--convenient, sturdy, and easy to make. _A_, Bed; _B_, bed and armchair.] [Illustration: Figure 37.--_A_, Dining table appropriate for log cabin; _B_, book rack and hod.] [Illustration: Figure 38.--Plan for making an armchair suitable for log residence.] [Illustration: Figure 39.--Plan for making an upright chair and stool.] [Illustration: Figure 40.--Plan for making a double bed for log residence.] Bed and Bunk Birch or well-seasoned lodgepole or eastern pine is suitable for making a bed or bunk. In making a bed (fig. 40) the crosspieces should impale the corner posts tightly; the joints should be glued and toe-nailed from below. Do not cut the side or end pieces until the bedspring has been measured and then allow for a slight play in both directions in setting the angle irons, in order to facilitate the insertion and removal of the mattress. Use 14- by 3-inch carriage bolts to fasten the angle irons to the wood frame. Figure 40 is a plan for making a double bed 5 for a single bed, reduce the width accordingly. A double-deck bunk is made in much the same way as a bed (fig. 41). [Illustration: Figure 41.--Plan for building a double-deck bunk.] [Illustration: Figure 42.--Plan for making a combination chest and buffet.] Chest and Buffet No log residence is complete without furniture for storing clothes. A combination chest and buffet suitable for log cabins can be made from well-seasoned lodgepole or eastern pine, tamarack, or birch (fig. 42). The ends, doors, shelves, and drawer fronts should be cut from No. 2 tongue-and-groove commercial pine lumber. Settee A settee can be made from well-seasoned pine or birch (fig. 43). Join the corner poles to the slab frame and rail with mortise-and-tenon joints; then anchor the joints by means of 3/8- by 6 -inch lag screws. Fasten the arms to the corner poles with 3/8- by 5-inch carriage bolts and to the slab support with 3/8- by 4-inch lag screws. Use 3/8- by 3-inch carriage bolts to fasten the slab support to the frame. The 1- by 2-inch hardwood crosspieces should be securely fastened at the top ends and notched into the legs at the bottom ends, held by 2-inch wood screws, driven into place at an angle. Back slats should be mortised and tenoned to the rail and frame. The cushions should be the filler type, without springs if so desired, and covered with homespun fabric. [Illustration: Figure 43.--Plan for making a living-room settee.] [Illustration: Figure 44.--Dining table plan.] [Illustration: Figure 45.--Plan for making benches.] Dining Table Peeled pine or birch is ideal material for building a dining table (fig. 44). Make a tight saddle joint between _B_ and the legs. Cross poles to impale the legs tightly. Notch _E_ for the cross poles. Upper surface of _C_ should be slab-faced and fitted between _D_ and cross poles, all rigidly braced together. Top pieces of tables should be doweled at places indicated in the drawing with 1/2- by 4-inch wood dowels, glued and clamped to insure tight joints. Notch top pieces A 1-inch deep to receive _B_ and _D_. Top outside edges of _A_, _C,_ and _E_ should be hewed. [Illustration: Figure 46.--Plan for a book rack.] Table, Bench, Book Rack, and Wood Hod Well-seasoned lodgepole or eastern pine, tamarack, cedar, or birch are suitable for benches (fig. 45). The joints should be glued. Countersink any screws, then conceal the heads with false wooden dowel-like plugs. If the furniture is to be painted, use plastic wood. A book rack may be made of the same material used for the bench, except cedar, which is unsuitable (fig. 46). The sides and bottom shelf should be rabbeted and thoroughly glued. The two intermediate shelves can be made adjustable by boring 3 holes in each side-piece 2 inches apart, above and below the position shown for the shelves in figure 46, into which loose wooden pins may be inserted for their support. Screw the top in place, countersink screwheads and insert wood cover plugs or false dowels for concealment where stained finish is used. If painted, plastic wood may be used. [Illustration: Figure 47.--Plan for a fireplace wood hod.] A fireplace wood hod (fig. 47) may be made of wood and metal. Use well-seasoned lodgepole or eastern pine, tamarack, or birch. Make a tight cradle joint between horizontal and vertical side-pieces, using 14- by 2-inch carriage bolts except that by 3-inch lag screws should be used for fastening the lower side-pieces and bottom. Secure the wrought-iron handle to each side toppiece with 3- by 1-1/2-inch carriage bolts. The wood sides should have hewed edges of 3/4 inch minimum thickness. [Illustration: Figure 48.--Floor plan for a four-room log residence.] BUILDING PLANS Selection of the site and preparation of building plans varies with individual taste. In choosing a location one must consider availability of transportation, shopping centers, water supply, sewage disposal, electric facilities, and kindred factors. [Illustration: Figure 49.--Floor plan for a four-room log residence with somewhat different orientation than that shown in figure 48.] Before undertaking construction it may be desirable to consult an architect or competent builder to make sure that (1) your desires are satisfied with respect to the necessary accommodations; (2) rules and regulations enforced by local authorities will be observed; and (3) provisions are made for installing telephone, electricity, water, and plumbing facilities. Failure to take these precautions may necessitate costly changes after construction has begun. Plans for suitable four-room log residences are given in figures 48 and 49, and for a five-room structure in figure 50. Figure 51 shows the layout of a United States Forest Service two-room guard cabin adaptable for summer residence use. [Illustration: Figure 50.--Floor plan for a five-room log residence, including three bedrooms, living-room, kitchen, and two porches.] [Illustration: Figure 51.--U. S. Forest Service two-room fireguard cabin adaptable for summer residence use.] ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Additional useful information on building log cabins may be obtained from the following publications: UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FIREPLACES AND CHIMNEYS. Farmers' Bul. 1889, 52 pp., illus. 1940. PROTECTION OF LOG CABINS, RUSTIC WORK, AND UNSEASONED WOOD FROM INJURIOUS INSECTS. Farmers' Bul. 1582, 20 pp., illus. 1929. USE OF LOGS AND POLES IN FARM CONSTRUCTION. Farmers' Bul. 1660, 26 pp., illus. 1931. OTHER SOURCES LOG BUILDINGS. Wis. Agr. Col. Ext. Stencil Cir. 158, 39 pp., illus. 1940. LOG CABIN CONSTRUCTION. A. B. Bowman. Mich. State Col. Ext. Bul. 222, 54 pp., illus. 1941. LOG CABINS AND COTTAGES; HOW TO BUILD AND FURNISH THEM. W. A. Bruette, ed. 96 pp., illus. New York. THE REAL LOG CABIN. C. D. Aldrich. 278 pp., illus. 1934. New York. SHELTERS, SHACKS, AND SHANTIES. D. C. Beard. 243 pp., illus 1932. New York. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1954 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office Washington 25, D. C. -- Price 25 cents * * * * * TO KEEP THE TREES GROWING Here in the United States we are cutting trees faster than new ones are growing for the future. And because science is showing us how to use wood better and in new ways we are likely to want more trees in the future than we use today. In fact we must double the annual growth of usable wood. This can't be done easily or quickly. It will require decades of good forestry. So we must take steps now-- To protect all our forests well from fire, insects, and disease; To stop wasteful and destructive cutting; To keep plenty of trees of all sizes growing to replace those we cut; To restore commercial tree growth on millions of acres of forests that have been badly treated or burned; To give farmers and other small owners more help in growing, harvesting, and marketing their tree crops; To put wild land into public forests when private owners cannot take care of it or the public interest calls for special treatment. * * * * * Transcriber Notes All illustrations were moved so as to not split paragraphs. 
49581	----	[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH, FROM THE EAST.] THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF OXFORD A DESCRIPTION OF ITS FABRIC AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE EPISCOPAL SEE BY THE REV. PERCY DEARMER, M.A. WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: Arms of the See] LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, 1899 First Published, April, 1897. Second Edition, Revised, April, 1899. GENERAL PREFACE. This series of monographs has been planned to supply visitors to the great English Cathedrals with accurate and well illustrated guide books at a popular price. The aim of each writer has been to produce a work compiled with sufficient knowledge and scholarship to be of value to the student of archæology and history, and yet not too technical in language for the use of an ordinary visitor or tourist. To specify all the authorities which have been made use of in each case would be difficult and tedious in this place. But amongst the general sources of information which have been almost invariably found useful are:--firstly, the great county histories, the value of which, especially in questions of genealogy and local records, is generally recognised; secondly, the numerous papers by experts which appear from time to time in the transactions of the antiquarian and archæological societies; thirdly, the important documents made accessible in the series issued by the Master of the Rolls: fourthly, the well-known works of Britton and Willis on the English Cathedrals; and lastly, the very excellent series of Handbooks, to the Cathedrals, originated by the late Mr. John Murray, to which the reader may in most cases be referred for fuller detail, especially in reference to the histories of the respective sees. GLEESON WHITE. E.F. STRANGE. _Editors of the Series._ AUTHOR'S PREFACE. For one who has learnt the best of what he knows within Christ Church walls it has been very pleasant to gather these notes of the Cathedral's history and architecture. Moreover, I am less remorseful than I might be at adding to the world's overcrowded library, because certain recent discoveries in the Cathedral have thrown the best of the old books out of date, and made it necessary for some one to weave together the older and the later knowledge. My indebtedness, therefore, is not only to former labourers in this field, but especially to the author of these discoveries, Mr J. Park Harrison, who roused my enthusiasm in the old days, and now has most generously helped me with his advice, and allowed me to incorporate in these chapters the substance of his own papers. To these pamphlets I would refer any who wish to go to the fountainhead for the account of the investigations, and especially I may mention two: "The Pre-Norman Date of the Choir and some of the Stone-work of Oxford Cathedral," and the "Account of the Discovery of the Remains of three Apses at Oxford Cathedral" (Oxford: Frowde, 24 and 23 pp.). I must also express my thanks for the kindness and help of Professor York Powell, and of Mr W. Francis, the senior verger, and to Messrs Carl Norman & Co. of Tunbridge Wells, Mr W. Giles, Mr Park Harrison, and Mr R. Phené Spiers, F.R.I.B.A., for the loan of and permission to reproduce various drawings and photographs. PERCY DEARMER. CONTENTS. PAGE History of the Cathedral 3 Description of the Exterior 27 Spire and Tower 28 On the North Side 32 The Saxon Foundations 33 Cloister 37 Chapter House 39 Bell Tower 43 Tom Tower 44 College Buildings 47 Description of the Interior 49 Nave 51 Monuments of the Nave 57 Organ 58 Pulpit 58 Tower 58 Aisles of Nave and Transepts 62 Glass in Aisles 63 North Transept 65 Glass in Transepts 67 South Transept 67 St. Lucy's Chapel 70 Monuments of Transept and Chapel 71 Choir 72 East End 78 Reredos 79 High Altar 80 South Choir Aisle 81 Monuments 81 North Choir Aisle 83 Shrine of St. Frideswide 84 Lady Chapel 88 "Watching Chamber" 89 Monuments in Lady Chapel 91 Glass in the Aisles 97 Latin Chapel 102 Glass in Latin Chapel 105 History of the Foundation 109 St. Frideswide 109 The Priory 114 College and Cathedral 118 The Diocese of Oxford 126 Oseney 126 List of the Bishops 128 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Christ Church from the East _Frontispiece_ Arms of the See _Title_ The Roof of the Choir 2 The Cathedral at the End of the Seventeenth Century 5 Christ Church from the Garden of the Canon of the 2nd Stall, 1857 10 Christ Church in the Eighteenth Century 11 The Tower and Spire 29 Early Saxon Arches 33 Plan of recently excavated Saxon Arches 34 Conjectural Plan of Early Saxon Church 35 Doorway of Chapter-House 39 Corbel in Chapter-House 40 Boss in Chapter-House 41 Choir, from the Old Cemetery 42 Tom Tower 44 Western Entrance and Bell Tower 45 Plan 52 Early English Moulding 54 Nave and Choir, looking East 55 Pulpit 58 Choir and Nave, looking West 59 From the North Transept 66 Clerestory Window in the South Transept 69 Third Capital of the Choir 72 Capitals of the Choir 73 Tracery of the Roof 77 Lady Montacute's Tomb 91 Ornament from a Tomb 95 The "St. Cecilia" Window 99 Window in the Latin Chapel 103 Section of the Interior before the Restorations 107 The Exterior in 1857 113 The Interior before the Restorations 123 Arms of the College 136 [Illustration: THE ROOF OF THE NAVE. (FROM A DRAWING BY R. PHENÉ SPIERS, F.R.I.B.A.)] CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING. The "Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford" has had a somewhat unfortunate history. Built for the small monastery of St. Frideswide, with no thought of any ampler destination, it was in the sixteenth century raised to the rank of a cathedral, just after it had been reduced in size by the destruction of the bays of the nave, and sunk out of sight among a mass of college buildings. Nor was this all the indignity it suffered; for it had also to do duty as the chapel of the new academic foundation which Wolsey established, and very soon the cathedral was forgotten in the college chapel. So neglected was it that Britton wrote at the beginning of the present century--"It is very common for visitors, and even those of rather refined and critical minds, to leave Oxford without examining the building now under notice." A century earlier Browne Willis had been content to make the astounding observation: "'Tis truly no elegant structure." The first church on this site was that built by St. Frideswide, "The Lady," as she was afterwards called in Oxford, and her father Didan, about the year 727. The story of this saint, which no visitor to her church should omit to read, will be found in our chapter on the History of the Foundation. A contemporary of the Venerable Bede, she was one of those noble and devoted souls who (as Dr. Jessopp reminds us) made Anglo-Saxon monasticism the brightest spot in the history of English community-life. The monks and nuns of that period were in fact missionaries, who spread the Christian faith among the half-civilised _pagani_, or country-folk; and, by the wise method of planting themselves in remote districts, and quietly living the gospel they preached, touched the hearts, and won the souls, of their rough neighbours. Thus, without the use of force, without even the exercise of royal authority, says Professor Freeman, the whole of England had, by the time of the birth of St. Frideswide (c. 700), accepted the Christian faith. But the religion of the country districts must have still been of a very untutored description; and St. Frideswide was one of those who spread in the South, just at the time when Mercia was the paramount power in England, the finer civilisation which had already established itself in the North, and produced kings like Edwin, saints like Aidan, and poets like Caedmon. Whatever may be the authority of the legends which gathered about her name, it is certain that she gave up her high estate, "devoted herself and all her worldly goods to the service of Christ and her poor brethren," refused the offer of a royal marriage, escaped the persecutions of her suitor, "and finally died in the odour of sanctity, blessed by the poor and ignorant people to whom she had devoted her troubled life." Of the place where she established the little church, part of which can still be seen in the walls of the cathedral, Dr. Liddell, the late Dean, thus writes:-- "Meadows unbroken by human habitations or human cultivation, a river wandering through them as it listed, unbarred by locks, or weirs, or mills, the hills down to their margin clothed in primeval forest. The bank of gravel which still slopes down to what we call Christ Church Meadow, offered a dry and pleasant site; the river supplied fish for the inmates of the new convent; the Trill-mill stream bears testimony by its name to the fact that its water was in early times, perhaps the earliest, used to turn the wheel which ground their corn; the neighbouring forests supplied abundant wood for fuel, as well as game for food, and acorns for the swine; the rich meadows of the valley furnished pasture to the flocks and herds. In those days, no doubt, the existence of such a peaceful community exercised a humanising and softening influence over the rude thanes and their clansmen and serfs, who had as yet perhaps hardly heard the name of Christ." [Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AT THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (_from an old engraving_).] Our next glimpse of the church is a terrible one. Despairing of beating back the Danes, Ethelred the Unready gave the mad and treacherous order for the Massacre of St. Brice's Day, 1002. "Urged by secret orders from the king," says Mr. J.R. Green, "the West Saxons rose on St. Brice's Day, and pitilessly massacred the Danes scattered defencelessly among them. The tower of St. Frideswide, in which those of Oxford had taken refuge, was burnt with them to the ground." This account is touched up by Mr. Andrew Lang with a little local colour:--"We are tempted to think of a low grey twilight above that wet land suddenly lit up with fire; of the tall towers of St. Frideswyde's Minster flaring like a torch across the night; of poplars waving in the same wind that drives the vapour and smoke of the holy place down on the Danes who have taken refuge there, and there stand at bay against the English and the people of the town." A finishing touch comes from the old chronicler, William of Malmesbury:--"Into the tower of St. Frideswyde they were driven, and as men could not drive them thence, the tower was fired, and they perished in the burning." This closes the first era in the history of the church: the old _ecclesiola_ of Didan and his daughter was gutted by the fire, and its roofs and furniture destroyed. Indeed, until lately it was held that the whole building was of wood, and perished therefore with the tower and roof, no vestige of it remaining for later times. But the recent investigations of Mr. J. Park Harrison, an archaeologist of remarkable devotion and insight, have proved that the east wall of the eighth century church, with two of its primitive arches, still remains, a venerable relic of times past, as part of the wall of the cathedral; while the foundations of the three apses, into which the three low arches once led, have been discovered in the garden to the north-east of the church (see pp. 33, 34). So did Anthony à Wood, when in the seventeenth century he wrote of "the antientist buildings" as "on the east and north side of the church," speak more truth than even he himself was aware. After the slaughter of St. Brice's Day, King Ethelred made a vow that he would rebuild St. Frideswide's church. And well did he keep it; if in 1004 he built the splendid church which forms the main part of the cathedral as we know it to-day, sparing the more sacred part of the rude old building, it may be, because of the veneration in which everything connected with St. Frideswide was held. His charter contains the following sentence:-- "In the year of our Lord 1004, in the 2nd indiction, and in the 25th year of my reign, according to the disposal of God's providence, I Ethelred ruling over the whole of Albion, have with liberty of charters by royal authority and for the love of the Almighty, established a certain monastery situated in the city which is called Oxoneford, where the body of St. Frideswide reposes." And here another question of the deepest architectural interest occurs. This church of Ethelred's was of a size and magnificence until lately considered not to have been attainable in England till many years after the Conquest. It was therefore taken for granted that the church was wholly rebuilt in the years 1160-1180, and that Ethelred's work was as entirely lost as Didan's was supposed to be. Dr. James Ingram, President of Trinity, had, it is true, written in the thirties to prove that the cathedral was Saxon, but, great authority as he was, he wrote at a time when architectural history was in its infancy; and at the restoration of 1869, Sir Gilbert Scott was content to write--"Dr. Ingram evinces great anxiety to prove that traces of his (Ethelred's) work still exist, but I need hardly say there is not a shadow of foundation for such a supposition." However, a greater authority than either of the preceding showed that the tide of knowledge was turning against the accepted view. Professor Freeman in his "History of Architecture" wrote that the cathedral might be "in the main portions of the fabric a monument of the later days of Saxon architecture," and that "the evidence between the conflicting statements which would assign it, some to the days of Æthelred II., others to those of Henry I., seems very evenly balanced;" in the former case, he said, "we have a complete minster of comparatively small size, but of the fullest cathedral type, belonging to the early part of the eleventh century." Mr. J.H. Parker, himself, who had been the chief authority for the theory that the Saxon architects built almost entirely in wood, at length changed his mind; and even went so far as to say, in the fourth edition of his "A.B.C. of Gothic Architecture," that "the Saxons, at the date of the conquest, appear to have been more advanced in the fine arts, such as sculpture, than the Normans," that "their work was more highly finished, had more ornament," and that their masonry was more finely jointed than that of the Normans. Following up these admissions, Mr. Park Harrison carried on the most thorough investigations, examining almost every stone in the building, investigating Saxon MSS., and travelling over England and Normandy for the purposes of comparison. As a result he succeeded in convincing Professor Freeman, Professor Westwood, and other experts in Anglo-Saxon archæology, that Ethelred's church was still in the main extant; and at this moment his theory has a good many supporters. Without committing ourselves irrevocably to Mr. Park Harrison's conclusions, some of which are naturally not so well established as others, we may, in the majority of cases, accept them, at least provisionally. Many allusions to them will occur in this book; and here, therefore, it is well to say that, ingenious and striking as they are, many high authorities are still unconvinced, and that we cannot venture to predict how much of them may be damaged or maintained by future research. In this place the following summary of the evidence will suffice:-- 1. There is no document or anything tending to show that the original fabric, as restored and enlarged by Ethelred, was ever rebuilt on a new plan. 2. Several of the choir capitals differ essentially in their ornamentation from any others in the cathedral; but resemble very closely the ornamental work in illuminated MSS. of Ethelred's time. They should consequently belong to the church as enlarged by him in 1004 (p. 72). 3. The junction of the eleventh century, or Ethelred's work with the later work, is clearly visible at the north and south-west corners of the choir; and the abaci, though resembling each other, are of different thickness. The ashlar work is different, and the courses are not continuous (p. 61). 4. The manner in which the Norman vaulting shafts are inserted in the north choir aisle implies that vaulting was not contemplated in the original plan of the church, and that the aisle was built at a date when vaulting ribs were not in use (p. 33). 5. The introduction of attached shafts in the tower piers shows that additions were made, about 1160, to earlier work with roll mouldings corresponding with those of the choir: similar proofs of alteration are to be seen in the imposts of the tower and transept arches, which have been cut through to admit late Norman capitals (p. 58). 6. There is also good evidence that the Norman Presbytery is not part of the original choir, or the earliest part of the church, as was assumed, but probably stands on the site of an apse which belonged to Ethelred's building (p. 79). 7. The worn condition of the choir capitals can only be accounted for by the state of disrepair into which the church had fallen by the middle of the twelfth century (p. 74). [Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH FROM THE GARDEN OF THE CANON OF THE 2ND STALL, 1857.] The reason is not far to seek for the unusual magnificence of Ethelred's plans. His brother-in-law was Richard II., Duke of Normandy, whose fame as an art-patron and church-builder was spread so far that, according to the Chronicles of Fontenelle, "bishops and clergy, abbots and monks," travelled from all parts, from Greece and Armenia, to visit him, and William of Jumièges speaks of him as producing a kind of renaissance in his country. It so happens that one bay remains in the abbey church of Fécamp of the original building commenced by Duke Richard in 1001, just before Ethelred began his operations; and the capitals in this bay are ornamented with the same curious twining foliage that is found in the choir at Oxford. It is more than likely, then, that the Saxon king sought assistance from the cultured court of Richard-le-bon; the Queen Emma may well have been anxious to have the church rebuilt on a scale that would accord with the monastic buildings of her own land; and so important was the work considered, that King Ethelred (as we learn from his charter) had contributions given him for carrying it on by his whole people. [Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.] But more troubles were to follow, for Ethelred had yet to pay the penalty for the massacre of St. Brice's Day, and his "long reign of utter misgovernment" was interrupted in 1013, when the heathen Viking Sweyn drove him out of his kingdom to take refuge in Richard's court in Normandy. The exile of the king, and the triumph of the Danes, who besieged and took Oxford in the same year, must have interrupted the work there for a time; and a remarkable break of joint between the masonry of the choir and the south transept bears silent witness to the dislocation of the Anglo-Saxon rule (p. 61). When Sweyn died in 1014, Ethelred returned, and for three years, with the help of his noble son Edmund Ironside, held Canute in check. At this time the work at St. Frideswide's was probably resumed, the king being doubtless anxious to complete the fulfilment of his vow at a time when he sorely needed the divine assistance; and a certain difference in the character of the capitals and foliage in the transepts points to their having been built at this time, for they bear traces of oriental influence similar to that in the church at Bernay which Duke Richard was building in the year when Ethelred was with him in exile, and the eastern monks were flocking to his court in Normandy. But it is probable that, what with the strain of the terrible war, and the constant drain of the Danegelt, the work was never finished according to Ethelred's complete design, for he died in 1016, and his son Edmund Ironside only reigned for seven months. Nor have we any record that anything further was done under Canute or Edward the Confessor. Though it is not at all improbable that Canute continued the work, for we know that he restored many monasteries which had been injured or destroyed by his father, being very fond of the monks; and that the Witenagemot met several times at Oxford during his reign. His marriage to Ethelred's widow Emma, also, placed him in the same relationship to the Norman court as Ethelred himself. The church must have been in use during this time; for we read that in the reign of Edward the Confessor troubles arose owing to the substitution of Regulars for the Secular Canons. Under King Harold the Seculars were restored, and, says Anthony Wood, "It was not long after this but that, whether by the negligence of the Seculars or the continuall disturbance of the expelled Regulars, it was almost utterly forsaken and relinqueshed, and the more especially because of that troublesome warre betweene King Harold and William the Conqueror,--a few persons all that while only remaining in it." In this ruinous state it proved a kind of white elephant that no one cared to possess; given first to Abingdon Abbey, and then to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, it was at last handed over to Henry I., who made Guimond his chaplain Prior. Although the whole church has been sometimes attributed to Prior Guimond, it is probable that he was too much taken up with restoring order to devote himself to architecture. And, as there is no suggestion in history that Ethelred's church was destroyed, so there is no mention of any building by Guimond. William of Malmesbury, his contemporary, praises his piety and learning (_excellentis literaturæ et non aspernandæ religionis_), but is totally silent about architectural talents. Besides, the establishment was at that time too impoverished for anything of the kind, many of the lands and revenues having been alienated, as we learn from the Domesday Book. If Guimond built at all, he would have had enough to do, we may imagine, in adapting the tumble-down monastic buildings for their occupation by canons regular. Sir G.G. Scott attributes the Norman doorway into the chapter-house to him; and he may have begun the restoration by putting a roof on the old church; for the weathered condition of some of the choir capitals bears out the historians who tell us that in the eleventh century the place was become ruinous. Robert of Cricklade, called Canutus, another excellent man, was next prior. He ruled from 1141 to 1180. There was a copy of one of his works, says Dr. Ingram, in the library of Balliol College in Leland's time. In 1158 Cricklade obtained a confirmation of the privileges of the priory from Pope Hadrian IV. (Nicholas Brakespear, the English pope) who wore the tiara from 1154 to 1159. It was probably at this time that the restoration of Ethelred's church was begun, for the monks would almost certainly not have undertaken such extensive works until their property was secured them. Robert of Cricklade did not build a new church, but it was probably he who restored Ethelred's church on the old plan, rebuilding those portions of the walls that required it, and inserting most of the later Norman work, especially the clerestory and presbytery. Much of the earlier work appears to have been imitated at this time, as is known to have been the case elsewhere when enlarging or rebuilding a church; and some of the carved work was used again. Cricklade appears, from architectural evidence, to have left most of the old pillars, but he rebuilt two of those in the nave, and reduced the girth of the rest. The restoration must have been pretty well finished by 1180, for in that year the relics of St. Frideswide were translated "from an obscure to a more noted place in the church," by the new prior Philip, who himself wrote a book, "_De Miraculis S. Frideswydæ_." The "obscure" place was doubtless the southernmost of the three early Saxon apses, recently discovered outside the east wall of the north choir aisle (see p. 37). So important a ceremony could not have taken place till the church was fit for the great company that assembled there; for the translation was regarded as an event of national interest,--King Henry II. possibly, and the Archbishop of Canterbury certainly, being present, with many other prelates and nobles. This occasion may have also been the inauguration of Oxford University, since seven years afterwards we come upon the first mention of regular students. Here is Wood's account of this the first translation:-- "After they were meet, and injoyned fasting and prayers were past, as also those ceremonies that are used at such times was with all decency performed, then those bishops that were appointed, accompanied with Alexio, the pope's legat for Scotland, went to the place where she was buried, and opening the sepulchre, took out with great devotion the remainder of her body that was left after it had rested there 480 yeares, and with all the sweet odours and spices imaginable to the great rejoycing of the multitude then present mingled them amongst her bones and laid them up in a rich gilt coffer made and consecrated for that purpose, and placed it on the north side of the quire, somewhat distant from the ground, and inclosed it with a partition from the sight hereafter of the vulgar." The fame of her miracles spread over all England, and multitudes came to be healed, many of whom went away whole and rejoicing. But the troubles of the Priory were not yet over. During the priorate of Philip in 1190, a great fire broke out in Oxford, which destroyed a large part of the city. St. Frideswide's did not escape, and, though the church itself does not seem to have suffered materially, it is probable that the monastic buildings were much injured, the chapter-house and cloisters among them; for the old Norman doorway has, through all the changes of seven centuries, borne the red marks of the fire, and bears them as unmistakably to-day. This mishap did not mark an era in the architecture of the church; for nothing can with certainty be pointed to as the work of the last decade of the twelfth century; nor indeed do we find that any important work was undertaken till, well into the thirteenth century, the spire was added. The monks seem to have patched up the ruined chapter-house as best they could, for it was not till about the middle of the thirteenth century that the present beautiful room was built. About this time the second bay of what is now the Latin Chapel was also added. It seems certain now that the Lady Chapel, though it was undoubtedly vaulted, and its pillars cut into Early English shafts, was not built for the first time at this period. Part of the wall between it and the Latin Chapel remains in all its primitive roughness, while there is no sign of a wall between it and the north choir aisle. Its east wall is even older, for it contains one of the eighth century arches already alluded to. In 1289, Robert de Ewelme being prior, the relics of St. Frideswide were again translated. "The old coffer," says the Oseney Chronicle, "of St. Fritheswyda was translated, and placed in a new and more precious one in the same church, and near the place where the old one had stood." Its marble base has recently been discovered, and replaced in what seems to have been its old position. The beautiful northernmost chapel, called the Latin Chapel, was added in the fourteenth century, the single Early English bay being incorporated, and the north wall of the Lady Chapel further opened out, for this purpose. Some of the Norman windows were also altered to Decorated. The Norman windows at the east end were replaced by a large five-light window, which was spoilt in the seventeenth century, and ultimately removed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Decorated windows of three lights were also placed at the east ends of the choir aisles, and a four-light window in the Lady Chapel. These all went in the seventeenth century, but the beautiful window in St. Lucy's Chapel survived. All the fourteenth century work belongs to a rather late division of the Decorated style. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the Perpendicular style began to spread over the church. Besides the windows of the nave and north transept aisles, the clerestory of the choir was remodelled to carry the elaborate vaulting, which was probably also added in this century, and not by Wolsey as has been supposed, though the work may have been completed in his time. The similarity of the vaulting to that of the Divinity School in Oxford enables us to fix the date pretty accurately at 1480. Another characteristic feature of the church was made at this time, to wit, the fine chantrey tomb, called the Watching Chamber, but very probably the third and last "shrine" of the patron saint. The cloisters were also reconstructed, and, in order to make room for their eastern side, the western aisle of the south transept was destroyed. We are able to fix the date of the great north window of the north transept, and of the commencement of vaulting in its northern bay, because they were paid for out of a bequest of a monk, James Zouch, who died in 1503, and is buried under the window. One may conjecture that the whole of the church would have been vaulted in a style similar to that of the choir, if the dissolution of the priory had not come, and left this one bay as a pathetic little protest against the sweeping reconstructions of Cardinal Wolsey. Indeed Wolsey, who in 1524 created Christ Church as a college, did nothing but harm to Christ Church as a church. It used to be thought that he had thrown the vault over the choir, and even that he had built the palpably early English spire!--an idea which throws a curious light upon the architectural knowledge of our grandfathers. But, alas for his reputation, the only work connected with the church that can with certainty be attributed to him is the destruction of one half of the nave. For, in order to build the great quadrangle now known as "Tom Quad," he demolished its three western bays, and was apparently only prevented from carting away the whole church by his sudden fall from the royal favour in 1529. His scheme for "Cardinal College," as Christ Church was at first called, was one of extreme magnificence; and he began--much to the amusement of Oxford--with the splendid kitchen, still in daily use. Tom Quad gives one some idea of the scale on which he formed his plans: it, however, has never been properly finished, as it is too large and too much inhabited to be fit to receive the cloister for which it was designed. The real cloisters are of much more modest dimensions. Wolsey destroyed one side of them in order to build the college Hall. In justice, however, to Wolsey it must be stated that he commenced to build a new chapel along the north side of Tom Quad, which, judging by the foundations that some draining operations in the canon's gardens have recently disclosed, would have rivalled the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, in size, and have been about 100 feet longer than the actual length of the cathedral. To this the Aubrey MSS. (written about 1670) refer:--"Ye foundations of that famous begun Chapel or Cathedral of Cardinal Wolsey which went towards the blue Boare in Oxford and pulled down by Dean Fell about 1671." Aubrey also mentions that the height of the walls of this chapel was seven feet at the time of Wolsey's disgrace. The west end ran in a line with the front of the octagonal turrets in St. Aldate's Street, and the walls reached nearly to Fell's passage into Peckwater. To the sixteenth century belong also the flat wooden roofs of the nave and transepts, and perhaps the concealment of the lantern story of the tower. The Reformation, apart from the usual destruction of altars, furniture, plate, and ornamental work generally, is chiefly remembered in the history of the church by the demolition of St. Frideswide's shrine. Anthony à Wood says of the third shrine that, "being adored till the dissolution of the religious houses, it was then, 30 Henry VIII. [A.D. 1538], amongst others, taken down, and all the offerings conveyed into the King's Treasury." We give an account of the curious incidents connected with the demolition in our description of the shrine itself. An inventory taken in the last year of Henry VIII.'s reign is interesting for the glimpse it gives us of the rich ornaments which even then survived, and must have made so vast a difference in the appearance of the church. They were confiscated, no doubt, as being "monuments tending to idolatrie and popish or devill's service, crosses, censars, and such lyke fylthie stuffe," to quote the curious phrases used by Bishop Horne of the plate of Trinity College. There were eight altars in the aisles and body of the church, in addition to the high altar. The furniture then remaining of the high altar and choir was catalogued (only that the spelling was obscurer) as follows:--"Upon the high altar a here-cloth, 40s. _Item_, two altar-cloths, one of olde diaper, and the other of fine linen cloth. _Item_, a mass-book and a desk. _Item_, a great sacring bell. _Item_, 4 high latten candlesticks. _Item_, a canopy with a pix of copper. _Item_, 4 desks with two cloths of old silk. _Item_, a pair of organs, with a turned chain to the same. _Item_, 2 forms. _Item_, a canopy over the Dean's head of old silk. _Item_, 15 antiphoners and 9 grayells." After some more books comes:--"_Item_, a foot-cloth for the high altar of old tapestry." All the hangings of the side altars are enumerated, besides their vestments, candlesticks, etc. Thus the south choir aisle had "4 hangings for above and beneath the altar, whereof two of white satin Bruges, and the other two of yellow and red," and two altar-cloths; St. Lucy's Chapel had "two altar-cloths of old diaper, two hangings for the altar for above and beneath, the one of old needle-work, and the other of buckram"; the four altars on the north of the choir were hung with "dornaxe," diaper, yellow and white baundkin. The description of some of the fourteen copes sounds very beautiful, for instance:--"2 copes of red silk, woven with sunbeams of gold;" "one cope of blue silk, woven with flower de luce, roses, and crowns of gold, and a whole suit to the same." There were also copes of purple and red, branched with gold, of red and white flowers, bordered with clouds, of red and green, of velvet and baundkin, and chamlet; and many suits of vestments besides; and tunicles, albs, and amices for the choristers. The inventory also contains, among other items, heavy silver bowls and other vessels belonging to the "house plate," and the "church plate," which we here give in the original spelling:--"A pixe of the ymage of God, gilte, weing 33 oz. _It'm._ a highe standing pixe w'th a cover gilte, weing 23 oz. dim. _It'm._ a crosse w'th Mary and John and a fote to the same gilte, weing 114 oz. _It'm._ a ship [incense-boat] and a spone gilte, weing 12 oz. dim. _It'm._ two bassings parcell gilte, weing 92 oz. _It'm._ a halliwater [holy water] bokett, and a sprinkell, whitt syluer, weing 33 oz., 2 greatt sensors, and a litle sensor, whit syluer, weing 170 oz. _It'm._ two crowetts [cruets] of whit syluer, weing 8 oz. _It'm._ a little paxe gilte, weing 3 oz.; 4 chalesses, gilte, w'th patentts, weing 95 oz. _It'm._ 3 chalesses w'th patentt, whit syluer, weing 50 oz. _It'm._ a litle cros, parcell gilte, weing 51 oz. _It'm._ a crismatory gilte, not weighted. _It'm._ 2 gospells, plated w'th syluer of thonesyde [the one side], not weighted. _It'm._ two maces for the preuelege, plated w'th syluer vppon yeron [iron], not weighted. _It'm._ two virge roddes, plated w'th syluer vppon yeron, not weighted; 4 rectors staves, the haadds of syluer wherof two gilte, not weighted. _It'm._ two stavis for the crosse, plated with syluer, not weighted." When, in 1546, St. Frideswide's became the cathedral church of the four year old diocese of Oxford, the momentous change in its character left no mark upon its architecture. The great alterations in the fabric and fittings had either happened already or were yet to come. During the deanery of Brian Duppa in 1630, the unhappy church suffered a sweeping restoration, which well-nigh destroyed its ecclesiastical character altogether. As Dean Duppa was a cultured man himself, and wrote a life of Michael Angelo, his work was all the more disastrous,--a mere Philistine would have probably been content to let well alone. To begin with, he, "_being minded to adorn it_," says Wood, "did first take down all the old stalls in the choir, and in their places put up those that now are," those great ugly pews, that is, which Dean Liddell removed. Then, in laying down his new pavement, he removed many of the old monuments, "having most of them," continues the old antiquary, "Saxon inscriptions on them; which being looked upon by the dean and canons as old superfluous stuff, and unhandsome to be mixed with their new pavement, they did cause them to be thrown out of the church, as also those out of the cloister." The remaining monuments he moved to the aisles, having, with two exceptions, "duly deprived them of their brasses." Thus was a priceless record of the priory's history lost to us. Most of his work has during this century been undone; but one memorial of him remains, a valuable historical landmark, and full of the characteristics of its age--the Jonah window at the west of the north aisle of the nave. In order that the windows of the aisles might be "beautified with glass, admirably well performed by the exquisite hand of Abraham Ling, a Dutchman, an. 1634," Brian Duppa and his chapter altered the whilom Perpendicular windows, sawing away "the fine architecture or crustation of those windows," and changing them from three lights with tracery to two plain lights, the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy" being the donor of part of the new glass. The priceless old glass, which had been set up by ancient priors of St. Frideswide's, and contained pictures of the life of "The Lady," besides the arms of many benefactors, was ruthlessly sacrificed. This act of vandalism has led to still more unfortunate reprisals in our own time; for Van Ling's old glass, which had great merits, was taken away at the last restoration, and replaced by some entirely uninteresting modern stuff (to say the least of it), while the tracery was remade into a respectable nineteenth century parody of the original Perpendicular. The amiable and terrible Duppa also ruined the Decorated windows of three lights which terminated the aisles of the choir by converting them into his favourite two-light windows; and the beautiful four-light window of the Lady Chapel was similarly treated. The great north transept window was likewise impoverished in its tracery; and at the end of the seventeenth century the great east window was reduced from five to three lights by the same curious and unaccountable perversion of taste. One more memorial of Dean Duppa defaced the cathedral down to our time. This was the strange arrangement of stone screens by which the eastern chapels were separated from the transepts, and the most romantic feature of the church destroyed. They were particularly offensive, as they finished in a half-circle turned upwards, so that, with the Norman arch above, a complete circle was formed. However, the fine pulpit and organ-screen must be set down to the credit of this period. Dean Duppa's successors signalised themselves, as far as the cathedral is concerned, only by the erection of monuments, some gruesome, and all heavy. Their work for the college was more considerable, and we shall enumerate it in our chapter on the Exterior. A great deal of mischief was done to the painted glass during the Civil War, many of the windows being destroyed, and not one left quite perfect; but otherwise the church escaped pretty well. Indeed, in this orderly country a great deal more damage has been done by lawful authority than by popular riots. Up till Dean Liddell's time the cathedral was in as bad a state as most of the other cathedrals of England. A writer in the "Ecclesiologist" for February 1847 thus bewails its then condition:-- "We now come to the present estate of the cathedral, which is more deplorable than can be imagined. It is really wonderful that the cathedral of an English diocese, and the chapel of one of our greatest colleges, should remain in a condition which would disgrace the meanest hamlet. In the first place, it will hardly be credited by those whose eyes have not witnessed the sacrilege, that a portion of the church is actually desecrated. In so vast a college the hire of a single room cannot be dispensed with, but the House of God must be defiled; a bay of the south transept and one of the adjoining chapels are blocked off to form a residence for the verger. On this subject we can hardly trust ourselves to speak. "The fittings up of the choir are of the most wretched and irreverent description. The stalls are of seventeenth century work, and by no means a favourable specimen: those of the dean and canons are marked by canopies. The episcopal throne is meanness itself, and can hardly be distinguished without a most diligent search: on the prayer-books nearest to it, and nowhere else, are inscribed the words 'Christ-church Chapel,' as if to warn the Bishop off the forbidden ground. Nearly the whole area of the choir between the stalls is filled with benches looking west, and in which kneeling is all but impossible. These are occupied by the overgrown mass of undergraduates, and at the 'canons' prayers' partly by choristers. Further, that not an inch of available space may be lost, an arch on each side is blocked up by a gallery, which at surplice-prayers, when the students and commoners attend, is filled by the choir thus displaced. Finally, behind the stalls are some darksome dens, occupied by women, which greatly encumber the choir aisles. The screen [then blocking up the choir] is a cumbrous piece of work contemporary with the stalls, but of better character: it supports, of course, a vast and unsightly organ. The miserable appearance which is thus produced in this really noble chancel is almost indescribable. The whole seems so narrowed and confined; one feels pent in without the least scope for one's energies. Of the service performed within the degraded choir we can only trust ourselves to say that it is the most slovenly and irreverent that we have ever witnessed in any English cathedral." The stalls seem to have been particularly bad. The "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1856 says that "the choir aisles and the chapels were also excluded from view, and almost from any participation in the service, by the box-like framing, which rose to the height of eleven feet from the paving." Of course, all this had caused serious damage to the architecture: the pillars on the north and south side of the choir were, for instance, _squared_, and their bases cut away; thus mutilated they had been "encased with heavily moulded Italian framing intermixed with some remnants of Jacobean workmanship." But since the fifties the appearance of the cathedral has been completely changed. Dean Liddell began the restoration in 1856, when Mr. John Billing was employed to repair some parts of the walls that had become unsafe, and to remove the galleries and high pews. The work then done was only temporary; the reseating whereby decent accommodation was provided for the whole college was managed out of the old woodwork, not a plank being taken out or carried into the church; the organ was moved for the time into the south transept, so that the choir could be thrown open to the nave, and other work of a simple and necessary character carried through. In 1870, Dean Liddell employed Sir G. Gilbert Scott to carry on the great restoration, whereby very considerable changes were wrought in the fabric itself. On the whole, it has been real restoration, and not destruction: here and there one might have wished that the changes had been less sweeping, or that the renewed carved work had been left unattempted till such time as the dignity of labour in craftsmanship is recovered; but it remains one of the most judicious and successful works of restoration that this not impeccable age has produced. The difficulties to be encountered were very great, for the church had suffered unusually; a certain amount of rebuilding was therefore inevitable, and besides provision had to be made for the church as a college-chapel as well as a cathedral. The restoration was preceded by a report on the condition of the building, which Sir Gilbert Scott drew up in 1869. The following extract shows the "reparation" that was needed:-- "It is fortunately the case that the main walls of the building do not show any symptoms of failure or of weakness. The external stone-work is very unequal in its state of preservation, some parts being very much decayed, while others have suffered in a very small degree. On the whole, however, there can be no doubt that the decay is very extensive, and even some parts which, at first sight, seem tolerably sound, are found on closer examination to be seriously decayed. The eastern parts are, as a rule, better preserved than those facing in other directions, though the southern aisle of the choir is also among the least decayed portions. The tower is generally very severely decayed, but the spire less so, though its lights are very much damaged. The reparation of this wide-spread decay is a work requiring much discrimination and judgment. Every stone which retains ancient work in an intelligible state should be carefully preserved, and only such parts renewed as have become shapeless from decay, or the retention of which would tend to future injury. "Internally, the stone-work generally needs little more than the careful brushing or washing off of the white-wash and the exposure of the original surfaces. This should be effected with extreme care and tenderness, so as not to efface in any degree the original tool-marks or to disturb any ancient wall-painting which may exist. The mutilations which the work has in some places suffered would of course be repaired, as well as any structural defects which may be brought to light." This proves that Gilbert Scott went to work with a full sense of his responsibility, so far as the "reparation" was concerned. With regard to the "restoration," many complicated questions arose, but Scott generally threw his weight on the conservative side, respecting all the alterations which had been effected before "the extinction of our national architecture in the sixteenth century"; and, happily, respecting as well all the good work of a later date. Thus the organ-case and pulpit were spared. Duppa's work was mostly destroyed, his windows being rebuilt according to their former Perpendicular and Decorated designs, with the one interesting exception already mentioned. To make provision for the church's collegiate use, while rendering it at the same time suitable for diocesan purposes, an iron screen was carried round the nave as well as the choir, and the seats of the nave were set lengthways. This arrangement could not well have been bettered: the college is well accommodated without any blocking up of the church, and the choir is conveniently situated in the eastern bay of the nave. The organ at the same time was moved to the west end of the church, where a new bay was made; and thus, while an increased effect of length was given, a screen was provided for the college-chapel, without hiding any of the old work in the nave, and the choir was no longer hidden by the organ. The great Decorated east window, which had been spoilt in the seventeenth century, was, after much deliberation, removed; and, traces being found of a large circular window assumed to be Late Norman, the east end was rebuilt in accordance with the conjectured Norman design,--a bold venture, but a remarkably successful one. At the same time the two Norman windows at the sides of the presbytery were reopened. The bay of the south transept, which had been cut off, and used as a house for the verger, was recovered, and the present vestry built therein, in a style, right no doubt in general plan, but not very successful in detail. The vaulting of the cloister was completed, and, by the happy expedient of building a raised wooden vault in one part, the old chapter-house door was once more fully exposed to view. The division which had entirely spoilt the chapter-house itself was removed; as were also the stone screens which had cut off and defaced the beautiful cluster of north-eastern chapels. The opening of the lantern-story added greatly to the beauty of the interior, but it made it necessary to chime the bells instead of ringing them; and in 1878 they were removed altogether, as their vibration was considered dangerous to the tower, and an admirably contrived belfry built in 1880 over the staircase of the Hall by Mr. Bodley. Scott also constructed the porch which opens into Tom Quad, and affords an entrance to the cathedral at once more dignified and convenient than before. Since Scott's time a good many further improvements have been effected, among which may be mentioned the reredos, the stained glass of Sir Edward Burne Jones, the fitting up of the Latin Chapel and recovery of the easter sepulchre therein, the recovery also of the marble base of the second shrine of St. Frideswide, and of the early Saxon arches hard by. At least it cannot be true now, as it seems to have been fifty years ago, that many persons, visiting Oxford to explore its antiquities, "actually go away without entering the cathedral church, or that undergraduates any longer pass an academical career, content to be aware possibly that Christ Church has its chapel, like other colleges." CHAPTER II. THE EXTERIOR. The peculiar position of Christ Church, as a cathedral which is three parts college chapel, is apparent to the most casual observer, who, passing by the college porter in the gateway of Tom Tower, finds himself in a great open quadrangle with a fine hall on one side, but no sign of a cathedral anywhere, except a spire which seems so far off that it might very well belong to some other college. He may well be struck by that doubtfulness as to any means of exit, which makes most of the colleges appear to the stranger as if they consisted of one quadrangle only. There really seems no way of getting to the cathedral, for the incipient cloisters of Tom Quad stretch in unbroken array round the four points of the compass; and no one could be expected to guess that the two rat-holes at one side of the eastern terrace stand for the west front of a great church. But so it is, and on Sundays a crowd of citizens mingle with the undergraduates in their curious open surplices, and drift across the Quad, past Mercury fountain, leaving no doubt in the mind of the traveller that this is a cathedral church, and he is as free of it as anybody else. There is, indeed, another entrance from the old cloister on the south side, which is public, though mainly convenient to those members of "The House" who dwell in the Old Library and Meadow Buildings; and a third entrance besides, which is, however, the private boon of the Professor of Pastoral Theology. It follows, therefore, that without describing the various college buildings, which are rather outside our province, we can say little about the exterior, except in matters of detail; for there is no close, and the cathedral is thus far from being common property that it is hidden in a rather intricate environment of college buildings and private gardens. But the one feature which in part rises above its misfortunes is the spire. =The Spire.=--Among all the strange domes and steeples which give to the city of Oxford such a unique appearance, this spire of the cathedral is to the architectural eye not the least striking. Very humble in its bearing, it seems to put forward no claim to our attention, and may escape the notice of a hurried traveller; but it has more character and interest than the elaborate spire of the University Church itself. Its very modesty gives it a distinction; were it taller it would be but one among a hundred, but as it is there is no other in England at all like it in the quiet dignity of its low proportions. The first time one sees it one is most struck by its squat appearance; it seems almost to have been built as little more than a convenient stone capping for the tower; and, indeed, each time one returns to Oxford one is impressed afresh by this lowliness; so that one fancies for a moment that it may have subsided a little during one's absence. But it quickly resumes its old dignity--the kind of dignity that one sometimes notices in short people--and every day it seems to grow a little higher. Homely and simple, as befits the crown of a foundation which is called "The House," it wins an almost human place in the affections of those who live near it; and never was a spell so honestly cast, never a friend that bore so well the test of familiarity. And its low proportions are soon accounted for. It is one of the earliest spires (perhaps the very first) ever built in England. Thus it was an experiment in what must have appeared at the time a very hazardous style of building; and that which to us is low, to the men of the thirteenth century must have seemed dangerously lofty. It was a pioneer, and as such needed to be sturdy. We need not then regret that it is not like that of Salisbury; it gives the whole cluster of buildings a look of security, and it causes no anxiety to its guardians. "This spire," wrote Dr. Ingram in 1837, "certainly accords in character with some of the earliest specimens in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, measuring in height about two diameters of its base; and it is remarkable, that the small turrets at the angles of the north transept are made to terminate in pyramidal octagons, similar to those which surmount the angles of the tower. These are the simple prototypes of those exuberant pinnacles, niches, and tabernacles, enriched with crockets and finials, which so profusely embellish the spires and turrets of a later date. A singular specimen of this improved kind of turret is seen on the north side of the cathedral; beneath which is an elegant niche, containing a statue of St. Frideswide." [Illustration: THE TOWER AND SPIRE, FROM THE CLOISTERS.] The lower story of the tower is Norman, or earlier, with later work added. The belfry-stage and the spire are early English. On each side of the lower story can be seen the line of the ancient high roof, destroyed in the Perpendicular period, to the great loss of the exterior effect, which Sir Gilbert Scott was anxious to restore. On either side of the roof-line is a plain window. At each angle a circular turret supports the tower, the turret being reduced in size at the belfry-stage where the Early English work commences, and ornamented with a tall and graceful arcade; an arcade being also carried all round the walls of the belfry-stage, and its central arches pierced for windows. Each turret finishes above the belfry-stage in a pinnacle. "These pinnacles," says Mr. R.J. King, "are modern; but are faithful, or, more truly, servile imitations of the ancient ones; of which not only the original features, but those resulting from the wear and tear of six centuries, have been too exactly copied." The spire itself is octagonal, with circular ribs at the angles; it is of the "broche" form, that is to say, it rises from the exterior of the tower walls, like most others of that period. Its eaves are supported by a corbel-table of pointed arches; and from its cardinal faces project the four spire lights of the same graceful character as the arcading of the belfry-stage. When the upper part of the spire was restored, the beautiful finial of foliage was for some unaccountable reason not reproduced. The old spire point was erected in one of the canon's gardens, where it rests in peace. The tower can best be seen from the cloister, the staircase window in the Library in Peckwater Quad, and the canon's garden on the north side. Of course, there are many distant points of view; but one from the path between the Broad Walk and Merton College gives a better idea of the cathedral as a whole than most. The tower can be ascended from the gallery in the south transept, but it should not be attempted by any but slim persons. The visitor makes his way along the clerestory and round the lantern, which is the first stage of the tower. Having avoided the iron bars which threaten him at every turn, he will have to squeeze through an incredibly small doorway, and then climb up a dark staircase which takes him, not into the belfry, but into the spire. One can only peer into the lower part of the belfry from the shuttered windows on the outside; but as the interior of the spire is open to it, the whole, forming one queer-shaped room, can be seen therefrom. The bells have all gone, as they taxed the strength of the tower, having been originally cast for the larger tower of Oseney Abbey (see p. 43); they are now hung in the new bell-tower over the hall staircase. The belfry-stage can be considered octagonal from the interior, four very short extra sides being formed by the angular turrets, which are chamfered off on the inside. Above these are the squinches which support the spire. Round the arcade which contains the belfry windows runs a passage, made just like the clerestory passage of a church. The whole structure is remarkable for its careful and finished work, the very corbels just above the floor being heavily foliated, as if they were intended to be seen from below. The windows of the spire are interesting for the double plane of tracery which adds to the strength of the spire. The inner tracery resembles that without, with the difference that it has no transom. The transom, by the way, is a rare feature in the Early English period. The only exterior view of any extent is from the garden of the Professor of Pastoral Theology on the northern side of the cathedral. It seems unfortunate that so important a spot should be in private hands, and the public excluded; but still a visitor who desires to go into the garden can obtain permission by applying at the professor's house in Tom Quad. The garden is a pretty one, and the view of the homely-looking cathedral set in this quiet old-fashioned retreat is well worth taking the trouble to see. The Latin Chapel, which seems to stand right on the lawn, looks like some little village church, while the north transept seems inconceivably smaller than from the inside. From between the transept and the nave, near the house that is to say, there is an excellent view of the tower. Two remarkable square turrets flank the transept: they resemble those at the east end, and are nearly of the same date; they are, however, capped by pinnacles like those on the tower, but somewhat earlier. At the angle of the transept aisle there is a smaller turret, early Perpendicular in style, with crockets on its spire, and in its west face a niche with a weather-worn statue of St. Frideswide. The flowing tracery of the four beautiful windows of the Latin Chapel is well seen from here; and the buttresses that support its wall should also be noticed. [Illustration: EARLY SAXON ARCHES.] =The Saxon Apses=.--In this garden can also be seen the site of the Saxon apses, discovered in 1887 by Mr. Park Harrison. The history of this discovery is an extremely interesting one. It was known that two small rag-stone arches existed at the east end of the Lady Chapel and north choir aisle, though blocked up and concealed by plastering inside the church. Their character and rude workmanship suggested that they formed part of the original church of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary, and All Saints, which was built C. 727; but there was some years ago a tradition among architects that nearly all Saxon churches were built of wood, and the presumption naturally was that the original church was entirely destroyed in the fire of 1002. However, it came gradually to be admitted, even by the late Mr. J.H. Parker, that Saxon churches were built of stone from the earliest times; it was further found to be implied by the charter of Ethelred that the old church had been of stone; for the charter states that, when it was found necessary to dislodge the Danes by burning, the fire was thrown upon the wooden shingles of the roof. Another document supported this theory by stating that Ethelred "repaired and enlarged" the old building. Thus the presumption lately came to be that these arches, and the wall in which they stood, belonged to the church of 727. In opposition to this it was suggested that they were nothing more than barrow-holes made in the twelfth century to admit the Norman workmen. Mr. Harrison, however, was strongly opposed to this view, urging that no barrow-holes existed of such narrow dimensions as these doors, or in such an inconvenient place as the east wall of a chapel. In order to put his conviction to the test he asked that excavations should be made outside the east wall, to see if the doorways led into a crypt or "porticus," since apses, used for interments, had been found of an equally early date at Winchester and Lyminge. [Illustration: PLAN OF RECENTLY EXCAVATED APSES.[1]] This venture of faith was triumphantly rewarded by the discovery in 1887 of the foundations of three apses, corresponding with these two arches, and with a third between them, of which traces were found shortly after. The first excavation in the canon's garden took the form of a trench outside the southern arch, and led to the discovery of part of the foundation of an apse, which measured a quarter-circle. The rest of this foundation had been destroyed, evidently when the wall of the Norman presbytery was built (which, it is notable, is quite twelve inches thicker than the wall containing the arches); but it was evident that the archway in the wall must have stood in the centre of a perfect apse. Similar foundations were next laid bare opposite the northern arch. Then the earth was removed opposite the Norman pilaster buttress, which, standing midway between the two arches, led the investigators to suppose that it hid a centre Saxon archway. Nothing was found at first but a small piece of concrete walling (2 feet by 1-1/2 feet) which it was at once seen might prove to be part of the north wall of the chancel of the ancient church, if a centre apse could be proved to have projected beyond the two side apses. Excavations were therefore commenced further east, with the result that the foundations of the central apse were discovered under a drive in the garden. The missing portion of this apse was accounted for by a main drain which had been cut across its inner side, and by a pit which had been made for the interment of bones found elsewhere in the Close. About the same time Mr. A.J. Evans, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, found rag-stones by the side of the Norman buttress, which proved to be part of the central archway, a little wider and higher than the two side ones. It now became clear that this archway was really not a doorway at all but a small chancel-arch, the three arches being similar to those still used in the conservative churches of the East. It is a foot wider than the chancel-arch of the Saxon church at Bradford, Wilts, and two feet wider than the arch between the tower and chancel of Wotten Wawen church in Warwickshire, the jambs and arches of which were also built of rag-stone. Further evidence of the antiquity of this east wall is the fact that the sill of the south archway was found to be 2 feet 8 inches below the level of the pavement of the Norman church, as is shown in the elevation. [Illustration: CONJECTURAL PLAN OF EARLY SAXON CHURCH.] This Eastern plan of three apses was adopted about the same early period at Melbourne and Lindisfarn; and, as it was not long before the death of the great Archbishop Theodore that this arrangement came in, there is a great probability that he introduced it from his native country of Syria, where the churches were always constructed with three apses. The absence of any marks of juncture upon the exterior of the walls also inclines one to suspect that there was a passage from apse to apse behind the wall, as there always is in Eastern churches. The whole arrangement will be made abundantly clear from the above conjectural ground-plan of the ancient church, c. 740. There are indications that these three apses are not of precisely the same date, for the northernmost arch is the smallest of the three, and the apse is correspondingly smaller. It is therefore surmised that the southernmost apse belonged to the church of Didan, the father of St. Frideswide, and dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, "without any more title and addition," while the other apses were the additions of Frideswide herself, when the church was adapted to the purposes of a convent, with the additional dedication to St. Mary and All Saints. This may be the reason why the chapel in a line with the central apse, and therefore on the site of the ancient nave, is still the Lady Chapel. Another important point rests upon the document which states that, when Ethelred II. enlarged and repaired the old building, the result was that the tomb of St. Frideswide, which before was on the south side of the church, thereupon stood in the middle. The tomb of St. Frideswide must therefore have been in the southernmost of these three apses (in a "chapel," as Wood says, on the south side of the convent church), and not, as some people have supposed, in the vault discovered under the tower during Scott's restoration. A significant corroboration of the old document is supplied by the fact that the Norman plinth, which was carried across the other two archways, breaks off at the arch which leads into the south apse. It would thus seem that access was, after the Norman restoration, still afforded into this chapel, and that St. Frideswide's relics remained there until the Translation of 1180, when they were moved "from an obscure to a more noted place in the church" on the completion of the Norman restoration. After the investigations had been completed, the earth was laid down again, but stones have been set in the drive to mark the site of the old foundations. Some charcoal and reddened stone which was found--evidently a relic of the fire of 1002--is now to be seen in the gallery over the vestry in the cathedral. In addition to this, the remains of a rough pavement were exposed in the north apse, and some square stones in the chord of the central apse, which seem to be part of the old altar. In addition to the numerous scattered bones that the workmen unearthed, two complete skeletons were found in the southern apse, and underneath the stone slabs upon which they lay another skeleton, that of a woman or a man of short stature, possibly that of Didan himself, or his wife Saffrida, who are both known to have been buried in the church. =The Cloister= now forms only three sides of a square, the western part having been destroyed by Wolsey in order to make room for the hall staircase. Considerably inferior to those of Magdalen and New College, it is small and unpretentious: its tracery, of a humdrum Perpendicular type (mostly restored), and its vaulting, which is peculiar, point to the latter half of the fifteenth century as the time of its erection. Of the earlier cloister no trace remains, except the door and windows of the chapter-house. The north walk was converted into a muniment room, much to the defacement, one may imagine, of this part of the college; but it has now been restored, and a good imitation of the fine old lierne groined roof inserted, though funds have not been provided to finish the carving of the bosses. Mr. R.J. King points out that the panelling of the sides of the windows agrees very closely, even to the character of the cusps, with that introduced into the clerestory of the choir. The quadrangle of the cloister was the scene of Cranmer's degradation. In its area are the foundations of the lavatory, which was built about 1490. Above the arches of the cloister runs a story with latticed windows on the east and south side, which adds considerably to the picturesqueness of the whole. Indeed, as one stands on the steps leading to the hall, the ivy-grown cloister, in spite of its modest proportions, has a beauty of its own. The latticed windows give it an air of mystery, as if strange old rooms were concealed by them; and in fact on the south side there is a curious library of time-worn theological books, which is seldom entered, and hardly ever used: it belongs to the Regius Professor of Divinity. The windows on the east side hide nothing more romantic than a small lumber-room, cut up by the raising of the wooden roof beneath, and an undergraduate's bed-chamber. From the same position at the west of the cloister one can enjoy the best view of the tower and spire of the church. One is close enough to see all the detail, and yet from this angle nothing is lost of the general effect. On a moonlit evening the effect is particularly solemn and beautiful. From this point also should be noticed the difference in the masonry of the south transept. The lower story is entirely of rubble, while the upper story is partly of good ashlar work. On the south side of the cloister is the Old Library, as it is now called, which was formerly the refectory of the monastery, and is all that now remains of the conventual buildings. Its large Perpendicular windows, rising like a clerestory above it, look on to the cloister, but they were spoilt on the inside by a staircase, when the building was turned into undergraduates' rooms. On the other side, facing the meadow buildings, there is a curious little oriel window, its lights now walled up, that once contained the pulpit whence the lessons were read during meals. The rest of the Perpendicular windows on this side are entirely gone, and the beauty of what was one of the best buildings in Oxford destroyed. An engraving of the Refectory in its original state is given in Skelton. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF CHAPTER-HOUSE.] The roof, which formerly hid the upper part of the chapter-house door, has been removed, and, by a happy device, a wooden roof groined in the same way has been inserted at a higher level, thus giving the old doorway the benefit of its full proportions. This doorway has been attributed to Prior Guimond, and belongs mainly to the later Norman period, of which it is a fine example. The two inner divisions of the arch are richly ornamented with zigzag moulding; the two outer divisions rest on shafts, of which the pair on the north have sculptured, and the pair on the south plain cushion, capitals. On either side of the doorway is a round-headed window of two lights, plain without, but ornamented within with the same label as that which surrounds the outer arch of the doorway itself. An ancient painting can be made out on the north side of the northernmost of these windows; it was traced recently, and found to be the figure of a saint. =The Chapter-House= was rebuilt in the very best Early English period, of which it is an excellent example. It bears some resemblance to the chapter-house at Chester, being especially remarkable for the purity of its style and the excellence of its detail. It would, indeed, be hard to find a better specimen of a mediæval chamber. As the whole effect of the room depends upon its proportions, it is hardly necessary to say that the extraordinary genius for making the worst of everything, which seemed at one time to take possession of the English people, inspired some one to build a wall right across the middle. This has, however, been removed, and the visitor has now nothing to complain of but a want of colour. The chapter-house has been used for divinity lectures since the Latin Chapel was restored to its original purpose; and the lower part of the walls is now hung with curtains, which help to destroy the coldness due to the destruction of the old painting and furniture. [Illustration: CORBEL IN CHAPTER-HOUSE.] The room is an oblong, divided into four bays, the vaulting of which springs from clustered shafts, supported on curiously carved corbels. Two of these corbels are in the form of monks' heads, very vividly conceived; they face each other, and are thought, from the vivacity of their expression, to be represented as carrying on a conversation together. The perfect taste of the rich carving on the bosses of the roof will also be noticed. One of them represents our Lady crowned, in the act of giving an apple to the Holy Child. But the most striking feature of the chapter-house is its east end. An arcade of five arches fills the entire space; of these the three central arches are pierced for windows, deeply recessed, and having a double set of shafts to support their arches, the inner shafts being clustered, and ornamented with dog-tooth moulding. Each light is crossed by a transom, with a later four-centred arch beneath. Foliage is introduced in the spandrels, and every capital in the room is richly foliated, nor could anything exceed the grace and finish of the carving. There are two windows of similar character on the south side of the room, and one on the north. There are also some pieces of remarkably fine glass in these side windows, which one should be careful not to miss. The remains of painting on the groined ceiling are not likely to escape notice,--the figures of St. Peter and St. Paul can be easily distinguished. [Illustration: BOSS IN CHAPTER-HOUSE.] A thirteenth century stone slab now rests in the chapter-house; it was brought here from Rewly Abbey, where it covered the tomb of Ela, wife of Thomas de Newburgh, Earl of Warwick, and daughter of William Longspée. In the east wall is preserved the foundation stone of Wolsey's College at Ipswich, the inscription on which runs,--"_Anno Christi 1528, et regni Henrici octavi, regis Angliae 20, mensis vero Junii 15, positum per Johannem epm. Lidensem_,"--John Holt being titular Bishop of Lydda, and probably a suffragan of Lincoln. The stone has no connection with Christ Church, beyond the fact that it commemorates another benefaction of Wolsey, and was presented to the House in 1789. A small staircase in the south wall leads up into the charming oak-panelled room, which is used by the chapter for meetings. In the window of the staircase will be noticed some initial letters and other devices in stained glass which are among the very finest of their kind. In the upper room itself, which looks pleasantly on to a garden, are some interesting pictures:--one of Henry VII.; another of the same king, younger, with his queen; Henry VIII.; Elizabeth; Mary; Samuel Fell, the father of Bishop Fell, and Dean of Christ Church himself; Busby, the terrible headmaster of Westminster School, also connected with this House; two portraits of the talented Dean Aldrich, and one of Peter Martyr, whose wife was so strangely made to share the grave with St. Frideswide. Peter Martyr had been himself an Augustinian prior: he adopted strong reforming views, and was made Regius Professor of Divinity here in 1549. He lived near Tom Gate; but the undergraduates broke his windows, and he moved to the cloister, where he fortified his garden. According to Blunt, he gave up the professorship when the undergraduates annoyed him, but returned on being made a canon. In this chapter-room there is a good Elizabethan table, a curious old iron safe, and some Chippendale chairs. [Illustration: THE CHOIR, FROM THE OLD CEMETERY.] A gateway in the cloister to the north of the chapter-house leads into the slype, which occupies the position usual in monastic buildings between the chapter-house and the transept. In this case the slype is a plain barrel-vaulted passage that takes up part of the transept itself, and forms the lower story of the choir-vestry (as it now is) within the church. It leads into the old cemetery, whence a good view is obtained of St. Lucy's chapel, the east end, and the chapter-house. In the garden are the tombs of Philip Pusey, son of Dr. Pusey, and Edith Liddell, who is commemorated in St. Catherine's window. The round-headed doorway, now blocked up, should also be noticed: it may be one of the doorways of Ethelred's church, and is in any case the only ancient one left. The east end was restored in 1871 by Gilbert Scott, in accordance with the late Norman design, of which fragments, left when the Decorated window was inserted, still remained in the wall; but how far exactly it follows the original no one appears to know. An elaborate wheel-window occupies the upper part of the chancel gable; above it is a blind arcade of transitional pointed arches, and below are two round-headed windows. The square turrets at the angles are ornamented with arcading in three stories: the upper is on a level with the pointed arcading of the main wall, and similar in style; the middle carries on the line of the wheel-window, and consists of two round arches on each turret; the lower, on a level with the two round-headed windows, is made up of three round arches, which, by intersecting, form four pointed arches. The whole, in spite of its being (with the exception of the turrets) a restoration, gives one a good idea of transitional work on a large scale. In plan it is still Romanesque, in detail it is Early Gothic. =The Bell Tower=, which stands above the hall-staircase, is really only a stone case built by Mr. Bodley to hide the wooden structure which actually contains the bells. The tower, as it now stands, is incomplete, Mr. Bodley having intended a lofty and intricate wooden superstructure to rest upon it. The authorities, however, were afraid of its dwarfing the spire and Tom Tower, and consequently left the structure in its present state, much against the opinion, as we understand, of the architect, whose completed design can be seen in the common-room, and is so magnificently picturesque, that one cannot help hoping that the authorities will see their way to erecting it. After all, if every one in the past had been afraid of overtopping the cathedral, Oxford would never have become the "Sweet city of her dreaming spires" that we know The cathedral can hold its own, and so can Tom Tower; for neither makes any pretensions to loftiness. The original hall-tower seems to have stood on the same spot before the space was cleared for the erection of Dean Fell's staircase. The bells themselves are, with Great Tom, the only relics left of the glorious Abbey of Oseney. They were considered the finest in England, and were after their removal to the cathedral made famous again as "The merry Christ Church bells" of Dean Aldrich's catch. Their names are contained in the following line, which professes to be a hexameter-- _Hautclerc, Douce, Clement, Austin, Marie, Gabriel et John._ [Illustration: TOM TOWER.] =Tom Tower=, over the entrance to Tom Quad from St. Aldate's, is one of the characteristic features of the city. The lower story was built by Wolsey, but the cupola which gives it so uncommon an appearance was added by Sir Christopher Wren in 1682. On the side facing St. Aldate's is a statue of the great Cardinal, in a very dramatic attitude, and on the quadrangle face a statue of Queen Anne, placed there by her minister Harley, with this inscription,--_Annae Principi Optimae Secretarius ipsius principalis Robertus Harley hac in sede posuit quod illam coleret et hanc amaret_. The vault of the archway under Tom Tower is decorated with the arms of those who helped towards the completion of the quadrangle. "Tom," the great bell which gives its name to the quadrangle, and its orders to the whole University, came, with the cathedral bells, from Oseney Abbey; and twenty shillings were paid in 1545 for the conveyance of Tom and his satellites from the Abbey to Christ Church. It weighed 17,000 pounds, and bore the inscription,--_In Thomae laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude_; but it was recast in 1680, and its present inscription is _Magnus Thomas Clusius Oxoniensis renatus Apr. 8, 1680_. It will have to be recast again some day, for it is sadly out of tune; its note ought to be B flat, but is not, and the bell itself is cracked. [Illustration: THE WESTERN ENTRANCE AND BELL TOWER, FROM TOM QUAD.] Perhaps the other college buildings are sufficiently connected with the history of the cathedral to allow of our mentioning them. For Wolsey built the kitchen, which is a remarkably fine specimen of the peculiar architecture necessitated for such a building, and also the magnificent hall, the finest perhaps in England, and interesting to us also as containing the portraits of many of the men referred to in this book. Wolsey also built three sides of Tom Quad. Though the bases of the buttresses for its cloister invite the enterprising builder, the Quad is probably best left as it is; for a projecting cloister is not anything the architectural success that a cloister is which forms the ground story of a building continued over it, and the Quad is besides so large as to be unmanageable in the matter of cloisters. The fountain in the middle is called "Mercury," because Dr. Anthony Radcliffe set up a statue there of the nimble god in 1695. Frank Buckland, by the way, about five years before his death, put into Mercury several golden carp; there was also added an _Aurea Tinca_ from Austria, a superb creature, popularly called "The Dean." The surface of the Quad was in 1665 lowered three feet, so as to give a greater appearance of height to the surrounding buildings. Bishop John Fell finished the quadrangle, and his father, Dean Samuel Fell, built the vaulted staircase of the Hall (1640), which is one of the instances of the curious survival of Gothic in Oxford, that home of "lost causes," which need never have been lost, and of "impossible ideals," which ought to be made possible. Late as it is, and open to the structural criticism of all Perpendicular work, it is most deservedly admired. The staircase itself must not be laid to Fell's charge; it is the work of the James Wyatt. Dean Aldrich built Peckwater Quad, which is a decent work of its kind, too grim and gloomy to be as attractive as All Saints Church, and dreadfully disfigured by the strange tendency to moulder away that besets Headington stone, from which Oxford as a whole has suffered so much. The Library in Peckwater Quad was begun in 1716 (designed by Dr. G. Clerke), and finished in 1761, the original intention having been to leave an open piazza beneath it; but its columns were connected, in the end, by a wall. It contains a few first-rate pictures (including an exquisite Francescà) among a great many palpable shams, and a collection of drawings mainly by fifteenth and sixteenth century artists, which are said to have given Ruskin his first enthusiasm for Italian art, when he was an undergraduate at the House. Wyatt was the architect of Canterbury Gate. Dean Liddell built the Meadow Buildings nearly thirty years ago; the architect was Mr. T. Deane. They are as bad as the other college buildings in Oxford of the same period. CHAPTER III. THE INTERIOR. The cathedral is best entered through the handsome porch in Tom Quad which was cut by Mr. Bodley through one of the canonical houses; in order, perhaps, to announce that the old _régime_ had passed away, and the time at last arrived when "the teachers of theology no longer dwell on the ruins of the church they should protect," as a writer fifty years back had half-despairingly foretold. This porch is a happy compromise between the old heart-breaking descent into a half-ruined nave, and the rather impossible scheme of continuing the church into the middle of the Quad. The former spoilt the cathedral, the latter would have spoilt the college; but by the present arrangement the church serves very creditably for both its purposes, and one may well spend a day there without remembering what Wolsey did to the nave. On entering the cathedral itself the visitor finds himself in a kind of narthex which is in fact the ante-chapel of a college chapel. Before him is the organ-screen, the entrance under which is veiled by a curtain at service time; on either side he has a glimpse of the aisles. The effect is peculiar, but not unpleasant, although the ante-chapel is a bare bit of modern restoration, wisely left unsculptured, and unrelieved except for some monuments, of which one may gratefully say that they are best where they are. But passing under the screen, all is changed. We find ourselves in one of the most charming and distinctive interiors of a country of interesting churches. The curious and happy arrangement of the great pillars and triforium, the variety and originality of the sculptured capitals, the rich pendent vaulting of the choir, and the touch of mystery in the further chapels, all combine to give to this creation of a long and chequered history an attraction peculiarly its own. Yet the same bluntness of aspect which impresses one in the spire is the leading characteristic of the interior also. Only in this case the effect is not part of the original plan, but is due to the destruction by Wolsey of the three Western bays. Things must have seemed far worse before the new western bay added twenty feet to the nave, and brought the church right back to the cloister around Tom Quad, for though it only serves as an ante-chapel, it yet helps considerably to break the enclosed appearance, which must have been almost oppressive before. As it is, Christ Church is the smallest of our cathedrals; for even with the new ante-chapel it measures but 175 feet in length. Instead of being of the usual cruciform plan, it is now almost square,--in fact, the length from the reredos to the organ-screen is 132 feet, while the breadth across from the Latin Chapel to St. Lucy's Chapel is 108 feet. The church is made up of the shortened nave with its two aisles, and ante-chapel, the central tower, the north transept with its one aisle, the south transept, and the eastern half of the church, which itself contains no less than six divisions,--the choir, with its two aisles, the Lady Chapel on the north, and the Latin Chapel (or St. Catherine's) on the north again of that, while on the south is the small chapel of St. Lucy. If the unusual appearance of the cathedral is partly due to Wolsey's destruction, it is partly due also to its being used as a college chapel, and partly to the fact that in general plan, and to some extent in detail, it is Ethelred's design, commenced seventy years before the great developments of Norman architecture began. Ethelred himself probably only completed the choir and adjacent parts, and even there the work was very much altered in late Norman times; while the nave itself seems to be principally Norman (though built in imitation of Ethelred's work), with the exception of the pillars, which must be earlier than the Norman restoration, and may be of Saxon date, though we have no documentary clue as to what happened from the reign of Canute to that of Henry I., except that the church was, during the latter part of the time, in a very bad way. The following are Mr. Park Harrison's conclusions as to the general plan of the church, which he set before the British Archæological Association in 1892:--"The design of the building is clearly derived from the original pre-Norman church. The uniformity of plan throughout affords a remarkable instance of the way in which early church-builders imitated previous work, the process being, at Oxford, slow enough to make stages in the construction, that must have occupied instead of thirty years, as stated in the explanatory cards suspended in the cathedral, and quoted in some of the guide-books, at least 160. There were three changes in the profiles of the bases, and three in the abaci, all before the years 1170 or 1180." Thus the cathedral is a most important evidence of the high state of civilisation at which our Anglo-Saxon forefathers gradually arrived after the landing of St. Augustine. It is some satisfaction to our national pride to discover that they did not owe their culture to the Norman settlement, nor worship in wooden sheds before the arrival of the Conqueror, as was till recently supposed; but that the people who produced poets like Caedmon, artists like Dunstan, and scholars like Alfred and Bede, were also able to build churches worthy of such great names. More will be said about their workmanship when we come to discuss the capitals in the choir, but here we may refer the reader to a drawing in Mr. Harrison's pamphlet, "The Pre-Norman Date," of the apse of a church from the "Dunstan" MS., which shows at what elaborate architecture the Anglo-Saxons had arrived by the year 1000, and illustrates the curious foliage found on the cathedral capitals. =The Nave= was probably completed during the priorate of Robert of Cricklade (c. 1160-1180), the restoration being begun shortly after 1158, when the Pope's charter was secured. The clerestory, which is transitional, may therefore have been still unfinished at the time of his death. The remarkable arrangement of the triforium is characteristic of all the four main divisions of the church. From the large pillars spring circular arches worked with heavy round mouldings. _Underneath_ these arches, not above them, is the triforium which is a blind arcade of two arches set in the tympanum beneath the main arch. The reason why there is this space under the main arch is because corbels in the form of half-capitals are set on the further side of the great pillars, a good way below the true capitals, to support the vaulting of the aisles. In this way, says Scott, "the pillars and arches have been divided, as it were, into two halves in their thickness, the half facing the aisle retaining its natural height and proportions, but that facing the central space being so raised as to embrace the triforium stage, the openings of which appear between the two ranges of arches; the clerestory ranging above." Of course, by this arrangement, the pillars avoid the low and stumpy proportions they would otherwise have, and the general effect of height in the nave (which is actually only 41 feet 6 inches) is considerably increased; for, were the triforium in the usual place above the main arches, the main pillars would not come any higher than the lower half-capitals. The arrangement is very unusual in England; though it is found in Italian Gothic, and even in Renaissance work in that country, as in St. Petronio, Bologna. It occurs in the transept of Romsey Abbey, in the choir at Jedburgh, in Dunstable Priory, and in Tewkesbury Abbey. That it existed in Saxon times is proved by a drawing in Cædmon's Paraphrase (c. 1000) in the Bodleian (_c.f._ "The Pre-Norman Date"). Dr. Ingram, who wrote in 1830, thought that this arrangement was made in order to raise the height of the building in the twelfth century, the triforium being the clerestory of the old Saxon church peeping out under the later work. And though his zeal was not according to knowledge (he thought the chapter-house doorway was Saxon), yet there is a possibility that this theory of his may have some truth in it. [Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH, OXFORD. PLAN.] Until lately, the church was thought to belong altogether to Prior Guimond's time. Sir Gilbert Scott fixed the date of the rather heavily carved capital over Bishop Berkeley's monument at 1170-80, owing to its close resemblance to certain capitals at Canterbury Cathedral of this period. The others seem to be of earlier date than this, and possibly of Ethelred's time. Strange as they are, however, they do not suggest a Saxon origin so strongly as do those of the choir. They are unique in design, and have neither the massiveness of Norman, nor the crisp severity of Early English work. The light, graceful, and rather fantastic foliage of the three eastern capitals on the south side--almost like iron-work--will be noticed. The third capital on the north side bears some resemblance to two of those in the choir. The pillars of the nave also present problems of some difficulty. They are alternately circular and octagonal, and the masonry of six of them points with something like certainty to a date considerably earlier than the twelfth century restoration. In the four western pillars the stones are a good deal smaller than those in the two octagonal ones of the next bay: this makes it highly probable that they are of earlier date than the octagonal pillars, which are certainly Norman of the period of the restoration c. 1160. Mr. Harrison believes there is also considerable evidence that the two cylindrical pillars were reduced in girth in order to make them of the same size as the octagonal pillars then introduced; for the lower half-capitals project nine inches on either side beyond the pillars, while in those of the choir, which are unreduced, their projection is only five. There is also reason to suppose that the other pair of octagonal pillars, those by the organ-screen, were cut out of older ones at the same time. [Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH MOULDING.] The clerestory windows are transitional, as is proved among other things by their being pointed, for purely æsthetic reasons, and not (as in the case of the north and south tower-arches) from any structural necessity. Each window has a smaller blind arch on either side of it, making a triple opening within to a single window in the wall; and the shafts of this triple opening are made to carry small attached shafts which bear the arches above. The capitals of the larger and lower shafts spread in an unusual manner, having to support a mass of walling. =The Roof= is a fine example of sixteenth century woodwork, and doubtless replaced a simpler Norman roof of wood; but the brackets which support it were added later to the Norman shafts, in order to carry a Perpendicular vault of stone, which was never carried out. It is divided into small panels, whose ornament, though rich, is rather mechanical. The nave and choir are used as the College Chapel of Christ Church. In the returned stalls by the organ-screen sit the two censors; most of the undergraduates occupy the benches of the nave (which are modern woodwork carved by Chapman after Sir G.G. Scott's designs), as far as the raised seats where the choir sits; the central benches under the tower are reserved for the freshmen; while the dean, canons, students (_i.e._, fellows), and graduates fill the stalls of the choir, the other seats of the choir being occupied by the Scholars. The public use the aisles, transepts, and chapels on Sundays, but on weekdays are free of the nave for the two special cathedral services. [Illustration: NAVE AND CHOIR, LOOKING EAST (_from a photograph by Carl Norman & Co._).] =Monuments of the Nave=.--Berkeley's monument is attached to one of the north pillars, which it entirely defaces. _George Berkeley_ was Bishop of Cloyne, and died in 1753, during a visit to Oxford; he was as good as he was famous, and his monument is as large as it is ugly. The epitaph, though not altogether untrue, and doubtless well meant, has the unfortunate effect of prepossessing the reader against its subject,--_Si Christianus fueris, si amans patriae, utroque nomine gloriari potes Berkleium vixisse_. Beneath is inscribed the quotation from Pope,-- "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven." On the pier by the pulpit the talented _Dean Aldrich_ is commemorated by a bust, which shows him to have had a very good face, and bears by way of further adornment a winged skull that is quite unnecessarily hideous. Aldrich has been already referred to: he was the architect of Peckwater and All Saints, the composer of many well-known anthems and services, the author of the once standard "Oxford Logic," and "a most universal scholar." He succeeded Massey, the Roman Catholic dean, who had to "make off and retire across the seas" in 1689. Browne Willis says of Aldrich that "as he spent his Days in Celibacy, so he appropriated his Income to Hospitality and Generosity, and, like Bishop Fell, always encouraged learning; as a celebrated Author tells us, 'to the utmost of his Power, being one of the greatest then in England, if we consider him as a Christian, or a Gentleman,' to which give me leave to add that he always had the Interest of his College at heart; of which I may experimentally say, he was an excellent Governor." He was very modest, and desired to be buried without any memorial, a wish which was at first complied with by his "thrifty nephew." Sunk into a pillar opposite is a curious old brass, to the memory of John Walrond, student, who died young in 1602. A marble slab on the pavement in the midst of the nave commemorates _Dr. Pusey_, who was canon of Christ Church, in virtue of his Hebrew Professorship, and lies buried here. The Latin inscription mentions also his wife and daughter, and of him it speaks as "Professor of the Hebrew tongue, and Canon of this church (_aedis_), who in the peace and pity of Jesus fell asleep, September 16th, 1882, being 82 years and 24 days old." =The Organ= stands on a fine Jacobean screen, dating from Duppa's time (c. 1635); it was removed here from before the choir during the restoration. The outer casing belonged to a former organ built by Father Schmidt in 1680. The present instrument was built by Willis & Son in 1884. It has four manuals and pedals, thirty-nine speaking stops, nine couplers, ten pneumatic pistons, six composition pedals, and other accessory movements. It has a very fine tone, and is well placed for sound. Its external appearance is much improved by the pretty green _appliqué_ curtain which now hangs in front of the organist's seat. [Illustration: PULPIT.] =The Pulpit=.--Christ Church is fortunate in possessing an old oak pulpit, escaping thus the garish ventures in marble which have been disastrous to so many other cathedrals. This pulpit is Jacobean (c. 1635). It is a remarkable piece of workmanship, elaborately carved, and well designed: the grotesques on the panels should be especially noticed, as well as the light elevated canopy, surmounted by a pelican, which was at one time transferred to the episcopal throne, and has recently been restored to its original use. =The Tower= is not square, the nave and choir sides being wider than those of the transepts. For this practical reason (and not because of the transitional character of the work, though transitional it is) the north and south arches are pointed, while the east and west are round-headed. The tower arches seem originally to have sprung from the imposts ornamented with trefoil leaves which can still be seen, though they were cut through when the present capitals were introduced at the time of the Norman restoration. The Norman shafts and capitals were attached to the older and ruder piers. Round these piers are the shafts of very firm and graceful proportions, their capitals decorated with foliage. The lower parts of the vaulting shafts of the great piers are cut off and finished with a narrow beading, which shows that the ritual choir originally stood here, and did not correspond with the structural choir. [Illustration: CHOIR AND NAVE, LOOKING WEST.] The lantern, which had been blocked up, was reopened at the time of the recent improvements, and adds considerably to the appearance of the church. Its first stage is ornamented with an arcade of stout Norman shafts, whose capitals are carved with a breadth and simplicity well suited to the height at which they stand: the arcade is bounded above and below by a heavy round string course. The upper stage has another arcade, of four large round arches on each side, the corner ones pierced as windows. Above is an early sixteenth century roof: it is divided into square panels, in most of which marks of the old ornaments (in the form of Maltese crosses like those of the nave roof) can be clearly discerned. At the springing of the main arches Fifteenth Century corbels have been inserted. In the south-east pier of the tower occurs the break in the masonry which marks, it is thought, the cessation of the building operations when Ethelred was driven out of England by Sweyn. It can be clearly seen from the south choir aisle. The tooling of the masonry half way up the tower has also been found to be marked with the cross lines, which distinguish Saxon from Norman mason's work. During Mr. Billing's restoration in 1856 a remarkable crypt was opened three feet beneath the paving of the choir between the north and south piers of the tower. This crypt, which was covered up again after investigation, was 7 feet long by 5 feet 6 inches, and just high enough for a man to stand upright; its walls were of stone, and contained aumbries or lockers at each end. There were also slight remains of indented crosses on the western side, and at the east enough was missing to suggest a doorway. The entrance to this chamber may have been through a trap-door, or by a passage leading into the east side. It was clearly not intended for sepulture, as its length was from north to south; and the absence of passages giving convenient access on each side seems to prove that it was not intended for the exhibition of relics. The most likely theory is that it was used as a secret chamber to contain the University chest, which was called the Frideswide chest, because it was kept in a secure place in this church, its keys being in the hands of certain canons by appointment of the chancellor. If this seems a very public place for a secret chamber, it must be remembered that originally it was immediately under the rood-loft, and therefore admitted of a trap-door being concealed; though the resting-place of the chest may not have been kept very secret for all we know. This crypt was probably made in Norman times, and is unique of its kind. =The Aisles of the Nave and Transepts= show the progress which was made at the end of the twelfth century in vaulting: Mr. Ruskin says of the work here that it is "bad and rude enough, but the best we could do with our own wits, and no French help." Vaulting originally began with square ribs, after wards the ribs became plain half-rounds, and later were moulded Here we find good specimens of the development of all three stages. In the choir aisles the vaulting arches are partly square and the ribs on the groins half-round, of a heavy character. These ribs were inserted at a later period, as is sufficiently clear from the awkward way they are fitted to corbels at the side of the capitals which carry the vault. In the west aisle of the north transept the vaulting is the same, but lighter in character; and there are no corbels, though the fitting is still awkward. In the north aisle of the nave the vaulting is pointed but still with plain half-round ribs, a little lighter than in the transept-aisles. But in the south aisle of the nave, as the builders got on with their work to the westward, their style underwent a further development, and a pear-shaped moulding with a fillet along the edge proclaims that the Early English period had begun. With the completion of this aisle they seemed to have become bolder; for the vaulting shafts in the transepts with their unmistakable Norman capitals, and the solitary ribbed stones resting on those of the south transept, prove that they intended to go beyond the practice of Norman architects and throw a vault across the wider span of the transepts themselves. Perhaps they immediately afterwards discovered that the task was beyond them: at all events the vaulting shafts were left as they are, and the transepts have never been vaulted. The windows of the nave and transept aisles are uniformly uninteresting. They were originally plain Norman lights, then Perpendicular, then seventeenth century Gothic, and finally "restored" by Scott, in imitation of the Perpendicular work. The windows of Dean Duppa, which they replaced, were certainly not beautiful in their tracery, as may be seen by that at the west end of the north nave aisle, which only the delightful Dutch glass of Van Ling redeems,--but they at least had some character. In the south nave aisle an attempt has been made to hark further back by the introduction of a window in Norman style; but fortunately this has not been persevered with. Only one of the original Romanesque windows remains, by which to judge the effect contemplated by the first architects; it is that containing Bishop King's portrait. =Glass in the Aisles=.--The glass in the restored Perpendicular windows of the nave aisles (by Clayton and Bell) is very unsatisfactory both in colour and design. Of that in the round-headed window of the south aisle of the nave by an Irish artist (O'Connor) one can only say that it was better conceived than executed. Over the door that leads into the cloister is a half-window by Mr. Wailes. The "Faith, Hope, and Charity" window next to this (namely, at the west end of the aisle) was Sir Edward Burne Jones' second essay here in this craft. If his first, that in St. Catherine's, the Latin Chapel, was a wonderful success, this one is a not unpleasant failure, but a failure none the less. None of the figures are very graceful; the firing seems to have gone wrong in the most important places, especially in the faces, which are coarse and expressionless, though one cannot help admiring the fortitude of Charity in carrying the bulky infant who presents his vast back to the spectator. The colour is strong, and free from the miserable timidity of the work in the Perpendicular windows,--for the whole thing is of course a work of art (and not of commerce), though an unsuccessful one,--still it fails to harmonise. The window as a whole, however, is saved by the beautiful foliage which forms the background, and by the four slender figures in the tracery. Others have admired it more. Here, for instance, is an appreciative description from the columns of "The Builder" for April 1888:--"The figure of Hope has a greyish-blue drapery, varied in tint, and diapered with the pattern of a flower in stain. The scarf floating round the figure is sky-blue in tone and lighter than the dress. The figure of Charity has a ruby over-mantle, with a white dress underneath; while the figure of Faith has a blue dress beautifully and richly diapered, the upper portion with a sumptuous Venetian design familiar on the brocades of the sixteenth century, and the lower portion with a sprig of foliage. The tone of the backgrounds is a rich, warm green, and is very carefully painted with foliage, and the contrast yielded by the pale blue of the drapery, and the rich, warm green of the background in the two outside windows, is most harmonious and striking. The detail in this window is very elaborate, and every part of it bears traces of care and thought." In a corner of this window is an inscription,--_In Memoriam Edwardi Denison hujusce Aedis commensalis Curâ amicorum, A.D. 1870._ Edward Denison, nephew of the Speaker, and son of the Bishop of Salisbury, was the pioneer of those who have since founded the numerous settlements in the neglected parts of London. At a period of acute distress he convinced himself that no good could be done by sending money from the West End unless educated people could be found who would give up their lives to making friends with the poor. Accordingly he took the novel step of going to live in the East End; there he founded a club, and lived apart from the brilliant society to which he was accustomed. Besides teaching and organising, he studied carefully the social conditions of his neighbours, and many of the methods now universally practised date from his experience. Shortly after he had been elected M.P. for Newark he died, at the early age of twenty-nine, and there was "hardly a home within his district that had not some memory left of the love and tenderness of his personal charity." In the west end of the north aisle of the nave is the last remaining relic of the glass which the Dutchman Van Ling painted in Dean Duppa's time. The rest, which filled the aisle, was removed about twenty-five years since, on the ground that it made the church too dark. There are various opinions about this window, which represents Jonah sitting under his gourd, and the town of Nineveh in the distance. We must confess to a great admiration for it; the foliage is fine and rich, and if it is a little over-strong in its green, that only makes it more characteristic of its age. And, however that may be, there cannot be two opinions as to beauty of the town in the background, which reminds one irresistibly of Dürer; and, with its rich brown houses, bluish roofs, touches of greenery, and fair purple hills beyond, makes the right-hand light of the window a picture of which one never wearies. The whole is leaded in rectangular panes, like Bishop King's window. =Monuments of the Nave Aisles=.--In the south aisle there are two monuments of interest; that of _Corbet_ (1688) for the characteristic decoration of cupids and wreath work; that of _Pococke_ for further reasons. Edward Pococke (1604-1691), whose bust was moved here from the north aisle by Scott, is represented with pointed beard and wearing the old tufted college cap. He was the great Arabic scholar of his day; the first text in Hebrew characters printed at Oxford was published by him, and his 420 oriental MSS. were bought by the University. Yet he was condemned, under the Commonwealth, by the Berkshire "Committee of Scandalous Ministers," on the ground of "insufficiency," his real offence being that he had used part of the Prayer Book in the public service. There are two portraits of him in the Bodleian, representing him with light hair and dark eyes; and a fig-tree which he planted still flourishes on the south side of the Professor of Hebrew's house. A striking biography of him has come down to us in a sentence--"His life appeared to me one constant calm." =The North Transept= has the unnoticeable peculiarity, that it turns slightly westward. This is because the choir (into which it is built at right angles) turns a little to the north, to symbolise, it is said, the droop of our Lord's head upon the cross. The western aisle of this transept still remains; the eastern aisle has been lost in the chapels, of which it now forms the respective western bays. The north bay of this transept bears the marks in its clerestory of late Perpendicular restoration; the carved heads on the string-course above the arch afford an interesting comparison with the Norman heads above the capitals, and are vigorous sketches of contemporary life. The capitals in this transept and those in the north aisle of the nave are strong and varied. The wooden roof of both the transepts was made in the early sixteenth century, earlier than that of the nave. The tracery of the great north window had been altered and made ugly by the seventeenth century restorers; it was accordingly restored back to its original design by Sir Gilbert Scott. Under this north window is a panelled tomb belonging to Henry VII.'s time. It is attributed to _James Zouch_, a monk of the priory, who died in 1503. In his will, dated October 16, 1503, and preserved in the Prerogative Office in London, he directs that he shall be interred under the window of the north transept, and a tomb be erected for him in the midst of the same window. He also bequeathed £30 to the convent for vaulting that part of the church, in consideration of his being there buried. On each of the shields in the quatrefoil compartments of the tomb is an inkhorn and pen-case, indicating, it is said, that the monk was a notary or scribe by profession, though Dr. Ingram speaks of "the pen-case and inkhorn of Zouch" as an heraldic blazonry. [Illustration: FROM THE NORTH TRANSEPT.] In the north transept aisle there are curious thin, wavy scrolls of brasses, commemorating "Leonardus Hutten," and hard by are two pleasant kneeling figures also in brasses. Some of the monuments that disfigured the church have fortunately been removed; of these is Chantrey's great sitting figure of Cyril Jackson, which took up most of the north transept, but is now removed to the Library. Of these sequestrated monuments some have been placed in the ante-chapel; among them are the large and simple memorial of Bishop Fell, and those of Dean Gaisford (d. 1855) and Bishop Lloyd (d. 1829). One cannot but admire the spirit which has caused so many brasses to be set up in recent years to deceased members of the House; and yet it has become an abuse which calls for serious protest. It is now so much a precedent that every member of the foundation should have a brass set up to his memory at his death, that the tribute is become mechanical, and indeed it would now be a marked slight if any don should die without a memorial brass being erected. At this rate the cathedral will in a few generations be entirely defaced unless the tradition be interrupted. As it is, the brasses are all the reverse of beautiful; and, after a period of lacquered obtrusiveness, they become leprous, and afterwards black. A modern brass, indeed, defaces a wall as much as a modern tablet. Surely some more beautiful form of memorial could be devised. The cathedral is in need of many things, of colour, and hangings, and furniture. Could not those tributes of respect take in the future this more honourable form? Then, when an inscription is necessary, the enamelled tablet, with its endless possibilities of jewel-like colour, might be used in place of brass or marble. Something has already been done by the erection of the beautiful eastern windows, and the cathedral has been fortunate in escaping an eruption of episcopal tombs; but latterly there has been an epidemic of brasses, which makes one fear that the artist's work is being forgotten in the temptation to set off an epitaph with a display of Latinity. =Glass in the Transepts=.--The great window of the north transept is by Clayton and Bell. Mr. Tyrwhitt says of it that it "glows with all the fires which a fervid fancy can bestow upon the inwards of the Dragon." The glaring glass in the clerestory of the north and south transepts is by Henri and Alfred Gérente (1854), artists famous in their day. It was originally in the great east window (now destroyed), and must have thrown the members of the House into a stupor when in that prominent position. As it is, the clerestory windows are a very inappropriate place for colour, violent enough to "scare a chameleon"; though the glass was evidently put there as the least conspicuous position. It might now be taken out and buried, on the chance that time and the earth may have a mellowing effect. The half-window above the vestry in the south transept is filled with glass, coloured to look as if it were old, by Clayton and Bell, and given in memory of Dr. Liddon. =The South Transept= was originally on the same plan as the north, but its aisles have disappeared: that on the west to make room for the cloister; while that on the east is now represented by the chapel of St. Lucy. Its appearance has also been much altered by the division of its southern bay into two stories, which reduces its length, since the lower story is the slype or passage that leads from the cloister to the cemetery, and is therefore to all intents and purposes outside the church. The upper story is reached by steps from the transept floor. The whole of this curious structure, which has the appearance of a small house built into the transept, is a modern restoration, its immediate predecessor having been literally a house where dwelt the verger and his family. In earlier times, however, there had been some kind of erection here, which was used as a sacristy, and of this traces were found by Gilbert Scott which led to the present restoration. As these traces, however, consisted principally of some fragments of a staircase, the present Early English restoration is only conjectural. On the whole it is tolerable, though the heavy and unnecessary central buttress one may well suppose not to be part of the old design. Why the slope of this buttress, which stands in the middle of the transept, should be so stoutly protected against the weather, it is hard to imagine. The carving on the tympanum over the door that leads into the slype is stiff and repulsive. Just to the right of this door is a holy water stoup, very simply cut into the pillar, which proves that this entrance from the slype was usual in old times, when the monastic buildings lay on that side of the church; at present, however, the door is commonly kept locked. [Illustration: SAXON CLERESTORY WINDOW IN SOUTH TRANSEPT (_from a drawing by J. Park Harrison_).] The chamber above the slype, representing the old sacristy, is now used as a vestry. It is reached from the transept, and a staircase in it leads to the gallery above, whence in all probability a door led straight into the dormitory of the monastery. A similar arrangement to this existed at Bristol, which was also an Augustinian house; and there are traces of a door in the wall of Canon Sanday's house which further substantiate the conjecture. Some direct access to the church from the dormitory was a great convenience in the days when matins was said in the middle of the night. The gallery is now used as a kind of museum for any odd fragments that are discovered in the precincts. Among them is the quaintly carved base of a Norman cross, which before the Reformation stood, together with a pulpit, at the west end of the nave, near the place now occupied by the fountain. The subjects represented are the Fall, Abraham's Sacrifice, the Giving of the Law. The open triforium directly over the Lyttleton monument in this transept is an important relic of the second Saxon church, and a good instance of the slight things which sometimes turn the scales in antiquarian disputes. Professor Willis had in 1840 pronounced (as against Dr. Ingram, whose pet theory it was that the triforium was the clerestory of Ethelred's church) that the triforium must be of Norman design, because no grooves could be found for the insertion of glass in the shafts, as would be the case if it were Saxon. Mr. Harrison accordingly, in December 1891, made a close examination of the shaft and small arches in the open triforium which had struck him as of Saxon character, with the result that the grooves for glass were discovered to exist beyond a doubt, but so neatly stopped with mortar as previously to have escaped notice. They can be clearly discerned inside the arches, by anyone with good sight, from the floor of the church. The base of the shaft which carries these arches is equally decisive, for it is "pudding shaped," entirely different from the other bases, and most unmistakably Saxon: it also can be seen from the floor, but is worth an inspection from the gallery over the choir-vestry, whence there is also an impressive view of the church. With this exception, the triforia and clerestories of the transepts are similar to those of the nave, though Saxon tooling has been found on the wall, and there is a break in some of the masonry on the angle shaft near the vestry door, which possesses a Saxon base. The principal arches of the clerestories are not pointed, which proves that the transepts were rebuilt earlier than the nave. Two corbels on the east side of the transept mark the site of a musicians' gallery which once projected beyond the triforium. =St. Lucy's Chapel= in the second bay of the old south transept aisle was used as a vestry in the days when the transept was devoted to domestic purposes. It must have ruined the effect of this part of the church, and formed an extremely inconvenient vestry. Now the chapel is used, not very appropriately, as a baptistery; it contains a font, well designed and carved, which was executed in 1882. It is Norman or earlier, with the exception of the eastern wall, which was rebuilt in order to hold the present beautiful window. This window is of an uncommon type; the three lights, less than half the height of the tracery above them, commence considerably below the spring of the arch. The tracery, which reminds one of that in Dorchester Abbey, a few miles away, is flamboyant in character, suggesting the form which the decadence of Gothic architecture took in France; only in this case it is a decadence that is vigorous as well as graceful. The chapel recalls the time when King Charles held his court in Christ Church, at the time of the Civil War, many cavalier knights being buried here. =Monuments of the South Transept and Chapel=.--There are the tombs of several prominent royalists in the transept as well as in St. Lucy's little chapel, most of which might well be spared were it not for their historic interest. That of Viscount Grandison, for instance, consists of an urn on a pedestal, altogether huge and hideous; yet Grandison was a brave and doubtless a graceful cavalier, who died in Oxford of wounds received in the attack on Bristol in 1643. Another ugly, big monument is that of Sir E. Littleton, keeper of the Great Seal, who took up arms "for the royal majesty, during the execrable siege of this city." Sir John Smith is also buried here: he "redeemed the banner royal" at the battle of Edgehill, was knighted on the field by the King, and died of his wounds in 1644, at the early age of twenty-eight. A very odd monument is that to Viscount Brouncker, who died in 1645, having been chamberlain to the young Charles, then Prince of Wales. A smartly dressed gentleman and his wife are represented seated in meditative attitudes, each with an elbow on the table, while between their two elbows is propped a skull. In the tracery of St. Lucy's chapel is to be found the finest old glass in the cathedral. It belongs to the year 1330, or thereabouts, and enables one to imagine what the church must have looked like when glass of this magnificent description abounded, and hangings and altar-pieces and wall-paintings, hardly less rich, filled every conspicuous position. In the uppermost compartment of the tracery is a figure of our Lord seated in glory; below there are angels with censers, and next two Augustinian monks in blue and white robes, kneeling with outstretched arms; then come coats of arms, and various grotesque beasts, all most richly coloured in ruby and blue and green and gold. Below, in the principal spaces, are (1) St. Martin on horseback giving his coat to the beggar; (2) the martyrdom of St. Thomas à Becket: St. Thomas' head has been knocked out by some fanatic, and replaced with white glass; the armour and shields of the knights should be noticed; (3) St. Augustine, who holds a pastoral staff, is teaching his monks and others. In the next four spaces are:--The head of a king; St. Cuthbert, carrying the head of St. Oswald, and wearing a green chasuble; St. Blaise, in a mulberry-coloured chasuble; the head of a queen. The glass in the three main lights was destroyed, and then replaced by some of seventeenth century work, but this too is now gone, all except a portion of the upper part, which shows that the design was architectural in character, and the colour that of fog-smitten stone-work. [Illustration: THIRD CAPITAL OF CHOIR.] =The Choir= is in four bays with a presbytery; it is in the same style as the rest of the church, with the exception of the Perpendicular alterations in the upper part. It was formerly filled with heavy, ugly woodwork, and half way up all the pillars may be traced the modern stone-work which had to be inserted when the stalls and panelling that had encased the pillars were removed. Not a wreck of the old wood remains, and the choir is now seated with walnut-wood stalls by Farmer and Brindley, along which runs a light iron screen, very carefully wrought by Skidmore of Birmingham in 1871. It is copied from Queen Eleanor's tomb in Westminster Abbey. The pavement relaid in 1871 contains representations of the cardinal virtues, copied from the church of the Knights of St. John at Malta. Yet there were original artists to be found twenty-five years ago! [Illustration: CAPITALS OF THE CHOIR (_from a drawing by J. Park Harrison_).] The pillars of the choir are larger than those of the nave, which appear to have been reduced in girth (see p. 54). They are (according to the theory of p. 9) part of Ethelred's church, dating from the first decade of the eleventh century; but their bases belong to the Norman restoration, and were probably put in by Cricklade. The triforium is also Late Norman, here as throughout the church, with the single exception of the one window in the south transept. It is in the capitals of the choir that the most striking evidence of Saxon work in the church is said to lie. Thus they are of remarkable interest, besides being very fine specimens of stone-carving. If the visitor sits in a stall in the middle of the south side of the choir he will have the three most important capitals before him, and can study them at leisure. One striking feature common to them all is that they bear very evident traces of having been worn by the weather. It has been found by Mr. Drinkwater that the stone of which they are made is too durable to have been affected by the atmosphere while under cover; which would prove that they must have been in their present position exposed to the driving rains from the south, during the long period when the church was in ruins, that is to say, before the restoration of the twelfth century. Another significant feature which these three capitals have in common, not only with each other but with all the others in the choir, is that their abaci are extremely thick, just twice as thick as those in the transepts and nave; and thick abaci are a mark of early work. Their ornamentation is remarkable, partly Saxon and partly Oriental in character, and said to be unlike Norman work. Sir Gilbert Scott himself noticed the latter characteristic of these and other capitals in the church. "The foliated ornament," he wrote, "assumes a noble character, evidently evincing a study of the ancient Greek, which was effected through a Byzantine medium." We have already seen, in the History of the Cathedral, how this Byzantine influence is to be accounted for by the fact that Greek clergy flocked to the court of Ethelred's brother-in-law Richard; and further, it must be noted that many illuminated MSS. of Saxon date show that Greek ornament was admired and studied at the time. Professor Westwood, in his "_Lapidarium_," points out that in Saxon art the designs of stone-carving are so completely identical with those in the MSS. as to lead us to suppose that the artists of the illuminated drawings were also the designers of the architecture. So much is this the case that, "the age of a particular MS. being ascertained, we are able approximately to determine also the age of the carving." Professor Westwood was, in fact, among the first to be convinced of the Saxon origin of the capitals we are discussing. It is worth while to give a few illustrations of this very important point. The first capital from the tower on the north side of the choir is ornamented with that curious _spuma_ or wave-shaped work which has just the dip and swing of a wave of the sea as it curls over before breaking. In a Psalter of the beginning of the eleventh century (B.M. Har. 2904) is to be found precisely the same vivid conventionalism.[2] The second capital is the most curious one in the church, and is also the most strikingly Saxon, the stalks issuing from pipes or tubes being as characteristic almost of Saxon as interlaced work is of Celtic art. Standing immediately under this capital, one is able clearly to discern the faces on the corner volutes, which have each a crown of leaves like one found in the famous tenth century "Dunstan" MS. in the British Museum. One of these faces is that of a man, very heavy and stupid-looking; the other that of a comely woman. It is hardly fanciful to suppose that they are portraits of the blundering Ethelred and his wife Emma. The third capital is decorated with some branching work hardly less curious, and above it is a head wearing the unbifurcated mitre, which dropped out of use in the eleventh century. Of the three capitals on the south side of the choir, which do not bear the same signs of weathering, one has branching work, and the other two reworked leafage, such as is found also in one on the north side of the nave. As for the triforium and the rest of the work of the choir, it was all so much restored in the twelfth century that one cannot find in it any sign of pre-Norman work. The pendent ceiling is one of the most striking features of the cathedral, and is worth careful study. Ferguson considers this work to be the most satisfactory attempt ever made to surmount the great difficulty presented in all fan-tracery by the awkward, flat, central space which is left in each bay by the four cones of the vault. At Gloucester, King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster, and other places, various attempts were made to deceive the eye, and hide the unmanageable space; in Henry VII.'s Chapel the well-known pendants were boldly introduced with this object. None were wholly satisfactory, but, says Fergusson:-- "Strange as it may appear from its date, the most satisfactory roof of this class is that erected by Cardinal Wolsey in the beginning of the sixteenth century [this is a mistake, the roof having been built some time before] over the choir of Oxford Cathedral. In this instance the pendants are thrust so far forward, and made so important, that the central part of the roof is practically quadripartite. The remaining difficulty was obviated by abandoning the circular, horizontal outline of true fan-tracery, and adopting a polygonal form instead. As the whole is done in a constructive manner and with appropriate detail, this roof, except in size, is one of the best and most remarkable ever executed." Fan-tracery is a peculiarly English feature, and was invented, according to Fergusson, in order to get rid of the endless repetition of inverted pyramids which earlier vaulting produced. He therefore considers it an improvement on the vaulting of the early English and Decorated periods; and, as he thinks the ceiling of Christ Church Cathedral to be the best example of fan-tracery, he comes near to pronouncing it the finest in the world. It certainly must strike every observer as possessing exceptional beauty. At once rich and light, it yet accords wonderfully with the homely Norman work that it crowns, and gives a happy finish to the most important part of the cathedral. Even the lantern pendants seem more graceful than is usually the case with those strange architectural solecisms. Mr. Ruskin calls the ceiling "true Tudor grotesque, inventively constructive, delicately carved, summing the builder's skill in the fifteenth century." [Illustration: TRACERY OF THE CHOIR CEILING, SHOWING TRANSEPT CLERESTORY BEFORE THE RESTORATION.] The ceiling is certainly too early in design to have been built by Wolsey, as was supposed. But there are traces in the work which have led some antiquaries to suppose that, though begun about 1480, its western bay may not have been finished till the Cardinal's time, or even till the end of Henry's reign. The head on the large corbel over the Dean's stall certainly wears a Tudor crown, and is bearded. This would lead one to suppose it to be a likeness of Henry VIII.: furthermore, the face is broad but emaciated, with the beard straggling; and we learn from historians that the King did let his beard grow longer at the end of his life, when he was worn and ill, and expressed more penitence for his many misdeeds than he is generally given credit for. The woman's head on the corbel opposite, also wearing a Tudor crown, would probably be the last of his wives, Katherine Parr. The face wears the happy expression of one delivered from great anxiety. In the arched space nearly above these heads are four canopied figures: on the north, St. Peter with his keys, and St. Mary Magdalen (suggestive of Wolsey's own college in Oxford); on the south St. Luke, over his bull (possibly because of the connection of St. Frideswide's with the healing art), and St. Catherine, holding the remains of a sword in her right hand, and retaining a fragment of the wheel in her left. St. Katherine will be found in the same attitude in a painted window of the Latin Chapel. The central bosses of the roof are interesting. Over the altar is the head of our Lord, surrounded by an aureole, the beard twisted into three points: in the next bay is the Madonna and Child, and next a graceful figure, identified as St. Frideswide by the curious sceptre with heavy foliage at the end, which she is again represented with in the middle window of the Latin Chapel. An angel is on either side of this figure. In the next bay is an archbishop (Augustine?) with his cross; and on the last a bishop (perhaps Birinus), holding his pastoral staff and supported by two figures which may be chaplains or acolytes. The clerestory of the choir was converted into Perpendicular at the time when the roof was vaulted. The old walls were simply covered with panelling, and the old windows enlarged into Perpendicular ones. =The East End=, now one of the most characteristic features of the cathedral, is the work of Sir G. Gilbert Scott, and is supposed to be a reproduction of the original twelfth century design: for enough fragments of the old work were said to remain on the walls to leave no doubt as to its original plan. Of course the detail has the usual machine-made look of modern carving; but it is something to have recovered the original effect, especially as the Decorated window which it has replaced had been spoilt in the seventeenth century, when it was altered from its original five lights to three. The design, says Mr. J.H. Parker, is very rare in England, and not common anywhere. It consists of a large wheel-window, with an intersecting arcade under it, and _two_ round-headed windows below: the wheel-window is set in a large round arch that seems to rest on two stout pillars. This round window is an imitation of an old one in Canterbury Cathedral. The arcade has a truer and less mechanical look than most of the restored work. The whole effect of the East End is excellent; dignified and varied, it has something of that refined homeliness which is so strong a characteristic of the cathedral. The stained glass in the windows by Clayton and Bell is not at all unpleasing when seen from a distance. It is in character with the stone-work, and only just fails to be really fine in colour. Dr. Liddon and Sir John Mowbray were the donors of the glass. It was formerly thought that the Norman presbytery was part of the original choir, and therefore presumably the earliest portion of the church; but Mr. Harrison gives the following technical reasons for holding that it was an addition to an older building with an apse, built by Ethelred:-- 1. The arches of the two side windows cut through string courses which run eastwards on both sides of the presbytery, being, in fact, continuations of the abaci proper of the half-capitals at that end of the choir. 2. If the east windows were designed from fragments of previously existing Norman ones, these cannot have been of the same date as the choir arches. The mouldings are later, and the old bases of the windows still in the east wall are clearly of transitional character, differing essentially from those belonging to corner shafts in the east aisles of the transepts. 3. The east walls of the choir aisles, which had been heightened to carry the vaulting, abut against and cover the jambs of the two side windows of the presbytery on the outside, a thing which could not have happened had the presbytery and choir aisles formed part of the same design. =The Reredos=, an anonymous gift, erected in 1881 in red Dumfries sandstone, is a pleasant contrast to the chilly erections which now deface so many of our cathedrals. It has been said to be "perhaps the most exquisite piece of modern workmanship in Oxford," though this would not necessarily be very high praise. But, though a little too small for its position, a little wanting in breadth and overstrained in detail, it is a sound and sincere piece of work. Nor can we agree with the criticism which says that nothing can make it look like part of the structure, for this is the fault of the structure in its present condition; when the old colouring is revived, the reredos will certainly not be too rich for it, and there is plenty of late Gothic in the choir to harmonise with its carving. Mr. Bodley designed it, and Mr. Brindley was the sculptor of the figures. They are of marble (rosso antico), and are excellent both in feeling and execution. The central panel represents the Crucifixion, with Our Lady and St. John at the foot of the cross, and Jerusalem in the background. In the niches on the left are St. Michael in armour, and St. Stephen in a dalmatic; on the right, St. Augustine, in cope and mitre, and a very feminine looking St. Gabriel. Above the niches are carved and gilt shields bearing the emblems of the Passion. The warm effect of the whole is heightened by two handsome, green curtains on either side. The inscription, under the crucifix is _Per crucem tuam libera nos Domine_. =The High Altar=, of cedar wood, is less successful. Its eight clumsy legs, which are the only part visible, are covered with unpleasant, geometrical carving, most inappropriately accentuated by gilding: the result is that an impression of some strange, many-legged insect fastens on one in entering the church, and is hard to dislodge. One could wish that the altar were panelled, or frontals used to cover the legs. The two silver-gilt candlesticks are extremely fine examples of seventeenth century plate; they are rather squat in shape, with large bases richly embossed. The alms-dish which stands over the credence is also silver-gilt of the same date, magnificently embossed. These were given at the Restoration, and bear the date 1661-2. The chalices, patens, and flagons have been made to match them in more recent times. The altar books are good specimens of binding in velvet and precious metal. They were given in 1638 by Canon Henry King. On the fly-leaf of each book is a curious inscription in Latin, of which the following is a translation:--"Bequeathed to the Church of Christ, Oxford. A brand snatched from the burning, 1647, by the zealous care of R. Gardiner, Canon of Ch. Ch., but displaced from his rightful position by the greed of his times." These books were in use when Charles I. worshipped in the cathedral during the civil war. The lectern, of ancient, pale brass enriched with filigree work, and garnished with amethyst, cornelian, and agate stones, is the gift of two former censors of the House, the Rev. T. Vere Bayne and the Rev. H.L. Thompson. The stem, surmounted by a globe and a good conventional eagle, bears the figures of St. Frideswide, Cardinal Wolsey, and Bishop King. At the base are three lions bearing the arms of the Priory, the College, and the University. The bible bears the date 1674. A beautifully illuminated lectionary on vellum, a relic of Cardinal Wolsey, and used by him in this church, can be seen in the Christ Church library. The Bishop's Throne (in Italian walnut) is a not very inspired work of Messrs. Farmer and Brindley. It was put up as a memorial to Bishop Wilberforce, at a cost of £1000, and has a medallion of the Bishop with mitre and pastoral staff at the back. =The South Choir Aisle= is of an earlier period than the nave and transept aisles, the walls being, it is thought, of Ethelred's time. A stone bench runs along its south side, adding to its bright and pleasant appearance. The southern windows were rebuilt by Scott in Norman style of a different character to the window containing Bishop King's portrait which has its original capitals and bases. The corbels which carry the vault are carved into heads of men and baboons: the vaulting ribs have been unmistakably fitted on to the earlier Norman work. The Decorated east window, which, owing to the Burne Jones glass, is such a prominent feature of the cathedral, is restored, but there is a good deal of the original ball-flower moulding around it. At the side is a late Perpendicular piscina, with bold, square flowers cut on the jambs; and on the pillars opposite there are traces of paintings, which must have been very bright-coloured once, and would very likely be so still, had it not been for Brian Duppa's wood-work. =Monuments=.--There is an old brass on the wall, near the eastern end, to Stephen Pence, who died in 1587. Near this is a not very pleasing life-size medallion of Prince Leopold in statuary marble set in Sicilian marble; it was sculptured by Mr. T. Williamson of Esher. The bronze tablet, with the portrait in relief of Dr. Mackarness, the late Bishop, is very much better both in colour and design. Further west another medallion in statuary marble, set in giallo antico, commemorates Sarah Acland, the wife of Sir Henry Acland, who is an Honorary Student of the House, and was for many years Regius Professor of Medicine in the University; the Sarah Acland Home for Nurses keeps her pious memory fresh in Oxford. The late Tudor monument to the first Bishop of Oxford, _Robert King_, has been removed from its former place under his window to the bay between the aisle and St. Lucy's Chapel, where it now forms a sort of small screen to the little chapel. Bishop King died in 1557; his tomb is recessed, canopied, and covered with shallow panel-work in minute divisions, but without any effigy, sculptured or incised. Though it is among the last works of the mediæval school of monumental architecture, it is still graceful and restrained; and indeed a great contrast to the new style of monument which came in a few years later. _Inscription:--Hic jacet Robertus King sacre theologie Professor et primus Ep'us Oxon. qui obiit quarto die Decembris Anno (Domini M.D. LVII)_. Crossing to the north side of the choir, one reaches the beautiful cluster of chapels which add so much to the grace of the cathedral, relieving it of any grimness of aspect which its unbroken array of massive columns might otherwise have produced, and by their unaffected dissimilarity enhancing at once its historical interest and its visible charm. Here the eye wanders among pillars and arches which branch away in so many directions that the grandest churches can scarcely give more thoroughly the idea of infinity. And here one stands on the site of St. Frideswide's first little church, with the very arches that she had built for her, still standing in all their primitive simplicity. These three aisles, and the south aisle on the opposite side of the choir, are indeed eloquent of the unpretentious, lasting work that brave women have done for humanity: the latter has become, through its window, sacred to the memory of St. Catherine, whose own Latin Chapel is now for the same reason inseparably connected with St. Frideswide. St. Cecilia looks down upon the aisle next the choir, and the chapel of Our Lady is separated from it only by the monument of the Saxon maiden, while St. Lucy has given her name to the fifth and smallest of these eastern chapels. Thus has this great society of learned men taken pleasure in doing honour to the good women of Christendom. =The North Choir Aisle= and the two aisles which adjoin it were lengthened one bay by the gradual inclusion of the eastern aisle of the transept. A heavy pier has been left with no attempt at decoration on the transept side but with a cluster of shafts on the side facing east; and the next pier to the north has been similarly treated. It will be noticed that the arches over these western bays of the north choir aisle and Lady Chapel, being the arches of the old transept aisle, are extremely massive; unlike anything else in the church, except the one remaining arch, is the corresponding south transept aisle (now St. Lucy's Chapel): these are therefore thought to be unrestored parts of Ethelred's works. The fact that Norman vaulting shafts have evidently been inserted into the pier walls of the aisles point also to the conclusion that the aisle was erected at a date when vaulting shafts were not in use. At the east end there is a small arch, extremely rough, its ragstone voussoirs patched in one part with a block of modern stone. A similar arch is to be seen in the wall of the next (Lady) Chapel, and between these two are traces of another. These three arches led to one of the most interesting architectural discoveries of recent years; and one can hardly look at them unmoved, remembering that they form part of the original church which was built by St. Frideswide and her father. They were indeed the three "chancel arches" (if one may use the expression) which led into the three apses, the discovery of which we have described in our chapter on the exterior of the cathedral. It was not till 1888 that the plaster was removed from the walls, and these arches exposed to view. It was then obvious that they had been part of a permanent church, and not merely temporary doorways for the convenience of Norman masons. Rough as they seem, to the expert they bear marks of care and repair, of having been, in fact, preserved as a specially venerated part of the church. As an instance of this, Mr. Park Harrison points out that one of the supporting stones is quite two feet long (longer than any other in the cathedral), and has Norman tooling upon it. It can scarcely be doubted, he says, that this was introduced to support the springing-stones of the arch, for there are clear signs that there had been some settlement. The head of the archways, too, had been plastered. In both archways there is an impost (a projection, that is, from which the arch springs), and this impost is continued through the thickness of the wall. It will be noticed that the jambs of these arches go more than two feet below the level of the floor, which is another sign of their early date. Within the apse that was reached through the southernmost archway lay the body of St. Frideswide in its first resting-place, and for long this part seems to have been held in special veneration, until the first translation in 1180, when the relics of "The Lady" were moved into a more noted place in the church, and this apse doubtless abandoned like the other two. Somewhere here the relics were then placed (as they lie to-day in the ground beneath this chapel), but the first monument has been lost. Of the second monument, which also was lost but is found again, it is now the place to speak. But, first, it may be well to explain that what is usually called the shrine of St. Frideswide is really the marble monument, or base, upon which the shrine itself formerly rested. In the Middle Ages, relics (with the two English exceptions of Westminster and St. Albans) were preserved in a shrine, usually of metal, which was enclosed in a coffer or _feretrum_. =The Shrine of St. Frideswide=.--Foremost in historical interest, as well as in actual beauty, are the remains of the marble monument which have recently been put together and set up in the easternmost arch between the Lady Chapel and the north choir aisle. The coffer or shrine, which was made for the translation in 1289 (its base being therefore the most ancient monument in the cathedral), was knocked to pieces at the Reformation (1538), and, being of wood, must have entirely perished. But gradually, and from different places, fragments of the base were brought together: first, several pieces of delicately carved marble were discovered in the sides of a square well in the yard south-west of the cathedral; then a part of the plinth on the south side was found to be in use as a step, luckily with the carved portion turned inwards; next, a spandrel was detected by Mr. Francis, the head verger, in the wall of the cemetery; and last of all a piece of the plinth was found in a wall in Tom Quad. Though some portions are still wanting, it is not impossible that more may yet be found. As the monument stands now, it cannot, of course, impress one as it would have done in its perfect state, with the rich superstructure crowning it: especially as the restored shafts are merely square stone supports of the clumsiest description, so studiously careful has the restorer been not to confuse them with the original work. One cannot but applaud this conscientious spirit (would, indeed, that it had been adopted earlier!), but at the same time the modern supports have been made quite unnecessarily hideous. Still, though the base of St. Frideswide's shrine is only a collection of fragments, these fragments are of remarkable beauty and interest. It is of Forest marble, measuring seven feet by three and a half; and consists of an arcade of two richly cusped arches at the sides and one at each end. On the top of this was fixed the _feretrum_, containing the jewelled casket that held the relics themselves. The spandrels are filled with wonderfully carved foliage, unusually naturalistic, and preserving still the traces of colour and gilding to remind one of its former glories. The plants have been identified by Mr. Druce of High Street, the well-known Oxford botanist. On the south side there is maple in the central spandrel, with a wreath of what is probably crow's-foot in a boss below: the two side spandrels contain columbine and the greater celandine. On the north side the foliage is mostly oak, with acorns and numerous empty cups; sycamore and ivy filling the adjoining spandrels. At the east end one of the spandrels contains vine leaves and grapes, the other fig-leaves, but without the fruit; the cusp under the vine has a leaf which may be that of hog-leaf. At the west end there is hawthorn and bryony. The choice of all this foliage was doubtless made for symbolical reasons, referring first to St. Frideswide's life in the oak woods near Abingdon, and next to her care for the sick and suffering at Thornberrie (now Binsey). And in this connection it is pleasant to think that the sculptor, with tender fancy, chose plants which were famous for their healing virtue. The foliage at the angles takes the form of pastoral staves; and the intermediate spandrels at the sides have women's heads carved in the centre. The plinth, which has been set on a chamfered base and step of white stone, is ornamented with a series of quatrefoils, containing the head of a bishop at the north-west corner, and the heads of queens on the south side. Foliage, instead of a head, occupies the centre and end panels on the sides; and very delicate foliage is worked on a little roll moulding extant at two of the angles. Here is an account of the destruction of the shrine, and the treatment of its relics, in the words of Dean Liddell[3]:-- "It is a strange story. It is well known that, before the Reformation, the Church of St. Frideswide and her shrine enjoyed a high reputation as a place of sanctity. Privileges were conceded to it by royal authority. Miracles were believed to be wrought by a virtue attaching to it; pilgrims from all parts resorted to it,--among the number we find the name of Queen Catherine of Aragon, whose visit to the shrine shows the veneration in which it was held. Twice a year the Vice-Chancellor and principal members of the University visited the church in solemn procession, being considered (as we are told) the 'Mother Church of University and town,--there to pray, preach, and offer oblations at her shrine.' "These practices and privileges not unnaturally seemed to the zealous Reformers of those times to call for summary interference. The old superstitions, which certainly gave rise to many abuses, must, they thought, be abated at once; nothing but strong measures would avail to withdraw the minds of the people, nurtured as they were in absolute belief in these superstitions, from belief in them. Accordingly, we cannot be surprised to find that this famous shrine was doomed to destruction, and was actually destroyed. When this happened it is not easy to determine,--probably in the time of Henry VIII. The fragments were used either at the time, or not long afterwards, to form part of the walls of a common well; and there we found them. The reliques of the Saint, however, were rescued by some zealous votaries, and carefully preserved in hope of better times. Meantime Catherine (the wife of Peter Martyr, a foreign Protestant theologian of high repute, who had been appointed Regius Professor of Theology here) died, and was buried near the place lately occupied by the shrine. Over her grave sermons were preached, contrasting the pious zeal of the German Protestant with the superstitious practices that had tarnished the simplicity of the Saxon Saint. Then came another change. The Roman Church under Mary Tudor recovered a brief supremacy. The body of Peter Martyr's wife was (one regrets to learn), by order of Cardinal Pole, contemptuously cast out of the church, and the remains of St. Frideswide, preserved, as I have said, by the piety of her devotees, were restored to their former resting-place. But it does not appear that any attempt was made to restore the shrine. Party zeal still prevailed. Angry contests continued between the adherents of the two parties even after the accession of Elizabeth. "In consequence, the Queen, soon after her accession, ordered Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Grindal, Bishop of London, to look into this and other matters in dispute between the adherents of the Roman Church and those of the Reformed Faith; and these eminent ecclesiastics commissioned the authorities of this House to remove the scandal that had been caused by the inhuman treatment of Catherine Martyr's body. The matter was conducted by James Calfhill, lately appointed to a stall in this church, and then acting as sub-dean. In a letter to Bishop Grindal he gives an account of the ceremony that took place. He was resolved, if we may judge from his action, not to give a triumph to either party. On Jan. 11th, 1561, O.S., the bones of the Protestant Catherine and the Catholic St. Frideswide were put together, so intermingled that they could not be distinguished, and then placed together in the same tomb. This solution of the difficulty could not have been displeasing to the great Queen, who had been consistently endeavouring rather to win over her opponents by conciliation than to crush them by persecution. We may well suppose that she approved of the act of our Dean and Chapter. Death is the great reconciler; enmities should, at all events, be buried with the dead." Calfhill, the sub-dean, wrote two epigrams on the burial of Catherine Martyr with St. Frideswide. The first ends thus: _Ergo facessant hinc rabida impietas, inde superstitio_; the other thus: _Nunc coeant pietas atque superstitio_. Perhaps these apparently contradictory sentiments led Isaac Disraeli (in his account of this curious transaction, which he selects in his "Amenities of Literature" as an illustration of the mutability of time) to remark that Calfhill "seems to have been at once a Catholic and a Reformer." Sanders the Jesuit was indignant at the "impious epithet," which he says was added, _hic jacet religio cum superstitione_; "although," says old Fuller, "the words being capable of a favourable sense on his side, he need not have been so angry." The exact spot where the bones of The Lady now rest is supposed to be marked by a brass on the floor of the Lady Chapel, lately placed there by Canon Bright. But we can only be certain that, somewhere in this part of the church, "the married nun and the virgin saint," to use Froude's words, "were buried together, and the dust of the two still remains under the pavement inextricably blended." =The Lady Chapel=, which is the aisle next to the north choir aisle, is sometimes called "the Dormitory," because many of the canons are buried here: the word being a literal translation of the Greek _coemeterium_ (sleeping-place), applied to the catacombs of Rome. It was enlarged, with the Early English pillars and vaulting of the period, in the thirteenth century. The shafts are filleted, and the capitals carved in the characteristic curling foliage. It owes its position possibly to the original dedication of the eighth century church; though the Elder Lady Chapel of Bristol Cathedral, another Augustinian house, is similarly situated. Its eastern wall proves that it must have already existed long before the thirteenth century. The most casual observer will also be struck by the ingenuous clumsiness with which it has been patched together. There is a fine Decorated four-centred window at the East End, restored to its present condition from the mean two-light window that the seventeenth century had made of it: underneath, at the side of the blocked-up Saxon doorway, is a once richly coloured piscina, the outer moulding much damaged. The roof and arches of the second bay from the east bears many traces of colouring, which show among other things that the capitals were all painted green alike, the abaci red, and the ribs of the vault and arches red, green, and perhaps other colours. The figures of angels can be made out on the roof, a swinging censer being particularly clear. A glance from here at the high altar makes one realise how much more bright and strong the old colour was, and is indeed even now, than the modern. This decoration proves that in the second bay stood something of particular importance. It is generally agreed now that this was not the shrine of St. Frideswide but the altar of Our Lady, for shrines were placed behind and not before the altars. Such an arrangement would leave the eastern bay of the chapel free for the two shrines, the large one (commonly called the "Watching Chamber") and the small one recently discovered and placed opposite to it under the south-east arch. The fact that this arch is also coloured, and is the only other part which is thus treated, goes to prove that the small shrine did originally stand where it now is. Another sign is that the pillar nearest to the east end of it has been cut away, evidently to allow of a free passage round the shrine. The Lady Chapel is divided from the Latin Chapel by four arches. Of these the first, being part of the original transept aisle, is very plain and massive, without mouldings and of one order; it springs from a square pier with shafts at the corners, and has an extremely broad soffit. It is almost beyond doubt part of Ethelred's church, and proves that the transept was finished early. The second arch is Early English, cut irregularly through the wall, which bears traces of a round arch above it. The first of the four arches which separate this chapel from the north choir aisle is similar to the one just described. The rest are very obtuse; for the two eastern bays of the Lady Chapel are two feet wider than the others, perhaps in order to increase the accommodation for worshippers at the shrine of St. Frideswide. =The "Watching Chamber."=--Next in interest to the "shrine," and far more imposing in appearance, is the large tomb or watching chamber under the easternmost arch between the Lady Chapel and the Latin Chapel. Its real nature is still a matter of dispute: some maintaining it to have been used as a chantry chapel for the welfare of those who were buried below; others that it served as a "watching chamber" to protect the gold and jewels which hung about the shrine of St. Frideswide. But there is much likelihood that is was built for the new shrine of St. Frideswide, when the growing taste for elaboration in architecture tired of the comparative simplicity of the old one. If this be the case, the "watching chamber" would be in reality the third and last monument of St. Frideswide, the second being that already described, while of the first (that made for the Translation of 1180) no trace remains. The _feretrum_ would have been removed from its position on the second monument, and placed within the little wooden chapel of the chamber. Most elaborately carved and crocketed, the "watching chamber" is a beautiful example of full-blown Perpendicular workmanship; "most lovely English work, both of heart and hand," according to Mr. Ruskin. It consists of four stories, the two lower, in stone, forming an altar tomb and canopy, and the two upper in wood. A door from the Latin Chapel leads one up a small and well-worn stone staircase into the interior of the little upper chapel, which is now a rough wooden room. Its extreme roughness suggests that it was once panelled and otherwise adorned, while there are marks at its east end, which may be the site of an altar, or of the _feretrum_ itself. The "watching chamber" belongs to the turn of the fifteenth century, and may have been erected in 1500, under the patronage of Archbishop Morton, the inventor of "Morton's fork," who died in that year, having been Chancellor of the University, and a great benefactor of it. The stone altar-tomb is of rather earlier date than the wooden superstructure, and bears the matrices of two brasses, from which one can make out enough of the horned head-dress of the female figure to settle the costume as one that remained in fashion till about 1480. In 1889 Mr. Park Harrison explored the interior of the tomb which forms the lower portion of the "watching chamber." Entrance was effected by the removal of two steps of the staircase which leads into the Latin Chapel, and the whole space beneath the stone slab was found to be packed with carved stones and rubble. The pretty battlemented coping, which is now happily placed on the sill behind the altar of the Latin Chapel, was thus found; and also a pillar piscina of Norman date, and a fine Early English piscina, with two trefoiled arches, divided by a slender shaft with foliated cap, and profusely enriched with the tooth ornament. This latter find can now be seen lying on the slab itself. By an accident it was discovered that what seemed to be the floor of this tomb was really the ceiling of a vault beneath. The pavement was opened in the Latin Chapel just outside the tomb, and steps were found which led to the vault through a flat four-centred doorway. In the vault was a single oak coffin, widest at the head and tapering in a straight line to the foot, like the stone coffins of an earlier period. It was apparently of fifteenth century date, and contained a body closely swathed in cerecloth; but after the coffin was opened the dust within the cerecloth rapidly subsided. The body was pronounced by experts to be that of a woman about five feet six inches in height, and was probably that of the lady in the mitred head-dress whose brass can be traced on the altar-tomb. [Illustration: LADY MONTACUTE'S TOMB.] =Monuments in the Lady Chapel=.--In the bay of the west of the "watching chamber" is the tomb of _Elizabeth, Lady Montacute_, who gave to the Priory the large field now known as the Christ Church Meadow, in order to maintain two priests for her chantry in the Lady Chapel. There seems to be no ground for the statement that she built the Latin Chapel; in her foundation-deed she expressly directs the masses and other offices to be said "within the chapel of the Blessed Mary," and, so far from her bequest proving sufficient to build a new chapel, it was soon found inadequate for the maintenance of the two chantry priests. Lady Montacute was the daughter of Sir Peter de Montfort, and was married first to William de Montacute, by whom she had four sons and six daughters, and afterwards to Thomas de Furnival. Her monument consists of a high tomb, the sides of which are divided into three panelled compartments. In these compartments are little statuettes of her children, and her own effigy rests on the top; at the head and foot of the tomb are quatrefoiled compartments containing sacred symbols and figures. It is very beautiful, and of great interest as showing many specimens of the costume of the period; but one can hardly imagine what its splendour must have been when the rich hues, with which it is painted in every part, were fresh. The colours mentioned in the following learned description by Mr M.H. Bloxham have long tended to monochrome, and the hand of the mutilator has been unusually painstaking and systematic. "The head of the effigy reposes on a double cushion, and is supported on each side by a small figure of an angel in an alb; these albs are loose, and not girded round the waist. The heads of these figures are defaced, and they are otherwise much mutilated. She is represented with her neck bare, her hair disposed and confined on each side, the face within a jewelled caul of network; over the forehead is worn a veil, and over this is a rich cap or plaited head-dress with nébulé folds, with a tippet attached to it and falling down behind. Her body-dress consists of a robe or sleeveless gown, fastened in front downwards to below the waist by a row of ornamented buttons. The full skirts of the gown are tastefully disposed, but not so much so as we sometimes find on effigies of the fourteenth century. The gown is of a red colour, flowered with yellow and green, and at each side of the waist is an opening, within which is disclosed the inner vest, of which the close-fitting sleeves of the arms, extending to the wrists, form part; this is painted of a different colour and in a different pattern to the gown. This was probably the corset worn beneath the open super-tunic. The gown is flounced at the skirts by a broad white border, and round the side openings, and along the border of the top of the gown, is a rich border of leaves. The hands, which are bare, are joined on the breast in a devotional attitude. Over the gown or super-tunic is worn the mantle, fastened together in front of the breast by a large and rich lozenge-shaped morse, raised in high relief. The mantle, of a buff colour, is covered all over with rondeaux or roundels connected together by small bands, whilst in the intermediate spaces are _fleur de lis_: all these are of raised work, and deserve minute examination. They are apparently not executed by means of the chisel, but formed in some hard paste or composition [_gesso_] laid upon the sculptured stone and impressed with a stamp. The feet of the effigy appear from beneath the skirts of the gown in black shoes, and rest against a dog." Of the statuettes on each side of Lady Montacute's tomb, which are each a foot and a half high, Mr Bloxham says:-- "The first and easternmost of these, on the north side, is the most puzzling and difficult of all to describe, as regards the costume, and the more so from the mutilated state in which it now appears. It is that of a male, who is habited in a red cloak, the borders of which are jagged. This is buttoned in front to the waist by lozenge-shaped morses, and may have been the garment called the Courtepye, and discloses a short white tunic or vest, plaited in vertical folds, with a bawdrick round the body at the hips." "Next to this is the effigy in relief of an abbess, in a long loose white gown or robe, a black mantle over, connected in front of the breast by a chain, with a tippet of the same colour. The head has been destroyed, but remains of the plaited wimple which covered the neck in front are visible, as also of the white veil on each shoulder. The pastoral staff appears on the left side, but the crook is gone. "Two daughters of Lady Montacute were in succession Abbess of Barking, in Essex, and so, next to the last figure is another abbess similarly dressed, with the exception that the left sleeve of the gown, which is large and wide, is seen, as well as the close sleeve of the inner robe. Sculptured figures of abbesses, especially of this period, are extremely rare. "The next figure is that of a female, in a green high-bodied gown or robe, with small pocket-holes in front and sleeves reaching only to the elbows. The fifth figure is also that of a female, in a white robe or gown, with close sleeves, close fitting to the waist, where it is belted round by a narrow girdle, and thence falls in loose folds to the feet; over this is a black mantle. There are also indications of a plaited wimple about the neck, but the head of this, as of the other effigies, has been destroyed. "On the south side, the easternmost figure, of which the mere torso remains, is that of a male in a doublet, jagged at the skirts, and buttoned down in front from, the neck to the skirts, with close sleeves buttoned from the elbows to the wrists,--_manicae botonatae_, with a bawdrick, round the hips, and buckled on the right side. From the bawdrick on the left side the gipciere is suspended. This much mutilated effigy presents a good specimen of the early doublet. "Next to it is the figure of a male, in a long red coat or gown, the _toga talaris_, with a cloak over, buttoned in front downwards from the neck as far as the third button, from whence it is open to the skirts. This dress, in the phrase of the fourteenth century, would be described as _cota et cloca_. In the right hand is held a purse. "Next to this is the figure of a Bishop, intended possibly to represent Simon, Bishop of Ely, 1337-1344, one of the sons of Lady Montacute. He appears in his episcopal vestments, a white alb, with the apparel in front of the skirt, a black dalmatica fringed and open at the sides, and a chocolate-coloured chesible, with orfreys round the border and disposed in front pall-wise. The parures or apparels of the amice give it a stiff and collar-like appearance. The head of this effigy has been destroyed, and the outline of the mitre is only visible. The pastoral staff has been destroyed, with the exception of the pointed ferrule with which it was shod. It was, however, held by the left hand. The maniple is suspended from the left arm, but no traces of the stole are visible. In more than one instance we may notice on episcopal effigies the absence of either the tunic or dalmatica, and sometimes of the stole. "The fourth figure is that of a lady in a gown or robe buttoned down in front from the breast to the waist, and with sleeves reaching only to the elbows, from whence depend long white liripipes or false hanging sleeves; small pocket holes are visible in front. From beneath this gown or super-tunic the loose skirts of the under robe, of which also the close-fitting sleeves are visible, appear. Behind this figure are the remains of a mantle. The fifth and last figure is also that of a female in a gown or super-tunic, close-fitting, and buttoned in front to the waist." The quatrefoiled compartments at the ends of the tomb are particularly good: they contain,--at the head, the Blessed Virgin and Child, between a winged figure at a desk and an eagle, which are the symbols of St. Matthew and St. John the Evangelist,--at the foot, the symbols of SS. Mark and Luke, and between them a woman in gown and mantle with long flowing hair, probably St. Mary Magdalene. The shields in the panels are blazoned with the arms of Montacute, Furnival, and Montfort. On a pillar near Lady Montacute's tomb there are two brasses; one bearing a graceful kneeling figure of _Johañ, Bishop filii Geo. Bishop_, who died March 23rd, 1588; the other of Thomas Thornton, who died August 17th, 1613. The next tomb to the west of Lady Montacute is that of a Prior, supposed to be _Alexander de Sutton_, prior from 1294 to 1316. It used to be called Guimond's tomb, and Prior Philip's, but it cannot, of course, be of their time: for the beautiful canopy, supported by Purbeck shafts with vine-leaf capitals, and powdered with ball-flower without, and groined within, as well as the figure beneath it, are Decorated, and belong to the reign of Edward I., about a hundred and fifty years later than Guimond's death in 1141. There were formerly figures at the angles, of which one on the north-west remains with a little of its original colour. The effigy, also of Purbeck marble, is thus described by Mr. M.H. Bloxham:--"The head of the effigy, which is bare and tonsured, with flowing locks by the sides of the face, reposes on a double cushion. The Prior is represented vested, with the amice about his neck with the apparel; in the alb, the apparels of which appear at the skirt in front and round the close-fitting sleeves at the wrists; with the stole, and dalmatica or tunic--which, it is somewhat difficult to say: these two latter are not sculptured, but merely painted on the effigy, and are only apparent on a careful examination; over these is worn the chesible. This vestment is very rich, and ornamented with orfreys round the borders, over the shoulders, and straight down in front. Hanging down from the left arm is the maniple. The boots are pointed at the toes, and the feet rest against a lion. There is no indication of the pastoral staff; the hands are joined on the breast." Another proof of its fourteenth century date is that the face is close-shaven: had it been an effigy of the twelfth century the face would have been bearded. [Illustration: ORNAMENT FROM A TOMB IN CHRIST CHURCH.] West of this is the tomb of _Sir George Nowers_ (de Nodariis), who died in 1425. His effigy gives one a good idea of the armour of his time--or rather of a period slightly before his death. Mr. Bloxham, who devoted special attention to these three monuments, thus describes the armour:-- "On the head is a conical basinet attached by a lace down the sides of the face to a camail or tippet of mail, which covers the head and shoulders, epaulières, rere, and vambraces, and coudes incase the shoulders, arms, and elbows, and on the hands are gauntlets of plate. The body-armour is covered with an emblazoned jupon, with an ornamental border of leaves, and round this, about the hips, is a rich horizontally disposed bawdrick. Beneath the jupon, which is charged with the bearing--three garbs Or--is seen the skirt or apron of mail. The thighs, knees, legs, and feet are incased in and protected by cuisses, genouillères, jambs, and sollerets, the latter composed of movable lamina; or plates, and rounded at the toes. The feet of this effigy rest against a collared dog, and the head reposes on a tilting helm, surmounted by a bull's head as a crest." On a scutcheon at the head of the tomb are the knight's arms: they are--a fess between three garbs, impaling a chevron between three greyhounds. On the pier at the foot of Sir George Nowers' tomb is fixed the remarkably characteristic monument of _Robert Burton_, the famous author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," who died in 1639, having been Student of Christ Church for forty years, and also Vicar of St. Thomas', Oxford. His bust is coloured, and surrounded by an oval frame; it should be a good likeness, and one fancies that the face is drenched in melancholy. On the frame are two medallions with a sphere, and a curious calculation of his nativity, composed by himself, and placed here by his brother William, the historian of Leicestershire. The inscription, written by himself, is:-- Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus Hic jacet Democritus Junior Cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia. At the south side of the Montacute tomb there is a stone in the floor with a large cross upon it, and an inscription in Lombardic characters of which these words can be made out:--_Johan: de: col ... v. le: gist: id: Dieu ... Merci. Pour: lame: prier: dis: jours: de: pardon: aver: amen_. In the north aisle of the choir a stone commemorates _Andreas de Soltre quondam rector Ecclesiae de Kalleyn_; and a brass, James Coorthoppe, Canon of Christ Church 1546, and Dean of Peterborough till his death in 1557. On the floor of this aisle there is also a small brass with the figure of a youth, with the Courtenay arms, and this inscription:--_Hic jacet Edvardus Courtenay, filius Hugonis Courtenay, filii Comitis Devomæ, cujus animæ propicietur Deus_. This Hugh Courtenay, the father of the lad, must have been either Hugh second Earl of Devon, or his son Hugh, surnamed _le Fitz_, one of the heroes of Crécy. =Glass in the Aisles=.--The three lovely east windows of the aisles and Lady Chapel were designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and executed by Mr. William Morris. The only possible criticism is that made by Mr. Ruskin, who once said that they were beautiful pictures, but were they windows? They are perhaps open to the objection, but a comparison of them with the Reynolds windows in New College Chapel, which are flagrant offenders in this way, makes one feel that the objection is purely formal, and that these are true windows, adding colour and interest to the old cathedral in a perfectly legitimate way. One is naturally prejudiced against large figures pictorially treated, because of the atrocities of the Munich school, but these were made, not at Munich but at Merton, by the most accomplished craftsman of the century. The first window, that in the Lady Chapel, was erected in memory of Frederick Vyner, an undergraduate of the House, who was murdered by brigands at Marathon in 1870. The figures represent Samuel the Prophet, David, King of Israel, John the Evangelist, and Timothy the Bishop. In the panels beneath are, Eli instructing the young Samuel, David slaying Goliath, St. John at the last supper, and Timothy as a little boy learning from his mother. The legends are:--(1) _Loquere Domine, quia audit servus tuus_, and in the panel _Prope est Dominus quibus invocantibus eum_; (2) _Deus, Deus, meus, ad te de luce vigilo_, and _Tua est Domine victoria_; (3) _Qui recubit in coena super pectus ejus_, and _Quis nos separabit a charitate Christi_; (4) _Dabit tibi Dominus in omnibus intellectum_, and _Statuit super petram pedes meos_. At the end of the north choir aisle is the St. Cecilia window, presented in honour of the patroness of music by Dr. Corfe, a former organist, in 1873. In the centre light the saint is represented playing her regal or small hand-organ; two angels holding other musical instruments, with palms in their hands, stand by her. The drapery is wrought in white glass, the angels have pale blue wings, and the flesh tints matted over with red tell warm against the drapery. In the lower panels are three scenes from her life: "Here St. Cecilia teaches her husband," "Here an angel of the Lord teaches St. Cecilia," "Here St. Cecilia wins a heavenly crown;" the saint's figure in this last panel is most touchingly drawn. These lower panels are richer in colour than the rest, and a greater variety of tints is introduced; but the colours are so delicate, and so skilfully blended, that they fall in most harmoniously with the main parts of the window. As the neighbouring window just described is full of the robust strength of manhood, so this one, in colour as well as in design, is graceful, delicate, and feminine. Probably it will lead to the north choir aisle being known by the name of St. Cecilia, whose art has certainly many votaries in Oxford. Mr. Malcolm Bell, in his monograph on Burne-Jones, gives the following description of the St. Cecilia window:-- "A still more beautiful instance of the use of simple figures with complicated draperies is found in the lovely St. Cecilia window, executed in 1874-5, a companion to the 'St. Catherine,' executed in 1878, in Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford, in which, moreover, it is enhanced by the soberness of the colouring, which, with the exception of a few touches of stronger hues in the lower panels, is green, and white, and gold, symbolic of the lily of heaven, into which mediæval commentators tortured the meaning of her name. The saint herself stands in the middle, with attendant angels on either side, bearing the palm of martyrdom, who hush their harmony while she plays. Below the left-hand angel, St. Cecilia, seated on her bed, reads to her husband Valirian the lesson of chastity. In the centre the angel brings to them the miraculous proof of the justification of her faith which he demanded from her: "Valirian goth home, and sint Cecilie Withinne his chaumbre with an aungel stonde, This aungel had of roses and of lillie Corounes two, the which he bar in honde. [Illustration: THE "ST. CECILIA" WINDOW, BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES.] "The lilies, symbolical of virgin purity; the roses, of victory over death. In the third, the executioner holds her by one hand as she kneels on the floor of her bath-room, which is seen in the background, the steam still rising in it after the ineffectual attempt to roast her to death. With his sword raised he is about to strike the first of the three blows which failed to cut off her head. "And for ther was that tyme an ordinaunce That no man sholde do man such penaunce The ferthe stroke to smyten, softe or sore This tormentour durste do no more." At the end of the south choir aisle is the third figure window of Burne-Jones. It is dedicated to St. Catherine, and is in memory of Edith Liddell, a daughter of the late Dean, "who, having been scarcely five days betrothed, seized by a sudden attack of illness, rendered her spirit to God, June 26th, 1876." St. Catherine, crowned, is the central figure: she is painted in the likeness of Edith Liddell. On the right is the Angel of Suffering and Submission, with mutilated hands, the wheel of torture and flames beneath; on the left is the Angel of Deliverance, crushing the wheel of torture and scattering the flames. The draperies are white, the wings of the angels are a pale blue, and the curtains hanging at the back of the figures of a rich greenish blue, while the detailed background is cut out of violet-coloured glass, a daring but thoroughly successful arrangement. In the tracery above are angels playing triumphant music. The whole is as beautifully executed as it is finely conceived. In the three lower panels are scenes from the life and death of the saint:--(1) She disputes with philosophers, pleading for her fellow Christians, and demonstrating _avec force syllogismes_ the truth of Christianity, and the falsity of paganism. This little panel has as large an effect as if it were a fresco covering half a wall. (2) Her dream, in which she is led through a wilderness by the blessed Virgin into the presence of our Lord, who is seated amid a concourse of cherubim. The way in which the cherubim are cut out of tones of ruby, full of depth, and without a suspicion of crudeness, should be noticed, and compared with the treatment of ruby glass elsewhere. This is perhaps the most beautifully drawn picture of all; and the figure of St. Mary is something not to be forgotten. (3) St. Catherine is laid in the tomb by angels. The inscriptions are:--_Agnus reget illos, et deducet eos ad vitae fontes aquarum, et absterget Deus omnem lachrymam ab oculis eorum. Timor Domini ipsa est sapientia. Beati mundo corde quoniam Deum videbunt. Cum dederit dilectis suis somnum._ The two first windows in the wall of the south choir aisle, in memory of Dr. Jelf, Canon from 1830-1871, are by Hardman. Next is a most interesting glass painting of Bishop King, last abbot of Oseney, and first Bishop of Oxford, which is perhaps from the hand of Van Ling. This window, with some others, was taken down during the Civil War, buried for safety by a member of the family, and put up again at the Restoration. The Bishop is represented standing vested in a jewelled cope of cloth of gold, and mitre, a pastoral staff in his gloved hand. In the background, among the trees, is a picture of Oseney Abbey in its already ruined condition (c. 1630), drawn without much feeling for its architecture, but of great value as almost the only picture of the place we possess. The western tower was the first home of what are now the Christ Church bells. Three coats of arms (being those of the Bishop, impaled with the abbey of Oseney and the see of Oxford) complete the richness of what is a very good example of seventeenth century _painted_ glass, in the strict sense of the word. It is to be regretted that some of the glass, which formerly was seen by everybody in the cathedral, has been removed to the chapter-house, where it is seen by few: among the glass thus removed the lovely I.H.C. should not be missed. =The Latin Chapel= (St. Catherine's, or the Divinity Chapel, St. Catherine being the patroness of students in theology) was built on to the rest in two parts, the walls of the Lady Chapel being cut into arches, and duly fitted with shafts. The first bay from the west is, like that of the Lady Chapel, part of the transept aisle; the second bay was built in the thirteenth century, so as to form a chapel like that of St. Lucy on the south side of the church; the third and fourth were added in the fourteenth century, and make now one large chapel, very secluded and self-contained, a kind of _hortus inclusus_ that has an attraction peculiarly its own, and dwells pleasantly in the memory of every one who sees it. It is that supremely excellent thing, a church within a church, without which no cathedral can be what its builders intended it to be; nor any religious building fulfil that instinctive desire of men for an inner place, where they can find their way to the inner places of their own hearts. In such a home of recollectedness, doubly guarded against the dogging world without, is "rest without languor and recreation without excitement"; in such a place one is "never less alone than when alone"; and the fine sympathy with the needs of workaday humanity, which led mediæval architects to build such sanctuaries as this chapel here, or the Lady Chapel of so many churches, had led men in far earlier ages to find room even within the travelling tabernacle of a wandering tribe for a holy place and a holy of holies. Such being the case, it was like the crude instincts of the "dark ages of architecture" to choose this very chapel as most suitable for a lecture-hall--out of all the lofty rooms in the spacious college. Quite lately this practice has been dropped, and the Latin Chapel restored to something of its ancient sanctity, though a good deal remains to be done in a place where there is not as yet even a chair to proclaim a _siste viator_. [Illustration: WINDOW IN THE LATIN CHAPEL.] The Decorated vaulting was built when the chapel was enlarged in the fourteenth century. The foliage of its bosses is very beautiful; the water-lilies especially of the third boss, so suggestive of Oxford streams, and the roses a little further east, are a happy combination of naturalistic treatment with decorative restraint. It will be noticed that the vaulting does not run true in the third bay, the Decorated work there having been somewhat awkwardly joined to the Early English of the second bay. That part of the old wall which forms the pier at the juncture has been left in a strangely rough condition; the builder having seemingly given up the problem of fitting the vaults to the unequal spaces of the bays, and left the pier as a simple bit of old wall, without even a moulding to mark its juncture with the vault. A prominent feature in the Latin Chapel is the old oak stalling, which a second inspection proves to be patchwork. The returned stalls at the west end probably belonged to the choir of the conventual church, and in that case would have been fitted in here when Dean Duppa "adorned" the choir by destroying the old wood-work. Near to these is some of the work prepared for Cardinal Wolsey's new chapel. The poppy-heads are good specimens of wood-carving, and contain a monogram I.H.S., a heart in a crown of thorns, a cardinal's hat, and other devices. The pulpit, with its delicate canopy, an excellent specimen of seventeenth century wood-work, was formerly the Vice-Chancellor's seat in another part of the church, occupied by him during university sermons. It was then used by the Regius Professor of Divinity for his lectures, but since the altar was restored six years ago, the chapel has been no longer used as a lecture room. At the time when it was refitted, a handsome ogival arch was found in the wall near the north end of the altar: the moulding is deeply recessed, and once the arch terminated in what must have been an ornate finial. The top of this finial has been cut down to a level with the window ledge, and the face of the moulding hacked off to make the wall flat for the panelling, which has now been removed. It was probably the "Easter Sepulchre," where the Host was deposited on Good Friday, but it may have been the tomb of the founder of the chapel. The curious break in the masonry at the back has not been yet explained. The wall behind the altar is pleasantly hung with Morris velvet. The altar itself was the high altar before the restoration of 1870. In 1890 new legs were made for it out of the old organ screen, and it was placed in its present position. The eastern window (inserted as a memorial to Dr. Bull) is a pathetic instance of the corrupt following of Mr. Ruskin, which also inflicted upon Christ Church the gaunt Meadow Buildings. It is, of course, really as unlike Mr. Ruskin's well-loved Venetian work as anything can possibly be: as heavy as that is light, as clumsy as that is graceful, it is ugly and cold and dead; but it represents a genuine enthusiasm of the fifties, and commands our respect as an honest though mistaken effort, a landmark in the history of the architectural revival. It also illustrates a truth which one is apt sometimes to forget,--that it is easy to appreciate beauty, and very hard to create it. Fortunately it is nearly lost sight of in the splendid Burne-Jones glass which fills it, and represents another side of the artistic revival not less important than the architectural. =Glass in Latin Chapel=.--The beautiful windows at the side are filled with fine fourteenth century glass, which was replaced after a long period of exile by Dean Liddell. In the middle of each light is a figure in canopy work, the rest of the light being covered with "quarries,"--that is, diamond-shaped pieces of glass with leaves and flowers lightly burnt upon them. The spaces in the tracery are ornamented with curious medallions, and the borders with various beasts, as in St. Lucy's Chapel, monkeys among them. The Courtenay Arms--Three Torteaux--suggest that the family may have contributed towards building the chapel. Beginning at the west, the first window contains a St. Catherine in the first light, next a Madonna and holy Child (the blue pattern at the back of these figures should be noticed); next a figure of St. Frideswide, or her mother Saffrida. The second window contains the figure of an archbishop, holding a cross curiously blended into a crooked pastoral staff; angels are on either side. The next has St. Frideswide in the centre, with St. Margaret and St. Catherine at her side. The patroness holds the curiously foliated sceptre which has led to the identification of her figure in the choir boss, and Catherine handles her wheel and sword in the same way as her statue over the dean's stall in the choir. The last window on this side is by Clayton and Bell, and a particularly feeble one. The St. Frideswide window at the east end of the Latin Chapel was designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones and executed by Messrs. Powell of the Whitefriars Glass Works, the firm which is now making the glass for the mosaics at St. Paul's. "Burne-Jones, an Oxford undergraduate, destined for the Church, but gifted with high powers of romantic design, sought out Rossetti towards June 1856, and showed him some drawings. Rossetti told him at once that he ought to be, and must be, an artist, and he became one." In the next year Rossetti drew the attention of the Powells to the young artist, and they had the penetration to recognise his worth and to employ him. But though this is one of the first windows that Burne-Jones ever designed, it is one of his best. Better suited (as many think) to the purpose of a window, at all events in this enclosed chapel, than the freer method of the other glass, it carries on the best traditions of the craft, in its infinite variety of gem-like colour and complexity of detail; while it attains a degree of perfection in pictorial effect and figure-drawing which was impossible during the great era of mediæval glass-painting. The death of the saint, with its lovely effect of light through the latticed window, for instance, and the picture of her in the pig-sty, would be perfect as finished pictures, and yet do not for an instant outstep the convention which is necessary for their function as part of a window. The fact that the subjects are a little crowded is not the artist's fault. Mr. Woodward, the architect to whom the commission was due, made an unlucky mistake about the measurements, being in very ill-health at the time, and indeed on the point of death. Mr. Burne-Jones' cartoon had therefore to undergo a mechanical reduction which has slightly affected the clearness of the designs. The colour is, in spite (or rather because) of its radiant variety, not so immediately attractive to everyone as that of the other Burne-Jones windows; but when one has sat down for five or ten minutes and deciphered the various scenes, its unapproachable beauty becomes apparent, and each succeeding visit deepens the impression of the splendour and poetry of this incomparable work. The scenes depicted are, by the artist's own account, as follows:-- _First Light._ St. Frideswide and her companions brought up by St. Cecilia and St. Catherine. St. Frideswide founds her first convent. A messenger from the King of Mercia demands her in marriage. The King comes to take her by force, and the first convent is broken up. _Second Light._ Flight of St. Frideswide to Abingdon. The King of Mercia and his soldiers in pursuit, The Flight continued. The Pursuit continued. St. Frideswide takes refuge in a pig-sty. _Third Light._ Flight of St. Frideswide to Binsey. The King of Mercia in pursuit. St. Frideswide founds a new convent at Binsey. Her merciful deeds. _Fourth Light._ Return of St. Frideswide to Oxford. The Siege of Oxford by the King of Mercia. The Siege continued. The King struck blind. The Death of St. Frideswide. [Illustration: SECTION OF TOWER, WITH A COMPARTMENT OF BAY AND CHOIR, BEFORE THE RESTORATIONS (_Britton_).] In the tracery above are the trees of life and of knowledge, and a ship of souls convoyed by angels. This east window was purchased with money left by Dr. Bull (1853), to whom there is a monument against the western wall. There are also brasses to the eminent Dr. Mozley (Regius Professor of Divinity till 1878), Dr. Ogilvie (1873), Dr. Shirley (1866), Dr Barnes (1859), Archdeacon Clerke (1877). CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE FOUNDATION. St. Frideswide (Fritheswithe, "The Bond of Peace"), foundress and patron saint of the church, lived early in the eighth century, when Ethelbald was King of Mercia. Her father Didan was probably the under-king of the little town of Oxford, which was then a frontier city of Mercia. In spite of the legendary atmosphere that has gathered about her memory, there is no reason to doubt the main facts of her life; indeed, the best modern authorities endorse them. Here is her story, told in the delightful words of Anthony a Wood, who wrote towards the end of the seventeenth century:-- "About the year of our Lord 727, as authors say, lived in the city of Oxford a prince (or as Malmesbury hath, a king) named Didan, one of incomparable honesty and virtues, who, by his wife Safrid, of a Saxon family, had an only daughter called Frideswyde, born at this place, and by her parents brought up in all manner of honest and liberal breeding, befitting her descent." Then is described her early piety, her refusal of marriage, and her refusal also to be a nun. The narrative continues:-- "And furthermore, with great zeale, she added that seeing he had large possessions and inheritances and that she was like to enjoy most of them after his discease, he could not doe better than bestowe them upon some religious fabrick wherein she and her spirituall sisters (votaresses also) might spend their dayes in prayers and singing of psalmes and hymmes to God. To which the father giving an attentive eare and considering withall that his issue was like to be discontinued, took upon him a resolution to performe the same that soe he might leave his child in a comfortable manner and then dye in peace. Wherfore, not long after, the good old man built a church within the præcincts (as 'tis said) of the city of Oxon, and dedicated it to the honour of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary and All Saints, and soe committed it wholy to the use of his daughter Frideswyde purposely to exercise her devotion therin." Then is told how Frideswide afterwards took the veil, inducing "12 virgins of noble extract to follow her"; how her father "erected other ædifices adjoyning to the church to serve as lodging rooms for the said virgins," settled lands upon the Nunnery, and died. The central story of her life next follows:-- "Frideswyde, continuing most constant in her strict course of life, was not only reputed famous for that particular, but also for those excellent parts that nature had endowed her withall; insomuch that both being conjoined in one body, was accounted the flower of all these parts. Which being quickly rumoured in other countryes, gave occasion to a young spritely prince, named Algar, king of Leycester, to become her adorer in way of marriage. Which she by his proxies and others of his wellwishers understanding, triumphed soe highly in her virginity, that she with an open profession utterly despised both him and his princely bed; neither left the least incouragement for him to proceed in this his designe. The king having such a sudden repulse, and supposing it to be a flashy resolution, encited him the more to goe forward; and sometimes considering her beauty, then her incomparable qualities, and both obscured under a minchon's hood, could not but attempt once more. Which, though he performed with all the intreaties and gifts imaginable, did not in the least disjoynt her purpose, but rather occasioned her to trample upon his accostments and with a coy deportment despise his offers. All it seemes was in vaine: nothing to be heard but nays: nothing to be received but foyles: nothing but what if pursued, usher him to dispaire: and the like. What shall we imagine this yong amoretto now to doe! Noe place is able to containe him, nobody please his curious fancy but deare Frideswyde! Noe note now but '_hei mihi, quod nullis_,' etc.! "To remedy this, therefore, and attaine his cure, he considered very well from the præmises could not be compassed unless it was by a forced stealth. These were his last thoughts; and this he was resolved to prosecute. "Wherefore, immediately summoning some of his faithfull servants, sent them as embassadours to prefer (under pretence) his last desires for marriage, with full power, if like to prosper, to complete it. With this speciall and soveiraign caution, if she did not concede, to watch their opportunity and carry her away by force." Then follows the account of the visit of the ambassadors, their threats of force, and the Saint's undaunted reply. The story proceeds:-- "Well, the night is spent in consultation, and at the dawning of the day they sallied from their lodgings and made their appearance towards the Nunnery, where clambering the fences of the house and by degrees approching her private lodging promised to themselves nothing but surety of their prize. But alas! their purposes came short. What shall we think the event of this designe? Why! their hopes were utterly frustrated. For shee, either by the noise they made at their entrance or else (as 'tis said in another place) by the instinct of some good spirit, awakened and suddenly arose to see what was the matter. And immediately discovering who they were and their intent for what they came, and finding it in vaine to make an escape from them by flight being soe closely beseiged, she (as the best remidy) straightway prostrated her selfe flatt on her face and fervently prayed to the almighty that he would præserve her from the violence of those wicked persons that were now ready to take her away, that he would show some speciall token of reveng upon them for this their bold attempt. Wherefore the embassadors (as 'tis delivered) were miraculously struck blind, and like mad men ran headlong yelling about the city." The townsmen were much amazed at this strange sight, and this the cheifest of them went straightway to her and--"Upon falling upon their knees, humbly desired her to grant those simple and impertinent people their sights, promising withall that, as sone as they were perfected, would see them out of towne and enjoyne them noe more to returne. Hereupon she commanded them to be brought to her; and after fervent prayers in their behalfe, were as wonderfully restored to their eyes againe, as before they were deprived of them." On the ambassadors' return to Algar, he was filled with rage against "that witch, hagge, and fury Frideswyde," and planned vengeance:--"The king then gathering a force and intending for Oxon, breathed out nothing but fire and sword to this place. But the night before he came hither, there was an angel (as the story goes) appeared to Frideswyde in a dreame, saying to her these words: '_Ignoras, O Virgo_,' &c.: 'thou art as yet ignorant, O virgin, what will befall you tomorrow: for King Algar with his assistants intend to sett upon you and if it be possible will satisfy his lust upon you and leave you a miserable creature. But doe not feare: there is a safe place provided for you; and he for this his attempt shall be struck blind and never recover his sight. Arise therefore, and make hast to the way that leads to the river Thames, where you shall find a ship boat ready provided for you and one in it to convey you away in safety.' After this was pronounced Frideswyde awakened; and, suddenly arising from her couch, took two of her sisters the nunns named Katherine and Cicely; and walked to the place appointed her by the angell in her dreame. Where according to his admonitions, she found a boat by the river's side and in it the appearance of a yong man with a beautiful countenance and clothed in white: who, mitigating their feare with pleasant speech, placed them in the boat, in which, the space of one hour, shee and her sisters arrived neare the towne called Benton [Bampton or Bensington], ten miles and above distant from Oxon. "Where after their landing, followed a path adjoyning, which conveyed them into a vast and dismall wood. And wandring therin too and fro, met at length with a kind of hovell or shelter purposely erected to harbour swine and other cattell in times of cold and wett weather; and there taking up a resolution to fix, crossed themselves and retired therin. Which place being quickly overgrowen with ivy and other sprouts, they continued therin a long time, being in fasting and prayers, and utterly unknown to the inhabitants therabouts." Algar in the meanwhile had gone to Oxford, found Frideswide flown, and in the midst of his fury been smitten with blindness. After living three years in close retirement in the Benton wood, Frideswide, to comfort the nuns whom she had left, came by boat to Binsey near Oxford, and there lived for some time. Soon after she came back into Oxford, and spent her days in the service of the people, working in especial many miracles of healing. The Cottonian MS. relates her first miracle as happening at "Bentonia," when St. Frideswide cured a blind girl of seven through virtue of the water wherein the saint had washed her hands. Shortly after she helped a young man (_infortunatus juvenis_) named Alward, who, while cutting wood on a Sunday (_parvi pendens diem Resurrectionis Dominicæ_), found his hand fixed to the handle of his axe, so that he could not let it go. A beautiful story is told about her entry into Oxford; that a leper met her, and begged her to kiss him, which, after making the sign of the cross, she did, and he was healed of his leprosy. [Illustration: THE EXTERIOR IN 1857.] Of her last sojourn in Oxford, William of Malmesbury says:--"In that place, therefore, this maiden, having gained the triumph of her virginity, established a convent, and when her days were over and her Spouse called her, she there died." "Some time," says Dugdale, "after the glorious death of St. Frideswide, the nuns having been taken away, Secular Canons were introduced." We cannot fix the date when the community of nuns which the saint had founded was thus removed, but the passage which follows in Dugdale makes it clear that the seculars were in possession in 1004, when Ethelred II. rebuilt the church. It seems strange that the nuns, for whom Frideswide had suffered so much and laboured so successfully, should have been thus early made to give place to a chapter of married priests; but early it must have been, for by the middle of the tenth century Dunstan was busy suppressing the seculars, and enforcing everywhere the stricter monastic rule. Nor did the nuns ever come back; for, when the Secular Canons had finally disappeared, by the time of the Norman Conquest, the priory, after being for a long time in ruins, was made over, first to the great Benedictine monastery of Abingdon, of which it became a "cell" or dependency, shortly afterwards to the warlike Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, "but only for the profits issuing from their lands, which he, after its restoration, returned again with great reluctancy"; and it was finally restored under Henry I. (IIII) as a house of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, an order holding a position midway between monks and secular canons, in whose hands it continued henceforward. Guimond was the first prior, and a curious story is told by several old writers as to the manner whereby he won the king's favour:-- "On Rogation Sunday (30th April 1122), when the king was at mass and Guymundus performing divine service before him, did when he came to that parcell of the prophet, 'it did not rain upon the earth for the space of III. years and six months,' read thus, 'it did not rain upon the earth one, one, one years six months.' Which the king observing, and all the clerks marvelling and laughing at, did when mass was ended reprove him for it, and furthermore asked him the reason why he read after that manner. Guymund smilingly answered, 'Because you, my liege, are used to bestow your bishopricks and other church benefices to them that read so; and therefore be it known to you, henceforth I will serve no other master but Christ my King and Sovereign, who knoweth as well how to confer temporal as eternal benefits upon his servants that always obey him.'" By the eleventh century important national meetings were held in Oxford, as when in 1020, Cnut being then king, the English and Danes were reconciled, and both nations agreed to observe the laws of Edgar. But no king ventured to visit the city, for, after the failure of Algar, there was a tradition that boded misfortune to any king who entered within the city walls. Henry III. was the first to defy it by coming to worship at the shrine of St. Frideswide in 1264; but his example was an unfortunate one, for within six weeks Nemesis came in the Battle of Lewes. Edward I. was less daring than his father, for in 1275, when he reached the gates of Oxford, he turned his horse about, and sought a lodging outside the town. Later in his reign, however, he made the venture, and destroyed the superstition. St. Frideswide's Priory did not, according to the latest authority on mediæval universities, Mr. Rashdall, create Oxford University,[4] but reasons of convenience of access and other like matter-of-fact causes; for, if the University had needed only a religious house round which to cluster, the neighbouring monastery of Abingdon was far larger and more suitable. Yet there is great probability that the first germs of the University were produced by the Priory. It is said, indeed, that the Mercian kings built inns or halls in the neighbourhood of the convent, but we may suspect this as a legendary statement not more substantiable than the story of King Alfred's founding University College, since the first actual notice of "Oxeneford" does not occur till 912. But it is much more certain that, during the wise rule of Guimond (1122-1141), the first Regular Prior, and of Robert of Cricklade,[5] his successor, there was a school connected with the convent, as indeed was the case with most convents, and probably with St. Frideswide's itself before Guimond's time. This school stood near the west end of the church, about the middle of what is now Tom Quad. Writing of the arrival of Vacarius, in King Stephen's reign, Mr. J.R. Green says:--"We know nothing of the causes which drew students and teachers within the walls of Oxford. It is possible that here, as elsewhere, the new teacher had quickened older educational foundations, and that the cloisters of Osney and St. Frideswide already possessed schools which burst into a larger life under the impulse of Vacarius." The Priory was also one of the centres of university life in its early days, occupying perhaps in some sort the position held by St. Mary's at the present day. From the time of the Translation of St. Frideswide, the chancellor and scholars of the University used to go in Mid-Lent and on Ascension Day "in a general procession to her church, as the mother-church of the University and town, there to pray, preach, and offer oblations to her shrine." The Civil Law School belonged to St. Frideswide's as well as St. Patrick's Schools, and some others situated near to School Street. Among the Halls that the Priors possessed, Brend Hall was in 1438 made over to Lincoln College; Urban Hall and Bekes Inn were bought by Bishop Fox to procure a site for Corpus Christi College. Yet St. Frideswide's does not seem to have been so great a power in educational matters as its position would have warranted. In fact, most of the other orders were ahead of the Augustinian Regulars in this matter, for we do not hear of their doing anything much until the fifteenth century, when St. Mary's College near Northgate Street was an Augustinian establishment. It was the new orders, the Black Friars (Dominicans) and the Grey Friars (Franciscans), who did so much for the educational advance of Oxford. The Franciscan schoolmen, especially, gave the University a European reputation, for Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William Occam were trained by them. Cardinal Wolsey, though he did much harm to St. Frideswide's church, did at least make the place a great educational centre. In one indirect way we find that the Priory helped to attend to the scholars' interests in the thirteenth century. "Owing to the general poverty," says Mr. Boase, "charitable people founded _chests_, from which loans might be made to poor scholars. Grostête began the system in 1240 by issuing an ordinance regulating St. Frideswide's Chest, which received the fines paid by citizens; and we hear on the whole of about two dozen of these charitable funds, amounting in all to nearly 2000 marks. The money was lent out on security of books, plate, or other property, and it was, in fact, a pawnbroking business which charged no interest." The money accruing to the University was placed in a chest at St. Frideswide's, when the borrower was required to deposit some pledge--a book or a cup, or a piece of clothing. Pledges not redeemed within a year were sold by public auction. As time went on, private bequests were added to the Frideswide chest, to the great relief, no doubt, of the scholars, who were as poor as could be. The Fair of St. Frideswide was another useful institution connected with the Priory, for in early days the fairs not only afforded much innocent amusement, but they also served to mark the seasons of the year, and were of great practical value in the domestic economy of the people. St. Frideswide's Fair lasted for seven days, and during that time the keys of the city passed from the mayor to the prior, and the town courts were closed in favour of the Piepowder Court, held by the steward of the Priory for the redress of all disorders committed during the fair. By Stuart times the Fair had fallen almost to nothing, but its memory is still kept up by the annual cakestall in St. Aldate's. One of the strongest Jewries in England existed in Oxford, so the chest was a useful form of charity in the days when Jews were the only money-lenders, and it was found necessary to pass a law preventing the Hebrews of Oxford from charging over 43 per cent, on loans to scholars. In 1268 St. Frideswide's provided a curious proof of the strong protection which the Jews enjoyed till their expulsion from England for four centuries in 1290. "The feud between the Priory and the Jewry went on for a century more, till it culminated in a daring act of fanaticism on Ascension Day 1268. As the usual procession of scholars and citizens returned from St. Frideswide's, a Jew suddenly burst from the group of his friends in front of the synagogue, and snatching the crucifix from its bearer, trod it underfoot. But even in presence of such an outrage, the terror of the Crown shielded the Jewry from any burst of popular indignation. The king condemned the Jews of Oxford to make a heavy silver crucifix for the University to carry in the processions, and to erect a cross of marble on the spot where the crime was committed; but even this was in part remitted, and a less offensive place was allotted for the cross in an open plot by Merton College." The event which had opened the feud between the Priory and the Jews happened about 1185, when Prior Phillip complained of a certain _Deus-eum-crescat_ (Gedaliah), son of Mossey, who stood at his door as the procession of St. Frideswide passed by, and mocked at her miracles, no one daring to meddle with him. An instance of the widespread fame of the shrine of St. Frideswide, and the veneration in which it was held even shortly before its destruction, is given in Wood's "Annals." In 1518, "Queen Katherine being desirous to come to Oxford, was attended in her journey by the Cardinal [Wolsey]: and being entered within the limits, was received by the scholars with all demonstrations of love and joy. After she had received their curtesies, she retired to St. Frideswydd Monastery to do her devotions to the sacred reliques of that Virgin Saint, being the chief occasion, it seems, that brought her hither." But the great change was rapidly approaching. It had indeed been foreshadowed nearly a century and a half before, as when, for instance, on Ascension Day 1382, Wyclif's disciple Nicholas Hereford, preaching in the churchyard of St. Frideswide's, made a violent attack on the Mendicant Friars, and boldly asserted his sympathy with Wyclif. The suppression of the Priory in 1524 was not, however, a Protestant act; for Wolsey obtained a bull from Pope Clement VII., authorising him, with the royal consent, to suppress the Priory of St. Frideswide, and to transfer the canons to other houses of the Augustinian order, so that their dwelling and revenues might be assigned to the proposed college of secular clerks. Wolsey had magnificent ideas about education,--"indeed," says Fuller, "nothing mean could enter into this man's mind"; he was bent on founding institutions which should surpass even those of William of Wykeham and William Waynflete; and he saw that monasticism had fallen into disrepute, with no prospect of restoration to public favour. He adopted, therefore, the hitherto exceptional method of suppressing certain priories, in order that he might endow with their revenues his new foundation of Cardinal College, as it was first styled. Henry VIII. readily assented to the scheme, and his minister was thus enabled to dissolve the oldest religious establishment within the walls of Oxford, and to dispose of its income of "almost £300 a year." Dr. John Barton, the last Prior of St. Frideswide's, was elected to be Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Oseney, just as (a little later) Bishop King, the last Abbot of Oseney, was made first Bishop of Oxford. There was much popular opposition to Wolsey's act in suppressing St. Frideswide's, and (by a second Papal Bull) certain other monasteries. Hall, a chronicler unfriendly to Wolsey, averred that "the poor wretches" ejected from the monasteries received scarcely any compensation. Complaints such as these drew from Wolsey this earnest and redundant contradiction:-- "Almighty God I take to my record, I have not meant, intended, or gone about, ne also have willed mine officers, to do anything concerning the said suppressions, but under such form and manner as is and hath largely been to the full satisfaction, recompense, and joyous contentation of any person which hath had, or could pretend to have, right or interest in the same, in such wise that many of them, giving thanks and laud to God for the good chance succeeded unto them, would for nothing, if they might, return or be restored and put again in their former state, as your Highness shall abundantly and largely perceive at my next repairing unto the same. "Verily, sir, I would be loth to be noted that I should intend such a virtuous foundation for the increase of your Highness' merit, profit of your subjects, the advancement of good learning, and for the weale of my poor soul, to be established or acquired _ex rapinis_." It was indeed, says Mr. Maxwell Lyte, part of Wolsey's "grand and statesmanlike scheme of establishing episcopal sees in some of the larger monasteries, and annexing thereto smaller monasteries to provide greater revenues." The graduates of Oxford were very grateful, and promised to remember him in their prayers to the end of time; but great fear came over the monks. His proceedings, says Fuller quaintly but truly, "made all the forest of religious foundations in England to shake, justly fearing the king would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut the underwood." Thus was Cardinal College founded. Its magnificence certainly made a great impression upon Englishmen, as is shown by the fact that it is the only existing college mentioned by Shakespeare. In _Henry VIII._ Wolsey is praised for his new foundation:-- "though unfinished, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and yet so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue." But all Wolsey's great buildings, and projects still greater, were stopped by his sudden fall in 1529. Three years afterwards "bluff Harry broke into the spence," and, placidly transferring the whole credit of the idea to himself, refounded Cardinal College with the title "King Henry VIII. his College." Then he suppressed his own foundation, and, on Nov. 4th, 1546, reconstituted it, adopting the novel and economical expedient of combining a cathedral with an academic college. The new style was _Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis Henrici octavi_; so St. Frideswide's church, which had for seven years been the chapel of Cardinal College, and of King Henry's College for thirteen years, became at length the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, and also the chapel of the college now at length called Christ Church, and presided over by the Dean of the cathedral. Ever since, the ancient church has had a two-fold character as cathedral church and college chapel; and "as the Dean of Christ Church is always present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic usages and appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way that may have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the see of Oxford." Wolsey had contemplated establishing a hundred canons; but Henry reduced the number at a stroke to twelve, and then to eight; later they were further reduced to six, which is the present number. Besides the canons, dean, and bishop, Henry's foundation included eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller or bible-clerk, eight singing clerks, eight choristers and their master, a schoolmaster and an usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students, and forty "children," corresponding no doubt to the scholars of later days. Soon after, however, the whole scholastic part of the establishment was replaced by one hundred students, who (with the one "outcomer" of the Thurston foundation) are still nightly tolled by the hundred and one strokes of great Tom, this being the signal for college-gates to be closed all over Oxford. Such was the arrangement of the new establishment, which, as the name of _Ecclesia Christi_ was replaced by _Ædes Christi_, came to be called, according to the double use of the word _æedes_, both Christ _Church_ and the _House_. The history of the see of Oxford, which was first set up at Oseney in 1542, will be found in another chapter. Curiously enough, the suppression of the monasteries, and the new vigorous religious movement, did not benefit the University, in spite of the addition of Wolsey's great college; on the contrary, the Reformation nearly emptied the University, which had already lost much of its old activity during the intellectual stagnation of the fifteenth century, so that, in Edward VI.'s reign, washerwomen took to hanging out their clothes in the schools. Most of the halls disappeared for ever, and from that time Oxford passed out of the hands of the poor man, Christ Church as the royal college becoming the special home of the gilded youth. The first functions of the House seem indeed to have been mainly ornamental: Henry VIII. was entertained there, public declamations were given before the University under Edward VI., Cranmer was unfrocked in the cloister under Mary. In Queen Elizabeth's reign, as well as in the seventeenth century, Christ Church Hall was used for the performance of plays, as when in 1583 _Dido_ was acted, and "there was a pleasant sight of hunters, with a full cry of a kennel of hounds, and Mercury and his descending and ascending from and to a high place. The tempest also, wherein it rained small comfits, rose-water, and snew artificial snow, was very strange to the beholders." The Deans in Elizabeth's time were undistinguished. There was Martiall, who was appointed by Mary, and deprived in 1559 for his religion, "which though he had two or three times changed, yet having made himself Enemies by his indiscreet Carriage, he was obliged to go into Yorkshire"; and there was Sampson, who was "so professed an enemy of the ceremonies of the Church of England," and of organs and vestments, that he was removed by Archbishop Parker, 1565. But there was no one else of much note till Brian Duppa was installed in 1629. This staunch old man left Christ Church in 1641 for the Bishopric of Salisbury, after having "adorned" the cathedral, with the mixed results we have witnessed. He was extremely generous and unselfish; and he stuck to the king through his evil days, even sharing his imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle, where he is thought materially to have assisted in writing the "_Eikon Basilike_." Duppa, Mr. Wakeman tells us, "amid many dangers had boldly found means to carry on the torch of apostolic grace, even amid the proscriptions of Cromwell." During the troubles of the Civil War, Christ Church came in for its share of the work: in 1642 a University regiment of Cavaliers was drilled in Tom Quad, and of the hundred and one students of the House twenty became officers in the king's army. After Edgehill, Charles I. occupied Oxford, and kept his court with Prince Charles in Christ Church. On February 3rd, 1644, the king appointed a thanksgiving to be made at evensong for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The doctors were then in their red robes, the officers and men in laced buff coats and polished breastplates. "But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this several times repeated therein--'Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.'" In 1646 Oxford was taken by the Roundheads, and in 1648, at the visitation of the Parliamentary officers (the Dean, Samuel Fell, being in custody), Mrs. Fell, with some other ladies, and her children, refused to walk out of the Deanery, and had to be carried out with her companions, and "deposited in the quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion." Dean Samuel Fell, who had finished Duppa's wood and glass work in the cathedral, and built the fine staircase into the hall, died heartbroken on February 1st, 1648, "the Day he was acquainted with the murder of his Royal Master King Charles I.": he was buried at Sunningwell, near Abingdon, with this inscription of touching brevity--_Depositum S.F. Februar._ 1648. The use of the Latin version of the Prayer Book, and the English version as well, had ceased three months before; but it was kept up in a house in Merton Street by three Christ Church men, one of whom was the Dean's son, John Fell, afterwards himself to become Dean and Bishop of Oxford. The intruding Dean and Chapter seem to have behaved villainously; for, in an account given by the Chapter of 1670, it is stated that the entire revenues of the College had been exhausted by the intruders, all the unfinished work on the north side of Tom Quad demolished, and the timbers actually sawn down from the walls and roof to be used as firewood. Almost every part of the College was damaged in this way, and the huge expense of making the destruction good had to be borne by the new Chapter after the Restoration. [Illustration: THE INTERIOR BEFORE THE RESTORATIONS.] Samuel Fell's first Puritan successor in the Deanery was Reynolds, a Presbyterian who, in two years (1650), was turned out "to make room," says Browne Willis, "for that noted, canting, Independent, Time-serving Hypocrite John Owen." This Owen was himself turned out in 1659, and "retired among the Dissenters at London, and there ended his Days (preaching up Sedition in Conventicles)." He was buried in Bunhill Fields, with a portentously long epitaph, whereof one sentence may suffice as a specimen--_In illâ viribus plusquam Herculeis, Serpentibus tribus, Arminio, Socino, Cano, venenosa strinxit guttura_. Reynolds was restored by the Presbyterians in 1659, but them deserting, he became Bishop of Norwich, and was succeeded at Christ Church in 1660 by Morley, who, in the same year, became a Bishop, and afterwards succeeded the tough old Duppa in the see of Winchester, 1662. John Fell, who had seen so much trouble in his father's old house, was next installed therein, in 1660. His biography will be found among the bishops. James II. made Massey, an ex-Presbyterian convert to the Roman Church, Dean of Christ Church, and the Holy Communion was celebrated according to the Roman use every day in the House. When the king visited Oxford in 1687, he was lodged in the Deanery, and a chapel fitted up for his use. He summoned the fellows of Magdalen, who had refused to admit Bishop Parker as their president, into Christ Church Hall, and said:--"Is this your Church of England loyalty? Get you gone. Know that I, your King, will be obeyed. Go and admit the Bishop of Oxon. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand." They refused, and twenty-five of them were expelled. James, by-the-way, touched for the King's Evil in the cathedral about the same time. Aldrich, the versatile, followed in the Deanery, nothing being said of Massey in the letters patent which installed him as direct successor to John Fell. We have alluded to him more than once in this book, and his monument in the nave is mentioned in its place. After Aldrich came Francis Atterbury in 1711, who in 1713 left Oxford to combine the rather dissimilar functions of Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. He found his way into the Tower of London in 1722, being convicted of correspondence with the Pretender. By the eighteenth century Oxford had sunk into a state of torpor, from which it began to recover in 1807, when the first honour schools were founded; though from 1783 Dean Cyril Jackson had been doing a great work in the restoration of order and efficiency at the House. Christ Church thus bore an honourable part in the revival of learning, and gradually developed from a rich man's plesaunce into a home of learning: the names of Ruskin, Gladstone, and Pusey are typical of the great men in different walks of life that have belonged to the cathedral college in our own era. Dean Gaisford more than half a century ago did much to help on the progress; and the long rule of his successor, Dean Liddell (1855-91), familiar to every schoolboy through his famous lexicon, covered a period of immense change both in the cathedral and in the college. Dr. Liddell died January 18th, 1898. His successor is Dr. Francis Paget, one of the writers in "_Lux Mundi_," and the author of some well-known volumes of addresses. Fifty years ago it was said that Christ Church was the only cathedral in Christendom where there were neither services nor sermons for the people of the diocese. But the new life, which has since then wrought such great changes in university, cathedral, and diocese alike, has left Christ Church, if still the smallest, yet not the least important of the great centres of ecclesiastical activity. CHAPTER V. THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD. Down to our own time, Oxford remained one of the new dioceses of the English Church, having been set up by Henry VIII. by way of compensation for his confiscation of the monastic properties. Before 1542 Oxford belonged to the enormous diocese of Lincoln; but in that year the new see was created, and Robert King, the last Abbot of Oseney, was made first Bishop of Oseney, and the Bishop's stool set up in his magnificent abbey church of St. Mary. This Abbey of Oseney, which had been founded by Robert D'Oilgi in 1129, and rebuilt in 1247, was, like St. Frideswide's, a house of Augustinian Canons, but far larger. It was, indeed, one of the finest abbeys in England, its principal cloister being as large as Tom Quad, and its church no less than 352 feet by 100, with double aisles, and twenty-four altars. Gardens and courts, and comely outbuildings, ran along the side of the river; in every corner a busy life went on among the orieled windows and high-pitched roofs, within the fretted cloister, the schools and libraries, the refectory, and the kitchen, whither a conduit brought the water from the river side. A great gate looked on to the high road; and the abbot's lodgings were so spacious that six men could walk abreast up the steps which led into his hall. Yet others were not forgotten; besides the guest-house, there was a building reserved for poor clerks. But Henry's mania for destruction could not let the Abbey stand. In 1546 he moved the see to St. Frideswide's, reconstituting the old Priory, which Wolsey had turned into a college, as both college and cathedral. The doom of Oseney was pronounced, and in that year the demolition began. In 1566 Agar's map represents Oseney Abbey as still standing, but roofless; in 1644 a good deal remained, but Charles I. used the greater part to complete the fortifications of Oxford against the Cromwellians; in 1718 the abbot's chamber and the great stone staircase were all that was left. In Dr. Johnson's time a few ruins could still be seen, of which the great man said (at a time when such sentiments were uncommon)--"Sir, to look upon them fills me with indignation." At the present day the remains are almost invisible; they consist of a portion of a building attached to the mill, a fragment of the foundations of the gateway at the end of the same building, a small portion of the wall near the great gate, a few loose fragments of masonry, and some encaustic tiles. Bishop King's window in the cathedral gives one a vague reminder of its former aspect; and only the bells, which were transferred to Christ Church, remain intact. Thus perished the first cathedral church of the see of Oxford. Of it there now remains no memory Nor any little monument to see; By which the traveller that fares that way, That once she was may warned be to say. Apart from questions of vandalism, the destruction of this the first cathedral of Oxford was an egregious piece of waste and folly. Such places have been only too much needed by the University--indeed the need was felt a few years after the destruction--and vast sums have been spent in the erection of immeasurably inferior buildings. If Oseney Abbey, with its crowd of beautiful outbuildings along the water side, had been converted into a college, it would have been of immense use, and every other college now extant insignificant compared with it. Of all the headstrong and wanton actions of an irreverent age, the destruction of Oseney was one of the most wicked; and, as the train moves into Oxford railway station, the stranger may remember that the present approach to the old city is only so hideous because the glorious old abbey has given place to a collection of gasholders, coal-heaps, railway-sidings, modern tombstones, and obscene jerry-buildings. The diocese of Oxford now includes the deaneries of Aston, Burcester, Chipping-Norton, Cuddesden, Deddington, Dorchester (Oxon), Henley, Witney, Woodstock, and Oxford City, together with the counties of Berks and Bucks. =Robert King= (1542-1557), the first Bishop of Oseney and of Oxford, and the last Abbot of Oseney and of Thame, began life as a Cistercian monk. On the conversion of his abbey into a cathedral, he continued, as bishop of the new see, to preside; but he had already, seven years before, been raised to the episcopate, as suffragan of Lincoln, under the title (conferred by the Pope) of Bishop of Rheon in the province of Athens. He seems to have taken the Reformation pretty easily, passing through all the changes under King Henry, King Edward, and Queen Mary. He died at an advanced age in 1557, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral. He left considerable riches to his nephew Phillip King, "which it seems," says Fuller, "was quickly consumed, so that John King, Bishop of London (son of Phillip), used to say he believed there was a fate in abbey money no less than in abbey land, which seldom proved fortunate, or of continuance to the owners." He is supposed to have built "Bishop King's House" in Rose Place. After Queen Elizabeth had kept the see vacant for ten years, =Hugh Curwen= (1567-1568), a "moderate papist," according to Fuller, who had been made Archbishop of Dublin by Queen Mary, and now wished to end his days in peace, was translated to Oxford. "Very decrepid, broken with old age and many state affairs," he died next year. Whereupon Elizabeth kept the see vacant for twenty-one years more, "out of pure devotion to the leases, as some writers say." =John Underhill= (1589), Rector of Lincoln College, and one of Queen Elizabeth's chaplains, was next appointed, "being persuaded," says Willis, "on certain considerations, to accept it in the way of a better." But it proved "very much out of his way; for ere the first-fruits were payed he died in great discontent and poverty about the beginning of May 1592." Again Elizabeth, who had already taken away some of the best estates from the bishopric, kept it in her hands the third time (1592-1604): "who," says Willis, "constituting no bishop forty-one years of her forty-four, disposed of its income to her courtiers as she thought fit, giving whatever they had a mind to ask; though, as some writers remark, it proved miserably fatal to them, particularly to her great favourite the Earl of Essex." With =John Bridges= (1604-1618) commences the unbroken succession of Bishops of Oxford. It is suggested by Fuller in his "Worthies" that "the cause that church was so long a widow was the want of a competent estate to prefer her"; but at this time, Elizabeth being dead, the endowment of the see had been increased; and henceforward occupants for it were found. Bridges is known to history mainly from his name appearing at the head of the title-page of the first two Marprelate tracts. He was then, 1587, Dean of Sarum, and had written a temperate reply to the Puritan pamphleteers who were pouring violent abuse upon Episcopacy. Martin Marprelate seized upon his book, "A Defence of the Government Established in the Church of England," and headed the "Epistle" and the "Epitome" with, "Oh read over D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke." He was a good Bishop. =John Howson= (1619-1628) was a great controversialist of the time, his four sermons against the Pope's supremacy having, according to Fuller, "made him famous to all posterity." He was one of the original members of Chelsea College, an institution founded by James I. "to afford divines leisure and other conveniences to spend their time wholly in controversy." Mercifully this terrible design soon gave way, and Chelsea College became Chelsea Hospital. Bishop Howson was translated to Durham in 1628, where he died at the age of ninety-five. =Richard Corbet= (1628-1632) was "a distinguished wit in an age of wits, and a liberal man amongst a race of intolerant partizans." But perhaps his liberality (which did not prevent him, by-the-way, from carrying out the Laudian discipline with a high hand) was due to his own easy way of living: for he and his chaplain were wont to lock themselves in the wine-cellar and be merry. He seems to have been a genial, kind, generous, and spirited prelate; sincere and affectionate in private life, he was, says Gilchrist, "correct, eloquent, and ingenious as a poet." At least he was a man of character. From 1632 to 1635 he was Bishop of Norwich. =John Bancroft= (1632-1641), Master of University College, and nephew of the Archbishop of Canterbury of that name, was a great benefactor to the see. Being a single man he devoted his money to this purpose; and besides many financial acquisitions, he built an episcopal palace at Cuddesden at the suggestion of Archbishop Laud. This palace, the first since the time of Edward VI., was finished in 1634, and burnt down ten years later by Colonel Legg, to prevent its becoming useful to the parliamentary forces. It lay in ruins till the time of Bishop Fell. =Robert Skinner= (1641-1663) was translated from Bristol. He was imprisoned in the Tower by the Puritan party, and remained in obscurity during the Commonwealth; but he was one of the few who continued to ordain. At the Restoration, being then over seventy, he was translated to Worcester. =William Paul= (1663) and =Walter Blandford= (1665) did nothing memorable. =Hon. Nathaniel Crewe= (1671-1674) entered into holy orders in 1664; in the short space of five years he was Dean of Chichester, and two years after that Bishop of Oxford. He was an ambitious and restless man: in 1673 he had the boldness to perform the marriage ceremony between the Duke of York and Mary of Este, in defiance of the House of Commons. As a reward for this act, the Duke procured him the see of Durham, whither he was translated in 1674. At the Revolution, as a consequence of his political intrigues, he was excepted from the general pardon, and obliged to fly to Holland. But he afterwards made his peace; and, on the death of his elder brother, becoming Lord Crewe, he was the first man to be summoned to Parliament both as baron and bishop. He lived on till 1722. =Hon. Henry Compton= (1674-1675), son of the Earl of Northampton, who died fighting by the king at Hopton Heath in 1644, was after the Restoration a cornet in the army before he took orders. He was conspicuous throughout his long life for his efforts to reconcile the dissenters with the Church of England, and for his opposition to Rome; he was the first to sign the declaration for the Prince of Orange on William's arrival in London. But at Oxford he was a bird of passage, being translated to London in 1675. =John Fell= (1676-1686), the best known, and also the best of the Bishops of Oxford, was well-fitted to restore the traditions of the place; for his father Samuel Fell was Dean of Christ Church from 1637-1649, and had been elected student of the House as far back as 1601: thus John Fell must have had an intimate knowledge of the traditions of Christ Church as far back as the third interregnum of Elizabeth. A strong royalist, Fell kept in seclusion till the Restoration, when, in 1660, he was made Dean. He at once commenced to restore both the discipline and the buildings of the College. On his appointment to the Bishopric, he was permitted to retain the Deanery as well, in order "that he might better carry on his noble designs, which were so many that they contributed to wear him quite out and shorten his life." He employed Sir Christopher Wren to build Tom Tower, and finished the north side of Tom Quadrangle; he also built a new episcopal palace upon the ruins of the old one at Cuddesden. He founded ten exhibitions, and caused the University Theatre to be erected, and the Printing Press to be "advanced to a glory superior to any place in Christendom." He showed exemplary care in governing his diocese, and established daily prayers at St. Martin's (as the principal city church of Oxford) at eight in the morning and eight at night. His most important book is the "Life of Dr. Henry Hammond," 1660; he also wrote several theological books, edited St. Cyprian's works, and produced a well-known edition of the New Testament. He died in 1686, "having by a most pious unspotted single life left behind him an everlasting character," and was buried in the cathedral, where, in the ante-chapel, there is a monument to him. There is also a beautiful statue of him over the archway that leads past the deanery into Peckwater Quadrangle, by Mr. Bodley. Anthony à Wood records of him that he was "the most zealous man of his time for the Church of England." Still John Fell had his weak points, as this same Anthony Wood had cause to know. For it so happened that Wood had mentioned Hobbes, the redoubtable author of the "Leviathan," in terms of great admiration, in his History and Antiquities of the University. Wood was himself a strong high-churchman, with (it had been said) a weakness for popery; in praising Hobbes he therefore acted with a generosity and fairness beyond his age. Fell, however, was not so liberal; he considered Hobbes no better than an atheist or a deist, and when one Peers was employed by Wood to translate his book into Latin, Fell got on the right side of the man, and made him alter all Wood's praises of Hobbes to expressions of abuse. The author of the "Leviathan," meeting the King in Pall Mall, got leave to reply, and hit the Bishop rather hard. Fell retorted with an answer that contained the famous description of Hobbes as _irritabile illud et vanissimum Malmesburiense animal_. Wood, of course, was furious, and the wretched Peers suffered at the hands of the muscular old Antiquary, so that "as Peers alway cometh off with a bloody nose or a black eye, he was a long time afraid to goe anywhere where he might chance to meet his too powerful adversary, for fear of another drubbing." =Samuel Parker= (1686-1687) was a typical specimen, of the place-hunter of the period. He was brought up a strict Puritan at Northampton, and, coming to Wadham College in 1656, when the Puritans were in power, he distinguished himself as "one of the most godly young men in the University," and was under the tuition of a rigid Presbyterian. Shortly after the Restoration, however, he changed his mind, and in 1663 he took orders, becoming "a zealous advocate of the Church of England." By 1686, however, he was the creature of James II., and was forced by that monarch upon Magdalen College, Oxford, as its President, in 1687, in the place of the lawful President, John Hough. At the installation only two of the Magdalen Fellows attended; the porter threw down his keys, the butler had to be dismissed because he would not scratch Hough's name from the buttery list, no blacksmith even could be found in Oxford to force the lock of the President's lodgings; and the whole University, which had suffered so much for the Stuarts, was alienated at last. Parker himself died very soon after, in the lodgings that he had unlawfully occupied. He lies buried in the ante-chapel of Magdalen, but no monument marks his grave. Antony Wood intimates that he would have become a Papist, but for his wife, who was unwilling to be parted from him; and he certainty wrote in defence of transubstantiation. Still, Parker, according to Mr. W.H. Hutton (_Social England_, iv. 421), was by no means a despicable man. As a philosopher in his _Disputationes de Deo_, and _Censure of the Platonick Philosophie_, as a satirist in his _Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity_, and an ecclesiastical historian, he is eminent. "But most of all is he commended to modern thinkers by his little tract containing reasons for the abolition of the Test Act." =Timothy Hall= (1688-1690), another of James II.'s creatures, was also originally a Nonconformist, but afterwards, "getting nothing," says Willis, "for his loss of a small living in Middlesex, he complied." Being a very obscure and inconsiderable person, and on no account for learning, no one took any notice of him. At the Revolution he fled from Oxford, and died "miserably poor at Hackney near London, and was buried in the church there without any memorial." =John Hough= (1690-1699), the President of Magdalen whom King James had ejected, was the next bishop. He retained the Presidency during his episcopate. In 1699 he was translated to Lichfield, thence in 1717 to Worcester, where he died in 1743. He was, says Macaulay, "a man of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution with fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours, and having modestly declined honours higher still, died in extreme old age, yet in full vigour of mind," fifty-six years after the eventful struggle with James. =William Talbot= (1669-1715), father of Lord Chancellor Talbot, was translated to Salisbury in 1715, and to Durham in 1721. =John Potter= (1715-1737), son of a linen-draper in Wakefield, wrote a well-known book on the "Antiquities of Greece." He was "a learned and exemplary divine, but of a character by no means amiable, being strongly tinctured with a kind of haughtiness and severity of manners." He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1737. =Thomas Secker= (1737-1758) came of dissenting parents, but was persuaded by the great Bishop Butler to abandon the study of medicine and to take orders in the Church. He was an estimable and able person, and in 1758 became Archbishop of Canterbury. His portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds is at Lambeth. =John Hume= (1758-1766), Bishop of Bristol 1756: translated to Salisbury 1766. =Robert Lowth= (1766-1777) was the author of a variety of works, including a "Life of William of Wykeham," and a "Short Introduction to English Grammar." His controversy with Warburton, and the "Letters" to which it gave rise, are well known. Of his "Isaiah" Philip Skelton said that "Lowth on the Prophecies of Isaiah is the best book in the world, next to the Bible." He was moved to London 1777, and he refused the Archbishopric of Canterbury. =John Butler= (1777-1788) was a popular preacher and political pamphleteer; in reward apparently for his efforts in the latter function, Lord North advanced him to see of Oxford, though he was not a university man. Translated to Hereford 1788. =Edward Smallwell= (1788-1799), St. David's 1783. The first bishop since Dr. Fell to remain faithful to the diocese. =John Randolph= (1799-1807), regius professor of Greek and a trustee of the British Museum, was the author of many sermons and charges. One of his last works was a report of the progress of the National School Society. Translated to Bangor 1807, and to London 1809. =Charles Moss= (1807-1811) avoided translation, and died shortly in the palace at Cuddesden, and "leaving his splendid furniture for the use of his successors." =William Jackson= (1812-1815) was a prominent Oxford man, being regius professor of Greek and curator of the Clarendon Press. =Hon. Henry Legge= (1816-1827) was a son of the Earl of Dartmouth; he had been Dean of Windsor, and in 1817 became Warden of All Souls, retaining the bishopric. =Charles Lloyd= (1827-1829). Had he not died at the early age of forty-five, Lloyd would have played a great part in the stirring times that were in store for the Church. He was, says Mr. Gladstone, "a man of powerful talents, and of character both winning and decided." He was Student and Tutor, then Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, and had Sir R. Peel among his pupils and constant friends. Lloyd warmly supported the Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1829. He was the first to publish the Prayer Book with red lettered rubrics. =Hon. Richard Bagot= (1829-1845), translated to Bath and Wells. He graduated in 1803, and it is characteristic of his times that in 1804 he was fellow of All Souls, in 1806 rector of Leigh, and in 1807 canon of Windsor,--all within seven years of his matriculation at Christ Church. He was bishop at the time of the Oxford movement, and was reluctantly obliged to play a part in its history. He did not exactly please either side, but he behaved with great fairness and courtesy, as Newman bears witness in his _Apologia_. In 1845, being ruined in health by the worry of previous years, he was translated to Bath and Wells. =Samuel Wilberforce= (1845-1870), translated to Winchester. This famous bishop was the third son of William Wilberforce, the great slave emancipator. At the early age of forty he was made bishop of Oxford, and he administered the diocese with wonderful ability for a quarter of a century, guiding it through the most difficult period, when the Tractarian storm was at its height, without offending either party. His extraordinary tact and charm enabled him to perform a valuable work for the Church by binding the various sections together at a time when party-feeling ran high. He was the most accomplished preacher in the English Church, one of the fore-most parliamentary orators of his day; "the most witty and genial of companions, he was the favourite of social life, and was equally irresistible in the drawing room or on the platform." As a theologian he was the inferior of his brother the Archdeacon; he wrote, however, several books, of which the best remembered are "Agathos" and "Rocky Island." He was killed by a fall from his horse when riding with Lord Granville in 1873. =John Fielder Mackarness= (1870-1888) was recommended to the bishopric by Mr. Gladstone, having lost his seat in convocation through refusing to oppose the disestablishment of the Irish Church. He was a hard-working prelate of great courage and independence. When an attempt was made to force him to take proceedings against the rector of Clewer, he argued the case in person before the judges of the Queen's Bench, and at last won his case on appeal. On surrendering to the ecclesiastical commissioners the management of the Oxford bishopric estates, Dr. Mackarness paid them the sum of £1729, which he estimated that he had received in excess of his statutory income during the previous nine years. He had been made a fellow of Exeter College on taking his degree; he wrote several pamphlets, among them "A Plea for Toleration, in Answer to the 'No Popery' Cry, 1850." He resigned, owing to failing health, in 1888, and died in the next year. =William Stubbs=, the present bishop, was translated from Chester in 1888, being already an Honorary Student of Christ Church. He is one of the leading historians of our time, and his Constitutional History has long been the standard work upon the subject. [Illustration: ARMS OF CHRIST CHURCH.] * * * * * Printed by Neill and Co., Ltd., Edinburgh. FOOTNOTES [Footnote 1: S. _Skeletons_; B. _Bones_; P. _Drain-pipe_.] [Footnote 2: Mr. Park Harrison has collected some very interesting drawings from various Anglo-Saxon MSS., which afford striking parallels to the ornament on these and other capitals in the church. A reproduction of the drawing here referred to, and of others equally important, will be found in his "Pre-Norman Date."] [Footnote 3: St. Frideswide: Two sermons preached in the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, by H.G. Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, pp. 21-24.] [Footnote 4: Mr. Rashdall's theory has, however, already been called in question by Mr. A.F. Leach, who (_National Review_, September 1896) asserts decisively that there were schools at Oxford even before Guimond's time, and that "Oxford is as much, there is every reason to believe, a natural growth from the schools and schoolmasters of St. Frideswide's as Paris from those of Notre Dame."] [Footnote 5: Prior Robert published an abridgment of Pliny, addressed "to the studious, and especially to those in cloisters and schools." He also published another work on _Jacob's Marriage_, which he said he had written when he was himself a scholar and "a regent master."] 
55450	----	[Illustration: _Frontispiece_ THE TOWER OF LONDON. The Bloody Tower and the Wakefield Tower, in which the Crown Jewels are kept.] PEEPS AT ROYAL PALACES OF GREAT BRITAIN BY BEATRICE HOME CONTAINING 8 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND 21 LINE DRAWINGS IN THE TEXT LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1913 PREFACE If a palace be a royal residence, as the dictionary defines it, then nearly all the famous castles of England would come under that title, for the Norman and Plantagenet Kings were constantly moving from one stronghold to another during the unsettled period of the Middle Ages. Until the fifteenth century, both the English and Scottish Kings resided in impregnable castles or fortified houses, but their sojourn was never long in one place. After the Wars of the Roses had crushed the power of the great nobles, it was no longer necessary for the monarch to dwell within a fortress, and it was then that the gracious and commodious palaces of Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Greenwich, arose in England. The Scottish Kings, having at the same time reached a greater control over their headstrong nobles, also began transforming their castles into palaces, and to erect Holyrood and Falkland to gratify their desire for more luxurious residences. Within the compass of this small book, it would have been impossible to detail every castle in which a monarch ever resided, so that it has been thought better to confine attention to those palaces which were owned, and most constantly used by the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WESTMINSTER PALACE 5 II. WINDSOR CASTLE 11 III. THE TOWER OF LONDON 19 IV. KENNINGTON PALACE 22 V. ELTHAM PALACE 24 VI. GREENWICH PALACE 27 VII. WHITEHALL PALACE 31 VIII. HAMPTON COURT PALACE 39 IX. ST. JAMES'S PALACE 48 X. KENSINGTON PALACE 53 XI. KEW PALACE 59 XII. BUCKINGHAM PALACE 63 XIII. VANISHED PALACES 67 XIV. EDINBURGH CASTLE 72 XV. DUNFERMLINE CASTLE 76 XVI. STIRLING CASTLE 78 XVII. HOLYROOD PALACE 82 XVIII. LINLITHGOW PALACE 87 XIX. FALKLAND PALACE 91 XX. BALMORAL CASTLE 94 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR THE TOWER OF LONDON _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE WINDSOR CASTLE 17 HAMPTON COURT PALACE 24 EDINBURGH CASTLE 73 STIRLING CASTLE 80 LINLITHGOW PALACE 91 BALMORAL CASTLE 94 ST. JAMES'S PALACE _On the cover_ ROYAL PALACES OF GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER I WESTMINSTER PALACE Scarcely anything remains to-day to remind us of the vast size and the magnificence of the Palace of Westminster, the royal residence of the English Kings from the time of Edward the Confessor until the reign of Henry VIII. For five centuries the monarchs of England kept their Court on the island of Thorney, within the sound of the bells of the great minster raised by the piety of the saintly Edward. Though the early Kings were seldom long in one place, they regarded Westminster as their principal palace, and often kept their Christmas festivals there, a time of general feasting at the royal expense. Cnut is supposed to be the first King to settle at Westminster, whither he had gone, after his conversion to Christianity, to be near his friend Abbot Wolfstan, and we are told that the incident of his rebuke to his courtiers concerning the tide occurred on the shores of the River Thames. At that time Westminster was surrounded by water, being built on the island of Thorney, an islet that rose out of the low-lying marshy ground overspread by the wide and unembanked river. It is customary to attribute the ruin of the many beautiful and stately buildings of past ages, to the agency of civil wars, the fanatical zeal of Protestant reformers, or the carelessness of the Cromwellian soldiers; but far more deadly foes than the cannon-balls of enemies or the mistaken energies of religious zealots, were the destructive fires that time and again destroyed the splendid structures that adorned the vanished centuries. Westminster, though immune from other foes, suffered terribly from fires, which have robbed us of the greatest part of one of the most picturesque of palaces. Just after Edward I. had finished repairing his royal dwelling a huge fire broke out, so tremendous that the palace was rendered uninhabitable, obliging the King to accept the hospitality of York Place, the London house of the Archbishops of York. Edward II. rebuilt the palace, which remained the main royal residence until a disastrous fire in 1512 drove the monarchs away for ever. Though much was destroyed, a considerable part of the King's house remained, together with the beautiful chapel of St. Stephen and the great hall of the palace; but yet another fire attacked this remnant in 1834. From this last conflagration only Westminster Hall, the crypt of the chapel, and an old tower (now hidden away among the narrow byways of the abbey precincts) survived. The Palace of Westminster, described by Camden as "large and magnificent, a building not to be equalled in that age," was of great extent, stretching from the abbey to the river. It consisted of a mass of rambling buildings erected with little regard to any fixed plan, but resulting in a picturesque medley of gabled roofs, carved stonework, delicate window tracery, noble halls, and exquisite chapels. Medieval palaces required to be large, for all the King's work was done upon his own premises. Bakers, brewers, chandlers, armourers, blacksmiths, carpenters, furriers, masons, gardeners, barbers, stablemen, embroiderers, weavers--all lived and worked within the palace walls, and received wages and lodging. As Sir Walter Besant tells us, in his fascinating history of Westminster, the palace was "a crowded city, complete in itself, though it produced nothing and carried on no trade; there were workshops and forges and the hammerings of armourers and blacksmiths, but there were no stalls, no chepe, no clamour of those who shouted their goods and invited the passengers to 'Buy, buy, buy.'" Within this city, crowded within a confined space, dwelt about fifteen thousand people all occupied with the King's business, from the judges, bishops, and high State officials, down to humble laundry-women. A strongly-fortified wall ran all round the palace, for medieval Kings needed their royal residences to be places of defence as well as of regal splendour. There were gates leading to the Abbey, to Whitehall, and to the river, where the King's barges lay to take him down to the Tower of London in the city, or up the river towards Windsor. Immediately beyond the busy throng of the palace and the monastic buildings of the Abbey, lay green fields and pleasant rural scenes. Between the palace and the noisy city, a mile away, stood palatial houses of the great nobles and bishops, facing the broad and sparkling Thames. Of all the beautiful buildings that once formed the extensive palace only the great hall remains, now known as Westminster Hall. William Rufus built it in 1097, declaring that, large though it might appear, it was "but a bedchamber" in comparison to what he intended to make. But practically nothing is left of the work of Rufus, for we learn that three hundred years later, in 1397, Richard II. ordered the "walls, windows, and roof to be taken down and new made." The following year Richard, the most magnificent of the English Kings, kept his royal Christmas in the newly finished hall. Dressed in cloth of gold, adorned with pearls and precious stones, Richard entertained ten thousand people, necessitating the purchase of twenty-eight oxen, three hundred sheep, and numberless fowls every day for the feeding of his guests. He little thought that a few months hence the Parliament meeting in that very hall would depose him. This famous hall has witnessed some of the most spectacular, splendid, and tragic events in the history of the nation, from the Coronation banquets held within its walls, a-glitter with gorgeous raiment and all the pageantry of the past, to the sombre procedure of State trials. Perhaps the best remembered scene is that of the trial of Charles I., who had been brought hurriedly from Windsor, and was lodged during his trial in part of the old palace, then used as the residence of Sir Ralph Cotton. Standing, a monarch tried by his subjects, Charles Stuart remains for all time a dignified figure, not deigning to plead before such a self-constituted Court. For many centuries justice was administered from the hall, judges sitting in different parts determining Chancery cases or those of Common Pleas. The most-to-be-regretted loss caused by the fire of 1834 is that of the chapel royal of the palace, the chapel of St. Stephen. From an account of its architectural detail, which has fortunately been preserved, one gathers that it was a most beautiful and exquisite piece of work, as rich and stately as any in the country. King Stephen is supposed to have founded it, but Edward I. rebuilt it, only to have his building burnt down a few years later. His grandson, Edward III., restored it in such splendour that, as Camden says, "he seems rather to have been the founder than only the repairer." He made it a collegiate church, endowing it with so much wealth after his victories in France that it almost rivalled its wealthy neighbour, the Abbey of Westminster. Indeed, this royal munificence brought about considerable quarrelling with the Abbey, whose inmates grudged the Masses being said at St. Stephen's, when they might have been said in the Abbey and so enriched their coffers. In this new chapel Richard II. married his first wife, Anne of Bohemia. [Illustration: Westminster Hall. From an engraving by Hollar.] At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the King granted to the Commons of England, who had hitherto met in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, the use of St. Stephen's Chapel, and there they have met ever since, except once during the reign of Charles I. For the reception of the members the beautiful chapel was ruthlessly altered, but enough of the original work remained to make the fire of 1834 a disaster to all lovers of graceful architecture. The present House of Commons is built upon the site of the old collegiate buildings, and only the crypt of the church remains to remind us of the royal chapel of our Plantagenet Kings. All the other historic rooms have vanished. Nothing is left of the Painted Chamber, where Edward the Confessor died, the long room whose painted walls depicted the story of the Confessor's life upon one side, while the other was devoted to the Wars of the Maccabees. These paintings were unknown until 1800, when the tapestry that covered them was removed, and thus revealed the meaning of the room's designation. Gone, too, is the old House of Lords, used by the peers until the Commonwealth, where the famous tapestry representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada was hung. In the vaults underneath, originally the Confessor's kitchen, Guy Fawkes and his fellow-conspirators stored the barrels of gunpowder with which to blow up the Parliament. After the Restoration the Lords removed to the White Hall of the palace, taking the Armada tapestry with them, which, together with so much of fascination and historic interest, perished in the all-embracing fire of 1834. CHAPTER II WINDSOR CASTLE Standing upon a steep chalk cliff that rises abruptly from the River Thames, Windsor Castle towers above the low-lying river meadows, and, looking beyond the town that clusters round it, gazes proudly over twelve adjacent counties. For more than eight centuries a castle has stood upon this cliff-top, the defensive qualities of such a perfect natural stronghold having appealed to all the royal rulers of England. In Saxon times the mound was defended by some kind of wooden palisade, which William the Conqueror replaced with stone, nothing of which now remains. Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet Kings, built his palace there, erecting it upon what is known to-day as the Upper Ward, the castle being divided into three distinct sections or tiers. The Upper Ward, situated upon a higher level of the plateau, is separated from the Lower Ward by the Round Tower, which stands upon a mound in the centre. Perhaps the most exciting times that the castle ever witnessed took place in the reign of John; certainly one of the most important events in the history of the English people is connected with its grey walls. John had filled the castle with mercenary troops, with which to defend himself against his insurgent barons. Protected by these foreigners, who fought with extreme bravery, the castle sustained two sieges, the only active warfare in which it took any serious part. Owing doubtless to its almost impregnable situation before the days of artillery, it remained calm and secure, however disturbed other parts of the kingdom might be. One summer day in the year 1215 King John, overawed by the great gathering of armed barons within sight of his castle, left his stronghold on the hill, and full of rage rode down to the meadow of Runnymede, near Staines. There he was forced to sign the Great Charter of English Freedom, an action which reduced him to such a pitch of impotent fury that when he reached the castle again, he rolled on the ground, gnawing sticks and straws. It is to John's son, Henry III., that the present aspect of the castle is due, for though walls and towers have been rebuilt since his time, the general appearance remains the same. He was the first great builder, and beginning early with a reign of over fifty years before him, he was able to carry out his extensive building schemes. Deserting the Upper Ward, where all his predecessors had lived, he built his palace on the Lower plateau, also erecting a chapel on the site of St. George's. Less than a century after his death palace and chapel had vanished, fallen into a rapid decay, so that almost the only records of his work to-day are to be found in the Curfew Tower, and the Cloisters. The first King to be born at Windsor was Edward III., who spent great sums upon his palace, practically rebuilding the whole castle. Being a great warrior, loving war and glory, he became enamoured with the idea of founding an Order of Knighthood that should become as illustrious as that of King Arthur, who was believed to have some connection with Windsor. A Round Tower was built upon the mound, to hold the Round Table, and great festivities were held there in 1344, but this Round Table idea forms no part of the great Order--the Order of the Garter--instituted in 1348. It is thought that Froissart confused these two celebrations. [Illustration: Windsor Castle: Entrance to the Horseshoe Cloisters.] Under the superintendence of William of Wykeham, afterwards the great Bishop of Winchester, but employed by Edward III. as his surveyor of works, the Lower Ward was entirely given up to the service of St. George, the patron saint of the new Order. This involved the building of a new palace, which was erected upon the Upper Ward, hitherto merely walled and left vacant. At the time when these great building schemes were in progress, there were two captive Kings within the castle, for Edward did not entirely devote his energy to palace building, which merely formed a pleasing interlude to the long and ambitious wars which occupied his life. David II. of Scotland had been captured at Neville's Cross in 1346, and ten years later John, the King of France, joined him at Windsor, having fallen to the Black Prince at Poitiers. It is said that Edward, while walking with his prisoners, discussed with them the building of his new palace. They suggested that it would look more regal if it stood upon the Upper Ward, at which Edward cynically remarked that it should be erected at the cost of their ransoms. But as King John's ransom was never paid, and Scotland was too poor a country to provide much even to redeem their King, Edward was obliged to do most of the paying of the bill himself. Good Queen Philippa, the sweet woman who had been the gentle inspiration of Edward's life, fell ill at Windsor in August, 1369, an illness of which there was "no remedy but death," says Froissart, who writes very sympathetically of her last moments. Edward, the bravest knight in Christendom, stood weeping at her bedside as she whispered to him her last requests, that he should pay her debts, carry on her charities, and be buried beside her. Froissart tells us that "in all her life she did neither in thought, word, nor deed, things whereby to lose her soul." So that he was confident that "the holy angels received her with great joy up to heaven." During the reign of Henry V., Windsor again became a royal prison-house, Scotland's youthful King, James I., spending about ten years of his life there. He had been captured when quite a lad on his way to France to be educated, and had received a good education at the hands of his captors, who had treated him kindly, allowing him considerable liberty. While at Windsor he met his future queen, then the Lady Joan Beaufort, the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, whom he describes in his poem, "The King's Quair," as "the fairest and freshest youthful flower" he had ever seen. After his release in 1424, they were married in Southwark Cathedral, setting off immediately afterwards for Scotland. "The Royal Saint," as Henry VI. has been called, did not spend time or money upon his palace at Windsor, but was enthusiastic over the founding of Eton College, which he erected on the opposite bank of the winding river, so that he could see it from his palace windows. In his zealous activity to make this college worthy of the Virgin Mary, in whose honour it had been founded, poor King Henry forgot his kingdom, and found himself deposed long before his schemes were perfected. He lies buried in St. George's Chapel, under a plain stone slab, having been brought thither from Chertsey Abbey by Richard III., who did not care for miracles to be performed at his victim's grave, and preferred to have the body under his own observation. As a form of penitence for having waded "through slaughter to a throne," Edward IV. is said to have erected the beautiful chapel dedicated to St. George, which replaced the one built by Edward III. One of the finest specimens of pure Perpendicular architecture in England, it is the most impressive and stately building enclosed within the walls of Windsor Castle. Its glorious fan tracery is only rivalled by Henry VIII.'s Chapel at Westminster and King's College Chapel, Cambridge--all three being built during the latter half of the fifteenth century. But the choir, perhaps, attracts more attention than any other part of the chapel, for there are to be found the richly-carved stalls allotted to the use of the Knights of the Order of the Garter. Above each stall is placed the helmet of the Knight, while his splendidly emblazoned banner hangs over it. At his death the helmet and banner are removed, but his gilded brass plate upon the back of the stall remains, so that upon these stalls can be seen the gilded plates of some of the most illustrious names in history. The succeeding monarchs from Edward IV. to the time of Elizabeth did little either to alter or adorn their palace by the shining Thames. Henry VIII., who was very fond of Windsor and often resided there till he obtained Hampton Court Palace from his great Minister, Cardinal Wolsey, rebuilt the main entrance to the Lower Ward which is known by his name. In the vault beneath the choir of St. George's bluff King Hal found a resting-place beside Jane Seymour, his third wife, but no monument has been raised to his memory. Almost the only part of the palace which has remained unaltered since its erection is the Royal Library, part of the building facing the North Terrace. Built by Queen Elizabeth as a picture gallery, it is a fine specimen of a Tudor room, with a beautiful ceiling and a handsome stone chimney-piece. It is said that the "Merry Wives of Windsor" was first performed in this gallery, the play having been written in a fortnight at the Queen's command that Shakespeare should write a play about Sir John Falstaff in love. The Virgin Queen is also responsible for the North Terrace, on to which the gallery opened. [Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE Has been a stronghold of importance since Saxon times. St. George's Chapel, whose long roof-line can be seen in the picture, was built by Edward IV.] During the Civil War the castle was held by the Parliamentary forces, whose mere presence behind the strong walls was sufficient to repel Prince Rupert, Charles I.'s headstrong nephew, who had hoped with a small body of horse to surprise the castle. No further attempt was made by the Royalists to capture the royal fortress, to which King Charles was brought as a prisoner in December, 1648. For three years the unhappy King had been a captive, driven from prison to prison, Windsor being his last resting-place before his trial and death in London. Charles must have become aware that dangers were thickening round him, when, having refused to admit Denbigh bearing the last overtures of the Army, all ceremonies of State were omitted, his meals no longer being served to him on bended knee. After the tragedy at Whitehall, the body of the King was brought to Windsor and buried hurriedly one snowy February morning, in the vault below the choir, by the side of Henry VIII. At the Restoration £70,000 was voted by the Parliament to erect a fitting memorial, but for some unexplained reason his coffin could not be found, though two of the Lords who had carried his body to the grave were still living. Though the leaden coffin was identified in 1813, no monument has yet been raised to the most unfortunate if also the most unwise of British sovereigns. His son, Charles II., employed Sir Christopher Wren to make additions to the palace. Much of this work still remains practically as it was in the days of the Merry Monarch, for whose dining-room (now called the State Ante-room) Verrio painted the ceiling and Grinling Gibbons carved the walls. No monarch is more intimately associated with Windsor than George III., who loved the place which had been cordially disliked and neglected by his two predecessors. So complete had been the neglect, that the castle was quite unfit for habitation, obliging the Royal Family, during the process of repairs, to live in an ugly stuccoed building known as the Queen's Lodge, built on the site of the present royal stables. Owing to the minute chronicle of their daily events in the diary of Fanny Burney, we know exactly what the good commonplace King and Queen did and said during their residence at Windsor. So much had Queen Charlotte admired "Evelina," that she thought no greater honour could be done to the gifted authoress than to make her a dresser to her royal self, a condescension which almost overwhelmed shy Fanny Burney, who accepted the post, little dreaming of the drudgery it entailed. Everything went by routine in the Court life: the same things were done every day at precisely the same time they were done the day before, with a monotony which Thackeray declares must have rendered the life, frugal and virtuous as it was, stupid to a degree which he shuddered to contemplate. Poor King George spent the last ten years of his life, hopelessly insane and quite blind, confined in rooms overlooking the North Terrace, and was buried in the new tomb-house which he had cut in the solid chalk, under what is now known as the Albert Memorial Chapel. George IV. carried on the repairs commenced by his father, living meanwhile in a lodge in the park. Over a million pounds was spent upon the alterations and furnishing of the royal apartments. When Sir Jeffry Wyattville, the architect to whom the work had been entrusted, had completed his task, Windsor Castle appeared exactly as it does to-day. The walls and towers had been repaired and refaced, the brick buildings within the walls had been cleared away, the Round Tower raised by forty feet so that it dominated the whole pile, and the present State apartments built on the south and eastern sides of the Upper Ward. Though Windsor Castle cannot claim so fascinating or romantic a history as that of other royal palaces, yet it can boast that while its more picturesque rivals have either vanished or ceased their careers as palaces, it alone remains a royal residence with a story stretching back to the Normans. Majestic in its calm serenity, it remains, as Leigh Hunt used to say, "a place to receive monarchs in." CHAPTER III THE TOWER OF LONDON There are no myths or legends connected with the building of London's great fortress, the clear light of history beats upon the erection of its walls. It was built by William the Conquerer, not as a protection for the city, but as a proof of his dominating power over the subdued but possibly troublesome citizens. Part of the Roman wall which encircled the city was removed, and the tower rose into being upon the easternmost corner of Saxon London, right on the shore of the River Thames, the great highway from the sea. Various additions were made by succeeding monarchs down to Edward III., until it assumed the shape we now see it, with the solid Norman keep in the centre, an inner wall with twelve towers, protected by a strong outer wall surrounded by a deep moat. Only four gateways gave entrance to the fortress, and those were strongly guarded by towers. Any enemy attempting to enter from Tower Hill had to force his way across three branches of the moat, with three successive towers before he could reach the inner wall of the citadel. There were three gateways from the river, a small postern gate for the use of State visitors, the main water gate, which earned the ominous title of Traitor's Gate, due to the frequent arrival of State prisoners, and another entrance east of the Traitor's Gate. Owing to its immense strength it was more commonly used by the Kings during times of civil war, when from behind its bastioned walls they could bid defiance to the surging mobs outside. John, Edward II., Henry VI., and Edward IV. all retreated there for safety during their troublous reigns, but it is with Richard II., the boy-King, that we associate one of the most dangerous episodes in the eventful life of the city. One midsummer day in 1381 a frenzied mob of countrymen swarmed on Tower Hill, demanding, with no uncertain voice, a redress of grievances. Within the Tower there was great hesitation, the councillors of fifteen-year-old Richard vacillating between a sally with force upon the ill-armed peasants and a granting of their just demands. With something of the insistence of the market-women of Paris when they swarmed up to the gates of Versailles, the savage crowd gained admittance into the Tower, searching for their supposed enemy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, as the chief lawyer in England, represented the men who enslaved and starved them. Seizing the poor old man, they dragged him out to Tower Hill, and, with their summary judgment, cut off his head then and there. The story of how Richard saved the situation at Smithfield after the death of Wat Tyler is well known. Nothing now remains of the palace where the Plantagenet Kings held their Court. It was situated between the White Tower and the Wakefield and Lanthorn Towers. Scarcely used after the reign of Henry VII., save for three days previous to the Coronation procession through the city, it was completely demolished in the reign of William and Mary, every fragment being removed. [Illustration: The Keep, or White Tower.] The most romantic as well as the most pathetic incidents in the history of the Tower are connected with its forlorn prisoners, doomed to long incarceration or speedy death at the will of despotic monarchs. Even the sovereigns themselves were often captives within its walls. The two young Princes, Edward V. and his brother Richard, entered the Tower under the nominal protection of their uncle Richard III., never to appear again. Anne Boleyn returned as a prisoner to the place which she had formerly entered in triumph just before her Coronation. Retaining her gay spirit to the end, Anne laughingly remarked that she had a little neck, when told that death by execution was quite painless. During the reign of her sister Mary, Queen Elizabeth was brought through the Traitor's Gate to the Tower, where she was confined for some time under suspicion of being implicated in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion. Though ceasing to be a royal palace, and of little use as a fortress, the Tower retained its position as a State prison until 1820, becoming since then merely a barracks and a guard-house for the Crown jewels. CHAPTER IV KENNINGTON PALACE No royal house has more completely vanished from sight, and even from memory, than the royal palace of Kennington. Few know that such a palace ever existed, and certainly those who dwell upon its site would require to be possessed of keen imaginations, to realize that once all the pageantry of a medieval Court took place, where to-day monotonous streets crowd upon one another. Yet Parliaments assembled and all the ceremonies of State were performed on a spot not far from where Kennington Park now stands. The whim of royal fancy was the cause of the complete obliteration of the palace, other royal houses pleasing the later Kings more than the one upon Lambeth Marsh. Low-lying ground, only redeemed from complete marshland by the embankment of the river, lay between it and the City of London on the north. As it was not until quite the end of the eighteenth century that houses began to be built upon this district, the land being up till then used as market-gardens, it is not surprising that when the palace was destroyed it soon passed from men's minds, no one living in the neighbourhood. The exact date of the destruction of the palace is not known, but its oblivion was almost complete when Camden, the great antiquarian, wrote in 1607, for he says: "The Royal seat call'd Kennington, whither the Kings of England us'd to retire, the discovery whereof 'tis vain to endeavour after, there appearing neither name nor rubbish to direct us." Though no vestige of the palace now remains, it is reasonable to conjecture, from the analogy of contemporary palaces which still exist, that Kennington Palace was a fortified building, with a strongly embattled wall and deep moat. Deserted by Henry VIII., who found Eltham and Greenwich more to his taste, the building materials were all sold and the palace razed to the ground. Some kind of Tudor manor-house was built upon the site, for a survey taken about the middle of the seventeenth century describes a building of some fair size. Close to it stood a low stone structure with a thatched roof, known as the "Long Barn," which was thought to be part of the old palace. It stood until 1795, when it was pulled down, removing the last trace of historic interest. As one loses oneself among the maze of houses and streets of Kennington, it is difficult to believe that in the lost palace which rose above the marsh of long ago Harold Harefoot, the son of Cnut, was crowned, Harthacnut, his brother, died either by treachery or accident, and Henry III. held two Parliaments. But of all the Kings whose memory should haunt the spot, the most to be remembered is Richard II., the handsome, popular, pleasure-loving and magnificent Prince. After the early death of his father, the Black Prince, young Richard had been brought up in the palace by his widowed mother. In later years Richard brought his child-wife, the fair Isabella of France, to Kennington Palace, to rest there for the night before she entered London in state. She was then only eight years old, and was never anything more than Queen in name, for long before she was old enough to be a wife her attractive but unwise husband had been murdered by his enemies. CHAPTER V ELTHAM PALACE To realize that Eltham was one of the most stately of royal residences one has only to stand within the magnificent hall erected by Edward IV. Though neglected for many years and allowed to fall into decay, it is still a marvellous relic of medieval splendour, at the time when Perpendicular architecture was beautifying the land. The fine oak roof, with its hammer beams and carved pendants, is almost as perfect as when it was first put up, but unfortunately the beautiful tracery of the windows has suffered from being bricked up during the period of neglect. The whole hall, however, has lately undergone a thorough restoration, and the windows have been glazed, so that it is likely to remain for many centuries to come a noble witness of the dignified surroundings of the Plantagenet Kings. [Illustration: HAMPTON COURT PALACE. Erected by Cardinal Wolsey and afterwards presented by him to Henry VIII. Sir Christopher Wren reconstructed a part of the palace for William III. and Queen Mary.] The old stone bridge, with its buttressed arches, built at the same time as the hall, still stands over the moat, which at one time ran all round the palace. Standing on the bridge, across which must have trod Edward IV., its builder, Henry VIII. in his buoyant youth, Cardinal Wolsey in the early days of his greatness, and Queen Elizabeth when visiting the palace to meet her Scottish suitor the Earl of Arran, one looks down to-day upon smooth green water, overshadowed by willows and sycamores, and edged with smooth-shaven grass borders, with a glimpse of a rose-filled garden. [Illustration: The Banqueting Hall, Eltham Palace.] For Eltham, though only eight miles from London on the Maidstone road, retains much of its rural charm. As one approaches the palace along a tree-shaded avenue between old red-brick walls, one forgets the nearness to the great city and the fact that tram-lines now run up to the quiet little High Street. There is an old-world dignity about the neighbourhood of the palace, locally known as King John's Palace, through some confusion with John of Eltham, the second son of Edward II., who was born there. King John himself never resided in the palace, for it was not a royal house until the reign of his son. Some charming old houses, with red-tiled roofs and overhung upper stories, standing among gardens gay with flowers, border the avenue. It is probable that Wolsey and other Lord Chancellors stayed in these houses when in attendance upon the monarch. Eltham has never been anything but a small village amid fertile country, so that the problem of feeding the Court when resident in the palace must have been a serious one. Two thousand people to be fed daily must have absorbed the energies of all the farmers round. In plan the palace was a quadrangular castle protected by a strong battlemented wall, surrounded by a deep moat, with a drawbridge and portcullis. Camden claims that the original palace was built by Anthony Bec, Bishop of Durham, who presented it to Eleanor, the beloved wife of Edward I. Of its subsequent history one learns that many Kings held their Christmas festivals there, that Richard II. was extremely fond of it, spending much of his time there, that Edward IV. built the hall and bridge, and that Henry VII. also did a good deal of building, and brought up his children within its walls. Henry VIII. spent his early childhood in the palace, being visited by the learned Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. During the first years of his reign he also resided there frequently, until Greenwich rose in his royal favour. It was at Eltham that Wolsey received the office of Lord Chancellor, and also where he drew up, in 1526, the famous Eltham Ordinances for the regulation of the royal household. One finds from these ordinances that the King's guests were in the habit of stealing locks, tables, and other household articles, for strict rules were made concerning these fixtures, and also against the keeping of any dogs, except ladies' spaniels, within the precincts of the Court. James I. was the last monarch to reside within the palace, his son, Charles I., bestowing it upon Sir John Shaw, who pulled down all the buildings, with the exception of the great hall. When John Evelyn visited it in 1656, he found the whole place in ruins, but in 1828 the Government was persuaded to undertake repairs in order to preserve this beautiful remnant of fifteenth-century architecture. CHAPTER VI GREENWICH PALACE [Illustration: Greenwich Palace.] Greenwich was the sea palace of the English monarchs. It stood upon the edge of the broad and tidal River Thames, which was salt to the taste at the time when the Tudor monarchs gazed over its sparkling waters. From their palace windows Henry VIII. and his illustrious daughter Elizabeth watched the busy vessels passing down to the sea, laden with wool and other merchandise, to return filled with silks, and spices, and precious metals; and looked with proud satisfaction at their ships of war lying anchored close at hand at Deptford. Warships had appeared at Greenwich very early in its history, when it was a mere fishing village sheltered beneath the green slope of Blackheath. The Danes had arrived in 1009, flying their raven flag, seeking tribute money from Ethelred the ill-advised. During one of their visits, these ruthless Norsemen murdered Alphege, the Archbishop of Canterbury, by aiming beef bones, so it is said, at the good man's head. It was from their sea palace, too, that the royal rulers watched the departure and return of two famous explorers. On a certain day in May, 1553, Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed from Deptford with his small expedition to search for a North-East passage to China. Young King Edward, already in the last stages of his wasting illness, was brought to the window to see the ships depart with their brave commander on board, who was destined never to return, being found frozen to death in his cabin in the Arctic ice. Crowds gathered along the shore, the nobles and courtiers thronged the palace windows as the ships sailed by, discharging their guns in a final salute, so that the surrounding hills echoed. Twenty-seven years later, a small weather-beaten vessel, _The Golden Hind_, came to anchor at Deptford after a momentous voyage round the world, in which battle and tempest had been braved, and little known lands visited. Its dauntless commander shortly after was honoured by a visit from his sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth, who, forgiving his irregular deeds because of their success, knighted him upon his own deck, causing him to arise as Sir Francis Drake. Though pre-eminently associated with the Tudor monarchs who loved their healthy royal home, which felt the sea breezes coming up the river, Greenwich had been a royal possession for many years. Henry IV. dated his will from his manor of Greenwich, while his son, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was the real founder of the palace. Gaining permission from his nephew, Henry VI., for whom he had acted as regent during his minority, he erected a stone manor-house, calling it Placentia. Disasters fell thick upon "good Duke Humphrey," as he has been called. His wife Eleanor was accused of witchcraft, and after penance in the streets of London, was imprisoned for the remainder of her life, while he himself, falling under the displeasure of the haughty Margaret of Anjou, was arrested for high treason, dying suddenly a few days later under suspicion of poison. When it reverted to the crown, both Henry VI. and Edward IV. lived at Placentia, and Henry VII. wooed and won his Yorkist bride there, but it is to Henry VIII. that Greenwich owes its fame. Born at Greenwich in 1491, baptized in the former parish church in a silver font "well padded with soft linen," Henry VIII. spent much of his time at his birthplace. He rebuilt the palace, erecting an unfortified dwelling, the sovereigns no longer requiring to dwell within a castle. His two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were born in the palace, their royal father, though disappointed at the non-arrival of a Prince, ordering all reverence to be paid to the infant Princesses. Queen Katharine of Aragon spent some happy years at Greenwich before Henry was led away by the charms of Anne Boleyn. Henry at that time seems to have been full of buoyant life and good-humour, enjoying the rough and tumble of tournaments in the park, riding out in the early morning of the First of May to bring in the blossom, and rollicking in the dances and pageants of the time. It was at one of the tournaments that Henry last saw Anne Boleyn, who was acting the part of the Queen of Beauty. Taking offence at her behaviour, the headstrong King got up suddenly and set off for London, never again seeing his unfortunate wife, who was arrested the following day and carried to the Tower. After the time of James I., who, with his Queen, much delighted in its situation, the palace fell gradually into decay, so that Charles II. pulled it all down and started to rebuild a new one. He never lived in it, for only one wing--that which now faces the building devoted to the Museum--was ever erected, the scheme of the palace being rejected for quite another purpose. The gentle, kindly heart of Queen Mary, the beloved wife of William III., was so moved by the suffering of the wounded sailors after the Battle of La Hogue, that she determined that the neglected palace should be furnished as a hospital for those seamen "who had protected the public safety." Sir Christopher Wren furnished the design, and King William, private donors, and Parliamentary grants supplied the endowment of the hospital, whose first stone was laid on June 30, 1696. For over a century and a half invalided sailors were sheltered within the hospital, which was closed in 1869, pensions being then bestowed instead of residence. The buildings are now used as a college for naval officers. Greenwich still retains a sea-faring aspect; on a bright day the river, full of laden barges and busy little tugs, still sparkles, while "the noblest of European hospitals" remains as "a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of William, and of the great victory of La Hogue." CHAPTER VII WHITEHALL PALACE Of all the many palaces of the English monarchs, none is more associated in men's minds with the splendour and pageantry of Court life than the palace of Whitehall. In comparison with other palaces, such as Windsor, its life-story was very brief, just over a century and a half, but it was spent in the hey-day of royalty, when the Kings were freed from the power of the great barons, and were not yet controlled by the constitution. It is full of memories of the masterful Tudors, and the pleasure-loving Stuarts, a period stored with great and stirring happenings, just when the New World was being discovered, the New Learning flooding over Europe, and the Reformation stirring the hearts of men. Yet of all its vast size, only a tiny fragment is left--the banqueting hall of the magnificent palace designed by Inigo Jones--and not a brick or stone remains of the palace where Wolsey reigned in his episcopal glory, and Henry VIII. held his gorgeous Court. The first house on the site of the palace belonged to Hubert de Burgh, the patriotic ruler of England during the minority of Henry III., but remembered most generally as the unwilling gaoler of young Prince Arthur. He bequeathed his property to the Black Friars, in whose church in Holborn he was buried. Not long afterwards the Dominicans sold the house to Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, who left it as a London residence to his successors in the see of York. It will be remembered that after one of the serious fires that attacked the palace of Westminster, Edward I. took shelter in the Archbishop's palace at York Place, as it was then known, and continued to occupy it during the remainder of his reign. In his capacity as Archbishop of York, Cardinal Wolsey came into possession of York Place, which he almost entirely rebuilt. During his days of greatness Wolsey lived in the utmost magnificence in his palace, rivalling the King's Court at Westminster. Surrounded by many hundreds of courtiers, among whom were some of the noblest in the land, who did not disdain to serve "the butcher's son," Wolsey kept high state, feasting off gold and silver plate, to the accompaniment of singing and music, wearing scarlet and gold, and riding on a crimson velvet saddle, with his feet in stirrups of silver gilt. As an excuse for the undoubted ostentation of the great cardinal, Sir Walter Besant maintains that in his time "it was the right and proper use of wealth to entertain royally; it was part of a rich man to dress splendidly, to have a troop of gentlemen and valets in his service, to exhibit tables covered with gold and silver plate, to hang the walls with beautiful and costly arras. All this was right and proper." But Wolsey experienced, as so many great men have done, that "They that stand high have many blasts to shake them, And when they fall, they dash themselves to pieces." After the disgrace of his great chancellor, Henry VIII. seized York Place, quite regardless of the fact that, as it was not the private possession of the cardinal, he had no right to do so. But it was just what the King wanted, his own palace at Westminster having been destroyed by fire a few years before. It was then that the name of Whitehall came into use, as Shakespeare reminds us in the play of Henry VIII.: "You must no more call it York Place; that's past: For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost; 'Tis now the King's, and called Whitehall." Though Whitehall for us to-day signifies but one palace, in the days of the Tudors nearly every palace had its "white hall," usually the great banqueting hall, so that the new name bestowed by Henry was not peculiarly distinctive. Henry was delighted with his new residence, and proceeded to add new buildings, and to enclose nearly all St. James's Park up to the site of Buckingham Palace. Covering a vast extent of ground, the palace rambled from Scotland Yard along the riverside, to where Downing Street now stands, and spread across the roadway by means of a long gallery. Never so beautiful as Westminster, the Whitehall of the Tudors was a mass of brick buildings, erected without any particular scheme just as occasion required, resulting, as Besant declares, in a building "without dignity and without nobility." A roadway had always existed from Charing Cross to Westminster, and not even the autocratic Henry dared divert it for the sake of his palace, so that he caused two gateways to be erected to mark the precincts of the royal domain. Both were put up about the same time, the one nearer Westminster being called the King's Gate, and the other the Holbein Gate, being designed by the famous artist, Hans Holbein. Across this latter gateway ran the gallery connecting the main part of the palace with the Tiltyard (now the Horse Guards Parade) and the Cockpit (where the Admiralty now stands), the tennis court, and the bowling alley, where Henry VIII. indulged his love of games; for, as Leigh Hunt cynically tells us, "though he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports." Both gateways were removed during the first half of the eighteenth century, when the road was widened. Henry VIII. died in the palace where he had secretly married Anne Boleyn, and where he had enjoyed so many of the good things of life. It is said that he had grown so unwieldy that he had to be lifted by means of machinery. Cranmer came to see him on his deathbed, but when he arrived the King was already speechless, though still conscious. The Archbishop, after "speaking comfortably to him, desired him to give some token that he put his trust in God through Jesus Christ, therewith the King wrung hard the Archbishop's hand," and so left the earthly scene of his cruelties, his amusements, and his worldly success. [Illustration: Whitehall Palace at the End of the Seventeenth Century.] When James I. succeeded to the throne of the Tudors, he found the palace of Whitehall needing a considerable amount of repairs. The old banqueting hall that had sufficed for the needs of Elizabeth was despised by the new monarch, who regarded it as an "old rotten slight-builded Banqueting House." Inigo Jones, the great architect, was called upon to supply plans for an entirely new palace. His plans, the originals of which still exist, were extremely ambitious, for if they had been carried out, London would have possessed a palace rivalling Versailles, and covering an area of twenty four acres. According to his scheme, the palace was to present four imposing frontages, having square towers at the corners, and was to contain one vast central court, as well as six smaller courts. Only the stately banqueting hall of this colossal scheme was ever erected, that which remains to-day, the solitary fragment of the once extensive palace. The hall was finished in 1622, and when, three years later, Charles I. came to the throne, he was too much overwhelmed with the difficulty of obtaining sufficient money to supply his immediate needs, to entertain any ideas of carrying out the proposed palace. He contented himself with adorning the existing banqueting hall, commissioning the artist Rubens, who was in London in the capacity of Ambassador from Flanders, to paint the ceiling. For the magnificent work which we see to-day, covering the entire ceiling, representing the apotheosis of James I. the artist received £3,000 and a knighthood from King Charles. It was outside the banqueting hall which he had so enriched, that King Charles was beheaded on January 30, 1649. Early on the cold wintry morning, escorted by a body of soldiers, Charles walked from St. James's Palace, where he had spent his last night, across the park to Whitehall. Owing to the cold he had put on two shirts, in order to prevent any shivering, which might, the King thought, have been put down to fear. Wearing a black cloak, and a striped red silk waistcoat, he walked rapidly, telling Bishop Juxon, who accompanied him, that he was soon going to obtain a heavenly crown. On the way he pointed out a tree in Spring Gardens, planted by his elder brother, Henry. Arrived at Whitehall, he crossed over the gallery above the Holbein Gate, and went to his own room in the palace, awaiting the order for his appearance on the scaffold, spending the time in prayer. In spite of the great controversy on the subject of the position of the scaffold, and the manner of the King's approach to it, there seems to be every probability that the scaffold, which was erected in the open street, stood in front of the large windows of the banqueting hall. It is thought that King Charles, after walking through the hall, crowded for him with memories of his father and of his own stately and decorous court, entered into a small adjoining room, the wall having been cut through for the purpose. And it was from the window of this small room that Charles stepped upon the scaffold. At that time the windows of the banqueting hall, facing Whitehall, were not glazed. A great crowd had assembled to witness, as Sir Thomas Herbert, the King's devoted friend, records, "the saddest sight that England ever saw." With calm dignity Charles performed the last actions of his life, asking his executioners whether his hair would hinder them, taking off his cloak, handing the "George" worn by the Knights of the Garter to Bishop Juxon, who remained by the side of his fallen monarch to the end, and then, after making a short speech declaring his innocence, kneeling down and laying his head upon the block. When Bishop Juxon reminded him that he had but one stage more, which would carry him from earth to heaven, the King replied: "I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown." Directly the painful scene was over every sign of it was removed at once; soldiers dispersed the crowd, and the scaffold was immediately taken down. The King's body was embalmed, after which it was shown to the public, that there should be no doubt of his death. A week later his faithful friends carried him to his last resting-place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. And so was cut short the life of Charles Stuart, who, had his youth been spent under wiser guidance than that of his father, might have been one of England's noblest rulers. [Illustration: The Execution of Charles I., outside Whitehall Palace. _From the painting by Ernest Crofts, R.A._] Cromwell, conscious of his own integrity and free from superstitious fears, did not hesitate to occupy the palace outside which his late monarch had been executed. Though he refused the crown offered to him in 1657, his residence in Whitehall began to assume more and more the aspect of a court, he himself gradually acquiring a dignified and stately manner, as we are assured by the contemporary royalist writer, Sir Philip Warwick. "And yet I lived to see this very gentleman," he writes, "when for six weeks together I was a prisoner in his sergeant's hands, and daily waited at Whitehall, appear of a great and majestic deportment and comely presence." After six years of almost autocratic power as Protector of England, during which period he had shown his capacity as a statesman, Cromwell breathed his last in the palace of his royal predecessors, relinquishing his hold upon life, in spite of his strong religious faith, with obvious reluctance. Worn out with anxieties and domestic grief, especially over the death of his much-beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, the great Protector died at the age of fifty-nine, on September 3, 1658, a day which he had always accounted as peculiarly fortunate, having been the occasion of his victories at Dunbar and Worcester. A tremendous storm, one of the most violent ever known, was raging over England when Oliver Cromwell's spirit passed into the great Unknown. On his arrival in London after his restoration, Charles II. proceeded to Whitehall, where he confirmed all the great charters of English liberty, such as Magna Carta, and the Petition of Right. Two years later, Charles brought his unhappy young bride by river in state to Whitehall, after their honeymoon at Hampton Court. Samuel Pepys watched the pageant from the top of the banqueting hall, which he describes as "a most pleasant place as any I could have got." The whole river was covered with boats and barges, "so that we could see no water for them," some boats representing the mimic court of a King and Queen, until the actual royal pair appeared, who were greeted with guns on their arrival at Whitehall Bridge. Whitehall, so intimately connected with the Tudors, fell with the Stuarts. A fire, which raged furiously all one night, destroyed for ever, in 1698, the old rambling palace known to Wolsey and his royal master, leaving no fragment to remind us of its existence. Only the graceful banqueting hall escaped the general conflagration. Plans were drawn up by Sir Christopher Wren for a new palace, but William III., who, suffering from habitual asthma, found the smoke of Whitehall almost intolerable, was not likely to be anxious to restore a palace in which he could not live. As he wrote to one of his friends, "the loss is less to me than it would be to another person, for I cannot live there." But though he made little effort to rebuild the palace, being already busy at altering Hampton Court, there is no truth in the statement of his enemies, that William had partly inspired the fire. George I. altered the banqueting-hall into a Chapel Royal, for which purpose it continued to be used until 1890, when Queen Victoria gave permission for the building to be used for the United Service Museum. CHAPTER VIII HAMPTON COURT PALACE In the high tide of its popularity, Hampton Court Palace was considered the finest and most commodious palace in England, an opinion which was corroborated by the foreign ambassadors of the time, who spoke of it in terms of the highest praise. One distinguished foreign visitor, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, recorded in his diary: "This is the most splendid and most magnificent royal palace of any that may be found in England, or, indeed, in any other kingdom." And though to-day the tide of royal favour has receded for ever from the shores of Hampton Court, the palace remains as stately and as dignified as when the proud Wolsey paced its galleries. [Illustration: Hampton Court: The First Court.] Its situation has always been a happy one, for though built on the banks of the River Thames, it has avoided all the disadvantages of damp, owing to the gravelly nature of its soil. The nearness to London, only thirteen miles away, with easy access along the broad river, made it a delightful residence for the monarchs who were able to get to and fro from London, however bad the roads might be. When wearied with the smoke and bustle that surrounded Whitehall, the royal owners rejoiced in escaping to their beautiful palace at Hampton Court, from whose windows they looked over the clean river, across fresh green meadows to the horizon of the blue Surrey hills. Cardinal Wolsey was largely influenced by the healthy position of Hampton Court, when he bought the place from the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, who had owned it since the early part of the thirteenth century. The Cardinal, like so many other great men, had never been strong, and had taxed his strength to the uttermost by the enormous quantity of work which he undertook. Not only was he Archbishop of York, holding various other bishoprics, but he was Lord Chancellor of England, an office which carried with it vast legal duties, and also that of chief adviser to the King, through whom all the business of the State was carried out. No wonder he needed a quiet spot far from the busy throng, but he would have been wiser had he built a modest country house, which would not have aroused the envy of the King. But Wolsey had a passion for building, as his work at Whitehall, his college of Christchurch, Oxford, and the school at Ipswich, witness, and he apparently could not refrain from erecting a palace, which was to excite universal admiration, and ultimately to assist in his fall from power. Though suffering from a variety of ailments, among which were ague and dropsy, Wolsey never rested, but, having bought Hampton Court in 1514, pushed on the building, so that it was finished and ready for occupation two years afterwards. No word concerning any architect has come down to us, so that we may presume that the palace was erected according to the Cardinal's own plans, and that he is responsible for the romantic charm of the Tudor work, with its clustered chimneys, gabled roofs, mullioned windows, and all the picturesque dignity of the red-brick courtyards. No sooner had the builders evacuated, than Wolsey filled the palace with the most rich and costly furniture, magnificent tapestries, and beds upholstered in gorgeous velvet and silk, everything being adorned with the Cardinal's arms, until it quite outshone anything that the King possessed. King Henry often honoured his "good Cardinal" with a visit, sometimes coming unexpectedly to surprise his Chancellor. The greatest banquet Wolsey ever gave was to the French Ambassador in 1527, when 280 beds were prepared, each room being lighted with blazing fires and candles in silver candlesticks. Music was performed all through the banquet, at which marvellous dishes appeared representing St. Paul's Church and various birds and beasts. Though Wolsey had handed over the lease of Hampton Court to the King in 1525, when the first small cloud of royal displeasure had appeared, he continued to occupy his beautiful palace for four more years, until his final disgrace over the question of the divorce with Katharine of Aragon. King Henry took possession in 1529, and at once began building apartments for the Lady Anne Boleyn, though Queen Katharine was still with him. Four years later, after Cranmer had pronounced a divorce, the Pope still remaining obdurate, Anne Boleyn spent a gay and brilliant honeymoon within the Cardinal's palace, recking little that the fickle King who had thrown off a faithful servant and a devoted wife for her sake, was to condemn her within a few years to a cruel death. Hampton Court remained Henry's favourite palace, for he was proof against any sad memories of past wives, while he was enjoying the company of another. Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife, whom he married the day after Anne Boleyn was executed, gave birth to Henry's only son, Edward, within the palace, the young Prince being received with great rejoicings, which were cut short by the death of his mother a few days afterwards. Catharine Howard and Catharine Parr were both married at Hampton Court, and Anne of Cleves also spent a short time there, so that the palace is associated with all the wives of Henry VIII. As a builder, King Henry is responsible for the Great Hall, on the north side of the Clock Court, a fine Perpendicular building, with a rich ceiling and large bay window. Even when, in his later years, he could no longer enjoy his favourite sports of hunting, archery, tennis, and fishing, owing to his increasing corpulence, Henry retained his love for the Cardinal's palace, and was often there amusing himself with games of backgammon and dice, and playing on the lute, having been always fond of music. Queen Mary, Henry's eldest daughter, spent her gloomy honeymoon at the palace, none of her English subjects welcoming her marriage with Philip II. of Spain. Philip, though outwardly devoted, was not much in love with his plain and unattractive wife, who seems to have lost all joyousness during the years of her retirement following the divorce of her mother. Deep melancholy and despair settled down upon the unfortunate Queen, when her hopes of an heir to carry on her work of restoring the Roman Catholic religion in England were denied, and she knew that her Protestant sister must succeed. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth no very important events occurred, for though the Queen constantly visited the palace, she came for periods of rest and amusement, away from all political cares. When her successor came to Hampton Court, he was delighted with it, as he was with most of the English royal palaces, which were so much more rich and luxurious than those of Holyrood or Falkland. The park allowed him opportunity for his much-loved occupation of hunting, when, his ungainly figure clad in a vivid green hunting suit, he would follow the stag with great keenness. But, enthusiastic as he was, he much disliked any crowds assembling at the royal meets, thinking that they worried the hounds and spoilt the game, and so he issued peevish proclamations against "the bold and barbarous insolency of multitudes of vulgar people," who, if they followed the hunt at all were to be conveyed to the nearest gaol. The favourite indoor entertainment at this time was the masque, which reached the height of its popularity and glory during James's reign. Ben Jonson, the greatest poet, and Inigo Jones, the greatest architect of the day, were employed as author and designer of these stately dramatic performances, in which the nobles and ladies of the Court took part, before an audience representing the highest in the land. But King James could not spend all his time watching gods and goddesses upon the stage, or hunting the deer in his park, for the question of religious toleration had to be decided. A conference was held in January, 1604, at the palace, between the Puritan clergy and the bishops, on the question of some lesser ecclesiastical reforms involving no change in the organization of the Church. James delighted in presiding at the conference, as it gave him an opportunity of showing forth his scholastic accomplishments, which were real, though extremely pedantic. No settlement was arrived at, for James, after his experience under the Presbyterians in Scotland, delighted in the Church of England with its subservience to royal authority. King James thought he had crushed the Puritans with his arguments, but he had only left them certain that all concessions would have to be wrested from the King by force, resulting in the deadly struggle of his son's reign. Though Charles I. grew to be devotedly attached to his French bride, Henrietta Maria, he had some unfortunate disagreements with her during the early months of his married life, which he spent at Hampton Court. Owing partly to the interference of the Duke of Buckingham, Charles's unwise favourite, and to the young bride's extreme youth and lack of tact, there were constant quarrels between the royal pair. Henrietta Maria's large train of French followers were extremely unpopular among the English, owing to their religious beliefs, and the Queen herself was ill-advised enough to refuse to take part in the coronation ceremonies, as they were performed by Protestant clergy. At last Charles grew so annoyed that he dismissed all the French suite in a high-handed manner, and sent them back to France. Though the Queen never became popular among the Puritans, who attributed much of the King's stubbornness to her suggestion, yet she and her royal husband learned to live together in great domestic bliss. The first hint of the gathering storm was made evident to the King when the Commons brought down to the palace their Grand Remonstrance, a document in which they had recorded, in unqualified language, all the King's misdeeds. Charles retaliated by the fatal error of attempting to arrest five members of the Commons; after the failure of which he retired from London to Hampton Court--the last time (except for one night) that he visited it as a free man. In the summer of 1647, when his armies had all been crushed and dispersed, he came to the palace once more, but this time as a prisoner. He was still treated with great respect and allowed considerable liberty, visiting his children at Sion House, and having them visit him. Unhappily Charles determined to escape, and was so far successful that he succeeded in slipping from the palace, crossing the river, and reaching the Isle of Wight. But there his success ended, for he was obliged to give himself up as a prisoner to the governor of the island, to be treated afterwards with increasing severity. Cromwell's soldiers are credited with effecting considerable damage to historic buildings, but we are indebted to the Protector for the saving of Hampton Court Palace. It had already been sold to various purchasers, when Cromwell became Lord Protector and the Parliament, knowing his liking for the palace, at once set to work to repurchase it. The Protector and his family soon after took up their residence there, provoking the mocking laughter of royalists, either for the regal state which Cromwell maintained, or the homeliness of his wife. It is strange to remember, that along with all his austerity of character Cromwell used to indulge, in his lighter moments, in great buffoonery, putting sticky sweetmeats on to the chairs on which the ladies were to sit, slipping live coals into his officers' coat pockets, or throwing wine about. Hampton Court had often served as a honeymoon palace, but the young brides had seldom been very happy, unless, perhaps, Anne Boleyn had managed to be care-free during her short reign. Certainly Queen Mary and Henrietta Maria had been far from happy, but the insignificant little Portuguese wife of Charles II. was the unhappiest of all. Her husband did not love her, and she succeeded in annoying him by persisting in wearing her Portuguese style of dress, which seemed grotesque to English eyes. When she gave in on this point, she was ordered to receive Lady Castlemaine, one of the King's favourites, as a lady of her bedchamber, an indignity which she was justified in refusing. But Charles's open rudeness, and studied indifference to his wife, at last forced poor Catharine of Braganza to accept the notorious lady, after which the King treated her with respect, though never with love. When William III. first saw Hampton Court, he was enchanted with it, it reminded him of his beloved Holland, and besides, the air was free from smoke, so that his asthmatical frame could breathe easily. He at once began to set about rebuilding and altering the palace, and laying out the gardens in the formal Dutch fashion. Sir Christopher Wren was entrusted with the new work, creating the stately east and south fronts, and the Fountain Court that we see to-day. The architect had to join on the Renaissance style of architecture in vogue at that time, to the late Perpendicular of the original builders, and by adhering to red-brick with stone facings and copings, he made a combination which is both restful and dignified. Queen Mary took an intense interest in the new building which she was never destined to see finished, her early death causing King William to lose all pleasure in the palace, which they had both loved. For some years work almost ceased on the new building, until the disastrous fire at Whitehall rendered it necessary for the King to have another palace. Work was then hurried on, Grinling Gibbons working at the interior carving, Verrio painting the ceilings and staircases, gardeners laying out the avenues and maze, till all was ready for the King in the winter of 1699. Little more than two years later, William, who had been very ill for some time, was riding in the park, when his horse stumbled on a mole-hill, throwing his royal master on to the ground. When the doctor examined him, King William was found to have broken his collar-bone, which was immediately set. In spite of the remonstrances of the doctor, the King insisted upon returning to Kensington, where he rapidly became worse, the jolting of the roads having shifted the bone, which had to be reset. A fortnight later he died. The succeeding monarchs did little to the palace, though the first two Hanoverian Kings occasionally resided there. George III., whose partiality for Windsor and Kew caused him to neglect all the other palaces, never visited Hampton Court after he became King, so that it was gradually left to various private families, who were granted apartments by the royal bounty. When Queen Victoria came to the throne the palace was made open to the public, who have much appreciated the privilege of seeing one of the most beautiful royal residences ever erected in England. CHAPTER IX ST. JAMES'S PALACE The old red-brick palace which stands at the foot of St. James's Street, looking up towards the busy throng of Piccadilly, still gives the diplomatic title to the Court of Great Britain, though it has long been neglected by royalty. It stands serene amid the traffic of Pall Mall, having gained with the passing of ages some of that dignity with which it was said to be lacking in the eighteenth century, when Sir John Fielding wrote "it reflects no honour on the kingdom, and is the jest of foreigners." Certainly less romantic in its history than Westminster or Whitehall, it yet remains to-day a Tudor palace, while its more picturesque rivals have crumbled away. Long before the palace was erected, a small hospital stood upon its site, its inmates being fourteen chaste maidens, victims of the deadly malady of leprosy. The position had been chosen carefully, owing to its extreme loneliness, it being then completely surrounded by fields. In course of time eight brothers had been added to the hospital, which was known as St. James the Less, and the whole property had been granted by Henry VI. to his new foundation, Eton College. When Henry VIII. took possession of Wolsey's palace in Whitehall, he purchased the hospital and all the green fields round it, in order to obtain a park for his new residence. One is glad to learn that the unfortunate leprous maidens were pensioned off for the rest of their lives. King Henry immediately set to work to build a sort of country manor-house for himself, surrounding the park with a brick wall, and at the same time draining it, for originally it was a somewhat dreary marsh. It is said that Holbein, the artist, drew up the plans for the palace, which were carried out by Thomas Cromwell, Wolsey's secretary, who rose in Henry's favour upon his master's fall. But whoever was the architect, the palace is essentially Tudor, and remains so in spite of the various additions made by the later monarchs. The gatehouse, with its four octagon towers and its clock, is the most familiar feature of the palace. Unfortunately, from a sentimental point of view, the clock is a new one; an older one, bearing the date 1731, was removed in 1831, and is now at Hampton Court Palace. Perhaps the most interesting part of the interior is the Old Presence Chamber, now known as the Tapestry Room, from the fine tapestry representing Venus and Mars, which had been made for Charles I., but had been put away in a chest and apparently forgotten, till it was discovered and hung up for the wedding of George IV. The stone Tudor fireplace in this room bears the initials H. and A. for Henry and Anne Boleyn, united most inappropriately, considering their later history, by a true lover's knot. [Illustration: The Gate Tower of St. James's Palace.] In spite of Henry's early enthusiasm, he was not often at the palace, which, indeed, was seldom used for any length of time, till after the fire at Whitehall, and even then Kensington Palace was preferred. It was more usually occupied by the heir to the throne, or some of the younger members of the royal family. Unhappy Queen Mary, soured by her early misfortunes, neglected by her husband, and despairing of the restoration of her Church, died after a weary illness on November 17, 1558, in the palace which she had always loved. Her successors did not reside there, Queen Elizabeth only coming for brief periods, and James I. giving it to his son, Prince Henry, who died there of a malignant fever, imputed, as was customary at that time, to poison. On the death of his brother, Charles I., as Prince of Wales, took up his residence in St. James's Palace, spending the early years of his married life there, most of his children being born within its walls. Associated with the hopeful time of his young manhood, the palace also recalls his last days upon earth, before the final scene at Whitehall. Arriving on January 19, 1649, Charles spent the remainder of his life there, with the exception of the few days of his trial when he was lodged in the precincts of the old palace of Westminster. However much we may denounce the method by which Charles attempted to govern his kingdom, we can accord him nothing but a respectful and sympathetic admiration for the manner in which he passed to his death. He was still a young and vigorous man, to whom life must have held much that was good, and yet he left it with no whinings at fate, but with a calm dignity and full of trust in God. The day before his execution his two young children, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, came to say farewell. Holding the little Princess in his arms, he told her she must not grieve for him, for he was going to die a glorious death, "for the laws and religion of the land." With the Duke of Gloucester on his knee, the father told the children to love and obey their mother, and then looking sadly at his little daughter he said, "But, sweetheart, thou wilt forget what I tell thee." The child promised to write down what he had told her, and then, after they had received some jewels and a last kiss from their royal father, they were led away by Bishop Juxon. Waking early on the fateful morning, the King roused his faithful attendant, Sir Thomas Herbert, saying that he would get up, "having a great work to do this day." Bishop Juxon came and administered the Sacrament, after which Charles was persuaded to take a little food, as the day was so bitterly cold. A few hours later the dread sentence had been fulfilled; but St. James's Palace was to witness one more scene, for the body was brought back on February 1, remaining there for many people to see it. A story, unsupported by evidence, though we would gladly give it credence, runs that a man, hidden in a cloak, visited the coffin, and as he walked round it was heard to mutter, "Dreadful necessity"--the man being said to be Oliver Cromwell. After the Restoration, Charles II. did not reside in the palace, but lent it to his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who maintained a lesser Court there, while remaining in perfect amity with his royal brother. King Charles took a tremendous interest in the park, which he altered under the superintendance of Le Nôtre, the famous French gardener, changing it from mere rural simplicity into long straight avenues, and confining the water of various ponds into one formal canal. Bird-cage Walk owes its name to the aviary which was created at this time in part of the park. Much of the popularity which the Merry Monarch enjoyed was the way in which he wandered about among the public, unattended by the courtiers. He was often to be seen walking about with his dogs in the park, which had been made public eight years after he had come to the throne. James, Duke of York, once ventured to suggest greater caution, but Charles, with sly humour, replied: "Brother James, take care of yourself, for no one would kill me to make _you_ King!" On his accession, James II. left St. James's for Whitehall, though his Queen much preferred the palace in which she had lived as the Duchess of York. His only son, the unfortunate Old Pretender, was born in St. James's in a room whose proximity to some back stairs allowed ground for the absurd belief that the child was smuggled into the palace in a warming pan. Bitter disappointment at the prospect of the continuance of the Roman Catholic dynasty was responsible for the story. From this time St. James's was never very popular. When William of Orange had driven away his father-in-law, he allowed the Princess Anne to reside in the palace, he himself retiring to Kensington, which he built for his own use. The succeeding monarchs all delighted in the rural charms of Kensington, and only came to St. James's when State ceremonies rendered their presence absolutely necessary. Since the fire in 1809, which destroyed a very picturesque part of the palace, no monarch has resided there, though the proclamation of the succession to the throne is still announced from the balcony leading from the Tapestry Room. CHAPTER X KENSINGTON PALACE When William III., "a great man in a little crazy body" as Leigh Hunt calls him, found that he could not stand the smoky atmosphere of Whitehall, he looked about for a place sufficiently near London for him to be near his Ministers, and yet should be rural enough to have clear fresh air. He found this spot in the village of Kensington, where he bought a suburban mansion, formerly the residence of the Earls of Nottingham. Here he at once began building, and laying out gardens in the formal Dutch fashion, employing Sir Christopher Wren to make the alterations to the house. While the King was in Ireland fighting against his father-in-law, James II., Queen Mary superintended the work, writing to her absent husband of the slow progress the builders were making, and how "the place made me think how happy I was there when I had your dear company." A road was specially constructed through Hyde Park, gravelled and lighted with lamps, for the convenience of the officers of State, who were obliged to visit the monarch in his country retreat. Queen Mary did not long enjoy the pleasures of Kensington Palace, for in the winter of 1694, an epidemic of smallpox, which was raging in the neighbourhood, crept through the palace gates, and attacked the young Queen. Immediately she knew the terrible nature of her fate, the Queen, with her usual kind consideration, directed that all her ladies and servants who had not had smallpox should hurry from the palace, while she herself, having put everything in order, calmly prepared for death. King William could scarcely be persuaded to leave his beloved wife, even to lie down at night upon the camp bed arranged for him in the ante-chamber. Tears ran down the stern face which was seldom allowed to betray any emotion, and in the end, just before Queen Mary died, he was carried away from her bedside fainting. As he said to Bishop Burnet, "I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none: you knew her well: but you could not know, nobody but myself could know her goodness." Eight years later, King William himself expired in the same palace, a man still in the prime of life, but worn out with illness and hard work to which his vigorous intellect had driven him. He was already far from well when he was thrown from his horse while riding in Hampton Court Park, and broke his collar bone. The bone was set at once, after which the King insisted upon returning to Kensington, against the advice of his doctors. Upon arriving at the palace it was found that the bone required resetting owing to the jolting caused by the bad roads. The King lingered for a fortnight, busy all the time arranging a coalition to curb the power of France, but on March 8 it was seen that he was sinking. Macaulay tells us that "when his remains were laid out it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk riband. The lords-in-waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary." Finding herself saddled with a debt of £4,000 still unpaid for the building alterations of her predecessor, Queen Anne contented herself with improving the gardens, leaving the palace untouched. But she added one architectural feature, the beautiful orangery designed by Sir Christopher Wren, standing near the north-east of the palace, a building famous for the beauty of its proportions and the delicacy of its detail. At one time it was much neglected and even ran the danger of being pulled down, but was happily preserved and carefully restored in 1898. The "dull woman with a dull husband," as Leigh Hunt bluntly summarizes Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark, both died in the palace to which they were much attached, Prince George dying in 1708, six years before his wife. Always a lethargic and weak-minded woman, Queen Anne's pleasures lay in eating and drinking, for she cared nothing for music or books, and would sit in silence for a long time among her friends. It was natural that such a woman should be ruled by the strong, imperious will of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who for many years completely influenced the Queen. She, however, presumed too much upon this influence till a breach was effected, never to be healed. The last famous interview between the one-time friends took place in Kensington Palace. The Duchess had written asking for an interview at which she should merely state her case, the Queen not requiring to answer at all. This the stolid Queen obeyed to the letter, for not a word could the furious Duchess extract beyond "You desired no answer and you shall have none." [Illustration: A Courtyard of Kensington Palace.] Under the first Hanoverian King, who never was able to speak the language of his new subjects, the Court at Kensington was extremely dull. But as George I. liked the quietness of the palace, he erected a new suite of rooms, and employed William Kent as the architect. To Kent we are indebted for the monotonous drab frontage which faces the Round Pond. The last monarch to reside and to die in the palace was George II., the "petty German autocrat" who scorned England and delighted in snubbing his English courtiers, declaring, according to Lord Hervey, that no Englishman knew how to enter a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress, nor English cooks how to prepare a dinner, nor English coachman how to drive, nor, indeed, were there any English horses fit to ride or drive. Queen Caroline, his much-enduring wife, devoted herself to the planning out of the gardens, which she laid out practically as we now see them. Uniting a collection of ponds she created the Serpentine, and was also responsible for the Round Pond and the Broad Walk. George III. did not care for Kensington, much preferring his beloved Windsor, so that the palace became somewhat neglected, being only used by various members of the Royal Family. The Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III., came to live there shortly after his marriage, the Princess Victoria being born on May 24, 1819, in the room which now bears a brass plate commemorating the fact. At the time of her birth there seemed small likelihood of the little Princess ever reaching the Throne, but her royal uncles having no children, it soon became obvious that she was the heir to the Throne of England. She herself, being brought up with scrupulous care by her widowed mother, did not know of her great future till the death of George III. The residents of Kensington soon became familiar with the sight of little Princess Victoria driving about in a donkey carriage or in a tiny chaise drawn by small ponies. A few weeks after her eighteenth birthday, the Princess was awakened out of her sleep very early on a bright June morning. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain had arrived at the palace, and their business could not wait. "We have come to see the _Queen_ on business of state, and even the Queen's sleep must give way to that." Hastily putting on a dressing gown and slippers, the young girl went down, to be told by the Archbishop that her uncle and King was dead, and that she was now the Queen of a vast inheritance. Later on that same morning her first council was held in the palace, the scene depicted by Wilkie in his well-known picture. The young Queen was very dignified and self-possessed, turning to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, when doubtful as to what she should do, but showing all through the trying ordeal a gentle sweetness that won upon all the lords present. She read her speech "in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment," after which all the privy councillors came to kiss her hand and swear allegiance. When her uncle, the old Duke of Sussex, who was very infirm, came forward to kneel before her, she left her chair and came towards him, kissing him on the forehead. On July 13, the girl-Queen left the home of her childhood for Buckingham Palace. Members of the Royal Family continued to occupy various apartments in the palace, the Duchess of Kent residing there till her death in 1861. Queen Mary was born there, her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Teck, living there for a short time. After some years it was found that the palace was in a very bad state of repair, every part of the building wanting attention. So extensive was the dilapidation, that the question of pulling down the palace was seriously considered. Fortunately, however, the historic place was saved by Queen Victoria, who was anxious to preserve her old home. It was finally decided as a memorial of the Diamond Jubilee, to repair the building thoroughly, and to throw open the State Rooms to the public. The restoration was carried out most carefully, everything being saved that was possible; pictures were brought from Hampton Court, and the whole palace rendered much as it was in the days of its glory. At the present time it is serving as the temporary home of the London Museum. CHAPTER XI KEW PALACE Kew first became a royal residence in the reign of George II., when it was leased from its private owners and used as a country seat by Frederick, Prince of Wales. Owing to his undutiful behaviour to his father, the Prince was banished from Court, when he retired to Kew, forming a sort of opposition Court there. But the actual red-brick Jacobean house, now known as Kew Palace, was then only called the Dutch House, after its original founder, Sir Hugh Portman, who was a Dutch merchant in the time of James I. It stood quite close to the more important building of Kew House, and was as constantly occupied by members of the Royal Family as the larger adjacent palace. The Dutch House, or Kew Palace as it is now designated, is thoroughly typical of its period--a simple, three gabled, and dignified looking building, unpalatial indeed, but quite befitting the position of the wealthy knight who built it. The interior has been altered to suit the tastes of the royal inmates, who inserted marble fireplaces, and put in new doors, but a good deal of the original Jacobean panelling still remains. On the brass locks of the doors are to be seen the Prince of Wales's feathers, and the cypher of Frederick, Prince of Wales. [Illustration: Kew Palace (the Dutch House) and George III.'s Castellated Palace, pulled down by George IV.] George III. spent a great part of his youth at Kew, living there with his mother, the widowed Princess of Wales. He was brought up in strict retirement, his mother regulating his life and restricting his intercourse with the outer world. Strangely enough, when he succeeded to the throne of his grandfather, George III. did not revolt from the ordered régime of the early days, but maintained the same careful regularity all his life. He continued to love Kew, where he and his devoted but prosaic Queen spent several months of every year. Buying the two houses from the lease-holders, Queen Charlotte turned the Dutch House into a royal nursery, where her large family was brought up. Both she and the King delighted in getting away to Kew, where no kind of royal state was kept up, and where they could live the ordinary life of quiet country gentlefolk, the only life for which they were really suited. Once a week the public were admitted into the gardens, and allowed the privilege of seeing the King and Queen and the royal children _en famille_, talking to their friends, and walking about in their private gardens. The little riverside village of Kew became quite gay, and its inhabitants were much loved by Queen Charlotte for the spontaneous enthusiasm with which they welcomed King George, after his attempted assassination by the mad woman, Margaret Nicholson. In order to erect a flamboyant palace, Kew House was pulled down by royal command in 1802, and a new "castellated structure of carpenters' Gothic" put up under the direction of Wyatt, the architect who was responsible for the alterations and repairs of Windsor Castle. Fortunately it was never finished, owing to the poor King's illness, and it has been said that George IV. never did a better deed in his life than when he demolished the ridiculous palace perpetrated by his father. While the building was in progress the Royal Family moved into the Dutch House. During one of the King's periodic attacks of madness in 1789, he was confined to the Dutch House, under the charge of two doctors, and when he walked in the gardens everyone was supposed to keep out of his way. But one day, Miss Fanny Burney, then in attendance on Queen Charlotte, was walking in the gardens, having learnt that the King was to go to Richmond. To her utter dismay she came quite suddenly upon the King, who called out to her, "Miss Burney!" She instantly ran off, not knowing the state in which he might be, and was horrified to find herself pursued by the poor King, who chased her hotly while she in vain sought to elude him. At last, hearing from the shouts of the doctors that she must stop as it was bad for the King to run, she waited till the King came up, who accosted her with, "Why did you run away from me?" With a great effort the shy little authoress controlled herself, and, finding that the King was quite peaceful, she had a long conversation with him, during which her royal master confided in her some of his troubles. After the King's madness had become permanent he spent the last years of his unhappy life at Windsor, but Queen Charlotte still resided for long periods at Kew, where she died in November, 1818, at the age of seventy-five. Earlier in the same year, three royal weddings had taken place within the old house, for the question of the succession had become pressing. Though Queen Charlotte had had fifteen children, she had no living grandchildren, for the Princess Charlotte, the only child of George IV. had just died. The drawing-room was fitted up with a temporary altar, and on the same day the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) was married to Adelaide, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. A few weeks before, the Duke of Cambridge had also been married in the palace. Suffering, like Kensington Palace, from lack of royal favour and general neglect during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was restored in 1898 and opened to the public by the wish of Queen Victoria, as a commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee. CHAPTER XII BUCKINGHAM PALACE Buckingham Palace, the London residence of the monarch, is the most familiar of all the royal palaces to the general British public, in so far as everyone, sooner or later, migrates to London. Unfortunately the spectator sees only a somewhat depressing and stereotyped building, lacking the majestic proportions of Windsor and the stately beauty of Hampton Court, representing, indeed, the very lowest ebb of English architecture. Yet, in spite of its uninspiring exterior, it is full of interest, for present-day life throbs within its walls, the nation's history is bound up with it, and it pulsates with memories of the Queen who won the hearts of her people as a young girl and kept them all through her long and honoured life. As a palace, its life-story is just beginning; three sovereigns only, excluding our present King, have lived within it. [Illustration: Buckingham Palace, from the Lake in St. James's Park.] In the days of James I. the site of the palace was occupied by a plantation of mulberry-trees, a royal investment, the King believing that the cultivation of silkworms would be lucrative both for himself and the nation. In this he was disappointed, but the Mulberry Gardens remained as a place of amusement for the public until 1675. Both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn mention visiting the gardens, to which the fashion of the Restoration resorted to eat mulberry tarts. When the Mulberry Gardens were first instituted, a keeper had been appointed by the King, and the office continued long after the work had become a sinecure. The keeper's official residence became known as Goring House, when Lord Goring purchased it in 1632. On the death of Lord Goring, Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, bought the mansion, and later on succeeded in adding to his property the famous gardens, when they were closed to the public. According to John Evelyn, Lord Arlington filled his house with the most rich and handsome furniture, all of which perished in a disastrous fire which broke out in 1674. The house was rebuilt, receiving the new name of Arlington House, and was afterwards sold to John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire. Not content with the building of the former owner, the Duke pulled down Arlington House and erected the immediate predecessor of the present palace, calling it after himself--Buckingham House. It was apparently a dignified-looking mansion, much admired in its time, having a flat roof adorned with statues, and large gilded letters making _Rus in Urbe_. Soon after he came to the Throne, George III. bought Buckingham House from the Duke of Buckinghamshire's successor, and some years later altered it to suit his convenience, at the same time spoiling the general outline of the building. But King George and Queen Charlotte liked the house where most of their children were born, and carried on there the same placid domestic life that they led at Windsor and at Kew. The children were brought up most severely, the Queen even carrying out the whipping herself, but the success of the system was not obvious, considering the later life of the young Princes. Though King George's simplicity is much laughed at, the nation owes something to his foresight and intelligence, in collecting a large library in his London house. For many years he spent £2,000 a year upon books, until he amassed the splendid collection now known as the King's library in the British Museum, George IV. having presented it to the nation. It was in this library that Dr. Johnson had his famous interview with the King, whom he described as the finest gentleman he had ever seen. Dr. Johnson was a friend of the royal librarian who informed the King of the presence of the great lexicographer, whom King George wished to see. The conversation, as related by Boswell, seems to have been about books and libraries, and Johnson's own literary work, upon which the King complimented him. George IV. never lived in the palace, for on his accession he ordered the old house to be razed and a new palace built. But as he was at the same time rebuilding Windsor Castle, he did not venture to ask Parliament for more money than necessary repairs, and told Nash, his architect, to build upon the old lines. This Nash proceeded to do without any models or drawings, with the result that he himself was surprised with the effect when the building was finished. So great was the universal scorn for the outspreading wings of the palace, that they were taken down at once. A cynical verse expressed the public's opinion of the architect: "Augustus at Rome was for building renown'd, For of marble he left what of brick he had found; But is not our Nash, too, a very great master? He finds us all brick and he leaves us all plaster." The gateway to the palace was designed from Constantine's Arch in Rome, and was intended to carry an equestrian statue of George IV. upon the top. This gateway, the Marble Arch, now stands at the Oxford Street entrance to Hyde Park, having been moved there in 1851. After the builders had left the much-criticized palace, it was left empty and bare, until Queen Victoria came to the Throne, when the girl-Queen soon made the lifeless palace full of animation and happiness. All through her long reign Buckingham Palace is intimately associated with her, from her Coronation Day, that June morning when all London welcomed her with enthusiasm, down to the Diamond Jubilee, when the aged Queen could say, "From my heart I thank my beloved people." It was from the palace that she set out on a cheerless February morning to her wedding in Westminster Abbey, and a great part of her happy married life was spent there, when in company with her beloved husband she held a brilliant Court. Two fancy dress balls were held, one where all the noblest and most distinguished in England came arrayed in the dress of the Plantagenets, and the other where all appeared in Georgian costumes. The marriage of the Princess Royal to the Crown Prince of Germany took place from Buckingham Palace. Though a highly approved love-match, it caused considerable grief to the royal household, the Queen finding it extremely difficult to part with her eldest daughter. The Queen wrote of it as "the second most eventful day" in her life, and after the young pair had set off for their new home in Germany, she said, "My tears began to flow afresh frequently, and I could not go near Vicky's corridor." The public will not soon forget the momentous events associated with the palace during the last reign; the serious illness of King Edward, on the eve of his Coronation, postponing the great ceremony for which many distinguished visitors had already arrived, and then after a short but brilliant reign, the sudden death of the popular monarch, throwing all the country into mourning. Almost before anyone knew that the King was seriously ill, for he had only just come back from Biarritz, the bulletin, announcing that "His Majesty breathed his last" within the palace, was read by the sorrowing crowds. CHAPTER XIII VANISHED PALACES Besides the palaces whose stories have been related, there were at one time many other royal residences scattered over England. These have either entirely vanished, even their sites being problematical, or mere fragments of them alone remain. While England remained in an unsettled condition, with constant internal wars, the Kings were always moving about taking their Court with them, staying in their various castles or fortified houses. We find that Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet Kings, never stayed long in any place, generally moving on after a few days' visit. But when more settled times came, and the Parliament remained at Westminster, the King came to live longer in London or at one of his royal houses in the neighbourhood. Some of the country palaces were maintained on account of the hunting they afforded. A few brief notes must suffice for these vanished palaces. =Baynards Castle= was situated on the River Thames not far from St. Paul's. In 1461 the City of London tendered their allegiance to Edward, Duke of York (Edward IV.) at Baynards Castle, and by doing so secured his triumph. It became a royal house on the attainder of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and was rebuilt by Henry VIII., but was seldom occupied by the sovereign. Queen Mary gave it to the Earl of Pembroke. [Illustration: Baynards Castle in 1790.] =Dartford Priory= was turned into a house for the King after the dissolution of the monasteries. It is chiefly associated with King Henry VIII.'s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who lived there during the reign of Edward VI. and until her death in 1556. Queen Elizabeth occasionally visited it, but when it was found to need costly repairs James I. granted it to Robert, Earl of Salisbury. =Enfield Palace=, though a Crown property from the time of Henry IV., was not used as a royal residence until the time of Henry VIII. Queen Elizabeth was at Enfield when Henry VIII. died, and she often visited it after she came to the Throne. It was sold to the Earl of Pembroke in 1641. =Hatfield House= was acquired by Henry VIII., whose daughter, Queen Elizabeth, lived there during her sister's reign. James I. persuaded Sir Robert Cecil to accept it in exchange for his house at Theobalds. =Havering-atte-Bower= Palace stood near Romford, in Essex. It was the country palace of Edward the Confessor, and was afterwards occupied by various Queens, some of whom died there. James I. let it to the Earl of Oxford. =Kempton Park= was often used by the Plantagenet Kings up till the time of Richard II. Henry VIII. ordered it to be taken down, using the building materials for his new palace of Whitehall. =King's Langley=, in Hertfordshire, was Crown land from the fourteenth century, the manor being last held by Charles I., who presented it to Sir Charles Morrison. [Illustration: Nonsuch Palace. _From an engraving by Houfnagle._] =Nonsuch Palace= at Cheam, in Surrey, was built by Henry VIII., who had obtained the land in 1538. The Earl of Arundel, to whom Queen Mary gave the palace, completed the building, which was still unfinished. It was a most unusual structure, almost fantastic with its bas-reliefs and gilded cupolas, and quite unlike the Tudor mansion of the period. Queen Elizabeth often visited Arundel, who entertained his royal mistress in lavish manner. She afterwards bought the estate, which James I. settled upon his wife. Charles II. gave it as a present to Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, who pulled it down. =Oatlands=, near Weybridge, in Surrey, was the site of a palace erected by Henry VIII., who also enclosed a park. It was occasionally visited by Henry VIII.'s successors, down to the time of the Civil War, when it was destroyed. [Illustration: Savoy Palace, about 1650. _From an etching by Hollare._] =Richmond Palace=, the much-loved residence of the Tudors, received its name from Henry VII., who had been known as Henry of Richmond after the town in Yorkshire, before he came to the Throne. The first house was destroyed by Richard II. when his wife died there in 1394, but Henry VII. rebuilt it, dying there in 1509. Queen Elizabeth was often at the palace, where she died in 1603. =Savoy Palace= obtained its name from Peter of Savoy, the uncle of Queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry III., who resided there. It was bought back again by Queen Eleanor, who handed it on to Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, from whose family it returned again to the Crown, by the marriage of John of Gaunt to Blanche of Lancaster. The captive King John of France spent some years of his life there. =Somerset House= was built by the Protector Somerset, who ruthlessly destroyed churches and houses to obtain a site on the river. After his execution, it came to the Crown, and was afterwards used as part of the Queen's dowry, Catharine of Braganza being the last Queen to live in the palace. In 1775 it was converted into a Public Office; Buckingham Palace, just acquired by George III., being settled upon the Queen. =Theobalds=, on the borders of Hertfordshire, was built by Robert Cecil, Lord Burleigh, who often entertained Queen Elizabeth, an honour which cost him £2,000 a visit. James I. was so delighted with it when he came there on his royal progress from Scotland, that he induced his host to let him have it in exchange for Hatfield. He was frequently there, enjoying the hunting in the neighbourhood, and died there in 1625, his son Charles being proclaimed at the gate. At the Civil War it was much damaged, afterwards being parcelled out among some Parliamentarian officers. The last remains disappeared in 1766. =Winchester Castle= was built, according to tradition, by Arthur, and was constantly used by the early English Kings. It was the birthplace of Henry III., and Parliament assembled there occasionally until the fifteenth century. Henry V. was the last King to reside there. In the time of the Commonwealth it came into the possession of Sir William Waller, from whom the Corporation bought it. =Woodstock=, in Oxfordshire, was a royal manor when the Domesday survey was made. It was at Woodstock that Queen Eleanor, the wife of Henry II., discovered the Fair Rosamond, daughter of Lord Clifford, who was so much loved by her royal master. Much of the story is probably legend; she was certainly not murdered by the jealous Queen, but died in Godstow nunnery. Edward III. and Queen Philippa were much attached to the palace, where their eldest son, the Black Prince, was born. After Wyatt's rebellion, Queen Elizabeth was guarded there as a prisoner. James I. liked it for the hunting it afforded, and Charles I. was often there during his reign, especially when his army was at Oxford during the Civil War. It fell into ruin after the war, and the estate was given to the Duke of Marlborough after his famous victory at Blenheim. The architect of Blenheim Palace wished to save the ruins which still remained, but the Duchess of Marlborough declared that they spoilt the view, and so swept them away completely in 1723. [Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE Stands upon a great rock rising abruptly from low-lying ground. Its history stretches back to the dim time of legends.] CHAPTER XIV EDINBURGH CASTLE Edinburgh Castle has a history that stretches far back till it is lost in the misty realm of legend. The great rock upon which it is built could not fail to have appealed to all the successive rulers of the land as of great strategic importance. It rises abruptly from the low-lying land, and dominates the country for many miles around, from the Forth on the north to the Pentland Hills on the south. Its Celtic name of _Maidun_, meaning the fort of the plain, became corrupted in later times to Maiden's Castle, the name being responsible for the tradition that the castle was used by the royal Princesses, during times of great danger. [Illustration: Edinburgh Castle, from the North.] Though Edwin, the King of Northumbria, is the reputed founder of the town whose name is commonly derived from him, the clear light of history only begins to shine upon it in the days of Malcolm Canmore and his sainted Queen. At that time a Celtic Castle stood upon the rock, of which there are no remains except St. Margaret's Chapel, a little Norman building, named after Malcolm Canmore's English wife. Malcolm, the Big Head, a brave but illiterate Prince, was so devoted to his beautiful wife, that through her teaching he learned religion, and used to take part with her in the religious services of which she was so fond. Unable to read himself, he caused her prayer-books and missals to be splendidly bound, and would listen to her while she read to him, submitting at the same time to refinements in dress and table customs which were quite innovations in the rude northern Court. Queen Margaret was in the castle in 1093, when her warlike husband and her eldest son went off with a large army to fight the English. She was lying very ill when the news came to her that both husband and son had been slain, the shock causing her death. As there was considerable disaffection in the country, her body was carried with great secrecy across the Forth to Dunfermline, a miraculous mist kindly enveloping the party, so that no one saw them escape. Another Queen Margaret, also an English Princess, a century and a half later, came as a girl-wife to the grim castle on the rock. She was the daughter of Henry III. of England, and had been married to Alexander III., a mere boy, with great splendour at York, her father hoping by the marriage to gain more influence over Scotland. All the troubles of the War of Independence during the fourteenth century arose from King Alexander III. leaving no male heir. His two sons had died before him, and his grand-daughter, the Maid of Norway, was his only heir. Disasters came thick upon Scotland soon after the death of Alexander III., who had fallen over a cliff on the coast of Fife when riding too near the edge on a very dark and stormy night. For the next fifty years Edinburgh Castle was constantly being taken by the English and recaptured by the Scottish people. Everyone knows the story of how Sir Thomas Randolph surprised the English garrison in the castle, by climbing up the precipitous side of the rock with a party of thirty bold men. After this capture, Robert Bruce, according to his usual policy, destroyed the castle, so that it should no longer serve as a stronghold for the English. But when Edward III. obtained it again in 1334 he rebuilt it. It was not until the early Stuart Kings, that Edinburgh Castle really became a palace, in the more peaceful sense of the word. When James I. returned to Scotland after his long captivity in England, he spent a considerable amount of money on building the Parliament House, (now used as the armoury), and many of the private apartments. He had doubtless, during his residence at Windsor and Westminster, learnt to enjoy the greater beauty and dignity of the English palaces. His son, James II., continued his work of rebuilding. During the minority of James II., a time when several parties in the State were endeavouring to capture their young monarch and to rule in his name, a great tragedy took place within the castle. William, Earl of Douglas, a lad of about eighteen, was then the head of the most wealthy and powerful family in Scotland, and being of royal descent, might even make a claim to the throne. As he did not join himself to either the party of Sir William Crichton or that of Sir Alexander Livingstone, these two leaders, usually at deadly enmity with one another, united to destroy the young Earl. In the year 1440, the Earl and his brother David were invited to the castle, on the pretext that the young King wanted their congenial company. Accompanied by their aged tutor, Sir Malcolm Fleming, the two boys came to Edinburgh, where they were received with real pleasure by James II., and with false hospitality by Crichton and Livingstone. But the real purpose of the visit was evident when a black bull's head was placed upon the dinner-table, in Scotland as much a symbol of death as the Judge's black cap in a modern trial. Taken unawares, the unfortunate boys were hurried to the castle walls, where, after a mock trial, they were beheaded, Fleming also suffering a similar fate. After the time of Flodden Field, the monarchs very seldom used the castle for anything but a stronghold against their enemies, Holyrood Palace becoming their favourite residence. The last Prince to be born in the castle was James VI., his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, having chosen to be within the protection of its strong walls. The small room in which he was born can still be seen, a memorable room, for the infant Prince was to bring peace to his realm, putting an end at last to centuries of conflict, not indeed by any wisdom or foresight of his own, but by succeeding to the throne of England. CHAPTER XV DUNFERMLINE CASTLE For peaceful beauty of situation the royal palace of Dunfermline in Fife excelled all others in Scotland, for though the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling were majestic, they were too associated with the troubles of turbulent nobles to have been pleasant residences for the monarchs. The palace was built high above a wooded glen, its walls apparently rising out of the cliff-like sides of the winding stream. Only a fragment now remains, but it is sufficient, with its mullioned windows and massive buttresses, to show how picturesque and stately must have been the Stuart palace. The first monarch to reside at Dunfermline was Malcolm Canmore, who built a castle on Tower Hill, a little distance away from the later palace. Its site is still to be seen, though the slight remains of the walls are probably those of its Norman successor. Queen Margaret lived the greater part of her reign there, spending her days in pious devotion, giving food and garments to the poor, or sitting with her maidens working at rich embroideries to adorn the abbey which she had founded. No frivolous conversation was allowed among the maidens, their royal mistress being very severe, yet the Queen was much beloved, for she combined sweetness with her gravity. It was the presence of the abbey adjoining the palace which made Dunfermline so dear to Queen Margaret. She was never tired of enriching her foundation with every gift that saintly enthusiasm could suggest, and when she died she was naturally buried in the Lady Chapel. The abbey buildings were destroyed by Edward I., but were restored by Bruce, who erected the palace near by, deserting the castle on the hilltop. The reforming energy of the Protestants, in 1560, led them to pull down most of the beautiful church of the abbey, fortunately leaving the nave, a fine example of Norman work, to be used for Presbyterian services. So many royal Princes had been buried in the abbey, from Malcolm Canmore and his Queen, that it has been sometimes called the "Scottish Westminster," yet the Reformers did not spare it, though it contained the grave of Robert Bruce. Bruce's monument being broken, became indistinguishable among the general ruin, till at the beginning of the nineteenth century the church was repaired. Some fragments of the tomb were discovered, and on the grave being opened, the body of Bruce was found wrapped in some remnants of cloth of gold, which had served as a winding sheet. A new tomb was made, and after a solemn service the body was reinstalled. Queen Margaret's tomb is still to be seen among the ruins of the Lady Chapel. Many royal Princes were born within the palace, from the Bruce's son and heir, David, to Charles I., the last Prince to be born in Scotland. When James VI. brought his newly-wedded wife to Dunfermline, a new house was erected, called Queen Anne's house, to serve for the Queen's use. Three of their children were born there, Princess Elizabeth, who married the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, Prince Charles, and a son who died in infancy. Prince Charles was described as "a very weak child," irritating his nurses with his peevishness. After James VI. acceded to the Throne of England, he never revisited Dunfermline, nor did Charles I. see again the place of his birth. Charles II. came there in 1650, when the Scots were supporting him against the Commonwealth, and while there, was forced to sign the Covenant, much against his will. During the eighteenth century, the palace was absolutely neglected, and fell into hopeless ruin, Defoe, when he made his tour round Great Britain in 1724, finding it "the full perfection of decay." In the following century a private gentleman repaired the ruins, and claimed possession on account of the expenditure which the repair had entailed. However, the Crown disputed his claim, and resumed possession in 1871. CHAPTER XVI STIRLING CASTLE Through the whole period of Scottish history, Stirling Castle held a position of vast importance. In early days it stood as a stronghold against the barbarous Highlanders of the North, acting as the frontier post of civilization. For fifty years during the War of Independence, the castle was alternately held by the English or the Scotch, whichever party was at the time dominant in the country. Crowning the summit of a sudden outburst of volcanic rock, the castle was practically impregnable to all save treachery, and was therefore constantly used as the residence for the Stuart Kings during their minority. [Illustration: Stirling Castle.] But being one of the Three Keys of the kingdom, its possession was eagerly sought during any foreign or civil war, great efforts being made both to attain and retain it. In 1296, Edward I. took Stirling for the second time, and held it for three years. Wallace had won a great victory within sight of the walls, a victory which had dispersed the English army, but had not been sufficient to take the castle. When the Scots obtained possession in the winter of 1299 after starving the garrison into surrendering, Sir William Oliphant became governor of the castle, to himself sustain a siege of many months in 1304. Edward I. was so angry at being hindered from his purpose for so long, that when he at last gained the castle he broke faith with Oliphant, sending him to the Tower of London. Ten years later, when Robert Bruce was winning back Scotland from the feeble grasp of Edward II., Stirling still held out. With superlative chivalry, Edward Bruce, who was conducting the siege, promised a year's respite, after which the castle must surrender unless relieved. Urged by dire necessity, Edward II. was persuaded to leave his frivolous Court, and gathering a magnificent army to march to Scotland. But all their splendid equipment did not avail against the courage and ingenuity of the Bruce, who, on the field of Bannockburn won for Scotland her greatest victory. Thousands of the English lay dead upon the field, while Edward fled for his life. Stirling Castle surrendered, and its fortifications were levelled. Once again Stirling was to be held by the English, when Bruce's son was on the throne; but in 1342 it was regained, never to fall again into the hands of a foreign foe. In a room in the castle, still pointed out by the guide, William, Earl of Douglas, was murdered by his royal master, James II. By special invitation, backed by a safe-conduct signed by the King, Douglas had come to Stirling in 1452. When supper was over, the King took Douglas into an inner room, where he accused him of being in league with Ross and Crawford against his monarch, and ordered him to break his bond. The haughty Douglas refused to do so, whereat James, forgetful of his safe-conduct, struck at him with his dagger, and the courtiers in attendance, dashing to the assistance of their King, Douglas fell covered with wounds, as the Duc de Guise was to do over a century later in the cabinet of Henri III. Douglas was undoubtedly a danger to his country, at the head of so powerful and unruly a house, but James should have taken more legal measures to subdue him. However, the Parliament of his day acquitted him of all blame. [Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE. One of the three Keys of Scotland, acting as a stronghold against the Highlanders of the North.] His son, James III., lived constantly at Stirling, which was his favourite residence, building the Parliament House which still remains. His interest in the Chapel Royal, to whose endowments he wished to add the rich priory of Coldingham, aroused the enmity of the Homes and Hepburns, who regarding Coldingham as a family property, rose against the King. To his lasting remorse the King's son, James IV., fought against his father, who was killed after the battle of Sauchieburn. The young King really grieved, and in order that he should never forget, it is said he wore a belt of iron round his waist, adding an extra link every year. From all the records of legal expenditure, it is evident that James IV. was a great palace builder. He is responsible for much building at Holyrood, Linlithgow, and Falkland, and at Stirling too he did most of the building of the palace, which was carried on by his son. Both Mary Queen of Scots and James VI. were crowned at Stirling as mere infants, the ceremony taking place in the parish church, just below the castle. Queen Mary revisited the scene of her coronation when she returned to Scotland, after her long sojourn in France. She came there with young Lord Darnley as her husband in 1565, and in December, the following year, her infant son, James, was baptized with great ceremony at Stirling. Many lords and nobles assembled, wearing only their swords in order that there might be less danger of disturbance, while the royal child was carried to the chapel by Lady Argyll, acting for Queen Elizabeth, between an avenue of gentlemen bearing wax torches. The only ominous sign amidst the festivities was the absence of the father, Lord Darnley, who remained sulking in the palace. Fourteen months later the poor infant was crowned, his mother being forced to abdicate. Another hurried ceremony took place, the crown being held over the King's head, and the baby hand guided to the sword and sceptre. The Earl of Morton took the oath as substitute, and then the infant was carried back to the castle in the arms of the hereditary governor of the castle, the Earl of Mar. For many years James VI. remained carefully guarded within the castle walls, never allowed to roam without first getting permission, until he had grown to man's estate. Yet he bore no ill-will to Stirling, to which he brought his wife, Anne of Denmark, and where his eldest son, Prince Henry, was born. After the desire of his life had been achieved, and he had become King of Great Britain, he paid one visit to Stirling in 1617, after which the castle was only used on one other occasion as a palace, when Charles I. came there in 1633. The castle remained in the charge of the Earls of Mar until the Rebellion of 1715, when their connection with the rising caused the attainder of the Earl, and the loss of all his offices. CHAPTER XVII HOLYROOD PALACE To those who see it for the first time, Holyrood Palace is distinctly disappointing. All the glamour of its romantic history seems out of place in connection with the somewhat prosaic looking mansion, which bears little outward sign of its eventful life. Nothing is left of the medieval abbey which once stood upon the site, save a ruined portion of the abbey church. And of the Stuart palace, so associated with the fascinations of Scotland's most famous Queen, only a small part is left, though luckily the fire which attacked the palace at the end of the Civil War spared the apartments used by Mary Queen of Scots. Yet, disappointing as a first impression may be, Holyrood Palace, to those who know anything of Scotland's story, can never fail to be interesting. The palace was never a fortified building, for it was not used as a regular royal residence until the more fierce days of warfare had vanished. Originally an abbey stood at the foot of Arthur's Seat, being founded by David I., in gratitude for his miraculous escape when out hunting. According to monkish tradition, the King was saved by the providential appearance of a cross which interposed between him and the infuriated stag. Therefore the name of the abbey was called the Holyrood. [Illustration: The Bedchamber of Mary Queen of Scots, in Holyrood Palace.] Though not a palace until the time of the Stuarts, the early Kings often held councils there, and continued to show royal favour to the monks, who had given the name of Canongate to the burgh which arose outside the city walls. James II., who lies buried in the royal vault in the chapel, was the first to erect any kind of royal apartments in the abbey. His successor, James III., lived there, but it was James IV. who really was the builder of the palace, to which he brought his wife, Margaret Tudor, the English bride who was eventually to bring about the union of the crowns. James V. carried on the brilliance of his father's Court, his two French wives bringing many of the fashions of their own country to grace their new home. His first wife died soon after her arrival, but his second wife, Mary of Guise, lived to rule Scotland through many anxious years of regency, while her infant daughter was being brought up away from her in distant France. But it was under Mary Queen of Scots that Holyrood became really famous. She made it her constant and favourite residence. After her many years of education in France, and her brief career as the wife of the sickly Francis II., she returned to her native country in August, 1561. John Knox, with the superstition of the age, comments upon the peculiar fogginess and darkness of the weather which marked the young Queen's arrival, saying, "that forewarning gave God unto us, but alas! the most were blind." Bonfires were lit, and great demonstrations of joy were manifested when Mary took up her abode at Holyrood. A band of musicians with much zeal but little skill played outside her bedroom window, being courteously thanked by the Queen; but Brantôme, the French courtier, who had accompanied Queen Mary from France, complains in his memoirs of the terrible noise of these musicians who sang psalms all out of tune; "Quelle musique! et quel repos pour sa nuit" he writes. The very first Sunday after her arrival was marred by a tumult outside the Chapel Royal, where Mass was being performed, a disturbance which was only checked by Lord James Stuart, the Queen's natural brother, who stood in front of the chapel door, and being a zealous Protestant himself, managed to check the Reformers. The palace witnessed three interviews between the great reformer, John Knox, and his young and beautiful Queen. Using his pulpit as the opportunity for declaiming against the doings of the Queen and that of idolators generally, John Knox was called to task by Mary, who ordered him to appear before her at Holyrood. The first interview took place in the audience-chamber, leading into the Queen's bedchamber. Only Lord James Stuart, afterwards the Regent Moray, was present at the interview, in which Knox answered the Queen's accusations very cleverly. The second interview was held in the Queen's bedroom, the room which remains much as she left it, with the actual bed in which she slept. Off this room were two small rooms, in one of which she was supping with her Italian secretary, David Riccio, when the band of armed men, headed by her husband Darnley, burst into the room. Riccio clung to the Queen's dress, but was torn apart, stabbed, and dragged out to be despatched with many wounds at the top of the staircase. Queen Mary's son, James VI., spent some time of every year in the palace, and restored it when he was expecting his Danish bride. Charles I., who had been crowned King of Scotland in the chapel at Holyrood, restored the building, which was wrecked by a mob in 1688, after James VII. (James II. of England) had endeavoured to set up the Roman Catholic worship there. The chapel suffered another disaster about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the architect who had been entrusted with the work of restoring the building put on too heavy a roof, which fell in, destroying all but the bare walls. The royal vault at the east end of the south aisle still remains, containing the bodies of David II., James II., James V., and his Queen, Magdalen of France, and Henry Lord Darnley. From the time of Charles II., who rebuilt the palace much as we see it now, and James VII., who stayed in the palace when Duke of York, Holyrood became deserted, the later Stuarts and the Georges not visiting their northern capital. But in September, 1745, the palace once more broke into gaiety and splendour, when Prince Charles Edward entered Edinburgh and held high court in the home of his ancestors. His father was proclaimed as King James VIII., ladies flocked to the balls to win a gracious smile from the handsome Prince, and the kingdom seemed almost won. But in the midst of all the apparent brightness, the Prince realized that his cause was not so successful as he had at first hoped; the Highlanders, indeed, were flocking in, but the Lowlanders held aloof. After a few weeks Prince Charlie determined to risk all on the desperate march into England, leaving Edinburgh never to return again. Since then Holyrood has only once rejoiced in the presence of the monarch, when in 1822 George IV. visited Edinburgh and received an enthusiastic welcome, chiefly through the fervid loyalty of Sir Walter Scott, who devoted all his energies to the success of the first royal visit since the time of Charles I. For nearly a century the palace has not been used as a royal residence, but is merely occupied once a year when the Lord High Commissioner to the Assembly comes in state to the capital. CHAPTER XVIII LINLITHGOW PALACE "Of all the palaces so fair Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland, far beyond compare, Linlithgow is excelling." [Illustration: The Fountain in the Quadrangle of Linlithgow Palace.] So wrote Sir Walter Scott, an opinion which can be endorsed to-day, enough of the palace remaining, ruined though it is, to show what a stately and dignified structure it was in its days of greatness. The palace, standing on some rising ground jutting into a beautiful lake, is square in construction, having towers at the corners. The original entrance was on the eastern side, through a gateway which was protected by a drawbridge. Inside this gateway is a mutilated statue, thought to represent Pope Julius II., who gave James IV. his sword, still to be seen among the regalia in Edinburgh Castle. A ruined fountain stands in the centre of the courtyard, which once resounded with all the gaiety of the Stuart Court. The western side, containing the room where Queen Mary was born, is the oldest, while the northern side is the most recent, being rebuilt by James VI. Apparently there was a castle or royal manor-house at Linlithgow from the time of David I., who granted the skins of the rams, sheep, and lambs, who died there, to his foundation abbey of Holyrood. When Edward I. was holding sway over Scotland, he spent a considerable time at Linlithgow, turning it into a real fortress. Builders, masons, and carpenters were ordered from England, who threw up stockades, enclosing the parish church within the walls. It remained in English hands until 1314, when it was taken by a familiar strategy. A farmer, named Binnock, who was in the custom of bringing hay to the garrison, determined to capture the castle, one of the last to submit to the conquering Scots. One morning he drove up as usual to the castle gate, stopping his cart immediately under the portcullis, which was raised to admit him. Cutting the yoke which fastened his horses, so that the cart could not be shifted nor the portcullis lowered, Binnock sprang upon the unsuspecting porter and killed him. The hay in the cart covered some armed men who leapt out, being joined by others concealed near the gateway. The garrison was completely surprised, and were all put to the sword. Binnock was rewarded by a grant of land. Bruce destroyed the castle, following his usual policy, but it must have been rebuilt some time during the reign of his son. The palace which now remains is entirely a Stuart building, the older castle and part of the church having been burnt down the year that James I. returned to his native country after his long captivity. Great rebuilding took place in his reign, and, indeed, he is considered the main builder, the later monarchs only adding to and adorning portions of his scheme. It was in this new palace that Henry VI. of England, with Margaret of Anjou, and Edward Prince of Wales, stayed when the triumph of the Yorkists had driven them from England. James IV., under whom Scotland enjoyed a rare interval of prosperity, delighted in his beautiful palace of Linlithgow, where he indulged in all the manly sports of the time. Like his contemporary, Henry VIII., he revelled in tournaments, to which he invited all the lords to come and tilt with him, making of Linlithgow another Hampton Court, where great merry-making took place. Under his wise rule, Scotland was at peace and prosperous, the Court maintained a higher level of refinement and luxury, and science and art were encouraged. Unfortunately, James's chivalrous and rash temperament led him into war with England and the disaster at Flodden Field. Before starting on the expedition, a council was held at Linlithgow, after which the King attended evensong in the church. According to the story described by eye-witnesses, a strange man, dressed in a blue robe belted with a linen strap, with reddish hair hanging to his shoulders, pushed his way up to where the King was kneeling. Addressing him with slight reverence, the man warned the King against proceeding to battle, saying, "Sir King, my mother has sent me to you desiring you not to pass at this time where thou art purposed," saying it would bring disaster and shame, also warning him against visiting any woman on his journey. While the lords and everyone round were astonished and amazed at this apparition, the man suddenly disappeared "like a blink of the sun." In spite of the fact that the superstition of the time credited the man with being St. John appearing upon earth, the King persisted in his undertaking to meet his death upon the battlefield, and to plunge Scotland into mourning for the flower of the land. Doubtless the man was an imposter, got up for the part, by those who wanted to dissuade the King. A little room in the south-west corner of the palace is pointed out as Queen Margaret's Bower, being said to be the room from which the King's English bride watched for the messengers bringing her news of her husband's fate. When James V. became of age he also loved the palace, building the stately hall known as the Parliament Hall. He brought his French wife, Mary of Guise, there, who said she had never seen a more princely residence. His only child, Mary Queen of Scots, was born in the palace, but he never saw her, for he was at Falkland Palace when the news of her birth was brought to him, dying of grief after the shameful defeat at Solway Moss. The infant Queen was declared by some to be extremely delicate, but Sir Ralph Sadler, the English Ambassador in Scotland, gave quite a different account. The Queen-Dowager took him into the room where her baby was lying, and showed him how healthy she was. He writes to Queen Elizabeth: "I assure Your Majesty it is as goodly a child as I have seen of her age, and as like to live, with the grace of God." [Illustration: LINLITHGOW PALACE. THE BIRTHPLACE OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. Though from very early times a royal manor-house, the existing building is purely the work of the Stuart Kings.] After the thrones were united, the palace, like so many others in Scotland, became neglected, but it received its final ruin in 1746, when General Hawley's soldiers quartered in the palace. They had been defeated at Falkirk by the Jacobites, and were retreating. In spite of remonstrances to the General, the soldiers were allowed to make great fires in the palace, which were so carelessly watched that the building caught fire, leaving it the ruin which it is to-day. CHAPTER XIX FALKLAND PALACE Unless equipped with a good knowledge of Scottish history, the average tourist wandering through Fife will come upon Falkland Palace with surprise. Its situation is so remote from any centre of importance, it stands upon no great river affording an outlet to the sea, and never being a stronghold of any sort it remains at the base instead of the top of the hills among which it is built. Though elevated to the proud position of a royal burgh in 1458, Falkland can to-day be scarcely designated by any other title than that of a fair-sized village, so that the presence of the stately palace, ruined though it is, partakes of the nature of the unexpected. [Illustration: The Gateway of Falkland Palace.] Being built purely for pleasure and convenience, and with no thought of safety, the builders of the palace indulged in greater beauty of decoration than is to be seen in almost any other palace in Scotland. It suggests the dignity of a graceful French château, with its pilasters, bas-reliefs, statues, and canopied niches. Of the three sides of which the palace once consisted, only two remain, one of these being much ruined. But the south wing which has always remained more or less intact, is sufficient to prove how far from barbarous was the taste of the later Stuart monarchs. Before the palace was erected a castle stood close to the site of the present building. It had long been a possession of the Earls of Fife, till in the fourteenth century it descended to an heiress who had no children. She bestowed the castle upon Robert Duke of Albany, the brother of the inefficient King Robert III. Upon Albany rests the dreadful charge of murdering his young nephew, the Duke of Rothesay, by starving him to death in the castle at Falkland. Rothesay was young and wild, and had annoyed his uncle by getting himself made Guardian of the Realm, a post desired by Albany. After involving Scotland in war with England, due to his imprudence in jilting the daughter of the Earl of March, who succeeded in obtaining an English army in his support, Rothesay was captured on his way to St. Andrews by his uncle, who, it is said, had his father's authority to do so. Taken to Falkland Castle the Prince never came out alive, dying of slow starvation according to one account, and of dysentery by another. It is evident that Albany was suspected of murder, for he took the trouble to be officially acquitted of any part in his death. Only grassy mounds now indicate the position of this castle, which must have been, according to the investigations of Lord Bute, of considerable extent. The execution of Albany's son as a traitor made Falkland Crown property. The palace began to be erected by James II., but its chief builder was James IV., who spent large sums of money on the work, and much enjoyed the sport to be obtained in the neighbourhood. His son, James V., was often there, though apparently not for long periods at a time. He was the only monarch to die there, a sad event which occurred at the early age of thirty. In despair at the rout of his army at Solway Moss, the young monarch refused all consolation, and just seemed to wait for death, though there were no apparent signs of it upon him. Not even the news brought to him from Linlithgow of the birth of a daughter could cheer him. Merely saying the often quoted words, "It came wi' a lass and will pass wi' a lass," he turned his head to the wall and died a few days later. No events of importance took place at Falkland during Mary Queen of Scots' brief reign, though she visited it occasionally. Her son, James VI., was much attached to it, on account of the good hunting it afforded. On one occasion he was nearly captured there by the reckless Francis Earl of Bothwell, who made one of his many attempts to seize the King. But on this midnight attack he was unsuccessful, for he and his party were forced to flee when the artillery of the palace was turned against them. They were not pursued, as they had taken the precaution to take possession of all the horses. After James went to England he could seldom be lured from the luxury of his English palaces to visit his northern residences, but he did visit Falkland once again in the year 1617. Tremendous preparations were made for the royal visit, eighty carts lumbered up from Kirkcaldy with the luggage, and a large gathering of nobles and gentlemen made Falkland once more a gay and busy place. Charles I. came to Falkland once in the summer of 1633, after which the palace was never again to rejoice in great regal splendour. When Charles II. was being supported by the Presbyterians of Scotland, he spent a little time there, much worried by the persistency of his friends, who insisted upon his signing the Covenant. After he departed, no monarch ever resided in the palace, which was given to a Cromwellian officer during the Commonwealth, but which, at the Restoration, again became the property of the Crown. Lying deserted and neglected all through the eighteenth century, the palace became a quarry for those who needed building materials, till in 1820 it was bought by Mr. John Bruce of Grangehill, who, with the assistance of Sir Walter Scott, arrested the ruin and restored the remaining structure. CHAPTER XX BALMORAL CASTLE Sir James Clark's suggestion that the valley of the Dee was a neighbourhood possessing all the qualifications of a health resort, induced the Prince Consort to purchase Balmoral Castle in 1852. Both he and the Queen found the lonely situation of the castle among the rugged hills, quite delightful, and though Prince Albert had at first only taken a lease, he soon bought the entire property, handing it over to the Queen as a possession for the reigning monarchs. Though belonging to the Farquharsons for about 150 years, the last tenant of Balmoral had been Sir Robert Gordon, who, having been high in the diplomatic world, filled his house with many distinguished guests. Sir Robert had considerably enlarged the castle, but it was not sufficient for the needs of a Court, quiet and homelike as it might be. A new castle was commenced in 1853, largely from the plans and ideas of the Prince Consort, whose devoted wife called it "his own creation, own work, own building." To-day, the castle, built of native granite in the Scottish baronial style, stands out strikingly white among the dark wooded hills. [Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE. Erected in 1853, following the plans of the Prince Consort. Built of native granite in the Scottish baronial style, it stands out strikingly white among the dark wooded hills.] By August, 1856, the new castle was quite ready, and Queen Victoria found everything delightful--"the house is charming; the rooms delightful; the furniture, papers, everything perfection"--and from that moment Balmoral remained her favourite residence, where she was happy in the company of her beloved husband, and free from much of the conventionality of State ceremonial. No one reading the Queen's letters or her diary, can fail to see how blissful was the simple domestic life, the gay picnic expeditions among the mountains, the informal dances where the Queen joined in Scotch reels and country dances. It was among the heather of the Scottish hills that Prince Frederick of Prussia proposed to the little Princess Royal, then only fifteen years old. Prince Frederick (afterwards the Emperor Frederick III.) was so much in love that he could not refrain from speaking of it, though the Queen, owing to her daughter's youth, had wanted him to wait a little longer. Picking up a piece of white heather, Prince Frederick gave it to the Princess as they rode down Glen Girnoch, telling her at the same time how _allerliebst_ she was. In the midst of all this happiness came the sudden blow of the early death of Prince Albert, a grief from which the Queen never recovered. She wrote to her uncle, "my life as a _happy_ one is _ended_! the world is gone for _me_!" Amidst all her desolation, it was a relief to her to get away to Balmoral, where everything reminded her of him, and where the beauty and calm of the mountains and glens were restful. Though there were no longer any large shooting parties, Queen Victoria did not shut herself up, but took a great interest in the tenantry, whom she visited constantly. Under the fostering care of Queen Victoria, the village of Balmoral, once poor and barren, with mud cottages roofed with heather, became prosperous. Constant employment has brought wealth to the village, where schools and a library had been erected. Whatever its subsequent history may be, Balmoral Castle will ever remain enshrined as the dearly-loved home of Victoria the Good, among the Highland folk she knew and loved so well. All her letters from the castle breathe the same feeling as the one written on October 6, 1851: "I love my peaceful wild Highlands, the glorious scenery, the dear good people who are much attached to us ... my heart is _bien gros_ at going from here." BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. Transcriber's Note: _ _ represents italic text = = represents bold text Sundry missing or damaged punctuation has been repaired. Both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants of many words occur in this book. All have been retained. Any illustration which interrupted a paragraph has been moved to a more convenient location, between paragraphs. Page 7: 'chepe' is an old word, meaning 'market'. See 'THE HISTORY OF LONDON' BY (Sir) WALTER BESANT (Project Gutenberg e-book 27995) (p. 47) Most fortunately, there exists a document priceless and unique, short as it is and meagre in many of its details, which describes London as it was in the reign of Henry II. It is written by one FitzStephen, Chaplain to Thomas (à) Becket. He was present at the murder of the Archbishop and wrote his life, to which this account is an introduction. 13. FITZSTEPHEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE CITY. PART I. (translation from Latin) (p. 49) "... Cheapside preserves the name of the Chepe, the most important of all the old streets. Here, every day, all the year round, was a market held at which everything conceivable was sold, not in shops, but in selds, that is, covered wooden sheds, which could be taken down on occasion. Do not think that 'Chepe' was a narrow street: it was a great open space lying between St. Paul's and what is now the Royal Exchange, with streets north and south formed by rows of these selds or sheds. Presently the sheds became houses with shops in front and gardens behind. The roadway on the south side of this open space was called the Side of Chepe...." Page 38: 'Samual' corrected to 'Samuel'. "Samuel Pepys watched the pageant...." Page 57: "... that no Englishman knew how to enter a room, nor any Englishwoman how to dress, nor English cooks how to prepare a dinner, nor English coachman how to drive,..." ... is as printed, and 'coachman' is probably correct, in the context, though 'cooks' may be questionable.... Page 76: 'castle' corrected to 'castles'. "... though the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling were majestic, they were...." Page 79: 'seige' corrected to 'siege'. "... sustain a siege of many months in 1304." "... Edward Bruce, who was conducting the siege,..." 
43402	----	THE CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN [Illustration York Minster.] THE CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN _THEIR HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE_ BY P.H. DITCHFIELD, M.A., F.S.A. _Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Rector of Barkham_ WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERBERT RAILTON, J.A. SYMINGTON, H.M. JAMES, H. CRICKMORE, ETC. 1902 LONDON: J.M. DENT & COMPANY PHILADELPHIA: J.B. LIPPINCOTT COY. _All Rights Reserved_ PREFACE In this volume I have attempted to give an architectural description of all the cathedral churches of England, Wales, and Scotland, together with a brief history of each see. In order to include any adequate account of each church and bishopric in one volume of portable size, which may be of use to visitors in their travels, much compression has been necessary, but it is hoped that nothing of importance has been omitted which might be useful to those who would read aright the architectural history of our great churches. On account of their immense importance in the history of Gothic art, it has been thought well to include in this volume some account of the churches of Westminster and Beverley. At the close of each history of a cathedral will be found a record of the principal building dates and dimensions, and also a brief account of the chief places and churches of interest in the city or neighbourhood which it is advisable to visit. I desire to express my grateful thanks to all who have kindly assisted in the preparation of this work, to the deans and canons-in-residence who have often guided me by their counsel during my study of their cathedrals, and also to the vergers who have readily afforded me much valuable help. More especially do I wish to thank the Deans of Lincoln, Ely, Chester and Gloucester, Canon Tristram of Durham, Bishop Anson of Lichfield, and Archdeacon Richardson of Southwell, for their courtesy and kindly interest. I have also to record my obligations to the work of many previous writers. The works of Freeman, Rickman, Britton, Willis, Winkle, and the Diocesan histories published by S.P.C.K. have been consulted, as well as the special monographs on each cathedral, which are too numerous to mention. Prior's _Gothic Art_ has been of the greatest possible assistance, Addis's _Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys_, and also the very valuable and indispensable handbooks published by the late Mr. John Murray. I have found the volumes of Bell's Cathedral Series most useful when visiting the buildings of which they treat, and Messrs. Isbister's volumes written by the deans of our cathedrals contain picturesque and attractive accounts of the historic buildings. To all these works I desire to acknowledge my great indebtedness. And lastly I have to record my grateful thanks to the artists who have enriched these pages with their charming drawings, and to Mr. Dent, the publisher of this work, for much encouragement, valuable advice, and able direction, without which this volume would have lacked whatever of merit it may possess. P.H. DITCHFIELD. BARKHAM RECTORY, _September 8, 1902_. CONTENTS PAGE THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN 1 ST. PAUL'S 8 WESTMINSTER 35 ROCHESTER 57 CANTERBURY 68 WINCHESTER 85 CHICHESTER 96 SALISBURY 108 OXFORD 125 BRISTOL 138 WELLS 149 BATH 161 EXETER 164 TRURO 177 GLOUCESTER 178 HEREFORD 204 WORCESTER 216 LICHFIELD 230 CHESTER 248 LIVERPOOL 263 MANCHESTER 264 CARLISLE 272 NEWCASTLE 282 DURHAM 283 RIPON 297 YORK 309 BEVERLEY 327 WAKEFIELD 333 LINCOLN 337 SOUTHWELL 351 PETERBOROUGH 360 ELY 377 NORWICH 393 ST. ALBAN'S 409 ST. ASAPH'S 423 BANGOR 426 LLANDAFF 429 ST. DAVID'S 432 GLASGOW 439 IONA 441 BRECHIN 442 ABERDEEN 443 DUNBLANE 444 DUNKELD 445 ST. ANDREW'S 446 ST. GILES', EDINBURGH 447 KIRKWALL 448 GLOSSARY OF ARCHITECTURAL TERMS 450 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE York Minster _Frontispiece_ St. Paul's from Cheapside 11 The West Front 23 The Nave from the Choir 28 Woodwork, South Choir Aisle 29 Johnson's Statue 31 Dean's Yard, Westminster, in 1730 37 The North Front 40 Poets' Corner 43 Henry V.'s Chantry 47 Interior from Chapel of St. John 51 Rochester Cathedral 59 Canterbury Cathedral 71 Tomb of the Black Prince 78 The Crypt 80 Winchester Cathedral 89 West Front 93 Chichester Cathedral 99 The Presbytery 105 Salisbury Cathedral 111 Strengthening Arches, East Transepts 116 Oxford Cathedral 129 The Interior 133 Bristol Cathedral, the Central Tower 143 Wells Cathedral 153 Entrance to Crypt 159 Exeter Cathedral 165 Detail of Minstrels' Gallery 170 Gloucester Cathedral, The Deanery 179 From S.E. 183 Nave Pillars from the West 187 The Choir, looking East 191 The Lady Chapel 195 Carrel in South Cloister 199 Hereford Cathedral from the Wye 207 The Cantelupe Shrine 211 Worcester Cathedral from the Severn 219 Lichfield Cathedral, Distant View of Exterior 235 St. Oswald's Gate, Chester Cathedral 249 Chester Cathedral 253 The Choir 257 Shrine of St. Werburgh 261 Carlisle Cathedral from S.E. 275 Durham Cathedral 285 The Galilee Chapel 290 The Bishop's Throne 293 Ripon Cathedral from North 299 The Great Buttresses 302 The Apse 303 York Cathedral--Tomb of Archbishop Walter de Grey 311 Chapter House 313 North Aisle of Choir 317 The Ladye Chapel 321 The Crypt 323 Beverley Minster, the West Front 328 Beverley Minster 329 Percy Shrine 332 Wakefield Cathedral 334 Chantry Chapel on Wakefield Bridge 335 Lincoln Cathedral Towers and Potter Gate 338 Lincoln Cathedral and Exchequer Gate 342 The Angel Choir 347 Southwell Central Tower and N. Transept 355 Peterborough Cathedral 365 North-west Transept 370 Ely Cathedral--Arm of Abbot's Chair 378 West Tower from Deanery Gardens 379 The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Lady Chapel 381 Ely Cathedral from South-east 383 The Octagon and Lantern from North-west 384 St. Catherine's Chapel 386 In South Aisle of Nave looking to North Transept 387 Carrel in Cloister 388 Norwich Cathedral 397 A Bay, North Side of Nave 401 Ancient Bishop's Throne 403 Bridge, North Aisle of Presbytery 404 St. Alban's Cathedral 411 LIST OF PLANS PAGE St. Paul's Cathedral 34 Westminster Abbey 56 Canterbury Cathedral 83 Winchester Cathedral 95 Salisbury Cathedral 124 Wells Cathedral 163 Gloucester Cathedral 203 Worcester Cathedral 229 Durham Cathedral 296 York Cathedral 326 Lincoln Cathedral 350 Peterborough Cathedral 376 Ely Cathedral 392 Norwich Cathedral 408 Cathedrals of Great Britain THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN We are endeavouring to follow the traces of the handiwork of the great master-builders who have filled the English Isle with so many noble shrines, to mark the growth and development of the various styles and modes of building, and to endeavour to interpret their meaning. The story of the rise and fall of English Gothic art has a fascination that is all its own; and with the intention of endeavouring to realise its high aims, its strength and beauty, and to understand its true spirit, we will start on our pilgrimage to those fanes which it has reared to the honour and glory of the Most High. And as we watch the rise and progress of English Gothic art, we shall note that it is no exotic, no alien welcomed to our shores; but a true English native art, born in the brains and faith of our English forefathers, and nourished here with a nation's whole-hearted affection. French writers on architecture are accustomed to state that our English Gothic came from France, and that each stage and change were wrought by the influence of foreign masons and were borrowed from them. There could not be a greater error. The Anglo-Norman style was developed quite as much in this country as in Normandy, which was then a province of England. We shall see that English Gothic sprang into being in the choir of Lincoln. No foreign mason taught our English masons the secret of their art. Even Westminster, most French of all our buildings, and designed by a foreigner, is, in the language of Sir Gilbert Scott, "a great French thought expressed in excellent English." And while we have a style peculiarly our own, the Perpendicular of the fifteenth century, at that period the French with their Flamboyant tracery were only imitating the flowing lines of our fourteenth-century Decorated. And as we study more carefully these examples of English Gothic art, we shall admire the great unknown toilers who built so surely and so well, who put their hearts and lives, affections and religion into their work; we shall reverence the relics of their handiwork which time has spared and love them exceedingly. For the convenience of classification, mediæval architecture has been divided into four distinct styles or periods, and we must again chronicle the oft-told story of their varied peculiarities. I. The Norman style commenced in the reign of Edward the Confessor, whose work at Westminster (the sub-structure of the dormitory and the lower part of the walls of the refectory with the ornamental arcade) is declared to be the earliest example of the Norman style in England. This style prevailed to the time of Henry II., when a period of transition set in, and the style began to approximate to that of the succeeding century. The main characteristics of the Norman style are--cylindrical massive piers, round-headed arches, a great variety of mouldings such as zigzag, billet, double-cone, pellet, lozenge, beak-head, etc., small and narrow windows splayed only on the inside, buttresses slightly projecting from the wall. Some of the best examples of this style are the naves of Ely, Gloucester, Durham, and much Norman work is seen at Winchester, Exeter, Canterbury, Chester, Peterborough, Norwich, Rochester, Chichester, Oxford, Worcester, Wells and Hereford. II. The Early English style began with the thirteenth century, in the reign of King John, the choir of Lincoln being the earliest example. Wearied with the Romanesque uncouth details of Norman art, the English masons were feeling after and finding a more excellent way, and discovered the beauties of Gothic architecture. This style flourished until the time of Edward I.; during his reign another period of transition set in, and this style gradually developed into the Decorated. Its main characteristics are lighter and more elegant forms of construction and decoration, pointed arches, often shaped like a surgeon's lancet, whence they derive their name, deeply undercut mouldings, dog-tooth ornament, piers formed of columns with detached shafts united under one capital, and bound together by a band, bell-shaped capitals, stiff-leaved foliage, trefoiled arches, plate-tracery. Early English work is seen in the choir of Lincoln, Worcester, Chichester, Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, Rochester, York (south transept), Southwell, Ripon, Ely, Peterborough, Durham ("nine altars"), Glasgow. III. The Decorated style commenced in the fourteenth century, or a few years earlier, reached its zenith before the middle of the century, and ended with the reign of the third Edward. The period of transition between this style and the last is perhaps the era of the greatest beauty of English art. The characteristics of the style are, more elaborateness of detail and ornament, much larger windows with beautiful and complex tracery, heavier buttresses, piers with closely-joined shafts, not detached as before, sculpture closely imitating natural foliage, mouldings less deeply cut, the ball-flower ornament. Decorated work is very plentiful, and may be seen in the chapter-houses of Wells, Norwich, Winchester, Canterbury, also at York, Lichfield, Exeter, Carlisle, Lincoln, Southwell, and elsewhere. A period of transition again followed during the last half of the fourteenth century, during which the style developed into the Perpendicular. IV. The Perpendicular style prevailed during the fifteenth century and continued until the reign of Henry VIII., when the mediæval period ceased. This style is, as we have said, peculiar to England. In Scotland, where French influence was great, there are many examples of the Flamboyant style, which prevailed in France, and was scarcely known in England. This style is characterised by more elaborate and richer work, increased use of ornament and panelled decoration, peculiar window tracery (the mullions being carried straight up through the head of the window, while smaller mullions spring from the heads of the principal lights), much larger windows, depressed arches (Tudor arch), much heavier buttresses, mouldings carried up the piers and arches without any break or capital, cavetto (a wide and rather shallow variety), ogee, bowtell mouldings, the rose ornament, Tudor flower. The extensive use of panelling is always the hall-mark of the Perpendicular period. The choir of Gloucester is the earliest known example of this style, and King's College, Cambridge, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, are the most perfect specimens of Perpendicular art. Then followed the Renaissance period, when classical and Roman features were mingled with the latest English style. There was an attempt to revive the Gothic style in the time of James I., but the foreign influence was too strong, and not till the close of the eighteenth century did this revival take place. The love of Gothic art had never been quite extinguished in this country, and to the English people belongs the honour of restoring to its rightful place that style which has created so many superb and magnificent buildings instinctive of the faith and reverence which first called them into being. In our cathedrals we have endless varieties of plan, construction, style and adornment, as well as in the associations connected with their histories. They derive their name from the Latin word _Cathedra_ (Greek, [Greek: Kathedra]), signifying a seat, a cathedral church being that particular church of the diocese where the bishop's seat or throne is placed. If this church belonged to a monastery it was served by the monks, but many of our cathedrals were in the hands of secular canons, who were not monks, and should not be confused with the "regular" clergy. Monastic churches had always a complete series of monastic buildings--the cloister-court, the centre of a monk's life, around which were grouped the chapter-house, dormitory, refectory, infirmary, hospitium or guest-hall. Churches served by secular canons sometimes have a cloister, but this was added more as an ornament, and was not a necessity. The Reformation wrought many changes in our cathedrals. Out of the spoil of the monasteries Henry VIII. undertook to endow five new sees, and thus created the sees of Oxford, Peterborough, Chester, Gloucester and Bristol. These are called the cathedrals of the New Foundation, and with these are classed the monastic cathedrals which survived the shock of the Reformation, viz.: Canterbury, Winchester, Worcester, Rochester, Norwich, Ely, Durham, Carlisle. The cathedrals of the Old Foundation which survived, with some changes in their constitution, were York, London, Salisbury, Wells, Chichester, Hereford, Exeter, Lichfield and Lincoln, and the Welsh dioceses of St. David's, Llandaff, Bangor and St. Asaph. Episcopacy was finally banished from the Church of Scotland on the advent of William III.; hence the cathedrals in the northern country are so only in name. The Episcopal Church of Scotland has, of course, cathedrals, but most of these are modern. Since the Reformation in England, and especially in modern times, many new sees have been formed; these are Manchester, Liverpool, Ripon, St. Alban's, Southwell, Truro, Wakefield and Newcastle. The plan of our cathedrals is usually cruciform, formed by a nave with aisles, north and south transepts, central tower, choir and presbytery. Sometimes the plan is that of a double cross, there being a second or eastern transept towards the eastern end of the choir. Our inspection of the exterior begins first by trying to obtain a good general view of the building. We notice the remains of the walls and gates which guarded the close, or precincts of the cathedral. Within these walls the bishop's power was supreme. If sanctuary was claimed by a fugitive from justice, here he was safe; and the clergy and the serving-men were free from the ordinary law, and could be tried only by the ecclesiastics. Then we notice the west front, usually a fine screen of stone-work, wherein are enshrined in niches weather-worn statues telling of the men of old who had done well in their days for their Church and realm. Passing to the north we see the central tower, possibly Norman as high as the roof, with a superstructure of later times. The pitch of the roof may have been altered in later times from a high pitch to a flat one, and the marks of the old roof may often be seen on the tower walls. Just below the eaves is the range of clerestory windows. Flying buttresses connecting the buttresses of the outer wall with those of the inner are frequent and produce a very graceful effect. Niches for statues are often carved upon the buttresses. Curious grotesquely-carved heads, called gargoyles, look down upon us from the gutters of the roof. The tracery of the windows is no indication of the age of the walls, as they have frequently been inserted in place of others of an older period. The porch is a large structure, and sometimes has a chamber, called a parvise, over it. The object of this chamber cannot always be determined. Sometimes it was the abode of the sacristan, and occasionally it was set apart for the use of an anchorite or recluse. The monastic buildings are usually on the south side in Benedictine monasteries, but sometimes on account of the nature of the ground they are on the north. On entering the church we view the nave, which is usually in three storeys--the main arcade, the triforium, which opens into a gallery or passage, and the clerestory. Sometimes the choir occupies two bays of the nave, but usually begins with the screen placed on the east side of the central tower. This screen was formerly the rood-screen, and a large crucifix stood on it; but at the Reformation all roods were destroyed, and sometimes the organ stands in its place. Entering the choir we see before us the high altar with a fine reredos behind it, so called from the French _L'arrière-dos_, meaning "embroidered hangings." On the south of this is the piscina, consisting of a hollow basin with a stone-drain, wherein the priest cleansed the sacred vessels after using them in the Holy Eucharist. On the same side are the sedilia, or stone seats for the clergy, frequently with richly-carved canopies. Then there are the beautifully-carved stalls with fine tabernacle work, and the _sub-sellæ_ or misereres (French, _miséricorde_) with their quaint carvings. It is a popular error, gravely perpetrated by some cathedral vergers and others, to suppose these misereres were a kind of ingenious trap for sleepy monks, who, when the heavy seat fell down with a loud bang, were detected in slumber and forced to do penance. They were so placed as a concession to human weakness in order that the monks or canons might lean against them during the long mediæval services, when sitting was not allowed. The eastern portion of the choir is called the presbytery. We pass to the north aisle of the choir and proceed to the ambulatory, processional path, or retro-choir. Here, at the back of the altar, was the chief shrine, where the relics of some great saint were preserved under a gorgeous cover decorated with gold and silver and precious jewels, to which crowds of pilgrims flocked, and there prayed and gazed upon the wondrous shrine, and made their offerings. The steps and pavement leading to the shrine often still show by their worn condition the evidence of the tread of countless numbers of pilgrims. Near the shrine was a watching chamber, where a monk stayed to guard the shrine and its treasures. Eastward of the ambulatory is usually the Lady Chapel, where the altar of the Virgin stood; and here, and in other parts of the church, are numerous chantry chapels, sometimes built on to the church, or in the church itself, containing effigies of the founders and altar tombs, where masses were said by specially-endowed chantry priests for the repose of the souls of the deceased and their families. Some effigies of knights and warriors have their legs crossed. It is another popular error to suppose that this fashion of representing the deceased had anything to do with the Crusades. Beneath some portion of the church we find a crypt with the remains of numerous altars, where masses were said for the souls of those who lie buried here. A door on the south side of the church leads to the cloister court; immediately on the left as we traverse the east walk we see the slype or passage leading to the monks' cemetery. Another door from this walk leads to the chapter-house, where the monks assembled daily to arrange the affairs of the monastery, enforce its discipline, assign the duties of the day and transact other business. On the same side of the cloister was the dormitory; the refectory was on the south; the uses of the buildings on the west side varied in different houses. As we see our cathedrals now, the view that meets us differs much from that which would have greeted us in mediæval times. Then all was ablaze with colours. Through the beautiful ancient glass the light gleamed on tints of gorgeous hues, on rich tapestries and hangings, on walls bedight with paintings, and every monument, pier and capital were aglow with coloured decorations. We have lost much, but still much remains. At the Reformation the avaricious courtiers of Henry VIII. plundered our sacred shrines, and carried off under the plea of banishing superstition vast stores of costly plate and jewels, tapestry and hangings. In the Civil War time riotous fanatical soldiery wrought havoc everywhere, hacking beautifully-carved tombs and canopies, destroying brasses, and mutilating all that they could find. Ages of neglect have also left their marks upon our churches; and above all, the hand of the ignorant and injudicious "restorer" has fallen heavily on these legacies of Gothic art, destroying much that was of singular beauty, and replacing it by the miserable productions of early nineteenth-century fabrication. But in spite of all the evils that have been wrought, in spite of Puritan iconoclasm and Reformation violence, in spite of natural decay, eighteenth-century lethargy, and the intemperate zeal of unwise and tasteless modern restorers, our cathedrals still preserve much of their ancient beauty and attractiveness. They are standing witnesses to the greatness of the masons and builders who fashioned and perfected our English Gothic art, "an art that was created here in this land according to our native instincts, and in accord with the sober dress of our skies and the simple pleasantness of our scenery."[1] A man cannot fail to love that English art, whether he has been born amongst it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the grandeur over seas. FOOTNOTE: [1] _History of Gothic Art in England_, by E.S. Prior. ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL The great Cathedral of St. Paul has abundant claims to the love and veneration of every Englishman. Situated in the heart of the city of London, it has ever been associated with the religious, social and civic life of the people; and as the great national Cathedral of England all the principal events in our country's annals have been connected with St. Paul's. Without doubt it is the finest and grandest building in London, if not in the world. Comparing it with St. Peter's at Rome, we find that its dimensions are, of course, much smaller, though its grace and beauty are in no way inferior to the magnificent conception of Michael Angelo. It is the shrine of our national heroes, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of a great genius; its massive dome surmounted by a golden cross greets the traveller returning from beyond seas; its walls have echoed with the strains of high thanksgiving on the occasion of national victories and blessings, when kings and queens have come in solemn state to render thanks to Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Just as Westminster was ever the church of the king and the government, so St. Paul's was the church of the citizens. The prominent place which St. Paul's takes in the national and social life of England, in the great functions of Church and State, and in promoting the religious life of the people, is worthy of its best traditions, and at no time during its long history has it taken a higher place in the affections of the nation. THE OLDER CATHEDRALS OF ST. PAUL'S The present Cathedral, erected by the skill and genius of Sir Christopher Wren, is the third sacred edifice built upon this site. Indeed, Camden and certain early fanciful historians tell us of a Roman temple dedicated to Diana which they assert once stood here, erected during the time of the Diocletian persecution upon the site of an early Christian church. It is, however, certain that when Sir Christopher sank his foundations for the present building, he found beneath the interred bodies of mediæval times several Saxon stone coffins, and at a still lower depth Celtic and Roman remains, showing that the site had been set apart as a cemetery from very early times. The earliest church of which we have sure records was erected in Saxon times by good King Ethelbert of Kent in the year 610. St. Mellitus, the companion of St. Augustine, was the first English Bishop of London,[2] who came there in order to convert the East Saxons. Siebert, their king, joined with his uncle, Ethelbert, in building the Cathedral church, and the former probably founded the monastery of St. Peter called Westminster on Thorney Island, a place then "terrible from its desolate aspect--a mass of marsh and brushwood." But the Londoners loved their Paganism, and took not kindly to the new faith. The men of the "emporium of many nations" clung to their worship of Wodin and Thor, and not even the wise words of Mellitus in the new Cathedral could win them. It was the original design of Pope Gregory, who sent Augustine to our shores, to make the Cathedral of London the Metropolitan Church of England--a design which Augustine could not carry out on account of the violent opposition of the Pagan-loving people. Hence Canterbury was elevated to the position of the Metropolitan Church. Thirty-eight years passed away. At length the fiery spirit of the Londoners was subdued after three great missionary efforts, and they gradually learned the story of the cross. The Cathedral was beautified by Bishop Cedd, brother of St. Cedd or Chad of Lichfield, and Sebbe, King of Essex, and was fortunate in having St. Erkenwald as the fourth Bishop of London, who wrought great wonders and attracted many converts, restoring wealth and honour to his Cathedral. To his memory a golden shrine was erected which was much frequented by pilgrims. Saxon kings gave of their wealth to the endowment of the Cathedral, and many rich lands were granted to it, as the ancient charters bear witness. Fire has always been a great foe to St. Paul's. A very destructive conflagration raged in 961 A.D., and again in 1086 the Cathedral was wholly destroyed. We have no means of knowing what kind of architecture characterised this earliest fane, but probably it possessed round arches of stone, massive piers, and the usual characteristics of the Saxon style. The energy of the English people is evident to all who study our national annals. When any alarming catastrophe occurs, immediately they arise to repair the disaster. As it was in the seventeenth century when the Great Fire swept over London and laid the city low, so it was in the eleventh. The Saxon church had no sooner been reduced to a heap of ruins than the Norman builders began to rear another noble pile. Bishop Maurice was the designer of this great edifice, which existed until the time of the Great Fire, though it was greatly injured by a fire in 1136. A very noble church it must have been, with its walls ablaze with colour, richly-canopied tombs, pictures and frescoes, books, and vestments glittering with gold, silver and precious stones. It was the largest Cathedral in England. Old pictures tell us that it was cruciform, with a high tower and spire in the centre. The nave was long and noble, built in Norman style, having twelve bays. William of Malmesbury describes it as being "so stately and beautiful that it was worthily numbered amongst the most famous buildings." At the west end were two towers for bells, and sometimes used as prisons. The central tower had flying buttresses. Besides the high altar there were seventy or eighty chantries, with their own altars all ablaze with rich draperies. St. Paul's was also very rich in relics, among the number of which were two arms of St. Mellitus, a knife of our Lord, some hair of Mary Magdalene, blood of St. Paul, milk of the Virgin, the hand of St. John, the skull of Thomas à Becket, the head of King Ethelbert. But "the pride, glory and fountain of wealth" to St. Paul's was the body of St. Erkenwald, covered with a golden shrine, behind the high altar. Dean Milman states that in the year 1344 the offerings made by pilgrims alone amounted to £9000. The choir was rebuilt in 1221, and the Lady Chapel added in 1225. There was a very large east window, and a rose window over it. Buttresses crowned with pinnacles and adorned with niches supported the walls. The interior view, judging from Hollar's engraving, must have been very fine. The pillars and arches were Late Norman. The choir consisted of twelve bays and was finished about the end of the thirteenth century. We have few records to tell us about the details of the building of this old St. Paul's. In 1312 the nave was paved with marble, and two years later a spire of wood was raised to the height of 460 feet, then the highest in the world. This was damaged and ultimately destroyed by lightning. [Illustration ST. PAUL'S FROM CHEAPSIDE] FOOTNOTE: [2] There were some British Bishops of London. One of these, Restitutus, was present at the Council of Arles in A.D. 314, and Geoffrey mentions Theon, Bishop of London, amongst those who fled into Wales during the Saxon invasion. THE PRECINCTS We will now examine the precincts of the Cathedral. A wall surrounded the vast space which extended from Carter Lane on the south to Creed Lane and included Paternoster Row. This wall had six gates, the site of two of which is marked by St. Paul's Alley and Paul's Chain. The Bishop's Palace occupied the north-west corner of this space, and on the north were some cloisters decorated with mural paintings representing the Dance of Death, a favourite subject of mediæval painters, of which Holbein's conceptions are best known. This cloister was on the site of Pardon Churchyard, where a chapel was founded by Gilbert à Becket, the father of St. Thomas of noted memory. The chapter-house stood on the south side of the Cathedral, and was a very beautiful structure, so beautiful that Protector Somerset coveted the materials for his palace in the Strand, and took down and removed them. At the north-east corner of the precincts stood the famous Paul's Cross, the scene of so many famous preachings and strange events, where folk-motes were held, Papal bulls promulgated, Royal proclamations made, excommunications and public penances declared, and sometimes riots and tumults excited. Paul's Cross played a very prominent part in the history of old London. Near the Pardon Churchyard once stood the Parish Church of St. Faith, called the Chapel of Jesus; but this was destroyed, and the parishioners received in lieu of it a church in the crypt of the Cathedral. Fuller, remarking on this and on the existence of the Parish Church of St. Gregory on the Thames side of the Cathedral, quaintly observed, "St. Paul's may be called the Mother Church indeed, having one babe in her body and another in her arms." St. Paul's was the centre of the life of London. Its great bell summoned the London citizens to their three annual folk-motes at Paul's Cross, where all the municipal business of the city was transacted, disputes settled, grievances stated and rights vindicated. Very turbulent and jealous of their liberties were these good citizens, and even the sovereign will of kings and queens must bow before the noisy clamours of the burghers of London. The bell of St. Paul's, like that of its famous brother "Roland" at Ghent, seemed endowed with a human voice when it summoned the multitudes to their meeting-place at the Cross, and declared in loud tones the will of the people. HISTORICAL EVENTS The citizens might well love to have their church in their midst, for the ecclesiastical power was very strong, and often enabled them to defy the will of tyrannical kings or troublesome barons. In the time of the Conqueror, Bishop William of London obtained from the king a renewal of their privileges of which the monarch had deprived them. In gratitude for this benefit, the mayor, aldermen and livery companies of London used to visit the tomb of the good bishop in grand procession, in order to pray for his soul, and to commemorate his great services. In the reign of Stephen civil war raged, and the country was divided into hostile camps, one siding with the king and the other with the Empress Maud. The citizens of London were not doubtful in their opinions. They rang the great bell of St. Paul's, summoned their folk-mote, and loudly declared that it was the privilege of the citizens of their great city to elect a sovereign for England, and with one voice supported Stephen. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a favourite of the citizens, though hated by his sovereign. Gilbert à Becket, his father, had a shop in Cheapside on the site of Mercers' Hall, whither the fair Saracen is said to have followed him from the Holy Land, where he had gone on a Crusade. He built a chapel in the churchyard of St. Paul, and his son, the famous archbishop, was well known to the citizens. Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, however, had taken the side of the king, Henry II., in the fatal quarrel, and aroused the anger of the prelate. A curious scene took place in consequence in old St. Paul's. A priest was celebrating mass, when a man approached, thrust a paper into his hand, and cried aloud, "Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury." The news spread fast among the citizens. Foliot at first attempted to defy the dread sentence; but he knew something of the nature of the citizens of London, and wisely bowed before the decree, which the people were quite willing to enforce. St. Paul's was the scene of a memorable council in the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion, who was crusading in Palestine. The bishops, together with the king's brother John, met in the nave and condemned Longchamp to resign the office of justiciary, and to surrender the castles which he held in the name of the king. During this reign a factious demagogue, William Fitz-Osbert, equally distinguished by the length of his beard and the vehemence of his eloquence, called the people together at Paul's Cross, and excited them to rebel against their oppressors. Bishop Hubert, however, calmed the multitude on the eve of a formidable rising. The people deserted their leader, who took refuge in St. Mary-le-Bow Church, which was set on fire, and Fitz-Osbert suffered death at the hands of the hangman. Thus from the tyranny of a Royal favourite, and from that of a mob orator, the people were saved by the influence of the Church in St. Paul's Cathedral. A still greater service did St. Paul's render to England. Here was assembled a grand concourse of bishops, abbots, deans, priors and barons, to withstand the oppressive lawlessness of King John. Here Magna Charta was first devised. Here, at the instigation of Archbishop Langton, the barons and chief men swore to maintain the principles of the Charta, and to protect the liberties of Englishmen. St. Paul's also set itself in opposition to the authority of the Pope; and when a Papal legate sought to enthrone himself in St. Paul's, he was openly resisted by Cantelupe, Bishop of Worcester. Boniface of Savoy, "the handsome Archbishop," brought with him fashions strange enough to English folk. His armed retainers pillaged the markets, and he felled to the ground, with his own fist, the prior of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, who presumed to oppose his visitation. He came to St. Paul's to demand first-fruits from the Bishop of London, but deemed it advisable to wear armour beneath his robes. He found the gates of the Cathedral closed against him; but he fared better than two canons of the Papal party, who were killed by the citizens a few years later when they attempted to enter St. Paul's. London was aroused by these Italian priests, and the citizens at length besieged Lambeth Palace and drove the obnoxious archbishop beyond seas. Again and again the tocsin sounded, as St. Paul's bell rang clear and loud, and the citizens seized their weapons and formed their battalions beneath the shadow of the great church. Now it was to help Simon de Montfort against the king; now to seize the person of the obnoxious Queen Eleanor, who was trying to escape by water from the Tower to Windsor, and who was rescued from their hands by the Bishop of London, and found refuge in his palace. Now the favourites of Edward II. excited their rage, especially the Bishop of Exeter, the king's regent, who dared to ask the Lord Mayor for the keys of the city, and paid for his temerity with his life. An incident which shows the attachment of the people to their church and bishop occurred in the reign of the third Edward. Wycliffe was summoned by Bishop Courtenay to appear before a great council at St. Paul's. But the reformer did not come alone; to the surprise of his accusers he arrived attended by a large following of friends, among whom were John of Gaunt and Lord Percy. These powerful supporters of Wycliffe attacked the bishop with angry words. News was flashed among the citizens that John of Gaunt had threatened their bishop and vowed to drag him out of the church by the hair. They gathered together in angry crowds, and would have slain the duke and sacked his palace, the Savoy, in the Strand, if the bishop had not interfered on behalf of his enemy. Wycliffe and Lollardism did not then find much favour with the people of London. There were reformers within the Church who were quite as eager to correct abuses as those outside the fold. Among these was Bishop Braybroke of London, who lived in the time of Edward IV. He contended for the sanctity of the sacred building, inveighed against the practice of using it as an exchange, of playing at ball within the precincts or within the church, and of shooting the pigeons which then as now found sanctuary at St. Paul's. The chronicles of the Cathedral tell the story of the troublous times of the Wars of the Roses. We see Henry IV. pretending bitter sorrow for the death of the murdered Richard, and covering with cloths of gold the body, which had been exhibited to the people in St. Paul's. We see Henry V. returning in triumph from the French wars, riding in state to the Cathedral, attended by "the mayor and brethren of the city companies, wearing red gowns with hoods of red and white, well-mounted and gorgeously horsed, with rich collars and great chains, rejoicing at his victorious returne." Then came Henry VI., attended by the bishops, the dean and canons, to make his offering at the altar. Here the false Duke of York took his oath on the Blessed Sacrament to be loyal to the king. Here the rival houses swore to lay aside their differences, and to live at peace. But a few years later saw the new king, Edward IV., at St. Paul's, attended by great Warwick, the king-maker, with his bodyguard of 800 men-at-arms. Strange were the changes of fortune in those days. Soon St. Paul's saw the exhibition of the dead body of the king-maker, and not long afterwards that of the poor dethroned Henry, and Richard came in state here amid the shouts of the populace. After the defeat of the conspiracy of Lambert Simnel, Henry VII. celebrated a joyous thanksgiving in the Cathedral, and here, amid much rejoicing, the youthful marriage of Prince Arthur with Catherine of Arragon took place, when the conduits at Cheapside and on the west of the Cathedral ran with wine, and the bells rang joyfully, and all wished happiness to the Royal children whose wedded life was destined to be so brief. THE REFORMATION AND AFTER At the dawn of the Reformation period we will pause in order to try and realise what kind of scenes took place daily in the great Cathedral, and what vast numbers were employed on the staff. The members of the Cathedral body in the year 1450 included the following:--The Bishop, the Dean, the four Archdeacons, the Treasurer, the Precentor, the Chancellor, thirty greater Canons, twelve lesser Canons, about fifty Chaplains or Chantry-Priests and thirty Vicars. Of inferior rank to these were the Sacrist, the three Vergers, the Succentor, the Master of the Singing School, the Master of the Grammar School, the Almoner and his four Vergers, the Servitors, the Surveyor, the twelve Scribes, the Book Transcriber, the Bookbinder, the Chamberlain, the Rent-collector, the Baker, the Brewer, the Singing-men and Choir Boys, of whom priests were made, the Bedesmen and the poor folk. In addition to these must be added the servants of all these officers--the brewer, who brewed in the year 1286, 67,814 gallons, must have employed a good many; the baker, who ovened every year 40,000 loaves, or every day a 100, large and small; the sextons, grave-diggers, gardeners, bell-ringers, makers and menders of the ecclesiastical robes, cleaners and sweepers, carpenters, masons, painters, carvers and gilders. One can very well understand that the Church of St. Paul alone found a livelihood for thousands. The inventory of church goods belonging to the Cathedral in 1245 exists, and is worth studying. It enumerates sixteen chalices, five of gold and the rest of silver-gilt. A chalice of Greek work had lost its paten, but retained its reed (_calamus_), a relic of the time when the deacon carried the chalice to the people, and each one drank of its hallowed contents through a long narrow pipe, which was usually fastened on a pivot to the bottom of the cup of the chalice. Amongst other curiosities of the inventory are three _poma_, or hollow balls of silver, so contrived as to hold hot water or charcoal embers for the warming of the hands of the celebrant during mass. Of shrines and relics we have already spoken. There were three episcopal staves, and also a precentor staff of ivory with silver-gilt and jewelled enrichments, and a _baculus stultorum_ for use at the profane travesty called the feast of fools. Among the mitres were two for the boy-bishop's use on St. Nicholas Day. There were thirty-seven magnificent copes, and forty-four others, and thirty-four specially fine chasubles. The inventory of 1402 supplies some curious information as to the manner in which the numerous and costly vestments were arranged when not in use. In the treasury, on the west, stood a wardrobe, _armariolum_, in which were twenty-four _perticæ_, pegs, or rods, or frames, from which the copes and chasubles could be suspended, one _pertica_ holding from three to six copes. The vestments were arranged according to colour. Three other wardrobes were also stored with goodly vestments, and there were twenty-six in daily use. The total is 179 copes, fifty-one chasubles and ninety-two tunicles, and the colours were red, purple, black, white, green, yellow, blue, red mixed with blue. We have remarked that St. Paul's was the centre of the social life of the people in olden days, which led to some abuses. Francis Osborn says, "It was the fashion in those days, and did so continue until these, for the principal gentry, lords and courtiers, and men of all professions, to meet in St. Paul's by eleven of the clock, and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six, during which time they discoursed of business, others of news." Shakespeare represents Falstaff in _Henry V._ as having "bought Bardolph in Paul's"; and Dekker thus speaks of the desecration of the sanctuary, "At one time in one and the same rank, yea, foot by foot, elbow by elbow, shall you see walking the knight, the gull, the gallant, the upstart, the gentleman, the clown, the captain, the apple-squire, the lawyer, the usurer, the citizen, the bankrout, the scholar, the beggar, the doctor, the idiot, the ruffian, the cheat, the Puritan, the cut-throat, highman, lowman and thief; of all trades and professions some; of all countries some. Thus while Devotion kneels at her prayers, doth Profanation walk under her nose in contempt of Religion." Here lawyers received their clients; here men sought service; here usurers met their victims, and the tombs and font were mightily convenient for counters for the exchanges of money and the transaction of bargains, and the rattle of gold and silver was constantly heard amidst the loud talking of the crowd. Gallants enter the Cathedral wearing spurs, having just left their steeds at "The Bell and Savage," and are immediately besieged by the choristers, who have the right of demanding spur-money from anyone entering the building wearing spurs. Nor are the fair sex absent, and Paul's Walk was used as a convenient place for assignations. Old plays are full of references to this practice. Later on the nave was nothing but a public thoroughfare, where men tramped carrying baskets of bread and fish, flesh and fruit, vessels of ale, sacks of coal, and even dead mules and horses and other beasts. Hucksters and pedlars sold their wares. Duke Humphrey's tomb was the great meeting-place of all beggars and low rascals, and they euphemistically called their gathering "a dining with Duke Humphrey." Much more could be written of this assembly of all sorts and conditions of men, but we have said enough to show that the Cathedral had suffered greatly from desecration and abuse. Indeed, an old writer in 1561 declared that the burning of the steeple in that year was a judgment for the scenes of profanation which were daily witnessed in old St. Paul's. He writes, "No place has been more abused than Paul's has been, nor more against the receiving of Christ's Gospel; wherefore it is more marvel that God spared it so long, rather than He overthrew it now. From the top of the spire at coronations, or at other solemn triumphs, some for vain glory used to throw themselves down by a rope, and so killed themselves vainly to please other men's eyes," and much more to the same effect. But the strictness of the worthy divine did not altogether cure the evils against which he railed. Eight years later the first great lottery was drawn before the west doors. There were 10,000 lots at ten shillings each, and day and night from January 11 to May 6 the drawing went on. The prizes were pieces of plate, and the profits were devoted to the repair of the havens of England. So profitable was the lottery that another took place here in 1586, the prizes being some valuable armour. At the dawn of the Reformation we see Henry VIII. in all the pomp and glory of mediæval pageantry riding in state to the Cathedral to be adorned with a cap of maintenance and a sword presented to him by the Pope. There was no sign yet of any breach of alliance between the Roman Pontiff and him whom he honoured with the title of "Defender of the Faith." Lollardism in spite of some burnings spread, and the western tower of the Cathedral earned the name of the Lollards' Tower, as several were imprisoned there. Wolsey, the great cardinal, in the height of his prosperity often came to St. Paul's, and very gorgeous were the scenes which took place there, when thanksgiving for the peace between England, France and Spain was celebrated, when Princess Mary was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, and Charles V. proclaimed emperor. But signs of trouble were evident. Bishop Fisher thundered forth invectives against the works of Luther, which were publicly burnt in St. Paul's Churchyard. A few years later there was a burning in the Cathedral of heretical books in the presence of the cardinal, who caused some of Luther's followers to march round the blaze, throw in faggots, and thus to contemplate what a burning of heretics would be like, and be thankful that only their books and not their bodies were condemned to the flames. During this troubled time and in Mary's reign, St. Paul's was often used as a place of trial for heretics, but Paul's Cross was a fruitful breeding place for the principles of the Reformation. Here Latimer, Ridley, Coverdale, Lever, and a host of others used to inveigh against the errors of Rome and deny the authority of the Pope. Here they exhibited the Boxley Rood, with all the tricks whereby it was made to open its eyes and lips, and seem to speak. The crowd looked on, and roared with laughter, seized the miraculous Rood, and broke it in pieces. And then a strange thing happened in the Cathedral. One night all the images, crucifixes and emblems of Popery were pulled down. Terrible havoc was wrought, chalices and chasubles, altars and rich hangings, books and costly vestments, were all seized and sold, and helped to increase that vast heap of spoil which the greedy ministers of Edward VI. gathered from the wasting of the Church's goods. Tombs were pulled down, chantries and chapels devastated, cloisters and chapter-houses removed bodily to Somerset House by Protector Somerset for the building of his new palace, and all was wreckage, spoliation and robbery. Then came the fitful restoration of the "old religion," and many riots ensued, many ears were nailed to the pillory nigh Paul's Cross; many Protestants condemned in the Cathedral to the fires at Smithfield, and many horrors enacted which Englishmen like not to remember. With the coming of Elizabeth more peaceful times ensued, but the Cathedral was in a sorry condition. Desecration reigned within. Then in 1561 the spire caught fire, blazed and fell, destroying parts of the roof. The clergy and citizens soon set to work to repair the damage, but the glory of "old St. Paul's" had departed, and its ruinous condition was the distress of rulers and the despair of the citizens and clergy. Elizabeth often visited the Cathedral, and troubled Dean Nowell by her plainly-spoken criticisms. Felton was hung at the bishop's gates for nailing a Papal bull to the palace doors, which declared the queen to be a heretic and released her subjects from their allegiance. This attempt of the Pope to dethrone the Virgin Queen was not very successful. Some other conspirators suffered for their crimes in the following reign in the precincts, four of the gunpowder conspirators being hung, drawn and quartered before the west doors. Here also Garnet, the Jesuit, shared a like fate. King James attempted to restore the Cathedral, but his efforts came to nothing. Charles I. did something, and from the designs of Inigo Jones built a portico at the west end, and made some other improvements, but the troubles of the Civil War intervened, and the money which had been collected by Archbishop Laud and the generosity of the citizens of London was seized by the Parliament and converted to other and baser uses. THE CIVIL WARS Desolation reigned supreme in the once glorious church when Puritan rage had vented itself on its once hallowed shrines and sacred things. Cromwell's troopers "did after their kind." Whatever beautiful relics of ancient worship reforming zeal had left were doomed to speedy destruction. In the western portico built in the last reign shops were set up for sempstresses and hucksters; Dr. Burgess, a Puritan divine, thundered forth in his conventicle set up in the east of the building; and the rest of the Cathedral was turned into a cavalry barracks. The conduct of the rough soldiers created great scandal. They played games, brawled and drank in the church, prevented people from going through the nave, and caused such grievous complaints, that an order was passed forbidding them to play at ninepins from six o'clock in the morning to nine in the evening. The _Mercurius Eleneticus_ of 1648 waxes scornful over the misdeeds of these rough riders, and scoffs sarcastically: "The saints in Paul's were last week teaching their horses to ride up the great steps that lead to the Quire, where (as they derided) they might perhaps learn to chant an anthem; but one of them fell and broke his leg, and the neck of his rider, which hath spoilt his chanting, for he was buried on Saturday night last, a just judgment of God on such a profane and sacrilegious wretch." The famous Cross in the churchyard, which according to Dugdale, "had been for many ages the most noted and solemn place in this nation for the greatest divines and greatest scholars to preach at, was, with the rest of the crosses about London and Westminster, by further order of the Parliament, pulled down to the ground." AFTER THE GREAT FIRE With the restoration of the monarchy came the restoration of the Cathedral. Dr. Wren, the great architect, was consulted, plans were discussed, Wren prepared himself for the great work, and all was in readiness, when the Great Fire broke out, and completed the ruin which had already begun. It, however, paved the way for the erection of the grand church which will ever be associated with the genius of its great architect. Both the diarists, Pepys and Evelyn, speak of the melancholy spectacle of the great ruin. Pepys laments over the "miserable sight of Paul's church, with all the roof falling, and the body of the nave fallen into St. Faith." And Dryden sings:-- "The daring flames press'd in and saw from far The awful beauties of the sacred quire: But since it was profaned by civil war Heaven thought it fit to have it purged by fire." [Illustration THE WEST FRONT] Evelyn, in his diary, describes his visit to the church before the fire with Dr. Wren, the bishop, dean and several expert workmen. "We went about to survey the general decay of that ancient and venerable church, and to set down in writing the particulars of what was fit to be done. Finding the main building to recede outwards, it was the opinion of Mr. Chickley and Mr. Prat that it had been so built _ab origine_ for an effect in perspective, in regard of the height; but I was, with Dr. Wren, quite of another judgment, and so we entered it: we plumbed the uprights in several places. When we came to the steeple, it was deliberated whether it were not well enough to repair it only on its old foundation, with reservation to the four pillars; ... we persisted that it required a new foundation not only in regard of the necessity, but that the shape of what stood was very mean, and we had a mind to build it with a noble cupola, a form of church-building not as yet known in England, but of wonderful grace...." Then came the Great Fire, so graphically described by Evelyn. He writes: "The stones of Paul's flew like granados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream, and the very pavements glowing with fiery redness, so as no horse or man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopped all the passages, so that no help could be applied." This Great Fire roused again the energy and indomitable spirit of Englishmen. They beheld without alarm the ashes of their houses, and the destruction of their great city. They felt that the eyes of Europe were upon them. A new city was to be built worthy of their nation, worthy of the great centre of the commerce of the world. But to restore St. Paul's was a stupendous work. Some were for rebuilding on the old walls. Pepys describes the ruins: "I stopped at St. Paul's, and then did go into St. Faith's Chapel, and also into the body of the west part of the church; and do see a hideous sight of the walls of the church ready to fall, that I was in fear as long as I was in it; and here I saw the great vaults underneath the body of the church." And again: "Up betimes, and walked to the Temple, and stopped, viewing the Exchange, and Paul's, and St. Faith's, where strange how the very sight of the stones falling from the top of the steeple do make me sea-sick." They began to repair the west end for service against the advice of Wren, and Dean Sancroft was obliged to confess to the architect,-- "What you whispered in my ear at your last coming here is come to pass. Our work at the west end of St. Paul's is fallen about our ears." At last the order was given to take down the walls, clear the ground, and proceed according to the plans of Wren. He was thwarted and distressed by the interference of many. His original design was to build it in the form of a Greek cross, but to this the clergy objected, and a Latin cross was decided upon. In 1674 the workmen began to clear away the old ruins, no light task, but in the end it was accomplished, the first stone of the new Cathedral being laid on June 21, 1675. In October 1694 the choir was finished, and on December 2, 1697, Divine service was performed for the first time in the new edifice. It was a special thanksgiving for the Peace of Ryswick, a peace which settled our Dutch William more securely on the throne of England. His Majesty wished to attend the service, but it was feared that amongst the vast crowds there might be too many Jacobites, and he was persuaded to remain at his palace. Bishop Compton preached a great sermon on the occasion from the text, "I was glad when they said unto me, we will go into the House of the Lord." Thirteen years elapsed before the highest stone of the lantern on the cupola was laid by Wren's son, and the magnificent building was completed by the skill, genius and determination of one man, whose memory deserves to be ever honoured by all Englishmen. The men of his own day did not treat him worthily. During the building of the Cathedral he was beset by all the annoyances jealousy and spite could suggest, and at the end of his long and useful career, by the intrigues of certain German adventurers, he was deprived of his post of Surveyor-General after the death of Queen Anne. He retired to the country, and spent the few remaining years of his life in peaceful seclusion, occasionally giving himself the treat of a journey to London, in order that he might feast his eyes on that great and beautiful church which his skill had raised. His was the first grave sunk in the Cathedral, and it bears the well-known inscription, than which none could be more fitting:-- LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE. THE EXISTING CATHEDRAL--EXTERIOR The new St. Paul's is without doubt the grandest building in London. Perhaps the finest view is obtained from the approach by Ludgate Hill, and the grandeur of its majestic dome is most impressive. The style is English Renaissance. We will begin our survey with the _West Front_, which was erected last, and therefore bears the stamp of Wren's matured genius. There are two storeys. In the lower there is a row of Corinthian columns arranged in pairs, and in the second storey a similar series. On the triangular pediment above is a carving of the Conversion of St. Paul, while a statue of the saint crowns the apex, the other statues representing SS. Peter and James and the four Evangelists. Two towers stand, one on each side of the front, and complete a superb effect. These contain a grand peal of twelve bells, one of which, called Great Paul, fashioned twenty years ago, is one of the largest in the world. Rich marbles, brought from Italy and Greece, adorn the pavement. Proceeding to the _north side_ we note the two-storied construction, the graceful Corinthian pilasters,[3] arranged in pairs, with round-headed windows between them; the entablature; and then, in the second storey, another row of beautiful pilasters of the Composite order. Between these are niches where one would have expected windows; but this storey is simply a screen to hide the flying buttresses supporting the clerestory, as Wren thought them a disfigurement. The walls are finished with a cornice, which Wren was compelled by hostile critics to add, much against his own judgment. There are some excellently-carved festoons of foliage and birds and cherubs, which are well worthy of close observation. The _North_ and _South Fronts_ have Corinthian pillars, which support a semi-circular entablature. Figures of the Apostles adorn the triangular-shaped head and balustrade. The Royal arms appear on the north side, and a Phoenix is the suitable ornament on the south, signifying the resurrection of the building from its ashes. The south side is almost exactly similar to the north. The east end has an apse. The magnificent _Dome_ is composed of an outward and inward shell, and between these there rises a cone-shaped structure which supports the lantern, crowned with its golden ball and cross. The arrangement of this is most complex, and is a witness to the marvellous skill of the architect. Above the row of Composite columns is a gallery, which affords a good view to those who are anxious to climb. Above the actual dome is the Golden Gallery, and then the lantern, roofed with a dome bearing the ball and cross. The whole height is 365 feet. INTERIOR OF THE BUILDING The view on entering the Cathedral at the west is most impressive. The magnitude of the design, the sense of strength and stability, as well as the beauty of the majestic proportions, are very striking. Over the doors we see carvings of St. Paul at Berea. A gallery is over the central doorway, and here is a good modern window. [Illustration The Nave from the Choir] The nave has a large western bay with chapels, three other bays, and a large space beneath the west wall of the dome. It has three storeys, the lofty arches, a storey which in a Gothic church would be termed the triforium, and a clerestory. Grand Corinthian pilasters are attached to the massive piers, with wonderfully-wrought capitals, which support the entablature. The arches spring from smaller pilasters joined to the larger ones. Great arches springing from the triforium piers span the nave, and between these arches are dome-shaped roofs. High up there are festoons of carving. The aisles have three large windows, and Composite pilasters adorn the walls and support the vault. The north chapel at the west end is the Morning Chapel, and is adorned with mosaics and modern glass, in memory of Dean Mansell (1871). The south chapel is called the Consistory, and once held Wellington's monument, to which the marble sculptures refer. Here is an unusual _Font_ of Carrara marble. The _Dome_ is supported by immense and massive masonry. Above the arches a cornice runs round, supporting the _Whispering Gallery_. Then the dome begins to curve inward. Above is a row of windows, set in groups of three, separated by niches recently filled with statues of the Fathers, and then the dome is completed and painted by Sir James Thornhill with scenes from the life of St. Paul. These are too faint and too far distant to be easily observed. The painter nearly lost his life through stepping backward in order to see the effect of his brush, and nearly fell from the scaffold. His companion just saved his life by flinging a brush at the painting, and Thornhill rushed forward to rescue his work, and thus his life was saved. The _Pulpit_ is made of rich marble, and the lectern was made in 1720. The modern _mosaics_ are of unique interest, and add much to the beauty of the Cathedral. To Sir William Richmond the credit of this work is mainly due, and for some of earlier portions to Mr. G.F. Watts, R.A. The _Transepts_ have good windows, representing (north) the twelve founders of English Christianity, and south, the first twelve Christian Saxon kings, and also a window in memory of the recovery from illness of His Majesty Edward VII. when Prince of Wales. [Illustration Woodwork South Choir Aisle] The _Choir_ has some wonderfully-carved stalls by the famous Grinling Gibbons, and these bear the names of the prebendaries attached to the Cathedral, with the parts of the Psalter which each one had to say each day, an arrangement similar to that at Lincoln. The _Reredos_ is a noble example of modern work, and is worthy of close examination. Behind it is the Jesus Chapel, containing a monument of Canon Liddon. The mosaic decorations of the choir are the work of Sir William Richmond, and are worthy of the highest praise. MONUMENTS One feature of St. Paul's especially endears it to us, and that is that there lie all that is mortal of many of our national heroes. Westminster is richer in its many monuments of great poets and writers; but the makers of the Empire and most of our distinguished painters are entombed in the "citizens' church." We can only point out the tombs of the most illustrious. _Nave_ (North Aisle)-- Wellington (d. 1852), the hero of Waterloo. Gordon (d. 1890), slain at Khartoum. Stewart, General (d. 1880), who tried to rescue Gordon. Melbourne, Viscount (1848), Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister. _North Transept_-- Sir Joshua Reynolds (1792), by Flaxman. Rodney, Admiral (1790), the hero of Martinique. Picton (1815), slain at Waterloo. Napier, General (1860), author of _Peninsular War_. Ponsonby, General (1815), killed at Waterloo. Hallam, the historian (1859). Johnson, Samuel (1784). _South Transept_-- Nelson, Admiral. Sir John Moore (1806), killed at Corunna. Turner, Joseph, R.A. (1851), painter. Collingwood, Admiral (1810), Colleague of Nelson. Howe, Admiral (1799), Colleague of Nelson. Howard, John (1790), the prison reformer, the first monument erected. Lawrence, General (1857), killed in Indian Mutiny. Cornwallis, General (1805), fought in American War and in India. _South Choir Aisle_-- Dean Milman (1868). Bloomfield, Bishop (1856). Jackson, Bishop (1885). Heber, Bishop (1826), of Calcutta. Liddon, Canon (1890). [Illustration Johnson's Statue in St. Paul's Cathedral] The _Crypt_ contains the Parish Church of St. Faith, Wellington's funeral car fashioned from captured cannon, and his tomb, Nelson's tomb (the coffin is made from the wood of one of his ships--the tomb is sixteenth-century work and was made for Cardinal Wolsey), the grave of Wren with its famous inscription, and many illustrious painters sleep in the _Painters' Corner_, amongst whom our modern artists Leighton and Millais rest with Reynolds, Lawrence, Landseer and Turner. DIMENSIONS Total length 460 ft. Length of nave 200 ft. Width of nave 100 ft. Height of nave 89 ft. Length of choir 160 ft. Height of cross on dome 363 ft. Height of west towers 222 ft. Area 59,700 sq. ft. Style--English Renaissance. BUILDING DATES Begun June 21, 1675. Cathedral finished 1710. [Illustration PLAN OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTE: [3] A pilaster is a column attached to a wall. WESTMINSTER ABBEY The famous Abbey Church of Westminster, though not a cathedral, must be included in our chronicle of the chief ecclesiastical buildings in this country. It is the coronation church of the sovereigns of England, the final resting-place of many, the national tomb-house of our heroes and great men, as well as a triumph of Gothic architecture of singular beauty and attractiveness. For one brief space at the time of the Reformation there was a Bishop of Westminster, but the see did not long continue, and it is for other reasons that Westminster must find a place in this volume. In early Saxon times a chapel dedicated to St. Peter was built by Siebert in the seventh century on an island rising from the marshy ground bordering the Thames. It was called Thorney, and the eastern portion of the water in St. James's Park is a part of the arm of the Thames which encircled the sanctuary of the monks and the palace of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Here was established by Dunstan a colony of Benedictine monks. In the charters of Edgar (951) the original boundary of Westminster is clearly defined, though this charter is esteemed doubtful by Kemble, and the importance of Westminster gradually increased. Edward the Confessor took a particular interest in the place, and began his building of the Abbey in 1050. On Childermas Day (the Feast of the Holy Innocents) 1065 the choir was finished and consecrated, and on "Twelfth Mass Eve" the king died and was buried here. The Bayeux tapestry depicts the scene of this Royal funeral, and gives a representation of the church. The earlier church still remained as the nave of the new choir. A few fragments of Edward's work remain beneath the pavement of the present choir. The work progressed while William Rufus was building his Royal palace, and at the time of his death the transepts and first bay of the nave were completed, the first conspicuous example of a great Benedictine church in England. Henry I. and Matilda were crowned here with much pomp, and all the monarchs since the time of the Conqueror. Early in the days of Henry III. a new lady chapel was built, and this inspired the artistic soul of the young king, who determined to build an abbey worthy of the honour of God in the best and newest style of architecture. He was a Frenchman in feeling, and had passed many days at the Court of St. Louis. So his new monastic church must be fashioned in the French style; his monks must speak French, and he chose a French model for his architecture, for the plan of his church with its French _chevet_, and for the radiating chapels of the choir. But in spite of this French design our Westminster remains "a great French thought expressed in excellent English"; it is like "one of Chaucer's lays, a sweetly English poem inspired by a French romance," and is the most finished product of the Early English of the first half of the thirteenth century. Its French peculiarities may be seen in the narrowness and height of the bays of the choir, its plan with regard to the radiating chapels, and in the tracery of the windows. The work began in 1245 with the east end, and all the building as far as the fourth bay of the nave was finished in 1269. The noble re-founder was buried in his glorious minster. Edward I. brought here the coronation stone of the Scottish kings, and had it placed in the new throne which he fashioned to enclose it. In the fourteenth century much building was done to perfect the monastery. In the time of Richard II. the reconstruction of the old nave was in progress, and Henry V. took much interest in it. His father died in the Jerusalem Chamber. The building of the nave continued, and the well-known Whittington, "thrice Lord Mayor of London," in 1413 helped forward the work by liberal contributions. The Tudor badges in the vaulting of the last bays show the later character of that portion of the building. Henry VII. built the beautiful and famous chapel at the east end in place of the Lady Chapel built in 1220, which is such a perfect example of the best Perpendicular work. It was finished about 1520. [Illustration DEAN'S YARD, WESTMINSTER, IN 1730] At the dissolution of monasteries Westminster shared the fates of the rest, and the last abbot, Benson, became the first dean, and for a brief space there was a bishop. Protector Somerset turned his greedy eyes upon the noble minster, and was with difficulty induced to refrain from plundering it overmuch. Indeed, he had thoughts of pulling it down, but was propitiated by bribes of some manors and many loads of Caen stone for the building of his new palace, Somerset House. The services were of course changed, and many goodly treasures sold; during the brief reign of Mary the Roman Catholic ritual was restored, and the Confessor's shrine re-erected; but Elizabeth turned out Abbot Ferkenham, and constituted Westminster a collegiate church with a dean and twelve prebendaries. The remains of poor Mary Queen of Scots were brought here by James I. and laid side by side with Queen Elizabeth. Here in the gatehouse Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned. Soon the tumults of the Civil War arose, but Westminster happily escaped the fury of the Puritans. The noted Westminster Assembly was called together in Henry VII.'s Chapel in 1643, for the purpose of "settling the government and liturgy of the Church of England and clearing of the doctrine from false aspersions and interpretations." This Assembly took upon itself to denounce the Book of Common Prayer and to substitute the Directory for Public Worship. Many restorations of the fabric have taken place since the Restoration of the monarchy. Sir Christopher Wren was a wonderful architect, but he was scarcely the man to tamper with an ancient and beautiful Gothic building. He set to work to rebuild the western towers, which were finished after his death in 1739. New stone-work has been erected in place of the old in most of the exterior of the Abbey, and Sir Gilbert Scott and Mr. Pearson were responsible for the restoration of the north front of the north transept. The complete story of the Abbey of Westminster would tell of all the pageants and coronation festivals which have taken place therein, to which another has just been added when King Edward VII. and his queen were crowned; it would tell of the last solemn rites of monarchs and great men, poets, sages and generals who sleep within the hallowed precincts. But the story must be left to others, and we will now examine the details of this ancient pile which is so closely connected with all the chief events in English history. THE EXTERIOR The _West Front_ is flanked by two towers 225 feet high, built by Wren, and finished by his pupil, Hawksmoor, about 1740. In the centre of the front is the great Perpendicular window, beneath which is a row of niches. The entrance porch has a groined roof. The nave is remarkable for its length and height. On the north side we notice that there is a wealth of buttresses. Strong buttresses support the aisle walls, and from these flying buttresses stretch across to the walls built on the central arcade. The four eastern buttresses comprise the part of the church finished by Henry III.; the rest of the nave, with the exception of Wren's towers, was built during the last half of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. The figures in the niches are modern. [Illustration THE NORTH FRONT] The _North Front_ is new, designed by Sir G. Scott and Mr. Pearson. It is very elaborate work, and much of it is beautiful, but it does not seem to harmonise with the rest of the building. There is a large rose window; on each side tall buttresses crowned with turrets and covered with niches. There is an arcade of open work below, and then some deeply-recessed Early English windows, and below three doorways under one string-course, the centre one having a high gable. This door is divided by a pier having a finely-carved figure of the Virgin and Child. The tympanum is divided into three panels. In the highest is Our Lord in glory surrounded by angels, and below Him are the Twelve Apostles, while in the lowest tier are figures representing Art, History, Philosophy, War, Legislation and Science, with the builders of the Abbey, Edward the Confessor, Henry III. and Richard II. The niches are filled with figures of persons in some way connected with the Abbey. The _Choir_ is in the form of an apse, with radiating chapels, planned on the model of the French _chevet_, according to the taste of Henry III., which he had cultivated during his sojourn in France. The _Lady Chapel_ at the east end, commonly called Henry VII.'s Chapel, is one of the noblest examples of the best Perpendicular work in the kingdom, and ranks with St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and King's College, Cambridge. The monastic buildings are on the south side of the Abbey, and will be approached from the interior. THE INTERIOR The view of the interior is very impressive. Standing at the west end of the nave we cannot fail to admire the magnificent beauty of this noble shrine. This _Nave_ of twelve bays, with its clustered columns, its beautiful triforium, and its lofty and firmly-proportioned roof, soaring to the height of 101 feet, is very striking. A close inspection will show the difference between the piers of the portion finished by Henry III. and the newer work of the fourteenth century. The tracery of the triforium openings is very fine. The _Choir-Screen_, which crosses the nave at the eighth pier, is modern, and also the pulpit. The west window is Perpendicular, and has some Georgian glass containing figures of the Patriarchs. Much architectural beauty has been sacrificed for the sake of ponderous monuments, but many of these have much interest, and for many visitors will prove the most attractive features of the Abbey. A list of the most important monuments will be found at the close of our account of the Abbey. The north-west tower contains the monuments of distinguished members of the Whig party, and has in the window some ancient glass. The south-west tower was formerly the Baptistery. The architecture of the aisles has suffered much from the erection of stupendous monuments. The gallery at the west of the south aisle was erected at the same time as Henry VII.'s Chapel by Abbot Islip, and is known as the _Abbot's Pew_. The door at the east end is Late Early English. The _South Transept_ is known as the _Poets' Corner_, on account of the memorials of the votaries of the muses which stand here. The architecture is of very beautiful design in the style of Early English, when it was merging into Early Decorated. In the south wall is the entrance to the Chapel of St. Faith, the door of which was once covered with the skins of Danes. Two tiers of trefoiled arches are above this, and higher still the triforium, the spandrels of the arches being enriched with sculpture. There is no west aisle. Chaucer's tomb will attract most visitors. In the chapel are some ancient paintings of the Crucifixion, St. Faith, and a kneeling monk. The _Choir_, which has been the scene of so many solemn and memorable services, has no ancient woodwork. The stalls were erected about the middle of the last century. The altar and reredos are modern. There are some large figures, and a mosaic of the Last Supper. Here the coronations of our monarchs take place. The pavement is interesting, as it was brought from Rome by Abbot Ware in 1268, and beneath it he rests with other abbots of Westminster. The sedilia are thirteenth-century work, and were decorated with paintings. The figures of King Siebert, the first founder, and of Henry III., the munificent re-founder, remain. Above the base of the tomb of Anne of Cleves, one of Henry VIII.'s many wives, is a remarkable painting of Richard II., and behind it some ancient tapestry. A record of the interesting tombs here will be found later. _Edward the Confessor's Chapel_ is a mausoleum of Royal personages, wherein our monarchs have been laid to rest, a portion of the building which always possesses a solemn and pathetic interest. Here is the shrine of the "miracle worker," the pious but weak last Saxon king, St. Edward. It was fashioned in 1269 by order of Henry III., the artificer being one Peter, a Roman citizen. The style of the oldest part, the base of the shrine, is of a Byzantine character. The upper part was probably made by Abbot Feckenham in Mary's reign, in imitation of that which was destroyed in Reformation times. It is difficult to imagine what must have been the splendour of this wondrous shrine when it was adorned with gold and gems, ere the greedy commissioners of Henry VIII. despoiled it of its treasures. Henry III., Eleanor of Castile, in whose honour her loving husband, Edward I., raised the Eleanor crosses wherever her body rested on its last journey to the Abbey, Edward I., and other monarchs rest here. _Henry V.'s Chantry_ is a splendid piece of ornate Perpendicular work, with elaborate sculptured figures representing St. George, St. Denys, and the story of the hero's life, his fights, his coronation, his court. The effigy has been much mutilated. Above the tomb is the monarch's achievement, his shield, saddle and helmet, which were borne in his funeral procession. The coronation chairs have especial interest at this time, especially the famous throne of Edward I., which has under the seat the coronation stone of Scone, brought by him from Scotland. Legends tell us that this stone was the veritable stone used by Jacob as a pillow when he dreamt that wondrous dream at Bethel. There is also the throne of William and Mary, and Edward III.'s sword and shield. [Illustration Poets' Corner Westminster Abbey] In the _South Ambulatory_ are three chapels, dedicated to SS. Benedict, Edmund and Nicholas, all of which have interesting monuments which will be noticed later. We now enter _Henry VII.'s Chapel_, the most perfect example of the Perpendicular style at its best in the country. At the entrance are beautiful bronze doors covered with designs symbolical of the titles of the Royal founder. It is impossible to describe in words the richness and beauty of the interior of this noble chapel. Washington Irving wrote: "The very walls are wrought into universal ornament, encrusted with tracery and scooped into niches, crowded with statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb." The vault is very beautiful with fan-tracery. The banners of the Knights of the Order of the Bath hang over their stalls. The misereres are wonderfully carved, and are worthy of close examination. The black marble tomb of the founder is considered to be the best example of the Renaissance style in England. It was fashioned by Torregiano. Very numerous monuments are found here, which will be described later. The tombs of Mary Queen of Scots and of Queen Elizabeth have especial interest. Oliver Cromwell's body once lay in the most eastern chapel, but the Royalists at the Restoration wrought vengeance on his corpse, and on that of other regicides, and did not suffer them to remain in these hallowed precincts. Returning we traverse the _North Ambulatory_, from which open the Chapels of SS. Paul, John Baptist, Erasmus and Abbot Islip. St. Erasmus was a Bishop of Campania, martyred in the time of the Diocletian persecution. His chapel has a fine, Late Decorated doorway. Abbot Islip died in 1532, and had previously adorned this chapel for his tomb, of which only the base remains. A curious eye will discern his rebus. In the upper chapel are preserved some remarkable wax effigies of deceased monarchs and others, which were used in ancient times in funeral processions. Charles II., Elizabeth, William and Mary, Anne, Duchess of Richmond, General Monk, and a few others have survived the wreck of time. The _North Transept_ resembles the south and is remarkable for its noble architecture. It is part of Henry III.'s construction. The carving is rich and beautiful, especially the famous sculptures of the _censing angels_, which are best seen from the triforium. On the east are the three Chapels of SS. John the Evangelist, Michael and Andrew, which are now filled with monuments. We will now visit the _monastic buildings_, which may be entered from the south aisle of the nave. The east walk of the cloisters was finished in 1345, and the south and west walks a few years later under the rule of Abbot Litlington. The north walk is a century earlier. From the east walk we enter the _Chapter-House_. The doorway is remarkably fine, with its sculptured figures in the mouldings. This is one of the finest and largest chapter-houses in England, and was built by Henry III. in 1250. Its plan is octagonal. There is a central, slender, clustered shaft from which the vaulting springs. This vault is a restoration. The windows have beautiful tracery, and are filled with modern glass. The old paintings representing the Second Advent are very interesting. This room has been devoted to many uses. Here the House of Lords used to meet, and here the Records were once kept. The Chapel of the Pyx, a fine Early Norman structure, where "the trial of the Pyx" took place, is not open to the public. Above this and the vestibule was the dormitory, now the library and schoolroom of the famous Westminster School founded by Henry VIII. The cloisters have many monuments. On the south-east lies the little cloister formerly the infirmary, approached by a passage from the east cloister. The refectory was on the south side of the cloister-court, and on the west was the abbot's house, now the Deanery. Permission should be obtained to see the famous _Jerusalem Chamber_, probably so called from the tapestry which once hung here. Here Henry IV. died, which fact Shakespeare mentions in his play, _Henry IV._, and many other historical scenes have these walls witnessed. [Illustration HENRY V.'S CHANTRY] KINGS BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY Siebert, King of the East Saxons. Edward the Confessor. Henry III. Edward I. Edward III. Richard II. Henry V. Edward V. Henry VII. Edward VI. James I. Charles II. William III. George II. LIST OF MONUMENTS _St. Edward's Chapel, or the Chapel of the Kings_-- Edward the Confessor. Henry III. Henry V. Edward III. Edward I. Eleanor of Castile. Queen Philippa. Richard II. and Queen. Queen Editha and Queen Matilda (good Queen Maud) are buried here. _Henry VII.'s Chapel_-- Mary Queen of Scots. Queens Elizabeth and Mary. Henry VII. and his Queen. James I. No monument. In the "Stuart Vault" are buried-- Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and Prince Rupert. Lady Arabella Stuart, Anne Hyde, and several Royal children. In the "Royal Vault" are buried-- Charles II. Queen Mary II. William III. Queen Anne. Prince George of Denmark. Under the Nave of the Chapel are buried-- George II. and Caroline of Anspach. Edward VI. The old altar by Torregiano under which he was laid has been of late years restored. In "Oliver's Vault" were originally buried-- _Cromwell_, and other leaders of the Commonwealth; the only body that has remained undisturbed is that of the Protector's daughter, Elizabeth Claypole. A small sarcophagus contains the bones supposed to be those of Edward V. and the Duke of York. In this Chapel are also buried-- Addison, to whom a statue was raised in 1809 in the _Poets' Corner_. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, an immense tomb. _Nave and Choir_-- Charles James Fox. Henry Fox, Lord Holland. Major-General Charles George Gordon, bronze bust. William Pitt. William Wordsworth, seated statue. } John Keble, bust. } Frederick D. Maurice, bust. } Baptistery. Charles Kingsley, bust. } Matthew Arnold, bust. } Dr. T. Arnold, bust. } William Congreve. Major John André. Charles Robert Darwin, medallion portrait. (Sir John Herschell, buried next to Darwin). Ben Jonson (buried here--monument in Poets' Corner). Sir Charles Lyell, bust. Sir Isaac Newton. Buried here are-- David Livingstone, } Robert Stephenson, } without monument. Dean Trench, } Sir George Gilbert Scott, } Lord Lawrence, bust. Sir James Outram (a bas-relief of Relief of Lucknow). Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde. Dr. Isaac Watts. John and Charles Wesley (buried elsewhere). Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Sir Godfrey Kneller, the only painter commemorated in the Abbey. William Wilberforce, seated figure. Henry Purcell, tablet. (Sir William Sterndale Bennett buried here.) [Illustration INTERIOR FROM CHAPEL OF ST. JOHN] _North Transept_-- William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Viscount Palmerston, statue. Sir Robert Peel, statue. Lord Beaconsfield, statue. Gladstone (no monument yet erected). Warren Hastings (buried elsewhere). Richard Cobden, bust (buried elsewhere). _Poets' Corner_-- John Dryden, bust. H. Wadsworth Longfellow, bust. Abraham Cowley. Geoffrey Chaucer. Lord Tennyson, bust. Robert Browning (no monument). Michael Drayton. Ben Jonson, monument bears same inscription as stone above grave. Edmund Spenser. Samuel Butler (buried elsewhere). John Milton. Thomas Gray (buried elsewhere). Matthew Prior. Thomas Campbell. Robert Southey (buried elsewhere), bust. S. Taylor Coleridge (buried elsewhere), bust. William Shakespeare. Robert Burns (buried elsewhere), bust. James Thomson (buried elsewhere). John Gay (buried?). Oliver Goldsmith, medallion (buried elsewhere). Sir W. Scott, replica of bust at Abbotsford. John Ruskin, medallion. George Frederick Handel, statue. Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, portrait head. W. Makepeace Thackeray (buried elsewhere), bust. Joseph Addison (buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel). Lord Macaulay, bust. William Camden. David Garrick, full-length figure. Among those buried here without monuments are-- Sir John and Francis Beaumont. Sir John Denham. Dr. Samuel Johnson (monument at St. Paul's). Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Charles Dickens. Sir William Davenant. Richard Hakluyt. Thomas Parr. Queen Anne, Richard III.'s wife, is believed to be lying here. Monuments to Dr. Busby and Dr. Robert South. Portion of tomb of Anne of Cleves. Within the rails of the Choir are three old tombs-- Aveline, Countess of Lancaster, married to Henry III.'s son, Edmund Crouchback. Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, cousin to Edward I., employed as general in wars in Scotland. Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster. _South Ambulatory_-- Supposed tomb of King Siebert. _Chapel of St. Edmund_-- William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke (father of above), half-brother to Henry III. This is the only existing example in England of an effigy in Limoges enamel work. Lord Lytton, black marble slab. _North Ambulatory_-- General James Wolfe. _Chapel of St. Paul_-- James Watt, statue. _Islip Chapel_-- Remains of Islip's tomb form a table by the window. _St. John's Chapel_-- Sir John Franklin. _St. Andrew's Chapel_-- Sir Humphrey Davy (buried elsewhere), tablet. Mrs. Siddons, statue. John Kemble, statue. Among those who are buried in the Cloisters are-- Thomas Betterton, actor. Mrs. Bracegirdle, actress. Aphra Behu. Samuel Foote. A tablet in the Cloisters has been put up in memory of seven of the Queen's Westminster Volunteers killed in South Africa, 1900. Monument to Dean Stanley (Henry VII.'s Chapel). Archbishop Tait, bust (Poets' Corner). Window commemorative of-- George Herbert. William Cowper. DIMENSIONS Length of nave 166 ft. Breadth of nave 38 ft. Breadth of nave and aisles 71 ft. Height of nave and choir 101 ft. Length of choir 155 ft. Breadth of choir 38 ft. Length of whole church 511 ft. Height of central tower 151 ft. Height of west towers 225 ft. Area 46,000 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES 1050-1100--Fragments beneath pavement of choir, Chapel of the Pyx. 1245-1269--Choir and four eastern bays of nave, transepts, chapter-house, and north and part of east walk of cloister. 1330-1350--Cloisters, south and west walks. 1350-1512--West parts of nave, Henry VII.'s Chapel, abbot's pew, Henry V.'s Chantry, Jerusalem Chamber. 1739-1741--West front. Modern--North front of north transept. [Illustration PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY] ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL The city of Rochester has a distinguished past. It lies on the great high road to London, the Old Watling Street. Hence, all the great and Royal visitors passed through Rochester, and few events of historical importance which occurred in the Kentish corner of England were unconnected with this city. It was a Roman station. The Saxons called it _Hvof-Cæstre_. Ethelbert founded the Cathedral here in 604, and this first raised it to importance. Athelstan established a mint here, and at the beginning of the tenth century it was one of the principal ports of the kingdom. This was the cause of its undoing, as the Danes found it a convenient landing-place, and pillaged and ravaged the city. A Norman castle was built by Bishop Gundulf, of whom we shall hear more later. This fortress, of which there are extensive remains, has been frequently besieged. It was granted by the Conqueror to Odo, Bishop of Bayeaux, who was faithless to William and was besieged in this castle. Again, King John and Simon de Montfort, and Wat Tyler, all tried the strength of this mighty fortress. Many scenes of mediæval pageantry took place here. In the time of Henry III. a grand tournament was held here, and gay was the city with the presence of contending knights and squires and all the pomp of ancient chivalry. It were vain to name all the Royal visitors who have sojourned here. Here at the Restoration came the "Merry Monarch," and here, when the fortunes of the Stuarts were very low, came James II. in his secret flight, and embarked from Rochester on his fatal journey to France. The story of the city is full of interest; but its Cathedral was the primary cause of its greatness, and thither we must wend our way, and try to read its history. The see was founded by Ethelbert at the instigation of Augustine in 604, Justus, one of the followers of the Apostle of the English, being its first bishop. He was the builder of the earliest church, some foundations of which have been recently discovered. Here the great missionary of the north, Paulinus, came, the Apostle of the North of England, having been driven away from Northumbria, and was bishop here till 644, when Ithamar succeeded, the first native bishop of the English Church. The church was dedicated to St. Andrew. Danish invasions caused much destruction. Siward, formerly Abbot of Abingdon, was the last Saxon prelate who preserved his see when the Conqueror came. But the chroniclers tell of the miserable condition of the church, "wretched and empty, destitute of all things within and without." In 1076 came Gundulf of Bec to preside over the fortunes of the harassed see, and he wrought vast changes. He introduced Benedictine monks, who replaced the secular canons, rebuilt the Cathedral, and, not content with that, erected a castle here, and built parts of Dover Castle and the Tower of London. Soon after his death Ernulf, whose work at Canterbury we shall see, became bishop here, and carried on his great building operations, erecting the dormitory, chapter-house and refectory. In 1130, in a grand assembly of bishops, nobles, and in the presence of the king, Henry I., the Cathedral was consecrated. As with many other cathedrals, fire wrought havoc in the sacred fane, especially in 1138 and 1177. The later Norman builders added much to the perfection of the church, carving the capitals of piers of the nave, recasing them, and building the west front, which Gundulf does not seem to have accomplished. After the fires the building was renewed, especially in the monks' quarters, which had suffered much. Another great misfortune was the plundering and devastation of the church by King John after his capture of the castle; but happily an event occurred which helped to fill the treasury of the monks, and enabled them to adorn their minster. One William of Perth, a baker by trade, who was of a pious mind, undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but was killed by robbers near Chatham, and buried here. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his tomb; the fame thereof spread; and crowds of pilgrims began to frequent St. William's shrine, and bring costly offerings. William de Hoo was sacrist and prior at the beginning of the thirteenth century, a most active builder, who rebuilt the choir and aisles, using much of the old Norman work. This choir was used for the first time in 1227. Another great builder was Richard de Eastgate, sacrist, who constructed a new west transept, and began the construction of the central tower. His work was continued, and before the century was completed there was a new south transept, and the piers finished for bearing the tower. [Illustration Rochester Cathedral] Bishop Glanville (1185-1214) was much hated by the monks, and continuous disputing arose. "He came from Northumbria," says a monk, "and is a proof of the saying that out of the north proceedeth all evil." In 1264 Simon de Montfort and the barons besieged Rochester, and on Good Friday "the satellites of the devil entered the Church of St. Andrew with their drawn swords, and, striking fear and horror into its children and those also who had taken refuge in it, crucified them together with the Lord, Who suffereth in His elect. Moreover, they plundered the gold and silver and precious things. Some of the monks they imprisoned all the night, and armed men on their horses rode about the altars, and dragged thence with impious hands certain persons who had fled to them. The holy places--the chapels, cloisters, chapter-house, infirmary--were made stalls for their horses, and filled with filth and uncleanness." Walter de Merton was bishop here in 1274-1278. He was the noble founder of Merton College, Oxford, and from his rules which he framed for his institution it is evident that he liked not monks. At one time it seems to have been the intention of the builders to pull down the nave and rebuild it in Gothic style, but in the fourteenth century the monks seem to have given up the idea, and joined the new work with the Norman. The affairs of the monastery did not always go very smoothly. We have noticed some disputes between the bishop and the monks, and in the fourteenth century there were endless quarrels between the monks and the citizens. The latter had the altar of St. Nicholas in the body of the nave near the screen for their use. Their access to it the monks tried to control, and scenes of violence resulted. So the monks encircled the precincts with a wall, and enclosed the choir with strong gates and screens, and subsequently built a church for the parishioners. Bishop Haymo de Hythe (1319-1352) contributed large sums to the restoration of his Cathedral. He built the central tower and raised a campanile, in which he placed four bells, named Dunstan, Paulinus, Ithamar and Lanfranc. He also built the door leading to the chapter-house. Several alterations were made in Perpendicular times, new windows inserted, and the Lady Chapel built in the unusual position on south of the nave, and the fabric of the Cathedral finished. At the dissolution of monasteries the monks were turned adrift, and the New Foundation called into being, consisting of a dean, prebendaries, minor canons, choristers, together with a grammar school. At the Civil War the Cathedral fared better than many. The soldiers changed the position of the altar and broke the rails, and profaned the church by using it as a stable and a tippling place, while saw-pits were made here, and carpenters plied their trade. At the Restoration all churchmen set about repairing their cathedrals, and the citizens of Rochester lagged not behind. Much money was spent on the fabric, and many repairs effected. In the eighteenth century Sloane was the architect who rebuilt the steeple. Very extensive alterations were made at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the direction of Cottingham, which were drastic, and Sir G. Scott and Mr. Pearson have both been at work on the Cathedral, whose restorations we will examine when we inspect the Cathedral. The Bishopric of Rochester since the Reformation has been occupied by several remarkable men. Bishop Fisher, a learned, brave and saintly man, was doomed to death on the scaffold by Henry VIII. (1535), and Barlow, Buckeridge, Warner and Atterbury were all men who achieved fame in their times. THE EXTERIOR The best view can be obtained from the castle. The _West Front_ is a fine example of Norman work, with the exception of the large Perpendicular window, and the modern imitation of Norman work. It is a mistake for architects to destroy the accretions of centuries, and to substitute a reproduction of what they imagine to have been the original design. Mr. Pearson had the audacity to take down the fifteenth-century north turret, and to erect a bran-new Norman turret in its place. The front, as we see it, consists of a centre flanked by turrets, and two wings, which form the ends of the aisles. First we notice the beautiful west door, which is one of the finest Norman doorways in the kingdom. It has five orders, and is of elaborate design and profusely adorned with mouldings, the capitals being richly carved. On the fourth shaft on each side are two curious figures, supposed to represent Henry I. and his queen. In the tympanum is the Saviour, with angels and the evangelistic emblems, and below small mutilated figures of the Apostles. The old doors were said to have been covered with the skins of Danes, but these have disappeared, and the new ones have no trace of the epidermis of our destructive visitors. The great west window was inserted about 1470. Rows of Norman arcading adorn the front. Two modern statues of Bishops Gundulf and John have been placed in the niches on each side of the doorway. The turrets are octagonal, that on the west being modern, and built by Mr. Pearson on the model of that on the south, in place of a Perpendicular one erected at the same time as the window. The north tower has been quite recently erected in imitation of the ancient design, and the south tower raised to its original height. The _Nave_ is for the most part Norman. The clerestory is Perpendicular, also the windows in the north aisle. The _North Transept_ is Early English, but has been re-roofed at a much higher pitch by Sir G. Scott, who added the pinnacles and circular windows. On the east of this is _Gundulf's Tower_, built by the founder of the Norman church and probably intended for purposes of defence, and as a treasury. It seems that the only entrance to it was from the top, a bridge connecting it with a staircase in the neighbouring transept. It was afterwards used as a belfry. The north side of the choir shows its Early English character, and the presence of the dog-tooth ornament bespeaks its style. There is, however, much modern work. The high gables that call loudly for corresponding roofs were built by Scott, and perhaps some generous visitor will be willing to grant their silent appeal. The south side of the presbytery adjoins the chapter-house and library, built in the eighteenth century in place of the noble Norman chapter-house, the ruins of which still remain. The monastic buildings stood in an unusual position on the south side of the choir, and were mainly constructed by Ernulf. Gundulf's cloisters were on the south of the nave in the usual place for a Benedictine abbey, but these have entirely disappeared. In the ruins of Ernulf's monastic buildings there is much fine Norman work, zigzag and billet mouldings, his favourite diaper which is found at Canterbury, and a curious carving of the sacrifice of Isaac. Parts of the wall of the dormitory and the refectory, with a lavatory, remain. The south side of the choir and the choir transept were much restored by Cottingham in 1825. A fine Decorated window has been inserted in the south wall of the choir transept aisle. The _South Transept_ is Late Early English work. On its west side is the Lady Chapel, erected in the Perpendicular style about 1500. The lower part of the central tower, which is hardly worthy of the Cathedral, was built by Bishop Haymo de Hythe (1319-1352); all above the roof was erected by Cottingham in the restoration of 1825. The remains of the old wall which surrounded the precincts are still in existence. The Prior's Gate was built about the middle of the fourteenth century; and the other remaining gates are College Gate, and the Deanery Gate, both of which belong to the time of Edward IV. THE INTERIOR We enter the _Nave_ by the beautiful west doorway and are at once impressed by the fine Norman character of the building. Much of it is the work of Gundulf, the first Norman bishop, the companion of Lanfranc, who fashioned his rising church after the model of Canterbury, and has thus left us a copy of the appearance of that church ere it was refashioned by later builders. The two eastern bays are Early Decorated. The clerestory is Perpendicular work, and the flat timber roof was erected at the same time. The later Norman builders, Bishops Ernulf and John (1115-1137), greatly improved the appearance of Gundulf's nave. They finished the west end, recased the piers, and carved the zigzag mouldings and the capitals, and seem to have added a new triforium or enriched the old arcade with diaper work. There is no triforium gallery, as it opens both into the aisles as well as into the nave. The fine interior of the west doorway will be noticed, and also another Norman doorway in the south-west corner. The windows in the north aisle are Perpendicular. The font is modern, and also the pulpit, stalls and lectern. On the south of the south aisle is the Late Perpendicular Chapel of St. Mary, usually called the Lady Chapel. It was restored in 1852. Here the consistory court used to meet. It is now used as a chapel for the grammar school. The _South Transept_ is of later date than the corresponding north transept; its style is Late Early English, when the style was merging into Early Decorated. The architect was Richard de Waldene, sacrist. Above in the south wall there are five single-light windows, and below three double windows, and the extensive use of Purbeck marble in the shafts will be noticed. Banded shafts of marble cluster around the great tower-piers. Cottingham erected the present ceiling in 1840. It will be noticed that the Purbeck marble shafts on the two western tower-piers stop some distance from the ground, and a block of intrusive masonry obtrudes itself on the west of the northern one. Various conjectures have been made concerning the object of this. Possibly it formed part of a stone rood loft, or served as a buttress to the arch. The _North Transept_ is Early English, the work of Richard de Eastgate, sacrist. The dog-tooth ornament is seen in the clerestory. The carved corbels, representing monastic heads, are finely executed. In the recess on the east side there is a piscina which marks the site of an altar. The _Monuments_ in the nave and transepts are not important. That of Richard Watts in the south transept is worthy of notice. He entertained Queen Elizabeth at his house called Satis,[4] and erected a hostel for six poor travellers, "not being rogues or proctors," which in later times has been immortalised by Charles Dickens, as a tablet sets forth. Near it is the monument of Sir Richard Head, who sheltered the fugitive monarch James II. when he fled from his kingdom. The glass is all modern. The _Choir Screen_ has been restored in memory of Dean Scott, who, with Dean Liddell of Christ Church, Oxford, compiled the well-known Greek Lexicon. The doorway is ancient Decorated work; the figures are (beginning on the north side) St. Andrew, Ethelbert, St. Justus, St. Paulinus, Gundulf, William de Hoo, Walter de Merton, Bishop Fisher, all of whom were connected with the See of Rochester. As at Canterbury, we ascend several steps to gain the choir, rendered necessary by the height of the crypt below. All the work before us in the choir is Early English, but fashioned on the old Norman walls. It was finished sufficiently for use in 1227, in the year of the accession of Henry de Sandford to the bishopric, and is the work of William de Hoo. The choir aisles are separated from the choir by stone walls. Shafts of Purbeck marble support the vault. Some of the brackets of Early English foliage which support the shafts are beautifully carved. Some of the windows in the presbytery and south choir transept are later insertions, and are Decorated. Sir G. Scott wrought drastic changes here, and substituted two tiers of lancets instead of a large east window, brought the altar away from the extreme east end and designed a new reredos. He made new stalls, using much of the old woodwork. Some fine old fourteenth-century painting he discovered behind the old stalls, which he carefully reproduced, and designed a new throne, pulpit and reredos. Amidst so much that is new and beautiful in its way, it is pleasant to discover some ancient work. The sedilia are Perpendicular, and an Early English piscina and aumbry are observable behind the altar. There is a curious and interesting mural painting on the north wall representing the _Wheel of Fortune_, which is probably a thirteenth-century production. The _North Choir Transept_ (Early English) contains the tomb of St. William, to whom we have already referred, and whose shrine brought much gain to the treasury. The tomb is of Purbeck marble, with a floriated cross. A flat stone marked with six crosses in the centre of the transept is said to be the site of the shrine. The steps leading to this transept from the north choir aisle are much worn by the feet of pilgrims. Here is also the tomb of Walter de Merton (1274-1277) of Early Decorated design, the founder of Merton College, Oxford. The slab is modern; an alabaster effigy made in 1598 now is placed in the adjoining recess. Here is also the tomb of Bishop Lowe (1467). In the aisle (St. John Baptist's Chapel), are tombs of Bishop Warner (1666), the founder of the college for widows at Bromley, who occupied the see during the Commonwealth period; of Bishop John de Sheppey (1360), the sculpture of which is worthy of the highest praise. It was long hidden away in the wall, and remained so for centuries, until the restorations of 1825 brought it to light.[5] Here also is a very ancient statue said to be the figure of Gundulf. In the chancel or sacrarium are the tombs of Bishop Gilbert de Glanville (1214), a shrine-shaped monument with medallions containing mitred heads; Bishop Lawrence de St. Martin (1274), of Early Decorated design; at extreme east, Sir W. Arundel (1400) and his lady; and on the south side the supposed coffin of Bishop Gundulf; Bishop Inglethorp (1291), a thirteenth-century coffin, and another in the south choir transept (name unknown). The glass in this part of the church is all modern. The _doorway into the Chapter-House_ is one of the great glories of the Cathedral. It is Late Decorated work, and was probably erected during the episcopate of Haymo de Hythe (1319-1352). Cottingham restored it in 1830, and made the left-hand figure into a grave and reverend bishop holding a model of a cathedral and a crozier. It is probably correct that in a more recent restoration the figure should have been made into that of a female. It is meant to signify the Christian Church, just as the right-hand figure represents the Jewish Church, blindfolded, and leaning on a broken reed and holding a reversed table of the Law. The two seated figures on the right and left sides represent the four doctors--SS. Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose and Gregory, while above appear angels who have rescued a pure soul from purgatorial fires. The crocketed ogee arch and the diaper work above are worthy of attention; the door is modern. The _Chapter-House and Library_ occupy a room which is a modern addition. The library has some treasures, amongst which may be mentioned _Textus Roffensis_, a collection of records, gifts and privileges of the Cathedral, compiled under the direction of Bishop Ernulf (1115-1124). It has passed through many perils, having been stolen, restored, borrowed, lost in the Thames, recovered, and we trust its dangers are now over. _Custumale Roffense_, another valuable MS. of the thirteenth century, a great collection of _Bibles_, including Coverdale's, Cranmer's or the Great Bible, and the Bishops' Bible. Above the choir transepts are two chambers called the Treasury, where the church plate is kept, and the Indulgence Chamber. Following the course of the pilgrims, we proceed down the flight of steps to the south choir aisle, or Chapel of St. Edmund. There is the mutilated tomb of Bishop John de Bradfield (1278-1283). Following the second flight of steps we come to the _Crypt_, which extends under the whole choir and is one of the most perfect in the kingdom. The western part is Early Norman, and has massive piers and cushion capitals. The rest is Early English. The altars in the crypt were numerous, and traces of them remain, as shown by the piscinas. The crypt was extensively decorated with mural paintings, and some traces of them may still be seen. DIMENSIONS Total length, 306 ft.; length of nave, 126 ft.; width of nave, 65 ft.; length of choir, 147 ft.; length of west transept, 120 ft.; length of east transept, 88 ft.; height of tower, 156 ft.; height of vault, 55 ft.; area, 23,300 sq. ft. DESCRIPTION OF ARCHITECTURE Norman--Most of the nave and part of crypt and old chapter-house. Early English--The choir and transepts. Decorated--Chapter door and some windows at east end. Perpendicular--Clerestory of the nave, west window, Lady Chapel. Modern--Tower, chapter-house and library, roof of west transept and north-west tower. FOOTNOTES: [4] When the queen was departing he apologised for his poor entertainment, but she replied "_Satis_" ("sufficient"), from which august reply Watts named his house. [5] Authorities differ as to whether the colouring is ancient or modern. Mr. Palmer, in his recent and valuable history of the Cathedral, pronounces in favour of the latter; but Mr. St. John Hope considers it to be ancient. CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL In the minds of readers of English history Canterbury must always rank first amongst our cathedrals on account of the wealth of historical associations connected with it. The story of Canterbury is the story of England, and every record of our annals abounds with allusions to it, or to the distinguished prelates connected with it. It is the metropolitan church of the southern province, and is regarded with veneration as the Mother Church not only of England, but of all the churches in America and the colonies of the British Empire. There was probably a Roman or Romano-British church here; when Augustine converted King Ethelbert to Christianity the monarch gave him his palace together with an old church which stood near it. This was on part of the site of the present Cathedral. We need not record again the tangled story of the conversion of the English, or the names of all the successors of Augustine. The first seven were buried in the Monastery of St. Augustine, now St. Augustine's College, Archbishop Cuthbert (d. 758) being the first to be interred in his own Cathedral. Archbishop Odo (942-959) known as "the Severe" on account of his endeavour to restore discipline among the clergy, although born a heathen Dane, was a zealous prelate, and set himself to restore the ruinous condition of his Cathedral. For three years the work of building progressed. The eleventh century brought the Danish ravages, and with fire and sword the Pagan hosts attacked Canterbury and murdered the archbishop, Alphege. His successor, Living or Leofing, was held captive by the Danes for some time, but sought safety beyond seas, and lived to crown Canute. The Cathedral was restored by the next prelate, Egelnorth, but a fire destroyed it in 1067, and it was not till Norman times that a complete restoration was attempted. Lanfranc, the first Norman archbishop, finding the church utterly dilapidated, destroyed the old fabric and built a noble minster. We have a description of the old Saxon church in the writings of Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury: "At the east end of the church stood the high altar, which enclosed the body of St. Winifred. This was of rough stone cemented together. A little before that was an altar where Mass was said daily; in which altar St. Alphege enclosed the head of St. Swithun, and many other relics which he brought with him from Winchester. Descending hence by several steps was the crypt. At the foot of these steps was a descent into a vault which went under the east part of the church; and at the east end of it was an altar, wherein was enclosed the head of St. Fursius. From hence by a winding passage, at the west end, was the tomb of St. Dunstan, separated from it by a wall. His body was buried deep in the ground before those stairs, and over him was a tomb erected in the form of a lofty pyramid. The hall or body of the church was separated from the choir. About the middle of the hall were two towers jutting out beyond the walls--that on the south had an altar dedicated to St. Gregory; and from this tower was a passage, the principal porch of the church, anciently called Stuthdore, a large and capacious portico. The tower on the north side was erected to the honour of St. Martin, having a passage to it from the cloisters. The end of the church was adorned with the oratory of the Blessed Virgin. In the eastern part of it was an altar, consecrated to her, which enclosed the head of a saint." Lanfranc also built the monastic buildings. The saintly Archbishop Anselm, who succeeded Lanfranc, took down the east end and rebuilt it with great magnificence. His chief architect was Ernulf, the prior, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. Prior Conrad succeeded, who finished the choir, which was hereafter known as "the glorious choir of Conrad." Gervase, a monk of Canterbury, describes this church, which had a central tower, a nave supported on each side by eight pillars, two western towers with gilt pinnacles, a rood-screen, surmounted by a great cross with figures of SS. Mary and John. He concludes that the dedication of this church was "the most famous that had ever been heard of on the earth since that of the Temple of Solomon." This church was the scene of the murder of Thomas à Becket, which convulsed the land, and here Henry II. did penance before the tomb of the archbishop slain at his instigation. In 1174 a fierce conflagration raged and destroyed the beautiful choir, and at the sight of the ruins, Gervase tells us, the people were mad with grief, and beat the walls and tore their hair, blaspheming the Lord and His saints. The task of rebuilding was at once commenced, and William of Sens was appointed architect. He laboured for four years, and then falling from a scaffold was so much injured that he was obliged to return to France. An English William then took over the superintendence of the work. It is not stated that he was a pupil of William of Sens, or was in any way influenced by French models. In 1184 the choir was finished, and soon new cloisters were added. In 1304 the choir was beautified and a new pulpit erected by Prior d'Estria, who added the great bell called Thomas. In 1376 Archbishop Sudbury took down the western transepts and the nave, and began the rebuilding of the former in the Perpendicular style, the work being continued by Prior Chillenden during the rule of Archbishop Courtenay, the oppressor of Lollardism. The cloisters and chapter-house were finished at this time. Archbishop Arundel (1396-1414), who was addicted to burning heretics, also added greatly to the beauty of the church, and his successor, Chichele, spent vast sums on the church, founded a library, and began the spire on the west tower. In 1449 Prior Goldstone built the beautiful chapel of the Virgin called the Dean's Chapel, and another prior of the same name in 1495 began the great central tower, or Angel Steeple, when Archbishop Morton ruled, whose rebus is inscribed upon it. The same prior also built the Christ Church Gate in 1517. The troublous times of the Reformation followed, and we find Cranmer occupying the archiepiscopal throne, who was ultimately doomed to the stake at Oxford. Fanatical reformers wrought terrible havoc in the Cathedral. The magnificent shrine of Becket, to which millions had flocked to pay their devotions, was entirely destroyed, and numerous other costly shrines shared its fate. Archbishop Laud attempted to restore the beauty of the sanctuary, and erected a fine altar with reredos; but soon the pikes of the Puritans and their wild savagery reduced the interior of the Cathedral to a ruinous desolation. The usual scenes of mad iconoclasm were enacted, windows broken, altars thrown down, lead stripped off the roof, brasses and effigies defaced and broken. A creature nicknamed "Blue Dick" was the wild leader of this savage crew of spoliators, who left little but the bare walls and a mass of broken fragments strewing the pavement. [Illustration Canterbury Cathedral] Since then numerous alterations and restorations have taken place. At the Restoration of the monarchy Bishop Juxon of London, who attended Charles I. on the scaffold at Whitehall, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and he and Archbishop Sheldon, his successor, did much to restore the fabric and remove the traces of Puritan fanaticism. Archbishop Tenison (1694-1716) removed the old stalls and substituted pews. He covered Prior d'Estria's screen with wainscotting, and erected a fine throne with carving by Grinling Gibbons. Queen Mary also added to the beauty of the Cathedral by sundry costly gifts. In 1834 a new north-west tower was built. In 1872 a fire broke out in the roof, but happily no very extensive damage was done, and five years later Sir G. Scott began his restorations, which have removed some of the faults committed in the early eighteenth-century alterations. THE EXTERIOR The best views are obtained from the mound in the Dane John (or Donjon--probably a fortified earthwork of Norman times) approached by St. George's Terrace, adjoining the Cattle Market, from the green or outer court of the monastery, and from the village of Harbledown. The _West Front_ is flanked by two towers. That on the north was built in 1840, as the former one, called the Arundel, was in a dangerous condition; that on the south, called the Dunstan, was finished by Prior Goldstone (1449-1468), and is in the Perpendicular style, with characteristic panelling. A large window is in the centre of the front, and two smaller windows for the aisles, and above, in the gable, another window with elaborate tracery. The _South Porch_ was built by Prior Chillenden about 1400. Erasmus tells us that he saw figures of Becket's murderers here, but these have disappeared. The niches have been filled with modern figures. Proceeding along the south side of the church, we notice the Perpendicular style of the nave and aisles, the work of Prior Chillenden, which replaced the old Norman nave. There is a close resemblance between this and Winchester, which was being constructed at the same time. All that remains here of Lanfranc's nave is the lowest base of the aisle walls. The south-west transept is of the same date as the nave and has a large window on the south front with three tiers of panels over it, and an elaborate turret at the south-west corner. The south-east transept is Late Norman, the work of William of Sens and William the Englishman. Here we have Norman round-headed windows with arcades, also a circular window, and on the west a Norman turret capped with a short spire. Proceeding eastwards we see Anselm's Tower, and on the extreme east the corona, the work of English William. On the west Henry IV.'s Chantry, St. Andrew's Chapel, corresponding to that of St. Anselm, the treasury, and the range of monastic buildings, consisting of library, chapter-house and cloisters, which we will examine later. A wall surrounded the precincts, the principal gate being that called _Christ Church_ Gate, erected by Goldstone in Perpendicular style in 1517. THE INTERIOR We enter the _Nave_ by the south porch. Lanfranc's nave was entirely removed in 1380 on account of its ruinous state, and the present nave erected by Prior Chillenden, who was employed and supported by Archbishops Sudbury, Courtenay and Arundel. As we have said, it resembled Winchester, built at the same time, but it is lighter in character, as here the piers were built anew, and not cased with Perpendicular work as at Winchester. The height of the floor of the choir necessitated a lofty flight of steps leading to it from the nave; and this is a peculiar feature of this Cathedral and of much beauty. The nave is very lofty, being 80 feet high. The great west window contains the fragments of old glass which have been brought together here. The rest of the stained glass is modern and hideous. In the north aisle are monuments of Adrian Saravia, the friend of Hooker (1612), Orlando Gibbons, organist to Charles I., Sir John Boys (1614), founder of a hospital, Archbishop Sumner (1862), who crowned Queen Victoria, and memorials of military men who died for their country. In the south aisle are monuments of Dr. Broughton, Bishop of Sydney, and Dean Lyall (1858). The central tower is supported by original Norman piers, cased with Perpendicular work at the time when the nave was built. The vault and all the upper part of the tower above the roof were erected by Prior Goldstone (1495-1517), and also the arches, which act as buttresses and bear the Prior's rebus, three golden bars. The screen is fifteenth-century work and is remarkable for its beauty; formerly the figures of our Lord and the Twelve Apostles occupied the upper niches, but these fell victims to Puritan iconoclasm. The devastators spared, however, the figures of the kings in the lower tier. The _North-West Transept_, or Chapel of the _Martyrdom of Becket_, claims our close attention, as the event which occurred here filled Christendom with amaze. The martyrdom of Thomas à Becket took place on Tuesday, 29th December 1170. Early in the morning the four barons had an interview with him, pretending to come on a peaceful visit with messages from the king. They were shown into the room in the palace where the archbishop usually remained. Some high words passed between them and they departed; in the evening they entered the Cathedral, armed. While the archbishop was ascending the steps, Sir Reginald Fitzurse entered the door of the church, clad in complete armour, and, waving his sword, cried, "Come hither, servants of the king!" The other conspirators, Sir Hugh Morvill, Sir William Tracey and Sir Richard le Breton, immediately followed him, armed to the teeth, and brandishing their swords. It was already twilight, which within the walls of the dimly-lighted church had deepened into the blackest obscurity. Becket's attendants entreated him to fly to the winding staircase which led to the roof of the building, or to seek refuge in the vaults underground. He rejected both of these expedients and still stood to meet his assailants. "Where is the traitor?" cried a voice. There was no answer. "Where is the archbishop?" "Here I am," replied Becket; "but here is no traitor. What do ye in the House of God in warlike equipment?" One of the knights seized him by the sleeve; he pulled back his arm violently. They then advised him to go with them, as though they repented of the evil design. They called upon him to absolve the bishops. He refused; and Fitzurse, drawing his sword, struck at his head. The blow was intercepted by the arm of one of the monks who stepped forward to protect him, but in vain. A second blow descended, and while the blood was streaming from his face some one of his assailants whispered to him to fly and save himself. Becket paid no heed to the speaker, but clasped his hands and bowed his head, commending his soul to God and the saints. The conspirators now fell upon him with their swords and quickly despatched him. One of them is said to have kicked the prostrate body, saying, "So perishes a traitor." The deed thus accomplished, the conspirators passed out of the town without hindrance, but no sooner had they done so than the news spread throughout the city and the inhabitants, in the utmost excitement and indignation, assembled in crowds in the streets and ran towards the Cathedral. Seeing the body of their archbishop stretched before the altar, men and women began to weep, and while some kissed his hands and feet others dipped linen in the blood with which the pavement was covered. It was declared by the people that Becket was a martyr, and although a Royal edict was published forbidding anyone to express such an opinion, the popular feeling still manifested itself. Some soldiers attempted to seize the corpse, but the monks, who had received an intimation of the design, buried it hastily in the crypt of the Cathedral. Since that eventful scene the transept has been rebuilt. The stones around us, except it be the pavement, did not witness that bloody deed. When the nave was rebuilt by Chillenden this part of the church was much transformed. Portions of the old Norman walls built by Lanfranc remain, but the main character of the building is Perpendicular. The door is the same by which the murderers entered, part of the wall, and probably the pavement, wherein is a small square piece which marks the actual spot where Becket fell. The great window was given by Edward IV., and has figures of his queen, his daughters, and the two princes who were murdered in the Tower. The west window is modern, and represents scenes from the life of Becket. There are monuments here of Archbishop Peckham (1292), the oldest in the Cathedral, and Archbishop Warham (1532), who crowned Henry VIII., and was the opponent of Wolsey and the friend of Erasmus. A door at the east end of this transept leads to the _Dean's Chapel_, formerly the Lady Chapel, built by Goldstone in Perpendicular style. The monuments here are to Dean Fotherby, Dr. Bargrave, Dean Boys with his books, and Dean Turner, a favourite of Charles I. The daily crowd of pilgrims who visited the scene of the martyrdom in mediæval times used to pass on to the shrine of St. Thomas by the north choir aisle, on their way to his shrine, and we will follow in their steps. In this aisle we see much of the original Norman work of Archbishop Anselm's choir, erected under the supervision of Prior Ernulf. William of Sens added many architectural details and made some alterations, but he seems to have intended to preserve the special features of the earlier work. The roof was, however, raised, and the clerestory of Ernulf's building converted into the triforium windows of William of Sens. The latter brought with him the use of the chisel, the former carving his ruder ornamentation by means of an axe. William also introduced the pointed arch. Here is the monument of Archbishop Tait. Three "squints" will be observed in the west wall. Two apsidal chapels are at the east end, dedicated to SS. Stephen and Martin. In the aisle there is some ancient glass of thirteenth-century work, which is of extreme beauty, also an old desk with ancient Bible. An ancient mural painting should be noticed, representing the conversion of St. Hubert. Next we visit the _Chapel of St. Andrew_, now the vestry, which has some traces of colour decoration. It was built by Prior Ernulf, and was formerly the sacristy, where relics of Becket were preserved in a chest, together with a quantity of vestments. Beyond this, to the north, was the treasury, which was well protected by a massive door. The treasures of costly plate and jewels at Canterbury were of enormous value. In the aisle on the south side there is the splendid tomb of Archbishop Chichele (1443), whom Shakespeare represents in _Henry V._ as instigating the war with France, and who was the founder of All Souls', Oxford. Also there are monuments of Archbishop Howley (1848) and Archbishop Bourchier (1486). Up lofty steps, climbed by pilgrims on their knees, we ascend to the _Retro-Choir_, the work of William the Englishman, the successor of William of Sens. _Holy Trinity Chapel_ occupies the centre, where stood the wondrous shrine of Becket. Architecturally it is interesting as showing the triumph of English achievement over the foreign influence, and the gradual development of the English Gothic style; and historically it is fascinating as being the goal of pilgrims from all quarters of the land. The famous shrine has entirely disappeared, owing to the cupidity of Henry VIII. and his commissioners. Some idea of what it was like is given by a representation of it in one of the windows of the chapel. There was a stone base with marble arches, and above the shrine covered with a wooden canopy, "which at a given signal was drawn up, and the shrine then appeared, blazing with gold and damasked with gold wire, and embossed with innumerable pearls and jewels and rings, cramped together on this gold ground." One great diamond or carbuncle was as large as a hen's egg, called the _Regale of France_, and presented by Louis VII. All the monarchs and nobles in mediæval times came here to worship, and crowds flocked from all quarters "the holy blissful martyr for to seek"; the pavement is worn by their knees; cripples begged to rub their limbs against the pillars of the holy shrine, and perchance were healed--faith plays a wondrous part in many a cure--and Chaucer sings of the tales and doings of the not always very austere Canterbury pilgrims. The windows of this chapel contain some of the best thirteenth-century glass in existence. They record miracles wrought by Becket. Above the shrine is a gilded crescent, concerning which many theories have been suggested, none wholly satisfactory. [Illustration Tomb of the Black Prince] In this chapel is the monument of _Edward, the Black Prince_ (1376), who fought at Creçy and Poictiers, one of the bravest of our national heroes. The effigy is of brass and was once gilded, and represents the prince in full armour. The head rests on a casque, and the features of the Plantagenets are distinctly traceable. Above the tomb is a canopy, having on it a representation of the Trinity, and above that are the remains of dress and armour actually worn by the prince--his helmet, a shield, a velvet surcoat, gauntlets, and the scabbard of the sword. On the tomb is an inscription in Norman French which, translated, tells: "Here lies the most noble Prince Edward, eldest son of the most noble King Edward III., Prince of Aquitaine and Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester, who died on Trinity Sunday, the 8th of June 1376. To the soul of whom God grant mercy.--Amen." Then follow some verses written by the prince, which begin:-- "Tu que passez ove bouche close pur la ou c'est corps repose, Entent ce qe te dirray, sicome te dire la say," and proceed to contrast the riches and glory of this present life with the mouldering and decay of death. Below are seen shields of arms which bear those of France and England, and the ostrich or Prince of Wales's feathers, with the motto _Houmont Ich diene_. Both Welsh and German origin is claimed for the motto. Dean Stanley preferred the latter, and stated that _Houmont_ meant _high-spirited_, while the latter words signify _I serve_. Another interesting tomb is that of Henry IV. (1413), and his second wife, Joan of Navarre (1437). The tomb was opened in 1832, and the body of the dead king discovered in wonderful preservation. He founded the chantry near his tomb. Some vestments taken from a tomb are preserved in this chapel. Other memorials are those of Dean Wotton, by Bernini; Cardinal Coligny, whose brother fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and who was poisoned by his servant; Archbishop Courtenay, the oppressor of the Lollards, who is represented in archiepiscopal robes, with his mitre and crosier. The _Corona_ at the extreme east end is a beautiful piece of work, accomplished by English William. It is in the form of a circular apse, and has a triforium and clerestory. For some obscure reason it has been popularly called "Becket's crown," possibly from the presence here of some relic of the martyr. Here were the shrines of Archbishop Odo and St. Wilfrid of York, and here is the tomb of Cardinal Pole, archbishop in the time of Mary, a plain brick monument, plastered over with the inscription: "The body of Cardinal Pole." Turning to the _South Choir_ aisle, which resembles the north, we see the _Chapel of St. Anselm_, formerly that of SS. Peter and Paul. It resembles that of St. Andrew, and was built by Ernulf, and probably restored after the great fire. Behind the altar was buried the great Anselm, one of the most saintly and renowned prelates who ever occupied the see of Augustine. The south window is Decorated, inserted by Prior d'Estria in 1336. There is a monument here of Archbishop Simon de Mepham (1333), whom we shall hear of again at Exeter, when his visitation was resisted by the arrogant Bishop Grandisson; and also of Archbishop Bradwardine (1349). Above this chapel is the _Watching Chamber_, where a monk was stationed to guard the shrines. Proceeding along the aisle on the right are monuments of Archbishop Sudbury (1381), beheaded in the Wat Tyler rebellion; Archbishop Stratford (1348) and Archbishop Kemp (1454). The _South-East Transept_ is similar to the northern one. The walls are the work of Ernulf. It is to William of Sens, however, that we have to attribute the architectural details. There are apsidal chapels dedicated to SS. John and Gregory, the remains of Archbishop Winchelsey's tomb (1313); and the "patriarchal chair," erroneously called "St. Augustine's." In the aisle on the left are two tombs said to be those of Archbishop Hubert Walter, who accompanied Richard I. on a Crusade, and Archbishop Reynolds (1327), the friend of Edward II. The _South-West Transept_ was rebuilt at the same time as the nave by Chillenden. On the east of this is the _Warrior Chapel_, dedicated to St. Michael. Its style is Perpendicular, _circa_ 1370, and was probably erected by Chillenden. Here is the monument of Stephen Langton (1228), who wrested from King John the Magna Charta. The position is curious, only the head of the tomb appearing through the wall. Other monuments are those of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, half brother of Henry IV. (1409), and Thomas of Clarence, second son of the same king, killed in battle in 1421, erected by the widow of both; Lady Thornhurst (1609) and Sir Thomas, Sir John Rooke, one of the heroes of the capture of Gibraltar, and some military trophies and memorials. [Illustration The Crypt.] The _Crypt_ is one of the finest in England, built before 1085. There is here some very fine Norman work, the western portion was constructed mainly by Ernulf, though there is some of the work of Lanfranc also here. The carving was executed after the stones were set in their places, and we can see that some of the carving was left unfinished, the designs having been roughly traced out. The portion of the crypt east of the Trinity Chapel is the work of English William (1178-1184). The Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft is enclosed by some Late Perpendicular open stone-work, and was very magnificent. Only privileged pilgrims were allowed to see the wealth of precious stones and costly ornaments with which this wondrous shrine was adorned. In the crypt is the monument of Lady Mohun of Dunstar (1395), the chantry founded by the Black Prince, St. John's Chapel, the tomb of Isabel, Countess of Athole (1229). Here Becket's body was hastily buried by the monks after his murder; it remained here for fifty years, and was resorted to by the crowds of pilgrims, and here Henry II. endured his penance, receiving five strokes of a rod from each bishop and abbot present, and three from each of the eighty monks, and remaining all the night fasting, resting against one of the pillars. Queen Elizabeth gave the Flemish refugees the use of the crypt both as a place of worship and as a home for their industry. Here they plied their busy looms, and in their moments of leisure wrote inscriptions on the walls. The descendants of these settlers still live in Canterbury, and use part of the crypt as their chapel. THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS Canterbury was a Benedictine monastery. We enter the _Cloisters_ from the north transept, which are mainly Perpendicular in style, though occupying the site of the old Norman buildings, and containing remains of earlier work. Chillenden, the builder of the nave, is responsible for all the Perpendicular work. The _Chapter-House_ was rebuilt on Norman lines late in the thirteenth century, and re-ceiled and re-windowed in the fourteenth by Chillenden. The ceiling is composed of panels of Irish oak. Unfortunately a severe restoration in 1897 has somewhat vulgarised its former beautiful features. At the east end there is the beautiful priors' sedilia, with glass mosaics on the spandrels of the throne. After the Reformation the chapter-house was used for preachings, and acquired the name of the sermon-house. On the north of the garth was the refectory, the entrance to which may be seen, and also the remains of the monks' lavatory. Passing along we see the Priors', now known as the Green Court, a large open space surrounded with the remains of the domestic buildings of the monastery. The Deanery, previously part of the priors' lodgings, is on the east, and the south was also occupied by the dormitory and refectory, with kitchens. On the west is the Porter's Gate, a Norman structure, with curious ornamentation. The very interesting late _Norman Staircase_ leading to the hall of the Grammar School should be examined. Returning, we traverse the passage north of the chapter-house, and come to the _Lavatory Tower_--erroneously called the baptistry--of Late Norman construction, built by Prior Wibert for supplying the various buildings with water, and adjoining this is the _Library_, which possesses a fine collection of books. A very interesting MS. is the charter of Eadred (949 A.D.), written by Dunstan; there is an ancient portrait of Queen Edgiva (late fourteenth century). The remains of the infirmary and the garden of the monastery may also be seen; and an arched doorway in Palace Street is all that remains of the once famous Archbishop's Palace, which was inhabited by so many distinguished prelates, and the scene of so many events in English history. It was destroyed during the Commonwealth period. DIMENSIONS Total length 522 ft. (inside, 514 ft.) Length of nave 178 ft. Width of nave 71 ft. Length of choir 180 ft. Height of nave 80 ft. Height of central tower 235 ft. Height of west tower 130 ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Nave (1378-1411), Prior Chillenden. Choir (1174-1184), William of Sens and English William. Choir-screen (1304-1305), Prior d'Estria. Towers of St. Andrew and Anselm, Prior Ernulf. Retro-choir and corona (1178-1184), English William. Crypt, west part (1070-1109), Lanfranc and Ernulf. Crypt, east part (1178-1184), English William. Central tower (1495), Prior Goldstone. [Illustration PLAN OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL] OTHER CHURCHES AND OBJECTS OF INTEREST _St. Martin's Church_, traditionally said to be the oldest church in the kingdom, is certainly of great antiquity. A large number of Roman bricks are built up in the walls. It contains a stone coffin, in which it is said that Queen Bertha lies, the wife of King Ethelbert, converted by Augustine, but this is improbable. The font is Saxon, and it is, according to tradition, which is not very reliable, the font in which Ethelbert was baptised. _St. Augustine's College_ for Missionaries was formerly the Monastery of St. Augustine. The earliest house was dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, said to have been founded by Augustine. Dunstan enlarged it, and added the founder's name to the dedication. It became very rich and important. The buildings were destroyed by the Danes, but they arose again in greater glory, and at the dissolution of monasteries the house became a Royal palace. The buildings are well worthy of a visit. _St. Dunstan's Church._ The _West Gate_, built by Archbishop Sudbury, _temp._ Richard II. _Holy Cross Church._ _St. Peter's Church._ _St. Thomas's Hospital_ for Entertainment of Pilgrims. The remains of the old _Chequers Inn_ at the south-west corner of Mercery Lane, can be traced, and a portion of it is incorporated in the house known as Grafton House. There are some fine old houses in this street, anciently called _La Merceri_, each stone projecting outwards, so as almost to meet at the top, typical of an old English city street. WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL The city of Winchester, the ancient capital of England, the Caer Gwent of the Britons, the Venta Belgarum of the Romans, the Royal city of Alfred the Great and of William the Conqueror, was a place of vast importance in the annals of England. Under Cnut it was the capital of a kingdom stretching across the seas to Scandinavia, and under the Normans a large part of France was in subjection to it. Here kings were born and Royal weddings celebrated with great pomp in its grand Cathedral. If Royal patronage could have preserved the glories of ancient Winchester, it would have remained the capital of England; but London was the centre of the commercial activity of the country, and in the end Winchester was forced to yield supremacy to its more powerful rival. Its ecclesiastical history is no less important. A British church here is said to have been destroyed during the Diocletian persecution (A.D. 266) and restored subsequently and dedicated to St. Amphibalus, the martyr. Heathendom returned with the Saxons, until they were converted by St. Berinus, and by the baptism of King Kynegils the triumph of Christianity was assured. He built a new Cathedral, which was again rebuilt by Bishop Ethelbold (980) and consecrated by Dunstan, and this church remained until the Norman builders came with the Conqueror, and began, under his kinsman, Walkelin, to erect that stately fane which we are now about to visit. Winchester is unlike Salisbury, which was, for the most part, completed in one period of architecture; the former was the work of several builders at different eras. A large part of the Early Norman Cathedral remains; the crypt and transepts and the core of the walls being all Norman work. The eastern aisles and chapels are the work of Bishop de Lucy (1189-1204), built in the Early English style, during the troubled reigns of Richard I. and John; the noble nave was begun by Bishop Edingdon in 1345, and not finished until the time of Waynflete, in 1496, while the dawn of the Reformation saw the building of the side aisles of the presbytery and the east part of the Lady Chapel. The celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of Edward III., the founder of the Colleges of Winchester and New (Oxford), was the chief architect of the nave. We approach the Cathedral by an avenue of stately elms, and reach the west door. The best exterior view is obtained from the north side of the close. The tower is low massive Norman work, built in the time of the first Henry, the first tower having fallen, as some said, because William Rufus, the bad king, was buried beneath it. The west front has been recently restored. It is evidently Perpendicular work, and was probably constructed by Bishop Edingdon. On entering we are struck by the grandeur and impressiveness of this noble nave: Winchester is the largest Cathedral in England. The whole church is 556 feet in length, and nearly 400 feet of magnificent stone-vault is visible from the west doorway. This nave presents some architectural problems. The style is evidently Perpendicular work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the builders of that period transformed much of the original Norman work, which still remains in the piers and walls, into that of the later style. They did not rebuild, but transformed, adding new mouldings, casing, and concealing, though not obliterating, the ancient Norman features. We can trace the work of the successive builders. Bishop Edingdon entirely rebuilt the west front and extreme west portion. Examine the two west windows of the north aisle, and compare them with the third, the work of William of Wykeham, and notice their heavy and less graceful appearance. Wykeham was responsible for the complete transformation of the nave, but lived only long enough to complete the south side. Notice the thickness of the piers. This was caused by casing the Norman piers with Perpendicular stone-work, and the balcony above the arches was necessitated by the work of reconstruction. Wykeham's successor, Cardinal Beaufort (uncle of Henry V., the "rich Cardinal," as men called him, one of Joan of Arc's judges, but withal not so base a man as Shakespeare depicts), continued, and Bishop Waynflete, the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford, completed that magnificent structure which we now see. On each side of the west door are bronze statues of Charles I. and James I. by Le Sueur. On the bosses of the roof we see some armorial bearings; the lily (the arms of Magdalen College) is the device of Waynflete, and the arms of Wykeham, Beaufort, John of Gaunt and Richard II. (white hart chained) are there represented. The Minstrels' Gallery or tribune, erected by Edingdon, is at the west end of the north aisle, and the oldest piece of iron grill-work in England of very good design is seen in a neighbouring door. The font is Norman work, the sculptures representing scenes from the life of St. Nicholas of Myra, together with doves and the salamander. The chantry chapels on the south side of the nave are extremely interesting: (1) Bishop Edingdon's Chantry (1345-1366), (2) William of Wykeham's Chantry, which is very beautifully designed. We see the effigy of the distinguished prelate with two angels holding the pillow under his head, and three monks at his feet praying for his soul. Some modern statues have been added at the east end and an ingenious chronogram. In the south aisle there are two monuments by Flaxman (Henrietta North and Dr. Warton), and one to the once famous Bishop Hoadley, the founder of the Bangorian controversy, which shows the Magna Charta by the side of the Bible and the cap of liberty contending with the pastoral staff. Some heroes of the Crimean War are also commemorated. There are memorials of Mrs. Montagu, the founder of the "Blue Stockings," and of Jane Austen. The pulpit is Jacobean, and was brought here from New College, Oxford. The screen separating the nave from the choir is modern. The bronze figures of James I. and Charles I. formed part of an older screen erected by Inigo Jones. Cromwell's soldiers wrought havoc here as in many other churches and cathedrals. They broke the windows and woodwork, desecrated shrines, and paid much attention to this statue of their king. On entering the choir we find ourselves immediately beneath the tower, which, as we have observed, is Late Norman work, and notice the immense piers which support it. The former tower having fallen, the builders were determined not to have a similar misfortune, and therefore built these piers abnormally strong and massive. The ceiling was erected in the time of Charles I. (1634), and bears medallions of that ill-fated monarch and his queen. Beyond the tower we see the piers and arches and clerestory of the presbytery, which belong to the Late Decorated period. The noble reredos belongs to the fifteenth century, and has been recently restored, the vacant niches being again filled with statuary. In the centre is the figure of our Lord upon the Cross, with the Virgin and St. John. On each side of the altar are SS. Hedda and Ethelwolf, and in the spandrels of the two doorways some ancient sculptures of the life of the Virgin. Above are figures of SS. Swithun and Berinus, and above the doors SS. Benedict and Giles, and SS. Stephen and Lawrence. In the highest row are SS. Peter and Paul and the four Latin doctors. There are numerous smaller statues of kings and prelates. The whole appearance of the screen is very magnificent. The woodwork of the stalls is the most perfect in the kingdom, and was constructed in the closing years of the thirteenth century. The carved foliage is remarkable for its grace and elegance. Notice the carved heads and the monkeys and other animals playing amidst the branches. The _Misereres_ are interesting, and are earlier than the canopies. The pulpit was presented by one "Thomas Silkstede, prior," whose name it bears. In the centre of the presbytery we see the supposed tomb of William Rufus, who was accidentally killed by an arrow when hunting in the New Forest. His ashes, however, do not rest beneath this stone, but are preserved in the chests above the screen, together with the bones of Canute and some Saxon prelates. Cromwell's soldiers rifled the tomb and found therein a chalice, which sacred vessel was usually placed in the coffins of bishops and therefore could not have belonged to the grave of the red-haired monarch. Bishop Fox (1500-1520) did much for this part of the Cathedral. He placed the glass in the east window, which has been much modified. Glass painting at this period had attained its highest perfection as an art, and in its original condition this window must have been unrivalled. The stone screens on each side of the presbytery were also erected by Fox, and six mortuary chests containing the bones of Saxon kings and bishops are placed upon them. Amongst the bones of other illustrious men are deposited in a mingled state the mortal remains of Kynegils, Ethelwolf, the father of Alfred the Great, Egbert, Canute, and many others. The soldiers of Cromwell played havoc with these bones of kings, and scattered them about the Cathedral, hence it is impossible to be certain that these chests actually contain the mortal remains of those whose names they bear. The vault of the presbytery is wooden, and the bosses are interesting. Behind the reredos is the feretory or place for the shrines of patron saints, with a stone platform at its east end on which formerly stood the shrines of St. Swithun[6] and St. Berinus. [Illustration WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL] Pilgrims used to pass in procession before these shrines along the stone passage. A collection of fragments of carved work is shown here. We now visit the north transept and find ourselves in the earliest portion of the Cathedral, built by Bishop Walkelin in the old Norman style. The windows were inserted in the Decorated period, and the ceiling belongs to the last century. The transepts have aisles on the east and west sides and also at each end, over which is a gallery. This is not common in England. At St. Alban's there is a similar arrangement, and in several Normandy churches. The Norman work of the transepts is of two periods. The earlier part by Walkelin (1070-1098) is distinguished by the smaller piers and plain groined vaulting; the later (1107) by the ribbed vaulting and larger piers. When we visit Ely Cathedral we shall notice the similarity of design, the transepts of that building having been erected by Simeon, Walkelin's brother. Under the organ-loft is the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Notice the curious mural paintings representing the Passion of our Lord which date from the thirteenth century, and the Decorated canopies built against the Norman piers. We now enter the north aisle of the presbytery and proceed to the extreme eastern portion of the Cathedral. Here seven chantries and chapels are seen which record the memory of illustrious prelates. "How much power and ambition under half-a-dozen stones! I own I grow to look on tombs as lasting mansions, instead of observing them for curious pieces of architecture," wrote Walpole. Almost all the east end was built by Bishop Godfrey de Lucy (1189-1204) at the beginning of the Early English period and is of exquisite design. The north chapel is called that of the Guardian Angels, and is so named from figures of angels in the vaulting. There is a bronze figure of the Earl of Portland here, the treasurer of Charles I. Notice the figure holding a heart. It represents Bishop Ethelmar, half-brother of Henry III., who died in Paris but directed that his heart should be conveyed to this Cathedral. The Lady Chapel has work of divers periods--north and south walls Early English (De Lucy), east wall and window with small eastern parts of north and south walls Perpendicular (Prior Hunton, 1470-1498, and Prior Silkstede, 1498-1524). The rebuses of these two priors on the vault are curious: T. _Hun_ and a ton (Thomas Hunton), and 1 and _Por_ for Prior; T. _Silk_ and a horse (Thomas Silkstede). Mural paintings by the latter prior representing the legends of the Virgin adorn the walls. The panelling is the work of Bishop Fox. The south chapel (Early English) is the Chantry of Bishop Langton, who died of the plague in 1500, just before he was translated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The woodwork of the stalls is very beautiful. The pikes of Cromwell's soldiers wrought havoc here, and we notice that just above the height they could reach with their weapons the woodwork is uninjured. Mediæval artists were fond of puns and rebuses, and here we have Langton's name represented by a _long_ (or musical) note with a _ton_, and a _vine_ and _ton_ for Winton or Winchester. Winton is also represented by a dragon coming from a ton, referring to Solomon's warning against the wine that is red which biteth like a serpent, etc. An object of much interest is preserved here--Queen Mary's chair upon which she sat when she was married to Philip of Spain in the Lady Chapel. On that occasion there was much feasting and rejoicing in Winchester, though the nation liked not the Spanish marriage, and much ill came to England through that ill-starred connection. De Lucy's tomb in the centre of the retro-choir looks upon the noble work which he built for his beloved Cathedral. On the north of the central aisle is the Chantry of Waynflete, the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford; on the south that of Cardinal Beaufort. Both were much injured by the soldiers. Between these is the effigy of a knight in armour, Sir A. de Gavaston, the father of the favourite of Edward II. Notice the wall at the back of the feretory, with its beautiful tabernacle work of Decorated period, under which images once stood. The names of the worthies appear below. "The Holy Hole" formerly led to the crypt but has now been closed. On the north side of this wall is Bishop Gardiner's Chantry, who was the leader of the Roman Catholic party at the Reformation and was styled the "Hammer of Heretics." He took a leading part in the Marian persecutions. On the south side is the Chantry of Bishop Fox (1500-1528), the founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who bore the pelican as a device. The south wall of the south aisle of the presbytery is Late Perpendicular work. Another instance of heart burial is recorded on the wall opposite, that of Bishop Nicholas of Ely (1280), and an inscription tells of the burial of Richard, son of William the Conqueror, who was killed while hunting in the New Forest. We now enter the south transept, the architectural features of which are similar to those of the north transept. Silkstede's Chantry should be visited. This worthy prior loved a rebus, and here carved a skein of _silk_ to represent his name, also the letters THOMAS appear on the screen, the MA being formed differently from the rest to represent his patroness, MARY the Virgin. Isaac Walton's tomb is here, the author of the _Angler_. There are some good mural paintings. The monument of Bishop Wilberforce forms a conspicuous object in the transept. Adjoining Silkstede's Chapel is the Venerable Chapel, with a fine screen. On the west side are the chapter-room and the old treasury. Passing through the chamber on the south we enter the slype. [Illustration The Cathedral West Front.] The library has some treasures, notably a Vulgate of the twelfth century and some valuable MSS. The crypt is entirely Norman work, except the east part, which is Early English. The cloisters and old chapter-house were destroyed in 1563. The Deanery was formerly the home of the prior; its entrance belongs to the time of Henry III., and the hall within the house to the fifteenth century. Over the dean's stables is a long room which was probably the guest-house for pilgrims; rude carvings can be seen on the beams of the roof probably made by the pilgrims. DIMENSIONS Total length, 556 ft.; length of nave, 262 ft.; width of nave and aisles, 88 ft.; height of vault, 78 ft.; area, 53,480 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES 1079-1093--Transepts, crypt and cores of piers and wall; 1120--central tower rebuilt; 1202--retro-choir and eastern chapels; 1320--presbytery rebuilt; 1360--west front and two bays of nave; 1394-1486--nave reconstructed; 1487--east end of Lady Chapel; 1520--alterations in presbytery by Bishop Fox. Other objects of interest in Winchester-- The _School_, founded by William of Wykeham; the _Hospital of St. Cross_, founded by Henry de Blois in 1136; _Hyde Abbey_, the resting-place of the body of Alfred the Great; the _County Hall_, with the so-called Round Table of King Arthur; _Wolvesey Castle_, the ancient episcopal palace. [Illustration PLAN OF WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTE: [6] St. Swithun became bishop in 837; he was "a diligent builder of churches in places where there were none before, and a repairer of those that had been destroyed before." In modern times his name is best known as a weather prophet; according to the tradition that if it is fine or wet on St. Swithun's day (July 15th) the same weather will last for the next forty days. The legend arose from the moving of his body from the lowly grave in the churchyard to its golden shrine in the Cathedral being delayed on account of continued rain. CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL Chichester, like most of our cathedral cities, has a long history dating back to the time of the Romans. The Roman town stood on the line of the road now known as Stane Street, and seems to have been a populous place where trade was carried on, and not merely a military station. A marble slab discovered in 1713 (preserved at Goodwood) bears an inscription which tells us much of the Roman city and runs as follows: _Neptuni et Minervæ templum pro salute domus divinæ ex auctoritate Tih. Claud. Cogidubni r. leg. aug. in Brit. collegium fabror. et qui in eo a sacris sunt d. s. d. donante aream Pudente Pudentini fil_. Much has been made of this inscription, that there was a temple here dedicated to Neptune and Minerva, that there was a large body of craftsmen who built this temple, and that Chichester was the seat of King Cogidubnus mentioned by Tacitus as possessing independent authority in Britain. When the Pagan Saxons under Ælla came they destroyed the place. "Ælle and Cissa," says the chronicle, "beset Anderida[7] and slew all that were therein, nor was there afterwards one Briton left," and overran the coast, establishing the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. Then Cissa, having captured the old Roman city, made it the capital of his kingdom, calling the place _Cissan-caestre_, or the fortress of Cissa, now corrupted to Chichester. This was at the close of the fifth century. Shut in by the great forest of Anderida, these South Saxons retained their Paganism long after the advent of Augustine and the conversion of other parts of the country. St. Wilfrid was shipwrecked on their coast, but they fiercely attacked the crew of the vessel, which escaped with difficulty from the perilous coast owing to the prayers of the saint. Thirty years later he returned and converted them to Christianity. A famine raged owing to long draught. He taught them to fish in the sea, and so won their confidence, and on the day when their chiefs came to be baptised rain fell and the famine ceased. The Island of Selsey or Seal's Island was given to the saint, where he founded a monastery and became the first bishop of the South Saxons. Until the conquest Selsey remained the seat of the bishopric. The last Saxon prelate, Ethelric, though he was a learned, and moreover a very aged man, received harsh treatment from William I. He was deprived of his bishopric and imprisoned. Then came Stigand, who moved the bishop's throne to Chichester, and made the minster Church of St. Peter's Monastery his Cathedral. The waves of the sea now roll over the site of the Early Saxon church. Ralph de Luffa, the third Norman prelate (1091-1123), began the building of the present Cathedral. Fire played havoc with the newly-erected church in 1114, four years after its completion, but Ralph again set to work to restore it. It was consecrated in 1148, twenty-five years after his death. He was a noble bishop, and accomplished much for his diocese and for the Church of England in the time of the tyranny of Norman kings. Fire again raged in 1186, which prepared the way for the alterations and improvements of the transitional builders who were developing the beauties of English Gothic. Bishop Seffrid, the second who bore that name, was the director of the work, which shows the purist style of the twelfth century. The triforium, the upper storey of the western towers (the present north-west tower is a modern imitation of the south-west tower) and the lower storey of the central tower are mainly his work. This bishop had the doubtful honour of crowning King John. Bishop Neville (1224-1244) designed and began to build the spire, and the Lady Chapel was partly constructed by Bishop Gilbert de St. Leofard (1288-1304). John de Langton, bishop (1305-1336), who was a skilful architect, finished the retro-choir and the south wing of the transept. By this time the Cathedral had assumed much of its present form. The apsidal chapels in the choir had been made to assume the more English form of square-ended buildings. The thirteenth-century bishops who accomplished all this excellent work were remarkable men. Bishop Simon Fitz Robert (1204-1207) obtained many benefactions for his see, and grants of stone from the Isle of Purbeck for the beautifying of his church. Richard Poore, the noble builder of Salisbury, was here for two years, and Bishop Neville worked hard during his episcopacy for his church, and built a palace for his see in London which stood on the site of Lincoln's Inn. St. Richard de Wych was an excellent bishop (1245-1253), who reformed his diocese with some severity, and ordered his flock to contribute liberally to the building fund of his Cathedral. "St. Richard's Pence" afterwards became a fruitful source of income. Bishop Gilbert de St. Leofard followed in his steps, and, as we have said, built the main parts of the Lady Chapel, which is of Decorated style. The work of the fourteenth century was rather that of adornment than of construction. We find Bishop Langton (1305-1337), the suppressor of the Templars, inserting a beautiful window in the south transept, and building the chapter-house. A little later a noble reredos was erected behind the altar, the choir stalls added, and some changes made in the window tracery. The founder of Merton College Library, William Read, was bishop here in 1369-1385. Lollardism was rampant in the diocese, and Bishop Robert Rede (1397-1415) took strong steps to uproot the obnoxious teaching. The beginning of the fifteenth century saw arising the detached bell tower, called Raymond's Tower, the only existing detached belfry in the kingdom. Some of the Bishops of Chichester at this time fared ill. Bishop Moleyns (1446-1450), who helped Henry VI. to marry Margaret of Anjou, was murdered by some sailors at Portsmouth, and his successor, Peacocke (1450-1459), was tried on account of his supposed heretical opinions and deprived. Bishop Storey (1478-1503) was the builder of the famous Market Cross and the Grammar School. Bishop Sherbourne (1508-1536) who favoured not the "new Religion," employed the Bernardi, an Italian family who had previously settled in Flanders, to decorate his church, and we shall see some of their work in the Cathedral. Then came the trouble of the Reformation period, when altars were destroyed, shrines pillaged of their gold and ornaments, and the whole church ransacked of its treasures. Further spoliation and destruction were wrought by the Parliamentary soldiers under Waller, who "plundered the Cathedral, seized upon the vestments and ornaments of the church, together with the consecrated plate serving for the altar; they left not so much as a cushion for the pulpit, nor a chalice for the Blessed Sacraments; the common soldiers broke down the organs, and dashing the pipes with their poleaxes, scoffingly said, 'Hark, how the organs go!' ... On the Tuesday following, after the sermon, possessed and transported by a Bacchanalian fury, they ran up and down the church with their swords drawn, defacing the monuments of the dead, hacking and hewing the seats and stalls, and scraping the painted walls. Sir William Waller and the rest of the commanders standing by as spectators and approvers of their barbarous impieties." Bishop King was prelate at this time; his palace and goods were destroyed, and he was treated with cruel indignity. In the seventeenth-century the north-west tower fell, and the central tower was so insecure that the upper part of the spire was removed and rebuilt by Wren. Since then several attempts at reparation have been made. At length in 1860 a terrible disaster befell, and the central tower and spire collapsed. It was rebuilt by Sir G. Scott with much care, and may be said to be an exact copy of the old, and in addition to other improvements the north-west tower has been rebuilt. [Illustration Chichester] THE EXTERIOR The best views may be obtained from the city wall to the north, also from West Street and East Street, and a fine distant prospect is observed from the Goodwood Downs. We will begin our inspection as usual with the _West Front_, which consists of a gable with windows and porch, flanked by two towers. The upper part of the north-west tower is a recent construction, made in imitation of the south-west tower, and built on the ruins of the former tower. The south tower is of Norman workmanship, the upper part being Early English, and also the plain and heavy buttresses at the south-west corner. The basement and next storey are part of the original work of Bishop Ralph, and the rest of Bishop Seffrid II. The west porch is plain and deep, with double buttresses at the corners. The doorway consists of a wide arch, under which are two smaller ones divided by a single clustered column. These have been restored in imitation of the ancient design. The interior of the porch is very beautiful Early English work, the arcading of quatrefoils being very effective. The monuments have evidently been placed there in later times. Above the porch are three Early English windows, and above these a large modern window, and in the gable are two small Early English windows. The cross above is modern. The _Bell Tower_, the only instance in England of a detached belfry, though not unusual abroad, is a massive and plain building, 120 feet high. The upper storey is octagonal and low, and resembles the great west tower of Ely, but is much inferior. Both these towers were built about the same time, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and are in the Perpendicular style. The north side of the nave exhibits in the clerestory the round-headed windows of the original Norman church. The parapet is fourteenth-century work. Flying buttresses connect the clerestory with the outer wall. The windows of the chapels are Early Decorated, and were erected during the reign of Edward III. One of them is modern. The _North Porch_ is Early English work, and the dog-tooth ornament is observable in the arches. It has a parvise. The _North Transept_ on the west side has some of the original Norman wall and Norman windows, and on the north end there are thirteenth-century buttresses with octagonal turrets, a large window and a rose window over it. On the east side there are some Early English windows. Proceeding eastward we pass the Chapels of St. Edmund and St. John Baptist, of Early English design, with some Perpendicular windows, the same style prevailing in the presbytery. Flying buttresses support the main walls. The old Norman church ended in an apse, and traces of the curve can still be observed, and other remains of twelfth-century work can be seen. Two of the windows are Perpendicular in style, but have been much restored. The low Lady Chapel projects at the east end. Two western bays are twelfth-century work, the two eastern bays being added by Bishop Gilbert de St. Leofard at the end of the thirteenth century, and are Late Decorated. Much restoration has been found necessary here. Early English work prevails in the chapel on the south side. The south wall of the choir aisle has several points of interest and several styles of architecture are shown here. A consecration cross can be seen in one of the bays. The south transept is very similar to the north, and on the west of it is the sacristy. Norman walls are on the north and east, and Early English on south and west. On the south side of the Cathedral are the _Cloisters_, which are curiously shaped. The Paradise is not square, the east walk being longer than the west. These cloisters are fifteenth-century work, having Perpendicular windows and flat roof. The south side of the nave is interesting, and resembles somewhat the north side. The arches of the windows in the aisles are Early Decorated, the tracery is modern. In the fourteenth century the buttresses were strengthened and enlarged, the parapet added. The Norman wall and windows remain in the clerestory, though later tracery has been inserted in two of these. The south porch leading to the west cloister has been much restored. The doorway in the south-west tower is Norman, and is adorned with chevron moulding, and beautifully designed. The window over it is also of the same date. THE INTERIOR The interior is more imposing than the exterior. The best view is perhaps obtained from north-east corner of the nave. The width of the nave is the first peculiarity which we notice. It has double aisles on each side of the nave, a peculiarity shared only with Manchester, and some parish churches, such as Abingdon, Taunton and Coventry. There are some grand effects of light and shade, and the nave is well proportioned, and has a quiet dignity which is all its own. There are eight circular arches, supported by seven flat piers, isolated and flanked by half columns of cylindrical character with plain capitals and cable moulding. Purbeck marble is extensively used in the string-courses and capitals of the vaulting shafts. The triforium preserves its Norman character. Here are the Norman circular arches, containing two smaller arches resting on single shafts. The surface of the stone in the head is hatched as at Rochester. There is a striking analogy between Chichester and Peterborough, both in the nave and choir. Both were destroyed by fire, and both rebuilt about the same time. The main arcade and triforium are the work of Bishop Ralph de Luffa (1091-1124). Bishop Seffrid II. (1180-1204) rebuilt the clerestory, and made it loftier than the triforium. The style is Early English. It will be noticed that the middle arch of the windows is round and higher than the side arches, which are pointed. The windows are separated by small shafts of Petworth marble, and the capitals are carved with leaves of palm trees. The Cathedral is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the builders seem to have wished to express symbolically the threefold nature of the Deity by the triplicity of the work. Triple clustered shafts appear everywhere. The vaulting is of stone, and is a little later than Seffrid's work. Alarmed by the fires, the architect determined to build a stone and chalk roof instead of wood. In the sixteenth century this vaulting was painted in gaudy colours by Bishop Sherbourne. Two storeys of the south-west tower are original Norman work, with rude cushion capitals, and formed part of the first church finished by Bishop Ralph. This is used as a baptistry, and has a modern font, an imitation of that at Shoreham. In the _South Aisle_ are the Chapels of St. George and St. Clement. The latter has been restored in memory of the last good bishop, Durnford. The figures placed in the old wall arcade are SS. Anselm, Clement and Alphege. The old piscina and aumbrey remain, as also in the other chapel. The chapels were added in the second half of the thirteenth century. The _North Aisle_ resembles the south. Here were the Chapels of St. Anne, St. Theobald or the Four Virgins, and SS. Thomas and Edmund. The screen, pulpit and lectern are all modern, and also the glass. The _monuments_ here are:--in the south aisle, Bishop Durnford (1895), and Captain Cromwell (Flaxman); and in the north aisle, Poet Collins, Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel and his wife [the earl was a supporter of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Richard II., and was beheaded in 1397], an unknown lady, supposed to be Countess of Arundel (1270). This tomb is of Decorated design, and is beautifully executed. [Illustration The Presbytery.] The _North Transept_ was once the Parish Church of St. Peter the Great. The main walls are part of Bishop Ralph's Norman church, and there are Norman windows on the west and arches of the same style on the east. These open into the old Chapel of St. John Baptist and St. Edmund, which has now been converted into the _Library_. The north and east walls are Early English, the vaulting is very beautiful, the ribs being ornamented with zigzag. The library has some early MSS., but is not particularly rich in its treasures. Entering the north choir aisle we see the monuments of Bishop Storey (1503), the builder of the Market Cross; Bishop King (1670), who suffered much from the Parliamentary soldiers; Carleton (1685); Grove (1691); Otter (1840), and an early slab of thirteenth century representing a heart burial. Formerly an inscription could be deciphered which told in Norman French: "Here lies the heart of Maud." At the end of this aisle is the Chapel of St. Katherine. This eastern end of the aisle is all Early English work. Here are preserved the paintings of the Bishops of Chichester and Kings of England made by Bernardi, which were much injured by the soldiers and restored by an indifferent artist. The _Retro-Choir_ is early thirteenth century, and has a fine vault which in style resembles that of some French churches. The piers are curious, and the shafts are further detached from the main piers than in any other known example. The capitals are most beautifully carved. The triforium is ornamented with rich tracery and carving and clustered shafts of Purbeck. It somewhat resembles Ely, the work of Bishop Hotham in 1235. The clerestory is later. Here stood the magnificent shrine of St. Richard, the glory of Chichester, and the resort of pilgrims. This St. Richard de la Wyche, who was the friend of Becket, died in 1245. He was remarkable for his zeal and charity. On his death his body was found wrapped in a shirt of horse hair and bound with rings of iron. Miracles being reported to have taken place at his tomb, he was canonised. The _Lady Chapel_ in Norman times extended two bays eastward, and was extended by two bays by Bishop Gilbert de St. Leofard at the end of the thirteenth century (1288-1305). It was formerly used as the library, and Willis speaks of it as "having nothing to recommend it except a good collection of books." The east window has five lights, and all the windows have been restored. The vaulting is good and the fittings are modern. In the vault is a beautifully-painted design by Bernardi (1519). The _South Choir Aisle_ resembles the north. The Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene is at the east end, which has been restored. St. Richard's head was preserved here as a precious relic. Some modern paintings here represent scenes from the life of St. Richard and our Lord. Passing by the door into the cloisters we see on the north the tombs of Dean Hook (1875), and Bishop Daye (1552); and on the south, Bishop Sherbourne (1536). Here are two carved panels of very early character, which legendary lore tells were brought from Selsey when the bishop's stool was transferred to Chichester. It is quite possible that they are Saxon, and the style of art has a Byzantine appearance. The subjects are the Raising of Lazarus and Our Lord at Bethany with Mary and Martha. A door on the left leads to the vicar's vestry, and then we come to the _South Transept_, which resembles the north. The walls on both west and east are Norman. On the south is a very beautiful window inserted by Bishop Langton (1305-1337), one of the finest Early Decorated windows in England. The glass is modern and hideous. The paintings here on the back of the choir stalls are interesting. They are the work of Theodore Bernardi, an Italian artist, who settled in Flanders and afterwards came to England, and with his son lived at Chichester. Bishop Sherbourne employed him to decorate his Cathedral. The paintings here represent the foundation of the see at Selsey by Caedwalla, and the foundation of four prebends by the bishop and Henry VIII. The soldiers much injured the paintings, which were restored by Bishop Mawson, who employed an inferior artist and thus destroyed much of their merit. The saintly Bishop Richard has a monument here. On the east is the Chapel of St. Pantaleon, a Nicomedian martyr, which retains its piscina. It is now used as the canons' vestry. On the west is the entrance to the _Sacristy_, a large room, now used as a music room, with a vaulted ceiling. Above this is the old consistory court where heretics were tried. Lollards were often examined and condemned here, and behind the seats there is a sliding door leading to what is commonly known as the Lollards' prison. It was probably either a treasury or evidence chamber. Langton's tomb, the builder of the beautiful window, is below that fine structure. He died in 1336. The _Choir_ is long and narrow and has been much restored. The design is Early English, though much of the old Norman piers was retained. The carving in the triforium is very beautiful. The screen is modern. The stalls were erected in Bishop Sherbourne's time, and are of carved oak and inferior to many. The dean's and precentor's stalls are new. The old throne was much defaced by the soldiers under Waller. A new one was given by Bishop Mawson (1740-1754) and this has given place to a modern one. The reredos and altar are modern. DIMENSIONS Total length 393 ft. Length of nave 155 ft. Width of nave 90 ft. Height of nave 61 ft. Length of choir 115 ft. Length of transept 131 ft. Height of spire 277 ft. Area 28,000 sq. ft. BUILDING DATES Norman (Twelfth Century)--South-west tower and part of west front, piers of nave and triforium, part of transepts, parts of walls of choir aisles and piers of choir, and parts of Lady Chapel. The upper part of south-west tower late twelfth century. Early English (Thirteenth Century)--Remodelling of the nave and choir, chapels, porches, and Lady Chapel begun. Decorated (Fourteenth Century)--Retro-choir and south window in south transept. Lady Chapel finished. Perpendicular (Fifteenth Century)--Bell tower, choir walls, paintings, cloisters. Modern--Tower and spire and north-west tower. FOOTNOTE: [7] The modern Pevensey. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL Salisbury is one of the finest examples of Early English architecture in England. It was built for the most part in one style and at one period, and therefore does not present to us that varied conglomeration of the art of different ages which we see in most of our ecclesiastical edifices. The story of its building is full of interest, and we must look for the original home of the Salisbury diocese on the wind-swept fortified heights of Old Sarum, where Bishop Herman fixed his episcopal seat in Early Norman times. The early history of the sees of Southern England is somewhat complicated. When the Story of the Cross was first proclaimed here, and the savage Saxons became Christianised, the whole of Wessex and Sussex were comprised in the see of Dorchester, a small village in Oxfordshire. This huge bishopric was then divided into the two sees of Winchester and Sherborne. Then Selsey (afterwards Chichester) was taken out of Winchester, which diocese was again divided, and Ramsbury formed. Out of the diocese of Sherborne, Wells and Crediton were constituted, and then Bishop Herman in 1058 united the sees of Ramsbury and Sherborne, and formed the diocese of Salisbury, fixing his seat at Old Sarum, the Saxon town of Searobyrig. On this hill fortress seven prelates ruled, amongst whom were the saintly Osmund (1078-1099), who completed the first Cathedral, of which no stone remains, and compiled the famous "Use of Sarum," the model of all service-books in the South of England; Bishop Roger (1102-1107), a most powerful prelate and castle-builder; Jocelyn de Bohun (1142-1184), the opponent of Becket; Hubert Walter (1188-1193), a crusading bishop, the companion of Richard Coeur de Lion; Herbert le Poer or Poore (1194-1216), and then his brother or kinsman, Richard Poore (1217-1228), the founder of the present Cathedral. Various reasons are assigned for the transference of the see. Old Sarum lacked water. It was a lofty, barren height, swept by every wind of heaven, and "when the wind did blow they could not hear the priest say Mass." But the real reason was the quarrel between the clergy and the soldiers who guarded the castle of the king. On one occasion, when during Rogationtide the ecclesiastics went in solemn procession to the Church of St. Martin, on their return they found the gates closed against them, and had to remain without shelter during a long winter's night. Similar insults frequently being offered them, the bishop and his clergy determined to seek a new home. Whither should they go? Legends tell us of the arrow shot at random from the heights of Old Sarum, of the bishop's mysterious dream, wherein the Virgin appeared and told him to seek for the spot Moerfield, of his talking with the Abbess of Wilton, and her reply that he had plenty of land of his own without seeking to spoil her. At any rate the bishop gave the land for his new Cathedral out of his own domain, and he began to build the stately edifice which we now see. The first stones were laid on the feast of St. Vitalis, April 28, 1220; one Elias of Dereham was the master-mason, and the work progressed rapidly until Bishop Poore was translated to Durham in 1228. There his "Chapel of the Nine Altars" attests to the love of building which he acquired at Salisbury, and the similarity of the styles of architecture. His successors continued to build with much zeal, and in the time of Bishop Giles de Bridport (1257-1262) the church was consecrated by Archbishop Boniface, of Savoy, in the presence of Henry III. and his court. The church was now complete. Only forty-six years were spent in its building--a marvellous achievement. The monastic buildings were begun by Bishop Walter Delawyle (1262-1270). As yet the tower was not so high as it is now, and there was no spire; but the fourteenth century had scarcely begun before the two upper storeys were added, and the lofty spire, which forms such a glorious crown of this beautiful structure. It was the work of the mason, Richard of Farleigh, who was at the same time engaged on work at Bath and Reading. In the time of Bishop Wyvil (1329-1375) Edward III. granted permission to fortify the close, and to use the stones from the Cathedral of Old Sarum for this purpose. Hence in the walls which surround the close we see Norman carvings which once adorned the ancient edifice. Of this Bishop Fuller says that "it is hard to say whether he was more dunce than dwarf, more unlearned or unhandsome, insomuch that Walsingham tells us that had the Pope ever _seen_ him (as he no doubt _felt_ him in his large fees) he would never have conferred the place upon him." His curious brass tells of his recovering for his see the Castle of Sherborne and the Chase of Bere, of which the bishopric had been wrongfully despoiled. Prominent among its bishops was Robert Hallam (1408-1417), who was present at the Council of Constance, which saw the burning of Huss and Jerome of Prague, and strove hard to avert their fate. Bishop Ayscough (1438-1450) was murdered by the rebel followers of Jack Cade at Edingdon. Bishop Beauchamp (1450-1481) built the great hall of the palace, and his chantry (destroyed by Wyatt). Here one of the unhappy Woodvilles, brother of Edward IV.'s queen, was bishop (1482-1485), and he had the unhappiness of seeing his brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, beheaded at Salisbury, just before the battle of Bosworth (_cf._ Shakespeare's _Richard III._). Cardinal Campeggio was bishop just before the Reformation, and after Wolsey's disgrace was deprived of his see. There are no records to show what damage was done during that stormy period, but probably the niches of the west front were deprived of many of their images at this time, the windows broken, and the treasury shorn of its plate and relics. One of the best of the Salisbury bishops was Jewel, the author of the _Apology of the Church of England_ (1560-1571), who built the library over the cloisters. During the Civil War Ludlow's soldiers were quartered here, and garrisoned the belfry, but they seem to have behaved with extraordinary mildness. The Cathedral had powerful protectors, and when some of Waller's men carried off some church goods, the Parliament ordered that these should be restored. Bishop Seth Ward (1667-1688), one of the founders of the Royal Society, did much to repair his Cathedral, and restored the palace, which was ruinous, having been bought by one Van Ling from the Parliament, and partly converted into cottages. Unhappily the arch-destroyer, Wyatt, was turned loose on the building at the end of the eighteenth century, who wrought vast and irreparable destruction, which it is pitiable to see. Since his day there have been many efforts to obliterate his work; vast sums have been spent, and the Cathedral restored to much of its ancient glory and beauty. THE EXTERIOR [Illustration Salisbury Cathedral] As we enter the Cathedral precincts we are at once struck with the wondrous beauty and charm of this peaceful close, which surrounds, with its circling green sward, the magnificent Gothic pile. All writers have vied with each other in singing the praises of this grand achievement of Gothic art, and nowhere can we gain a better view of the grand proportions of this church, with its noble spire, than from the south-east or north-east corner of the close. Around us are the venerable walls of the fortifications, erected in the time of Edward III., who granted a license for this purpose, and gave leave to the bishop to pull down the walls of Old Sarum, in order to provide the stone. Embedded in the wall we find some stones with Norman carving, which bespeak their former location in the Norman buildings on the old stronghold of Sarum. The grand _Spire_ is the highest in England (400 feet). The tower on which it stands is Early English as far as the first storey; the two higher storeys were added in the early part of the fourteenth century, and are Early Decorated. The whole structure is magnificent. On each side there is an arcade, richly canopied, and having double windows. At each angle there is a turret, with a small crocketed spire, and from a mass of richly-decorated pinnacles the great spire rises. In the capstone still remains a small leaden box containing a fragment of decayed silk or fine linen, doubtless a relic of the Virgin. The spire has sometimes caused anxiety, and has been strengthened by metal bands, but the Early English sub-structure has sustained with wonderful constancy the weight of the two higher storeys and the spire which the somewhat venturesome builders of the time of Edward III. forced them to bear. The _West Front_ it is the fashion to abuse. It has been censured for its "parcellings" and "raggedness." Professor Freeman denies the honesty of such fronts, because they extend beyond the walls of the aisles and nave, and are what the professors of "true principles" call "shams." Such criticisms fail to recognise the real object of such screens, which was to set forth a chronicle in stone of the history of the church, and people the niches with figures of the great men and benefactors, the saints and heroes, whose memories are here enshrined. It is no "sham," and we must try to imagine it as it really was, not shorn of half its beauties, bereft of its images, or supplied with the works of modern art which do not always harmonise with their surroundings. Inferior it may be to the fronts of Wells or Lincoln, but it still possesses many merits, and is certainly impressive. It was the last completed portion of the Cathedral, as in the mouldings we see the ball-flower which is the sign-manual of the Decorated period. There is a central portion with a gable and buttresses, and a compartment on each side flanked by small towers with small spires. There are five storeys. In the lowest there is a triple porch, deeply recessed with canopies. The west window is large, and is a triplet divided by slender clustered shafts. There are about 100 niches which have been filled with some of the best examples of modern art by Mr. Redfern. Above all we see our Lord in glory, to whom all the others are offering their praise. Mr. Armfield in his _Legend of Christian Art_ gives us the following detailed account of the various figures in the west front and the meaning of their several emblems:-- _The Tier of Angels._--The celestial hierarchy have been divided into three classes, each class containing three grades. The first class consists of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; the second of Dominions, Powers and Authorities; the third of Principalities, Archangels and Angels, Angels being thus the lowest order of celestial creation. _The Tier of Old Testament Worthies._--David, with the harp; Moses, carrying the Tables of the Law; Abraham, with the knife in his hand; Noah, with the ark in his left hand; Samuel; Solomon, with the sceptre in his right hand and the Church in his left hand. _The Tier of Apostles._--St. Jude, with the halberd; St. Simon Zelotes, with the saw; St. Andrew, with the cross; St. Thomas, with the builder's square; St. Peter, with the keys in his right hand; St. Paul, with the sword in his right hand; St. Luke and St. John. The figures of St. Peter and St. Paul are restorations of ancient figures which had been mutilated. St. James the Less, with the fuller's club; St. James the Greater, with the pilgrim's staff; St. Bartholomew, with the knife; St. Matthias, with the lance. _The Tier of the Doctors, Virgins and Martyrs._--St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan; St. Jerome, in a Cardinal's hat; St. Gregory the Great, with the tiara of the Papacy; St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in Africa; St. Augustine, of Canterbury; St. Mary the Virgin, St. Barbara, St. Catherine, St. Roch, St. Nicholas, St. George, the patron Saint of England; St. Christopher, St. Sebastian, St. Cosmo, St. Damian, St. Margaret, St. Ursula, St. John the Baptist; St. Stephen, the proto-martyr; and the four virgins--St. Lucy, St. Agatha, St. Agnes and St. Cecilia. _The Tier of Worthies distinctively belonging to the English Church._--Bishop Giles de Bridport, bishop of the diocese at the time of the consecration of the Cathedral; Bishop Richard Poore, founder of the present Cathedral; King Henry III., the monarch who granted the Charter for the building of the Cathedral; Bishop Odo; Bishop Osmund, who built the first Cathedral of Sarum; Bishop Brithwold; St. Alban, holding sword and cross; St. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury; St. Edmund, king and martyr; St. Thomas of Canterbury. A mutilated figure on the west side of north turret is probably that of St. Berinus. We notice several consecration crosses on the walls of the church. The _North Porch_ is large and massive, and has a parvise in the upper storey. On the inside there is a double arcade with foliated arches, and the pinnacles on each side of the gable are very fine. The _Nave_ presents a perfect example of Early English workmanship. Notice the regularity of the masonry, which is one of its great peculiarities. The stones run in even bands throughout. The aisle windows have two lights; the clerestory has triple lancets, and each pair is flanked by flying buttresses. The fronts of the transepts are graced by beautifully-designed windows and are divided into four storeys. The porch on the north side was removed by Wyatt. The east front of the choir is a fine arrangement of lancets. There is great similarity between the north and south sides of the Cathedral. On the north side of the Lady Chapel formerly stood the Hungerford Chapel, ruthlessly destroyed by Wyatt; the Beauchamp Chapel on the south side shared the same fate. Bishop Beauchamp erected the flying buttresses on the south of the choir in 1450. The gates of the close are:--High Street Gate, built at the same time as the walls; St. Anne's Gate, and Harnham Gate, of which little remains. On the south of the nave is the cloister-court, which we will visit after seeing the interior. Salisbury possessed at one time a separate belfry at the north-west corner of the close. It was entirely destroyed and removed by Wyatt. The _Palace_ is on the south-east. It was commenced by Poore. The hall was built by Bishop Beauchamp in the fifteenth century. THE INTERIOR Entering the building by the west door we obtain a grand view of the interior. The beautiful clustered columns of the fine arches, wrought of Purbeck marble, the fine triforium and clerestory, the distant view of the choir, all combine to make a very impressive scene. The oft-quoted lines tell us that "As many days as in one year there be, So many windows in this church we see; As many marble pillars here appear As there are hours throughout the fleeting year; As many gates as moons one year does view-- Strange tale to tell! yet not more strange than true." [Illustration Strengthening Arches. East Transepts.] The uniformity of the architecture in the first beauty of Gothic conception, the long rows of sepulchral monuments of warriors and bishops, and the noble proportions of the building, add greatly to the charm of this building; and yet it lacks much of the beauty which once shone here. Little of its stained glass, which once shed wondrous light on all we see, has been saved from the wreck caused by Reformation zeal and the wanton destruction of Wyatt. The triforium with its flat-pointed arches, sub-divided into four smaller ones, ornamented with trefoils and quatrefoils, alternating with cinquefoils and octofoils, greatly resembles that at Westminster. The clerestory windows are triple lancets. The vaulting is plain, the arches rising from clustered shafts with foliated capitals, and resting on corbel-heads. The west wall has a triple-lancet window, and beneath this is an arcade of four arches, each of which contains two sub-arches. In the west window has been collected fragments of old glass saved from the wreck. It is possible to discover the figure of our Lord in Majesty, the Virgin, Zacharias in the Temple, the Adoration of the Magi. There is some Flemish glass also here. The glass in the west windows of the aisles is ancient (1240-1270), and we see here the arms of Bishop Jewell (1562) and John Aprice (1558). The aisles have double-lancet windows. There is a curious stone bench on each side of the nave, upon which the piers stand. This was so placed in order to distribute the great weight of the building resting on these piers, as the foundations were not laid upon any very firm ground, the nature of the soil being formerly marshy, and the situation liable to floods. This ingenious plan has evidently had the desired effect, as the building has stood for nigh 700 years. The nave contains a fine series of monuments which were arranged here by Wyatt in a barbarous fashion. This vandal was guilty of every enormity. Not only did he remove the monuments from their original positions, but he seems to have mixed up the effigies and put them on tombs to which they did not belong. Beginning at west end of south side, leaving the figure of Hibernia, which graces Lord Wyndham's monument (1745), we see the monuments of the following:-- 1. Bishop Herman (1078), which was brought from Old Sarum. 2. Bishop Jocelyn (1184), which was brought from Old Sarum (the head is later than the rest). 3. Bishop Roger (1139), which was brought from Old Sarum. (There is some uncertainty about the identity of these.) 4. Incised slab to an unknown personage. 5. Bishop Beauchamp (1481), whose chantry was destroyed by Wyatt. 6. Robert, Lord Hungerford (1459), whose chantry was destroyed by Wyatt. Notice the plate armour and collar of saints, also sword and dagger. 7. Lord Stourton, hung in the market-place in 1556 for the murder of the Hartgills, accomplished in a brutal fashion. He was hung, as a concession to his noble birth, with a silken cord. The "wells" on each side allude to the six heads of the Stour river, which rise near the Stourton mansion. 8. Bishop de la Wyle (1271), mutilated. The base is made up of fragments of much later date. 9. William Longespée, first Earl of Salisbury of that name, son of Henry II. by Fair Rosamond (1226). Notice the chain-armour and surcoat, shield with arms of Anjou, and the decoration of the tomb--silver diaper work. He fought in the Crusades and in France, and was present at the signing of Magna Charta. Crossing to the north side we see the monuments of-- 10. Sir John Cheyney (1509), standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond at battle of Bosworth, unhorsed by Richard III. 11.} Walter, Lord Hungerford, and his wife. 12.} 13. Sir John de Montacute (1389), fought at Creçy and in Scotland under Richard II. Notice armour, especially gauntlets. 14. Chancellor Geoffrey. 15. Person unknown. 16. Longespée, Earl of Salisbury (1250), son of the above-mentioned earl, a Crusader killed by the Saracens. The fact that this is a cross-legged effigy does not prove that all cross-legged effigies represent Crusaders. 17. "Boy Bishop," the great attraction of the ordinary visitor and tourist. The ceremony of the boy bishop is well known. One of the choir boys was elected on St. Nicholas Day, and presided until Innocents' Day, and a special service and procession took place during his rule. The old idea was that this boy died during his brief episcopacy, and was thus honoured with an effigy. It is now generally believed that such small figures represent heart burials. In bygone times the body was usually buried at the place where the person died, and not infrequently the heart was conveyed to the special church associated with the family or life of the deceased. The library, however, contains the order of service of boy bishop, and the ceremony lingered on until the time of Elizabeth. 18. Person unknown. Near the entrance is a monument to Dr. Turburville, an oculist of Salisbury (1696). The _North Transept_ is entered by a Perpendicular arch, by Bishop Beauchamp (1450-1481). It was designed to support the tower. The style of this transept resembles that of the nave. The two-light windows, which take the place of the triforium on the north side, and the beautiful clerestory windows, with their slender pilasters, should be noticed. There is an eastern aisle, divided into chapels, which Wyatt robbed of their screens. The monuments here are:--Brass to John Britton, the eminent antiquary; James Harris, author of _Hermes_, by Bacon; Earl of Malmesbury, by Chantrey; W.B. Earle, by Flaxman; Bishop John Blythe (?) (1499); Sir R. Hoare, the Wilts historian, by Lucas; Richard Jefferies, the charming modern writer on country life; Walter and William Long, by Flaxman; Bishop Woodville (1484). The _South Transept_ resembles the north. Here are monuments of:--Bishop Mitford (1407), a fine tomb of white marble; Bishop Fisher (1825); Edward Poore (1780). The _Choir-Screen_ is good modern work, and replaced a patchwork structure of Wyatt's handiwork, made up of spoil taken from his destroyed chantries. The organ is modern. The _Choir and Presbytery_ differ in no way from the architecture of the nave. The east end is beautifully designed. At the base of the reredos are three arches, and above five arches, with cinquefoil headings, and above these a triplet window. The roof is painted with an interesting series of designs, which are modern reproductions of thirteenth-century work. First there are series of Old Testament saints, the Forerunner of our Lord being ranked with the prophets. Then come the Apostles, with the figures of our Lord and the Evangelists; and further east are representations of the months, which are curious and interesting. January is represented by a man warming his hands; February, a man drinking wine; March, digging; April, sowing; May, hawking; June, flowers; July, reaping; August, threshing; September, gathering fruit; October, brewing; November, timber-felling; December, killing a pig. The _Choir Stalls_ are a patchwork composition. There is some old Perpendicular work; some of the work is by Wren. Happily Wyatt's productions have been removed. The reredos is modern, is a very elaborate piece of work. All the other fittings of the choir are new. In the choir are the chantries of Bishop Audley (1524), a fine piece of Late Perpendicular work, which has a fan-vault and some traces of colour, and of Walter, Lord Hungerford (1429), removed here from the nave, and made into a family pew by Lord Radnor. The iron-work is good, and such chapels are rare, the Chantry of Edward IV. at Windsor being the finest of its kind. In the _North Choir Aisle_ and _Transept_ there are two monuments of the _memento mori_ type, the large tomb of a thirteenth-century bishop, either Bingham or Scammel, Bishop Wyvill (1375), Gheast (1576), and Jewell (1571), and the curious brass of Bishop Wyvill, who recovered for the see Sherborne Castle and the Bere Chase, seized by Stephen, and granted by Edward III. to the Earl of Salisbury. To decide the right the wager of battle was resorted to, and both bishop and earl chose a champion. The king, however, caused the matter to be settled amicably. The bishop is here shown in his castle, praying for his champion, and below are the hares and rabbits representing the chase. In this north-east transept is a fine Early Perpendicular lavatory, which is evidently not in its original position, part of an Early English screen, removed by Wyatt, and a curious aumbrey. In the aisle toward the east we see an effigy, said to be that of Bishop Poore, the founder of the Cathedral, and at the east end is the monument of Sir Thomas Gorges and his lady, who was a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. It is a cumbrous piece of work. The _Retro-Choir_ or processional path has beautiful clustered shafts and fine vault, and forms a graceful entrance to the _Lady Chapel_, a most perfect piece of Early English building, and the oldest part of the church. At the east end is a triple lancet, with another lancet on each side, filled with modern glass. There is a new altar here, and modern colouring adorns the walls and ceiling. The canopies of the niches under the windows on the north and south were brought here from the Beauchamp Chapel destroyed by Wyatt. Here in former days stood the shrine of St. Osmund, the second Norman bishop, the saintly man to whom the diocese and the English Church owe much. His tomb remains here, but his shrine was plundered and destroyed at the Reformation. At the east end of the south choir aisle is the stately tomb of the unhappy Earl of Hertford (1621), who married Catherine, the sister of Lady Jane Grey, and thus incurred Queen Elizabeth's resentment, and was imprisoned. The poor lady, when released from the Tower, was separated from her husband, and died of grief. He survived her sixty years. Near here are the modern tombs of Bishops Moberly and Hamilton, and the Perpendicular tomb of William Wilton, Chancellor of Sarum (1506-1523). The old sacristy, now the vestry, is on the south of this transept; above this is the muniment room, the ancient treasury. In the transept is the remarkable monument of Bishop Giles de Bridport (1262), under whose rule the church was finished. It is the most interesting tomb in the church. The carvings in the spandrels record the chief events in the bishop's life--his birth, confirmation, education, and possibly his first preferment, his homage, a procession (probably referring to the dedication of this church), his death, and the presentation of his soul for judgment. Here are monuments also of Canon Bowles (1850); Bishop Burgess (1837); Bishop Seth Ward (1689), Hooker, the famous divine; Young, the father of the poet; Isaak Walton, the son of the angler; Bishop Davenant (1641); Mrs. Wordsworth, the wife of the bishop; and a brass to Canon Liddon's memory. Further on are the monuments of Bishop Salcot (1557), and Sir Richard Mompesson and his wife (1627). Notice the inverted strengthening arches in both choir transepts. Passing through the south transept we enter the _Cloisters_, which are considered to be "among the finest in England," and without doubt they can lay claim to be a great and beautiful architectural triumph. They are a little later than the Cathedral, having been begun directly after its completion, and finished during the rule of Bishop Wyvill, about 1340. The windows are finely constructed, and consist of double-arched openings, each arch having two sub-arches, while in the head is a large six-foiled opening. On the wall side is a blind arcade of graceful arches. An unfortunate restoration in 1854 did not improve the appearance of the cloisters. On the north side, between the cloister and the church, is the plumbery. The monuments here do not possess much interest. The _Library_, over part of the east walk, was built by Bishop Jewell, and contains about 5000 volumes, and a valuable collection of MSS. One of the most interesting is a Gallican version of the Psalter (969 A.D.), Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicles (twelfth century), a copy of Magna Charter (now in muniment room), and many others of much value and importance. The _Chapter-House_ was built early in the reign of Edward I. It is a noble octagonal building, and can scarcely be surpassed by any other. The roof is modern. There is a central pillar, from which the vaulting springs. On each side there is a large window, resembling in tracery those in the cloisters. Below the windows is an arcade, and beneath this a stone bench, and at the east end a raised seat for the bishop and his officials. There is a remarkable series of sculptures above the arcade, which are extremely interesting and merit close study. The following are the subjects represented:-- WEST BAY 1. Description of Chaos. 2. Creation of the Firmament. NORTH-WEST BAY 3. Creation of the Earth. 4. Creation of the Sun and Moon. 5. Creation of the Birds and Fishes. 6. Creation of Adam and Eve. 7. The Sabbath. 8. The Institution of Marriage. 9. The Temptation. 10. The Hiding in the Garden. NORTH BAY 11. The Expulsion. 12. Adam tilling the Ground. 13. Cain and Abel's Offering. 14. Murder of Abel. 15. God sentencing Cain. 16. God commanding Noah to build the Ark. 17. The Ark. 18. Noah's Vineyard. NORTH-EAST BAY 19. The Drunkenness of Noah. 20. Building of the Tower of Babel. 21. The Angels appearing to Abraham. 22. Abraham entertaining Angels. 23. Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. 24. The Escape of Lot. 25. Abraham and Isaac journeying to the Mount. 26. The Sacrifice of Isaac. EAST BAY 27. Isaac blessing Jacob. 28. Blessing of Esau. 29. Rebecca sending Jacob to Padanaram. 30. Meeting of Jacob and Rachel. 31. Rachel introducing Jacob to Laban. 32. Jacob wrestling with the Angel, and Jacob's Dream. 33. The Angel touching Jacob's Thigh. 34. Meeting of Jacob and Esau. SOUTH-EAST BAY 35. Joseph's Dream. 36. Joseph relating his Dream. 37. Joseph being placed in a Well. 38. Joseph sold into Egypt. 39. Joseph's Coat brought to Jacob. 40. Joseph brought to Potiphar. 41. Joseph tempted by Potiphar's Wife. 42. Joseph accused before Potiphar. SOUTH BAY 43. Joseph placed in Prison. 44. The fate of Pharaoh's Baker and Butler. 45. Pharaoh's Dream. 46. Pharaoh's Perplexity. 47. Joseph taken from Prison, and interpreting the Dream. 48. Joseph ruling in Egypt. 49. The Brethren journeying into Egypt. 50. The Cup placed in Benjamin's Sack. SOUTH-WEST BAY 51. The Discovery of the Cup. 52. The Brethren pleading before Joseph. 53. Jacob and Family journeying to Egypt. 54. The Brethren pleading before Joseph after the Death of Jacob. 55. Joseph assuring his Brethren of his Protection. 56. Moses in the Presence of God. 57. The Passage of the Red Sea. 58. Destruction of the Egyptians. WEST BAY 59. Moses striking the Rock. 60. The Declaring of the Law. In the vestibule the doorway is remarkable for its great beauty. In the voussoirs of the arch is another series of sculptures representing moralities, the triumph of virtue over vice. We see Concordia trampling on Discordia, Temperantia pouring liquor down the throat of Drunkenness, Bravery trampling on Cowardice, Faith on Infidelity, Virtue covering Vice with a cloak, while Vice embraces her knee with one hand and stabs her with the other. Truth pulls out the tongue of Falsehood, Modesty scourges Lust, and Charity pours coin into the throat of Avarice. These sculptures are of the very highest class of art, and are among the most interesting remains of Early Gothic carving in the world. All the glass in the chapter-house is modern, and also the tiling. A fine old specimen of fourteenth-century furniture is seen in the ancient table preserved here. DIMENSIONS Total length 473 ft. Length of nave 229 ft. Width 82 ft. Height 84 ft. Height of spire 404 ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Early English (1220-1260)--The main buildings of the church were completed at this time. (1262-1270)--Monastic buildings. Decorated (1330-1350)--Two upper storeys of tower and spire. Perpendicular (1460)--Arches supporting tower in north and south transepts. Flying buttresses on south side of choir. Other buildings of interest in Salisbury-- The Guild Hall. Market Cross, called the Poultry. Churches of St. Martin, St. Edmund, St. Thomas à Becket. In the neighbourhood are-- Old Sarum. Stonehenge. [Illustration PLAN OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL] OXFORD CATHEDRAL Oxford is so full of varied interest that we must leave our readers to gain knowledge of its history from other sources, and confine ourselves to its Cathedral records. This see was one of those founded by Henry VIII. out of the proceeds of his spoliation of the monasteries. The Cathedral was originally the Church of the Priory of St. Frideswide. This lady was the daughter of Didan, the chief man of the town. At an early age she took the veil, and her father built for her a convent; but Algar, King of Mercia, wished to marry her, and swore that he would carry her off. She fled for refuge, and on her return to Oxford was gallantly defended by the men of her city against Algar, who was struck blind. She was buried in her convent, and many miracles were wrought at her shrine. Such was the beginning of what ultimately became the Cathedral of Oxford. Terrible was the scene which took place in this little church. The Danes were in Oxford. There was peace between the Saxon king, Ethelred, and their foes; but on St. Brice's Day, 1002, the folk of Wessex were excited to slaughter the Danes, who fled for sanctuary to the little church. The Saxons respected no more the sacredness of the building than the laws of hospitality, and set fire to the place and massacred the helpless Danes. The remains of this Early Saxon church are said to have been discovered, which we shall examine later.[8] Ethelred, repenting of his crime, determined to rebuild the church, which he accomplished, and recent authorities assure us that the present church is in plan and main substance the Saxon church of Ethelred, erected in 1004, and not the later Norman church about which the older writers tell us. He seems to have established a community of secular canons. The work was interrupted by the later Danish invasions, and perhaps never finished. At any rate it was ruinous in the time of the Early Normans kings. In 1111 A.D., it was granted by either Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, or by Henry I., to Prior Guimond and his fellow canons. This prior began to restore the ruined church and monastery, but his successor, Robert de Cricklade (1141-1180), did most of the work, and restored the nave, choir, central tower and transepts. All the later Norman work is due to him. In 1180, in the presence of Henry II., his nobles and a goodly company of bishops, the relics of St. Frideswide were translated to a place of honour in the restored building on the north side of the choir, to which there was great resort of pilgrims on account of the miraculous healings which took place there. Fire played havoc with the city of Oxford in 1190, but the church escaped without much injury. The monastic buildings suffered, and the traces of fire can still be seen on the old Norman doorway in the cloisters. In the thirteenth century the Lady Chapel was built adjoining the north side of the choir, some of the old walls being used, the spire raised above the tower, the chapter-house and part of the Latin Chapel added, which was completed in the fourteenth century. A few Decorated details were added at this period, and windows in this style inserted. The fifteenth century witnessed sundry alterations in the cloisters, the building of St. Frideswide's latest shrine, the insertion of some Perpendicular windows, and the erection of the fine vaulting of the choir. Then a mighty change dawned on the old monastery. Cardinal Wolsey obtained a bull from Pope Clement VII. for its suppression and determined to convert it into a college, which was designed to be the largest in Oxford. He played sad havoc with the fabric of the church. A great part of the nave he destroyed altogether in order to make room for his great "Tom Quad," so named after the famous bell which still rings each night at five minutes past nine, and is the signal for the closing of the gates of all Oxford colleges. Part of the old cloisters disappeared also. Wolsey contemplated the building of another church for his college, and indeed began its construction; but his fall in 1529 put an end to the carrying out of his great conception, and the college fell into the hands of King Henry VIII. Here the monarch established one of his newly-formed sees (the bishop's seat was first fixed at Oseney Abbey, just outside Oxford), and with characteristic parsimony applied the revenues of the college to the support of the see. The dean of the Cathedral is still the head of the college, and the canons are university professors. As was usual at this time, the Cathedral was shorn of all its costly ornaments, vestments, plate and other treasures, but the fabric remained intact. Dean Brian Duppa in 1630 wrought much evil in the way of restoring his Cathedral, destroying the old glass and woodwork, tearing up the brasses, and "improving" the windows by cutting away the old tracery. He was rewarded for his zeal by being made Bishop of Salisbury. His loyalty to the fallen fortunes of his sovereign, Charles I., somewhat atones for his wanton destruction of much that was beautiful in Christ Church Cathedral. In the Civil War, Oxford was the great centre of the Royalists. Here King Charles held his court. Students flocked to his standard, and the Cathedral was the scene of several thanksgiving services on the occasion of victories. Cromwell's soldiers at length captured Oxford, and did some damage in the Cathedral, breaking much of the glass. Bishop Fell (1676-1686) was a munificent benefactor of the college. His father when dean had built the fine staircase to the hall with its fan-tracery vault, and commenced the buildings on north and west of the quadrangle. This Bishop Fell finished the buildings of the college together with the west belfry, designed by Sir C. Wren, but he does not appear to have done much for the Cathedral. Neglect and the hard hand of time wrought much mischief, and it seems to have been in a deplorable state when the restorations of the last half of the nineteenth century were inaugurated. To rescue it from its wretched condition Dean Liddell, whose name is familiar to every student of Greek, set himself with much energy, and the work was entrusted to Sir G. Scott. His restoration was carried out with much wisdom and careful regard for antiquity. The author of _Alice in Wonderland_, a fellow of the college, published a satirical pamphlet on _The Three T's_, the tunnel, the tower (the third we forget), and compared the new entrance with a railway tunnel, representing a railway train emerging from the portal, and scoffing at the new tower, which arose above the grand staircase to the hall. But it is easy to criticise, and Sir G. Scott's work at Oxford compares favourably with most restorations, and for this posterity will thank him. THE EXTERIOR Oxford Cathedral is so hidden away behind the obtrusive walls of Wolsey's college that it is difficult to obtain any good exterior views. The best is that seen from the garden of one of the canons, to enter which permission may be obtained. The view from the cloister is also satisfactory. The principal entrance is from "Tom Quad" by the "tunnel," as Lewis Carroll termed the passage or porch situated a little to the north of the entrance to the hall. As we have said, the west front and the greater part of the nave were destroyed by Wolsey when he erected the college buildings. He also destroyed the west walk of the cloister, which we enter by a passage leading from the entrance to the hall. The cloisters are Perpendicular work of the latter part of the fifteenth century. The north walk was at one time converted into a muniment room, but has recently been restored to its original form, and has a modern imitation of the old vaulting. The old refectory stood on the south side, but has been converted into college rooms. Its large Perpendicular windows still remain looking on to the cloister. The entrance to the chapter-house is in the east walk, and a fine Norman doorway it is. It belongs to the later Norman period. It has four orders, richly ornamented with zigzag. A round-headed window is on each side of the door. The chapter-house is one of the best examples of the Early English style in the kingdom, and may be compared with those of Lincoln, Salisbury and Chester. The east end is very fine, and consists of an arcade of five arches which are double. Slender clustered shafts with capitals adorned with foliage support the inner arches. The three central arches are pierced for windows. Similar arcades are at the east end of north and south sides. The sculpture in this chamber is extremely fine. Grotesque corbels, carved capitals and the bosses in the vault, are all beautiful and interesting. One of the bosses represents the Virgin giving an apple to the infant Christ. There is also some old glass and interesting mural paintings. Diocesan meetings are held in this delightful room. The foundation stone of Wolsey's college at Ipswich is preserved here. In the room on the south are some fine paintings, an Elizabethan table and an old chest. Another door in this cloister leads to the old slype, a passage to the monastic burial-ground. On the left is St. Lucy's Chapel, mainly of Norman construction, the east window being much later. It is of Decorated character, and the tracery is flamboyant and of very beautiful design. The south choir aisle adjoins, and is part of the original church. The windows are modern imitations of Norman work. The windows in the clerestory of the choir are Perpendicular. The east end is modern, having been reconstructed by Scott. On the north side of the Cathedral, viewed from the canon's garden, we see the north transept with its large Perpendicular window, erected at the beginning of the sixteenth century, flanked by two turrets crowned with pinnacles; the Latin Chapel of beautiful Decorated design, erected in the fourteenth century, and the Lady Chapel, the east wall of which is part of the old Saxon church, and Mr. Park Harrison has discovered the remains of three Saxon apses which are perhaps the remains of the earliest Saxon church, the Church of St. Frideswide, built by Didan early in the eighth century.[9] A Decorated window has been inserted here. We must now notice the _Tower_ and _Spire_, a beautiful feature of the Cathedral. The lower storey is Late Norman, similar to the style of the nave; the belfry and the spire are Early English. This spire ranks with that of Barnock, Northants, and New Romsey, Surrey, as being one of the earliest in the kingdom. It was restored by Scott. The pinnacles at the angles of the tower are modern but accurate copies of the ancient ones. The spire is octagonal, and is what is termed a broach spire, _i.e._, it rises from the exterior of the tower walls and not from the interior of a parapet as in the later spires. [Illustration Oxford Cathedral] THE INTERIOR Entering by the new porch from the quadrangle and passing under the organ-screen we see a Cathedral, small, indeed, but possessing features of peculiar interest. In its main plan it is possibly the church of Ethelred begun in 1004, but finished in Late Norman times when Robert de Cricklade or Canutus was prior (1141-1180).[10] The piers of the _Nave_ are alternatively circular and octagonal. There is a very unusual triforium. Arches spring from the capitals of the piers, and in the tympana are set the triforium arcade. From half capitals set against the piers spring another series of arches at a lower level than the others we have mentioned, and above the curve of these is the triforium arcade. Very few examples of this curious construction are found in this country. The carving of the capitals is graceful, and though it differs somewhat from the stiff-leaved foliage of Early English style, it somewhat resembles that character. The clerestory belongs to the period of transition between Norman and Early English. The central arch of the triple windows is pointed, and the others, which are blocked up, round. The corbels and shafts which support the roof are Norman, but the brackets are Perpendicular, erected by Wolsey, who intended to build a stone vault. The present fine timber roof belongs to his time, or a little later. The stalls and seats are modern. The screen is Jacobean, above which is the organ, a fine instrument enclosed in a Jacobean case. The pulpit belongs to the same period and is very interesting, especially its grotesque carving. The central tower has fine and lofty arches, and its appearance has been improved by the removal of the ceiling which formerly existed here. A curious subterranean chamber was discovered here in 1856. It contained two aumbries, and was evidently intended for the keeping of some treasure, possibly of the monastery, or of the university. It is known that the university chest during the thirteenth century was deposited in a secret place within the Church of St. Frideswide, and this, doubtless, was the spot. The _Choir_ is of the same character as the nave. The piers are more massive, and the style of the carving of the capitals differs. We are told that we have distinct evidence here that this is part of Ethelred's church, that the sculpture is Saxon, copied from Saxon MSS., that it has been worn by weather which could only have been done during the ruinous condition of the church prior to its Late Norman restoration. Possibly this may be true, and the carving is certainly peculiar, but at present we cannot quite agree to accept this view. The triforium is Late Norman, and the roof is a fine example of fan-tracery begun in the fifteenth century. Wolsey changed the appearance of the clerestory, and introduced Perpendicular details. [Illustration Oxford Cathedral (Herbert Railton)] The _East End_ is modern, and is a fine conception of Sir G. Scott based upon early models. The _Reredos_ is a fine modern work, and the altar, lectern and throne are also new. Turning to the north we enter the _North Choir Aisle_, where we stand upon debatable ground. Perhaps we are in the Early Saxon church built for St. Frideswide, or the later Saxon church of Ethelred. Authorities differ, and it is impossible to decide. At any rate, there in the east wall are the remains of the three Saxon arches which lead to the apses discovered on the outside. And here, too, is the noted _Shrine of St. Frideswide_, of which Mr. Ruskin said that every stone was worth its weight in silver, if not in gold. It has been gradually collected from odd corners of the precincts, as the shrine was destroyed by Henry VIII. The carved foliage is very beautiful, and when this base of the shrine was complete and crowned with the jewelled cover, beneath which reposed the relics of the saints, it must have been very imposing. There is a curious story in connection with these relics. When the tomb was destroyed these were carefully preserved in secret by "the faithful," and in the meantime the body of the wife of Peter Martyr, a Protestant professor, was laid near the saint's shrine. As this poor lady was an ex-nun, in the time of Mary and Cardinal Pole her body was cast out into a cesspool, and the relics of the saint restored to their place of honour. In Elizabeth's time the saint's bones were again removed. The queen ordered the decent re-burial of the remains of Peter Martyr's wife, and while this was being done the sacred box containing the relics was produced, and "the married nun and the virgin saint were buried together, and the dust of the two still remains under the pavement beneath our feet inextricably blended."[11] The exact spot is conjecturable, but a brass has been placed where the mingled remains are supposed to lie. The _Lady Chapel_ is on the west of the choir aisle, and is of Early English construction. It was added about 1250, when the present piers and vault were built. The east wall, as we have said, is manifestly earlier, and is part of one of the earlier Saxon churches. The east window is restored Decorated. The west arch is round-headed, and shows that this part of the chapel was the east aisle of the north transept. There are extensive remains of colouring. Here is the remarkable "Watching Chamber," supposed by some to be a later shrine of St. Frideswide, and by Professor Willis and others to be the chamber where watch was kept for guarding the gold and jewels which adorned the actual shrine. It has three stages, and is very beautiful Perpendicular work. In this chapel there are some interesting monuments--Sir George Nowers (1425) (with good example of armour); Prior Guymond (?) (1149), or Prior Alexander de Sutton (1316), with Decorated canopy and effigy; Lady Montacute (1353), the supposed founder of the Latin Chapel; Robert Burton, author of _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1639). Some "Morris" windows have been inserted here designed by Burne-Jones, very beautiful in themselves, but perhaps scarcely in keeping with their surroundings. The St. Cecilia window is extremely fine. The _Latin Chapel_ is mainly Decorated work of the time of Edward III., the western parts being earlier. The vault has some richly-foliated bosses, on which appear the waterlily and the roses, and heads surmounted with crown and mitre. The east window has strange Venetian tracery, but some excellent modern glass designed by Burne-Jones and representing incidents in the life of St. Frideswide. The other windows have some fine old fourteenth-century glass; the north-east window is modern. The woodwork is very fine; it is later than the chapel, and was not designed for it. The cardinal's hat, supported by angels on one of the carved poppy-heads, shows that this was prepared for Wolsey's choir. Some of the work is much older. In this chapel the writer used to listen to the lectures of the divinity professor, and was often distracted from the discourse by the architectural beauties around him. Beautiful vistas may be obtained here of "long-drawn aisles and fretted vault," and he became very conversant with the history of St. Frideswide as depicted in the fine east window. The _North Transept_ is similar to the nave in style. The north window is a modern restoration, and the glass is not very pleasing modern work. Here is the Perpendicular tomb of a monk, Zouch (1503), and some good brasses in the aisle. The north aisle has Norman vaulting. The windows are restored Perpendicular, and the glass is modern. The window at the west end of the aisle was refashioned by Dean Brian Duppa in his usual barbarous manner, but it has some good Flemish glass by Van Ling representing Jonah and the Gourd, with Nineveh in the background. Crossing to the south side of the church we pass several monuments in the vestibule at the west end and reach the _South Aisle_, which is later in style than the north. At the west end is a Burne-Jones window, representing "Faith, Hope and Charity." The south transept preserves its Late Norman character, but has been shorn of its length. On the east side is the Chapel of St. Lucy. At the back of the wall on the south is the slype, and above this the vestry. One of the windows here is said to be Saxon. _St. Lucy's Chapel_ is Norman, and is now used as a baptistry. The east window has flamboyant tracery and some fine old glass. Several monuments of distinguished Cavaliers who died for the Royal cause in the Civil War are in this part of the church. The _South Choir Aisle_ resembles that on the north. The south windows are in the Norman style, but are modern imitations. The glass of the east window was designed by Burne-Jones and portrays St. Catherine. It was erected in memory of a daughter of Dean Liddell. The monument of Prince Leopold, brother of the king, formerly a student of Christ Church, has a pathetic interest, and the tomb of Bishop King, Oxford's first bishop (1557), is a fine piece of Perpendicular work. The window to his memory is on the south and shows a representation of the Abbey of Oseney, where his episcopal throne was first established, before it migrated to the Church of St. Frideswide. DIMENSIONS Extreme length 175 ft. Length from screen to reredos 132 ft. Extreme breadth 108 ft. Height of spire 144 ft. DATES OF BUILDING Saxon--East wall of Lady Chapel and north choir aisle, and possibly window in south transept. Norman--Nave, choir, transept, aisles, door of chapter-house St. Lucy's Chapel. Early English--Lady Chapel. Decorated--Latin Chapel and several windows. Perpendicular--Cloisters, windows and vault of choir. FOOTNOTES: [8] Mr. Micklethwaite considers these remains to have belonged to Ethelred's church. [9] Mr. Micklethwaite believes these apses to have been part of Ethelred's church. [10] Although Mr. Park Harrison's theory is attractive, we are unable to accept all his conclusions as to the pre-Norman character of the details of the church. [11] Froude, _Hist. Engl._, vi. 468. BRISTOL CATHEDRAL Bristol, the great western port of England, has a history which tells of the ancient glories of English seamanship. From this port sailed the first Englishman who landed in America, Sebastian Cabot, who was born in Bristol, and was the first to discover that which is now known as the United States. A Bristol chronicle states, "this year 1497, on St. John the Baptist's day, the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristol, called _The Matthew_, the which said ship departed from the port of Bristowe the 2nd of May, and came home again 6th August following." It was a Bristol ship which brought home the real Robinson Crusoe (Juan Fernandez) from his island home. Very famous were the great merchants of Bristol, such as William Cannynge, who founded the noble Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, whom his king, Henry VI., delighted to honour, and styled "his beloved and honourable merchant." Vast was his fleet--his shipping, amounting to 2470 tons, was seized by the victorious Yorkist monarch--and vast were his commercial enterprises, whereby he made Bristol a large and flourishing port. But we must go back to earlier days. In Saxon times the port was famous, or infamous, for its slave-dealing, which the coming of the Conqueror scarcely suppressed. Here Harold's three sons made a vain attempt to rescue the kingdom from his iron grasp. A famous Norman castle destroyed in the Civil War was built here, where Stephen was kept a prisoner. Pleasanter visits were frequently paid by other monarchs. The city was besieged and taken by Henry Bolingbroke, and Shakespeare in _Richard II._ tells of the beheading of four supporters of the luckless king in the city market-place. Here, too, five martyrs were burnt, and in the first year of Elizabeth's reign a mass of roods and images shared the same fate. The imposition of the ship-money tax was so distasteful that the Royal cause was not very popular at Bristol. The citizens opened their gates to the troopers of Cromwell, who held it from 1642 to the following year. Prince Rupert stormed the place, and held it till it was wrested from him in 1645. The "Bloody Assize" of Judge Jefferies left its mark on this western port; six prisoners were executed, and hundreds sent across the sea to serve in the plantations. The darkest spot in the history of Bristol is the story of the Reform riots of 1831, sometimes called "the Bristol Revolution," when the dregs of the population pillaged and plundered, burnt the bishop's palace, and were guilty of much vandalism. Of the old churches we shall write subsequently. The old quaint houses are very attractive, especially the old Norman hall and Tudor windows of the house of Edward Colston, one of Bristol's merchant princes, Cannynge's house, with its fine Perpendicular roof, and the old Hospital of St. Peter. THE HISTORY OF THE SEE Bristol was one of the sees founded by Henry VIII. in 1542, after the destruction of the monasteries. There is, however, in the British Museum, a MS. copy of a Papal Bull of 1551, for the refounding of the see, directed by Pope Paul IV. to Cardinal Pole. In 1836 the Sees of Bristol and Gloucester were united, and remained so until 1897, when they were again separated. The church has a history long before it became a Cathedral. It was the church of the monastery of Augustinian canons, founded in 1142 by Robert Fitzhardinge, afterwards Lord of Berkeley, on the site of Augustine's oak (so tradition says), where Augustine met the British bishops in conference and offended them by his haughty demeanour. The consecration of probably the chancel took place six years later. In 1155 Fitzhardinge received from the king the forfeited estates of Roger de Berkeley, and was thus enabled to extend his building operations, which were continued until the time of his death in 1170. The church consisted of a nave with north and south aisles, a central tower with north and south transepts, a presbytery with north and south aisles, and a processional path. The choir had a square ending, and consisted of three bays, the altar being at the east of the second bay, the last bay forming a _via processionum_. The chapter-house and vestibule are also Norman. The Early English builders erected the Elder Lady Chapel, Bristol Cathedral being rich in Lady Chapels, and possessing two. Abbot John (1196-1215) or his successor, David, was doubtless the builder. Later Early English work is evident in portions of the north and south transepts and in the Berkeley Chapel, but much of the work of this period has been destroyed. Serious complaints were made at this time concerning the conduct of the monks, and sundry visitations were made and orders issued for the reform of the monastery. During the Early Decorated period the roof and east window of the Elder Lady Chapel were added, and a little later (1306-1332) Abbot Knowle reconstructed the choir and choir aisles. With his work came the beginning of Perpendicular aspiration, and it is an earnest of the course of the later English Gothic which first manifested itself in the choir of Gloucester. Bristol nearly had the lucrative honour of receiving the body of the murdered King Edward II., slain at Berkeley Castle. But for fear of offending his patrons Abbot Knowle declined to have the burial here; hence the corpse was taken to Gloucester, where it caused a great concourse of pilgrims, and brought many offerings. Knowle's successor, Abbot Snow (1332-1341), was made a mitred abbot, and had a seat in Parliament. He continued the work of his predecessor, erected a chantry, and built the Newton Chapel. Soon after his death terrible misfortunes happened to the city and monastery. The Black Death invaded the land, and so great were its ravages that in Bristol the living were hardly able to bury the dead, and few monks survived the awful malady. The effects were disastrous. For over a hundred years no building was attempted, and the monastery was in a deplorable condition. In the time of Abbot Newbury (1428-1473) the great tower was begun, and finished by his successor, Hunt (1473-1481), who re-roofed the church. Abbot Newland (1481-1515) rebuilt the upper part of the abbey gateway in Perpendicular style, and began to rebuild the ruinous nave. As the power of the town increased the citizens often had disputes with the monks over rights of fairs and markets and other matters, and the burghers of Bristol were not more submissive than those of other places. Hence the usual quarrels arose and disturbed the peace of the city. Some of the succeeding abbots wrought some minor improvements, but in 1543 a most drastic remedy was applied to the ruinous nave. It was entirely pulled down, and not rebuilt until recent times. The monastery was dissolved like other similar institutions, and Paul Bush became the first bishop of the new see founded by Henry VIII. For a brief space during Mary's reign the old worship was restored, and Her Majesty and Philip bestowed costly gifts of copes and altar frontals and vestments. But in Elizabeth's reign all "relics of Popery" were ordered to be destroyed, such as the rood-lofts, tabernacles for images, and scripture texts and the table of the commandments to be painted in large characters on the wall. Beyond purloining the lead from the roof neither the besiegers nor the besieged did much damage to the church during the Civil War. On the site of the destroyed nave some houses were erected, but after the great riots these were taken down. The building seems to have been kept in fairly good order. Edward Colston, the benefactor of Bristol, repaired the pavement. Sundry restorations were taken in hand during the last century, and finally in 1865 it was decided to undertake the stupendous task of rebuilding the nave. The work was begun in 1868 and finished in 1888. Since then the Elder Lady Chapel and the tower have been restored, and the church is now complete. It contains much of unusual value and interest, and the completion of the nave is a triumph of nineteenth-century achievement. THE EXTERIOR As we have said, the whole nave is new work, and therefore need not be examined very closely. The _West Front_ is flanked by two towers, which bear the honoured names of Bishop Butler and Edward Colston. The style is an imitation of fourteenth-century work. There is a crocketed gable above the door, a rose window of good design, and some delicately-carved work surmounted by a cross. The face of the towers has three storeys; on the first a large window; on the second some lancets; and above two windows with louvres, the heads of which have crockets and finials. There are pinnacles at the four corners. On the _South Side_ we see the remains of the monastic buildings. The north and east walks of the cloisters alone remain, except a few traces of the western walk, and the north is a restoration. We will visit the east walk from the Cathedral. Passing round to the _North Side_ we notice the _North Porch_ built in 1873. We have often noticed the figures of the four great doctors of the church--SS. Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. They appear in the sculptures of many of our cathedrals. A great storm of indignation arose at Bristol when it was proposed to place these figures here, and the four Evangelists were substituted. We can pass over the modern work, which is not wholly satisfactory, and notice the interesting character of the eastern portion. The north transept has some remains of Norman work in the north wall. The north window is modern in memory of Colston, and replaces an Early English window. The building adjoining is the Elder Lady Chapel, which is Early English work of the early thirteenth century. The east window is Decorated and is rather earlier than the choir built by Abbot Knowle (1306-1332). The battlemented parapet is, of course, a later addition. The buttresses of the chapel are Decorated, and there are curious little flying buttresses connecting the two pinnacles. The Lady Chapel at the east end of the Cathedral is of the same date as the choir, and has a large, noble and graceful window. Passing round to the south we see the outside of the Berkeley Chapel, of Decorated design, and adjoining it the sacristy and external walls of the Newton Chapel, chapter-house and modern vestry. Here, too, is the old churchyard. The _Central Tower_ is Perpendicular and was constructed by Abbot Newland (1481-1515) or his successor, Abbot Elliot (1515-1526). THE INTERIOR Retracing our steps, we enter the Cathedral by the north porch and view the new _Nave_ from the west end. The slender piers and fine vaulting are striking, and the work is in many ways very beautiful. The surface of the walls in the aisles is broken by canopied recesses for tombs, one only being occupied by a marble figure of Dean Elliot. The baptistry is in the south-west or Colston Tower, and is decorated in memory of Bishop Monk. Already there are many memorial windows of good modern glass. The _North Transept_ has some original Norman work in the core of the buttresses and in the wall below the north window. Some alterations were made during the Decorated period, probably by Abbot Snow (1332-1341), and the arch leading to north choir aisle is Perpendicular work constructed by Abbot Newland (1481-1515), called "the good abbot." Either he or his successor, Elliot, constructed the groined roof, which has on the bosses sculptured representations of the instruments of the Passion. The north window is modern, in memory of Colston. The well-known writer, "Hugh Conway" (F. Fargus), has a memorial here, and also Jane Porter of literary fame, Sterne's "Maria" (Mrs. Draper), and the parents of Macready, the actor. [Illustration Bristol The Central Tower from S E] The _South Transept_ has much Norman work in the lower part of the walls. Part was rebuilt in Early English times. Abbot Snow (1332-1341) continued the work and constructed the arch leading to the south choir aisle. The vault is Perpendicular work by Abbot Elliot (1515-1526). On the south is a staircase now leading to the consistory court, but which formerly echoed with the tread of the monks as they came here to their midnight services from the dormitory. In this transept there are monuments to Lady Hesketh (1807), the friend of Cowper; William Phillips, the sub-sacrist or verger who prevented the rioters from profaning the Cathedral in 1831; Chantrey's monument of Mrs. Crawford; and most famous of all, _Bishop Butler_ (1752), one of the most honoured of English divines, the author of _The Analogy of Religion_. The inscription was written by Southey. It is deplorable that a beautiful stone screen of Tudor architecture, which separated the choir from the transept, was ruthlessly destroyed in 1860, and another one erected. This also has been removed, and the view of the east end, with its Decorated piers and arches and the rich glass of the windows, is extremely fine. All the work before us was constructed by Abbot Knowle (1306-1332) and is Decorated. The Norman choir had two bays with a third for a processional path. Knowle added two bays to the choir and built the Lady Chapel. The clustered piers have triple shafts which support the vaulting. The capitals on these shafts have very graceful foliage. The piers have no capitals, but the mouldings run round the arches continuously, as is not unusual in Decorated work. The vaulting is what is known as lierne. Iron screen work divides the aisles from the choir. The reredos is modern, erected in 1899, and has some fine carving. The _Stalls_ were originally Decorated, but "restoration" has destroyed much, and little of the old work remains. There are some curious _Misereres_: a fox preaching to geese, a tilting with brooms between a man and a woman, one mounted on a pig, the other on a turkey-cock, the story of Reynard the Fox. The pavement is new, and not altogether successful. The organ is a noble instrument placed on the west side, and has been often reconstructed. The _Throne_ is modern and has some fine carving. Passing into the north aisle we notice the peculiar vaulting. It will be seen that the roof of the choir and aisles is the same height, and in order to support the weight of the choir-vault transoms are thrown across the aisles supported on arches, and above a vaulting shaft springs from the centre of the transom. This ingenious plan produces the same effect as a flying buttress and is most ingeniously arranged. The windows have beautiful Decorated tracery and the ball-flower is extensively used in the string-course beneath them. The east window has seventeenth-century glass, said to have been given by Nell Gwynne, more probably by Dean Glemham (1661-1667). It treats of the Resurrection, with Jonah and Abraham's sacrifice as types of the same, the Ascension with Elijah as a type. There are monuments here of Robert Codrington (1618); Harriet Middleton (1826); Paul Bush (1558), the first bishop; Robert Southey, the poet; Bishop Westfield (1644); Bishop Howell (1649); and Mary Mason, wife of the poet, with some touching lines (1767). Between the aisle and the Elder Lady Chapel are the effigies of Maurice, Lord Berkeley (1368), and his wife, Elizabeth. There is a tablet to the memory of Robert Fitzhardinge, the founder of the Cathedral and also of the house of Berkeley. Some Norman corbels will be noticed in the door leading to a staircase in the third bay. The _Elder Lady Chapel_ is Early English and therefore earlier than the choir, and was probably built by Abbot John (1196-1215); it is therefore, as the architectural details testify, very early work. The east window is Decorated. There are some curious grotesques in the spandrels of the arcade--a hunter-goat blowing a horn and carrying a hare on his back, a ram and an ape playing musical instruments, St. Michael with the dragon, and a fox carrying off a goose. The foliage is what is known as stiff leaved, and opposed to the more natural foliage of the Decorated period. The roof is Early Decorated. The eastern _Lady Chapel_, formerly the chancel of the choir, was built by Abbot Knowle and is Decorated like the rest of the eastern part of the Cathedral. It has a magnificent east window with beautiful tracery. This is a Jesse window, showing the descent of our Lord from Jesse, the father of David, and the glass is in the upper parts of the same date as the stone-work. Above we see the arms of many distinguished families--the Berkeleys, Mowbrays, Beauchamps and others. The glass in the other windows is also of the same period and is of much interest. The parapet under the windows is modern. The reredos is ancient, of the same date as the chapel, and designed by Knowle, but it has been much altered in Perpendicular times. The _Sedilia_ have been much restored. A characteristic feature of this Cathedral is the star-shaped recesses designed by Knowle, which are very beautiful. In one of these is Abbot Newbury's tomb with ball-flower ornament; in another Abbot Hunt (1473). Here, too, is Abbot Newland's tomb, and a modern brass to the memory of Bishop Butler, and at the back of the reredos a brass to Bishop Ellicott. The _South Choir Aisle_ resembles the north. It has a very similar east window, and the same curious vaulting. Two very interesting chapels adjoin this aisle. The _Berkeley Chapel_ is entered by a richly-ornamented doorway which leads into the old sacristy, with its chests for relics and plate, and a hearth for baking sacramental bread. Abbot Knowle was a student of nature and loved to reproduce in stone the fruits and flowers which he saw growing around him. In the ornaments of the doorway we see the ammonite and medlar. The chapel had two altars, as we see the remains of two piscinæ, beneath the two east windows, separated by a screen. There is an altar tomb of Thomas, Lord Berkeley (1321). The lower part of the tomb is Early English. The other chapel is the _Newton Chapel_, which is Late Decorated and almost Perpendicular in some of its details. The ball-flower has ceased to be used as an ornament. There are many memorials of the Newton family here, and one to Bishop Gray (1834). Returning to the south choir aisle we notice another of the curious recesses adorned with oak leaves, acorns and mistletoe. There are some more Berkeley tombs which furnish interesting studies of the armour of the period. We now enter the _Cloisters_. As we have said, only the north and east walks remain; the north is entirely new, and the east has been much restored. The vestibule and chapter-house are, however, part of the original Norman building, and the work is of Transitional character. It is oblong in shape. The east wall is modern and has three windows. The north and south walls have beautiful arcades, and above lattice work and zigzag mouldings. The west wall has three rows of arcading. Twelve stone coffins were found here and a curious piece of ancient sculpture representing our Lord wounding the head of Satan and rescuing a child by means of the Cross. Adjoining the chapter-house was the dormitory. The refectory was on the south side of the cloister garth. It still exists after many transformations and is the house of the master of the Cathedral School. The _Great Gateway_ should be visited. The lower part is of Norman character, and was part of the founder's work; the upper is Perpendicular and was the work of Abbot Elliot. He probably renewed the rich Norman ornamentation, so much so that in the opinion of Mr. Godwin, the great authority on Bristol architecture, "the so-called Norman gateway of College Green is no Norman gateway, but a Perpendicular restoration of the old work." Another gateway, which formerly led to the palace destroyed in 1831, exists, which is part of the original Norman work of the Cathedral. At the south-west corner of the cloister is an Early English doorway, which formerly led to the refectory. It is a sad pity that so much of the old monastery has been destroyed. DIMENSIONS Total length 300 ft. Length of nave 125 ft. Width of nave 69 ft. Height 52 ft. Area 22,500 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1142-1170)--Part of transepts, chapter-house, lower part of gateway. Early English (1196-1215)--Elder Lady Chapel, parts of transepts and Berkeley Chapel. Decorated (1306-1332)--Choir, Lady Chapel and stalls. (1332-1341)--Newton Chapel. Perpendicular (1428-1481)--Great Tower, upper part of gateway, roof. Modern--The nave. The city has a large number of interesting churches. The noble Church of St. Mary, Redcliffe, one of the finest in England, chiefly fourteenth century; All Hallows' (Norman and Perpendicular); Temple Church (Decorated and Perpendicular); St. Philip's, St. Stephen's, St. John's, are the most important. WELLS CATHEDRAL The beautiful city of Wells entirely owes its origin to the noble church and palace built here in early times, around which the houses and population grew. It is one of the most picturesque in England, situated in the most delightful country, and possessing the most perfect ecclesiastical buildings which can be conceived. History tells us that Ina in 704 built a church here, near a spring dedicated to St. Andrew and known as "The Wells," and Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great, formed a bishopric for Somerset and set the bishop's throne here. Three Abbots of Glastonbury became Bishops of Wells, which was richly endowed. The first Norman prelate was Giso, who built some dwellings for the secular canons which were destroyed by his successor, John de Villula, a native of Tours, who erected a palace in their stead. Moreover, he moved the seat of the see to Bath, where he had formerly practised medicine, and Wells was allowed to become ruinous. Bath minster we shall visit presently. There was much ancient rivalry between the two places and sore disputings, which were only partially settled by the conjoining of the title "Bath and Wells." Bishop Robert (1135-1166) had pity on the ruinous state of Wells and rebuilt the church. This took place while Stephen and Matilda were fighting for the crown, and Bishop Robert scorned not to take up arms on behalf of Stephen, and was moreover imprisoned by the adherents of his rival. Almost all of Robert's work has disappeared in subsequent alterations. Jocelyn de Wells (1206-1239) has for many years had the credit of building the main part of this beautiful House of God. It is hard to have one's beliefs and early traditions upset, but modern authorities with much reason tell us that we are wrong, and that another Jocelyn--one Reginald Fitz-Jocelyn (1171-1191)--was the main builder of Wells. Old documents recently discovered decide the question, and moreover the style of the architecture is certainly earlier than the fully-developed Early English of Jocelyn de Wells. The latter, and also Bishop Savaricus (1192-1205) carried out the work, but the whole design and a considerable part of the building are due to Bishop Reginald. Savarac or Savaricus was concerned with the release of Richard I. from his prison in Germany, and was one of the hostages for the payment of his ransom. He styled himself Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, and when the monks objected he stormed the abbey and beat and imprisoned them. Jocelyn de Wells found his church unfinished and dilapidated. His was a grand era for church-building; moreover, he was a friend of Hugh of Lincoln and Bishop Poore of Salisbury, both consummate architects. So he set to work to finish and repair Reginald's rising church, completed the nave and added that wonderful west front which is one of the glories of this Cathedral. Bishop Burnell (1275-1292) erected in later Early English style the crypt of the chapter-house, which was itself partly built some time late in the Decorated period, probably by Bishop William de la March, a favourite of Edward I., who is said to have advised the plundering of the monasteries. During the episcopate of Drokensford (1309-1329) the central tower was raised, the choir was begun and the Lady Chapel and chapter-house finished. Dean Godelee at this time was a great builder and seems to have devised these additions. Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury (1329-1363) continued to perfect the Cathedral, enlarging the presbytery and building the fine east end. He did much work outside his church, founding the college, restoring his palaces and fortifying his palace at Wells. The upper part of the Harewell Tower was built by the bishop of that name (1366-1386). This is the south-west tower. The north-west tower was built later still by Bishop Bubwith (1407-1424). This prelate built the east walk of the cloister, the west and south walks being finished by Bishop Beckington (1443-1464) in the Perpendicular style. Wells was then in its full glory. The church, the out-buildings, the episcopal palace, the deanery all combined to form a wonderful architectural triumph, a group of buildings which represented the best achievement of English Gothic art. It was shorn of some of its glory at the Reformation. The church was plundered of the treasures which the piety of many generations had heaped together; the beautiful Lady Chapel in the cloisters was pulled down, and the infamous Duke of Somerset robbed it of its wealth and meditated further sacrilege. Amongst these despoilers and desecrators of churches there was a mighty hunger for lead ("I would that they had found it scalding," exclaims an old chaplain of Wells). Once the richest of sees, it would probably have been suppressed altogether, but for the advent of Queen Mary to the throne, who appointed Bishop Bourn and restored the palace. In the Civil War it escaped. Some damage was done, the palace was despoiled, and at the Restoration much repair was found needful. Monmouth's rebellion wrought havoc here. The rebels came here in no amiable temper, defaced the statues on the west front, and did much wanton mischief, and would have caroused about the altar had not Lord Grey stood before it with his sword drawn and thus preserved it from the insults of ruffians. Then came the evils of "restoration." A terrible renewing was begun in 1848, when the old stalls were destroyed and much damage done. Better things were accomplished in 1868, save that the grandeur of the west front was belittled by a pipy restoration, when Irish limestone with its harsh hue was used to embellish it. In the palace, too, modern ideas have effaced much of the refinement of its thirteenth-century beauty. THE EXTERIOR Fergusson declares that though Wells is one of the smallest it is perhaps, taken altogether, the most beautiful of English cathedrals. Some of the distant prospects are perhaps the best. There is a fine view from the Shepton-Mallett Road. We enter the precincts by Browne's Gate at the end of Sadler Street, and see before us the magnificent _West Front_, a masterpiece of art superior to any in this country or abroad. It is 150 feet in width and 70 feet high. Six deep buttresses project from its face. There are six tiers of sculpture. The doors are small. Not for the living throng, but to the dead was this front dedicated who lie in the cemetery at its feet.[12] Here is the history of God's Church on earth expressing its faith and pointing to the hope of the Resurrection. Its style is Early English and is intermediate between the west front of Lincoln and Salisbury. The upper part of the towers is Perpendicular, that on the north being finished by Bishop Bubwith (1407-1424), that on the south by Harewell (1366-1386). In the lowest tier the sculptures have nearly all gone. In the second are angels in small quatrefoils. In the third subjects from the Old and New Testaments. In the fourth and fifth there are 120 statues of kings and bishops and heroes of English history from Egbert to Henry II. The sixth is called the Resurrection tier. And above are the angels and Apostles, and finally the Lord in glory. It is difficult to identify the statues with any feeling of certainty, though many lists have been published which may, or may not, be correct. There can be no doubt about the excellence of the sculpture, and all authorities unite in praising them as being the perfection of design and execution. Flaxman said of them that in them there is a beautiful simplicity, an irresistible sentiment, and sometimes a grace excelling more modern productions. The _North Porch_ is earlier than the west front and possesses transitional features. The zigzag ornament is used, and shows that Norman traditions have not yet passed away; though Early English foliage appears on the weather moulding. On the capitals on the east side are representations of the martyrdom of St. Edmund, who shared the fate of St. Sebastian and was afterwards beheaded. Mystic animals appear in the panels on either side of the arch--one is a cockatrice. Above, three lancets light the parvise. The _Central Tower_ is 182 feet high, and is Early English as far as the height of the roof. In the Decorated period the upper part was added, which caused much disaster, as the foundations were unable to bear the additional weight. Very skilful treatment was required, as we shall see when we enter the church. The _Nave_ is Early English, but Perpendicular tracery has been inserted in the windows, and the walls of both the aisles and clerestory have been crowned with a parapet of Decorated work. The _North Transept_ is rather earlier than the nave, and retains much of the Transitional character. It has two aisles, and is not so richly ornamented as the nave. The windows are pointed and have Perpendicular tracery. Passing on we come to the _Chain Gate_, a very beautiful structure erected by Bishop Beckington (1443-1465) in Perpendicular style. Figures of St. Andrew and other saints appear in the niches. The gallery over the Chain Gate connects the Cathedral with the Vicar's College. After passing under the gate we see the beautiful _Chapter-House_, which is octagonal, we are surprised to find the chapter-house in this position and far removed from the cloisters, but this is accounted for by the fact that secular canons served this Cathedral, and not monks; hence the cloisters were an ornamental appendant rather than the centre of the monastic life. The chapter-house was finished in 1319 in Decorated style under the guidance of Dean John de Godilee, who employed one William Joy as the master-mason. There are some curious gargoyles here. The _Choir_ and _Lady Chapel_ form a beautiful composition. The western portion of the choir was until recently attributed to Jocelyn. [Illustration Wells Cathedral] It is now generally believed to have been the work of Bishop Reginald, Jocelyn's predecessor. The eastern portion is the work of Bishop Ralph (1329-1363), the Lady Chapel was finished in 1326. All this is therefore Decorated, and windows of the same style have been inserted in the earlier western portion. There were two Lady Chapels adjoining the cloisters, but these were ruthlessly destroyed by Bishop Barlow in 1552. The _Cloister_ does not possess the usual features of a monastic church. It is unusually large, and there are only three walks, the north being absent. The wall of the east walk is Early English, built by Jocelyn, but the rest was rebuilt by Bishop Bubwith; the west and south walks by Bishop Beckington and finished soon after his death. The style is Perpendicular. The grotesque bosses are interesting. An Early English doorway leads to the palace. Over the west walk is the singing-school, and over the east the library. Beckington's rebus (a _beacon_ and a _tun_) occurs in the bosses. The garth is known as "Palm Churchyard" from the yew tree in the centre. Branches of yews were carried in processions on Palm Sunday, and this probably accounts for the prevalence of yew trees in churchyards. The cloisters have been made the receptacle of many monuments removed from the Cathedral. The _Library_ over the east walk, built by Bubwith, has about 3000 volumes, and contains the books belonging to Bishop Ken. An Aldine edition of Aristotle has the autograph and notes of Erasmus, and there are several important MSS., the chains which formerly attached the books to the desks, a thirteenth-century pyx-cover, and a crozier of the same period. The _Bishop's Palace_, unfortunately much restored in 1846, is one of the finest examples of a thirteenth-century house existing in England. It was begun by Jocelyn. The great hall, now in ruins, built by Bishop Burnell (1275-1292) for the purpose of great entertainments, was destroyed by Barlow. The chapel is Decorated. The gatehouse, moat and fortifications were constructed by Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury. The _Deanery_ was built by Dean Gunthorpe in 1475, chaplain to Edward IV. On the north is the famous _Vicar's Close_, which has forty-two houses, constructed mainly by Bishop Beckington (1443-1464), with a common hall erected by Bishop Ralph (1340), and chapel by Bubwith, but altered a century later for the use of the Vicars-Choral. We notice the old fireplace, the pulpit from which one of the brethren read aloud during meals, and an ancient painting representing Bishop Ralph making his grant to the kneeling vicars, and some additional figures painted in the time of Elizabeth. THE INTERIOR Few will fail to be impressed by the many beauties of this glorious _Nave_, which we will gaze at from the west end. It is rather narrow, but the proportions are good, and the magnificent clustered columns and enriched capitals, the groups of bearing shafts, grotesque carvings, and the fine vault, all combine to form a noble structure. The curious inverted arches at the east end of the nave are remarkable. These were added early in the fourteenth century to save the collapsing central tower; and so skilfully was the work done that the object of the builders was completely accomplished. The nave has generally been assigned to Jocelyn, but architects have noticed that it is only a little removed from the Norman style, and recent investigators have shown that the greater part is the work of Bishop Reginald (1171-1191). The four eastern bays are assigned to him, and the rest to Jocelyn. A close inspection will reveal several points of difference between the earlier and later work. The heads of a king and bishop between the fourth and fifth piers (counting from the west) mark the change. The difference may be thus tabulated[13]-- EAST | WEST | Masonry in small courses of | The blocks are larger. stone. | | Small human heads at angles | No heads. of piers. | | Grotesque animals in tympana | Foliage and larger heads. of triforium. | | Medallions above triforium | Flush with the wall. sunk in the wall. | | Capitals plainer. | More ornamented and richer. The piers are octagonal with clustered shafts. The capitals are enriched with foliage. Birds, animals and monsters twine and perch among the foliage. The triforium arcade is continuous, and composed of lancet openings. The clerestory windows have Perpendicular tracery inserted by Beckington. The roof is vaulted, with bosses of foliage. The _Music Gallery_ stands in the central bay on the south side erected in Perpendicular style, and near it formerly was another gallery supported by two brackets, on which are carved the heads of a king and bishop. The curious and grotesque carvings should be carefully studied. The west end has an arcade of five arches. Above are three lancets with dog-tooth moulding and Perpendicular tracery. The glass was collected by Dean Creyghton on the Continent during his exile with Charles II., and represents the life of St. John Baptist. Its date is 1507. The other windows have the figures of King Ina and Bishop Ralph. The north and south aisles correspond with the nave in their architecture. Perpendicular tracery has been inserted in the windows. Under the north-west tower is the Chapel of the Holy Cross, now used as a vestry, and the opposite Chapel is now used by the ringers. There are two beautiful chantries in the nave--one is Bishop Bubwith's Chapel (1421), with much mutilated east end; the other is Sugar's Chantry, formerly dedicated to St. Edmund. Hugh Sugar, dean of Wells, died in 1489. The fan-tracery of the roof, the niches and the cornice of angels are worthy of notice. The _Pulpit_ was erected by Bishop Knight (1541-1547). The lectern is by Bishop Creyghton, who erected the west window, and shared Charles II.'s exile. The _Transepts_ are rather earlier than the nave, and are part of Reginald's work. They have aisles, and the capitals of the piers are richly sculptured. In the _South Transept_ we see on the west Elias, a woman extracting a thorn from her foot, a man with toothache, the grape-stealers and their fate. On the east there is only foliage and no figures. The Chapel of St. Calixtus is on the east, containing the beautiful monument of Dean Husse (1305), with its finely-carved panels. The subjects are the Annunciation, God the Father, and some ecclesiastics. The other Chapel is that of St. Martin, now a vestry, and has the tomb of a Chancellor of Wells (1454). In the transept are the monuments of Lady Lisle (1464), wife of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and of Bishop William de la Marchia (1302). The _Font_ is Norman, and probably the only remaining link with the early church built by Bishop Robert (1136-1166). The cover is Jacobean. The _North Transept_ resembles the south. Here we see again a series of strange carvings, amongst which are Moses and Aaron, man with goose, woman with toothache. The reason why so many representations of this distressing malady occur is that the shrine of St. William Bytton (1274) was famous for its cures of persons so suffering. On the east are the Chapels of St. David, with tomb of Bishop Still (1607), and Holy Cross with tomb of Bishop Kidder (1703). Another tomb is that of Bishop Cornish (1513). The famous _Clock_ is here with its tilting knights and human-shaped striker, who perform wondrous things when the expiration of each hour summons them to action. We will not dispel the curiosity of the visitor by any description of the performance, which is popular, and should not be missed. The _Tower_ is of Early English date as far as the roofs, and has a fine fan-tracery vault. As we have said, it was raised in the Decorated period, and the superstructure caused a dangerous settlement, which was counteracted by the inverted arches, and some flying buttresses. The _Choir-Screen_ is Decorated, and has not been improved by modern restorers. Above it is the organ, a modern instrument, which replaces the old organ erected by Dean Creyghton. The _Choir_ is very beautiful, but it is only a shadow of what it was before the evil hand of the restorer rested heavily upon it. It is terrible to contemplate the mischief which has been accomplished here in the fatal restoration of 1848. However, it would have been difficult to efface all its beauties, and some of these happily remain. The three west bays are probably Reginald's work, and were formerly attributed to Jocelyn; the rest is Decorated, and two of the west piers have been converted into this style. There is no triforium, its place being taken by rich tabernacle work. At the east end there are three graceful arches; and above these rich tabernacle work, and a large window of seven lights with Late Decorated tracery. There is a lierne vault. The vandals of the nineteenth century destroyed nearly all of the old woodwork, and substituted canopies of Doulting stone. The pulpit is modern; the throne was erected by Beckington, but has unfortunately been much restored. The _Misereres_ have happily been saved, and are very remarkable. They are Early Decorated, and can scarcely be surpassed. Amongst the many curious subjects are a mermaid, griffin and various monsters, two goats butting, cats, peacock, cock, fox and geese, lions, rabbits, etc. [Illustration Entrance to Crypt.] The glass of the east window, and of those on each side of it, is fourteenth-century work (_circa_ 1330). The east window is very fine, and is a Jesse window, showing the genealogy of our Lord from the "Stem of Jesse," with figures of kings and prophets, the Virgin, and finally the Crucifixion and the Judgment. In the north-east window is a figure of St. George. The _South Choir Aisle_ is of the same character as the choir; the windows are Decorated. Here is the famous monument of Bishop Bytton (1274), who was canonised, and whose tomb was much resorted to by pilgrims, especially by those who suffered from toothache. This is the most ancient example of an incised slab in England. Near the saint lie Bishop Beckington (1464), (who did so much for this Cathedral), and Bishop Hervey (1894). Below the effigy is a skeleton-like figure, which was intended to proclaim the moral maxim, _memento mori_. The iron-work should be noticed. Here also are the tombs of Bishop Harewell (1386), Bishop Hooper (1727), and Bishop Lake (1626). In the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist are buried Dean Gunthorpe (1498), the builder of the Deanery, and Dean Jenkyns (1854), who was responsible for the "restoration" of the choir. There is a fine Decorated piscina here. The _Retro-Choir_ is very beautiful. Slender piers of Purbeck marble support the fine vault. The carving of the capitals and bosses is very excellent. All is in the Decorated style. The _Lady Chapel_ is of the same date and style, finished in 1326. Its shape is pentagonal, and it is of rare beauty. The glass is of the same date as that of the choir, but has been restored. Angels bearing the instruments of the Passion appear in the east window, and in the tracery of the other windows are the Evangelistic emblems and heads of patriarchs and saints. At the south-east corner of the retro-choir was St. Catherine's Chapel. The glass is old and rich. There is a monument by Chantrey of John Phelips, and that of Bishop Drokensford (1329), who was bishop during the building of the Lady Chapel, and part of the choir is a graceful structure. At the opposite corner is St. Stephen's Chapel, and then we enter the north-east transept or Chapel of St. John Baptist, which contains Bishop Creyghton's tomb (1672), also monuments of John de Myddleton (1337), Bishop Berkeley (1581), Dean Forrest (1446). The _North Choir Aisle_ has the tomb of Bishop Ralph (1363), and an effigy, attributed to Bishop Giso (1088). Bishop Jocelyn caused several of these effigies to be executed, in memory of his predecessors. On the north is a door leading to a vaulted passage, which conducts us to the crypt of the chapter-house. Notice the curious carved heads in this passage. There is a curious stone lantern in the wall near the inner door. This crypt or undercroft is on the same level as the floor of the church, and was used as a treasury. It was finished about 1286, and is Late Early English. There is a massive octagonal pier in the centre, and eight other round piers, which support the vaulting. A piscina in the doorway has a curious sculptured dog gnawing a bone. Here are preserved a cope chest, some stone coffins, and other treasures. Retracing our steps to the aisle, we enter the noble _Staircase_ leading to the chapter-house. It is Early Decorated, the door at the upper end being added in the Perpendicular period, when the Chain Gate was erected. Two Decorated windows light the staircase. The _Chapter-House_, octagonal in plan, is entered by a fine doorway composed of double arches. There is a curious boss here, composed of four bearded heads. There is a central pillar, with clustered shafts of Purbeck marble, from which the beautiful ribs of the vaulted roof spring. There are eight windows, the mouldings of the arches being ornamented with ball-flower, and retaining some old glass. An arcade runs round the wall under the windows, with ornamented canopies, and beneath this are the stone benches. Sculptured heads and grotesques appear in the ornamentation of the arches. This chapter-house is later than the staircase, and was probably built by Bishop William de la Marchia (1293-1302), the vault being added after his time, and finished in 1319. DIMENSIONS Total length 383 ft. Length of nave 161 ft. Breadth of nave 82 ft. Height of nave 67 ft. Length of choir 103 ft. Length of transepts 135 ft. Height of towers 160 ft. Area 29,070 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Early Norman--Font. Transition (1174-1191)--Eastern bays of nave, transepts, north porch, and west bays of choir. Early English (1218-1286)--West front, western part of nave, undercroft of chapter-house, palace. Early Decorated--Staircase to chapter-house. Decorated (1293-1363)--Chapter-house, Lady Chapel, central tower, inverted arches, east part of choir. Perpendicular (1386-1400)--Western towers, gateways, Chain Gate, Deanery. BATH ABBEY For some time Bath was the rival of Wells, and hot and fierce was the contention between the monks of St. Peter and the canons of St. Andrew at Wells. The monastery was founded here in Saxon times by Offa in 775. In Early Norman times, John de Villula of Tours, who is said to have practised medicine at Bath, became Bishop of Wells, and, by grant from William II., removed the seat of the bishopric to Bath, and rebuilt the Abbey Church, which now became a Cathedral. But the monks liked not this arrangement. In the time of Bishop Robert (1135-1166), in order to settle their disputes, it was decided that the bishop should be styled "of Bath and Wells." But even this did not produce peace. When Jocelyn died the monks of Bath elected Roger without the consent of the canons of Wells, and both chapters nearly ruined themselves by appeals to the Pope and costly litigation. The church at Bath fell much into decay, and was entirely rebuilt by Bishop Oliver King of Wells (1495-1503). He is said to have seen a vision somewhat resembling Jacob's dream, a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and a voice saying, "Let an Oliver stablish the Crown and a King build the church." A representation of this dream appears on the west front of Bath minster, and an inscription referring to the Parable of the Trees (Judges ix. 8):-- "Trees going to choose their king Said, Be to us the Olive(r) King." The style of the church is Late Perpendicular, and was scarcely completed before the monastery was seized and dissolved. It was left in a sorry condition, roofless and ruinous, until it was restored by Bishop Montague in the seventeenth century. It has been restored in modern times, and has lost that dilapidated appearance which long distinguished it. It is a small and not very interesting building, though it lacks not some striking features, and certainly contains some fine tombs and interesting memorials of the fashionable folk who flocked to Bath in the days of its splendour. [Illustration PLAN OF WELLS CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTES: [12] Prior's _Gothic Art_. [13] Murray's _Cathedrals_. EXETER CATHEDRAL Exeter, the noble city of the west, which proudly bears the motto granted to it by Queen Elizabeth, _Semper Fidelis_--"Always Faithful," has a venerable Cathedral, which was commenced in Norman times on the site of a Saxon church, entirely removed. The principal feature of Exeter is its Decorated work. A large portion of the Cathedral was erected during that period; and as Salisbury is the most perfect example of Early English architecture, Exeter represents the most beautiful specimen of the Decorated style. Southey's judgment on the Cathedral was that "it looked finest when you could only see half of it." Indeed, it is difficult to obtain a good view, and the north side is the only one which presents a favourable prospect. The historian of Exeter Cathedral, Mr. Hewett, wrote: "As we walk round this, we cannot but consider that the Cathedral, though far from lofty, and presenting none of the majestic features of several of its sister churches, is nevertheless a fine composition. The aisles of the choir and nave, intercepted by the stately Norman towers, further broken by the prominence of their chantries, and spanned by flying buttresses richly pinnacled; the large, pure windows, which pierce both aisles and clerestory; the roof, highly pitched, and finished with crest-tiles, form a decidedly graceful and pleasing whole." With this excellent description all visitors will agree. Glancing back at the early history of the see, we find that Crediton was the ancient seat of the bishop, where was born in 680 St. Winfrid, called Boniface, the apostle of the Germans. There was a monastery at Exeter in the time of Athelstan, which was much plundered by the Danes. In 1050 Bishop Leofric, the favourite of Edward the Confessor, removed his episcopal seat to Exeter, and continued to hold it when William the Conqueror came. Osbern was appointed in 1072, but he contented himself with the old Saxon church, and it was not until William Warelwast (1107-1136), nephew of William the Conqueror, became bishop that the present Cathedral was begun. The Norman work was continued by Bishop Marshall (1194-1206), who is said to have "finished the building according to the plot and foundation which his predecessors laid." [Illustration Exeter Cathedral] Exeter has suffered many sieges, and during that of Stephen, in 1136, the Cathedral was much injured by fire. The two towers at the end of the transepts are all the portions that remain of Warelwast's building, and one of these (that on the north) has been much altered, until it has assumed the features of Perpendicular style. This was done by Bishop Courtenay (1478-1487), when he transferred here a great bell from Llandaff. In 1258 a poor man's son, one Walter Bronescombe, though not in priests' orders, was elected bishop, and set to work to rebuild his Cathedral, his labours being continued by his successor. The Lady Chapel with adjoining chapels was partly built by this bishop. His successor, Bishop Quivil, the foe of the Franciscans (1280-1291), finished it, and erected the north and south transepts. The choir, nave, porches and west front were built by Bishops Stapledon (1308-1326) and Grandisson (1327-1369). Stapledon was a great statesman, and in the troubles of the second Edward's reign took the side of the king against the queen and Mortimer, and was murdered by the citizens of London in Cheapside. Grandisson was also a mighty prelate who refused to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to visit his Cathedral as his ecclesiastical superior. He, with a band of armed men, met the intruding archbishop at the west door and forbade him to enter, and an armed conflict was with difficulty averted. These mediæval bishops were very powerful. They usually built a strong wall with gates around the precincts of the Cathedral, and ruled their clergy, their servants and dependants quite independently of any external control. The conflicts between the clergy and the townsfolk were very numerous, and the struggle severe in nearly all our cities and monastic towns. When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, "visitors" were appointed to examine churches and to remove all that savoured of "superstition." Their zeal outran their discretion, and much mischief was wrought in Exeter and elsewhere by their iconoclastic violence. Strange events took place during the Commonwealth period. The Cathedral was divided into two portions by a brick wall, and in one called "West Peter's" an independent preacher thundered forth his declamation, while in the other, "East Peter's," a Presbyterian divine conducted his form of service. Happily the Restoration put an end to these curious proceedings, and the wall was taken down, and the Church of England service renewed. We will now examine the west front erected at the close of the fourteenth century. The screen is very remarkable and beautiful, and has three rows of figures of saints and kings and warriors. In the first row appear angels; the second has figures of kings and knights, and the third saints, and figures of Athelstan and Edward the Confessor stand above them. Some of the ancient figures have crumbled away and been replaced by modern sculptures. Bishop Brantyngham was the builder of this screen, who lived in the time of Richard II., and the crowns and armour represented on the figures belong to that period. The figures in the lower row, beginning on the left, are:-- 1. Canute. 2. Edgar. 3. Ethelred. 4. Justice, } small figures 5. Fortitude, } above north 6. Discipline,} door. 7. Edward II. 8. Henry III. 9. } Unknown bishops. 10. } 11. Richard I. 12. Henry II. 13. Stephen. 14. Henry I. 15. William I.,{ a modern { imitation. 16. Robert of Normandy. 17. William II. 18. A king unknown. 19. } Bishops. 20. } 21. John. 22. Edward I. 23. Edward III., { over 24. The Black Prince,{ south { door. 25. Godfrey de Bouillon. 26. Stephen, Count of Blois. 27. Guy de Lusignan. 28. Ethelwold. 29. Alfred. 30. Edward the Elder. In the upper row, beginning at the left hand, are:-- 1. Samuel. 2. Samson. 3. Jephtha. 4. Gideon. 5. Barak. 6. Deborah. 7. Noah. 8. St. Matthew. 9. St. John. 10. St. Jude. 11. St. Bartholomew. 12. St. Matthias. 13. St. Philip. 14. St. Andrew. 15. St. Peter. 16. King Richard II. 17. King Athelstan. 18. St. Paul. 19. St. John. 20. St. James the Greater. 21. St. Thomas. { a 22. St. James the Less,{ modern { statue. 23. St. Simon. 24. St. Luke. 25. St. Mark. 26. St. Augustine. 27. King Ethelbert. 28. St. Berinus. 29. St. Boniface. 30. Kynigils, } 31. Cwichelm, } 32. Kenwalch, } Kings of 33. Kentwald, } Wessex. 34. Caedwalla,} 35. Ina, } The sculpture has been pronounced "remarkable, characteristic and beautiful," but that at Wells and Lincoln is earlier and perhaps better. Above the screen is a platform on which the bishop used to stand when he blessed the people, and also the choristers and minstrels when they hailed with song the advent of distinguished persons. The three doorways should be noticed. The central one has a moulding of carved foliage, and on the central boss of the groined roof is a representation of the Crucifixion. The south doorway has two sculptures, the appearance of an angel to Joseph in a dream, and the Adoration of the Shepherds. Between the south and central doorways is the Chantry of St. Radegunde, which we will examine on entering the Cathedral. The north porch was built by Grandisson, and is very beautiful with its triple canopy. The Puritan soldiers have mutilated the Crucifixion scene on the east wall. On the central boss is a well-carved Agnus Dei. Notice the cresting of the roof in a _fleur-de-lis_ pattern, which somewhat relieves the long, unbroken stretch of leaden roofing. We now enter the Cathedral. Though the nave is less lofty than many, it is most beautiful, and the richness of the architectural details abundantly atones for the lack of height, which is 70 feet. The roof springs from slender vaulting shafts and is studded with beautifully-carved bosses, representing foliage, animals, strange figures and heraldic shields. The murder of Thomas à Becket occurs in one of these bosses. Clustered pillars of Purbeck marble support the roof and separate the nave from the aisles. Notice the sculptured corbels between the arches, which are peculiar, and the exquisite carving of the leaves and figures. In the triforium on the north side is the _Minstrels' Gallery_, the most perfect in England, where the musicians played on high festivals, or on the occasion of some Royal visitor. The figures are represented as playing on various instruments--cittern, bagpipes, flageolet, violin, harp, trumpet, organ, guitar, some unknown wind instrument, tambour and cymbals. The heads of Edward III. and his queen, Philippa, support two niches. This gallery is a very beautiful example of mediæval art. Instead of the usual triforium we have a blind arcade, the height of which is much less than in most cathedrals, but above this there is a very lofty clerestory. The windows of the nave are Decorated, and have a great variety of most beautiful and elaborate tracery. They are arranged in pairs, one window corresponding to its opposite. The glass of the west window, erected in 1766, is a great eyesore, and spoils the beauty of the stone tracery. [Illustration Detail of Minstrels' Gallery] We have abundant evidence that this noble nave was constructed almost entirely in Norman times, and subsequently transformed into the Decorated style, just as Winchester was changed from Norman to Perpendicular work. Disturbances of masonry in both north and south walls indicate the position of Norman pilasters, and outside flat buttresses of Norman type are observed which correspond to the position of these. We gather that the nave was finished in Norman times by Bishop Marshall, and that Stapledon (1308-1326) began the transformation, which was carried on and completed by Grandisson (1327-1369). Nor must the work of our modern men be disregarded. The nave was in a very dilapidated state. The Purbeck marble columns were fallen into decay, and hideous high pews disfigured the view. Sir Gilbert Scott in recent times most judiciously restored the Cathedral, and made it again one of the finest in the land. We will now examine the chapels and monuments in the nave. On the left of the west door is the _Chapel of St. Radegunde_, which contained formerly the body of Bishop Grandisson; but in the time of Queen Bess the tomb was plundered and his remains scattered no one knows whither. St. Radegunde was a Frankish princess, the wife of Chlotar, the son of King Clovis. Notice the carved figure of our Lord on the roof, His hand outstretched to bless, and the holes in the stone for suspending lamps. On the north side is the Chapel of St. Edmund, which is earlier than the nave itself, and was connected with it by Bishop Grandisson. The following monuments in the nave should be examined:-- _North Aisle_-- Tablet memorial of Lieutenant Allen, and window to memory of one of the Earls of Devon. Brass memorial of men of North Devon Regiment slain in Afghan war (1880-1881), with regimental flags. Memorial of 9th Lancers who died in India. Tablet to the musician Samuel Wesley. _South Side of Nave_-- High tomb of Hugh Courtenay (d. 1377), second Earl of Devon, and of his Countess, Margaret (d. 1391), a connection of Edward I. The effigies have been much mutilated. Brass to memory of General Elphinstone, V.C. (d. 1890). Brass to Hugh, second Earl of Devon. Window to Thomas Latimer. Window to Dean Cowie. We now pass into the north transept. The Norman towers at each end of the transepts were originally separated from the church. Bishop Quivil, however, wishing to enlarge the building, took down the massive walls which divided the interior of the towers from the body of nave, and constructed arches to sustain the sides of the tower. The original Norman walls remain, and in the north transept one Norman window and two narrow, circular-headed doorways. Quivil also erected the two galleries. On the east of north transept is _St. Paul's Chapel_, used as a vestry for lay choral vicars; there are here some interesting old tiles with heraldic devices, and amongst them the arms of Richard, Duke of Cornwall, brother of Henry III. Near this is the _Sylke Chantry_, founded in 1485 by William Sylke, sub-chanter, whose skeleton effigy proclaims the message--_Sum quod eris, fueram quod es, pro me, precor, ora_. An interesting mural painting has been discovered representing the Resurrection. The old clock is very remarkable, which is about 700 years old. The historian of the Cathedral thus describes it:-- "On the face or dial, which is about 7 feet in diameter, are two circles: one marked from one to thirty for the moon's age; the other figured from one to twelve twice over for the hours. In the centre is fixed a semi-globe representing the earth, round which a smaller ball, the moon, painted half white and half black, revolves monthly, and by turning on its axis shows the varying phases of the luminary which it represents. Between the two circles is a third ball, representing the sun, with a _fleur-de-lis_, which points to the hours as it daily revolves round the earth." The maker of the clock was a believer in the old-fashioned astronomy which recognised the earth, and not the sun, as the centre of the solar system. Below the clock is a door leading to the tower, which contains the great bell called "Peter," which is only exceeded in weight by the Great Tom of Oxford. It was brought from Llandaff by Bishop Courtenay at the end of the fifteenth century, and weighs 12,500 tons. It was cracked on 5th November 1611, "from a too violent ringing in commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot." We now enter the south transept, which is similar to the north. The monuments here are interesting. There is the supposed tomb of Bishop John the Chaunter (1185-1191), but is of later date; a sixteenth century monument of Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter; a mural tablet to the memory of Sir Peter Carew, who played an important part in the rebellion of the Devon men, caused by the changes introduced into the Prayer-Book at the Reformation, when they besieged Exeter and well-nigh gained an entrance. Sir John Gilbert has a monument, a relative of Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the brave discoverers of the Elizabethan age and founders of our maritime supremacy. The colours of the Cornwall Light Infantry hang here, which were carried at Waterloo and in the Indian Mutiny. The Chantry of the Holy Ghost in the south-west corner of this transept is a Norman structure. It has a font which was first used at the baptism of Henrietta, daughter of Charles I., who was born in Exeter in 1644. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist, on the east side, is similar to that of St. Paul in the north transept. Bishop Oldham, whose chantry is in the south choir aisle, erected the screen of this chapel. Beyond the Chapel of the Holy Ghost is the chapter-house. The cloisters were destroyed by the Puritans. The chapter-house has been recently restored. Notice the Early English character of the arcade (thirteenth century) in the lower part; the upper part has Perpendicular niches. The Chapter Library has about 8000 volumes. Retracing our steps we approach the choir, entered by a door in the beautiful screen supporting the organ. This was the old rood-screen, on which formerly stood the rood or figure of our Lord on the Cross. It was erected in the fourteenth century. The rose and thistle in the carvings were inserted later, in the time of James I., to mark the Union of England and Scotland under one monarch, but these have happily been removed, and probably the worthless paintings belong to the same period. The organ was built by Loosemore in 1665 (one of the oldest in England), rebuilt in 1819, and has been so much renovated that very little of the old work remains. The choir is remarkably fine. The style is now Decorated. The original Norman choir extended to the third arch. Bishop Marshall completed this by adding four more bays. Then came the builders of the early fourteenth century who transformed the Norman pillars and other details, and converted the choir into Decorated work. The bishops who accomplished all this were De Bytton (1292-1306) and Walter de Stapledon (1306-1329) and Bishop Grandisson (1327-1369). The last dedicated the high altar in 1328. The bosses of the vaulted roof are worthy of especial examination, so remarkable are they for the delicacy of the carved foliage. The choir has been carefully restored in recent years, and the stalls, pulpit and reredos are modern, and were designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Notice the interesting old misereres, which are very remarkable, and probably the oldest and most curious in England. The foliage denotes the Early English period, and they were probably designed by Bishop Bruere (1224-1244). Notice the mermaid and merman on the south side, the elephant, knight slaying a leopard, a minstrel, etc. The lofty bishop's throne was erected by Stapledon, and is said to have been taken down and hidden away during the civil war period. The painted figures represent the four great building bishops--Warelwast, Quivil, Stapledon and Grandisson. The sedilia by Stapledon are very fine. Notice the carved lions' heads, and the heads of Leofric, Edward the Confessor and his wife Editha. The east window is Early Perpendicular, inserted by Bishop Brantyngham in 1390, and contains much old glass. The tombs in the choir are:-- _On North Side_-- Bishop Stapledon (holding a crozier and a book). Bishop Marshall (d. 1206). Bishop Lacey (d. 1455), to which tomb pilgrimages used to be made on account of the reported miracles wrought there. Bishop Bradbridge (d. 1578). _On South Side_-- Bishop Chichester (d. 1155). Bishop Wolton (1594). Entering the north choir aisle we see the Chapel of St. Andrew, renovated by Stapledon, having an upper chamber containing the archives, the Fabric Rolls, MSS. of Roger Bacon, Leofric's book of Saxon poetry, and many other valuable treasures. Next in order we see the Chantry of St. George, or Speke's Chantry (Perpendicular style), containing the monument of Sir John Speke, who endowed this chantry for the good of his soul. When the Cathedral was divided into two portions in the days of the Puritans, a doorway was made through the east window as an entrance to "East Peter's." At the east end of this aisle is the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, erected originally by Bronescombe, transformed by Quivil, but has Perpendicular screen. The east window has good fifteenth-century glass. Notice the noble monuments of Sir Gawain Carew (1589, restored in 1857), his wife and nephew, Sir Peter Carew (_see_ p. 172). The latter is remarkable as a very late example of cross-legged effigy. The monuments in this north choir are--a cross-legged effigy of Sir Richard de Stapledon, brother of the bishop (d. 1330). [It need not be stated that this fashion of crossing the legs has nothing to do with the Crusades]; effigy of Bishop Carey (d. 1626); a tablet to Robert Hall, son of the bishop; tablet to Canon Rogers (d. 1856); an emaciated sepulchral figure; Elizabethan tomb of Anthony Harvey (1564), who gained great wealth from the dissolution of monasteries. Passing behind the high altar we come to the ambulatory, or "procession path." The style is Early Decorated. Notice the ancient Bible-boxes and the two Jacobean tablets. The windows contain good modern glass. The Lady Chapel was entirely transformed by Bishop Quivil (1280-1291) into the Decorated style. The bosses in the east bay show the Saviour's head and the emblems of the Evangelists. The reredos was erected by Grandisson, but only the central portion is ancient, the rest has been severely "restored." This chapel contains the tombs of:-- 1. Bishop Peter Quivil (d. 1291), a slab with the inscription--_Petra tegit Petrum nihil officiat sibi tetrum_. 2. Bishop Bartholomaus Iscanus (d. 1184), a bearded figure, of military type. 3. Bishop Simon of Apulia (d. 1223). This effigy, when compared with the last, shows the advance of art made in a century. 4. Bishop Bronescombe (d. 1280). The canopy is older than the monument, and is Perpendicular. 5. Bishop Stafford (d. 1419). A fine monument, much defaced. 6. Sir John and Lady Doddridge. Sir John (d. 1628) was one of the judges of James I., called by Fuller the "sleepy judge, because he would sit on the bench with his eyes shut to sequester his sight from distracting objects." The dress of Lady Doddridge is remarkable. In the south choir aisle we see first the Chapel of St. Gabriel, similar to that of St. Mary Magdalene on the north. This was built by Bishop Bronescombe, whose patron saint was St. Gabriel. The colouring of the roof has been carefully restored. Some early glass is in the windows. Then we enter Bishop Oldham's Chantry, or the Chapel of St. Saviour. This bishop died in 1519. His chantry resembles the Speke Chantry in the opposite aisle. Notice the effigy of the bishop, with the owls in the panels, referring to the first syllable of his name, "old," or "owld." The bishop was a Lancashire man, and in that county _old_ is usually pronounced _owld_. The third chapel in the south choir aisle is that of St. James, built by Bishop Marshall, and renovated by Bishop Bronescombe in very Early Decorated style. It contains a beautiful monument, raised in the fifteenth century to the memory of Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter. There are two cross-legged effigies in this aisle, which are usually said to represent Crusaders. With this chapel our tour of the Cathedral closes. Of some of the great men who have been Bishops of Exeter we have already spoken. The names Warelwast, Marshall, Bronescombe, Quivil, Stapledon, Grandisson, have often been mentioned, and of others whose tombs still adorn their mighty resting-place. Others there are whose memory remains. Miles Coverdale, the well-known reformer; Joseph Hall, the famous theologian; John Gauden, the supposed author of the _Eikon Basilike_ (though modern scholars have come round to the belief that the book was really written by Charles I.); the learned Seth Ward; Trelawny, one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower by James II.; Phillpots and Temple, have all added lustre to the See of Exeter. * * * * * The city of Exeter is full of interest. The old Guild Hall and scanty remains of Rougemont Castle should be visited, and fifteen miles away is the noble collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, which well repays a minute examination. In construction it somewhat resembles the Cathedral of Exeter, and the main part of the building belongs to the fourteenth century. DIMENSIONS Total length, 383 ft.; length of nave, 140 ft.; breadth of nave, 72 ft.; height of nave, 66 ft.; area, 29,000 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES 1107-1200--Part of towers in transept and core of walls of nave; 1224-1244--stalls; 1258-1291--Lady Chapel and transepts; 1308-1369--choir, nave, porches and west front; 1390-1519--east window, part of chapter-house, Oldham's Chantry, Speke's Chantry. TRURO CATHEDRAL Truro is one of the oldest towns in England. The courts of the Duchy of Cornwall are held here, and it once enjoyed the privilege of a mint. In the time of Elizabeth it had jurisdiction over the port of Falmouth. Norden, in his survey of England, in 1574, wrote of Truro:--"There is not a towne in the west part of the shire more commendable for neatness of buyldinges, nor discommendable for the pride of the people." It showed its loyalty by furnishing a large body of soldiers for the king in 1642, commanded by Sir Ralph Hopton. In 1876 the See of Truro was formed, and a new Cathedral was built, Mr. Pearson being the architect. It is one of the most important modern ecclesiastical buildings in England, and is a fine imitation of the Early English style at its best period. The south wall of the old Church of St. Mary, which formerly stood on this site, has been incorporated in the new Cathedral. The newness of this Cathedral and the entire absence of any historical traditions and associations will perhaps hardly tempt travellers to journey so far west to see the creation of modern architects and builders. The whole plan of the Cathedral has not yet been completely carried out, and the church still lacks its towers. Whether our modern architects can build so surely and so well as our ancient monks and priors time will show; but reports speak none too well of the substantial nature of all that has been done at Truro. GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL Gloucester is a very venerable city. It was a Roman station, and was known as Glevum. Remains of the old Roman wall of the city exist in various places, under the house, 36 Westgate Street, under a furniture shop (Messrs. Lea) in Northgate Street, at "Symond's Arms," in Hare Lane. Roman pavements and pottery, coins and altars have also been found, and the four straight streets crossing in the centre are the modern forms of the old Roman roads which intersected the city, forming _insulæ_, as the sections were called. It was an important place in Saxon times, and Bede called it one of the noblest cities in the land. The first monastery was founded by Osric in 681 for monks and nuns. Of the history of this we shall treat presently. The Danes, of course, ravaged and burnt the city. Saxon and Norman kings loved the fair city of the west. We seem to see a procession of monarchs who held their courts here--Alfred, Athelstan, Edgar, Hardicanute, Edward the Confessor, and then the stark Conqueror, who here ordered the compilation of that important survey, the _Domesday Book_. "In the reign of Rufus," wrote a great historian, "everything that happened at all somehow contrived to happen at Gloucester." Here Anselm was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. It is famous for lampreys, for which Henry I., when feasting here, acquired a liking, which unhappily proved fatal to him, as he died of a surfeit of them. Here Henry II. held a great council, and Henry III. was crowned, "who loved Gloucester better than London." The Statutes of Gloucester were passed here in an Edwardian Parliament, and the murdered king, Edward II., found here his last resting-place. Numerous Parliaments were held here, and monarchs visited the city. In the Civil War period Gloucester was held by the Parliamentarians, and subjected to a protracted siege, which was eventually raised by the advent of Earl of Essex. The city retains many of its old houses. The house of Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday Schools, is a fine old building. The Deanery, formerly the prior's lodging, has many interesting associations. Here Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn sojourned. The inns are famous, especially "New Inn," which was used by the pilgrims to the shrine of Edward II., and "The Old Raven." Colonel Massey, the governor during the siege, sojourned at 154 Westgate Street. Before the dissolution of monasteries there were many religious houses, and the friars were numerous; there were colleges of Grey, White and Black Friars, some remains of which still exist. There are several interesting churches--St. Mary de Crypt, a cruciform building of twelfth century, with some Decorated and Perpendicular work; St. Mary de Lode, built on the site of a Roman temple, with an old chancel and tower; St. Michael, from the tower of which the curfew sounds each night; St. Nicholas, of Norman construction. [Illustration The Deanery Herbert Railton] HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL Gloucester was one of the sees founded by Henry VIII.; its episcopal life, therefore, does not extend further back than 1541, when the last Abbot of Tewkesbury became the first Bishop of Gloucester. The story of the minster, however, carries us back to very early times. The first Abbey, as we have said, was founded by Osric, nephew of King Ethelred, in 689, and was designed for both monks and nuns. It was not long-lived, and in a century was deserted and fell into decay. The Mercian kingdom was much distracted, and confusion reigned until Beornwulph restored the ruined walls of St. Peter's Abbey, and introduced secular canons, who seem to have lived as they pleased, and loved not discipline. So Canute in 1022 turned them out and established Benedictine monks. These did no better. Their abbot, Eadric, was a waster of the goods of the Abbey, and the pious chronicler saw in the destruction of the monastery by fire the vengeance of God for their sins. Then Bishop Ealdred of Worcester, who brought back the Black monks of St. Benedict, began to build a new church. Then came Abbot Wulfstan from the Worcester Monastery in 1072, and Abbot Serlo, a worthy monk of Mont St. Michel, who found desolation, an almost empty monastery, a poor, mean building, and began to raise that glorious pile which we see now. It was dedicated in 1100, when there was a mighty concourse of bishops and great men. A remarkable sermon was preached here by Abbot Fulcher of Shrewsbury, prophetic of the death of the cruel king, Rufus. Abbot Serlo sent to warn him, but in vain, and soon the news of his death in the New Forest rang throughout the country. Fire frequently played havoc with the minster. In 1102 it suffered much, and again in 1122, when "in Lent-tide the town was burnt while the monks were singing their Mass, and the deacon had begun the Gospel _Præteriens Jesus_," and the fire came in the upper part of the steeple, and burnt all the monastery and the treasures except a few books and three Mass robes. Again in 1179 and 1190 fires raged. The Early English builders set to work to repair the damage, and the church was re-dedicated by Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, in 1239. The monks were now very busy building, and in 1242 they had finished the stone vaulting of the nave, which replaced the old Norman wood vault; in 1246 the south-west tower was completed, and they had begun to rear for themselves a new refectory. Yet another fire in 1300 wrought havoc in the cloisters, and deprived the monks of their dormitory. Abbot Thokey was a noble prelate who did much building, erected some of the beautiful Decorated windows in the aisles and choir triforium, and was the means of enriching his Abbey "beyond the dreams of avarice." When Edward II. lay dead, foully murdered at Berkeley Castle, unlike the time-serving Abbot of Bristol, who feared the anger of Queen Isabella and her party, he boldly demanded the body of the dead king and gave it honoured burial in his minster. Then arose that strange cult, the worship at the dead king's shrine. Thousands came from far and near, and their offerings so enriched the monastic treasury that the monks were able to adorn and beautify their church and monastery, and make it one of the glories of English architectural achievement. The fearless abbot felt himself too old to carry on the work; so he resigned in favour of his friend, Abbot Wygmore (1331-1337), who began to erect that "veil of stone" which covers the old Norman work, and is such a characteristic feature of Gloucester. The south transept was the first recased, a noble screen erected, and the work was carried on by succeeding abbots. Abbot de Stanton (1337-1351) constructed the vaulting of the choir and the stalls on the prior's side, which Abbot Horton completed on the abbot's side, together with the altar and choir and north transept, and also began the great cloister, which Abbot Froucester finished. The west front, south porch and two western bays of the nave are Abbot Morwent's work (1420-1437). The tower was built by Abbot Seabrooke (1450-1457), and Abbots Hanley (1457-1472) and Farley (1472-1498) built the Lady Chapel. [Illustration Cathedral from S E Herbert Railton GLOUCESTER] At length the day of dissolution came. Abbot Malvern, the last abbot, was offered the bishopric which Henry VIII. had just founded; but he declined, and died of a broken heart. The continued progress of adornment was checked by the appropriation of much of the wealth of the monastery by the king, and the building began to fall into decay. It did not suffer much during the Civil War, in spite of the long siege. The Lady Chapel was mutilated and defaced, and some other damage done, but the burghers seem to have acted well, took a pride in their church, and suffered it not to be destroyed. There have since been frequent "restorations," and some damage done by destructive architects; but, on the whole, Gloucester has escaped with less scars than many of our cathedrals, and retains much of its original beauty and delicate attractiveness. THE EXTERIOR The plan is cruciform, and consists of a nave with two aisles; north and south transepts, with apsidal chapels on the east side of each; a tower rises at the crossing. The eastern portion consists of choir with aisles, forming a processional path, with four apsidal chapels opening from them, and a Lady Chapel. With the exception of the Lady Chapel this plan is exactly the same as that of the original Norman church built by Abbot Serlo. We approach the Cathedral from the south-east and obtain a good view of its beauties across the close. The _West Front_, built by Abbot Morwent (1420-1437), is not very rich or striking when compared with many others. There is a large Perpendicular window, and another on each side, and a rather small doorway. The flanking buttresses are crowned with pinnacles, and a cross crowns the centre of the embattled parapet. The pierced buttresses, designed so as not to darken the west window, and the parapets of open-work below and above, are distinguishing features. The south aisle is Abbot Thokey's work, and is very beautiful with its fine Decorated work. The buttresses are very massive, and are surmounted by figures, and the windows deeply recessed. The _South Porch_ is rich Perpendicular work, built by Abbot Morwent. The figures are modern, and represent SS. Peter and Paul, and the four Evangelists, Osric and Abbot Serlo, the founders of the earlier and Norman Church--SS. Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory--against whose figures the fanatics of Bristol manifested such unreasonable hate. There is an upper chamber or parvise. The doors are contemporary with the building. The _South Transept_ shows the remodelling of the Perpendicular period. Norman work may be seen in the arcading, the turrets, and traces of an original window; while the capping of the turrets, the windows and battlement belong to the Perpendicular style. Passing on to the east we notice the beautiful lofty choir. The main part of the walls are Norman, and we notice the unusual polygonal radiating chapels, which are part of the original Norman plan. The windows are Decorated and Perpendicular, inserted in Norman openings. The great east window is the largest and finest in England. The _Lady Chapel_ was originally Early English work, built in 1225, but it was rebuilt in 1457-1499, during the rule of Abbots Hanley and Farley. It has four bays, each bay being filled with a lofty Perpendicular window. There is a passage beneath the chapel, which was necessary in order to reach the northern side. The chapel is one of the most beautiful in England. The central _Tower_ is remarkable for its grace and grandeur. The present one is the work of Abbot Seabrooke (1450-1457), and belongs to the Perpendicular period. The bells are ancient, and happily were saved, when the monastery was dissolved, from the greedy hands of the commissioners of Henry VIII. The monastic buildings are on the north side, which we shall examine later. There is a fine view of the Cathedral from the north-west. On the north-west is the Deanery, formerly the prior's lodging, a very interesting house; and between it and the north aisle is a passage, the old Norman slype communicating between the cloisters and the close. THE INTERIOR [Illustration NAVE PILLARS FROM THE WEST] Entering by the south porch we note its Norman character. The old Norman wooden roof has been replaced by a stone vault, and Decorated windows of the time of the second Edward have been inserted, but otherwise there has been little change. The west end, with two bays of the nave, is Abbot Morwent's work (1420-1437). He destroyed two western towers or turrets, which were built in 1222-1243 in place of two similar Norman structures. The height of the Norman piers is unusual, leaving a small space for the triforium and clerestory. The zigzag and double cable moulding appear on the main arches. Abbot Serlo was the builder of the original nave. The stone vault was erected by the monks in the thirteenth century (1242), when the clerestory was altered in the Early English style by Abbot Foliot (1228-1243). Morwent inserted Perpendicular tracery in these windows. The remains of coloured decoration were discovered during the restoration. We have mentioned the numerous fires which wrought havoc here. Traces of the fire may still be seen in the reddened surface of the piers. The contrast between the Norman piers and the Perpendicular piers at the west end is noticeable, also the disappearance of the triforium in the last bay and the lierne vault. The west window contains some modern glass inserted in memory of Bishop Monk (1856). There is a curious series of grotesque heads on the arches of the nave showing the mummeries of gleemen. The story of the _North Aisle_ is similar to that of the nave. We have the same Norman work and the Perpendicular western bays of Abbot Morwent. Perpendicular tracery fills the Norman windows which have zigzag mouldings, and the vault is Norman. The monks' entrance to the cloisters is at the west end of the north wall, and is richly ornamented in Perpendicular style. Another Perpendicular doorway, called the Abbot's Door, is at the east end of the wall. The history of the mythical King Lucius is the subject of the west window. There are memorials of Bishop Warburton (1779), the friend of Pope, a learned divine; Flaxman's monument of Sarah Morley and Thomas Machen (1614). The _South Aisle_ retains some of its Norman style, but was remodelled by Abbot Thokey (1306-1329) in the Decorated style. The ball-flower ornament is much used on the windows. The vault is Decorated work erected by Thokey, and the windows have been more effectually transformed than in the north aisle. There are monuments to John Jones, M.P. for Gloucester at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, with his deeds and documents; Sir G.O. Paul (1820), a prison reformer; Dr. Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination. The Chantry of Abbot Seabrooke (1457), the builder of the tower, is at the east of this aisle, much mutilated. The chantry has been restored. The effigy is a good study of ecclesiastical dress of the period. Near at hand are the effigies of a knight and his lady, supposed at one time to represent one of the Bohun Earls of Hereford, but they are now declared to be members of the Brydges family, perhaps Sir John Brydges, who fought at Agincourt, more probably a descendant of his. We notice the SS. on the collar, and the study of the armour shows that at that time chain armour was being supplanted by plate armour. On north side of entrance to transept we see a canopied bracket with remains of blue colouring. Entering the _South Transept_ we see the first part of the Cathedral which was recased, and may be said with truth to be the birthplace of the Perpendicular style. This example is quite the earliest which can be traced, and was finished in 1337 when the treasury of the Abbey was being filled by the offerings of pilgrims at the shrine of Edward II. This part of the church has therefore peculiar interest. The designer was Abbot Wygmore (1329-1337). All the walls are covered with the panel work, which is the "sign-manual" of the Perpendicular style. The clustered shafts form very beautiful groups. On the south is a large Perpendicular window, and below it a passage behind an open arcade. Two doorways should be noticed, one called the _Confessional_, with figures on each side said to represent angels, and the other, now blocked up, with a grotesque monster over it. The angel-guarded door is sometimes called the Pilgrims' Door, by which they entered to worship at the shrine of King Edward. Another story is that penitents entered beneath the monster emblematical of sin, and returned by the other door protected by the guardianship of angels. The curious _Prentice's Bracket_, said to be the memorial of a master-builder and his 'prentice, was probably intended as bracket for a lamp. The roof is a lierne vault without bosses. The flying arches or buttresses which support the tower are very graceful. The effigies of Alderman Blackleech and his wife (1639) are remarkable as studies of the costume of the period. Other monuments are to the memory of Richard Pates (1588) and Canon Evan Evans (1891). The _Chapel of St. Andrew_ is on the east side, adorned with paintings by Gambier Parry. Above this is the east window, which has some beautiful old glass contemporary with the remodelling of the building. On the north is the curious Chantry of Abbot John Browne (1510-1514), dedicated to St. John Baptist because of the similarity of the initials. The floor has some interesting tiles and the reredos has been painted. [Illustration THE CHOIR, LOOKING EAST] In the _North Transept_ we see the further development of the Perpendicular style in the recasing by Abbot Horton (1351-1377). Here is the remarkably interesting _Reliquary_, of Early Decorated work, said by some to be a lavatory. The carved foliage is very beautiful and also the figures, though mutilated. A chapel is at the east side of this transept, similar to that in the south transept, dedicated to St. Paul. A door opens to the north choir aisle. At the entrance from the transept there is a curious desk which was used by a monk appointed to check the pilgrims as they went to the shrine of Edward. The chapel was repaired in 1870, and the niches supplied with figures of SS. Peter, Paul and Luke. A good Perpendicular doorway is on the north side, with carved angels in the moulding. The _Chapel of St. Anthony_ is on the south of this transept, now used as a vestry. There is a curious painting here of St. Anthony rescuing a female from the mouth of hell. The transept has a monument of John Bower (1615), which bears the words: "Vayne, Vanytie. All is Vayne. Witnesse Solomon." The _Screen_ supporting the organ was erected in 1823 and replaced an earlier one. The story of the screens is a long one which Mr. St. John Hope has told so well that we need not repeat it. It appears there were two screens, one called the _Pulpitum_ and the other a stone screen supporting the rood-loft. But these have disappeared, and we have instead an early nineteenth-century structure which need not be described. The original organ was built at the time of the Restoration, and some of the pipes bear the monogram of the Merry Monarch. The _Choir_ is remarkable for its extreme beauty. From the lofty traceried roof down to the elaborately-tiled floor the walls are covered with richly-carved panelled work, broken here and there with delicate screens of stone. Behind this veiled work of stone stand the old Norman walls and piers. This casing was done by Abbots Staunton (1337-1351) and Horton (1351-1377). The lierne vault is one of the finest in England, with its multitudinous ribs, and ranks with King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and Westminster. The vaults of the tower and choir both belong to the same period. The _Stalls_ were erected by the builders of the choir and have fine canopies. The _Misereres_ are curious and well carved. Some of them represent hunting scenes, St. George slaying a giant, etc. Before us is the grand _East Window_, the finest in Christendom. Its date is 1345-1350, and is part of Abbot Horton's work. The Coronation of the Virgin is the subject, and the figures consist of angels, apostles, saints, kings and abbots. The arms of Edward III., the Black Prince, and the lords of Berkeley, Arundel, Warwick, Talbot and others appear, who took part in the campaign against France when Creçy was fought. It is thought by some that the window is a memorial of that famous victory. The clerestory windows retain some of their old glass, which is of the same date as that of the east window, but has been restored. The _Reredos_ is modern, designed by Sir G. Scott. The Birth, Burial and Ascension of Our Lord are represented. The floor of the presbytery is paved with some remarkable old _Tiles_, which record the names of some of the abbots, the arms of knights, and other interesting devices. The sedilia are adorned with modern sculptured figures, and the restoration has been accomplished with much care and taste. There are five principal historic _Monuments_ in the choir. Near the altar is the canopied tomb of Osric, the founder of the first Abbey, said to have been erected by Abbot Parker (1515-1539). Guided by the description of the tomb told by Leland, Dean Spence opened the cenotaph and found the grey dust and bones of this ancient benefactor. Near at hand is the beautiful _Tomb of King Edward II._, murdered at Berkeley Castle. It was erected by Edward III. The effigy is of alabaster, and the features are thought to have been reproduced from a waxen mask taken after death. The tomb is a forest of pinnacles and rich tabernacle work. It has been much restored at various times, but the extreme beauty of the work has in no way been impaired. The white hart, chained and collared, the badge of Richard II., is painted on the pillars. The Chantry of Abbot Parker, or Malverne (1515-1539), has a much mutilated effigy of this, the last Abbot of Gloucester. Vine leaves and grapes adorn the screen, and the base has some heraldic devices and the emblems of the Passion. On the south side is a projecting bracket which Leland tells us marks the grave of Abbot Serlo, the founder of the Norman Church. The bracket is Perpendicular, the effigy Early English, both much mutilated. The figure has a model of a church in his hand, and therefore denotes that the abbot was a founder, but the Early English character of the effigy points to it representing a later abbot than Serlo, and possibly Abbot Foliot (1243). The _North Choir Aisle_, or ambulatory, is original Norman, the windows being filled with Perpendicular tracery. At the north-east corner is Abbot Boteler's Chantry (1433-1450). The old tiles are interesting, amongst which we see some representing the arms of the Boteler or Butler family (three cups). The decoration of the chapel is all Perpendicular work, screens, windows and reredos. This last is very fine, and has some well-carved figures of the Apostles. Here is the effigy of Robert, Duke of Normandy, eldest son of William I., whose wild youth was atoned for by his prowess in the Crusades. He, however, had to endure twenty years' imprisonment, inflicted by his father. The effigy was probably made not long after his death. The chest on which it rests is fifteenth-century work. The effigy was hacked to pieces by Cromwell's soldiers, but the fragments were put together by Sir Humphrey Tracy, and replaced in the Cathedral. [Illustration THE LADY CHAPEL] The _Ante-Chapel_, or vestibule, leading to the Lady Chapel, is the meeting-place of the old and new work, and is ingeniously contrived. The Norman apse is pierced by a doorway and two Perpendicular windows. It is separated from the Lady Chapel by an open-work screen, which is very beautiful, and has a fine lierne vault. This, and the _Lady Chapel_, are the work of Abbots Hanley and Farley, who presided over the Abbey during the last half of the fifteenth century. The Lady Chapel ranks with Ely as the largest in England, and certainly it is a triumph of Perpendicular architecture. It has lofty Perpendicular windows, which seem to produce the effect of a wall of glass with panelled tracery. The head of each panel is much ornamented, and panel work, with niches, covers the walls. The lierne vault is very fine, and the bosses carved with beautiful foliage. At one time the walls were painted, and traces of colour remain. The east window has much old glass, which is also visible in the heads of the other windows. There is a very poor modern reredos, which might be removed without much regret, as it hides a very interesting, though much mutilated, mass of rich tabernacle work. The altar rails belong to the time of Laud, who was dean here, and are said to be the first introduced into churches. Many of the original tiles remain, and bear inscriptions: _Ave Maria grâ plê, Dñe Jhû Miserere_. There are two side chapels, with fan-tracery vaulting. In the north chapel is the monument of Bishop Goldsbrough (1604). There is an upper chapel, or oratory, and the same arrangement obtains on the south side. This chapel has a monument of Th. Fitz-williams (1579). The marks on the walls of these upper oratories show that the love of recording names by visitors in historic places is not confined to modern times, and dates as far back as the sixteenth century. Returning to the entrance, we follow the ambulatory to the south, which retains its northern features. _St. Philip's Chapel_ is at the south-east corner, and has been restored in memory of Sir C. Codrington, Bart. (1864). There are Norman arches, and fourteenth century tracery inserted in the windows. The spacious chests for copes are interesting records of the rich ecclesiastical vestments in use in former times. The _Triforium_ is unusually fine, and now extends over the north and south choir aisles, but not over the east end. That part was removed when the choir was reconstructed, and in order to connect the severed portions of the triforium together, the Whispering Gallery was constructed. This part of the church retains its Norman features, and is full of interest. The first chapel on the south has Decorated windows, with ball-flower ornament. There is a double piscina. A very ancient painting of a Doom or Last Judgment, discovered in 1718, is a very remarkable example of early art. It was probably painted towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII. The view of the choir is very beautiful, and the way in which the later builders cased the Norman work with a veil of stone can best be observed from the triforium. The next chapel (south-east) is Norman, with later windows inserted. There are some fragments of an old choir-screen stored here. The _Whispering Gallery_ is built out at the back of the great east window, and in its construction old Norman stone-work has been re-used. It happens to possess the curious acoustic property of the famous gallery of St. Paul's, London. The next chapel is over the ante-chapel of the choir, and has a stone altar, with the usual five crosses carved on it. The north-east chapel has a Decorated window, and the north-west a double piscina of the same period. We will now descend to the _Crypt_ (entrance in south-east transept), which is very Early Norman, founded before 1085. The walls and piers are very strong and massive, the former being 10 feet thick. There is a central apse, an ambulatory, out of which radiate five chapels. The half columns in the ambulatory have been strengthened and recased in later Norman times. The chapels have little of interest except their own intrinsic architectural merits. There are some good piscinæ, and some memorial slabs. [Illustration CARREL IN SOUTH CLOISTER] The _Monastic Buildings_ are some of the finest in England, especially the cloisters, which are remarkable for their excellent preservation and for the beauty of the fan-traceried vault. It is thought that this kind of vaulting, peculiar to this country, originated here. The outer walls are Norman, and have been recased with Perpendicular panelling. This work was begun by Abbot Horton (1351-1377), and finished by his successors, Abbot Boyfield (1377-1381) and Abbot Froucester (1381-1412). The south walk possesses a very interesting feature in the _Carrels_ or studies of the monks. The glass of the windows is modern. The passage or slype, of Norman date, at the west end, was the main entrance to the cloister from the outer court. At the north end was the door to the refectory. A window has been placed there instead, but Mr. Hope points out "the iron hooks on which the doors were hung." Little of the refectory, which was on the north of the garth, remains, except the south wall, preserved by the cloister, and part of the east end. The action of the fire of 1540, which destroyed this noble hall, is observed on the walls. In the north walk are the monks' lavatories, the most perfect in England; opposite is the _Manutergia_, or recess for towels. This walk was reserved for novices, and Mr. Hope shows us the tables for games which they played scratched on the stone bench, the "Nine Men's Morris" and "Fox and Geese" being their favourite pastimes. The east walk gives entrance to the chapter-house. The doorway is Norman, with zigzag ornament. The chapter-house is Norman, with a Perpendicular east end. At the west end is a Norman doorway and an unglazed window (the corresponding one being covered up when the south-east staircase was added), and three Norman windows. Traces of fire may be seen here. The seats of the monks under the arcading may be traced. The vault of the Perpendicular part is finely groined, and there is a large Perpendicular window at the east end. The names of several illustrious leaders under William I. appear on the walls. The _Locutorium_, or monks' parlour, lies between the chapter-house and the north transept of the church. This passage is often erroneously called the "Abbot's Cloister." Here the monks met to converse when talking was prohibited in the cloister. Above is the vestry and library. The latter is a long room, of Perpendicular character. The library at Gloucester has had many migrations and vicissitudes; the books of the old monastic library were dispersed. A new collection was begun in 1624 by Bishop Goodman. The books have been stored in the chapter-house, and elsewhere, and have now found a permanent resting-place. Its principal treasure is Abbot Froucester's _Lives of the Abbots of Gloucester to 1381_. This copy was lost at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and discovered again at Berlin, and restored to the library. The dormitory has been destroyed. It probably stood on the north of the chapter-house. The remains of the infirmary and little cloisters are on the north of the cloister. The Cathedral close was surrounded by a wall. Some of the gateways remain. St. Mary's Gate, on the west, is a fine thirteenth-century structure; the Inner Gate, of fourteenth-century work, leading to Miller's Green, the site of the old Abbey Mill and outhouses; the south, or King Edward's Gate, built by Edward I., of which only fragments remain; and the Westgate Street Gate. The Deanery, as we have said, has many interesting features, and remains of the work of eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Bishop's Palace is modern, built on the site of the abbot's house, erected in the early part of the fourteenth century. Previous to that period the abbot lived at the present Deanery. DIMENSIONS Nave, length 174 ft. Nave, width 34 ft. Nave, height 68 ft. Transepts, length 46 ft. Transepts, width 34 ft. Choir, length 140 ft. Choir, width 33 ft. Lady Chapel, length 90 ft. Lady Chapel, width 25 ft. Tower, height 225 ft. Total length 407 ft. Area 30,600 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1089-1100)--Piers, arches, triforium of the nave, walls and vault of north aisle and pilasters of south aisle, walls of choir and presbytery, chapels and ambulatory, north transept, west end of chapter-house and abbot's cloister. Early English (1242)--Vault of nave. Decorated (1307-1329)--Windows and vault of south aisle, south transept, windows of ambulatory and chapels. Perpendicular (1337-1500)--Windows of nave and north aisle, casing north transept, choir and presbytery, Lady Chapel, cloisters, tower, west end, south porch, and east end of chapter-house. [Illustration PLAN OF GLOUCESTER CATHEDRAL] HEREFORD CATHEDRAL The story of the See of Hereford takes us back to very early times, to the days of the British, and shows the connection and identity of the Church of England of the twentieth century with that which existed even prior to the landing of Augustine. The see was in existence in the sixth century, and was subject to the Archbishop of Caerleon. Legends tell us of Dubricius, who crowned King Arthur at Cirencester. One Bishop of Hereford represented the old British bishops at the famous conference with Augustine, when, by his want of tact and haughty demeanour, the Roman missionary alienated the native British Church. A very tragic event enhanced the glories of the see. King Offa slew Ethelbert, King of the East Angles, who was a suitor for his daughter's hand, and buried him at Hereford. On the night of the funeral, "a column of light, brighter than the sun, arose towards heaven," according to the monkish chronicler, and miracles were wrought at the tomb of the martyred monarch. This distressed Offa, who tried to expiate his crime by erecting a noble monument, founding the monastery at St. Alban's, and devoting costly gifts to the church of Hereford. One Mildred, Offa's viceroy, built "an admirable stone church," dedicated to the martyr Ethelbert. This was rebuilt by Bishop Ethelstan in 1012. Then followed sad times when the Welsh tribes invaded the land and destroyed the city and church by fire. When the Normans came Bishop de Losinga (1079-1095) began to rebuild the ruined church, and the work was continued by his successor, Raynhelm (1107-1115). During the troubles of Stephen's reign Hereford suffered much. The Cathedral was deserted and desecrated, and Bishop Robert de Bethune, a worthy prelate, was forced to seek safety in flight. Stephen entered the Castle of Hereford with great pomp, and occupied during service the episcopal chair, which still remains. On his return he cleansed and repaired the building. Then we see Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, the stern opponent of Becket, who preached the sermon at Canterbury, when Henry II. did penance for the murder of the archbishop. Bishop William de Vere (1189-1199) is said to have built much, removed the apsidal terminations at the east end, and made other alterations. His work was continued by the erection of the Early English Lady Chapel. Probably he built the Palace. Bishop Giles de Bruce (1200-1215) took part with the barons against King John, and was a very warlike prelate, who allied himself with Prince Llewellyn, and destroyed the castle of Earl Mortimer, an adherent of the king. He was driven from his see, but afterwards made peace with John, and died at Gloucester when he was returning to his see. Writers commonly assign to him the building of the tower, on the ground that his effigy has a model of the church in its hand. But this effigy was erected long after his death, and cannot be taken as any evidence of the truth of the statement. The profusion of ball-flower ornament certainly points out that the tower belongs to the fourteenth and not to the thirteenth century. Peter d'Acquablanca in Savoy (1240-1268) was one of the foreign favourites of Henry III., who fought in the Crusades. He was a simoniacal prelate who tried to gain the See of Bordeaux, and was much ridiculed when, after paying the money, the Archbishop of Bordeaux was found to be alive. He was expelled from England, but returned, and then went off to Ireland to collect tithes. Unfortunately King Henry visited Hereford during his absence, and found that no clergy were there, and the church in ruin and decay. He therefore wrote a strongly-worded remonstrance to the absent bishop, who returned in time to be seized by Simon de Montfort and put into prison, while his hoards of wealth were divided amongst his captors. He died soon after this. His tomb remains, but his heart is buried in Savoy, his native land. He is said to have rebuilt the north transept. Thomas de Cantilupe (1275-1282) was a noted bishop, who attained to the honour of canonisation, and was, moreover, Chancellor of England. He was by no means a meek-spirited saint, excommunicated an earl for capturing his game, and made another lord walk barefoot to the altar of the Cathedral, after chastising him for interfering with his tenants. On his death in Italy his flesh was buried at Florence, his heart at Ashridge, Bucks, and his bones at Hereford. Various miracles were said to have been wrought at his tomb. His successor Swinfield (1283-1317), built, or began, the eastern transept, the clerestory of the choir, the central tower above the roof, and probably the nave aisles. Adam de Orleton (1316-1327) espoused the cause of the queen against Edward II., and involved Hereford in the troubles of that disastrous time. He is said to have instigated the murder of the king; at any rate he captured the fugitive monarch, and Hugh Despenser, the king's favourite, was brought here and hanged. He obtained from the Pope a grant of the tithes of two Berkshire parishes, Shinfield and Swallowfield, for the repair of his Cathedral. The fifteenth century saw several additions to the fabric, the cloisters in 1418-1448, the great west window by W. Lochard, the precentor, some chantry chapels which we shall notice later, and the enlargement of the north porch. At the Reformation an ardent reformer, Edward Fox, was appointed bishop, and Hereford, like other cathedrals, was despoiled of its valuables and treasures. Fox's successor, Skip, was a liturgical scholar, and helped in compiling our liturgies. Another learned prelate was Francis Godwin (1617-1633), the author of the Lives of English Bishops (_de Præsulibus Anglicæ_). At the Civil War period Hereford suffered the usual misfortunes. Both bishop and people espoused the cause of the king. The city was taken and retaken without much damage being done, until Lord Leven with the Scottish army besieged it in 1645, when the church suffered considerably; and when, by the treachery of the governor, Colonel Birch, the city was again taken, it was plundered and the Cathedral ransacked. Brasses were torn up, monuments defaced, old windows broken, the library pillaged, and when the dean courageously preached to the riotous soldiers on their sacrilege, they levelled their muskets at him, and were scarcely restrained from firing. Injudicious "restorers" have worked their wicked will on the fabric; amongst these was Bishop Bisse (1713-1721) who spent much money, erected several monstrosities, which have happily been removed, and destroyed the half-ruined chapter-house in order to restore the Palace. In 1786 the western tower fell, and carried with it the west front. Then Wyatt, of evil memory, was let loose on the Cathedral. He made a new west front, shortened the nave, and took down the Norman work in triforium and clerestory, substituting his own designing. Plaster was used unsparingly. The old spire was removed, the roofs lowered, and much other vandalism perpetrated. From 1837 to 1863 continued restoration took place, and in spite of the havoc which has been wrought the church retains much of its ancient and interesting character, and is well worthy of accurate study. [Illustration HEREFORD CATHEDRAL FROM THE WYE] THE EXTERIOR A good view is obtained from the close on the south side. On the banks of the Wye is the Palace and College of Vicars Choral; on the east was the old castle, one of the strongest on the Welsh marches. The _West Front_ is an erection of Wyatt's, and need not be noticed. Formerly there was a great tower here, which fell in 1786 and destroyed the old west front. The _Central Tower_ is very fine. The abundance of ball-flower ornament proclaims its Decorated style. The date is about 1300. It has two stages. The pinnacles are modern. As we have said, a wooden spire which once capped it has been removed. On the west side there is a noble _Porch_ of Perpendicular style, built by Bishop Booth in 1530. There is a parvise in the second storey with Perpendicular windows. This porch joins on to an inner one of the Decorated period. Octagonal turrets containing staircases stand at the angles. The iron-work of the doors is excellent modern work. The walls and windows of the aisles are Late Decorated, about 1360. The clerestory is Wyatt's construction, who destroyed the original Norman work. The _North Transept_ is worthy of attention. The buttresses are very massive. It was built about 1285 for the reception of the shrine of Bishop Cantilupe. The windows are very lofty, of three lights under triangular-headed arches. The window on the north is similar, but double. On the east side there is an aisle, with triforium windows of three lancets, and above the clerestory windows are triangular. The Lady Chapel is fine Early English work, and belongs to the first half of the thirteenth century. We notice especially the tall and graceful lancets and elegant arcades of interesting arches. The east end was rebuilt in 1850. On the south is the Audley Chapel. It is difficult to approach the south side, as walls and gardens prevent easy access. The _Vicar's Cloister_, connecting the Cathedral with the College of the Vicars Choral (incorporated in 1396), is Perpendicular work. The oak beams are finely carved. The quadrangle of the college is well worthy of notice. The _Bishop's Cloister_ is on the south of the nave. Two walks remain, and the west walk is partially restored and contains the library. Their style is Perpendicular. The chapter-house was pulled down by Bishop Bisse; only the double doorway remains. We notice the grotesque heads over the windows, the richly-groined roof, and the Lady's Arbour, a small room in the tower at the south-east angle, which may possibly have obtained its name from the Virgin, our Lady. The Chapels of SS. Katherine and Mary Magdalene, of Norman construction, formerly stood against south wall, and some remains are evident. THE INTERIOR We enter the nave by the north porch, and proceeding to the west end we notice the grand Norman piers and arches. Wyatt's hand was heavily laid upon this structure, and the triforium, clerestory and vault are all his handiwork. Moreover, he took away one bay entirely. The view eastward is very impressive. The arches are adorned with the billet and other Norman mouldings, and are remarkable for their richness. The _Font_ is curious and of Late Norman design. It has figures of the Apostles, and at the base projecting lions. The aisles are Late Decorated, except the lower part of the walls, which is original Norman. The chief monuments in the nave and aisle are, on the south:--Sir Richard Pembridge (1375), who fought at Poictiers. The effigy is a good study of the armour of the period. The right leg is a restoration. Two unknown figures of ecclesiastics. On the north--Bishop Booth (1535), the builder of the porch; a fine tomb, protected by original iron-work. The _Screen_ is a magnificent work, designed by Sir G. Scott. The lectern is modern. The _Central Tower_ has passed through many vicissitudes. The original Norman piers being unable to support the heavy Early English shaft, they were cased with new stone-work, and the Norman arches were blocked up. In Dean Mereweather's time extensive restoration was found necessary. All the parts above the arches is fourteenth-century work. The vaulting has been removed, and the tower is now open to the belfry floor. The _North Transept_ is particularly fine and remarkable, and is Late Early English or Early Decorated (1282-1287). It was built for the shrine of Bishop Cantilupe. The arches are sharply-pointed and unusual. On the west are two windows of two narrow lights under sharply-pointed arches, the tracery of the heads being in the form of three circles enclosing trefoils. On the north is a double window of the same character. On the east is an aisle with clerestory and triforium. Dog-tooth ornament appears in the mouldings. The arches of the triforium are very beautiful, and the diaper of leaf-ornament in the spandrels is effective. The windows above are octofoils. [Illustration The Cantilupe Shrine] This aisle contains the remains of the Cantilupe shrine, which was a source of much revenue to the church, derived from the pilgrims who flocked hither. The date of the tomb is 1287, and the details are worthy of study. It is made of Purbeck marble. The lower part has fifteen figures of Knights Templar, of which order the bishop was Provincial Grand Master. The details of the armour are very exact. Curious monsters appear at the feet of the knights. The foliage is excellent Early Decorated, retaining some of Early English features. Other monuments are Bishop Westfayling (1602), John Philips, author of _The Splendid Shilling_ (1708), Bishop Charlton (1329), Bishop Field (1639), Dean D'Acquablanca (1320), and brasses to Dean Frowcester (1529) and Richard Delamare and his wife (1435). Near at hand is the beautiful monument of Bishop D'Acquablanca (1240-1268), the finest in the Cathedral. (Concerning the unenviable repute of this bishop, _see_ the history of the see). The tomb was originally elaborately coloured. _The South Transept_ has much Norman work. The east wall is entirely Norman, and has five ranges of arcades. Perpendicular windows have been inserted in south and west walls, and the lierne vaulting belongs to the same period. Bishop Trevenant (1389-1404) is said to have been responsible for this later work. The monuments in this transept are:--Sir Alexander Denton and his wife (1566), an altar tomb with alabaster effigies. The latter died with her infant, who is represented as a "chrysome" child, i.e., one who dies within a month of its baptism, and wears its white baptismal robe. Bishop Trevenant, who was responsible for the Perpendicular alterations, is buried here; his effigy has been much mutilated. Masons' marks are observable, and the Norman fireplace is said to be unique. The _Choir_ is full of interest. The main arches and triforium are Norman, the clerestory and vaulting Early English (_circa_ 1250). The carving of the capitals exhibits foliage and grotesque heads, and the lozenge ornament appears round the arches. The headings of the pilasters between the piers are Early English. The clerestory windows consist of one lofty pointed window and a small trefoiled one on each side. The reredos was designed by Cottingham, the architect at the restoration in 1850, and represents the Passion of Christ. A curious effect is produced by the central pillar and arches in the retro-choir appearing through the arch at the east of the choir, and presenting a broad spandrel, on which are carved some modern figures of our Lord and St. Ethelbert. The stalls are good Decorated work with rich canopies and some curious misereres, with carvings representing a pair of wrestlers with ropes round their necks, an irate cook throwing a dish at a troublesome guest, etc. Some are modern. The _Throne_ is also Decorated, and there is the remarkable old chair already mentioned, on which Stephen is said to have sat on the occasion of his visit here. The _Organ_ has some parts of the instrument presented by Charles II. The monuments in the choir are those of-- Bishop Trilleck (1360), an excellent brass; Bishop Stanbery (1474), whose chantry we shall see in the west choir aisle; Bishop Giles de Bruce (1215), with model of church in his hand; Bishop Bennett (1617). We notice the small figure of St. Ethelbert on a bracket on east pier on south side, of fourteenth century. In the _North Choir Aisle_ the wall has Decorated arched recesses, which contain the effigies of Bishop Godfred de Clive (1120) (executed in Perpendicular period); Bishop Hugh de Mapenore (1219); Bishop Richard de Capella (1127). Bishop Stanbery's Chantry (1453-1474) is entered from this aisle, and is Late Perpendicular. It is very richly ornamented with tracery and panelling and shields and has a groined roof. It is a good example of the over-elaborateness of Late Perpendicular work. The _North-East Transept_ is Early Decorated, the original apsidal termination being altered in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Traces of Norman work are still evident. There is a central octagonal pier which supports the vaulting. There are monuments here of Dean Dawes (1867); Bishop Godwin? (1633) (the tomb is certainly earlier and cannot be his); and the altar tomb of Bishop Swinfield (1316), though the effigy upon it is not his. The ball-flower moulding is plentifully used. Proceeding onwards we come to the _Retro-Choir_ or ambulatory, which is Transitional Norman. The chevron and diamond moulding on the ribs of the vaulting point to its Late Norman date. There was evidently an ambulatory and Lady Chapel in Norman times, and the windows on each side of the vestibule show that formerly these walls were outside walls, and the windows were glazed. Here is a monument of Dean Beaurieu (1462), which is of some interest on account of the accurate carving of the dress, and the rebus _boar_ and _rue_ leaves; and there are some late brasses. The _Lady Chapel_ is remarkably fine, being very rich Early English. Its story is difficult to read, as the architect Cottingham redressed the old stone-work and made complications in 1840-1850. He rebuilt the east gable. Five narrow lancets form the east window, and above are five quatrefoil openings. The glass was erected to the memory of Dean Mereweather, to whom the Cathedral owes so much. The subject is the life of the Virgin. The aumbrey and piscina are reproductions. On the north there is an interesting but somewhat conglomerate tomb. The effigy is supposed to be Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in the reign of Edward III., but the canopy is Perpendicular, and the figures in the arches were discovered elsewhere and placed here, except the two mutilated central ones, our Lord and the Virgin. The others are SS. John Baptist, Cantilupe and Thomas of Canterbury. The Countess of Hereford, Johanna de Bohun (1327), lies here, a great benefactress, whose effigy and tomb are worthy of study. On the south is the _Audley Chantry_, erected by Bishop Audley (1492-1502), who constructed another chantry at Salisbury, whither he was translated, and where he was buried. It has two storeys, and a curious and interesting screen separates it from the Lady Chapel. There are traces of considerable colour decoration. The chapel has five sides, with two windows in the lower and five in the upper storey. The central boss of the vaulting in the upper chamber or oratory has a figure of the Virgin crowned. The window west of this chapel has some good fourteenth-century glass. Beneath the choir is the crypt, of Early English date, and is the only example of a crypt constructed later than the end of the eleventh century. It is called "Golgotha," on account of its being used as a charnel-house. The _South-East Transept_ is similar to its opposite. It has monuments of Bishop Charlton (1369); Bishop Coke (1646); Bishop Ironside, who died in London, 1701, and was buried in a city church, which was destroyed in 1863, and the body brought here. This was the bishop who, as Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, resisted the action of James II. in regard to the expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen College. In the _South Choir Aisle_ are four Perpendicular tombs under Decorated arched recesses, supposed to represent Bishop William de Vere (1199); Bishop Hugh Foliot (d. 1234); Bishop Robert de Betun (1148); and Bishop Robert de Melun (1167). There is a brass of Dean Frowsetown (1529), an effigy of Bishop Mayew (1516), who conducted Catherine of Arragon to England from Spain; and an effigy of Bishop de Losinga (1096), erected in Perpendicular period. The vestries are of Norman construction; the vaulting is the only example of Norman vaulting in the Cathedral. Here in this south choir aisle is preserved the famous _Map of the World_, as known in 1300. It was designed by Richard de Haldingham, Prebendary of Hereford. This was generally supposed to be the most ancient of its size in the world; but another map has been discovered at Ebstorp, near Hanover, which is larger, more highly coloured, and about the same age. The library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, has an earlier map of Henry of Mainz, and there is a small Psalter map in the British Museum. The world is shown to be round; at the top is Paradise, with its rivers and trees, Eve's transgression, etc. Above is the last Judgment with the Virgin interceding for mankind. Jerusalem is in the centre. Rome proclaims itself the head of the world, and Troy the most warlike city. The British Isles have much space, and most of the cathedrals are mentioned. Monstrous animals, birds and fish abound. The monkey appears to live in Norway, the scorpion on the Rhine. There is very much that is strange and curious to be seen in this wonderful map. _The Library_ has a splendid collection of chained books. The building is modern, having been opened in 1897, and built on the site of the old west cloister. There is an ancient copy of the Gospels at least 1000 years old, written in Anglo-Saxon characters, a beautiful twelfth-century MS., a copy of the "Hereford Use" of thirteenth century, Wycliffe's Bible (1420), "Bangor Use" (1400), with a curious charm for toothache inserted in the book, _Decreta Gratiani_, of twelfth century. There are many _Incunabula_, Nicholas de Lyra's Bible and Commentary (1485), _Polychronycon_, by R. Higden, with additions by Caxton (1495); Caxton's _Golden Legend_, a very fine copy. Here is an ancient _Reliquary_, with representation of the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, a pre-Reformation chalice and paten, taken from the coffin of Bishop Swinfield (1316), and some episcopal rings. This collection of chained books is the finest in England. DIMENSIONS Total length (exterior) 342 ft. Length of nave to screen 158 ft. Breadth of nave 31 ft. Breadth of nave and aisles 73 ft. Height of nave 64 ft. Height of lantern 96 ft. Height of tower with pinnacles 165 ft. Length of choir to reredos 75 ft. Length of Lady Chapel and retro-choir 93 ft. Width of central transepts 146 ft. Width of eastern transepts 110 ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1079-1115)--Main arcade of nave, arcade and triforium of choir, font, east wall of south transept, vestry. (1189-1199)--Retro-choir. Early English (1200-1250)--Lady Chapel, crypt. (1282-1287)--North transept. Decorated (1300-1360)--Walls and windows of aisles, choir transepts, upper part of tower, stalls and throne. Perpendicular (1400-1530)--Cloisters, windows in south transept, north porch, Audley and Stanbery Chantries. Modern--West front, triforium and clerestory of nave, east front, library. WORCESTER CATHEDRAL Worcester has many points of interest outside its Cathedral. All round the city is historic ground. It was the battlefield of Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane and Norman. It heard the sounds of fighting in the wars of the barons and in the wars of the Roses, and in the great Civil War Worcester repeatedly suffered, and within its boundaries the great battle of Worcester was fought, the last effort of a dying cause. The half-timbered houses of the Elizabethan and early Stuart times, the interesting churches, and streets that by their names record many a curious custom and phase of old English life, all remind us of ancient times and the manners of our forefathers. We will walk round the town and note its chief points of interest. We notice the old houses in New Street, the remains of the old city wall, "the Cross," the old centre of civic life, the Guild Hall, designed by a pupil of Wren in 1721; St. Helen's Church, from the tower of which still nightly sounds the curfew. Along Sidbury the tide of battle rolled in 1651, when Charles II. was making his last gallant struggle against the army of the Protector. The old Edgar Gate is near at hand, which leads to the castle and Monastery of St. Mary. The Commandery in Sidbury was a hospital founded by St. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester about 1085, for a Master, Priests and Brethren under the rule of St. Augustine. The house is a wonderful example of mediæval architecture, and is kept in its ancient state by the present occupier, Mr. Littlebury, who allows it to be inspected. Here in 1300 Hugh le de Spencer held a court. The great hall is of Tudor architecture. King Charles I. stayed a night here, and the Duke of Hamilton died here, after wounds received in the fatal battle. "Fort Royal," fortified by Charles I., is seen from the garden, and cannon were placed here at the battle of Worcester; but Cromwell captured the stronghold. Charles II. withdrew with difficulty, and the house in the old Corn Market is shewn where he took refuge, and effected his escape at the back door as Colonel Cobbett, his pursuer, entered at the front. Over the entrance is the inscription: "Love God. Honour the Kinge." HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL The See of Worcester was first formed in 680, when the unwieldy Diocese of Mercia was divided, and Bosel was its first bishop. The successive Kings of Mercia poured wealth into the episcopal treasury, and endowed the see with many a rich manor. St. Dunstan was bishop here (957-961), and then came Oswald, subsequently Archbishop of York, the reformer of monasteries, who is said to have replaced the secular priests by a community of monks, and built the Church and Monastery of St. Mary on the site of the present Cathedral. This sacred fane was destroyed by the Danes, under Hardicanute, in 1041. Bishop Wulfstan, the second prelate of that name who held the see, was appointed in 1062, a holy, simple and earnest prelate, who, though a Saxon, held his see in spite of Norman opposition and prejudice. He laid the foundations of the existing Cathedral, and some of his work remains in the crypt and monastic buildings. When he saw the workmen pulling down the ruins of the old Church of St. Oswald he wept, saying, "We destroy the works of our forefathers only to get praise.... We neglect the care of souls and labour only to heap up stones." He was canonised, and many miracles were reported to have taken place at his tomb, to which there was great resort. In 1113 fire destroyed part of the Cathedral, as well as the city and castle. In the troublous times of Stephen, Florence, a monk of Worcester, tells us that when a raid was made on the city the people took their chests and sacks of goods and deposited them in the great church, while all the church goods, the curtains and palls, albs and copes were hidden away in recesses in the walls. The west bays of the nave were built about 1160. In 1175 the "new tower" fell, a misfortune common to so many cathedrals; in 1189 another great fire raged, and the troubles of John's evil reign were felt heavily here, when the city was taken by the king's forces, the church pillaged and the monks compelled to pay a heavy fine, to defray which they even melted down the shrine of the saint. Soon John was buried here, and could do no further mischief. In 1218 the church was dedicated, when Henry III. and a goodly number of bishops and nobles were present. In a storm is 1221 the two "lesser towers" fell. Happily the offerings at the shrine of St. Wulfstan, which was soon repaired, were very numerous, and in 1224 the present choir and Lady Chapel were begun by Bishop William de Blois in the Early English style, and doubtless continued by Bishop Walter Cantilupe, uncle of the sainted Bishop of Hereford. He was a sturdy Englishman who upheld the rights of the English Church against the Pope, and was excommunicated by the Roman Pontiff. The work of rebuilding the church gradually progressed. The nave was built in the Decorated style on the north side (1317-1327), and Bishop Thomas Cobham, styled "the good clerk," made the vault of the north aisle; so Leland informs us. The south side of the nave is a little later, about 1360, when traces of Perpendicular work are evident, blended with the Decorated. In this century also was built the Guesten Hall, now, alas! destroyed, the roof of which is now seen in Holy Trinity Church. Henry de Wakefield was a vigorous builder (1376-1394). During his time the refectory and cloister, the tower, the stone vault over the choir, under the belfry, over the nave, library, treasury and dormitory, the water-gate, infirmary, the stalls in the choir, the west window and the north porch were erected. At the Reformation Worcester had a very zealous reforming bishop in the person of Hugh Latimer, who was subsequently burnt at Oxford. Under his rule the costly shrines of St. Oswald and St. Wulfstan were destroyed, and the relics buried near the high altar. During the Civil War Worcester fared badly, and terrible scenes took place in the sacred building. In 1642 Cromwell's soldiers under the Earl of Essex entered the town and did after their kind. They pulled down altars, destroyed vestments and furniture, and carried off stores of treasure concealed in the crypt and deposited there for safety. The bishop at this time, John Prideaux, was a vigorous Royalist, who excommunicated freely all who fought against the king. In return the soldiers pillaged his palace, and the poor bishop was reduced to selling his books in order to gain a livelihood. But this was not all the evil that befell the "faithful city." It was besieged four years later from March 26 to July 23, but when the Roundheads gained the day and entered the city they behaved in most becoming manner, and did less damage than the soldiers of the Royalist garrison. But even this was not all. In 1651 was fought the battle of Worcester. We can see Charles II. watching the issues of the fight from the top of the tower, and then the divers fortunes of the fight (to which allusion has already been made), the final victory of Cromwell, the capture of 6000 prisoners, who were confined in this sacred building. Then followed one of the most terrible scenes in the war, when the soldiers of Cromwell were let loose on the helpless citizens, and ravaged and plundered without mercy in the streets and lanes and houses of this unhappy city. [Illustration WORCESTER CATHEDRAL FROM THE SEVERN] At the Restoration of the Monarchy it does not seem that any extensive repairs were immediately undertaken. In the eighteenth century some unfortunate "restoration" was carried out which disfigured the building, and did not materially contribute to its strength. As most of these disfigurements have been removed, we need not record them. A great restoration was begun in 1857 by Mr. Perkins, the architect, and continued by Sir Gilbert Scott, and the church was re-opened in 1874. Opinions differ with regard to the severity of this restoration. Certainly it has destroyed all appearance of antiquity in the exterior of the choir and Lady Chapel, but Professor Willis thinks that we have now a reproduction of its original aspect, as far as that can be determined. However, the attempt to reproduce the original should not be the entire aim of restoration. We want to have the whole story of the building before us, and not its opening chapters interpreted for us, and often mangled and distorted by the modern restorer. THE EXTERIOR We approach the Cathedral from the west and obtain a good view. At the foot of the west end the river flows. The _West Front_ need not detain us; it is plain and unpretentious. There is a large modern window in Decorated style, and above three lancets, and a cross crowns the gable. The doorway is Norman much restored, and has figures of our Lord in glory, angels and the Virgin and Holy Child. The _North Porch_ was built by Bishop Wakefield (1375-1394), and belongs to the period when the Decorated style was merging into the Perpendicular. There is a parvise over it with Perpendicular battlements, and figures of our Lord and the twelve Apostles in niches. Above is a row of small figures. Between the porch and the west front was formerly the charnel-house, built by Bishop William de Blois in the thirteenth century and demolished in the seventeenth. The crypt still exists. The two west bays are Transition Norman. The rest is Decorated work. A small Decorated chapel, called _Jesus Chapel_, juts out from the aisle on this side. The lower part of the walls of the north transept is Norman work, but the transept was much repaired in the fourteenth century and the windows are Perpendicular, and that in the north wall is a modern antique. Strong flying buttresses support the main walls on the east of this transept. There is a choir transept. The east end is plain. The east window is of Early English design but modern workmanship. The south side is very similar to the north, but enclosures and buildings prevent us from a close inspection. The cloisters are as usual in Benedictine monasteries on the south side, and these we shall enter from the church. The _Tower_ dates from 1374, but the details are modern, as the tower was very much restored. It is of good proportion, has two storeys with crocketed pinnacles, a parapet adorned with lesser spires, and the whole effect is not unpleasing. THE INTERIOR We enter by the north porch. The _Nave_ covers the same ground as the original Norman Cathedral, and some remains of the old building are left. At the west end the door entering into the north aisle, at the north-east angle of the north aisle, and the great Norman shafts running up the centre of the second piers from the west, are pure Norman. The two _Western Bays_ are Transition Norman, and are an interesting study. We see here almost the earliest advance of Gothic art and the earliest traces of the Early English feeling which manifested itself for the first time in its developed form in the choir of Lincoln. It will be observed that the arches are pointed, but the capitals are Late Norman. The triforium is peculiar, and has a series of pointed arches over three round-headed openings, the centre one being much higher than the rest, and the ornaments are the zigzag, lozenge and curious knots of carved leafage. The clerestory consists of groups of three windows under round arches, the tracery at the back being Perpendicular insertions. The date of this portion is about 1160. The vault was fashioned by Bishop Wakefield (1375-1394). There are seven remaining bays. Those on the south are later than those on the north, and the earlier work is the richer and more beautiful. On the north the five eastern bays and the pier arches of the other two are Decorated (1317-1327), while the rest of these two bays and all the south side are Early Perpendicular. The great west window is modern, erected in 1865 in Early Decorated style. Sculptured figures of characters from the Old Testament appear in the tympana of the triforium. The _South Aisle_ has two west bays of Transition Norman work like the nave, quadripartite vaulting, Late Decorated windows, high in the wall on account of the cloister on the other side, and two doorways called the monks' and the prior's. The wall is original Norman. Here is a large modern font. The _North Aisle_ has also the two west bays of Transition Norman. The vaulting is Decorated, the work of Bishop Cobham (1317-1321), and the rest of the aisle belongs to the same period. The _Jesus Chapel_ opens from this aisle, separated by a modern screen in Perpendicular style. This chapel has been recently restored by the Hon. Percy Alsop, and the scheme of decoration is very elaborate and beautiful. The _Pulpit_ is a very handsome and elaborate structure made of marble and alabaster, with some excellent carving. The principal monuments in the nave and aisles are:--Sir John Beauchamp (1388), much defaced, in alabaster, and his lady, whose head rests on a swan, the Beauchamp crest; Robert Wylde (1608) and his lady--the sides of the tomb are adorned with sunflowers rising from vases; Dean Eedes (1608); Bishop Thornborough (1641). In the south aisle--an ecclesiastic (late fourteenth century); Bishop Parry (1616); altar tomb unknown; Thomas Littleton, judge (1481), learned law writer; Bishop Freke (1591); Sir Henry Ellis, who fell at Waterloo; Richard Solly (1804); Bishop Gauden (1662), the supposed writer of _Eikon Basilike_, a work usually attributed to Charles I. In the north aisle--Earl of Strafford and soldiers of the Worcestershire regiment who fell in India; Bishop Goldsborough of Gloucester (1613); the Moore family (1613); and curious effigy of Bishop Bullingham (1576). Very little ancient glass is left; the windows of the south aisle have a few fragments, but all the rest is modern. The _North Transept_ is Norman as high as the clerestory and is without aisles. A Norman staircase turret is in the north-west corner. The different coloured stones used in the building is remarkable and gives a pleasing effect. Perpendicular work is evident. In the east wall is a Norman arch recently discovered. Traces of colour are evident above the arch leading to the north aisle of the choir. The north window is a modern insertion. The monuments here are Bishop Fleetwood (1683), Bishop Hough (1743), the Magdalen President who withstood James II., Bishop Stillingfleet and others. The _South Transept_ is somewhat similar to the north. There are some fine Norman window arches now blocked up, and a beautiful Norman arch opening to the Chapel of St. John. The builders of the fifteenth century cased the Norman walls with a screen of Perpendicular tracery somewhat similar to the work at Gloucester. The great organ is placed here. Here is a monument of Bishop Philpott (1892). We now enter the _Choir_ and eastern portion of the Cathedral. The screen is of oak and open metal work designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. A figure of the Saviour is over the centre and a figure of the Virgin looks eastward. This part of the building is certainly the most interesting. It is of Early English design and was begun in 1224, that is four years after Salisbury, and some twenty-four years after Lincoln. Worcester was one of the earliest churches in England in which English Gothic was developed, and therefore has a peculiar interest for us. We notice that the span of the arches is wider than in the nave, and that in consequence the arches rise to a higher level. The triforium is, however, less in height than that of the nave. The piers are composed of clustered shafts of Purbeck marble, and these have curious brass rings which were placed there by Bishop Gifford. The dog-tooth ornament is much used. The whole choir was restored by Mr. Perkins and Sir G. Scott. The _Stalls_, which contain some finely-carved _Misereres_, have seen many vicissitudes. Puritan soldiers destroyed the ancient canopies. The carvings were placed on a hideous screen, at the beginning of the last century, which separated the nave from the choir. The subjects are curious--an old man stirring a pot over a fire, knights tilting, huntsmen, hawking scene, and many others. The _Stone Pulpit_ was brought here from the nave; the upper part is Late Perpendicular. The sculpture represents Evangelistic emblems--Heavenly Jerusalem with Tree of Life, Tables of the Law, etc. The _Throne_ is modern and is elaborately carved with figures, foliage, animals, birds and Scriptural subjects. It was presented by Bishop Philpott. The modern _Reredos_ is of alabaster enriched with gold, mosaic, lapis-lazuli and malachite. Over the altar are statues of our Lord and the Evangelists, and there are figures of Apostles, prophets, David and Solomon and angels. The organ is divided into three separate parts connected by electricity. There are two Royal tombs; in the centre of the choir is that of King John, who died at Newark in 1216, whence his body was conveyed here for burial. The effigy is the earliest of an English king in this country. The Royal garments are the tunic reaching to the ankles, and over this the dalmatic with wide sleeves and a girdle buckled in front. On the feet are sandals with spurs; on the hands are jewelled gloves, and there is part of a sceptre. The head has a crown, and the face has moustache and beard. The figures on each side are SS. Oswald and Wulstan. Recently the figure has unfortunately been covered with gilt. The tomb on which the effigy rests is sixteenth-century work. The other Royal tomb is that of Prince Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII., who died at Ludlow Castle in 1502. His death was fraught with great consequence to English history. The tomb is a very fine example of Late Perpendicular work, in which the Tudor emblems, the rose and portcullis, are evident. The exterior consists of open tracery, niches and panelled work, crowned with a battlement and pinnacles. Within there is a flat groined roof, a rich mass of tabernacle work at the east end with figures in niches, in the centre a plain altar tomb, and at the west end a small figure of the mourning father, Henry VII. The _South Choir Aisle_ is Early English similar to the choir, as is the rest of this portion of the Cathedral, and therefore this need not be again mentioned. The _Chapel of St. John_, restored by Earl Beauchamp, is very fine. The glass is all modern. Passing into the eastern transept we notice a piscina and aumbries and some remarkable sculptures in the spandrels of the arcade which are reproductions of ancient work. They are supposed to represent the present and future life. The subjects are: Knights fighting with lions and centaurs (the world and its temptations); St. Michael weighing souls, and the devil pulling down the scale; demons torturing souls over flames (purgatory); hell's mouth; a burial (of Adam?); expulsion from Paradise; an angel leading soul to heaven; the Resurrection; angels sounding a trumpet and bearing the Cross and Christ enthroned. Other subjects are monks building, Annunciation, Nativity, Crucifixion, etc. In this transept is the effigy of a knight in full armour of the fourteenth century of ringed mail. The shield has Harcourt arms, and below is the inscription--_Ici gist sur Guilliamme de Harcourt_. Guide books usually point him out as a Crusader because he has his legs crossed. As we have already stated, there is no special signification in crossed-legged effigies. There is a tomb of Sir Gryffyth Ryce (1523), "a noble knight," and his wife, daughter of Sir John St. John, and near Prince Arthur's Chantry the tomb of Bishop Gifford (1302), and Maude de Clifford, wife of Earl of Salisbury, beautifully executed. It is a wonderful study of the dress of the period (1301). Here is a fine statue of Mrs. Digby by Chantrey; this lady was maid of honour to Queen Charlotte (1820). The _Lady Chapel_, which has two aisles, is earlier than the west end of the choir. The wall arcade is very rich and beautiful. We notice the brass rings supposed to have been placed round the columns by Bishop Gifford. The east wall is entirely new, and the tracery of the windows is a modern restoration of ancient work. There are some curious grotesque carvings. The _North Choir Aisle_ has some beautiful capitals and bosses; a small oval window of Perpendicular date looks on to this aisle, and was formerly the window of the sacrist's chamber, through which he could watch the great shrines. There is a curious carving under one of the windows. The principal _Monuments_ in the Lady Chapel are:-- A mural slab to the memory of Anne, wife of _Isaac Walton_, the prince of anglers, who probably wrote the inscription: "_Ex-terris._--M.S. Here lyeth buried so much as could die of Anne, the wife of Isaac Walton, who was a woman of remarkable prudence, and of Primitive Piety. Her great and generale knowledge being adorned with such true humility, and blest with so much Christian meeknesse as made her worthy of a more memorable monument. She died (alas that she is dead!) the 17th of April 1662, aged 52. Study to be like her." Bishop John Jenkinson (1840) of St. David's. Prebendary Davison (1834), who wrote his famous work on _Prophecy_. An unknown lady of the fourteenth century, one of the most beautiful mediæval relics in the Cathedral. William, first Earl of Dudley (1885). George William, fourth Baron Lyttelton (1886). Bishop William de Blois (1236). Bishop Walter de Cantelupe (1265). Mutilated effigy of Bishop Brian (1361) or Lynn (1373). Bishop Cobham (1327). Bishop Walter de Bransford (1349). An unknown lady of the thirteenth century. An unknown knight, _temp._ Henry III. Last Abbot of Evesham. The _Crypt_ is a very interesting part of the Cathedral, the work of St. Wulstan, begun in 1084. We notice the fine Norman piers with cushion capitals and square abaci. It is apsidal with aisles, and is remarkable for the numerous pillars. Here in this crypt Wulstan assembled a synod in 1092, when were assembled all the wisest men from the counties of Worcester, Gloucester and Warwick. Here used to be preserved the old fourteenth-century doors of the Cathedral, which were said to be covered with human skin, which tradition says was flayed from the body of a man who stole the sanctus bell. The _Cloisters_ are Perpendicular in decoration, though the outer walls are Norman. We pass through the Prior's Door, and notice how perfect the monastic arrangements remain. The vaulting is good lierne, and the bosses are beautifully carved with foliage and other devices. We see the ancient slype or arched passage of Norman character and the _Chapter-House_, with its beautiful central pillar and vaulted roof. It is one of the few Norman ones left, though much altered in the early fifteenth century. Its vault is Perpendicular. A Norman arcade runs round the wall, and the central pillar is Transition Norman. The windows and doorway are Perpendicular and the exterior was coated with masonry of that period. Here are preserved some fragments of ancient vestments, a paten of Bishop Blois', some good bindings and other treasures. On the south is the _Refectory_ with Norman crypt. The room is Decorated, _temp._ Edward III., and is now part of the school called the King's School, founded by Henry VIII. A sculptured reredos of great beauty, with traces of coloured decoration, has recently been discovered here. In the west is an interesting lavatory and entrance to the dormitory, both Perpendicular. The dormitory has disappeared, but its foundations have been traced. We return to the Cathedral by the Monks' Door, or go by a vaulted Norman passage to the west front. In the north-west cloister is a stone inscribed MISERRIMUS, which is said to mark the grave of a non-juror, the Rev. Thomas Morris, or Maurice. Wordsworth wrote the following lines on this subject:-- "'Miserrimus!' and neither name nor date, Prayer, text, or symbol, graven upon the stone; Nought but that word assigned to the unknown, That solitary word--to separate From all, and cast a cloud around the fate Of him who lies beneath. Most wretched one! _Who_ chose his epitaph? Himself alone Could thus have dared the grave to agitate, And claim, among the dead, this awful crown; Nor doubt that he marked also for his own Close to these cloistral steps a burial-place, That every foot might fall with heavier tread, Tramping upon his vileness. Stranger, pass Softly! To save the contrite, Jesus bled." DIMENSIONS Length (exterior) 425 ft. Length (interior) 387 ft. Nave, length 170 ft. Nave, height 68 ft. Nave, width 78 ft. Choir, length 180 ft. Tower, height 196 ft. Area 33,200 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1084-1160)--Crypt, chapter-house, and parts of other monastic buildings, west bays of nave with aisles, parts of north and south transepts. Early English (1224)--Choir with aisles and Lady Chapel. Decorated (1317-1327)--North side of nave, vault of north aisle. (1360)--South side of nave. (1376-1394)--Refectory, cloisters recased, tower, nave and choir vault, library, treasury, stalls and north porch. Perpendicular--Windows in north transept, Prince Arthur's tomb. Modern--West window in nave, north window in north transept, east window in nave, reredos, etc. [Illustration PLAN OF WORCESTER CATHEDRAL] LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL Lichfield has been the victim of Puritan rage and of the over-zeal of modern restorers, but in spite of this it retains much of its ancient beauty and its picturesqueness is evident to all. It is one of the smallest of our cathedrals, but when one sees the three graceful spires of Lichfield, known as the "Ladies of the Vale," the glories of its west front and the richness of the carving, one cannot but retain a warm place in one's heart for this wonderful building which has passed through such strange vicissitudes of fortune. It has been be-pinnacled by our modern Gothic confectioners, who have produced much unnatural "naturalism" in their sculpture; but if we can forget that much that we see is new, we shall perhaps form some conception of what the Cathedral was like ere innovators and destroyers laid their hands upon it. The history of the Cathedral is full of interest, and carries us back to the early days of Christianity in England. The heathen King of Mercia, Penda, long withstood the teachers of the Gospel, but when his son, Peada, was about to marry the daughter of the Christian King Oswi of Northumbria, the latter made it a condition that Peada should be baptised. Forthwith four priests were introduced into Mercia, Diuma became the first bishop (656), and on the death of Bishop Jaruman, the fourth bishop, the famous St. Chad was appointed to the vacant see, who fixed his seat at Lichfield. He was a very holy and humble man, and became the patron saint of the church. Beautiful tales are told of him. Near the Church of St. Mary he built a dwelling for himself and seven brethren. He was deeply affected by the convulsions of nature, and when the wind blew strongly and the thunder rolled he would always retire into the church and pray to God to spare His people; and when a pestilence broke out and his end was near, angel voices were heard which called him to his heavenly reward. The little Church of St. Chad was near the well that bears his name. Another Saxon church was built by Bishop Hedda (691-721) near the present Cathedral, but this has passed away. The diocese was sub-divided at the close of the seventh century, and Hereford, Worcester, Lincoln and Leicester were all separated from the Lichfield See. In the time of Offa, King of Mercia, Lichfield became an archbishopric, when Higbert was bishop, but this distinction did not last long. At the Conquest William made his chaplain, Peter, Bishop of Lichfield, who removed his seat to Chester. Then Coventry was made the city of the diocese by Bishop Robert de Lymesey (1087-1117). History is silent concerning the church at Lichfield, nor does it tell us with any degree of certainty who built the Norman church which certainly existed here, as its remains were discovered by Professor Willis. It had an apse, of which the foundations lie below the present choir, and also a long, square-ended chapel of twelfth century, destroyed when the Early English choir was built in the thirteenth. Professor Willis compares the building of York and Lichfield, and points out the close parallelism. Unfortunately the soldiers in the Civil War destroyed all the records; hence we have little to guide us except the history written in the stones of the Cathedral. A Norman prelate, Roger de Clinton, did much for the church, but all his work has perished. The diocese was then called that of Lichfield and Coventry. He died in one of the Crusades. The Early English builders began to build a new choir about 1200 A.D., of which only the lower part of the three westernmost bays and the sacristy on the south side remain. About 1220 they began to replace the Norman transepts with Early English work, beginning with the south transept and ending with the north. The nave was constructed about the middle of this century and central tower added, and the chapter-house belongs to the same period of architectural activity. In the last quarter of the century the west front was begun. At the end of the century a notable bishop was appointed, one Walter de Langton, Keeper of the Great Seal and Treasurer of England in the reign of Edward I., who incurred the hatred of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward II., and was several times imprisoned by him. He led a very stormy life, but found time to begin the building of the beautiful Lady Chapel at Lichfield, surrounded the close with a wall and a fosse, thus making it a fortress, erected a grand shrine for the relics of St. Chad and built the Palace. This chapel was finished by Bishop Northburgh, who had fought at Bannockburn and been taken prisoner by the Scots, and at the same time the presbytery and clerestory of the choir were rebuilt in the Decorated style. The church was now complete, and very perfect must it have been, glorious with the best achievements of true English Gothic art when that art was at its best. Quaint Thomas Fuller describes it as "the neatest pile in England," and tells us that Bishop Heyworth "deserved not ill of his Cathedral Church of Lichfield, which was in the vertical heights thereof, being, though not augmented in the essentials, beautified in the ornamentals thereof. Indeed the west front thereof is a stately fabric, adorned with exquisite imagery, of which I suspect our age is so far from being able to imitate the workmanship, that it understandeth not the history thereof." Quoting a saying of Charles V. of Florence, "that it was fit that so fair a city should have a case and cover for it to keep it from wind and weather," he adds, "so in some sort this fabric may seem to deserve a shelter to secure it." It was also a church rich in relics and costly ornaments, and kings and nobles loved to adorn it with bounteous offerings, while the shrine of St. Chad brought many a pilgrim to fill its treasury when they paid their vows. The fifteenth century made few alterations to the fabric. Dean Heywood built a library, which has now disappeared. Some Perpendicular windows were inserted. At the Reformation Henry's commissioners carried off a vast store of plate and jewels for "the king's use," and during the Civil War the Cathedral actually endured a siege, the results of which were most disastrous. We have recorded how Bishop Langton surrounded the close with fortifications. The sacred precincts were garrisoned by the Royalists, who awaited the attack of the Parliamentarians, led by Lord Brooke, a fierce fanatic, who longed to pull down all cathedrals as relics of Popery, and extirpate Episcopacy. On St. Chad's day they began the siege, and Brooke prayed in the presence of his men that "God would by some special token manifest unto them His approbation of their design." The "special token" was manifested, but not in favour of the Roundheads; on the second day of the siege a bullet fired by "Dumb Dyott," the son of Sir Richard, one of the leaders of the Royalists, struck Brooke in the eye, and caused his death. This signal act did not save the Cathedral. The spire was struck by cannon balls, and fell, and after three days the garrison made terms of surrender. Desecration and spoliation raged in the once beautiful church. Carved stalls, organ, stained glass windows--all shared the same fate. Images were torn from their niches and broken; tombs were rifled, and the ashes of holy men scattered about with barbarous indecency. Bishop Scrope's tomb yielded a silver chalice and crozier of much value, and a pandemonium of ruthless rage filled the church. Prince Rupert came to Lichfield, and laid siege to the Cathedral, and after ten days turned out the Roundheads. Here the luckless King Charles came, after the disastrous fight of Naseby, and again, when the Royal cause was well-nigh lost, the Parliamentarians besieged the place, and the king's troops were forced to yield. The Restoration of the monarchy brought about the restoration of the Cathedral, which, according to Fuller, "was now in a pitiful case, indeed almost beaten down to the ground in our civil dissensions." Bishop Hacket, a worthy and zealous man, was appointed to the see, who immediately began the stupendous work, and in eight years completed it, when the church was reconsecrated with much solemnity. King Charles II. gave "100 fair timber trees" for the restoration, and a poor statue of the monarch was placed at the west end, and the Duke of York gave the large window beneath it. Both have now been removed. Too soon the ruthless hand of the arch-destroyer, Wyatt, was laid on the luckless Cathedral, who wrought mischief second only to that of the Puritan fanatics. As the canons felt cold, he walled up the pier arches of the choir and closed the eastern tower arch with a glass screen, removed the altar to east end of the Lady Chapel, patched the piers with Roman cement, hacked away the old stone-work, in order to make this cement stick, and fixed up a large organ screen between the nave and the choir. Roman cement became the passion of the hour. Statues were made of it, old stone-work repaired with it; arches, mouldings, niches and pinnacles were coated with it. Happily its reign is over. Sir Gilbert Scott began his restoration in 1856. The difficulty of the work was enormous. He endeavoured to imitate the ancient sculpture and stone-work, and restore the Cathedral to the condition of its Early Gothic purity. Though some of the work has been severely criticised, we must take into consideration the difficulties caused by Wyatt and Roman cement which he had to encounter; we must remember that Gothic revival had not reached its highest development in 1856, and be thankful that so much has been spared to us of this once magnificent Cathedral. EXTERIOR When we enter the _Close_ we notice that little is left of the fortifications that once made Lichfield into a fortress. Here and there a few traces of the walls remain. Lichfield was never a monastery, so there are no cloisters. The view of the Cathedral upon entering the close is very striking and beautiful. The colour of the stone is remarkable, as it is built of red sandstone. The three spires are extremely graceful. A fine view of them is obtained from the south side across the lake. The two west spires were built by Bishop Northbury (1322-1359), and are Decorated. The upper part of the north-western one was rebuilt, and there has been some renovation of the other. The old central tower fell during the siege, and was rebuilt by Bishop Hacket at the Restoration. The style is Perpendicular, having been built in the fashion of the west tower. The _West Front_ must have been one of the most beautiful in England, and has passed through many vicissitudes. It was commenced in 1275, and completed by degrees, the work being protracted for more than a century. The ball-flower ornament in the upper stages points to the later date of the highest part. There are three principal stages. In the lowest are three doorways, the wall being covered with a rich arcade of brackets and canopies and statues. The next stage has three rows of arcading, the lowest extending completely across the front. The west window divides the two upper arcades. There are windows in the tower fronts in the third stage, and the wall is covered with rich canopied arcade. The Puritan soldiers did much injury to the statues which filled these niches. In 1820 the broken figures were restored with Roman cement in a barbarous fashion. Sir Gilbert Scott in 1877 began to reconstruct the west front, and placed new statues in the niches, and endeavoured to reproduce an exact copy of its appearance in the days of its early beauty. A study of the figures will not be without interest. Small figures in central west doorway--on north side--genealogy of Christ according to St. Matthew from Abraham to the Virgin; on the south, according to St. Luke from Adam to Joseph. Notice fourteenth-century carving of Our Lord in Glory inside the porch. NORTH-WEST DOORWAY _On North_-- 1. Ethelbert, angel, with emblem of the Passion. 2. Edwin, orb. 3. Oswald, dove, with letter, and cross in his left hand. 4. Oswy, casket, with key and cross. [Illustration Lichfield Cathedral Herbert Railton Distant view of exterior] 5. Peada, embracing a cross. 6. Wulphere, model of a Saxon church, and a shield. _On South_-- 1. Bertha, cross in her hand, and her daughter kneeling at an altar. 2. Ethelburga, glass and comb. 3. Hilda, angel hovering over her, and pastoral staff in her hand. 4. Eanfled, priest with letter. 5. Ermenilda, laying down crown. 6. Werburga, pastoral staff, and crown at her feet. SOUTH-WEST DOORWAY The figures represent the two sources of English Christianity, the Celtic and Roman missionaries. _North Side_-- 1. St. Aidan, pastoral staff, and St. Chad as a boy in St. Aidan's School at Lindisfarne. 2. Finan, pastoral staff. 3. Diuma, pastoral staff and banner. 4. Ceollach, pastoral staff, and mitre at his feet, indicating that he resigned his bishopric. 5. Trumhere, pastoral staff. 6. Jaruman, pastoral staff, and model of a Saxon church. _South Side_-- 1. Gregory, young Saxon slaves at his feet, in the Market Place at Rome. 2. Augustine, crozier and model of Canterbury Monastery. 3. Paulinus, crozier. 4. Theodore, crozier and scroll. 5. Cuthbert, pastoral staff, and head of St. Oswald in his hand. 6. Wilfrid, pastoral staff, and treading on an idol. CENTRAL GABLE 1. Our Lord in Glory, in the act of benediction. 2. Moses, the two tables of stone. 3. Elijah, a book. 4. St. Gabriel, holding a lily, the emblem of purity. 5. St. Uriel, open book. 6. St. Michael, in armour, with spear and shield. 7. St. Raphael, pilgrim's staff. _Highest Stage--South Side_-- 8. Adam, clothed with skins, and with a lion at his feet. 9. Abel, shepherd's crook and a lamb. 10. Abraham, fire and knife. 11. Isaac. 12. Jacob. 13. Melchisedec, royal and priestly robes and censer. 14. Enoch, prophesying, with uplifted hand. 15. Methuselah, old man's staff. 16. Noah, ark and olive branch. 17. Daniel. 18. Job, staff, and prophesying the Resurrection. 19. Shem. _Middle Stage--Upper Tier_-- 20. Isaiah, a saw. 21. Hosea, skull at his feet, and scroll, "O death, I will be thy plagues." 22. Jonah, a fish at his feet, and scroll in his hand, "Salvation is of the Lord." 23. Zephaniah, holding a torch and scroll, "The great day of the Lord is near." 24. St. Michael, in armour, with spear and shield. 25. Bishop Hacket, holding the open Bible. 26. Bishop Lonsdale, model of Eton College Chapel at his feet. 27. Bishop Selwyn, his hand resting on the head of a Melanesian boy. Bishop of New Zealand, 1841 to 1867. Bishop of Lichfield, 1868 to 1878. 28. Vacant. _Middle Stage--Lower Tier_-- 29. Ezekiel, wheel, with Evangelistic emblems. 30. Joel, locust at his feet, and scroll in his hand, "Jehovah is God." 31. Micah, with foot upon an idol; and the words, "Who is God like unto Thee," in a scroll. 32. Haggai, unfinished temple at his feet, and pointing upwards, and scroll, "Go up to the mountain." 33. St. Raphael, a pilgrim's staff, as a messenger of God. 34. Bishop Clinton, A.D. 1129, model of a Norman church. 35. Bishop Patteshull, A.D. 1240, wearing a chasuble, as shown on his effigy in the Cathedral. 36. Bishop Langton, A.D. 1296, model of the Lady Chapel at his feet. 37. Vacant. _Lower Stage of Kings_-- 38. St. Chad, A.D. 669, pastoral staff, first Bishop of Lichfield. 39. Peada, A.D. 665, embracing the cross. 40. Wulphere, A.D. 657, shield, and model of Peterborough Monastery. 41. Ethelred, A.D. 657, four scrolls, indicating the four sub-divisions of the great Mercian Diocese, Lichfield, Worcester, Hereford and Chester. 42. Offa, A.D. 755, archiepiscopal mitre. 43. Egbert, A.D. 827, orb and sceptre. First sole monarch of Saxon Britain. 44. Ethelwolf, A.D. 836. 45. Ethelbert, A.D. 860, crown and sword. 46. Ethelred, A.D. 866, holding a book to his breast. 47. Alfred, A.D. 871, a harp. 48. Edgar, A.D. 958, wolf's head; alluding to tribute of wolves' heads in lieu of money. 49. Canute, A.D. 1017, orb, and looking to the sea; in reference to his rebuke of his courtiers. 50. Edward the Confessor, A.D. 1042, a dove, and a ring in his left hand. 51. William the Conqueror, A.D. 1066, _Doomsday Book_ and sword. 52. William Rufus, A.D. 1087, bow and arrow, and hunting horn; alluding to his death. 53. Henry I., A.D. 1100, holding a book. 54. Stephen, A.D. 1135, orb, dove and sword. 55. Henry II., A.D. 1154, sceptre and sword. 56. Richard I., A.D. 1189, with banneret and battle axe. 57. John, A.D. 1199, signing Magna Charta. 58. Henry III., A.D. 1216, model of Westminster Abbey. 59. Edward I., A.D. 1272, the poisoned arrow. 60. Edward II., A.D. 1307, reversed sceptre; alluding to his deposition and murder. 61. Edward III., A.D. 1327, the Garter and sceptre. 62. Richard II., A.D. 1377, orb, cross and sceptre. _Lowest Stage--North to South_-- 63. St. Cyprian, sword and book. Archbishop of Carthage. 64. St. Bartholomew, knife. 65. St. Simon, saw. 66. St. James the Less, club and book. 67. St. Thomas, the carpenter's square. 68. St. Philip, cross. 69. St. Andrew, a transverse cross. 70. St. John, pen and book. 71. Vacant. 72. Mary Magdalene, the alabaster box of ointment. 73. The Virgin and Child. 74. Mary, wife of Cleophas. 75. Vacant. 76. St. Peter, keys. 77. St. Paul, sword and book. 78. St. Matthew, wallet. 79. St. James the Greater, staff, book and scallop shell. 80. St. Jude, scroll. 81. St. Stephen, stones and the martyr's palm. 82. St. Clement, anchor and open book. 83. St. Werburga, pastoral staff, clasped book and crown at her feet. NORTH-WEST TOWER _Middle Stage--Lower Tier_-- 84. Daniel, scroll and flames of fire at his feet. 85. Obadiah, hands lifted up and scroll, "The kingdom shall be the Lord's." 86. Habakkuk, writing the vision. 87. Malachi, fiery oven at his feet and scroll. 88. St. Uriel, a spear. 89. St. Luke, staff with serpent entwined. 90. Queen Victoria. 91. St. Mark, lion at his feet. 92. Dean Bickersteth. 93. Jeremiah, lamenting destruction of Jerusalem. 94. Amos. 95. Nahum, scroll and an Assyrian idol. 96. Zechariah, candlestick and scroll. 97. St. Gabriel, shield and sceptre. 98. Solomon, sceptre and model of the Temple. 99. St. Helena, the cross, and a model of a Basilica. 100. David, harp. 101. St. Editha, foot upon a crown. _North-West Tower--Upper Tier_-- 102. Eve, a distaff in her hand. 103. Old Figure. This and four others are the only remaining fourteenth-century figures which have survived the wear of time and the violence of the Civil War. 104. Sarah, three cakes in her hand. 105. Old Figure. Fourteenth century. 106. Rachel, crook. 107. Deborah, scroll. 108. Old Figure. Fourteenth century. 109. Hannah, with the boy Samuel at her side. 110. Samuel, anointing horn and scroll. 111. Aaron, scroll. 112. Old Figure. Fourteenth century. 113. Old Figure. Fourteenth century. St. Anthony over the belfry window on south side of south-west tower. The west window presented by James II. when Duke of York has been removed and a Decorated window inserted. Passing round to the north side we see the interesting north doorway, which is a double one, with five orders, and of Early English style (1240 A.D.). The dog-tooth ornament is evident. Carved figures appear in the mouldings. The genealogy of our Lord, beginning with Jesse, is on the east side; on the west St. Chad and the Apostles. Kings and prophets appear on the middle moulding, and angels on the inner. These are good specimens of Early English carving, and are original, though somewhat restored. A modern figure of St. Anne is in the central niche, and above a figure of our Lord. The figures of SS. James and Jude are examples of the hideous Roman cement work which once was so plentiful here. Continuing our pilgrimage round the church we see the chapter-house and the Lady Chapel, which has been too much restored with new niches and statues of holy women mentioned in the Bible. The lower row (New Testament) has figures of Priscilla, Anna, Dorcas, Mary of Bethany with box of ointment, Martha with a dish and cloth, Lydia, Phebe and Elizabeth; above Esther, Ruth with corn, Naomi, Rizpah, Deborah, Miriam, Rachel and Rebecca. Passing the so-called mortuary chapels, probably vestries, we notice a noble figure of the Madonna on south side, and though the head has been defaced, and the child knocked away, it remains a beautiful study of fourteenth-century pose and drapery. On the corners of the sacristy are figures of Godefroi de Bouillon and St. Chad. The south portal has been much restored. It is similar to the north doorway, but not so rich in architectural details. On the tympanum are shields with arms of the diocese, and on the west the arms of Lady Catherine Leveson, a benefactress of the time of Bishop Hacket, and an inscription recording her munificence on the east. A row of niches is over the door, formerly filled with figures of Roman cement. Happily they have disappeared. The rose window is very fine. INTERIOR We enter the church by the west door, and are struck with the richness and beauty of the view of the nave and choir, the clustered columns with richly-carved capitals, the elaborate reredos of marble and alabaster, and the stained glass of the Lady Chapel. It will be noticed that the choir inclines considerably to the north. This difference in orientation is observable in many churches, and has been interpreted as a figurative representation of the bending of our Lord's head upon the Cross. We believe that this beautiful fancy has no authority, and most probably the inclination was accidental. No records tell us when this nave was built. It is earlier than the west front, and was begun about 1250, at the time when the Early English style was being merged in that of the Decorated. There are eight bays. The piers are octagonal, with many shafts, the capitals enriched with foliage of Early English type. The triforium has two arches in each bay, each arch has two sub-arches, with cusped heads, and a quatrefoil in the tympanum. Dog-tooth ornament is used copiously. The clerestory windows are triangular, with three circles in each, and a trefoil in each circle. Mr. Petit stated, "Nothing can exceed this nave in beauty and gracefulness." The roof was originally of stone. This the besiegers damaged, and after its restoration the stone vaulting was found too heavy for the walls and piers; hence it was removed, except the portions at the immediate east and west end. Wyatt covered the rest with plaster to imitate the original work. The roof has now been coloured, so that it is impossible to discover any difference between the stone and plaster ceiling. The _Aisles_ are similar in style to the nave, and are very narrow. The wall arcading is very fine Early Decorated work. The windows have three lights, with three foliated circles in their heads. In the north aisle are tablets to the memory of Gilbert Walmesley, the friend of Dr. Johnson and David Garrick; to Lady Mary Montagu, the introducer of the inoculation for small-pox; to Ann Seward, the "Swan of Lichfield" (1809), a window; brass to the memory of officers of the Staffordshire regiment, and its colours. In the _South Aisle_ are two curious semi-effigies of ancient date--the heads and the feet are carved, the rest of the body is left a blank in the stone; a good brass of the Earl of Lichfield (d. 1854); and the monument of Dean Addison (1703), the father of a more famous son--the essayist. We now pass to the _South Transept_, which is earlier than the north, and was begun about 1220. The north transept and chapter-house were built twenty years later. Doubtless for the building of the transepts Henry III. in 1235 and 1238 granted licence to the dean and chapter to take stone from the Royal Forest of Hopwas, south of Lichfield.[14] Both transepts have east aisles. All is Early English work, except the windows. The large south window is Perpendicular, probably inserted by Bishop Blyth (1503-1533). The stone vault is also Perpendicular, erected in place of a wooden one, which served as a model of that at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, according to the order of Henry III. There is some Flemish glass in the south window of the aisle, similar to that in the Lady Chapel. It was brought from Herckenrode. We notice the memorial of one of Nelson's men--Admiral Sir W. Parker. The south window is fitted with good modern glass. In the _North Transept_ we see that the style has advanced since the construction of the south transept, twenty years earlier. The arcading here has trefoiled arches. The windows have Perpendicular tracery, and a large north window was inserted in Perpendicular times, but it has recently been removed and the Early English window restored. The curious monument is of Dean Heywood, representing his skeleton. The organ occupies the aisle. Standing beneath the _Tower_, at the entrance of the choir, we notice the conjunction of styles--the large piers with banded shafts of the Early English of the choir blended with later work of the transept and the Early Decorated of the nave. A modern metal screen of graceful design separates the transept from the choir, and was designed by Sir G. Scott. Above are bronze angels playing instruments of music. The _Choir_, which succeeded the Norman apsidal choir, was begun in 1200, and the Lady Chapel about 1300, when the choir was lengthened by one bay. Then the Early English choir was removed as far as the third pier east of the tower, and the present choir built in the Decorated style; the upper part of the three western bays was also removed, and a Decorated clerestory added. Thus we have the arches and piers of the first three bays Early English, clerestory Decorated, and three other bays Decorated. Wyatt wrought havoc here, but his plans have now been altered, and the arrangements been made to conform to the original design. It will be observed that the tracery of the clerestory windows is Perpendicular, inserted at the restoration after the siege; only one original being left. There is no triforium, there being only two storeys. The spandrels have cusped circles, and in the older part niches with statues: on south, SS. Christopher, James and Philip; and on north, SS. Peter, Mary Magdelene and the Virgin. The stalls and bishop's throne are modern. The _Reredos_ is very magnificent, designed by Sir G. Scott. The pavement contains a veritable history of the Cathedral, while the space before the altar contains Old Testament types of the sacrifice of our Lord. The canopies of the _Sedilia_ are ancient and Late Decorated. The _Choir Aisles_ resemble in style the parts of the choir to which they are adjacent. In the north there is Chantrey's monument of Bishop Ryder, and G.F. Watts's effigy of Bishop Lonsdale (d. 1867). The _Lady Chapel_ is full of interest, and especially noticeable is the stained glass of sixteenth century, brought from the destroyed Abbey of Herckenrode, having been concealed from the destructive zeal of French revolutionists. The subjects are scenes from the life of our Lord and figures of the benefactors of the Abbey, and are the work of Lambert Lombard, the first, and by far the best, of the Italianised Flemish School of the sixteenth century. The architecture of the chapel was begun by Bishop Langton (1296-1321), and finished by Northburg; the style is Decorated. It has an octagonal apse--an unique arrangement. Beneath the windows is an arcade, resting on a stone bench, and between the windows are niches, which have recently been filled with statues of excellent execution. These are:--St. Werburgh, St. Cecilia, St. Prisca, St. Faith, St. Catherine, St. Margaret, St. Lucy, St. Agnes, St. Ethelreda. The triptych which forms the reredos was carved at Ober Ammergau. The altar rails are of alabaster. Looking back we have a good view of the Cathedral, and note the considerable inclination of the choir. On the south side are the so-called mortuary chapels, which have been restored in memory of Bishop Selwyn, and contain his effigy and some mural paintings recording scenes from the adventurous life of this great missionary-bishop, who did so much to plant the Church in Melanesia. The shrine of St. Chad formerly stood in the retro-choir behind the high altar. In the south choir aisle is the consistory court, formerly the sacristy. The walls are the oldest part of the Cathedral, being of the same date as the Early English portion of the choir. We notice the old tile and coal pavement, and the old Jacobean choir stalls. Above is the minstrels' gallery, so-called, of Perpendicular work, opening into St. Chad's Chapel, chiefly intended for the exhibition of relics to the pilgrims in the aisle below, and amongst these those of St. Chad. This chapel, formerly used as a muniment room, has been beautifully restored by Dean Luckock, and has good lancet windows, noble reredos of alabaster, old piscina and aumbrey which probably once held the skull of St. Chad. Carved figures in bosses and corbels tell the story of the saint. The old treasury has been beautifully restored, and we see the old aumbreys which once contained such a store of treasures and relics, and some of the cannon balls which wrought such havoc during the siege. There are many interesting monuments in this aisle--notably the famous "Sleeping Children," by Chantrey (1817), daughters of Prebendary Robinson; the monuments of Archdeacon Hodson and his son of "Hodson's Horse" fame, who distinguished himself so much in the Indian Mutiny; Erasmus Darwin (1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, a writer of botanical poems; Bishop Langton (1296), much mutilated; Bishop Patteshull (1241), of Purbeck marble; Sir John Stanley (1515), a curious effigy of a knight naked to the waist as if prepared for scourging. It is supposed that he was excommunicated for some offence, and was not ashamed to have his penance recorded on his tomb. Other monuments are those of Archdeacon Moon (1876); Dean Howard (1868); Bishop Hacket, the restorer of the Cathedral after the siege; one of the semi-effigies mentioned above, and at the east end is a curious fourteenth-century mural painting. We now visit the _Chapter-House_, passing through the vestibule which is of Late Early English design. We notice the beautiful arcading in the latter; on the west side there are seats where, it is said, that the feet of beggars were washed on Maundy Thursday. The dog-tooth ornament is extensively used in the arcading. The doorway to the chapter-house is very fine and is a double one with a figure of our Lord in the tympanum. Clustered shafts are at the sides with capitals carved with foliage. The chapter-house is octagonal, having the north and south sides longer than the others. The central pillar is surrounded by banded shafts with richly-carved capitals. The windows are Early English, with two lights. An arcade of forty-nine arches with rich canopies surrounds the chamber. Traces of mural painting may be seen over the door. All the ancient glass was destroyed, and modern artists are depicting in glass the history of the see. Over the chapter-house is the _Library_. It contains many treasures, in spite of the Puritan destruction, the most valuable being the Gospels of St. Chad (preserved in a glass case in the retro-choir), containing the Gospels of SS. Matthew and Mark and part of St. Luke. It has 700 miniatures. Other treasures are Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, which has all except that of the _Ploughman's_, supposed by some to be spurious; Caxton's _Life of King Arthur_, the MS. Household-book of Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., and many rare Bibles. The copy of South's Sermons is interesting, as it belonged to Dr. Johnson, and contains MS. notes for his Dictionary. DIMENSIONS Total length 371 ft. Length of nave 140 ft. Width of the nave and its aisles 67 ft. Width of the choir and aisles 66 ft. Width of the Lady Chapel 29 ft. Length of the transepts from north to south 149 ft. Height of the vaulting 57 ft. Height of the central spire 258 ft. Height of the two western spires 198 ft. Area 27,720 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Early English (1220-1250)--Lower part of three west bays of choir and sacristy, south transept. (1250-1275)--Nave and aisles, central tower, chapter house, north and south doorways of transepts. Decorated (1275-1357)--Lady Chapel, west front, and west spires. Perpendicular--South window of south transept and vault, north window of west transept, some other windows, minstrels' gallery. (1661-1671)--Central tower, spire rebuilt. FOOTNOTE: [14] _Rot. Lit. Clans._, 19, Henry III.; quoted by Britton and Murray. CHESTER CATHEDRAL Royal Chester is one of the most ancient and interesting cities in the kingdom. It was an important Roman station. It was called the "City of Legions," and the twentieth Legion of the Roman army was stationed here, and left behind it many traces of its occupation. Saxons and Danes also held the place. The warlike daughter of Alfred the Great, and wife of Ethelred of Mercia, drove out the Danes and rebuilt the walls, but the Welsh again gained the mastery until the first Saxon Edward reconquered it, and later Edgar subdued the Britons, and in 973 was rowed in his victorious vessel on the Dee by eight British chieftains. William the Conqueror made his nephew Earl of Chester, and for years he and his successors ruled as kings in this corner of England, until Henry III. bestowed the title on his eldest son, and since that time the earldom has always been held by the king's first-born. Edward I. often came here when he was waging war against Llewellyn and the Welsh, and worshipped in the great church. Here Henry IV. brought as a captive the luckless King Richard II. and imprisoned him in the castle. Of Royal visits old Chester had abundance. The city was famous for its "miracle plays," which were performed in the streets. Frequently the dread visitor plague made its presence felt, and grass grew in the neglected streets. Tradition states that the name "God's Providence House" was given to a house in Watergate Street, because that was the only dwelling which the plague passed over. Chester played an important part in the Civil War, and bravely resisted a siege and frequently repelled formidable attacks, and the inhabitants were reduced to great straits and much ruin wrought. The walls of the city are quite complete, and on one of the towers called the Phoenix is the inscription: "King Charles stood on this tower September 24th" (27th it should be) "1645, and saw his army defeated at Rowton Moor." Chester retains many of its historical associations, its extensive Roman remains, its walls and ancient houses, its wonderful Rows, "like which there is nothing else in the world," the quaint street names, the interesting churches, all contribute to make Chester one of the most delightful cities in England. Although the great church is ancient, the present see is not. Chester was one of the dioceses founded by Henry VIII. in return for some of the great stores of treasure which he and his courtiers filched from the church. It appears, however, that just after the Norman Conquest there were Bishops of Chester. In 1075 the Bishop of Lichfield removed the seat of the bishopric to Chester, and the Church of St. John the Baptist was his Cathedral. Then Coventry became the centre of the diocese, but the title of Bishop of Chester was frequently used, but fell into disuse in later time, until Henry VIII. constituted the new see. [Illustration ST. OSWALD'S GATE] The church has, however, a very interesting history. Possibly there may have been a Christian church here in Roman times. An old chronicler tells us of an early church dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, and that in the time of the Saxons it was re-dedicated to St. Werburgh and St. Oswald. St. Oswald we have met before at Durham and elsewhere. St. Werburgh was the daughter of Walphur, King of Mercia, A.D. 660, who, perceiving that his daughter was much disposed to a religious life, caused her to take the veil. Her aunt, St. Ethelreda of Ely, was her spiritual mother, and when St. Werburgh died her body was conveyed to Chester, where a monastic house was built, dedicated to her. The early history of this house is somewhat uncertain. Ormerod, the historian of Chester, states that it continued a nunnery until the time of the Norman Conquest, when secular canons were installed in their stead, but this change took place in the time of King Athelstan (925). Leofric, the husband of Lady Godiva, is also recorded as a great benefactor of the church and monastery. When Hugh Lupus, the nephew of the Conqueror, became Earl of Chester, in the time of William Rufus he founded a new monastery of Benedictine monks, and endowed it with rich possessions. He introduced the famous Anselm, Abbot of Bec, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, who made his chaplain, Richard, the first abbot. The Norman church was begun in his time, and some of the features of the Norman Abbey of Bec were introduced at Chester, especially the stone roof of the apse in the south-east of the Cathedral. Some fragments of this church remain in spite of the changes which time has wrought, notably the small arches in the east wall of north transept, and an arch in the canons' vestry, the north wall of the nave, the doorway between the east cloister and the nave, the lower part of the north-west tower and the crypt. Fire played havoc here as elsewhere, and we find Abbot Geoffrey lamenting over the intolerable ruin of his church. This was at the close of the twelfth century, and some reparation was affected, while, during the time of his successor, Hugh Grylle, prosperity dawned upon the Abbey, and the number of monks was soon after increased. Increased wealth tempted the rapacious, and the abbey had to withstand a siege. A noted abbot was Simon de Albo Monasterio, or Whitchurch, who did much for his monastery. He rebuilt the Lady Chapel, enlarged the chapter-house, and began the present choir. The refectory, with its beautiful pulpit, must have been constructed about this time, the close of the thirteenth century, when the king, Edward I., gave grants of venison from his forests for the support of the monks, "who were engaged on the work of building the church." No records tell of any work being done by succeeding abbots until the time of Simon Ripley (1472-1493); but where records are silent the stone-work tells us that in the fourteenth century some beautiful work was accomplished, notably the shrine of St. Werburgh, the sedilia and choir stalls. Simon Ripley was an energetic abbot, and rebuilt the nave, tower and south transept. This south transept was claimed as the Parish Church of the parishioners of St. Oswald, and there were much disputings, but the people had their way, and retained their rights until 1881. We also find that the usual quarrels took place between the monks and citizens about the rights to hold fairs and markets. Abbot Birkenshawe continued Ripley's work, and completed the west front and part of the west tower. An unfortunate alteration was made at this time. The vault of the cloisters was raised, tradition says, by Cardinal Wolsey, and mars the beauty of the earlier work. Then came the dissolution of monasteries, and the Abbey of St. Werburgh shared the fate of the rest. The See of Chester was created in 1541, the last abbot becoming the first dean, and John Byrde the first bishop. Most of the lands and wealth of the church were seized by the king and his courtiers. But, shorn of its wealth, the Cathedral itself was at this time one of the most beautiful in England. Dire troubles were, however, in store. The waves of the Civil War beat fiercely on Royal Chester; and when, after the protracted siege, the victorious Puritan soldiers entered the city, they defaced the Cathedral choir, injured the organ, and demolished the font, broke all the painted windows, and used the church as a stable. Randle Holme, the historian of Chester, utters a sad lament over the condition of the city which he loved so well, and compares it with Jerusalem, "the beloved citie of God, with not a stone left upon another." Since then the story of the Cathedral has been one of continual reparation and restoration. The exterior of the choir was recased by Bishop Stratford (1689-1707). Bishop Law, in 1818, effected some considerable repairs, and other efforts were made, until at length Sir G. Scott was engaged in 1868, when Dean Howson ruled, and a very "thorough" restoration was made. A modern authority on Gothic architecture states that Sir G. Scott's was "a rebuilding of every external feature of this Cathedral in the style of his own Victorian Gothic." Perhaps this criticism is a little too severe. It must be remembered that the stone of Chester Cathedral was very soft and perishable, that the state of the fabric was so bad that it was almost dangerous, and that the difficulties of the architect were great. However, in spite of what has been done, there is still much to admire, and we will proceed to examine the details of this ancient church. THE EXTERIOR To examine the exterior we must avoid the narrow streets in its vicinity, and ascend the old walls of the city, from which we can obtain an excellent view. Starting at the east gate, we get a good view of the south-east of the Cathedral, including the tower, the east side of the south transept, choir and Lady Chapel. We notice the colour of the stone--red sandstone. The plan of the church is cruciform. The _Tower_ is Perpendicular in style, and was probably built by Abbot Ripley. Two windows of Perpendicular character look out from each side. It has been much restored, and was only just saved from destruction by this process. Sir G. Scott devised the turrets and pinnacles out of his inner consciousness, and also the parapet; but the effect, though differing, doubtless, from the original design, is not unpleasing. The _Lady Chapel_ is a simple and beautiful construction of Early English design. On the south side there are three triple lancets under a pointed arch, separated by buttresses crowned with pinnacles, and a parapet above. The south aisle of the choir is Early Decorated, and there is a modern apsidal termination, with a curious steep roof, almost resembling the spire of a church, which Sir G. Scott constructed, and for which he found justification in the remains of the earlier roof. This example is unique in England, but not unusual in France. The south transept is unusually large, which is accounted for by its being the Church of St. Oswald. There are some curious modern sculptures in a corbel here, representing modern statesmen, and the features of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Beaconsfield are not difficult to discover. Passing along the wall of the city, at the east of Abbey Street we see the north-east view. Near at hand, on the right, is the refectory, and on the left the chapter-house, which is Early English. The north transept is Norman work. The north choir aisle, which extends along the side of the Lady Chapel, is, in its eastern part, Perpendicular; further west it is Early Decorated, while by the canons' vestry we see unmistakable Norman work. In this wall much of the old stone remains, as it has not suffered so much from the weather as on the south side. We see the long expanse of the nave roof, and then pass along Abbey Street, and have a fine view of this north side. Then houses interfere with the prospect. Then we see the old Abbey gateway, a fourteenth-century structure, and the new buildings of the King's School, which occupies the site of the old Palace, and soon stand opposite the _West Front_, which lacks the grandeur of this feature of many cathedrals. It has a large Perpendicular window of good design and rich tracery; beneath it is a Tudor doorway, and canopied niches, and on the south the base of a tower which was never completed. Passing along we have a grand view of the south side. [Illustration Chester Cathedral] There is a porch, with a parvise over it, of Late Perpendicular design, with Tudor doorway, and battlements and pinnacles. The vault is modern; the windows of the aisle are Decorated, and those of the clerestory Perpendicular. This concludes our survey of the exterior, and we now enter the Cathedral and examine the principal features of the interior. THE INTERIOR Entering by the south porch or the west door, we examine first the _Nave_, which is small and not very striking in appearance. There are six bays, but the southern arcade is much earlier than the north. The piers consist of groups of attached shafts, with capitals of foliage. The southern arcade is Decorated, while the northern is later. The initials S.R. appear on the capital of the first northern pier. These letters stand for Simon Ripley, abbot (1485-1492). He probably built the upper part of the northern arcade, but the lower part is earlier. The clerestory was finished by Abbot Birkenshawe. The last bay eastward is more ornamented than the rest, and has cusped windows in the clerestory and tracery in the triforium opening. This is earlier, and is perhaps more ornate, because the choir included this bay. The roof is modern, and has a good specimen of fan-tracery vault. Some of the bosses are noticeable, and record the benefactors--the Prince of Wales, Duke of Westminster, and others. Under the south tower is the _Consistory Court_, which is separated from the nave by some curious Jacobean stone-work, and contains some good woodwork of the same period. The south aisle has Decorated windows; the north aisle contains some interesting remains of the old Norman church. The north wall is entirely Norman. A Norman doorway leads to the cloisters at the east end, and at the west there are some remains of the Norman tower built by the nephew of the Conqueror. This is now the baptistry, which has a curious _font_, presented by Earl Egerton in 1885. The dean states that "it came from a ruined church in the Romagna, but it is not known whence it was brought to Venice. It is of a rectangular form, of white marble; and in all probability it was originally a village well-head in early Roman times, and afterwards taken by the Christians and carved with symbols for a font. The work is of the Ravenna type, of the sixth or seventh century." Near here is hung an ancient piece of tapestry, which has been in the Cathedral since 1668. The subject is Raphael's cartoon of Elymas the Sorcerer. The vault of this aisle is modern. The old wall is covered with rich mosaics, representing Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Elijah, and other Old Testament characters. The _North Transept_ is small, and is of the same size as the original church, there being no room for expansion on this side because of the monastic buildings. The lower walls are original Norman, the upper Late Norman. A Norman arch, now blocked up, leads to the canons' vestry on the east. The arches of the triforium are very early, and are rude and massive. On the west there are three Norman windows blocked up. Perpendicular tracery has been inserted in some of the windows. That of the north window is modern. The roof is Perpendicular, and on one of the bosses are the arms of Cardinal Wolsey. A conspicuous monument here is that of Bishop Pearson (1686), the author of the famous work on _the Creed_. The initiation of the erection of this magnificent memorial of one of the greatest of English divines was due to an American bishop, Dr. Whittingham of Maryland. The organ-loft is very rich, and the instrument itself is a very noble one, and replete with every modern contrivance. Crossing to the _South Transept_, which until 1881 was the Parish Church of St. Oswald, we notice its great size when compared with that on the north. It was undergoing restoration when we last visited the Cathedral. It has Decorated windows, and Perpendicular in the west aisle. The monuments in the naves and transepts do not possess many features of interest, and may be passed over. [Illustration THE CHOIR] We now enter the _Choir_, and can admire the modern screen, designed by Sir G. Scott, and beautifully executed. The choir is remarkable for the great beauty of the woodwork which it contains, as well as for its architectural merits. The style is that of the transition between the Early English and Decorated. The north side differs from the south, especially in regard to the mouldings. The north side is earlier than the south, the building having been commenced at the east end of that side. The mouldings on the north are bold rounds, while those on the south are shallow and small hollows. The triforium has a series of elaborately-carved cusped arches, and the clerestory windows are light and graceful, with geometrical tracery. The vault is modern, constructed of good English oak. At the east there are figures of the sixteen prophets, and at the west are angels playing musical instruments. There are some curious grotesque corbels, from which the vaulting shafts spring. The carving of the _Choir Stalls_ is equal, if not superior, to anything in England. These are fourteenth-century work, and rival the noble stalls of Amiens. They have been restored with much accuracy and taste. The carving of the dean's stall should be noticed, as it represents the Jesse tree, surmounted by the Coronation of the Virgin. That representing Jacob's dream is modern. The _Misereres_ are extremely interesting and curious, and full of religious instruction, though often conveyed in the way of sarcastic reproof. There are forty-eight, of which three are modern. Some of the most curious are: a pelican feeding her young; St. Werburgh and the stolen goose; a wife beating her husband; the strategy of the fox; stag hunt; Richard I. pulling out the heart of a lion; a fox in the garb of a monk presenting a gift to a nun; various wild men; wrestlers; unicorn resting its head on a virgin's knee, and numerous grotesques. The _Throne_ is a handsome modern work, and also the _Pulpit_, presented by the Freemasons of Cheshire, who restored also the ancient sedilia, which, tradition states, came from the old Church of St. John without the city walls. The altar is made of wood grown in Palestine. The oak of Bashan, olive wood from the Mount of Olives, and the cedar of Lebanon, are all used, and the carvings represent palm, vine, wheat, olive, thorn, bulrush, hyssop, myrrh and flax, all of which are included in the _flora_ of Palestine. The reredos is a mosaic of the Last Supper. The magnificent candelabra of Italian _cinque cento_ work are the gift of the late Duke of Westminster. Over the altar is an arch, through which the window of the Early English Lady Chapel can be seen, and above is a window with Decorated tracery. The _North Aisle_ of the choir is interesting. Traces of Norman work are seen in the base of a massive round pillar at the west entrance, in the inverted capital of a Norman pier, with an Early Decorated pier constructed on it, and the Norman apse is marked on the pavement by a line of dark marble. The canons' vestry is architecturally a very important building, as it contains work of the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The arch in east wall of the transept is Early Norman; the Norman apsidal termination can be traced. It was rebuilt in the Early English period, and made to terminate in a square form, and the doorway from the north aisle is fourteenth-century work. There is an old chest or reliquary here with very good iron-work and lock of the thirteenth century. Re-entering the aisle we can trace the abandonment of the apse and the extension eastward in the Early English period, as shown in the character of the vaulting and in the piscina, which belongs to this period. In Perpendicular times a further extension took place, in order to gain an entrance to the Lady Chapel. The gates of both aisles are old Spanish work of 1558, presented by the late Duke of Westminster. The _South Aisle_ has passed through somewhat similar vicissitudes, but "restoration" has removed some of their traces, and it is now terminated by the apse, the erection of which we recorded when examining the exterior, and which is conjectured to be an exact reproduction of the appearance of this end of the Cathedral in the time of Edward I. The apse has been fitted up as a memorial to Thomas Brassey, the great contractor. The _Lady Chapel_ is of Early English design, and was built about 1266, previous to the present choir. Many alterations were made subsequently, including the removal of the ancient steep and lofty roof and the substitution of a flat roof, and the insertion of Perpendicular windows. Most of these additions have been removed and the Early English character restored. The east window of five lights was designed by Scott, and the original form of the roof has been restored. The vault, which is original Early English, has a boss representing the murder of Thomas à Becket. The mosaics were designed by Sir A. Blomfield. Here the consistory court was held at the time of the Reformation, and George Marsh, the Chester martyr, was condemned to be burnt. The _Monuments_ in the choir and Lady Chapel are to the memory of Dean Howson, Bishop Graham (1865), Dean Arderne, an altar tomb to an unknown person, and the famous shrine of St. Werburgh, of fourteenth-century work, which is of exquisite design and construction. It was richly ornamented by figures. There was a great resort of pilgrims to this shrine in mediæval times. The pavement of the choir is worthy of attention. It is modern; around the lectern are the heads of the twelve Apostles, and of the four doctors of the Church--SS. Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius and Chrysostom. On the east end are representations of the Passover, and some fragments of tesselated pavement are inserted here which came from the Temple at Jerusalem. The stained glass is all modern. The Cathedral has a rare treasure of the seventeenth century, a carved narwhal tusk, beautifully carved by a Flemish artist. It is thus described by the dean: "The leading subject is the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, passing on to the exaltation of the Cross.... A Jesse tree occupies about 3 feet, and above is seated the Blessed Virgin with the Holy Child. Higher up is the Cross with the figure of our Saviour, whose countenance is full of compassion.... St. Michael thrusting down Lucifer with a cross; the figures of SS. Peter and Paul and the four Evangelists; St. Anthony of Padua and another monk holding up a cross, and figures of angels, each holding in uplifted hands a cross." [Illustration SHRINE OF ST. WERBURGH] We will now proceed to the _Monastic Buildings_, which are of great importance. They are situated on the north side of the Cathedral, and are approached through a Norman doorway in the north aisle. Turning to the left we see some good Norman arcading. The tombstones of some of the earlier abbots are seen here. The south walk is entirely new, having been restored by Scott. The west walk adjoins a fine Early Norman chamber, probably the great cellar of the abbot's house. The cloisters are Perpendicular work. In the south and west walks there is a double arcade on the cloister-garth side, which contained the _Carrels_ or enclosed studies of wainscot, where the monks read or wrote, and on the opposite side are recesses which are not tombs, but _Armaria_ or cupboards, where their books and materials for illuminations were stored. In the Perpendicular period the roof of the cloisters was raised, which was not an advantage, as it caused the aisle windows and those of the refectory to be partly blocked up, and the vaulting cuts into the earlier work. The _Lavatorium_ is near the entrance to the _Refectory_, an Early English building with Perpendicular windows. It is a noble structure, shorn of some of its length, and now used as a music room. The stone pulpit is remarkably fine, of Early English design, which rivals the famous pulpit of Beaulieu Abbey. In the east walk we see the doorway leading to the _Vestibule_ of the chapter-house. It consists of a cusped arch, and three small windows are above it; on the centre one the dog-tooth ornament is used. Both the vestibule and the chapter-house are fine examples of Early English. In the former light, graceful piers support the vaulting without capitals, the mouldings being continued along the piers and vaulting in a very beautiful manner. The _Chapter-House_ is a noble chamber. Its shape is oblong, and it was built about 1240. There is a fine east window of five lights; and windows of three lights are on the north and south sides, and have detached shafts. The glass is modern, and represents the chief persons associated with the history of the Cathedral. Here is stored the library, which is not rich in treasures of bibliography. There is a fair collection of the Fathers and liturgical works, a book which belonged to Bishop Pearson and Higden's _Polyolbion_. DIMENSIONS Length, 355 ft.; length of nave, 145 ft.; width of nave, 75 ft.; height, 78 ft.; height of tower, 127 ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1093-1140)--north wall of north aisle and doorways, part of north-west tower, north transept, part of canons' vestry, cellar in monastic buildings; Early English (1266-1300)--Lady Chapel, choir, part of north choir aisle, chapter-house, refectory; Decorated (1300-1400)--Abbey Gate, south and lower part of north nave, windows of south aisle, part of south transept; Perpendicular (1472-1500)-- tower, upper part of north of nave, east of north choir aisle, west front, south porch, part of south transept and some windows; Choir recased (1689-1707). * * * * * St. John's Church is well worthy of a visit. It has an important history, and was once the Cathedral of the first Norman bishop. It is mainly of Norman construction. The massive piers are very early (1067-1105), the triforium and clerestory are Transitional. A good history of the church has been written by the Rev. Cooper Scott. LIVERPOOL CATHEDRAL Liverpool is a very modern see, the bishopric having been formed in 1880. It has at length been possible to take steps to found a Cathedral, and many architectural problems have to be solved by the citizens with regard to the site and the style of the new church. We trust that these will be solved satisfactorily, and that the Cathedral of Liverpool will be made worthy of the city. If wealth can accomplish this great achievement, there should be no difficulty in this place. The Church of St. Peter is at present used as the Cathedral, but it has no feature of either architectural or historical interest. MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL Other objects of interest rather than those of history or architecture usually attract the stranger to Manchester. The great centre of modern industry, the city that brings the sea to its walls, that finds employment for tens of thousands, where the pulse of life beats fast--that is the Manchester we all know. But there is another Manchester of quiet and sedate ways, which is not devoid of history, which we will endeavour to read amidst the din and turmoil of this hive of industry. It is difficult to imagine that the parish "was originally a wild, unfrequented tract of woodland, inhabited merely by the boar, the bull, and the wolf, and traversed only by the hunters of the neighbouring country." Under Agricola, Manchester became a Roman station. Camden tells of Roman inscriptions, and many other Roman remains have been found. Edwin of Northumbria came here, and Paulinus brought Christianity and thousands were baptised by him. Two Saxon churches were built, St. Michael's and St. Mary's. Ina and his queen, Ethelburga, sojourned here. The Danes ravaged it, and Edward the Elder re-edified the town in 924. We find that Canute came here, and the historian of the town derives Knot, or Knut, Mill from his name. The Conqueror gave the manor to Roger de Poictiers, but it appears to have been regranted to the Greslie family. It is unnecessary to follow the history of the manor and barony. In 1235 Manchester is said to have had a Deanery, and Peter de Greleigh (Greslie) held the Rectory in 1261. Hugh de Manchester, a favourite of Edward I., went on an embassage to Philip of France to recover certain lands for his king. Other distinguished rectors were William de Marchia (1284), afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and William de Langton, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, the builder of the beautiful Lady Chapel of that Cathedral; Otto de Grandisson, Geoffrey de Stoke, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, London. In 1373 Thomas de la Warre was presented to the living, and he obtained Royal licence in 1422 to found a collegiate church, consisting of one warden, eight fellows, four clerks and six choristers. The parishioners cheerfully agreed to build the new church. John Huntingdon, the first warden, built the choir, and several leading families, the Radcliffes, Stanleys, Traffords, Byrons and Strangeways erected chantries. The college was founded at the same time as the residence of the warden and fellows. The right of sanctuary was granted to the collegiate church, the sanctuary men bearing a cross on their hand. The college has a chequered career. In the reign of Edward VI. it was dissolved and its possessions seized. Under Mary it was re-established, together with the chantries in the church. In the time of Elizabeth the college had prolonged disputes with the town, the clergy were beaten by the populace, and one of them stabbed, and the plate and ornaments stolen. In 1578 the charter was renewed. A famous warden was Dr. Dee, who is well known as a dealer in magical arts, and his successor, Murray, was not a very learned divine; when preaching before James I. from the text, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," the monarch said the Gospel of Christ might well be ashamed of him. In 1617 a gallery was erected in the church, which was much dilapidated and the income impoverished. In the time of the Civil War, Richard Heyrick was warden and sided with the Parliament, the Independents setting up a meeting-house at the college. Manchester underwent a siege during the war, and in 1649 the chapter-house and chest were broken into by soldiers and the deeds carried off to London, where it is thought that they perished in the great fire. The college was dissolved. Heyrick was a veritable "Vicar of Bray," and embraced all the opinions in turn of all the parties in that troublous period. The collegiate buildings were in much decay during the Commonwealth period, when Humphrey Chetham, one of the worthiest of benefactors, conceived the idea of converting them into a school and library, and left a large sum of money for this purpose. Chetham's Hospital is quite the most interesting building in the city, which has retained few of its ancient edifices. Lancashire folk were very faithful to the House of Stuart, and in both the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 Manchester took part. The young Pretender was proclaimed here King James III., and the "Manchester Regiment" was formed to fight in the prince's cause, and subsequently many lost their heads, some being stuck upon the Exchange. The Diocese of Manchester was formed in 1847, and has only had three bishops--James Prince Lee, Fraser, and the present Bishop Moorhouse, formerly Bishop of Melbourne. THE EXTERIOR Manchester smoke soon causes stone-work to assume a venerable appearance, and although much of the Cathedral is new, its first appearance is one of an ancient edifice. Manchester is a modern see, founded in 1847, but its church, as we have seen, dates back to a very respectable antiquity and has many features of special interest. It stands out well amidst the surrounding mass of modern buildings, of shops and railway stations, and seems to raise the thoughts of all who behold its beauties above the buying and selling in this busy mart of human enterprise. The present generation of merchants of Manchester and the Cathedral authorities have done much for their Cathedral, and striven to make it worthy of its name and position as the Mother Church of the diocese, and all the resources of modern art have been lavished on the building. We shall see this better in the interior. The exterior also shows that very much has been done in building and decoration. There is first the new _West Porch_, which has just been finished with a statue of Queen Victoria in the niche over the doorway. Just as the burghers of the Middle Ages loved to enrich their churches with the triumphs of architectural art, so do the modern merchants of Manchester strive to adorn their Cathedral with elaborate handiwork. This new piece of work is richly carved. The style follows that of the Cathedral and is mainly Perpendicular. There is rich panel work, an open-work battlemented parapet, and a richly-crocketed pinnacle crowns a turret on the south side. The door itself is a very handsome piece of work. On each side of the main porch there are rooms. The _Tower_ stands at the west end above the porch. There is a good west window in the lowest stage with an ogee label richly crocketed. Above is the clock. In former days this clock was not noted for keeping correct time. An old gentleman was observed each morning setting his watch by it. "Excuse me," said a bystander, "that clock is five minutes late." "Sir," he replied, "I have set my watch by that clock for forty years, and right or wrong, I shall go by it for the rest of my life." At each corner of the tower there are three pinnacles. The windows of the church, we observe, as we pass to the south, are all Perpendicular, but there is a pleasing variety in the tracery. The _South Porch_ has a parvise, and was built by Mr. James Jardine, a distinguished citizen of Manchester, in 1891. On this side there are several chapels--the Brown Chapel, St. George's, St. Nicholas or Trafford Chapel, Jesus Chapel, the chapter-house with its pyramidal roof, the Fraser Chapel, a new building erected in memory of Bishop Fraser. The battlemented parapet on this side of the church is modern. On the east side is a tiny Lady Chapel with a Decorated east window, which has been reproduced from the earlier design. Proceeding onwards we notice the Ely Chapel, the Derby or John the Baptist's Chapel, the St. James's Chapel, and that dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The _North Porch_ is similar in character to that on the south, and was erected in memory of James Craven in 1888. THE INTERIOR The interior of the Cathedral is full of interest. We enter by the south porch, and we are at once struck by the extraordinary width of the church. On each side of the nave there are two aisles. The outer aisles both on the north and south sides were formerly separated from the rest of the church by screens, and were occupied by chapels or chantries. By a somewhat drastic restoration at the beginning of the nineteenth century these screens were removed, and the outer aisles thrown open. This procedure rendered the church more useful for congregational purposes, though we may regret the disappearance of the historic chapels, a few piscinæ being the only remains. We will commence our pilgrimage at the west end, and from this point view the length of the church, which is shrouded in "a divine religious light," perhaps a little too dim. Most of the windows are filled with modern glass which is generally of beautiful design; but modern glass lacks that transparency which ancient glass has. The sunlight streams through the old glass, and it is quite possible, as at Fairford, to read the smallest print; while modern glass effectually shuts out the light, and at the best too much sunlight is not usually observable in this region of smoky chimneys and polluted atmosphere. The piers of the nave are modern imitations of the original Perpendicular ones, and are lofty and graceful. There is no triforium, and the clerestory is somewhat contracted. The windows have five lights of Perpendicular tracery, and most of them are filled with modern glass. The roof is ancient, but has been much restored. In the distance we see the handsome choir-screen with the organ over it. The spandrels of the chancel arch are richly carved with shields in quatrefoils, and above is the Tudor rose. Shields adorn the spandrels of the main arches. Above us is the ceiling of the tower, which is a good example of fan-tracery. The modern baptistry is on our right. Passing the south porch, erected in memory of Mr. James Jardine, we see the extreme south aisle, formerly consisting of chantries separated from the rest of the church by screens. In a recess east of the porch was the Brown Chapel, and north of this St. George's Chantry (to which saint, together with St. Mary and St. Denis, the church was formerly dedicated) founded by W. Galley in 1508. At the dissolution of the collegiate institution John Barlow and Edward Smyth, priests of this chantry, received pensions of £6 and £4, 12s. 6d. respectively. Then comes the Trafford or St. Nicholas Chantry, the priest of which received a pension of £5. The Traffords of Trafford are an ancient Lancastrian family who have held the manor, near Manchester, since the Conquest, and the name of Edmund Trafford appears upon the list of parishioners given in the licence to erect the collegiate church. A piscina shows the position of the altar of this chantry. Next follows the Jesus Chapel which has a fine sixteenth-century screen. It was founded by Richard Bexwick in 1506, being granted to him "to enjoy its privileges by James Stanley, warden, and the fellows." His daughter Isabel gave it to Francis Pendleton and Cicely his wife, daughter of Isabel. In 1652 it was in a ruinous condition. It is now used as the library and vestry. From this chapel another chapel founded by Ralph Hulme in 1507 opened, but it has been destroyed. One of this family of Hulme founded in 1691 the Hulmeian scholarships at Oxford. Next we see the entrance to the chapter-house built by James Stanley (1485-1509), which is good Perpendicular work. Under the arch, which has panelled work in the soffit, there are two doors having four-centred arches, and above panelling. The Fraser Chapel, erected in memory of Bishop Fraser of Manchester (1870-1885), "a man of singular gifts both of nature and the spirit," who won all hearts and whose memory will ever be venerated in the Manchester Diocese, stands on the south at the extreme east end of this aisle. It contains an admirable effigy of the bishop, who was buried in the little Parish Church of Ufton Nervet, Berks, where he passed the early years of his clerical life, and for which he had tender memories. This was a college living to which he was presented by Oriel College. Turning to the north we enter the retro-choir and the Lady Chapel, originally founded by George West, youngest brother of Lord Delaware, who was warden of the college in 1518-1535. The last historian of the Cathedral, Mr. Perkins, considers that West reconstructed a more ancient building, and that the style of the windows inserted in the eighteenth century in imitation of earlier ones point to an earlier date than 1518. This chapel was once known as the Byron Chapel, and then the Chetham Chapel, as it contains several memorials of that family. There is a modern statue of Humphrey Chetham, the founder of Chetham's Hospital (which we shall presently visit), who was born in 1580, and by trade "acquired opulence, while his strict integrity, his piety, his works of charity and benevolence secured him the respect and esteem of those around him."[15] He founded the school, and clothed, fed and instructed twenty-two boys, and, though never married, thus became a father of the fatherless and destitute. At the base of his statue is seated a figure of one of these youths. Near this statue is the tomb of Hugh Birley, a member of a distinguished Manchester family and a representative of the city in Parliament. An ancient organ, more than two centuries old, also is in this aisle. On the north is the St. John the Baptist or Derby Chapel, formerly called the Stanley Chapel, separated by an old screen from the aisle. The Stanleys belong to the same family as the Earls of Derby. The office of warden was held by two members of the Stanley family, both having the Christian name of James. The second James Stanley became Bishop of Ely, and by virtue of his will (he died 1515) this chapel and the Ely Chapel were built. His tomb remains, of grey marble, with a small brass figure of the bishop in his robes, with the inscription:--"Off yur charite pray for the soul of James Stanley, sutyme Bushype of Ely and Warden of this College of Manchestir, which decessed out of this transitore world the xxxi. daye of March, the yer of our Lord MCCCCC. and XV., on whos soul and all Christian souls Jhesu have mercy." Westward of this Derby Chapel stands the Ducie Chapel, dedicated to St. James, founded in 1507, and next comes the Radcliffe Chantry, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, founded by W. Radcliffe in 1498. The Radcliffes of Radcliffe, near Manchester, were an ancient race, and the ballad of "Fair Ellen," the daughter of one member of this family, who was slain by a cruel stepmother and her body cooked in a pie, is a gruesome legend of old Lancashire. The east end of the nave is used for services, and there is a fine modern pulpit. Manchester Cathedral possesses some very fine carved woodwork, of which the ancient rood-screen is a good example. The organ is placed above it. On entering the _Choir_ we notice the magnificently-carved stalls with rich tabernacle work, and quaint _misereres_. This is the work of James Stanley (1485-1509) afterwards Bishop of Ely, assisted by a Manchester merchant named Beck. The bishop's throne is modern, and also the reredos. The three Patron Saints-SS. Mary, George and Denys--appear in the niches. In accounting for this triple dedication Randle Holme states that to St. Mary was the earlier church dedicated, and that Thomas Delaware, "being partly a Frenchman, and partly an Englishman," selected St. Dionysee, ye Patron Saint of France, and St. George, the Patron Saint of England, as patrons of his new Cathedral. This does not seem probable, and it is more likely that the claim of Henry V. to the crown of France at the time of the founding of the college suggested the additional dedication. The windows have all modern glass. Formerly there was some curious ancient glass; in the east window of the south aisle, Michael and his angels fighting with the dragon; in the east window of the north aisle, SS. Augustine and Ambrose chanting the _Te Deum Laudamus_; in the clerestory were pictures of the Virgin; and then there were some curious representations of the Trinity. These have all disappeared. Of the modern ones, the most interesting, perhaps, is the Gordon window in the north aisle. John Huntingdon, the builder of the present choir (1422-1459), lies buried in it, and formerly his tomb was inscribed with the words: _Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuæ_, and there was a brass with this inscription: _Hic jacet Johan Huntingdon Bacc in Decr. Prim. Magister sive custos istius collegii qui de novo construxit istam cancellam, qui obiit ix. mo die xi. bris MCCCCLVIII., cujus animæ proprietur Deus_. We could not discover this brass, but on each side of the Lady Chapel entrance is the rebus of the founder, on one side a man hunting, on the other a tun, which "hieroglyphical quiddity" makes Hunting-ton. * * * * * Crossing the street to the north is a profoundly interesting building, known as the _Chetham Library and Hospital_, of which Manchester may be justly proud. Its chequered history has already been partially told, and carries us back to the days when the college of warden and fellows, chaplain and choir-boys, lived here. Now, as we have seen, it is the school, with a noble library attached, founded by that worthy merchant, Humphrey Chetham. As a baron's hall, an ecclesiastical establishment, and a remarkable school, the building presents many features of unique interest, and the grand library is worthy of minute inspection. DIMENSIONS Length of nave and choir 172 ft. Width of nave and aisles 114 ft. Length of choir and Lady Chapel 88 ft. Height of roof 50 ft. Height of tower 140 ft. Area 18,000 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES (1422-1458)--Choir. (1465-1509)--Nave rebuilt, stalls and canopies, chapter-house, chantries of St. George, St. Nicholas, Jesus, Ducie and Radcliffe. (1518-1535)--Lady Chapel, Ely Chapel. Modern--Baptistry, north and south and west porches, Fraser Chapel, throne, reredos and glass. FOOTNOTE: [15] Baine's _Lancashire_, Vol. II., p. 365. CARLISLE CATHEDRAL This northern city has had a noted history. It was a town of considerable importance under the Romans, and on their departure was captured by the furious Picts. It has been a city of sieges. Egfrid of Northumbria rebuilt it in the seventh century, and granted it to St. Cuthbert, but the Danes sacked and plundered it. William Rufus again rebuilt and fortified it, but David, King of Scotland, captured the place, and died within its walls in 1153. Two more sieges it again endured, and was at length taken in 1217. Here came Edward I. frequently on his marches to conquer the Scots, and held Parliaments here, and near here he died. A goodly company of nobles hastened here to do homage to his son. After the disaster of Bannockburn Robert Bruce besieged Carlisle, and had his quarters in the Cathedral, which is outside the city walls, but he failed to gain the city. The Bishops of Carlisle were sometimes warlike men, and took the field against the dread invaders from the north. The old castle has seen much of fighting, and it had a notable prisoner in the person of ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots. A long siege, lasting eight months, took place in the Civil War time, and in that time terrible damage was done to the Cathedral, as we shall see. Again, in the rebellion of 1745, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" captured the place, and there was a great flourish of trumpets, or rather bagpipes, until the king's forces came and put an end to the poor campaign. The Cathedral was again used as military quarters, and the prisons of the castle tell the sad story of the fate of the rebels. The ecclesiastical history of Carlisle reflects its civil history. As we have said, St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and his successors ruled over this city and district for many years. When William II. restored the city and raised the castle, one Walter, a noble and wealthy priest, who was left as governor by the king, set to work to build a church and priory. But death stayed his hand, and Henry I. completed the task, and established here a monastery of Augustinian canons in 1121. In 1133, on the advice of Thurstan, Archbishop of York, he established a see here, and Udelulf became the first bishop. The Cathedral, begun by Walter and finished by Henry I., was of the usual Norman character. Its plan was cruciform, and it had a nave with aisles, transepts with a low tower at the crossing. The architect was Hugh, Bishop (1218-1223), formerly Abbot of Beaulieu, Hants, who brought with him to Carlisle the traditions of a splendid style of architecture. In the early part of the thirteenth century the Norman choir was taken down, and rebuilt in the Early English style. Two fires did much damage, especially the one that raged in 1292. The work of rebuilding was at once commenced, and a more imposing plan was projected, but a long time elapsed before it was completely carried out. At length, about the middle of the fourteenth century, the choir was completed in the Decorated style, a new triforium, clerestory roof and east end being erected. The Late Decorated east window, which was finished at this time, is one of the most beautiful in the world. Fire again injured the Cathedral in 1392, especially the north transept, which was restored by Bishop Strickland (1400-1419), who also rebuilt the tower above the roof, and crowned it with a wooden spire. The monastery was dissolved at the Reformation, and a Cathedral establishment formed, consisting of a dean and canons. In Mary's reign Owen Oglethorpe was made bishop, who, "being a good-natured man and pliable," according to Fuller, crowned Queen Elizabeth, "which the rest of his order refused to do." He was, however, deprived on account of "certain principles of stubbornness instilled into him." The Civil War did terrible damage to the Cathedral. During the siege Puritan soldiers were quartered in the sacred building, "who did after their kind," and, moreover, after the capture of the city, in order to repair the fortifications, they pulled down a great portion of the nave, and used the stones for that purpose. In the rising of 1745 Charles Edward, the Pretender, as we have said, occupied Carlisle, and installed in the Cathedral, as bishop of the see, a Romanist named James Cappoch. When the Duke of Cumberland arrived and recaptured the city, Cappoch allowed himself to be taken prisoner, and was hanged. The church was again used as a barracks, and many of the poor Jacobite prisoners were confined here. Since then there have been sundry restorations, some very deplorable, one about the middle of the eighteenth century, which were happily effaced, as far as possible, by the work of the middle of the nineteenth. But the hand of the restorers has fallen rather heavily upon the beautiful work of the choir, and destroyed much of its delicate beauty. The architects of 1850 had not yet learned to respect the antiquity of the buildings which fell into their hands to restore, and Carlisle and many other churches have suffered much from their drastic treatment. THE EXTERIOR A good view is obtained from the castle. The usual approach is from the east end, whence we observed the grand east window with its beautiful Late Decorated tracery. It is flanked by buttresses, with niches and crocketed pinnacles. In the niches are statues of SS. Peter, Paul, James and John. A floriated cross crowns the gable, and on each side are four similar crosses. In the gable is a triangular window, having three trefoils, and below is a niche with figure of the Virgin. The _Central Tower_, built by Bishop Strickland (1400-1419) on the old Norman piers, is too small for the huge choir, and lacks dignity. Formerly it was crowned with a wooden spire, but this has been removed. There is a turret set at the north-east angle, and in the north side is a niche with the figure of an angel. The lower part of the _Choir_ is Early English, with the exception of a Perpendicular window at the west, and a Decorated one in the east bay. The _Clerestory_ is Late Decorated, and the windows have flowing tracery. The ball-flower ornament is extensively used in the cornice. The sculpture at Carlisle is worthy of notice. Carved heads and curious gargoyles abound. The _North Transept_ is nearly all modern. It was rebuilt by Strickland in the fifteenth century, and again rebuilt when the church was restored. There is, however, an Early English window in the west wall. On the east side there was formerly a chapel, which has not survived the repeated alterations. The greater part of the _Nave_ was taken down by Cromwell's soldiers. What is left is of unmistakable Norman character. There is some modern imitation work, and late architectural detail. Most of the windows are modern, and also the doorway. The west end is the result of modern restoration. The south side is similar to the north. The _South Transept_ preserves the old Norman walls. On the south is a modern doorway with a window over it. On the east is _St. Catherine's Chapel_, a Late Early English or Early Decorated building. The south side of the choir is similar to the north, and presents Early English details of construction. The monastic buildings once stood on the south side of the church, but they have been pulled down with the exception of the fratry and gatehouse, the stone being used for repairing the fortifications of the city by Puritan soldiery. The refectory, or fratry, was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and is now used as a chapter-house. There is a fine reader's pulpit here. The gateway was erected by Prior Slee in 1527. The Deanery is a fine old house, and was formerly the prior's lodging. It was rebuilt in 1507. [Illustration Carlisle from S E] THE INTERIOR The _Nave_ was formerly used as the Parish Church of St. Mary, and was filled with high pews and galleries. These have all been cleared away, and it is possible to admire the plain and massive Norman building, which now, alas! consists of only two bays, the rest having been destroyed in the Civil War period. Before that act of vandalism there were eight bays. The work before us, for the most part, belongs to the earliest church, begun by Walter, finished by Henry I. about 1130. Formerly a low ceiling shut out the triforium and clerestory from our view, but this, too, has happily been removed. The piers are low (14 feet high, 17 feet in girth), the arches being semi-circular, some of the capitals having evidently been carved later with some Early English foliage. The triforium consists of plain, open, round-headed arches, and is a little later than the main arcade. The clerestory has in each bay three arches, resting on shafts with carved capitals. The west end is modern. The tattered colours of the Cumberland Regiment tell of the Indian Mutiny, and there is a window in the south aisle to the memory of the men who died in that melancholy time. Sir Walter Scott was married in this nave, when it was a church, in 1797, to Miss Margaret Charlotte Carpenter. The font is modern and also the organ. The _North Transept_ was rebuilt by Bishop Strickland in the fifteenth century, and its north end was again rebuilt in modern times. Here a large modern window of Decorated design has been erected in memory of five children of Archbishop Tait, who died here of scarlet fever when Dr. Tait was dean. In the west wall is an Early English window, which is a good example of plate-tracery. The arch of the choir aisle is Decorated; the roof is modern. Crossing over to the south transept we notice the piers which support the _Tower_. These are Norman, and have additional columns erected by Bishop Strickland when he rebuilt the tower. The latter have foliated capitals, and are in the Perpendicular style. On the capitals of the eastern arch are the badges of the Percy family--the crescent and fetterlock. The most famous scion of this house--Hotspur--was governor of Carlisle. On the western side are the rose and escallop shell, badges of the Dacres and Nevilles. The _South Transept_ is both narrow and shallow, being only one bay in length. The east side is Norman work; there is an arch with zigzag ornament and cushion capitals, opening into the choir aisle. A second Norman arch opens to St. Catherine's Chapel. The window and door on the south are both modern, and have much elaborate decoration, which is scarcely in keeping with the Norman work surrounding it. The triforium and clerestory resemble those of the nave. _St. Catherine's Chapel_ stands on the site of a Norman chapel, and is in the Early Decorated style or Late Early English. It was founded by John de Capella, a wealthy citizen, and is now used as a vestry. The screen is Late Decorated, and is of great beauty. The doorway between the aisle and chapel formerly led to a well, now closed. "A similar well exists in the north transept, but has been long covered. Besides supplying water for the use of the church, such wells may have been of special service in border churches, which, like this of Carlisle, served as places of refuge for the inhabitants in cases of sudden alarm or foray" (Murray's Handbooks). The following monuments are in the transepts:-- Robert Anderson, "the Cumberland Bard" (1833); Bishop Fleming (1747): Prior Senhouse (_temp._ Henry VII.); and there is a curious Runic inscription, written in Norse, which, being translated, is: "Tolfihn wrote these runes on this stone." We now enter the _Choir_ by the door in organ-screen. This is one of the finest in England--spacious, lofty, well-proportioned and rich in all its details. The arches of the main arcade are Early English, as the mouldings and dog-tooth ornament testify. These remained after the fire of 1292, and were retained. The piers are Early Decorated, and were evidently built to support the arches after the fire. The capitals were carved later in the Late Decorated period, when the upper parts of the choir, triforium, clerestory, roof and east end were rebuilt. The builders were probably Bishops Welton and Appleby (1353-1395). When the choir was rebuilt in Early English times, the architect determined to enlarge it, and as the monastic buildings on the south prevented any expansion in that direction, the south piers of the choir retained their old position, while the north were moved further northward, and a new north aisle added. Thus the choir and the tower and nave are not quite symmetrical, and there is a blank wall at the north-west end of the choir which is thus accounted for. The details of the architecture of the choir merit close attention, especially the sculpture. Small figures of men, animals and monsters are mingled with the foliage. There are some admirable representations of the seasons, beginning with the second capital on the south, counting from the east end. There is a very fine timber roof, constructed about the middle of the fourteenth century. The scheme of colour decoration is, unfortunately, not original. The _East Window_ is one of the finest Decorated windows in the kingdom. The stone-work is new, but it is believed to be an exact reproduction of the original. It has nine lights. The glass of the upper portion is ancient, dating from the reign of Richard II. It represents the Resurrection, Final Judgment and the New Jerusalem. Hell is depicted with the usual mediæval realism. Below is modern glass, representing scenes from the life of our Lord. The _Stalls_ are Late Perpendicular, erected by Bishop Strickland, and are excellently carved. The tabernacle work is generally attributed to Prior Haithwaite (_circa_ 1433). There are some quaint and curious _misereres_, the carvings representing grotesque monsters, such as dragons and griffins, fables such as the Fox and the Goose, and a great variety of subjects. A Renaissance screen, erected by Salkeld, the last prior, divides the west bay of the presbytery from the north choir aisle. The altar, throne, lectern and pulpit are modern. There is a fine brass to the memory of Bishop Bell (1495) on the floor of the choir. Passing to the _North Choir Aisle_ we notice the Early English character of the arcade and windows. The latter have two lights, and have deep mouldings and dog-tooth ornament. The wall arcade is particularly graceful. The last bay eastward was built when the east window was erected, and is Late Decorated, and in the last bay west-ward there is a Perpendicular window. The vault was constructed after the fire of 1292. The two sepulchral recesses in the north wall are remarkable. They are of Early English character, and have a chevron moulding which is said to be unique. It is conjectured that the effigy in one of these recesses is that of Silvester of Everdon (1254), and that the other was intended for Bishop Hugh of Beaulieu, who died in Burgundy. In another bay is an aumbrey wherein treasures of plate and other valuables were stored. There is a late brass to the memory of Bishop Robinson (1416), formerly Provost of Queen's College, Oxford. Archdeacon Paley (1791), the learned divine whose _Evidences of Christianity_ is still a divinity text-book at Cambridge, lies buried here. The curious paintings on the back of the stalls, of late fifteenth-century execution, always interest visitors to the Cathedral. They illustrate the lives of St. Anthony and St. Cuthbert, with descriptive verses under each scene, and there is a set of figures of the Apostles with the words of the Apostles' creed traditionally assigned to each. The _Retro-Choir_ is very narrow and is of the same date as the window. Bishop Law's monument is here (1787), carved by T. Banks, R.A. The _South Choir Aisle_ resembles that on the north. The two western windows are later than the Early English ones in the opposite aisle. There are monuments here of Bishop Waldegrave (1869), Bishop Barrow (1429) (or Welton, 1362), Bishop Goodwin (1891), Dean Close (1882). The screen here is like that opposite by Prior Gondibour, who did so much to decorate his Cathedral, and to whom the paintings are assigned. The back of the stalls on this side has a representation of scenes from the life of St. Augustine, or, as curious descriptive verses call him, the "gret doctor Austyne." DIMENSIONS Length of nave 39 ft. Breadth of nave 60 ft. Height of nave 65 ft. Length of choir 134 ft. Breadth of choir 72 ft. Height of choir 72 ft. Height of tower 112 ft. Area 15,270 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1092-1130)--South transept, piers of central tower, part of nave. Early English (1219-1260)--Walls and windows of choir aisles, part of main arcade of choir, St. Catherine's Chapel. Early Decorated (1292)--Part of main arcade of choir. Late Decorated (1353-1395)--Upper part of choir, east end and roof. Perpendicular (1400-1419)--Upper part of tower. NEWCASTLE CATHEDRAL The See of Newcastle was created in 1882, as the result of the spiritual expansion of the Church of England which caused the formation of so many new sees. In the days when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms, and when wars between the two countries were not infrequent, Newcastle occupied a position of great strategic importance. Here was a strong castle--the "new castle"--founded by Henry II. on the site of an older structure built in 1080 by the son of the Conqueror. It was the mightiest castle in the north of England, and its keep is one of the finest specimens of Norman military architecture remaining in the country. In this fortress Baliol was brought to do homage for the crown of Scotland to Edward I. The keep is still standing, and also the chapel, a fine specimen of Late Norman architecture. Many Roman remains have been found here. The Cathedral was formerly the old Parish Church of St. Nicholas. The style is principally Late Decorated. An older church was burned down in 1216. It consists of nave, aisles, chancel and transept. The total length is 245 feet, and the width 128 feet. The transept is Perpendicular in style, and so is the fine tower with spire built in 1474, which is the principal feature of the church. Frequent restorations have taken place and a very extensive renovation was effected in 1876 at a cost of £30,000. Admiral Collingwood, the comrade of Nelson, is buried here. The Norman Church of St. Andrew and the Church of St. John of the fourteenth century, with an ancient font, are the principal old churches in the town, and also the chapel of 1491 attached to Trinity House. The old Saxon churches of Jarrow and Monk Wearmouth are in the neighbourhood. DURHAM CATHEDRAL Durham Cathedral is one of the grandest buildings in the world. Standing upon the summit of a lofty hill, which rises abruptly from the River Wear, its position is one of surpassing beauty, and the dignity of the building, its massive walls and towers, and the interesting associations which cluster round the venerable pile, make it one of the most superb edifices in this or any other country. The story of Durham carries us back to the very early days of Christianity. In spite of the efforts of Paulinus the Saxons of Northumbria were still heathen until Oswald became king in 634, who was converted to Christianity by the monks of Iona, where a monastery had been founded by Columba, an Irish saint. Desiring to benefit his people, Oswald sent to Iona, and under St. Aidan a colony of monks was founded at Lindisfarne, or Holy Island. St. Cuthbert, the Patron Saint of Durham, succeeded, who died in 687. After the lapse of nearly two centuries the coast was harassed by the attacks of the Danes, and the monks fled from Lindisfarne, bearing with them their most precious relics and with these the body of St. Cuthbert. They wandered far and wide with their holy burden; a hundred years elapsed; generations of monks passed away; but the bones of the saint knew no rest. For a long time they tarried at Chester-le-Street, which became the seat of the Northumbrian bishopric; but still the savage Northmen threatened them with danger, and at last in 995 the wearied monks found a shelter on the lofty and impregnable rock where the Cathedral now stands, the abiding resting-place of St. Cuthbert's bones. On the outside of the church there is the figure of the Dun Cow, which is associated with their wanderings. It was revealed to one of the monks that Dunholme was to be their final home; but not knowing where this place was, they were in much distress. However, they heard a woman inquiring about her lost cow, to whom her companion replied that it was at Dunholme. "That was a happy and heavenly sound to the distressed monks," says the chronicler, "and thereupon with great joy they arrived with the saint's body at Dunholme in the year 997." Here they raised a church of boughs to cover their precious treasure and then a stone building, and then Bishop Aldwin "raised no small building of stone-work for his Cathedral church, when all the people between the Coquet and Tees three years were at work, and were paid for their pains with treasure in heaven, than which there was never a dearer or cheaper way to build churches." Around this holy house the city began to grow, which owes its importance and very existence to the monastery. Troublous times followed the advent of the Conqueror. Exasperated by the tyranny of the favourites of Walcher, the first Norman prelate, the people set fire to the church and slew the bishop. Then followed William de St. Carileph, who founded the present church. He expelled the secular clergy, and introduced the Benedictine rule. For the part he took in the rebellion against William Rufus he was exiled for three years, and lived in Normandy. Animated by the sight of the beautiful churches which there abounded he resolved to erect a more glorious edifice on the rugged hill of Durham, and on his return commenced the work. The foundation stone was laid in 1093. He began to build the east end of the choir, and continued the walls as far as the first arch of the nave. After his death in 1096, the prior and convent continued the building until the advent of Bishop Flambard (1099-1128), who carried on the work and nearly finished the nave, aisles, western towers and doorway. The chapter-house was erected by the next bishop, Galfrid Rufus (1133-1140). Bishop Hugh Pudsey (1153-1195) built the Galilee Chapel. In 1229 Bishop Poore, the builder of Salisbury, was translated to Durham; he discovered the unsafe condition of the eastern apsidal walls of his church, and determined to erect the beautiful Chapel of the Nine Altars, which is such a charming specimen of Early English architecture. He did not live to carry out his design, which was continued after his death under the rule of Prior Melsanby. The priors of Durham rivalled the bishops in their zeal for perfecting their noble Cathedral. Prior Darlington erected a belfry, and Prior Fossor part of the monastic buildings and the west windows of the nave in 1342. Bishop Skirlaw (1388-1405) was the chief builder of the present cloisters. In 1429 the tower was struck by lightning, and was rebuilt under the direction of Prior Bell. [Illustration Durham Cathedral] The church was now complete, but like most of our cathedrals it has suffered from the evils of "restoration," and Wyatt, the destructive architect of the eighteenth century, was allowed to do much damage. We shall notice his handiwork as we examine the details of the building. There seem to have been great disputes between the bishop and the monks, and the peace of this solemn sanctuary was often disturbed by angry quarrels and open violence. Sometimes the Scots made incursions, and on one occasion William Cumin seized the castle and committed great ravages. In the time of Bishop Hatfield was fought the great battle of Neville's Cross, when, by the aid of St. Cuthbert and his banner, the English won the day, and a hymn of thanksgiving is still sung every year on the top of the tower. The choir used to sing on all the four sides, but on one occasion a choir-boy fell, and ever since they only chant the hymn from three sides. The Bishops of Durham were great men, holding the rank of temporal princes or Counts Palatine. Their courts were independent of the king, and they could coin money and live as they listed. Moreover, many of them were mighty warriors. Bishop Anthony Bek took part in the Scottish wars, and had a vast army of knights and men-at-arms. It was not until the year 1836 that the dignity of Count Palatine was removed from the holders of the Durham See. Cardinal Wolsey was bishop here for six years, but never set foot in his diocese. The monastery was suppressed by Henry VIII., and a dean and chapter appointed. Many learned and good men have held the See of Durham, and the names of the last two bishops--Lightfoot and Westcott--will always be held in esteem. THE EXTERIOR As we approach the church from the Palace Green we notice the grand Norman building, which is much the same as when Bishop Carileph left it. At the east end there is the Early English Nine Altar Chapel, at the west the Galilee; the upper portions of the towers, the north porch and a few windows are the only additions, and the whole appearance of the church is at once bold, stern and commanding. The _Central Tower_, the work of Prior Bell, was built in 1471. The Bell Ringer's Gallery divides it into two portions, with two windows in each, the lower ones being glazed and the upper louvred. The panelled work, the ogee-shaped labels and the surmounting parapet proclaim their Perpendicular style. Two _Octagonal Towers_ of Norman character rise at the north corners of the north transept. The _Western Towers_ are Norman as far as the level of the nave roof, the upper portion being added in the thirteenth century, and the pinnacles and parapets at the end of the eighteenth. We have already alluded to the construction of the east end, which replaced the apsidal termination of the original building. The famous rose window is in the gable of the east end, and beneath are nine lofty lancet windows. Notice the sculpture of the Dun Cow in the north angle of the Nine Altars, placed there in 1775. The _Porch_ was built by Wyatt, and we can endorse the decision of Canon Greenwell, Durham's great historian, that "in its present condition it is a most unworthy and discreditable portal for so magnificent a temple as that into which it ushers the worshipper." The woodwork is ancient, and here we see the famous sanctuary knocker, which criminals used when they wished to gain an entrance and secure the rights of sanctuary from mob violence or secular law. Two porters were employed in watching for fugitives, and directly the refugee knocked he was admitted, clad in a black cloth gown, with a yellow cross on his left shoulder, conducted to a chamber near the south door of the Galilee Chapel, and given shelter for thirty-seven days. At the west end there is the _Galilee Chapel_, of Late Norman work, which covers the west door, over the main entrance. This door, walled up by Cardinal Langley in the fifteenth century, and re-opened in 1845, was made by Flambard (1099-1128). It has thirteen detached cartouches, each having an animal or flower within it, and is adorned with chevron ornament. The window was inserted by Prior Fossor (1342-1374), and contained coloured glass, represented "the Stem of Jesse," which was destroyed at the Reformation. In 1867 Dean Waddington restored the glass, reproducing the old design. The arch-destroyer, Wyatt, actually proposed to remove the Galilee Chapel, and make a carriage drive to the west door; but happily his nefarious design was frustrated. There are two south doorways; the one opposite the north door, known as the Monks' Door, was erected by Bishop Pudsey, and has fine carvings of floral and other designs upon the arches and columns. The mouldings and sculptures are most profuse, the zigzag and double chevron and diaper being extensively employed. The leaf pattern is observed on the arch, and the iron-work of the door is a fine specimen of Norman workmanship. The other doorway, known as the Prior's Door, is of the same date, but the carving is much decayed. We will now examine the _Cloisters_, enclosed on the north by the walls of the Cathedral, on the south by the refectory, on the east by the chapter-house, deanery and south transept, and on the west by the dormitory, now, together with the refectory, used as the library, and beneath it the so-called crypt, which was the common hall of the monks. The present buildings were erected by Bishop Skirlaw in the early years of the fifteenth century, the refectory being restored at the Restoration. A stone laver or conduit stood in the centre of the cloister erected in 1432, the basin only remaining. The _Chapter-House_ was a victim to Wyatt's misdoings, and the greater part was pulled down by him. It has, however, been recently restored in memory of Bishop Lightfoot, and is a noble chamber, having an apsidal termination at the east end, an arcade of interlacing arches running round the wall, and round-headed windows. The library and museum contains many objects of great interest, including a number of Roman altars and tablets, Saxon crosses and carved stones, remarkable for their beautiful scroll-work. There is the famous Ruthwell cross, memorial crosses of the four last Saxon bishops, Hadrian stone from the Roman wall, the monastic dining-table, a remarkable treasure-chest, with five different locks and keys, and--most interesting of all--the remains of St. Cuthbert's coffin, his robes, and other relics taken from his tomb. Amongst these we notice his stole and maniple and pectoral cross. In another case we see three rings of the first Norman bishops, and the crozier of Bishop Flambard. Durham has many interesting MSS., amongst others the Book of the Landisfarne Gospels, brought away by the monks when they fled from Holy Island, which fell into the waves and still retains the stains of sea water; a MS. of the seventh century, which once belonged to the Venerable Bede, and the Bede Roll (1456 and 1468), containing a list of all the religious houses in England and abroad which were asked for prayers for the souls of Priors Ebchester and Burnaby. The roof is remarkably fine. THE INTERIOR As we stand at the west door we get a magnificent view of this noble edifice, with its grand Norman cylindrical pillars, 23 feet in circumference, some adorned with zigzag furrows, others lozenge-shaped, with narrow ribs, or spiral, and arches round and carved, with rolls and chevron moulding. The capitals are cushioned, and cut octagonally. Above is the triforium, composed of large arches, enclosing two smaller ones, with cushioned capitals; and higher still the clerestory, composed of single round-headed windows, surmounted by the vaulting ribs, adorned with chevrons. This nave and aisles were built by Bishop Flambard (1099-1128). The roof of stone vaulting was finished in 1133, and Durham is said to be the only Cathedral in England which retains the original stone Norman vaulting over the nave. [Illustration The Galilee Chapel] The _Sanctuary Chamber_, wherein the hunted fugitives from justice found a shelter, formerly stood near the south door of the Galilee Chapel, but all traces have been removed. The font is modern, the subjects carved on it representing scenes from the life of St. Cuthbert. The canopy was erected by Bishop Cosin in 1663. The internal north doorway should be examined, especially the beautiful foliage-work. In the lozenges and mouldings there are some strange creatures represented--a centaur shooting with bow and arrow, a boy being whipped, a man riding a lion, and other curious subjects. Before proceeding eastward we will see the Galilee Chapel, which was the Lady Chapel, a beautiful specimen of Late Norman work, erected by Bishop Pudsey in 1175. Lady chapels usually stand at the east end, but no women were allowed to enter churches dedicated to St. Cuthbert, who has been accused of misogyny. We notice in the nave a boundary stone, beyond which no female foot might go in the direction of the high altar. We mark a change in the style of architecture from that used in the nave. The arches and columns are lighter, with graceful capitals, on which the volute appears. The style is approaching that of the graceful period of Early English. Cardinal Langley (1406-1437) made extensive alterations in this chapel, heightening the walls, erecting a new roof, inserting Perpendicular windows, closing the west door of the church, and making two other entrances. All visitors will approach with reverence and interest the tomb of the Venerable Bede, the great Anglo-Saxon scholar, and the father of English history. His bones were once covered with a splendid shrine, which the iniquitous commissioners of Henry VIII. destroyed. Now a plain marble slab, with the inscription: "_Hac sunt in fossa Bædæ Venerabilis ossa,_" alone marks the grave of this illustrious man. The altar of the Virgin stood in the great western doorway, which was then walled up, of which the stone slab carved with the five crosses, the aumbrey and some colouring alone remain. The builder of this chapel, Cardinal Langley, lies buried here, and his monument remains. Some much-damaged mural paintings mark the site of the Altar of Our Lady of Pity. The paintings are supposed to represent St. Oswald and St. Cuthbert. There is some uncertainty about the origin of the name "Galilee." Most probably it arose from the custom of the monks to go in procession at certain times around the church, and to halt at certain stations in memory of our Lord's appearance after His Resurrection. His last appearance was on a mountain in Galilee; it is therefore not improbable that the place where the procession made its final halt should receive that name. Here in ancient times the consistory court held its sittings, and here the commissioners of Henry VIII. met and destroyed, or appropriated, the rich store of treasures, the vestments, plate and ornaments which had been given to the Cathedral by countless generations of pious benefactors. Again entering the nave in the south aisle, we see the Neville monuments, which have been much mutilated by the Scottish prisoners, or during the Reformation period. Between the fifth and sixth pillars is an altar tomb to the memory of Lord John Neville and his wife Matilda (1386), daughter of Hotspur. The matrix of the brass of Bishop Robert Neville (1438-1457) is in front of this. In the next bay is the altar tomb of Lord Ralph Neville and his wife, Lady Alice (1374), who founded the Neville Chapel. Holes in the pillar show where the iron grating stood which divided the chapel from the rest of the church, and in this enclosure there was "an altar with a fair alabaster table above it, where Mass was daily celebrated." Traces of the colouring which once adorned this beautiful chapel can still be seen. Leaving the nave, we enter the _Transepts_, which were part of Carileph's work. The large window in the north transept was inserted by Prior Fossor (1341-1374), and is in the Decorated style. Prior Castell in 1512 restored the window, and filled it with coloured glass representing the four doctors--SS. Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory and Jerome. Hence it is known as the Window of the Four Doctors. In the south transept is the large Perpendicular _Te Deum_ window, erected about 1450. Some of the glass is ancient, but the greater part was inserted in 1869 in memory of Archdeacon Thorp. Altars stood formerly in the aisles at the north and south extremities of the transepts. Traces of colour may still be seen, and the remains of some brackets which contained sculptured figures. Chantrey's fine monument of Bishop Barrington (1791-1826) stands in the south transept. The whole of the lantern _Tower_ is of the Perpendicular style, and was probably built by Prior Bell (1464-1478). A gallery surrounds the lower stage, supported by grotesque heads. The Tudor flower ornament may be observed on the string-course over the panelling. The screen is modern, and was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott. Passing into the choir, the earliest part of the building, we see the Norman work of Carileph blended with the later Early English style. As we have already noticed, the east end of the Norman church terminated with apses. These were subsequently removed. The whole choir comprehends four pillars on each side, two of them clustered and two round, the latter of which are cut in a spiral form. The roof was new vaulted by Prior Horton, who succeeded in 1289, the ribs of the vaulting being decorated with the dog-tooth mouldings. The work around the altar is all Early English. Clustered pillars divide the nine altars from the choir, decorated with foliage. In the year 1650 a large number of Scottish prisoners were confined in the Cathedral, who did much damage to the internal fittings. In order to gain fresh air, or for love of mischief, they broke most of the windows, and the holes in the floor in the south transept show where they made their fires for cooking their meals. Another mark of their presence was the destruction of the woodwork of the choir, which they doubtless used for firewood. At the Restoration Bishop Cosin erected the present stalls. The _misereres_ are worthy of remark--lions, mermaids, monsters, apes, peacocks and dolphins being the most striking subjects. The modern lectern and pulpit are both very beautiful, the former being designed after the ancient lectern described in the _Rites of Durham_. The altar-screen is very graceful and beautiful, and was originally erected by Lord Neville of Raby in 1380, and much restored in 1876. It was originally painted, and the 107 niches were filled with images. The matrix of an immense brass to the memory of Bishop Beaumont (1318-1333) is seen near the altar steps. It must have been one of the largest brasses in England, and resembles the immense one at Lynn, Norfolk. The choir is paved with mosaics similar to those of the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster. [Illustration The Bishop's Throne] The magnificent tomb of Bishop Hatfield (d. 1381) is on the south side of the choir. He is habited in his episcopal dress. The outer garment is the chasuble, and beneath it the linen alb or surplice. His hands are covered with episcopal gloves, embroidered on the back; on his left arm is the maniple. The tomb was originally gilded and coloured. Above is the throne erected by him, the highest in England. The monument of Bishop Lightfoot stands opposite. The _North and South Aisles of the Choir_ are similar in their architectural features to the choir itself, showing the blending of the stately Norman with the graceful Early English work. The monks used frequently to resort to the north aisle, where was a porch having an altar, with a rood and pictures of St. Mary and St. John, where they sang Mass daily. Certain holes in the stone mark the place of the porch, sometimes called the anchorage. Bishop Skirlaw's tomb stood between the third and fourth piers, before the old altar of St. Blaze. His monument has disappeared, but the stone bench remains, erected by him for his almsmen to sit upon. In the _South Aisle_ the doorway of the great vestry remains, though the building was destroyed in 1802. The grave cover of the Prior of Lytham, a cell belonging to Durham, is preserved here. Here also stood the famous Black Rood of Scotland, captured from King David Bruce of Scotland at Neville's Cross (1346). And now we will enter the _Chapel of the Nine Altars_, at the extreme east of the building. It was commenced in 1242, and the architect was Richard de Farnham, probably a relation of Nicholas de Farnham, then bishop. Prior Melsanby (1233-1244) presided over the erection of the building, and the name of the master-mason is preserved on an inscription: _Thomas Moises_. We notice the nine-lancet windows (under each of which stood an altar separated from its neighbour by screens and partitions of wainscot); the large rose window, "restored" by Wyatt; the beautiful arcade, with its trefoiled arches and deeply-cut mouldings, raised on slender shafts of marble, and surmounted by capitals. The altars were dedicated (beginning on the south side) to St. Andrew and St. Mary Magdalene; St. John the Baptist and St. Margaret; St. Thomas à Becket and St. Catherine; St. Oswald and St. Lawrence; St. Cuthbert and St. Bede; St. Martin and St. Edmund; St. Peter and St. Paul; St. Aidan and St. Helen; St. Michael, the Archangel. Forty years were consumed in building this chapel, and the style developed as the work progressed. The north end was finished last, as we see from the noble double-traceried window, one of the finest in existence. The south windows are Perpendicular. Among the monuments are those of Bishop Bury, tutor of Edward III. (1345), and Bishop Bek (1310), and Bishop Van Mildert (1836), the last of the prince bishops. Behind the high altar is all that remains of the famous shrine of St. Cuthbert, once the glory of Durham, where countless pilgrims came to pay their devotions and offerings, and seek the protection of the saint. The cavities in the floor are said to have been worn by their feet. The grave of the saint was opened in 1827, and the vestments and other relics taken from it are kept in the library, and have already been described. On the south of the church is _the College_, containing the Deanery and prebendal houses. The gate is an interesting structure, built by Prior Castell in 1515. THE CASTLE William the Conqueror in 1072, when Walcher was bishop, on his return from Scotland, ordered the castle to be built, which was continued by Carileph and Flambard. Bishop Pudsey erected a new wall and a hall which bears his name, and Bishop Bek built the hall on the west of the courtyard. Bishop Hatfield rebuilt the keep. Tunstall's Gallery (1530-1558) connects the great hall and clock tower, and his chapel is remarkable for its beautifully-carved stalls. At the Restoration the castle was in a ruinous condition. It had been sold to the Lord Mayor of London. The Scots had plundered it; and Bishop Cosin set to work to rebuild and repair the home of his predecessors. In 1840 the keep was rebuilt, and the castle is now the seat of the University of Durham. The most interesting _Churches_ in the city are St. Mary le Bow (rebuilt 1685); St. Mary the Less (Norman, but much "restored"); St. Oswald (1190, with many subsequent rebuildings); St. Margaret (1154); St. Giles (1112). About four miles from Durham are the beautiful ruins of Finchale Priory, which was commenced in 1240 and finished about a century later. The Priory was suppressed at the Reformation. DIMENSIONS OF THE CATHEDRAL Total length, 470 ft.; length of nave, 201 ft.; width of nave with aisles, 60 ft.; height of nave, 72 ft.; length of choir, 133 ft.; length of Nine Altars Chapel, 131 ft.; height of west towers, 144 ft.; height of central tower, 218 ft.; area, 44,400 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1093-1140)--nave, choir, aisles, west towers, doorways, chapter-house; (1153-1195)--Galilee Chapel. Early English (1238-1275)--Nine Altars Chapel, choir vault. Decorated (1342-1346)--window in north transept and west windows of nave. Perpendicular (1386-1500)--cloisters, dormitory, central tower; (1661-1684)--library. [Illustration PLAN OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL] RIPON CATHEDRAL The historical associations of Ripon carry us back to very early times. Alcfrid, Prince of Deira, was lord of the soil in the seventh century, and in 660 bestowed on Eata, Abbot of Melrose, a portion of the ground at Ripon whereon to erect a monastic foundation. After the expulsion of the Scottish monks the same prince gave the monastery to St. Wilfrid, who, after he became archbishop, erected a church. This was of the basilican type, with which St. Wilfrid had made himself familiar during his sojourn in Italy. With the earlier monastery was associated the holy Cuthbert, who was the Hostillar. Wilfrid was ordained at Ripon, and here he resided when his episcopal seat was usurped by Ceadda (or Chad). The site of the old monastery was on the north-east side of the present Cathedral, bounded by Stammer Gate and Priest Lane. Wilfrid built his new monastery about 200 yards west of the old buildings. There is some doubt about the position of his church. It is the pronounced opinion of the learned that the famous Saxon crypt under the present church is really his work. Did he build an earlier church, and that which stood over this crypt later? Possibly so--but, in all probability, we may conclude that the monastic buildings only occupied the site on the west of Stammer Lane, and that his church stood over his crypt. This church was a very famous one. It is recorded that he brought workmen from Italy, who wrought in the Roman manner. It was fashioned after the model of a basilica, and constructed with wrought stones from the foundation, and had divers pillars and porticoes. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and splendid was the feast of the dedication. Here St. Wilfrid, after all the trials of his wandering life, was buried. For a brief space Ripon enjoyed the rank of an episcopal city, being so raised by Archbishop Theodore, and then for a thousand years the see was in abeyance, until in 1836 another Bishop of Ripon was appointed. But much happened during this long interval. When the Danes terrified the land, in 995, came Bishop Aldune, bearing the body of St. Cuthbert, and stayed here three months until they set out and found peace at Durham. Before this Odo of Canterbury, coming into these northern parts, had pity on the desolation of Ripon Church, wrought by the "harrying" of Eadred of Northumbria in 948, and caused a new work to be edified where the minster now is. After the Conquest hard was the hand of William pressed upon his northern subjects, who liked not his yoke, and all this land was devastated by the Norman conquerors. But with the Conquest came peace, and soon some building was evidently set on foot here, though the chroniclers are silent. In later Norman times Archbishop Roger de Pont l'Evêque (1154-1181) began the building of the existing church, incorporating some portion of the older structure. His work is Transitional, and furnishes a good example of the gradual development of Early English style. Archbishop Walter de Grey (1216-1255) carried on the good work and built the west front with its flanking towers, adorned with lofty spires of timber and lead. The next alteration was carried out at the end of the thirteenth century, when Archbishop John Romanus determined to rebuild the eastern part of the choir, and for this purpose granted an indulgence of forty days to those who should help forward the work. This work was in all the glory of the Decorated style. The Scots made a ferocious raid in 1319, when the people of Ripon took refuge in the church, which suffered much from the attacks of the enemy. Archbishop de Melton repaired some of this damage, which was chiefly confined to the roofs, screens, stalls, and other woodwork, and Archbishop Thoresby (1352-1373) was very eager to continue this restoration and beautify the minster. He probably built the Lady Chapel. A century elapsed, during which the clergy do not seem to have been remarkable for zeal or earnestness, and then the lantern tower was so much shaken and broken that the greatest part thereof had already fallen, and the rest expected to follow, and speedy remedy was found immediately necessary. Archbishop Booth in 1459 adopted the usual and efficacious plan of granting an indulgence of forty days to all who should assist in re-edifying the steeple. The work was immediately begun, and a great era of church building was inaugurated. The canons awoke from their lethargy and worked vigorously. They rebuilt much of the tower, and then set themselves to entirely rebuild the Norman nave, which was in great decay and ruin. It was a great work, and nobly done. The fall of the tower had broken much of the woodwork of the stalls; so these indefatigable canons made new ones. It was only the dissolution of the Establishment which checked their progress, and prevented them from finishing their work. The church was despoiled of all its wealth, and in Elizabeth's time, when Archbishop Sandys applied for an endowment, he could obtain "nothing but fair and unperformed promises." Elizabeth loved not this northern town, the people of which clung to the "old Religion," and took an active part in the rising of 1569. Many of them were hung for their pains. James I., however, restored the constitution of the collegiate chapter, and granted to it many of its old privileges and an assured income. During the Civil War Ripon escaped fairly well, save that the Puritan soldiers broke much of the beautiful glass in the east window, and perhaps were guilty of causing other damage, of which history telleth not. In 1660 the wooden spire, which had suffered by lightning in 1593, fell, and damaged the roof of the choir. This was repaired, and the other wooden spires on the west towers removed lest they, too, should fall. Since then there have been several restorations. In 1861 the church was placed in the hands of Mr. Scott, afterwards Sir Gilbert, who made a very complete renovation of the building, the details of which we will examine when we inspect the Cathedral. [Illustration Ripon Cathedral from North Evening] In 1836 an episcopal see was erected at Ripon, and Charles Langley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, became its first bishop. THE EXTERIOR Although Ripon is not a Cathedral of the first magnitude or splendour, yet it is a stately structure, and greatly superior to many of our ecclesiastical buildings. It possesses also some features of profound interest, and the story of its building is attractive. Approaching the church from the market-place by Kirkgate we see the beautiful _West Front_, which compares favourably with most others, except perhaps York, Lincoln, Peterborough and Wells. It has much dignity and beauty. It consists of a gable between two square towers. The nave, built by Archbishop Roger, was Late Norman or Transitional, and to this Archbishop Grey added this façade in the best and purest period of the Early English style. In the lowest storey are three deeply-recessed doorways, with detached shafts. Round and hollow mouldings are used, and the dog-tooth ornament, the hall-mark of the Early English style, is plentiful. The doors are old. Above are five-lancet windows, and above them another row of five lancets of unequal height. The dog-tooth is used in the mouldings. The towers have four stages. In the lowest is an arcade of trefoiled arches, and above lancets. Nail-head moulding is used in the string-courses. When the spires were pulled down in 1660, battlemented parapets were added, and later the pinnacles. The whole front has been much restored. There is a fine peal of ten bells in the south tower. There were formerly some old bells, one of which is said to have been brought from Fountains Abbey, but these have all been recast, and their interest has vanished. The nave has six bays, and was built in Perpendicular style in 1503. The south side is earlier than and superior to the north. The arches of the windows are less acutely pointed, and the buttresses have three stages, are crocketed, and have large finials. The pitch of the roof has been lowered since the nave was built. [Illustration The Great Buttresses Ripon] The _Central Tower_ was rebuilt on the south and east sides in Perpendicular times, while the north and west retain Roger's work. It was formerly capped by a spire. Returning to the north side we see the north side of the nave, which is later than the south. There are six buttresses, which project widely and have two stages with crockets and finials, and grotesques. The arches of the windows both in the aisles and clerestory are very acute, and those of the latter have five lights. From this point we see the original faces of the central tower, built by Roger (1154-1181), which has round-headed windows. The presence of dog-tooth shows the approach of the Early English style. The _North Transept_ is also part of Roger's church and the best example of his work; it has round-headed windows. The parapet is later. We notice two sculptured stones in the north-west buttress, with rich scroll-work, evidently Saxon, and probably taken from Wilfrid's church. The doorway in the north side is remarkable, having a plain trefoil head rising from a corbel-like projection, and is flanked by three receding detached shafts with foliated capitals. The _Choir_ has three bays of Transitional Norman work, but the windows are Decorated. The remainder of this side was built late in the thirteenth century and is Decorated. The east end, with its grand window, is very fine. Massive buttresses stand on each side of the front with octagonal turrets. In the north turret there is a small chamber which was probably a reclusorium. The east window is flanked by heavy buttresses. The gable was rebuilt by Scott. The window (51 feet by 25 feet) is a magnificent specimen of Early Decorated work, one of the finest in England. On the south side we see the three eastern windows are Decorated as on the north, but the rest are Perpendicular. On this side is a building which retains some of the earliest Norman work in the Cathedral, probably built by Thomas of Bayeaux, archbishop (1069-1100). This building has three storeys--a crypt, the chapter-house and the Lady Chapel (erected in the fourteenth century), which we shall examine later. The _South Transept_ retains much of Roger's Transitional work, but the east side was altered and rebuilt in Perpendicular times. On the south side is a fine doorway contemporary with the transept and resembling somewhat that on the north. [Illustration The Apse Ripon Cathedral] THE INTERIOR Entering by the west door we see a fine and imposing _Nave_, with tall and graceful piers that support without any intermediate triforium a range of lofty windows of elaborate tracery. This nave was constructed in the Perpendicular period, as we have said, and the main arcades stand on the foundation of Roger's earlier church. The latter had no aisles. These the sixteenth-century builders added, taking as their western starting-point the northern and southern extremities of the west tower. Hence the nave is unusually wide (87 feet), and exceeds all other cathedrals except York, Chichester, Winchester and St. Paul's. There are many points of architectural interest. The west bays opening into the tower are Early English. On either side is a lofty thirteenth-century arch, with plain mouldings, and capitals deeply undercut. Above is a blind arcade of four arches enclosed in a circular arch--this occupies the triforium stage; and the clerestory has a triple window, the centre round-headed, the side ones pointed. The west end, with its ranges of lancets, is most effective. The glass is modern. The next bay shows us clearly the character of Roger's church, and eastward we come to the Perpendicular work of the early sixteenth century, which appears to be earlier than it really is. The traditions of the earlier style lingered on amid the hills and dales of Yorkshire, while the architects and townsfolk of less remote places had developed the more familiar details of the Perpendicular period. The roof is modern. The arch of the tower facing us is part of Roger's church, but there is a curious mass of masonry on the south pier which was erected by the Perpendicular builders, when want of funds or the dissolution of the chapter prevented the completion of the design. The contrast between the materials of the old building and the new in the nave will be noticed. The former is fashioned of yellow gritstone, the latter of white limestone. The aisles are Perpendicular work erected about 1503. The vaulting is modern. In the south aisle is the font, or rather there are two fonts. The earlier one reposes in the corner, and is Roger's work; the later is Perpendicular. Ripon is not very rich in monuments. In this same aisle there is a curious altar tomb with a slab of grey marble, upon which is carved the figure of a lion and near it that of a man kneeling. Tradition states that it covered the body of an Irish prince, who died here on his return from Palestine, whence he had brought a lion that followed him like a dog. There is some old glass, fragments of which have been collected in the window near the font. In the _North Aisle_ at the west end is the consistory court. The old _Saxon Crypt_ deserves close attention and has occasioned many conjectures and much antiquarian disputing. It is undoubtedly very early, and may with safety be assumed to have been part of St. Wilfrid's church. After descending several steps and passing along passages, which have two niches in the wall, we arrive at a cylindrically vaulted chamber (7 feet by 11 feet), and on the north side is the famous "St. Wilfrid's Needle." Formerly the superstition attached to it was that no unchaste woman could with safety pass through it; now we are told that if a virgin "threads the needle" she will be married within a year. This needle is only an enlargement of one of the niches which were doubtless used for lights. Recent excavations have been made here, which revealed the remains of an altar, a passage round the chamber, and a quantity of bones which were probably relics. It is conjectured that this was a relic chamber, and was built under the church of Wilfrid. It is impossible to touch upon all the interesting problems which this curious chamber suggests, especially as affecting the position and form of Wilfrid's early Saxon church. The _Transepts_ retain, with the exception of the east wall of the southern member, Archbishop Roger's Transitional work, when Norman architecture was slowly developing into Early English. There is a niche on the east side of each transept. A Perpendicular arch forms an entrance to the _North Transept_ from the north aisle, and on the north of this is a round-headed window. The triforium has two broad arches in each bay with a central detached shaft, while the clerestory has three arches, the centre round, the others pointed. In the north wall there are three round-headed windows in the highest stage. The mullions in the windows in the second stage are later insertions. On the east is the Chantry of St. Andrew, the Markenfields' Chapel. Outside the aisle is the effigy of Sir Thomas (1497), with that of his lady, and another Sir Thomas lies in the chapel (notice the armour and collar). This family lost its estates in the rising in the time of Elizabeth. Also there is the monument of Sir Edward Blackett of Newby (1718). The _South Transept_ resembles the north, except that its east side is Perpendicular. The aisle is called the Mallorie Chapel, and there is a tablet to the memory of Sir John Mallorie of Studley, who defended Skipton Castle for Charles I. There are some ancient mural paintings, which may be seen when going to the library. The _Choir-Screen_ is Perpendicular, and has beautiful enriched tabernacle work. Above the door is a representation of God the Father with angels. Above the screen is the organ. The _Choir_ is a delightful architectural study, as the work of three periods are blended here--Transition Norman, Decorated and Perpendicular. The three western bays on the north are Roger's work, Transitional Norman. The three bays opposite were injured by the fall of the tower and renewed in Perpendicular style. The rest of the choir was renewed in the Decorated style of the fourteenth century. The three bays on the north resemble the work in the transept. The group of vaulting shafts is very fine. The triforium openings are glazed like the clerestory. A change was made in Perpendicular times. Before the triforium arches opened into the aisles, but the roof of these was lowered in 1459, and the openings filled with glass. There is some of Roger's work in the other bays, the earlier work being altered and converted into that of the Decorated style. In the clerestory there is tracery on the inner side of the opening as well as the outer. The foliage of the carving is very beautiful. The roof is modern, but some very interesting ancient bosses have been re-inserted. Some of the subjects are:--the Good Samaritan, the expulsion from Paradise, the Virgin with lilies, the crucifixion (modern), a bishop, a king, an angel. The east window is remarkably fine, one of the best Decorated windows in England. All the old glass was destroyed by Cromwell's soldiers, and the modern glass is but a sorry substitute. The woodwork of the _Stalls_ is for the most part of excellent fifteenth-century execution. Rich tabernacle work rises at the back of the stalls. Several of the eastern canopies are modern. The finials are curious; some represent an elephant and castle with figures of men fighting, and a monkey. The _misereres_ are interesting; the carvings represent many curious grotesques, fables and Scripture subjects. We notice Samson carrying the gates, Jonah and the whale, fox and geese, lion and dogs, griffins and rabbits, etc. The _sedilia_ should be noticed. They have been restored, but much old work remains of Late Decorated style. A close examination of the grotesques should not be omitted. The pulpit and lectern are modern. The _North Choir Aisle_ follows the architecture of the choir. Here once stood the famous shrine of St. Wilfrid. The _South Choir Aisle_ is very similar to the opposite one. Here is a lavatory, and a piscina at the east end marks the site of a former altar. Above the west bay was a chantry chapel, now used for part of the organ. There is a monument in this aisle to Dean Fowler (1608). On the south is the _Chapter-House_ and _Vestry_. The _Crypt_ below formed part of the Early Norman church existing here before the rebuilding by Archbishop Roger. It is generally attributed to Thomas of Bayeaux (1070-1100). The vault is supported by square pillars with plain capitals. The windows have a double splay, which is a sign of almost Saxon work. The east end is apsidal. This crypt was formerly filled with bones. There are some interesting stone coffins preserved here. Returning to the _Chapter-House_ we notice the stone benches where the canons once sat in conclave. The vaulting is very fine, of Late Transitional work, almost Early English. This chamber was built by Roger. An arcade runs along the north wall. The windows are circular, the piers round, and have circular bosses and capitals. Some curious fifteenth-century alabaster carvings are preserved here, the subjects being St. Wilfrid, the Coronation of the Virgin and the Resurrection. The _Vestry_ is evidently of the same date as the chapter-house, and once formed part of the same building, the partition wall being much later. It has an apse with the remains of an altar and the treasury occupied the apse on the south. Above these chambers is the _Lady Loft_, the date of which is uncertain; it was probably built about 1330, and is Decorated in style. It is strange to find a Lady Chapel in this position. The room is now the library. It possesses some interesting incunabula and a few MSS. Dimensions Total length 270 ft. Length of nave 133 ft. Breadth of nave 87 ft. Height of nave 88 ft. Length of choir 95 ft. Height of tower 110 ft. Length of transept 130 ft. Area 25,280 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Saxon--Wilfrid's crypt. Norman (1070-1100)--Portions of chapter-house, vestry and crypt below. Transition (1154-1181)--Three bays of north side of choir, portions of nave, piers adjoining west and central towers, transepts. Early English (1215-1255)--West front and west tower, vaulting of chapter-house and windows. Early Decorated--Two eastern bays of choir and east window. Perpendicular--South and east sides of central tower, east side of wall of south transept, two bays south side of choir, nave. Ripon has some other important and interesting ancient buildings. There is the _Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene_, rebuilt in 1674, with an old chapel of the twelfth century. The Hospital of St. Anne, founded in the fifteenth century, though rebuilt in 1869, has its old chapel, with piscina and altar stone, and there are many other old houses in this city. Near here is the famous Fountains Abbey. YORK CATHEDRAL Few cities can rival York in interest, dignity and importance. The ancient city of Roman Cæsars, the centre of Saxon Christianity, of Danish supremacy, of mercantile enterprise, the abode of kings, the seat of an archbishopric that long contended for supremacy with Canterbury, York may well claim a foremost place in English history, and possesses features of peculiar interest. Professor Freeman stated that "Eboracum (York) holds a place which is unique in the history of Britain, which is shared only by one other city in the lands north of the Alps (Treves)." Here the Emperor Constantius died, here Constantine the Great was crowned. Bishops of York were present at the Councils of Arles (314), Nicæa and Sardica, and when the Christian faith died out, killed by Pagan Saxons, Paulinus taught again the lessons of the holy Cross, and baptised Edwin, the king, in a little wooden church which stood on the site of the present Cathedral. Then Christianity died down, killed by the onslaughts of fierce Paganism, until at length, under the influence of Oswald and the monks of Iona and Lindisfarne, the Cross again triumphed. There was much contention between the Roman faction, led by Wilfrid, and the upholders of the native church, as regards customs and observances, and the influence of Wilfrid predominated. Wilfrid was a great builder, restored the Cathedral at York and erected large churches at Ripon and Hexham. The Danes overran Northumbria, and under their rule York increased its importance and became a large and flourishing city. Then came the Norman Conquest, and we find Ældred, Archbishop of York, crowning William at Westminster, but his people liked not the change of rulers and rebelled. The Conqueror came and ruthlessly crushed the revolt, and after his wont erected a castle to overawe his subjects. Again they rebelled; the king swore deep vengeance, and terrible was the punishment inflicted on the northern kingdom. He appointed Thomas of Bayeaux archbishop, who set about repairing the ruined church, and built a new nave with side aisles and transepts, using the old church as a choir for the new. For years the question of the supremacy of York or Canterbury disturbed the ecclesiastical affairs of England, and on one occasion at a council the Metropolitan of York, finding his brother of Canterbury occupying the seat of honour at the right of the Papal legate, gravely sat down on the latter's lap. In the reign of Henry II. came Roger de Pont l'Evêque, who built the new choir and crypt, removing the remains of the old Saxon church. The people of York have ever been eager for fighting, revolt and riot. Sometimes we find them killing Jews; now disputing with the monks of St. Mary's Abbey, because some offending citizen had escaped their vengeance by claiming the right of sanctuary; now fighting against the Scots, and even rebelling against rulers who were obnoxious to them. Kings of the House of Lancaster were especially hateful, and nowhere in the kingdom did reformers of religion find more bitter opponents. During the rule of Walter de Grey, archbishop (1216-1255), the Norman transepts were removed and the present ones built, and in the reign of the Edwards the old Norman nave was replaced by the present one, and the chapter-house built. At this period York enjoyed much prosperity. The Scottish wars brought kings here who made it the military and civil capital of the whole country. Parliaments were held here. York Minster saw the marriage of Edward III., and the burial of his infant son. But rebellions against the kings of the House of Lancaster, the famous Pilgrimage of Grace against the reformed doctrines, and other risings, diminished its influence and deprived it of many privileges. York was besieged for six weeks during the Civil War, and suffered much; but happily General Fairfax exercised a restraining influence on his soldiers and prevented them from damaging the Cathedral. Although the citizens at the Reformation rebelled against the "new Religion," at the Restoration they rebelled against the overthrow of Puritanism; and again, when James II. endeavoured to restore Roman Catholicism, they rebelled again, attacked the Roman Catholic prelate whom the king sent to them, wrested from him his silver-gilt crozier, and took it in triumph to the minster, where it remains until this day. We will now briefly trace the history of the building, which has been rightly called "the King of Cathedrals." In 627 Paulinus built his little wooden church for the baptism of King Edwin. A year later a stone church was begun, which was finished by Oswald and repaired by Wilfrid. In the crypt are some of the walls of this early church, which show the "herring-bone" work of Saxon builders. When the Conqueror besieged York much destruction was wrought on this church. [Illustration Tomb of Archbishop Walter de Grey] In 1070 Archbishop Thomas of Bayeaux built the Norman nave and transepts, and used the old church as the choir. The apse in the crypt and the core of the tower piers are the remains of this work. In 1154-1181 choir and crypt were rebuilt by Roger in Late Norman style. In 1230-1260 the present transepts were built. In 1291-1324 Norman nave was taken down and the new nave built, and also the chapter-house, vestibule, sacristy and treasury. In 1338 the west front of nave was erected. In 1361-1400 choir rebuilt and Lady Chapel. In 1400-1423 central tower built in place of Early English lantern. In 1433-1474 north and south-western towers built. The Cathedral was now complete. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the organ-screen was erected, and two disastrous fires in 1829 and 1840 necessitated considerable repairs, and in 1875 some needful restoration of the south transept was carried out. THE EXTERIOR The _West Front_ is "more architecturally perfect as a composition and in its details than that of any other English cathedral," and is unquestionably the best cathedral façade in this country. The lower part, with the entrances and lower windows, belongs to the Early Decorated period. Above the windows the work is Late Decorated, and the towers above the roof Perpendicular. Numerous niches cover the surface. It is doubtful whether they ever contained statues. The principal entrance is divided by a clustered pier, and above it is a circle filled with cusped tracery. Over the whole doorway is a deeply-recessed arch, and over that a gable with niches, one of which contains the statue of an archbishop, supposed to be John le Romeyn, who began the nave in 1291, and other niches have figures of a Percy and a Vavasour, who gave the wood and stone for the building. The favourite ball-flower ornament of the Decorated style is seen on the gable, and the mouldings in the arches have figures representing the history of Adam and Eve. Above the entrance is a large eight-light window, pronounced by many to be too large even for York Minster, containing very elaborate and beautiful tracery, and over it is a pointed gable. On each side of the west window are buttresses covered with panelling and niches. The noble towers, rising on each side of the west front, have buttresses similarly adorned, and each three windows, and over the second an open battlement forms a walk along the whole front. The towers have battlements and pinnacles. The south-west tower (1433-1457) was injured by fire in 1840; and the north tower (1470-1474) has the largest bell in the kingdom. [Illustration Chapter House Herbert Railton] The _Nave_ is divided into seven bays by high buttresses, on the south side crowned with pinnacles. It was evidently originally intended to connect them with the clerestory wall by flying buttresses to support a stone vaulted roof. But the builders were alarmed by the great span of the roof and substituted a wooden vault. Hence the flying buttresses were not needed. There are some curious gargoyles. The north side is plainer, as formerly the Palace would conceal any elaborate carving. The style is Decorated. The _South Transept_ (1216-1241) is of Early English design. The central porch is not remarkable, though the clustered shafts are very fine, ornamented with dog-tooth ornament. On each side are lancet windows, and above similar windows; higher still a large rose window, and in the gable a cusped triangular light. Arcaded buttresses with octagonal turrets rise on each side. Extensive restoration took place in 1871, when the old clock was removed. The _Choir_ and _Lady Chapel_ are Perpendicular work. The four eastern bays, constituting the Lady Chapel, are earlier than the later ones of the choir, and vary in detail. The triforium passage in the former is outside the building, and the windows are recessed. Strange gargoyles, with figures of apes and demons, adorn the buttresses. The east end is mainly filled with the huge window, the largest in England, which does not leave much space for architectural detail. Above it is the figure of Archbishop Thoresby, the builder of this part of the Cathedral. Panelling covers the surface of the stone, and below the window is a row of seventeen busts, representing our Lord and His Apostles, Edward III. and Archbishop Thoresby. There are two aisle windows; buttresses adorned with niches separate the aisles from the central portion, and others, capped with spires, stand on the north and south of this front. The _Chapter-House_ (Early Decorated) is octagonal, and connected with the north transept by a vestibule, which shows by its architectural details that it was built after the completion of the chapter-house. These constitute the finest examples of Decorated Gothic in England. Buttresses project at each angle, crowned with pinnacles. Curious grotesque gargoyles are seen, and amongst them some strange-looking bears. The roof is in the form of a pyramid, and there is a battlement surrounding it. The _North Transept_ (1241-1260) is a beautiful specimen of Early English work. The five long lancet windows, called the "Five Sisters," surmounted by the seven lancets in the gable, are most effective. The _Central Tower_ is the largest in England, and is in the Perpendicular style (1410-1433). It is 200 feet high. It has windows ornamented with ogee gables, and its surface is covered with niches and panelling. A pair of narrow buttresses support each angle of the tower, decorated with panelling. This tower is one of the greatest achievements of the fifteenth-century builders, and is one of the finest in the world. THE INTERIOR _The Nave._--The first impression on viewing this nave is a sense of its magnitude. Archbishop Romeyn and his builders determined to build a vast church which would eclipse all other rivals. They would have large windows, high, towering piers, a huge, vaulted roof, and everything that was grand and impressive. Edward I. was then fighting with the Scots, and made York his chief city. It was immensely prosperous, and the ecclesiastical treasury was replete with the offerings of knights and nobles, kings and pilgrims. Nowhere should there be so mighty a church as York Minster. In order to have space for large windows they made the triforium unusually small, which is formed only by a continuation of the arches of the clerestory windows. The design for the stone vaulted roof was never carried out. The builders feared that the great weight of a roof with so large a span would be too much for the walls, so a wooden vault was substituted. The piers have octagonal bases, and consist of various sized shafts closely connected. The capitals are beautifully enriched with foliage of oak and thorn, and sometimes a figure is seen amidst the foliage. We notice thirty-two sculptured busts at the intersection of the hood moulding with the vaulting shafts. Coats of arms of the benefactors of York appear on each side of the main arches. The clerestory windows have each five lights. The old roof was destroyed by fire in 1840. The present one has a vast number of bosses representing the Annunciation, Nativity, Magi, Resurrection, besides a quantity of smaller ones. The whole scheme of decoration is most elaborate. [Illustration North Aisle of Choir Herbert Railton] The west window is a noble specimen of Decorated work, with its curvilinear tracery, one of the finest in the kingdom. It has been entirely restored. There are eight lights. It was glazed by Archbishop Melton (1317-1340). Niches and arcading cover the west wall. The pinnacles are carved with figures of men and animals, and also the brackets of the niches. The aisles have stone vaulting, windows Decorated like the west window, carved panels and arcading work. Over the north doorway are some sculptured figures of doubtful signification. The walled-up door which led to the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre has a headless figure of the Virgin. Here is a tomb of an archbishop of Late Perpendicular work, with Tudor flower cornice. All the other monuments have been destroyed. Over the south aisle door are three sculptured representations of David killing the lion, Samson and the lion with Delilah cutting his hair, and a man and woman fighting. The glass of the windows should be especially noticed. Most of it is either Decorated or Early English. The _South Transept_ is the earliest part of the present Cathedral (1230-1241). The finest view is obtained on entering by the south door. The extraordinary magnitude of the transepts, the five lancets with their old glass, and the beauty of the Early English architecture, are most striking. The triforium is not dwarfed as in the nave, but assumes large proportions, whereas the clerestory is small. The former consists of semi-circular moulded arches, with dog-tooth ornament, each enclosing two pointed arches, and sub-divided into two similar arches. Five pointed arches in each bay constitute the clerestory, with sculptured heads. Clustered shafts of stone and Purbeck marble form the piers. The vaulting is of wood of the fifteenth century, and the bosses are curious. A mermaid and merman, a monk and a nun, look down upon us; an arcade of pointed arches lines the walls. Chantry chapels were formerly in the east aisle. On the south was Ludham's Chantry, archbishop (1258-1265). It contains the large modern monument of Dean Duncombe. Next we see the Chapel of St. Michael with the tomb of its founder, Archbishop Grey (1216-1255), the builder of this transept, and near it the monument of Archbishop Sewal de Bovill (1256-1258). The _North Transept_ resembles the south, but differs in details. Especially noticeable is the profusion of dog-tooth ornament, the magnificent lancet windows, called the "Five Sisters," with the five smaller ones over it. These are the largest ancient lancets in England.[16] Curious grotesques are seen in the triforium moulding. The monuments here are:--(1) a brass to the memory of soldiers slain in India; (2) Archbishop Harcourt's tomb (1808-1843); (3) a skeleton memorial of Thomas Huxby, treasurer (1418-1424); (4) Archbishop Greenfield's tomb (d. 1315), which lies before the place where the altar of St. Nicholas stood; (5) effigy of Dr. Beckwith (d. 1847). In 1829 a disastrous fire occurred in the Cathedral, caused by a lunatic incendiary named Martin. He hid himself on the night of the fire behind the tomb of Archbishop Greenfield. There is a curious doorway leading to the vestibule of the chapter-house of Decorated style. Entering the _Vestibule_ we notice the exact place where the Early English builders finished their work, and the Decorated style begins. The difference between the styles in the chapter-house and vestibule shows that the former was erected first. It has a wall arcade, and above are windows of curious tracery, filled with beautiful old glass. The shafts of the arcade support trefoiled arches, with a cinquefoil ornamented with a sculptured boss. Each boss and capital is beautifully carved with foliage, amidst which the heads of men and dragons appear. The glass is Early Decorated, and contains representations of Royal personages. The _Chapter-House_ is one of the most beautiful in England. The entrance is an arch, divided into two arches by a canopied pier, which bears a mutilated statue of the Virgin and Child. Clustered shafts, with capitals, are on each side of the doors, which have remarkably good scrolled iron-work. The chamber itself is very magnificent. It is octagonal, and in each bay there are six canopied stalls under a five-light window. The window tracery is superb. Clustered shafts support the vaulted roof. Everywhere we see richly-carved stone-work, the finest in any cathedral, the foliage of maple, oak, vine, and other trees. Here are pigs and squirrels feeding on acorns, men gathering grapes, birds, and coiled dragons and reptiles. The grotesques are most curious and interesting. In 1845, unfortunately, the building was restored, and the painted figures of kings and bishops were destroyed, a poor tiled floor laid down; but, in spite of all, it can still maintain its proud boast:-- "_Ut Rosa flos florum, Sic est Domus ista Domorum._" ["As the Rose is the flower of flowers, so is this House the chief of Houses."] [Illustration The Ladye Chapel Herbert Railton 1899] The _Choir-Screen_, erected in 1500, is good Perpendicular work, and has figures of kings from William I. to Henry VI. The rebus of the master-mason, Hyndeley (a hind lying) occurs in the capitals. The canopies are richly carved. There is an ogee pediment, and a niche with angels on each side, with censers. The Tudor flower is used as an ornament, and plaster angels by Bernasconi were added in 1810. The organ was erected in 1632. [Illustration THE CRYPT] _The Choir and Lady Chapel._--The Lady Chapel, occupying the four east bays, was built in 1361-1405, the choir in 1407-1420. The style is Perpendicular, though it follows the design of the nave; yet the builders endeavoured to improve upon the earlier work and remedy its defects. They were eminently successful, and produced one of the most stately and magnificent choirs in England. The roof is made of wood, like the nave, and has a large number of foliated bosses. A disastrous fire in 1829 destroyed all the old carved stalls and _misereres_, and the modern substitutes are fairly successful. The altar-screen is a good reproduction of the ancient one, and the reredos was designed by Street, with reliefs by Tinworth. The lectern was given by T. Cracroft in 1686. The differences in the style of the clerestory windows in the east and west portions will be readily noticed. Only in the western part is the Perpendicular style fully developed. The east window is the largest window in England, retaining its original glazing, but in actual size it is surpassed by that at Gloucester. Its height is 75 feet, and breadth 32 feet, and each compartment is a yard square. The artist of the glass was one Thornton, of Coventry. The Altar of the Virgin stood under this window, and here was a chantry, founded by the Percys. There is a curious ancient carving, much mutilated, of the Virgin and Child. Archbishop Bowet's Chantry (1407-1423) was at the east of the south aisle, and his tomb is here, the finest in the Cathedral, though much mutilated. There are many monuments in the choir, which are too numerous to mention--the second son of Edward III. (d. 1344), Archbishop Savage (d. 1507), Archbishop Sterne (1689), Archbishop Scrope, beheaded by Henry IV., to whose tomb there was great resort by pilgrims. The _Crypt_ was mainly discovered after the fire of 1829. It has fine Norman piers, part of Roger's Cathedral (d. 1181), and contains some "herring-bone" work of Saxon architecture, the remains of Edwin's church. The vestry has some very interesting antiquities: an old Installation Chair, used at the consecration and enthronement of the archbishops; an old treasury-chest; Prayer-Book and Bible, presented by Charles I.; an old chained Bible; two _misereres_, left after the fire; a pastoral staff of 1686; the famous Horn of Alphus, presented before the Conquest, the title-deed to several acres of land held by horn tenure; chalices and patens of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; episcopal rings, and the bowl of the Cordwainers' Company, formerly belonging to Archbishop Scrope. The vastness of York Minster, with its forest of clustered pillars, its unrivalled ancient stained glass, its importance as the metropolitan church of Northern England, combine to make this splendid Cathedral one of the most interesting in the kingdom. OTHER OBJECTS OF INTEREST IN THE CITY _St. Mary's Abbey_, in the Museum Gardens, founded by Earl Sward in 1050. The present buildings were erected, after a fire in 1137, in 1270, and the Abbey grew to become one of great wealth and importance. The style is Decorated. On the site of the abbot's house is the _King's Manor_, or _Royal Palace_, now used as a Blind School. Near at hand is the _Multangular Tower_, which formed part of the old Roman wall, and _St. Leonard's Hospital_, founded by King Athelstan in 936 A.D., and rebuilt by Stephen. The Museum is worthy of a visit, and the _Hospitium_ of the old Abbey, which now contains a good collection of Roman antiquities and carved stones from the Abbey. _St. William's College_ (College Street), the famous abode of the chantry priests of the Cathedral, founded in 1460, is now a series of cottages. The city walls should be visited, and the old gates--Mickelgate, Walmgate, Monkgate, and Bootham Bar. The hall of the Merchant Adventurers' Company is interesting, and Clifford's Tower, the keep of the Conqueror's castle, celebrated for the Massacre of the Jews in 1190. Many of the churches are ancient, and have beautifully-carved doors and interesting old glass. The Church of St. Mary the Younger has a Saxon tower. DIMENSIONS Total length 486 ft. Length of nave 262 ft. Breadth of nave and aisles 104 ft. Height of nave 99 ft. Length of choir 224 ft. Length of transept 223 ft. Height of central tower 198 ft. Height of western towers 196 ft. Area 63,800 sq. ft. For Building Dates _see_ page 312. [Illustration PLAN OF YORK CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTE: [16] We must except Lord Grimthorpe's modern innovations at St. Albans. BEVERLEY MINSTER [Illustration Beverley Minster, the West Front] Although Beverley is not a cathedral, its Minster is certainly worthy of being ranked as such, and perhaps some day, when our dioceses are again divided, it may have a bishop of its own. Of John of Beverley's foundation want of space forbids us to write, or of the great Æthelstan, who conferred great privileges on the place. Ælfric and Archbishop Aldred were great builders, and did much for the Minster; but in 1188 a great part of the church was destroyed by fire. The nave seems to have escaped without much serious injury, and the monks set about repairing the east end and building a central tower; but, after the manner of towers, this one fell, and reduced the eastern arm of the church to ruins. Then came the era of the great Gothic builders, and early in the thirteenth century the monks began to rebuild the east end of the church, the tower, and one bay of the nave, and nobly did they accomplish their undertaking. They accomplished a work which caused their Minster to rank with the best achievements of Early English Gothic art, and we must look to Salisbury or the choir of Lincoln to find anything equal to it. For many years the old Norman nave remained. Nearly 100 years passed away, and then a new era of building dawned. At the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century the monks set to work to rebuild the nave. Quickly the work progressed, until the Black Death, which seems to have been especially virulent in monasteries, laid low many of the builders. The noise of the chisel ceased, until at length the monks resumed their work, and built that crowning glory of their Minster, the noble west front. Such was the history of the building of Beverley Minster. Since that time little has been done, except to preserve the exquisite workmanship of these early builders. The church suffered from neglect, and from the evil genius and vile taste of the Georgian architects; but happily all their monstrosities have been removed by Sir Gilbert Scott, who restored the Minster to its ancient beauty. [Illustration BEVERLEY MINSTER] The _West Front_ is one of the finest examples of the Perpendicular style in England. It consists of two towers, flanking a large window, above which is a high gable, and below a deeply-recessed door. The window has nine lights. The whole front is panelled, and the buttresses are ornamented with various tiers of niche-work of excellent composition and most delicate execution. These niches are about to be filled with figures. We enter the Minster by the north porch, which is a fine piece of Perpendicular work, with a parvise over it. On entering the building we are struck with its great loftiness and the consummate beauty of its architectural details. As we have said, the _Nave_ is later than the choir, with the exception of the first bay adjoining the tower. That one bay is Early English; the rest is superb Decorated work. The ball-flower moulding is conspicuous in the latter, the dog-tooth in the former; but there seems to have been some attempt to assimilate the later work with the earlier. The west end is Perpendicular, and the west window is a fine example of the work of that period. The glass is modern. There is some beautiful arcading in the aisles, that in the north aisle being more developed Decorated than that in the south. The tomb of the "Sisters of Beverley" in the south aisle should be noticed. It belongs to the Decorated period, and possesses many features of interest. History is silent as to the names of these sisters, who are supposed to have been benefactors to the townsfolk. The tracery of the windows in the aisles should be noticed, as it is remarkable for its gracefulness and variety. The only relic of Norman work in the church is the font, near the south door, which is of a somewhat late character. The _Transepts_ are of noble Early English construction. Tall lancets shed light upon the exquisite architectural details displayed here. Each transept has double aisles. The arcading of the triforium is curious, but effective. In the tympanum of each trefoil arch there is a quatrefoil and two semi-arches, which are completed by similar ones under the next arch. The effigy and monument of a priest in the north transept (fourteenth century) have some exquisite carving, and afford an excellent study of ecclesiastical vestments. The _East End_ of the church is entirely composed of Early English work, and without doubt contains some of the best and most perfect architectural achievements of the thirteenth century. The piers are composed of eight massive columns. There is no triforium gallery, a very exquisite arcade taking its place, similar to that in the transepts, consisting of trefoil arches, ornamented with dog-tooth. Purbeck marble is extensively used throughout the choir. The screen is modern. The choir stalls and _misereres_ are scarcely surpassed by any in England. They belong to the sixteenth century, and the designs represented on the latter are extremely quaint and curious. Few churches have such a superb _Altar-Screen_ as Beverley. It is Early English, but has been much mutilated and robbed of its images, which now have been replaced by good modern sculpture. It has also been decorated with glass mosaic work. Near it, on the north, is the famous _Percy Tomb_, which is well known to all students of architecture. It is very beautiful Decorated work, and is generally considered to have no equal. It was erected about 1338, and is to the memory of Lady Eleanor Percy, the wife of the first Lord Percy. The carving is quite superb, the details of the figure-sculpture being worthy of the closest attention. In the gable is a figure of the Almighty receiving the soul of the deceased, who is represented as being held up by a sheet supported by two angels. The east transepts and retro-choir possess also some fine Early English work, and is similar to that which has been described. In this retro-choir stood the shrine of St. John of Beverley, which was watched by a monk stationed in the watching chamber over the altar-screen. Notice the frith-stool, seated in which the person who sought sanctuary could defy the approach of his enemies and escape the justice which doubtless he deserved. Beverley was a noted place for sanctuary, and the records relating to this privilege are full of curious interest. The _Staircase_ leading to the chapter-house, now destroyed, is remarkably fine, and is certainly a very beautiful feature of this wonderful church. The great east window is Perpendicular, and has some ancient glass. On the north is the Percy Chapel, founded in the fifteenth century; in it lies the body of one of the Earls of Percy, who was cruelly murdered at the close of that century. [Illustration Percy Shrine Beverley Minster] WAKEFIELD CATHEDRAL The See of Wakefield was created in 1888. The enormous increase of the population of England and the growth of the Church's work have necessitated the multiplication of bishoprics and the division of many of the ancient enormous dioceses. This is one of the sees which it was found necessary to form. The old Parish Church of All Saints was converted into the Cathedral, but it possesses few of the associations and architectural beauties of our ancient minsters. It is, however, a fine parish church. It was consecrated by Archbishop William de Melton of York in 1329, but almost wholly rebuilt in the fifteenth century. Its main features are, therefore, Perpendicular. It consists of a chancel and large nave, with aisles. There is a clerestory, but no triforium. At the west end there is a tower, surmounted by a fine spire, rebuilt in 1860, the total height being 247 feet. A heavy screen separated the nave from the chancel of Jacobean style, and the organ and font belong to the seventeenth century. The whole building was restored by Sir G. Scott at a cost of £30,000. On the bridge across the Calder there is a beautiful little chapel or chantry, dedicated to St. Mary (30 feet by 24 feet). This was built and endowed by Edward IV. in memory of his father, Richard, Duke of York, killed at the battle of Wakefield in 1460. It was restored in 1847. Near here was fought the famous battle between Queen Margaret, wife of Henry VI., and the Duke of York, whom this chantry commemorates. Wakefield was an ancient seat of manufacture, foreign weavers being established here by Henry VII. [Illustration Wakefield Cathedral Herbert Railton] [Illustration Chantry Chapel on Wakefield Bridge Herbert Railton] LINCOLN CATHEDRAL The city of Lincoln has a history of profound interest. The first view of its mighty minster rising above the lower houses of the city is most impressive, and the whole place teems with historical association. Professor Freeman states that Lincoln has "kept up its continuous being through Roman, English, Danish and Norman conquests." Before the advent of the Romans it was a British stronghold, and bore a Celtic name--Lindum; and when the conquering legions came they made it one of the chief towns of the empire, and honoured it with the rank of a "colony"--hence Lin_coln_, "the colony of Lindum," thus preserving its ancient name, and adding the title of its dignity. The only existing Roman gateway in England is here, and the remains of a basilica, mosaic pavements, altars, sepulchral monuments, testify to the greatness of Roman Lincoln. The Anglo-Saxons wrought much havoc, and devastated the city. Here came St. Paulinus in 627 A.D., and converted the Pagan Saxons to Christianity. The fierce Danes attacked Lincoln and made it their chief town, the principal member of their League of the Five Towns (Leicester, Stamford, Derby, Nottingham and Lincoln). Before the Norman Conquest it ranked fourth among the cities of England. Then came William the Conqueror, who raised a castle and made it the base of his operations against the northern counties. Lincoln soon was raised to a position of great ecclesiastical pre-eminence, when Remigius of Fécamp became the first Norman bishop, and ruled the vastest diocese in England, extending from the Humber to the Thames. The city was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries one of the greatest trading towns in the country, the resort of traders both of land and sea. Here King Stephen was vanquished and carried off a prisoner to Bristol. Here King John received the homage of William the Lion of Scotland. The din of wars and battles has often been heard in the streets of Lincoln; in the Wars of the Barons against the young King Henry III., the Wars of the Roses, and above all in the great Civil War, when the city was stormed and sacked by the Roundheads. Here Edward I. summoned his first Parliament. Here kings have held their court and worshipped in the minster, and here a most formidable insurrection arose in consequence of the arbitrary acts of Henry VIII. and the destruction of the monasteries. The Bishops of Lincoln have been men of great power and influence, and have played prominent parts in the history of England. Such prelates as St. Hugh, Robert Grosseteste, and many others have conferred honour on the see over which they presided. [Illustration The Potter Gate & Towers of Lincoln Cathedral] HISTORY OF THE CATHEDRAL The first Cathedral of Lincoln was built by Remigius, the earliest Norman bishop, on the removal of the see from Dorchesteron-the-Thames about 1074. Previous to this Paulinus had preached here, and converted its prefect, Blaecca, who built a church of stone, which was probably on the site of St. Paul's Church, the name being corrupted from Paulinus. Stow village was the seat of the Lindsay Diocese until the Danish invasion. Then Dorchester was the bishop's residence until Remigius transferred his throne to Lincoln, and built a church "strong as the place was strong and fair as the place was fair, dedicated to the Virgin of Virgins." This church was ready for consecration on the founder's death in 1092 A.D. It was cruciform, with a semi-circular apse at the east end. The parts remaining are the central portion of the west front with its three recesses, a fragment of the first bay of the nave, and the foundations of the apse beneath the floor of the choir. It was a massive stern Norman building. The third Norman bishop, Alexander, called "the magnificent," after a disastrous fire in 1141, restored the Cathedral "to more than its former beauty." This Alexander was a nephew of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, and during his time raged the war between Stephen and the Empress Maud. The adherents of the latter held the Castle of Lincoln; so Stephen seized the Cathedral and used it as a fortress. The chroniclers tell us that Alexander "remodelled the church by his subtle artifice," and made it the most beautiful in England. All that remains of his work are the three western doorways inserted in the arches built by Remigius, the intersecting arcade above the two side recesses of the west front, and the three lower storeys of the west tower, with their elaborately-ornamented gables facing north and south. These were all in the Late Norman or Transition style. A terrible earthquake wrought much damage in 1185, and grievous was the condition of the church after this deplorable visitation. But happily in the following year the famous St. Hugh of Avalon, near Grenoble, was made Bishop of Lincoln by Henry II. He determined to restore the ruined House of God, and began to build in 1192. Freeman states that "St. Hugh was strictly the first to design a building in which the pointed arch should be allowed full play, and should be accomplished by an appropriate system of detail." Before his death in 1200 he built the choir and aisles and east (or smaller) transept, with a portion of the east wall of the great transept. All architects praise this beautiful work, the first development of the Early English style, the earliest building of that style in the world. The great transept was completed and the nave gradually carried west-wards in the Early English style during the successive episcopates of William de Blois, Hugh de Wells and Robert Grosseteste (1203-1253). Of the nave, Freeman wrote: "There are few grander works in the style of the thirteenth century than Lincoln nave, few that show greater boldness of construction and greater elegance of detail." To the same period we may assign the two western chapels, the arcaded screen wall of the west front and its flanking turrets, the Galilee Porch and the vestry, the two lower storeys of the tower, and chapter-house. During the rule of Grosseteste, the two lower storeys of the tower were built. This Grosseteste was a remarkable man, of great learning and ability, defended the rights of the English Church against the claims of the Papacy, and reformed many abuses in his diocese. Great sanctity was attached to the body of St. Hugh, which caused many miracles. It was buried according to the wishes of this holy and humble-minded man in an obscure corner of the Cathedral. In such honour were his remains held that it was resolved to transport them to a more distinguished place; hence it was decided to erect a large and costly shrine, and the beautiful "Angel Choir" was erected for its accommodation. This magnificent structure was built in 1255-1280, and belongs to the period of Transition between the Early English and Decorated styles, just when Gothic architecture was touching its point of highest development. It is simply perfect in its proportion and details. The translation of the body of St. Hugh was performed with much pomp, and the ceremony was attended by the highest in the land, King Edward I. himself being one of the bearers of the revered saint's remains. The cloisters and vestibule belong to the Decorated period, 1296 A.D., of which they present a small but beautiful example. The "Bishop's Eye," the large circular window of the south transept, was erected in 1350. About the same period much was done to adorn the interior. John de Welbourn, treasurer of the Cathedral, 1350-1380, set up the beautiful choir stalls, erected the vaulting of the central and west towers, with the internal panelling of the latter, and the row of niches and regal statues over the great west door. The three western windows and the upper stages of the west towers belong to a closely subsequent period. In these works we see the transition from the Decorated to Perpendicular style. Some of the chantry chapels are purely Perpendicular. At the Reformation great spoils of treasure were carried off by the infamous Commissioners of Henry VIII., who purloined a goodly store of jewels and nearly 9000 oz. of precious metals. They plundered the gold shrine of St. Hugh and the silver shrine of Bishop Dalderby, and left the Cathedral bare of all the treasures which the piety of centuries had accumulated. The people of Lincoln liked not these proceedings, and there was a formidable insurrection, during which the church was used as a garrison. The advent of the Royal troops and the execution of some of the leaders and several abbots suppressed the revolt. A reforming bishop of evil memory, Henry Holbech, further desecrated the church, destroying images and monuments, so that in 1548 there was scarcely a whole figure or tomb remaining. Further terrible destruction took place in the Civil War, when the soldiers broke the beautiful glass windows, tore up the brass memorials of the dead, wrecked the Palace, and even threatened to pull down the Cathedral, but were happily stayed from their mad enterprise by the intercession of the Mayor, Mr. Original Peart, with Cromwell. After the Restoration Bishop Fuller set to work to repair the destruction which vandalism had caused, and although the hand of the "restorer" has been felt on the fabric of this noble building, Lincoln still maintains most of its ancient features, and remains one of the most interesting cathedrals in the kingdom. THE EXTERIOR We will now walk round the building and note its chief architectural features. Standing at the west end we will examine first the imposing _West Front_. The central portion with its three recesses are parts of the earliest Norman church of Remigius. It will be noticed that the middle arch has been subsequently raised and pointed. A band of curious sculpture runs across the front, representing scenes from Bible history. They are of Norman character. Noah and the ark, the Deluge, the expulsion from Paradise, scenes from the life of our Lord and Hades are the most curious. The doorways are later than the recesses, and were inserted by Bishop Alexander, "the magnificent," who also built the arcade of intersecting arches above the two side recesses, and the three lower storeys of the towers, in the style of Late Norman. The rest of the screen is Early English work, erected 1200-1250. Bishop St. Hugh had sketched the outline of the new church, and his successors carried it out. Amongst them Bishop Grosseteste did much good work, and his portion is distinguished by the lattice-work ornament which appears in the gable of this front, proclaiming its author. There is a row of Royal statues (William I. to Edward III.) above the central door, which were erected by the treasurer, John de Welbourn (1350-1380). The statue of St. Hugh surmounts the south turret, and the Swineherd of Stow[17] the north turret. The three large windows belong to the time of Henry VI., and at this time the towers were completed, which are Perpendicular work, above the Norman three storeys. [Illustration Lincoln Cathedral Exchequer Gate.] Turning to the south side of the church we see the unique chapel and consistory court, and the curious grotesque popularly known as "the Devil looking over Lincoln." Heavy buttresses support the nave, and flying buttresses connect these with the clerestory. The _Galilee Porch_ was built in 1230, and is cruciform. The name Galilee is attached to chapels at Durham and Ely, and we have already referred to the most probable conjecture with regard to its origin.[18] A profusion of dog-tooth ornament appears here, the characteristic moulding of Early English period. The muniment room is above the porch. The _Central Tower_ is the finest in England, as it is the highest (271 feet), though the spires of Salisbury and Norwich exceed this altitude. Formerly it was capped by an immense timber spire, blown down in the first year of the sixth Edward's reign. Lincoln has suffered from falling towers as have other cathedrals. The two lower storeys were built by Grosseteste in Early English style on the fall of its predecessor in 1237. The lattice-work ornament so freely employed in the work of this bishop is observable here. The upper storey was begun by Bishop Dalderby in 1307 and finished in 1311 in the Decorated style. The timber spire covered with lead rose to a height of 524 feet, and was destroyed by a tempest. Storms and tempests have beat upon this tower for centuries, and occasionally have wrought mischief, but this has been from time to time remedied, and it remains the grandest and most majestic in the world. It is the abode of the famous "Great Tom of Lincoln," the fourth largest bell in the kingdom, recast in 1835. It weighs over five tons, and is 21 feet 6 inches in circumference. The _Choir_ is the work of St. Hugh, the earliest example of Early English. In the _Presbytery_ we see the style developed to his most perfect form, and merging into the Decorated period. The south doorway is especially worthy of notice, with its fine sculpture and splendid tympanum representing the Last Judgment. The Russell and Longland Chapels (Perpendicular) are on each side of this doorway. We notice the magnificent Decorated window of the Angel Choir, on the north side the Chapel of Bishop Fleming (Perpendicular), a doorway of good design; and then we see the chapter-house with its flying buttresses and pyramidal roof. On the north side is the cloister garth and Deanery. The cloisters are usually on the south side, and this position is uncommon. Lincoln was not a monastic church, being served by secular canons, and therefore had no necessity for a cloister court. However, this was built in the thirteenth century, the colonnade on the north side being erected in 1674 by Sir Christopher Wren, together with the library over it, which we shall visit presently. By an act of vandalism the old Deanery was pulled down in 1847 and the present house built, which is devoid of many of the interesting associations of its predecessor. The Cathedral close was surrounded by a wall and protected by strong gateways. Two of these remain, the "Exchequer Gate," opposite the west end, and the "Potter Gate." The old Bishop's Palace on the south of the close was destroyed during the Civil War, and quite recently a new episcopal residence has been erected near the ruins of the ancient house. THE INTERIOR. As we have already stated, the nave of Lincoln was designed by Bishop Hugh in the Early English style, gradually carried west-ward by his successors, and completed before the death of Grosseteste in 1253. It consists of seven bays. Eight circular shafts of Purbeck marble surround each pier. The mouldings of the arches are deeply cut. Above is the triforium, consisting of two arches, each divided into three sub-arches. Clustered shafts with capitals carved with foliage support the arches. Above each main triforium arch in the clerestory are three lancet windows, and the roof is a fine specimen of English vaulting. Sir Gilbert Scott says that this nave "exhibits an Early English style in its highest stage of development: massive without heaviness, rich in detail without exuberance, its parts symmetrically proportioned and carefully studied throughout, the foliated carving bold and effective, there seems no deficiency in any way to deteriorate from its merits"--an opinion with which few visitors to Lincoln will be inclined to differ. Under the towers will be noticed the Norman character of the first bay, which is part of the original church of Remigius. The west window, in its present form, is Perpendicular, and was inserted in the place of an earlier one. The _Font_ also belongs to the time of Remigius, and is a fine example of the Norman period. It is of black basalt, square in shape, and has been recently placed upon three steps of Derbyshire marble. Grotesque monsters are carved on the sides of the font. The aisles have lancet windows, and below a beautiful arcade of trefoiled arches, the south side being more elaborate than the north. The bosses have figures carved on them. On the north-west corner is the Morning Chapel, having a central column of Purbeck marble supporting a stone vaulted roof. Here is the pastoral staff of Archbishop Benson of Canterbury, who, when Chancellor of Lincoln, restored this chapel. Opposite to this chapel, in the south-west, is the consistory court. None of the old glass has survived in the nave, and most of the shrines and tombs have been destroyed. The fanatics of the Reformation and Cromwell's soldiers left little of the sepulchral brasses and gorgeous tombs and effigies which once were here. A marble slab, carved with Scriptural subjects, is supposed to represent the tomb of the founder, Remigius. The memory of Dean Hoywood (d. 1681), the founder of the library, is recorded on a tablet, and three slabs preserve the names of Bishops Smyth (d. 1514), Alnwick (d. 1449), and Atwater (d. 1521). The _Pulpit_ is seventeenth-century work, and the lectern is a memorial of Dean Butler (d. 1894). The great transept contains some of St. Hugh's work. He devised a beautiful double arcade, and his work ends half-way on the east wall in north transept, and half-way the east wall in south transept, measuring from the centre of the building. The rest was built by his successors in the Early English style. The magnificent circular windows at the north and south ends are very striking, and extremely beautiful. The former is known as the _Dean's Eye_, the latter as the _Bishop's Eye_, which, with the gable and window above, is in the curvilinear style, and was erected about 1350. The Dean's Eye was placed there about 1220, and has some exquisite ancient glass of that period representing our Saviour in Glory. In the east of this transept are six chapels, dedicated to SS. Nicholas, Denis, James, Edward the Martyr, John the Evangelist and Giles. The stone screen before the Chapel of St. Edward should be examined, with its curious sculpture. Before the Reformation there seems to have been some laxity of conduct among the chaplains and choristers, who were accused of playing games in the church, and here in one of these chapels we see nine holes, which were probably used for the favourite pastime of "Nine Men's Morris." In the south transept there are the slender remains of the once famous tomb of Bishop Dalderby (d. 1320), to which there was great resort of pilgrims in mediæval times. His shrine was destroyed at the Reformation. This bishop built the upper part of the tower. The _Screen_ is good Decorated work, and consists of arches ornamented with figures of ecclesiastics and grotesques. It has been somewhat severely handled by fanatical destroyers, but, in spite of mutilation and restoration, it remains a noble example of the workmanship of the period. The organ stands above this screen. The doorways on each side of the screen are Early English, and are very beautiful. Entering the _Choir_, we see the earliest known example of pure Lancet Gothic or Early English, free from the trace of Norman influence. It was built by Bishop St. Hugh. The first stone was laid in 1192. The perfection of the ornament is wonderful. This part of the church suffered severely from the fall of the tower in 1237, and many traces of the disaster may still be seen. Screens divide the choir from the aisles, and were erected to strengthen the building. The _Choir Stalls_ are very fine, and were erected by Treasurer Welbourn in 1370. The carving is most elaborate and beautiful, and the _misereres_ are extremely curious and interesting. Behind each stall is a list of the Psalms which, according to the constitution of Lincoln, each prebendary is bound to repeat daily. The pulpit and bishop's throne are fairly modern. The brass lectern bears the date 1667. The _Reredos_ was restored about the middle of the eighteenth century, but contains some thirteenth-century work. A very interesting feature of the north side is the _Easter Sepulchre_, fashioned for the deposition of the consecrated elements of the Eucharist from the evening of Good Friday until the morning of Easter day; during which time it was watched by a quasi-guard. Three figures of sleeping soldiers appear in the carving. The style is Decorated. This tomb has been very doubtfully assigned to Remigius. There are the monuments of Katherine Swinford, third wife of John of Gaunt (d. 1403), from whom King Edward is descended in a direct line, and of her daughter, the Countess of Westmoreland (d. 1440), much mutilated by the soldiers. In the _North Aisle_ of the choir the beautiful double arcade work of Bishop Hugh is seen on the wall. In the _South Aisle_ are the remains of the _Shrine of Little St. Hugh_, the Christian boy with whose crucifixion the Jews were charged in 1255. The style is Decorated, but the shrine was mutilated by the soldiers in the Civil War. The great chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, also lies buried here. The eastern transept is part of Bishop Hugh's church. In each arm, on the east side, there are two apsidal chapels, with arcading round the walls. The style of the construction resembles that of the choir. On the south of the north arm is the so-called _Dean's Chapel_, the use of which can only be conjectured. The iron-work of the door is worthy of notice, and also the faded paintings of some Lincoln prelates, by Vincenzo Damini (1728). It is sad to see the fragments of the tomb of Grosseteste, to whom the Cathedral of Lincoln and the whole Church of England owe so much, stored away in one of the chapels. Respect for his memory and gratitude for his work might suggest the restoration of this tomb. The southern arm of this east transept has been much altered, and most of the present work is later than the choir. In one of the chapels the sub-dean was murdered by one of the vicars in 1205. Here is the tomb of Bishop Kaye (d. 1853). The screen and lavatory of the choristers' vestry are beautiful examples of Decorated work. [Illustration The Angel Choir] We now enter the _Angel Choir_ (1256-1280), pronounced by Sir Gilbert Scott to be "the most splendid work of that period which we possess, and did it not lack internal height, I do not think it could be exceeded in beauty by any existing church." It is the latest portion of the main fabric, and was built when the Early English style was developing into the Decorated. The piers are beautiful clustered shafts, with carved capitals of Purbeck marble. The east window of eight lights is very fine (the glass is modern), and is said to be the noblest example of Geometrical Decorated in the kingdom. The choir takes its name from the carved angels in the spandrels of the triforium, which exhibit combined grace and dignity. The famous _Lincoln Imp_ can with difficulty be distinguished on the north side, above the most eastern pier. Early English glass fills the east windows of the north and south aisles. On the north of the Angel Choir is the _Fleming Chantry_, which contains the double effigy of the bishop (d. 1431), the founder of Lincoln College, Oxford, first in his episcopal robes, and then of his corpse in a state of decay. Bishop Fleming exhumed and burnt the bones of Wyclif. Opposite this chantry is the _Russell Chantry_, founded by Bishop Russell (d. 1494), Chancellor of Richard III., and near this the Chantry of Bishop Longland (d. 1547). Here in the Angel Choir stood, in former days, the rich shrine of St. Hugh, plundered at the Reformation, and a monument of Queen Eleanor, the beloved wife of Edward I., who caused to be erected the famous Eleanor crosses at every place where her body rested, as it was borne to its final resting-place at Westminster. This monument was destroyed by Cromwell's soldiers, and recently a modern copy of the original has been erected. The Burghersh monuments are worthy of careful study. The family played an important part in history, and held high honours. Also we notice the tombs of Nicholas de Cantelupe (much mutilated), the artists Peter De Wint (d. 1849) and W. Hilton (d. 1839); Bishop Fuller's memorial of St. Hugh, Bishop Fuller (d. 1675), Bishop Gardiner (d. 1705) and Sub-Dean Gardiner (d. 1732), Bishop Wordsworth (d. 1885), Dean Butler (d. 1894), Bishop Sutton (d. 1299) and Robert Dymoke (d. 1735), whose family held the office of King's Champion. The _Cloisters_ were erected in the thirteenth century, with the exception of the north colonnade, which was built by Sir Christopher Wren. Over this is the _Library_, which contains many treasures: an original copy of Magna Charta, a letter of Edward I.; a chalice of Bishop Grosseteste (1254) and his ring; Bishop Sutton's ring and chalice and paten (1299); a Roman mile-stone (260 A.D.). Of books there is a large collection, including a MS. copy of the Vulgate (1106), other valuable MSS., and many versions of the Bible in English. The old desks are curious and interesting. The beautiful _Chapter-House_ is of Early English design, and was completed about 1230. It is ten-sided, and has a central pillar girt with Purbeck marble shafts, and a stone vaulted roof; lancet windows, filled with good modern glass enlighten the chamber, two in each side. An arcade runs round the walls beneath the windows, and in the carving we see the tooth ornament. There is a very ancient Chair of State here, which is said to have been the throne of Edward I. when he held his Parliament in this room. * * * * * [My grateful thanks are due to the Very Reverend the Dean of Lincoln for the great assistance which he has kindly rendered me in investigating the history of his Cathedral.] DIMENSIONS Total length 482 ft. Length of nave 252 ft. Breadth of nave with aisles 80 ft. Height of nave 82 ft. Length of choir 158 ft. Length of presbytery 72 ft. Height of central tower 271 ft. Height of west towers 200 ft. Area 44,400 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1074-1092)--Central part of west front, fragments of first bay of nave. (1123-1183)--West doors, arcade of west front, three lower storeys of west towers. Early English (1192-1253)--Choir and presbytery, nave, transept to west chapels, turrets and screen of west front, Galilee, vestries, two lower stages of tower and chapter-house. (1255-1296)--Angel Choir, cloisters. Decorated (1307-1380)--Upper storeys of tower, "Bishop's Eye," stalls, statues over west door, upper stages of west towers. (1450-1500)--Chapels. (1674)--North colonnade of cloister and library. [Illustration PLAN OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTES: [17] This swineherd is said to have given a peck of silver pennies to the building of the Cathedral. [18] Page 291. SOUTHWELL CATHEDRAL The ancient and interesting Church of St. Mary, Southwell, became a Cathedral in 1884, when the bishopric was founded, and the building is worthy of its high honour. In the time of Henry VIII. it nearly attained that rank, Southwell being one of the sees which that monarch proposed to found out of the spoils of the monasteries, but his good intentions were not fulfilled. For centuries it was in the large Diocese of York, and was esteemed as the Mother Church of the district, and enjoyed many rights and privileges. With the exception of a few fragments, no part of the present church dates further back than the twelfth century. There was an early Saxon church here, which was probably founded by Paulinus when he converted the wild folk of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the Christian faith. Then came the savage Danes, who swept away all traces of Christianity. The next church is said to have been built by the Saxon King Edgar, in 960 A.D., which was one of much importance before the Conquest; and in 1061 Aldred, Archbishop of York, founded prebends here, and built refectories for the canons. In the time of Henry I. it was raised to the dignity of Mother Church of the district, and the church was entirely rebuilt in the Norman style. When Walter de Grey was Archbishop of York (1216-1255), he was very energetic in improving the condition of his diocese and in erecting churches. He rebuilt the nave of Southwell, granting an indulgence of thirty days' pardon to all who should assist the work. John de Romeyn, sub-dean, whose son was afterwards Archbishop of York, assisted him in the work. There is a close resemblance between the nave of York Cathedral and the earlier choir of Southwell, and it is not improbable that the latter served as a model for the former. There is also a very close resemblance between the chapter-house of the two Cathedrals, which are evidences of the same designer and workmanship. Archbishop John de Romeyn was doubtless the architect of both buildings. The community of clergy at Southwell consisted of the prebendaries, who formed the chapter, the vicars-choral and chantry priests and choristers. The prebendaries had much power and many privileges. They held property, and each had a large house, hunted in neighbouring forests, and lived as country gentlemen as well as canons of Southwell. At the Reformation they surrendered their goods to Henry VIII., who contemplated making Southwell a Cathedral. He despoiled the church of vast quantities of plate and other valuables. In 1574, however, the college, like other similar institutions, was seized by the unscrupulous advisers of Edward VI. In Mary's reign it reverted to the Crown, and she restored the college to its former owners and uses, and this arrangement was happily left undisturbed by her successors. During the Civil War Cromwell's soldiers stabled their horses in the nave of the church. Charles I. stayed in the town at the "Saracen's Head," and here he delivered himself up to the Scotch commissioners, who stayed at the Palace. Cromwell wished to destroy the nave, but was stayed in his fanatical design by the intercession of one of his officers. The story is told of the wife of a hunted Royalist, named William Clay, registrar of the minster, hiding herself in the parvise, or room over the porch, and there giving birth to a child, while the soldiers lived in the church. A general pillage took place in the church at this time; the font was destroyed, lead torn from the roofs, brasses from the tombs, and every vestige of an image swept away. The College of Southwell has suffered in many other ways, sometimes from the carelessness of the prebendaries and their lack of zeal, sometimes from the effects of unwise and revolutionary legislation. In 1846 its position as a peculiar ceased to exist. Southwell is now a Cathedral with a diocese of its own, and if the ecclesiastical commissioners and the friends of the Church could see their way to granting an adequate endowment and means for carrying on its great work, Southwell would be able to maintain the dignity of an important see, and fulfil its mission to the Church and nation. EXTERIOR The finest view of this noble minster is obtained from the north-west corner of the churchyard. We notice the general Norman character of the building. The massive western towers, capped with spires, the lantern tower, the north transept and beautiful chapter-house, the noble roof, all combine to form a magnificent example of dignified and noble building. The _West Front_ has been altered in character from its original Norman work. We see a huge Perpendicular window with an embattled parapet over it, an alteration made in the fifteenth century. The windows in the lower stages of the towers are modern imitation of Norman work. The towers have seven stages, and the sixth is enriched with fine arcading composed of intersecting arches. The present spires are modern imitations of the originals destroyed by fire in 1711. These were immediately restored, but removed in 1802, and have now again been replaced. The old Norman doorway is remarkably fine. It has five orders, the zigzag and filleted edge roll being the chief mouldings. Passing to the south side we see the wall of the nave pierced by apparent Norman windows, but these are modern imitations. The most western window in the north side is the only original Norman window; the rest are copied from it, and were erected in 1847. Four Perpendicular windows were inserted in the fifteenth century. There is a row of small square windows above which light the triforium, and the clerestory has a curious series of circular windows which are unique in this country. The roof is high pitched, having been erected in modern times by the architect Christian, and the parapets are Perpendicular in style. The south doorway should be noticed, of Norman workmanship with zigzag string-course over it. Near here are the remains of the old Palace. The banqueting hall has been recently restored. The kitchens belong to the time of Henry VI. On the east of the transepts there were formerly apsidal chapels, which were removed when the present choir was built in the Early English period. The _Choir_ is a noble specimen of Early English work and "seems to be an emanation from Lincoln," wrote Sir Gilbert Scott, which it much resembles. We notice the extensive use of the dog-tooth ornament. Lancet windows give light to the interior. Two flying buttresses support the walls on the south side, and were added subsequently in the Decorated period to help them to bear the weight of the vaulted roof. The _Chapter-House_ is on the north side, and was built in the Decorated period during the reign of Edward I., when York was extremely prosperous and profited by the presence of the court. The resemblance between the chapter-houses of York and Southwell is very striking, and both were evidently designed by the same architect. This one is octagonal, and has windows of three lights with trefoil and circular ones in the heads. The roof is modern. A vestibule connects it with the church. An Early English wall with an arcade of lancets connects the vestibule with the north transept. The _North Porch_ is good Norman work, and has a parvise which is very unusual in a porch of this date. This parvise was the scene of the story of the hiding of Mistress Clay in the troublous times of the Civil War. The inner doorway is very fine with its zigzag and beak-head moulding. THE INTERIOR We now enter the church by the west door, and looking down the nave (1110-1150) we are impressed by the massive appearance of the interior. The piers are rather short, only 19 feet high, six on each side, with square bases and round capitals. The triforium is large, and above is the clerestory with its unique plain circular windows. The Norman mouldings, zigzag, billet, hatchet, etc., are easily recognised. The present roof was erected in 1881. The _Font_, erected in 1661, is a poor substitute for the one destroyed by the soldiers of Cromwell. The _Pulpit_ is modern; the figures represent the Virgin and Child, King Edwin and his queen, Augustine and Paulinus. The second pillar from the east on the south side is called Pike's Pillar, and retains faint traces of a mural painting of the Annunciation; the nave aisles have some good vaulting. A plain stone bench runs along the walls. This was common in old churches, and was the origin of the saying, "let the weakest go to the wall," where they could sit and rest, as the days of pews were not yet. The only original Norman window which remains is at the west end of the north aisle. Formerly there were several chantry chapels in the aisles, but all have been destroyed. The marble slab in the north aisle marks the site of one. The _Tower_ is a lantern, and also has a peal of bells. The chimes were given by Wymondesole in 1693. This tower is part of the original Norman church, and was built in 1150. The cable moulding round the four large arches should be noticed. It is composed of a series of double cones. [Illustration Southwell Central Tower & N Transept] The _Transepts_ are beautiful specimens of the work of Norman builders, and are full of interest. Originally there were apsidal chapels on the east side of both transepts. One has been destroyed, but the arch which connected it with the church can be seen in the wall, with its zigzag and cable mouldings. The Norman chapel on the east of the north transept has been replaced by a Late Early English building which will repay careful study. There were formerly two altars here, as the piscinæ and aumbreys show. The old Norman arch is replaced by two pointed arches of unequal width. The windows are later insertions, and belong to the Decorated period. There is an upper storey, formerly the treasury, now the library. The chapel has been recently restored, and is a most interesting architectural study. Returning to the north transept we see a curious tympanum over the belfry doorway, with strange carving representing the teaching of Psalm xci. 13: "The lion and the dragon shalt Thou tread under Thy feet." Other interpretations are given of this subject, but this is the one usually accepted by scholars. It is also said by some to be Saxon, but this is incorrect. There is a very similar sculpture in the church of Charney Bassett, Berks. Here is the fine alabaster tomb of Archbishop Sandys (d. 1588). He is represented in his episcopal robes, and the details of his dress are important, as they show what the vestments of a bishop really were in the time of Elizabeth, a point often disputed by English Churchmen of to-day. The east arch of the central tower has some curious sculptured capitals hidden by the organ which belong to the twelfth century. Beginning on the south side, the subjects are lamb and dove, Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, Nativity or Resurrection, Last Supper, bishop saying Mass, the Blessed Trinity, and the Virgin and Child. A stone _Screen_ of rich Decorated work separates the transept from the choir, over which is now the organ (a modern instrument). The screen is richly ornamented, and a noble specimen of the work of the period. There are three arches opening to the space beneath the tower, separated by slight piers of clustered shafts, the capitals carved with foliage of a Late Decorated character. The walls of the screen support the old rood-loft, access to which is gained by two staircases. Entering the _Choir_ we see on each side of the doorway three prebendal stalls with _misereres_, on which are carved some foliage. The bishop's stall was once occupied by Cardinal Wolsey. The choir, as we have said, was built by Archbishop Grey in Early English style (1230-1250). There are six arches, with piers of eight clustered shafts. The dog-tooth moulding is conspicuous in the arches, and on the vaulting of the roof. It will be noticed that the triforium and clerestory are blended together. The east window consists of two rows of lancets, the lower ones containing old glass brought from Paris in 1815, where it was formerly in the Chapel of the Knights Templar. The Baptism of our Lord; Raising of Lazarus (Francis I. is to be seen in a crimson cap); Christ entering Jerusalem (Luther is near our Lord, Louis XI. and the Duke of Orleans); the Mocking of our Lord (the figure of Dante appears). The _Sedilia_ were erected in 1350, and are good Decorated work. They have the unusual number of five seats on the same level. The arches are ogee-shaped, and are richly carved. The sculptured figures are remarkable, and represent the Creation and the Redemption. Beginning at the east we see the Father holding the world (two groups uncertain), Joseph's Dream, the Nativity and Flight into Egypt. The _Lectern_ belonged to the monks of Newstead Abbey, who threw it into the lake to hide it from the commissioners of Henry VIII. Its date is about 1500. The choir aisles had several altars, as we see from the piscinæ and aumbreys which are left. We will now visit the _Chapter-House_, and pass through the vestibule which leads to it, entering by a beautiful doorway in the north aisle. The transition between the Early English work of the choir and the Decorated style of the chapter-house is very gradual. The doorway, with its two arches and shafts of Purbeck marble, is remarkably fine. There is a small cloister court, with a stone-covered well. In the vestibule we see the walls covered with beautiful arcading of lancet arches of an Early English character. The capitals are beautifully carved with foliage. There is a curious boss of sculpture representing a secular priest shaking the regular monk by his hair, which figuratively depicts the supremacy of the former in the church of Southwell. The _Chapter-House_ (1285-1300) is described by Ruskin as "the gem of English architecture," and all architects agree in singing the praises of this noble building. It much resembles that of York, but is smaller and perhaps more beautiful. It is octagonal, has no central pillar, and is remarkable for its fine sculpture. The historian of Southwell says: "The foliage everywhere is most beautiful: the oak, the vine, the maple, the white-thorn, the rose, with a vast variety of other plants, are sculptured with exquisite freedom and delicacy; and no two capitals or bosses or spandrels are found alike. Everywhere we meet, in ever-changing and ever-charming variety, with some fresh object of interest and admiration. Figures are introduced amid the foliage, heads with branches issuing out of their mouths, birds and lizard-like monsters. In the capitals a man reclines beneath a tree, puffing lustily at a horn, or a goat is gnawing the leaves, or a bird pecking the berries, or a pair of pigs are grunting up the acorns, or a brace of hounds just grabbing a hare. All this is the work of no mere chiseller of stone, but of a consummate artist; than whom it may be doubted whether any sculptor, of any age or country, ever produced anything more life-like and exquisitely graceful." The entrance doorway is remarkably fine and is worthy of close study. The main arch is divided into two by a slender shaft, and over them is a quatrefoiled circle, of beautiful design. The leaf ornament is largely used, both in the smaller arches and in the main arch. Filleted rounds and hollows are the other mouldings used. Southwell once contained the shrine of a Saxon saint--St. Eadburgh, Abbess of Repton (d. 714). "The Pilgrim's guide to the Saints of England" (a MS. in the British Museum, written in 1013) states that "the shrine of St. Eadburgh is still at Southwell," but no trace of it can now be found. There are several incised monumental slabs in the minster which have been cut and set in the floor. There is a Latin inscription to the memory of William Thorton, a chorister of the church, and the humble epitaph of William Talbot, who was a shining light in his day and died 1497, is of pathetic interest:-- "Here lies William Talbot, wretched and unworthy priest, awaiting the resurrection of the dead under the sign of the Cross." [My thanks are due to the kindness of Archdeacon Richardson, Rector of Southwell Minster, for his kindness in explaining to me the interesting features of his church. I am also indebted to the works of Mr. Dimock, Mr. Livett and Mrs. Trebeck for much valuable information.] DIMENSIONS Length, 306 ft.; breadth, 61 ft.; length of transept, 123 ft.; height of central tower, 105 ft.; height of west towers and spires, 150 ft. PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL The towns and cities of England owe their origin to various causes. Some arose around the walls of great castles, some as trading centres or harbours, some clustered around the palace of a bishop, and others sheltered themselves beneath the shadow of a monastery. Peterborough, or Medeshamstede, is of this last class. It is a monastic town, and owes its existence to the great fenland Monastery of St. Peter, the minster church of which is now this beautiful Cathedral. Peada, the son of Panda, King of Mercia, first founded a monastery here in 654, of which Saxulph was the first abbot. The Pagan Danes came in 870 with fire and sword, and wrought fearful havoc in all this region, burning the holy house of Medeshamstede, and slaughtering the monks. For a hundred years the monastery lay in ruins; then came the religious revival under the rule of Dunstan and King Edgar. Monastic houses increased in number greatly, and Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester began to rebuild the waste places of the ruined Saxon Medeshamstede, and constructed a minster, some foundations of which still remain. The Abbey flourished for nearly a century, but sad misfortunes befell. Hereward the Wake, the hero of Kingsley's story, the gallant "last of the English," was making his last brave stand against William the Norman, and in conjunction with the Danes attacked the Abbey, and wrought much destruction. Fires and robbers were also occasionally dread visitants, and at last, in the time of Henry I., a great fire destroyed the whole buildings. The then abbot was John de Sais, who set to work immediately to erect a new monastery. This was in 1117. Then was begun the glorious minster which is the pride and glory of the fenlands. Subsequent abbots continued the work. Abbots Martin de Vecti and William de Waterville completed the transepts and tower and part of the nave, which was finished by Abbot Benedict (1177-1193). There is a striking uniformity of design throughout all this Norman work, which shows that the builders followed one plan, and imitated the work of their predecessors. The western transept, however, shows evidences of the coming change, and when we come to the beautiful west front we find unmistakable Early English work. This part was probably finished in 1238, in the time of Abbot Walter of St. Edmunds, when the church was dedicated by Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln. Abbot Robert de Lindsay, who liked not the windows of his monastery "stuffed with straw" to keep out wind and rain, filled many of them with glass, and built the lavatory in the cloister. Gradually the erection of the monastic buildings was being completed, and refectory and infirmary added, and Prior Parys built the Lady Chapel and one of the steeples at the close of the thirteenth century, which also saw the removal of the Norman windows from the aisles and the substitution of Early Decorated ones. This was a time of much splendour and magnificence for the Abbey, when Godfrey was abbot, and King Edward often visited it and received aid for his Scottish wars. This Godfrey built the large gateway. A century later the abbot was endowed with the privilege of a mitre, and thus took his seat in the House of Peers; and during this fourteenth century the lantern tower was erected with an octagon framed of wood, the triforium windows changed into the Decorated style, and the west front improved by the erection of the spire and the central porch. During the fifteenth century we hear sad complaints of the relaxation of the discipline of the monks, who too often frequented taverns and "the vulgar company of dancers and ballad singers." Abbot Kirton was a notable man, who built, or rather finished, "that goodly building at the east end of the church, now commonly known by the name of the new building," begun by his predecessor Ashton; and his rebus--a _kirk_ and a _tun_--appears on the grand gate, now leading to the Deanery. At this time several Norman windows were filled with Perpendicular tracery. We see Cardinal Wolsey visiting the Abbey, and on Maundy Thursday washing the feet of poor persons, and the luckless Catherine of Arragon being buried here in 1535. Then came the dissolution of monasteries, and Peterborough shared the fate of the rest. Whether it was on account of the subservience of the abbot, or because it contained the ashes of his queen, Henry VIII. spared the church, and made it a Cathedral, the last abbot being the first bishop. The burial of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 is the next historical event which was here witnessed. We can imagine the scene of the torchlight procession bearing the executed body of the frail but fair queen into the church, and the last solemn obsequies of that sad and stormy life. Cromwell's soldiers "did after their kind," and Dean Patrick tells us of "the rifling and defacing" that ensued:-- "The next day after their arrival, early in the morning, they break open the church doors, pull down the organs, of which there were two pair. "Then the souldiers enter the quire, and their first business was to tear in pieces all the common-prayer books that could be found. The great bible indeed, that lay upon a brass eagle for reading the lessons, had the good hap to escape with the loss only of the apocrypha. "Next they break down all the seats, stalls and wainscot that was behind them, being adorned with several historical passages out of the old testament. "When they had thus defaced and spoilt the quire, they march up next to the east end of the church, and there break and cut in pieces, and afterwards burn the rails that were about the communion table. The table itself was thrown down, the table-cloth taken away, with two fair books in velvet covers; the one a bible, the other a common-prayer book, with a silver bason gilt, and a pair of silver candlesticks beside. But upon request made to Colonel Hubbert, the books, bason and all else, save the candlesticks, were restored again. "Now behind the communion table there stood a curious piece of stone-work, admired much by strangers and travellers: a stately skreen it was, well wrought, painted and gilt, which rose up as high almost as the roof of the church, in a row of three lofty spires, with other lesser spires growing out of each of them. This now had no imagery work upon it, or anything else that might justly give offence, and yet because it bore the name of the high altar, was pulled all down with ropes, lay'd low and level with the ground. "Over this place, in the roof of the church, in a large oval yet to be seen, was the picture of Our Saviour seated on a throne; one hand erected, and holding a globe in the other, attended with the four evangelists and saints on each side, with crowns in their hands, intended, I suppose, for a representation of Our Saviour's coming to judgment. This was defaced and spoilt by the discharge of muskets. "Then they rob and rifle the tombs, and violate the monuments of the dead. First then they demolish Queen Katherin's tomb: they break down the rails that enclosed the place, and take away the black velvet pall which covered the herse: overthrow the herse itself, displace the gravestone that lay over her body, and have left nothing now remaining of that tomb, but only a monument of their own shame and villany. What did remain [of the herse of Mary Queen of Scots] that is, her royal arms and escutcheons which hung upon a pillar near the place where she had been interr'd, were most rudely pulled down, defaced and torn. "In the north isle of the church there was a stately tomb in memory of Bishop Dove, who had been thirty years bishop of the place. He lay there in portraicture in his episcopal robes, on a large bed under a fair table of black marble, with a library of books about him. These men soon destroy'd all the tomb. "The like they do to two other monuments standing in that isle. "In a place then called the new building, and since converted to a library, there was a fair monument, which Sir Humphrey Orm (to save his heir that charge and trouble), thought fit to erect in his own life time, where he and his lady, his son and wife and all their children were lively represented in statues, under which were certain English verses written:-- "_Mistake not, Reader, I thee crave, This is an Altar not a Grave, Where fire raked up in Ashes lyes, And hearts are made the Sacrifice, &c._ "Which two words, altar and sacrifice, 'tis said, did so provoke and kindle the zealots' indignation, that they resolve to make the tomb itself a sacrifice: and with axes, poleaxes, and hammers, destroy and break down all that curious monument, save only two pilasters still remaining, which shew and testifie the elegancy of the rest of the work. "When they had thus demolished the chief monuments, at length the very gravestones and marbles on the floor did not escape their sacrilegious hands. For where there was any thing on them of sculptures or inscriptions in brass, these they force and tear off. "Having thus done their work on the floor below, they are now at leisure to look up to the windows above. "Now the windows of this church were very fair, being adorned and beautified with several historical passages out of scripture and ecclesiastical story; such were those in the body of the church, in the isles, in the new building, and elsewhere. But the cloister windows were most famed of all, for their great art and pleasing variety. One side of the quadrangle containing the history of the Old Testament; another, that of the new; a third, the founding and founders of the church; a fourth, all the kings of England downwards from the first Saxon king. All which notwithstanding were most shamefully broken and destroyed. Yea, to encourage them the more in this trade of breaking and battering windows down, Cromwell himself, (as 'twas reported,) espying a little crucifix in a window aloft, which none perhaps before had scarce observed, gets a ladder, and breaks it down zealously with his own hand. "But before I conclude the narrative, I must not forget to tell, how they likewise broke open the chapter-house, ransack'd the records, broke the seals, tore the writings in pieces, specially such as had great seals annexed unto them, which they took or mistook rather for the popes' bulls. "Thus, in a short time, a fair and goodly structure was quite stript of all its ornamental beauty, and made a ruthful spectacle, a very chaos of desolation and confusion, nothing scarce remaining but only bare walls, broken seats, and shatter'd windows on every side. "Many fair buildings adjoyning to the minster, were likewise pulled down and sold by publick order and authority, such were the cloysters, the old chapter-house, the library, the bishop's hall and chapel at the end of it: the hall was as fair a room as most in England; and another call'd the green-chamber, not much inferior to it. These all were then pull'd down and destroyed; and the materials, lead, timber and stone exposed to sale, for any that would buy them. But some of the bargains proved not very prosperous; the lead especially that came off the palace was as fatal as the gold of Tholouse; for to my knowledge, the merchant that bought it, lost it all, and the ship which carried it, in her voyage to Holland." [Illustration Peterborough Cathedral] And thus the church continued for some time ruined and desolate. A relative of Cromwell, Oliver St. John, was granted the possession of it, and converted it into a parish church. The Lady Chapel was pulled down in order to obtain material for repairing the main building; the painted boards of the ceiling they found useful for making the backs for the choir. At the Restoration Dean Cosin was recalled, and since that time many alterations and much reparation have been undertaken, though often with more zeal than good taste. Dean Tarrant (1764-1791) collected the fragments of stained glass, and placed them together in two windows at the east end. Dean Kipling removed the octagon, and erected four hideous turrets, which no longer disfigure the tower. Dean Monk (1822-1830) did much for the Cathedral, though little of his work remains. Since then the tower has been rebuilt (finished in 1886), much internal decoration added, and the west front rendered secure. Much controversy has raged about the restoration of this west front. Experts on both sides have expressed divers opinions, the relative merits of which it is difficult to decide. Certainly to take down a building stone by stone and rebuild it again is not legitimate restoration. But whether it was possible to make the north gable secure without this drastic treatment it is for experts to decide, and it is presumptuous for others to express an opinion or attempt to arbitrate when these experts puzzle us with the variety of their judgments. THE EXTERIOR We enter the precincts by the western gateway, built by Abbot Benedict in Norman style, but subsequently altered at the end of the fourteenth century. There is a Late Decorated arch, and two arcades of the same date built over the Norman wall; but the Norman arcades proclaim its ancient origin. The upper room was the home of the Peterborough branch of the Spalding "Society of Gentlemen," who advanced learning and published papers at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Previously it was the Chapel of St. Nicholas. On the left of the close is an old building, also erected by Benedict, the remains of the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The old Grammar School, founded by Henry VIII., utilised the building until recent years. The style of the present building is Decorated. Immediately before us we see the noble _West Front_, "the pride and glory of Peterborough," the finest portico in Europe. With the exception of the porch, the style is pure Early English. On the north and south are two lofty turrets, flanked at the angles with clustered shafts and crowned with spires. Between these are three pointed arches, supported by clustered shafts, six on each side, with floriated capitals. The central arch is narrower than the rest, but its mouldings are ornamented with crockets and dog-tooth. A string-course runs along the top of the arches, and the spandrels have trefoils, quatrefoils and niches with statues. Above the string-course is a series of trefoiled arches, some of which have statues. Between the three gables are pinnacles much ornamented. The gables have circular windows of beautiful design and a cross at the apex; they are ornamented with dog-tooth and have niches with statues--St. Peter in the centre, with SS. John and Andrew on either side. The turrets on the north and south have six stages panelled with arches. The spires are good examples of the difference between those of the Early Decorated and Perpendicular periods. The south spire is connected with the pinnacles of the tower by clustered pinnacles springing from an arch; these are decorated with crockets, and the spire belongs to the early fourteenth century; whereas the spire on the north has no such connection, and is Early Perpendicular. We now notice the _Porch_ with parvise over it. This was built late in the fourteenth century in order to give additional strength to the west front and act as a kind of buttress to the piers of the central arch. The design is very beautiful. The entrance has an obtuse arch, and above a Perpendicular window with elliptical arch. Buttresses empanelled with niches stand on each side. It has a stone vault of good design. One boss is curious, representing the Trinity. The attitude of the Saviour shows that the figure was designed by a freemason, and bears witness to the antiquity of that fraternity. The parvise is now a library. A Late Perpendicular gateway at the north-east, erected by Abbot Kirton, whose rebus appears over the side door, leads to the Deanery. It has a Tudor arch, with the arms of the see in spandrels, and is ornamented with Tudor rose and portcullis, and Prince of Wales's feathers. Here is the old burial-ground, and a fine view of the Cathedral is obtained from the north-east. The Norman character of the building is evident, though there have been many changes. The Norman windows in the clerestory have been filled with Perpendicular tracery. The low Norman aisles have been raised, the windows taken out and replaced by thirteenth-century substitutes in the lowest range and by Decorated ones in the triforium. Below this the old Norman arcade remains. A good Norman door, called the Dean's Door, is in the centre of this north wall. An Early English parapet crowns the aisle walls, and a Decorated one surmounts the clerestory, which is continued in the _North Transept_, where similar alterations have taken place, and Perpendicular tracery inserted in Norman windows. The central _Tower_ was rebuilt in 1884. The necessity for continued rebuilding and restoration at Peterborough is much to be deplored. Probably the cause is the draining of the fens, which makes the clay to contract and thus produces insecure foundations. It has some good windows. We have already recorded the history of the previous structures. As much of the old work as possible was preserved in the rebuilding of the present tower. Walking around the church we come to the east of transept, where formerly stood the Lady Chapel, pulled down at the Restoration by the townspeople, and its materials sold in order to provide funds for restoring the church after Puritan destruction. Notice the marks of the gable of Lady Chapel in the transept wall. The thirteenth-century builders pierced the Norman wall with lancets. The east end of Peterborough is rather peculiar. There remains the old Norman apse, with Decorated windows inserted, and this is surrounded by what is called the _New Building_, though it is 400 years old, formed by extending the walls of the choir and building a square end to the Cathedral. This was erected by Abbot Kirton. His work possesses the best features of Perpendicular style. It is richly ornamented, and when we examine his work we cannot say that the glories of Gothic achievement had quite departed. We see the twelve buttresses, each terminated with a seated figure, usually said to be one of the Apostles. On the south-east of the Cathedral are the ruins of the infirmary of the monks, always a pleasant place in a monastery. It is a thirteenth-century building, and consisted of a hall, with aisles and a chancel. The aisles were used as cells or couches for the sick monks, and the religious services of the infirmary were performed in the chancel. On the south are the remains of the monastery. Only the south and west walls of the cloister court remain. There is a good thirteenth-century doorway and Perpendicular lavatory. The south view of the Cathedral is very fine. Passing through the cloisters, which once echoed with the tread of the monks, or saw them poring over their tomes and writing their beautiful MSS., we retrace our steps to the west front and so enter the Cathedral. THE INTERIOR As we enter we notice the distinctive character of the Norman work of which this Cathedral is a notable and excellent example. In the extreme west there is a blending of the two styles of Norman and Early English, but the monks of Peterborough clung tenaciously to their old ideas and to Norman and Romanesque models, and right up to the end of the twelfth century built in this style, not from any desire to imitate the work of their predecessors (as some writers assert) but from an obstinate adherence to conservative tradition. Even when the glorious tide of English Gothic was rising, and they could no longer resist the flood, they clung to the old zigzag mouldings. It is evident from the construction of the third column that they intended to end their church there; but happily the thirteenth-century brethren decided to rear the noble twin-towered front and the perfect portico. Some of the later columns show Transition work; on one side we see a Norman base or capital, on the other an Early English. There is a grand uninterrupted view of the whole length of the Cathedral from west to east. It will be observed that the tower arch is Decorated, and this adds to the beauty of this view. Before leaving the west we notice some dog-tooth carved in wood, which is somewhat rare. The south end of this west transept is the baptistry, the font of which has a thirteenth-century bowl. The north end is now used as a vestry. The west window has Perpendicular tracery. [Illustration NORTH-WEST TRANSEPT] The nave has ten bays with Norman arches; the triforium has likewise Norman arches, but each of these has two sub-arches. The windows of the clerestory have Perpendicular tracery. The _Ceiling_ is intensely interesting, and is original Norman work. It has various figures within lozenge-shaped medallions, viz.:--Agnus Dei, SS. Peter, Paul, Edward the Martyr, Edward the Confessor, Moses, and other kings, archbishops, bishops and allegorical and grotesque figures. As we have seen from the exterior, the walls of the aisles have been raised, and later windows inserted. The roofs of the aisles were vaulted by Norman builders. The visitor may discover for himself some mason marks in the south aisle. As at Norwich the _Choir_ begins with the two east bays of the nave, which was the original arrangement, and not unusual in Benedictine minsters, and extends over the space under the tower, and besides the apse occupies four bays east of the tower. The gates are good modern iron-work. The erection of a screen is in contemplation. Two pillars have been placed in position; but the scheme presents difficulties which have not yet been solved. The piers are alternately round or polygonal. This portion was the earliest part of the Cathedral, and was constructed by Abbot de Sais (1114-1125). The hatchet moulding is conspicuous. The triforium arches are double, like the nave, and the clerestory has triple arches, the centre one being the highest. The apse is particularly fine. The Decorated style is evident in the windows, which were inserted in the fourteenth century instead of the old Norman ones, and the hanging tracery of graceful design was then added. The roof of the choir is late fourteenth-century work except at the east end where the roof is flat. Here Cromwell's soldiers discharged their muskets at the figure of our Lord in glory, which they deemed to be an idol. This ceiling was decorated in 1884 by Sir Gilbert Scott. The bosses of the rest of the roof are curious. Nearly all the old glass was destroyed in the Puritan desecration; the remaining fragments have been placed in the two highest east windows. The fittings of the choir are modern, except an ancient lectern of fifteenth-century date given by Abbot Ramsay and Prior Malden, as the inscription testifies, though it is now scarcely legible. The choir stalls are remarkably fine, and as the carved figures contain a history of the Cathedral written in wood, it may be well to record their names. We will begin with the dean's stall and proceed eastward:-- 1. St. Peter, the Patron Saint. 2. Saxulph (656), first Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. 3. Adulph (971), Abbot Chancellor to King Edgar, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York. 4. Kenulph (992), Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. 5. Leofric (1057), Abbot. 6. Turold (1069), Abbot, appointed by William the Conqueror. 7. Ernulph (1107), Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. 8. Martin de Vecti or Bec (1133), Abbot. During his time the choir and transept aisles were finished, and solemnly dedicated. 9. Benedict (1175), Abbot, Keeper of the Great Seal for Richard I. He built the greater part, if not all, of the nave. 10. Martin de Ramsey (1226), Abbot. 11. John de Caleto or Calais (1249), Abbot, one of the King's Justices. He built the infirmary, and probably the refectory and part of the cloisters. 12. Richard de London (1274), Abbot. He built the north-western tower. 13. Adam de Boothby (1321), Abbot. 14. William Genge (1296), first mitred Abbot. 15. Richard Ashton (1438), Abbot. 16. Robert Kirton (1496), Abbot. He built the Deanery Gateway, and the new building; his rebus, a church on a tun, carved in stone, is to be seen on most of his work. 17. John Towers (1638), Bishop, previously Dean. 18. Thomas White (1685), Bishop. He was one of the seven bishops committed by James II.; and also one of the seven non-juring bishops. 19. William Connor Magee (1868), Bishop, afterwards Archbishop of York. 20. Simon Patrick (1679), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, and finally of Ely. 21. Augustus Page Saunders (1853), Dean. 22. John James Stewart Perowne (1878), Dean, afterwards Bishop of Worcester. The upper figures on the north side represent the following:-- 1. Peada (655), King of Mercia, founder of the monastery. 2. Cuthbald (675), second Abbot. 3. King Edgar and his Queen. 4. Ethelfleda. 5. Brando (1066), Abbot. 6. Hereward, the Saxon Patriot (1070), nephew of Abbot Brando, and knighted by him. 7. John de Sais (1114), Abbot. He commenced the building of the existing choir. 8. Hedda (d. 870), Abbot murdered by Danes. 9. Robert de Lindsay (1214), Abbot, with model of west front. 10. Godfrey of Crowland (1299), Abbot. Gateway. 11. William Ramsay (1471), Abbot. 12. William Parys (1286), Prior, builder of Lady Chapel. 13. St. Giles, with hart. 14. Hugo Candidus, historian of Abbey. 15. Henry de Overton (1361), Abbot. 16. Queen Catherine of Arragon. 17. Dean Cosin, afterwards Bishop of Durham. 18. Simon Gunton (1546), historian of the church. 19. Herbert March (1819), Bishop. 20. George Davys (1839), Bishop. 21. Dean Monk, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 22. Dean Argles (1891). Much history is also contained in the carvings of the pulpit and bishop's throne. The altar has a marble canopy over it, which is a magnificent piece of work, but perhaps hardly suitable for its position. The mosaic pavement is remarkably fine. We now pass into the _Choir Aisles_, which have Norman vaulted roofs, and formerly had apsidal ends, but these were removed when Abbots Ashton and Kirton built the _New Building_ or square end to the church, or perhaps earlier, as there are some aumbreys and double piscinæ of the thirteenth century, and also on the south wall some painted shields and a scroll border of the same date. The windows are later insertions as in the nave. Traces of the old entrance to the destroyed Lady Chapel may be seen in the north wall. We have noticed the building of the ambulatory called the New Building from the exterior of excellent Perpendicular work. Perhaps the most striking features of the interior is the fan-tracery of the roof, the curious bosses, the rebuses of the two Abbots Ashton and Kirton, and the monuments. The principal ones in the choir and aisles are a modern memorial stone of Catherine of Arragon (the old tomb was destroyed by the Puritans, of which fragments have been discovered); the tablet in memory of Mary Queen of Scots; Archbishop Magee's marble monument; Sir Humprey Orme's mutilated tomb; several abbots' tombs and tablets to bishops; Late Saxon tombs of two Archbishops of York, and the famous Monks' Stone which popular tradition associates with the massacre of the Peterborough monks by the Danes in 870. Recent investigators have assigned a later date, and attribute it to Norman work, but we are inclined to favour the Saxon theory. We will now visit the _Transepts_, which are of Norman character. Norman fish-scale ornament and cable and saw-tooth mouldings are plentiful. In both north and south transepts there is an eastern aisle separated by pillars and forming several chapels, which are divided off by Perpendicular screens. The Morning Chapel occupies the aisle of the north transept, formerly the Chapels of SS. John and James, and here is preserved two pieces of old Flemish tapestry, and portions of the old nave screen, and ancient tiles. In this transept are some interesting Saxon coffin lids. In the south transept are the Chapels of SS. Oswald and Benedict. In the former the relics were kept. Here Abbot Sutton's heart was buried. The window is modern. A pre-Reformation inscription is carved round the edge of a stone much worn by time. The old chapter-house, now a music-room, is on the west of this transept. It is Late Norman. A Perpendicular doorway has been inserted here instead of the old Norman door. A very interesting discovery was made here during the alterations a few years ago, and that is the remains of the actual original Saxon church which was sacked by the Danes, rebuilt by Bishop Ethelwold and visited by King Edgar and Dunstan, and then destroyed by fire. Evidences of this destruction were not wanting when the discovery was made. The east wall of the chancel stood just where the piers of the aisle of the transept stand. The church was cruciform. This discovery is of great interest and importance. Old Scarlett's memory must not be forgotten, the aged sexton, who lived ninety-eight years, and buried two queens in the Cathedral, dying in 1594. The painting is a copy of the original made in 1747. The well-known rhymes beneath are:-- "You see old Scarlett's picture stand on hie, But at your feet there doth his body lye; His gravestone doth his age and death-time show, His office by these tokens you may know. Second to none for strength and sturdye limm, A scarbabe mighty voice, with visage grim, He had inter'd two queens within this place And this towne's householders in his live's space Twice over; but at length his own turne came, What he for others did for him the same Was done; no doubt his soul doth live for aye In heaven: though here his body clad in clay." DIMENSIONS Total length of interior 426 ft. Nave, length 228 ft. Nave, width 35 ft. Transept, length 185 ft. Transept, width 58 ft. Height of interior 78 ft. Area 41,090 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1117-1193)--Choir, transepts, central tower (rebuilt in 1886), nave, ceiling of nave, chapter-house. Early English (1214-1295)--West front, font, infirmary, refectory and part of cloisters, north-west tower, windows and parapet in aisles of nave. Decorated (1299-1400)--Large gateway, west porch, roof of choir, south-west choir, parapet of clerestory, inserted windows. Perpendicular (1400-1528)--New building, north-west spire, north-east gateway, Perpendicular tracery in windows, and west window. [Illustration PLAN OF PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL] ELY CATHEDRAL Ely is one of the monastic towns of England, and owes its existence to the famous church and monastery which were built here in Early Saxon days. The patriotic monkish chronicler of Ely, who compiled the _Liber Eliensis_, wishing to add glory to his church, states that in 607 St. Augustine founded a church at Cratendune, a mile south of the present site. The first monastery on the Isle of Ely was founded by St. Etheldreda, daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles. She received the Isle of Ely as her dowry from her first husband, an Earldorman of the South Girvii or Fenmen, and when she married Egfrid, afterwards King of Northumbria, feeling the call to a religious life, she left her court and retired to the lonely isle, and there founded a monastery, of which she was the abbess. As was not unusual at that time, the house was a double one, for both monks and nuns. St. Wilfrid assisted her considerably in carrying out her plans, but no fragment of this early church and monastery remains. The saintly queen died in 679, and was buried in the nuns' resting-place. Some years later her body, placed in a marble sarcophagus, was translated to the Saxon church. In 870 the isle was ravaged by the Danes, who destroyed the church and monastery, slaying both monks and nuns, plundering the town, and returned loaded with the spoils of the pillaged island. Some of the monks who escaped returned to their ruined house, and King Alfred is said to have confirmed them in their possessions. King Edgar, by the advice of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, reorganised the monastery under the Benedictine rule, restored to it all its lands, and made Brihtnoth the first abbot. The Norman Conquest brought many troubles to the Isle of Ely. The monks espoused the cause of Hereward, "the last of the English," the hero of Charles Kingsley's romance, and here he made his last great stand against the Norman invaders; but the monks "did after their kind," and surrendered to the Conqueror in 1071. Little harm was done to the monastic buildings by the warriors of either side, and twelve years later the building of the present Cathedral was begun by Abbot Simeon, brother of Walkelin, Bishop of Winchester. He commenced with the transepts, some parts of which still declare themselves to be his work. Abbot Richard (1100-1107) continued the building, and finished the east end, where the body of St. Etheldreda was conveyed and reburied before the high altar. Ely was now raised to the dignity of a bishopric, the revenues of the abbot being used for the endowment of the see, and henceforth the prior was the head of the monastery. The building of the church proceeded gradually. The nave was growing by degrees during the twelfth century, and Bishop Riddell (1174-1189), by his energy, did much towards its completion and that of the great west tower. The isle was much disturbed during the troublous time of Stephen's reign, and the bishop took the part of the enemies of the king, who exacted heavy fines from the prelate and his monks. Bishop Eustace (1198-1215) accomplished much, and erected the beautiful Galilee Porch. In 1235 the building of the noble presbytery was begun by Bishop Northwold (1229-1254), and here, in the presence of King Henry III. and his court, the shrines of the founders and of three other abbesses were removed, and the whole church in ground plan completed as we see it to-day. [Illustration ARM OF ABBOT'S CHAIR] Having finished their church, the monks turned their attention to their domestic buildings, and to the Lady Chapel, which stands here in an unusual position. It was erected by Alan de Walsingham (the sub-prior) in 1321, and finished in 1349. In 1322 a sad calamity happened--the central tower fell, and caused much destruction. But the catastrophe called forth the constructive genius of Alan de Walsingham, a prince among architects, who built the beautiful octagon and lantern tower, which add so much grace and beauty to the building. The superb Lady Chapel, with its marvellous sculptured work, the sub-structure of St. Etheldreda's shrine, and Prior Crauden's Chapel--a perfect gem of beauty and originality--are all Alan de Walsingham's work. The monks elected this great builder Bishop of Ely, but the Pope refused to ratify the election. He is admirably described on his tomb as the _Flos Operatorum_, or "flower of craftsmen." [Illustration WEST TOWER FROM DEANERY GARDENS] In this period Decorated windows were inserted in the triforium of the presbytery, the outside walls being raised for this purpose, and flying buttresses added. The Cathedral then appeared externally much as we see it to-day. The Perpendicular style finds few examples in Ely except in some of the smaller chapels and one or two windows. [Illustration The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Lady Chapel.] At the Reformation the monastery shared the fate of similar institutions, and a dean and chapter were appointed. The fact that the bishop occupied the place of the abbot of the monastery is observable in the position of the bishop's seat, which is south of the entrance to the choir. He has not a throne, which most bishops have in their cathedrals. Ely was spared much destruction in the Civil War. The Parliamentarians pulled down some of the cloisters, and broke a few windows, but the Cathedral fared better than most others at the hands of Cromwell. It has suffered, however, from the fancies of "restorers." In 1770 the ritual choir, with the stalls, was moved from under the octagon to the extreme east end, to be again moved to its present position in 1847. About the same time the massive Norman stone screen, which for eight centuries had stood across the nave, was ruthlessly destroyed, and the roof of the upper hall of the Galilee Porch removed, and the western opening of the tower arch filled with a modern window. Wyatt's destructive hand was only just restrained from working further mischief, though some authorities make him responsible for the removal of the screen and the destruction of the roof of the Galilee. A vast amount of money has during the last century been spent upon the fabric, and happily the restorers have been, in the main, governed by good taste and sounder architectural knowledge than that of their destructive predecessors. THE EXTERIOR As you ascend the hill from the station you will undoubtedly be struck by the external appearance of this magnificent pile. Professor Freeman remarked that the first glimpse of Ely overwhelmed us, not only by its stateliness and variety of outline, but by its utter strangeness and unlikeness to anything else. Its huge western tower, its beautiful but curious central octagon, are quite peculiar, and the general view, especially from the north-west, is extremely fine, and can never be forgotten. We will begin our survey, as usual, with the _West Front_, which has been much altered, but remains a very imposing structure. It will be noticed that the north side differs from the south, and either was never completed or fell into decay. They both belong to the Late Norman or Transitional period. The _Galilee Porch_ is a perfect gem of exquisite architecture. It has been pronounced "the most gorgeous porch of this style in existence, combining the most elegant general forms with the richest detail." The style is Early English, and is the work of Bishop Eustace (1198-1215), who was ordered by the Pope to excommunicate King John, and had to fly from England in consequence. It will be seen that this porch is one of the earliest examples of good Early English work, and for its excellence and perfection rivals the choir at Lincoln. There is a profusion of dog-tooth ornament. The doorways are most graceful. The main arch is divided into two cinquefoiled sub-arches, separated by a slender shaft, and in the head there is very beautiful tracery. The walls are covered with arcading, of lancet-shaped arches cinquefoiled. In the interior there is a beautiful double arcading, similar to that which we have seen at Lincoln. [Illustration ELY CATHEDRAL FROM SOUTH-EAST] The _West Tower_ is earlier than the porch, and its lower stages are Transition Norman. The upper stages are Early English, except the highest octagonal stage, which is Decorated. Bishops Riddell and Northwold were the builders of earlier stages, and the octagonal summit was built during the bishopric of John Fordham (1388-1425). This magnificent tower has been a source of continual anxiety to the monks and masons of Ely, on account of the great weight of the superstructure, and continual repairs and strengthening operations have been needed. [Illustration THE OCTAGON AND LANTERN FROM NORTH-WEST] The _North Side_ of the nave preserves its Norman character, but Perpendicular windows with ogee arches have been inserted. Formerly the Church of St. Cross stood on this side, erected by Walsingham, but it fell into decay and was pulled down in 1566. We can still see the walled-up door in the north wall of the Cathedral which led to this parish church. Norman mouldings (such as the billet) may be seen round the arches of the windows in the clerestory. The curious and beautiful _Octagon_ is a striking feature of Ely. It consists of an eight-sided tower crowned with an octagonal lantern, the dimensions of which are much smaller than those of the tower which supports it. Decorated windows of large size occupy the sides facing north-west, north-east, south-west and south-east, which are narrower than the other sides. Turrets crowned with pinnacles stand at each corner of the lower tower, and quadrangular turrets at each corner of the lantern, which is made of wood. The whole has been recently restored with the greatest possible success. The _North Transept_ is Norman. Some Perpendicular and Decorated windows have been inserted, and the north-west corner, which fell in 1699, was rebuilt by the builder of St. Paul's, London, Sir Christopher Wren, who inserted the Renaissance door in the north side. The _Lady Chapel_ has been pronounced to be one of the finest specimens of Decorated architecture in the kingdom. It is the work of Walsingham, and was finished in 1349. The east and west windows are later insertions, but belong to the same century. The building is oblong, and is enriched with much beautiful carving; niches destitute of figures appear in the buttresses, and at the east and west ends. The tracery of the side windows should be noticed. The _Presbytery_ is fine Early English work, built by Bishop Northwold (1229-1254), and has been scarcely altered by succeeding builders. The windows are double lancets in each bay, and in the clerestory three lancets under an arch, the centre one higher than the others. The arrangement of the east end is as follows:--In the lower stage three tall lancets with dog-tooth moulding, above them five lancets of unequal height, and in the gable three lancets of the same height. Buttresses carved with niches stand on each side, and flying buttresses springing from the side buttresses support the roof. Alterations have been made in the triforium in order to increase the light in the church. The _South Transept_ is Norman, with some later windows inserted. Notice the curious Perpendicular window on the south side. The _Cloister Court_ was on the south side of the church, but was destroyed by the Commissioners of Cromwell. Two doorways are remarkable, named the _Monks' Door_ and _Prior's Door_, both Late Norman work, and enriched with much carving. The tympanum over the Prior's Door contains a representation of our Lord in glory. THE INTERIOR We now enter the church at the west end, and are struck by the noble character of this magnificent Norman work. It consists of twelve bays (there were thirteen before the central tower fell). The two eastern bays were finished by Abbot Richard (1100-1107), and the rest completed by Bishop Riddell (1147-1189). The earlier character of the five bays nearer the central tower is discoverable. The ceiling was painted forty years ago by Mr. le Strange and Mr. Gambier Parry, whose artistic work can also be seen at Gloucester. The subjects are the Creation, the Fall, Noah Sacrificing, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob's Dream, Marriage of Ruth, Jesse, David, Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Shepherds and Magi, the Lord in Glory. We see also representations of the patriarchs and prophets, and in the medallions at the sides the heads of the human ancestors of our Lord. The west window was inserted at the close of the eighteenth century and filled with modern glass (when the roof of the upper hall of the porch was removed), thus effectively blocking the view of the three great lancets, 40 feet further west, through which, up to that time, the setting sun must day by day, through so many centuries, have flooded the nave with its evening light. [Illustration ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL] At the west end, under the tower, we notice the strengthening of the original pillars with additional Perpendicular work. The arches of the tower, though Norman, are pointed, showing that they were erected at the end of that period, and the richness of ornament and detail of the southern portion of the west transept bears out the same conclusion. _St. Catherine's Chapel_ is in the south corner, rebuilt in the old style, and the font is modern. The _Nave Aisles_ have arcades of Norman arches, and the chevron moulding appears about them in several parts where it has not been cut away. In the south aisle is an interesting memorial of Ovin, the steward of St. Etheldreda, which has been recovered from a neighbouring village. It is part of a cross, with the inscription on the base--"_Lucem tuam Ovino da Deus et requiem. Amen._" (O God, give light and rest to Ovin. Amen). The _Octagon_ would require a volume adequately to record its many beauties and perfections. We have already described its construction. It is pronounced by all architects as the gem of the Cathedral, and one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. The vault is of wood, and a remarkable series of paintings appears on the boarding. The Crucifixion and the Apostles are here represented. Large corbels have sculptured scenes of the life of St. Etheldreda. The vault has been painted by Mr. Gambier Parry. [Illustration IN SOUTH AISLE OF NAVE LOOKING TO NORTH TRANSEPT] The _Transepts_ were the portions of the church first begun by Abbot Simeon when he first commenced the present Norman Cathedral. The lower part of the walls and part of the triforium were built by him and finished by Abbot Richard (1100-1107). The arcading in the south transept is Transitional, and the upper windows Late Decorated. [Illustration CARROL IN CLOISTER] Perpendicular windows have been inserted in the north transept. There are three chapels at the east of the north transept, one of which bears the name of St. Edmund, and is divided off by a wooden screen of the middle of the fourteenth century. The east aisle of the south transept is walled off and used as the library, and the west as the vestry. A modern oak screen of graceful design, replacing a massive Norman screen ruthlessly destroyed in 1760, separates the octagon from the _Choir_, which we now enter. It will be remembered that the central tower fell and carried away three bays of the choir. Hence the work of these bays is later than the more eastern portion forming the presbytery, which was built by Bishop Northwold (1229-1254) in Early English style. The choir was erected by Bishop Hotham (1316-1337), and is a noble specimen of Decorated work. Between the choir and presbytery are fine Norman piers of the earlier choir. On the bosses of the roof we see figures of St. Etheldreda and the Virgin. The east wall is pierced by lancet windows, which are grouped in a most perfect manner. The stalls are splendid examples of Decorated work, and the _misereres_ have some curious grotesques. The fifty carved panels of scenes from the Old and New Testament are by Abeloos of Louvain, a modern wood-carver. The lectern is modern, and also the reredos. Of this eastern part Freeman says:--"Nowhere can we better study the boldly clustered marble pier with its detached shafts, the richly foliated capitals with their round abaci, the yet richer corbels which bear up the marble vaulting shafts, the bold and deeply cut mouldings of every arch great and small. Lovelier detail was surely never wrought by the hand of man." On each side of the presbytery are some ancient monuments of especial interest. On the south side, beginning at the west, we see Bishop William de Louth (1298), a fine tomb of Early Decorated character; Bishop Barnet (1373), translated from Bath and Wells (the effigy has been lost); Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, with his two wives, one of whom was the sister of "the King-maker," Earl of Warwick (this earl was one of the victims of Edward IV., and lost his head in 1470. He was a great patron of learning and art, and Fuller exclaims, "The axe did at one blow cut off more learning than was left in the heads of all the surviving nobility"); Bishop Hotham (1337), much mutilated. On the opposite side are the monuments of--Bishop Northwold (1254), which affords a good illustration of the ecclesiastical dress of the period (at the foot of the tomb is an interesting representation of the martyrdom of King Edmund, who shared the fate of St. Sebastian. Northwold was abbot of St. Edmundsbury before he came to Ely, hence the origin of the carving); a shrine, believed to be that of St. Etheldreda, of Decorated design, probably constructed by Walsingham about 1340; Bishop Kilkenny (1286), who died in Spain, his heart being buried here; Bishop Redman (1505), a fine Perpendicular structure. At the end of the north aisle is the chantry of Bishop Alcock (1500), a fine Perpendicular work in good preservation, though the figures which once adorned it were destroyed at the Reformation. He founded Jesus College, Cambridge, and built Ely Palace. On the east is the inscription, "_Johannes Alkoc Epus Eliensis hanc fabriciam fieri fecit 1488_." In this aisle are the supposed arm of Northwold's chair, which he brought from his abbey (the sculpture represents the wolf with St. Edmund's head in his paws), and the tombs of Bishop Marson (1771), Bishop Patrick (1707), and Basevi, architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. In the retro-choir are the monuments of Bishop Allen (1845), Canon Fardell (1819), Cardinal Louis de Luxembourg, Bishop, 1444, and an early muniment chest. At the east end of the south aisle is Bishop West's chantry (1534), a beautiful chapel in the Late Perpendicular and Renaissance style. The carving is very elaborate, with delicate tracery. This Bishop was the champion and chaplain of Catherine of Arragon, Henry VIII.'s queen. Above his tomb, in seven small niches, are deposited the bones of six Saxon bishops and of Earl Bryhtnoth, killed by the Danes in 991, who exclaimed when he died, "God of Nations, I thank Thee for all the joy I have had in life." Here are the tombs of Bishops Woodford (1885), Sparke (1836), Keene (1781). In the south aisle are--an ancient gravestone of Norman date, representing Michael carrying to heaven the soul of a bishop, with the inscription, "_St. Michael oret pro me_"; Bishop Hotham (1337), Canon Selwyn (1875), Dean Steward (1557), last prior and first dean of Ely; Bishop Gunning (1684), author of _The Prayer for All Conditions of Men_; Bishop Goodrich (1554), a zealous reformer, destroyer of images and shrines, compiler of "Duties to God and Neighbour," in the _Catechism_; Bishop Heton (1609), Dean Tyndall (1614), and other monuments. The _Lady Chapel_ is a superb structure, with its beautiful sculptured work, one of the finest specimens of Decorated architecture in the kingdom in spite of the cruel mutilation to which it was subjected at the Reformation. It was completed in 1349, but the east window is a little later and shows evidence of the approach of the Perpendicular period. An arcade of sculptured canopies runs round the walls, of extremely delicate carving. The mythical history of the Virgin and of Julian the Apostate appear in the spandrels, and the bosses of the roof have some sculptured figures representing the Crucifixion, Ascension, Annunciation, the Virgin crowned, the Virgin and Elizabeth, and some which cannot be distinguished. * * * * * [My thanks are due to the Dean of Ely for his kind assistance in interpreting the history of the Cathedral which he knows and loves so well.] DIMENSIONS Total length 517 ft. Length of nave 230 ft. Breadth of nave 78 ft. Height of vault 70 ft. Length of transept 190 ft. Diameter of octagon 65 ft. Height of west tower 215 ft. Area 46,000 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES 1083-1189--Transepts, nave, lower stages of tower, monks' and prior's doorways. 1189-1254--Galilee porch, presbytery, upper stages of tower. 1316-1349--Lady chapel, octagon, choir, windows of triforium of presbytery, buttresses, Prior Crauden's Chapel, stalls. 1388-1534--Highest stage of tower, chapel and some windows. 1699--North-west corner of north transept and doorway. [Illustration PLAN OF ELY CATHEDRAL] NORWICH CATHEDRAL Norwich, the capital of East Anglia, is a delightful city, beautifully situated on the winding Wensum and full of the charm of the associations of mediæval times. The hill on which the castle stands carries our thoughts back to Saxon days, to King Uffa in the sixth century. Saxon, Dane and Norman held sway here. It was also the city of the Dutch. The cruelties of Alva sent Flemings and Walloons, who came with their silks and threads and worsteds and implements, and made the textile manufactures the glory and fortune of the county. Here kings kept their Christmas feasts, and in no less royal fashion did the old Dukes of Norfolk, when Norwich was the gayest of episcopal cities. Very independent were the turbulent burghers, who often contended with the monks and bishops for rights and privileges, as when in 1272 they quarrelled over the tolls of a fair, and sacked the Cathedral, and in 1549 when Kett the tanner raised his formidable rebellion, which was with difficulty subdued. Few cities can rival Norwich in the interest of its associations and the treasures of antiquity which here abound. THE CATHEDRAL--ITS HISTORY The See of Norwich was created in Norman times, Dunwich, Elmham and Thetford having previously been the episcopal seats. In the time of Rufus there was a general transference of bishoprics to the larger towns, in accordance with a decree of a church synod, hence in 1094 Norwich had the honour conferred on it by Bishop Herbert de Losinga, who two years later commenced his Cathedral. This bishop obtained his preferment by simony, and it is said built the church in expiation of his crime. Beginning at the east end "he finished the church as far as the altar of St. William,"[19] which was on the north side of the present screen. This included the choir and transepts with the two chapels and two bays of the nave. His successor, Bishop Eborard, finished the nave. Herbert built also a Bishop's Palace, and a monastery of Benedictine monks was attached to the Cathedral. A curious scene was witnessed here in 1144 when a number of Jews were tried for the ritual murder of the boy saint, St. William of Norwich, in Thorpe Wood, whom they cruelly tortured. The houses of the Jews were plundered, and in memory of the miracle-working boy a chapel was built on the scene of his murder, and a shrine erected in the Cathedral. Fire played its usual destructive part here, as elsewhere, in 1171, and the church was repaired and perfected by Bishop John of Oxford in 1197. In the Early English period there seems to have been little progress, except the building of the Lady Chapel at the east end by Walter de Suffield (1244-1257), which was destroyed in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The entrance only remains. Very stormy times befell the Cathedral at the end of the thirteenth century. The city was sacked by the revolting barons in 1266, and a few years later a dispute arose between the citizens and the prior about the right of tolls to a fair held in the Tombland at Whitsuntide, which were of much profit to the monastery. It was the same story which is told of many towns, the quarrels of the burghers and the ecclesiastics. In 1272 the disputants fell to blows, and some of the citizens were slain. They arrested some of the men of the monastery for murder, and an interdict was hurled by the prior against them. Moreover, he imported three barges-full of mercenaries who plundered the burghers' houses and killed and wounded many. Reprisals followed. The citizens stormed the Priory and Cathedral, routed and slew the monks and their mercenaries, set fire to the buildings, and pillaged the church. Such violence against the Church was then unheard of, and dire punishment was inflicted on the citizens of Norwich. The Pope excommunicated them, Henry III. deprived them of their liberties, and ordered 3000 marks to be paid towards the restoration of the Cathedral. New gates and gatehouses were erected by order of the Pope in order to prevent the renewal of such sacrilege, and St. Ethelbert's Gate was built at the close of the thirteenth century to guard the precincts. History concludes that the violence of the fierce prior was the main cause of the trouble, and not the obstinacy of the people. The work of restoration was immediately begun and the church reconsecrated in 1278 in the presence of King Edward I. and his queen and a grand assembly of bishops, knights and nobles, when Bishop Middleton was raised to the see. His successor, Bishop Ralph de Walpole, began to rebuild the cloisters, which were continued by Bishop Salmon, and form some of the largest and most beautiful in the country. Their style is mainly Decorated, but there is some Perpendicular work constructed in Bishop Wakering's time, who was a great persecutor of the Lollards (1416-1425). The chapter-house was erected by Walpole. In the time of Edward IV. troubles sore oppressed the diocese. Bishop Anthony, who was of a violent and imperious spirit, rendered himself very obnoxious to the monks, and was poisoned by his servants, and six years later the Black Death is said to have carried off 50,000 inhabitants. This was in the time of Bishop Bateman, buried at Avignon, a mighty prelate who compelled the powerful Lord Morley to do penance in the Cathedral for killing the bishop's deer. The lofty spire was blown down by a fierce hurricane in 1361, and rebuilt by Bishop Percy, who rebuilt also the clerestory. His successor, Henry de Despencer, was a very warlike prelate, who ruled with an iron hand. He crushed the revolting peasants in 1381, and fought in the Netherlands for Pope Urban VI. against the adherents of his rival, Clement. The vicissitudes of prelates were great in those days; both he and his successor, Totington, were imprisoned by the king. Bishop Alnwick (1426-1449) began to alter the west front, and Bishop Lyhart put in the large west window and built the rood-screen and vaulted the nave. During the rule of Bishop Browne (1436-1445) the quarrel between the burghers and the monks again broke out, and the former besieged the monastery, for which conduct the king deprived them of their rights and liberties. A fire occurred in 1463, caused by lightning striking the spire, and did much damage to the presbytery, which was restored by Bishop Goldwell (1472-1499), who also finished the spire. Fire again did much damage in 1509 during the rule of Bishop Nykke or Nix (1501-1536), whose reputation was not so unblemished as his name (_snow_). The transept roof was destroyed, which Nykke rebuilt in stone. The dissolution of monasteries soon followed in 1538, and Norwich shared the fate of the rest. The Cathedral foundation was renewed, the last prior being made the first dean. The church suffered from the usual acts of spoliation and desecration at the hands of the Commissioners of Edward VI. and the Puritans. Dean Gardiner (1573-1589) destroyed the chapter-house and the beautiful Lady Chapel. Bishop Hall (1641-1656) thus alludes to the misdeeds of the Puritans:-- "It is tragical to relate the furious sacrilege committed under the authority of Lindsey, Tofts the sheriff, and Greenwood; what clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what tearing down of monuments, what pulling down of seats, and wresting out of irons and brass from the windows and graves; what defacing of arms, what demolishing of curious stone-work, that had not any representation in the world but the cost of the founder and the skill of the mason; what piping on the destroyed organ pipes; vestments, both copes and surplices, together with the leaden cross, which had been newly sawn down from over the green yard pulpit, and the singing books and service books were carried to the fire in the public market place; a lewd wretch walking before the train, in his cope, trailing in the dirt, with a service book in his hand, imitating in an impious scorn the tune, and usurping the words of the Litany; the ordnance being discharged on the guild day, the cathedral was filled with musketeers, drinking and tobaccoing, as freely as if it had turned ale-house." The citizens joined eagerly in the work of spoliation and burned in the open market, by order of the court of assembly, "Moses and Aaron, and four Evangelists that came from the Cathedral, and some other superstitious pictures." The Restoration of the Monarchy caused the restoration of the Cathedral. A new organ and church plate were presented, and since that time much restoration has taken place, which has greatly enhanced the glory and beauty of this ancient House of God. THE EXTERIOR We enter the Cathedral precincts by the Erpingham Gate, built by Sir Thomas Erpingham, a knight who fought at Agincourt, and is mentioned by Shakespeare (_Henry V._, Act IV). The style is Early Perpendicular. Notice the figures of saints in the arch moulding, the donor's kneeling figure in the niche above the arch, his arms and those of his two wives on the buttresses, and the word _Yenk_ (think) on the shafts. The other gates are that of St. Ethelbert, Early Decorated, much restored, built by the citizens in expiation of their sacrilege in 1272, and the Bishop's Gate leading to the Palace, built by Bishop Alnwyck in Early Perpendicular style. [Illustration EXTERIOR VIEW OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL] Entering by the Erpingham Gate, on the left is the Grammar School, formerly the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, founded by Bishop Salmon in 1315. Below was a charnel-house, now used as a gymnasium. The porch was added by Lyhart at the end of the fifteenth century. Here Nelson was educated, and George Borrow and many other distinguished men. The _West Front_, in spite of its noble window, is far from being a satisfactory compilation. The injudicious restoration of 1875 has had much to do with this. Portions of the original Norman work remain in a great part of the wall, two side doors, arcades and windows above. The main doorway was erected by Bishop Alnwyck, who seems to have cased the old Norman with Perpendicular work--an arch of the old work was uncovered by Dean Goulburn. The same bishop left money for the great Perpendicular window of nine lights, which was erected by Bishop Lyhart. We can see the result of perverse modern restoration by comparing the present front with those shown in earlier illustrations, and discover that the towers flanking the great window have been cut down and shorn of their cupolas, and also the turrets at the extreme north and south have suffered a like deprivation, and some inelegant pinnacles erected instead, while the battlemented parapet has been removed, and some ridiculous little round windows inserted. Certainly the efforts of modern architects have not been crowned with success. The best view of the long nave is obtained from the upper close, or from the cloister garth. The wall is divided into three storeys. Behind the cloisters some late windows have been inserted in the aisle. Above the cloisters we see a Norman arcade with Norman windows over it, which have been blocked up; above them a row of Perpendicular windows, with a battlemented parapet, and above this a row of Norman windows, and parapet added later. Two Perpendicular windows were inserted at the west end by Bishop Nykke. Norman buttresses divide the windows. The north side resembles the south, and is enclosed by the bishop's garden. The south transept is Norman, but it has been recased with new stone, and pyramid caps set on the turrets in imitation of Norman work, instead of some Perpendicular turrets which these replaced. Why will architects and restorers thus destroy the history of a building written in stone by trying to imitate what they imagine to have been the original form? On the east is the dean's vestry, formerly a chapel. The chapter-house and ancient slype have been destroyed, also an apse-shaped chapel on the east side of the south transept. The _Choir_ in its lower storeys resembles the nave, with its Norman arcade, windows, and inserted Perpendicular windows, but it has a lofty clerestory of Late Decorated style supported by flying buttresses, erected by Bishop Percy, when the fall of the spire destroyed the old Norman clerestory. Carved figures surmount the summits of the exterior buttresses. There are projecting Chapels of St. Mary-the-Less (Decorated), St. Luke and the Jesus Chapel (Norman).[20] The Lady Chapel was destroyed by iconoclastic Dean Gardiner, as we have mentioned, who regarded Lady Chapels as relics of Popery. The north front is very similar to the south, and needs no separate description. The chief glory of Norwich is its _Tower_ and _Spire_. The tower is a very fine example of Norman work. At the four corners are noble Norman buttresses, crowned with crocketed pinnacles, added in Early Perpendicular times, when the fall of the old wooden spire had carried away the original Norman ones. On the surface of each wall are three Norman arcades, and in the upper and lower three of the arches have been pierced with windows, and above are two rows of small circular windows. The spire is Perpendicular work, erected by Bishops Lyhart and Goldwell towards the end of the fifteenth century. May it long escape the fate of its predecessors, one of which was blown down in 1361, and the other struck by lightning, on each occasion causing considerable damage to the church. The _Bishop's Palace_ is on the north, founded by Bishop Herbert, but subsequent alterations have left little of the original structure. Some of the original vaulting is in the basement, and the ruin in the garden is the remains of the great hall built by Bishop Salmon in 1318. In the chapel are monuments to Bishop Reynolds (1661-1676) and Bishop Sparrow, a learned divine, who assisted in the revision of the Prayer Book in 1661. There was a curious open-air pulpit, with a cross over it, somewhat similar to Paul's Cross in London, on the north, in what was known as Green Yard. Galleries were erected around it, and good accommodation provided for the mayor and his officers, with their ladies, who came in summer time to hear the sermons. THE INTERIOR The view of the nave from the west end is magnificent. A long vista of Norman arches, and beautiful expanse of vaulted lierne roofing, is most impressive. A fine screen, with organ above it, prevents a full view of the whole interior, but this detracts nothing from the grandeur of the view. The nave has fourteen piers on each side, divided into seven bays, two arches to each bay. The lower arches, and those in the triforium, are about equal. Each pier has several shafts attached. A lofty shaft runs up the face of the main arch to support the roof. The zigzag and billet mouldings will be observed on the arches. The clerestory is Norman, and has triple arches. The first Norman prelate, Herbert, built the nave as far as the two most eastern bays, and his successor, Eborard, finished it. The old Norman roof was destroyed by fire in 1463, when Bishop Lyhart, who loved to display his punning rebus, a stag lying in water, erected the lierne stone vaulted roof, which is a noble specimen of its kind. The bosses are very interesting, and contain a full epitome of Bible history from the Creation to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and include the terrors of Hades and the Final Judgment. One boss is absent, and through the hole in the roof it is conjectured that on Whitsunday a white pigeon was released and a burning censer swung, as an eyewitness testifies to a similar representation in old St. Paul's. There is a somewhat similar custom in Florence at the present time. [Illustration A Bay N side of Nave.] We notice in the west the large window erected by Lyhart, with modern glass, and the Norman arch over the door. The north aisle has Decorated windows inserted in the Norman walls. A reconstruction of the roof was made in the fifteenth century, when the walls were raised and Perpendicular windows added, and the slope of the roof changed into one much less steep. The _South Aisle_ differs little from the north. In the centre was Bishop Nykke's Chapel, which he devised for himself, to perpetuate a not very desirable memory. Here we have Late Perpendicular work in the vaulting and windows. Few monuments or brasses escaped the destructive hands of the Puritans. In the aisles there are a few--the altar tomb of Sir T. Wyndham and four wives; Dean Prideaux (d. 1724), a distinguished divine, the author of _The Connection between the Old and New Testament_, Sir John Hobart, Attorney-General to Henry VII. (1507); Bishop Parkhurst (1574). The _Choir_ occupies the space between the two last arches of the nave, being shut off from it by an interesting stone _Screen_. The lower part of this structure is ancient, having been erected by Bishop Lyhart in Perpendicular style. The upper portion was added about 1830. Two altars stood near the central door, one dedicated to the boy saint of Norwich, St. William, slain by the Jews. The scanty remains of these altars mark the site of two chapels, over which were the rood-loft and organ, destroyed by the iconoclastic Puritans, whose sacrilege and abominable riotings have been already mentioned in the records left us by Bishop Hall. At the Restoration Dean Croft endeavoured to remedy the result of their evil deeds, and fashioned a new organ which, with additions and improvements, remains and stands over the screen. Modern taste has removed some of the obstructions erected in times when the ideas of beauty and fitness were defective, and the alterations and improvements of the east end were not concluded till a few years ago. The stalls are very good Perpendicular work, fashioned at the time when the art of wood-carving had attained its highest development. The _misereres_ are specially worthy of examination. The old popular legend is often repeated concerning them, that if one of the monks fell asleep during service, and caused the bench to fall, he was condemned to severe penance. This idea has no foundation in fact, as the raised seat was designed, as its name implies, out of _pity_ for the infirmities of the brethren, and not for any idea of punishment. The bishop's throne and pulpit are modern, and the lectern is good Decorated work. The presbytery was damaged on two occasions by the fall of the tower, and these accidents obliged subsequent repairs and alterations, which were constructed in the style then in use. Hence we have blended with the old Norman work the Decorated clerestory of Bishop Percy (1355-1369), and the Perpendicular roof of Bishop Goldwell, erected a century later. The lower arches were altered by the same bishop into the Perpendicular style, and his name is preserved in the canting rebus--gold and a well. The old Norman triforium remains. The vaulting of the roof is curious. Between each pair of clerestory windows is a niche, and from the heads of these spring the ribs, which form a beautiful example of lierne vaulting. The eastern termination is the original Norman apse, built by Bishop Herbert. The old bishop's throne is particularly interesting, chiefly from its position in the centre of the apse, with the presbyters' seats on each side. This idea was probably derived from Rome, where this position was not uncommon, though unusual in this country. The bishop's throne at Torcelli is a well-known example of this use. The present altar is modern, and also the present floor, designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield. [Illustration Ancient Bishop's Throne] The following are the principal _Monuments_:-- A slab marks the resting place of Bishop Herbert, the founder; Goldwell's Chantry and tomb; Bishop Wakering's tomb (d. 1425); Bishop Overall (d. 1619); Sir W. Boleyn (d. 1505). The _North Transept_, built by Herbert, has good Norman arcading, and a vault erected by Nykke. The clerestory resembles the nave. There was at the east an apsidal chapel dedicated to St. Anne, but it is now closed and used for baser purposes. A processional path runs round the presbytery. On the north side is a curious bridge, which was connected with the Reliquary Chapel, now destroyed, situated on the exterior of the church. This bridge was an ante-chapel to that in which the relics were stored, and is adorned with mural paintings. Probably relics were exhibited here for the worship of the pilgrims, who went in procession along the path below. [Illustration Bridge North Aisle of Presbytery.] The curiously-shaped _Chapels_--the _Jesus_ and _St. Luke's_--with their Norman arcading are next seen. In the former there is some mural painting much restored--a facsimile of the ancient picture--and over the chapel is a museum. The latter is a parish church for the precincts. The windows are sham Norman, having been inserted in the last century. There is a mutilated font of fifteenth century, carved with Crucifixion and Seven Sacraments. Above it is the treasury. Here is a curious oil painting accidentally discovered by Professor Willis, which was part of a reredos, converted into a table after the Puritan outbreak. It is sometimes attributed to an Italian artist of 1370, but there is no reason to suppose that it was not the production of genuine English art of that period. Even Dean Stanley attributes the Eleanor bronze to an Italian, Torel, and Professor Freeman calls De Noyer of Lincoln a "crazy Frenchman," and others ascribe the Exeter chancel-screen to French workmen. This error of attributing pure English work to foreign artists has caused a very unjust depreciation of the skill and genius of our native craftsmen. The subjects of these paintings are the last scenes of our Lord's life. Other mural paintings are:--On ceiling of sacrist's room of late thirteenth century--subjects: Virgin, SS. Catherine, Margaret, Andrew, Peter, Paul, and Richard of Chichester. On south wall of south aisle--SS. Wulstan, Edward the Confessor, and others. The Lady Chapel has been destroyed, as we have said, by Dean Gardiner in Elizabeth's reign, but happily the doorway remains, the only part of the Cathedral of Early English workmanship. The profusion of the dog-tooth ornament is evident. The doorway is formed of a double arch, with clustered shafts, and was built, together with the Lady Chapel, about the middle of the thirteenth century by Bishop Walter de Suffield. Stone was brought from Caen and Barnack for the purpose. The destruction of these Lady Chapels was a sign of the decay in the worship of the Virgin, which was so extensively followed in mediæval times. There is another chapel on the south; that of St. Mary-the-Less, now used as the consistory court, built by one Bauchun in the fourteenth century. An ecclesiastical lawyer, Seckington, added the groined roof in the fifteenth century. The altar has been displaced by a doorway. The sculptured bosses represent the legendary history of the Virgin. We enter the _South Transept_ by a Tudor doorway, over which is some rich open screen work of fifteenth-century design, under the original Norman arch. This transept, built by Herbert, is fine Norman work, with good arcading, the vault being added by Bishop Nykke. This transept has the oldest coloured glass in the Cathedral, a copy of Raphael's Ascension, erected by Dean Lloyd in 1790. Here we see the following _Monuments_:-- Bishop Bathurst (d. 1837), by Chantrey; and memorial tablets to East Anglian heroes who fell in China and Afghanistan. The _Cloisters_ are extremely interesting and beautiful. We enter them by the Prior's Door, a fine Decorated work, having four columns on each side, with archivolt mouldings, in front of which are seven canopied niches, with richly-sculptured crockets, containing figures. The Norman cloisters, probably constructed of wood, were destroyed in 1272, at the time of the citizens' revolt. The east walk was rebuilt by Bishop Walpole (1289-1299) in Early Decorated style. His successor, Bishop Salmon, built the south walk, the windows of which show a great advance in the same style, the windows having flowing tracery. The west walk has also Late Decorated work, and the north walk has at the east end an Early Decorated window, at the west end two Late Decorated, while the other five are Perpendicular in their tracery. This part was finished by Bishop Alnwyck (1426-1436). The slype and chapter-house have both been destroyed. The usual plan of Benedictine monasteries was followed here. The dormitory was on the east side, the refectory on the south, with entrance at south-west corner, and near to this is the monks' lavatory, the kitchen being further west. Carved figures representing the Temptation of Adam and Eve are above this door leading to the refectory. The locutory or parlour of the monks was on the west side of the cloisters and the hospitium, and from this walk the _Monks' Door_ leads us back to the Cathedral. The bosses are extremely interesting. In the east walk the subjects are foliage, the four Evangelists, the Scourging, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, and Nebuchadnezzar eating grass. In the south and west, scenes from the Book of the Revelation of St. John; and in the north, legends of the saints--Christopher, Laurence (being burnt on a gridiron); the dancing of Herodias's daughter before Herod, which represents her as tumbling rather than dancing, in accordance with the usual conceptions of mediæval artists. DIMENSIONS Length of church 407 ft. Nave length 252 ft. Nave to choir-screen 204 ft. Width of nave 72 ft. Height of roof 95 ft. Height of spire (from ground) 315 ft. Height of tower 140 ft. Height of spire from tower 174 ft. Area 34,800 sq. ft. OBJECTS OF INTEREST IN NORWICH The _Castle_, of which I have already written. _Guild Hall_, parts of which were built in 1407, and contains much that is interesting--portraits of Norwich worthies, regalia, etc. _St. Andrew's Hall_, once the Church of the Dominicans, in Perpendicular style, which has passed through many vicissitudes, and has some good pictures. Norwich abounds in interesting churches-- St. John of Timberhill--Norman font, squint; parvise, principally Decorated. All Saints--fine Perpendicular font. St. Michael-at-Thorn--Norman doorway, curious registers. St. Peter, Mancroft; St. Gregory, Pottergate; St. Giles, St. Helen's, St. John the Baptist, St. Michael-at-Plea. The Stranger's Hall is well worthy of a visit, and Norwich abounds in objects of the greatest interest. The old "Maid's Head" hotel is one of the most ancient and interesting hostels in the kingdom. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Norman (1091-1145)--Choir, transept with chapels, nave and tower. Early English (1244-1257)--Door of Lady Chapel. (1278-1299)--Ethelbert's gate, east walk of cloisters. Decorated (1299-1369)--Chapter-house and cloisters, clerestory of presbytery, Chapel of St. Mary-the-Less, some windows. Perpendicular (1420-1538)--West front altered, Erpingham Gate, presbytery restored, vault of nave and transepts, spire, screen, stalls, some windows, Bishop's Gate. (1573-1859)--Chapter-house and Lady Chapel destroyed. [Illustration PLAN OF NORWICH CATHEDRAL] FOOTNOTES: [19] _Registrum Primum._ [20] The restorers have been very busy here, and most of the windows are imitations of Norman work. ST. ALBAN'S CATHEDRAL St. Albans, the ancient Verulam, is one of the most ancient towns in England, and is replete with historical associations. It was the home of the British chieftain Cassivellaunus before the Romans came. Boadicea killed many of the people for loving the Romans; and soon came Christianity, and then the record of the slaying of St. Alban, Britain's proto-martyr. It was during the Diocletian persecution that Alban sheltered a deacon named Amphibalus from the fury of the oppressors, and was himself converted to the Christian faith. Alban enabled his guest to escape, and was himself seized and slain, many miracles taking place at his execution. Offa founded a monastery here in 793, near his manor-house--of which the earthworks remain--and dedicated it to the saint, finding the remains of the martyr, which he placed in a reliquary and deposited in the church. The monks introduced here were Benedictine, of which order this was the chief house in the kingdom. The town increased, and Ulsi, the sixth abbot, founded the three churches of SS. Peter, Michael, and Stephen. We need not dwell on the records of Saxon abbots, many of whom were of Royal descent. When the Normans came, Paul of Caen, a relative of Lanfranc, was made abbot in 1077, and rebuilt the church, using the Roman town of Verulam as a quarry. He found much material collected by the last two Saxon abbots, who intended to build a new church, but were prevented by the troubles of the time. The large amount of Roman tiles used in the construction of the building is apparent. Much of his work remains in the eastern portion of the nave and in the tower and transepts. The church was dedicated during the rule of Abbot Richard D'Aubeny, in the presence of the king, Henry I., his court, and a goodly number of bishops, in 1115, and a little later we read of the relics of the saint being deposited in a beautiful shrine and conveyed to a place of honour in the minster. One Ralph de Gobion, seventeenth abbot, plundered the shrine in order to increase the territorial possessions of the Abbey, but his successor, Robert de Gorham (1151-1167), restored the shrine, and built anew some of the monastic buildings. This monastery had the high honour of producing the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspeare, who was a monk here, and who, in the time of his prosperity, forgot not his early monastic home. The noble west front that once adorned this church, ruined by modern "restoration," was begun by Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214), but the troubles of John's reign prevented him from finishing it. His work was continued by William de Trumpington (1214-1235), who placed a lantern on the tower and rebuilt the west end of the nave. St. Alban's was fortunate in having a historian among its monks. Matthew Paris lived here, and died in 1259. He tells us much in his chronicles about the Abbey he loved so well, of royal visits, of dread plagues, and of the abbots who ruled here. Here came Edward I. on his way to Scotland, here his queen's body lay on its last sad journey, and here one of the Eleanor crosses was raised--alas! now destroyed. There was here a famous school of chroniclers, who did much for the history of England, and amongst them were Roger of Wendover, Matthew of Westminster, Thomas of Walsingham, and many others. A great work was begun in 1256 by Abbot John de Hertford (1235-1260), the successor of Trumpington, and this was the rebuilding and extension of the eastern arm. The apsidal termination was removed, the aisles lengthened two bays, a square-ended central chapel placed at the end, and the Lady Chapel begun. The work lasted until almost the end of the century, and is pronounced to be the most perfect example of the art of the age. A terrible disaster befell the Abbey in the rule of Hugh de Eversden (1308-1326). A great part of the south aisle gave way, two piers, with triforium and clerestory roof and south wall, being involved in a mighty ruin. The abbot set to work to restore the church; he built in the Decorated style, and finished also the Lady Chapel. The usual disputes between the monks and townsfolk raged at St. Albans, as in most places where there was a powerful abbot and a growing town. In Eversden's time the lordly abbot was compelled by the king to give way, but his successor regained all his power over the town. He was a wonderful man, this Richard de Wallingford (1326-1335), who made a marvellous astronomical clock, and could manage to tell the ways of the stars and the course of the sun as easily as he could manage the people of St. Albans. But all disputes did not cease for many a long year, and frequently the abbot's servants and the townsfolk came to blows. The work of restoring the south aisle progressed, and was finished by Abbot Mentmore (1335-1349), who also repaired the north walk of the cloister, damaged by the fall of the adjoining aisle. Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349-1396) was the son of a noble house, and a favourite of Edward III. After Poictiers the French King John was brought here, and kept as an honourable prisoner, and afterwards expressed his gratitude to the courtly abbot for his care. Edward III. granted leave to the abbot to fortify his monastery, and walls and gates were much needed a few years later when Wat Tyler and his rebels besieged it and frightened the abbot and caused much damage. The rebels suffered here later when the king came, and some he hanged. Then was the Great Gate, with its prisons and vaults, constructed, which still stands, mightily convincing of the power of the abbot. Nor did he forget his church. He paved all the west part at great cost, and spent large sums on the services. The abbot, John de la Moote (1396-1401), took some part in dethroning Richard II., and it is said that the conspiracy was hatched at the abbot's dinner-table. Here they brought as a prisoner the Bishop of Carlisle, who stoutly defended Richard at Westminster. The rivalry of the Houses of York and Lancaster brought trouble to St. Albans. Here was fought the first battle, and here, in the house of a tanner, Henry VI. was found and conveyed to London. The second battle of St. Albans was fought here in 1461, when the king's party were victorious, and the Abbey was the scene of a great thanksgiving service. Great privileges were granted to the Abbey by Edward IV. Several alterations were made in Perpendicular times. The walls of the nave aisles were lowered and their roofs flattened, so that the backs of the Norman triforia were exposed, and their openings made into windows. Several Perpendicular windows were also inserted. St. Albans played a great part in the introduction of printing, and a press was set up in the Abbey. The earliest book printed here was in 1480, and many other incunabula came from this renowned press. The era of the Reformation is at hand. Cardinal Wolsey was abbot here in 1521. The fate of the monastery was doomed. In 1539 it was surrendered to the king by his creature Abbot Boreman, and the manors, goods and possessions were soon seized by the courtiers. Much damage was done in the church; of course, the beautiful shrines were destroyed. The Abbey church and buildings were granted to Sir Richard Lee, who soon began to uproot and destroy. The cloisters were levelled to the ground. Abbot Boreman did good service in buying the site of the monastery from Sir R. Lee. Then the townsfolk did nobly. They bought the church from the Crown, and made it the Parish Church of St. Andrew, and moreover established a Grammar School in the Lady Chapel. The eastern ante-chapel was walled up, and a public passage made across the church west of the Lady Chapel. The knives of the schoolboys improved not the ancient stone-work of this once beautiful building. Various attempts have been made in successive ages to keep this Abbey in repair. In 1832 and 1856 much was accomplished, and the story of the reparation of 1870 under Sir G. Scott tells of the triumphs of the skill of modern builders, and their bravery and resolution in saving the fall of the great tower. This mighty mass began to give way, and the architect discovered that some dastard attempt had been made to destroy it, after the dissolution of the monastery, by digging a great hole under one of the piers. The greatest credit is due to all concerned in the hazardous and most difficult task of saving the falling tower. The Grammar School was removed from the Lady Chapel, and much done to restore the building to its ancient beauty. In 1871 it was raised to the dignity of a Cathedral; and surely no church more worthily deserved this honour. In quite recent times injudicious "restoration" has wrought terrible mischief. The west front has been entirely modernised, and much else has been "restored" beyond all knowledge of English Gothic art; but, in spite of all this, St. Albans remains one of the most interesting buildings in the kingdom, and one can only regret that time has dealt so hardly with this venerable pile. [Illustration S^t Albans from the N W] THE EXTERIOR As we approach the Cathedral from the south we get a fine view and notice the great length of the building, its great central tower, and large amount of Roman tiles used in the construction. These tiles are 1-1/2 inches thick and measure 16 inches by 12. In addition much flint is used. The piers, arches, towers and staircases are mainly composed of tiles. Originally the building was covered with cement, which has almost entirely disappeared. Its plan is that of a Latin Cross, and originally there were no less than seven parallel apses, all of which have disappeared. The grand _Tower_ is Norman. Formerly there were turrets at the four angles, and in the thirteenth century an octagonal lantern was added; but these have disappeared, and the tower is very much the same as it was in Norman times. The embattled parapet is recent. The _West Front_ creates sad reflections, and words are powerless to convey a sufficiently strong protest against the evils which have been wrought by the injudicious though well-meaning efforts of modern restorers. The original Norman west front was removed by Abbot John de Cella (1195-1214), who began to erect a new one. It was a magnificent intention, but it was too ambitious for the resources of the monastery, and the levies of Richard I. for his crusading exploits, and the confiscations of John, were too much for the abbot, and put a stop to his enterprise. He intended to build two western towers, but got no further than the foundations. The front would have been 160 feet in width, 40 feet wider than Salisbury. Abbot William de Trumpington proceeded to finish the work, and rebuilt five bays on the south side of the nave and four on the north. John de Cella's three deep porches are left to us in some small fragments; the rest is modern, and owes its erection to Lord Grimthorpe. The _Nave_ shows three periods of architecture. The eastern portion is the work of Paul de Caen (1077-1097). On the south side the three easternmost bays are Norman and were constructed by him. The next five bays are Decorated. These were begun by Abbot Hugh de Eversden (1308-1326), in whose time during Divine service two great piers on the south fell, and all the roof and beams of the south part were ruined. The rebuilding was finished by Abbot Michael de Mentmore (1335-1349). The four remaining bays are the Early English work of William de Trumpington (1214-1235). In Perpendicular times the roof of the aisle was lowered and made flat, disclosing the triforium openings, but in the recent restoration the original pitch has been renewed. On this side stood the cloister court, and against the south wall of the church are seen the remains of the arches of the north cloister walk. Part of the east walk cloister left its marks on the west wall of the south transept, but recent restoration has obliterated them. The south transept is Norman, the work of Paul de Caen, except the south wall, which has been entirely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The tall lancets are an imitation of "the Five Sisters" of York Minster. Turrets crowned with small caps stand at each angle of the transept. Below the window are the remains of the slype, or passage from the cloister to the monks' burial-ground. The south wall is all that remains of the chapter-house. On the east side of the transept were formerly two apsidal chapels, but all traces of these have been removed. They were destroyed in the time of Edward II. to make room for a sacristy. On the south of the south chancel aisle is a fine Norman arch leading to these apsidal chapels. When they were removed the arch was contracted by the insertion of a pointed arch. A vestry was constructed here in 1846. This eastern part of the church beyond the third bay from the tower was built in the latter half of the thirteenth century under the rule of Abbot John de Hertford, and completed by Abbot Roger Norton (1260-1290). The Lady Chapel was mainly built under the rule of Abbot Hugh de Eversden (1308-1326), one Reginald of St. Albans being the master-mason. It is in the Decorated style, and was begun as early as 1280. Abbot Wheathampstead (1420-1464) embellished it with much decoration in the Perpendicular style. It was with the ambulatory long separated from the church by a wall, and used as a Grammar School. A public path passed through the building here. The north side of the chapel and presbytery resembles the south. The north door is much later. The most western part of the wall is Norman. The north transept is entirely Norman, the work of Abbot Paul. On the east side were two apsidal chapels, removed in the fifteenth century. The upper part of the north front was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The north side of the nave preserves its Norman character, both in the clerestory and aisle, except at the west end, where it has been reconstructed in the Early English style. On the west of the Abbey is the _Great Gateway_, which is an unusually important building. The greater part of the present structure was built by Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349-1396), but there seems to be some thirteenth century incorporated with it. Here the abbot held his court, and dealt out justice to the townsfolk and received his rents, and transacted other business; and here there were prisons for rebellious clerks and others. The gateway was stormed by Wat Tyler's rebels in 1381, who broke into the Abbey and terribly frightened the abbot and his monks. But vengeance was in store for the rioters, several of whom were imprisoned here and afterward hanged. After the dissolution it was used as the Assize Court, and subsequently as a prison. Then the Grammar School, evicted from the Lady Chapel, found a home here. All the other monastic buildings have been destroyed. THE INTERIOR We enter the church by the west door, and are at once struck by its immense length. It is the longest in England, and consists of thirteen bays. Originally the Norman style prevailed throughout the building, but in the course of ages numerous alterations have been made, and its architectural history is somewhat complicated. The five bays on the north and the three bays on the south are the work of Trumpington, who left the great piers standing, removed the Norman arches, triforium and clerestory, and began his reconstruction with all the gracefulness of the Early English style. He cased the piers with stone-work, which are octagonal and have attached shafts. The triforium has in each bay an arch enclosing two sub-arches with a quatrefoil in the head. The dog-tooth appears in the string-courses. The clerestory windows have two lights. The roof is modern. It was evidently intended to have a stone vault, but this was abandoned apparently for want of means. The work in the aisles corresponds to that in the nave as far as Trumpington's building extends. There is a remarkable juncture of this Early English work with the Norman on the north side of the nave. This Norman work is that of Paul de Caen. It is simple and plain, and not dissimilar from that at Caen, whence the abbot came. On the south side the five bays next to Trumpington's work were rebuilt by Abbots Hugh de Eversden (1308-1326) and Michael de Montmore (1335-1349), owing to the fall already alluded to. Here we see rich Decorated work, and though it differs in detail, it follows the lines of the earlier work on the west. Instead of dog-tooth, we have the ball-flower alternating with lilies. There is more sculpture, some of the heads being beautifully carved. The aisle here is similar in character to the nave. The cloister court having been on the south side of this wall, the windows here are high up. The next three bays on the south side are Norman, and also the nine eastern bays on the north side. The piers are very massive and are square-edged. The arches have three orders. The triforium arches are plain, but less lofty than those of the nave, and the clerestory arches are of the same character. We will now examine the mural paintings in the nave, which are of Norman date. Upon the west side of the six Norman piers are examples of the same subject, the Crucifixion, with St. John and the Virgin. Beginning with westernmost Norman pier we notice a representation of our Lord, and below is the Annunciation. On the south is St. Christopher, on the next pier is the same subject, and on the south the figure of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The figures of St. Syth, Edward the Confessor, Coronation of the Virgin, and the Virgin and Child also appear. The nave has been shorn of most of its monuments, but on the second pier on the north side is the monument of Sir John Mandeville, the great traveller, with this inscription:-- "_Siste gradum propcrans, requiescit Mandevil urnâ Hic humili; norunt et monumenta mori._ "'Lo, in this Inn of Travellers doth lie One rich in nothing but in memory; His name was Sir John Mandeville; content, Having seen much, with a final continent, Toward which he travelled ever since his birth And at last pawned his body for y^e earth, Which by a statute must in morgage be Till a Redeemer come to set it free.'" There is another monument which records the undying fame of one John Jones, who wrote a poem on "the Shrine of St. Albans." But time has been unkind to the poet, and his poem no longer exists. The massive stone pulpit was designed by Lord Grimthorpe. An inscription at the west end informs us that in the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, on account of the Plague in London, the Courts of Justice were held in this nave. Dividing the choir from the nave is the fine Decorated screen commonly but erroneously called that of St. Cuthbert, erected about 1350 by Abbot de la Mare. It is not the rood-screen as it is commonly described. That with its great, high, towering rood stood a little further east. This is excellent Decorated work. It has suffered from iconoclastic reformers. Over the screen is the modern organ. The extensions of the screen over the aisles are the work of Lord Grimthorpe. Notice the rich tabernacle work of the screen. The _South Aisle of the Choir_ beyond the screen is all Norman, except the modern vault. Here on the south is the tomb of two famous hermits--Roger and Sigar--who lived in the time of King Stephen, though the tomb is later. Roger lived near Dunstable, and Sigar in the wood of Northaw, of whom it is said that he banished all nightingales from his retreat, as their sweet song prevented him from saying his prayers. Next we notice the Abbot's Door, which is rich Decorated work, built by the fashioner of the screen, Abbot de la Mare (1349-1396). The _Transepts_ and _Central Tower_ are plain Norman, the work of Paul de Caen. The south wall of the south transept, however, with its Five Sisters' Window, copied from York Minster, was entirely rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe. The eastern triforium arches are extremely interesting, as they have curious baluster shafts which are recognised as Saxon work. These doubtless are the sole remaining relics of the ancient church built by Offa in 793, and were inserted here by Abbot Paul. The capitals are, however, Norman. The small window on the opposite side was an opening into a watching chamber, whence a monk could keep guard over the treasures in the transept. This chamber was not a reclusorium as the legends tell. On the east side were two apsidal chapels, destroyed in order to make room for a sacristy, which has now shared their fate. The altars of SS. Stephen and John the Evangelist stood here. On the west side are three ancient Jacobean cupboards, fashioned for the distribution of bread to the poor on Sundays. On the south is a fine Norman doorway, brought here from the slype, which is now entered through it. The south wall of this passage is all that remains of the old chapter-house. Here are some Norman arcading, and as the modern verses tell us, "fragments brought together from all sides." We enter the _Choir_, which occupies the three eastern bays of the nave and the space under the tower. The stalls are modern. The ceiling is extremely interesting and dates from the time of Edward III., the painted panels being adorned with the sacred monogram, numerous shields with royal arms supported by angels, the _Te Deum_, and invocations to the Virgin. The Roses of York and Lancaster appear on the lofty ceiling of the tower. The choir pulpit here was given by the English Freemasons. The _North Transept_ resembles the south, and is mainly Norman. Here is another Saxon baluster-shafted arch in the triforium, a relic of Offa's church. The old painted ceiling has been replaced by a modern roof. The upper part of the north wall was rebuilt by Lord Grimthorpe, who inserted here a huge rose window which has received some very severe criticism. He has also placed beneath it an inscription which records the fact that he ("Edmund") has built anew the work of Abbot "John" Wheathampstead which had perished while that of Abbot Paul remains. On the east were formerly apsidal chapels, which have been removed, and altars dedicated to the Holy Trinity, St. Osyth, and the Holy Cross of Pity. Near the last is a painting on the wall, the subject being the Incredulity of St. Thomas. On the floor are some remarkable ancient tiles. On the splay of one of the Norman windows a vine is represented, and there is a small Norman door. Bishop Claughton's fine monument is here (1892) and Bishop Blomfield of Colchester (1894). The presbytery occupies the space between the tower and the Wallingford screen, and retains its Norman walls as far as the third bay. The rest is the work of Abbot John de Hertford (1235-1260). The style is Early English. Before us is the famous Wallingford screen or reredos, erected by Abbot William Wallingford (1476-1484), which resembles that at Winchester. It was much mutilated, and has very recently been thoroughly restored, and the niches filled with statuary. There is a fine figure of our Lord in the centre, with the Virgin and St. John on either side, surrounded by angels. Below are the twelve Apostles with our Lord in the midst. On either side are figures of saints and kings connected with the history of the Abbey. On the north is the Chantry of Abbot Ramryge (1521), which has some rich Perpendicular work; the abbot's rebus--_rams_ with _ryge_ on the necks--may be discovered. Notice the representation of the martyrdom of St. Alban over the door. On the south is the Chantry of Abbot Wheathampstead (1464), which has a fine brass (that of Abbot Thomas de la Mare), and bears his arms (three ears of corn with the motto _Valles habundabunt_). Some attribute this tomb to Abbot Wallingford, but the details seem to point to Wheathampstead. This abbot caused the ceiling to be painted whereon are depicted the _Agnus Dei_ and the Eagle of St. John. There are numerous tombs and brasses of other abbots here. The south door has some fine Early English tabernacle work. The architecture of the adjoining _North Aisle_ corresponds with that of the presbytery, and through it we pass to the _Saints' Chapel_, which is the work of Abbot John de Hertford and his successors, and may well be described by Sir G. Scott as being "among the finest productions of that period." On the east side of the reredos are some fine modern statues of the Virgin and other saints. Here is the famous _Shrine of St. Alban_, broken and destroyed at the Reformation, and now happily built up again, the fragments having been collected by careful hands from many parts of the building. It was first erected by Abbot John de Marynis (1302-1308), and is of Decorated style. Gorgeous must have been its original appearance; but though shorn of all its jewels, gold and silver, it remains a noble piece of work. The holes in the panels of the base were intended for the insertion of diseased limbs, in order that they might be healed by the merits of the saint. The carved leafage in the tympana of the canopied niches is admirable. Only two carved figures remain, those of Offa and St. Oswin. On the west we see a representation of the martyrdom of the saint, and at the east his scourging. On the north side of the chapel is the _Watching Tower_, a wooden structure, probably erected by Abbot John de Wheathampstead. This and a similar one at Christ Church, Oxford, are the only watching towers remaining. A monk was stationed here to guard the treasures of the shrine. There are some curious carvings on the frieze. Treasures were preserved in aumbreys which now contain some curios. The famous Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV., murdered by order of Queen Margaret (1446), lies buried here in a tomb on the south. The sculpture of the numerous figures is very bold and vigorous. Some painting is observed on the piers, and there is a figure of St. William of York. In the _North Aisle_ is part of the _Shrine of St. Amphibalus_, which shares the history of its neighbour, and has been now partially recovered. It belongs to the last half of the fourteenth century. On the sides are the initials of Ralph Whitechurch, sacrist of the Abbey. The _Ante-Chapel_ and _Lady Chapel_ have been extensively restored. Indeed, their condition was deplorable. A public path ran through the former, and the latter was used as a Grammar School, and suffered in consequence. The story of the architecture is rather complex. The ante-chapel was begun by De Hertford and finished by his successor, Roger Norton (1260-1290), who continued to build the Lady Chapel, which was finished by Hugh de Eversden (1308-1326). The style is Decorated. The whole of the chapel has been most completely restored by Lord Grimthorpe. The modern carving is exquisite. We now pass to the _South Aisle_, which follows the architecture of the rest of the east end. Here we see an iron trellis screen of thirteenth-century work. There is here some good arcading, and an interesting panel taken from the old ceiling of the north transept representing the martyrdom of St. Alban. At the east end of this aisle was the Altar of St. Mary of the Four Tapers, and numerous other altars existed in the aisles and ante-chapel. In the wall above the old poor box is a curious figure of a pensioner carved by a sexton about 100 years ago. An ascent of the tower reveals many interesting features of that ancient structure, and helps one to realise the formidable nature of the task which the skilful architect and builders of 1870 accomplished when they saved this massive pile from destruction. DIMENSIONS Total length 550 ft. Length of nave to tower 284 ft. Length of nave to screen 215 ft. Width of transepts 189 ft. Width of tower 144 ft. Total area 40,000 sq. ft. PRINCIPAL BUILDING DATES Saxon--Baluster shafts of windows in triforium of transepts. Norman (1077-1115)--Nine bays on north of nave, and three bays on south, transept, and three bays of presbytery. Early English (1195-1260)--Western end of nave, presbytery, Saints' Chapel with aisles. Transition (1260-1290)--Foundations of Lady Chapel and ante-chapel. Decorated--Lady Chapel and five bays of nave. Perpendicular--South buttresses of choir; windows inserted which have since been removed. The city possesses many objects of interest:-- The Roman city of Verulamium. The Churches of St. Michael, St. Peter, St. Stephen. Sopwell Nunnery. The old Moot Hall. And the old inn called the "Fighting Cocks," said to be one of the oldest inns, and the oldest inhabited house in England, but this reputation is somewhat legendary. NOTE The Welsh Cathedrals of Llandaff and St. David's should be approached from Gloucester; and Chester is the most convenient starting-point for St. Asaph and Bangor. ST. ASAPH'S CATHEDRAL This Cathedral, like that of Bangor, is small, but its history is not unimportant. It owed its origin to Kentigern, otherwise called St. Mungo, the founder and Bishop of Glasgow, who, being driven from his northern see in the sixth century, found a refuge here, and enjoyed the protection of Prince Cadwallon. This prince aided him in building a church and founding a monastery here, and fabulous records tell of the amazing number of the monks. His biographer assures us that there was no less than 965 dwellers in this monastery, which number must be an extraordinary exaggeration. When Kentigern returned to Scotland, he left one of his followers, St. Asaph, to act as bishop of the diocese. The chroniclers are silent about the names of the subsequent bishops, until they record the doings of Norman times. In 1143 one Gilbert was consecrated bishop. The church in existence during his rule was burnt down in 1283, during the fierce wars between Edward I. and the Welsh. Anian II. was bishop during that time, and contemplated the transferring of the seat of the bishopric to Rhuddlan; but, on the advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he determined to rebuild the ruined church, and most of the present building is his work, or that of his two successors, Leoline and David. The work extended from 1284 to 1350. Owen Glendower, after his fashion, set fire to the church and burned the roof in 1404, and for a century the church remained in a roofless ruined state. Bishop Redman, in 1490, began to rebuild and restore the ruined church. He raised walls, erected a new roof, added the east window, and placed in the choir the stalls and a throne. Bishop Owen Jones, in 1631, made some further alterations, and repaired the steeple and belfry. Then came the disasters of the Civil War, when terrible desecration ensued, principally caused by a wretch named Miller, who turned the Palace into a wine-shop, and the church into a stable and cow-house, and the font into a hog-trough. Since the Restoration there have been several learned and devout prelates, amongst others, Isaac Barrow, William Beveridge, Thomas Tanner, author of _Notitia Monastica_; Samuel Horsley; but they were more learned in theology and their books than in the study of the correct principles of architecture. Hence they disfigured the church, and destroyed many of its most interesting features. In 1780 the choir was remodelled, a plaster ceiling erected, and much further damage done. "Oh, _Restoration!_ what evils have been wrought in your name." The church is cruciform. At the west end is a large Decorated window, and a deeply-recessed doorway of six orders, with buttresses on either side, which have crocketed pinnacles; a wooden cross surmounts the gable. It will be noticed that the shafts supporting the arch of the doorway have no capitals, the wave moulding making a complete sweep round the arch, with no capitals intervening. This arrangement we shall notice in the church. The great central tower was the latest addition to the mediæval church, and was constructed late in the fourteenth century. The embattled parapets were added in 1714. It is 93 feet high. The nave consists of five bays, and at once we notice the same peculiarity observable in the west doorway. The mouldings are carried up the piers and round the arches without any break. They are very plain, and of two orders, and are of the Early Decorated style, the work of Bishop Anian. Formerly there was a clerestory, but during one of the tasteless restorations a ceiling was erected, which shuts it out from view. The windows of the clerestory were in the Perpendicular style, and exist still in the south. Grotesque carvings appear on the brackets supporting the roof. The windows of the aisles have been much restored, and are in the style of the Early Decorated. The south transept was once the Lady Chapel, the consistory court and chapter-house. The windows are of five lights, and were finished about 1336. Here is a much mutilated effigy of a bishop, which is of great beauty, especially the figures of censing angels. It is supposed to represent Bishop Anian. The north transept has the monument of Bishop Luxmore (1830). In the south aisle are some monuments of the relatives of Mrs. Hemans, the poetess, and a tablet has been erected to the memory of that lady, who died in 1835. Under the central tower stand the old finely-canopied stalls. The throne is modern. The style of the old choir was almost entirely changed at the eighteenth-century "restoration." It was of Early English design, and Sir G. Scott wisely resolved to restore it to its primitive form. This proceeding was somewhat drastic, but such was the condition of the choir, and so severe was the treatment it received in 1780, that perhaps no other course could with advantage have been taken. He discovered the old sedilia, and the door leading to the old chapter-house. The east window has entirely modern tracery, and the reredos is modern. Bishop Barrow's tomb outside the west door is worthy of notice. The Bishop's Palace is a large modern building. At the foot of the hill is the parish church. From the summit of the tower of the Cathedral a fine view can be obtained of the Vale of Clwyd, with the Castles of Denbigh and Rhuddlan, and a long line of sea coast. Robert Montgomery sang sweetly of this wondrous view:-- "Thy heart might beat In thrilling answer to the strain I sing, Hadst thou beside me, from the sacred tower, Beheld this beauteous vale." BANGOR CATHEDRAL The early Bishops of Bangor are shadowy beings. We read of Bishop Daniel in the sixth century, concerning whom the records are misty, although he was canonised. Godwin says that there were no bishops here before the Norman Conquest. At any rate Hervey, or Harvé, was consecrated bishop in 1092, but he was so rigid in his discipline, and so severe upon the Welsh, that they rebelled, murdered his brother, and threatened him with a like fate. So he fled for refuge to the court of Henry I., and was ultimately appointed to the See of Ely. The early Celtic church was destroyed by the Normans in 1071. A second church was at once built, and here, in 1188, Archbishop Baldwin preached the Crusades, and so moved the heart of the Bishop of Bangor that he joined the army of Crusaders to rescue the Holy City from the Saracens. This church was destroyed in 1211 by a great fire. It was, however, partly restored, and again fell a prey to destruction in the wars of Edward I. and the Welsh. Bishop Anian, however, seemed to have been a favourite of the king, who helped him to rebuild his church. This bishop baptised the first Prince of Wales, born at Carnarvon Castle. He also drew up the Bangor Use, or Service Book, which ranked highly among the Cathedral uses of the mediæval church. During the wars of Owen Glendower in 1402 the church was completely gutted, and for nearly a century it lay in ruins. A new church was begun by Henry Deane in 1496, who finished the choir, and the Cathedral was completed by Bishop Skeffington, Abbot of Beaulieu, Hants, who was appointed to the See of Bangor in 1509. The style of the architecture was therefore entirely Perpendicular. Though the body of this benefactor was buried in his Hampshire Abbey, his heart was conveyed for sepulchre to the church he loved so well. The church suffered at the Reformation, when the see was held by Bishop Bulkely, who cared not for his church, and sold its store of vestments, plate, ornaments, and the bells given by his predecessor. Bishop Rowlands, in 1598, put a new roof on the church, and gave four new bells. In the Civil War it suffered much; the soldiers destroyed all the woodwork and broke the glass. At the Restoration the church was renovated and beautified, and Brown Willis gives a good account of "its lightsome" appearance. In the early nineteenth century some terrible "restorations" took place, and the church was divided into two portions, one for the Welsh and the other for the English service. The general appearance of the church was stunted and low, and was much inferior to many parish churches, possessing neither dignity nor beauty. In 1866 a very thorough restoration was undertaken by Sir G. Scott, which practically amounted to a rebuilding. He, however, carefully collected all the old materials found built up in the wall, and from these he endeavoured to reconstruct the church as it originally stood. The plan of the church consists of a west tower, a nave with aisles, a central tower, transepts and choir, and on the north a muniment room, and above it the chapter-house. The _West Tower_ was built by Bishop Skeffington (1509-1533), and is a good example of Late Perpendicular work. It has three stages, and is 60 feet high. The door is of the usual character of the style, and above it is the inscription:-- "_Thomas Skevynton, episcopus Bangorie hoc campanele et ecclesiam fieri fecit, A^o Partus Virginei, 1532._" In each of the other stages there is a window of three lights. The _Nave_ has six bays, and the Perpendicular style is evident in the arches, octagonal piers and characteristic bases. The windows in the south aisle are Decorated, and those in the north Perpendicular. The masonry of the walls seems to have survived the various fires and other accidents which befell this ill-fated Cathedral, and probably are the remains of Bishop Anian's work. The font was probably erected by Skeffington, and is good Perpendicular. The _Transepts_ have been almost entirely rebuilt, and the Perpendicular work, which was much decayed, was replaced by Decorated, authority for which was discovered by Sir G. Scott in the fragments of old stone-work built up in the walls. Some very fine thirteenth-century piers stood at the crossing until an unfortunate restoration in 1824, when they were replaced by imitation Perpendicular. These have now been removed, and new piers and arches constructed in accordance with the conjectured design of the originals. There was no central tower in the Perpendicular church, but the relics of earlier work prove that the original church had such a tower. Hence Scott added this to his design, and when completed it will enhance the dignity of the building. The _Choir_ has had a chequered history, which, as Sir G. Scott states, is of a threefold nature. The Norman choir had an apsidal termination. This apse was removed, and the length of the choir or presbytery greatly increased in Early Decorated times. After the destruction wrought by Owen Glendower, Bishop Deane (1496-1500) restored it, and the main object of Scott's restoration was to make the present choir conform to the condition in which Bishop Deane left it. The Civil War brought much destruction to this excellent work of the Perpendicular period, and decay had also left its marks upon it; but during the recent restorations all has been again renewed, and all that we see conforms as nearly as possible to that produced in the days of Henry VII. Cromwell's soldiers left none of the fittings untouched. The stalls were destroyed. Now all has been restored, and most of the fittings are new. The modern tiles of the floor are worthy of notice. Some mural paintings have been added at the east end. The tombs on either side are probably those of Bishop Anian (1328), the rebuilder of the church, and one Tudor ap Tudor (1365). In the south transept is recorded the burial of Owen Gwynedh (1169), the son of the last King of Wales, Gryffydh ap Gynan, who also was buried here. A rude representation of our Lord upon the Cross appears over the supposed Royal tomb. In the north transept is a memorial to a Welsh bard, Gronovil Owen (1722). Sir G. Scott entirely rebuilt the old chapter-house and muniment room on the north side of the choir in the Early Decorated style. The Bishop's Palace is a large mansion, but has no great architectural merits. The Deanery and some old almshouses and an Elizabethan school are all near the Cathedral. LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL The history of the Welsh sees carries us back to the early days of British Christianity. When the Saxon tribes swept over the land they destroyed the churches and monasteries, and drove the British west-ward, who found a refuge in the hills of Wales, in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, and in the regions north of the Mersey, and there the British Church continued to exist and flourish, though the rest of England was submerged in the flood of Paganism. When Augustine came he found in these parts of England a church governed by its bishops, who did not recognise the authority of the Pope, and whose customs differed somewhat from those of Rome. He summoned them to a conference, which was held at a place called "Augustine's oak," where by his haughty demeanour he offended the representatives of the ancient native church, who refused to abandon their accustomed usages, especially in the matter of the time for observing Easter and the forms of the tonsure. In Roman times Caerleon was a see, which seems to have embraced the whole of Wales. Then there were five principalities, each of which had a bishop. These were Bangor, Llanelwy (St. Asaph's), St. David's, Llandaff and Llanbadarn, afterwards incorporated with St. David's. Judging from the number of the names of saints which occur in Welsh nomenclature, we may conclude that the Welsh Church was famous for its zeal and activity and for the holiness of its members. It sent preachers and missionaries to Ireland, to Brittany, and Cornwall and Devon. It founded colleges and schools, and the great Celtic Church assisted in the conversion of the Northern Saxons of England, and even sent missionaries to the Continent. By degrees the British Church became merged in the English, founded by Augustine, and with the appointment of Norman prelates in the time of the Conqueror, any lingering survivals of ancient customs and usages were lost, and the unity of the church fully established. The earliest bishop of the See of Llandaff whose name is recorded was St. Dubricius. He is reputed to have founded the see in 612 A.D., but his successor, St. Teilo, seems to have had the chief credit of accomplishing the work. Of course the mythical King Lucius is dragged in as the earliest founder, but we have always neglected the legends connected with him. Of the early Welsh bishops we have no sure information, though there is the famous _Book of Llandaff_, which does not afford much certain knowledge, and is full of inaccuracies. Bishop Urban was consecrated in 1107, conveyed here the relics of Dubricius, and began to rebuild his Cathedral, for which an indulgence was granted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to all who should assist him in the work. Possibly it was finished in his time, but we have no certain information, and the stones of the church can alone tell the story of its building. During the thirteenth century the western part of the nave was erected, and also the chapter-house, which is of Early English design. During the Decorated period the Lady Chapel was added and the presbytery rebuilt, and the walls of the aisles also renewed. The north-west tower was erected in the Perpendicular period by the Earl of Pembroke, uncle of Henry VII. Thus the church was completed. It was not a very beautiful structure, and time has dealt hardly with it. The spoilers at the Reformation plundered it; decay and desolation reigned in the deserted "long-drawn aisle." Some bishops seem to have attempted to do something, but the whole condition of the church was deplorable. Then the troubles of the Civil War period fell upon this Job-like structure, and in spite of some attempts to improve its condition at the Restoration, and at subsequent periods, it still remained in a ruinous state. Then in 1723, when the taste for Italian models was rampant, the authorities erected an Italian temple-like building at the east end. This happily has been entirely removed during the restorations, which commenced in the middle of the last century, when the church was completely renovated, and all the old portions which had escaped the action of time, or the barbarous efforts of the followers of Christopher Wren, restored to their original state. The work was finished in 1869. Although much of the church is new, on close inspection we can discover some ancient work that lacks not interest. The _West Front_ is very beautiful. The doorway is a fine example of Early English work. It consists of a round arch, with two sub-arches, and in the tympanum there is an episcopal figure, probably that of St. Dubricius. The shafts at the sides of the doorway are Early English. Above them are lancet windows, and in the gable a figure of our Lord in glory. The cross above the gable is modern. The front is flanked on each side by two towers. The north-west tower is Perpendicular, the work of Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, uncle of Henry VII.; the south-west tower is modern. The _Nave_ consists of five bays, and is of Early English design. There is no triforium. The clerestory windows are lancets, and a passage runs in front of them. We notice the graceful foliage on the pier capitals, of Late Early English design, when the stiff-leaved foliage was giving way to the more natural foliage of the Decorated period. The aisles were rebuilt in the Late Decorated period, but two Norman doorways on the north and south sides were preserved. The choir is of the same character as the nave, but in the presbytery we see some of the Norman work of Urban's church, mixed with that of the Decorated period. Here stood the Italian temple, until happily this monstrosity was removed. The clerestory was destroyed when the temple was erected, but in the restoration of Sir Gilbert Scott it was rebuilt. On the south side we notice the curious blending of the Norman with the Decorated work. One of the most striking features of this Cathedral is the Late Norman arch at the east end. It is very richly ornamented, and has four orders, being adorned with zigzag, roll, and a curious row of flower-like circles. The reredos is modern, and has some fine paintings by Rosetti. The sedilia are modern. The _Lady Chapel_ has a stone vault, the ribs rising from Purbeck marble shafts. The windows are of good design, having two lights with a circle in the head. The east window is modern. The chapter-house is Early English, and is almost unique in having a square plan with a central pier. Few of the monuments possess much interest. We notice that of St. Dubricius; a brass memorial of Bishop Copleston (1849); Bishop William de Bruce (1287); Bishop St. Teilo; Bishop Bromfield (1393); Bishop Marshall (1496), a skeleton figure of the _memento mori_ type; Sir David Matthew, standard-bearer to Edward IV. (1461); Sir William Matthew; Lady Audley. The old reredos discovered during the restoration has been placed in the north aisle of the choir. ST. DAVID'S CATHEDRAL Far away on the most western point of Southern Wales stands the ancient Cathedral of St. David's, the most inaccessible, but the most interesting of the four Welsh Episcopal churches. The see was founded in the sixth century, and was known by the name Menevia. St. David was the reputed founder of the see, concerning whom there are many legends. He founded a monastery at Glyn Rhosyn, which became a fruitful school of saints and Celtic worthies, wrought divers miracles, and through him the Welsh Church extended its influence to Ireland, and also to Scotland and Northumbria. After his death troubles befell the monastery. It was plundered in 645, but recovered from the disaster. Here Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, acquired his wisdom. Then the Norse pirates frequently attacked the place, and on one occasion, in 1011, Eadric of Mercia wrought havoc here. But the see survived all these misfortunes, and here came William the Conqueror, who made an offering at St. David's shrine. For a time Welsh prelates continued to hold the see, but in 1115 Bernard, the first Norman prelate, chaplain of the queen of Henry I., was appointed to the see. Although he altered the constitution of the chapter, he made no alterations in the old church. The rebuilding was begun by Bishop Peter de Leia (1177-1198), but it is doubtful whether he personally did much to forward the work, as on account of his unpopularity he spent most of his time in England. However, the work progressed rapidly during his episcopacy, and was finished in the early years of the thirteenth century. After the fashion of cathedral towers, the tower of St. David's fell in 1220, and was immediately rebuilt. But it showed signs of again collapsing, and for centuries was a cause of anxiety, until it was made secure by Sir G. Scott in the restoration of 1866. The greater part of the present building is Transitional Norman, but there was much architectural activity in later periods. Owing to the fall of the tower and the action of an earthquake in 1248, much rebuilding was found necessary. The thirteenth century witnessed the reconstruction of the north transept, together with the building of the east chapels, which incline at so great an angle, much reparation of the choir, and the commencement of the Lady Chapel and eastern portion of the presbytery. During the Decorated period much work was accomplished. Bishop Martyn (1290-1328) finished the Lady Chapel, and Bishop Gower (1328-1347) did much for the fabric of the Cathedral, and built the noble Palace, which is still beautiful in decay. His work is seen in the upper portion of the walls of the nave and eastern part of the choir and presbytery, the inserted Decorated windows, the eastern chapel of the south transept, the alterations in the corresponding chapel of the north transept, the south porch, the second stage of the tower, and the famous rood-screen. During the fifteenth century and the latter years of the fourteenth century, new roofs were added, the south window in the south transept constructed, heavy buttresses placed against the north wall of the nave, which had shown signs of giving way, and during the early years of the sixteenth century the tower was raised, and a stone vault erected over the Lady Chapel and the chapels behind the high altar. During the Civil War sad havoc was wrought; lead was torn from the roof, and this caused the eastern chapels and the Lady Chapel to fall into decay. The once noble Cathedral, in consequence of the treatment which it received during the strife of King and Parliament, and of subsequent neglect, was shorn of its ancient glory, and ruin and desolation reigned. At the beginning of the nineteenth century some efforts were made to improve this state of things, and the west front was rebuilt in a debased and miserable style, and during the course of the century sundry alterations were made, and at length, in 1862, Sir G. Scott commenced a thorough restoration. Vast sums have been expended upon the fabric of the Cathedral, and though the eastern chapels remain in their ruined state, the rest of the building has been repaired and renewed, and preserved from destruction. "It remains," wrote Sir G. Scott, "a wonderfully interesting and valuable landmark in architectural history, taking in the extreme west a position parallel to that held by Canterbury in the extreme east of the island." THE EXTERIOR The _West Front_ is entirely modern, the work of Sir G. Scott, but it is designed after the fashion of the ancient front which existed before the hideous construction of the early eighteenth-century architect. As we walk around the Cathedral we must remember that nearly all the work is Transitional Norman, although its character is much disguised by later alterations and the insertion of Decorated windows. The _North Doorway_, with its curious ornamentation, is Transitional Norman, but time and weather have destroyed much of its beauty. The walls of the aisles were raised in the time of Bishop Gower (1328-1347), who inserted Decorated windows. The massive flying buttresses were added about 1500 A.D. On this side was the cloister court of the College of St. Mary, the ruined walls of which appear on the north. This college was founded by John of Gaunt in 1377 for the maintenance of a master and seven priests. The _North Transept_ has been much altered. During the recent restoration the low Perpendicular roof has been removed, and one with a high pitch erected. The north window was inserted by Butterfield in 1846 in place of one which had been blocked up. A curious building is seen on the east side of this transept, which has three storeys, and is higher than the roof of the main building. It contains the Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, built mainly by Sir Richard Symonds in 1329, and above it the old chapter-house, and in the highest storey the treasury. The east end of the church was extensively restored by Scott. The Perpendicular roof was retained, but finding amongst the _débris_ the evidence of lancet windows at the east end, Scott reproduced these with excellent effect. The _Lady Chapel_, built by Bishop Martyn (1296-1328), is still in ruins. The south transept has a Transitional Norman west wall, and the rest was built about 1220, after the fall of the tower. Large Perpendicular windows were inserted in the south wall. The old vestry is on the east side. On the south side is the beautiful _Porch_, built by Bishop Gower (1328-1347) in the Decorated style. There is a parvise chamber above. The doorway is remarkable; the sculptures represent the Root of Jesse, with Adam and Eve on the west side and the Patriarch Jesse on the other; above it a representation of the Holy Trinity, with censing angels. The _Tower_ was erected originally by Bishop de Leia, and fell in 1220. It was then rebuilt. Bishop Gower added a second storey in the Decorated style, and above this a Perpendicular storey was raised in Perpendicular times. The wonder is that all this extra weight did not cause the tower to collapse again. It certainly caused continual anxiety, and produced bulges in the neighbouring walls. However, the restoration of Sir G. Scott has secured safety and removed anxiety. The Perpendicular parapet is curious and not very beautiful. Only one gateway remains, though there were four in the great wall which surrounded the precincts. The _Tower Gate_ is a fine structure, flanked by two towers, one of which is octagonal and the other semi-circular. The ruins of the _Bishop's Palace_, a magnificent structure, should be visited. It was built by Bishop Gower, and must have been one of the finest residences in the whole kingdom. THE INTERIOR The _Nave_ is the work of Peter de Leia (1176-1198), and is Transitional Norman. The elaborate carving and the richness of the ornamentation are remarkable, and the colour of the stone adds a wonderful effect. St. David's has many peculiar features, and is unlike any other church in the kingdom. The arches are round, the triforium and clerestory are blended together under one arch. The piers are round and octagonal, with attached shafts. It was evidently intended to vault the nave, but this was abandoned. A Perpendicular roof of intricate and unusual design was constructed about 1500. The capitals afford an interesting study. The west end is modern, the work of Scott. Traces of coloured decoration may be seen on some of the piers of the nave; among the designs are figures of the Virgin, our Lord, and some monarch. The font in the south aisle is, with the exception of the shaft, of the same date as the nave. It is octagonal, and is carved with an arcade of pointed arches. The aisles do not possess any special features of interest. The architectural changes which have taken place there have already been mentioned. In the north aisle is the Transitional Norman doorway, and in the south the Decorated door of Bishop Gower. The _Rood-Screen_ is very remarkable, the work of Bishop Gower in the Decorated style. It is very massive and elaborate, and contains several tombs and monuments, has a groined roof, and is a very unusual and noble structure. The organ, which is modern, stands above this screen. The iron gates leading to the choir are also modern. Before entering the choir we will visit the _Transepts_, which are entered through Late Norman doorways from the nave. The western walls are Late Norman, built by De Leia, the rest were erected after the fall of the tower in 1220. In the _North Transept_ the large north window was erected in 1846 in the Decorated style. This transept was dedicated to St. Andrew. On the east side is the Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr, begun in 1220, refounded by Sir R. Symonds in 1329, and used for a variety of purposes. We notice a fine Early English piscina in the south wall. Above is the library and the old treasury. The _South Transept_, formerly known as the "Chanter's Chapel," had altars dedicated to the Holy Innocents and St. David, and was once used as a parish church. The east side of this transept has passed through several vicissitudes, and has now been restored to its original form. The _Choir_ is entered through the gates of the rood-screen, and occupies the space beneath the tower and half a bay beyond. The presbytery occupies the rest of the space beyond the parclose screen to the east wall behind the altar. All this is the work of Bishop de Leia, or that of his immediate successors, who rebuilt the tower after its fall in 1220. First, we examine the tower itself, and wonder at the marvellous skill of our modern architects and masons who could rebuild from their foundation two out of the four piers, each sustaining a weight of 1150 tons. Rich ornamentation is observed on the east and west arches, one of which is round, the rest pointed. Scott raised the wooden ceiling, and greatly improved the appearance of the interior of the tower. The _Stalls_ were erected at the end of the fifteenth century, and are the work of Bishop Tully. There are a number of curious _misereres_ with strange grotesques, amongst others--three men in a boat with a fourth rowing, one of the passengers being very sea-sick; a cowled fox offering a wafer to a goose with a human head; a carpenter building a boat, etc. The fox is doubtless a satire on the monks, and possibly also the sea-sick passenger. The _Bishop's Throne_ is an elaborate structure erected by Bishop Morgan (1496-1505), and is of great height. It is a blend of the Perpendicular and Decorated styles; probably Bishop Morgan used some older materials in its construction. The _Parclose Screen_, separating the choir from the presbytery, is a peculiar feature of this Cathedral. It is of Decorated design. Passing through it we enter the _Presbytery_. At the east end above the altar are two rows of lancets, the lower lights being blocked, and filled with rich mosaics. The glass in the upper lights is modern, of good design and execution, erected by the Rev. John Lucy in memory of his ancestor, Bishop Lucy (1660-1677). The subjects of the mosaics are the Crucifixion, and figures representing the Christian and Jewish Churches. The type of our Lord upon the Cross, the brazen serpent, appears below the central figure. Scenes from the life of St. David also are represented. The roof of the presbytery dates from about 1500, and on the bosses and in the panels are heraldic shields. The altar is modern. The floor is paved with old tiles, and the five crosses cut on some of the slabs in the sanctuary show that these stones were formerly altars. On the north of the presbytery is the famous _Shrine of St. David_, to which pilgrims flocked from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland. Kings and queens, nobles and princes came to pay their devotions at this shrine of the great Welsh saint, and bestowed many offerings on St. David's Church. Only the base of the shrine remains, and above this once stood the _feretrum_, which was doubtless covered with gold and jewels. The base is of Late Early English design, and was probably constructed in 1275 by Bishop Richard de Carew. The lowest part consists of three pointed arches with quatrefoils in the spandrels. The two inner quatrefoils communicate with lockers at the back, and were evidently intended for offerings. The upper portion consists of three arches with Early English capitals to the shafts, and under the arches were paintings of SS. David, Patrick, and probably Denis, but these have disappeared. Another shrine is in the Cathedral, that of _St. Caradoc_, on the south side of the north transept. He was a Welsh saint, who was ordained and ministered in the Cathedral of St. David, and dying in 1124 was canonised by Innocent III. Here too are seen two quatrefoil openings for the reception of offerings. We need not linger in the choir aisles except to observe the monuments, and will at once pass to the part of the east end behind the altar. This part consists of Bishop Vaughan's Chantry on the east of the presbytery, the ante-chapel, with two chapel aisles, and the Lady Chapel. This part of the church awaits restoration, for which funds are needed. With the exception of Vaughan's Chantry and the ante-chapel, all the building is roofless, exposed to the storms and rains of this exposed headland, and pitifully beseeches a new roof and shelter. Several architectural puzzles are presented by this portion of the Cathedral, which have not yet been entirely satisfactorily solved. Examining first Vaughan's Chantry or Trinity Chapel, we find a very beautiful example of Perpendicular work. The roof is a fine example of fan-tracery, and the whole structure rivals King's College Chapel, Cambridge, or Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster. Before the construction of this chapel the space occupied by it was left waste, and was described by Vaughan as _Vilissimus sive sordidissimus locus in totâ ecclesiâ_. A curious recess of Late Norman work has been discovered behind the high altar with beautifully-carved crosses. Above the recess is the figure of an angel, and some relics were found in the cill embedded in mortar, where they had doubtless been placed for the purpose of preservation at the Reformation. Recent discovery has revealed at the east end a beautifully-carved niche and two fine windows. Here are preserved some interesting Celtic crosses. On the south is the Chapel of King Edward the Conqueror, and on the north the Chapel of St. Nicholas. The _Ante-Chapel_ has Early English arches with a Perpendicular roof. The _Lady Chapel_ in its present form belongs to the transition from Early English to Decorated. Bishop Gower added the sedilia, founded a chantry here, and made sundry other alterations of a Decorated character. The Cathedral is rich in monuments. The most important are:-- Bishop Gower, south of rood-screen. Bishop Morgan (1564), south of nave. Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, father of Henry VII. (1456), presbytery. Bishop Anselm le Gras (1247), presbytery. Two tombs of Knights, on each side of presbytery. A Priest (Decorated period), in presbytery. Two ancient Celtic slabs, one of which records the name of Bishop Abraham (1078), and is in memory of his two sons. In the ruined eastern chapels are the monuments of Bishop Vaughan, Sir J. Wogan (_temp._ Edward I.), Archdeacon Hoit (1319), an unknown knight, Bishop Martyn, and the fine tomb of a priest under a beautifully-carved canopy. SCOTTISH CATHEDRALS Although the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian, it was not until the stirring events of the Revolution of 1688 that this form of church government was adopted. From that day forward the Church of Scotland knew no bishops, and hence the application of the term cathedral to a church belonging to that communion is a misnomer. The Episcopal Church of Scotland has its cathedrals, but these for the most part are modern. But Scotland still possesses many of its ancient fanes, which are usually preserved with much care and solicitude, and retain much of the splendour of their Gothic architecture, and are rich with historical associations and tradition. GLASGOW CATHEDRAL The Cathedral of St. Mungo in this city has vast treasures of architectural beauty. Its Patron Saint was the contemporary of St. Columba, a devout, miracle-working apostle, who converted the King of the Strathclyde Britons to Christianity and gained a victory for the Cross of Christ over the wild people who inhabited these parts. A cathedral was built here in Norman times. It was begun in 1124 and consecrated in 1192 in the presence of King David of Scotland. Before the century had closed fire destroyed this ancient church. But a new one was immediately begun, and five years later a portion of the building was so far finished that it was fit for consecration. About 1258 the fine Early English choir was completed. It is one of the best works of the thirteenth century in Scotland. The style of architecture followed closely the Early English of the northern type. The windows are deeply moulded on both sides, and the piers are strong and massive without clustering shafts. But Scotland at an early date developed peculiarities in her architecture which differed from English art. We see this in the use of the double lancet and simple tracery, whereas in England the lancets were widened. The influence of French architecture was not yet felt, though there was a distinct difference from the English usage. We see also that the choir has two storeys, the lower or crypt being entirely above the ground. Mr. Watson has recently published a learned work on this double choir, and gives excellent reasons for assuming that the vault of the "lower church" was built at five different periods, extending over half a century. His first period (_circa_ 1220) includes only the south-east compartment. Then followed the north and south aisles with the springers of the south middle portion. The lower church was then left unfinished until the upper church had been built. The central portion of the lower church was then vaulted (_circa_ 1260), and later still the eastern aisle and chapel. Mr. Watson's conclusions have not been universally accepted, but they are certainly worthy of credence. A few years later the tower and transepts were finished. Bishop Wishart took the part of Bruce as a loyal Scot against Edward I. and his attempted conquest, and suffered a long imprisonment. A disaster happened to the steeple in 1400, when it was struck by lightning. Bishop Lauder erected a stone one. The chapter-house was built by Bishop Cameron in the Perpendicular style. The rood-screen, with its curious sculpture, was the work of Bishop Blackadder, and also the great staircase leading to the crypt or lower church. At the close of the fifteenth century Glasgow became the seat of an archbishopric. Beaton, the nephew of the more famous Cardinal, finding that he lived in times dangerous for prelates, fortified his Palace and stored therein all the plate and precious things he could find, and then carried them off to Paris. The Cathedral happily was spared when the storm of contending forces at the Reformation raged, though it was long disused. The archbishop was in France, and Episcopacy was not in favour. With the advent of James VI. of Scotland to the throne of England Episcopacy was restored, and Spottiswood became Bishop of Glasgow. Then during the civil war Cromwell came here during the Presbyterian rule, but Episcopacy was restored with the monarchy, until it vanished again with the coming of Dutch William. Much has been done during the past century in the way of "restoration." Two western towers have been bodily removed. The glass is modern and is almost entirely the work of foreign artists. The great east window was the gift of Queen Victoria. From the close we gain a fine view of the necropolis, which abounds in the sculptured tombs and monuments so dear to Scotland's sons. IONA CATHEDRAL We must now journey to the ruined shrine of Iona, the cradle of Western Christianity, the place whence flowed the stream of missionary enterprise which watered the dry furrows of northern England as well as Scotland, and caused Christianity to flourish throughout the country. We owe much to this lonely isle where St. Columba landed in 563 and built his rude monastery, the forerunner of the ruined buildings which now greet us. This isle could tell us of many a scene of carnage when the wild Norse pirates came. The Cathedral was begun in the Early English period, and is cruciform. The tower, 75 feet high, has two fine windows. The capitals are beautifully carved, though they are much weather-worn owing to the roofless condition of the church. On the north side are the remains of the monastery; a Norman arcade shows that it is older than the present Cathedral; and on the south is the Chapel of St. Oran, the companion of St. Columba. It is of early date, probably founded in the eleventh century by Queen Margaret when the isles were wrested by Scotland from the Norsemen. Its western doorway is Norman with beak-head ornament. In the _Reilig Oiran_, or cemetery of kings, lie buried forty-eight Scottish, four Irish, and eight Scandinavian monarchs, together with many abbots and monks and chieftains, a veritable Valhalla of the great. The carved sepulchral stones and crosses of Iona are noble examples of early art, the interlacing work sculptured upon them being wonderfully intricate and beautiful. The two most perfect crosses are Maclean's cross and St. Martin's, one of the most beautiful and perfect in Christendom. A nunnery was founded here in Norman times, and traces of Norman architecture are evident in the ruins. In 1208 a colony of Benedictine monks was established here by one Reginald, the heir of the Abbot of Derry, who handed over the nunnery to the guidance of his sister Beatrice. There was a close connection between Iona and Norway, and for a long time the bishopric of the Isles was united with that of the Isle of Man. At the present time the bishop of that island is known as the Bishop of Sodor and Man, Sodor being a corruption of Sud Ja, or southern island, so called by the Norwegian Vikings, who long held rule here. The monastery was destroyed in 1561. Iona was a much-esteemed seat of learning, and was much frequented by pilgrims. It was long regarded as the isle of special sanctity, and kings and warriors from far and near were brought here to be laid in their last resting-place near the sacred tomb of Columba. Few places have so great a fascination as this sacred isle. BRECHIN CATHEDRAL Brechin has many interesting features, notably its half-finished Cathedral, the famous round tower which was undoubtedly connected with it, or an earlier shrine, and the ruins of the _Maison Dieu_ or hospitium founded by William of Brechin in 1256. The old Cathedral was founded by King David of Scotland in 1150. It is a plain and unpretentious building, now used as a parish church, and it has suffered much from restorers and renovators. Its plan was originally cruciform, but some vandals at the beginning of the eighteenth century entirely destroyed the transepts. The west window and doorway are thirteenth-century work. Most drastic treatment did this church receive in 1806, when besides the destruction of the transepts, the aisles were removed, and new and larger ones erected. The renovators were not satisfied with the old arches of the nave; so they built new and wider ones, and raised the walls, so that one roof could span the whole, and thus eclipsing the clerestory windows. The south side of the nave seems later than the north. Its piers are lighter than those on the opposite side. At the north side of the choir are three lancet windows. The church is disfigured by galleries and pews. The ruins of the chapel of the _Maison Dieu_ are small but interesting. An Early English doorway and a few lancet windows remain. The _Round Tower_ is the principal architectural feature of Brechin. Ireland possesses many of these curious structures, and besides this one Scotland has only one other, the tower at Abernethy. Its date is about 980. The object of such towers is mainly to provide a place of refuge in times of attack, where the monks could store their treasures and protect themselves. They may also have been used as belfries, and their origin is certainly ecclesiastical. There is no staircase, access to the top being gained by ladders resting on wooden floors. The height is 86 feet, the thickness of the wall near the base 4 feet, and the inner diameter 8 feet. An octagonal spire crowns the summit. There is a doorway on the west which is adorned with rude carvings. Over the doorway is a carved representation of the Crucifixion, and on either side of the door are ecclesiastics, and below are strange creatures realistically carved. These figures are interesting memorials of Celtic art. ABERDEEN CATHEDRAL One mile north of the large and flourishing city is the quiet, ancient town of Old Aberdeen. Here is the Cathedral of St. Machar, built entirely of granite. It is not remarkable for its sculptured elegance or vast dimensions, but it has an interesting history, and its flat panelled ceiling, adorned with numerous heraldic shields, is a distinguishing feature. The church is small, and is only 200 feet in length. Its Patron Saint was a companion of St. Columba, who journeyed here on his missionary work, and founded a church about the year 597. A second church was begun in 1183, but this was not equal to the ambition of Bishop Cheyne, and was destroyed by him in order to make way for a better. This again was superseded by a church begun by Bishop Kinnimond, in 1357, but the work progressed slowly, and not until the rule of Bishop Leighton (1422-1440) was the nave finished with the north transept and west towers. The roof was added by his successor, Bishop Lindsay, and the central tower and spire by Bishop Elphinstone, who began the ill-fated choir. Bishop Stewart built the chapter-house. The troubles of the Reformation and of the Civil War wrought much havoc. The lead was torn from the roof; the bells were shipped off to Holland and lost at sea. The stones of the choir were used for fortifications by Cromwell's troops; the great tower fell and destroyed the transepts, and all that remains of this church is the nave. The west front is an imposing piece of work. The west window consists of seven lofty narrow openings, with cusped arches at the head. The towers, capped with spires, are very massive in their granite ruggedness. There are five bays in the nave, with round piers, Decorated arches, no triforium, and small clerestory windows. On the ceiling are forty-eight heraldic shields of princes, nobles and bishops who aided in the erection of the church. King's College, founded by Bishop Elphinstone in 1498, should be visited. The original oak canopied stalls, _misereres_, and lofty open screen in the chapel, are some of the finest work of the period. The influence of the French Flamboyant style is evident in their execution. These beautiful works of art were saved from destruction by the bravery of the Principal, who summoned his people, and protected his treasures from the fury of the barons of Mearns, after they had sacked the Cathedral. DUNBLANE CATHEDRAL This Cathedral is one of the few specimens of Gothic art in Scotland which escaped destruction at the Reformation. Nearly all the building is Early English, except the tower, which is Early Norman. Ruskin wrote his praise of this edifice:-- "He was no uncommon man who designed the Cathedral of Dunblane. I know nothing so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, so far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am acquainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind, that man was content to work under Nature's teaching, and instead of putting merely formal dog-tooth, as everybody else did at that time, he went down to the woody banks of the sweet river, beneath the rocks of which he was building, and took up a few of the fallen leaves that lay by it, and he set them on his arch, side by side for ever." There was an early church on this site founded by St. Blane. This early church was superseded in 1150 by one erected by King David of Scotland. All that remains of this church is the fine Norman tower. The rest of the church fell into ruin and neglect, until the time of Bishop Clement, who, about 1240, began to build this beautiful church in Early English style. At the Reformation great damage was done, when over-zealous Protestants pulled down the roof and carried off much plate and treasure. For centuries the nave remained in this condition; the choir and chapter-house were roofed over, in order to form a parish church; and now a great restoration of the church has recently taken place. A new roof has been erected, after the fashion of the Cathedral church of Aberdeen, with its heraldic devices, and the whole church repaired and beautified. The west front is Early English in design, with lancet windows, a deeply-recessed doorway, and in the gable a window with the leaf decoration praised by Ruskin. The nave has eight bays, and is Late Early English. The pulpit is modern, and also the screen. The choir has no aisles, and has six lancet windows, with a large east window. The stall-work of sixteenth-century is beautifully carved, and there are some interesting grotesques. On the west side of the choir is the chapter-house, which is the earliest part of the present church, with the exception of the tower, and has an upper room, possibly used as a treasury or _Reclusorium_. The tower is an important structure, of Early Norman character, and doubtless served the same purpose as the round towers of Ireland and Brechin, affording shelter in case of attack. There are good reasons for believing that originally it was separate from the church. The upper portion was added later. A fine view can be obtained from the summit. There are some interesting monuments in the Cathedral, and in the churchyard is the tomb of the heroine of the song, "Charming young Jessie, the flower of Dunblane." DUNKELD CATHEDRAL The first church was founded by Constantin, King of the Picts, about 800 A.D., and the Culdees were established in a monastery here. In 1107 it became the seat of a bishopric, and a colony of Augustinian canons replaced the former dwellers. A new choir was built in 1220-1250, in the Early English style. During the wars with England, in 1380, it was burnt, but almost immediately restored. The nave was finished by Bishop Lauder in 1465. He was a most munificent prelate, who did much for his Cathedral, began the tower and chapter-house, and furnished the Cathedral with gifts of much valuable church plate. There is a curious story[21] of a Highlanders' raid, and of their entry to the church, and of the bishop's perilous escape to the rafters of his church, in order to escape their hands. On another occasion the church was besieged in the time of the famous Bishop Gavin Douglas, the translator of the _Æneid_ (1576). His election to the see was opposed by the Stewarts, the inveterate enemies of his house; and Andrew Stewart barred the door against him, and fought against him from his stronghold in the tower. Douglas soon gathered his friendly clans together, and forced an entrance. It is uncertain when the nave lost its roof, probably when certain lairds at the Reformation went on their base crusade, plundering and destroying churches, and seizing their goods and valuables. After the battle of Killiecrankie there was a great fight here, and an asylum of refuge was found here by the people, who fortified their position with the seats, and did much damage. The roof was destroyed, and the nave has been ever since exposed to the storms of wind and rain. The choir is now used as the parish church, having been rebuilt. The nave has seven bays, and measures 120 feet by 60 feet. The piers are of massive Norman character, and there is a somewhat poor triforium and clerestory. The original choir was built by Bishop Sinclair in 1350. The tower, 96 feet high, is Perpendicular, the work of Bishop Lauder (1469), and finished by Bishop Brown in 1501, and is a very good example of the style. The south porch was built by Lauder, but it is now in ruins. The chapter-house is the work of the same bishop. It contains the vault of the Dukes of Athol. Here, near the porch, is buried Alexander Stuart, Earl of Buchan, better known as the "Wolf of Badenoch" (1394), who burned down Elgin Cathedral and devastated the place. Few churches have passed through such stormy scenes as Dunkeld, and its ruined state is a melancholy testimony to the lawlessness of the tumultuous times, which have left their mark upon its desecrated walls. FOOTNOTE: [21] _Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys_, by M.E. Leicester Addis. ST. ANDREW'S CATHEDRAL Of the once great Cathedral of St. Andrew, the Primatical See of Scotland, few traces are left. Its consecration in the time of Robert Bruce was marked by unparalleled pomp and circumstance. All the most distinguished in Church and State were present, no less than seven bishops and fifteen abbots, the king and well-nigh all the flower of his nobility. It was originally founded by Bishop Arnold (1159-1162). Its plan was cruciform, and was 355 feet in length, and the nave 200 feet, and there was a Lady Chapel at the east end. It had a grand central tower, and six turrets, of which three remain. A fire partly destroyed it in 1378, but it was restored and embellished, and finished in 1440. In 1559 John Knox preached a fiery sermon in the town church, which led the magistrates and inhabitants of the city to plunder the Cathedral and strip it of its altars and ornaments. The whole church was ransacked and left to fall into ruin. Soon the central tower fell, and carried with it the north wall; and since then the church has been used as a quarry. The ruins are picturesque in their decay. All that remain are the east and west gables, part of the south wall of the nave and the west wall of the south transept. The style of these ruins is partly Norman and partly Early English. Under the east window, built up in the wall, is a curious Runic inscription. The Castle at St. Andrews is closely connected with the Cathedral, as it was built by Bishop Roger in the thirteenth century as an episcopal residence. The old Castle was destroyed in the fourteenth century, and soon afterwards rebuilt. Here Cardinal Beaton was murdered, who had witnessed the burning of Wishart in front of his Castle. The Bottle Dungeon is a curious place of incarceration, and, besides the towers and walls, there is an interesting subterranean passage which enabled persons to escape from the Castle in time of siege. ST. GILES' CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH Edinburgh was not raised to episcopal rank until the time of Charles I. The church has a great history, though it is popularly remembered as the place where Jenny Geddes threw her stool at the dean, when the English service book was introduced in the time of Charles I. The first Church of St. Giles was consecrated in 1243, but it was burnt down during the English wars, when most of the city shared the same fate. Indeed, signs of fire may still be detected on the piers of the choir and elsewhere. The church is remarkable for its numerous chapels. On the south of the nave two were built in 1387, but these have been destroyed by drastic "restoration." There are the Chambers's Memorial Chapel, the Preston Aisle, named after one William Preston, who brought from France a relic of the Patron Saint; the Chapman Aisle, named after Chapman, the "Scottish Caxton," who introduced printing into Scotland, and the Moray Aisle. During the fifteenth century much building was in progress. The choir was lengthened, a clerestory added and the roof raised, and ere the century had elapsed it was raised to the dignity of a collegiate church. The choir is a fine example of fifteenth-century work, and the Gothic crown which surmounts the central tower forms a very distinguishing feature. It is unlike anything else we know. Few scenes and events in Scottish history have not in some way been connected with this church. We see John Knox preaching violently here against the iniquities of the court, and especially of the unfortunate Queen Mary. Knox was appointed minister of the church. It was divided into three portions--the Great and Little Kirk and the Tolbooth. Then in the time of James I. Episcopacy was restored, and in 1633 Charles I. made St. Giles into a Cathedral. Here Jenny Geddes, as we have said, expressed her displeasure at the new English liturgy by throwing her stool at the clergyman, and commenced the famous riot which had lamentable results. Later on we see the struggle between the Covenanters and the Royal Party, and the head of the Duke of Argyll stuck on a spike on a gable of the Cathedral, the advent of "Bonny Prince Charlie," and all the events of Scottish history seem to be associated in some way with St. Giles'. Its war-worn banners, its monuments of national heroes, all combine to add a peculiar interest to the building. The church owes much of its present beauty to the munificence of Dr. William Chambers, who rescued the building from neglect, and renewed and beautified it. He was one of the firm of the great Edinburgh publishers. Amongst other memorials of recent worthies we find a window to R.L. Stevenson, and in the Moray Chapel a monument to General Wauchope, who was killed gallantly leading his troops in the recent war in South Africa. Although the choir is fifteenth-century work, it differs much from that of the same period in England. In Scotland French influence was much felt in the development of architecture, and the builders inclined more to the French Flamboyant rather than to the English Perpendicular. The new Cathedral of the Episcopal Church of Scotland at Edinburgh, designed by Sir G. Scott, is one of the finest and largest of our modern Gothic buildings. KIRKWALL CATHEDRAL If we journey to the remote Orkneys we shall see a noble Cathedral at Kirkwall, which is of peculiar interest. Until the year 1472 these islands belonged to Norway, and were under the episcopal supervision of the Archbishop of Drontheim in that kingdom. The Cathedral is therefore connected with the rule of Norwegian earls and bishops, and has many features differing from those types which are more familiar to us. It was founded by the Norwegian Earl Ronald in 1137, and was designed and constructed by the Norwegian Kol. Here were buried many Scandinavian jarls and bishops, but their tombs have disappeared. There is a fine nave of eight bays, which is of the Norman character, and a choir of six bays, screened off so as to form a parish church. The piers are all round and massive, and the arches round-headed, both in the main arcade and in the triforium and clerestory. There is some fine Norman arcading, with intersecting arches on the side walls. The church is dedicated to St. Magnus, and is 226 feet long by 56 feet wide. The original choir ended in an apse, but it was lengthened by Bishop Stewart in 1511, and the west end of the nave was finished by Bishop Reid in 1540. Different coloured stone is used extensively in the building, principally the red and yellow sandstone, and these varied hues add greatly to the architectural effect. The three west doors are particularly fine. The tower has fifteenth-century windows, and the bells were given by Bishop Maxwell at the end of the fifteenth century. Near the church are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, where King Haco died in 1263, and also the Earl's Palace, which, after the incorporation of the islands with Scotland, was assigned to the bishops for a residence. The church has been much restored during the last century. GLOSSARY OF ARCHITECTURAL TERMS _Abacus._--The uppermost division of the capital, or head of a column, originally square and plain, in later styles more or less decorated with moulding, and in the Early English and Decorated periods generally circular or polygonal. In classic architecture it supported the horizontal superstructure of the entablature, but in Gothic architecture the arch rises directly from it. _Apse._--The round or polygonal end of a chancel. _Architrave._--The lowest division of the entablature in classic architecture; ornamental moulding round the exterior curve of an arch or round the openings of doors and windows, etc. _Ashlar._--Hewn stone. _Aumbrey or Almery._--A cupboard for containing the sacred vessels. _Ball-Flower Moulding._--Ornament resembling a ball enclosed in a globular flower of three petals. _Baluster._--A small turned wooden pillar, generally circular. _Bay._--The compartment of a church formed by the buttresses or pilasters on the walls, the main arches or pillars, the ribs of the vaulting, or other features which separate the building into corresponding portions. _Campanile._--A bell tower. _Cavetto._--A concave moulding of a quarter of a circle, used in classical and other styles of architecture. _Chamfer._--To cut off angles. _Clerestory or Clear-Story._--An upper storey, or row of windows in a Gothic church; so called to distinguish it from the blind-storey, or triforium. _Corbel._--A projecting stone or piece of timber supporting a weight. _Corbel-Table._--A row of corbels. _Credence._--A small table or shelf near the altar on which the bread and wine were placed before they were consecrated. _Crocket._--A bunch of projecting flowers or foliage decorating pinnacles, arches, etc. _Cusps._--The projecting points in Gothic tracery, or inside an arch; sometimes worked at the ends with leaves, flowers, or heads. _Dog-Tooth Moulding._--Ornaments usually consisting of four plain leaves, arranged so as to form a point. _Dripstone._--Projecting tablet or moulding over heads of archways, windows, doorways, etc. _Fan-Vaulting._--Vaulting in which the ribs rise with the same curve and diverge equally in every direction from the springing of the vault. _Finial._--A foliated ornament ending a pinnacle or gable, etc. _Flamboyant._--A name given to Late Decorated style of architecture from the flame-like wavings of its tracery. _Gargoyle._--A projecting spout, often carved in a grotesque form. _Groin._--The angle formed by the intersection of vaults. _Herring-Bone Work._--Masonry in which the stones are placed aslant, forming a fish-bone pattern. _Jamb._--The side of a window or door, etc. _Miserere._--A projecting bracket on the under side of the seats of stalls, which were made to turn up; the monks were allowed to lean on these brackets during the long services, which were performed standing. _Mullion._--Perpendicular bar between the lights of windows in Gothic architecture. _Nail-headed Moulding._--Moulding in imitation of ornamental nail-heads. _Newell._--The column round which a spiral staircase winds. _Ogee._--A moulding partly concave and partly convex, forming a round and a hollow. Term also applied to an arch formed of contrasted curves. _Orders._--The recesses of a divided arch. _Parvise._--A small room over the porch. _Pilaster._--A pillar, sometimes disengaged but generally attached to a wall. _Piscina._--A basin attached to the wall near the altar of a church, where the priest washed his hands and rinsed the chalice. _Plate-Tracery._--Tracery which appears as if formed by piercing a flat surface with ornamental patterns. _Plinth._--The lowest division of the base of a column, or projecting face at the bottom of a wall. _Presbytery._--The part of a church where the high altar stands. _Reredos._--A screen at the back of an altar. _Rood-Loft._--A gallery over the screen separating the nave from the chancel, on which the great cross or _rood_ was fixed. _Sedilia._--The seats for the officiating clergy. _Soffit._--The under side of an arch, cornice, etc. _Spandrel._--The triangular space between arches. _Splay._--The expansion given to windows and other openings by slanting the sides. _Springing._--The point at which an arch unites with its support. _Squint._--An oblique opening in the wall of a church. _Stoup._--A vessel or stone basin formed in the wall, serving as a receptacle for holy water. _String-Course._--A horizontal moulding running along a wall. _Transom._--A horizontal cross-bar in a window. _Triforium._--A gallery in the wall over the arches which separates the body of the church from the aisles. _Tympanum._--The space above the horizontal opening of a doorway and the arch above; the space between an arch and the triangular drip-stone or hood-mould which surmounts it. INDEX Aberdeen, 443 Bangor, 426 Bath, 161 Beverley, 327 Brechin, 442 Bristol, 138 Canterbury, 68 Carlisle, 272 Chester, 248 Chichester, 96 Dunblane, 444 Dunkeld, 445 Durham, 283 Ely, 377 Exeter, 164 Glasgow, 439 Glossary of Architectural Terms, 450 Gloucester, 178 Hereford, 204 Iona, 441 Kirkwall, 448 Lichfield, 230 Lincoln, 337 Liverpool, 263 Llandaff, 429 Manchester, 264 Newcastle, 282 Norwich, 393 Oxford, 125 Peterborough, 360 Ripon, 297 Rochester, 57 Salisbury, 108 Southwell, 351 St. Alban's, 409 St. Andrew's, 446 St. Asaph's, 423 St. David's, 432 St. Giles', Edinburgh, 447 St. Paul's, 8 The Architecture of the Cathedrals of Great Britain, 1 Truro, 177 Wakefield, 333 Wells, 149 Westminster, 35 Winchester, 85 Worcester, 216 York, 309 * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Punctuation and spelling errors and inconsistent hyphenation have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscore_ and bold text by =equal signs=. In the inscriptions described on page 197, the letters a, e and u which have macrons in the original text, have been represented in this version using circumflexes, i.e. grâ, plê and Jhû. In this version of the text, superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. y^e. The oe ligatures in the text are shown as separate oe characters. In ambiguous cases, the text has been left as it appears in the original book. 
51205	----	Bennett's Small House Catalog 1920 Ray H. Bennett Lumber Co., Inc. [Illustration: FRONT COVER Bennett Homes Better Built Ready Cut RAY H. BENNETT LUMBER CO., INC. NORTH TONAWANDA--N.Y.] Bennett Homes Better Built Ready Cut RAY H. BENNETT LUMBER CO., INC. NORTH TONAWANDA--N.Y. LUMBER LATH--SHINGLES WINDOWS--DOORS MILL WORK NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. Dear Friend, We send this catalog to you with just one thought in mind, Service. As you turn the pages and study the various houses, remember that we are planning and building for YOU. No trouble is too great, no detail too small, if by personal consideration and supervision we can provide you with your ideal home. Our architects have studied the requirement of comfortable, convenient, up-to-date houses. In the designs shown in this catalog, you will find embodied their ideas--the results of considering the greatest convenience at the least cost. Not only do we supply you with blue prints of the house you select, but our special service department is ready to assist you in your interior decorating. Then too, our service department can give you any information you require in regard to the erection of your house. You naturally will want to know the approximate cost of erecting the house of your choice, the cost of the mason work, plumbing, lighting, heating, etc. This we shall be glad to furnish you, if you will write to us for such information. In buying a Bennett Home, you are really gratifying your individual tastes. You have infinite choice of designs, any of which can be slightly or moderately altered. You can choose your own color for outside paint and inside finish. Cupboards and closets of convenient size and situation, bay windows, French doors, fire places, stairways, colonnades,--all these are yours to command. We have already selected for you the best framing materials, lumber and hardware. The little touches that make the home and radiate the personality of the owners--these we leave to your individual choice. It is YOUR home that you are to build, and we offer you our assistance and co-operation. Cordially Yours, RAY H. BENNETT LUMBER CO., INC. JAS|RN Bennett Homes Better-Built Ready-Cut PRICES OF BENNETT HOMES DECEMBER 1, 1921 PRICES ARE NET F. O. B. CARS NORTH TONAWANDA, N. Y. DELIVERED PRICES QUOTED ON REQUEST. TERMS: Net Cash with Order. TERMS: =1. Cash with Order.= 5% discount from gross amount allowed when Cash in full is sent with order, or =2. 25% Cash with Order.= Balance sight draft with order bill of lading attached. No discount from gross amount allowed under these terms. WE GUARANTEE SATISFACTION OR MONEY BACK. 5% Cash Name Page Gross Discount Net Aberdeen, Plan A 30 $1944.78 $ 97.23 $1847.55 Aberdeen, Plan B 30 2418.89 120.94 2297.95 Arcadia, Plan A 31 1610.33 80.51 1529.82 Arcadia, Plan B 31 1907.57 95.37 1812.20 Atherton 32 2481.17 124.05 2357.12 Auburn, Plan A 56 1074.09 53.70 1020.39 Auburn, Plan B 56 1273.94 63.69 1210.25 Avon 10 2940.28 147.00 2793.28 Beverly, Plan A 60 1142.60 57.13 1085.47 Beverly, Plan B 60 1224.00 61.20 1162.80 Bison 22 2342.62 117.13 2225.49 Bryant 12 2465.12 123.25 2341.87 Charlotte, Plan B 11 3184.52 159.22 3025.30 Clarendon 39 3345.17 167.25 3177.92 Cleo 26 2313.83 115.69 2198.14 Cloverdale, Plan A 55 1380.97 69.04 1311.93 Cloverdale, Plan B 55 1519.36 75.96 1443.40 Concord, Reg. 61 1317.45 65.87 1251.58 Concord, Plan B 61 1585.31 79.26 1506.05 Colonial 44 4243.05 212.15 4030.90 Delaware, Plan A 58 1747.45 87.37 1660.08 Delaware, Plan B 58 1949.84 97.49 1852.35 Dover, Reg. 50 2120.89 106.04 2014.85 Dover, Plan B 50 2275.89 113.79 2162.10 Emerson 62 1697.23 84.86 1612.37 Erie 45 2281.00 114.05 2166.95 Flanders 35 2024.85 101.24 1923.61 Forsyth 38 3049.37 152.46 2896.91 Franklin 17 2550.71 127.53 2423.18 Frederick 46 3669.70 183.48 3486.22 Fulton 25 2552.78 127.63 2425.15 Genesee 41 2202.63 110.13 2092.50 Hamilton 24 2994.63 149.73 2844.90 Harriet 33 2776.88 138.84 2638.04 Hartley 43 2753.12 137.65 2615.47 Harvard 14 2071.13 103.55 1967.58 Ideal 23 2654.70 132.73 2521.97 Ilion 13 2440.36 122.01 2318.35 Janis 40 3088.00 154.40 2933.60 Kenmore, Plan A 54 804.91 40.24 764.67 Kenmore, Plan B 54 1039.82 51.99 987.83 Lancaster 34 2905.94 145.29 2760.65 La Salle 21 3076.84 153.84 2923.00 Lawton, Plan A 53 1647.97 82.39 1565.58 Lawton, Plan B 53 1825.67 91.28 1734.39 Lincoln 16 2849.67 142.48 2707.19 Madison 66 2510.10 125.50 2384.60 Maidstone, Plan A 52 1131.47 56.57 1074.90 Maidstone, Plan B 52 1386.96 69.34 1317.62 Monroe 59 2100.69 105.03 1995.66 Nelson 47 1728.63 86.43 1642.20 New Hartford 19 2185.30 109.26 2076.04 Niagara 20 2459.91 122.99 2336.92 Olean 42 2012.08 100.60 1911.48 Ontario 64 2051.56 102.57 1948.99 Potomac 18 3124.68 156.23 2968.45 Raymond 15 2305.83 115.29 2190.54 Richard 48 2045.57 102.27 1943.30 Rochester 49 2340.15 117.00 2223.15 Salem 28 2538.93 126.94 2411.99 Shamrock, Plan A 57 1124.27 56.21 1068.06 Shamrock, Plan B 57 1429.11 71.45 1357.66 Sherrill, Plan A 51 1551.68 77.58 1474.10 Sherrill, Plan B 51 1898.22 94.91 1803.31 Stanley 65 1230.88 61.54 1169.34 Tremont 67 4051.07 202.55 3848.52 Waverly 63 2006.09 100.30 1905.79 Woodward 29 1723.77 86.18 1637.59 York 27 1914.00 95.60 1818.40 =SUMMER COTTAGES=, Pages 68-69 Wenona 68 $842.07 $42.10 $799.97 Newport 68 786.86 39.34 747.52 Ivernia 69 702.34 35.11 667.23 Linwood 69 800.36 40.01 760.35 =GARAGES=, Pages 69-70 Buick 10 × 14 $170.12 $ 8.50 $161.62 Buick 10 × 16 182.48 9.12 173.36 Buick 12 × 16 196.45 9.82 186.63 Buick 12 × 18 210.21 10.51 199.70 Buick 12 × 20 217.08 10.85 206.23 Cadillac 18 × 16 275.84 13.79 262.05 Cadillac 18 × 18 293.09 14.65 278.44 Cadillac 18 × 20 306.98 15.34 291.64 Cadillac 20 × 18 306.98 15.34 291.64 Cadillac 20 × 20 325.52 16.27 309.25 Cadillac 27 × 20 417.76 20.88 396.88 Hudson 10 × 14 169.83 8.49 161.34 Hudson 10 × 16 181.72 9.08 172.64 Hudson 12 × 16 199.97 9.99 189.98 Hudson 12 × 18 208.73 10.43 198.30 Hudson 14 × 16 212.73 10.63 202.10 Hudson 14 × 18 226.63 10.33 215.30 Peerless 18 × 16 288.10 14.40 273.70 Peerless 18 × 18 301.76 15.08 286.68 Peerless 18 × 20 315.26 15.76 299.50 Peerless 20 × 18 315.26 15.76 299.50 Peerless 20 × 20 327.42 16.37 311.05 Bennett Special 8 × 12 90.94 4.54 86.40 Bennett Special 8 × 14 97.61 4.88 92.73 Bennett Special 8 × 16 110.18 5.50 104.68 Bennett Special 10 × 12 99.22 4.96 94.26 Bennett Special 10 × 14 109.25 5.46 103.79 Bennett Special 10 × 16 122.23 6.11 116.12 [Illustration: Bennett Homes Better-Built Ready-Cut Order Form FORM 211-5-20 120M-PK-1000] This book is the story, in word and picture, of actual homes proven by living people to be Beautiful, Practical, Substantial. ¶ The designs and plans are the final creations, after years of study and experience, of Foremost American Authorities on Home Architecture and Construction. ¶ Economy is the controlling thought in these plans--not economy that merely cheapens but that which eliminates all unnecessary costs without sacrifice of appearance, strength or utility. ¶ Bennett Homes are truly Better-Built--better to look at, better to live in and better to last. [Illustration] CATALOG No. 18 Copyright 1920 by =_Ray H. Bennett Lumber Co., Inc. NORTH TONAWANDA - N. Y._= ESTABLISHED 1902 INDEX Page Bennett Advantages, 7 Bennett Economies, 4-7 Bennett Method, 4-7 Bennett Plant, 1 Cellars, 9 Chimneys, 9 Colonnades, 36-37 Decorating Service, Inside Back Cover Doors, 36-37 Double Home, 46-67 Duplex Home, 46-67 Economies, 4-7 Foundation Plans, 9 French Doors, 36-37 Garages, 69-70 Buick Hudson Peerless Cadillac Bennett Special, 69 Guarantee, Order Form Hardware, 36-37 Heating, 71-72 History--Home Building, 3 Houses, 10-35 and 38-67 Aberdeen, 30 Arcadia, 31 Atherton, 32 Auburn, 56 Avon, 10 Beverly, 60 Bison, 22 Bryant, 12 Charlotte, 11 Clarendon, 39 Cleo, 26 Cloverdale, 55 Concord, 61 Colonial, 44 Delaware, 58 Dover, 50 Emerson, 62 Erie, 45 Flanders, 35 Forsyth, 38 Franklin, 17 Frederick, 46 Fulton, 25 Genesee, 41 Hamilton, 24 Harriet, 33 Hartley, 43 Harvard, 14 Ideal, 23 Ilion, 13 Janis, 40 Kenmore, 54 Lancaster, 34 LaSalle, 21 Lawton, 53 Lincoln, 16 Madison, 66 Maidstone, 52 Monroe, 59 Nelson, 47 New Hartford, 19 Niagara, 20 Olean, 42 Ontario, 64 Potomac, 18 Raymond, 15 Richard, 48 Rochester, 49 Salem, 28 Shamrock, 57 Sherrill, 51 Stanley, 65 Tremont, 67 Waverly, 63 Woodward, 29 York, 27 Kitchen Cabinets, 36-37 Landscape Service, Inside Back Cover Lighting, 71-72 Linen Closet, 36-37 Lock Sets, 36-37 Masonry, 9 Medicine Cabinet, 36-37 Mirror Door, 36-37 Paints, 9 Plaster, 9 Plumbing, 71-72 Prices, with letter References, 2 Reverse Plans, 8 Specifications--general, 8-9 Specifications--detail, with each home Stairways, 36-37 Summer Cottages, 68-69 Wenona Newport Ivernia Linwood Two Family Home, 46-67 Trim--interior, 36-37 Wardrobe, 36-37 Windows, 36-37 [Illustration: 3 Letters of Reference REFERENCES THE STATE NATIONAL BANK NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. BUFFALO TRUST COMPANY BUFFALO, N.Y. THE FIRST TRUST CO. OF TONAWANDA TONAWANDA, N.Y. REFERENCES OUR CUSTOMERS EVERYWHERE ANY BANK OR TRUST COMPANY COMMERCIAL AGENCIES.] "_=Home-keeping hearts are happiest; For those who wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best.=_" --LONGFELLOW The first home was purposely built beside the "Sacred Fire". The story runs that fire came as a gift from the Gods to Man. And so heavenly seemed its qualities of beauty, light and warmth, that Man reverenced it--ceased wandering and built his abode around its glowing radiance. Through the ages--from the rugged cave, the rough tent of animal skins, the crude log cabin, down to the Home Beautiful of To-day--home building has been the strong primal instinct. Men have practiced all the pursuits of peace and war for those things for which home stands--love, family, hospitality, security, worship. Indeed, the home building spirit is the very backbone of civilization. Intelligent, thoughtful men always desire their families to live the home life, because they know that the best of physical, mental and moral powers are developed under home's benign influence. Almost the first thought of the Pilgrims after they had landed on America's new shores was of a home. And so immediately they built themselves sturdy houses of the straight-shafted pine trees that stood everywhere about the rugged shores. And some of these homes are still standing, amazing testimony to the vigor and endurance of wood. Today, more than ever before, people are seriously considering how they shall live. They realize that the dwelling place has a marked influence upon living and character--that the inspiration of home, next to religion, is the greatest in life. Perforce, many must live part of their lives in the rented house. But however desirable, no family can ever acquire quite that deep-seated love and interest for, nor have the incentive to adorn and beautify, a dwelling place for which they pay toll to a landlord. But when the place which shelters the family belongs to them, when they know that every thought and every dollar they put into it is a permanent investment which pays big dividends in the family happiness and contentment--then that place, however lowly or humble, becomes truly a home. Naturally then, the tendency is strongly toward the owned private home. The dainty cottage--the inviting semi-bungalow--the comfortable Colonial--the cosy story-and-a-half--these are the leading types of homes to-day. And when there is built into them that particular beauty, and those conveniences--modern sanitation, lighting, ventilation and heating--that will suit the taste of the individual family, their mode of living and their pocketbook--then indeed does the dwelling place become "a thing of beauty and a joy forever". Bennett Homes, Better-Built and Ready-Cut, satisfy every desire and every need of home-lovers--for the dwelling-place which shall possess charm, convenience and endurance to the greatest extent consistent with the desired investment. [Illustration: =A Better-Built idea--routing (instead of cleating) stair-stringers for fine workmanship, and accurate fit.=] HOW SCIENCE SOLVED THE HIGH COST OF HOME-BUILDING Up to the present, the great drawback to home-building has been the excessive cost, by the individually-built-house method. Plans by experienced architects have been costly; the cost of lumber has been high; the amount of labor necessary to cut and trim rough and finished lumber has been a serious item; there have been endless worries--delays--extra costs; plans have looked good on paper, but have not worked out well; contractors have been known to be careless about the quality of the material and of the work on the job. What will avoid all the usual waste, delays, disappointments, and--what will cut the cost of building a home? Science says--"_simplify_"--"_standardize_"--"_eliminate waste_." "_This is the day of brains that plans for thousands_ at a time, instead of one. Why is it necessary to plan every individual home that is built? There's a wiser, more economical way. Once the plan for a house has been tried and proven true, use it many times over; let hundreds of people divide the cost--let hundreds of people reap the benefit of these plans." "_This is the day of machinery_, the day for producing in tremendous quantities, thereby accomplishing in minutes that which would consume hours, days and weeks to achieve by usual methods. After having worked out plans to the highest point of economy, why not cut the materials by labor-saving machines _instead of the old hand method_, thereby reducing labor and waste to a minimum." +==================================+ | ¶ ALL CHANCES FOR ERRORS AS TO | | QUANTITY AND QUALITY ARE | | ELIMINATED BY PURCHASING ALL | | MATERIALS AT A STATED PRICE FROM | | ONE COMPANY--FROM BENNETT. | +==================================+ SCIENCE'S ANSWER IS THE BENNETT-WAY The best designs and plans have been produced for hundreds to share the benefits--a huge modern mill in the heart of the lumber market has been equipped with labor-and-waste-saving machinery of the latest type--and YOU, who want to build a home, reap the advantages and savings of the Bennett-Way in securing one of finer design, greater convenience, and genuine durability. Perhaps right here, it is well to establish the difference between a Bennett Ready-Cut Home and a portable house. The object of the portable system is to produce a building construction which may be put together to form a temporary shelter--taken apart again--moved from place to place as desired. Manufacturers of portable buildings cannot and do not represent their products to be permanent. But Bennett Homes, Better-Built and Ready-Cut, are built for permanency. Once your Bennett Home is completed, there is absolutely no difference between it and any well constructed home, except, perhaps, that our designs are more attractive and impressive than the average homes one sees. HOW RENT-MONEY COUNTS This table shows what rent amounts to in ten and twenty years, with six per cent interest compounded annually, and gives an idea of the value of the house one can pay for by applying rent toward paying for a home. Rent per Month In 10 Years In 20 Years $ 8.00 $1,265.35 $ 3,531.41 12.00 1,898.02 5,279.11 17.00 2,688.86 7,504.24 20.00 3,163.36 8,828.52 25.00 3,954.20 11,035.65 30.00 4,745.04 13,242.78 35.00 5,535.88 15,449.91 50.00 7,908.40 22,071.30 [Illustration: =Tonawanda, heart of the Lumber Market. Great lumber-docks on one side, main trunk-line railroads on the other.=] ATTRACTIVE DESIGNS There are more than fifty designs and plans offered on the following pages. They have been carefully and expertly selected from hundreds submitted. These designs are not merely dreams of architects or artists. They are actual houses which have been built, lived in and proven practical and pleasurable in every detail. In considering a BENNETT BETTER-BUILT HOME, you are offered a very wide selection of various styles and sizes, so that you may choose a home that will suit your particular needs, tastes, locality, and pocketbook. In building the Bennett Way you have this genuine advantage--you know, before you build, just exactly how your home will look after it is completed. Do you know _that_ when your local architect or contractor designs your home for you? He may convince you that his design is what you want, and induce you to accept it, even against your own better judgment. Though you may not be pleased with the design he has prepared, nevertheless you accept his ideas rather than submit to the additional expense and delay of a change. BENNETT BETTER-BUILT HOMES correspond in every detail with the actual photographs shown in this catalog. Should the design you select require some slight alterations, we shall be very glad to make such changes, if practical, at actual cost. ECONOMY IN DRAFTING The first of a series of savings for you starts in our drafting room. It is quite necessary for the architect to charge a considerable fee for his drawings, for he must pay expenses and a profit. The drawings for our houses are even more elaborate, and the first cost of production is naturally much greater. Yet there is this gain for you: when the drawings are once made, hundreds of blue prints are made from them at practically a negligible cost. Therefore, we furnish you with blue prints from our drawings _absolutely free_ of fees or of any charge. [Illustration: =Two large schooners unloading a giant shipment at the spacious Bennett Docks.=] [Illustration: =Millions of feet of choice lumber air-drying for your and other fine homes.=] ECONOMY IN STANDARDIZATION Next we help you realize a decided saving through standardization of materials. In designing an attractive home, a professional architect can give little thought to standard lengths or shapes of material. Our Bennett Better-Built designers, however, put forth both thought and effort toward producing, not only an attractive home, but one which is economical of rough and finished lumber, millwork, etc. For instance, there are certain standard lengths and widths of lumber, and certain standard styles and sizes of windows, doors, window frames, door frames--in fact of every kind of millwork. Standard items can be manufactured in tremendous quantities at very low cost while special styles and sizes require readjustment of machinery, and the waste (sometimes 33 and 1-3 per cent) of standard-sized materials to meet special requirements. We manufacture such an extensive variety of styles and sizes in building materials of so many kinds, that an appearance as artistic as you may wish can easily be produced without resorting to the expense of special materials. Another important application of standardization lies in the spacing of windows and the like. Insofar as appearance is concerned, 6 inches one way or another usually makes but little difference in the spacing of windows. But from the standpoint of economy, it is decidedly better to have the spacing in even feet. For instance, windows spaced 12 or 14 feet apart permit the use of 12 or 14 foot standard length boards, without waste; whereas, if the windows were spaced 12' 6" apart, it would necessitate the cutting up of a 14' or 16' board with a waste on every board that goes to make up the full height of the window. ECONOMY IN USE OF LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY By the use of gigantic, powerful machinery, we save you a large percentage of labor cost, and inaccuracies that always waste hand-cut lumber. The prices quoted in our catalog furnish you with material sufficient to complete every listed detail of the home which you select. In addition, it covers the cost of cutting every piece of material so that when it reaches its destination, it is ready to nail. There will be no wasting of time waiting for "something forgotten that must be ordered," waiting for one man to cut and fit a part before another can go ahead. [Illustration: Machines sawing and resawing lumber for homes--saving hours and days over hand methods.] You cannot possible go astray, because--as we said before--our blue prints are thorough and complete, showing the exact location of each and every piece of material. It would not be difficult to erect the entire building with only the blue prints at hand. Nevertheless, to facilitate the work, we furnish a bill of material, itemizing each and every piece, and instructing where it should be placed. As a further safeguard against error and confusion, we include a set of instructions written by men who have had years of actual experience in constructing houses. ECONOMY IN CARPENTRY The entire time consumed by the carpenter for calculating the best plan for framing, has been eliminated. This time is entirely saved, because with our Bennett Better-Built system, the planning is completely done in our office before the material is shipped, and our _Special Notch System_ makes the work speedy. As you have watched work on a house, have you ever stopped to figure how very much of a workman's time was spent in first measuring, then cutting, then trying and perhaps refitting the material--all this is against the very small amount of time required for fastening and nailing? Well, we save you all that fuss and waste by furnishing the material not merely cut, but cut to fit more accurately than hand labor ever could. Immediately upon receipt of your order, the blue-prints of the design you have selected, the bill of material and a set of instructions are mailed to you. At that same time, a duplicate bill of material is sent into our mill, with instructions to start cutting. Within a few hours the material for the frame of your house is completed--which means that the work which would have required many days of expensive labor on the job, is accomplished in hours by our machines--more economically, more accurately, many times over. ECONOMY IN MILLWORK All Bennett Better-Built doors, windows, door frames, window frames, door trim, window trim and mouldings are manufactured in quantities--therefore at a very low cost of production, of which you derive the benefit. Powerful and precise machines saw and resaw, rout stair stringers, mortise, and fit doors and windows, cut and shape woodwork, smooth and sand all sorts and sizes of lumber--with a quality of fine workmanship in dozen and score lots impossible by any other method. And remember--any saving in labor must be considered a double saving, because the more time required for the erection of your home, the longer you are paying out money for labor on the new and for rent where you are living. ECONOMY IN WATER TRANSPORTATION OF RAW MATERIALS The docks of the Ray H. Bennett Lumber Company, Inc., are located the best of any in North Tonawanda. You will realize the importance to you of location, when we tell you that the largest lumber steamers coming down the great lakes, direct from the saw mills, land at our docks. Thus we are enabled to take advantage of lake-steamer cargo-shipments, and save something for you. [Illustration: Thousands of doors--absolutely clear grade--knotless, and beautifully grained.] You will also appreciate that we, as buyers of cargoes of lumber totalling millions of feet, are entitled to a lower price than the buyer of a carload of lumber containing only about twenty thousand feet. This impresses the fact that we are in a position to furnish you better quality materials at lower prices. We handle lumber in huge quantities--our stock sizes are secured in big units--therefore, our goods are manufactured and handled at a much lower cost. You can easily see that our ideal location for the securing of our raw materials means large savings to you. We have enormous stocks on hand at all times and are ideally equipped for fast work. ECONOMY IN EXCEPTIONAL SHIPPING FACILITIES North Tonawanda, N. Y., where the Bennett Plant is located, is one of the largest lumber markets in the United States. This is due to the fact that North Tonawanda is a made-to-order center for distribution. Its shipping facilities are conceded to be unsurpassed in the country. Practically all of the great railway systems are in direct connection, enabling us to give you the remarkable service--the vitally important quick shipments--for which we are famed--in which we excel. ECONOMY IN BENNETT BULK BUYING We have, as yet, made little mention of our vast purchasing power, nor of the fact that you are purchasing your material at wholesale prices. [Illustration: Window warehouse--thousands of dollars' worth of finely constructed frames ready for glazing.] We purchase, annually, many millions of feet of material directly from the saw mills, thereby eliminating unnecessary expenses and profits. We buy at rock-bottom prices, less all possible discounts for quantity, for prompt payment, etc. [Illustration: One of our modern Planers--helping to put the celebrated finish on Bennett interior woodwork.] And then our giant purchases are brought by large lake steamers to our docks and unloaded directly into our yard. On one side our material comes in; it moves almost automatically through our yards to the cutting and finishing mills; it leaves them on the railroad side of our property. With our advantages, the cost of handling is therefore reduced to a minimum which only a few of the largest establishments can hope to equal. BENNETT ADVANTAGES--In a Nutshell 1. Designs and plans proven the "best" of this country's architectural and practical experts. 2. Elimination of architects' and contractors' fees. 3. Materials from the heart of the lumber market--brand-new, bright stock. 4. Saving of waste through standard sizes, lengths, shapes. 5. Ready-cut, ready-to-erect features as against cut-and-try on the job method. 6. Quantity production of standardized millwork. 7. Transportation and handling charges minimized. 8. Huge buying facilities. 9. Services of an organization, celebrated for its financial strength, for ability and for integrity. 10. All-in-all a real HOME for you and yours at a price that represents the greatest possible value for the money you elect to put into it. In every paragraph of these specifications you will note how thoroughly we have planned for strength and endurance in the construction of your home--how we employ only the best grades of lumber, accurately cut and fashioned by the most precise workmanship. In the first place, please understand the importance of our notched construction. See the photograph in the lower corner of next page. The frames of our houses are a great improvement over the common practice, both in matters of accuracy of fit, of strength and rigidity. The notch method is considered costly when done by hand labor, but it is always considered desirable. The Bennett methods of doing by machines in minutes what would take hours or days by the cut-on-the-job way, gives you extra quality without extra cost. Another thing we wish you to note is the double and triple strength of joists and studding, where extra stresses are sure to be met, or absolute rigidity is an essential. See the three studs at the corners as shown by the photo of "notch" construction. Notice that we furnish bridging for floor joists; that our stairs are cut accurately, as in the best houses, instead of using mere nailed-on cleats. Notice how we select and match interior woods for beauty of grain--how we sand them so they will take a most beautiful finish. Notice that the outside of our houses--door and window frames, and siding,--is of _Redwood_, celebrated for its extraordinary long life, and so approved by the U. S. Government experts. Notice our hardware and such items as kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, medicine cabinets, even building paper, and lastly notice our double flooring for both floors. In every last item, Bennett Homes are truly Better-Built--all in all you will get a most attractive, most livable, most enduring dwelling place, giving you a dollar for dollar value that is unequalled in the lumber market. General Specifications DIMENSIONS All rooms show =actual= inside measurements and not from outside of building to center of inside partition or from center of partition to center of partition, as is sometimes given. PLANS One set is furnished with each house. They are so complete in detail, that if carefully followed, it is impossible to go wrong. Reversed plans will be furnished without extra cost. MATERIALS IN GENERAL All lumber for Bennett "Better-Built" Homes is shipped directly from enormous stocks in our yards. It is all thoroughly seasoned, and guaranteed equal to or better than the grades specified. Thorough seasoning means less waste and consequently lower freight charges. It also means that shrinkage, bound to occur with green lumber, has occurred before the lumber is cut for your home. [Illustration] QUANTITY OF MATERIALS An unqualified guarantee is contained on your order blank that we will furnish material to entirely complete your home in accordance with the following general specifications and with the particular specifications contained on the individual page of photograph and plans. BASEMENT FRAMES AND SASH Are not included in your order unless illustration shows siding or shingles to the grade lines, because these are used when the foundation is laid. We plan to have your material on the ground as soon as the foundation is finished and has had sufficient time to set. If we were to furnish basement frames and sash, it would be necessary either to ship them by express, creating additional expense, or it would be necessary to delay the foundation work until the lumber arrived. We cannot see where enough benefit is derived to make up for this additional expense and delay. If, however, you decide to have us furnish them, we will ship them according to your instructions. FOUNDATION WALL PLATE OR BOND TIMBER 2 in. × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit, furnished to lay on top of the foundation wall to insure an even bearing for the first floor joists. GIRDER Size 6 in. × 6 in. or 6 in. × 8 in., (as listed under each design) depending upon the size house. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit. It is a well-known fact that a built-up timber is stronger than a solid timber, and is much easier to handle. We, therefore, furnish material cut to proper length to make a built-up timber. GIRDER POSTS Iron stanchions 4 in. in diameter. These posts are furnished in sufficient number for spacing not more than 8 ft. apart. FIRST FLOOR JOISTS 2 in. × 8 in. or 2 in. × 10 in. according to span, No. 1 Hemlock, Surfaced four sides and cut to fit; spaced 16 in. on centers and =doubled= under all bearing partitions. SECOND FLOOR JOISTS 2 in. × 8 in. or 2 in. × 10 in. according to span, No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit; spaced 16 in. on centers. CEILING JOISTS AND COLLAR BEAMS 2 in. × 4 in. or 2 in. × 6 in., depending upon span, No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit; 16 in. on centers. BRIDGING 2 in. × 2 in. Hemlock, cut to fit. A double row between all 2 in. × 8 in. and 2 in. × 10 in. joists having a span of 12 ft. or over. RAFTERS 2 in. × 4 in. or 2 in. × 6 in. depending on size of house and pitch of roof, No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides, spaced 24 in. on centers. The rafters are all carefully laid out and cut in our mill, ready to erect on the job. STUDDING 2 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides, all cut to fit; spaced 16 in. on centers. =Trebled= at corners of outside walls and =doubled= at sides of door and window openings where extra strength is required. Top plates of all partitions and outside walls are =double=; single plates at bottom. Side wall plates are =notched= to receive the studding, a celebrated Bennett feature. It is impossible to set the studding wrong. This is an improvement over the ordinary method of framing. See illustration on opposite page. WALL SHEATHING =Dressed and matched= and cut to fit. This is another important item of Bennett quality. No. 1 Hemlock. ROOF SHEATHING 1 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced one side, cut to fit. We furnish this material in quantities to allow for 2-1/4 in. spacing, as is common practice, when shingles are used. In case you decide to use Asphalt Slate Surfaced Roofing, or Asphalt S. S. Shingles, it is necessary to lay the sheathing tightly together. We furnish dressed and matched sheathing for this purpose at a slight additional cost. PORCH FLOOR JOISTS 2 in. × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit. Spaced 16 in. on centers. PORCH CEILING JOISTS AND RAFTERS 2 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, surfaced four sides and cut to fit. Spaced 24 in. on centers. SUB FLOORING 1 in. No. 1 Hemlock =Dressed= and =Matched= and cut to fit, furnished for both =first= and =second floors=. FINISH FLOORING 13/16 in. × 2-1/4 in. or 13/16 in. × 3-1/4 in. Clear Flat Grain Yellow Pine or Clear Fir. Double Flooring is another proof of the Bennett Better-Built idea--it secures rigidity and soundproofness. Furnished in standard lengths. PORCH FLOORING 1-1/8 in. × 3-1/4 in. Clear Fir, cut to fit. PORCH CEILING 7/16 in. Clear Yellow Pine, surfaced and beaded one side and matched, cut to fit. ATTIC FLOORING When attic stairs are shown in plans, we furnish 13/16 in. × 3-1/4 in. No. 2 Yellow Pine, cut to fit. When attic stairs are not shown, no flooring is furnished. CORNICE CEILING 3/4 in. × 3-1/4 in. =Clear Fir=, surfaced and beaded one side and matched, cut to fit, used instead of roof boards over exposed rafter ends. OUTSIDE FINISH =Clear Redwood=, =Clear Fir or Sound Knotted White Pine=, surfaced four sides. SIDING 1/2 in. =Clear Redwood Bevel Siding, furnished in standard lengths. Or= =Extra *A* Washington Red Cedar= Shingles will be furnished instead of siding without extra charge, if so desired. It is commonly known, and an admitted fact that =Redwood is unequalled for exterior protection=. DOOR FRAMES AND WINDOW FRAMES =Clear Redwood= cut to fit, and shipped knocked-down. The sills for all outside doors are 1-3/4 in. × 7-1/4 in. hardwood. All outside casing for window and doors are 7/8 in. × 4-1/2 in. with drip cap. INSIDE DOORS 1-3/8 in. Fir, two or five panel, mortised for lock sets. See pages 36 and 37. FRONT AND REAR DOORS Both glazed. Front doors are furnished as shown in the individual house picture. 1-3/4 in. thick No. 1 grade solid Chestnut, unless otherwise specified, =mortised= for front door lock set. Rear door 1-3/8 in., =mortised= for lock set. See pages 36 and 37 for all doors. ROOF SHINGLES Extra Clear Washington Red Cedar 5-2 inches, (*) at butt. To lay 4-1/2 in. to the weather. Bennett multi-strip slate-surfaced shingles or Bennett Asphalt Slate-Surfaced Shingles will be furnished at a nominal cost. *Note: The "5 to 2" inches, refers to the thickness of the shingles, and means that five shingles placed one on top of the other with butts together, measures full 2 inches thick at the butt end. SIDE WALL SHINGLES For side walls, where shown in catalog, are Premium Brand Extra *A* Washington Red Cedar Shingles 6 to 2, furnished to be laid 5 in. to the weather. Siding will be furnished instead of shingles, if so desired. SCAFFOLDS AND BRACES We furnish these as necessary, depending upon the size of the house. LATH No. 1 Spruce or Hemlock 48 in. standard. No lath furnished for cellar or attic, unless ordered extra. GROUNDS 5/8 in. × 7/8 in. Hemlock. To nail around all inside door openings as a guide for plastering. STAIRS The stairs are carefully designed for the individual requirements of each home. The material is the highest grade of Yellow Pine to match the beauty of the other interior finish. They are carefully machined in our mills and are shipped to you knocked down, ready to set up. See illustration of manufacture on page 4. See pages 36 and 37 also. CELLAR AND ATTIC STAIRS Furnished cut to fit whenever shown in the plans. PANTRY AND CLOSET SHELVING Material for shelves is furnished for each closet and pantry, shown in the catalog plans. KITCHEN CABINET Whenever kitchen cabinets are shown in the plans they are included in the price for the home. They are shipped to you in the knock-down complete (including hardware). The material is clear grade Yellow Pine. See pages 36 and 37. MEDICINE CABINET A built-in medicine cabinet is furnished with each house having a bathroom. Each cabinet is complete in every detail and includes a bevel-mirror door. Shipped ready to set in place. See pages 36 and 37. COLONNADES Where a colonnade is shown in the plans, it is included in the price of the home. The material is, of course, Yellow Pine to match the other fine interior finish of the home. Each colonnade is manufactured in owr own mill under our own supervision, and we guarantee you the very best of materials and the finest workmanship. Two styles of colonnades are shown on pages 36 and 37 of our catalog. In case a colonnade is not included in the plan of the house you select, and you wish to install one, we will, upon application, gladly quote prices. INSIDE DOOR AND WINDOW TRIM Clear Yellow Pine of the finest quality obtainable, all carefully matched and sanded. The casings are 13/16 in. × 3-5/8 in. in width; back band 1-1/8 in. × 1-1/8 in.; the window stool 7/8 in. × 3-5/8 in.; the apron 7/8 in. × 3-1/4 in. This design is one of the choicest on the market. See pages 36 and 37. BASE, PICTURE MOULDING, CHAIR RAIL AND HOOK STRIPS Clear Yellow Pine, shipped in standard lengths to be cut on the job; base 13/16 in. × 7-5/8 in. on first floor, 13/16 in. × 5-5/8 in. for second floor. Picture moulding 13/16 in. × 1-1/2 in. Chair rail 5/8 in. × 3-1/2 in. Hook strips 13/16 in. × 2-3/4 in. Chair rail for kitchen and bath. Hook strips for all closets. WINDOWS 1-3/8 in. Clear White Pine, check rail, made to be used with pulleys and weights. Glass set in and puttied. Styles to correspond with those shown in the individual house pictures. All windows more than 26 inches in width, glazed with =double= strength glass. PORCH MATERIAL All porch materials are manufactured from the best weather-resisting woods of standard designs. Porch steps are painstakingly cut to fit in our mill and shipped to you knocked-down with 1-1/8 in. treads. HARDWARE MORTISE LOCK SETS Design illustrated on pages 36 and 37. Furnished in two styles of finish--Antique Copper, or Sand Blast Dull Brass. Unless otherwise specified in your order, we will furnish the Antique Copper. A cylinder front door lock set is furnished with all houses listed at $2400.00 or more. For houses listed at less, the standard bit key front door lock set is furnished. DOUBLE ACTING FLOOR HINGES AND DOOR PLATES Furnished with all houses shown with a double swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. HINGES Finished to match other hardware. Three hinges are furnished on all front doors. SASH LIFT, SASH LOCKS AND WINDOW STOP ADJUSTERS Furnished for all sliding sash windows, finished to match the lock sets, two sash lifts to each window. BATHROOM HARDWARE All bathroom hardware is =nickel plated=. KITCHEN CUPBOARD AND CABINET HARDWARE All =hinges=, =turns=, =etc.=, are included in price quoted and furnished to match other hardware. NAILS Sufficient quantities of all sizes furnished for all purposes. Galvanized nails for shingles. BUILDING PAPER =Tarred Paper= is furnished for underneath the siding, and between the finish and sub-flooring. DOORBELL We furnish an attractive front door bell set. MISCELLANEOUS HARDWARE Our hardware list includes sash cord, window weights, attic sash sets, base knobs, coat hooks, chimney flashing and valley tin, but does not include eavetroughing. PAINTS, OILS AND VARNISHES EXTRA FINE QUALITY READY-MIXED PAINT Sufficient in quantity for three good coats on outside walls. A special hard drying floor paint is furnished to cover the porch floor and steps two coats. Color card furnished upon request. SPAR VARNISH Although it costs less to furnish paint for the porch ceiling, we are furnishing a high grade spar varnish for two coats. Spar varnish is also furnished to cover the front door. INTERIOR VARNISH A very high grade varnish is furnished for two good coats on all doors, windows and interior trim. This varnish is exceedingly durable and can be rubbed within 36 to 48 hours. It is not affected by hot or cold water and will not crack. Practically every home owner prefers his bathroom painted rather than varnished. All bathrooms in Bennett Better-Built Homes are especially attractive, owing to the fact that they are finished in white enamel and all hardware is furnished nickel plated. Enamel undercoater is furnished to cover the woodwork, two coats. Two coats of Bennett White Enamel on top of this makes an attractive and durable surface. Our White Enamel Paint will not turn yellow. Putty, oil, sandpaper and turpentine in proper quantities to meet requirements are furnished. Although we do not include floor varnish or wall paints in our specifications, owing to the wide variety of ways for finishing floors and walls, we will upon request be glad to figure your exact needs and quote upon them. SHINGLE STAIN When shingles are used on outside walls, we furnish shingle stain instead of paint. We do not furnish stain for roof shingles, except at an additional cost on order. FOUNDATION, CHIMNEY, FIREPLACES Although we show on our plans, the location of foundation, chimney, fireplace, etc., we do not include these items in our prices, nor do we carry the materials in stock. The express and freight charges to be met in shipment would offset any advantages we might offer. For the same reason, we do not furnish plaster. We will, however, gladly co-operate with our customers by offering suggestions or furnishing data regarding same. PLUMBING, HEATING AND LIGHTING See pages 71 and 72 for plumbing, heating and lighting fixtures. The quotations covering the installation of plumbing, heating and lighting equipment vary so much that it is advisable to consider each separately. Our Equipment Department will furnish you with information and estimates. [Illustration: Notches Make Assembling Easy] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Avon_= 26 ft. × 40 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] What "Sterling" means to silver, our "Avon" means to the semi-bungalow home. It is the hallmark of genuine worth. Rarely do you find so stately, yet so graceful lines. Consider the broad and downward sweeping roofs of main structure and porch, the overhanging eaves, the supporting brackets, the solid pillars and house-wide veranda. And such a wonderful place inside! You'll hesitate a minute in the vestibule--but it's in the hospitable living room you wish to be. There's a restful hearth and fireside at the farther end; or, if you prefer, a triple window to give a wide view of outdoors. And--what's unique--the stairway rising charmingly from one corner of the roomy, cheerful dining room. The kitchen is compact, convenient. And think of it--_two_ airy, sizable bedrooms on the main floor. Yet there are two more sleeping rooms--one extra large--the bath, storeroom, and a linen closet upstairs. Notice the ample closet room, the coat closet, the flood of light and air possible in every room of this home. Oh! there are features in the "Avon" to tell you about for a long time--but write us you are interested in it especially, and we will send the whole splendid story. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ French doors between vestibule and living room. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for vestibule, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "AVON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "AVON" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _Charlotte_ 26 ft. × 38 ft. over all 8 Rooms, Vestibule, Bath] There's a quiet, rich dignity to the Charlotte--a home beyond the ordinary for a good-sized family. The shingle sides are novel and pleasing. Interesting brackets support the wide, overhanging eaves. Dormers provide triple windows--one, a bay! You enter a cozy reception hall, with its pretty stairway and landing. An attractive colonnade arch leads into a well lighted living room. Here you may have your cozy fireplace--or, if you prefer, none at all. French doors communicate with an unusually attractive dining room. Many will be pleased with the bedroom and bath on first floor. Note the splendid bedrooms with roomy closets on second floor--bath with an easy access, a linen closet, a large kitchen cabinet. Truly, the Charlotte is an _achievement_--in rare design--in perfection of every detail--in wonderful value for its low price. SPECIFICATIONS Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ French doors between living room and dining room. Niagara Colonnade between hall and living room. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for vestibule, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and two medicine cabinets included in selling price. _See pages 36-37._ [Illustration: "Charlotte" FIRST FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration: "Charlotte" SECOND FLOOR PLAN B] _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Bryant_= 28 ft. × 24 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] If your desires lean toward the home beautiful, yet modest, containing all necessary conveniences for modern living, you will study the Bryant with considerable interest. Though of complete styling, it is unburdened with expensive "fuss and feathers." The roof treatment is artistically handled on porch, dormer and sides. A shingled second story adds to the smart effect. A good-sized porch leads to a spacious living room, while to the right stands a gem of a dining room. Especially mark the stairway, closed or open as you may wish--and a distinct gain in conservation of warmth in cold weather. Off the nearby kitchen is a dandy storage closet. The downstairs bedroom may be as readily used for den or study. Upstairs there is a convenient bathroom, and two roomy sleeping chambers with extra large closets. There is the innovation of a bright sewing room--a room all for mother. Splendidly designed, sturdily built in every detail, you can choose the Bryant as a home that will meet your future as well as present needs. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "BRYANT" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "BRYANT" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] Batavia, N. Y. Nov. 11, 1917. _Gentlemen_:-- _Five years ago_ I bought all my lumber from you to build my house and I am very much pleased with it. I saved a good big bit by dealing with you. R. P. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Ilion_= 22 ft. × 34 ft. over all 8 Rooms, Bath, Pantry] Trimness is personified by this neat, compact, all-shingle house--trimness and comfort, for the common-sense interior arrangement is in keeping with the all-around beauty and durability of the exterior. Notice that you reach the porch by means of the steps on the side--this advantage securing fine privacy for time spent on the veranda. One enters a reception hall that opens either toward the amply-spaced living room, or a quiet den (which might readily be used as an office, if desired). The dining room is complete with a triple-window bay, insuring a wealth of light and an ideal place for house-plants and flowers. The kitchen and the generous pantry are in that close proximity which modern home management dictates nowadays. Side and rear doors are combined in an entrance at grade. And then step upstairs! Three bright, airy, double-windowed bedrooms greet you--rooms of liberal width and depth, each one having an adjoining extra-size closet. Taken altogether, the Ilion is a home every foot useful--spacious yet compact--best of all, quite reasonable. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists and rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Saranac," of Solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Cased opening between reception hall and living room and between living room and dining room. Windows divided upper sash as shown in illustration. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ILION" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "ILION" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Harvard_= 22 ft. × 24 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] The Harvard possesses a style and character peculiarly its own. Distinctly modern in arrangement and construction--both the exterior and interior arrangement showing thought and care. The broken roof lines, hooded entrance and pergola porch are the attractive exterior features. The living room is large and cheerful, well lighted from all sides. An attractive stair leads from this room to the second floor. The dining room is very attractive with grouped windows at the side and a French door opening onto the private porch. The kitchen is of a convenient size and well lighted. Our cupboard No. 2 illustrated on page 37 is a part of the finish in this room and is supplied as a part of the equipment. Direct access from kitchen to front door is had without passing through other rooms. Space for refrigerator, etc., is provided in cellar entryway. The cellar stairway arrangement is very convenient from both kitchen and front part of house, provides a side entrance and does away with extra expense of outside cellar stairs. The second floor is divided into three comfortable bedrooms and a bath, the latter being easily accessible to all rooms and stairs. Large wardrobes are provided for two of the bedrooms and off the front bedroom is a large closet for storage. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists and rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Mohawk" of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2, wardrobe and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "HARVARD" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "HARVARD" "SECOND FLOOR PLAN"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Raymond_= 24 ft. × 24 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] Good taste is exemplified in every line of the Raymond. It has been well described as "most prosperous looking." The consistent use of wide clapboarding is indeed a pleasing feature, and there is a touch of genuine originality in the roof treatment around the front dormer. The roominess of the wide veranda is a harmonizing part of the generous proportions of the whole. A luxurious living room greets you as you enter from the vestibule. The dining room, just to the rear and on a corner gladdens you with its brightness. Your attention is also called to the plentiful light provided throughout--six windows in the living room, three in the dining room and three in the kitchen. The same cheerfulness is continued in the arrangement of the three spacious bedrooms upstairs. Each sleeping room has its own closet or wardrobe, and the bathroom is conveniently placed near the head of the stairs. It seems hardly true that such substantiality in the design, such desirability in the arrangement, could be secured in dimensions 24 ft. × 24 ft. But the Raymond proves how beautiful, practical, substantial, Bennett Homes are. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "RAYMOND" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "RAYMOND" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Lincoln_= 30 ft. × 26 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] Some of the most artistic homes are those provided with a slightly terraced lawn, porch and first floor practically at grade. The Lincoln is a strikingly attractive example of such a plan. Seemingly a part of the landscape on which it rests, it blends itself easily into all its surroundings. As you step onto the veranda, you are struck by its wide expanse--while before you an attractive door with little side windows holds your admiration. A hospitable fireplace commands your attention as you enter, and you marvel at the brightness of the whole room, for there are in reality two sides practically of glass. A very large opening calls your attention to a dining room made most tempting by a window seat just under triple windows. If you wish to retire for a quiet conversation, a bit of rest or reading, the cozy den satisfies your every wish. The stairway to the second floor is hidden, but ascends easily to a large halfway landing, and then reverses to the second story. Here you find two splendid bedrooms, each with ample closet space, and a slightly smaller room, balancing the bathroom on the other corner!--conveniently near which is a linen closet. Notice especially in the front bedrooms the casement windows opening underneath the dormer roof. Notice, too, that in one of these bedrooms you might easily have your upstairs fireplace. For the average family with tastes that run to homes with personality, we sincerely believe the Lincoln offers a real first choice. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--special design of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in., 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Prices on oak floors and trim for vestibule, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Franklin_= 24 ft. × 32 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] For such modest proportions there are few homes presenting greater roominess than the Franklin. Think of it--only 32 ft. long and 24 ft. wide, yet containing a 23 ft. living room, a sizable dining room and kitchen, three comfortable bedrooms, and an additional sewing room, and nursery or extra bedroom. The generous veranda of this house is a distinctive feature. Notice the graceful harmony between slope of the porch and the main roof. See the brackets, and the exposed rafters. Consider the well-chosen position of the dormers, left and right, the latter being the only one in view from where you look. Out of the living room mounts a pretty stairway. At the right, a wide opening leads to a delightful dining room. The kitchen connects with a double swinging door, and besides the cabinet contains a closet with room enough to serve a number of purposes. There's a bedroom on the first floor, with its own large closet. Upstairs--two good-sized bedrooms, both with large closets, and an extra room all centering on the upstairs hall. Notice that a complete bath is here. Particularly note that there are two windows in each bedroom. It's no wonder that the Franklin is a popular choice among Bennett owners. Such roominess, such completeness is rarely found in a home so inexpensive. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and two medicine cabinets included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "FRANKLIN" FIRST FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration: "FRANKLIN" SECOND FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Potomac_= 26 ft. × 38 ft. over all 8 Rooms and Bath] Summer or winter, indoors or out, the Potomac is a place of happiness, contentment and comfort for any family. It would seem that our architects have outdone themselves on the exterior of this home. The overhanging second story, spacious porch and solid chimney, pattern of shingling--these features and a score of others speak for themselves. But perhaps it is on the interior that our designers have secured the most remarkable results. The front door opens on a beautiful living room extending the house width, stairs at the left leading to a halfway landing. Nearby perhaps you may locate your broad fireplace and hearth. Graceful French doors yield from this living room upon a sunny dining room--that, in turn, opens upon a first-floor bedroom, and, through a double swinging door, the nicely ordered kitchen. Note well that adjoining four-windowed breakfast room. Picture the youngsters and yourselves seated at its sun-flooded table upon its built-in seats, starting the day right in its cozy, cheery atmosphere. Underneath the broad sloping roof are three most attractive bedrooms. There are two large closets and a wardrobe, and the bath is easily reached from any sleeping room. The Potomac is indeed a home you will like living in--beauty, utility, endurance to delight you for years to come. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Breakfast table and seats included in selling price. Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Awning not included. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "POTOMAC" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "POTOMAC" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_New Hartford_= 26 ft. × 24 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] Distinction has been remarkably well attained in this little gem of a home. The clever treatment of the front--novel porch pillars, lattice work and white trim--makes a neat and artistic contrast with the darker tones of the shingled body of the house. The porch is one of those all-embracing verandas, broad enough for the whole family and their friends. Living and dining room are each amply proportioned, with wide opening between, making large space available for dances, parties, and such affairs. The downstairs bedroom might just as well be a den, study or private office, if preferred. The second floor sleeping quarters are well lighted, with the opportunity for cozy window corners under the dormer. Placing an enclosed stairway at the rear of the house is a fortunate departure in a home of this size, from the accustomed practice--just one more example of the all-around distinctiveness of this appealing home. One man who has built many homes and sold them, runs to the New Hartford as his "best bet". You, too, will find this distinctive home a most livable--or if you prefer, a most salable place. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in., 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Cased opening between living room and dining room. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "NEW HARTFORD" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "NEW HARTFORD" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Niagara_= 24 ft. × 30 ft. over all 6 Rooms, Bath, Hall] Here's a home of comfort and contentment in the highest degree. Rich simplicity marks every item of its ingenious architecture--and its pleasing and practical arrangement means a most satisfying livableness for a modest sized family. There are crisp, clean-cut lines from the tip of its gable down to its very foundations. The shingled triangles in green, the gently sloping roofs, the generous porch and its pillars, the details of the trim--all add their bit to the striking appearance of the whole. But let's call and see the interior. Here's a charming reception hall for a first glimpse. A broad archway points the way to a sociable living room, amply provided with windows yet with plenty of space for piano and furniture. A splendid dining room, with outlook to the side and rear, connects to a compact but uncrowded kitchen. Ascending the rich stairway by two easy flights, we come upon a cheerful front bedroom--with a closet to enthuse the most exacting wife. Just a step back is the complete bath--and nearby are the other sleeping chambers, again each with spacious closet room. But now, we rest our case with you. One last word--if the Niagara _satisfies_ your needs and pocketbook, we sincerely assure you that enduring happiness and comfort will be your reward in it. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "NIAGARA" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "NIAGARA" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_La Salle_= 26 ft. × 36 ft. over all 8 Rooms, 2 Baths] Inviting--Distinctive--Practical! This description reveals the secret of the LaSalle's great popularity. Note the artistic overhanging eaves--and the dormers, in front and on either side. These give balance and substantiality. They afford, too, the roominess of a one and one-half story home, with the smart lines of a semi-bungalow design. See how well-lighted are the bedrooms. Particularly note the ample closet room. And one room upstairs might well be used as a den, sewing room, or nursery. There is a cosy, sunny bay window in the dining room--there is a window seat there! The roomy, well-protected porch is a splendid feature. The kitchen is ample, but most compact and convenient. And the two bathrooms, one on each floor, give a final touch to an ideal plan. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and two medicine cabinets included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: LA SALLE FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: LA SALLE SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Bison_= 24 ft. × 24 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] For the family interested in a permanent abode that shall combine utility with refined architectural features, the Bison is a home with a genuine appeal. Every line of its design bespeaks good taste. Especially unique is its undercut porch, a place wide and roomy for the whole family and guests, too. The unusual treatment of railing, brickwork and pillars also makes it distinctly attractive. The living room always proves a great attraction--both to the family and to visitors. A handsome stairway leads upward from the left of this bright room, while the inviting dining room with its prized bay window greets you through a pretty colonnade. The kitchen is compact, light, and equipped with a labor-saving cabinet. Upstairs, also, you will find the same combination of bright, cheerful quarters. The bathroom is nearby, and large closet and storage room serve for keeping some family belongings without cluttering up the useful rooms. Surely the Bison would make you a most livable home! =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Colonnade arch between living room and dining room. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Ideal_= 26 ft. × 28 ft. over all 6 Rooms, Bath, Alcove] The Ideal might well be termed "A big little home." Attractiveness here is gained by clever application of symmetry and proportion. The broad porch with unique columns could easily be converted into an outdoor living room with screens in summer and glass in winter. The interior is cheerful and homelike. The living room and dining room, connected by a wide cased opening, may be used as one on occasions. A grade entrance is included in the rear, so that the basement may be reached from outdoors without passing through the kitchen. Note, too, the refrigerator may be iced from outdoors. At the head of the stairs on the second floor is the bath, in an "ideal" location, convenient to all bedrooms, also economically located for plumbing. The alcove provides a sewing room or a child's bedroom. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Saranac," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1--6 ft. pantry cabinet in pantry. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "IDEAL" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "IDEAL" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Hamilton_= 28 ft. × 36 ft. over all 8 Rooms and Bath] Examine the Hamilton minutely and you will agree that it embodies most, if not all, of the attributes of that "Dream Home" which you have so long planned. While it doesn't lack a single detail of that refined architecture which our modern standards demand, it nevertheless is a most practical dwelling-place. Note the dignified yet tasteful exterior design--the good-looking foundation, spacious porch, and graceful dormers on front and sides. Then look within--a generous living room with cheery fireplace, liberal-sized dining room, a secluded retreat in the form of the den, convenient kitchen, and three large, light, airy bedrooms and bath upstairs. In the Hamilton you have all advantages of the semi-bungalow construction--compactness and proper economy--combined with the ample elbow-room of a full-sized home, designed and built for lifetime usage--and sufficiently reasonable to be within the means of most folks with home-owning aspirations. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ French doors between living room and dining room. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "HAMILTON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "HAMILTON" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Fulton_= 28 ft. × 26 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] The Fulton is true to its type--a very happy appearance combined with a very desirable plan. The broad, sloping roof, broken by a well-formed dormer, and unusually wide porch lend dignity to the whole exterior of this home. If one wishes, shingles may well be used in the place of the siding protecting the first story, and variegated colors used in soft-toned effects. You enter the Fulton through the charming reception hall. From there the stairway winds to the second story. There's a wide cased opening introducing you to the living room, at one end of which you may have an inviting fireplace built if you wish. The dining room receives light from two sides. Between it and kitchen is a pantry, both exits enclosed by double-swinging doors. The upstairs of this home consists of three fine sleeping rooms, each with an extra large closet. The plan is finally completed by the usual bath. In a setting of trees and bushes, this home is truly pleasing, and combined with its most livable plan and low price, offers the soundest kind of an investment for the home builder. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--special design, of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Niagara colonnade between hall and living room. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "FULTON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "FULTON" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Cleo_= 28 ft. × 36 ft. over all 6 Rooms, 1 Bath] Here is an unsurpassed bungalow--in architecture, in arrangement, in convenience. Wide eaves, exposed rafter ends, perfect harmony of line, a substantial porch that excels in charm--these delight from without. And within!--An ideal floor plan affords three well-lighted bedrooms, a spacious living room, well-arranged kitchen and bath conveniently located to all rooms, and made desirably private by a small hall. Between living and dining rooms is an impressive colonnade arch. There's the luxury of a fireplace if you wish it--and high casement windows at either side with nooks beneath for bookcases or furniture. Truly unusual is the Cleo!--truly beautiful, truly roomy, truly practical, and best of all, modestly priced. [Illustration] =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Wardrobe in rear bedroom. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "CLEO" FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_York_= 26 ft. × 34 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] Here is a type of bungalow rightfully popular in the suburban districts of America's big cities. Its general appearance is quite substantial, yet broken roof lines, the careful placing and design of windows, the selection of porch pillars and outside trim give a pleasing balance and harmony one never tires of. Inside this home you are at once attracted by the warm hospitality of the living room. Two windows at front and side each let in all the sunlight you want. You may have your prized open fireplace; and there's a casement window at the side, underneath which your bookcase may go. Just beyond you catch a glimpse of the dining room. Through a door to the right, but out of sight, are the two bedrooms--one with four windows! There are large closets, a linen closet, and the usual bath. The kitchen is furnished with our celebrated cabinet; a door leads to a grade entrance and to the cellar. There's a wonderful porch--wide and deep, with room for many a lounging chair, a veranda-swing, or any comfort you may elect. Owners of the York are most enthusiastic about its individuality, its livableness, its economy both in first and in upkeep cost. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] =EVERY ITEM CORRECT= Beaver Dams, N. Y. Feb. 27, 1918. Gentlemen:-- Lumber received and unloaded. Every item correct, and we are more than pleased with the quality. Thank you for your _promptness_ and the _square deal_ given us. J. R. S. +=======================+ | ¶ IN THE HAPPINESS OF | | A BENNETT HOME | | LIES THE HEALTH AND | | STRENGTH OF THE WHOLE | | FAMILY. | +=======================+ [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Salem_= 28 ft. × 40 ft. over all 6 rooms and Bath] The Salem seems to fit especially well on a terraced lawn, and its architecture harmonizes well with a "woodsy" setting; or equally well where some of the trees and bushes have been left out of the landscape. To the passerby, this home appears as a rather large and substantial place, the veranda and the main roof gable each lending to this effect. Bracketed and extending eaves add to the beauty of this home. And whether finished with regular siding or shingles, the whole house attracts favorable attention. One feature is the semi-protection afforded the front entrance to this house. Still another is the possibility of a wonderful fireplace on one end, and underneath casement windows at either side, shelves or cases for your favorite books. There is a pair of charming French doors by which you enter the dining room. The three sleeping rooms of this home are all arranged on one side--all bright and livable. The bath is separated by entrance into a small private hall. Two of the bedrooms have closets, the third a wardrobe closet; and in addition there is the indispensable linen closet. The kitchen is equipped with a large Bennett Cabinet, and access to outdoors is had through a grade entrance at the rear. A family who lives in one of the Salems calls it "The best home ever." Perhaps they are prejudiced, but if you owned one we feel certain you, too, would be as enthusiastic over it. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Attic joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. French doors between living room and dining room. Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1, medicine cabinet, linen closet, attic stairs and flooring included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "SALEM" FLOOR PLAN] February 12, 1917. Gentlemen:-- I want to recommend the fine quality of material you have sent me. The _finishing lumber is particularly fine_. You have saved me, on my house, as good as $400.00. Yours respectfully, W. A. K. +=====================+ | ¶ ARTISTIC DESIGNS | | WITHOUT INCREASE | | IN COST IS THE WORK | | OF BENNETT MASTER | | ARCHITECTS. | +=====================+ [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Woodward_= 26 ft. × 32 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] Inside and outside, common sense is personified in the Woodward--a modest but becoming home which thoroughly expresses that "chummy" spirit which has brought the bungalow into such universal favor. The comfortable atmosphere of the Woodward begins in the spacious porch to which a touch of artistry has been added by the neat colonnades. It's a well-sized, welcoming type of porch which adds to the good appearance of the entire house. The favorable impression created by the attractive exterior is enhanced as one steps inside. Compactly arranged, but comfortably sized, the entire room scheme provides living, sleeping, eating and all accommodations of sufficient comfort for a family of several persons. Placing the sleeping rooms on the right side of the house with the day rooms on the left is an appealing plan as it simplifies housework. Both bedrooms have plenty of light and air, while commodious closet space is provided. The bathroom is accessibly located and completes a decidedly practical arrangement. If the amount of money you have set aside for a home is near the price of the Woodward, you can make it yours with full assurance that its satisfaction will be as great as its economy. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--special design, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "WOODWARD" FLOOR PLAN] +=========================+ | ¶ ONE SHOULD KNOW | | IN THE BEGINNING | | WHAT HIS HOME WILL | | COST IN THE END. YOU | | ALWAYS DO WHEN BUILDING | | A BENNETT HOME. | +=========================+ Caledonia, N. Y. January 18, 1917. _Gentlemen:_-- Please send your catalog once in a while. The house I am living in was built with lumber from you, and my wife and I are both well pleased and when I can boost your business I will do it, as a number of persons have asked where I get such good lumber. Yours truly, L. F. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Aberdeen_= 24 ft. × 32 ft. or 28 ft. × 36 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath or 6 Rooms and Bath] Here is a very smart bungalow that has a host of admirers among our customers. As you look at it from the side view shown here, the things that impress you are the many clever touches to break the straight lines of the home. There is the dormer resting easily on the broad expanse of the front roof. There is the massive chimney at the side, typifying the solidity of this kind of a house. There is the bay window that helps enlarge the dining room. Note particularly that the porch is a part of the house itself, and not merely just "stuck on." At the front door you are introduced to the comfortable living room, the fireplace at one end, the dining room just beyond. To the left are the two sleeping rooms, both with space aplenty for all usual bedroom furniture. Please especially note there is a coat closet and a linen closet, a kitchen cabinet, and all the requisites of a well-appointed home. In Plan "B," we have extended the dimensions to include another bedroom, a closet for each bedroom, and a rear entry-way. If you are quite taken with the Aberdeen, you will be still more amazed to learn how modest an outlay is required to bring its comforts and conveniences to your fireside. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height approximately 9 ft. Floor joists floor plan A 2 in. × 8 in. Floor joists floor plan B 2 in. × 10 in. Ceiling joists floor plan A 2 in. × 4 in. Ceiling joists floor plan B 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Cased opening between living room and dining room. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price, plan A. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price, plan B. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ABERDEEN" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "ABERDEEN" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Arcadia_= 32 ft. × 24 ft. or 36 ft. × 24 ft. 5 Rooms and Bath] Nearby this charming Arcadia is another house practically the same size, practically the same cost, yet--you would say the Bennett-Built home is worth all of five hundred dollars more. The increased value is due to clever refinements our architects have given to the Arcadia. How inviting this home is--and how picturesque with that pergola porch, when in summer, flowering vines have wound their way around and over it. And let showers come--there is protection from storm and sun while yet enjoying the outdoor breezes on this porch. But come indoors--Plan "A" first, please. Are you quite fond of a big, hospitable living room--then here you find your wishes realized. Toward the front is the dining room, light and cheerful, with roomy kitchen right behind. On the other side two bedrooms--two windows apiece!--and bathroom between. But perhaps you would prefer the bedrooms at the back, and closets instead of wardrobes; perhaps you like a practical extension to the kitchen which you have in the back room with its cool place for ice box and its covered way to the cellar--all this and more you will find in "B." Choose either plan that fits your needs and your tastes best--your choice will delight you many a day to come. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ARCADIA" FLOOR PLAN 'A'] [Illustration: "ARCADIA" FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Atherton_= 28 ft. × 24 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] The Atherton is solid worth from the ground up. There is the delightful spacious porch, the dormer sheltered windows in the sloping roof, the wide eaves that secure graceful lines. And the interior! Seldom do you see so large and lovely a living room--there's the interesting touch of a stairway that wins the heart--a fireplace for snug warmth and hospitality. You step through a cased opening into the dining room, to find four large windows to assure brightness and cheer. A peep into the convenient, well-lighted kitchen discovers a splendid Bennett kitchen-cupboard. The upstairs speaks for itself--three large bedrooms and a good-sized bath. Beautiful--substantial! For people who like to be deeply attached to their home, the Atherton is a real choice. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 10 in. Second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard, our wardrobe, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ATHERTON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "ATHERTON" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] +===================================+ | ¶ BENNETT BEAUTIFUL HOMES ARE | | THE PRODUCT OF CREATIVE | | THOUGHT--PLUS YEARS OF EXPERIENCE | | IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNING. | +===================================+ =APPROVES--WITH NEW ORDER= _Gentlemen_:-- Moshannon, Pa., May 22, 1919. Your way of doing fair and square business is perfectly satisfactory. I never used any lumber as near the standard as I get from the Bennett Lumber Co., and I prove same in separate envelope _with a nice order_. C. S. L. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Harriet_= 28 ft. × 26 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] Here is a home that breathes hospitality. It seems to say "Come in--you'll like living here a long, long while." You enter the living room--and like it at once. It extends clear across, with a cheery fireplace here and a cozy bay window seat there! The dining room looms large, well-lighted, with windows carefully placed to accommodate your furniture. The kitchen, you discover, is bright with light from three windows. You exclaim over the six-foot kitchen cabinet and approve the grade entrance. Up the stairs you find three large bedrooms with plenty of closet room, a linen closet, and the bathroom _right over the kitchen_, to reduce plumbing costs! Then, last but not least, that big convenience--a large and well-lighted attic. Sum it up for yourself--"to the very end, the Harriet makes one want to stay." =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Attic stairs and attic flooring supported by 2 in. × 6 in. floor joists. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 1 kitchen cabinet, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in selling price. Window seat in bay. Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: HARRIET FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: HARRIET SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Lancaster_= 30 ft. × 26 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] Quiet but rich dignity is this home's expression. The rustic stone chimney and broken ashlar porch wall are most attractive, though brick may be substituted without loss of beauty. The broad, low dormer and wide eaves lend a substantial appearance. The shingled exterior is in keeping with the design; but in case siding is preferred, harmony would not be destroyed. Off the reception hall is a handy little closet for coats and rubbers. French doors, there are--and a wide fireplace. See that double swinging door off the kitchen; cupboard in the pantry; direct passage from kitchen through hall to front door. Upstairs--three large bedrooms and closet space aplenty. For charm outside and in, and for convenient roominess, the Lancaster is indeed most desirable. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 10 in. Second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ French doors between living room and reception hall. _See pages 36-37._ Windows as shown in illustration. Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in selling price. Prices on oak floors and trim in reception hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "LANCASTER" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "LANCASTER" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Flanders_= 24 ft. × 22 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] Staunchness is instantly apparent in the practical, good-looking design of the Flanders. You can readily picture this house providing you with all the requirements of modern home-life without burdening you with an investment in unnecessary and costly non-essentials. Glance at the first floor arrangement and you will see a sensible grouping of all necessary downstairs rooms. There's a tidy hall, with the essential coat closet. The stairway ascends from the right. The living room, bright with light from three broad windows, and another corner room (dining room) furnish an ideal layout. Coming to the upstairs we will find three thoughtfully proportioned bedrooms, with spacious closet or wardrobe space. The bathroom at the head of the stairs is accessibly located for both floors. For good service you can safely select the Flanders--and in addition secure a genuine bargain. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Cased opening between living room and dining room. Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "FLANDERS" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "FLANDERS" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: Style A Bookcase Colonnade Style B] [Illustration: Interior Window] [Illustration: Exterior Window] [Illustration: Stairway] [Illustration: Cottage Door] [Illustration: Medicine Cabinet] =Beautiful Graining, Expert Matching, Distinguish These Bennett Articles of Trim= [Illustration: Exterior--Mohawk] [Illustration: Exterior--Saranac] [Illustration: Exterior--Chautauqua] [Illustration: Exterior--Conesus] [Illustration: Mirror Door] [Illustration: Interior Door] [Illustration: Niagara Colonnade] [Illustration: Inside LOCK SETS Outside] [Illustration: Linen Closet] [Illustration: Wardrobe] [Illustration: French Doors] [Illustration: Kitchen Cabinet No. 2] [Illustration: Kitchen Cabinet No. 1] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Forsyth_= 36 ft. × 26 ft. over all 8 Rooms and Bath] Here's a design of individuality--practical, substantial. There's delight upon entering the convenient central hall, to find each room big, airy, inviting. You peep into the living room to spy casement windows upon either side of a fireplace. That library! A few Forsyth owners use it as a bedroom by substituting a single door; but most, rejoicing in French doors, never make a change. There are many conveniences--the large kitchen cabinet, broom closet, the ease of access to all rooms. And see--! Every bedroom on the second floor possesses _two windows_ and a closet. All in all--where could you purchase such splendid architecture and livableness as in this modest-priced Forsyth? =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 10 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Vestibule door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in vestibule, hall, living room, library and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "FORSYTH" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "FORSYTH" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Clarendon_= 36 ft. × 24 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] Could you peep through the walls of this Colonial home, you would find yourself regarding an interior as charming as the exterior is picturesque. But step through that unique latticed entrance and see the house-deep living room--with its hospitable fireplace and casement windows, with nooks for bookcases or built-in seats, and captivating French doors. And what a comfortable lounging place the side veranda furnishes! French doors upstairs, too, give access from bedrooms to balcony. Note the clever touch in the broken roof lines, increasing the size of the bedrooms--better yet, veritable _sunrooms_. Be assured this remarkably beautiful home, built the Bennett-Way, is a real dividend-paying investment in beauty, comfort and convenience. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--Special design of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Vestibule door, of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. French doors between living room and porch. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in vestibule, hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 and No. 2 kitchen cupboards, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "CLARENDON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "CLARENDON" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] +======================+ | ¶ BENNETT BUILT-IN | | CONVENIENCES REDUCE | | THE COST OF | | HOUSE FURNISHING AND | | INTRODUCE EFFICIENCY | | INTO THE BUSINESS OF | | HOUSEKEEPING. | +======================+ =BETTER THAN CLAIMED= Little Valley, N. Y., April 30, 1919. _Gentlemen:_--Thank you very much for the honest deal. Everything is okay. Many were sure that I would not get what I ordered, but they were much mistaken. They have seen my lumber and say it is fine, and a number of persons thinking of building said they are going to get their lumber from you. Yours truly, J. F. R. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Janis_= 28 ft. × 30 ft. over all 8 Rooms and Bath] Coziness plus serviceability characterize the Janis--a cozy porch, a complete first floor scheme, and four commodious bedrooms and bath upstairs. The exposed rafters underneath the roof, the brick chimney, the roof brackets, the clever placing of the trimmings secure an approval for the exterior appearance which is turned to enthusiasm by the attractive rooms within. One can picture real hospitality in the Janis. The broad, cheerful porch is a fitting introduction to the bright, spacious living room with its welcoming fireplace. The reception hall is an appreciated convenience. French doors between reception hall and living room, and between this last and the dining room add remarkably to the home's smart interior. The dining room has a bay with a tasty window seat. The kitchen is about the same "just right" place as in all our plans. There's a convenient lavatory, too. The Janis has a well-modeled second floor arrangement. The bedrooms are large-sized and amply proportioned with good light. Three of them are corner rooms. Choose this home for its ever-attractive styling, the economy of its floor plans, the unique features of its interior--and you will have purchased a thing of permanent pleasure and profit. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Saranac," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ French doors between reception hall and living room; between living room and dining room. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in reception hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "JANIS" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "JANIS" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Genesee_= 26 ft. × 24 ft. overall 6 Rooms and Bath] Here's a home that wins wide approval, not so much because it is "the economical square house," but more because it includes decided variations in plan. For the exterior--the well-placed dormer adds character to the roof. The wide-eaved porch lends dignity to the front. The novel siding supplies individuality. You are immediately impressed with the roomy living-room--and the fine balance of fireplace at one end and ascending stairway at the other. The dining room is wonderfully cheerful, and with its wide opening to living room is especially prized. The kitchen receives light and air from two sides. The grade entrance saves an extra outside door, yet gives easy access to basement and outdoors. The bedrooms and the bath all center on an attractive upstairs hall. And see how ample is all closet space. Surely you find every available foot of space utilized to good advantage in this clever "Genesee." =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Rafters main roof 2 in. × 6 in. Dormer and porch 2 in. × 4 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in selling price. Bungalow siding for exterior. Windows divided upper sash as shown in illustration. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "GENESEE" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "GENESEE" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] +==================================+ | ¶ LABOUR AND MATERIAL ARE | | TOO EXPENSIVE TO WASTE. IT | | DOESN'T PAY TO GUESS AT THE | | COST OF EITHER. BUY FROM BENNETT | | AND BE SURE OF YOUR COSTS | +==================================+ =NO WASTE= Whippany, N. J., May 22, 1919. _Gentlemen_:--I bought lumber of you 25% cheaper than the same quality of goods here. I did not have to throw away any, as I often have to with that bought here. F. D. J. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Olean_= 22 ft. × 26 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] Though somewhat more conservative than others of our two-story designs, the Olean, nevertheless, is dressed with smart lines that lift it out of the ordinary. The overhanging roof with rafters exposed underneath, the brackets supporting the front, the broad veranda with its stately columns, the placing of the windows and door--all give fine dignity to this home. On the first floor you find a rather generous living room; stairs on one side, two pleasant windows opposite and a wide opening leading to the square dining room, made pleasant by light from two sides. The kitchen is set by itself, and access to the side entrance and the cellar is gained through a compact and serviceable entry. On the second floor there is one quite remarkable bedroom, and two others of just the right size. The usual bath is found near the bedrooms. Especially, notice the triple windows in the large bedroom and the extra large closet that room boasts. The modest investment required in the Olean represents, we believe, a home value second to none. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Wardrobe in two rear bedrooms. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "OLEAN" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "OLEAN" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Hartley_= 24 ft. × 28 ft. over all 6 Rooms, Bath, Sleeping Porch] If a family's choice leans toward the "square" house, it is fairly certain that the Hartley will be one of those seriously considered--for in it a rare degree of appearance, livableness, and economy of plan have been combined. The front of this home is quite impressive. To begin with, there's a porch embracing the entire width of the house. Its gently sloping roof blends in with the shingle covered second story. Broad top roofs, front and sides, are adequately broken with wide dormers, giving a final touch to an exterior already most attractive. As you enter the reception hall a pretty stairway leads up to the half-way landing. Directly ahead is one of those highly desirable conveniences, a coat closet. Then, through a wide opening, you are greeted by a sight of a rather large living room--the bright dining room just beyond adding its share to the home's invitation. The kitchen is replete with both cabinet and pantry! There is a rear and a side entrance, the last at grade. We will let the three fine bedrooms, the big closets, tell their own story--and pass the bath with just the name of it, but--here is something to talk about, an outdoor sleeping place! There's a real treat for some of the family in that feature--who will the lucky ones be? For the "right" kind of a home, at the "right" kind of a price--consider thoughtfully the Hartley. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Attic joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Attic stairs and flooring included in selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "HARTLEY" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "HARTLEY" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Colonial_= 38 ft. × 26 ft. 7 Rooms and Bath] Here's a masterpiece in designing--both for beauty of exterior and for ideal arrangement. This house faithfully reproduces the atmosphere of Colonial days, yet with touches of modernism which have been tried and approved by best architectural practice. Perhaps the first unique thing you notice are the seats at either side of the doorway--then the quaint Colonial door with its narrow side windows. As the door swings back you are welcomed, through French doors, to a magnificent living room, fireplace at the farther end, and built-in bookcases underneath pretty casement windows. Through the door or window at the right of the room you spy the privacy of a well-sheltered porch. Just in front of you the stairway leads straight to the second story. Through another pair of French doors, you note the dining room. At the rear of the hall is a convenient lavatory and underneath the stairs a very useful coat closet. As you notice the corner location of each bedroom, and the large closets in each, stop a passing minute in the rear bedroom at the right to see that you may have a fireplace here, too. The Colonial is a design quite beyond the ordinary for a cost quite less than ordinary. Does it suit your needs?--Then write us for more definite information. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 10 in. Attic joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--as illustrated, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. French doors between hall and living room, also between hall and dining room. Bookcase on each side of fireplace. Prices on oak floors and trim in hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Pantry and kitchen cabinets furnished in Yellow Pine. Attic stairs and flooring included in the selling price. Seats for front entrance included in the selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "COLONIAL" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "COLONIAL" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Erie_= 24 ft. × 26 ft. over all 6 Rooms, Bath, Hall] However much house styles may change, that most practical of all plans, the square house, always remains in vogue. And "The Erie" is genuinely an all-prized design of this most popular type. There is a prosperous, substantial appearance to this home. It is free from elaboration--yet full of the spice of style. The extending roof with its distinctive dormer, the shingled upper story, the wide expanse of porch, the solid type of porch pillars--everything bears out the impression that here live people of a most desirable American type. The first room inside is a reception hall, serving the purpose of receiving the casual caller, and of providing the place from whence a simple stairway winds toward the upstairs. The living room is a square one with five windows to guarantee a flood of light. From here a colonnade-opening leads to the dining room on one of the back corners of the house. This room is also bright with light. The kitchen is the usual compact and complete Bennett arrangement. There is a passageway from the kitchen to the front hall. The upstairs arrangement of this home is as ideal as that of the lower floor--every room a corner room. Three spacious sleeping chambers--each with its own capacious closet--a convenient bath and a handy linen closet complete the layout. "The Erie," outside and inside, is a most inviting home--its arrangement is most practical and most complete--its construction and finish of a quiet, rich and enduring type. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. x 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ "Niagara" colonnade between living room and dining room. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ERIE" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "ERIE" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _=Frederick=_ 24 ft. × 42 ft. over all Two-Family Dwelling 5 Rooms, Bath--Each] It is a thrifty family who, in building its own home, provides for a tenant to pay taxes and upkeep and, besides, a comfortable profit. To such a family, the Frederick has much to recommend it. Red Cedar Shingle and Redwood clapboard side wall protection has been provided to give more than usual character to the design, and lasting life. The spacious substantial porches provide outdoor comfort for both families. The whole exterior is one of fine balance and dignity. Upstairs and down the living rooms are ample, attractive, a casement window enriching each; just back are the dining rooms with three splendid windows apiece. Airy, light kitchens connect through double swinging doors. There's a back entryway with room for the refrigerator. On the other side of the house are the two bedrooms--two windows apiece--with bath just between. There are coat closets, clothes closets, medicine and kitchen cabinets, and wardrobes to satisfy every need. And last but not least--you may make extra rooms in the attic. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Saranac," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Prices on oak floors and trim in hall, living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Wardrobes in rear bedrooms. Our kitchen cupboards No. 1 and medicine cabinets included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "FREDERICK" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "FREDERICK" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Nelson_= 24 ft. × 36 ft. over all 5 Rooms, Bath, Hall] There is fine simplicity in the Nelson. Here is a dwelling-place to satisfy exacting tastes for a refined home of modest proportions. One likes the clean-cut columns and railing on the friendly porch--the exposed rafters--the well-proportioned dormers. The ample-sized rooms are expressly planned for a wealth of sunshine, yet with sufficient wall-space for placement of furniture. Conveniences! Note the coat closet--the hall affording privacy to the bath--the ideal location of the kitchen cupboard for simplified serving. There's a pretty cased arch between living and dining room, and between hall and living room. A sound purchase--if you wish beauty, comfort and durability--is the substantial Nelson. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard, wardrobe and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "NELSON" FLOOR PLAN] +============================+ | ¶ BY BUYING ALL MATERIAL | | FROM ONE CONCERN | | THE BLAME FOR DELAYS | | AND SHORTAGES, IF ANY, CAN | | BE PLACED WHERE IT JUSTLY | | BELONGS. SEE THE BENNETT | | GUARANTEE. | +============================+ =SAVED $800= Six Mile Run, Pa. May 23, 1919. _Gentlemen_:-- I had estimates from three lumber dealers and the best price I could get was $2,200.00. Your bill, delivered, was $1,314.05. My carpenter said he never worked on nicer material in thirty years. You surely did treat me fair and honest and prompt in all matters. I am pleased with my new home. Inside trim is surely fine. Thanking you and wishing you success, W. A. F. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Richard_= 26 ft. × 34 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] In the Richard, the keynote in architecture and arrangement alike, is Utility. Day-by-day usefulness has been built into each unit of its construction from the pleasant porch to the much-used storeroom on the second floor. This house has been created to accommodate a small family with modest needs and tastes. But if more bed rooms are required, two large comfortable well lighted rooms with closets may be secured on the second floor at a nominal expense. Stairs leading from dining room and matched flooring for entire second floor are included in selling price. Like all Bennett-Built Homes, the Richard has well-lighted and well-proportioned rooms without an exception. There has been incorporated every advantage of a costly home, built on a basis of strictest economy. It is a substantial, durable, dependable house that embodies every vital feature for a happy home within the means of a moderate income. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--glazed cottage design, 3 ft. x 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "RICHARD" FLOOR PLAN B] Emporium, Pa. _Gentlemen_:-- May 20, 1919. The material furnished me was as good as I expected it to be. And as near as I could estimate, think the price was at least 20% cheaper delivered here than I could have bought the same grade of material from our local dealers. M. F. L. Upland, Pa. _Gentlemen_:-- May 10, 1919. I received my lumber all O. K. several days ago and have just finished working with it. I must say that I was more than pleased with it. It was all perfect goods. C. N. H. Lockport, N. Y. _Gentlemen_:-- May 20, 1919. I am perfectly satisfied with the quality of your lumber. Your prices are enough lower so I can save from one to two hundred dollars on a house bill, which is an item any contractor should consider. C. T. N. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Rochester_= 22 ft. × 32 ft. over all 7 Rooms and Bath] Charm has been our watchword in the creation of the Rochester--a charming exterior as well as a charming room arrangement. A house of modest proportions at moderate cost has been attained without sacrificing either inside or outside attractiveness. The sloping roof lines blend in gracefully with the shingled walls and the veranda. Entering the home, one finds a living room indeed luxurious for a home of this size. A dandy dining room and the usual kitchen, together with a secluded den, complete the first floor layout. Upstairs, three bedrooms, each large and double-windowed and furnished with roomy closets, and the bath are the remaining details that combine to make the Rochester a home of great popularity. Interested?--then we would like to send you all the good news about it--write. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Ceiling slightly hipped. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door as illustrated, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "ROCHESTER" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "ROCHESTER" SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Dover_= 26 ft. × 36 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath] The Dover is a splendid example of how the all-on-one-floor bungalow home can luxuriously and comfortably house a large family. In appearance, this home is ideally balanced. Graceful roof lines blend into its shingled sides. Porch pillars carry through the idea of substantiality. Overhanging eaves give the final touch to the bungalow theme. Let us analyze the Dover from the viewpoint of solid comfort. The twenty-six foot porch promises plenty of outdoor comfort and air. The living room provides space for not only the whole family but several guests in addition. The dining room is large enough to accommodate a holiday dinner party. In case of large entertainments, the two rooms can practically be opened into one. The three bedrooms suffice for a family of five or six--or with less people, a guest room is available. There's a kitchen ample for all needs. You may have noticed where you can build a fireplace in the living room. That bay in the dining room you can plan for flowers and plants, or just a cozy cushioned seat. You have made a note of that celebrated step-saver, the kitchen cabinet. Did you see the closets for each sleeping room? If it's a bungalow home that meets your fondest wishes, and the Dover satisfies your needs, then we can assure you that it will be ideal. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Ceiling joists plan B 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--special design, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed. French doors between living room and dining room. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Attic stairs and flooring included in the selling price of plan B. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "DOVER" FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: "DOVER" FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Sherrill_= 22 ft. × 32 ft. or 24 ft. × 36 ft. over all 6 Rooms and Bath or 5 Rooms and Bath] The Sherrill is a home of snug contentment--the type of home that will nestle alongside a country road or adorn a city street, presenting a charming appearance anywhere. The broad porch, dormer window and graceful roof make an unusually pleasing exterior. The profile or side view is equally interesting. For the interior arrangement, two alternate plans are offered. The one provides three bedrooms, the other two. Living, dining room, kitchen and bath are found in generous size in both. A wide opening between living and dining room in each case provides an advantageous feature for "affairs." Select the plan you prefer--either one will provide you with a lifetime service of true satisfaction. =SPECIFICATIONS= =PLAN A= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Cased opening between living room and dining room. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ =PLAN B= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Cased opening between living room and dining room. Wardrobe in rear bedroom. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "SHERRILL" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "SHERRILL" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Maidstone_= 22 ft. × 26 ft. or 22 ft. × 30 ft. overall 5 Rooms and Bath--or just 4 Rooms] "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home"--might well have been written with this cosy cottage in mind. Though quite humble, the Maidstone is decidedly "homey". Most houses of a like size are usually quite ugly--but see how a bracketed roof, cleverly shingled side walls, and the artistic use of exterior trim, transforms this Bennett-Built Cottage into a really attractive home. But now let's look indoors--into the smaller plan, first. For simple purposes, can you conceive a simpler layout? Just two partitions, and you have--living and dining room, kitchen, and two bedrooms. But some families desire a bit different arrangement, a separate dining room, and a bath. There you find it in Plan "B"--with a closed back entry thrown in for good measure. And notice the sheltered porch, whichever plan you favor. If the Maidstone fills your needs, the satisfaction you will find living in it will be as great as your surprise at its low cost. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 8 ft. 6 in. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our glazed cottage design, 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. (Plan B.) _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. (Plan A.) _See pages 36-37._ (If basement is not wanted in Plan B, omit rear addition and basement stairs, saving in price.) _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "MAIDSTONE" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "MAIDSTONE" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Lawton_= 24 ft. × 30 ft. or 24 ft. × 36 ft. over all 5 Rooms, Bath or 6 Rooms, Bath] Simplicity is in the keynote of this cottage home--a simplicity, however, enriched by clever lines of roof, porch and whole-house architecture. Plan "A" provides for a moderate-sized family--a cheerful, roomy living room, rather good-sized dining room and a compact, convenient kitchen. The bedrooms contain room aplenty for bed, dresser and other bedroom furnishings; and, of course, there is the very necessary bath. In "B" there's an additional bedroom for the family of larger numbers. In addition there are closets off the sleeping rooms. The kitchen and bath are differently located--the dining room is slightly increased to accommodate the larger number of persons. You will agree, we are confident, that for compact design, yet plenty of room to keep out of each other's way, either of the two Lawton plans offers a most pleasing choice. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Price on rear addition and basement stairs same as shown with Maidstone, plan B, quoted on application. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "LAWTON" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "LAWTON" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Kenmore_= 20 ft. × 18 ft. or 24 ft. by 20 ft. over all 3 or 4 Rooms] The one best way to prove a home's worth is by the testimony of those who have lived in it. By such people the Kenmore is classified as a "snug, perfect little place." We need not dwell at length on the exterior, for you can see what goes to make it up. The interior is as easy to understand, too. The living room is of unusual size for such a kind of home. The single bedroom has light and air from two sides, and to save extra cost, we included our wardrobe clothes closet. In the kitchen, again to save extra cost, we have included our cabinet. In Plan "B," we have provided an extra bedroom and quite sizable closets, leaving the living room with space aplenty, and having added enough room in the kitchen so that the family may eat at a table over in the corner. There is a lot to say about the economy of either Kenmore. But let the price of it argue for itself. If it suits you, we can fill your order in a few hours. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--glazed cottage design, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "KENMORE" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "KENMORE" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Cloverdale_= 20 ft × 30 ft. or 22 ft × 30 ft. over all 5 Rooms alone or 5 Rooms and Bath] Of all tidy, economical cottages, its friends vote "The Cloverdale" ideal--most wholesome. Though covering only 600 sq. ft., the proportions of length, width and height have been admirably balanced, and a neat porch added. Notice the bracketed roof, exposed rafter ends, extending porch roof with richly shaped pillars, windows and door nicely balancing the whole front. In plan "A," there's a most restful living room with one end for a cozy fireside. A wide opening leads to an ideal dining room. The kitchen, directly back, contains our labor-saving cabinet. The two bedrooms are practically alike, both well lighted, well aired and provided with wardrobes, giving all the convenience of regular closets. In "B," by adding two feet to the width and saving a bit on the living room, we have slightly enlarged the dining room and made the plan complete with snug bath and fine pantry. The bedrooms, too, are slightly larger. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Plan A girders 6 in. × 6 in.; Plan B girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--glazed cottage design, 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard included in the selling price, Plan A. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price, Plan B. _See pages 36-37._ Price on rear addition and basement stairs same as shown with Maidstone, plan B, page 52, quoted on application. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "CLOVERDALE" FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: "CLOVERDALE" FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _=Auburn=_ 20 ft. × 28 ft. or 22 ft. × 30 ft. over all 4 Rooms and Bath or 5 Rooms and Bath] For rock-bottom economy, we know of no "buy" that betters the Auburn. Though minus the comfort of a roof over porch, this home does include a place to enjoy the outdoor air. Overhanging roof, shingled sides, and a clever handling of the windows and doors gives the Auburn a smart effect not found in the common house of this type. For economy of space and work, the living and dining room have been combined in plan "A," but space has not been sacrificed in the sizable kitchen, nor has closet room been overlooked in either of the bedrooms. In plan "B," the house dimensions have been slightly increased to secure a separation of living room from dining room, and the addition of a pantry off of the kitchen. A slight enlargement of the bedrooms was also possible--especially since wardrobes could satisfactorily take the place of closets. Could you see this home as it actually exists and compare its appearance and finish, outside and in, with others of the same type, you would not hesitate a minute in choosing the Auburn--further, a comparison of costs would confirm your selection. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 8 ft. 6 in. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our Glazed Cottage design, 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Price on rear addition and basement stairs as shown with Shamrock, plan B, page 57, quoted on application. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _=Shamrock=_ 22 ft. × 26 ft. or 30 ft. over all Five rooms and Bath or Four rooms] Here is a solid, substantial, livable type of cottage home--a dwelling not only well-built, but also most convenient and comfortable. The Shamrock provides all of the essentials of an attractive exterior without expensive and unnecessary frills and innovations. Yet there are snappy touches of design--bracket-supported roof, exposed rafter, combined shingle and regular siding effects--to differentiate this home from the ordinary. You will observe that you can have your choice of two floor plans. Plan "B" includes a connecting bathroom which is eliminated in "A," as that plan is designed for localities where sewerage connections are not available. Plan "A" also extends the living room to include the dining accommodations, making possible a four-foot contraction in the depth of the house, and thus a substantial saving in cost. The porch is ample and well protected. The rooms are fairly proportioned and well lighted. Note the convenient built-in wardrobes in the good-sized bedrooms, and the additional rear room (or summer kitchen) provided in "B." Either plan will provide you with a satisfying, serviceable home--for an investment that is decidedly modest. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 8 ft. 6 in. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--glazed cottage design, 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ Wardrobes in bedrooms. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _=Delaware=_ 30 ft. × 26 ft. or 34 ft. × 24 ft. 5 rooms and Bath.] Here's a cottage bidding for your favor not merely because of its modest building cost, but also because of unique beauty and balance of design--nothing overdone, and nothing forgotten. Notice how this compact little home invites approval with its graceful overhanging eaves, the individuality of its half-siding and half-shingle exterior, and its broad, roomy porch. And inside! Two rooms on the front--both the large living room and the cozy dining room! In Plan "A" notice especially the well-located pantry; and the hall giving privacy to bedrooms and bath. In Plan "B" see that convenient bathroom arrangement, and the kitchen made roomier, the pantry room cared for in this plan by one of our efficient kitchen cabinets. In both plans you find the same serviceable refrigerator location, and side and back entrance combined in one--with the cellar easily reached by a few steps. Comparing all--where can you find more distinctive appearance, more compact utility than in this "homey" little Delaware? =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: _=Monroe=_ 30 ft. × 32 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] The all-in-one floor scheme of bungalow-homes is quite as much in their favor as their comparatively modest cost--from both viewpoints the Monroe is a faithful example of this design. There's an air of stability to this home--solidity and endurance, yet not a bit overdone. And notice the harmony of roof lines; the extending and protecting eaves, with rafter ends just showing here and there. And if you like them better, shingled side walls in soft-toned colors might be used, certainly with no loss of effect. Perhaps a most striking feature of the interior is its large inviting living room, with a truly pleasant dining room just to the right--a wide opening between, a decided advantage when entertaining. And do not overlook the kitchen's easy access to cellar, to entry and sheltered back porch. The lady of the home will be glad to see that handy linen closet; to especially mark the cheerful bedrooms, and their ample closet space. What more of convenience, of roomy compactness could be asked in this home--what better dollar-for-dollar value. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Prices on oak floors and trim for living room and dining room, maple flooring in kitchen, quoted on application. Our kitchen cupboard No. 1, medicine cabinet and linen closet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "MONROE" FLOOR PLAN] +====================+ | ¶ IT IS NEVER THE | | SIZE OF A HOME | | THAT MAKES IT | | ATTRACTIVE, | | BUT THE CARE | | WITH WHICH IT | | IS DESIGNED | | AND KEPT. | +====================+ Freeport, Pa., May 20, 1919. Gentlemen:-- All lumber in fine condition, and better than we had expected. Claim to have _saved $300_. Your business methods were most satisfactory to us. Yours truly, J. A. McE. [Illustration] [Sidenote: Beverly 20 ft. × 28 ft. or 30 ft. over all 5 Rooms or 4 Rooms and Bath] This sturdy, practical, pleasing home offers everything to be desired in comfortable living quarters, while reducing the cost of home-building to a most moderate basis. Notice, please, the novel hooded type of porch, the bevel glass door, the general tidy appearance of the whole front. Observe the choice of two floor plans; the bathroom being omitted in "A," but an extra sleeping chamber being gained. Both plans provide the same splendid house-wide living room, sizable dining room and kitchen; both include an efficient kitchen cabinet; both provide ample clothes-keeping facilities in the shape of large wardrobes. You can choose whichever plan is most suited to your conditions with the certainty that you are selecting a home that embodies both economy and service in the highest sense. =SPECIFICATIONS= =PLAN A=-- Ceiling height first floor approximately 8 ft. 6 in. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Saranac," design, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ =PLAN B=-- Ceiling height first floor approximately 8 ft. 6 in. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Saranac," design, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "A"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "B"] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Concord_= 20 ft. × 30 ft. or 22 ft. × 30 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] Beyond the rather striking economy which we believe you find in purchasing your home the Bennett-Way, there is considerable increased worth both in the appearance and in the quality of material that we send you to put into your home--the Concord is fully up to Bennett standards. To its rather simple proportions has been added an overhanging, bracketed roof, and a snug porch. The pattern of the window sash and frames and the shingled sides also add their bit to this comfortable looking little home. The floor plan itself speaks for the interior of the home. But let's call your particular attention to the rather generous closet space off both bedrooms, the well-lighted and well-aired rooms, the convenient kitchen cabinet--all contained in the modest proportions of 20 ft. by 30 ft. We believe the selling price of the Concord is quite in keeping with the most efficient home economy ideas. Certain it is that from other owner's experiences, we can guarantee enduring and entire satisfaction with the Concord, if it is your choice. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--cottage design, 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 1 and Niagara Colonnade included in selling price of Plan B. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "CONCORD"] [Illustration: "CONCORD" FLOOR PLAN B] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Emerson_= 24 ft. × 32 ft. over all 5 rooms and Bath] This is an extremely neat and inexpensive home to build, easy to keep in order, easy to heat and make comfortable. The porch across the front will be a great comfort in summer, and at little expense it may be screened and converted into a comfortable out-of-door room. The vestibule will help keep out the cold of winter, and the adjoining coat closet provides a splendid place for wraps and rubbers. The living room is large and comfortable. The wide-cased opening leading from the dining room gives it an effect of still greater proportion and the dining room is also attractive with its grouped windows. The interior hall arrangement provides easy access to bath and bedrooms. The well-lighted kitchen is of convenient size and is particularly pleasing, providing a light, cheery, comfortable room within easy access of the dining room. The cellar entrance at grade, you will find another desirable feature. The ownership of the Emerson will prove a never-ending source of satisfaction and content. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua" of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "EMERSON"] [Illustration: ¶ FEW INDIVIDUALS WHO DESIGN THEIR OWN HOMES KNOW HOW TO ARRIVE AT THE COST OF MATERIAL AND LABOUR.] Hopewell Junction, N.Y. May 20, 1919. _Gentlemen_:-- The building material shipped me came in good condition, was of good grade which rather _surprised_ some of our _old carpenters_, it being much better quality than they have been using. I hope to build another house as soon as this one is finished, and shall remember you with the order. Sincerely, J.L.F. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Waverly_= 24 ft. × 38 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] The beauty and charm of this comfortable bungalow are instantly appreciated by every true home lover. It is a masterpiece in bungalow architecture. See the low sloped roof, wide bracketed eaves, grouped windows, built-up rail, shingled side walls, a true California bungalow and a favorite in that country which has become a model for all the world. The front porch is an unusually pretty feature. What an attractive departure the balusters and timbered effect are from the usual combination of rail and balusters. The bay window is just what is needed to break up the wall space and adds greatly to the general pleasing effect. Picture this bungalow on your lot, side walls stained a light seal brown, moss green for the roof, with pure white trimming, shrubbery nestled along the front and corners of the porch. Wouldn't you be proud to say "This is my home"? Often an attractive exterior will be found to conceal a poor arrangement of rooms. This is not the case with the Waverly. Careful attention has been given to details and we believe that every housewife will appreciate the excellent floor plan arrangement. You enter direct from the porch into one of the prettiest living rooms you have ever seen. Triple windows in front and side are among the attractive features of this room, allowing worlds of sunshine and cheer to enter, but still leaving plenty of wall space for furniture. The high casement windows in the end were separated purposely to provide a place for your piano. The well-lighted dining room is separated from the living room by an attractive colonnade-arch. The kitchen is conveniently located for serving and for easy access to the grade cellar entrance. Bedrooms and bath open into an interior hall which makes these private but within easy access of all rooms. We are sure that the Waverly will meet your highest expectations. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. Niagara colonnade between living room and dining room. _See pages 36-37._ Our kitchen cupboard No. 2, wardrobes and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "Waverly"] =MORE THAN SATISFIED= Olean, N. Y. December 28, 1919. _Gentlemen_:-- Be assured we shall not forget you whenever we may have occasion to mention or suggest ready-cut houses, for our Erie is more than satisfactory. N. E. P. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Ontario_= 26 ft. × 34 ft. over all 5 Rooms and Bath] Can you imagine a more pleasing and homelike design than the Ontario at such a moderate cost? Great care was used to secure this attractive, harmonious exterior and still retain the exceptionally convenient and practical arrangement of rooms. The front porch with its large tapering columns, wide overhanging bracketed eaves and roof dormer at side, all serve to give this design a distinct individuality. The vestibule and coat closet will be found a desirable arrangement. The living room and dining room are made especially attractive with triple windows, having an extra wide cased opening between the living room and the dining room, making this practically one room--a feature desired by many. The kitchen is of a convenient size and well lighted. Our kitchen cupboard No. 2 is a part of the finish in this room and is supplied as a part of the equipment. The grade entrance is another added convenience. A large storage space is provided for in the attic, attic stairs and flooring being included in the selling price. Bedrooms are of good size with large closet-space. The interior hall arrangement provides easy access to bath and bedrooms. If you are looking for comfort and a home of which you may be proud, select the Ontario. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Second floor joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Mohawk," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ Attic stairs and flooring included in selling price. _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "ONTARIO"] =PROMPT AND EFFICIENT SERVICE= Richmondville, N. Y. December 27, 1919. _Gentlemen_:-- I desire to thank you for the prompt and efficient service which you have given me and for the prompt attention which has been given to all of my orders and assure you that if I can do any good in this section, I will gladly do it. My new home is nearly completed and as soon as the lawn is graded and some shrubbery placed, in the spring, I will send you a picture of same. C. A. B. [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Stanley_= 26 ft. × 20 ft. over all 4 Rooms] To combine attractiveness, individuality and economy in one design requires skill, but you will find that the Stanley possesses them all. A more attractive cottage could hardly be imagined. You can see that the pretty exterior effect is obtained by the use of a well proportioned porch, large built-up porch columns, broad overhanging roof, clapboards for side walls with shingles and panels for gables. One of our most attractive front doors, the "Conesus," and the latest style of panel sash are furnished with this design. The living room, bedrooms and kitchen are expertly arranged to secure the greatest amount of comfort and convenience. If a basement is desired, an enclosed cellar addition may be added at rear in place of the stoop, at small cost. Notice that each room has two windows, thus insuring perfect ventilation. Two roomy closets give ample space for clothes. Either living room or kitchen is sufficiently large to be used also as a dining room. On the whole this cottage is altogether charming and will strongly appeal to those who desire a modern four-room house but whose purse places a limit on the amount to be expended. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Girders 6 in. × 6 in. First floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 4 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 2 kitchen cupboard included in selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "STANLEY" FLOOR PLAN] =GOES TOGETHER LIKE A CHARM= Norfolk, Va. December 17, 1919. _Gentlemen_:-- Please send catalogue to enclosed list. These people are all thinking of building and have shown great interest in my Ilion. From the favorable comments I hear concerning my house you should be able to stir up some business here. I am making good progress with my house. The stuff goes together like a charm. L. M. K. (Note: His Ilion proved so eminently satisfactory that he has since placed an order for the Potomac.) [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Madison_= 24 ft. × 28 ft. over all 8 Rooms and Bath] The Madison is planned to meet the requirements for a square house that can be built on a lot of medium size and still give comfortably large rooms. Notice how well the rooms are arranged to utilize every inch of space. This hospitable front porch will be appreciated during the summer when at a little expense, it may be screened and converted into a comfortable out-of-door room. The enclosed porch balustrade with its added seclusion is a very desirable feature in a house set close to the street. The reception hall in this home is an unusually attractive and cozy apartment with its broad staircase and pretty landing. A wide-cased arch leads into the comfortable living room. It is not necessary to crowd your furniture in this room or set it at an angle, for there is plenty of wall space for the largest pieces. You will like the beautiful, well-lighted dining room with its built-in window-seat and grouped windows. See how nicely you can arrange your buffet, serving table and china cabinet and still have plenty of wall space for chairs. Every housewife will appreciate the thought we have given in designing the kitchen. See how conveniently you can arrange your equipment to save unnecessary steps. The range at the inside wall, the sink and work tables in front of windows, your large kitchen cabinet placed just right. Notice the convenience in the icebox arrangement, only a step or two from the kitchen, still out of the way and iced without going into the kitchen. The arrangement of rooms on the second floor is ideal. The bedrooms are large and well lighted with plenty of closet space. The bath is within easy reach of all bedrooms as well as the stairs. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 4 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Conesus," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Our No. 1 kitchen cupboard, wardrobes and medicine cabinet included in the selling price of this house. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: "MADISON" FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN "MADISON] [Illustration] [Sidenote: =_Tremont_= 32 ft. × 34 ft. over all Twin House 6 Rooms and Bath--Each] To meet the present and constantly increasing demand for a practical twin house that can be erected on an average city lot, we present this attractive design. From the exterior, one would never even suspect that this house contained two complete suites of rooms. The vestibule divides the porch so that each family has its own private porch. From the large, well-lighted living room, separated by a wide cased arch is the attractive dining room. Notice the convenient coat closet, a very essential feature in every home. The kitchen is very conveniently located for serving. The built-in cupboards and shelves extend the full width. The entryway provides space for the refrigerator, brooms, etc. On the second floor, you have three nice bedrooms, each one provided with wardrobes. The bath is conveniently located at the end of the hall within easy access of chambers and stairs. A large, well-lighted attic and attic stairs have also been provided for with floor and partition dividing the attic which are also included in the price of this house. The Tremont offers an excellent investment, rental income doubled. The proportional greater cost over a single house is insignificant when compared with the net profit. =SPECIFICATIONS= Ceiling height first floor approximately 9 ft. Ceiling height second floor approximately 8 ft. Girders 6 in. × 8 in. First and second floor joists 2 in. × 8 in. Ceiling joists 2 in. × 6 in. Rafters 2 in. × 6 in. Front door--our "Chautauqua," of solid Chestnut, 3 ft. × 6 ft. 8 in. and 1-3/4 in. thick, glazed with clear glass. _See pages 36-37._ Oak floors and trim for living room and dining room quoted on application. Special kitchen cupboard, wardrobes and medicine cabinet included in the selling price. _See pages 36-37._ _See pages 8-9 for general specifications._ [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN "TREMONT"] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN "TREMONT"] [ILLUSTRATION] =GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR BENNETT SUMMER COTTAGES= Cedar posts for two foot grade. Foundation sills--4 × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, cut to fit. Floor joists--2 × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, cut to fit, spaced 2 ft. O. C. Studding--2 × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed four sides, cut to fit, spaced 2 ft. O. C. Walls 8 ft. high. Rafters--2 × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed four sides, cut to fit, spaced 2 ft. O. C. Wall ties--2 × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed four sides, cut to fit. Wainscoting--Dressed, matched and beaded, 2 ft. high, where shown in illustration, cut to fit. Siding 1 × 6 in. Fir novelty siding, tongued and grooved, dressed both sides, cut to fit. Roof Sheathing--1 × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed and matched, cut to fit. Roof Covering--Bennett 3-ply prepared roofing, or extra *A* Red Cedar Shingles, if preferred. Exterior Finish--White Pine, cut to fit. Flooring--1 × 4 in. Yellow Pine or Fir, dressed and matched, cut to fit. Partitions--1 × 4 in. No. 1 Ceiling, dressed and matched and beaded both sides, cut to fit. Partitions 7 ft. high. (The rooms are all open to rafters.) Doors and windows glazed as shown in illustrations. (Interior doors furnished where shown in plans.) Interior door and window trim--1 × 3 in. Yellow Pine. Paint for two good coats outside, including the porch floor and steps, any color. (Color card mailed upon request.) Hardware, nails, locks, hinges. No paints, stains or varnishes furnished for interior. No masonry, lath, plaster or plaster board furnished. Screens, storm doors and storm windows not included--prices quoted on application. Stoops and steps included when shown in plans, cut to fit. Reversed plans will be furnished without extra cost. Bennett Summer Cottages are designed with the same care as Bennett Homes. The lumber and mill work furnished throughout is the same high grade as used with our best houses. [Illustration: WENONA] [Illustration: "WENONA"] [Illustration: "NEWPORT"] [Illustration: NEWPORT] =We Guarantee Entire Satisfaction or Money Back= We guarantee to furnish all lumber, shingles, finishing lumber, doors, windows, frames, floor and interior trim, hardware, nails, paints of sufficient quantity and equal to or better than the grades specified, to complete the house according to the plans and specifications on opposite page. We further guarantee that there will be no extras, and that all material will reach you in perfect condition. Should any shortages occur, we agree to replace the material either by shipping the necessary material or paying you whatever it costs to buy locally. [Illustration: IVERNIA] [Illustration: "IVERNIA" FLOOR PLAN] All of the material in these cottages comes to you completely ready-cut, every piece plainly marked. Plans and instructions are so simple and easily understood, that they can be erected in from three to five days by unskilled labor. Every piece of material is guaranteed accurately cut to fit. [Illustration: "LINWOOD" FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: LINWOOD] =Specifications for Bennett Special Garage= Studding--2 × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 36 O. C. cut to fit. Circular Rafters cut from 2 × 12 in. No. 1 Hemlock, cut to fit. Siding--1 × 6 in. Fir novelty siding, dressed and matched, cut to fit. Hardware--All necessary hardware and nails included in selling price. Roof Sheathing--1 × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed and matched, cut to fit. Roof Covering--Bennett 3-ply roofing. Doors--1 × 4 in. Ceiling, cut to fit. Paint--Two coats paint for outside. Floor--No material for floor is furnished. If such is desired, we will, upon request, gladly quote prices. [Illustration: THE BENNETT SPECIAL] [Illustration: BENNETT SPECIAL GARAGE] [Illustration: HUDSON--Touring Car Size] [Illustration: BUICK--Roadster or Medium Size] [Illustration: PEERLESS--Double Large-Car Size] [Illustration: CADILLAC--Double Large-Car Size] =GARAGES= Up to the Bennett Better-Built standard in every item, yet low priced. Very quickly erected. Well lighted, snug, substantial. Liberal space for cars, with working room aplenty at sides. =SPECIFICATIONS= =STUDDING=: 2 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 24 in. on centers. Cut to fit. =RAFTERS=: 2 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 24 in. on centers, surfaced 4 sides. Cut to fit. =SIDING=: 1 in. × 6 in. Clear Fir Novelty. Cut to fit. =ROOF SHEATHING=: See individualized specifications. =HARDWARE=: All necessary hardware and nails included in selling price. =FLOOR=: No material for floor is furnished. If such is desired, we will upon request, gladly quote prices. =WALL PLATES=: 2 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, double at top, single at bottom of studding. Cut to fit. =ROOF COVERING=: See individual specifications. =DOORS=: As shown in illustration. Glazed opening 8 in. × 8 in. =WINDOWS=: See individual specifications. =PAINT=: Sufficient quantity of Bennett House Paint for two good coats, colors as specified by purchaser. =BUICK= =ROOF SHEATHING=: 1 in. × 6 in. No. 1 Hemlock, dressed, matched and cut to fit. =ROOF COVERING=: Asphalt Slate-Surfaced Roll-Roofing. Shingles will be furnished at a slight additional cost, if desired. =WINDOWS=: Two sliding sash windows and frames 26 in. × 26 in. glazed. For various sizes see price list. =HUDSON= =ROOF SHEATHING=: 1 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 2-1/4 in. apart. Cut to fit. =WINDOWS=: Three 3-light sash, and frames, each light 10 in. × 20 in., glazed. =ROOF COVERING=: Extra Clear Red Cedar Shingles, laid 4-1/2 in. to the weather. For various sizes see price list. =PEERLESS= =ROOF SHEATHING=: 1 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 2-1/2 in. apart. Cut to fit. =ROOF COVERING=: Extra Clear Red Cedar Shingles, laid 4-1/2 in. to the weather. =WINDOWS=: Three 3-light sash and frames, each light 10 in. × 20 in. glazed. =SIDE DOOR=: 2 ft. 8 in. × 6 ft. 8 in. mortised for lock set. For various sizes see price list. =CADILLAC= =ROOF SHEATHING=: 1 in. × 4 in. No. 1 Hemlock, spaced 2-1/4 in. apart. Cut to fit. =WINDOWS=: Three 3-light sash and frames, each light 10 in. × 20 in., glazed. =ROOF COVERING=: Extra Clear Red Cedar shingles, laid 4-1/2 in. to the weather. For various sizes see price list. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "THE CADILLAC"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "THE PEERLESS"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "THE HUDSON"] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN "THE BUICK"] MODERN EQUIPMENT FOR YOUR HOME [Illustration: Bathroom] Bennett Plumbing Fixtures _A BATHROOM LIKE THIS WILL BE A CREDIT TO YOUR HOME_ The Home Equipment Book offers a variety of high grade, attractive fixtures to choose from. Be sure to get this book. [Illustration: Furnace] Bennett Pipeless Furnace Cold weather comfort and convenience. Costs little more than a stove. Heats the entire house with one register. Warm air is forced to all rooms and cold air is drawn off the floors. Requires little attention. Burns any kind of fuel. Hard or soft coal, coke or wood. Easy to install. A man and a boy can set it up in a single day. No need to cut up your floors and walls. Economical in fuel. Heats up quickly. No heat wasted in the basement. Keeps cellar cool for fruits and vegetables. _For sizes and prices see HOME EQUIPMENT BOOK._ [Illustration: Lighting fixtures] HOME EQUIPMENT BOOK A Guide For the Home Owner. It Will Help You Equip Your New Home With Modern Conveniences at a Saving. _Send For Your Copy Today_ RAY H. BENNETT LUMBER CO., Inc. Bennett Home Equipment Service Puts the Finishing Touch on Home Comfort [Illustration: =KITCHEN SINK= An attractive sink, massive in construction, cast in one solid piece from best grade of gray iron and heavily white enameled. All corners are rounded to prevent accumulation of grease and dirt. Deep rim hides entire painted bottom of sink. Furnished with drain board on either right or left hand side. Length, 52 inches over all. Size of sink, 20 × 28 inches. _See Home Equipment Book for other styles and sizes._] [Illustration: =LAUNDRY STOVE= Combination laundry stove and heater. Heats laundry room and supplies hot water for domestic use. Has flat oval top plate, 16 in. wide, and 25-1/2 in. long. Will accommodate a wash boiler or six flatirons. Has durable grate with draw center. Water jacket surrounds entire firepot. Has capacity for heating 60 gallons of water. _See Home Equipment Book for price._] [Illustration: =LAUNDRY TUB= Two-compartment laundry tub made from best grade of imported Portland cement and crushed granite. Moulded in one solid piece. Inside corners are nicely rounded so tub can be easily kept clean. Top edges are fitted with patent metallic rim and wringer guard. _See Home Equipment Book for other sizes._] [Illustration: =KEROSENE WATER HEATER= A kerosene heater which is absolutely efficient. Heats just as well as gas. Has double copper coils. Patented burner. No wicks. Heats water quickly and economically. Complete with kerosene tank of one gallon capacity. _See Home Equipment Book._] [Illustration: =RANGE BOILER= Galvanized range boiler for storing hot water under pressure. Connected to water front in the kitchen stove or to a coil in the furnace, or heated by water heater. Insures a constant supply of warm water for domestic use. Furnished in 30, 40 or 52 gallon sizes. _See Home Equipment Book._] [Illustration: Efficient gas burning water heater with black sheet steel casing. Water runs through double copper coil and is heated by large burner shown at bottom. Conical shape of coil provides maximum heating efficiency. Suitable for heating 30 gallon range boiler. _See Home Equipment Book for larger heaters._] [Illustration: =WARM AIR FURNACE=] =Heating, Plumbing, Lighting Service--Free= Modern heating, sanitary plumbing and electric lighting are essential to home contentment. Let our service department solve your equipment problems without placing you under any obligations. Our experts will gladly give you reliable advice on every point. You will find our Home Equipment Book an interesting guide in selecting fixtures to suit your taste. [Illustration: =WATER SUPPLY OUTFIT=] BAKER, JONES, HAUSAUER, INC., PRINTERS BUFFALO, N. Y. INTERIOR DECORATING SERVICE FREE Sometime ago the thought came to us: "We build our Bennett Homes soundly and artistically on the outside and inside. We use the finest trained talent in the country to give our home-builders the very best to be had in architecture and workmanship. Why not assist our home-keepers in selecting and arranging the furnishings of those homes?" Every woman wants her home to express charm, personality, good taste. But every woman does not care to employ a high-priced interior decorator. Yet it must be conceded that someone who does nothing all day but plan colors, lights and furniture arrangement, can save, through wide experience, long days and nights of anxious thought for the home-keeper. To get just the prettiest arrangement for rooms really does take much valuable time and much trouble. So we have taken into our Organization two women advisers for our home-keepers. These women are expert interior decorators who do nothing but plan for our Homes Beautiful. It does not matter whether your home and the amount of money you wish to spend be small or large--our experts will help you plan to the very best advantage with whatever you care to spend. Too, they will either plan entirely, or help you plan--as you choose. They know, thoroughly, every home that we build--every nook and corner of every one of them. They have furnished some many times over--every time differently. If you wish merely suggestions as to various color schemes in walls, floors, hangings, or if you wish to use furniture you already have, but in a new way--or if you desire to furnish your homes entirely, down to the last detail of picture hanging and effective plant-placing, they are glad and willing to answer any and every question and to give all advice in their power. An especial feature of their service is helping you plan your kitchen efficiently, according to modern methods of steps and energy saving. They have planned many hundreds of model kitchens and can help you stock and arrange yours so that you will save time from drudgery of routine, for the enjoyment of a book, the good outdoors, or your social life. Bennett Saving Will Pay Your Expenses to The Falls and Niagara Frontier _See_ the world-wonder--Niagara Falls--only twenty minutes' ride from our door. _See_ Beautiful Buffalo with its wonderful park and drives--the celebrated million dollar Albright Art Gallery--Lake Erie--Niagara River and Gorge. _See_ the "home" of Bennett Homes--large lake steamers, enormous stocks of lumber, modern mills, carpenter shops, machines. Come! We will deem it a pleasure to show you every possible courtesy. _Take advantage of this opportunity to travel!_ [Illustration: TONAWANDA AND THE BENNETT DOCKS NIAGARA FALLS ART GALLERY--BUFFALO] _Enjoy a visit to_ _Ray H. Bennett Lumber Co. Inc._ _NORTH TONAWANDA--N.Y._ _Established 1902_ [Illustration back cover] 
60658	----	OLD HOUSES IN HOLLAND TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY SYDNEY R. JONES, WITH SOME ADDITIONAL PLATES IN COLOUR AFTER OTHER ARTISTS Edited by Charles Holme. MCMXIII "THE STUDIO" LTD. LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK PREFATORY NOTE The Editor desires to express his indebtedness to the following, who have rendered valuable assistance in the preparation of this volume: Mr. A. Pit, Director of the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, and other officials of the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam; Messrs. P. C. J. A. Boeles and D. Draaisma, of the Friesch Museum, Leeuwarden; Dr. B. van Rijswijk, Secretary of the Vereeniging Oud-Dordrecht; Mr. W. Polman Kruseman, Secretary of the Zeeuwsch Genootschap der Wetenschappen, Middelburg; and the Directors of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery, and the Wallace Collection, London. ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR After-- Pieter de Hooch "Interior of a Dutch House" Frontispiece ,, ,, ,, "Interior with Woman peeling Apples" Opposite page 16 ,, ,, ,, "Dutch Interior" ,, ,, 44 Johannes Vermeer "The Letter" ,, ,, 66 Catherine Bisschop-Swift "The Mirror" ,, ,, 80 Sydney R. Jones "Nijmegen, Gelderland" ,, ,, 98 Baron J. A. Hendrik Leys "Seventeenth-Century Dutch Interior" ,, ,, 130 Sydney R. Jones "Hindeloopen Room at the Frisian Museum, Leeuwarden" ,, ,, 140 Enamelled Earthenware Tiles (early 18th century) Opposite pages 136 & 138 Delft Dishes (18th century) ,, ,, 144 & 146 CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1 Illustrations:-- Breda, North Brabant 5 Monnikendam, North Holland 7 Veere, Zeeland 9 Nijmegen, Gelderland (dated 1544) 11 Dordrecht, South Holland 13 Leiden, Rhijnland (dated 1612) 15 Haarlem, North Holland 17 Brigdamme, Zeeland 18 I.--The Development of Domestic Architecture 19 Illustrations:-- Groningen (1509) 21 Boxmeer, North Brabant 22 Gorinchem (Gorcum), South Holland 23 Breda, North Brabant 24 Middelburg, Zeeland 25 Franeker, Friesland 26 Dordrecht, South Holland 27 Dordrecht (dated 1702) 28 Haarlem, North Holland 29 Spaarwoude, North Holland 30 St. Laurens, near Middelburg, Zeeland 31 Haarlem, North Holland 32 Alkmaar, North Holland (dated 1609) 33 Hoorn, North Holland (dated 1612) 34 Middelburg, Zeeland 35 Hoorn, North Holland 36 ,, ,, ,, 37 Woudrichem, North Brabant 38 Leiden, Rhijnland 39 Middelburg, Zeeland 40 Nijmegen, Gelderland (dated 1606) 41 Zutphen, Gelderland 42 ,, ,, (dated 1547) 43 Veere, Zeeland 44 Haarlem, North Holland 45 Delft, South Holland 46 Haarlem, North Holland (dated 1637) 47 Alkmaar, North Holland (dated 1673) 48 Franeker, Friesland (dated 1634) 49 Corbel from Dordrecht 50 Mosaic brick and stonework from Dordrecht 50 Dordrecht, South Holland (dated 1608) 51 Workum, Friesland (dated 1663) 52 Arnhem, Gelderland (dated 1642) 53 Amsterdam--Rembrandt's House (dated 1606) 54 Zwolle, Overijssel--The Guild Hall (dated 1571) 55 Vlissingen (Flushing), Zeeland (dated 1614) 56 Dordrecht, South Holland (dated 1626) 57 Kampen, Overijssel (dated 1631) 58 ,, ,, (dated on dormers 1634, 1626, 1730, 1630 and 1619) 59 Groningen--The "Goudkantoor" (dated 1635) 60 Groningen (1661) 61 Franeker, Friesland (dated 1662) 62 's Hertogenbosch, North Brabant (dated 1671) 63 Iron Wall-tie from Alkmaar 64 Alkmaar, North Holland (dated 1672) 65 's Gravenhage (The Hague), South Holland--"T'Goutsmits Keur Huijs" 66 Velsen, North Holland 67 Spaarwoude, North Holland 68 Zutphen, Gelderland 69 Halfweg, North Holland 70 ,, ,, ,, --showing construction of farmhouse 70 Spaarndam, North Holland 71 Schooten, North Holland 72 The Ferry House, near Gennep, North Brabant 73 Beek, Gelderland 74 Brigdamme, Zeeland (dated 1622) 75 Beek, Gelderland 76 Bloemendaal, North Holland 77 Broek, North Holland 78 ,, ,, ,, 79 Well at Beugen, North Brabant 80 Beek, Gelderland 81 Bridge at Zuiderwoude, North Holland (dated 1799) 82 II.--Exterior Features--Doors, Windows, Gables and Ornaments 83 Illustrations:-- Woudrichem, North Brabant (dated 1611) 85 Leeuwarden, Friesland 86 Delft, South Holland 87 ,, ,, ,, (dated 1547) 88 Haarlem, North Holland (dated 1632) 89 Leeuwarden, Friesland (dated 1675) 89 Leiden, Rhijnland (dated 1612) 89 ,, ,, (dated 1615) 90 Vlissingen (Flushing), Zeeland 91 Marssum, Friesland (dated 1713) 92 Kampen, Overijssel (dated 1665) 93 Arnhem, Gelderland 94 Wooden Door, with iron fittings, from Dordrecht 95 ,, ,, with carved lintel, from Haarlem 95 Leiden, Rhijnland (dated 1655) 96 Veere, Zeeland--The "Scotch House" 97 Wooden Window-frame, with iron fittings and lead glazing, from Dordrecht 98 Window Shutter from Velsen 98 ,, ,, ,, Nijmegen 99 ,, ,, ,, Leiden 99 ,, ,, ,, Dordrecht 99 ,, ,, ,, Haarlem 100 ,, ,, ,, Monnikendam 100 Zwolle, Overijssel 101 Kampen, Overijssel (dated 1626) 102 ,, ,, (dated 1634) 102 Marssum, Friesland 102 Gorinchem (Gorcum), South Holland (dated 1566) 103 Kampen, Overijssel 104 Vlissingen (Flushing), Zeeland 105 Monnikendam, North Holland 106 Haarlem, North Holland 106 Dordrecht, South Holland (dated 1523) 107 Arnhem, Gelderland 108 Haarlem, North Holland 109 Leiden, Rhijnland 109 Amsterdam, North Holland 110 Wood details from Gelderland and South Holland 111 Zutphen, Gelderland 112 Hoorn, North Holland 112 Franeker, Friesland (curved gables dated 1573) 113 Carved stone lettering from Haarlem 114 ,, ,, panel from Franeker 114 ,, ,, ,, ,, Zutphen (dated 1615) 115 ,, ,, ,, ,, Sneek 115 ,, ,, ,, ,, Haarlem 115 ,, ,, ,, ,, Workum 115 ,, ,, ,, ,, Middelburg (house dated 1590) 116 ,, ,, ,, ,, Haarlem 116 Woudrichem, North Brabant 117 Brick and Stone Mosaic from Zwolle 118 ,, ,, ,, ,, Nijmegen 118 ,, ,, ,, ,, Woudrichem 118 Zwolle, Overijssel (dated 1609) 119 Detail of Diaper-work from Franeker 120 Workum, Friesland 120 Iron Wall-ties 121 ,, Date-sign from St. Anna, near Nijmegen 122 ,, Wall-tie from Nijmegen 122 ,, Weather-vane from Broek 122 ,, Terminal from Middelburg 122 Lead Spout-heads from Zutphen 122 Oval Window with Stanchion-bar, from Leiden 122 Iron Wall-tie from Beugen 122 ,, Door-furniture from Middelburg 123 ,, Door-knocker 123 ,, Weather-vane from Hees 124 Lead Finials from Hoorn 124 III.--Interiors and Decoration 125 Illustrations:-- Brass Candelabrum from Haarlem 127 Seventeenth-century Room from Dordrecht, South Holland 128 ,, ,, ,, Leeuwarden, Friesland 129 Fireplace in the Bricklayers' Guild, Amsterdam 130 ,, from Maastricht, Limburg (dated 1510) 131 Cast-iron Fireback from Leiden 132 Cast-iron Fireback from Nijmegen 132 Fireplace from Middelburg, Zeeland 133 Cast-iron Fireback from Middelburg 134 ,, ,, ,, Jisp 134 Fireplace from The Westerwold, Groningen 135 Interior of a wooden house at Marken, North Holland 136 Brass Chimney-crane from Leeuwarden 136 Hindeloopen Room at the Frisian Museum, Leeuwarden 137 Carved Oak Panel from Zwolle (16th century) 138 Iron Hangers, Fire-irons and Fire-standard 139 Oak Panelling from Leiden 140 Hindeloopen Room at the Frisian Museum, Leeuwarden 141 Carved Door from Groningen (17th century) 142 Iron Lock-plate (16th century) 143 ,, ,, (dated 1587) 143 ,, Lock and Bolt 143 ,, Door-handle and Escutcheon 143 Carved Door of Wall-cupboard, with pierced and engraved iron fittings 143 Wall-cupboard with iron lock and hinges (16th century) 144 Carved Table from Edam 145 ,, Cabinet from Haarlem 145 Table from Amsterdam 146 Wrought-iron Stair-Railing from Zierikzee 146 Brass Warming-pan (dated 1602) 147 Wickerwork Coffer with brass mounts (18th century) 147 Brass Fire-side set (18th century) 147 ,, Candlestick ( ,, ,, ) 148 ,, Tea-caddy ( ,, ,, ) 148 ,, Pastille-burner 148 ,, Foot-warmer (dated 1733) 148 ,, Lantern (18th century) 148 Corridor in "St. Pietershofje," Hoorn, North Holland 149 Tiled Fireplace from Volendam, North Holland 150 ,, ,, ,, Marken, North Holland 151 Interior of a wooden house at Marken, North Holland 152 INTRODUCTION It is in the old towns of Holland that the architectural expression of the Dutch people is to be sought. Theirs was an intimate and human architecture, concerned with everyday events, and it developed out of the civil and domestic life. Many of the towns continue to be busy and prosperous, and new buildings here and there crowd in upon the picturesque groups of houses that for centuries have clustered round the great churches and market-places: in others, the active days of commerce are over, the merchants come no more, and the streets and waterways are quiet. But all Dutch towns having any pretension to age possess, to a wonderful degree, what may be termed an old-world atmosphere. Much of their charm, it is true, is due to the rivers and canals that encircle and intersect them in all directions, imparting a sense of quaintness and novelty; but it is the extraordinary number of old buildings still existing, unchanged in form since the days when they were erected and mellowed by ages of sun and rain, that ever appeal to the eye and imagination. The fantastic gables and red roofs, above which rise slender spires and belfries surmounted by leaden flèches and wrought vanes, together with the waterways and canal life, the windmills, and changing skies, are as characteristic now as when the masters of the great Dutch School of painting were living and working. Such scenes were to them inspiration; to picture the intimate events associated was their delight. If the painters have gone--and with them the arquebusiers and governors and burgomasters--the gables, the sunlit courts, and many other familiar features remain. The peculiar geographical conditions that have always existed in Holland have affected in no small degree the development of the land and the temperament of the people. Most of the country is below sea level. Behind the dunes and dykes the sea threatens inundation; the fear of accident by flood has kept the nation watchful and in perpetual war with its ancient enemy. The influence of this natural check has been far-reaching. It has produced the system of canals, determined the character of the landscape, made accordant life and work, method, regularity and order, and brought philosophy and fortitude to the national mind. In the domain of building, as in other spheres, water has been a powerful underlying agent affecting the evolution of style, just as the mountains, forests and deserts of other countries have imparted distinction to architecture. Side by side with the external conditions imposed by Nature, conditions that, if accepted, might well be expected to have produced an attitude of extreme lack of initiative in those living amongst them, the Dutch have ever been an enterprising people. The same spirit that defied and conquered the inroads of the sea characterised their dealings in the domain of commerce. Trade was to them the great business of life. From very early times, and continuing for a long period, the prosperity of the Low Countries was foremost in Europe. The towns became centres of busy and pulsative life, the homes of virile civil and domestic communities. Many old buildings still existing, town halls, weigh houses, trade and guild halls, warehouses and merchants' premises, bear witness to those strenuous days. An architecture in close touch with the events of the times developed through, and by reason of the successes achieved by industry and sustained advances of conquest and colonization. The phase of domestic art which is reviewed in this volume was essentially the expression of a nation urgently concerned with the material, matter-of-fact side of everyday life, and bore close kindred to its needs, its aspirations and its achievements; it was corporeal rather than spiritual in aspect, reflective of the market-place, the fireside and the home. And while the continuous building tradition of certain other countries was allied to ecclesiasticism, or was a movement instigated by the aristocracy, in Holland it was democratic in general trend, an art bound up in the interests of the people and existing for their good and welfare. It was urban rather than rural in its principles. Unlike the English growth, where the native building art developed vigorously and lingered longest in the countryside--as many an old village, manor-house or farm will demonstrate--the equivalent vernacular Dutch development was pre-eminently of the towns, and trade was the influence that gave it life. In a country notable for its manufactures and commercial activities men congregated together for mutual gain. A sturdy race they were, unimpressionable, but kindly and charitable, and their comfortable homes were in keeping with their temperament. To better appreciate the course of architectural development, it will be well to briefly cite the main circumstances connected with these towns and with the country's history. Records of Dutch towns prior to the twelfth century are scanty, although at that time orderly government had begun to develop. Then followed the municipal charters, many dating from the thirteenth century. These charters were granted by the feudal lords to the townspeople and secured to them certain rights and protection in return for taxation and levies; justice was administered by various governing bodies and magistrates, and the municipal finances were properly supervised. There thus grew up a strong communal movement which was steadily developed and strengthened. Then it was that the cities began their era of great prosperity and each became practically self-governing and semi-independent. Revenue was derived from the river commerce and markets, over-sea trading, and from the industries which were fostered. So powerful did they become, so energetic was their municipal life, so well organised their trade, that these cities came to be reckoned, together with the neighbouring towns of Flanders, the most prosperous and wealthy in the world. As time went on the chief cities became members of the Hanseatic League, which influential association embraced trading colonies in places as far apart as London, Visby on the island of Gotland, Novgorod the Great in Russia, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Kampen on the Zuider Zee. Through the impetus of this remarkable movement, the long-continued commercial relations between England and Holland were established. About the middle of the thirteenth century Hanse merchants settled in London, obtained privileges from Henry III., founded the Steelyard, and there developed a flourishing trade. The intercourse between the two countries was very considerable, and it was of the utmost importance to the Netherlands that nothing should happen to weaken their good relations with England. For England was then the principal wool-producing country of Europe, the only place, in fact, able to supply it in large quantities, and the men of the Low Countries, famed above all for their skill as weavers and depending upon the woollen industry for their greatest wealth, were eager buyers of English wool in the raw state. In the fifteenth century, through dissension and war, the cities of Holland were ejected from the Hanseatic League; but the Dutch, with their fine ships and business acumen, continued to prosper and carried their conquests by trade into far-distant lands. It was while at the height of their material success that the provinces of Holland came under the dominion of the house of Burgundy. The peculiar independent constitution of the cities promoted rivalry between them, rather than a common national interest which would have been best for the preservation of their just rights. They were heavily taxed and oppressed and were continually at variance with the ruling power, fighting for the redress of their grievances. By the first half of the sixteenth century the kingdom of the Netherlands had passed to the Emperor Charles V., King of Spain, and Philip, his son, inherited his father's throne. He thereby became monarch of vast territories. Philip determined to utterly subjugate the provinces and carried out a policy of relentless persecution. The people rebelled, brutal punishment followed, and they became victims of the worst excesses of the Inquisition. Deeds of cruelty, tyranny and murder, almost unparalleled in history, were enacted. In those dark days arose that great champion of the people, "William the Silent," Prince of Orange, the "father of his fatherland." Intent on defending the liberties of the nation, he gathered around him a company of gallant spirits, and, principally at his own expense, commenced what at first appeared to be a hopeless struggle. But early victories, hardly won, roused a cowed populace to action. The nation embarked upon the memorable Eighty Years' War, which resulted in the Spanish yoke being overthrown and the founding of the Dutch Republic. William was basely assassinated at Delft in 1584, and Maurice, his second son, succeeded him as Stadtholder. He was ambitious, shrewd, and skilled in the arts of war, and under his rule, and that of his brother Frederick Henry, who succeeded him in 1625, the fortunes of the Dutch gradually rose high. Through times of trial and suffering, hardships endured and conquests won, they emerged valorous and strong, a nation of heroes. Triumphs of arms by land and sea, successes of the merchant fleets and navigators who explored remote parts of the world, the founding of colonies, and ingenuity on the part of the workers in home manufactures, characterised a notable period of great prosperity; the Dutch became supreme in trade, chief rulers of the sea, and accumulated vast wealth. As the seventeenth century advanced commercial welfare continued to increase. Admirals Tromp and De Ruyter swept the seas, gaining brilliant naval victories; in 1667 the safety of London itself was threatened by the appearance of the Dutch fleet in the Thames. But the mastery of the sea eventually passed to England and from that time the fortunes of the Dutch declined. The election of William III.--who had married Princess Mary, daughter of the Duke of York--to the English throne in 1689 marked the close of Holland's greatest days. Early Dutch secular architecture is in the spirit of the late Gothic style. The most valuable monuments of that period are the civic buildings which herald a time when public life--as opposed to ecclesiastical--assumed an importance and dignity capable of being symbolized in brick and stone; when power acquired by trade found expression in its own distinctive forms, and the wealthy burghers of the towns erected municipal buildings which stand for all time as the embodiment of their ideals. Such is the Town Hall at Middelburg by Ant. Keldermans the Younger, one of that famous family of architects of Malines. It is a stone erection of fine proportions, enriched with a wealth of detail, sculptured figures, sunk panelling and many turrets; tiers of dormers break up the roof surface and the whole is surmounted by a noble and boldly conceived tower. At Veere, not far distant, is a smaller example (opposite) built in 1474 by another member of the Keldermans family. While owning some similarity to its fellow at Middelburg, the treatment is simpler, but the proportions are exquisite, and the peculiar grace of the belfry is outstanding. The characteristic richness of surface decoration which was then common may also be seen on the sandstone façade of the "Gemeenlandshuis" at Delft, with its elaborate traceries and parapet belonging to the early sixteenth century. The aforementioned are stone buildings and betray the influence of French Gothic, but the especially individual Netherlandish interpretation of Gothic was developed in the brick architecture. Brickwork was much employed and the nature of the material--not so responsive as stone in the hands of the craftsmen--limited the possibilities of ornamental treatment. Detail had to be simplified and adapted to the means available for carrying it out; the example from Nijmegen (p. 11), dated 1544, furnishes an instance of how it was handled. It is in this early brickwork that the germs of the Dutch transitional Renaissance style are to be traced; its root principles were derived not only from the public buildings, but from the churches also--vast piles whose bold masses and ornaments were logically developed out of the material, and whose millions of little bricks, jointed together, stand as impressive memorials of patient labour. Mediæval domestic work followed in the wake of the civic. Not many examples remain. Of those that have survived most belong to the late fifteenth or the first half of the sixteenth century. The current forms of the period were employed--panelling and projecting surface decoration, more often in brickwork than stone; arched window-heads ornamented with tracery; circular brick turrets surmounted by conical roofs; stepped gables having pinnacles rising from the copings; steep roofs pierced by dormers; and the somewhat florid, rich, but carefully wrought detail. In contrast to the scarcity of Gothic domestic buildings, those of the Transitional period--from Gothic to Renaissance--are very numerous. Many examples are to be found in the old towns where rows of houses, much out of the perpendicular, rise from the canalsides and paved roadways. They are narrow and very high and are surmounted by gables which are often of fantastic shape and curious outline, picturesque from the draughtsman's point of view and full of subject for the painter. Strange though it now seems, and quite beyond reasonable explanation, the greatest art movement that Holland has ever known flourished at the close of those troublous times when she was at war with Spain. It was then that the painters, with startling suddenness, came into their full powers, and Hals, Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Gerard Dou, Paul Potter, Jan Steen, Ruysdael and De Hooch, with a host of brilliant companions, followed in quick succession. They created a new art, a school of painting with original conceptive views and unrivalled executive skill. Contemporaneously with this artistic activity developed the peculiarly specific Dutch style of domestic architecture. Existing examples prove how energetically the building craft was then carried on, and show how its characteristics were matured during the closing years of the sixteenth century and onwards through the century following. Many of the Town Halls and Weigh Houses, which set the fashion for the private dwellings, are of this time; Leiden 1598, Haarlem 1602, Nijmegen 1612, Bolsward 1614, Workum 1650, and numerous others. It was in the sixteenth century that the influence of the Renaissance gained ground in Holland, and with it came new canons and new impulses, revived interest in classical literature and art. And in connection with it, it is significant to note that Erasmus, one of the most distinguished of the Humanists, was born at Rotterdam in 1466; during a life of much travel and varied residence he was often in the Low Countries, prosecuting his own self-culture and advocating his doctrines. The Transitional period lasted long and the buildings associated with it in many ways resemble those of England, erected in the style known as Elizabethan. The real significance of the revolutionary Renaissance art was not grasped or understood. The Gothic form of house long held its own and to it was added the heavy Dutch interpretation of the newer style, a rendering showing French rather than Italian feeling. But nevertheless, however well or ill applied, the use of Classic motifs in architecture became a firmly-established and general practice. But the great changes in religious and intellectual thought that transpired during the sixteenth century did not so quickly influence the domain of architecture as might be supposed. No sudden breach with the inherited style occurred, although the ancient life and faith were passing. The Gothic tradition, which had been handed down from generation to generation, continued on. The national temperament was opposed to innovation, and the Dutch people clung to that which had been evolved through long years of experiment; they were unwilling to give up those forms that had been satisfying to their forefathers. So the new fashion in architecture was at first but tardily accepted and made little headway against the olden practices. Early tentative efforts were confined to novelties of detail introduced in gable ornaments, window-heads and doorways; the traditional forms of building remained unaltered, and fresh types of ornament were simply added to them for no very definite or intelligent reason. As time went on the Renaissance influence gradually became more established, but there was evidently no unanimity of opinion on the merits of it. Some looked upon it with favour; others viewed it with suspicion and preferred to keep to that which had served so well for preceding generations. As a consequence, the development was not uniform throughout the country. Thus a house at Alkmaar, bearing the late date of 1673, has arched window-heads and step gable terminated with a pointed arch quite in the Gothic manner; while a façade erected at Zwolle one hundred and two years earlier unmistakably betrays its Classic origin by the details with which it is adorned. After a changeful period, during which the architectural impulses were halting between the acceptance of the new and the retention of the old, men who directed public taste eventually adopted what they understood to be the Renaissance ideas. Behind them was a strong tide of inherited tradition which continued to flow on. To it they brought their own interpretation of the new movement, and the two forces ran side by side for many years. Foremost among the earlier architects who turned to classicism for fresh inspiration were Lieven de Key, Hendrik de Keyzer and Cornelius Danckerts. Hendrik de Keyzer was born at Utrecht in 1565 and died at Amsterdam in 1621. He was appointed architect to the city of Amsterdam in 1594, and his name is connected with buildings both in that town and elsewhere. One of his most notable works is the monument erected at Delft to the memory of William the Silent. Cornelius Danckerts was associated with de Keyzer and lived from 1561 to 1631. Born at Ghent about the year 1560, Lieven de Key worked principally at Haarlem and Leiden. He was the author of the celebrated Meat Market at Haarlem, a remarkable building which has evoked both praise and disparagement; it was completed in 1603. He was responsible for the design of other civic buildings as well as numerous private dwellings. Such men as these had their followers and founded schools of architecture in the places of their professional activities. There was thus a vigorous body of men working at Haarlem; while Amsterdam, which had become virtually the political and commercial capital as well as the centre of the arts, had its own assembly of architects who were particularly energetic in the city and exercised great influence in the adjacent districts. The results of their accomplishments are still apparent, and the many large and sober gabled houses suggest to the imagination the comparative splendour of seventeenth-century Amsterdam. The buildings of this period are quaint and charming. If somewhat lacking in serious architectonic qualities, they are inseparably connected with the national sentiments; they stand as lasting evidences of human emotion expressed through the medium of brick and stone. The streets lined with ancient houses are witnesses of a great past, and bring to remembrance those strong and earnest men who honoured hearth and threshold and fought to save their fatherland from tyranny and threatened ruin. Above all, the structures bear upon them the impress of the intellectual life which was concerned with their production. The work itself is thoroughly Dutch in character, full of suggestion, and the materials are well handled. That of the early Renaissance is the best, and in it the two streams of thought--mediæval and classic--are seen harmoniously blended. A good example from Leiden, by Lieven de Key, is illustrated opposite; signs of the new influence are obvious in the details, yet it has the traditional form of stepped gable; while there is a freedom of handling discernible in the disposition of the ground floor features which was dictated by convenience rather than symmetrical arrangement. All the work, however, was not so reasonable as this. Gables of extraordinary and curious outline began to appear, remarkable certainly for fertility of invention, but often lacking in delicacy and restraint. Isolated stone ornaments, unconnected with constructive principles, were applied to vacant wall spaces. They were decorated with lion-heads, armorial bearings, strapwork, cartouches, winged heads and panels in relief, all vigorously carved. Many of the subjects were seemingly derived from published pattern books and decorative designs, and lack that independence of conception which distinguishes all inspired craftsmanship. Evidence goes to prove that the men who made the designs for the buildings had not yet become detached from the building trades. They were not architects within the present meaning of that term. They were described as masons, stonecutters, and the like, and no doubt were master-builders who, in addition to supplying the design, had a personal hand in the execution of the work of their own particular craft. The idea that a trained director should conceive the work as a whole, and marshal all the supplementary arts to proper subjugation, had not yet been evolved. Architecture as a separate force was not recognised. Results automatically grew out of the united efforts of the sculptors, bricklayers, carpenters and masons who were engaged on the same production. So de Key, in addition to acting as a designer, was the city mason of Haarlem; H. de Keyzer was sculptor to the city of Amsterdam; and these are typical instances of the conditions then prevailing. It is also not surprising to find in this country, where government by municipalities was so well developed, that the architects were often official servants of the towns. Two such are mentioned above; Dryfhout was town architect of Middelburg, and Ambrosius van Hanenberch held a similar position at 's Hertogenbosch. [1] The demand for qualified men to protect and guide the public artistic needs was appreciated, a wise and excellent practice from which present-day authorities in England might well take a lesson. With the advancing seventeenth century came a keener desire for the employment of purer forms of Renaissance art. Architects turned their thoughts to the Italian ideal, which they modified, yet preserved in its essential characteristics. Chief among the exponents of the developed style were Jacob van Campen and Phillippus Vinckboons, both of Amsterdam; and Pieter Post of Haarlem. The massive Town Hall of Amsterdam--now the Royal Palace--by van Campen, is one of the most important buildings of this period. It was erected between the years 1648 and 1655. But the severe classic ideas, directing towards uniformity and symmetrical arrangements, were never really at home, nor did they displace the weakening influence of inherited tradition. In the general mass of work the Dutch national genius continued to assert itself. Up to the time when the native architecture became devoid of character and personality, the houses and trade buildings in which the people lived and worked--even if of strange appearance or sometimes fantastic beyond description--retained an unmistakable flavour of the vernacular and owned something of that playfulness and quaint invention that were the heritage of mediæval times. It is fitting to conclude this Introduction by referring to the effect of Dutch upon English architecture. For our style of domestic building has in the past owed something to knowledge gained from the Low Countries; details have been derived from the Dutch and their practices adopted. Most obviously the influence is to be seen in the Eastern counties, although it penetrated more or less throughout the country; Staffordshire can show it as well as Norfolk, Wiltshire as well as Kent. To those men of the Netherlands who early engaged in English commerce the germs of this influence are to be traced. Not that many of these foreigners were actively connected with the building trades, but, during a long period of trading intercourse and settlement by merchants and artisans, they, as a matter of course, left distinct impressions of their own ideas. Onward from the fourteenth century the influx of Flemings and Dutchmen into England was considerable and the reasons for their coming various. Apart from the traders, skilled artisans were encouraged to settle for the purpose of improving the home manufactures. Oppression, too, was responsible for many immigrants; to cite an instance, thousands of people left Holland when the harsh Duke of Alva, acting for Philip of Spain, was in 1567 appointed commander of the forces, and numbers of them found refuge in England. But the presence of foreigners such as these, most of whom were not engaged in the building crafts, had only an indirect effect upon the local architecture. It was the imported artificers, coming from Germany as well as the Netherlands, who brought a new development to English building. "Throughout the reign of Elizabeth," writes Professor Blomfield, "their influence was in the air and predominant." The results of it are obvious in work then erected, notably in the long series of country houses with strapwork ornament, peculiar decoration of porches and fireplaces, and much patterned woodwork. Again, with the advent of Dutch William to the English throne, further new features were introduced and they are especially traceable in the admirable brickwork of the Queen Anne style. But the lasting and altogether good effect of Dutch influence was on traditional, rather than academic architecture, on those quiet and unpretentious buildings of the countryside. Here the foreign motives were almost imperceptibly blended with those existing, neither suddenly nor inharmoniously. A feature was added here, a detail there, yet the work remained truly English in character. Old villages can yet show buildings that bear upon them traces of an alien hand, or embody ideas drawn from other than local sources of inspiration. Such are the East Kentish cottages at Sandwich, Ickham, Reading Street and Sarre; the halls and manor-houses of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, with corbie-stepped and curved gables; the high brick barns of the Eastern counties; and endless picturesque groupings of certain distinction that exist up and down the land. The industrious settlers from over the water certainly brought something to our traditional architecture, gave it qualities that helped to make it what it was. And when they came to erect their dwellings on foreign soil, they cherished the memory of their own country, and turned their thoughts to home and to the houses on the tree-lined streets and waterways of Holland. DIVISION I THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE The only really abundant building materials in Holland were bricks. Stone was available in limited quantities, but not readily so. Brick-earths there were in plenty, and brick-building has been practised continuously from the dawn of Dutch architecture to the present day. The inhabitants, after long and intimate association, became very proficient in the use of bricks, skilful in applying them, and apt to quickly realize the possibilities afforded by this material. There is, therefore, a great deal of old work of exceptional interest which is, in addition, valuable for the suggestions it presents. The creation and development of an architectural style, depending upon brickwork as the medium for its execution, call into being considerable powers of ingenuity. For the limitations of bricks are definite and circumscribed; the unit is small and its size not subject to variation. Moreover, enrichment can only be obtained by careful disposition and arrangement of the units, and the almost unlimited scope possessed by stone, wood or plaster--both in respect to size of parts and effects of surface decoration--is nearly non-existent. Difficulties such as these have to be realised and overcome, but good results are not easily secured. The preconceived ideas in the mind, the general proportions, and the disposition of features, are governed to a degree by the nature of the building material. And for these reasons, the bonding of the walling, colour arrangements, width and finish of the mortar joints, and the precise manner of forming details, all contribute markedly to the ultimate appearance of the whole. Good brickwork depends, even more than other forms of building, upon a complete understanding of the capabilities of the medium; skill in manipulating it is secondary only to capacity for design. It was in the use of bricks that the Dutch were especially successful. Qualified by experience gained through years of experiment, their achievements were dexterous and often daring. They were thoroughly at home with brickwork, alive to its restrictions as well as its possibilities, and they handled it in a spontaneous and reasonable way. All the features and details of some buildings had to be suitably designed for execution in this not very pliable material--gables (page 21), windows, doorways (shown above), decoration, mouldings and traceries. Problems such as these, definitely existing, were satisfactorily solved. The craftsmen thought in brickwork, as it were, and forms were more or less dictated by the means available for carrying them out. Not that stone was ignored; on the contrary, it was doubtless used when it could be obtained, as our illustrations plainly show. Thus, it was employed not only for ornamental details but often for the entire structures. Wood had its uses too, as may be seen in the half-timbered houses at Dordrecht or the wooden-fronted ones at Gorinchem (Gorcum), illustrated opposite; and plaster entered into the construction of many country buildings. But the prevailing conditions brought about an advanced development of brickwork and through it the vital building tradition was evolved. The old bricks themselves were particularly well shaped and the proportion of height to length gave a long and narrow appearance. How narrow they actually were will be realised when it is stated that it not infrequently happens we find them no more than 1-1/4 inches high. Some of the sizes noted are 1-1/4 inches by 6-3/4 inches to 7 inches at Workum; 1-1/2 inches by 7 inches at Breda (page 24); 1-1/2 inches by 8-1/2 inches, and 1-3/4 inches by 7 inches to 8-1/2 inches at Haarlem; and 2 inches by 9 inches at 's Hertogenbosch. They were laid with five, six, or seven courses to the foot, and sometimes the door and window openings were formed with smaller sized bricks than those used for the main walling. It was only rarely that comparatively large bricks were employed. Some may be seen in the walls of the old Abbey at Middelburg, and "Thvis van Leeninge" (page 25), situated in the same town, has bricks measuring 2-1/2 inches by 9-1/2 inches; while a building at Franeker, in Friesland, is carried out in unusually large bricks, which vary in size from 3 inches to 3-1/2 inches by 10-1/2 inches to 11-1/2 inches. The joints are widest in the older work and were either finished with dark mortar, no lighter in tone than the bricks, or were raked out and pointed up with light mortar. The bond almost universally adopted was that known by the name of "English" and not, as is often erroneously stated, "Flemish." English bond consists of alternate courses of headers and stretchers; that is to say, one course of bricks, all placed longways, upon a course all laid endways, and so continuously up the wall. Flemish bond, rarely to be seen in Holland, has alternate headers and stretchers in every course. Dutch brickwork shows a wide range of colouring. Some is very dark and of a purple tint; some is yellow, particularly in the neighbourhood of Dordrecht; red bricks there are in every town; while at Breda they gradate from lemon yellow to a delicate salmon pink. It will be perceived that materials such as these offered means for harmonious combinations. The possibilities were appreciated, and about the country there exist many happy effects which were secured by blending the various coloured bricks. It was a favourite method to build walls with parti-coloured bands running horizontally through them in the manner shown from Franeker (page 26), where four courses of red bricks interchange with one of yellow. Mouldings and surrounds to openings often contrasted with the prevailing colour of the building. As an illustration of this, the example from Dordrecht (below) may be cited; the walls are formed with yellow bricks and the decorated window-heads with red. In addition to effects obtained by colour harmonies, enrichment was secured by applying moulded and shaped brickwork. It was confined principally to the doorways, windows and string courses, and how successful this system of ornamentation can be will be realised by further reference to the two above-mentioned drawings. Among other familiar features of Dutch buildings are the mosaic decorations which generally occupy the arched spaces over window-heads. Made up of simple units--square or shaped bricks and little pieces of stone--they were set together to form repeating patterns and devices. Many of the houses, such as that at Dordrecht (page 27), attain distinction by reason of these interesting and freely rendered details, and they will be more fully considered in the following chapter on exterior features. Pantiles were almost universally used for roof-coverings in the towns, while in the country thatching was freely employed. Under certain conditions the good qualities of pantiles show conspicuously. Where the country is level and the landscape low, and big changing sky-effects constantly recur, they look particularly homely and suitable. Their curved surfaces quickly respond to play of light, becoming successively bright in the sunlight or mellow-toned in the shadow. They have the appearance, too, of being well able to withstand the wind and the rain. Holland is a country having the attributes for the successful use of these tiles; moreover, they blended in every way with the prevailing brick architecture, both of the towns and of the villages, as is shown by the illustrations from Haarlem (page 29) and St. Laurens (page 31). They were not always of that bright red colour usually associated with pantiles. Many were made from a grey clay and look not unpleasing; especially in the town and neighbourhood of Zutphen they can be well observed. The thatched roofs of the countryside do not present any special characteristics. They were contrived to accomplish their purpose in a straightforward way. Brought down directly from ridge to eaves, or arranged pyramidally, they have no added decoration in straw-work. The ridge was protected by a course of half-round tiles of which the farmhouse at Spaarwoude (page 30) furnishes an example, and the roof of this building, arranged part in thatch and part in pantiles, is an instance of a fairly prevalent practice. Passing from the consideration of building materials to that of planning, it may be stated as a general rule that the ground plans of the old work were usually determined by the exigencies of practical requirements. The very narrow frontage of many of the houses gave little latitude for variation of interior disposition: for it will be noticed that the majority of the houses were built with gable-ends facing to the streets, and these consequently became the principal elevations. The measurement from front to back of each was thus much greater than that from side to side. The economical and practical way of treating such an area would be to arrange a passage at the side, directly through from front to back, which would, as well, give access to the rooms and stairs; and this is what was generally done. Such a passage, sketched from the outside pavement, is shown on this page. This expedient was not necessary when the building had a wider frontage, and in such a case the way through was often placed more or less centrally, in the manner illustrated from Alkmaar on page 33. On the other hand, the narrow house at Hoorn (page 34) has a central entrance, and here it gives immediate access to the front room. But the passage was an important feature of Dutch planning and gave the fundamental idea for general disposition. The internal arrangements were disclosed by the elevations and a guiding principle of Gothic design was thereby followed. The positions of lofty rooms, ways of access, staircases and different floor levels, were as much as possible made obvious on the outside of the buildings. This practice led to many happy results. Not fettered by artificial conventions or limited by unyielding laws, the designers were able to give scope to their invention. Utility and convenience set the theme for spontaneous fancy to adorn. These were the motive powers, the guiding impulses that lay behind the early work, and they continued to operate with more or less force for many generations. The series of houses in the "Balans" at Middelburg (page 35) furnishes a good example of a group that owed its inception to such influences. While there is harmony between part and part no two are alike. One house is higher than its fellow; one comes forward over the paved way while another recedes. Doorways and windows are conveniently, but not too evenly disposed. The brightly painted window-shutters give lively colour, and isolated features--such as the staircase turret seen on the right--show with telling effect. Gables of differing shape break the skyline. Utilitarian in lighting the rooms of the roofs, the dormers æsthetically serve to carry the eye up to the ridges. The whole impression, if irregular, is picturesque to a degree. Contemplating an effect such as this, so powerful in its human appeal to the eye and mind, it is difficult to appreciate those arguments which are advanced against principles capable of giving such satisfying results. The most characteristic essential of domestic architecture in Holland is the steeply-pitched gable. It was derived from Gothic sources. Gables owning this influence almost invariably have the lines of their two ascending sides broken by a series of steps which continue upwards from base to apex. They are consequently called "stepped," and such gables will be observed in the drawing from Middelburg mentioned above. The acute rake of the gables determined the slant of the roofs. This circumstance, together with the fact that houses usually had little frontage to the streets, gave great roof spaces incapable of being adequately lighted by windows inserted in the walls. So the fore part consisted of a room (or rooms) which was generally assigned to servants, and the rear area, lighted by dormers, was used for storing and kindred purposes, one all-important among the latter being that of "drying washing." These dormers were quite important factors in architectural composition; each had hinged and painted shutters and a little steep roof. Sometimes they were elaborated, as may be seen, for instance, in the drawing from Hoorn (page 37). The dormer eventually became a much developed feature. In examples such as those shown from Leiden (page 39), where two of the houses are not ended by a gable, the main roof would be hipped back. A certain number of dwellings were built with one of the longest sides occupying the main frontage. The house at Hoorn (page 36) was so constructed. The floor-joists, carried through the walling, are exposed to view; they project beyond the face of the ground floor wall and support an overhanging upper storey. Similar examples occur at Vlissingen (Flushing), and there the joist-ends are carved with representations of small human heads, each of different design. Very noticeable, both in early and later work, is the great height of ground-floor rooms and passages. They not uncommonly measure from eleven to thirteen feet, or even more, from floor to ceiling. The windows, proportionate to the rooms, are extremely lofty. Over entrance doorways are fanlights of conspicuous size, which are occasionally nearly as large as the doors themselves. Some houses, with very high front rooms abutting on the street, have at the back two stories contained within this same height. The example from Woudrichem (page 38) is disposed in this way; the fore part of the hall, from which the drawing was made, together with the adjoining room are almost twice as lofty as the passage seen beyond; the stairs give access to the imposed intermediate floor. Heights of rooms gradually diminish upward from the ground, and the string-courses that externally mark the position of the floors, are consequently nearest together far up the walls and gables. It will be seen by the foregoing how construction and practical arrangement went hand in hand with design, neither one being divorced from the other. Especially is this demonstrated by the Gothic buildings and those which primarily betray a Gothic origin. The house from Middelburg (page 40) is given as an example. It is a highly successful piece of grouping, and the features show with admirable effect. The walls are of brickwork and the dressings of stone. On the gable-end bands of stone alternate with courses of bricks, while set back in the angle the well-placed turret, steep-roofed and soaring, dominates the composition. How accurately the value of horizontal and vertical elements was estimated, and how cunningly they were opposed to each other, will be observed. The gateway from Nijmegen (page 41) was conceived in much the same spirit as the above, and here again the turret was effectively employed. Both it and the pointed archway are in quite the Gothic manner; but the crow-stone, or terminating member of the gable, the band of diaper executed in brick and stone, and the details of the windows (near to which the date of 1606 appears) point to other influences. On the exterior walls of the house from Zutphen (page 43) can be seen the sunk panels, set back from the main face of the brickwork, which served for the insertion of windows. They often extend from near the ground to well up the gable. The dividing projections, turned with arches at their extremities, give bold upright lines. In the example cited these lines have evidently been broken by the rebuilding of the first-storey wall. It is dated 1547. The upper part, showing the sunk panel bordered by moulded bricks, the arched head--in this instance pointed and supported on each side by small circular turrets--and the shuttered window, is given in detail on page 42. A noticeable treatment of the ground floor elevation is exemplified by the two drawings from Alkmaar and Hoorn (pages 33 and 34), already considered, and by that from Veere (page 44). Each is constructed principally in woodwork, and the many windows amply serve to light the lofty rooms. The wooden mullions are simply shaped and enriched, while over them is a moulded cornice. Above the lower series of windows in the Alkmaar example is a projecting hood, which affords protection from the weather. The date of 1609 is carved upon it, and other buildings having this characteristic usually belong to the opening years of the seventeenth century. A more artistic and satisfactory solution to the difficult problem of adequately lighting the entire side of a high room or shop would not easily be found in the old work of any other country. It is not possible to make any hard and fast division between Gothic and Renaissance work. The actual dates of the buildings form no conclusive key, for it has been demonstrated in the Introduction how the later development did not advance evenly throughout the country. Houses built in the traditional way, and in a mixture of styles, are to be seen in almost all old towns (page 45). Sometimes one influence shows predominantly, sometimes another. The brick and stone façade at Delft (page 46) has all the attributes of Gothic work, pointed arches, overhanging stories, stepped gable and pinnacles. But the spirit of the carved details is different. The heads in circles, cherubs, vases, cornucopias, lion-heads, dolphins, eagles and acanthus ornament are all subjects far removed from Gothic ideas, as are the delicately carved corbels from which the arches spring. Two other houses that owe much to Gothic influences are those from Haarlem (page 47) and Alkmaar (page 48). The first-named was built in 1637 and the second in 1673. The more recently dated example shows, in point of style, the earlier architectural form. Both have the customary stepped gable and window-heads, the Alkmaar examples being elliptically arched and those at Haarlem pointed. But in the latter instance the keystones are furnished with Renaissance ornaments, as is the crowning pediment of the gable. The three following buildings mark a further step forward in architectural development. In general disposition of masses they accord with olden practices, but the decorative details approximate Renaissance ideas. "De Crimpert Salm" at Dordrecht (page 51), of 1608, presents a rich appearance, but the profuse elaboration of the front was not achieved by accident or haphazard use of material. The balance of the design was obviously well considered. Horizontal motives, intensified below the first-floor level, give a stable base for the lavishness overhead; above, they repeat with less force and are finally carried up the gable by the steps. The vertical lines, obtained principally by the window openings and frames, are similarly reduced towards the top, and there the curved elements are concentrated. Upon a low wall of stone and brick stands the woodwork front of the ground floor. Next in order comes a broad band of mosaic decoration executed in brick and stone (page 50), bounded at each end by lion-heads in high relief, and divided centrally by a stone panel with a salmon carved upon it. Other mosaics show in the arched spaces over the windows of the next storey (page 50), while the equivalent space in the gable is filled with arranged brickwork. Moulded bricks and stonework, plain and carved, all contribute to the exuberance of the scheme. The small example from Franeker (page 49) is built in brick and stone and was erected in 1634. It has the traditional gable but the old type of step, small in height and width, was not followed. Two steps only suffice to reach the gable-head and the side of each is finished with shaped stonework, a method of completion not employed in earlier times. Later in date than these two houses, that from Workum (page 52) gives an instance both of the persistence of established practice and of the human desire for newness and change. The builder evidently could neither forget nor abandon the general form of house arrangement that he knew so well, and to it he kept. This is especially obvious in the gable which mounts up in quite the Gothic way. The pilasters on the ground and first storey, however, plainly show that an attempt was made to keep in touch with the prevailing mode of the period. Each is terminated by a Corinthian capital and festoons of fruit are carved upon the panels. In these particulars the work, which was completed in 1663, was in agreement with the then advancing Classic taste. The bricks used in the walls are plum coloured and measure but 1-1/4 inches wide. Designers were thus getting farther away from Gothic architecture. The political and religious events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries revolutionized old beliefs. Time-honoured faiths were not only given up, but were viewed with positive distrust. The powers that had swayed the people of the Middle Ages, the mysticism, ideals, and poetry of their lives, were unrealities to the great majority of seventeenth-century Hollanders; such doctrines fell meaningless upon their senses, and were to them but unintelligible and empty forms. They not unnaturally turned from a creed in whose name loathsome crimes had been committed and countless lives had been sacrificed. It was a time of new life and faith. This change in the trend of thought is amply reflected in the domestic architecture. The Gothic tradition, already more or less alienated from the public sympathies, had almost spent itself. Its vitality was gone and only as a survival, a mere shadow of former glory, was it carried on. The old order gave place to the new. But it was long before a fresh system of planning came to be generally accepted and mediæval methods of construction and workmanship still persisted. Classic motives, however, were increasingly applied to the elevations. All the features, and the entire decoration of many of the houses, were often the direct outcome of Renaissance influences. In some few cases--such as the gateway at Arnhem of 1642 (page 53)--the whole schemes were conceived in the Classic spirit and were evidently designed by men of advanced intelligence, who were able to comprehend the significance of the style in which they worked. Rembrandt's house at Amsterdam (page 54) is an able achievement, sober and dignified. The walls are built of ochre-coloured bricks, with stone used for the dressings. The date of 1606 appears on the upper storey. It has no gabled front, but a projecting cornice and pediment make division between the roof and wall surface. Above are two dormers placed in balanced order; while the roof, steeply rising and hipped and having a chimney at each end of the ridge, completes the studied arrangement. So far the work is in the style of the Renaissance, and it is only by the windows below that earlier influences are recalled: but the two themes are so well blended as to be perfectly harmonious. The net result is simple and reasonable and by no means lacking in scholarship. Very different is the Guild Hall at Zwolle (page 55), erected thirty-five years earlier. Its too fussy elaboration is in sharp contrast with the comparative restraint of Rembrandt's house, just mentioned. Classicism was applied without the Classic spirit and with little understanding of its real import. The general effect is rich and complex, but the composition lacks breadth and is overladen with ornament. Some of the details disclose good craftsmanship, notably the frieze which runs across the entire front at the first floor level, carved with cupids on horseback, old men with tridents, satyrs and flowing foliage, and broken at intervals by lion-heads worked on the bases of the pilasters. At the second storey is a Doric frieze, with sculptured circular ornaments and heads of bulls appearing in the metopes between the triglyphs. The gable, mediæval in feeling, is curly in outline; it is further complicated by the introduction of reclining satyrs and lascivious demi-gods that quaintly break the skyline. The designer evidently proposed to himself the Italian ideal, but did not grasp the meaning or refinement of it. Many details came to be used in a similar way, such, for instance, as those shown from Dordrecht (page 50) and Flushing (page 56), but, although often of admirable workmanship, they were never coherent parts of a self-evolved whole. A house of somewhat unusual appearance is that in the Voorstraat at Dordrecht, dated 1626 and illustrated on page 57. At the top is an open arcade constructed wholly in bricks, with the exception of the stones upon which the arches rest. The brick walls are relieved by stonework, while projecting pilasters separate the large lead-glazed and shuttered windows. Houses that depended upon dormers for their controlling architectural idea were common in the seventeenth century. The front wall is usually only one storey high and the dormers rise from it at the line of the eaves. When the frontage is wide and the building long and low, as is the case at Kampen (page 59), these features--shaped and carved and fundamentally valuable in lighting the rooms of the roof--show with good effect. A smaller house in the same town, given on page 58, has a single dormer only. It contributes the necessary interest to what would otherwise be a very dull effort of building. On the frieze at its base is a carved stone representation of the Nativity, while below appears the inscription "IN BETHLEHEM 1631." Those principles that imparted to the domestic architecture of Holland its picturesqueness, and so gave to it its most valued possession, were strained to the uttermost as the freshness of the Transitional style declined. The influences bequeathed from former ages were running out. Extreme freedom of design, although showing certain originality and character, was not accompanied by necessary restraint. Architects sometimes cast aside all the limitations of their art and gave themselves up to unreasonable over-elaboration and the grotesque; they ignored the fact--true for all time--that construction must form the basis for ornamental detail. But it must not be thought that this was always so. There is, however, certain work of this period that cannot seriously be accepted as good. Brickwork and stone continued to be employed and were still associated with excellent workmanship, as was the carpentry. There was evidently yet, as the many dated buildings prove, a large body of men who had complete mastery of their particular crafts, men versed in that traditional skill which had come down unbrokenly from mediæval days. Prominence was given to the numerous door and window openings, which were heavily moulded and often surmounted by pediments. Gables were shaped in endless ways and upon them almost every conceivable combination of curves was employed. Pilasters and cornices, swags and festoons, with strap ornament, scrolls and ornate iron wall-ties, all generally of debased Renaissance character, contributed to the rich profusion. Whither events in architectural history were tending will be seen in the following illustrations. The "Goudkantoor" at Groningen (page 60), bearing a motto and date of 1635, and a house near to it of the year 1661 (page 61), have quaint gables, curiously shaped and laden with carved stone decorations. On the walls below the same complex treatment continues, especially on the "Goudkantoor," the entrance doorway of which is emphasised by the work surrounding it. At Franeker (page 62) is an extreme development of the step gable, with the four steps supporting masses of coarsely-designed ornamentation. The heavy pediments to the windows are conspicuous, as are the many stone details. Two panels are inscribed with "ANNO 1662." With the above-mentioned may be compared the two gables at Alkmaar (page 65) which betray the same source of origin. Each is crowned by a stone pediment, and the steps have carvings resting upon them. Applied to the wall of the farthermost house, and placed centrally between the windows of the second storey, is a notable iron wall-tie of much larger size than was usual. An enlarged drawing of it is reproduced on page 64. Another variation of gable outline is illustrated from 's Hertogenbosch (page 63). In this case the stone-capped sides follow the lines of sweeping curves, and on them, facing outwardly, are little carved bunches of fruit and flowers. The front face of this building is remarkable for the use of pilasters. They are boldly carried up from bases to the head of the gable. The pillars, executed in unrelieved brickwork, have stone capitals of the Ionic order which carry an entablature. There appears the date of MDCLXXI. The bricks are 2 inches wide by 9 inches long and are laid about five courses to one foot. It eventually came to pass that the gabled treatment, which had been the guiding principle of house design for so many generations, was given up. And with the disappearance of it there went that which had given character to the architecture of Holland. The links of the tradition were broken. The old sources of inspiration no longer served. Inherited ability and skill, originality and vigour, were being lost, and the last traces of native ideas are to be found in inconspicuous buildings such as that given from The Hague (page 66). Although hipped roofs, wide projecting cornices and other Renaissance features were employed, as is shown by the drawings from Velsen (page 67), and Zutphen (page 69), a pure Renaissance domestic architecture did not become established. When the traditional style, owning both Gothic and Renaissance motives, had ceased to hold its ground, the stream of design--which until then had flowed continuously --ebbed low, and houses became uninteresting and commonplace. Away in the country the town architecture is mirrored in the brick buildings of the numerous villages. Less pretentious in appearance, their style is well suited to the simpler conditions that there obtain; for the crowded activity of the town waterways is absent on the calm canals that wind between meadows, and give communication from village to village; on the quays life moves placidly. Spaarndam (page 71) furnishes a typical village view, with its gabled brick and white-fronted houses, screened by delicate greenery. The Ferry House, near Gennep (page 73), has more ornate gables, curved and stepped, and on the front is diaper brickwork. There also developed a type of building peculiar to the countryside. It is shown by the many farmhouses and cottages. Their outward forms were determined by constructional principles, and added adornment was but little employed. They are unobtrusive examples of honest work, not claiming especial distinction, yet in thorough harmony with their natural environment. They were brought into being by prevailing needs, and are the local representatives of that phase of native art which is to be found in almost every country. Such village homes exist in all parts of Holland. The style of them shows little variation in the different localities. They are equally suited to the windswept Friesland landscape, the watered provinces of North and South Holland, or the beautiful country of North Brabant, with its hedgerows and woods and distant hills. Grouping, perchance, around old brick churches and sheltered by trees, as at Spaarwoude (page 68), they are pleasant and rustic to see. Under one great thatched or tiled roof all the covered accommodation necessary for farm life is contained. One side of the building is occupied by living apartments, the remainder providing a huge barn, stalls for cattle, and other conveniences for the farmer's work. These buildings were solidly constructed on a timber basis in the manner shown by the sectional view from Halfweg (page 70), where centre and side aisles are divided from each other by the stout upright timbers. Extreme durability was the keynote and the materials were employed according to their quality. This traditional form of building, practised for many generations, continues in use to the present day. An illustration of the exterior of a similar homestead to that mentioned above, and from the same village, also appears on page 70. The great roof, hipped at each end and covered with pantiles, will be observed. Beneath the eaves are the domestic rooms, in this instance all upon the ground floor; often they extend to a second storey in the roof, which is then lighted by dormers. The cottages follow the same general constructive principles as the farms, and have similar low walls and large roofs. A lean-to was frequently added to give an additional room, and the main roof brought down over it at a less steep pitch. The roof space, valuable as a store, is in many cases reached from the exterior by a ladder. In addition to the customary steeply-pitched roofs, those of the Mansard pattern occur less frequently, as is exemplified by the drawing from Schooten (page 72). Country work does not exhibit a great variety of building materials. Bricks, being made from the natural product and consequently readily available, were principally used for the walls. Rather than left in their normal state, they were often thinly coated with plaster on the outer face, and the lower parts, for about two feet upwards from the ground, were tarred. Houses and cottages of this description together form a characteristic group in the country architecture of Holland. They were built upon a traditional system which grew out of the accumulated experience that was transmitted from generation to generation. Customary examples are shown in the two drawings from Beek (pages 74 and 76), and by that from Broek in Waterland (page 78). The farmhouse from Brigdamme (page 75) is of a similar character; at the entrance are two stone gate-piers, dated 1622. Two influences are to be traced in the farm at Bloemendaal (page 77). The main building has the white plastered walls and large roof--which in this case comes forward to cover an open verandah--while the adjoining gable is of natural coloured bricks and more in the style of town work. Houses with wooden walls are prevalent, especially in North Holland. Upon a low brick wall, tarred, and varying in height from 18 to 30 inches, the timber frame was erected. Boards were simply nailed to it and the framing was commonly left exposed to view on the exterior. The boarding was well coated with paint or tar for protection against the weather. A roof of thatch or tiles, well projecting at the eaves, covered the whole. There was thus provided, by simple and economical means, a type of building well suited for its purpose. The village of Broek has many examples of timber houses, such as those here given on page 79; while near by, at Monnikendam, Volendam, and on the Island of Marken, are numerous others. An extravagant use of paint is conspicuous in the country as well as the towns. It is renewed at frequent intervals and, in the main, it is well applied. Shutters and doors and window frames, and frequently the whole house front, are freely covered with it. But the effects are not unpleasing. They give to the villages an air of gaiety and freshness. Plain schemes of colour are wisely adhered to, while throughout a district one general note will be followed. On the island of Walcheren it is apple-green and white; north of Amsterdam bluey-green and cream; while the woodwork of the house at Beek (page 81) is painted in the tones of buff that find favour in the locality of Nijmegen. There are many other domestic features worthy of note to be seen in the villages of Holland; quaint appliances for wells, ingeniously worked (page 80), or little bridges that span dividing dykes, and connect homesteads with the highways. One from Zuiderwoude, near the edge of the Zuider Zee, is illustrated on this page. It is built of brick relieved by a little stonework. On the keystone of the arch appears the date of 1799. The wooden gates above give access to the farm and the fields. The Dutch, too, have a marked fondness for natural beauty, as is demonstrated by the skill they display in laying-out open spaces. All towns can show flower gardens and lawns, or old fortifications overlooked by gaunt watch-towers, transformed into pleasant parks. Nijmegen and Arnhem are noteworthy in this respect. Very charming, too, are the village streets, of which that at Brigdamme (page 18) is a typical instance. They are lined with many trees that afford kindly shade in summer and shelter from the wind, and gratify the eyes with traceries of green. DIVISION II EXTERIOR FEATURES--DOORS, WINDOWS, GABLES & ORNAMENTS From the time when Dutch houses were built in a definite recognised style the features were always treated with skill and care. The many and crowded openings were accentuated. Doorways became imposing through the enrichment that surrounded them and windows were similarly emphasised. Panels, carvings, and ironwork decorated the walls, while the crowning gables, crow-stepped or curved, completed the richness of the buildings. Upon all these details, whether for a public building or private dwelling, great labour was expended. A careful examination of them discloses much inventive readiness and meritorious execution. Particular prominence was given to external doorways. The manner of their treatment varied widely. They were regarded as more than mere ways of access and upon them the best skill of the craftsmen was frequently concentrated. A personal note would be added by the introduction of the owner's arms or initials, the date of the work, or some quaint conceit of peculiar and subtle meaning. Among the examples extant, those of the early period incline to greatest simplicity. They were based on the current forms that were employed in ecclesiastical and civic architecture. The openings are spacious and are surrounded by mouldings. The arches at the heads are pointed, trefoil, or elliptic shapes. When there are label-mouldings above they follow the curves of the arches and support or surround the arms, panels, or other decorations. The doorway at Delft (page 87) is a good example of work dictated by Gothic influences. From carved stops at each side spring the simple mouldings that extend round the opening. It is surmounted by a label, near the centre of which is a three-sided space, enclosed by mouldings and filled by a winged cherub's head carved in relief, while the label is terminated by a finial. The wooden door is noteworthy. It is composed of six boards and upon the outer face of each are shallow grooves running continuously from top to bottom. Projecting nailheads arranged in vertical lines, together with other ironwork, give further interesting ornamentation. Another doorway from the same town (page 88) is built of stone and moulded bricks. The space at the head, contained within a trefoil arch, has carved upon it a shield--lacking armorial bearings--supporters, and a scroll with the date of 1547. The semi-circular arch which surrounds the trefoil is one of the series that repeat across the building. That other early type of house, peculiar for its windowed ground floor front constructed in wood, such as is given from Veere on page 44, had its entrance doorway made with three plain stout timbers, one at each side and one across the top as a lintel. An elaboration of the simple wooden doorway occurs at Leiden (page 89). It is crowned by mouldings, below which appears an ogee arch shaped in wood. The parti-coloured effect of the door itself is achieved by the application of contrasting tints of paint. The circular arch followed the pointed although simultaneously a modified form of the latter, of which that from Haarlem (page 89) is an instance, continued to be used. Of circular-arched doorways there are endless examples which were erected in a manner that became general and customary. They were usually built in stone and bricks. Those from Leiden (below), Flushing (page 91), and Leeuwarden (page 86) are characteristic. The Leiden doorway of 1615, with moulded opening and carved archstones, is doubtless the earliest of the three and most nearly allied to the work of the preceding century. The two remaining examples incline to later influences, particularly to be observed in the enrichment of the jambs. Changing taste brought a new treatment to external doorways. They were affected by the same forces that altered the outward character of late sixteenth and seventeenth-century houses. Renaissance detail gradually became established and doorways of the seventeenth-century were frankly treated in a Classic way, rich in pilasters, capitals, friezes, pediments and mouldings, with an especial preference for an adapted form of the Ionic order. Stone was now almost exclusively used for this feature, unaccompanied by brick. "Delvitt's Poort" at Woudrichem (page 85) shows a rather advanced development for the period of 1611 to which it belongs. The whole of it is painted, with the carved details picked out in different colours. Two doorways illustrated here are well designed and proportioned. They are distinguished by the elaboration that appears at their heads. Upon the frieze immediately above the arch of the Kampen example (page 93) will be seen the inscription and date of 1665, over which is a broken pediment surmounted by particularly well-rendered armorial bearings carved in stone. The frieze at Leeuwarden (page 89) is similarly inscribed, the date in this case being 1675, while within the heavily moulded pediment is a coat of arms. Less complicated is the doorway from Leiden of 1655 (page 96). It is crowned by mouldings and decorated below by festoons in relief. The above will show the fashion of the time, tending towards correctness in design, with details carefully thought out and well executed. Many eighteenth-century doorways were unduly florid and may well be described as rococo. That from Marssum in Friesland (below), belonging to the year 1713, is of this kind. The overladen ornament and peculiarities of design suggest the unreality of a poor stage-setting, rather than serious architecture; while the incongruity of the work can only be appreciated by an inspection of the original, situated as it is among cottages in a quiet village street. Later in the century French influence was predominant. Details, such as are noticeable in the Arnhem doorway (page 94), were based on the Louis XV. style which not only affected the work of the towns but permeated into the heart of the country. The small cottage doors and doorways in villages such as Broek have all the attributes of the then prevailing mode. The wooden doors were much enriched either with applied ironwork, or mouldings and panels. Metal locks, bolts, hinges and nails are conspicuous in the early specimens. The use of ironwork on the door from Dordrecht (page 95) is carried to an extreme degree; but, be it noted, all the fittings have a practical purpose. It was only after needs had been provided for that embellishment was added, discernible in the shaping of the lock-plates and hinges and the arrangement of the nailheads. The centre of the more recent example from Haarlem (page 95) is occupied by a large sunk panel surrounded by mouldings, a section of which is given. A good piece of woodcarving is that appearing on the lintel, having for its subject a ship sailing on rough water. Windows of houses were almost always square-headed. They appear so in existing examples belonging to the Gothic period. The traceries and pointed heads, usual in early civic buildings, were rarely adopted for house windows, although arched spaces, filled with tracery, were not uncommonly built over them. A fine series of such window-heads is to be seen on the stone front of the "Scotch House" at Veere (page 97); there are others at Kampen and on a house in the Groenmarkt at Dordrecht. Except in cases where the openings were small, they were divided vertically by mullions and transversely by cross-bars. The lower windows were closed by wooden shutters. Two examples, from Nijmegen and Dordrecht (page 99), both of Gothic design and of sixteenth century workmanship, are illustrated. The Dordrecht shutter is constructed of beautifully grained pieces of oak, jointed and pegged together. Late Gothic windows have also pointed and elliptical arches over the heads unenriched by decoration. They were customarily built in brickwork, with the window spaces flush, or set back from the face of the walling. Pointed arches ceased to be generally used after the coming of the Renaissance. The elliptical shape, however, continued, and the establishment of the circular arch was but a short and natural step in development. These two forms obtained for many succeeding years. Instances of either type are presented in the drawing from Zwolle (page 101), and innumerable others are shown by the illustrations in this volume. They were not given up until displaced by classic pediments, or the overhead feature was altogether abandoned. The gabled front at Gorinchem (page 103), built in stone and brick, has circular arches appearing over the windows. The enclosed spaces are richly decorated by stone carvings, and the character of the work seems to be advanced for the period to which it apparently belongs. Much interesting sculpture is also distributed over the gable and walls of this building. Windows were first glazed with leaded lights. Small squares of glass, as at Dordrecht (page 98), or diamond panes were used. But during the seventeenth century the employment of wooden bars became universal and leadwork went out of fashion. The openings were divided centrally by transoms, the lower windows receding inwards considerably more than the upper ones. Wooden shutters, opening outwards, were still customary. They were occasionally large enough to cover the whole window, but usually only the lower half was furnished with them. Seventeenth-century shutters are not comparable, in point of carved enrichment, with those of Gothic times; the woodwork, frequently devoid of ornament, is fastened to the window-frames by iron strap-hinges, and fitted with bolts and catches. They are, however, brightly painted and are interesting in consequence, giving colour to the architectural groups. Many harmonious schemes are to be observed; green and white; white, green and red; yellow and black; red and black; and numerous others. The coloured drawing from Nijmegen (opposite) shows shutters painted in red and black; while several specimens, from North and South Holland, are given (pages 98 to 100). The glazing of windows was first enclosed by casements, with hinges to open and shut. After casements came sash windows, which were substituted for the older form. There are many shown in the illustrations. Those from Flushing (page 105), appearing on a house dated 1625, differ somewhat from the usual type, being surrounded by mouldings and carvings. Dormer windows also, as has already been stated, became much-developed features during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Three characteristic specimens are given: two from Kampen, of the years 1626 and 1634, and a later dormer, from Marssum, belonging to the eighteenth century, all shown on page 102. The distinguishing gables--so often mentioned, and intimately associated with house development--exhibit infinite varieties of treatment. Between the early stepped shapes, and the fantastic outlines of later days, there is an innumerable succession. They followed the trend of design prevalent at the time of their erection. Thus, the two gables, from Kampen (page 104) and Dordrecht (page 107), are in keeping with the current forms of the late Gothic period. They are both built of stone and decorated on the face with sunk panels and carvings. The Kampen gable has pinnacles rising from the coping of the steps, usual features in work of the time; while the twisted finials at Dordrecht, associated with the first quarter of the sixteenth century, are worthy of notice. It is impossible to consider here in detail the numerous vicissitudes through which the development of the gable passed during the many years that Gothic and Renaissance motives were acting together as guiding influences. Roughly and briefly, mediæval character was observed in respect to construction and general management of masses--evident by the stepped and curved gables--with a marked tendency to Classic feeling in the handling of details. Work was carried out wholly in brick, or in brick relieved by stone. Among the large number of different outlines that are in evidence, those based on the original stepped form show predominantly. But the spirit of the times is discernible in the culminating pediments, mouldings, and stone decorations. Four typical gables, all sketched in North Holland, are illustrated (pages 106 and 109). A good example of shaping, achieved by the use of oppositive curves, is that from Arnhem (page 108), and the stonework of the copings extends to the strapwork ornament. Two gables from Leiden (page 109) are well carried out in brickwork. How effectively window-heads and copings were handled, yet withal in a perfectly workmanlike way, is demonstrated by the larger drawing; the brickwork is flush and obliquely tailed into the horizontal courses of the wall. Long sweeping curves were much employed in the shaping of later gables. The house opposite the bridge in the Franeker illustration (page 113) has such a gable, and it is dated 1735. Another, from Amsterdam (page 110), has similar characteristics. Both are enriched with stone representations of fruit and flowers, vases and festoons, all quite in the spirit of late seventeenth and eighteenth-century work. The sides of the gables of farmhouses and country cottages, straight and unshaped, are not uncommonly protected by barge-boards. The two timbers, running from base to apex, may have mouldings worked at the edge of them; or the undersides are diversified by repeating curves, with pendants appearing at the lower ends. Both methods are figured in detail in drawings 1, 2, and 4 on page 111. Fascia-boards, applied to overhanging stories of wooden houses, are similarly decorated; two are exemplified in numbers 6 and 7. The wooden finials, which are planted on the outer faces of the gables at their highest points, are variously shaped and perforated, and the details numbered 1, 2, 3 and 5 give four examples of them. There is an absence of interesting chimneys in Holland, for the gable ends of the high and narrow-fronted houses, bordering the street, obscured from view these objects of usefulness. Solely utilitarian, therefore, they generally remained, shafts of the simplest form, serving the purpose for which they were devised, owing nothing to beauty or ornament and little to precedent. When hipped roofs were employed, instead of gables, chimneys came into greater prominence. But even then--with an absence of developed, traditional forms to give the basis for the evolution of a settled type--they did not constitute important decorative factors in the architectural scheme. Many stacks have neither mouldings nor other projection at the top. Chimneys a little more elaborate than was usual are shown by the two illustrations from Hoorn and Zutphen (page 112). They deviate somewhat from the plain rectangular shape, and both have moulded heads; while the Hoorn example has a pyramidal hood covered with lead and supported by four metal uprights. Isolated stone ornaments are numerous. They were inserted into walls with freedom and wheresoever caprice or fancy suggested--high up on gables, around doorways, over windows, or distributed on what would otherwise have been unrelieved spaces. The rich appearance of the buildings is in no small measure due to the extravagant use of these details. That bizarre kind of ornament, known by the name of strapwork, and well shown in the Arnhem gable (page 108), was freely used, as was carved work based upon Italian motives. Among the latter may be mentioned the more or less conventional representation of human forms, fruit and flowers, birds, fishes and beasts, with prominence given to heads of lions, or the complete animal in the attitude sejeant, popularly used as a gable termination. Of a more homely and personal character are the frequently occurring panels bearing, in well-cut figures and letters, dates, mottoes, and inscriptions; four are exemplified by the accompanying drawings from Zutphen (page 115) and Haarlem (pages 114 to 116). Equally symbolic of pride of home are the carved coats-of-arms which keep green, by visible sign, the memory of the builder and the honour of his house. One such armorial decoration from Workum, dated 1644, is illustrated on page 115. All these little enrichments, so constantly seen, are more than mere examples of craftsmanship; they essentially express the sentiments of the man who caused the stones to be laid. Things to be observed in everyday life naturally furnished subjects for carvings in stone. The forces of Nature, greatly influential in Holland--that is to say, water and wind and all that resulted therefrom--were turned to for inspiration. Decoratively treated water, with ships, windmills, and other appliances relevant to human convenience or suggestive of enterprise, were especially favoured. A windmill from Sneek, high in relief and painted black, red, gold and white, together with a ship from Haarlem appearing in an oval panel surrounded by a scrollwork frame, are illustrated (page 115). Interesting is the wall-panel at Franeker (page 114), with a scene from local history depicted upon it; there is much spirit shown in the carving of the men and horses, while the water, drawbridge, and distant houses are well managed. The house known as "Inde Steenrotse," situated on the Dwars Quay at Middelburg, dated 1590, is noteworthy for its large panels in high relief. It was built by a wealthy mason. Five of the carved subjects portray various episodes connected with the working of stone and two are here given (page 116); others, higher up the building, represent biblical scenes from the Book of Exodus. The mosaic decorations are of unusual interest, for they are of a kind more or less peculiar to this country. They were formed by inlaying small pieces of brick and stone set together to make repeating patterns or panels. As was customary, materials were used with just regard for their suitable adaptability to purpose; not employed unreasonably, or strained to accomplish that for which they were not fitted. The units were simple and results legitimate. This ornamental work was principally used to enrich the arched spaces over window-heads; less frequently it appears in bands carried horizontally across the buildings. The houses at Woudrichem (page 117)--inscribed "Iden Salamander 1606" and "Zuden Gulden Engel 1593"--have notable examples of mosaics in the window-heads. Two of the patterns are shown in detail on page 118, together with two others from a house near by. All were achieved by manipulating little shaped pieces of brick to form devices, especially noticeable being the starlike figures with radiating points. Work of a similar kind appears on the house at Zwolle, dated 1609, and illustrated on page 119. An enlarged drawing of one of the window-heads (page 118) gives the precise arrangement of the brick and stonework. There is quite a Moorish feeling evident in this design, with the two main portions of inlay enclosed by arch-shaped lines curved horseshoe fashion. The horseshoe arch was essentially a product of Morocco, and the analogy with the East is further strengthened by the fact that mosaic was a medium extensively used by Byzantine and Saracenic artists. These circumstances all suggest the origin of the employment of such work in Holland. On page 118 is represented a small section of the horizontal mosaic band that appears over the archway at Nijmegen (page 41). Simpler patterns were also formed with ordinary narrow bricks and mortar. Two examples are here given, both carried out in red and yellow bricks,--a frieze at the first storey level of a house at Workum and shaped spaces from Franeker (page 120). Turning to external metalwork the most characteristic objects are the iron wall-ties. They were applied to walls to give them stability. But the possibilities for artistic treatment which the wall-ties offered were by no means overlooked, as is demonstrated by the many and varied forms produced by the blacksmiths, who regarded these accessories, before all things, as the particular field for the display of their skill. Endless varieties are to be found, certain patterns being local to specific districts. Upon ordinary houses--and they were practically invariably used--they are usually no more elaborate than might be achieved by direct work on the anvil; of honest but unambitious appearance and shaped in simple ways, such as are shown by the illustrations on page 121. But the wall-ties of more important buildings are often complicated affairs; beautiful examples of design and craftsmanship which were wrought with labour. They are rich in scrolls and curves with foliated ornament, and one of the examples here given (page 123) has the date of 1798 worked within it. Iron letters and figures also decorate the fronts of many houses. Each is detached and secured to the wall by a single stay. They are arranged to denote dates or monograms. An example has already been seen at the base of a gable at Middelburg (page 35); another specimen, from St. Anna, near Nijmegen, is reproduced on page 122. Other wrought ironwork was used for various purposes on doors and windows, as well as to heighten the effect of certain features. A good instance of its application is demonstrated by the key-escutcheon, with supporting iron decorations, from Middelburg (page 123). The workmanship is of a traditional kind, with Gothic forms recalled by the cusps on the pierced plates. The iron door-knocker, appearing on the same page, is an interesting example of curious design and belongs to the sixteenth or seventeenth century. For windows, ironwork was used in the stout stay-bars and stanchions, instances of which, fitted to an oval opening, are furnished from Leiden (page 122). The magnificent wrought vanes of Holland, surmounting lofty belfries on public buildings, are justly famous and are reflected in the less elaborate shapes that adorn the roof points or gable terminations of business and dwelling-houses. One, from Middelburg (page 122), is a beautiful example of an iron terminal. The crowning figure and fleur-de-lis are gilded, while signs and symbols of the Zodiac are worked around the outer and inner open-framed globes. Simpler vanes are common throughout the country, attached to farmhouses or stables. That from Broek (page 122) is shaped like a swan; one may be seen at Veere which takes the form of a ship. The shaft of the weathercock from Hees (page 124) is made up of iron scrolls, welded together, and four projecting arms point to north, south, east and west. The leadwork to be observed on domestic buildings is not of remarkable interest. There are no wonderful decorated rain-water heads such as may be seen elsewhere, and lead heads, when used at all, are for the most part comparatively plain, square projections. The examples from Zutphen, reproduced on page 122, illustrate two ordinary forms. An interesting feature, prevalent in North Holland, is the lead finial placed at the apex of a hipped roof. There are many examples in the streets of Hoorn, three of which are shown on page 124. Notice should be taken of the delicate little fretwork heads; the repoussé patterns on the upright sides; and the iron vane which surmounts one of the examples. These objects, although of little practical use, have a decorative value that well justifies their existence. In all these exterior features and details, whether executed in wood or stone, metal or brick, there is especial evidence of the type of mind that was concerned with their production; they pertinently give the key to temperament and character. Such work resulted from deliberate thought and calculation, rather than from imaginative impulse. Sometimes it verged on dulness, yet there is always traceable a certain solid strength and vigour. This is well seen in the stone carvings, here illustrated, whose subjects are often lacking in originality or follow some oft-repeated theme. They are excellently carved, however, and attain interest in consequence. For the individuality of the masons is reflected in the inanimate stone. They gave life to their work and freshness to old subjects. Each man followed his own bent. Some were a little in advance of their time, some behind it, so there are endless variations to patterns that superficially agree. A new turn was given to a scroll here, a different arrangement there; just small things that served to raise work from the conventional and commonplace. The olden craftsmen respected tradition. Forms that became established by custom were handed down from generation to generation. Certain ornaments continued to be used, almost unaltered, over a very long period. Not that patterns were slavishly followed; on the contrary, each man gave his own interpretation of what he knew had served so well, and fashioned his work in his own way. But he remembered something of that which had gone before. Traditions of ornamentation were just as much founded upon accumulated experience as were the main styles of architecture. The worker saw around him the forces of Nature, active yet unchanging, the abiding waterways, the ancient churches standing as they had done in times long past, and it was in a spirit of respect for the permanence of spiritual and material things that he pursued his craft. This was altogether good. Methods of workmanship, the treatment of features, and types of enrichment, were gradually evolved. They were governed by ordered principles that slowly grew together and became established, principles that served to check the introduction of inharmonious innovations which would have been out of sympathy with all those forms that, as a whole, were customary and usual. Doorways, windows, gables and ornaments, therefore, by their particular appearance, mark various steps in a long-continued process of development. Period followed period. After the pointed-arched doorways came the circular-headed; gables of simple outline in course of time became more complex; fashions in the shaping of wall-ties changed. But nothing happened suddenly. Craftsmen were content to solve their own problems without any show of haste. It was by such methods that incongruities were avoided. The national temperament always asserted itself and each individual as he carved his stone, laid his bricks, worked his wood, or wrought his iron, did his small part to keep alive the inherited traditions, and pass them on so that they should be vigorous to meet the needs of future generations. The ornamental features that appear on the exterior walls impart to the buildings of Holland much of that quaintness for which they are distinguished. Although the decorations are so plentifully applied, they do not often appear misplaced or offend the eye. For the natural conditions of the country have always been peculiar. The low-lying lands and ever-present water demand a special type of architecture which shall be in thorough sympathy with the surroundings, as well as outwardly express the character of those people who live amongst them. Much is possible and good in Holland which would be out of place, or even bad, elsewhere. The many houses, appearing where they do, are admirably conceived. Rich with ornaments, date panels, little carvings, mosaics and ironwork--such as are shown by the illustrations in this section--with coloured bricks fashioned in many ways, and doorways and windows highly decorated, they cannot fail to appeal to those who see them in their natural environment. There is a personal note about each dwelling. They are houses that look like homes, places to be treasured by succeeding generations. And the evidences of pride of possession to be seen in the isolated panels carved with arms, dates and inscriptions, or similar motives worked around doorways, especially give to the brick and stone-built walls a home-like and fireside quality. Students of English architecture will have observed how homely ideas affected the appearance of the houses of Holland just as they did those of England. Similar sentiments obtained in both countries and indirectly brought kindred features to the buildings. It requires but little imagination to people once again the streets and waterways with men and women and of their lives are on every hand. The stones they lovingly caused to be carved are there; the heavy studded doors that yielded to their hands are still framed by old entrance ways. The work was done that it should last and yet it stands, solid and good. The glory of the house may have departed; yet there still remains the material record of lives well-spent and duties well-performed. And in this the carved monograms and dates are full of meaning. DIVISION III INTERIORS AND DECORATION There are, within the old buildings of Holland, interior effects of rare charm. They are hidden away from the outer world behind high gabled fronts of sober houses, beyond the thresholds of country farms. These interiors are rich in memories of the past. They tell of bygone times and bring vivid pictures of civic and home life to the imagination. Solidly built, they were erected with due thought to permanence, that they should stand from generation to generation; that men's memories might be honoured by their children and their children's children. That it should be continuous and abiding was the keynote of the old work which to this day is fresh and beautiful, full of life and vitality, although the makers of it have long since gone and are forgotten. And while things were made to be durable, so also were they made to please the eye and gratify the senses. Good construction, accompanied by much enrichment, gave results tending towards extreme elaboration. Rooms became imposing by their massive ceiling beams supported by sculptured corbels; panelling, or maybe Spanish leather or tapestry, upon the walls; carved oaken doors; fireplaces in wood and stone adorned with columns, figures and other devices; coloured tiles of many patterns; cast-iron firebacks and wrought metalwork; panels of painted glass in the windows; floors of oak, veined marble, or glazed quarries; brass candelabrums hanging from the ceilings, with movable furniture and ornaments disposed in many places. A good impression of a seventeenth-century room may be gathered from the accompanying illustration from Dordrecht (page 128). The walls are panelled in oak up to a certain height; above is a deep white frieze, admirably adapted for displaying the blue-and-white ware and pictures which rest against it. The chimney-piece is sumptuous, alternately gay and sober, charming below the mantel with brightly-coloured tiles and shining metal utensils, dignified above with panelling and projecting frieze. Forming the dividing line between mantel and fireplace is a mantel-cloth of blue material, inscribed with the homely maxim "Oost West, Thuis Best," and bearing a brace of crossed tobacco-pipes worked at each end of it. A good specimen of a brass candelabrum is attached to the central ceiling beam, while the floor is covered with matting. Solid oak furniture, massive and heavy, completes this picture of material comfort and pleasantness. Equally characteristic is the room at Leeuwarden (page 129). Similar features will be observed--panelling and carved woodwork; ceiling joists and beams, which are here supported by moulded corbels; blue-and-white ware, tiles, and a blue velvet mantel-cloth. The hearth is of squares of black and white marble. Upon it stands a copper fire-holder; behind is a cast-iron fireback adorned with an armorial subject. In the lead-glazed window are two circular panels of painted glass. Another example of a brass candelabrum, similar to the one above-mentioned, is shown by the drawing from Haarlem (page 127). It is of a type that was customary. Many such still exist in old-world rooms, suspended from high ceilings by chains or rods. Apart from their uses for purposes of illumination, they are highly successful as centre ornaments, for it will be seen how effectively they were made, with curved decorated brackets branching from shaped shafts. Patterns are various, but there are certain essentials common to all and a general resemblance between each. Thus, a particularly beautiful candelabrum in the Town Hall at Zwolle, with an image of the Virgin and pierced, leaf-like brackets, is but an elaboration of the simple familiar form. Some carry three lights only, ordinarily there are ten or twelve; while an example noticed at Haarlem, with twenty-seven candles, probably represents the extreme capacity of this old-fashioned system of lighting. Of interior features, first in importance come the fireplaces. Great thought was given to the decoration of them, the appearance of many being rich beyond description. Numerous kinds of materials were used for their adornment; brick and stone, wood, marble and slate, coloured tiles and terra-cotta, all giving value to the imposing compositions. And although the materials were so various, they were skilfully combined to produce harmonious results. Fireplaces were brought forward from the walls and not set back within them. The openings were of ample size, wide and high. The jambs, enriched with mouldings or appearing as columns, supported massive hoods that extended upwards to the ceiling. The fireplace at Maastricht (page 131) is a good specimen of the late Gothic type. It belongs to the year 1510, this date being carved on the centre scroll. Upon the sandstone jambs are worked Gothic mouldings which spring from shaped stops resting on square bases. The broad frieze is rich with carvings of angels, conventional flowers, cusps, and two shields, bearing the arms of Maastricht and Liège. The rear of the opening is lined with pressed terra-cotta tiles that exhibit a variety of designs in low relief. Against it is set an iron fireback ornamented with a heraldic device. The wooden figures on the mantel-shelf are merely placed thereon and are not inherent to the design. Details of fireplaces changed with the passing of Gothic influences, although the olden form was still retained. Classic columns, or less frequently, human figures and grotesques, were substituted for moulded jambs. They commonly supported a carved oak frieze surmounted by a projecting cornice. Such chimney-pieces are by no means rare in Holland and may generally be ascribed to the seventeenth century. One, from Leeuwarden, has already been illustrated on page 129. Another example, from Middelburg, is here given (page 133). The columns are of white marble, but the jambs behind them, together with the bases and corbels, are of slate and are decorated with strapwork patterns. The oak mantel is inlaid with bands and panels of light wood. Tiles of blue, white and yellow cover the back, and border the upright sides of the iron hearth. The chimney-piece at Amsterdam (page 130) is of an unusual pattern. It is situated in the room of the Bricklayers' Guild and is of early seventeenth-century workmanship. The opening is framed of stone. Over the mantel-shelf is a curved pediment with the arms of Amsterdam carved upon it. Fitted to the chimney-breast above is a small oval painted panel enclosed by brickwork. The fireplace from the Westerwold (page 135), now at Groningen, belongs to a later period than the preceding example. A wooden chimney-shelf and pilasters, almost black in colour, support the tapering hood. The back of the fireplace is faced with blue-and-white tiles and red bricks. A protecting fireback rests against it, while a hanger, hooked within the opening, holds the metal pot over the fire. The effect of this fireplace and its accessories, admirably decorative in themselves, is further enhanced by the pure white surrounding walls, and by the parti-coloured floor laid with red and yellow quarries. Cast-iron firebacks have been noticed in the previous illustrations. They were generally used where fires burned on open hearths. The castings are rather light and thin, and were taken from wooden models. They are ornamented with floral and heraldic subjects, or designs suggested by classical myths and bible stories. Of the four examples illustrated on pages 132 and 134, two have armorial bearings, surrounded by rich borders, cast upon them. The one from Leiden is dated 1609, and the other, from Nijmegen, 1650. Both of the remaining specimens from Jisp and Middelburg, are decorated with figure subjects, bordered by fruit and scrolls and flowers. All the work is in rather low relief. Fuel, in the form of peat or charcoal, was responsible for certain utensils in which it could be conveniently burned. One such is given on page 139. It is an iron fire-standard suited for holding peat, and was drawn in the Museum at Dordrecht. The lines of the design are good, especially to be observed in the engaged scrolls and shaping of the top. It is, withal, serviceably made. Small boxes containing fire, placed upon the floor in front of chairs, served as foot-warmers (page 148). They are of square or oval shape. The sides are frequently patterned and the lids perforated. Fires were also contained in iron pots which stood upon oak stools within the fireplaces; or they burned in little iron hearths, which were set towards the centre of the rooms, with no provision made for carrying away the smoke. The former system is exemplified by the drawing from Leeuwarden (page 137), and the latter by an illustration from a cottage at Marken (page 136). A small crane is often seen attached to the back of the fireplace. A kettle or pot rests upon it, which might, if desired, be swung over or away from the fire. The specimen here reproduced (page 136) is from Leeuwarden. It has one simple movement, that of swinging backwards and forwards. The curved arm is made of brass, and shaped to resemble a fish. Out of the mouth comes the iron kettle-holder with a small chain affixed, handy for drawing it to and fro. Allied to the crane, and used for a similar purpose, is the hanger that was suspended from the flue. The two specimens appearing on page 139 are from Middelburg, and both are constructed of iron. They can be made to hang high or low, one by means of a ratchet, and the other by a catch, which fits into pierced holes and is shown in detail. The set of fire-irons, also from Middelburg (page 139), furnishes admirable examples of useful objects, suitably adorned. The plate to which the fire-irons hang, with scallop-like indentations at its upper edge, is enriched with incised decoration, depicting a ship, trees, birds, letters, and the date of 1787. The tongs at the extreme left are so fashioned that one arm, being hollow, may be used as a blowpipe. Next in order is a ladle adapted for scooping up ashes from the hearth. Upon the flat handle is further incised ornamentation, based upon floral motives. The central object is a blowpipe, and a second pair of tongs completes the set. With the exception of some of the ends and terminations, which are of brass, these implements are made of iron, brightly polished. In the glazed tiles, inseparably associated with Delft and other places in Holland, the Dutch had admirable material for interior decoration. Some tiles were pure white; others had conventional floral forms painted upon them. Many, again, were decorated with devices derived from scriptural, nautical, rural, historical, and classical sources. Units such as these, beautiful in themselves, were capable of giving lively and gay effects when arranged together. How satisfactorily they were used will have been already observed in the fireplaces previously described. But, apart from giving value to fireplaces, they were employed in other ways. Notable rooms are to be seen whose good appearance depends primarily upon the skilful manipulation of tiles. Two such are illustrated, one in colour (opposite). They are from Hindeloopen, and are now in the Frisian Museum at Leeuwarden. The original woodwork of the coloured drawing belongs to the seventeenth century. The back of the fireplace, as well as the walls surrounding it, is faced entirely with tiles from floor to ceiling. Those towards the floor have blue and white patterns upon them; above, and in the window recess, they are white but for the narrow blue borders round the angles. These tiles were made at Makkum. Upon the floor are glazed quarries of red and black, laid in alternate colours. The room of the other illustration (page 137) dates from the eighteenth century. It has similar tiles on the walls and quarries on the floor. Floors were also laid with other coloured quarries, blue and green and yellow; while in larger houses stone and marble were employed with pleasing results. Panelling was by no means infrequently applied to interior walls. It was often marked by elaboration rather than simplicity, although there are not wanting examples of rooms wainscoted with plain framed woodwork divided into panels by stiles and rails. Of ornamental panels there are certain definite kinds. Characteristic are those adorned with linen-fold patterns. Another design that was favoured is shown in the illustration taken from Zwolle (page 138), where carved vine ornaments appear between two curved and moulded scrolls set back to back. This particular example is attributed to the beginning of the sixteenth century. At a later date round-headed arches and pilasters were introduced, such as those exemplified from Leiden on this page, as well as carved friezes and moulded cornices. It is remarkable to note the great similarity between the development of panelling in Holland and in England. The earlier patterns employed in both countries are practically identical, while Dutch seventeenth-century woodwork bears great resemblance to that of our Jacobean period. Wooden doors harmonised with the wainscot of the walls. They were divided into panels and often richly carved. Doorways were given importance by the pilasters and cornices that surrounded them. The door from Groningen (below) furnishes a seventeenth-century specimen, elaborately carved with forms peculiar to the time. The metal fittings attached to doors--locks, bolts, hinges, handles, and the like--are of good design and workmanship. Two lock-plates (page 143), from the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam, belong to the sixteenth century. They are both made of iron. One, bearing the date of 1587, is decorated with projecting ornaments; the other is adorned with applied metalwork, pierced and carved. Further examples of iron door-furniture, simply but effectively treated, are illustrated by the handle from Middelburg and the bolt from Dordrecht (page 143). A feature common to Dutch rooms is the small cupboard in the wall, wherein many and sundry articles were stored. The recess is sometimes merely covered by a curtain that may be drawn to and fro, such as can be seen at the left hand of the window in the coloured reproduction from Leeuwarden given here. But generally a wooden door was fitted to the opening. Some of these doors, with one or two panels, are quite plainly made. Others, highly decorated with carvings and metalwork, furnish examples of beautiful craftsmanship. Two are here illustrated (pages 143 and 144), which show how well and cunningly artificers in wood and metal exercised their skill. Both are of sixteenth-century workmanship, and are now in the Rijks Museum. Apart from the good wood-carving, the ironwork on each is notable. The three hinges, attached to the larger door, all have peculiarly graceful branched terminations; while the hinge of the second example is pierced and engraved with a floral pattern. The lock-plates, also, are admirably devised. The further illustration of a Hindeloopen room from Leeuwarden (page 141) is especially interesting, for around the walls are cupboard-like apartments that afforded accommodation for sleeping. They are closed by wooden doors which have open-work panels at their heads to permit the passage of air. The beds, resembling a ship's berths, are reached by flights of steps, two of which will be seen in the reproduction. These steps are movable and curiously shaped and painted, as is demonstrated by the flight in the foreground with its side boards made to imitate birds and flowers. Other old Dutch interiors--cheerful with coloured plates, tiles and quarries, shining brass and carved woodwork--furnish instances of this particular disposition of sleeping accommodation. The old furniture was of a kind that well harmonised with the fitted woodwork and other decorations of the rooms. It is not unusual to find pieces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries amid surroundings similar to those for which they were originally intended. The rooms at Dordrecht (page 128) and Groningen (page 135) both have suitable furniture that valuably contributes to the success of the schemes. All is more or less directly useful; rooms were not crowded with objects that were neither utilitarian nor good to look upon. Most commonly occurring are chairs and tables, chests and cabinets. The earlier oak work was jointed and pegged together. It was very solidly made and ornamented in a reasonable way. Some of the large cabinets offer splendid examples of skilful handiwork, and an elaborate specimen, from Haarlem, appears on page 145. Two characteristic tables are also illustrated, one from Edam (page 145) and one from Amsterdam (page 146). In the eighteenth century it became the fashion in certain parts of Holland to heavily paint fitted and movable furniture with coloured patterns, the natural beauty of the wood being thus obscured. All kinds of objects were ornamented, and in a somewhat amateurish way. The favoured motifs were floral scrolls, little flowers, birds and animals, scriptural scenes, with pastoral and sea views. Brass was much used in the making of domestic utensils. Familiar objects for many purposes were fashioned of this material. Brightly polished and shining, they were quite in accord with the prevailing gayness of the rooms and well harmonised with the fitted woodwork, furniture, tiles and other metalwork. Fireplaces were adorned with sundry articles of brass, some being purely ornamental, others achieving some useful mission. The brass chimney-crane (page 136) belongs to this latter class, as does the fire-side set reproduced on page 147. The latter is a particularly handy contrivance, for, being movable, it can be transferred from room to room. The stand takes the form of a baluster stem which rests upon an ornamental basic tripod; it is surmounted by a circular attachment that supports the kettle. Upon three curved arms, branching outwardly, the brush and tongs and shovel are hooked. This set is of eighteenth-century workmanship. The stand is 1 foot 11-1/2 inches high, the tongs 23 inches long, the brush 21 inches long, and the shovel 23 inches long. An example of the portable foot-warmers for placing on the floor in front of chairs, such as have been already mentioned, is here illustrated (page 148). It is made of brass and has eight sides. Each upright side decorated with repoussé work, circular bosses alternating with panels of flowers. The slightly curved top has a medallion in the centre, engraved with the letters and date "i. w. hm. 1733." It is surrounded with floral scrolls, geometrically arranged, and between the patterns are pierced holes through which the heat is distributed. The candlestick (page 148), also of brass, belongs to the eighteenth century. It has two curved brackets which are adjustable, as will be seen by the hinged attachments in the illustration. The height is 18-1/4 inches and the width, from bracket to bracket, is 12-1/8 inches. Another old-fashioned object used for lighting is the brass lantern with arched top (page 148). All the three windows are surrounded by a border of floral openwork, very finely pierced with a pattern common to the eighteenth century. The fourth side, forming the back, has a panel in the centre. The cover of the warming-pan, given on page 147, furnishes an excellent specimen of perforated and engraved brasswork. The central figures represent Venus and Cupid, while interwoven with the strap and foliated ornaments are grotesque figures, beasts and birds. Each little part of the design is engraved, and around the outer margin of the pan is a Dutch inscription which embodies the date of 1602. Further well-executed piercing and engraving, but of a later date than the above, appear on the tea-caddy here illustrated (page 148). This latter object is 6 inches high and 4 inches wide. The pastille-burner (page 148) is made wholly of brass. Upon the baluster stem and circular base are rococo designs beaten-up in relief. Made of wickerwork, the coffer reproduced on page 147 is adorned with handsomely shaped and perforated brass mounts that extend around it. The corridor at Hoorn (page 149) belongs to the seventeenth century. It has a timber roof springing from the two side-walls in the form of a barrel-vault. Upon the concave surface are longitudinal and transverse ribs whose intersections are emphasised by carved bosses. The vault is supported at each side by decorated wooden brackets. Another detail associated with a place of access is the wrought-iron railing from Zierikzee (page 146). And lastly, three typical village interiors are given. Two, from Volendam (above) and Marken (page 151), have simple fireplaces faced with ordinary blue and white Dutch tiles. Another shows a room in a wooden house at Marken (page 152), the timbering of the walls being visible. But it is the old towns of Holland, rather than the villages, that hold the charms for those who sojourn in that fascinating country; towns rich in associations that unbrokenly date back to a buried and untraceable antiquity. In them history has been made. There stand the old and sober gabled buildings, silent monuments to the thoughts, ideals and ambitions of those who built them. And, clustering around the market-places where life yet centres as it did in days gone by, or reflected in still waters, the houses keep their secrets well. Sydney R. Jones. NOTE [1] "Biographical Sketches of Dutch Architects."--MSS. by J. B. Weenink. 
59599	----	by The Internet Archive. Transcriber Note Text emphasis is denoted by _Italics_ and =Bold=. Whole and fractional parts of numbers as 12-3/4. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FARMERS' BULLETIN No. 1738 FARMHOUSE PLANS [Illustration] The Farmhouse Plans presented in this bulletin were developed in connection with the Farm Housing Survey made in the spring of 1934 by the United States Department of Agriculture and the agricultural colleges of 46 States, with funds provided by the Civil Works Administration. These plans were selected from more than 100 prepared under the cooperation of the following agencies and persons: United States Department of Agriculture: Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, S. H. McCrory, Chief; Bureau of Home Economics, Louise Stanley, Chief, and Director of the Rural Housing Survey. Alabama Polytechnic Institute: J. B. Wilson, extension engineer, department of agricultural engineering. University of Arkansas: Deane G. Carter, head, department of agricultural engineering. University of California: H. B. Walker, head, division of agricultural engineering. University of Georgia: R. H. Driftmier, professor of agricultural engineering. University of Illinois: E. W. Lehmann, head, and W. A. Foster, assistant chief in rural architecture, department of agricultural engineering. Purdue University (Indiana): William Aitkenhead, head, department of agricultural engineering. Iowa State College: Henry Giese, professor, department of agricultural engineering. Kansas State Agricultural College: H. E. Wichers, rural architect, department of architecture. Massachusetts Agricultural College: C. I. Gunness, head, department of agricultural engineering. University of Minnesota: H. B. White, assistant professor, division of agricultural engineering. University of Missouri: J. C. Wooley, chairman, department of agricultural engineering. Ohio State University: R. C. Miller, professor, department of agricultural engineering. Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas: D. Scoates, head, department of agricultural engineering. Virginia Polytechnic Institute: C. E. Seitz, head, department of agricultural engineering. State College of Washington: L. J. Smith, head, department of agricultural engineering. University of Wisconsin: S. A. Witzel, extension instructor, department of agricultural engineering. At each of the cooperating institutions, home economics specialists were consulted by the designers in regard to the arrangement of the kitchen and other parts of the home. Working drawings for building the houses shown in this bulletin are available from the extension services of the State agricultural colleges. In most cases a small charge is made for the drawings. Washington, D.C. October, 1934 FARMHOUSE PLANS By Wallace Ashby, _Chief, Division of Structures, Bureau of Agricultural Engineering_[1] [1] Acknowledgment is made of the extended collaboration of Louise Stanley, Chief. Bureau of Home Economics, in selecting and reviewing the plans presented herein; and of the helpful assistance of W. H. Nash, architect, Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, in the preparation of both the manuscript and illustrations for publication. Mary Rokahr, senior home-management specialist, Extension Service, and Eloise Davidson, director of domestic electric service program, Electric Home and Farm Authority, made valuable suggestions regarding arrangement of kitchens and other equipment. Helpful comments and suggestions have been received from many other persons. Many of the perspective sketches illustrating the house plans shown in this bulletin were drawn by C. W. Mead, Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, CONTENTS Page Farmhouse requirements 1 Size 1 Comfort and convenience 2 Relation to other buildings and highway 3 Appearance 4 Safety 4 Construction materials 4 Costs 5 Cellars 5 Superstructures and porches 5 Estimating by unit costs 6 Working drawings 7 Caution regarding changes 7 Plans for houses 7 One-story growing houses 7 Moderate-sized one-story houses 34 Houses of more than one story 45 Very small houses 60 The principal purpose of this bulletin is to supply plans A for low-cost farm dwellings designed to meet the requirements of the farm operator and his family. Some of the plans may be useful in eases where, in addition to the main dwelling, smaller homes are needed for relatives, tenants, or unmarried farm hands. Still others will be found useful in the construction of low-cost houses for temporary use. A well-built farmhouse should last for 60 years or more. In the ordinary course of events at least two generations of children will be brought up in it. During these years the family operating the farm probably will have no other choice of dwelling. The builder should, therefore, think both of present needs and possible future requirements when selecting a plan for a new farmhouse. FARMHOUSE REQUIREMENTS SIZE The first requirement of a satisfactory farmhouse is adequate size to provide needed working area, storage space, and living and sleeping quarters. For the average family at least three sleeping rooms are needed,[2] one for the parents, one for the boys, and one for the girls. [2] Sometimes the living room must serve as one of the sleeping rooms. All the space may not be needed at the time the house is built, but the chances are that it will be needed before many years. On the other hand, many families find that after the children have grown up and left home it is not necessary to use the entire house. For this reason it is desirable to have it arranged so that part of the rooms may be closed off or may be rented to tourists. COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE Adequate, well-used space for both the family and the furniture is a large factor in farmhouse comfort. The proper number, size, and placement of windows, doors, and stairs, and good construction are important. These matters have been carefully worked out in the plans shown in this bulletin. Comfort also depends to a large extent on good heating, plumbing, lighting, and screening. Information on some of these subjects is given in Farmers' Bulletin 1698, Heating the Farm Home; 1448, Farmstead Water Supply; 1426, Farm Plumbing; 1227, Sewage and Sewerage of Farm Homes; Department Circular 405, The Domestic Oil Burner; and in U.S. Department of Commerce bulletin, Insulation on the Farm, price 10 cents. The convenient arrangement of the farmhouse begins with its relationship to the other farm buildings and to the highway. Unlike the city house, the farmhouse has its main line of communication through the back or side door. Therefore outside doors and porches should be located so as to give convenient entrance from the farm driveway and the path to the barn, and wherever possible should be on the sheltered side of the house. If possible, there should be a convenient place near the rear entrance for men to leave their outer wraps and to wash before going into the house. These facilities are often provided in a washroom or in one corner of the workroom, but if there is no washroom or workroom in the house, there should at least be clothes hooks and a bench and washbasin for summer use on the back porch. It is also desirable that the work portions of the house, where the housewife spends much of her time, look out over the farm buildings and the entrance roadway. Most farm women like also a glimpse of the highway from the kitchen window. Preferably the traffic way from the rear entrance to the main portion of the house should not lead through the kitchen. If the kitchen must be used as a passageway, the doors should be so arranged that the traffic does not cross the work area. This not only decreases the possibility of interference with household activities but also makes possible a more compact and convenient arrangement of work equipment. An important factor is a workroom or porch, on about the same level as the kitchen, for laundry, canning, care of milk, and other farm activities and for supplementary food storage. This saves much clutter in the kitchen itself and contributes to more efficient arrangement. At least one bedroom should be provided on the first-floor of the farmhouse, not too far from the kitchen, so that small children or sick persons may be cared for conveniently. The bathroom should be convenient to both downstairs and upstairs bedrooms, but preferably on the first-floor. A space for a bathroom is very desirable even if the fixtures cannot be put in at once. Ample storage space should be provided for clothing, bedding and linen, wraps, food, dishes and utensils, cleaning equipment, toys, and fuel. In general, these needs have been met in the plans given in this bulletin by closets in halls and bedrooms, kitchen cabinets, shelves or pantries, and cellar storage. Closet, cabinet, and shelf space adds greatly to the convenience and comfort of a house and should not be omitted.[3] [3] Plans for closets and storage spaces can be obtained from the Bureau of Home Economics. In the smaller plans shown here, an alcove or an end of the kitchen is indicated for use as a dining area. In the larger plans, either a dining room or a space for dining in the living room is provided, and in most cases there is also space in the kitchen for "hurry-up" meals. The following points have been kept in mind in planning the kitchens. A sink in every house is recommended. Even when water must be carried into the house, the sink and drain add much to the convenience of the kitchen and may be installed very cheaply. Where running water is not available, a pump may be installed beside the sink. However, running water, hot and cold, adds more to the convenience of the farm-home than almost any other factor. The sink should be well-lighted, with windows over or at one end of it. Windows over the sink should have the sills higher than the back of the sink. Such windows will need to be shielded from sun glare unless on the north side of the house. The sink should have a drain board at the left end, at the right a flat shelf for stacking dishes if there is no drain board there. Dish storage should be near enough the left end of the sink for the dishes to be put away without unnecessary steps. The cookstove should be conveniently near the sink, preferably against the side wall, or across from it if the kitchen is narrow. A small food-preparation surface, table or shelf, should be placed next to the stove at the same height as the cooking surface. There should be cupboard space near the stove for the storage of cooking utensils. A worktable should be provided for long mixing jobs; it should have knee space and toe space. Staple supplies should be stored near this table and, if possible, should be near the refrigerator and not too far from the stove. The refrigerator should, for convenient use, be as near as possible to the worktable and stove; however, the higher the surrounding temperature the greater the cost of operating the refrigerator. If an ice refrigerator is used, a location near the outside door lessens the tracking of dirt into the house. A ventilated cupboard near the worktable is convenient for storing the less perishable foods and reduces the season during which ice is needed. RELATION TO OTHER BUILDINGS AND HIGHWAY A house designed for the south or west side of the highway should be reversed if it is to be built on the north or east. For example, plan 6521 (p. 24) would fit nicely on either the south or the west side of the main road. If it were south of the highway, with the drive as shown, the kitchen would be on the east where it would have the advantage of the morning sunlight and in most localities the screened porch would be sheltered from the coldest winds. If the house were on the west side of the road, the kitchen would still get morning sunlight, and the porch would protect it from the afternoon sun. On the other hand, if the house were to be built on the north or east side of the road, the kitchen would be badly sheltered and lighted, but reversing the plan so that the kitchen would be on the right instead of the left side of the house would remedy these conditions. Before deciding to build any house the plan should be studied carefully to see how it will best fit the location and the arrangement of the rest of the farmstead. APPEARANCE Attractive appearance of a farmhouse is to be obtained by: Good taste in its proportions and exterior design. Materials chosen to suit the local environment and type of house, effectively employed. A pleasing color scheme for the house, in harmony with its surroundings. Proper planning with relation to the natural features of the site, the other farm buildings, and the highway. Grading the site and planting trees, shrubs, and flowers. If the homes shown in this bulletin are carefully built according to the drawings, they will be satisfactory with respect to the first two points. Proper location of the house is exceedingly important and must be worked out on the ground. Farmers' Bulletin 1132, Planning the Farmstead, and 1087. Beautifying the Farmstead, will be found helpful in this and in the planting of trees and shrubs around the house. Farmers' Bulletin 1452, Painting on the Farm, discusses kinds and uses of paints. Other bulletins on these subjects are available from several of the State agricultural colleges. SAFETY Safety in the farmhouse depends first on good construction for protection from damage by wind, fire, decay, and termites. Safety is promoted also by planning to avoid hazards from low beams, steep or unguarded stairways, or badly placed doors and windows. The working drawings for the houses illustrated herein embody good practice in these matters. The welfare and convenience of the occupants will be further permanently safeguarded through rat-proof construction, which eliminates "rat harbors", and denies easy entrance of the rodents to the building. Additional safety may be secured at slight cost by following the recommendations in Farmers' Bulletins 1590, Fire Protective Construction on the Farm; 1638, Rat Proofing Buildings and Premises; and 1649, Construction of Chimneys and Fireplaces; Leaflet 87, Wind-Resistant Construction for Farm Buildings, and Leaflet 101, Injury to Buildings by Termites. CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS The houses shown in this bulletin may, with slight changes, be built of wood, stone, concrete, brick, tile, earth, steel, or other materials. The choice depends largely on owner's preference, local availability and price, and the skill of local builders in using one or another. Many new materials for various purposes such as roofing, flooring, and insulation are on the market and deserve consideration. The practice common among farmers of hauling their own stone or concrete materials, cutting their own logs where possible, having their lumber sawed at local mills, and doing part of the actual construction work, aid in reducing the cash outlay and in making possible a better house for the same money expenditure. This is especially true where lumber is sawed long enough before building starts to allow thorough seasoning. This seasoning of lumber is important and is too often disregarded. COSTS The most satisfactory way to learn the probable cost of a house is to obtain estimates from one or more local builders. Approximate costs may, of course, be obtained by comparing the proposed house with one built recently in the same community, or rough estimates may be based on the size of the house and typical unit costs for the locality. Unit costs based on prices and wages prevailing in the spring of 1934 for houses suitable for the localities were obtained for about 300 counties by the Farm Housing Survey, A summary of the figures is as follows: CELLARS Costs for ordinary cellars were reported for most sections as varying from 50 cents to $1 per square foot of floor space. The cost per square foot is, of course, less for a large than for a small cellar, other things being equal. Easy excavation and low-cost materials also make for low unit cost. Costs of nearly $2 per square foot were reported in some sections where the ground-water level is high and cellar walls and floor must be carefully waterproofed. In sections where cellars are not ordinarily used the cost of the foundation was reported as part of the cost of the house superstructure. SUPERSTRUCTURES AND PORCHES Reported costs of one-story frame superstructures, including heating, plumbing, and lighting equipment ordinarily used in the locality, ranged from $1.25 to $2.25 per square foot of floor space in the South, from $2.25 to $3.50 in the West and Southwest, from $2.50 to $4 in the North, and from $3 to $4.50 in New England. Costs in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia and in a narrow belt along the east coast, including Florida, were reported from $2 to $3.25, and in the timber-producing sections of the Northwest at about $2 per square foot. Costs in any locality are influenced by local factors, generally being relatively high near cities and in thickly settled sections and relatively low in places where there are local supplies of lumber or other materials. Differences in cost between the various sections are due to differences in the kinds of houses built, as well as to differences in material costs and wages. The typical house in the North is much more compact and substantial and provided with more expensive heating equipment than the typical house in the South. The cost per square foot of floor area of two-story frame houses was reported as being 5 to 15 percent less than that of one-story houses in the same locality. The costs of typical masonry superstructures were generally reported at $2 to $3 per square foot of floor area in the southern third of the United States, from $3 to $4 per square foot in the central third, and more than $4 per square foot in the northern third of the country. There were many variations from these general levels, however, costs of about $2 per square foot being reported in many localities in the States bordering on or south of the Ohio River. Costs reported for counties along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts were generally higher than for those in the interior. Little difference in cost per square foot of floor area in one-story and in two-story masonry houses was reported. The higher costs reported for masonry houses as compared with frame are probably due in part to better grades of finish and equipment used in the masonry houses. The costs per square foot of floor space of open porches were reported as being about half the costs per square foot of floor space in one-story houses of similar materials. ESTIMATING BY UNIT COSTS The floor areas of the cellar, the porches, and the house itself (the superstructure) are shown with each plan. They do not include unexcavated cellar space nor unfinished space in attics. The areas were figured from the working drawings (see p. 7) because in some cases the dimensions given in the plans herein are approximate only. The superstructure area of a house of more than one story is given here as the area of the first-floor plus the usable area of the second-floor. Stairways, halls, and closets are included. To estimate very roughly what a house might cost, multiply the number of square feet of cellar floor space by a cost per square foot based on the costs stated above. Do the same for the house superstructure and the porches, and add the figures together. This, with allowance for price changes since the spring of 1934, will give a rough estimate of total cost of the house. The actual cost will, of course, be affected by the materials and home equipment which the owner selects and by the skill and efficiency of the builders. If the owner can furnish part of the material or labor, or if interior finish or equipment is omitted, the initial cash outlay may be reduced. Estimates based on local prices and wage rates are to be preferred to those based on the cost figures given above. Little study has been given to what amounts farm people are justified in spending for their houses, but several investigations have been made of expenditures for housing by people with fixed incomes. It is generally agreed that the house ordinarily should not cost more than two and one-half times the average annual net income of the family. In the case of the farm family the value of the living furnished by the farm should be considered as part of the income. Another generally accepted rule, which perhaps is more nearly applicable to farm conditions, is that not more than 25 percent--usually not more than 20 percent--of the average annual net income of the family should be required for housing, including principal payments, interest, taxes, insurance, repairs, and miscellaneous costs. WORKING DRAWINGS Working drawings have been prepared giving all necessary dimensions and details for building these homes. Farmers may obtain copies of these drawings from the agricultural extension services of the State agricultural colleges. The State extension services will supply only those plans which are suitable in their respective States, and usually will make a small charge to cover printing and mailing. CAUTION REGARDING CHANGES These plans have been carefully prepared by competent architects in consultation with home-management specialists and agricultural engineers familiar with farm conditions in all parts of the United States. It is urged that the plans be studied carefully before making a selection, but that no changes be made in them except for alternate arrangements indicated by the drawings or descriptions. Changing the size of a room or the location of a door or window may spoil some other valuable feature, and is almost certain to harm the appearance of the house. Doors and windows should be selected according to the descriptive material on the drawings. Sizes should be closely adhered to for best appearance. The prospective builder should not try to obtain too much originality, but rather should base his selection on those features of the plan which will give the utmost satisfaction in the long run. Differences in slope of ground, location of the drive and farm buildings, and position and amount of trees and shrubbery, all will contribute to the distinctive appearance of the home. For homes of the type offered in this bulletin, the surroundings should be kept free from distracting adornments. As a general rule, a few trees to provide shade, some flowering shrubs of native growth grouped close to the building to break harsh lines, and a bed or two of flowers selected for their color value, will be sufficient decorative relief. PLANS FOR HOUSES The 40 house plans shown in this bulletin have been arranged in four groups representing, respectively, (1) 1-story growing houses; (2) 1-story houses originally built with two or more separate bedrooms; (3) houses of 1-1/2 or 2 stories; and (4) very small houses. Some of the plans might have been placed in another group about as well as in that in which they are shown. ONE-STORY GROWING HOUSES There are many arguments in favor of the growing house for the farm. The first unit can be erected at a moderate cost, yet the finished house may have all the features considered important. As more space is needed the owner often can build the additions himself, taking advantage of slack times to cut lumber from his own land, haul sand and gravel for concrete, and in other ways reduce the cost of the additions. The chief difficulty with the growing house is that it is likely to grow very slowly. By the time additions are made the house is considered old by its occupants, and the additions are likely not to receive as careful attention as the original house. The growing houses in this bulletin have been carefully planned so that both the first units and the final structure are satisfactory in usefulness and in appearance. The additions fit into the original units with a minimum of ripping out and rearrangement. PLAN 6511,[4] FOR THE SOUTHWEST Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 605 square feet; with 1-bedroom addition 815 square feet; with 2-bedroom addition 960 square feet. [Illustration: ORIGINAL HOUSE] This plan is for a permanent dwelling of frame, stucco, stone, adobe, or other construction. If desired, the first unit may be built without bedrooms, as shown, and the living room used for sleeping quarters until the house is completed. The two large closets of this living room add much to its value, and the arrangement with all doors at one end of the room permits efficient use of the space. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] If the first unit is to be used for several years before the bedrooms are added, the small bathroom with shower will be especially desirable. That space must be used for other purposes, however, and the bathroom fixtures moved when one or both bedrooms are added. An alternate kitchen arrangement suggested by the Bureau of Home Economics for houses in which only an oil, gas, or electric stove is needed and meals will usually be eaten in the living-dining room is shown on page 9. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSES] [Illustration: FLOOR PLANS] [4] Prepared by W. K. Bartges and Earl Barnett for the department of agricultural engineering, University of California. PLAN 6512,[5] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, first stage 715 square feet; second stage with one bedroom 1,085 square feet; third stage 1,515 square feet. Porch, 250 square feet. [Illustration: VIEW OF ORIGINAL HOUSE] Plan 6512 is designed for southern conditions, to afford ample shade from a glaring summer sun. The arrangement of rooms permits the building to face toward the south, thus taking advantage of the summer breezes from that direction. The glazed porch on the north side offers a cool spot for summer meals, while the meals served during cold weather would naturally be more enjoyable in front of a blazing fire at the west end of the living room. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] The second stage of the house adds the center bedroom of the three shown in the third stage. The partitions for the hall and the closets near the south porch are not needed until the third stage. If at all possible, the center bedroom should be built with the original unit to provide more sleeping space; but if it is necessary to watch the budget closely, the large living room or the glazed porch can be pressed into temporary service as sleeping quarters. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN WITH ADDED BEDROOM] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN WITH TWO ADDED BEDROOMS] [5] Prepared by J. B. Atkinson and J. E. Hudson for the department of agricultural engineering, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. PLAN 6513,[6] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 490 square feet; with first addition 705 square feet; completed house 1,015 square feet. Porches, first unit 25 square feet; with first addition 240 square feet. The first unit of house 6513 is modest, and yet provides complete kitchen equipment, toilet facilities, a workroom or laundry, and g bedroom of comfortable size. The first addition increases the living accommodations and, with its front and rear porches, offers a cool retreat in hot weather. The second addition provides two more bedrooms and an adjoining bath, thus completing the six-room house. If desired, these two bedrooms may be made larger than shown in the plans. [Illustration: VIEW OF INTERIOR] The interior view shows the compact arrangement of kitchen cabinets and sink, and indicates the bright work area that is planned to lighten the duties of the housewife. An alternate arrangement of the kitchen, with no workroom, is shown on page 13. During the first two stages of development adequate space will be found in the kitchen for dining; but when two bedrooms are added in the final wing, the original bedroom (adjoining the kitchen) might be converted into a dining room. On the other hand, if at times the entire house is not needed by the family, the last wing of the house will make very desirable rooms for renting to tourists or summer boarders, or may be closed. In some parts of the South the fireplace will not provide sufficient heat in cold weather, but a circulator heater may be set in front of the fireplace and connected to the chimney through a metal shield. If the plan is used in the North, a cellar may be constructed under the second unit, with stairs leading down from the rear porch, which should be enclosed. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLANS] [6] Prepared by W. H. Nash for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6514,[7] FOR THE MIDDLE WEST Floor areas: Superstructure, original house 670 square feet; with addition 940 square feet. Cellar, 255 square feet. Porches, 120 square feet. House 6514, with basement and furnace, is well adapted to northern or mid-western conditions. The steps to the basement may be outside the building as shown, or the washroom may be extended so as to include the steps and provide greater protection during stormy weather. The original house, in order to come in the class of low-cost houses, does not contain a bath. A pump at the kitchen sink provides water until funds permit of the installation of a modern plumbing system. The first unit of the house may be heated either by a circulator heater in the living room or by a furnace. The furnace will be especially desirable after the second unit is added. The added bedroom wing is recessed from the main building line to permit cross ventilation through the bedroom in the original house. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETE HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [7] Prepared by W. E. Pettit and Fred Riebel for the department of agricultural engineering, Ohio State University. PLAN 6515,[8] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 565 square feet; with first addition 900 square feet; completed house 1,255 square feet. Porches, 175 square feet. This begins as a three-room house but is planned so that eventually three bedrooms and a bath may be added. The kitchen in the original house is nicely arranged, as shown in the plan. When the house is completed, the first bedroom may be used as a dining room, with a door cut through from the kitchen. The range should then be placed against the living room wall. The fireplace and range will heat the first three rooms. Hall space for a circulator heater is provided in the first addition. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETE HOUSE] [8] Prepared by C. W. Heery, Fred J. Orr, and B. G. Danner for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Georgia. PLAN 6516,[9] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, original unit 685 square feet; with first addition 1,035 square feet; completed house 1,345 square feet. Porches, original 90 square feet; completed house 155 square feet. The original unit of house 6516 is a two-room structure of ample size. The dining room and kitchen are combined in one room, while the other room is temporarily both bedroom and living room. A porch leading directly into the kitchen affords entrance during the initial stage. In the center of the first unit are an unusually large storage closet and a chimney reminiscent of colonial Virginia. In localities where firewood is not readily available the fireplace may be omitted and a stove used for heating the bedroom. [Illustration: PLAN SHOWING FUTURE ADDITIONS] Additions to the house are indicated on both sides of the original; the first addition undoubtedly would be that with the bedroom and bath. The rear porch can be enclosed if needed, and will then serve for laundering and other work that is more convenient not to do in the kitchen. The second addition will complete the house with a living room and front porch. The addition of the living room and front porch requires considerable change in the arrangement of the kitchen to keep traffic from the back door to the living room from passing directly in front of the range. It will be best to set the range against the end wall, and preferably to use an electric or oil range so that no new chimney will be required. After the living room is added, less dining space will be needed in the kitchen. [Illustration: VIEW OF ORIGINAL UNIT] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED UNIT] [9] Prepared by H. B. Boynton and J. M. Thompson for the department of agricultural engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. PLAN 6517,[10] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, original house 660 square feet; completed house 1,025 square feet. Porches, 300 square feet. In plan 6517 a large amount of space is provided at low-cost by using the cheapest type of construction and omitting the interior finish at the time of building, for when a large family must be housed and funds are limited space is often more desirable than good finish and ease of heating. The exterior walls are of vertical boards and battens, and the roof is of galvanized corrugated metal. The house may be improved at any time by lining the walls and ceiling. The kitchen arrangement shows a treatment recommended by home economists, the sink and worktable at right angles to the wall, with shelves above them. This scheme has the advantage of separating the working and dining areas, yet it does not hamper easy communication between the rooms at meal hours. If desired, a bed may be placed in the living room, yet the house is so arranged that each sleeping room will have complete privacy. The side wall of the small bedroom next to the kitchen is intended to be made of 1-inch boards with battens on both sides. The addition of bedrooms with closets and a bathroom is suggested. This addition will provide space for a circulator heater, which is a convenience when no cellar is planned. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN AND COMPLETED HOUSE] [10] Prepared by the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6518[11] Floor areas: Superstructure, first stage 835 square feet; with addition 1,160 square feet. Porches, 120 square feet. Several novel features about this small dwelling will appeal to the farm-home builder. A heater room on the main floor near the rear entrance and the kitchen avoids the need for a cellar. A kitchen like this, with three outside walls to give light and cross ventilation and a better view of the farmstead and highway, is often desirable. The end of the living room next the kitchen is narrowed to a dining alcove, and when more space is needed the dining table may be extended into the living room. The completed bungalow has three bedrooms, with ample closet space. The rear porch will provide a comfortable, shady place to work outside during the warm summer days. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] In the first stage of construction the two bedrooms at the rear may be omitted. This would still leave one bedroom and the bathroom and temporary closet space in the original bungalow. Then the two other bedrooms can be added later, when funds become available, or a screened and glazed sleeping porch with outside entrance could be built instead. A porch off the living room could also be added. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [11] Prepared by L. J. Smith for the department of agricultural engineering, State College of Washington. PLAN 6519,[12] FOR THE SOUTHWEST Floor areas: Superstructure, original house 775 square feet; with addition 1,075 square feet. Porches, 160 square feet. The plans and perspectives on these pages show two methods of roofing this house. In each plan the original unit of the house is complete, and pleasing in appearance, and the additions fit the house gracefully with very little tearing out or rearrangement. As in some other plans, the kitchen is designed for the use of an oil, gas, or electric cookstove. The house may be heated by a circulator hot-air heater, by a hot-water system with a radiator boiler in the living room, or possibly by radiant gas or electric heaters in the bedrooms. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] The type of design favors keeping the house close to the ground. If floor-joist construction is used, the topsoil should be removed from under the house so that joists will not come too close to the ground surface. A concrete subfloor could be placed directly on the ground, supporting wood sleepers and wood floors. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [12] Prepared by H. E. Wichers, O. S. Ekdahl, and N. F. Resch for the department of architecture, Kansas State Agricultural College. PLAN 6520[13] Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 450 square feet; with first addition 730 square feet; completed house 985 square feet. Porches, 255 square feet. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] With their low-pitched roofs, and modest design both inside and out, plans 6520 and 6521 represent very desirable types of farmhouses. Such buildings blend with their surroundings to produce a real homey atmosphere. Originally planned for southern conditions, where a circulator heater placed in the hall should be adequate, these plans are adapted to colder regions if the houses are well constructed and are provided with basements and central heating plants as indicated on the working drawings. PLAN 6521[13] Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 630 square feet; with first addition 985 square feet; completed house 1,285 square feet. Porches, 385 square feet. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] In both designs the development from two large rooms progresses logically, the main difference being that in plan 6520 the additions are made at the side, while in plan 6521 the new rooms are added at the rear of the first unit. Although all the rooms of 6521 a r e shown as larger than those of 6520, by slight alterations either size of house may be built from either plan. The choice should be determined largely by the slope of the building site. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] In each original house a temporary partition provides 2 bedrooms in place of a living room. The first addition adds 2 other bedrooms, and the removal of the partition between the temporary bedrooms provides a large living room. The second addition increases the total number of bedrooms to 3 by adding 2 and refitting 1 in the first addition as a bathroom. Each kitchen is ideally located to command a view of the driveway, highway, and farm buildings. Closets, pantry, and other equipment utilize the darker part of the room, leaving the lighter portions for working area and dining table. These arrangements are complete in the original house. On the screened back porch, which is equipped with laundry trays and closet, men coming from the fields may hang their outside work garments and, except in cold weather, wash before entering the house. Here a great deal of the dirty and messy work in preparing fruits and vegetables for canning may be done. Entrance from the screened porch to the bath or bedrooms reduces to a minimum the traffic through the kitchen and living room. In plan 6520 the screened porch might be divided by a lattice into work and living spaces. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [13] Prepared by Eldred Mowery and C. E. Cope for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6522[14] Floor areas: Superstructure, original house 640 square feet; with addition _A_. 950 square feet; with addition _B_ 930 square feet. Porch, addition _B_, 120 square feet. On account of its compact arrangement, this low-cost house furnishes a very satisfactory amount of usable space for the small family and may be enlarged to three-bedroom size, as indicated on the plans. The kitchen is well-arranged, with moderate storage space, and a wood box filled from outside, with a ventilated cupboard or cooler above it. The workroom, unusually large for a small house, is a good place for laundry or canning and for men to clean up before coming in to meals. Dining space is provided at the rear of the living room. This house should be compared with no. 6527 (p. 36). Board and batten construction is very suitable for a low-cost house, but any other type of construction may be used for plan 6522 if preferred. If the house is built in a cold climate, probably it will be desirable to omit the fireplace and heat the living and bedrooms with a circulator heater. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN WITH ADDITION A] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN WITH ADDITION D] [14] Prepared by the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6523,[15] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 990 square feet; with addition _A_ 1,420 square feet; with addition _B_ 1,375 square feet. Cellar, 350 square feet. Porches, 100 square feet. Communication between rooms is an important consideration in modern house planning. This has been provided in house 6523 by a small hall, which permits access not only from one room to another but also to the outside, the basement stairs, the washroom, the bathroom, and the linen closet, thus eliminating the necessity of using any room as a passageway. Alternate extensions are shown, the choice probably depending upon the surrounding ground contour. Addition _B_ should receive first consideration, because it brings the two new bedrooms into closer relation with the bathroom and does not destroy the washroom adjoining the rear entrance. It does, however, reduce the size of one of the first bedrooms. If addition _A_ is contemplated, the window at _X_ should be located at _Y_ when the first unit is built. The steps in the hall of addition A may be omitted if the ground slopes down at the rear so that the floor of the addition can be built at a lower level than the floor of the original house. If addition _B_ is to be used, the window at _Z_ should be located so as to come in the hall of the addition. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN WITH ADDITIONS] [15] Prepared by C. W. Heery and B. G. Banner for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Georgia, PLAN 6524[16] Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 1,245 square feet; with addition 1,735 square feet. Porches, 25 square feet. Cellar, 400 square feet. The charm of house 6524 lies in its informality and simplicity. It is built for comfort and service. The broad expanse of roof, relieved by a gable, gives it a substantial yet homelike appearance. This is an easy house to move around in, and the kitchen is very nicely arranged. The screened porch, in addition to providing a cool and inviting summer dining and work space, affords ready access to all the rooms of the house. If the future addition of bedrooms is contemplated, the hall window in the first unit should be replaced with a door. This will not only provide an extra exit from the house but obviate unnecessary cutting and tearing out when the addition is built. The cellar provides space for a central heating plant, it desired. [Illustration: VIEW COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF KITCHEN] [16] Prepared by C. W. Heery, Fred J. Orr and B. G. Banner for the department agricultural engineering, University of Georgia. PLAN 6525[17] Floor areas: Superstructure, first unit 795 square feet; with bedroom addition 1,080 square feet; with both additions 1,375 square feet. Porches, 105 square feet. Cellar, 795 square feet. This simple farmhouse develops into a home of dignity and charm. The original unit furnishes all modern conveniences and an ample basement. Future bedrooms may be added as required, while the extended living room might be built as the final touch of growing prosperity. It will be of interest to the reader to note the similarity of arrangement of this house and no. 6519 (p. 20). These plans were developed independently, but the coincidence emphasizes the practicability of having the work and living areas on the side of the building next to the driveway and the bedrooms toward the rear, with the bathroom located as centrally as possible. The design of a small house for farm use is greatly influenced by the rather fixed location of the kitchen. [Illustration: MAIN FLOOR PLAN SHOWING FUTURE ADDITIONS] [Illustration: BASEMENT PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF ORIGINAL UNIT] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETE HOUSE] [17] Prepared by H. B. Boynton and J. M. Thompson for the department of agricultural engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. MODERATE-SIZED ONE-STORY HOUSES Houses of this group can best be built complete at one time, though in several cases it is noted that rooms may be omitted from the original building or extra rooms added. The larger houses of this group provide about the same features as the completed growing houses. The more compact two-bedroom houses are well adapted to farms where two or more separate dwellings are needed. PLAN 6526,[18] FOR TIMBERED SECTIONS Floor areas; Superstructure, 845 square feet. Porches, 300 square feet. In spite of present-day improvements in building materials, there is something about the rugged appearance of a log cabin that harmonizes with rural settings. Log construction blends into wooded surroundings more intimately than boards, bricks, or stucco. House 6526 will accommodate 4 persons comfortably, or even 5 or 6 persons if a couch is placed in a corner of the living room. The location of the bathroom not only serves the bedrooms but is convenient to the kitchen and the rear porch. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] The central chimney serves the kitchen range, circulator heater, and fireplace. The ample size of the kitchen, and its built-in cupboards, dish cabinets, and other conveniences add greatly to the desirability of the design. If a pass cupboard between kitchen and living room is desired, it may be arranged in the cabinet next to the outer wall. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [18] Prepared by N. G. Napier for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Arkansas. PLAN 6527[19] Floor areas: Superstructure, main house, 915 square feet; with storage addition 1,120 square feet. Cellar, 115 square feet. Porches, 130 square feet. This house is similar in many respects to the first unit of 6522 (p. 26), but is enlarged to provide for the bathroom. A shallow root cellar with room above is added at the rear of the house to provide extra storage if needed in localities where a cellar is not practicable. As in the case of plan 6522, two more bedrooms may be added to the left side of the house by taking space from the rear bedroom for a hallway. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] The house is planned to be heated by a jacketed heater in the workroom with a cold-air return duct under the floor and cold-air registers in the living room and bedrooms. This arrangement will keep all handling of coal and ashes out of the living parts of the house. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [19] Prepared by O. R. S. Trabor for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Missouri. PLAN 6528,[20] FOR THE NORTH Floor areas: Superstructure, 800 square feet. Cellar, 800 square feet. House 6528 is intended for use in cold, snowy regions, where farmers need cellars for storing fuel and vegetables. The hip roof helps to brace the house against the wind and is economical of material. A well-insulated ceiling is recommended to help keep the house comfortable. The substantial chimney in the center of the house, with separate flues for furnace, kitchen range, and fireplace, insures good draft and no wasted heat. The vestibule at the front and the hall arrangement at the side door also aid in keeping the house warm. Both doors are convenient to the driveway and the path to the barn. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] The washroom and laundry of this house are in the cellar. This is a satisfactory and economical arrangement where there is good drainage for both the cellar and the plumbing fixtures, and is particularly advantageous on rolling ground. But one should beware of putting a deep cellar in a poorly drained location. (See Farmers' Bulletin 1572, Making Cellars Dry.) [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [20] Prepared by S. A. Witzel for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Wisconsin. PLAN 6529[21] Floor areas: Superstructure, 740 square feet. Porches, 250 square feet. This house was designed to meet the needs of a family of 4 to 6 people. The porch faces the highway, and paths from the front and side porches lead to the farm drive. The kitchen is complete and compact. The extra space found in many farm kitchens has been omitted and a workroom added to provide for laundry and other rough work. This also provides a place for men to leave their outer wraps and wash before entering the living room. Storage space can be obtained in the attic by the use of a disappearing stair in the workroom ceiling. No wood or coal range is provided for in this plan, because the use of an oil, gas, or electric stove saves space in the kitchen and correspondingly reduces the cost of the house. This saving and the convenience of a small, compact cooking unit deserve careful consideration in localities where these fuels are cheaply available. Heating is accomplished by means of a circulator heater in the living room. The designer of this plan states: The bedrooms are small. They are little used during waking hours, thus they can be reduced with less injury to family comfort than any other room. The large living room more than compensates for this. When funds are limited it is always debatable, in a great portion of the United States, whether spending money for a porch is wise, because the same money could be used instead to increase the area of the house proper. In this particular case the porch could be left off without harm. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME AND FLOOR PLAN] [21] Prepared by H. E. Wichers and O. S. Ekdahl for the department of architecture, Kansas State Agricultural College. PLAN 6530[22] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,155 square feet. Porches, 245 square feet. The well-known economy of square house construction is illustrated by this plan. A choice of heating methods without a cellar is indicated. If a circulator heater is used in the hall, as shown, the chimney between the bedrooms will not be needed, and if extra bedrooms are wanted they may be added as in plan 6517 (p. 18). A fireplace in the back bedroom would, of course, interfere with taking a hall off this room. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] Kitchen doors are located to permit easy communication between the screened porch and the hall without interference with the work area while the screened porch is useful as both work and dining area. This latter feature, together with the ample size of the bedrooms, living room kitchen, makes the dwelling especially suitable for the small family in the South. The addition of a cellar under one-half of the house and of a central heating plant would adapt this plan to other sections of the country, though the rooms are rather larger than is common in the North. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME] [22] Prepared by W. C. Breithaupt and H. W. Dearing for the department of agricultural engineering, Alabama Polytechnic Institute. PLAN 6531[23] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,185 square feet. Porches, 155 square feet. House 6531 should be compared with no. 6533. The two plans were developed independently, but are very similar and illustrate a logical grouping of rooms for a farmhouse. In some respects the arrangement of 6531 works out more satisfactorily because it is not restricted by the structural details of framing a pitched roof. This house is a model of compactness and efficiency. Note the simple but effective way in which the kitchen and heater room are located back to back. The floor of the heater room is a concrete slab, two steps below the main floor level. A pass cupboard between the kitchen and dining room is handy for serving meals. It also provides storage space beneath its counter. The entire bedroom side may be omitted from the original house, in which case the workroom would serve for dining and the dining room for a bedroom. All dimensions of this house are multiples of 3-1/2 feet. Wall, door, and window sections might be prefabricated so that erection would consist merely of bolting the sections together, or the house can be built in the ordinary way. The sketch at the top of page 41 illustrates the use of sheet metal as an exterior covering, the one in the center shows concrete blocks, and the bottom view shows the walls covered with a combination of lap siding and shingles or wide boards. The flat roof should be covered with good roofing and well-insulated for comfort in both summer and winter as described in the working drawings. The cost of the insulated flat roof should not be greater than that of an ordinary pitched roof without insulation. The accumulation of snow will help to keep the building warm. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME] [23] Prepared by Albert Frey for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economies, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6532[24] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,125 square feet Porches, 35 square feet. This is a new type of low-cost house designed to provide five small single bedrooms or sleeping compartments and one bedroom of average size. The sleeping compartments are not very large, but to secure privacy and yet maintain economy of construction, something must be sacrificed. In this case it is unnecessary space. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOME AND FLOOR PLAN] The sketch showing the arrangement of bunks illustrates an interesting feature of this house. In the right-hand room the bunk is near the floor, and wardrobe and dresser space is obtained in the partition between the two rooms. In the left-hand room the bunk is 4 feet above the floor and projects over the one on the other side of the partition. Wardrobe space is arranged under the bunk. This room is especially suitable for a boy. A folding study table is provided under the window in each room. On warm nights air circulation would be obtained by opening the bedroom doors to the hall, which is ventilated by the windows above the lower roof. By omitting all but one of the partitions forming the five small bedrooms two good-sized rooms can be obtained. [Illustration: CROSS SECTION OF BEDROOMS AND WARDROBE AT B-B] [Illustration: SIDE VIEW OF BUNK AT A-A] The exterior appearance may seem, at first glance, unusually severe, but by omitting a pitched roof and the ornamental features of cornice moldings and trim decorations, the cost of construction is materially lowered. Here everything has been reduced to the simplest form possible. With the heater room adjoining the kitchen, there is little need for a basement, thus an important item of expense is eliminated. The kitchen and workroom form a compact and very convenient unit along the driveway side of the house, while the large living room commands a good view of the highway. The living room and halls are lighted and ventilated by the small windows above the lower roofs. Closet space is provided in every room. As in plan 6531 (p. 40), all dimensions are multiples of 3-1/2 feet so that the house can be either prefabricated or built in the ordinary way. [24] Prepared by Albert Frey and R. G. Allen for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6533[25] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,130 square feet. Porch, 80 square feet. Cellar, 280 square feet. House 6533 is one of the few designs in which a separate dining space was allotted. Many people do not consider a separate dining room essential in the small farmhouse, and additional space adds to the cost, but in this case the arrangement adds to the spaciousness of the interior without greatly increasing the cost. The rear entry is large enough to serve as laundry and washroom, and constitutes a back way from the kitchen to the bedrooms and bathroom without passing through the living room. The kitchen, with cross ventilation and ample cupboard and counter space, is a pleasant workshop for the housewife, and is so arranged that easy service to the dining alcove is possible. The bedrooms and adjoining bath are grouped together, allowing that portion of the house to be closed off from the living portion. In the cellar is the heating plant, with fuel bin. The house is kept low to give it an appearance of hugging the ground, but in no case should the joists be below the ground level. Shingles, beveled siding, or clapboards may be used for the exterior surface. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [25] Prepared by Max Uhlig for the department of agricultural engineering, Massachusetts Agricultural College. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] * * * * * HOUSES OF MORE THAN ONE STORY In many respects houses of more than one story are better suited for farm use in the Northern States than single-story buildings. They are more economical in foundation and roof construction, and are easier to heat. They should be arranged with one bedroom and a bath, or at least a toilet, on the ground floor. A cellar for fuel and vegetable storage and a central heating plant are usually needed with this type of house. The laundry may also be located in the cellar if suitable drainage and a grade door to the outside can be obtained, but in a poorly drained location it is best to keep the laundry above-ground. In building a cellar advantage should be taken of the slope of the ground to obtain good lighting and an easy entrance on the low side of the slope. To avoid uncomfortably warm second-floor bedrooms in summer cross ventilation should be provided in each room. Insulation of the ceiling is valuable both in summer and in winter. It is very convenient to have a bathroom on the second-floor as well as one on the first-floor, especially if rooms are to be rented to tourists when the family does not need the whole house. PLAN 6534[26] Floor areas: Superstructure, original house, 1,420 square feet; with living room addition, 1,720 square feet. Cellar, 775 square feet. Porches, 285 square feet. [Illustration: MAIN FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] The first-floor and cellar plans of house 6534 are almost the same as the original unit of no. 6525 (p. 32), but there are comfortable bedrooms, a bath, and closet space on the second-floor. If funds are available to build the living room wing indicated, the entire dwelling will breathe the traditional southern spirit of hospitable spaciousness. The hall and stair arrangements of this house are very good. Persons coming in at the back door can leave wraps in the vestibule at the head of the cellar stairs and go directly to any downstairs room or to the cellar, yet there is little lost space. If the house should at some time be occupied by a small family, the entire upstairs could be shut off. Persons wishing rooms for tourists will find either the upstairs bedrooms or the downstairs bedroom and bath very suitable for this purpose. [Illustration: VIEW OF ORIGINAL UNIT] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [26] Prepared by H. B. Boynton and J. M. Thompson for the department of agricultural engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. PLAN 6535[27] Floor areas: Superstructure, 820 square feet. Porch, 30 square feet. This might well be considered the smallest story-and-a-half farmhouse that could be practicably built. The designer has utilized the space to good advantage, omitting a bath in the original structure for the sake of economy. The working drawings show a future addition to the house which provides a bedroom and bath on the first-floor. The alternate floor plan shows a dormer in the rear like the one on the front, to make room for a second-floor bath. A distinctive feature of this compact design is the =L=-shaped kitchen with its well-grouped and well-lighted working surfaces and dining table. The arrangement of an =L=-shaped room is often a problem when enlarging or remodeling. The living room is arranged for both day and night use, with a folding bed in a closet. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: ALTERNATE FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: ALTERNATE SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [27] Prepared by C. T Bridgman for the department of agricultural engineering, Iowa State College. PLAN 6536,[28] FOR THE NORTH Floor areas: Superstructure, 1560 square feet. Cellar, 400 square feet. Porch, 210 square feet. This design illustrates a type of farmhouse frequently built in recent years because of its simple lines and economy of construction. It illustrates the pleasing possibility of fitting the farmhouse to sloping ground, with ample light in the basement and easy flights of steps between the house proper, the large workroom at the rear, and the cellar. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] The partition between the main rooms downstairs is carried up to divide the second-floor, giving these bedrooms ample size and good cross ventilation and making a strong construction that will not sag in years to come. A second bathroom may be provided in the storage space by the chimney, thus adding to the comfort of the home and making the upstairs rooms suitable for rental to tourists if desired. The roof should be insulated to give comfort both in summer and in winter. [Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW OF KITCHEN] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] The downstairs hall, lighted by the windows on the stairs, is compact and provides easy communication between all rooms. The living room is well-lighted and has good wall spaces for furniture. The combined kitchen and dining room, with the sink at right angles to the outside wall, as shown in the interior view, gives the housewife three walls of continuous work surfaces and in addition light and the view from all the windows of the room. Children can play or older members visit in the dining end with slight interference to the housewife's work. This is especially helpful on chilly days in the fall and spring when the kitchen stove provides the only heat in the house. The part basement furnishes space for a furnace and for storage of fruits and vegetables. [28] Prepared by C. J. Poiesz and Eldred Mowery for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6537[29] Floor areas: Superstructure (including enclosed porch) 1,520 square feet. Cellar, 840 square feet. Terrace and steps, 100 square feet. House 6537 is similar in many respects to no. 6536, and has much the same advantages, though the rooms are somewhat smaller. A second downstairs bedroom can be added beside the bathroom, if needed, or the two bedrooms on the second-floor can be left unfinished if funds are not on hand to complete the building in the beginning. The sketch indicates the roof line sweeping down snug over the window of the first-floor bedroom, a feature which is carried out with similar success in plan 6538. Designs of this type help to keep a two-story home from appearing too tall and make it a more harmonious unit in the farmstead scheme. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [29] Prepared by T. A. Zink for the department of agricultural engineering, Purdue University. PLAN 6538[30] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,740 square feet. Cellar, 385 square feet. Stoops, 80 square feet. House 6538 may be roofed in a number of ways, with slight alterations in the arrangement of the second-floor. The appearance is, of course, greatly altered; but in each case is pleasing. With the modernistic flat roof, any waste spaces caused by the sloping roofs in the other designs are eliminated. The storage room on the second-floor then becomes suitable for a child's bedroom, a sewing room, or an office, and the flat-deck porch roof will serve as a sleeping porch. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] The plan is simple and well proportioned. Since the arrangement of the entrance is a little unusual, the location of the driveway and the path to the barn should be given careful study before deciding upon the site and placing of the house. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSES] Construction should be simple. In the case of the modernistic house, concrete or stucco is suggested for the first story and boards and battens for the second. [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [30] Prepared by W. K. Bartges and Earl Barnett for the department of agricultural engineering. University of California.. PLAN 6539,[31] FOR THE NORTH [Illustration: VIEW OF FIRST STAGE] Floor areas: Superstructure, original house, 1,100 square feet; with kitchen addition, 1,270 square feet; with all additions shown, 1,620 square feet. Porches, original house, 90 square feet; completed house, 285 square feet. Cellar, 565 square feet. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] Thousands of farmhouses in all parts of the North and Middle West have begun like house 6539, and the development illustrated for this one should offer helpful suggestions both to farmers who plan to build new and those who expect to remodel present houses. It is a very practical design, expressing honest dignity. [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] The plans on this page show the original unit, which would supply a comfortable yet economical dwelling, with a basement for fuel and storage. The first addition might be either the new 7 kitchen and porch or the downstairs bedroom, bath, and laundry. If needed, a third upstairs bedroom and a bathroom can be added over those in the first-floor addition, as shown in the working drawings, with little loss of material or work, because the downstairs bedroom has a flat-deck roof. This would increase the floor area of the superstructure to 1,900 square feet. [Illustration: VIEW OF COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN WITH ADDITIONS] [31] Prepared by J. M. Deibert for the Bureaus of Agricultural Engineering and Home Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. PLAN 6540[32] Floor areas: Superstructure, 1,380 square feet. Porch, 70 square feet. Cellar, 760 square feet. This plan is intended for use in the North, where the compact floor plan with cellar and inside chimney and the front vestibule will simplify the heating problem. The first-floor level is above the ordinary height of packed snow in winter, but the grade entrance gives easy communication with both the cellar and the main part of the house. This permits convenient use of the cellar as a washroom and laundry, if in a well-drained location, as well as for storage purposes. The house is roomy and well-arranged, with a downstairs bedroom and bathroom. By a slight change to make the second-floor like the first, a bathroom or toilet could be arranged in the large closet by the stairs. Storage space is provided in the attic. All second-floor partitions are directly above those of the first floor, thus making a strong, rigid house with the least framing material. [Illustration: FIRST FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: SECOND FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [32] Prepared by H. W. Orth and R. A. Gmeinder for the division of agricultural engineering, University of Minnesota. VERY SMALL HOUSES The dimensions of the houses in the very-small-house group are kept to the minimum by using the living rooms for sleeping rooms at night. These houses cannot be considered adequate for the typical farm family, but will serve for young married couples or for tenants with small families. PLAN 6501[33] Floor areas: Superstructure, 325 square feet. Stoop, 15 square feet. In plan 6501, sleeping space is provided in double-deck beds screened from the living room by draw curtains. If more space is wanted later, a bedroom wing can be added at the end of the living room. To save space, the kitchen is planned for an oil, gas, or electric stove. With a house of this size, part of the housework would have to be done outdoors, and a paved or graveled space under a tree near the house would be a convenience. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [33] Prepared by H. E. Wichers, N. F. Resell, and O. S. Ekdahl, for Kansas State College. PLAN 6502[34] Floor areas: Superstructure, 600 square feet. Stoop, 35 square feet. The special feature of plan 6502 is the well-arranged kitchen, with good storage space and a compact work area at one side of the direct line of travel from the back door. Some privacy at night is afforded by the double wardrobes and folding screen between the two beds in the living room. The side porch will serve the double purpose of workroom and sleeping porch. It should be screened and have curtains to keep out the rain. By adding 4 feet to the living room and an additional partition, a third room could be provided. A shower bath may be installed in the large closet as shown. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [34] Prepared by A. L. Matthews and N. G. Napier for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Arkansas, PLAN 6503[35] Floor areas: Superstructure, original house 520 square feet; with addition, 825 square feet. Small homes are often cut up into several rooms, with the result that in them a person has a "boxed-in" feeling. In plan 6503 the rooms are few, and each is used for more than one purpose. If the cost must be kept to a minimum, the bedroom and sleeping porch may be omitted in the original construction. The kitchen-dining room is unusually large for a house of this size, and the equipment is grouped in the front part of the room where the housewife can have a good view of the highway. When the bedroom and sleeping porch are built, the bunk in the kitchen-dining room may be taken out to provide more dining space; or if one desires a cellar under part of the house, the cellar stairway may replace the bunk space. A large window and high-beamed ceiling are features of the living room. The chimney must not be too small; it is a feature of the house. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [35] Prepared by R. A. Deal and W. W. DeNeff for the department of agricultural engineering, State College of Washington. PLAN 6504,[36] FOR THE SOUTHWEST Floor areas: Superstructure, 430 square feet. Porches, 145 square feet. Plans 6504 and 6505 were designed for the central valleys of California, where outdoor sleeping is invited, by the mild nights. These were designed for temporary homes to be used later as shops, bunk houses, storage buildings, or for other uses, so concrete floors are recommended. Low-cost "frameless" construction is shown in the working drawings. There are no ceilings. The shower baths shown in the plans can be installed cheaply. The kitchens and work porches are large enough for the needs of a good-sized family. Plenty of windows are provided for ventilation. The kitchen arrangement shows a wood-burning stove, and a large refrigerator placed against an inside wall for protection from the outdoor heat. It is expected that meals will ordinarily be eaten in the kitchen or outdoors. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] PLAN 6505,[36] FOR THE SOUTHWEST Floor areas: Superstructure, 410 square feet. Porches, 125 square feet. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [36] Prepared by W. K. Bartges and Earl Barnett for the department of agricultural engineering, University of California. PLAN 6506,[37] FOR NEW ENGLAND Floor areas: Superstructure, 540 square feet. Porches, 60 square feet. Though the rooms in plan 6506 have been kept as small as possible in order to reduce cost, good use of space is realized in the arrangement. Additions to the house would enable it to accommodate an average-sized family. A work-porch addition beside the kitchen and living room, between the windows, would provide a place for laundry work and for hanging outer wraps. A bathroom might be built by enclosing a portion of the front porch and enlarging the window to make a doorway from the hall. If desired, a third bedroom could be added at the end of the living room. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [37] Prepared by Bernhard Dirks for the department of agricultural engineering, Massachusetts State College. PLAN 6507,[38] FOR THE NORTH Floor areas: Superstructure, original house, 380 square feet; with first addition 600 square feet. Porches and entrances, 50 square feet. Cellar, first unit 380 square feet; with addition 600 square feet. Plan 6507 is intended for snowy sections, and the first-floor is purposely raised above the winter snow level. The house can be built in either one or two stages. No partition divides the kitchen and living room, which permits heating the house with the kitchen range in mild weather. It also aids ventilation in summer and facilitates serving of meals in the living room. The steps to the cellar are outside the house, protected by a storm door. There is ample space in the cellar for laundry and storage. A cistern under the kitchen provides soft water. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN AND COMPLETED HOUSE] [38] Prepared by S. A. Witzel for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Wisconsin. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] PLAN 6508,[39] FOR THE NORTHWEST Floor areas: Superstructure, first stage 385 square feet; second stage 605 square feet; third stage 755 square feet. Porches and steps, first stage 20 square feet; second and third stages 70 square feet. This house is designed for the minimum requirements of beginners on the land, the first portion being 16 by 24 feet outside. It may either be enlarged for a permanent dwelling or later used as a service building. The bedroom is ample in size, but the living room, because it must also be used temporarily as a kitchen and dining room, will be crowded. This unit may be made 18 feet instead of 16 feet wide. Later the kitchen and a small bedroom may be added at the rear of the first unit, with a side porch off the kitchen. The door between the kitchen and living room will then be changed to the right of the chimney, and a narrow hall taken off the rear of the front bedroom. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] If an additional bedroom is desired, it can be added to the left of the bathroom, making the third stage for this house. The closet in the kitchen should be removed and a door cut through to allow easy access from the kitchen to the bath and bedrooms. The bedroom closets must be rearranged to allow for these changes. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] [39] Prepared by R. A. Deal and W. W. DeNeff for the department of agricultural engineering, State College of Washington. PLAN 6509,[40] FOR THE SOUTH Floor areas: Superstructure, 525 square feet. Porches and steps, 90 square feet. [Illustration: COMPLETED HOUSE] [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN] Plans 6509 and 6510, for the South and the Middle West, respectively, are low-cost houses for families that need only one bedroom. The kitchens are well-arranged and have good storage space. Closet space also is ample for houses of this size. A storage and workroom, as shown in plan 6510, is a good feature for the North but is not so much needed in the South, where mild weather permits doing much housework outdoors. The living room fireplace and kitchen range should heat house 6509 comfortably under ordinary southern conditions, but in the North arrangements should be made for a stove or circulator heater as in plan 6510. [40] Prepared by W. C. Breithaupt and H. W. Dearing for the department of agricultural engineering, Alabama Polytechnic Institute. PLAN 6510,[41] FOR THE MIDDLE WEST Floor areas: Superstructure, 740 square feet. Porches and steps, 60 square feet. [Illustration: FLOOR PLAN AND COMPLETED HOUSE] [41] Prepared by H. J. McKee and Arthur Wupper for the department of agricultural engineering, University of Illinois. * * * * * U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1934 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D.C. Price 10 cents * * * * * Transcriber Notes All illustration were move so that paragraphs were not split. All plan footnotes were moved to the end of that plan. All plan illustrations were captioned and standardized to ALL CAPS. 
56331	----	Transcriber's Note All variant spelling, variable hyphenation and variable capitalisation have been retained. Italics are represented by underscores. The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature THE HISTORICAL GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS London: FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, MANAGER [Illustration] Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: St Benet's, Cambridge: west tower from N.W.] THE HISTORICAL GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON M.A., F.S.A. Cambridge: at the University Press 1911 Cambridge: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_ PREFACE This small book is intended to be a companion and complement to the writer's book in the same series on _The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church_. In that book the growth of the ground plan is treated with necessarily scanty reference to the circumstances to which, directly or indirectly, that growth is due. Some attempt is made in the present volume to supply an account of the historical conditions amid which our parish churches were built, to say something of the builders, and to remove the popular idea, still current even among educated people, that our architecture is mainly due to the profuse benefactions of the religious orders. A special chapter on chantry foundations, which played so large a part in the life of the later middle ages, follows the general historical chapter. The western tower, the porch, and the chancel are then described with more fulness than was possible in the description of the ground plan; and the decoration and furniture of the various parts of the church are treated in the closing chapter. The writer returns thanks for much help to his wife, to whom a sketch and the plans in the book, except that of Burford, are due; to the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A., and to the Rev. R. M. Serjeantson, M.A., F.S.A., who have read through his proofs, and provided him with many useful suggestions; to the editor of the _Archaeological Journal_, for the use of the plan of Burford church; and to Messrs C. C. Hodges, J. P. Gibson, F.S.A., E. Kennerell, and A. J. Loughton, for the loan of photographs. A. H. T. _April, 1911._ CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARISH CHURCH SECTION PAGE 1. Early parish churches in England 1 2. The monastic missionary settlements: church-building on private estates 3 3. The Danish invasions and the monastic revival 5 4. German influence on pre-Conquest architecture 6 5. Influence of the Normans on the architecture of parish churches 7 6. The parish church at the Norman conquest 10 7. Appropriation of churches to monasteries: ordination of vicarages 11 8. Relation of monastic owners to the fabrics of churches 13 9. The builders of medieval parish churches 15 10. The parish church and its rectors 17 11. Disadvantages of pluralism and litigation 18 12. Growth of the chantry system 20 13. Chantry chapels at Beckingham, Lincolnshire 21 14. Summary 22 CHAPTER II THE CHANTRY CHAPEL IN THE PARISH CHURCH 15. Chantries and colleges of chantry priests 24 16. Foundation of chantry colleges 27 17. Parochial chapels 29 18. Religious and trade guilds 30 19, 20. The chantry chapel: its influence on the church plan 33 21. Chancels of collegiate churches 37 22. St John Baptist's, Cirencester 39 23. Chesterfield and Scarborough; charnel chapels 41 24. Burford church, Oxon 42 25. St Michael's and Holy Trinity, Coventry 45 26. Importance of the work of lay benefactors 48 CHAPTER III THE TOWER, THE PORCH, AND THE CHANCEL 27. Subject of the chapter 51 28. The western tower before the Conquest 53 29. Survival of the older type of tower after the Conquest 56 30. Architectural development of the tower 59 31. The spire 60 32. The tower of the later middle ages: its relation to the clerestory of the nave 62 33. Western doorways and porches 65 34. Side doorways of the church 67 35. The porch: altars in porches 68 36. Chambers above porches 71 37. Altars in towers: habitations in connexion with churches 73 38. Variety of position of the tower 75 39. The chancel arch 76 40. Enlargement of the chancel and architectural treatment 78 41. Fourteenth century chancels in Yorkshire and the northern midlands 80 42. Decline of chancel building in the fifteenth century: the laity and the nave 85 43. Sacristies 88 44. Squints, priests' doors, low side windows 90 45. Crypts and bone-holes 95 CHAPTER IV THE FURNITURE OF A MEDIEVAL PARISH CHURCH: CONCLUSION 46. Remains of medieval decorations 98 47. Mural paintings 98 48. Stained glass 102 49. Coloured furniture of stone and wood 105 50. Furniture of the nave and aisles: font and benches 106 51. Chapels in aisles 109 52. Pulpits, galleries, etc. 110 53. The rood screen 112 54. The rood loft and beam 116 55. Quire stalls and lectern 117 56. Levels of the chancel 119 57. The altar and its furniture 120 58. Piscina, sedilia, and almeries 122 59. The Easter sepulchre 124 60. Exceptional furniture 128 61. Parish churches after the Reformation 129 62. Later parish churches 130 63. Post-reformation work and modern restoration 131 Bibliography 134 Index 137 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS St Benet's, Cambridge: west tower from N.W. _Frontispiece_ PAGE Sketch of Hallaton, chantry chapel in S. aisle 25 Plan of Cirencester Church 40 Plan of Burford Church 43 Plan of St Michael's Church, Coventry 46 Plan of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry 47 Norton, Co. Durham: Saxon central tower, with transept 52 Carlton-in-Lindrick, Notts: west tower 57 Tickhill, Yorkshire: general view from S.E., shewing clerestory, western tower and projecting eastern chapel 63 St Mary's, Beverley: south porch 69 Cirencester: south porch 72 Patrington: north side of chancel and vestry 83 Walpole St Peter: from N.E. 86 Wensley: chancel, with low side window, from S.E. 91 St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol: from N.E. 95 Patrington: interior, looking across nave from S. transept 99 Well, Yorkshire: font cover 107 Banwell, Somerset: rood screen 113 Hawton, Notts: Easter sepulchre 125 CHAPTER I THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARISH CHURCH § 1. The early history of the English parish church is obscure, owing to the fact that architectural remains of the earliest fabrics are somewhat scanty, and that their actual date still affords ground for dispute. The episcopal constitution of the Romano-British church is not fully known; but it is probable that, as in Gaul, every considerable centre of population possessed within its walls a church, which followed the 'basilican' arrangement common to the Christian churches of the Roman empire. But while, on the continent of Europe, the ecclesiastical history of the chief provincial capitals remained unbroken, and the great cathedrals of the middle ages rose upon sites which had been, from the establishment of Christianity in the empire, the centres of the religious life of Roman cities, the continuous history of church-building in England was broken by the relapse into heathenism which followed the victorious invasions of the Saxons. The history of church architecture begins again with the coming of St Augustine in 597 A.D. Of churches which may reasonably be said to have been built as an immediate result of his mission, there are several remains in Kent; and the famous church of St Martin at Canterbury is probably in large part the building which he and his companions used for their first services. There is more than one theory as to the original extent of the church; but there can be little doubt that the western part of the chancel, the south wall of which is built of Roman brick, is of Augustine's time. Bede tells us that Augustine found an earlier church, built during the Roman occupation, on this site or on a site closely corresponding to it. It is safe to assume that he repaired this building, and spared all that he could of its materials. Apart from the Kentish churches there remains, on the remote part of the Essex coast, a building known as St Peter's on the Wall, which appears to be connected architecturally with the Kentish group. Its history cannot be traced back earlier than about 653 A.D., when St Cedd was sent from Northumbria to preach to the East Saxons. One of his two chief missionary centres was the Roman city of Othona, then known as Ythanceaster, at the mouth of the Blackwater. Here he ordained and baptized: he also, says Bede, built churches in several places. St Peter's on the Wall, now long disused, stands on the site of the eastern gateway of Othona, and is largely built of re-used Roman material. It presents difficulties of site and plan which forbid us to connect it positively with St Cedd; but there is a high probability that it is his church, while, in point of plan, it is too closely allied to the Kentish group to admit of a doubt as to its connexion with those churches. The actual way in which the connexion came about is, however, a difficult problem to solve. § 2. There is much uncertainty with regard to the chronology of pre-Conquest architecture in England. From the actual masonry of the buildings it is difficult to gather much information. Saxon builders shewed little architectural skill: their methods were unprogressive; and the chief criterion by which we may estimate any degree of progress in their work is found in their efforts to develop the ground plan of their churches. The course of architectural evolution between the coming of St Augustine and the Norman conquest suffered more than one serious check. The later part of the seventh century, the age of Wilfrid and archbishop Theodore, was an epoch during which ecclesiastical art flourished. It is now that we arrive at the beginning of the history of the parish church as distinguished from the monastic missionary settlement of early Saxon times. The churches which Augustine and his companions had founded at Canterbury and Rochester were churches of monasteries, established as missionary centres in a heathen kingdom. The work of evangelisation was carried on for a century afterwards by the agency of monastic communities. The churches of Benedict Biscop at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, Wilfrid's churches at Hexham and Ripon, the Mercian churches of Peterborough and Brixworth, were all churches of monks. But, as Christianity grew in the Saxon kingdoms, churches were naturally multiplied. Wilfrid himself was a large land-owner in Mercia, and may be credited with the building of churches upon his lands: the foundation of the monastery of Brixworth and the church of Barnack may be attributed to his influence. His example would be followed by others; and we shall not be far wrong if we look upon the private estate of Saxon times as identical with the early parish. Owners of large estates built churches upon their property; and undoubtedly the growth of church-building on private lands led to that organisation of the ecclesiastical system in England, which was the great work of Theodore's episcopate. During this period, the church plan was founded upon a compromise; but continental influence, if modified by contact with Celtic traditions, was strong; and this influence came from Italy through the channel of the Gallican church. § 3. When Wilfrid died in 709 A.D., the age of religious and artistic activity was already passing. The power of Northumbria was declining; and the record of the next hundred years is one of quarrels between the various tribal kings of Britain. At the end of the eighth century the Northmen appeared on the Northumbrian coast. Significant features of their activity were the destruction of the church of Lindisfarne and the sack of the monastery at Wearmouth. During the next fifty years, while the kingdom of Wessex was rising to the front place in English affairs, the incursions of the Danes became more constant. In 851 A.D. a Danish army took up its winter quarters in England. From Thanet and Sheppey the Northmen extended their ravages over the whole east coast. The army which defeated the East Anglian levies at Thetford in 870 marked its progress across Mercia and East Anglia by the destruction of monasteries, chief among them the abbey of Peterborough. During the next hundred years, under the constant pressure of Danish invasion, little or no church-building can have been done; and it is likely that, for a long time before 870, little progress had been made. In 958 or 959 Edgar the Peaceable succeeded to the throne of Wessex and became master of the whole of England. During his reign, which lasted till 975, the great ecclesiastics who rose to influence at his court, Dunstan, Oswald and Ethelwold, busied themselves with the re-establishment of monasticism in England, and the rebuilding of churches. The activity of Oswald in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, of Ethelwold at Winchester, Ely and Peterborough, shews how widespread was the area of the destruction wrought by the Danes. This period of revival lasted until the beginning of the eleventh century. The Danish conquest under the heathen Swegen brought more destruction with it, and although Cnut restored the churches which his father had destroyed, it was probably not until the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042 that another era of church-building began in earnest. § 4. During the religious revival under Dunstan and his fellow prelates, the reformers looked once more to the continent for inspiration. Gaul, however, was no longer a possible source. Between England and the French kingdom which was rising on the ruins of the Neustrian monarchy, lay the Danelaw of Gaul, the province of Normandy. Access to the old current of religious tradition, denied on that side, was unimpeded on the side of the Low Countries and Germany, where, along the Rhine, the Austrasian kingdom still pursued its existence under the powerful sway of the Saxon emperors who had superseded the house of Charles the Great. It was from monasteries in this district that the restoration of the religious life in England was most powerfully helped; and with such help, came inevitably architectural influence. If we are to look anywhere for the immediate origin of such well-known features of pre-Conquest architectural detail as "long-and-short" work or strip-work, it is to be found in the early religious buildings of the Rhine provinces. Their ultimate origin was, no doubt, Italian; but during this period, English building indicates no such close communication with original sources as existed during the period of Gallo-Roman influence. The era of German influence lasted but a short time, and examples of it, though familiar from the peculiar details of their masonry, are comparatively few. The builders of the period immediately preceding the Conquest seem to have been thrown more upon their own resources, and to have abandoned German details gradually in favour of a more simple fashion of building. Certain German features, however, which had been imperfectly developed during the period of revival, persisted in their work; and the closest parallels to the English towers of the eleventh century, so common in Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire, are to be seen in western Germany, and in that part of Italy where German influence was most powerful. § 5. The development of Norman architecture in England was due to the increasing skill in construction which followed the Conquest. For the building of the larger churches, foreign prelates relied on the help of Norman masons, trained in artistic methods far in advance of those which Saxon builders had learned to use. The great aisled churches of the monasteries, Durham, Winchester, Norwich, or Gloucester, planned and built under the superintendence of men who were in close touch with the contemporary art of Normandy, led the way, and provided patterns of architecture which could not fail to exercise an influence upon the smaller churches of the country. In the early parish churches of the Norman period, we cannot expect to find this influence strongly marked. Local masons had little opportunity of acquaintance with the more advanced craftsmanship of the Normans until some large cathedral or abbey church rose in their neighbourhood, and supplied them with a model. Even then their imitation would be rough and uncertain, until practice made perfect their first attempts. The model would also provide them with a plan far beyond the requirements of a parish church, where a single priest served a limited congregation. There was no need of the provision of a large quire or of a number of separate altars: the ritual necessaries were all of the simplest kind. The old plan therefore sufficed in most instances. It is in the masonry that we notice the earliest introduction of modifications and improvements. The thin Saxon walling gives place to more massive construction: walls composed of a rubble core with facings of dressed stone take the place of the rubble masonry with through-stone quoins and dressings of the later Saxon period. The recessing of the arch, with shafts in its jambs, becomes gradually understood: the beginnings of the practice were rough and unintelligent, and it was not without difficulty that the local builder learned the structural use of jamb-shafts as supporting and corresponding to the orders of the arch above. Our country churches supply many instances of this faltering treatment of new motives. Here and there it is possible to trace the direct influence of some large Norman building on the work of the country mason. At Branston, four miles south-east of Lincoln, the western tower of the church belongs to the class which is common in the neighbourhood--a class whose origin is earlier than the introduction of Norman influence. Its masonry has several characteristics of the type known as Saxon. But the high arch of its western doorway, and the small arcades which have been introduced, on either side of the doorway, in the face of the tower, shew very clearly that its builder had seen Norman work, and was attempting, roughly, but not without success, to copy it. Further, the arch of its doorway, and the tall shafts, with crocketed capitals, which support it, are beyond doubt closely imitated from the lower arches of the Norman west front of Lincoln minster. As the Norman church at Lincoln was consecrated in 1092, the tower at Branston can hardly be earlier than that date, and may be several years later. Such examples as this shew that there is still much to discover with regard to the chronology of the later Saxon architecture, and that the grasp of new methods by native builders was acquired very gradually. § 6. We know, from the indications with respect to certain counties supplied by Domesday Book, that in 1086 the number of parish churches in England corresponded closely to the number which existed until the comparatively modern sub-division of parishes. Domesday was not intended to be a directory or clergy list; and the return of the churches existing upon manors depended upon the view which its individual compilers took of their duties. We have seen that the earliest English churches were monastic centres of missionary influence, built on land granted by wealthy converts to Christianity. The revival at the end of the tenth century was also monastic. But, after the age of Dunstan, the monastic ideal suffered an eclipse. The parish churches of the later Saxon age, although many of them had been granted to, and remained the property of monasteries, were for the most part, if not entirely, served by secular priests who were under no monastic obligation. The parish was co-extensive, so far as we can tell, with the estate of the Saxon landlord: in most cases the church was his property, the appointment of the priest lay in his hands, and the church and its advowson passed to the Norman land-owner who superseded him. § 7. With the Norman conquest came a great revival of monastic life. The conquerors founded and heaped benefactions on new monasteries, or enlarged the possessions of Norman abbeys by granting them new estates in England. Many manors and more churches thus became the property of religious houses; and, where the property of a benefactor was widely scattered, a monastery might acquire a number of churches in many different counties. Thus the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, in west Yorkshire, became the property of the abbey of West Dereham, in Norfolk; while a moiety of the tithes of Gisburn, in the same neighbourhood, belonged to the nuns of Stainfield, near Lincoln. These gifts, in the first instance, depended entirely on the free will of pious benefactors. The monasteries were naturally expected to present suitable priests to the churches; but this was left to their discretion. The logical result of these unconditional benefactions was that, as time went on, many churches were totally appropriated by monasteries: the income from the tithes, which should have served for the support of parish priests, was absorbed by the religious proprietors. Bishops recognised the evil; and towards the beginning of the thirteenth century steps were taken to check the control of monasteries over their subject churches. Archbishop Geoffrey Plantagenet in 1205 allowed the abbey of West Dereham to appropriate the fruits of the church of Kirkby in Malhamdale, but required them to reserve a stipend of ten marks yearly for a vicar. Such ordinations of vicarages became common within the next few years; and the great feature of the episcopate of Hugh of Wells, bishop of Lincoln 1209-35, was the provision of vicars, not monks, but secular priests with sufficient stipends, in the appropriated churches of his huge diocese. The monastery was usually allowed to take the greater tithes, _i.e._ the tithes of corn, for itself, the smaller tithes, or a sum in commutation of them, being reserved to the vicar. The study of episcopal registers shews that these provisions were sometimes evaded; and anyone who has made out lists of vicars of appropriated churches knows that frequently long gaps occur, in which it is probable that the monastery allowed the presentation to lapse unchecked; but the ordination of vicarages was in great measure a cure for the evil. However, during the thirteenth century, laymen still continued to present religious bodies with large gifts of property. The inroads which these benefactions began to make upon estates held in chief of the king were a menace to royal power. In order to provide a regular restraint upon the growth of ecclesiastical property, the statute of mortmain was passed in 1279. As a consequence of this measure, any man who wished to alienate land or churches to a religious corporation, was required to apply for royal letters patent. If it were found by inquisition that the property could be alienated without prejudice to the king or the lord from whom the fee was immediately held, the licence was granted; and, if a church formed part of the property, the religious corporation was allowed to appropriate it by the grant of a further licence, the ordination of a vicarage being left to the decree of the bishop. It need hardly be said that a very large number of churches remained all through the middle ages in the hands of private patrons, and that by no means all churches granted to monasteries were appropriated by them. Of the arrangements for these unappropriated rectories more will be said later. The connexion of the parish churches with the monasteries is of great importance, however, for our present purpose. § 8. As so many churches belonged to monasteries, it is constantly assumed that the monasteries, especially during Norman times, provided parish churches at their own expense. Thus the splendid series of churches in south Lincolnshire, on the road from Sutton Bridge to Spalding, is said, without historical foundation, to have been produced by rivalry in church-building between Croyland abbey and other monasteries. It is true that, as at Spalding in 1284, the religious house would probably contribute a certain amount to the building or rebuilding of an appropriated church, but that amount would be limited, and the parishioners would be left to provide the rest according to their means. When vicarages were ordained, the repair of the chancel, the rector's peculiar property, was usually left to the monastery as rector; but we often find that a special stipulation was made by which part of the repairs even of this portion of the church devolved upon the vicar, and that sometimes his stipend was so arranged as to free the monastery of this obligation altogether. A monastery naturally regarded the fruits of a church as an addition to its own income. The most that could be expected of it would be that it would employ a reasonable part of the profits in keeping the fabric in order. If the monastery owned the manor as well as the advowson, it probably, and here and there unmistakably, did more for the fabric of the parish church. But these fabrics were in most cases existing when the monasteries took seisin of the advowsons of the churches in question. When appropriation followed, the enrichment of the monastery, not the enlargement of the building, was the end in view; and the plea made by the monastery in dealing with the bishop over appropriations, was invariably one of poverty. When a church, then, was rebuilt or enlarged, the money came for the most part from parishioners, the monastery supplying its proportion, not without a view to strict economy. § 9. Further, the builders were generally, it may be assumed, local masons. We have seen an indication of this at Branston, where the builder grafted imitative detail in a new style upon his own old-fashioned work. The splendid development of many twelfth century parish churches is no argument against their local origin. Architectural enthusiasm in the middle ages was a possession of the people generally: it was not confined to a limited and privileged body. The large monastery or cathedral churches in every neighbourhood were sources of inspiration to the builders of the parish churches: details were copied, and methods of construction were learned from them, and the structural progress which took place in them had a constant influence upon the architectural improvement of the less important buildings. Here and there, perhaps, a mason, who had taken part in the building of one of the greater churches, would be called into consultation for the design of a parish church; and this, as years went by, would become more common. It should be noted that in the middle ages the builder was not a mere instrument to carry out the designs of an architect. He himself, the master mason of the work, was the architect. His training lay, not in the draughtsmanship of an architect's office, but in practical working with mallet and chisel. Thus, during at any rate the earlier part of the middle ages, design was in no small degree a matter of instinct. Architecture was a popular, democratic art, in which the instinctive faculties became trained to a high pitch. The individual mason was allowed free play for his talent; and the result was that constant variety of design and detail, that continual movement and progress, those forward steps or that conservative hesitation in the art of different districts, which are the eternal attraction of medieval architecture. One feature of the instinctive faculty of design in the builder was that he did much of his work by eye alone. He must have made some rough measurements for the setting out of his buildings; but he was not always provided with a plan or elevations. Even in our larger churches, his work was sometimes left to his own judgment. The western transept at Lincoln, for example, can hardly have been built with much forethought. Each set of masons employed upon it seems to have been left to its own devices: accurate spacing was entirely neglected, and the connexion between the different parts of the design was evidently a matter of guess-work, which led to curious irregularities in the elevation. In this striking instance, the builders were doubtless hampered by having to build their new transept round older buildings, which were not taken down until their work was well advanced; and the encumbered site alone may account for some bewilderment. § 10. Parish churches in England may be divided, for historical purposes, into four classes. (1) In some monastic churches, as in the Benedictine priory of Selby and the Augustinian priory of Bridlington, the parochial altar was in the nave of the church, west of the rood screen, and was served by a vicar or a curate, who was responsible for the spiritual welfare of the parish. (2) In collegiate churches a similar arrangement existed; but in the majority of such cases the dean or warden of the college was regarded as the parson of the parish, and had the cure of souls. (3) Of parish churches appropriated to monasteries, we have spoken already. (4) There remains the very large number of unappropriated parish churches, in which the rector or parson was directly responsible for the cure of souls. The duties of the rector were regarded in the middle ages with considerable latitude. Nothing was more usual than for a man of good family, or one whose clerkly talents made him a constant attendant on the king or the great officers of state, to obtain a number of benefices which provided him with a necessary income. Such parsons were naturally non-resident: as often as not, they had not proceeded to full orders. The Patent Rolls are full of grants of benefices to persons engaged in the work of the royal chancery or exchequer; while the papal registers in the Vatican library contain thousands of dispensations by which pluralists were enabled to hold several benefices at a time, to acquire benefices up to a stated value, or to defer their ordination to the priesthood. Popes and bishops alike kept a careful watch on the attempt to obtain additional benefices without licence; but it is quite obvious that little discrimination could be exercised, and that dispensations became matters of form, for which the applicant, backed by a request from the king or some magnate, made a payment in money. Pluralism was further increased by the pope's claim to reserve certain benefices on a vacancy, and provide incumbents to them. This claim, which originally was intended to prevent patrons from keeping benefices vacant and appropriating their fruits, led to the enactment of the statute of provisors in 1351. Papal provisions, though nominally forbidden, were not stopped by this law, but became subject to regulation. § 11. To the medieval mind, the habit of a non-resident rector, holding several churches in plurality, was a matter of course, which cannot be judged by the moral standard of our own day. It must be regarded simply as a fact, not as an abuse. The rector was required to see that his churches were properly served, and probably, like his successors after the Reformation, he paid a curate to do his work in each of his churches. In some cases, like monastic impropriators, he made an arrangement by which a vicar was provided with a fixed stipend; and now and then a vicar was properly instituted by the bishop at his presentation. This was the regular course of procedure in parish churches attached to prebends in cathedral and collegiate churches, which were held for the most part by king's clerks, and often by foreigners appointed by the pope. But it is clear that, where a man held ten or twelve churches at once, they might be served very irregularly. Again, no form of litigation in the middle ages was so common as that between two or more claimants of an advowson. The sub-division of the ownership of a manor might and did constantly lead to a dispute between rival patrons for the presentation to a living. Thus, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, the church of Adlingfleet in Yorkshire became the subject of a long law-suit between two separate patrons, the archbishop of York, and their presentees, which was protracted for nearly thirty years before the royal and papal courts. The candidates, all non-residents, strove to obstruct each other. In the parish itself they made attempts to defend their rights by force, and it is difficult to see how, during this period of strife, the cure of souls could have been adequately served. Churches appropriated to monasteries were more fortunate; for they, in most instances, had the advantage of a resident vicar, and the appropriation removed disputes as to the patronage. § 12. Pluralism and litigation, in themselves, had no noticeable effect on architectural development. But they led to a desire, on the part of the parishioners, for resident clergy with an endowment independent of the caprices of lay patrons. And this led to the establishment of chantry priests at the altars of churches, which had a powerful effect upon the architectural growth of the churches in which they served. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, and from that time to the Reformation, the foundation of chantries in parish churches became a common thing. Zeal for the foundation of monasteries had spent itself. Lay benefactors acquired the habit of alienating land, not to some religious house, but to one or more priests who, as a condition of the gift, should say mass daily at one of the altars of a parish church for the good estate of the giver and other persons named by him, and for their souls after death. These endowments of services were known as chantries, and were intended to continue for ever. Many chantries were founded in cathedral and monastery churches; but, as time went on, the church of the parish in which the benefactor lived was more and more frequently chosen as their site. That this had been always the custom is probable; but it was a custom which certainly was not universal until the later middle ages. From the time of the enactment of the statute of mortmain, we possess a series of royal licences for the foundation of chantries and gifts of land to chantry priests, which are invaluable in tracing the history of the English parish church. A chantry, however, is a service, not the building in which it is held. It might be founded at the high altar of a church, but more usually was connected with one of the lesser altars. It was natural, however, that a founder would be willing to do something for the repair of the part of the church in which his chantry was held. Repair took the form of enlargement and rebuilding; and while special chantry chapels were sometimes built as excrescences from the main body of the church, the usual building which was done in connexion with a chantry implied the widening or addition of an aisle. § 13. A good concrete example of this procedure is the church of Beckingham, five miles east of Newark-on-Trent, a building of various periods, but chiefly of the early part of the thirteenth century. The aisles of the nave are wide, and belong, in their present condition, to the fourteenth century. At the end of each are distinct indications of the former presence of an altar. The parson of Beckingham in the second quarter of the fourteenth century was Thomas Sibthorpe, a man of some substance, and one of the royal clerks. His benefactions to the church of his native village of Sibthorpe and to Beckingham involved him in some litigation, ample records of which are to be found in the Patent Rolls. In 1332 he obtained a licence to found a chantry in the chapel of St Mary, in the north part of Beckingham church, and by the end of 1347, he built the chapel of St Anne, on the south side of the church. Both the existing chapels agree with one another in date; and we may safely infer that Sibthorpe probably widened, and certainly rebuilt both the aisles between 1332 and 1347. He evidently intended his chapel of St Mary to be of some importance, as the chantry priest was called the warden, and was probably intended to be the head of a small college, such as existed at Sibthorpe. Of a chantry in the chapel of St Anne we know nothing: Sibthorpe endowed two candles to be burned there at certain times. An interesting feature of this fourteenth century rebuilding is that the north and south doorways, both of late twelfth century work, were removed to the new walls. § 14. The growth of chantry foundations formed the most remarkable feature of the lay activity of the later middle ages, and is treated in the next chapter with a view to its influence on architectural progress. We may sum up the influence of the historical facts already indicated upon the fabric of the parish church in the following conclusions: (1) The origin of the parish church was the spiritual need of the private estate. (2) The lord of the manor was the founder and provided the fabric. (3) The work of the fabric was entrusted to local masons. (4) In the division of expense, the rector became responsible for the chancel and the altar from which he received his dues. (5) The parishioners were responsible for the fabric of the nave. (6) In churches appropriated to monasteries, the chancel was the only part of the fabric for which the monastery was responsible, and a part of its responsibility was usually laid upon the vicar. (7) Where the monastery was lord of the manor, it would take its share of the building and up-keep of the church with the other parishioners. We shall see in a later chapter some concrete instances of manorial and monastic influence at work upon the structure of the church. CHAPTER II THE CHANTRY CHAPEL IN THE PARISH CHURCH § 15. The chantry and the guild chapel had so important an influence on the plan of the parish church, and especially of the larger church, that they deserve further consideration, in company with the anomalies of plan which are their result. Chantries increased in number during the fourteenth century, and, from the period of the Black Death to the Reformation, had an ever growing importance. At Grantham, where it is clear that the enlargement of the church was due to the increase of chantries, three were founded in 1349, two of them at altars inside the church. In 1392 two new chantries were founded, at the altars of Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, and the maintenance of chantries at the altars of St Mary and St John Baptist was increased by new benefactions. Thus, to large churches, a large staff of priests became attached. Although Grantham was never incorporated as a collegiate church, the body of clergy which served it seem to have had common services in quire together, and to have been known as the 'college.' The chantry priests of a large church would benefit from incorporation in the ordinary course of things, and it very often happened that they were formed into a regular college, or that provisions were made affecting their common life. St William's college at York was founded for the chantry priests of the minster in 1461 by archbishop Neville and his brother, the king-maker. In 1482-3 archbishop Rotherham founded his college of Jesus at Rotherham, to which, as a secondary provision of the foundation, the chantry priests already existing in the church were to be attached. Rotherham recognised that a large body of individual priests, whose duties for the day were finished with their daily mass, would be open to temptation if they were allowed to choose their own lodgings as they liked; and Thomas Kent, whose executors in 1481 founded a 'perpetual commonalty' of the seven chantry priests of St James Garlickhithe in the city of London, expressed his opinion that these chaplains 'conversed among laymen and wandered about, rather than dwelt among clerks, as was decent.' Not infrequently, a benefactor who wished to found a chantry of more than one chaplain, acquired the advowson of the church in which it was to be founded, and secured its appropriation to his chaplains, who held it in perpetuity, and were incorporated as a college. This was the case with the college of Sibthorpe. In 1333 Sir John Heslerton, patron of the church of Lowthorpe in east Yorkshire, founded a college of six priests in the church, whose duties were set forth in detail by archbishop Melton in his ordinance for the new college, which included the appropriation of the church to it. Sir John represented to the archbishop that the fruits of the living would serve for the maintenance of more than one parson, but that there were few ministers there. 'Many persons there,' he said, 'who are attached to the worship of the Holy Trinity and St Mary, and are desirous of daily service in their honour and for the departed, grow lukewarm because of the frequent absence of anyone to celebrate in the church, when their minister is engaged in the visitation of the sick, or in discharge of the other duties of his office.' Six chantries were founded, with a priest to each, known as the chantries of the Trinity, St Mary, the archbishop, the chapter, the founder, and the patron. The head of the college was known as the rector. He and the six chaplains had a common habitation in the rectory. Daily they were to assemble in the church, with the three clerks attached to the college, one of whom at least was to be a deacon, and chant the canonical services. The chaplains were obliged to wear a common dress of black or nearly dark cloth with black surcoats. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Hallaton, Leicestershire: chapel in S. aisle.] § 16. The great advantage of colleges of chantry priests was that they ensured a constantly resident ministry in the parish. This, in days when rectors were frequently non-residents or pluralists, whose real business lay in attending on the king in the chancery or exchequer, was a most desirable circumstance. But it is also quite easy to see that, in a parish like Lowthorpe, a small country village between Bridlington and Driffield, if there were too few ministers before the foundation of the college, there probably were too many after. Their duty, as enunciated by the founder, was to celebrate divine service for the departed; and this was a duty which, sacred though it was, left those who were bound by it a fair margin of leisure. Also, in some churches, the chantry foundations were on a very large scale. The college of Cotterstock in Northants was founded in 1337 for a provost and twelve chaplains. In 1411 the college of Fotheringhay was founded, only two miles away, for a master, twelve chaplains, eight clerks, and thirteen choristers. Of the three chantry colleges in Shropshire, Battlefield was founded at first for a master and seven chaplains, to pray for the dead who fell at the battle of Shrewsbury; Tong was founded in 1410 for a warden and four chaplains; Newport was enlarged from a chantry of two chaplains, founded in 1432, to a college of a warden and four chaplains in 1442. Other colleges which may be cited out of many were Haccombe in Devon, founded in 1335 for an arch-priest and five chaplains; Bunbury in Cheshire, founded in 1386-7 for a master and six chaplains; Clovelly in Devon, founded in 1387-8 for a warden and six chaplains; Pleshy in Essex, founded in 1393-4 for a master or warden, eight chaplains, two clerks, and two choristers; Higham Ferrers in Northants, founded in 1425 for a master or warden, seven chaplains, four clerks, and six choristers; Tattershall in Lincolnshire, founded in 1439 for a master or warden, six chaplains, six secular clerks, and six choristers, with thirteen almspeople; and Middleham in Yorkshire, founded in 1477-8 for a dean, six chaplains, four clerks, six choristers, and one secular clerk. All these foundations bore a distinct resemblance to the ordinary collegiate bodies, such as those of the cathedrals, or of Wolverhampton, Tamworth, Bridgnorth, or Westbury-on-Trym. But, while the holders of prebends in collegiate churches were not necessarily, and indeed were seldom, resident, the fellows or chaplains of chantry colleges were obliged to be always on the spot. Nor were these chantries of more than one priest founded merely in parish churches. Lords of manors founded chantries on their estates: there was a college of several chantry priests at the Beauchamp castle of Elmley in Worcestershire, for example. Sir Robert Umfraville, who founded in 1429 a chantry of a master and a chaplain in the chapel of his manor house at Farnacres, near Gateshead, strictly bound down the incumbents to their religious duties, forbidding them to carry on any temporal business as bailiffs or estate agents, on the ground that _dum colitur Martha, expellitur Maria_. § 17. The foundation of ordinary chantries more than kept pace with the foundation of chantry colleges. Individual benefactors sought to secure their own salvation and that of their relations, by endowing an altar in their parish church. In parishes where services were few, the parishioners often clubbed together for the support of a stipendiary service, paid out of property of which they were feoffees. The chaplain whose services were thus secured would be of great use to the incumbent of a large parish, especially at seasons when there were many communicants, and many confessions had to be heard. Also, in distant parts of large parishes, separated from the mother church by several miles, or by foul roads and flooded streams in winter, chantry priests were provided by individual or collective benefactions to serve the altars of parochial chapels. In the great parishes of west Yorkshire, Burnsall, Aysgarth, or Grinton, each including a vast tract of dale and fell, parochial chapels, subject to the mother church, had existed from a very early period. Such chapels became more numerous as the middle ages advanced; and the famous chapel of South Skirlaugh, between Hull and Hornsea, so often quoted as a perfect example of late Gothic work, was one of these subordinate foundations. It may also be noted that two of the largest parish churches of the same neighbourhood, St Augustine's at Hedon and Holy Trinity at Hull, were originally chapels to Preston-in-Holderness and Hessle. At Boughton in Northants, owing to a shifting of the population, a chapel in the parish became the parish church. Obviously, if the larger churches were to be properly served, they must depend in no small measure on the goodwill of the parishioners. § 18. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the parishioners came forward with benefactions as they never had done before. The rich wool stapler of Grantham, Newark, or Boston, returned thanks for his wealth by founding a chantry in his church or one of its chapels. With the rise of the commercial class, the churches of East Anglia were rebuilt and transformed. Wealthy trade guilds at York, Boston, Shrewsbury, or Coventry, maintained their own chaplains in the various parish churches. Religious guilds or fraternities, composed both of men and women, obtained royal licence for incorporation, and established their chantries. Such was the Palmers' guild at Ludlow, which received its first royal charter in 1284, and maintained a large body of chantry priests, incorporated as a college, in the parish church. These religious guilds existed for the purpose of mutual assistance and works of charity. The guilds of St Mary and Corpus Christi in Cambridge united together in one corporation, and founded Corpus Christi college in 1352. In 1392 the guild of St Mary at Stamford had licence to devote land to the maintenance of certain chantry priests in St Mary's at the Bridge. In the same year, two guilds at Coventry were united under the name of the guild of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, and St John the Baptist, and founded a college of chaplains in St John's chapel at Bablake. Still in 1392, the guild of the Holy Cross at Birmingham was founded, with its chaplains in St Martin's; and the guilds of St Mary and of Jesus Christ and the Holy Cross in the parish church of Chesterfield. To 1393 belongs the foundation of the guild of the Holy Trinity at Spalding, with a chaplain at the Trinity altar in the parish church. In the reign of Henry IV the refounded guild of St Cross and St John the Baptist at Stratford-on-Avon had licence to find two or more chaplains in their parish church (1403); the guild of St Thomas of Canterbury, with one or two chaplains, was founded at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire (1405). Under Henry VI may be mentioned the guild of St Mary at Louth, with more than one chaplain, founded in 1446-7; the licence to the guild of the Holy Trinity at Nottingham, in the same year, to maintain two chaplains in St Mary's church; the guild of St Mary of Crediton, with a chaplain at the altar of St Peter, founded in 1448; the guilds of the Holy Trinity, with two chaplains, at Chipping Norton, and, with one or more chaplains, at Louth (1450); and the guild of St Mary, with two chaplains, at Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire (1452). In 1460-1, the twelve chaplains, supported by seven guilds, in All Saints, Northampton, were formed into a college. In the time of Edward IV the trade guilds became more active in establishing chantries; but the foundation of religious guilds went on with unabated zeal. A number were founded in the small market-towns of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire, with aid in more than one instance from the diocesan, Thomas Rotherham, then bishop of Lincoln--the fraternity of the Body of Jesus Christ at Leighton Buzzard (1473), the guilds of the Holy Trinity at Luton (1474) and Biggleswade (1474-5), a guild at Hitchin (1475), and the guild of St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr at Stony Stratford (1476). In 1480 was founded a guild at Thaxted in Essex, and in 1483-4 the fraternity of the Holy Cross at Abingdon. § 19. The names of most of these guilds, which were joined by royal and noble personages, are connected with churches of great beauty and importance, which owe their final perfection in no small degree to the benefactions of the brethren and sisters of the guilds. The chapel of Bablake, St John Baptist's church at Coventry, was a result of the incorporation of the guilds in 1392. The two guilds at Louth and Chesterfield left their mark on the churches in which they worshipped. The chancel, the aisles of the nave, the great porches, the west tower and spire, at Thaxted, belong to the epoch, if they are not altogether the direct result, of the foundation of the guild. Chantry chapels and guild chapels may exert their influence on the plan of the fabric, simply by providing it with a complete set of aisles. Of this type of plan, we already have seen an example at Beckingham. But these chapels often cause anomalies which are difficult to classify, and lead to some confusion of plan; and some instances of this character must now be given. In the first place, the chantry chapel is not confined to any definite part of the plan. In our cathedrals it is frequently an excrescence from an outer wall of the church, like the bishops' tomb chapels at Lincoln or Hereford, or it is a rectangular structure of stone, with elaborately traceried windows, cresting, and canopy work, like prince Arthur's chapel at Worcester, or the episcopal tombs at Winchester, set up within an arch of the nave or quire. Of these types we have examples in our parish churches: the first is illustrated, on a large scale, by Hall's chapel at Grantham; on a fair scale, by the chapels at Long Melford and Berkeley; and, on a rather smaller scale, by the chapels, now destroyed, of two masters of Peterhouse, on either side of Little St Mary's church at Cambridge. All these have small doorways and arches for table tombs between the church and the chapel. The chapel east of the south porch at Sherburn-in-Elmet in Yorkshire, has a tomb arch opening into the south aisle; but the entrance is in the east wall of the porch. Many examples of the second type must have existed in the larger churches of England: at Ludlow, for example, there were chantry chapels in the eastern arch of the south arcade, and in the two western arches of both arcades. We read of Sir John Pilkington's chantry, founded in 1475 at the altar of St Mary in the 'south arch' of the parish church at Wakefield: in 1478 the chantry of Roger Nowell was founded at the altar of St Peter in the 'north arch.' There are stone chantry chapels in the north and south arches of the chancel at Newark--the chantry chapel of Thomas Meyring (1500) on the north, and that of Robert Markham (1505) on the south. These chapels recall prior King's chapel at Bath abbey, the Warre chapel at Boxgrove priory, and other small independent structures, like some of the tomb chapels which form a ring round the apse at Tewkesbury. Most of these chapels beneath arches were no doubt covered, like prior Leishman's tomb at Hexham, with wooden canopies, which have now disappeared. At Burford in Oxfordshire, however, there is, in the east arch of the north arcade, a small chapel with a wooden tester and upright posts: the sides are panelled up to a certain height. The whole structure has been well restored and is still used. § 20. Some small chantry chapels form transeptal projections in unusual parts of the building: thus, at Sherburn-in-Elmet, St Botolph's, Cambridge, and Kewstoke, Somerset, such chapels project from the south wall of the nave next the porch. Indeed, the variety in the position of chantry chapels often invests the churches of the west of England with a charm which is not always possessed by more regular buildings. Churches like Beverstone in Gloucestershire, Croscombe in Somerset, and Sherston Magna in Wiltshire, are full of little surprises for anyone to whom variations in plan appeal. Perhaps the most attractive surprise of this kind is at Long Melford in Suffolk. On the south side of the chancel, opening out of the Martin chapel, is a vestry, which communicates with another building at right angles to it, behind the east wall of the chancel. From this building there is a doorway into the lady chapel, which thus stands detached from the body of the church. The chapel is a nearly square building, with three external gables: internally, there is a central square space, entirely surrounded by an aisle or ambulatory. At Boston there is a chantry chapel, forming a short extra aisle, west of the south porch; while at Witney, there is one west of the north porch. Sometimes, the whole of an aisle of the nave, east of the main entrance of the church, was screened off as a chantry chapel. There are instances of this at Croft in Yorkshire, Hungerton in Leicestershire, and Stratton Strawless in Norfolk. There are instances, again, in which, when a chantry chapel was placed at the end of an aisle, its separate character from the rest of the aisle was structurally defined. In Shropshire, at Alveley, Cleobury Mortimer, Stottesdon, and one or two other places, one or more chantry chapels have been formed by widening the eastern part of the aisles in which the altars were placed. § 21. Where chantry colleges have existed, the fact is by no means always obvious in the plan of the church. It is sometimes disclosed by the presence of stall-work of unusual richness in the chancel, as at Higham Ferrers; and sometimes, as in the same place, the altar in the main chancel may have been reserved for the services of the college, while another altar was provided for the ordinary parochial services. But it must be borne in mind that a chantry college was not a monastery. The church appropriated to the college was a parish church. Although a chaplain might be specially deputed to look after parochial services, the master, rector, warden, provost, arch-priest, or whatever his title might be, was in the position of a resident incumbent. Many splendid churches, now shorn of their chancels, recall the fact that the naves of monastic churches were frequently used for the services of the parish. This distinction doubtless extended to many chantry colleges, Arundel and Fotheringhay, for example. But the services of the college were not cut off, like the services of the monastery, from the outer world. The college of Lowthorpe was founded specifically for the benefit of devout parishioners who, before its foundation, could not get all the masses they wanted. The result is that the plan of the chantry church, as it may be called, differed little from that of the ordinary parish church. Sibthorpe and Cotterstock are normal churches, with fine chancels: the altars at which each of the three chaplains of Chaddesden, or the four of St Michael Penkivel, said his daily mass, are not confined to one part of the church, but are distributed throughout it. Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, which were originally colleges of clergy, were practically identical with chantry colleges, with the exception that their members were associated mainly for purposes of study and teaching. To many of them parish churches were appropriated, in which they held their services, and maintained their own parochial chaplain. St Michael's at Cambridge, appropriated to Michaelhouse, was rebuilt in the early part of the fourteenth century. It has been little altered, and the division into collegiate quire and parochial nave is clearly marked. There was a similar division in Little St Mary's, belonging to Peterhouse. In the fourteenth century the college began to rebuild the church on a large scale. The chancel was nearly completed, when the Black Death put a stop to the work. Later, an extra western bay was added to the chancel; and the aisleless church thus formed was divided by a screen into a collegiate and a parochial half. In 1446 Clare hall and Trinity hall added aisles to the chancel of St Edward's: these aisles were wider than the aisles of the nave, and also overlapped the nave by one bay. When Jesus college entered into possession of the nunnery of St Radegund, the priory church was shorn of the western end of the nave and of all its aisles. The college reserved the quire for its own services, while the parishioners of the old peculiar of the priory used the nave and transepts. The ante-chapel of Merton college chapel at Oxford was used till quite lately as the parish church of St John Baptist. § 22. No better instance of the complicating influence of chantry chapels on the plan of a parish church could be given than the church of St John Baptist at Cirencester. The oldest part of the present building is the chancel with its south chapel, which contain twelfth and early thirteenth century work, but are in the main the fruit of a later thirteenth century reconstruction. The north chapel, known as St Katharine's chapel, is a rather narrow aisle, communicating with the chancel by fourteenth century arches. North of this, again, there may have been a lady chapel on part of the site of the present one. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the aisles of the nave were much widened, the width taken for the new north aisle being about twice the width of St Katharine's chapel, and the new south aisle being rather wider than the south chapel of the chancel. The Trinity chapel was formed by adding to the nave an extra north aisle, about half as long as the adjacent aisle, from which it is divided by a stone screen. There had been an earlier altar of the Trinity in the church; for the licence granted to Robert Playn and others in 1382 to found a chantry of two chaplains in Cirencester church placed one at the altar of the Trinity, and the other at the altar of St Mary. In 1392 another chantry was founded in the lady chapel. But, in its present state, the lady chapel seems to belong to the later part of the fifteenth century, when it was probably much broadened, so as to overlap the east wall of the Trinity chapel. Both it and St Katharine's chapel open into the north aisle through four-centred arches: they open into one another by two arches pierced in the intermediate wall. Between these arches has been left a thin piece of wall, in which rectangular slits, commanding the altar of the lady chapel, have been cut. The plan thus includes two chapels north of the chancel, and another north of the nave, as well as the south chapel of the chancel. The rebuilding of the nave, with its splendid south porch, its smaller north porch, and its western tower, was not completed until early in the sixteenth century. The Jesus chapel was enclosed within screens at the south-east corner of the south aisle; and the roof of St Katharine's chapel was heightened, and provided with fan vaulting. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Plan of Cirencester Church.] § 23. The tendency of the chantry chapels at Cirencester is to group themselves at the east end of the church, the Trinity chapel forming an excrescence at the end of the north aisle which is nearest the chancel. At Chesterfield the high altar, below the great east window, was flanked by the guild chapel of our Lady on the south, and the chapel of St Katharine on the north. The guild chapel of the Holy Cross was east of the north transept: an apsidal chapel east of the south transept contained the altar of St George; while there were two chantry altars against the screens in the arches of the south transept. The four chantry chapels added to Scarborough church towards the end of the fourteenth century were built in a row at right angles to the south aisle, each with its own separate gable and pointed barrel vault. The chapel of St Nicholas had been added to the church somewhat earlier, by the building of an extra north aisle; a chantry was founded at St Nicholas' altar in 1390. We also meet at Scarborough, Great Yarmouth, and other places, with charnel chapels. That at Scarborough, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, was probably a separate building in the graveyard. Such external chapels were often built, although few remain to-day. Henry of Newark, archbishop of York 1298-9, founded about 1292, while he was dean of York, a chapel of St Katharine and St Martha in the churchyard of Newark. Some twenty years later, when the enlargement of the aisles of Newark church was contemplated, archbishop Grenefeld licensed the destruction of the chapel. Its materials were used for the rebuilding of the south aisle, and the chantry was probably transferred to an altar in the new building. There was probably a charnel chapel at Grantham, to the south-west of the church. § 24. But the most interesting case of an external chapel is the Sylvester chapel at Burford, which now forms a long arm stretching to the south-west of the main fabric. The church and chapel were originally separate. The church was, to begin with, an aisleless twelfth century structure, with a tower between nave and chancel. In the thirteenth century the chancel was produced to its present length, the north and south walls of the tower were pierced with arches, and transeptal chapels were added. A narrow south aisle was also added to the nave. About the same time a long aisleless chapel was built in the churchyard, some yards to the south-west of the church. In the fourteenth century a chapel was constructed, with a bone-crypt beneath it, west of the south transept, and was connected with the south aisle. There seems to have been no north aisle to the nave. East of the transepts were small chapels. The fifteenth century saw a great transformation. A sacristy was built north of the altar. Aisles and a south porch of great beauty were built in harmony with a new nave arcade. The outer chapel, the axis of which was not parallel to that of the nave, was prolonged eastward to meet the south porch, and connected by an arcade with the south aisle. It was shortened at the west end, but still projects two bays beyond the main body of the church. The east chapel of the south transept was now taken away, and a south chancel chapel built, the east wall of which interfered with the thirteenth century sedilia of the chancel. The south wall of the chancel, opposite the sacristy, was allowed to stand clear of the new chapel. On the opposite side of the church, the north transept was shortened, until it was little longer than the breadth of the north aisle: its north wall was then continued eastwards and was returned to join the west wall of the sacristy. The north chapel of the chancel was thus formed. The whole progress of the plan is from a simple form of aisleless church to an aisled rectangle with central tower and spire; but the process is irregular, and the absorption of the outer chapel is an almost unique step. It will be noticed that the south aisle is entirely covered by a triple arrangement of buildings--first, St Thomas' chapel next the south transept, then the south porch, and finally the Sylvester chapel, which gives additional length to the church from this point of view. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of Burford Church.] § 25. Other examples of churches in the wealthy market towns of the west of England might be given, in which, as at Frome, chantry chapels grafted themselves upon the plan, with immense advantage to the picturesque effect. But there were few churches on which the foundation of chantries, and especially of chantries maintained by religious guilds, had such influence as on the great churches of Coventry--St Michael's, Holy Trinity, and St John's. Licences for the foundations of chantries in St Michael's bear date 1323 (two chaplains), 1344 (one chaplain in the chapel of St Lawrence, augmented 1383, 1390), 1388 (one chaplain at the altar of All Saints), 1411-2 (one chaplain at the altar of St Katharine), and 1412 (two chaplains at the newly made altars of the Holy Trinity and St Mary). In addition to these altars and the high altar there were altars of Jesus, St John, St Anne, St Thomas, and St Andrew. The chantries at these various altars became in time attached to the various trade guilds of the town, and the church, greatly enlarged and extended in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, contained several chapels, known by the names of the guilds. Some details of the rebuilding have been touched upon already. The plan is curious; for the chancel ends in a semi-octagonal apse--a feature which also occurs in the late Gothic chancels of Westbury-on-Trym and Wrexham--surrounded by a row of vestries on a lower level. On the north of the chancel is the lady chapel, the altar of which was new in 1412-3, known later as the drapers' chapel. The south chapel of the chancel was the mercers' chapel, which probably contained the Trinity altar. The eastern part of the north aisle was occupied by St Lawrence's chapel. The outer north aisle was divided into two parts: east of the doorway was All Saints' or the girdlers' chapel, while west of it was St Andrew's or the smiths' chapel. Two further chapels, St Thomas' or the cappers' chapel, and the dyers' chapel, formed excrescences to east and west of the south porch. The beautiful cruciform church of the Holy Trinity became flanked in process of time by similar chapels. In the later part of the thirteenth century the north porch was joined to the transept by St Thomas' chapel. At a later date a chapel, afterwards the consistory court, was built from the west wall of the north porch as far as the west wall of the north aisle. Much later, in the sixteenth century, Marler's or the mercers' chapel was continued from the east wall of the north transept along the north aisle of the quire, the north transept being thus practically absorbed in an outer north aisle. The lady chapel was at the end of the north aisle of the chancel, north of the altar: opposite it, on the south, was the Trinity chapel. The south aisle of the chancel was the butchers' chapel: in the south transept was the Corpus Christi chapel, now destroyed; while at the west end of the south aisle of the nave was the tanners' chapel. [Illustration: Fig. 4. Plan of St Michael's, Coventry. A. St Andrew's Chapel. B. Girdlers' Chapel. C. St Lawrence's Chapel. D. Drapers' Chapel. E. Dyers' Chapel. F. Cappers' Chapel. G. Mercers' Chapel.] [Illustration: Fig. 5. Plan of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. A. Archdeacon's Court. B. St Thomas' Chapel. C. Marler's Chapel. D. Lady Chapel. E. Tanners' Chapel. F. Jesus Chapel. G. Corpus Christi Chapel. H. Butchers' Chapel. I. Holy Trinity Chapel.] § 26. Thus, by the gradual addition of chapel after chapel, the plan of these magnificent churches, some of the finest productions of English art, grew until, as at Burford or Holy Trinity, Coventry, it lost all likeness to its original state, and seems at first sight to be a collection of buildings heaped together without much method. It would be interesting to trace the growth of churches like St Mary Redcliffe or Ludlow, as we have traced that of Cirencester and Burford. In these cases, it is impossible to give too much emphasis to the part played by lay benefactors in the development of the fabric. Cirencester, Burford, and the Coventry churches, were appropriated to monasteries: St Mary Redcliffe was merely a chapel of Bedminster, appropriated, like Grantham, to a stall in Salisbury cathedral. At Cirencester and Coventry the churches were close to the religious houses to which they belonged. But the growth of the churches was the result of lay devotion: the founders of chantries of whom we hear, like the famous William Canynge at St Mary Redcliffe, were men who had made money in business. The part of the monasteries in church-building was never, so far as parish churches were concerned, very active. As the middle ages went on, their connexion with the fabrics became still slighter; and their interest in the church, apart from the profits which they received from it, and from an occasional litigation about the advowson, was probably confined to the periodical presentation of a vicar. The highest state of development which the parish church attained, in such buildings as have just been described, or in the great churches of Norfolk and Somerset, was the consequence of a long series of beautifications and improvements, in which at first, no doubt, the lay lords of manors took the leading part, but afterwards were joined by wealthy parishioners, who could find no more fitting employment for their wealth than the enlargement and decoration of the house of God. And it should not be forgotten that not merely the rich, but the poor, shared in this work of benefaction. In some places, at Oswestry, for example, chantry priests were supported by the devotion of servants or husbandmen, each of whom paid his yearly share of the endowment. Here and there in East Anglia, inscriptions remaining on beautiful pieces of church furniture, bear witness to the generosity of members of the parish in humble positions. The churches of London, Bristol, York, and Norwich, and of countless towns and villages, are memorials of the brightest aspect of medieval religion--the spontaneous devotion which it excited, for motives often mingled with superstition, but never selfish or unworthy, in the most hard-headed and least emotional section, then as now, of English society. CHAPTER III THE TOWER, THE PORCH, AND THE CHANCEL § 27. In another volume of this series, the development of the ground plan of the parish church has been treated with some detail. The importance of the central tower in connexion with the transeptal or cruciform plan has there been explained; and it has been seen that English builders generally preferred a tower at the west end of the nave. In the present chapter, something will be said of the development and use of the western tower, and of the closely related subject of the entrances to the church. The nave and its aisles demand, in this space, little more attention than can be given to them in the discussion of the ground plan and in what has been said already with regard to chantry chapels; and of their furniture more will be said in the next chapter. But some further consideration of the chancel, the enlargement of which forms so important a part of the history of the medieval plan, is necessary; and some account of its architectural and ritual development is given here, following the description of the tower and porch. [Illustration: Fig. 6. Norton, Co. Durham: Saxon central tower, with transept.] § 28. There is evidence that, in certain churches of unquestionably Saxon origin, the western tower was formed, probably at a time considerably subsequent to their foundation, by the heightening of the western porch or main entrance to the church. Brixworth and Monkwearmouth are cases in point. At Brixworth the original western doorway of the porch was blocked up when the stair-turret of the tower was built on that side. At Monkwearmouth the line of the gabled roof of the porch is still visible. Western towers, whether heightened or built from the ground, were certainly not common until, at any rate, the epoch of the Danish wars. No existing church can be assigned positively to that epoch; and those who contend that the church tower then came into existence as a place of defence and refuge from the invaders probably argue from analogies of a later period. The thin walls and undefended ground-floor doorways of Saxon towers forbid us to entertain this theory seriously. But it is certainly the case that these towers, primarily intended as bell-towers, were sometimes planned to afford more accommodation than was necessary for a man whose sole duty was to ring the bell. The ground-floor area of towers like Earl's Barton and Barnack in Northants, and Hough-on-the-Hill in Lincolnshire, which, in their present state, may be assigned tentatively to the later part of the tenth century, takes its place in the history of the development of the plan; and, just as at Barton-on-Humber, the dimensions of the upper part of such towers were conditioned by the space allotted to the lowest stage. But there are indications that, in cases where the ground floor of the tower was simply the porch of the church, one or more of the upper stages had their special use. A doorway occasionally has been made in the east wall of the tower, above the arch leading into the nave. This may be explained by the fact that such towers were small in area, and that their angles contained no room for staircases. Some access from the interior of the church to their upper stories was necessary, and would be easily provided by a ladder from the ground floor to the doorway on the first floor. The doorway is usually slightly on one side of the centre of the wall, so that the ladder would not interfere with the archway below. But the case is different, when, as at Brixworth, a large circular turret has been built against the west wall of the tower, and from the first floor chamber there is a large triple window-opening looking out into the body of the church. At Deerhurst, there is not only a doorway in the first floor of the tower; but, close by it, near the centre of the wall, there is a small window-opening or squint; while, on the second floor, there is a double window-opening of unusual form, and, on the third floor, another doorway in the centre of the wall, which seems to have opened into a wooden gallery. More than this, the lower part of the tower is partitioned by a transverse wall into an eastern and western porch and upper chamber. It is therefore indisputable that the tower at Deerhurst was more than a bell-tower. Deerhurst was an important monastery: the size and plan of the church were exceptional; and the upper floors of the tower may have been used for special purposes in connexion with the monastic services. One may hazard the suggestion that the room on the east side of the first floor was used by the monk whose turn it was to keep night-watch in the church: the spy-hole in the east wall seems to afford ground for this. It has been suggested that the second floor chamber--and, like it, the first floor chamber at Brixworth--was used as an oratory by the lord of the manor and protector of the monastery; and this is possible, if the importance of the lord of the manor in connexion with early parish churches is taken into account. Almery-like recesses in the wall are found in this chamber at Deerhurst: such recesses, where they are found by themselves, as in the tower of Skipwith in Yorkshire, suggest little and prove nothing, and at Deerhurst no positive reason for their use can be given. In some medieval churches there are traces of altars on the upper floors of towers; and it is possible that such altars may have existed at Deerhurst and Brixworth, and the windows pierced in the wall behind them may have been given special decorative treatment. The western stair-turret at Brixworth was probably constructed for the sake of the important first floor chamber. Three other examples of a circular stair-turret projecting from the western face of a tower are found, one in Northamptonshire, two in Lincolnshire; but in none of these are there any indications of a particular use for the first floor of the tower. The only example of a spiral stair or vice built in an angle of a pre-Conquest tower is at Great Hale in Lincolnshire, and is a rude piece of work. Until the introduction of buttresses, the newel stair in the angle of the tower was uncommon. A ladder from the floor of the tower served for access to the upper stages. In rare instances, as at Kirkburn in the east riding of Yorkshire, a stone stair was built against the inner walls of the tower as far as the level of the first floor. Where angle-staircases have been added to early Norman towers, as at Tansor in Northants or in the central tower at Coln St Denis in Gloucestershire, the abutments have been seriously weakened. § 29. In the eleventh century, the western bell-tower, the ground floor of which served as the main porch of the church, became common. The tower of the so-called 'Lincolnshire' type, with its stages separated by off-sets, and its double belfry window openings divided by a 'mid-wall' shaft, is found not infrequently in other parts of England, and survived, with some change in proportion and detail, for some time after the Norman Conquest. Some sixty western towers of the ordinary late Saxon type remain in England, exclusive of heightened porches, and of a few round towers in the eastern counties, where the absence of stone suitable for quoins made this shape desirable. It is probable that portions of many more exist beneath later additions. We have seen that in the tower at Branston, built more than a quarter of a century at earliest after the Conquest, the old type was retained--the slender tower, lofty in proportion to its area. The tower of Weaverthorpe in the east riding of Yorkshire, obviously Norman in its details, keeps the old proportions. Many towers, on the contrary, which, at first sight, might be associated with the Saxon group, shew Norman influence in the thickness of their walls and stoutness of their proportions. While the normal thickness of wall in the late Saxon towers of Lincolnshire is about three and a half feet, the thickness at Caistor is increased to nearly six feet. The normal area is from ten to twelve feet square: the area at Caistor is 15½ feet east to west by 17½ north to south. The normal width of the arch between tower and nave is about 5¾ feet: at Caistor it is nearly four feet more. At Tugby, between Leicester and Uppingham, there is a remarkable tower, built in a primitive fashion which shews distinct traces of Saxon kinship, but with proportions and with the introduction of detail which as clearly bear witness to its post-Conquest date. Hooton Pagnell, near Doncaster, has a large western tower which follows the Saxon tradition of the simple rubble tower with small stone quoins and without buttresses; but the character of the arch leading into the nave is distinctly Norman, and the tower is not merely of unusually large area, but is the full breadth of the spacious nave beyond it. While the western tower increases in area, it does not at first acquire buttresses at the angles: these, in their flat pilaster-like form, begin to appear in the course of the twelfth century. [Illustration: Fig. 7. Carlton-in-Lindrick, Notts.: west tower, of late Saxon type, with later additions.] § 30. The magnificent architectural development of the tower and spire, in which, as in perhaps no other part of the church, the individual characteristics of local schools of masoncraft can be traced, becomes noticeable in the thirteenth century, at a time when the use of the ground floor of the tower as the principal porch of the church had been discontinued. In the fen country round Wisbech and Spalding, a series of thirteenth century towers, covering the period from 1200 to 1280, bears witness to the work of a school of tower builders, hardly less distinguished than the great Somerset masons of later days, which probably derived its inspiration from the arcaded western tower of Ely cathedral. Elm, Leverington, Walsoken, West Walton, Tilney All Saints, Long Sutton, Gedney, and Whaplode, are the principal evidence of their work. Not all these towers are western, and four of the number, including Gedney, the belfry stage of which belongs to a later date, are without the spires which their builders doubtless intended; but all are instances of the treatment of the bell-tower as an independent architectural composition, quite irrespective of its part in the plan of the church. In the twelfth century, however, when the side doorway was superseding the tower porch, the western tower was by no means so handsome or invariable a feature as it became in later days. Many smaller churches were content with a bell-cot over the western gable. There are several excellent examples of stone bell-cots in Rutland. In Essex and other districts where good building timber was easily procured, it is not uncommon to find square towers of timber, with conical caps or even spires, above the western gable, often supported on an elaborate framework within the west end of the church. A few timber towers, like Margaretting in Essex, are built up against the old west end of the church. § 31. There can be no doubt that, in the earlier part of the middle ages, while the high pitched roof prevailed in the main body of the building, the spire was considered the proper termination of a tower. Its chief development naturally took place in districts where good roofing stone was plentiful; and the finest English spires, with a few exceptions, are to be found in south Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, and Rutland. In less favoured districts, timber spires, covered with lead or shingles, were placed upon towers. Many of these remain in Surrey and Sussex. The spire may be regarded as the natural development of the conical roofs with which the towers of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries were usually crowned--an invaluable, if exceptional, example of which remains at Sompting, near Worthing. These must generally have been of wood with leaden coverings. The earliest general development of the stone spire is probably to be traced to south Lincolnshire, where the low broach spires of Sleaford, Rauceby, Frampton, and a few other churches, appear to belong to the last years of the twelfth, or earliest years of the thirteenth century. The spire continued to be fashionable in this and the neighbouring districts, long after it had become unusual in other parts of England. Grantham spire exercised an enduring influence upon its neighbourhood. It was the model upon which the builders of the spire of Oakham endeavoured to improve, with less striving after height and more coherence of design. From Oakham was closely derived the tower of Exton in Rutland, where the builders raised their spire upon an octagonal base. The octagon at Exton was probably the parent of those octagons which, rising on the summit of towers, reach their climax in the lantern at Boston, and in the octagonal frame which surrounds the lower part of the spire at Patrington. Other details at Exton bore fruit in the spires of Oundle and Kettering. At the very end of the middle ages, the feeling for the spire in Lincolnshire was still so strong that the tower of Louth was designed for a spire in the middle of the fifteenth century, and the spire itself was brought to completion in 1515. § 32. While, in the districts to which allusion has just been made, towers were designed, as a rule, with a view to the spires which were to cover them, the tower, in other parts of England, was designed simply as a tower, and the spire was regarded merely as a roof for it. In the chalk country north of the Thames, towers are often found crowned by small timber spirelets with a leaden covering, which are merely insignificant additions. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, an important development in the elevation of the main fabric led to a general disuse of the spire, especially in districts where stone spires had formed no part of architectural design. Clerestories with broad windows were built above the arcades of the nave. With this increase of height the old high pitched roofs were abandoned in favour of roofs of a flatter pitch. Very often, this was due to the rotting of the old roof-timber at the ends next the wall-plates. These ends were sawn off, and the roof re-laid at a lower pitch. At the same time, the clerestory dwarfed the western tower. At Oadby, near Leicester, where there is a beautiful tower and spire, designed in perfect harmony with a fourteenth century nave, the fifteenth century clerestory actually raises the height of the nave to that of the tower, with incongruous effect. During the fifteenth century, therefore, it is common to find that towers were rebuilt, or an upper story was added to them, in proportion to the increase of height in the nave. Thus, at Immingham in north Lincolnshire, the clerestory and upper part of the tower are of one date, and were built as part of one connected work. The roof of the clerestory being, in most cases, nearly flat, the roof of the tower followed suit; and although, where traditions of spire design had a hardy existence, spires were still built, towers without spires, surmounted by parapets like the parapets which hid the roof of the clerestories, became the order of the day. In certain parts of England, and especially in Somerset, where the art of designing towers was pursued with extraordinary success, towers were rebuilt from the ground. But the proportion of towers, with or without spires, which have been heightened to meet the requirements of a clerestory, is probably in excess of the proportion of towers entirely rebuilt. In the case of heightened towers, the pitch of the older roof of the nave can generally be made out by the retention of its housing slot or weather course in the east wall of the tower. At Gedney, in south Lincolnshire, where the lower part of the tower is of the thirteenth century, the line of the contemporary roof may be traced above the tower arch. Above this is another line, marking the pitch of a new roof, made when the arcades were rebuilt in the fourteenth century. The clerestory and the upper story of the tower belong to the fifteenth century. In many instances, however, the flattening of the roof has followed the rebuilding of the tower; and in these the old weather course will be found on the east face of the tower, above the present roof, as in the south aisle at St Mary's, Leicester. Here the roof was probably flattened in the fifteenth century, when the tower and spire were completed. [Illustration: Fig. 8. Tickhill, Yorkshire: general view from S.E., showing clerestory, western tower and projecting eastern chapel.] § 33. West doorways are frequently found in towers; and often, as at Grantham and Newark, they are of some importance in the design. They are a general feature of the larger towers, although sometimes, as at St Michael's, Coventry, where the nave has a west porch north of the tower, they are insignificant, and were probably intended to be little more than a convenient entrance for building materials. In Northamptonshire, some of the towers of the churches of the Nene valley have doorways covered by shallow porches. The beautiful porch at Higham Ferrers and that at Raunds are the earliest: later porches occur at Oundle, Rushden, and Keyston, the last place being just across the border of Huntingdonshire. These western doorways were sometimes used as principal entrances to the church, and were provided with holy-water stoups. But habitually they were kept closed, and used only on special occasions for ritual purposes, as in the Palm Sunday procession, when the clergy and choir entered the church by the west door. Such entrances would be a natural feature of large churches, like Kettering, and are found in the west walls of churches like Stratford-on-Avon, St Mary Redcliffe's at Bristol, or Ketton in Rutland, where the tower is central or in a situation not at the west end of the nave. Where the west doorway is covered by a projecting porch, as mentioned above, the design possibly recalls the western porches or Galilees, found in some of our larger churches, and on an imposing scale, in certain districts of France. The word Galilee arises from the fact that the west porch was the last stage in the Sunday procession, and the celebrant, entering it first, symbolised our Lord preceding His disciples into Galilee after the Resurrection, of which Sunday was the festival. A regular western building of the Galilee type is a somewhat rare feature in an English parish church; but there is one at Melton Mowbray, and at Snettisham in Norfolk there is an open porch, projecting beyond the west wall of the church. In both cases the church has a central tower. At King's Sutton in Northamptonshire, there is a vaulted porch in front of the western tower. § 34. It has been said that there are churches of the twelfth century in which the tower was omitted, and a bell-cot above the western gable took its place. Quenington in Gloucestershire, and Barton-le-Street in the north riding of Yorkshire, are good examples. In both cases, a north as well as a south doorway were provided to the aisleless nave, although, at Barton-le-Street, this circumstance has been obscured by a modern restoration. In neither case was there a western door; and in both the north doorway, which stands on the side nearest the village, has probably been always the main entrance. The reason of the two doorways may have been the exigencies of processions, in which the litany was sung, and the altars of the church sprinkled with holy water. Such processions took place, at any rate in the greater churches, every Sunday, and in monastic churches were partly external, to include the buildings of the cloister. In smaller churches, however, external processions would be of rare occurrence, and two doorways would hardly be provided for this reason alone. As a rule, the ordinary entrance would lie on the side of the church nearest the approach from the village, which was generally on the south. But this is not invariable; and the favourite entrance, even where a village lay to the north of the church, was on the south side. There are sometimes signs that one of the doorways may have been appropriated traditionally to the use of the tenants of one of the manors in a parish, or to the parishioners of a chapelry who were bound to attend the mother church on certain feasts in the year. Thus at Barton-le-Street, the south doorway, lying on the side of the church towards the hamlet of Coneysthorpe, is called the Coneysthorpe doorway. At Easingwold, in Yorkshire, the north doorway is called the Raskelf door, and was doubtless used by the inhabitants of the chapelry of Raskelf on these special occasions. At Hungerton, near Leicester, the tenants of each of the four manors in the parish still occupy their own quarter of the nave; and at Churchdown, near Gloucester, the names of the various chapelries of the medieval parish are still applied to divisions of the churchyard. In cases like this, the doorway nearest to the part of the church appropriated to one or more of these separate bodies of parishioners would naturally be used as well as the main doorway. § 35. In its simplest form, the porch is simply a protection to the doorway which it covers. The timber porches, often beautiful works of art, which are common in Essex and other timber-growing parts of England and Wales, can hardly have served any very practical use, although, like stone porches, they have side-benches, on which worshippers could rest. But, from the days when the south porch of Canterbury cathedral was resorted to by litigants from every part of the kingdom, the church porch was a common place for the transaction of much secular business. Hence, no doubt, it became a permanent stone structure, usually roofed with wood, but sometimes vaulted, as at Barnack, or covered, as in some of the churches round Doncaster, by a high pitched roof of stone slabs. In many later medieval churches, the size of the porch increased, and it was vaulted with elaborate ribbed ceilings, or, as at Lavenham in Suffolk, with fan vaulting. There may sometimes have been, as there was at Canterbury and possibly at Bradford on Avon, an altar in the porch. At South Pool in Devon, the bench which runs along the east wall is raised in the middle, and forms an altar table. A broad south aisle was built in the fifteenth century, but was stopped at the east wall of the porch. A small window, now filled in, directly above the altar, commanded a view of the aisle and the south altar of the chancel from the porch, and was closed on the side of the aisle by an iron grille. Such altars, however, must have been very rare. One may suggest that the altar at South Pool contained relics, on which oaths were taken by those who came to the porch to settle business or disputes which might be terminated by mutual agreement, without being brought before the regular courts. [Illustration: Fig. 9. St Mary's, Beverley: south porch.] § 36. From the fourteenth century onwards, porches with an upper story became common, and it is certain that much miscellaneous business may have been transacted in the chamber on the upper floor. This chamber, so frequently called a 'priest's room,' was used for several purposes. It was sometimes a chapel of the church. The north porch at Grantham was either rebuilt or extended northward in the fourteenth century: the lower story was vaulted, and the long upper chamber became the chapel in which the principal relics belonging to the church were preserved. Stairways were provided in each of the outer corner-turrets, one for those ascending to venerate the relics, the other for those descending, so that a free circulation was assured for devotees who visited the chapel on feast days. In addition, a window was made in the wall above the north door, through which the relics could be exhibited to worshippers inside the church. The vaulting was broken down at a later period, and the two stages combined into one. The south porch also has an upper chamber, which in later days, like so many similar chambers, contained the library of the church. It was probably appropriated to the church-watcher, sometimes the deacon attached to the church, who slept there, and, from a small inner window which projects slightly from the wall, could gain a view of most of the interior of the building. In such a case the watcher's room would probably also be used as the treasury of the church. The magnificent south porch at Cirencester, in three stages, has fan vaulting in the ground story: the upper rooms were used by the trade guilds of the town, and still form the Guildhall. The close connexion of the guilds with the religious life of the place made the church their natural meeting-place; and their annual meetings were very generally held in the chapels where they maintained services in their parish church. The porch at Cirencester is called the Vice, a corruption of the word parvise (the Latin _parvisus_ = _paradisus_) which is commonly, though inaccurately, applied to these storied porches. Among the splendid storied porches of the later middle ages may be mentioned those at Thaxted in Essex, Beccles in Suffolk, and Sall in Norfolk. The upper story of one of the porches at Sall contains a piscina, and was probably a chapel. [Illustration: Fig. 10. Cirencester: south porch.] § 37. It has been noted that there was occasionally an altar on the first floor of a tower. One still remains in place at St Michael Penkivel, near Truro, where the church was appropriated to a college of four chantry priests, and was rebuilt early in the fourteenth century. Certain indications have lately been found of another at Tansor, near Oundle: the conversion of this tower chamber into a chapel explains the otherwise pointless addition of a stair at the south-east angle of the tower, which seriously weakened the fabric. While the term 'priest's chamber,' as applied to the room over the porch, is by no means accurate, it is probable that such a room may sometimes have been used by a chantry priest, or as has been said, by the deacon who occasionally assisted the incumbent of a church. The most curious instance of a habitation in connexion with a church is at Terrington St John's, in the Norfolk marshland, where the tower stands at some distance west of the south aisle, and is connected with it by a two-storied building, divided into chambers. There seems little reason to doubt that this dark and uncomfortable, but moderately roomy structure, with the first floor of the adjoining tower, was occupied by the curate who served the church. It is well, however, to look askance on the usual traditions which have led, for example, to the confident statement that the porch chambers at Grantham were the vicarages of the two rectorial portions of the church. Statements, also, with regard to the defensive use of church towers must carefully be guarded against, with the proviso that, in certain districts, there are indications that such an use was made of them. In some of the churches of north-west Yorkshire, from the end of the twelfth century onwards, towers were built with a strength which indicates that they might become strongholds in time of warfare; and there is positive evidence that the tower of Bedale church, in a district much exposed to the inroads of Scottish invaders, was intended to receive on occasion a body of defenders. The same thing is true of fortified towers, like that at Newton Nottage, on the coast of South Wales. In towers, again, like those of Llywel and Llanfihangel-Cwm-Du in Breconshire, and Llanfair-ar-y-Bryn in Carmarthenshire, the external construction speaks clearly of the uses to which such towers might be put in time of war, while the strong barrel vaults of the ground floors, the ample planning of the turret stairs, and the presence in one case, till recent times, of a fire-place on the first floor, are further indications which support the idea. § 38. It should not be forgotten that a porch was occasionally used as the foundation of a tower. There is a good example of a northern porch tower at Cromhall in Gloucestershire and of a southern porch tower at Norbury in Derbyshire; but the finest instance is probably the south tower and spire of Donington in south Lincolnshire. The south tower at Fowey in Cornwall is another striking example. It was merely custom and tradition which made the west tower a nearly invariable feature in most districts of England during the greater part of the middle ages. It is obvious that the position of the tower in the plan is elastic, and we find it, not merely over the crossing of the transepts, or over a side porch, or at the extremity of a transept, or as an upward extension of a transeptal chapel, but also in a position detached from the church. The beautiful tower of West Walton in Norfolk is at the entrance to the churchyard, its ground story forming the gateway. In examples like this--Fleet and Tydd St Giles, in the same neighbourhood, stand apart in their churchyards--the insecure nature of the soil probably made the building of a bell-tower in direct attachment to the church unsafe, and therefore undesirable. § 39. The Norman chancel in England was rectangular in the majority of cases. It was also narrower than the nave, from which it was divided by an arch. Such arches are almost invariably, until the middle of the twelfth century, round-headed, and are usually low in elevation. Their character and width, however, vary greatly. At North Witham the archway is low and narrow, and the arch is unmoulded; decoration is confined to the impost-blocks from which it springs. A wide space of wall is left on either side of the opening. When in the thirteenth century the chancel was enlarged, these spaces were pierced with wide pointed openings, presumably in order to give a better view of the altar from the body of the church. In north Yorkshire there are a large number of similar chancel arches, the narrowness and plainness of which have sometimes induced antiquaries to class them as Saxon. Saxon in affinity they may well be; but at Scawton on the Hambleton hills, where one of them occurs, and the wall on either side is pierced with late Norman openings, we know that the church was built in 1146. At Bracebridge, near Lincoln, where there is a fairly lofty and narrow chancel arch of early character and uncertain date, there are openings, apparently later than the rest of the work, at the sides. These openings are not carried down to the ground in any of the cases mentioned; and there were probably altars against the wall below them, as was certainly the case at Castle Rising in Norfolk, and Avening in Gloucestershire, where towers occur between nave and chancel. Were such openings invariable, or were they even contemporary with the chancel arch, we might see in them a survival of the triple-arched screen wall of early Saxon times. But they are quite exceptional; and at North Witham both, and at Castle Rising one, are much later than the chancel arch. More frequently the chancel arch is given elaborate architectural treatment, with moulded orders and jamb-shafts, and occupies most of the width, and practically the whole height of the chancel behind. Early Saxon chancel arches were very narrow, as is the case at Escomb and Bradford on Avon--so narrow as to shut off the chancel from the nave. This may have been a survival of the primitive practice which kept, by means of curtains drawn round the canopy of the altar, the consecration of the sacred elements in the Eucharist from the public eye. All through the middle ages, it was customary during Lent to hang a curtain or Lenten veil across the chancel arch; and in many English churches hooks for its support may still be seen. A narrow chancel arch would be much more serviceable for this purpose than a wide one; and its persistent continuance through the twelfth century may perhaps be attributed to this usage. § 40. While, in the enlargement of a church, the nave was usually widened by the addition of aisles, the chancel was in most cases lengthened, and was often rebuilt entirely, in order to provide more room for the stalls of the quire. Thus, at Sandiacre in Derbyshire, the twelfth century nave and chancel arch were left untouched, but a splendid chancel was built in place of the old one during the fourteenth century. The screen which divided chancel from nave is gone; but nowhere can we appreciate better the practical separation between the parishioners' portion of the church, and that devoted to the clergy and quire, which, in churches like this, became almost as marked as in the monastic and larger collegiate churches. The lengthened chancel, forming a deep aisleless projection to the east of the building, was often treated with great architectural dignity. Nothing could be more beautiful, from their very simplicity of design, than the chancels of Mitford in Northumberland, or Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk, with their row of lancet windows in the side walls, and the marked projection of their string-courses and buttresses. Later in the thirteenth century, the chancel of Houghton-le-Spring church, near Durham, gives us another example from the north of England of spacious planning, with light admitted through a row of splayed lancets. The chancel of the collegiate church of St Andrew, Bishop Auckland, enlarged about 1250 or rather later, underwent further alteration not long after, by the substitution of broader two-light openings for the narrower lancets, and of a large mullioned east window for a group of lancets at the east end. In Yorkshire, the chancel of West Heslerton, a simple aisleless church, was lengthened and lightened by a row of lancets not unlike those at Houghton-le-Spring. Further south, the nobility which long lancet windows in bays divided by projecting buttresses, and marked by the strong horizontal lines of string-courses, can give to an architectural composition, is shewn by the chancel of the cruciform church of Hedon, near Hull. Less elaborate, but even more striking by virtue of the height, narrowness, and wide internal splay of the lancet openings, is the chancel of Bottesford in north Lincolnshire. Cherry Hinton, near Cambridge, possibly reaches the high water mark of chancel building which depends for its effect on the arrangement of lancet windows. Acton Burnell in Shropshire, recalls Cherry Hinton in the piercing of its side walls by rows of lancets, with trefoiled rere-arches; but its east window is a composition of four lights, with geometrical tracery, and marks the transition to an even more imposing type of chancel, in which the side walls are pierced with large traceried windows, and the outside and inside of the building alike are marked by architectural treatment of great beauty, and even splendour. Some of the earliest of these fourteenth century chancels may be found in the east of England. Great Sampford in Essex stands on the border-line between the two centuries. Dennington in Suffolk, a chancel of unequalled beauty, comes within the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Somewhat later is Stebbing in Essex, and a little later still is Great Bardfield. In both of these churches, close to one another, nave and chancel alike were rebuilt, and the arch between them filled with a screen of open tracery in stone. The chancel of Lawford, near Colchester, followed about the middle of the fourteenth century: its chief feature is the licence given to the curvilinear tracery of its windows. Impulse may have been given to this outbreak of energy in the east of England by the great building works undertaken at old St Paul's during the latter part of the thirteenth century: all the examples cited, with the exception of Dennington, are within the bounds of the ancient diocese of London. Further examples which give colour to this view might be cited, such as the chancel which the Cistercians of Tilty, near Dunmow, added to their church, as the beginning of a complete rebuilding, about the beginning of the fourteenth century. § 41. But even more conspicuous than these are the chancels which are found with some frequency in the ancient and widespread dioceses of York, Lincoln, and Lichfield. The chief features of these are, traceried windows of great beauty of proportion and variety of design, with carefully moulded arches and jambs, boldly projecting buttresses with gables or pinnacles, strings and base courses carried right round the building, often with much elaboration. The internal furniture includes stone piscinae and sedilia, canopied niches on each side of the east window, founders' tombs, and, in some cases, stone Easter sepulchres in the north wall. In almost every case, the masonry is composed of large dressed stones; and the building capacity of the masons reaches a high level of architectural skill. The probable source of the development of masonry and sculpture shewn in these structures is to be found in the architectural work which was going on at York during the last quarter of the thirteenth and first quarter of the fourteenth century. It can be shewn that the York school of masoncraft had some influence at Lincoln. Its influence at Southwell, the southern _matrix ecclesia_ of the diocese of York, is undoubted. That it had some influence as far south as the lady chapel of Ely, begun in 1321, is very probable; and the work done there may have reacted in a northward direction. Its influence at Lichfield, during the episcopate of Walter Langton (1296-1321), is more than probable, as Langton was intimately connected with York from his early years till his death. In Yorkshire, the rebuilding of the cruciform church at Patrington was completed, with the chancel, towards 1350. Earlier than this, probably between 1320 and 1330, the chancels of Patrick Brompton, Kirkby Wiske, and Ainderby Steeple had been built: Croft, near Darlington, and Romaldkirk in Teesdale, belong to much the same period and sphere of influence. Round Southwell and Lincoln, and probably during the same decade, the greatest triumphs of the period were achieved. The founder of the chancel of Hawton, near Newark, died in 1330. The rector who was the founder of the chancel of Heckington, near Sleaford, was presented by the crown in 1308-9, and had licence to found a chantry in the church, probably at the high altar of the rebuilt chancel, in 1328. The chancel of Navenby, near Lincoln, belongs to the same period. At Sibthorpe, near Newark, a college of chantry priests was founded by stages during the first half of the fourteenth century, and the present chancel seems to have been built about 1330: the founder, as already noted, rebuilt the aisles of his church at Beckingham, a few miles away, before 1347. The architectural likeness between his work at Beckingham and the chancel of Boothby Pagnell, near Grantham, built about 1350, cannot be mistaken. The whole church of Fledborough, north of Newark, was rebuilt, probably about 1343, when a chantry was founded in the lady chapel. [Illustration: Fig. 11. Patrington, Yorkshire: north side of chancel and vestry.] Other Nottinghamshire chancels, the probable date of which is 1330-40, are Arnold (much rebuilt), Car Colston, and Woodborough. A certain number of chancels in Leicestershire, such as that of East Langton, approximate to the type, without actually reproducing it; but at Cotterstock, in Northamptonshire, where John Giffard, canon of York, founded a college of chantry priests in 1337, its familiar features reappear. It reached the diocese of Lichfield--or, at any rate, Derbyshire--rather later than the period of its general diffusion in the dioceses of York and Lincoln. The chancel of Sandiacre belongs to the decade between 1330 and 1340: Dronfield, which, in proportions and parapet and pinnacle-work, is closely akin to Sandiacre, is later than 1340; Norbury and the handsome chancel of Tideswell are later still, probably 1350-60. The chantry college of Chaddesden, founded in 1355, adds another church, with a smaller and less ambitious chancel, to the group. In the north-western part of Lichfield diocese, the fine vaulted chancel of the collegiate church of Nantwich (1327-33) is probably independent of the general type. There can be no mistake, however, about Halsall in south Lancashire. Here the date, although the later window tracery seems to contradict it, appears to be at latest 1340-50; and the likeness of the internal arrangements to those of the north Yorkshire churches is quite remarkable. In a few instances, the type persisted till much later. The chancel at Claypole, near Newark, was rebuilt about 1400: the fourteenth century nave has a noticeable affinity, in the sculpture of its capitals, to the nave of Patrington. Between 1380 and 1400, the chancel of Burneston, in north Yorkshire, shews distinct traces of the influence of Patrick Brompton and the other neighbouring buildings already mentioned. Burneston, Patrick Brompton, and Croft, were all connected with St Mary's abbey at York. The convent, as rector of Burneston, may have been responsible for the chancel, when the whole church was rebuilt. But it must be repeated that the spread of architecture in parish churches is due to local piety rather than to the desire of religious houses to found churches in places from which they derived their income. The founder of the chancel of Heckington was not the impropriating abbey of Bardney, but a well-to-do king's clerk, who was presented to the vicarage by Edward II during a voidance of the abbey. Further, the spread of this particular type of chancel cannot be referred to St Mary's abbey or any other monastery, but to the growth of a school of lay masoncraft which learned its earliest lessons among the new buildings of St Mary's abbey and York minster. As we should expect in a period which was so fruitful in good work, isolated types of almost equal beauty, the result of original local skill, constantly make their appearance. Such are the chancels of North Luffenham in Rutland, or of Hodgeston in Pembrokeshire--the latter, no doubt, one of the fruits of that movement in the diocese of St David's, to which bishop Henry Gower (1328-47) gave a powerful impulse. § 42. The aisleless chancel survived as a favourite feature of the plan all through the middle ages. The aisled nave, with the deep aisleless chancel beyond, is beautiful in plan and elevation alike; and hardly any of the great Norfolk churches is so satisfactory in effect as the fourteenth century church at Tunstead, or the great fifteenth century church of Walpole St Peter, where the rebuilding of the chancel followed that of the nave. The wealthy lay folk of East Anglia naturally took charge of the repair of the nave as their own part of the church. The rectors, monastic or otherwise, were less active about the chancel. The result is that the uniform magnificence of Walpole St Peter is by no means found everywhere. The small vaulted thirteenth century chancel at Blakeney in north-east Norfolk, is quite out of proportion to the large fifteenth century nave and west tower. The magnificent church of Sall, near Aylsham, was entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century; but the proportions of the chancel are very modest compared with the gigantic nave. Lavenham in Suffolk has one of the most ornate naves of the later part of the fifteenth century, and a tower of great height. The fourteenth century chancel, however, was kept, and, although chapels were added to it on the north and south, the eastern bay is insignificant in proportion and rough in masonry when contrasted with the nave. A similar disparity, not of style but of design, exists between the nave and tower of Stoke-by-Nayland and the less carefully rebuilt chancel. The rebuilding of a chancel may occasionally indicate that monastic impropriators neglected their duties, until they were compelled to repair. The hastily rebuilt chancel at Harringworth in Northamptonshire, where Elstow abbey was rector, is in striking contrast to the earlier nave, and may perhaps be explained in this way. Croyland abbey had to attend to its duties at Wellingborough in 1383, and the present aisled chancel is the result. At Walpole St Peter the church was evidently lengthened eastwards. The parishioners were probably allowed to pull down the old chancel when they built their new nave, and to encroach on its site: they naturally would contribute towards the new chancel, and this may account for the unusual splendour of the whole design. [Illustration: Fig. 12. Walpole St Peter: from N.E.] § 43. Medieval sacristies attached to chancels, and especially to aisleless chancels, are common, and are in most cases on the north side, with a door in the north wall close to the altar. Good examples of an ordinary kind are at Islip and Aldwinkle St Peter in Northants. There is a fourteenth century sacristy at Willingham, near Cambridge, with a vaulted ceiling. The vaulted vestry at Burford is of the fifteenth century. Sometimes the sacristy contained an altar, as at Claypole and Westborough, between Newark and Grantham; and it is probable that the sacristies of several of the beautiful chancels already alluded to, as at Hawton, had their altars, which might be used occasionally for mass, but would in any case be useful for laying out and folding up vestments before and after service. The sacristy at Heckington is of two stories, the lower probably intended to be a bone-hole. At Halsall there is a handsome doorway, west of the founder's tomb, through which a chantry chapel is entered: this may have been a sacristy in the first instance. Large sacristies of two, and even three stories are found. The upper room or solar, as at Raunds in Northants, Wath, near Ripon, and other places, was sometimes provided with a window opening into the chancel, and may have served, like the solar of the south porch at Grantham, as the treasury of the church and a room for the deacon or church watcher. But that these upper rooms may have been provided as extra chantry chapels is also probable. The very interesting vestry building between Peterhouse and its appropriated church of Little St Mary's at Cambridge seems to have contained the chantry chapel of John Warkworth, master of Peterhouse, on its upper floor: there is also a piscina in the small lower sacristy, which stands above a bone-hole. The originally very similar building between St Benet's church and Corpus appears to have had chantry chapels on both floors. Perhaps the best example of a two-storied sacristy is the semi-octagonal building, vaulted on both floors, at the east end of the north chancel aisle at Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. This is an exceptional situation; but there was no fixed place for the sacristy. Often, as at Darlington or as the vaulted vestry at Rushton, Northants, it is on the south side of the chancel. In certain places, as at St Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and Lavenham in Suffolk, it projects from the east wall of the church, below the east window, and is entered by a doorway at one or both sides of the altar. Sometimes, again, as at Sawley and Tideswell in Derbyshire, the altar was brought forward from the east wall, and provided with a stone screen wall or reredos, the space between which and the east wall became the sacristy. A similar screening off of the east end of an aisle is found, for example, at Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northants: in these cases, it has been effected without interfering, as at Tansor, with the proper spacing of the aisle. § 44. Three features which are specially noticeable in the planning of the aisleless chancel may be mentioned here. The first is the very usual provision of squints, or oblique piercings, through the backs of the responds of the chancel arch. One object of these was to enable the priest, celebrating at the aisle altar, to see what was going on at the high altar, if his mass happened to coincide with or overlap another service. They would also be of use to the ringer of the sanctus bell, when the bell-cote was above the chancel arch, and the rope hung down at the side, out of sight of the altar. The second point is the occurrence of a separate door, for the use of the priest, in the south wall of the chancel: this was provided in a very large number of cases, and, though usually small, was often treated with some architectural dignity. At Trunch in Norfolk it is covered by a small porch. The third point, which has been the cause of much controversy, is the presence of a window, usually in the south wall of the chancel, and near its west end, the level of which is generally just above the back of the chancel stalls. This is known as a 'low side' window. These windows are not confined to chancels, nor to one side of the chancel only: sometimes, as at Acaster Malbis, near York, and Burton Lazars in Leicestershire, they are on both sides of the chancel; here and there, as at Gretton, Northants, on the north side only. Their design also varies. Not infrequently separate windows, they are formed quite as often by lowering the sill of a single-light or two-light window, and cutting off the lower from the upper part by a transom or cross mullion. Where this arrangement was adopted, the upper part of the window was glazed, but the lower portion seems generally to have been closed by shutters. Many fanciful explanations, which have little foundation in common sense, have been given for the use of these windows. Most popular has been the idea that they were used by lepers, who could not take part in the common services of the church, but could assist at mass and even be communicated through these windows. This fancy disregards the sanitary precautions of the middle ages, which were excellent and plentiful. We may well believe that the people of Burton Lazars would have been horrified, if they had seen, one Sunday morning at mass, their two low side windows darkened by sufferers from the dreadful disease, for whom a hospital with its chapel was carefully provided in their own village. A very widely accepted theory is that low side windows were used in connexion with the consecration of the elements at mass: a small hand-bell may have been rung at the window, so as to be heard outside the church, especially where the village lay on the south side. Churches are comparatively few in which, as at March or Walpole St Peter, a special cot was provided for a sanctus bell above the chancel arch. At Hawstead in Suffolk a sanctus bell remains in position on the inner side of the chancel screen. In the aisleless church of Preen in Shropshire, where the chancel, belonging to a small cell of monks, a colony from Wenlock, was divided by a screen from the parochial nave, there is a low side window in the north wall, just west of the place where the screen originally stood with an altar against it. The window has a lowered sill, with a stone seat on either side; and its position suggests that it may have been used for the above purpose. A seat at the window, as at Morpeth, would have been useful for the server who rang the bell; but some think that it may have been used by the priest in hearing confessions. The common explanation of any unfamiliar object in a church is that it had to do with confession; and one therefore hesitates to adopt a solution of the difficulty which is so open to suspicion. But there are certainly windows which are recessed too deeply to allow of the sanctus bell being audible through them, and no existing example affords any real convenience for confessions. It is difficult, moreover, to explain, on the sanctus bell or confession hypotheses, why, at Othery in Somerset, there should be not merely a low side window in the south chancel wall, but a corresponding opening through the south-east buttress of the central tower, evidently planned in relation to the window. Also why, in some examples, is there a hook, as though for a hanging lamp, in the soffit of the window-head? Cases of this kind have been explained, with much learning, by the possible use of the 'low side' window as a place for a lamp, which was hung there to frighten evil spirits from the churchyard, and could be trimmed from the outside by merely opening the shutters. To those who know anything of medieval thought, this is not unlikely. No explanation yet advanced is wholly satisfactory. The difference of opinion leads to the conclusion that the use of the low side window was not one and invariable, and that it may have been intended for more than one use, but the sanctus bell hypothesis appears to fit the largest number of cases. The fact that cots for sanctus bells are, as a rule, comparatively late additions to buildings, should be taken into account in considering the use of the low side window. In our own day, it often serves the very practical purpose of giving additional light to the west end of a very dark chancel; but this can hardly have been its original object. [Illustration: Fig. 13. Wensley, Yorkshire: chancel and S. aisle from S.E., shewing low side window.] [Illustration: Fig. 14. St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol: from the north-east.] § 45. The double crypt at Grantham, below the south chapel of the chancel, is not a very usual feature. The entrance to the Grantham crypt was originally by two external doors, which still remain. In process of time, it is not improbable that the relics, which at an earlier date were in the chapel above the north porch, were translated to the eastern crypt. A stairway, with a very imposing doorway at its head, was made to it from the south side of the chancel in the early part of the fifteenth century. A certain number of crypts of Saxon date still remain beneath chancels: these, however, are few, and perhaps the last survival of the _confessio_ in the English parish church is the aisled crypt at Lastingham, near Pickering. The greater part of a twelfth century crypt, with ribbed vaulting, remains beneath the chancel at Newark. Where the church is built on ground with a steep slope eastward, it is more economical to build the chancel on an open crypt, which also may have its uses as a bone-house when the churchyard is cleared, than to build it on a solid lower stage. This accounts for the crypts at Bedale and Thirsk in Yorkshire, and Madley, near Hereford, which are really lower stories to the chancel, and not subterranean chambers. The Lastingham crypt is also built on an abrupt eastward slope. The site of St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol allowed for the construction of large crypt-chambers on its south side and beneath the lady chapel. Sometimes, as at Hythe in Kent, the floor of the chancel was raised to make room for a crypt below. Such crypts were used as bone-houses, when the churchyard was disturbed to make room for new burials. The crypt beneath the south aisle at Rothwell, in Northamptonshire, contains a collection of bones to which, as to that at Hythe, ill-founded legends have been attached. Both these large bone-holes contain altars, at which masses for the dead were said: there is also an altar in the eastern crypt at Grantham. Sometimes, as at Oundle and St Mary Magdalene's, Bridgwater, there is a small crypt or bone-hole beneath one of the transeptal chapels. Bone-holes also occur beneath the east end of an aisle, as at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire, and Hallaton in Leicestershire. At Burford, St Thomas' chapel, to the west of the south transept, has its floor raised to give headway to the vault of the bone-hole below. A similar bone-hole is entered from the interior of the south aisle at Bosham, in Sussex: the altar at the end of the aisle is raised on a platform above it, as the floor of the hole is only a little below the level of the aisle. The splendid twelfth century crypt at St Mary's, Warwick, extended beneath the chancel and transepts of the collegiate church, and is to be classified with the crypts or lower churches of our Norman cathedrals, rather than with the less ambitious crypts of our parish churches. CHAPTER IV THE FURNITURE OF A MEDIEVAL PARISH CHURCH: CONCLUSION § 46. Our parish churches, as we have them to-day, are stripped of much that made them beautiful. The cold walls, often scraped of all their plaster and whitewash; the windows, glazed with white glass, or with modern glass of very uncertain merit, reveal merely the structural skeleton of the building. The robe of colour with which the interior was clothed is gone; and only fragments here and there remain to tell us of the beauty of the decorative art which was, at the close of the middle ages, at its very highest point. But enough is left to enable us to picture to ourselves the appearance of the interior of an English medieval church, and reconstruct that arrangement of furniture and pictorial decoration which made it so beautiful. § 47. To take, first, the features common to nave and chancel alike, the walls of the building were covered with paintings executed on a plaster surface. As might be expected, the best remains of such paintings are to be found in districts where the churches are built of rubble, and the plaster covering, necessary to the internal wall-surface, afforded the fullest field for this form of decoration. There are numerous and beautiful examples in Sussex and Surrey, from which a good idea may be gained of the general scheme of painting in a medieval church. The earlier wall-paintings, such as those at Copford in Essex, or South Leigh in Oxfordshire, or the probably thirteenth century paintings at Easby in Yorkshire, are stiff in drawing and somewhat crude in colouring. From the earliest times, however, this method of decoration was adopted, and gradually assumed a more independent existence and a more pictorial character. As the history of art advanced, and the demand for special kinds of work increased, the lesser arts, hitherto treated as mere servants of masoncraft, began to strike out paths for themselves. The painters at Pickering in Yorkshire or at Raunds in Northamptonshire, treated the walls on which they worked as the backgrounds of strong and brightly coloured designs bearing no relation to the architectural divisions of the building. Where the space to be covered was limited, like the wall between two aisle windows, the treatment was more restrained: in these positions there occur, as at St Breage in Cornwall, panel pictures of saints. In the north aisle at Kettering there is a faded picture of St Roch, the blue background of which, studded with gold stars, is a beautiful example of medieval colour. But the general treatment pursued by the later medieval painters, in their subject and figure painting, was unconfined by architectural limits, and sometimes a single subject spreads below and round a window. Above the chancel arch was usually a painting of the Doom, of which traces remain in many churches, as at Holy Trinity, Coventry, and (much restored) at St Thomas, Salisbury. At Liddington in Rutland and at Kettering, the Doom seems to have been extended to the north and south walls of the nave: there is on the north clerestory wall at Kettering, a figure of an angel looking towards the middle of the wall above the chancel arch; while there are remains on the south wall at Liddington, of a huge whale-like figure representing the mouth of Hades. The subjects represented in these paintings were of the utmost variety. A good idea of the beauty of colour attained by the artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may be gained from a study of the fragmentary figure and pattern paintings at Cirencester or the important remains at Bloxham. To the end of the middle ages much pattern and diaper work was used in painting large surfaces or filling in backgrounds. In several Northamptonshire churches the soffits of arches are covered with reddish brown scrolls of leafage, at its best most elaborate and delicate. The shafts in the angles of the tower at Fairford are painted with a spiral pattern in two colours, like a barber's pole, and at Fairford and Burford there are important remains of late diapered backgrounds. One of the best pieces of fifteenth century diaper painting known to the present writer is that above the chancel arch at Llanbedr-ystrad-yw in Breconshire, which served as a background to a rood and figures of St Mary and St John. [Illustration: Fig. 15. Patrington, Yorks: interior, looking across nave from south transept.] § 48. Mural painting, however, was little more than a complement to the stained or painted windows, which were the most gorgeous note of colour in the medieval fabric. There is no more familiar feature of medieval architecture than the gradual increase in the size of windows, due to that constant progress in the science of architectural construction, in which the timber-roofed parish church followed the vaulted cathedral. The low round-headed windows of the twelfth century were followed by the long lancets of the early thirteenth century. Lancets gradually drew closer and closer together, and were united with spherical openings above, until the mullioned window with its geometrical tracery was formed. The restless spirit of the medieval craftsman was not satisfied with tracery imprisoned within geometrical limits: the enclosing circles and triangles were removed, and the tracery twined in naturalistic curves in the head of the window. Then, at the middle of the fourteenth century, the limit of the imitation of nature was reached. The Black Death formed a sudden division between the work of the old school and the new age, and that formalism in window tracery began, which lasted for years, and left its mark on our architecture as late as the days of the Stewarts. It was long the fashion among those who saw merely the decline in architectural detail, distinctive of the 'Perpendicular' style, to speak of the magnificent achievements of the fifteenth century masons with an overbearing contempt. As a matter of fact, fifteenth century builders were gifted with a power of design, and an ability to plan a parish church as a whole, unequalled in the previous history of medieval art. They lost their interest in sculptured detail, because their main concern was with the broad contrasts of light, shade, and colour, which their large windows and high walls afforded--contrasts in which there was no use for minute detail, and the deep under-cutting and delicate carving of the earlier styles became mere waste of time. The great sheets of coloured glass, in which, as time went on, painting became of more and more importance, and large figures beneath tall canopies of white glass took the place of the smaller subjects and more deeply coloured canopies and grounds of an earlier time, supplied an effect fully as beautiful as that once given by the contrasts of bold projections and deep hollows in moulded arches and carved foliage. The mason in no small degree sacrificed his skill to the glazier; but, in the service of the glazier, his power of noble design on a large scale increased. No effect of colour can well surpass that which is still to be seen in some of our late medieval churches--the grisaille windows of the chancel at Norbury in Derbyshire, the late fourteenth century figure glass of the north aisle at Lowick in Northamptonshire, the fifteenth century east window of the south aisle at St Winnow in Cornwall, the fourteenth century Jesse tree, once in St Chad's, and now in St Mary's at Shrewsbury, or the fifteenth century Jesse tree at Llanrhaiadr-yn-Cynmerch, near Denbigh. Some of the parish churches of York are almost as rich in glass as the cathedral itself. But, in those churches which are still so fortunate as to retain nearly all their medieval glass, like All Saints, North Street, at York, St Neot in Cornwall, and Fairford, the lack of the connecting link which the mural paintings between the windows formed in the colour-scheme is sadly felt. At Fairford, in particular, where the wall-painting which remains is not near the windows, the glass, in its frame of cold plastered wall, gives the effect of isolated masses of almost violent colour, which need to be reduced to their proper key by the painting of the intermediate wall surfaces. On the other hand, at Pickering or Raunds, where we have the mural paintings, the glass is wanting. Often, where painting and stained glass have both disappeared, as in the chapel at South Skirlaugh, their necessity to the building forces itself on the attention. Probably, the full value of stained and painted glass in architectural design, and the relations which prevailed at the close of the middle ages between the mason and glazier, can be judged nowhere in Europe better than in King's college chapel at Cambridge. § 49. The third source of colour to the church, apart from the stonework and the stained glass, was the woodwork of roofs, screens, and other pieces of furniture. With this must be reckoned also the colour of the stone furniture of the church, the sedilia, canopied tombs, stone reredoses, pulpits, and so on. As a rule, the colouring of the stone, here as upon the walls, has faded away or has been obscured by later coats of plaster or whitewash. Here and there, as at Higham Ferrers, a tomb-canopy keeps not a little of its original brilliance. There is a gorgeous coloured frame, probably much restored, for a reredos in the north chapel at Worstead in Norfolk. The panels of the reredos in the south aisle at Northleach contain certain figures of saints, in faded green, red, and blue. The fine reredoses in the side chapels of St Cuthbert's at Wells have brilliant remains of gilding. But coloured woodwork, which has lost little of its brightness, is fairly common, and, though it has often been subjected to drastic restoration, is sometimes almost untouched by time. This type of art reached its highest point in the churches of East Anglia, in the great roofs, with their figures of angels at the end of the hammerbeams or at the foot of the principal rafters, extending from end to end of the building, in the canopies of the fonts, like that at Ufford St Mary, near Woodbridge, and in the rood screens, like that at Ranworth, its openings fringed with cusping of gilded plaster, and its panels painted with figures of saints and archangels, which sometimes, as at Southwold, were set within a raised frame of gilded gesso work. § 50. This setting of colour, towards which stone, wood, and glass all contributed their share, constituted the great beauty of the internal effect of a medieval parish church; and naturally, the more the various craftsmen who worked there advanced in skill--their skill growing in proportion to their opportunity--the more gorgeous was the effect of the assemblage of brilliant windows, screens, and pictured walls. The usual entrance would be through the south porch. Near the entrance, or, at any rate, near the west end of the church, stood the font, beneath its canopy. No piece of church furniture was subject to so much variety of design as the font; and the types vary from perfectly unadorned examples to structures of the utmost richness. The canopy was sometimes a simple cover, which could be moved by hand: often it was a towering structure, suspended by pulleys from the ceiling: sometimes it formed a roofed enclosure on carved uprights, within which the font stood, of stone at Luton in Bedfordshire, of wood at Trunch in Norfolk. Some fonts, like the famous one at Little Walsingham in Norfolk, perhaps the most beautiful of those on which the seven Sacraments are represented, stand on high stepped platforms: others are on a low plinth, which is occasionally continued from the base of a neighbouring column. In fact, the arrangement of fonts is as various as their shape. The rest of the furniture of the nave would vary. Some of the East Anglian churches, such as Irstead in Norfolk, or Dennington and Fressingfield in Suffolk, keep many of the medieval benches, with narrow seats, backs with carved lines of open-work, and projecting ledges which to-day are used for book-rests, but were originally intended as kneelers. Worshippers would kneel on these ledges, with their feet on the seats behind: the age of hassocks had not come, and the floor was hardly an ideal kneeling place. Many English churches were seated with benches of this kind during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Few parts of England are without their examples of bench-ends. Many fine examples remain in Cornwall, as at Launcells, and in Somerset, as at Trull; and in some churches, as Down St Mary and Lapford in Devon, the early sixteenth century bench-ends are almost complete. Wooden benches, however, do not seem to have become general till a comparatively late date, and there was probably little seating accommodation in the earlier churches. The plinths of columns were sometimes made of some size, as at Coddington in Notts, to afford seats; and in some churches, as Belaugh and Tunstead in Norfolk, and Cotterstock, Tansor, and Warmington in Northamptonshire, there are stone benches round the inner walls of various parts of the church, apparently for the same purpose. [Illustration: Fig. 16. Well, Yorkshire: font cover.] § 51. At the east end of each aisle, as has been shewn, there was very frequently an altar. This was enclosed within screens, shutting off, as a rule, the eastern part of the aisle. The screens remain at Dennington, where the loft above the rood screen was continued round them, with fine effect. At Wolborough in south Devon, the side screens also project from the main screen; and, in many cases where the screens themselves have disappeared, holes in the adjacent columns, vertical grooves in the bases, and other similar signs, bear witness to their former existence. All the side altars of a church would be fenced in by screens. In large churches, such as Grantham, there was often more than one chapel in an aisle: the north and south aisles of the nave at Grantham contained at least two chapels each. There were four chapels in the south aisle at Ludlow, three in the north: the transepts each contained two chapels; and, in addition to these, five of the arches of the nave had chapels beneath them, while the altar of the Cross stood at the east end of the nave in front of the tower. § 52. A nave like this would be broken up by a great variety of screen-work; for the clear vista from end to end and side to side of a building, so dear to the restorer of the middle of the nineteenth century, formed no part of the medieval ideal. A space, however, would be kept clear near the pulpit, which, at Ludlow, stood west of the first pier from the east of the north arcade. The stone pulpit at Cirencester is in much the same position; at Wolverhampton, it is on the south side of the nave; at Nantwich it is against the north-east pier; at Holy Trinity, Coventry, against the south-east pier of the central tower. The medieval pulpits of Devonshire stand just west of the rood screen; some, like Kenton, on the north; others, like Dartmouth, on the south side of the entrance. The sermon was hardly so prominent a feature in the services of the medieval church as it became at a later date; but many medieval pulpits remain, and those at Wolverhampton and Coventry, in particular, are imposing structures. The regular furniture of the nave was completed by the pulpit. However, there are some other features to notice. Each altar, or, at any rate, each of the more important altars, would have its own piscina: the chantries at the ends of the aisles sometimes had their own sedile or sedilia. On a bracket near, or in a niche behind each altar, would be a figure, carved and painted, of the saint to whom it was dedicated; and before certain altars where a light or lights were maintained there would be hanging lamps or stands for candles according to the endowment. Thomas Sibthorpe, when he founded his chapels at Beckingham, provided for lights before each altar: in the chantry certificates made under the chantry act of Edward VI, many notices are found of stocks of money by which lights were maintained to burn before specified altars. There would be a holy water stoup in the wall, on the right hand as one entered the church: often the stoup is found in the porch. In some of the Norfolk churches--Sall, Cawston, Aylsham, and Worstead are the best instances--the lower part of the tower is screened off from the nave, the screen supporting a floor which forms a ringers' gallery. In the ringers' gallery at Sall there is a kind of crane, by which the cover of the font, which stands close to the west end, is lifted. In a few churches, as at Weston-in-Gordano in Somerset, there are remains of a small gallery above the main doorway of the church. This is sometimes explained as a gallery used on Palm Sunday by the semi-chorus who joined in chanting the processional hymn. Such a gallery might be used by singers or minstrels on special occasions. § 53. The transepts, where they occur, were, as has already been said, used as chapels, or divided off into more than one chapel. Little need be said of the chapels on either side of the chancel, as the general arrangement of their altars and furniture was not very different from that of the chancel itself. The quire and chancel were divided from the nave by the rood screen. This important piece of furniture, usually of wood, but sometimes of stone, crossed the chancel arch from side to side; and was often continued, in churches where the chancel arch was omitted, across the west end of the chancel aisles. Where there was a chancel arch, the chancel chapels had their own screens. The rood screen was elaborately carved, and its lower panels were painted with figures of angels, saints, prophets, apostles, and other designs. The uprights dividing the panels were continued upwards on either side of open panels, sometimes treated as tall arched openings, at other times imitating the form of mullioned windows, and were framed into a plinth at the bottom, and a horizontal beam at the top. The central division of the screen was closed by folding doors: on either side of this entrance was sometimes, against the west side of the screen, an altar. At Ranworth in Norfolk the screen altars are enclosed by panels returned from the face of the screen: there are distinct traces of this arrangement at Weston-in-Gordano and other places; and, at Lapford and Swymbridge in Devon, there are large rectangular openings in the traceried panels of the upper part of the screens, across which painted cloths seem to have been stretched at the back of the side altars. Above the screen, with its floor-beams laid across the top, and attached to either face by a series of trusses which formed a deep coved and ribbed cornice to the screen, was the loft, gallery, or, as it was often called, the 'solar.' Sometimes, as at Montgomery and Llanwnog, the screen was double, the floor of the loft forming a roof to the space between. This upper story had a projecting parapet on either side, the front of which was divided into panels and painted. It was approached by a staircase, the position of which varied greatly. In churches with an aisleless chancel, the stair was contained in a turret to the north or south of the chancel arch, which was, if there was little room for it, sometimes built out into the adjacent chapel. At Dennington, however, where the loft was continued round the screens at the end of the nave aisles, the staircase is in the south wall of the south aisle. At Ropsley, near Grantham, the stair is in the outer wall of the north aisle, near the north-east corner; and the loft was approached by a bridge thrown across the end of the north aisle. In the aisleless church of Little Hereford, near Tenbury, where there is a very narrow chancel arch, the loft was approached by a straight stair in the thickness of the south half of the east wall: a right-angled turn at the top led straight into the loft. In churches with aisled chancels, the stair was commonly contained in a turret projecting from the outer side of the north or south wall, and there were lofts continued across all the screens of the chancel and its chapels. At Llywel in Breconshire, there is a fairly broad straight staircase at right angles to the loft, contained in a broad projection from the north wall of the aisleless nave: this was a favourite arrangement in Wales, and occurs at Patricio, and, in the more primitive form of a wooden stair within a projecting window, at Llanwnog in Montgomeryshire. Wooden stairs and even ladders to lofts were probably not unusual. At Totnes the chief approach to the loft of the stone screen was a stairway in a half-octagon, projecting into the north part of the chancel, from the head of which the way lay along the loft of the adjoining parclose screen. Few lofts, however, remain. The Totnes loft, which was of wood, is gone. Several Welsh lofts, owing, no doubt, to their remote position, escaped destruction when the general dismantling of rood lofts was carried out in the reign of Elizabeth. The most magnificent of these are at Patricio in Breconshire, Llanegryn in Merionethshire, Montgomery and Llanwnog in Montgomeryshire, and Llananno in Radnorshire. Less beautiful, but remarkable for the very perfect state of its painted back-board, is the loft at Llanelieu in Breconshire. But in remote English places, such as Blackawton, near Dartmouth, Cotes-by-Stow in Lincolnshire, and Hubberholm in west Yorkshire, lofts are left in a fair state of perfection. [Illustration: Fig. 17. Banwell, Somerset: rood screen.] § 54. The use of the loft was, it has often been said, for the deacon to sing the gospel from at high mass on great festivals. This was certainly the case with the stone _pulpita_ above the quire screens of collegiate and monastic churches. But, in most parish churches the stair was so narrow and inconvenient that certainly the vestments and probably the temper of the deacon who attempted to climb it would be easily spoiled. In many lofts, it is true, there was an altar. The piscina of one remains in a few churches, as at Little Hereford: there was a chantry founded in 1349 at one in Grantham church, where the screen was a large one of stone. But the habitual use of the loft was as an organ gallery; and the fine screen at Newark-on-Trent still has at its east side the rectangular projection which was occupied by a 'pair of organs.' The rood itself, the great cross bearing the figure of our Lord with statues of St Mary and St John upon either side, stood upon a beam which crossed the chancel arch above the loft. The beam was, of course, painted, and, in addition to the statues which it carried, bore sockets for candles, which were lighted on festival occasions. The corbels which supported rood beams are sometimes seen: beams themselves, however, do not often remain. There is a finely painted example of one at Tunstead in Norfolk; and another remains at Cullompton in Devon. Here and there, where the beam was fixed in the wall, and had to be sawn away, the end may still be seen. Some screens had no loft: in these cases the rood frequently stood upon the top of the screen. In some cases, as at Llanelieu in Breconshire and Wenhaston in Suffolk, the rood and its attendant figures were fixed upon a painted board which formed a back to the loft, and filled the upper part of the chancel arch. In other places, as at Hickleton, near Doncaster, and Llanbedr-ystrad-yw, they were fixed against the wall above the chancel arch. This would be the case where, as at Hickleton, the arch was low and narrow, and there was no room for a separate beam beneath it. No piece of church furniture is more interesting than the rood screen and its accompaniments: the variety of local design and of its arrangements, and the great beauty of the finished work, make it, of all special topics of ecclesiology, perhaps the most attractive. § 55. It has been said before that the hooks by which the Lenten veil was suspended across the chancel arch are still to be seen in several churches. The western part of the chancel was occupied by the quire, whose stalls were returned along the back of the screen, the rector's stall being the end return stall on the south side. Quire stalls in parish churches were often carved with great refinement and beauty: the stalls at Walpole St Peter have each a stone canopy, formed by recessing panels in the chancel wall. The finest stalls, with their hinged seats, rightly called misericords, and wrongly misereres, are usually to be found in collegiate or chantry churches, like Higham Ferrers or Ludlow, where the chantry priests of the Palmers' guild said their offices together in the high chancel. The stalls of the chantry college at Fotheringhay are now in the churches of Tansor and Benefield; the quire stalls of St Mary's at Nottingham are in the suburban church of Sneinton. An excellent instance of the combination of stalls and rood screen is found in the village church of Ashby St Ledgers, near Daventry, which contains a large amount of old woodwork. In the centre of the quire or, as a gospel-desk, on the north side of the altar would stand the lectern. The number of medieval lecterns remaining in England is not great, the finest being the great brass lectern given by provost Hacomblen to King's college, Cambridge. Lecterns in which the desk takes the form of a bird are sometimes found, as in Norwich cathedral and at Ottery St Mary. § 56. When interest was first revived in ecclesiology, the fashion of raising the quire and chancel above the rest of the church, by a number of steps intended to be symbolical, became very prevalent. This, however, was not in keeping with medieval practice. It is true that occasionally chancels were raised high above the rest of the church. At Walpole St Peter the chancel, rebuilt in the fifteenth century, was brought up to the churchyard boundary, and apparently interfered with a right of way which led round the back of the old chancel. It was therefore built with a floor raised high above the nave, and the right of way was preserved by piercing an arch below. St Leonard's at Exeter has a chancel built over an archway which affords access to a narrow street. A church built on a slope, like Tansor, ascends noticeably from west to east. But the ascent is contrived, not by means of flights of steps, but by an inclined plane. As a rule, floors of churches sloped slightly upwards towards the altar. A perfectly level floor gives the false effect in perspective of a downward slope: a floor, on the other hand, with a gradual upward slope has a level effect. The floor of the quire was sometimes elevated by a single shallow step above the floor of the nave: very generally, it was on the same level: at St Michael's, Cambridge, the level was slightly lower. The chancel, again, was a step higher than the quire, and the altar stood slightly raised upon its own oblong altar pace. The levels at Geddington in Northamptonshire remain much as they were. The quire is on a level with the nave: the chancel is a pace higher, and the altar stands upon its own pace. An inscription round the foot of the chancel wall records the making of the pavement (now renewed) and the _scabella_, by which the foot-paces are almost certainly implied, of the altar in 1369. Round the lower foot-pace of the south chapel is another inscription, apparently of the same date. In no respect have modern restorations been so disastrous as in the altering of original levels, in order to give the altar the elevation which was supposed by the restorers to be necessary. § 57. The altar itself, as can be seen from the many altar-slabs which remain, was a long and fairly broad stone table: it was usually less than three feet high, and was covered by a cloth and frontal. It is probable that the frontal, like the vestments of the clergy, followed, in the ordinary parish church, no very strict sequence of colour according to the seasons. For festivals the handsomest and newest frontal and vestments would probably be used. The altar was kept fairly low, to make room for the reredos, which extended across the east wall above the altar, and below the sill of the east window. It will be found that modern restorers, in nine cases out of ten, have disregarded old English uses, by raising an altar until its upper surface is close to the sill of the window, and then by blocking up part, or even the whole of the window, by reredoses or altar screens of stone or wood. High reredoses and altar screens were not unknown, of course, in England; but the ordinary reredos was a single or double band of carving below the east window, as at Geddington or Ludlow. At Stanion in Northants, the string-courses of the east walls of the chancel and north chapel are raised, below the east windows, to form frames for mural paintings or carved retables above the altar. Sculptured tablets were not rare, and indications of their presence may be traced: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the alabaster, dug out of the Chellaston 'plaster-pits,' and worked by the 'plasterers' of Nottingham, was used, among other purposes, for such tablets. On the north and south sides of the reredos the altar was enclosed by curtains hung on brass rods projecting from the wall or from upright standards. These curtains, known as riddels, had sockets for candles at the ends of the rods. They appear to be derived from the curtains which hung round the altar canopies of basilican churches, and were drawn at the consecration of the elements. Probably the reredos, in most churches, was formed by a painted cloth--that is, a piece of embroidered tapestry--hung behind the altar, or stretched from the upright of the one to the upright of the other riddel. It may be added that the arrangement of cross, candles and flower vases on a shelf, or even on several shelves, at the back of the altar, with which we are so familiar, was not frequent in the middle ages. The cross was usually the central carved or embroidered feature of the reredos: one or two lighted candles were placed upon the altar at mass; and flowers and sweet smelling herbs would be strewn at certain seasons on the chancel floor. Richness of colour and simplicity of furniture were the distinguishing features of the medieval altar. There is a curious ledge upon the back part of the upper surface of the crypt altar at Grantham: it actually lies _upon_ the altar, and its height, as contrasted with that of the modern gradine or shelf, affords the same contrast that there is between the low foot-paces of the medieval, and the flights of steps of the modern chancel. § 58. The statue of the patron saint stood near the altar, on a corbel in the wall, in a canopied recess, or, as at Abbots Kerswell in Devon, where there is a very large figure of the Virgin, in the jamb of a window. In front of the altar, the pyx, or receptacle for the reserved Sacrament, hung by chains from the roof: it was covered by an embroidered veil, which was drawn aside when the pyx was opened. The rest of the ordinary furniture of the chancel was of a more permanent description. The piscina and sedilia, which are frequently of one date and form part of one design, were on the south side of the chancel, forming arched recesses in the wall. The number of sedilia varied from one to three: more than three are seldom found in a parish church. Permanent stone sedilia were usually regarded as part of the regular furniture of the chancel. Occasionally their place was supplied by the lowering of a window sill; but there were also instances, no doubt, in which the sedile or sedilia were simply wooden chairs placed near the south wall of the chancel. The piscina was frequently supplied with an upper ledge for cruets. In the piscina of the south aisle at Hawton, near Newark, there is an inner recess for this purpose on the east side; at Tansor a shallow niche is provided in the head of the arch of the piscina. The drain of the piscina was usually within the wall; but there are a number of twelfth century, and a few later, examples, in which the bowl forms a projection from the wall, and the drain was contained in a detached column, the base of which is frequently united to the foot of the wall. Projecting bowls are common, with drain-holes which slant downwards into the wall. A piscina is sometimes found in the sill of a window: one at Grantham is fitted with a removable drain, and there are other such examples. A drain in the chancel floor is sometimes found, usually of a rather early period. In addition to the piscina, most churches contain plain almeries or cupboards, rectangular recesses with rebates for wooden doors: these are generally in the north or east wall of the chancel. § 59. More exceptional--indeed, very uncommon--as a piece of furniture, was the permanent Easter sepulchre, which usually was on the north, but sometimes on the south of the chancel. This was the place to which the Host was carried on the evening of Holy Thursday, and left until Easter eve: it was symbolical of the sepulchre of our Lord, and the services which took place in connexion with it were sometimes of a somewhat dramatic character. A permanent Easter sepulchre, like those at Hawton and Heckington, was a luxury. These, and the sepulchre at Navenby, have carvings referring to the story of the Resurrection, and in the lower panels are represented the guards at the tomb. The recess at Hawton, forming a triple opening, has an inner recess at the back, which could be shut and locked. At Heckington and Navenby the recesses are merely single cupboards, surrounded by elaborate carving. Frequently, an almery was used for the purpose; and where, as at Frating in Essex, Claypole in Lincolnshire, or Sefton in Lancashire, an almery is treated with special care, as, for example, with a floral hood-mould, this special use is indicated. There may also have been removable sepulchres of wood: a piece of furniture which remains at Cowthorpe in Yorkshire, is said to be one. Another was made for St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, in 1440. Certainly, the sepulchre was often a temporary arrangement, like the _reposoir_ in a French church to-day. Thomas Meyring of Newark directed his burial to take place 'where the sepulchre of our Lord was wont to be set up at Easter.' A founder's tomb near an altar was also used for the sepulchre, the receptacle for the Host being probably placed inside the tomb-recess or against it. At Sibthorpe near Newark, the small sepulchre is immediately above the founder's tomb: this was probably the case at Fledborough. At Owston, near Doncaster, a tomb-recess in the north chancel wall is often called the Easter sepulchre, and a projecting stone at one side of it is pointed out as a stone for the watcher who kept guard over the tomb at Easter. The majority of Easter sepulchres which are left belong to the fourteenth century. The imposing structure at Northwold in Norfolk, which is on the south of the chancel, is of the fifteenth century, and, in at least one example, at Wymondham in Norfolk, also on the south side, there are details which approach the Renaissance period. The frequent identity of the founder's tomb with the Easter sepulchre, for which there is documentary evidence, is proved further by the tombs of the rector and vicar, under whose auspices, in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, the chancels of South Pool and Woodleigh churches in south Devon were restored. These are vaulted recesses north of the altar, containing table tombs with effigies, and a large amount of florid carving, which shews signs of Renaissance influence. On the wall at the back of either tomb are sculptures dealing with the burial and resurrection of our Lord, which clearly point to the use of the tombs at Easter, and justify the name of Easter sepulchre, frequently applied to them. A third tomb of rather later date is at West Alvington, in the same neighbourhood: its details were suggested by South Pool and Woodleigh, but the brasses of the back wall are gone, and its inclusion in the list of Easter sepulchres is doubtful. There is a curious late thirteenth century piece of work, projecting inwards from the north wall of the chancel at Twywell, near Kettering. A tomb-recess forms the lowest stage; above this is a double almery, which may have been an Easter sepulchre, and above this, again, is a sloping stone desk with a book-rest for the reader of the gospel. Stone gospel-desks are found in a few Derbyshire churches, like Crich, Spondon, and Etwall; and in a few other rare instances. A founder's tomb is, of course, by no means an invariable feature of a chancel. The natural place for the burial of the founder of a chantry would be close to the altar where his chantry was celebrated; and often, as at Grantham, the presence of a tomb in an aisle wall indicates the existence of a chantry altar near that spot. [Illustration: Fig. 18. Hawton, Notts: Easter sepulchre.] § 60. The sacristy has been referred to in the previous chapter; and with this description of the furniture of the chancel, our account of the English parish church is nearly come to an end. Few persons who are in the habit of visiting parish churches will fail to meet with exceptional or unique features. For example, in the north wall of the chancel at Scawton in north Yorkshire, there is a long oblong trough, with a drain in the wall behind it, the use of which is difficult to conjecture. At Tunstead in Norfolk, there is a narrow platform behind the altar, the whole width of the east wall. At its south end is a stair from the floor of the chancel; and near the stair is a door leading into a chamber below the platform. This narrow room, far too small for a sacristy, is lighted by a grating in the floor of the platform. It is supposed that this was an arrangement for the exhibition of relics. At Tanfield, near Ripon, there is a little cell-like recess in the wall between the chancel and north chapel, with a window commanding the altar. The problems which are set by these details bring us by degrees into relation with the whole of medieval life; and the history of the parish church becomes an important part of the social history of the parish. The magnificent tombs of the Marmions at Tanfield also recall to us an artistic feature of the parish church which opens out a wide field, and can be dealt with here only so far as the tombs themselves afford evidence as to the date of the part of the church in which they occur. § 61. The actual development of the parish church comes to an end with the Reformation. The building of great churches, cathedral and monastic, ceased with the suppression of the monasteries. The suppression of the chantries, and the new doctrines which it symbolised, did away with one object which had been a powerful consideration with the lay benefactor of parish churches. Henceforward the best work of those English masons who, in every county, had for generations shaped the course of medieval art, and, with it, the best work of the wood-carvers and glaziers, is found in private houses. In the early part of the seventeenth century, under the influence of Laud, much restoration and rebuilding was done. Wood-carvers filled many churches with furniture of great beauty and historical value. Churches like St John's at Leeds, or the little chapel of Carlton Husthwaite in Yorkshire, are, in stone and woodwork alike, complete examples of the work of this period. Brancepeth, Sedgefield, and Eaglescliffe in Durham; Burneston in north Yorkshire; and, above all, Croscombe in Somerset, contain wooden furniture which one would not willingly exchange for medieval work. But, in spite of the richness and picturesqueness of seventeenth century woodwork, the art of the Laudian revival had no power to strike out new lines for itself. The chancels of Astley Abbots in Shropshire, Kelmarsh in Northamptonshire, and Barsham in Suffolk, interest us by their quaint adaptation of Gothic detail: they tell us nothing new. The art of the mason, as regards the parish church, is exhausted. § 62. At a later date, Wren built parish churches with an extraordinary elasticity of style and plan. But the study of Wren's plans is simply the study of the plans of an individual architect: they are the outcome of his relation to the fashions of his day, and his unrivalled capacity for dealing with them. He established firmly the use of a modified Palladian style in church architecture, which his successors imitated until nothing further could be done with it. But, when we look at his churches, we never can forget the architect behind them. St Martin's-in-the-Fields and St Mary-le-Strand, by Gibbs; St Philip's at Birmingham, by Archer, fine churches though they are, fall short of his designs; and we instinctively compare and contrast their plan and elevation with the models supplied by Wren. In the medieval parish church, on the other hand, the individual architect had no place; the whole artistic activity of an age was represented; the builder was an original artist, and a member of a nation of artists; and the development of the parish church was the work of a national interest, not merely confined to one highly specialised profession. When the Gothic revival came in the early nineteenth century, it was thought that medieval art was once more re-born. But, when we look to-day at the scholarly and often extremely beautiful work of artists like Pugin, Sir Gilbert Scott, Street, Pearson, Butterfield, Bodley, or the younger Gilbert Scott, we still feel the force of individual design and style rather than the force of a great collective movement. All these, like Wren, have added individual contributions to church planning and decoration; but their art is a by-path of national life, and is merely the result of a purely individual type of thought. § 63. At the same time, to say this is not to belittle post-Reformation church architecture. It is simply to point out the contrast between the work of the architect and the work of the medieval mason, between a sporadic development of art, and a development which was general in every part of the country. But, while the work of later generations differs in quality and spirit from that of the medieval craftsman, while it is necessarily more sophisticated and less spontaneous than his, no greater mistake can be made than to drive it out of our churches. The Reformation and Cromwell have been made responsible for much destruction: yet no one has destroyed so light-heartedly as the modern restorer, in his efforts to bring back churches to what is called their 'original state.' To-day, people are waking up to the value of post-Reformation masonry and furniture. They realise that when an eighteenth century church is swept away, and a handsome building, in an eclectic Gothic style, decked with the best products of modern arts and crafts, rises in its place, the advantage is questionable. Not merely does much good furniture inevitably perish, but a link with the past is destroyed. Eighteenth century pews may not be altogether suited to a fifteenth century church; but they remind us at any rate that the fabric in which they stand has a continuous history. The age which produced them followed its own taste and worked on its own lines, and did not merely strive after an ideal of harmonious imitation. Not only the work of recent centuries has been touched, but medieval work has been altered: screens have been mutilated and removed, old glass has been destroyed, even whole fabrics have been rebuilt with very slight regard to their earlier plan. It can never be impressed too strongly upon the average Englishman that, quite apart from their religious associations, the parish churches of this country form, as a body, one of the most remarkable historical monuments which any European nation possesses. We may regret, perhaps, that past generations have tampered with them; but for that very reason we should hesitate to tamper with them ourselves, or to replace incongruous work of the past by imitative work of our own. We may well use our individual energy and our new ideas in adding to their number; but our treatment of the older work, where it positively calls for renewal, should be tender, conservative, and self-effacing. The excellence of the medieval mason's work consists largely in his avoidance of self-consciousness, in its perfectly natural and spontaneous feeling: if we attempt to impose our individuality upon his work, we are in danger of supplying to future and, it may be hoped, wiser generations a contrast from which they will not fail to draw a melancholy profit. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Books exclusively devoted to the subject of the English parish church are few in number, and generally are in the form of descriptions of the churches of special districts, or of monographs on individual churches. 1. Among the older books in which special attention is paid to parish churches, the following may be mentioned: BLOXAM, M. H., _Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture_, 11th ed., 2 vols., London, 1882. BRANDON, J. R. and J. A., _Parish Churches_, London, 1888. [Perspective views, ground plans, and short descriptions.] ECCLESIOLOGICAL [Cambridge Camden] SOCIETY, _A Hand-Book of English Ecclesiology_, London, 1847. NEALE, J. P., and LE KEUX, J., _Views of the most interesting collegiate and parochial churches in Great Britain_, 2 vols., London, 1824-5. PARKER, J. H., _Introduction to the study of Gothic Architecture_, 12th ed., Oxford and London, 1898. RICKMAN, T., _An attempt to discriminate the styles of English Architecture_, 7th ed., Oxford and London, 1881. WICKES, C., _The spires and towers of the mediaeval churches of England_, London, 1859. 2. More modern works, in which the development of the ground plan is treated as part of the general subject, are: BOND, F., _Gothic Architecture in England_, London, 1905. BROWN, G. BALDWIN, _The Arts in Early England_, vol. II, London, 1903. PRIOR, E. S., _A history of Gothic art in England_, London, 1900. SCOTT, G. G., _An essay on the history of English Church Architecture_, London, 1881. 3. Among volumes dealing with special districts, the following may be mentioned: BUCKLER, G., _Twenty-two churches of Essex_, London, 1856. COX, J. C., _Notes on the churches of Derbyshire_, 4 vols., Chesterfield and London, 1875-9. CRANAGE, D. H. S., _An architectural account of the churches of Shropshire_, Wellington (in course of publication). MCCALL, H. B., _Richmondshire Churches_, London, 1909. NORTHAMPTON, _Architectural notices of the churches of the Archdeaconry of_, London, 1849. SHARPE, E., _An account of the churches visited during the Lincoln excursion of the Architectural Association_, London, 1871. SHARPE, E., and others, _Churches of the Nene Valley_, London, 1880. WILSON, F. R., _An architectural survey of the churches in the Archdeaconry of Lindisfarne_, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1870. 4. Books upon individual churches cannot be mentioned here, nor can any detailed list be given of the numerous valuable articles in such publications as _Archaeologia_ and the _Archaeological Journal_. Some of the most enlightening work upon the subject is to be found in the papers contributed by the late J. T. Micklethwaite to the transactions of various societies. Those on Saxon churches in vols. LIII and LIV of the _Archaeological Journal_, and the plans contributed by him to J. W. Walker's _History of All Saints, Wakefield_(Wakefield, 1888), may be specially mentioned. 5. Books on the subject of church furniture are numerous. The most comprehensive modern handbook on the subject is J. C. Cox and A. Harvey's _English Church Furniture_, London, 1907. More detailed treatment of separate articles of furniture is given in F. Bond's _Screens and Galleries_, _Fonts and Font-Covers_, etc., volumes of a series now in course of publication. J. T. Fowler's edition of _The Rites of Durham_ (Surtees Society, 1903), and Rock's _Church of our Fathers_, edited by G. W. Hart and W. H. Frere (4 vols., London, 1903-4), are a mine of information on points connected with church services and furniture. 6. The historical aspect of the parish church is treated excellently by E. L. Cutts, _Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages_ (London, 1898). But, to gain an adequate knowledge of this side of the question, the study of original documents is necessary, and chiefly of the contents of episcopal registers. Of these invaluable texts some have been printed in full, and of others there are printed abstracts, but the vast majority remain in manuscript. The fullest printed series is the _Exeter Episcopal Registers_ (ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph), covering the period 1258-1455: the York registers from 1216 to 1285 (ed. J. Raine and W. Brown for the Surtees Society), and the Hereford registers from 1275 to 1327 (ed. W. W. Capes and others for the Cantilupe and Canterbury and York Societies) are also full and accurate editions. Much information with regard to the foundation of chantries and other important subjects may be obtained from the Calendars of the Patent Rolls and of Letters from the Papal Registers, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. The Chantry Certificate Rolls and Inventories of Church Goods drawn up between 1547 and 1549 are also sources of great value: these have been printed for some counties, but the greater number are still unpublished. J. C. Cox and R. M. Serjeantson's _History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton_ (Northampton, 1897) may be cited as a model history of a parish church. The arrangement of the topographical sections of the various Victoria County Histories makes it possible to study the history of a large number of churches in company with their architecture. INDEX Abbots Kerswell, Devon, 122 Abingdon, Berks., 33 Acaster Malbis, Yorks., 92 Acton Burnell, Salop, 79 Adlingfleet, Yorks., 19 Ainderby Steeple, Yorks., 82 Aldwinkle St Peter, Northants., 88 Alveley, Salop, 36 Alvington, West, Devon, 127 Arnold, Notts., 83 Arundel, Sussex, 37 Ashby St Ledgers, Northants., 118 Astley Abbots, Salop, 130 Auckland St Andrew, Durham, 79 Avening, Glouces., 77 Aylsham, Norfolk, 111 Aysgarth, Yorks., 30 Banwell, Som., 113 Bardfield, Great, Essex, 80 Barnack, Northants., 4, 53, 70 Barsham, Suffolk, 130 Barton-le-Street, Yorks., 67, 68 Barton-on-Humber, Lincs., St Peter's, 54 Bath, Som., cathedral priory, 35 Battlefield, Salop, 28 Beccles, Suffolk, 73 Beckingham, Lincs., 21, 22, 33, 82, 111 Bedale, Yorks., 74, 96 Bedminster, Som., 49 Belaugh, Norfolk, 109 Benefield, Northants., 118 Berkeley, Glouces., 34 Beverley, Yorks., St Mary's, 69 Beverstone, Glouces., 36 Biggleswade, Beds., 33 Birmingham, Warwicks., St Martin's, 31; St Philip's, 130 Blackawton, Devon, 116 Blakeney, Norfolk, 87 Bloxham, Oxon., 101 Boothby Pagnell, Lincs., 82 Bosham, Sussex, 97 Boston, Lincs., 31, 36, 62 Bottesford, Lincs., 79 Boughton, Northants., 30 Boxgrove, Sussex, priory church, 35 Bracebridge, Lincs., 76, 77 Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts., 70, 77 Bradwell-juxta-Mare, Essex, St Peter's on the Wall, 2, 3 Brancepeth, Durham, 129 Branston, Lincs., 9, 10, 15, 58 Bridgnorth, Salop, 29 Bridgwater, Som., St Mary Magdalene's, 96 Bridlington, Yorks., priory church, 17 Bristol, St Mary Redcliffe, 48, 49, 66, 95, 96, 126 Brixworth, Northants., 4, 53, 54, 55, 56 Bunbury, Cheshire, 28 Burford, Oxon., 35, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 88, 97, 102 Burgh-next-Aylsham, Norfolk, 78 Burneston, Yorks., 84, 85, 129 Burnsall, Yorks., 30 Burton Lazars, Leices., 92 Caistor, Lincs., 58 Cambridge, Clare college, 38; Corpus Christi college, 31, 89; Jesus college chapel, 38, 39; King's college chapel, 105, 118; Michaelhouse, 38; St Peter's college, 34, 38, 89; Trinity Hall, 38; St Benedict's, 89; St Botolph's, 35; St Edward's, 38; Little St Mary's, 34, 38, 89; St Michael's, 38, 119 Canterbury, Kent, cathedral, 4, 70; St Martin's, 2 Car Colston, Notts., 83 Carlton Husthwaite, Yorks., 129 Carlton-in-Lindrick, Notts., 57 Castle Rising, Norfolk, 77 Cawston, Norfolk, 111 Chaddesden, Derby, 38, 84 Chellaston, Derby, 121 Cherry Hinton, Cambs., 79 Chesterfield, Derby, 32, 33, 41 Chipping Norton, Oxon., 32 Chipping Sodbury, Glouces., 32 Churchdown, Glouces., 68 Cirencester, Glouces., 39, 40, 41, 48, 49, 72, 73, 101, 110 Claypole, Lincs., 84, 88, 124 Cleobury Mortimer, Salop, 36 Clovelly, Devon, 28 Coddington, Notts., 109 Coln St Denis, Glouces., 56 Coneysthorpe, Yorks., _see_ Barton-le-Street Copford, Essex, 100 Cotes-by-Stow, Lincs., 116 Cotterstock, Northants., 28, 37, 83, 109 Coventry, Warwicks., Holy Trinity 45, 48, 49, 101, 110; St Michael's, 45, 46, 47, 49, 65 Cowthorpe, Yorks., 124 Crediton, Devon, 32 Crich, Derby, 127 Croft, Yorks., 36, 82, 84 Cromhall, Glouces., 75 Croscombe, Som., 36, 129 Croyland abbey, Lincs., 14, 88 Cullompton, Devon, 117 Darlington, Durham, 90 Dartmouth, Devon, St Saviour's, 110 Deerhurst, Glouces., 54, 55 Dennington, Suffolk, 80, 108, 109, 114 Dereham, West, Norfolk, abbey, 11, 12 Donington, Lincs., 75 Down St Mary, Devon, 108 Dronfield, Derby, 84 Durham, cathedral, 8 Eaglescliffe, Durham, 129 Earl's Barton, Northants., 53 Easby, Yorks., 100 Easingwold, Yorks., 68 Elm, Cambs., 59 Elmley, Worces., castle chapel, 29 Elstow abbey, Beds., 88 Ely, Cambs., cathedral, 6, 59, 81 Escomb, Durham, 77 Etwall, Derby, 127 Exeter, Devon, St Leonard's, 119 Exton, Rutland, 61, 62 Fairford, Glouces., 102, 104 Farnacres, Durham, 29 Fledborough, Notts., 82, 126 Fleet, Lincs., 75 Fotheringhay, Northants., 28, 37, 118 Fowey, Cornwall, 75 Frampton, Lincs., 61 Frating, Essex, 124 Fressingfield, Suffolk, 108 Frome Selwood, Som., 45 Geddington, Northants., 120, 121 Gedney, Lincs., 60, 65 Gisburn, Yorks., 11 Gloucester, cathedral, 8 Grantham, Lincs., 24, 25, 31, 34, 42, 49, 61, 65, 71, 72, 74, 89, 95, 96, 109, 116, 122, 123, 127 Gretton, Northants., 92 Grinton, Yorks., 30 Haccombe, Devon, 28 Hale, Great, Lincs., 56 Hallaton, Leices., 25, 97 Halsall, Lancs., 84, 89 Harringworth, Northants., 88 Hawstead, Suffolk, 93 Hawton, Notts., 82, 88, 123, 124, 125 Heckington, Lincs., 82, 85, 89, 124 Hedon, Yorks., 30, 79 Hereford, cathedral, 34 Hereford, Little, Heref., 114, 116 Heslerton, West, Yorks., 79 Hessle, Yorks., 30 Hexham, Northumb., priory church, 4, 35 Hickleton, Yorks., 117 Higham Ferrers, Northants., 28, 37, 66, 90, 97, 105, 118 Hitchin, Herts., 33 Hodgeston, Pembroke, 85 Hooton Pagnell, Yorks., 59 Hough-on-the-Hill, Lincs., 53 Houghton-le-Spring, Durham, 78, 79 Hubberholm, Yorks., 116 Hull, Yorks., Holy Trinity, 30 Hungerton, Leices., 36, 68 Hythe, Kent, 96 Immingham, Lincs., 64 Irstead, Norfolk, 108 Islip, Northants., 88 Jarrow-on-Tyne, Durham, St Paul's, 4 Kelmarsh, Northants., 130 Kenton, Devon, 110 Kettering, Northants., 62, 66, 100, 101 Ketton, Rutland, 66 Kewstoke, Som., 35 Keyston, Hunts., 66 Kirkburn, Yorks., 56 Kirkby in Malhamdale, Yorks., 11, 12 Kirkby Wiske, Yorks., 82 Langton, East, Leices., 83 Lapford, Devon, 108, 114 Lastingham, Yorks., 96 Launcells, Cornwall, 108 Lavenham, Suffolk, 70, 87, 90 Lawford, Essex, 80 Leeds, Yorks., St John's, 129 Leicester, St Mary's in the Castle, 65 Leigh, South, Oxon., 100 Leighton Buzzard, Beds., 33 Leverington, Cambs., 59 Lichfield, Staffs., cathedral, 81 Liddington, Rutland, 101 Lincoln, cathedral, 9, 10, 16, 34 Lindisfarne, Northumb., 5 Llananno, Radnor, 115 Llanbedr-ystrad-yw, Brecon, 102, 117 Llanegryn, Merioneth, 115 Llanelieu, Brecon, 116, 117 Llanfair-ar-y-bryn, Carmarthen, 74 Llanfihangel-cwm-du, Brecon, 74 Llanrhaiadr-yn-Cynmerch, Denbigh, 104 Llanwnog, Montgom., 114, 115 Llywel, Brecon, 74, 115 London, old St Paul's, 80; St James Garlickhithe, 26; St Martin in the Fields, 130; St Mary-le-Strand, 130 Louth, Lincs., 32, 33, 62 Lowick, Northants., 104 Lowthorpe, Yorks., 26, 27, 37 Ludlow, Salop, 31, 34, 48, 110, 118, 121 Luffenham, North, Rutland, 85 Luton, Beds., 33, 108 Madley, Heref., 96 March, Cambs., 94 Margaretting, Essex, 60 Melford, Long, Suffolk, 34, 36 Melton Mowbray, Leices., 67 Middleham, Yorks., 28 Mitford, Northumb., 78 Monkwearmouth, Durham, 4, 5, 53 Montgomery, 114, 115 Morpeth, Northumb., 93 Nantwich, Cheshire, 84, 110 Navenby, Lincs., 82, 124 Newark-on-Trent, Notts., 31, 35, 42, 65, 96, 116, 126 Newport, Salop, 28 Newton Nottage, Glamorgan, 74 Norbury, Derby, 75, 84, 104 Northampton, All Saints', 32 Northleach, Glouces., 105 Northwold, Norfolk, 126 Norton-on-Tees, Durham, 52 Norwich, Norfolk, cathedral, 8, 118; St Peter Mancroft, 90 Nottingham, St Mary's, 32, 118 Oadby, Leices., 64 Oakham, Rutland, 61 Oswestry, Salop, 50 Othery, Som., 94 Othona; _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare Ottery St Mary, Devon, 118 Oundle, Northants., 62, 66, 96 Owston, Yorks., 126 Oxford, Merton college chapel, 39 Patricio, Brecon, 115 Patrick Brompton, Yorks., 82, 84 Patrington, Yorks., 62, 82, 83, 84, 99 Peterborough, Northants., cathedral, 4, 5, 6 Pickering, Yorks., 100, 104 Pleshy, Essex, 28 Pool, South, Devon, 70, 71, 126, 127 Preen, Salop, 93 Preston-in-Holderness, Yorks., 30 Quenington, Glouces., 67 Ramsey, Hunts., abbey church, 6 Ranworth, Norfolk, 106, 112 Raskelf, Yorks., 68 Rauceby, Lincs., 61 Raunds, Northants., 66, 89, 100, 104 Ripon, Yorks., cathedral, 4 Rochester, Kent, cathedral, 4 Romaldkirk, Yorks., 82 Ropsley, Lincs., 114 Rotherham, Yorks., college of Jesus, 25 Rothwell, Northants., 96 Rushden, Northants., 66, 90 Rushton, Northants., 90 St Breage, Cornwall, 100 St Michael Penkivel, Cornwall, 38, 73 St Neot, Cornwall, 104 St Peter's on the Wall; _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare St Winnow, Cornwall, 104 Salisbury, Wilts., cathedral, 49; St Thomas, 101 Sall, Norfolk, 73, 87, 111 Sampford, Great, Essex, 80 Sandiacre, Derby, 78, 84 Sawley, Derby, 90 Scarborough, Yorks., 42 Scawton, Yorks., 76, 128 Sedgefield, Durham, 129 Selby, Yorks., abbey church, 17 Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorks., 35 Sherston Magna, Wilts., 36 Shrewsbury, Salop, St Chad's, 104; St Mary's, 104 Sibthorpe, Notts., 22, 26, 37, 82, 126 Skipwith, Yorks., 55 Skirlaugh, South, Yorks., 30, 105 Sleaford, Lincs., 61 Sneinton, Notts., 118 Snettisham, Norfolk, 67 Sompting, Sussex, 61 Southwell, Notts., cathedral, 81 Southwold, Suffolk, 106 Spalding, Lincs., 13, 14, 32 Spondon, Derby, 127 Stainfield priory, Lincs., 11 Stamford, Lincs., St Mary's, 31 Stanion, Northants., 121 Stebbing, Essex, 80 Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, 87 Stony Stratford, Bucks., 33 Stottesdon, Salop, 36 Stratford-on-Avon, Warwicks., 32, 66 Stratton Strawless, Norfolk, 36 Sutton, King's, Northants., 67 Sutton, Long, Lincs., 32, 60, 89 Swymbridge, Devon, 114 Tamworth, Staffs., 29 Tanfield, West, Yorks., 128 Tansor, Northants., 56, 73, 90, 109, 118, 119, 123 Tattershall, Lincs., 28 Terrington St John's, Norfolk, 74 Tewkesbury, Glouces., abbey church, 35 Thaxted, Essex, 33, 73 Thirsk, Yorks., 96 Tickhill, Yorks., 63 Tideswell, Derby, 84, 90 Tilney All Saints, Norfolk, 60 Tilty, Essex, 80 Tong, Salop, 28 Totnes, Devon, 115 Trull, Som., 108 Trunch, Norfolk, 91, 108 Tugby, Leices., 58, 59 Tunstead, Norfolk, 87, 117, 128 Twywell, Northants., 127 Tydd St Giles, Cambs., 75 Ufford St Mary, Suffolk, 106 Wakefield, Yorks., cathedral, 35 Walpole St Peter, Norfolk, 86, 87, 88, 93, 118, 119 Walsingham, Little, Norfolk, 108 Walsoken, Norfolk, 60 Walton, West, Norfolk, 60, 75 Warmington, Northants., 109 Warwick, St Mary's, 97 Wath, Yorks. (North Riding), 89 Weaverthorpe, Yorks., 58 Well, Yorks., 107 Wellingborough, Northants., 88 Wells, Som., St Cuthbert's, 105 Wenhaston, Suffolk, 117 Wenlock priory, Salop, 93 Wensley, Yorks., 91 Westborough, Lincs., 88 Westbury-on-Trym, Glouces., 29, 47 Weston-in-Gordano, Som., 111, 114 Whaplode, Lincs., 60 Willingham, Cambs., 88 Winchester, Hants., cathedral, 6, 8, 34 Witham, North, Lincs., 76, 77 Witney, Oxon., 36 Wolborough, Devon, 109 Wolverhampton, Staffs., 29, 110 Woodborough, Notts., 83 Woodleigh, Devon, 126, 127 Worcester, cathedral, 34 Worstead, Norfolk, 105, 111 Wrexham, Denbigh, 47 Wymondham, Norfolk, 126 Yarmouth, Great, Norfolk, 42 York, cathedral, 85; St Mary's abbey, 85; All Saints', North Street, 104; St William's college, 25 Ythanceaster; _see_ Bradwell-juxta-Mare CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
41687	----	How France Built Her Cathedrals [Illustration] [Illustration: _Soissons Cathedral. The Transept's Southern Arm_ (_c. 1180_)] How France Built Her Cathedrals A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries _By_ ELIZABETH BOYLE O'REILLY Honorary Member of the _Société Française d'Archéologie_ _Author of_ "Heroic Spain" Etc. _Illustrated With Drawings By_ A. PAUL DE LESLIE [Illustration: colophon] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON HOW FRANCE BUILT HER CATHEDRALS Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America A-W Contents CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 I. WHAT IS GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE? 16 Gothic architecture the logical fulfillment of Romanesque--Origin of Romanesque architecture--Romanesque basilicas modified by the liturgy--Horrors of the IX and X centuries in France--Rebirth of the builders' energy after the year 1000--Cluny, the civilizing force of the X and XI centuries--Various regional Romanesque schools of France--Normandy, Burgundy, Auvergne, Poitou, Languedoc, Provence, and the Franco-Picard school--Birth of Gothic art--An undecided question where the first diagonal-crossing ribs were used--Germany's and Italy's claims--Claim of England--The Ile-de-France Picard region, the classic land of Gothic--Gothic architecture not a layman's revolt against monkish Romanesque--The architects of the Gothic cathedrals--No heretical tendencies in Gothic sculpture--Origin of the term Gothic--XVII- and XVIII-century scorn for Gothic architecture--Modern French school of mediæval archæology. II. ABBOT SUGER AND ST. DENIS-EN-FRANCE 43 Evolution from Romanesque to Gothic--St. Denis' abbatial, the first important Gothic monument--Some early-Gothic churches in the Ile-de-France--Morienval, the first Gothic-vaulted ambulatory extant (c. 1122)--Church of St. Étienne, at Beauvais (c. 1120)--St. Germer-en-Flay built from 1150 to 1175, yet less advanced than St. Denis--Poissy's church of St. Louis (c. 1135)--How Abbot Suger built his abbey church at St. Denis--St. Denis' school of glassmaking, the leader for fifty years--Dedication of St. Denis on June 11, 1144, consecrated the national art--Who Suger was and how St. Bernard converted him--What is left of the abbey church which Suger built--Reconstruction of St. Denis by St. Louis, 1231 to 1280--Pierre de Montereau, its architect--Tombs in St. Denis' abbatial--Deviation of the axis not symbolic--Some happenings in St. Denis during the XII and XIII centuries--Charles Péguy's verses, linking St. Denis, St. Geneviève, and Jeanne d'Arc. III. PRIMARY GOTHIC CATHEDRALS 74 Cathedral of Noyon, first built of Gothic cathedrals (c. 1150)--Noyon's communal charter, the first of known date, 1109--Cathedral's nave, a vessel of most perfect proportion--Exceptional among French cathedrals, its transept's rounded ends--Noyon has retained its annexes--Its chapter house, built about 1240--Noyon city destroyed, 1918--Cathedral still stands. Cathedral of Senlis, second of the Gothic cathedrals, begun about 1153--Sculpture at Senlis' west portal (c. 1180) marks a date in imagery--Cathedral tower, the "pride of the Valois land"--Transept's façades of the best Flamboyant Gothic art--What the World War did to Senlis. Cathedral of Sens, begun about 1160--Sens' ancient see, governed by notable men in the XII and XIII centuries--How they found out who was the architect of the cathedral--St. Thomas Becket in Sens, 1164, and again from 1166 to 1170--St. Louis married in Sens Cathedral, 1234--Glory of Sens' stained glass. Cathedral of Laon, begun about 1160--Fallacy of the "town-hall" theory--Cathedral of springtime foliage--Oxen on Laon's towers--Origin of the square east end of Laon Cathedral--Laon's communal struggle--Famous XII-century school of Anselm de Laon--Laon city shelled by the French, but its cathedral unhurt. Cathedral of Soissons almost a ruin--Desolation of Soissons in World War--Soissons' southern arm of transept ends in a hemicycle (c. 1180)--Is the most exquisite thing in France--The crusading bishop-builder, Nivelon de Chérisy. Some important Primary Gothic churches: Abbatial of St. Remi at Rheims (c. 1170)--Its superb XII-century glass wrecked in the World War--Abbatial of Notre Dame at Châlons-sur-Marne (c. 1160)--Pioneer in fenestration--First to use pillars between chapels and ambulatory--Church of St. Quiriace at Provins (c. 1160)--Provins, residence of the counts of Champagne--Its international fairs frequented by mediæval Europe--Collegiate of St. Yved, at Braine (c. 1200), between Primary Gothic and the Era of Great Cathedrals--Individual plan of its choir-chapels--St. Leu d'Esserent, on the Oise, the best type of the small churches in the classic Ile-de-France--Its forechurch shows transition work (c. 1150)--Primary Gothic work to be found at Étampes, Vendôme, Fécamp, Rouen, Lisieux, Angers, Mantes, Paris. IV. NOTRE DAME OF PARIS AND OTHER CHURCHES OF THE CAPITAL 126 Notre Dame, begun in 1163--Its exterior unsurpassed, the west façade a classic--Scholastic training of its bishop-builders--_Summa_ of the supreme scholastic, Aquinas, like a Gothic cathedral--Thirty thousand students then in Paris University--Bishop Maurice de Sully (1160-96) built Notre Dame--Bishop Eudes de Sully made the portals of the west façade--Bishop Pierre de Nemours died a crusader, before Damietta, 1219--Bishop Guillaume d'Auvergne finished the north tower (1228-49)--All the prelates building Paris Cathedral good and able men--Their sincerity lives in its stones--First architect unknown--Jean and Pierre de Chelles made the transept and apse chapels--Sculpture of Notre Dame masterly--Sainte-Chapelle built by St. Louis, 1246 to 1248--St. Julien-le-Pauvre a contemporary of Notre Dame's choir (c. 1180)--Same noble sculptured capitals--Three Benedictine abbey churches of Paris show early trials of Gothic vaulting--St. Germain-des-Prés, St. Martin-des-Champs, St. Pierre-de-Montmartre--St. Louis and his friend, Joinville--Louis IX illuminated his kingdom with fair churches--On his first crusade spent five years in the East, 1248 to 1259--From 1254 to 1270 worked for his people--Death of St. Louis on the crusade of 1270--His characteristics: justice, pity, other-worldliness--Inimitable charm of Joinville's _Histoire de St. Louis_--Describes his friendship with the king in Palestine--Joinville's old age and death in 1319. Mantes' collegiate of Notre Dame is Primary Gothic--A contemporary of Paris Cathedral--Perhaps by the same architect--Its chapel of Navarre one of the best works of Rayonnant Gothic. Meaux Cathedral, a difficult architectural page to decipher, owing to reconstruction--Begun in 1170, but rebuilt radically after 1270--Bossuet, its greatest bishop (1681 to 1704)--Meaux, the cathedral for the _Te Deum_ of victory--Battle of the Marne, 1914, waged at the city gates. V. ERA OF THE GREAT CATHEDRALS: CHARTRES, RHEIMS, AMIENS 169 Cathedral of Chartres--Bishop Fulbert's Romanesque Notre Dame burned in 1194--His vast crypt, of 1020, still exists--Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves built the tower of Chartres, called the most beautiful in the world (1145)--Making of the three western portals (c. 1155)--Gothic cathedral begun after the fire of 1194--Primary Gothic west façade escaped the fire--Jehan de Beauce crowned the northwest tower, 1506 to 1513--Sculpture of the transept portals and porches, 1220 to 1260--Chartres excels all cathedrals in the wealth of its stained glass, chiefly of the XII and XIII centuries. Cathedral of Rheims, begun by the crusader, Bishop Albéric de Humbert, 1211--Its architects recorded in the pavement labyrinth--Its west façade the culmination of Gothic art--Coronation of Charles VII in 1429, Jeanne d'Arc present--Astounding sculptural wealth of this "Cathedral of the Angels"--Martyrdom of Rheims in the World War. Cathedral of Amiens, the Parthenon of Gothic art--Bishop Evrard de Fouilloy began it, 1220--Designed by Robert de Lusarches--Its sculpture the peer of Rheims and Chartres--Its portal of the _Vierge Dorée_ (c. 1280). VI. SIX OF THE LESSER GREAT CATHEDRALS: BOURGES, BEAUVAIS, TROYES, TOURS, LYONS, LE MANS 211 Cathedral of Bourges--Only XIII-century cathedral without a transept--Inner aisle has its own triforium and clearstory--Chevet built by St. Guillaume, 1200 to 1209--Over main portal is best Last Judgment (c. 1275)--Bourges famous for its stained glass--Jean, duc de Berry, and Jacques Coeur, the late-Gothic art patrons of Bourges--Their gifts to the cathedral--Orléans Cathedral destroyed by Calvinists (note). Cathedral of Beauvais--A mighty fragment: only a choir and transept--Begun in 1247, derived directly from Amiens--Transept façades masterpieces of late-Gothic--Is Flamboyant Gothic of English origin?--Le Prince family of glassmakers. Cathedral of Troyes--Its choir built by Bishop Hervé, 1206 to 1226--Martin Chambiges designed the Flamboyant west façade--Magnificent XIII- and XIV-century windows of Troyes Cathedral--St. Urbain's church begun by Pope Urban IV in 1262--Carried the Gothic principle of equilibrium to its limit--Churches of Troyes treasure-houses of stained glass and sculpture--Cultivated court of Champagne's rulers--To the Gothic school of Champagne belongs the Cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne--Châlons another center for stained glass. Cathedral of Tours--Choir begun about 1210--Has the classic note of the Touraine landscape--Cathedral windows set up between 1260 and 1270--Venerable ecclesiastical souvenirs of Tours--Tours, the center for the Region-of-the-Loire school of sculpture--Michel Colombe, last of the great Gothic artists, worked here--Environs of the city rich in Flamboyant Gothic. Cathedral of Lyons--Lyons boasts an apostolic succession for its bishops--Early Christian martyrs of Rome's chief city in Gaul--St. Martin d'Ainay's abbatial dedicated in 1107--Cathedral choir late XII century--With Vienne Cathedral (note) it alone in France used incrustations--Nave of Lyons Cathedral building through the XIII century--Stained glass of Lyons of exceptional quality--All Christendom was represented at the Ecumenical Council held in Lyons Cathedral in 1274--Church of Brou built by Marguerite of Austria (note)--Moulins Cathedral and Souvigny's abbatial and tombs (notes). Cathedral of Le Mans--XII-century nave built by notable prelates--Bishop Hildebert de Lavardin (1097 to 1125) a poet and scholar--Guillaume de Passavent made the Angevin vaults (c. 1150)--Geoffrey the Handsome, nicknamed Plantagenet, and his son, Henry II of England, born in Le Mans--Trinité church at Vendôme (note)--Le Mans' Gothic choir built from 1218 to 1254 by Bishop Geoffrey de Loudon--Le Mans ranks next to Chartres and Bourges for its wealth of stained glass--Rayonnant-Flamboyant transept of the XIV and XV centuries--The groups at Solesmes a final expression of Gothic sculpture (1495 to 1550)--Collegiate church at St. Quentin, in size a cathedral, XIII-century choir--Villard de Honnecourt, probably the architect of St. Quentin. VII. PLANTAGENET GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 285 Plantagenet Gothic fused the cupola of Aquitaine and the diagonals of north--Lasted a hundred years, from 1150 to 1250--For clearness divided into three periods: I. Heavy diagonals, II. Eight slight branches, III. Multiple ribs--English fan tracery a derivation of Angevin Gothic. Cupola churches of Aquitaine: St. Front at Périgieux, begun after a fire, 1120, and finished by 1180--Cahors Cathedral has Romanesque portal of beauty (note)--Cathedral of Angoulême, begun 1109--Its façade a notable page of French decoration--Rich façades distinguish Poitou's Romanesque school--Fontevrault abbey church, built in the first half of the XII century--Plantagenet tombs at Fontevrault--Aliénor of Aquitaine buried there in 1204 beside her husband, Henry II, and her son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--Aliénor's descendants notable builders of churches. Cathedral of Angers--Its nave vaulted with First-Period diagonals, about 1150--Anjou rulers a remarkable race--Fulk Nerra, the great builder, died 1040--Choir of Angers Cathedral extended after 1274--In the nave is XII-century glass of St. Denis derivation--Cathedral's Apocalypse tapestries--Fortress of Angers, built by St. Louis, 1228 to 1238--Church of Toussaint had a ramified vault of the Third Period--St. Jean's hospital hall, endowed by Henry II, a gem of Plantagenet art--Choir of St. Serge, 1220 to 1225, a masterpiece of lightness. Saumur--Another center for the study of Plantagenet Gothic--Historical fête called the _Non-Pareille_ took place in its castle in 1241--St. Pierre's church shows different kinds of Angevin vaults--Church of St. Martin at Candes, a Plantagenet masterpiece--St. Florent-les-Saumur shows one of the first eight-branch vaults--Puy-Notre-Dame and Asnières beautiful examples of Plantagenet art (note)--Plantagenet vaults at Le Mans, Vendôme, Chinon, and Tours. Cathedral of Poitiers, begun by Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor of Aquitaine, 1160--In adopting the gracious Plantagenet vaulting it remained true to Poitou's Romanesque traditions--XII-century Crucifixion window the most glorious in the world--Spirit of Poitiers' bishops, St. Hilary and Fortunatus, inspired it--Church of Ste. Radégonde is Plantagenet vaulted--St. Hilaire's abbatial has curious octagonal cupolas--St. Jean's baptistry, the oldest building in France, dating from the IV century--Clement V at Poitiers in 1307 carried on the Templars' process--Hall of the count's palace rebuilt by Duke Jean de Berry--Jeanne d'Arc examined there in 1429, found to be sent of God. VIII. GOTHIC IN THE MIDI 329 Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand, begun in 1248--Gothic of the north, translated with a Midi accent--True character of Auvergne shown in its Romanesque churches--Notre Dame-du-Port, the classic type of Auvergne's Romanesque school--Abbey church of La Chaise Dieu, begun by Clement VI, 1344--Contains incomparable tapestries (note)--First Crusade proclaimed at Clermont by Urban II, 1095--Riom's Sainte-Chapelle, of the XIV century--Madonna of the Bird a masterpiece of late-Gothic imagery--Romanesque Cathedral of Le Puy (XII century) one of the most venerable shrines in France. Cathedral of Bordeaux, like the city itself, is of the north and the south--Nave is composite and difficult to read--Clement V (d. 1314) built the Rayonnant Gothic choir--In the Romanesque church of Ste. Croix appeared the first diagonals of the region--Charlemagne laid Roland's olifant on the altar of St. Seurin--St. Bertrand-de-Comminges Cathedral built by Clement V--Cathedral of Bayonne (note). Cathedral of Toulouse consists of two inharmonious parts--Unaisled nave with Angevin vaults building while Simon de Montfort besieged city--Gothic choir begun in 1275--Chief monument of Toulouse is the abbey church of St. Sernin (begun 1075)--Languedoc then excelled in sculpture: Moissac's portal and cloister (note)--Toulouse a center for brick architecture--Its Jacobins' church begun in 1229--St. Dominic's mission in Languedoc--Albigensian Crusade. Albi Cathedral, the incarnation of the Midi wars: meridional Gothic--Aggressive Bernard de Castanets began it in 1282--Flamboyant and Renaissance riches were added to St. Cecilia's cathedral--Frescoes of its vault have never been surpassed (1509 to 1512)--Its choir screen equally noted--Auch Cathedral has famous XVI-century windows (note)--Cathedral of Rodez possesses a notable Flamboyant tower (1510 to 1526) (note)--Carcassonne Cité has been too much restored--Its ci-devant cathedral of St. Nazaire the best of XIV-century Gothic--Like a reliquary of colored glass--Carcassonne town has typical Midi Gothic churches. Narbonne Cathedral, consisting of a vast Gothic choir, begun in 1272--Its mechanical skill cold, but still Gothic of the grand style--Lovely XIV-century glass--Sack of Béziers, 1209--Perpignan Cathedral and Elne's cloister (note)--Abbey church of Fontfroide allied with Poblet in Catalonia (note). Montpellier Cathedral, formerly an abbey church, built by Urban V, XIV century--Jaime el Conquistador, mighty builder of churches, born in Montpellier, 1208--Mende Cathedral and St. Victor's abbatial at Marseilles built by Urban V (note)--Maguelonne, former cathedral of diocese, now the most aloof spot in Europe--Aigues-Mortes, begun by St. Louis, completed by his son--Fortress unspoiled by restorations--Both crusades of Louis IX sailed thence--St. Gilles' abbey church, partly a ruin, interesting to archæologists; building from 1116--Noted portal of St. Gilles inspired Trinity Church, Boston--Loyalty of Provence to its Saintes-Maries traditions--Les Saintes-Maries church a pilgrim shrine (note)--St. Martha's church at Tarascon (note). St. Trophime Cathedral at Arles--Portal influenced by Gallo-Roman sculpture--Its cloister the fairest Christian monument in the city--Ruins of Montmajour near Arles--Frédéric Mistral should be one's companion in Provence--Expresses the regional soul--St. Maximin church the best Gothic monument in Provence--Begun by Charles II d'Anjou in 1295--Cathedral of St. Sauveur at Aix-en-Provence is composite--Its south aisle originally a separate Romanesque church, XII century--Good King René gave the triptych by a French _primitif_--Avignon's great day was the XIV century under seven meridional popes, 1309 to 1377--Palace of the Popes built from 1335 to 1358--Grandest fortress-palace in the world. IX. THE GOTHIC ART OF BURGUNDY 410 Burgundy excelled in monastic architecture--The cradle of three great cloistral centers--Luxeuil, Cluny, Cîteaux--Luxeuil, founded by St. Columbanus (610), reorganized the VII century--Cluny, Christendom's supremest monastic congregation, founded 910--St. Hugues of Cluny (1049 to 1109) trained the leaders who remade Europe's civilization--Peter the Venerable, abbot from 1120 to 1156, continued building Cluny's vast church--Abélard died in a Cluny house, 1142--Revolution destroyed the glorious abbatial church--Paray-le-Monial, the favorite priory of Abbot Odilo (d. 1049) of Cluny, initiator of the Truce of God--Its Romanesque church has fluted pilasters (XII century)--Autun Cathedral's Romanesque portal the ancestor of the sculptured doors of Gothic cathedrals--Abbey church at Saulieu (note)--Beaune's collegiate of Notre Dame has lovely tapestries--Hôtel Dieu at Beaune (1444 to 1457), founded by Nicolas Rolin, contains Roger van der Weyden's best work--Hospital hall at Tonnerre (founded 1293) the prototype for Beaune's hospice--Fontenay, the oldest Romanesque Cistercian church extant--Dedicated by Eugene III in 1147--Avallon's church of St. Lazare blessed by Paschal II in 1107--Has a well-known Romanesque entranceway. Some Primary Gothic churches in Burgundy--Montréal's collegiate can be visited from Avallon--Built by a returned crusader late in the XII century--Pontigny's abbatial the oldest Gothic in Burgundy--Its nave (1160 to 1180), with _bombé_ vaults, was begun as Romanesque--Its choir used structural features as decorations--Three archbishops of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket, Stephen Langton, and St. Edmund Rich, found refuge at Pontigny--Vézelay's abbatial of the Madeleine the stateliest church in Burgundy--Its Romanesque nave and Gothic choir belong both to the XII century--Its imaged portico (c. 1132) a supreme work of French sculpture--Second Crusade preached by St. Bernard at Vézelay, 1146--Philippe-Auguste and Richard Coeur-de-Lion rallied here for the Third Crusade, 1191. Burgundy's best Gothic monuments--Collegiate of Notre Dame at Semur a gem of the Burgundian school, begun about 1225--Its sculpture exceptional--Auxerre Cathedral begun in 1215, the model of Gothic churches in the province--Auxerre's sculpture and its opaline glass rank with the first--Bishop Jacques Amyot (d. 1593) restored the cathedral after the Calvinists sacked it--Cathedral of Nevers has an apse at both west and east ends (note)--Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, led in art, under its four great dukes, 1364 to 1477--Flemish-Burgundian school began modern imagery--Dijon's cathedral of St. Bénigne, formerly an abbatial, is mediocre late-XIII century--Crypt of St. Bénigne begun 1001--Oldest monument of the Romanesque renaissance--William of Volpiano, abbot of St. Bénigne, initiated the revival of architecture after the year 1000--Rebuilt Tournus abbey church (note)--Church of Notre Dame, Dijon, is a gem of Burgundian Gothic (1220-1240)--Its subtleties of construction have never been excelled. St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux (d. 1153), born near Dijon, the greatest son of Burgundy--His reform laid the spiritual foundations of Gothic cathedrals--His puritanic taste in architecture made Cistercian churches bare and simple--Cistercian Order, founded 1099, instrumental in spreading Gothic over Europe--St. Stephen Harding, its practical founder, welcomed St. Bernard at Citeaux in 1113--Five hundred Cistercian monasteries founded in Europe before the middle of XIII century--Spirit of St. Bernard, greatest of Cistercians, lives in the _Imitation of Christ_. X. GOTHIC ART IN NORMANDY 472 Monastic architecture best expression of Norman character--Normandy, like Burgundy, was a land of monasteries--Bernay's abbey church an ancestress of Norman Romanesque (note)--Bec Abbey, the Cluny of Normandy--Lanfranc made the school of Bec world-noted--At Bec, St. Anselm began the philosophical movement of the Middle Ages--William of Volpiano pioneer in the rebirth of architecture in the duchy--Jumièges, the first Norman church of architectural pretension, begun 1040--Only vestiges remain of St. Wandrille abbey--Caen, the Mecca of Norman Romanesque and the queen city for towers--Three good towers at St. Pierre-sur-Dives--St. Georges de Boscherville the best type of Norman Romanesque--Fécamp's Primary Gothic abbatial rose after the fire of 1169--Gothic abbatial at Eu built after the death of St. Laurence O'Toole, 1180--Mont-Saint-Michel the greatest of Norman abbeys--Its Merveille (Gothic halls), building from 1203 to 1228--Choir of Mont-Saint-Michel, the best work of Flamboyant Gothic, begun 1450. Rouen Cathedral, not local in character--Its tower of St. Romain begun in 1145--Its transept façades and Lady chapel XIV-century Rayonnant work--Abbatial of St. Ouen a gem of Rayonnant Gothic--No city richer than Rouen in Flamboyant Gothic monuments--Trial of Jeanne d'Arc at Rouen in 1431 and her Rehabilitation in 1456. Lisieux Cathedral the earliest Gothic cathedral in Normandy--Begun after 1160 as Ile-de-France Gothic--Its Lady chapel built by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, Jeanne d'Arc's venal judge. Évreux Cathedral not homogeneous, but has much charm--Its choir (1298-1310) a gem of Rayonnant Gothic--XIV century's best array of glass in its choir. Séez Cathedral modest in size--Norman in style--Its choir a forerunner of Rayonnant Gothic--Has XIV-century windows. Bayeux Cathedral the Gothic of the duchy at its best--Romanesque part of its nave remarkable--Bishop Odo, brother of the Conqueror, built the crypt, and of his time is the Bayeux Tapestry--Choir of Bayeux a masterpiece of Normandy's elaborate Gothic. Coutances Cathedral loveliest in Normandy, begun after the fire of 1218--Its three towers notable--Aisles of choir are of different height. Gothic art of Brittany--Brittany more a land of shrines than cathedrals--Her religious soul best expressed by her Calvarys--XIII-century cathedral at Dol has fine eastern window--Cathedral at Nantes possesses the last great work of Gothic sculpture--Cathedral of Quimper very Breton in spirit--St. Pol-de-Léon Cathedral entirely complete--The Kreisker is Brittany's grandest tower--St. Yves of Brittany helped build Tréguier Cathedral. Summing up--Gothic art gave way before the pagan Renaissance and the contempt for legends roused by the Reformation. In the World War France again displayed the spirit that had built cathedrals. Unquenchable idealism of the French race. INDEX 583 BIBLIOGRAPHY 605 Illustrations SOISSONS CATHEDRAL. THE TRANSEPT'S SOUTHERN ARM (C. 1180) _Frontispiece_ POISSY. AN EARLY EXAMPLE OF GOTHIC VAULTING (C. 1135) _Facing p._ 54 ST. DENIS-EN-FRANCE AND ITS ROYAL MAUSOLEUMS " 68 NOYON'S CHAPTER HOUSE (1240-1250) _Page_ 83 SENLIS' TOWER (C. 1230-1250) _Facing p._ 90 THE INTERIOR OF LAON CATHEDRAL (XII CENTURY). VIEW FROM THE TRIBUNE GALLERY " 98 THE OXEN ON LAON'S TOWERS " 106 NOTRE DAME OF PARIS. VIEW FROM THE SOUTH _Page_ 127 NOTRE DAME OF MANTES (1160-1200). THE CONTEMPORARY OF PARIS CATHEDRAL _Facing p._ 162 THE CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX, VIEWED FROM THE NAVE'S AISLE " 168 THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES (1194-1240). THE SOUTHERN ASPECT _Page_ 178 THE ANGEL APSE OF RHEIMS (C. 1220) " 196 THE TRANSEPT OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL (1220-1280) _Facing p._ 204 THE APSE OF BOURGES (1200-1225) " 214 ST. URBAIN AT TROYES (1264-1276) " 236 LE MANS CHOIR (1217-1254). THE DOUBLE AISLES " 270 ANGOULÊME CATHEDRAL. A XII-CENTURY CUPOLA CHURCH OF AQUITAINE WITH A TYPICAL FAÇADE OF POITOU'S ROMANESQUE SCHOOL " 290 THE PLANTAGENET TOMBS AT FONTEVRAULT " 298 THE PLANTAGENET GOTHIC CHOIR OF ST. SERGE AT ANGERS (1220-1225) " 312 NOTRE DAME DU PORT AT CLERMONT-FERRAND. TYPICAL XII-CENTURY CHURCH OF AUVERGNE'S ROMANESQUE SCHOOL " 338 LE PUY IN OLD AUVERGNE " 344 THE JACOBINS', OR DOMINICANS', CHURCH AT TOULOUSE (XIII CENTURY) " 358 ALBI CATHEDRAL (1282-1399). A MIDI FORTRESS CHURCH " 370 THE MEDIÆVAL CLOISTER OF ARLES " 398 THE XI-CENTURY SANCTUARY OF CLUNY AS IT WAS UNTIL THE REVOLUTION _Facing p._ 414 VEZELAY'S XII-CENTURY ABBEY CHURCH OF THE MADELEINE " 436 NOTRE DAME AT DIJON (1220-1245). BURGUNDIAN GOTHIC " 452 THE CRYPT OF THE ABBAYE-AUX-DAMES AT CAEN (1059-1066) " 484 BELFRY OF ST. PIERRE AT CAEN (1308-1317). PROTOTYPE FOR THE GOTHIC TOWERS OF NORMANDY AND BRITTANY " 490 THE HALL OF THE KNIGHTS AT MONT-SAINT-MICHEL (1203-1228). SECOND STORY OF THE MERVEILLE " 500 THE CHOIR OF BAYEAUX CATHEDRAL (1210-1260). TYPICAL OF NORMANDY'S ELABORATE GOTHIC " 546 How France Built Her Cathedrals [Illustration] How France Built Her Cathedrals INTRODUCTION "We may live without architecture, and worship without her, but _we cannot remember without her_. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes and the uncorrupted marble bears. There are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture, and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality; it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled and their strength wrought and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life."[1] So wrote John Ruskin in one of his flashes of genius, and never was word truer. Architecture is the living voice of the past. Architecture is history. By architecture the forefathers from whom we come relate to us their progress in knowledge, their prowess in handicrafts, their economic conditions, their sorrows, their rejoicings, their aspirations. They wrote it down, those men and women whose blood is our blood, on great stone pages of perennial beauty for us to read--_if only we would_. By architecture we are linked in a grand solidarity with all that has gone before, with the proud periods of history that thrill us as we read, and with the tragic outbreaks of the oppressed that sadden our spirit. Whenever men have set themselves to forget this solidarity, their first act has been to fling themselves in frenzy on cathedral and city hall. In 1914 they forgot it, and mighty Rheims fell. They forgot that Bamburg had learned its imagery from Rheims, that German Norbert, revered of St. Bernard, had helped France in the days when Gothic art was in formation, that he died bishop of Magdeburg, and Magdeburg is a Primary Gothic cathedral in the land which frankly called the new architecture _opus francigenum_. Would the civic halls of Noyon, Arras, St. Quentin, and Ypres lie in ruins if Frankfort and Lübeck had remembered? In 1793, man again thought to set up a barrier between himself and his past, and he shattered the art treasures of a thousand years and tore down the cathedrals of Cambrai, Arras, and Avranches; he tore down Cluny, the greatest Romanesque church in the world, Cluny the civilizer, that had removed from agriculture its stigma as serfs' work. Man fancied that to shatter and demolish was to build. Again in 1562, a date most tragic in the annals of Gothic architecture, men tried again to rear a wall of hate between themselves and the generations gone before, and the cathedral of Orléans met the fate of Cluny and Cambrai, and from end to end of France images were decapitated, and ancestors' tombs wrecked impiously--even the tombs of spiritual ancestors who with painful journeyings afoot had brought the gospel light. Whether you go to chapel or to temple to-day, to meetinghouse or to cathedral, whether you worship under the open sky, be you a reader of Marx or of Aquinas, you were robbed most piteously of your patrimony in 1562, in 1793, in 1914. How is it to be prevented again? By trying to make the monuments of the past loved, by relating the tale of their building, by telling the life story of the builders. If we know them we must surely revere them, and when we have learned to know and to love, we have learned to be liberal. Archæology is _to teach us to remember_. Those who have gone before have passed on to us cathedral and town hall; it is our obligation to transmit them intact to those who come after. They are not ours to destroy. Art is the high-water mark reached by civilization; art does not speak in English, or in German, or in the Latin tongue, but in a language understood of all peoples and all times. To destroy a great monument of the past is to betray civilization. It was proved in 1914 that erudition is not safeguard enough, nor is enthusiasm, sighs 1793, nor purpose to reform, admits 1562. We must comprehend intelligently our own personal solidarity with the past. We must never look at a noble building without proudly realizing that we had a hand in its making. Battles then can rage around cathedrals without danger of their destruction. As in golden amber, the past will preserve them, the past which is yours and mine and everyone's heritage. It is a right instinct which makes a man treasure the home he has had transmitted to him through several generations. How much more--when loyalty is roused by an XVIII-century or a XVII-century habitation--should emotion be felt for what was reared from 1140 to 1270 by the very generations who began for us of to-day most of the big things we value: our universities, our literature, our political freedom, our prosperous trade. Now in the making of these infinitely precious things, France played the leading role. Put partisan feeling aside and acknowledge it honestly. "I believe," said Ruskin, in a lecture at Edinburgh, in 1853, even before the new science of mediæval archæology was formulated, "that the French nation in the XII and XIII centuries was the greatest nation in the world, and that the French not only invented Gothic architecture, but carried it to its noblest developments." French Gothic churches are a fountainhead, and should rank first. Because of them we have Westminster, Ely, and Lincoln, we had Tintern, Melrose, Mellifont, Holycross. They built the Burgos, Toledo, León, Seville, and Belem, which have given wings to the soul of the Peninsula. Because of the French cathedrals we have Cologne, Magdeburg, and Halberstadt, Vienna, Prague, Upsala, Siena, Florence, and Milan. By her lyrics, her epics, and her architecture, France was the inspiration of Europe in the XII and XIII centuries. With his sword, the crusader carried compass and rule. Those indefatigable wanderers, Cluny, Cîteaux, and the men of Prémontré and Chartreuse carried with them the chisel and the Book. Then as now the commercial traveler was a valiant propagandist; in 1181 a cloth merchant of Assisi, returned from trading in France, where he had seen the cathedral of Lyons rising, or perhaps that of Paris, or that of Poitiers, and he had passed under wonderful new-imaged portals in the Midi and in Burgundy; so, in memory of beautiful things, he chose to call the son born to him, Francis, and the boy grew up to love and to chant the lyrics of France and named himself "God's little troubadour." Backward and forward has moved the ebb and flow of races and their arts. When Celts from conquered Britain passed over to Armorica they carried with them the Arthurian cycle; Teutonic tribes, strong in bone and tissue, poured into Gaul a very avalanche; masterful Norsemen populated the seacoasts; and before the recording of time the Oriental and the Latin had made their home in the land between the northern seas and the big inland water of commerce. Does such history seem too remote to be of emotional value? Are personalities lacking? Not so in the missionary days of Columbanus and Benedict, first hewers of the cathedrals' foundation blocks, for never came a great movement of building activity that did not tread in the steps of spiritual regeneration. Your forefathers and my forefathers came into France to help her, to bring her art and letters in her dark hour. They came to teach and they came to learn, to succor and to find refuge. They came in the persons of Celtic Columbanus, Brieuc, Malo, Fiacre, Malachy, and holy Laurence buried at Eu, as English Alcuin, Stephen Harding, John of Salisbury, and Saint Edmund Rich buried at Pontigny. They came as German Radegund and the saintly Bruno and Norbert, as Italian Benedict, Fortunatus, Hildebrand, William of Volpiano, Lanfranc, Anselm, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, as Spanish Dominic, and Portuguese Anthony. They came from Egypt with Maurice and his Thebans, from the Levant with Irenæus and Giles, from Hungary with Martin the soldier. And the story of each one of them is recorded in the churches that stand in France to-day. Without architecture we would have forgotten them. With the ebbing and flowing of the tide in the affairs of men, a day arrived when the big people and the little people of Normandy, Poitou, Anjou, and Flanders passed in large numbers into Great Britain and Ireland in the wake of the Conqueror and of Henry Plantagenet, so that the very names we bear are those of the cathedral builders. Who has not watched the widening ripples of water spread from a center? Even so is each one of us a center whence in ever-widening circles stretch out our progenitors, embracing more and more men, more and more women, rippling over the pitiful barricades of 1793, sweeping over the factions of 1562, till by the time the widening ripple has reached the age of St. Louis, the age of Suger, it is scientifically impossible that we, in our very own forefathers, were not building some of the eighty cathedrals and three hundred great minsters with which France was then clothing herself as with a white mantle of churches. We were chatelaine, and burgher's wife, we were villein's daughter and knight's son, and side by side we harnessed ourselves to carts and dragged in the blocks for the tower at Chartres and the belfry at Rouen, and the canticles we sang during our voluntary servitude passed into the stones and are still chanting there--_if only we would listen_. No visionary notion this, but science and history. By architecture we remember. Of our kin was the bishop who sacrificed his revenue to rear God's house. Of our kin were the architects, masters of the living stone, who with inspiration conceived their shrines of Notre Dame and were trained soundly enough in mason craft to achieve their dreams; of our kin were the artisans who put up the serene images at cathedral doors for the edification of the people, and chiseled with warm, loving touches the running bramble of the roadside. Even botany is to be learned in mediæval cathedrals. Not a leaf that grows in Champagne to-day but was carved on the walls of Rheims seven hundred years ago. Against the big capitals of Paris Cathedral they laid the broad plantain leaf of the marshy Oise, then, seeing around them that indigenous acanthus, the uncurling fern, they carved it, too, and as they grew adept with chisel they wrought ivy and vine leaf, parsley and holly, and in time, intoxicated with their skill, they undercut the rich foliage and serrated the lobes and curled the leaf edges, till summer ran riot in stone and the architectural line was well-nigh lost sight of in sheer joy of nature's glad livery. The cathedrals of France are an enduring appeal to man's high faculty of imagination. In them we go crusading again. We scale the walls of Constantinople with doughty Bishop Nivelon, builder of Soissons Cathedral, we are ransomed from Saracen captivity with Bishop Albéric, builder of Rheims. We repent of our black feudal deeds with Fulk Nerra, and when we have finished our footsore penances in Holy Land, we punish ourselves in our purses, raising costly abbeys in Anjou and Touraine. On our Eastern pilgrimage we have seen visions of Oriental color, and, remembering them, we lighten our sober churches of the north with translucent mosaic tapestries. We dot our Western land with circular Holy Sepulcher temples. It is said that Suger, builder of the first great Gothic church in the world, maker of jeweled windows over which science sighs in despair of emulation, used eagerly to inquire of travelers returned from the East had they seen aught, even in St. Sophia itself, to surpass his St. Denis'. We are rightly sure that our new art surpasses all others. We may borrow, but our borrowings are creations. By architecture in happy promiscuity we crowd to the international fairs of Champagne. We elbow and we jostle to see what our diligent brothers, the art-loving Flemish burghers, have brought for exchange, or what things beautiful the merchants from south of the Alps have to barter. To-day, at Troyes, we are astounded by the gathering of art treasures in that lesser-known city, and we wonder at the mighty rampart walls at Provins. _Then we remember._ It is architecture that will not let us forget what efficient traders we were in the XIII century. By architecture we are Benedictines at Cluny, white monks at Fontenay, of Prémontré at Braine. Again we pace in meditative cloisters, we tuck up our robes to delve in mother earth to make the desert bloom, we illumine parchment pages, we teach the plain-chant to children, we cast bells, each with its own entity, each a living voice for the people, named with its own name. By architecture we are one of the thousands athirst for knowledge, who gather at the feet of abstruse debaters in the schools of Bec, Auxerre, Rheims, Orléans, Laon, Chartres and Paris, king's son seated on the rush-strewn pavements next to peasant's son, both equally convinced that the most thrilling of all sciences are philosophy and theology. Books are scarce; as yet no printing press; we must wander far to gather crumbs of learning; our strong young brains are intact, prepared for service by long ages of active bone and muscle; with avidity we seize on problems so knotty that the learned ones of 1920 fear to touch them. "The time of big theories is the time of big results." It is we, in the person of the Scholastics who built Paris Cathedral, and Laon, the intellectual,--churches disciplined, sober and strong. It is we the multitudinous scholars of the Middle Ages who built Chartres, the wise mystic, and opalescent Auxerre, and Châlons on the Marne of Victory. And lest the hungry generations tread us down, we inscribed our loved subtleties on their walls, and at their portals placed images of the Liberal Arts. By architecture we join one side or the other in the eternal struggle of Might and Right. Sometimes in atonement we spend the revenues secured by heedless Might on minster or cathedral. By pain and struggle we have won our city charter, and we are proud to record in God's sight and man's what thrifty burgesses we are, what trained journeymen. To work is to pray, say the cathedral windows set up by furriers, butchers, vintagers, and farm laborers. To work is as fine a thing as to fight at Roncevaux and Mansurah, as did our next-door donor neighbor here. The little people of the Lord are as grateful in his sight as the noble _prud'hommes_. _Le bon Dieu_ likes to be shown how a tailor cuts his cloth and a baker bakes his bread just as well as to be entertained with pilgrimage adventures or the story of a canonized saint. Are we not saints in the making if only we can get the better of that prowling felon, the devil, whom we have set up over our church door with pitchfork and caldron as a warning to the unwary? "O men and women of to-day"--appeal the windows at Chartres and Bourges and Tours--"you whose blood is our blood, who without our struggle would have no ordered government, no self-ruling cities, no trade to bind land with land in the sanity of peace, no arts and crafts, why not learn to read our story? There are those unable to decipher a line of our illumined pages who will assure you that we were sunk in gross superstition, that our sole religion was the worship of bits of cloth and bone. Yes, even from the halls founded by good Robert de Sorbon (in order that youth with its lean purse might get a free education) the erudites marshal against us every human frailty of our hardy, enterprising times. And yet, in unparalleled marvels of stone and glass we have recorded the deepest sentiments of mankind. But having eyes, they see not. Come then, you, and interpret us. Come, and through us, _remember_." Each great cathedral is pleading to us by the alluring half-smile of its angels, by the dignified images of reverent personages at its entrances, by each gargoyle, each faithful guardian that has craned his neck for ages to keep rain water from the precious walls. Cease to be so superior to the legends and dreams we set forth, they seem to be saying. We know just as well as you that the apostle St. Thomas did not have all the adventures raising fairy palaces in India which we put to his credit in our windows and tympanums, even though good Bishop James of Voragine, in his cycle of church feasts, our iconographic chart--_Legenda Aurea_--relates it. The holy Jerome, close to the desert and the origin of things, real and apocryphal, warned us not to be too credulous. But symbols and legends are the breath of art, as art alone realizes through expression, the supersensual visions of mankind. Are there not millions of good Christian folk in India to-day? Her first evangelist builded better than ever we can relate by our imagery. We are not at all dull, plead the waiting cathedrals. Encyclopædias they call us. Yes, we had our little weakness for symmetry, for the mystic beauty of numbers, for gathering into "Mirrors" all the knowledge of the world. But how admirable is our Mirror of Morals, with virtues and vices contrasted; how interesting our Mirrors of Nature and of History that tell the story from Genesis to Revelations, and that set the marvels of the skies and man's dumb fellow creatures, the beasts, side by side on the walls of the house of worship, with David and Isaias, St. Peter and St. Paul, Charlemagne and Louis. And our Mirror of Knowledge--how profound it is: not as enemies but as allies would it show forth science and religion. We are no more dull than the Bible is dull, than the _Divina Commedia_ is dull. We satisfy the subtlest intellects; alike the lettered and the unlettered enjoy us. Each French cathedral and each minster makes its own special plea. Lyons reminds us, in windows of apocalyptic radiance, that her first bishops came from John the Apostle, that Christian blood flowed in her forum as generously as in Rome's Coliseum. Of the very stones of the Amphitheater, hallowed by her martyrs, is her cathedral built, and the architectural methods of the north and the south are welded here in the ancient central city of Gaul whence rayed out the linking highroads of Rome. At Tours, the charity of Martin to a beggar is recorded many a time, for it civilized middle Europe. Slow, steady, and deep were the accumulations of culture by the Loire of measured horizons and classic restraint. A tower named of Charlemagne recalls that Saxon Alcuin filled the schoolrooms of St. Martin's Abbey. A chiseled tomb reminds us that here worked the last sculptor of the Middle Ages (loyal to its humble and profound Christian traditions), as well as the first artists of the imported pagan Renaissance. At Le Mans and Angers, at Fontevrault, with its tomb of Henry Plantagenet, who gave us our jury system, speak those fighting progressives, the Angevin rulers; and all their love of the arts and of adventure endures in the exotically beautiful development which we call Plantagenet Gothic. An unlettered king is an uncrowned ass, said a X-century count of Anjou. At Poitiers, city of St. Hilaire who fought the Arians, is the most glorious window in the world--Christ triumphant on the Cross, and again we walk in procession to the strain of Bishop Fortunatus' hymn, and we read the Church Fathers in Greek and Hebrew in Queen Radegund's cloister. Aquitaine's line of troubadour dukes, passionate sinners, and prodigious repenters lives in every church in the old hill city, from the cathedral wherein Aliénor blended the indigenous art of her own Poitou with the Plantagenet suppleness of her Angevin husband, to the cupola-covered abbatial of St. Hilaire, where her son, Richard the Lion-hearted, was installed as duke. At Caen we live with the Conqueror and Matilda in their penitential abbey-churches, full of thought and purpose, the architecture of hieratic pre-eminence which Normandy passed on to England. At Coutances, the cathedral walls record the Tancreds, so the people say; close by was the eyrie of that eagle brood who set up kingdoms in Italy and the Orient. At Rouen we mutter with the crowd in the market place that a grievous shame it is to burn a saint as a witch, and in reaction, soon we are to rear monuments whose every line is jubilant freedom. At Rheims we are crowned kings in a cathedral so sumptuous that on coronation days it needed no tapestries to adorn its walls. At Clermont and at Vézelay we don the crusaders' insignia with cries of enthusiasm. The lavish art of Bourges tells of Jacques Coeur's largess, the princely merchant who financed the army that rid France of her invaders, just as clearly as the ducal tombs and imagery at Dijon relate the pageantry of the XV-century Burgundian life. The stones of Pontigny tell of Becket the martyr, whose cause impassioned all Christendom, as many a sculptured group and storied window in France relate, and of another great Englishman, Stephen Langton, who passed from this cloistral peace--dividing the Bible into chapters for us--to the Magna Charta struggle in England. _By architecture we remember._ Until we have seen Albi's aggressive fortress-church what do we really know of the Albigensian heresy, of the disease un-European, antichristian, antisocial, that bred in the precocious civilization of Languedoc? What do we know of that terrible struggle called a crusade, when the greedy barons of the north descended on the Midi (ever brutal and refined), thinking to cure its soul by the sword and with the same blows to carve out for themselves rich principalities? Forever is the story told in the Jacobins' church at Toulouse, in the red cathedral fortress above the Tarn. All the isolating pride of feudalism is resumed in the ramparts of Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes, all the frustrated destiny of Narbonne in its vast fragment of a cathedral, all the unbroken links with the Latin are in the sculpture at Arles and St. Gilles, all the immemorial story of _la grande bleu_ in Maguelonne's solitary church. _By architecture we remember._ The Celtic remnant, that in the volcanic-torn uplands of middle France inflicted on Cæsar his sole defeat, lives always in the churches of Auvergne, so stubbornly indigenous, planted so sturdily, contriving decorative beauty from the regional varicolored lava stones. In the granite churches of Brittany endures all the aloof individuality, the sensitive independence, the tenacious traditionalism of the dwellers by the sea in the far-north outpost of France. We have our souls to keep, say the lowly Breton shrines, we have always been too busy doing that to find time to erect great churches. But once our neighbors, the Normans, taught us tower-building, our Celtic imagination leaped _au delà_ by their spires, so we raised our royal Kreisker which far out to sea welcomes home our Breton sailors. Architecture is history. Architecture is what the old Greeks said of history, "philosophy teaching by examples." The cathedrals of France prove that there is no supreme architecture where there is not liberty or the will to attain it. In 1109 the bishop-baron of Noyon granted his city a charter, the first communal written laws on record. In 1145 Noyon began to build the first Gothic cathedral of France. In the Ile-de-France, where from the nation's birth were lived its intensest hours, sprang up the churches which are the most national, the most racially French in character, Noyon, Senlis, Soissons, Laon, Paris. The history of architecture proves that without a right-minded national pride, ready to make sacrifices in order that it may transmit its high deeds to the future, no mighty monuments rise. In 1214 Bouvines' victory was won and French unity demonstrated. In 1220, not far away, was laid the foundation stone of Amiens Cathedral, the crowning achievement of the national art. A hazard, such juxtaposition? Ah, no. Nothing happens by chance in this science of the builder whose basic forces are long at work in silence. Architecture is the truthteller of history. The history of France, which in the XII and XIII centuries meant universal history, is written on the walls of the cathedrals built under Philippe-Auguste and his grandson St. Louis, during the full flowering of the new national art. And in the days when France was neither happy nor good nor great, when faith flagged, when a minority's blind greed of gold ended the international fairs, drove out the Jews, overtaxed the clerical church builders, when the crusading enthusiasm ended in a Templars' process, then the structural logic of Gothic architecture turned to pitiless geometry. So proclaim the cold, uninspired XIV-century churches, and few of them ever were built. It seemed almost as if the Gothic cycle had run its course. The XII century had seen its rise; the XIII century its apotheosis; the XIV century its decline. Was the last word said? Churches are not built by generations that live in ceaseless war, in misrule, or under a foreign yoke. There was to be another chapter for the Gothic tale. Aspiration was born again, national pride lifted its head and art flowered. Not from beyond the mountains or the sea came the needed missionary this time, nor from a Carolingian palace, nor out of Norman and Burgundian cloister. No saint-king was to lead now, but only a young girl from a peasant hamlet. When Jeanne d'Arc broke the spell of foreign invasion, when she gave France a new soul, then all over the land rose that pæan of rejoicing which we call Flamboyant Gothic art, for verily it flamed up with joy. Never will you see an arch of double curvature, accoladed, soaring to its triumphal finial, never will you gaze at radiant belfries rising richer and richer with each story, never will you pray beneath a late-Gothic pageantry picture window with its mullions swaying in exaltation, but the thought of the Maid of Orleans and her mission will come to you. This Flamboyant art may run riot in details like any modern, but it remains true in its essentials to the Middle Ages. Forever will it tell of the freeing of France from foreign rule, even as the academic Rayonnant phase sets forth the lowered ideals of Philippe le Bel, or the ampleness of XIII-century Gothic, the creative age of Louis IX and his augmenting grandfather. No regional schools were there in the last manifestations of the national art; they built the same at Albi as at Rouen, at Bordeaux as at Lyons, for an entire people shared the same feeling of recovered self-respect. You can learn to read it by yourself, learn to _remember_, if only you are not repelled by that stiff word "archæology." Just what generation made Dijon's crypt and Morienval's ambulatory, put the masonry roofs on the Caen abbatials, chiseled the column statues at the doors of Angers, Le Mans, and Chartres, made of Bourges' procession path a heavenly way of ruby, sapphire, emerald, and topaz, raised the tower at Senlis, paid tribute to St. Cecilia's gentleness in the white imagery of Albi's grim fortress--that is archæology. Archæology tells how Cluny lifted up a prostrate Christendom, how the Normans conquered England, how Abbot Suger reformed himself, how Bernard of Clairvaux exhorted Europe, how the Lion-hearted went crusading as had his fascinating mother before him, how Simon de Montfort won the Midi, how the wily Philippe-Auguste enlarged his domain, province by province--and all the while most of the Gothic cathedrals of France laid their foundations--and how the _bon-saint-homme-roy_, truest lover of the builders' art, sat under an oak tree, dispensing justice at first hand, with his loyal Joinville seated close beside him. That is archæology. It is written down clearly on great stone pages of perennial beauty for us to read--_if only we will_. A little knowledge of construction's laws is needed to show us how to see. A little more of history to guide us when to feel. If to love we must know, to know we must set ourselves to learn. Even in these days of easy motor travel one cannot go about book-laden. But there are open libraries in French cities where an inquirer is courteously lent the monographs on the town's monuments, or the big folios that picture the storied windows. It has, therefore, appeared advisable to give, with each cathedral, a list of its biographies, for they may be of use some rainy afternoon in France. It seems almost unnecessary to remind ourselves that in the XII and XIII centuries the Church of Europe--barring the Greek schism--was one and united, save for the quarrels inseparable from all manifestations of mankind's history, and that the Protestant of to-day descends from the same mediæval forefathers as does the Catholic, from the same builders of cathedrals, crusaders, feudal proprietors, and commune winners. To refuse sympathy to the two best centuries of the Middle Ages because, three hundred years later, occurred a break in western Christendom is as illogical as the attitude of those historians who would liken the religious movement of the XVI century to the antisocial outcrop of Oriental dualism called the Albigensian heresy. Let us then, with open minds, turn to this art of the builder, "the strongest, proudest, most orderly, most enduring of the arts of men that if once well done will stand more strongly than the unbalanced rocks, more prevalently than the crumbling hills; the art which is associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men record their power, satisfy their enthusiasm, make sure their defense, define and make dear their habitation."[2] CHAPTER I What Is Gothic Architecture?[3] _Le temps Où tous nos monuments, et toutes nos croyances Portaient le manteau blanc de leur virginité Où sous la main de Christ, tout venait de renaître._ --ALFRED DE MUSSET. About the year 1000 a new spirit animated the art of the builder in France. That rebirth, to which has been given the name Romanesque, held sway for a hundred and fifty years, and had reached its apogee when, in mid-XII century, it was superseded by the architecture we call Gothic. Gothic architecture did not spring up like a mushroom. Like all manifestations of art, it was the logical fulfillment of its predecessor. Romanesque and Gothic were phases of the same art. The dethronement of Romanesque was a voluntary abdication in favor of younger, more efficient leadership: "What is called the birth of Gothic is but the coming of age of Romanesque." The XI-century monks who built monastic churches cleared the path for the laymen builders of the Gothic cathedrals. With persistency, with courage, the monk architects went forward, seeking a way. And the way sought, the problem on which they concentrated their energies, was how to protect their churches by masonry vaulting without sacrificing amplitude or lighting.[4] Out of their trials to solve that problem there emerged a new principle of construction, and Gothic architecture was then born. Thrust and counterthrust was the law of its being. Instead of the Romanesque idea of equilibrium by dead load, by sheer mass, which may be called a continuous counterbutting of the vault's thrust, there now was substituted equilibrium by intermittent abutment. By means of diagonal-crossing ribs the vertical and lateral thrusts of the stone roof were collected at fixed points, which points alone had to be counterbutted. Thick walls were a necessity in a Romanesque edifice, if it were to be stable, but in a Gothic building the walls could be made a mere shell, since all the work was done by an active skeleton, a bone structure of stone, consisting of piers, arches, and buttresses. To define shortly, Gothic architecture is the art of erecting buildings with vaults whose ribs intersect (concentration of load) and whose thrusts are stopped by buttresses (the grounding of the thrusts). The never-ceasing downward and outward thrust of the vaulting is met by an equivalent resistance in pier and buttress and solid earth. Equilibrium results from that well-adjusted opposition of forces. Since the starting point in the development of Gothic was the vaulting, and how to substitute a stone vault for a wooden roof was the germinal idea of the Romanesque builder, it is no digression to turn to the earlier school, the chrysalis of Gothic. The name "Romanesque" is an affair of yesterday, employed by a French archæologist about 1825. Various local designations had hitherto been used, such as Lombard, or Norman, or Romano-Byzantine, but the term Romanesque for this architecture is as suitable as the name Romance is for the popular languages which, in that same period, were forming out of the corruption of Latin. A definition given by M. Camille Enlart is excellent: "Romanesque art was a product of Rome, animated by a new spirit, and combined with a certain number of elements of barbarian or Oriental origin." Rome gave the basilica plan to western Europe, which for centuries continued to build its churches as oblong halls with a small apse at one end. The hall, or nave, consisted of a central vessel with side aisles that were divided from it by piers. In the treatment of vaulting and the method of stone laying Romanesque architecture also derived from Rome. Byzantine influences certainly were important, but they affected the decoration more than the plan or the structure; the use of the Byzantine cupola was merely occasional. The Romanesque masters copied the ivories and miniatures of the Eastern Greeks till, in time, they turned to nature for their models, and then their work took on new life and evolved into the glory which is Gothic sculpture. While some have laid stress on the Oriental influences, rather than those of Rome, in the formation of Romanesque art, others have overemphasized the personality and fantasy introduced into French architecture by the Barbarian invasions. No doubt the influx of new blood added new elements, but since knowledge of the invaders' art is fragmentary, there can be no scientific base for the theory. Composite, certainly, were the causes for the new spirit which animated architecture after the Carolingian day, but it is safe to say that the influence of Rome predominated. In the course of the centuries the Roman basilica was modified by the Catholic liturgy. For catechumens, or penitents, was made the porch, or narthex, before the western end. Tribunes were built over the side aisles.[5] Increased church ceremonial brought about a development of the choir. The custom of burying the dead in crypts under the main altar originated the raised chancel. Between the choir and the nave the builders began to insert a transverse nave called a transept.[6] Such an enlargement enabled the congregation to approach closer to the altar ceremonies; only the bigger churches built transepts in the XI century. Then the liturgical writers saw in a transept the extended arms of the Cross, and it was in that spirit the XIII-century transepts were made--their symbolism was posterior. The first ambulatories were no doubt built in churches which possessed some revered relic, to facilitate the passage of the pilgrim crowd. (The term ambulatory will be used to designate the continuation of the choir aisle round the apse.) Before long that curving processional path, with radiating apsidal chapels opening from it, was taken to represent the crown of thorns about the Sacred Head. "All things as pertain to offices and matters ecclesiastical be full of divine signification and mysteries, and overflow with a celestial sweetness: if so be that a man be diligent in his study of them, and know how to draw honey from the rock and oil from the hardest stone." So wrote William Durandus, the XIII-century French bishop whose _Rationale_, or treatise on church symbolism, was an inspiration for centuries and, next to the Bible, the most frequently printed book of the older times.[7] Despite a host of additions to the basilica of Rome--transept, ambulatory, a long choir, apse chapels, towers--despite the discarding of the classic orders and of antiquity's use of a veneer of finer stone (the Romanesque builder used the unadorned stone of his own region) the church of western Europe remained, in general plan, a Roman basilica. Like Rome, they covered their main vessel by a flat wooden roof, although they knew how to build barrel and groin vaulting.[8] Now a wooden roof is an easy prey for fire. Such roofs, a succession of long-continued invasions, and the faulty construction of Merovingian and Carolingian churches are accountable for the fact that in France to-day is no church that predates the year 1000. Some portions of ancient wall are embedded in later work, and some few early crypts are intact. But to speak with certainty of Merovingian and Carolingian architecture is impossible, though they formed the incubating phase of Romanesque art. In France the IX and X centuries were periods of overwhelming disaster. In the Midi were Saracen incursions. In northern and central France Norman pirates wiped out Charlemagne's revival of art. As far as Poitiers and Clermont the Northmen's path of destruction extended. "Look where you will," wrote Flodoard, the chronicler, "the sky is red with fires." To the litany was added a new invocation--_A furore Normannorum, libera nos, Domine_. The falling to pieces of Charlemagne's civilization and the general return of social disorders have led to an overdramatic contrasting of the year 1000, when mankind, in terror, anticipated the ending of the world, with the rebirth of hope and of building energy, when the dread day had passed. Whenever the gaunt horses--famine, pest, war, and death--are afoot, humanity is prone to look for the fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecy. Previous to the X century the final day had been awaited, and the same superstition was to seize on the world's imagination in following centuries. The X century was certainly a desperate age. Fifty years of it were famine, and on the highroads people were killed for food. But the evils did not cease precisely with the year 1000; also it should be noted that a certain number of churches were begun before the XI century opened. However, to mark the start of a new art life the year 1000 is a convenient date if we bear in mind that it was not a sharp division between Carolingian and Romanesque architecture, since a gradual evolution took place. All through the XI century the vital renewal of architecture went on, and churches were built which, to this day, are unrivaled for their profound religious spirit. They exist to tell us that in the harsh life whence they emerged there were enlightened cases. They vindicate, by their grand simplicity and detachment of soul, the men who built them. Never was an art less one of routine than this of the so-called hidebound monks, an art of a people reborn, full of youth's daring, an art that was never to have an old age, eager, untiring, experimental, an art that fitly generated the most scientifically sound of architectures--Gothic. The heterogeneous races, Celtic and Gallo-Roman, Germanic, and Norse, whose conflicts long had held France in anarchy, were at last welding into one people. The advent of a vigorous third dynasty, under whose leadership social conditions improved, was another cause of art's rebirth. Not long after 1000 the bishops formulated the _Trève de Dieu_, by which peace was enforced on the turbulent lords from Wednesday night to Monday morning. With interval of peace came commerce and wealth and the security necessary for works of the imagination. The rebuilding of churches was inevitable. Invasions and wholesale conflagrations had impressed on the mediæval mind the necessity of a church roof more durable than wood, but a masonry vault over a wide space was a constructive feat too difficult to be achieved immediately. In fact, up to the very end of the XI century, though the builders had succeeded in vaulting with stone the crypt, the apse, and the side aisles, they continued generally to cover the wide central vessel in wood. However, the fecund idea was at work. From the time that it took possession of their imagination, to the day when Gothic, its fulfillment, was clearly enunciated, there was over a century of continuous effort--roughly speaking, from the year 1000 to the memorable day in 1144 when was dedicated the first truly Gothic monument of considerable size--the abbey church of St. Denis. Within that energetic span of years is embraced the Romanesque architecture of France.[9] The monk, Raoul Glaber, wrote an account of the rebirth of architecture after the year 1000. It has been quoted to weariness, but is none the less a valuable contemporary record. The whole earth, he says, as of one accord seemed to throw off its tatters of old age and to reclothe itself in a white mantle of churches. The monastery in which lived monk Raoul, St. Bénigne, at Dijon, was one of the first to inaugurate the new century, and its present crypt dates from the year 1001. Soon after 1017 the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel, in the far corner of Normandy, began a new church, to which belonged part of the present nave. At Chartres, Bishop Fulbert undertook to rebuild his cathedral after the fire of 1020, and the vast crypt which to-day astonishes every beholder was his work. The chronicler, Raoul Glaber, lived under the rule of the most powerful monastic brotherhood ever organized, Benedictine Cluny, embracing several thousand houses scattered over Europe. Founded in 910, during the darkest years of the Middle Ages, Cluny kept alive the light of learning and art, "the solitary torchbearer that passed on the flame from the spent glow of Charlemagne to the Gothic rekindling." Her monks were the pioneers of civilization. Cluny beat back barbarism with a pertinacity that should make hers an honored name in history. So established was her reputation as a civilizer that William the Conqueror wrote to the great Abbot Hugues, to beg from him Cluny monks for England, saying that he would pay their weight in bullion. Cluny formed the savants who made the XII century memorable. Her fertile seed provided Europe with doctors, ambassadors, bishops, and popes. Gregory VII had passed through her discipline, and in his giant task of reform, it was from Abbot Hugues that he solicited monks of Cluny. Urban II, who set in motion the First Crusade, had been a monk in the great Burgundian house. It is interesting to note that a generation of reforming pontiffs accompanied the expansion of the Romanesque movement. This would seem to contradict the notion, which many hold, that the clergy profits by keeping the people in superstitious ignorance. It is when religion is purified of its dross that man's respiritualized faith out-flows in generous donations to the Church. St. Benedict had taught his sons that work as well as prayer was a part of salvation. The monks of Cluny fostered agriculture, thus taking away its stigma as serf's work. Thierry speaks of the mediæval monastery as a model farm. In Cluny craftsmen of every kind were trained; its school of music was noted, and along the roads, as they traveled, the monks from Burgundy sang canticles. But the art of arts for Cluny was that of the builder, the supreme art that takes into its service all the others, to lead them to the glorification of God's house. When, in bands of twelve, the monks of Cluny set out to colonize in Spain, in Germany, in Italy, in Poland, everywhere they carried with them the tool as well as the Book. As a rule they conformed in each province to the local building traditions. There was never a distinct Cluny school of Romanesque architecture. By the end of the XI century the main provincial centers of France had each evolved its own special building characteristics. French Romanesque architecture has been divided into some six or seven regional schools--those of Normandy, Burgundy, Auvergne, Poitou, Languedoc, Provence, and a minor school, the Franco-Picard.[10] In their efforts to protect their churches by masonry roofs, these various regional schools made use of the barrel vault or the groin vault. The latter was found too insecure to span a wide space. Now, the thrust of a barrel vault was exerted along the whole length of the wall, which necessitated a continuous abutment--in other words, an enormously thick wall. Only small windows could be opened. Since the Romanesque architect had the ambition to light his church well, and not to encumber his floor surface by clumsy piers, a barrel vaulting could be but a temporary solution of the main problem. The struggle for a satisfactory stone roof was pursued tenaciously. Many a clearstory wall was thrust apart by the vaulting's pressure. Thus the abbey church of Bec, finished in the 'forties of the XI century, was reconstructed in the 'fifties, and three times, again, had to be rebuilt. No failure could daunt the courage of those old monastic builders. Already inherent in the newly amalgamated race was the creative genius of France. Perseverance and courage were to have their reward. The theory long taught in the École des Chartes was that in the first part of the XI century, among a number of rural churches in the royal domain, there gradually came into use the member which was to revolutionize the science of building. The idea did not spring from one brain; it was a collective, not an individual, triumph. When, under some groin vault, no doubt at first to reinforce it, some obscure mason constructed the earliest intersecting stone ribs, the first step in Gothic architecture had been taken.[11] From that essential organ, the other characteristics of Gothic art were deduced: flying buttress, slender piers, expanse of windows. In a Gothic vault the infilling, or web, rested elastically on the diagonal ribs. As the load of the stone roof was thus concentrated at fixed junctures, it was necessary to reinforce only those given points. Buttresses became intermittent. All the disintegrating force of the heavy vaulting was gathered on the diagonally crossing arches. An arch never sleeps, said the old Arab proverb. Let us then, said the mediæval architect, set a guard on it that also never sleeps; and from that idea he proceeded to develop the greatest architecture of all times. The force of expansion was counteracted by a proportionate force of compression. By means of a framework made up of vault ribs, of piers, of buttresses, and flying buttresses, the edifice became a living skeleton. The walls between the active members, when relieved of their load, served merely as screen inclosures and could be carved into fragile beauty and hung with transparent tapestries of colored glass. Because the flying buttress transmitted a large part of the vault's pressure to the exterior buttress piles, the piers within the church could be lessened in diameter, and greater capacity be given to the interior. Each new trial was a lesson learned. It was only with time that they adjusted precisely the sufficient counterpoise to the thrust of the vaults; it was only by degrees that the pier's diameter was lessened, only with practice that was learned the placing of flying buttresses neither too high nor too low. At first many a flying buttress was made needlessly heavy. The solid wall in between the buttresses was not discarded all at once. In the first Gothic churches windows continued to be single lights, then two or three lancets were placed side by side, subsequently each light was subdivided by mullions, and gradually an elaborate fenestration developed. For a time, too, the round arch continued in use, and the earliest vault ribs were semicircular. With the fusion of the equilateral arch and the counterbutted intersecting ribs, the essence of Gothic architecture was achieved. Lesser consequences of the new form of vaulting followed in logical succession. Obeying the law that it is the thing borne which commands the form of the thing that bears, the ribs may be said to have drawn out of the sturdy pier of Romanesque art the clustered columns of Gothic gracefulness. Not a single beauty in a Gothic church but has a structural explanation. The soaring pinnacles that crown the buttresses are apparently mere ornaments, but in reality those gallant little bits of decoration are of sound engineering usefulness. By weighting the buttresses, they hasten to channel the transmitted lateral thrust of the vaulting into a vertical pressure, and they increase, too, the counterthrust of the flying buttress against the side walls. A clear comprehension of Gothic is impossible unless the fact be grasped that architecture is nothing if not structural, and that no decoration can veil a faulty skeleton. Ornamentation is the spontaneous blossoming of the structure, else it is meaningless--a principle many a modern architect might well digest. Too long has the most scientifically exact of architectures been judged by its embellishments, which often enough, in the hands of the copyist, do become a florid veneer without reason. The Gothic master-of-works was right when he said that nothing which was inherently needed could be ugly. No longer were flying buttresses hidden under the cover of wooden roofs. Proudly ranged about the church, those essential practical members became one of the distinctive beauties of the new science of building. Renan, with his treacherous half praise, has called the flying buttress a crutch needed by an architecture which, from its start, nourished the seeds of decay, since it was based on no sound constructive formula. Its success was a prestidigitator's trick, he said. Such criticism misunderstands the A B C of Gothic lore. Can a living limb be called a crutch? it has been aptly asked. The Gothic cathedral is not only the most complicated, but is also the most complete, organism ever conceived by man. Where the first diagonal-crossing ribs are to be found will probably never be known. Various have been the claimants. The Rhenish claim is no longer taken seriously. Gothic made its first appearance in Germany as a fully developed French art, and its XIII-century name, there, was _opus francigenum_. In his Gothic work the Teuton showed a fondness for the _tour-de-force_ and his manual dexterity surprises more than it satisfies. The best German works in architecture are the sober Romanesque churches. Germany's school was developed a century before the Romanesque of France; across the Rhine occurred no Norman invasion to sever art traditions from Charlemagne's renaissance. The pre-Gothic art suited her ethnical temperament, and was long adhered to. While France was building Gothic, Germany was still erecting Romanesque cathedrals. Not till the end of the XII century were churches along that "_rue des moines_," the Rhine, vaulted in the new manner. The claim of Italy to be the first to use the diagonal ribs is denied by most French archæologists, but is put forward by the Italian scholar Rivoira and by Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter.[12] The latter cites the church of Sannazzaro Sesia as showing proofs that its high nave was Gothic vaulted by 1040. For a century, he says, the Lombard churches used diagonals, especially in Milan, where wood was scarce and it was easier to build permanent brick ribs under the groin vault than to mold the groin on a temporary substructure. Diagonal ribs were invented, he thinks, as a device to economize wood. That may be true of the Lombard churches, of which he has made an elaborate study. And it may be true that the use of such diagonals filtered into Provence and Languedoc, where appeared some early Gothic vaults sporadically before 1150, at Fréjus, Marseilles, Maguelonne, and Moissac, all with the rectangular profile of the Lombard type. The theory he advocates does not prove why the Ile-de-France masons could not themselves, without hint from Lombardy, have stumbled on the new feature which was to revolutionize the builder's art. Why should we prefer his explanation for the first use of diagonals--the desire to economize wood--to that advanced by the French scholars--the effort to brace a falling groin vault? Mr. Porter acknowledges that not a single Lombard church was rib-vaulted throughout, that the Lombard architects never counterbutted their diagonals properly, that their vaults proved unsatisfactory, so that after 1120 they returned to their groin and barrel vaulting, or used timber roofs, in those regions where wood abounded. The destruction of Milan through the German invasion, in 1162, was a fatal blow to Lombard architecture. We can only conjecture how northern Italy might have worked out the problem of stone roofs. The best definition of Gothic, thinks Mr. Porter, is Professor Moore's, which concludes thus: "Wherever is wanting a framework maintained on the principle of thrust and counterthrust, there we have not Gothic." The Lombard churches never met the vault thrust with counterthrust of buttress. Surely not in Lombardy was conceived the new system of construction? S. Ambrogio at Milan was cited as l'oeuvre initiale, till it was proved that it was built not in the IX century, but after 1067; and as later disasters necessitated reconstructions, none of the present diagonals was extant before 1198. S. Abondio at Como, consecrated by Urban II, in 1095, has some very early intersecting ribs, but they are more a step toward the new system than a true Gothic vault, since the ribs merely reinforce and do not carry the cells. M. Camille Enlart contends that the systematic use of Gothic in Italy was not earlier than the second quarter of the XIII century, and was brought across the Alps by French Cistercian monks. Though for centuries Italy used it, she apprehended its constructive principle imperfectly. Because she possessed a Niccola Pisano, a Giotto, a family of Cosmati to veil the poverty of her Gothic skeleton with details of consummate beauty, criticism is silenced. Her best Gothic monument, the cathedral of Siena, was insecure because of technical errors. Always was Italy adverse to showing the mechanism by which an edifice stood; few flying buttresses were ever built south of the Alps. She preferred the classic wide spacing of piers, an unencumbered interior, and small windows against her hot sun. Who remembers that he is in a Gothic church when in the somber cathedral of Florence? Its long nave is divided into four bays where a northern church would have used eight. For Italy the Renaissance was a whole-hearted return to a national art which she could fully understand. No people outside of France better understood and developed Gothic art than the English. Their claim to priority is based on the date of the cathedral of Durham, whose choir-aisle diagonals Mr. John Bilson says are as early as 1093. Since those diagonals show no hesitation, they must have been preceded by others. Where in England are there to be found the earlier trials? The English claim is practically a Norman one, and Normandy's experimental work in Gothic vaultings remains to be traced. Rivoira claims that Lombard influences predominated in the formation of Normandy's Romanesque school. Can the Norman be said to have discerned in diagonals their immense possibilities any clearer than had the Lombard? Those among the French archæologists who have disputed the Norman claim to priority say that the principal span of Norman and English churches was covered with timber roofs far into the XII century. We know that the Gothic vaulting of the two abbey churches of Caen were XII-century additions, and M. de Lasteyrie thought the same was true of Durham, though Mr. Bilson has convinced MM. Enlart and Lefèvre-Pontalis that Durham's choir-aisle vaults are an original part of the cathedral begun in 1093. Not till 1174, when Guillaume de Sens began Canterbury Cathedral, did French Gothic architecture, in its plenitude, appear in England. The question of priority remains an open one. It might almost be said that vaulting with intersecting ribs began to appear here and there simultaneously, that if it had not cropped out in the Ile-de-France, it would have appeared in Normandy, or vice versa. And not long after them, the builders in Burgundy and Anjou began to use it. Before 1150, isolated samples of the Gothic rib vault appeared at Vézelay, Poitiers, Bordeaux, Quimperlé, Moissac, St. Gilles, Marseilles. The hour was ripe for the solution. Gothic architecture was the spontaneous invention of French builders at the dawn of the XII century, at a time when the poetry of France was imposing itself on the whole of Europe. _L'oeuvre initiale_ will never be known. However, there was a region where the early use of the ogival vault was not accidental, but systematic, one spot in the heart of France where it immediately made a school, since there it found no strong earlier traditions to overcome, where it became a living organism and went through a succession of logical developments until it had taken on the main characteristics of the new art. There is one center from which Gothic architecture spread out with slow, sure march into the neighboring regions. In the Ile-de-France, all the trials were summed up and developed by Abbot Suger at St. Denis. From 1140 to 1144 he wedded definitely the pointed arch with the diagonal rib. The French masters, who have contended that the Ile-de-France is the cradle of Gothic architecture, have had lesser controversies among themselves as to which special portion of the royal domain led in the evolution. M. Woillez, a pioneer, considered the environs of Beauvais the favored spot; M. Saint-Paul looked to the districts between Normandy and Paris; M. Enlart sought the nucleus in Amiens diocese in Picardy; and M. Lefèvre-Pontalis chose the classic diocese of Soissons. The two latter masters have modified their views since studying Durham's vaults, and they may modify them further in regard to Lombardy's early use of diagonals. The controversy is not closed. The France of that day was more a feudal confederation than a united kingdom, and some of the king's vassals ruled territories larger than his own. If the feeling of nationality is created as much by great achievements in common, as by political boundaries and the ties of blood, if, as all now agree, the enthusiasm of the Crusades, those holy wars against a common foe, helped to weld the rival sections of France into one nation, surely that other enthusiasm of the day, those other _Gesta Dei_ per Francos, the building of the Gothic cathedrals, played an important part in forming the national soul. From end to end of France they were building when at the battle of Bouvines a French king united with the jealous barons, with clergy and with burgess and with villein in a common defense of their native land. King, clergy, lords, and people fought at Bouvines, and king, clergy, lords, and people built the big national churches. All the energies of the times went to their making, all the primitive strong purposes, all the newly stirred intellect of the schools. Science was as needed for them as inspiration, for without the long manual training of the guilds, the mystic glow had not sufficed. There has crept into various architectural manuals, since first M. Viollet-le-Duc voiced it, a theory which scarcely needs refuting, so disproved is it by modern research.[13] Gothic art is considered as the layman's expression of revolt against the Romanesque art of the monks, an idea that denies the structural sequence of the two phases of the same art, and would present Gothic as a reaction against its predecessor, instead of its supreme development. We read that a cathedral was built as a sort of assembly hall for the rising communes, and not _pour loger le bon Dieu_. Now in every known case it was the bishop who started the rebuilding of each cathedral, and the works usually began with the choir, the part of a church suitable only for the cult. Even when a bishop, in his character of proprietor of a city (as in the case of Rheims and Laon), opposed the communal claims, he and the people went on building their cathedral together. We have precious documents to assure us in what spirit of piety the work was done. All classes and all ages, women as well as men, gave their voluntary labor to the new works, after having confessed and communicated in pious confraternities; sometimes it was for an abbot that they dragged in the stones from the quarry, as at St. Denis and St. Pierre-sur-Dives; sometimes it was to aid a bishop, as at Chartres and Rouen. To offset such irrefutable evidence there is not one contemporary reference to a laic, or communal purpose. Also, when it is asserted that the bishop helped the cathedrals because they were jealous of the monastic orders, there is not one historical record to confront a host of documents which disprove the idea. Large numbers of the bishop-builders issued from monasteries, founded monasteries, and returned to monasteries to die. While Maurice de Sully was erecting Notre Dame, at Paris, he built four monasteries, in one of which he requested to be buried. The bishop who began Auxerre Cathedral chose Cistercian Pontigny for his tomb. The bishop-builders of Noyon, Laon, Senlis, Soissons, Rheims, Bourges, and Rouen were buried among the monks. That there should occasionally be friction between a bishop and an abbot over legal privileges is only characteristic of human nature in all times. As a class the bishops were not opposed to the monks, nor the Orders to the secular clergy. The monks of St. Remi honored the archbishop of Rheims in their choir windows. The cloister welcomed the new architecture. Transition Gothic churches were built by the monks of St. Germain-des-Prés and St. Martin-des-Champs at Paris, and one could prolong the list into pages. Where in Burgundy is found the earliest Gothic? In the Cistercian church of Pontigny, and in Benedictine Vézelay. Where in Champagne?--the abbatials of Notre Dame at Châlons-sur-Marne and St. Remi at Rheims. In Normandy? In the Midi?--again the answer is, in abbey churches. Indeed, monastic building energy seemed inexhaustible, for where the prime of Gothic arrived, it was still the monks who produced that masterpiece of the new art, the Merveille of Mont-Saint-Michel. In the XII century the spread of monastic life took on a phenomenal aspect. Benedictine houses and those of the newly founded Orders of Cîteaux and Prémontré increased, not by hundreds, but by thousands. The monks were in absolute accord with the spirit of their time. Sons of the cloister had inspired the entire XI century: Gregory VII, Abbot William of Dijon, St. Anselm, Lanfranc, St. Hugues of Cluny. A bevy of remarkable men of the cloister led the XII century, the chief being Suger of St. Denis, protector of the serfs, the man of genius who stimulated the bishops of France to remake their cathedrals in emulation of his Gothic abbey church, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on whose words all Europe hung. Architecture passed to laic control when the protection of monastic life was no longer needed for artists, and when the science of building required the specialist, the man occupied with it alone. The schools of Cluny had trained the first guildsmen, and many of the names of Gothic architects--Orbais, Honnecourt, Corbic--indicate that they were born in places where monastic building industries flourished. It was in the natural course of events that the art should pass out of the possession of the few into the general national life. Another natural happening has been distorted by partisans. The burning of monastery archives during the XVI-century religious wars and by the Revolution is accountable for the few names of architects that have come down to us. The scarcity of such names has been cited as an instance of the jealous suppression of the laymen by the clergy forced to employ them. Now precisely the contrary is the truth. What modern architect was ever accorded such prominence as was allowed by the bishops of Amiens and Rheims to their masters-of-works when they inscribe those laymen names in the labyrinth designs of the cathedral pavements? The monks of Marmoutier and of St. Germain-des-Prés were proud to bury in their abbey-churches their architects Étienne de Mortagne and Pierre de Montereau. In Rheims, the architects Hugues Libergier and Robert de Coucy were likewise honored. By digging in old archives, the modern student is ever adding new names to the nation's honor roll. Many a gap still remains, but the very anonymousness of such masters of the living stone is stuff for the imagination. One likes to picture the old-time craftsman-artist rejoicing in his insignificance as he chiseled his leaf and vine just as he saw them by the roadside. He served a Master who gave like wages to all who worked in spirit and in truth, to him who, in the hidden corners where no human eye could penetrate, carved his leaf and flower with the same love as did the greater artist working on the stately imaged portals. The "heretical Gothic-sculpture bogey" has led certain imaginations astray. There are those who find latent heresy in the old carvers' work; they point, with suggestive smile, to the bishop and monk placed among the damned in the Last Judgments at the cathedral doors. Let them turn to the sermons of the day and they will find precisely the same Christian doctrine of the equality of all men before sin and punishment, preached from the pulpit within the church. Not in all the myriad scenes from Old and New Testaments is a single doctrinal error to be found, says M. Émile Mâle, who is master of the iconography of French churches. The sculptor layman merely carried out the scheme of the trained theologian. Many a sharp word does M. Viollet-le-Duc give as critic to those who enjoy in a cathedral the superficial beauties of decoration, but are blind to the efficient structure, to the scientific upholding skeleton. Surely it is a still more radical ignorance which perceives in a Gothic church its mechanical perfection, but denies the aspiration to immortality which was its inceptive spirit. To ascribe the origin of cathedrals to the need by the nascent commune of a town hall is to make of those soaring monuments veritable follies of human pride. Restore to them their religious soul, have eyes to see what may be called their spiritual framework, and as up-leaps toward the infinite they are sublimities. Can churches be the creation of rebellion and hate when into their very stones passed the clamorous vibrant faith of those crusading generations? Like hovering prayers their vaults seem to shut one in. The heart, weary of modern sophistry, draws strength from their eternal affirmation. He must have little music in his soul who is deaf to such a _Credo_. When men built Gothic cathedrals they knelt on both knees to pray, and never have they soared more supremely above themselves. "Deeds of God through the French" are these temples. A word in regard to the term "Gothic." It is as unreasonable a misnomer as could have been chosen, but since usage has sanctioned it, it must pass. Primarily put into currency by the Italians of the Renaissance, in the injurious sense of barbarous, the term was adopted by the French neo-classics of the XVII century. Molière's scathing line on Gothic sculpture is well known--"_Ces monstres odieux des siècles ignorants_." He complained that Gothic art "_fit à la politesse une mortelle guerre_." When Racine spoke of Chartres Cathedral he made use of the term _barbare_; even to the churchman Fénelon the cathedrals of the Middle Ages appeared unreasoned and faulty. The opprobrious term was fixed by the Encyclopædists of the next century, when prejudice against the Middle Ages became militant and organized. With exclusive pedantism they dismissed the most national and civilized of arts as worthy of those rough invaders, the Goths. Voltaire, who, says Guizot, garnered only what was mean and criminal in the Middle Ages, saw in the study of Gothic architecture "a coarse curiosity, lacking good taste." As late as 1800, a project was abroad to disencumber the soil of France of "these overcharged façades with their multitude of indecent and ridiculous figures." And still later, the students in the national school of architecture were taught to despise the most reasoned, the most robust, the most logical of arts as a style of confusion and caprice. The rehabilitation of Gothic architecture in France, if tardy, has been ample. No branch of modern science presents a more able corps of workers. While true to the Latin genius, which unites clarity of style with an exact erudition, they have obeyed a yet deeper race instinct which knows that matter must be vivified by spirit, else learning sinks to a dry-as-dust recording, incapable of its highest flight. The telling of the monumental story of France has been touched by the sacred flame of patriotism. Like paladins, these modern knights are abroad on all the by-paths eager to rescue some hidden treasure of the national art. Future scholarship will look back at the brilliant achievements of the French archæologists of to-day with the same pride that is felt for the Benedictine savants of the XVII century. The aim of archæology is to date a monument correctly. How to do this by scientific method has been taught the last two generations at the École des Chartes, the national school par excellence, so M. de Vögué called it. Archives are pored over to trace each link with history, and those monuments which have no authenticated pedigree are compared with those of certain date. Each manuscript date is verified by the analysis of the edifice itself, whose successive campaigns of building are deciphered, since few and far between are the homogeneous churches. Each restoration also is verified. One of the solid bases for archæological exactness is the knowledge of profiles, which are called by the English textbook rib molds, arch molds, pier molds, or base molds. By a comparative analysis of profiles, a monument can now be accurately dated. As keystones were of different types in the various earlier decades of Gothic, they too help to substantiate an edifice.[14] Churches of one region are contrasted with those of another. The material employed is considered, since the stone of a province causes richness or poverty of sculpture: thus, Brittany's granite and Auvergne's lava mean an undeveloped sculpture compared with the fine white limestone districts of the Oise, or in Normandy and Poitou. When practicable, excavations under an edifice can give data concerning previous churches on the site. M. Jules Quicherat was the first to teach that the history of the Middle Ages architecture was the history of the architect's fight against the weight and push of the vaulting.[15] Once the right path was blazed, many an able pioneer helped clear the new road--such students as Viollet-le-Duc, de Caumont, Woillez, Prosper Merimée, de Dion, Coutan, de Beaurepaire, Grandmaison, Révoil, Rupricht-Robert, Félix de Verneilh, Anthyme Saint-Paul, Louis Courajod, Buhot de Kersers. At the École des Chartes, Robert de Lasteyrie occupied with distinction the chair held by Quicherat for thirty years, and his pupils, Camille Enlart and Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis, in their turn, are passing on the high tradition to a younger school. M. Enlart, the director of the museum of comparative sculpture at the Trocadéro, is an authority on Romanesque architecture, and has initiated the study of the spread of Gothic architecture in mediæval Italy, Spain, the North, and the Levant.[16] M. Lefèvre-Pontalis has written a host of erudite monographs; one learns to accept his decisions as final, in so far as the ever-expanding realm of knowledge can be final. He directs the invaluable publications called the _Congrès Archéologique de France_ and the _Bulletin Monumental_, and he edits those excellent short studies known as the _Petites Monographies des grands édifices de la France_, which are convenient pocket guides for the serious tourist.[17] Each year is producing final monographs on the chief churches of France. M. Georges Durand has rendered fitting tribute to Amiens. M. de Farcy has identified himself with Angers, René Merlet with Chartres, Lucien Broche with Laon, and Lucien Bégule with Lyons. MM. Brutails has specialized on Gascony, the Thollier and H. du Ranquet on Auvergne, Labande on Provence, Berthelé on Plantagenet Gothic, André Rhein on Poitou and Anjou, Émile Bonnet on Hérault, Charles Porée on Burgundy, and Louis Demaison on Champagne. Other able students are MM. Bouet, Louis Serbat, Marcel Aubert, Ernest Rupin, Jules de Lahondès, René Fage, Amédée Boinet, Jean Virey, Robert Triger, and Louis Régnier. Precious texts have been unearthed from the archives by Victor Mortet, Henri Stein, and Eugène Müntz. The sculpture of France has been studied by MM. Robert de Lasteyrie, Émile Lambin, Léon Palustre, Eugène Müntz, Gabriel Fleury, Raymond Koechlin, J. M. de Vasselot, Paul Vitry, Gaston Brière, André Michel, Louis Gonse, and Émile Mâle. The latter three have brought out monumental general works. _L'art gothique_ of Gonse gives the most exact and extended account of the beginning of Gothic, says Anthyme Saint-Paul, who is himself one of the most inspiring masters of mediæval archæology. M. Michel, who is conservator of the national museums, has edited the superb _Histoire de l'art_, to which leading French scholars have contributed.[18] And the iconography of French cathedrals has received no more magistral treatment than from M. Mâle, to whom is due the credit of establishing the scholastic character of Gothic imagery.[19] His path was cleared by pioneers such as Didron, Crosnier, Martin, and Duchesne. Happily for the local schools, a bevy of intelligent churchmen have devoted themselves to their regional monuments. I hope I may be pardoned if I do not name each with his ecclesiastical designation, but cite them here simply as savants: the Abbés Eugène Müller (Senlis); Bourassé and Bosseboeuf (Touraine); Ledru (Le Mans); Auber, De la Croix, and Mgr. Barbier de Montault (Poitiers); Chomton (Dijon); Bulteau (Chartres); Abgrall (Brittany); Maurin (Aix-en-Provence); Bouvier (Sens); Cerf (Rheims); Bouxin (Laon); and for the Norman churches, the Abbés Fossey, Porée, Loisel, and Pigéon. The list might be greatly extended. One can cite only a few. From the pages of such students have been written these chapters, by one who has felt that there must be many travelers who love the old cathedrals of Europe and have wandered among them puzzled by half-understood things, longing to know with exactitude how and when they were built. So it has not seemed a useless task to gather into these ten chapters what the French scholars are relating of their churches. So swiftly do archæological discoveries follow one another to-day, that statements accepted now may be obsolete to-morrow. The makers of history and art books can hope to serve only their hour. The new school of Christian archæology is redeeming the misrepresented centuries after the year 1000. It is undoing the systematic falsification of history, and is teaching us to read the past other than by the printed page. Not hate, but love, opens new windows in the soul. The study of the churches of France adds flesh and blood to many a mere name in history. One gains a very special liking for little Abbot Suger, most dependable of men, whose life was a succession of big undertakings. One feels reverent affection for that sentinel of the Church and its guide, Bernard of Clairvaux, who said some harsh things of fine churches, all the while that he was feeding the mystic life that made them inevitable. And very real become the bishop builders when one knows their cathedrals. One pores over the old volumes of the _Histoire Littéraire de la France_, begun by XVII-century Benedictines, and still being continued by the Institute of France, to gather details of good Bishop Fulbert and doughty St. Ives, who built at Chartres; of that distinguished literary man, Bishop Hildebert de Lavardin, who worked at Le Mans; of the well-poised Bishop Maurice de Sully, who raised Notre Dame at Paris; of crusading prelates such as Albéric de Humbert, who began Rheims; and of Nivelon de Chérisy, who built Soissons, and who, on the Fourth Crusade, played a foremost role. One grows to love, above all, the saint-king, Louis, truest hero of _la douce France_, who illuminated his kingdom with fair churches. And no one can admire St. Louis and not keep a warm corner in his heart for Joinville, his comrade-in-arms, the irresistible seneschal of Champagne. Crusades and chivalry and all the multicolored aspects of the XII and XIII centuries become clearer to the imagination as one traces the story of the cathedrals of France; scholasticism and the early days of the schools, when Abélard sparred with Guillaume de Champeaux. Very real they all become: Peter the Venerable, good Stephen Harding, St. Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury, St. Edmund Rich, Stephen Langton, St. Dominic, St. Malachy O'Morgair, Innocent III, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas Aquinas. France welcomed them all during the two vital centuries when she imposed her literature as well as her architecture on western Europe, when the Paris schools were the intellectual center of the world. To paint a rose-colored picture of the two best centuries of the Middle Ages would be absurd. They were full of very evil things. There were horrifying episodes in them. "Barbarism tempered by religion; religion disfigured by barbarism," is the definition of Balmes, the theologian. The inconsistencies were gigantic. The same men who sacked Constantinople in 1204, dealing art a staggering blow, were the very men who in western Europe were building cathedrals. Then, as now, there were many for whom religion served as a convenient cloak for the lower instincts; then, as now, there were many who never lost sight of the higher ideals. Side by side with the evil and the self-seeking should be set the sublime impulses which checked those untutored generations. Do not hide the merciless laying waste of Languedoc by the north, but do not forget that, in the same hour, men had reached an abnegation of self that led them to the African coast as voluntary substitutes for their brother Christians in bondage there. In the midst of its human infirmities it was an age that aspired: its poets sang of the Holy Grail, its kings and its serfs were saints, there were saint scholars and barons and merchants, there was even a saint lawyer. It is precisely the restored balance between good and evil which the study of Gothic art is bringing about. The partisan may go on compiling a police gazette and call it history.[20] While the towers of Gothic churches point upward, he is refuted. The modern mind has once for all grasped that it is psychologically impossible for an age to have been sunk in blind superstition when it could build, not merely one or two, but hundreds of churches whose every line is an aspiration toward sanctity. The cathedrals are the true apologetics of the Middle Ages. Archæology is again proving its claim to be the soul of history. CHAPTER II Abbot Suger and St. Denis-en-France Under the impulse of this monk, truly great in all things, Gothic architecture was born.--FÉLIX DE VERNEILH (of Abbot Suger). The churches built during the evolution from Romanesque to Gothic have been called transitional, a classification which would be most convenient for the amateur, had not archæologists decided it was an equivocal term. They say that, during the short period when "Romanesque and Gothic inhabited under the same roof," the Romanesque parts of the edifice were placed side by side with the simultaneously built Gothic parts, that there was juxtaposition, but no fusion. Vaults were either barrel, groin, or of the diagonal-rib type; there was no such thing as a transition form of vault. Arches were either round or pointed; there was no such thing as a transition or intermediary form of arch. And since the radical distinction between Romanesque and Gothic is caused by the vaulting, it is correct to call that part of a church where was groin or barrel vault Romanesque, and that part where were used the intersecting ribs Gothic. The sequence of the passing from Romanesque to Gothic is obscure, because there is a lack of definite dates. From 1110 to 1140, while the intersecting ribs were coming into use in northern France, such a vault was practically the only sign in an edifice of the new movement. The walls still were massive, the windows still were small and round-arched, the sculpture still was coarse and heavy. Then, as the transition advanced, the supports grew lighter, the profiles (those cross-section outlines of ribs, arches, capitals, and bases) grew purer, and the sculpture discarded Byzantine traditions and took nature as its model. French archæologists have thought that the use of diagonals came about first through the desire to hold up some groin vault, on the point of collapsing, which would seem a very sensible explanation, since the creative genius of the Ile-de-France seems dimly to have apprehended even in the first hour the stupendous possibility to be drawn from a member whose purpose was to concentrate force in order that other parts of the edifice might be relieved. From the initial hour began the evolution of the cardinal organ in the Ile-de-France. Whereas the Lombard architects looked on the diagonals as a mere contrivance, stubbornly keeping their eyes shut to the structural possibilities latent therein. The masons of the Ile-de-France at once began to profile their diagonals graciously, and even before the genius of Suger had coordinated, at St. Denis, all the foregoing progress of the nascent art, craftsmen had occasionally symbolized, as it were, the importance of the intersecting ribs by carving little caryatids for them to rest upon above the capitals; such figurines are to be seen in the Oise region at Bury and at Cambronne.[21] Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter's idea is that the transitional period resolves itself into a series of experiments on the part of the builders to erect a vault with a minimum of centering, and he cites the hollow spires at Loches as an experiment to put up a stone roof without the use of any temporary substructure of wood, which apparently was costly.[22] He thinks that the earlier Gothic vaults were _bombé_ because that form facilitated construction without centering, and that the Lombards dropped their precocious diagonals after 1120, as soon as they had learned how to build domed groin vaults which required no temporary wooden substructures. What is of value in Mr. Porter's thesis is sure, in time, to pass into French currency; until a majority of French archæologists find his explanation better than their own it is permissible for us to agree with those who are telling the tale of their own national art. Probably the earliest extant Gothic vaults in the Ile-de-France are those at Acy-en-Multien (Oise) and at Crouy-sur-Ourcq (Seine-et-Marne). Their outline is rectangular. Some intersecting ribs at Rhuis (Oise) are cited by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis as the oldest in the Soissonnais. Diagonals were put up, about 1115, at St. Vaast-de-Longmont (Oise), Orgeval (Seine-et-Oise), Viffort (Aisne), Airaines (Somme), and in other rural churches. The famous ambulatory vaults at Morienval were probably built about 1122. A year or two earlier, perhaps, are the side-aisle vaults of St. Étienne at Beauvais. Bury (Oise) shows the first extant half dome with ribs. Of the same time, about 1125, are the diagonals at Marolles, St. Vaast-les-Mello, Béthisy-St.-Pierre, Bonneuil-en-Valois, and Bellefontaine, all in the Oise department. Bellefontaine, whose date of 1125 is certain, has helped to place other churches of the transition by comparing their diagonals with its pointed intersecting ribs. Bruyères (Aisne) is about 1130, Poissy (Seine-et-Oise) and Villetertre (Oise) are about 1135, and so are the ribs of St. Martin-des-Champs at Paris. In the Aisne region are Berzy-le-Sec and Laffaux (c. 1140) and in the Oise region is Chelles, building at the hour when Suger undertook St. Denis (Seine), 1140 to 1144. Cambronne (Oise) and Foy-St.-Quentin (Somme) are about 1145. Such churches as Glennes (Aisne), St. Leu d'Esserent (Oise), and, close to the latter, Creuil's church of St. Évremont were building in 1150; so were Chars (Seine-et-Oise) and, near it, Pontoise,[23] whose ambulatory vaults some claim are prior to those of the procession path of St. Denis, and therefore a link between Morienval and Suger's abbatial. The big church at St. Germer (Oise) was begun about 1150, though certain of its features are more archaic than St. Denis, built before it. Some of these churches, called transitional, used wall ribs for their diagonals, others omitted them; in some the intersecting ribs were pointed, in others, semicircular. Mr. John Bilson, who contends that diagonals were used in Normandy some twenty-five years earlier than in the Ile-de-France, considers the early dates for these rural churches improbable, that scarcely any were anterior to St. Denis, that it was a case of little churches following the great churches, not vice versa. The earliest, he thinks, was St. Étienne at Beauvais (c. 1120), significantly close to Normandy. But Normandy did not suspect the value and fecundity of diagonals. That feat of creative genius none can deny to the Ile-de-France. The traveler can do nothing more enlightening and delightful as a prelude to his journey among French cathedrals than to spend some early spring days exploring the rural churches of the privileged land of the national art which the old geographers chose to picture as an island inclosed by the Seine, the Marne, the Aisne, and the Oise. Numerous churches of the transition lie between Soissons, Senlis, and Beauvais, and once, around Amiens was another such center, but few of the monuments there have survived.[24] Go to Creuil and see, in the ruins of St. Évremont, a rudimentary flying buttress--a quarter arch once hidden under the lean-to roof. No doubt the architect built it with the intention of bracing the upper walls, but since he omitted to brace the flying buttress itself it failed of its purpose. Four miles away, at St. Leu d'Esserent, is an awkward early trial of a Gothic vault in the tribune above the porch, but as the ribs are embedded in the cells, no proper elasticity is achieved. Go to Morienval and study its remarkable essay in spanning a curving section with diagonals. Trace these early steps of the national art, and the meaning of the Gothic bone structure grows plainer. MORIENVAL[25] I approve the life of those for whom the city is a prison, who find paradise in solitude, who live by the works of their hands, or who seek to remake their spirit by the sweetness of their contemplative life, who drink of the fountain of life by the lips of their heart, and forget what is behind them to regard only what lies ahead. But neither the most hidden forest nor the highest mountains will give happiness to man, if he has not in himself solitude of the spirit, peace of conscience, upliftings of the heart to God.--Letter of ST. IVES, Bishop of Chartres, 1091-1115. Of the experimental steps which led to Gothic art, the most appealing is the nunnery church of Morienval, a humble forerunner of Amiens Cathedral that has made as much stir in archæological controversy as Périgueux's cathedral of St. Front itself. Morienval may not be the passionately sought _oeuvre-initiale_, since its vaults, while they betray inexperience, certainly were preceded by still cruder attempts, but it can boast that it is the first Gothic ambulatory extant, and as the curving aisle around the chancel is the most exquisite feature of the great cathedrals, Morienval's humble first essay of it merits a pilgrimage. As one approaches the abbey church it does not appear till one is directly over it, so snugly hidden away is the village in a fold of the rolling country that skirts the forest of Compiègne. Perhaps the IX-century nuns who chose the site may have hoped that the marauders of that troublous time might ride by, unconscious of booty so close at hand. With gratitude one learns that the invasion of 1914 has left Morienval unscathed, as well as those other memorials of tentative Gothic, Acy-en-Multien and Crouy-sur-Ourcq. Because of excellent proportions, the church appears larger than in reality. The exterior is Romanesque. Two time-stained towers of the XI century mark the angles between transept and choir, an arrangement derived from Rhenish churches. At the west façade is a beautiful XII-century tower. It was building while the nuns were proceeding to tear down a decrepit apse in order to erect the present east end of the church. In that new apse appeared the much-discussed early ribs. A record tells that relics were installed in the church in 1122, and it was probably then that the new works were finished. Ambulatories had come into favor during the first third of the XII century, when need was felt for a suitable corridor for pilgrims to encircle the altar whereon relics were exposed. Now to vault a curving aisle was no easy task, owing to the trapeze shape of each section. Morienval's ambulatory must have been designed to hold extra altars, since entrance to the aisle is blocked at both ends by the towers, and the passage is so narrow that only one at a time can walk in it. There are no apse chapels. The sculpture is archaic. Some of the capitals show interlacings, and some are of the pleated type popular in Normandy. The diminutive corridor has four small bays whose clumsy intersecting vault ribs are of the size of the average stovepipe. They curve strangely, and two of the keystones are not in the axis of the passageway, nor has elasticity yet been wholly achieved, since the ends of the ribs plunge into the web of the vault. Over the choir, consisting of one large bay, are intersecting ribs that appear to be posterior to those of the ambulatory. They, too, are rude and large, but are wholly detached from the cells. M. Lefèvre-Pontalis thinks that the ambulatory diagonals are contemporary, and owe their more archaic character to the difficulty of vaulting a curved passage. So swiftly did the early architects acquire skill in the new system of building, that when a chapel was erected on the northern arm of Morienval's transept, at the end of the XII century, each diagonal had become a single slender torus, virile and graceful. Of less architectural importance is the Romanesque nave of Morienval, whose meager vault ribs are of the XVII century. The western tower was the prototype of the Romanesque belfries of the region and should be preserved. It is in a deplorable state, propped by beams, which are gayly scaled by the lads who ring the Angelus. Little Morienval has the human touch which the traveler craves. Set in the wall above the XIII-century lord of Viri's tomb are tablets that commemorate two pastors of this isolated Valois village who were heroes as valiant as any crusader. Their combined ministry covered a hundred and one years. The first died in 1840, after fifty-seven years of service here, "faithful to his duty in times most difficult," and difficult indeed was a priest's life during the Revolution. "Pray for his soul," begs his grateful commune, to which he had bequeathed the presbytery and all his savings. His successor came to Morienval in his 'twenties, fresh from Paris, his birthplace, and on this dwindling village he expended his energies for forty-five years. Abbé Riaux loved his parishioners like a father, and was, says the memorial tablet, "physician for body as well as soul." During the cholera of 1849 his self-denial elicited a gold medal from Morienval and the village of Bonneuil, where is another primitive essay of a Gothic vault. "The state of decay of his beautiful church made him suffer," runs the inscription, so he willed his modest fortune toward its restoration. Happily, he lived long enough to see the church he loved become a savant's shrine. It was in 1880 that M. Robert de Lasteyrie first drew attention to Morienval as an early step in the tardily understood national art, and MM. Anthyme Saint-Paul, Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis, and Camille Enlart joined in the debate. The archæologists' war horse they have called our little Morienval. Such widespread discussion and the good priest's bequest fortunately brought about a thorough restoration of the choir. ST. ÉTIENNE AT BEAUVAIS, AND ST. GERMER[26] Sous le porche de l'église, chacun laisse le fardeau que la vie lui impose. Ici le plus pauvre homme s'élève au rang des grands intellectuels, des poètes, que dis-je? au rang des esprits: il s'installe dans le domaine de la pensée pure et du rêve. Le gémissement d'une vieille femme agenouillée dans l'église de son village est du même accent, traduit la même ignorance, le même pressentiment que la méditation du savant.... De ces parties profondes de l'être, de ce domaine obscur surgissent toutes les puissances créatrices de l'homme. --MAURICE BARRÈS.[27] Close in date to Morienval are the aisle vaults of St. Étienne's nave at Beauvais, the old city that lies on a tributary of the Oise. The intersecting ribs are not quite so stout as those of Morienval, but their ends still plunge into the massive, and they, too, are round-arched; their date is approximately 1120. That they planned at the same time to throw similar diagonals over the principal span is proved by the existent lower structures, but the actual vaults there were not erected till after a fire in 1180. The transverse arches of the aisles are noticeably stilted. This device was to lead to a solution of the problem how to raise the arches framing each vault section to the level of the diagonals' crown, and thus avoid the excessive doming which is found in the earlier Gothic vaults. In the XII-century north façade of the transept is an oculus big enough to be called the first rose window; a wheel of fortune it is called, because the images around its circle are an allegory of the fleet passing of man's greatness. This is one of the very early approaches to pure sculpture. The nave's two westernmost bays and its façade are of the XI century. Had the original choir of St. Étienne survived, it is thought that its ambulatory would be one of the missing steps connecting the cramped corridor of Morienval with the double procession path of St. Denis. The present choir, a Flamboyant Gothic structure, is famous for its gloriously colored windows, some of which were made by that notable family of local artists who designed the big rose windows of Beauvais Cathedral, Engrand Le Prince and his sons Jean and Nicolas, and his son-in-law Nicolas Le Pot. The latter carved the cathedral's wooden doors, for versatility was characteristic of the artisan-artists of those days. Ten miles from Beauvais, a crawling train sets one down in a field whence a two-mile walk leads to the sleepy bourg of St. Germer-en-Flay. The abbey was founded in 655 by Germer, a noble of Dagobert's court, nephew of St. Ouen the great bishop of Normandy's capital. To St. Germer's abbey came William the Conqueror to beg the French king to join him in his proposed descent on England. But Philip I gathered his counselors, and it was decided not to support the Norman duke, since, if he gained England, he would be richer than his own suzerain, the king of France, and if he failed, France would have antagonized the English. The large abbatial church of St. Germer, if not beautiful, is of archæological interest. Formerly it was thought to be a monument of 1130, but closer study has shown that it was erected during one bout of work from 1150 to 1180. Hard though it was to believe it the contemporary of the cathedrals at Senlis and Noyon, its sculpture is too excellent to have been done earlier. The crocketed capitals of its westernmost bays were never made earlier than 1175. That the church was continued without pause from apse to façade is proved by the unity of profiles and details. Its anachronisms are to be explained because it derived from a side current of Gothic art, out of touch with the swift-moving main stream, which was channeled by Abbot Suger. The architect of St. Germer showed in the main parts of his church a thorough understanding of the new Gothic vaulting, and at the same time he covered his tribune gallery with Romanesque groins. He made heavy Romanesque piers, and simultaneously he essayed to disencumber the pavement by employing the corbel, or side bracket. The Norman zigzag or chevron design decorates the heavy molding of the pier arches. Over the sanctuary he attempted the inartistic experiment of having his ribs converge, not on a keystone, but directly on a transverse rib. The ribs of the upper vaulting are heavy and ornamented. The pointed arches of the pier arcade are surmounted by round arches, in the tribunes. And between tribune and clearstory are square apertures neither Romanesque nor Gothic. To meet the thrust of the upper vaulting, some rudimentary flying buttresses were built under the lean-to roof of the tribune galleries, but as they themselves were not braced, they remained ineffectual. The collapse of some of the high vaults caused the addition, later, of the present flying buttresses. The exterior of the church is gaunt, with windows that are small and round-arched. The west façade was wrecked during the Hundred Years' War, and never restored. Walled-up arches mar the spacious interior. Thick coats of whitewash cover it, and when dust gathers on that make-shift of cleanliness the effect is tawdry. Directly behind the apse of the big abbatial stands a masterpiece of Rayonnant Gothic, a diminutive church whose west façade faces, with awkward closeness, the back of the larger church. As it is connected with the latter's ambulatory by a glazed passage, it may be regarded as a sort of Lady chapel. Many such imitations of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris arose, after St. Louis had made his shrine for the crown of thorns. The abbot who put up St. Germer's glass reliquary was Pierre Wesencourt, who ruled from 1254 to 1272, and it is thought that the king's own architect designed it. That Louis IX contributed toward it is shown by the fleur-de-lis and the donjons of Castile in the storied windows. Over the altar once stood the alabaster retablo, depicting St. Germain's life, now in the Musée Cluny, at Paris. POISSY[28] Christianity is still for 400,000,000 of human beings the great pair of wings that are indispensable if man is to rise above himself, above humdrum living and shut-in horizons, it is still the spiritual guide to lead him by patience, resignation, and hope to serenity, to lift him by purity, temperance, and goodness to the heights of devotion and self-sacrifice. Always and everywhere for nineteen hundred years as soon as these wings flag or break, public and private manners degenerate. Neither philosophy, reason, nor artistic and literary culture, nor even feudal honor, military and chivalrous, no code, no administration, no government can serve as substitute for it.--H. TAINE (1892). The church of St. Louis, at Poissy, is a link in the normal development of Gothic, and not like St. Germain, a disconcerting anachronism. About 1135 both systems of vaults were here built at one and the same time. Poissy lies on the Seine slightly above its junction with the classic Oise. A pleasant way to approach it is to walk from St. Germain-en-Laye through the forest, when it is carpeted with anemones. St. Germain's palace chapel is thought to be the work of Pierre de Montereau. One goes to Poissy in a spirit of pilgrimage, for at its font, in 1215, St. Louis of France was baptized.[29] He held the gift of Christian citizenship he here received above all that the world could bestow. To his intimates he often signed himself Louis of Poissy. His grandfather, Philippe-Auguste, had given the manor of Poissy to his son, on his marriage to Blanche of Castile. Living then in retirement at Poissy was the gentle Agnes of Méran, that aunt of St. Elizabeth of Hungary whom Philippe-Auguste had been forced by Rome's decree to set aside. When St. Louis was born, on St. Mark's Day of 1215, in order to spare the young mother, the church bells were silent. The Spanish princess asked the cause, and ordered--gallant woman that she was--that every bell in the town should ring out a joyous carillon because God had given her _un beau fils_. Shakespeare would inevitably admire Blanche; she was a Shakespearian character: That daughter there of Spain, the hardy Blanche, Is near to England; look upon the years Of Louis the Dauphin and that lovely maid. If lusty love should go in search of beauty, Where shall he find it fairer than in Blanche? If jealous love should go in search of virtue, Where shall he find it purer than in Blanche? If love ambitious sought a match of birth, Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanche?[30] The wide ambulatory of Poissy is groin-vaulted, but diagonals cover the two oriented apsidioles that open on a false transept, which arrangement of pseudo-transept with chapels was copied soon after at Sens. The three easternmost bays of the nave have retained their primitive intersecting ribs, which are round-arched, decorated, and very broad, as are the transverse arches that separate the vault into sections. Poissy's sculpture is of an advanced type. Owing to later changes, there is much patchwork in the church. ST. DENIS-EN-FRANCE[31] Give all thou canst: high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more: So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars, spread this branching roof Self-poised. --WORDSWORTH. [Illustration: _Poissy. An Early Example of Gothic Vaulting (c. 1135)_] Finally came the hour of the new architecture's clear achievement. After all the trial efforts, there now was built, midway in the XII century, a monument which was to wield momentous influence. With the erection of St. Denis, the center of Gothic art may be said to have shifted slightly south, to Paris. From the capital the new movement spread out in systematic progression--each church comprehending better than had its predecessor the principle of thrust and counterthrust, each drawing from it further consequences. St. Denis did not put a stop abruptly to the coexistence in the same edifice of both systems of vaulting any more than it began immediately the usage of all the consequences of diagonals. Yet none the less the Royal Abbey is rightly called the first Gothic monument, since here first was demonstrated stout-heartedly the advantages of the new system. Abbot Suger was the first to employ the generating member with the full intelligence of its results. "From the moment of St. Denis' conception, Amiens had become inevitable." It was Suger who wedded definitely the pointed arch and the intersecting ribs. He dared to make piers so slender that the beholders were astonished they could carry the weight of a stone roof; he dared to open his walls by windows so large that his choir was called by the people the lantern of St. Denis. The mastery by Suger's craftsmen of the art of stained glass was to have profound consequences in Gothic structure, since it hastened the suppression of the wall screen between the active members: "Behold I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and thy foundations with sapphires; and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." Suger has himself told us how the house of God, many-colored as the radiance of precious stones, lifted his soul from the cares of this world to divine meditation, for this Gothic art, whose spiritual appeal he had apprehended as profoundly as he had its structural laws, was most aptly fashioned to be a foretaste of the Beyond, neither touching the baseness of earth nor wholly the serenity of heaven. Doubtless Suger understood the importance of the dedication day in 1144. He made of it a national ceremony. He started the Gothic movement intrepidly. Before a historic gathering of bishops and barons he demonstrated that a Gothic vault was lighter, more easily built, more economical, and more enduring than any other, and the important men of France went back to their own cities to spread far and wide the lesson they had learned. In the course of the story of French architecture, fate has most graciously allied certain monuments of prime archæological interest with people or events of historic importance. Gothic art made its debut in a unique setting. St. Denis was the patron of France, the missionary who first preached Christianity by the Seine, and who there had been martyred in the III century. On Montmartre is the crypt said to have been the burial place of the first Christian martyrs of Paris. In time there rose on the road outside the city a monastery dedicated to St. Denis, and thither were his relics transferred. Each of the three royal lines that have ruled France, Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian, chose the abbey of St. Denis as their final resting place and loaded it with favors. The first milestone on the highroad of Gothic art was the famous center of the nation's life, and the initiator of the new system of building was the maker of the nation's unity, Abbot Suger. To Suger may be applied the mediæval term for an architect, Master of Works, _maître de l'oeuvre_. He wrote an account of how he reconstructed his abbey, building it, he says, with the aid of his companions in the community and his brothers in the cloister. The people gave voluntarily of their labor. When a quarry with suitable stone was discovered at Pontoise, the whole countryside--men, women, and children being harnessed to the carts--dragged the blocks in pious enthusiasm to St. Denis. The tomb of the martyred patron of Paris was a pilgrim shrine from earliest days. The same trait in human nature that, in 1915, sent Americans to gaze reverently at a relic of their national history, the Liberty Bell, when on a two weeks' journey from the San Francisco Fair to Philadelphia, it was exhibited in different cities, made the early Christians of Gaul flock to revere the relics of the holy man who had brought them the light and liberty of the gospel. Religion then and all through the Middle Ages was fraught with patriotism. For St. Denis' abbey a Merovingian church had been built by Dagobert. Pépin and Charlemagne replaced it by a Carolingian church. By the XII century the abbatial had become inadequate for the pilgrim crowds; people were crushed to death on festival days, and Abbot Suger decided to rebuild. He began by demolishing a heavy vestibule which Charlemagne had put up as a kind of tomb over his father's grave, for Pépin had begged to be buried face downward in penance, before the abbey church. Suger replaced that encumbering porch by what is to-day a narthex, or forechurch, formed by the two westernmost bays of the edifice. In the thirties of the XI century he started the new works. Romanesque feeling lingered in the sculpture, and the stout vault ribs crossed each other in round arches. By 1140 the west façade was finished and ceremoniously consecrated. A month later, a still greater gathering met at St. Denis for the laying of the corner stone of the choir. To the sound of trumpets, Louis VII descended into the trench prepared for the foundation, and placed the first stone, and as the choir chanted of the jeweled walls of the heavenly city, _Lapides pretiosi omnes muri tui_, the king, profoundly moved, took from his finger a costly ring and threw it into the mortar, which had been mixed with holy water. Each baron and bishop, as he laid down a stone, did the same. Their vehement faith would turn to literal meaning the Psalmist's dream of the celestial city. In his choir, Suger united definitely the pointed arch with the intersecting ribs, and the ribs, now, were not the heavy ones used in his forechurch. All the arches at their crown were brought to the same height by a combination of stilting, pointing, or depressing them. In the outer aisle of his ambulatory, Suger introduced a fifth rib in each vault section, which welded the apse chapels with the procession path. For his inner aisle he employed what is called the broken-rib vault. First, the keystone was planted in the center and from it branched the four ribs, each regardless of making a straight diagonal. This became the generally accepted method for vaulting an ambulatory. Every part of his edifice Suger supervised with untiring energy. Owing to the waste of forest trees for machines of war, none of sufficient girth could be found for the outer roof covering. Suger lay brooding over this one night, then started up impetuously before dawn, took the measurements of the beams needed, and himself went into the dense forest. Before nine that morning he had found a giant tree; by noon ten others, and the timber was hauled in triumph to the abbey. All France was talking of the new works at St. Denis. Never before had been such a gathering of skilled masons and sculptors, of goldsmiths and glassmakers. St. Denis' school was to direct the glassmakers' art through the second half of the XII century. Little is known of the origin of that art; the early basilicas of Christian Gaul had made use of pieces of colored glass framed together, and in the X century figures were represented. No work, however, previous to the XII century has survived. For the earlier fenestration the term "painted glass" is a misnomer, since each piece was colored in the mass, and only a few black lines were applied to denote the features, or the folds of the draperies. The artists of St. Denis obtained their relief effects by a skilled juxtaposition of tones; intensity of hue was increased by the employment of thick rough leaves of glass. Scarcely any white was used; in the ancient windows no spots spring out unpleasantly. To St. Denis' school succeeded that of Chartres, which predominated during the first part of the XIII century, while its second half was ruled by the school of Paris, when windows of the Sainte-Chapelle type were the rule. Gradually the craftsmen gave up their sound tradition that a window should be a transparent mosaic, subordinate to its architectural setting. They began to treat a window as an isolated picture and the art declined. Abbot Suger's school of glassmakers carried their art to its zenith. Not all the wonders of XIII-century fenestration equaled the unfathomable vibrant blue in the background of XII-century windows--a fugitive mystery whose secret has been entirely lost. The popular fancy was that Suger ground down sapphires to obtain his magic color. All over the land the church builders desired windows like those of St. Denis. Suger's own craftsmen went to Chartres to make the three big lancets in that cathedral's western front. The St. Denis school influenced the superb Crucifixion window in Poitiers Cathedral, and others in the cathedrals of Angers and Le Mans and in the Trinité at Vendôme, also the Tree of Jesse window in York Cathedral. And, had the choir glass of Notre Dame at Paris survived, it would have been of the school of St. Denis. Suger wrote inscriptions for his abbey windows to make their symbolism clearer. Owing to the vicissitudes of seven hundred years, few of the St. Denis lights have survived. Four are now reset in the central apse chapel and in that to its north. In a medallion at the base of one of these windows Suger himself is represented holding a scroll bearing his name. The medallion figures are of the hieratic Byzantine type. Every window has a closely woven pattern; each losenge has its own border, and a rich jeweled border surrounds the whole lancet. Bracing bars of iron run straight across the pictured story. Slowly, with infinite patience, worked those old XII-century artists, and never has their handicraft been surpassed as sheer splendor of ornamentation. After three years and three months of passionate work, the choir of St. Denis was finished, and on June 11, 1144, the dedication day, the relics were installed. That date, forever memorable in the annals of architecture, may be called the consecration of the national art. At the ceremony assisted Louis VII with his queen, Aliénor of Aquitaine, whose strange destiny was to make her patroness of that entirely different phase of Gothic called the Plantagenet school. The chief barons were present at the dedication, as well as five archbishops and some fourteen bishops. They looked and wondered, and not a few of them returned home to imitate. The bishops of Noyon and Senlis hastened to rebuild their cathedrals in the new way, and some of Suger's masons passed into the service of the former prelate. Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves went back to Chartres to build the most beautiful tower in the world, and the sculptors who had made Suger's western portals (now no longer extant) worked on the three west doors of Chartres. On the day of St. Denis' dedication, Abbot Suger, small and frail in person, but towering in personality, was honored on every side. When the abbot of great Cluny, Peter the Venerable, passed from the marvels of the new church to Suger's narrow cell, he cried out in honest distress: "This man condemns us all. He builds, not for himself, but for God alone!" Though the last half of Suger's life was an example of monastic simplicity, not always had he been content with a monk's cell. Perhaps because of his conversion midway in life, he appeals to us in a more human way. Not that he was converted from evil doings; his purpose always was high. But in his position as St. Denis' abbot, as a powerful feudal lord, he lived sumptuously, according to the accepted standards of the time. He mixed freely in the world; he directed state affairs for the king to whom he was devoted; he went on embassies; he even led armies. In 1124, when an irate German emperor was marching on Rheims, which he had vowed to destroy, Suger in person led against him some ten thousand of his abbey's retainers. That was the first time the oriflamme of St. Denis was carried as the national emblem.[32] Suger had grown up in the secular atmosphere of the Royal Abbey, and took its worldliness as a matter of course. Of peasant parentage himself, he had been brought, a child of ten, to live with the monks, because he already showed exceptional qualities. Among his fellow students in the abbey school was the king's son, the future Louis VI, and an intimacy began between the two lads destined to continue till death. When Suger became a monk he was sent on notable missions, for he was gifted with tact and good manners, vivacity and charm. Sweetness of disposition, mental energy, courage, and absolute integrity won for him general esteem. Early and often this born lover of things beautiful made the journey into Italy. It was while returning from one of his missions there, in 1122, that he learned of his election as abbot by his fellow monks in St. Denis. Louis VI had come to the throne; henceforth Suger was to lead in all state affairs. The genius of this son of field workers had pierced to the vital need of the age--unity of government. Only a strong, central administration could cope with the disintegration which was feudalism. For its very existence the feudal system depended on the absence of well-enforced general laws. It was Suger's strong hand that guided the early steps toward national unity, and king and people worked for it together. Under the king whom Suger served France began her great role of redresser of wrongs. Louis VI was the first to use the title, king of France, not king of the Franks. The ideal of this XII-century statesman was a strong central monarchy, coexistent with a national assembly. His high conception of solidarity was to fructify, within a hundred years, under Philippe-Auguste, the grandson of Suger's master. Suger was one of the first in Europe to understand political economy. He laid the base of a sound financial administration. His confirmation of a charter for the townsmen of St. Denis gave security to trade; he relieved the abbey serfs of _mainmorte_, built a Villeneuve for homeless nomads, and found time to study agriculture scientifically. In his writings we feel the first breath of a national patriotism. A new note in that age of unfettered personal impulse when might meant right, was Suger's constant reference to "the poor weighed down with taxations," to "that which has been too long neglected, the care of the surety of laborers, of artisans, and of the poor." Many a modern politician could well ponder Suger's censure of the spoils system. "The officers dismissed carry off what they can lay their hands on," he said, "and those who replace them, fearing to be likewise treated, hasten to steal, to secure their fortune." Suger's pre-eminence in public affairs continued during two reigns. Louis VII, after stumbling some years without guidance, turned to his father's counselor and, during his absence on the Second Crusade, appointed him regent of France. So masterly was the abbot's rule that king and people publicly proclaimed him _Père de la Patrie_. Suger studied the causes of the crusade's lamentable failure; he felt that forethought and prudence might win success, and, though he was seventy years of age, he began preparations to carry out a crusade at his own expense. Time was not given him again to prove his genius for leadership. When news of his death (1151) reached the court, the king and the Grand Master of the Templars, who was with him, burst into tears. On his grave in the abbey church which he had built they cut the simple inscription, "Here lies Abbot Suger." No need of panegyric. "The single names are the noblest epitaphs." The commanding place held by this monk in the estimation of Europe is vouched for by letters from pope, kings, and many a dignitary. The king of Sicily wrote to beg a line from him; the king of Scotland sent gifts; the bishop of Salisbury made the journey to France expressly to know Suger. By one clear stroke after another--and above all by his own writings--every line of which is of historical value--the picture is filled in of this admirable churchman who was as soundly honest and forceful as the architecture he fostered, and whose delicate, ardent soul accomplished remarkable things with the reasoned orderliness of the art he loved. Suger's sudden but thorough conversion is attributed to St. Bernard. Up to middle life he had been a type of those who soar as high as human abilities can reach without super natural aid. Entangled in the mesh of various employments, his soul could not rise to heavenly things. Then the trumpet of Bernard's reform sounded in Europe. Men's hearts were set on fire with repentance and aspiration toward the highest. Bernard's clear eyes read beneath the outer circumstance of Abbot Suger's life. He saw that here was a good man, capable of becoming a holy one. He wrote fearless words of disapproval. "One would think it was a governor of a province, not of souls," he wrote, when he saw the abbot of St. Denis ride by with sixty horsemen. Suger began to scrutinize his manner of life. Grace touched his soul, pomp was laid aside, and he set about his conversion with the same thoroughness that he displayed in all his acts. Before reforming his monastery, he completely reformed himself. With St. Bernard, who was ten years his junior, he was linked in ennobling friendship to the end. "I know profoundly this man," Bernard wrote of Suger to the pope, "and I know that he is faithful and prudent in temporal things, that he is fervent and humble in things spiritual. If there is any precious vase adorning the palace of the King of Kings, it is the soul of the venerable Suger." When Suger lay dying, he wrote to St. Bernard: "Could I but see your angelic face before I die, I should go with more confidence." And Bernard, who was to follow in a year, begged that when Suger reached Paradise he would "think of him before God." Yet, if the overwhelming saint could change the whole tenor of Suger's life, the cultivated little abbot of St. Denis offered a gentle, stubborn opposition to the puritanic ideas of Bernard in the domain of art. "Vanity of vanities," cried the ascetic, in the well-known open letter in which he denounced the new luxury in church building. Churches were made too long, he complained, too high, and needlessly wide; the capitals were carved with monsters more apt to distract than to lead to pious recollection. The art lover in St. Denis' abbey smiled at such iconoclastic vehemence. Suger thought that nothing was too precious for the house of God. He proceeded to erect an abbey church as imposing as a cathedral, and to enrich its treasury with goldsmith work. Over the three gilt-bronze entrance doors of his church he inscribed, "The soul on its earthly pilgrimage rises by material things to contemplate the Divine." To this day both men have vigorous partisans, and those who set out on a cathedral tour in France are more likely to be on Suger's side in the controversy. Suger's subtle mind reached beyond the ascetic's maxim. Well he knew that both saint and art patron were needed, well he knew that Bernard of Clairvaux was as instrumental as himself in the formation of the cathedral builders. A living example of Christian perfection, Bernard fortified the faith of all Europe. He might advocate church simplicity, but it was not without cause that his apostolate preceded the most fecund creative period of mankind's art. His impassioned love of God warmed the imaginations of the men who began the big Gothic churches. What remains to-day of the XII-century abbatial built by Suger of St. Denis? Comparatively little. The lower parts of the west façade and the two first bays of the nave which form a narthex, or vestibule, are his work. In the choir, his beautiful ambulatory begins at the third bay of the double aisles. There are nine bays of Suger's processional path, and from them radiate seven apse chapels. The pillars that divide the lovely curving double passage are the very ones which the generous enthusiasm of the people dragged from Pontoise, and, in memory of the little abbot, some will touch those slender columns with reverential gesture. It was Suger who created the disposition of the _rond point_ found in its perfection at St. Denis and copied in the great cathedrals. The crypt also is his work, though its nucleus belonged to an underground shrine built by Abbot Hilduin in the XI century. When Abbot Suger had finished his choir, he proceeded to make a new Gothic transept and nave; but of them scarcely a vestige remains. Some sculpture at the north door of the transept is of the XII century. Whether the construction was faulty, or whether the monks desired a more ample church, there was a total reconstruction of St. Denis' abbatial, a hundred years after Suger's day. THE ST. DENIS OF ST. LOUIS Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims, the architect who planned (Albeit laboring for a scanty band Of white-robbed scholars only) this immense And glorious work of fine intelligence. --WORDSWORTH. From 1231 to 1280, at St. Louis' own expense, the present nave and transept of St. Denis were built, and the first bay of the choir as well as the upper parts of the chevet were reconstructed. Inasmuch as the new nave was wider than the choir, a canted bay of the latter joined it to the transept. St. Denis, as it now appears, presents the noble elegance of Gothic art in its golden hour. The new transept was made of exceptional width; its aisles and stately piers compose picturesque vistas. The triforium of the reconstructed church was glazed, one of the first essays of a feature which was to be in general use in the XIV century. To unite triforium and clearstory in a brilliant sparkle of color added to the magnificence of a church, but it marked a decline in the sound structural laws of Gothic. The purpose of a triforium arcade was to beautify the plain wall surface necessitated by the lean-to roof over the side aisles. When that blind arcade was opened, the lean-to roof of the aisles had to be changed to a conical one, which signified an inner channel for rain water and the ultimate deterioration of the masonry. Suger's St. Denis had started the delight in stained glass, and the St. Denis of St. Louis merely carried out its consequences--the suppression of wall inclosures. The present upper windows of the abbatial are poor examples of Louis-Philippe's day. The architect of Louis IX, Pierre de Montereau, designed St. Denis as we have it to-day, so says a record recently unearthed by M. Henri Stein.[33] He was an innovator who here first accentuated the upward sweep of Gothic lines. To that XIII-century master they attributed for a time the Sainte-Chapelle of the king's palace in the Cité, but now that it is certain that he planned St. Denis, it is doubted if he made the Sainte-Chapelle, as there is little kinship between the two. There is a decided likeness between St. Denis and the chapel of the palace at St. Germain-en-Laye, and also with the Lady chapel of St. Germer-en-Flay. Pierre de Montereau was buried in 1267 in a now-destroyed Sainte-Chapelle which he had erected within the monastery inclosure of St. Germain-des-Prés, at Paris. Both Montereau and Montreuil claim this distinguished master. Probably he was born in the former town on the border of Champagne, as his church at St. Denis shows a trait of that region, the gallery of circulation under the windows of the side aisles. Moreover, two of his abbot patrons came from Montereau. The architect Eudes de Montreuil, whom St. Louis took with him on his first crusade, and who worked on the fortresses of Aigues-Mortes and Jaffa, was a son of Pierre de Montereau, it is supposed, and his name should be spelled in the same way. No tomb in St. Denis' abbey church predates the XIII century. To honor King Dagobert, founder of the abbey, St. Louis put up an elaborate monument and ordered the effigies that distinguish his royal predecessors' graves. With the tombstone of St. Louis' son, Philip the Bold, began portrait work. An exact likeness of Charles V, the good Valois king, was made by his Flemish sculptor, André Beauneveu, and of almost too great realism is that of his general Bertran Duguesclin, whom King Charles ordered buried with royal honors in the national necropolis. It was the XVI century that added to St. Denis' the three tombs of most architectural pretensions, those of Louis XII, Francis I, and Henry II. The monument of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany was undertaken (1516-32) by Jean Juste, who with his brothers had come north from Florence, being among the first to bring into France the ideals of the Renaissance.[34] It has been suggested that the king's and queen's kneeling images are from the studio at Tours of Guillaume Regnault, who for forty years was co-worker with Michel Colombe, last of the great Gothic artists. The priants are still quite French in treatment. Jean Juste made the gisants and his brother and nephew aided with the lesser sculpture. It was Louis XII who ordered artists at Genoa to make, in 1502, the Carrara marble tomb of his father, the poet-duke, Charles d'Orléans, and of his grandfather, the murdered duke of Orléans, builder of Pierrefonds Castle, and son of the art-loving Valois king, Charles V. The tomb of Francis I (1549-59) was designed by Philibert de Lorme. Pierre Bontemps fashioned the bas-reliefs that celebrate the wars in Italy; he and other masters made the _priants_ and _gisants_. The tomb of Henry II and Catherine de Medici (1570) of less artistic value, has a complicated history. The Italian, Primatici, directed the works; Domenico Florentino made the king's kneeling figure, and Germain Pilon his _gisant_; Jerome della Robbia chiseled the queen's death image. To sum up: there are in St. Denis' abbatial three totally different parts, built in different periods. There is Suger's forechurch, in which linger Romanesque echoes; there is the ambulatory of purest Primary Gothic built a little later by the same great abbot; and finally there are nave, transept, and the main parts of the choir erected during the reign of St. Louis in the zenith of Gothic art. As one stands in the center of the church, gazing along its vaulting, it is easy to perceive that the axis is broken three times, and each divergence from the straight line conforms to one of the different stages of work. The deviation of the axis line once was called poetically _inclinato capite_ (_et inclinato capite, emisit spiritum_--St. John xix:30). It was thought to symbolize the inclining of Christ's head on the Cross. When M. Robert de Lasteyrie proved that a constructive miscalculation was the cause of the irregular line, the beautiful idea had to be renounced.[35] In each successive addition to a church it was difficult for the architect to start the new part exactly on the same axis as the old, since usually a temporary wall shut off the portion of the church already finished and in use. The slightest miscalculation at the start led to a very apparent deflection of alignment. Those churches which show irregular alignment are known to have been built in successive stages. A number of church choirs slant to the south, whereas were the figure on the crucifix taken as model they would deviate to the north. In churches without a transept, or, in other words, churches that lack the extended arms of the cross, is sometimes found a decided slant to the north. Moreover, the crucifix of that epoch represented a triumphant Christ with erect head, for the art of the XIII century was serene; the pathetic in religious iconography was a later development. No writer of the period mentions a symbolic interpretation of the deviated axis, not even Bishop Guillaume Durandus, in his noted _Rationale_, or _Signification of the Divine Offices_. There is, instead, a text of the XIV century which says that a certain architect was so chagrined at having built a tortuous axial line that he never returned to be paid by the cathedral chapter. Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter thinks that the deviation of the axis was intentionally done, in order to overcome that tendency of perspective which lessens the apparent length of a church by foreshortening its far bays. By slanting the east end, the distant bays could be brought into view, and thus the edifice would seem longer. [Illustration: _St. Denis-en-France and Its Royal Mausoleums_] The Royal Abbey of St. Denis suffered during the Hundred Years' War, from which period dates the crenelated wall at the birth of the towers. In those checkered times the silver tombs of St. Louis, of his father Louis VIII, and of his grandfather Philippe-Auguste, disappeared. In the XVI-century religious wars the abbey was pillaged, and its library, a national treasure, was burned. The Calvinists carried off Suger's altar vessels of silver and gold, on which the learned little abbot had inscribed Latin verses. The Revolution completed the havoc; of the monks' quarters nothing remains to-day. The Committee of Public Safety voted to destroy the tombs of "our ancient tyrants" on the first anniversary of the August 10th that had unseated the monarchy. So the mob sallied forth to St. Denis and scattered the dust of the patriot Suger, whose life work had been the public weal, and the dust of St. Louis, the most conscientious man who ever ruled a nation and the first to give France her written laws. The gruesome account of the wrecking of the royal tombs was written by an eyewitness.[36] In the opening years of the XVIII century, the abbey church was described by Chateaubriand as in a ruinous state, with the rain falling through its roof and grass growing on the broken altars: "The birds use its nave as a passageway; little children play with the bones of mighty monarchs. St. Denis is a desert." Napoleon began its restoration, and many of the scattered tombs were brought back. During the first half of the XIX century some deplorably bad work was carried on, and the robust primitive profiles were chiseled away. No sooner was the spire on the north tower finished than cracks showed, and the tower was dismantled to the level of the roof. Later changes have repaired some of the stupidity of those tasteless renovators. The very history which had been enacted within the walls of the great abbatial would suffice to make it a national relic. To the Primary-Gothic church which Suger was building came Louis VII for the oriflamme, the banner carried before the army in momentous wars. He shared bed and board with the monks the night before he set forth on the Second Crusade. To the same early-Gothic church, in 1190, came his son Philippe-Auguste, to receive the oriflamme for the Third Crusade. The flame-colored abbey gonfalon on its gold lance flouted the German emperor when Bouvines' great victory was won in 1214. At the funeral of Philippe-Auguste, in 1223, a little lad of eight marched to St. Denis' behind his grandfather's bier. It was the first time that the populace had beheld their future saint-king, and an old record tells how his noble bearing gladdened their hearts. At his side walked Jean de Brienne, king of Jerusalem, leader of the recent Fifth Crusade. When St. Louis came to St. Denis for the oriflamme in 1247, it was to find a totally reconstructed church, for Pierre de Montereau had been many years at work. Joinville in his memoirs described the landing in Egypt of the Royal Abbey's banner, how for miles the sea was dotted with the gleaming ships of the crusaders, how the king, standing head and shoulders above the rest, on perceiving that the leading vessel which bore the oriflamme had touched shore, leaped into the sea, sword in hand, with the cry, "Montjoye St. Denis!" And uttering the same battle cry of France, princes and knights followed. Five years later, tested by defeat and imprisonment, as fine gold is by fire, Louis IX brought back the oriflamme to St. Denis. Again he returned for it in 1270 for his last crusade. Within a year, the whole nation, in mourning, came out to the abbey. In a reliquary, the king's bones, embalmed with fragrant spices, had been brought from Tunis, and the new king bore the _châsse_ solemnly, and wherever he paused, on the way from Notre Dame to St. Denis, a memorial cross was erected. But, to give the annals of the abbey church would be to tell the history of the French monarchy. The first time that the gonfalon of St. Denis was carried against Frenchmen was in 1413, two years before the defeat at Agincourt, in the black days of the Hundred Years' War, days as fatal to the builders' art as to the civic life of France. What those dire times were that rent France to shreds, and how _la fille de Lorraine à nulle autre pareille_ came to the rescue, have been sung by a poet whose high destiny it was to fall in recent battle. Charles Péguy, in his poem, linked the momentous epochs of the capital: St. Denis, who brought the Light; Ste. Geneviève, the sentinel patroness of Paris, who guarded it, and Jeanne d'Arc, who lifted up the torch from the mire--the torch which the fallen heroes of the World War have passed on refulgent. In the V century it was at Geneviève's instigation that a basilica was raised to honor St. Denis. In the XV century Jeanne d'Arc paid tribute to the first martyr of Paris. Her troops lodged in the town of St. Denis, then moved in closer to Paris, and in a shrine dedicated to St. Denis, in the village of La Chapelle, Jeanne heard Mass, the morning that she led the assault on the walls of Paris, September 8, 1429. When wounded she was carried back to La Chapelle (to-day a dense industrial faubourg of the city), and on St. Denis' altar she offered tribute. During her trial at Rouen they asked her what arms she had offered to St. Denis.[37] "A complete knight's outfit in white, with a sword that I had won before Paris," was Jeanne's reply. "And why did you make that offering?" asked the judge, bent on twisting her every act to sorcery. Jeanne answered hardily: "For devotion, and because it is the custom for all men-of-arms when they are merely wounded thus to give thanks. Having been wounded before Paris, I offered my arms to St. Denis because his is the cry of France." But let Charles Péguy speak, he who fell between Belgium and Paris in August, 1914:[38] Comme Dieu ne fait rien que par miséricordes, Il fallut qu'elle [Ste. Geneviève] vît le royaume en lambeaux, Et sa filleule ville embrasée aux flambeaux, Et ravagée aux mains des plus sinistres hordes; Et les coeurs dévorés des plus basses discordes, Et les morts poursuivis jusque dans les tombeaux, Et cent mille innocents exposés aux corbeaux, Et les pendus tiront la langue au bout des cordes; Pour qu'elle vît fleurir la plus grande merveille Que jamais Dieu le père en sa simplicité Aux jardins de sa grâce et de sa volonté Ait fait jaillir par force et par necessité; Après neuf cent vingt ans de prière et de veille, Quand elle vit venir vers l'antique cité ... La fille de Lorraine à nulle autre pareille ... Gardant son coeur intact en pleine adversité, Masquant sous sa visière une efficacité, Tenant tout un royaume en sa ténacité, Vivant en pleine mystère avec sagacité, Mourant en plein martyre avec vivacité ... Jetânt toute une armée aux pieds de la prière.[39] CHAPTER III Some of the Primary Gothic Cathedrals: Noyon, Senlis, Sens, Laon, Soissons _C'est vers le Moyen Âge énorme et délicat,_ _Qu'il faudrait que mon coeur en panne naviguât._ _ ... Roi, politicien, moine, artisan, chimiste,_ _Architecte, soldat, médecin, avocat,_ _Quel temps! Oui, que mon coeur naufragé rembarquât._ _Pour toute cette force ardente, souple, artiste!..._ _Guidé par la folie unique de la Croix_ _Sur tes ailes de pierre, ô folle Cathédrale!_ --PAUL VERLAINE, _Sagesse_, IV.[40] St. Denis' abbatial was an object lesson in the new art, and the bishops returned to their dioceses to emulate it. Two of Suger's personal friends, the bishops of Noyon and Senlis, were the first to rebuild their cathedrals. Already during the Romanesque stage the cathedral of Sens had been initiated; it now was to be carried on according to the new system of building. At Laon was begun a splendid Gothic edifice. At Soissons, a new cathedral was started by that masterpiece of Primary Gothic, the transept's southern arm. And many a lesser church now rose: the collegiate at Braine, the abbey church of St. Leu d'Esserent, and two abbatials in Champagne as imposing as cathedrals, St. Remi at Rheims, and Notre Dame at Châlons-sur-Marne. Also in Champagne is the Primary Gothic church of St. Quiriace at Provins. The cathedral of Paris was also begun in the primary stage of the national art. But Notre Dame of Paris must have a chapter to itself. Before its main parts were completed, Gothic architecture had reached its culminating point. With it ended the primary group and opened what we shall call the Era of the Great Cathedrals, though let it be remembered that all such divisions are arbitrary and made use of merely for clearness. From its first assured steps to its apogee, from the middle of the XII century to the middle of the XIII, the sequence of Gothic architecture is welded too logically to be defined by cut-and-dried nomenclature. During the XII century, the Gothic cathedrals retained Romanesque features, such as deep tribunes over the side aisles, which gave them a wall elevation in four stories--pier arcade, tribune, triforium (to veil the lean-to roof over the tribune), and clearstory. At first it was common usage to encircle the clustered shafts at intervals with stone rings, but by the XIII century the desire for an unbroken ascending line had grown stronger, and the employment of such horizontal bands died out. The simultaneous use of both round and pointed arch is found in all five of these Primary cathedrals; but after the opening of the XIII century, semicircular and equilateral arches rarely were used at the same time in a church. Slowly, as if with reluctance, the new architecture dropped favorite traits of the old school. Sculpture continued longest faithful to Romanesque traditions. Noyon, Senlis, Sens, Laon, and Soissons--it seems rash to treat of such a bevy of churches in one chapter, when students have made a single cathedral their life work. The passing traveler is encouraged by one fact: each big French church, once seen, remains a clear-cut memory, for each possesses a distinct personality. To confuse one cathedral with another is impossible. It is an instinct deeper than mere fancy to choose a season æsthetically right for a first visit to such sanctuaries. For these Primary cathedrals the fitting occasion is that fugitive hour when the leaves are multiple yet half transparent still, only partly veiling the virile framework of the tree. In them is the evanescence of spring, the slenderness of adolescence and its virginal restraint, that something of youth's severity, that something of youth's radiance which is joy, but not abandonment to joy. There is something sacred in the modest sobriety of the earlier Gothic churches.... But what words can express their unimaginable charm! If all true art is but a symbol, a prefiguring of the mystery, these churches veil and reveal the coming harmonies of the Beyond as it never before was revealed and veiled. We speak of Chartres as a recollected holiness; the stones of Rheims were made majestic for royal pageants; Amiens is a _sursum corda_. And yet there is something in the first fugitive hour when Romanesque and Gothic met that makes a deeper appeal to the soul. No Greek, in portico or sepulchral tablet, conceived beauty of lovelier proportion, of more heart-piercing simplicity, than some of the earlier churches of the national genius. When in the French towns the word passed from mouth to mouth, on a tragic day of September, 1914, that Rheims Cathedral was in flames, there were many who asked breathlessly: "And St. Remi? What of St. Remi?" And when the invaders burst upon Senlis, many who knew the lovely springtime Gothic church of St. Leu d'Esserent trembled for its fate. Over the birthplace of the nation's unity of language and architecture has poured a pitiless rain of iron and fire, a destruction akin to desecration.[41] Cradle and necropolis! The iron grip has held cloistral Noyon that was only too content to be forgotten in its distinguished retirement. The proudest mediæval thing in France, Laon set with feudal arrogance on its high hill, has been long years in chained captivity. For seven centuries the faithful bulls on Laon's towers have looked out, like sentinels, over the city. With dread forebodings they stood in their captivity, aware that the angel guard set about Rheims Cathedral had pleaded in vain, that the tower of Senlis, pride of all the Valois country, had been selected as a target by the invaders' guns. And Bamburg and Limburg, Halberstadt and Magdeburg, had copied Laon Cathedral in the old days when the _opus francigenum_ aroused emulation, not hate, across the Rhine. Month after month, year after year, the shells rained on Soissons; town and cathedral lie in ruins. The fair cities of this inmost heart of France have been desolated, the loyal places that hastened to open their gates to Jeanne d'Arc when she rode by with her king from the coronation in Rheims--Senlis and Laon, Soissons and Compiègne,[42] and Crespy-en-Valois, the countryside that greeted her with such love that she said she hoped to be buried among such good folk, among these _chiers et bons amis les loyaulx Franxois habitons les bonnes villes_.[43] Always in the vanguard of battle were these ancient cities of France, always the boulevard of the capital, yet the wars of centuries had respected their churches. Future ages will read of the glorification of brute force by the invaders who refused to take pity on Soissons, Noyon, and Rheims, when they stand before the giant amorphous 1913 memorial at Leipzig. Therein speaks the Prussian purpose as distinctly as, in Gothic cathedrals, speaks the idealism that sent the old and young crusading, and spurred man on to "the bravest effort he ever made to save his soul." Tragic irreparable early churches of France! Like martyrs in the arena, you have been laid low, one after the other.... But martyrs leave undying memories. If loved before with an almost unfair preference, you are sacred now. Rheims, Soissons, Noyon, and Senlis--your names have become sacramental. NOYON CATHEDRAL[44] Vous entendrez rugir une de ces batailles Où les peuples entiers se mordent aux entrailles, Un combat formidable aux cris désespérés, Dont parleront longtemps les hommes effarés; Car nous saurons de moins, si notre France expire, Lui creuser un tombeau plus large qu'un empire. --LOUIS BOUILHET. Most of the cathedrals of France have an early history following the same general lines. Each may be said to have passed through a Merovingian stage, and to have rebuilt itself larger and finer in Carolingian times.[45] The inroads of the Northmen pirates and the conflagration of timber roofs wrecked most of the cathedrals, so that a third and often a fourth reconstruction went on during the Romanesque era--the century and a half that followed the year 1000. When the evolution of Gothic art was accomplished, there were few churches that were not renewed. It has been said that never before had such a noble frenzy of building seized on mankind. In the short biography traced here of each cathedral, seldom will an account be given of former edifices, but rather the story of each church as it now stands. While some portion may be Romanesque, it is uncommon to find any Carolingian vestige remaining. The bishop of Noyon took the initiative set by Abbot Suger at St. Denis. He was the first to start a cathedral in the new way just as Noyon can boast that hers was the first communal charter of which there is record. In 1109 the liberal Bishop Baudry granted the town its franchise, without the turbulent scenes by which other cities were to wrench theirs from their feudal proprietors. "Know then, all Christians, present and future, that by advice of priests, knights, and townsman I have established a commune in Noyon," begins the bishop's parchment. Many a neighboring city modeled its charter on that of Noyon. The quiet towns on the Oise played a precocious part in what Gratry calls "the big historic effort at justice which occurred in the XII century, the strong will to get out of barbaric chaos which began our era, and which, eight hundred years ago, started the impulses of modern progress." From city to city the communal movement quickened. France began to be covered by associations for mutual aid, and the winning of city charters and the creation of guilds went hand in hand with the intellectual ferment in the schools and the creation of a national architecture. A second Carolingian cathedral of Noyon was replaced in the XI century by a Romanesque one which was burned in 1131, when the city was laid in ashes. At that time, Pope Innocent II was visiting a lord of the region, a cousin of Louis VII, and the brother of the bishop of Noyon, Simon de Vermandois. The pope wrote to various French prelates enjoining on them to help Noyon in its disaster. Bishop Simon must have built part of the walls of the present choir, but as he accompanied Louis VII on the Second Crusade, and died in the East, it was his successor, Bishop Baudouin II (1148-67), friend of Suger, friend, too, of St. Bernard, who really inaugurated the present cathedral about 1150. He sacrificed in large part what was already done of Bishop Simon's choir in order to put it into character with the newly expounded principles of architecture. The choir of St. Denis was his direct model, and he obtained from Abbot Suger some of his masons; the profiles and ornamentation at Noyon are identical with those of St. Denis. In 1157, the relics of St. Eloi, Noyon's noted VII-century bishop, a skilled goldsmith and prime minister for King Dagobert, were transferred to the new sanctuary, probably because it was then completed. In the time of Bishop Baudouin III, who died in 1174, the transept was finished, as well as the bays of the nave near it. Noyon's western limb rose during three campaigns of work, as is indicated by differences in its details, but in main part the nave is a work of the final quarter of the XII century. The cathedral was finished by the westernmost bay of its nave, its capacious porch, and the southwest tower, under Bishop Étienne de Nemours (1188-1222), who had three brothers, also bishops and builders, at Paris, at Meaux, and at Châlons, the sons, all four of them, of a lord chancellor of France. In Noyon, Bishop Étienne was a sound administrator; he was favorable to the municipality, regulated the town's moneys, and built a hospital. Philippe-Auguste sent him to Denmark to escort to France the unfortunate Princess Ingeborg, who was to be his second wife. The bishop was buried as a benefactor in the abbey of Ourscamp, four miles from Noyon, farther down the Oise, which house was a foundation of Bishop Simon de Vermandois, though only vestiges of its XII-century parts remain.[46] During the last decade of the XIII century a terrible fire raged for two days in Noyon Cathedral. The vaulting throughout the church, save in the choir aisle, had to be reconstructed. For the sexpartite system, which embraces two bays, and has six branches from the keystone of each vault section, was now substituted the barlong plan, where diagonals cover one bay. The early-Gothic architects took up with enthusiasm the Normans' sexpartite plan, but after using it for half a century they most sensibly returned to the quadripartite system as better suited to their needs. The sexpartite vault calls for piers of alternating strength, since on the heavier pier fall diagonals and transverse arch, and only a transverse arch on the intermediate pier. Noyon Cathedral had from its start planned for a sexpartite vault by building its ground supports of alternating strength. Its piers, therefore, became illogical when a barlong vaulting was erected after the fire of 1193. And one regrets that it has not its original stone roof, since the correlations in this hardy first cathedral are elsewhere very perfect. Throughout the church are details of subtle charm. There is a slight bending out, like a horseshoe, of the archivolts of the pier arcade, which archivolts are severely plain. Usually from the abacus of a main pier rise five clustered shafts to the level of the vault-springing, two to catch the diagonals, two for the longitudinal or wall arches, and one for the transverse arch. Noyon showed constructive agility in concentrating its wall ribs and diagonals on a single shaft, which meant only three clustered colonnettes from main piers to vault-springing. Each cathedral in France possesses a few traits peculiar to itself. Noyon is unique in having both ends of its transept terminate in hemicycles, like a Rhenish church.[47] The Romanesque school of the Rhine had derived the feature from the early chapels of Rome. Probably Noyon's transept apses came from retaining the foundations of the previous cathedral. A church which was long in the jurisdiction of Noyon--the cathedral at Tournai--still possesses its Romanesque transept with semicircular ends. Cambrai Cathedral, destroyed by the Revolution, once had a similar pre-Gothic transept; its choir, built from 1220 to 1237 in the golden day of the national art, was an irreparable loss. Noyon Cathedral showed another Germanic trait in what may be called a western transept, made by the lower stories of the façade towers and the middle section of the first bay. The nave of Noyon is a noble vessel, with an interior four-story elevation of happier proportions than was achieved in the transept. No longer do annulets bind the clustered shafts, thus breaking the ascending line as in the choir. Throughout the church is to be found the simultaneous use of round and pointed arches, and, curiously enough, it is the lower stories, pier arcade, and tribune, that used the pointed arch; in the triforium and clearstory the arches are semicircular. Everywhere the sculptured capitals are of rare beauty. The Romanesque acanthus leaf is found in juxtaposition with the Gothic crocket. Noyon is exceptional in having retained its annexes: the treasure hall built by Bishop Baudouin II, the chapel of the episcopal palace, a half-timber library, and a beautiful chapter house (c. 1240). This latter, opening on a fragment of the cathedral cloister, is a hall divided into two aisles by a row of slender pillars, the type preferred by the French, whereas in England the circular hall whose vault ribs were gathered on a central pier was more popular. Noyon's chapter house was built by Bishop Pierre Chalot, who died at sea, off Cyprus, on St. Louis' crusade of 1248. When in late-Gothic times Noyon was adding chapels and side aisles, her master-of-works was Jean Turpin, who at Péronne--pitiful Péronne la Pucelle entirely a ruin to-day--erected a Flamboyant Gothic church which was a veritable gem. The battle of giants, foreseen in the poet's dream, twice engulfed Noyon during the World War. From the first occupation by the enemy the city escaped without serious injury. Then in March, 1918, began the Germans' desperate advance on Paris. At the end of the month the mayor of Noyon quitted the city, the last to leave. And in September he was the first to re-enter Noyon after the second battle of the Marne had driven back the invaders. He found his town a ruin. Not a single building had escaped injury, and only ten days earlier a photograph taken from a French airship had shown that the Renaissance Town Hall and Noyon's chief square were intact; few monuments had suffered from the occasional bombardments by the Allies. The Hôtel de Ville had been built in the dawn of the classic Renaissance, and its fine façades retained much of the Gothic spirit. Before their departure the invaders blew up the town; not even Calvin's birthplace was spared. Hardly 10 per cent of the houses of this amiable little city that asked only to be left unmolested by the fever and fret of new things are to-day worth reconstruction. [Illustration: _Noyon's Chapter House (1240-1250)_] As if by a miracle, the cathedral and a side street named for the old goldsmith bishop, St. Eloi, were preserved. The cathedral roof is pierced by shells in a dozen places and the northern tower and the porch between the towers are smashed, but the interior is but slightly damaged. In one of the side chapels a vandal fired his pistol many times at a picture of the Saviour. Perhaps it was the memory that Noyon's rounded transept ends and forechurch were Germanic which saved the cathedral. Better is it to remember by a Radegund, by a Charlemagne, than by Odin and Thor. THE CATHEDRAL OF SENLIS[48] To-day analysis has seized on all things, and it is leading us to death. Man, we must not forget, lives intellectually by synthesis.... If archæology is to make known the monuments of the past, it ought, before all else, to try to make them loved, for, given the uncertitude of the future, it is in that love that they will find their only chance of safety. --ÉMILE LAMBIN.[49] Senlis was the second begun of the Gothic cathedrals. The most fecund region for early essays in the nascent national art lay between Senlis and Noyon. Thibaut, bishop of Senlis, was present at Abbot Suger's deathbed in 1151. Filled with the ambition to replace his half-ruined church by a Gothic one, he began, about 1152, the new works, and once more the abbey church of St. Denis was the model. Some of Senlis' original vaults remain over side aisles, tribune, and apse chapels. Their intersecting ribs show a certain inexperience, and in places semicircular diagonals still are used. The framing arches of each section are lower than the keystone of the diagonals, which imparts a _bombé_ shape to the vault. As the masons acquired skill in the making of Gothic stone roofs, this domical form died out; by stilting, by depressing, and by pointing the arches was the difficulty solved. Like Noyon, Senlis played a part in the early history of France. The Merovingian and Carolingian kings and those of the House of Capet frequented the little city in order to hunt in the forests of the Oise. Louis VII made Senlis his favorite residence, and when the new cathedral was undertaken he allowed donations to be collected over the entire kingdom. When Bishop Thibaut died, the succeeding prelates, Henri and Geoffrey, continued to give largely of their revenues to the new works, but the progress was slow. Senlis was a small diocese for so big a monument. About the time that the choir was finished, 1180, the sculpture of the central-western portal was set up, a gem of Primary Gothic, though sadly damaged by time. It marks a date in French mediæval sculpture. On the lintel is related the Death of the Virgin and her Assumption, in the tympanum her Coronation. Senlis was the first to use this ordinance which the XIII century frequently repeated; we find it at Chartres' north portal, and at the entrance under the northwest tower of Notre Dame at Paris. M. Émile Mâle with his usual happy phrasing speaks of the lyric beauty of the lintel stone at Senlis.[50] It was partly inspired by the _Golden Legend_ of the good Bishop James of Genoa, which in its turn had used the apocryphal gospels freely.[51] The legend relates that at the deathbed of Our Lady, the Apostles gathered, and St. John cautioned them: "Be careful when she is dead that no one weeps, lest the people, seeing our tears, be troubled, and say, 'They fear death, who preach the Resurrection.'" For three days Our Lady rested in her tomb in the valley of Jehoshaphat, then came her Divine Son, with angels, singing the Canticle of Canticles, to escort her to Paradise. The old sculptor of Senlis has depicted the touching reverence with which the angels bend, to lift from the tomb their future Queen of Heaven. Their gesture of eager love is one of the exquisitely delicate conceptions of mediæval sculpture. While they were carving the west portal there came to Senlis a touching figure, the young mother of the future Louis VIII, Isabelle, daughter of Baudouin V of Flanders, who claimed direct descent from Charlemagne; through her the blood of the Carolingian line passed into the third dynasty of France. She was to die, at nineteen, almost repudiated by Philippe-Auguste, because her people declined to support one of his projects. In Senlis Cathedral this gentle grandmother of St. Louis walked barefooted, candle in hand, beseeching assistance from the Mother of God with such humility that the beholders wept. She founded a chapel in the cathedral. A few years later, in 1191, the cathedral of Senlis was consecrated by that archbishop of Sens who was Philippe-Auguste's uncle, Guillaume of Champagne, William of the White Hands, the prelate who had completed the cathedral at Sens. And there came to the dedication Bishop Nivelon de Chérisy, just starting Soissons' Cathedral; Bishop Étienne de Nemours, at work on Noyon's; the prelate of Meaux, who was raising that cathedral; and many another expert in the new art. Sometime later, Bishop Geoffrey resigned his see, and in his place was elected Pierre Guérin, chancellor of France under three kings, a figure worthy to stand beside those Gallo-Roman bishops who remained as bulwarks of society when the Roman Empire fell in pieces around them. Bishop Guérin was a man possessed by a passion for the public weal. His prudence and firmness caused Philippe-Auguste and Louis VIII to name him executor of their testaments. One of his enterprises was the organizing of the royal archives. It was he who came to Blanche of Castile to break the news of her husband's death as she rode out from Paris to meet Louis VIII returning from the southern war. For Louis IX during his minority he showed a father's affection. "He governed marvelously well the kingdom's needs," says the old chronicler, and when he died, on his grave they inscribed, "Here lies Guérin, whose life was an untiring work." In early life Guérin had, in Palestine, become a Knight Hospitalier of St. John of Jerusalem, and, as bishop, continued to wear the white habit of that military order. At the battle of Bouvines, though not an actual combatant, he exhorted the troops and directed maneuvers, for he was skilled in the strategy of war. A survey of the enemy's position made him urge Philippe-Auguste to attack at once, and the king, who knew Guérin to be _sages homs et de parfont conseil_, obeyed, thus winning the greatest victory of the century. "On that day French unity received its baptism." The king had vowed, were his arms successful, to endow an abbey. Bishop Guérin laid for him the first stone of the Abbaye de la Victoire, near his episcopal city.[52] Before this greatest of the bishops of Senlis died, his cathedral had begun to crown its southwest tower by the octagon and spire which are the boast of all the Valois country. St. Louis must have contributed to Senlis' famous tower, which places in foremost rank, this, the smallest cathedral in France. The unknown architect gathered features from many a beacon to unite them here in a masterpiece. He may be said to have created a new type, since his belfry at Senlis made a school in the region.[53] The graduation of the upright shaft into the inclined plane, which in every tower is the crucial point, has here been accomplished with such address, such rhythm, that precisely at what instant the fusion takes place is not to be determined. It has been said that the shaft of the tower is too high in proportion to its spire; at a distance perhaps the criticism may seem justified, but not on closer view. Some have thought that Senlis' belfry was a trifle too conscious of its charms, that it had not the calm poise of Chartres' tower. So it may be; there is more of the woman than the archangel in it. Its personal graciousness has become so wedded with the lives of Senlis' townspeople that they wish it good morning as they pass. The voyager will not find himself many hours in Senlis without pausing at every coign of vantage to gain some new silhouette effect of the slender beacon. It is charming when viewed in the same group as the Gallo-Roman ramparts. And from the open door of the church of St. Frambourg,[54] it can be studied at leisure. In the original plan of Senlis' Cathedral there was only an indication of a transept--two small lateral chapels that open, to-day, from the choir aisle. When, about 1240, the radiant tower was finished they undertook to make a real transept. To insert one they had to do away with four bays of the nave; some ancient columns in the west piers of the transept witness to this change. In its present form the transept of Senlis belongs to the XIII century only in its lower walls. In 1504 a conflagration lasting several days destroyed the cathedral's upper vaulting and necessitated the total reconstruction of the clearstory. In consequence, the exterior appearance of this very early Gothic church is most decidedly Flamboyant. Only the apse and the west façade have retained their Primary Gothic aspect. Chapels with complicated pendant vaults were built, aisles were added, and balustrades put before the tribune opening. Thick coats of whitewash coarsened the lines; in fact, restorations have been so radical, and many of them so over-ornate, that this cathedral has been called the Gothic of bad taste. An extreme criticism, for if some of the changes are distressing, Senlis' transept façades, which also are later additions, are to be reckoned among the best work of the final phase of the national art. After the fire of 1504 the cathedral chapter sought assistance from the king: "_Plaise au Roy d'avoir pitié et compassion de la paoure église de Senlis ... laquelle, par fortune et inconvénient de feu a été bruslée, les cloches fondues, et le clocher qui est grant, magnifique et l'un des singuliers du royaume, au moyen du dit feu tellement endommagé qu'il est en danger de tomber_." Royalty responded generously as the sculpture shows; at the transept's portals are to be seen the porcupine of Louis XII, the ermine of Anne of Brittany, and the salamander of Francis I. Under the learned Bishop Guillaume Parvi, confessor to Francis I, was laid the first stone of the transept's elaborate south façade in 1521. On it worked Pierre de Chambiges, son of the noted maker of late-Gothic frontispieces, and Jean Dixieult. And when it was nearing completion in 1560 the north façade was begun, and finished by the latter master. Effective, vivid, alertly handsome are Senlis' transept fronts. The wise traveler, even if he infinitely prefers the purer lines of early Gothic, will learn to value this florid final expansion of the national art. The renewal of builders' energy in the XV and XVI centuries was a sumptuous phase worthy of admiration. Those who are partial to English Gothic do not need to be warned against depreciating French Flamboyant work. The advice to be eclectic in travel, so as not to lose any source of artistic pleasure, is for those whose ideal of the builders' art is that of the Ile-de-France, comprised between 1150 and 1250. For such the chief interest of Senlis will be the cathedral's apse, its main façade, and the splendid tower. Let them widen their sympathies and take in the effective transept-fronts of the Flamboyant rebirth. Senlis of the towers, of the silent squares, of the quaint names--rue des Fromages, rue du Puits-Tiphane, rue des Pigeons Blancs--a charming aristocratic little city, set in an undulating Corot-like landscape, dotted with country houses, was the very epitome of well-conditioned provincial life. Before the summer of 1914 no spot on earth seemed farther removed from violence and crime. Then came the invading hordes over the Valois land. On September 2, 1914, the Germans surrounded Senlis, which, _ville ouverte_ though it was, they proceeded to bombard. One third of the obus that fell hit the cathedral. That the guns, three miles away, were pointed on the famous tower would seem to be proved by the fact that only those houses were damaged which lay in the direct line between the German battery and Notre Dame. When the enemy entered the city the mayor (shot later in reprisal) met them at the Hôtel de Ville. He had scarcely assured them that no troops remained in Senlis when shots rang out: by ill luck some colonial colored troops, on retiring, fired a salute. Thereupon followed the usual accusation that civilians were the combatants, and the usual tragic scenes of reprisal. Down the main street of the little city passed the trained wreckers of peaceful homes, prying open the doors to throw in incendiary bombs. Before night a whole section of Senlis lay an unsightly blackened ruin.... Then came the victory of the Marne and the invaders retreated. The havoc done to the cathedral can be repaired, though, in the process, must be lost the exquisite golden lichen stain which long ages had achieved. The preservation of Senlis' tower was due to a curé of the cathedral who fearlessly pleaded for his church before the German commandant. THE CATHEDRAL OF SENS[55] What were Rheims and Soissons before their martyrdom but the transfiguring of stone and metal and wood; dead matter delved from the ground or hewn out of the forest, through the labor of man exalted into forms of absolute beauty, and, because of this loving labor, transformed ... into a mysterious creation that, in the words of Suger of St. Denis, was neither wholly of earth nor wholly of Heaven, but a mysterious blending of both. --RALPH ADAMS CRAM.[56] [Illustration: _Senlis' Tower (c. 1230-1250)_] Sens was a chief Celtic city at the intersecting of the Roman roads from Lyons to Paris, from Orléans to Troyes. Long did it dispute the title of primate of Gaul with Lyons and Rheims; even down to the XVI century Paris was within its jurisdiction. To-day as the express trains rush by from Paris to Marseilles, many a traveler looks out on a cathedral that seems to over-tower and overpower a flat, sleepy little town whose name he scarcely knows. When the cathedral was building in the XII century Sens was a center of the nation's life, and under a succession of noteworthy archbishops reached its zenith. Here at the Council of Sens, in 1140, was scheduled to take place a final contest between St. Bernard and Abélard, and in that hour of enthusiasm over abstract controversy, the king with his court and people of every degree flocked to Sens for the schoolmen's debate on the Trinity. At the last moment Abélard, the inexhaustible arguer who had himself called for the test, quitted the combat. Some twenty years later Pope Alexander III spent a year and a half in Sens, and hither came Thomas Becket to seek papal indorsement for his opposition to Henry II's interference in church affairs. Between these two events, 1140 to 1164, lies the building of Sens Cathedral. At the time of Abélard's and St. Bernard's visit the present edifice had been started. During the residence here of Alexander III and the archbishop of Canterbury it was nearing completion. The pope is recorded as dedicating an altar. For a time Sens usurped the claim to be the oldest of the Gothic cathedrals. Its choir was started as Romanesque, but the walls rose slowly, and before a stone roof crowned the ambulatory the new system of building had conquered public opinion. The choir-aisle walls, intended to carry a groin vault, were rearranged to bear one with diagonals. On the outer wall the diagonals were caught on corbels placed above the capitals, and though such an arrangement shows maladroitness, the ribs themselves were made by no novice hand. Sens was a pioneer in the use of the broken rib to avoid the curving of diagonals: from each keystone, set precisely in the center of each section, branched the four ribs. The walls of the procession path and an apsidal chapel opening on the transept's north arm, are the oldest parts of Sens Cathedral. It is true that they antedate the dedication of St. Denis, but not by a few Romanesque vestiges can Sens substantiate its claim to be the first built of Gothic cathedrals. In its main parts it belongs to the third quarter of the XII century. It was a distinct advance on Noyon and Senlis, because it eliminated the deep tribunes over the side aisles. One of the striking characteristics of Sens is the way that light floods it from the aisle windows, which are on a noble scale. Because the church was built during a tentative hour its deficiency lies in the height of the central nave. For right proportion, when flanked by such lofty aisles, the nave should have been made considerably higher. Sens Cathedral was begun by Archbishop Henri-le-Sanglier (1122-43) to replace a church dedicated at the end of the X century. Such strides has mediæval archaeology taken in France during the last generations, it is hard to believe that serious students, during the Congrès Archéologique held at Sens in 1840, could have considered the present edifice to be the one dedicated before 1000. Henri-le-Sanglier had been appointed by Louis VI to the see of Sens before he had received holy orders, and in the lax spiritual standards of the day, he saw no harm in living like the feudal lord he was by birth. He had not Thomas of Canterbury's unbending consistency. When his worldliness was censured by St. Bernard he changed his way of life, and ultimately proved himself a loyal and humane pastor. Of the six archbishops who were to follow him as builders of Sens' metropolitan church, all of them were national figures. Under the long rule of Hugues de Toucy (1143-68) the church was mainly erected. He was the friend of Abbot Suger the pioneer, the friend, too, of Bernard the regenerator, who came as his guest to Sens, after preaching the Second Crusade at Vézelay. The same hospitable bishop welcomed on two occasions the exiled archbishop of Canterbury. The second visit of St. Thomas Becket was when he had been forced to quit the abbey of Pontigny, situated close by over the Burgundian border, because Henry Plantagenet swore to close every Cistercian house in his English and French domains if further refuge were offered the prelate. Moved by the welcome given him in his distress by the archbishop of Sens, the famous Englishman cried out--so his secretary, Herbert of Bosham, records: "Ah, we have proved the truth of the old saying--'_douce France! ô douce encore, ô très douce France! Oui, elle est douce, vraiment douce, la France!_'" By a series of logical inferences the name of the architect of this Primary Gothic cathedral has been added to the roll call of honor. It is known that Guillaume de Sens, a French master, was chosen in 1174 by the chapter of Canterbury to rebuild their cathedral, destroyed by fire. He drew the plan of Canterbury and had put up its apse, its Lady chapel, and two bays of the choir, when one day he fell fifty feet from a scaffold, and returned, in 1180, to his native land to die. An English architect, also named William, continued the works at Canterbury, always on the plan of French William. Now the chevet of Canterbury has strong analogies with that of Sens. There is the same single chapel in its axis; at Sens other apse chapels were added in the XVI and XVIII centuries. The profiles were alike in both cathedrals, and so were the sexpartite vaulting and the embryo transept. In both Canterbury and Sens is an exceptional feature, of Champagne origin, which could hardly have been used accidentally by two men in the same generation. Each alternate pier, at Sens, consists of twin columns, placed side by side according to the width, not the length, of the church. At Canterbury, despite subsequent rebuildings, the same arrangement is still to be found in the bay before the sanctuary. Guillaume de Sens was too prominent to have copied another man's work, and since it is certain that the plan of Canterbury is his, it is now accepted that he built the cathedral of his native town before he proceeded to England. The homogeneous choir and nave of Sens show that they are the work of the years preceding 1175. And Guillaume's claim to be Sens' architect is further strengthened by a historic link. Not only did Thomas Becket spend three weeks with Archbishop Hugues de Toucy on his first arrival in the city during the pope's stay there, but, after quitting Pontigny, he passed some years in St. Colombe monastery by the town. Without a doubt he knew the master-of-works who was erecting the cathedral, and it may have been he who, on his return to his own see, made the French architect's skill known to his cathedral chapter. Guillaume was not called to Canterbury, however, till after the martyrdom of its great archbishop. Sens Cathedral was completed by a prince of the reigning house of Champagne, a son of Thibaut the Great, Archbishop Guillaume-of-the-White-Hands (1168-76). He, too, was Becket's stanch supporter, and denounced his murder to the pope, though by blood he was Henry II's cousin. In 1178 he crossed to England to pray by the tomb of the newly canonized saint--one of the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims who for over three hundred years were to wend their way to the shrine in Kent. Through his influence, Becket's friend and adviser, John of Salisbury, the ablest scholar of his generation, was raised to the see of Chartres. Both William of Champagne and John of Salisbury received episcopal consecration from the hands of good Maurice de Sully, the builder of Paris Cathedral. In his later life Archbishop Guillaume was transferred to the see of Rheims, and in that cathedral he anointed as king his own nephew, Philippe-Auguste, whose prime minister he was; when Philippe II went on the Third Crusade he left as regents his uncle and his mother, Alix of Champagne. The archbishop's affection for his nephew led him to sanction the king's divorce from Ingeborg of Denmark and his marriage to Agnes of Méran, which drew on France the papal interdict, and on William of Champagne the censures of Innocent III. The house occupied by Thomas Becket, in the cloister of Sens Cathedral, was decorated by a statue of him, which disappeared during the Revolution. During excavations in the cloister, in 1899, they came upon an image representing a bishop, and marked with the seal of Archbishop Guillaume-of-the-White-Hands. The statue is now set up in the choir aisle on the site where once stood an altar dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. The tutelary of Sens Cathedral is St. Stephen, the first martyr. A XII-century statue at the trumeau, or central shaft, of the west door presents him as the beautiful youthful servant of the Lord. Gazing at it one thinks of St. Augustine's words: "The Church would never have had St. Paul but for St. Stephen's prayer." Paul, holding the robes of those who stoned Stephen, heard the martyr pray for his executioners. The trumeau statue of St. Etienne with its parallel feet marks the transition from the column image, such as those at Chartres' western portal, to the XIII-century type of saintly personages at the doors of Rheims and Amiens. It escaped mutilation during the Revolution because some one had the wit to write on the stone tablet in the saint's hand, _The Book of the Law_. The foliage relief on the shaft is exquisite. As the XII century closed the archbishop of Sens was Michel de Corbeil (1194-99), a well-known scholastic writer. Under him and Pierre de Corbeil (d. 1222), his successor and also a learned teacher from the Paris schools, the axis chapel at Sens was rebuilt, and the upper vaulting of choir and nave reconstructed in order to enlarge the windows. As the longitudinal or wall arches were now raised to the level of the keystone, the bombé shape of the vault disappeared; in the chevet the wall ribs show as many as three sets of capitals. The vault sections of the side aisles, however, remained domical, as originally built. Two other distinguished brothers, men of great lineage and intellectual attainment, ruled the see of Sens during many years, Gautier de Cornut from 1222 to 1241 and Gilles de Cornut, who died in 1254; and they had a brother who busied himself with the new cathedral at Beauvais. Gautier de Cornut, who while doctor of law in Paris University served as chaplain to Philippe-Auguste and Louis VIII, was the envoy sent in 1234 to fetch Marguerite of Provence to be married to Louis IX in Sens Cathedral, the king then being in his twentieth year. The young princess of the art-loving Midi came north accompanied by a troop of minstrels. Again in 1239 St. Louis returned to Sens for the Crown of Thorns, on its transit from Venice to Paris, and he walked out some miles from the city to meet it. Barefooted, he and his brother, Robert of Artois, bore back the previous relics to the cathedral, through streets hung with tapestries and lighted by candles. The relic rested in St. Étienne's church all night and then in a solemn, eight-day procession was carried to Paris. The king had the archbishop write the formal account of it all. Gautier de Cornut erected the synodal hall which touches the cathedral's façade, and his own statue and that of the young king decorated its buttresses. The best civic monument of St. Louis' reign many think it to be, and as perfect in its own way as the hospital hall at Ourscamp, its contemporary. In 1267 the cathedral's southwest tower fell; it may have been one built in Carolingian times from the proceeds of a gold retable, or it may have been a XII-century tower of Archbishop Hugues de Toucy's time, as are the two lower stories of the present northwest tower. Its fall necessitated the remaking of the last two bays of the nave and of the damaged western doors during the early XIV century. The side chapels were built then, too, but they have been rehandled in the present day, and are now dissimulated behind an arcaded wall. A record of 1319 speaks of the able Nicholas de Chaumes as architect here before he proceeded to Meaux Cathedral. He demolished the ancient chapel on the transept's southern arm, but its corresponding chapel, on the transept's northern arm, still exists and is, with the ambulatory walls, the oldest part of the church. Not till after the Hundred Years' War, however, was the plan to erect a new transept carried through. Sens then possessed as its archbishop, during forty years, the energetic Tristan de Salazar (d. 1519) who had fought, sword in hand, with Louis XII in the Italian wars. Like Bishop Jacques d'Amboise, who was then finishing at Paris the present Musée Cluny as town house for his abbey of Cluny, Archbishop de Salazar built the Hôtel Sens in Paris for his diocesan house. To his own cathedral he added the southwest tower's upper story (to which later a Renaissance lantern was attached) and he connected the synodal hall with the episcopal palace by a rich gallery. Some sculptured panels now attached to a pier in the nave of Sens Cathedral originally formed part of a tomb he had made for his parents. It was this munificent art patron who began the late-Gothic transept. In 1490 the most notable architect of the day, Martin Chambiges, was invited to direct the work, and for four years he gave it his personal supervision until called to Troyes to make the Flamboyant Gothic façade of that cathedral. Sens Cathedral contains some ancient windows, four of which are among the best in France and allied with Suger's school, though probably executed as the XIII century opened, since the saddle bars follow the outline of the medallion pictures. Those four exceptional windows of the choir aisle sparkle with the jeweled intensity of the golden age of the vitrine art. In one of them is told the story of St. Eustace, often to be met with in French iconography, since he figured in the _Golden Legend_. Another describes the return to England of Thomas Becket and his immediate martyrdom. Originally next to it hung a companion lancet, giving Becket's early life, but this was done away with to make room for a chapel. The other two lancets are of the _Biblia Pauperum_ type. In one, the parable of the Prodigal Son is given. In the other is the story of the Good Samaritan, and the half medallions on either side of each central scene interpret it symbolically. Such correlation of the Old and the New Testament was most popular in the Middle Ages. Beside a medallion which shows the traveler fallen among thieves stands the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden; and the scene of the charitable Samaritan is accompanied by pictures of the Saviour's death and resurrection. They might not be able to write and read, the ordinary men and women of that day, they had no daily journal to crowd their minds with half-digested facts, but their souls were fed by sound ethical truths set forth clearly in their one great book, the cathedral. The artisan donors of such windows we may be sure knew the symbolic meaning of every panel. In the clearstory windows at the curve of Sens' choir is more XIII-century glass, but it is later work, lacking the marvelous glow of the choir-aisle lancets. The two big roses of the transept are splendid. A celestial concert was then a favorite theme. The south rose (1500) was made by the same Champagne artists, Lyénin, Varin, Verrat, and Godon who filled the nave of Troyes Cathedral with its high-colored translucent woodcuts. The north rose of the transept finished in 1504, was the work of native masters, influenced by the noted school of Troyes. The side windows in Sens' Flamboyant transept are equally good.[57] Jean Cousin, born in Sens, 1501, made two of the cathedral's windows, the rich one of St. Eutropius, in the nave, and the Tiburtine sibyl of amplest design, in the shrine to the south of the axis chapel. Nothing could be more resplendent as picture windows, but Gothic-Renaissance work, whose tendency was to treat each light as an isolated picture, is not equal to the close-woven patterns of XII-and XIII-century mosaic glass, which kept itself in subordination to its architectural setting. The immense superiority of the earlier windows is demonstrated in Sens Cathedral, which offers us both types at their best. [Illustration: _The Interior of Laon Cathedral (XII Century). View from the Tribune Gallery_] THE CATHEDRAL OF LAON[58] And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.--Apoc. xxi:2, used in the office for the dedication of a church. While Sens, Noyon, and Senlis were building, the splendid cathedral of Laon was begun, about 1160. The usual transition features of Primary Gothic showed in its retention of tribunes over the side aisles, in the simultaneous use of round and pointed arches, the beringed colonnettes, and the salient transept arms. The chapel, in two stories, that opened on each arm of the transept, was another Romanesque tradition. The interior of Laon, "the cathedral of Purity, Silence, and Power," is indeed most impressive. One bay follows another with a regularity that is accentuated by the interior elevation being in four stories--pier arcade, tribune arches, triforium wall arcade, and clearstory. It is not a lofty church, but, like English cathedrals, what it lacks in height is compensated for in length. There are eleven bays in the nave, and ten in the choir. Moreover, because it was comparatively low it could build a square transept-crossing tower, and the average French cathedral was too high for such a tower to be artistic. Laon and Braine were exceptions among Ile-de-France churches in having central lanterns; they were derived from Normandy, since the Rhenish lantern usually was octagonal. Strange as it may seem to say of the most prominent, most open, and best-lighted part of a church, there is a blessed seclusion beneath the wide white tower of Laon that "shuts the heart up in tranquillity." Down the long church, the stout monolithic piers make two virile lines. Only during a short period were such sturdy cylinders used, here and in Notre Dame at Paris are the chief examples, and both cathedrals were artistically right in preferring their uniform columns, even though both of them used the sexpartite vaulting that called for alternating ground supports. The coming cathedrals were to adopt once for all the barlong system of vaulting, where the concentration of loads fell equally on every bay, and to evolve a classic type of pier, consisting of a central cylinder flanked by four semi-attached columns. At Laon a few piers in the nave experimented with free-standing colonnettes, three of which were placed in front of the pillar to enlarge, there, the abacus of the capital on which stood the shafts that mounted to the vault-springing. The elliptical piers of Beauvais, longer from north to south, were to be the most perfect solution of the problem of ground supports. There is no denying that Laon's interior is to-day too white, but we must remember that originally color was used on the stones, so that any effect of a hall would have been impossible in the olden times. Viollet-le-Duc called Laon the laic cathedral _par excellence_. He considered it a great civic hall wherein the populace "could unite and enjoy spectacles more or less profane." And even in the flat eastern wall he found something occultly heretical. The towers, he said, were more those of a château than a church. He shut his mind to the fact that Laon was erected largely by its bishops, that it was begun by the choir end, which is suitable only for divine service, and that if its seven towers had been crowned with the sky-pointing spires of the architect's plan, and if its sky-dreaming windows were still intact, there would be little of the aspect of a town hall about this stately church. Critics like Huysmans have exaggerated its present iciness: no one can pray in Laon, he exclaimed; its soul is fled forever. But what would be Chartres, his spot of election for prayer, were it unsoftened by its "storied windows richly dight"? Only a slight amount of ancient glass has survived in Laon. The north rose of the transept shows pictures of the sciences. Beneath the rose window in the flat eastern wall are three handsome lancets made by the school of Chartres early in the XIII century. They show the passing away of the hieratic Byzantine gesture: in the Annunciation and Visitation medallions the robes float naturally; in the Nativity scene the natural gesture of a woman who tests the warmth of the water before bathing the Holy Child has been well rendered. If a lack of accessories makes the interior of Laon Cathedral seem to-day more philosophic than religious, there are certain lovable individual touches in it that warm both heart and imagination. In the first place it is a church fairly garlanded with springtime foliage. The wonder of eternal youth is in its half-curled leaves which the sculptors conventionalized just enough to make them architectural. Not one sprig, not one leaf is like another. Never was nature more profoundly loved or more convincingly interpreted. Then there are the stone bulls of Laon. They stand high on the western towers, those sixteen massive oxen, stretching their necks, as if watching the people climb the steep hill below. Each stands under a columned canopy. The popular fancy is that they commemorate the patient beasts who dragged the stones for the cathedral up Laon's precipitous crags, and there is nothing improbable in the idea. It was a day when St. Francis was telling man to love his dumb fellow creatures. The towers of Laon Cathedral are worthy of the magistral setting of the church on the edge of the abrupt hill where had grown the ancient city. For miles Laon's towers command the plain, "an assembly without rival among Gothic monuments." Incomplete though they are, Laon's five towers come nearer to the ideal plan of seven spires than does any other cathedral. The corner tourelles pass from one form to another, as they rise, converting themselves into octagons. "Ponder it well," wrote the XIII-century architect, Villard de Honnecourt, in his famous sketchbook. "I have been in many lands, as you can see by this book, but never in any place is to be found a tower equal to Laon." Four of the towers are alike, each with the same long lancet openings, the same free-standing pillars at the corners. Rows of crockets mark the main lines, for the old-time masters were adepts in every device whereby to fix the eye on the essential. There are aspects when the fretwork designs made by Laon's towers against the sky are superb. The date of the cathedral long gave rise to discussion in the days when mediæval archaeology was still hazy. No one now contends that the present Notre Dame is the church which was patched up hastily by Bishop Bartholomew de Vir after the fire of 1112. That conflagration was a semi-lawless act. Laon's bishop was also its feudal proprietor, hence a greedy baronage contended to hold the see. One Gaudry, a knight adventurer who had served under William the Conqueror in England and there grown rich, obtained the bishopric of Laon by simony. All his talk was of hawks, hounds, and hunting. During one of his absences in England the townspeople set up a commune, and Gaudry bent his energies to frustrate it. In an uprising in 1112 the infuriated populace murdered him. The fire, started during the riots, spread to the cathedral, which was practically consumed. The burghers, being unskilled in arms, were forced to call to their aid a fierce robber-baron of the house of Coucy, Thomas of Marle, who, according as he found it profitable, fought, now against, now for, the communes.[59] It took the king of France half a lifetime to destroy that "raging wolf," as Abbot Suger called him. Guizot has brought out that the XII-century uprisings against feudal exactions on the part of the burgesses were often favored by king and clergy. Such was the unformed state of society that no liberal general views could be adhered to; the king is to be found granting charters to some towns and marching against the rebellious citizens in others. The bishops of Noyon, Beauvais, and Soissons favored the people's claims. The prelates of Rheims and Laon opposed them. Such feudalism as that of Thomas of Marle meant permanent anarchy; for the royal power to centralize authority then meant law and order. It is sad to relate that no sooner did the burgess gain his civic rights than he began to oppress the peasantry. Before the XIII century closed there were outbreaks of the peasants against the prosperous townspeople. In our own day has the cry of the underman, voiced by the old Norman poet, been silenced? "We are men as they. The same in stature, the same in limb, and the same in strength--_for suffering_. Are we not men even as they?" At Laon the antagonism between bishop and citizens continued for a century; several times the charter was won, only to be abrogated later. There is food for thought that all through the embittered struggle the building of the cathedral was carried forward, and it was an enterprise that required the collaboration of bishop and people. The people might fight their baron bishop to wrench from him certain civic rights, but they were aware of the difference between his temporal claims and his spiritual authority. Their robust faith was not disconcerted by a discrepancy between "Peter's key" and "Peter's sword." To the end of time Peter will show his weak human side. Had he not denied thrice? Had not another of the selected twelve betrayed for paltry lucre? Had not everyone of them run away in the hour of need? While Bishop Gaudri's ill-gotten gains were buying him a bishopric there was in Laon's cathedral chapter a famous scholar who had stoutly opposed his election. Anselm of Laon, son of a laborer, "the grave, the sweet, the prudent," was a pupil of St. Anselm of Bec and Canterbury. For over forty years he taught in Paris and in Laon, and from the nucleus of his pupils, among whom were Guillaume de Champeaux and Abélard, was to emerge Paris University, which was not, however, to appear by name in history till 1215. Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), like his greater namesake, was a pioneer in scholasticism, which brought to the study of Christian doctrine not only the aid of tradition, the Old and New Testaments and the Church Fathers, but also the use of metaphysics and dialectics. The school of this master at Laon became a veritable university to which flocked students from Italy, Spain, Germany, and England. Laon Cathedral is justly entitled to carve the Liberal Arts on its façade. A score of the coming notable men of the XII century were Anselm's pupils; one of them was that bishop who began the Primary Gothic tower of the cathedral at Rouen. Anselm and his brother trained the youths who, having heard St. Norbert of Cologne preach in Laon Cathedral, in 1120, followed him to Prémontré, in the forest of Coucy, which estate gave its name to the new order Norbert there founded. Like the Cistercians, so swift an increase had the white canons of Prémontré that they soon counted a thousand houses over Europe and were an evangelizing force for their century even as Cluny had been earlier and as the Franciscans and Dominicans were to be in the XIII century. The citizens of Laon clamored for Anselm as their bishop when the miserable Gaudri was killed in 1112, but he declined the honor and directed the choice to the worthy Bartholomew de Vir, who restored temporarily the cathedral. It is not known exactly when was laid the foundation stone of Laon's Gothic cathedral. By its sculpture, the profiles, and the noticeable keystones, the archæologists say that it belongs to the last third of the XII century and that it kept to its original plans, though its building continued into the first third of the XIII century. The bishop-founder was a pupil of Anselm's and himself had taught rhetoric in Paris. Gautier de Mortagne (1155-71) gave generously of his own revenues to the new works. The choir he built ended in a semicircle and consisted of the present three bays next the transept. There, and in the west wall of the transept, the profiles are different from those elsewhere in the church. In a second spell of work they finished the transept, the nave, the towers, and the west façade just before 1200. Laon's façade ranks among the great western frontispieces of Gothic architecture, a model for that of Rheims. What chiefly characterizes it are the profound shadows made by cavernous porches, projecting gables, and other varied surfaces. It has been called a supreme composition in light and shade. In accentuating the upward surge of lines it was a pioneer. When the façade was finished the choir was lengthened by seven bays, and now was terminated by a flat wall whose prototype is to be found in Laon town in the church of St. Martin, an early-Gothic edifice, building about 1165. Various regional churches used the square chevet. As the custom died out in France, it struck root in England, where the Cistercians made it popular. Those accustomed to the rectagonal chevet of the English cathedral may prefer that type, but to a lover of the apse of the French cathedral, of the curving procession path with its radiating chapels that mystically suggests the thorn crown around the Sacred Head, it will ever seem a dull way to end a sanctuary precisely like a transept arm. The cathedral of Laon was consecrated in 1237. That same century built the treasure hall and the large chapel beside the west façade. The XIV century added side chapels between the buttresses, and in those chapels at Laon appears the academic precision of that skilled but dry period. About the same time was made a new southern portal for the transept, and the wheel window over it was replaced by a big Rayonnant Gothic light. The hill citadel called by Charlemagne in the _Chanson de Roland_ "my good town of Laon" was held by the invader from August, 1914, to October, 1918. Though the city was shelled by the French, not a piece of glass in the cathedral was broken. St. Martin's abbatial, too, is intact, and the XII-century Templar's church, the only well-preserved monument in France built by the great military Order. The Prussians' horses were stabled at first in the cathedral till a general public protest stopped such a desecration. When the Allies, under General Foch, drove back the German lines in the final weeks of the war, the retreat was too swift for much havoc to be wrought. On October 13, 1918, General Mangin made his triumphal entry into Laon, whose much-enduring citizens flocked around him in the cathedral to chant a solemn _Te Deum_. THE CATHEDRAL OF SOISSONS[60] The other evening before the ruins of a Cistercian abbey, that once harbored St. Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, a group of Alpine chasseurs and Zouaves fell to recounting their daily feats of heroism just as in the times of chivalry the strong, swift strophes of the _chanson de geste_ celebrated knightly prowess. To the north, the cannon thundered.... And the next morning, a Sunday, I assisted at Mass in a Gothic-vaulted hall that had served as _promenoir_ for the monks of Cîteaux. Soldiers filled all the wooden seats, others thronged the threshold, bareheaded in the shadow of the ruins.... Then when the sacrifice of the body and blood of our Lord was celebrated, a song rose in the dawn: "_Kyrie Eleison! God be praised!_" And the soldiers within the chapel and without sang before returning to battle as in the ancient _Chanson de Saucourt: "Kyrie Eleison!"_ Even those harnessing the great cart horses, those saddling their own restive mounts, those extinguishing the fires of the night's bivouac, and those charging the six-wheeled camions, all took up the canticle: "_God be praised! Kyrie Eleison!_".... And the implacable cannonading to the north echoed in the deep quarries, whence had come the stones builded here for God's glory. --A war picture of Longpont abbey,[61] by GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, who visited the battle-front in 1914. [Illustration: _The Oxen on Laon's Towers_] To-day the fair white city of Soissons lies a scene of desolation, only to be likened to a wrecked town of old-time barbarism. They say that Soissons Cathedral is more damaged than if a geological convulsion had wrecked it. Deliberately was it taken as a target, though, as French troops held the highlands round the flat town, there can be no excuse that the towers were used as posts of observation. The westernmost bays are ruined; the north side of the big church has been riddled with projectiles; flying buttresses have been cut off; great rents show in roof and sides; the vaulting hangs in air; a pier lies prone, its stones scattered like a pack of cards; the aisles are dismantled, and the windows, some of which Blanche of Castile gave in 1225, have been reduced to powdered dust. In one week of January, 1916, over three hundred projectiles fell on the church, said the old priest, who lived in the midst of the wreckage, to a visitor to whom he spoke gently of God's mercy. In the once "sweet and tranquil provincial city, whose soul was the daughter of honorable simplicity, grass grows in the street. Soissons is a dead city. Its casementless windows fix you like the eye of the blind." Always has it lain in the path of war, this ancient capital of Clovis that has ever been part of the very heart of France, but never war such as this! Here, in 486, Clovis won the battle of Soissons that annihilated the last remnant of Rome's empire in Gaul, and conquered the land to the Loire. In the evil days of the Hundred Years' War, Soissons suffered. So depopulated was it by the XVI-century religious wars that it took over a century to recover. Nor did the Revolution spare the seat of the ancient monarchies of France. In 1814 occurred an explosion of gunpowder that wrecked precious windows in the cathedral, some of them the gifts of Philippe-Auguste. In 1870 the Prussian bombardment of Soissons devastated what remained of the abbey church of St. Jean-des-Vignes, whose Flamboyant Gothic spires have been mutilated again in the World War.[62] Under the southern flank of the shattered cathedral nestles the diamond of Primary Gothic art in France, the transept arm built by the crusading bishop, Nivelon de Chérisy. As by a miracle it has escaped. The most exquisite thing in France, many of us hold it to be. It has drawn its devotees back to Soissons time and time again, this perfect thing so little heralded. They would test a second and a third time the overpowering first impression it had made. Perhaps it had been some happy mood, some subtle lingering shadows of the late afternoon, that had touched it momentarily to an ethereal grace. And then standing face to face again with its small and stately beauty, those who love this early-Gothic monument of France know that its power is not a chance or borrowed comeliness. Sit before it for hours; study the mystery and play of its lights and shadows; try to seize in what lies its young poesy of grace, its maturity of dignity, "its invincible impression of virginity." In vain to analyze it. Can that intangible quality which is sheer inevitable beauty be dissected? Those who fall under the spell of its supernal loveliness lose all false shame that would prune adjectives, lest their praise be excessive. No glow of words can convey the something celestial here. The nave and the choir of Soissons Cathedral are XIII-century Gothic at its prime, and yet they seem merely to be the setting for a jewel, for the small apse preceded by one bay, which is the transept's southern arm. That apse and bay are the culmination of the Romanesque ideals, and at the same time, indissolubly part of the new and richer art, they crown the Primary Gothic hour. Soissons' chief church is better documented than Laon's. Bishop Nivelon I de Chérisy (a Chérisy fell on the field of honor in 1914) occupied the see from 1176 to 1207. The Romanesque cathedral which he inherited had become inadequate, so the bishop gave land from his episcopal garden, and about 1180 the foundation of the south arm of the transept was laid. Like Noyon's transept, it terminated in a hemicycle, and its interior elevation was also in four stories, but here was attained a consummate symmetry not achieved at Noyon. Soissons' curving transept arm is exceptional in having an ambulatory. The apsidal chapel which opens in its eastern wall has over it a similar chapel that gives on the tribune gallery. Slender columns with stilted arches are planted at the entrance of each of these chapels in the gracious fashion originated by the Champagne school of Gothic. It was born of a necessity, in order that a more regular vaulting might be built over the curving aisle. St. Remi at Rheims had used the same arrangement. So many are the points of resemblance between Soissons' transept arm and the choir of St. Remi's abbey church that it is thought the architect of the Champagne abbatial proceeded to Soissons later; there are the same profiles, the same plan, the same encircling frieze of sculpture. At Soissons, the architect had grown bolder and dared to diminish his supports. To have made Soissons' curving wall of arches and colonnettes proves him to have been, not only well practiced in mason-craft, but a man of genius who had visions. He here created a thing apart. The exterior of the transept's arm is unimpressive and plain; the lower windows are round-arched. Inside, the pointed arch reigns, however. "The king's daughter is all glorious within." The prelate who built Soissons Cathedral was a remarkable personage and played a foremost part on the Fourth Crusade. Villehardouin tells us that it was Bishop Nivelon de Chérisy who was sent as an envoy to Innocent III, when against papal commands the Crusaders had turned aside to capture the Christian city of Zara on the Dalmatian coast. The bishop-ambassador found the pope at Viterbo and obtained from him the raising of the excommunication on condition that the knights should proceed direct to Palestine. We all know how, a second time, they went filibustering. Among the first to scale the walls of Constantinople was Nivelon de Chérisy; with him was the bishop of Troyes. When the chief barons met to elect the first Latin emperor of Constantinople, it was Bishop Nivelon who passed out to the waiting crowd to announce that Baldwin of Flanders had been chosen--Baldwin who began the Cloth Hall at Ypres--and it was he who crowned Baldwin in St. Sophia. When that new emperor was captured by the Bulgars the bishop of Soissons returned to Europe for aid. All the time that he was absent in the Holy Land Nivelon had devoted the revenues of his see toward the renewal of the cathedral. Strangely enough, it was this same prelate who also built Soissons' choir, which in scale and plan differs so radically from the transept arm. The fleeting hour of Primary Gothic was over. The new art was moving forward swiftly; irresistible the development of its principles and impossible at such a time that the work of one decade could be similar to the decade preceding it unless, as at Laon, the primitive plan was insistently adhered to. Whoever the master that designed Soissons' choir and nave, he incorporated the perfect transept into his bigger church with reverence. Not to dwarf it was his main care, for he bowed before the touch of perfection in his predecessor's work, and sought to give to his own monument, different though it was, a like clarity and noble simplicity. Examine the skill with which choir and nave are joined to the small transept arm. It is lower than they, it has four vertical stories to their three, and yet no discrepancy is felt. It was as if the new builder said: "Here is a miracle of force and grace, done in a fugitive hour never to be recaptured. Let us enshrine it fittingly." In 1212 services were held in the finished choir. The nave proceeded without interruption and was in use in the first years of St. Louis' reign. Probably the final touches were given to it by that bishop of Soissons of whom Joinville tells, Mgr. Jacques de Castel, _fort et vaillant homme_, who started with the king on the crusade of 1248. After Mansourah's battle and the disastrous retreat toward Damietta good Bishop Jacques felt such a desire "to go to God" that he rushed alone to attack the infidels, whose swords soon "dispatched him to God's company with the martyrs." Singular good taste has at all times guided the builders of Soissons. The XIV century decided to make a northern arm to the transept; and as if to avoid all hint of rivalry with its peerless neighbor, the new structure was finished by a flat end wall without a portal. The cylinder piers of Soissons choir and nave are a distinguishing trait of the church interior, neither too high nor too short. Before each is engaged a slender shaft which rises to the level of the springing and causes the edifice to appear more lofty than its reality. Everywhere, in the church, the fitting of the stones was done with peculiar nicety, though the picking out of the mortar lines in black, a recent innovation, was a sad mistake. In the choir and nave the clearstory windows were an advance on those of Chartres, their model, for the lights were made longer, and the oculus, above the twin lancets, smaller, which gave greater compactness to the whole composition. St. Gereon at Cologne copied these windows. Marburg's church also was aided by Soissons. The talc of this desolate city during the World War is heartrending. The Germans first entered Soissons on September 1, 1914. The mayor had fled. But an admirable woman, Madame Macherez, the widow of a senator, went to the _état-major_ of the Prussians and assumed the responsibility to keep order among the civilians: "_Le maire c'est moi_." Already the poets of France have enshrined the memory of this heroine of sixty winters who saved her city from pillage: Le regard bleu comme strié de lave De Jeanne Macherez qui nous sauva Soissons. Ah! la vieille brave! For ten days the Germans occupied the town. The first battle of the Marne caused their departure on September 12th. Then a French reverse in January, 1915, let them draw near enough to the city to bring it within the range of fire, and such was its tragic fate till the Germans' strategic retreat in the spring of 1917. The enemy had intrenched himself solidly in the vast quarries on the left bank of the Aisne, and month after month poured his fire on desolated Soissons. Then came the final grand act of the war. Rolling forward in overwhelming numbers in March, 1918, the invaders drove the French troops from Soissons after a desperate resistance in the streets. There they encamped until the first days of the following August, when the French army re-entered the smoking ruins of a dead city over which stood a phantom cathedral. Noyon, Senlis, Sens, Laon, and Soisson, are with Notre Dame of Paris the first cathedrals of the national art. They are far from being the complete list of Primary Gothic monuments, which includes such churches as the Trinité at Vendôme, two churches at Étampes,[63] the collegiate of Notre Dame at Mantes, the Trinité at Fécamp, and Lisieux Cathedral. There are the two towers built in an hour of religious enthusiasm: the _clocher vieux_ at Chartres and the belfry of St. Romain at Rouen. The nave of Angers Cathedral is the Primary Gothic of the Plantagenet school. The Attica of Gothic art is the Ile-de-France, and where Picardy touches it on the north, and Champagne on the south. In that land filled with never-to-be-forgotten churches speaks the clarity of French genius in its classic simplicity. The beauty of such churches comes from their rightness of proportion, that quality which gives the most enduring joy in architecture, beyond all richness of detail or startling effect. From such churches one learns the difference between the architect born and the architect made. The supreme quality of proportion must be innate; it is never acquired. The artist blessed with it may only produce a small masterpiece, such a church as that of St. Yved of Braine or a St. Leu-d'Esserent, but one is sure that he would not exchange the glow which his work gave him for the fame of building even a Strasbourg. It is in the early-Gothic churches of the Ile-de-France that the taste is best purified and trained. There the sense of beauty is spiritualized. In them art gives an entity to what is ethereal, art seems to make tangible what is impalpable. In them the heart feels the loveliness of the space inclosed as the eye rejoices in the inclosing walls. There is something of poignancy in such churches. Standing in all the promise of their youth, of the youth of the greatest architecture the world ever produced, they gravely admonish us that beauty even as theirs is but a momentary lifting of the veil. To such churches the memory returns with nostalgic regret amid the magnificence of the Gothic expansion, when the leaves opened wide to show the golden pollen. But the sadness which the early-Gothic churches of France rouse in the soul, is it not the stumbling name we give to an eternal Hope? "There are no hours in this cathedral," wrote Rodin of Soissons; "there is Eternity."[64] THE ABBATIALS OF ST. REMI AT RHEIMS, AND NOTRE DAME AT CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE[65] There are two things for which all the Faithful ought to resist unto blood, Justice and Liberty.--PIERRE DE CELLE, Abbot of St. Remi (1162-81). Before closing our crowded chapter on Primary Gothic cathedrals, let us add a few notes on a few early-Gothic churches. Those of chief interest, in the story of the national art, are the big abbey churches at Rheims and at Châlons, sister monuments, equal in size to cathedrals. So closely do they resemble each other in plan and ornamentation that it is thought one architect planned both. They are the earliest Gothic edifices in Champagne. Notre Dame at Châlons-sur-Marne was reconstructed soon after 1157. Three periods of work appear in it. The transept and the four towers--which give an imposing air to the church--belong to the Romanesque rebuilding of 1130. The towers which stand between choir and transept are not set symmetrically, since, in that to the south, use was made of the foundations of an earlier tower, a boundary mark between the lands of the big abbey and those of the bishop of Châlons. In 1157, the Romanesque choir of Notre Dame collapsed, and when rebuilt the citizens of the ancient city on the Marne displayed the same pious enthusiasm as had the men and the women of Chartres in 1145. In 1165, Guy de Bazoches, then a canon of Châlons Cathedral, wrote to his sister to describe how all ages and conditions brought material to the new church of Notre Dame-en-Vaux, and how the people, harnessed to carts, sang canticles as they labored. When the new Gothic choir was under way the nave of 1130 was remodeled. The pier arches and the tribune arches were made pointed, and the upper walls were raised in order that a Gothic vaulting might be added. Notre Dame's choir is very beautiful. Its three apse chapels open on the ambulatory, by columns and stilted arches, perhaps the first time this disposition of Champagne Gothic was used. Soon it was repeated in St. Remi at Rheims. Auxerre and St. Quentin also used it, and it reached its apotheosis in the ethereal charm of Soissons' transept. Notre Dame at Châlons was in other ways a precursor; here first were set in each bay of the clearstory three windows side by side, a triplet of lancets that started the complex fenestration of the new art. In its first plan were no flying buttresses, but they were soon added when it was found that the thrust of the upper vaulting was not sufficiently counterbutted. In the XV century the Flamboyant south porch was built. Of the XVI century are some rich windows of the school of Troyes, now set in the nave's aisles. One of them represents the victory of Spain's crusaders over Islam at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, and is the best battle scene depicted in colored glass. With its beautiful Gothic cathedral, its immense abbatial, and all of its churches rich with storied windows, one is profoundly grateful that Châlons-sur-Marne only for a short hour early in the World War formed part of that "_ligne doulereuse et triomphale, ce ruban de pourpre et de lumière qui s'étend de Belfort au rivage des Flandres, la Voie Sacrée_." Tragic the fate of its sister abbatial, St. Remi, in martyred Rheims. That grand ancestral church lies well-nigh mortally wounded on the field of honor. It stood up above the city as prominently as the cathedral itself, and has been mercilessly wrecked. The vaulting has fallen, and great rents have been torn in the walls of the precious Primary Gothic choir. A recent traveler found that its devastated nave recalled gaunt Jumièges. Some ten years after the reconstruction of Notre Dame at Châlons, the monks of St. Remi began to make over their abbey church under the inspiration of Abbot Pierre de Celle, of the same lineage as the heiress of Braine who, with her husband, a brother of Louis VII, built the church of St. Yved. While John of Salisbury was a young student in France, Pierre de Celle entered into a friendship with him which continued to deepen till their death, both of them being men of the highest culture, strong literary abilities, and solid character. Pierre de Celle succeeded the English scholar as bishop of Chartres in 1181; _summi et incomparabilis viri_, so his epitaph sums him up. It was this distinguished churchman who built, about 1170, the superb choir of St. Remi, and who remodeled as Gothic the ancient Romanesque nave. The choir had five radiating chapels, each of which opened on the ambulatory in the beautiful Champagne way, by slender columns bearing stilted arches. As tribunes were built over the aisles, the wall elevation was in four stories, and below two of them ran friezes of sculptured foliage. As if the architect felt that he had thus over-accentuated the horizontal line, he bound his triforium and clearstory into one composition by continuous moldings, a precocious first step toward the glazed triforia of Rayonnant Gothic. Originally no flying buttresses braced this early-Gothic choir; those that were added, about 1180, are probably the first ever made. Nothing could better show the swift development of Gothic structure than to compare the plain old flying buttresses of St. Remi with the luxuriant counterbutting members of Rheims Cathedral built fifty years later. Between St. Remi's choir and the hemicycle transept of Soissons Cathedral there is such similitude of profile, detail, and plan that it is thought the same architect designed both. The able Pierre de Celle built the two westernmost bays of St. Remi's nave, and opened the tribune on the middle vessel with Gothic arches. He also built the west façade, which to-day is ancient only in its lower stories, as it was reconstructed in 1840. The north tower was re-done in the XII century; the south one is of the XI century, Abbot Herimar's time. With book in hand should be read the complicated story of St. Remi's nave and transept, the ancient Romanesque edifice re-dressed as Gothic in 1170. Nothing remains of the church built in the IX century under Bishop Hincmar of Rheims. The oldest parts extant are the piers of the nave, which belonged to the reconstruction of the abbatial by Abbot Airard (1005-33). His successor, Thierry (d. 1041), decided that the works then under way were on too elaborate a scale to be within his means, so he simplified the plan. The outer side aisles were suppressed, the archivolts were doubled, the bays widened, and the old columns replaced by compound piers. In the transept his work still exists in the west wall (north arm) where are two stories of arcades supported by thick, short, cylinder piers whose capitals are coarsely carved acanthus leaves. The rest of the transept (save what was added in 1170 to connect it with the Gothic choir and the re-dressed nave) is the work of Abbot Herimar who raised the west towers. Under him occurred the notable dedication of St. Remi's new Romanesque church, in 1049, by Leo IX, the reformer, with whom the Benedictine Order took possession of the papacy for some vital years of needed regeneration. St. Bruno of Cologne, the future founder of the Carthusian Order, was a student in the episcopal school of Rheims while Romanesque St. Remi was building. And later he returned from Germany to direct the school from 1057 to 1075 with great prestige. His most notable pupil, Eudes de Châtillon, became the pope of the First Crusade, Urban II. Feeling the call for a life of prayer and retirement, Bruno thought of joining the group of earnest men about to commence the Cistercian Order, but his destiny led him to Grenoble, near which in the mountains he began the Grande Chartreuse (1084) where they say reform never was needed.[66] In St. Remi's abbatial the last phase of Gothic art was to be represented. The transept's south façade is Flamboyant, and over its sculptured portal is a highly colored XV-century window. The façade was finished by Abbot Robert de Lenoncourt (d. 1531), who later became archbishop of Rheims. To his abbey church he presented ten rich tapestries relating the life of the first bishop of the city, St. Remigius, who baptized Clovis in 496, and whose rule of seventy years is the longest spiritual reign on record. Clovis and Clotilda founded the abbey. At its church altar St. Louis was knighted. On the day of Charles VII's coronation the barons rode their steeds into the basilica, dismounting at the sanctuary to ask for the sacred ampulla needed for the king's anointing in the cathedral. In the clearstory windows of St. Remi's choir were thirty-three lancets in which were portrayed the archbishops of Rheims from holy Remigius to Robert of France, brother of Louis VII, who was ruling here from 1162 to 1175, while Abbot Pierre was building his choir. The windows were probably set up in the time of Archbishop Robert's successor, Archbishop Guillaume of Champagne, who had finished the cathedral at Sens. They were memorable for their lovely browns and greens, and were allied, undoubtedly, with St. Denis' glass, though executed by local workers. Deep borders surrounded each lancet. Similar ornate borders and a magnificent deep blue color distinguished still older XII-century windows in the tribune gallery. The central lancet was an extraordinary Crucifixion, somewhat like that at Poitiers. An irreparable loss to art is the destruction of St. Remi's windows, though it is said that some of them were dismounted in time and carried to a place of safety. ST. QUIRIACE CHURCH[67] AT PROVINS Provins, une des plus charmantes villes de France, rivalise avec la vallée de Cachemire.... Des croisés rapportèrent les roses de Jéricho dans cette délicieuse vallée, où, par hasard, elles prirent des qualités nouvelles, sans rien perdre de leur couleurs.--BALZAC, _Pierrette_ (whose scene is Provins). Another Primary Gothic church in Champagne is St. Quiriace at Provins, which one goes out of one's way to see because Provins is one of the most individual little towns in France, still in part surrounded by massive XII-and XIII-century ramparts. Thibaut IV the Singer added to the great walls of the lower town about 1230. They say that when crusaders drew near to Jerusalem on its hill encircled by its walls and towers they often cried out, "Provins!" Once the population of this shrunken little city rivaled that of Paris. Here were held annual fairs to which flocked the merchants of Europe, and the sensible counts of Champagne encouraged their visitors by wise regulations and strictest justice. The money of Provins was accepted in Florence and Rome. The valley of roses was the favorite residence of the reigning counts. Here Thibaut IV, the most celebrated lyric poet of the Middle Ages, wrote his songs that wedded the art of the Midi troubadour with the salt of the northern trouvère. His son, Thibaut V, married the daughter of St. Louis and brought her in state to Provins, "_où ils firent leur entrée accompagnés d'une grande foison de barons_," wrote Joinville, who had helped to arrange the match. Thibaut V's heart is contained in a XIII-century monument now in the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu, which hospital was originally the ancient palace of the countesses of Champagne. Thibaut V and his wife died returning from the tragic last crusade of Louis IX. Their niece Jeanne married the king of France, and the prosperous days of Champagne ended when it merged its independence in the royal domain, for new regulations soon impaired the popularity of its famous fairs. It was Countess Jeanne of Navarre who persuaded her seneschal, Joinville, to write his reminiscences. In the days when Provins was a world center St. Quiriace church was begun about 1160 by Henry the Liberal, the reigning count who was warmest patron of John of Salisbury when the latter, forced to quit England, lived in Provins. Little more than the choir of St. Quiriace now remains. In the tympanum of a late-Gothic portal is a XIII-century image of Christ. The semicircular chevet is boxed in a square ambulatory on which open square eastern chapels. The shafts are banded with annulets. There is Romanesque feeling in the zigzag ornamentation on the heavy ribs; the round arch reigns in the triforium, although the pier arcades below are pointed. The choir shows a curious experiment in vaulting hardly to be called successful: three bays are embraced by the vault section of eight branches. St. Quiriace crowns the hilltop; in the lower town is St. Ayoul, whose portal sculpture (c. 1160) is of the same type as the three western doors at Chartres, as is the portal of St. Loup-de-Naud (Seine-et-Marne), close by.[68] Those who have fallen under the spell of Chartres' fascinating column statues will always study their sister images with interest. Epitaphs on the walls of St. Quiriace recall two true shepherds of this church, one, who went daily into the hills to teach children and to tend on the sick poor in their homes, and the other, who opened up the forgotten crypt and left a school and presbytery to his parish. There is a quaintly worded tablet of the XVI century telling of the _haute et puissante dame_, the Marquise de Chenoise, who had "for God a tender solid piety; for her husband a submissive, respectful love; for her children a Christian and reasonable tenderness; for her friends a sincere and generous affection; for the poor charity without limit; and for the rest of the world _une bonté, une douceur, une honestété charmante_." One would not mind being the rest of the world for this gracious person. Both her sons were killed in one week, fighting under Turenne, so she passed the last years of her life in a retirement, which "she sanctified by prayer, and her prayer she nourished and sustained by good works." The robust piety of Bossuet's preaching breathes in such records. In St. Remi's abbatial at Rheims is the eulogy of another good lady of Champagne who was "Rachel in beauty, Rebecca in fidelity, Suzanna in purity, Tabitha in piety of heart, Ruth in sentiment, and Anna by good works." Paragons those old-time ladies seemed to be! ST. YVED AT BRAINE[69] I am just back from the battle line in that Royal Domain of Soissons, where the soul of ancient France seems more itself than in any other region, country of martyrs, and of kings, of Merovingian crypts, of the donjon of Coucy, of the five apses of St. Yved--realm of the first race of rulers bearing vestiges of the greatest history of France.--GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO, 1914. Strictly speaking, St. Yved at Braine is not so much a Primary Gothic monument as it is a link between that first tentative hour and the fuller development of the national art represented by Rheims and Amiens. In the same group as Braine, between Primary Gothic and the Era of the Great Cathedrals, are St. Leu d'Esserent, Montréal, Vézelay's choir, and the church of St. Laumer at Blois. Braine, on the ancient Roman highroad between Rheims and Soissons, had been a farm of the Frankish kings. In the VII century it belonged to the father of St. Ouen, and it was here that the future bishop of Rouen, as a child, was blessed by a passing guest, the Irish missionary St. Columbanus, whose Celtic rule of Luxeuil dominated, in Gaul, the century called of saints. Lady Agnes of Braine espoused a son of Louis VI, the turbulent Count of Dreux (d. 1188), and, from them came the funds for St. Yved, the second foundation of the new Order of Prémontré. The recorded date of the enterprise is from 1180 to 1216, but as the church is perfectly homogeneous, it must have been built in one campaign, probably in main part before the dedication of 1216. As a composition, the plan of the collegiate is original. The apse chapels on each side of the choir chapel are placed on the bias so that the sanctuary opens out like a fan, with five altars visible at the same time. The arrangement was copied in far-off Hungary in St. Martin's church at Kassovie, built for the king by the wandering Picard artist Villard de Honnecourt. In Cologne the church of St. Gereon, and in Marburg that of St. Elizabeth, show the influence of Braine. St. Léger's abbatial at Soissons copied it. St. Yved has a square transept-crossing tower that opens still farther the central part of the edifice. Carved about the interior is a cordon of free springtime foliage. There is youth in every line of this beautiful white church. The superb monocylindrical columns and their capitals are robust virility itself. Everywhere is firmness of touch, and never has the unity been marred by patchwork reconstructions. Like its neighbor, Soissons, the same nicety of stonework is shown. Before the Revolution the collegiate at Braine harbored an unparalleled collection of tombs, since here for centuries were laid to rest the barons and bishops of the proud family of Dreux, warriors at Bouvines, crusaders, and donors of storied windows at Chartres and Rheims. The four west bays of the church of Braine were stupidly demolished after the Revolution, because funds for repairs were at that time lacking. From the destroyed portal were saved the two statues now set in the choir's wall. They represent the Coronation of Our Lady; the robes flow easily and there is scarcely a touch of Byzantine rigidity left in them. Twice during the late World War was Braine's collegiate in the direct path of invasion. The first battle of the Marne freed it, but in May, 1918, the Germans again entered the little town. Then swept forward the second battle of the Marne, and Braine was liberated in September. One can only pray that, in such hasty retreats, St. Yved escaped mutilation. ST. LEU D'ESSERENT[70] I think that that style which is called Gothic is endowed with a profound and a commanding beauty, such as no other style possesses ... and which probably the Church will not see surpassed till it attain to the Celestial City.... The Gothic style is as harmonious and as intellectual as it is graceful.--CARDINAL NEWMAN. St. Leu d'Esserent is one of the small but perfect churches of the classic Ile-de-France that satisfy both eye and soul by the exquisite justness of their proportions. Its serene white charm is unobtrusive. Only a master of the inmost heart of France could have produced the assured rightness of its proportions. Unforgettable are the moments spent in this Benedictine abbatial on the Oise; sometimes up and down its lovely white avenue flits some happy lost bird, rejoicing in the paradise of quietude he has found. The quarries round St. Leu d'Esserent were noted, and many a church of France has been made of their firm white stones. The origin of Gothic art is comprised, thinks M. Lefèvre-Pontalis, in this region where good quarries abounded, with Senlis taken as a center. A line from Senlis to Laon, if carried round, would pass through Rheims, Provins, Montereau, Étampes, Vernon, Amiens, Péronne, St. Quentin. Well within that circumference lies St. Leu d'Esserent. The Benedictine church stands on prominent foundations overlooking the river loved of Corot and Daubigny. The priory was founded and presented to great Cluny by a knight of Esserent as thank-offering for his ransom from the Saracens by monks of St. Benedict. Of the church built in that XI century, there remain only the two stout columns, with archaic capitals, which now are embedded in the westernmost bay of the nave. About 1150 the present church was begun, and for a century continued building, in three distinct bouts of work. First was made the west façade, only one of whose Romanesque towers was ever finished with a spire, the octagonal faces of which were relieved by curious lancelike ridges not repeated elsewhere. In the narthex, or porch between the towers, was tried an experiment to eliminate the so-called domical shape of the first Gothic vaults. The transverse arches were loaded with masonry to raise them to the vault's apex. Experimental also are the ungainly diagonals, in part ornamented with Norman chevrons, that span the tribune over the forechurch (c. 1150). The ribs are not free of the vault web, so elasticity is missing. During the last quarter of the XII century, the chevet was built, as were the two towers placed beside the apse, an arrangement derived from Rhenish churches. Of that time, too (c. 1180), is the double bay, surmounted by a sexpartite vault which precedes the apse. There is no transept. The recently finished choir of Senlis Cathedral influenced the ambulatory and apse chapels of St. Leu. At Senlis and here occur the earliest examples of double flying buttresses. The six bays of the nave were added about 1220, after a pause in the works. Previously, each bay of the church had been lighted by a single lancet; now two lancets surmounted by an oculus were used, which added much dignity to the exterior aspect of the edifice. Over the axis chapel was built a second story. The unvaulted tribunes, above the side aisles, were transformed into a sort of triforium by building a wall slightly behind their arcaded openings. As that wall was pierced by some odd little square windows, this may be regarded as one of the first essays of a glazed triforium, the feature which was soon to develop into the decorative richness of St. Denis, Troyes, Le Mans, Tours, and Beauvais. CHAPTER IV Notre Dame of Paris and Other Churches of the Capital[71] It is important to meditate often and with ardor and respect on the documents which the ancestors have left us.--ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. The Era of the Great Cathedrals was inaugurated by Notre Dame of Paris, the most imposing Gothic church hitherto attempted. The popular voice has chosen to group it among the chief four, with Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens--all four of them dedicated to Our Lady, though in a special way Notre Dame of the capital seems to have appropriated the name. Of the four, the cathedral of Paris was the first built, and traits of the Romanesque epoch lingered in it, such as the tribune galleries over the side aisles, the division of its interior wall into four vertical stories, and the Byzantine feeling of its earlier sculpture. The piers were massive single columns of true majesty. In the sixth pier of the nave, counting from the east, an experiment was tried when an engaged shaft was added to its front. The seventh pier (c. 1192) marks a date in the development of Gothic structure since with it was made the type of ground support which was to predominate in the XIII century--four engaged shafts around a central pillar. When the middle core was made elliptical, as at Beauvais, the type pier was achieved. [Illustration: _Notre Dame of Paris. View from the South_] Notre Dame of Paris used the sexpartite system which calls for alternating ground supports. Either the uniform piers here were laid before a sexpartite vault was thought of, or else the architect preferred them for æsthetic reasons, and in this case he certainly was right. Double aisles about both nave and choir differentiate the interior of Notre Dame of Paris from that of the average cathedral. The far-stretching aisles of this church compose vistas of unsurpassed picturesqueness and variety of perspective. Some have said that the central nave is not sufficiently wide for such a stretch of lateral aisles, and have found a certain monotony in the clearstory, tribune, and pier arcade being of equal height. Originally, beneath the clearstory were small circular unglassed apertures giving on the rafters over the tribune. Those oculi were done away with during the XIII century, when the clearstory windows were lengthened for the better lighting of the church. During his able restoration of Notre Dame, M. Viollet-le-Duc found hidden under the pavement some of the discarded window frames, and he took the liberty (which many regret) of replacing a few in the bays near the transept, thus marring the uniformity of the interior. Despite the enlargement of the upper windows and the changes made to give more light to the tribunes, none can deny that, in gloomy weather, Notre Dame can be somber and even cavernous. Yet who, of its devotees, would have it different? Supreme cathedral it is for that supremest of hymns, the _Dies Iræ_--sound and sense and vision welded. To exchange its severe majesty for an expanse of brilliant glass--save Suger's glass--is unthinkable. In Notre Dame you comprehend the spectacular repentances of the Middle Ages. Here, when pestilence stalked the city or the enemy was at the gate, have echoed the _Miserere_ and the _Libera nos, Domine_.[72] There is an individuality in the cathedral of Paris that overrides every criticism. Perpetually does the worshiper find in it new aspects, in the dim, low aisles full of mystery, in the gleam of transept windows as seen through the tribune arches while one listens, perhaps, to a lenten friar preacher discoursing of sin, justice, and the judgment to come; here on the very spot where Dominic himself taught the same sobering lessons; here where, six hundred years later, his son, Lacordaire, held the manhood of Paris spellbound. Or, again, one gazes down the length of the church, with its incomparable perspective, while around one rise the voices of strong men fresh from the battle of Verdun, fresh from their firm "They shall not pass," and their _Magnificat_ of thanksgiving to Notre Dame swells in a volume of sound like the eternal sea. The crusaders of St. Louis' time prayed, too, for strength in Notre Dame of Paris.[73] The curve of the sanctuary as seen from the west end of the nave is one of the splendors of the monument, and no chevet ever built surpassed it. The cause of the magic is practical--a structural problem solved, as is the case with the best aspects of Gothic art. At that eastern curve extra piers were inserted between the double aisles in order to obviate the difficulty of vaulting such irregular trapeze-shaped sections. The enthusiast maintains that the exterior of Notre Dame surpasses that of all other cathedrals. Certainly better transept façades were never made nor was apse more romantic than that of the chief church of Paris, as it rises in three grandiose steps, with flying buttresses of wide span leaping with an audacity that fairly catches the breath; and again the success is a case of sound science solving a problem. The west façade is an accepted classic, "an architectural glory of France," irreproachable. Once the intelligence has grasped its pre-eminence, allegiance to it will never waver. The frontispieces of Rheims and of Rouen are richer and may appeal more to the imagination. It is possible that the severe dignity of Paris may even chill at first. But what clarity of plan! Four strong buttresses accentuate the big square parallelogram. Excess of ornamentation has been avoided in order that the whole may stand forth. Lest the two towers might appear to rise abruptly from the massive, some master hand made there the graceful open colonnade.[74] The façade of Notre Dame is true to its epoch in its appeal to the intellect rather than to the emotions. It was built in the golden age of scholasticism, when religion and philosophy went hand in hand, when the teachers in the schools of Paris, the _cité lettré_, the _oeil du monde_, thought that Faith and Reason could give mutual aid one to the other, that the truths of Revelations could coincide with the natural judgment. Scholasticism has been belittled by the modern sophists from the time of the XVIII-century Encyclopædist to the XIX-century superman. Yet scholasticism was an important factor in the formation of the French intellect, which, in its virile youth, it put through a course of useful mental gymnastics. Precisely the race, whose ancestors sharpened their wits in the _Sic-et-Non_ debates of the mediæval schools of Paris, is to-day pre-eminent in precision of language and freedom from fogginess of thought. Easy enough for the modern mind to ridicule the quarrel of generations over nominalism and realism, pursued with the personal heat of a modern political campaign.[75] Certainly the abuse of the scholastic system led to hair-splitting disputes, for the deductive method, when carried to excess, ends in thin subtlety. But why judge a system by its extremes? Because XIV-century architecture grew rigid with set formulas and the abuse of its own laws, does that discredit the virile period to which it succeeded? The bishops who built Notre Dame were notable scholastics. The generations who built cathedrals were impregnated with the certainty that what was Christian was rational. Scholasticism produced St. Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophy has outlived a dozen systems, whose _Summa_ was placed on the assembly table of the Council of Trent, the sole companion of the Scriptures, Aquinas, whose sanity of ethics and doctrine was held up by Leo XIII as the best guide amid current errors. With Aquinas, who taught the inextricable union of Faith and Reason, Christian philosophy reached its zenith.[76] Too long has it been the fashion to look on orthodoxy as a sign of mental inferiority. Professors still dismiss the _Summa_ with a scathing line. They have never opened its pages, perhaps, but second-hand knowledge to vast regions of human thought is no impediment to a chair in the modern university. "Abstractions as repulsive as they are frivolous," is the dictum of a group of present-day French scholars who seem to think that to belittle things mediæval is proof of patriotism. We have looked on at the rehabilitation of certain mediæval saints. It was not so long ago that the poor man of Assisi was patronized as an ignorant fanatic. The appeal of St. Francis is to the emotions, while that of St. Thomas Aquinas is to the intellect, so, perhaps, it is expecting too much to hope that some day the average man may appreciate this thinker who set sane boundaries round the human mind. Too long have the prime sanities of reason been flouted by hazy abstract thinking in the void; too long has man shut his eyes to the fact that a crime of the intellect is of more consequence to mankind than a crime against the civil law; too long has applause been given to philosophers who obliterated the distinctions between right and wrong--like Hegel, teaching the identity of Being and non-Being--so that the very soul of the peoples grew perverted and appalling cataclysms threatened civilization. What the older centuries thought of Aquinas, the painter as well as the poet tells us. In the Louvre hangs Benozzo Gozzoli's picture of the _doctor angelicus_ sitting in luminous repose amid pope, doctors, saints, and the sages of antiquity, and the inscription runs: "_Vere hic est lumen ecclesiæ_." And in Milan hangs Piero della Francesca's profound study of the saint. "I place Plato high," wrote a sound French thinker, "but as I see Aquinas he is as superior to Plato, and even more, than is our knowledge of the physical world to that of the Greeks.... He embraces St. Augustine, Aristotle, and Plato." Often has it been said that a Gothic cathedral is the _Summa_ translated into stone, logical, ordered, interlinked, leaving nothing to chance, a sound skeleton on a sound base, so securely balanced that great windows could be opened on the sky, like flashes of intuitive genius lifting the soul to the infinite. Many were the points by which St. Thomas touched Gothic art in its heyday. He was a student in Cologne when its mighty cathedral was begun. He was in Paris during the years when the transept of Notre Dame was building, and the Sainte-Chapelle and St. Denis' abbatial. By blood he was related to St. Louis, and often was his guest at table, where talk must have turned on that keen interest of the hour--the making of Gothic churches.[77] He was to die (1274) in Cistercian Fossanuova, the first Gothic monument of Italy. And his great work, like many a cathedral, was left unfinished. Never was aspiration toward the infinite more passionate than in that scholastic disputing, commune-winning, cathedral-building, crusading age. The absorbing interest for old and young, for bishop and layman, for king and poor student, was to know God, to know their own souls, to learn how to make life more worthy of God. "In the entire length of France," wrote the archbishop of Sens to the pope, in 1140, "in towns and even in villages, in the schools and outside them, all, even simple people and children, are disputing on the Holy Trinity." Paris became the center of the seething new interest in theology and philosophy. In 1109 Guillaume de Champeaux opened a school of logic on the slopes of St. Geneviève's hill (where to this day reigns Paris University), and soon all Christendom frequented it.[78] His pupil, and later his opponent, was Abélard, brilliant, restless knight-errant of dialectics, whom the modern orthodox student finds to be a forerunner of the new method of biblical criticism rather than a rationalist. In the abbey of St. Victor, whose free classes were founded by Guillaume de Champeaux when harried by Abélard, there gathered a group of mystic scholars and poets: Hugues de St. Victor, the Augustine of his day (d. 1141), whose work on the sacraments was an interlinked system of theology. Lucid in intellect, tender in sentiment, was this friend of St. Bernard, whom Dante places in Paradise with St. Anselm and St. Bonaventure (_Par._, xii: 30); and Hugues' disciple, Richard de St. Victor (d. 1173), ranked in Paradise as the companion of the Venerable Bede and St. Isidore of Seville, "Richard, who in contemplation was more than man" (_Par._, x: 132); and Adam de St. Victor, one of the best poets of the XII century, whose sequences and rimed proses fill the liturgy. Another pupil of the learned Hugues was Pierre Lombard, who died bishop of Paris in 1160; his _Book of Sentences_ became a textbook in European universities for centuries to come. From the cathedral school and the mount of St. Geneviève and St. Victor's cloister[79] evolved the University of Paris, "elder daughter of France," whose title first appears in 1215, the oldest university in Europe with that of Bologna--one the high priestess of theology, the other the leader in canon and civil law. In the XII-century schools of Paris, John of Salisbury met Thomas Becket and Nicholas Breakspear (the English pope, Adrian IV), and there the future Innocent III became the friend of Stephen Langton. By the XIII century over thirty thousand students thronged the colleges in Paris. Aquinas taught in the Dominicans' branch of the university, in which same convent, called the Jacobins, lived the reader of Louis IX, Vincent de Beauvais, whose four _Mirrors_ were depicted in the imagery of the great cathedrals. No age was ever more enamored of encyclopædias. To overclassify was a characteristic of the times which even the great Aquinas could not escape. They say that over five hundred monks, under the guidance of the Dominican cardinal, Hugues de Saint-Cher, were busy in the rue St. Jacques preparing the first concordance of Scriptures. The entire Bible was translated into French in the XIII century. In the Franciscans' branch of the University St. Bonaventure taught. The king's chaplain, Robert de Sorbon, founded a house where poor students could live in common. Canterbury's archbishop, St. Edmund Rich, was a pupil in Paris, then a teacher. Roger Bacon, first to grasp the importance of experimental science, studied there, and so did Robert Grosseteste, builder of Lincoln Cathedral, whom Bacon said excelled all other masters in his range of useful knowledge. The smelting pot of modern society those fecund formative years of the XII and XIII centuries have been called. A life-time's study it would be to draw adequately the picture of the one city of Paris then, when Philippe-Auguste and his grandson, St. Louis, were busy raising their Louvre and their Cité palaces, their Notre Dame, and their Sainte-Chapelle, busy cleaning the city streets and the city laws; when one scholarly bishop succeeded another as slowly rose the capital's cathedral, when lovely Latin hymns poured from St. Victor's abbey, while in the street the students sang the new lays of trouvère and troubadour, telling of "love that is a thing so high," of Roland and the _gestes_ of paladins, of the Celtic heroes, Tristan, Lancelot, and Percival; when all the newly awakened intellectual and art life was astir welding old blood and new, making Frenchmen, at last, of Celt and Latin and Frank, making a kind of commonwealth of the nations that met in universities whose common speech still was Latin.[80] That there were black shadows in the picture, none deny. There were pillages and massacres. It was an agitated day full of tumults and heresies and terrible reprisals. One has only to read the censures of St. Bernard and of Innocent III to learn of the cupidity and the lust. Joinville has told of a sink of corruption lying within a stone's throw of the saint-king's crusading camp. But, above all the lawlessness, the men of those ages of faith aspired. Their acts might fall short; their principles remained sound. "No easy-going doctrines, then, to legitimize vice," says Ozanam. Man knew how to beat his breast in humble repentance. He lifted his eyes toward an ideal so far above himself that it was given his human weakness to build cathedrals such as Notre Dame of the capital. Not so does he build when as superman he sits on a self-raised altar. The virtuous bishop, who had most to do with the erection of the cathedral of Paris, had been a student and later a teacher of scholasticism. Maurice de Sully was born of simple parentage in the village of Sully-sur-Loire, and he came as a poor scholar to the great city. His abilities and the integrity of his conduct won him recognition, and after teaching belles-lettres, he was elected to the see of Paris as the seventy-second successor of St. Denis. From 1160 to 1196 he directed his diocese, a true shepherd whose special care was the training of young priests. Crowds flocked to his sermons, wrote a contemporary. He took an active part on the side of Thomas Becket during the English archbishop's struggle with Henry II, and it was he who consecrated as bishop of Chartres Becket's friend, the intellectual John of Salisbury. To Bishop Maurice, who had baptized him, Philippe-Auguste left the care of the Royal Treasury when he went on the Third Crusade. So wisely did this churchman administer his revenues that he was able to build hospitals and abbeys, as well as erect, in larger part by his personal donations, his own cathedral. The first stone of Notre Dame was laid in 1163, and tradition says that Alexander III officiated in the same month that he dedicated for the Benedictines the new choir of St. Germain-des-Prés; the exiled pontiff resided in France for four years. Though the name of the architect of Notre Dame has not survived, his design was adhered to during a century and a half. A transept was not in his plan; however, a short one was inserted before the nave was laid down. That nave was nearly finished when Bishop Maurice de Sully died, in 1196, leaving large sums, in his testament, for the completion of his beloved church. The two westernmost bays of the nave are not of the bishop-founder's time. Notre Dame, because of interruptions in its construction, presents an irregular alignment, and it is easy to perceive, as one gazes along its vaulting, that its choir slopes toward the north. Archæologists have given up the poetic explanation that the slanting choir was symbolic of the droop of Christ's head on the cross. Nor can the symbol seeker now call the Porte Rouge (an extra door in the north wall of the choir) a souvenir of the spear wound of the Saviour, since if made with such intention it would have been placed below the extended arms of the transept. Three campaigns of work built Notre Dame, and each time that the work was resumed the axis deviated slightly. First rose the choir and a short transept. Then was done the nave, save its westernmost bays. And finally, at the beginning of the XIII century, they undertook the west façade and the two bays behind it. The carving on the pier's capitals shows the gradual advance in sculpture: in the choir they cut the large leaves of water plants which were the first nature models copied when the conventional Byzantine models were discarded. Then, in the nave, the foliage grew richer, and oak and vine and curled-up ferns appeared. Capital by capital should be studied, for their sculpture is masterly. The capitals of the nave's triforium are said to mark the culmination of Gothic art in foliate design. While unity was kept throughout the entire arcade, there was unceasing variation in details. When Bishop Maurice de Sully, the peasant, died, he was succeeded by Bishop Eudes de Sully, the feudal baron, descended from the reigning counts of Champagne, from Louis VII and Aliénor of Aquitaine, and in whose veins ran the blood of William the Conqueror through his daughter Adela. The ability to build was his by inheritance. He began the west façade, and probably at his death all three of the portals were in place. To him we owe that fairest of sculptured entrances, the Virgin's door, under the northwest tower, called "the most beautiful page of stone that the Middle Ages have left us." _Visibile palare_ are Dante's words for such art as this. In the carved tympanum, "Gothic art reached the simple perfection of Phidias." The draperies flow easily; only in the abrupt turning up of the edges of the robes lingers an archaic touch. Below are represented kings and prophets, the ancestors of Mary. Above them is a moving version of the Assumption; and in the upper triangle is the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven by her Divine Son--she, the mortal, turned toward Him, the divinity, with a gesture of adoration. The Christ is the Nazarene, a noble Oriental. No haziness then in their knowledge that the patroness in whose care they placed their cathedrals was a fellow creature. To the common sense of the Middle Ages, it would have seemed a muddle-headed way of thinking to have called Jesus, God, and at the same time to have refused homage to His Mother, the one whom God chose to honor above all mortals, "she who didst so ennoble human nature that its own Maker scorned not to become its making."[81] It was only logical, they thought, that the best advocate with the son should be the mother. "All of us who fear the wrath of the Judge, fly to the Judge's mother," wrote Abélard. "_Que Dieu nous l'octroie par la prière de sa douce mère_," wrote the crusader Joinville. So, without worrying over future carpers who might murmur "Mariolatry," the Middle Ages chanted "_Laus Deo et Beatæ Mariæ laudum_." And the cathedral of Paris dared to dedicate four of its six doors to the Queen of Heaven. The door under the southwest tower commemorates St. Anne, the Blessed Virgin's mother. It is a composite work, carved in Bishop Maurice's time, between 1160 and 1170, but not set up here till Bishop Eudes de Sully had undertaken the façade; in its tympanum are representations both of Louis VII and of Maurice de Sully. St. Anne's door was a link between the still archaic western doors of Chartres and the clearly enunciated Gothic portal under the northwest tower of Paris Cathedral. In the multitudinous folds of the draperies is Byzantine feeling, and sacerdotal is the Madonna who gravely presents her son to be adored. By the middle of the XIII century, the Madonna had become a natural mother, and so she is sculptured at the north entrance to Notre Dame's transept. Bishop Eudes de Sully, like his predecessor, had many a link with scholasticism and with other bishop-builders. He had been fellow student in Paris with the future Innocent III, and that expert in men when pope called on his aid to find capable occupants for the French sees. Eudes' own brother Henry was the archbishop of Bourges who initiated the new cathedral there; and when his brother died, Eudes assisted in placing in his see the saintly Guillaume, who built the chevet of Bourges. Through Eudes de Sully, the bishop-builder of Rheims Cathedral, Albéric de Humbert, was elected, and he also helped to elect Bishop Hervé, who began the cathedral of Troyes. Able men ever found a protector in the capable bishop of Paris, whose strict sense of duty was incorruptible. When Philippe-Auguste, his near kinsman, broke the marriage law, Bishop Eudes went into exile rather than sanction the scandal. To him Innocent III sent St. Jean de Matha, that the prelate might draw up a Rule for the new Order of Trinitarians, established to redeem captives from Islam. It was Eudes de Sully who founded, in 1204, the abbey of Port Royal, a name to become of note in French letters. The bishop of Paris from 1208 to 1219 was Pierre de Nemours, one of four brothers who were bishop-builders, at Paris, at Noyon, at Châlons, and at Meaux. He died a crusader under the walls of Damietta. Scarcely a cathedral but has its crusade memory. The façade of Notre Dame had almost reached the crowning open arcade when the scholarly Guillaume de Seignelay was transferred to the see of Paris from Auxerre where he had begun the Gothic cathedral. The _galerie des rois_, whose date is about 1223, was no doubt his work. Such galleries are found only in cathedrals in the royal domain, and it is just as likely that they honor the kings of France as the kings of Judea as some maintain. The majority of the larger statues of Paris Cathedral are restitutions. Viollet-le-Duc had an English sculptor, George Frampton, make the gargoyles and grotesques of Notre Dame, since the Revolution wrecked most of the exterior sculpture. Still another noted scholastic, Guillaume d'Auvergne (1228-29), was to rule the see of Paris while its chief church was building. He finished the northwest tower, which differed slightly in size and details from that to the south; across the face of the former are ten statues, whereas nine only are set before its companion tower. Perhaps a change of architects caused the disparity, or it may be that when the houses were cleared away for the erection of the north tower, more space was available. Bishop Guillaume d'Auvergne's writings show him to have been one of the most original thinkers in the XIII century, a theologian, a philosopher, a mathematician, and one versed in Arab and in Greek literature. He became for St. Louis a kind of prime minister in ecclesiastical business, and, like the king, he founded hospitals and houses of charity. There is a charming page in Joinville's reminiscences concerning this able man. A priest expressed his doubts to him on the Eucharist. Bishop Guillaume asked if he tried to resist the temptations, and he replied that he did so with all his force. "Now I," said the good bishop, "have not a single doubt about the Real Presence. I am like the fortress of Montleheri, safe in the heart of France, far from the danger line; but you, who fight unceasingly, are like the king's fortress of Rochelle in Poitou, on the frontier. Now, of us two, whom will the king most honor for guarding his fortresses?" Peasant and prince, crusader and scholar, humanist and mathematician, men of exemplary lives, born rulers and guides, such were the builders of Notre Dame of Paris, and their ability and sincerity live eternally in their work.[82] They gave free wing to the soul in raising their great church, while they cheerfully accepted the human law of working within limits. No cathedral in France shows more clearly the relation between builders and building, more clearly vindicates the ideals of its age. The partisan historian may cite his instances to prove that the religion of that age was superstitious. While Notre Dame stands, such charges are refuted. It is a historical document as potent for the vindication of the truth as the _Divina Commedia_ itself. When Bishop Guillaume d'Auvergne had finished the towers of Notre Dame he caused to be made the open arcade from which they emerge, as from a royal peristyle. About the same time side chapels were inserted between the buttresses, and the line of small rose windows, which had hitherto marked the triforium story, was done away with, in order that the clearstory windows might be lengthened. Only step by step were the builders learning that they might open the entire space between the active members of a Gothic structure; the upper windows of Chartres had passed on the lesson to Paris. The plan of the first architect was adhered to throughout, and since the later masters-of-works were likewise natives of the Ile-de-France and innate in them a classic restraint and a hardy daring (the hall-mark of the best Parisian art to this day), the cathedral of Paris was homogeneous. Midway in the XIII century Jean de Chelles, a precursor of Rayonnant Gothic, lengthened the transept arms by a bay and finished them with admirable façades. His name, and the date 1257, are cut on the foundation stone of the south façade. The sculpture of that southern entrance honors St. Stephen, since on the site had once stood a church dedicated to the first martyr; the tympanum of the door is another _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Notre Dame. Jean de Chelles was the first to use perforated gables. It is thought that on the north façade worked Pierre de Montereau, the architect of St. Denis. As the XIII century merged in the XIV Pierre de Chelles, probably a son of Jean, directed the making of the apse chapels and the superb flying buttresses which leap unhesitatingly over chapels and aisle and tribune gallery. He added the big tribune windows with gables. The classic restraint which is the leading quality of Notre Dame was never poverty. Sculpture was lavish where it should be. At the portals the Scriptures were set forth in detail and saints were held up for the edification of the people. The signs of the zodiac were carved, as well as the personification of the seasons and the months. Pinnacle and parapet were weighted with winged beast or demon, and the useful water spouts, or gargoyles, were chiseled as crabbed images. However, one should always remember, in climbing the towers of Notre Dame, that most of the present stone monsters are modern, and it is one of the weaknesses of the restorer to overemphasize the grotesque in the art of the Middle Ages. A strange world of fabulous creatures dwell on the roof of Our Lady's church--conceptions that are half terrible and half fantastic, imaginations that are survivals of the old pagan superstitions which Christianity could not wholly extirpate. The XII and XIII centuries were not so far removed in time from the invasions of the northern Barbarians, and the Church made concessions to primitive inheritances. Artists were allowed to carve on roof or pinnacle the chimeras and vampires which through long centuries had haunted the imagination of their ancestors, provided that they expounded the truths of Christian doctrine in such principal places as portals, façades, and choir screens. Might not a mocking grotesque beside an angel be taken as emblem of the external antagonism of the animal and the spirit in man? The choir screen of Notre Dame of Paris is sculptured with the apparitions of the risen Lord, from Easter Day to the Ascension. "If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain."[83] The cathedral of Paris during the first centuries of its existence was the setting of many national scenes. Here the kings of France deposited their crown and renewed their vow to be just fathers of their people. Before its altar their newborn heir was blessed. In 1182 the main altar of Notre Dame was consecrated, and three years later the patriarch of Jerusalem preached from it the Third Crusade. On the eve of both his crusades St. Louis prayed here, and in 1270, when his remains were brought back from Tunis, they rested in Notre Dame for a solemn night of chanted mourning. In Notre Dame the Duke of Bedford had his nephew, Henry VI of England, crowned as king of France. Factional hate and a foreign enemy in control caused a _Te Deum_ of rejoicing to be sung in this, the most national of French cathedrals, when the news came that Jeanne the Maid had been taken prisoner before Compiègne, in 1429, but solemn reparation was made in 1456, when, in the presence of Jeanne's mother and brothers, the bishop of Paris (a Norman, and brother of the poet Alain Chartier) opened in Notre Dame the inquest that was to lead to the Rehabilitation of the heroine of Orleans. To the hidden places over the vaults of Notre Dame fled the illustrious chancellor of Paris University, Gerson, to whom during two centuries was attributed the _Imitation of Christ_. In 1407 he had reprobated the murder of the Duke of Orléans (builder of Pierrefonds) by the Duke of Burgundy (of the regal Dijon tomb), and the mob rose and sacked his house. It is said that for months Gerson lay concealed in Notre Dame, alone with his books, and given over to prayer and meditation. The present stained glass in Notre Dame is modern, save for the north, south, and west rose windows, the trilogy of light usually found in big cathedrals. The roses of the transept belong to the Paris school which led in the art of glassmaking during the second half of the XIII century. So large were the spaces then to be filled that the scrupulous patience of the St. Denis craftsmen was no longer possible. Backgrounds had to be made quickly by bold, simple trellis designs, and as the most frequent background was a red trellis on a blue field, and the juxtaposition of red and blue makes violet, in too many of the windows of that period prevails a melancholy purplish hue. Originally the choir of Notre Dame boasted some glass given by Abbot Suger himself to the preceding Romanesque cathedral. In the XVIII century, those over-confident _gens de goût_, the cathedral canons, whose taste admitted only the neo-classic, substituted uncolored glass for the ancient windows. They say that when the workmen were removing Suger's priceless glass, they were dumfounded by its deep, ineffable blue.[84] Many a treasure of Notre Dame was destroyed by the Revolution, and the church itself was put up for sale and escaped demolition by merest chance. It served as Temple of Reason, as warehouse, as fête hall. Again, during the Commune, in 1871, for the purpose of destroying it, chairs were piled high in the choir and set on fire, but brave men broke in the doors and extinguished the flames. Early in the World War, in 1914, a German airship dropped a bomb on Notre Dame which pierced the roof of the transept's northern arm. THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE[85] Li cuers doit estre semblans à l'encensier, Tous clos envers la terre et overs vers le ciel. --(Old song of the Middle Ages). On the same isle in the Seine with Notre Dame stands the Sainte-Chapelle, the reliquary of stone and jeweled glass which the saint-king had made to enshrine the Crown of Thorns redeemed from Constantinople. To-day it is a body without a soul, as the revered crown is kept in the treasury of Notre Dame, and until a memorial service during the World War, Mass had not been said in the _reliquaire de souvenirs_ for fifteen years. The chapel, which was connected with the king's palace, was begun in 1246 and dedicated in 1248. "It was," said one who knew St. Louis well, "the king's citadel against the adverses of the world." He would rise at midnight to pass into the chapel for the singing of matins. "Into this shrine Louis IX put all the memories of his crusading ancestors, all the hues of the Orient. It was his vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem." The walls were rich with gold and color. The present polychromatic decorations of the walls are a deplorable modern experiment. Fifteen splendid windows told the Bible story in a thousand small medallions; ninety-one scenes related Genesis; one hundred and twenty-one gave Exodus. A window on the south side told the True Cross story, and the three central windows were devoted to the lives of the Saviour and John the Baptist. The western rose was added during the Flamboyant Gothic revival following the expulsion of the English invaders. The making of the vast windows of the Sainte-Chapelle raised Paris to the leadership of the vitrine industry during the second half of the XIII century. Of that school are windows in the cathedrals of Angers and Clermont, and Soissons' western rose. Though of splendid effect, such windows do not equal those of the preceding hundred years, when Chartres and St. Denis led. The borders round each medallion had now become mere zigzags, since expedition was required for the glazing of enormous spaces. The Sainte-Chapelle, as Gothic science, could be carried no farther without violating its own laws and becoming what an English critic said of the late-Gothic of France, "all muscle and glass." Everywhere was the ascending line accentuated; over the windows are some of the earliest gables extant. They break the horizontal band of the balustrade above, and serve structurally as weights on the longitudinal wall arches. Perhaps it was because the architect felt he was overemphasizing the ascending line that he interrupted the soar of the columns marking the chapel walls, by placing against each shaft the amply draped statue of an apostle--the twelve pillars of the Church. To-day only the forth and fifth statues on the north side are originals; there are merely ancient fragments in the other images. For some time it was thought that the Sainte-Chapelle was the work of Pierre de Montereau, the king's own architect. A newly discovered record proves that he designed St. Denis' abbatial, which shows, however, no family likeness with the chapel of the Cité palace. Now, that chapel does display a certain likeness to the façades of Notre Dame's transept, and it has been suggested that Jean de Chelles, who designed the transept, was the architect of the Sainte-Chapelle. ST. JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE[86] La France est l'homme, Paris est le coeur. --HENRY IV. Close to the Seine, under the hill of St. Geneviève, stands a small contemporary of the choir of Notre Dame, St. Julien-le-Pauvre, built by the Cistercians of Longpont, about 1180, and claiming as its patrons three saints of the same name, St. Julian, martyr, St. Julian, bishop of Le Mans, and a humble St. Julian who had founded a hospice for pilgrims by the Seine and used to help the poor across the river. It is said that a leper whom he was piloting over vanished in midstream, whereupon the people said it had been the Lord himself come to test the holy man's charity. The western bays of St. Julien-le-Pauvre have been demolished and all that remains intact of the Primary Gothic church are the choir, with three apsidal chapels, the side aisles' vaulting, and the columns against the side walls. The same sculptor who worked at Notre Dame made the virile capitals of this little church. St. Julien to-day is used by the Greek-Melchite rite of Roman Catholics. It long was the patron church of letters and science, and every year from its altar started the procession of the University of Paris to the fair at St. Denis called Lendit, for the solemn purchase of a twelve months' supply of parchment. The rector of the university led the throng, and so vast was the concourse of students that the head of the procession was in St. Denis' abbatial before the rear ranks had quitted St. Julien-le-Pauvre. For four hundred years Paris University elected its rector in this little church, and tradition says that Dante prayed here when he crossed the Alps in 1304. In his imagination was then surging his mighty poem, and the men of France have pictured him pausing to muse over the images of Hell at their own cathedral doors. The great exile of Florence was himself the purest product of scholasticism, as impassioned as were the cathedral builders for theology and philosophy, for symmetry and rhythm and the mysterious beauty of numbers. The _Divina Commedia_ was a poetic _Summa_. ST. GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS, ST. MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS, AND ST. PIERRE-DE-MONTMARTRE[87] Ces vénérables bénédictines dont la science n'était égalée que par leur modestie--F. BRUNETIÈRE. There are in Paris three abbey churches that show steps in the transition to Gothic art: St. Germain of the meadows, St. Martin in the fields, and St. Peter's church on the martyr's hill, names that keep alive early Christian traditions--the first bishop and martyr of Paris, St. Peter whom always "the eldest daughter of the Church" was glad to honor; St. Martin, first beloved of the apostles of Gaul, and Bishop Germain (d. 576) who founded outside the city walls the abbey called later by his name, and who helped to Christianize the new Frankish conquerors. So disinterested was he that, to feed the poor, he sold a horse given him by the king; whether riding or walking, the saint-bishop ever went in prayer. The present church of St. Germain-des-Prés has a tower that in part predates the year 1000; it was erected by an abbot who ruled from 990 to 1014, and shows the small stones used at that period. The nave and transept, finished before the XI century closed, under a bishop of Paris who was uncle of Godfrey de Bouillon, comprise the only remaining Romanesque work in the capital. Twice in the XII century the choir was reconstructed by the monks, first about 1125, and at the same time the ancient tower's upper story was built; and again, after Suger, in 1144, had demonstrated the superiority of Gothic vaulting. St. Germain's abbot wrote, in 1163, that he had repaired his church in a new fashion. In the ambulatory the round and the pointed arch appeared side by side, and the groin vault was used simultaneously with the diagonals. The capitals were altogether Romanesque, since sculpture changed less swiftly than construction in those transitional years. Perhaps the new choir of St. Germain was not wholly finished when Pope Alexander III dedicated it in 1163, the year that the foundation stone of Notre Dame was laid. The choir's triforium arches were cut off, later, to lengthen the clearstory windows, and the nave has been revaulted. In the abbey inclosure a Sainte-Chapelle, a cloister, and a refectory were built by Pierre de Montereau; he and his wife, Agnes, were buried in the chapel. Fragments of his work have been collected in the small garden beneath the Carolingian tower of the abbatial, as well as in the gardens of the Musée Cluny.[88] The Revolution entirely wrecked the monk's quarters. St. Germain-des-Prés, in popular speech, was _The Abbey_. Here gathered the learned men of Paris for mental stimulus. In its priceless library, destroyed by the Revolution, worked those famous scholars Dom Luc d'Achery (d. 1685), Dom Mabillon (d. 1707), and Dom Rivet (d. 1749), whose tireless patience and scrupulous respect for historical truth made the name Benedictine a synonym for "savant." Three monumental works were begun by the XVII-century reformers who renewed the love of letters in the leading monastic houses of France: the _Acta Sanctorum_; the annals of the Benedictine Order; and that pride of French letters, the _Histoire Littéraire de la France_, which to-day the Institute of France is continuing. "_Gros livres inutiles_," Voltaire glibly called the invaluable books which for the modern school of mediæval archæology have made flesh-and-blood men of the old prelate-builders of cathedrals. The parts which have survived of that other notable Benedictine establishment in Paris, St. Martin-des-Champs, are now comprised in the _Arts et Métiers_ establishment. Affiliated with great Cluny, St. Martin's priory was as like it, said Peter the Venerable, as seal is like signet. To-day in the ancient church is installed an exhibit of machinery. The beautiful hall, once the monks' refectory, and now a technical library, is thought to be the work of Pierre de Montereau. The slender pillars dividing it into two aisles, the well-carved capitals, the elaborate keystones, and the portal's foliage all belong to the golden hour of the national art. For the student it is the choir of the church (c. 1135), built by the prior who surrounded the monastery lands with walls (1130-40), which is of chief interest, for in it were taken marked strides in the advance of Gothic structure. Here first was attempted a double ambulatory, an idea which Suger within a few years was to carry out in its fulfillment at St. Denis. The Lady chapel, a lobed half dome--the sacred trefoil--developed further the ribbed apse first found at Bury (c. 1125); here the ribs are structural, not merely decorative. Like other monuments of the transitional hour, St. Martin used simultaneously intersecting ribs and groins, round and pointed arches. Its XIII-century nave was never vaulted. The third monument of the capital which shows other stumbling first steps of the national art is the little church of St. Pierre under the towering new basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.[89] Till the XII century there stood on the site of St. Pierre a church dedicated to St. Denis, for tradition said that the first martyr of Paris had here been interred until his relics were removed to the new abbey of St. Denis on the Roman road outside Paris. In the crypt, by St. Peter's, on Montmartre, it is said that the earliest Christians of the region held their rites. And to that hallowed spot has come many a soul to beseech enlightenment on the eve of some projected good work. Here, in 1534, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and the first Jesuits passed a night in prayer and vowed themselves to God's service. Here came St. Francis de Sales before founding the Visitation Order, St. Vincent de Paul before founding the Lazarists, and M. Olier before he organized St. Sulpice. Ursulines and Carmelites also have memories with St. Pierre-de-Montmartre. A Benedictine priory was installed here by Louis VI and his queen, Adelaide, niece of Pope Calixtus II of the Capetian house of Burgundy. They began the present church as Romanesque, but soon the new system of vaulting was employed. Slowly but consecutively throughout the XII century St. Peter's church was built. Its oldest Gothic vault is the one over the section of the choir preceding the apse; the stout ribs have profiles like those which Abbot Suger was making about that same time in the forechurch of his abbatial. The solemn dedication of St. Pierre-de-Montmartre took place in 1147 with Pope Eugene III officiating and St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable acting as deacon and subdeacon. Since the rebuilding of the apse, at the end of the XII century, numerous reconstructions have gone on in order to preserve the revered church.[90] ST. LOUIS AND JOINVILLE[91] Je dis que droit est mort et loyauté éteinte Quand le bon roi est mort, la créature sainte, A qui se pourront désormais les pauvres gens clamer Quand le bon roy est mort qui tant les sut aimer? --REGRES DU ROY LOEYS. The greatest glory of the Middle Ages was the saint-king himself. He was essentially of his epoch both in his love of theology and his enthusiasm for building. Under his grandfather, Philippe-Auguste, most of the Gothic cathedrals of France were begun. The majority of them continued building under Louis IX. In his reign Beauvais Cathedral was started, that of Meaux rebuilt, as was also St. Denis' cathedral-like abbatial. There rose now a host of lesser Gothic edifices, such as the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, the synodal hall at Sens, and the hospital hall at Ourscamp. "And as a writer who has made his book, illuminating it with gold and azure, so our king illuminated his kingdom with the beautiful abbeys he built," wrote his friend Joinville. All too many of his abbatials have been swept away--Royaumont,[92] built with the proceeds from his father's jewels, where Louis IX had worked side by side with the masons, where he had passed his saddest hours, for in its church was laid to rest his promising eldest son, whose beautiful tomb now is harbored at St. Denis. Gone, too, is Maubuisson Abbey, where was buried his mother, Blanche of Castile. Her bronze tomb was melted up and made into cannon during the Revolution, but one knows that the something high and Spanish in Blanche (whom her contemporaries compared to stag and eagle) would have preferred a cannon to the copper pennies into which were transmuted all too many of the ancient tombs. The mother of St. Louis was a woman cast in a heroic mold, daughter of that Spanish king who at Las Navas de Toloso saved Europe from an avalanche of 400,000 Mussulmans and granddaughter of art-loving Aliénor of Aquitaine and Henry II, Plantagenet. The prudence of Blanche of Castile saved the kingdom for her son against the insurgent barons of France. She hastened to have him crowned at Rheims, in 1226, in the same year that St. Francis died, in Italy. It is said that the lad of twelve held up firmly the sword of the Emperor Charlemagne, whose blood ran in his veins. The barons tried to kidnap the young king from his mother, and when he escaped the snare and rode back to Paris all the countryside poured out to bless him. Years later he told Joinville it was from that hour he dedicated himself to the welfare of his people. In 1234, at twenty, he was married in Sens Cathedral to a princess of the cultivated house of Provence; Dante has a line for the daughters of Raymond Berenger IV, patron of the troubadours: "Four daughters had he and each a queen."[93] Marguerite of Provence was somewhat overridden by the stronger personality of Blanche, her mother-in-law. For his valiant mother, Louis IX retained always a passionate admiration. On his first crusade he left his kingdom in her charge, which, however, he did not do for his queen, when he last went crusading. He had seen her sister, on the throne of England, tamper with that country's interests for the advancement of her own family, and he recognized in his Marguerite a strain of the same intriguing. She could rise to her lord's level, however, and was his faithful lifelong companion. A sublime word of hers has come down to us: they were sailing back to France after four years' sojourn in Palestine; off Cyprus the ship was well-nigh wrecked, and an attendant rushed to ask if he should awaken the royal children. "No," cried the queen, "let them go to God in their sleep." That a king whose forebears had fought in all the crusades should, in his turn, strike a blow for Christendom, was inevitable. Jerusalem had fallen in 1244, and the instinct of Europe felt the menace of the Mongol advance from the East. Was not the fate of Spain close at hand to prove the possibility of Oriental invasion? So St. Louis took the crusader's vow, and with him went the turbulent lords whose departure gave France some needed years of peace. He had in vain tried to negotiate peace between Papacy and Empire, in whose protracted duel he remained neutral. In Cyprus, in 1248, the crusaders paused before descending on Egypt, and there St. Louis and Joinville drew together. The hereditary seneschal of Champagne was a very great lord, his mother being of Burgundy's Capetian line, and his Joinville forebears notable crusaders.[94] The contingent which he provided for the holy wars consisted of nine knights and seven hundred men, but because of the long winter's halt in Cyprus he found himself in straits to meet their expenses. Louis IX, ten years his senior, came to his aid, although the ruler of Champagne and not the king of France was Joinville's suzerain. Side by side the two friends went through the disastrous campaign in Egypt--the delayed march on Cairo, which ended in Mansourah's defeat. Together they shared imprisonment, and the king's elevation of soul won the Mussulmans' respect. Then, their ransom paid, they sailed together for Palestine, and there, in the daily intimacy of years, the affection of these two loyal knights struck deep root. To Joinville the king intrusted his wife and children in the perilous overland journey in Syria, before they embarked for France. When, in 1254, Louis IX came back from the East, he gave himself up for fifteen years to his country's welfare, "the most conscientious man who ever sat on a throne," touched to the core by that divine unrest which is man's highest faculty and does lasting work for God, revered by the "little people of the Lord" as their champion for justice and social progress. "_Il est en doulce France un bon roy Loeys_," sang the minstrels then. Never did king love more _la doulce France_ and prove it more conclusively. Justice was inherent in him. A most sensitive feeling of duty ruled his every act. Yet he knew how to mete out deserved punishment unflinchingly. From his shrewd and capable grandfather, so little of a saint, he had learned that no one could govern well who could not refuse as well as grant. That Louis IX understood his age is shown in his dealings with the feudal system. He made no attempt to destroy it, which would then have been impossible, and, moreover, his respect for the rights of others always kept him from extreme measures; but he regulated its excesses, knowing that organized anarchy could be broken only by organized laws. One of the best laws he passed was that of the _quarantaine-le-roy_, which forbade any baron to wage war on his fellows without a notice of forty days. The king favored the written law to offset the law of custom, on which feudal abuses were based. During a generation he had his agents all over France collect old laws and customs--Roman law, canon law, feudal privileges, and from their composite mass was created the great code called the _Établissements de St. Louis_. He substituted jurisprudence by inquest, and witnesses for that by force, and he made a supreme court by instituting the right of appeal. Admirable were some of his treaties such as that which made the Pyrenees the natural boundary between Spain and France. His reform of the coinage was another link of unity for France. In Paris he organized a police, protected commerce by regulations, put an end to the selling of magistratures, and he began, there, the library which to-day is the richest in Europe. In the garden of the Cité and under the oaks of Vincennes, the king held open courts of justice, and when his youngest brother, Charles d'Anjou,[95] tried to browbeat one of lesser rank, the king gave a legal councilor to the poor knight who won the case against the prince. Louis IX's very enemies chose him as arbiter. Little wonder that the people of France have sung of him: Ha! le bon Roy! Simples, ignorans supportait Pauvres, mendians confortait, Observant de Jhusys la foi, Redoutant Dieu-- Ha! le bon Roy! Joinville has drawn for all time the picture of the years between the saint-king's two crusades, a golden age, if ever there was one. The friendship begun during their years of Syrian comradeship continued, and the seneschal often came up to Paris. It was he who arranged the marriage of the king's daughter with his own suzerain, the son of Thibaut IV, the song maker, in whose court of Champagne Joinville had acquired his delightful mode of speech. Then, again, came the call of the East. Jaffa and Antioch had fallen to Islam, and the condition of the Oriental Christians was heartrending. Louis IX could not resist their cry for aid. In 1270, twenty-two years after his first departure from Aigues-Mortes, the king sailed again from that half-finished fort by the dead waters. Joinville was not with him, for he was needed by his "little people," an excuse which his friend acknowledged. The crusaders had scarcely landed on the coast of Africa when plague struck them down. First died Tristan, the son born to St. Louis in the sorrowful, earlier days in Egypt. Then the saint-king himself passed away; and on his lips was the prayer that his race might learn to despise the prosperity of this world and not to fear adversity, and that France might never deny the name of Christ. The night before he died they heard him singing, "_Nous irons en Jerusalem_," the holy city he had never seen, the aspiration, the magic name that stirred those strong generations.[96] Before the century closed the Church canonized him. "House of France," announced the pope, "rejoice to have given the world so great a prince, and to heaven so great a saint. People of France, rejoice to have had so great a king." "If ever the golden age of the good old times existed," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "it certainly was under St. Louis, and it is by the pen of Joinville that it exists for us. They believed then in their king, they believed above all in their God, as if God were present in the smallest occurrences of daily life." In the _Histoire de St. Louis_ by Jean, sire de Joinville, there is not a mawkish note, and considering what happens to too many saints in their biographies, it must be acknowledged that the seneschal accomplished a feat. As depicted by his contemporaries, Louis IX is so convincingly himself that later efforts to stereotype him as the sacristan's ideal of piety have failed. His "pleasant manner of speech seasoned with wit" had nothing of the prig in it. From his childhood to his deathbed of ashes in ancient Carthage (birthplace of his favorite Augustine), St. Louis possessed a direct personal touch with God. "_Beau Sire Dieu, garde-moi mes gens!_" he rose at night to petition with insistent outstretched arms when, in Egypt, the "Greek fire" was hurled into the Christian camp. And Joinville, who had a wholesome dread of the Saracens' projectiles, turned to rest, feeling secure while such prayers were beseeching Heaven. Louis IX was a tireless student of the Bible and works of the Church Fathers. He had a passion for the liturgy. The number of hours which he spent in prayer has roused the sarcasm of our indifferent generation. His hours before the Tabernacle bore fruit in deeds. His temper was naturally quick, and he had a keen sense of irony, but his friend, the seneschal, was able to bear witness, at his canonization process, that in an intimacy of over twenty years never had he heard a word of disparagement of others fall from the king's lips. "There was something in the mere sight of him that found a way to the heart and affections," wrote one who knew him; "the eyes of a dove," said another. "He seemed pierced to the heart with pity for the unfortunate," wrote Queen Marguerite's chaplain who had daily intercourse with him. An observant Italian who saw the king on his way to his first crusade described the something of rare refinement and grace in his bearing. Not a touch of self-consciousness was in Louis; barefooted, in a white tunic, he carried the Crown of Thorns through the streets of Paris. In his sublime other-worldliness, he bathed the feet of beggars, dressed the sores of lepers, and when he felt that his soul needed it he scourged himself. And at the same time he was a model of knightly prowess, who many a time had fought For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens.[97] At the battle of Mansourah, Joinville saw the king, "the most beautiful of men," to his eyes, fair, gallant, in stature head and shoulders above those around him, defend himself alone with great slashing sword cuts from the onslaught of six paynims. He was a true _prud'homme_, a name for which he had a weakness, for to be a _prud'homme_ meant to be a knight, not only bodily, but in one's soul. Side by side with his other-worldliness went a sound practical sense. When his son-in-law, Thibaut V of Champagne, gave overgenerously to a monastery in Provins, all the while that he was in debt, St. Louis asked him was it fair to bestow alms with other people's money. His personal tastes were unostentatious, but he held court sumptuously when the occasion required, and he advised his lords to dress well so that their wives would love them better. He was ever human; when word came to him in Palestine that the mother he adored had died in France, he shut himself away from sympathy for two days, then sent for the friend he loved best. As Joinville approached, the king opened his arms to him with the cry, "Ah, seneschal, I have lost my mother!" Joinville has recounted a scene which took place between him and his friend, that is one of the fairest things in literature, slight episode though it is. In council, in Palestine, the barons urged the king to return to France. Almost alone, Joinville held out against such a course while their retainers were still unredeemed from captivity. For he remembered how a knight of his family had admonished him: "You are going beyond the seas. Be careful how you come back. For no knight, rich or poor, can return an honored man if he leaves in Saracen hands the humble folk of Our Lord with whom he started forth." The king listened in silence at the council, and in silence sat through the banquet that followed, paying no heed to Joinville, who was placed by his side. The seneschal, saddened by what he thought to be his friend's displeasure, was standing alone, leaning against a casement, thinking that when the others returned to France, he would join the Prince of Antioch, his cousin, till another crusade came to deliver the "little people of the Lord" unransomed still in Egypt. As he leaned against the window bars he felt friendly arms laid about his shoulders: "Have done, Monseigneur," he cried, thinking it was one of the barons come to mock him, "leave me in peace." Then the loving hands slipped over his face and he recognized the emerald ring worn by the king. The dear words of mock reproach: "What you, the youngest, dare advise me against all the great and the wise men of France? Tell me, you think I would do wrong in leaving?" Then sturdy Joinville, who paints his friend, too, by the confession, "Never did I lie to him," made answer, "Yes, Sire, as God is my aid." "And if I stay, will you stay?" asked the king. The bloom of the exquisite moment has come to us across the dividing centuries because Joinville was not thinking of making a book when he wrote his reminiscences. His object was to have others understand the gracious distinction, the tender familiarity with him of this king-crusader whom he loved and who loved him. Written artlessly, and in entire good faith, his book is full of that indefinable quality called charm. The seneschal's honest heart is in its infinitely precious pages. In that other early monument of French prose, the grave Villehardouin rises to the historian's plane in depicting the Fourth Crusade. Joinville cannot be said to have taken in the Sixth Crusade as a whole; he muddles the battle scenes; he digresses to right and to left in idle details, then catches himself up with happy ease, as if saying, "Dear me! I forgot to mention," imparting to his chronicle an inimitable quality all its own. No one would have Joinville different. Amiable, jocund, unaffected, the soul of honor, candor itself, he does not fear to acknowledge that he could tremble with fright in battle despite his stalwart six feet and over. He beguiled his captivity by trying to convert a Mohammedan by highly colored descriptions of hell. He whiled away the long hours in Syria in composing a treatise of theology, a _Credo_, wherein he warns every _prud'homme_ to hold on to God with both arms lest that felon, the devil, come between. And the two arms by which a man was to hold on to God were Faith and Good Works. "You must have both, if you wish to keep God: one without the other is worthless," warns the young seneschal. No quibbling then! Joinville had also that quality which the French term _enjouement_, hard to translate, a playful, most lovable frankness, a mocking vivacity which was for St. Louis a source of relaxation. The king loved conversation; he thought there was no book so good as _quolibet_, or say what you please. Some Armenian pilgrims besought of the seneschal a glimpse of the saint-king. Joinville came merrily to tell his friend, warning him that he, the seneschal, was not yet prepared to kiss his bones. And the king laughed, too, but because he knew it would give the devout Armenians pleasure, he accorded them an interview. Stroke by stroke, Joinville filled in the picture of Louis IX, and all the while he unconsciously paints himself as well. He is so eager to make you love his hero that you learn to love himself. A tear is always close to the eye in reading Joinville, not that what he relates is sad, but because this story of a high soul, written by his loyal friend, touches things that lie deep in all true hearts. Joinville was to survive his friend for half a century. He died in 1317. With a character ripened by six years of intimacy with the _bon saint-homme roy_, he came back from the East and set himself to work for his people's welfare, the "little people of the Lord" by whom he had stood in their hour of need. He was then but thirty. In his old age he was the accepted arbiter of good taste, admired as the last of a generation of courtesy. When over ninety, this vigorous old crusader rode into Flanders on a military expedition for the crown. He had seen the reigns of six French kings and the passing away of the crusader's spirit. He had seen his own Champagne become a part of the royal domain, when the heiress Jeanne was married to the grandson of St. Louis. And it was at the bidding of that queen of Philippe-le-Bel that Joinville wrote down his memories of Louis IX. France has high advocates to plead for her before the Throne in hours of national peril. Jeanne d'Arc said that she saw St. Louis petitioning God in the dire hour of foreign invasion. "May they never deny Thy name," prayed the saint-king at Tunis, as he rendered "his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, under whose colors he had fought so long." And in the men of 1914-18, true _prud'hommes_ after the heart of St. Louis and his dear friend Joinville, stirred the crusader blood of their ancestors. THE COLLEGIATE OF MANTES[98] The king was very well built, of easy bearing and smiling countenance, bald, high-colored, a great eater and drinker. Toward his friends he was most generous; toward those who displeased him he was very firm; in his designs he was foresighted and tenacious, very catholic in his beliefs, and he judged rapidly and with great perspicacity. Easy to arouse, he was also easy to appease. Upon the great who disobeyed him he was hard, and he enjoyed sowing discord among them, and to make use of the little people in his purposes.--Portrait of Philippe-Auguste by a canon of St. Martin, Tours. [Illustration: _Notre Dame of Mantes (1160-1200). The Contemporary of Paris Cathedral_] From Paris can best be visited the cathedral-like collegiate at Mantes on the Seine to the east, and the cathedral of Meaux on the Marne to the west. Mantes-la-Jolie, the "well-beloved" city of Philippe-Auguste, and where he died in 1223, is set picturesquely above the Seine, in whose widened course are wooded islands. From the bridge crossing the river[99] may be had the best view of the town. The collegiate church of Notre Dame stands above the houses of the pleasant little city, in the high-shouldered way of many a French church. Happily, it has never been reconstructed. It has various traits in common with Notre Dame of Paris, and some think that the same architect planned both. Mantes' Primary Gothic church was begun about 1160, at the same time as the cathedral in the capital, but, being on a lesser scale, it was finished sooner, and thus appears more archaic. Normandy's Romanesque zigzag ornamentation was still retained, and the cells of certain vault sections show the hesitating rough work of masons as yet unpracticed. While the transverse arches are pointed, those of the diagonal-crossing ribs are round. Too wide an expanse of plain wall space was left between tribune and clearstory, for it was to take half a century longer before architects dared fill their entire upper wall with windows. Like Notre Dame of Paris, the tribunes open on the middle church by wide, graceful arches. And this smaller Notre Dame also has western towers that are connected by an open colonnade. The collegiate has no transept, and one recalls that neither had Paris Cathedral in its first plan. The flying buttresses here are among the first ever made. A striking feature of the exterior of the church is the row of little oculi that light the tribunes over the aisles, some of which have been changed to windows of Rayonnant tracery. The deep galleries once were entirely vaulted by transverse half cradles borne on low lintels, an experiment in masonry roofing first tried at Tournus, but which never became popular; at Caen the tribunes of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes had been vaulted by similar half cylinders whose axial lines were at right angles to that of the nave. The first Gothic rose window of big dimensions adorns the west façade of Mantes collegiate. It is what they call plate tracery--that is, the pattern is formed of voids, the window being a group of variously shaped openings, and not, as in bar tracery, a single opening with the pattern made by solids, or stone mullions. The western rose at Laon stands halfway between plate and bar tracery. Mantes' rose was the prototype for that at Chartres. Like most of the larger XII-century churches, the sexpartite system of vaulting was used. Mantes also followed Noyon and Senlis in having alternating piers and, like Noyon, it showed the Rhenish trait of a western transept, formed by the two lower stories of the towers and the westernmost bay of the middle vessel. Two of the portals are of the XII century, but the largest--the one under the south tower--was made by Raymond du Temple. And probably that same XIV-century architect of Charles V added the gracious chapel of Navarre which is among the best works of Rayonnant Gothic. In it are four charming statuettes of the donors, the princesses of Navarre, portrait work showing personal mannerisms. When the sister of the art-loving Valois king, Charles V, married Charles the Wicked (a scion of Capetian stock who was count in Évreux and king in Navarre) she brought the town of Mantes in her dowry, and it was probably her daughters who are sculptured in this chapel of Navarre--their gift to Mantes collegiate. On the site of the present church once stood a Romanesque edifice built by funds donated by William the Conqueror on his deathbed, to atone for his having set fire to the ancient church (1087). Angered by a coarse joke of the French king's, he had sworn his usual oath, "by the splendor and resurrection of God," that he would light a hundred thousand candles when he went to his churching Mass; so he marched against his tormentor and set fire to Mantes that lay in his path. For, as Mr. Henry Adams has picturesquely expressed it, "Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest in arms, as in architecture." As the corpulent Conqueror rode around the place, his horse stumbled, and from the injury then received he died in Rouen in a few weeks. That burning of Mantes by the Duke of Normandy and King of England has been called the prelude to the Hundred Years' War between France and England, whose actual span was from 1337 to 1453. And in a way Waterloo was its epilogue. The shoulder-to-shoulder fight of the ancient rivals, from 1914 to 1918, let us hope, has put the seal on their pact of peace. THE CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX[100] Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ! White Horsemen who ride on white horses, the Knights of God! They, for their Lord and their Lover have sacrificed All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod! These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, Swept, and they wake in white places at morningtide.... Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go; White Horsemen who ride on white horses, oh, fair to see! They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: forever He! --LIONEL JOHNSON, _Te Martyrum Candidatus_.[101] To decipher Meaux Cathedral has been a student's _tour-de-force_, so early and unceasing have been its rebuildings. With Troyes and Séez, it was the only Gothic cathedral that had a flaw in its structure. Begun with the choir, in the last decades of the XII century, it still retained the Romanesque idea of deep galleries over the side aisles. Whether poor foundations were laid or whether the tribune vaults were made too cumbersome, the edifice gave signals of insecurity from the start. As the XIII century opened, the transept and that part of the nave near it were building with the tribunes still, although by that time such galleries had fallen into disuse. Repeated restorations delayed the works. Cracks continued to show until, about 1270, when the collapse of the whole church was threatened, a complete reconstruction was undertaken by Bishop Jean de Poincy. Already, in 1220, the choir had been redone and two more chapels added, making five apsidioles in all. In 1270 they demolished throughout the church the tribunes over the side aisles, and thus the aisles became twice their intended height. In the first three bays of the choir were retained the arches of the tribune, so that now certain bays of the choir aisles open on the central vessel by pier arcades surmounted by false-tribune arches. Striking effect is made in the nave by some giant cylinder piers whose height is double what was originally planned and whose capitals are gems of interpretative sculpture, vine leaf and fern. Much mechanical dexterity was shown in the recutting of piers and the elimination of the tribunes, but even now a few of the shorter columns are to be found embedded in the newer parts, and a few sections of the triforium show their primitive plan. By the time Meaux Cathedral was completed it was practically an edifice of the end of the XIII century. Its chief patroness was the queen of Philippe-le-Bel (St. Louis' grandson), the Jeanne of Champagne who brought that rich province to the Crown, as well as the kingdom of Navarre, the same princess who encouraged Joinville to write his reminiscences. The city of Meaux was in her dowry, and they say that her portrait was carved on a keystone of the choir. When she died, in 1305, she named the bishop of Meaux as her executor and donated a legacy to his church. A well-known XIV-century architect, Nicolas de Chaumes, worked on the west façade, two of whose portals are of that period, and one of the XV century. Unfortunately, use was made of a soft stone which time has sadly eroded. Flamboyant Gothic sculpture, with foliage in gracious disorder, appears in the western bays: the undulating flora of the XIV century, and the nervous, deeply indented, pointed leaves of the XV century when such complicated forms as the curly cabbage were taken as models. Wiser were the earlier sculptors who had interpreted and arranged their leaves with architectural fitness. The south portal of Meaux's transept must have had in mind St. Stephen's door of the cathedral at Paris. At Meaux the sculptured figures show certain mannerisms, such as the throwing out of one hip, a trait soon to be exaggerated. The carvings throughout the church were mutilated by the Huguenots in 1562, and from that date no further work was done on the edifice. One tower of the façade remains painfully stunted. The church of Meaux would stand well in the front rank of Gothic cathedrals were it not for certain flaws of proportion. Such exceptionally high side aisles call for a nave twice as long, and the clearstory appears dwarfed by the lofty pier arcades of the chevet. Yet though made piecemeal, and without uniformity of style in its main parts, Meaux possesses a unity of its own, and its effect as a whole is one of elegance and even radiance. The tomb of its greatest bishop is an immense slab of marble in the pavement of the choir. Bossuet devoted himself to his diocese for over twenty years (1681-1704). Frequently he preached in the cathedral built by the generosity of Jeanne of Champagne, the founder of the College of Navarre, where he had studied in his youth. There is something akin in Meaux Cathedral to the high soul and courtliness of Bossuet. The two most religious and national epochs in French history were the XIII and XVII centuries. Few churches in France present a better setting for a festival of solemn joy than the cathedral of Meaux. It is the church for _Noël_, for the white radiance of First Communion gatherings, for the _Te Deum_ of victory. Fitting is it that the victory of the Marne should here have become a personal heritage. At the very gates of Meaux came the turning of the tide on September 5, 1914, when the thunderous advance on Paris was suddenly arrested. The password for that day of miracle was "Jeanne d'Arc." Near by, on the Oureq, Jeanne's troubadour, Péguy,[102] fell on that same September 5th, he who had chanted prophetically: _Heureux ceux qui sont mort pour une juste guerre ..._ _Heureux les épis murs et les blés moissonnés,_ _Heureux ceux qui sont mort dans les grandes batailles,_ _Couchés dessus le sol à la face de Dieu._ Close to Meaux the battle raged outside, and the wounded, in bewildering numbers, were carried into the desolated town which lacked a civic head. The bishop of Meaux, Monseigneur Marbeau, stepped forth as the accepted leader, as in the time of those earlier invasions when the bishops of Gaul saved Latin civilization. Again, in 1918, the invader drew perilously near, and a second victory of the Marne swept back the avalanche. From the fields around the city forever will an invisible white army of martyrs swell this cathedral's _Te Deum_. In Meaux on the Marne, God will always be the omnipotent Lord God of Battles, the _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_ of the great hymn of thanksgiving.[103] [Illustration: _The Cathedral of Meaux, Viewed from the Nave's Aisle_] CHAPTER V Era of the Great Cathedrals, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens _I stood before the triple northern porch_ _Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,_ _Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,_ _Looked down benignly grave, and seemed to say:_ _"Ye come and go incessant, we remain_ _Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past._ _Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot_ _Of faith so nobly realized as this."_ --JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, _The Cathedral_. Of the four master cathedrals of France, that of Paris was begun first. Thirty years later, in 1194, the cornerstone of Chartres was laid, that of Rheims in 1211, and that of Amiens in 1220. In the case of Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens, rebuilding was undertaken when fire had destroyed their Romanesque cathedrals. All four of these great churches have the same patroness, Our Lady, "the glorious mother of God, our advocate against our enemy of hell"--thus those generations spoke of her of whom Dante chanted: "Lady, thou art so great, and hast such worth that if there be who would have grace, yet betaketh not himself to thee, his longing seeketh to fly without wings."[104] It is difficult for many a modern mind to understand the passion of spiritual chivalry felt by the generations that built cathedrals for her whom they called their sovereign lady, but unless some comprehension of that mystic ideal is grasped no complete sympathy for mediæval art is possible. Mr. George Santayana, who would renew our sense of the moral identity of all the ages, may see in the mediæval devotion to Our Lady a development of Platonic love, which he calls the transformation of the love of beauty into the worship of an ideal beauty, the transformation of the love of a creature into the love of God. All love is to lead to God. All true beauty leads to the idea of perfection, said Michael Angelo, who practiced Platonism, even as had Dante, who was of the very essence of the great scholastic century that built Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens. THE CATHEDRAL OF CHARTRES[105] Discipline is indispensable to art.--GEORGE SANTAYANA.[106] Chartres was Our Lady's shrine in a peculiar way, her "special chamber." A local tradition, so old that it reached back to the dimmest past, told of a prophecy concerning a virgin mother, pronounced by the Druids, a hundred years before the Christian era on the site where Chartres now stands, and in the cathedral first built on the revered spot the bishop retained a pagan well which from time immemorial had been honored by the populace. That Puits des Saints-Forts has been included in the crypt of each succeeding cathedral of Chartres. Finally some priggish XVII-century prelates looked with disfavor on the policy, advocated by the apostle of the gentiles, to make use of the ancient superstition for the spread of the true faith. So the pagan well was filled in, and trace of it was lost till M. René Merlet discovered it in 1900 and had it excavated. That Chartres was a meeting place of the Druids, we know from Cæsar, and the XIII-century sons of the Gauls, as if in souvenir, carved the druidical oak leaf freely upon the present cathedral. Is it fanciful to feel that in the grave forest stillness of Chartres' interior lingers much of the theocratic nostalgia that forever haunts the Celt? In druidic times priest, teacher, and lawmaker were honored above brute force of arms. The present crypt of Chartres includes part of the Gallo-Roman walls. The V-century Merovingian cathedral abutted on the city ramparts. Then came wars which in part demolished the town walls, so that the reconstructed church was able to extend itself beyond the ramparts. It was doubtless after the Norman inroads that was built, in the IX century, the chapel of St. Lupus which forms the core of the present crypt. The Carolingian cathedral of Chartres was destroyed by a terrible fire in 1020. Now, in 1020, the see of Chartres was occupied by one of the notable bishops of French history, Fulbert (1007-29), revered of the people, a scholar enamored of the life of study, though the events of that agitated age forced him to play an active part in the national life. Like Abbot Suger, he was of lowly extraction. He had studied in the cathedral school of Rheims, made notable by Archbishop Gerbert, who later became Sylvester II, the pope of the year 1000. Fulbert, too, like his master, was a versatile genius--doctor in medicine as well as theologian, and one of the first to take up the new musical system of the Benedictine Guy d'Arezzo. He made the cathedral school of Chartres a center of learning, and men who were to be the leaders of the age were his pupils. Like Socrates, he taught his disciples as they paced up and down the cathedral precincts. In his exhortations there was an appealing tenderness that had a singular power in moving men's hearts, and letters from his pupils still exist, complaining of the exile they felt when separated from him.[107] To rebuild his cathedral, Bishop Fulbert gave up his own revenues. Gifts poured in from the kings of England and Denmark, from the bishop's schoolmate of Rheims, the good and cultivated King Robert of France, from the Duke of Aquitaine, who donated the treasure accumulated in St. Hilary's abbatial at Poitiers. The work was pushed forward with such energy that after four years Bishop Fulbert was able to write that, by winter, his lower church would be vaulted. The present magnificent crypt under Chartres Cathedral is the very one built by St. Fulbert. It is the most extensive crypt in France. Its soundly constructed groin vaults stood firm when, two hundred years later, the upper church was destroyed by fire. In times of public calamity the people have fled to Fulbert's subterranean passages, and the devotion of generations has hallowed his shrine. If you would know the soul of this mystic cathedral, gather at dawn with the silent worshipers who choose that hour to kneel daily in the secluded intimacy of Notre-Dame-sous-Terre. The true hour for Chartres is not at noontime, when the tourists flock to the empty church, but in the morning with the dawn.[108] Fulbert's Romanesque cathedral was finished in the same XI century by St. Ives of Chartres, another born leader of the nation, who righted many abuses. He dared stand up against Philip I himself, because of the king's adulterous marriage with the beautiful Bertrada de Montfort, stolen from the Count of Anjou. The bishop wrote thus to the king, refusing to attend his wedding, "out of respect for my own conscience, which I wish to keep pure before God, and because I would retain the good repute by which a priest of Christ should honor himself before the faithful. I would rather be flung into the bottom of the sea, with a millstone round my neck, than be a stumbling block to the weak. Nor do I fail in the fidelity I owe you, in speaking thus to you, but rather I give you proof of it, for I believe that you are risking your immortal soul and are putting your crown in jeopardy." The king's answer was to throw him into prison and to pillage his church. Bishop Ives, in 1095, attended the preaching of the First Crusade at Clermont, after which he accompanied Urban II to the Council of Tours. Scarcely a big event of his day or a leading personage that he was unassociated with, and the three hundred of his letters which are extant form a valuable contribution to history. Twice was the exiled St. Anselm of Canterbury his guest, and in 1107 Paschal II--the pope who built the upper church of S. Clemente at Rome--stopped with him in Chartres. Bishop Ives had been a pupil at Bec, of the celebrated Lanfranc, so he was fully competent to keep up the prestige of his cathedral school. The Romanesque basilica, begun by Fulbert and finished by Bishop Ives, lasted for over two hundred years. The present northwest tower was started probably in 1134, when the nave's western bays had been damaged by fire. Following a pre-Romanesque tradition, the tower was placed a little distance before the church, apart from it, and so it remained for some ten years. Then, one day in June, 1144, the eloquent Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves, successor of St. Ives, was the guest of the abbot of St. Denis during the dedication of Suger's abbatial, and what he there saw of the new system of building made him determined to reconstruct his own church of Chartres. Being an excellent administrator, he was able to start the new works immediately. Within a year was begun the southwest tower of Chartres (1145), which many hold to be the most beautiful in the world. While it was building, the side aisles of Fulbert's basilica were lengthened to meet both western towers. That the one to the south never was intended to stand isolated is shown by the absence of windows on the two sides where it joins the church, whereas the tower to the north had windows on all four sides. While these works were in progress St. Bernard came to Chartres to preach the Second Crusade. He and Bishop Geoffrey had recently traveled together through Aquitaine, combating the Cartharist heresy. It was Geoffrey de Lèves who accompanied the future Louis VII to Bordeaux for his marriage with Aliénor of Aquitaine, and when the death of the king suddenly called Louis away, he left his bride in the care of the bishop of Chartres. Geoffrey was long the sincere defender of Abélard, though finally he disapproved of what was overhardy in his doctrine; with Peter of Cluny he held that the errors of the brilliant schoolman were of the head rather than the heart. Two often-quoted ancient records described the surge of religious fervor which raised the western end of Chartres Cathedral. In 1145 the archbishop of Rouen wrote to the bishop of Amiens to relate how the people of his diocese, knights and ladies, townspeople and peasants, went in a spirit of penitence to Chartres, there to help in the new work of Notre Dame. No one could join the pilgrimage who had not confessed, and renounced all enmities and revenges. As the quarries were some miles from the city, it was a heavy task to drag in the big stones. In that same 1145 Abbot Haimon of St. Pierre-sur-Dives in Normandy, wrote to some monks in England to picture the scenes at Chartres: "Whoever heard tell in times past of powerful princes brought up in honors and wealth, of noble men and women bending their proud necks to the harness of carts, and like beasts of burden dragging stones, cement, wood, to build the abode of Christ? And while men of all ranks drag these heavy loads--so great the weight that sometimes a thousand are attached to one wagon--they march in such silence that not a murmur is heard. When they halt by the roadside, only the confessing of sins, and prayer, humbly suppliant, ascend to God. If anyone is so hardened as to refuse to pardon his enemies, he is detached from the cart and refused companionship in that holy company. When they have reached the church they arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during the whole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and canticles." It was not long after this wave of enthusiasm that the Portal Royal was begun, probably about 1155, though some have placed those three western doors earlier and some later. As they resembled the doors of St. Denis (now destroyed), they were made, doubtlessly, within ten or fifteen years of Suger's work. By 1175 cracks appeared in the new west foundations, and the three doors were moved forward, stone by stone, and placed on a line with the towers. In their first position, set back between the advancing towers, they had shown to better advantage, but it is to the advance of Chartres' western façade that we owe the preservation of its priceless glass and sculpture. At the time of these changes the bishop of Chartres was John of Salisbury (1176-80), perhaps the most learned man of his century, and certainly one of the wisest, sincerest, and most likable men who ever lived. In his works this humanist advocated a proper use of dialectics, as opposed to the sterile subtlety then increasing among scholars. His stand on the problem which agitated the thinkers then--how our ideas correspond to things existing outside our intellect--was one of moderate realism. Abélard had led up to such an outlook, and the scholastics of the XIII century, notably Aquinas, also classed themselves as moderate realists. John of Salisbury possessed what the French call _esprit_, and he poked some fun at the hair-splitting in the schools. Hebrew and Greek he knew, and his Latin was of good literary quality, which was rather an exception among scholastic writers. When Thomas Becket was raised to the see of Canterbury, his friend, John of Salisbury, became his chief adviser, and though the latter held principles equally firm, he endeavored to curb the primate's excess of zeal. Through the years of Becket's exile, John lived in France, returned with his archbishop to England, and witnessed his martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral. At Sens he, too, must have watched with interest that cathedral building, being himself an artist and modeler in clay. Sens' archbishop, Guillaume de Champagne, admired the balanced character and solid scholarship of the Englishman, and after the Canterbury tragedy proposed him for the see of Chartres. No one could have appreciated better than John of Salisbury the strange charm and beauty of the column statues which one by one were moved to a new position at his cathedral's west doors while he governed this see. And no one was more fitted to comprehend the glory of the three XII-century windows, also dismounted and reset in those years, than John of Salisbury's successor at Chartres, his intimate of many years past, Pierre de Celle, who, while abbot of St. Remi at Rheims, had adorned the lovely Primary Gothic choir he built there with admirable colored lights. The south tower was crowned with its mighty spire in his day, and he paved the streets of Chartres and raised the town walls. Both these best types of scholastic authors were interested in maintaining the high repute of their cathedral school. As Pierre de Celle died in 1183, he was spared the sight of his cathedral's destruction. On the night of June 10, 1194, a terrible conflagration wiped out Fulbert's Romanesque basilica. To its cavernous crypt the clerks bore the treasured relics, and after three days emerged, when the fire was spent. Only the crypt and the more recent west façade, with its two towers, escaped destruction; the north tower at the time still lacked its upper stories. On the smoking ruins the pope's legate made an appeal to the people's generosity, and once again Chartres presented the devotional scenes of 1145. Bishop and canons gave up three years of their revenue, and pious confraternities dragged in the big stones. Those passionate rivals, Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe-Auguste, were donors. Thus every part of Chartres Cathedral has been raised by the hands and hearts of faith, and surely the personality which builders impart to their work breathes here in a piety of the soul that not all the science of later times has ever been able to simulate. _Non est hic aliud nisi Domus Dei et porta coeli._ The new cathedral went forward apace; early in the XIII century the big west rose was added to the much-transformed façade. By 1224 the upper vaulting was entirely closed in. The formal dedication was postponed till 1260, to allow for the completion of the two elaborate porches before the transept's doors. To that delayed consecration came St. Louis and his court. The name of the architect of Chartres is unknown, but its unity of plan is proof that it emanated from the brain of one man. The choir had double aisles, the nave a single one. It is believed that to the absence of side chapels in the nave is due the exceptionally good acoustic properties of this church in which the preacher's voice carries to every part. Unknown, too, is the architect of the tower built in the dawn of Gothic art, two generations before the present cathedral. The veriest amateur as he gazes at it is conscious that he has before him one of the supreme things of France. The more closely the _clocher vieux_ is analyzed, the more it becomes a touchstone by which will be judged other towers. A miracle of just gradation, it sprang in one jet from the brain of a man of genius. With a pleasurable sense of harmony the eye travels from the base to the tip of the spire. Proportion, not ornament, is the secret of its transcendent influence. The width is right--and so many towers fail there--the division of the stories is right, and radiantly right is that crucial point, the transition from the vertical square shaft to the inclined octagonal spire, accomplished here by means of dormers and turrets. An innovator was the architect of Chartres' belfry when he placed open windows in the gables. To obviate any monotonous optical effect, he made a ridge down each inclined plane of the spire, which spire is a massive pyramid forming almost half of the tower's height. Its bare nobility surpasses the richer open stonework of the spire to the north. [Illustration: _The Cathedral of Chartres (1194-1240). The Southern Aspect_] It is confusing that the north tower at Chartres façade should be called the _clocher neuf_ because of its Flamboyant Gothic upper stories, for its lower Romanesque parts were built before the _clocher vieux_. When towers were rising in every part of France as the XVI century opened, the chapter of Chartres Cathedral invited a local architect, Jean de Texier, called Jean de Beauce,[109] to complete their truncated northern tower, whose temporary top had just been consumed by fire. Jean de Beauce saw that the XIII-century rose window had crowded the south belfry. While the rose was making, a new story had been added to the north tower. To that tower he decided to add still another story before he topped it with an elaborate lacework spire. In consequence the _clocher neuf_ is out of all proportion to its mate. Nor does it carry the eye smoothly from soil to tip; its renewals are abrupt. However, if it lacks subtlety, its crown is none the less a strikingly effective monument of the final phase of Gothic architecture. The spire is adjusted to the shaft by means of little flying buttresses which spring from the angle and face turrets, and help to unify the design. Some human vanity the north tower of Chartres displays, but no arrogant pride, no Renaissance pretentiousness. And in the inscription commemorating its renewal still breathes the reverential, loving, personal note of the Middle Ages: "I was once built of lead, till after the fire on the feast of St. Anne, six o'clock in the evening, 1506, Messires the Chapter ordered me rebuilt in stone. In my necessity good people helped me. May God be gracious to them." Under his belfry tower, Jehan de Beauce built a pretty pavilion to regulate its chimes. Sculptor as well as architect, he designed the sumptuous screen about the choir, on whose exterior wall is portrayed the life of Our Lord in groups made during seven generations. The oldest and best scenes are those in the south aisle nearest the transept. The mystery plays gave to the iconography of the late XV century its realistic character. In these sculpture panels at Chartres, not only were the costumes of the religious theater copied, but the stage settings. A group was represented in a room, whereas in earlier work the sacred personages "stood with a sort of spiritualized detachment, clad in the long tunic of no country, of no time, the very vestment itself for the life eternal."[110] One of the earlier scenes of Chartres' choir screen presents Our Lady seated in the cosiest of interiors, like a XVI-century housewife, a reticule by her side and a chaplet, which last touch was a charming anachronism. She sews serenely while poor distracted St. Joseph dreams. A complete contrast to this human Virgin Mother is a XIII-century lancet across the aisle from it--the much-venerated Notre-Dame-de-la-belle-verrière, a mother of God, the austere symbolic Throne of Solomon, almost uncanny in her solemn passiveness. In some of the later groups sculptured on the outer walls of the choir screen appears the icy hand of the Renaissance, though the setting remained Gothic throughout. The two decorative glories of Chartres Cathedral are its sculptured portals and its wealth of stained glass, "an assemblage unique in Europe, the thought of the Middle Ages made visible." Though over ten thousand personages are represented, decoration is kept subordinate to structure with an instinct for discipline inherent in the best Gothic art. For the archæologist, the three western doors are of prime importance, last of the Romanesque, first of the Gothic portals, call them whichever you wish. To speak of a transition is to be metaphysical, employing words for what has no existence in reality, since there was no break in the sequence of sculpture from the first imaged portals of French Romanesque art, at Beaulieu, Moissac, Autun and Vézelay to those at Le Mans and Chartres, and to that masterpiece of Gothic sculpture, the portal of Our Lady under the northwest tower of Paris Cathedral. For the making of his three western doors at Chartres, Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves must have obtained workers from his friend, Abbot Suger of St. Denis. Archaic enough seem these kings and queens with their strange, haunting faces, their slim, parallel feet, with their slender figures more architectural than sculptural as they stand against the pillars to which they conform, yet none the less they show freedom from the stereotyped Byzantine traditions. The attitudes are less rigid than in previous column statues, and personality is dawning in the faces. The Madonna is own sister of the Eastern empress of St. Anne's door at Paris, made about fifteen years later under Bishop Maurice de Sully. The "celestial portal" of Chartres portrayed the life of Christ from his birth to his ascension. At the northern doors of the transept was set forth the Creation, to the coming of the Messiah, and Our Lady was especially honored. And the southern portal commemorated from the coming of the Lord to his second advent at the Last Judgment. It was the custom to represent this last scene at the west façade, where it might be illumined by the setting sun of the world's final day, the _dies iræ_ long dreaded. But since the west portal of Chartres had followed a Romanesque tradition by carving in its place of honor a Christ in the elliptical aureole of eternity, accompanied by the symbols of the four evangelists, the Last Judgment was relegated to the transept's south entrance. Between the two lateral portals of Chartres there is little choice. In them Gothic sculpture appears in full bloom. Each is a national heritage. In the first plan of the transept the entrances lacked their magnificent porches begun as afterthoughts (about 1240), but so well adjusted to the doors that they appear to be of the same date. Among the seven hundred statues at the northern entrance, some show that they were portrait studies, but it is mere hypothesis to give names to them. Not a statue was placed haphazard. A prearranged dogmatic scheme was consistently followed, since to the mediæval mind art was before all else a teacher. Our Lady stands at the central door, accompanied by ten big figures representing Melchisedek, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, and David on her right, and Isaac, Jeremiah, Simeon, John the Baptist, and St. Peter on her left. They are the patriarchs who prefigured her Son and the prophets who foretold Him, and the two who witnessed His coming, one as foreteller, the other to be His symbol in the future. Each personified a period of history: "Fathers of the people, pillars of humanity, contemporaries of the first days of the world, they seem to belong to another humanity than ours. They are to be counted among the most extraordinary images of the Middle Ages." It is inevitable that M. Mâle be quoted on all points of mediæval iconography. Usually under each large statue was carved a pedestal scene having some connection with it. Thus beneath the Queen of Sheba is a negro; beneath Balaam, his ass. At the south porch, under St. Jerome, translator of the Bible, is the Synagogue with bandaged eyes, and under St. Gregory the Great is a crouching scribe, who cranes his neck to see the saint, for the legend was that one day as the pope dictated to his secretary, a long pause came, and the scribe peeped through the curtain that hung between them and saw a dove perched on the saint's shoulder, symbolic of the Holy Spirit directing him. St. George and St. Theodore garbed as crusaders are the only youthful images at the south porch, and must have been studied from some of St. Louis' knights. At her entranceways Chartres set forth the calendar of months in small medallioned allegories, and here and at Amiens, Paris, and Rheims was given a complete system of moral philosophy through the contrast of virtues with vices. On the north façade of Chartres is carved "Libertas" under the image of a virtue. Bishop John of Salisbury would have approved this: "For there is nothing more glorious than freedom," he wrote, "save virtue, if indeed freedom may be rightly severed from virtue, for all who know anything know that true freedom has no other source." In structural technique the fenestration of Chartres was a stride forward, and both the cathedrals of Paris and Soissons learned immediately from its clearstory arrangement--the first attempt to fill with colored glass the entire space between the active wall shafts. "In certain parts of the cathedral of Chartres," says M. Mâle, "is a magnificent amplitude, a superabundance of power. Each of the nave's windows is surmounted by an immense rose as wide as the bay, a conception as proud as ever an architect realized. It is one of those flashes of genius such as came to Michael Angelo. Those great orbs of light, those wheels of fire that dart sparkling rays are one of the beauties of the cathedral."[111] Notre Dame has preserved over two hundred of the ancient, imaged windows. The oldest and the best are three large lancets under the western rose which, like the Royal Portal beneath them, are the work of Suger's craftsmen who came here from St. Denis. One of these noted windows relates the childhood of Christ, another His Passion and Resurrection, and the third is a tree of Jesse, similar to one in St. Denis.[112] The iron bars supporting the sheet of glass do not conform to the outline of the medallions, hence it is somewhat more difficult to decipher the scenes than in XIII-century work. None the less, these, the oldest windows of the cathedral, are the peer of any colored glass ever made, because of their inherent genius for decorative effect and their conscientious workmanship. Many a pen has tried--in vain--to describe the marvelous deep blue which blends together the other colors--the streaky ruby, the emerald green, the sea-green white, the brownish purple and pink, the yellow pot metal. Even after the opening of the XIII century the St. Denis school exerted influence, as is shown by the Charlemagne-Roland windows in Chartres' ambulatory, whose outline was taken from a crusader window of Suger's abbey. The majority of Chartres' windows belong to the early XIII century, when the city was mistress of the vitrine art and supplied the cathedrals of Bourges, Rouen, Sens, Laon, Auxerre, Tours, Le Mans, Poitiers, and even Canterbury. In the nave's north aisle, the St. Eustace window (the third) is held to be of faultless artistry. The large lancets which light the aisles scintillate as with precious jewels. Only some five or six have floral scrolls filling the spaces between the medallions and the deep border that surrounds each window; in France a geometric pattern for such interstices was more frequent. At the base of each window is what is called its signature--a medallion which usually represents the avocation of the donors, whether kings, knights, priests, butchers, shoemakers, furriers, or water carriers. Thus below the Charlemagne-Roland windows tradesmen display rich fur mantles, and we know that the _pelletiers_ were the donors. Splendid were the gifts of the old artisan guilds. The tanners presented an apse-chapel window in honor of St. Thomas Becket, the vintners one that related the story of Noe, planter of vines. An overpowering sensation it must have been for those mediæval workmen to worship beneath the vaults they themselves had helped to build, under the windows they had contributed. Kings and knights were their fellow donors, but in the cathedrals of France the gifts of the lowly were the most plentiful, a Christian quality which endured till the XVI-century disunion. To Chartres St. Louis gave a window in honor of St. Denis, patron of his kingdom. The splendid red northern rose, "The Rose of France," is a glorification of Our Lady. The donjons of Castile adorn it in honor of the queen regent. Directly opposite is the big south rose presented by Blanche's enemy, Pierre Mauclerc, who tried to kidnap Louis IX from his mother, but who was to die fighting the infidels under his cousin the king, as did Pierre de Courtenay, another donor of a window at Chartres. Pierre de Dreux, it is said, began the porch before the southern entrance to commemorate his marriage with the heiress of Brittany, a granddaughter of Henry II, Plantagenet. Like every door of this church of the resplendent entranceways, it is a mass of sculpture. Mauclerc was grandson of the builder of St. Yved at Braine, and brother of Archbishop Henri de Dreux, who donated windows to his cathedral at Rheims. Below the Dreux rose at Chartres, four of the Prophets are borne on the shoulders of the four Evangelists, for never could those generations, enamored of symmetry, resist the opportunity to weave together the Old and New Testaments. A first cousin of St. Louis, Ferdinand III, the saint-conqueror of Seville and Cordova, donated to Chartres a window commemorating the patron of Spain. Three times was St. James honored here, so popular was the Santiago Compostela pilgrimage. St. Martin and St. Nicolas of Bari are also commemorated, the former some seven times, for it pleased the voyagers to noted shrines to record their travels. By pilgrimages French art and song spread in Italy and Spain. Single monumental figures of prophet or saint were used in the clearstory windows instead of small medallions, which would be indistinct when viewed at such a height. Although most of the windows in the cathedral belong to the XIII century, the XV century is represented in the Vendôme chapel, begun in 1417 by Louis de Bourbon, an ancestor of Henry IV. Much white was then employed for the better lighting of the church, and the straight saddle-bars of Suger's time were again made use of. No attempt was made for perspective in the earlier glass, which was treated like a translucent mosaic: relief was obtained by the skilled juxtaposition of tones. The old workers had taught themselves many of the secrets of optics. They knew that designs on a background of blue--an expansive color--should be larger than those on red--an absorbent. They knew that blue was a sedative, that red excited the vision, and that yellow stopped contours, hence it was to be employed in borders. It is not of technique that one thinks when standing face to face with the windows of Chartres. "Create in me a new heart, O God!" one murmurs when gazing at them. When at noon the sun renders the colors dazzling and bewildering, the cathedral seems to be chanting "_Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!_" with the seraphim proclaiming that the whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord. Live coals from heaven's high altar are the windows of Chartres, then, cleansing us of our iniquities; and seeing with our eyes we see, and hearing with our ears we hear, and understanding with our heart we comprehend the vision and are converted and healed. When evening blots out the rest of the church, and in luminous obscurity the windows hang ethereally in space, they are psalms of intercession and penitence. To gaze at such windows is to pray, think the Levites who serve in this temple. At sunset it is no unusual sight to see a young student of theology seated with his back to the choir, his forgotten breviary open on his knee, gazing spellbound at the western lancets, in his face a rapt reverence, indicating that his soul is in prayer. Each evening the windows of Abbot Suger's craftsmen hymn the suave and lovely _Te Lucis ante_ which ushers in night's purity. A mediæval cathedral was designed for the Real Presence, and without that soul of all ritual it stands bereft. Windows such as Chartres' proclaim the miracle of the Tabernacle as symbolically as do those pillars of humanity sculptured by the northern doors, Melchisedek and Peter, types of the Christ, each holding a chalice, or as do the transept's outspread arms that recall the sacrifice on Calvary, renewed daily in the sacrifice of the Mass. That Chartres Cathedral has preserved its wealth of colored glass is proof that it came gently through the ages; moreover, it was constructed solidly, being a pioneer in the use of flying buttresses with double arches united by an arcature. Its lower walls never were weakened by the insertion of side chapels, those customary XIV-century additions. That academic period built at Chartres merely the semi-detached chapel of St. Piat, to which a stair ascends from the ambulatory. In the XVIII century some well-intentioned but misguided canons of the cathedral lined their sanctuary with neo-classic marbles and stucco, and cluttered the plain wall spaces over the pier arches with needless ornament. In the time of the Revolution, the entire demolition of the big church was proposed, but happily the embarrassment of how to dispose of such a mountain of stone prevented the vandalism. Lead was stripped from the roof to make bullets and pennies. In the XIX century the vast timber covering of the masonry vaults, called _la forêt_, was burned, but the new steep-pitched roof covered with lead has taken on a greenish hue that blends well with the ancient gray stones. The easy hill of the town serves as pedestal for Chartres Cathedral. Walk through the little city, whose air of cold propriety is very typical of French provincial life, pass through the Porte Guillaume, and from the boulevard beside the stream study the chief edifice of this Beauce which is "the granary of France." Observe how salient are the transept arms. Another Romanesque trait is the placing of two towers--unfinished here--between choir and transept. What Huysmans called the _maigreur distinguée_ of youth is a characteristic of this church. In Rheims, the next begun of the big Gothic cathedrals, is no trace of youth's structural plainness. As you sit by the stream watching Notre Dame of Chartres, its Flamboyant Gothic tower, perfect of its kind, seems to ride imperiously over the nave; none the less it will be the weather-beaten southwest tower on which the eye will linger longest. Though it was designed to accompany a church of lesser proportions, though it labors under the disadvantage of being overtopped by its sister beacon, nothing can diminish its unparalleled unity. Virile, virginal, aërial, majestic, venerable in youth and youthful in its venerable age, the _clocher vieux_ of Chartres is one of the supreme things of the national art, "full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing." THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS[113] The nation that made a compact with God at the baptismal font of Rheims will be converted and will return to her first vocation. Her errors may not go unpunished, but the child of such virtues, of so many sighs, of so many tears, will not perish. A day will come, and we hope it may not long tarry, when France, like Saul on the road to Damascus, will be enveloped in a supernal light whence will proceed a voice, asking: "Why persecutest thou me? Rise up and wash the stains that disfigure thee. Go, first-born of the Church, predestined nation, race of election, go carry as in the past my name before all the peoples and before all the kings of the earth."--Address of POPE PIUS X, in 1912, to the visiting French cardinals. The other two of the four great cathedrals have no setting equal to the hill pedestal of Chartres or to the river island of Notre Dame of Paris. Seldom is a French cathedral surrounded by the pleasant precincts and cloisters preserved by the English minsters, and Rheims Cathedral is no exception in its abrupt rise from flat city streets. Its druidical massiveness can easily dispense with a pedestal. Rheims imposes itself. Even in the night its prodigy of magnificence endures. "The huge bas-relief is always there in the darkness," wrote Rodin. "I cannot distinguish it, but I feel it. Its beauty persists. It triumphs over shadows and forces me to admire its powerful black harmony. It fills my window, it almost hides the sky. How explain why, even when enveloped in night, this cathedral loses nothing of its beauty? Does the power of that beauty transcend the senses, that the eye sees what it sees not?... _O Nuit! tu es plus grande ici que partout ailleurs!_"[114] The "masters of the living stone" who built Rheims Cathedral are known to us to-day. Their names were commemorated in a labyrinth that once formed part of the nave's pavement, a drawing of which has been unearthed by M. Louis Demaison. The obliterated figure in the middle of the labyrinth no doubt represented the bishop who laid the foundation stone. He was Albéric de Humbert, formerly archdeacon of Notre Dame at Paris while the bishops Maurice and Eudes de Sully were raising that cathedral. Builder and crusader, Albéric was a true product of his age. He marched into Languedoc, in 1208, to chastise the Albigensian heretics; he attended Innocent III's great Council of the Lateran in 1214, and when he ventured again to the East to take part in the crusade of Jean de Brienne, he was captured by Saracens and ransomed by the Spanish knights of Calatrava. He died on the return journey, 1218. For a man of such energy, it could have been with slight regret that he witnessed, in May, 1210, the destruction by fire of the decrepit church he had inherited, one of whose builders had been Archbishop Hincmar in the IX century. That early cathedral of Rheims had been redressed with a façade by Archbishop Sampson, a friend of Abbot Suger's, and among the prelates who attended the memorable dedication of St. Denis. His Primary Gothic work, wiped out in the conflagration of 1210, was a loss indeed for art. Bishop Albéric de Humbert set vigorously to work, and within a year of the fire had laid the corner stone of the present cathedral (1211). By 1241 services were held in the finished choir. An archbishop of the Dreux line (1227-40) gave windows to the upper apse, and although he and the townsfolk were at bitter odds, the building of the great church by both prelate and people went on unabated. The imperious Henri de Dreux, like Pierre Mauclerc, the donor of Chartres' south rose, was a grandson of that brother of King Louis VII who built the beautiful church of St. Yved at Braine on the highway between Rheims and Soissons. While the cathedral of Rheims was building, another of its archbishops was a Joinville, and in 1270 its sixtieth ruler died on St. Louis' last crusade. The plan of the cathedral was made by Jean d'Orbais, who had watched the erection of the abbatial (1180) in his native town of Orbais,[115] a church modeled on the choir of St. Remi which the celebrated schoolman Pierre de Celle had built from 1170 to 1180. Thus Orbais is the intermediary between the big abbey church of Rheims and Rheims Cathedral. For twenty years Jean d'Orbais directed the works at Rheims, so stated the inscription in the labyrinth; and on his death Jean de Loup became directing architect for sixteen years (1231-47), during which the transept and its portals were constructed. The third architect, Gaucher de Rheims (1250-59), began the west portals and worked on the nave. In his precious notebook, Villard de Honnecourt sketched a bay of the nave before 1250. The fourth master-of-works at Rheims, whose name was inscribed in the labyrinth, was Bernard de Soissons. He worked here for thirty-five years; the inscription states that he made five bays of the nave--no doubt the westernmost ones--and that he opened the big O, the rose window of twelve mammoth petals that flowers in the west façade, and is one of the most beautiful designs of the age. By the end of the XIII century, therefore, Rheims Cathedral was completed in its main parts. Carried on with scarcely a pause, and always after the original plan of Jean d'Orbais, the great church kept its unity throughout. The first four architects who during a century had directed the works were succeeded by Robert de Coucy, to whom for a time was erroneously attributed the original plan, but who really continued to build the elaborate west façade. That frontispiece of Rheims Cathedral, with its cloud of witnesses, is a culmination of Gothic art. Some have called it a work of the XIV century, but the labyrinth, set in the pavement before Robert de Coucy's day, distinctly attributed the placing of the big rose window to Bernard de Soissons, who was in the city till 1298. Also a text of 1299 refers to one of the west towers, and the armor worn in the David-Goliath group of the gable is of the 1280 type. All critics acknowledge that the big statues of the portals belong in main part to the golden period of Gothic sculpture, and were done between 1250 and 1260.[116] The images under the southwest tower had been prepared about thirty years earlier, in the time of Jean d'Orbais. The façade of Rheims inspired many a later Gothic frontispiece--Meaux, Tours, Rouen, Troyes, and Abbeville. The cathedral went on perfecting itself in detail, and was nearing a complete finish when, four months after the raising of the siege of Orléans, Jeanne d'Arc brought her king to be crowned in the city where two hundred years earlier St. Louis had been anointed. Three gentlemen of Anjou wrote a letter to the queen of Charles VII, Marie of Anjou, and to her mother, Jolande of Aragon, to describe the ceremonies at Rheims on that fifth day of August, 1429. As the crown was set on the king's head trumpets rang out, till it seemed that the vaults would crack, and every man cried "_Noël!_" and drew his sword. A fair sight it was to see the gallant bearing of Jeanne the Maid as she stood by the king, holding the banner she cherished more than the sword. At her trial in Rouen even her standard was used against her. "Why," asked her judges, "was your banner carried into the church of Rheims to the consecration rather than those of the other captains?" And Jeanne made one of her ringing answers: "It had been in the fray, surely there was good reason it should be at the victory"--_à la peine ... à l'honneur_--her phrase was to become a proverb of France.[117] Jeanne liked fair play. In her army she would tolerate no pillage, nor eat of food which she thought had been so obtained. But then Jeanne had no _Kultur_. She was merely an unlettered peasant girl of the Middle Ages, who called it plain thieving to carry off household goods in an invaded country. For her good friends of Rheims _la bonne Lorraine_ kept a warm place in her memory, as her letter to them showed: "_Mes chiers et bons amis les bons et loyaulx Franxois de la cité de Rains, Jehanne la Pucelle vous faict à savoir de ses nouvelles ... je vous promect et certiffy que je ne vous abandonneray poinct_." Not many years after that national hour of rejoicing the cathedral of Rheims suffered a disaster which put a stop to further construction; henceforth only restorations went on. In 1481 some careless plumbers set on fire the timber overroof and the molten lead ran like a river into the streets. Many a citizen perished in the effort to check the flames. The stone roof of the cathedral stood firm, justifying those generations whose life struggle had been the problem how to cover their churches enduringly. Though all France contributed, the huge edifice was never to be crowned by the six spires of Jean d'Orbais' plan; yet even as it is, Rheims presents the ideal exterior of a Gothic cathedral. The main façade was made most appropriately a thing of pomp and circumstance, regal and gorgeous for the royal coronations. No need to hang such walls with tapestries for the feast. The three deep portals were united as one by means of an unbroken line of thirty or more large images, deriving from similar arrays at Chartres and Amiens, but possessing a pronounced indigenous genius. In the groups of the Annunciation and the Presentation the Blessed Virgin is a figure of spotless purity, meek and infinitely touching in her little mantle that falls in straight simplicity from her slender shoulders. "By humility the holy Virgin merited to become the mother of God," was the answer given by St. Isabelle of France, the only sister of St. Louis, when asked why she named her convent at Longchamp, L'Humilité-Notre-Dame. A very different Virgin is that in the Visitation group. She and St. Elizabeth are draped voluminously like stately Roman matrons. Those two statues (imitated by Bamburg Cathedral in 1280) must have been inspired by some work of antiquity, of which Rheims possessed a number. Classic influences in the imagery of northern France during the Middle Ages was transitory, however. First and last mediæval sculpture was a building-stone sculpture. In the eyes and on the lips of a few of the entranceway statues hovered a half-smile, a fleeting, rare expression which, long centuries before, the Greek sculptors preceding Phidias had achieved. Again, at the Renaissance, Da Vinci was obsessed by the same expression, "born of a miracle, meant to gladden men's souls forever." To-day, the angel image La Sourire stands headless at the portal under the north tower. Not only was the west frontispiece of Rheims unique, but its transept façades would have distinguished any cathedral. One of the three doors of the north façade is composed of fragments from a monument which had been in the Romanesque metropolitan burned in 1210. The middle door commemorates local saints, for cathedrals were historians and linked the generations with that continuance of tradition which makes the strength of a race. To honor their spiritual forefathers was held to be patriotism by those believing generations. At both west and north façades was an image of St. Nicaise, the eleventh bishop of Rheims, who had been martyred as he knelt by his cathedral door. Tradition relates that he was reciting the Psalmist's words, "My soul is bowed to earth," when the Vandals struck off his head, and that the severed head finished the verse: "Verify me, O Lord, according to thy word."[118] The fifteenth bishop (459-533), St. Remigius, apostle of the Franks, is honored by a statue. In the cathedral of his day he baptized Clovis, and thus made France the first orthodox Christian kingdom of the West, since Gaul's other conquerors had fallen into the Arian heresy. Many an archbishop of Rheims played a foremost part in the life of the nation. The military prowess of Turpin, the twenty-seventh prelate here, is related in the _Chanson de Roland_.[119] The forty-first archbishop was the learned Gerbert, who died Pope Sylvester II (1003). He made the cathedral school famous, among his pupils being the king's son and Bishop Fulbert of Chartres. One of the students in Rheims in that age was St. Bruno of Cologne, founder of the Carthusian Order. For long years he directed the cathedral school, guiding the people during the misrule of a scandalous archbishop. A pupil of his at Rheims became Urban II, who instigated the First Crusade. And a century later one of his ablest and holiest sons, St. Hugh of Avalon, built the cathedral choir of Lincoln, as well as its small transept, and part of the big transept--the oldest examples of Early-English Gothic. In 1180, the archbishop of Rheims, Guillaume de Champagne, crowned as king his nephew, Philippe-Auguste. Only those shepherds of the flock who attained to canonized sainthood were honored by statues at the church entrances. The Beau Dieu of Rheims of most benign majesty is the central image of the transept's northern façade. Surmounting it is a Last Judgment that speaks well for the honesty of the clerics whose pupils were the sculptors. Here at the king's own basilica, whither he came for the most brilliant hour of his life, was sculptured a crowned monarch, as the front figure, marching to hell, and behind him walked a bishop. No pharisees were the men of the XIII century. Sin was sin, and all men were equal before sin's punishment. There are statues on the towers of that same north frontispiece to which names have been given. One has been called Philippe-Auguste, and it certainly was a portrait study, whether or not it represented the most able monarch of the feudal ages, the victor of Bouvines, who tripled the area of France and under whom was begun almost every Gothic cathedral in the land. The name of his grandson, St. Louis, has been given to another image. In a niche of the façade stands a charming Eve holding a very mediæval serpent. One can merely indicate, in passing, the astounding wealth of Rheims--five thousand images whose verve and fecundity are marvelous. "If your heart is right, all creatures will be for you a book of holy doctrine," so they dared to carve clown, dog, cat, or sheep on pinnacle, or in hidden nook, and their flora was as generous as their fauna. A local botanist has found that every leaf growing to-day by the roadsides was reproduced in the cathedral. It was only natural that in Champagne the vine leaf should be popular; on one of the capitals of the nave a pleasant vintage scene is represented. If the gorgeous west approaches of the Cathedral-Royal were suited for earthly pageantry, its eastern end paid homage, in holier simplicity, to the Spiritual King. Around the exterior wall of the apse was set a guard of angels, each carrying an emblem of the Passion, or of its symbol, the Mass--chalice, censer, missal, spear--and the procession met at the Christ image placed in the center of the curving wall. The ordinance was derived from Byzantine art. Many an artist has said of the apse sculpture of Rheims that the Greeks can show no lovelier work. A few years later, more angelic thrones, dominations, and powers were set around this, the Cathedral of the Angels. A seraphic sentry adorned each buttress and at the same time increased its counterbutting force, and were agents toward the swifter grounding of the load. And now, having touched superficially on the exterior of this inexhaustible church, let us step inside its imaged doors. On the inner wall of the three western portals is an elaborate decoration found nowhere else. Tier upon tier of statues shrined in foliage-covered niches rise to the level of the triforium. Never has a wall been more glorified both within and without. Lavish leaf ornamentation forms the capitals of the piers. Each pier consists of a circular shaft cantoned by four lesser columns; the capitals of the latter are divided into two stories because their diameter is less--a skillful contrivance that solves the difficulty of grouping pillars of different sizes. [Illustration: _The Angel Apse of Rheims (c. 1220)_] The nave of Rheims was never weakened by the addition of side chapels, which always diminishes the integrity of an edifice. In fact, the lower walls[120] as well as the piers were made oversolid for what they bear, since it had not yet been learned how to apply exactly the right counterforce to the pressure of the vaulting. Amiens was to be the first to achieve that perfect equilibrium. The interior proportions of Rheims are harmonious; the side aisles are relatively right with the central vessel, and the nave leads up well to the sanctuary, which, inside and out, is beyond criticism. As a whole, however, the interior of this cathedral has not the slender upwardness of Amiens nor the ascetic holiness of Chartres. It stands more than it soars. It praises the deity in another fashion than does the mystic cathedral. The keynote here is a right-minded human splendor. Robust and majestic, this is the church for state pageants, the regal temple for national festivals. Alas! poor battle-worn Rheims! Alas for the _bons et loyaulx Franxois de la cité de Rains!_ Has Jehanne la Purcelle forgotten her promise never to abandon you? Mourant en plein martyre avec vivacité ... Masquant sous sa visière une efficacité ... Jetant toute une armée aux pieds de la prière.... So wrote the poet who fell on the field of honor, in September, 1914, of St. Jeanne, whose martyrdom was a victory; so he might have written of Rheims Cathedral. Again a sublime holocaust was needed for the saving of the soul of France. RHEIMS SINCE 1914 How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people. How is she become a widow, she that was great among the nations.--JERIMIAH: _Lamentations_. Designer infinite! Ah! must Thou char the wood e'er Thou canst limn with it? --FRANCIS THOMPSON, _The Hound of Heaven_. In the first days of September, 1914, after the battle of the Marne, the Germans evacuated Rheims, which they had occupied for little over a week. Before they quitted the city, some cans of inflammable liquids, with bundles of straw, were set on the roof of the cathedral, and there they were found and made note of officially by Frenchmen who ascended the towers to hang out the Red Cross flag. The destruction of Rheims Cathedral was planned deliberately and in cold blood it was carried out. No military excuse for the crime is possible, since General Joffre made a formal statement that at no time were the church towers used as posts of observation. From the heights a few miles away the enemy opened fire on the city. It is said that Baron von Plattenburg ordered the bombardment. General von Haeringen is also cited as an executioner of Rheims Cathedral. On September 17th and 18th the church was riddled with projectiles. Between dawn and sunset, on September 19th, over five hundred of them struck the mammoth church. About four o'clock on that fateful day, Saturday, September 19, 1914, the timber roof caught fire from an inflammable bomb. In less than an hour flames were devouring the wooden scaffolding which, by ill luck, because of repairs in progress, framed part of the edifice. Fire lapped and calcined the outer walls, obliterating the kings and the angels and the saints, wiping out all the loving handicraft of the old stonecutters. Once again molten lead ran in the streets of Rheims. Fire lapped the sculptured screen inside the western doors, and the lovely lavish chiseling has become a blurred, amorphous mass. Projectiles tore through the gaping windows and crashed against the opposite walls. Some of the burning timber from the overroof fell through the apertures of the vault's keystones and ignited the straw spread on the pavement for the wounded German soldiers who had been left behind when the invaders evacuated the city. Let an eyewitness relate the burning of Rheims Cathedral: "It stood enveloped in flames, one towering flame itself. Before the outrage something surged unchained at the root of our being. Our cathedral! Our hearts broke as we watched its desecration. An aged woman of the city intoned solemnly: 'This will bode them no good!' ('_Ca ne leur portera pas bonheur!_') We stood in groups watching with fierce anger the conflagration. We walked, we spoke, but like automatons, for our souls were groaning with anguish. Our cathedral! _Première page de France! Geste des aïeux! Legs des siècles devenant aujourd'hui, en ce poignant martyre, l'hostie nationale!_" Suddenly word came that the German wounded inside the church must be saved. The archpriest of the cathedral, Canon Landrieux (to-day a bishop), called for aid from the onlookers. He was answered by angry murmurs: "What! must we then risk our lives to save these bombarders of hospitals, these incendiaries of cathedrals?" Then a young girl's voice rose, trembling with tears: "_On est de France, nous autres!_" And instantly men stepped forward to aid the heroic priest save their enemies from the flaming furnace. Poor martyred Rheims! Its once illuminated western front is battered and corroded past restoral, and is falling flake by flake. With a touch of the finger the stone crumbles into dust. The towers are mutilated. One after another the rapt and fearless angels on the buttresses have been toppled down. As the incessant rain of fire and iron came from the northeast, the transept's northern entranceway is wrecked--its historic statues mere unsightly stumps. Never again will the hardy lesson of the Last Judgment be preached at the ruined portal. No more will the triple-winged seraphim chant hosannas in the great western rose. No coming generations of travelers will carry away an undying memory of the sunset hour in the great church, when the western inclosure became a resplendent sheet of flame, and those who paced up and down the basilica gazed with awe at that majestic spectacle of Art and Faith. The XIII-century windows of the clearstory are pulverized; scarcely a fragment is left of the forty lancets of the nave where, in superimposed rows, the kings of France stood, with the archbishops who had crowned them, big-eyed barbaric images, so intense of hue that one remembers them as blood-red rubies. The loss of the windows of Rheims has been expressed poignantly by Pierre Loti, who spent a Sunday in October, 1915, in the cathedral. He found the silence of death within its ravaged walls that for centuries had echoed the music of the liturgy. Only a cold wind now and then made fitful psalmody. When it blew strongly he could hear a patter as of delicate light pearls. It was the falling to oblivion of what still remained of the ancient windows. The hammer of Odin and of Thor has gone on beating down relentlessly the national church, and a Berlin poet has sung, exultantly: "The bells sound no more in the two-towered Dom. We have closed with lead, O Rheims, thy house of idolatry." Rheims was hated of old. In its cathedral of 1119 Calixtus II, of the blood of the Capetians, had excommunicated the would-be autocrat of Europe, the German emperor, who had proved himself an unnatural son, a treacherous neighbor, and one who laid sacrilegious hands on holy things. As the pope pronounced the sentence the four hundred prelates gathered in the cathedral dashed down their candles. Yes, Rheims was hated. Every check to the invader's troops in the trenches was immediately revenged on the defenseless church. _Rheims Cathedral bombarded_ became a tragically recurrent line in the war's official bulletin. On October 14, 1914, a hole, meters wide, was torn in the most beautiful of Gothic apses. On February 21 and 22, 1915, the bombardment surpassed in savagery the horrors of the fateful September 19th. On March 29, 1915, a German airship dropped inflammable bombs on the choir, and before many months of this rain of iron and fire the masonry roof began to give way. During the half year preceding the armistice a veritable avalanche of shells fell on the stricken city, where remained only a few hundred of its hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants. From June 15 to June 28, 1918, over sixteen thousand shells fell on Rheims, and, strange to tell, amid it all Dubois' statue of Jeanne d'Arc mounted on her charger on the cathedral parvis stood unscathed.[121] On July 5th eight shells crashed into the western entrances; and so on runs the sinister record. "We wait for a chastisement equal to the crime," is the word of Enlart, the archæologist. And the world's heart echoes the verdict. When on that fatal September day of 1914, the staggering almost unbelievable report first spread over France, "Rheims Cathedral is in flames"--many a strong man wept on the streets of French cities, and throughout the tragic night of the conflagration the French soldiers, camped over the plains for miles, watched in anguish the destruction of their patrimony, of their ancestress cathedral, _l'holocauste de la patrie_. In Jeanne's century it had taken a long and cruel war and the sacrifice of her who was the incarnation of France to remake the stricken soul of the nation, and again an overwhelming martyrdom was needed to set right the grievous _pitié_ there was in the country of France. The city of Rheims is to-day a shapeless mass, resembling a place wrecked by ancient barbarism. The archiepiscopal palace, whose two-storied chapel was built by the same hands that laid the choir stones of Notre Dame, is entirely demolished. The cathedral, though ravaged irreparably, still towers above the ruined city. Had Amiens been subjected to the same bombardment as Rheims, it would have collapsed long ago. It is the surplus strength of Rheims' foundations, somewhat criticized by architects, that has saved the church from utter destruction. Notre Dame of Rheims was built for eternity. The mystic wonder of the severed head of St. Nicaise has been repeated. Immolated Rheims has stirred anew the latent crusading blood. "Honor" and "sacrifice" and all the brave words of the days of chivalry are again on the lips of Frenchmen, and many a scoffer has been beaten to his knees by the same spirit which actuated the generations who built the cathedrals and, building them, welded a nation's unity. Those who committed the sacrilege of Rheims forgot that when mankind is robbed of a heritage it sets the criminal in the pillory of history. To-day Rheims Cathedral lies wounded on the field of honor; Rheims Cathedral is forever the symbol of a people's resurrection. _À la peine!... À l'honneur!_ AMIENS CATHEDRAL[122] There have been, in humanity's story, only two great schools of art--that of Greece, and that of the Gothic era. For only then was expressed the ideas and the religious spirit of the peoples that gave birth to them. The Greeks rendered the Pagan spirit, the Pagan emotion; they left us the Parthenon. The Gothic School rendered the Christian idea, the Christian spirit. It has left us Notre Dame of Amiens.--ÉMILE LAMBIN.[123] The terrors and the thunder of the World War menaced Amiens through the long four years, but the grand doctrinal temple, almost superhuman in its majesty, was spared the fate of Rheims, Soissons, and the noble church of St. Martin at Ipres, begun in the same twelvemonth as itself. The statues at the portals of Amiens have seen pass the great personages of the mediæval centuries. The kings of this world felt honored to visit the church of Our Lady and St. Firman. Its reconciliation Mass put the seal on a treaty of goodwill between France and England, and united the English ruler with his rebellious people; St. Louis, the peace maker, prayed in its sanctuary. On its very enemies it imposed veneration. When Charles le Téméraire attacked the city in 1471 he ordered his troops to respect the cathedral. While the upper vaulting of Chartres was being finished and the choir of Rheims was building, there was laid the first stone of Notre Dame of Amiens in 1220. Amiens is the Gothic cathedral par excellence, recognized from the first as a masterpiece--the Parthenon of Gothic--and immediately taken as a model. The cathedrals of Tours and of Troyes, already begun, were now continued like the big church of Picardy. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris was modeled on the Lady chapel of Amiens. The cathedrals of Clermont, Narbonne, Rodez, and Limoges are "daughters of Amiens." Its influence extended to the church of St. Sauveur at Bruges, to the cathedral of Prague, and to the choir of Cologne, the latter being almost a replica.[124] Amiens carried the Gothic principle of equilibrium farther than Rheims. The aisles were made higher, the bays wider, the points of ground support fewer, and the piers less heavy. No energy was wasted. Each part was made just strong enough. To go beyond this culminating point of constructive boldness was inevitably to decline. No one has better summed up the amplitude of this inspired church than M. Georges Durand, its latest historian, whose monograph is a model: "A vast space inundated with air and light has here been covered by stone vaults, as light and solid as possible; those vaults have been raised to a height never before attained; no longer any walls; the solidity of the edifice is assured by a play of pushes and resistances; flying buttresses exactly meeting the necessary spot to counterbut the great vault; the system of equilibrium perfectly known, and applied with a rigor and audacity unbelievable; the least possible sharpness given to transverse arches; the collaterals raised to a great height--all contribute to give this interior its expression of immensity." Amiens is a "triumphal chant." The "vast space inclosed" produces an impression that is confounding. When first you step inside the western doors of Amiens, you pause in awe. The emotion felt has the efficacy of a prayer. The edifice is prodigious and appears so; only St. Sophia, Cologne Cathedral, and St. Peter's at Rome cover larger areas. Now in St. Peter's each detail was enlarged in proportion to the giant scale chosen; thus, a cherub would have a thigh the size of an elephant's. The result is that the great church appears less than its real size. The method of the mediæval architect was precisely opposite. He saw no advantage in making his edifice appear smaller than it really was. He observed that no matter how big a tree might grow, its leaves were no larger than those on smaller trees. The mediæval architect took for his scale of measurement the height of man. His doorways were made for man to walk under. In the bases of his piers, in the triforium arches, in the normal size of his sculpted flora and fauna, he recalled to the eye the scale of a man, his chosen _échelle_: "And he measured the wall thereof ... the measure of a man, which is of an angel."[125] No matter how large a Gothic church might be, the statues decorating it did not increase in scale. To those who prefer a cathedral of the north there will always seem to be a touch of the artificial, of the _tour de force_ in St. Peter's. The name of the master mind who designed the cathedral of Picardy was Robert de Lusarches, recorded in a labyrinth formerly in the nave's pavement, as were his two successors, Thomas de Cormont and his son Renaud. The occasion for a new structure was the fire of 1218 which partly destroyed the Romanesque cathedral. As its old choir was preserved sufficiently to serve for a while longer, the new cathedral was begun by the nave, not the usual procedure. The nave rose in one supreme effort; from start to finish its plan never deviated. It has been taken as the typical masterpiece. "The façade of Paris, the tower of Chartres, the sculpture of Rheims, the nave of Amiens" is a popular summing up. [Illustration: _The Transept of Amiens Cathedral (1220-1280)_] By 1236 the nave of Amiens was finished, whereupon the Romanesque choir was replaced by a Gothic one whose plan had been drawn by Robert de Lusarches at the same time with that of the nave. His feeling for proportion was unfaltering; the relation between every part of his church is perfect. The interior elevation in three vertical stories was to become classic--a pier arcade--which is one-third of the entire height, and of the remaining upper wall a clearstory which occupies two-thirds and a triforium one-third. The church is three times as wide as the side aisle is high, and height and span correlate with length. Subtlety of calculation is seen everywhere. The perspective view became a kind of classic type. As you gaze down the church toward the curving east wall which closes the vista, you see beneath the pier arcades of the _sanctum sanctorum_ the windows of the apse chapels behind; they appear to fill the apertures symmetrically, whereas at Beauvais, where the side aisle is exceedingly high, the windows of the chapels rise to merely half the height of the pier arches. The cathedrals of Tours and Clermont followed the more satisfactory arrangement of Amiens. In the last days of Gothic architecture the dislike of the horizontal line was to be carried to such an extent that even the capitals, which the custom of all nations had approved for three thousand years, were eliminated. At Amiens a sane balance was kept. Under its triforium runs a deeply carved band of foliage broken only at the triumphal arches of the transept-crossing. Only there does the ascending line rise unobstructed from pavement to vault. And yet no church ever soared more confidently. The very hall-mark of genius is Amiens' strong horizontal leaf garland--just the needed touch to give variety to regularity as grandiose as this. In the nave the frieze was cut before the posing of the stones, but in the choir the sculpture was done _in situ_. The fenestration of this cathedral of St. Louis' reign shows the national art in its prime. The glazed triforium is a kind of pedestal for the clearstory, with which it is bound in a single composition by means of continuous mullions. The original glass was of the Sainte-Chapelle type, made by the Paris school which led in the second half of the XIII century, and were it still in existence the interior of Amiens would be a gorgeous sight. Only vestiges have survived; in some of the choir chapels are patchwork panels of ancient fragments. No one denies that the light enters this cathedral too profusely for the mystic seclusion beloved of the soul. The prelate who laid the foundation stone of Amiens in 1220 was Evrard de Fouilloy, cousin of that archbishop of the great house of Joinville who was a builder at Rheims. Intimate with Innocent III, connoisseur in notable men, the bishop of Amiens was one of the many building prelates who attended the Lateran Council whose séances must often have appeared like an _Amis des Cathédrales_ reunion. Bishop Evrard's splendid bronze tomb, cast at one flow, escaped the smelting pot of the Revolution, and with that of his successor, Geoffrey d'Eu, who chanted the first Mass in his cathedral in 1236, the year of his death, is now placed under the pier arcades of the nave. "Here lies Evrard," runs the inscription, "a man compassionate to the afflicted, the widows' protector, the orphans' guardian, who fed the people, who laid the foundations of this structure, to whose care the city was given." The hand of the bishop is raised in a grave gesture of power. The image of Geoffrey d'Eu is less personal. "Bright-shining man of Eu," runs his epitaph, "by whom the throne of Amiens rose into immensity." The saintly bishop used to encourage even the beggars to give their penny toward raising the new house of God. By 1245 bells were placed in the western towers; then came a lull in the work, from 1247 to 1257, for the bishop had accompanied St. Louis to the holy wars. Louis IX was in Amiens on several occasions and his Sainte-Chapelle at Paris proved his admiration for the classic church. As the XIII century closed, a chapel was added to Amiens by her bishop, the learned Guillaume de Mâcon, a personal friend of St. Louis, and present at his death in Tunis, 1270. The son and successor of Louis IX sent Guillaume to Rome to solicit his father's canonization. During the XIV century other side chapels were added, and in the one erected by Bishop La Grange, from 1373 to 1375, appeared for the first time in France some of the characteristics of Flamboyant Gothic--the flame tracery and ramified vaulting. As early as 1270, however, Amiens had made a sporadic use of supplementary ribs, in the square over the transept-crossing, employing them there, no doubt, in order to break up the immense expanses of infilling. Though the cathedral of Amiens has lost its stained glass, it has retained that other glory of decorative art--its sculpture. The three western entrance arches, in nine orders, are sovereign compositions. Probably as a scheme of dogmatic theology Amiens is even more complete than Chartres or Rheims. The main façade, with its strong buttress lines unbroken from ground to tower, would be the grandest of all the Gothic frontispieces had it been completed as first planned. But only in its lower stories is it of the XIII century, and the towers scarcely rise above the enormous parallelogram. At the trumeau of the central door stands _le Beau Dieu_ of Amiens, of stronger personality than that of Rheims, a Christ of the West more than the East. "He is the master, wise, steadfast, fraternal, with the patience and the human sympathy that comprehend man's eternal weaknesses."[126] He treads on monsters that symbolize Satan and Sin: "Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk; the lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot."[127] About him stand the best loved of all the saints, the apostles--plain, primitive men in whose upturned foreheads shines the serenity of certitude. We are His witnesses, they seem to be saying, and our testimony we sealed _usque ad sanguinem_: "That which we have seen and have heard we declare unto you...." "We were eyewitnesses of His greatness...." "This Voice we heard brought from heaven...." "These things we write to you that you may rejoice and your joy be full." The prophets and patriarchs at Amiens' portals lack the assurance of joy which shines in the faces of the humble men chosen for the hierarchy of the New Law; the earlier ones had not themselves seen and heard and touched. Never was the meaning of the Messiah's coming set forth more sublimely than in this archetype cathedral. The soul of the Middle Ages had brooded over the Gospels till it had pierced to their spiritual sense. "The house of the Lord built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone in whom all the building being framed together, growing up into an holy temple in the Lord."[128] When the apostles were placed at the cathedral doors, the tradition was to have St. Peter stand to the right of his Master, and St. Paul to the left; the latter was substituted for Matthias, elected to Judas' place. St. Peter, tonsured, carried the key and a cross; his beard was short and curly. St. Paul bore a sword, since his Roman citizenship had saved him from death by crucifixion; he was represented with a bald forehead and a long beard. St. Andrew carried the peculiar-shaped cross on which he died; St. Bartholomew a knife, emblem of his martyrdom. At the western doors of Amiens is an Annunciation group in which the Virgin is the prototype of the gentle _Ancilla Domini_ at Rheims. The St. Elizabeth of the Visitation group is a noble aged woman; the St. Simeon of the Presentation has been called the _Nunc dimittis_ in person. Local saints are in a position of honor at the right-hand door, the chief here being St. Firman, the first bishop of Amiens, and the pioneer who preached the Word in Picardy, where he was martyred in 289. On his tomb rose the first cathedral of the city. His statue at the trumeau is a masterpiece of its period. In his _Bible of Amiens_,[129] Ruskin gives enlightening interpretations of the quatrefoils adorning the wall under the big images at the western entrance. Little genre studies of agricultural life typify the seasons, and the vices and virtues are rendered with movement and subtlety. There is a connection between certain of the small bas-reliefs and the large statues standing above them. About 1288 they carved the images at the transept's southern portal. Fifty years had elapsed since the making of the western entrance, and already the early reverential awe had passed away. Our Lady is now shown as a radiant young matron whose smile is somewhat mannered, but to call the charming _vierge dorée_ "the soubrette of Picardy," as did Ruskin, is an absurd exaggeration. The apostles are no longer of the ideal type. They are mediæval schoolmen, debating some point of dialectics. Each century was to add to the sculpture of Amiens. André Beauneveu, an illustrious French-Flemish master, made buttress statues of Charles V and his sons, realistic portrait work. The king was one of the four Valois brothers who were, with the Avignon popes, the chief art patrons of the XIV century. As Amiens Cathedral suffered comparatively little during the two cataclysms which emptied the churches of France, it is still a museum of treasures. When, in 1562, the Huguenots, sword in hand, rushed into the church to shatter the altars, the town's tocsin sounded and the citizens assembled in such numbers that they saved their church. Again, during the Revolution, when brutal soldiery began to mutilate the choir screen's groups, the women of Amiens who lived about the cathedral lustily beat the vandals with chairs. Of course the Revolution set up here the usual altar with its living Goddess of Reason, Marat's bust was honored, and over the portal was inscribed the grandiloquent boast: "Fanaticism is destroyed: Truth triumphs." The tombs, bas-reliefs, and paintings were left intact, as well as the famous carved stalls finished in 1522. In the choir-screen sculpture of XVI-century Gothic the Renaissance had only just begun to appear. St. Firman's mission was related quaintly--no prudery shown in the scene of the baptism of Amiens' first Christians. The life of St. John the Baptist was set forth because crusaders had brought his relics to this church from Constantinople. The tourist guide enjoys leading his clients behind Amiens' sanctuary to show them a plump little cupid weeping a marble tear over the tomb of some good canon who founded a local orphanage. M. Durand remarks that for one who appreciates the magnificent bronze tombs of the bishop-builders, or the realistic late-Gothic groups of the choir screen, there are ten who are moved by that banal little _ange pleurant_. In the transept are some marble slabs inscribed with the names of the presidents of a religious-literary association called Puy-Notre-Dame. Such Puys (from podium, or platform) were poetic contests that sprang up in the XIV century, with the disappearance of the wandering minstrels, and they led in turn to a real literary movement.[130] At Amiens it was the custom each year for a new picture in honor of Notre Dame to be presented to her church, and at the festival a poem was read in her praise. Eventually statues were substituted for pictures, which explains the wealth of XVII-century sculpture in the side chapels and aisles of Amiens Cathedral. A number of the ancient paintings have been placed in the Museum of the city, whose walls have been embellished by Puvis de Chavannes' _Ave Picardia nutrix_. CHAPTER VI Six of the Lesser Great Cathedrals: Bourges, Beauvais, Troyes, Tours, Lyons, Le Mans Every work of art truly beautiful and sublime throws the soul into a gracious or serious reverie that lifts it toward the Infinite. Art of itself is essentially moral and religious, since it expresses everywhere in its manifestation the eternal beauty, or else it is false to its own law, to its own genius. --VICTOR COUSIN, _Du vrai, du beau, et du bien_. Scattered over France are a number of cathedrals that would stand in the first rank in any other land but one in which were such supreme churches as Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens. It is convenient to group here six of these lesser Great Cathedrals, since they will not fall properly within the coming four chapters, which deal with the regional schools of Normandy, Burgundy, the Midi, and Plantagenet Gothic. According to the classification used by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis, there are six schools of Gothic architecture in France. Their differences lie in secondary characteristics such as ground-plan, ramifications of ribs, and the form of piers, window tracery, and ornamentations. Of the Ile-de-France and Champagne schools we have already gained some idea in tracing the first steps of the national art, and in following its highest development at Paris, Rheims, and Amiens. Of the six cathedrals here grouped that of Beauvais belongs to the Ile-de-France Picard school and that of Troyes to the Gothic of Champagne. But the four others--Bourges, Tours, Lyons, and Le Mans--show the influences of two or more schools and therefore fit more reasonably into this heterogeneous chapter. In speaking of Gothic schools it is well to recall that in the Flamboyant development there were no distinct regional groups. A similar Gothic style was used in the Midi as in Normandy, in Picardy as in Burgundy. Though not of the greatest, these six churches are splendid monuments. With hesitation one places such a cathedral as Bourges in a secondary group. Had Beauvais and Le Mans been completed on the same scale as their grandiose choirs, they would stand with the foremost. At Troyes are windows, of the same epochs as the stones framing them, that for splendor are second only to those of Chartres and Bourges. The cathedral of Tours is the personification of the equipoise of Touraine's art, and its storied windows are notable. The metropolitan church of Lyons possesses a grave individuality of the most singular interest, and its windows, too, are masterpieces. During an astonishing century--roughly speaking from 1170 to 1270--France built about eighty Gothic cathedrals, and more than three hundred fine churches. And the miracle is that each had its own distinct personality, which etches itself clearly on the traveler's mind. Such was the super-abounding joy of creation in the golden age of the national art that no two churches are alike. THE CATHEDRAL OF BOURGES[131] One goes before the Lord's altar, one bends the knee, one stays there in an attitude of prostrate humility, and _perhaps_, in it all, one has not rendered to God a single homage. Why? Because religion does not consist of inclinations of the body, or of modesty of the eyes, but of humbleness of spirit, and not for an instant has the spirit been one with those demonstrations of respect and adoration. One visits the hospitals and prisons, one consoles the afflicted, one tends the sick and helps the poor, and _perhaps_ the very one who displays in all this the most assiduity and zeal is he who possesses the least Christian mercy. Why? Because he is carried on by a certain natural activity, or an entirely human pity touches him, or is it any other motive, except God, that leads him.--_On True and False Piety_, BOURDALOUE (1632-1704; born in Bourges). The cathedral of St. Étienne stands on a slight hill in the center of Bourges, and is a landmark for forty miles over the Berry plains that are the tranquil heart of France. The best architectural view of it is obtained from the park once attached to the archbishop's palace and said to have been laid out by Le Nôtre, master of this type of cold distinction which is so eminently French. As the entire south flank of the church is exposed to view there, the absence of a transept is what first strikes the attention. Bourges is the only XIII-century cathedral without the extended arms of the cross. Had it a transept it might appear short, whereas now its four hundred feet of length make the most imposing effect. Bourges, Paris, Troyes, and Clermont are the only cathedrals with double aisles about choir and nave. Bourges is exceptional in that the inner aisle is twice as high as the outer--so high that it possesses its own triforium and clearstory; so high that the pier arches around the middle church rise to more than half the height of the edifice. Indeed, many an English cathedral could stand under the pier arches of Bourges. Each pillar is encircled by eight shafts--an arrangement that accentuates its loftiness. It may be claimed that there is over-emphasis in a procession of such giant columns about the interior of a church, and that there is something spectacular in a colonnade of such stupendous arches. Certainly the main clearstory is dwarfed by comparison, and the contrast in height between inner and outer aisle is too violent. Bourges must pass as a superb experiment rather than the restrained achievement from which emanates a school. Subsequent architects preferred to take as model the more classic division of Amiens' interior wall elevation. None the less is this most original basilica magnificently and romantically beautiful. Upon entering the church for the first time one feels the gripping sensation of beholding a thing audacious and gigantic. And yet the impression conveyed is not that of overweening pride. There is reverence here. Bishop Durandus tells us that the piers of a church are the bishops and doctors who sustain the temple of God by their doctrines, that the length of a church representeth fortitude which patiently endureth till it attain heaven; its breadth, charity; its height, courage that despiseth prosperity and adversity, hoping to see the gladness of the Lord in the land of the living. The windows are hospitality with cheerfulness, and tenderness with charity. They are Holy Scriptures which expel the wind and the rain--that is, all things hurtful--but transmit the light of the true Sun--that is, God--into the hearts of the faithful.[132] So wrote the wise old XIII-century Midi bishop for whom the whole world and everything in it were symbols. Sound doctrine, fortitude, and warm protecting hospitality--such are qualities supremely understood of Bourges. There is awe in this church and there is magic. Of the boundless imagination of dreams are certain sunset aspects here, when from the wide western window of Jean de Berry gleams of light strike athwart these vast arches of wonderland, across these sixty big pillars of stone, and night-time hours--during the May evening services of Our Lady--when the great church as in fearsome meditation is shrouded in shadow. [Illustration: _The Apse of Bourges (1200-1225)_] Some four or five cathedrals have stood, in turn, on the same site which was close by the Gallo-Roman city walls. For the early Christians were despised as pariahs, and allowed to build only on the outskirts of cities, until the edict of Constantine permitted them to exercise their religion with honor. All over France churches are to be found abutting on the ancient ramparts of towns. Of the early cathedrals of Bourges only the core of the present crypt remains. From the Romanesque edifice immediately preceding the present cathedral come its XII-century side portals. There are strong analogies between the ground-plan of St. Étienne of Bourges and that of Notre Dame of Paris, especially if one recalls that the cathedral of Paris, as first designed, possessed no transept. Probably the plans of both were made at the same time, but the work in the capital of the royal demesne started immediately in 1163; hence it retained the galleries over the side aisles--a Romanesque tradition--whereas, at Bourges the actual building began only in the last decade of the XII century, when such tribunes were passing out of vogue. Bourges thereupon undertook to modify its first design, and it tried the startling experiment of making an inner aisle whose height comprised both aisle and tribune. The crypt of Bourges,[133] one of the most spacious in France, was begun by Archbishop Henri de Sully (1184-99), brother of Bishop Eudes who helped build the west façade of Paris Cathedral. When Henri died, the decision was left to his brother in Paris, as to which of three Cistercian abbots should be the succeeding archbishop in Bourges. The nomination fell to St. Guillaume Berruyer (1199-1208) of the house of Nevers, whose counts had built the admirable Romanesque St. Étienne in that city. Guillaume had watched both Paris and Soissons' cathedrals rising; he had been a monk in Pontigny, whose church was the earliest Gothic venture in Burgundy, and he was abbot of Châalis, where the church also was Primary Gothic. This holy Cistercian was loath to leave his cloister, and always wore his white robe and fasted like a genuine son of St. Bernard. In his face shone his purity of soul, and it is said that his manner was merry. Only a saint could have made the ambulatory of Bourges, a place apart from the world's fret, fashioned for meditative prayer, its walls hung with gospel parables of mosaic glass. It is thought that while the new Gothic choir was building, services were held in the Romanesque cathedral, which may have been partly open to the elements, since St. Guillaume caught a chill in it while preaching, from the effects of which he died in 1208. Ten years later, the first ceremony held in the completed choir was for his canonization; without the usual process of investigation the pope declared him a saint. From 1236 to 1260, a nephew of St. William's, Blessed Philippe Berruyer, was archbishop of Bourges and carried forward the nave; and the saint's great-niece, the Countess Matilda of Nevers, contributed generously. Bourges commemorated her saintly bishops in the clearstory of her inner aisle. The window wherein St. Guillaume is pictured shows his niece as the donor. Never was monument set on a more majestic base than the choir end of Bourges. There the crypt stands above the ground, owing to the slope of the land. The chevet of St. Étienne is incomparable. In every part of the edifice good mason work was done, save in the upper vaults, where the necessity of economy led to skimping. It is apparent that, as the eastern curve of the cathedral was rising, the architect modified his plan. In his apse walls he inserted small chapels, each standing on two columns and an engaged shaft and each roofed by a stone pyramid. Not only does the circlet of little shrines add to the beauty of the chevet, but each chapel serves the practical purpose of a buttress. That they were afterthoughts is proved by the ambulatory windows not being set symmetrically over the crypt windows. However, the chapels must have been added during the building of the procession path, because the latter's vaulting shows no sign of reconstruction. The cathedral of Bourges is not well documented. Only by a study of the stones themselves can it be dated. Its eastern end was building during the first part of the XIII century; in 1266 the chapter contributed toward the works, their donations being used probably for the completion of the nave. At the end of the XIII century porches were added to the side doors retained from the Romanesque cathedral. Work continued on the west façade during the early part of the XIV century, but when, in 1324, St. Étienne was dedicated, it had been completed in its main parts for forty years. This makes the west front of Bourges about a century younger than its apse. The five deeply recessed portals correspond to its five aisles, and the western towers are set clear of the aisles, as at Rouen; that to the southwest is now braced by a flying buttress and detached buttress pile. In 1506 the northwest tower collapsed. It was rebuilt by alms, given as thank-offering for the privilege of eating butter during Lent, hence its name Tour de Beurre. Such butter towers may be called the XVI century's method of charity bazaar to raise money for church repairs. During the heyday of Gothic, the fervent layman gave voluntarily, asking for no return, and in that spirit rose the _clocher vieux_ at Chartres. Compare that sublime monument with the elegant, mundane late-Gothic "butter towers" of France, and you comprehend how inevitably the spirit of builders reveals itself in the work of their hands. Of the five western doors of Bourges, only the central one is wholly of the XIII century (c. 1260-75). Its representation of the Last Judgment, adjudged to be the best ever set up at a cathedral door, the _Dies Iræ_ warning in stone, is derived from Job, St. Paul, St. Matthew, and the Apocalypse. In the upper zone Christ is enthroned; in the lower is shown the arising of the dead from their tombs. Between these scenes is the splendid panel of the Judgment, with the stately archangel as its central figure, holding the scales of justice. To his left malign demons seize on the damned to plunge them into the jaws of the Leviathan described in Job. To his right the blessed ones smile with complacency as they move toward Paradise, here represented by a hieroglyphic--supposed to be Abraham's bosom, out of which peep some little souls smuggled safely away.[134] St. Peter stands at the gates of Paradise, holding the keys, a doctrinal symbol of his power to bind and to loose, until in time popular fancy pictured him as the actual gatekeeper of heaven. Among the elect is represented a king holding the flower of sanctity, probably meant for St. Louis. Beside the king is a cord-girdled monk--hence the name "cordeliers" for Franciscans--showing how popular was the new Order. The fall of the north tower caused the ruin of the portals near it, and when rebuilt in the XVI century an iconographic error was made which would have been impossible with the trained scholastics of an earlier day--the mother of the Saviour was placed on his left, instead of in the seat of honor on his right. In the fatal year 1562, when from end to end of France the churches were mutilated, the Calvinists attacked the portal images of Bourges and flung the carven stones into the breaches of the town walls. They went so far as to mine the giant piers in order that the great edifice might totter to its fall; but happily their control of the city was cut short, or the tragedy of Orléans might have been enacted.[135] Bourges is a chosen spot for stained glass, second only to Chartres. Students have made the study of its windows a lifetime enthusiasm. Nowhere can the epochs of the vitrine art from the XII to the XVII century be more easily studied. The school of St. Denis, however, is not represented. Two small panels, now set in a window beside the south portal, are earlier in date than Suger's windows; their flesh tone is purplish; perhaps they are the oldest colored glass extant in France. Of the XIII-century school of Chartres are the twenty and more lancets in the ambulatory, legend-medallion windows ranking with the best ever made. They repeat some of the themes used by the artists at Chartres, such as the parables of the Prodigal Son, presented by the tanners, and of the Good Samaritan, which latter lancet at Bourges is an exception in having its story begin at the top. Ancient windows are to be read usually from the bottom upward. The first window in the choir aisle, as you enter it from the north, shows the beggar Lazarus despised and suffering on earth, then carried by angels to Abraham's bosom, wherein (in the topmost medallion) he sits cozily ensconsed, but Dives, the bad rich man, is snatched by demons from his earthly scenes of plenty and thrust into hell. The lancet which, at Bourges, is devoted to the Apocalypse, is held to be a subtle commentary on the vision of Patmos. To the fifth large window of the ambulatory, called the New Alliance, the Jesuit fathers, Cahier and Martin, have devoted over a hundred pages--a veritable treatise on symbolism--in their monumental study of the earlier stained glass in this church. "Prophecies in action," our friend Joinville called the prefiguring of the New Law by the Old, so popular during the Middle Ages. New Alliance windows are to be found in various cathedrals--their theme being the substitution of Gentiles for Jews by the merit of the Cross.[136] The guild of butchers was the donor of this abstract doctrinal window of Bourges. The only break in the XIII-century glass of the choir aisle is in the axis chapel, where the windows--of the XVI-century Renaissance--belonged originally to the Sainte-Chapelle of the ducal palace that once existed in Bourges; other windows from the same source have been reset in the cathedral's crypt. The small scenes at the base of each lancet--the signatures as they are called--show that here, as at Chartres, the larger number of these priceless treasures of art were donated by the little people of the Lord--carpenters, weavers, coopers, money changers. A window given by the stonecutters, in the choir aisle of Bourges, is devoted to St. Thomas, the apostle, patron of builders. Bourges and Chartres afford the best opportunity for a more intimate study of the legends and symbols then most popular. Here, as at Chartres, the _Golden Legend_ should be one's inseparable companion. In the high windows of the middle choir the apostles are ranged on one side of Sancta Maria, and the prophets on the other--another of the many contrasts of the Old and New Testaments. The nave's clearstory is chiefly XIII-century grisaille. The XIV-century artists, in their desire for more light, gave up the profound colors of their mosaic-like windows for that coldly elegant phase of the vitrine art, when the use of white was carried to excess and each figure set in its own panel was pictured like a statue with architectural niche and dais. About 1370 Duke Jean of Berry, born connoisseur like his brothers Charles V, Philippe of Burgundy, and the Duke of Anjou, presented to Bourges Cathedral its immense western window. Before the Medici, this Valois prince collected cameos and medals and bric-à-brac. Among the twenty castles he built were those of Poitiers, Riom, and Bourges, on which were employed the noted Flamboyant Gothic architects, the Dammartin brothers. When the Sainte-Chapelle of the palace in Bourges was destroyed (1759), the duke's tomb, which his nephew Charles VI had ordered of Jean de Cambrai (1477-83), was brought to the cathedral. The sarcophagus was once surrounded by alabaster statuettes, some of which are in the Museum. The arrangement of mourners came from his brother's world-famous tomb in Dijon. In his old age the spendthrift, unstable Jean de Berry married the very youthful Jeanne de Boulogne, and kneeling images of both duke and duchess have been placed on either side of the entrance to the axis chapel of the cathedral. Apparently art-loving John of France was in person the homeliest of men. The Revolution damaged these images, which were restored by means of drawings made of them by Holbein in the time when Bourges was a Mecca for the artists of Europe. Some of Duke Jean's friends presented early XV-century windows to the side chapels of Bourges Cathedral. His physician, Aligret, gave one. The Hundred Years' War put a stop to the accumulation of art treasures in the metropolitan church. When Charles VII, "the little king of Bourges," as the English had dubbed him ironically, went with the victorious Maid of Orleans to be crowned king at Rheims, his gentle queen, Marie of Anjou, stayed in Bourges with her mother, Yolande of Aragon. Marie's brother, then a youth under Jeanne's command, was to become the good King René of history. To Bourges Jeanne herself came later. She lodged with an estimable widow of the town who, years afterward, during the inquest conducted for the Maid's rehabilitation, bore testimony to the young girl's simple goodness. She told how gallantly Jeanne mounted a horse and how adroitly she managed a lance so that "everyone was in admiration of her, for no knight could have done better."[137] Then when "_Jehanne la bonne Lorraine_," as Villon called her, had given France a new soul, when the blight of the Great Schism of the West was over, and France accepted the same spiritual chief as the remainder of Europe, there came about the energetic, happy, restless manifestation of art which we call Flamboyant Gothic. Bourges then possessed a Mæcenas in the person of a merchant (son of a tradesman of the city) whose ships covered the sea. Jacques Coeur, from 1443 to 1452, built himself, in his native town, the finest burgher's house in France, to see which René of Anjou--great-nephew of Jean of Berry--came especially to Bourges. Its walls were carved with quaint devices and images,[138] and, like Van Eyck's, were the charming little angels painted on its chapel vaults. No civic monument in the land excels it; it ranks as the best with Rouen's Palais de Justice and the Hôtel Cluny at Paris. The same merchant-prince built in Bourges Cathedral a private chapel for his family, and beside it a rich Flamboyant Gothic sacristy. The Annunciation window in the chapel (1450) is held to be the best glass of its century, uniting the better drawing of the later day with a plain, firm, general design. The face of the Angel Gabriel has been said to be a portrait of Jacques Coeur. St. James is represented in pilgrim garb because of the fame of his shrine at Santiago Compostela. It is thought that Jacques Coeur donated the row of richly damasked windows in the west façade beneath Jean of Berry's big sheet of glass, made fifty years earlier. Colors have become richer and the figures show a tendency to escape from the rigid attitude of statues, but not yet has absolute congruity between the hues been achieved. Jacques Coeur was not to be buried in the chapel he had prepared. He served the same master who had let the Maid of Orleans perish at Rouen without striking a blow to save her. With money provided by the merchant-banker of Bourges, Charles VII had reconquered Normandy, but he let the estate of his faithful servant be rapaciously confiscated without a trial, and left him to languish in prison for two years before being banished from the kingdom by the mockery of a law process. Jacques Coeur died in exile in 1461, but his good name was exonerated, and his son Jean, archbishop of Bourges, was buried in the cathedral's choir. The merchant-prince's chapel passed with his mansion into the hands of the Laubespine family, whose kneeling statues now adorn it. With the XVI century there opened another golden period of the vitrine art in Bourges. A local master, Jean Lecuyer, won fame. He made the Tullier window (1532) in the tenth bay (south) of the cathedral. The donor, Canon Tullier, and his father, mother, and various ecclesiastic relatives, are being presented by their patron saints to a distinguished-looking Madonna. The architectural background shows what headway the foreign Renaissance had made in France, though the chief figures are still true to French traditions. The colors are faultlessly balanced and certain exquisite half-tones are noticeable. In the upper panels, in a fair blue sky, are entrancing little angels giving a celestial concert, fiddling, beating a drum, singing with all their hearts, for this is the shrine built by St. William, who knew how to be holy and merry as well. The Tullier light has been called the loveliest of XVI-century windows. And yet no one can deny that enamel painting on glass was a deterioration of the art. The old masters had followed a sounder tradition when they subordinated their windows to their architecture, making them an integral part of it, and not merely isolated painted pictures. Jean Lecuyer also composed the window (1518) relating the lives of St. Stephen and St. Laurence in the cathedral's nave (south side), and several brilliant lights in St. Bonnat's church. Even the XVII century produced interesting work at Bourges; in the Martigny chapel of the cathedral (north side of nave) the portrait of the donor is as realistic as a miniature. THE CATHEDRAL OF BEAUVAIS[139] C'est alors que se constitue cette merveilleuse discipline, vrai fondement de la culture intellectuelle et de la science, qu'est la discipline scholastique.... Toute la connaissance est tournée vers la science de l'être, vers la métaphysique, plus haut encore vers la théologie; plus haut encore, vers théologie vécue, vers la contemplation.--JACQUES MARITAIN. The cathedral of Beauvais derived directly from Amiens, and no expression of the Gothic principle was ever carried farther. It consists of a mammoth choir and transept. As the height of the edifice is three times its width, the nave which now is lacking would need to have been of enormous length. Instead of that much-needed nave, there nestles under the truncated west end a modest little Carolingian edifice called the _Basse-OEuvre_, built by the fortieth bishop of Beauvais, Hervé (987-998). The small cubic stones and occasional courses of brick tell of the antiquity of this, the best-preserved monument in France, dating before the year 1000.[140] Most of the Romanesque churches of the Oise copied it. Scarcely, however, had the Ile-de-France Picard Romanesque school developed than the privileged region gave birth to the national art. In 1227 Beauvais planned a new cathedral, spurred on thereto by the magnificent nave rising in neighboring Amiens. But the works were not started till 1247, for the bishop, more a feudal baron than a pastor, was for a time entirely engrossed in mercenary wars in Italy and in quarreling with Blanche of Castile, the queen-regent. Finally Bishop Milon began his cathedral in Beauvais on a scale beyond the resources of the diocese. Despite his own and the chapter's generous donations, and the exemption of workmen and all building material from taxes, the choir was not finished till 1272, two years after the choir of Cologne. Scarcely was it done when, in 1284, its upper vaulting fell; a few years earlier a partial collapse had occurred. To remedy the disaster new piers had to be inserted between the old ones, which explains the sharp-pointed arches of the pier arcade. Only in the ambulatory, which was untouched by the falling masonry, is the original vaulting to be found. The required addition of flying buttresses was no improvement to the symmetry of the exterior. Instead of being able to proceed to the erection of a nave, forty years were wasted in repairs. Then came the calamities of the Hundred Years' War when building activities flagged all over France. Never again were profiles to be virile. The apogee hour of Gothic was forever past. With English, Burgundian, and French troops roving the country, Beauvais was kept on the alert. In 1429, the citizens, roused by Jeanne d'Arc's success at Orléans, expelled their bishop, who was in sympathy with the foe, and was none other than the unworthy Pierre Cauchon, soon to sit as miscreant judge at the Maid's trial in Rouen. Two years after Jeanne had been burned, Beauvais was besieged by English troops, and so gallant was the behavior of the women of the city, notably Jeanne Hachette, that forever after was accorded to them the right to march in the place of honor in all processions, directly behind the clergy. When the Duke of Burgundy, England's ally, besieged the city in 1472 he burned the episcopal palace, to which the two sturdy towers near the _Basse-OEuvre_ originally belonged. Once more the women of Beauvais fought side by side with the men, while the children and the aged gathered in the cathedrals to supplicate Heaven for protection. No city in the land had better cause to rejoice over peace and the invader's expulsion than Beauvais. And nowhere did Flamboyant Gothic take on nobler expression than in the stately transept now added to the cathedral, a masterpiece worthy to be joined to the giant choir. On its north front worked Martin Chambiges, who gave to Troyes and Sens their admirable façades. Over-ornamentation was a pitfall for the late-Gothic masters, but not for Chambiges, who kept Beauvais' strong lines of construction unobliterated by lavish detail. Flamboyant Gothic was essentially a decorative art. Therein only did it differ from preceding schools, for it developed no new principles of construction. Because of the flamelike undulations of its window tracery, the Norman archæologist, M. de Caumont, who had brought into use the name Romanesque, invented the equally useful term Flamboyant.[141] Capricious, overladen, disturbingly restless, this final phase of the national art may often be (it has been called more terrestrial than celestial), it was inclined to exhibit its technical dexterity; but none the less it was keenly alive and a vast improvement on the over-formalized geometric Rayonnant Gothic to which it succeeded. In both, the profiles were prismatic, fluid, and weak. Discipline which made for robustness was forever lost. A century before the characteristics of Flamboyant art developed in France, they were in use in England, and there called Curvilinear or Decorated Gothic. Window mullions undulated, arches were crowned with reversed curves and sculptured finials, secondary, connecting ribs were added to the vaulting, bases were elongated, there were interpenetrating molds, hanging keystones, piers without capitals, and such new models for foliate sculpture as the deeply indented leaves of parsley and curly cabbage. When capitals were given up, the ribs died away weakly in the piers. The Gothic of England had changed to its cold Perpendicular phase by the time that the architects across the Channel adopted the features called Flamboyant in France. M. Camille Enlart has developed the idea that the last phase of the national architecture was a product of the English occupation during the Hundred Years' War, that from elements of decoration introduced by England, the French composed a style which differed somewhat only from that in vogue across the Channel from 1300 to 1360. In France, flowing tracery and ogee arches were not used before 1375. France need feel no diminution of her claim of leadership in Gothic architecture because she adopted, for her XV-century traits, certain decorative details developed first by others, since the Gothic of England was originally of French derivation. The theory of an English origin for French Flamboyancy is contested by M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, who thought that from the same elements of XIII-century Gothic one country developed its own Curvilinear style and the other its own, Flamboyant Gothic.[142] M. de Lasteyrie agreed with the thesis that there is a French origin for French late-Gothic manifestations. That Flamboyant art is in part indigenous and partly of foreign derivation is probably nearest the truth. Certainly sporadic cases of florid features appeared in French art during the XIII and XIV centuries, but it is clear that in various places long held by the English there appeared the first or the fullest expression of late-Gothic art. Before the Flamboyant Gothic transept of Beauvais was finished, the foreign Renaissance had arrived in France. And it showed here in the richly sculptured doors. The sibyls, all ten of whom are represented, are, as pagans, kept outside the church. With skilled gradation the carving grows deeper and bolder toward the top of the doors, farthest away from the eye. Jean Le Pot carved the southern doors in faultless taste. He was a glassmaker as well, and in St. Étienne's church are his windows beside those of his father-in-law, Engrand Le Prince, who, with his sons Jean and Nicholas, made the north and south rose windows of the cathedral and its splendid Peter and Paul window. Their tree of Jesse, in St. Étienne's choir, is considered a masterpiece of color and design. To-day a Le Prince window in any French city is a matter of civic pride. The old saying ran: "The choir of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, the portals of Rheims, the towers of Chartres" make the most beautiful cathedral in the world. One hundred and fifty feet high curve the upper vaults of Beauvais choir. Beneath them could be set the belfries of Notre Dame of Paris. As at Bourges, the lofty aisle possesses its own triforium and clearstory, but here the clearstory of the central choir has not been dwarfed as a result of the stupendous pier arcades. Beauvais dared to make its upper windows eighty feet high. Think what its interior would be had it retained the original stained glass! Its towering choir windows would scintillate like those of Sainte-Chapelle, since it was the Paris school that supplied XIII-century Beauvais. Such a sweep of fragile glass was possible because the play of thrusts and counterthrusts had been calculated to a certainty. Technically, Beauvais is the extreme expression of the Gothic theory. It perfected the pier by making it elliptical, widest where fell the greatest strain, north and south. It is said that its error lay in certain false bearings, that some of the intermediate buttresses were balanced half on air without direct ground supports. That may have been temerarious, since building material of perfect quality is required when chances are taken. Certainly Beauvais pushed to its rigid consequences the law of equilibrium, allowing no excess in the supporting members, but it was not a builder's folly. M. de Lasteyrie has called its plan a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of lightness. Though the architect pushed his technique to the extreme limit of the law of thrust and counterthrust, he did not pass beyond the possible, and had he employed the hard, resistant stone of Burgundy the history of the cathedral church he built would not be a tale of disasters. What brought about the collapse of Beauvais' vaults was the use of inferior stone. Sometimes one feels in the hardihood of this cathedral a trace of everweening pride, as if its certitude of excelling tended to virtuosity. The stupefying ascending lines, strong-willed and carried out with science, seem as much to vaunt the enterprise of their builder as pay homage to the Creator. Some of the lesser churches, that humbly and tentatively reached out toward perfection, make a deeper appeal than does stupendous Beauvais. Was man meant for the superlative on earth? And one remembers that Bishop Milon de Nanteuil was a proud man of the world, very unlike that true pastor of souls, Maurice de Sully, who with unpretentious diligence raised Notre Dame of Paris. Such criticisms would be silenced, perhaps, had Beauvais a nave from which could be viewed its overwhelming choir. Truncated as it now is, it is necessary to crane the neck in order to see its clearstory windows. So colossal a thing should be led up to gradually; it cries out insistently for its missing nave. Fatality seemed always to pursue Beauvais. After terminating a noble Flamboyant transept, the ambitious citizens were lured into the scheme of a central tower, when a church of such height should have at its crossing merely a slender spire. Instead of proceeding to build a nave, they raised a lantern that lacked merely a few feet of the enormous height of St. Peter's dome in Rome. It was a day of tower building in France, and Beauvais, ever hopeful beyond its resources, thought to outvie all others. On feast days lights were hung in its spire's open stonework for the illumination of the entire countryside. For five years only the giant beacon stood. On Ascension Day of 1573, just after the congregation had left the church to walk in procession, the tower fell with an appalling noise, covering the whole town with dust. Only one bay of the nave has been built, its piers have disappearing moldings, amorphous profiles, and no capitals whatever. Beauvais stands a massive fragment, and there seems little chance that the truncated church will ever be completed. THE CATHEDRAL OF TROYES[143] With travail great, and little cargo fraught, See how our world is laboring in pain; So filled we are with love of evil gain That no one thinks of doing what he ought, But we all hustle in the Devil's train, And only in his service toil and pray; And God, who suffered for us agony, We set behind, and treat him with disdain. Hardy is he whom death doth not dismay. The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, While man goes groping, without sense to tell Where to seek refuge against growing old.... The Devil doth in snares our life enfold. Four hooks he has with torments baited well; And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, And then, to fill his nets has Pride enrolled, And Luxury steers the boat and fills the sail, And Perfidy controls and sets the snare. Thus the poor fish are brought to land. --COUNT THIBAUT IV of Champagne.[144] Beneath the present choir of Troyes Cathedral are Gallo-Roman walls, and a succession of edifices have stood on the same site. From the cathedral of the V century started the bishop, St. Loup, "the friend of God," when he went forth to check Attila the Hun, "God's scourge," and the barbarian was touched by spiritual fear and retired. That same good bishop of Troyes was the companion of St. Germain of Auxerre, on the notable journey north, when they blessed the gentle child Geneviève in a village near Paris, marking her as a vessel of election. Probably the cathedral immediately preceding the present one was in large part early-Gothic. Fire wiped it out, in 1188, and preparations for a new basilica were started by the energetic Bishop Garnier de Trainel, who went on the Fourth Crusade, and was among those, says Villehardouin, who scaled the walls of captured Constantinople along with his friend Nivelon, the bishop-builder of Soissons. The first stone of the new cathedral at Troyes was laid in 1206 by Bishop Hervé (1206-23), an able man who had been advanced by the observant prelate of Paris, Eudes de Sully. For almost twenty years Bishop Hervé worked on the choir, considered one of the best chevets in France. During his episcopate Troyes was a brilliant center of European trade and culture. Blanche of Castile and young Louis IX passed some time in the city when Thibaut IV the Singer, related to the royal line, was attacked by the clique of rebellious barons who plotted against the boy king. There had been considerable romancing about the volatile, inconstant Thibaut's admiration for Queen Blanche, who was a married woman before he was born. His own mother, Blanche of Navarre, another of the able women rulers of that day, gave generously to the new cathedral of her capital city. In 1228 a storm damaged the rising structure, necessitating years of tiresome repairs. Pope Urban IV, as a native son of Troyes, contributed. During the last forty years of the XIII century the transept was building. It showed traces of English feeling derived perhaps from Edmund Plantagenet, a son of the builder of Westminster Abbey, who had married the dowager Countess of Champagne. His ward Jeanne, Thibaut the Singer's granddaughter, inherited the countship of Champagne, the kingdom of Navarre, and by marriage became the queen of France. Slowly during the XIV and XV centuries, one bay of the nave was added to another; the changes from the precise lines of Rayonnant tracery to the undulating mullions of the Flamboyant day are easy to follow. The long delays were caused by lack of funds and the repeated need for consolidating the parts already built. The soil on which the church stood was unsuitable, and from the first, security was jeopardized by using the soft, native stone in those parts of the edifice which were out of sight, in order to economize on the firm stone imported from Burgundy. Several times during the difficulties of reconstruction, the cathedral chapter turned for advice to noted masters--to Raymond du Temple, Charles V's architect, and to André de Dammartin, patronized by the king's brothers of Berry and Burgundy. Work ceased altogether during the English occupancy. Then in 1429 the city opened its gates to Charles VII on his way to be crowned at Rheims. Jeanne d'Arc, during her trial in Rouen, told of an incident of their entry into Troyes. Some of the townspeople were fearful lest the heroine of Orleans came of the devil, so they had a holy preacher march out to exorcise her. Scattering holy water and making repeated signs of the Cross, Brother Richard approached the Maid. "Draw near without uneasiness," Jeanne assured him, in her pleasant manner. "I won't fly away." The city by its reception of the king evinced eagerness to wipe out the infamy of the Treaty of Troyes, signed here in 1420 by Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, wherein she repudiated her son Charles VII and gave France over to the foreign invader. The people's renewed hope and self-respect expressed itself in some of the most lovely Flamboyant foliage ever chiseled--the deeply undercut leafage on the gable of the north portal (1462-68). Work on the cathedral was taken up with energy after Jeanne, carrying her standard, had hallowed the streets of Troyes. As the XV century closed, the nave's radiant late-Gothic windows were installed. They are of the _Biblia pauperum_ type, and are surprisingly like big translucent woodcuts. They tell the story of Daniel, Tobias, Joseph and his brethren, Job--a window especially to be noticed--some parables, too, and edifying legends. The scenes are set quite as they appeared in the mystery plays, the costumes being not of Syria, but of the very stuffs and damasks bought in their own international fairs. The same masters of Troyes, Verrat, Godon, Lyénin, Macadré, who signed a rose window of Sens transept, put their signatures here. Bible stories such as these suit the layman's part of a church, for they serve to hold the attention of the average man. In the choir of Troyes are thirteen large windows of an earlier day, profounder in color and more spiritual in suggestion. They are like a jeweled cloistral screen around the Holy of Holies. In the upper central windows are the Passion scenes, and on either side rise tier on tier of martyrs who witnessed to the Faith--bishops, abbots, and a few important personages, such as Pope Innocent III, Bishop Hervé, the builder, and the archbishop of Sens, the learned Pierre de Corbeil. On one side of the choir Henry I, emperor of Constantinople, of the house of Champagne, is pictured, and Philippe-Auguste, suzerain of Champagne. And opposite in the fourth window are donjons and fleurs-de-lys showing that the queen-regent, Blanche of Castile, was generous here as elsewhere. The upper choir windows of Troyes allowed more light to pass than had their immediate predecessors, the lancets of Chartres. Their colors were clear and bright; only such stone mullions were used as were absolutely required for the support of the glass. The eight lateral windows of the upper choir belong to the XIII century, the five at the eastern curve to the XIV century. In the lower choir are various ancient windows, liberally restored, the Tree of Jesse, of Byzantine character, being the best. Two hundred years later another Tree of Jesse was made by Lyénin,[145] for the clearstory of the nave. It gave Christian folk a feeling of pride to record the Lord's high ancestry according to Isaias and the Acts. This cathedral of Troyes was one of the first to glaze its triforium, even before St. Denis' abbatial. The present triforium lights are, in most part, modern. By 1504 the clearstory windows of the nave were all in place. Among their donors was represented a mayor of Troyes with all his family. The golden-hued west rose was put up in 1546. And even into the XVII century the vitrine art of this exceptional city maintained its high traditions of five hundred years. In 1625 Linard Gontier made the _Pressoir_ window, the swan-song of good Renaissance glass. There is a translucent picture of Our Lady in the nave's south aisle, with stars leaded into holes that were cut out of an entire plate of glass; any apprentice who could perform that difficult feat of glazing was promoted to be a master craftsman.[146] For the building of the cathedral's west front, the chapter, in 1506, called on the noted late-Gothic master, Martin Chambiges, who had made his reputation with transept façades at Beauvais and Sens. Together with other artists, his son, Pierre (who won fame with Senlis' transept façade, and who, in 1539, began the château of St. Germain-en-Laye), carried on Troyes' frontispiece during fifty years, so that its imagery--badly damaged by the Revolution--shows the ermine of Anne of Brittany, the porcupine of Louis XII, and the salamander of Francis I. Troyes, with its record of four hundred years, was, of all the cathedrals of France, the longest in building. In spite of its double aisles, its wide transept, its noble, deep choir, and its astounding wealth of storied windows, it is clear when standing before the Flamboyant Gothic front of this chief church of Champagne's capital, that it is a cathedral of secondary rank. The flaw here is one of proportion. With such width--and this is the widest cathedral in France--the church should be thirty feet higher. However, no traveler with harmony in his soul thinks of technical criticism once he steps across the threshold and walks beneath the joyous terrestrial windows of the nave and the seraphic lights of the sanctuary. ST. URBAIN AND OTHER CHURCHES AT TROYES[147] Madame, je vous le demande, Pensez-vous ne soit péché D'occire son vrai amant? Oïl voir; bien le sachiez. S'il vous plaît ne m'occiez; Car, je vous le dis vraiment, Quoique l'amour soit tourment, Si vous m'aimez mieux vivant. Je n'en serai point fâché. --THIBAUT IV of Champagne, in lighter mood. St. Urbain's famous collegiate church, a forerunner of XIV-century Rayonnant Gothic, was founded by a son of Troyes, who sat in Peter's chair, Urban IV. He tells us that "in the desire that the memory of this our name might remain forever in the city of Troyes even after the dissolution of our body," he began, in 1262, a church on the site where his father's shop had stood, choosing for its tutelary the saint-pope, Urban, who had succored the early martyrs in Rome. His father was a prosperous shoemaker in the day when tradesmen gave princely gifts to their parish churches. Urban IV himself had been a choir boy in Troyes Cathedral. He died before his church was finished, but his nephew, Cardinal Pantaleone Ancher, continued the edifice, which was completed in 1276. Urban's successor, Clement IV, also a Frenchman, patronized the new works at Troyes. While the choir and transept were done by one generation, many a century was to pass before the westernmost bay and façade were finished. [Illustration: _St. Urbain at Troyes (1264-1276)_] In archæological circles St. Urbain is noted, Viollet-le-Duc being the first to discuss its ingenuity. As construction it is a small masterpiece, a model of elasticity, perhaps the lightest and most fragile of all Gothic edifices. To an economy in stone we owe this structural feat. Were the principle of equilibrium pushed a step farther, metal, not stone, would be required. Ground supports have been lessened, and flying buttresses attenuated to the last limit. Despite its science, St. Urbain is not doctrinaire, but immaterial and seductive. On first entering it Montalembert exclaimed, "_Quelle délicieuse église!_" The architect, Jean Langlois, here created the most elegant form of Rayonnant window tracery. At his porch appears the first French arch of double curvature, the earliest interpenetration of archivolts. We know his name because in 1267 a papal bull summoned him to account for sums advanced on the edifice, and Jean was not forthcoming, because he had disappeared in the East, crusading. The chief church at Famagusta, in Cyprus, begun in 1300--the only completed French-Gothic cathedral of the XIV century--shows such analogies with St. Urbain at Troyes that apparently Langlois' architectural influence had spread in the Orient. M. Lefèvre-Pontalis has called Troyes' lantern church inundated with light one of the most original monuments of the Middle Ages. Ten feet above the ground its walls change to opalescent glass. No grisaille is more exquisitely decorated with natural foliage outlines; set in the expanses of the opal-tinted white glass are colored medallions of extreme beauty. The lower row of lights around the choir are of this character. Above them, and almost a part of them, are the choir's upper windows--big prophets and patriarchs with the Crucifixion in the center--transition windows between legend-medallion glass, and the XIV century's single figures in a vitrine architectural frame. The arms of France, Champagne, and Navarre appear in the borders of the choir windows. The transeptal chapel to the north of the choir shows in its quatrefoils some interesting heads of men, women, and children. From the windows of the south transeptal chapel some panels were stolen, but St. Urbain's curé, Abbé Jossier, a learned enthusiast, was able, by sending photographs all over France, to trace his lost panels in a private collection, and it is to be hoped they may be returned. In his short pontificate, 1262-64, Urban IV, besides creating this enduring memorial, instituted the feast of Corpus Christi. He requested a liturgy for his new feast from St. Thomas Aquinas, who composed the _Pange lingua gloriosi_, the last stanzas of which are sung daily throughout the Christian world, the familiar _Tantum ergo_. To Aquinas is ascribed the _Verbum supernum prodiens_ hymn whose ending is the lovely _O Salutaris Hostia_. Doubt and heresy have always been instrumental in clarifying doctrine and in enriching the liturgy and art. So in a later day was made, in reaction against the XVI-century desecration of the Eucharist, such windows as the Wine Press of Troyes and that of Conches. In 1906, soon after St. Urbain's church had celebrated the completion of its western portal, it became the scene of a conscientious objection on the part of its parishioners, who protested against the taking of an inventory, they deeming it an unlawful interference with their private affairs. They sat in their church till the police broke in the doors; even then they continued to sing canticles, and were expelled only by having a hose turned on them. Six centuries earlier, St. Urbain's had been the scene, on the completion of its choir, of a suffragette-like demonstration by a community of nuns, who claimed part of the land on which the church stood. They smashed various things on the premises, and, it is whispered, even slapped a high dignitary's face. Apparently St. Urbain's is destined to pass into history under various aspects. For four hundred years the ancient capital of Champagne was an active center of the stained-glass industry. Overpowering is the wealth of storied windows to be found in its churches, the majority being of the Flamboyant-Renaissance day. In the suburbs, and farther afield in the hamlets of Champagne, there is the same prodigal display of colored windows and interesting statues.[148] From father to son, from generation to generation, was passed on the art skill of this ancient city on the highway of international trade. In Troyes there were so many churches that the old saying ran: "You arrived from Troyes? And what are they doing there?" "_On y sonne._" Next to St. Urbain's, for its wealth of art treasures, comes the Madeleine church built about 1175, and reconstructed during the Flamboyant enthusiasm when this city readorned almost every shrine it possessed. Contemporary with its noted _jubé_, or rood screen (1508-17), is the statue of St. Martha, one of the gems of French sculpture, entirely of the national school, unaffected work as ample and robust as the best period of the XIII century. St. Martha is represented, in this church of Troyes dedicated to her sister, with the holy water by which she exorcised the legendary Tarasque of Tarascon. She was the patroness of housekeepers, and it is said that the servant maids of Troyes presented to their church this memorial of the plastic genius of Champagne.[149] Champagne's special aptitude for sculpture appeared in the XIII-century gargoyles of St. Urbain's church, each of which was almost a complete figure. Later her imagery grew mannered for a few generations, with the Madonna's face of a formal type, and an exaggerated throwing out of the hip. The advent of Flemish realism, through the Franco-Flamand school at Dijon, renewed the vigor of French idealism, and before the XV century closed a truly French Renaissance had set in, retaining the equipoise of the old school and quite free of Italian classicism. Eventually the imported standards checked that renewed national movement. It was not the big men of Italy's revival who came to Champagne, but secondary artists whose work was often pretentious or coldly abstract. From 1540, under the leadership of the Italian, Domenico Rinnuccini, called Florentino, the foreign Renaissance prevailed at Troyes. In the church of the Madeleine, besides its _jubé_ and St. Martha statue, is some of the best XVI-century glass. A window of 1506 tells the life of St. Eloi, the goldsmith-bishop of Noyon; a window dated 1517 is devoted to St. Louis; Jean Macadré I made a Jesse tree; and there is the celebrated Creation in which God the Father wears the papal tiara, significant of the reaction that followed Luther's attacks on Rome. There are, also, two good XV-century windows, the Lord's Passion and the Magdalene's story. So vast is the accumulation of treasures in the sanctuaries of Troyes that one can indicate merely a few of them. In St. Jean's church--Flamboyant Gothic mainly, with a XII-century tower and a XIV-century nave--is a Visitation (1520) by Nicolas Haslin, a meeting of two pleasant dames of Troyes, wearing robes of Burgundian fullness, a group in which there appears a first evidence of transalpine influence. The reredos, from the Juliot studio, that led in the transition from French Gothic art to the neo-classic standards, has conventional images somewhat overgestured. In the flat eastern wall of St. Jean is a _maîtresse vitre_ (1630) by the Gontier brothers, delicate in hue, yet radiant, with half tones such as mauve, salmon pink, soft grays, pomegranate, celadine green. Eagerly the Renaissance masters seized on the new invention of _verre double_, which allowed them a fuller palate. Their over-use of opaque enamel-painting on glass led to the deterioration of the vitrine art, for the picture-painter soon swamped the glazier and draftsman who had worked in subordination to the architect. In the church of St. Pantaléon, where Lyénin II worked, the windows are in one or two tones, gray-brown with silver-stain yellow and flesh color, a style better suited to domestic interiors or to civic halls than to churches. The church boasts a statue of St. James and a Charité by Domenico Florentino, and a St. Crespin group by a son of Troyes, François Gentil, influenced by the Italian. To Gentil is attributed the Christ at the column and the Christ bearing the Cross in the church of St. Nicolas, where are also images of St. Anne and St. Joachim from the Juliot studio, a St. Bonaventure from the same source whence emanated the adorable statue of St. Martha, and more of the grisaille picture-glass. In St. Martin-ès-Vignes the window of St. Anne (1623) is attributed to Linard Gontier; in Ste. Sabine are some painted wood panels, and a carved keystone of great beauty; in the hall of the library of Troyes are thirty panels by Linard Gontier, made in commemoration of Henry IV's visit in 1598. CHÂLONS CATHEDRAL[150] It so happens that in most of our communes the church remains the only witness of the olden times and of departed generations. It thus becomes a symbol, legible for the humblest, of the duration of our race, of the persistence, through the dead, of a special group of French families on a special corner of French soil. The village church gives the lesson of lineage, of the solidarity of efforts, of the communion of men.--EDMOND BLANQUERON, Inspecteur de l'Académie de la Haute-Marne, in the crusade to save the churches of Champagne, notably Vignory, one of the oldest in France (c. 1050). The cathedral of Troyes and the church of St. Urbain belong to the Champagne school of Gothic, to which we have devoted no separate chapter because some of its monuments, such as St. Remi at Rheims and Notre Dame at Châlons, we grouped with the Primary Gothic churches, and the cathedral of Rheims with the Great Cathedrals, classifications used solely for greater clarity. From its inception, the Gothic of Champagne kept pace with the Ile-de-France Picard school, and in certain characteristics even took the lead of its neighbor. Gerson, Racine, La Fontaine, Gaston Paris, are among the sons of this province whose Gothic art, formulated centuries before them, displays qualities which embody aspiration, sublimity, sanity always and just measure, a singular ease and grace, patience, and science. From Champagne came the gracious arrangement of planting slender columns and stilted arches at the entrance to radiating chapels. Champagne was the first to use the pier composed of twin columns, first to employ a passageway round the church at the level of the aisle windows, and to place lancets side by side in each bay for the better lighting of the edifice. The region was conservative in clinging to certain Romanesque traits, such as apsidal chapels projecting from the eastern wall of the transept. It employed, as did Normandy and Burgundy, a circulation passage under the clearstory windows. Champagne's influence spread far afield to Sens, Auxerre, St. Quentin, St. Denis, Metz, Toul, Ipres, Tournai, Avila, León, and York.[151] Lest these pages should become overloaded, we can merely touch on the beautiful Champagne cathedral of Châlons-sur-Marne, an old city which is another treasure house of colored glass. The most interesting windows are in the small church of St. Alpin, whose apse celebrates the Eucharist, the souls in Purgatory, the Corpus Christi procession, lately mocked by the Calvinists. Its Manna in the Desert window is a symbol of the Eucharist. In St. Alpin are the most successful examples of that distinguished phase of vitrine art called _camaïeu_--of cameo or chiaroscuro effect, using brown-gray hues, the yellow of silver-stain, a pale blue for the sky, and an occasional single touch of superb ruby red. One of the windows of Raphaelesque design represents St. Alpin, bishop of Châlons, meeting Attila the Hun; another, dated 1539, is a rendering of the Vision of Augustus, a theme most popular then. Peter the Venerable called Châlons "great and illustrious." Guillaume de Champeaux, one of the most learned men of the age, whose schoolroom was really the beginning of the University of Paris, was bishop of Châlons in 1115 when a young Burgundian named Bernard came to be consecrated abbot of Clairvaux. In the monk of twenty-five, unknown yet to fame, the great teacher was swift to recognize a supreme spiritual genius. In 1147 St. Bernard preached at the dedication of the Romanesque cathedral of Châlons before Pope Eugene III, who had been one of his own Cistercian monks at Clairvaux. The present tower to the north of the choir belonged to the church that Bernard knew. The south tower, its mate, is of the XIII century. The placing of belfries on either side of the choir was a Rhenish trait. In 1230 Châlons Cathedral was wrecked by lightning. Its reconstruction began with the choir, under Bishop Pierre de Nemours, whose brothers were building-prelates at Noyon, Paris, and Meaux. In 1250 work on the nave was going on, and at the end of the century was built the transept's excellent north façade. The XVII century erected the unsuitable neo-classic west frontispiece, yet at the same time, curiously enough, the two westernmost bays were constructed in perfect imitation of Apogec Gothic. It remains an open question whether the same Renaissance century made the apse chapels after a fire in 1668. Some say they are of the XIV century, that the choir, as first built, had no ambulatory, but that one was added soon after, with radial chapels. There is a noble purity in Châlons Cathedral, due in large part to its soaring monolithic piers. No church is richer in tombstones, and its stained glass is plenteous. In the eastern clearstory are three lovely silver and blue XIII-century windows; the north rose of the transept is early XIV century and the first window in the nave's south aisle is another good example of that period. The same aisle shows a brilliant XV-century light, ruby red in effect, and a window of 1509, wherein the Blessed Virgin's life is explained by quaint inscriptions. Some XII-century glass from Châlons Cathedral is in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris. Just as Champagne had proved herself a pioneer in the first days of the national art, so she distinguished herself in later times when Rayonnant Gothic turned to Flamboyant art. Among the few churches built during the transition between those two phases is the cathedral-like Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine, in the fields a few miles from Châlons-sur-Marne, a link connecting St. Urbain at Troyes with the goodly array of Flamboyant buildings that sprang up in the ancient capital of Champagne. The interior proportions of Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine resemble those of Rheims Cathedral, and its rood screen recalls the _jubé_ of the Madeleine church at Troyes. But _revenons à nostro matière_, as dear Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, would say. The reason for the wealth of architecture and its allied arts and crafts in the region of which Troyes is the center was because the ancient city, so unnoted in to-day's activities, lay on the mediæval highway of commerce, and under its enterprising rulers became the scene bi-yearly of a fair to which all Europe flocked. To this day we use Troy weight. The counts of Champagne safeguarded the visiting merchants and fostered commerce by wise laws. Their money passed in Rome and Venice as freely as in Provins and Troyes. Lavish and art-loving were the Champagne rulers; one of them founded Clairvaux in lower Champagne; another rebuilt the Cistercian church of Pontigny, just over the border in Burgundy. They were indefatigable crusaders, some of them winning thrones in the East. And their alliances constantly enriched their stock with new qualities, as when Count Henry the Magnificent wedded, in 1164, the daughter of Louis VII by Aliénor of Aquitaine. That Countess Marie--the _suer comtessa_ to whom her half brother, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, addressed his famous prison song--made of her court of Champagne a school of good manners with all the ceremonial of the Midi's _cour d'amour_. What M. Gaston Paris calls poet-laureates' work, _poésie courtoise_, became the vogue, and the Countess Marie herself wrote in the troubadour manner. She encouraged the best of the XII-century poets, Crestien de Troyes (d. 1175), suggesting to him the romances of the Breton cycle, Lancelot, Tristan, and Percival.[152] Through Crestien the story of the Holy Grail spread over Europe. In him the trouvères new ideals of chivalry met the Midi's refined gallantry, and the Celtic themes which he versified brought what was needed of passion and profundity. All Europe then drew its poetic inspirations from the _matière de France_, as France in her turn was enriching herself from the inexhaustible _matière de Bretagne_. The XII-century French trouvères were imitated by the German Minnesingers, by the early songsters of England, Spain, and Portugal, and in Italy the precursors of Dante preferred the use of the Romance tongues of France. In the fecund hour wherein our modern civilization was conceived, France gave to the Western World her architecture, her sculpture, and her poetry. At the cathedral doors of Verona, Roland and Oliver were sculpted. The international city of Troyes saw the creation of the Templars Order at her Council of 1128, whither had come Hugues de Payns, a knight related to the reigning counts. Taking part in the First Crusade, he proved himself a true _prud'homme_ in Palestine by forming a band of volunteer knights to escort unprotected pilgrims. At the Council of Troyes he won recognition for his monk-knights. St. Bernard championed them, drew up their rule, and gave them their white robe and red cross. With the birth of the national art rose this great military Order and with its decline it was stricken down. When the lust of gain replaced aspiration, men no longer went crusading or built cathedrals. The ancient city of Troyes is not only associated with epic poetry--"history before there are historians"--but is linked with the earliest two historians who wrote in the vernacular, Villehardouin and Joinville. "_Mes lengages est buens car en France fui nez_," boasted the Champagne poet, who tells us that God listened by preference to his speech, since he had made it lighter and better than any other, of more brevity, of nobler amplitude. Villehardouin's record of the Fourth Crusade, the _Conquête de Constantinople_, possesses the same powerful simplicity as the greatest of all chansons-de-geste, _Roland_. He was born near Troyes, in whose convents lived two of his daughters and his two sisters, and to whose churches he left property. Our good friend Joinville grew up in the cultivated court of the Countess Marie's grandson, Thibaut IV _le Chansonnier_, born in Troyes. Thibaut's songs blended the courteous poetry of the troubadour tradition with the attic salt of his own most civilized Champagne. In his gallant company Joinville acquired his good manners and inimitable mode of expression. The last countess of this land of gay singers and soldier-historians was Thibaut's granddaughter, Jeanne, who inspired Joinville to write his memoirs, helped to build Meaux Cathedral, and founded the College of Navarre where Gerson and Bossuet were to be trained. But, alas! the liberal young heiress of Champagne married the legist king of France, Phillipe le Bel, the executioner of the Templars. When he struck a blow at the international fairs of Champagne by persecuting Lombards and Jews, the great day for Troyes was over. When Jeanne d'Arc--born on the confines of Champagne--revived the nation's pride, the art traditions latent in the citizens of Troyes flowered once more with magnificence. Only the slow accumulation of centuries could have produced the unemphatic beauty of the gracious St. Martha in Troyes' Flamboyant Gothic church of the Madeleine. THE CATHEDRAL OF TOURS.[153] A religion is the heart of a race; it expresses the emotions of a people and elevates them by giving them an aim: but, unless a God be visibly honored, religion does not exist, and human laws are powerless.... Thought, the fountain of all good and evil, cannot be trained, mastered, and directed except by religion, and the only possible religion is Christianity, which created the modern world and will preserve it.... France is being saved and lost perpetually. If she wants to be saved, indeed, let her go back to the laws of God.--HONORÉ DE BALZAC (1799-1850; born in Tours). The cathedral of Tours does not startle. One is not carried away by it, at first. Its charm is that of the tranquil horizons of the Loire, _fleuve de lumière, de vie doucement heureuse, partout de plein effets de lenteur, d'ordre_, so Rodin saw it. The beauty of Touraine increases with familiarity because it is touched with that measure, that justness of soul inherited from the classic spirit, that has ever tempered, in the art manifestations of this nation, the sublime overimpassioned consistencies of the Celt and the lofty overexaggerated dreams of the Teuton. The cathedral of Tours does not aspire to the impossible. It is a rather cold, high-bred church at one with its environment, the gracious garden of Touraine, a satisfying, discreet church and most intensely French. While one rejoices that a Robert de Lusarches aspired to the Infinite at Amiens, one approves the architect of Tours who worked within human possibilities. The choir of the cathedral possesses both delicacy and force. Toward its erection Louis IX granted a quarry and some forest lands near Chinon. The choir must have been nearing its completion when in 1255 the king visited Tours, whose archbishop, Geoffrey de Martel, had lately died a crusader in Palestine. During the fifty years prior to 1270 the cathedral was building. In 1269 the relics of St. Maurice and his companions from Thebes, who were martyred in Gaul under Diocletian, were transferred to the sanctuary. Those early Christians were the tutelary saints of Tours Cathedral up to the XIV century. Then St. Gatien, the first to preach Christianity in this region, was chosen as patron. _La Gatienne_ the people call their chief church. The cult of the early missionary had been a favorite devotion of St. Martin, third and greatest bishop of Tours, who died as the IV century drew to a close. Like Lyons, Tours has eminent ecclesiastical memories. The shrine of St. Martin, the most popular saint of Gaul, made the city a frequented pilgrimage for Europe. Gregory of Tours, who ruled this see from 573 to 595, has described the richness of the Byzantine church that stood over the tomb of the great thaumaturge. Like most of the prelates who saved Latin civilization from the Barbarian's submersion, Bishop Gregory was of Gallo-Roman stock, of a senatorial family of Auvergne who boasted descent from an early Christian martyr of Gaul. In the present southwest tower of la Gatienne are traces of the VI-century cathedral built by this bishop-historian of Gaul, whose pages are a chief source for Merovingian times.[154] The city of Tours always had two great monuments--the cathedral within the ramparts, the basilica of St. Martin outside the walls. St. Martin's abbey was the nation's intellectual leader when the Saxon scholar Alcuin became its abbot (796-804). He made of Tours a Christian Athens. They buried him in his abbatial, where four years earlier Charlemagne's wife, Luitgarde, had been laid. To-day only two towers stand of St. Martin's basilica--the Tour Charlemagne, begun by the Blessed Hervé, abbot in 997, hence one of the oldest memorials of the rebirth of architecture associated with the year 1000, and a former façade tower mainly of the XII century. One of the busiest streets of Tours runs up what once was the nave of the abbatial, but, not discouraged, the people of Touraine have erected a new Byzantinesque basilica of St. Martin on the site of the transept's southern arm. Those two tragic frenzies of forgetfulness, 1562, that scattered St. Martin's ashes--for which St. Eloi, bishop-goldsmith of Noyon, had made a priceless reliquary--and 1793, that laid in ruins his church in Tours and Marmoutier's Apogee Gothic abbatial that marked the rock-hewn cells where he had lived a hermit across the Loire, those two blind hours when men thought to erect barriers between themselves and their past, destroyed monuments which, did they exist still, would rank Tours, architecturally, among the first cities of Europe. St. Martin's church, built by Hervé, became a _monument-type_,[155] copied by Ste. Foi, Congnes, St. Martial, Limoges, St. Sernin, Toulouse, and the cathedral at Santiago. It is said that twenty centuries of human effort are represented by the stones of Tours Cathedral.[156] In the base of its façade towers are remains of the city's III-century walls, which had been constructed in their turn with the big stones stolen from the local Roman temples of 50 B.C. For sixteen centuries Mass has been said on this site. In the southwest tower are vestiges of Gregory of Tours' VI-century church, and in the northwest tower traces of the Romanesque cathedral on which worked the philosopher and theologian, Hildebert de Lavardin, the most popular poet of his age and one of the builders of Le Mans Cathedral before promoted to be Tours' sixty-fourth archbishop (1125-34). In refuting Berengar, a canon of Tours, who taught a confused doctrine concerning the Eucharist, Bishop Hildebert was the first to use the term "transubstantiation" in its theological sense. It is said that the custom of elevating the Host in the Mass resulted from the eucharistic controversies started by Berengar. In 1167 a fire, caused by a quarrel over crusaders' treasure, between Louis VII and Henry II Plantagenet, destroyed the Romanesque cathedral of Tours. Bishop Joscion, who died in 1173, planned to construct a Plantagenet Gothic church, since Touraine was in large part under Angevin control, and to the church he began belongs the graceful _bombé_ vault borne on eight slender branches beneath the northwest tower. In 1191 Richard Coeur-de-Lion came to his city of Tours to receive the crusaders' insignia before his venture to the East. His ransom drained the land of building funds. For that cause or another, the projected work at Tours languished. The actual choir was begun only about 1210, when the city had become a part of the royal domain, and its new master Philippe-Auguste wrote that he held the church of Tours to be one of the chief jewels of his crown, and that whosoever molested it touched his (the king's) person. We do not know who was the original architect of _la Gatienne_. Étienne de Mortagne, who designed the Benedictine church at Marmoutier, is mentioned, in 1269, as master-of-works at the cathedral, but by that time its choir was completed. That choir, while making no pretense of being sublime, is a monument of noble robustness, displaying within and without the veriest genius of good taste. The vista closing the eastern end of the church is one of the most satisfactory in France, owing to its right proportion. In this, Tours derives directly from Amiens. Its pier arcade comprises one-third of the interior wall elevation; and the triforium and clearstory make up the other two-thirds--clearstory being double the height of triforium. At Tours the relation of span and height is admirable, and both are well correlated with length. Seen in perspective down the nave, the three stories of colored glass around the sanctuary are the supreme impression of this church interior, and seldom does one pass from its west portal without turning back for a lingering look at that harmonious chevet of consecrated light. Through the pier arches can be seen symmetrically the windows of the apse chapels. The design of the glazed triforium is excelled by no other in France; though serving as a kind of pedestal for the upper lights, it retains its own entity. When the choir of Tours was completed, the builders proceeded at once to erect the transept which, the stones themselves say, must have been finished as the XIII century closed. The nave's easternmost bays touching it belong to the first years of the next century, as do the two rose windows of the transept. The northern rose is irreproachable in design and of the same scintillating jewel tradition as XIII-century glass. The Hundred Years' War, here as elsewhere, checked building activities. When they were resumed at Tours, happily the first plans were adhered to, so that choir and nave are homogeneous. As the church advanced toward the west, the window tracery changed from Rayonnant to Flamboyant, the profiles grew prismatic, and the sculpture of the capitals became naturalistic rather than an architectural interpretation of foliage. The nave was made narrower than the choir, probably with the intention of joining it to the XII-century façade. Of the four triumphal piers at the transept-crossing, the two westernmost ones stand closer together than those flanking the choir, whose spacious procession path causes the side aisles of the nave to appear meager. What might seem an overreasonableness in the architecture of Tours metropolitan church is offset by the glory of its jeweled windows. Between 1260 and 1270 the choir's upper lights were placed, and considering their date, they are exceptional in still being of the legend-medallions type rather than large single figures. Blue is set in greenish white with good effect, contrasting happily with certain contemporary windows at Paris, where the juxtaposition of blue and red produced melancholy purple. The joyous sparkling tone of Tours' lights proves a skillful use of pot-metal yellow. More care was taken to tell the legends plainly than to put borders round each medallion. The glass of Tours belongs to the Paris school, though made, doubtless, by local workers. Were a floor laid below the triforium of the choir, its fifteen upper windows, composing a veritable pavilion of glass, would be almost a replica of the Sainte-Chapelle, and one recalls that it was Archbishop Odo of Tours who on April 25, 1248, dedicated for St. Louis his new shrine at Paris. The donors of Tours' great windows were churchmen and laymen, the lowly and the mighty. Bishop Geoffrey de Loudon, builder of Le Mans' glorious choir, presented a light, as did Tours' own prelate and a group of parish priests. Small craftsmen were donors, drapers, and day laborers, and of course Queen Blanche's donjons of Castile are to be seen. Her window, devoted to St. James, the patron of Spain, is splendid in hue. The fourth clearstory window on the north excels in color harmony. They call it the Adam window, after the first tiller of the soil. It was presented by plowmen, and relates their field labors as well as the story of Genesis. On one side of the central light of the clearstory is a dazzling Tree of Jesse, the gift of a furrier and his wife. Next to it is a window devoted to St. Martin, whose story is told again, in the late XIII-century glass of an apse chapel. More French churches have been dedicated to St. Martin than to any other patron save Notre Dame. The windows of the sanctuary north of the axis chapel, though mixed in design, excel all others in exquisite color, being composed of fragments from St. Martin's abbatial reset here. The New Alliance window in the Lady chapel has medallions of Christ bearing His Cross and the Crucifixion accompanied by such symbols and prefigurings as Elisha resuscitating the child, Jonah issuing from the whale's jaws, the brazen serpent, and Moses striking the rock. All the world was a symbol to the men of those Ages of Faith. The interlinked petals of the transept's northern rose meet in a symbol of the Divinity--a knot without beginning or end--the _forma universal_ visioned by Dante. There are Frenchmen who think that the splendid rose windows in their Gothic cathedrals suggested to the exile of Florence his conception of the empyrean. Heaven as Dante visioned it had neither roof of gold nor pillars of jasper, but was an expanded, supernal, white rose. Once the nave of Tours Cathedral was filled with late-Gothic windows, but storms wrecked many of them. Some of its glass has been set in a line of lights beneath the transept's north rose, XV-century panels representing members of the Bourbon Vendôme family, that was to mount the French throne with Henry IV. Jean Fouquet might have drawn them. Under the XVI-century rose in the west façade is another row of windows containing good portraits of art patrons as munificent as the Bourbons--the Laval-Montmorency family. All over France we find them as donors of beautiful things. The hour when Tours was an individual leader in art came during the late-Gothic development.[157] Then was finished the cathedral's nave, chapter house, library, cloister, and the psaltery with its pretty Renaissance stair. The cathedral canons, _Messires de la Gatienne_, sacrificed a forest for the nave's overroof. The elaborate Flamboyant façade was set up. Jean Papin was its architect, and Jean de Dammartin, fresh from Le Mans' transept, worked on it. It was begun under Archbishop Philippe de Coëtquis (1427-41), one of the learned men whom Charles VII summoned to interrogate Jeanne d'Arc. He pronounced her entirely sincere. In Tours Cathedral, April, 1429, knelt St. Jeanne for a solemn benediction before she went forth to accomplish her feat at Orléans. An artist of Tours made for her the banner she loved better than her sword. When Tours heard that she was taken prisoner, public prayers were ordered and a procession marched with bare feet, in penitential intercession for her deliverance. Charles VII had been married in Tours to his cousin Marie of Anjou, who was, says the modern student, more his incentive to patriotism than Agnes Sorel. The son of Charles, Louis XI, also was married in the cathedral of Tours, and preferred to live in the environs of the ancient ecclesiastic city. Under the saintly Archbishop Robert de Lenoncourt, installed here in 1488, were finished Tours' western portals. Their foliage is tormented, serrated, and deeply undercut, almost too prodigally and delicately sculptured for an exterior decoration. The entranceways are to-day shorn of their imagery, the statues having been shattered in 1562. In the Renaissance day the façade's twin towers were gracefully topped; _deux beaux bijoux_, Henry IV called the belfries of Tours. Throughout the Loire region an astounding number of monuments rose during the last half of the XV century and the early part of the XVI. Tours was the foyer for a school of sculpture that spread to Le Mans, Angers, Nantes, Poitiers, and Bourges. From 1480 to 1512 the school of the Region-of-the-Loire, as M. Paul Vitry calls it, was at its prime. It culminated in the ducal tomb at Nantes and the entombments at Solesmes. Dijon, the leader of the first half of the XV century, benefited Tours by its realism, and the Italian artists, gathered here in the dawn of the foreign Renaissance in France, contributed certain qualities. But the art of Michel Colombo is predominatingly of the Middle Ages, and a product of Touraine, a measured, contained, and charming art, _de pur esprit français_. Colombe simplified the draperies of the Franco-Flamand school and eschewed the Dijon roughness. His grace is never petty, however, nor his idealism conventional. As the XVI century opened he made, in his Tours studio, the statues for the ducal tomb at Nantes. In 1509 his nephew, Guillaume Regnault, sculptured the recumbent images of the children of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII for the sarcophagus, now in the cathedral of Tours, the base of which was covered with arabesques by Jerome of Fiesole. Colombo's contemporary, Jehan Fouquet, a son of Tours, delighted in painting the regional types. He decorated the walls of Notre-Dame-la-Riche, but his work is lost, though some of the dazzling Renaissance windows of that late-Gothic church of Tours have survived. A certain Jean Clouet emigrated from Brussels to Tours in those days, and his son and grandson, born by the Loire, are two of the French _primitifs_ whose work the traveler does not care to miss in any gallery that can boast their Holbein-like canvases. During the Revolution, plans were afoot to destroy the cathedral of Tours, but two artists of the city (so loyal through centuries to art interests) risked their lives to save their noble Gothic church. THE CATHEDRAL OF LYONS.[158] What Christian does not approach with veneration this city that was in France the cradle of the true religion, and where amid persecutions and tortures rose for the first time the Cross of Christ? Who does not tread with veneration the soil impregnated with the blood of so many martyrs and forever consecrated by the glories of a see that justly claims the title Primate of Gaul?--CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT, visiting Lyons in 1831. In its early Christian memories Lyons outrivals all other cities of France. It claims a clear apostolic tradition, and boasts that, next to Rome, it shed most Christian blood witnessing to the planting of the Cross. And modern Lyons is the center of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which sends forth to non-Christian lands more missionaries than any other group in western Christendom--apostles who obey the mandate given to Lyons' first martyr-bishops: Go, teach ye all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Imperial Rome, that foreshadowed many things, chose Lyons, before the birth of Christ, as starting point for her network of highways and aqueducts over Gaul. Augustus made it the capital of Celtic Gaul. It was the bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp (d. A.D. 166), the disciple of St. John the Beloved (d. A.D. 100), who sent the first two bishops of Lyons to Christianize Gaul, Pothinus (d. A.D. 177), an Asiatic Greek, and Irenæus (d. A.D. 202), one of the most remarkable writers of the early Christian era, lettered in Greek literature and writing in Greek. With profound knowledge of Christian doctrine, he advocated, for the guidance of the Church, tradition, or the spoken word of the Apostles, as well as their written word. Often with just pride did Irenæus boast that his doctrine came direct from the contemporaries of the Saviour: "I could describe to you the very spot where the blessed Polycarp sat when he preached God's word.... His discourse to the people is engraved in my heart. He had talked with John and the others who saw the Lord." For twenty years St. Irenæus served as priest in Lyons under Bishop Pothinus, and then when that holy prelate, at ninety years of age, was martyred during the persecutions of the Christians under Marcus Aurelius, Irenæus went to Rome to be consecrated primate of Gaul in his place. When the pagan judge asked Pothinus who was the Christians' God, the aged man made answer: "Merit him and you will know him." For twenty years, till his death in 202, St. Irenæus evangelized the country with such success that Lyons was almost a Christian city when the persecution of Septimus Severus broke out. Then followed evil days when the streets of Lyons ran red with blood, and her learned bishop perished with nineteen thousand Christian martyrs. During the first persecution, in 177, the Christians of the city wrote a famous letter describing how forty-eight of their number were tortured day after day in the Roman Forum of Lyons, till even the pagans allowed that never a woman had suffered so much and so long as the fragile slave Blandina. The letter of "the servitors of Christ who inhabit Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to the brothers of Asia and Phrygia who partake of our Faith and our hope in the Redemption," is not only an historical document, precious for Lyons, but, as Renan said, is "one of the most extraordinary pages that any literature possesses."[159] The hill of Fourvière looms over the scene of the martyrdoms, the _forum vetus_, the forum of Trajan, which gave its name to the neighboring eminence to which many generations have come as to a pilgrimage shrine. On the flank of the hill a hospice marks where St. Pothinus breathed his last. The sumptuous new basilica that stands on the crest of the hill beside an ancient chapel, now its annex, persistently dominates the old, gray city. Lyons fulfilled its war vow of 1870 by the erection of this church wherein are strange echoes of Greek, Sicilian, Byzantine, and Gothic art that surely will make archæologists in the far future wonder at much in our civilization. On its walls the city's proud apostolic traditions are set forth in mosaics. Equally venerated is the ancient church of St. Martin d'Ainay which marks the holy ground where many of the martyrs were slaughtered at the confluence of the Saône and the Rhone. There once had stood the temple of the sixty nations of Gaul consecrated to the glory of Augustus. Haunted by imperial visions, Napoleon at St. Helena suggested that his burial site be where the Rhone met the Saône. No city is more nobly girdled than Lyons. From the altar to Augustus came the four pillars at the transept crossing of St. Martin's; two lofty classic columns were cut in two to make them. The Burgundian queen, Brunehaut, of tragic memory, rebuilt Ainay's original oratory over the Christian martyrs' bones, and founded the monastery which is one of the oldest in France. In the course of time it became affiliated with the world-power, Cluny. The present church of St. Martin was blessed in 1106 by Paschal II, who on this same journey had dedicated various new basilicas in northern Italy. In the XII and XIII centuries St. Martin's outer aisles were added. The crypt under the chapel of Ste. Blandine is not later than the V century. A contemporary of St. Martin's is the little Romanesque building touching the cathedral's façade, the _Manécanterie_ (to sing in the morning).[160] Originally it formed the outer wall of a gallery of the cloister. The cathedral of St. John the Baptist faces the hill of Fourvière and its apse overlooks the Saône. The Baptist was the first teacher of St. John Evangelist to whom the city traces its Christianity. A preceding Romanesque cathedral, building in 1084 and completed by 1117, was destroyed during disorders between the two warring local authorities, the archbishop and the counts of Forez. Lyons for a time was under the titular jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire, but to all intents and purposes was a free city with well developed communal rights. While the Romanesque cathedral was building, St. Anselm of Canterbury passed sixteen months in Lyons as guest of Archbishop Hugues. The present cathedral was undertaken by Archbishop Guichard (1165-80), and in its foundation walls were incorporated some of the polished stones from the forum of Trajan, hallowed by the martyrs' blood. So thick were the apse walls made that flying buttresses were never needed. The windows were set in deep embrasures. The absence of an ambulatory, and the flat roof, are reminders that this city neighbors the Midi. The cathedral's apse, as seen from across the Saône, is admirable. Over the arms of the transept are towers whose breadth indicates that the tower of St. Martin d'Ainay created a school in the district. In comparison with the transept towers, the western belfries of the cathedral appear meager. The nave of Lyons rises twenty-five feet above the choir, and, furthermore, is covered by an inappropriate high-pitched roof. Within the church, the difference in height between the two main parts has been gracefully veiled by piercing, in the flat wall over the triumphal arch of the choir, a rose window and two lancets. In size this church may be modest, but its sincere, grave dignity is such that the impression conveyed is that of a very great cathedral. The nave derived from the north. The choir emanated from the south, and its creamy, sculptured marbles and Greco-Italian incrustations compose an interior of sober elegance, the peer of any sanctuary in the land. A unique feature in France is Lyons' incrustations--patterns cut in white marble and filled in with a reddish-brown cement--found only here and in the cathedral of Vienne.[161] St. Sophia in Constantinople first used the decoration, which was imported into Italy and thence passed up the Rhone. The choir of Lyons' Cathedral, up to its vault-springing, is Romanesque, of the Burgundian and Provençal type. The classic pilaster strips are channeled; on each arm of the transept is an apsidal chapel. The prelate who began it, Guichard, had, while abbot of Pontigny, been the host of St. Thomas Becket, and in Pontigny's church he was buried in 1180. His successor, Jean de Bellesmaine (1180-93), born in Canterbury, was another of Becket's friends, and soon after he was transferred here from the see of Poitiers, then under English rule, he inspired the building of a collegiate church dedicated to the new English saint. Archbishop John undertook the second campaign of works on Lyons' choir, which was now vaulted in the Gothic way. On the capitals of the upper walls are the familiar crockets of the north. In the transept is to be seen the same change from the round arches and fluted pilaster strips of the Romanesque day to the Primary Gothic characteristics. During the first third of the XIII century the transept was vaulted, its two towers raised, and the choir's four easternmost bays built. Lyons was then governed by one of its best rulers, Archbishop Renaud de Forez, who laid here the base for several centuries of prosperity. Circumstances forced him into the position of a leader of armies, but his natural inclination led him to the cloister's peace to end his days. In 1226, as president of a free city, he received Louis VIII, shortly before that king's sudden death. This capable churchman presented to his cathedral the seven magnificent lancets in the curving sanctuary wall, that glow with the sparkling jewel-radiance achieved before 1220, but never equaled afterwards. The windows at Lyons are linked with those at Sens, and Sens' lancets we know to have been related to the earlier school of Chartres. What differentiates Lyons' medallions from those in the north was their use of certain Byzantine arrangements, such as the Virgin reclining on a couch in the Bethlehem grotto, or the representing St. John with a beard. The first light in the Lyons' chevet celebrates the local martyrs. The axis window is a New Alliance, wherein the Old Law symbolizes the New. The meaning of its animal allegories was first explained by Père Cahier, who observed that they were taken from the ancient book called the _Bestiaires_. M. Mâle further discovered that Lyons' New Alliance window showed only those animals spoken of in Honoré d'Autun's popular _Mirror of the Church_. Honoré, who taught in Autun's cathedral school early in the XII century, was the initiator of animal symbolism in French cathedrals. In the upper lights of Lyons' choir are some XIII-century archaic figures of big gaunt patriarchs with strange white eyes. The upper choir's triplet windows of different heights are most artistic. Under the north rose of the transept is a large lancet of surpassing effect, and in the transeptal chapel, close by, is a window that is like a sublimated topaz. The small pieces of glass used, their varied thicknesses and roughnesses are causes producing such sparkle. One cannot stress too strongly the exceptional character of Lyons' glass. Centuries later, in the Flamboyant day, this city produced again a bevy of notable masters. The nave of Lyons Cathedral advanced, bay by bay, in slow progress all through the XIII century, and sculpture and tracery in triforium and clearstory show the gradual change to Rayonnant design. The nave of northern Gothic conformed itself with sound instinct to the Romanesque southern choir. This is a cathedral that kneels more than it soars. The ancient city exulted on Fourvière's hill, but it thought best to keep its cathedral as a solemn cenotaph for its white army of unburied martyrs. There came to Lyons, while its nave was building, the great Englishman, Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), who at Lincoln made an angel-choir, "one of the loveliest of man's works," to shrine the relics of his predecessor, St. Hugh of Avalon, born in this semi-southern region. And many another enthusiast for the art of the builder studied the nave of Lyons in the course of its construction. Here gathered in 1245 a general Council of the Church. Modern congresses are sometimes dull affairs, but they must have been thrilling in the days when cathedrals were building and each prelate championed his regional ideas and yet looked about eagerly to seize on new ones. The two westernmost bays of Lyons Cathedral were finished by 1310, and then were sculptured the façade portals with hundreds of little panels as full of frolic and fancy as the marginal gaieties of illuminated missals. A few years earlier the transept doors at Rouen had made similar medallions. Vice in them was rendered hateful. Where Lot's story should have been was left a blank space. Not until Flemish realism entered French art, in the XV century, were certain gross scenes rendered. The medallions at Lyons are "Gaulois but without obscenity." From 1308 to 1332 the wide, plain west façade of St. Jean's cathedral was done. Two of the Avignon popes were crowned here in those days, Clement V, the builder of Bordeaux's choir, and John XXII. The great dukes of the west, Philippe le Hardi and his son Jean sans Peur, being hereditary canons of the cathedral, often sat in its choir stalls. Of their time is the astronomical clock in the transept. For ten years, prior to 1429, Jean Gerson lived in the old Christian city, teaching little children their catechism, and the only payment he craved was that they should pray: Lord have mercy on your poor servant Gerson. He had been worsted by his century's treachery, bloodshed, foreign rule, and church schism; but after his death Lyons revered him as a saint, and carved his device, _Sursum Corda_, on a chapel in the church of St. Paul. Scholars have decided against Gerson as author of the _Imitation of Christ_, yet during two centuries he was so believed to be, and his memory will be dear to those who have found inspiration in that precious book. Lyons played so important a part in the revival of late-Gothic art that it was called the French Florence. Its new school of glassmakers decorated the church of Brou, at Bourg-en-Bresse, not far away.[162] Two elaborate Flamboyant Gothic tombs were put up in the cathedral--that of Archbishop de Saluces (d. 1419) by Jacques Morel, and that of Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, a grandson of John the Fearless of Burgundy, and son of the Bourbon duke commemorated by the Souvigny tomb. From 1486 to 1501, he and his brother Pierre de Bourbon, son-in-law of Louis XI, added to Lyons Cathedral the splendid chapel of their name whose walls are carved with their winged stag and the device Espérance. Unfortunately the windows, made by the Lyons master Pierre de la Paix, exist no longer, save a few upper panels, in one of which is an angel of rare beauty holding the Bourbon arms. Frequently in France one meets the donations of Henry IV's art-loving forbears, at Chartres, Tours, Souvigny,[163] Champigny-sur-Veude. Henry was married in Lyons Cathedral, in 1600, to Marie de Medici, daughter of another line of connoisseurs. Like many a cathedral of France, Lyons was at its richest when it was sacked most piteously both in 1560 and 1562. Every church in the city was devastated by the cruel Baron des Adrets, who led the Huguenots one year, the Catholics the next, for in those bitter civil wars religion was often the thinnest cloak. The Huguenots destroyed the tomb of Cardinal de Saluces, with its eighteen alabaster statuettes, smashed the Bourbon chapel and tomb, broke up the Flamboyant rood screen, and dragged through the streets a silver statue of Christ that had surmounted it. On the west façade some fifty large statues were brought down, though happily the lovely little scenes chiseled under their brackets were spared. It is told how an archer shattered Our Lady's image, but when he attempted to dislodge that of God the Father, on the pignon, it fell and killed him. Lyons was again the scene of saturnalian havoc during the Revolution, when by the thousand her citizens were mowed down with grape shot because they chose to adhere to the old régime. A passageway was broken open in the walls of the cathedral to permit the entry of a chariot bearing the Goddess of Reason. Of all the happenings in Lyons Cathedral, the most momentous was the Ecumenical Council of 1274. Christendom never witnessed a greater gathering. At the Council held at Lyons in 1245, Innocent IV had preached his famous sermon on the five wounds of the Church, but he was less concerned with healing them than with excommunicating Frederick II. St. Louis tried in vain to make peace between pope and emperor on his visit to Lyons in those days. When the saint-king died on his last crusade his ashes rested in honor in Lyons Cathedral on their long journey from Tunis to St. Denis. Till the death of Frederick II, the pope lived in Lyons, whose independent position, neither wholly of France nor of the Empire, caused it to be a chosen spot for exiles. Innocent contributed toward the building of a stone bridge over the Rhone to replace one that had collapsed under the troops of Philippe-Auguste and Coeur-de-Lion as they marched to the Third Crusade. The Council of 1245 had been held in a cathedral of whose nave only four bays were completed. For the far greater gathering of 1274, Lyons Cathedral could seat over two thousand prelates and princes. The chief visitors were placed in the choir with Gregory X (formerly a canon of this church). Among them was Aragon's king, Jaime el Conquistador, mighty builder of churches and untiring crusader, Guy de la Tour, the bishop-builder of Clermont Cathedral, and the bishop of Mende, Guillaume Durandus, author of the universally read liturgical treatise. St. Bonaventure, whose book of meditations was soon to inspire Giotto, preached at the opening Mass. His fellow teacher in Paris University, St. Thomas Aquinas, journeying north to attend the congress at Lyons, had died suddenly in the prime of life. The Council of 1274 was not political, as had been that of 1245; its main purposes were the Holy War in the East and the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin churches. The Emperor of Constantinople had sent officials to reconcile him with Rome, and to this day memorials of that short reunion--Greek and Latin processional crosses--stand behind the chief altar of Lyons Cathedral. The emperor's ambassadors solemnly abjured the twenty-six propositions condemned by Rome, then took the oath of fidelity to the pope. With swelling heart the vast throng rose to chant the _Te Deum_. Gregory X intoned the _Credo_ in Latin, and the Greek patriarch repeated thrice the _Filioque_ phrase which, centuries earlier, had been the occasion of the break with Rome, _qui ex Patre Filioque procedit_. Before the century ended the union was a dead-letter, though the emperor till his death remained faithful to his pact. The Greek priesthood proved irreconcilable. The day before the Council closed St. Bonaventure died, and around his grave, in the Franciscan church at Lyons, stood the most imposing group of mourners recorded in history, pope, kings, and five hundred princes and prelates of note. The sermon was preached by Bonaventure's pupil of the Paris schoolroom, the learned Pierre de Tarentaise, archbishop of Lyons, soon to mount Peter's chair as Innocent V. All Christendom was bidden to offer up a prayer for the soul of Brother Bonaventure. The city adopted him as a patron. In 1562 the ashes of the Seraphic Doctor were flung into the Rhone, but there still stands in Lyons a late-Gothic church that bears his name. LE MANS CATHEDRAL[164] A cathedral is a book, a poem, and Christianity, true to its promise, has drawn voice and song from stone, _lapides clamabunt_.--FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM. Like Bourges and Lyons, the cathedral of Le Mans shows the influence of different schools. An Angevin architect made the _bombé_ vaults of its nave, and from the Ile-de-France and Normandy came the masters who designed its mammoth choir. The nave of Le Mans is a masterpiece of Romanesque despite its diagonals; the choir a masterpiece of Apogee Gothic. In the nave appear different stages of pre-Gothic art, and in the choir, the transept, and the nave's masonry roof are represented--Primary, Apogee, Rayonnant, and Flamboyant Gothic. To read the stones of this composite church with intelligence, one must trace its story step by step. It is named after the first bishop of the city, St. Julian, who brought Christianity into the region. Several earlier cathedrals succeeded each other on the site. The one erected after the Northmen sacked Le Mans was falling into ruin when, about 1060, Bishop Vulgrim began a new cathedral, carried on by his successor, Arnould. Their Romanesque choir exists no longer, but vestiges of the church are to be traced in the walls of the present nave, and in the gable of the Psallette, a building to the north of the cathedral, which in Bishop Vulgrim's day formed part of his transept's north tower. The nave of Le Mans as we have it to-day shows three distinct campaigns of work undertaken by the three bishops, Hoël, Hildebert de Lavardin, and Guillaume de Passavant. Bishop Hoël (1085-97), a Breton, able, handsome, patriotic, continued the Romanesque transept and the towers that terminate its arms. His works exist in the base of the southern tower and also in those two pier arcades of the nave that touch the transept. The groin vaulting of the side aisles is of Hoël's time, as well as the aisle walls, decorated with blind arcades, the capitals of whose shafts are carved crudely with chimerical animals. As the capitals opposite those of the engaged shafts show more skill, they must have been done later in the XI century. Good Bishop Hoël, in famine time, sold the gold and silver plate of his cathedral to feed the poor, and on his deathbed distributed his possessions among them. After a visit to Rome, he accompanied Urban II back to France, on the momentous occasion of the launching of the First Crusade. When the Council of Clermont ended, the pope came to Le Mans, in February of 1096, to visit his friend the bishop, to the intense pride of all the city. Such episodes reflect clearly the unison of aspiration which was presently to express itself in mighty movements. The Greek princess who saw the first crusaders arrive in Constantinople has told in graphic phrases how Europe, unloosed from its foundations, hurled itself on Asia, and with a like impetuosity western Christendom was about to fling itself toward heaven in cathedrals. The church on which Bishop Hoël had worked was destroyed in large part by fire, and his successor, the illustrious Hildebert de Lavardin (1097-1125), began a reconstruction about 1110. Hildebert was the most popular poet of his day and in the mediæval schools his letters were committed to memory. A lover of the Latin authors, he composed verses of such facture that some of them have been mistaken for ancient classics. He was philosopher, orator, and architect as well. The best years of his life were passed in Le Mans, though he was to die in Tours as archbishop of that city. While a teacher in Le Mans' cathedral school, he accompanied Bishop Hoël on his travels, and knew well Cluny and its great abbot Hugues, whose biographer he became. Hildebert possessed _esprit_, a sound judgment, and much independence. Life tested him harshly. The ordeal of prison he suffered several times, and the worse ordeal of calumny, which is disproved by the affectionate friendship felt for him by St. Anselm, St. Bernard, and Bishop Ives of Chartres. No man, he himself said in one of his sermons, should be a bishop whose life has not always been irreproachable. His contemporaries called him "a prelate attentive to the distribution of the bread of the word of God," a man zealous for discipline, charitable to the poor, and with a love for the House of Prayer that made him a builder both at Le Mans and Tours. [Illustration: _Le Mans' Choir_ (_1217-1254_). _The Double Aisles_] Like St. Anselm, he was bullied by William Rufus. Maine lay between Anjou and Normandy and was fought for by each of those expanding powers, a duel settled only by the marriage of the heiress of Maine to the heir of Anjou, the son of which union was Geoffrey the Handsome, the first Plantagenet so called, who married the heiress of Normandy and England. Geoffrey's son, Henry II of England, inherited Maine, Anjou, and Normandy before he fell heir to the kingdom across the Channel. When William Rufus captured Le Mans in 1097, he exacted the demolition of the cathedral's towers on the charge that they dominated his residence. Annoyed that Hildebert had been elected bishop without his deciding voice, he pillaged his palace, confiscated his possessions, and kept him chained in prison for a year. The bishop was imprisoned as well by Maine's designing neighbor to the south, the Count of Anjou, and once while in the south of France he almost met death at the hands of Saracen pirates. Despite vicissitudes, he found time for writing poetry and for building. He obtained a monk-architect named Jean from the noted Geoffrey, abbot of Vendôme,[165] author, writer, and the intimate of many popes. Later, when Abbot Geoffrey asked for the return of his architect, Hildebert retained him, and a tart letter of the abbot to the bishop exists; it appears that monk Jean was sent, in consequence, on a penitential pilgrimage to Palestine. Bishop Hildebert's part in Le Mans' actual cathedral is the semicircular pier arches discernible in all the bays of the nave save the two touching the transept, the alternate circular piers, and the west façade, wherein were retained older portions, and against which leans a big menhir of immemorial age: "_Il y a dans la cathédrale toute la simple beauté du menhir qui l'annonce_," is one of Rodin's vivifying phrases. Bishop Hildebert consecrated his new cathedral in 1120, and it is related how, on that day, Fulk V of Anjou, the widower of the heiress of Maine, about to start for the Holy Land, set his little son of seven, Geoffrey, on the high altar of Le Mans Cathedral, and said with emotion: "O holy Julian, to thee I commend my child and my lands. Defend and protect them both." His prowess in Palestine was eventually to win for him the heiress of Jerusalem, so that when he had married his son Geoffrey to a woman of great fortune, he sensibly left him as sole ruler in Maine and Anjou, contenting himself with his Oriental kingdom. Two fires in quick succession damaged the Romanesque cathedral of Le Mans. Ordericus Vitalis tells how "in the first week of September, 1134, the hand of God punished many sins by fire, for the ancient and wealthy cities of Le Mans and Chartres were burned." In the necessary changes that followed practically all the central nave was redone by Bishop Guillaume de Passavant (1145-86). The triforium, the clearstory, and the masonry roof are his, and he constructed the pointed arches under the semicircular ones of Bishop Hildebert's pier arcade. The four immense square vault sections (c. 1150) over Le Mans' nave are of the heavy rib Plantagenet type, like the so-called domical vaults of Angers Cathedral. Their crown, or keystone, being ten feet higher than their framing arches, a pronounced concave shape results. The addition of a heavy stone roof necessitated the englobing of each alternate monolithic column by a square pier cantoned with shafts. Bishop Guillaume developed the door in the south flank of the nave, whose column images, though much mutilated, are allied with those at Chartres' western entrances. At the door joints, in bas-relief only, are Peter and Paul; an additional step was taken when the other images were made to stand almost free of their columns. Guglielmo, the Lombard, had used jamb-sculpture at Modena Cathedral as the XII century opened. This door of Le Mans, among the earliest of French imaged portals, belongs to the decade before 1150. The porch leading to it was built in time for the consecration of the cathedral in 1158. Guillaume de Passavant was another of the outstanding men of his age. He, too, wrote Latin verses, and even as he lay dying composed a little satire on his attendants, whom his clear eyes observed to be more concerned over the coming recompense from his estate than for the loss of their bishop. Like St. Bernard, who had loved him as a youth, he was a tireless reader of the Bible. Daily at his table the poor were fed. He presented to his cathedral a cloth of gold studded with gems, for which he wrote verses, saying that in case of famine it was to be sold to feed the destitute. Another princely gift he gave to Le Mans Cathedral was the enameled tomb of Count Geoffrey the Handsome, of which only one large panel has survived, now the treasure of the Museum. Both kinds of enamel were used, the flat surface, or champlevé, and the cloisonné method. The technique is Limousin, not, as some have said, Rhenish; between Le Mans and Limoges were many links. Geoffrey the Handsome was the thirteenth count of Anjou, though the capital of Maine was always his favorite residence, rather than Angers, the chief city of his father's patrimony. He won the nickname "Plantagenet" because of the sprig of broom he used to stick in his cap. True to his race's instinct for territorial aggrandizement, he married, when not yet twenty, a woman twice his age, Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, the Conqueror's son. Geoffrey died in 1151 on his return from the Second Crusade, where he had fought for his half brother, Baudouin III, king of Jerusalem. His son, Henry II, was born in Le Mans (1133) and baptized in its cathedral. Henry had revered Guillaume de Passavant from childhood, yet once, in an Angevin passion, because the aged bishop had crossed his will, he sent messengers from England to order the sacking of the prelate's palace. Thomas Becket, then Henry's chancellor, gave secret advice to the envoys to tarry long on their journey to Maine. On the third day after their departure he wrung from the king, who fancied his order was already carried out, a counter-order, which he rushed through to Le Mans. Henry Plantagenet loved Le Mans better than any city in his wide dominions, and his heart broke when his rebellious son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, drove him out in 1189. Two months later he died in Chinon castle and was carried for burial to Fontevrault; the ancient prophecy had said that Anjou's ruler of his generation would lie shrouded among the shrouden women. If Fulk Nerra's wild blood had passed to Henry, so had his shrewdness and progressive statesmanship. He, too, like his father, before twenty, wedded a woman much older than himself, the richest heiress in Christendom, Aliénor of Aquitaine. Possessing Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, Normandy and Aquitaine, this king of England ruled more territory in France than did the French king. And Philippe-Auguste, son of the French monarch, whom Aliénor had discarded, bent his resourceful genius and fox-like policies to change so abnormal a state of affairs. The Capet-Plantagenet duel was to last for centuries. Both Henry and Philippe were munificent patrons of the new architecture. Henry sponsored that individual phase of it called Plantagenet Gothic; under Philippe, French Gothic reached its highest development. And the cathedral of Le Mans records them both, Plantagenet in its nave, northern French in its choir. When Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, because of John Lackland's crimes, passed willingly to the French king, the art of the Ile-de-France found favor in southwest France. Then it was that the XI-century Romanesque chevet of Le Mans Cathedral was replaced by the present stupendous Gothic choir. In 1217 Bishop Hamlin obtained the consent of Philippe-Auguste to destroy the Gallo-Roman city walls in order to extend the apse of his church, and the next year the choir was started. The bishop, trowel in hand, spent hours on the new work. His two successors continued the enterprise. From 1234 to 1255 Bishop Geoffrey de London was its princely benefactor. In 1254 the choir was dedicated, "a day of benediction" for our land, said the people with tears of fervor. Men and women worked voluntarily to clear the edifice of builders' rubbish, even the little children of four carrying out the sand in their frocks. For the happy ceremony, each guild of the city, chanting psalms, brought a candle of two-hundred-pound weight, to be set up in a majestic circle round the high altar. The choir, then blessed for God's service, is one of the vast designs of Gothic architecture. "Words are powerless to paint the majesty of this sanctuary," wrote M. Gonse. Here, as at Bourges, is the note of dream beauty that haunts the memory, the something mysterious and superlatively picturesque. Were the church completed on the same scale it would rank with the supreme cathedrals of France. From the exterior the contrast between the XII-century nave and its towering neighbor is painfully abrupt. The nave's outer walls are stark and unadorned, the round arched windows insignificant in size. But who would be willing to forfeit the venerable monument built by the poet-theologians, Hildebert de Lavardin and Guillaume de Passavant, wherein history has been lived, and whose interior aspect is of so grave, white, and primeval a simplicity? Overawing in size is Le Mans' Gothic choir. The ground falls away to the cast of the church, and then opens out in the Place des Jacobins, whence can be obtained an unobstructed view of the stupendous edifice. Its numerous apse chapels are of exceptional length. The forked flying buttresses allowed the insertion of ambulatory windows. As at Bourges and Coutances, the inner aisle is sufficiently high to possess its own triforium and clearstory, but Le Mans improved on Bourges by omitting altogether the triforium of its middle choir in order not to dwarf its clearstory. Archæologists have traced the handiwork of three different men in Le Mans' choir. First, an architect of the Ile-de-France made the general plan, and built the thirteen radiating chapels. Then a Norman worked on the eastern curve, and it is thought he was Thomas Toustain, cited here as master-of-works, since Toustain is a Norman name. Perhaps he was the same genius who had already planned the high inner aisle at Coutances Cathedral. Very Norman are Le Mans' circular capitals, the sanctuary's twin-column piers, the carved band under the clearstory, the sharp-pointed arches beneath arches, and the foliate sculpture covering the spandrels of the aisle's triforium. The third master-of-works must have been a native of the Ile-de-France, for the upper choir and the two bays nearest the transept belong to that school. There is a progressive enlarging of the bays of the choir from its entrance to its end, done too regularly to have been accidental. Professor Goodyear has developed the thesis of these intentional refinements in Gothic monuments.[166] Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter thinks that undoubtedly there are cases when it was done with subtle design, but more often the irregularities resulted from the sound artistic taste of the old masters who preferred a free-hand drawing to mechanical perfection. "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion," said Bacon. Some think that at Le Mans the desire was to counteract the perspective narrowing. Others say that the builder thought thus to conform the wide choir to the ancient nave of lesser breadth. Not till the day of Rayonnant Gothic was Le Mans' transept begun, and it proved exceptional in continuing building while the foreign wars ravaged France; the chapter taxed itself heavily to meet expenses. As the XIV century closed, the southern arm was finished; it is entirely blocked by the ancient tower, to which were then added two stories. Midway in the vertical wall of the northern arm (begun in 1403) appears Flamboyant tracery. As cracks soon showed, the chapter called in a new architect, Jean de Dammartin, whose grandfather and great-uncle had beautified Dijon, Bourges, and Poitiers. When in 1430 the English captured Le Mans, he passed to Tours, on whose west façade he worked. Because the Gothic transept of Le Mans was confined to the same space as the Romanesque one it replaced, it may seem too narrow for such tremendous height. It is a monument as stately and cold as the glass it frames. Window over window rises the fragile audacious sweep of color that closes the transept's northern vista, each part being bound by stone traceries into the monumental whole. White and the yellow produced by silver-stain is the general theme, with brilliant touches of green, flashed ruby, violet, and blue. It has been said that what XV-century glass needs, to give it character, are the strong black cross-hatchings of the earlier schools. In the row of lights below the big rose, a damasked background to the figures was used with good effect. Among those represented are good King René, faithful amateur of art, and his mother, Yolande of Aragon, the regent dowager of Maine and Anjou. Her son-in-law Charles VII contributed toward the transept of Le Mans. For its wealth of storied windows Le Mans comes second only to Chartres and Bourges. It has suffered from hail-storms which wrecked many of its XIII-century treasures. The majority of the choir lights were set up between 1250 and 1260. Those in the radial chapels are somewhat earlier; in the long Lady chapel is a notable Tree of Jesse. The upper windows, contemporaries of those at Tours, have large figures with signatures that tell us their donors were canons, Benedictines,[167] Cistercians, architects, drapers (the donors of the fourth window), furriers (who gave the fifth), innkeepers and publicans (who presented the sixth). The seventh window--in the center of the apse--was the gift of Bishop Geoffrey de Loudon. In the thirteenth window bakers pour grain into sacks and take bread from the oven. In the clearstory of the inner aisle the legend-medallion type of window is retained. The first two bays were filled by Bishop Guillaume Roland (1255-58) here portrayed. The vintners presented the next light, for, on the "day of benediction" in 1254, when each of the town guilds brought a giant candle, the vintners chose to donate a light that would burn longer, so they set up this dazzling window of St. Julian.[168] Over the entrance to the Lady chapel Bishop Geoffrey is again portrayed, and in the eleventh bay Pope Innocent IV appears. A hundred years separate Le Mans' splendid specimens of XIII-century art from certain small lancets in the cathedral's nave, made probably by Suger's own workers of St. Denis, who came here when they had finished the three lancets in Chartres' façade. M. Mâle has proved that all the XII-century windows in the west of France derive from St. Denis. Le Mans' lancets show the same robes, the same borders of medallions as in the Suger lights at Chartres. The up-gazing apostles in Poitiers' Crucifixion window resemble the apostles in Le Mans' Ascension. The large much-restored light in the west façade, relating the story of St. Julian, though modeled on the St. Denis school, must have been executed by local craftsmen; it is rougher workmanship than the XII-century lancets in the nave aisles. Le Mans suffered woefully in 1562 when the Huguenots worked their will for three months on the cathedral's treasures. A choir screen with three hundred figures, a contemporary of that at Albi, was demolished, windows by the dozen were broken, and there was a holocaust of carved altars and tombs. After the Revolution, the XIII-century tomb of Berengaria of Navarre, the childless widow of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, was set up in the transept. For thirty years, as chatelaine of Le Mans, she watched its new Gothic sanctuary rising. They have mistakenly called hers the house of a XV-century lawyer in the Grande Rue. The earliest Renaissance tomb in France is in Le Mans Cathedral, that of King René's brother, made by Laurana from beyond the Alps. The effigy reposes in Christian fashion, but near by, on the later tomb of Guillaume du Bellay, the deceased is represented reclining at ease amid his mundane books. THE SAINTS AT SOLESMES.[169] No one can speak with the Lord while he prattles with the whole world.--HILDEBERT DE LAVARDIN, bishop of Le Mans (1097-1125). Bishop Hoël, who worked on the nave of Le Mans Cathedral, used to retire for meditation to the priory of Solesmes, farther down the Sarthe, a house founded in 1010 by the lord of Sablé and given to the Benedictines of the _Cultura Dei_ at Le Mans. Closed by the Revolution's hurricane, Solesmes was reopened in 1833 through the devoted efforts of Dom Prosper Guéranger, who made it a modern Cluny for erudition, for arts and crafts, and above all for church music. Solesmes restored to the church the Gregorian chant in its purity. Cowled architects of the XIX century rebuilt their monastery. On their own printing press the monks brought out books. Guests came here to find peace of mind and inspiration. At Solesmes Montalembert wrote the noble chapter on the Middle Ages that prefaces his _History of St. Elizabeth of Hungary_.[170] The traveler from Le Mans to Angers should quit the train at Sablé and walk two miles to the now deserted monastery on the Sarthe. In the transept of its church are the groups of images called _Les Saints de Solesmes_, work that ranks with the most vigorous final samples of the national art, and that are in spirit profoundly a part still of the Middle Ages despite Renaissance arabesques and pilasters. What master, or masters, made the Solesmes groups has led to animated controversy. They belong to the Region-of-the-Loire school, of which Tours was the center, and, like Michel Colombe's work, in them the harsh realism of the preceding school of Burgundy has been softened, and the draperies made supple and less overwhelming. If the _Maître de Solesmes_ is not Colombe himself, he was some one trained in his art school at Tours, perhaps some monk in this priory. The entombments at Solesmes are the best of the Middle Ages, with that of Ligier Richier at St. Mihiel.[171] Interest centers chiefly in the Entombment of Christ, the earliest and finest group, made about 1496 under Prior Cheminart, whose crest is cut on the stones. No Holy Sepulcher can compare with this in contained and sustained emotion. Its classic moderation is very different from the dramatic, almost violent, sculpture soon to be made popular by the Renaissance from Italy. The two men who lower the dead Christ into the tomb, Nicodemus (bearded) and Joseph of Arimathea (shaven, for such was the ritual in the mystery plays), are powerful images, and the latter is indubitably a portrait study, but of whom is not known. The Christ type could not be nobler. The Virgin's grief is rendered without emphasis, and St. John, supporting her, is an admirable image. But the supreme saint of Solesmes is the Magdalene, seated beside the tomb, her head bowed, her lips pressed against her crossed hands. She is garbed in as homely fashion as her sister Martha in St. Madeleine's church at Troyes--sisters in blood and sisters by the heart are these two admirable conceptions of late-Gothic sculpture. Nothing could be gentler, more discreet, more poignant in emotion, than the Magdalene of Solesmes, "the exquisite flower of the art of the Loire region," says M. Paul Vitry, "one of the masterpieces of French imagery of all times." "She is alive, she breathes gently," wrote Dom Guéranger, "her silence is at the same time both grief and a prayer." Dom de la Tremblaye asks what Italian master of the Renaissance has rendered faith more profoundly than this Magdalene, whose desolation is closer to a smile of ecstasy than to the contraction of grief. Even the neo-classic XVII century admired this image, and Richelieu wished to transport it to his château in Poitou. Some fifty years later, while Jean Bougler ruled Solesmes, was made the Burial of the Virgin, whose setting is entirely of the Renaissance, though the imagery remains faithful to the French Gothic spirit. It is said that the monk at Our Lady's feet represents the prior, Jean Bougler (1515-56), who returned to the lord of Sablé the eternal answer of the spiritual to the temporal powers. Accosted one day on the bridge over the Sarthe by the baron, against whom he had just maintained the priory's rights, the irate layman cried out: "Monk, if I did not fear God, I should throw you into the Sarthe." "If you fear God, Monseigneur," replied the prior, "I have nothing to fear." ST. QUENTIN'S COLLEGIATE CHURCH[172] Out in the night there's an army marching ... Endless ranks of the stars o'er-arching Endless ranks of an army marching ... Measured and orderly, rhythmical, whole, Multitudinous, welded and one ... Out in the night there's an army marching, Nameless, noteless, empty of glory, Ready to suffer, to die, and forgive, Marching onward in simple trust.... Endless columns of unknown men, Endless ranks of the stars o'er-arching.... Out in the night they are marching, marching ... Hark to their orderly thunder-tread! --ALFRED NOYES, _Rank and File_.[173] In size, if not in name, the church that tops St. Quentin's hill is a cathedral, an achievement of the apogee hour of Gothic fitted to close this group of stately churches. Throughout the World War battles raged round St. Quentin. The saints buried in its crypts, the cloud of witnesses in its window and sculptured groups, listened year after year to the marching millions, marching in the hope that a better world might emerge from the chaos, _ready to suffer and die and forgive_. St. Quentin has always stood in the path of invading armies. Much of its precious glass was destroyed in 1557, when Philip II of Spain attacked the town on St. Laurence day, and in memory of his victory built the Escorial. The siege of 1870 damaged the city dedicated to Caius Quintinus, the Roman senator's son who evangelized this region where he met a martyr's death. In August of 1914 the invaders passed in swift advance on Paris. When the Marne battle drove them back, they dug themselves into trenches a mile from St. Quentin's suburbs and there, with tragic monotony, the giant battle fluctuated. On August 15, 1917, suddenly, like a candle in the night, St. Quentin's great church flamed up, lighting the country for miles around. The projectiles came from the south where the invaders, not the Allies, were intrenched. From beneath this hill, in April of 1918, started the final desperate thrust toward Paris. Four months later the Allies, taking the offensive, swept all before them, and in October the Germans quitted the city in too great haste to destroy the big church, as the bored holes in every one of its piers would indicate had been their intention. A ghost of its former self is the collegiate of St. Quentin to-day. The venerated crypt, part of which dated from 840, was blown up with gunpowder before the evacuation (1918). The notably good XIII-and XV-century windows are wrecked, and the Flamboyant Gothic Town Hall, close to the church, is a ruin. About 1115 was begun the present collegiate as a Romanesque edifice; the north arm of the easternmost transept and the side wall between it and the larger transept are pre-Gothic. St. Quentin is an exception, in France, in possessing two transepts. When in 1257 St. Louis came to St. Quentin for the removal of the martyrs' relics to the new crypt, the Gothic choir was completed. Three of the small chambers in the XIII-century crypt are of Carolingian origin, and vestiges of Carolingian work remain in the west tower, placed directly before the church, and serving as a kind of vestibule to it. Till the present nave was extended to meet that ancient belfry, it stood isolated. Fissures showed in the new constructions and much time was wasted in consolidations. Only as the XIV century opened was the big transept between choir and nave begun; it was made twenty feet wider than the transept between apse curve and choir. The tracery in the rose windows of both cross inclosures is most artistic. The nave continued building all through the XIV century. It repeated the shafts which, in the choir, had been later additions needed for consolidation. Only by 1470 was St. Quentin's nave completed by joining it to the ancient west tower. Three different campaigns of work built this church, and three breaks in its axial line are distinctly visible. Toward its repairs the good king Charles V contributed, and Louis XI bore the expense of remaking the small transept. To Villard de Honnecourt is attributed the plan of St. Quentin, since there are details in his sketchbook--the thirty-three parchment leaves now a treasure of the National Library at Paris--to substantiate the claim. His annotations are in the Picard dialect. St. Quentin's ordinance followed that of Rheims Cathedral sketched by Villard. The planting of columns between axis chapel and ambulatory--a Champagne feature--is the kind of charming novelty which would have appealed to the eager traveler who, at Kassovie, made a church for the king of Hungary wherein he repeated the unique fan-spreading eastern end of St. Yved at Braine. Thus he opened his precious book: "Villard de Honnecourt salutes you, and he begs all those who work at different classes of studies contained in these pages, to pray for his soul and remember him, for in this book can be found great help in teaching oneself fundamental principles of masonry and church carpentry." CHAPTER VII Plantagenet Gothic Architecture[174] Il n'y a pas seulement deux principes opposés dans l'homme. Il y en a trois. Car il y a trois vies et trois ordres de facultés. Il y a trois espèces de dispositions l'âme bien différentes: la première, celle de presque tous les hommes, consiste à vivre exclusivement dans le monde des phénomènes qu'on prend pour des réalités. La deuxième est celle des esprits les plus réfléchis qui cherchent longtemps la vérité en eux-mêmes ou dans la nature.... La troisième enfin est celle des âmes éclairées des lumières de la religion, les seules vrai et immuables. Ceux-là seuls ont trouvé un point d'appui fixe.--MAINE DE BIRAN (1766-1825; born in Périgord). The Gothic of the southwest grew out of the meeting of the cupola church of Aquitaine with the intersecting ribbed vault of northern France. It rose and spread in a region then under Plantagenet rule, Anjou, Poitou, Maine, and Touraine. As the first known vault of the Angevin type was dated approximately 1150, and as the system died out about the middle of the XIII century, Plantagenet Gothic was but an incident of a hundred years in French architecture. However, it was a phase which produced monuments of such remarkable individuality and grace that the school deserves more notice than has hitherto been given it. The dominant feature in Plantagenet Gothic is its cup-shaped vaulting. The French term "_bombé_" is more exact than such expressions as "domical" and "domed." The panels of an Angevin vault do not form parts of a spherical dome. The keystone of each section is raised higher than the four arches framing the section. Similar vaults were built during the first trials of diagonals by other Gothic schools, in districts where there were no cupola churches to serve as models. They were the result of inexperience in constructing ribbed-groined vaults, and their _bombé_ shape disappeared as soon as architects learned to raise their transverse and wall arches, by stilting and pointing them, to the level of the keystone. While the so-called domical vault in other schools had been a transitional step, in Plantagenet Gothic it was intentionally persisted in and became the most distinguishing characteristic of the school. In principle and in construction, the Plantagenet school is truly Gothic. The cells are carried on the backs of diagonal ribs. The Angevin builders recognized at once the advantage of concentrating the thrust of the stone roof at fixed points and counterbutting and grounding the load at those points only, so they followed close on the northern architects in adopting the new system. At the same time they felt that the cupola tradition in their region was not to be wholly set aside. M. Anthyme Saint-Paul well expressed it when he said that southwestern France "_s'est conduit en nation tributaire et non soumise_." There can be little doubt that the presence in the Plantagenet territories of churches covered by a number of small cupolas encouraged a decided curve in the newly imported diagonals. It was not for nothing that near Angers and Saumur, the two cities where Angevin vaults were first constructed, lay the famous abbatial of Fontevrault, a masterpiece of the cupola school. Had not the arrival, midway in the XII century, of the northern French type of masonry roof checked the construction of such churches, it is probable that they would have extended farther north. From the meeting of the two schools developed the Plantagenet phase of Gothic. Before proceeding to a description of the successive steps taken by Plantagenet architecture in its best-known examples at Angers, Saumur, and Poitiers, it is well to touch on the cupola churches of southwestern France, building for a century before the beginning of the regional Gothic school. M. de Lasteyrie has divided Romanesque architecture into some half dozen schools--those of Normandy, Burgundy, Auvergne, Poitou, the Midi, Champagne, and the scarcely enunciated Picardy Ile-de-France school. To these he added two isolated developments of short duration, one typified at Tournus, in Burgundy, where half barrels are placed transversely across a nave; and the other consisting of cupola-covered edifices which were building from Saintes to Fontevrault in the same hour as the Poitou-Romanesque churches surrounding them. For three generations the cupola haunted the imagination of southwestern France. The majority of them came into existence by hazard, as it were. They were not in the first plan of the church, but were built to replace other roofs, and in France they have been set on every kind of pedestal.[175] They were a variant of the barrel vault of the region preferred because less material was required. How the cupola arrived in Aquitaine is still an open question. M. de Lasteyrie has belittled the explanation of an Oriental source, since the mode of construction in France differed from that of cupolas in the East. His idea is that the use of the cupola never died out from the earlier days in Gaul, and that the domed churches of France may be considered to be fairly indigenous. M. Enlart has contended that no matter how or when the use of the cupola got into France, its origin was undeniably Byzantine, since Rome took the feature from Byzantium. He has dwelt on the fact that it was while such churches were building in France, the men of western Europe were going on pilgrimages, on crusades, and on trading ventures into countries where the cupola was a common feature. ST. FRONT AT PÉRIGUEUX.[176] Is it not better to dwell a little sadly far from the world, under the hand of God? The world gives but vain pleasures. You will be like others beguiled by it and hardened. You will hear many evil conversations, you will see many contemptible pushing people with distinguished names, you will feel malignant envy, many will be the faults with which you will reproach yourself.... Nothing is good apart from Peace. Peace is the mark of God's finger. All that is not Peace is but illusion, and disturbing self-love.... Be simple and insignificant, and Peace will be your reward. It is only you yourself who can trouble your own Peace. It is in forgetting self that Peace comes.--FÉNELON (1651-1715; born near Périgueux). The most discussed of the cupola churches is St. Front at Périgueux. For a while it was considered a mother church of the school, but such well-constructed domes are a culmination, not a beginning. One of the oldest cupolas extant is that of St. Astier, near Périgueux, finished in 1018; there are two large domes over Cahors Cathedral, in which church Pope Calixtus II blessed an altar in 1119.[177] The two cupolas over Cahors' unaisled nave appear in the exterior view, but were not well enough constructed for their inner surfaces to be left uncovered by coats of plaster, whereas the interior masonry of St. Front is beautifully finished, proving that in point of time it was separated from St. Astier. Long and heated have been the controversies over the date of the cathedral of Périgueux. As much space has been devoted to the discussion as to the little Morienval in the Ile-de-France. At first it was taken to be the church begun before 1000 and dedicated in 1047. To-day no one dreams of saying it predates the fire of 1120. A few of the bays of the ancient church, burned in 1120 with much loss of life, were retained as parish rooms and now stand to the south of the present cathedral's façade. It is very evident that they never were intended to be incorporated in the new church. Once it was thought that the actual St. Front, which is in the shape of a Greek cross, with a dome over each of its arms, copied St. Mark's at Venice. St. Mark's was modeled on the church of the Apostles at Constantinople, destroyed by Mohammed II in 1464. However, its domes were added only when the basilica was rebuilt, in 1063. And furthermore, there are indications at St. Front to show that the original design was to lengthen its nave by another bay, which would have changed the plan from a Greek cross to the universally used Latin cross. The present St. Front was begun after 1120 and probably was completed by 1180, in which year a record says that Bishop Pierre de Mimet (1169-80) moved the ancient tombs into the basilica. During some modern repairs parchments were discovered in a scaffold hole thirty feet from the ground and closed only by a loose stone. The MSS. were in the Romance dialect of the XII century, and were abusive of Henry II of England, who besieged Périgueux in Bishop de Mimet's time. Such a hiding place for compromising papers might well have been thought of during the last stage of a building while yet the scaffolding stood in place. St. Front's interior possesses a fine, plain solidity of its own, but its garish white walls cry out for mosaics or fresco. The cupolas rise above the big arcades without any vertical foundation members. Each is divided into a hemispherical dome and a drum having the shape of spherical triangles. So massive are the square piers supporting the cupolas that narrow corridors have been threaded through them. Those dense piles of masonry saved St. Front when the Huguenots lighted bonfires at the base of the piers. St. Étienne, formerly the cathedral of Périgueux, was devastated then, so that only two of its cupolas remain; the westernmost one is rougher, earlier work. The restorer, Abadie, took deplorable liberties with St. Front, but it is an exaggeration to call it a modern church studied from a Romanesque original. Abadie from 1865 to 1875 reconstructed the great broad arches hitherto slightly pointed, and the actual sanctuary is entirely his work. Oriental and un-French as is the exterior of Périgueux Cathedral with its white domes, its neo-minarets, its immense tower each of whose stories is lesser in size than the one below it, and whose summit is a pavilion covered with the inverted tiles called pineapple scales, one has to accept the disconcerting fact that it was building in the same year with the cathedrals at Paris and Laon. Well has St. Front been called an archæological monster defying the laws of that science. THE CATHEDRAL OF ANGOULÊME.[178] If we wish to know all that is worthy of being imitated, we must make of legends a part of our studies and observations. The marvel of the lives of the saints is not their miracles, but their conduct.--JOUBERT, _Pensées_ (1754-1824; born in Périgord). [Illustration: _Angoulême Cathedral. A XII-century Cupola Church of Aquitaine with a Typical Façade of Poitou's Romanesque School_] The cathedral of Angoulême shares with St. Front and Fontevrault the distinction of being the finest cupola church in France. It is unsurpassed in the setting on the edge of the city's steep hill above the Charente valley. In ancient Angoumois, now the department of the Charente, are over five hundred XII-century Romanesque churches.[179] Angoulême Cathedral was begun in 1109 by Bishop Gérard (1101-36), who had taught at Périgueux in the cathedral school and no doubt learned there to admire cupolas. His first dome at Angoulême--the easternmost one--is slightly later than the older cupola of St. Étienne at Périgueux. Bishop Gérard had the moral courage to rebuke the sinful union of the troubadour-duke, Guillaume IX, and the fair Vicomtesse Malbergeon, whose portrait he wore on his shield when he marched into battle. Guillaume informed Gérard that only when hair grew on his bald, prelate pate would he give up the lady of his affections. Gérard was papal legate in Gaul for Pascal II, Calixtus II, and the second Honorius, and was the prelate chosen, because of his eloquence, to be spokesman for the bishops who opposed Paschal II's compromise with the German emperor on the question of investitures. And yet this able man, because Innocent II had not renewed his dignities, joined the anti-pope faction and took with him Guillaume X of Aquitaine. Only the passionate genius of St. Bernard was able to end the scandal. The cathedral built at Angoulême by Bishop Gérard, like most of the churches of the southwest, lacks the charm of perspective, since it has neither curving processional path nor side aisle. A note of force is given to the interior by the strong projection of the buttress piers, more salient within the church than without. Farther to the south, when the Gothic day had dawned, buttresses were to be disguised as walls between the side chapels. The three cupolas that roof the nave--each covering a large square bay--are among the largest in France. The side walls are divided at mid-height: below is a huge blind arch, while above are two round-headed windows. Angoulême's hemispherical domes on pendentives were sufficiently well constructed to dispense with plaster coatings, an advance over Cahors Cathedral and St. Étienne at Périgueux. At the transept-crossing is an immense dome forming within the church a lantern lighted by a series of round-headed windows that open in its pedestal. The arrangement derives directly from the Orient and is rare in France. A very fine tower, whose stories lessen as they rise, covers the northern arm of the transept, and till the cathedral was sacked, during the XVI-century wars, a similar tower spanned the transept's southern limb. Angoulême's elaborate XII-century façade is one of the noted pages of monumental decoration in France, a frontal more of ornate beauty than of power, in which M. André Michel finds the influence of old ivories. Tier on tier rise its carven scenes, with a Christ in Majesty crowning the whole. The XIX-century restorer, M. Paul Abadie, who worked such havoc at Périgueux, took equal liberties here. He made the upper story with its turrets topped by conical spires, and over-restored the principal sculptural groups. These pre-Gothic churches of southwest France obsessed his imagination, for when he came to design a church of his own he put up on the Mount of Martyrs in Paris a neo-Byzantine, neo-Gothic basilica most strangely reminiscent of Aquitaine as it stands in exotic isolation under the cold, northern sky. Angoulême's west façade had not long been completed when under its portal passed John Lackland to be married to the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Count of Angoulême, Isabella, already affianced to a Lusignan. Henry III of England, the builder of Westminster Abbey, was the fruit of that union. Twenty years later Isabella married the son of her discarded fiancé, and her jealousy filled France with war. Jezebel, the people called her. She rests in effigy at Fontevrault, beside the tomb of her great father-in-law, Henry II, the first Plantagenet. FONTEVRAULT ABBEY CHURCH.[181] A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between the manners of men and women.... Men had the right to dissolve in tears, and women that of talking without prudery. The women appear distinctly superior. They were more serious, more subtle. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, the crowned poet-artist, a king whose noble manners and refined mind, in spite of his cruelty, exercised so strong an impression on his age, was formed by the brilliant Aliénor of Aquitaine. St. Louis was brought up exclusively by Blanche of Castile, and Joinville was the pupil of a widowed and regent mother.--GAREAU, _Social State of France During the Crusades_. The art of the cupola church may be said to have culminated in the abbatial at Fontevrault on the confines of Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine, and practically the northernmost point to which attained the cupola development of Aquitaine. Undoubtedly it would have spread farther afield had it not been checked--even while Fontevrault was building--by the advent of ogival ribs which initiated a new manner of masonry roofing. In Fontevrault's bourg is a village church covered gracefully in the Plantagenet Gothic manner. The untenable theory was advanced by a French architect that the cupola church was the egg out of which hatched the radical organ of Gothic architecture, that the first ribs were employed to stiffen a dome.[182] No one to-day concedes this. Yet, though cupola monuments may not have affected French Gothic in general, they certainly exerted a local influence on the Gothic of the West. The hemispherical domes at Fontevrault were directly under the eye of the first architects of Plantagenet Gothic. An abbess ruled over men at Fontevrault. Its founder, the Blessed Robert d'Arbrissel, had been impressed by the Saviour giving St. John into the spiritual guidance of the Virgin. So he organized a new Order comprised of four communities ruled by a woman: a main house for nuns and another for men; a hospital dedicated to St. Lazarus, and a house for repentant Magdalenes. Robert d'Arbrissel was a Breton, schooled in Paris, and noted for his eloquence, which so impressed Urban II, who heard him preach at the dedication of Angers' church of St. Nicolas, that he named him an apostolic missionary to spread the First Crusade. Feeling need of spiritual renewal, Robert had retired for meditative peace to these forests when one day he was attacked by bandits. He yielded all he possessed on condition that they give him their souls to guide, and, having converted them, the name of their chief, Evrault, was given, it is said, to the congregation that gathered in cells about the holy man. Pious folk came and sinners, the rich and the poor, the halt and the hale, and the impetuous Robert called them one and all "the poor of Christ." "I never read of a hermit," said honest old Samuel Johnson, "but in imagination I kiss his feet; never of a monastery but I fall on my knees and kiss the pavement." In 1106, Paschal II approved the Order and in Blessed Robert's lifetime some five thousand gathered at Fontevrault. Abbot Suger, who was a young student at that time near the new abbey, testified to the edification it gave. A sermon by the Blessed Robert converted the fair Bertrada de Montfort, who had quitted her ignoble husband, Fulk IV of Anjou, to marry Philip I, king of France, which illegal union kept churchmen busy during sixteen years; she callously brought her second master to visit her first. The fight which Rome waged to preserve monogamy in western Christendom deserves the highest praise. Bertrada died the second abbess of Fontevrault. The historic names of France compose the list of abbesses. The young widow of the only son of Henry I of England retired here, after the loss of the White Ship, and her father, Fulk V of Anjou, came to visit her as he quitted his career in Europe to take up his new role as king of Jerusalem. Margaret of Burgundy, the builder of Tonnerre's hospital hall, and second wife of Charles d'Anjou, St. Louis' brother, was educated at Fontevrault by her aunt the abbess. About 1500 Abbess Renée de Bourbon built the Renaissance cloister. To-day the famous house serves as a state prison. Fontevrault church played a part in the Gothic story. Its earliest cupola, over the transept-crossing, differs from those over the nave in that its base is not distinct from its dome. Angers copied it in its churches of St. Nicholas and St. Martin, and so did Saumur in St. Pierre. When in 1119 Calixtus II dedicated Fontevrault, the church consisted of the present choir and the transept. During the first quarter of the XII century the aisleless nave was spanned by four cupolas on clearly defined pedestals. Perhaps from Angoulême Cathedral came the fashion of domes on pendentives, after some Fontevrault monks had gone on legal business, in 1117, to the capital of Angoumois. The _abbaye-double_ was favored both by the Angevin rulers and their Poitevin neighbors, the dukes of Aquitaine. Henry II's father and mother, Geoffrey the Handsome of Anjou and the ex-empress Matilda of England, gave generously toward the building of the new church, and so did Aliénor of Aquitaine's forbears of the illustrious house of Poitiers; hence it was fitting they both, Henry and Aliénor, should lie in burial there. When Henry Plantagenet died in 1189 in his castle at Chinon, which the old chronicler tells us rises steeply from the Vienne "straight up to heaven"--the Chinon whither Jeanne d'Arc was to come to give France a new soul--the dead monarch was carried to Fontevrault church near by, instead of to the Grammont he favored, the mother-house of a new Order founded by Stephen de Tierney in 1176. The archbishop of Tours came to Fontevrault to conduct the funeral, and Henry's rebellious son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, stood by while they lowered into the tomb the great administrator who gave us the germs of our jury system, the man of the same unbridled passions, the same strong leadership in arms and statecraft, as his ancestor, Fulk Nerra, who had won this strip of middle France by sheer ability. And well Richard might feel serious, for the nine generations of increasing prosperity, promised to Fulk I of Anjou, ended with him. In 1199 the Lion-hearted himself was brought to Fontevrault for burial; he had begged to be laid in penitence at the feet of the father he had defied, like the true Angevin he was. As his elder brother had said: "It has ever been the way with Plantagenets for brother to hate brother, and for son to turn against father." The ceremony for Richard in Fontevrault abbey church was conducted by St. Hugh from Lincoln, where he was raising a splendid Early-English cathedral. He had come to France to protest to Richard against further spoliation of his see. At this 'shrouding of a second Angevin among the shrouden women,' Aliénor stood beside the nuns, and, the ceremony over, St. Hugh, so wise and holy amid such seething passions, proceeded to comfort the widowed Berengaria. Richard, like his father, was a cosmopolite. "_Miey hom e miey baron_, _Angles_, _Norman_, _Peytavin et Gascon_," he sang in his prison lay, and indeed one would be puzzled to know which of them were the countrymen of him whom Guizot called "the bravest, most inconsiderate, most passionate, most ruffianly, most heroic adventurer of the Middle Ages." In 1204 his equally turbulent, able, and seductive mother, Aliénor, was buried at Fontevrault beside the husband against whom she had stirred up undutiful sons, and who in his last years had kept her shut away from further mischief. From 1122 to 1204 stretched her full life; queen of France for fifteen years, queen of England for fifty, a pernicious influence upon them both, but always a most sensible ruler for her own Aquitaine. She passed her final years in peaceful Fontevrault, but her stormy destiny was to be troubled to the end. In 1204 her grandson, Arthur of Brittany, besieged her in a Midi castle where she was visiting, and when John Lackland heard of his mother's plight he came by forced marches to her relief and captured Arthur, who soon after was foully murdered. Aliénor had seen the rise of Gothic at St. Denis, whose corner stone her French husband laid, and she lived to found churches of the gracious Plantagenet phase of the new art. But true daughter of the Midi that she was, an Aquitaine cupola church is her rightful funeral monument. In her, as in her own Midi of that age, culture and corruption were precocious. The fourth of the famous Plantagenet tombs at Fontevrault which England has tried to get for Westminster Abbey, is that of Isabelle of Angoulême (d. 1247), the wife of John Lackland. And there once were two others, the tomb of Richard Coeur-de-Lion's favorite sister, Jeanne (d. 1199), who became the fourth wife of Raymond VI of Toulouse, and that of her son, Count Raymond VII (d. 1249), of the Albigensian wars--tombs swept away either by the Huguenots or during the Revolution. As the XIX century opened, the Plantagenet tombs lay forgotten in a cellar. When England became aware of their value they were shipped to Paris in 1846, to be taken across the Channel. Luckily, however, an Angevin, M. de Falloux, became minister on the declaration of the Second Republic, and the four precious mausoleums were returned to Fontevrault church. Aliénor was ninth in descent from that Duke of Aquitaine who had founded great Cluny itself. Her grandfather, Guillaume IX, the troubadour duke, was a benefactor of the newly established Fontevrault. When her father resigned his dominion in penitence, his will was that Aliénor, his heiress, should wed the son of the king of France. So in Bordeaux Cathedral, in 1137, Aliénor married the future Louis VII. No temperaments could have been more opposite. In 1249 she took the Crusader's cross from St. Bernard, at Vézelay--where the monks were building their glorious basilica. At Constantinople her troublous beauty roused admiration, and scandal at Antioch, where the ruler was her own handsome young uncle, Raymond of Poitiers.[183] Her union with Louis became an irksome bond and she clamored for its dissolution on the ground of consanguinity. The flouted French king was only too happy to be rid of her, but Abbot Suger, foreseeing all too clearly the national calamity that would be precipitated should Aliénor's great domains pass to a rival of France, held together the mismatched pair. When he died, in 1152, headstrong Aliénor broke loose, and as she rode away from the court of France the great lords came out to woo her--one of them even tried to kidnap her. Because she craved a strong arm to revenge herself on her first husband, she chose as consort young Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine, and Duke of Normandy; she was thirty, Henry not yet twenty. Thus began the long Capet-Angevin duel, not to be fought out to a finish until 1452, when all that Henry II had possessed on the Continent and all of Aliénor's wide domain were in the hands of the king of France. It needed a St. Jeanne to atone for the very unsaintly Aliénor. [Illustration: _The Plantagenet Tombs at Fontevrault_] From this unscrupulous, mischief-making, virile, and capable queen of the XII century sprang a vigorous brood of men and women, passionate in both good and evil, and most of them enlightened art patrons, builders of churches, and writers of verses. Coeur-de-Lion was a troubadour. John Lackland's son built Westminster Abbey. Aliénor's daughter, the queen of Castile, had an Angevin architect help in the building of Las Huelgas, by Burgos. Her daughter of Champagne set the trouvères singing of Lancelot, Tristan, and Iseult. Another Eleanor of her lineage had her funeral journey marked by sculptured crosses from Lincolnshire to Charing Cross. It was given Aliénor to make some atonement for the evil she brought on France in her youth; at eighty years of age she went into Spain to bring back her granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, as bride for the grandson of the discarded Louis VII, and Blanche gave France the saint-king who illuminated his realm with fair churches. Another of Aliénor's great-grandsons was a saint-king, Ferdinand, the conqueror of Seville, who founded many a church. Even as the cruelty and craft of John Lackland cropped out in Charles d'Anjou, whom the Sicilian Vespers punished, so the culture and inconsistency of Coeur-de-Lion appeared again in his nephew of Champagne, Thibaut IV, the maker of songs. From Aliénor descended Bishop Eudes de Sully, who built the western portals of Notre Dame at Paris, and Henry de Sully, who had the plans drawn for Bourges Cathedral. Herself an outstanding figure in the early day of Gothic art, and ancestress of enlightened builders, much can be forgiven Aliénor. All of which brings us back to the starting point of our chapter, the formation of the Plantagenet Gothic school of architecture. PLANTAGENET GOTHIC The XII and XIII centuries were a period when men were at their strongest; never before or since have they shown equal energy in such varied directions or such intelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels of history--these Plantagenets; these scholastic philosophers; these architects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents and Robin Hoods and Marco Polos; these crusaders who planted their enormous fortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes and barrens yield harvests--all, without apparent exception, bowed down before the woman. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she was always the stronger force.--HENRY ADAMS. There have been various divisions of this school, and it is always well to bear in mind that such cut-and-dried classifications are arbitrary and made use of merely for the greater ease of the student. By dividing Plantagenet work into three periods--preceded by a brief incubation hour, the twenty years before 1150--it is easier to follow the evolving steps of this brilliant phase of the builder's art. During the short introductory stage before 1150 the cupola had the upper hand and imposed its construction on the intersecting ribs just imported from the north. The earliest _bombé_ vaults with ribs are really cupolas still, since the stones of their infilling were laid in concentric rings round and round. Only a small number of these ribbed cupolas were built. Then in the first phase of Plantagenet Gothic appeared the ascendency of ribbed vault over cupola. The dome was lowered and the stones of the infilling were laid like those of a true Gothic vault, not horizontally, round and round, but vertically, with the courses running parallel with the ridges of the triangular compartments traced by the diagonals. Each of the four triangular cells was concave in both directions, with a groin defining its axial line. Hence eight panels, not four, composed the _bombé_ vault, groin ridges alternating with ribs. Such groin lines called for strengthening ribs beneath them, since a curving surface has more need of a bone skeleton to stiffen it. Given the _bombé_ shape, it was inevitable for the architect to arrive soon at the use of ridge ribs between the diagonals. The Plantagenet vault _par excellence_ is made up of eight ribs that branch from a central keystone, those ribs being of the same slight graceful profile as the arches framing each vault section. For a time the rib molds of the First Period were enormously heavy and wide, like the diagonals of the nave of Angers Cathedral--the oldest Angevin Gothic work extant (c. 1150). Their profile shows two large round molds with a flat space between. Before long the level space tended to swell into a roll molding, which in time predominated over the lateral ones; such are the diagonals of the Trinité church at Angers (c. 1170). Finally, the side rolls died out altogether, leaving one slender uniform torus, a characteristic of the Second Period of Plantagenet art. When the lateral and transverse arches adopted the same delicate profile as that of the eight branching ribs, there was achieved the slender elegance and rare distinction typical of the best Plantagenet interiors. Keystones were richly carved, and pretty figures and heads were added where the vault ribs met the framing arches. During the last quarter of the XII century the Plantagenet school was building vaults of this type, and they remained in vogue till the cuplike shape died out altogether. In Plantagenet art the ramification and intercrossing of ribs had a structural reason, since they were the logical result of the concave outline of the vault and not, like the supplementary ribs of Flamboyant Gothic, mere ornamentations. In the third and final period of Plantagenet Gothic, the ribs ramified more and more. They had first been increased about the windows of apses, because an eight-branch vault was better suited to a square than to a curve. During the years preceding 1250, the ramification of the ribs grew very complicated. All divisions between the vault sections were eliminated, and the masonry roof appeared to be continuous, one bay melting subtly into the next--in reality a cradle vault, _à pénétrations_, carried on intercrossing, branching Gothic ribs. The construction of such stone roofs was no easy matter and comparatively few of them were built. It is interesting to note that a germ of the Angevin school when carried to England, then under the same Plantagenet rule, developed into what is a unique architectural glory, English fan tracery vaulting. Most of the monuments of Angevin art fall under the three main divisions here given. Like a beautiful hybrid, the Plantagenet stone roof passed through a continuous series of transformations, while in northern France, once a satisfactory masonry vault had been achieved, it was adhered to faithfully as a classic type until the Flamboyant, or final, phase. Frequently a Plantagenet church is extremely plain outside, in striking contrast with the aërial grace of its interior. The cause is a structural one, hence satisfactory. The thrust of a _bombé_ vault is not altogether concentrated on branching ribs, piers, and buttresses, but in part is borne by the inclosure walls. Hence these latter were made thick and pierced merely by lancet windows; with such walls there was no need of flying buttresses. When the piers were somewhat relieved of the roof load by the thick walls, they could be made exceedingly slender. There is an effect of gracious winsomeness in certain Plantagenet churches, to be described only by such words as "fairylike" and "Saracenic." The transient perfect moment of the art of northern France was seized and rendered by the curving transept at Soissons, an ideal vision of the Beyond. In southwestern France the first, fine, careless rapture nothing can recapture is to be found in St. Serge at Angers, of lesser genius than Soissons, but, like it, possessed of an enthrallment that is enduring. THE CATHEDRAL OF ANGERS.[184] A mon avis, ceux qui n'ont pas au moins le tourment religieux ignorent la moitié de la vie, et la plus belle, la moitié de la pitié. Un esprit est bien incomplet s'il ne s'élève pas jusqu'à sa destinée, et un coeur est bien faible s'il n'a que des motifs humains d'agir, de se contraindre, et de se donner ou de pardonner.--RENÉ BAZIN (born in Angers, 1850). No city in southwestern France is a more satisfactory center for a comparative study of Plantagenet Gothic than Angers--the old Black Angers of history, which owed its importance not to any pre-eminence of site, but to the powerful line whose cradle land it was. Each phase of the regional school of Gothic can be found in Angers. In the tower of St. Aubin, a vestige of an ancient abbey named after a VI-century bishop of the city, is a ribbed cupola, typical of the incubating period of the school.[185] It is more a cupola than a Gothic vault. The stones are laid horizontally in concentric rings, and the ribs are more decorative than structural, being in part embedded in the infilling. The abbot who erected it ruled from 1127 to 1154. The First Period of the Gothic of Anjou is represented at Angers by a masterpiece of elemental force--the nave of the cathedral. Three huge so-called domical vaults, truly Gothic in construction, span the sixty-foot unaisled nave of St. Maurice. The stones are laid parallel with the groin line of each triangular panel between the intersecting ribs. Those diagonals are needlessly heavy, for the builders were still experimenting. The crown of each vault section is ten feet higher than the framing arches--wall arch and transverse arch. The exceptional span of Angers' three massive vaults is due to a reconstruction of the nave undertaken in the XII century, at which time the side aisles of the Romanesque cathedral were eliminated and the entire width of the edifice thrown into an unobstructed hall. Mr. John Bilson, the eminent English archæologist, belittles the influence of the cupola church in Angevin Gothic, the shape of whose vaults he attributes to a structural cause. He thinks that the extreme width of Angers' nave made it essential to raise the keystone above the crowns of transverse and wall arches in order to prevent its settling. The diagonals were made more obtuse than the equilateral framing arches lest they might tower too high. Given the form adopted for the arches, the _bombé_ vault web resulted inevitably. Arch curves determine the forms of a vault. None the less is M. Berthelé's account of the Plantagenet school sound both ethnically and æsthetically. The Angevin architect chose to persist in the use of _bombé_ vaults over narrow spans where there was no structural need to raise the keystone. A succession of cathedrals had stood on the site of Angers' actual church. To that of the IV century, St. Martin, Gaul's apostle, presented relics of St. Maurice and his legion of Theban soldiers. A Merovingian cathedral mentioned by Gregory of Tours was succeeded by a Carolingian basilica, and after the year 1000 the chief church of Angers was rebuilt several times as Romanesque. A dedication occurred in 1030. In 1032 the cathedral was wiped out by a fire caused by that remarkable personage, Fulk Nerra, the Black Falcon, who raised Anjou from an insignificant under-fief to be one of the chief powers in France.[186] To atone for his feudal excesses, Fulk built many shrines and made many pilgrimages; in Palestine, with the same melodramatic instinct for the picturesque which his descendant, Coeur-de-Lion, was to display, he walked barefooted in the streets of Jerusalem, flagellated by his own servitors, as he lamented, "Lord be merciful to a perjured, unfaithful Christian wandering far from his native land." All over Anjou, and in Touraine, Fulk III put up abbey churches and castles; "the great builder," he was called. One day, from his castle on the rock of Angers, his falcon eyes saw a dove fluttering over a certain spot beyond the river, and there he founded the abbey of St. Nicholas in 1020, and his wife at that period (he had a succession of wives, one of whom he is said to have killed) founded a nunnery close by to which was once attached the church of the Trinité. In the XVI century St. Nicholas was called Ronceray, because a bramble-rose insisted on pushing its way up through the choir's pavement.[187] A superman was Fulk the Black, highly dowered intellectually, with enormous capacity for organization, but of shameless wickedness, calculating, subtle, unscrupulous as to the means by which he pursued his designs, and of demoniac temper--marked traits in his race from generation to generation. Vestiges of the cathedral of Angers which rose after the fire of 1032, and in which Urban II preached the First Crusade, are in the actual nave, built by Bishop Ulger[188] (1125-49). He taught in the cathedral school, which school was the nucleus of the present University of Angers. His successor, Bishop Normand de Doué (1149-53), at his own expense, substituted for the timber roof of the new nave its massive Angevin vaults. When we recall that only fifteen years earlier Abbot Suger, who started Gothic architecture on its triumphal career, was building the heavy diagonals to be seen in the antechurch at St. Denis, we can understand what pioneers were the builders of southwest France in the use of the cardinal organ of the new system. Angers Cathedral continued building during the final years of the XII century, under Bishop Raoul de Beaumont (1177-97), who erected the southern arm of the transept and added a short choir; the city walls at that period prevented the farther extension of the apse. Along the west façade, the same prelate built a spacious porch, twenty-five feet deep, which stood till 1806, when, in spite of episcopal protest, the civic authorities tore it down rather than trouble to repair it. Sorely does the western entrance need that softening portico. Angers' portal images are of the same archaic column-statue type as those at Chartres' western doors, and here, too, in the tympanum is a Byzantine Christ in an elliptical aureole, surrounded by the symbols of the evangelists. Bishop Raoul de Beaumont came of one of the illustrious races of crusaders, statesmen, and prelates, the _ancienne chevalerie_ in which France was so prolific for centuries. A XIII-century Beaumont, marshal of France, stood by Joinville in voting against the knight's return to Europe until they had redeemed their servitors from captivity; a XIV-century Beaumont was instrumental in giving Dauphiny to France; a Beaumont in the XVIII century was the archbishop of Paris, who warned the nation that if it de-Christianized itself it would be denationalized. Bishop Raoul's nephew, Guillaume de Beaumont, became bishop of Angers, and in 1236 donated land from his garden for the erection of the northern arm of the transept. Eight-branch Plantagenet vault sections cover transept and choir. The choir of Angers Cathedral was extended after 1274, when permission was obtained from St. Louis' brother, Charles d'Anjou, to demolish part of the city ramparts. Heavy buttresses mark the junction of the old part and the new. By the extension of the eastern limb the church became a bold Latin cross. Secluded nooks in dim religious corners are not to be found in these unaisled churches of southwestern France. In them is no curving procession path, no picturesque perspective effects. Though they possess their own quiet nobility, seldom does their grave reverence rise to sublimity. The exterior of Angers Cathedral was made equally simple, without radiating apse chapels or flying buttresses. The cathedral's nave boasts some windows which were donated before 1180 by a generous canon. Borders of the St. Denis glass were repeated in them. The third window (north), which has an inimitable deep blue background and a wide border, relates St. Catherine's life; the fourth portrays, the Burial of the Virgin; and the fifth is devoted to St. Vincent. Probably local workers allied with the St. Denis school made these lights. In the nave's southern wall is a good Renaissance lancet, transferred here from a ruined château. When the choir was completed, its windows were filled with glass of the Paris school a century later than the nave's windows. The transept roses are Flamboyant Gothic. Angers Cathedral tops a high hill, so that its towers are landmarks, visible for thirty miles around. Its west façade has been so reconstructed that it now presents the ungainly proportions of the church fronts in Hanover and Brunswick. After a fire, in 1516, when the towers were renewed, stone spires were added by the well-known Flamboyant Gothic master, Rouland Le Roux, who elaborated the frontispiece of Rouen Cathedral. Then, in 1533, a third tower was built between the original two. One of its walls rested on the west façade, but the other three have mere arches for foundations, so that the tower hangs in space, as it were, the kind of feat applauded by the tourist guide, but which the true lover of structural sincerity can dispense with. Jean de l'Espine, a local master of whom Angers is proud, designed the curious central tower, and two sculptors who had worked on groups at Solesmes made the façades eight warrior images which have been restored. Scarcely was Angers Cathedral newly dressed when came the tragic year 1562, to wreck the gathered treasures of generations. The Huguenots broke into the transept from the bishop's garden--and ever since that door has been walled up in disgrace. For a fortnight they intrenched themselves in the church, looting its treasures, destroying tombs and images. More than a hundred splendid tombs lined the walls of the church. The neo-classic canons of the XVII and XVIII centuries lost so entirely the comprehension of the national art that they sent priceless bronze tombs to the smelting pot, even that of Bishop Raoul de Beaumont, the builder. A silver-gilt altar given by Bishop Normand de Doué who spanned the nave with its vaults of magnificent proportions, was sold, as was another altar, the gift of Bishop Guillaume de Beaumont, and with the proceeds was erected the pseudo-classic baldaquin over the high altar. They did away with the lower panels of the precious XII-century windows in order that a new metal balustrade might show to better effect. In a final attack of _bon goût_, those worthy canons proceeded to whitewash the entire inside of the cathedral, including the tombs and statues. The Revolution broke up the elaborate funereal monument of good King René, on which several generations had worked; Jacques Morel, who sculptured the Souvigny sarcophagus, was putting final touches to it when he died in Angers in 1453. For years after 1793 its chiseled stones were used by the city's masons to adorn chimney pieces in civilians' houses. Anjou, after returning to the French crown in the XIV century, was again given as an appanage to a king's son, to Louis,[189] son of Jean le Bon, and brother of those art-loving Valois princes, Charles V and the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy. Louis I d'Anjou had made for his palace chapel at Angers, in 1378, some tapestries telling the Apocalypse wonders. His grandson, good King René, presented them to the cathedral, where first they were hung for a visit of Louis XI. In the days when the cathedral walls were being whitewashed those one hundred and fifty yards of textile art, made by Parisian weavers after Flemish models--and the oldest-dated tapestries extant--were put up for sale, but, not finding a purchaser, were used to cover greenhouses and to line stables. When in 1843 the bishop of Angers was able to rescue a hundred yards of the Apocalypse, he was mocked for his taste for rubbish. Three hundred francs was all he paid for over sixty sections of the embroidery, and when one section was recently loaned to the exhibition at Ghent it was insured for forty thousand dollars. Louis II d'Anjou married Yolande of Aragon, a statesman-like woman of sound character and good taste, and together they built the pavilion that stands within the fortress inclosure, and the chapel adjoining it (finished in 1411), whose _bombé_ vaults are carried on ribs of prismatic profile. Yolande's two sons, Charles and René, ruled Anjou. The claims of Louis XI to the duchy caused his uncle, King René, to spend his latter years in Provence, but never did he forget his birthplace, and to Angers Cathedral he sent the green marble Roman bath mounted on lions, now used as a holy-water font. René wrote poems and plays, composed church music, painted and illuminated, and throughout a long life of misfortunes proved himself a loyal knight and Christian philosopher. Shortly after his death Anjou returned to the French crown. The ramparts within whose somber walls was the palace[190] of the counts and dukes of Anjou's three lines of rulers, was constructed by St. Louis, from 1228 to 1238, though begun by his grandfather, Philippe-Auguste. For the precincts of his huge fortress St. Louis was compelled to take lands from the congregation of Toussaint. With the compensation money the religious rebuilt their church and roofed it with a Plantagenet Gothic vault of the elaborate final phase of the regional school. The interlocking ribs had three lines of keystones, like the vault of Airvault (Deux-Sèvres). Toussaint had been founded in the XI century by a pious canon, as a refuge for the poor and stricken, and the duty of its clergy was to visit the sick and bury the dead. That every forlorn soul might feel under the protection of his own chosen patron saint, the name All Saints was chosen. The Revolution suppressed the asylum of charity and in 1815 Prussian cavalry were stabled in the neglected church. The roofless nave now serves as an archæological museum. The vaults of the choir were made early in the XVIII century on the same model as the nave's XIII-century Plantagenet roof. The fortress built by St. Louis on the Toussaint property was saved from demolition by the seneschal of Anjou, who, when Henry III's orders came to destroy the ramparts, had the tact to proceed in so leisurely a fashion that after seven years, when he was able to get the order revoked, little more was destroyed than the upper stories of the towers. A kneeling image of that truly patriotic seneschal, Donadieu de Puycharic, is now in the museum installed in the XII-century hospital of St. Jean. That hospital of St. Jean was begun by another enlightened seneschal of Anjou, but before long (c. 1180) Henry Plantagenet undertook to finish and endow it, some say to expiate the assassination of St. Thomas Becket. The oldest parts of St. John's establishment are the granary and the north and east corridors of the cloister; the latter's south gallery was built (1538) by Angers' local architect, Jean de l'Espine. The hospital hall was undertaken between 1174 and 1188, and at first was roofed in wood. Shortly after 1200 the Knights of St. John Hospitalier of Jerusalem were put in charge of Angers hospital, and governed it till 1232. During their occupancy the hall was covered by its twenty-four small cuplike sections, each of which is carried on four slender ribs. The effect of the three aisles of little _bombé_ vaults is alluring. The slender torus usually distinguished the eight-branch Plantagenet type, and its use here for simple diagonals is an exception. The chapel attached to the hospital was also built in two campaigns; over part of it was employed the eight-rib vault, while portions were roofed in the more complicated Plantagenet way. The singular grace of St. Jean's hospital hall, with its slender columns and multiple little _coupoliformes_ vaults, inspired the small choir of St. Serge, which many hold to be the most exquisite example of Plantagenet Gothic. The church[191] once formed part of an ancient Benedictine monastery named for the pope, who had instituted the triple chanting of the _Agnus Dei_ in the Mass. Hitherto the Angevin masonry roof had been applied to churches without side aisles. The ground plan of the cupola church had been adhered to. The Plantagenet architects now began to copy another regional model, Poitou's Romanesque church, whose side aisles were almost as high as the principal span they buttressed; hence the light came entirely from the lateral corridors. One roof covered all. Poitiers Cathedral was among the first to use Poitou's pre-Gothic plan in Plantagenet architecture. The choir of St. Serge developed the same idea in its own small, gracious way. No doubt the harmonious effect obtained in St. John's hospital by the three aisles of _bombé_ vaults inspired the architect of St. Serge, who built his choir, from 1220 to 1225. Six fragile-looking columns, thirty feet in height, support with ease the twelve little Plantagenet vaults, which are of the eight-branch type, with elaborate keystones, and minute figures at the intersection of the ribs and the framing arches. At the choir's square eastern end the ribs ramify considerably around the windows. It is impossible to say wherein lies the witchery of this small monument--all elegance and lightness. Some call it Saracenic because of its exotic loveliness. Its science of construction is perfect. Certainly some individual genius designed it. SAUMUR[192] L'ancienne Grand' Rue de Saumur ... la rue montueuse qui mène au château, obscure en quelques endroits, remarquable par la sonorité de son petit pavé caillouteux, toujours propre et sec ... la paix de ses maisons impénétrables, noirs, et silencieuses--l'histoire de France est là, tout entière.--BALZAC, _Eugénie Grandet_ (whose scene is Saumur). Close by Angers lies Saumur on the Loire, "well-loved, well-set city." It comprises, with its environs, another center for the study of Plantagenet Gothic. The town is topped by its castle, now in main part of the XIV century. In its former great hall, built by Henry Plantagenet, took place, in 1241, that celebrated fête called the _Non-Pareille_ which Joinville has described. His memory of it was so fresh, after sixty years, that he could tell the color of Louis IX's robe and surcoat; perhaps it was the first time that Joinville saw the saint-king who was to become his closest friend. He was not yet twenty when he accompanied his suzerain of Champagne, Thibaut IV, the maker of songs, to the feast held in Saumur château for the knighting of Alphonse of Poitiers, the king's brother. [Illustration: _The Plantagenet Gothic Choir of St. Serge at Angers (1220-1225)_] The bodyguard of St. Louis were a Bourbon, a Coucy, and a Beaujeu, behind whom stood ranged a host of barons and knights in silk and cloth of gold. The future king of Portugal and a prince from Thuringia, the son of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, waited on the table of the queen-mother, Blanche of Castile, who, when she heard the name of the princeling from beyond the Rhine, called him to her side and placed a kiss upon his brow, since there, she said, his saintly mother must often have blessed him. Jealous passions, too, burned behind the glitter and show. Isabelle of Angoulême, the widow of John Lackland, married now to a Lusignan who had to render homage to his new suzerain, cried out, imperiously, "Am I a waiting woman that I should stand while they sit at ease?" and she proceeded to stir up war. Below the castle of Saumur lies the XII-century unaisled church of St. Pierre, whose masonry roof belongs to different phases of Angevin Gothic. Over the transept-crossing is a ribbed cupola without distinct pedestal, inspired evidently by the small unribbed cupola of Fontevrault's crossing. The stones are laid in horizontal concentric courses like a true dome. Though archaic in structure, St. Pierre's _croisée_ is of skilled execution. It belongs to the last third of the XII century. Over the choir and transept are the heavy diagonals of the First Period of the Plantagenet development, and the nave's vault sections are carried on the eight branches of the Second Period. Powerful transverse arches separate the wide, square bays, and against the inclosure walls are other strong arches beneath the windows. The walls of St. Pierre's choir are not parallel, but draw closer together at the eastern end, for undoubtedly there was much intentional asymmetry in mediæval monuments. The Flamboyant day gave to St. Pierre its well-carved choir stalls and some exquisitely toned Flemish tapestries executed by local weavers. Other superb tapestries adorn Notre Dame-de-Nantilly, a church patronized by Louis XI, who added to it the south aisle and a Flamboyant oratory. The body of the edifice belongs to the first half of the XII century; its barrel vault is braced by slightly pointed transverse arches. At the transept-crossing is a ribbed cupola, without distinct pedestal, like that of St. Pierre. Against the fourth pier, to the south, is the epitaph which good King René himself composed and set up because of his affection for his old nurse, Dame Tiphaine, for whose soul he begs a paternoster of all who pass by. Against the fifth pier is the Limousin enamel crozier of the archbishop of Tyr, keeper of the seal for St. Louis, who was buried here in his native city in 1266. Behind the Gothic Town Hall is the now unused chapel of St. Jean, a small example of the Third Period of Angevin architecture, when ribs branched considerably; in the square chevet they ramify to the number of twenty. A mile down the river lies what is left of St. Florent-les-Saumur[193] re-established by Fulk Nerra when he conquered Saumur in 1026. Its narthex, now the chapel of a nuns' community, shows one of the earliest uses of the Plantagenet vault of eight branches (1170-1200). At St. Florent was living the daughter of the exiled poet-duke of Orléans, with her young husband, the Duke of Alençon, when one day in 1429 word came that at Chinon, near by, where Charles VII was staying, had arrived an inspired maid, and young d'Alençon, soon to be Jeanne d'Arc's lieutenant--her _gentil duc_--galloped along the banks of the Loire to see the wonder. So delighted was he with Jeanne's management of spear and horse that he presented her with a palfrey, and she came to St. Florent-les-Saumur for a four days' visit to his duchess, promising[194] that anxious young wife that she would bring back her husband safe and sound. Fontevrault's abbatial, where culminated the art of the cupola church, is the chief excursion to be made from Saumur. It can be reached by a ten-mile trolley ride. Only three miles from Fontevrault, and a pleasant cross-country walk from it, is the beautiful Plantagenet Gothic church of St. Martin, at Candes,[195] crowned with battlements, on the highland above the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire. In the ancient abbey here St. Martin died as the IV century closed. A chapel to the north of the choir marks the site of his cell, and its window recalls the pious piracy of his loyal parishioners of Tours, who claimed his body for burial, but who, knowing that Candes would not give it up, came by night and stole it away; and quite rightly they had judged, for when, centuries later, the Northmen invasions forced Tours to send its great relic for safe-keeping to Auxerre, it took an army of six thousand men to get it back. The present choir of St. Martin's at Candes was built in the latter half of the XII century (c. 1180). Fifty years later rose the nave, justly considered one of the most brilliant examples of Plantagenet Gothic architecture, its model, not the unaisled cupola-church, but the Romanesque church of Poitou, whose side aisles are so high that their lancets are the only lighting of the edifice. St. Martin's hall-like interior of three spacious aisles is inundated with light. The well-proportioned clustered piers rising from pavement to vault-springing are placed considerably out of alignment, and in a number of other arrangements the architect here followed his personal bent. In the western porch the ribs of several Plantagenet vault sections fall on a central pillar. THE CATHEDRAL AT POITIERS[196] _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ _Fulget Crucis mysterium_ _Qua vita mortem pertulit_ _Et morte vitam protulit._ Abroad the regal banners fly And bear the mystic Cross on high, That Cross whereon Life suffered Death And gave us Life with Dying breath. _Impleta sunt quæ concinit_ _David fideli carmine,_ _Dicendo nationibus_ _Regnavit a ligno Deus._ That which the prophet-king of old Hath in mysterious verse foretold Is now accomplished whilst we see God ruling nations from a Tree. --FORTUNATUS, bishop of Poitiers (599-607).[197] The noblest Gothic monument due to Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor of Aquitaine is the cathedral church at Poitiers, founded by them in 1162 about the same time that, in Paris, Louis VII witnessed the laying of the corner stone for a new chief church in his capital. Never were contemporary edifices more unlike in their form and their informing spirit. In Notre Dame of Paris breathes the struggle of human existence and that Christian resignation voiced by the XIII-century Franciscan in the _Dies Iræ_. St. Peter's Cathedral at Poitiers rings with Christian joy, with the triumphal strains of the hymn composed by its VI-century bishop for the arrival from Constantinople of the True Cross relic. From the hour that the ancient ecclesiastical city marched forth with banners flying to meet the Cross, Poitiers has held it to be a tree of royal honor, not of pathetic agony. Her greatest bishop, St. Hilary, was western Christendom's champion for the Son's divinity when the Arian heresy attacked it. Clovis defeated the Arian Visigoths at Poitiers in 508; Charles Martel checked the Mohammedans at Poitiers in 732. A city's spiritual history speaks by its monuments. In the high place of honor in Poitiers' cathedral of St. Peter, hangs a gleaming canticle of translucent mosaic, a window which many hold to be the finest in the world. It celebrates God ruling nations from a tree. It is a passion and a triumph, an agony and an apotheosis. Eight centuries divide the inspiration of the Crucifixion window from St. Hilary's struggle with Arianism, six centuries from the canticle of Bishop Venantius Fortunatus, but Hilary's affirmation and the rejoicing of Fortunatus live in it, and through it have been passed on to us. Poitiers Cathedral is a spacious hall-church illuminated by large lancets that seem to be chanting Alleluias, yet whose piety is plain and robust. It is a church loyal to indigenous art traditions, yet blending those sober Romanesque inheritances of Poitou with the delicate grace of Plantagenet Gothic. Its loveliness is severe, its slenderness is sturdy. St. Peter's both imposes and allures. Poitiers was the cradle of Aliénor of Aquitaine's brilliant and debonaire line of troubadours, crusaders, and church builders. Charlemagne gave them the title of Duke of Aquitaine for their services against Islam. The first warrior duke died a hermit at St. Guilhem-le-Désert, which became a Midi pilgrim shrine where, in the Gothic dawn, appeared a very early use of diagonals, profiled like those of the Ile-de-France. A duke of Aquitaine founded Cluny, the greatest building energy of the ages. Another of the dynasty of the Guillaumes aided Bishop Fulbert to build Chartres, and, when fire wiped out Poitiers Cathedral, reconstructed it in Romanesque form. Guillaume VIII and Guillaume IX built at Bordeaux the churches of Ste. Croix, St. Seurin, and St. André. In Poitiers they raised anew Notre Dame-la-Grande and St. Hilaire, and founded Montierneuf,[198] blessed by Urban II in 1096. Aliénor's grandfather, Guillaume IX, the first-known troubadour, especially favored Fontevrault. Her father was that Guillaume X, with the appetites of eight men, an open boaster of his crimes, whom it took St. Bernard to beat to his knees in penitence, after which he passed out of history in the odor of sanctity as pilgrim to Compostela. With the art of the builder Aliénor's own links were multiple. When Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves took charge of her as a young bride in Bordeaux, he was raising at Chartres the most beautiful tower in the world. She assisted at St. Denis' dedication and knew Abbot Suger well; at Vézelay she watched the Burgundians sculpting a portal of paradise. Through all her crowded life, with all her reckless sins upon her, Aliénor was loyal to her own region. She began Poitiers Cathedral in the same decade that she had her favorite son Richard the Lion-hearted installed as ruler of Aquitaine--another troubadour duke--seating him in the abbot's chair at St. Hilaire's, according to ancient custom. She blended with her own Poitou's Romanesque what was choicest in the Gothic art of her Angevin husband. Poitiers Cathedral was the prototype of monuments such as Candes and Puy-Notre-Dame, in whose interiors Aliénor's own "high grace, the dower of queens," seems incarnate. An Angevin architect probably designed St. Peter's at Poitiers. The works started at the east end, which is square, and rises from the down-slope of the hill like a solid fortress, a hundred and fifty feet in height; Coligny's troops were one day to riddle with bullets that big quadrangular target. So thick was the eastern wall that the round chapels ending the choir disappeared in its depth. The easternmost bays and the south arm of the transept were built about the same time, soon after 1160, and their masonry roof belongs to the first phase of the Gothic of the West. Over the crossing is a six-branch vault; for the rest of the church, the eight-branch type was used. The lower half of the inclosure walls is ornamented with a blind arcade above which runs a circulating gallery carried on corbels carved with fantasy. Again was used the artifice employed in Poitiers' Romanesque church of Notre Dame-la-Grande, whereby from the eastern end onward the edifice grew slightly wider and higher. The axial line deviates considerably, and it is known that this cathedral rose during different periods. While the plan and the beginning of the work were of Aliénor and Henry's day, the greater part of the church was erected under their great-grandson, Alphonse of Poitiers, the brother of St. Louis. When he died in 1271, the two westernmost bays were incomplete. After a lull, the work was resumed at the close of the century. In the XIV century was erected the not very interesting west frontispiece which stands below the street level and which is too wide for its height; it would have been better had the towers been set in a line with the aisles and not planted beyond them like the towers of Rouen and Bourges. The first of the Avignon popes, Clement V, builder of the Rayonnant Gothic choir of Bordeaux Cathedral, watched Poitiers' Rayonnant façade rising during the sixteen months that he spent in the city. While here he learned that fire had damaged St. John Lateran's at Rome and ordered it to be reconstructed. The last windows in St. Pierre's Cathedral have the Flamboyant tracery of Jean de Berry's time. That amateur of art--sixth in descent from Henry and Aliénor--left his mark all through middle France. The interior of Poitiers Cathedral is an ample parallelogram of eight bays, divided into three aisles of equal height, by a dozen widely spaced piers, each of which is a cluster of lovely shafts rising from pavement to vault-springing. The eighteen _bombé_ vault sections are grace itself. As the light floods in from the big lancets in the side walls, one scarcely notices that this church has ground supports. The plan of Poitou's Romanesque churches--seen at its best at St. Savin[199]--shows adroit construction, since it employed the aisles to buttress the principal span, and used one roof to cover the entire structure. Poitiers' memorable Crucifixion window is in the flat, eastern wall of the central aisle. The three windows in that square chevet belong to the transition between the XII and XIII centuries. That to the north was the gift of Maurice de Blason, who became bishop of Poitiers in 1198, and who is supposed to have been also the donor of the Crucifixion, whose date has given rise to controversy. The straight saddle-bars still used in it were abandoned after 1200. In the lower panel of the central light, the founders of the cathedral, Henry and Aliénor, are pictured kneeling. Aliénor knew well Suger's school of glassmakers, and as M. Mâle has proved that all the XII-century windows in western France proceed from those of St. Denis, very likely the ex-queen of France was instrumental in spreading their fame. At Poitiers the apostles gaze upward in quite the same attitude as those in the Ascension window at Le Mans, an accepted work of Suger's craftsmen. Blue as profound as sapphires and a crimson that glows like blood-red rubies make of Poitiers' Crucifix an unapproachable glory. The genius who conceived it had brooded over the ecstatic hymn composed for the glad celebration of November 19, 569. This is the Tree of Life, effulgent in fecundity, on its branches hanging such fruit as the Ransom of the World, the vine that gives sweet wine of the red blood of the Lord. No agonizing Christ on Poitiers' Cross _ornata regis purpura_. The Saviour's eyes are wide open to indicate that the Christ dies not. The arms are extended to great length as if embracing the entire world.[200] The halo is marked by the Greek cross, emblem of divinity. In many other chevets of France the Crucifixion holds the central place, in the Lady chapel at Tours, in the clearstory at Rouen, in the ambulatory at Bourges, in St. Remi's wide gallery at Rheims, in the square east wall of Moulins, and at Ervy. And in many ways was the Sacrifice presented; sometimes the Cross became an apple-decked Tree of Knowledge with Adam and Eve beside it; sometimes the Saviour's arms were high uplifted and angels received the precious blood in chalices. Never was the meaning of Calvary presented with more profundity than at Poitiers, whose ancient bishops had suffered exile to defend the Son and written verses to exalt him. The other lancets of the cathedral are in most part XIII-century work of the closely woven pattern type that produces scintillation; contrary to the more general usage the medallions are to be read from the top downward. As color schemes they have been composed with extraordinary care. Few church interiors can equal this for jeweled riches: 'And the building of the wall thereof was of jasper stone.... And the foundations of the wall were adorned with all manner of precious stones--jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst.' Poitiers' ancient church of Notre Dame-la-Grande has the appearance of a cathedral, and its elaborate front, the best of all Romanesque façades, is classed among peerless works such as Vézelay's portico, St. Gilles' portal, and the Auvergnat apses. The pre-Gothic school of Poitou, formulated as early as 1050, excelled in sculptured frontispieces, decorated apses, and ornate window frames. Sometimes the side aisles bracing the principal span were made too narrow, as here in Notre Dame, but where the school reached its structural apogee as in St. Savin-sur-Gartemps (which has lofty ample aisles and splendidly carved capitals), it can hold its own with that of any region. Poitou has been called the paradise for lovers of Romanesque architecture. In Notre Dame-la-Grande are some XII-century frescoes, but its modern experiment in polychromy is distressing. Many a gathering has the ancient church seen. When in 1100 a church council at Poitiers censured the illegal marriage of the king of France and the fair Bertrada de Montfort, Guillaume IX, the troubadour duke of Aquitaine who was present--and in much the same predicament, living with the wife of a neighboring lord--made a scene and indignantly left the hall. Stones were thrown at the churchmen who dared censure an open scandal. Then brave Robert d'Abrissel, founder of Fontevrault, tore off his cloak and stood forth, in token of his willingness to suffer in so good a cause.[201] Poitiers' abbey church of St. Hilaire has much interest for archæologists.[202] The Vandals destroyed a church here, the Saracens burned another, twice was it wrecked by Norse pirates during the IX century when St. Hilary's relics were carried to Le Puy Cathedral for safety. Then a daughter of the Duke of Normandy, Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, had her architect, Gautier Coorland, rebuild the abbatial, which was dedicated in 1049. Owing to continuous reconstructions, little of that period remains, save in the ambulatory and in the tower which once stood isolated. The XII century added the oblong cupolas whose only counterparts are to be found at Le Puy. To support its new cupola-vaulting, St. Hilaire built two rows of pillars with a narrow passageway between, and when, in later times, outer aisles were added, the interior was given the uncommon aspect of triple aisles. A Huguenot sacking worked irreparable damage, and after the Revolution the westernmost bays of the church had to be demolished. In Merovingian times the two most-visited shrines in France were St. Hilary's at Poitiers, and St. Martin's at Tours. When Hilary, the thirteenth bishop here (d. 368), returned from his exile in Phrygia, whither he had been driven for combating the Arian heresy, he brought back from the East a fondness for the interpretation of Scripture by allegory which was to have a strong influence on the iconography of Gothic cathedrals. To pray by St. Martin's tomb at Tours there came north the Italian poet, Venantius Fortunatus, who continued his pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Hilary, the master who had trained Martin in the spiritual life. Never was he to quit Poitiers, where, in 607 he died, its revered bishop. In those days, Radegund, the Thuringian wife of Clotaire, son of Clovis, had retired to Poitiers to pass her life in study and prayer. Scripture and the works of the church fathers were read in Greek and Hebrew, in her cloister. About her gathered pious maidens, chiefly of the Gallo-Roman stock, harried by the rougher peoples from the north. Fortunatus became for Queen Radegund and her Abbess Agnes a sort of self-appointed intendant; he sent them gifts of fruit with verses. Puvis de Chavannes has painted it all on the walls of Poitiers' Town Hall. St. Radegund's tomb became a pilgrim shrine. The savants see no reason to doubt the genuine antiquity of the queen's sarcophagus of black marble now in the crypt of her church, part of which crypt escaped the fire of 1083 and so dates before 1000. The new apse was dedicated in 1099. The three big bays of the aisleless nave are covered by Plantagenet Gothic vaults with eight branches, and along the walls are the same blind arcades and carved carbels as in the cathedral. The sacristy shows an octagonal dome on ribs. The church has no transept, but over the north portal is a XIII-century rose window of deep blue hue, between which and the apse are some XIV-century windows that experimented not very successfully with colored figures in white glass. The porch is good Flamboyant Gothic. Poitiers boasts the oldest extant Christian church in France, the baptistry of St. Jean, in whose walls are Gallo-Roman IV-century vestiges.[203] There is VII-century Merovingian work in its apsidal chapels, and the later Romanesque and Gothic times added their quotas. The ancient well in which baptism by submersion was practiced has been preserved. A son of Poitiers feels doubly a Christian if baptized in the church of St. Jean's. The venerable little edifice to-day lies many feet below the level of the city streets, for Poitiers escaped few of the sackings of history. For safety from the Barbarian invasions some rich Gallo-Roman must have buried the statue of Minerva exhumed in 1902, in the garden of a girls' school, and now in the town's museum. It is a most lovely Greek marble of the VI century, B.C.[204] Henry Plantagenet and Aliénor of Aquitaine built in Poitiers the guard's hall of the Counts' Palace, in the center of the town, on its highest eminence.[205] The wall-arcading is like contemporary work in the cathedral and the church of St. Radegund. In late-Gothic times the south wall was remade. In this hall the second husband of Isabella of Angoulême made amends to his suzerain, Alphonse of Poitiers, for the war to which her jealous haughtiness had forced him. In this hall in 1307-08 the accused Templars were interrogated by Clement V, the pontiff who initiated the residence at Avignon, and the consequent papal subserviency to the French crown, Philippe le Bel cowed the pope, and the group of anti-cleric legists who controlled the king arranged that only picked specimens of the doomed military Order should appear at Poitiers. The royal coffers were empty and those of the Templars were full. Torture and intimidation had wrung from all too many of the monk-knights false avowals of guilt. In Spain, where the investigation was carried on without torture, the bishops found no heresy in the Order; instead, they bore testimony to its exemplary standing. One brave old crusader raised his voice in honest speech: "Let him have a care," wrote Joinville, "this king who now reigns. Let him amend his ways, lest God strike him down without mercy." The Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques Molay, was burned publicly in Paris, calling on king and pope to meet him before God's judgment seat within the year. A month later Clement V died, and before 1314 closed, the young king met sudden death. And the people recalled that when Clement was crowned at Lyons, the tiara had been knocked from his head by a collapsing wall and one of its precious jewels lost. Less discouraging were other doings of Clement V in Poitiers. Here he dated the nomination of John of Montecorvino (d. 1328), pioneer of Christian missionaries, to the see of Peking. Armed crusading had run its course; the crusade by preaching, prayer, and penance was to begin. Already in 1245 Innocent IV had sent Dominicans to Persia and Franciscans farther east, St. Louis had sent William de Rubruquis to the Mongols, and those astonishing Venetian merchants; the Polos, had roused the papacy to the spiritual needs of Cathay, the far Cathay of the mediæval tradition, to which Columbus was seeking a shorter route when he accidentally discovered America. For thirty years John of Montecorvino missionized Tartary. He translated the New Testament and the Psalms. To encourage missionary activity, Clement V ordered that Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic be taught publicly at Rome, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca. The Hundred Years' War, so fatal to French architectural progress, surged round Poitiers. After Crécy, in 1346, the hall of the Counts' Palace was damaged by the English. In the environs of Poitiers took place the bitter French defeat of 1356, when King Jean le Bon was made prisoner. "_Et fut là morte toute la fleur de chevalerie de France_," says Froissart. The siege by Duguesclin to recapture the hill city from the English damaged its monuments. When the Duke of Berry, son of King Jean the Good, became master of Poitiers he undertook to restore the Counts' Palace, and he had noted Flamboyant Gothic masters construct for him the splendid triple chimney piece of the guard hall, decorated about 1383 by André Beauneveu with statues of Charles VI, of his wife Isabeau of Bavaria, and of Jean of Berry and his first duchess. In the pignon above the great fireplaces was set some XIV-century glass. Guy de Dammartin re-established the donjon tower called Maubergeon, now cut off at the third story. The images of the counts of Poitiers, decorating it, belong to that phase of French sculpture which preceded the Franco-Flamand school at Dijon. Before transalpine influences were imported, a truly national renaissance had begun. The Tour Maubergeon and the pignon of the great hall are all that remain of the palaces built at Poitiers by Jean de Berry; but what they were can be seen in his illuminated Book of Hours now in Chantilly's museum. The historic hall of Poitiers has its memories of Jeanne d'Arc. Hither, in 1429, Charles XII brought her to be examined by learned men. When one of them told her, with condescension, that if God wished to deliver France he had no need of men-of-arms, swift was Jeanne's reply, "Man does the battling and God gives the victory." Finally her judges reported to the king that she was of sound sense and a true Christian and appeared to be sent of God, and that, given the desperate need of the kingdom, they advised the king to put her at the head of an army for the relief of Orléans. Decision momentous for the fate of France! Jeanne, during her trial at Rouen, often referred to the answers she had given to her honest judges at Poitiers: "If you do not believe me, send to Poitiers, where I was questioned before.... It is written in the book at Poitiers." Cauchon might wear a miter, well she knew it was not the Church which persecuted her, though the English left no stone unturned to have it so appear. Jeanne in Poitiers lodged with Maître Jean Rabateau, advocate, and it was the duty of his good dame to spy on her night and day. Many years after she testified to Jeanne's habit of long prayer in the night-time. To test the maid's virtue the king's own mother-in-law visited her. That able Yolande of Aragon had brought up Charles VII. Her own son, the young knight René d'Anjou, was soon to fight under Jeanne, and Yolande, herself, convinced of the Maid's mission, helped with funds for the expedition to Orléans. They say that Jeanne made answer to the court ladies with such sweetness and grace that she drew tears from their eyes. The old hill city of Poitiers, so ecclesiastical, so full of national memories, has had the good sense to keep itself _très province_, and its street directory still makes a sort of calendar of saints. At Bourges, the mania to wipe out its past has reached such a pass that the rue St. Michel is now the rue Michel-Servet and the rue St. Fulgent the rue Fulton. Poitiers has no desire to blot out her high historic memories. CHAPTER VIII Gothic in the Midi The giant struggle we have witnessed is but the beginning of a long and complicated historical crisis in which men will have to make their choice between the unlimited augmentation of power (by force, riches, and success) and a forward-moving moral progress (by justice, charity, and loyalty). If we live always in exterior things, if we are always in movement, we become, little by little, incapable of recollection and fecund meditation. --GUGLIELMO FERRERO, 1917. It has been said that the Midi adhered long, if not always, to Romanesque architecture, even when employing the Gothic vault. Gothic art was not an indigenous development in the south, but was brought in the wake of political events, when central France and Languedoc became one with the royal domain. It proceeded, in part, from the architecture of southwest France, and in part from the classic Ile-de-France Picard region. The realization of the local type of Midi Gothic was Albi's fortress cathedral, which comprises a wide unaisled hall covered by twelve bays of diagonal vaults whose span is sixty feet--the width of Amiens' nave being merely forty-five feet. The buttress are disguised as walls between the side chapels, the windows are long, narrow lancets, there is no triforium, and the roof is flat. Ogival art such as this has retained all the grand simplicity of Romanesque. The chief care of the Midi architect was to avoid the flying buttress; he had inherited Rome's admiration for wide, unincumbered interiors, and its aversion to showing the structural skeleton. His warm sun precluded the use of wall inclosures that were composed entirely of stained glass, which fragile screens would have necessitated wide-spreading buttresses. He seemed to disdain sculpture. And yet, during the pre-Gothic day, Languedoc had excelled in that important branch of the builder's art, as Moissac's wealth of imagery and Elne's lovely cloister show. Various causes led to the nudity of sculpture in the later churches of the south. The Gothic cathedrals of the Midi were erected after two generations of the Albigensian strife had impoverished the race. The new mendicant Orders of Francis and Dominic advocated austerity; the best Gothic of Provence is the Dominican church of St. Maximin. The building material available in some of the central and southern provinces did not lend itself to ornamentation; the lava of Auvergne, the granite of Limousin, and the brick of the Toulouse region are unyielding to sculpture. The chief Gothic churches of the Midi were built in the second half of the XIII and the first part of the XIV centuries. First there rose in central France the sister cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges--northern Gothic infused with the regional spirit. Directly derived from them are the cathedrals of Toulouse and Narbonne. Albi Cathedral was not begun till 1282. The choir of Bordeaux, built by the first of the Avignon popes, is a classic of Rayonnant Gothic, and so is that jewel of Carcassonne Cité, the whilom cathedral of St. Nazaire. St. Sauveur, at Aix-en-Provence, the cathedral of Rodez, and Béziers' fortified church were the work of the successors of the apogee period of Gothic. At Montpellier, Mende, La Chaise Dieu, and Avignon, the XIV-century popes, all of whom were meridionals, built Gothic halls and chapels. Memorable and interesting as are the Gothic monuments of the Midi, the traveler carries away the impression that the inmost soul of these central and southern provinces lingers most happily in the venerated shrines of Our Lady and St. Michael at Le Puy, in such churches as Notre Dame-du-Port, St. Sernin, St. Trophime, in the sculptured portal of St. Gilles, and in Maguelonne's isolated cathedral of St. Peter. CLERMONT-FERRAND[206] Si c'est un aveuglement surnaturel de vivre sans chercher ce qu'on est, c'en est un terrible de vivre mal en croyant Dieu.... La conduite de Dieu, qui dispose toute choses avec douceur, est de mettre la religion dans l'esprit par les raisons, et dans le coeur par la grâce.--PASCAL (1623-62; born in Clermont). In mediæval reckoning that mountainous, central province of France which was called Auvergne was counted in Languedoc. Therefore, to place the cathedral of Clermont in this general group of Midi Gothic is permissible. It is a daughter of Amiens, of the northern French type, and yet it belongs in a marked degree to its own volcanic region of mountains and storms. In it is the endurance and sturdy individuality of Auvergne, the inmost heart of France, where the Romanesque work may be said to be indigenous, so directly does it derive from the local traditions of Rome grafted on those of Gaul, and scarcely touched by those of Byzantium. The chief Gothic church of Clermont has in it much of Romanesque austerity. The black lava of which it is built sets it apart among French cathedrals. "A pious fear of God makes itself felt in this spot," wrote a son of Clermont, Gregory of Tours, of the cathedral governed by Bishop Sidonius Apollinaris, Gallo-Roman and "last zealot for Latin letters." And though not a stone of the present edifice is of historian Gregory's day, one often murmurs in its precincts, "_Terribilis est locus iste_," and one often experiences in this abode of Jehovah the Lord, _un frisson d'âme à la Pascal_. In Clermont, where even the serene Gothic art could not free itself of the fire-torn mountains around, the somber soul of Pascal first experienced religion. That he should overstress the fall of man and original sin, what wonder? But Jansenist in temperament though he was--overwhelmed by man's nothingness and God's grandeur--the mystic Pascal was no rigid pessimist. Cathedral and man of genius both preach the resurrection after the fall, both have the upward surge of hope, even as the fearful summit of the Puy-de-Dôme, standing over Clermont, outsoars the storm clouds hiding its base, to rear its head in sunlight. For all its soberness, the cathedral of Clermont has the true Gothic sweep of the spirit _au-delà_. Happy the traveler who first approaches it at sunset, coming slowly across the mountain-walled plain, out of the Forez hills of rushing torrents where is set the Chaise Dieu. The cathedral crowns the foothill around which has settled the city, and as it stands silhouetted against a bluish haze of mountain--the extinct crater, the Puy-de-Dôme--it fulfills the ideal of a church crowning a city.[207] Seen from the town, the massed volcanic hills are sufficiently near for their woods and villages to add picturesque details to the ever-changing views, yet not so close that they hang oppressively over the city. Other views of the cathedral can be gained from the foothills around Royat, whose small, sturdy church was fortified to bar the valley into the huge mountain behind it. Lava stone is dusty black, therefore on closer inspection Clermont Cathedral has somewhat the aspect of the smoke-stained churches in manufacturing centers. The gray-black Volvic stone is of better effect within the church, though at first that interior may strike a chill. Lava does not lend itself to sculptural decoration. However, the essential lines of Clermont are of such masterly proportions, of so grand a simplicity, that deeper and deeper grows the influence of this church on those who frequent it. The diagonals etched black against the white vault panels fall with peculiar ease and vigor on the tall dark piers. The slenderness of those clustered columns is not foolhardy, since lava has much resistant force. The single aisles of the choir and the double aisles of the nave rise to half the height of the church, and we have seen at Bourges and Le Mans that when pier arches are above the average height there is given to an edifice a note of exotic beauty. Like Amiens, the height of this church is three times greater than its width. Its vista is closed imposingly; the imaged windows of its high apsidal chapels appear symmetrically behind the arches that surround the sanctuary. The story of the chief church of Auvergne interests the archæologist. The crypt belonged to the previous Carolingian church, and so did the two western towers until the XIX century. M. Viollet-le-Duc removed the ancient belfries, extended the nave by two bays, and built the present towers, whose sky-pointing spires are superb in the general view of Clermont, but whose details can be criticized, as, for instance, the blocking of corner niches by pinnacles when the purpose of a niche is to hold a statue. Modern Gothic is too often a cold, hard imitation. The stair approaches here lack the old-time amplitude of the triple portals. The XIII-century cathedral of Clermont was practically the first Gothic monument raised in Auvergne, which province adhered stubbornly to its own exceptional Romanesque architecture. The first stone was laid in 1248, in the same year that Cologne Cathedral was begun. The founder, Bishop Hugues de la Tour, had attended the dedication of the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, and then had returned to Clermont to begin his own cathedral. That same year he started out as a crusader, in the train of Louis IX, but as he died in Egypt the work on the church was not continued seriously till 1253, when St. Louis helped to raise to the see of Clermont his friend Guy de la Tour, nephew of Hugues. Belonging to a feudal family of great possessions, the new bishop, too, was able to be munificent toward his cathedral. In 1254, when St. Louis was returning from his unsuccessful crusade, he paused in Clermont, to replenish his depleted treasury. Ten years later he presented windows to the cathedral, on the occasion of his son Philippe's marriage there to the daughter of Jaime el Conquistador of Aragon. The lights in the Lady chapel show the fleur-de-lis and the donjons of Castile, and are apparently the work of Paris craftsmen, who controlled the vitrine art of the later XIII century. That unskilled local workers set them in place would seem to be indicated by the armature bars which do not follow the contour of the medallions, as was then the custom. In the choir's clearstory are the single figures and grisaille that were in vogue during the next century. Jean Deschamps made the plan of Clermont Cathedral. He may have studied in the north, since certain traits of Picardy appear here, but the spirit of the work is regional. His windows do not fill the entire upper space between the active members. Under Bishop Guy de la Tour he directed the building of the cathedral for almost forty years, till 1287. Perhaps he designed the cathedral of Limoges, in west-central France, since its plan and details closely resemble those of Clermont. Bishop Aymar de Cros, who carried on the works in Auvergne's capital, was another of the schoolmen who were builders of churches; such was his intellect that St. Thomas Aquinas willed to him his manuscripts in the hope that his _Summa_ might be completed. Under Bishop Aubert Aycelin de Montaigu a new master-of-works took charge--Pierre Deschamps (1287-1325), the son probably of Jean who had made the plans. He erected the four westernmost bays of the choir, the transept, and the easternmost bay of the nave in its lower parts. From 1340 to 1359 the master-of-works was Pierre de Cabazat, who added three more bays to the nave, and was employed in those same years in making, with Hugues Morel, the abbey church of La Chaise Dieu in the Forez mountains across the plain from Clermont.[208] An Avignon pope, Clement VI, was the patron who undertook that gaunt granite structure, as full of sorrow as the times that produced it. Clement had been abbot at La Chaise Dieu, so naturally he contributed toward the erection of the cathedral of Auvergne as did his successor at Avignon, Innocent VI (d. 1362), a former bishop of Clermont. The city was fortunate to have one of the notable D'Amboise family for its prelate in the late-Gothic day, Jacques d'Amboise (1505-16), who as abbot of Cluny had built at Paris the stately residence called the Hôtel Cluny. Close to his Auvergne cathedral he set up the Fontaine d'Amboise, now on the Cours Sablon. The eloquent Massillon was a later bishop of Clermont (1717-42); he founded its town library and bequeathed his fortune to the sick poor of the Hôtel Dieu. Before the French Revolution had turned to violence and destruction, in Clermont Cathedral gathered the people, with hearts beating high with generous desire for reform, for the blessing of their National Guard banner, embroidered by a community of nuns. With all too tragic swiftness came the day when in the same church were lighted bonfires for the destruction of vestments and missals. Among the precious things then wrecked was a portrait statue of Louis IX, made while his friend Guy de la Tour was bishop. Only by chance did the cathedral itself, riddled with bullets, escape annihilation. The see of Clermont has gone by various designations; so ancient is this city that it has been called successively by five different names. Here where is more Celtic blood than in any other region in France, save Brittany, the Celtic hero, Vercingetorex, inflicted on Cæsar his sole defeat. When Gaul became Christian, Clermont continued to be important. Her first bishop, St. Austremonius, was one of the seven whom Gregory of Tours says were sent into Gaul in 250 by Pope Fabian, with St. Denis of Paris, St. Martial of Limoges, St. Saturninus of Toulouse, St. Just of Narbonne, St. Trophimus of Arles, and St. Gatien of Tours. At the close of the V century Clermont's bishop, the celebrated Caius Apollinaris Sidonius, poet and scholar, son-in-law of an emperor, made his stand for Latin culture against Teutonic submersion. Dearly he loved his own enlightened Lyons, but of Clermont he said, "Such an horizon would make a stranger forget his native land." A generation later another outstanding Gallo-Roman bishop of Clermont was St. Gall, uncle of Gregory of Tours, who was so just to all that even Jews marched with lighted tapers at his funeral. Some twenty-six of Clermont's bishops have been canonized. The third cathedral of the city, and that which immediately preceded the present one, was consecrated in 946 by Bishop Étienne II. Clermont had suffered grievously by Saracen invasion, followed by the Northmen inroads. After the second Norman sacking the ruined houses smoldered for a month, and in the streets corpses lay unburied, for the population in terror had fled to the countryside. The bishop called back his flock to remake their homes. In his new church was a precocious use of ambulatory and radiating chapels, a disposition which was to lead to the chief beauty in the Gothic cathedrals of the land, but which made its appearance in the Ile-de-France only in the XII century. Bishop Étienne's Carolingian cathedral became the prototype for the Auvergnat-Romanesque school. In the good Étienne's church prayed the first crusaders when by papal bidding there gathered at Clermont a mighty council at whose tenth and last session was preached the First Crusade. Nature herself seemed to have prepared the people's minds for some vast enterprise, for all the chroniclers of western Christendom describe the sublime shower of astral stars, thick as snowflakes, which whirled in the sky. So in this same primeval Auvergne, some six centuries earlier, at the break-up of Rome's empire before the invading Barbarians, there had for three years been earthquakes and fiery volcanic eruptions. Tradition says that the momentous gathering of 1095 took place in what is now the Place Delille and the adjacent Cours Sablon. Many of our building friends were present--Bishop Odo from Bayeux, Bishop Ives from Chartres, Bishop Hoël from Le Mans, the abbots Geoffrey of Vendôme, Jarenton of St. Bénigne, and St. Hugues of Cluny, and from Spain came the great Bernardo who ruled the see of Toledo. For the people of Clermont to-day, November 28, 1095, is as vivid a reality as any of the revolutions of yesterday. A statue of Urban II stands outside the cathedral. Even so he stood, said a witness, as one having authority, high above the vast throng, on one side of him the stunted Peter the Hermit of Picardy, and on the other the Norman-Italian Bohemund of Taranto, a veritable Greek god in build and feature. From end to end of France Urban journeyed to arouse the people. Now he used persuasion, now invective; sometimes he appealed to idealistic motives or propounded colonial policies very like modern ideas. Europe had good cause to be apprehensive. The Almoravids had advanced into Spain. The Seljukian Turks were a menace more serious than the Saracens. Urban understood the peril and raised his voice in warning. "Cease to be a terror to peaceful citizens," he exhorted the gathered barons. "Turn your arms to the defense of the soil trod by the King of Kings, of the tomb over which rose the sun of the Resurrection.... The great cities of Asia Minor have fallen a prey to the Mussulman, who has planted the crescent by the Hellespont, whence he menaces Europe.... Nation of the Franks, set beyond the mountains, nation cherished and chosen of God, as clearly your high deeds prove, nation distinct from others by your situation, by your faith, by your respect for Mother Church, to you I address my plea.... Who should right these wrongs but you who have received from on high agility of body, the training of arms and grandeur of soul?... Cease these mutual wars!... Jesus Christ died for you. You should be willing to die for him." And a great answering cry rose from the hundred thousand gathered there, "God wills it," to be the rallying call of the crusades. Thus in the heart of France a French pope initiated the cosmic ventures which were to change European ways of life, ventures in which Frenchmen played a leading part so that to this day a European is called a Frank by a Mohammedan. One can easily see in the crusades only their failures and their crimes, one can sneer at them with Voltaire--who sneered at Jeanne d'Arc. Europe's aggression was needed then to save Christianity from Asiatic immobility. The benefits of the crusades outweigh their delinquencies. _Gesta Dei per Francos_ a monk called his chronicle of the First Crusade. And while those feats by God through the men of France in the East went on, other feats for God were ventured in France, the raising of Gothic cathedrals, sister movements that gave wings to the soul, purifying and molding the faith and the genius of those virile and faulty generations. Already the movement was stirring. On his way to Clermont, Urban II had seen Verona Cathedral building and S. Ambrogio's at Milan. He had blessed S. Abondio at Como. In France he blessed the new choir of St. Sernin at Toulouse and the material gathered for the cathedral at Carcassonne. Cluny's new choir he dedicated, and various other Romanesque churches. Before the Second Crusade set out Suger had built St. Denis. [Illustration: _Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand. Typical XII-century Church of Auvergne's Romanesque School_] In Clermont, though the cathedral of 1095 has been superseded by the present Gothic structure, there is intact a venerated sanctuary where Urban had a votive Mass chanted on the eve of the historic council. Every morning one can see the men and women of the city gather in the crypt of Notre Dame-du-Port to beg a blessing on their working day. They may not be able to put into words what it is each feels in that subterranean chamber impregnated by the petitions of those of their race who have gone before them, but each knows that here his prayer has plenitude and patriotic aspiration. A _custodia matutina_ in Notre Dame-du-Port, _usque ad noctem_ in the cathedral. One fears God in the cathedral, one loves God in Notre Dame. Notre Dame-du-Port is a masterpiece of the Romanesque school of Auvergne.[209] When it was built lava stone was not in use for construction, but solely for decorative purposes. So curiously alike are all the pre-Gothic churches in this province that one architect might have planned them. The venerable crypt of Notre Dame-du-Port was built in the XI century. The Romanesque church above it was constructed during the XII century and has all the Auvergnese traits: a central tower in two stories set on a barlong which forms a kind of upper transept, a compact apse with snug absidioles whose exterior walls are decorated by colored volcanic stones in marquetry designs, a western narthex, and a principal span covered by a half-barrel vault undivided by transverse arches and buttressed by side aisles surmounted by tribunes, which meant that light entered the middle vessel indirectly. Auvergne, like Burgundy, attempted to light her upper church by a clearstory, but found the experiment hazardous and gave it up. Her churches have stood intact through centuries of harsh winters. The very mortar lines were made means of decoration; wide bands of red mortar were found to be effective with blocks of black lava.[210] In the volcanic soil of Auvergne were elements that rendered mortar as resistant as stone. The local Gallo-Romans had used the polychrome lava as decoration. The interior apse of Notre Dame-du-Port is a gem of masoncraft. Around the tiny processional path stand engaged pillars that are decoration and buttresses, too. The regional skill in sculpture appears in the capitals of the main piers, where the story is related with animation, even if the figures are too squat and the heads too large. The armor indicates that the work was done early in the XII century. The doorjamb images at the southern entrance of the transept were sculptured in the years when St. Thomas Becket came to Clermont wearing the white robe of the Cistercians who had given him hospitality in France. Crowds gathered every day to receive his blessing, for all Christendom held him to be a saint defending right and liberty. A cast of Clermont's archaic portal, whose charm is exceptional, with its seraphim of the mystic triple wings, has been placed in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris. When this side entrance was completed, Richard Coeur-de-Lion was making over his claims in Auvergne to his lifetime rival, Philippe-Auguste, which cession was to lead, in time, to the erection of the Ile-de-France Picardy cathedral of Clermont. Some of the most admirably sculptured capitals in Auvergne are at Mozac, a suburb of Riom.[211] The nave of Mozac's abbey church was built from 1131 to 1147 by a brother of Peter the Venerable, who made Cluny's nave, and of the doughty abbot, Pons de Montboissier, who erected Vézelay's portico of paradise, all three of them belonging to a feudal family of Auvergne. The small abbatial holds a priceless treasure, the reliquary of St. Calmin, which an abbot presented in 1168. Its fourteen panels of Limoges enamel are ornamented in gold. A bold attempt was made to rob the church of this national heritage, so it is now protected by electric bells and every kind of burglar alarm. "_Clermont le riche, Riom le beau_," so ran the old saying. Riom, the small but proud rival of the capital of Auvergne, was a town of magistrates who built themselves Gothic Renaissance houses as individual as the pre-Gothic work of the province. The church of St. Amable has a Romanesque nave and an early-Gothic choir. Jean, Duke of Berry, had Guy and André de Dammartin design the XIV-century Sainte-Chapelle for his palace at Riom. Its brilliantly cold stained glass was commanded for the wedding, in 1389, of sixty-year-old Duke John and the thirteen-year-old heiress, Jeanne de Boulogne. Froissart has described the curious union. Each window panel has a single statue under a canopy; the prophets and apostles carry appropriately inscribed scrolls. A XV-century window, representing the Bourbon dukes, Jean II and Pierre II, patrons of Moulins, contains a St. Marguerite so similar to one in the "Book of Hours" which Jehan Fouquet painted for Étienne Chevalier that the window is thought to be designed by the great _primitif_ of Tours. It may be to artists of Jean de Berry's entourage that we owe the most entrancing Madonna of Flamboyant art, the _vierge à l'oiseau_, an image in the regional stone which stands at the trumeau of the XV-century church of Notre Dame-du Mathuret. One student after another has discussed the date of this exquisite figure, so purely French in essence, whose simplicity is as ample and unaffected as the best XIII-century art. Work as exceptional as this is of no date or school, but is due to some unrecorded individual genius. In that same late-Gothic day the spirit of St. Louis and Joinville lived again in _The Very Joyous, Pleasing and Diverting History of the Gentle Lord of Bayard, written by the Loyal Servitor_. The serrated foliage of the Madonna's crown proves the sculpture to be late-Gothic. M. Gonse places it midway in the XIV century, M. Vitry early in the XVI, and M. Enlart thinks that it could not have been produced before the XV century. MM. Mâle, Palustre, Merimée, and others have discussed it. In the ideal innocence and dignity of the Virgin is Michel Colombe's charm. The legend was that in Egypt the infant Jesus modeled images of birds, then breathed on them, imparting life. This is the mystic moment which the unknown master of Riom chose to render; there is a brooding reverence in the young mother's face as she gazes at her Son, who ponders in a divine wonderment at a bird about to fly from his hand. THE ROMANESQUE CATHEDRAL OF LE PUY[212] Into whatever country you carry war, remember that children, women and churchmen and the poor are not your enemies.--(Dying words of BERTRAND DUGUESCLIN, killed near Le Puy, 1380). Le Puy is hoary with history. Perched high on basaltic rocks near the source of the Loire, picturesque beyond description, it stood on the great pilgrimage route from Italy to Compostela, the _Via Francigena_ by which French art and poetry passed into Spain and penetrated to Italy, along whose pilgrim roads are found portal images of the Round Table heroes and the sculptured tympanums of France.[213] The cathedral is built near the top of the town's hill, and above it on the hillcrest has been set a mammoth statue of Our Lady cast from cannon taken at Sebastopol. In the immediate suburbs rises another mass of volcanic rock, a needle some two hundred and fifty feet in height. The oldest part of the chapel crowning that extraordinary little basalt mountain dates before the year 1000. The sanctuary is trefoil, like the early-Christian churches at Rome, and like St. Laurent at Grenoble.[214] At the end of the XI century St. Michel d'Aiguille was enlarged irregularly. From time immemorial a shrine dedicated to the Archangel has crowned the pinnacle: "In the presence of angels I shall sing my psalms." The approach to the cathedral of Le Puy, while less difficult than the precipitous needle of St. Michel, is equally romantic and solemn. You mount the hill by the Street of Tables, so called from the days of pilgrimages, when the merchants' booths lined it. As you climb, the way changes to a broad flight of steps, more than a hundred, and up and up you mount, with the polychromatic façade of the cathedral rising before you on high. Then suddenly, almost before you are aware of what has happened, you pass right under that western front of the church, ascending always, climbing under the cathedral's western bays. Formerly you could have mounted right into the very sanctuary itself, coming to it through the pavement. To-day the stairway branches, and you enter the church at the side. Never was there such an approach to the House of Prayer as this, never a more sublime and grandiose conception than the shadowed stair over which hangs the façade. Halfway up, where stand red porphyry columns and doors of chiseled bronze, is carved, "If you do not fear crime, fear to cross this threshold, for the Queen of Heaven wishes a devotion without stain." M. Thiollier has shown that the Romanesque school of the Velay region was an intermediary between Burgundy, Auvergne, and the Midi, with the meridional influences the strongest. Le Puy's choir, transept, and two bays of the nave were erected in the XI century, and of that date is the cloister walk that touches the church. The transept has a tribune at each end. Beyond the chevet stood a tower of which the actual one is a replica. As all the level space available was covered by these structures, it became necessary, when they wished to lengthen the nave in the XII century, to build out from the hill a vast masonry foundation as a platform. It is under those westernmost bays that mounts the stairway of Wonderland. Each bay of the nave is covered by an oblong cupola set on an octagonal base, of a type found again only at Poitiers, in the church of St. Hilaire. At Le Puy the side aisles buttress the cupolas. No one should miss seeing a XV-century fresco discovered under whitewash, in 1860, in the library off the cloister. The Liberal Arts are symbolized by women of the type of Anne of Brittany with bombous foreheads, and at the feet of each sits a disciple. Thus Aristotle, with the sensitive face of a scholar, is seated at the feet of Logic, and Cicero learns of Rhetoric. [Illustration: _Le Puy in Old Auvergne_] The cathedral of Le Puy has been venerated and visited by practically every ruler of France from Charlemagne to Francis I. This ancient city was almost chosen as the meeting place for launching the First Crusade. Urban II paused here in 1095, and the bishop of Le Puy, Adhémar de Monteil (1087-1100), accompanied him to Clermont, and when the pope's great rallying speech was ended it was Bishop Adhémar, his face shining with enthusiasm, who first stepped forward to take the cross. Urban appointed him the spiritual chief of the expedition, and his skill in military strategics proved of use since he had been a knight before becoming a churchman. This good man died in the grievous days at Antioch, worn out with his efforts to check disorders in the crusaders' camp. To Adhémar de Monteil has been attributed the _Salve Regina_ called in the olden times the anthem of Puy. To Le Puy's famous shrine St. Louis presented a thorn from the Crown he had obtained from Constantinople, and on his way back from his first crusade he deposited in the church the curious image of a black Virgin given him in Egypt. THE CATHEDRAL OF LIMOGES[215] Bien me sourit le doux printemps, Qui fait venir fleurs et feuillages; Et bien me plait lorsque j'entends Des oiseaux le gentil ramage. Mais j'aime mieux quand sur le pré Je vois l'étendard arboré, Flottant comme un signal de guerre. Quand j'entends par mont et par vaux Courir chevalier et chevaux Et sous leur pas frémir la terre, Et gens crier: "A l'aide! A l'aide!" De voir les petits et les grands Dans les fossés roulers mourants. A ce plaisir tout plaisir cède.[216] --BERTRAN DE BORN (1140-1215). Although in plan, in the mode of construction, in the covering of chapels and various details, the resemblances between the cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges are such that it is thought the same Jean Deschamps designed both, the cathedral of St. Étienne at Limoges possesses its own individual character because of the fine-grained, compact granite of which it is built and the unusual talent of its masons. M. Viollet-le-Duc considered the apse of Limoges one of the most scientific of Gothic constructions. The very beautiful leaf foliage is as crisply cut as when it came from the master's hand. Full of character are the profiles of the molds used in the triforium for decorative effect. Because of the enduring quality of their building material, the Romanesque edifices of Limousin lasted so well that there was little temptation to tear them down in order to substitute Gothic churches. Till the Revolution, Limoges kept its great pre-Gothic abbatial of St. Martial, and its cathedral was, like that of Clermont in Auvergne, an isolated example of Gothic. Like Clermont's chief church, the western bays of Limoges were not built till the XIX century. The general aspect of St. Étienne is Rayonnant. Its Flamboyant Gothic additions were held in rigorous restraint. When Bishop Aimeric de la Serre (1246-73), a man of wealth, determined to remake his church, he willed his fortune to the enterprise. As Bishop Aimeric had just died, the first stone was laid on June 1, 1273, by Hélie de Malemort, doyen of the chapter. For over fifty years they built steadily till under Bishop Hélie de Talleyrand the choir was completed in 1327. A second period of work, from 1344 to the end of the century, resulted in the south arm of the transept whose rose is Rayonnant, whereas that to the north is Flamboyant. In its tendency to eliminate the horizontal line Limoges is eminently a church of the XIV century. The shafts before the piers rise unbroken from pavement to vault-springing; the pier arches at the apse curve are very pointed. Yet there is no geometric dryness in this interior. Plain wall surfaces above the main arcade and around the triforium and clearstory add to its robust aspect. In 1370 the Black Prince sacked Limoges and left little but the cathedral standing. Froissart recounts that "there was no pity taken of the poor people who had wrought no manner of treason ... more than three thousand persons of all ages and both sexes were slain that day ... and the city clean brent and brought to destruction." It took time and treasure to repair the devastation. Only from 1458 to 1490 were the two easternmost bays of the nave erected. The fourth period of energy at Limoges, from 1515 to 1530, created a gem of Flamboyant Gothic, the transept's north façade, which is called the Portail de St. Jean, as it stood near a church dedicated to the Baptist. Bishop Philippe de Montmorency began it, and his successor, César de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, completed it, as their carved armorials bear witness. Because it stood on the emplacement of the old Romanesque transept, it was somewhat too narrow. To obviate that impression the corner buttresses were offset at an angle. The wooden doors of this, the main entrance to Limoges Cathedral, are of the Renaissance. They represent the stoning of St. Stephen, and the first Christian missionary of Limousin, St. Martial, to whom an early local martyr, St. Valérie, is presenting her decapitated head. The ring of St. Valérie gave symbolic investiture to the dukes of Aquitaine. Limoges was active in the Renaissance days. Her bishop, Jean de Langeac, erected an elaborate _jubé_ between choir and transept, a rood loft which is one mass of hanging keystones, channeling, bas-reliefs, and arabesque panels, with six big statues of the Virtues made in 1536 by an artist of Tours named Jean Arnaud. It is plain to see that the Renaissance was in full swing. The Labors of Hercules were set forth, and Bacchus was placed beside Ambrose and Augustine. Perhaps the huge _jubé_ and the episcopal tomb both came from the studios of Tours, where had settled the earliest artists of the transalpine Renaissance. The master hand that made the bishop's tomb, says M. Mâle, followed Dürer, but his eight Apocalypse panels were an improvement over the designs of the German. Unfortunately the bronze recumbent figure of the munificent prelate whose pride it was to adorn his church was melted up for pennies in 1793. There are two other notable tombs in the choir's procession path--that of a bishop-builder, Raynaud de la Porte--the only funeral monument in France that represents stone curtains drawn aside by angels--and the tomb of his nephew, Bernard Brun (d. 1350). Three of the Avignon popes were natives of art-loving Limousin. The Revolution robbed Limoges of the noble abbey church of St. Martial, which had been dedicated by the pope of the First Crusade in 1095. St. Martial had formed the center of the Château section of Limoges, ruled by its own counts with a totally different administration from that of the Cité division, where the cathedral stood, and whose civic master was the bishop. Many a feud had Cité with Château. The abbatial of the "apostle of Aquitaine" would tell us the story had not blind passion laid it in ruins. For three hundred years no effort was made at Limoges to complete its cathedral's nave until, through the enterprise of Monseigneur Duquesnay, the first stone of the sorely needed western church was laid in 1876 and the structure finished in 1888. It was joined, by means of a narthex or forechurch, to the ancient tower which had been built isolated before the Romanesque cathedral of St. Étienne. In its three lower stories, now hidden by cumbersome masonry propping, save on the east side, the tower belonged to the cathedral which Urban II blessed in 1095 when he dedicated St. Martial's abbatial. Its four upper stories, mainly of the XII century, were begun by Bishop Sebrand-Chabot while the overlord of the province, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, was on his crusading venture. In this very region, at the castle of Chalus near Limoges, the Lion-hearted met his death in 1199. The dialect of Limousin was considered the purest form of Provençal by the troubadours. Here in the west center of France, Coeur-de-Lion's troubadour friend, the malignant breeder of dissensions, Bertran de Born, had his castle of Hautefort south of Limoges. He excited Henry Plantagenet against his sons, and spurred on the sons to rebellion. Unlike the gentle Valérie who carries in her hands her own head with right Christian pride since she lost it to witness to the planting of the Cross, Bertran de Born, sower of discord, is represented swinging his severed head by the hair like a lantern. So Dante saw him in the ninth chasm of hell herded with the malicious ones who had abused the attribute of reason: "I made the father and the son rebels to each other," he wailed. "Because I parted persons thus united, I carry my brain, ah, me! parted from its source. Thus the law of retribution is observed in me."[217] And equally merciless has been the law of retribution for Limoges, than which no other city has suffered more from pillage, pest, and fire. Froissart tells us that during centuries the frontier lands of Limousin and Gascony exercised brigandage as a _métier_. Like the three lower stories of the tower, the crypt belonged to the XI-century Romanesque cathedral of Limoges. On its groin vault was painted a Byzantinesque Christ surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. The cathedral has recently lost by theft some precious enamels. From father to son in Limoges passed the skill in this beautiful art craft. St. Eloi was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Limoges in the VII century. At Le Mans is the XII-century plaque of Geoffrey Plantagenet, at Mozac an unrivaled Limousin reliquary, and Jean, duc de Berry, prince of amateurs, once possessed the best XIII-century work of Limoges enamel, the gold King's Cup, now in the British Museum. In St. Pierre's at Chartres are the splendid Apostle plaques of the XVI century by Léonard Limosin. The earlier method had been to sink the enamel like a jewel in cells or _cloisons_, hence the name _cloisonné_, but the Renaissance artists used no inclosing ribbon of metal. The only ancient windows remaining in the cathedral's clearstory are the two at the apse end, which a canon, Pierre de la Rodier, presented. When he became bishop of Carcassonne he built the south chapel that opens from St. Nazaire's nave (1323-30). In the cathedral chapels are some XV-and XVI-century lights, and fragments of earlier glass. On the same river, Vienne, which at Limoges is crossed by two noble XIII-century bridges, lies Eymoutiers, some thirty miles to the west, between Clermont and Limoges. Its remarkable collection of windows is entirely of the XV century; each panel contains a single figure in an architectural setting. French writers claim that between Eymoutiers and Limoges took place the apparition of the Infant Jesus to St. Anthony of Padua which became a favorite theme with painters, but the Italians insist that Padua was the privileged spot. Limoges city has its St. Anthony tradition. In its square, they say, while the saint was preaching in 1225, his audience was untouched by a rainstorm that inundated the other townspeople. As we have seen that the building of great churches was preceded in most cases by a spiritual regeneration, it is not extreme to think that the fervor roused in the Midi by the great son of St. Francis had much to do with the laying of the corner stone of Limoges Cathedral in 1273. THE CATHEDRAL OF BORDEAUX[218] Celuy qui, d'une doulceur et facilité naturelle, mépriseroit les offenses reçues, feroit chose très belle et digne de louange: mais celuy qui, picqué et oultré jusques au vif d'une offense, s'armeroit des armes de la raison contre ce furieux appétit de vengeance, et aprèz un grand conflict s'en rendroit enfin maistre, feroit sans doubte beaucoup plus. Celuy là feroit bien; et celuy cy, vertueusement: l'une action se pourroit dire bonté: l'aultre, vertu; car il semble que le nom de la vertu présuppose de la difficulté et du contraste. Nous nommons Dieu bon, fort, et libéral, et juste, mais nous ne le nommons pas _vertueux_.--MONTAIGNE (Mayor of Bordeaux from 1581 to 1585). While Bordeaux has the warm fertility of the Midi, there is much of the north in the big commercial city. And its cathedral of St. André is typical of the dual temperament. The nave is the aisleless, wide hall preferred by meridionals, the choir has the procession path with its circlet of chapels loved by the north. Excepting Le Mans, Amiens, and Rheims, it is the longest cathedral in France. Bordeaux was an important city in the wide possessions of the dukes of Aquitaine. In 1137 Aliénor, the daughter of the last William, was wedded in its cathedral to the prince who immediately ascended the French throne as Louis VII. When she left him after fifteen years and wedded Henry Plantagenet the rich city on the Garonne passed under English rule. In all the vicissitudes of the three hundred years that followed, from 1154 to 1453, Bordeaux' self-interest kept her faithful to her masters beyond the sea, the chief customers in her wine trade. Bordeaux remained French, however, in race and in the expression of race, architecture. Aliénor's second husband, Henry II of England, was, like herself, more French than English; of his thirty-four years' reign he passed only twelve in England, and his son, Coeur-de-Lion, was another Anglo-Frenchman. The hardy, domelike vaults carried on diagonals that span the nave of Angers' Cathedral (c. 1150) have been considered the earliest extant examples of the Gothic of the West. And yet it is possible, thinks M. Brutails, the erudite archivist of the Gironde, that the vaults of the same type which were built over the nave of the present cathedral of Bordeaux antedated the notable ones of Angers. In Bordeaux occurred one of the premature isolated examples of Gothic ribs under the south tower of Ste. Croix. During a revival of builder's energy, from 1052 to 1127 (under the eighth and ninth dukes of Aquitaine), Ste. Croix and St. Seurin were reconstructed and St. André begun. It seems more reasonable to suppose, however, that Anjou, where first the cupola church of Aquitaine met the diagonal ribs of northern France, should have been the cradle of that phase of the new architecture which we call Plantagenet. The nave of St. André is a difficult page to read, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance as it now is. The Romano-Byzantine church here which Urban II blessed in 1096 exists only in vestiges in the lower walls on either side of the wide hall. Originally the church had side aisles, but they were obliterated when the XII century spanned the entire width with Angevin diagonals. The side walls were then made into two stories, a lower wall arcade surmounted by a window story, such as we have seen in the cathedrals at Angers and Angoulême. In 1437 an earthquake caused the collapse of the masonry roof of the four westernmost bays, which were recovered by a Flamboyant Gothic vaulting rich with supplementary ribs. The west front of St. André never was developed, as the church abutted there on the ancient ramparts. The main entrance was the Porte Royale in the north flank of the nave, whose statues, made in the golden hour of St. Louis' reign, were used as models by Viollet-le-Duc when he refilled the empty niches of Notre Dame at Paris. There can be no clearer exposition of what qualities were lost in Rayonnant Gothic than to pass from this apogee portal to the smoother, more conventional images at the northern entrance to the transept; in the rugged apostles, full of character, is the touch which all time recognizes as genius; in the aristocratic churchmen of the XIV-century door is mere talent. To the nave of Bordeaux a XVI-century archbishop, Charles de Grammont, who initiated here the Italian Renaissance, added an elaborate buttress. That miniature façade is called the _contrefort de Grammont_.[219] Under Archbishop de Mallemort (1227-60) St. André superseded St. Seurin as the cathedral of Bordeaux. As late as 1259 it lacked a suitable chevet. Gascony was in chaos in those years when Henry III, builder of Westminster Abbey, sent the Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort (son of the leader of the Albigensian Crusade), to straighten out the disorders. That strong administrator, who was on the constitutional liberal side in English politics, was frustrated by Midi corruption. Only as the XIII century closed was built the present splendid choir of Bordeaux Cathedral, a classic work of Rayonnant Gothic before that phase turned to geometric rule. How technique cramped and killed inspiration can be seen in the later Rayonnant church of St. Michel. At St. André, it is true, the capitals are slight and the profiles not overvirile. Decadence is foreshadowed, but not yet is the art academic and wiredrawn. The Midi appears in the clearstory and triforium, which do not fill the entire space between the shafts. The partiality of the meridional for unencumbered interiors had something to do with making the procession path thirty feet wide. Most grateful is the traveler for a curving aisle around the sanctuary after having sojourned among the cupola and hall-like churches of Anjou and Aquitaine. Bordeaux' choir possesses some good stained glass of its own period, and some of its buttress statues are among the best imagery of the XIV century. Mary Magdalene, carrying her vase of ointment, appears as a chatelaine of the Middle Ages with the bandeau under her chin then fashionable; Aliénor of Aquitaine could not have been very unlike her. The most active patron of St. André's Gothic choir was the archbishop of the city, Bertrand de Got, who in 1305 became Clement V, the first Avignon pope. When he died, in 1314, the new choir was practically completed. His image stands at the trumeau of the transept's north door (the head and hand are reproductions), and around him are six prelates who may be intended to represent the French bishops whom Clement raised to the cardinalate. In technique these images may surpass the weather-beaten apostles at the Porte Royale (c. 1260), but they are their inferior in spirit. Five of the statues are studies from the same model. Casts of the transept portal of Bordeaux are in the Kensington Museum and in the Trocadéro. The Avignon popes were the chief art patrons of the XV century, with the four Valois princes--Charles V of France and his brothers at Dijon, Bourges, and Angers. No pontiff was more munificent than Clement V. While he was bishop at St. Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute Garonne)[220] he renewed that small cathedral, which consists of two unequal parts, a Romanesque façade, donjon tower, and forechurch of the day when St. Bertrand had been bishop (1073-1123), and an unaisled Gothic choir, begun by Bertrand de Got, continued by him while pope and finished by Bishop Hugues de Chatillon, who died in 1352. The Rayonnant chevet of Bordeaux Cathedral and its transept, two of whose towers are spire-crowned, compose an effective architectural group, with a detached campanile in the gardens. In order to give employment to the poor, Archbishop Pierre Berland, who had been a shepherd's son, erected the graceful, isolated tower for bells to hang in, "that God might be praised in the sky." And the same generations built St. Michel's tower (1472-92), the highest beacon in southwest France, mutilated mercilessly by M. Paul Abadie's restoration. The lifeless church before which it stands is proof of how much needed was the vim, even if often exaggerated and bizarre, of the late-Gothic movement. M. Enlart considers Bordeaux and Bayonne[221] to be two of the principal doors by which the English Curvilinear style entered France. There its name is Flamboyant Gothic. And yet in this same Midi, M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, who denies the English origin of French late-Gothic architecture, claims to have found proof of his theory that already in Apogee Gothic and in the Rayonnant hour were developing the characteristics of the final phase. One cannot help but feel that the English builders' partiality for exuberant decoration had something to do with the making of such towers as St. Michel and the Pey Berland. The landscape round Bordeaux is as rich in sky-pointing spires as Calvados in Normandy. When, in 1451, the English surrendered Bordeaux, the great Dunois, Jeanne d'Arc's companion in arms, was received as conqueror in its cathedral (where in 1376 the Black Prince had accepted the citizens' oath of fealty to his father), and to the ringing of bells and cries of "_Noël_," Archbishop Pierre Berland and the chief men of the town swore to be loyal subjects of France. Among the ancient churches of historic interest in Bordeaux is Ste. Croix, rebuilt by Charlemagne when Saracens destroyed it, and again remade (1099) as Romanesque according to the school of Poitou. Under its tower, Gothic ribs were used early in the XII century. The church was partly wrecked in 1179 and revaulted at the end of the XIII century. In the sculpture of the rich façade is a certain Assyrian note. M. Brutails complains that Abadie, the restorer, made of the frontispiece a neo-Angoumois work and that the north tower is entirely of his building. Memories of the great Emperor Charles haunt the former cathedral of Bordeaux, St. Seurin. Fundamentally it belongs to the cupola type of edifice, and though incessantly rebuilt up to the XV century, it presents the aspect of a Romanesque church. The south portal (c. 1260), sculptured with elaborate foliate ornament, has images of unequal merit. In St. Seurin, says tradition, Charlemagne paused, in 778, with the bodies of the heroes of Roncevaux to be buried at Blaye, his nephew Roland and that paladin's comrade, Sire Olivier, and Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, who fought pagans--_par granz batailles et par mult bels sermuns_. On the altar of St. Seurin the emperor laid the horn that Roland blew in his last extremity, the olifant which the Midi folk say still echoes in the Pyrenean gorges: Vient à Burdele la citet de valur, Desur l'alter seint Sevrin li barun Met l'olifant, plein d'or et de manguns, Li pélerin le veient ki là vunt.[222] (Came to Bordeaux the city of great price, And on the shrine of Baron St. Seurin, The olifant Charles laid, filled full with gold, And to this day pilgrims can see it there.) The XX-century pilgrims to the old city on the Garonne must remember that the _Chanson de Roland_ was written a long, long time ago, and that to-day the olifant of the paladin lives only in the pages of French history, where its place is as secure as the standard of Jeanne d'Arc. _À la peine, à l'honneur._ Without St. Seurin's church we might have forgotten a proud page of Bordeaux' past. TOULOUSE[223] Ici, dans Toulouse, je sens palpiter La prodigieuse histoire du libre Languedoc! Et je vois Saint-Sernin, la grande église romane, ... Et le rempart où la pierre écrasa l'oiseau de Proie que je ne veux pas nommer.... À Toulouse vivante, à Toulouse qui chante, J'élève mon salut et je dis: Ville sainte! Au soleil à jamais épanouis-toi puissante!... L'âme du Midi réfugiée en toi, Chevaleresque et digne, tu as traversé les âges! --Frédéric Mistral, at the _Jeux Floraux_ of Toulouse, 1879.[224] If the influence of both the north and the south is felt at Bordeaux, the unadulterated Midi reigns at Toulouse. It is eminently the capital city of this fertile Languedoc, where art and luxury developed precociously in the earlier periods of the Middle Ages. Here the troubadour still sings in the regional tongue which might to-day be the speech of France (instead of a dialect) had a genius such as Dante written in the _langue d'oc_, the most gracious form of the Romance language. It is spoken in Aragon and Catalonia--lands where the architectural development followed the same trend as that of French Languedoc. Modern Toulouse is not a handsome city like the Bordeaux of to-day. Its most imposing church is not its cathedral of St. Étienne, which is as ungainly outside as it is irregular within. The nave and choir make no pretense of following the same axis line, since they never were intended to form one edifice; were the north wall of the nave extended down through the choir, it would abut on the high altar. The nave is of enormous span like that of Bordeaux Cathedral. It once had side aisles, but the entire width of the edifice was thrown into one hall when the church was remodeled in 1211. Simon de Montfort (whom Mistral, as a patriotic son of the Midi, refuses even to name in his verses) was besieging the city while the Angevin vaults of its cathedral were building, and Count Raymond VI of Toulouse ordered that the works should continue, war or no war. The choir of Toulouse Cathedral belongs to the same current of northern Gothic that produced Clermont, Limoges, and Narbonne. Begun in 1275, it was inspired directly by Narbonne Cathedral, whose foundation stone was laid in 1273. The plan is of the north, but the feeling is meridional. After the death of the wealthy Bishop Bernard de Lille, the founder, the chapter had not sufficient funds to continue building on the same ambitious scale. Only in the XV century was the triforium level reached, and it was not until the XVII century that the masonry roof was added. Even then it was so skimped that the exterior aspect of the choir is deplorable. At St. Étienne there seemed to be a fatality against symmetry. When all hope was given up of replacing the Romanesque nave by one of the same character as the choir, it was decided to make its entrance more important; but instead of setting the new Flamboyant portal in the center of the west façade, it was placed to one side. The window dedicated to two sons of the Midi, St. Roch and St. Sebastian, is attributed to Arnaud de Moles who made the celebrated Creation, prophets, and sibyls of Auch Cathedral. Some of the grisaille in St. Étienne came from the Jacobins. There are few church interiors in Europe more stately and unique than that of the brick abbatial in Toulouse, called the Jacobins', a name given the Dominicans because their Paris convent was in the rue St. Jacques. The house of wisdom is founded on seven pillars, Scripture tells us.[225] So the Friars Preachers planted directly down the center of their lofty hall church seven columnar piers that soar to an enormous height. The easternmost one is set in the middle of the apse and on it fall some fourteen ribs. The vault arches of white stone against the red brick infilling are of striking effect. No mediæval pillars--save those of the late-Gothic church of St. Nicolas-du-Port near Nancy--are higher than the seven giants of Toulouse. In the desecration of the edifice after the Revolution, its pavement was covered with soil, for the stabling of horses, but within the last ten years excavations have exposed the true bases of the piers. The Jacobins' church was founded in 1229 by a rich citizen and his wife, who had vowed to devote a large portion of their fortune to God's service, should their only daughter recover from a desperate illness. The edifice, constructed with an audacious massiveness, as if for eternity, has been allowed to fall into general decay, and now appears more desolate than would a ruin of stone. Like alien images, gargoyles protrude forlornly from the red brick walls, so inconsistent is brick with the true Gothic spirit. The Midi was too wedded to classic traditions to excel in the national art, which it never took completely to its heart. There is little of the ogival style about these narrow loophole windows, these diagonals unbraced by flying buttresses. Gothic in the south has an accidental aspect. [Illustration: _The Jacobins', or Dominicans', Church at Toulouse_ (_XIII Century_)] To the greatest of Dominican churches the Avignon pope, Urban V, who covered the Midi with his monuments, gave the body of St. Thomas Aquinas, greatest of Dominican doctors. It was saved when the Jacobins were sacked in 1562, and is now in St. Sernin, whose collection of authentic relics is the richest in France--and some say in Europe. Toulouse also had a Franciscan brick church, whose wall bordered on the city ramparts, so that passages of defense were thrown from buttress to buttress. That church of the Cordeliers (rich with memories of St. Anthony of Padua) was burned in 1870, and its lovely XV-century cloister now forms part of the Museum that is housed in the former convent of the Augustinians. The graceful octagonal brick tower of the Cordeliers,[226] saved from the wreckage, was modeled on that of the Jacobins', just as the Jacobins' tower, in lessening stories, was designed probably by the architect who made the top stories of St. Sernin's beacon. Artists have preferred the Jacobins' belfry to its prototype. The paucity of stone in the province caused the creation of a school of brick architecture of which Toulouse was the center. One may prefer a stone architecture, but one cannot deny the lovely tones of brown and crimson madder acquired in time by these brick monuments of the Midi that seem created especially for resistance and long duration. Not the cathedral of Toulouse, but its monastic brick church of St. Sernin, is the supreme religious monument of the city and the grandest Romanesque edifice in France. Its date has been discussed by MM. de Lasteyrie, Corroyer, Saint-Paul, and Jules de Lahondès. In the last quarter of the XI century the monks began the choir of the present church, which combined the characteristics of the Romanesque schools of Burgundy and Auvergne. Those influences had passed south by way of Conques, where the abbatial of Ste. Foi had been rebuilt a generation before St. Sernin. In 1083 Cluny monks replaced at St. Sernin the canons regular, and where Cluny reformed, building activities usually followed. While the Toulouse monastery church was rising, its selfsame plan appeared in the northeast corner of Spain in the cathedral of Santiago Compostela, begun in 1082, too direct a copy to have been done by any but St. Sernin's own architect or his favorite pupil. In Spain the works went faster, so that Santiago Cathedral was completed long before the abbatial at Toulouse, and, being constructed in stone, its interior has not been marred by centuries of whitewashing. "The entry of Urban II into Toulouse" is pictured by Benjamin Constant in the Museum. In 1096, on his journey through France, preaching the First Crusade, he blessed the unfinished choir and transept of St. Sernin. The aisles around the transept form the most imposing part of the church. As the XI century closed, the transept was continued and the nave begun under the direction of a monk-builder, St. Raymond Gaynard, a man of wealth before entering the cloister. He conceived the masterly plan of five aisles. The side aisles were covered by a quarter-barrel vaulting that serves the purpose of a continuous flying buttress. Perhaps it was when the original architect of St. Sernin had proceeded to Santiago Compostela that St. Raymond became master-of-works at Toulouse. In 1119, a year after his death, another pontiff, Calixtus II, blessed St. Sernin. From 1120 to 1140 was made the south portal, which constitutes, with Moissac's[227] portal and cloister, the chief works extant of the Languedoc school of sculpture. That school needs a competent biographer who will do for it what M. Paul Vitry has done for the Region-of-the-Loire school, and MM. de Vasselot and Koechlin for the imagery of southern Champagne.[228] The high-water mark of the regions' sculpture was attained in the Annunciation group at Moissac, whose ethereal elongated figures in clinging draperies rouse the imagination. The monks of Moissac, being Cluniac and not Cistercian, found imagery profitable to their souls. What were Bernard's thoughts as he gazed at their haunting rendering of the Incarnation? Puritan Bernard thundered against the bizarre grotesques carved in cloisters. Up to 1140 they were popular, since the untrained stonecutters found it easier to make a caricature than an image true to nature. The invasions of the Barbarians had wiped out the sculptor's art, and the men of the XI century had to rediscover it. While St. Bernard sojourned in Toulouse he lived in St. Sernin's monastery, a Cluniac house, and it is probable that he paused with the monks at Moissac on the memorable journey he made into Languedoc to combat the fast-spreading dualist heresy of the Catharists. He was accompanied by Bishop Geoffrey de Lèves of Chartres, the builder of the most beautiful tower in the world. Surely those enlightened men mused with spiritual benefit before the _Ecce ancilla Domini_ at Moissac? But one very much doubts if Bernard could have approved of four hundred carven capitals in the abbatial at Toulouse. Slowly the making of St. Sernin's nave advanced. At first it was built story by story, but later the more usual procedure of bay by bay was adopted. In 1217, from the roof of St. Sernin, the stone was thrown that killed Simon de Montfort, who was besieging Toulouse. To the end of time a character such as his will rouse both enthusiasm and detestation. His personal morals were exemplary, his own troops adored him. The leading men of Christendom regarded him as an instrument of Heaven and right progress. The Midi execrated him, and does to this day, even as Ireland execrates Cromwell, whom good Puritans consider a hero, for the religious psychology of those two born leaders was curiously alike. With God's name on their lips their troops felt righteous in butchering. With the death of Simon de Montfort the Albigensian wars changed in character. Simon's son, Amaury de Montfort, was incapable of retaining the principality won by his father's sword, so he sensibly passed over his claims to the king of France. The struggle henceforth was purely political. Blanche of Castile's wise head solved the Midi tangle when she married her son Alphonse of Poitiers to the heiress of the Count of Toulouse, with the understanding that, should the young people die childless, Languedoc fell to the French Crown. Alphonse gave the Midi, says Molinier, the first intelligent administration it had received since the better times of the Roman Empire. When he and his wife died, returning from St. Louis' fatal crusade of 1270, the great southern land became a part of France. The Albigensian wars--for with reluctance one calls those years of bitter strife a crusade--delayed the completion of St. Sernin, whose main façade is gaunt and bare, and whose westernmost windows lack stone casements. When the Midi came under French rule the monks attained sufficient prosperity to erect the octagonal tower in five stories--each of lesser dimensions than the one below it. The upper stories used the miter arch so suited to brick. M. Enlart has called attention to the affinity of the _clochers Toulousans_ and the Lombard steeples. At present the underpinning of the tower obstructs the transept-crossing, but propping is better than demolition, which is what M. Viollet-le-Duc proposed in his blind enthusiasm for unity of style. The townspeople indignantly protested and the supreme beacon of this patroness city of art was saved. A proud boast of Toulouse is that the first Dominican monastery was established there, and by Dominic himself, the saint whom Dante called "the messenger and familiar of Christ."[229] The Friars Preachers, like the Franciscans (who, because of a new appreciation of their founder's character, are found sympathetic by many who still call a Dominican a "bloody sort of monk"), were agents for the quickening of the religious fervor of the XIII century. Both Orders were protests against abuses such as luxury, love of gold, and selfish privilege, which feudalism had helped to foster in the clergy. Dominic de Guzman was a Castilian gentleman, a trained scholar, a man whose luminous face won instant affection and respect. In the first years of the XIII century he came north with the bishop of Osma on a diplomatic mission relating to a royal marriage. As those two good men journeyed through Languedoc amid the fearful havoc wrought by heresy, the vocation of the younger priest took shape. Returning from Italy in 1206, he and the bishop of Osma laid aside pomp and comforts to evangelize according to primitive Christianity. Only too clear was it to them that heresy was fed by the unworthy priesthood of the Midi that had lost the people's esteem. Two generations earlier St. Bernard had lamented over the same evil. Innocent III rebuked the worldling prelate of Bordeaux, and asked the bishop of Narbonne if he had a purse in place of a heart. After ten years' heroic missionizing both before and during the Albigensian Crusade, Dominic won papal sanction for his new Order in 1216. He was then a man of forty-seven. When he died, at Bologna in 1221, he left flourishing houses all over Christendom. The function of his Friars was to teach again Christian doctrine in its purity; hence it was only natural, when the Inquisition[230] was founded, after the death of Dominic, that it should be intrusted to such trained theologians. They were to be a kind of jury to ascertain whether a case was heretical; if it was so decided, then the civic authorities stepped in and took action, since heresy was a state offense. The best minds of that day held the theory that the decline of religion was a menace to law and order. The violent repression of heresy to prevent the dissolution of society seemed then as necessary as the repression of anarchy seems to-day. It had not always been so. "Slay error, but always love the man who errs," was St. Augustine's maxim. St. Ambrose and St. Hilary reprobated physical violence toward heretics. Gregory VII had protested against the "impious cruelty" which had burned a man of Cambrai for heresy. "Heretics are to be taken by force of arguments, not by force of arms," said the vehement St. Bernard himself on one occasion. Gradually a different outlook had taken possession of men's minds, a change of view that was to cost the Church dear. Crusades against the infidel were on every side, in the Orient, in the Balkans, in Spain. When heresy took on so alien and perverse an aspect as the Catharist errors, which were at root the negation of Christian standards and a veritable antisocial menace, it needed but an incident to start a crusade against heretics in France. It should not be forgotten that had the Albigensians won the victory, the south of France would have been placed outside the pale of western civilization as effectively as was southern Spain under Moslem rule. Had the Midi wars been conducted by civil authority many a partisan of to-day would not hold them up as exceptional horrors, but, since all the thinking of the Middle Ages was expressed in religious form, unfortunately the term "crusade" was used for the embittered struggle in the south. THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE[231] La vérité n'est point a nous, nous n'en sommes que les témoins, les défenseurs, et les dépositaires.--MASSILLON. So interwoven is the architectural story of Languedoc with the Albigensian Crusade that to find the underlying significance of the southern monuments it is needful to comprehend the trend of thought of the Midi people. We have the unbroken testimony of five hundred years as to what were the tenets of Catharism, the final form taken by the Manichean heresy. They held that two principles, one good and one evil, ruled the universe. In the third century Manes in Persia had woven a curious tissue of beliefs, largely Zoroastrian with a tinge of Buddhism, and had coated it all with a thin veneer of Christianity of the gnostic type. The dualist idea and a complete rejection of the Old Testament were leading Manichean doctrines. Manes was put to death in Persia, but his teachings lingered on in the Orient, and after seven centuries crept into Europe by way of the Slav countries of the Balkans. Without a doubt, the intercourse of Europe with the Orient, through the crusades, fostered the gnostic superstitions. The dualist heresy cropped out in the north of France, but after the XII century was confined more or less to Languedoc, where the Visigoths' Arian beliefs had prepared the soil. From the XI to the XIII century these neo-Manicheans were called Catharists. The local name Albigensian came into usage because in the region round Albi, though not especially in that city itself, the new ideas flourished. Toulouse was the heretic's stronghold. It has always seemed illogical that many Protestants who revere the Bible should be sympathetic toward the Midi heretics who reprobated the Jehovah of the Old Testament as a vindictive assassin, the creator of this the visible world, which is Hell. Life is a nightmare, they taught, and suicide a virtue. Moses was sorcerer and thief (and the Ten Commandments?). John the Baptist was a strong incarnation of the Devil sent to combat the coming Christ. Baptism by water was reprehensible. On this muddle of the Old Law was grafted some neo-Christian spiritism. Christ was the God of good who created the invisible world of spirits. He was a phantom being who never really lived on earth or suffered or died. The Albigensian denied His human nature. Man's body, living or dead, was Satan's (Jehovah's) creation and to be annihilated; respectful burial of the dead was frowned on; marriage was sinful, since to engender was to capture souls and imprison them in the material world or Hell. Libertinage was preferable to marriage, since it did not pose as virtuous. We find in an official recantation of his Albigensian beliefs by a Midi lord that he promises to accept the Church's tenet that marriage is not sinful, as was taught by his sect. The Albigensian heresy was an anti-social peril. It is sophistry to say, as has Molinier, that we do not know what they taught, or to call their movement a step in freeing the human mind, as do certain modern rationalists. They had two moralities, one for the people, or Hearers, and a stricter code for the elect, or the Perfect. If a Perfect relapsed, he had, after death, to pass through another existence, or Hell, in another body. This current of anti-Christian thought, flowing in from the East, brought with it the over-rigid asceticism of the Orient, but in the Midi few lived up to ascetic practices. There were minor divergencies in the tenets according to the different regions, but always, East or West, the heretics were one in their detestation of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and of the Church and her sacraments, especially that of Holy Eucharist. The Church was held to be a prolongation of the abhorred synagogue, and, like it, an incarnation of Satan. No one can deny the crying need of reform in the Midi church. But the Albigensians damned one half of the Creator's work--the visible world--and the perfection which they preached was race suicide. When, more recently, Mormonism struck at the root of the social fabric, the United States government took immediate action. Had the Mormons resisted, had they, for instance, murdered an ambassador from Washington and war resulted, would we not think that the use of force by the Federal government was legitimate? From 1100 to 1208 Rome had sent one peaceful ambassador after another into Languedoc. St. Bernard, who was loved all over Europe, was stoned in the Midi streets. The Albigenses were aggressive wherever they outnumbered the orthodox, and as most of the Midi lords held the new tenets, it was the believer who was persecuted in Languedoc. Churches were attacked and bishops flung into prison. Because the Count of Béziers accepted a local council which had censured the heretics, he was murdered by the people of Béziers in the very church and on the very day where they themselves, forty years later, were massacred by the northerners. "On all sides is the image of death," wrote the visiting bishop of Tournai, in 1182, "villages are in ashes, churches in ruin, and the inhabitants living like beasts." Long before the crusaders arrived in Languedoc life there was a bloody feud, and like ravening wolves the heretic lords warred one on another; their repeated divorces were a flaunted scandal. The Albigensian Crusade is no isolated page in the annals of the Midi. Read of the anarchy in the south, previous to 1208, and then pass from the XIII century to the gigantic duel between France and England in the Hundred Years' War. You will feel no sense of dislocation. The crusade methods were hideous, but not exceptional. In the later debacle, Froissart relates as a matter of course the pleasant little jaunt of the Black Prince, _fleur de toute chevalerie_, into Languedoc, in 1355,[232] when he burned some seven thousand houses in the faubourgs of Toulouse, when Carcassonne was twice sacked and burned, Narbonne wrecked, treasure seized, and all ages and sexes butchered "till a line of fire and blood stretched from Toulouse to the sea." And the Black Prince was succeeded by avowed freebooters who gnawed France to the bone, the Grandes Compagnies who, as said the harassed pontiff at Avignon, _mettaient tout la Crestienté à combustion_. It was in the dire times of the XIV century that the Midi churches fortified themselves. War slackens architectural work in any period. A radical decay of builders' energy in the Midi was not the result of the Albigensian Crusade, since Languedoc erected its chief Gothic churches between those wars and the Hundred Years' War, a period, moreover, that was controlled by the newly functioning Inquisition. To generations torn by anarchy, the methods of that tribunal, hateful though they appear to us, were an advance in jurisprudence. Every leader of the day accepted them as a progress. The civil courts were not to be able, for centuries to come, to offer even such guaranty for justice. No balanced mind can read the lives of such chief inquisitors as, for instance, St. Raymond of Penafort,[233] and fail to comprehend that past history is not to be read in the light of modern prejudices. Rome had carried on a hundred years' diplomatic negotiation with the Midi heretics. Finally, in 1208, the pope's legate was murdered by a henchman of the Count of Toulouse and hostilities were precipitated. Innocent III proclaimed a crusade. Later he regretted its excesses just as he had cause to deplore the divergence of the Fourth Crusade to filibustering purposes, but he was too entirely a man of his own epoch to regret the Albigensian Crusade itself. By 1209 the northern barons had invaded Languedoc and many a building-bishop was in their ranks. The spirit of crusading was at first strong enough to prevent their attacking the rich trading city of Montpellier which lay in their path but which was singularly free of heresy. Yet their very next step was a sacrilege. The orthodox population of Béziers, when called on to deliver up their heretic citizens, answered they would sooner see themselves sunk in the deep sea. It would seem that from the first hour many Catholics of the Midi looked on the crusade as a war of conquest on the part of the barons of the north. Between north and south was deep-rooted antipathy. The more cultivated but more corrupted Midi scorned the rougher peoples beyond their confines, who in their turn despised the southerners. Inevitable was it that a clash between those opposite civilizations should acquire the character of racial hate. Simon de Montfort, chosen leader of the crusaders after the sack of Béziers, soon overran the heretical region, whereupon many barons of the north, deeming that the ethical purpose of the Midi excursion was accomplished, returned to their homes. Henceforth the racial and political aspects of the struggle were accentuated. Cruelty and perfidy marked both sides. The Midi lords boasted that no crusader escaped them with eyes, fists, or feet, and they cut into little pieces the nephew of Albéric de Humbert, archbishop-builder of Rheims Cathedral. In retaliation Simon de Montfort cut off heretics' ears and noses. By 1212 word was sent to Innocent III that hate and cupidity, as much as zeal for the Faith, actuated the invaders, whereupon the pope roundly ordered them to pass into Spain to fight Islam. It was too late to stem the tide. In 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council, in which every power in Christendom, lay and ecclesiastic, had a voice, Simon de Montfort's retention of his Midi conquests was sanctioned. Simon's death, in 1218, led young Raymond VII of Toulouse to rise in arms and the wars that followed were frankly political. In 1229 peace was signed under the portal of Paris Cathedral and the only daughter of Raymond VII affianced to the brother of the king of France. ALBI CATHEDRAL[234] Laissons-nous aller de bonne foi aux choses qui nous prennent par les entrailles et ne cherchons point de raisonnements pour nous empêcher d'avoir du plaisir.--MOLIÈRE. The city which gave its name to the terrible episode of the XIII century lies forty miles east of Toulouse. The local saying is, "Who has not seen the cathedral of Albi and the tower of Rodez has seen nothing." Albi Cathedral yields to none in its gaunt majesty. It stands apart in one's visions of travel, as unique a memorial of past history as the Mount of the Archangel off the coast of Normandy, as Vézelay looking out over the soft valleys of Burgundy, as Le Puy on its basaltic pinnacles. Never was a monument more absolutely itself. [Illustration: _Albi Cathedral (1282-1399). A Midi Fortress Church_] Unfrequented Albi was once in the stir of life, and over its stone bridge, built nine centuries ago, have passed the notable folk of the Middle Ages[235] as they wended their way to Santiago Compostela, whither all the world was going in those days. Time-scarred houses border the reddish Tarn; dark, decayed streets climb the hill. At a curve of the river, bastions and ramparts rise in terraces to a fortified episcopal palace and--crowning all--the enormous bulk of the cathedral. Its long, stark wall strikes the sky in a formidable straight line. The west façade is a massive donjon, four hundred feet above the Tarn. No welcoming west portals here, no extended transept arms of sacrificial mercy, no soaring buttress, no leaping pinnacles. Not the lore of Christ, "Do as you would be done by," seems to have inspired Albi, but the Hebraic spirit of breaking one's enemies' bones, as if the Jehovah of the Old Testament, outraged by Albigensian blasphemies, here asserted himself in a temple that would forever be a looming menace for heretics. Albi's forbidding structure rose between those two harsh epochs--the Albigensian Crusade and the Hundred Years' War. Its aggressive mass was planned by a most aggressive churchman, Bernard, Cardinal de Castanets, the city's learned bishop detested of the people as their uncompromising feudal master, as well as a spiritual chief so harsh in his inquisitorial functions that a pontifical commission was appointed, in 1306, to repair his excesses. In 1282 Bernard de Castanets laid the first stone of Albi Cathedral and for twenty years he and the chapter contributed a twentieth of their revenues. The church was finished by the sixty-fifth bishop, Guillaume de la Voulte, in the last years of the XIV century. To approach the cathedral at its apse end is not so picturesque as from the river side, but it is formidable enough. The prodigious apse rises abruptly, imperiously, from the town square. One fairly shivers beneath its Tolosan brick walls, overtowering and overpowering, broken merely by a few narrow windows--surely the narrowest ever made in a Gothic church--and by uniform bastion-tower buttresses. Gargoyles, of as alien an aspect as those of the Jacobins' at Toulouse, crane their gaunt necks from the upper walls, as if asking what manner of Gothic this is. Albi Cathedral is the meridional interpretation of the national art. The traditions of Rome held tenaciously in southern France, where builders disliked to show the machinery by which their edifices stood. The buttresses at Albi are in larger part hidden within the church under the guise of walls between the side chapels. The flying buttress is uncommon in the Midi. Like Rome again, with her preference for an unencumbered floor space, Albi's immense interior is unbroken by aisles. The vault's diagonals spring over a width of sixty feet--a span unrivaled by any in the north. Albi Cathedral is a vast hall three hundred feet long, one hundred feet high, not high enough for its length, perhaps, but few will regret having the marvelous frescoed ceiling, "the missal of St. Cecilia," brought nearer to the eye. The tutelary of this fortress-church is the gentle patroness of music. Half the fascination of Albi comes from its convincing inconsistencies. It would seem that not Cécile--doubly feminine and gracious under her French name--but Michael Archangel with a brandished sword, should guard this rugged pile. As if the good people of Albi felt the incongruity, they added, long after Bishop de Castanets' day, a southern portal preceded by a porch, the baldaquin, with all its elaborate Flamboyant tracery executed in a creamy-white marble in which surely Cécile, saint though she was, must have felt a personal satisfaction. An architect of genius set that marble porch of Albi against its red time-dulled walls, 'alabaster on corall'; one takes liberties with Chaucer's rime: And southward in a portal on the wall Of alabaster white on red corall An oratorie riche for to see, In honor of the Roman Cicily. To ascend to the marble baldaquin one passes under a fortified sculptured gateway, erected by the Dominican bishop of Albi, Dominique de Florence (1392-1410). The marble portal and porch were executed under Bishop Louis I d'Amboise (1472-1502) and his successor, Louis II d'Amboise (1502-11) his nephew, belonging to an enlightened family all of whose members excelled in affairs, war, letters, and art, leaving their memorials at Chaumont on the Loire, their feudal seat, at Cluny, Paris, Clermont, Gaillon, and Rouen. Louis I d'Amboise also adorned the interior of his cathedral by the sumptuous screen of white stone that surrounds the choir, leaving a passageway between it and the side chapels. The rood-loft, or _jubé_ (so called because from its balcony the clerk chanted _Jube Domine dicere_ before the gospel), is sculptured with the ermine of Anne of Brittany and the lilies of France, being made about 1499, when Anne wedded Louis XII. Bishop Louis at Albi was brother of the king's prime minister, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise. Originally the choir screen of Albi was painted in colors. While the accessories indicate that the Italian Renaissance was obtaining headway in France, the images derive from the short, overdraped Franco-Flamand figures of Dijon. Perhaps the stonecutters who made Albi's choir wall came direct from Cluny, where a late-Gothic chapel, on which had worked Abbot Jacques d'Amboise, was adorned with prophets and apostles, each with his suitable text. On the inner wall of Albi's choir screen are sculptured homely but charming little angels, and the twelve apostles holding scrolls inscribed with phrases of the _Crédo_. Old Testament personages, who only heralded the Messiah, were not admitted to the _sanctum sanctorum_; the vestibule was their proper place. Prosper Mérimée called Albi's screen "a splendid folly before which one is ashamed to be wise." Inside and out it is exuberant with sculpture, though its extravagant caprices do not stifle a very real religious feeling in the images. Such a profusion of delicate ornament led the modern critic to suspect that the choir wall was modeled in cement, not chiseled in stone, but when a Sorbonne geologist analyzed the substance it was found to be a fine-grained white stone that grows harder with time. Everywhere in St. Cecilia's cathedral is fragile loveliness set side by side, as an afterthought, with stern forcefulness. Bishop Louis II d'Amboise brought from Italy a group of artists to paint the panels of Albi's cyclopean vaulting, and the work accomplished by those men of northern Italy, from 1509 to 1512, remains the most splendid color decoration of the Middle Ages in France. Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling in those same years. Languedoc produced another superb array of color, the windows of Auch Cathedral,[236] and we must not forget that the greatest of all Renaissance glassworkers, the friar who filled Arezzo with glory, was a Midi Frenchman. Amid Albi's arabesques the artists from Bologna and Modena inscribed their names, and some young lovers wrote "Antonia, mia bella," and "Lucrezia Cantora, bolognesa." The frescoes give the genealogy of Christ. They recall Perugino, Francia, and Pintoriccio. Never was blue background more marvelous--a strong rare hue neither indigo nor Prussian nor peacock, but a blending of them all in a cerulean depth of color--an art as entirely lost to posterity as the blue background of Suger's windows. Chemical analysis has busied itself with Albi's frescoes, too; but though the blue color of the vault panels was found to be obtained from the precipitation of salts of copper by carbonate of potassium, how to produce a similar hue to-day remains unsolved. Over the blue background wind lovely arabesques, and the saints portrayed are stately Italians of the Renaissance. The diagonals and transverse arches are colored in old-gold. On the western wall of the church a XV-century fresco was painted directly on the bricks, a Last Judgment copied from popular woodcuts of the day, with the punishments of the seven deadly sins pitilessly set forth. The painting was ruthlessly cut into when a chapel was introduced under the western tower. The side chapels of Ste. Cécile are illuminated in gold and color like a Book of Hours. Never was there a church of such contrasts: within--a shrine of warm, polished, over-splendid beauty, and without--the most rugged feudal challenge of the Middle Ages. CARCASSONNE[237] It is the first sharp vision of an unknown town, the first immediate vision of a range of hills, that remains forever, and is fruitful of joy within the mind ... that is perhaps the chief of the fruits of travel.--HILAIRE BELLOC. The Cité of Carcassonne was long one of the most formidable fortresses of Europe, covering the route from ocean to sea and guarding a pass into Spain. These Pyrenean provinces of France gave Joffre and Foch to the World War. The lower walls of the Cité were of Rome's building; above came the Visigothic defenses; then St. Louis extended the fortifications and his son completed them. Within its double belt of walls and half a hundred towers is the precious little church of St. Nazaire, once of cathedral rank. Its western front was never opened by a portal because it stood near what were long the outer ramparts. The Romanesque nave is small and dark, without triforium or clearstory, and with high aisles that buttress the tunnel vault of the principal span, whose transverse ribs are slightly pointed. Piers and columns alternate. The materials to build this early church were blessed by Urban II in 1096 in the same month that he dedicated the new choir of St. Sernin at Toulouse. St. Nazaire was an entirely Romanesque church when Simon de Montfort ruled the Cité for ten years. In this church St. Dominic married Amaury de Montfort to a princess of Dauphiny. St. Dominic had held a public controversy of eight days with the heretics of Carcassonne in 1205, before the coming of the northern barons, and in St. Nazaire he preached the Lent of 1213. Simon de Montfort was buried temporarily in St. Nazaire, and there exists in a nave chapel a sculptured stone which some have thought to be part of his sepulcher, but which is more probably from the tomb of a brother of Count Raymond of Toulouse, who, having sympathized with the northern barons, was slain in consequence. The curious stone shows the engines of war described in the _Chanson de la Croisade_, and the costumes of that period. Under Bishop Radulph (1255-66), who built the Gothic chapel beside the south arm of the transept, permission was obtained to replace the ancient transept and choir by a new one. Bishop Radulph won forgiveness for those citizens of Carcassonne who were expelled from the fortress in 1262, because they had conspired against the crown with one of the Trencavel dynasty, their old rulers, and the builders of the Cité's château. Louis IX, who governed Carcassonne through a seneschal, allowed the exiles to start the present town of Carcassonne beyond the river, in the plain below the citadel. The erection of the Gothic half of St. Nazaire took place under Bishop Pierre de Roquefort (d. 1321) during the first twenty years of the XIV century. To him we owe the radiant glass lantern which is St. Nazaire's transept and choir, a structure that is really a big transept with seven chapels, equally high, along its eastern wall, the central of which chapels, and the longest, serving as choir. The windows in the chapels rise to the roof, and are filled with clear and brilliant glass ranked with the best of the XIV century; those in the first two chapels excel the others. Two windows show the arms of Pierre de Roquefort. St. Nazaire was one of the last to use the legend-medallion type of window; henceforth, in each panel, a single figure was placed in an architectural setting. The seven eastern chapels of the transept open one on the other above a low dividing wall, and standing out from those walls, so that a narrow passage is made between them and the transept, are detached piers that rise powerfully from pavement to vault-springing. Above their capitals the molds die away in the column--a very early use of a Flamboyant characteristic. The two pillars flanking the entrance to the choir are decorated, midway up, with statues under canopies sculptured by northern artists before 1320. Archæologists declare that the Gothic part of the Cité's ancient cathedral are the perfection of XIV-century construction, elastic in every part, each part fulfilling its own separate function. The ogival principle could not be carried farther. It is thought that some architect of the north made the plan, which local masons executed. The only Midi trait is the flat, tiled roof. Modern restoration has overhauled the citadel of Carcassonne too radically. Imperiously set though it is, does it grip the imagination as entirely as Aigues-Mortes, lying flat on marsh lands, its time-stained walls untouched? Often in France one echoes Pius IX's response to Baron de Crozé, who proposed the restoration of the Coliseum: "Dear Son, I have read your memoir and I thank you for it; but do you not know that there are two sorts of vandalism, one which consists in destroying, the other in restoring? Never has the Coliseum been so beautiful as in its moving contrast of past splendor and magnificent present decay. To restore it is to annihilate the work of centuries, to recompose an ordinary pastiche with no _éclat_." Not that Carcassonne, as redressed by M. Viollet-le-Duc, is deficient in _éclat_; it has too much of it. It is a vision of a feudal fortress too carefully prepared, too deliberately made ready for the tourist. In the lower town are the typically meridional churches of St. Michel, the actual cathedral of Carcassonne, and St. Vincent whose aisleless hall is the widest in the Midi--a span of sixty-eight feet. Even when using diagonals, the south kept true to its favorite Romanesque traditions. Neither church has a triforium, the apse windows are long and narrow, over the entrance of each chapel is an eight-lobed rose, and the buttresses are disguised as walls between the side chapels. The tracery is Rayonnant. St. Vincent was built after the Black Prince burned Carcassonne in 1355. At its sculptured portal was placed a statue of the newly canonized saint-king, Louis IX, under whom this modern Carcassonne was founded. NARBONNE CATHEDRAL[238] Que chaque homme console un homme, Fasse un bien, donne une pitié, Ne t'occupe pas de la somme: Ce pain sera multiplié. --JEAN AICARD (born in the Midi, 1848). At Narbonne one is at the very heart of the Midi. It is an ancient mother city of Europe, a capital of Celtic Gaul. Surpassed by nothing in the Roman world, Narbonne kept its pre-eminence under both pagan and Christian Rome. It became the seat of the Visigothic royal line, and of their Moorish conquerors. Charlemagne made it a fortified outpost, and during the Middle Ages it was the richest of trading centers, a third of whose population was Jewish. In 1311, the same covetous king who abolished the Templars banished the Jews, to whom Charlemagne had given the freedom of this town for their support of his cause against Islam. To-day one walks its dust-white streets with a strange sensation of loneliness. Narbonne is a dead city. When in the latter part of the XIII century the great Gothic cathedral of St. Just was begun, there seemed no reason why so flourishing a trading center could not succeed in the enterprise. Unlike Beauvais, where the chief church was from its inception out of all proportion to the population, Narbonne could easily have erected a nave to complete its mighty choir. In 1272 was laid the first stone of St. Just Cathedral.[239] Then there occurred here what happens to all rivers that communicate with the sea by means of lagoons: gradually the salt lakes silt up till they become marshes through which the river winds tortuously till suddenly it breaks a new path to the sea. In 1320 occurred this catastrophe for Narbonne. The Roman dike gave way and the river Aude left its ancient bed, quitting Narbonne to flow toward Courson, where it still is. The stagnant waters bred disease, and the metropolis, greeted by Sidonius Apollinaris for its salubrity, _Salve Narbo, potens salubritate_, became a pestilential site. Narbonne sank into silent decay. Over the shrunken city stands the ghostly fragment of the great cathedral, surpassed in height only by Beauvais and Amiens. St. Just was begun in 1272, and three years later the cathedral of Toulouse was started on a plan and with profiles so closely resembling Narbonne's chief church that one master may have designed both. Both derive immediately from those northern Gothic churches translated with a meridional accent, the cathedrals of Clermont, whose choir was finished in 1265, and of Limoges, begun in 1273. The Midi shows in Narbonne Cathedral in the simplified triforium which is framed by wall spaces, as are the clearstory windows, in the extremely high pier arcades, and in the stout buttresses that are disguised as dividing walls between the side chapels. The capitals are mere uncarved bands, and over them certain molds die away in the pier. M. Anthyme Saint-Paul's theory was that even in the XIII century began the evolution which was to end in Flamboyant Gothic. He pointed out, in Narbonne's chapels, windows with Rayonnant tracery side by side with flamelike undulations. M. Enlart thinks we cannot be sure that they were done at the same time. An unusual and graceful aspect was achieved in the choir's northern aisle by the setting of piers beyond the dividing walls of the chapels, making a kind of double aisle like that in the transept of St. Nazaire at Carcassonne. An architect named Henri is cited as master-of-works at Gerona Cathedral whose chevet, begun after 1312, resembles that of St. Just. Henri was a name uncommon in the Midi. It is thought that he was the original architect of Narbonne. His successor at Gerona, Jacques de Favari or Favers, a name of the central plateau of France, is known to have directed the works of Narbonne's chief church. Catalonia, Aragon, and Languedoc were allied in architecture as in tongue. Poblet in Catalonia is directly the daughter of the abbey at Fontfroide, six miles from Narbonne.[240] The Gothic influence of Narbonne spread to the isles in the Mediterranean, to southern Italy and Cyprus. Archbishop Maurin began Narbonne Cathedral after the tragic crusade of St. Louis in 1270. He had vowed that if ever again he saw the fair land of France he would offer thanksgiving by rebuilding his church. The corner stone and relics were sent by Pope Clement IV, originally a lawyer at St. Gilles, and then archbishop of Narbonne, whose crumbling cathedral of Charlemagne's time he had purposed to replace by a Gothic one, when his translation to the papacy intervened. The apse chapels were built first. The main parts of the choir are the work of Archbishop Gilles Aycelin de Montaigu, (1292-1311), a noble of Auvergne, brother of the bishop who was building Clermont Cathedral and who had himself been a canon at Clermont. He also began the cloister, and to his own residence added a donjon tower. It is thought that the episcopal palace at Narbonne served as prototype for the palace of the popes at Avignon. In modern times, between its ancient towers a town hall has been constructed. In 1311 Gilles Aycelin was transferred to the see of Rouen, and Rouen's archbishop, Bernard de Farges (d. 1341), a nephew of the pope who built the choir of Bordeaux Cathedral, took his place at Narbonne, where he completed the giant choir. Services were held in it in 1320. The truncated western end of the cathedral is a depressing sight. Work stopped after the completion of the east wall of the transept, whose window apertures had later to be filled in; by the XV century all hope of completing the church was abandoned, and two west towers were raised. In the XVIII century the plan to build a nave was revived and part of the city ramparts were thrown down to allow for its extension. One bay of the proposed structure was begun in bastard Gothic, and then the enterprise collapsed. The present entrance is through a door contrived in one of the apse chapels. The exterior of that apse was fortified. From one turreted buttress pile to the other was maneuvered a crenelated gallery, and originally the passage communicated with the bishop's palace. Although sadly needing a nave, Narbonne's choir is a proud and noble vessel. Critics have called it a work of mechanical skill more than of imagination. Its science is beyond cavil, each thrust being exactly counterbutted. Profiles, however are angular and there is a painful lack of sculpture. If, technically, Narbonne's chief church is somewhat hard and dry, it has retained sufficient of the emotional quality of Gothic, what has been called its _sursum corda_, to belong to the grand tradition of the national art. Moreover, one can kneel reverentially on the very steps of the altar instead of being kept at a stately distance. In the clearstory are the loveliest XIV-century windows in France, like rare-toned etchings or delicate spider-web, time-stained lace. As there is color in them, it is inexact to call such windows grisaille, but the subdued note of grisaille glass predominates. Between Narbonne and Spain lies Perpignan's XIV-century[241] cathedral, and Elne's cloister, called a work of supreme elegance by the critical Prosper Merimée, and to the east at Béziers is a fortified cathedral with massive towers, begun in 1215 and building through the XIV century; it has good stained glass of this latter period. One's interest in Béziers centers in the terrible massacre of 1209, the opening act of the Albigensian Crusade. Not that the mere sacking of a city would have roused such horror. In the course of its history eight massacres had occurred in Béziers. It was a day when such acts were the accepted methods of warfare and the northern leaders had discussed whether it were not good tactics to start their campaign by terrorization. It was the slaughtering of the citizens in the churches to which they had fled for sanctuary that violated the general standards. Witnesses of the sacking of Béziers say that while the chiefs of the besieging army were considering how to spare those in the city who were not Albigensian, an assault was started through the skirmish of lawless hangers-on of the crusading army and a few townspeople. In the confusion that followed, the northern knights rushed to arms and the city was captured. A XX-century wrecking of the Louvain-Dinant-Termonde type followed, and some twenty thousand perished. Modern scholars doubt that the famous _Tuez-les-tous_ remark, attributed to Abbot Arnaud of Cîteaux, who died archbishop of Narbonne, was ever uttered. He is accused of saying, "Kill them all, God will know his own," when asked how the orthodox were to be told from the heretics. No contemporary chronicle mentions it and Albigensian historians would certainly have flung such words at the crusaders; equally would an ardent admirer of Simon de Montfort, who wrote his _Gestes_, have lauded the sentiment, if one is to judge by other happenings he thought praiseworthy. Neither enemy nor friend mentions the _Tuez-les-tous_ phrase. It first occurs in the history of a German monk at Bonn, long after the Midi crusade, and the pages of that chronicler are so filled with discredited assertions that little he says should be taken seriously. MONTPELLIER AND MAGUELONNE[242] The tocsin sounded its lamentable notes of alarm over all the land of France. Fire? No. _War._ The voice of the bells long condemned to silence by the authorities suddenly rang out everywhere. From the high belfries spread the warning, and no one worried now to refuse to God, to the Inexplicable, the right of speech. From God's house alone came to France, waiting in tense agony, the announcement of the most terrible catastrophe that ever fell like an avalanche on humanity. Sunrise to sunset from east to west, from north to south rang out the coming of War, the world's misery.--JEAN AICARD, on how the World War opened in the Midi.[243] In Montpellier is a stately terrace called the Peyrou, built in the artificial, distinguished style of Louis XIV, from which one looks out on a most lovely landscape of Midi fertility.[244] Here Mistral in 1878 read his vibrant ode to the Latin race, _la race lumineuse, la race apostolique_, and a generation later the people gathered here to listen to the belfries far and near ring out over that peaceful Claude Lorraine scene the hour of unity in battle array, for all Frenchmen--Latin and Celt and Frank. No longer a Midi and a North. The time was past for race hate or conquest to pose as a crusade. The time had come to end the silencing of Christian steeples under the guise of freedom. As one man, Midi and North sprang up in answer to the tocsin of August, 1914. What to-day is the cathedral of Montpellier was built from 1364 to 1367 as a monastery church, so that it hardly falls within our scope. But if architecturally the city of Montpellier is of lesser importance, it has been for long centuries the intellectual stronghold of the Midi, and we know that cathedrals are built with more than stones. Montpellier's school of medicine was famous in the XII century. The city was free of Albigensian taint; no trading town was more flourishing during the XIII century. At the hour that the northern barons invaded the Midi, the heiress of Montpellier, whom the king of Aragon married for her dowry and immediately deserted, gave birth to one who was to build more churches than any monarch in Christendom. Twelve candles were set up in the chief church of Montpellier, each with the name of an apostle, and when the candle called James burned the longest the child was named Jaime. An inscription on the Tour du Pin, a vestige of the city ramparts that originally had twenty-five such towers, records the birth of Jaime el Conquistador, the scourge of Islam, the conqueror of Valencia and the Balearic Islands, and the builder of six thousand churches. His father was one of the victors of Las Navas de Tolosa, in 1212, where a vital blow was struck at Moorish domination in Spain; yet he was killed in the very next year in Languedoc, fighting on the heretic side. Peter of Aragon looked on the Albigensian Crusade as a northern war of conquest, and if outsiders were to win new lands why had he not the same right. Jaime's mother fled to Rome, the sole court of arbitration then in Europe, and when she died there, she left her son the ward of Innocent III.[245] The pope compelled Simon de Montfort, who held the child as hostage, to return him to his Spanish subjects. Jaime's tutor was that Languedoc knight, St. Peter Nolasco (d. 1258), who founded the Order of Mercy to redeem captives from Moslem prisons, but no saint-tutor or saint-neighbor could tame this fierce young eagle, the scion of the French Midi and the Spanish Pyrenees. From the time he buckled on his sword as a boy, to his death in 1276, the weapon never left his side. He cut off the ear of the bishop of Gerona who had rebuked his free living, for Jaime's domestic relations were on a par with those of the Languedoc lords and of his Mahommedan neighbors. The church which now is Montpellier's cathedral consists of a modern choir of the meridional type, without ambulatory or flying buttresses, and a nave built as an abbatial by Guillaume de Grimoard, the best of the Avignon popes, Urban V. The nave is a wide, unaisled hall, with small clearstory windows. Even when the Midi used diagonals, says M. Enlart, it remained faithful to Romanesque traditions. At the west façade is an ungainly canopy held up by two round turrets of solid stone, the sort of thing which is a builder's notion, not the design of an architect. Urban was disappointed when he found that his architect from Avignon had erected a big chapel rather than a church. When he came to Montpellier in 1367 the new edifice was almost finished. He was honored as never man was before by any city. The townspeople marched out to meet him, every guild and corporation in the ranks, the lawyers carrying the image of the newly canonized St. Yves of Brittany. When the pope's visit ended, half the population walked for miles with him into the country, and the town authorities escorted him all the way back to Avignon. Urban V had been educated in Montpellier and he loved its university, in which for years he had taught law in the school where Petrarch studied. He renewed the departments of law and art, put new life into the famed medical school (which to-day is housed in the former bishop's palace, fortified with propped machicolations), and founded a college for the free maintenance of a certain number of students. To this day Montpellier reveres him. All over Christendom this energetic Midi baron endowed institutions of learning, supported hundreds of students, and built monuments. He founded the universities of Prague, Cracow, and Vienna, re-established that of Orvieto, made a school of music at Toulouse, began the cathedral of Mende,[246] near his birthplace, and in Marseilles rebuilt St. Victor's, where he had been abbot,[247] and where remains his towering tomb. At Avignon he continued the making of its walls of defense, for it was a day when the lawless _Grandes Compagnies_ roved over France. Urban was too wise a man not to perceive that his continued residence at Avignon was a detriment to the papacy, and he made a valiant effort to return to Rome. There, too, he was no sooner established than he initiated works of art.[248] Broken by the disorders round him with which he had not strength to cope, he returned to his beloved southern France, where he died almost immediately, in 1370. His successor, Gregory XI, inspired by St. Catherine of Siena, who journeyed to Avignon in 1376, was to be the pontiff who ended what Italy, sick to death, called "the Babylonian captivity." Montpellier was not a bishopric till 1536, when the see was removed from Maguelonne here, and no sooner was the new see established when the city was sacked twice--in 1561 and again in 1565. Every tomb in the present cathedral was violated. Were its walls lined with those old-time memorials they would appear less bare. Neither side was distinguished by amenity in those long years of civil strife. Maguelonne, the original bishopric, lies six miles from Montpellier on the Mediterranean. In ancient days it was a little island of volcanic formation, then in time an island in a swamp, connected artificially with the mainland. Climb to the flat stone roof of the ancient cathedral of St. Pierre, almost the only monument left standing here where civilization has followed civilization, and look across the lagoons that lie between France and the solitary dead city. Europe and the present seem no longer to exist in this the most aloof, self-effaced, most philosophic spot in the world. Maguelonne had known all the peoples in their pride. During fifteen hundred years it played its part--Celt, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman ruled here in turn. Visigothic Wamba besieged it. Islam held it under the name of Port Saracen till Charles Martel drove the sea robbers from their stronghold by destroying the city; only the new church of St. Peter was saved. For the following three centuries Maguelonne lay deserted. Then in 1037 Bishop Arnaud undertook to restore the city, and the cathedral he rebuilt was blessed in 1054. Prosperity soon returned under a republican form of government, with the bishop as president. Maguelonne became an asylum for exiles and a retreat for scholars. Urban II blessed the island in 1095. When Pope Gelasius II, driven from Rome, landed at St. Gilles in 1118, he soon sailed thence for Maguelonne, and hither came Alexander III in 1162. The cathedral of St. Pierre stood up a very rock of defense against the corsairs of Spain and Africa. On its flat stone roof engines of war were placed. The present XI-century church replaces that of Charles Martel's day; over an arm of its transept occurred one of the pre-Gothic early uses of diagonals. The transverse arches of the nave are slightly pointed. On the lintel of its portal of creamy-white marble--Classic, Saracenic, Romanesque, and Gothic, with doorjamb bas-reliefs of Peter and Paul, key and sword--were inscribed by Bernard de Trevies in 1178 some Latin verses still legible: Ye who seek life's port to gain enter now this sacred fane. If ye pass these gates within, ye may break the chains of sin, So to pray thou must not fail, all thy cruel sins bewail; Know that all thy sins and fears may be washed away in tears.[249] The cathedral of St. Peter was spared in the second annihilation of Maguelonne, which took place after the religious wars, when Richelieu's policy was to level every possible fort that rebellion might use. Stone by stone the other monuments of the city were carried away. When the canal from Cette to Aigues-Mortes was built, in 1708, Maguelonne became a useful quarry. St. Peter's church now stands alone, embalmed as in amber, preaching the sobering lesson, _Sic transit gloria mundi_. AIGUES-MORTES[250] Aigues-Mortes! Consonnance d'une désolation incomparable! Dans le train si lent à traverser la Camargue je m'imagine ces mornes remparts qui depuis sept siècles subsistent intacts. J'évoque ces mystérieux Sarrasins, ces légers Barbaresques qui pillaient ces côtes et fuaient, insaisis, même par l'histoire. Aigues-Mortes, le vieux guerrier qu'ils assaillaient sans trêve, est toujours à son poste, étendu sur la plaine, comme un chevalier, les armes à la main, est figé en pierre sur son tombeau.--MAURICE BARRÈS.[251] "I propose that we institute a pilgrimage," sighed Rodin, "to all monuments _de plein air_ yet spared by restoration." Aigues-Mortes' big quadrangle set on the dead lagoons is precisely as it came from its builder's hand in the reign of Philippe III, son of St. Louis. No destructive restoration has ever chipped away the time stain of centuries. So shrunken is the little town of to-day, within those imposing ramparts with their fifteen towers and nine gateways, that it is as weird an experience to encircle the walls within as to make the solitary tour without. No sooner did St. Louis take the crusaders' vow, in 1244, when he began to look about for a concentration camp on the southern coast. He was suzerain only in the south of France. Narbonne had its own counts and so had Provence; St. Gilles and Adge were in the Toulouse countship, and the Montpellier coast was under Aragon. Practically only swampy Aigues-Mortes was available. St. Louis purchased it from the monks of Psalmodi, and reconstructed an old tower on the site which had served as a fort during piratical attacks. The grand Tour de Constance, now standing outside the quadrangle fortification, is the only part of Aigues-Mortes of Louis IX's day. He deepened the tortuous canal of eight miles that led to the sea, since Aigues-Mortes never was directly on the Mediterranean. The Genoese architect, Boccanegra, who constructed the ramparts for Philippe III, followed the type of fortified town in the Orient; Aigues-Mortes especially resembled Antioch. On both his crusades St. Louis started from his fort on the dead waters. When in 1248 the crusaders saw the low-lying spot so like the pestilential coasts of the East, many a heart felt oppressed. Again in 1270 the king's army arrived at Aigues-Mortes. Finding his transport ships delayed, Louis IX thought it best to move his warriors to the more healthful site of St. Gilles. There he held brilliant court, to keep up the idle army's spirit, and at the tourneys excelled his Provençal queen's nephew, the future king of England, Edward I. The crusaders left their mark on the walls of St. Gilles. ST. GILLES[252] Noms des Morts pour la Patrie, Qu'on vous trie Selons vos provinces; puis, Pour propager votre culte, Qu'on vous sculpte Sur la borne et sur le puits!... Mais d'abord, que votre zèle Vous cisèle Sur les maisons mêmes d'où Pour aller vers le martyre, Ils partirent Dans le soleil du mois d'août. ... On lira sur la corniche Pauvre ou riche: "_Mort pour nous ... un tel ... un tel...._" Trois fois, tous bas, comme on prie, On s'écrie: "_Morts pour nous ... pour nous ... pour nous!_" --EDMOND ROSTAND (1868-1918; born in Marseilles).[253] To this day on the stones of St. Gilles' abbatial are the graffiti of ships and warriors--a king among them--scratched by the swords of St. Louis' crusaders before they crossed to their death in Africa, 1270. The sadly dilapidated bourg which is St. Gilles to-day played a prominent part in the important centuries of the Middle Ages. Many were the popes and kings who visited it to venerate the tomb of the VIII-century hermit, Ægidius, from Athens, whose cult was widely spread over western Christendom, as many a church image and window showing the holy man and his fawn remain to tell. The counts of Toulouse were the chief patrons of the abbey. On the First Crusade, Raymond IV of Toulouse bore the title Count of St. Gilles. Raymond VI held here, in 1208, an interview with the papal legate, Guy de Castelnau, the after-consequences of which precipitated the Albigensian wars. Angry words were uttered by the count when the legate rebuked him for shielding the heretics, and the next day the legate was murdered by one of the count's retainers as he was about to cross the Rhone. Thereupon Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade. In the following year Raymond VI performed penance before the church door of St. Gilles--the last public canonical penance of the Middle Ages. The disasters of the house of Toulouse diminished the abbey's building funds. The discussions over the date of St. Gilles have been of importance because of its relation to the school of Provençal sculpture of which the most notable monument is its triple portal. Before St. Gilles' western end is a mass of composite imagery, of different dates and material, yet composing an architectural unit. Six bays of the nave are covered by a masonry roof of the XVIII century; only the piers and side walls of the edifice are ancient. Beyond the nave lie the ruins of the choir, in which has been installed an open-air archæological museum. Did the choir of St. Gilles still stand, it would be the best Gothic monument in the south of France, exceptional in possessing an ambulatory and radiating chapels. At its entrance still exists a spiral staircase, the _vis de St. Gilles_, the first of its kind constructed, which many a mason of the Middle Ages journeyed hither to see. The steps compose an annular vault, winding like a corkscrew. According to M. Labande, the choir of St. Gilles was built from 1140 to 1175, and at first there was no intention of vaulting it with diagonals. As the walls rose, however, a Gothic vault was prepared for. The nave, whose capitals have well-cut acanthus leaves, was erected from 1175 to 1209. It could not have been finished when in 1265 Clement IV rebuked his fellow citizens of St. Gilles for their delay in completing their church. Clement had been a local lawyer--a Romanesque house is still pointed out as his--by name, Guy Fouquet, or Fulcodi. The death of his wife caused him to embrace religion. When raised to St. Peter's chair, such was his dread of nepotism that he wrote to his daughters they were not to expect matches any more important than if he were a simple knight; we learn that the well-admonished young ladies failed to obtain any husbands at all. This pope, whom St. Louis called "_notre aimé et féal Guy_," instigated the crusade of 1270, which was associated in the hour of its departure with his own town. Despite his exhortation, St. Gilles' choir was joined to its nave only in the XIV century, as is proved by the rows of Rayonnant Gothic foliage on the capital of the nave's easternmost bay. The XVI-century religious wars devastated the abbey, which now was held by Calvinists, now by Catholics; and finally the Huguenots, after using the church as a citadel, ordered that it be razed. The tower was mined and its fall wrecked all around it, but the arrival of the king's troops saved the edifice from entire destruction; as the masonry roof had collapsed, a bastard-Gothic restoration of the nave was undertaken from 1650 to 1670. Then came the Revolution; the choir was sold and its stones carted away. So dead seemed all appreciation of the national art that the constitutional curé of St. Gilles clamored for the demolition of the famous triple portal, as its images "were insupportable reminders of past servitude, recalling the odious feudal régime, displeasing to lovers of liberty and equality." Till the middle of the XIX century the church was abandoned. During excavations in 1765 a chamber, or bay, of rough workmanship was unearthed in the crypt, and in it was found a tomb inscribed as that of St. Gilles. This is all that remains of the church in which Urban II blessed an altar in 1096. On a buttress of the crypt an inscription states that its foundation was laid Easter Monday of 1116. The abbey had been damaged by an irate count of Toulouse, and Calixtus II asked Peter the Venerable to send from Cluny a new abbot to reorganize things. The crypt's north and west walls rose first, but the work was dropped and taken up several times. All the vaulting, whether groin or diagonals, was an afterthought, for all the piers have been rearranged for the masonry roof they now support. Only a few of the westernmost bays of the crypt used diagonals, and as their profiles are the same as those in the choir, building from 1140 onward, they are probably contemporary. Inscriptions on the outer west wall of the crypt prove that in 1142 people were buried there, which would indicate that the present stair to the west portal was not yet arranged. Perhaps for a time they were not sure of making an upper church above the spacious basement. By 1209 that upper nave was built, because Innocent III buried his murdered ambassador beside the tomb of St. Gilles, and when Raymond VI had performed public penance before the portal, we are told that he was brushed against by the crowd, and escaped through the lower church, passing his victim's new tomb. The imaged portal of St. Gilles, which inspired the porch of Trinity Church, Boston, is a composite mass of imagery begun in the XII century and continued till St. Louis' day. Pilfered fragments were made use of, as was only natural in a region where Rome had left many monuments. Some of the pillars are the fluted marbles of antiquity; others are of granite. Fourteen columns and fourteen large images of apostles and angels give unity to the composition, as does the continuous wide frieze. St. Gilles' images, strong and short like the figures on the Gallo-Roman sarcophagi near the mouth of the Rhone, are perfectly proportioned to the place they occupy, cold, impersonal figures, more architectural than sculptural, the fruit of an old art, not the beginning of a new tradition, as was the theory of Herr Vöge, who would trace to Provence the origin of French Gothic sculpture. M. de Lasteyrie contended that the Porte Royale at Chartres--first of the Gothic portals, last of the Romanesque--with its long, slender figures in whose visages expression has been attempted, descends from the imaged portals of Burgundy, not from St. Gilles or St. Trophime, but from a nascent rather than a dying art tradition. The Lombard school gave to St. Gilles its lion caryatides, a very popular feature at church doors; Lanfranco, who remade Modena's cathedral in 1099, had been the first to plant pillars on the backs of lions, perhaps copying some lost work of antiquity. "A world in itself," said Prosper Merimée of St. Gilles' sculptured portal. Under the biblical scenes of the frieze animals crouch and crawl. Some of the frieze groups, such as the Flagellation, are full of spirit, and must be of later date than certain other stiff archaic figures. The Kiss of Judas with its grimacing soldiers is probably a XVII-century restoration. The only time that the Expulsion from the Temple was treated in the older work was here. The sisters Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, with Mary Jacobi and Mary Salome, are all imaged at St. Gilles' door. The tradition of their arrival in Provence was gaining in favor every day while this portico was making. The savants inform us, though not patriotic Provençal savants, that no mention of the saints of Bethany is to be found in Provence before the middle of the XI century. Monseigneur Duchesne of the Institute of France, who takes saints out of their niches as boldly as any Bollandist, tells us that it was the monks of Vézelay in Burgundy who first imagined the arrival in southern France of Mary Magdalene, in order to explain how it was they possessed her relics, the lodestar of their pilgrim shrine. Then, gradually, the legend grew till it was a remarkably full boatload that landed, in A.D. 40, at Les Saintes-Maries,[254] where the Little Rhone, on which stands St. Gilles, enters the Mediterranean: the risen Lazarus, whose relics were claimed by Autun in 1144; Martha, whose relics appeared at Tarascon in 1187 and caused a new church there to rise;[255] Marcella, the waiting woman of Martha and Mary; Maximinus, one of Our Lord's disciples; Simon the leper; St. Sidonius; Joseph of Aramathea; and the Blessed Virgin's sisters, Mary Jacobi, mother of James the Less, and Mary Salome, mother of James and John, and their dark handmaiden Sara, who became the patroness of gypsies. Monseigneur Duchesne says that a grotto dedicated to the Virgin in the mountains east of Marseilles came to be regarded, by gradual unconscious fabrication, as the Sainte Baume where Mary Magdalene passed years of penitence, for the Midi wove the story of St. Mary the Egyptian with the saint of Bethany. All these holy people who had known the Lord fled from Syria after the martyrdom of St. Stephen and found asylum in southern France. The savants can prove what they will; while in Provence, in the "kingdom of sentiment," one believes every word of it. Read Mistral's _Mireille_ and dare to be a skeptic! Under the leaden skies of Paris you may take the Institute's learning seriously. But gazing at _la grand bleu_, the frequented highway between Syria and Gaul when Roman Emperors ruled both, you say to yourself that it all _could_ have happened. For hundreds of years the people of Provence have been made better and happier because they have believed that the historic family of Bethany who entertained the Lord were entertained by them. ST. TROPHIME AT ARLES[256] Seigneur, des lois et voies antiques, nous avions quitté; l'austérité, vertus, coutumes domestiques, nous avions tout détruit, démoli.... Seigneur, nous sommes tes enfants prodigues; mais nous sommes tes vieux chrétiens: que ta justice nous châtie, mais au trépas, ne nous laisse point.... Seigneur, au nom des pauvres gens, au nom des forts, au nom des morts--qui auront péri pour la patrie, pour leur devoir, et pour leur foi!... Seigneur, pour tant d'aversités, de massacres, d'incendies; pour tant de deuil sur notre France, pour tant d'affronts sur notre front, Seigneur, désarme ta justice! Jette un regard par ici-bas; et enfin écoute les cris de meurtris et des blessés!... Seigneur, nous voulons devenir des hommes; en liberté-- tu peux nous mettre! Gallo-Romans et fils de noble race, nous marchons droit dans notre pays. --(Literal French translation of Mistral's "Psaume de la pénitence," 1870.) The western portal of the cathedral at Arles, less carefully executed than that at St. Gilles, was begun at the end of the XII century and finished in a couple of generations. Both were inspired by the same local classic influences of Rome and the subsequent Gallo-Roman development. The large statues, eminently architectural, at the famous door of St. Trophime, are as sturdy and squat as the images on early Christian tombs. Two of those ancient tombs, of the V and VI centuries, have been turned to ecclesiastic usage in this very church, as baptismal font and altar, and across the square from the cathedral many others can be studied in the Museum of Arles. The strong Byzantine influences apparent in St. Trophime's sculpture recall that Arles was the favorite residence of Constantine. From northern Italy came the animal-caryatides idea. St. Trophime's Romanesque entrance leads into a somber church under whose barrel vault reigns a mellow gloom.[257] Begun before the middle of the XI century, it was reconstructed in the XII century; the painfully narrow high side aisles are covered by quarter circles that buttress the central vessel, whose undergirding arches are slightly pointed because the pre-Gothic masons had learned that the thrust of a broken arch was less. The XV century built the insignificant choir (without the vestige of a capital), exceptional only in having the sole ambulatory and radiating chapels in Provence. A prelate of the Grignan family built a chapel projecting from the transept, for, not far away, in Dauphiny, is the château of Grignan, where Madame de Sévigné died while staying with her daughter; one knows that she and XIII-century Blanche of Castile had been friendly. [Illustration: _The Mediæval Cloister of Arles_] St. Trophime's cloister, among the most beautiful in France, building from the XII to the end of the XIV century, is the fairest Christian monument of Arles.[258] This Midi art expands in the sunlight and grows melancholy under a masonry roof. Arles was a free town when it was begun, with its own podesta and consuls like a flourishing commercial city in Italy. About 1150, the north gallery was commenced, and the one to the east soon followed. The angle pier is composite (c. 1180), with St. Trophimus standing between St. John and St. Peter, the latter being sculptured in marble. The storied capitals of the cloister are exceedingly interesting. In the second half of the XIV century the west walk was begun, and almost immediately was followed by the south gallery, which is similar to it save for slight details. The cloister was completed under Bishop Jean de Rochechouart (1390-98). Arles, like Lyons, claims a direct apostolic origin. A tradition says that St. Trophimus, her first bishop, was the disciple of the gentile of Ephesus, whom St. Paul mentioned in his epistle to Timothy. For centuries before the popularity of the Saints of Bethany legends in the Midi, St. Trophimus was revered. Pope Zosimus, in the V century, called Arles "the source from which flowed all over Gaul the rivulets of the Faith." Gregory of Tours voiced another tradition concerning St. Trophimus when he named him as one of the seven evangelists sent by Pope Fabian into Gaul in 250. At any rate, whether he lived in the first century or the third, St. Trophimus was the first bishop of Arles, and it is right that its primate church should be dedicated to him. Arles, from which flowed over Gaul the rivulets of the Faith, is a city of ruins, and yet most gracious in aspect; _Arles la blanc_, Joinville called it as he sailed by on his way to the Sixth Crusade; _Arles la Grecque_. The women walk as nobly as the matrons of antiquity here where "the copper coins of Rome's republic and the gold of the emperors gleam in the sun amid the springtime wheat." "I tell you, and you can well believe me," sings Mistral, "that the damsel of whom I speak is a queen, for, know you, she is twenty years old and she is Arlésienne.... She descended with lowered eyes the steps of St. Trophime, and the stone saints by the portal blessed her as she passed, for she was ineffably good." There are books so typical of their race, or this period, that they belong to all time, and by them posterity can learn more of the basic forces that build monuments than from many a learned treatise. Such a book is Voragine's _Golden Legend_, such a book is the _Rationale_ of Durandus. The _Barzas-Breiz_ teaches us to comprehend Carnac and the Calvaries of Brittany. Even so the soul of Provence has been interpreted by her own Mistral, who loved "the perfume of the ancient days when on the banks of the Rhone flourished a refined civilization that for a time bore the name, the Kingdom of Arles, but that really, through all the successive revolutions, was naught else but the direct survival, on French soil, of Rome's civilization."[259] ST. MAXIMIN[260] The cement, without which there can be no stability of the walls, is made of lime, sand, and water. The lime is fervent charity which joineth to itself the sand--that is, undertakings for the temporal welfare of our brethren. Now the lime and the sand are bound together in the wall by an admixture of water. Water is the emblem of the Spirit. And as without cement the stones cannot cohere, so neither can man be built up in the heavenly Jerusalem without that charity which the Holy Ghost worketh in them. The stones are built by the hands of the Great Workman into an abiding place in the Church: whereof some are borne and bear nothing, as the weaker members; some are both borne and bear, as those of moderate strength; and some bear and are borne of none save Christ the Corner Stone. All are bound together by one spirit of Charity as though fastened with cement, and these living stones are put together in the bonds of peace. --BISHOP GUILLAUME DURANDUS of Mende (1220-96), _Rationale_.[261] The bourg and church of St. Maximin lie about thirty miles east of Aix-en-Provence. Some rich Gallo-Roman noble of the V or VI century had his estate here, thinks Monseigneur Duchesne, on which he built a funereal chapel and crypt according to custom. That crypt with its early Christian sarcophagi is now under the church of St. Maximin, though why that saint is honored in the locality is not known. The first record of the site occurred when the estate was passed over to the monks of St. Victor's at Marseilles, who built a priory here (1038), and chose Maximinus as its tutelary. It was only when some fertile brain, in Vézelay, said that St. Maximinus was one of the Lord's seventy-two disciples, and had accompanied Mary Magdalene to Provence, that Aix-en-Provence began to claim him as her first bishop. For two centuries Provence allowed Vézelay to boast of the possession of the Blessed Magdalene's remains. During Saracen inroads she had lost the relics of Lazarus and his sister, so the Burgundian church told her. Finally--we are quoting Monseigneur Duchesne, not a Midi savant--a patriotic Provençal whose mind was as fertile in inventions as the chronicler at Vézelay, arranged a rediscovery in 1279, in the crypt of St. Maximin, of the Magdalene's relics, whereupon the pilgrimages to Vézelay ceased. Before witnesses and the ruler of Provence, Charles II d'Anjou (nephew of St. Louis), was opened one of the sculptured tombs in the Gallo-Roman noble's funeral crypt now under the nave of St. Maximin. In the sarcophagus was found a manuscript, in a wooden coffer, relating that in the year of the Incarnation, 716, on December 6th, under King Odoin, the body of Mary Magdalene had been moved from its alabaster tomb, in this same crypt, to the plainer tomb of St. Sidonius, in order to save it from those felons, the Saracens. The uncritical mind of the age accepted the obvious forgery as genuine. It was worded in XIII-century, not VIII-century Latin, the use of the term Incarnation for dating was an anachronism, and no such king as Odoin ever existed. Why should it have been expected that Saracens would spare one tomb more than the other, asks the courageous Monseigneur Duchesne. But why feel too critical of the pious fraud, since the genuine enthusiasm it aroused led to the building of the most imposing Gothic church in Provence and the one most pure in style, an edifice that inspired the imposing modern church of St. Vincent de Paul at Marseilles. In 1295 Charles II d'Anjou[262] (1285-1309) began St. Maximin, which he passed into the care of the Dominicans. Abbé Albanès has discovered that the architect's name was Jean Bandier. During two centuries the Angevin rulers of Provence continued the church, and good King René finished it before he died in 1480. As the first plans were adhered to, the edifice possesses unity save for a few Flamboyant windows in the aisles. Those side aisles of St. Maximin are almost as high as the central vessel; they braced the main span and did away with the need of flying buttresses. Traits of Midi Gothic are the exceedingly narrow windows, the lack of a triforium, and uncut bands for capitals, though the omission of sculpture may be due to the fact that the abbatial belonged to a mendicant Order, vowed to poverty. St. Maximin's piers soar majestically from pavement to vault springing, nor has nobility of proportion been sacrificed in its severe granite interior. AIX-EN-PROVENCE[263] Le désordre des malheureux est toujours le crime de la dûreté des riches.--VAUVENARGUES (1715--47; born in Aix-en-Provence). The cathedral of St. Sauveur is a composite edifice needing skilled archæologists to decipher it. Its semicircular apse, without ambulatory or chapels, was begun by Bishop Rostan de Noves. Its nave, of the XIV century (with typical capitals whose foliage is disposed in two bands), shows vestiges of a far more ancient church. The nave's north aisle is neo-classic. The south aisle, called _Corpus Domini_, is Romanesque, and was held to be the ancient cathedral, since it conforms to the classic type of the regional Romanesque school, such as the Dom at Avignon. M. Labande has demonstrated that this pre-Gothic portion of Aix Cathedral was originally a church for the laity, built between 1150 and 1180 and dedicated to St. Maximinus, and that it was planted along the side of a church for the canons, dedicated to Notre Dame in 1108. Vestiges of this latter church are the ancient parts in the actual nave of St. Sauveur. The _Corpus Domini_ has its own sculptured doorway, and three bays covered by a barrel vault carried on pointed arches. Over the fourth bay is a shallow cupola ridged with eight pilasters in a manner inherited from ancient Rome. Classic, too, are the columns now arranged to form a baptistry. Aix was the capital in Provence of the art-loving Anjou princes of the Capetian line. Under them in 1476 was begun St. Sauveur's beautifully restrained Flamboyant Gothic façade and tower. In the nave is a stone reredos of 1470 called the Tarasque, from the dragon of St. Martha represented in it, and under King René's inspiration was made the splendid triptych of the Burning Bush by the French _primitif_, Nicolas Froment, born in Avignon, but impregnated with the Flemish spirit of Van Eyck. King René kneels in one panel, and his second wife, Jeanne de Laval, in the other; the outer side of the folding panels is painted in grisaille. The Burning Bush was taken as a symbol of the Virgin's integrity. The carved doors at the west entrance of St. Sauveur, rich with prophets and sibyls, are ranked with the noted doors of Beauvais and Rouen. While the church of St. Maximinus, or the present south aisle of St. Sauveur, was building, a student at the University of Aix, across the way from its cathedral, was St. Jean de Matha (1156-1213), one of those good men of history who accomplished a great work but are overlooked by posterity. In Aix he passed his leisure waiting on the poverty-stricken sick. Then he went up to the Paris schools to perfect himself in theology, and good Bishop Maurice de Sully, then building Notre Dame, became interested in him, and with the prior of St. Victor's, after attending the young Midi noble's first Mass, prophesied that this was a soul chosen of God. Because Jean de Matha had been born in the south, a witness of Islam's piracies, he vowed himself at his first Mass to the redemption of Christian captives. His fellow student at Paris, Innocent III, approved the new Trinitarian Order called popularly Maturins because their Paris house was dedicated to St. Maturin. So rapidly did it spread that before long it had fifty houses in far-off Ireland, and as many in England. In its annals are the names of all the western nations. Jean de Matha, until his death, passed backward and forward to Africa. When the first boatload of redeemed captives landed at Marseilles a cry of thanksgiving rose in Christendom. Sometimes a brother of the Order would remain in a captive's place, when his funds for ransoming prisoners gave out. In Granada, Maturins were martyred. In the year 1260 five thousand Christians were redeemed from Islam prisons by these devoted men. And for five centuries the good work went on, so that we hear of Trinitarians freeing Christians from Mohammedans in the reign of Louis XIV. Cervantes was released from African captivity by the sons of St. Jean de Matha, else we would have no _Don Quixote_. All through the dark episodes of the Albigensian wars these lives of unobtrusive Christian charity endured. Their deeds have not been trumpeted to the winds. I dare say the historian who rings the changes on the _Tuez-les-tous_ phrase never heard of St. Jean and his Maturins. AVIGNON[264] In abandoning Rome, their cradle, in departing from the venerated tomb of the Prince of the Apostle, in ceasing to reign on the site consecrated by the blood of martyrs, the popes failed to value the prop those august memories were for them. In their voluntary exile on the banks of the Rhone the popes were controlled by the king of France. Villeneuve's high towers, a French stronghold, threw too protective a shadow over the papal palace of Avignon.--L. SALEMBIER. Architecturally Avignon does not fit into our category, but who can close a chapter on the Midi and not mention, among gems, this diamond? There is no more imposing, no more magnificent a palace in the world than that of the XIV-century popes at Avignon. Romanesque architecture is represented by the Dom and the bridge built by _frères-pontifes_ over the Rhone (1177-85) under the inspiration of the shepherd boy St. Bénézet. Many a time has the river carried away its bays. The chapel on the bridge shows the work of three epochs, part being of Little Benedict's time, part of 1234, and an apse of 1513. Notre Dame-des-Dom, as it was first built, belonged to the usual type of a Midi Romanesque church (1140-60), but to it have been added chapels and neo-classic decorations.[265] The west porch of the cathedral can claim to be one of the first conscious revivals of classic art in France, inspired by a Roman triumphal arch in neighboring Carpentras. Originally the inner walls of the porch were frescoed by Simone Martini of Siena, a friend of Petrarch. That humanist spent many years in Avignon, and it was at the door of the church of St. Clara that he first saw Laura, in 1327. If the Avignon popes employed Italian painters, their architects and sculptors were mainly local. Avignon's great day was under the seven Roman pontiffs who lived here in succession during sixty-eight years, a period disastrous to the interests and prestige of the Church, but fecund for the art life of southern France. All seven of the popes were meridionals. Clement V (1305-13), whom the patriotic Italian poet places in hell for his subservience to the French king, was the first to take up his residence in Avignon, but his building enterprises were elsewhere, at Bordeaux and St. Bertrand-de-Comminges, and he chose to be buried near Bordeaux, at Uzeste, his native place, where his tomb was mutilated in 1577. Clement is pictured on the walls of the Spanish chapel in Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Neither his statue at the chief portal of Bordeaux Cathedral nor his effigy on his tomb is a portrait. After an interval he was succeeded by John XXII (1316-33), born in Cahors, where a tower of his palace still stands, as well as the most beautiful bridge of the Middle Ages, which he helped to build. John had been educated at Cahors, Montpellier, and Paris; he had taught law at Toulouse, and from 1310 was bishop of Avignon, so that he made it his permanent residence when elected to the papacy at seventy-two. John was an organizer of genius; he founded Perugia University and reformed those of Paris, Cambridge, and Oxford. The great treasure he left was the fund drawn on by his successors for the erection of their palace. His tomb in the cathedral of Avignon is like an immense reliquary, excessive lace stonework and pinnacles, though if some of the sixty statues that once embellished it remained, there would naturally be more character in the ornamentation. The tomb has recently been claimed as a late-Gothic west-of-England work, similar to monuments at Exeter and Tewksbury. His successor, Benedict XII (1333-42), was the pope who really began the Avignon palace which was to be completed in twenty-five years. While abbot of Cistercian Fontfroide, he had watched Narbonne's episcopal palace rising, and there are decided likenesses between it and the papal residence on the Rhone. Both were fortresses eminently of the Midi, not of Italy. Of Benedict it is related that when his father, a baker in the comté of Foix, came to visit him, dressed richly by courtiers who thought to save the pope's _amour propre_, the pope declined to recognize him till he garbed himself humbly. His was a complex character. He spent vast sums lavishly on his palace, bringing artists from Italy to decorate its walls and ceilings. His tomb, that had resembled his predecessor's, exists only in a few arcades housed in the Musée Calvert. The tomb called his in the cathedral is a composite affair. There is a statue of Benedict XII in the crypt of the Vatican. The next pontiff, Clement VI (1342-52), a Limousin lord of great lineage, more knight than churchman, made the most beautiful parts of the papal palace, the conclave gallery, the Audience Chamber, the Pontifical Chapel over it, and the tower called St. Jeane whose chapels, _sotto_ and _sopra_, were decorated by Martini. Petrarch had praised Clement for his liberality toward the Jews, who, driven out of other countries, found a home here, "_povres Juifs ars et escacés par tout le monde excepté en la terre d'Église dessous les clefs des papes_." For his burial Clement VI rebuilt, in the Forez mountains, the church of his former abbey, La Chaise Dieu, in the center of whose choir he placed his own sumptuous monument, whose forty-four statuettes represented his great relatives. In the religious wars of the XVI century the mausoleum was sacked and only the pontiff's marble effigy now remains. Clement VI purchased the city of Avignon from Queen Joanna of Naples of the Anjou house. The Comtat-Venaissin, but not Avignon, formed part of the possessions that fell to the French Crown on the death of Alphonse of Poitiers and his wife in 1271. Philippe III gave it to the popes, to whom it had been promised by the last count of Toulouse. The papal palace was finished by Innocent VI (1352-62), another Limousin. He made the tower applied to the south wall of audience hall and church, and he added to the city's fortifications. Across the Rhone he began the Chartreuse, later called Val de Bénédiction, a vast structure carried on by his family as a hereditary obligation.[266] To-day it is a mass of desolate ruins, and the pope's mutilated tomb is now housed in the hospice at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. Urban V (1362-70), "_moult saint homme et de belle vie_," says Froissart, was a patron for art and letters throughout the Midi. At Avignon he continued the fortifications. His work is to be found in Montpellier Cathedral, also at Mende, St. Flour, and Marseilles, where his mausoleum towers in St. Victor's abbatial. His attempt to re-establish the papacy in Rome failed, but his successor, Gregory XI--Count Roger de Beaufort, a nephew of Clement VI--went back definitely in 1377 to the Holy City, where a bas-relief on his tomb, in Santa Francesca Romana, records his triumphal entrance. The consequences of the long exile were deplorable. Immediately came the Great Schism of the West, during which some of the doubtful pontiffs resided at Avignon. After their return to Rome the popes governed their small Midi principality by viceroys till at the time of the Revolution it passed to France. The palace was turned into a prison and barracks; when a local antiquarian society begged that they might be allowed to preserve the precious frescoes of Simone Martini in the chapels of Clement VI, the military governor replied that such notions were contrary to military custom. Happily the Palace of the Popes is now a national monument, and its judiciously accomplished renovation is one of those restorals against which no one can cavil. CHAPTER IX The Gothic Art of Burgundy[267] _Be strong in humility and humble in authority: Be austere in tenderness and tender in austerity: Be amiable in sorrow and grave in prosperity._ --ST. COLUMBANUS' Antitheses. Burgundy, "a country placed on Europe's highways," was a land of monasteries. They dotted the fertile province. There were "prodigious Cluny," and Vézelay "the superb," scenes of historic gatherings; at Auxerre was St. Germain's monastery; at Dijon, the abbey of St. Bénigne, pioneer in the Romanesque renaissance of the region. There were Cîteaux, the mother house of missions over the entire Christian world, Pontigny, that harbored three archbishops of Canterbury, Fontenay with its industrial forge, Tournus, Saulieu, Paray-le-Monial, and Flavigny, that reminded Chateaubriand of Jerusalem set on its hill. Up and down the land the _laus perennis_ never ceased. On the confines of the old kingdom of Burgundy, as the VI century closed, St. Columbanus founded at Luxeuil, between the sources of the Moselle and the Saône, an abbey which was to mold the religious life of the VII century, most fertile of epochs in the number and fervor of its religious institutions. Luxeuil became the popular school of Gaul, the mother house of hundreds of monasteries. Her monks filled the sees of France. The Celtic Rule was harsh, a compound of the Orient, of Lerens, and of Bangor in Ireland; even on feast days fish was a luxury. It was only the personal genius of the impetuous Irish missionary that caused it to be accepted for a few generations; then as the VII century closed, the Benedictine Rule which conformed better to human limitations superseded the Columban. "Where Columbanus sowed, Benedict reaped."[268] Three hundred years later there rose in Burgundy the most splendid monastic institution that Christendom has ever known, Benedictine Cluny, that stood shoulder to shoulder with the reforming popes in their fight for the purification of the Church.[269] Cluny initiated the Truce of God, the peace movement of the XI century that permitted the art renaissance which was to culminate in the Gothic cathedrals. Peace meant an unmolested commerce, peace meant city charters and stable laws. A reformed clergy meant the renewal of the people's love of the altar, and their generous contributions toward the erection of churches. With Cluny as leader there was then formulated the architecture which was a stepping stone to a greater system. Two hundred years after Cluny's foundation, Burgundy again gave birth to a monastic movement which was to carry to the ends of Europe the Gothic system of building. Cîteaux, in the extent of its conquests and its centralized administration, has been compared with the Roman Empire. Cistercian monks carried Burgundian Gothic to Spain, to Italy, to Greece, to England, Germany, and Scandinavia. Owing to the conditions of society and of the episcopacy, the cloister then was chief patron of art. Simony infected the bishoprics and it is not under unworthy prelates that churches are reared. Gregory VII, Cluny, that supplied him with his army of reformers, and St. Bernard, with his white-cowled brethren, warred unceasingly on simony, concubinage, and investiture (the tormenting question of layman control of churchmen). And since it was monasteries that fought that battle of regeneration, monastic churches and not cathedrals were the first tangible proof of the ethical rebirth of Europe. _À la peine ... à l'honneur._ When the reform achieved by Cluny and Cîteaux had filled the sees with worthy bishops, then were built the great cathedrals. We have seen how the problem of roofing churches in stone caused the evolution from Romanesque to Gothic art. Burgundy's struggle to achieve a permanent stone roof was bolder than that of other regional schools in France, and perhaps it was overhardy, since her abbatials, in Gothic times, had to be buttressed to keep them standing. Though the Burgundian discarded too early the Romanesque principle of equilibrium by dead load, his temerity was a step forward in the march toward new principles of construction. These monks on Europe's highway made churches of ample width and height, and, rather than sacrifice their proper lighting, opened windows in the upper walls of the central vessel. However, they must have felt that their clearstory windows were an experiment, for they essayed, occasionally, an embryo flying buttress, keeping it hidden under the lean-to roof of the aisles. The militant Romanesque school of Burgundy was too well developed for it to bow instantly before the new art. Not here did the generating member of Gothic architecture first come into common usage, but in that region of northern France whose pre-Gothic school was of less importance. The Burgundian clung stubbornly to his early ways of building, and even after other provinces had accepted the ogival style he erected thoroughly Romanesque churches; St. Philibert at Dijon is the contemporary of the cathedrals at Chartres and Paris. Flying buttresses at no time found favor in Burgundy. Groin vaults were persisted in simultaneously with diagonals, and the sexpartite vault used long after the north had dropped it. Firm plain profiles for archivolts and window molds were preferred. Once the Burgundian frankly accepted the new system, his bold genius led him to push its principles to their limit. Within the confines of the duchy were the quarries of hard Tonnerre stone that permitted audacious experiments in building. He dared traverse his exterior buttresses by circulation passages, he dared catch his heavily weighted diagonals on corbels (carved with original heads), and to poise a mass of material on the slenderest of colonnettes. Often he surmounted his triforium by a passage that passed directly through the active wall shafts, as in cathedrals of Auxerre, Nevers, and Semur. By the middle of the XIII century Dijon achieved a marvel of Gothic technique in its church of Notre Dame. Despite much notable Gothic work one is inclined, none the less, to maintain that Burgundy found her fullest expression in her earlier monastic churches. Alas, that the greatest of them, Cluny, should to-day be but the phantom of its once colossal self! CLUNY[270] Time will be ending soon, heaven will be rending soon, fast we and pray we: Comes the most merciful; comes the most terrible; watch we while may we. --BERNARD DE MORLAIX, "Jerusalem the Golden"[271] (c. 1140). The "mother abbey of Europe" lies in a fertile valley some fifteen miles off the express route that passes through Mâcon. The property was given to the monks by a duke of Aquitaine, who thus anathematized future despoilers: "I conjure you O holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to cut off from life eternal all robbers, invaders, or sellers of that which I herewith donate with full satisfaction and entire free will." When Cluny was founded in 910, the victory of Christianity over the Barbarians still hung in the balance. It was Cluny that weighed down the scale for justice and progress, Cluny that gave to Rome the needed reforming popes. Hers should be a name as honored in humanity's history as Athens: "We leave college," wrote Montalembert, "able to cite the list of Jupiter's mistresses, but ignorant, even to their names, of the founders of the religious Orders that civilized Europe." And the testimony of the Protestant Leibnitz is: "Without monks we should have no erudition, for it is certain that we owe to monasteries the preservation of letters and books." Four of the best among the popes came out of Cluny's cloister: Gregory VII, Urban II, Paschal II, and Urban V. [Illustration: _The XI-century Sanctuary of Cluny as It Was until the Revolution_] The modern French school of mediæval archæology, delving into the past, has drawn Cluny from its long oblivion. In 1910 was celebrated with national honors the millennium of the Burgundian "abbey of abbeys," and to the festival the French Academy sent M. René Bazin as its representative to voice the gratitude of French letters to the "great Order of Cluny which in the France of the Middle Ages exercised in its plenitude the mission of civilizer, apostle of the Gospel, apostle of peace, guardian of the whole field of knowledge, founder then, of all works of charity, initiator of both literary and agricultural progress, creator of an art which she spread over Europe." During the Middle Ages the silent Burgundian valley was a busy hive of arts and crafts[272] with goldsmiths' work, illuminating, carving in ivory and in stone, foundering of bells, and the making of stained glass. All that went toward the adornment of God's house was fostered in Cluniac schools, but above all was the master art of the builder honored. In bands of twelve the monks carried not only the Gospel, but the arts to every part of Europe, and even farther afield, for there were houses of the Order on Mount Tabor, in Nazareth, and in Bethany. No uniform Cluniac building lore was followed; it was the usual custom for the monks to conform to the local traditions in each different country.[273] It was natural that the big abbey church at Cluny proper should have been Burgundian Romanesque. Hazelon, a monk of Cluny, was the master-of-works, a learned man who had once occupied a high position in the world; he is said to have himself worked here with trowel and mortar. The tunnel vaulting was braced by transverse ribs that were slightly pointed; clearstory windows were opened in the upper walls. The channeled pilasters were a heritage from the classic traditions of the region; near by, in Rome's former capital of Autun, were many monuments of antiquity. Cluny's abbey church of St. Peter was the largest in the world, and covered an area about equal to that of the present St. Peter's at Rome. It was over five hundred and fifty feet long; the cathedral at Paris is not four hundred feet in length. There were double aisles and double transepts. St. Hugues of Cluny, the sixth abbot, "a man of God greatest among the great," "the pupil of the papacy's eye," ruled the Burgundian mother house during the sixty years that Cluny guided Christendom (1049 to 1109). No flattery, no subtlety could turn him from pure justice. Under him were trained Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII, who led the forces of church reform. "The giving up of justice is the shipwreck of the soul," said Gregory VII. Abbot Hugues trained also Urban II, who preached the First Crusade. Among the houses he founded were St. Martin-des-Champs at Paris, and St. Pancras at Lewes; in England there were thirty-five Cluniac establishments in the time of Henry VIII. Twice St. Hugues went into Spain, where his niece was the Queen of Castile, engaged in substituting the liturgy of the Church universal for the Mozarabic rite. To the town of Cluny he granted a commune, and he built two of its parish churches, Notre Dame and St. Marcel.[274] When he felt death approaching, he had himself carried before the altar of St. Marcel, there to breathe his last on a bed of ashes, and a few days earlier than the Easter Tuesday of 1109 on which he passed away, his dear friend and frequent visitor at Cluny, St. Anselm of Canterbury, died, being privileged, he said, to go to meet his Saviour in time for the blessed Easter feast. Those two great men of the cloister by their ethical and intellectual leadership laid the basis for the Gothic cathedrals. The choir of St. Peter's, at Cluny, was blessed by Urban II, in 1095, when he came into France to preach the First Crusade. He passed a week in his old home, after which he and his beloved master, St. Hugues, proceeded to the historic gathering at Clermont. The nave of St. Peter's was carried forward by succeeding abbots of Cluny, and many a pope was to watch the edifice rising. Paschal II passed the winter of 1106-07 in Cluny, and his successor, Gelasius II, died there in 1119; he had recently consecrated the new Romanesque cathedral of Pisa.[275] On the site of the wing of the cloister where he lodged now stands a XIV-century building called by his name. On his death the cardinals at Cluny held conclave, electing as pope a member of the ducal house of Burgundy, the bishop of Vienne, who took the name Calixtus II; in Cluny church he canonized the great Abbot Hugues. St. Hugues' successor, Pons de Melgueil, after an estimable career, was led by pride to a downfall. On his resignation, Pierre de Montboissier, an Auvergne noble, known in history as Peter the Venerable, became the ninth abbot (1122-56). At that time he was but thirty years of age. Pons returned, seized Cluny abbey, and in the ensuing disorders the vaulting of the new nave collapsed. Abbot Peter restored the stone roof, and Innocent II dedicated the completed church in 1131. The capitals then carved are to be seen in the town's Museum. Some of them personified the eight tones of liturgical music, for Cluny excelled in song, and every twenty-four hours her vast basilica echoed to the chanting of the entire book of Psalms; never, says the old chronicle, was there pause in the _saintes clameurs_, the _laus perennis_ started by Irish Columbanus in the valleys of Burgundy. Some of the capitals from the abbatial are contemporaries of the statuary at Vézelay, where Peter the Venerable had been prior, and where his brother, Pons de Montboissier, was abbot. Vézelay was a pilgrimage church, so that its imagery was made of more popular character than that of Cluny, where worshiped an intellectual élite. Cluny began the carving of the Bible for the Poor. The Burgundians were the first to develop the imaged portal which the Gothic cathedrals were to elaborate into their sumptuous triple entrances. While Cluny was building, a monk in the monastery composed a poem of some thousand lines, opening with a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. Bernard of Morlaix must have found inspiration in his own Burgundian basilica, which we know to have contained over three hundred windows of translucent mosaic. He dedicated his poem to his beloved abbot, Pierre de Montboissier. Peter the Venerable was no Puritan in art, as was his friend St. Bernard, with whom he had many a skirmish, owing to their temperamental differences and the rivalship of their respective Orders. The abbot of Cluny never wavered in his reverence for the "fellow citizen of angels," as he called the abbot of Clairvaux, and Bernard saw in Peter, man of the world though he was, "a vessel of election full of truth and grace." Like Abbot Suger, Pierre de Montboissier was the type of the liberal culture of the Benedictine, and he was to live again in the XVII-century scholars of the St. Maur reform, even as Bernard's uncompromising spirit reappeared then in De Rancy and his Trappists, a reform of Cîteaux. Like Suger, Peter the Venerable was a quoter of the classics, and a literary man. "To write was for an abbot of Cluny a hereditary tradition," said a XII-century historian. He had Arabic taught at Cluny for mission purposes. Journeying in Spain, he was the first to have the Koran translated for Europe; he held it to be Islam's best refutation. Very modern appears this old-time abbot in the zest with which he set out to travel, to inspect the houses of his Order. When he died in 1156, he was ruling over two thousand establishments, in every part of Christendom. In person Peter was distinguished, and in character most generous, humane, and free from narrowness. He was wisely moderate always, and simple and direct. The letters of his which still exist make him a living personality. Though as keen a theologian as his friend Bernard, Abbot Peter kept the defeated Abélard with him at Cluny until his irritated spirit was soothed, and when the great schoolman died in 1142, Abbot Peter wrote to Héloïse, in her nunnery of the Paraclete, in Troyes diocese, to arrange that Abélard's body be brought there for burial, and he himself went to preach the funeral sermon.[276] In his letter to Héloïse he said that never had he seen truer humility and retirement than Maître Pierre's; "after which," as M. René Bazin remarks, "none of us need despair." Cluny's abbatial of St. Peter was enlarged in the XIII century by a forechurch of several bays, with double aisles. An antechurch or narthex was a frequent addition to the Burgundian basilica; sometimes it was open as at Autun and Beaune, sometimes wholly inclosed as at Vézelay. Although Cluny's narthex was built as late as 1220, groin vaulting was used for the aisles. In 1245 Innocent IV paused for a month at Cluny, having in his train a dozen cardinals and their suites, and Louis IX came for a fortnight's conference with the pope, accompanied by the queen mother, his brothers, and courtiers. The emperor of Constantinople and the heirs both of Castile and Aragon were guests at that same time, and yet so immense was the establishment, that all were accommodated without the monks quitting their usual quarters. In 1248 St. Louis paused again in Cluny before his first crusade. With material success came spiritual decline. The tale runs the same in most of man's organizations. As a reformer Cluny was succeeded first by the Cistercians, whose fervor lasted for a century, when were needed the two mendicant Orders of Francis and Dominic. The system that allowed the king to appoint abbots, initiated by the Concordat of 1516, proved fatal, and there is truth in the saying that the court prelates paved the way for the religious wars. Three times in those bitter years of strife was Cluny sacked, its famous library ravaged, and its art treasures burned. The Revolution completed the ruin. The first mob that marched out from Mâcon to wreck the abbey was dispersed with firearms by the townspeople. The municipality of Cluny wrote to the National Assembly to tell of the constant benefits it had derived from the monks--so the rationalist Taine relates in his _Ancien Régime_--but the impious wrecking of the great monastery went on. Day after day cartloads of rare books were brought to feed the bonfires in the square. All through 1793 bands of looters came out from Mâcon to break windows and destroy images. The indignant townspeople looked on impotently at the vandalism that spelled their own material decline. At Napoleon's advent they sent petition after petition to try to save the big church, but the Mâcon merchant who had purchased it proceeded to open a road right up its nave and sold the stones as building materials. First the narthex was blown up with gunpowder; then a transept arm. When the huge central tower fell with stupefying noise the people shivered with a nameless fear. The history of France was being obliterated before their eyes. To save what remained the town offered in exchange its communal lands and market halls. In vain; the grandest monastic church in the world was demolished piecemeal after the nineteenth century opened. Some seven or eight towers had crowned St. Peter's. In 1811 the one over the choir was destroyed. Gunpowder blew up the stately pillars of Pentelic marble and Italian cipolin set around his sanctuary by St. Hugues seven hundred years before. They destroyed the frescoes of the apse, which were so fresh that one who then sketched them said that they seemed to have come straight from the artist's brush. To-day little of the abbey church is standing. There are vestiges of the choir, a small tower, and the south arm of the main transept with a big tower over it. There also remains the Flamboyant Gothic chapel built by Abbot Jean de Bourbon (1456-81), out of the smaller transept. In the town street are evidences of where the western doors of the abbatial once stood. The entrance arches to the abbey grounds are intact, and some few of the towers of the inclosure walls. The museum is now housed in the monastery's guest quarters built by Jean de Bourbon. His successor, Abbot Jacques d'Amboise (1481-1514), erected the pavilion which now serves as Town Hall. Both of those art-loving prelates constructed at Paris the Hôtel Cluny as town residence for the abbot of the Burgundian mother house. THE ROMANESQUE ABBATIAL OF PARAY-LE-MONIAL[277] The world is very evil, The times are waxing late, Be sober and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate! The Judge that comes in mercy, The Judge that comes with might, To terminate the evil To diadem the right. --BERNARD DE MORLAIX, "Jerusalem the Golden."[278] Not far from Cluny lies Paray-le-Monial, "a town very dear to heaven," said Leo XIII's brief of 1896. The monastery was founded by the second abbot of Cluny, St. Majolus, who was instrumental in bringing to France William of Volpiano, the leading spirit in the renaissance of architecture after the year 1000. The present abbatial resembles on a very small scale that of Cluny. Its barrel vaulting is braced by pointed arches and there are the channeled pilasters of Rome's tradition in the region. The exterior of the apse and the carven doorway are gems of pre-Gothic art. Towers and porch date from the end of the XI century, and the remainder about 1130. At present the monastery church (which is abominably marred with whitewash) is dedicated to the Sacré Coeur, a devotion that was initiated by the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, who died in the Visitation convent of this town in 1690. Paray-le-Monial has become one of the pilgrimages of modern France. St. Odilo, who governed Cluny for the half century preceding the sixty-year rule of Abbot Hugues, loved especially the priory of Paray-le-Monial. He inspired and organized the Truce of God, the _Treuga Dei_, by which war was prohibited on certain days and in certain holy seasons. The monk, Raoul Glaber, to whom Odilo was patron, has described in a chronicle covering the period from 900 to 1047 (an invaluable document for the sources of the Capetian line) how the war-wrecked populace flocked to the church councils that were their only hope, their hands uplifted, with the beseeching cry, "Peace! Peace! Peace!" In the rebirth of hope and energy that succeeded to the terrors of the year 1000, Glaber has told us how the earth reclothed herself in a white mantle of churches. He had been spurred on to write his history by the chief builder of the age, William of Volpiano. The great monastic churchmen of Burgundy were leaders in the movement that was to culminate, within four generations, in Gothic cathedrals. To Abbot Odilo is attributed, also, the founding of the feast of All Souls, which he set on the day following All Saints, as if to place the suffering ones in the care of the elect. From the observance of this feast in Cluny houses it spread to the entire Church. THE ROMANESQUE CATHEDRAL OF AUTUN[279] Et c'est ainsi que Dieu travaille quand il veut nous châtier sans nous perdre, quand il ne veut pas que la guerre finisse, par le feu, le sang, la désolation générale, la ruine entière et le changement d'un État. _Il sépare les gens de bien_: il faut que les uns se mettent avec choix au parti qu'ils estiment le plus juste, et que les autres se trouvent dans le parti qu'ils approuvent quelquefois le moins.--LE PRÉSIDENT JEANNIN (1540-1622; born in Autun). Autun's chief church, one of the few cathedrals in France which is Romanesque, was begun in 1120 and consecrated in 1132 by Innocent II. In that same year he blessed Cluny's nave and Vézelay's narthex. A friend of St. Bernard, Bishop Étienne de Baugé (1112-36), was its chief benefactor, as he was, also, of the Burgundian abbey of Saulieu.[280] The Last Judgment over Autun's west door, signed by one Gislebertus, dates from that period. Its strange, elongated figures are not the culmination of an old art, but a first effort in a development that was to produce the imaged portals of Gothic cathedrals. Autun's curious tympanum was saved from the iconoclasts of the Revolution because the _gens de goût_ of the XVIII century had covered it over with the neo-classic plaster ornamentation they preferred. The graceful trumeau images of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary are restorations. Before the western door an open narthex for the use of lepers was added about 1178. In the first part of the XII century, the cathedral school was directed, during thirty years, by Honoré d'Autun, whose popular book, _The Mirror of the Church_, introduced the use of animal symbolism into the iconography of cathedrals. M. Mâle discovered that the New Alliance window in Lyons Cathedral copied his book verbatim. In the learned Honoré's day Autun Cathedral had not yet laid claim to the relics of the risen Lazarus. Originally the church was consecrated to St. Nazaire, which name was changed to Lazare after the Burgundian abbey of Vézelay had spread the story that Mary Magdalene had died in Provence. No one knew how Autun obtained the relics said to be those of Lazarus of Bethany. They were first exposed for veneration in the cathedral in 1147. Monseigneur Duchesne has thought that the legend grew by unconscious fabrications. It certainly did the Burgundian towns little harm to honor those whom the Lord had cherished. Through long centuries Burgundy delighted to call her sons Lazare. The cathedral of Autun has a barrel vault undergirded by pointed arches. Channeled pilasters,[281] great and small, abound; they are on all four sides of the piers. In Autun stand gateways of Rome's empire to serve as classic models. The acanthus leaves of the cathedral's triforium can compare with those of the Porte d'Arroux. Autun was a Roman capital in Gaul, founded by Augustus. It covered then twice its present area. Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, built the great military road that ran from Lyons to Autun, Autun to Auxerre, Auxerre to Troyes, Troyes to Châlons-sur-Marne, Châlons to Rheims, Rheims to Soissons, Soissons to Senlis, Senlis to Beauvais, Beauvais to Amiens, and thence to Boulogne-sur-Mer. The graceful central tower of the cathedral was added in the Flamboyant Gothic day by Cardinal Rolin (d. 1483), son of the builder of Beaune Hospital, Nicolas Rolin (a native of Autun), the self-seeking but able chancellor of Duke Philippe le Bon. Another son of Autun was Pierre Jeannin, president of the parliament of Burgundy and minister of Henry IV. His father, a tanner, was a man of civic importance in the town. President Jeannin's kneeling statue and that of his wife, Anne Gueniot, are now in the cathedral choir, being all that remained, after the Revolution, of his tomb made by Nicolas Guillan of Paris. No man ever had a truer passion for the public weal than this Burgundian magistrate who saved Burgundy from the stain of blood on St. Bartholomew's day in 1572. Word came from the king to kill, but the Catholic Jeannin on the governor's council at Dijon urged delay, saying that when a king's orders were given in anger, the wisest course was procrastination. He was to live long enough to aid Henry IV in drawing up the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Jeannin's attitude in 1572 was all the more meritorious because Burgundy had suffered acutely from the Calvinists, who invited their co-religionists from Germany to fight their fellow citizens. In 1569 a band of the invaders left behind them a trail of four hundred burned villages. Cluny was attacked, and Cîteaux was sacked from top to bottom; to-day some XIV-century debris is all that marks the mother house of the Cistercian Order. The destruction of Cîteaux was irreparable for art, since during centuries its abbatial was the St. Denis of the first Capetian dukes who ruled Burgundy. The leading families of the province felt it an honor to be buried at Cîteaux. In its church was once the splendid tomb (now in the Louvre) of the seneschal of Burgundy, Philippe Pot (d. 1494). The effigy of the baron in armor is carried on the shoulders of eight black, cowled figures--a further development of the _pleurant_ type of tomb. In a chapel of Autun Cathedral is a beautiful modern statue of Pope Gregory the Great, presented to Cardinal Perraud (1882-1906) of the French Academy, as bishop of this ancient city whose prelate in the VI century had entertained Augustine and his monks on their way to missionize England. Cardinal Vaughan of Westminster was the donor of this grateful souvenir. THE HOSPITAL AND ROMANESQUE COLLEGIATE AT BEAUNE[282] L'art du Moyen Âge--aussi ennemi de l'art académique figé dans ses moules conventionnels que du désordre matérialiste--est une esthétique très simple, très certaine, très puissante et très libre. Cette esthétique n'invoque pas un idéal abstrait; elle impose le culte de la réalité, de la plus humble comme de la plus éclatante; elle pourrait s'appeler un réalisme trancendant, respectant la forme telle que Dieu l'a faite, et en même temps la transfigurant par la grand frisson de l'au-delà.--ROBERT VALLERY-RADOT.[283] The Hospital of the Holy Ghost, built by Chancellor Nicolas Rolin from 1444 to 1457, is a gem of the province, reminding us of the close union of Burgundy and the Netherlands under the four great dukes of the West. The third of those rulers, Philippe le Bon, patronized Jean Van Eyck, as did the enterprising man who was the duke's chancellor during forty years. For a church at Autun, Rolin ordered of Van Eyck, in 1425, the magnificent Madonna now in the Louvre in which he kneels as donor--a shrewd, hard-featured, capable man. For his new hospital at Beaune he commissioned Roger Van der Weyden to paint, in many panels, the Last Judgment now in the little museum of the establishment, but originally installed in the large raftered hall. After the Van Eyck's Adoration of the Lamb it was the most important work of Flemish art undertaken. Philippe le Bon is portrayed in it twice, and so is the donor. The outside of the panels is painted in monochrome--what the French call _camaïeu_ from its cameo effect, and the Italians call chiaroscuro. When this superb painting hung at the end of the hospital hall that ended in a chapel like the XIII-century hospice at Tonnerre, the patients could see it from their beds. The Hôtel Dieu at Tonnerre had been founded by Marguerite of Burgundy, in 1293. After the death of her husband, Charles d'Anjou, whose cruelty roused the Sicilian Vespers, she retired to the city of which she was hereditary countess, and with two other dethroned ladies, the Empress of Constantinople and the Countess of Tripoli, gave herself up to good works. _La bonne Reyne_, the people called this princess who passed her days serving the sick poor in a hospital where the spirit of the Beatitudes ruled. None was dismissed from its door without new cloak and shoes. To-day the great rafter-covered hall at Tonnerre lies empty; the raising of its pavement has somewhat impaired its proportion. Beaune's hospital hall, that indubitably copied Tonnerre's, serves still the charitable purpose for which it was founded. Its quiet courtyard is a vision of Flanders. In the kitchen the ancient iron crane of the fireplace is ornamented with I.H.S.; the Middle Ages made even work artistic. On feast days, such as Corpus Christi, the quaint half-timber hospice is hung with beautiful XV-century tapestry. It is deemed an honor for the leading families of the region to count one of its members among the nuns whose service is for a few years, after which they may return to their own people. The collegiate church of Notre Dame at Beaune is a typical Burgundian Romanesque edifice of the XII century, to which the following century added a graceful open narthex of two bays. It possesses seventeen embroidered panels relating Our Lady's life, presented in 1500 by the Chanoine Hugues le Coq, and held to be among the most lovely tapestries in France, evoking memories of Memling and the Flemish primitives. AVALLON, MONTRÉAL, FLAVIGNY, AND FONTENAY[284] L'esprit humain, poussé par une force invincible, ne cessera jamais de se demander: qu'y a-til au delà? Il ne sert à rien de répondre: au delà sont des espaces, des temps, ou des grandeurs sans limites. Nul ne comprend ces paroles. Celui qui proclame l'existence de l'infini accumule dans cette affirmation plus de surnaturel qu'il n'y en a dans tous les miracles de toutes les religions. La notion de l'infini dans le monde j'en vois partout l'inévitable expression. Par elle, le surnaturel est au fond de tous les coeurs. L'idée de Dieu est une forme de l'idée de l'infini. Tant que le mystère de l'infini pesera sur la pensée humaine, des temples seront élevés au culte de l'infini. Et sur la dalle de ces temples, vous verrez des hommes agenouillés, prosternés, abimés dans la pensée de l'infini. Où sont les vraies sources de la dignité humaine, de la liberté, et de la démocratie moderne, sinon dans la notion de l'infini devant laquelle tous les hommes sont égaux?--LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95; born in Burgundy).[285] The hill town of Avallon, above the gorge of the Cousin, with a square that would do honor to any capital, makes a convenient center from which to explore various Burgundian churches. Its own church of St. Lazare still possesses the apse and absidioles of the edifice blessed by Paschal II in 1107. The remainder of the church was built in mid-XII century, and the portal (in five orders richly carved, with channeled and twisted columns) belongs to the end of the century. A copy of Avallon's door is in the Trocadéro Museum at Paris where it can be compared at close range with the two other notable Romanesque portals of the province--those of Autun and Vézelay. The interior of St. Lazare is excessively plain, having a high expanse of unbroken wall over the pier arches, with the clearstory opened merely by little circular windows. Twenty miles from Avallon is the church of Montréal, like a feudal fort guarding one of the main passageways from Champagne. The lord of Montréal was among the few hundred barons who returned from the dire experience of famine, treason, and death which was the Second Crusade, on which had set forth a hopeful hundred thousand knights and pilgrims. In the latter part of the XII century he built Montreal's collegiate church, one of the earliest Gothic ventures in the province, showing a simultaneous use of Romanesque and Gothic vaulting. Its two westernmost bays were added early in the XIII century. The beautiful alabaster reredos of the XV century, and the carved choir stalls, are well worth studying. Beyond Montréal, to the north of Avallon, lies Tonnerre's hospital hall and to the south can be visited the abbatial at Saulieu and the XIII-century castle of Chastellux, a son of which ancient house fought in America with Rochambeau and was the good friend of George Washington.[286] To the east, at Flavigny, set picturesquely on a hill near the last stronghold held by the Gauls against the Romans, stood one of the most interesting of abbey churches, of which portions of the XIII-century sanctuary remain, a few arches of the nave, and a Carolingian crypt built by the abbot who ruled here from 755 to 768, hence that subterranean chamber can claim to be the oldest dated monument extant in France. Over the choir of Flavigny was a cupola, and the Lady chapel was an XI-century octagon like that which William of Volpiano constructed for his abbey at Dijon. This precious Benedictine abbatial was destroyed in the XIX century. At Flavigny are two ancient parish churches. What is now the Pension Lacordaire was the Dominican convent opened in 1849 by that brilliant son of Burgundy, with funds donated by his admirers of Dijon. To the northeast of Avallon, at Fontenay, near Montbard, is the oldest extant Romanesque church of the Cistercian Order, built from 1139 to 1147, on land given by the lord of Montbard, the maternal uncle of St. Bernard; on his mother's side St. Bernard was of the blood of Burgundy's first line of Capetian dukes. The great abbot of Clairvaux himself conducted hither the twelve monks who were to found the new house and reclaim the marshy region; and for his brethren of Fontenay he wrote his treatise on Pride and Humility. The first small sanctuary at Fontenay was soon replaced by the actual one, built on the same lines as the church at Clairvaux, which no longer stands. Both followed the Cistercian plan; no tower; no triforium nor clearstory; uncut capitals; the east end rectangular; square chapels opening on the eastern wall of the transept. Funds for the new constructions at Fontenay were provided by a wealthy English prelate who had retired here, Evrard de Montgomery, of the Arundel family, who, while bishop of Norwich, completed the long Norman nave of that cathedral. In 1147 the church was consecrated by Pope Eugene III, St. Bernard being present. As it was frequent in Cistercian monasteries to make a specialty of some branch of manual work, Fontenay conducted a forge, and the massive XII-century building which housed it still stands. The forge, the abbey church, and the refectory to-day comprise part of a paper factory whose proprietor has taken a patriotic pride in restoring these precious monuments of ancient Burgundy. THE PRIMARY GOTHIC ABBATIAL AT PONTIGNY[287] Whatever draws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be the frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue.... That man is little to be envied whose patriotism does not gain force on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.--DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. The oldest Gothic church in Burgundy is the Cistercian abbatial at Pontigny. "Cradle of bishops and asylum of great men," Pontigny is _parfumée de souvenirs_, to use a charming stilted French phrase. It was the first daughter of Cîteaux, founded in 1114. When a pious canon of Auxerre proposed to endow a house of the new Order, the abbot of Cîteaux, St. Stephen Harding, came to overlook the site on the confines of Champagne, and then sent twelve monks to found the house, under the leadership of Hugues de Mâcon, kinsman and childhood friend of St. Bernard. The Cistercians had not the Benedictines' weakness for a noble site, but if they planted their monasteries in a marsh--as at Fontenay and Pontigny--their agricultural industry soon made the desert bloom. The earlier Cistercian churches obeyed St. Bernard's ascetic admonitions for architecture, a Puritanism that became monotonous in the Italian churches of the Order. In France the Cistercians ceased to adhere to church simplicity, raising sanctuaries such as Ourscamp, Longpont, and St. Julien-le-Pauvre at Paris. No towers adorned Pontigny, and stained glass was eschewed, but the leaded design of the grisaille windows is so lovely that, as M. André Michel has said, "one could not be poor with more nobility." The architect of Pontigny made skillful use of certain essential constructive features to obtain his decorative effects. Thus, though monastic sobriety was followed by omitting the triforium, the bare wall between pier arches and clearstory was relieved (at the sanctuary curve) by carrying down the moldings from the upper windows; and in the procession path a fifth rib was introduced into each vault section, which rib fell on a corbel set above the entrance to each of the radiating chapels--a constructive subtlety by which was produced a graceful wall arcade. The present abbatial was begun a generation after the foundation of Pontigny, with funds contributed by Thibaut the Great, Count of Champagne. The transept, which is Romanesque, rose from 1150 to 1160. While the walls of the nave were mounting, the master-of-works began to prepare for a Gothic vault over the principal span. The lower windows were round-headed; the upper ones used the pointed arch. As the keystone of the diagonals was raised far above the arches framing each section, a pronounced _bombé_ shape resulted. From 1160 to 1180 this transitional nave of Pontigny was building, and the most famous of the English exiles, who sought the hospitality of Pontigny, must have watched the works. The choir, as first erected, had a rectangular eastern wall after the usual manner of Cîteaux's churches. Then, from 1170 to 1200, the present choir was erected with Gothic ambulatory and radiating chapels.[288] Alix of Champagne, daughter of the abbey's generous patron, and mother of the French king, Philippe-Auguste, was buried in the new choir, in 1208. From 1207 to 1213 Pontigny harbored a second archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, of Magna Charta fame. During the studious years he passed here he divided the Bible into chapters for the first time, and even the Greeks accepted his rulings. In later life Archbishop Langton often looked back to this byway of Burgundy; "his garden, his solace, his abode of peace," he called it. His predecessor at Pontigny was St. Thomas Becket, one of the outstanding figures of the XII century, whose story is told in many a French window and sculptured group. If ever an Englishman was all of a piece it was that son of a Rouen merchant settled in London. During his life as a courtier Becket was so lavish in grandeur that when he passed through France as Henry II's ambassador, the countryside turned out to see him, since few were the king's retinues that could equal his. When Henry raised him to the highest post in the English Church he instantly dropped luxury. He stood firm as a rock in defense of ecclesiastical rights against the king's attempt at Church supremacy. Tennyson's "Becket" says, "I served King Henry well as Chancellor; I am his no more, and I must serve the Church." To the end of time such a character will be discussed; some for, some against, him; admired he certainly was by that sincerest and cleverest of men, John of Salisbury, who lived in his intimacy.[289] Both in England and France the populace felt that Becket was the champion of their civic rights by his defense of church independence--then the only supreme court against lay tyranny. Undeviatingly and enthusiastically they supported him all through his seven years' exile. One of the articles of the Clarendon Constitutions which Henry Plantagenet tried to impose on English ecclesiastics was that no peasant could become a priest without his lord's permission. The poet voiced the indignant outcry: "Hath not God called us all, bond or free, to his service?" When Henry II, with his usual Angevin bad faith, duped his new archbishop into a promise to maintain the customs of the kingdom, and thereupon proceeded to revive obsolete customs, Becket, repenting the concessions he had made, fled, in 1164, to Sens, to lay the case before Alexander III. The pope decided that certain of the Clarendon propositions were impossible for any churchman to accede to. The abbot of Pontigny offered hospitality to the persecuted primate and Becket stayed with him till 1168, conforming to the severe Cistercian Rule. He quitted the Burgundian monastery when Henry, in a burst of vindictive anger, threatened to shut up every house of the white monks in England as well as in his continental possessions if they harbored the rebellious churchman. Soon after Becket's arrival at Pontigny, the irate king sent thither the primate's relatives and friends, turned out to beggary, in order that their plight might oppress the archbishop's spirit. The third exile from Canterbury, and the saint who has given his name to Pontigny's abbatial, was a gentler spirit. St. Edmund Rich knew France as well as his native region of Oxford, having studied in Paris University and taught there for years. It is told how his mother, Mabel, sent him to the foreign schools with a hair shirt and a cord whip in his gripsack in order that he might learn to chastise and thus curb himself. She was a merchant's wife, and alone reared her family, to enable her husband to follow the call he felt for the cloister; two of her daughters died the saintly abbesses of Catesby. At the knee of that XIII-century mother the little Edmund, as a child, recited every Sunday the entire book of Psalms. While lecturing at Oxford he initiated the study of Aristotle. In Paris, St. Edmund watched the cathedral of Notre Dame perfecting itself, and at Salisbury, while treasurer, he assisted at the laying of the corner stone of the Gothic cathedral in 1220. Worsted in the struggle to right crying abuses in English church affairs where the king kept bishoprics vacant for his financial profit, and the queen filled the sees with her own unpopular foreign relatives, the archbishop, accompanied by his chancellor, St. Richard, was on his way to Rome to remonstrate. He thought it wrong to condone further by his presence evils he was powerless to correct. He paused in Burgundy, and there death came to him in 1243. To-day his tomb stands over the high altar of the abbey church named St. Edmé, in his memory. Puritan Bernard most certainly would not approve the gymnastic-limbed angels that decorate the present Renaissance tomb of St. Edmund, but one fears that he would give his sanction to the whitewash that disfigures the interior of the interesting Primary Gothic church. To the canonization ceremonies at Pontigny in honor of St. Edmund of Abingdon came St. Louis (who had known him well in Paris) and Blanche of Castile, and notables such as the archbishop-builder of Bourges Cathedral, and St. Richard, now become bishop at Chichester, in which cathedral his tomb was destroyed, in 1538, by order of Henry VIII. Few spots in France are more entirely apart from the come-and-go of modern life than is forgotten Pontigny, _parfumée de souvenirs_. THE ABBATIAL OF VÉZELAY[290] Il y a des lieux qui tirent l'âme de sa léthargie, des lieux enveloppés, baignés de mystère, élus de toute éternité pour être le siège de l'émotion religieuse ... l'héroique Vézelay, le mont Saint-Michel, qui surgit comme un miracle des sables mouvants ... lieux qui nous commandaient de faire taire nos pensées et d'écouter plus profond que notre coeur. Silence! les dieux sont ici! Il y a des lieux où souffle l'Esprit.--MAURICE BARRÉS, _La colline inspirée_.[291] The supreme excursion from Avallon is that to Vézelay, ten miles away. One can drive to it or walk to it, since no railway touches the valley which once was the beaten thoroughfare for Christendom marching to crusades. A good way to approach it in the proper spirit of pilgrimage is to walk from the station at Sermizelle with the church of St. Magdalene as the lodestar to guide one's steps. Vézelay has the aspect of a hill city of Umbria. The abbey church, Gothic in its choir, Romanesque in its nave, transition in its forechurch, and practically all of it of the XII century, crowns the hill like a cathedral. "_Le grand nom de Vézelay sonne aux oreilles avec une sauvage poésie. La majesté du site est digne de la splendeur du monument._"[292] Always afterward will you remember this abode of reverie with that uplift of the heart which high art and high thoughts arouse. Like loved sites in Umbria, this, too, is "one of the earth's oases of spiritual rest and refreshment." The abbey was founded in the IX century by Girard de Roussillon[293] of _chanson de geste_ fame, but its position as a leading pilgrim shrine was not established till Abbot Geoffrey was installed in 1037. Only then did the relics of the Magdalene appear here, given, it was claimed, by Charles Martel as reward for Burgundian aid during Saracen inroads in the Midi. Monseigneur Duchesne thinks that from Vézelay started the legends so loved in Provence, that the privileged family of Bethany, with others who had known the Lord, fled from persecution in Syria to the mouth of the Rhone about A.D. 40. Up to the XI century the Christian world had accepted Ephesus as the burial place of the Magdalene, and the tomb of Lazarus was claimed by Cyprus. In 899 the Emperor Leo VI had removed both bodies to Constantinople, where he built a church for them. Not a trace of the tradition concerning the Bethany sisters and brother is to be found in France before Vézelay monastery claimed the possession of the relics of the Magdalene and dedicated its church to her. [Illustration: _Vézelay's XII-century Abbey Church of the Madeleine_] The founder of Vézelay freed its abbot of the control of local bishop or baron by establishing him as feudal proprietor of the town. The result was that the history of the abbey was a stormy one. The neighboring proprietors, resenting the abbot's independence, excited against him the townspeople who had grown rich from the fairs held during the pilgrimages. The burghers chafed at their serfdom to the monastery, and in 1106, during riots, they murdered Abbot Artaud. He probably was the builder of the Romanesque choir to which was originally attached the actual nave, since there is record of a dedication ceremony at Vézelay in 1104. As the archives were burned by the Calvinists in 1560, no precise dates exist for the church, but M. Lefèvre-Pontalis thinks that the crypt under the choir is of Abbot Artaud's time. A fire in which hundreds perished occurred in 1120. The present nave could not have been in use before then. When it was completed the builders proceeded to erect a forechurch of three bays, and between it and the nave was opened the famous portico which has been called worthy of Paradise. Innocent II, in 1132, blessed the new parts of the abbatial. He had lately consecrated the cathedral of Piacenza, and at Pavia in that same year was blessed San Pietro-in-Ciel-d'Ore. North and south of the Alps the same energies were astir, but no sculpture of that period in Italy equals that of Vézelay. The date of the imaged portal of Ferrara Cathedral is 1135, and that of St. Zeno at Verona, 1183. The nave at Vézelay had no triforium, nor was there a tribune over the aisles. However, in the narthex they built upper galleries, under whose lean-to roof was concealed a quarter-circle wall that did the work of a continuous flying buttress. The principal span was still further counterbutted by the side aisles themselves. Over the easternmost bay of the narthex appeared a vault section with Gothic ribs, but the diagonals were more decorative than functional; the vault web of rubble in a bed of mortar was molded on a temporary frame like a groin vault. Pointed arches were employed in the main arcade of the forechurch. Vézelay's capitals rivet attention, so dramatic are the Bible stories related--the suicide of Judas, David and Goliath, Absalom, Moses, some symbolized vices and virtues, too, and a few _genre_ studies. The capital of the fifth pier on the north side of the nave shows field laborers who carry cones which some say were used for scattering grain, and others think were for the vintage, or for honey-gathering; the same agricultural scene was represented at Cluny. Vézelay even ornamented with sculpture some of the bases of its piers. The triple doors between narthex and nave are a supreme work. At the middle trumeau stands John the Baptist, he who was sent before to prepare the way, the announcer as well as the witness. On the disk which he holds was once carved the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. Observe that the trumeau was made narrow at its base, in order to let pass the pilgrim throngs. At each side of the door stand a few apostles, and among them M. Viollet-le-Duc cited St. Peter as one of the earliest attempts to escape the stereotyped Byzantine models by portraying individual expression in imagery. In the tympanum is the Pentecost, or perhaps it may be called more exactly the Messiah's mandate to the apostles: Go, teach all nations. Christ is surrounded by a gloria, and the Greek cross of his nimbus symbolizes divinity. From his outstretched hands spread rays which touch the head of each apostle. The explanations of the lintel stone have been various. It would seem to represent the strange peoples of the world to be won by Gospel preaching. Around the tympanum are eight medallions, thought to interpret John the Evangelist and the seven churches of Asia he exhorted. In 1136 an Auvergne noble, Pons de Montboissier, became abbot of Vézelay (d. 1161), when the forechurch was practically finished, but without doubt while its statuary was in progress, for certain uncut sides of the capitals prove that the stones were set up in the rough and carved _in situ_. Under Abbot Pons, Vézelay emancipated itself from Cluniac rule. He was the brother of Peter the Venerable of Cluny, who had become prior of Vézelay at twenty years of age. In vain the amenable Peter counseled Pons to show a more conciliatory spirit toward the restless townsmen, but Pons was as stubbornly convinced of the righteousness of his monastery's privileges as is many a modern landlord who holds vast areas among the unlanded millions. He held a stiff head against popular demands, the trouble grew aggravated, and the embittered burghers passed beyond their first fair demands and compromised their cause. Abbot Pons was driven out, but returned a victor after Louis VII had investigated the case and imposed a heavy fine on the citizens. Some have thought that the penalty money was expended on the elaborate sculptures of the abbey church. The people might oppose their feudal master, but they were aware that their material prosperity came from the pilgrimage church of the monastery, and each Burgundian was proud to show the visiting strangers the region's exceptional ability in stonecutting. In Vézelay occurred two notable gatherings of mediæval history. Here, on March 31, 1146, St. Bernard preached the Second Crusade, on the hillside without the northern gate. Abbot Pons built on the site the chapel of the Holy Cross, wherein was preserved the tribune on which the saint had stood. The leaders of France flocked into this valley of Burgundy, Louis VII and his brilliant queen, Aliénor of Aquitaine.[294] St. Bernard had been commissioned by the pope to set the new venture in motion, and he threw his whole passionate heart into the enterprise. Standing above the vast gathering, he read the papal letter that told of Odessa's fall, two years earlier, and the horrifying massacre of eastern Christians. It was sound statesmanship that discerned the menace of the Eastern Question; the advance of the Seljukian Turk was indeed a knotty problem for the XII century, when XX-century Europe, after oceans of blood, has not settled the trouble. We may be sure that Bernard of Clairvaux used no flatteries in addressing the throng at Vézelay, if his public word was as uncompromising as his private letters: "Up! soldier of Christ! Go, expiate your sins! The breath of corruption is on every side. The license of manners is unchecked. Brigandage goes unpunished. _Debout, soldats du Christ!_" We know that his words of flame swept the crowd, and that, as at Clermont, fifty years earlier, again rose the cry: "God wills it! The Cross! The Cross!" The seductive queen, whose equivocal conduct on this very crusade was to start centuries of calamity for France, threw herself at Bernard's feet, to receive from his hand the Cross. The lowly people jostled with the lords to take the vow, "_les menues gens et les gens de grand air_," for crusades were democratic things that did more than aught else to break up feudal autocracy. The eager men and women of 1146 knelt in the actual nave and narthex of Vézelay's abbatial. The choir which we have to-day was not yet built. In 1165 a fire damaged the choir of the Madeleine. A year later the exiled archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, excommunicated his enemies in England from Vézelay's pulpit. The new choir was built mainly under Abbot Girard d'Arcy (1171-96), and is Burgundy's Primary Gothic, though a generation behind the work of that phase in the Ile-de-France. Unpracticed hands made its vaulting, whose web is not built elastically as in the true Gothic fashion; the stones were welded in a compact mass by a bath of mortar. Viollet-le-Duc suggested that Abbot Hugues, deposed by the pope in 1206 for indebtedness, may have expended more than he should on the church. The choir was well advanced when, in July of 1191, the second great gathering at Vézelay occurred. Here Philippe-Auguste and Richard Coeur-de-Lion met, swore eternal friendship, and then marched south together for the Third Crusade. Before ever they reached Palestine their pact of good will was broken, as was only to be expected with the virus of the Capet-Angevin duel in their veins. Richard's mother, Aliénor, had flouted Philippe's father, her first husband, on the former great enterprise for the East which had been initiated at Vézelay. The Madeleine church reconstructed its west frontispiece in the XIII century in order to light better its narthex; the pignon is overheavy and rather odd. Three times St. Louis came to pray in the famous Burgundian pilgrim church, his last visit being a few months before his death while crusading in Africa. Then, in Provence in 1279, was discovered what was claimed to be the real body of the Magdalene. Before the XIII century was ended the prestige of Vézelay's pilgrimages was a thing of the past. The monastery's ruin was consummated during the religious wars.[295] Such was the decrepitude into which the splendid church fell, that only a complete restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, from 1840 to 1858, saved the edifice from collapse. Because Vézelay's nave belongs to Burgundy's school of Romanesque it is spacious and amply lighted; no gloom, no cramping here. Such a nave could lead up to a Gothic choir, without sharp contrast. The choir, taken by itself, may be a cold work, but the sublimity of its setting places it beyond criticism. There is no more romantically ideal a vista in architecture than the white choir of Vézelay, as it appears from the narthex through the imaged portico. Seen thus down the prospect of the sober nave four hundred feet away, it rises like the crusaders' dream of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The dominant note of Vézelay's interior is serenity. Pace up and down its deserted aisles as a warm June day fades. The rose glow of sunset transmutes the coarse, porous stones to glory and the church seems voicing, _securo e gaudioso_, the grand old plain-chant psalmody which through long centuries echoed here. With you, like a tangible presence, is Faith's certitude, the certitude of John the Baptist who witnessed, the vision of John the Evangelist who loved, the impassioned tranquillity of Mary of Magdala. Here reigns the benignant gladness, _benigna letizia_, that Dante attributes to St. Bernard in Paradise. The luminous stillness of Vézelay testifies that he that cometh to God must believe that He is. Here Faith is an overwhelming acquiescence of the conscience as entire as was the belief of the men and women of the XII century who, when they heard the preacher's word, responded with the cry: "The Cross! The Cross!" In the solitary abbatial of to-day, half forgotten on a bypath of the world, breathes the living quietude, the active repose, the voluntary discipline of its old Benedictine builders. "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not. Without faith, it is impossible to please God." Like the Tag, in India, there is here a supersensual art beauty that renews the jaded spirit. Both have been embalmed for eternity in a vivifying peace. "Without holiness no man shall see God," thought the faulty, vehement, crusading generations who prayed in Vezelay's church, and holiness, then, meant primarily the humble repentance of sins. Whoever it was built the tomb of the Indian princess at Agra, whoever it was built the church in Burgundy called after Mary of Magdala, he worked in something more than stones and mortar. At Agra you end by thinking that the secret of the enthralling magic lies in the marvel of atmosphere, the deep soft shadows which break the dazzling sun expanses. At Vézelay, in the groping effort to put its spell into words, you end by saying that the beauty lies in the space which the inclosing walls have so holily shut in. But what analysis or what detailed description can convey how the spirit is impressed by this shrine, named for the Sinner who poured out the precious ointment with a Faith and Love so complete that it washed her clean! In such a church come flashes of insight, momentary liftings of the veil, periods of mental fecundity that make clear why the true mystic passes without loss from his isolated reverie of Divine Love to an intensely practical activity, and when you begin to understand that you are on the way to a comprehensive sympathy with that pillar of French Christianity, that apostle sent of God as surely as was Paul to the Gentiles--Bernard the Burgundian, who prayed and preached in this abbey church. THE GOTHIC COLLEGIATE AT SEMUR-EN-AUXOIS[296] Les Français, fils ainés de l'antiquité, Romain par le génie, sont Grec par le caractère. Inquiets et volages dans le bonheur; constant et invincibles dans l'aversité; formés pour les arts; civilisés jusqu'à l'excès durant le calme de l'État; grossiers et sauvages dans les troubles politiques; flottants comme des vaisseaux sans lest au gré des passions; enthusiastes du bien et du mal; aimants pusillanimes de la vie pendant la paix; prodigues de leur jours dans les batailles; charmants dans leur pays; insupportable chez l'étranger; tels furent les Athéniens d'autrefois, tels sont les Français d'aujourd'hui.--CHATEAUBRIAND. If the traveler has chosen little Avallon as the center from which to explore Burgundian churches, Semur-en-Auxois, lying a few miles to its east, will soon be visited. Picturesque and well kept, it is perched on a crest round which loops the river, a site such as a feudal baron chose, when possible, for his lair. The donjon towers at Semur belonged to a fortress built by Duke Philippe le Hardi. The collegiate church of Notre Dame, included with the best Gothic work in Burgundy, derived indirectly from the choir of Auxerre Cathedral, through the church of Our Lady at Dijon. About 1225 the builders began to replace the XI-century Notre Dame at Semur by the present edifice, which reproduced the columnal piers with salient crockets that distinguish the most beautiful of Dijon's churches. By 1250 they had terminated the choir, transept, and the bay of the nave touching the transept. The nave and transept are too narrow for their height, because they followed the same ground plan as the antecedent Romanesque church. Burgundy seemed to enjoy a problem in construction. Here, the arches of the vault being excessively pointed, the flying buttresses were made with a radius greater than is to be found elsewhere. Early in the XIV century, three new bays were added to the nave, as is shown by their main arches, which are more pointed than those of the earlier bays. Then about 1370, probably after a fire, the nave's stone roof was rebuilt and its triforium suppressed. The religious wars of the XVI century played havoc here in Notre Dame. During the Revolution, for two entire weeks, cartload after cartload of art treasures was carried away from the collegiate. Happily, the transept's northern portal escaped destruction, for it is a small masterpiece of Burgundian sculpture. Its tympanum relates the adventures in India of St. Thomas the Apostle, whose builder's rule was said to be of gold, in emblem of his spiritual masoncraft. St. Jerome would not sanction the Indian legends of the architect apostle, but the story of King Goldoforus and St. Thomas lingered in popular favor. In one of the chapels of Semur's collegiate church is a XIV-century window dedicated to no saint, telling no Scriptural story, but merely setting forth, in large, clear panels, the working day of various artisans--dyer, vintager, butcher, tailor. The theologians who directed the iconography of mediæval churches permitted the old guildsmen to translate into sign language their sensible idea that honest work was prayer. The keystone over the sanctuary of Notre Dame, where eight ribs meet, is the most beautiful ever carved--a Coronation of the Virgin. Throughout the church the sculpture is exceptional. In the choir and transept, carved heads lean out from the triforium's spandrels, heads of monarch, bishop, monk, nun, and chatelaine, with here and there a grinning mask or grotesque. The restorer has followed a wrong path when he makes the exaggerated images in XIII-century sculpture exceed the ideal or realistic ones. Semur's triforium is among the most beautiful in Gothic art. On some of the capitals of the collegiate are vintage scenes, as was natural in this land of famous wines. There are noted modern vineyards, such as Chambertin and Vougeot, which were cultivated by the monks of Cluny and Cîteaux for many a long century. THE CATHEDRAL OF AUXERRE[297] J'erre à pas muets dans ce profond asile, Solitude de pierre, immuable, immobile, Image du séjour par Dieu même habité, Où tout est profondeur, mystère, éternité ... La voix du clocher en son doux s'évapore; Et, le front appuyé, contre un pilier sonore, Je le sens, tout ému du retentissement, Vibrer comme une clef d'un céleste instrument ... Les rayons du soir que l'Occident rappelle, Éteignent au vitraux leur dernière étincelle, Au fond du sanctuaire un feu flottant qui luit, Scintille comme un oeil ouvert sur cette nuit; Alors, portant mes yeux des pavés à la voûte Je sens que dans ce vide une oreille m'écoute, Qu'un invisible ami dans la nef répandu, M'attire à lui, me parle un langage entendu, Se communique à moi dans un silence intime Et dans son vaste sein m'enveloppe et m'abîme. --LAMARTINE (1790-1869; born in Burgundy). At Auxerre, on the Yonne, two Gothic edifices stand imposingly above the city, the cathedral of St. Stephen and the abbatial church named after that bishop of Auxerre, St. Germain, who foretold the sanctity of _la pucellette_ Geneviève in the village of Nanterre by Paris, and whose own sanctity was so assured that more churches have been called for him than for any other saint of France save the supreme St. Martin himself. Paris put her church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois under his protection. He had been the ruler of this region of middle France under the Emperor Honorius, and was a soldier and devoted to sports; yet the old bishop of Auxerre, St. Amâtre, chose him as his successor, divining in him a man destined to do great things for God. The splendid abbey church at Auxerre stands on the site of the oratory which rose over the grave of St. Germain. Queen Clotilde on her way to wed Clovis, pausing here in 490, renewed the shrine by a church, which became the nucleus for an abbey favored by all three dynasties of France--Merovingian, Carolingian, and Capetian.[298] The monastery was a noted school whither came St. Patrick, and many generations later St. Thomas Becket studied here after he had finished his law courses at Bologna. In memory of Auxerre's reputation as a teacher, the cathedral has twice represented the Liberal Arts, in glass and in sculpture. The choir of St. Étienne Cathedral was begun about 1215 by a well-known schoolman, Bishop Guillaume de Seignelay, who undertook it at his own expense, stimulated thereto by some of the parish churches which had lately been rebuilt in the new way. The crypt (c. 1130), retained under the choir of the new cathedral, had been begun by the bishop, St. Hugues de Châlons, a friend of St. Bernard, and probably finished by his successor, Hugues de Mâcon (1137-51), the first abbot of Pontigny, and St. Bernard's kinsman and childhood intimate. Of the cathedral of their day only the present crypt remains. When Bishop Guillaume de Seignelay was transferred to the see of Paris, in 1220, he worked on the west façade of Notre Dame of the capital, and his successor at Auxerre, Henri de Villeneuve, completed the choir of St. Étienne in 1234. Two lancets in the sanctuary are his gifts. The cathedral of Auxerre was building at both ends, while between lay the ancient Romanesque nave. The easternmost bay of the nave is XIII century, but the next five bays were erected only during the XIV century, at which time most of the statues of the western portals were done. With the choir's superb stained glass they form the supreme accessory of this cathedral. M. Enlart holds Auxerre's imagery to be, for delicacy and charm, among the best produced by the XIV century, and that the statuettes of the Liberal Arts, in the spandrels over the canopies of the David-Balthazar groups, are equal to Greek terra-cotta figurines. The Judgment of Solomon by the northwest door is excellent. Within and without the stonecutting of the transept's southern façade should be observed. At that entrance appeared an early example of an accoladed arch, cited by M. Enlart as an indication of the English derivation of Flamboyant Gothic in France, since during the XIV century they were masters of Auxerre for a time. As the Hundred Years' War relaxed building enterprise, the nave was not covered by a masonry roof till the XV century, about the time when Jeanne d'Arc paused to pray in Auxerre Cathedral on her memorable journey of eleven days from Lorraine to Touraine, across a France ravaged by civil and foreign wars.[299] The gracious Flamboyant west front of Auxerre's chief church is an expression of the hope and national pride renewed in France by the Maid's feat at Orléans. The well-designed north tower proves that the final phase of Gothic art in France did not pass away in decrepitude; had only the south tower been raised above the roof, this frontispiece could claim foremost rank. For bold and light construction Auxerre's choir is notable, and it made a school in Burgundian Gothic. It has only one radiating chapel--that in the axis--because it followed the ground plan of the Romanesque crypt, its foundation. The charming Champagne disposition of planting columns between chapel and ambulatory was made use of; perhaps the pillars and stilted arches of Auxerre are rather too frail in their proportions. The same feature was used in the abbey church of St. Germain, and when the church of St. Eusèbe[300] rebuilt its chevet, in the XV century, pillars were again placed to divide the curving aisle and the radiating chapels. Auxerre Cathedral showed another trait of the Champagne school of Gothic--an interior passageway beneath the aisle windows. The plain wall below it is relieved by a kind of arched corbel course not very satisfactory; the arches and the capitals upon which they rest are present, but there is no shaft to support the capitals, from above each of which reaches out a well-sculptured head. One of these busts represents the Erythræan priestess referred to in the _Dies iræ_: That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When Heaven and Earth shall pass away, As David and the Sibyl say. The XIII century distinguished only that one sibyl whom St. Augustine's _City of God_ had popularized as the prophetess of the Last Judgment, but later in the Middle Ages all ten of them were represented, and certain Renaissance windows represented as many as twelve pagan prophetesses. The placing of sculptured heads in the spandrels of arches was not infrequent in Burgundy, though occasionally merely one salient crocket was used. The cathedral of Nevers,[301] south of Auxerre, went a step farther and chiseled a small figurine in the spandrels of its triforium, like the angels of Lincoln's choir. Moreover, the colonettes of Nevers' triforium are borne on the backs of small crouching caryatides--a Lombard echo. In France, Nevers' cathedral of St. Cyr was exceptional in having an apse at both east and west ends, like a Rhenish church. One is forced to relegate the beautiful little capital of the Nivermois to a footnote, which is what France herself seems to be doing to the well-set town on the Loire which in England or beyond the Rhine would be made into a small residence city. Its palace, parks, cathedral, and numerous churches, its faïence industry and fortifications give it the air of a little capital. Auxerre is another Mecca of stained glass in France. Its choir possesses almost forty windows (1220-30) of the school of Chartres, half of them being in the ambulatory and Lady chapel. Unfortunately, the lower panels were wrecked in 1567, and the east window of the axis chapel was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian war; the grisaille design throughout is mastery. The opaline loveliness of the choir's clearstory grisaille has drawn from M. Viollet-le-Duc one of his most eloquent pages.[302] Each bay is filled with twin lancets surmounted by a rose; each lancet has a large figure set in uncolored glass--one of the first attempts made to give more light to an interior. Those crusading generations visioned their Heavenly Jerusalem in sculpture at Vézelay, in color at Auxerre: With jaspers glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze, The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays: Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced; The saints build up its fabric, And the corner stone is Christ. They stand, those halls of Zion, Conjubilant with song, And bright with many an angel, And all the martyr throng: The Prince is ever in them; Their daylight is serene, The pastures of the blessed Are decked in glorious sheen. There is the throne of David, And there, from care released, The song of them that triumph, The shout of them that feast; And they who, with their leader, Have conquered in the fight, For ever and for ever Are clad in robes of white.[303] In the roses of the two bays neighboring the central lancets are the Liberal Arts and virtues contrasted with vices. The choir aisle has a Creation window, and lancets of the popular St. James, St. Nicolas, and St. Eustace. The transept's south rose is Rayonnant. Its north one is Flamboyant, and with the eight golden lights below it was given by Bishop François de Dinteville, the younger (1530-52), who donated also the _Gloria in Excelsis_ west rose. But no sooner were all these precious things installed when came the bitter civil wars of the XVI century. No place in France suffered more than Auxerre. An eyewitness of the 1567 sacking wrote: "All the woes of Jerusalem when it fell to the infidel are heaped on our city." Many a citizen died of grief at the town's desolation, and so devastated was every single church that for months no services were held. A restoration was accomplished by Bishop Jacques Amyot (1571-93), the noted Hellenist, who first brought flexibility and amenity into French prose.[304] His translation of Plutarch--a French classic--molded the ideals of French youth for generations. Unfortunately, because imported foreign taste had won the victory over the national art, this enlightened Renaissance prelate removed some of the ancient windows to light his high altar. His marble bust adorns a pier of the choir of Auxerre Cathedral. DIJON[305] Eternal, je me tais; en ta sainte présence Je n'ose respirer, et mon âme en silence Admire la hauteur de ton nom glorieux. Que dirai-je? Abîmés de cette mer profonde, Pendant qu'à l'infini ta clarté nous inonde, Pouvons-nous seulement ouvrir nos faibles yeux? * * * Cessez: qu'espérez-vous de vos incertitudes, Vains pensers, vains efforts, inutiles études? C'est assez qu'il ait dit: "Je suis Celui qui suis." Il est tout, il n'est rien de tout ce que je pense; Avec ces mots profonds j'adore son essence Et sans y raisonner, en croyant, je poursuis! --BOSSUET, _Tibi silentium laus_ (1627-1704; born in Dijon). [Illustration: _Notre Dame at Dijon (1220-1245). Burgundian Gothic_] And finally we come to the capital of Burgundy, to a city of prime importance in the art history of France, although it can claim no one supreme monument. Dijon's leadership was from 1364 to 1477, under the four art-loving Valois princes, Philippe le Hardi (1364-1404), Jean sans Peur (1404-19), Philippe le Bon (1419-67), and Charles le Téméraire (1467-77). "Never," says Brantôme, "were there four greater princes one after the other than the great dukes of Burgundy." Each in turn on his formal entry into Dijon came to the abbey church of St. Bénigne to take oath to defend the special privileges of his capital. Tradition says that St. Benignus was sent to Christianize Gaul by St. Polycarp, who had known John the Evangelist. The hypothesis is possible, since it is historically certain that Polycarp provided Lyons with its first two bishops. Many a son of Dijon has borne the revered name of Bénigne, none with greater honor for his native city than Bossuet, descended from ancient parliamentary stock. The neo-classic taste of the great preacher's day might prevent his knowing Gothic architecture rightly, but without the centuries that built mediæval cathedrals he had not been what he was.[306] Dijon became the capital of Burgundy under the first line of Capetian dukes who governed the province from 1032 to 1361 and who gave the city its franchise and privileges. A duke of Burgundy led the right wing at Bouvines, another fought under St. Louis at Mansourah. From Burgundy's reigning line came Pope Calixtus II (1119-24), whose brother went crusading in Spain, where he founded the house from which descended Queen Isabella; Burgundian Capetians also reigned in Portugal. Cluny and Cîteaux were favored by the first line of Burgundy's dukes, to which belonged, by ties of blood, the two greatest abbots of their respective Orders, St. Hugues and St. Bernard. In 1361 the last duke died childless and the duchy returned to the French crown. Three years later the Valois Capetian king, Jean le Bon, gave Burgundy to his youngest and favorite son, Philippe le Hardi, who won his surname of valiant when fifteen years of age through his defense of his father at the battle of Poitiers. When Philippe, by the generous aid of his brother, King Charles V, wedded the richest heiress in Europe, the very plain Marguerite of Flanders, there resulted the political union of Burgundy with the Netherlands that was of important influence on French art. It led to the formation at Dijon of a French-Flemish school of sculpture. The robust middle region of France impressed its own character on the masters from the Lowlands who flocked to the semi-royal court of the dukes, and equally it assimilated the artists who came from Lyons and neighboring regions. The Flemish-Burgundian style controlled the first half of the XV century. Its fusion of national and local art traditions with Flemish realism renewed the vigor of French sculpture, and a truly French Renaissance had already set in before the advent of the Italian spirit. In Dijon took place the evolution that changed the sculpture of the Middle Ages to that of modern times. The artists who had gathered around Charles V in Paris, were scattered by that king's premature death and the subsequent disorders in the royal domain, and they flocked to the Burgundian court of his brother. Among them were André and Guy de Dammartin, who erected outside the gates of Dijon the Chartreuse of Champmol (1388-96) as a burial place for the Valois line of dukes. The work of the Dammartin family--with whom Flamboyant Gothic became a heritage passing from father to son--can be found at Bourges, Poitiers, Tours, Le Mans, and Nantes. What parts of the Chartreuse monastery now remain constitute an asylum. The sculptured portal of the church shows kneeling images of Philippe le Hardi and his duchess Marguerite, and in the cloister is the noted Well of the Prophets, conceived, and in part executed, by Claus Sluter in 1395, and finished by his nephew, Claus de Werve, in 1403. The _Puits de Moïse_ was so called because the statue of Moses, alone of the six prophets, shows religious analogy with the biblical character it stands for. The others are realistic studies of tradesman, rich citizen, or Jew, in eccentric costumes that probably were copied from those in the mystery plays of the day. With these prophet images of Claus Sluter, modern sculpture took birth. The two most regal tombs of the Middle Ages, those of Philippe le Hardi and his son Jean sans Peur, were originally in the Chartreuse church, but were broken up by the Revolution. They were reset, for a time, in St. Bénigne's church, and now are installed in the XV-century guard hall of the ducal palace, a part of Dijon's Art Museum, raising that collection to first-class rank. Near them are placed the elaborately carved and painted altarpieces brought from Termonde by the dukes. The pomp and pageantry of the knighthood described by Froissart and Commines breathes in the two grandiose tombs of Dijon, and the progeny of sumptuous funereal monuments they inspired. Cowled figures called _pleureurs_ are set in niches around each sarcophagus. They seem like symbols of the lesser people's sufferings in the dire Hundred Years' War, when France became a field of carnage. Foreign invasion, the Great Schism of the West, pest, massacres, misrule, lawlessness--such was the accumulation of miseries that only the heaven-sent Jehanne la Pucelle, from the far borders of the land, could right the immeasurable _pitié_ there was in the kingdom of France. Though Burgundy suffered less than the royal domain, the lesser people had to pay heavily for the prodigal largess of their dukes. At times the lavish giving of Philippe le Hardi bordered upon folly; while on visits of state he was forced to put his jewels in pawn to obtain sufficient funds for his home journey. When he died, in 1404, it took six weeks for his funeral _cortège_ to journey from Brussels to Dijon, and those of his household who accompanied the body were provided with Capuchin capes of black cloth. That is the procession represented by the statuettes around his sarcophagus, though, unfortunately, the original order of their march has been lost. Among the eighty _pleurants_ of the two ducal tombs are only eight restorations. Jean de Marville, a Lorraine master, designed Duke Philippe's monument, whose imagery is in greater part from the hand of Claus Sluter and Claus de Werve, Netherlanders (1384-1411). De Werve made most of Duke Jean's monument, a replica of his father's tomb; it was finished by an Aragonese sculptor, Juan de Heurta, and Antoine le Moiturier from Avignon. The latter was nephew of Jacques Morel of Lyons, trained in the Dijon studios, who made for the daughter of John the Fearless, the Duchess of Bourbon, a tomb in Souvigny's abbatial near Moulins, which M. Enlart has called the most masterly work in sculpture of the XV century. Dijon built no XIII-century cathedral. What to-day is its cathedral was originally the abbey church of St. Bénigne, not of architectural pre-eminence, but rich in historic memories. Abbot Hugues d'Arcy began it in 1280, in the hour of hope and energy that followed on the Council of Lyons, where Greek and Latin churches fraternally united. In 1286 the choir was dedicated and the relics of St. Benignus transferred from the crypt to the new sanctuary. St. Bénigne of Dijon is a secondary church compared with its neighbors, the cathedrals of Bourges and Lyons. The profiles are emasculated, the clearstory windows lack sufficient height, the wall surface above the triforium is monotonous, the denuded triforium of the nave lacks capitals, and despite the warm brown color of the stone, the general aspect of the interior is glacial. The Gothic effect has been marred further by the numerous busts and statues brought here from other churches after the Revolution. Far surpassing in interest the somewhat pinchbeck Gothic upper church of St. Bénigne is its crypt, the oldest Romanesque monument in Burgundy. It lies beyond the actual apse. For eight hundred years it was the foundation of a rotunda church of the same type as the round church at Cambridge, England, the prototypes for both being certain Roman mausoleums. Originally the Dijon crypt opened westward on a crypt now lost--the basement for a Latin cross church--and where that juncture occurred are vestiges of buildings that antedate the actual crypt. The round church beyond the apse of St. Bénigne's Gothic abbatial was destroyed during the Revolution, and its crypt filled in and forgotten. In 1858, while digging foundations for a new sacristy beyond the choir, the circular chamber was unearthed, in which was found a tombstone, apparently the ancient one of St. Benignus. Once again the venerable subterranean shrine became a pilgrimage for Burgundy. St. Bénigne's crypt has double circular aisles. Its sculpture is rude, even amorphous, and testifies to the extinction of the art during the Barbarians' immigrations. These rough designs on the capitals of St. Bénigne are, as it were, the first stutterings of the national pæans in praise of God and country that are the imaged portals of Gothic cathedrals. Abbot William of Volpiano, who made St. Bénigne's Romanesque rotunda and its adjacent basilica, came from Cluny to reform the spiritual life of the Dijon monastery and rebuild its church. Born on an island in the lake of Orta, he had crossed the Alps with Abbot Majolus of Cluny. For over thirty years he exercised his double function of administrative reformer and architect in Burgundy[307] and in Normandy, introducing certain Lombard features such as alternating piers, arched corbel courses, and superimposed arcades for decorative effect, this latter being a Ravennate motive adopted by Lombardy. He began his two connecting churches at Dijon in 1001, and completed them in 1018, when there was a solemn dedication at which St. William preached most movingly. St. Bénigne is, therefore, the first-recorded monument built after the terrors of the year 1000, described by Raoul Glaber, who lived in this monastery. William of Volpiano founded schools, taught the plain chant to children, revised Gregorian music, and established centers for craftsmen. In manner he was authoritative, but one on intimate terms with him wrote: "No one can tell to what degree in him rose mercy and compassion. In famine time, he sold the gold plate of the church to feed the people." To this day a gateway of Dijon bears his name, the Porte Guillaume. A century later Abbot Jarenton of St. Bénigne invited monks from Cluny to reanimate the spiritual life of his monastery. Paschal II blessed the Dijon abbatial, repaired after the fall of a tower in 1096. When in 1107 Aleth de Montbard, mother of St. Bernard, died in her castle two miles from Dijon, Abbot Jarenton hastened out to Fontaine-lès-Dijon to claim the body of the saintly woman for his hallowed crypt of St. Bénigne, and an enthusiastic procession carried the Blessed Aleth to the city. St. Bernard was an unknown lad at the time. In 1131, Pope Eugene III blessed the Dijon abbatial subsequent to still other restorations. Finally, in 1271, the easternmost church of William of Volpiano was wiped out by fire (though his rotunda church was to stand till 1792), and the present St. Bénigne was begun immediately on the site of the destroyed Latin cross basilica. If the ex-abbatial which is now Dijon's cathedral is secondary in size and character, the parish church of Notre Dame is a veritable gem of Gothic architecture, faultless in construction and of singular purity and unity. Its influence on the Gothic art of the province was widespread. After a fire in 1137, which consumed half the city, a Romanesque Notre Dame had risen. It was cited, in 1178, as the first of the town, its bells sounding the opening and the shutting of the city gates and alarms for fire. The present church of Notre Dame was begun about 1220; a record referred to it as in use in 1245. The architect had to contend with difficulties. His funds were so small that a minimum of building material was necessary. Three sides of his edifice were bounded by public thoroughfares; hence it was impossible to spread out the piles required by flying buttresses; at the same time the limited plot of ground made it imperative not to encumber the small interior by clumsy piers. How to construct a secure edifice without big piers, thick walls, or flying buttresses was the problem. The builder showed his genius when he used the inclosure wall to counterbut the vault thrust and yet dared open these walls by generous Gothic windows. For ten feet above the ground the walls are heavy; then they become a mere shell, skillfully doubled by the use of colonnettes of durable stone, each slender shaft being so weighted that it stands with the security of iron. The interior of Notre Dame appears charmingly spacious and airy. The XVII century added circular windows to the triforium of the apse, in character with the church, however. The exterior of the apse is plain and neat and, with the central lantern tower, composes an architectural group of simple elegance. The eastern buttresses fulfill a triple function as piers, as walls, and as counterbutting members. Technical subtlety is to be found throughout Notre Dame. The vaults of the side aisles were constructed to brace the principal span. The piers are uniform monoliths, but a sexpartite vault was built, though for a generation that system had been discarded in the north. The coping stones over the capitals of each alternate pier were enlarged to catch there the heavier weight. There are so many points of resemblance between Notre Dame of Dijon and the choir of Auxerre Cathedral, begun in 1215, that M. Charles Porée has thought that the same architect designed both. Their profiles are alike, their capitals have similar salient crockets, and their colonnettes were cut from the quarry according to the rock's horizontal strata, and not by the usual method of vertical cutting. In boldness of technique the small Dijon church is a masterpiece to which many an eloquent page has been devoted.[308] Beneath an apparent simplicity is unsurpassed scientific construction. The great engineer Vauban praised it, as did Soufflot, the XVIII-century architect of the Panthéon at Paris. The balanced equilibrium of the national art can be carried no farther, and only the use of hard Tonnerre stone permitted this successful audacity. Were a modern student to present such a plan to any commission, said M. Lassus, he would be dismissed as mad. While the nave was building a narthex was added before the western entrance, consisting of a fifty-foot-deep porch. Notre Dame's west façade rides astride two rows of pillars set close together before the narthex, again a case of strength being attained by the able use of double walls. The façade's superimposed arcades, used merely as decoration, as at Pisa, prevented the employment of strong buttress ridges, and give to the western front of the church a most un-Gothic aspect. It cannot be said that the lamp of truth is upheld, since the frontispiece makes no pretense to express the three-aisled interior, but rises above the roof like an abstract screen. The gargoyles that alternate with some ancient superbly cut panels of foliage across the west front, date only from 1881, and, as usual with restorations, the grotesque element has been overemphasized. A manuscript of the XIII century relates that the original gargoyles were removed when a bridegroom (a money-lender) about to enter the church was killed by the fall of a protruding image that represented a man gripping a money bag. The imagery of Notre Dame's portal has been entirely obliterated. When the Revolution voted to destroy "all signs of fanaticism," an apothecary of Dijon mounted a ladder each morning and leveled with his hammer all the stonecutters' work. The present image at the trumeau is a fragment saved from the late-Gothic Chartreuse of the Valois dukes. To Notre Dame Philippe le Hardi gave the Jacquemart[309] clock, one of his spoils from the sacking of Courtrai in 1382, whereat he had been assisted by the Dijon citizens _par loyauté et parfait amour_. SAINT BERNARD, AND CISTERCIAN INFLUENCE IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE[310] What is genius? It is a mind in which imagination, intelligence, and feeling exist in an elevated proportion and in an exact equation. It is a mind which has a penetrating view of ideas, which incarnates them powerfully in marble, in brass, in language, and in that dust which we call writing, which also communicates to ideas an impulse from the heart to precipitate them, living, into the hearts of others. Genius is, with conscience, the most beautiful endowment of humanity.... Genius is the greatest power created by God for grasping truth. It is a sudden and vast intuition of the connections which bind beings together.... It is the faculty of rendering ideas visible to those who would not have discovered them by themselves, of incarnating them in speaking images, of casting them into the soul, enlightening it, subjecting it, thrilling it.--LACORDAIRE (1802-61; born in Burgundy). Although modern Dijon may momentarily blot out much in its past history by renaming the square before Notre Dame _Place Ernest Renan, auteur de "La vie de Jésus"_ (which work depicts the Saviour as an unconscious charlatan), and christening the square before the cathedral _Place Blanqui, grand Révolutionnaire_ (Blanqui being the Communist who founded the journal _Ni Dieu ni Maître_), although it may mark one street sign _Rue Babeuf, écrivain politique, démocrate très ardente_ (the socialist, Babeuf, was executed under the Directory), and another with an equal pedantry that is most un-French, _Rue Diderot, auteur principale de l'Encyclopédie_ (the encyclopedia which railed at the Christian religion), none the less will the greatest honor of the ancient capital of Burgundy be the monk in whom western monasticism culminated, Bernard of Clairvaux, who led Dante to the Supreme Vision in Paradise, "who spoke to kings as a prophet, to the people as their leader, and transported Christendom by his eloquence," the greatest of Cistercians, the greatest of Burgundians, and the last great Doctor of the Church. As the XI century drew to a close, certain pious Benedictines, who regretted the laxity of rule in their own convent, retired to the marshy woods near Beaune, to Cîteaux, some twelve miles south of Dijon. There was started a new Order which languished during fifteen years, fever decimating the postulants, till the third abbot, St. Stephen Harding, stormed heaven with petitions to spare his dwindling flock. And efficacious prayers they appeared to be, for one spring day in 1113 there came to the abbey gates (Cîteaux' name signifies _Sistite hic_, Halt here!) a group of thirty young nobles, whose conversion was to set all Burgundy talking. Their leader was Bernard of Fontaine-lès-Dijon,[311] then in his twenty-fourth year. When he experienced the call to a monastic life, he drew after him brothers, cousins, uncle, and friends. His mother, the Blessed Aleth, had impressed ineffaceably on his soul her own ardent love of God. As Peter the Venerable said in that same generation: "With us the virgin, the wife, the mother, expand the soul of the country by the breath of their piety." When the small band of enthusiasts were quitting the château of Bernard's father, the elder brother and heir, Guy, told Nivard, the youngest of the six sons of Aleth, that now he alone remained to inherit the estate. "Ah," cried the lad, "you would leave me the earthly reward while you gain the eternal? The exchange is not fair." And in time he, too, sought his brothers in the cloister as did his father, who died in a Cistercian robe. All the nations of Europe were meeting then in the internationalism of monastic institutions. St. Stephen Harding, who was practically the founder of the Cistercian Order, who drew up its charter and began its centralized system of chapters-general, was an Englishman, educated in Sherborne abbey in Dorset, and later at Paris University. Feeling the desire to visit Rome in pilgrimage, he went there afoot, reciting each day, as he walked, the entire Psaltery. It is said that benignant joy shone in his face. To-day a Bible he translated is treasured in Dijon; he used to consult the learned rabbis of his acquaintance whenever in doubt concerning the Hebraic text. It was an hour of internationalism. A frequenter of St. Bernard's own Clairvaux was St. Malachy O'Morgair, archbishop of Armagh, who died in Bernard's arms in 1147. The Burgundian saint loved Malachy for his gentleness, his holiness, his delicacy of soul, and his noble majestic presence, and for him trained young Irish monks to serve in the reform needed then in the Celtic church, thus paying back to Ireland the debt incurred by the mission of Columbanus. With such souls as Bernard and his kinsmen, the new Order governed by Abbot Stephen Harding took on fresh vigor. Pontigny was founded a year later, and in 1115 Bernard and twelve companions were sent to establish Clairvaux[312] in a former robber haunt given by the Count of Champagne, a valley of wormwood which they turned into a valley of light. By the middle of the XIII century there were five hundred Cistercian houses in Europe. In England, from 1125 to 1200, rose a hundred monasteries of the white monks, Fountains, Furness, Tintern, Kirkstall, "God's castles," wrote a contemporary, "where the servants of the true anointed King do keep watch, and the young soldiers are exercised in warfare against spiritual evil." Many a Cistercian house was in Scotland and Ireland--Melrose, Mellifont, Boyle; in Germany and the north--Maulbronn, Arnsberg, Warnhem, and Sorö; in Spain--Poblet and Santa-Creus; in Portugal--Alcobaça. St. Bernard himself founded Chiaravalle near Milan, and on the spot of the Roman Campagna where St. Paul was beheaded flourished the Cistercian house of Tre Fontane, whose first abbot, trained under Bernard at Clairvaux, mounted Peter's Chair as Eugene III. Wherever the Cistercians went they promulgated the new Gothic building lore of France. Their churches with square east end, square chapels opening on transept arms, and neither tower, triforium nor clearstory, were built exactly alike whether it was in the far north as at Alvastra in Sweden, or in the far south as at Girgenti in Sicily. Burgundy's abbatial at Fontenay is the type at its purest. M. Camille Enlart was first to draw attention to the active rôle played by Cistercian monks in the dissemination of Gothic architecture in Europe.[313] All Cistercian churches were dedicated to the Mother of God, and the use of the gracious term _Notre Dame_ spread from their abbatials to the cathedrals. Dante opens the final canto of the _Paradiso_ by a eulogy of the Queen of Heaven, put into the mouth of St. Bernard, who never flagged in her praise, culling from Scripture every mystic and lovely name for her. _Io sono il suo fedel Bernardo_, the Burgundian proudly boasts in Paradise. Though Bernard's devotion to his _Dame souveraine_ was poles apart from Puritanism, his rules for ecclesiastic plainness were as rigid as those of the Puritans. His severe ideas concerning art restrained the earlier Cistercian churches, though his apostolate quickened the spiritual forces that soon were to rear the cathedrals. It has been said that to relate St. Bernard's life is to resume the history of the XII century during half its course. He ended the schism of an anti-pope; he went up and down Europe preaching unity and peace and reconciling enemies; he journeyed into Languedoc to combat, by word, the Catharist heresy; fearlessly he rebuked scandal in high places. He drew up the Rule for the Military Order of Templars. His _Book of Considerations_, written for Eugene III, became a manual of behavior for the papacy. His treatise on Grace and Free Will defined so perfectly the Church doctrine of Justification that almost textually it was repeated by the Council of Trent. No man ever received more overwhelming ovations than Bernard; at Toulouse they crowded to kiss his hand till his frail arms were swollen past all movement; at Albi a jeering crowd was subjugated by one sermon; in northern Italy, such was the reverence for the maker of peace between the rival cities, that Genoa chose him as a patron, and Milan placed herself under his protection. As he crossed the Alps, word passed among the mountaineers, and his way became a triumphal procession. He was worn to a shadow in the service of Christendom when Eugene III commissioned him to preach the Second Crusade, and when the expedition proved a lamentable failure, Heaven sent this strong man, who had passed unscathed through the intoxication of human glory, the severer test of human disgrace. The figure of the greatest proselytizer since St. Paul is no vague one in history. Bernard was tall and slender, with chiseled features like polished ivory; his hair was red-blond; in his blue eyes was a flame of celestial purity. Many have testified to the serenity of his visage, the modesty of his attitude, and the almost superhuman influence he exerted on those who saw him. They say that the very sight of him preached. Apart from the numerous descriptions of him by his contemporaries, there are over four hundred of his own letters extant, letters straightforward, abrupt, ironic here and there, fearless, and warm-hearted. He swayed emperors and kings, yet retained always his personal humility. Reluctantly he tore himself from the peace of Clairvaux to direct the affairs of Europe, and eagerly he returned to the life of prayer and brotherly love. A preacher, he said, must be a man of prayer if he would convert men. He must be a reservoir kept full and overflowing, not merely a canal that can run dry. Some to whom the spiritual life is a dead letter have called the abbot of Clairvaux unsympathetic and superhuman. Others, while admiring him, regret his brusqueness and hardy invectives. It was not a day when controversialists handled their adversaries with gloves; witness Abélard's onslaughts on those who disagreed with him on the most abstract theological points. No doubt, in some cases, Bernard's zeal exceeded propriety; perhaps his father had touched exactly on the defect of his qualities when he advised him to keep measure in all things. But who that appreciates this great man would tone down his splendid vehemence? His love for morality and pure doctrine was a glorious passion. He struck at the sin, not the sinner. Such censures are the anger of love. And remark how the men whom Bernard rebuked accepted the humiliation of his public censures. When he asked the archbishop of Sens--the feudal lord, Henri le Sanglier, who began that cathedral--if he thought justice had disappeared from the rest of the world as it had from his own heart, the proud churchman set about curbing his autocratic tendencies, and died an honored pastor. No disputants ever more soundly berated each other than Abélard and Bernard, yet their reconciliation, brought about by kindly, large-minded Peter of Cluny, was frank and complete. And we have seen how Abbot Suger changed his worldly ways of life, how he reformed his monastery, and how the revenues hitherto wasted on a retinue of sixty horsemen were devoted to building the first Gothic monument in France. St. Bernard was, without question, the most eloquent preacher of the Middle Ages, but the conversions he wrought were due as much to the purity, charity, and humility of his own life as to his unparalleled powers of persuasion. The ideal of that harsh age, despite its shortcomings, was saintliness, and when men found it incarnate in this Burgundian, they accepted him as their leader. Bernard held that it was false principles that led to social corruption, and to punish the evil act while the mental crime which led to it went unchastened, was illogical. So whenever the purity of Christian doctrine was threatened, this champion of the Cross emerged from his seclusion full armed for its defense. His vigilance was not bigotry. When a fanatical German monk preached a persecution of the Jews, the abbot of Clairvaux came to their defense: "The Just," an old rabbi called him, "without whom not one among our people had saved his life. Honor to him who came to our succor in our hour of mortal anguish." In all Bernard's writings is not one word of disloyalty to what he thought was right, not a trace of the hypocrite. If he thundered against ambition, cupidity, and that hypocrisy which moves about in dim corners, _perambulante in tenebris_, he knew that scandals there have been and will ever be, since even among the chosen twelve Judas betrayed, Peter denied, and Thomas doubted. He might flagellate ecclesiastic disorders as openly as Luther himself, but the pope called him the pillar of the Church and its guide. Towering above his fellow men morally, he took up his Master's cord whips to drive the traffickers from the temple, but he left an altar in the sanctuary and a high priest at the altar, and his own life was blameless. The choicest spirits of the age sought Bernard's friendship. He was loved by St. Norbert, whose new Order of Prémontré spread over Europe with the same rapidity as that of Cîteaux. He had links with the mystics in St. Victor's abbey at Paris; Hugues de St. Victor submitted cases of conscience to him; Richard de St. Victor asked of him criticism on his book on the Trinity; and the Latin hymns of Adam de St. Victor breathe the selfsame spirit as that of the Burgundian mystic. Geoffrey de Lèves, who built the tower at Chartres, traveled with him in Italy and Languedoc. Pierre de Celle, who built the choir of St. Remi, at Rheims, wrote of Bernard: "His life, his fame, his works, his writings, his miracles, his faith, his hope, his charity, his chastity, his abstinence, his words, his visage, his gestures, the attitude of his body, all, in a word, rendered homage to his sanctity. He was the well-beloved disciple of the Lord, in whose honor he built, not only one basilica, but all the basilicas of the Order of Cîteaux. If, then, thou wouldst touch the pupil of Our Lady's eye, write against Bernard." And the bishop of Paris, who worked on the façade of Notre Dame, the schoolman, Guillaume d'Auvergne, testified that Bernard "lived in the highest perfection," that his "wisdom proceeded not from human instruction, but from divine inspiration." The first great master of scholasticism, Guillaume de Champeaux, the progenitor of Paris University, was bound to Bernard in loving friendship till his death, and asked to be buried in the abbey church at Clairvaux. Detachment from the things of the world never weakened this saint's human affections. What cry from a stricken heart is more moving than Bernard's lament for his brother Gerard? That elder brother was following a knight's career when Bernard won him for God's service in the cloister. There for twenty-five years they lived side by side. They had just returned together from Italy when Gerard suddenly died. Dry-eyed, Bernard attended the burial, and dry-eyed he went about his daily tasks. He mounted the pulpit to continue an exposition of the Canticle of Canticles which he was conducting, and all at once his grief broke forth irresistibly in one of the sublime elegies of literature, recorded by a monk of Clairvaux who heard it: "What is there in common between this Canticle of joy and me who am in bitter anguish!... I have done violence to my heart.... Grief shut in but wounds with deeper sting. It has vanquished me. What I suffer must have its way. I must pour out my trouble before you, my sons, who knew the faithful comrade I have lost and the justice of my sorrow. You knew his vigilance, his sweetness; you knew my need of him. When I was weak in body, he strengthened me; when I hesitated he spurred me on; when I grew negligent he cautioned me. My Gerard! why have you left me to stumble alone on the road we two trod together, my brother by blood but still more by religion! Ah! I would know if you still think of one whom you loved, if, in God's presence, you can lean toward our distress? You have shed your mortal weaknesses, but surely not your human tendernesses, for charity endures, says the apostle. No! my Gerard does not forget me in eternity! It was our joy to be together, inextricably were our spirits interlinked, the same thoughts, the same emotions, the same will; one only heart, one only soul between us; with one blow, the sword has pierced my heart and his.... That I might have tranquillity he took on his own shoulders the material cares of the convent. It was his heart bore my troubles. His eyes led my steps. Now, when a need rises I turn to where I think to find him, and he is not there!... I am deprived of the best part of myself and I must not weep. My heart is torn from my bosom, and I must not suffer.... But my courage is not of stone.... I suffer, I weep, and my grief is ever before me...." And so on it runs, this lamentation with its Hebraic note of sorrow's passion. Impregnated through and through was Bernard with the Bible, and his speech fell naturally into its cadences. To mark the biblical references in his works would be, says the student, to fill half the pages with annotations. There is a book of interior consolation, precious to humanity, which has preserved for us intact the spiritual teachings of this Cistercian abbot who led the XII century. Scholars say that the _Imitation of Christ_ bears the direct impress of St. Bernard's spirit, that it reproduced and analyzed his writings. Whoever its author, his prayer _Da mihi nesciri_ has been answered. Those who have been comforted by the book which, next to the Bible, has been chief solace for the stricken heart, have leaned unaware on the purpose, the faith, and the purity of the greatest saint of the Middle Ages, the man who made Burgundy as illustrious by its Cistercian reformers and missionary builders as it had been by its Benedictines when Cluny was a world power. CHAPTER X Gothic Art in Normandy[314] The cathedral was perfected slowly and passionately. The Romans brought to it their force, their logic, their serenity. The Barbarians brought to it their naïve grace, their love of life, their dreamful imaginations. From this unpremeditated collaboration sprang a work modelled by times and places. It is the French genius and its image. It did not progress by fits and starts; it was not the servant of pride. It mounted in the course of centuries to complete expression. And that expression, one throughout the country, varies with each province, with each fraction of a province, just enough to make interesting the chain that joins all the pearls of this monumental necklace of France. --RODIN, _Les cathédrales de France_.[315] Virtually the land conquered by the vikings received its civilization from monasteries. Like Burgundy, Normandy was a very Egypt, a Thebaid, for the number of its religious houses. Each baron sought to have one on his domain. In the capital of the duchy was St. Ouen, whose abbot owned half the city; on the same Seine lay Jumièges, a center of letters and arts, and farther down the river was St. Wandrille, "nursery for saints"--three noted houses that inherited directly the apostolate of Celtic Columbanus. From St. Wandrille went monks to establish Fécamp, favorite of the Norman dukes, with an early-Gothic church equal to a cathedral. Other monks from Fontenelle reorganized the most romantic pile of monastic buildings in the world, Mont-Saint-Michel, guarded by the patron of the kingdom of France, _Sanctus Michael in periculo maris_. When that man of genius, William of Volpiano, abbot of St. Bénigne, at Dijon, came to Normandy to reform its houses, he himself rebuilt the abbatial church at Bernay which architecturally is an ancestress for such Romanesque work as Cerisy-la-Forêt, Lessay, the Caen abbatials, and St. Georges de Boscherville. At Mortain, at St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, at St. Évroult, were monastery churches, and the picturesque ruins of Hambye cause one to mourn that Primary Gothic abbatial wrecked by the Revolution. St. Pierre-sur-Dives and the collegiate at Eu are later monastic works of the province. For its influence as a world power--what we may call the Cluny of Normandy--was Bec abbey that became, under Lanfranc the Lombard, and St. Anselm the Piedmontese, the intellectual leader of the West. Its mammoth church has gone the way of Cluny's--scarcely stone left on stone. BEC ABBEY[316] O beata solitudo! O sola beatitudo! --(Inscription on a Benedictine monastery in France.) In Bec, theology for the first time spoke the language of philosophy. Herlouin, an unlettered knight, who learned to write only at forty, founded, in 1034, an abbey on his lands on the banks of a beck in the valley of Brionne. With the monks who gathered round him, he was engaged in building with his own hands his convent when, one day in 1042, Lanfranc of Pavia arrived in their midst, the learned one needed by those simple, good men. Lanfranc had been teaching at Avranches, and was journeying to Rouen when brigands seized him in a forest near Bec, stripped and tied him to a tree to perish. Before aid came to him, as he faced death during long hours--learning that despite his scholarship he was incapable of reciting one single psalm to support his soul--a new comprehension of life dawned on him, and he vowed himself to the triumph of religion. The school which he opened in Bec abbey soon drew students from all parts of Europe. From northern Italy came young Anselm, destined twice to succeed his master, in Bec as prior, in Canterbury as archbishop. Lanfranc, practiced in the affairs of the world, a born statesman, was better fitted to be primate of England than was Anselm with his childlike, tender nature, and his subtle, speculative brain. Bec gave still a third archbishop to the see of Canterbury, Theobald, the patron of St. Thomas Becket; Martin, whilom abbot of Bec, built Peterborough Cathedral. For thirty-three years St. Anselm wrote and taught in Bec abbey, student first, then monk, then prior, and in 1078 abbot. There at night, while all the house slept, he wrote the books which have won for him the title of founder of the Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages. A forerunner of scholasticism, he was among the first to set forth the conformity of Christian doctrine with human reason. Dante places him in Paradise among the great contemplatives. The union of the mystic and the rational in theology, in the Norman abbey ruled by Anselm, started impulses which were to pass down through the centuries. An immediate result was the quickening of the mental life of the XII century. Among St. Anselm's pupils at Bec was Anselm de Laon, whose classes, with those of Guillaume de Champeaux, are regarded as the nucleus of the University of Paris. What is of interest to us here is that, from the hour of the opening of men's minds to scholastic learning, rose the architecture of France, that the giant energy which built cathedrals had its source in a faith that _believed in order that it might understand_, which is St. Anselm's own proposition, _Credo ut intelligam_, as well as it is the apogee flight reached by Plato, what the Greek philosopher called _the wings of the soul_. And Plato's peer, XIII-century Aquinas, voiced the Greek's vision, and repeated Anselm's thought, in a hymn whose subtle stanzas are sung daily over Christendom: "_Præstat fides supplementum sensuum defectui_" ("Faith for all defects supplying where the feeble senses fail"). Anselm, with his "face of an angel," naïvely enthusiastic over his metaphysical proof of God, writing alone in Bec, in the silence of the night, was digging unaware the foundations for Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and those other visions of the Beyond to which man gave tangible shape in the scholastic-trained centuries because, _believing_, he _understood_. Sorely against his will St. Anselm left the peace of Bec to take up the duties of England's primacy in an hour when the eternal lay-ecclesiastical controversy was embittered. The wanton and despotic William Rufus was the opponent who overwhelmed him. His sole friends were the little people for whom, at that time, any churchman who maintained independence against layman tyranny was a champion of civic liberties. The scholar of Bec was the only prelate of the many crossing from Normandy to England who displayed loving kindness for the downtrodden Saxons. Homesick in England, St. Anselm used pathetically to sign his letters to his intimates, "Brother Anselm by the heart, Archbishop of Canterbury by coercion." At Le Bec-Hellouin to-day little remains of the abbatial whose choir once soared on twenty immense piers. Again and again the church was reconstructed. In 1077 Archbishop Lanfranc crossed the Channel for a dedication. Early in the XIII century the master-of-works at Rouen, Enguerrand, proceeded to Bec to superintend a new Gothic edifice. A fire in 1263 caused another renewal of the choir. In the Rayonnant day the nave was rebuilt on the same lines as St. Ouen's abbatial. The religious wars of the XVI century damaged the church, whose demolition was continued as late as 1814. What now remains are a portion of the transept, a chapter house of the XII century, and the isolated tower of St. Nicholas (1467-80), another memorial of Normandy's rejoicing to be free of foreign rule. Eight large statues adorn its upper walls. Bec had been pillaged by Henry V's troops before Jeanne d'Arc's advent, and the abbot then appointed by the invaders was one of the sixty university professors and ecclesiastics who condemned the Maid to death in Rouen, 1431. Ten abbots of Normandy thus tarnished their great names, but it is well to bear in mind that in each case the delinquent monastery had recently been sacked because of its patriotic stand against the foreigners, and that it was governed by a tool of the victors. Fifty Norman abbeys honored themselves by their absence from the torture of a young girl who had all England against her, half of France, as well as the perverted learning of Paris University. NORMANDY'S ROMANESQUE SCHOOL[317] The Christian world made no mistake when, in calm confidence, it sought, under the wing of the Benedictine abbeys, that strong education of the Western races which made possible all the marvels of faith, courage, fervor, and humility with which Europe was illuminated from the XI to the XV century, from Gregory VII to Jeanne d'Arc. --CHARLES DE MONTALEMBERT, _The Monks of the West_. Normandy's hardy personality showed at its best in her Romanesque monastic churches. Their design is decisive and vast, their construction solid--the Norman excelled in masoncraft--and as art they have never been surpassed for grave impressiveness. In the Norman minsters is a primeval energy admirably restrained, a massive grace, a something of reasoned simplicity lost in the Gothic cathedrals of the region. One who fell under the spell of Normandy's Romanesque architecture has told how its repose "appeals to men and women who have lived long and are tired, who want rest, who have done with aspiration and ambitions, whose life has been a broken arch.... The quiet strength of these lines, the solid support of the moderate lights, the absence of display, of effort, of self-consciousness, satisfy them as no other art does. They come back to it to rest after a long cycle of pilgrimage--the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started."[318] No church earlier than the year 1000 has survived in Normandy. The Norseman, while still an unbaptized buccaneer, laid low every Merovingian and Carolingian edifice. All was in ruin. "From Blois to Senlis," says the old record, "not an acre is plowed, for none dare work in the fields." Then, Rollo, chief of the marauders, baptized in Rouen, settled down in the duchy granted him in fief by the harassed king of France. In an incredibly short time the erstwhile pagans became the most indefatigable of church builders. For Normandy, the date 911 is as important a landmark as is 910 for Burgundy, the year of Cluny's foundation.[319] The Norman Romanesque school made general use of the roll molding at window and portal, of griffes at the base of piers, blind arcading, intercrossing wall arches (that became monotonous in the Anglo-Norman school), and very frequently it contrived an interior passage at the clearstory level, whose effect was heightened by the use of arches of different designs in its outer and inner walls. Certain archæologists contend that the predominant influences in the development of Norman Romanesque were Lombard, and that in this it differed from other French schools which in main part derived from local Carolingian work. As the Norman's creative genius was not on a par with his constructive abilities, it seems reasonable to look for foreign influence when finding its school precociously formed by the middle of the XI century. The Lombards used, before the Normans, the alternate system of ground supports, cubic capitals, transverse arches, compound piers, crypts, and raised choirs, and their most striking feature of exterior decoration was the arched corbel table that made a continuous cornice. Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter says that diagonals were used in Lombardy early in the XI century as an expedient to economize wood, groin vaults being molded on a temporary wooden substructure, but as the Lombard never counterbutted his intersecting ribs, such vaults proved unsatisfactory and were given up after 1120. If the Norman had an early knowledge of diagonals through the Lombard, like the Lombard he failed to derive from them their constructive consequences. That fact of creative genius no one can deny to the Ile-de-France. Even if the controversy as to who first used Gothic ribs should be decided in favor of the Anglo-Norman school, and behind their use of it, traced to Lombardy's Romanesque builders, none of them saw in it what Abbot Suger did--the radical member of a new system of building. William of Volpiano, a Lombard, and an architect as well as a reformer, spent many active years in Normandy, where he died in 1031. At Fécamp he is said to have trained a group of masons. A decade after his death, Lanfranc, born in northern Italy, became a leader in the duchy, and under him was built the present nave of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes at Caen. It seems very natural to suppose that such men, alert as they were to architectural progress, should have exerted influence on the Norman school. However, M. Lefèvre-Pontalis thinks it wiser not to exaggerate the immediate influence from beyond the Alps. He holds that the Romanesque school of Normandy proceeded in main part from the same element as the other pre-Gothic schools of France, elements derived somewhat from Barbarian sources, but chiefly from Rome's occupation of Gaul. In the case of Normandy the Barbarian influences would be largely Scandinavian, and there has been considerable speculation over the Norseman's wooden structure and the Norman's partiality for the pleated capital. Mr. John Bilson is unsympathetic to Mr. Kingsley Porter's ideas of Lombard influence in Normandy, and he considers the early dates ascribed to Lombard diagonals most improbable. Why, he asks, if the solution was reached in Lombardy about 1025, did it take three quarters of a century for the Normans, directly in contact with the builders of Italy, to arrive after long experimenting at the same intersecting ribs? He claims that the Ile-de-France was indebted to Normandy for diagonals, which were not in use in the royal domain before 1130, but that, once that school came into possession of intersecting pointed arches and flying buttresses, it developed from them a new system of construction, clothing it with a new expression, which we call Gothic. The controversy is by no means closed. Normandy's Romanesque school spread far afield.[320] It passed into Picardy and penetrated as far south as Chartres. It crossed the Channel with the adventurers who descended on England, and with other free lances who carved out distant kingdoms for themselves, its characteristics appeared in southern Italy and Sicily. The ornamentation of the Norman school came in part from Oriental or Byzantine sources already in use in the Carolingian era, and in part from Scandinavian. Unlike Burgundy, this province, despite its good stone, never won distinction in sculpture either in the Romanesque or the Gothic day. Never was Norman decoration equal to Norman construction, otherwise this school would be without a peer. Its ornamentation lacks variety and imagination. Geometric designs were endlessly repeated. Both in England and in Normandy the traveler grows weary of the zigzag or chevron motive, taken from Merovingian interlacings, or Carolingian triangular outlines, and very weary, too, of its variants, the dog-tooth or star ornament, and the fret or meander which reproduced a classical motive. The Carolingian billet molding was also overused. Such monotony of decoration was probably the defect of a good quality--caution and thoroughness. The Norman seldom attempted what he could not put through, hence his churches were usually completed, even to having their towers crowned by stone spires. The builders of the Ile-de-France were less cautious, but more sublime. THE ROMANESQUE ABBEY CHURCH OF JUMIÈGES[321] Aucun pays n'avait fourni au moyen âge plus de missionnaires chrétiens qu'Irlande, ni d'hommes empressés de répandre chez les nations étrangères les études de leur patrie.--A. THIERRY. The first Romanesque church of Normandy with architectural pretensions, the first to present the regional school fully formed, was the abbatial of Jumièges, begun about 1040. That virile, rugged "château de Dieu" stands on a semi-island of the Seine where the river makes a gracious twenty-mile meander, or rather, there stand the "incredible masses of masonry" which are the ruins of Jumièges, a wall of the big central lantern, a roofless nave, and two gaunt façade towers, the only Norman towers entirely of the XI century. In all France is no more austere, stark, and grandiose a ruin. How from such a predecessor as Bernay's abbatial the Norman could immediately evolve an architectural feat as tremendous as Jumièges seems explicable only by some strong exterior impetus. Here is the Lombard alternance of ground supports over whose origin in Normandy much printer's ink has been spilled. As the Lombard groin vault embraced two bays, a strong pier was needed only for the transverse arch separating the large square vault sections; or if a timber roof was used, a reinforced pier was required only for the bigger tiebeams. Now, at Jumièges, the lower structure proves (say certain archæologists) that never was a masonry roof planned for, so it is probable that the open timber roof required heavy tiebeams only at every other bay, hence an alternance of substantial and slight piers to correspond to the alternance of big beams and little beams. Jumièges also used the Lombard engaged shaft. Its uniform _hautes colonnes_, without capitals, rise from soil to roof, serving as interior buttresses, and some say as supports for the tiebeams, since they rose too high to be intended for a masonry roof. They bind together the three stories, and æsthetically their rhythm breaks the monotony of the plain walls. Mr. John Bilson thinks that the wall shafts of Jumièges can have had no other motive than to support a vault over the principal span, and cannot have been the supports of mere tiebeams. They may have been planned, suggests Prof. Baldwin Brown, to carry an undergirding arch such as occurs beneath some wooden roofs. Normandy's invention of the sexpartite vault came about, thinks M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, through her predilection for multiple lines. With such Gothic vaults--each section of which embraced two bays--she proceeded to reroof various of her Romanesque abbatials, whose already existent alternated piers were thus made logical. Almost it would seem as if the presence of ground supports, substantial and slight, had called into being the new type of masonry roof. St. Denis used a sexpartite vault in 1140, and M. Lefèvre-Pontalis suggested, at one time, that Normandy derived the idea from the Ile-de-France. In the royal domain, however, no steps are to be found leading up to it, whereas in Normandy can be seen sexpartite vaults of primitive design, such as those covering the Abbaye-aux-Dames, which consist merely of two diagonals with a transverse rib crossing their apex. In the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, where the timber roof of the nave was replaced by a Gothic vault as early, perhaps, as 1135, the vault web is warped to the intermediate transverse rib. It has been suggested that the sexpartite vault originated from the employment of the diaphragm arch. Jumièges abbey church was dedicated "with great spiritual joy," so an old chronicle relates, by saintly Archbishop Maurille of Rouen, in the presence of William the Conqueror and Matilda. Maurille had been trained at Fécamp under the great William of Volpiano. A Gothic choir, added to the abbatial later, was blown up after the Revolution by a contractor who acquired the monastery in order to sell its stones as building material. Under the flank of the now roofless nave nestles a ruined little church of the XIV century, St. Peter its tutelary. Two of its bays incorporate parts from a Carolingian church built by Rollo's son, William Longsword (928-943). They are of archæological interest in being the oldest examples extant of twin arches beneath a common arch for the tribune-opening on the middle vessel. The arrangement became popular in the Romanesque churches of Normandy and England, and can be seen at Mont-Saint-Michel, Rochester, Ely, Gloucester, Peterborough, and Winchester. Jumièges was an ancient foundation of Clovis II and Queen Bathilde. They granted forests on the Seine to St. Philibert (d. 684), who had been an intimate at the Merovingian court, of St. Ouen and St. Wandrille. To obtain the Celtic rule of Columbanus at its source, Philibert visited Luxeuil and Bobbio, and he dedicated a chapel of his abbatial at Jumièges to the Irish missionary. His own cult was to crop out at Tournus and Dijon when the Norse piratical inroads drove the inmates of wrecked monastic houses into Burgundy. Jumièges was a scene of pillage and massacre during the last acts of the Capet-Plantagenet duel, when Henry V, the victor of Agincourt, overran Normandy. The abbot, then appointed, sat in judgment on St. Jeanne in 1431, and fell down dead three months later. After Charles VII had entered Rouen as conqueror, in 1449, he retired to Jumièges. During the feasts of rejoicing _la dame de beaulté_, Agnes Sorel, died in a manor close by, and her memorial stone in Jumièges abbatial recorded her "pitiful loving kindness to all men and especially the poor and children." Days of decline came for Jumièges under her commendatory abbots. A XVII-century revival of learning was led by the reformers of the Congregation of St. Maur, but the famous establishment went under completely during the Revolution. The sequence is the same for most French abbeys. Farther down the Seine, at what once was Fontenelle, stand the less imposing ruins of St. Wandrille's abbatial, consisting of a transept of the XIII century and a Flamboyant Gothic cloister, whose _lave-mains_ is a gem of Renaissance delicacy. The house was founded in 649 by St. Wandrille, of Merovingian blood. Like his friend, Philibert of Jumièges, he sought the rule of St. Columbanus at its fountainhead, though the more equable rule of St. Benedict was to prevail in French religious establishments before the VII century closed. St. Wandrille trained many of the saints who planted monasteries over northern France, and in later centuries the Duke of Normandy chose monks from St. Wandrille's abbey to institute a Benedictine house of prayer on the rock of St. Michael-in-peril-of-the-sea. THE ROMANESQUE ABBATIALS AT CAEN[322] Clochers légers, clochers aigus, Clochers de France, Par quel attrait d'élan pieux Emportez-vous si vite et si haut dans les cieux Nos regards et notre espérance?... Longs et pareils à ces lances pointus Que les géants piquaient au sol, Vous montiez d'un seul jet pour défier le vol Des hirondelles éperdues. --GEORGES LAFENESTRE, "Clochers de France."[323] Caen played a prominent part in the builder's story of Normandy. It has been called the Romanesque Mecca. Its church of St. Nicolas (c. 1180-93), one of the most interesting Romanesque edifices of the duchy, is dismantled, but the Abbaye-aux-Hommes or St. Étienne, and the Abbaye-aux-Dames, or Ste. Trinité, are in good repair. All the world knows how William the Conqueror and his good and gentle Matilda of Flanders each founded an abbey in Caen, "that God might be served by both sexes and thus pardon their transgression." Their marriage disobeyed Church regulations concerning consanguinity and a canonical atonement was required. Matilda's tomb rests in the middle of the choir she built. Her epitaph was inscribed in letters of gold: "Consoler of the needy, lover of piety, a woman who, having lavished her treasures in good works, was poor to herself, but rich to the unfortunate. Thus she sought the fellowship of eternal life on the second of November, 1083." [Illustration: _The Crypt of the Abbaye-aux-Dames at Caen (1059-1066)_] The Abbaye-aux-Dames, begun about 1059, was dedicated in 1066 by the same Archbishop Maurille who blessed the new church at Jumièges. A few weeks after the ceremony, William descended on England, which his knights and villeins conquered to the chant of the _Chanson de Roland_, written by some unknown poet who, like themselves, looked to the Archangel of the Peril for inspiration. Yet a few decades more and Roland's war song was sung by the first crusaders before Jerusalem. Architecture, crusades, language, literature--many were the vital movements then coming to birth. On the day of the blessing of Matilda's convent of the Holy Trinity, her little daughter, Cécile, was laid on the altar and dedicated to God's service. For almost fifty years her aunt, Matilda, daughter of Richard II and the fair Judith of Brittany, ruled the Abbaye-aux-Dames, and then Cécile succeeded as second abbess; _Dame de la ville de Caen_, her brother Henry I of England called her. Cécile was one of the learned ladies of her day, having studied philosophy and belles-lettres under the patriarch of Jerusalem. One recalls that it was a contemporary abbess--at St. Odile in Alsace--who made the first attempt to compile an encyclopedia. Several English princesses were nuns of the Trinité, among them the daughters of Henry III and Edward I. In a later century Charlotte Corday was a pupil of the convent. It has been thought that Gundulf, a monk of Bec, called to Caen by Lanfranc, was architect of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, where his mother had retired as a nun. This learned and pious man had entered Bec in the same year as St. Anselm, and when he had become the bishop of Rochester he remained faithful to Anselm, then the primate of England, facing bitter troubles with the king. The saint came to attend the good bishop on his deathbed. Gundulf rebuilt Rochester Cathedral, whose crypt and western bays are of his time (1076-1108); Rochester Tower, too, he raised, and the chapel of St. John in London Tower. It was said of him that he was the most skilled of all men in masoncraft. The apse of the Trinité is considered one of the best things in Caen. It stands over a crypt whose sixteen piers are in four rows. When the choir was renovated, after 1100, some of its sculptures were modeled on certain Byzantine ivories that had been brought as gifts to Abbess Cécile by her crusading brother. The abbatial's triforium is a blind arcade behind whose wall was essayed some very primitive flying buttresses. The present sexpartite vault was an early trial of that Norman form of the Gothic masonry roof, and is really a quadripartite vault divided by a transverse rib, the web being unwarped to that intermediate member. Though the XII century replaced the original timber roof of the Trinité by this sexpartite one, exactly when it was done is not known. But those interested in claiming priority for Normandy in the use of diagonal ribs place it before the sexpartite vaulting of St. Denis. The XIII century added a handsome Gothic chapel to the transept of Matilda's convent church. As the expiatory abbatial erected by the Conqueror was on a far larger scale than the Abbaye-aux-Dames, it took longer to build; perhaps the same Gundulf of Bec and Rochester was its architect. Over the aisles are deep tribunes, some of whose bays have retained their primitive vaults of the same type as those at Tournus in Burgundy--half barrels placed side by side on lintels at right angles to the axis of the church. The original roof of the principal span was replaced by the actual sexpartite vault (whose web is warped to the six branches) about 1130, said M. Régnier; other archæologists have placed it a generation later. By the addition of a sexpartite vaulting the much-discussed Lombard alternate piers were no longer inconsequent. The height to which the wall shafts of the nave are carried indicates that the cowled architect had not purposed originally to cover his main span with a stone roof. When the Gothic vaulting was added the clearstory was changed in the interior of the church, but the exterior was left as first built. William and Matilda made Caen their chief residence in Normandy, and Lanfranc was brought from Bec in 1063 to be prior of the duke's new monastery. He opened a school in Caen to which his pupil, Pope Alexander II, sent his relatives as scholars. In the peaceful cloister of St. Étienne the able Italian composed a treatise--to counteract Berengar's heresy on the Eucharist--which is considered a small masterpiece of Christian controversy. Lanfranc was dialectician, administrator, builder, subtle lawyer, and statesman. His genius reached its highest development in the organization of a Norman hierarchy for England. He rebuilt his own church at Canterbury, and two former monks of St. Étienne, Caen, rebuilt the cathedral of Winchester and St. Alban's abbey. Other memorials of Lanfranc's primacy in England are the crypt and eastern end of Gloucester Cathedral, the work of a monk of Mont-Saint-Michel, the crypt at Worcester, choir chapels and ambulatory at Norwich, and the western transept of Ely Cathedral, erected by a monk from St. Ouen, Rouen. It is said that during the century and a half from the Conqueror to John Lackland the Norman prelates in England erected over four hundred churches as expiatory offerings for the grievous wrong perpetrated in the Norman conquest. In Caen, Lanfranc built the nave of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, a monument of magnificent proportions, compact, tranquil, and sincere. When archbishop of Canterbury he returned to Caen in 1077 for the dedication of his abbey church. Another ten years and in St. Étienne's choir took place the sinister burial of William the Conqueror. In the town was raging a fierce conflagration which was to wipe out half the place. As they lowered into the tomb the proud and wrathful overman whose strength had been so pitiless, whose will so inflexible, a poor townsman stepped forth to forbid the burial, claiming he had been robbed of that special parcel of land. In the disorders that ensued the corpulent body of the dead king was injured, and though incense was burned to purify the infected air, the people deserted the church in horror. _Sic pulvis es._ In 1210 the Romanesque choir of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes was replaced by the present Gothic one. Normandy apparently used annulets about the clustered shafts at a much later date than the Ile-de-France, and it continued to employ its pre-Gothic zigzag decoration. The chapels round the choir were made to open one on the other above low dividing walls; Bayeux and Coutances repeated this, as they did the turrets at the birth of the apse. The exterior aspect of the edifice was enhanced by a row of small rose windows each of which lighted a bay of the choir's tribune. A generation later the same arrangement was employed in the collegiate church at Mantes. The new Gothic choir of St. Étienne at Caen was joined with skill to Lanfranc's grave Romanesque nave. Maître Guillaume is cited as architect of the new works, and he probably crowned the two western towers that so grandly dominate the city. Few architectural views in France surpass the stark majesty of the fortresslike church built by the Conqueror, as it appears from across the town, from the rue des Chanoines, when one stands near the convent church of Queen Matilda. St. Étienne's towers were the prototypes for the other notable ones at Caen. During the XVI-century religious wars the Abbaye-aux-Hommes was twice pillaged and the Calvinists scattered the Conqueror's ashes. They stripped the roofing of its lead, which soon caused the collapse of the central lantern and the choir vaults. During two generations the great church lay unused save as a stone quarry. Then the prior, Jean de Baillehache, in 1609, undertook a restoration, carried through so judiciously that were it not for the monastery's official record, and a slight poverty in the sculpture, it would be impossible to detect the new parts from the old. For the making of towers Caen is a queen city. In descending the rue des Chanoines one passes the church of St. Pierre, whose much-admired Renaissance apse (1518-45) was the work of a regional master, Hector Sohier. But it is the tower of St. Pierre which is its glory and the boast of Normandy. It served as model for belfries throughout the duchy and in Brittany. Built from 1308 to 1317, it stands as proof that the tradition of Apogee Gothic continued till the opening of the Hundred Years' War. Apart from the natural rise and fall of things human various causes contributed to the decline of Gothic art after the XIII century. A soulless mechanical dexterity that crystallized the principles of Gothic architecture succeeded to the creative genius that had made glorious the reigns of Philippe-Auguste and Louis IX. Symbolism and true mysticism gave place to doubt, and--when internal dissensions and foreign invasion rent the land--to superstition. With the blurring of spiritual vision passed the vigor of construction. The XIV century in France opened under a king who debased the coinage, overtaxed the clergy, persecuted the Jews, and who, by the outrage of Anagni, struck a fatal blow at the prestige of the papacy. Soon followed the Black Death, when a third of Europe's population perished. Radical deterioration of the national art set in after France "went to pieces at the Battle of Crécy" (1346). The royal domain was a field of brigandage: "From the Loire to the Seine, and from the Seine to the Somme, the peasants being killed, all the fields lay uncultivated, and this during many years," wrote Bishop Bérenger of Le Mans. In Paris Cathedral a foreigner was crowned king of France. What horrors reigned in Normandy, many an old record relates. More than a thousand patriot leaders perished when English gold was given for each decapitated corpse. "Houses are without occupants, fields without workers," wrote a XV-century bishop of Lisieux. Bedford's troops pillaged and massacred. Near Falaise twelve thousand civilians were butchered in one day. "The land of Normandy was grievously oppressed and _le pauvre peuple détruit_," wrote Monstrelet. "Men and women fled for their lives, by land and by sea, as if in peril of fire. Nobles gave up their fiefs, clerks their benefices, burghers their patrimony, rather than take oath to the invader."[324] _Normannia nutrix_ lay almost uninhabited. Such is the French version. Naturally the English outlook was different. "The false Frenchman," sings Drayton in his Agincourt ballad. Freeman falls into a vein of self-congratulation. "Go from France proper into Normandy," he writes, "and you at once feel that everything is palpably better; men, women, horses, cows, all are on a grander, better scale. The good seed planted by the old Saxon and Danish colonists, and watered in aftertimes by Henry V and John, Duke of Bedford, is still there. It is not altogether choked by the tares of Paris." Gothic art deteriorated, but so persistently lingered the simplicity, the spiritual poignancy of the XIII century that in the late-Gothic day it was still possible to produce the mystic loveliness of Riom's Madonna of the Bird, and the humble prayerfulness of Solesmes' Magdalene. In the unspoiled years of the XIV century was built the tower of St. Pierre, at Caen. Its shaft rises in a virile, unbroken ascent from soil to spire tip. On the busiest street corner of the city it stands like a perpetual call to recollection and joy. The Norman will boast with legitimate pride that it is the most beautiful tower in France, excelling those of Chartres and Senlis, whose shafts, he will tell you, are either too high or too short, whereas his loved tower of St. Pierre has spire and shaft in perfect accord. When Caen added this stately monument to its wealth of churches it was as rich a metropolis as Rouen, and it had contributed more than London toward the ransom of Richard Coeur-de-Lion from Teuton captivity. Just before the defeat of Crécy, this, the intellectual capital of Normandy, was besieged by English troops, and all its wealth pillaged, and its streets strewn with dead. Amid havoc wrought, the towers of the Abbaye-aux-Dames were destroyed. [Illustration: _Belfry of St. Pierre at Caen (1308-1317). Prototype for the Gothic Towers of Normandy and Brittany_] All over the department of Calvados are towers.[325] A Romanesque one crowns the church of Vaucelles, a suburb of Caen. At Ifs, and near Bayeux, at St. Loup (c. 1180), are others. The monk's church of Norrey, a dependency of St. Ouen, at Rouen, noted for the lavishness of its foliate ornamentation, has a tower of the XIII century, and near it, also ten miles from Caen, is Secqueville's Gothic beacon. There are belfries at Bernières-sur-mer (c. 1150), at Langrune, Thaon, Tour, and Basly. Three of the most beautiful towers in Calvados crown the abbatial of St. Pierre-sur-Dives, an edifice, too much a patchwork of five centuries to be altogether pleasing, but linked with a memorable hour of the Gothic story, 1145. Popular enthusiasm then aided Abbot Haimon to reconstruct his church, as he wrote, in a much-quoted letter to the English monks at Tutbury. The same wave of fervor was raising the Primary Gothic towers of Chartres and Rouen. The western towers of St. Pierre-sur-Dives are of Haimon's day only in their lower stories; that to the south has a XIII-century top, and that to the north was finished in the XIV century.[326] Throughout the final phase of Gothic, Normandy continued to excel in towers. Witness Rouen's Flamboyant beacons. In quiet country places and lesser towns rise belfries as stately as those of cathedrals: at Carville is the "Giant of the Valley" (1512-14), at Harfleur is a most beautiful tower, and still another at Verneuil (1506-30), built by a son of the town, Arthur Fillon, curé of St. Maclou, Rouen, and vicar-general of that lover of noble structures, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise; when he became bishop of Senlis, he helped to finish the Flamboyant Gothic transept of that cathedral. THE ROMANESQUE ABBATIAL OF ST. GEORGES DE BOSCHERVILLE[327] I have borne for forty-two years with happiness the sweet yoke of the Lord.--ORDERICUS VITALIS (xii century). From Rouen a pleasant six-mile walk through the forest of Roumare leads to the abbatial of St. Georges de Boscherville, an example of the best Anglo-Norman Romanesque. Some have thought it belongs to the first decade of the XII century, but M. Besnard places it a generation earlier. Mr. John Bilson claims that, like its contemporary, the cathedral at Durham, the piers show that from the start the design was to construct ribbed groin vaults over the wide span, and he thinks that the same is true for the now disused Romanesque abbatial of St. Nicolas, at Caen (1083-93), building twenty years before Durham's choir. He has cited the diagonals of Lessay's choir and those of the transept of Montvilliers as the primitive Gothic of Normandy, vaults which M. de Lasteyrie considered to be contemporary with Suger's St. Denis. The German archæologists, Dehio and von Bezold, give priority to Normandy. The actual intersecting ribs at St. Georges de Boscherville are a XIII-century reconstruction. So solid were the church walls made that no flying buttresses have been needed. The tribune at the end of each arm of the transept is supported by an isolated pillar, apsidal chapels project from the eastern wall of the transept, and the central lantern is one of the best in Normandy. The entire church, save its west façade flanked by slender turrets, was the work of some six or seven years only. About 1157, under Abbot Victor, was erected the chapter house that nestles beneath the transept's northern arm. The French students who did not know, or who have not accepted, Mr. John Bilson's theory of Anglo-Norman priority in the use of the essential organ of Gothic architecture, have claimed that the diagonals of St. Georges' chapter house are among the earliest extant of the province, of the same decade as the vaulting of the lower hall of St. Romain's tower at Rouen. Mr. John Bilson's championship of Anglo-Norman pioneer work, and Mr. Arthur Kingsley Porter's theory of Lombard priority, have both found supporters among leading French archæologists; the English scholar is patriotically disgruntled at the American's advocacy of the Italian claims. It would seem that during the XI century the Normans, like the Lombards, used what Mr. Bilson calls ribbed groined vaults, occasionally, for one reason or another. The Norman developed tentatively the ribbed vault, always associating it with the semicircular arch, and without comprehending the wonderful results that were to be derived from concentrating the weight of a masonry roof at fixed points. The possibility of those results was perceived first in the Ile-de-France, and from there, when Gothic architecture had taken on its special characteristics, it entered Normandy by way of the Seine at Rouen and Boscherville, then at Fécamp and Lisieux. The first Gothic cathedrals of Normandy show purely French influence and only gradually were regional ogival traits developed. In the controversy as to who first used diagonals, one can take whichever side one prefers; the question remains open. Light will be thrown on it, doubtless, by a forthcoming paper by Mr. Bilson in the _Archeological Journal_, tracing the evolution of the diagonal rib in Normandy. The abbey at Boscherville was founded by the lord of Tankerville, high chamberlain of the Conqueror and Henry I. In its abbatial, when his grandson, hereditary constable of Normandy, was knighted, he laid his sword on the altar, and to redeem it presented property to the monastery. If we would comprehend the society that built these churches, we must understand that such donations were voluntary and a matter of civic pride. "If I cannot myself attend to the works of God," runs an ancient deed of gift, "at least I can assure a home for those with whom God loves to dwell. It is only natural to enrich our Holy Mother the Church, and thus to take a hand in caring for Christ's poor." THE GOTHIC ABBATIAL AT FÉCAMP[328] It is a usage bequeathed to us from our ancestors, never to let anyone depart from our abbey without a gift. --(From an old Latin chronicle of Fécamp.) If one would enjoy, without critical comparison, the Gothic of Normandy, her churches should be visited before the taste has become sensitized by loiterings in the Ile-de-France. In that classic region of the national art is found a simplicity, a purity, a restraint, a something of imaginative genius that makes of its work the touchstone by which all other manifestations of Gothic are judged. Of the Norman churches, the Trinité, at Fécamp, is most closely related to the Primary Gothic work of the royal domain. Its architect must certainly have come from the Ile-de-France. Monks trained in the Celtic rule by St. Wandrille founded Fécamp, which was wrecked by Norse pirates in 876. William Longsword, the first duke's son, built his palace here, and his son, Richard I the Fearless (d. 996), began a new monastery. In his will Richard ordered: "Bury not my body within the church, but deposit it on the outside, immediately under the eaves, that the dripping of the rain from the holy roof may wash my bones as I lie and may cleanse them of the spots of impurity contracted during a negligent and neglected life." He desired that on every Friday a sarcophagus be filled with wheat and grain for the poor. His son, Richard II the Good (d. 1020), finished Fécamp abbatial, and was laid to rest beside his father. The dukes of Rollo's line especially favored Fécamp, which held a front rank among Normandy's institutions, and was the richest of her monasteries down to the Revolution. Henry Plantagenet presented Fécamp town to the monastery. After Duke Richard the Good had brought that man of administrative genius, William of Volpiano, into his duchy to reorganize its spiritual life, architectural activities took on new vigor. William himself directed the construction of Bernay's[329] church; the abbatial of Mont-Saint-Michel rose when he reformed that house; and the church of Jumièges followed immediately after his reformation there. The Blessed William, in his thirst for souls, used to loiter at the crossroads to gather in the stricken of body or spirit. He passed away in Fécamp in 1031, and his ashes are still preserved in a chapel of the present Gothic abbatial. In 1034, in the Romanesque Trinité, Robert the Magnificent gathered the chief men of Normandy to have them swear allegiance to his sturdy little bastard son of seven, who was to be known in history as William the Conqueror, after which Duke Robert started on his pilgrimage to the East, from which he was never to return. The abbey church of Fécamp long consisted of the nave begun by Richard I, and a choir built by Abbot Guillaume de Ros (1082-1108), under whose rule the Trinité won the admiration of Europe. He is said to have introduced into Normandy the ambulatory and its radiating chapels. Two of the radial chapels which he constructed at Fécamp have survived. While they were building, there lived in the Trinité convent, as prior, Herbert de Lozinga, who, obtaining the bishopric of Norwich, erected on the Norfolk downs a stately Norman cathedral (1096-1119). Abbot Guillaume de Ros carried out the instructions of Richard I to give a loaf of bread to every beggar asking it, and when Fécamp was dissolved at the Revolution its abbot was distributing daily some twelve thousand free loaves of bread. In 1169 fire wrecked the Romanesque Trinité, whereupon the present Gothic edifice was begun immediately, and in it two of the groin-vaulted chapels from the choir of Guillaume de Ros were incorporated. Abbot Henri de Soullay (1139-87) built the Primary Gothic choir, transept, and half of the nave. After the fifth bay of the nave a new architect took up the work, as is shown by differences in the pier profiles, but the cessation of activities must have been of short duration, as the church is homogeneous. The nave was finished under Abbot Raoul d'Argence (1190-1220), who organized Normandy's first literary academy--a confraternity of jongleurs. Its character was more Norman than the choir, though regional traits had early appeared in the turrets at the birth of the apse and the square central lantern. To increase the impression of length in the nave its side walls were marked by double the number of arcades that divide the middle church from the aisles. This was accomplished by introducing a fifth rib into each vault section of those side corridors, which rib fell on a shaft engaged in the side walls. Like the minsters of England, Fécamp is more remarkable in its length than in its height. Abbot Thomas de Saint-Benoît (1297-1307) decided to suppress the deep gallery over the choir's ambulatory, making the chapels that open on the curving aisle of exceptional height. He changed the southern aisle, giving it a coldly elegant Rayonnant aspect, but happily not that to the north, or we would have lost the two interesting Romanesque chapels of Abbot Guillaume de Ros. Some of Fécamp's later abbots were Clement VI, builder of the palace of the popes at Avignon and of the Chaise Dieu in the mountains of Auvergne, and an abbot of the patriotic Estouteville family, who was driven out by the English when Fécamp was besieged in 1415. The tool who succeeded him sat in judgment on Jeanne d'Arc. The abbot of Fécamp during the transitional Flamboyant Renaissance day was Cardinal Antoine Boyer (1492-1519), a Mæcenas who adorned his beautiful church with Italian marbles. He had sculptured, in the same studio at Genoa that provided Louis XII with the Orléans tombs for St. Denis, an Entombment more spectacular in character than the famous one at Solesmes. Girolamo Viscardo made for him a tabernacle (for the choir's procession path), after the style of Mino da Fiesole. The lovely marble screens that close the side chapels are due to this generous prelate. For him Jacques Le Roux, the noted architect of Rouen, lengthened the Lady chapel. The only later change of importance in the Trinité was the erection of its neo-classic façade. THE GOTHIC ABBATIAL AT EU[330] La Nature a bien des manières de sourire. La Normandie est le plus beau sourire de la nature temperée.--O. RECLUS. The tutelary of Eu is St. Laurence O'Toole, archbishop of Dublin, son of a prince in Leinster, an active continuer of the reforms begun by St. Malachy of Armagh, who died in St. Bernard's arms at Clairvaux. St. Laurence had crossed the Channel to plead with Henry Plantagenet for certain of his flock in disgrace (1180). Arriving at Eu's convent, then belonging to the congregation of St. Victor, he felt a premonition of his approaching death, and exclaimed, as he crossed the threshold, "Here is my abode of rest forever." He was worn out in the struggle to uphold the weak against the strong in those difficult years of the Anglo-Norman seizure of the eastern coast of Ireland. As his end drew near a monk suggested that he make his testament. "I thank God that I have nothing to bequeath," he said. So impressive was the death of Archbishop Laurence in Eu monastery that the little people of the Lord soon began to pray beside his tomb. When the monks reconstructed their church they placed the saintly man's relics in the new crypt. From 1186 to 1226 the choir, transept, and one bay of the nave were built without interruption, in a Gothic more of the Ile-de-France than regional, though the placing of towers between transept and choir and the central lantern followed the Norman tradition. Archbishop Laurence O'Toole was canonized in 1225, and to the joyous ceremony when his relics were set above the high altar came the archbishop of Rouen--then building his cathedral, and Bishop Geoffrey, the "shining man of Eu by whom the throne of Amiens rose into immensity." For eight days the throng pressed to pray near the relics of the canonized Irish prelate, and with the gifts that poured in the monks were able to finish their nave by 1230. It is a gem of Norman Gothic, sober, elegant, of perfect unity. The first plan called for tribunes over the aisles, as in the choir. Before they were constructed, however, the idea was given up, but it was decided to keep the arches by which the tribunes would have opened on the middle church. The same effect of false tribunes had been used earlier in the nave of Rouen Cathedral. In 1426 lightning caused the collapse of the central tower, and in the reconstruction of the transept and choir, undertaken after the invaders were driven from Normandy, Flamboyant work was set side by side with Primary Gothic. From 1511 to 1534 rose the transept's florid south façade. After the Revolution the church of St. Laurent was restored by the Orléans family, who own the château and park at Eu. MONT-SAINT-MICHEL[331] Chaque peuple a son ange, disait Daniel le prophète. Le nôtre ne peut pas, même indignes nous délaisser.... Plus encore que Saint Jacques était le patron des espagnols, Saint Michel voulut être le Baron de France. Il mit les trois lys dans ses armes et fit passer sur le royaume l'éclair de son glaive. Avoir suscité Jeanne d'Arc et par elle libéré la France.... Voilà bien le plus beau miracle dû à l'archange. Il constitue pour le pays une promesse de perennité.--JOSEPH LOTTE (born in Normandy, 1875; killed in the World War, 1914). Surpassing all the abbeys of Normandy is the outpost of the archangel that lies offshore, at the junction of Normandy and Brittany, a conicle mass of "rock on rock, keep on keep, century on century," sand-locked one hour, and the next rising from the Atlantic. _Tremor immensi oceani_ is the motto of the Mount. Before the days of crusaders it was one of Europe's chief points of departure for the Eastern pilgrimage. Like Jerusalem, it has been one of the sites of the earth that has impressed itself with historic signification on the imagination of mankind. Many have felt the kindred spirit of the _Chanson de Roland_ and the granite, military monastery. They are both of the same high lineage. To the paladin Roland, dying at Roncevaux, as he held up his right glove to God, his suzerain, there came, to fetch his soul to Paradise, the very special St. Michael of the Mount that stood in peril of the sea, in _periculo maris_.[332] Scholars think that the most virile, the most heroic of the _chansons de geste_, wherein already was _la douce France_ loved beyond the regional cradle, was composed by a Norman who lived in the marches within the cult of the Angel of the Peril.[333] [Illustration: _The Hall of the Knights at Mont-Saint-Michel (1203-1228). Second Story of the Merveille_] Alas, in our day Mont-Saint-Michel-au-péril-de-la-Mer is in very deadly peril of the land, for it looks as if the covetousness of financiers was to defraud France of this rock of glory "_qui s'émeut et s'achève en prière_." Dikes and dams, to reclaim coast lands, will before long cause the historic crag to rise from green woods as it did some geological periods ago. Citadel, palace, cloister, church, and town, the Mount is a thing of romance that not all the vulgarity of daily tourist crowds can tarnish. Charlemagne himself chose its tutelary archangel for the national patron saint, and the cowled guardians here were in truth through long centuries what the great emperor called monks: "Knights of the Church, of the willing vassalage and chivalry of Christ." The Northmen destroyed the ancient shrine. Then Richard the Fearless, grandson of the pirate Rollo, placed on the rock the sons of St. Benedict, trained at St. Wandrille. Richard II, in 1017, came to the Mount to ask a blessing on his union with Judith of Brittany, whose beauty was such that the old chronicle exclaimed _corpore et moribus usque ad miraculum elegantem_. The duke's marriage gift enabled the monks to supplant their Carolingian church by a bigger one. The discarded X-century chapel was discovered in 1909 by M. Paul Gout, the Mount's latest historian. Until 1780 it had been used as Notre Dame-sous-Terre, but during the building of the foundations for the ugly west façade of the upper church it was walled up. With Richard the Good's donation, Abbot Hildebert II erected his new church on the very summit of the rock, but as there was not sufficient level space, he built out from the hillcrest a platform of masonry to support the nave. From William of Volpiano's school at Fécamp came skilled journeymen. The church at Mont-Saint-Michel was begun in 1020, and still building in 1057. Abbot Roger I, formerly chaplain to William the Conqueror, erected the nave. William prayed at the Mount before undertaking the conquest of England, and the abbot fitted out for him an entire fleet. In 1103 the northern wall of the Romanesque nave collapsed one night as the monks were chanting matins in the choir. It was restored immediately in the same style, and Abbot Roger II took the opportunity to reconstruct the monks' quarters. Above the crypt called Aquilon (c. 1112) he built a cloister, which later was vaulted with diagonals, and over that _promenoir_ was made a dormitory on the same level as the church. During the years that followed the Mount was governed by a man of genius, Robert de Torigni (1153-80), whose chronicle is the most important history of France for that epoch. In the _promenoir_ he entertained, at a banquet in 1158, his sovereign, Henry II, and Aliénor of Aquitaine. They chose him as godfather for their daughter, who, later, as queen of Castile, built the convent church of Las Huelgas by Burgos. Abbot Robert was a pupil of Bec, whose higher standards of intellectual life he brought to the Mount, where he formed a library, built monks' quarters, and added western belfries to his abbatial, though the façade of his day no longer exists. As the XIII century opened, Normandy became once more a part of the royal domain, after being three centuries under dukes of its own. When Rollo's strong breed ended in the debased John Lackland, the northern province gladly accepted Philippe-Auguste as ruler. How whole-heartedly, how unreservedly French it became it was to prove by its heroic resistance to the English invaders during the Hundred Years' War.[334] In the frays of 1203, fire had spread from the town that hugged the rock's edge, to the monastic buildings on the summit. Philippe-Auguste, always wisely conciliatory toward new subjects, contributed toward the restorations. With the gift from the king under whom most of the Gothic cathedrals of France were begun, Abbot Jourdan (1191-1212) built the supreme architectural work of the citadel, what is called the Merveille, and a marvel indeed are its three stories that rise, one above the other, hall over hall, two hundred feet in height above the sea, ridged heavily outside by stout buttresses and graced within by pillars, arches, and a sky-gazing cloister. From the brain of some unknown cowled genius sprang this _mâle_ and splendid conception, built in the very prime of Gothic. Who else but one enamored of meditation would have set his cloister atop of his monastery under the open sky, or have opened on that courtyard of peace a monks' refectory, where, in a flooded stillness of light, the brethren could sit pondering as they listened to one of their number reading from the stone lectern the book which is the spirit of Bernard of Clairvaux incarnate: "Give all for all; seek nothing; call for nothing back. Thou shalt be free in heart and the darkness shall not overwhelm thee." And around them there spread the wide horizon of the sea one hour, of the white ashes of sand the next. Pacing the lovely skyward cloister one has time to brood on life and death, on God and one's own soul; it refutes a hundred calumnies against monastic life just by being what it is. Serious men enamored of voluntary seclusion carved it unstintingly and set its columns quaintly in triangular order. Love and science contrived the diffused, soothing luminousness of the brothers' dining hall. The present gable windows there are innovations. Originally when one entered one could discern no window, and yet light was everywhere. The side walls, that from the door appear to be blind arcades, are in reality a succession of narrow panel windows--thirty to a side--deeply recessed in stone embrasures that are triangular in shape, because they serve the purpose of buttresses. To have carried the exterior buttress ridges to such a height as is this refectory, set audaciously up in the sky on the Merveille's third story, would have been an awkward procedure; so the nameless monk-architect, because he was a XIII-century man, let his genius lead him, and, "master of the living stone" that he was, contrived a supreme beauty of decoration out of a structural necessity. The Merveille was erected under a succession of abbots, in one consecutive radiant effort, from 1203 to 1228--a Titan's work. Each of its three stories is divided into two halls; on the ground floor are the almonry, where the pilgrims fed, and a groin-vaulted cellery or storehouse; the top story, as we have seen, consists of open cloister and monks' refectory; and between the upper and lower stories are two of the most vigorous halls ever built; that over the almonry called the Salle des Hôtes because in it were entertained the guests of the monastery, and that to the west, over the cellery, acquiring the name Salle des Chevaliers, from the Order of the Knights of St. Michael, whose members met here. The latter is divided by rows of stout pillars, and served as the common room of the community, where the tireless scholar-scribes illuminated missals and copied manuscripts. The charter for the military Order of the Archangel, founded in 1469 by Louis XI, welded the name of St. Michael, whom every good Frenchman knew kept a specially friendly eye on France, with that of Jeanne the Maid, who had quitted Domrémy-on-the-Meuse because the voice of her dear archangel rang insistent in her ear: _Fille Dè, va! Je serai à ton ayde. Va!_ It was St. Michael who first roused her to the sense of the great misery there was in the kingdom of France, and in her hour of victory after Orléans she spoke of going to the rescue of the besieged Mount in Normandy. At her trial in Rouen she dwelt on the comfort he had given her.[335] He appeared to her, she said, in the guise of "_un très vrai prud'homme_"--the term loved of St. Louis, who once told Joinville that to be _prud'homme_ meant to be knight in heart, as well as outward bearing. "I believe the words of St. Michael who appeared to me," said Jeanne, at her trial, "as firmly as I believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered death and passion for us. And what leads me so to believe is the good counsel, comfort, and good doctrine St. Michael gave me." On the completion of the Merveille, the monks continued building. They had finished the officiality hall by the entrance gate of the monastery before the visit of St. Louis to the Mount in 1254, when he came to return thanks for his safety during his late crusade. The XIV century added more defenses till the rock became the most forceful example of mediæval military architecture. Strong walls were needed during its siege by the English who invaded Normandy under Henry V. The Mount's abbot, Robert Jollivet, whose name figures among the well-paid judges at Rouen in 1431, allied himself with the victorious foreigners who had quickly overrun the province. His monks repudiated him, led by their prior, Jean Gonault. Defended by the gallant knight Louis d'Estouteville, they endured the longest siege recorded in history, 1415 to 1450, when, as Jeanne had proclaimed, the invaders were "_boutés tous hors de France_."[336] In 1429, during the memorable siege, the Romanesque choir of Mont-Saint-Michel's abbey church collapsed. It was impossible then to rebuild it; they had even to sell their altar vessels to carry on the defense. When Normandy was again a part of France the erection of a new choir was undertaken by the abbot of the Mount, who was none other than the distinguished Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, the chief agent in the vindication of Jeanne d'Arc's memory. His layman brother had directed the defense of the Mount during many years. In 1450 were laid down the crypt's nineteen mammoth piers, among the most powerful ever planted. The upper church reached its triforium story by 1469, the year when Louis XI came to the rock to establish his new Order of knighthood, and about 1513 the choir was completed. Many hold it to be superior to all other late-Gothic works in France. There are no capitals, the moldings die away in the shafts, the triforium is glazed. It belongs to the fleeting splendor of Flamboyant art, but without capriciousness. There is no overexuberance, no virtuosity in this vigorous, glad memorial of the nation's reconquered freedom: Sainte Jeanne went harvesting in France, And oh! what found she there? The brave seed of her scattering In fruitage everywhere. And where her strong and tender heart Was broken in the flame, She found the very heart of France Had flowered to her name.[337] Building activities at the embattled abbey ceased after the erection of its beautiful florid choir. The evil consequences of commendatory abbots--those named by royal whim--bore bitter fruit from end to end of France in the relaxed spiritual life of the monasteries. The XVII-century reformers of the Congregation of St. Maur found the Mount's abbot to be a princeling of Lorraine, five years of age. Those scholarly Benedictines carried on excellent research work in local history, but to their neo-classic generation Gothic art was a sealed book. Deplorable changes went on during three hundred years: an apsidal chapel of the church was made into a staircase, irregular windows were opened in the halls of the Merveille, the cloister was planted as a garden, to the deterioration of the lower structures, and when, in 1776, fire weakened the abbatial, its three westernmost bays were demolished and the present ugly façade put up. After the Revolution pillaged the monastery it became a state prison called Mont Libre, and so continued until 1863. The church was floored midway to serve as a convicts' hat factory. The modern restoration of Mont-Saint-Michel has been, like that which saved the palace of the popes at Avignon, a truly national benefit. THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN[338] One can say that nothing great ever was accomplished in the Church without women bearing a part. A host of them stood among the martyrs in the amphitheater; they disputed with the anchorites the possession of the desert. Constantine set up the Labarum on the Capitol, and St. Helena raised the True Cross on the walls of Jerusalem. Clovis, at Tolbiac, invoked the God of Clotilda. Monica's tears won the conversion of Augustine. Jerome dedicated the Vulgate to the piety of two Roman ladies, Paula and Eustochium. The first lawmakers of monkish life, Basil and Benedict, were seconded by their sisters, Macrina and Scholastica. The Countess Matilda held up the tottering throne of Gregory VII. The wise judgment of Queen Blanche dominated the reign of St. Louis. France was saved by Jeanne d'Arc. Isabella of Castile led in the discovery of the New World. And in times closer to our own we see St. Teresa mixing with bishops, doctors, and the founders of Orders by which the reform in Catholic ranks was operated. We see St. Francis de Sales cultivating like a rare flower the soul of Madame de Chantal, and St. Vincent de Paul passing over to Louise Marillac the most admirable of his designs, the establishment of the Sisters of Charity.--FRÉDÉRIC OZANAM. So much for the abbey churches of Normandy. Many another might be described, but with six Gothic cathedrals to consider, one must refrain. Of the six--Rouen, Lisieux, Évreux, Séez, Bayeux, and Coutances--that of Rouen shows the earliest Gothic work and its character is more French than Norman, as if the river, flowing down from Paris, carried with its waters the characteristics of the art life astir on the banks of the Seine, Oise, Aisne, and Marne. The least local of Normandy's cathedrals, Our Lady's church at Rouen, has a magnetism distinctly its own--from its florid romantic west front, the most lavish screen ever set up, to the imposing sentry columns that guard its sanctuary. The northwest tower is Normandy's best Primary Gothic, the southwest tower the supremest belfry that sprang up to commemorate the freeing of France from foreign yoke. The façades of the transept and the Lady chapel (whose tombs mark dates in the art history of France) rank with perfect Rayonnant work. Its storied windows are among the richest ever dight by mediæval guildsmen. Not but that a dozen flaws might be picked in the metropolitan church at Rouen. Were it to be strictly ranked among French cathedrals, it could not be placed among the foremost. But it has gone on embellishing itself century after century with a self-respect so sincere that few care to dispute its claim to stand in the front rank. On a first visit to Rouen many an amateur prefers the regularity of St. Ouen's abbatial, which in size equals Westminster Abbey.[339] St. Ouen, the classic of Rayonnant design, geometric in tracery, accentuating the ascending line, coldly perfect in construction, possessed still the true _sursum corda_ of Gothic, though the art was fast crystallizing into formulas. The capitals were lessened, and the glazed triforium united to the clearstory in a single composition. Made of fine-textured gray stone St. Ouen is a stately vessel, but, add the critics, "its uniform excellence is average." Gothic lore has not degenerated, but has simply gone too far in the development of its principles, says the mechanical artistry of the last built of the great monastic churches of France, planned before the tragedies of the Hundred Years' War had petrified the national genius.[340] The cathedral of Normandy's capital is not uniform, but its excellence surpasses the average. It is not homogeneous, its proportions are not absolutely harmonious, but it has profundity, personal character, and flashes of genius. The better it is known the deeper grows affection for it, which is not the case with St. Ouen. In the latter one feels that the cult is the main concern; in the cathedral there is piety of heart. The early history of Sainte-Marie at Rouen follows the usual course. Norse marauders wrecked the ancient cathedral. Rollo, the first duke, endowed another which was radically reconstructed under an XI-century archbishop, a son of Duke Richard II. In 1063, that Romanesque church was dedicated by Archbishop Maurille (whose tomb is in the present ambulatory) in the presence of William the Conqueror and his good Matilda. Vestiges of the Romanesque edifice are in the first bay of the choir aisle. In it were interred the prodigious Rollo, the Norwegian sea-robber, who sacked half Normandy, sailed up the Seine to terrorize Paris, and up the Loire to overrun Auvergne and Burgundy, and yet, no sooner was he granted the duchy of northern France than the buccaneer gave way to a ruler whose laws were so respected that golden bracelets were left exposed and remained unstolen for years in the forest of Roumare. Rollo was baptized a Christian in Rouen, in 912, and there he wedded a Carolingian princess. When his son, William Longsword, died in 945, he was wearing a gold key that opened a casket containing a monk's robe for his burial; the new rulers were swift to comprehend that monasteries were the chief civilizers in that formative age. Near Rouen, in 1087, died the Conqueror, sixth in descent from Rollo. "Pirate jostled statesman" in him, too. Mortally wounded at Mantes, he was brought to the priory of St. Gervase--beneath which suburban church still exists intact a V-century crypt--and as he heard the bells of Rouen Cathedral ringing, there rose to haunt him the curses, not loud but deep, of the oppressed Anglo-Saxons, and most piteously he petitioned the Queen of Heaven to draw Her Son's attention to all the religious houses he had built for the people's good on both sides of the Channel. No sooner was he dead than his retainers stripped and robbed him, and through private charity he was carried to his horror-inspiring burial at Caen. To Rouen, because of its generosity to him in his captivity, Richard Coeur-de-Lion bequeathed his heart. In 1203 the last duke of Normandy, John Lackland, fled from Rouen after the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, of which the popular voice accused him. Philippe-Auguste entered the city in triumph in 1204, and the building of the new Gothic cathedral started apace. Notre Dame at Rouen is associated closely with the return of Normandy under French rule. On Easter night, 1200, fire ravaged the city and its chief church. Whether the cathedral then wrecked was that blessed in 1063 by Bishop Robert de Maurille is uncertain. Some think that it was a Romanesque choir and transept which were burned, and a recently built Primary Gothic nave. It may have been an entirely new Gothic church which was destroyed. At any rate, the northwest tower, named after the VII-century bishop, Romanus, and the side doors of the main façade escaped the fire. The preservation of the tower was due, probably, to its position beyond the side aisle. The doors, built about 1180, are ornamented with Oriental incrustations such as are to be seen in the cathedral at Genoa, with which seaport Rouen had trade links. The Tour Saint-Romain, whose prototypes were the towers at Étampes, Vendôme, and Chartres, was long counted as the oldest Primary Gothic work extant in Normandy, with the chapter house at St. Georges de Boscherville and the chapel of St. Julien, Petit-Quevilly.[341] But as many archæologists now say that the Gothic vault of St. Étienne's nave at Caen may be 1130 just as well as 1160, and that there are still earlier diagonals in the duchy, it remains an open question where the oldest extant ogival work of Normandy is. Mr. John Bilson claims that the diagonals of Lessay's choir pre-date any in the Ile-de-France. However the controversy over the priority of diagonals may be decided, the tower of St. Romain is the first Norman monument that shows the incontestable influence of Gothic of the Ile-de-France type. The spirit of religious ardor that expressed itself in the northwest tower of Rouen Cathedral was described by Bishop Hugues d'Amiens in a letter, in 1145, to a brother prelate. He tells how volunteers were quitting Normandy to aid in the making of the new tower at Chartres: "In like manner, a large number of the faithful of this, our diocese, and of neighboring regions, put themselves to work on the cathedral church, their mother, forming associations to which no one is admitted unless he has confessed his sins, fulfilled his penances, laid down at the foot of the altar every enmity and revenge, and become reconciled with his enemies in a true peace. Under the lead of one in the band, who is chosen as chief, the people drag heavy wagons in humility and silence." The writer of this famous letter had been a monk of Cluny, and while ruling the see of Rouen he taught school there; he had inherited the traditions of Bec's scholarship through Anselm of Laon. The lower hall of the cathedral tower then begun is considered faultless. Before the close of the century the upper hall was completed, but the belfry story was not added till the late-Gothic day. After the fire of 1200 work on the new cathedral was pushed on with energy. A master called Jean d'Andely is cited as the architect, a native, probably, of Les Andelys farther up the Seine, where there are two churches so closely resembling the cathedral of Rouen that they are doubtless from the same hand.[342] Another architect, named Enguerrand, is mentioned as quitting work on the cathedral of the capital in 1214, to undertake the abbatial at Bec. A keystone of Notre Dame, of the date 1233, is inscribed by one Durand, mason. He is thought to have been the son-in-law of the original architect, Jean d'Andely. The first plan of Rouen Cathedral called for tribunes over the aisles, but the idea was given up in order to have the side aisles twice as high as originally designed. The arches by which the tribunes would have opened on the central vessel were retained, however, as was done later with the false tribunes of the abbey church at Eu. In the side aisles, resting on the capitals of the nave's piers, are ringed colonnettes that rise to the ledge above--a ledge constructed to catch the tribune's diagonals (which never were built). By this graceful expedient they cloaked architectural members prepared but not used. The passageway carried from pier to pier above the main arcade of the nave is exceptional. An apsidal chapel projects from each arm of the transept, as in the Romanesque edifices of the region. The archbishop under whom Notre Dame of Rouen was begun was Walter of Coutance, _Gautier-le-magnifique_ (1184-1207), who willed his fortune to the cathedral, since it was he, devoted public servant of the Plantagenets, and long the chief justice of England, who had urged the chapter to sell its treasure to help ransom Coeur-de-Lion from captivity after the Third Crusade. He himself went as hostage into Germany in order that Richard might be released before his full ransom was raised. Learned, liberal, and affable, Bishop Walter was a man of whom all spoke well. The choir of Rouen Cathedral showed more the regional characteristics; the arches were more acute and the moldings multiple. The circular piers about the sanctuary have Norman round capitals. We know that in 1235 a bishop was buried in the choir, which must have been entirely finished when, in 1255, St. Louis spent Easter in Rouen as the guest of his friend and counselor, Archbishop Eudes Rigaud (1247-74), a Franciscan, who was to accompany the king on his fatal crusade. The choir's upper windows were reconstructed during the XV century. About 1280, architect Jean Davy began the south façade of the transept, the Portail de la Calende, so called because there was carved there a mythical animal of that name, considered in ancient times as a symbol of the Saviour, since the superstition was that the sight of a Calende cured illness. The transept façades of Rouen are among the best works of the Rayonnant phase. Their sculpture, says M. Enlart, has not yet the fluid indecision of XIV-century draperies. A pronounced feature of that period are the openwork gables, which, though they may be superbly decorative, are none the less a step away from constructive sincerity, since drip stones made of lacework masonry fail to fulfill their practical function. The northern door of the transept was named from the canon's library beside it. It, too, like the earlier Calende portal, was paneled with medallions over which many a pharisee has shaken his head. The Middle Ages were neither pharisaic nor prudish. Rouen's little sculptured groups are merely fantastic and popular. They embody no satire against the clergy, as some would intimate; nor are they obscene. To place a centaur or an acrobat in proximity to a scriptural group seemed then no more profane than to illuminate the margins of missals with meaningless frolics. Leeway was allowed the artistic imagination, which here ran largely to grotesques. The medallions of the Calende door were in better sequence and of more vigorous character than those of the Portail des Libraires. Beside this latter entrance is the courtroom of the archepiscopal palace adorned with statues representing Solomon's judgment, in souvenir of the old usage of rendering justice before church doors. From 1302 to 1320 rose the Rayonnant Gothic Lady chapel of impeccable mechanical skill but not inspired. Long centuries later, during the Revolution, its tomb of the cardinals d'Amboise,[343] in which Gothic sculpture culminated, escaped destruction because the axis chapel served as a granary. Clement V, the builder of Bordeaux' Rayonnant choir, arranged that his nephew, who was archbishop of Rouen and had got into difficulties with the Norman nobles, should exchange his see with Gilles Aycelin, the prelate who was erecting Narbonne Cathedral, brother of the bishop-builder of Clermont's nave. A little later another archbishop of Rouen became the Avignon pontiff who built the audience hall and the chief chapel of the palace on the Rhone. Other XIV-century additions to Rouen Cathedral are the side chapels; every guild and corporation craved thus to honor its own particular patron. Those contemporary works, Rouen's Lady chapel, the choirs of Bordeaux and Narbonne, Avignon's halls, belong to the phase of the national genius which we call Rayonnant because of its geometric window tracery, a phase aptly designated as metallic by M. Gonse. Artists were fast losing their exquisite feeling for the silhouette; the vertical line was over-accentuated; triforium and clearstory had become one composition. Pitiless logic was drying up the spring of inspiration. When the cathedral of Rouen remade three bays of the nave's triforium, the model taken was the geometric design of that masterpiece of Rayonnant Gothic, the abbatial of St. Ouen. Before the XIV century closed the façade of the cathedral was redressed with arcatures and statues like the west frontispieces of Wells, Salisbury, and Litchfield. The XV century carried through the chief supplementary works of Sainte-Marie of Rouen in a style frankly florid. Normandy, Artois, and Picardy reveled in the last development of the national art, regions all of them having close links with England. For if much of Flamboyant Gothic was indigenous, as M. Anthyme Saint-Paul contends, if it enveloped and absorbed Rayonnant Gothic, it seems fairly well proved that its two most pronounced traits, the flamelike window tracery and arches of double curvature, came from England. M. Enlart says that ramified vaults were built at Ely, Lincoln, and Litchfield, during the XIII century. By 1304 accolade arches were used; at Merton College, Oxford, is a flame-tracery window of 1310, features not to be found in France before 1375.[344] In the Rayonnant phase lines break; in the Flamboyant they undulate. Rayonnant capitals were diminished; capitals disappeared altogether in the later period, and molds melted into the piers. Normandy expressed her renewed national dignity with enthusiasm in the flowery, happy architecture we call Flamboyant: Le Temps a laissié son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye, Et s'est vestu de broderye De soleil raiant, cler, et beau. So sang Charles, Duke of Orléans, come back from twenty years in English prisons to witness the expulsion of the invader from Normandy: Il n'y a beste ne oiseau Que en son jargon ne chante ou crye; Le Temps a laissié son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye.[345] How they built in Rouen! With what vim and emancipated energy! St. Ouen carried forward its nave and raised a central tower. From 1437 to 1480 was built the gallant little church of St. Maclou with a central tower that is one of the best in Normandy, and whose curving front of five arcades is profusely elegant. Similarly large, ornate portals became the vogue in late-Gothic Norman construction. St. Maclou is to the Gothic art of the XIII century what the reel is to the minuet, said an English architect.[346] In the cathedral of Rouen one noted master succeeded another. Guillaume Pontifs put the belfry on St. Romain's tower (1463-77); built the canon's library, to which he made a staircase from the cathedral's transept; and made the decorated portico leading from the rue St. Romain to the court before the Portail des Libraires. No approach to a church possesses more entirely the atmosphere of the Middle Ages than that. Pontifs began a masterpiece of Flamboyant architecture, the Tour de Beurre (1485-1509), that, as it rises, grows more and more sumptuous, though it never loses its architectural lines. Unfortunately the stone used was of poor quality, which necessitated a coarse sculpture. The transition from square to octagon was gracefully achieved by the one constructive arrangement which originated during the final stage of the national art: to unify the design, flying buttresses were sprung from the corner turrets and the face-shafts to the octagon.[347] From 1497 to 1507 the master-of-works at Rouen Cathedral was Jacques Le Roux, who continued the Tour de Beurre, finished by his nephew, Rouland Le Roux (1507-20), an artist of the first order. He redressed the upper part of the main frontispiece in order to put it into character with the Tour de Beurre and St. Romain's belfry. After completing the middle portal of the façade he reconstructed the central tower, whose platform he raised a story higher. When Rouen's lantern tower was burned in 1822 the present iron skeleton was contrived, a structure too mechanical to be architecture, but of good effect in the distant views of the city. The oft repeated renewals of the famous frontispiece of Rouen Cathedral account for its failure to express the interior church structurally, but though merely a screen, it is deservedly popular, "one of the dreams of the Middle Ages," M. Émile Lambin has called it. By moonlight its effect is romantic, almost spectacular. Most popular, too, is another work of Rouland Le Roux, the Palais de Justice which he built with Roger Ango, from 1493 to 1507, for the parliament of Normandy. A pomp and a pageantry carried almost to folly distinguished the generations that raised monuments such as these. In 1520, when Francis I met Henry VIII, not far from Rouen, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, many a lord, says the chronicler, carried on his back his mills and his forests and his meadows. One of the most curious houses in France, Rouen's Hôtel du Bourgtherould, now a bank near the Old Market, is decorated exteriorly by reliefs of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.[348] M. Léon Palustre discovered that the sculpture on its tower, originally polychrome, was a copy of a Flemish tapestry in the possession of that prince of pageantry, Philippe le Hardi of Burgundy. The archbishop of Rouen from 1493 to 1510 was none other than the Mæcenas of his age, Cardinal George I d'Amboise, chief minister of Louis XII. All over France we have traced the work of that art-loving family--at Paris, Cluny, Clermont, Chaumont, Albi. A nephew of the same name held the see here until 1545, and saw to the erection of his uncle's tomb, designed by Rouland Le Roux, with sculpture by artists of the Michel Colombe tradition as well as those of the Italian Renaissance. Rouen was so active a center for glassmaking that, in 1317, Exeter obtained windows here, as did Gloucester and Merton College, Oxford. Next to Troyes, Rouen contained the richest collection of colored glass in France. Until the Revolution her eighty lesser churches were filled with it. The best windows left are six lancets in the ambulatory of the cathedral. They belong to the XIII-century school of Chartres and are exceptional in being the only signed windows; "Clement of Chartres" was their maker. The first, given by a company of boatmen, relates the legend of St. Julian Hospitator, who ferried strangers day and night over the river, a story recounted by Gustave Flaubert, a son of Rouen.[349] The other five lancets are of the _Biblia pauperum_ type, teaching dogma to the people. The cold, limpid hues of the XIV century appear in the Lady chapel, and in the chapel of St. Jeanne d'Arc is an interesting Pentecost window of that century; contemporary are the apse lights in the upper choir, where the unsuccessful experiment was tried of continuing the subject from one panel to another--here the arms of the Crucified Lord extend into the lateral lights. The cathedral's west rose is of the XV century; in the transept is a XVI-century window devoted to the ancient bishop Romanus. The abbatial of St. Ouen has, with the choir of Évreux, the best array extant of XIV-century canopy glass figures. So loath were the vitrine artists to give up an architectural design in glass that when the XV century composed scenes instead of single figures for each panel, even those small groups were set in grisaille frames. The iconoclastic 1562 worked havoc in Rouen. For twenty-four hours a Huguenot mob wrecked tombs, altars, and windows in the cathedral, to such an extent that it lay unused during half a year. One mourns the loss of the cenotaph of good Charles V, made in 1369 by the same Jean de Marville who designed the famous Dijon tomb of the king's brother. Ten years later, in 1572, the Rouen Catholics retaliated by massacring some eight hundred Calvinists in the city on St. Bartholomew's Day. In the World War Rouen became almost an English city again. This time, however, England, the ancient combatant of France, came not as a detested invader, but as her ally in dire years of distress. It is pleasant to learn that devotion to the Maid of Orleans was not infrequent among the English troops of 1914-18. JEANNE D'ARC'S TRIAL IN ROUEN[350] De ma part, je répute son histoire un vrai miracle le Dieu. La pudicité que je vois l'avoir accompagnée jusques à sa mort, même au milieu des troupes; la juste querelle qu'elle prit; la prouesse qu'elle y apporta; les heureux succès de ses affaires; la sage simplicité que je recueille de ses réponses au interrogatoires qui lui furent faits par les juges du tout voués à sa ruine; ses prédictions qui, depuis, sortirent effet; la mort cruelle qu'elle choisit dont elle se pouvoit garantir s'il y eût de la feintise en son fait; tout cela dis-je, me fait croire (joint les voyes du ciel quelle oyoit) que toute sa vie et histoire fut un vrai martyre de Dieu.--Testimony of ÉTIENNE PASQUIER (1529-1615). So swiftly followed the fruitage of the sacrifice offered up in the Vieux-Marché on May 21, 1431, that in every part of the ancient city of Rouen sprang up exuberant, vigorous, Flamboyant monuments. The most momentous and the saddest happening in the history of Normandy's capital was the burning at the stake of Jeanne la Pucelle whose relief of Orléans, only two short years before, had saved the nation in its last gasp. From the church of St. Saviour on the market place they brought her the cross for which she begged on that tragic morning, that the pillory on which her Lord had hung might be held up before her eyes, to strengthen her in her last hour. Long afterward, in 1450, Massieu, the priest-sheriff of her trial, a weak man but less unsympathetic than many in that grim gathering of rascals, testified: "The English feared her more than the whole army of the king of France.... It was they who held the trial and paid its costs. She was taken to the Viel-Marché, having beside her Brother Martin and me, and accompanied by more than eight hundred men at arms, with spears and swords. On the way she made pious lamentation so touchingly that my companion and I could not keep back our tears. She recommended her soul to God and the saints with such devotion that those who heard her wept. All distressed, she exclaimed, 'Rouen, Rouen, must I die here!'" When the Old Market was reached Jeanne heard herself sermonized as a limb of Satan, a blasphemer guilty of diabolical malice, of pernicious crimes, and infected with the leprosy of heresy. Her sentence read, she fell on her knees and addressed to God prayers so ardent that even the foreign masters of Rouen were moved. Her dear St. Michael she petitioned, too. "As soon as the flames reached her," relates an eyewitness, "she cried out more than six times, '_Jhésus!_' and then a final time, in a loud voice, with her last breath, '_Jhésus!_' And her cry was heard from end to end of the market place, and almost everyone was weeping.... A shiver passed over the assembly.... The people pointed at her judges and said that Jeanne was the victim of a great injustice.... They murmured that such an evil deed should have taken place in their city.... That evening the executioner went to the Dominican convent and confessed in fear, 'I have burned a saint!'... The secretary of the English king turned away from the lamentable spectacle, muttering: 'We are lost. We have burned a saint!" Surrounded by her brutal jailers, at dawn that May morning, Jeanne had said, with confidence, "With God's aid, I shall be this night in His Kingdom of Paradise." As her final cry to her Redeemer rang out, a canon of Rouen Cathedral prayed aloud, "Would to God my soul were where I believe is the soul of this Maid." The young priest-secretary, the clerk of the court, Manchon, who took down her trial (and let his irresistible admiration for her run over in marginal notes, "_Superba responsio!_"), testified later: "Never did I weep so much over any grief that has come to me, and for a month I could not be appeased. I bought a little missal with the money that came to me from the trial, that I might have cause to remember her in my prayers." The verdict of all impartial men in Rouen, that somber May morning of 1431, was that the whole business from beginning to end had been violence and injustice.[351] A packed jury had judged her. The president of the tribunal, the renegade selected to prove a saint a sorceress, was Bishop Pierre Cauchon, driven from his see of Beauvais by loyal Frenchmen, as the enemy of his own country. Because the see of Rouen was unoccupied, the English preferred to hold Jeanne's trial there rather than at Paris, where the bishop was not their creature. How abject a tool Cauchon was is to-day shown by old receipts which prove that he was the recipient, on each day of the trial, of a hundred _sols tournois_. For the same ignoble reason many a learned professor "charged his soul." There was not the faintest shadow of fair play in the process. After Maître Jean Lohier had said to Cauchon that the proceedings were not valid because Jeanne was allowed no counsel, nor were the hearings in public court, and those present had not freedom to express their true opinion, that honest Norman lawyer saw that his only safety lay in quitting the city. "It is an affair of hate," he said to young Secretary Manchon one day as they stood together in Rouen Cathedral. "Deliberately they try to trap her. If only she would not say in regard to her apparitions, 'I know for certain,' but, 'It seems to me,' I do not see how she could be condemned." Some canons of the cathedral who criticized the trial were thrown into prison, and the English locked up a citizen who remarked that since Jeanne had been judged innocent by the doctors at Poitiers, in a court presided over by the archbishop of Rheims, a second trial was illegal. Three of the younger judges who at first dared to give their true opinion were berated by Cauchon, who bade them quit their ecclesiastical quibbling and let the jurists decide the matter. The testimony of the aged bishop of Avranches, then a resident of Rouen, was set aside because he advised that in matters doubtful touching the faith the case should be referred to a council or to the pope. Because Massieu, the humble court usher, said to a townsman, "I can see nothing but goodness and honor in her," he was threatened with a prison cell where never again would he see sun or moon. The secretaries, Manchon and Boisguillaume, were beaten by the English. A man on the street who spoke well of Jeanne was chased by Lord Warwick with a drawn sword and almost killed. Passions ran high. Lord Stafford drew his dagger on Jeanne in her cell one day because she said that the English would be driven out of France. Even after her execution, when a Dominican in the city spoke kindly of her, he was flung into prison for a year. Her judges sought to tire Jeanne out by long hours of interrogation; the lawyers themselves came away exhausted from the sessions. Virulent against her was Beaupère, rector of Paris University, who, when routed by the young girl's replies, called her sly. When Cauchon wished to have it appear that she refused to submit to the Church, he made the scribes omit her statement that gladly she appealed to a general council or to the pope. "Ah," cried Jeanne, "you write all that is against me, but you do not write anything for me." The lawyers' subtle questions rained on her thick and fast till she would call them to order with admirable courtesy, "_Beaux seigneurs, faites l'un après l'autre_." Whenever she wished to make no reply to a question came her concise, "_Passez outre_." Secretary Manchon testified before an inquest, twenty years later, "Never could Jeanne have defended herself as she did in so difficult a cause, against so many and such learned doctors, if she had not been inspired." Sublime to tears are some of the answers made by this young country girl not yet twenty, who could barely read and write, who knew only _Pater_ and _Ave_. When sheeringly asked were she in a state of grace, she replied: "A serious question to answer. If I am, may God keep me so; if I am not, may God put me in his grace. I would rather die than not have God's love." Awe fell on the assemblage and for that day the session broke up.[352] Yet Jeanne was very human at her trial, too. It was just the well-brought-up country maid, the Jeannette they all loved in Domrémy, who boasted before those callous men: "For sewing and for spinning, I fear no woman in Rouen." Those housewives of Rouen, the "little people of the Lord," to whom Jeanne's thoughts turned in homely fashion, dared only murmur beneath their breath that her process was "a crying injustice," and shame it was that so evil a _cause célèbre_ should take place in their good town. Rouen was terrorized into silence by her foreign master. Jeanne's five months' imprisonment and final execution at Rouen was a political crime covered with the cloak of religious zeal by a very genius of hypocrisy. John Plantagenet, Duke of Bedford, together with the boy king's great-uncle, the cardinal of Winchester, were the movers behind the scenes. Jeanne never quitted her prison in the castle built by Philippe-Auguste--only a tower of which is extant to-day. From that stronghold the English governed Normandy. Since the opening of the World War an erroneous inscription, placed by partisan politicians in the wall of the episcopal palace of Rouen, has been changed, for it sought to convey the idea that from the prelate's court of justice Jeanne was led forth to her death. Never did she set foot in that officiality building; she was held from the first day to the last in an English prison. From a dark cell in the tower fortress she was conducted through corridors of the same castle to the hall where sat her judges. Massieu, the usher, used to let her slip into the castle chapel for an _Ave_ as she passed its open door, but even that solace was stopped by Estivet. That venomous agent of Cauchon accused Jeanne of ironic replies ill suited to a woman.[353] Cauchon tried to coerce the young priest-secretaries of the trial, Manchon and Boisguillaume, to falsify their notes, but they proved incorruptible. And twenty years later they, with Massieu, became the chief vindicators of the Maid when the inquests for her rehabilitation were started. Jeanne had felt their unspoken sympathy. Once with pleasant humor she told them not to ask her the same question twice or she would pull their ears. We know from contemporaries that Jeanne's way of intercourse was natural and friendly, _enjouée_, that her attitude was modesty itself, that her voice had a feminine note of sweetness, that she was strong and comely and well shaped, that her hair was dark. Born in 1412, by the Meuse, in Domrémy, on the old Roman road from Langres to Verdun, in French territory, on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine, she was not yet eighteen when she crossed the ravaged land in the winter of 1429 to rouse Charles VII, then in Chinon Castle. In March of that year she raised the siege of Orléans; in July she witnessed the coronation of her "_gentil dauphin_" at Rheims; in September occurred the assault on Paris, from which siege Charles VII, counseled by traitors, retired, and all winter Jeanne was kept in semiactivity, though chafing to free the land from the foreign yoke. Especially she longed to go to the aid of the besieged Mont-Saint-Michel, and to liberate from his English prison the poet-duke of Orléans, even, she said, if it meant going to London Tower itself. In May, 1430, she was captured by her enemies, the Burgundians. Jeanne's active mission covered only a year. "Several times in my presence," testified the Duke d'Alençon,[354] her companion in arms, "Jeanne told the king she would last but a year, and to look well that he made right use of her." But Charles VII failed her. After her capture Jeanne spent some months in prisons in northern France, and finally she was sold to the English for a king's ransom. Never in their minds was there any mistake as to who had turned the tide against them. "They had for her a mortal hate," said, in later years, Pierre Minier, one of the judges cowed by the Duke of Bedford; "they thirsted to bring about her death, no matter by what means." From December, 1430, to May, 1431, Jeanne's martyrdom at Rouen endured. "An iron cage was made for her, and at night she was chained up," declared Secretary Boisguillaume, at the inquest of 1450. "She was incarcerated in Rouen Castle; her guardians were English soldiery of the lowest type; day and night they kept watch ... they made her the object of their mockeries; often she reproached them for it. Her feet were held in irons which were attached to a post." There were scenes in that dark cell, vouched for by witnesses, which are too painful to transcribe.[355] Only when she fell ill was the severity with which she was treated relaxed, lest by a natural death she escape public burning. One day Estivet so vilified her that she had a relapse of fever. Every detail is set down in the process for her rehabilitation, for which the Dominican Bréhal traveled from end to end of France, gathering testimony from those who had known Jeanne. But the chief instrument of her vindication is the word-for-word record of her trial at Rouen in 1431. Not in all history is there a more personal and appealing document. One can hear Jeanne's very accent in her valiant replies to her tormentors. "_Répondes hardiment_," her voices admonished her. Why did Charles VII, who, before Jeanne appeared, was about to pass into foreign exile, strike no blow to rescue her who had given him back his kingdom? A difficult question to answer. Charles was no hero, though his quality of perseverance was ultimately to make him the instrument that ended the centuries-old Capet-Plantagenet duel. Charles was surrounded by counselors who were jealous of Jeanne's leadership, who represented her captivity as the result of her headstrong character. In 1449 Charles, _le bien servi_, but not the duly grateful, entered Rouen "in triumph and magnificence as never king in city." Bells rang out and children cried, "_Noël!_" in welcome. In the cathedral the festal throng gathered. Beside the king stood Jacques Coeur, the merchant-prince, who had provided the funds for the reconquest of Normandy, and whose splendor of apparel on this triumphal entry was so to excite the barons' envy that within four years their machinations had him impeached, despoiled, and banished. He who was building at Bourges the finest bourgeois mansion in France, must have observed with interest the host of Flamboyant monuments then arising in Rouen. With Charles VII came, too, his commander in chief, the great Dunois, who had fought with Jeanne, the half brother of the Duke of Orléans, who that day was singing: "Resjoys-toy, franc royaume de France! À présent Dieu pour toy se combat." When Normandy was again French, not many years were to pass before Rouen exonerated herself of the crime of Jeanne's execution. The chief mover of the rehabilitation was the archbishop of the city, the Norman, Guillaume d'Estouteville, son of the hero who in 1415 held Harfleur against the entire army of Henry V, brother of the knight who led the defense of Mont-Saint-Michel, and nephew of Archbishop d'Harcourt, who gave up his see of Rouen to live in exile, rather than swear fealty to a non-French master. Cardinal d'Estouteville saw the propriety of clearing not only Normandy but France and the Church of what had been the political crime of foreigners. Through his efforts Pope Calixtus III, in 1456, revoked the legal decision of 1431, as "iniquitous, malicious, calumnious, and fraudulent." The unworthy Cauchon was excommunicated. A formal reading of the sentence of rehabilitation took place in the big hall of Rouen's episcopal palace: "Considering the quality of the judges and of those who directed the trial, considering that her abjuration was extorted by fraud and violence, in presence of the executioner and under threat of fire, without the accused understanding its full content and terms, considering finally that the crimes charged against her are not proven whatsoever by the process"--thus runs the decree declaring Jeanne's two sentences of condemnation in 1431 to be the work of iniquity. It was ordered that the rehabilitation be read publicly, not alone in Rouen, but in all the chief towns of France. Rouen celebrated with gladness the justice rendered to the Maid who had saved France in her darkest hour. A solemn procession, in which marched Jeanne's brothers, who had been ennobled by the king, proceeded to the graveyard beside St. Ouen's abbatial, where, twenty-five years earlier, Jeanne had sat alone on a platform above the crowd, just a week before her execution. They had there read to her the twelve accusations--dubbing her witch and wanton--which a doctor of Paris University had drawn up, and then a preacher thundered in vituperation. Jeanne listened gently till she heard Charles VII abused, whereupon she, who had the mystic cult of royalty, lifted up her head bravely: "By my faith, sire," she cried, "my king is a noble Christian. Say what you will of me, but leave my king alone." "Hush her up!" angrily cried Cauchon. In that cemetery of St. Ouen occurred what now is called proper self-defense on Jeanne's part. She could write her name, but with a smile she signed with a circle, emblem of mockery, and a cross, meaning negation. She hoped to be transferred to the prisons of the Church, where she clamored to be placed. Jeanne signed a paper consisting of seven lines, and afterward they produced an abjuration of fifty lines. Her judge might be a bishop, but never once did she confuse the Church she revered and the unworthy clerics who sat in judgment on her. During the ceremonies of the rehabilitation at Rouen, a great procession marched to the Old Market where had stood Jeanne's funeral pyre, and with solemnity the twelve accusations against her were torn into shreds and burned. Rouen felt happier after rendering that justice, and her renewed self-respect found natural expression in her Flamboyant Gothic monuments. However, many a long year was to go by before France fully comprehended the martyr of Rouen. Voltaire libeled Jeanne as vilely as the XV-century savants of Paris University. The rationalists of a later day have patronized her as self-hallucinated. But the tide has mounted. "The day that all the bells of the world ring in honor of Jeanne d'Arc, they will sound abroad the glory of France," said Leo XIII, in 1896. The Maid of Domrémy-on-the-Meuse was declared Venerable in 1904, Blessed in 1909, and canonized a saint in 1920. _St. Jeanne d'Arc, ora pro nobis!_ THE CATHEDRAL OF LISIEUX[356] One must live as one thinks, or else, sooner or later, one finishes by thinking as one lives.--PAUL BOURGET. Lisieux Cathedral is, with that of Rouen, the least Norman in the province. It claims to be the first built of the Gothic cathedrals of Normandy and the most vigorous. The preceding Romanesque cathedral was grievously damaged by fire in 1136. Arnoul, a prelate who had gone through the disillusioning experience of the Second Crusade, began the present church. Similarities between it and Laon Cathedral, and various other indications, prove that it was building from 1160 to 1190. Bishop Arnoul, of a line of shrewd Norman diplomatists, profited materially by his ability to keep on good terms with both husbands of Aliénor of Aquitaine, Henry of England, and Louis of France. In Lisieux Cathedral he married Aliénor to Henry II, which act was to take three hundred years of war and Jeanne's sacrifice to undo. Arnoul was the English king's chief adviser before Becket's ascendancy. It is said that he counseled Henry, after his first quarrel with Becket, to detach one by one the English bishops from their primate, which policy of _divide et impera_ came only too easily to an Angevin-Anglo-Norman. Four times did Bishop Arnoul journey to Sens to negotiate for Henry with the pope, during the Becket controversy. Some of the leading men of his day admired the prelate of Lisieux; but soundly honest men such as Abbot Robert de Torigny of the Mount, and the bishop of Chartres, John of Salisbury, distrusted him entirely--the latter remarked on his political sense in bestowing benefits when he wished to convince a man of his point of view. Under Bishop Arnoul the nave of Lisieux rose in one campaign, a monument severe and pure, fog-colored like the wintry sky over it, say the townsmen. A note of force is imparted by the sturdy cylindrical piers. There is a narthex bay at the western end--a Germanic influence. No trace of vaulting shows in the deep gallery over the aisles, though the triforium arches that open on the central vessel are better suited for a tribune than a blind arcade. Behind that arcade now stands a poorly constructed wall opened here and there by doors, reminding us that once it was the custom for crusaders to store their valuables in the upper galleries of cathedrals. Some have suggested that Guillaume de Sens was the architect of Lisieux, whose resemblances with his known works at Sens and Canterbury are discernible. Lisieux adhered to the Romanesque tradition of salient transept arms; that to the north lacks a portal; that to the south is an excellent example of plainest Primary Gothic. The transept has an eastern aisle, an arrangement found at Durham, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Peterborough. The first two bays of the choir were built, like the nave, in the XII century; the birth of the apse is marked by a staircase, as at Caen, Boscherville, Fécamp, and Eu. The ample central tower of Lisieux, not in the first plan, was erected as the choir was gradually extended. In the later-constructed straight bays of the choir, and at the apse, finished under Bishop Jourdain du Hommet, no annulets broke the ascending line of the clustered shafts, quatrefoils were cut in the spandrels, and more and more the structure took on regional characteristics. Arches were set under arches, some of them being acutely pointed, because the Norman preferred to use the same opening of the compass for all his arches, wide or narrow. It gave his eye pleasure to multiply molds, and his sense of exactitude craved a support for every roll molding. Lisieux' choir, however, avoided what was to become an excessive complication of parts in the Anglo-Norman school. The cathedral is essentially vigorous and severe. In 1226 a fire necessitated repairs, and Bishop Guillaume de Pont-de-l'Arche took the opportunity to make three ambulatory chapels. He built the façade towers whose lower walls retained Romanesque parts of the XI century. When the southwest tower fell in 1553 it was replaced by one of pre-Gothic design. The northwest belfry had as prototype the famous one of St. Pierre at Caen. The axis chapel--longer than the XIII-century one it replaced--is a gem of Flamboyant art. On its walls are some small funereal bas-reliefs erected by the cathedral canons. The builder of Lisieux' Lady chapel was Pierre Cauchon, president of the tribunal that sentenced Jeanne d'Arc to death. He did not erect his chapel, as some intimate, in expiation of his conduct at Rouen in 1431, for he remained to the end the creature of his country's invaders. His detestation of Jeanne, moreover, was a personal affair, since it had been her triumph at Orléans, creating a national hope, that put heart into the citizens of Beauvais to expel their pro-English bishop. The English sent him to buy Jeanne from her captors. After the happenings in St. Ouen's cemetery, by law Jeanne should have been passed into the control of the Church, but Cauchon ordered her back to her English prison, and when she again donned male attire, and again asserted that she had heard her voices, her unscrupulous enemies were enabled to accuse her of being a relapsed heretic and wanton, to start a new trial, and condemn her to death. Cauchon himself hastened to the fortress to witness Jeanne's "relapse," and with Lord Warwick he is said to have chuckled over it--"This time she's well caught!" The morning that Jeanne was led to her execution she faced Cauchon fearlessly: "Bishop, I die by your hand. Had I been placed in the prisons of the Church, this would never have happened. You have left me in the clutches of my enemies. I call you before God, the great judge, to answer for the wrong you have done me." Even as she so spoke a spirited statue now represents Jeanne in Cauchon's Norman cathedral, while her judge is a condemned felon before the bar of history. Like Arnoul, builder of Lisieux' nave, Cauchon knew how to act a better part. As rector of Paris University he had been esteemed for his learning. But, coming to the parting of the ways, he chose the broad and easy path, and the rest followed. His influence encouraged the University of Paris in its pernicious betrayal of France after Henry V's invasion. Cauchon won the see of Beauvais by defending Jean Sans Peur of Burgundy, in 1407, when the latter had murdered his cousin, the Duke of Orléans,[357] in the streets of Paris. And in the same hour that he thus truckled for advancement, Jean Gerson, the chancellor of Paris University, denounced the ducal crime--destined to be for France of incalculable consequence--and had his house sacked by Burgundians. Ten years later, at the Council of Constances, in Switzerland Cauchon upheld the murderer, and Gerson rebuked the crime, whereupon he felt it to be wiser to quit Constances in disguise and to pass his latter life in retirement. Cauchon became the butcher of Jeanne d'Arc, his name forever an infamy; Gerson, dying in poverty and defeat at Lyons, was thought worthy, during two centuries, to be called the author of the _Imitation of Christ_, and before he passed away in July, 1429, it was given to him to learn that the Maid had triumphed at Orléans, and to testify that her mission was of God: _Gratia Dei estensa est in hac puella; a Domino factum est istud_. Cauchon, ex-bishop of Beauvais, having placed his learning and energies at the service of his country's invaders, ambitiously hoped to obtain Rouen as his thirty pieces of silver, but the Duke of Bedford compromised matters by bestowing on him the lesser see of Lisieux, in 1432. As the national cause prospered the traitor was more and more detested by the populace. When the Burgundian partisans of the English were expelled from Paris, the properties of the bishop of Lisieux in the capital were seized and he himself was mobbed. In 1442 he fell dead suddenly one day while his barber was shaving him. A few years later, when Jeanne was rehabilitated and her judge excommunicated, the populace broke open Cauchon's tomb in the cathedral and flung his bones into the mire. His successor at Lisieux, Bishop Pasquier de Vaux, also one of Jeanne's faithless judges, died alone, deserted, on the day that the French army entered his city as victors, in 1449. The after history of Lisieux Cathedral followed the same course as others in France; 1562 and 1793 wrecked its monuments and smashed its stained glass. In the Flamboyant Gothic church of St. Jacques--where not a capital breaks the ascending line--are some XVI-century windows, making it the first church with such remaining. Lisieux can boast of no bishop canonized by the Church, but her citizens are doing all in their power to let Christendom know of the gentle Norman girl, Thérèse Martin, the "Little Flower," who died in the odor of sanctity (1897) in the Carmelite convent of the town, before she had reached her twenty-fifth year. Her extraordinary cult, especially among soldiers during the World War, proves that the thirst for sainthood is as strong as ever in the peoples who went crusading and flung themselves toward heaven in cathedrals. Art springs from emotions such as that felt by Frenchmen for the "Little Flower." To ignore such manifestations, as do the rationalists who still are insisting, as dogmatically as before 1914, that France, at root, is the land of Voltaire, is a willful shutting of the eyes to the basic forces that make history. Those good people of Lisieux who are mystic-minded, who _believe in order that they may understand_, as Anselm taught at Bec near by, as Plato taught in Greece, feel subconsciously that their "Little Flower," who said that only after her death would begin her real mission, is atoning for Pierre Cauchon.[358] THE CATHEDRAL OF ÉVREUX[359] Il en coûte cher pour devenir la France. Nous nous plaignons, et non sans droit, de nos épreuves et de nos mécomptes. Nos pères n'ont pas vécu plus doucement que nous, ni recueilli plus tôt et à meilleur marché les fruits de leurs travaux. Il y a dans le spectacle de leurs destinées de quoi s'attrister et se fortifier à la fois. L'histoire abat les prétentions impatientes et soutient les longues espérances.--GUIZOT. The cathedral of Évreux is not homogeneous like that of Lisieux, but, gathering of different styles though it is, Romanesque, Gothic, early and late, neo-classic, it possesses its own distinct personality. A church of whose choir it has been said by one so competent to compare the cathedrals of his native land as M. Louis Gonse, that it is "one of the fairest bits of Gothic architecture in France," surely can hold its own among more brilliant companions. Two Romanesque edifices stood in succession on the site, not to speak of the Merovingian and Carolingian cathedrals here. Évreux is the _Evora_ of Gallo-Roman times when it was ranked with Rouen and Tours. St. Patrick came hither in 432 for his consecration as bishop before his apostolate to Ireland. The first of the Romanesque cathedrals was dedicated in 1072 by Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, but in 1119, when Henry I of England was besieging the city, it was destroyed for strategic purposes, by consent of its bishop, who was in the king's camp. Henry and all his barons gave generous compensation, we are told by Ordericus Vitalis, the English monk who spent most of his life in the Norman monastery of St. Évroult, "delighting in obedience and poverty," writing a history which is the chief XII-century record of the duchy. The second Romanesque cathedral was begun in 1126. To it belonged the pier arcade of the present nave and the entire westernmost bay, as well as portions of the façade towers. At one time it was thought that the arches adjacent to the transept were part of the earlier church blessed by Lanfranc, inasmuch as they differ from the profiles of the other pier arches. Further study has demonstrated, however, that the entire arcade belongs to the XII century, since it was not the usage, before 1120, to flank a pier's four faces by columns, as was done here throughout. The second Romanesque cathedral of Évreux was also destined to be of short duration. In 1194, Philippe-Auguste laid the city in ashes as chastisement for John Lackland's black deed. John had allowed a French garrison into Évreux during his intrigues with the French king, while Richard the Lion-hearted was on his crusade. When word came that his brother was returning to his possessions, John, hoping to placate him for his own treachery, invited the French garrison of three hundred to a feast and, it is said, foully murdered them all. The bishop of Évreux had accompanied Richard Coeur-de-Lion to the East and in Cyprus had crowned his bride, Berengaria of Navarre. In the course of time the counts of Évreux became kings of Navarre, through the marriage of Berengaria's sister to the Count of Champagne.[360] The niece of Richard and John, Blanche of Castile, brought in her dowry Évreux to the French Crown, when she married (1200) the son of that wily augmenter, Philippe-Auguste. The renewal of the cathedral as Gothic proceeded slowly. By 1230 the nave had merely reached the triforium level. A horizontal sculptured band, such as surmounts it, was not used after that date. The clearstory of the nave is contemporary with the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, and when Louis IX came to his mother's dower city, in 1259, for the consecration of its bishop, who was his personal friend, he and the group of building-prelates with him, from Rheims, Rouen, Coutances, and Séez, must have discussed the new works at Évreux with interest. The choir of the cathedral was not undertaken till the close of the century. From 1298 to 1310 it was built in a Rayonnant style fully as advanced as the later abbatial of St. Ouen, at Rouen, with glazed triforium, capitals that are slight bands of foliage, and precocious prismatic profiles. The only distinctly Norman trait is the balustrade of the triforium. As the choir was made fifteen feet wider than the nave, its westernmost bay was canted to join the transept, but the effect is not displeasing. The Hundred Years' War caused a cessation of works at Évreux. Dire years were they for the city ruled by Charles le Mauvais, a "demon of France," "perfidy in person." He plotted ceaselessly against the national party, not because he leaned to the English side, but that he was obsessed by his own superior claims to the French crown, being by both father and mother directly of St. Louis' line. His high abilities--and he was learned, eloquent, and handsome--were wasted in mischief making. In 1365 he gave up his city of Évreux to the flames. Charles the Wicked is pictured in the cathedral's clearstory windows, in the fourth on the north side of the choir, and across the sanctuary from him, in another light, is his wife, a Valois, sister of the French king, Charles V, and his art-loving brothers at Dijon, Angers, and Bourges. She possessed Mantes by her dower right, and added to its collegiate church the Rayonnant chapel of Navarre, in which are portrait statuettes representing her daughters. Her four brothers, says M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, were the paramount influences in the formation of French Flamboyant Gothic, from 1365 to 1415. The best array of XIV-century glass[361] in France is that of the choir of Évreux. The windows are not forceful, like XIII-century medallion-mosaics, any more than the Rayonnant stonework framing them resembles hardy Apogee Gothic. The hues, while limpid and pleasing, show none of the lovely half-tones which the Flamboyant-Renaissance day was to achieve. Large plates of glass were employed in order that fewer leads might darken the window. White was overused, as well as the recently discovered yellow, called silver-stain, obtained by fusing the surface of white glass with a solution of silver. Pot-metal glass--that colored in the mass--had hitherto been used exclusively. Effective backgrounds were obtained by damasked patterns. In each panel was a single figure in an architectural setting of grisaille and silver-stain, which frames grew so elaborate, by the middle of the century, that perspective was represented. The earliest example of a canopy type of window is in Évreux' upper choir--the third light on the north side. It was the gift of the _grand queux_, or cook, of France, Guillaume d'Harcourt, who died in 1327. The two windows presented by the bishop of Évreux, Bernard Cariti (1376-83), show progress in architectural backgrounds, and the donor is drawn from life. In the canted bay of the choir (north) is a XV-century window of the Saintes Maries, whose alleged relics were given to the bishop here by good King René of Anjou. The window commemorates Normandy's newly acquired freedom, hence its portraits of Charles VII, his son, the future Louis XI, and the seneschal of Normandy, Pierre de Brézé. It is also a memorial of the Great Schism of the West, ended by the Council of Constance, at which the bishop of Évreux was present. Foliate designs cover the grisaille lights of the triforium. The quarries (white, parallel pieces of glass framed together in a lead pattern) are enlivened by strips of colored glass and heraldic ornament. Louis XI built the Lady chapel of Évreux, in whose windows he depicted his coronation. In the lily-petals formed by the Flamboyant tracery of the mullions are pictured the barons who attended the king's investing. Instead of the single figures in each panel, hitherto popular, small groups were now set under the vitrine canopies, and subjects heretofore unknown in western iconography appeared, such as the Transfiguration, the Woman of Samaria, the Marriage at Cana. They were pictured just as the mystery plays of the day presented them on the stage. In the Tree of Jesse, at the end of the chapel, the new process of abrasion was employed, by which the color of flashed glass was ground away in places, and on the white surfaces thus exposed were enameled new colors, so that one piece of glass could exhibit a variety of hues. These windows of Évreux' Lady chapel belong to the transition hour between the earlier tradition that treated a window as an adjunct of the architecture, and the later tradition that composed a window as an independent painted picture.[362] When, in 1441, Évreux opened its gates joyously to the national troops, new works were begun in the cathedral. The actual Flamboyant transept was substituted for a decrepit Romanesque structure, whose ground plan it followed, hence it is too narrow for its height; seen from the interior of the church, the octagonal lantern appears cramped. The lacework stone spire of the crossing was one of the first in the region. For sixty years during the XVI century two prelates of the prominent Tillières family held the see; to Ambrose le Veneur is due the superlatively ornate Flamboyant north front of the transept, an unanswerable proof that if Gothic art was soon to end it was not of inanition it expired. To put the northern flank of his church in accord with the façade's festival of lace stone he re-dressed the chapels along nave and choir. His nephew, Bishop Gabriel le Veneur, undertook to remake the west frontispiece in a style so neo-classic that M. Léon Palustre, the historian of the Renaissance, exclaimed, "_Pour cette fois le moyen âge est bien fini!_" And yet only thirty years separated the façades of uncle and nephew. The southwest tower has been left uncrowned; that to the northwest is an imposing heavy mass in which is the sonorous bell of Évreux, called Gros-Pierre. THE CATHEDRAL OF SÉEZ[363] Il y a plus d'une sorte de chevalerie, et les grands coups de lance ne sont pas de rigueur. À défaut d'épée, nous avons la plume; à défaut de plume, la parole; à défaut de parole, l'honneur de notre vie.--LÉON GAUTIER, _La Chevalerie_. "Prudent, modest, and gracious," reads the epitaph of Bishop Jean de Bernières, who, having in large part built the choir of Séez Cathedral, impressing on it his personal qualities, departed this life on Holy Thursday of 1292. Séez has been called a little sister of Chartres. It is well set, but of unpretentious dimensions. Its twin spire-crowned western towers will be improved when the masses of masonry now propping them are removed. The interior is white and clean, almost to prudery, which may be due to the renewal of choir and transept in modern times. Never from its inception have restorations ceased in this church. Not that Séez overstepped the possibilities of Gothic equilibrium, but it made incautious use of the calcined foundations of the Romanesque cathedral to which it succeeded. That earlier church had been erected by Bishop Yves de Bellême after two cathedrals had been wiped out by the Norse invasions. Brigands had nested beside his church, and in seeking to dislodge them he had set fire to his own sanctuary, for which act he was rebuked by Leo IX at the Council of Rheims in 1049. He took as his penance the replacing of the cathedral at his own expense, and since he was connected with the rich Norman princes of Italy funds soon poured in. The edifice he erected was destroyed in the unceasing petty wars waged against each other by the husbands of Aliéner of Aquitaine. The nave of the actual cathedral, the part first undertaken, rose from 1220 to 1240 under Bishop Gervais, a member of the Order of Prémontré. After the pause of a generation, its upper vaulting was constructed. All the traits loved by the Norman are here; friezes below triforium and clearstory, balustrades, sharp twin lancets under equilateral arches, multiple ridges and multiple supports, circular capitals and bases, interior passageways contrived skillfully. Subdivision and multiplication of parts reign supreme; merely for the pleasure it gave his eye the Norman increased the molds of his archivolts. There are diagonals here of so generous a profile that little vault-web shows. The Norman was partial to shadow decoration. He covered his walls with holes cut into foiled shapes which lent themselves to ever-changing contrasts of light and shade. In each spandrel of the main arcade is cut an elaborate rosette before which stands the shaft that mounts to the vault-springing. No Ile-de-France architect had thus obstructed his pierced ornament. The choir of Séez was begun soon after the nave, but about 1270 was entirely reconstructed as a Rayonnant vessel, designed audaciously to weigh as little as possible on defective foundations. The sanctuary was raised above the ambulatory, with no screen between. The capitals were slight. Here again appeared a trait of Norman redundancy--rain-guards or weather-drips over the main arches and the wall arcading; an Ile-de-France master had relegated such crocketed gables where they belong--to the exterior walls of a church. Like Évreux, Séez Cathedral possesses a uniform array of XIV-century glass. Above and below the canopied figures in the clearstory lights are panels of grisaille. The triforium was among the first to become one composition with the upper windows, by means of stone mullions; its quarry designs are bordered with strips of colored glass. The transept, built from 1290 to 1330, has in its side walls excellent images of the prophets. Its roses are linked by mullions with the row of windows below; the north rose traces a star with rays. In 1373 a fire damaged the edifice, and its reconstruction continued through the foreign wars. The Bishop of Séez, Robert de Rouvre, proved loyal to the national cause and quitted his city for the wandering court of Charles VII, rather than take oath to Henry V. This patriotic Norman prelate knew Jeanne d'Arc, not at her trial at Rouen, but in her triumphal hour of the coronation at Rheims. The cathedral of Séez was twice pillaged during the religious wars. The Huguenots tore the lead from the roofs, and piled the art treasures in the aisles for bonfires. One doubly regrets the loss of the nave's windows which would have completed the coherent scheme of color decoration that distinguishes the church. Séez was neglected for centuries, its decrepitude becoming such that the priests at its altars were inconvenienced by wind and rain, and not so inconsequent, after all, then seemed the interior weather-guards. The much criticized restoration of M. Ruprich-Robert was a necessity, even though it may have been too radical. Of the six Norman cathedrals, that of Séez is the least known, yet it lies but a few miles beyond Falaise, visited by most travelers in Normandy. In the streets of the Conqueror's birthplace they still sing, "_Vive le fils d'Ariette, Normans, vive le fils d'Arlette!_" A statue of William faces the Trinité in which parish he was baptized (1027). The XIII century built the Trinité's transept, the XVI century its choir (beneath which passes a street), and the Renaissance appears in a porch of faultless taste.[364] The donjon of the castle belongs to the XII century, though the guides will point out a window whence Duke Robert the Magnificent first beheld the maid Arlette. THE CATHEDRAL OF BAYEUX[365] Mais c'est toujours la France, ou petite ou plus grande Le pays des beaux blés et des encadrements, Le pays de la grappe et des ruisslements, Le pays de genêts, de bruyère, de lande. --CHARLES PÉGUY. In the cathedrals of Rouen, Lisieux, and Évreux, the Norman traits are subordinate to those of the Ile-de-France; at Séez all is Norman, and altogether Norman, too, are Bayeux and Coutances, the gems of the duchy's Gothic school. The cathedral of Bayeux stands on the site of one burned in 1046. After that fire Bishop Hugues began a Romanesque cathedral which was continued by his successor, Odo de Conteville, a half brother of the Conqueror. The fair Arlette, the tanner's daughter of Falaise, after the death of Duke Robert the Magnificent, was joined in lawful wedlock with a Norman baron. Her son, Odo, without the slightest vocation, was made a bishop at seventeen--precisely the feudal debasing of the priesthood which Gregory VII was combating. At the battle of Hastings, when he had blessed the troops, he sprang to his charger and led the cavalry. A XII-century canon of Bayeux, Robert Wace, in his rimed history of the Norman dukes, the _Roman de Rou_, tells how, at Hastings, the Norman minstrel, Taillefer, "famed for song, mounted on a charger strong, rode on before, awhile he sang of Roland and of Charlemagne, Oliver and the vassals all, who fell in fight at Roncevals." As governor of Kent, Bishop Odo deepened, by his injustices, the hate of the dispossessed Anglo-Saxons for their new masters. On an excursion against Durham he so harried the countryside that it lay waste for a hundred years. When to his misgovernment was added the folly of grandeur--for this unbalanced feudal bully intrigued to wear the papal tiara, to succeed to the great-hearted champion against iniquity, Gregory VII--his brother, William, thought it best to shut him up. From 1047 to 1096 Odo held the see of Bayeux. The Romanesque cathedral which he completed was blessed in the presence of William the Conqueror and Matilda, in 1077, on which occasion the bishop presented to his church a candelabrum such as can be seen at Hildersheim. Bayeux' crown of light hung from the high vaults until wrecked by the Calvinists in 1562. Of the cathedral built by this anomalous prelate very little remains. The crypt is of his time, parts of the outer walls, and the body of the west towers in their lower halls; their upper stories were re-dressed later. The crypt was forgotten till 1412, when, in digging for a certain bishop's tomb they unearthed it. Odo's cathedral was in part destroyed in 1106 when Bayeux was besieged and burned by Henry I of England. Another fire in 1160 made rebuilding imperative, and even before the latter disaster Bishop Philippe d'Harcourt (1142-62) had begun a new Romanesque church. To it belonged the core of the actual transept-crossing's piers and the lower part of the nave, which is considered the richest Romanesque[366] work extant. The flat wall above the pier arcade is covered with geometric designs, interlacings, and chevrons. The curious carved disks, in the spandrels of the arches, represent Oriental animals and the grotesques that are to be found in Celtic illuminations. Some have thought that the exotic sculptures of Bayeux derived directly from an ivory coffer, of the IV-century Hegira, brought home by crusaders for the treasury of their cathedral. Oriental Byzantium was their common origin. [Illustration: _The Choir of Bayeaux Cathedral (1210-1260). Typical of Normandy's Elaborate Gothic_.] The choir of Bayeux is a masterpiece of Norman Gothic erected by Robert des Ablêges (1206-31), who died a crusader, and by the two successive bishops. In the nave those prelates surmounted the Romanesque lower walls with Gothic windows and vaulting; a balustrade marks the division between the dissimilar parts. They reinforced the façade towers, and made five western doorways--although the church behind possessed only three aisles. The student who would comprehend at a glance the difference between the æsthetic equipoise of the Ile-de-France and the sumptuous Gothic of Normandy can do nothing better than to place side by side the pictures of Bayeux' choir and the curving transept end of Soissons. Those whose taste has been formed by English minsters may prefer Bayeux, those whose loiterings have made them familiar with the cradle-land of the national art of France will find their ideal in the classic restraint of Soissons. Scarcely a square foot of Bayeux' choir is unadorned. Each spandrel is pierced by trefoils and quatrefoils, and at the apse the triforium spandrels are entirely covered with foliage. There are acutely pointed arches, and arches under arches. Mold has been added to mold, and each roll molding has its own colonnette. There are carved friezes at different levels, and the horizontal line is still further accentuated by balustrades. At the sanctuary curve double pillars stand one behind the other. Even the vault web is decorated with the portraits of bishops. As the choir surmounts Odo de Conteville's crypt it is raised above the procession path. Some of its side chapels open, one on the other, above a dividing wall, as in the Gothic choir of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes at Caen, an arrangement repeated with beautiful effect at Coutances. At the birth of the apse are turrets; there are corner towerettes with staircases on each of the western belfries. The Norman façade, as a rule, is very plain, lacking rose window and galleries, and with undeveloped portals. Two marked stories usually divide it--that of the entranceway and the big window story over it. Often the towers are disengaged awkwardly from the massive, nor is the transition from shaft to pyramid accomplished with subtlety. Yet the Norman church has great compensations to offer. Few edifices in the classic region of the Oise, Seine, and Marne present a more complete exterior than this chief church of Bayeux that stands so proudly over the flat little city, unencumbered by houses, raised on a dignified platform where the ground slopes to the east. The cathedral's transept is Rayonnant Gothic of the XIV century, in which day were added the various side chapels whose tracery is geometric. When Jeanne d'Arc had given France a new soul, Bayeux raised its lordly central tower "to praise God in the sky." It was undertaken by a wealthy prelate, Louis d'Harcourt (d. 1479), of the same family as the bishop who had built the Romanesque wall of the nave. He planted his Flamboyant octagon on the square XIII-century lantern, but the actual top story of the transept-crossing tower is modern. Bayeux almost lost her notable beacon in the XIX century, when fissures appeared, and a zealous restorer thought to demolish it whereas all that was needed was consolidation. The ancient Romanesque piers at the four corners of the _croisée_ were found incased in XIII-century masonry. Opposite the cathedral in the town library is an invaluable historical document, the Bayeux Tapestry,[367] the oldest extant large amount of the art of design in the mediæval centuries. Many a vicissitude it has had: lost from view till Montfaucon, the learned Benedictine of St. Maur's reform, unearthed it in 1720, and again, during the Revolution's disorders, used as covering for ammunition carts till an enlightened citizen redeemed it. Originally it comprised one seamless piece, just sufficient to encircle the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, for which, indubitably, it was made. Every summer solstice, on the dedication day of Odo's church, it adorned the cathedral, "the toilet of St. John," it was named, a very simple toilet, for, though called a tapestry, it is really a drab linen band twenty inches wide, two hundred and thirty feet long, with the design alone worked in worsted of eight colors. The scheme is the perjury of Harold and its punishment, hence its suitableness as an embroidery for a church. It begins with Harold and ends with his death at Hastings. His oath of allegiance to William, given at Bayeux, is pictured. Odo is shown saving the Normans from retreat at the battle of Hastings. Some have thought he would not have dared to glorify himself till after the death of his brother, William. The tapestry was made, probably, from 1067 to 1077, immediately following the successful conquest of England, and is a contemporary, therefore, of the _Chanson de Roland_, composed by a Norman anterior to the First Crusade. The embroidery was done before 1085, since the Conqueror's seals of that date show armor similar to that pictured in the canvas; the sequence of the scenes indicates they are subsequent to Wace's poem (c. 1160). Critics have thought, from the inscriptions, that Anglo-Saxons made the tapestry. It is known that the textile art flourished in Kent, the province ruled by Odo; in Normandy, too, the industry was popular. M. Levé, in the most recent monograph of this precious legacy from the past, contends that a Norman who was favorable to William the Conqueror made it, and that the popular attribution to Queen Matilda is not unlikely. She may have had the work done as a gift for Bayeux Cathedral while Odo was still in royal favor. The war-like bishop died as a crusader journeying East, and lies buried in Palermo Cathedral. The people despised Odo, and would openly mock as he passed, "Fie on the bishop who married adulterous King Philip to adulterous Bertrada de Montfort." A century after Harold's oath to Duke William, in Bayeux, and in the same hunting-seat, at Bures, near the city, occurred a scene of passion whose consequences were momentous. Bishop Henri de Beaumont was at work on the cathedral's transept and upper nave when Henry II came to Bayeux to spend the Christmas season of 1170. For seven years western Christendom had watched his feud with the exiled primate of Canterbury. The lesser people of France and England considered that the prelate defended their liberties by his defense of church liberty. For how, they asked, can a churchman rebuke lay injustices if he owes his position to the very culprits he should censure? A pretense of reconciliation between Henry and his whilom intimate had recently been brought about. Becket felt its hollowness, since none knew better than he that the Angevin monarch's besetting sin was duplicity and a merciless vindictiveness when his will was successfully crossed. As he parted with the king he had looked steadily at him, saying, with meaning: "I think I shall never see you again," and Henry Plantagenet had cried, vehemently, "Do you take me for a traitor?" Soon after word was brought to the king that Becket, newly arrived in England, was again stirring up difficulties. Henry flew into one of his madman passions hereditary in his blood from Fulk Nerra, from the Conqueror, too; frenzied words broke from him, their purport being the upbraiding of his followers that he lacked a friend to rid him of this upstart priest. Immediately four of his courtiers started for England, and as December of 1170 closed, Canterbury Cathedral was the scene of a bloody assassination. Becket dead was more formidable than Becket alive. Frightened by the indignation roused by the murder, Henry conceded what the primate had contended for. The Canterbury martyr became a frequent theme with the mediæval artist. At Coutances, Chartres, Angers, and Sens are medallion windows that relate his story. Twice he is honored in Bayeux Cathedral, in the sculpture of the southern portal and in a window of the transept. The popular voice of Europe canonized St. Thomas, and his grave at Canterbury became the loadstone of an international pilgrimage. The XIV-century poet has related how Merrie England rode down to Kent in the first spring days, when that Aprille with his shoures sweet hath pierced to the root the drought of Marche, and with the new-liveried year the _wanderlust_ awakes: Then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ... And specially, from every shires ende Of Englelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seke That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.[368] THE CATHEDRAL OF COUTANCES[369] Art is the stammering of man driven from his terrestrial Paradise but not yet arrived at the heavenly Paradise. Ever has he recalled, ever will he recall, the lost beauty. He is fallen: beauty's sanctuary is shut to him, but the exile traces a sketch of his original home in the strange land where he finds himself. Does not art fill in the intellectual life the same place that hope does in the moral? Art is man's trial to embody his ideals, it is a presentiment and a souvenir.--ERNEST HELLO, _Philosophie et Athéisme_. If the exterior aspect of Bayeux is admirable, that of Coutances Cathedral is superb. The high hill of the town is its pedestal. Few architectural views in France are finer than the silhouette of Coutances against the sky. And when its crowning cathedral is seen rising from a mist, it appears to ride the clouds like a mighty ship--a vision of Norman energy as memorable as the Mount of the Archangel off this very coast, in the bay of St. Michael. As the archives of Coutances Cathedral were destroyed by the Huguenots, documentary proof of its date is lacking. Midway in the XIX century even serious students contended that this Apogee Gothic edifice was the church dedicated in 1056 by a hero of Hastings' battle, Bishop Geoffrey de Mowbray. Like Odo of Bayeux, the sword, not the crozier, should have been his emblem. He was the holder of two hundred lordships. He it was who, in Westminster Abbey, in 1066, mounting a tribune, asked the cowed Anglo-Saxons if they would consent that Duke William of Normandy assume the title, king of England, and the next day an enormous tax was imposed on the conquered race as "joyous tribute" to their new rulers. Geoffrey gave up residence in his Norman see to be castillan of Bristol, but, taking part in Odo's intrigues, he was driven from the country with the cry, "Gallows for the bishop!" This ambitious baron-prelate obtained donations for his Romanesque cathedral when he journeyed in southern Italy and the East, where ruled his Norman kinsmen. When the archæologists Bouet, A. de Dion, and Abbé Pigéon found parts of Geoffrey's church englobed in the present nave and façade of Coutances, the heated controversy over the date of the cathedral ceased. The core of each façade tower is Bishop Geoffrey's, as are some of the piers in transept and nave, and the nave's upper wall (re-dressed as Gothic about 1230). The tribune of the fighting bishop lies unused behind the present triforium, whose wall arcades plainly show a succession of transformations. The Romanesque cathedral was injured by fire in 1218. Bishop Bivien de Champagne planned a new church which his successor, Hugues de Morville (1208-38), started. That prelate, and his two successors, built the choir with its double aisles of different height, and the central tower carried on triumphal piers of multiple molds. "What inspired idiot dared fling those stones toward the sky!" exclaimed the great engineer, Vauban, before the lantern of Coutances. The transfused gentle light that falls from its windows tranquilizes the entire church. Even the laie-haunted Viollet-le-Duc likened it to St. Christopher bearing the Christ Child before an image of the Virgin, in her honor. Joinville would have called it prayer in action. The _Deus absconditus_ impression conveyed by the mystical choir of Coutances is another of its ravishing qualities. As at Bourges and Le Mans, the inner aisle is so high that it possesses its own triforium and clearstory; however, it avoided the stunted aspect of Bourges' main clearstory by omitting the triforium altogether in the central vessel. The choir of Coutances has retained more of the warmth of atmosphere that induces piety of soul than any other Norman cathedral, save that of Rouen. Not mere brilliant talent, but genius and faith, built it. It is almost triple-aisled, inasmuch as columns were planted in the outer aisle slightly before the walls that divide the radiating chapels. Throughout the church are these lesser arrangements that charm--such, the opening of the nave's chapels, one on the other above the dividing walls. The ends of the transept have tribunes like many Romanesque churches of the duchy. There are the usual Norman characteristics of a double-walled clearstory with different tracery in each wall, friezes of sculptured foliage, balustrades, acutely pointed arches, pierced ornament, and a generous multiplication of molds, each with its own support. Two architects designed the church; one made the nave and the other--thought by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis to be the same Thomas Toustain who planned the apse of Le Mans Cathedral--constructed the choir, lantern, transept, and perhaps the spires of the western towers. Under Bishop Jean d'Essay (1251-74) the cathedral was finished. Louis IX was the guest of that prelate when he came to render thanks at the national shrine of St. Michael for his safe return from Palestine. The west façade of Coutances is very Norman: plain portals, no rose window, and a staircase on a corner of each belfry. The lines of the towers rise uncrossed by horizontal bar from ground to tapering point. "Ponder them well," old Villard de Honnecourt would have said before the faithful sentinel towers of Coutances, that seem planted "like the spear of a man-at-arms." This severe church front was not meant for romance like the façade of foreign-trading Rouen, or for royal pageants like that of wine-growing Rheims. The basic forces that lead to architectural character were different here. Northern men in an outpost of France facing the dangers of the sea, built the façade of Coutances, men who had won this province by the sword, who with the sword were seekers for new conquests to the north, to the south. Taken with the central tower, the belfries of Coutances compose an unequaled group. The apse exterior is equally admirable; the flying buttresses, as at Notre Dame, at Paris, clear both aisles of the choir by a single hardy leap. The adventurers of Normandy who made the brilliant, if ephemeral, kingdoms of Apulia, Sicily, and Antioch, were the sons and grandsons of a Norman knight called Tancred de Hauteville,[370] whose manor lay not far from Coutances. The people have chosen to call certain statues on their cathedral's northern outer wall by the names of Roger and Robert de Hauteville, and their descendants of the next generation--Bohemund, who used the Holy Wars to push his own fortunes, and his cousin, Tancred, the idealist of the First Crusade. Probably the "Tancred" statues--which now are restorations--were intended by the XIII-century sculptors for Hebrew kings. In the southern kingdoms founded by the stalwart offshoots of a simple knight of Normandy, the local architectural traits predominated, but such Norman influences appear as the central lantern and intercrossing arches (at Monreale), acutely pointed arches, and lobed rosettes cut in the spandrels (in the hospital at Palermo), west towers with corner staircases in turrets, an aisle preceding the chapels that open on the east wall of the transept (the cathedral of Cefalu, c. 1145). There are Norman traits in the cathedrals of Bari and Barletta, the latter having false tribunes like those of Eu and Rouen.[371] At Coutances the XIV century added side chapels to the cathedral. During a siege in 1356, English stone bullets damaged the church; Charles V had it restored and fortified. Bishop Silvester de Cervelle (1371-86) built the Lady chapel, some lateral chapels, and added to the façade its only ornamentation--the colonnade connecting the towers. When Jeanne d'Arc's good name was to be vindicated, a bishop of Coutances was named by Rome as one of the three judges in the process of rehabilitation. "Would to God," exclaimed the pope, "that I had bishops of Coutances. The Church would be well governed." Olivier de Longueil, _vir gravis_, _vir bonus_, _vir mutis_ (like his own cathedral), was endowed with the ideal qualities for a judge--independence and firmness. His boyhood friends were the Estouteville brothers, one the defender of the Mount, and the other the most active agent in the clearing of the Maid's name. The cathedral of Coutances suffered much in the religious wars. So devastated was it in 1562, when from end to end of Normandy, as at a given signal, priests were slaughtered at the altar, tombs violated, church windows broken, and images shattered, that it lay long unused. The collapse of some vault sections made a thorough restoration necessary. To the south of Coutances, at Avranches,[372] once stood another cathedral of Normandy, begun in 1109, dedicated in 1120, and later changed to Gothic. It was exceptional in having no transept. An inscription in the street marks the spot where, before its northern portal, Henry II of England did public penance in 1172, and received absolution from the papal legate for his guilt in the murder of St. Thomas Becket. Alas! like the cathedrals of Cambrai and Arras, the Revolution brought about the ruin of Avranches. "_L'égalité s'était faite dans les ruines_," says one of its biographers. After the sacking of 1794 the historic church collapsed. Ruskin has nobly lamented its loss: "Did the cathedral of Avranches belong to the mob who destroyed it any more than it did to us who walk in sorrow to and fro over its foundations?" THE GOTHIC ART OF BRITTANY[373] Chez les Bretons un double courant: l'esprit de liberté, l'esprit de tradition; et pour les concilier, les pousser tous deux vers un même but et vers un but supérieur, la flamme, la passion de l'idéal, si ardente chez nos bardes et nos saints, si vivante, si puissante toujours dans l'âme bretonne, et qui l'a jetée tout entière dans la religion de l'idéal par excellence: la foi du Christ. Liberté, tradition, idéal: voilà le triple facteur de la vie intime et de la vie publique, de la vie nationale des Bretons.--LÉON SÉCHÉ. Brittany was a late comer in the national art and much is it to be regretted, for had her building energies been aroused during the Romanesque epoch, her storm-worn granite rock would have then best expressed her regional character. Among the few Romanesque works of Brittany are the crypt of Nantes Cathedral; the nave of St. Aubin's church within the corselet of stone at Guérande; a stalwart central tower over monastic Redon--cradle of Breton history-making, St. Gildas de Rhuys, which M. Lefèvre-Pontalis places in the first quarter of the XI century; the church of the Holy Cross, at Quimperlé, radically remade after the fall of its tower in 1862 (the Gothic-rib masonry roof beneath that tower dating before 1150); a Templar's church at Loctudy; the Bréléverez church beside Lannion. Equally rare are Brittany's Gothic monuments of the first part of the XIII century, Dol Cathedral being one of the few. As the era of Apogee Gothic drew to a close the cathedrals at Quimper, St. Pol-de-Léon, and Tréguier were rising. So was that rude mass of granite, the cathedral at St. Brieuc, and the churches of Rosporden and Guingamp. In the XIV century was built the Kreisker tower, parent of a generous progeny. Sea-going people are lovers of high towers, and Brittany is dotted with them. Over the flat, bleak land of Léon the _clochers à jour_ are a glory. With passion the Breton admired his landmarks. As he sailed home from long months in the northern fisheries, they were the first signals of welcome. To express his affection, he sometimes inscribed the Canticle of Canticles on his tower: "Who is this that cometh up from the desert flowing with delights?" No village felt itself too humble to attempt an imitation of the Kreisker at St. Pol-de-Léon. By far the greater number of Breton churches belong to the Flamboyant Gothic day, and at that time the most energetic builder was Finistère, the far-western stronghold called Armorica before the Celts from Britain fled in the V and VI centuries from invading Saxons to the inviolate refuge of these other dwellers by the sea. St. Jean-du-Doigt was built from 1440 to 1513, and when almost completed, Anne, duchess of Brittany and twice queen of France, visited it to pray for a cure. Her daughter, Claude, also queen of France, was equally generous to the shrine. St. Jean's Pardon of the Fire, in the latter days of June, is one of the five big Pardons of Brittany. Anne of Brittany's device, the ermine, is carved on many a façade of France. Both her husbands were notable art patrons. For her Charles VIII rebuilt the château at Amboise, and for her Louis XII began the château at Blois, and at Loches made an oratory that bears her name. The _Book of Hours_ of Anne of Brittany has never been surpassed. It was for her a liberal education to live in contact with her second husband's minister of state, Cardinal Georges I d'Amboise, who is said to have employed practically every Flamboyant and Renaissance architect and sculptor of the time on his château at Gaillon, and whose tomb in Rouen Cathedral retains much of the truly French spirit of Michel Colombe's school. Brittany benefited artistically by the royal marriages of her last duchess: Anne gave the Breton Colombe the opportunity to make his _chef-d'oeuvre_--the splendid ducal tomb in Nantes Cathedral. The ermine of Anne of Brittany adorns the lintel of Folgoët, to which she added a tower, after her visit in 1505. That stately late-Gothic collegiate church, standing in a little Breton village above Landerneau, possesses an apostle porch--a feature popular in Brittany--a richly sculptured _jubé_ of three arcades, and altars of green Kersanton granite. On one of its altars the corporation of masons carved compass, rule, and hammer. And in like manner, as emblems of patriotic service, might be inscribed the names of the twelve villagers who, at personal sacrifice, when their church was to be demolished in 1808, bought it as a gift for their commune. On many a shrine can modern Finistère inscribe the names of those of her sons who fought for their country in the World War. Just as it was given Breton sailors of the XV century to raise the siege of Mont-Saint-Michel, so at Dixmude, in the autumn of 1914, they checked the drive toward Calais of other invaders of French soil. Brittany, with her profound cult of the dead, will consecrate one of her noblest Calvaries to the memory of Dixmude's heroes: Que ces noms soient sur l'église! Qu'on les lise Sur le granit des piliers ... Que, sur la roche sévère D'un Calvaire, Solitairement inscrit, A travers la pastorale Vespérale Le nom du mort pousse un cri![374] Other Flamboyant Gothic monuments of the ancient duchy are the choir of the cathedral of St. Pol-de-Léon; the cloister, porch, and central tower of Tréguier Cathedral; the chapel of Notre Dame-des-Portes at Châteauneuf-du-Faou; Notre Dame in the little city of Vitré, that claims to be, with Avignon, the most entirely mediæval walled town in France; St. Jean and Notre Dame at Lamballe, which latter XIII-century church, with foundations hewn out of the solid rock, was rebuilt and fitted with XVI-century windows; St. Mélaine, at Morlaix, rebuilt, 1482, and possessing a towering baptismal font of carved wood; and Notre Dame at Kernascleden, between Le Faouët and Guéméné, the work of two brothers named Bail. The making of stained glass flourished in the later Middle Ages at Quimper, Tréguier, and Vannes. Good windows are to be found at Dol, Quimper, Guérande, Ploërmel (where the church has a rich Flamboyant façade pignon), at Kergoat, Moncontour, Les Iff (where the donors were the Laval-Montmorency family), at Plélan, Plogonnec, and at Penmarc'h, whose Pardon of the Rosary occurs on the first Sunday of October. Because the popular gatherings called pardons are among the basic forces that have helped to mold the architecture of the ancient duchy, they are important for the student of the builder's art. The late-Gothic churches that cover Brittany are rich in ecclesiastical furniture, carved baptismal temples, and panels sculptured with the quaint usages of burial and marriage, or with agricultural scenes, such as those at St. Goueznon (1615), at Bannalec (1605), at La Roche-Maurice near Brest, and at Notre Dame-la-Grâce, near Guingamp, the latter two churches possessing some "storied windows richly dight." At Kerdévot is a wooden reredos, at Roscoff a very beautiful alabaster one of the XV century; at Lambadec a _jubé_ dated 1480; at St. Fiacre-du-Faouët (whose pardon comes on the first Sunday of July) a rood-loft of richly carved wood, unfortunately painted in crude colors; at Quimperlé, in the church of Ste. Croix, that is fashioned in memory of the sepulcher shrine at Jerusalem, is a _jubé_ almost wholly of the Renaissance. Because of her pardons, Brittany's religious ceremonies took place largely in the open air, even as each of her tribes, each _plou_, in prehistoric times had gathered around her solemn menhirs and dolmens. Hence the Breton made much of churchyards, placing in them his Calvaries, profound expressions of a people's emotions carved primitively in the regional coarse granite. The Lord's Passion had vivified the Celtic soul ever since Christianity took possession of it. As granite is unyielding to sculpture, many a Breton turned to wood to express his verve, carving his church beams like the prow ends of ships. Morlaix[375] is a good center from which to visit many of the notable revered places. Close by, in the village of Plougonven, is the oldest Calvary extant (1554). A few miles away is that of St. Thégonnec (1610), a shrine invoked for the cure of beasts, where beneath a statue of Our Lady is inscribed: "We beg you, _Madame Vièrge_, to accept our first bull." Near the church is one of the isolated chapels called ossuaries in which were gathered the bones of the past generations when they had had their turn in the churchyard's consecrated ground. The chapel bears an inscription from Maccabees: "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." Bedrock in the Breton is his instinct to join his progenitors and his descendants in a permanence of spiritual emotion.[376] No other people of the earth risk life more freely than these frequenters of the deep-sea fisheries; nowhere is the cult of the dead more tenacious, because it is considered that they who have fallen asleep with Godliness have great grace laid up for them. Near St. Thégonnec, at Guimiliau, is another Calvary (1581), and another ossuary and triumphal arch. The capacious church porch is lined with statues of the apostles. At Carhaix, Pleyben (1650), Cronan, and Penmarc'h, are Calvaries, and that at Lampaul is united in the same composition with the graveyard's triumphal arch. Brittany's most imposing _Calvaire_, and the most wonderful wayside shrine ever made, comprising over two hundred images in all, is at Plougastel-Daoulas, a memorial of the epidemic of 1598. The greenish Kersanton granite of which it is made is quarried close by in the harbor of Brest, and acquires with time the endurance and appearance of bronze. Breton peasants are represented playing on Breton pipes in the Entry-into-Jerusalem scene. Late comers these rough-hewn sculptures may be in the national art, but in so far as character goes they might easily belong to the XII or XIII century. The theorist may say that the racial exclusiveness of Brittany is one of the reasons why it has not excelled in architecture and the kindred arts. That may be so. The chief concern of the Celt has ever been to save his soul. The architectural purist is prone to carp at Breton Gothic, and some even dare say that the Kreisker itself errs, in that its shaft is not sufficiently welded with its spire. Without a doubt the absence of symmetry in many churches of the ancient province is at first disturbing, but soon one comprehends that one travels in Brittany not for its architecture, but for the unconquerable soul of a people who, while devoted to tradition, have ever stood up uncowed, unswerving in their antagonism to despotism. The sensitive traveler--that is, the man with kindly, plain loyalties--will let himself grow attached to the mediocre, irregular churches of this individual land. Some of those irregularities are startling enough. The pilgrimage church of Guingamp has a curious two-storied triforium, and flying buttresses inside the choir over the aisles. Its nave is an amalgam, one wall Gothic and its vis-à-vis a fluted-pilastered Renaissance affair. The sculptor gave his initiative full scope in the apostle's porch--a revered spot on the days of Guingamp's famous pardon, that precedes the first Sunday of July. At Dinan, in the church of St. Sauveur--in whose transept is treasured the heart of Duguesclin, born not far away--a Romanesque wall faces a Flamboyant Gothic one. In the corsair stronghold of St. Malo,[377] breeder of strong men, the cathedral's walls make no pretense to be parallel. The Breton has been too engrossed in keeping warm in his churches the spirit of devotion to bother about such details as symmetry. Eagerly he added chapel to chapel, aisle to aisle, regardless how difficult it might be for a stranger to orient himself on entering. The wise traveler will accept Brittany as she is, for if he does not, Brittany, like Spain, will exasperate him by her tranquil indifference to his criticisms. On a mediæval tower of the castle at St. Malo was inscribed: Grumble who will. So shall it be As pleases me.[378] THE CATHEDRAL AT DOL-EN-BRETAGNE[379] Bretagne, ô mon pays, garde ta foi naïve, Car Dieu se plaît surtout dans la simplicité; C'est comme le miroir d'une source d'eau vive, Où vient se réfléchir, l'astre de vérité. --JOSEPH ROUSSE, _Poésies bretonnes_. Brittany may be a land of shrines more than of churches; nevertheless, some five of its former nine bishoprics are of interest in the Gothic story--Dol, Nantes, Quimper, St. Pol-de-Léon, and Tréguier. The hardy outpost of Dol, in the north, has stood many a siege, fought many a battle, and its church walls are crenelated where they face the city ramparts. The tutelary of the _ci-devant_ cathedral is St. Samson, whose name keeps alive the memory of the arrival of the harassed Celts of Britain who poured "like a torrent" into Armorica during the dark centuries of the Middle Ages when the migrations of the Barbarians had wiped out Rome's civilization in England. In Dol's great eastern window, St. Samson and some monk companions are shown crossing the Channel. The cathedral of Dol--which Stendhal admired beyond others in France--is a melancholy severe granite edifice, though probably the best Gothic of the province. Characteristics both of Normandy and the Ile-de-France appear in it. Two of the wholly detached colonnettes of each pier are now clamped with metal bands, and the wide arches of the triforium would be better suited to open on a gallery than as they are at present--set close to a blank wall; a few doors in the wall give on the lean-to roof over the aisles. The structure of the church demonstrates that, as the works rose, extra supports were added for stability. The cathedral was begun by its nave soon after a conflagration of the town, in 1203, caused by the troops of John Lackland. Vestiges only of the wrecked church were retained. The façade's southern tower is late work, despite its Romanesque character, and its fellow belfry to the north is in larger part of the XVI century. Out of the nave's southern flank opens a graceful XIII-century porch. The choir, which ends in a flat eastern wall, was finished by 1265, when was installed its splendid big window of eight medallion panels that set forth the Last Judgment. In the XIV century was opened the arch leading to the Lady chapel of that same date, wherein were used various supplementary ribs, around windows and in corners, to obviate the difficulty of vaulting a square-ended edifice. To the XIV century, too, belong the side chapels of the choir, and the big porch of St. Magloire before the transept's southern door. Against the blank wall that closes the north arm of the transept stands the much-discussed Renaissance tomb of Bishop Thomas James. It is an initial work of the Juste brothers of Tours, the ablest among the Italians who brought the new art standards across the Alps. The bishop's recumbent image has disappeared. From 1482 to 1504 he held the see of Dol, though only in residence after 1486, as he lived in Rome, the papal guardian of the castle of St. Angelo. In his testament he requested a simple burial, but his nephews--whose profiles adorn the tomb--chose to erect this elaborate monument, whose cream-colored fine-grained stone, delicately arabesqued, contrasts happily with the dark granite walls. One of the nephews had known the Juste, or Betti brothers, in Florence, and through him those artists came to France. In his prime Jean Juste made the tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany for the Royal Abbey at St. Denis. THE CATHEDRAL AT NANTES[380] Très crestien, franc royaume de France, Dieu a les braz ouvers pour t'acoler, Prest d'oublier ta vie pécheresse: Requier pardon, bien te vendra aidier Nostre Dame, la très puissante princesse, Qui est ton cry et que tiens pour maistresse. Les saints aussy te viendront secourir, Desquelz les corps font en toy demourance. Ne vueilles plus en ton péchié dormir Très crestien, franc royaume de France! --CHARLES D'ORLÉANS (1391-1465). The cathedral of St. Peter, at Nantes, the third on the site, is a late-Gothic structure, not overvirile, somewhat artificial, but ingenious and elegant, even as is the contemporary verse of Charles d'Orléans, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt and passed half a lifetime in exile. M. Gaston Paris has drawn attention to the similarity between XV-century architecture and XV-century poetry. Is not that bijou of artistry, the chapel of St. Hubert, which Anne of Brittany's first husband set on the cliff edge at Amboise, of the same quality as a rondel of the poet-duke's? Is not Villon's ironic, tragically-true note reflected in the Dance of Death painted on church walls during those years of pest and internecine strife? Brittany has retained one of the only two surviving _danses macabres_, in the hamlet of Kermaria,[381] the house of Mary, that lies between the villages of Plehedel and Plouha. In Auvergne, at La Chaise Dieu, is the other. In 1431 Jean V, of the third ducal line of Brittany, the de Montforts, decided to remake the cathedral of the outpost city wherein stood his castle. Nantes never was _Bretagne bretonnante_, being differentiated from Finistère amid its rocky seacoast, by its position on the Loire of commerce and art. That wonderful river, in an eight-hundred-mile course from Languedoc to Brittany, passes some of the fairest monuments of France: Le Puy, Nevers, La Charité, St. Satur, St. Benoît, Orléans, Blois, Chaumont, Amboise, Tours, Langeais--where Anne of Brittany wedded Charles VIII--Saumur, St. Florent, Gennes, Cunault, and the castle and cathedral of Nantes. Under ducal patronage the nave of Nantes Cathedral rose apace; the capitals of its north side have deeply undercut curly-tipped foliage, but on the nave's south side the piers lack capitals altogether. The interior of the church is of glacial aspect; light floods it pitilessly. Its eastern end is modern. In 1886 was unearthed a Romanesque crypt which Abélard must have known, for he was born in a manor close by Nantes, and returned to live here in 1136. Guillaume Dammartin, of the notable family of Flamboyant Gothic architects, is mentioned as working on Nantes Cathedral, and M. Arthur de la Borderic, Brittany's historian, has discovered that an artist of Tours, Mathelin Rodier, was master-of-works when the western portals were sculptured (1470-80), and while the stately inner-court façade of the duke's château was rising. In that castle Anne of Brittany was born in 1477, became a reigning duchess at twelve years of age, and in its chapel was married, in 1499, to Louis XII. On her deathbed she willed her heart to her native city. She completed the castle of Nantes by what is called the Horseshoe Tower overlooking the river. Anne must have known the master, Mathelin Rodier, who made the portals of the cathedral, decorating them with the same undercut leaf foliation, the same lavish splayed ornaments as adorn the contemporary western doors of Tours Cathedral, a hundred and thirty miles to the east. The larger statues at Nantes' entrances have been destroyed, but in the voussures are many small groups, sometimes with four or five personages in a scene, chiseled with natural attitudes and expressive faces. One of the portals commemorates St. Peter (observe the _Quo Vadis_ episode), another, St. Paul, while the place of honor is given to the Saviour. Within the church, under the organ, are XV-century statues, one of which represents the duke patron who began the cathedral, the grandfather of Anne of Brittany. Through the filial piety of Anne, her birthplace possesses the _canto cygni_ of Gothic sculpture, "the most unscathed monument of the Middle Ages," intact because it was taken apart and buried during the Revolution. The tomb of Anne's parents, Francis II, the last duke of Brittany, and his duchess, is the work of a Breton, for an authentic manuscript has proved that Michel Colombe was born in Finistère, within sight of the Kreisker. His genius was fortified by long years passed in the art atmosphere of Tours, and strengthened, too, by the Flemish realism which had come into France by way of the Dijon school that led the first half of the XV century, even as the school of Tours, whose chief master was Colombe, led its latter half. Nor did this Breton, fecundated by Touraine and sturdy Burgundy, ignore the incoming Italian culture, as is shown by his preference for ideal beauty over absolute realism: Celt, Teuton, and Latin--all were needed for the making of the last of the great Gothic masters, one who held loyally to the spiritual essence of the Middle Ages in a day when Renaissance pomp was fast rising to supremacy. Michel Colombe was seventy years of age when Anne of Brittany, on a visit to Tours shortly after her second marriage, commissioned him to make a mausoleum for her parents, for which she had imported white marble from Genoa, and black from Liège. From 1502 to 1507 Colombe worked on the larger images, in his studio at Tours. His are the recumbent figures of the duke and duchess, and the entrancing little angels who support their headcushion, ministering with the same loving willingness as the XII-century angels of Senlis' lintel. From Colombe's master hand are the four allegorical figures at the corners of the tomb, robust and graceful women, of the local type to be seen in central France to-day. They typify qualities of the defunct, Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice--this last image said to be a study from Duchess Anne herself. Centuries later a similar arrangement of symbolic figures was used by Paul Dubois for his noble tomb of General de Lamoricière (a son of Nantes), which balances, in the north arm of the transept, the ducal tomb to the south. Valor, Faith, Charity, and History, are the four corner statues that commemorate the pioneer of civilization in French Africa, who was so loved by the natives that he went freely among them unarmed, a modern hero who proved himself a true Breton by assuming the leadership of a lost cause. Lesser masters of the school of Tours worked on the noted ducal tomb of Nantes; Guillaume Regnault made the small images and Jerome of Fiesole the arabesques, the same two masters who composed the tomb of the children of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII, now in the cathedral at Tours. And when Michel Colombe had finished his statues, Anne had the Lyons master, Jean Perréal, one of the most active agents in popularizing in France the new art standards of Italy, visit Nantes to supervise the erection of the mausoleum whose ordinance he had designed. THE CATHEDRAL OF QUIMPER[382] Ce qui me charme en toi, Quimper de Cornouailles, C'est ton coeur paysan sous tes airs de cité. --ANATOLE LE BRAZ. Like the chief church at St. Pol-de-Léon, and that of Tréguier, St. Corentin at Quimper is "widowed of its bishop." Admirably situated, it stands with all the dignity of a cathedral above the pleasant little "river city of gables and fables," which etches itself on the memory. It is a well-cared-for shrine, full of warm Breton piety, seen at its richest during the pardon gatherings of August 15th. Bishop Rainaud laid the first stone of Quimper Cathedral in 1239. Its ambulatory copied a disposition first used in Soissons Cathedral, but repeated only here and at Bayonne, though across the Rhine it became popular. The vault ribs of each chapel meet in the same keystone as the ribs of that section of the procession path on which the chapel opens. About 1280 a little shrine, which had stood in the rear of the cathedral, separated from it by a lane, was joined to the ambulatory of the new Gothic choir by means of a canted bay. This improvised Lady chapel increased the irregular alignment of the church. The deviation of Quimper's axis is extraordinary. Standing in its central aisle, at the rear of the nave, you cannot see the first of the three bays that usually are apparent at the apse curve, and such is the bend of the choir that its southern aisle possesses one more bay than does the aisle to the north. When the time came to replace the Romanesque nave by the actual one, that new Gothic edifice might have straightened somewhat the axial line by following the false orientation of the choir. But apparently the proximity of the episcopal quarters prevented this being done. The choir of St. Corentin retains the canopy-image windows of Jamin Sohier (1417), and the nave, those of the Jamin Sohier of a second generation; a western window is dated 1496. The shield and helmet of one of Brittany's dukes of the Montfort line, Anne's immediate forebear, adorn the gable of the main façade. The cathedral works ceased during the first part of the Hundred Years' War; the choir was not roofed in stone till the first quarter of the XV century. In 1424 the nave was begun and the foundations of the west towers laid. Quimper's towers derive directly from the famous one of St. Pierre at Caen. There are the same deep, elongated twin-window recesses serving as buttresses. After another period of inactivity, the cathedral's nave was vaulted. In the latter part of the XIX century the west towers received their crowning of crocketed spires, paid for by a popular collection called "the penny of St. Corentin." How these dwellers by the sea love their obsolete local saints! How certain they are that to forget them is to lose infinitely precious links with the past. The solidarity of ancestors with descendants is no dead letter in Finistère, that lives not by bread alone. One knows that the white-coiffed women of Quimper--and their daily gathering in their mediæval church makes a brave showing--would not love this shrine of St. Corentin so well had it a name common to western Christendom. But St. Corentin, St. Tugdual, St. Huec, St. Iltud, St. Budoc, St. Jacut, St. Jubel, St. Gulstan, St. Comery--ah, those are the potent ones before the heavenly throne when a true Breton needs assistance! THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. POL-DE-LÉON[383] O Dieu qui nous créas ou guerriers ou poètes, Sur la côte marins, et pâtres dans les champs, Sous les vils intérêts ne courbe pas nos têtes; Ne fais pas des Bretons un peuple de marchands. J'ai vu, par l'avarice ennuyés et vieillis, Des barbares sans foi, sans coeur, sans espérance, Et, l'amour m'inspirait, j'ai chanté mon pays. --A. BRIZEUX, _L'élégie de la Bretagne_. The most complete Gothic monument of Brittany is the whilom cathedral of St. Pol-de-Léon, one of the few important churches of the Middle Ages to be entirely carried out, with spired towers, and porches for the different needs of soul and body, one for catechumens, another for lepers. Its choir and nave differ strikingly in color and quality of stone. The nave of yellow sandstone was built first, and is decidedly the most artistic portion of the edifice. The florid Gothic choir is of gray granite. As the XIII century closed the nave was begun, continuing building up to the dire times of the Hundred Years' War. It has the Norman traits of sculptured bands of academic design below triforium and clearstory, trefoils cut in the spandrels of arches, multiple arch molds, each with its own support, and a circulation passage beneath the upper windows. The triforium was begun elaborately, with much foliate decoration, but economy soon forced the architect to adopt a simpler plan. The nave's south aisle is double beyond the fourth bay where a porch opens, and the stones show that the outer aisle was originally a separate chamber, converted during the XV century into a passageway. The Flamboyant Gothic choir, that lacks the harmony and elegance of the nave, was built from 1439 to 1472. Chapel has been added to chapel, aisle to aisle, with the profusion loved by the Breton, who would press into God's service every foot of free land around his presbytery. The transept of the XII and XIII centuries was radically reconstructed during the late-Gothic day, retaining vestiges only of its Romanesque and early-Gothic work. It is doubtless to such repeated modelings that some of the buttresses fail to correspond to columns and vault shafts. During a siege of St. Pol-de-Léon by the English, the church called the Kreisker, "center of the city," was injured. When rebuilt, from 1345 to 1399, there was erected, between its nave and choir, carried merely on open arches, a grandiose tower modeled on Caen's belfry of St. Pierre, as had been the twin towers of St. Pol's cathedral, lesser in height than "the Kreisker." The deeply recessed lancet openings in each face of the giant beacon serve the practical purpose of buttresses. Few cities can show three such brave towers as this little Breton town. "The Kreisker," mantled in golden lichen, is the pride of every Breton. So sure is its poise, so supple and strong, that for centuries all the wild storms of the ocean have swept unheeded through its open stonework spire. The popular songs love to extol it: Je suis natif du Finistère, A Saint-Pol j'ai reçu le jour, Mon clocher est l'plus beau d'la terre, Mon pays l'plus beau d'alentour; Rendez-moi ma bruyère et mon clocher à jour! St. Pol received its name from another exile of Britain, and the good man's little bell is rung on the days of Pardon, over the heads of the people, who believe it can cure maladies of the mind. The Revolution tried to change the town's name to Port Pol, but the traditionalists and the independents that are the Bretons soon reverted to their St. Pol-de-Léon. THE CATHEDRAL OF TRÉGUIER[384] Une, deux génerations peuvent oublier la Loi, se rendre coupable de tous les abandons, de toutes les ingratitudes. Mais il faut bien, à l'heure marquée que la chaine soit reprise et que la petite lampe vacillante brille de nouveau dans la maison. --ERNEST PSICHARI (1883-1914). The cathedral of St. Tugdual obtained its name from the founder of a local monastery, a nephew of St. Brieux, who had crossed from Britain with the returning missionary, St. Germain of Auxerre, and in Armorica had established a religious house which eventually gave its name to a Breton city. No church of the region demonstrates more clearly how difficult it is to obtain full Gothic effect with granite. Lacking sculpture, the art is necessarily abortive. The interior of Tréguier is dark and forbidding. The capitals of the graceless octagonal piers are merely uncut bands. There are Norman balustrades and a Norman interior passage below the clearstory lights. The name of the architect, Goneder, was recently unearthed by M. de la Borderie. From the previous Romanesque cathedral was retained the Tour Hastings which now terminates the northern arm of the transept. Toward the western end of the church the molds of the archivolts die off in the piers. The nave rose from 1296 to 1333; then came the pause of the Hundred Years' War. Building was resumed--always on the original Rayonnant lines--by Bishop Jean de Coëtquis (1450-61), whose relative, of the same name, was finishing the nave of Tours Cathedral. The charming Flamboyant cloisters of Tréguier were made from 1461 to 1468, and with the Tour Hastings they compose one of the oft-sketched architectural groups of the country. St. Tugdual has suffered by wars and revolutions, being damaged by the English in 1347, by the Spaniards in 1592, the Liguers in 1594, and the Revolution's cyclone passing here as elsewhere. In the nave of Tréguier Cathedral stands a sumptuous Gothic monument to honor Brittany's patron saint, Yves de Helori, born in 1253, a mile from the town in the manor of Kernartin--modern Minihy. On the nineteenth of every May Tréguier marches in procession to Minihy to commemorate the good man who cleared the region of evil-doers, built a hospital beside his home that he might himself wait on the stricken, rose at midnight to chant matins, preached sometimes five sermons a day, and was the poor man's lawyer, so a popular hymn relates: "An advocate and not a thief, a thing almost beyond belief." The pardon of St. Yves, the Pardon of the Poor, is one of the five chief ones of Brittany. For centuries those who had pending law cases repaired to his primitive tomb. Thus Henry VII, Tudor, crossed from England the year before he won his kingship, to petition the favor of the Breton saint who had supported only just causes in law. Universities selected him as their patron. St. Yves was the son of a knight who went crusading with St. Louis. When sent, at fourteen, to Paris University, he sat with other young scholars on the rush-strewn floors to listen to the scholastics; even in his student days he visited the sick poor in the hospitals. Before thirty he entered the episcopal magistry, and henceforth his abilities were devoted to the relief of orphans and widows. This good man, after whom myriads of the sons of Brittany have been named, worked assiduously, it is said, to collect funds for the building of the Gothic cathedral of Tréguier. In a street near the cloisters of St. Tugdual, Ernest Renan was born in 1828, his name deriving from an Irish anchorite of VI-century Armorica. From his Breton father he derived his gravity, respect, faith, and imagination; from his mother's Gascon stock his irony, gayety, and serenity in skepticism, the result being, as he himself said, a tissue of contradictions. Brittany took his _Vie de Jésus_ as a personal affront. That a son of hers, once destined for the priesthood, should call her dear Christ of Calvary a "sorcerer," a "demi-impostor," a "_géant sombre_," "_un fin et joyeux moralist_," pierced her to the soul. When, beside the cathedral of Tréguier, partisan politics raised a Renan statue (singularly inartistic), whose inscription was taken as an affront by every believing Christian, two million Bretons donated toward the erection of a monumental protest. The Calvary of Reparation stands at the entrance to Tréguier, voicing the cry attributed to the dying Julian the Apostate, "Thou hast conquered, Galilæan!" The son of Renan's daughter was that chosen soul, Ernest Psichari, who fell defending Belgium in August, 1914, a death considered by mystic Brittany to be an atonement. He has told of his spiritual anguish, "without defense against evil, without protection against sophistry, wandering without conviction in the poisoned gardens of vice, sick to the soul and ever pursued by obscure remorse, weighed down by the bitter derision of a life ruled by disordered sentiments and thoughts." In his _Appel des Armes_ and his _Voyage du Centurion_ he has traced his pilgrimage from materialism to Christian belief, taking "_contre son père le parti de ses pères_." His grandfather, of Tréguier, in Armorica, had written many years earlier: "The characteristic trait of the Breton race is idealism--the disinterested pursuit of a moral or intellectual aim. The Celt craves the Infinite. He thirsts for it, seeking it beyond all the prizes of the world." A SUMMING UP All our France is in our cathedrals.... Initiation into the beauty of Gothic is initiation into the truth of our race, of our sky, of our landscape.... Gothic art is the sensible, tangible soul of France; it is the religion of the French atmosphere. We are not incredulous; we are merely unfaithful. We have lost at the same time the sense of our race and of our religion. To regain force we must live again in the past, revert to first principles. Taste reigned of yore in our country: we must become French again. --RODIN, _Les cathédrales de France_. With many a gap, with many a lapse, we have followed the earlier stages of Gothic art in the land where it was born. We have seen how, from the efforts of the monks to cover their Romanesque naves with a permanent stone roof, was evolved the intersecting rib vault which was the basis of Gothic architecture, how for a short time churches used the Romanesque and Gothic systems simultaneously as in Morienval and Poissy, and for another short period the churches were Gothic in essentials while retaining a few traits of the earlier phase. By many the imperishable hour that produced Soissons' transept, the choir of St. Remi, Notre Dame at Laon, and Notre Dame at Paris, is beyond all others. When the national art expanded into its full flowering in the XIII century--an era as great in men and the making of history as in art--Gothic science, though ever seeking, ever reaching out, remained disciplined, even as the scholastic builders themselves were disciplined. While eighty cathedrals in France were rising, and in the same hour some hundreds of lesser churches, the rulers of the nation were capable warriors, compilers of laws, and administrators, the builders were monarchs, crusading bishops, troubadour counts, cloistral ascetics, and arduous sinners. Serf, artisan, burgher, baron, and king built the cathedrals; field laborer, minstrel, maiden, and chatelaine were harnessed to the same cart to drag in the great stones. Little children cleared the church pavement of sand and cement in preparation for the "Day of Benediction" for their city, as the solemn blessing of their church was held to be by those God-fearing generations. The new school of mediæval archæology, that during three generations has been interpreting the Gothic churches of France, is teaching us to read the stones with sympathy. "Symbol of Faith, the cathedral was also a symbol of Love," says M. Émile Mâle. "All men labored there. The peasants offered their all, the work of their strong arms. They pulled carts and carried stones on their shoulders with the brave good will of the giant-saint, Christopher. The burgess gave his money, the baron his land, the artist his genius. During more than two centuries every vital force in France collaborated on the cathedrals. From that comes the puissant life emanating from these eternal monuments. The dead, too, were associated with the living, for the cathedral was paved with tombstones, and the earlier generations, with hands joined in prayer, continued to worship in their ancient church. Past and present were united in the same feeling of love. The cathedral was the very conscience, the very soul of the city."[385] After five generations had reared so many and such magnificent churches, their energy, because it was human, passed from plenitude into decline. The death of St. Louis, in 1270, may be taken as the beginning of the change, though even before had been used various cut-and-dried Rayonnant features. Genius flagged when structural perfection was achieved. The divinely restless reaching out of art was stultified by geometric rule. Graceful and stately as is many a XIV-century church, never in them do we find the unexpected entrancing touches of Apogee Gothic. Gothic was fast becoming an art made tongue-tied by authority. As time went on profiles deteriorated, sharp prismatic molds succeeding to the virile torus, or molds fluid and vague. By the XV century capitals were omitted altogether. The sane marking of the horizontal line had become an offense to the eye. Without capitals the molds died away weakly in the piers. Flamboyant Gothic architecture exhibited all these traits, and, moreover, gave capricious rein to many a redundant detail, yet it was none the less a phase of art far more vigorous and satisfactory than the Rayonnant geometric period, its predecessor. The verve and abundance of Flamboyant Gothic was a rebirth. The inspiration of St. Jeanne d'Arc, the restored political unity, the increase of trade, the love of pageantry, all aided the art renaissance which was in progress before the advent of Italian ideas. No one can say that Gothic architecture ended in decrepitude who knows such masterpieces as the façades of Rouen and Beauvais, the towers at Bordeaux, Rodez, and Chartres, the baldaquin and choir screen of Albi, or statuary as ample in its simplicity as Riom's Virgin of the Bird and "the Saints" at Solesmes. And from end to end of France, as the XVI century opened, such work was in progress. What, then, killed Gothic art? For it was slain with all this warm blood in its veins. Some say the return to pagan ideals dealt the death blow, the deserting of the celestial man-humble ideal for the terrestrial self-intoxicated pride of the Italian Renaissance: "The Renaissance is man seeking knowledge, happiness, and love, outside of Christianity." A Christian had knelt in prayer on a Gothic tomb, or reposed with serene confidence, awaiting the trumpet call of the archangel, a Book of Hours in his hand. On a Renaissance tomb the deceased reclined like a pagan at a feast. The Italian wars diverted from its natural channels the genius of the northern Latins (who were so strongly Celt and Frank), and in many cases the imported neo-classicism was not that of Italy's supreme masters, but of the lesser artists, their successors. Others have contended that the printing press and the Protestant Reformation--with its spirit of hostile criticism--proved fatal to the national art, since the very life of Gothic was legend, poetry, and dreams, and symbolism its inspiration. Doubt quickly drained the sources of life. "Its charm had been to retain the candor of childhood, the limpid book of young saints. It was an art whose faith discussed not--it sang."[386] It was an art happy and bold and free of restraint, save the restraint which its own right instinct for discipline imposed--co-ordinating the multitudinous into a symmetrical unity--an art unfettered in its truth telling, daring to sculpture king or bishop marching to Hell, yet giving no offense to authority by so doing. Alas, one must acknowledge that the Church, so long the guardian of Gothic art, dealt a deadly blow at the sweet naïve gayety of the Middle Ages. To reform Catholic Christendom there gathered at Trent a much-needed Council, impregnated with the critical spirit which Luther had unloosed. Pious churchmen had come to look askance on legends. They were ashamed of the simplicities which the XIII-century man was so certain pleased Our Lady, who accepted them with a friendly smile of comprehension of her fellow creatures. The good fathers at Trent regarded prudishly the spiritual passion of the Canticle of Canticles flaming in cathedral windows; they thought it forwardness to carve mechanics' tools on altar stones. Such manifestations were excessive. What would our critics of Wittemberg and Geneva say? The mystery plays, source of inspiration for the late-Gothic sculptors, now became suspect. Deprived of popular life, the religious themes grew cold. When censured, the creative instinct withered. In 1563 (a year after the iconoclastic outrages in France) the Council of Trent, at its last session, complained that Gothic artists scandalized the faithful by their childish superstitions. The Middle Ages were ended. Cathedrals are not raised by critics or doubters. When France built her great churches, her faith was humble, her love a mounting flame. Her cathedrals were symbols of the Kingdom of God in her midst, the _pons sæculorum_ whereby man passed beyond the bourne of his narrow life. They were solaces in his hours of misery, in his delinquencies; they stood for justice alike to serf and baron; they were the Sermon on the Mount made visible, the _Biblia pauperum_ wherein lettered and unlettered read the same lessons; they were the _Credo_ chanted by men who believed in Christ, Son of the Living God and Son of the Immaculate Virgin. Nor should it be forgotten that the generations who raised the great cathedrals believed profoundly in themselves as God's specially loved instruments, his own selected knights-errant. "We are a race that exists to advance in the world the affairs of God," said the old Gallic patrician to Clovis the Frank, and soon a Frankish parchment ran, "_Vivat Christus qui diligit Francos_." When men feel like that they are compelled to express it grandly. When as pagans they feel it, the expression is a cataclysmic war of conquest. When they feel it as Christians, they build cathedrals. The generations whom St. Bernard purified, whom Suger trained, whom St. Louis inspired, founded their church on a firm rock, a living rock, lighted it unto a precious stone, prepared it as a bride adorned for her husband, and ever since sanctity has abided therein; kings have brought hither their honors and glory, and the glory and honor of the people have adorned the walls. FRANCE Because for once the sword broke in her hand, The words she spoke seemed perished for a space; All wrong was brazen, and in every land The tyrants walked abroad with naked face. The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star Of evil fate, denying all release. The rulers smote the feeble, crying, "War!" The usurers robbed the naked, crying, "Peace!" And her own feet were caught in nets of gold, And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm, And little men climbed her high seats and sold Her honor to the vulture and the worm. And she seemed broken and they thought her dead, The Over-Man, so brave against the weak. Has your last word of sophistry been said, O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak. Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes, As slow mists parted over Valmy fell, And once again her hands in high surprise Take hold upon the battlements of Hell. --CECIL CHESTERTON (who died a soldier of the World War). Regretfully one turns to other interests after spending years in trying to draw closer to the spirit of the Middle Ages--years that have coincided with the apocalyptic struggle that has desolated the classic region of the national art, laying low, one after another, the churches of the first fugitive hour. And watching the giant battle, it has grown clearer how indissoluble is the solidarity of modern Frenchmen with their achieving grandfathers. A nation's bulwark is the unbroken solidarity of Past with Present. And only when _la race lumineuse_, compounded of Celt, Gaul, Latin, and Frank, denies that solidarity will it be conquered. The peasant-soldier of 1914, starting for the front, who replied with grave dignity to his well-wisher, "Whichever way it turns, I am ready,"[387] would have met death like a paladin at Roncevaux, in 778, holding up his gauntlet to God, his suzerain, certain of the justice of Him who from the grave raised Blessed Lazarus, and Daniel saved from lions. The young tradesman of 1915 who wrote from the trenches to one who loved him: "I look on this struggle less as a war against an enemy than as a crusade to reinstate God in his place in France," was true to his _race apostolique_ that sets the church bells ringing. At Clermont, in 1095, he pressed forward with the cry: "The cross! The cross! God wills it!" The priest-soldier offering sacrifice at an improvised altar within hearing of the guns, his spurs fretting his sacerdotal gown, is Turpin, guarding well the Cross and France. The stricken lad, flung back, diseased from the prisons beyond the Rhine, weak, broken, in tatters, who cried with vibrant voice, as he and his comrades crossed the Swiss frontier, and friendly strangers gathered round: "_La tête haute! C'est nous la France!_" conquered Jerusalem with Godfrey de Bouillon in the olden days, and related his prowess in a legend-medallion window at Chartres. Above all, lives the soul of the Past in the generalissimo to whom a righteous destiny granted the freeing of his land from invaders. In churches shattered by shell fire he knelt daily--the weightiest fruit bending lowest--and he begged that the children of Christendom lift up their little white hands to heaven to petition for his endurance. In 1249, with flashing sword and the cry, "_Montjoie-St.-Denis_," he sprang into the surf beside his saint-king, following the oriflamme as it touched African soil. We have seen them alive again, the cathedral builders, the commune winners, the crusaders, dying with the farewell sigh, "_Ha! doulce France!_" And thank God the flame is unquenchable, thank God that in the French race is the underlying sentiment for the Infinite, that peasant, artisan, student, priest, and chief feel the same humility and the same proper pride as those who built Soissons, the lovely stricken virgin; and Laon the intrepid, braving the hammer of Odin and Thor; Amiens the perfect, menaced and shaken but spared to us; and tragic, immortal Rheims, symbol of a people's resurrection. To herald the dawn is the mission of France, to look on her deeds as _Gesta Dei per Francos_. "Hers is the hand that scatters the seed." Index NOTE.--The heavy figures appearing here and there in the index indicate the pages in which a complete description of the subject is given. The other figures indicate additional references to the subject. A Abadie, Paul, 151, 290, 292, 354, 355. Abbeville (Somme), 210, 226. Abélard, Pierre, 41, 91, 104, 130, 133, 138, 174, 175, 414, 419, 467, 566. Abraham, 182, 218, 219. Achery, Dom Luc d', 149. Acy-en-Multien (Oise), 45, 48. Adams, Henry, 165, 170, 231, 299, 477, 499. Adrian IV (Nicolas Breakspear), Pope, 134. Agincourt, =1415= (Pas-de-Calais), battle of, 71, 483, 490, 565. Agnes of Meran, 54, 95, 280. Aicard, Jean, 378, 384. Aigueperse (Puy-de-Dôme), 341. Aigues-Mortes (Bouches-du-Rhône), 11, 66, 157, 377, =389=, =390=, 400. Airaines (Somme), 45. Airvault (Deux-Sèvres), 321. Aix-en-Provence, 40, 330, 401, =403=, =404=. Albi (Tarn), Cathedral of, 11, 13, 14, 279, 329, 330, =370-375=, 466; choir screen, 373, 577; vault frescoes, 374, 519. Albigensian Crusade, 11, 189, 330, 353, 357, 358, 362, 363, 364, 365-370, 371, 376, 383, 385, 386, 392, 394, 405. Alcobaça, Cistercian abbatial of, 465. Alcuin, 4, 10, 149, 249. Aldégrevier (vitrine artist), 541. Alençon (Orne), 542. Alençon, the Duke d', 315, 515, 527. Aleth, Blessed, 458, 463. Alexander II, Pope, 487. Alexander III, Pope, 91, 136, 149, 250, 388, 433. Aliénor of Aquitaine, 10, 60, 137, 138, 153, 174, 254, 274, 293, 296, 297, 298, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 326, 351, 353, 439, 440, 465, 502, 531, 543. Alternate system, the, 80, 81, 93, 100, 127, 164, 478, 481, 482, 486. Amboise (Indre-et-Loire), 254, 304, 558, 565. Amboise, Cardinal Georges d' (of Rouen), 373, 492, 513, 519, 558. Amboise, Bishop Jacques d' (of Clermont), 97, 335, 373, 421. Amboise, Bishop Louis d' (of Albi), 373, 374. Ambulatory, 19, 24, 45, 48, 51, 54, 58, 64, 65, 92, 109, 124, 129, 150, 216, 278, 292, 307, 337, 353, 398, 432, 569. America, United States of, 57, 367, 394, 429. Amiens (Somme), Cathedral of, 12, 31, 34, 39, 46, 55, 181, 197, 201, =202-210=, 214, 224, 225, 329, 331, 333, 351, 380, 425, 475, 539, 581. Amyot, Bishop Jacques, 451. Angers (Maine-et-Loire), 10, 13, 39, 255, 286, 303, 309, 310; Cathedral of, 59, 113, 146, 273, =302-309=, 351, 550; Fortress of, 309, 310; St. Jean's Hospital, 310, 311; St. Martin, 295, 305; St. Nicolas-du-Ronceray, 294, 295, 305; St. Serge, 302, 311, 312; Toussaint, 310, 321; Trinité, 300, 305. Angoulême (Charente), Cathedral of, 287, =290-293=, 295, 352. Anjou, counts and dukes of, 173, 220, 269, 271, 273, 274, 280, 408. Anjou, Charles I d', 154, 156, 280, 295, 299, 307, 309, 427, 465; Charles II d', 280, 309, 401, 402; St. Louis d', 402; Louis II d', 280, 308, 309, 396. Anjou, King René. _See_ René. Anne, St., 138, 181. Anne of Brittany, 67, 89, 256, 344, 373, 557, 558, 565, =566=, =567=, 569. Annunzio, Gabriele, d', 107, 121. Anselm, St., 4, 34, 133, 173, 250, 260, 271, 417, 473, =474=, =475=, 485. Anselm de Laon. _See_ Laon. Anthony of Padua, St., 5, 350, 359. Antioch, 157, 208, 323, 345, 390, 554. Apocalypse, the, 20, 98, 99, 144, 204, 217, 219, 239, 309, 320, 347. Apostles in art, the, 146, 182, 207, 208, 262, 278, 321, 349, 352, 377, 389, 438, 561. Apses, notable, 65, 80, 93, 105, 115, 116, 122, 129, 216, 232, 251, 275, 276, 421, 486, 489, 536, 547, 554. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 2, 4, 41, 126, 130, =131=, =132=, 133, 134, 175, 238, 267, 334, 359, 465, 475. Aquitaine, dukes of, 10, 298, 318, 327, 347, 351, 384. Arbrissel, Robert d' (founder of Fontevrault), =294=, 323. Archæology of the Middle Ages, 2, 13, 40, 92, 552. Archæology, modern French school of, 32, =37-48=, 415, 428, 576. Architects, mediæval, 5, 34, 35, 39, 57, 66, 82, 93, 94, 96, 141, 146, 150, 152, 163, 167, 177, 179, 190, 191, 204, 237, 276, 284, 251, 264, 271, 284, 299, 303, 334, 360, 380, 390, 406, 411, 457, 513, 517, 518, 553, 559, 564. Architecture, 1, 4, 5, 7, 12, 15, 27, 56; X century, 20, 21, 148, 411; XI century, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 34, 48, 117, 254, 270, 305, 314, 343, 349, 384, 397, 481, 546, 554; XII century, 12, 22, 31, 34, 41, 57, 58, 92, 104, 105, 108, 109, 115, 116, 119, 120, 124, 136, 137, 147, 253, 270, 275, 287, 289, 291, 295, 300, 303, 313, 314, 320, 344, 381, 392, 403, 406, 423, 428, 435, 446, 532, 537, 546, 552, 554; XIII century, 12, 41, 65, 66, 105, 110, 111, 139, 141, 146, 166, 177, 190, 204, 237, 330, 436, 446, 489, 503, 504, 538, 575, 576; XIV century, 12, 13, 65, 105, 130, 164, 187, 207, 232, 265, 330, 346, 377, 378, 381, 382, 386, 407, 408, 447, 449, =489=, =490=, 509, 513, 514, 515, 538, 555, 564, 576; for the XV and XVI centuries _see_ Flamboyant Gothic; XVII century, 243, 561. Arcis-sur-Aube, 239. Arezzo (Tuscany), 171, 374. Aristotle, =344=, =434=. Argentan (Orne), 542. Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), 11, 24, 397, 399; St. Trophime, 330, 336, =398=, =399=, 400. Arnold, Matthew, 264, 265. Arnoul, Bishop (of Lisieux), 250, 531, 532, 534. Arras (Pas-de-Calais), 2, 556. Arthur of Brittany, 297, 308, 511. Artois, Robert d', 96, 156. Asnières (Maine-et-Loire), 314. Attila the Hun, 201, 231, 243. _Aucassin et Nicolette_, 396. Auch (Gers), Cathedral of, 358, 374. Augustine, St., 132, 158, 364, 449, 508. Augustus, 239-243, 257, 259, 424. Aulnay (Charente-Inférieure), 291. Autun (Saône-et-Loire), Cathedral of, 24, 181, 416, 419, =423-426=, 429. Autun, Honoré d', 262, 424. Auvergne, 11, 38, 39, 249, 330, 331, 336, 337, 381; Romanesque school of, 11, 24, 38, 151, 254, 329, 331, 333, 337, 339, 340, 343, 344, 360, 449. Auvergne, Guillaume d' (Bishop of Paris), 133, 139, 140, 141, 469. Auxerre (Yonne), 224, 428, 445; Cathedral of, 7, 33, 115, 226, 242, 316, 429, =446-451=, 460; glass of, 449, 450, 451; sculpture of, 447; St. Germain, 410, 445, 446, 572; St. Eusèbe, 448. Avallon (Yonne), 24, =428=, 435, 441. Avignon (Vaucluse), 209, 381, 388, =405-409=; the Avignon popes, 330, 335, 347, 353, 359, 368, 381, 386, 387, 388, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409. Avila, 242, 264, 340, 465. Avranches (Manche), Cathedral of, 2, 474, 556. B Bacon, Francis, 276. Bacon, Roger, 134. Balmes, J. C., 41. Balzac, Honoré de, 119, 247, 249, 312. Bamburg, Cathedral of, 2, 77, 193. Bannalec (Finistère), 560. Barbarian invasions in France, 4, 18, 20, 28, 29, 36, 78, 107, 142, 172, 261, 325, 336, 337, 361, 411, 414, 472, 479, 483, 495, 510, 563. Bari, Cathedral of, 555. Barre, Chevalier de la, 151. Barrès, Maurice, 389, 398, 435. Bar-sur-Aube, 239. Bar-sur-Seine, 239. _Barzas-Breiz_, 400, 556. Basly (Calvados), 491. Bassac (Charente), 291. Bayard, Chevalier, 342. Bayeux (Calvados), Cathedral of, 488, 508, =545-551=. Bayonne (Basses-Pyrénées), Cathedral of, 354, 569. Bazin, René, 259, 302, 415, 410, 580. Beaucaire (Gard), 396. Beauce, Jehan Texier, called de, 179, 180. Beaulieu (Corrèze), 24, 288. Beaumont, Raoul de, 306, 308; family of, 308, 550. Beaumont-le-Roger (Eure), 536, 541. Beaune (Côte-d'Or), hospital and collegiate of, 419, =426=, =427=. Beauneveu, André (sculptor), 67, 299, 327. Beauvais (Oise), 3, 96, 100, 125, 127, 379, 380, 425, 533, 534, 539; Cathedral of, =224-230=, 404, 577; St. Étienne, 45, 46, =50-53=, 224, 228. Beauvais, Vincent de, 9, 133, 134. Bec (Eure), Abbey of, 125, 173, =473-476=, 485, 487, 496, 502, 512. Becket, St. Thomas, 11, 41, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 134, 136, 176, 184, 250, 261, 311, 340, 432, 433, 446, 518, 527, 531, 532, 550, 556; windows of, 97, 184, 518, 550. Bedford, John Plantagenet, Duke of, 87, 143, 489, 490, 523, 525, 527, 530, 535. Bellefontaine (Oise), 45. Belloc, Hilaire, 375, 548. Benedict, St., 4, 23, 411, 483. Benedict XII, Pope (Avignon), 407. Benedictines, 7, 34, 54, 114, 117, 123, 124, 133, 148-151, 190, 278, 411, 476, 501, 548, 554. Berengaria of Navarre, 279, 296, 538. Berengar of Tours, 250, 487. Berland, Pierre (Archbishop of Bordeaux), 354, 355. Bernard, St., 14, 34, 40, 63, 64, 91, 92, 93, 107, 133, 135, 152, 243, 246, 271, 273, 298, 319, 321, 361, 362, 364, 367, 371, 412, 414, 418, 423, 430, 431, 434, 439, 440, 441, 442, 453, =461-471=, 503, 541, 579. Bernay (Eure), Abbatial of, 473, 481, =495=, 496, 541. Bernières-sur-mer (Calvados), 491. Berry, Jean, Duke de, 214, 220, 221, 222, 232, 309, 320, 327, 329, 341, 342, 349, 353, 539. Berzy-le-Sec (Aisne), 45. Béthisy-St. Pierre (Oise), 45. Bèze, Théodore de, 218, 441. Béziers (Hérault), Cathedral and sack of, 330, 367, 369, =383=, 405, 539. Bible, in the Middle Ages, the, 9, 11, 58, 133, 142, 145, 208, 217, 233, 253, 273, 327, 358, 395, 418, 432, 434, 437, 470, 557. _Biblia pauperum_ windows and sculpture, 97, 184, 219, 233, 418, 437, 451, 462, 520, 579. Bilson, John, archæologist. _See_ Bibliography. Bishop-builders of French cathedrals, 5, 32, 79, 80, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 105, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 150, 172, 173, 174, 189, 202, 215, 229, 231, 243, 250, 251, 261, 263, 267, 270, 272, 275, 291, 299, 306, 334, 335, 344, 353, 354, 371, 373, 377, 381, 447, 513, 538, 542, 546, 592. Black Prince, the, 347, 355, 368, 378. Blanche of Castile, 54, 86, 106, 107, 153, 154, 185, 225, 232, 234, 253, 299, 313, 362, 398, 435, 508, 538. Blois (Loir-et-Cher), 121, 254, 558. Bobbio (Province of Pavia), monastery of, 411, 483. Bohemund of Taranto, 323, 337, 555. Bologna, 134, 327, 364, 374, 446. Bonaventure, St., 5, 41, 133, 134, 267, 268. Boniface VIII, Pope, 385. Bonneuil-en-Valois, 45, 49. Bordeaux (Gironde), 350-356; Cathedral of, 13, 31, 226, 298, 318, 330, =350-356=, 577; Ste. Croix, 318, 351, 355; St. Michel, 320; St. Seurin, 318, 351, 352, 355, 356. Born, Bertran de, 345, 348, 349. Boscherville. _See_ St. Georges de. Bosham, Herbert of, 93. Bossuet, 121, 163, 167, 247, 252, 253. Boston, U. S. A., 353, 394. Botrel, Théodor, 201. Bouilhet, Louis, 78. Bourbon art patrons, 185, 253, 259, 264, 265, 266, 295, 341, 357, 364, 406, 421, 456, 513, 539. Bourdaloue, 212. Bourges (Cher), Cathedral of, 8, 11, 14, 211, =212-224=, 226, 255, 275, 276, 320, 322, 328, 454. Bourget, Paul, 339, 531. Bourgonnière chapel in Bouzilly (Maine-et-Loire), 322. Bouvines, =1214= (Nord), battle of, 12, 32, 70, 86, 122, 195, 453. Boyle (Co. Roscommon), Abbey of, 464. Braine (Aisne), St. Yved at, 99, 113, 116, =121-125=, 185, 284. Brest (Finistère), 560, 561. Bridges, mediæval, 267, 289, 350, 371, 405, 407. Brienne (Aube), 239. Brienne, Jean de, 4, 70, 189. Brioude (Haute-Loire), 340. Brittany, 11, 400, =556-575=; Calvaries of, 400, 559, 560, =561=, 574; cult of the dead in, 559, 561; dukes of, 297, 308, 566, 567, 569; glass of, 559, 560, 563, 569; Gothic of, 12, 557, 558, 559, 562, 563, 570, 571; Romanesque of, 557, 562; the Renaissance in, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 568. _See_ Anne of Brittany. Brizeux, A., 570. Brou (in Bourg-en-Bresse), the church of, 264, 265. Brunetière, F., 148. Bruno, St., 4, 117, 118, 194. Bruyère (Aisne), 45. Burgos, Cistercian abbatial of Las Huelgas, 2, 264, 399, 465, 502. Burgundy, 21, 23, 39, 229, =410-470=; dukes of, 143, 154, 226, 261, 410, 425, 452, 453, 454; Franco-Flamand school of sculpture, 240, 255, 256, 281, 452, 455, 456, 567; Gothic of, 242, 410, 412, 413, 415, 427, 436, 440, 443, 446, 447, 448, 464, 465; Apogee Gothic, sculpture of, 410-413, 444, 447, 449; Romanesque school of, 23, 254, 340, 344, 360, 394, 422, 423, 428, 437, 438, 439; Romanesque, sculpture of, 418, 422, 423, 424, 437, 457. Bury (Oise), 44, 45, 150. Buttresses, 25, 26, 27, 229, 352, 378, 412, 413, 451, 481, 504; flying buttresses, 26, 27, 46, 52, 117, 124, 129, 163, 179, 181, 187, 196, 225, 237, 260, 276, 292, 360, 413, 437, 443, 486, 554. Byzantine influences in French art, 17, 18, 43, 59, 101, 120, 123, 137, 138, 180, 181, 196, 234, 248, 249, 262, 287, 291, 292, 306, 322, 349, 398, 438, 486, 547. C Caen (Calvados), 10, 13, 30, 163, 478, =484-491=, 519, 520; Abbaye-aux-Dames (Ste. Trinité), 164, 482, =484=, 485; Abbaye-aux-Hommes (St. Étienne), 415, 482, =484=, =486=, =487=, 488, 512, 532, 547, 554; St. Nicholas, =484=, 493; St. Pierre, 488, 489, 490, 523, 570, 571; Vaucelle's tower, 491. Cahors (Lot), Cathedral of, 24, =288=, =289=, 292, 407. Calixtus II, Pope, 151, 200, 250, 261, 288, 291, 295, 360, 393, 417, 423, 453. Calixtus III, Pope, 529. Calvaries. _See_ Brittany. Cambrai (Nord), 2, 81, 264, 556. Cambrai, Jean de (sculptor), 221, 266. Cambridge, England, 407, 457. Cambronne (Oise), 44, 45. Candes (Maine-et-Loire), =314=, =316=, 319. Canterbury, archbishops of, 173, 260, 410, 432, 433, 434, 474, 475, 550; Cathedral of, 3, 30, 93, 94, 173, 474, 475, 487, 532; pilgrims, 94, 551. Captives, redeeming of Christian, 6, 38, 42, 139, 369, 386, 404, 405. Carcassonne (Aude), 11, 330, 339, =375-378=; Cathedral of St. Nazaire, 349, 376, 377, 539. Carentan (Manche), 539, 541, 554. Carhaix (Finistère), 561. Carnac (Morbihan), 400. Carolingian vestiges and times, 20, 56, 57, 77, 78, 84, 149, 171, 173, 224, 225, 249, 250, 278, 283, 284, 305, 311, 324, 333, 337, 411, 470, 471, 478, 480, 482. Cartharist heresy, 174, 362, 365, 366, 466. Carthusian Order, 4, 117, 118, 194, 408; the Grande-Chartreuse, 118, 408. Carville (Seine-Inférieure), 492, 494. Casamari (Province of Rome), Cistercian abbatial of, 465. Castanets, Bernard de (Bishop of Albi), 371, 372. Catalonia, 357, 380. _See_ Gerona, Poblet, Tarragona. Cathedrals of France, 9, 42, 74, 193, 202, 268, 575, 576, 578, 579; Religious fervor of the builders, 5, 8, 9, 23, 32, 33, 35, 36, 42, 57, 115, 174, 175, 275, 338, 350, 472, 491, 512, 553, 578, 579, 580, 581. Catherine of Siena, St., 307, 388. Cauchon, Bishop Pierre, 225, 328, 523, 524, 525, 529, 530, 531, 533, 534, 535, 536. Caudebec-en-Caud (Seine-Inférieure), 474, 494, =518=, 541. Cécile, Abbess (Trinité, Caen), 485, 486. Cecilia, St., 14, 370-375, 485, 486. Cefalu (Palermo province), Cathedral of, 555. Ceffonds (Aube), 239. Celle, Pierre de (Bishop of Chartres), 114, 116, 170, 176, 190, 469. Celtic element in France, 4, 11, 12, 21, 91, 135, 174, 177, 245, 336, 378, 384, 388, 411, 483, 556, 558, 562, 563, 567, 572, 574, 575, 577, 580. Cerisy-la-Forêt (Manche), 473, 554, 573. Cervantes, 405. Chaalis (Oise), ruins of abbatial, 87, 215. Chaise Dieu (Haute-Loire), abbatial of La, 330, 332, =335=, 408, 566. Châlons-sur-Marne, 424; Cathedral of, 7, =241-244=; Notre Dame, 33, 74, 90, =114-116=, 415; St. Alpin, 243. Chambiges, Martin (architect), 97, 152, 226, 235; Pierre (architect), 89, 235. Champagne, 6, 7, 39, 66, 121, 162; counts of, 94, 119, 120, 137, 157, 231, 232, 234, 236, 244, 245, 246, 432, 464, 538; fairs of, 6, 235, 244, 245; glass of, 98, 118, 150, 219, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243; Gothic art of, =114-120=, =188-197=, 211, 213, =230-247=; Gothic influence of, 109, 115, 116, 190, 191, 193, 202, =242=, 244, 245, 246, 247, 448; literature of, 119, 245, 246; sculpture of, 113, 116, 117, 194, 195, 196. Champeaux, Guillaume de (Bishop of Châlons), 41, 86, 104, 133, 176, 194, 243, 466, 469, 474. Champigny-sur-Veude (Indre-et-Loire), 254, 266. _Chansons de geste_, 42, 106, 135, 239, 245, 246, 299, 343, 376, 384, 436, 500, 501, 549, 580, 581. Chantilly (Oise), 144, 328. Charité-sur-Loire, abbatial of, 254, 566. Charlemagne, 9, 10, 20, 22, 57, 78, 86, 105, 153, 184, 249, 344, 355, 356, 379, 501, 545. Charles V, Emperor, 144, 264. Charles V of France, 67, 144, 164, 209, 309, 353, 454, 520, 534, 539. Charles VI, 221, 327. Charles VII, 118, 223, 233, 247, 255, 278, 299, 483, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 540. Charles VIII, 247, 256, 264, 558, 566. Charles le Téméraire, Duke of Burgundy, 226, 264, 266, 452. Charles Martel, 317, 388, 389, 436. Charles the Bad, Count of Évreux, 164, 538, 539. Chartier, Alain, 143, 546. Chartres, Cathedral of, 8, 14, 22, 33, 36, 39, 111, 113, 115, 122, 139, =170-187=, 197, 204, 207, 211, 212, 219, 220, 224, 226, 234, 272, 279, 306, 318, 413, 475, 490, 511, 512, 519, 541, 550, 581; school of glass, 59, 101, 183, 184, 262, 519; sculpture of, 175, 180, 181, 182, 288, 394; St. Pierre, 172, 349, 539. Chartres, St. Ives of, 337. Chastellux, Jean de, 429. Chateaubriand, 70, 118, 410, 443, 562. Châteauneuf-du-Faou (Finistère), 559. Chaucer, 372, 551. Chaumes, Nicolas de (architect), 96, 167. Chaumont-sur-Loire, 373, 566. Chauvanges (Aube), 239. Chauvigny (Vienne), 320, 321. Chelles (Oise), 45. Chelles, Jean and Pierre de (architects), 141, 146. Cherbourg (Manche), 554. Chérisy, Nivelon de (Bishop of Soissons), 6, 41, 86, 108, 109, 110. Chesterton, Cecil, 579, 580. Chevalier, Étienne, 241, 342. Cheverus, Cardinal de, 352. Chiaravalle (Milan province), 464, 465. Chichester, St. Richard of, 434, 435. Chinon (Indre-et-Loire), 254, 296, 315, 526. Christian persecutions, the, 9, 56, 215, 248, 252, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 263, 436, 439. Christopher, St., 553, 576. Cicero, 344, 411. Cistercian Order and architecture, 4, 7, 34, 93, 104, 105, 106, 107, 215, 278, 361, 412, 417, 430, 431, =461-465=, 554; influence of Cistercian Gothic, 461, 464, 465, 470, 471. Cîteaux (Côte-d'Or), 34, 410, 412, 418, 425, 431, 444, 462, 469. Civray (Vienne), 291. Clairvaux (Yonne), 245, 430, 464, 467. Claudianus Mamertus (Bishop of Vienne), 261. Clearstory, 24, 92, 111, 115, 116, 124, 128, 141, 183, 185, 205, 214, 242, 251, 276, 353, 412, 413, 430, 478, 486, 500, 553. Clement IV, Pope (Guy Fulcodi), 236, 381, 392, 393. Clement V, Pope (Bertrand de Got), 261, 264, 320, 326, 327, 353, 354, 406, 515. Clement VI, Pope, 335, 407, 408, 409, 497. Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme), 334, 336, 373; Cathedral of, 10, 146, 203, 205, 213, 330, =331-339=, 346, 380, 381, 519; Council of, 173, =337=, =338=, 344, 581; Notre Dame-du-Port, 330, 339, 340. Cloisters, sculptured, 82, 149, 254, 354, 360, 361, 383, 398, 399, 503, 504, 573. Clouet, Jean and François, 256. Clovis and Clotilda, 107, 118, 194, 317, 411, 446, 508. Cluny (Saône-et-Loire), 2, 14, =22=, 23, 24, 34, 104, 149, 150, 163, 259, 266, 270, 318, 335, 360, 361, 373, 393, 410, 411, 412, 413, =414-421=, 425, 438, 444, 457, 465, 471, 473, 477, 512, 519. Coeur, Jacques, 11, =222=, 223, 528, 529, 541. Cognac (Charente), 291. Coliseum, 377. Cologne, Cathedral of, 132, 203, 225, 333; St. Gereon, 112, 122. Colombe, Michel (sculptor), 67, 254, 255, 256, 264, 279, 280, 281, 342, 513, 519, 558, 563, =567-568=. Columbanus, St., 4, 122, 410, =411=, =412=, 457, 464, 483, 509. Commendatory abbots, 420, 483, 507. Communes, mediæval, 7, 8, 12, 32, 74, 62, 79, 102, 103, 262, 416, 435, 437, 439. Como, Church of S. Abondio, 29, 338. Compiègne (Oise), 47, 77, 143, 226, 534. Comtat-Venaissin, the, 405, 408, 409. Conches (Eure), Church of Ste. Foi, 536, 541. _Congrès Archéologique de France_, 38, 50, 78, 84, 92, etc. Conques (Aveyron), Abbatial of Ste. Foi, 250, 360, 415. Constantine, Emperor, 215, 398, 507. Constantinople, 6, 41, 204, 234, 261, 268, 270, 289, 298, 317, 345, 420, 427, 436. Corbeil, Pierre de (Archbishop of Sens), 95, 234. Cordova, 379. _Corpus Christi_ feast, 238, 243, 427. Cosmati, the (artists), 29, 387. Coucy-le-Château (Aisne), =102=, 313. Coulanges, Fustel de, 42. Councils of the Church, 91, 117, 189, 206, 246, 250, 261, 263, 267, 268, 323, 337, 338, 344, 370, 534, 540. Cousin, Jean (vitrine artist), 94, 98, 144. Cousin, Victor, 133, 211. Coutances (Manche), Cathedral of, 10, 276, 488, 538, 539, 547, 550, =551-556=. Coysevox (sculptor), 259. Cram, Ralph Adams, 91. Crawford, F. Marion, 439. Crécy, =1346=, battle of, 327, 487, 491. Crestien de Troyes (trouvère), 245. Creuil (Oise), 45, 46. Crouy-sur-Ourcq (Seine-et-Marne), 45, 48, 405. Crown of Thorns, the, 145, 159, 345. Crucifixion windows. _See_ Glass. Crusades, 11, 31, 32, 299, 338, 365, 366, 440, 581; First Crusade, 22, 118, 173, 194, 246, 250, 270, 294, 305, 323, =337-339=, 344, 345, 360, 449; Second Crusade, 62, 70, 79, 274, 298, 339, 429, 439, 466, 531; Third Crusade, 70, 94, 136, 143, 367, 440, 514, 538; Fourth Crusade, 41, 110, 161, 231, 233, 246, 369; Fifth Crusade, 70, 159; Sixth Crusade, 154, 155, 159, 390, 400, 553, 581; Seventh Crusade, 120, 157, 158, 162, 262, 390, 391, 514. Crusading-bishops, 6, 41, 79, 81, 82, 86, 97, 110, 111, 139, 189, 190, 206, 231, 233, 248, 334, 344, 345, 514, 531, 538, 547, 549. Crypts of France, noted, 19, 22, 65, 168, 172, 215, 224, 225, 259, 283, 287, 339, 399, 401, 429, 446, 457, 486, 547, 566. Cunault (Maine-et-Loire), 314. Cupola churches, 18, 24, 151, 227, 285, 286, =287-295=, 300, 303, 324, 344, 403. Cyprus, 38, 154, 237, 381, 436, 538. D Dagobert, 51, 57, 67, 80. Dammartin, Guy de, 221, 277, 327, 341, 387, 454; André de, 221, 232, 277, 341, 454; Jean de, 221, 255, 277; Guillaume de, 566. Dance of Death frescoes, 335, 565, 566. Daniel, 233, 580. Dante, 9, 133, 137, 141, 147, 148, 150, 153, 156, 245, 253, 349, 357, 363, 441, 462, 465, 474. Daudet, Alphonse, 259, 396. David, 9, 437, 447. Da Vinci, Leonardo, 193. Delorme, Philibert, 259. Deschamps, Jean and Pierre (architects), 334, 346. Deviation of axis, 68, 69, 136, 320, 569. Dieppe (Seine-Inférieure), 494, 518. _Dies iræ_, 128, 217, 317. Dijon (Côte-d'Or), 11, 13, 40, 255, 314, =452-461=; Cathedral of St. Bénigne, 22, 410, 415, 452, 453, =456-459=; Franco-Flemish school of sculpture, 255, 256, 281, 327, 373, =454=, =455=, =456=, 567; Notre Dame, 413, 443, 452, 453, =459-461=; Fontaine-lès-Dijon, 463. Dinan (Côtes-du-Nord), 541, 562. Dol (Ille-et-Vilaine), 539, 557, 559, =563=, =564=. Domenico Florentino (sculptor), 67, 240, 241. Dominic, St., 5, 41, 128, 363, 364, 376. Dominican Order, 134, 327, 330, 358, 364, 369, 373, 402, 420, 524, 528. Doué, Normand de (Bishop of Le Mans), 306, 308. Drayton, Michael, 490. Dreux, family of, 122, 185, 190. Dubois, Paul, 201, 568. Dugueselin, Bertrand de, 67, 266, 327, 342, 557, 562. Dunois, bâtard d'Orléans, 77, 355, 527, 529, 534. Durandus, Guillaume (author of _Rationale_), 19, 69, 214, 267, 359, 387, 400, 401. Dürer, Albert, 144, 347, 541. Durham, Cathedral of, 30, 31, 492, 493, 532, 545. E École des Chartes, 25, 37, 38, 50, 545. Écouen (Seine-et-Oise), 144. Edmund Rich, St. (Archbishop of Canterbury), 4, 41, 434, 435. Edward I of England, 390, 485. Elbeuf (Seine-Inférieure), 518. Elizabeth of Hungary, St., 53, 54, 112, 122, 280, 313. Elne (Pyrénées-Orientales), 382, 383. Eloi, St. (Bishop of Noyon), 80, 83, 240, 249, 349. Ely, Cathedral of, 3, 482, 487, 516. Enamel, Limoges, 172, 273, 314, 341, 349. England, 11, 105, 351, 416, 426, 430, 478, 482, 487, 502, 516, 517, 518, 520, 549, 550, 552, 563. _See_ Henry I, Henry II, Henry III, the Black Prince, St. Thomas Becket, St. Stephen Harding, John of Salisbury, etc. English architecture, 30, 93, 94, 99, 227, 296, 299, 301, 354, 407, 412, 432, 487, 495, 497, 516, 520, 523, 524, 533, 547. _See_ Canterbury, Durham, Ely, etc. Enlart, Camille, archæologist. _See_ Bibliography. Entombments (Holy Sepulcher groups), 225, 239, 280, 281, 282, 497. Ervy (Yonne), 239, 322. Escorial, the, 283. Espine, Jean de l' (architect), 308, 311. Estonteville family, the d', 497, 518, 555; Cardinal Guillaume d', 506, 513, 517, 529; Louis d', 505, 529. Étampes (Seine-et-Oise), 112, 511. Eu (Seine-Inférieure), Abbatial of St. Laurent, 473, =498=, =499=, 513, 532, 555. Eu, Geoffrey d' (Bishop of Amiens), 206, 499. Eugene III, Pope, 152, 243, 430, 458, 464, 466. Eustace, St., 91, 152. Évreux (Eure), Cathedral of, 518, 529, =536-541=; XIV-century glass of, 539, 540. Exeter, Cathedral of, 407. Eymoutiers (Haute-Vienne), 350, 541. F Fabian, Pope, 330, 399. Façades, noted church, 51, 89, 97, 105, 129, 191, 192, 207, 217, 226, 235, 254, 271, 291, 292, 307, 323, 343, 347, 353, 406, 460, 514, 518, 548, 553. Falaise (Calvados), 489, =544=. Fécamp (Seine-Inférieure), Abbatial of, 478, 482, =494-498=, 502, 532, 554. Fénelon, 36, 288. Fenestration, development of Gothic, 25, 26, 51, 55, 111, 128, 146, 164, 183, 205, 213, 214, 227, 228, 234, 235, 237, 251, 262, 276, 292, 322, 333, 340, 377, 380, 406, 413, 431, 441, 450, 459, 478, 486, 488, 506, 519, 539, 548, 553, 554. Ferdinand of Spain, St., 299. Ferrero, Guglielmo, 329. Feudal system, the, 11, 31, 61, 63, 92, 102, 104, 105, 151, 156, 160, 195, 225, 262, 271, 296, 299, 304, 305, 310, 313, 337, 349, 351, 362, 369, 370, 376, 383, 390, 394, 439, 455, 487, 531, 545, 550, 555. Fiesole, Jerome of, 256, 568; Mino da, 497. Flamboyant Gothic, 13, 89, 118, 146, 152, 167, 207, 217, 222, =226=, =227=, 228, 232, 233, 237, 239, 244, 252, 254, 265, 271, 277, 301, 309, 314, 327, 335, 347, 354, 372, 380, 387, 403, 415, 425, 447, 473, 506, 513, 516, 517, 518, 521, 529, 530, 539, 541, 542, 558, 559, 565, 569, 571, 573. Flandrin, H., 259. Flaubert, Gustave, 519. Flavigny (Côte-d'Or), 224, 410, 428, =429=. Fléac (Charente), 291. Flemish influences in French art, 6, 44, 67, 209, 240, 263, 264, 309, 373, =404=, 426, 427, 454, 455, 456, 567. Flodoard (chronicler), 20. Florence, Cathedral of, 3, 30, =406=. Foch, General, 106, 375, =581=. Folgoët (Finistère), Collegiate at, 558, 559. Fontenay (Yonne), 7, 410, 428, =430=, 431. Fontevrault (Maine-et-Loire), Abbatial of, 10, 274, 286, 291, 294, 313, 315, 318, 328. _See_ Plantagenet tombs. Fontfroide (Aude), Cistercian abbatial of, =380=, =381=, 407. Fortified churches in the Midi, 332, 359, 368, 382, 383. Fortunatus Venantius (Bishop of Poitiers); 10, 316, 317, 318, 322, 324. Fossanuova (province of Rome), Cistercian Burgundian church, 132, 465. Fouilloy, Evrard de (Bishop of Amiens): 206. Fountains Abbey (Yorkshire), 3, =464=. Fouquet, Jean, 254, 256, 342. Francis of Assisi, St., 4, 101, 131, 465. Francis I, 67, 89, 172, 344, 518, 534. Francis II, Duke of Brittany, tomb of 558, 567, 568. Franciscan Order, 218, 268, 317, 330, 359, 364, 420. Frederick II, Emperor, 132, 267. Freeman, E. H., 412, 490. Frescoes in French churches, 288, 314, 320, 321, 335, 344, 349, 374, 375, 405, 407, =408=, =409=, 511. Froissart, 210, 327, 347, 349, 368, 408, 455. Fulbert, of Chartres, Bishop, 22, 41, =170=, =171=, =172=, 173, 174, 176, 194. Fulk III, Nerra, Count of Anjou, 254, 274, 296, 302, 304, 305, 310, 314, 315, 550. Fulk IV, Count of Anjou, 295, 304. Fulk V, Count of Anjou, 173, 272, 295, 304. Furness Abbey (Lancashire), 464. G Gaillon (Eure), Château of, 373, 513, 558. Gallo-Roman bishops and times, 21, 86, 117, 118, 148, 164, 193, 194, 208, 231, 243, 248, 325, 331, 336, 337, 340, 349, 394, 396, 398, 399, 429, 433, 515, 579. Gargoyles, 8, 139, 142, 239, 358, 372, 461. Gassicourt (Seine-et-Oise), 163. Gautier, Léon, 133, 135, 162, 245, 356, 500, =501=, 520, 542. Gelasius II, Pope, 388, 417. _Genesis_, 145, 253. Geneviève, St., 71, 72, 73, 98, 133, =445=. Gennes (Marne-et-Loire), 314. Genoa, 466, 497, 511. Gensac (Charente), 291. Gentil, François (sculptor), 241. Geoffrey the Handsome, Count of Anjou, 271, 272, 273, 274, 295, 304. Geoffrey, Abbot (of Vendôme), 271, 272, 337, =436=. Gerard, Bishop (of Angoulême), 291 292. Gerbert (Sylvester II), 171, 194. Germanic influences on French architecture, 21, 48, 81, 84, 109, 124, 142, 164, 243, 336, 347, 449, 567, 580, 588. Germany, architecture in, 27, 77, 81, 99, 223, 288, 307, 464, 569. _See_ Rhenish school. Gerona (Catalonia), 380, 386. Gerson, Chancellor Jean, =143=, 242, 247, 264, 534. Giotto, 29, 267, 402. Glaber, Raoul (chronicler), 22, 414, 458. Glass, stained: XII-century, 10, 55, =58-60=, 97, 98, 118, 144, 183, 184, 219, 244, 272, 279, 307, 308, 321; XIII-century, =10=, 59, 97, 98, 101, 118, 143, 145, 146, 172, 180, 184, 185, 186, 219, 234, 252, 262, 278, 321, 449, 450, 511, 519, 539; XIV-century, =98=, 172, 220, 234, 237, 244, 252, 325, 341, 377, 382, 444, =539=, 543; XV-century, 118, 185, 222, 223, 240, 244, 253, 265, 277, 350, 520, 540, 541, 569; XVI-century, 51, 98, 144, 220, 223, 228, 233, 234, 235, 238, 239, 240, 244, 254, 264, 307, 374, 451, 513, 535, 539, 541; XVII-century, 224, 234, 240; grisaille glass, 172, 237, 431, 450, 540, 543; _camaïeu_ glass, 144, 239, 243; abrasion, 540; quarries, 540; Creation windows, 239, 240, 451; Crucifixion windows, 10, 32, 243, 39, 237, 322, 520; New Alliance windows, 97, 185, 219, 220, 253, 260, 262, 424; Jesse Tree windows, 59, 183, 228, 234, 238, 240, 253, 278, 517, 541; _Pressoir_ windows, 238, 240, 541; Renaissance glass, 98, 115, 144, 223, 224, 233, 234, 240, 241, 243, 449, 451, 513, 539, 541. Glennes (Aisne), 45. Gloucester, Cathedral of, 482, 487, 519. _Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea)_, 9, 85, 97, 220, 400. Gontier, Linard (vitrine artist), 234, 238, 240, 241. Gothic architecture, 3, 17, 25, 26, 27, 29, 36, 113, 123, 202, 246, 426, 459, 575, 576, 578; birth of, 42-52, 55, 123; definition of, 16, 17, 22, 26, 31, 36; first Gothic vaults, 27, 31, 39, 44, 45, 46, 287, 478, 479, 481; sporadic examples of early Gothic vaults, 31, 48, 351, 355, 361, 384, 387, 389, 437; Gothic schools in France, 211; structural development of Gothic, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 55, 56, 81, 82, 100, 110, 115, 116, 124, 127, 131, 138, 150, 229, 237, 377, 479, 514; ending of Gothic art, 576, 577, 578; neo-classic contempt for Gothic, 36, 114, 130, 187, 308, 424, 450. Goujon, Jean (sculptor), 515, 517. Grandlieu (Loire-Inférieure), 224. Gregory the Great, Pope, 181, 426. Gregory VII, Pope, 22, 34, 250, 364, 412, 415, 416, 422, 508, 545, 546. Gregory X, Pope, 267, 268. Gregory XI, Pope, 335, 387, 388. Gregory of Tours, Bishop, 248, 249, 304, 331, 332, 336, 399. Grenoble (Izère), Church of St. Laurent, 225, 343. Grosseteste, Robert (Bishop of Lincoln), 134, 263. Guéranger, Dom Prosper, 280, 281, 321. Guérin, Bishop (of Senlis), 86, 87. Guildsmen donors and artisan artists, mediæval, 6, 7, 8, 25, 34, 55, 57, 58, 62, 79, 98, 102, 103, 141, 143, 184, 186, 210, 219, 220, 222, 228, 233, 234, 235, 239, 240, 241, 244, 253, 275, 278, 284, 415, 422, 430, 435, 439, 464, 478, 503, 514, 540, 550, 558, 578, 580, 581. Guillaume of the White Hands, Archbishop (of Rheims), 94, 118, 176, 194. Guillaume VIII, Duke of Aquitaine, 318, 351; Guillaume IX, 291, 298, 318, 323, 351; Guillaume X, 292, 298, 319, 321, 354. Guimiliau (Finistère), 561. Guingamp (Côtes-du-Nord), 557, 559, 560, 562. Guizot, 36, 103, 296, 297, 536. H Haimon, Abbot, 174, 491, 492. Halberstadt, Cathedral of, 3, 77. Hambye Abbey (Manche), ruins of, 473, 554. Hanoteau, Gabriel, 400, 503, 521. Harcourt family, 529, 540, 546, 548. Harding, Abbot Stephen (of Cîteaux), 4, 41, 431, 462, =463=, 464. Harfleur (Seine-Inférieure), 492, 494, 529. Harold II, king of England, 549, 550. Haslin, Nicolas (sculptor), 240. Hastings, =1066=, battle of, 545, 549, 552. Héloïse, 133, 419. Henry I, of England, 234, 295, 304, 485, 492, 494, 537, 546. Henry II, Plantagenet, 5, 10, 67, 68, 91, 93, 94, 153, 250, 269, 271, 273, 274, 275, 290, 293, 295, 296, 298, 304, 312, 317, 319, 320, 321, 326, 348, 351, 433, 434, 495, 498, 502, 511, 531, 532, 550, 556. Henry III of England, 154, 293, 352, 434, 485. Henry V of England, 476, 483, 490, 505, 529, 534. Henry VI of England, 143, 265, 266. Henry VII, Tudor, 573. Henry VIII, 416, 435, 518. Henry II of France, 67, 144, 172. Henry IV of France, 69, 147, 185, 219, 241, 255, 265, 266, 425. Herlouin, Abbot (of Bec), 373. Hilary, St. (Bishop of Portiers), 10, 317, 318, 321, 323, 324, 344, 364. _Histoire Littéraire de la France_, 41, 55, 150, etc. _See_ Bibliography. Hoël, Bishop (of Le Mans), 269, 270, 278, 280, 337. Holbein, 221. Holycross Abbey (Co. Tipperary), 3. Honnecourt, Villard de, 34, 38, 101, 102, 122, 190, 280, =282=, =284=, 553. Hospitals, mediæval, 80, 86, 96, 298, 310, 311, 323, 426, 427. Hugh, St. (Bishop of Lincoln), 194, 263. Huguenots. _See_ Sixteenth-century religious wars. Hugues, St. (Abbot of Cluny), 22, 34, 270, 337, 414, 416, 417, 421, 440. Hugues de St. Victor. _See_ Paris, Abbey of St. Victor. Humbert, Albéric de, 6, 41, 139, =189=, 370, 371. Hundred Years' War, 52, 69, 71, 72, 73, 97, 108, 165, 221, 225, 227, 228, 252, 327, 347, 368, 371, 378, 447, 455, =489=, =490=, 499, 503, 505, 506, 507, 509, 538, 570, 571, 573. Hungary, 280, 284. Huysmans, J. K., 100, 128, 144, 170, 280, 284, 321, 415, 460. Hymns, mediæval, 128, 130, 135, 238, 261, 317, 345, 468. I Ile-de-France, 12, 24, 30, 31, 44, 45, 46, 49, 78, 113, 114, 141, 211, 225, 242, 269, 275, 276, 285, 337, 478, 479, 482, 494, 495, 514, 543, 547, 564. _Imitation of Christ_, 143, 263, 470, 503, 535. Ingeborg of Denmark, 80, 94. Innocent II, Pope, 79, 291, 417, 423, 437. Innocent III, Pope, 41, 95, 110, 134, 135, 138, 139, 206, 234, 299, 364, 369, 370, 385, 392, 394, 404, 465. Innocent IV, Pope, 264, 278, 327, 419. Innocent VI, Pope (Avignon), 267, 278, 335, 374, 408. Innsbruck, tomb of Maximilian I in, 264. Inquisition, the, 364, 368, 371. Ipres, 2, 110, 193, 242. Ireland, 5, 153, 155, 404, 411, 463, 464, 498. Irenæus, St. (Bishop of Lyons), 5, 257, 258. Irish missionaries, 4, 22, 410, 411, 449, 463, 480, 498, 560, 574. Isabeau of Bavaria, 233, 327. Isabelle of Angoulême, 193, 293, 297, 313, 326. _Isaias_, 9, 234. Issoire (Puy-de-Dôme), 340. Italian influences in France, 67, 144, 239, 240, 241, 243, 255, 279, 324, 361, 373, 374, 375, 384, 456, 466, 474, 478, 479, 493, 497, 555, 564. Italy, Gothic in, 10, 23, 28, 29, 38, 61, 185, 261, 345, 381, 411, 431, 464, =465=, 479, 554, 555. J Jacquemart-André, Mme., 89. Jaime el Conquistador, 267, 280, 334, 385, 386. James, St., 185, 222, 250, 451. James, Henry, 218. Jarenton, Abbot (of St. Bénigne, Dijon), 337, 414, 458. Jean le Bon, king of France, 308, 309, 327, 454. Jean sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, 143, 264, 265, 452, 523, 534. Jeanne d'Arc, St., 13, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 87, 143, 152, 162, 166, 167, 168, 191, 192, 197, 201, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 233, 247, 254, 255, 296, 298, 315, 328, 338, 355, 356, 447, 448, 455, 476, 483, 497, 504, 505, 506, 508, 509, 520, =521-531=, 533, 534, 535, 536, 544, 548, 555, 577. Jeanne of Navarre and Champagne, 119, 120, 162, 166, 167, 232, 246, 247, 538. Jeannin, Président, 423, 425. Jerome, St., 9, 182, 444. Jerusalem, 119, 142, 145, 154, 157, 274, 304, 311, 410, 485, 500, 508, 560, 561, 581. Jesse Tree windows. _See_ Glass, stained. Jesus Christ, iconography of, 98, 120, 137, 142, 180, 183, 195, 199, 207, 208, 239, 240, 241, 288, 292, 317, 321, 322, 361, 373, 423, 438, 450, 520, 540, 560, 561, 574. Jews in the Middle Ages, 12, 247, 336, 379, 408, 463, 468, 490. _Job, Book of_, 217, 233. Joffre, General, 198, 375. John the Baptist, St., 146, 182, 210, 259, 347, 366, 408, 438, 441. John the Evangelist, St., 9, 68, 204, 217, 219, 257, 259, 262, 281, 294, 310, 361, 396, 438, 441. John Lackland, king of England, 275, 293, 297, 298, 299, 308, 313, 487, 503, 511, 537, 564. John XXII, Pope, 264, 288, 289, 387, 407. Johnson, Lionel, 165. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 294, 431. Joinville, Jean, Sire de, 41, 70, 111, 119, 120, 138, 140, =152-162=, 166, 190, 206, 219, 244, 245, 246, 247, 306, 312, 313, 326, 342, 399, 553. Jouarre (Seine-et-Marne), crypt of, 168, 225, 411. Joubert, J., 290. _Jubé_, or rood screen, 239, 244, 247, 347, 373, 558, 560. Judith of Brittany, Duchess of Normandy, 501. Juliot, the (sculptors of Troyes), 235, 240, 241. Jumièges (Seine-Inférieure), ruins of, 23, 116, 224, 411, 415, =480-483=, 496, 509. Juste, the (sculptors), 67, 564, 565. K Kensington Museum, 353. Kernascleden (Morbihan), 559. Keystones of Gothic vaults, 37, 48, 104, 150, 166, 301, 314, 444, 513. Koran, the, 419. Kreisker Tower, the. _See_ St. Pol-de-Léon. L Lacordaire, J. B. H. D., 128, 430, 453, 462. Lady chapel, 52, 203, 498, 515, 533, 540, 555, 569. Lafayette family, burial place of, 335. Lafenestre, George, 484. La Ferté-Milon (Seine-et-Marne), 534. Laffaux (Aisne), 45. La Fontaine, 242. Laic theory, the, 32, 100. Lamartine, Alphonse de, 445. Lamballe (Côtes-du-Nord), 559. Lambin, Émile. _See_ Bibliography. Lamoricière, General de, 568. Lampaul (Finistère). Landrieux, Monseigneur, 188, 199. Langeais (Indre-et-Loire), 566. Langlois, Jean (architect), 237. Langres (Haute-Marne), 424, 526. Langrune (Calvados), 526. Langton, Archbishop Stephen, 11, 41, 134, 432. Languedoc, 11, 23, 24, 42, 356, 357, 361, 362, 365, 368, 370, 380, 384, 387; Romanesque school of, 24, 28, 360, 361; Romanesque sculpture of, 360, 361. Lannion (Côtes-du-Nord), 557. Laon (Aisne), 102, 103, 104, 106, 531; Cathedral of, 7, 12, 32, 40, 74, 75, 76, 77, =99-106=, 575, 581; its glass and sculpture, 101; its façade, 105; St. Martin, 105, 106; Templar's church, 99, 106. Laon, Anselm de, 104, 474, 512. La Roche-Maurice (Finistère), 560. Lasteyrie, Comte Robert de. _See_ Bibliography. Last Judgment, representation of, 147, 181, 195, 199, 217, 218, 375, 423, 426, 564. Lateran, Church of the, 387; 4th Council of, 189, 206, 370. Latin influences and vestiges in French art, 4, 9, 11, 18, 19, 21, 28, 30, 61, 193, 249, 257, 263, 270, 318, 336, 353, 384, 388, 389, 394, 398, 399, 400, 401, 403, 416, 418, 422, 424, 479, 507, 577, 579, 580. La Trappe (Orne), Souligny, 418, 542. Laurana, Francisco (sculptor), 279, 406. Laurence, St., 224, 283. Lavardin, Hildebert de, 41, 250, 269, 270, 271, 272, 275, 279. Lavisse, Ernest, 76. Lay-Ecclesiastic Controversy, the, 91, 94, 154, 173, 260, 267, 271, 282, 340, 432, 433, 434, 441, 475, 532, 556. Lazarus, 395, 396, 424, 428, 436, 501, 580. Le Braz, Anatole, 556, 568. Lecuyer, Jean (vitrine artist), 223, 224. Lefèvre-Pontalis, Eugène. _See_ Bibliography. Le Mans (Sarthe), 10, 274, 279, 349, 406, 454, 541; Cathedral of, 13, 59, 125, 211, 212, 255, =268-279=, 304, 315, 321, 351, 553; glass of, 59, 220, 276, 277, 278; St. Julien du Pré and the Couture church, 278, 280; Henry II of England in Le Mans, 274. Lenoncourt, Robert de (Archbishop of Rheims), 118, 198, 255. Leo IX, Pope, 117, 542. Leo XIII, Pope, 130, 385, 422, 521. Leon, Cathedral of, 3, 242. Le Pot, Nicolas, 51, 228. Le Prince, Engrand (and sons, vitrine artists), 51, 144, 228, 517. Le Puy (Haute-Loire), 342, 371, 566; Cathedral of, =343=, =344=, 345; St. Michel d'Aiguille, 343. Lerens, Island of, 411. Le Roux, Rouland (architect), 307, 498, 518, 519. Les Andelys (Seine-Inférieure), 512, =513=, 520. Les Iff (Ille-et-Vilaine), 541, 559. Les Noès (Aube), 238. Les Saintes-Mariés (Bouches-du-Rhône), 239, =395=, 396, 397. Lessay (Manche), 473, 493, 512, 554. Lèves, Geoffrey de (Bishop of Chartres), 60, =170=, =173=, =174=, 181, 319, 361, 362, 469. Liebnitz, 414. Ligugé (Vienne), 321. Lille (Nord), 226. Limoges (Haute-Vienne), Cathedral of, 203, 334, =345-348=, 380, 407, 408, 539; St. Martial, 336, 345, 346, 348; enamels of, 172, 341, 345, 349. Lincoln, Cathedral of, 31, 134, 194, 298, 449, 516, 532. Lincoln, St. Hugh of, 194, 263, 296. Lisieux (Calvados), Cathedrals of, 113, 531-536; St. Jacques, 518, 535. Litchfield, Cathedral of, 516. Literature in the Middle Ages, 4, 7, 9, 18, 31, 135, 150, 400; XI-century, 106, 133, 171, 173, 195, 304, 318, 415, 417, 422, 424, 430, 432, =450=, =461=, 466, 474, 475, 478, 500, 501, 545, 549; XII-century, 57, 116, 131, 133, 135, 174, 175, 176, 250, 270, 272, 273, 318, 345, 348, 398, 418, 419, 502, 537, 545; XIII-century, 9, 119, 130, 131, 132, 135, 140, 158, 161, 166, 231, 232, 236, 238, 245, 246, 267, 334, 396; XIV-century, 210, 287, 407, 551; XV-century, 516, 517, 529, 565. Loches (Indre-et-Loire), 44, 254; Beaulieu-lès-Loches, 254. Loctudy (Finistère), 557. Loire, the, 10, 247, 254, 255, 304, 449, 565, 566. Lombard architecture, 17, 24, 28, 29, 32, 44, 478, 479, 481, 493; influences of, 28, 247, 360, 384, 395, 478, 481, 486, 493, 495. Lombard, Pierre, 133, 134. London, 486, 491, 517. Longpont (Aisne), Abbey of, 107, 147, 431. Longueil, Olivier de (Bishop of Coutances), 555. Loti, Pierre, 199, 200, 561. Lotte, Joseph, 499, 536. Louis VI, 61, 122, 151. Louis VII, 57, 60, 62, 70, 79, 84, 137, 138, 174, 245, 248, 250, 298, 299, 317, 351, 439. Louis VIII, 69, 86, 96, 262. Louis IX, St. Louis, 5, 9, 12, 14, 41, 52, 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 86, 96, 106, 107, 118, 132, 135, 140, 143, 145, =152-162=, 177, 184, 185, 193, 206, 218, 232, 248, 283, 299, 309, 310, 313, 314, 327, 334, 336, 375, 378, 390, 410, 435, 441, 489, 514, 538, 553, 579, 593. Louis XI, 247, 255, 265, 309, 314, 452, 504, 540. Louis XII, 67, 89, 96, 97, 373, 497, 534, 558, 565, 566. Louis XIV, 70, 384, 405. Louis XV and Louis XVI, 70. Louis-Philippe, 66, 157. Loup, St. (Bishop of Troyes), 231. Loutil, Abbé (Pierre l'Hermite), 129. Louviers (Eure), 518, 536. Lowell, James Russell, 100, 170. Loyola, St. Ignatius, 151. Lozinga, Herbert (Bishop of Norwich), 494, 496. Luce, Siméon, 490, 499, 520, 526, 557. Lugo, Cathedral of, 465. Lusarches, Robert de (sculptor), 204, 205, 248. Luxeuil (Haute-Saône), monastery of, 122, 410, =411=, 483. Lyénin, family of (vitrine artists), 233, 234, 241. Lyons, 13, 39, 336, 400; Cathedral of, =211=, 212, 220, 248, =256-268=; Councils of, 263, 267, 268, 456; glass and sculpture of, 262, 263, 264, 265; St. Martin d'Ainay, 225, 259, 260. M Mabillon, Dom, 149, 418, 461. Macadré family, the (sculptors), 233, 234, 240. Mâcon, Hugues de (Bishop of Auxerre), 431, 447. Magdeburg, Cathedral of, 2, 3, 77. _Magna Charta_, 1215, 11, 12, 15, 432. Maguelonne (Hérault), 11, 28, 330, =384=, 388, 389. Maine, Province of, 269, 271, 274, 302. Maine de Biran, 579. Maistre, Joseph de, 222, 411. Malachy, O'Morgair, St., 4, 41, 463, 498. Mâle, Émile. _See_ Bibliography. Manchon, secretary of Jeanne d'Arc's trial, 523, 524, 525, 526. Mansurah, =1250=, battle of, 8, 111, 155, 156, 159, 453. Mantegna, 341. Mantes (Seine-et-Oise), Collegiate of Notre Dame at, 113, =162-165=, 488; its Chapel of Navarre, 164, 538, 539. Marbeau, Monseigneur (Bishop of Meaux), 168. Marburg, Church of St. Elizabeth at, 112, 122, 280, 313. Marcherez, Madame Jeanne, 112. Marguerite of Austria, 264. Marguerite of Burgundy, 295, 427. Marguerite of Flanders, 454, 455. Marguerite of Provence, 96, 153, 154, 390. Marie Antoinette, 70. Marie of Champagne, Countess, 245, 299. Maritain, Jacques, 224. Marle, Thomas de, 102, 103. Marmoutier (Indre-et-Loire), 251, 387, 400, 402. Marolles (Oise), 45. Marseilles, 28, 400, 401; St. Victor's abbatial, 387. Martha, St., 239, 240, 247, 281, 395, 396, 403, 424. Martin, St., 5, 9, 148, 185, 248, 249, 250, 253, 304, 315, 316, 321, 324, 446. Martin, Thérèse, the "Little Flower," 535, 536. Marville, Jean de, 456, 520. Mary of Burgundy, 264. Mary Magdalene, 239, 240, 247, 254, 281, 353, 395, 396, 401, 402, 424, 436, 441, 442. Matha, St. Jean de, 139, 404, 405. Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, 216, 295, 482, 484, 485, 486, 546, 549. Massillon, Bishop, 335, 365. Maulbronn, Cistercian church of, 464. Maurice and the Theban Legion, St., 5, 248, 303, 304. Maurille, Archbishop (of Rouen), 482, 485, 510, 511. Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), Cathedral of, 96, 152, =165-168=, 247, 538. Mellifont Abbey (Co. Louth), 3, 464. Melrose Abbey (Roxburghshire), 3, 464. Mende (Cantal), Cathedral of, 330, =387=. Merimée, Prosper, 38, 285, 312, 321, 331, 341, 343, 370, 373, 383, 395. Merovingian vestiges and times, 20, 56, 57, 77, 78, 84, 171, 224, 225, 249, 305, 324, 325, 470, 471, 480. Metz (Lorraine), 226, 242. Mézerai, François Eudes de, 298, 519, 520. Mézières (Ardennes), 226. Michael, St., 330, 343, 372, 499, 500, 504, 505, 520, 522, 553. Michael Angelo, 183, 374. Midi, Gothic in the, 329, 330, 346, 354, 377, 380, 386, 398, 402, 407, 408; Romanesque in the, 25, 329, 330, 337, 339, 340, 342, 355, 359, 360, 371, 376, 381, 398, 403, 406. Milan, 3, 28, 29, 338, 384, 464, 465, 466. Military orders, 86, 106, 189, 246, 311, 326, 466, 504. Missions in the Middle Ages, foreign, 327, 369, 386, 404, 405, 415, 419. Mistral, Frédéric, 356, 357, 384, 397, 400, 466, 504, 581. Modena, Cathedral of, 273, 361, 374, 395. Moissac (Tarn-et-Garonne), 24, 28, 31, 288, 330, 360, 361, 415. Moles, Arnaud de, 358, 374. Molière, 36, 370. Moncontour (Ille-et-Vilaine), 559. Monk-builders, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25, 33, 34, 280, 295, 360, 361, 365, 371, 392, 410, 411, 412, 413, 415, 416, 417, 422, 437, 440, 473, 475, 481, 493, 494, 496, 498, 502, 554. Montaigne, 350, 451. Montaigu, Gilles Aycelin de, 381, 515. Montalembert, Charles de, 237, 256, 280, 411, 414, 476. Montbard (Côte-d'Or), 430, 453. Montboissier, Pons de (Abbot of Vézelay), 338, 341, 418, 438, 439; Peter de. _See_ Peter the Venerable. Montecorvino, John of, 326, 327. Monteil, Adhémar de (Bishop of Le Puy), 344, 345. Montereau, Pierre de (architect), 35, 53, 66, 70, 141, 146, 149, 150, 280, 299. Montfort, Bertrada de, 173, 295, 323, 549. Montfort, Simon de, 14, 353, 357, 362, 369, 370, 376, 383, 386. Montfort-l'Amaury (Seine-et-Oise), 144. Montier-en-Der (Haute-Marne), 239. Montmajour-lès-Arles, 398, 399, 400. Montmorency (Seine-et-Oise), 144; art patrons, 144, 254, 347, 390, 408, 559. Montpellier (Hérault), 369, =385-387=; Cathedral of, 384, 385, 386; le Perou, 385, 400, 407. Montréal (Yonne), 121, 428, 429. Mont-Saint-Michel, 22, 34, 226, 322, 371, 435, 473, 482, 483, 487, 495, =499-507=, 527, 529, 551, 554, 559; the Merveille, 503. Mont-Sainte-Odile (Alsace), 485. Montvilliers (Seine-Inférieure), 491, 555. Morel, Jacques (sculptor), 254, 265, 266, 308, 456. Morlaix (Finistère), 559, 560. Mortagne, Gautier de (Bishop of Laon), 105. Mortain (Manche), Abbey of La Blanche, 473, 554. Moses, 182, 438, 455. Mouliherne (Seine-et-Loire), 315. Moulins (Allier), 226, =265=, =266=, 322, 541. Mowbray, Geoffrey de (Bishop of Coutances), 552. Mozac (Puy-de-Dôme), 340, =341=, 349. Musset, Alfred de, 16. Mussy-sur-Seine (Aube), 239. Mystery plays, influence on sculpture of, 180, 223, 281, 455, 540, 578. N Nantes (Loire-Inférieure), Cathedral of, 255, 256, 557, 558, 563, =565-568=. Naples, Gothic in, 465. Napoleon, 70, 259, 420, 446. Narbonne (Aude), 368, 378, 408; Cathedral of, 11, 203, 330, 336, 357, 364, =378-382=, 390, 515, 539. Narthex, or forechurch, 18, 57, 419, 424, 427, 436, 437, 457, 460, 532. Navarre, 167, 232, 237. Navas de Toloso, Las, 115, 153, 385, 538. Neale, Rev. John Mason, 19, 214, 414, 421, 451. Nemours, Pierre de (Bishop of Noyon), 80, 139, 243. Nevers (Nièvre), Cathedral of, 413, =449=, 566; St. Étienne, 215, 254, 340, 495. New Alliance windows. _See_ Glass, stained. Newman, Cardinal, 123. Niçaise, St., 193, 194, 202. Nicolas of Bari, St., 185, 239, 451. Nîmes (Gard), 397, 400. Nolasco, St. Peter, 369, 386. Nonancourt (Eure), 536. Norbert, St., 2, 4, 104, 467. Normandy, 40, 223, 226, 242, 274, =472-556=; Gothic of, 494, 499, 504, 505, 508, 518, 533, 543, 547, 553, 554; first Gothic vaults of, 30, 46, 478, 479, 493, 554; sexpartite vaults of, 481, 482; Romanesque school of, 17, 23, 30, =476-480=, 481, 485, 486, 493, 502, 546, 554; architectural influences of, 11, 46, 48, 163, 165, 276, 479, 555; monasteries of, 372, 373, 374, 480, 484, 492, 494, 498, 499, 554; Normans in Sicily, 132, 542, 552, =554=, 555; Norse invasions, 20, 21, 171, 324, 336, 477, 483, 495, 501, 510. Norrey (Calvados), 491. Norwich, Cathedral of, 430, 487, 496. Notre Dame, the term, 565; devotion to, 5, 126, 137, 138, 169, 170, 193, 343, 344, 404, 465, 511, 564, 571, 572; iconography of, 85, 101, 123, 137, 138, 180, 182, 193, 208, 209, 240, 242, 244, 278, 280, 282, 342, 361, 362, 373, 541. Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine (Marne), 242, 244. Noyes, Alfred., 282. Noyon (Oise), Cathedral of, 12, 33, 74, 75, 76, 78-84, 99, 112; commune of, 12, 79; World War havoc in, 2, 76, 82, 83. O Odilo. St. (Abbot of Cluny), 266, 414, =422=. Odo de Conteville (Bishop of Bayeux), 337, 545, 546, 547, 549, 552. Orbais (Marne). Orbais, Jean d' (architect), 34, 190, 191, 192. Orcival (Puy-de-Dôme), 340. Ordericus Vitalis, 272, 492, 537. Orders, mediæval religious, 414, 420; Trinitarians, or Mathurins, 401, 405; Order of Mercy, 369, 386. _See_ Carthusians, Cistercians, Cluny, Dominicans, Franciscans, Fontevrault, Prémontré. Orgeval (Seine-et-Oise), 45. Oriflamme of St. Denis, the, 61, 70, 71. Orléans (Loiret), 2, 328, 504, 521, 526, 527, 529, 533; Cathedral of, 2, 7, 218, 224, 254; family of, 499. Orléans, Charles d', 67, 315, 497, 516, 517, 529, 534, 565. Orléans, Louis, Duke d', 67, 143, 497, =534=. O'Toole, St. Laurence, 498, 499. Ourscamp (Oise), hospital and abbey of, =80=, 96, 150, 431. Oxford, 327, 407, 434, 516, 519. Ozanam, Frédéric, 135, 259, 268, 508. P Palermo, 549, 555. Papacy in the Middle Ages, the, 22, 23, 79, 91, 95, 135, 154, 171, 177, 194, 206, 239, 240, 243, 266, 267, 268, 291, 337, 388, 364, 367, 369, 370, 385, 386, 387, 388, 392, 393, 407, 408, 409, 411, 412, 416, 419, 466, 468, 489, 501, 578. Paray-le-Monial (Allier), 410, =421=, =422=. Paris, 7, 82, 126, 133, 317, 419, 445, 513, 527, 530; Cathedral of Notre Dame, 3, 6, 7, 13, 33, 41, 59, 74, 85, 99, 100, 112, =126-146=, 163, 167, 181, 182, 204, 213, 215, 228, 229, 290, 413, 416, 434, 489, 554, 575; Flamboyant Gothic churches in, 144; glass, school of, 59, 143, 145, 146, 252, 334; Hôtel Cluny, 53, 97, 222, 335, 373, 421; Hôtel Sens, 97; Louvre, the, 425, 426; Montmartre, church of St. Pierre de, 56, =148=, =151=, and Sacré-Coeur basilica of, 151, 292; Sainte-Chapelle, the, 132, 145, 146, 203, 205, 229, 252, 334, 538; St. Germain-des-Prés, 33, 34, 148, 149, 415; St. Germain l'Auxerrois, 152, 446; St. Julien-le-Pauvre, 147, 431; St. Martin-des-Champs, 33, 45, =148=, 150; St. Séverin, 152, 541; St. Victor, Abbey of, 133, 134, 135, 468; sculpture of, 131, 132, 137, 138, 139, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149; Trocadéro Museum, 38, 244, 340, 353; University of, 7, 41, 104, 133, 134, 147, 294, 327, 404, 408, 428, 434, 463, 469, 474, 476, 521, 524, 530, 534, 573. Paris, Gaston, 135, 152, 242, 245, 565. Parthenay (Deux-Sèvres), 321, 340. Pascal, 331, 332. Paschal II, Pope, 173, 250, 259, 261, 266, 291, 295, 415, 417, 428, 458. Pasquier, Étienne, 521. Passavent, Guillaume de (Bishop of Le Mans), 269, 272, 273, 274, 275. Pasteur, Louis, 428. Pater, Walter, 170, 432, 578. Patrick, St., 446, 536, 537. Paul, St., 9, 95, 208, 217, 273, 387, 389, 399, 442, 466, 567. Paul, St. Vincent de, 151, 259, 402, 508. Pavia (Lombardy), 437. Péguy, Charles, 72, 73, 168, 179, 197, 536, 545. Peking, 327. Penafort, St. Raymond of, 369. Penmarc'h (Finistère), 560, 561. Pépin, 57. Périgieux (Dordogne), Cathedral of St. Front, 47, =288-290=., 291, 465. Péronne (Somme), 82, 124, 226, 411. Perpignan (Pyrénées Orientales), 382. Perréal, Jean, 264, 568. Peter, St., 9, 103, 148, 182, 186, 208, 218, 273, 317, 387, 388, 389, 399, 416, 438, 482, 565, 567. Peter of Aragon, 385. Peter the Venerable, 41, 60, 152, 174, 243, 341, 393, =414=, 417, =418=, =419=, 435, 438, 463, 467. Peterborough, Cathedral of, 482, 487, 562. Petrarch, 239, 386, 406, 408. Philibert, St., 413, 483. Philippe I, king of France, 51, 173, 295, 323, 549. Philippe-Auguste, 12, 14, 53, 54, 60, 62, 69, 70, 80, 94, 96, 108, 135, 136, 162, 163, 177, 194, 195, 234, 251, 267, 274, 275, 280, 309, 310, 340, 432, 440, 489, 503, 511, 513, 525, 537, 538. Philippe III, the Bold, 67, 71, 247, 338, 375, 390, 408. Philippe IV, le Bel, 13, 326, 489, 538. Philippe le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, 220, 232, 264, 353, 443, 452, 454; tomb of, 455. Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, 426, 427, 452, 527. Picardy, 202, 203, 210, 503. Pierrefonds (Oise), 534. Piers, development of, 23, 24, 25, 26, 49, 55, 93, 100, 111, 122, 127, 166, 213, 214, 320, 333, 346, 358, 377, 380, 402, 514, 532. Pilasters, channeled, 416, 422, 424. Pilgrim shrines, mediæval, 6, 94, 157, 179, 185, 249, 250, 289, 324, 325, 343, 395, 436, 437, 498, 500, 551. Pilon, Germain (sculptor), 68, 278. Pinaigrier (vitrine artist), 149, 254. Pisa, 417, 460. Pisano, Niccola, 29. Pius IX, Pope, 377. Pius X, Pope, 188. Plantagenet Gothic, 10, 39, 113, 250, 273, 275, 278, =291-301=, 307, 311, 312, 314, 315, 317, 351. Plantagenet tombs, the, 293, 296, 297. Plato, 132, 169, 475. Plélan (Ille-et-Vilaine), 541. Pleyben (Finistère), 561. Ploërmel (Morbihan), 559. Plougastel-Daoulas (Finistère), 561. Plougonven (Finistère), 561. Poblet (Catalonia), Monastery of, 380, 381, 464. Poissy (Seine-et-Oise), 45, =53=, =54=, 574. Poitiers, 40, 221, 255, 286, 318, 324, 325, 327, 328, 454; Cathedral of, 10, 57, 279, 312, =316-322=; Baptistry of St. Jean, 225; Counts of, 298, 318: _see_ Guillaume VIII, IX, and X; glass of, 10, 59, 317, 321, 322; Minerva statue, 325; Montierneuf, 318; Notre Dame-la-Grande, 24, 318, 323; Palais de Justice (Counts' palace), 326, 327, 328; St. Hilaire, 172, 319, 323, 324, 344; Ste. Radégonde, 325, 326, 327, 539; University of, 325. Poitiers, Alphonse de, 156, 313, 320, 362, 370, 408. Poitiers, Diane de, 144, 172, 515. Poitou, 5, 10, 39; Romanesque school of, 24, 38, 291, 311, 316, 319, 320, 321, 323, 355. Polo, Marco, 299, 327. Polychrome decoration, 339, =340=, 343. Pont-Audemer (Eure), 541. Pont-de-l'Arche (Eure), 536, 539. Pontigny (Yonne), Cistercian abbatial of, 11, 33, 93, 215, 239, 261, =430-435=, 447. Pontoise (Seine-et-Oise), 45, =53=, =54=, 57, 65. Portals, sculptured, 4, 95, 180, 181, 182, 239, 252, 253, 261, 273, 289, 394, 398, 418, 428, 438, 514, 515, 517, 518, 550, 561. Porter, Arthur Kingsley. _See_ Bibliography. Portugal, 38, 454. Pot, Philippe (Seneschal of Burgundy), 144, 425. Pothimus, St. (Bishop of Lyons), 257, 258, 259. Prague, 3, 203, 387. Prémontré, Order of, 34, 104, 122, 468, 543. Primary Gothic, 68, =74-125=, 75, 76, 77, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 125, 303, 306, 440, 494, 508, 511, 580. _Primitifs_, French, 265, 404. Prophets and patriarchs, in art, 182, 262, 373, 404, 455. Provence, 112, 113, 114, 153, 309, 361, 390, 397, 400, 402, 441, 465; Romanesque school of, 23, 24, 398, 403, 405, 406; sculpture of, 361, 392, 394, 395, 398; tradition of the Saintes Maries in, 436, 441. Provins (Seine-et-Marne), 7, =119-121=, 538; St. Quiriace, 123. Psichari, Ernest, 168, 572, 574. Puvis de Chavannes, 216, 259. Puy-Notre-Dame (Maine-et-Loire), 314, 319. Q Quimper (Finistère), Cathedral of, 541, 557, 559, 563, =568-571=. Quimperlé (Finistère), 31, 557, 560. R Races in France, amalgamation of, 4, 5, 21, 135, 248, 378, 388. _See_ Barbarian invasions, Celtic element, Gallo-Romans, and Latin influences. Racine, 36, 242. Radegund, Queen, 4, 10, 78, 84, 324, 325, 327. _Rationale_, or the symbolism of churches, 19, 69, 214, 267, 359, 377, 387, 400, 401. Raymond IV, of Toulouse, 391. Raymond VI, of Toulouse, 297, 357, 369, 376, 392, 394. Raymond VII, 297, 370. Rayonnant Gothic, 12, 13, 105, 116, 130, 141, 232, 236, 237, 277, 346, 352, 353, 354, 380, 497, 508, 509, 514, 515, 516, 538, 543, 548, 573, 577. Rebirth of architecture after the year 1000, 20, 22, 422, 458, 575. Reclus, O., 498. Redon (Ille-et-Vilaine), 256, 268. Regnault, Guillaume (sculptor), 67, 256, 568. Remigius, St., 118, 191, 194. _See_ Rheims, Church of St. Remi. Renaissance, the classic, 10, 152, 179, 180, 228, 239, 240, 243, 246, 279, 281, 282, 295, 306, 374, 375, 406, 483, 489, 497, 513, 515, 541, 560, 564, 566, 567, 568, 577. Renan, Ernest, 27, 258, 462, 572, 574. René, King, of Anjou, 221, 222, 277, 279, 305, 308, 309, 314, 402, 404, 540. Revolution, devastation by the French, 2, 34, 69, 81, 122, 139, 144, 149, 153, 155, 209, 221, 239, 240, 241, 243, 249, 265, 266, 279, 308, 336, 347, 348, 358, 363, 374, 393, 420, 421, 423, 455, 457, 461, 497, 515, 519, 548, 554, 556, 573, 577. Rheims (Marne), 2, 6, 10, 32, 40, 61, 77, 153, 197-201, 425, 527, 538; Cathedral of, 34, 122, =188-201=, 209, 211, 242, 244, 284, 475, 581; its sculpture, 6, 192, 193, 195, 196, 204, 208; St. Remi, 7, 33, 74, 76, 77, 105, 109, =116-119=, 121, 196, 242, 322, 415, 575; World War devastation by, 2, 76, 196, =197-202=, 581. Rhenish school, the, 24, 27, 28, 164, 177, 449. Rhuis (Oise), 45. Richard I, the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, 495, 501. Richard II, the Good, Duke of Normandy, 485, 492, 495, 501, 502, 510. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 10, 14, 177, 245, 251, 267, 269, 274, 279, 293, 296, 297, 298, 299, 304, 319, 340, 348, 351, 440, 491, 511, 513, 514, 537, 538. Richelieu, 282, 289. Riom (Puy-de-Dôme), 340, =341=, 342, 387, 541; Virgin of the Bird, the, 342, 490, 577. Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, 544, 545, 554. Roc-amadour (Lot), 289. Rochester, Cathedral of, 482, 485. Rodez (Aveyron), Cathedral of, 203, 226, 330, 370, 374, 577. Rodin, Auguste, 114, 172, 189, 196, 215, 250, 272, 278, 390, 472, 575. _Roland, Chanson de_, 106, 184, 194, 246, 355, 356, 500, 501, 545, 549, 580. Rolin, Nicolas, 425, =426=, =427=. Rollo, Duke of Normandy, 477, 482, 503, 510. Roman centers in Gaul, 9, 91, 379, 398, 424. Romanesque architecture, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 43, 44, 48, 49, 187, 225, 287, 291, 320, 321, 323, 329, 340, 344, 359, 361, 362, 378, 403, 406, 422, 427, 433, =476-486=, 493, 546, 557, 575; Romanesque sculpture, 51, 288, 291, 292, 361, 480, 546, 547; Romanesque traits in Gothic art, 55, 75, 80, 81, 82, 92, 95, 99, 100, 116, 117, 120, 127, 149, 150, 180, 181, 223, 242, 261, 378, 394, 419, 429, 434, 437, 488, 513, 532, 547, 553, 575. Rome, 11, 18, 19, 81, 119, 204, 230, 250, 257, 320, 327, 329, 343, 372, 375, 385, 387, 388, 397, 398, 405, 406, 407, 409, 416, 424, 434, 464, 472, 479, 564. Roncevaux, =778=; battle of, 8, 194, 355, 500, 545, 580. Roquefort, Pierre de (Bishop of Carcassonne), 377. Ros, Guillaume de (Abbot of Fécamp), 496, 497. Roscoff (Finistère), 560. Rosnay (Aube), 239. Rostand, Edmond, 391, 559. Rouen, 10, 13, 33, =507-530=, 535, 538, 554, 558; Cathedral of, 104, 113, 129, 322, 373, 475, 494, 499, =507-520=, 523, 524, 531, 541, 555, 577; Abbatial of St. Ouen, 415, 472, 475, 487, 491, 507, =509=, =516=, 520, 522, 524, 530, 534, 541; Flamboyant towers, 509, 517, 518; Hôtel du Bourgtherould, 519; Palais de Justice, 222, 518; St. Gervais, 510; St. Julien, Petit-Quevilly, 511, 512; St. Maclou, 404, 492, 515, =517=, 541; St. Vincent, 517; sons of, 519; trial of Jeanne d'Arc in, =521-530=. Rouilly (Aube), 239. Roullet (Charente), 291. Rousse, Joseph, 563. Royal (Puy-de-Dôme), 332. Rubruquis, William of, 327. Rue (Somme), 222. Ruffec (Charente), 291. Ruskin, John, 1, 3, 15, 208, 209, 556. S Sablé (Sarthe), 280, 282. St. Albans (Hertfordshire), Abbey of, 487. St. Andre-lès-Troyes (Aube), 238. St. Astier (Dordogne), 288, 289. St. Bartholomew Massacre, 1572, the, 425, 566. St. Benoît-sur-Loire (Loiret), 254, 566. St. Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute-Garonne), 354, 406. St. Brieuc (Côtes-du-Nord), 557, 572. St. Catherine de Fierbois (Indre-et-Loire), 254. St. Cher, Cardinal Hugues de, 134. St. Denis-en-France, Abbey of, 21, 31, 33, 44, 45, 51, 52, =54-72=, 125, 132, 146, 147, 175, 336, 339, 415, 482, 486, 565, 581; built by Abbot Suger, 56, 57, 58, 59, 64; rebuilt by St. Louis, 65, 66; dedicated, 60, 319; its deviated axis, 68; glass of, 55, 58, 59, 60, 64, 66, 183, 184, 279; influence of, 65, 66, 74, 173, 175, 307, 321; tombs of, 66, 67, 68, 153; notable gatherings in, 56, 57, 60, 70. Ste. Baume (Var), 396. Sainte-Beuve, Ch. A., 158, 451, 453. Saintes (Charente-Inférieure), 226, 287, 340. Saintes-Chapelles, various, 52, 66, 145, 146, 153, 205, 206, 221, 341. St. Évroult (Orne), 473, 537, 542. St. Fiacre-du-Faouët (Morbihan), 560. St. Florent-lès-Saumur (Maine-et-Loire), 314, 315, 566. St. Florentin (Yonne), 239. St. Flour (Cantal), 408, 487. St. Gall, Switzerland, Abbey of, 411. St. Georges de Boscherville (Seine-Inférieure), 473, =492-494=, 532. St. Germain-en-Laye (Seine-et-Oise), 53, 66, 235. St. Germain-sur-Vienne, 314. St. Germer-en-Flay (Oise), 45, 51, 52, 53, 66. St. Gildas-de-Rhuis (Morbihan), 557. St. Gilles (Gard), 11, 24, 31, 323, 330, 388, 390, =391-396=. St. Guilhem-le-Désert (Hérault), 318, 384. St. Jean-du-Doigt (Finistère), 558. St. Jouin-de-Marne (Deux-Sèvres), 224, 321. St. Julien-du-Sault (Yonne), 98. St. Léger-lès-Troyes (Aube), 239. St. Leu d'Esserent (Oise), 45, 46, 74, 76, 113, 121, =123-125=. St. Lô (Manche), 518, 541, 554. St. Loup (Aube), 239. St. Loup-de-Naud (Seine-et-Marne), 120. St. Maixent (Deux-Sèvres), 225, 321, 415. St. Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine), 4, 562, 563. St. Maur, Congregation of, 37, 41, 418, 483, 507, 548. St. Maximin (Var), 280, 309, 330, =400=, =402=. St. Mihiel (Meuse), 281. St. Nectaire (Puy-de-Dôme), 340. St. Nicolas-du-Port (Meurthe-et-Moselle), 226, 358. St. Parre-lès-Tertres (Aube), 238. St. Père-sous-Vézelay (Yonne), 436. St. Pierre-sur-Dives (Calvados), 33, 473, 491. St. Pol-de-Léon (Finistère), Cathedral of, 557, 563, 568, =570-572=; the Kreisker Tower, 12, 557, 562. St. Ponanges (Aube), 239. St. Quentin (Aisne), 2, 115, 224, 226, 242, =282-284=. St. Riquier (Somme), 226, 411. St. Satur (Cher), 254, 566. St. Saturnin (Puy-de-Dôme), 340. St. Savin-sur-Gartemps, 320, 321, 415. St. Thégonnec (Finistère), 561. St. Vaast-lès-Mello (Oise), 45. St. Victor's Abbey, Paris, 133, 135; Adam de St. Victor, 133, 134, 468; Hugues de St. Victor, 133, 468; Richard de St. Victor, 133, 135, 468; St. Victor's Abbey at Marseilles, 387, 468. St. Wandrille (Seine-Inférieure), Abbatial ruins of, 373, 411, 415, 472, 473, 483. Salamanca, 327, 465. Salazar, Tristan de (Archbishop of Sens), 97. Sales, St. François de, 151, 259, 508. Salisbury, Cathedral of, 434, 516, 532. Salisbury, John of (Bishop of Chartres), 4, 41, 94, 116, 120, 134, 136, 170, =175=, =176=, 183, 433, 532. San Galgano (province of Siena), 465. Sanglier, Henri le, (Archbishop of Sens), 92, 132, 467. Santa-Creus (Catalonia), 464, 465. Santayana, George, 169, 170. Santiago Compostela, 185, 222, 250, 319, 340, 360, 361, 371. Saracens, 6, 124, 158, 159, 160, 184, 323, 326, 336, 338, 355, 388, 389, 390, 395, 402, 404, 405. Sarcey, Madame Yvonne, 102. Saulieu (Côte-d'Or), 410, 423, 429. Saumur (Marne-et-Loire), 286, 295, =312-316=. Scandinavia, Gothic in, 324, 412, 464, 465, 477, 479, 480. Schism of the West, Great, 222, 409, 455, 540; the Greek Schism, 14, 268, 456. Scholastics, mediæval, 8, 39, 95, 96, 104, 130, 132, 133, 136, 138, 139, 175, 209, 224, 299, 334, 446, 473, 474, 475, 476, 575. Schools, mediæval, 7, 61, 104, 133, 134, 170, 171, 172, 299, 415, 446, 474, 487, 496. Sculpture, 6, 8, 11, 35, 37, 39, 126, 167, 454, 560; XI-century, 361, 418, 423, 437, 438; XII-century, 65, 85, 120, 134, 138, 180, 181, 273, 306, 330, 339, 340, 394, 422; XIII-century, 66, 69, 101, 122, 137, 141, 142, 167, 192, 195, 196, 205, 208, 209, 217, 239, 252, 273, 278, 444; XIV-century, 166, 167, 252, 253, 59, 263, 373, 377, 387, 436, 447, 514; XV-century, 67, 167, 181, 209, 247, 263, 281, 282, 327, 406, 429, 454, 566; XVI-century, 10, 67, 180, 210, 218, 233, 255, 256, 265, 278, 280, 281, 322, 327, 342, 373, 404, 490, 515, 577; XVII-century, 210, 518, 560, 561, 567, 568. Séché, Léon, 556. Secqueville (Calvados), 491. Séez (Orne), Cathedral of, 166, 539, =542-544=. Seignelay, Guillaume de (Bishop of Paris), 32, 139, 446, 447. Semur-en-Auxois (Côte-d'Or), 413, =443=, =444=. Senlis (Oise), 14, 33, 40, 74, 77, =84-90=, 99, 425; Cathedral of, 74, 75, 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 99, 112, 124, 490, 508; its tower, 76; St. Frambourg, 88; Abbaye de la Victoire; World War devastations, 89, 90. Sens (Yonne), 91, 99, 433, 532; Cathedral of, 74, 75, 91, 92, 93, 94, 112, 153; glass of, 97, 98, 100; noted archbishops of, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96; St. Louis in, 96; St. Thomas Becket in, 91, 93, 95. Sens, Guillaume de (architect), 30, 93, 94, 532. Sévigné, Madame de, 398, 453. Seville, 185, 299. Shakespeare, 4, 5, 159, 162. Sibyls in French art, the, 98, 224, 228, 238, 239, 243, 258, 404, 448, 449. Sicily, 309, 464, 465, 479, 554, 555; Sicilian Vespers, =1280=, the, 156, 299, 427. Sidonius Apollinaris, 261, 331, 379. Siena, Cathedral of, 29, 406, 465. Sigüenza, Cathedral of, 465. Sixteenth-century religious wars, destruction by, 2, 34, 69, 107, 108, 167, 218, 249, 254, 266, 279, 290, 292, 308, 314, 319, 324, 393, 406, 408, 420, 425, 437, 446, 451, 488, 509, 520, 546, 552, 554, 556, 577. Smith, Marion Couthouy, 506. Soissons (Aisne), 77, 103, 107, 108, 112, 424; Cathedral of, 6, 12, 33, 74, 75, 77, 78, =106-114=, 122, 185, 215, 302, 547, 569, 581; St. Jean-des-Vignes, 106, 108; St. Léger, 106, 122; World War, destruction by, 107, 108, 112. Solesmes (Sarthe), 255, =278-282=, 308, 490, 494, 577; Saints of, 255, 280, 281, 282. Solignac (Haute Vienne), 291. Solomon's Judgment, 447, 515. Sorbon, Robert de, 8, 133, 134. Sorel, Agnes, 254, 255, 483. Soufflot (architect), 423, 460. Souillac (Lot), 291. Souvestre, Émile, 560. Souvigny (Allier), Abbatial and tombs of, 265, 266, 456. Spain, 3, 416, 420, 465, 563; French architectural influences in, 23, 38, 115, 185, 337, 361, 380, 385, 416, 419, 465. Spandrels, ensculptured, 444, 448, 449, 547, 555. Stephen, St., 95, 96, 141, 167, 224, 346, 347, 357, 396, 445, 449. Suger, Abbot, 5, 6, 14, 31, 34, 40, 43, 44, 45, 52, =55-65=, 66, 68, 69, 79, 84, 103, 143, 144, 175, 181, 189, 295, 298, 306, 319, 321, 339, 371, 417, 418, 467, 579. Sully, Eudes de (Bishop of Paris), 137, 138, 139, 215, 232, 299; Henri de, 139, 215, 299. Sully, Maurice de (Bishop of Paris), 33, 41, 94, 133, 136, 138, 181, 229, 405. _Summa_, the, 130, 131, 132, 334. Symbolism in mediæval art, 9, 12, 19, 36, 56, 64, 68, 69, 105, 136, 139, 195, 207, 214, 219, 253, 262, 289, 324, 371, 396, 400, 401, 404, 424, 438, 450, 514, 578, 579. T Taine, H., 53, 108, 420. Taj, the (Agra), 442. Tancreds, the, 10, 106, 323, =554=, =555=. Tapestry, mediæval, 118, 196, 309, 313, 314, 335, 427, 519, 548, 549. Taragona (Catalonia), 381. Tarentaise, Pierre de (Innocent IV), 268. Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône), 239, =396=. Templars, Order of, 12, 62, 99, 106, 246, 261, 326, 379, 466, 557. Temple, Raymond du (architect), 164, 232. Tennyson, Alfred, 433. Tenth century, horrors of the, 20, 21, 411. Thibaut IV, _le chansonnier_, 119, 157, 231, 236, =246=, 247, 299, 313, 432, 538. Thibaut V, Count of Champagne, 119, 120, 159. Thierry, A., 23, 435, 472, 480. Thomas, St., 8, 9, 220, 441. Thompson, Francis, 197. Tillières (Eure), 536, 541. Tintern Abbey (Monmouthshire), 3, 464. Toledo, 3, 264, 337. Tombs, mediæval, 11, 66, 67, 69, 244, 254, 256, 266, 308, 405, 406, 407, 408, 425, 455, 456, 504, 515, 519, 564, 567, 568. Tonnerre (Yonne), Hospital of, 295, 427, 429. Torigny, Robert de (Abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel), 499, 502, 532. Toucy, Hugues de (Archbishop of Sens), 92, 93, 94, 96. Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle), 226, 242. Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), 330, 356, 357, 359, 368, 387, 391, 407, 466, 539; Cathedral of, 330, 356, =357=, =358=; Jacobins Church, =11=, 358, 359, 372; museum of, 256, 259, 360; St. Sernin, 24, 250, 330, 336, 338, 340, 356, =359=, =360=, 361, 415. Tour, Guy de la, 267, 333, 334, 336. Touraine, 40, 212, 248, 250, 254, 256, 274, 567. Tournai (Belgium), 81, 89, 242, 305. Tournus (Saône-et-Loire), 24, 164, 287, 410, 414, 415, =457=, 458, 483. Tours (Indre-et-Loire), 173, 347, 454, 566, 568; Cathedral of, 8, 9, 125, 203, 205, 211, 212, 220, 226, 270, 315, 316, 322, 324; St. Julien, 250; St. Martin, 10, 248, 249, 250, 304; St. Symphorien, 250; sculptor, Region-of-the-Loire school, 254, 278, 281, 361, 564, 567, 568. Tours, Gregory of, 249, 250, 331, 336. Toustain, Thomas (architect), 276, 553. Towers of France, noted, 11, 78, 87, 89, 101, 140, 141, 174, 177, 179, 187, 188, 271, 276, 354, 436, 481, 484, 488, 489, 511, 517, 533, 553, 557, 572; Flamboyant towers, 217, 230, 287, 374, 492, 509, 517, 518; Romanesque towers, 49, 113, 446, 491, 557. Transept, 19, 54, 69, 108, 129, 136, 213, 215, 226, 283, 360, 532, 541, 556. Transition from Romanesque to Gothic, 16, 26, 33, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 57, 58, 75, 99, 120, 124, 262, 412, 413, 419, 432, 437, 554, 575. Tréguier (Côtes-du-Nord), Cathedral of, 557, 559, 563, =572-575=. Trent, Council of, 130, 466, 578. _Trève-de-Dieu_, 21, 411, 422. Tribune galleries, 18, 52, 82, 92, 99, 116, 125, 128, 163, 164, 166, 482, 486, 493, 532, 552, 564. Triforium, =65=, =66=, 82, 99, 116, 125, 234, 251, 276, 353, 380, 430, 431, 437, 444, 486, 547, 552, 553. Troubadours and trouvères, 245, 298, 345, 348, 357, 545. Troyes (Aube), 419, 424, 519, 538; Cathedral of, 98, 125, 203, 211, 213, 226, =230-235=, 281; glass of, 98, 115; Treaty of, 233; St. Jean, 240; St. Madeleine, =239=, 240, 244, 247; St. Martin-ès-Vignes, 241; St. Nicolas, 241; St. Nizier, 235; St. Urbain, =236-238=; churches in the environs, 238, 239, 539. Troyes, Crestien de, 245. Tunis, 71, 157, 162. Turpin, Archbishop (of Rheims), 194, 355. Tympanums, 85, 137, 141, 288, 345, 361, 423, 438, 444. U Urbain II, Pope, 22, 29, 118, 194, 266, 270, 294, 305, 337, 338, 344, 348, 352, 360, 375, 376, 388, 393, 415, 416, 417. Urbain IV, Pope, 232, 236, 238. Urbain V, Pope, 259, 384, 386, 387, 408, 409, 415, 446. V Vallery-Radot, Robert, 428. Valmont (Seine-Inférieure), ruins of, 518. Valois princes, 309, 353, 452, 453, 454. _See_ Charles V, Jean de Berry, Louis d'Anjou, Philippe-le-Hardi of Burgundy. Van Eyck, 222, 404, 426. Vauban (engineer), 423, 460, 552. Vaughan, Cardinal, 426. Vault, masonry, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 38, 43, 44, 48, 55, 58, 95, 100, 372, 413, 424, 440, 457, 575; _bombé_ vaults, 84, 95, 124, 269, 285, 286, 300, 301, 303, 309, 310, 311, 314, 316, 320, 351, 357, 381, 432; broken-rib vault, 58, 92; octopartite vault, 120; sexpartite vault, 81, 100, 127, 398, 481, 482, 486. Vauvenargues, 403. Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher), church of the Trinité, 59, 112, 113, 271, 272, 304, 305, 315, 511. Vendôme, Geoffrey of (Abbot of the Trinité), 271, 272, 337, 415. Venice, 96, 289. Verdun (Meuse), 129, 281, 526. Verlaine, Paul, 74. Verneuil (Eure), 536. Verona, 246, 338, 361, 437. Verrières (Aube), 239. Vézelay (Yonne), Abbey of the Madeleine, 10, 24, 31, 33, 121, 180, 288, 298, 319, 323, 371, 395, 401, 410, 415, 418, 419, 424, 429, =435-442=, 450; its portico, 428, 439; meeting place of crusades, 439, 440. Vienne (Isère), Cathedral of, 256, 258, 261, 417. Viffort (Aisne), 45. Vignory (Haute-Marne), 241. Villehardouin, 161, 231, 246. Villeneuve l'Archevêque (Yonne), 239. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (Gard), 405, 408. Villetertre (Oise), 45. Villon, François, 222, 565. Vincennes (Seine), 144. Viollet-le-Duc, E. _See_ Bibliography. Viterbo, 110, 465. Vitry (Ille-et-Vilaine), 559. Volpiano, William of, 4, 34, 266, 414, 422, 452, 457, 458, 473, 478, 482, 495, 502, 554. Voltaire, 36, 150, 338, 453, 530, 536. Voragine, Jacobus de, 9, 85, 97, 220, 400. W Wace, Robert, 545, 549. Wells, Cathedral of, 516. Westminster Abbey, 3, 154, 232, 293, 297, 299, 552. Weyden, Roger van der, 426, 427. William the Conqueror, 5, 10, 22, 51, 53, 101, 137, 164, 165, 274, 304, 482, 484, 485, 486, 487, 488, 494, 496, 502, 510, 511, 544, 545, 546, 549, 550, 552, 554, 580, 581. William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, 482, 495, 510. William Rufus, 271, 475. Winchester, Cathedral of, 481, 482, 487. Women in the Middle Ages, 13, 54, 72, 86, 96, 121, 122, 135, 138, 153, 154, 159, 166, 173, 174, 193, 209, 226, 232, 234, 238, 245, 253, 264, 279, 281, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 309, 315, 319, 324, 341, 344, 353, 385, 395, 396, 419, 427, 434, 440, 458, 463, 483, 484, 485, 490, 501, 508, 527-531, 536, 544, 549, 558, 567. Worcester, Cathedral of, 487. Wordsworth, 54, 65. World War, devastation by the, 76, 77, 82, 123, 144, 145, 168, 196, =197-201=, 283, 329, 375, 384, 391, 405, 520, 526, 535, 559, 580, 581. Y Yolande of Aragon, Countess d'Anjou, 191, 221, 277, 280, 309, 328. York, Cathedral of, 59, 242. Ypres, 2, 110, 202. Yves of Brittany, St., 386, 572, =573=, 574. Z Zamora, Cathedral of, 465. Zola, Émile, 249, 362. Zozimus, Pope, 399. Bibliography A Abadie, Paul, 151, 290, 292, 355. Abgrall, Abbé, 40, 556, 565, 568, 570. Adams, Henry, 165, 170, 231, 299, 477, 499. Agnel, Abbé A. d', 387. Agos, D', 354. Aigon, Abbé H., 389. Albanès, Abbé, 400, 402. Allard, Paul, 258, 331, 520. Alline et Loisel, 504. Annunzio, Gabriele d', 107, 121. Antony, C. M., 364. Arbellot, Abbé, 345. Arnaud, F., 230. Arnold, Matthew, 264, 265. Assier, A., 234. Auber, Abbé, 40, 316. Aubert, Marcel, 39, 78, 84, 126, 461. Aucouturièr, H., 266. Aufauvre, Amédée, 231. Auger, 148. Avril, Adolph d', 194. Ayroles, R. P., 521. Ayzac, Félicie d', 55. B Balzac, Honoré de, 119, 247, 249, 312. Barbat, L., 114. Barbeau, Albert, 236. Barraud, P. C., 50, 224. Barrès, Maurice, 50, 389, 398, 435. Barres, Chaillon des, 430. Barron, L., 126, 247, 256, 350. Barsaux, Chanoine, 224. Barthélemy, E. M. de, 114, 241. Bavard, Abbé, 426. Bayet, Jean, 126. Bayle, G., 406. Bazin, H., 126, 188. Bazin, J., 410. Bazin, René, 259, 302, 415, 419, 580. Beaurepaire, Ch. de, 38, 472, 484, 499, 507. Bédier, Joseph, 135, 245, 344, 435, 501. Bégule, Lucien, 39, 256, 261, 428, 461, 565. Beissier, F., 397. Belloc, Hilaire, 375, 548. Benard, Pierre, 282. Bérard, E., 90. Berger, E., 133, 154. Bernard, Abbé, 397. Berret, P., 261. Bertaud, Émile, 479, 555. Berthelé, J., 39, 404. Besnard, A., 50, 492. Besnard, Ch. H., 288, 303, 499. Beugnot, A., 152. Biais, 290. Bilson, John, 16, 30, 46, 47, 68, 276, 302, 303, 461, 476, 479, 480, 481, 484, 493, 494, 495, 496, 512, 554. Biran, Maine de, 285. Blanqueron, Edmond, 241. Boinet, Amédée, 39, 126, 281, 282. Boissonnot, Chanoine, 247. Bondot, L., 428. Bonnard, 133. Bonnet, Émile, 39, 384. Bontier, 231. Borderie, A. de la, 557, 566, 573. Born, Bertran de, 345, 348, 349. Bosseboeuf, Abbé, 40, 249, 254, 280, 285, 293. Bossuet, 121, 163, 167, 247, 452, 453. Botrel, Théodor, 201. Bouet, G., 39, 106, 484, 491, 551, 552. Bouilhet, Louis, 78. Bouillart, Jacques, 148. Bouillet, Abbé A., 145, 541. Bourassé, Abbé J. J., 39, 247, 315. Bourdaloue, 212. Bourget, Paul, 339, 531. Bourillon, F. W., 396. Bournon, F., 254. Bourrienne, V., 545. Boutarie, E., 154. Bouvier, Abbé, 39, 40, 90. Bouxin, Abbé, 40, 99. Bouzerand, 443. Branche, D., 331. Bréhier, Louis, 188, 331. Brière, Gaston, 39, 54, 188. Brin, 499. Brizeux, A., 570. Broche, Lucien, 39, 99. Broglie, Em. de, 148. Brown, Prof. Baldwin, 481. Bruel, F. L., 114. Brun, Armand de, 147. Brunetière, F., 148. Brutails, J. A., 39, 47, 288, 291, 350, 351, 355. Bulteau, Abbé, 40, 170. Bunodière, H. de la, 509. Bushnell, A. J. de H., 55, 90, 170, 234, 242, 247, 266, 302, 316, 536. C Cagnat, R., 157. Cagni et Mocquereau, 280. Cahier et Martin, P. P., 213, 219, 262. Calmette, A., 382, 410. Canéto, Abbé, 384. Calvert, 381. Caumont, Arcisse de, 38, 226, 293, 410, 472, 484, 491, 520, 531, 545, 546, 554. Cerf, Abbé, 40, 188. Chabeuf, H., 426, 452. Chaillan, Abbé, 384. Chaillot, A., 406. Chalandon, F., 479, 555. Champeaux et Gauchery, 213, 341. Chantelon, Dom, 399. Charmasse, A. de, 423. Chartraire, E., 90. Chassepied, Ch., 570. Chateaubriand, 70, 118, 410, 443, 562. Chaucer, 372, 551. Chaumont, Chanoine L., 414. Chérest, A., 435, 445. Cherge, De, 316. Cherval, 170. Chesterton, Cecil, 579, 580. Chevalier, Ed., 250. Chevalier, U., 152, 452, 521. Chigougesnel, 545. Chomton, Abbé, 40, 452. Choyer, 285. Clémat, Chanoine Joseph, 266. Clément, Pierre, 222. Cleuziou, H. de, 556. Cloquet (A.) et Cassier (J.), 254. Clouard, E., 341. Coffinet, J. B., 230. Cogny, G. de, 374. Colonne, A. de, 202. Congny, Gaston, 213, 449. Cook, 507. Cook, Sir Theodore Andreas, 213, 254, 499, 519, 534. Corberon, 448. Corbolin, 428. Cordier, Léon le, 472. Corroyer, Ed., 288, 294, 298, 359, 499. Coulanges, Fustel de, 42. Courajod, Louis, 38, 145, 247, 266, 452. Courcel, V. C. de, 230. Courteault, P., 350. Courtépée, Claude, 410, 423, 428. Cousin, Victor, 133, 211. Coutan, Dr., 38, 494, 498, 512. Cram, Ralph Adams, 91. Crawford, F. Marion, 439. Crégut, Abbé R., 341. Cros-Meyreveille, 375. Crosnier, Abbé, 39, 55, 90, 170, 435, 449. Crozes, H., 390. Cruppi, 151. Cucherat, Abbé, 421. Cunisset-Carnot, 452. D Dangibeaud, Ch., 287. Dante, 9, 133, 137, 141, 147, 148, 150, 153, 156, 245, 253, 349, 357, 363, 441, 462, 465, 474. Darcel, Alfred, 480. Daudet, Alphonse, 259, 396. Déchelette, Joseph, 423. Dehaines, Mgr., 99, 226. Delaborde, H. F., 245. Deliguières, 210. Delisle, Léopold, 378, 499, 520. Demaison, Louis, 39, 114, 188, 199, 241. Demimuid, 114. Demogeon, 202. Denais, J., 302, 311. Dénifle, H., 490, 521. Denis, Abbé, 492. Depeyre, G., 266. Desdevises du Dézert, 331, 381. Desgardin, Gustave, 224. Deshair, Léon, 453. Deshoulières, F., 266, 313. Deville, A., 507. Deville, J. A., 492. Devoncoux, Abbé, 423. Didot, A. F., 90. Didron, E. A., 39, 265, 513. Diehl, Ch., 479, 555. Dieudonné, A., 269. Digonnet, Félix, 405. Dion, A. de, 38, 114, 269, 461, 545, 551, 552. Douais, Mgr. C., 364, 365, 375. Dreux-Durandier, 316. Drouet (H.) et Calmette (A.), 410. Dubois, P., 224. Dubouchet, 499. Duchaisne, Mgr., 39, 395, 400, 401, 402, 424, 436. Duchemin, 512. Dufay, C. J., 265. Duhamel, L., 405. Dumaine, Abbé L. V., 542. Durand, E., 335. Durand, Georges, 39, 202, 203, 210. Durandus, Guillaume, 19, 69, 214, 267, 359, 387, 400, 401. E Echivard, A., 268. Édeline, Abbé, 491. Ehrle, R. P., 405. Engelhard, Ch., 531. Engerand, Louis, 476, 545. Enlart, Camille, 16, 18, 29, 30, 31, 38, 47, 49, 78, 81, 126, 201, 227, 228, 282, 287, 341, 342, 354, 435, 445, 447, 456, 461, 464, 465, 476, 479, 484, 507, 509, 514, 516, 555. Escoffier, H., 152. Esnault, G., 269. Espinay, D', 306, 312. F Fabrège, A., 384. Fage, René, 39, 345. Faillon, 396. Fallue, A., 507. Fançon, Maurice, 335. Farcy, Louis de, 39, 302, 303, 310. Farcy, Paul de, 545. Faure, H., 266. Fédié, L., 375. Fénelon, 36, 288. Fichot, Ch., 230. Fillon, Benj., 280, 316, 565. Flandin, V., 435. Fleury, Gabriel, 39, 84, 99, 119, 170, 268, 428, 551. Florival (de) et Midoux, 99. Focillon, Henri, 257. Fonteray, H. de, 423. Forel, Alexis, 288, 289, 316, 331, 343, 356, 391. Formeville, H. de, 531. Formigé, J., 165, 408. Forts, Paul des, 50. Fossa, F. de, 144. Fossey, Abbé Jules, 40, 536. Foucaud, L. de, 350, 509. Fournier, Paul, 369. Fowke, J. R., 548. Fraipont, G., 331. France, Anatole, 521. François, S., 126. Freeman, E. H., 412, 490. Froissart, 210, 327, 347, 349, 368, 408, 455. Fyot, Eugène, 452. G Galimard, J., 428. Gally, 435. Gandillon, A., 213. Gard, R. Martin du, 480. Gareau, 293. Garry, Eugène, 219. Gauchery, P., 213, 341. Gautier, Léon, 133, 135, 162, 245, 356, 500, 501, 520, 542. George, J., 291. Germain, Alphonse, 384, 426, 452. Germain, A., 384. Gerville, C. de, 546, 551. Gillet, H. L., 356. Girard, Ch., 343. Girardot, A. T., 213, 280. Glanville, L. de, 492. Gobillot, Abbé Ph., 331. Godart-Faultrier, 302, 312. Gomart, Ch., 282. Gonse, Louis, 16, 39, 67, 247, 282, 332, 342, 345, 435, 452, 498, 515, 537. Goodyear, Prof. W. H., 68, 276. Gosset, Alphonse, 114, 188. Gourmont, Remy de, 135. Gout, Paul, 499, 502. Graillot, H., 356, 375. Grandmaison, Ch. de, 38, 247, 280. Gratry, P., 79. Graves, 224. Green, Mrs. J. R., 269, 472. Grignon, Louis, 114. Guépin, Dom, 279. Guéranger, Dom Prosper, 280, 281, 321. Guérard, R. Louis, 405. Guerlin, H., 242, 249. Guigue, C., 256, 266. Guilhermy, F. de, 126, 565. Guirard, Jean, 364, 365, 384, 405. Guizot, 36, 103, 296, 297, 536. H Hallays, André, 84, 405. Halphen, L., 302. Hanoteau, Gabriel, 400, 503, 521. Hardy (G.) et Gandillon (A.), 213. Hardy, Abbé V., 535. Haskins, Ch. H., 477. Hauréau, B., 133. Havard, H., 39, 99, 144, 148, 149, 219, 250, 256, 310, 389, 423, 435, 452, 507, 509. Healy, 411. Heaton, Clement, 458. Hefele, 257. Hello, Ernest, 551. Hennezel, H. d', 256. Henry, Abbé V. B., 430. _Histoire Littéraire de la France_, 41, 55, 84, 90, 99, 133, 150, 170, 258, 269, 293, 304, 343, 378, 391, 414, 430, 473, 494, 499, 531, 545. Hubidos, H., 391. Hucher, E., 268, 269. Huillier, L., 433. Humbert, A., 452. Hurault, E., 242. Hutton, W. H., 162. Huysmans, J. K., 100, 128, 144, 170, 280, 284, 321, 415, 460. Hymans, H., 203, 242. J Jeannin, Président, 423, 425. Joanne, 39. Johnson, Lionel, 165. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 294, 431. Join-Lambert, O., 165. Joinville, Jean de, 41, 70, 111, 119, 120, 138, 140, 152-162, 190, 206, 219, 244, 245, 246, 312, 342, 399, 553. Jossier, Abbé, 236, 237. Joubert, J., 290. Jouin, H., 302, 310. Jourdain et Duval, 202. Jourdanne, Gaston, 375. Jubainville, d'Arbois de, 231, 461. Juiffrey, Jules, 312, 426. Julleville, Petit de, 135, 245, 521. Jullian, C., 350. K Kersers, A. Buhot de, 38, 213. Kleinclausz, A., 410, 426, 452. Koechlin, Raymond, 39, 231, 361, 452. L Labande, L. H., 39, 391, 392, 397, 403, 405. Lacordaire, J. B. H. D., 128, 450, 462. La Croix, P. de, 40, 325. Lafenestre, George, 484. Laferrière (J.) et Musset (G.), 287. Lafond, Jean, 507. Lahondès, Jules de, 39, 356, 360, 375, 381. Lahore, Abbé, 236. La Martillière, 272. Lamartine, Alphonse de, 445. Lambin, Émile, 39, 84, 99, 106, 123, 126, 165, 188, 202, 445, 507, 517, 531. Landrieux, Mgr., 188, 199. Laran, Jean, 370. Largent, R. P., 316. Lassus, J. B. A., 126, 266, 282, 460. Lasteyrie, Charles de, 345. Lasteyrie, Comte Robert de, 16, 17, 30, 38, 39, 49, 68, 114, 170, 228, 229, 250, 287, 331, 356, 359, 391, 394, 476, 484. Lasteyrie, Ferdinand de, 55. Latouche, Robert, 269. Lauer, Philippe, 153. Laurière, J. de, 354. La Tremblay, Dom Coutil de la, 279, 281. Lavalley, G., 491. Lavedan, P., 172, 345. La Villemarqué, Hersant de, 557. Lavisse, Ernest, 76. Lebeuf, Abbé, 445. Le Beuf, D., 498. Leblant, E., 397. Le Braz, Anatole, 556, 568 Lecestre, 414. Lecocq, 282. Le Conte, R., 554. Lecureur, L. Th., 570. Ledeuil, 443. Ledru, Abbé A., 40, 268. Lefèvre, L. E., 435. Lefèvre-Pontalis, Eugène, 16, 30, 31, 37, 38, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 78, 84, 99, 102, 106, 112, 121, 123, 126, 163, 170, 211, 237, 241, 268, 285, 291, 305, 323, 325, 340, 379, 421, 423, 443, 452, 479, 480, 482, 490, 491, 551, 553, 554, 557. Leger, L., 203. Legris, Abbé A., 498. Leliène, Abbé, 545. Lelong, E., 302. Lemire, Ch., 521. Lenoir, A., 148. Lentheric, Ch., 378, 389. Leo XIII, 130, 385, 422, 521. Leport, A., 494. Leroux, A., 345. Leseur, F., 315. Lestrade, Abbé, 356. Levé, A., 548, 549. Levillain, L., 55. Lhuillier, Victor, 50. Liard, L., 133. Lignum, Lambin de, 279, 565. Lincy, Le Roux de, 419, 494, 557. Locquin, J., 266, 449. Loisel, Abbé, 40, 504. Lorière, Éd. de, 314. Loriquet, Ch., 188. Lorme, A. de, 556. Lot, F., 480. Loth, Abbé Julien, 480, 507. Loti, Pierre, 199, 200, 561. Lotte, Joseph, 499, 536. Loutil, Abbé, 129. Louvière, J. de, 397. Lowell, James Russell, 100, 170. Luce, Siméon, 490, 499, 521, 526, 557. Luchaire, A., 162, 365. Luzel, F. M., 557. Luzuy, Abbé, 341. M Mabillon, Dom, 149, 418, 461. Mâcon, E., 144. Magne, Lucien, 293, 326. Maistre, Joseph de, 222, 411. Maître, Léon, 55, 257. Mâle, Émile, 35, 39, 55, 85, 126, 144, 180, 182, 183, 207, 256, 262, 335, 341, 342, 343, 345, 347, 361, 424, 507, 541, 565, 570, 578. Maleissye, C. de, 521. Malifaud, G., 293. Mallay, 343. Mandet, 343. Manteyer, Georges, 395, 397. Mantz, Paul, 341, 343. Marchand et Bourassé, 247. Marche, Lecoy de la, 55, 133, 152, 302. Marignan, A., 254, 356, 391. Maritain, Jacques, 224. Marlavagne, Bion de, 374. Marsaux, Chanoine, 242. Martin, Alexis, 126. Martin, H., 250, 411, 490. Martin, 39, 356, 397. Maurin, Abbé E. F., 40, 403. Mauvinière, H. de la, 290, 316. Méloizes, Vicomte des, 213. Mély, F. de, 145, 170. Merimée, Prosper, 38, 285, 312, 321, 331, 341, 343, 370, 373, 383, 395. Merlet, Lucien, 170. Merlet, René, 39, 170, 171. Meunier, Paul, 449. Meyer, Alfred, 345. Mézerai, 298, 519, 520. Michel, André, 39, 228, 292, 345, 426, 431, 452, 507, 509, 516, 541. Michel, Robert André, 405, 408. Michel-Danzac, R., 288. Migne, 414. Mignon, A., 133. Mistral, Frédéric, 356, 357, 384, 397, 400, 466, 504, 581. Mocquereau, Dom, 280. Molière, 36, 370. Molinier, A., 152, 356, 362, 364. Monod, Gabriel, 477, 520. Monstrelet, 489. Montaiglon, A. de, 67, 90, 563. Montaigne, 350, 451. Montalembert, Ch. de, 237, 256, 280, 411, 414, 476. Montault, Mgr. Barbier de, 40, 224, 316. Montegut, 423. Montfort, J., 565. Moore, Charles Herbert, 16, 22, 29. Morand, 145. Moreau-Nélaton, E., 106, 188. Morel-Payen, 119, 230. Mortet, Victor, 39, 126, 378. Mortier, 364. Mottay, Gautier du, 556. Moulton, E., 445. Müller, Abbé Eugène, 40, 84, 123. Müntz, Eugène, 39, 312, 384, 387, 405. Mure, De la, 343. Musset, Alfred de, 16. Musset (G.) et Laferrière (J.), 287. Musset, Abbé E., 242. Mylne, Rev. R. S., 545. N Narbonne, L., 317, 378. Neale, Rev. John Mason, 19, 214, 317, 401, 414, 421, 451. Newman, Cardinal, 123. Nicolai, N. de, 421. Nicquet, Honorat, 293. Nodet, V., 265. Norgate, Kate, 269, 302, 433, 472. Normand, Ch., 149. Noyes, Alfred, 282. O Oliphant, Mrs., 521. Orderieus Vitalis, 472, 492, 537. O'Reilly, E., 72, 194, 503, 506, 521, 523, 525, 527, 528. O'Reilly, P. J., 350. Orléans, Charles d', 67, 143, 315, 497, 516, 517, 527, 529, 534, 565. Ouin-Lacroix, Abbé, 517. Ozanam, Frédéric, 135, 259, 268, 508. P Pacary, P., 536. Palustre, Bernard, 293, 452. Palustre, Léon, 39, 67, 302, 342, 405, 515, 519, 541, 556, 563. Paris, Gaston, 135, 152, 242, 245, 565. Pascal, 331, 332. Pasquier, Étienne, 521. Pasteur, Louis, 428. Paté, L., 423. Pater, Walter, 170, 432, 578. Pavie, Victor, 293. Pécout, Abbé, 288. Péguy, Ch., 72, 73, 168, 179, 197, 536, 545. Peigné-Delacour, 80. Pélissier, L. G., 400. Penjon, A., 405, 414. Pépin, J., 492. Perier, Arsène, 426. Perkins, Rev. T., 202, 507. Perrault-Dabot, A., 410. Petit, A., 345. Petit, Ernest, 410, 428, 452. Petit-Dutaillis, 247, 452. Peyre, Roger, 361, 397. Peyron, P., 569. Philippe, André, 417, 445, 461. Pigéon, Abbé E. A., 40, 551, 552. Pignot, H., 114. Pihan, Abbé L., 50, 224. Pillion, Louise, 188, 224, 445, 507. Pinier, Chanoine, 305. Pissier, Abbé, 436. Plancher, Dom, 410. Plat, Abbé, 272. Poli, Vicomte Oscar de, 499. Pommeraye, Dom, 509. Poquet, Abbé, 106, 107. Porée, Chanoine, 40, 472, 473, 496, 513, 536. Porée, Charles, 39, 90, 435, 445, 446, 452, 460. Port, Célestin, 280, 285, 302, 312. Porter, Arthur Kingsley, 16, 18, 28, 29, 44, 46, 69, 183, 225, 228, 254, 277, 361, 465, 476, 478, 479, 493, 517. Pottier, Abbé, 361. Poulaine, F., 521. Poussin, Abbé, 114. Pradel, F., 378. Prentout, Henri, 267, 472, 477, 484, 545. Prioux, S., 121. Psiehari, Ernest, 168, 572, 574. Purchon, W. S., 410. Q Quantin, Max, 443, 448. Queyron, 126. Quicherat, Jules, 38, 99, 148, 152, 282, 509, 521. Quirielle, R. de, 266. R Racine, 36, 242. Ramée, D., 78. Ranquet, H. du, 39, 331, 340. Rashdall, H., 133. Raynouard, 316. Reau, L., 203. Rebatu, 397. Reclus, O., 498. Régnier, Louis, 16, 39, 47, 544. Rémusat, Ch. de, 419, 473. Renan, Ernest, 27, 258, 462, 572, 574. Renaud, Edmond, 517. Requin, Abbé, 266. Revoil, 38, 356, 397. Rey, E., 289. Reymond, Marcel, 261, 343. Rhein, André, 39, 291, 315, 316, 554, 563. Riat, G., 126. Richard, Alfred, 316. Rigault, G., 219, 234. Rivières, B. Ed., 370. Rivoira, G. T., 28, 30, 414, 428, 452, 476, 496. Robertson, J. C., 433. Robida, A., 557. Robuchon, J., 316. Rochias, Abbé G., 340. Rodière et Guyencourt, 202. Rodin, Auguste, 114, 172, 189, 196, 215, 250, 272, 278, 390, 472, 575. Roschach, 356. Rossi, J. B. de, 397. Rostan, L., 400. Rostand, Edmond, 391, 559. Rousse, Joseph, 563. Roux, J. Ch., 261, 288, 389, 391, 397. Royer, L., 399. Rule, Martin, 373. Rupin, Ernest, 39, 289, 345, 361. Ruprich-Robert, V., 38, 472, 476, 484, 531, 542, 544. Ruskin, John, 1, 3, 15, 208, 209, 556. S Sainsaulieu, Max, 188. Sainte-Beuve, Ch. A., 158, 451, 453. Saint-Germain, S. de, 50. Saint-Paul, Anthyme, 16, 31, 32, 38, 39, 47, 49, 53, 54, 67, 68, 84, 126, 188, 227, 228, 276, 285, 288, 345, 354, 356, 481, 490, 516, 539. Saladin, H., 157. Salembier, 405. Sanoner, G., 142, 435. Santayana, George, 169, 170. Sarcey, Mme. Yvonne, 102. Sarrazin, A., 521, 531. Saunier, Ch., 350. Sauvage, Abbé, 480, 494. Sauvageot, 213. Saveron, 331. Savory, Isabelle, 382. Schmidt, Ch. E., 379. Séché, Léon, 556. Segange, L. du Broc du, 266. Sepet, Marius, 61, 447, 521. Serbat, Louis, 39, 254, 291, 345, 378, 417, 449, 531. Sertillanges, R. P., 152. Sery, Abbé, 449. Shakespeare, 54, 159, 162. Sharp, 291. Sicotière, De la, 542. Simpson, F. M., 16, 517. Smith, Marion Couthouy, 506. Soleil, Félix, 565. Sommerard, E. du, 149. Sorel, Albert, 472. Souvestre, Émile, 560. Spiers, R. Phené, 288, 291. Stein, Henri, 39, 66, 126, 145, 165, 331. Steyert, André, 256. Suppligeon, 315. T Taine, Henri, 53, 108, 420. Tarbé, P., 245. Tardieu, Ambrose, 331. Taylor, I., 165. Taylor et Nodier, 202, 331, 370, 410, 443, 472, 556. Tennyson, Alfred, 433. Thierry, A., 23, 435, 472, 480. Thiollier, Noël et Félix, 39, 342, 344. Thomas, Chanoine, 452. Thompson, Francis, 197. Tillemont, Le Nain de, 152. Tillet, Jules, 445, 446. Topin, Marius, 389. Tougard, Abbé A., 492. Tournouër, H., 542. Tranchant, Ch., 321. Trichaud, J. M., 399. Triger, Robert, 39, 268. Troche, 145. Truchis, Vicomte Pierre de, 423, 428. U Urseau, Chanoine, 293, 302. V Vacandard, E., 364, 419, 461. Vachon, Marius, 90. Vallery-Radot, Jean, 428, 545. Vallery-Radot, Robert, 426, 428. Valois, Noël, 133. Vasselot, J. M. de, 39, 231, 361. Vasseur, Ch., 531. Vaudin-Bataille, E., 90. Verlaine, Paul, 74. Verlaque, 405. Verneilh, Félix de, 38, 43, 55, 288. Viatte, J., 147. Vic et Vaissette, 356, 389. Vidal, Pierre, 382. Villat, Louis, 343. Ville, Cirot de la, 350. Villefosse, Héron de, 190. Villehardouin, 161, 231, 246. Villetard, Abbé, 428. Villon, François, 222, 565. Vimont, E., 331. Viollet-le-Duc, E., 32, 35, 38, 50, 90, 100, 123, 126, 128, 139, 162, 236, 291, 333, 346, 352, 363, 378, 389, 440, 441, 445, 446, 450, 460, 498, 534, 552. Virey, Jean, 39, 414. Viriville, Vallet de, 222, 521. Vitet, Victor, 78. Vitry, Paul, 39, 54, 188, 231, 255, 265, 279, 280, 342, 361, 423, 452, 507, 515, 563, 565. Vöge, Wilhelm, 394. Vögué, Melchior de, 37. Voltaire, 36, 150, 338, 453, 530, 536. Voragine, Jacques de, 9, 85, 97, 220, 400. W Waern, C., 555. Wailly, Natalis de, 152, 245. Wallon, H., 152, 521. Westlake, M. H. J., 536. Wismes, De, 269, 302. Woillez, Eugène, 31, 38, 50, 224. Wordsworth, 54, 65. THE END * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] Ruskin, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_. [2] Ruskin, _Sesame and Lilies_. [3] Louis Gonse, _L'art gothique_ (Paris, Quantin, 1891); Camille Enlart, _Manuel d'archéologie française_ (Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1902), 2 vols., 8vo; _ibid._, _Monuments religieux de l'architecture romane et de la transition dans la région picarde_ (Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1895), folio; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _L'architecture religieuse dans l'ancien diocèse de Soissons au XIe et au XIIe siècle_ (Paris, Plon, 1894-97), 2 vols., folio; Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture, Its Origins and Development_ (New York and London, 1909), 2 vols.; C. H. Moore, _Development and Character of Gothic Architecture_ (New York, Macmillan, 1904); Anthyme Saint-Paul, "La transition," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1895-96, vols. 44, 45, and 1912-13, pp. 206, 263; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieux en France à l'époque romane_ (Paris, 1912), chap. x; _ibid._, in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1902, vol. 45, p. 213, his answer to Mr. Bilson, and Mr. Bilson's reply; Louis Régnier, "Les origines de l'architecture gothique," in _Mém. de la Soc. hist. et archéol. de Pontoise_, vol. 16; John Bilson, "The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 3d series, 1898-99, vol. 6, pp. 289, 322, 345; p. 259 (answer to M. de Lasteyrie); vol. 9, p. 350; Mr. Bilson's papers were given in part in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1901, vol. 44, pp. 369, 462; F. M. Simpson, _A History of Architectural Development_ (London, 1909). [4] "Gothic architecture did not arise from a reaction against the principles of Romanesque: on the contrary, it is the natural development of those principles, the logical consequence of the germ idea of the Romanesque builders, which was to protect the naves of their churches by vaults of stone."--R. DE LASTEYRIE. [5] Any raised balcony, or gallery, in a church is called a tribune. The term will be used here mainly for the deep gallery over side aisles. The making of tribunes was brought about by the custom, in early Christendom, of separating the ages and sexes; in primitive days the kiss of peace used to be given among the congregation. [6] Transept, or across inclosure, from _trans_, across, and _sepire_, to inclose. [7] Guillaume Durandus, _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, translated as _The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments_ by Neale and Webb of the Camden Society (Leeds, T. W. Green, 1843). [8] The barrel vault (a half cylinder) was known to the Egyptians and Assyrians. Rome used it extensively, also the groin vault (made of two intersecting half cylinders). [9] "There are few things more interesting, more instructive, or more beautiful in human history than the spectacle of those early cowled builders struggling against all difficulties and disadvantages, and laying the foundations of a new art which was, in the stronger hands of their lay successors, to culminate in the marvels of Chartres and Amiens."--CHARLES HERBERT MOORE, _Development and Character of Gothic Architecture_ (New York, Macmillan, 1904). [10] Let us run briefly over the French Romanesque schools to gain an idea of the monk builder's activities. _Normandy_ displayed a powerful regional genius, and carried through her Romanesque churches with native thoroughness. Her school was formulated early. By 1040 Jumièges abbey church was begun, and within thirty years the two abbeys of Caen were building. Norman Romanesque used the alternate system of piers, a central lantern tower, cubic capitals, and a geometric sculpture. Their architects were inclined to be overcautious; up to the advent of Gothic they often covered the middle nave with a timber roof, though they vaulted the side aisles with stone. _Burgundy's_ Romanesque school was bolder. Groin and barrel vaultings covered side aisles and central vessel; and the transverse arches which braced the vaulting were often pointed, since it was found that such an arch exerted less side thrust. Some of Burgundy's monastic churches were as lofty and spacious as the coming Gothic cathedrals. However, to obtain proper lighting by clearstory windows she sacrificed stability, and years later the Gothic builders had to add flying buttresses to prevent the collapse of the Romanesque churches. In this region where Gallo-Roman art had flourished, channeled pilasters were used. As was to be expected of the province where Cluny's arts and crafts were centered, Burgundy was a leader in monumental sculpture, and such portals as Avallon, Autun, and Vézelay attest her skill. _Auvergne_ produced a distinctive Romanesque school. Her art sprang direct from the ancient Roman traditions in the province. More cautious than her neighbor Burgundy, she soon gave up trying to light her upper nave by clearstory windows, but obtained light indirectly from side aisles and from a central tower. A precocious use of the ambulatory and of apse chapels appeared in the region. The two most striking features of her churches were the octagonal central tower set on a barlong base, and the apse whose exterior walls were decorated by the volcanic polychrome stones of the district. _Poitou's_ Romanesque school also developed early, and it, too, sacrificed spaciousness to solidity. The side aisles were made of almost equal height as the central vessel, and one roof covered all. The church interiors were often somber and cramped. The apse exterior was ornamented, and the boast of the region is its richly sculptured façades of which that of Notre-Dame-la-Grande at Poitiers is one of the best examples. _Languedoc_ built Romanesque churches of the first rank, such as St. Sernin at Toulouse, but the school had no definite uniformity. Sometimes it combined with the Romanesque of Poitou, sometimes with that of Auvergne, or of Burgundy. Because of Cluny affiliations, the Midi school was strong in sculpture--witness Beaulieu, Cahors, Moissac, and Toulouse. _Provence_ Romanesque covered a more limited area. Usually the churches were aisleless, with a simple apse. A flat stone roof was laid directly on the barrel vaulting, which had pointed transverse ribs like those of Burgundy. Provence also used the fluted pilasters of antiquity. The many remains of Gallo-Roman sculpture in the region served as models for the notable imaged portals at St. Gilles and Arles. _The Franco-Picard_ school had scarcely developed when it was supplanted by the nascent Gothic art. Besides these regional schools, two unique experiments in vaulting were essayed, though neither spread far afield. At Tournus, in the abbey church of St. Philibert was built a series of barrel vaults (carried on lintels) placed side by side transversely over the central vessel. And in Aquitaine, in the region of Périgueux and Angoulême, spreading in a line, north and south, arose a number of churches, each bay of which was covered by a cupola. Both these experiments were but partial solutions. While mediæval archæology was obscure, the pointed arch was looked on as the _sine qua non_ of Gothic, and it was puzzling to find it in certain Romanesque churches, like those in Burgundy and Provence. The pointed arch was in use in Persia, in the VI century, and the Arabs early brought the form to Egypt, Sicily, and Spain. From the XI century it had appeared sporadically in Christian Europe. Such arches were not the first step in a new architecture, but were used either as a decorative feature or as an expedient to lessen the side thrust of a vault. From outside of France two schools of Romanesque art, the Lombard and the Rhenish, exerted considerable influences on their neighbor, but the forces paramount in each of the local French schools were the pre-Lombardic pre-Rhenish inheritances from Rome, blended with indigenous traditions. [11] Rome had used some brick lines under the surface of certain of her groin vaults. They performed no separate function, but were embedded in the vaults' concrete. The true Gothic vault has the ribs independent of the infilling. In their elasticity is their strength. [12] G. T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_ (London, Heinemann, 1910). Translated from _Le origini dell' architettura lombarda_ (Milano, 1908); Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Lombard Architecture_ (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1917), 3 vols. and Atlas; _ibid._, _The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults_ (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1911). [13] E. Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle_ (Paris, 1875), 11 vols.; Anthyme Saint-Paul, _Viollet-le-Duc et son système archéologique_ (Tours, 1881). The masterly technical knowledge of M. Viollet-le-Duc did much to remove the stigma of caprice and extravagance which the neo-classic age had fixed on Gothic art. It is a pity that the pioneer who struck good blows for the rehabilitation of Gothic should have jeopardized the permanence of his work by giving free rein to his personal prejudices. [14] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Le plan d'une monographie _d'église et le vocabulaire archéologique_," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1910, p. 379. He has written on the same subject in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, p. 453, and 1907, vol. 71, pp. 136, 351, 535. [15] Jules Quicherat, "La croisée d'ogives et son origine," in _Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire_ (1850), vol. 2, p. 497. [16] Camille Enlart, _Origines françaises de l'architecture gothique en Italie_ (Paris, 1893); _ibid., Les origines de l'architecture gothique en Espagne et en Portugal_ (Paris, 1894); _ibid., Notes archéologiques sur les abbayes cisterciennes de Scandinavie_ (Paris, 1894); _ibid., Villard de Honnecourt et les Cisterciens_ (Paris, 1895); _ibid., L'art gothique et de la Renaissance en Chypre_ (Paris, Leroux, 1899), 2 vols.; Émile Bertaud, _L'art dans l'Italie méridionale_ (Paris, Fontemoing, 1904). [17] Other publications of value to the student are the _Revue de l'art chrétien_, _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, _Moyen-Âge_, _l'Archéologie_, _Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes_, _Revue archéologique_, and the Didron's _Annales archéologique_. There are H. Havard's _La France artistique et monumental_, Viollet-le-Duc's _Dictionnaire de l'architecture française_, Joanne's _Dictionnaire de la France_. The regional and local monographs will be given here with each school of Gothic and each cathedral as it is described. [18] André Michel (Publiée sous la direction de), _Histoire de l'art depuis les premiers temps chrétiens_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1906), 10 vols. [19] Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1908), 4to; _ibid., L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1910), 4to. [20] "Il en est parmi nous qui préfèrent la victoire de leur parti à la victoire de la patrie. Écrire l'histoire de France était une façon de travailler pour un parti et de combattre un adversaire. Pour beaucoup de Français être patriote, c'est être ennemi de l'ancienne France. Cette sorte de patriotisme au lieu de nous unier contre l'étranger nous pousse tout droit à la guerre civile."--FUSTEL DE COULANGES. [21] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 39, on Bury (Oise), and p. 43, on Cambronne (Oise). [22] Arthur Kingsley Porter, _The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults_ (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1911). [23] In each vault section of the ambulatory of St. Maclou, Pontoise, was inserted a fifth rib, which sprang from the keystone to the middle of each apse chapel's rear wall, and which consolidated both chapel and procession path. The diagonals do not curve, as do those of Morienval. St. Maclou was entirely finished in the XII century, but it was reconstructed radically in the XV century: the present façade is 1450-70. Again in the XVI century the church was partly rebuilt, so that the double-aisled nave of to-day appears a beautiful example of Renaissance art. It was at Pontoise that St. Louis, in 1244, took the vow to go crusading. (See, Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Monographie de l'église St. Maclou de Pontoise_.) [24] Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture_ (New York and London, 1909). In vol. 2, pp. 193-251, is a full list of monuments of the transition. [25] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 154, on Morienval; _ibid._, 1908, vol. 2, pp. 128, 476, on Morienval, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, Brutails, and John Bilson; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _L'architecture religieuse dans l'ancien diocèse de Soissons au XIe et au XIIe siècle_ (Paris, Plon, 1894-97), 2 vols., folio. Also, his discussion on the vaults of Morienval in _Bulletin Monumental_, vol. 71, pp. 160, 335; 1908, vol. 72, p. 477; and in _Correspondance historique et archéologique_, 1897, pp. 193, 197; Anthyme Saint-Paul, "La transition," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1895, p. 13. Also, his studies of Morienval in _Mémoires de la Soc. archéol. de Pontoise_ ..., 1894, vol. 16; _Mémoires du Comité archéol. de Senlis_, 1892, vol. 7; _Correspondance historique et archéologique_, 1897, pp. 129, 161; John Bilson, on Morienval, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1908, vol. 72, p. 498; and _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905; L. Régnier, in _Mémoires de la Soc. archéol. de Pontoise_ ..., 1895, p. 124. [26] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, "St. Étienne, at Beauvais," pp. 15, 530; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire_, vol. 3, pp. 254, 263; vol. 4, p. 289; vol. 7, p. 133; Stanislas de Saint-Germain, _Notice historique et descriptive de l'église St. Étienne de Beauvais_; Victor Lhuillier, _St. Étienne de Beauvais_; P. C. Barraud, "Les vitraux de St. Étienne de Beauvais," in _Soc. Académique d'archéologie, department de l'Oise_, vol. 2, p. 507; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 81, "St. Germer," L. Régnier; and p. 406, "St. Germer," A. Besnard; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "L'église de St. Germer," in _l'Annuaire Normand_, 1903, p. 134; and _Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, 1885 and 1889; also _Bulletin Monumental_, 1886; A. Besnard, _L'église de St. Germer de Fly_ (Oise), (Paris, E. Lechavalier, 1913); Paul des Forts, "Une excursion en Beauvaisis," in _Bulletin de la Société d'émulation d'Abbeville_, 1903; Eugène Woillez, _Archéologie des monuments religieux de l'ancien Beauvoisis_. [27] Maurice Barrès, _La grande pitié des églises de France_ (Paris, Émile-Paul, frères, 1914). [28] Anthyme Saint-Paul, "Poissy et Morienval," in _Mémoires de la Société archéol. de Pontoise et du Vexin_, 1894, vol. 16; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _L'Architecture religieuse dans l'ancien diocèse de Soissons au XIe et au XIIe siècle_ (Paris, Plon, 1894), 2 vols., folio; F. de Verneilh, _Le premier des monuments gothic_ (Paris, 1864). [29] Some naïve XVI-century lines are under the window of St. Louis' chapel: "Saint Louis fut un enfant de Poissy, Et baptisé en la présente église; Les fonts en sont gardés encore ici, Et honorés comme rélique exquise." [30] "King John," Act II. [31] Vitry et Brière, _L'église abbatiale de St. Denis et ses tombeaux_ (Paris, Longuet, 1908); _ibid., Documents de sculpture française_ (Paris, 1913); Anthyme Saint-Paul. "Suger. L'église de St. Denis, et St. Bernard," _Mémoire lu à la_ Sorbonne, inséré au _Bulletin archéologique_, et tiré à part, 1890; F. de Verneilh, _Le premier des monuments gothiques_ (Paris, 1864); Abbé Crosnier, "Vitrail de l'abbaye de St. Denis expliqué," in _Revue archéologique_, 1847, vol. 7, p. 377; Félicie d'Ayzac, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint Denis-en-France_ (Paris, 1861), 2 vols.; Ferdinand de Lasteyrie, _Histoire de la peinture sur verre_ (Paris, Didot, 1852), 2 vols.; Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan, 1914); Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1910); _ibid._, "La part de Suger dans la création de l'iconographie," in _Revue de l'art ancien et moderne_, 1914; L. Levillain, "L'église carolingienne de St. Denis," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1907, vol. 71, p. 211; L. Levillain et L. Maitre, "Crypt de St. Denis," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1903, p. 136; Suger, _OEuvres complètes_, éd. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, Renouard, 1867); _Histoire littéraire de la France_. (Begun by the XVII-century Benedictines and continued by the Institute of France.) Vol. 12, p. 361, on Suger, published in 1764. [32] Marius Sepet, _Le Drapeau de la France_. [33] Henri Stein, _Les architectes des cathédrales gothiques_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); ibid., "Pierre de Montereau," in _Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de France_, 1900, vol. 61. [34] A. de Montaiglon, "La famille des Juste en France," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1876, vol. 42, pp. 76, 768. Details of the tombs of St. Denis are to be found in Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_ (1888); Gonse, _La Sculpture française depuis le XIVe siècle_ (1895); Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française_ (1901); and in writings by A. Saint-Paul and Louis Courajod. [35] R. de Lasteyrie, "La déviation de l'axe des églises est-elle symbolique?" in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1905, vol. 69, p. 422, also published separately; A. Saint-Paul, "Les irrégularités de plan des églises," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, p. 129; John Bilson, "Deviation of Axis in Medieval Churches," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, December 25, 1905; W. H. Goodyear, "Architectural Refinements in French Cathedrals," in _Architectural Record_, vols. 16, 17, 1904-05, and _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 3d series, 1907, vol. 15, p. 17. [36] During three days in August, 1793, and again in October of the same year, the tombs at St. Denis were violated. Robespierre stood long studying the chivalrous head of Henry IV, then plucked some hairs from the king's white beard and put them in his portfolio; Henry IV had abjured Calvinism in this very church of St. Denis in 1593. The corpse of Louis XIV presented an air of serene majesty. When the coffin of Louis XV was opened the air was infected insupportably. On that same day in October, 1793, Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold. Her remains and those of Louis XVI are to-day laid in the inner core of St. Denis' crypt. [37] E. O'Reilly, _Les deux procès de condamnation_ ... _de Jeanne d'Arc_, vol. 2, p. 134, the eighth interrogation, March 17, 1431 (Paris, Plon, 1868), 2 vols. [38] Charles Péguy, _OEuvres de_, "La tapisserie de Sainte-Geneviève et de Jeanne d'Arc," vol. 6 (Paris, édition de la Nouvelle Revue française, 1916-18). [39] The following is a free rendering of Péguy's verses: Since God but acts for pity of us here, So Geneviève must see her France in shreds, And Paris, her own godchild, swept by flames, And ravaged by the most sinister hordes. And hearts devoured by blackest base discords, And even in their graves the dead pursued, On gibbets many an innocent hung high With tongue protruding, pecked by raven birds. France all despair. Then saw she come the Sign, A greater marvel never God had willed In His Serenity and Grace and Force, After nine hundred-twenty vigil years Geneviève saw approach her ancient city Her of Lorraine, emblem of God's pure pity-- Jeanne the Maid!-- Guarding her heart intact in dire adversity, Masking beneath her visor her efficacity, Living in deep mystery with sweet sagacity, Dying in drear martyrdom with brave vivacity Sweeping all an army to the feet of Prayer. [40] Paul Verlaine, _Choix de Poésies_ (Paris, Charpentier, 1912). [41] "The privileged land where the Seine, the Oise, and the Marne approach their waters gave France its laws and political unity, its literary language with its incomparable clarity, and its Gothic art."--ERNEST LAVISSE, _Histoire de France_. [42] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 131, "Compiègne." [43] The people of the Valois country cried "Noël!" as Jeanne passed. And as she rode between the great Dunois and the archbishop of Rheims she exclaimed, with emotion: "Here is a good people! Happy would I be, when I come to die, to be laid here to rest." "Know you when you will die, Jeanne?" said the archbishop. "I know not. I am in the hands of God," she made answer. "I would it pleased God, my creator, that I could go back now to serve under my father and my mother, and to keep their sheep with my brothers, who would be right glad to see me home."--From the testimony of the Comte de Dunois, in 1455, Jeanne's companion-in-arms in 1429. [44] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 170; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Histoire de la cathédrale de Noyon_, (1901); Vitet et Ramée, _Monographie de l'église Notre Dame de Noyon_ (Paris, 1845), 2 vols., 4to and folio; _Brière, Précis descriptive et historique de la cathédrale de Noyon_ (1899); Camille Enlart, _Hôtels de Villes et beffrois du nord de la France_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); Marcel Aubert, _Noyon et ses environs_ (Paris, Longuet, 1919). [45] Noyon was made a bishopric in the VI century, when St. Médard translated the see from St. Quentin, before the advance of the Huns and the Vandals. St. Médard gave the veil to Queen Radegund in the Merovingian cathedral of Noyon. Two Carolingian cathedrals stood in succession on the site: in the first, Charlemagne was consecrated king, 768, Noyon being his residence before Aix-la-Chapelle; in the second church, which rose after a Norman sacking, Hugues Capet was elected king shortly before 1000--the first monarch of the House of Capet, which was to rule over France during seven hundred years. Since the Revolution the sees of Noyon, Senlis, and Laon have been suppressed. [46] The abbey church of Ourscamp is a ruin, but with the choir and ambulatory of the end of the XIII century partly standing. Where once were the piers of the nave have been planted two rows of poplars. Like Longpont and Royaumont, it was a Cistercian church that paid no heed to St. Bernard's strictures on lavish architecture. The former infirmary of the monastery, now used as a factory, is one of the most graceful civic halls of the age (c. 1240); Peigné-Delacour, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Notre Dame d'Ourscamp_ (1876), in 4to; _Congrés Archéologique_, 1905, p. 165, on Ourscamp. [47] Camille Enlart, _De l'influence germanique dans les premiers monuments gothiques de la France_, 1902. [48] Marcel Aubert, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Senlis_ (1907). He has also described Senlis in the collection, _Petites monographies_ (1910); _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 89, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; _passim_, 1877, vol. 44, "L'architecture dans le Valois," Anthyme Saint-Paul; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _À travers le Beauvaisis et le Valois_ (1907); Émile Lambin, "La Cathédrale de Senlis," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1898, vol. 47; Abbé Eugène Müller, _Senlis et ses environs_ (1897); André Hallays, _En flanant à travers la France_. _Autour de Paris_ (Paris, 1910); G. Fleury, _Études sur les portails imagés du XII siècle_ (Mamers, Fleury et Dangin, 1904); _Histoire littéraire de la France_ (Paris, 1835), vol. 18, p. 33, "Guérin, évêque de Senlis." [49] Emile Lambin, _La Flore des grandes cathédrales_ (Paris, 1897). [50] Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux en France au XIIIe siècle_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1908). [51] Jacobus de Voragine, _The Golden Legend_. Translated into English by Caxton and reprinted by William Morris, Kelmscott Press, 1872, 3 vols. Translated also in Temple Classics. One of the best recent French editions is that of Théodor de Wyzewa (Paris, Perrie et Cie, 1909). [52] The Church of the Victory, consecrated by the warrior-bishop in 1225, was ruined during the Hundred Years' War by the Duke of Bedford's troops, who day after day were pricked on by Jeanne d'Arc's army to a battle. In Flamboyant Gothic times the abbatial was rebuilt, but again it was wrecked in the XVIII century. Only a few late-Gothic bays now stand on the lawn before the country house of the Comte Boula de Coulomier. Bishop Guérin also consecrated the church of Chaalis abbey, where he was buried in 1228. Chaalis is now a picturesque ruin. [53] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les clochers du XIIIe et du XVIe siècle dans le Beauvaisis et la Valois," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 592. [54] The corner stone of St. Frambourg was laid in 1177 by Louis VII. It is a sort of forerunner of the Sainte-Chapelle type of edifice, without aisles or transept. Its sober, pure lines show faultless constructive skill, and a grievous pity is its present abandonment. Behind the cathedral is the church of St. Pierre, built in six different epochs: the lower stories of the tower, XI century; the choir and transept, 1260; the piers of the nave and the north tower's top story, XV century; the rich façade, XVI century, a work of Pierre Chambiges; and the heavy, cold south tower, of the XVII century. In Senlis are St. Vincent's church with a choir built after 1136, a XII-century tower, contemporary of the cathedral, and a groin roof of the XVIII century. St. Aignan's belfry is of the end of the XI century, and served as model for the towers of St. Vincent and St. Pierre, just as all three of them contributed toward the inspiration of that sovereign thing of Senlis, the cathedral tower. [55] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 205, Charles Porée; E. Chartraire, _La cathédrale de Sens_ (Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1920); E. Bérard, "La cathédrale de Sens," in _L'Architecture_, 1902; E. Vaudin-Bataille, _La cathédrale de Sens_ (Paris, 1899); Bouvier, _Histoire de l'église de l'ancien archdiocèse de Sens_ (Paris, 1906); A. de Montaiglon, _Antiquités de Sens_ (Paris, 1881); A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan, 1914); A. F. Didot, "Jean Cousin, peintre verrier," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1873, vol. 39, p. 75; Marius Vachon, _Une famille parisienne d'architectes maistre-maçons: les Chambiges_; Crosnier, in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1847, "Iconographie des portails de Sens"; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire_, vol. 9, pp. 222, 506; vol. 8, p. 74 (on the synodal hall); _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 15, p. 324, "Michel de Corbeil, archévêque de Sens"; p. 524, "Guillaume de Champagne, cardinal, archevêque de Rheims" (Paris, 1820); vol. 17, p. 223, "Pierre de Corbeil" (Paris, 1832); vol. 18, p. 270, "Gautier de Cornut, archévêque de Sens" (Paris, 1835). [56] Ralph Adams Cram, _Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh_ (Boston, Marshall Jones Company, 1919). [57] At St.-Julien-du-Sault, fourteen miles from Sens, are over a dozen good XIII-century windows, and some four of the XVI century. St. Louis was a donor. In the window devoted to Ste. Geneviève are interesting XVI-century costumes. [58] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, Lucien Broche, p. 158, the cathedral; p. 225, St. Martin's church; p. 239, the Templar's church; Chanoine A. Bouxin, _La cathédrale Notre Dame de Laon. Histoire et description_ (Laon, 1902); Jules Quicherat, "L'âge de la cathédrale de Laon" in _Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, 1874, vol. 35, p. 249; Lucien Broche, _Laon et ses environs_ (Caen, 1913); _ibid._, "L'évêche de Laon," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1902, vol. 66; De Florival et Midoux, _Les vitraux de la cathédrale de Laon_ (Paris, Didron, 1882), folio; E. Fleury, _Antiquités et monuments du département de l'Aisne_, (1879), vol. 3, p. 153; Émile Lambin, _Les églises de l'Ile-de-France_ (Paris, 1906). His description of Laon is also in the _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1901-02, vols. 14, 15; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les influences normandes au XIe et au XIIe siècle dans le nord de la France," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 10, p. 171, "Anselm de Laon" (Paris, 1756); vol. 11, p. 243, "St. Norbert" (Paris, 1759); vol. 13, p. 511, "Gautier de Mortagne, évêque de Laon" (Paris 1814); H. Havard, éd _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 4, p. 81, Mgr. Dehaisnes, on Laon. [59] For Coucy-le-Château (between Soissons and Laon) see M. Lefèvre-Pontalis' study (1909) in the _Petites Monographies_ series; or the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, p. 239. The XIII-century donjon was the most massive conception of the Middle Ages. Coucy's lord ruled a hundred towns and was one of the big figures in feudal France. His proud device read: "_Roi ne suis, ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussi--Je suis le sire de Coucy_." The superb pile has been demolished in the World War. Madame Yvonne Sarcey visited Coucy in April, 1917. Of the imposing mediæval castle, hanging like a bourg to the flank of the hill, there remain two gaping porticos. "_C'est tout!... C'est tout!_" she lamented. "_Ce paysage adorable de l'Ile-de-France portera sa croix._" The Germans blew up the castle before their strategic retirement, in 1917. [60] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, p. 315, the cathedral; p. 337, St. Médard; p. 343, St. Léger; p. 348, St. Jean-des-Vignes; Étienne Moreau-Nélaton, "Soissons avant la guerre," in _Les cités ravagées_ (Collection, Images historiques), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); _ibid., Les églises de chez nous: Soissons_ (Paris, H. Laurens); Abbé Poquet, _Notice historique et archéologique de la cathédrale de Soissons_ (Soissons, 1848); Émile Lambin, "La cathédrale de Soissons" in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1898, vol. 47; Émile Mâle, _L'art allemand et l'art français du moyen âge_ (Paris, 1917); Bouet, "Excursion à Noyon, à Laon et à Soissons," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1868, vol. 34, p. 430; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _L'architecture religieuse dans l'ancien diocèse de Soissons au XIe et au XIIe, siècle_ (Paris, Plon, 1894-98), 2 vols., folio. [61] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, p. 410, Longpont abbatial; Abbé Poquet, _Monographie de l'abbaye de Longpont_ (1869). Longpont, where the bishops of Soissons were buried, was founded by Gerard de Chérisy, who had married Lady Agnes of Longpont. St. Bernard sent twelve Cistercian monks to start the new house in 1131. The splendid Gothic church, which departed from Cîteaux's rule of church simplicity, was consecrated in 1227 before the queen regent and Louis IX, by the bishop of Soissons, Jacques de Bazoches, who had just anointed Louis as king, at Rheims. Longpont was sacked by the Huguenots in 1567, and wrecked by the Revolution. The picturesque ruins were acquired by the de Montesquieu family in 1850. [62] The monastery church of St. Jean-des-Vignes was in size a cathedral, and the maker of the great façade at Rheims, Bernard de Soissons, is said to have designed it. The cloisters, once the most sumptuous in the kingdom, were begun by an abbot who died in 1224, after he had built an aqueduct for the city which still is in use. St. Jean's big west rose had been, since 1870, an empty circle. Little more than its façade and western towers stood before 1914. Sacked by the Revolution, its real demolition was under the Empire, when to repair the cathedral the deserted monastery was sold for a paltry sum, and stone by stone removed. The congregation of good men in this abbey did parish work for many centuries. In such good repute with the citizens were they that, when the Revolution suppressed the house, Soissons' municipality protested, saying that the abbey had "always claimed with zeal its share of public duties." Taine in his _L'Ancien Régime_ quotes the protest: "In calamities this abbey opens its doors to the destitute citizens and feeds them. It alone has borne the expense of the citizens' meetings, preparatory to the election of deputies for the National Assembly. It now is lodging a company of soldiers. Always when there are sacrifices to be made it is on hand." However, the revolutionary authorities paid no heed to the citizens' desire to retain their historic house. [63] For the churches of Notre Dame and St. Martins, at Étampes, see _Bulletin Monumental_, 1905, vol. 69, and _Annales de la Société hist. et archéol. du gatinais_, 1907, Lefèvre-Pontalis; also the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1901, p. 71. Notre Dame was begun about 1160. Its strongly Romanesque south portal is of the same type as Chartres' western doors. The crypt and piers of the nave are XI century, and the transept and choir were rebuilt about 1170 as early Gothic. The Romanesque tower is one of the best of its epoch; its base is approximately 1050; the next two stories about 1075; the fourth story, 1125; and the spire, 1130. The church is full of irregularities from rebuildings. St. Martin's church is XII and XIII century; its much discussed ambulatory of the Champagne type is about 1165. The number of supports for the vault was doubled in the outer wall, thus making the space to be covered a series of square compartments alternating with triangles. [64] Auguste Rodin, _Les cathédrales de France_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1914), 4to. [65] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, St. Remi (Rheims), p. 57, and Notre Dame (Châlons), p. 473, Louis Demaison; Louis Demaison, _Les églises de Châlons-sur-Marne_ (Caen, 1913); E. M. de Barthélemy, "Notre Dame-en-Vaux à Châlons-sur-Marne," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, vol. 15, p. 97; A. de Dion, "Notre Dame-en-Vaux à Châlons-sur-Marne," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1886, vol. 52, p. 547, and 1887, vol. 53, p. 439, Louis Grignon; L. Grignon, _Description et l'histoire de Notre Dame de Châlons-sur-Marne_ (Châlons-sur-Marne, 1884), 2 vols.; Abbé Poussin, _Monographie de l'abbaye et de l'église de St. Remi de Rheims_ (Rheims, 1857); Alfonse Gosset, _La basilique de St. Remi à Rheims_ (Paris, 1900); L. Barbat, _Histoire de la ville de Châlons-sur-Marne_; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane_ (Paris, 1912), p. 158, St. Remi. [66] "Il est digne de remarque, que de toutes ces règles monastiques les plus rigides ont été les mieux observées: les Chartreux ont donné au monde l'unique exemple d'une congrégation qui a existé sept cents ans sans avoir besoin de réforme."--CHATEAUBRIAND, _Génie du Christianisme_. In April, 1903, two squadrons of dragoons expelled the last monks from La Grande Chartreuse. An economic loss for the entire region has resulted. [67] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1902; Morel-Payen, _Troyes et Provins_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); Félix Bourquelot, _Histoire de Provins_ (Paris, Techener, 1840), 2 vols.; Gabriel Fleury, "Le portail de St. Ayoul de Provins," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1902, p. 458, or in _Études sur les portails imagés du XIIe siècle_ (Mamers, Fleury et Dangin, 1904). [68] The transept of St. Ayoul is good Romanesque. After a fire in 1160 the nave was rebuilt as XIII-century Gothic; the choir is XVI century. At St. Loup-de-Naud there is a central lantern on squinches (XII century). [69] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, p. 428, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; S. Prioux, _Monographie de l'ancienne abbaye royale St. Yved de Braine_ (1859), folio; _Bulletin Monumental_, 1908, vol. 72, p. 455, A. Boinet. [70] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, p. 121, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _À travers le Beauvaisis et le Valois_ (Paris, 1907); Émile Lambin, "L'eglise de St. Leu d'Esserent," in _Gazette des beaux-arts_, 1901, tome 25, p. 305; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire_, vol. 2, p. 504; vol. 4, pp. 83, 230; vol. 7, p. 384; vol. 9, p. 280; Abbé Eugène Müller, _Senlis et ses environs_ (1897). [71] Marcel Aubert, _La cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris_ (Paris, Longuet, 1909); Lassus et Viollet-le-Duc, _Monographie de Notre Dame de Paris_ (Paris), folio; V. Mortet, _Étude historique et archéologique sur la cathédrale et le palais épiscopal de Paris_ (Paris, 1888); Queyron, _Histoire et description de l'église de Notre Dame_ (Paris, Plon, Nourret et Cie); De Guilhermy, _Description de Notre Dame de Paris_ (1856); _ibid., Itinéraire archéologique de Paris_ (1855); S. François, _La façade de Notre Dame de Paris_ (Brussels, Imprimerie Goosens, 1907), 4to; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les origines des gables," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1907, vol. 71, p. 92; Camille Enlart, _Le musée de sculpture comparée du Trocadéro_ (Collection, Les grandes institutions de France), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1911); H. Bazin, _Les monuments de Paris_ (Paris, 1904); G. Riat, _Paris_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Amédée Boinet and Jean Bayet, _Les édifices religieux de Paris_ (Collection, Les richesses d'art de la ville de Paris), (Paris, H. Laurens), 3 vols.; L. Barron, _La Seine_ (Collection, Fleuves de France), (Paris, H. Laurens); Émile Lambin, _La flore des grandes cathédrales de France_, (Paris, 1897); _ibid., Les églises des environs de Paris étudiées au point de vue de la flore ornamentale_ (Paris, 1896), folio; _ibid., Les églises de l'Ile-de-France_ (Paris, 1906); Anthyme Saint-Paul, "Notices sur les églises des environs de Paris," in _Bulletin Monumental_, vol. 34, p. 861, and vol. 35, p. 709; Alexis Martin, _Excursions dans les environs de Paris_ (Paris, 1900); Henri Stein, _Les architectes des cathédrales gothiques_ (Paris, 1908); Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1908), 4to. [72] "Les ardentes prières, les sanglots désespérés du moyen âge avaient à jamais imprégné ces piliers et tanné ces murs."--J. K. HUYSMANS. [73] "Il me sembla que tout le passé de mon pays se dressait devant moi. Tout ce qu'elles ont vu, ces pierres!... Tout ce qu'elles ont entendu, ces voûtes!" --PIERRE L'ERMITE (Abbé Loutil) [74] "The first of the great Gothic façades in point of dignity is undoubtedly that of Paris, a design of which no words can express the exalted beauty. Grandeur of composition, nobility of silhouette, perfection of proportion, wealth of detail, infinitely varied play of light and shade combine to raise this composition, so majestic, so serene, to the place it has ever occupied in the heart of everyone endowed with the slightest feeling for the beautiful."--ARTHUR KINGSLEY PORTER. [75] The problem of Universals remains still a real one for the thinker--how our intellectual concepts correspond to things existing outside our intellect. [76] In his _Summa totius theologiæ_ St. Thomas held that the existence of God was to be known by reason. He took his stand on a palpable fact--the existence of creatures. He began with the fecund idea of motion, the stars in their orbits, man engendering man. If there is movement there must be a First Motor. If there ever had been an instant when nothing was, nothing ever would have been. Effects must have a cause. Either nothing is, which is an absurdity, or there must be One Being eternally immutable. That the movement is ordered, such as night and day, season following season, shows a supreme power directing. That creatures are more or less perfect supposes a perfect being. One by one Aquinas laid his foundation stones till a solid lower wall was built, on which he reared his majestic structure. In the Roman Breviary, he is thus recorded: "Thou hast written well of me, Thomas, what recompense do you ask of me?" "None but yourself, Lord!" ("_Non aliam, Domine, nisi te ipsum!_"). [77] The father of St. Thomas was the Count of Aquin, nephew of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. His mother came of the line of the Norman rulers in Sicily; the same stocks produced that undisciplined, undecipherable genius of the XIII century, Frederick II. [78] L. Liard, _L'Université de Paris_ (Collection, Les grandes institutions de France), (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Maître, _Les écoles épiscopales et monastiques de l'occident depuis Charlemagne jusqu'à Philippe-Auguste_ (Paris, 1866); Tarsot, _Les écoles et les écoliers à travers les âges_ (Paris, H. Laurens); H. Rashdall, _The Universities of the Middle Ages_ (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1895), 2 vols.; Bonnard, _Histoire de l'abbaye royale de St. Victor de Paris_ (1907); V. Cousin, éd., _OEuvres de Pierre Abélard_ (Paris, 1849-59), 2 vols.; B. Hauréau, éd., _Les oeuvres de Hugues de St. Victor_ (Paris, 1887); B. Hauréau, _Histoire de la philosophie scholastique_ (Paris, 1872), 3 vols.; A. Mignon, _Hugues de St. Victor_ (Paris, 1895); Léon Gautier, éd., _OEuvres poétiques d'Adam de St. Victor_ (Paris, 1858), 2 vols.; Léon Gautier, _Histoire de la poésie religieuse dans les cloîtres des Xe et XIe siècle_ (Paris, 1887); Noël Valois, _Guillaume d'Auvergne_ (Paris, 1880); E. Berger, _La Bible française au moyen âge_ (Paris, 1884); Lecoy de la Marche, _La chaire française au moyen âge_ (Paris, 1886); _Histoire littéraire de la France_. (Begun by the XVII-century Benedictines, continued by the Institute of France.) Vol. 9, p. 1, "L'État des lettres en France, XIIe siècle" (Paris, 1750); vol. 10, p. 309, "Guillaume de Champeaux" (Paris, 1759); vol. 12, p. 1, "Hugues de St. Victor"; p. 86, "Abélard"; p. 585, "Pierre Lombard"; p. 629, "Héloïse" (Paris, 1764); vol. 13, p. 472, "Richard de St. Victor" (Paris, 1814); vol. 15, p. 40, "Adam de St. Victor"; p. 149. "Maurice de Sully" (Paris, 1820); vol. 16, p. 1, "L'état des lettres en France au XIIIe siècle" p. 574, "Eudes de Sully" (Paris, 1824); vol. 18, p. 357, "Guillaume d'Auvergne" p. 449, "Vincent de Beauvais" (Paris, 1835); vol. 19, p. 38, "Hugues de Saint-Cher"; p. 143, "St. Louis"; p. 238, "St. Thomas d'Aquin"; p. 266, "St. Bonaventure"; p. 291, "Robert de Sorbon"; p. 621, "Les trouvères," (Paris, 1838). [79] The last vestige of St. Victor's monastery, foyer of sanctity for the XII century, was wiped out by order of a stupid municipality of Paris, in 1842. [80] Petit de Julleville, éd., _Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française_ (Paris, Colin, 1900), 8 vols. In vols. 1 and 2 the Middle Ages are treated by Gaston Paris, Léon Gautier, and Joseph Bédier; Gaston Paris, _La littérature du XIIe siècle_ (Paris, Hachette, 1895). He places the classic epoch of the literature of the Middle Ages between 1108 (opening of Louis VI's reign) and 1223 (end of Philippe-Auguste's rule); Joseph Bédier, _Les légendes épiques_ (Paris, H. Champion, 1908-13), 4 vols.; Remy de Gourmont, _Le Latin mystique_. [81] _Paradiso_, xxxiii: 4-6. [82] Some of the modern archbishops of Paris have added to the prestige of their see. Monseigneur Affre was shot on the barricades, in 1848, when he went forth bearing a message of peace. Monseigneur Darboy was shot in prison by the Commune of 1871. Both are commemorated in side chapels of the cathedral's choir. [83] G. Sanoner, "La Bible racontée par les artistes du moyen âge," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1907-13; _ibid._, "La vie de Jésus-Christ racontée par les imagiers du moyen âge sur les portes d'églises," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1905-08. [84] Once the Paris churches were filled with late-Gothic windows, though the troubled history of the city has left but few. Some XVI-century glass is still to be found in St. Merri and St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, for which churches see Huysman's _Trois églises et trois primitifs_ (1908). St Étienne-du-Mont has in a chapel an Engrand Le Prince window, a symbolic wine press with portraits of Pope Paul II, Charles V, Francis I, and Henry VIII; and reset in the passage leading to the catechism chapel is the masterpiece of Pinaigrier, twelve panels that are veritable enameling on glass. In St. Gervais, where on Good Friday, 1918, a projectile from the long-distance German gun crashed through the masonry roof, killing many, are two windows, Solomon's judgment (1531), and St. Laurence (1551), said to be by Jean Cousin, also some Pinaigrier glass. To Jean Cousin are attributed the five splendid windows of the Apocalypse in the chapel at Vincennes, whose design derives from Dürer's woodcuts, published in 1498. They have deep shadows and are strong in color and plan. M. Mâle says that Dürer's German has here been translated into graceful Renaissance Italian. Vincennes' chapel had been begun by Charles V in 1378. Then came the pause of a century, and the works were finished by Henry II, still on the Gothic plan, however. Henry donated the windows and he had Diana of Poitiers pictured among the righteous souls in the fifth seal of the Apocalypse. Francis I is represented at the base of the second window. Excursions can be made from Paris to places within easy distance that posses Gothic-Renaissance glass. At Écouen, nine miles from Paris, in the church of St. Acceul, are sixteen windows due to De Montmorency patronage. Originally in Écouen's guard hall were the forty-four panels (made for the constable, Anne de Montmorency) now in the long gallery of Chantilly, the château bequeathed to the Institute of France in 1897 by the Duc d'Aumale. The story of Cupid and Psyche is told in that camaïeu glass so suited for domestic decoration, a species of iron-red grisaille, whose only other hue is yellow stain. Chantilly's panels were painted in the Raphaelesque style by the Flemish master, Coexyen, trained in Van Orley's school. At Montmorency, ten miles from Paris, in St. Martin's church, the history of France seems written in the windows, with the portraits of Francis I, Henry II, Adrian VI, and members of the houses of Montmorency, Pot, and Coligny. Three of the lights are by Engrand Le Prince. More portrait work appears in the many windows at Montfort l'Amaury, twenty-nine miles from Paris (1544-78), work not equal to the earlier XVI-century glass. H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 4, Écouen; vol. 5, Chantilly, Vincennes, Pierrefonds; F. de Fossa, _Le château de Vincennes_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); E. Macon, _Chantilly et le musée Condé_ (Paris, H. Laurens). [85] Henri Stein, _La Sainte-Chapelle de Paris_ (Paris, 1912); F. de Guilhermy, _Description de la Sainte-Chapelle_ (Paris, 1899), 12me; Troche, _Notice historique et descriptive sur la Sainte-Chapelle_; Morand, _Histoire de la Sainte-Chapelle_ (Paris, 1790); Louis Courajod, _La polychromie dans le statuaire du moyen âge et de la Renaissance_ (Paris, 1888); Abbé A. Bouillet, _Les églises paroissiales de Paris_, vol. 5, _La Sainte-Chapelle_ (Paris, 1900); F. de Mély, "La sainte couronne d'épines," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1899, vol. 42. [86] Armand le Brun, _L'église St. Julien-le-Pauvre_ (Paris, 1889); J. Viatte, _L'église de St. Julien-le-Pauvre de Paris_ (Châteaudun, Prudhomme, 1899). [87] Jules Quicherat, "St. Germain-des-Prés," in _Bibli. de l'École des chartes_, 1865, vol. I, p. 513; and _Mémoires de la Soc. des Antiquaires de France_, 1864, vol. 28, p. 156; Jacques Bouillart, _Histoire de l'abbaye royale de St. Germain-des-Prés_ (Paris, 1724); Auger, _Les dépendances de St. Germain-des-Prés_ (Paris, 1909), 3 vols.; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Étude sur le choeur de l'église de St. Martin-des-Champs à Paris," in _Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, 1886, vol. 47; F. Deshoulières, _St. Pierre de Montmartre_ (Caen, H. Delesque, 1913); also in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1913, vol. 77, p. 4; H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 6, p. 66, "Le conservatoire des arts et métiers" (St. Martin-des-Champs); A. Lenoir, _Statistique monumentale de la ville de Paris_ (Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1867), 3 vols., folio (valuable drawings of the Parisian abbeys); Em. de Broglie, _Mabillon et la société de l'abbaye de St. Germain-des-Prés_ (Paris, 1881). [88] The Hôtel Cluny, which became a national museum in 1848, was built as the town house for the abbot of Burgundian Cluny, by those two art patrons, Jean de Bourbon (1456-81) and Jacques d'Amboise (1481-1514). It is one of the best works of Gothic civic architecture in France. It stands on the site of Roman baths, alleged to be those of Julian the Apostate, above which had later risen a residence of the Merovingian kings. In the time of the Carolings, Alcuin taught on this spot. The Palais des Termes was purchased for Cluny by Abbot Pierre de Chastellux (1322-43). H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 1, p. 161, A. Darcel, on Musée Cluny; E. du Sommerard, _Le palais des thermes et l'Hôtel de Cluny_; Ch. Normand, _l'Hôtel de Cluny_ (Paris, 1888). [89] Paul Abadie, who over-restored the cathedrals of Angoulême and Périgieux, won the competition for the national memorial basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, and began his strange Romano-Byzantine monument in 1873. He united Auvergne's Romanesque ambulatory with the cupola church of Aquitaine. There is not sufficient contrast between his elongated dome and the tower. Nevertheless, the immense pile of white stone standing over the capital presents exotic and superb effects in sun and mist, and no one can deny that a profound religious spirit breathes in this new shrine of France, as if the prayers and sufferings of generations had already hallowed its walls. Below the basilica stands a statue of the young Chevalier de la Barre, a victim of the personal intrigue of a corrupt magistrate of Abbeville and the lax law courts of Louis XV's time, not in any way the object of clerical hate, as the inscription on his statue would indicate. His abbess aunt was his warm defender, as was the bishop of Amiens, and on the day of his execution he received the sacraments piously. See Cruppi, _Révue des Deux Mondes_, March, 1895. As this mythical hero meets one in many a French city, it were well to know his real story. [90] Some of the later manifestations of Gothic art in the capital are the porch and façade of St. Germain l'Auxerrois (1431-39), one of the first signs of renewed energy after Jeanne d'Arc's mission; the tower of St. Jacques (1508-22), attributed to the late-Gothic master, Martin Chambiges, and formerly part of a Flamboyant church destroyed by the Revolution; and the church of St. Merri (1520-1612), still Gothic in spirit. Th e Renaissance appears in St. Étienne-du-Mont (1517-63), whose interior is alluringly graceful, though it cannot boast of purity of style. St. Eustache (1532-1642), begun slightly after St. Merri, has a Gothic skeleton, "dressed in Renaissance robes sewed together like the pieces of a harlequin's garment, bizarre and contradictory, satisfactory to neither taste nor reason." The old church of St. Séverin used to be employed by M. Jules Quicherat as an object lesson for his pupils, since four different epochs are traceable in it; the three westernmost bays of the nave are early XIII century; and there is much Flamboyant Gothic with disappearing moldings. Abbé A. Bouillet, _Les églises paroissiales de Paris_ (1903); H. Escoffier, _Les dernières églises gothiques au diocèse de Paris_ (Thèse, École des chartes, 1900). [91] Le Nain de Tillemont, _Vie de St. Louis_ (Paris, 1848-51 éd., Gauble), 6 vols.; Sertillanges, _St. Louis_ (Collection, L'art et les saints), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1918); H. Wallon, _St. Louis et son temps_ (Tours, 1865), 2 vols.; A. Beugnot, _Essai sur les institutions de St. Louis_ (Paris, 1821); Jean, sire de Joinville, texte original accompagné d'une traduction, Natalis de Wailly, éd., Paris, 1867. Translated into English, Bohn's Antiquarian Library, London; Gaston Paris, "Jean de Joinville," in _Hist. littéraire de la France_, 1848, vol. 32, p. 291; also Delaborde's biography; Lecoy de la Marche, _La France sous St. Louis et sous Philippe le Hardi_ (Paris, 1894); A. Molinier, _Les sources de l'histoire de France_ (Paris, 1901-06); U. Chevalier, Répertoire _des sources hist. du moyen âge_ (Montbéliard, 1903). [92] Philippe Lauer, "Royaumont," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908, vol. 2, p. 215. [93] One sister of St. Louis' queen married Henry III of England, under whom was built Westminster Abbey (1217-54). The second was the wife of King Henry's brother, Richard of Cornwall, who was titular emperor of Germany. The youngest sister inherited Provence and wedded St. Louis' brother, Charles d'Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies. E. Boutarie, _Marguerite de Provence, femme de St. Louis_ (Paris, 1869); E. Berger, _Blanche de Castille_ (Paris, 1900). [94] Joinville, in Syria, went to the Krak, the great Christian fortress beyond the Jordan, to obtain, as a relic for his church at Joinville, the shield of his crusading ancestor whom Richard Coeur-de-Lion had admired. His "_beau chastel_" on the Marne was wrecked by the Revolution. His line had ended in an heiress who married into the ruling house of Lorraine, so that the XVI-century Duke of Guise, whose personal charm made him the idol of the French people, was fifth, by female descent, from the irresistible seneschal. A brother of Joinville's, Geoffrey, married Mahaut de Lacy, heiress of Meath, and became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1273. Under Henry III and Edward I he played a role, and went crusading in 1270. He left nine children. On his wife's death he entered the Dominican convent of Tuam, where he died in 1314. [95] Often did Louis IX sigh over his youngest brother. "Charles d'Anjou! Charles d'Anjou!" he would say, sadly. As king of the Two Sicilies, Charles won the title of the Merciless, and his harshness was punished by the Sicilian Vespers, 1282. Dante abominated the house of Anjou in Italy. Of Charles he wrote in the _Paradiso_ (viii: 73-75), "His evil rule, which ever cuts into the heart of subject people, caused Palermo to shriek out: 'Die! Die!'" St. Louis loved especially his brother Robert d'Artois, whose overhardy courage caused the defeat of the crusaders at Mansourah. When word was brought to the king of his brother's death in that battle, tears warm and full fell from his eyes, though he said, "God must be thanked for all he sends." The other brother of Louis IX was Alphonse of Poitiers, who married the heiress of Toulouse and took guidance of the king in his administration of the Midi. [96] In 1841 Louis-Philippe built a chapel on the site where St. Louis had died in Tunis, 1270. In the _Ville d'Art Célèbres_ series (H. Laurens, Paris), see H. Saladin, _Tunis et Kairouan_, and R. Cagnat, _Carthage, Tingad, Tébessa_. [97] Shakespeare, "Richard II." iv: 1. [98] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905; Léon Gautier, _La France sous Philippe-Auguste_ (Tours, Mâme et fils, 1869); A. Luchaire, _La société française au temps de Philippe-Auguste_ (Paris, Hachette, 1909); W. H. Hutton, _Philip-Augustus_ (London and New York, Macmillan Company, 1896); Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_; see articles on cathedral, rose, triforium. [99] Two miles from Mantes, across the river, is Gassicourt (Seine-et-Oise), once a Cluniac priory. Its earliest diagonals were built about 1125. The nave and tower are XII century; the choir and transept are Rayonnant Gothic. Some of the windows donated by Blanche of Castile remain. Bossuet long held the living of Gassicourt. See Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Monographie des églises Gassicourt, Meulan," etc., in _Bul. de la Commission des antiquités et des arts de Seine-et-Oise_, 1885-88, vols. 5 to 8. [100] J. Formigé, _La cathédrale de Meaux_ (Pontoise, 1917); Amédée Boinet, "La cathédrale de Meaux," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1912; I. Taylor, _La cathédrale de Meaux_ (Paris, Didot, 1858), folio; Emile Lambin, "La cathédrale de Meaux," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1900; Henri Stein, _La cathédrale de Meaux et l'architecte Nicolas de Chaumes_ (Arcis-sur-Aube, 1890); Du Carro, _Histoire de Meaux et du pays meldois_ (Meaux, 1865); Monseigneur Allon, _Chronique des évêques de Meaux_; also his _Notice hist. et descript. de la cathédrale de Meaux_ (1871); O. Join-Lambert, _Le diocèse de Meaux_ (Thèse, École des chartes, 1894). [101] Lionel Johnson, _Poetical Works_ (New York and London, Macmillan Company), p. 252. [102] Péguy pierced to the very soul of the Maid in his _Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d'Arc_. Jeanne, in Domrémy, seeing the evil round her caused by war, says: "Je pourrais passer ma vie entière à la maudire, et les villes n'en seront pas moins efforcées, et les hommes d'armes n'en feront pas moins chevaucher leurs chevaux dans les blés vénérables ... blés sacrés, blés qui faites le pain ... sacrés blés qui devîntes le corps de Jésus-Christ." [103] Another who fell in battle in that same summer of 1914, Ernest Psichari, divined this pregnant region: "Diocèse de Meaux, cryptes de Jouarre, cloches des petites communes ... l'harmonie délicate, la grâce parfaite, le bon goût de ces paysages modérés. Ici la race est d'accord avec le paysage, sérieuse comme lui, ardente sans frivolité, sans élégances inutiles. Certains soirs, on pense à Pascal, si français, quand il écrivait: 'Certitude.... Pleurs de joie.' "--_L'Appel des Armes_ (Paris, G. Oudin et Cie, 1913). [104] _Paradiso_, xxxiii: 15-16. [105] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1900; René Merlet, _La cathédrale de Chartres_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1909); _ibid._, "Les architectes de la cathédrale de Chartres et la construction de la chapelle Saint Piat au XIVe siècle," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, p. 218; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Les architectes et la construction des cathédrales de Chartres_ (Paris, 1905); _ibid._, _Les façades successives de la cathédrale de Chartres au XIe et au XIIe siècle_ (Caen, 1902); Abbé Bulteau, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres_ (1891), 3 vols.; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Le portail sud de la cathédrale de Chartres," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1907, p. 100; F. de Mély, _Études iconographiques sur les vitraux du XIIIe siècle de la cathédrale de Chartres_ (Lille, 1888), 4to; J. K. Huysmans, _La Cathédrale_ (Paris, 1898; tr. London, Paul, Trench & Trübner); Henry Adams, _Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres_ (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913); De Lasteyrie, _Études sur la sculpture française au moyen âge_ (Paris, 1902); Cherval, _Chartres, sa cathédrale, ses monuments_ (Chartres, 1905); _ibid._, _Les écoles de Chartres au moyen âge_ (1895); Lucien Merlet, tr. _Lettres de St. Ives, évêque de Chartres_ (Chartres, Petrot-Garnier, 1885); A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan Company, 1914); Crosnier, _Iconographie chrétienne_ (Tours, Mâme, 1876); Gabriel Fleury, _Études sur les portails imagés du XIIe siècle_ (Mamers, Fleury et Dangin, 1904); _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 7, p. 1, "État des lettres en France, XIe siècle"; p. 261, "St. Fulbert" (Paris, 1746); vol. 10, p. 102, "St. Ives" (Paris, 1756); vol. 13, p. 82, "Geofroi de Lèves" (Paris, 1814); vol. 14, p. 89, "Jean de Sarisbéry"; p. 236, "Pierre de Celle, évêque de Chartres" (Paris, 1817). [106] George Santayana, _Interpretations of Poetry and Religion_ (New York, Scribner's, 1905). [107] Bishop Fulbert was buried in 1029 in the church of St. Pierre-en-Vallée. St. Pierre's choir is Romanesque and early Gothic; its sanctuary is a gem of XIV-century Rayonnant; its nave is in larger part of the XIII century, but later than the cathedral of Chartres; its west tower is of the XI century. At present it possesses a treasure of enamel work, the plaques of the apostles, by Léonard Limosin, which Francis I had made in 1545, and which Henry II gave to Diana de Poitiers for the château of Anet. There is much grisaille glass in St. Pierre; each window of the nave is divided perpendicularly into three panels--a colored one in the center and grisailles on either side. In the choir is some XII-century glass; the brilliant apse windows are XIV century, as are a few in the nave. P. Lavedan, _Léonard Limosin el les émailleurs français_ (Collection, Les grands artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens); Alleaume et Duplessis, _Les douze apôtres; émaux de Léonard Limosin_ (Paris, 1865). [108] "Chartres est sage avec une passion intense.... Palais de la paix et du silence!... C'est du paix héroique qu'il s'agit ici."--RODIN, _Les Cathédrales de France_ (Paris, Colin, 1914). [109] "I am Beauceron, Chartres is my cathedral," said Charles Péguy, who walked in pilgrimage a hundred miles to pray in the cathedral when his little son lay dying with diphtheria. No one has celebrated it better than that XX-century maker of mystery plays, true artisan-artist of the _moyen âge_: "Voici le lourd pilier et la montante voûte; Et l'oubli pour hier, et l'oubli pour demain; Et l'inutilité de tout calcul humain; Et plus que le péché, la sagesse en déroute. "Voici le lieu du monde où tout devient facile, Le regret, le départ, même l'événement, Et l'adieu temporaire et le détournement, Le seul coin de la terre où tout devient docile.... "Voici le lieu du monde où tout rentre et se tait, Et le silence et l'ombre et la charnelle absence. Et le commencement d'éternelle présence, Le seul réduit où l'âme est tout ce qu'elle était." --"Prières dans la cathédrale de Chartres," _OEuvres de Charles Péguy_, vol. 6, p. 383, éd., _Nouvelle Reçue française_, 1916-18. [110] Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1908); _ibid._, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1910). [111] Émile Mâle, _L'Art allemand et l'art français du moyen âge_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1917). [112] "Lovelier color the hand of man has not produced. There are times when human art seems to be something more than mortal; when it rises to heights infinitely above the ordinary achievements of men. French glass of the XII century is such an art. It is impossible to stand in the presence of these translucent mosaics without experiencing a depth of æsthetic emotion that at once disarms the critical faculty. Such sensuous beauty of tone, such richness of color, has been equaled by no painter of the Renaissance, by no Byzantine worker in mosaics. Yet it is not only for their absolute beauty, but also for their perfectly architectural character that these windows claim unqualified admiration."--ARTHUR KINGSLEY PORTER, _Medieval Architecture_ (New York and London, 1907), vol. 2, p. 108. [113] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1911, Rheims, p. 19, the cathedral; p. 57, St. Remi, L. Demaison; Louis Demaison, _Album de la cathédrale de Rheims_ (Paris, 1902), 2 vols., folio; _ibid._, _La cathédrale de Rheims_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); Abbé Cerf, _Histoire et description de Notre Dame de Rheims_ (Rheims, Dubois, 1861), 2 vols., 8vo; Alphonse Gosset, _La cathédrale de Rheims_ (Paris and Rheims, 1894), folio; _ibid._, _Rheims monumental_ (Rheims, 1880), 12mo; Anthyme Saint-Paul, "La cathédrale de Rheims, au XIIIe siècle," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, p. 288; E. Moreau-Nélaton, _La cathédrale de Rheims_ (Paris, 1915); Monseigneur Landrieux, _La cathédrale de Rheims_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1917); Louis Bréhier, _La cathédrale de Rheims_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); Max Sainsaulieu, _Rheims avant la guerre_ (Paris, H. Laurens); Vitry, _La cathédrale de Rheims, architecture et sculpture_ (Paris, Longuet, 1913); Ch. Loriquet, _Les tapisseries de Notre Dame de Rheims_; H. Bazin, _Une vieille cité de France, Rheims_; _monuments et histoire_ (Rheims, Michaud, 1900), 4to; Louise Pillion, _Les sculpteurs français du XIIIe siècle_ (Collection, Les maîtres de l'art), (Paris); Émile Lambin, _Flore des grandes cathédrales_ (Paris, 1897); Vitry et Brière, _Documents de sculpture française au moyen âge_ (Paris, Longuet, 1900). [114] Auguste Rodin, _Les cathédrales de France_ (Paris, Colin, 1914). [115] The Benedictines' church at Orbais (Marne), between Rheims and Châlons, contains some exceptionally good XII-century windows. Its nave has been destroyed, but the transept and the choir, with its radiating chapels (c. 1200), survive. The World War swept over Orbais, but the abbatial is unharmed. Héron de Villefosse, _Abbaye d'Orbais_ (Paris, 1892). [116] It has been suggested that about 1260 a façade then rising was dismounted and moved forward, to allow for the insertion of several more bays in the nave, but the idea remains a hypothesis. [117] E. O'Reilly, _Les deux procès de condamnation ... de Jeanne d'Arc_, eighth interrogation, March 17, 1431. "Il avait été à la peine, c'était bien raison qu'il fût à l'honneur." (Paris, Plon, 1868), 2 vols. [118] During this summer of 1020 excavations made under Rheims Cathedral have brought to light vestiges of the cathedral of the Virgin, founded by St. Nicaise in 401. Three Roman arches in good condition support the venerable nave, in a corner of whose floor was found buried sacred images of ivory most beautifully carved. Evidently they had been hidden to save them from the invading Vandals. [119] "Et les Français disent: Quel grand courage! Avec Turpin la croix est bien gardée!" Roland addressed the dead archbishop on the field of Roncevaux: "Eh! Chevalier de bonne aire, homme noble, Nul ne sut mieux, depuis les saints apôtres La foi garder et convertir les hommes: Du paradis lui soit la porte ouverte!" --_La Chanson de Roland_ (Edition, A. d'Avril). [120] Along the lower walls of the side aisles of Rheims hung splendid tapestries, "color of incense, silver-gray dashed with blue, with red." They related Our Lady's life and were given in 1530 by the saintly archbishop, Robert de Lenoncourt, the same who presented to St. Remi's monastery church other sumptuous embroideries, and who remade as Flamboyant Gothic St. Remi's south façade. The tapestries of Rheims were saved from the wrecked city and exhibited in Paris during the World War for the benefit of the refugees. It is said that a certain number of the stained-glass windows of the cathedral were dismounted in time to escape annihilation. [121] Sung in the French trenches: "... Attila II s'en veng et brûle Le baptistère de nos rois. Un siécle d'art à chaque bombe Se craquèle, s'effrite et tombe Avec un râle, et tout d'un coup! ... Mais dans la ville ruinée, Par l'incendie illuminée, _Jeanne d'Arc est encor debout!_" --(THÉODOR BOTREL, _Refrains de guerre_ (Paris, Payot, 1915)). [122] Georges Durand, _Monographie de l'église Notre Dame, cathédrale d'Amiens_ (Paris, Picard et fils, 1903), 2 vols., folio; _ibid., Description abrégée de la cathédrale d'Amiens_ (Amiens, Yvert et Tellier, 1904); _ibid._, "La peinture sur verre au XIIIe siècle et les vitraux de la cathédrale d'Amiens," in _Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Picardie_ 1891, 4e série, tome I, p. 389; Jourdain et Duval, "Le grand portail de la cathédrale d'Amiens," in _Bulletin Monumental_, vols. 11, 12, _passim_; _ibid., Cathédrale d'Amiens, les stalles et clôtures du choeur_ (Amiens, 1867), 8vo; T. Perkins, _The Cathedral Church of Amiens_ (London, Bell, 1902); Rodière et Guyencourt, _La Picardie historique et monumentale_ (Paris, Picard, 1906), 4to; Camille Enlart, _Monuments religieux de l'architecture romane et de transition dans la région Picarde_ (Amiens, Yvert et Tellier, 1895); Taylor et Nodier, _Voyages pittoresques ... dans l'ancienne France. Picardie_, (Paris, Didron, 1835-45), 3 vols.; Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1910); A. de Colonne, _Histoire de la ville d'Amiens_ (Paris, 1900); Demogeon, La Picardie (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf). [123] Emile Lambin, _La flore des grandes cathédrales_ (Paris, 1897). [124] L. Reau, _Cologne_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Leger, _Prague_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Henry Hymans, _Bruges et Ipres_ (Paris, H. Laurens). [125] Apocalypse xxi:17. [126] Emile Mâle, _L'art religieux de XIIIe siècle en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1908). [127] Psalm xc:13. [128] Eph. ii:20-21. [129] John Ruskin, _The Bible of Amiens_, vol. 33, Complete Works (London, Cook & Wedderburn, 1908). Illustrated; chap. iv, "Interpretations." [130] Abbeville, close by, also had its Puy, in whose competitions figured Froissart, the historian, as laureate. The magnificent portal decorations (1548) of the Flamboyant Gothic collegiate church of St. Wulfran were contributed in this way. Émile Deliguières, _L'église Saint-Vulfran à Abbeville_ (Abbeville, Paillart, 1898); _Congrès Archéologique_, 1893. [131] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1849 and 1898; Amédée Boinet, _La cathédrale de Bourges_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1911); _ibid_., "Les sculpteurs de la cathédrale de Bourges," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1912; also published by Champion (Paris, 1912); Gaston Congny, _Bourges et Nevers_; Buhot de Kersers, "Les chapelles absidioles de la cathédrale de Bourges," in _Bulletin Monumental_, vol. 40, p. 417; _ibid., Histoire et statistique monumentale du département du Cher_ (Bourges, 1875-98), 8 vols., 4to; Girardot et Durant, _La cathédrale de Bourges_ (Moulins, 1849); G. Hardy et A. Gandillon, _Bourges et les abbayes et châteaux de Berry_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1912); Cahier et Martin (P. P.), _Monographie de la cathédrale de Bourges; vitraux du XIIIe siècle_; Des Méloizes, _Les vitraux de Bourges postérieurs au XIIIe siècle_ (Lille, 1897), folio; _ibid., Les vitraux de Bourges_, 1901; _ibid._, "Note sur un très ancien vitrail de la cathédrale de Bourges," in _Mémoires de la Soc. des Antiquaires du Centre_, 1873, vol. 4, p. 193; Champeaux et Gauchery, _Les travaux d'art exécutés pour Jean de France, duc de Berry_ (Paris, Champion, 1894), folio; Buhot de Kersers, "Caractères de l'architecture religieuse en Berry à l'époque romane," in _Bul. archéol. du Comité des Travaux hist. et scientifiques_, 1890, p. 25; F. Deshoulières, "Les églises romanes du Berry," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1909, p. 463; Raynal, _Histoire de Berry_; Vacher, _Le Berry_ (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf); Sauvageot, _Palais, châteaux, hôtels et maisons de France_; Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, _Twenty-five Great Houses of France_ (London and New York, 1916). [132] _Rationale Divinorum officiorum_, tr. by Neale and Webb of the Camden Society (Leeds, Green, 1843). [133] Rodin should have placed his "Thinker" here: "Le Penseur aurait été au diapason dans cette crypt; cette ombre immense l'aurait fortifié!" --RODIN, _Les cathédrales de France_. [134] "There is a charming detail in this section. Beside the angel, on the left, where the wicked are the prey of demons, stands a little female figure, that of a child, who, with hands meekly folded and head gently raised, waits for the stern angel to decide upon her fate. In this fate, however, a dreadful big devil also takes a keen interest; he seems on the point of appropriating the tender creature; he has a face like a goat and an enormous hooked nose. But the angel gently lays a hand upon the shoulder of the little girl--the movement is full of dignity--as if to say, 'No; she belongs to the other side.' The frieze below represents the general Resurrection, with the good and the wicked emerging from their sepulchers. Nothing can be more quaint and charming than the difference shown in their way of responding to the final trump. The good get out of their tombs with a certain modest gayety, an alacrity tempered by respect; one of them kneels to pray as soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know the wicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shyness; they crawl out slowly and fearfully; they hang back."--HENRY JAMES, _A Little Tour in France_ (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1900), p. 105. [135] The chief piers of Orléans Cathedral were mined by Théodore de Bèze and blown up on the night of March 23, 1567. The portal, part of the choir, and the apse chapel escaped. The XII-century nave had double aisles with tribunes; the frontispiece also was XII century. The choir, begun in 1287, was finished by 1297, and a new Gothic nave was in progress at the time of the civil wars of religion. Henry IV undertook to rebuild Orléans Cathedral, and with his bride, Marie de Medici, laid the first stone in 1601. But a bastard-Gothic edifice is not compensation for earlier work. H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 6, p. 122, "Orléans," G. Lefenestre; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1854 and 1892; G. Rigault, _Orléans et le val de Loire_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); E. Lèfevre-Pontalis et Eugène Garry, on Orléans Cathedral, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904, vol. 68, p. 309. [136] _Nouvelle Alliance_ windows are to be found at Chartres (sixth window in the nave's north aisle), at Le Mans (the east window of the long Lady chapel), at Tours (in the axis chapel), in the transept of Sens Cathedral (in five lights below the north rose), and in the apse curve of Lyons Cathedral. [137] The happy chance of travel led the writer, in May of 1914, to the ceremony of the unveiling of a statue of Jeanne d'Arc in the cathedral of this city, that has not known invasion--the military arsenal of France. As the preaching bishop exhorted modern France to remake her soul else she would perish, over that spellbound congregation seemed to pass a premonition of portentous events looming ahead. Within three months the World War opened, _forte et aspre guerre_, as they said in Jeanne's day, war the chastiser, war the purifier: "_Il y a des guerres qui avilissent les nations, et les avilissent pour des siècles; d'autres les exaltent, les perfectionnent de toutes manières_," wrote Joseph de Maistre. [138] Carved on Jacques Coeur's house in Bourges are mottoes such as, "_A vaillans coeurs rien impossible_," or "_Dire, faire, taire, de ma joie_," or "_En bouche close, n'entre mousche_." Vallet de Viriville, _Jacques Coeur_; Pierre Clément, _Jacques Coeur et Charles VII_. [139] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1905, "Beauvais," Chanoine Barsaux; P. Dubois, _La cathédrale de Beauvais_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1911); Abbé P. C. Barraud, "Beauvais et ses monuments," in _Bulletin Monumental_, vol. 27, _passim_. He gives studies on the Le Prince and other windows in the cathedral and St. Étienne, in _Mémoires de la Soc. Académique de l'Oise_, 1851-53, vol. 1, p. 225; vol. 2, p. 537; vol. 3, pp. 150, 277; Louise Pillion, on St. Étienne's glass, in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1910, p. 367; Eug. J. Woillez, _Archéologie des monuments religieux de l'ancien Beauvoisis pendant la métamorphose romane_ (Paris, 1839-49), folio; Graves, _Notice archéologique sur le département de l'Oise_ (Beauvais, 1856); Gustave Desgardins, _Histoire de la cathédrale de Beauvais_ (1875); Abbé L. Pihan, _Beauvais, sa cathédrale, ses monuments_ (1905); _ibid., Esquisse descriptive des monuments historiques dans l'Oise_; see Gonse and Palustre on the portals of the cathedral; Monseigneur Barbier de Montault, "Iconographie des Sibylles," in _Rev. de l'art chrétiens_, 1874. [140] Carolingian work aboveground is rare; besides this _Basse-OEuvre_ at Beauvais, there is St. Philibert de Grandlieu (Loire-Inférieure), part of the small church under the flank of Jumièges' ruined abbatial, portions of St. Jouin-de-Marnes (Deux-Sèvres), and vestiges in the walls of La Couture at Le Mans. There are Carolingian crypts at St. Quentin, Amiens, Chartres, Orléans, Auxerre, Flavigny. More exceptional still are Merovingian remains, such as the crypt of Jouarre, the small tri-lobed church of St. Laurent at Grenoble, the crypt of St. Léger at St. Maixent (Deux-Sèvres), a crypt at Lyons, in St. Martin d'Ainay, and apsidal chapels in St. Jean's baptistry at Poitiers. A list of the Romanesque monuments of the Ile-de-France and bordering districts is to be found in Arthur Kingsley Porter's _Medieval Architecture_, 1909, vol. 2, pp. 13-49. [141] Among the Flamboyant monuments of France are St. Wulfran's frontispiece at Abbeville, begun in 1481, overcharged with ornament but with portals of great beauty; St. Riquier near by, also overcharged; the churches of Rue and Mézières; façades of cathedrals at Sens, Senlis, Auxerre, Troyes, Tours, and Limoges; Vendôme's frontispiece, and Albi's porch; towers at Bordeaux, Rodez, Saintes, Chartres, Auxerre, Bourges, Rouen, and many other cities in Normandy; the cathedrals of Toul and Metz; St. Maurice at Lille, a well-restrained Flamboyant monument; the magnificent church of St. Nicholas-du-Port near Nancy; the choir of Moulins; St. Antoine at Compiègne and a number of civic halls such as Compiègne's and St. Quentin's. The beautiful Flamboyant Gothic church at Péronne (1509-25) has been wiped out in the World War. Artois and Flanders were especially rich in late-Gothic edifices. Normandy was a Mecca of Flamboyant work--from Rouen, to that gem of the final phase, the choir of Mont Saint-Michel. Monseigneur Dehaisnes, _Histoire de l'art dans la Flandre, l'Artois et le Hainaut_ (Lille, 1886), 3 vols. [142] André Michel, éd., _Histoire de l'Art_, vol. 3, 1^{ère} partie, "Le style flamboyant," Camille Enlart (Paris, A. Colin), 1914, 10 vols.; Camille Enlart, "Origine anglaise du style flamboyant," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1886, 1906, p. 38; A. Saint-Paul, "L'architecture religieuse en France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1908, p. 5; _ibid., Les origines du gothique flamboyant en France_ (Caen, 1907); Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture_, vol. 2 (New York and London, 1907), 2 vols. [143] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1902; V. C. de Courcel, _La cathédrale de Troyes_, (1910); L. Morel-Payen, _Troyes et Provins_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); F. Arnaud, _Description historique de l'église cathédrale de Troyes_; J. B. Coffinet, "Les peintres-verriers de Troyes," in _Annales Archéologiques_, vol. 18, pp. 125, 212; A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_, chapters 32 and 33, on Troyes (New York, Macmillan Company, 1914); Ch. Fichot, _Statistique monumentale du département de l'Aube_, vol. 1, _Arrondissement de Troyes_ (Troyes, 1884), 4to; R. Koechlin and J.M. de Vasselot, _La sculpture à Troyes et dans la Champagne méridionale au XVIe siècle_ (Paris, A. Colin, 1900); Raymond Koechlin, "La sculpture du XIVe et du XVe siècle dans la région de Troyes," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908; Paul Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901); Louis Gonse, _La sculpture française depuis le XIVe siècle_ (Paris, Quantin, 1895), folio; D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Histoire des ducs et des comtes de Champagne_, 1859, 7 vols.; Bontier, _Histoire de Troyes et de la Champagne méridionale_ (Troyes, 1880), 4 vols.; Amédée Aufauvre, _Troyes et ses environs_. [144] Translation from XIII-century French by Henry Adams. [145] Generation after generation, the Lyénin, Macadré, Verrat, and Gontier families produced noted artists. Assier, _Les arts dans l'ancienne capitale de la Champagne_. [146] The same feat can be seen in St. Nizier at Troyes, rebuilt in 1528 and literally filled with XVI-century glass. Its best window is in the transept (1552), and shows the beasts of heresy trampled upon, for that day was nothing if not controversial. In a central window of the choir, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, the artist made the hands of a figure in one panel appear in the neighboring panel, regardless of the stone mullions. In 1901 an anarchist bomb exploded in St. Nizier, and in 1910 a terrible storm wrecked more of its windows. The church possesses a _Saint Sépulcre_ and a _Christ de Pité_ in which the Gothic spirit lingers. Its reredos, now in the Museum, was from the Juliot _atelier_. Her international fairs early accustomed Troyes to foreign influences. Flemish realism had fortified her sculptors and vitrine artists, and during the first third of the XVI century (when the trade of the city tripled itself) the new Italian ideas found favor. For a generation the just and loyal measure of Champagne's own Gothic tradition held the leadership, but finally the Italian Renaissance conquered. When abstract types were substituted for types precisely observed, imagery became cold, declamatory, and pretentious. In several of the churches of Troyes will be found the Education of the Virgin by her mother, St. Anne, a theme for which this city had a partiality. [147] Abbé O. F. Jossier, _Monographie des vitraux de St. Urbain de Troyes_ (Troyes, 1912); E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Jean Langlois, architecte de St. Urbain de Troyes," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904, vol. 64, p. 93; Albert Barbeau, _St. Urbain de Troyes_ (Troyes, Dufour-Bonquot, 1891), 8vo; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, vol. 4, pp. 182-192; Abbé Lahore, _L'église Saint-Urbain_ (1891). [148] Within walking distance of Troyes are Ste. Maure, with a Jesse tree by Linard Gontier; Les Noès, with good sculpture and a Jesse-tree window of 1521; St. André-lès-Troyes, with a lovely St. Catherine statue; St. Parre-les-Tertres, with a Vision of Augustus in _camaïeu_ like a magnificent enamel on white glass, and another grisaille-like Vision of Augustus at St. Léger-lès-Troyes (1558); Chapelle St. Luc, with a triptych on wood, sculpture of the Three Maries, and good glass; Torvilliers, Pont-Ste.-Marie, and Montgueux, with other _objets d'art_. Eight miles away, at Verrières, is the best portal of the region and more late-Gothic glass. There are storied windows at St. Loup, St. Ponanges, Rosnay, Brienne, Rouilly (with a good Virgin image), Pouvres, Chavanges, Bar-sur-Seine, Bar-sur-Aube (with a statue of St. Barbara), Mussy-sur-Seine, Montier-en-Der, Arcis-sur-Aube, and Ceffonds, whose windows were the gift of Étienne Chévalier (1528). Some thirty miles away lies St. Florentin (six miles from Pontigny), where are twenty splendid Renaissance lights, among them a Creation window (1525), with God the Father wearing the tiara, one of 1528 telling St. Nicolas' life in quatrains describing each scene, and a 1529 window devoted to the Apocalypse. Between Troyes and St. Florentin lies Ervy, where is a Crucifixion window (1570), showing the Saviour nailed to a Tree of Knowledge Cross with apples and leaves on its top, and Adam and Eve standing below. There are also the noted windows of the Sibyls (1515), representing twelve instead of ten prophetesses, each accompanied by the event of the New Law which she is said to have foretold, and the window called the Triumph of Petrarch (1502). [149] Of the same appealing type as St. Martha at Troyes are the Virgin and Madeleine of the Holy Sepulcher group at Villeneuve l'Archevêque (Yonne), where are also some beautiful portal images of the XIII century. M. Ch. Fichot has brought forward testimony that would indicate the image called St. Martha in the church of the Madeleine is really one of St. Mary Magdelene herself. However, the majority of those who have written on the sculpture of Champagne continue to call it a St. Martha. [150] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1855, 1875, and 1911, p. 447, the cathedral of Châlons; p. 473, Notre-Dame-en-Vaux; p. 496, St. Alpin; p. 512, Notre-Dame-de-l'Épine; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "L'architecture dans la Champagne méridionale au XIIIe et au XVIe siècle," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1902, p. 273; _ibid._, "Les caractères distinctifs des écoles gothiques de la Champagne et de la Bourgogne," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 546; Louis Demaison, _Les églises de Châlons-sur-Marne_ (Caen, 1913); E. de Barthélemy, _Diocèse ancien de Châlons-sur-Marne_. _Histoire et monuments_ (Paris, 1861), 2 vols.; E. Hurault, _La cathédrale de Châlons-sur-Marne et sa clergé au XIIIe siècle_; A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_, chapter 34, on the windows of Châlons (New York, Macmillan Company, 1914); Abbé E. Musset, _Notre Dame-de-l'Épine près Châlons-sur-Marne. La légende, l'histoire, le monument et le pèlerinage_ (Paris, Champion, 1902); Chanoine Marsaux, "La prédiction de la sibylle et la vision d'Auguste," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1908, p. 235. [151] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1890, Toul. In the series of _Villes d'art célèbres_, published by H. Laurens (Paris), are studies on Tournai, Ipres, and Avila: Henri Guerlin, _Ségovie, Avila, Salamanque_; Henri Hymans, _Gand et Tournai_ and _Bruges et Ypres_. [152] L. Petit de Julleville, _Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française_, dirigée par (Paris, Colin et Cie, 1841-1901), 8 vols. In vols. 1 and 2 the Middle Ages are treated by Léon Gautier, Gaston Paris, and Joseph Bédier; Gaston Paris, _La littérature française au moyen âge_ (Paris, Hachette, 1890); _ibid._, _Les origines de la poésie lyrique, en France au moyen âge_ (Paris, 1892); Léon Gautier, _Origines et histoire des épopées françaises_ (Paris, V. Palme, 1878-94), 4 vols.; Joseph Bédier, _Les légends épiques_ (Paris, H. Champion, 1908-13), 4 vols.; P. Tarbé, _Les chansonniers de Champagne_ (1851); Delaborde, _Notice historique sur le château de Joinville_. _Haute-Marne_ (Joinville, 1891); Natalis de Wailly, éd., _Jean, sire de Joinville, texte original accompagné d'une traduction_. Translated into English, Bohns' Antiquarian Library, VI, London; Bouchet, éd., _Villehardouin_ (Paris, 1891). English translation by Sir F. T. Marzial (London, Everyman's Library, 1908). [153] Chanoine Boissonnot, _La cathédrale de Tours_ (Tours, 1904); Paul Vitry, _Tours et les châteaux de Touraine_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1905); _ibid._, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901); Marchand et Bourassé, _Verrières du choeur de l'église metropolitaine de Tours_ (Paris, 1849), folio; A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_, chapter 22, on Tours (New York and London, 1914); Charles de Grandmaison, _Tours archéologique_ (Paris, 1879); Abbé Bosseboeuf, _Tours et ses monuments_; Monseigneur Chevalier, _Promenades pittoresques en Touraine_ (Tours, 1869); Abbé J. J. Bourassé, _Recherches hist. et archéol. sur les églises romanes en Touraine_ (1869); L. Courajod, _La sculpture française avant la Renaissance classique_ (Paris, 1891); Louis Gonse, _La sculpture française depuis le XIVe siècle_ (Paris, 1895), folio; Giraudet, _Histoire de la ville de Tours_ (Tours, 1873), 2 vols.; Chalmel, _Histoire de Touraine_ (1841), 4 vols.; Henri Guerlin, _La Touraine_ (Collection, Provinces françaises), (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Barron, _La Loire_ (Fleuves de France), (Paris, H. Laurens); C. H. Petit-Dutaillis, _Charles VII, Louis XI et les premières années de Charles VIII_ (Paris, Hachette, 1902). [154] Behind the choir of Tours Cathedral, in the Place Grégoire de Tours, a veritable nook of the Middle Ages, are XII-century vestiges of the Episcopal Palace, a mansion of the XV century, and near by is the rue de la Psalette, in which Balzac set the scene of his _Curé de Tours_. Why has not Tours named her chief square and residential street for Balzac, her own son, instead of for Emile Zola? Balzac's sister has told of the profound impression made on him by the cathedral of Tours, especially by its marvels of stained glass, so that all through the novelist's life the mere name "St. Gatien" had the power to rouse him to the dreams and aspirations of his youth. [155] R. de Lasteyrie, _L'église St. Martin de Tours_ (Paris, 1891); Monsuyer, _Histoire de l'abbaye de St. Martin_; Henri Martin, _Saint-Martin_ (Collection, _L'art et les saints_), (Paris, H. Laurens); Ed. Chévalier, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Marmoutier_ (Tours, 1871), 2 vols. There are papers on the church of St. Julien de Tours in the _Mémoires de la Soc. archéol. de Touraine_, 1909, p. 13, and on St. Martin de Tours, 1907; also in the _Bulletin Monumental_, 1873, p. 830, on St. Symphorien de Tours. The abbatial of St. Julien, a contemporary of Tours Cathedral, is exceptionally pure Gothic. Its tower is Romanesque and in part dates before 1000. [156] Many a Council has been held in Tours. In 1055 came Gregory VII, the reformer. In 1095 Urban II preached the First Crusade, and dedicated a Romanesque abbatial at Marmoutier. In 1107 Pope Paschal II came, in 1119 Calixtus II, in 1134 Innocent II, and Alexander III in 1163. At the Council of 1163 the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, pleaded for St. Anselm's canonization, and the builder of Lisieux Cathedral, the politic Arnoul, delivered an address that urged the unity and liberty of the Church; yet later he upheld Henry II in his dispute with St. Thomas Becket. Tours can even boast a pope, for Martin IV (d. 1285) had long been a canon in St. Martin's abbey. [157] Such is the architectural wealth within reach of Tours that one can draw but a few monuments to the traveler's attention. At Amboise is St. Hubert's marvelously sculptured little chapel (c. 1491) and the church of St. Florentin (c. 1445). At Loches is Anne of Brittany's oratory, a Virgin statue of Michel Colombe's school of Tours, and the tomb of Agnes Sorel, attributed to the master who made Souvigny's ducal tomb, Jacques Morel. The collegiate church of St. Ours is of exceptional interest to archæologists; its narthex (now the first bay), covered by a tower, was built by Fulk II of Anjou; the porch, also with a tower over it, was added in the XII century. To that date belong the two bays of the church covered by hollow pyramids, said by Mr. A. Kingsley Porter to be an attempt to make a stone roof without wooden centering. At Beaulieu-lès-Loches, founded by Fulk Nerra, the choir is late-Gothic (1440-1540). At St. Catherine de Fierbois, where Jeanne d'Arc found her sword, is a charming Flamboyant Gothic church. There are Plantagenet Gothic vaults at Chinon. Nine miles from Chinon, at Champigny-sur-Veude, is a rich mass of Renaissance glass attributed to Pinagrier, with Bourbon-Montpensier portraits. Some twenty miles from Blois is the Romanesque church of Fleury Abbey at St. Benoît-sur-Loire, with a superb XI-century narthex of three bays, surmounted by a tower. In 1562 the Huguenots wrecked the church. Also, between Orléans and Nevers, beside Sancerre, is the abbey church of St. Satur, a forerunner of Flamboyant Gothic, as early as 1361. The Benedictine church of La Charité-sur-Loire derives chiefly from the Burgundian Romanesque school, influenced by Berry and Auvergne. Its central and west towers, its nave, and chevet belong to the second half of the XII century, the transept is earlier; there was a reconstruction of the nave after 1559. Louis Serbat, "La Charité-sur-Loire," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1913, p. 374; Abbe Bosseboeuf, _Amboise_. For Loches, see _Congrès Archéol_., 1869, 1910; G. Rigault, _Orléans et le val de Loire_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres); F. Bournon, _Blois, Chambord et les châteaux du Blésois_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres); A. Marignan, "Une visite à l'abbaye de Fleury à St. Benoît-sur-Loire," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1901-02, p. 291; L. Cloquet et J. Casier, "Excursion de la Gilde de St. Thomas et de St. Luc dans la Maine, la Touraine, et l'Anjou," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1889-90, vols. 42, 43; _La Touraine artistique et monumental; Amboise_ (Tours, Pericet, 1899); Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, _Twenty-five Great Houses of France_ (New York and London, 1916). [158] Lucien Bégule et C. Guigue, _Monographic de la cathédrale de Lyon_ (Lyon, 1880); Lucien Bégule, _La cathédrale de Lyon_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); _ibid._, _Les vitraux du moyen âge et de la Renaissance dans la région lyonnaise_ (Lyon, A. Rey et Cie, 1911); _ibid_., _Les incrustations décoratives des cathédrales de Lyon et de Vienne_ (Lyon, 1905); H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 3, p. 80, C. Guigue; Émile Màle, _L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle_, pp. 52-59, on the glass of Lyons Cathedral; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 527, on St. Martin d'Ainay; Abbé Martin, _Histoire des églises et chapelles de Lyon_ (1909); André Steyert, _Nouvelle histoire de Lyon_ ... (Lyon, Bernoux et Gamin, 1895), 3 vols.; Meynis, _Grands souvenirs de l'église de Lyon_ (Lyon, 1886); Charletz, _Histoire de Lyon_ (Lyon, 1902); Hefele, _History of the Christian Councils_, 12 vols.; H. d'Hennezel, _Lyon_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Léon Maitre, "Les premières basiliques de Lyon et leurs cryptes," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1900, p. 445; Henri Foeillon, _Le Musée de Lyon_ (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Barron, _Le Rhone_ (Collection, Fleuves de France), (Paris, H. Laurens). [159] Paul Allard, _Histoire des persécutions_ (Paris, 1892), 5 vols.; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 1, pp. 290, 324, on St. Irenæus and the churches of Lyons and Vienne (Paris, 1733). [160] The church of St. Nizier also possessed a _manécanterie_ in which Alphonse Daudet, as _Le Petit Chose_, spent some happy years. Another romance based on reality whose scene is Lyons is René Bazin's _l'Isolée_. An ancient crypt under St. Nizier, shaped like a Greek cross, dedicated to St. Pothin since the IV century, has been ruined by restorations; the actual church is Rayonnant and Flamboyant Gothic, with a portal of the Renaissance by a son of Lyons, Philibert Delorme (d. 1570). Jean Perréal was also born here, as was Coysevox, who made the Virgin of St. Nizier (1676). Eminence in religious or idealistic mural painting has been attained by two sons of Lyons, Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98), who decorated the Museum with _Le Bois Sacré_, and Flandrin (1809-64), who frescoed the walls of St. Martin d'Ainay. Meissonier (d. 1891) was born here; so was Ampère, scientist and Christian believer (d. 1836). In the hospital of fifteen thousand free beds which opened its doors in the VI century and has never since closed them, worked a loved physician who was father of Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. St. Vincent's heart is treasured in a chapel of the cathedral. Another of the leaders of the Catholic reform, St. Francis de Sales, died in Lyons in 1622. [161] The see of Vienne was founded A.D. 160. The cathedral of St. Maurice, well set on the Rhone, contains vestiges of the church consecrated in 1106 by Paschal II, and which had been aided by that archbishop of Vienne, of the first line of Burgundy's Capetian dukes, who became Pope Calixtus II in 1119. The present edifice is due to Bishop Jean de Bernin (1218-66), and was consecrated by Innocent IV in 1251. Only in 1533 were its façade and the four bays behind it finished. There is no transept. The XV century made the northern entrance, and the XVI century that to the south. The red incrustations form friezes, in the choir, below both triforium and clearstory. A V-century bishop of Vienne was Claudianus Mamertus, who upheld Latin culture against the Barbarians, like his friend and fellow poet, Bishop Apollinaris Sidonius at Clermont. To Vienne's bishop is attributed the noted hymn _Pange lingua gloriosi proclium certamini_, and the institution of the Rogation days of penance and procession before the Ascension, in that hour when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions had terrorized central France. In 1312 Vienne was the scene of a general Council of the Church at which the Templars were suppressed by a pope cowed into obedience by the king of France, who arrived at the Council with an escort of the size of an army. The majority of the bishops present held that to abolish the Order was not a legal act, since the charges against them were unproven. Therefore, Clement V was forced to fall back on the expedient plea of solicitude for the public good. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1879; J. Ch. Roux, _Vienne_ (Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1909); M. Reymond, _Grenoble, Vienne_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); Lucien Bégule, _L'ancienne cathédrale de Vienne-en-Dauphiné_ (Paris, II. Laurens, 1914); Paul Berret, _Le Dauphiné_ (Collection, Provinces françaises), (Paris, II. Laurens). [162] About thirty miles to the north of Lyons lies Bourg-en-Bresse, in whose suburbs is the church of Brou. The eighteen windows of the school of Lyons were installed when the church was finished in 1536. Marguerite of Austria built it in fulfillment of a vow of her mother-in-law, a Bourbon princess, Marguerite herself being daughter of Mary of Burgundy, a line, like the Bourbous, that gloried in sumptuous mausoleums. She intrusted the work to the Lyons master, Jean Perréal, who called on his aged friend, Michel Colombe, for the imagery of the tombs. Colombe designed Duke Philibert's _gisant_ and the six winged genii, executed later, with liberties, by Conrad Meyt, and his brother (artists trained at Lyons), and some Italians. Disagreements rose, and Perréal was superseded by Loys van Boghem, who erected a bastard Gothic church of the same heavy Flemish type popular then at Toledo and Burgos. The three rich overcharged tombs are in the choir. Marguerite almost became the wife of Charles VIII, late-Gothic builder, and for a short time was married to the only son of Isabelle and Ferdinand, whose tomb is a boast of Avila. When the early death of the Duke of Savoy left her a widow she governed the Netherlands for her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. Her father's tomb at Innsbruck is one of the noted ones of the world, and the heraldic tombs of her mother and her grandfather (Charles le Téméraire of Burgundy) are in Bruges. If the traveler hopes to find flat, suburban Brou as described by Matthew Arnold, "mid the Savoy mountain valleys, far from town or haunt of man," he will be disappointed. Moreover, no reflections fall from ancient glass, owing to the patina or coating added by time to its exterior surface. Poetic license is allowed, and "The Church of Brou" adds to this heavy votive monument the charm it needs: "... So sleep, forever sleep, O marble Pair! Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair On the carved western front a flood of light Streams from the setting sun, and colors bright, Prophets, transfigured saints, and martyrs brave, In the vast western windows of the nave; And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints A checkerwork of glowing sapphire tints, And amethyst, and ruby--then unclose Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, ... And looking down on the warm rosy tints Which checker, at your feet, the illumined flints, Say: 'What is this? We are in bliss--forgiven. Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven.'" V. Nodet, _L'église de Brou_ (Collection, Petites Monographics), (Paris, H. Laurens); C.J. Dufay, _L'église de Brou et ses tombeaux_ (Lyon, 1879); Paul Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpteur française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901), p. 365; Dupasquier et Didron, _Monographie de Notre Dame de Brou_ (Paris, 1842), in 4º et atlas in fol. [163] In the XV century the dukes of Bourbon filled their capital of Moulins with art treasures, and Souvigny's abbatial, close by, was their necropolis. The present choir of Moulins Cathedral, originally the chapel of their palace, was begun by Agnes of Burgundy, daughter of Jean sans Peur, and finished by her sons, Jean II de Bourbon and Pierre II sire de Beaujeu, who in 1475 wedded the daughter of Louis XI and governed France with his wife during the minority of Charles VIII. Jeanne of France and her husband are portrayed on the folding doors of the splendid triptych (1488-1503), by some unknown French _primitif_ now in the sacristy of Moulins Cathedral, and again in one of the three windows--warm in color and with fine, clear portrait work--in the square east wall of the chevet, glass that belongs to the transition from Gothic to Renaissance as the XV century merged in the XVI. Fifteenth-century windows are comparatively rare, so the twelve possessed by Moulins' chief church are precious. Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, who beautified Lyons Cathedral, also appears in the Bourbon dukes' window with his two brothers. The nave of Moulins Cathedral, in black-and-white Volvic stone, is a modern rendering by Lassus and Millet of the Primary Gothic of the region. Souvigny was a Cluniac priory, in which died the two great Cluny abbots, St. Majolus (d. 994), who brought to France the noted William of Volpiano, the organizer of the Romanesque renaissance of architecture, and St. Odilo (d. 1049). In 1095 Urban II stayed in Souvigny, and so did Paschal II in 1106. The XII-century church was largely reconstructed in the late-Gothic day when the prior Dom Geoffrey Chollet wished to house fittingly the splendid new Bourbon tombs. That of Louis II (comrade in arms of Dugueselin) has been attributed without proof to Jean de Cambrai, who made the Berry tomb at Bourges. M. Guigue has ably assigned to Jacques Morel the tomb of Charles I and Agnes of Burgundy. The Bourbon line, direct in descent from St. Louis, mounted the French throne with Henry IV. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1913, p. 1, Chanoine Joseph Clémat; p. 182, Doshoulières; J. Locquin, _Nevers et Moulins_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, II. Laurens); H. Aucouturier, _Moulins_ (1914); R. de Quirielle, _Guide archéologique dans Moulins_ (1893); Abbé Requin, "Jacques Morel et son neveu Antoine le Moiturier," in _Revue des Soc. des Beaux-Arts des Départements_ (Paris, 1890); L. Courajod, "Jacques Morel, sculpteur bourguignon," in _Gazelle archéol_, 1885, p. 236; A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, 1914); L. du Broe de Segange, _Hist. et description de la cathédrale de Moulins_ (Paris, 1885), vol. 2, Inventaire des richesses d'art de la France; L. Desrosiers, _La cathédrale de Moulins, ancienne collégiale_ (Moulins, 1871); H. Faure, _Histoire de Moulins_ (Moulins, 1900), 2 vols.; G. Depeyre, _Les ducs de Bourbon_ (Toulouse, Privat, 1897). [164] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1860, 1863, 1871, 1878, and 1910, p. 267, on the cathedral; p. 280, on Le Mans' two Benedictine churches; Abbé A. Ledru et G. Fleury, _La cathédrale St. Julien du Mans_ (Mamers, Fleury et Dangin, 1900), folio; Gabriel Fleury, _La cathédrale du Mans_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Étude historique et archéol. sur la nef de la cathédrale du Mans_ (1889); Abbé A. Ledru, _Histoire des églises du Mans_ (Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1905-07); R. Triger, _Le Mans à travers les âges_ (Le Mans, 1898); E. Hucher, _Vitraux peints de la cathédrale du Mans_ (Paris, Didron, 1865), folio and supplement claques; A. Echivard, _Les vitraux de la cathédrale du Mans_ (Mamers, 1913): _Bulletin Monumental_, studies on Le Mans, in vol. 7, p. 359; vol. 14, p. 348 (Hueher); vol. 26, on the Geoffrey Plantagenet enamel; also vol. 31, p. 789; vol. 37, p. 704; vol. 39, p. 483 (Dion); vol. 44, p. 373; vol. 45, p. 63 (Esnault); and vol. 72, 1908, p. 155 (Pascal V. Lefèvre-Pontalis); De Wismes, _Le Maine et l'Anjou, historique, archéologique et pittoresque_ (Paris, A. Bry), 2 vols., folio; Guénet, _Le Maine illustré_ (Le Mans, 1902); Abbé R. Charles, _Guide illustré du Mans et dans la Sarthe_ (Le Mans, 1886); Kate Norgate, _England Under the Angevin Kings_ (London, 1887), 2 vols.; Mrs. J. R. Green, _Henry II_ (London, 1888); see also Davis (London, 1905); Robert Latouche, _Histoire du comté du Maine pendant le Xe et XIe siècle_ (Paris, H. Champion, 1910); H. Prentout, _Le Maine_ (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf); _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 11, p. 250, "Hildebert de Lavardin"; p. 177, "Geoffrey, abbé de Vendôme" (Paris, 1759); on Hildebert, see A. Dieudonne (1898) and P. Déservellers. [165] The abbey church of the Trinité has in its transept walls parts of the edifice dedicated in 1040. At the beginning of the XIII century that transept was vaulted in the eight-rib Plantagenet way, the keystones being well carved. The ambulatory and radiating chapels are early-Gothic; the choir is late XIII century; the easternmost bays of the nave are of the XIV, and its westernmost bays of the XV century. The façade is a gem of Flamboyant Gothic. There are also windows of the XIII and XV centuries, and some well-known carved choir stalls. The Merveille of Vendôme, its tower of 1140, prototype for the Primary Gothic ones at Chartres and Rouen, stands free of the church. From the earlier abbatial was saved a famous XII-century window of the St. Denis school, a Byzantinesque Madonna. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1872; Abbé Plat, _Notes pour servir à l'histoire monumental de la Trinité_ (Vendôme, 1907); La Martellière, _Guide dans le Vendômois_ (Vendôme, 1883). [166] W. H. Goodyear, "Architectural Refinements in French Cathedrals," in _Architectural Record_, 1904-05, vols. 16, 17; _ibid._, "Architectural Refinements, a reply to Mr. Bilson," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 3d series, 1907, vol. 15, p. 17; Anthyme Saint-Paul, "Les irrégularités de plan dans les églises," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, p. 135. Professor Goodyear's theory of intentional asymmetry in mediæval buildings--such irregularities as curves of alignment, vertical curves, want of parallelism in walls and piers, deflection of axis--has not found favor with various French and English archæologists, but much of what he has noted may some day be accepted as self-evident. [167] In Le Mans are two Benedictine churches of archæological interest. _De Cultura Dei_ is now Notre-Dame-de-la-Couture. When the church was rebuilt after a fire in 1180, big Plantagenet Gothic vaults, each section with eight ribs, were flung over the wide nave, which originally had possessed side aisles. Vestiges of a Carolingian church, built a decade before 1000, are in the crypt and the lower walls of choir and transept, where alternance of stone and brick work appears. The chevet is the oldest example now extant of an ambulatory and radiating chapel. In the XII century the upper choir was rebuilt, and again it was retouched during the XIII and XV centuries. The façade and the well-sculptured portal are late XIII century. A charming XVI-century Virgin, by Germain Pilon, on a pier opposite the pulpit, is to be classed with the prolongation of the Region-of-the-Loire school of sculpture whose center was Tours. Across the Sarthe lies the other Benedictine church, the former St. Julien-du-Pré, a Romanesque edifice of the XI and XII centuries, revaulted in the Flamboyant Gothic day. [168] "O noble peuple d'artisans! Si grands, que les artistes d'aujourd'hui n'existent pas auprès de vous!"--RODIN, _Les cathédrales de France_. [169] De la Tremblay, Dom Coutil, _L'église abbatiale de Solesmes_ (Solesmes, Imprimerie St. Pierre, 1892), folio; Paul Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901); Dom Guépin, _Description des deux églises abbatiales de Solesmes_, and also his _Solesmes et Dom Guéranger_ (Le Mans, 1876); Dom Guéranger, _l'Année Liturgique_ (Paris, 1888), 12 vols., tr. Worcester, England, _The Liturgical Year_, and also his _Études historiques de l'abbaye de Solesmes_; Cagni et Mocquereau, _Plain chant and Solesmes_ (tr. London, 1902). Among those who have taken part in the discussion as to who made the sculptural groups at Solesmes are L. Palustre, Girardet, Charles and Louis de Grandmaison, Benj. Fillon, Célestin Port, Lambin de Lignin, E. Cartier, A. Salmon, and Abbé Bosseboeuf. [170] The church of St. Elizabeth, in Marburg, is one of the earliest Gothic monuments in Germany, 1235-83. The saint was linked with the new system of building. For the king of Hungary, Villard de Honnecourt built Kassovic church. Her aunt was the gentle Agnes of Méran, married to Philippe-Auguste. Her half sister, Yolande, wedded that other builder of churches, Jaime el Conquistador, from whom sprang Yolande of Aragon, King René's mother, also a builder. St. Elizabeth's niece, daughter of the king of Hungary, married Charles II d'Anjou, who began the best Gothic church in Provence, at St. Maximin. [171] Amédée Boinet, _Verdun et St. Mihiel_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens). [172] Amédée Boinet, _St. Quentin_ (Paris, H. Laurens); Ch. Gomart, "Notice sur l'église de St. Quentin," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1856, p. 226; and 1870, p. 201; Pierre Bénard, _Monographie de l'église de St. Quentin_ (Paris, 1867), 8vo; also his studies in the publication of the _Société Académique ... de Soissons_, 1864, p. 260; and 1874, p. 300; Lecocq, _Histoire de la ville de St. Quentin_ (St. Quentin, 1875); J. B. A. Lassus, éd., _L'album de Villard de Honacort_ (Paris, 1858; and London, tr. by Willis, 1859); Jules Quicheral, _Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire_ (1886), vol. 2, on Villard de Honnecourt's album; Camille Enlart, _Hôtels de ville et beffrois du nord de la France_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); _ibid_. on Villard de Honnecourt, in _Bibli. de l'École des chartes_, 1895. [173] Alfred Noyes, _Collected Poems_ (London, Methuen; New York, Fred. A. Stokes Co.). [174] J. Berthelé, "L'architecture plantagenet," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1903, p. 234; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "L'architecture plantagenet," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910; Prosper Merimée, _Notes d'un voyage dans l'Ouest de la France_ (1836); Choyer, "L'architecture des Plantagenets," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1871, p. 257; Célestin Port, _Dictionnaire de Maine-et-Loire_, 3 vols.; Abbé Bosseboeuf, _L'architecture plantagenet_(Angers, Lachène, 1897). [175] Saintes lies on the Charente, some fifty miles from Angoulême. In the venerable XII-century church of St. Eutrope cropped out one of the early sporadic uses of diagonals. Its crypt, which is one of the largest in France, is braced on heavy, semicircular arches. The exterior of the apse is decorated. Nothing is left of the original nave; the present one is transitional work. The choir and part of the transept are of the XV century. The superb tower, with corner-turret effects that rise from base to summit, was finished with a spire by 1480. It is said that John XXII, who promulgated the Angelus by his bull of 1318, had learned its usage from a custom of St. Eutrope. The church of St. Pierre, at Saintes, rebuilt in 1117, and again in 1450, has another Flamboyant Gothic tower of good design, which is now much wasted by decay. See _Congrès Archéologique_, 1894; 1912, pp. 195, 309; also _Bulletin Monumental_, 1907, vol. 71; J. Laferrière et G. Musset, _L'art en Saintonge et en Aunis_; Ch. Dangibeaud, _L'école de sculpture romane saintongeaise_ (Paris, 1910). [176] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1858, 1901, and 1910; Chanoine Roux, _Monographie de St. Front de Périgueux_ (Périgueux, 1920); J. A. Brutails, "La question de St. Front," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1895, p. 125; 1906, p. 87; 1907, p. 517; Anthyme Saint-Paul, on St. Front, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1888, p. 163; 1891, p. 321; 1906, p. 5; Félix de Verneilh, _L'architecture byzantine en France_, 1851; R. Michel-Dansac, _De l'emploi des coupoles sur la nef dans le sud-ouest Aquitain_; Corroyer, _L'architecture romane_, 1888; _ibid._, _L'architecture gothique_, 1899; Ch. H. Besnard, "Étude sur les coupoles et voûtes domicales du sud-ouest de la France," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1912, vol. 2, p. 118; Abbé Pécout, _Périgueux_; R. Phené Spiers, "St. Front de Périgueux et les assises à coupoles," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1897; 1907, p. 175. [177] The cathedral of Cahors was damaged by earthquake in 1303, after which its apse was rebuilt as Gothic, but not too much out of harmony with the rest of the church. The ancient frescoes are full of interest. At the north end of the transept is a now unused portal, whose sculpture belongs to the same Midi school as Moissac, but later and calmer work. The Christ of its tympanum is classed with Vézelay, Chartres, and Beaulieu--the supreme Christ images of Romanesque art. M. Forel praises the angels' magnificent gesture of adoration. The XIV-century west front resembles those of the Brunswick churches whose façade and towers comprise one massive up to the roof. John XXII (1316-33), the second Avignon pope, was born in Cahors, where he founded the university, contributed toward the cathedral, and built a bridge over the Lot which is considered the handsomest of the Middle Ages. In the diocese of Cahors is Rocamadour, the most picturesque pilgrim shrine of Our Lady in France, visited by St. Louis. E. Rey, _La cathédrale St. Étienne de Cahors_ (Cahors, J. Girma, 1911); _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 413; Alexis Forel, _l'Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_, vol. 2, p. 52; "Le cloître de la cathédrale de Cahors," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1883, p. 110; E. Rupin, _Roc-amadour_ (Paris, Baranger, 1904). [178] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1847, 1903, and 1912; Biais, _La cathédrale d'Angoulême_ (Paris, H. Laurens); H. de la Mauvinière, _Poitiers et Angoulême_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); J. George, _La cathédrale d'Angoulême_ (Angoulême, Cha 1901-04); Michon, _Histoire de l'Angoumois_, 1846; _ibid._, _Statistique monumentale de la Charente_, 1844; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_ (see article _coupole_); Sharpe, _A Visit to the Domed Churches of Charente_ (London, 1876); J. A. Brutails and Spiers, "Les coupoles du Périgord et de l'Angoumois," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1895, 1897, 1906, and 1907. [179] Four miles from Angoulême is the curious octagonal church of St. Michel d'Entraignes (1137), built up to its big dome, as it were. Close to it is Fléae, whose three cupolas have no separate bases, but are pierced directly by the big arcades, which is more the Byzantine way of making a cupola than the French. Six miles from Angoulême are the ruins of La Couronne abbatial, where once was a Plantagenet Gothic choir; and ten miles away, at Roullet, is a remarkable sculptured façade. Aulnay's fine church has a decorated front, well-cut capitals, and a ribbed cupola, without distinct pedestal. Pont l'Abbé possesses one of the best Romanesque façades in France. At Ruffec and at Civray are others. There is a church at Charroux with the curious plan of three aisles round a central octagon. Cupola churches are to be found at Plazzac, Bassac, Gensae, Cognac, Souillae, and Solignac, six miles from Limoges. Studies of these churches by E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, L. Serbat, and André Rhein are to be found in the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1912. [181] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1862 and 1910; L. Magne, "L'ancienne abbaye de Fontevrault," in _L'architecte_, 1910, p. 60; A. de Caumont, "Fontevrault," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1867, p. 73; Bernard Palustre, "Les coupoles de Fontevrault," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1898, vol. 63, p. 500; Honorat Nicquet, _Histoire de l'ordre de Fontevraud_, 1642; G. Malifaud, _L'abbaye de Fontevrault, notices historiques et archéologiques_ (Angers, 1866); Abbé Bosseboeuf, _Fontevrault, son histoire et ses monuments_ (Tours, 1867); Édouard, _Fontevrault et ses monuments_ (Paris, 1874), 2 vols.; Joseph Joubert, "Les mausolées des Plantagenets à Fontevrault," in _Mém. de la Soc. d'arts d'Angers_, 1903; and 1906, p. 61, Chanoine Urseau; Vietor Pavie, "Westminster et Fontevrault," in _Mém. de la Soc. d'arts d'Angers_, 1866, p. 229; _Histoire littéraire de la France_ (Paris, 1756), vol. 10, p. 153, "Robert d'Arbrissel." [182] Louis Corroyer, _L'architecture gothique_ (Paris, 1899), p. 1. "La coupole, sous sa forme symbolique, est l'oeuf d'où est sorti un système architectonique qui a causé une révolution des plus fécondes dans le domaine de l'art." [183] "_Dans ces choses-là on eu dit plus qu'il n'y en a, mais aussi il y a souvent plus qu'on eu dit_," says the discreet historian Mézerai. [184] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, the cathedral of Angers; p. 161, Chanoine Urseau; p. 182, St. Serge; p. 228, the château; p. 232, l'évêché; Louis de Farcy, _Monographie de la cathédrale d'Angers_ (1910), 3 vols. and album; _ibid._, _Les vitraux de la nef de la cathédrale d'Angers_ (1912); J. Denais, _Monographie de la cathédrale d'Angers_ (Paris, 1899); John Bilson, "Angers Cathedral, the Vaults of the Nave," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 1911-12, p. 727; also in the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, vol. 2, p. 203; V. Godard-Faultrier, _Répertoire archéologique de l'Anjou_ (1865); L. Halphen, _Le comté d'Anjou au XIe siècle_ (Paris, Picard, 1906); Léon Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_ (3 vols.), vol. 3, Anjou et Poitou (Paris, Quantin); H. Jouin, _Les musées d'Angers_ (Paris, Plon, 1885), 4to; Péan de la Tuilerie, _Le Maine et l'Anjou_; Wismes, _Le Maine et l'Anjou, historiques, archéol. e pittoresque_ (Paris), 2 vols., folio; E. Lelong, "Histoire et mon. d'Angers," in _Angers et l'Anjou_ (1903); Lecoy de la Marche, _Le roy René, sa vie, son administration_ (Paris, 1875), 2 vols.; Kate Norgate, _England Under the Angevin Kings_ (London, 1887), 2 vols.; De Solies, _Foulques Nerra_; Célestin Port, _Dictionnaire historique, géographique, et biographique de Maine-et-Loire_ (Paris and Angers, 1874-78), 3 vols. also his _Notes et notices angevins_ (Angers, 1879); A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan Company, 1914); Sir J. H. Ramsay, _The Angevin Empire_, (London, 1903). [185] Ch. H. Besnard, "La coupole nervée de la Tour St. Aubin d'Angers," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, vol. 2, p. 196; L. de Farcy, "Tour St. Aubin," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, p. 558. [186] Beginning with a Breton woodsman, five counts of Anjou ruled before Fulk III the Black (989-1040). He held Vendôme, Amboise, and Loches, where he founded Beaulieu Abbey, and he won Chinon, and Saumur, where he established St. Florent-les-Saumur. His grandfather, Fulk II the Good, a canon in St. Martin's at Tours, and a poet, had said, "_Rex illiteratus est asinus coronatus_," which Henry I of England was fond of repeating. The son of Fulk Nerra was Geoffrey Martel (d. 1060), who won Tours and Le Mans, but later lost the overlordship of the latter to William the Conqueror. He founded the Trinité at Vendôme. Geoffrey and Fulk, his two nephews, succeeded in turn, but Geoffrey was kept imprisoned in Chinon for almost thirty years by his unnatural brother Fulk Rechin, or the Quarreler, who had all the greed, subtlety, and turbulance of his line, without its genius for statesmanship. He is counted as the first historian of the Middle Ages. (See _Hist. littér. de la France_ (Paris, 1750), vol. 9, p. 391.) Fulk Rechin's son by the beautiful Bertrada de Montfort (who deserted him for the king of France) was Fulk V, who wedded the heiress of Maine. When later Fulk V won a second heiress in the East, he left Anjou and Maine to his son Geoffrey the Handsome, and reigned as king of Jerusalem (d. 1143). Geoffrey (d. 1151), nicknamed Plantagenet, married to the heiress of Normandy and England, always preferred Le Mans to Angers. His son became Henry II of England and a leader in Europe because of his territorial possessions on the Continent and his ability as a statesman. [187] The abbatial of St. Nicolas-du-Ronceray is in a lamentable state; its nave serves as a hall for the Arts and Crafts school, the transept's north arm is a laundry, and its south arm a roofless ruin. The dome at its crossing is without distinct pedestal. The nuns of this house erected at the side of their own sanctuary, the Trinité church for parish use. The present admirable Trinité was built after a fire in 1062. Its chevet and transept are the oldest parts, and then rose the nave, covered with First-Period Angevin vaults (c. 1170). Chapel-like niches are lost in the thickness of the walls. Angers' abbatial of St. Martin contains Gallo-Roman, Merovingian, and Carolingian vestiges, and parts of the XI, XII, and XV centuries. Fulk Nerra rebuilt it on returning from one of his pilgrimages. Over its transept-crossing is a dome modeled on the one at Fontevrault, without separate pedestal. The church possesses one of the earliest eight-branch Gothic vaults extant; King René added the Flamboyant parts. Chanoine Pinier at his own expense is restoring the choir and transept. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, vol. 1, p. 211, "St. Martin," Chanoine Pinier; and vol. 2, p. 12, "St. Nicolas-du-Ronceray," E. Lefèvre-Pontalis. [188] Bishop Ulger carried forward, too, the episcopal palace which stood on V-century walls over the Roman citadel and is connected with the cathedral's transept. Its ancient façade is the finest civic monument in Angers (1101-49). The ground floor was used as a stable; over it rose Bishop Ulger's synodal hall, and under the rafters was made a library in the XV century. Angers is exceptionally rich in late-Gothic and Renaissance mansions. G. d'Espinay, _Angers et l'Anjou_ (Angers, 1903); _ibid._, _Notices archéol., Les monuments d'Angers, Saumur et ses environs_ (Angers, 1875), 2 vols. [189] The first line of Anjou's counts came to an end when John Lackland did away with his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. The region of the Loire became then most willingly a part of Phillipe-Auguste's royal domain. Anjou was given as an appanage to St. Louis' brother Charles d'Anjou, whose first wife brought him Provence, and who by invitation and conquest became king of the Two Sicilies. His son, Charles II, built the church of St. Maximin in Provence. He left only one daughter, who married the Count of Valois, like herself of St. Louis' direct line. The son of that union mounted the French throne as Philip VI. It was his son, Jean le Bon, who again detached Anjou from the French crown for his son Louis, who began the short-lived third line of Angevin princes. [190] That a portion of Angers' palace walls dates from Gallo-Roman times is indicated by the courses of brick in the small stones. When such brick courses alternate with big material, the work was done after 1000. Of the red flint-stone castle built by Fulk Nerra only fragments remain. A fire in 1132 and later disasters wiped out the counts' residence, to which Henry Plantagenet had added. L. de Farcy, "La chapelle du château d'Angers," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1902; Henri René, _Le château d'Angers_ (Angers, 1908); H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumental_, vol. 2, "Angers," H. Jouin. [191] The nave of St. Serge is a mediocre XV-century structure. In its transept walls are vestiges of earlier churches; the cordons of brick in the stonework date from Carolingian times. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1871 and 1910; V. Godard-Faultier, "Le coeur de St. Serge à Angers," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1866, vol. 32; J. Denais, "Histoire et description de l'église St. Serge à Angers," in _L'inventaire des richesses d'art de la France_, vol. 4, p. 20, Province, monuments religieux (Paris, Plon). [192] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1862 and 1910; Prosper Merimée, _Notes d'un voyage dans l'Ouest de la France_ (Paris, 1836), pp. 345-358; G. d'Espinay, _Notices archéologiques. Les monuments d'Angers, Saumur et ses environs_ (Angers, 1875), 2 vols.; Célestin Port, "Les stalles et les tapisseries de St. Pierre de Saumur," in _Revue des Sociétés savantes_, 1868, p. 278; _ibid._, _Dictionnaire historique, géographique, et biographique de Maine-et-Loire_ (Paris and Angers, 1874-78), 3 vols.; V. Godard-Faultrier, _Monuments antiques de l'Anjou, arrondissement de Saumur_ (Angers, 1863); Jules Juiffrey, "Tapisserie du XVe siécle à l'église Notre Dame-de-Nantilly à Saumur," in _Revue de l'art ancien et moderne_, 1897, vol. 4, p. 75; Eugène Müntz, Jules Juiffrey, Alex. Pinchart, _Histoire générale de la tapisserie_ (Paris, 1879-84), 3 vols. [193] From Saumur, eight miles down the Loire, can be visited the magnificent Romanesque church at Cunault, XI and XII centuries. It has noticeable capitals, mural paintings, and Plantagenet vaults with sculptured keystones and figurines. Two miles below it lies Gennes, whose church has Angevin vaults of the First Period. To be reached, _via_ Doué-la-Fontaine, are both Puy-Notre-Dame and Asnières, the latter called "the most beautiful ruin in Anjou." Its square-ended XIII-century choir resembles St. Serge's. Slender pillars divide that wide chevet into three aisles of equal height, composing one of the most graceful specimens of the school's Third Period. One arm of the transept has heavy diagonals of the first phase, and over the other are the eight-branch type. The Huguenots wrecked Asnières in 1569. The present nave is a restitution. A society of artists saved the choir and transept from demolition. The abbatial of Puy-Notre-Dame is very beautiful. Heavy diagonals of the First Period cover the transept's south arm; eight-branch vaults cover the nave and the transept's north limb; over the choir, which resembles St. Jean's chevet at Saumur, is a much-ramified Plantagenet vault. The lofty side aisles and clustered piers make this interior one of the best of XIII-century Angevin works extant. At St. Germain-sur-Vienne (Indre-et-Loire), two miles from Candes, the choir has the complicated multiple-ribbed vault of the Third Period, with three lines of keystones. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, p. 128, Cunault and Gennes; p. 65, Puy-Notre-Dame and Asnières; E. de Lorière, "Asnières-sur-Vègre," in _Revue hist. et archéol. du Maine_, 1904, p. 95. [194] At the battle of Jargeau, Jeanne reminded the duke of her promise. D'Alençon himself has related the episode: "_Je lui fis observer que c'était aller bien vite en besogne que d'attaquer si promptement: 'Soyez sans crainte,' me dit-elle, 'l'heure est bonne quand il plaît à Dieu, il faut besoigner quand s'est sa volonté: agissez, Dieu agira! Ah, gentil duc,' me dit-elle quelques instants après, 'aurais-tu peur? Ne sait-tu pas que j'ai promis à ta femme de te ramener sain et sauf?'_" Alas, for the deterioration of character brought about in those troubled years of foreign invasion and misrule; Jeanne's _gentil duc_ was later to plot with the English and to be impeached. At Chinon are specimens of Plantagenet Gothic (_Bulletin Monumental_, 1869). In the Loire-et-Cher department are some fourteen churches of the school. The other Plantagenet monuments usually seen by the traveler before his arrival in Angou are the eight-branch vaults at Vendôme, in the transept of the Trinité; the vault under the northwest tower of Tours Cathedral; and in Le Mans, the cathedral nave and the church of the Couture. At Mouliherne (Seine-et-Loire) every type of the Plantagenet development is present. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, vol. 1, p. 130, "St. Florent-les-Saumur," André Rhein; vol. 2, "Les voûtes de l'église de Mouliherne," André Rhein; p. 247, "Les influences angevines sur les églises gothiques du Blésois et du Vendômois," F. Leseur. [195] _Congres Archéologique_, 1910, p. 33, André Rhein, on Candes; Abbé Bourassé, "Notice historique et archéologique sur l'église de Candes," in _Mémoires de la Soc. archéol. de Touraine_, 1845, p. 141; Suppligeon, _Notices sur la ville et la collégiale de Candes_ (Tours, 1885). [196] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1843, 1884, and 1903, "Poitiers," André Rhein; H. L. de la Mauvinière, _Poitiers et Angoulême_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); Abbé Auber, _Histoire de la cathédrale de Poitiers_ (Poitiers, 1849), 2 vols.; _ibid._, _Histoire civile, relig. et littéraire du Poitou_ (Poitiers, 1856), 8 vols.; J. Berthelé, _Recherches pour servir à l'histoire des arts en Poitou_; Alfred Richard, _Histoire des comtes du Poitou_, 788-1204 (Paris, Picard et fils, 1903), 2 vols.; Dreux-Duradier, _Histoire littéraire du Poitou_; Alexis Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_ (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols.; Raynouard, _Choix des poésies originales des troubadours_ (Paris, Didot, 1816), vol. 5, "Richard Coeur-de-Lion"; R. P. Largent, _St. Hilaire de Poitiers_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre); J. Robuchon, _Paysages et monuments du Poitou_ (Paris, 1890-1903), folio; (on Poitiers, Mgr. Barbier de Montault); Benj. Fillon, _Poitou et Vendée_; A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan Company, 1914); Boissonnade, _Le Poitou_ (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, Cerf, 1920). [197] The _Vexilla regis prodeunt_ hymn is sung on Good Friday when the Blessed Sacrament is carried from the Repository to the main altar, and as a vesper hymn from the Saturday before Passion Sunday to Maundy Thursday. It has also been incorporated in the Roman Breviary for feasts of the Holy Cross. There have been a host of translations. In his _Medieval Hymns and Sequences_, London, 1813, Dr. J. M. Neale thus rendered the first quatrain: "The royal banners forward go. The cross shines forth with mystic glow, Where He in flesh, our flesh Who made, Our sentence bore, our ransom paid." [198] Montierneuf was founded in 1078 by Guillaume VIII (d. 1086). Only eight of the nave's eleven bays remain. The chevet was rebuilt in the XIV century. The abbey was sacked in 1562. St. Porchaire's tower is all that remains of an XI-century church, a contemporary of Notre Dame-la-Grande and Montierneuf. It was to be destroyed in 1843, but luckily some visiting archæologists saved it. From St. Porchaire's belfry rang the summonses of Poitiers University. De Cherge, "Mémoire historique sur l'abbaye de Montierneuf de Poitiers," in _Mém. de la Soc. des antiquaires de l'Ouest_, 1844; _Deux étudiants de l'Université de Poitiers, Francis Bacon et René Descartes_, 1867, p. 65. [199] St. Savin lies thirty miles from Poitiers. Its choir and transept belong to the early part of the XII century, and its nave was erected about thirty years after. Its donjonlike tower was crowned later by a spire, the highest in southwest France with St. Michel's at Bordeaux. Like Etruscan vase ornamentation are its unique frescoes giving Genesis, Exodus, and the Apocalypse. On the route from Poitiers to St. Savin lies Chauvigny, "the pearl of Poitou," with the ruins of several castles. Its church of St. Pierre has a decorated apse and some eight-branch Plantagenet vaults; its church of Notre Dame possesses some XV-century frescoes. Another of the chief Poitou-Romanesque churches is at St. Maixent, thirty miles from Poitiers, _via_ Niort. The nave is XII century, the choir, Angevin Gothic, and the tower, Flamboyant; its crypt capitals are noticeable. The abbey church at St. Jouin-de-Marnes, near Montcontour, has a good façade, a fine Romanesque tower, a transept of the end of the XI century, and a XII-century choir and nave, only three of whose vault sections, however, are the primitive ones. In the XIII century the present elaborate masonry roof was substituted. It belongs to the Third Period of the Plantagenet school, with three lines of keystones. Airvault abbey church, not far away, built a similar much-ramified vault, the prototype for that of Toussaint, at Angers. Parthenay can be included in the trip from Poitiers to St. Jouin-de-Marnes. In its venerable church took place the scene when St. Bernard rose in majesty at the altar and compelled the giant sinner Guillaume X of Aquitaine to repent. Three miles from Poitiers lies St. Benoit's Romanesque church, with a XIII-century spire, and five miles away is Ligugé, where St. Martin, under St. Hilary's guidance, founded the first monastery in Gaul. Dom Prosper Guéranger restored Ligugé in 1864, and here J. K. Huysmans lived, as he has described in _l'Oblat_. The XV-century church was rebuilt by that prelate of the Renaissance, Geoffrey d'Estissac, whom Rabelais came to visit. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1910, St. Savin; p. 119, Airvault; p. 108, St. Jouin-de-Marnes, and the latter also in the _Congrès_ of 1903; Prosper Merimée, _Les peintures de St. Savin_ (Paris, 1845), folio; Ch. Tranchant, _Guide pour la visite des monuments de Chauvigny en Poitou_ (Paris, 1901). [200] Probably because of the magistral window at Poitiers, the Byzantine tradition of the crucified Christ lingered long in the art of midland France. Over an altar of the chapel of Bourgonnière, in the parish of Bouzillé, in Angers diocese, is a remarkable XVI-century polychrome image of the Saviour, unwounded, robed, and awake, with arms wide outstretched against the Cross. [201] In 1106 gathered another council at Poitiers, a holy-war rally, but the war was to be waged on Christian Constantinople. The superb Bohemund, the new prince of Antioch, came to organize the expedition; he had gone on the First Crusade for booty, fierce as a Norman, astute as an Italian, in person like a Greek god, tall beyond man's normal height, broad-shouldered, and lithe--so the Greek princess at Constantinople saw him. Philip I gave him his daughter, and on Tancred, his cousin, a true hero of the holy wars, not a buccaneer, the king of France bestowed his daughter by the fair Bertrada de Montfort. [202] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Étude archéologique de St. Hilaire de Poitiers_ (Caen, 1904); also in the _Congrès Archéologique_ of 1903; De Longuemar, "Essai historique sur l'église Saint Hilaire-le-grand de Poitiers," in _Mémoires des antiquaires de l'Ouest_, 1856. [203] De la Croix, _Étude du baptistère de St. Jean de Poitiers_ (Poitiers, 1903); E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les fouilles du R. P. de la Croix au baptistère de St. Jean à Poitiers," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1902, vol. 66, p. 529; Mgr. X. Barbier de Montault, _OEuvres complètes_ (various studies on the monuments of Poitiers and its region), (Poitiers, Blais et Roy, 1899). [204] Like other Greek works of the period the Minerva at Poitiers shows the influence of Egyptian art in its stiff, regal attitude. The proud, full chin is uplifted. The shapely back is molded by a leopard's skin. The right arm is missing, but the left arm is honey-hued and as delicate as flesh in appearance. She bears the olive branch of peace, this wise Minerva. [205] Lucien Magne, _Le Palais de Justice de Poitiers_. [206] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1850 and 1895; Abbé Ph. Gobillot, _La cathédrale de Clermont_ (Clermont-Ferrand, F. L. Bellet, 1912); H. du Ranquet, _La cathédrale de Clermont-Ferrand_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); _ibid._, "Les architectes de la cathédrale de Clermont-Ferrand," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1912, vol. 76, p. 7; G. Desdevises du Dézert et L. Bréhier, _Clermont-Ferrand, Royat et le Puy-de-Dôme_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); Louis Bréhier, _L'Auvergne_ (Collection, Les provinces françaises), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); _ibid._, in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1912, on the capitals of Notre Dame-du-Port; G. Fraipont, _L'Auvergne_ (Collection, Montagnes de France), (Paris, H. Laurens); E. Vimont, _Les deux principales églises de Clermont_; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane_ (Paris, 1912); H. Stein, _Les architectes des cathédrales gothiques_ (Paris, 1912); Prosper Mérimée, _Notes d'un voyage en Auvergne_ (Paris, 1838); Alexis Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_ (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols.; Saveron, _Les origines de la ville de Clermont_; Ambrose Tardieu, _Histoire de la ville de Clermont_; G. Desdevises du Dézert, _Bibliographie du centenaire des croisades à Clermont-Ferrand_ (Clermont-Ferrand, 1895); D. Branche, _Auvergne au moyen âge_ (Clermont-Ferrand, 1842); Paul Allard, _St. Sidoine Apolinaire_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre); Taylor et Nodier, _Voyage pittoresque dans l'ancienne France_. _Auvergne_ (Paris, Didot, 1829-33), 3 vols. [207] "Il est peu de constructions ogivales qui se présentent d'un façon plus dégagée et plus pittoresque. La sombre masse se détache de la ville aux rues tortueuses comme une haute statue de son piédestal. Les deux flèches hardies s'encadrent dans la cirque majestueux de montagnes volcaniques. Il semble que la cathédrale soit le Mont-Saint-Michel de cette baie aux lumières mouvantes. Tantôt silhouettée par de vigoureux éclairages, tantôt estompée par les vapeurs qui planent dans la vallée, et quelquefois, aux heures matinales émergeant de leur nappe grise, comme une haute mâture au-dessus de la mer tranquille, elle reste toujours fière, imposante, poétique."--LOUIS GONSE, _L'art gothique_ (Paris, 1891). [208] The Chaise Dieu monastery, founded by St. Robert in 1043, was later affiliated with Cluny. The present church was begun in 1344 by Clement VI, who built the choir and four bays of the nave. The abbatial was completed, after 1370, by his nephew, Gregory XI. Clement had Avignon artists prepare his funeral monument, which originally possessed over forty statuettes representing his relatives, for he came of the great lines of Beaufort and Turenne. The Casa Dei abbatial, though possessed of grandeur, is dull and heavy. The aisles are as high as the principal span. The octagonal piers with uncut capitals lack elegance and lightness, the windows are the narrowest lancets, and there are no flying buttresses. Molds die away in the piers above the capitals--an early appearance of Flamboyant Gothic. The cloister (1378-1417) is frankly late-Gothic. The denuded church once was filled with the tombs of local magnates, among them those of the Lafayette family, precious pages of French history obliterated in 1562 and 1793. As if to shut out the funereal, humid aisles, the choir has been lined with tapestries (begun in 1492) unsurpassed in France. They reproduce the _Mirror of Perfection_ and the _Bible of the Poor_, two books popular in the XIII and XIV centuries. Each episode of the Saviour's life is accompanied by scenes of the Old Testament, prefiguring it. On the outer wall of the choir screen is a sketch, a Dance of Death, with the grim skeleton stalking in and out, touching with his chill finger pope, baron, burgher, page, field laborer, and little child. No XIII-century church had allowed so gruesome a theme on its walls. This lugubrious allegory came into vogue after the Black Death of 1348, when a third of Europe's population perished. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1904, pp. 54, 402; E. Durand, _La Chaise Dieu_ (1903); Maurice Fançon, _L'église abbatiale de la Chaise Dieu en Auvergne_; Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge_ (Paris, Colin, 1910). [209] "Quiconque en a senti une fois la beauté forte et simple de ce vigoureux style roman-auvergnat, dont l'origine demeure mystérieuse, n'oublie plus ces églises, solides, trapues, ramassées, dont l'ordonnance extérieure, au lieu d'être un décor plaqué, reproduit en relief l'ordonnance intérieure. Vue du chevet surtout, avec l'hémicycle de leurs chapelles serrées, accolées contre la masse de l'édifice, elles donnent une saisissante impression d'aplomb et d'unité."--PAUL BOURGET, _Le demon du midi_ (Paris, Plon-Nourrit et Cie, 1913). The feast of Notre Dame-du-Port falls on May 15th, and the city is illuminated with myriads of little lamps. [210] Polychrome decoration is to be found everywhere in Auvergne: Royat, Riom, Mozac, Saint-Saturnin, Orcival, Saint-Nectaire (where are some of the best carved capitals in the region), Issoire (observe _La cène_ sculptured on one of its capitals), Le Puy, and Brioude. This latter is one of the most beautiful of XII-century churches, showing Burgundian traits as well as those of Auvergne and the Velay. The influence of the Romanesque school of Auvergne spread to Parthenay, Saintes, Nevers, Toulouse, Santiago, and Avila. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1904, p. 542, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, on Brioude; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1895, pp. 96, 238, 292, on Saint-Nectaire; and p. 177, "École romane d'Auvergne," H. du Ranquet; _Bulletin Monumental_, 1909, vol. 73, p. 213, "Saint-Nectaire," Abbé G. Rochias. [211] Those who visit Riom (which lies close to Clermont) should go to Aigueperse, eight miles away, to see Mantegna's St. Sebastian and a Nativity by a brother of Ghirlandajo. As the lord of the region, a Bourbon-Montpensier--who died in 1496, had married the sister of the Gonzaga ruler of Mantua, these treasures probably came through that source. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1895; and 1913, p. 124, Mozac, Abbé Luzuy; p. 144, Riom, P. Gauchery; Paul Mantz, "Une tournée en Auvergne," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1886; Abbé R. Crégut, _La vierge du Mathuret_ (_Clermont-Ferrand_, 1902); _ibid._, _Les vitraux de la Sainte-Chapelle de Riom_ (1906); E. Clouard, _Les gens d'autrefois aux XVe et XVIe siècles_. (The controversy on the Madonna of the Bird is here summed up); Gondalon, _Riom et ses environs_ (Riom, Jouvet, 1904); A. de Champeaux et P. Gauchery, _Les travaux d'art exécutés pour Jean, duc de Berry_ (Paris, II. Champion, 1891); Camille Eulart, _Le musée de sculpture comparée du palais du Trocadéro_ (on the _vierge à l'oiseau_), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1913). [212] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1904, pp. 1, 403; Noël Thiollier et Félix Thiollier, _L'architecture romane du diocèse du Puy_ (Le Puy, 1900); Félix Thiollier, _Le Forez pittoresque et monumental_; Mallay et Noël Thiollier, _Monographie de la cathédrale du Puy_ (Le Puy, 1904); Prosper Merimée, _Notes d'un voyage en Auvergne_ (Paris, 1838), p. 242; Alexis Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_ (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols.; Paul Mantz, "Une tournée en Auvergne," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1887, vols. 35, 36; Louis Villat, _Le Velay_ (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf); Mandet, _Histoire de Velay_ (Le Puy, 1860), 6 vols.; De la Mure, _Histoire des ducs de Bourbon et des comtes de Forez_; Michel, _Auvergne et le Velay_ (Moulins), 3 vols. and atlas; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 8, p. 467, "Adhémar de Monteil"; p. 514, "Urbain II" (Paris, 1747). [213] Marcel Reymound et Ch. Girard, "La chapelle de St. Laurent à Grenoble," in _Bulletin Archéologique_, 1914-16, vol. 56, p. 176. [214] Emile Mâle, "L'art du moyen âge et les pèlerinages" in _Revue de Paris_, Oct. 1919, Feb. 1920. [215] René Fage, _La cathédrale de Limoges_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1913); Abbé Arbellot, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Limoges_ (Limoges, 1853); A. Petit, "Les six statues du jubé de la cathédrale de Limoges," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1912, vol. 62, p. 144. MM. Émile Mâle, André Michel, and Louis Gonse have written on the _jubé_; René Fage, "Le clocher limousin à l'époque romane," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1907, vol. 71, p. 262; Anthyme Saint-Paul, "Archéologie limousin," in _L'Almanac limousin_, 1885; Charles de Lasteyrie, _L'abbaye de St. Martial de Limoges_ (Paris, Picard, 1901); A. Leroux, _L'abbaye de St. Martial de Limoges_ (Toulouse, 1901); _ibid._, _Géographie et histoire du Limousin_ (Limoges, 1892); Ernest Rupin, _L'oeuvre de Limoges_ (Paris, 1890); A. Meyer, _L'art de l'émail de Limoges_ (Paris, 1896); P. Lavedan, _Léonard Limosin et les émailleurs français_ (Collection, Les Grands Artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens). (The meeting for the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1921, is to be held at Limoges.) [216] Rendered in modern French by J. Demogeot. [217] _Inferno_, xxviii:112-142. [218] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1861; Charles Saunier, _Bordeaux_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); J. A. Brutails, _Les vieilles églises de la Gironde_ (Bordeaux, Feret et fils, 1912); _ibid._, "La cathédrale de Bordeaux," in _Le moyen âge_, 1899-1901, vols. 12-14; H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_ "Bordeaux," L. de Foucaud, vol. 5, p. 105; Cirot de la Ville, _Origines chrétiennes de Bordeaux, ou hist. et descript. de l'église de St. Seurin_ (Bordeaux, 1867); P. J. O'Reilly, _Histoire de Bordeaux_ (Paris and Bordeaux, 1857), 6 vols.; C. Jullian, _Histoire de Bordeaux_ (Bordeaux, 1895); L. Barron, _La Gascogne_ (Collection, Régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf); _ibid._, _La Garonne_ (Collection, Fleuves de France), (Paris, H. Laurens); P. Courteault, _Histoire de Gascogne_ (Collection, Les vieilles provinces de France), (Paris, Boivin et Cie). [219] In the nave of the cathedral is the neo-classic tomb of Cardinal de Cheverus, who died, archbishop of Bordeaux, in 1836. Driven out of France at the time of the Revolution, he founded the see of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. [220] The beautiful cloister of St. Bertrand-de-Comminges belongs to the XII century. In 1536 the Renaissance art prelate, Jean de Mauléon, presented the carved choir stalls. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1874, p. 249, J. de Laurière; and 1906, p. 79, Louis Serbat; Morel, _Essai hist. sur St. Bertrand-de-Comminges_; d'Agos, _Description de l'église cathédrale de Comminges_. [221] The cathedral of Bayonne was begun about 1135 under Aliénor of Aquitaine's father. The choir is of that century; the nave was finished about 1335, and some of its sculptures, showing the national crest with the arms of both England and France, recall the short sovereignty in France of Henry V and Henry VI. The cloister of Bayonne ranks with those of Elne and Arles. A transept is indicated merely by the spacing of bays. The XII-century tower was rebuilt from 1501 to 1544. The interior of the cathedral is more firm than it is graceful, owing to the piers being six feet square and to an excessive sobriety in ornamentation. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1888. [222] Léon Gautier, éd., _Chanson de Roland_ (Tours, Mâme, 1895), section 297, l. 3684. [223] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1874 and 1906; H. Graillot, _Toulouse et Carcassonne_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Jules de Lahondès, _Toulouse chrétienne; l'église de St. Étienne, cathédrale de Toulouse_; _ibid._, "Les chapiteaux de St. Sernin de Toulouse," in _Mém. de la Soc. archéol. du Midi de la France_, 1897; Anthyme Saint-Paul, "St. Sernin," in _Album des monuments du Midi de la France_, 1897; in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1899; and in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1905, vol. 48, p. 145; Abbé Lestrade, _Histoire de l'art à Toulouse_ (Toulouse, 1907); H. L. Gillet, _Histoire artistique des ordres mendiants_ (Paris, 1912); A. Marignan, _Histoire de la sculpture en Languedoc des XIe et XIIIe siècles_ (Paris, Bouillon, 1902); Alexis Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_ (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols.; Roschach, _Le musée de Toulouse_, "Inventoire des richesses d'art de la France: ministère de l'instruction publique" (vol. 8), (Paris, 1908), 4to; Martin, _L'art roman en France_ (Paris, 1910); H. Revoil, _L'architecture romane du Midi de la France_ (Paris, 1873-90), 3 vols.; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane_ (Paris, 1912); Vie et Vaissette, supplemented by Du Mège, Molinier, and Roschach, _Nouvelle histoire de Languedoc_ (Toulouse, Privat, 1872-92), 15 vols. [224] Frédéric Mistral, _Poèmes_ (Paris, Charpentier-Fasquelle, 1912). [225] "Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars."--Prov. ix:1. [226] From the Chapelle de Rieux at the Cordeliers came some curious statues which are now in the Museum of Toulouse. Their date is certain, 1324 to 1348, yet their realism is of the XV century. Again Languedoc proved precocious in sculpture. In the Museum is a XIV-century statue of Bishop Guillaume Durandus, author of _Rationale_. [227] When Moissac was affiliated with Cluny and reformed, its church was rebuilt by Abbot Durand, whose image adorns a pier of the cloister's east gallery. The walls of the nave belong to the edifice consecrated in 1063. That church of three aisles was remade with cupolas and blessed in 1180, and of the same date are the fortified narthex and its tower. Owing to those defenses the celebrated portal is in the south wall of the porch, not in the church axis. The Gothic ribs beneath the tower are rectangular and three feet wide. In the XIV century the cupolas were replaced by diagonals. The cloisters were begun about 1100 under Abbot Ansquitil, who made the pier images, also the marble parts of the portal, its trumeau, and the Visitation. Abbot Roger (1115-31) finished the cloisters, inscribing the carved Scripture scenes of the capitals. During the first quarter of the XII century Moissac's imagery passed from the squat, coarsely executed figures of the cloister piers to the appealing, etherealized types--"_fluides créations du Languedoc_"--the Annunciation group. Mr. A. Kingsley Porter thinks that door-jamb-figure sculpture was first used by Guglielmo at Modena Cathedral (c. 1100), and from Italy passed into southern France. The current of art flowed in the opposite direction, too, for the coupled colonnettes, typical of the Romanesque cloisters of Provence, Languedoc, and Spain, soon found their way across the Alps, where early examples are to be seen at Verona and Aosta, and at the cathedral door of Verona are Languedoc's elongated figures with crossed feet. The _Portico de la gloria_ at Santiago sets forth the vision of John the Beloved at Patmos quite as Moissac's tympanum presents it. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 43, 303; E. Rupin, _Abbaye et les cloîtres de Moissac_ (Paris, Picard, 1897); André Michel, "Sculpture romane de Moissac," in _Bull. de la Soc. Archéol. du Midi de la France_, 1899 to 1901; Roger Peyre, _Padoue et Vérone_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens). [228] The master of French iconography, M. Émile Mâle, is on the eve of publishing a work on XII-century imagery, of which he says, "The art of Languedoc undulates like a flame in the wind, that of Provence seems cast in bronze." [229] _Paradiso_, xii:70-73. "Dominico fu detto; ed io ne parlo sì come dell'agricola, che Cristo elesse all'orto suo per aiutarlo. Ben parve messo e famigliar di Cristo." ("Dominic was he named; and I speak of him as of the husbandman whom Christ chose for his orchard to bring aid to it. Well did he show himself a messenger and a familiar of Christ.") [230] Douais, _L'Inquisition, ses origines, sa procédure_ (Paris, 1906); A. Molinier, _L'Inquisition dans le Midi de la France au XIIIe et au XIVe siècles_ (Paris, 1880); Vacandard, _L'Inquisition; étude historique et critique sur le pouvoir coercitif de l'église_ (Paris, 1907), (tr. London and New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1908); Jean Guiraud, _Histoire patiale, histoire vraie_ (Paris, 1911); _ibid._, _Questions d'histoire et d'archéologie chrétienne_ (Paris, 1906); _ibid._, _St. Dominique_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre, 1909), (tr. London, Washburne, 1913); C. M. Antony, _In St. Dominic's Country_ (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1912); Mortier, _Histoire des maîtres généraux de l'Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs_ (Paris, 1903), 5 vols. [231] Jean Guiraud, _Cartulaire de Notre Dame-de-Prouille_ (Paris, Picard, 1907), 2 vols. Vol. 1 is the ablest exposition of the Albigensian tenets; A. Molinier, "L'Albigeisme languedocien au XIIe et XIIIe siècles," in _Histoire de Languedoc_, vol. 1 (Toulouse, Privat, 1872-92), 15 vols.; C. Douais, _Les Albigeois; action de l'église au XIIIe siècle_ (Paris, 1889); A. Luchaire, _Innocent III; la croisade des Albigeois_ (Paris, Hachette, 1905). [232] "Les vainqueurs mettent à sac toutes les maisons au nombre de 7000.... Si trouvèrent en la ville grant avoir; si en prisent donquel qu'ils veurent et le remanant ils ardirent. Là eut grant persécution d'hommes, de femmes et d'enfans, dont ce fut pitié."--FROISSART, book I, chap. lxxvi. [233] Paul Fournier, _St. Raymond de Pennafort_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre). St. Raymond's life, from 1175 to 1275, covers one of the most vital centuries in history. He helped St. Peter Nolasco found the Order of Mercy to redeem Christian captives from Islam; he founded chairs for the study of Oriental languages; he reformed morals by his preaching. A voluntary teacher of philosophy at twenty, then a trained lawyer, it was not till he was touching the half-century limit that he entered the Dominican Order, of which he became the head. For fifty more years he gave himself up to works for humanity's advancement. [234] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1863; Jean Laran, _La cathédrale d'Albi_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1911); H. Crozes, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Ste. Cécile d'Albi_, 1873; E. d'Auriac, _Histoire de l'ancienne cathédrale et des évêques d'Albi_ (Paris, 1858); Abbé A. Aurial, "La voûte de Ste-Cécile d'Albi," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1913, p. 91; Prosper Merimée, _Notes d'un voyage dans le Midi de la France_ (1835); B. L. de Rivières, "Les églises d'Albi," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1873, vol. 39, p. 194; Taylor et Nodier, _Voyages pittoresques dans l'ancienne France_. _Languedoc_ (Paris, Didot, 1833-37), 2 vols. [235] In the Romanesque brick church of St. Salvi, with its imposing tower and XII-century cloister, St. Bernard preached in 1145. [236] The cathedral of Auch, which can be visited from Toulouse, was rebuilt (1371) by a nephew of Innocent VI, and again, after a fire in 1483. It is quite devoid of capitals. The façade is neo-classic. The choir stalls (1520-29) are masterpieces; Italianate fawns and Bacchantes are placed beside sacred personages. The magnificent windows, of the transition between Flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance, were the work of Arnaud de Moles (1507-13); their portrait studies are like Holbein's pictures. Abbé Canéto, Notice _sur l'église metro. de Ste. Marie d'Auch_ and _Congrès Archéologique_, 1901. The cathedral of Rodez, some fifty miles west from Albi, built its grand Flamboyant tower, _la couronne_, from 1510 to 1526, under the Blessed François d'Estaing. The Romanesque cathedral at Rodez was supplanted by the present one in 1277. The works flagged, however, and the nave was built as late-Gothic by Bishop Guillaume de la Tour d'Oliergues and a nephew who succeeded him. The west façade was left bare, since there the church overlooked the ramparts; to it were added later a rose window and a Flamboyant gallery. G. de Cogny, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1874, vol. 39; Bion de Marlavagne, _Cathédrale de Rodez_ (Paris, 1875). [237] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1868; and 1906, J. de Lahondès; Viollet-le-Duc, _La cité de Carcassonne_ (Paris, 1858); H. Graillot, _Toulouse et Carcassonne_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); L. Fédié, _Histoire de Carcassonne_ (Carcassonne, 1887); C. Douais, _Soumission de la vicomté de Carcassonne par Simon de Montfort_; Cros-Meyrevieille, _Histoire des comtes de Carcassonne_ (1845), 2 vols.; Gaston Jourdanne, _La cité de Carcassonne_ (1905). [238] Louis Serbat, in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1868 and 1906; L. Narbonne, _La cathédrale de Narbonne_, 1901; Victor Mortet, "Notes historiques et archéologiques sur la cathédrale de Narbonne," in _Annales du Midi_, vol. 10, p. 401; vol. 11, pp. 273 and 439--also printed separately (Toulouse, Privat, and Paris, Picard, 1899); F. Pradel, _Mono, graphie de l'église St. Juste de Narbonne_ (Narbonne, Caillard, 1884); Ch. Lentheric, _Les villes mortes du Golfe de Lyon: Narbonne, Maguelonne, Aigues-Mortes, Arles, Les Saintes-Mariés_ (Paris, Plon, 1883); "École gothique religieuse du Midi de la France," in _Positions des thèses soutenues par les élèves de l'École des chartes en 1909; Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 32, p. 474, on Gilles Aycelin, archbishop of Narbonne and Rouen, Léopold Delisle. [239] For the other churches at Narbonne, see the _Congrès Archéologique_, 1906. M. Lefèvre-Pontalis devotes a study to St. Paul Serge (p. 345), whose choir was built from 1229 to 1244. In the transept are vestiges of the primitive church. Two bays of the nave are of the XIV century, and the others are XII-century work redone in the XIII. To bind together the bulging walls, flat arches were thrown over the central vessel at the level of the pier arches. The church presents such peculiarities in the Midi as circulation passages at different levels round the edifice. There are false tribune arches, and over the pier arcade a passageway is maneuvered. Sergius Paulus was the first to preach Christianity in the city. In Narbonne's valuable Museum are classic vestiges of the city's great day under the Roman Empire. Many of the classic marble columns are to-day in the mosque at Cordova. Ch. E. Schmidt, _Cordoue, Grenade_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens). [240] The Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide lies in a wild gorge some six miles from Narbonne. The church, begun in the middle of the XII century, was roofed with a pointed cradle vault. The cloister, like that at Tarragona, was covered with _bombé_ vaults on eight ribs. Little marble columns support the Gothic masonry roof of the chapter house, which, like Poblet's, opens by arcades on the cloister. Twelve monks from Fontfroide founded Poblet in 1150. The countess who ruled Narbonne for sixty years confirmed the abbey charter in 1157: " I, Ermengarde, give to God and the Blessed Mary, to Abbot Vital and the present and future servants of God, the lands of Fontfroide," runs her deed of gift. Doubly is a nation robbed when monastic lands are held by private individuals who assume no responsibility toward the public, as did a majority of the ancient houses, before royalty named its favorites as their abbots. Even as vast tracts were granted to nobles that they might perform gratis the military defense of a land, so monasteries were expected to give payment for their domains, by voluntary services to civilization. J. de Lahondès, in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1906, p. 61; Calvert, _Études historiques sur Fontfroide_ (1875); G. Desdevises du Dézert, _Barcelone et les grands sanctuaires d'art catalan_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens). [241] Perpignan's aisleless cathedral of St. Jean was begun in 1324 and finished, as the century ended, under the kings of Majorca, who then ruled the Roussillon. The transept ends are apsidal below and pentagonal above. Beside it stands an older St. Jean, dedicated in 1025. The see originally was at Elne, where the cathedral was rebuilt in the XI century; lotus leaves are carved on the capitals of its lovely marble cloister (c. 1175). _Congrès Archéologique_, 1868; and 1906, p. 109, Perpignan; p. 135, Elne; E. de Barthélemy, " Le cloître de la ville d'Elne," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1857, vol. 23; Bernard Palustre," Perpignan et ses monuments," in _Revue d'hist. et d'archéol du Roussillon_, 1905; Auguste Brutails, " Notes sur l'art religieux du Roussillon," in _Bulletin archéol. du comité des traveaux hist. et scientifique_, 1892, No. 4; 1893, No. 3; P. Vidal, _Histoire de la ville de Perpignan_ (Paris, 1897); P. Vidal et J. Calmette, _Le Roussillon_ (Collection, Les régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf, 1909); J. de Gazanyola, _Histoire de Roussillon_ (Perpignan, Alzinc, 1857); Isabel Savory, _Romantic Roussillon_ (London, Unwin, 1919). [242] Eugène Müntz, _Les constructions du pope Urbain V à Montpellier, 1364-70_ (Paris, 1900); Jean Guiraud, _Les fondations du pape Urbain V à Montpellier_ (Montpellier, 1899), 3 vols.; G. E. Lefenestre, _Le musée de Montpellier_ (vol. 1, p. 189, "Inventaire des richesses d'art de la France: ministère de l'instruction publique"), (Paris, 1878); Émile Bonnet, _Antiquités et monuments du département de l'Hérault_ (Montpellier, 1908); Abbé M. Chaillon, _Le bienheureux Urbain V, 1310-70_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre, 1911); A Germain, _Maguelonne, étude historique et archéologique_; A Fabrége, _Histoire de Maguelonne_ (Montpellier, 1900), 2 vols. [243] Jean Aicard, _Arlette des Mayons_ (Paris, Flammarion, 1916). [244] To the northwest of Montpellier, near Aniane, is St. Guilhem-le-Désert, with blind niches in its exterior apse wall that derive from such Lombard churches as S. Ambrogio at Milan. Lombard towers, arched corbel tables, and mural arcaded bands passed from northern Italy into Languedoc. The early intersecting ribs here were exceptional for the Midi in being profiled. The nave and aisles are of the first half of the XI century, the chevet and transept of the early XII, as is the cloister, which once had a second story. The narthex was built from 1165 to 1199. The first duke of Aquitaine, Aliénor's ancestor, died here, a monk. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1906, p. 384; "L'église abbatiale de St. Guilhem-le-Désert," Émile Bonnet; Joseph Bédier, _Les légendes épiques_, vol. 1, "St. Guillaume de Gellone" (Paris, H. Champion, 1908-13), 4 vols. [245] Innocent III was the best type of the theory, enunciated by Boniface VIII as the XIII century closed, that civil rulers derive their power from religious authority. Leo XIII, in the encyclical _Immortale Dei_, November, 1885, set aside that claim. Each should keep to its own sphere, he said, one is not subordinate to the other; civil authorities are to attend to human affairs, and spiritual authorities to divine things. With every monarch in Europe appealing to him for his arbitration, it is little wonder that Innocent III should have held the views he did. [246] Mende lies in the mountains of western Languedoc. Its cathedral was begun (1365) under the auspices of Urban V, whose statue stands in the square close by. Practically it is a XV-century church, without capitals, flying buttresses, or transept. During twelve years the architect was Pierre Juglar, an associate, at Riom, of those Flamboyant Gothic masters, the Dammartin brothers. The cathedral was finished with its two towers in 1512. From 1286 to 1296 the bishop of Mende was Guillaume Durandus, author of _Rationale_, the famous book on church symbolism. He was governor under the popes of the marches of Ancona and the Romagna, and led the papal forces in battle. The Italian city of Castel Duranti was named after him. When he died at Rome in 1296, Giovanni Cosmati made his tomb, a masterpiece in the only Gothic church of Rome, Santa-Maria-sopra-Minerva. Urban V was generous also to St. Flour (which lies south of Mende), whose abbatial was rebuilt in the XIV century; John XXII had raised it to cathedral rank in 1317. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1857, Mende. [247] Nothing now at St. Victor's, Marseilles, is earlier than the XI century. A pre-Gothic use of diagonal ribs (with Lombard rectangular profiles) cropped out here, yet when the upper church was remodeled in the XIII century, Romanesque vaulting was used. Urban V rebuilt the transept, made the square apse, and raised the battlemented towers. When he visited Marseilles in 1373 every man in the city ceased his work to welcome him. As it was his desire to be buried in his former abbey, his remains were brought hither in 1372, and his successor, Gregory XI, raised a sumptuous Gothic monument forty feet in height. Abbé A. d'Agnel, "L'abbaye de St. Victor de Marseilles," in _Bulletin historique et philosophique_, 1906, p. 364; Eugène Müntz, "St. Victor, Marseilles," in _Gazette Archéol._, 1884. [248] In his short time in Rome Urban V gave commissions for art works to Giottino and the sons of Taddeo Gaddi, and he had made the precious shrine for the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul in the Lateran. (See Eugène Müntz in the _Cronique des Arts_ for 1880.) [249] Translated by F. J. C. Kearns, O. P. [250] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1909, p. 183; J. Ch. Roux, _Aigues-Mortes_ (Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1910); F. Em. di Pietro, _Histoire d'Aigues-Mortes_ (Paris, 1849); Marius Topin, _Aigues-Mortes_ (Nîmes, 1865); Abbé H. Aigon, _Aigues-Mortes, ville de St. Louis_ (1908); H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 3, p. 145; Ch. Lenthéric, _Le littoral d'Aigues-Mortes au XIIIe et au XIVe siècles_ (Nîmes, 1870); Vie. (Dom) et Vaissette (Dom), _Histoire de Languedoc_, vol. 7, p. 107, 3d éd.; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, vol. 1, pp. 378, 390; vol. 9, p. 182. [251] Maurice Barrès, _Le jardin de Bérénice_ (Paris, Charpentier, 1894). [252] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1897, p. 98; and 1909, p. 168, L. H. Labande; J. Ch. Roux, _St. Gilles, sa légende, son abbaye, ses coutumes_ (Paris, Lemerre, 1910), 4to; J. Hubidos, _Histoire et décoration de l'église abbatiale de St. Gilles_ (Nîmes, 1906); De Lasteyrie, _Étude sur la sculpture française au moyen áge_ (Paris, 1902); A. Marignan, _L'école de sculpture de Provence du XIIe au XIIIe siècle; Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 19, p. 268, Clement IV (Paris, 1838); Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_ (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols; W. Vöge, _Die Anfänge des monumentalen Styls_. [253] Edmond Rostand, "Le nom sur la maison," in _Le vol de la Marseillaise_ (Paris, Charpentier-Fasquelle, 1919). [254] Les Saintes-Maries is a desolate village of the Camargue, on the sea by the "Rhone of St. Gilles," six miles to the west of the big Rhone. The crenelated fortress-church replaced, in the XII century, one destroyed by Saracens. Its eastern end rises in three stories; below, in the crypt, is the shrine of Sara, the dark handmaiden; above is the high altar; and crowning all is the shrine (placed in St. Michael's care) in which Mary Jacobi and Mary Salome are honored. Their chapel opens on the church over the entrance to the Mass chapel. The sculpture resembles that of St. Trophime, at Arles; perhaps the much-eroded marble lions came from some monument of antiquity. Twice a year there are popular pilgrimages to Les Saintes-Maries, that of May being frequented by the gypsies. Monseigneur Duchesne, "La légende Sainte-Marie-Madeleine," in _Annales du Midi_, 1903, vol. 5; Georges de Manteyer, "Les légendes saintes de Provence," in _Mélanges d'archéol. et d'hist.: École de Rome_, 1897, vol. 17; Faillon, _L'apostolat des Saintes-Maries en Provence_. (This latter gives the Midi loyalists' point of view.) (1848, 2 vols.) [255] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1897, pp. 95, 291, Tarascon; pp. 92, 333, Beaucaire; and 1909, p. 262, Tarascon. The church of St. Martha at Tarascon was dedicated in 1197, but reconstructed in the XIV century. The south portal, with its curious little gallery, is of the XIII century. The honored relics are in the crypt in a heavy tomb of 1650. The simpler sarcophagus that once held them now stands by the side wall. All over France the defeat of paganism by Christian bishop or saint was symbolized by a dragon, and in the course of time the people often took the symbol for reality. The legend of St. Martha's Tarasque, or dragon, may be of this origin. Louis II d'Anjou began the castle of Tarascon, which was decorated by good King René. At Beaucaire, across the Rhone, is a tower built by St. Louis. The international fair of Beaucaire was famous. "Aucassin was of Beaucaire, of a goodly castle there": "'Tis of Aucassin and Nicolette.... The song has charm, the tale has grace, And courtesy and good address. No man is in such distress, Such suffering or weariness, Sick with ever such sickness, But he shall, if he hear this, Recover all his happiness, So sweet it is!" Turn to that cante-fable of the XIII century, and live again the Midi's days of chivalry. Turn to that XIX-century masterpiece of satirical generous humor, _Tartarin de Tarascon_, more likely to survive than many a more pretentious tale, so gay it is. F. W. Bourillon, éd. and tr. of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ (Oxford, 1896). [256] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1876; and 1909, p. 213, L. H. Labande; L. H. Labande, "Étude historique et archéologique sur St. Trophime d'Arles," in _Bulletin Archéologique_, 1904, p. 459; J. de Louvière, "St. Trophime d'Arles," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1876, vol. 42, p. 741; Abbé Bernard, _La basilique primatiale de St. Trophime d'Arles_, 2 vols., 8vo; Roger Peyre, _Nîmes, Arles, Orange_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1904); Georges de Manteyer, _La Province du Ie au XIIe siècle_ (1908); F. Beissier, _Le pays d'Arles_ (1889); Abbé Pougnet, _Étude analytique sur l'architecture de la Provence au moyen âge_ (1867); H. Revoil, _L'architecture romane du Midi de la France_ (Paris, Morel et Cie, 1873), 3 vols.; Martin, _L'art roman en France_ (Paris, 1910); Rebatu, _Antiquités d'Arles_ (1876); J. B. de Rossi, "Le cimétière des Arlescamps et sa basilique de St. Pierre," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1875, vol. 41, p. 170; E. Leblant, _Les sarcophages chrétien de la Gaule_ (1886); Alexis Forel, _Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans_, vol. 1, chap. 1, "Arles-la-grecque" (Paris and Geneva, 1913), 2 vols. [257] "Saint-Trophime, humide et écrasé, dit une louange irrésistible â la solitude et s'offre comme un refuge contre la vie.... Arles, où rien n'est vulgaire."--MAURICE BARRÈS, _Le jardin de Bérénice_ (Paris, Charpentier, 1894). [258] There is another cloister at Montmajour, four miles from Arles. Its transverse ribs are caught along the wall on corbels carved with grotesques. Nothing at Montmajour pre-dates A.D. 1000. In the monastery church appeared (in the transept) some early diagonals; the crypt (middle of the XII century) is of a peculiar plan: a circular chapel in the middle of its apse with chapels radiating from the passage round it. From each arm of the transept projects an apse chapel. Under a hillock is a small shrine remade in the XIII century. In 1369 a tower of defense was added to the abbey. The curious chapel of the Holy Cross, in a meadow near by, is not of the time of its foundation, 1019, but a reconstruction of the XII century, probably intended for the chapel of a graveyard. Montmajour once rose from the sea marshes that for centuries came up to the gates of Arles. J. M. Trichaud, _Les ruines de l'abbaye de Montmajour-lès-Arles_ (Arles, 1854); _Congrès Archéologique_, 1876, p. 362; and 1909, p. 154; Chantelon (Dom), _Histoire de Montmajour_ (1890); L. Royer, _L'abbaye de Montmajour-lès-Arles_ (Abbeville, Paillart, 1910). [259] "Sur cette terre élégante, au dessin si précis et si pur, sous cette lumière pénétrante, sur ces champs rouges où l'ovilier verse son ombre fine et grise, sur ces bords que la mer antique bat de sa flot court et rythmé, subsistent des oeuvres et des souvenirs qui ne dépareraient pas la Grèce elle-même, mère de toute beauté. Le Pont du Gard, la Maison Carrée, les Arènes de Nîmes et d'Arles, Saint Trophime, Montmajour, Les Saintes-Maries, Les Baux, le Château des Papes à Avignon, les remparts de Saint Louis à Aigues-Mortes, le Peyrou à Montpellier, le canal du Midi, sont les monuments de cette activité séculaire qui recueillit l'héritage de Rome, et l'entretint tout le long de cette vallée du Rhône qui, à ses deux extrémités, comme deux phares, porte deux villes, deux républiques qui n'ont rien de supérieur par l'antiquité, l'activité, et l'éclat: Lyon et Marseilles."'--GABRIEL HANOTAUX. [260] L. Rostan, _Monographie du couvent de St. Maximin_, 1874; Abbé Albanès, _Le courent royal de St. Maximin_; Monseigneur Duchesne, "La légende de Ste. Marie Madeleine," in _Annales du Midi_, 1893, vol. 5; L. G. Pélissier, _La Provence_ (Régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf). [261] _Rationale divinorum officiorum_, translated by Neale and Webb (Camden Society) as _The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornament_ (Leedes, Green, 1843). [262] His son, St. Louis d'Anjou, died archbishop of Toulouse, having resigned his heirsships after captive years in Spain proved to him the futility of grandeur. Giotto painted him on the walls of Santa Croce, Florence. His chasuble, a masterpiece of embroidery, was preserved by the solid wardrobes of St. Maximin's XIV-century sacristy. [263] L. H. Labande, "St. Sauveur d'Aix-en-Provence," in _Bulletin archéological du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques_ (Paris, 1912), p. 289; Abbé E. F. Maurin, _Notice historique et description de l'église métropolitaine St. Sauveur d'Aix_ (Aix-en-Provence, 1837); Prosper de St. Paul, "La cathédrale d'Aix-en-Provence," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1875, vol. 41, p. 442; J. Ch. Roux, _Aix-en-Provence_ (Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1907); L. Dimier, _Les primitifs français_ (Collection, Les Grands Artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens). [264] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1882; 1897, p. 113; and 1909, L. H. Labande; André Hallays, _Avignon el le Comtat-Venaissin_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); F. Digonnet, _Le palais des papes d'Avignon_ (after R. P. Ehrle, S. J.), 1907; L. Duhamel, _Les origines du palais des papes d'Avignon_ (Tours, 1882); L. H. Labande, "L'église de N.-D.-des-Doms à Avignon," in _Bulletin Archéologique_, 1906; A. Penjon, _Avignon la ville, et le palais des papes_ (1905); Léon Palustre, "Les peintures du palais des papes à Avignon," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1874, vol. 40, p. 665; Eugène Müntz, "Les tombeaux des papes en France," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1887, vol. 36, pp. 275, 367; _ibid._, "Les sources de l'histoire des arts dans la ville d'Avignon pendant le XIVe siècle," in _Bulletin Archéologique_, 1887, p. 249; Verlaque, _Jean XXII, sa vie, ses oeuvres_ (Paris, 1883); Robert André-Michel, "Les fresques de la garde-robe au palais des papes à Avignon," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1914-16, vol. 56, p. 293. (This study of the frescoes, discovered in 1909, was the author's last work. He fell in battle at Crouy-sur-Ourcq in 1914); Louis Guérard, R. P., _Les papes d'Avignon_ (Paris, Lecoffre, 1910); Jean Guiraud, _L'église et les origines de la Renaissance_ (chap. 2, on thé Avignon popes). (Paris, Lecoffre, 1902). [265] While the popes ruled in Avignon, churches rose from end to end of the city. In St. Didier (XIV century) is the bas-relief N. D.-du-spasme made for King René in 1476 by Francisco Laurana, one of the earliest Renaissance sculptors to work in France. He made the tomb for King René's brother in Le Mans Cathedral. The Gothic-Renaissance façade (1512) of St. Pierre is of singular grace; the date of its carved doors is 1551. There is a XV-century pulpit, and a retablo (1461) by Antoine Le Moiturier, born in Avignon, who finished the celebrated tomb of Jean Sans Peur now in Dijon's Museum. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1909, p. 17; A. Chaillot, _Les oeuvres d'art dans les églises et chapelles d'Avignon_; G. Bayle, _Notes historiques sur l'église de St. Pierre d'Avignon_ (Avignon, 1899). [266] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1897, p. 280; and 1909, p. 144, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon; Jules Formigé, _Rapport sur la Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon_ (Gard), (Paris, 1909); Robert André-Michel, "Le tombeau du Pope Innocent VI à Villeneuve-lès-Avignon," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1911, p. 204. [267] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907 and 1913; A. Kleinclausz, _La Bourgogne_ (Collection, Régions de la France), (Paris, L. Cerf, 1905); _ibid._, _Histoire de Bourgogne_ (Paris, 1909); Dom. Urbain Plancher, _Histoire générale de Bourgogne_ (1739-81), 4 vols.; Claude Courtépée, _Description du duché de Bourgogne_ (1775-85); De Barente, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois_ (Paris, 1825), 12 vols.; Ernest Petit, _Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne_ (Dijon, 1905), 9 vols.; A. de Caumont, "Rapport sur une excursion archéol. en Bourgogne," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1852, vol. 18, p. 225; J. Calmette et H. Drouot, _La Bourgogne_ (Collection, Provinces Françaises), (Paris, H. Laurens); A. Perrault-Dabot, _L'art en Bourgogne_ (1897); J. L. Bazin, "La Bourgogne sous les ducs de la maison de Valois, 1361-1478," in _Mémoires de la Soc. Éduenne_, 1901, vol. 29, p. 33; Taylor et Nodier, _Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France, La Bourgogne_ (Paris, Didot, 1863), 2 vols., folio; W. S. Purchon, "An architectural Tour in Central France and Burgundy," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 1913-14, 3d series, vol. 21, p. 557. [268] From Luxeuil derived Jumièges, St. Wandrille, Fécamp, St. Malo, St. Valéry, St. Bertin, Corbie, St. Riquier, Péronne, Lure, Rebais, Jouarre, Faremoutier, Remiremont, Dissentir, St. Gall, and Bobbio. St. Columbanus was born in Leinster in 543, the year that St. Benedict died at Monte Cassino. It is said that there was something supernatural in his appearance. Because of his comeliness he embraced the monastic life to flee temptation, entering the abbey of Bangor, a center of letters in what is now Ulster. All his life Columbanus was a lover of the classics; from his library at Bobbio was recovered Cicero's _De Republica_. At thirty came the call to missionize in Gaul. Ireland, on the outer verge of Europe, had escaped the Barbarian's wrecking so that her culture was intact. With twelve monks, among them his nephew, St. Gall (future founder of the noted Swiss abbey), Columbanus crossed to France. The king of Burgundy, a grandson of Clovis, gave him the region of Luxeuil, which the late invasions had turned into a desert. In twenty years Columbanus made it the center of spiritual life in Gaul. He was exiled in 610 because of his strictures on the evil living of Burgundy's rulers. After many wanderings he founded Bobbio, between Genoa and Milan, which abbey became another seat of learning. There he died in 615. Martin, _St. Columban_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre, 1909); Healy, _Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars_ (Dublin, 1890); Ch. de Montalembert, _Monks of the West_ (translated, London, 1896); Dalgairns, _Apostles of Europe_ (London, 1876), vol. 1; Besse, _Les moines de l'ancienne France_ (Paris, 1906). [269] "On peut dire que vers le Xe siècle, le genre humain en Europe, était devenu fou. Du mélange de la corruption romaine avec le férocité des barbares qui avaient inondé l'empire, il était enfin resulté un état de choses que, heureusement peut-être, on ne reverra plus. La férocité et la débauche, l'anarchie et la pauvreté étaient dans tous les états. Jamais l'ignorance ne fut plus universelle. Le chaire pontificale était opprimée, deshonorée, et sanglante."--JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. [270] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1899, p. 48; 1913, p. 65, Jean Virey; _Millénaire de Cluny_ (Mâcon, 1910), 2 vols.; Jean Virey, _L'architecture romane dans l'ancien diocèse de Mâcon_ (Paris, 1892), 2 vols.; _ibid._, _L'abbaye de Cluny_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); Chanoine L. Chaumont, _Histoire de Cluny_ (Paris, 1911); Migne, _Dictionnaire des abbayes_ (Paris, 1856); Ch. de Montalembert, _Monks of the West_ (trans. London, 1896); H. Pignot, _Histoire de l'ordre de Cluny depuis la fondation de l'abbaye jusqu'à la mort de Pierre le Vénérable_ (Autun et Paris, 1868), 3 vols.; F. L. Bruel, _Cluny_, 910-1910. _Album historique et archéologique_ (Mâcon, 1910), 4to; Ponzet, in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1912, on the capitals of Cluny's abbatial; David, _Grands abbayes de l'occident_ (Paris, 1909); Lecestre, _Abbayes en France_ (Paris, 1902); G. T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_, vol. 2, p. 104, Cluny; p. 112, Tournus. Tr. by G. McN. Rushforth (London and New York, 1910); Demimuid, _Pierre le Vénérable et la vie monastique au XIIe siècle_ (Paris, 1895); A. Penjon, _Cluny, la ville et l'abbaye_ (Cluny, 1884); _ibid._, "Abélard et Pierre le Vénérable d'après Dom Gervaise," in _Annales de l'Acad. de Mâcon_, 1910, p. 393; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 7, p. 318, "Le bienheureux Guillaume, abbé de St. Bénigne"; p. 399, "Raoul Glaber"; p. 414, "St. Odilon" (Paris, 1746); vol. 9, p. 465, "St. Hugues"; p. 526, "Abbé Jarenton" (Paris, 1750); vol. 14, p. 211, "Pierre le Vénérable"; p. 129, "St. Bernard" (Paris, 1764). [271] Dr. John Mason Neale, éd., _Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix_ (London, 1858). Dr. Neale has here rendered his translation like the XII-century original, dactylic hexameters divided into three parts. [272] "Ah! ce Cluny!... ce fut vraiment l'idéal du labeur divin, l'idéal rêvé! Ce fut, lui, qui réalisa le couvent d'art, la maison du luxe pour Dieu."--J. K. HUYSMANS, _L'Oblat_ (Paris, Plon-Nourrit et Cie). [273] Some of the French houses affiliated with Cluny were Vézelay, the Trinité at Vendôme, the Trinité at Fécamp, St. Martin-des-Champs and St. Germain-des-Prés at Paris, St. Denis, the Caen abbatials, St. Ouen at Rouen, Jumièges, St. Wandrille, St. Remi at Rheims, Notre Dame at Châlons-sur-Marne, St. Bénigne at Dijon, Tournus, St. Maixent, St. Savin, Ste. Foy at Conques, Moissac, St. Sernin at Toulouse, and St. Eutrope at Saintes. [274] The church of Notre Dame built in Cluny by St. Hugues was burned in 1233, and immediately reconstructed as Burgundian Gothic; the lower walls and some of the capitals are of St. Hugues' time. Consoles, sculptured with heads, such as those under the lantern, are frequent in the province, but a central tower is exceptional. In the XVIII century the narthex was destroyed. St. Marcel's church was rebuilt after a fire in 1159 by the abbot of Cluny, who was a great-nephew of William the Conqueror. The octagonal tower, capped by a XIII-century spire, is of exceptionally lovely proportions. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1913, p. 68. St. Hugues also founded the Charité-sur-Loire, whose church was dedicated by his pupil. Paschal II, in 1107, at which ceremony assisted Suger, then a monk at St. Denis. Only the transept and absidioles are of that time, for the choir, nave, and tower are Burgundian Romanesque of the second half of the XII century; the Lady chapel rose two centuries later. Once the abbatial was four hundred feet long, but a fire, in 1559, damaged it and only four bays of the nave remain. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1913, p. 374, Louis Serbat; André Philippe, "Charité-sur-Loire," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1905, vol. 69, p. 469. [275] De Foville, _Pise et Lucques_ (Villes d'art célèbres) (Paris, H. Laurens). [276] Héloïse as a girl, in the convent of Argenteuil, studied Greek, Latin, Hebrew, philosophy, and theology; the women of that age were as eager for learning as the men. In 1817 her body and that of Abélard were removed to the cemetery of Père la Chaise at Paris. Le Roux de Lincy, _Les femmes célèbres de l'ancienne France_ (Paris, Leroi, 1848), 2 vols. For Abélard, see de Rémusat (Paris, 1855) and E. Vacandard (Paris, 1881). [277] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1899; and 1913, p. 63, E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; Abbé Cucherat, _Monographie de la basilique du Sacré Coeur à Paray-le-Monial_, 1884; N. de Nicolai, _Générale description du Bourbonnais_. [278] John Mason Neale, _Collected Hymns, Sequences, and Carols_ (London, Hodden & Stoughton, 1914), p. 199, a translation of the XII-century poem of Bernard de Morlaix. [279] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1899, p. 62; and 1907, p. 32, Joseph Déchelette; also p. 537; H. de Fonteray and A. de Charmasse, _Autun et ses monuments_ (1889); Abbé Devoncoux, _Description de l'église cathédrale d'Autun_ (1845); Claude Courtépée, _Description de la duché de Bourgogne_, vol. 6; H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 5, p. 49, L. Paté, on Autun; Paul Vitry, in _Revue Archéol._, 1899, p. 188; Montegut, _Souvenirs de Bourgogne_. [280] The abbey of St. Andoche, Saulieu, was named for a companion of St. Benignus, a Greek missionary sent to evangelize Gaul, perhaps by St. Polycarp of Smyrna. The church was rebuilt early in the XII century, and of that period is the nave whose capitals present sculpture of different epochs: the barbaric earlier grotesques censured by St. Bernard, then a few acanthus leaves and medallions, and, finally, naturalistic work. Calixtus II dedicated Saulieu's abbey church in 1119. In 1339 the English sacked the choir and transept, which were rebuilt in 1704. That true son of Burgundy, Vauban, the celebrated engineer of Louis XIV, was born in a château near Saulieu in 1633: "The most honest man of his century, the simplest, truest, and bravest," according to St. Simon. He covered France with defenses whose worth was proved in 1914. One can comprehend qualities in a region's architecture by a knowledge of regional characters. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 103, Pierre de Truchis, on Saulieu. The architect Soufflot, of M. Lefèvre-Pontalis' family, was a Burgundian. [281] The cathedral of Langres in ancient Burgundy resembles Autun in its channeled pilaster strips and its acanthus-leaf sculpture. Its choir was rebuilt in 1100, using simultaneously groin vaulting and diagonals. The façade is neo-classic. [282] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1899, p. 68; A. Kleinclausz, _Dijon et Beaune_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Alphonse Germain, _Les Néerlandais en Bourgogne_ (Bruxelles, 1909); Arsène Périer, _Un chancelier au XVe siècle, Nicolas Rolin_ (Paris, Plon, 1904); H. Chabeuf, in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1900, p. 193, on the tapestries of Beaune; Abbé Bavard, _Histoire de l'Hôtel Dieu de Beaune_ (Beaune, 1881); André Michel, éd., _Histoire de l'art_, vol. 3, première partie, "La tapisserie aux quatorzième et quinzième siècles," Jules Guiffrey. [283] Robert Vallery-Radot, _Le réveil de l'esprit_ (Paris, Perrin et Cie, 1917). [284] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 4, Avallon, Charles Porée, and p. 129, G. Fleury; p. 97, Montréal, Charles Porée; p. 49, Flavigny, P. de Truchis; E. Petit, _Avallon et l'Avallonnais_ (Auxerre, Gallot, 1867); R. Vallery-Radot, _Un Coin de Bourgogne_; _Avallon_; Abbé Villetard, "Les statues du portail de l'église St. Lazare d'Avallon," in _Bull. de la Société d'études d'Avallon_, 1899, 1900, and 1901; E. Petit, "Collégiale de Montréal," in _L'Annuaire de l'Yonne_, 1861, p. 121; G. T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_ (tr. London and New York, 1910), vol. 2, on the crypt of Flavigny; L. Bondot et J. Galimard, _Restes de l'ancienne basilique de Flavigny_ (1906); Claude Courtépée, _Description du duché de Bourgogne_, vol. 3, on Flavigny; Lucien Bégule, _L'abbaye de Fontenay et l'architecture cistercienne_ (Lyon, 1912). There is also a study by Bégule of Fontenay in the Petites Monographies series published by H. Laurens; J. B. Corbolin, _Monographie de l'abbaye de Fontenay_ (Cîteaux, 1882). [285] _Discours de réception de M. Louis Pasteur à l'Académie Française_, 1882. Pasteur was born at Dôle (Jura), once a part of ancient Burgundy. A grandson, Robert Vallery-Radot, is one of the younger generation that comprehends the spiritual essence of the Middle Ages. He has written of the potency of his prayer in the church dedicated to holy Lazarus in his native Avallon. Another grandson, Jean Vallery-Radot, is a rising member of the school of mediæval archæology. [286] Jean de Chastellux, _Travels in America, 1780-1782_. He was the first to have himself inoculated with smallpox in order to give confidence to the people. The heir of Chastellux was a hereditary first canon in Auxerre Cathedral, privileged to sit in its choir with a falcon on his wrist. [287] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 199; Abbé Henry, _Histoire de l'abbaye de Pontigny_ (Avallon, 1839); Chaillon des Barres, _L'abbaye de Pontigny_ (Paris, 1844); _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 11, p. 213, "St. Étienne, troisième abbé de Cîteaux" (Paris, 1759). [288] "The long prospect of nave and choir ends with a sort of graceful smallness in a chevet of seven closely packed, narrow bays. It is like a nun's church, or like a nun's coif."--WALTER PATER, on Pontigny, in _Miscellaneous Studies_ (London, The Macmillan Company, 1895). [289] J. C. Robertson, ed., _Material for the History of Thomas Becket_. Rolls series, 7 vols.; vols. 1 to 4 contain the lives written by John of Salisbury, Herbert of Bosham, etc. Other studies of St. Thomas of Canterbury are Morris (London, 1885); Kate Norgate (_Dictionary of National Biography_); L. Huillier (Paris, 1891), 2 vols. [290] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 27; Charles Porée, _L'abbaye de Vézelay_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); H. Havard, éd., _La France artisque et monumentale_, vol. 4, Vézelay; De George, "L'église abbatiale de Vézelay," in _L'Architecture_, 1905; L. E. Lefèvre, "Le portail de l'abbaye de Vézelay," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1906, p. 253; also, 1904, vol. 54, p. 448, G. Sanoner; Crosnier, "Iconographie de l'abbaye de Vézelay," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1847, p. 219; V. Flandin, "Vézelay," in _Annuaire statistique du département de l'Yonne_, 1841-45; A. Chérest, _Études historiques sur Vézelay_ (Auxerre, 1868); Gally, _Vézelay monastique_ (Tonnerre, 1888); Camille Enlart, _Le musée de sculpture comparée du Trocadéro_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1913); A. Thierry, _Lettres sur l'histoire de France_, chaps. 22-24; Joseph Bédier, _Les légendes épiques_, vol. 1, "La légende de Girard de Roussillon" (Paris, H. Champion, 1908), 4 vols. [291] Maurice Barrès, _La colline inspirée_ (Paris, Émile-Paul, frères, 1913). [292] Louis Gonse, _L'Art Gothique_ (Paris, Quantin, 1891). [293] St. Père-sous-Vézelay, below the hill, occupies the site where Girard de Roussillon's foundation was first established. The present church is a typical Burgundian Gothic edifice, partly of the XII and partly of the XIII century. Carved corbels catch the fall of certain diagonals, and in place of a triforium is an interior passageway that passes through the shafts. In the opening years of the XIV century was added the narthex, a noble porch of two bays whose capitals have foliage in little bunches set in two rows. The façade is decorated by big statues like that of the Madeleine church, a mile away, and at the corners of the tower, a landmark for the valley, are sculptured angels blowing trumpets. The choir of St. Père-sous-Vézelay was wrecked during the English wars, and was in large part rebuilt as late-Gothic. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 16; Abbé Pissier, "Notice historique sur Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay," in _Bull. de la Soc. des Sciences de l'Yonne_, 1902, vol. 56, pp. 33, 275. [294] In his _Via Crucis_, F. Marion Crawford has described the great gathering at Vézelay. [295] The Huguenot leader, Théodore de Béze, was born in the bourg of Vézelay. His brother, a canon in the church of St. Lazare at Avallon, espoused the opposite side with equal zest. [296] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 64, Pierre de Truchis; Abbé Bouzerand, _Mémoirs sur l'église Notre Dame de Semur_, 1864; _ibid._, _Histoire générale de Semur-en-Auxois_; Ledeuil, _Notice sur Semur-en-Auxois_ (Semur-en-Auxois, 1886); Taylor et Nodier, _Voyage pittoresque et romantique dans l'ancienne France. Bourgogne_ (Paris, Didot, 1863), folio; Max Quantin, _Répertoire archéol. du département de l'Yonne_ (Paris, 1908); Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les caractères distinctifs des écoles gothique de la Champagne et de la Bourgogne," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 546. [297] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1850, p. 22; and 1907, p. 167, Charles Porée; p. 599, Camille Enlart, on the sculptured doors of Auxerre Cathedral: Camille Enlart, _La cathédrale d'Auxerre_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens): A. Chérest, _La cathédrale d'Auxerre_. _Conferences d'Auxerre_ (Auxerre, 1868); Émile Lambin, "La cathédrale d'Auxerre," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1897, vol. 47, p. 383; Charles Porée, "Le choeur de la cathédrale d'Auxerre," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, p. 251; Louise Pillion, "Sculpture de la cathédrale d'Auxerre," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1905, p. 278; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, vol. 4, p. 131, on construction; vol. 9, p. 447, on vitrail; Victor Petit, "Description des villes et campagnes du département de l'Yonne" (Auxerre, 1876). In the _Annuaire de l'Yonne_, earlier studies on Auxerre are, 1841, p. 38, F. de Lasteyrie; 1843, p. 128, V. Petit; 1846, p. 207, and 1847, p. 141, Challe; 1872, p. 161, and 1873. p. 3, Daudin; André Philippe, "L'architecture religieuse au XIe et au XIIe siècle dans l'ancien diocèse d'Auxerre," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904, vol. 68, _passim_. Other notices on Auxerre in the _Bulletin Monumental_ are, 1847, vol. 13, p. 153, and 1849, vol. 15, p. 145, Victor Petit; 1872, vol. 38, pp. 494, 744, Victor Petit; Abbé Lebeuf, _Histoire d'Auxerre_; E. Moulton, _La guerre au XVIe siècle_ (Paris, H. Laurens). [298] St. Germain's abbatial is less pure Gothic than the cathedral's choir. Beneath its sanctuary are two superimposed crypts, the lower one of the IX century, and that above it belonging to the XIII-century reconstruction of the abbey church. Conflagrations wiped out several early churches of the monastery. In the XII century rose the Romanesque tower--one of the best in France; until 1820 it was attached to the nave. A total reconstruction of the abbatial was necessary in 1277, but after the upper crypt and the choir were undertaken there came a pause. The abbot here (1309-39), who erected the crenelated inclosure walls of the monastery, resumed the church as Rayonnant Gothic. Urban V, the greatest of the Avignon patrons of art and letters, had been abbot of St. Germain (1352), and his arms were cut on a keystone of the new nave, to which he contributed, as did his successor, Gregory XI. Soon after the church was completed it was pillaged during the religious wars. Napoleon turned the establishment into a hospital, which it still is. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 182, C. Porée; p. 627, Jules Tillet; Abbé V. B. Henry, _Histoire de l'abbaye de St. Germain d'Auxerre_ (Auxerre, Gallot, 1853); Victor Petit, "Les cryptes de St. Germain d'Auxerre," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1872, vol. 38, p. 494; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'Architecture_, vol. 3, p. 377. [299] At her trial in Rouen Jeanne spoke of Auxerre Cathedral: "_En route, je traversai Auxerre, où j'entendis la messe dans la principale église.... Alors, j'avais fréquemment mes voix._" Marius Sepet, _Au temps de la Pucelle, récits et tableaux_ (Paris, P. Téqui, 1905). [300] The abbey church at St. Eusèbe is of archæological interest. The octagonal tower over its altar, forming internally a lantern, is of the XII century, as are the piers and their arches. A pause came between the making of the nave's lower and upper parts, for the church did not follow the usual custom of advancing bay by bay, but was constructed story by story. The west front is full Gothic, and the ambulatory of the XIII century. The original choir was in large part replaced by the present well-built Flamboyant Gothic one, finished by 1530. What used to be the episcopal palace of Auxerre is to-day the Prefecture. It shows, in its wall on the river side, the Romanesque gallery built by Bishop Hugues de Châlons (1116-36). Its hall, with pignons alike at both ends, was erected by Bishop Guillaume de Mello (1247-70). _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, p. 188; Corberon, _Auxerre, ses monuments_; Lescuyer, "Notice sur l'église de St. Eusèbe," in _l'Annuaire de l'Yonne_, 1839, p. 318; 1845, p. 103, "St. Eusèbe," Max Quantin. [301] The west apse of Nevers' Cathedral, dedicated to St. Juliette, mother of the child martyr, St. Cyr, formed, with its crypt and transept, part of the XII-century Romanesque edifice. Late in the XIII century was built a Gothic nave, which was reconstructed after a fire in 1308, and again its outer walls were reconstructed in the Flamboyant Gothic day. The present choir dates from the XIV century. The fine tower at the transept's southern façade was built 1506 to 1528. Nevers' former ducal palace, of the XV century, stands on a park overlooking the Loire. The Romanesque abbey church of St. Étienne, founded, tradition says, by St. Columbanus, combines the schools of Auvergne and Burgundy, and is important to archæologists because the date of its building, 1063 to 1097, is certain. The expense of constructing it caused the Count of Nevers to forego the First Crusade. Bishop Ives of Chartres consecrated the church in 1097. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1913, p. 300, Louis Serbat; Gaston Congny, _Bourges et Nevers_; J. Locquin, _Nevers et Moulins_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Monseigneur Crosnier, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Nevers_ (1854); Abbé Sery, _Les deux apsides de la cathédrale de Nevers_ (1899); Morellet, Barat, et Bussière, _Le Nivermois_ (1840), 2 vols.; Paul Meunier, _Nevers historique et pittoresque_ (1901). [302] "Because the pearly white surfaces of the grisaille would make the adjacent colored surfaces appear heavy and opaque, they introduced, into these latter, limpid blues and yellows, very light reds, whites with a greenish or rosy tint. In the high windows of the cathedral of Auxerre they first tried this method, and here the grisaille is chased with a large and firm design that offsets the transparency of the colorless surfaces. Notice how the pedestal and the canopy, both very light, bind together the bands of grisaille on either side, while the latter is heavily painted with a trellis and rich ornaments. In Auxerre, the grisaille is found only in the lateral windows which are seen obliquely. The apse windows, meant to be seen, in face and from a distance, are filled with color. The lateral windows are sufficiently opaque to prevent the solar rays which pass through them from lighting the colored windows on the reverse side. At certain hours the luminous rays throw a pearly light on the colored windows, imparting to them a transparency of tone and a delicacy impossible to describe. The opalescent light from the lateral windows makes a sort of veil of extreme transparency under the lofty vaults, and is pierced by the brilliant tones of the apse windows, producing the sparkle of jewels. Solid outlines then seem to waver like objects seen through a sheet of limpid water. Distance changes values and gains a depth in which the eye loses itself. Hourly during the day these effects are modified, and always with new harmonies of which one never wearies trying to understand." --VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, vol. 9, p. 447. [303] John Mason Neale, translator of "The Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix" (e. 1140), in _Collected Hymns, Sequences, and Carols_ (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1914), p. 19. [304] "Je donne la palme à Jacques Amyot sur tout nos écrivains français."--MONTAIGNE. "Quand il s'agit d'une jolie et gracieuse naïveté de langage, on dit aussitôt pour le définir: C'est de la langue d'Amyot."--SAINTE-BEUVE. [305] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1907, on Dijon, Charles Porée; p. 546, "Les caractères distinctifs des écoles gothiques de la Champagne et de la Bourgogne," E. Lefèvre-Pontalis; A. Kleinclausz, _Dijon et Beaune_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); _ibid._, "L'art funéraire de la Bourgogne," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1901-02; _ibid._, _Claus Sluter et la sculpture bourguignonne au XVe siècle_ (Paris, 1906); Abbé L. Chomton, _Histoire de l'église St. Bénigne de Dijon_ (Dijon, 1900), folio; G.T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_, vol. 2, chap. 1, on St. Bénigne (tr. London and New York, 1910); Chanoine Thomas, _Épigraphie de Notre Dame de Dijon_ (1904); H. Chabeuf, "Tête sculptée à Notre Dame de Dijon," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1900, vol. 43, p. 472; _ibid._, _Dijon, monuments et souvenirs_ (Dijon, Damudot, 1894); H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumental_, vol. 6, p. 26, Cunisset-Carnot; Alphonse Germain, _Les Néerlandais en Bourgogne_, 1909; Raymond Koechlin, _La sculpture belge et les influences françaises au XIIIe siècle_ (Paris, 1903); Louis Courajod, _Leçons professées à l'École du Louvre_, 1887-96. Vol. 2, _Origines de la Renaissance_ (Paris, Picard et fils, 1901), 3 vols. On the sculpture at Dijon, see MM. Paul Vitry, Louis Gonse, Léon Palustre, André Michel; A. Humbert, _Sculpture en Bourgogne_ (Paris, H. Laurens); Ernest Petit, _Hist. des ducs de Bourgogne de la race capétienne_ (Dijon, 1905), 9 vols.; B. de Barante, _Hist. des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois_ (Paris, 1825), 12 vols.; Petit-Dutaillis, _Charles VII, Louis XI, et les premières années de Charles VIII_ (Paris, Hachette, 1902); Abbé Chevalier, _Le vénérable Guillaume, abbé de St. Bénigne_ (Dijon, 1875). [306] "La gloire de Bossuet est devenue l'une des religions de la France; on la reconnaît, on la proclame, on s'honore soi-même en y apportant chaque jour un nouveau tribut. Bossuet, c'est le génie hébreu, étendu, fécondé par le Christianisme, et ouvert à toutes les acquisitions de l'intelligence, mais retenant quelque chose de l'interdiction souveraine. Il est la voix éloquente par excellence, la plus simple, la plus forte, la plus brusque, la plus familière, la plus soudainement tonnante."--SAINTE-BEUVE. No city has been more prolific in notable sons than Dijon, where, as Voltaire said, "_le mérite de l'esprit semble être un des caractères des citoyens_." Among them are Rameau, the musician (1683-1764), who founded French opera and discovered important laws in harmony; he and his descendants were exempted from tithes by their native city; Dubois, the sculptor (1626-94), whose Assumption and the high altar of Notre Dame, Dijon, are his best works; the critic and philologist, La Monnaye (b. 1641); the playwright, Crébillon (d. 1762); Piron, the witty epigrammatist (d. 1773); the learned Président de Brosse (1709-77), whose _Lettres d'Italie_ are full of Burgundian vivacity and salt, and whose friend, Buffon, the naturalist (1707-88), though born at Montbard, was educated in Dijon, where his father was counselor in the parliament. The grandmother of Madame de Sévigné, St. Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, founder of the Visitation Order, was born at 17 rue Jeannin, 1572. Her father was a president of Dijon's parliament. The sculptor Rude was a son of Dijon (d. 1855), and in this same city that had produced St. Bernard and Bossuet, the most eloquent preacher of the XIX century, Lacordaire, spent his childhood and youth, as his mother came of an old legal family here. Léon Deshairs, _Dijon, architecture des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles_ (Paris, 1910). [307] Tournus abbey (Saône-et-Loire), when founded, was affiliated with the Columban tradition. From 946 to 980 the church was rebuilt, and again from 1008 to 1028, under the auspices of William of Volpiano, abbot of St. Bénigne. On its outer walls are Lombard mural arcaded bands. The massive forechurch, or narthex of three bays, has two stories of different dates, the lower one about 950, and the upper about 980. The vault of the latter--a cradle carried on brackets--is the earliest example extant in France of a wide-span masonry roof at such a height. Tournus exemplified the militant spirit of Burgundy's Romanesque school by experimenting with every kind of vault, cradle, half cradle, transverse cradle, and groin. The pier arcades of the main church are of William of Volpiano's time. The transept and choir are early XII century, and in that same period the reconstructed nave was covered by an experiment in stone roofing which never made a school; it had been used in Persia in the VI century. A series of half barrels borne on lintels were placed side by side across the wide nave, from north to south, instead of one long tunnel vault from east to west. The system allowed for the better lighting of the upper church, and as each barrel vault was buttressed by the one next it, only at the east and west ends of the edifice was abutment required. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1899, pp. 223, 236; and 1909; Clement Heaton, in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 3d series, 1909. [308] Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'Architecture_, vol. 4, pp. 131-147; Huysmans, _L'Oblat_, chap. 5, on Notre Dame of Dijon. In his story, which is the continuation of _En Route_ and _La Cathédrale_, Huysmans described the closing of the Burgundian monastery of Val des Saints near Dijon. His theory is that by such acts the balance of good and evil in the world is destroyed, since no longer is propitiatory self-sacrifice and prayer offered to heaven for the sins being committed on earth: "_Il faut s'attendre à ce que le Bon Dieu tombe sur nous ... pour remettre les choses en place, et vous savez comment il procède, dans ces cas là, il vous accable d'infirmités et d'épreuves._" [309] A clockmaker named Jacquemart made such works, hence their name. Originally only one figure struck the hours on the big bell. Then a wife, Jacqueleine, was given to the bell-knocker, and after a local wit had rallied the couple on their childless state, first one child, Jacquelinet, was added, and then another, Jacquelinette, and the industrious children now ring the quarter hours on the little bells. [310] Works of St. Bernard, edited by Mabillon (Paris, 1669-90), tr. by Eales and Hodges (London, 1889), 4 vols.; E. Vacandard, _Vie de Saint Bernard_ (Paris, Lecoffre, 1895), 2 vols.; other studies of the saint, by Eales (London, 1890) and R. P. Ratisbonne; De Dion, _Étude sur les églises de l'ordre de Cîteaux_; Arbois de Jubainville, _Étude sur l'état intérieur des abbayes cisterciennes et principalement de Clairvaux au XII siècle_ (Paris, 1858); Lucien Bégule, _L'abbaye de Fontenay et l'architecture cistercienne_ (Lyon, 1912); Camille Enlart, _L'architecture gothique en Italie_ (Paris, 1893); _ibid._, _En Espagne et en Portugal_ (Paris, 1894); _ibid._, "Villard de Honnecourt et lex Cisterciens," in _Biblio. de l'École des chartes_, 1895; _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904, André Philippe, on Cistercian churches; John Bilson, _The Architecture of the Cistercians; Their Earliest Churches in England_ (London, 1909); also in the _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, 1909; Marcel Aubert, on Cistercian churches in Germany. [311] The castle of Fontaine-lès-Dijon was held by Bernard's lineage till the XV century. To-day the site is covered by an unfinished commemorative church. The village church is of the XVI century. [312] As at Cîteaux, scarcely an ancient vestige remains at Clairvaux. The XII-century monastic storehouse now serves as a house of detention. All trace of St. Bernard's tomb has been lost. The Revolution finished what the Huguenot wars and the absentee commendatory abbots began. [313] M. Enlart calls Fossanuova, on the Appian Way between Rome and Naples, the first Gothic church in Italy, begun in 1187 by Burgundian Cistercians. Mr. Porter thinks that the infiltration had begun thirty years earlier through various channels. In 1208 Innocent III dedicated Fossanuova; in 1274 St. Thomas Aquinas died there, en route to the Council at Lyons. The same plain Burgundian plan was followed at Casamari (1217), and a daughter house of the latter was S. Galgano (1218), from which went monks who are cited as the masters-of-works of Siena Cathedral, the best Gothic edifice of the peninsula. Monks from French Clairvaux built the three Chiaravalle churches of Italy, and monks from Pontigny raised S. Martino near Viterbo. Later, Italy felt the influence of different French schools; thus the Naples churches are Gothic of Provence because southern French architects accompanied Charles d'Anjou, count of Provence, when he became king of the Two Sicilies. At Assisi the church of S. Francesco shows the Gothic traits of Burgundy, Provence, and Champagne. The Cistercians introduced the torus profile of diagonals, but they long clung to round-headed windows. The Provence masters introduced pointed arched windows. In Spain, Cîteaux found a rival in the monks of Cluny for the dissemination of the new art. In the XII century a large number of Spanish bishoprics were filled by Cluny monks. Sometimes they built according to their own native architecture, as in Lugo Cathedral, San Vincente at Avila, and churches in Seville, which are Burgundian Romanesque. Sigüenza Cathedral is Burgundian both in its Romanesque and Gothic parts. Zamora Cathedral, consecrated 1174, and the old cathedral of Salamanca, show traits of Aquitaine; both sees were occupied by Bishop Jerome, who came from Périgieux. The Cistercians of Spain did not confine themselves, as in Italy, to typically Burgundian Gothic churches. Poblet and Santa-Creus (1157) derive from the early Gothic of Midi France, as well as from Burgundy. Las Huelgas, the Cistercian house for nuns near Burgos, finished about 1180, shows slight Burgundian and much Plantagenet Gothic influence. The foundress was the daughter of Henry II and Aliénor of Aquitaine. In Spain, as in Italy, the later Gothic monuments conformed to the standards of northern French Gothic. Portugal was more exclusively a Cistercian field of art. In 1148, Alcobaça monastery was founded by the son of a Burgundian prince, progenitor of Portugal's royal line. While it shows Angevin Gothic traits, its plan is the sober Cistercian Burgundian type. In the military Orders of Spain and Portugal the Cistercian Rule was used. The king of Sweden, in 1143, obtained Cistercian missionaries from Clairvaux; in Denmark the abbey church of Sorö is Burgundian Gothic. Camille Enlart, _Les origines de l'architecture gothique en Espagne et en Portugal_ (Paris, 1894); _ibid._, _L'architecture gothique en Italie_ (Paris, 1893); _ibid._, _Notes archéologiques sur les abbayes cisterciennes de Scandinavie_ (Paris, 1894); _ibid._, "Villard de Honnecourt et les Cisterciens," in _Biblio. de l'École des chartes_, 1895; _ibid._, _L'art gothique ... en Chypre_ (Paris, 1899), 2 vols. [314] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908; V. Ruprich-Robert, _L'architecture normande aux XIe et XIIe siècles_ (Paris, 1897), 2 vols.; A. de Caumont et Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Mémoires historiques sur la Normandie: antiquités, monuments, histoire_ (1827-36); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Seine-Inférieure, Calvados, Eure, Orne, Manche_ (Le Havre, Lemale et Cie), 8 vols, folio; Léon le Cordier, "L'architecture de la Normandie au XIIIe siècle," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1863, vol. 29, p. 513; Chanoine Porée, _L'art normand_ (Paris, 1914); Taylor et Nodier, _Voyages pittoresques ... dans l'ancienne France. Normandie_ (Paris, Didron, 1825), 2 vols., folio; Henri Prentout, _La Normandie_ (Collection, Les provinces françaises), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1910); Lechandé d'Anisy, _Les anciennes abbayes de Normandie_ (1834), 2 vols, and atlas; Ordericus Vitalis, _The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy_ (London, Bohn Library, 1856), 4 vols.; Albert Sorel, _Pages normandes_ (Paris, Plon, 1907). On Normandy's history, see Stubbs, Freeman, Palgrave, H. W. C. Davis, G. B. Adams, Sir J. H. Ramsay, Miss Kate Norgate, Mrs. J. R, Green, etc. A. Thierry in his _Conquête de l'Angleterre_ gives details of the oppression of the Anglo-Saxons by their Norman conquerors. [315] Rodin, _Les cathédrales de France_, (Paris, A. Colin, 1914). [316] Chanoine Porée, _Histoire de l'abbaye du Bec_ (Évreux, impri. de Hérissey, 1901); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque Eure_, vol. 2, p. 221, "Bec," Chanoine Porée (Le Havre, Lemale et Cie, 1895); Ragey, _Histoire de Saint Anselm_ (Paris, 1889); Martin Rule, _Life and Times of St. Anselm_ (London, 1883). Other studies of St. Anselm by Rémusat (Paris, 1853); R. W. Church (London, 1870); J. M. Rigg (London, 1896), and in _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_ (London, 1860-75); _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 8, p. 260, "Lanfranc" (Paris, 1749); vol. 9, p. 398, "St. Anselm"; p. 369, "Gondulfe, évêque de Rochester" (Paris, 1750). [317] V. Ruprich-Robert, _L'architecture normande aux XIe et XIIIe siècles_ (Paris, 1885-87); G. T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_, vol. 2, on Normandy (London and New York, 1910), translated from _Le origini dell 'architettura lombarda_ (Milano, 1908); Canoine Porée, _L'art normand_ (Paris, 1914); Camille Enlart, _Manuel d'archéologie française_ (Paris, Picard et fils, 1904), 2 vols.; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane_ (Paris, 1912); John Bilson, "The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture," in the _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, Third series, 1898-99, vol. 6, pp. 289, 322, 345; 1901-02, vol. 9, p. 350; René Fage, "La décoration géométrique dans l'école romane de Normandie," in _Congrès Archéol._, 1908, vol. 2, p. 614; Louis Engerand, "La sculpture romane en Normandie," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904, vol. 68, p. 405; Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture_, vol. 1, pp. 285 to 332, gives the chief Norman Romanesque monuments (New York and London, 1907); _ibid._, _Lombard Architecture_ (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1917), 3 vols. and atlas. [318] Henry Adams, _Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres_ (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913). [319] Normandy's _Millénaire_ of 1911 was celebrated fitly. Among the books it called forth are: Gabriel Monod, _Le rôle de la Normandie dans l'histoire de France_ (Paris, 1911); H. Prentout, _Essai sur les origines et la fondation du duché de Normandy_ (Paris, 1911); A. Albert, _Petit histoire de Normandie_ (Paris, 1912). In 1915 appeared Charles Homer Haskins, _The Normans in European History_ (Boston, Houghton Mifflin). [320] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les influences normandes au XIe et au XIIe siècle dans le nord de la France," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906. vol. 70; Camille Enlart, _L'influence extérieure de l'art normand au moyen âge_; F. Chalandon, _Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile_ (Paris, 1907); Ch. Diehl, _Palerme et Syracuse_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1907); Émile Bertaud, _L'art dans l'Italie méridionale_. [321] Roger Martin du Gard, _L'abbaye de Jumièges, étude archéol. des ruines_ (Montdidier, 1909); _ibid._, "Jumièges," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1909, vol. 73, p. 34; John Bilson, on "Jumièges," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1901, p. 454; F. Lot, _Études critiques sur l'abbaye de Saint-Wandrille_ (Paris 1913); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Seine-Inférieure_, p. 219, "Jumièges," Alfred Darcel; p. 353, "St. Wandrille," Abbé Sauvage (Le Havre, Lemale et Cie); Abbé Julien Loth, _Histoire de l'abbaye royale de St. Pierre de Jumièges_ (Rouen, 1882-85), 3 vols.; David, _Les grandes abbayes de l'Occident_ (Lille, 1907); Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Les influences normandes au XIe et au XIIe siècle dans le nord de la France_ (1906), also in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70. [322] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1883 and 1908; H. Prentout, _Caen et Bayeux_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1909); V. Ruprich-Robert, _L'église Ste. Trinité et l'église St. Étienne de Caen_ (Caen, 1864); E. de Beaurepaire, _Caen illustré, son histoire, ses monuments_ (Caen, 1896), folio; Bouet, _Analyse architecturale de l'abbaye de St. Étienne de Caen_ (1868); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Calvados_, pp. 1, 49; Arcisse de Caumont, _Statistique monumentale du Calvados_ (Caen, F. Le Blanc-Hardal, 1898), 6 vols.; Camille Enlart, _Manuel d'archéologie française_ (Paris, Picard, 1902), 2 vols.; John Bilson, "The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture," in _Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects_, Third series, 1898-99, vol. 6, pp. 289, 322, 345, and p. 259, his answer to M. de Lasteyrie. Reprinted in part in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1901, vol. 44, pp. 369, 462. In the excellent public library of Caen are to be found the _Congrès Archéologique_, the _Bulletin Monumental_, and other archæological publications. Also the _Catalogue des ouvrages normande de la Bibliothèque municipale de Caen_ (Caen, 1910-12). [323] Georges Lafenestre, _Gloires et deuils de France_ (Paris, Hachette, 1918). [324] An old chronicle related how the young widow of the lord of La Roche-Guyon "_mieux aimer s'en aller denuée de tous bien, avec ses trois enfants, que de rendre hommage au roi d'outre mer et de se mettre ès mains des anciens ennemies du royaume_." Anthyme Saint-Paul, _L'architecture française et la Guerre de Cent Ans_ (Paris, 1910); Siméon Luce, _La France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans_ (Paris, Hachette, 1893); H. Dénifle, _La désolation des églises, monastères, et hôpitaux en France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans_ (Paris, Picard, 1899); H. Martin, _La guerre au XVe siècle_ (Paris, H. Laurens); G. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Épisodes de l'invasion anglaise. La guerre de partisans dans la Haute-Normandie" (1424-29), in _Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, 1893 to 1895, vols. 54, 55, 56. [325] A. de Caumont, "Les tours d'églises dans le Calvados," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1847, vol. 23, p. 362; E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, "Les clochers du Calvados," in _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908, vol. 2, p. 652; G. Bouet, "Clochers du diocèse de Bayeux," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1872, vol. 38, p. 517; Abbé Édeline, _Norrey et son histoire; La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Calvados_, p. 231, "Norrey," G. Lavalley; p. 349, "Secqueville"; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908, p. 193, "Bernières"; p. 338, "Norrey"; p. 349, "Secqueville." [326] In the abbatial of St. Pierre-sur-Dives there is XII-century work in the ambulatory walls, in the piers and side walls of the nave, and in the lower parts of the façade towers. To the XIII century belong most of the choir's piers and the apsidal chapels, also the beautiful chapter house. The transept then was put into harmony with the nave, and its tower built, which latter now is braced by clumsy obstructions within the church. In the XIV century rose the west façade, and the north tower was rebuilt. The XV century rehandled the high vaulting and clearstory, where appear die-away moldings and flamelike tracery. The abbey was founded by Richard II (d. 1020) and his beautiful duchess, Judith of Brittany. Its Romanesque abbatial was dedicated in 1067 by Archbishop Maurille in the presence of the Conqueror and Matilda. In 1107 the abbatial was burned by Henry I of England, who accused the abbot of siding with his elder brother, with whom he was at war, but in atonement the king contributed toward the reconstruction of the church; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1861, 1862, and 1908, p. 278; J. Pépin, _Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives_ (Caen, 1879); Abbé Denis, _Église de Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives en 1145_ (Caen, 1869); _Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, vol. 21, p. 120, gives Abbot Haimon's letter, which also was published in Rouen, 1851, by L. de Glanville. [327] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908; A. Besnard, _Monographie de l'église et de l'abbaye Saint Georges de Boscherville_ (Paris, Lechevailier, 1899); J. A. Deville, _Essai historique et descriptive sur l'église et l'abbaye de St. Georges de Boscherville_ (Rouen, 1827); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Seine-Inférieure_, p. 235, Abbé A. Tougard. [328] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908; Doctor Coutan, _La Trinité de Fécamp_ (Caen, 1907). He also describes the Trinité in _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Seine-Inférieure_, p. 465; the churches at Dieppe, p. 279; the church of Harfleur, p. 393; Le Havre, p. 381; Carville, p. 177, and Notre Dame at Caudebec-en-Caux, of which Abbé Sauvage has published a separate monograph (1876); A. Leport, _Description de l'église de la Trinité de Fécamp_ (Fécamp, 1879); Leroux de Lincy, _Essai historique sur l'abbaye de Fécamp_; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 7, p. 318, "Le bienheureux Guillaume, abbé de St. Bénigne de Dijon" (Paris, 1746); vol. 10, p. 265, "Herbert Lozinga, évêque de Norwich" (Paris, 1756). [329] The abbatial of Bernay (Eure), to-day a corn exchange on the market place, shows in its transept the earliest instance of an arcaded wall passage, the feature that, when placed at the clearstory level, became one of the most frequent characteristics of Anglo-Norman architecture, both Romanesque and Gothic. Bernay was founded between 1013 and 1019 by Richard II and Judith of Brittany, the same who invited to their duchy the Lombard, William of Volpiano. William is known to have worked on the Bernay abbatial, which shows resemblances to Burgundian churches at Auxerre and Nevers, and he may have brought to Normandy the Lombard trait of absidal chapels projecting from the eastern wall of the transept. Bernay, however, did not use the Lombard alternance of ground supports. Mr. Bilson thinks that the tall attached stripes were intended for a vaulted, not for a timber roof. The nave's side walls and piers are of Abbot William's time; two bays of the choir belong to later years of the XI century. William the Conqueror is said to have finished the church. It was grievously sacked during the religious wars. The church of Ste. Croix in Bernay, begun, 1373, enlarged 1497, contains tombs from Bec, of former abbots there. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908, vol. 2, p. 588, Chanoine Porée; _Bulletin Monumental_, 1911, vol. 75, p. 396, Chanoine Porée, and p. 403, John Bilson; G.T. Rivoira, _Lombardic Architecture_, translated by G. Mc. N. Rushford (London and New York, 1910); Chanoine Porée, _Bernay_ (Caen, H. Delesques, 1912). [330] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1895; Abbé A. Legris, _L'église d'Eu_ (1913); Desiré Le Beuf, _La ville d'Eu_ (1884); Doctor Coutan, in _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Seine-Inférieure_, vol. 1, p. 333; Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, vol. 1, p. 198; vol. 2, p. 364; vol. 5, p. 359; Gonse, _L'art gothique_, p. 210 (Paris, Quantin, 1891). [331] Paul Gout, _Le Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Paris, Colin, 1910), 2 vols.; Ch. H. Besnard, _Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1911); Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Curieuses recherches sur le Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Rouen, 1873); Ed. Corroyer, _Description de l'abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel et de ses abords_ (Paris, 1877); Dubouchet, _L'abbaye de Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Paris, 1895); Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, _Twenty-five Great Houses of France_ (London and New York, 1916), chap. 1; Henry Adams, _Chartres and Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913); Léopold Delisle, éd., _Cronique de Robert de Torigni_ (Paris, Soc. de l'histoire de Normandie, 1872-75), 2 vols. On Robert de Torigny see _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 14, p. 362 (Paris, 1817); Siméon Luce, éd., _Cronique de Mont-Saint-Michel: la défence nationale_ (1879-86); O. de Poli, _Les défenseurs du Mont-Saint-Michel, 1417-50_, (Paris, 1895); Huynes, _Histoire générale de Mont-Saint-Michel_ (Rouen, 1872); Brin, _St. Michel et le Mont-Saint-Michel dans l'histoire et la littérature_ (Paris, 1880). [332] From the _Chanson de Roland_, édition Léon Gautier (Tours, Mâme et fils, 1895). "Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin; Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis. De plusurs choses à remembrer li prist; De toutes teres que li bers ad cunquis, De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne, sun seignur, ki l'nurrit, Ne poet muer n'en plurt e ne suspirt. Mais lui meïsme ne voelt metre en ubli; Cleimet sa culpe, si priet Deu mercit: 'Viere paterne, ki unkes ne mentis, Seit Lazarin de mort resurrexis E Daniel des leuns quaresis, Guaris de mei l'aume de tuz perilz Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis!' Sun destre gant à Deu en puroffrit, E de sa main seinz Gabriel l'ad pris. Desur sun braz teneit le chef enclin: Juintes ses mains est alez à sa fin. Deus li tramist sun angle chérubin, Seinz Raphael, seinz Michiel de l'Péril, Ensemble od els seinz Gabriels i vint, L'aume de l'Cunte portent en pareïs." ("Roland the brave lay prone beneath a pine, Toward Spain his face was turned as conqueror, Of many things came back the memory sharp, The host of places he had won in war, Thoughts of sweet France and of his parentage, Of Charlemagne, his lord, who nurtured him; And tears and sighs rose as the memories surged. Nor did he wish his own self to forget. Demanding grace of God, he told his sins: 'Our Father true, who never yet has lied, Who from the grave raised Blessed Lazarus, Who Daniel saved from lions, save my soul. Pardon the sins that I have stained it with!' Toward God he held his right-hand gauntlet up, Archangel Gabriel took it from his hand. Then on his arm his head sank slowly down, Hands clasped in prayer his spirit passed beyond. God to him sent his angel cherubim, Archguardian Michael, him called of the Peril, St. Raphael and St. Gabriel with him came And bore the Count's soul straight to Paradise.") [333] Léon Gautier, _Les épopées françaises_ (Paris, V. Palme, 1878-94), 4 vols.; Joseph Bédier, _Les légends épiques, recherches sur la formation des chansons de geste_, vol. 3, "La légende de Roland" (Paris, H. Champion, 1908-13), 4 vols. [334] "Il y a des provinces qui ont le doit de se dire françaises par excellence.... La Normandie et la Picardie sont de celles-là.... Elles ont apportés, dans le cours des siècles, à la vieille Ile-de-France, leur aînée, le concours loyal de leur bras, de leur courage, de leur génie."--GABRIEL HANOTAUX, "La Normandie dans l'unité française," in _Société normande de géographie_, 1900, vol 22. [335] The court at Rouen asked Jeanne at the fourth interrogation, February 27, 1431: "Whose was the first voice you heard when you were about thirteen?" Jeanne replied: "It was St. Michael's. I saw him before my eyes; he was not alone, but was encircled by angels of heaven. I saw him with my bodily eyes as clearly as I see you. When they left me, I wept; right gladly would I have gone with them, that is--my soul." At the seventh interrogation, March 15, 1431, when asked how she knew it was St. Michael, Jeanne replied: "_Par le parler et le langage des anges_.... He told me I was a good child and that God would aid me, and to come to the aid of the king of France. He related to me the _grand pitié qui était au royaume de France_."--E. O'REILLY, _Les deux procès de condamnation et la sentence de réhabilitation, de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, Plon, 1808), 2 vols. [336] _Le procès Jeanne d'Arc_, eighth interrogation, March 17, 1431. When asked by her judges if God hated the English, Jeanne replied: "Of the love or the hate which God has for the English, or of what He will do with their souls, I know nothing. But this I know: that they one and all will be driven out of France, except those who here die, and that God will send victory to the French against the English." [337] Marion Couthouy Smith, "Sainte Jeanne of France," in _The Nation_ (London, 1915.) [338] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1859 and 1868; Abbé Loisel et Jean Lafond. _La cathédrale de Rouen_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1913): Loisel et Alline, _La cathédrale de Rouen avant l'incendie de 1200_ (Rouen, Lecerf fils, 1904); Louise Pillion, _Les portails lateraux de la cathédrale de Rouen_ (Paris, Picard et fils, 1907); A. Deville, _Tombeaux de la cathédrale de Rouen_ (Paris, Levy, 1881), folio; Camille Enlart, _Rouen_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1904); Émile Lambin, "La cathédrale de Rouen," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1900; Abbé Julien Loth, _La cathédrale de Rouen_ (1879). Other descriptions of Rouen's monuments can be found in the general works of Henri Havard, André Michel, Louis Gonse, Émile Mâle, Paul Vitry. Cheruel, _Histoire de Rouen sous la domination anglaise au XVe siècle_ (Rouen, 1840); A. Fallue, _Histoire de l'église métropolitaine et du diocèse de Rouen_ (Rouen, 1850), 4 vols.; Ch. de Beaurepaire, _Notes historiques et archéol. concernaut le département de la Seine-Inférieure_ (Rouen, Cagniard, 1883); _ibid._, _Dernières mélanges historiques et archéol. Seine-Inférieure_ (Rouen, 1909); Cook, _The Story of Rouen_ (London, 1899); Perkins, _The Churches of Rouen_ (London, 1900). [339] St. Ouen derived its name from the bishop who succeeded St. Romanus and governed Rouen for forty years in the VII century, aiding the founders of Jumièges, Fécamp, and St. Wandrille. He had been blessed as a child in his father's castle near Braine by a passing guest, the Irish missionary, St. Columbanus, and he loved to trace thence his vocation. So rich grew the abbey of St. Ouen that it ruled half the city as temporal lord. In the XV century the English expelled Abbot Jean Richard, a builder of the present nave, to substitute a prelate docile to themselves who sat as judge at Jeanne's trial. But the pope restored Jean Richard in 1434, and he lived to entertain Charles VII in his monastery when that king came as victor to Rouen in 1449. Vacandard, _Vie de St. Ouen_ (Paris, 1902). [340] To a Romanesque abbatial of St. Ouen, burned in 1136, belonged the two-storied chapel called the Chambre-aux-Clercs, now set against the northern limb of the transept. In 1318 Abbot Jean Roussel, called Marc d'Argent, began the present abbatial, making its choir and transept in twenty years, as well as one bay of the nave. After a pause, two more bays were finished by 1390. Another cessation of work came during the Hundred Years' War. Alexander Berneval set up the transept's south rose (1439), made the pretty southern portal (1441) called after the marmosets decorating it; his son put up the north rose. Both architects repose in the same tomb in the church. Many hold the central lantern (c. 1490) to be a prime success of Flamboyant art. Flame tracery appeared in the XV-century windows, but the Rayonnant first plan was adhered to for the chief lines, so that the church, whose building extended over two centuries, is homogeneous. The abbatial was finished under Abbot Bohier (1491-1515). The Huguenots stripped it of its tombs, and lighted bonfires in the church. In the XIX century was added the mediocre west façade. _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Seine-Inférieure_, p. 105, "St. Ouen"; p. 129, "St. Maclou"; H. Havard, éd., _La France artistique et monumentale_, vol. 2, p. 79, "St. Ouen," L. de Foucaud; p. 85, "St. Maclou"; Dom. Pommeraye, _Histoire de l'abbaye royale de St. Ouen_ (Rouen, 1662), folio; Jules Quicherat, "Documents inédits sur la construction de St. Ouen de Rouen," in _Biblio. de l'École des chartes_, 1852, vol. 3, p. 454; H. de la Bunodière, _Notice sur l'église St. Ouen de Rouen_ (Paris, 1895); Camille Enlart, "L'architecture gothique au XIV siècle," in _Histoire de l'Art_ (éd., André Michel), vol. 2, partie 2 (Paris, Colin, 1914). [341] Henry II, the first Plantagenet, made for his own residence the chapel of St. Julien in a faubourg of Rouen, Petit-Quevilly. Simultaneously Romanesque and Gothic, the small edifice is one of the most elegant specimens of Normandy's XII-century architecture. Only the choir bay has retained the polychrome decoration which once covered the interior. St. Julien's sexpartite vault has been replaced by a wooden roof. Doctor Contan, _Monographie de St. Julien, Petit-Quevilly_, and his account, p. 239, in _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Seine-Inférieure_; Duchemin, _Le Petit-Querilly et le prieuré de Saint Julien_. [342] The church of St. Sauveur in Petit-Andely, begun in 1215, finished in 1245, contains excellent XIII-century glass. Of the same date are the façade, nave, and square-ended choir of Notre Dame at Grand-Andely. Its central tower is of the XV century; the transept is a gem of Flamboyant Gothic. The most brilliant of its windows date from 1540 to 1616. Above the smaller Andely stands Château Gaillard, the "Saucy Castle," which Richard the Lion-hearted built in a year. Its capture in 1204 by Philippe-Auguste ended the English resistance in Normandy at that period. Five miles away are the remains of the magnificent château of Gaillon, where every master of the Renaissance in France was employed. Begun in 1454 by Cardinal d'Estouteville, it was carried forward by Cardinal George I d'Amboise and Cardinal de Bourbon. Its bas-relief of St. George and the dragon is one of the three authenticated works of Michel Colombe. A façade of Gaillon is now in the courtyard of the Beaux-Arts at Paris. Abbé Porée, _Guide historique et descriptive aux Andelys_; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1853; _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Eure 1_, pp. 147, 163 (Le Havre, 1895); E. A. Didron, "Les vitraux du Grand-Andely," in _Annales Archéol._, vol. 22. [343] Opposite the tomb of the d'Amboise cardinals (1513-25), predominantly Gothic in character, is the purely Renaissance monument of Louis de Brézé (1536-44), seneschal of Normandy, son of the daughter of Charles VII and Agnes Sorel. The kneeling figure on the tomb is the notorious Diane de Poitiers, his widow. The critics say that if the De Brézé mausoleum is not the work of Jean Goujon, Diane's favorite sculptor, then there must have been living here an unknown XVI-century master of the first order. Jean Goujon was in Rouen, making the wooden doors of St. Maclou, at that time. Paul Vitry, _Jean Goujon_ (Collection, Les Grandes Artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); Louis Gonse, _La sculpture française depuis le XIVe siècle_ (Paris, 1895); Léon Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_, vol. 1 (Paris, Quantin, 1888), 3 vols. [344] Camille Enlart, on the origin of Flamboyant Gothic, in the _Archæological Journal_, 1886, and in _Histoire de l'Art_ (éd. A. Michel), vol. 3, 1^{ère} partie (Paris, Colin, 1914); _Bulletin Monumental_, 1906, vol. 70, pp. 38, 483, 511, the controversy between M. Saint-Paul and M. Enlart, on the origin of Flamboyant Gothic; Anthyme Saint-Paul, _L'architecture française et la Guerre de Cent Ans_ (1910); _ibid._, _Les origines du gothique flamboyant en France_ (Caen, 1907). [345] Charles d'Orléans, _Poésies_, éd. Ch. d'Héricault (Paris), 2 vols. [346] St. Maclou, says Mr. F. M. Simpson, expresses the _joie de vivre_, even as the stiff angular lines of a contemporary style--the English Perpendicular--show the gloom that prevailed in England after the War of the Roses. Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville contributed toward St. Maclou, which was dedicated only in 1521, by Cardinal Georges II d'Amboise. Jean Goujon probably made the richly chiseled doors. St. Maclou has XV-century windows; its rose windows are of the XVI century. There is Le Prince glass in the late-Gothic church of St. Vincent, and other XVI-century windows in St. Patrice. Abbé Ouin-Lacroix. _Histoire de l'église et de la paroisse de St. Maclou de Rouen_ (1846); Edmond Renaud, _L'église St. Vincent de Rouen_ (1885); Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture_, vol. 2, pp. 389 to 416, "Flamboyant Gothic Monuments." [347] Notre Dame at Caudebec-en-Caud, called by Henry IV "the most beautiful chapel of my kingdom of France," has its "tiara" united to its shaft by flying buttresses. Other Flamboyant Gothic monuments in Normandy are Louviers' lacelike portal (1493); churches at Dieppe; the transept of Évreux Cathedral; St. Jacques at Lisieux; St. Pierre at Coutances; Les Andelys, Elbeuf, Gisors, and the joyous festival of stone of Notre Dame at Alençon, where the shady north side of the nave is adorned with Old Testament scenes, and the sun-lit southern wall opened by spacious Flamboyant traceries that frame the New Testament; its Jesse tree is unusual. Notre Dame at St. Lô (which has a Becket window) shows Perpendicular traits. Its west portals are strangely dissimilar, as are its monumental towers. Near Fécamp, the Estouteville family founded Valmont abbatial (1116) now unroofed save its Lady chapel, in which are splendid tombs, a reredos of the Annunciation that is a gem of XVI-century realism, and a window that inspired Eugène Delacroix's palette. [348] Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, _Twenty-five Great Houses of France_, chap. 12 (New York and London, 1916). [349] Flaubert, born in Rouen, 1821, died near the city, at Croisset, in his ancient house that formerly belonged to the monks of St. Ouen. The increased river activities during the World War have encroached on his property. His pupil, Guy de Maupassant, born near Dieppe, was associated with his mother's city, Rouen, where stands his statue (1853-93). The house of the great Corneille (1636-1709) is near Rouen's Old Market. Other sons of Rouen were La Salle, the explorer (d. 1687), and the painter Géricault (1791-1824). Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) was born at Les Andelys; Jean-François Millet, near Cherbourg (1814-74); Auber, the composer (1782-1871), at Caen, as was the poet Malherbes (1555-1628). Mézerai, whose history is considered the best account of the XVI-century religious struggle in France, and his brother, Jean Eudes, founder of the Eudists, were born near Caen. The great seamen, Tourville (1642-1701) and Du Quesne (1610-88), were Normans; so were Laplace, the mathematician (1749-1827), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1736-1814), Octave Feuillet (1821-90), Léon Gautier (1832-97), Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89), and savants such as Simeon Luce (d. 1892), Gabriel Monod (d. 1912), Albert Sorel, Paul Allard, Leopold Delisle (d. 1910). The latter was led to decipher ancient manuscripts by C. de Gerville, who, with that other Norman, Arcisse de Caumont, was a pioneer in mediæval archeology. [350] Jules Quicherat, the archæologist, was the first to place before the public the records of Jeanne d'Arc's two trials. He printed (1841-49) five volumes in Latin for the _Société de l'histoire de France_. Accounts of Jeanne have been written by Wallon (Paris, 1877); Marius Sepet (Tours, 1885); Ayroles, S. J. (Paris, 1902), who dwells much on the nefarious part played by Paris University in her condemnation: Siméon Luce; G. Hanotaux (Paris, 1911); Petit de Julleville (Les Saints Collection, Paris, Lecoffre, 1907); Andrew Lang (London, 1908): Mrs. Oliphant (Leaders of the Nation Series, New York); D. Lynch, S. J. (New York, 1919); Sarrazin, _Jeanne d'Arc et la Normandie au XVe siècle_ (Rouen, 1896); F. Poulaine, _Jeanne d'Arc à Rouen_ (Paris, 1899); Ch. Lemire, _Jeanne d'Arc en Picardie et en Normandie_ (Paris, 1903); Le P. Denifle et Chatelain, _Le procès Jeanne d'Arc et l'université de Paris_ (Paris); U. Chevalier, _L'abjuration de Jeanne d'Arc_; C. de Maleissye, "La prétendue abjuration de St. Ouen," in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, February, 1911, p. 610. The study of Anatole France on Jeanne d'Arc is written from the rationalist standpoint that considers hers a case of hysteria fitted for medical science. No book on Jeanne equals the contemporary records. The report of her two trials in Rouen, and the testimony gathered from end to end of France to vindicate her memory in 1456, have been marshaled and clarified in a skilled legal manner by a magistrate of Rouen: E. O'Reilly, _Les deux procès de condamnation ... et la sentence de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, Pion, 1868), 2 vols. This masterly work should be translated into English. It is an example of the right way to write history. For Charles VII see Thomas Basin and Vallet de Viriville. [351] Boisguillaume, second clerk of the Rouen court in 1431, Manchon's assistant, testified before the three inquests for Jeanne's rehabilitation. He drew attention to the fact that all who had been culpable of the Maid's death had come to a swift or shameful end. Estivet was found dead in a gutter at the gates of Rouen; Loyseleur, the false confessor, was struck down suddenly; Cauchon expired ignominiously. "I call you to judgment before God for what you have done," rang out Jeanne's words to these unworthy churchmen on her last day. Nicolas Midi, of the Paris Parliament, who drew up the odious twelve accusations, and who sermonized Jeanne in the Old Market, was stricken with leprosy. A year after the execution died the young Duchess of Bedford, who had inflicted a gross outrage on Jeanne, and her death detached from the English cause her brother, the Duke of Burgundy. Her husband, John of Lancaster, regent-duke, brother of Henry V, died in full youth, three years later, and was buried in Rouen Cathedral. His nephew, Henry VI, was dispossessed of his English crown, imprisoned, and murdered. [352] "'Si j'y suis, Dieu m'y tienne; si je n'y suis, Dieu m'y veuille mettre: j'aimerais mieux mourir que de ne pas avoir l'amour de Dieu!' A cette réponse, les juges restèrent stupéfaits et rompirent sur-le-champ."--Testimony of the second clerk of the court, Boisguillaume, in 1450, before the inquest for the rehabilitation. [353] The Norman, Siméon Luce, has written of Jeanne: "La Pucelle n'est pas seulement le type le plus achevé du patriotisme, elle est encore l'incarnation de notre pays dans ce qu'il a de meilleur. Il y a dans la physionomie de l'héroïne du XVe siècle, des traits qui la rattachent à la France de tous les temps, l'entrain belliqueux, la grâce légère, la gaieté prisesantière, l'esprit mordant, l'ironie méprisante en face de la force, la pitié pour les petits, les faibles, les malheureux, la tendresse pour les vaincus. De tels dons appartiennent à notre tradition nationale, et la libératrice d'Orléans les a possédés à un si haut degré que cette face de son génie a frappé tous ses admirateurs." [354] The Duke d'Alençon testified, in 1455, concerning Jeanne: "I have heard captains who took part in the siege of Orléans declare that what passed there touched on the miraculous, that it was no human work. Apart from things of war Jeanne was a simple young girl; but for things of war, wielding the lance, massing the army, preparing the battle, arranging the artillery, she was remarkably skilled. All marveled that she should show the ability and foresight of a captain who had warred for thirty years. Especially in her control of artillery was she admirable." Equally convincing is the testimony, in 1455, of the bastard of Orléans, the great Dunois: "I believe that Jeanne was sent of God and that her conduct in war was more a divine than a human act.... I heard the seneschal of Beaucaire, whom the king had appointed to watch over Jeanne in the wars, say that he believed there never was a woman more chaste. I heard Jeanne say to the king one day: 'When I am distressed that credence is not given that it is Heaven has sent me to your aid, I withdraw to a quiet place and I pray and complain to God, and, my prayer finished, I hear a voice saying, "_Fille Dè, va, va, va! Je serai à ton ayde, va!_" ' And in repeating what the voice said, Jeanne was--an extraordinary thing--in a marvelous ravishment, in a sort of ecstasy, her eyes lifted to heaven." E. O'Reilly, _Les deux procès de condamnation et la sentence de réhabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, Plon, 1868), vol. 1, pp. 153, 156, 200, 214, 2 vols. [355] Testimony of Isambeau de la Pierre, in 1450, before the inquest for the rehabilitation: "Je la vis éplorée, son visage plein de larmes, défigurée et outragée en telle sorte que j'en eus pitié et compassion." [356] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1858, 1870, and 1908, p. 300, Louis Serbat; Abbé V. Hardy, _La cathédrale St. Pierre de Lisieux_ (Paris, Impri. Fazier-Saye, 1917); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Calvados_, pp. 91, 103, "Lisieux," Abbé Marie (Le Havre, Lemale et Cie, 1875); Ch. Vasseur, _Études historiques et archéologiques sur la cathédrale de Lisieux_ (Caen, 1891); Émile Lambin, "La cathédrale de Lisieux," in _Revue de l'art chrétien_, 1898, vol. 45, p. 448; A. de Caumont, _Statistique monumentale du Calvados_ (Caen, 1867), vol. 5, p. 200; V. Ruprich-Robert, _L'architecture normande au XIe et XIIe siècles_ (Paris, 1897), 2 vols.; H. de Formeville, _Histoire de l'ancien évêche-comté de Lisieux_ (Lisieux, 1873), 2 vols.; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 14, p. 304, "Arnoul, évêque de Lisieux" (Paris, 1817); A. Sarrazin, _Pierre Cauchon, juge de Jeanne d'Arc_ (Paris, 1901). Other studies of the judges of Jeanne d'Arc, by Fabre (Paris, 1915), and Ch. Engelhard (Le Havre, 1905). [357] The murdered Duke of Orléans, a son of the art-loving Valois king, Charles V, built the châteaux of La Ferté-Milon, on the Oureq, and Pierrefonds, in the forest of Compiègne, in the courtyard of which latter stands his equestrian statue. His sons were the poet-duke, Charles d'Orléans, and Dunois, his acknowledged bastard, the chief instrument in ridding France of her invaders. Two grandsons of the builder of Pierrefonds ascended the French throne, Louis XII and Francis I, and those who undertake an architectural journey over France will soon become familiar with the porcupine of the one and the salamander of the other. Sir Theodore Andreas Cook, _Twenty-five Great Houses of France_ (New York and London, 1916); Viollet-le-Duc, _Dictionnaire de l'architecture_, on Pierrefonds. [358] A professor in a Norman college, Joseph Lotte, who fell on the field of honor at Arras, in December, 1914, thus apostrophized the "Little Flower" of Lisieux: "Enrôlez-nous, petite soeur céleste! Enrôlez-nous sous vos bannières. Nous avons battu bien des pays, couru bien des aventures, dissipé bien des dons: il nous reste la fidélité. Nous serons derrière vous les vieux routiers qui escortaient Jeanne d'Arc. Notre France ne veut pas mourir. Apprenez-nous à aimer. Il faut qu'un tel amour monte de nous à Dieu qu'il tourne à nouveau sa face vers notre terre de France et, retrouvant son peuple, décide de le sauver. Mais ne l'a-t-il pas déjà décidé, puisqu'il vous a envoyée?" P. Pacary, _Un compagnon de Péguy, Joseph Lotte; pages choisies_ (Paris, J. Gabalda, 1916). [359] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1864, 1889, and 1908; Abbé Jules Fossey, _Monographie de la cathédrale d'Évreux_ (Évreux, 1898); Abbé Forée, _Les clôtures des chapelles de la cathédrale d'Évreux_ (Évreux, Hérissey, 1890); A. J. de H. Bushnell, _Storied Windows_ (New York, Macmillan, 1914); N. H. J. Westlake, _A History of Design in Painted Glass_ (London, Parker & Co., 1881); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Eure_, vol. 1, p. 1, Évreux; p. 31, Conches; p. 61, Verneuil; p. 89, Tillières; p. 93, Nonancourt; p. 119, Vernon; p. 147, Les Andelys; p. 191, Gisors; vol. 2, p. 1, Louviers; p. 23, Gaillon; p. 97, Pont-Audemer; p. 63, Pont-de-l'Arche: p. 183, Bernay; p. 221, Bec-Hellouin; p. 245, Beaumont-le-Roger. In most of these churches the colored windows are remarkable. [360] The son of that union was the trouvère poet, Thibaut IV of Champagne and I of Navarre, of which latter domain he was chosen king in 1234, on the death of his mother's brother, Sancho, the chief victor of Las Navas de Toloso. His niece, Jeanne, inheriting both Champagne and Navarre, united them with the royal domain by her marriage to Philippe le Bel. Three of her sons ruled successively as kings of France, and then the Valois branch--sprung from a brother of Philippe le Bel--came to the throne. Whereupon the Navarrese elected, as their ruler, the Count of Évreux, who had married a daughter of Jeanne's. His son was Charles the Wicked (1319-87), Count of Évreux, king of Navarre, who in turn was succeeded by his son, Charles the Noble (1387-1425). One and all of them were linked with the architectural story of France: at Troyes, Provins, Meaux, Mantes, and Évreux Cathedral. [361] In Normandy, glass of the XIV century is to be found in the cathedrals of Séez and Coutances, at Carentan, Pont-de-l'Arche, Nesle-St.-Saire, and in Rouen's big abbatial. Elsewhere in France there are XIV-century windows at Mantes, Beauvais, Amiens, Dol, Limoges, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Narbonne, Béziers, Carcassonne (in St. Nazaire), Chartres (in St. Pierre), and Poitiers (in Ste. Radégonde). In St. Urbain's at Troyes is some of the earliest glass of this century. [362] Normandy's XV-century glass, besides that of Évreux' Lady chapel, can be studied at Rouen, in the cathedral, and the churches of St. Ouen and St. Maclou, at Caudebec, Bernay, Vereuil, Beaumont-le-Roger, St. Lô, Carentan, Falaise, Pont-Audemer, Bayeux, and Coutances. Elsewhere in France glass of this period can be seen in Amiens Cathedral, in the Vendôme chapel of Chartres, in the choir of Moulins, in the north transept of Le Mans, and the windows presented to Bourges Cathedral by the Duke of Berry and Jacques Coeur. There is also XV-century glass at Clermont-Ferrand, Eymoutiers, Riom, in some of the churches of Paris, such as St. Sévérin, and in Brittany, at Dinan, Plélan, Les Iffs, and in Quimper Cathedral. Windows of the XVI century abound in Normandy. The most imposing array is near Évreux, at Conches, whose church of Ste. Foi is on no account to be missed. Aldégrevier, a pupil of Albert Dürer, designed the seven tall apse windows, about 1520. There are eighteen other lights (1540-53), very Raphaelesque in type; the _Pressoir_ window and the apotheosis of the Virgin are typical of that heated hour of controversy. Andre Michel, éd., _Histoire de l'art_, vol. 4, 2{ème} partie, "Le vitrail français au XV{e} et au XVI{e} siècle," Émile Mâle; A. Bouillet, _L'église Ste. Foi de Couches (Eure) et ses vitraux_ (Caen, H. Delesque, 1889). [363] V. Ruprich-Robert, _La cathédrale de Séez_ (Paris, Morel, 1885); Abbé L. V. Dumaine, _La cathédrale de Séez, son histoire et ses beautés_ (Séez, 1894); H. Tournouër, "La cathédrale de Séez," in _Bulletin de la Soc. hist. et archéol. de l'Orne_, 1897; Marais et Beaudouin, _Essai hist. sur le cathédrale et le chapitre de Séez_ (Alençon, 1878); Robert Triger, "La cathédrale de Séez," in _Revue hist. et archéol. du Maine_, 1900, vol. 47, p. 287; _De la Sicotière et Poulet-Malassis, Le département de l'Orne, archéol. et pittoresque_ (Laigle, Beuzelin, 1845), folio; _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Orne_, p. 101, on Séez, Abbé Barret; p. 1, St. Germain at Argentan, with a central lantern and elaborate late-Gothic porch; p. 41, Notre Dame at Alençon; p. 77, St. Évroult-de-Montfort, a late-XI century abbatial; p. 245, the monastery of La Trappe, in Séez diocese, established in 1122, and reformed in 1662 by the noted Abbé de Rancy. [364] St. Gervais, at Falaise, has a good Romanesque tower consecrated in the presence of Henry I of England. The nave's southern pier arcade is Romanesque, but the arches on the north side were reconstructed as Gothic at the same time that the vaults were redone during the XIII century. See _Congrès Archéologique_, 1848, 1864, and 1908, p. 367; Louis Régnier, "Falaise et la vallée d'Auge," in _Annuaire normand_, 1892; Langevin, _Recherches historiques sur Falaise_; Meriel, _Hist. de Falaise_ (1889); Black, _Normandy and Picardy, Their Castles, Churches, and Footprints of William the Conqueror_. [365] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1853 and 1908, vol. 1, p. 145; Henri Prentout, _Caen et Bayeux_ (Collection. Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens); Abbé Lelieve, _Bayeux, la cathédrale, les églises_ (Bayeux, Deslandes, 1907); Jean Vallery-Radot, _La cathédrale de Bayeux_, Thèse: École des chartes (1911); De Dion et Lesvignes, _La cathédrale de Bayeux_ (Paris, A. Morel et Cie, 1861); Rev. R. S. Mylne, _The Cathedral of Bayeux_ (London, 1904); Chigonesnel, _Histoire de Bayeux_ (1867); Paul de Farcy, _Abbayes du diocèse de Bayeux_ (Laval, 1886-88), 3 vols, (on Cerisy-la-Forêt, etc.); Arcisse de Caumont, _Statistique monumentale du Calvados_ (Caen, F. Le Blanc-Hardel, 1898); G. Bouet, "Clochers du diocèse de Bayeux," in _Bulletin Monumental_, vol. 17, p. 196; vol. 23, p. 362; vol. 25, 1859, p. 165; vol. 49, p. 465; Engerand, "La sculpture romane en Normandie," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1904; _Histoire littéraire de la France_, vol. 13, p. 518, "Robert Wace, chanoine de Bayeux, historien-poète"; V. Bourrienne, in _Revue catholique de Normandie_, on the bishops Odo de Conteville and Philippe d'Harcourt, vii to x, xviii to xxiii. [366] The term Romanesque was put into usage by the archaeologist, Arcisse de Caumont (1802-73), to whom Bayeux has erected a statue. He also originated the useful term "Flamboyant." His Norman Society of Antiquarians was a pioneer in the study of mediæval monuments. Another son of Bayeux, honored by a statue, is the poet, Alain Chartier (1386-1449), who lived to see his master, Charles VII, the conqueror of Normandy. [367] A. Levé, _La tapisserie de Bayeux_ (Paris, H. Laurens, 1919); Hilaire Belloc, _The Bayeux Tapestry_ (London and New York, 1914); J. R. Fowke, _The Bayeux Tapestry_ (London, G. Bell, 1898); Lefebvre des Mouettes, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1912, p. 213; 1903, p. 84. [368] Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_, "Prologue." [369] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1883; and 1908, p. 247, "La cathédrale de Coutances," E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, also published separately by H. Delesques, Caen, 1910; Abbé E. H. Pigéon, _Histoire de la cathédrale de Coutances_ (Coutances, Salette fils, 1876); Alfred Ramée, "Cathédrale de Coutances," in _Revue des Soc. Savantes_, 1880, p. 94; A. de Dion, in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1884, vol. 50, p. 620; 1865, p. 509, G. Bouet; 1872, p. 19, Regnault; Gabriel Fleury, in _Revue ... archéol. du Maine_, 1909, on the architect, Thomas Toustain; Regnault, _Revue monumentale et historique de l'arrondissement de Coutances_ (St. Lô, 1860); C. de Gerville, "Recherches sur les abbayes de la Manche," in _Mém. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de Normandie_, vol. 2, p. 77; _ibid._, _Études géographiques et historiques sur le département de la Manche_ (Cherbourg, 1854). [370] Near Hauteville-sur-mer are the ruins of Hambye Abbey, whose destruction was an irreparable loss for art, since its church was Primary Gothic. On the road from Coutances to Cherbourg is the abbatial of Lessay (a contemporary of St. Étienne at Caen), said by M. Arcisse de Caumont to be one of the purest models of Norman Romanesque, an austere monument of the XI-century type. Differences in the pier's profiles show where, in the nave, the XII century resumed work. In this latter period Gothic ribs were prepared for from the planting of the piers, but the actual diagonals of the nave were built in the XIII century. Mr. John Bilson claims that the Gothic ribs of the two sections preceding the apse are of the XI century, which again brings up the controversy of priority in the use of diagonals. The Cistercian church of La Blanche at Mortain was another abbatial of the Manche, dedicated in 1206. At Cerisy-la-Forêt the abbey church was begun (c. 1130) by the Fécamp school of William of Volpiano, continued by Duke Robert the Magnificent, and finished by his son William the Conqueror. The nave was built from west to east in the last quarter of the XI century, the apse slightly after 1100, the actual vaulting a century later. The religious wars and the Revolution sacked the abbatial; in 1811 its demolition was still going on. _Congrès Archéologique_, 1908, p. 242, "Lessay," Lefèvre-Pontalis; p. 553, "Cerisy-la-Forêt," André Rhein; _Congrès Archéologique_, 1860, on Cherbourg; _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Manche_, p. 173, "Lessay"; p. 1, "St. Lô"; p. 51, "Carentan"; p. 73, "Cerisy-la-Forêt"; p. 153, "Hambye"; R. Le Conte, _Études hist. et archéol. sur les abbayes bénédictines en général, et sur celle de Hambye en particulier_ (Bernay, 1890). [371] Camille Enlart, _L'influence extérieure de l'art normand au moyen âge_; _ibid._, _Origines françaises de l'architecture gothique en Italie_ (Paris, Thorin, 1894); Ch. Diehl, _Palerme et Syracuse_ (Collection, Villes d'art célèbres), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1907); Miss C. Waern, _Medieval Sicily_ (London, 1910); Émile Bertaud, _L'art dans l'Italie méridionale_; F. Chalandon, _Histoire de la domination normande en Italie et en Sicile_ (Paris, 1907); E. Curtis, _Roger of Sicily_ (New York, 1912). [372] Doctor Coutan, _La cathédrale d'Avranches_ (Rouen, Cagniard, 1902); _La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque_. _Manche_, vol. 2, p. 65, "Avranches." [373] Anatole Le Braz, _La Bretagne_ (Collection, Les provinces françaises), (Paris, H. Laurens); _ibid._, _Histoire de Bretagne_ (Collection, Les vieilles provinces de France), (Paris, Bouvin); _ibid._, _Au pays des pardons_ (translated, London, Methuen, 1906); Abbé J. M. Abgrall, _Architecture bretonne; études des monuments du diocèse de Quimper_ (Quimper, 1904); _ibid._, _Paysages et monuments des Côtes-du-Nord_; Gautier du Mottay, _Répertoire archéol. des Côtes-du-Nord_; H. du Cleuziou, _Bretagne artistique et pittoresque_ (Paris, 1886); _Bulletin de la Soc. archéol. du Finistère_, 1901, vol. 28, p. 264, "Le vieux Morlaix"; and 1902, vol. 30, p. 24, "Le vieux Quimperlé"; A. de Lorme, "L'art breton du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle," in _Bulletin de la Soc. archéol. du Finistère_, 1901, vol. 28, p. 264; Taylor et Nodier, _Voyages pittoresque ... dans l'ancienne France, La Bretagne_ (Paris, Didron, 1845-46), 2 vols.; André, _La verrerie et les vitraux peint dans l'ancienne province de Bretagne_ (1878); Léon Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_, vol. 2, "La Bretagne" (Paris, Quantin, 1885), 3 vols., folio; De la Borderie, _Histoire de Bretagne_, vol. 3, from 995 to 1364, and vol. 4, from 1364 to 1522 (Rennes, 1896-1900); _ibid._, _Mosaïque bretonne_ (Rennes, Plihon et Hervé); De la Villemarqué, éd., _Barzas-Breiz; chants populaires de la Bretagne_, ninth edition (1892), 2 vols.; F. M. Luzel, _Gwerziou Briez-Izel_ (epics) and _Soniou_ (lyrics), (Lorient, 1868-74), 3 vols.; Siméon Luce, _Histoire de Bertrand Duguesclin et de son épogue_ (1883); Leroux de Lincy, _Vie de la reine Anne de Bretagne_ (1860); A. Robida, _La veille France, Bretagne_ (Paris, 1891). [374] Edmond Rostand, "Le nom sur la maison," in _Le vol de la Marseillaise_ (Paris, Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1919). [375] A son of Morlaix, Émile Souvestre (1806-54), has written lovingly of Brittany: "Il y a quelque chose de bien supérieure à la louange; la conscience que l'on a été compris et que l'on est aimé pour son oeuvre. _Aimé pour son oeuvre!_ Je sais mieux que personne ce qui manque à ce que j'écris. Il faut quelque chose d'ondoyant. J'appartiens à cette terre Celtique où les monuments sont des pierres non taillées." [376] "Campagnes bretonnes, qu'on dirait toujours recueillies dans le passé ... grandes pierres qui couvrent les lichens gris ... plaines où le granit affleure le sol antique.... Ce sont des impressions de tranquillité, d'apaisement, que m'apporte ce pays; c'est aussi une aspiration vers un repos plus complet sous la mousse." --PIERRE LOTI, _Mon frère Yves_. [377] The men of St. Malo have been pioneers under one aspect or another, sea rovers, like Duguay-Trouin, Surcouf, or Jacques Cartier, who, in 1535, knelt in the cathedral, where an inscription marks the pavement, to receive episcopal blessing before he sailed to discover Canada. Other sons of St. Malo have been the astronomer, Maupertius (1698-1756); Lamennais (1782-1854); and Chateaubriand (1768-1848), who chose for his burial the barren island of Grand Bé, offshore. [378] "Quiqu'en grogne, Ainsi sera: C'est mon plaisir." [379] André Rhein, "La cathédrale de Dol," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1910, vol. 74, p. 367; A. Ramé, "La cathédrale de Dol; tombeau de l'évêque Thomas James," in _Mélanges d'archéologie bretonne_, 1858, vol. 2, p. 10; T. Gautier, _La cathédrale de Dol_; Ch. Robert, _Guide de tourist archéologique à Dol_ (Dol-de-Bretagne, 1892); Léon Palustre, _La Renaissance en France_, vol. 2, "La Bretagne," p. 87, on Dol (Paris, Quantin, 1885); Paul Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901); A. de Montaiglon, "La sculpture française à la Renaissance: la famille des Juste en France," in _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_, 1875, vol. 12, p. 394. [380] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1856 and 1886; Guilhermy, "Monuments des bords de la Loire; Nantes," in _Annales archéol._, 1845, vol. 2, p. 87; J. Montfort, "La crypte de la cathédrale de Nantes," in _Bulletin Monumental_, 1884, vol. 50, pp. 368, 449; Paul Vitry, _Michel Colombe et la sculpture française de son temps_ (Paris, 1901); Lambin de Lignum, _Recherches historiques sur l'origine et des ouvrages de Michel Colombe_; Benj. Fillon, _Poitou et Vendée_ (1846); Travers, _Histoire ... du comté de Nantes_, 3 vols. [381] Félix Soleil, _La danse-macabre de Kermaria-an-Isquit_ (St. Brieuc, 1882); Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_, chap. 2, "La danse macabre" (Paris, Colin, 1910); Lucien Bégule, _La chapelle de Kermaria Nisquit et la danse des morts_ (Paris, 1911); Abbé J. M. Abgrall, _Le mobilier artistique des églises bretonnes_ (Quimper, Cotonnec, 1898). [382] R. F. Le Men, _Monographie de la cathédrale de Quimper_ (Quimper, 1877); Abbé J. M. Abgrall, "Autour du vieux Quimper," in _Bulletin de la Soc. archéol. du Finistère_, 1901, vol. 28, p. 79; _ibid._, _L'architecture bretonne, étude des monuments du diocèse de Quimper_ (1882); Thomas, _La cathédrale de Quimper_ (1892); P. Peyron, "Les églises et chapelles du diocèse de Quimper," in _Bulletin de la Soc. archéol. du Finistère_, vol. 20, pp. 129, 451; vol. 31, pp. 18, 216, 304; vol. 32, p. 183. [383] L. Th. Lecureur, _La cathédrale de St. Pol-de-Léon_ (Collection, Petites Monographies), (Paris, H. Laurens); Ch. Chassepied, "Notes sur la cathédrale de St. Pol-de-Léon," in _Bulletin de la Soc. archéol. du Finistère_, 1901, vol. 28, p. 304; Abbé J. M. Abgrall, _Au pays des clochers à jour_ (Paris, 1902). [384] _Congrès Archéologique_, 1883, on Tréguier; Ch. de la Ronsiere, _Saint Yves_ (Collection, Les Saints), (Paris, Lecoffre, 1901); Ernest Renan, _Souvenirs d'enfance_ (1883). [385] Émile Mâle, _L'art religieux au XIIIe siècle en France_, p. 442 (Paris, Colin, 1908). (Trans. by Dora Mussey, London, Dent & Sons, New York, Dutton, 1913). [386] "Un tel art ne pouvait être effleuré par le doute. L'art et la poésie qui émeuvent sortent du coeur et d'une région obscure où la raison n'a pas accès. L'artiste qui examine, juge, critique, doute, concilie, a déjà perdu la moitié de la force créatrice."--ÉMILE MÂLE, _L'art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en France_ (Paris, Colin, 1910). "Art addresses not pure sense, still less the pure intellect, but the imaginative reason through the senses."--WALTER PATER. [387] "Hier, pendant son congé de vingt-quatre heures, j'ai rencontré le fils d'une pauvre femme de la campagne, un ouvrier que j'aime bien depuis longtemps. Quand je l'ai quitté, et que je lui ai dit: 'Bonne chance, Marcel,' il m'a regardé de ses yeux sans reproche, et il m'a répondu: 'D'un côté ou de l'autre, je ne crains rien.' Et cela voulait dire: la vie la mort? Qu'importe! je suis prêt. Qu'est ce que tout cela. C'est la chanson de geste qui continue: c'est la croisade qui n'est point finie, c'est Dieu transparaissant à travers la France purifiée."--An episode to the World War, 1914: René Bazin, _Les Preux_. * * * * * Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: Madgeburg is a Primary Gothic cathedral=> Magdeburg is a Primary Gothic cathedral {pg 2} builder of Sossions Cathedral=> builder of Soissons Cathedral {pg 6} To point a rose-colored picture=> To paint a rose-colored picture {pg 41} blood of the Caroligian line=> blood of the Carolingian line {pg 86} Germans' stategic retreat=> Germans' strategic retreat {pg 112} conterbutting members of Rheims Cathedral=> counterbutting members of Rheims Cathedral {pg 117} congrégation quia existé=> congrégation qui a existé {pg 118-(note 66)} Les eglises de l'Ile-de-France=> Les églises de l'Ile-de-France {pg 126 (note 71)} Cronique des évêques de Meaux=> Chronique des évêques de Meaux {pg 165 (note 100)} its sanctury is a gem=> its sanctuary is a gem {pg 172 (note 107)} They are the patriachs=> They are the patriarchs {pg 182} Quelle delicieuse église!=> Quelle délicieuse église! {pg 237} Through Créstien=> Through Crestien {pg 245} l'oyage au pays des sculpteurs romans=> l'Voyage au pays des sculpteurs romans {pg 288 (note 177)} tantôt estrompée=> tantôt estompée {pg 332 (note 207)} the tenets of Cartharism=> the tenets of Catharism {pg 365} vestage of the city ramparts=> vestige of the city ramparts {pg 385} fit into our catagory=> fit into our category {pg 405} Gregory XI--Count Roger de Beaufort, a nephew of Clement VI--went back definitely in 1177 to the Holy City=> Gregory XI--Count Roger de Beaufort, a nephew of Clement VI--went back definitely in 1377 to the Holy City {pg 409} Celui qui proclaime l'existence de l'infini=> Celui qui proclame l'existence de l'infini {pg 428} et de la democratic moderne=> et de la démocratie moderne {pg 428} Sacracen inroads=> Saracen inroads {pg 436} more romatically ideal=> more romantically ideal {pg 441} XI-centuy-Notre Dame at Semur=> XI-century Notre Dame at Semur {pg 443} nos éerivains français=> nos écrivains français {pg 451 (note 304)} et vous savez somment il procède=> et vous savez comment il procède {pg 460 (note 308)} the Cartharis heresy=> the Catharist heresy {pg 466} Lanfrance had been teaching at Avranches=>Lanfranc had been teaching at Avranches {pg 474} a chonicle mass=>a chonicle mass a conicle mass {pg 500} beseiged and burned=> besieged and burned {pg 546} joie de viore=> joie de vivre {pg 517} La crypt de la cathédrale de Nantes=> La crypte de la cathédrale de Nantes {pg 565 (note 380)} was married, in 1199, to Louis XII.=> was married, in 1499, to Louis XII. {pg 566} place of honor is give to the Saviour=> place of honor is given to the Saviour {pg 567} Tarantaise, Pierre de (Innocent IV), 268.=> Tarentaise, Pierre de (Innocent IV), 268. {index} Viffart (Aisne), 45.=> Viffort (Aisne), 45. {index} 
49687	----	EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND. ILLUSTRATED BY A SERIES OF VIEWS AND DETAILS FROM BUILDINGS ERECTED BETWEEN THE YEARS 1560 and 1635, WITH HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL TEXT.... The Illustrations comprise 145 Folio Plates, 118 being reproduced from Photographs taken expressly for the work, and 180 Blocks in the Text. 2 vols., large folio, in cloth portfolios £7 7s. Net. or half morocco, gilt £8 8s. Net. [Illustration: PLATE I. HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. INTERIOR VIEW, SHOWING VAULTING AND SCREEN.] EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND A HISTORICAL & DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE TUDOR, ELIZABETHAN, & JACOBEAN PERIODS, 1500-1625 FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AND OTHERS BY J. ALFRED GOTCH, F.S.A. AUTHOR OF "ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND," ETC. WITH EIGHTY-SEVEN COLLOTYPE AND OTHER PLATES AND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT LONDON B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN MDCCCCI BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. PREFACE. It should, perhaps, be observed that although this book is entitled _Early Renaissance Architecture in England_, it deals with much the same period as that covered by my former work _The Architecture of the Renaissance in England_, but with the addition of the first half of the sixteenth century. The two books, however, have nothing in common beyond the fact that they both illustrate the work of a particular period. The former book exhibits a series of examples, to a large scale, of Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings, with a brief account of each: whereas this one takes the form of a handbook in which the endeavour is made to trace in a systematic manner the development of style from the close of the Gothic period down to the advent of Inigo Jones. It is not the inclusion of the first half of the sixteenth century which alone has led to the adoption of the title _Early Renaissance_: the limitation of period which these words indicate appeared particularly necessary in consequence of the recent publication of two other books, one being the important work of Mr. Belcher and Mr. Macartney, illustrating buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the title of _Later Renaissance Architecture in England_; and the other being Mr. Reginald Blomfield's scholarly book, _A History of Renaissance Architecture in England_, which, although it starts with the beginning of the sixteenth century, does not dwell at any length upon the earlier work, but is chiefly devoted to an exhaustive survey of that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The value of a work on Architecture is greatly enhanced by illustrations, and I am much indebted to the numerous gentlemen who, with great courtesy, have placed the fruits of their pencil, brush, or camera at my disposal: their names are given in the Lists of Plates and Illustrations. More particularly I desire to acknowledge the kindness of the Committee of that very useful publication _The Architectural Association Sketch Book_, in giving permission for some of their plates to be reproduced; and among other contributors I have especially to thank Colonel Gale, Mr. W. Haywood, and Mr. Harold Brakspear; while to Mr. Ryland Adkins I am indebted for several valuable suggestions in connection with the text of the Introductory chapter. Mr. Bradley Batsford has rendered ungrudging assistance at every stage of the undertaking, which has particularly benefited from his broad and liberal views in regard to the illustrations. My thanks are also due to those ladies and gentlemen who allowed me to examine, and sometimes to measure and photograph their houses; and I am indebted to Mr. Chart, the Clerk of Works at Hampton Court Palace, for much useful information imparted during my investigations there. Each illustration is utilized to explain some point in the text, but in many cases the reference is purposely made short, the illustration being left to tell its own story. J. ALFRED GOTCH. WEST HILL, KETTERING. _August, 1901._ CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I.--INTRODUCTORY 1 II.--THE INVASION OF THE FOREIGN STYLE 10 III.--THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HOUSE PLAN FROM ABOUT 1450 TO 1635 41 IV.--EXTERIOR FEATURES--THE LAY-OUT OF HOUSES, LODGES AND GATEWAYS, DOORWAYS AND PORCHES 73 V.--EXTERIOR FEATURES--GENERAL ASPECT, EXTERNAL APPEARANCE, WINDOWS OF VARIOUS KINDS 94 VI.--EXTERIOR FEATURES--GABLES, FINIALS, PARAPETS CHIMNEYS, RAIN-WATER HEADS, GARDENS 116 VII.--INTERIOR FEATURES--ROYAL PROGRESSES, THE MANNER OF DECORATING ROOMS, WOOD-PANELLING 138 VIII.--INTERIOR FEATURES--TREATMENT OF THE HALL, OPEN ROOFS, THE SMALLER ROOMS, DOORS AND DOOR FURNITURE, CHIMNEY-PIECES, CEILINGS, PENDANTS, FRIEZES 159 IX.--INTERIOR FEATURES--STAIRCASES, THE GREAT CHAMBER, THE LONG GALLERY, GLAZING, &c. 184 X.--MISCELLANEOUS WORK--STREET HOUSES, MARKET HOUSES, ALMSHOUSES, TOWN HALLS, VILLAGE CROSSES, SCHOOLS, CHURCHES AND THEIR FITTINGS, &c. 200 XI.--SIXTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE-PLANNING--ILLUSTRATED FROM THE COLLECTION OF JOHN THORPE'S DRAWINGS 226 XII.--ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 253 LIST OF WORKS ON EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE 267 INDEX 271 LIST OF PLATES. NOTE.--The letters "A.A.S.B." denote that the subject is reproduced from _The Architectural Association Sketch Book_, with authority of the Draughtsman and by permission of the Committee. PLATE I.--HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY, INTERIOR VIEW _Frontispiece._ S. B. Bolas, London, photo. FACING II.--HENRY VII.'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY PAGE H. O. Cresswell, del. 14 III.--DETAILS FROM THE TOMB OF HENRY, LORD MARNEY, LAYER MARNEY CHURCH Fred Chancellor, del. 18 { FAN VAULTING, CHAPEL OF THE REDMOUNT, KING'S LYNN } { W. Galsworthy Davie, photo.} IV.{ } 19 { VAULTING OF PORCH, COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX } { J. A. G., photo.} V.--THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY'S CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH; VIEW FROM CHOIR 20 VI.--THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY'S CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH; DETAIL OF NICHES ON NORTH SIDE 22 { PART OF SCREEN, ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER } VII.{ W. Galsworthy Davie, photo.} 26 { PAULET TOMB, BASING CHURCH J. A. G., photo. } VIII.--SCREEN IN THE CHAPEL, KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 28 { TITLE PAVING FROM LACOCK ABBEY } { Harold Brakspear, del.} IX.{ } 38 { SINGLE TILES FROM THE SAME PAVEMENT } { W. Haywood, del.} X.--CHEST FROM ST. MARY OVERIE, SOUTHWARK Victor T. Jones, del. [A.A.S.B.] 40 XI.--COMPTON WINYATES; GENERAL VIEW 47 XII.--COMPTON WINYATES; THE ENTRANCE PORCH C. E. Mallows, del. 48 XIII. (DOUBLE)--DETAILS FROM LAYER MARNEY TOWER Arnold B. Mitchell, del. 52-3 XIV.--THE ENTRANCE GATEWAY, HENGRAVE HALL J. Palmer Clarke, Bury St. Edmund's, photo. 56 XV.--THE ENTRANCE PORCH, MORETON OLD HALL Maxwell Ayrton, del. 58 XVI.--A GABLE FROM THE FRONT, MORETON OLD HALL Maxwell Ayrton, del. 58 XVII.--SOUTH SIDE OF COURTYARD, KIRBY HALL M. Starmer Hack, del. 60 XVIII.--JOHN THORPE'S GROUND PLAN FOR KIRBY HALL From the Soane Museum Collection. 62 XIX. (DOUBLE)--DETAILS OF PORCH IN COURT, KIRBY HALL Arthur G. Leighton, del. 64-5 XX.--THE ENTRANCE PORCH, MONTACUTE HOUSE From a water-colour by W. Haywood. 66 XXI.--THE ENTRANCE FRONT AND GATEHOUSE, DODDINGTON HALL. By permission from Rev. R. E. G. Cole's _History of Doddington_ 69 XXII.--THE GATEHOUSE AT STANWAY 78 XXIII.--THE GATEHOUSE AT WESTWOOD 79 { DOORWAY AT CHIPCHASE CASTLE } { J. P. Gibson, Hexham, photo.} XXIV.{ } 85 { PORCH OF THE MANOR HOUSE, UPPER SLAUGHTER } { W. Galsworthy Davie, photo.} { THE GRAND STAIRCASE, WARDOUR CASTLE } { G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen, photo.} XXV.{ } 86 { DOORWAY IN COURT, HATFIELD HOUSE } { Col. Gale, photo.} XXVI.--ARCADED PORCH AT CRANBORNE MANOR HOUSE 91 XXVII.--WOLLATON HALL; GENERAL VIEW 97 XXVIII.--BURGHLEY HOUSE; GENERAL VIEW G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen, photo. 98 { EXTON OLD HALL, RUTLAND } XXIX.{ } J. A. G., photo. 100 { THE MANOR HOUSE, GLINTON } XXX.--MOUNT GRACE PRIORY, YORKSHIRE 106 XXXI.--VIEW OF FRONT, SPEKE HALL 107 XXXII.--PART OF THE FRONT, BARRINGTON COURT Kotaro Sakurai, del. [A.A.S.B.] 110 { ASTLEY HALL } XXXIII.{ Bedford Lemere, London, photo.} 112 { KIRBY HALL; THE BAY WINDOWS Col. Gale, photo. } XXXIV.--GABLES AT LILFORD HALL 112 { HOLMSHURST, BURWASH } XXXV.{ }W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 118 { TUDOR HOUSE, BROADWAY } XXXVI.--CHIMNEY-STACK AND WINDOW FROM LACOCK ABBEY Harold Brakspear, del. 128 XXXVII.--BLICKLING HALL; PART OF ENTRANCE FRONT 130 { STEPS TO TERRACE, HADDON HALL } XXXVIII.{ TERRACE WALL, CLAVERTON HOUSE } 133 { J. L. Robinson, photo.} { GATEWAY, HIGHLOW HALL, NEAR } XXXIX.{ HATHERSAGE }J. A. G., photo. 136 { TERRACE STEPS, EYAM HALL } { SIDE OF BAY IN THE DINING ROOM, } XL.{ HADDON HALL } { PANELLING IN THE DINING ROOM, }J. A. G., PHOTO. 153 { HADDON HALL } { WOODWORK IN CHAPEL, HADDON HALL } XLI.{ BAY WINDOW IN THE DRAWING }J. A. G., PHOTO. 154 { ROOM, HADDON HALL } XLII.--AN INTERIOR FROM CARBROOK HALL, NEAR SHEFFIELD 157 XLIII.--SIDE OF ROOM AT BENTHALL HALL B. J. Fletcher, del. 156 XLIV.--SCREEN IN THE HALL, WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 159 XLV.--SCREEN IN THE HALL, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 160 XLVI.--SCREEN IN THE HALL, WOOLLAS HALL Harold Baker, Birmingham, photo. 160 XLVII.--THE GREAT CHAMBER, SOUTH WRAXALL MANOR HOUSE Ernest W. Gimson, del. 162 XLVIII.--FIREPLACE AND PANELLING IN THE MAYOR'S ROOM, OLD TOWN HALL, LEICESTER 162 XLIX.--SIDE OF A ROOM, THE "REINDEER" INN, BANBURY John Stewart, del. 162 L.--DETAILS OF PANELLING FROM SIZERGH HALL F. Dare Clapham, del. 163 LI.--INTERIOR PORCH, BROUGHTON CASTLE 163 LII.--THE PRESENCE CHAMBER AT HARDWICK HALL A. Seaman, Chesterfield, photo. 164 LIII.--DOORWAY IN A HOUSE AT BRISTOL 164 LIV.--A DOORWAY FROM LEVENS HALL F. B. Turner, Flamborough, photo. 165 { DOORWAY, GAYTON MANOR HOUSE J. A. G., del.} LV.{ DOORWAY, ST. PETER'S HOSPITAL, BRISTOL } 166 { T. Locke Worthington, del. [A.A.S.B.]} LVI.--CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM BOUGHTON HOUSE 168 LVII.--CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM LACOCK ABBEY Harold Brakspear, del. 168 LVIII.--A CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM BARLBOROUGH HALL Col. Gale, photo. 168 LIX.--CHIMNEY-PIECE IN KING JAMES'S ROOM, HATFIELD HOUSE Col. Gale, photo. 169 LX.--CHIMNEY-PIECE IN THE GREAT CHAMBER, SOUTH WRAXALL MANOR HOUSE W. Haywood, del. 169 LXI.--CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM HARDWICK HALL J. L. Robinson, photo. 169 LXII.--CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM FORD HOUSE, NEWTON ABBOT J. A. G., del. 170 LXIII.--CHIMNEY-PIECE AT WHISTON, SUSSEX Col. Gale, photo. 171 LXIV.--TWO CHIMNEY-PIECES FROM BOLSOVER CASTLE Col. Gale, photo. 171 LXV.--CHIMNEY-PIECE AT BROMLEY-BY-BOW PALACE 172 LXVI.--CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM CASTLE ASHBY Bedford Lemere, London, photo. 172 LXVII.--CEILING AND FRIEZE FROM CARDINAL WOLSEY'S CLOSET, HAMPTON COURT PALACE J. A. G., photo. 175 LXVIII.--CEILING AT DEENE HALL J. A. G., photo. 177 LXIX.--CEILING FROM THE "REINDEER" INN, BANBURY J. A. G., photo. 178 LXX.--CEILING OF THE GREAT CHAMBER, ASTON HALL From W. Niven's _Account of Aston Hall_. 180 LXXI.--CEILING OF KING CHARLES' BEDROOM, ASTON HALL From W. Niven's _Account of Aston Hall_. 180 LXXII.--STAIRCASE FROM BURGHLEY HOUSE, STAMFORD After Richardson. 187 LXXIII.--PLANS OF STAIRCASES FROM JOHN THORPE'S DRAWINGS In the Soane Museum Collection. 189 LXXIV.--STAIRCASE, AUDLEY END C. J. Richardson, del. 194 LXXV.--THE LONG GALLERY, HADDON HALL G. W. Wilson, Aberdeen, photo. 196 LXXVI.--THE LONG GALLERY, ASTON HALL Harold Baker, photo. 196 LXXVII.--GLASS PANEL FROM MORETON OLD HALL John West, del. 198 LXXVIII.--FOUR EXAMPLES OF LEAD GLAZING FROM W. GEDDE'S "BOOKE OF SUNDRY DRAUGHTES," 1611 199 LXXIX.--TWO STREET HOUSES FROM OXFORD AND STRATFORD-ON-AVON 202 LXXX.--THE VILLAGE CROSS, BRIGSTOCK Miss Dryden, photo. 211 LXXXI.--DETAILS OF THE CHICHESTER TOMB, PILTON CHURCH 218 LXXXII.--CHOIR SCREEN FROM ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, TILNEY C. A. Nicholson, del. 219 LXXXIII.--PULPIT IN EDINGTON CHURCH R. Shekleton Balfour, del. 221 LXXXIV.--JOHN THORPE'S DRAWING FOR SIR JARVIS CLIFTON'S HOUSE From the Soane Museum Collection. 231 LXXXV.--UN-NAMED PLAN AND ELEVATION John Thorpe. 234 LXXXVI.--PLAN "FOR SIR Wm. HASERIDGE" John Thorpe. 235 LXXXVII.--ELEVATION OF PLAN ENTITLED "FOR SIR Wm. HASERIDGE" John Thorpe. 235 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. NOTE.--The letters "A.A.S.B." denote that the subject is reproduced from _The Architectural Association Sketch Book_, with authority of the Draughtsman and by permission of the Committee. ILLUSTRATION PAGE 1. Tomb of Prince Arthur in Worcester Cathedral J. L. Robinson, photo. 10 2. Tomb of one of the Cokayne Family, Ashbourne Church. J. A. G., photo. 11 3. Henry VII.'s Tomb; Detail of Ornament H. O. Cresswell, del. 12 4. Tomb of John Harrington, Exton Church J. A. G., photo 13 5. Tomb of Thomas Cave, Stanford Church J. A. G., photo 13 6. " " " End Panel J. A. G., photo. 14 7. Tomb of Sir George Vernon, Bakewell Church J. A. G., photo. 14 8. Tomb of Sir Thomas Andrew, Charwelton Church Miss Dryden, photo. 15 9. Tomb of ---- Bradbourne, Ashbourne Church J. A. G., photo 16 10. Panel from the Tomb of Elizabeth Drury, Hawstead Church. J. A. G., del. 17 11. Tomb of Henry, Lord Marney, Layer Marney Church Fred Chancellor, del. 18 12. Carving from the Sedilia, Wymondham Church. J. A. G., del. 19 13. Cowdray House, Sussex; Vaulting Rib of Porch. J. A. G., del. 19 14. Chantry of the Countess of Salisbury, Christchurch, from the North Aisle 20 15. The Salisbury Chantry, Christchurch; Detail of Carving. J. A. G., photo. 21 16. Prior Draper's Chantry, Christchurch; Head of Doorway. 21 17. Christchurch; Divisions between Miserere Seats J. A. G., photo. 22 18. " Bench-end in Choir J. A. G., photo. 23 19. Doorway and Panelling in the Gallery at the Vyne, near Basingstoke J. A. G., photo. 24 20. Screen on the North Side of Choir, Winchester Cathedral (with Mortuary Chest) 25 21. Canopy of Stalls, Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster A. W. Pugin, del. 26 22. Detail from Stalls, Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster G. G. Woodward, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 27 23. The Spring Pew, Lavenham Church J. L. Robinson, photo. 27 24. Detail from the Spring Pew, Lavenham Church C. R. Pink, del. 28 25. Roof of the Hall, Eltham Palace E. and S. H. Barnsley, del. 29 26. Roof of the Great Hall, Hampton Court Palace A. W. Pugin, del. 30 27. Details from the Roof of the Great Hall, Hampton Court. A. W. Pugin, del. 31 28. Hampton Court; Head of Door to Great Hall. J. A. G., photo. 32 29. Lacock Abbey; Tower at South-east Corner W. Haywood, del. 36 30. " " Stone Table in Tower Sidney Brakspear, photo. 37 31. " " Stone Table in Tower Sidney Brakspear, photo. 38 32. " " The Stables W. Haywood, del. 39 32A. Panel from the Sedilia, Wymondham Church J. A. G., del. 40 33. Great Chalfield House; Plan After T. L. Walker. 43 34. Oxburgh Hall; Ground Plan After J. Britton. 44 35. " " Entrance Tower J. L. Robinson, photo. 45 36. East Barsham House; Ground Plan After A. W. Pugin. 46 37. Compton Winyates; Ground Plan After Heber Rimmer. 48 38. Sutton Place, near Guildford; Ground Plan S. Forster Hayward, del. 49 39. " " Details A. C. Gladding, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 50 40. " " Part Elevation of Courtyard A. C. Gladding, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 51 41. Layer Marney Tower; Entrance Tower Arnold B. Mitchell, del. 53 42. Hengrave Hall; Ground Plan After J. Britton. 54 43. " " West Front J. L. Robinson, photo. 55 44. " " Corbelling of Bay Window over Entrance Archway J. A. G., del. 56 45. Moreton Old Hall; Ground Plan After J. Strong. 57 46. Kirby Hall; Ground Plan A. G. Leighton, del. 61 47. Montacute House; Ground Plan After J. N. Johnston. 65 48. " " West Front, with Court and Garden-houses J. L. Robinson, photo. 66 49. Barlborough Hall; Plan of Principal Floor J. A. G., del. 67 50. " " Entrance Front Col. Gale, photo. 68 51. Doddington Hall; Ground Plan J. A. G., del. 69 52. Burton Agnes Hall; Ground Plan J. A. G., del. 70 53. Aston Hall, near Birmingham; Ground Plan After W. Niven. 71 54. " " " North Wing Harold Baker, photo. 72 55. Holdenby House; Plan of Lay-out From an old Survey. 75 56. Doddington Hall; Block Plan J. A. G., del. 77 57. Stokesay Castle; The Gatehouse Col. Gale, photo. 78 58. Cold Ashton Manor House; Entrance Gateway J. A. G., photo. 79 59. Winwick; Gateway to Manor House J. A. G., photo. 79 60. Gateway to Almshouses, Oundle J. A. G., photo. 80 61. Holdenby House; Gateways to Base-court Miss Dryden, photo. 80 62. Kenyon Peel Hall; Gateway at Side of Court J. A. G., photo. 81 63. Doddington Hall; Entrance Doorway J. A. G., del. 82 64. Porch at Chelvey Court, Somerset J. A. G., photo. 83 65. Doorway at Nailsea Court, Somerset J. A. G., photo. 84 66. Doorway at Gayhurst Manor House J. A. G., photo. 85 67. Doorway at Cold Ashton Manor House J. A. G., photo. 86 68. Doorway at Cheney Court J. A. G., photo. 86 69. Woollas Hall; Part of Entrance Front Harold Baker, photo. 87 70. Porch at Gorhambury, near St. Albans (photo.) 88 71. Hambleton Old Hall (photo.) 89 72. Chastleton House; Ground Plan After J. A. Cossins. 90 73. Doorway at Lyddington John Bilson, del. 91 74. Doorway at Broadway J. A. G., del. 92 75. Doorway at Aylesford Hall W. Talbot Brown, del. 93 76. Kirby Hall; South Side of Court F. W. Bull, photo. 95 77. " " West Front J. A. G., photo. 96 78. Longleat House, Wiltshire (photo.) 96 79. Wollaton Hall; Plan of Principal Floor After P. K. Allen. 97 80. Charlton House, Wiltshire (photo.) 98 81. Aston Hall; The South Front Harold Baker, photo. 99 82. Corsham Court, Wiltshire J. L. Robinson, photo. 100 83. Kentwell Hall J. L. Robinson, photo. 100 84. Cheney Court J. A. G., photo. 101 85. The Manor House, Cold Ashton J. A. G., photo. 102 86. " " " " Ground Plan J. A. G., del. 102 87. Bolsover Castle J. A. G., photo. 103 88. " " Ground Plan J. A. G., del. 104 89. Condover Hall; The Garden Front J. L. Robinson, photo. 105 90. Clegg Hall, near Rochdale W. Riley, del. 106 91. Courtyard, Ingelby Manor (photo.) 107 92. House at Mayfield W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 108 93. Cowdray House; Part of Court J. A. G., photo. 109 94. Hoghton Tower; Bay of Hall J. A. G., photo. 110 95. Burton Agnes Hall; Bay Windows Frith, Reigate, photo. 111 96. House at Bourton-on-the-Water W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 112 97. Cottage at Steventon Col. Gale, photo. 113 98. Sections of Various Window Jambs and Mullions J. A. G., del. 114 99. Window Sill at Wollaton Hall W. Talbot Brown, del. 114 99A. Head of Window from Hatfield House J. A. G., del. 115 100. A Northamptonshire Cottage Miss Dryden, photo. 116 101. Stone Finials and Kneelers J. A. G., del. 117 102. The Manor House, Finstock W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 117 103. Cottage at Rothwell J. A. G., del. 118 104. Cottage at Treeton, near Sheffield C. Hadfield, del. 119 105. Cottage at Steventon Col. Gale, photo. 120 106. Wollaton Hall; One of Corner Towers (photo.) 121 107. Kirby Hall; Part of West Front Col. Gale, photo. 122 108. Gable in the Court, Rushton Hall J. A. G., del. 123 109. Gable in the Court, Apethorpe Hall J. A. G., del. 123 110. Exton Old Hall; Stone Parapet J. A. G., del. 124 111. Bramshill House; Stone Parapet After H. Shaw. 124 112. Audley End; Stone Parapet After C. J. Richardson. 124 113. Rushton Hall; Gable on East Front Col. Gale, photo. 125 114. Chimney at Droitwich W. Habershon, del. 126 115. Brick Chimney from Huddington Court House J. A. G., del. 127 116. Brick Chimney from Bardwell Manor House J. A. G., del. 127 117. Chimney at Toller Fratrum J. A. G., del. 127 118. Chimney at Kirby Hall J. A. G., del. 127 119. Typical Chimney in the Midlands J. A. G., del. 129 120. Chimney at Chipping Campden J. A. G., del. 129 121. Chimney at Drayton House J. A. G., del. 129 122. Chimney at Triangular Lodge, Rushton J. A. G., del. 129 123. Bean Lodge, near Petworth W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 130 124. Lead Rain-water Head from Haddon Hall From Mr. W. R. Lethaby's _Leadwork_, by permission of Macmillan & Co. 131 125. Lead Rain-water Head from Haddon Hall From Mr. W. R. Lethaby's _Leadwork_, by permission of Macmillan & Co. 131 126. Lead Rain-water Head from Haddon Hall From Mr. W. R. Lethaby's _Leadwork_, by permission of Macmillan & Co. 131 127. Pipe Head from Sherborne Henry Shaw, del. 131 128. Lead Pipe Head from Knole House W. Talbot Brown, del. 132 129. Lead Pipe Head from Bramshill House W. Talbot Brown, del. 132 130. Gayhurst; Stone Pillar in Garden J. A. G., photo. 133 131. Gateway in a House at Lindfield Arthur Ardron, del. 134 132. Chipping Campden; The Garden-house Percy D. Smith, del. 136 133. Eyam Hall; Plan of Lay-out J. A. G., del. 137 134. Bedroom in Deene Hall; Plaster Ceiling; Tapestry on Walls. J. A. G., photo. 147 135. Haddon Hall; A Corner of the Great Hall J. A. G., photo. 149 136. Panelling of the Time of Henry VIII. J. A. G., photo. 150 137. Example of Linen Panelling, Stanford Church J. A. G., photo. 151 138. A Panel of the Time of Henry VIII. J. A. G., photo. 152 139. Door at Castle Rising W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 153 140. Panelling of Door at Beckington Abbey J. A. G., photo. 154 141. Door at Nailsea Court J. A. G., photo. 155 142. Part of Reredos (removed) at Stowe-Nine-Churches J. A. G., photo. 156 143. Part of the Court Pew, Chelvey Church J. A. G., photo. 157 144. Part of Screen (removed), Stowe-Nine-Churches J. A. G., photo 158 145. The Hall, Knole House (photo.) 159 146. Wollaton Hall; The Roof of the Great Hall Percy K. Allen, del. 160 147. Roof of Great Hall, Kirby George P. Bankart, photo. 161 148. Panelling from Sizergh Hall (now in South Kensington Museum) F. Dare Clapham, del. 163 149. Doorway, Abbott's Hospital, Guildford J. A. G., photo. 164 150. Latch from Abbott's Hospital, Guildford E. A. Rickards, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 165 151. Latch from Haddon Hall R. S. Dods, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 165 152. Lock-plates, Latches, &c. After C. J. Richardson. 166 153. Casement Fastener from Haddon Hall R. S. Dods, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 166 154. Key-plate from Abbott's Hospital, Guildford E. A. Rickards, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 167 155. A Knocker After C. J. Richardson. 167 156. Wood Chimney-piece, Benthall Hall B. J. Fletcher, del. 170 157. Stone Chimney-piece, Bolsover Castle. J. L. Robinson, photo. 171 158. Ceiling of the Presence Chamber, Hampton Court. After Nash. 173 159. Bosses from Ceilings at Hampton Court J. A. G., photo. 174 160. Patera to a Ceiling at Hampton Court J. A. G., del. 175 161. Part of the Ceiling in the Long Gallery, Haddon Hall. J. A. G., photo. 176 162. Part of a Coved Ceiling at Beckington Abbey J. A. G., photo. 177 163. Coved Ceiling, Beckington Abbey J. A. G., photo. 177 164. Part of a Ceiling from Sizergh Hall (now in South Kensington Museum) F. Dare Clapham, del. 178 165. Ceiling from Benthall Hall B. J. Fletcher, del. 179 166. Ceiling in Gatehouse, Haddon Hall R. S. Dods, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 180 167. Pendants of Plaster Ceilings After C. J. Richardson. 181 168. Examples of Plaster Friezes from Montacute, Audley End, and Charlton House After C. J. Richardson. 182 169. Plaster Frieze from Montacute House C.J. Richardson, del. 183 170. Part of Plaster Frieze, Carbrook Hall W. Talbot Brown, del. 184 171. Ceiling of a Triangular Bay Window at Little Charlton House After C. J. Richardson. 184 172. Staircase at Lyveden Old Building J. A. G., del. 186 173. Details of Staircase, Hambleton Old Hall W. Talbot Brown, del. 187 174. Staircase from East Quantockshead J. A. G., del. 187 175. Details of Staircase, Lyveden Old Building J. A. G., del. 188 176. Pierced Baluster J. A. G., del. 189 177. Staircase at Ockwells Manor House H. C. Pullin, del. 189 178. " " " " Plans and Details H. C. Pullin, del. 190 179. Staircase at Benthall Hall, Shropshire J. L. Robinson, photo. 191 180. Staircase at a House at Warwick J. A. G., del. 192 181. Staircase at the Charterhouse Roland W. Paul, del. 193 182. Portion of Glazing from Ightham Church J. A. G., del. 197 183. Glass Panel from one of the Windows at Gilling Castle. J. A. G., del. 198 184. House formerly in North Street, Exeter W. R. Lethaby, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 200 185. House in the High Street, Canterbury W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 201 186. Old House, High Town, Hereford. Valentine, Dundee, photo. 202 187. Corbels, "King's Arms," Sandwich W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 204 188. Corbel at Canterbury W. Talbot Brown, del. 205 189. Corbel at Canterbury W. Talbot Brown, del. 205 190. Corbel at Orton Waterville W. Talbot Brown, del. 205 191. The "Swan" Inn, Lechlade W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 206 192. Desk in Almshouses, Corsham W. Haywood, del. 207 193. Almshouses, Chipping Campden. W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 208 194. Market House, Shrewsbury (photo.) 208 195. Market House, Wymondham (photo.) 209 196. Market House, Chipping Campden W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 210 197. School at Burton Latimer Miss Dryden, photo. 211 198. Mill at Bourne Pond, Colchester Col. Gale, photo. 212 199. Hawking-tower, Althorp Park (photo.) 213 200. Plan of Hawking-tower, Althorp Park J. A. G., del. 213 201. The Sign of the "White Hart" Inn, formerly at Scole E. A. Heffer, del. 214 202. The Chichester Tomb, Pilton Church Vickery Brothers, Barnstaple, photo. 215 203. Alabaster Frieze from one of the Foljambe Tombs, Chesterfield Church W. Talbot Brown, del. 216 204. Tomb of G. Reed, Bredon Church Harold Baker, photo. 217 205. Tomb of Sir Wm. Spencer, Yarnton Church Harold Baker, photo. 218 206. The Pulpit, Worth Church W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 219 207. The Pulpit, Blythborough Church W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 220 208. The Pulpit, Chesterfield Church J. A. G., photo. 221 209. Font Cover and Canopy, Pilton Church W. Galsworthy Davie, photo. 222 210. Window of North Aisle, Kelmarsh Church J. A. G., photo. 223 211. Keystones from Compton Winyates Church W. Talbot Brown, del. 223 212. Door in the Screen of the Chapel, Peterhouse College, Cambridge R. S. Dods, del. [A.A.S.B.]. 224 213. Plan of the Château of Anssi-le-Franc copied from Du Cerceau John Thorpe. 227 214. Part Elevation of the Château of Anssi-le-Franc, with three Turrets added John Thorpe. 228 215. Elevation copied from De Vries John Thorpe. 229 216. An Unnamed Plan John Thorpe. 232 217. An Unnamed Ground Plan John Thorpe. 236 218. Upper Plan of Fig. 217 John Thorpe. 237 219. Elevation of Figs. 217, 218 John Thorpe. 238 220. An Unnamed Plan John Thorpe. 239 221. Ground and Upper Plans, Unnamed John Thorpe. 240 222. Elevations of Plans in Fig. 221 John Thorpe. 241 223. Unnamed Plan and Elevation John Thorpe. 242 224. Plan and Elevation of House for Mr. Wm. Powell John Thorpe. 243 225. Plan of House for Mr. Johnson ye Druggist John Thorpe. 244 226. An Unnamed Plan John Thorpe. 245 227. Ground Plan of House for Sir Jo. Danvers, Chelsey John Thorpe. 246 228. Upper Plan and Elevation for Sir Jo. Danvers, Chelsey John Thorpe. 247 229. An Unnamed Elevation John Thorpe. 248 230. " " John Thorpe. 249 231. " Plan (Circular) John Thorpe. 250 EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The progress of style in the mediæval architecture of England was regular and continuous: so much so, that any one thoroughly acquainted with its various phases can tell the date of a building within some ten years by merely examining the mouldings which embellish it. These successive phases, moreover, merge into one another so gradually, that although it has been possible to divide them into four great periods--called Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular--yet the transition from one to the other is unbroken, and the whole course of development can be traced as regularly as the change from the simplicity of the trunk of a tree to the multiplicity of its leaves. For about four centuries (A.D. 1100-1500) this growth continued, English architecture finding within itself the power of progression. But about the beginning of the sixteenth century it began to feel the influence of an outside power--that of Italy--which acted upon it with increasing force until, after two centuries, its native characteristics had nearly disappeared, and Italian buildings were copied in England almost line for line. The object of the following pages is to display the effect of this foreign influence upon our native architecture up to the point when it became predominant, and stamped our buildings with a character more Classic than Gothic. But it will be desirable first of all to glance shortly at the causes which led to Italy having this extraordinary influence, and at the general effect which that influence produced upon England. England, in common with the rest of North-western Europe, was the home of Gothic architecture, instinct with the mystery and romantic spirit of the Middle Ages. Italy was the home of Classic architecture, which it had cherished since the great days of Rome. The Gothic manner was never thoroughly acquired in Italy, even in those parts which lay nearest to France and Germany, although it affected their buildings to a certain extent. The best examples of Italian Gothic hold a low rank in comparison with the masterpieces of the northern style. Classic forms were those in which the Italian designer naturally expressed himself, and it was these which he employed when that great revival of the Arts which took place in the fifteenth century, set him building. The earlier Renaissance in letters "the spring before the spring," of which the great figures are Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, heralded a great awakening of architectural energy, and Italian architects, in solving their new problems, mingled the results of a deep study of ancient examples with much of mediæval spirit and tendency. They set themselves resolutely to revive the architecture which had been one of the glories of ancient Rome; but they could not, even had they wished it, free themselves from the spirit of their own age, and the result was the development of a kind of architecture which used old forms in new ways, and which has gained the distinguishing title of the Renaissance style. But the awakening in architecture was only one manifestation of the spirit which was abroad: in painting, sculpture, and all the applied arts, as well as in literature, the same vivifying tendency was at work. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, an event which flooded Western Europe with Greek scholars and Greek literature, a tremendous impulse was given to the new aspirations. A new world of history and poetry had been discovered, just as, forty years afterwards, a new world of fact and reality was discovered by Columbus and Cabot. The two events combined to excite men's imagination to an extraordinary degree, and their stimulating effect was visible in all branches of mental activity. There was a marvellous mingling of the old and the new. In the past there was an inexhaustible well of knowledge and suggestion; in the present a boundless opening for enterprise and fresh experiences. Just at this juncture the invention of printing was being perfected, and it came at the precise time to help the dissemination of the new ideas. The result was that great movement of the human mind known as the Renaissance, which in the space of a century altered the life of Western Europe. In politics it shattered the international fabric of the Middle Ages; in religion it brought about the momentous change which we call the Reformation; in art it wedded faultless execution with an extraordinary fecundity of design. There followed an age richer, perhaps, than any other in original genius and fertility of mental products. Italy was at the centre of this upheaval. To her were attracted students from all parts of Europe, not excepting England. She herself was teeming with men of talent in all branches of learning and the arts. It was inevitable that she should part with some of her superfluous energy to the surrounding lands, touched as they were, though less intensely, with the new spirit. So general was the enthusiasm that her neighbours were only too glad to welcome whatever Italy could send, even if not of her very best. The new movement eventually reached the distant shores of England, but as the stream flowed across Europe it became tinged with the peculiarities of the various lands over which it passed, and each country can show its own version of the Italian Renaissance in architecture as well as in other matters. Spain has one version, France another, Germany another, and England yet another; and there is this peculiarity about the English version--that it is coloured by the two channels through which it came, France and the Netherlands. The whole circumstances of the time being conducive to the spread of Italian ideas and forms (which are only the embodiment of ideas), how did they affect English architecture? They found in England a style long established, and still endowed with considerable vigour. At no period of its history had this style been so peculiarly English in its more elaborate efforts, the special development known as fan-vaulting, for instance--of which the finest examples are to be seen in the chapel at King's College, Cambridge, and Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster (see Plate I.)--being found only in this country. The Gothic style of England and the Classic style of Italy had next to nothing in common. Their modes of expression were essentially different. The former was elastic, informal, readily adapted to different needs. Like Cleopatra, it was of infinite variety; its component parts were small and manifold, its tendency was towards well-marked vertical lines. Its outward appearance expressed its inward arrangement: a window more or less, a buttress here, a chimney there--so long as they were wanted--offered no difficulty to the designer. Classic architecture, on the other hand, was formal and restricted by considerations of symmetry; its component parts were simple and less mobile than those of Gothic; its tendency was towards strong horizontal lines. The Gothic string-course, for instance, could jump up and down to adapt itself to a door or window; it broke round projecting piers or buttresses without hesitation. But the classic cornice continued in the same straight line, neither rising nor falling, and only breaking forward round a pier or column after due deliberation. Its projection was far greater than that of any similar feature in Gothic work: it was consequently much less ductile. Compared to Gothic detail, Classic was unwieldy, even that more pliant version of it which had recently been evolved in Italy. The ornament, however, with which the Italian designers so freely adorned their architectural work, unlike that of the ancients, was generally small in scale and elastic in character. Here, therefore, was a feature common to both styles, and we shall find that it is in the ornament of buildings that the change first took place. It will be seen that the progress of the new style was very gradual: it showed itself first in small objects, such as tombs and chantries, and in the unimportant detail of larger buildings; then it affected the more significant detail; and ultimately, after many years, it controlled the organic conception and expression: but this final development did not take place till after the close of the period which we are to consider. That which we are to watch is the struggle of the old and the new: the encounter of the new spirit steeped in classical learning, with the old Gothic traditions and methods. The great monuments of English Gothic architecture are to be found in ecclesiastical buildings; those of the succeeding phase are domestic in character. The change of thought in religious matters, which was proceeding all through the sixteenth century, was not favourable to church building, and after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. no more churches were built. But the new nobility, rich with the spoils of the dissolved houses and the traffic of the Indies, had acquired a taste for grandeur and dignity in outward life that required great mansions for its display. It is therefore primarily in the Elizabethan mansion that we must watch the contest between the old style and the new--a contest rendered more piquant by the fact that the new style had no experience of this particular kind of building in the land of its origin. The English house had developed on lines widely different from the Italian; it had to meet other wants, it had to contend with a different climate, it was subject to other traditions. The new style when it came, had to harmonize these strange traditions as well as its own, derived from a far distant past, with the original and fertile spirit of the age. The result is one of abiding interest. Almost any of the great houses built in the reign of Elizabeth will show to the casual spectator examples of crudity in detail and imperfect classical proportion, mingled with reminiscences of Gothic notions; but a deeper scrutiny will disclose the fact that in spite of these shortcomings there is a national individuality and sense of genius in the handling of materials sufficient to raise the result to the dignity of a distinct style. Just as the "Faërie Queen" shows a jumble of heathen gods and cardinal virtues, Christian knights and Pagan nymphs, and yet withal is a consummate work of art, so the buildings of the period-- "With many towers, and terrace mounted high, And all their tops bright glistering with gold," in spite of their inconsistencies, have a fertility of fancy, a wealth of ornament, and a simplicity of treatment which raise them to a similar high plane. And just as the literature of the period, as it became more in accordance with rule, lost half its originality and more than half its fascination, so Renaissance Architecture, as it passed from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean, and so to the succeeding phases, became more homogeneous, more scholarly, more true to its classical origin, and yet withal lost vitality in the process. The full meaning of that great century which stretched from the divorce of Henry VIII. to the accession of Charles I. cannot be grasped unless it is always borne in mind that not only was a new style supplanting an old one, but that it was doing so at a time when the originality and richness of men's minds were at their height. But while in England the new style was winning its way, in Italy it was passing the zenith of its vigour. The continued study of ancient monuments enabled architects to reduce the old methods of design to a system which could be acquired with ease, and architectural design became less a matter of invention than a capacity for adapting new buildings to old rules. In course of time the same state of things established itself in England. The invention of printing brought to the eye of English craftsmen not only plans and pictures of buildings recently erected in foreign lands, but also the rules which celebrated Italian architects had laid down for the proportion of buildings generally--rules founded partly on the study of ancient fabrics and partly on the august authority of Vitruvius. The application of these rules to circumstances and needs which had never been contemplated by their authors was the problem which English designers set themselves to solve. During the earlier years of their attempt they were almost baffled. Then came Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, and by their commanding genius they made the rules bend to their will; but in the eighteenth century the rules triumphed completely, and, as already said, Italian buildings were copied in England almost line for line. It is the work of the men who were baffled that we are now to examine: work which, judged from the standpoint of their better tutored successors, may almost be regarded as a failure, but work which exhibits a vitality, a fancy, and a sense of romance for which we look in vain in the more correct architecture of the eighteenth century. It is not surprising that England, in common with the rest of Europe, should have felt the influence of Italy. It is, perhaps, rather a matter for wonder that she should not have felt it earlier; that the architectural Renaissance should have continued for more than a century, and have reached its prime in Italy before it landed on our shores and began to touch the more susceptible places of our English stonework. But Brunelleschi, who crowned the cathedral of Florence with its dome, and reared the Pitti Palace, had been dead seventy years; the delicate sculpture on the façade of the Certosa of Pavia was five-and-twenty years old; and Venice was busy lining her canals with palaces, when Torrigiano brought the first Italian forms to England and applied them to the tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey. But the way had been paved beforehand. For some fifty years it had been the custom of English scholars to repair to Italy to learn the humanities. They returned home familiar, if not in love, with Italian ideas and methods of expression, and if they themselves did nothing outwardly to hasten the impending change, it was their poverty and not their will which consented to inaction. Fine building requires money, and accordingly it is in the work of monarchs, noblemen, and great dignitaries of the Church that we find the first evidences of the Italian invasion. Henry VIII. was the outward and visible, although unconscious, agent who guided the new movement to our shores. His great Cardinal, Wolsey, was not less active in building, but Henry was the royal patron, vying with other monarchs in obtaining the services of distinguished artists to adorn his surroundings. Now most of the distinguished artists at that time were foreigners, hailing chiefly from Italy. There were plenty of excellent English workmen it is true, but it was the fashion to employ Italians. Henry's rival, Francis I. of France, had secured the services of several such men; why not he? So his efforts were frequent, although they met with comparatively small success. Italians were loth to leave their own sunny surroundings, where all men were in sympathy with them and their ways, for the chilly fogs and the barbarous manners of those "beasts of English," as Cellini called them. A few men complied with his requests; of these, Torrigiano was the most celebrated. To him Henry entrusted the making of his father's tomb, discarding the design approved by the dead monarch, and taking the work out of the English hands already engaged upon it. None of the other Italians whose names have been preserved have left any great or permanent mark in the country to which they came unwillingly, and which they left gladly. The other great foreign figure which stands out among those of minor importance is that of a German, Holbein. But though Holbein did much work in England in different branches of art, he left no school, nor can the influence of his manner be traced far, if at all, beyond his death. Names of Italians appear occasionally as being employed by the King, and among them John of Padua occurs most frequently; but no one knows who he was, nor what work he left behind him. His name has often been attached to different buildings, and he has been confused with John Thorpe, but no evidence has yet been adduced actually connecting him with work that still survives. One of the curious and provoking facts about the early years of the Renaissance manner in England is the way in which Italian names elude pursuit. Work which looks as though it must have been done by a foreigner has no name that can be attached to it. Other work, which is almost as foreign in appearance, is found on investigation to be that of an Englishman. Henry's rivalry with Francis I., his friendship and his feuds with that monarch, seem to have had some effect on architectural ornament, for much that was executed during Henry's lifetime has a French flavour about it. It is curious, indeed, to observe how little hold actual Italian detail obtained upon the fancy of English workmen. It was not direct from Italy that they would take it. The Italians were not liked by the English people at large; protests were raised by the more thoughtful against the Italianizing of our young nobles. The popular conception of the subtle Italian was embodied by Shakespeare in Iachimo and the more infernal Iago. What Italian detail we find in Henry VIII.'s time is chiefly superficial ornament, and even that is by no means of universal application. It is to be found up and down the country in considerable quantity, but side by side with work which is still thoroughly Gothic in character. Islip, the Abbot of Westminster, who laid the foundation stone of Henry VII.'s chapel, and who saw the erection of that monarch's tomb--the great central feature for which the chapel was built--was not sufficiently enamoured of the new ornament to cause his own tomb to be of the same character. On the contrary, the screen which encloses his chapel is free from any touch of actual Renaissance detail, although erected some fifteen years after Henry VII.'s tomb. It was through Dutch and German channels that the Italian manner came to stay. This was the result partly of ties of race and religion, partly of commercial intercourse, and partly of the general imitation of Dutch methods which prevailed in England during the latter half of the sixteenth century. In commercial and political as well as naval and military matters this imitation is well known to students of that period. The character of Renaissance work in England during Henry VIII.'s time inclined to Italian and the French version of Italian. After his death it inclined towards the Dutch version. In both cases it was strongly infused with English feeling; but there is this difference, that whereas the earlier phase ended abruptly, no merging of it into the latter being traceable, the second phase can be followed step by step into the pronounced Italian of Inigo Jones's mature manner. We can see how some features were dropped and others acquired, until, by the double process of shedding and assimilation, the style of Burghley House glides imperceptibly into that of the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall. CHAPTER II. THE INVASION OF THE FOREIGN STYLE. In order properly to understand the position of the Elizabethan mansion in the story of architectural development, it is necessary to examine the work which intervenes between it and the last of the Gothic period. [Illustration: 1.--TOMB OF PRINCE ARTHUR (D. 1502) IN WORCESTER CATHEDRAL.] The first work with Renaissance detail that was done in England was the tomb of King Henry VII.--the actual altar-tomb, not the metal screen enclosing it. There is no foreign influence to be detected either in the screen or in the wonderful fan-tracery vault that spreads itself above (Plate I). These are essentially English productions, and yet there are certain parts of them which would lend themselves readily to the new-fashioned detail which was about to invade our shores; parts which in subsequent buildings were actually affected by it. But so far, that is up to the year 1509, when the king died, the chapel being still unfinished, there is no Renaissance detail. Nor is there any in the fine chantry in Worcester Cathedral, wherein King Henry's eldest son, Prince Arthur, who died in 1502, lies buried (Fig. 1). The utmost that can be said is that here, as in the chapel at Westminster, the Gothic work is preparing to succumb to the new influence. It has been suggested that the king's own tomb was erected subsequently to that of his mother, the Countess of Richmond, who also lies in the Abbey. But the question is one of little importance; no long period can separate the two, and the important point is that the actual invasion of the foreign style is a well-marked event, the circumstances attending it are on record, its results still survive in an excellent state of preservation. [Illustration: 2.--TOMB OF ONE OF THE COKAYNE FAMILY, ASHBOURNE CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE. FIFTEENTH CENTURY.] Henry VII. says in his will, dated 31st March, 1509, that he had arranged for his tomb to be made in a certain manner,[1] and from other sources we gather that the men who were to do the work were certain English craftsmen, of whom Lawrence Imber, carver; Drawswerd, sheriff of York; Humphrey Walker, founder; Nicholas Ewen, coppersmith; Robert Virtue, Robert Jenins, and John Lebons, master masons, were the chief. The last name is the only one with a foreign appearance, but it is a curious and rather significant fact that the design had been made by one "Master Pageny," as he was called by his English acquaintances, but whom his own countrymen called Paganino. No other work of Master Pageny's is known in England, but it seems tolerably clear that he is the same Paganino who designed the tomb of the French King Charles VIII. at St. Denis, and that Henry's tomb was to have been like it.[2] The project, however, fell through in consequence of the death of the king, and the passing of the control of affairs into the hands of his son, Henry VIII. The new monarch discarded the old design entirely, and entrusted the work to Pietro Torrigiano, or Peter Torrisany, as he became on English lips. Torrigiano's design departed widely from English traditions. The leading idea of recumbent figures upon an altar-tomb was retained--this idea indeed held the field for another three-quarters of a century--but the old practice of adorning the sides of the tomb with cusped panels, or figures of saints in niches, or angels holding shields of arms (Fig. 2), was abandoned; and instead of the restrained architectural treatment of the English tradition, where the figures were solitary, and every fold of drapery harmonised with the main architectural members, Torrigiano gave us the free treatment of the Italian sculptors. The general arrangement of the panels is simple enough (Plate II.). There are three circular wreaths on each of the longer sides of the tomb, divided by Italian pilasters adorned with arabesques, into which the rose and portcullis of the Tudors are introduced. A rose also fills each of the four spandrils formed by the circular wreaths. These wreaths were new to English eyes; so, too, was the treatment of the spandrils, where the flower is simply applied to the triangular space, instead of appearing to be a growth on the structure itself in the old Gothic way (Fig. 3). The panels themselves contain figures in action, figures which have cast away conventional attitudes and stiffness of attire, and comport themselves in the most natural way imaginable. Henry's patron saints are there to the number of ten, but instead of standing in niches, statuesque and motionless, they are grouped in pairs, every pair seeming interested in a common subject, instead of each individual being rapt in solitary contemplation. As there are six panels, the ten patron saints are supplemented by two other figures--the Virgin with the Child, and St. Christopher. Another novelty appears in the shape of the four cherubs poised at each corner of the tomb; they have no niches or other architectural background; they are detached pieces of sculpture, self-reliant; their purpose, which they no longer fulfil, was to hold banners, but these have long disappeared. [1] Britton's _Architectural Antiquities_, Vol. II. [2] _Archæological Journal_, 1894, "On the work of Florentine Sculptors in England," by Alfred Higgins, F.S.A. [Illustration: 3.--HENRY VII.'S TOMB. DETAIL.] [Illustration: 4.--TOMB OF JOHN HARRINGTON (D. 1524), EXTON CHURCH, RUTLAND.] [Illustration: 5.--TOMB OF THOMAS CAVE (D. 1558), STANFORD CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: 6.--TOMB OF THOMAS CAVE (D. 1558). END PANEL.] [Illustration: 7.--TOMB OF SIR GEORGE VERNON (D. 1567), BAKEWELL CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE.] The change of idea is complete, but it is a change that never took hold of English craftsmen. They adopted the circular wreaths and the arabesqued pilasters, and so far as those features are concerned we see in this tomb the prototype of many that followed after. But the figures in action do not appear again. English tradition was too strong for the Italian influence to overcome it, and the principal way in which it was affected was that the panels became frequently divided by pilasters instead of by moulded members; and that the angels, which had hitherto been solitary and devout, took on the attitude of heraldic supporters, and assumed a more mundane appearance, or endeavoured to imitate the amorini of Italian craftsmen--an effort for which they were, as a rule, too elderly. [Illustration: PLATE II.HENRY VII.'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. SOUTH SIDE (1516).] [Illustration: 8.--TOMB OF SIR THOMAS ANDREW (D. 1563), CHARWELTON CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] The dividing pilasters were sometimes nothing more than spiral columns, and such a column is occasionally the only sign of the new feeling. In the tomb of John Harrington, who died in 1524 (Fig. 4), a spiral column at the angles and a certain stiffness in the cusped panels indicate the impending change. This change is still more marked in the Cave tomb (Fig. 5) at Stanford Church, where (in 1558) the sides have three circular panels containing, however, shields of arms, not figures, and the upper end exhibits the family shield supported by two angels. On the other hand, the opposite end (Fig. 6) shows the family of the deceased gentleman in a number of figures treated with a stiffness of pose and a conventionality of attire that still belong to the ancient style. There is a very similar tomb at Charwelton to Sir Thomas Andrew, who died in 1563 (Fig. 8). In the tomb of Sir George Vernon (Fig. 7), who died in 1567, the angle pilasters, with their vases and portcullises in low relief, recall those on Henry VII.'s tomb. The middle shield on the end is surrounded by a circular wreath, while the shape of the shield and the strange form of the dividing pilasters show a still further departure from the old detail. In the Bradbourne tomb of 1581 (Fig. 9) panels have disappeared altogether, and the sides of the tomb are occupied by figures of the children, who hold in a stiff and tiring manner, shields setting forth their marriages. There is a rather curious survival in the tomb of Elizabeth Drury at Hawstead Church, in Suffolk, where, as late as 1610, a shield of arms is supported by two amorini (Fig. 10). All these examples, selected from the tombs to be found in village churches, and covering a period of three-quarters of a century, tend to show that the Italianizing of the English workman, in this branch of art at any rate, was as incomplete as it was slow. The craftsman was, however, aware that a new influence was at work, and he was prepared to succumb to it where circumstances were favourable. In certain districts circumstances were favourable, and accordingly in parts of the eastern and southern counties, notably at Layer Marney, in Essex, there are tombs in which the detail is more decidedly wrought after Italian models (Fig. 11 and Plate III.), although even here the difference is so great that any of them would look strangely out of place if transported to a church in Italy. [Illustration: 9.--TOMB OF BRADBOURNE (D. 1581), ASHBOURNE CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: 10.--FROM THE TOMB OF ELIZABETH DRURY (D. 1610), HAWSTEAD CHURCH, SUFFOLK.] The eastern and southern counties appear to have been specially affected by the new movement, for we find considerable traces of it scattered over wide areas, and affecting not only small objects like tombs, but permanent structures. We shall presently see it at Layer Marney Tower, and among other places at East Barsham and Great Snoring in Suffolk; while in Wymondham Church, in Norfolk, the sedilia is made of what appear to be fragments of a tomb much resembling those at Layer Marney in character (Fig. 12). In the southern counties, Sutton Place, near Guildford, abounds in Anglo-Italian detail; some of the woodwork at the Vyne, in Hampshire, is also affected by it. There is some very interesting work of the same nature at the Chapel of the Holy Ghost, at Basingstoke; while at Christchurch, in the same county, the chantry of the Countess of Salisbury is strongly touched with the Italian influence, and at St. Cross, near Winchester, are the very beautiful fragments of a Renaissance screen (Plate VII.). Winchester itself has some good work in the choir of the Cathedral; and still further west, at Bingham Melcombe, in Dorset, there is a charming gable of mixed English and Italian detail. At Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire, there is a considerable amount of Renaissance work, wrought when the abbey buildings were converted into a dwelling-house soon after the dissolution of the monasteries. [Illustration: 11.--TOMB OF HENRY, LORD MARNEY (D. 1523), LAYER MARNEY CHURCH, ESSEX.] [Illustration: PLATE III. DETAILS FROM THE TOMB OF HENRY, LORD MARNEY.] Some of this work is in stone and some in wood, but some of it is in terra-cotta, and it would be an interesting task to ascertain why this pronounced detail should have been largely confined to these particular districts. The stone and woodwork might have been carved by itinerant Italians wandering some distance from their ports of debarkation; but the terra-cotta must have been cast, and need not have been cast close to where it was fixed, but abroad, and thence conveyed to almost any part of the country. Nevertheless, none of the work entirely loses its English character, whether it was done abroad or not. Some of it must certainly have been wrought by Italians, but about much of it the general impression produced is that it was done by Englishmen with Italian proclivities, rather than by Italians under English orders. [Illustration: PLATE IV. CHAPEL OF THE RED MOUNT, KING'S LYNN. FAN-VAULTING. COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX. FAN-VAULTING OF PORCH.] [Illustration: 12.--FROM THE SEDILIA, WYMONDHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK.] [Illustration: 13.--COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX. VAULTING RIB TO PORCH (CIR. 1540).] Nor was the foreign detail on the stone simply added to the English work after the native craftsmen had finished. It was not that the Englishman completed his work and then invited the Italian to come and do the carving after his own manner, but the two influences are curiously mixed. Take the fan-vaulting of the porch at Cowdray (Plate IV.), for instance. In general appearance it is of the same family as other fan-vaulting, of which the roof of the Chapel of the Red Mount at King's Lynn may be taken as a specimen. But, as might be expected, it is in the susceptible parts of the stonework that the foreign influence first shows itself,--not in the construction, but in the ornament. The spandrils at Cowdray are filled with carving; some of it is foliage, treated in the Late Gothic manner, but in one appears the head of a winged cherub, clearly not of English but Italian descent. The main ribs of the vaulting, too, have an Italian arabesque worked on them, and the point to be observed here is that the section of the rib is not of the usual type, but is expressly designed to receive the arabesque (Fig. 13). [Illustration: 14.--CHANTRY OF THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY, CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE, FROM THE NORTH AISLE (CIR. 1529).] [Illustration: PLATE V. THE SALISBURY CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH. VIEW FROM THE CHOIR.] [Illustration: 15.--THE SALISBURY CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH. DETAIL OF CARVING.] [Illustration: 16.--PRIOR DRAPER'S CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH. HEAD OF DOORWAY (1529).] [Illustration: 17.--CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE. MISERERE SEATS.] In the Countess of Salisbury's chantry at Christchurch it is much easier to imagine the Italian carver following the English mason, and adding his ornament to the other's work, for nearly all of it lies in sunk panels, the highest parts of the carving being on the same face as the surrounding margin: that is to say, the Italian found plain surfaces between the moulded members left for him to carve, and one set of these plain surfaces, on the side next to the choir, he did not carve--they still remain bare. Take away the ornament, and the chantry in general design and treatment is Late English-Gothic (Fig. 14), such as no Italian would have produced, if we except the topmost stage on the choir side, where there are two domed pinnacles of rather clumsy and unintelligible design (Plate V.). One of these has a curious feature--the somewhat vulgar product of the later Italian carvers--namely, the lower drapery and the feet of a figure ascending into clouds, all executed in complete relief. On the north side, next to the aisle, are some shields in the spandrils between the niches (Plate VI.), carved in the Italian spirit, and these can hardly have been added afterwards, but must have been an integral part of the design. The arabesques on the vertical shafts and in the horizontal bands might very well have been carved by a man put on for that purpose only (Fig. 15). Altogether, it is difficult to adjust with any accuracy the claims of the English and Italian workmen; it would almost seem as though they worked together, or at any rate with a cordial understanding between them. The same may be said of the screen to Prior Draper's chantry (dated 1529) in the same church. The general design is Gothic, and while the arabesque enrichments may have been added afterwards, and the spandrils of the flat-pointed door, the same can hardly be said of the corbels to the niches over it (Fig. 16). The cresting along the top of this screen exactly resembles that over the screens at the sides of the choir at Winchester Cathedral, except that the latter has not a battlemented finish (Fig. 20). [Illustration: PLATE VI. THE SALISBURY CHANTRY, CHRISTCHURCH. DETAIL OF NICHES ON NORTH SIDE.] Although it is not difficult to imagine an Italian carving this stonework at Christchurch, it is not quite so easy to attribute the interesting choir-stalls to him or a compatriot, for the Gothic feeling is too pronounced, and the angel and cherubs are not lissom and graceful enough to have descended from an Italian sky. The divisions between the miserere seats (Fig. 17) are thoroughly Gothic in general treatment and in their mouldings, but in the carving the Italian hand shows itself, although subdued to the Gothic surroundings in which it worked. Some of the desk ends are traceried and cusped, and some have vases and foliage after the Italian manner. But here again the two _putti_ which turn their backs in so unceremonious a way (Fig. 18) can hardly be the work of Italian chisels. [Illustration: 18.--CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE. BENCH-END IN CHOIR.] It is equally difficult to assign the beautiful panelling in the long gallery at the Vyne to a foreigner (Fig. 19); there is so much English feeling about it. The work conveys the impression that the carver was more at home with his linen panels than with the Italian flourishes with which he supplemented them; but the single panel over the door is evidently the work of a hand thoroughly familiar with the Italian method. We see the same mixed character wherever we look; we can point to no work--not even Henry VII.'s tomb--and say, "This is wholly Italian." There is always a strong English feeling, and sometimes it is only a touch here and there which shows the foreign influence. [Illustration: 19.--DOORWAY AND PANELLING IN THE GALLERY AT THE VYNE, HAMPSHIRE (BEFORE 1530).] [Illustration: 20.--SCREEN ON NORTH SIDE OF CHOIR, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL (WITH MORTUARY CHEST), 1525.] The same remark applies to the stone screens at the sides of the choir at Winchester (Fig. 20). They are Gothic in general treatment, but a little Italian carving is introduced in the cresting along the top. They were the work of Bishop Fox in 1525, who evidently had a hankering after the foreign ornament in his life, although his own chantry, in which he lies buried, is free from it; for in the neighbouring church at St. Cross are the fragments of some very beautiful screens containing charming Italian work (Plate VII.). The history of these fragments is not known, but from the occurrence in them of the pelican, which was Bishop Fox's badge, they seem to be due to him, and they may possibly have come from the cathedral itself. They do not belong to their present situation, and one of the main posts is worked with a return at a very obtuse angle, indicating some such polygonal disposition as the east end of the cathedral has. On the top of the choir-screens in the cathedral are placed six oak chests, called mortuary chests, procured by Fox, in which are deposited the bones of various benefactors. They are of Italian workmanship (except two which replaced the old ones in the seventeenth century), and are suggestive as being one of the sources of inspiration to native carvers. One of them is shown in Fig. 20, and just behind it can be seen the cornice of the chantry of Bishop Gardiner, who died in 1555. The portion visible is of well-developed classic character, and indicates how the use of the foreign forms had progressed during the thirty years that had elapsed since Fox's time. Even here, however, the pinnacle at the corner--the head of a heraldic animal on a pedestal--shows how the designer was unwilling or unable to shake off all the trammels of his native style. [Illustration: 21.--CANOPY OF STALLS, HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER.] At Basing Church, in Hampshire, there is yet another example of the same limited use of Italian detail in the Paulet tombs, which are constructed in the thickness of the side-walls of the chancel (Plate VII.). The arches over the tombs and the doorway in the wall are all flat-pointed, and the spandrils are filled with Renaissance carving, which, in the case of the large arches, surrounds the arms of the founder. Except for these touches, and for the cresting along the top, which recalls that at Winchester, the detail is all Gothic. The large panel in the wall over the doorway seems to be of later date. [Illustration: PLATE VII. PART OF SCREEN, ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER (PROBABLY DUE TO BISHOP FOX, WHO DIED 1528.) PAULET TOMB, BASING CHURCH, HAMPSHIRE.] Another interesting piece of work of this period is found in the stalls of Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster. The canopies (Fig. 21) are quite Gothic in character, but of a rather florid description, and although there is no actual Renaissance detail, there is a tendency towards it. The caps of the pilasters are also Late Gothic, while the columns are of that honeycomb pattern which is a sign of change towards the new fashion (Fig. 22). There is woodwork of a somewhat similar character at Winchester in Langton's chapel, and in Prior Silkstede's pulpit (1520). The Spring pew in Lavenham Church, Suffolk, is another instance of the late treatment of woodwork. There are niches, canopies, fan-vaulting, and cusped tracery (Fig. 23), but a closer inspection shows that the tracery has completely departed from the simple lines of Gothic work, and has assumed fantastic forms combined of twisted strands and foliage (Fig. 24), while the columns are honeycombed or twisted into spirals. [Illustration: 22.--DETAIL FROM STALLS, HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER.] [Illustration: 23.--THE SPRING PEW, LAVENHAM CHURCH, SUFFOLK.] These examples all tend to show that the old traditions died hard. The new ideas were cautiously accepted, and were utilised to help the existing methods rather than to supplant them. Hitherto it has been fittings, or chantries, or tombs which have furnished examples--comparatively small and isolated pieces of work which naturally lent themselves to experiments. But we find the same general treatment in larger and more important efforts; the native tradition still holds the field, but traces of the new manner are to be found in the spandril of an archway, the termination of a label, or the pendants of a roof. Compare the roof of the hall at Eltham Palace (Fig. 25) with that of the great hall at Hampton Court (1534-35). The roof at Eltham is still Gothic, without a touch of the Renaissance; the roof at Hampton Court is also still Gothic in conception and construction, but in the most susceptible parts--the pendants, the spandrils, and the corbels--the new influence makes itself felt (Fig. 26). These pendants are quite in the new style, and yet were carved by an Englishman, named Richard Rydge, of London.[3] The spandrils likewise are filled with Renaissance ornaments carved by Michael Joyner, among which the King's Arms and the "King's beasts" appear, treated in the manner customary in Late Gothic work; the Tudor badges are also carved on the pendants and corbels, amid the cherubs and balusters and foliage which go to compose the Italian ornament (Fig. 27). [Illustration: 24.--DETAIL FROM THE SPRING PEW, LAVENHAM CHURCH, SUFFOLK.] [Illustration: PLATE VIII. KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. SCREEN IN THE CHAPEL (1532-6).] Another fine piece of woodwork, which was being executed contemporaneously with the hall roof at Hampton, was the magnificent rood screen in King's College Chapel, Cambridge (Plate VIII.). There is no record as to who did this work, nor when it was done; but the evidence of the arms, initials, and badges upon it, which are those of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, fixes its date between 1532 and 1536. It has been called the finest piece of woodwork this side the Alps, and its exquisite design and workmanship quite justify the description, and even incline one to omit the limiting line. It is more completely Italian in treatment than any other work of the time, and there is very little trace of Gothic influence. All the mouldings are classic, whereas in the roof at Hampton Court even the Italian pendants have a Gothic feeling in their mouldings. There is, however, a considerable similarity in feeling between the pendants in both cases, and it should be borne in mind that the work at the two places was being carried on simultaneously. Richard Rydge, of London, who carved the pendants at Hampton Court, may have had a hand in the King's College screen; but it is practically certain that the general design and most of the work must have been done by Italians, and the whole screen must be regarded as an isolated example, complete in itself, not growing out of anything that went before it, nor developing into anything afterwards. [3] _History of Hampton Court Palace_, by Ernest Law, Vol. I. [Illustration: 25.--ROOF OF HALL, ELTHAM PALACE, KENT.] [Illustration: 26.--ROOF OF THE GREAT HALL, HAMPTON COURT (1534-35).] [Illustration: 27.--DETAILS FROM THE ROOF OF THE GREAT HALL, HAMPTON COURT.] [Illustration: 28.--HAMPTON COURT. HEAD OF DOOR TO GREAT HALL.] The early work at Hampton Court, that is, the work of Wolsey and Henry VIII., executed between 1514 and 1540, is typical of the prevailing manner. This building was the most important one of its time. It was built by the magnificent Cardinal as his principal residence, where he could live amid quiet and healthy surroundings, and yet be in close touch with London, which was the centre of political activity. Wolsey lived in more than regal state, and the enormous size and extraordinary splendour of his palace is testified to by many foreigners of distinction who resorted to him on some of the innumerable matters in which he was the controlling spirit. This great palace he presented to the king some time before his fall, and the king altered and enlarged it still further, and made it, as was to be expected, one of his chief residences. Here, then, we may expect to find the best work that wealth and skill could produce; here we may fairly look for typical work of the time. What is the character of the work that was being executed between 1514 and 1540? In its essentials it is Gothic of a late type, with just such touches of Italian detail as have been already mentioned. The structure is of dark red brick, with stone dressings; the detail is of the simplest; the windows are generally small, and have flat-pointed heads. Whatever elaboration there is, is chiefly confined to central features, such as the gateways on the great axial line. The chimneys are of cut and moulded brick; the archways are vaulted with fan tracery vaulting; the large windows of the hall are traceried and cusped; everything in its main outline is Gothic. But in certain parts the ornament is of Renaissance character. There are a number of terra-cotta roundels built into the walls, which came from Italy, and were made to the Cardinal's order. There is a terra-cotta tablet of his arms supported by _putti_ beautifully modelled--this was also probably an importation; it has no essential connection with its surroundings. The same may also be said of the more roughly modelled panels on either side of the doorway to the chapel, which contain the royal arms impaling those of Henry's third queen, Jane Seymour, supported by very mundane angels. But there is also, in other parts of the building, a little Renaissance detail, which is an essential part of the design, and could not have been brought from elsewhere and built in. Such is the carving in the spandrils of doorways (Fig. 28), the pendants of the hall roof, and the ceiling decoration of certain rooms. This must all have been wrought on the spot, but it forms an extremely small part of the whole. While the spandrils of three or four doorways are carved with Renaissance detail, the doorways themselves are in other respects quite Gothic. The hall roof, as already said, is Gothic in conception, although much of its ornament is of the newer fashion. The same may be said of the chapel roof, which is an imitation in oak of some of the stone vaulting and pendants of the period. The ceilings will be referred to later, but it may here be said that most of them are derived from the wood-ribbed ceilings of Late Gothic work, and that only in the small room called Wolsey's Closet does the design decidedly follow Italian models. It will thus be seen that Hampton Court is essentially Gothic in style, and that only in its susceptible places has it been affected by the foreign fashion. What happened at Hampton Court happened elsewhere, and in all the examples which have come down to us the same thing is to be seen--a Gothic structure with more or less of Italian ornament: more in such places as Sutton Court and Layer Marney Tower, less at Compton Winyates and Hengrave. There was, however, one building, which has not come down to us, in which the Italian manner must have been much more in evidence, judging by such accounts as we have of the place. This was the palace of Nonesuch, in Surrey. It was built by Henry VIII. as a retreat, according to Paul Hentzner, the tutor of a young German nobleman who visited England in 1598.[4] It was in "a very healthful situation," he says, "chosen by King Henry VIII. for his pleasure and retirement, and built by him with an excess of magnificence and elegance, even to ostentation; one would imagine that everything that architecture can perform to have been employed in this one work; there are everywhere so many statues that seem to breathe, so many miracles of consummate art, so many casts that rival even the perfection of Roman antiquity, that it may well claim and justify its name of Nonesuch." The site was acquired by the king in 1538,[5] and as he died in 1547, he must have begun to build almost immediately. According to a statement in Braun's _Civitates_ (1582), he "procured many excellent artificers, architects, sculptors, and statuaries, as well Italians, French, and Dutch as natives, who all applied to the ornament of this mansion the finest and most curious skill they possessed in these several arts, embellishing it within and without with many magnificent statues, some of which vividly represent the antiquities of Rome, and some surpass them."[6] About eight years after Henry's death the house was alienated from the Crown to the Earl of Arundel, and was thereby saved from the destruction contemplated by Queen Mary, who found it too costly to finish. The Earl, however, "for the love and honour he bare to his old master," completed the building and left it to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, who added a second court. In 1591 it again came into possession of the Crown, and so continued until it was presented by Charles II. to his favourite, Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine, who pulled it down to help towards paying her debts. A few years before this happened Evelyn notes in his diary under date 3rd January, 1666: "I supp'd in Nonesuch House, whither the office of the Exchequer was transferr'd during the plague, at my good friend's Mr. Packer's, and tooke an exact view of the plaster statues and bass relievos inserted 'twixt the timbers and punchions of the outside walles of the Court; which must needs have ben the work of some celebrated Italian. I much admir'd how it had lasted so well and intire since the time of Hen. VIII., expos'd as they are to the aire; and pitty it is they are not taken out and preserv'd in some drie place; a gallerie would become them. There are some mezzo-relievos as big as the life, the storie is of the Heathen Gods, emblems, compartments, etc. The Palace consists of two courts, of which the first is of stone, castle-like, by the Lo. Lumlies (of whom 'twas purchas'd), the other of timber, a Gotic fabric, but these walls incomparably beautified. I observ'd that the appearing timber punchions, entrelices, &c., were all so cover'd with scales of slate, that it seem'd carv'd in the wood and painted, the slate fastened on the timber in pretty figures, that has, like a coate of armour, preserv'd it from rotting." Some two and a half years before this visit of Evelyn's, his lively contemporary, Mr. Pepys, had gone through the park to the house and, as he says, "there viewed as much as we could of the outside, and looked through the great gates, and found a noble court." In September, 1665, he was again there, and while waiting about he examined the house, which was, he says, "on the outside filled with figures of stories, and good painting of Rubens' or Holben's doing. And one great thing is, that most of the house is covered, I mean the post and quarters in the walls, with lead, and gilded." [4] _Hentzner's Travels_, ed. by Horace Walpole [5] _Gentleman's Magazine_, August, 1837. [6] _Archæologia_, Vol. XXXIX., p. 32. Toto del Nunziata was probably one of the Italians. Of all this beautiful work nothing has survived, except a painted panel or two preserved at Loseley, in Surrey, and possibly other fragments in other houses of the district. According to a statement of John Aubrey, the antiquary, some of the materials of Nonesuch went to the building of The Durdans near Epsom. Evelyn calls it a Gothic building, and we shall probably not be far wrong in placing it in the same category as other buildings of the time--English in conception, but adorned with foreign ornament, which in this case was of greater extent and better workmanship than that on any other contemporary house. It seems clear, however, that the work, important as it was, did not have any permanent effect upon English architecture. It was the culmination of the Italian movement prevalent throughout Henry VIII.'s reign; after his death, and before the newness of Nonesuch had worn off, the Italian influence gave way to the Dutch. Nonesuch was a large building, especially after Lord Lumley had added the second court; but it would seem that Henry VIII. actually built but one court, measuring 116 feet long by 137 feet wide.[7] Hampton Court had four large courts besides half-a-dozen smaller ones; the largest or Base Court, measuring 167 feet by 142 feet, still remains; so also do the Clock Court, measuring 160 feet by 91 feet, and the Chapel Court; the fourth, measuring 116 feet by 108 feet, has given way to Wren's buildings. Hampton Court, therefore, stood without a rival in point of size, but Nonesuch was more magnificently decorated, and we can but echo Evelyn's lament that the beautiful panels were "not taken out and preserv'd in some drie place." [7] _Archæologia_, Vol. V., p. 429. [Illustration: 29.--LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. TOWER AT SOUTH-EAST CORNER (BETWEEN 1540 AND 1553).] Just about the time that Nonesuch was being built, Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire was being converted into a residence by William Sharington, who had bought it on the dissolution of the monasteries. He was lord of the manor in 1540, and he died in 1553,[8] so that all the work which he did must be comprised between those dates. One important part of his work is the octagonal tower at the south-east corner of the house (Fig. 29). The detail of the stonework is simple, and, except for certain brackets, does not show much foreign influence, but in the tower are two stone tables (Figs. 30 and 31), evidently made for their situation, which strongly display the new spirit. That one of them was expressly made for William Sharington is proved by his initials and crest being part of its ornamentation; and as a skilful mason named Chapman was working on the new buildings, it is just possible that he may have carved one or both of these tables. It is the table on the middle floor which has its base ornamented with Sharington's initials and crest; from this base rises a central pillar, against which squat four figures of satyrs carrying baskets of fruit and foliage upon which rests the table-top. The satyrs have that curious resemblance about their heads to North American Indians which characterises a number of such figures carved during the latter half of the sixteenth century. The second table (on the top floor) has nothing about it directly connecting it with Sharington. It was evidently intended for a banqueting house, as it is adorned with figures of Apicius, the first authority on the pleasures of the table, Ceres, Bacchus, and an unnamed personage of the same hierarchy. [8] "Notes on Lacock Abbey," by C. H. Talbot, _Wilts. Archæolog. and Nat. Hist. Mag._ Vol. XXVI. [Illustration: 30.--LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. STONE TABLE IN TOWER.] Sharington's work is of considerable interest, and includes, in addition to minor matters such as a chimney-piece, chimney-stacks, and panelling, a fine range of stabling (Fig. 32), of which the detail is tolerably simple, and of a character closely resembling that which prevailed twenty years later, although here and there, in a chimney or a bracket, we get a touch more in keeping with what is usually associated with Sharington's own time. In addition to the Renaissance work in the tables there is some tile paving (Plate IX.) which displays, amid the foliage, the vases and the dolphins that form the staple of Italian ornament, the initials of Sharington and his third wife, Grace, his arms (gu., between two flaunches arg. and az., two crosses formée, in pale), and his crest, a scorpion. As Sir William Sharington died in 1553, and it was during the life of his third wife that these tiles were made, they may fairly be dated about 1550. [Illustration: 31.--LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. STONE TABLE IN TOWER.] [Illustration: PLATE IX. LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. TILE PAVING (ABOUT 1550). SEPARATE TILES FROM THE SAME PAVEMENT.] With the close of the first half of the century we come to the end of pronounced Italian detail such as pervades the tiles at Lacock, and characterises other isolated features in different parts of the country. The nature of the detail in the second half of the century is different; it no longer comprises the dainty cherubs, the elegant balusters, vases and candelabra, the buoyant dolphins, and delicately modelled foliage which are associated with Italian and French Renaissance work, but it indulges freely in strap work, curled and interlaced, in fruit and foliage, in cartouches, and in caryatides, half human beings, half pedestals, such as were the delight of the Dutchman of the time. But the extreme heaviness of the Dutch work was lightened in its passage across the water, and the English workmen seem to have improved upon their later models as much as they fell short of their earlier. There is a fine carved and inlaid chest in St. Mary Overie, Southwark, which shows this change in detail (Plate X.), but it is treated with more restraint than the woodwork of later years. It was the gift of Hugh Offley, and bears his initials and marks, as well as his arms and those of his wife's family: he was Lord Mayor in 1556, and is not unlikely to have given the chest in that year. [Illustration: 32.--LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. THE STABLES (BETWEEN 1540 AND 1553).] In addition to the change in the character of the detail, we find a classic rendering of strings and cornices more prevalent; doorways became frequently round-headed instead of flat-pointed, windows became square-headed, and all accessories parted with what remains of Gothic character they may have possessed in favour of a classic treatment. But the general body of a building was less susceptible of change than were its particular features, and how the general body of such buildings as houses developed will be seen in the next chapter. [Illustration: 32A.--FROM THE SEDILIA, WYMONDHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK.] [Illustration: PLATE X. CHEST FROM ST. MARY OVERIE, SOUTHWARK (DATED 1556).] CHAPTER III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HOUSE-PLAN FROM ABOUT 1450 TO 1635. NOTE.--The plans are drawn to a uniform scale of 50 feet to the inch. The principal buildings erected during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were houses, and it is mainly in connection with domestic architecture that we must seek to trace the development of the new style. There were but few churches built after the dissolution of the monasteries, and we have no examples of sufficient importance to show how ecclesiastical architecture would have been affected. There are chapels, chantries, and fittings, such as screens, pews, pulpits, and fonts, but nothing on a large scale. We have already seen how such comparatively small and isolated features were affected. It is necessary, therefore, to look to the numerous houses that were built in order to see what progress the new ideas made. The character of a house is largely determined by its plan, and the plan is the expression of the wants and habits of the inmates. Accordingly we find that the wants and habits of English people, being far less susceptible of change than their taste in ornament and decoration, caused the plan of their houses to follow the old lines long after the superficial decoration had taken on itself the foreign fashion. The one quality which the Italian influence gradually introduced into the plan was symmetry, and this could be obtained without sacrificing the arrangements which seemed essential to English habits. In later days an Italian feature, the open loggia, was often made use of in the form of an arcade, but even this had its English precedent in the cloisters of the monks. What were the essential points about the plan of an English house? The most important place was the hall, which was the nucleus of the whole series of apartments. Then there was the kitchen with its adjuncts; and there were the private apartments for the family, of which the chief was the "parlour." The arrangement which naturally established itself was that the kitchen should be located at one end of the hall and the parlour at the other. This relation of rooms had existed from a very early period, and it is in the developing of this idea with more or less elaboration and skill that house-planning consisted down to the time of Inigo Jones, when the hall gradually ceased to be the centre of household life, and became merely an entrance. To the central group of hall, kitchen and parlour were added what other rooms were required for convenience or defence; but in regard to the latter, precautions against attack had already become less necessary in Henry VIII.'s time, and they were practically disregarded in Elizabeth's, when considerations of stateliness and display chiefly influenced the design, at any rate as far as the larger houses were concerned. Nothing will help to show how the central idea of an English house developed, while tenaciously adhering to its essence, so much as a comparison of the plans of a number of houses built during the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth. But in order to bring them into relation with what preceded them, the series commences with the plans of two houses that were built in the fifteenth century, before there was a trace of Italian influence to be found in English work. All the plans are those of fair-sized houses, chiefly of the manor-house class, and they are from examples scattered up and down the country; therefore whatever characteristics they possess may be taken to have been of fairly wide distribution. [Illustration: 33.--GREAT CHALFIELD, WILTSHIRE. PLAN (TEMP. HENRY VI.).] The first example is Great Chalfield, in Wiltshire (Fig. 33), where the work is all of good Perpendicular character. The house was built towards the end of the reign of Henry VI., at a time when precautions against attack were still necessary; it was therefore surrounded by a moat. Much of the work has disappeared, and alterations have been made in what is left, but the arrangement of the hall is still plain, although the kitchen is not recognisable. The almost invariable disposition of the hall was as follows: it was an oblong apartment with one end cut off by a screen, which formed the entrance passage called "the screens." From this passage the hall was entered on one side, while from the other side access was obtained to the kitchen, the buttery, the pantry, and the rest of the servants' department. This arrangement may still be seen in use at many of the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. The hall itself was usually lighted from both sides, and was a lofty apartment with an open roof, that is, with all the timbers showing. The effect of this disposition was that the hall divided the house into two separate portions; there was no thoroughfare above it or around it, but only through it. At the end opposite to the screens was the daïs, a platform raised some few inches above the general floor level, where the family sat at meals, in the same way as the dons sit in many colleges at the present day. The daïs was usually lighted by a bay window, which formed a convenient recess for a serving table. There are still a few houses where the daïs survives, but in most cases it has been cleared away and the floor has been lowered to the general level. That it was of universal adoption is proved by its being shown on practically all contemporary plans. The fireplace was placed in one of the side walls, and was generally somewhat nearer to the daïs end than the other. It obviously could not be placed at the screen end, because the screen itself did not go up to the roof, but was covered by a gallery, usually known as the minstrels' gallery, though it may be doubted whether in many instances it was used by the votaries of the _gaie science_. Nor could the fireplace be conveniently set in the end wall on the daïs, since it would have interfered with the table; it was necessarily placed therefore in one of the side walls. These features, then, may be looked for in every hall of the time--the screen, the daïs, the bay window, and the fireplace--and in some cases a good deal of ingenuity was displayed in contriving to obtain them in their due relation to each other. From the daïs end of the hall access was obtained to the family apartments, which were few in number at first, but gradually increased with the ever-growing desire for comfort and refinement. At Great Chalfield the hall conforms to the dispositions detailed above, but the bay windows serve rather as means of communication with other rooms than merely as windows. [Illustration: 34.--OXBURGH HALL, NORFOLK. GROUND PLAN (1482).] [Illustration: 35.--OXBURGH HALL, NORFOLK. ENTRANCE TOWER (1482).] At Oxburgh Hall, in Norfolk (1482), we have another type of defensive house (Fig. 34). It was built round a court, as well as being surrounded by a moat. The entrance was through a lofty tower into the court, on the opposite side of which was the hall of the usual type. The kitchen was to the right on entering, in the extreme south-west corner of the building--not exactly the aspect we should choose in the present day. So many changes have been made in the use to which the rooms in these old houses have been put, and in the way of approaching them, that too much stress must not be laid upon the details of the plan, but the relation of the hall and kitchen at Oxburgh must have been always the same. The rest of the building is made up of small rooms surrounding the court, not arranged on any elaborate plan, but put to whatever use was required. It will be seen that although there is a considerable amount of uniformity in the arrangement of Oxburgh Hall, there is no strict symmetry. The entrance tower is in the centre of the front, but the windows on either side of it do not tally with each other. The entrance to the hall is not on the axial line of the tower, nor is the setting of the windows and doors in the court by any means regular. As we advance in time, we shall find that all these points were very carefully attended to, especially towards the end of the sixteenth century. The plan here illustrated was made in 1774, and a few years subsequently the south side of the court, containing the hall and kitchen, was pulled down. Other alterations have been made since then, but there is still much of the original work left. The great entrance tower (Fig. 35) shows still a certain hankering after defensive features; there is a curtain arch thrown across between the turrets, from behind which missiles could be hurled upon unwelcome visitors, and the openings in the turrets are of the smallest. The windows generally are of few lights, the heads are pointed and cusped, the parapets are corbelled out and battlemented, and the whole work is of Late Gothic character without any trace of the new style in its decoration. [Illustration: 36.--EAST BARSHAM, NORFOLK. GROUND PLAN (CIR. 1500-15).] At East Barsham (about 1500-15) we get indications of the new style in the treatment of parts of the ornament. The general feeling, however, is still Gothic. There is not much of the plan to be made out, but what there is shows a large entrance tower, with the porch of the hall exactly opposite to it (Fig. 36). The hall has a bay window at the daïs end, and, contrary to custom, a fireplace in the end wall. The kitchen is to the right on entering, and is approached by a passage from the middle of the screens. The whole arrangement is in the main of the usual type, so far as it can be traced. The new feeling is indicated in one or two panels which bear a head, but most of the ornament is still of the Gothic type with cuspings, etc. At the neighbouring parsonage of Great Snoring, which resembles East Barsham in general treatment, some of the ornament is more decidedly Italian, with the characteristic balusters and foliage. [Illustration: PLATE XI. COMPTON WINYATES, WARWICKSHIRE (ABOUT 1520). GENERAL VIEW.] Compton Winyates, in Warwickshire (about 1520), is a very complete and charming example of its period. The plan conforms in its main features to the ordinary type (Fig. 37). A certain amount of regularity is imparted to it by reason of its being built round a rectangular court, but of symmetry in it there is hardly a trace, and there is still less in the grouping of the structure. Everything is as irregular and picturesque as the most romantic could desire; the mixture of materials--stone, brick, wood, and plaster--lends a delightful variety of texture, tone, and colour, and makes the house, next to Haddon, one of the most alluring in the country (Plate XI.). But our concern at present is more particularly with the plan. This shows a courtyard entered through a gateway which is opposite, though not exactly opposite, to the door of the screens. On the left of the screens are the buttery, the kitchen passage, and a staircase; on the right, of course, the hall, from the upper end of which access is obtained to the family rooms, the chapel, and--what previous plans have not shown--the grand staircase. Of course, with the lofty hall cutting the building in two halves, at least two staircases were necessary to get to the upper rooms; as a matter of fact there were usually more than two, as there are here: difficulties of planning being often removed, or at any rate lessened, by this rather costly expedient. It will be seen that the hall has a range of rooms at the back of it, and that its two side walls are not, as usual, both external. The sides of the court are formed, as they were at Oxburgh, of a number of small rooms, which originally (in all probability) led into one another, the passage being a later addition. The ornament, in which the house abounds, is all of Late Gothic character (Plate XII.). There is no actual Renaissance detail in the external work, although much of it looks as though it were quite ready for the change. [Illustration: 37.--COMPTON WINYATES, WARWICKSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (CIR. 1520).] [Illustration: PLATE XII. COMPTON WINYATES, WARWICKSHIRE THE ENTRANCE PORCH] [Illustration: 38.--SUTTON PLACE, NEAR GUILDFORD. GROUND PLAN (1523-25).] [Illustration: 39.--SUTTON PLACE, SURREY. DETAILS (1523-25).] So far, although we have come to nearly the close of the first quarter of the century, we have seen but little effect from the new style. Just a suggestion in the ornament at East Barsham, and a slight tendency towards a symmetrical treatment of the plan; yet whatever symmetry there may have been at East Barsham was thrown to the winds at Compton Winyates. In the next example, Sutton Place, near Guildford, only a few years later in date (1523-25),[9] we find symmetry in plan and elevation, and ornament which is strongly marked with Italian character. The entrance was as usual through a tower, and faced the hall door exactly opposite, on the axial line (Fig. 38). Such accuracy of alignment was so infrequent at this date, and it results in the hall door being placed so far from the end wall where the screens ought to be, that a feeling of doubt creeps in as to whether we see here the original arrangement unaltered. The hall, too, is of such a height as to embrace two tiers of windows, another most unusual treatment. In the ordinary way the windows would have been made lofty in proportion to the hall. If the existing dispositions have come down unaltered, they are a striking testimony to the manner in which routine of design was broken in order to obtain external symmetry. Apart from this point, the plan adheres to the usual lines. The hall connects the two wings, and the sides of the court are formed by a series of small chambers approached either through each other or from the outer air. The internal walls have either been removed or altered, but the external walls remain to show that the wings enclosing the court were only one room thick, and not of sufficient width to allow of a corridor. [9] _Annals of an Old Manor House_, by Frederic Harrison. There is, however, an important point to be noticed, and that is the symmetrical treatment of the court. Not only is there a little bay window halfway along each side, but the bay window of the hall, which comes in the angle of the court, is balanced by another bay in the other angle, although there is no important room to be lighted by it. Such an arrangement was often adopted in subsequent plans, but this is the first instance which we have seen of it. [Illustration: 40.--SUTTON PLACE, SURREY. PART ELEVATION OF COURTYARD (1523-25).] While the plan adheres in the main to the customary lines, the ornamentation has taken quite a new departure. The windows are of Perpendicular type, and have the old-fashioned cusping in the heads, but the hollow of the moulding is occupied with ornament drawn from Italian, or perhaps Franco-Italian, sources (Fig. 39). The house was built by Sir Richard Weston, and, in accordance with the custom of the preceding half century, his rebus, or an attempt at it in the shape of a tun, appears as a diaper in various places and in the horizontal string-course; but instead of being shrouded in vine leaves or other old and well-established devices, it occurs among ornament of the new type. This is a point worth noticing, inasmuch as it shows that this ornament was made for the place, and was not purchased out of ready-made stock. The amorini which are introduced over the doors have not the same individuality, nor have the half-balusters which divide them into their panels, but they were no doubt made by the same men who did the tuns and Sir Richard's initials, which also help to form a diaper in places. All this ornamental work is in terra-cotta, but there is nothing to show where the patterns were cast, whether in England or abroad. The battlemented parapet is not yet discarded (Fig. 40), and the large octagonal shafts are crowned with a variation of the dome. Some of the panels are Gothic quatrefoils, and in the parapet of the central block over the front door the Italian amorini disport themselves (a little clumsily) in panels with Gothic cusping. The whole of the ornament is a curious and interesting mixture of the old and new forms. Another house with many of the same characteristics is Layer Marney Tower, in Essex (1500-25). There is not enough left of the plan to enable us to draw any deductions from it, but the character of the work is very similar to that at Sutton, only a little more pronounced in its Renaissance feeling. The lofty entrance tower recalls that at Oxburgh; its general appearance, its pointed doorway and windows with their mouldings, and also the cusped panels of its string-courses are all distinctly Gothic (Fig. 41). But closely associated with the Gothic panelling is the classic egg and dart enrichment. The large mullioned windows, though of Gothic descent, are Renaissance in detail, while the parapets, with their egg and dart strings, and their dolphins climbing over semicircular panels filled with radiating ornament, are thoroughly Renaissance of the French type (Plate XIII.). In the moulded chimneys we go back to the ordinary patterns in vogue in nearly all houses of the time, whether touched with the foreign influence or not. The decorative detail here, as at Sutton Place, is in terra-cotta. [Illustration: Plate XIII. DETAILS FROM LAYER MARNEY TOWER, ESSEX.] [Illustration: 41.--LAYER MARNEY, ESSEX. ENTRANCE TOWER (1500-25).] Both these houses were built by men who had spent some time in France. Sir Richard Weston was there more than once, and was among those who were present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir Henry Marney, who built Layer Marney Tower, was one of those attending upon Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, when he took a great army to France in 1522.[10] But whether they took advantage of these journeys to bring back French or Italian workmen with them is not known. Unfortunately there is no documentary evidence to produce, and any opinion that may be formed can only be speculative. One thing is clear; namely, that no school was established over here of men working in the new style. The instances of its use are too few and isolated for that. [10] "Architectural Notes on Layer Marney Hall, Essex," by C. Forster Hayward. _Trans. Essex Archæolog. Soc._ Vol. III. pt. I. [Illustration: 42.--HENGRAVE HALL, SUFFOLK. GROUND PLAN (1538).] At Hengrave Hall, in Suffolk (1538), the main dispositions conform to the usual type, but without any attempt at exact symmetry (Fig. 42). The entrance leads into a court, round which a corridor is taken. This feature adds much to the comfort and convenience of the house, but it is a refinement in planning which was very seldom introduced. On the opposite side from the entrance is the hall, with the old position of the screens still preserved; to the right of the screens lies the kitchen wing. There is the usual bay window at the daïs end of the hall, and the family apartments are on the left. Owing to alterations the minutiæ of the original plan cannot now be traced; the general disposition alone can be recognised. The accompanying plan is from one made in 1775, since which time the whole of the kitchen wing has been pulled down and other alterations have been made. The general disposition shown on it may be taken as being like the original, and we see that the entrance is not in the middle of the side of the court, and that in order to obtain a symmetrical façade a wing was carried out to the right, whereby the entrance comes nearly in the centre, though not quite, and is balanced on either hand by projecting turrets corresponding one with the other. [Illustration: 43.--HENGRAVE HALL, SUFFOLK. WEST FRONT (1538).] The house was originally moated, and beyond the moat was an outer court, surrounded by low buildings, used as offices and stables. It was entered through a gateway or lodge, where the keepers and falconers had their quarters. The general treatment of the architecture still follows the old lines (Fig. 43). The windows, as a rule, have few lights, they have flat-pointed heads, and their total area is relatively small in proportion to the plain surface of brick wall. The chimneys are of cut and moulded brickwork of the prevailing type; the turrets are crowned with a dome-like finish, similar to that which had been used at Henry VII.'s chapel thirty years before. The parapets are battlemented, and the strings are narrow and not of classic profile. In the entrance gateway we find the new note struck (Plate XIV.). The archway is Perpendicular in character, but above it is a triple bay window, supported on corbelling, full of Renaissance detail, while amorini in Roman armour carry long scrolls in their hands, and serve as supporters to a shield of arms (Fig. 44). The whole of the corbelling terminates at the bottom in a foliated pendant. This inextricable mixture of the old-fashioned Perpendicular detail with the new-fashioned Renaissance ornament is quite characteristic of the period, and shows that the masons, while clinging to the style with which they had been familiar since their youth, were endeavouring to make closer acquaintance with the foreign forms so much in demand. The names of the masons who did this work are on record: they were John Eastawe and John Sparke, evidently Englishmen.[11] [11] _Hist. and Antiq. of Hengrave_, by John Gage. [Illustration: 44.--HENGRAVE HALL, SUFFOLK. CORBELLING OF BAY WINDOW OVER ENTRANCE ARCHWAY.] Of the houses so far mentioned, Oxburgh Hall, East Barsham, Sutton Place, Layer Marney, and Hengrave are all built of brick. On the other side of the country, and in a house constructed of entirely different materials, we get--at Moreton Old Hall in Cheshire (1559)--the same kind of plan with which we have now become familiar (Fig. 45). This house is of timber and plaster, as many of the old houses in that district are. It is surrounded by a moat, and has--at any rate on the ground floor--but few windows looking out over the country; they face into the court where possible. The relative positions of the hall, the kitchen, and the private apartments are here more clearly discernible than in some of the preceding plans, inasmuch as the family rooms have undergone but little serious alteration. The proximity of the two large bays of the hall and parlour is curious, and was the factor which caused the hall bay to be placed so far away from the daïs end. [Illustration: PLATE XIV. HENGRAVE HALL, SUFFOLK (1538). ENTRANCE GATEWAY.] The observations of contemporary writers are of much value when considering subjects of historical interest. It is therefore worth while to reproduce the advice of a certain Andrew Boorde, Doctor of Physicke, in regard to the arrangements of a house, which he offers in the fourth chapter of his _Compendyous Regyment, or a Dyetary of Helth_, published in 1542. In this chapter he proceeds to "shewe under what maner and fasshon a man shulde buylde his howse or mansyon in exchewyng thynges the whiche shulde shorten the lyfe of man." He dwells upon the necessity of a good soil and good prospect, which latter advice was frequently neglected, a great number of houses in those times being built in a hole. The air, he says, must be pure, frisky, and clean, the foundations on gravel mixed with clay, or else on rock or on a hill. The chief prospects are to be east and west, especially north-east, south-east, and south-west; never south, for the south wind "doth corrupte and doth make evyll vapoures." He holds it better that the windows should open plain north than plain south, in spite, he says, of Jeremiah's saying that "from the north dependeth all evil." [Illustration: 45.--MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1559).] He then enters upon particulars of the plan, and it will be observed how exactly his suggestions, so far as they go, agree with the plans we are examining. "Make the hall," he says, "under such a fashion that the parlour be annexed to the head of the hall, and the buttery and pantry be at the lower end of the hall; the cellar under the pantry, set somewhat abase from the buttery and pantry, coming with an entry by the wall of the buttery; the pastry-house and the larder-house annexed to the kitchen. Then divide the lodgings by the circuit of the quadrivial court, and let the gatehouse be opposite or against the hall door (not directly), but the hall door standing abase, and the gatehouse in the middle of the front entering into the place. Let the privy chamber be annexed to the great chamber of estate, with other chambers necessary for the building, so that many of the chambers may have a prospect into the chapel." The necessity for these particular arrangements, so far as health is concerned, does not seem quite obvious, especially the directions not to have the hall door exactly opposite to the entrance gateway; and it may be supposed that this particular passage in his treatise was suggested by what he had frequently seen rather than by what science led him to prescribe. When he goes on to dwell upon the necessity for removing "fylth," he was probably taking a more original attitude, as also when he recommended the stables, slaughter-house, and dairy to be kept a quarter of a mile away from the house. The bakehouse and brewhouse should also be isolated, he thinks; but in all these respects his advice was not universally followed, for the whole of these particular places are to be found attached to the house on one or other of contemporary house plans. His next advice is applicable to Moreton Old Hall. "When all the mansion is edified and built, if there be a moat made about it, there should be some fresh spring come to it, and divers times the moat ought to be scoured and kept clean from mud and weeds. And in no wise let not the filth of the kitchen descend into the moat." Most of Dr. Andrew Boorde's advice is practical and to the point, and he is not so much in bondage to ancient authorities as many of his contemporaries were, in spite of his reference to Jeremiah. The rest of his chapter refers to the gardens and other surroundings of the house, which need not now be dealt with. [Illustration: PLATE XV. MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE. ELEVATION OF ENTRANCE GABLE.] [Illustration: PLATE XVI. MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE. ELEVATION OF GABLE ON FRONT.] The prevailing treatment of the ornament at Moreton is still Gothic (Plates XV., XVI.), in spite of its date being beyond the middle of the century. Nevertheless the influence of the new style is seen here and there, especially in the carved pendants of the overhanging work. The fine bay windows were made, as an inscription tells us, by Richard Dale, carpenter, in 1559, a further testimony to the fact that it was English workmen who did most of the work of the time, even when it shows signs of foreign ornament. Although the bulk of the house was built in 1559, considerable alterations were made nearly half a century later, in 1602; and to this date may be assigned the long gallery, with its continuous row of mullioned windows reaching from end to end almost without a break. The effect is very quaint, but the room must always have been uncomfortable, whether in summer by reason of the heat, or in winter by reason of the cold; and as a comment upon the effect of time on the stability of these timber houses, nothing can be more striking than an attempt to walk quickly down the seventy feet of billowy floor which the gallery presents. With our next plan we enter upon the Elizabethan era, an era marked by an extraordinary amount of house-building, which led to a great degree of attention being bestowed upon the planning. This attention, it is true, does not seem to have been directed so much towards comfort or economy as towards magnificence and display. No doubt comfort of a kind was aimed at, but people did not then require comfort as we understand it, and designers were not likely to be much in advance of their clients. The sacrifices of common sense to architectural effect were nevertheless few. The relative positions of the principal apartments were settled by considerations of convenience, not of external grouping. The kitchens, for instance, were always fairly in touch with the hall, not, as in later days, when Palladian architecture was in vogue, located some hundreds of feet away in a detached wing, connected by a curved colonnade, and balanced on the other extremity by the stables or the remainder of the servants' rooms, in a similar wing. Nor were the servants' bedrooms hidden away in the roof with windows looking out on to the back of a solid pediment, or even looking inwards and only lighted by borrowed light. It was the architects of a more strict Italian school who were reduced to such expedients in the early part of the eighteenth century; but in the late sixteenth the prevalent style was sufficiently elastic to enable the dictates of common sense to be obeyed. No doubt bay windows were placed in useless situations in order to balance others that were useful. Lofty windows were sometimes divided by floors halfway up their height in order that the uniformity of the front should not be interrupted; but the rooms themselves were cheerful enough and had good prospects. The features which the Elizabethan designer had to marshal were smaller and more manageable than those which fell to the lot of his successor in the days of Anne and the Georges; and this was particularly the case with his windows. In a mullioned window an additional row of lights in the width, or even the height, can be managed without attracting undue attention, but the sash window has to conform to the size and situation of its brethren. Economy of planning, in the sense of avoiding waste spaces, or saving the footsteps of the inmates, was not much studied. The only evidence we have of its consideration lies in the occasional lopping off of extravagant features, or the substitution of a reduced set of plans for one of more extensive area. The real aim of the designers seems to have been magnificence and display--sometimes on a large scale, sometimes on a small. The principal means used for this end was symmetry--not so much a symmetry of detail as a symmetry of parts, of large features rather than of small. We shall find this quality in almost every kind of plan, and an extremely valuable quality it is if not carried to excess. The symmetry of the Elizabethans was generally under control. It was sometimes wasteful and its results were occasionally amusing, but they were never ridiculous or fatal to the comfort of the house. Up to the present the plans we have examined have not--with the exception of Sutton Place--shown any determined attempt at a symmetrical treatment, only a certain hankering after it. With Kirby Hall (1570-75) we get a more resolute effort in this direction (Fig. 46). The entrance gateway and the screens are on an axial line running through the house and its green court. The inner court is quite symmetrically treated, door answering to door, and window to window; but the exterior façades were left to take care of themselves, and no attempt was made to balance one mass by another. [Illustration: PLATE XVII. KIRBY HALL, NORTHANTS. ELEVATION OF SOUTH SIDE OF COURTYARD (1570-75).] [Illustration: 46.--KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1570-75).] The symmetry of plan was carried out in the elevations too, at least so far as the courtyard is concerned. The south side, in which the projecting porch stands, is quite symmetrical, the great windows of the hall on the right being exactly balanced by similar windows on the left (Plate XVII.). The hall reaches from floor to roof, but the left wing had two storeys, and the floor of the upper one occupied one row of the glazed lights. This expedient cannot be justified on the principle of causing the exterior treatment to indicate the internal arrangement; but it can hardly be denied that the general effect would be marred were the left-hand windows divided into two tiers. The door below the windows to the left is a later insertion. A curious fact about this front is that the two outside gables, which contain much delicate detail, are partly blocked by the roofs of the side wings, which abut against them; yet it is quite certain, from the character of the detail, and from the badges which are used as ornaments in the wings, that the whole court was built at the same time, ends and sides, and it is equally certain that the whole building operations were comprised within the five years 1570 to 1575. [Illustration: PLATE XVIII. KIRBY HALL. JOHN THORPE'S GROUND PLAN. _From the Soane Museum Collection._] Although no attempt seems to have been actually made to carry symmetry of treatment into the external façades, yet an examination of the plan made by John Thorpe, the surveyor, at the time that Kirby was built, shows that such a treatment was contemplated on each of the four faces (Plate XVIII.). There are other points of interest which Thorpe's plan elucidates. Having entered through the principal doorway, in the north or upper side of the plan, and having traversed the length of the court, we find a projecting porch through which the screens are reached. The arrangement is the typical one which we have seen in all the plans yet examined, and which tallies almost exactly with Dr. Andrew Boorde's advice, already quoted (see page 57), with the exception that he was opposed to the hall porch being exactly opposite the entrance gateway. On the right (as the plan lies) are the buttery and pantry, and the passage leading to the kitchen department; on the left is the hall. The details of the kitchen department are shown more clearly than in any of the foregoing houses, which have all undergone alterations. They comprise the kitchen, with its large fireplace; "the pastry," where the ovens are; the dry larder under it; the surveying place; and the wet larder. Close to these, and approached by the kitchen passage, is the winter parlour, a room which occurs on many plans of the time in close proximity to the kitchen. This endeavour to get a living room conveniently situated for winter use is one of the refinements which were now creeping in. Returning to the screens, and passing into the hall, we find the daïs marked on the plan, the fireplace in the side wall, but no bay window: there is one indicated, but it was not carried out. From the daïs the family apartments are reached, together with a great staircase. Next to the head of the hall, as Dr. Andrew Boorde has it, is the parlour (pler); the other rooms are not named. The division of "the lodgings by the circuit of the quadrivial court" is shown on Thorpe's plan, but most of the cross walls are now gone. It will be seen that these lodgings consist of a number of groups of two or three rooms (which were called "lodgings"), each group being entered from the court by a door, and each room communicating with its neighbour, so that the complete circuit of the building could be made through them. The object of this grouping was to give a small suite of rooms to every guest, in which he could establish himself with his principal attendants; in the case of a large retinue it could overflow into the next group. It was necessary to traverse the open court to reach the places of general resort, such as the hall, the "great chamber of estate," and the gallery; but it is evident that this was not felt to be a drawback, since the practice was widespread. The next point to notice is that here we have the first instance of the open terrace, or arcade, or loggia. It occupies the north side of the court, thus being open to the full midday sun. The long gallery, which was one of the principal features of an Elizabethan house, and frequently affected the planning, inasmuch as endeavours were made to obtain a gallery of the greatest possible length, was over the western or left-hand side of the court: it was 150 feet long by 16 feet wide. The upper floor was to be reached, according to Thorpe's plan, by four large internal staircases, and two external ones on the west front. As a matter of fact, indications actually remain of five principal staircases, besides a subordinate one, and they are more conveniently placed than those shown on the old plan. The great extent of the rooms, and their being placed round a court, necessitated several means of access, and it must not be forgotten that the upper part of the hall interposed an impassable barrier between the two sides of the house on the upper floor. The time was soon to come when the height of the hall was to be restricted to that of other rooms on the same floor, but at Kirby the traditional lofty hall was still retained. The detail at Kirby is thoroughly Elizabethan, but there are a few windows, dated 1638, 1640, which were inserted by Inigo Jones, and he remodelled the north wing. His work, however, is easily distinguished from that of earlier date. The house was built by a Sir Humphrey Stafford, the head of a family seated at Blatherwyck in the immediate vicinity. It was begun in 1570, and it bears on the parapet of the courtyard the dates 1572, 1575; in the latter year Sir Humphrey died, having practically completed his house, which was then sold by his heir to Sir Christopher Hatton. Not only are the parapets dated, but amid the ornament of the various bands which make the circuit of the courtyard, and in the gable over the porch, occur the Stafford cognizances. Their presence indicates the extent of the work of Stafford, and proves that practically the whole place was built between the years 1570-75, though the Hattons probably made some trifling alterations during the last ten years of the century, and subsequently employed Inigo Jones to partly modernise the house fifty years later. The detail is unusually free and fresh, and has more variety than Elizabethan masons generally bestowed upon their work. The gable over the porch in the courtyard has no counterpart in England; the coping of the parapet round the whole court has an unusual but effective wave ornament (Plate XIX.). [Illustration: Plate XIX. KIRBY HALL, NORTHANTS. DETAIL OF PORCH.] There are, of course, the usual classic columns applied with a liberal hand, and all the horizontal string-courses have classic profiles. The carving of the friezes is interesting, inasmuch as it is somewhat out of the common in detail, and its component parts were evidently carved in large numbers, and used as occasion required, for in many places where the length of a carved stone was too great for its intended position it was ruthlessly shortened to fit, and the carving was mutilated. So far all the plans have shown a courtyard round which the house was built, first adopted, no doubt, from reasons of defence, and afterwards retained because it had become customary. We now come to another type of very frequent occurrence, in which two narrow parallel wings are connected by a narrow body, thus forming a figure like the letter H. It is in effect a curtailment of the older plan by leaving out the "lodgings" which enclosed the court; but there is no change in the old idea of placing the hall in a central situation and flanking it at one end by the family apartments and at the other by the kitchen and servants' rooms. At Montacute, in Somerset (1580), the original relation of hall and kitchen is preserved, but the intermediate rooms have been allotted to modern uses (Fig. 47). It should be observed that the passage at the back of the hall was formed by inserting between the wings the porch and part of the walls from an earlier house at Clifton Maubank in the year 1760. This passage, which is a great convenience to the house, must therefore not be looked upon as part of the original plan. The detail of the part thus inserted is of Late Tudor character. The profiles of the mouldings are Gothic, the carving inclines towards Italian, the parapets have cusped panels, the pinnacles have the spiral twist so dear to the Tudor mason, and a battlemented moulding beneath the heraldic animals which they support (Plate XX.). The treatment is quite different from that of the house itself. Another point to remark about the plan is that all thoughts of defence are here abandoned, and the windows look freely out on all sides. Indeed, far from desiring to exclude people, the builder, Sir Edward Phelips, wrote up over his door, "_Through this wide-opening gate, none come too early, none return too late._" It will also be noticed that in order to get a truly symmetrical disposition of windows, the bay is removed from the end to the middle of the hall, which is another indication of a tendency to depart from the ancient arrangements. [Illustration: 47.--MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET. GROUND PLAN (1580). 1. Hall. 2. Drawing-room. 3. Large Dining-room. 4. Small Dining-room. 5. Smoking-room. 6. Pantry. 7. Kitchen. 8. Servants' Hall. 9. Porch. 10. Garden-house.] It is true that there is a court at Montacute, but it is enclosed by an open balustrade and not by solid buildings; it is there for delight and not for defence, and everything in the planning shows that the builder considered he could occupy his house in security. [Illustration: 48.--MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET. WEST FRONT, WITH COURT AND GARDEN-HOUSES (1580).] On the top floor, over the hall and running from end to end of the building, is the gallery; it is lighted at each end and down so much of the side as is not blocked by the wings of the house, which of course it cuts off from the staircases and the other rooms. The treatment of the elevations is as symmetrical as that of the plan (Fig. 48). The area of window space is in excess of that of wall space, the strings are of some depth and of classic profile, and the whole appearance contrasts strongly with that of Hengrave. Along the topmost floor in the spaces between the windows are eight statues, which, with a ninth in the central gable, are said to represent those Nine Worthies whom Holofernes and his companions tried to represent in a more dramatic manner before the Princess of France and her lively attendants. [Illustration: PLATE XX. MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET. PART OF ENTRANCE FRONT SEEN FROM WING.] It has already been observed that the plan of Montacute is shaped roughly like the letter =H=. This type of plan is very frequent, and is the same in its essence as the [sideways letter] =E= plan, of which many writers have made more than is needful. The [sideways letter] =E= plan is in fact the same as the =H= with the side strokes curtailed. To make a just comparison, either the centre stroke of the [sideways letter] =E= should be omitted or it should be added to the cross of the =H,= inasmuch as it represents the projecting porch, which was present equally in each arrangement. The fact that the [sideways letter] =E= plan resembles the first letter of Elizabeth is probably a coincidence merely, and not a compliment to the queen. At the same time it would have been quite in accordance with the spirit of the time to have taken such a way of expressing loyalty, only in that case we should have expected to find fewer plans of the =H= variety, and more of the other; but as a matter of fact there are few, if any, houses with a perfectly straight front such as the back of the [sideways letter] =E= demands. [Illustration: 49.--BARLBOROUGH HALL, DERBYSHIRE. PLAN OF PRINCIPAL FLOOR (1583).] At Barlborough, in Derbyshire (1583), we get again a different type. The house is built round a court, but an extremely small one, now filled with a modern staircase (Fig. 49). All the windows look out into the open country. Instead of extending itself along the ground, the house provides its accommodation by extending itself vertically, and the kitchen and servants' rooms are placed in the basement. This was an idea introduced, it is said, from Italy, but it is one which, though sometimes met with, did not commend itself to Elizabethan builders when space was plentiful. The hall is on the principal floor, and is approached from outside up a long flight of steps. The screens led to the staircase which penetrated to the kitchen in the basement. The hall had its bay window at the daïs end, from which the great chamber was approached. We have still, therefore, the old idea of the hall as a living room, and part of a series of rooms communicating with each other; not yet as an entrance from which the living rooms are approached. [Illustration: 50.--BARLBOROUGH HALL, DERBYSHIRE. ENTRANCE FRONT (1583).] The detail at Barlborough is of a simple kind; the house was not of a large size and did not require much elaboration (Fig. 50). The actual classic treatment is confined to the front door, which is flanked with columns. The parapet is battlemented, the strings are narrow, and the windows are not overwhelming in size. The roof is flat, and there are none of the gables which are so marked a feature of the time. Picturesqueness of outline, however, which was always sought for, is here obtained by carrying up the bay windows as turrets, a treatment which lends much distinction to an otherwise simple exterior. [Illustration: PLATE XXI. DODDINGTON HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE. ENTRANCE FRONT WITH GATEHOUSE (1595).] Twelve years later than Barlborough we get at Doddington, in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute (Fig. 51). It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind--wings one room thick; the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it--the great chamber: and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing. [Illustration: 51.--DODDINGTON HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1595).] There is an entrance court in front of the house enclosed by a wall. It is approached through one of the quaint gatehouses of the time, which were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the eye of the porter, but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the skyline being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front (Plate XXI.). The house is an example of a plain and business-like type, which may be accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one Thomas Tailor, registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln. [Illustration: 52.--BURTON AGNES, YORKSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1602-10).] With the opening of the new century we get at Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire (1602-10), a repetition of the same leading idea which we have been following for a hundred and fifty years (Fig. 52). We have the screens at the end of the hall, the kitchens on the left, and the bay window, the family rooms and grand staircase at the head of the hall. The family apartments have increased in number. The tendency was towards having separate apartments for various uses, and on plans of the time we not infrequently find a "dining parlour" specially named. The introduction of this refinement marks the dwindling importance of the hall. The latter is ceasing to be the centre of family life, and becoming merely an entrance. The daïs end is no longer the comfortable place it was, with its bay window and the fireplace close by: it is becoming pierced with doors, and draughty. The family find it more comfortable to have a separate room for their meals, and the servants' quarters are becoming more self-contained. The old usages of the hall are being discontinued. [Illustration: 53.--ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM. GROUND PLAN (1618-35).] [Illustration: 54.--ASTON HALL, WARWICKSHIRE. NORTH WING.] This change is quite apparent in the last plan of the series, that of Aston Hall, in Warwickshire (1618-35). The hall is still central, the kitchen is in one wing, the family rooms in the other, supplemented by a row at the back of the hall (Fig. 53). But the hall itself is now merely an entrance--it has ceased to be a living-room; it is entered from the middle of the side, no longer at the end, where indeed the fireplace now finds itself: there is no daïs and no bay window. This is a revolution which it has taken more than a century to produce, counting from the first appearance of the Italian influence. The change no doubt was effected from the inside more than the out: from the gradual alteration of habits, rather than from the wish to Italianize our English plans. But the two tendencies co-operated with each other and combined to lead English designers further and further away from the old traditions. Although the hall shows a departure from the old lines of planning, the general arrangement adheres to them. The symmetrical wings, the mullioned windows, the turrets (Fig. 54), the forecourt with its lodges at the corners, and the open arcade on the south front, are all in keeping with Elizabethan and Jacobean methods, and offer a striking contrast to the work at Rainham Hall, in Norfolk, which was built by Inigo Jones in 1630, five years before Aston was finished. The disappearance of the hall as a living-room, and its adoption as a vestibule, mark a great change in our domestic architecture. The tie with the mediæval past is loosened, and with the almost contemporaneous departure of the mullioned window it is severed altogether; there is nothing now to prevent English designers from assimilating their buildings ever more and more to the models which they sought direct in Italy, without being diverted from their purpose by what they passed in intermediate countries. CHAPTER IV. EXTERIOR FEATURES. LAY-OUT OF HOUSES, LODGES AND GATEWAYS, DOORWAYS AND PORCHES. There was a very remarkable amount of building done in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Plenty of money was available, much of it acquired from the lands of the dissolved monasteries; the country was at peace, and the strong rule of Elizabeth gradually produced a state of prosperity hitherto unknown. Defensive precautions, save such as seemed necessary against vagrants, were abandoned in all kinds of houses. The outer courts, the inner courts, and the gatehouses, which formerly were built for the sake of security, were now retained chiefly for the sake of appearance, and because they added to the privacy of the house. The porter at the gate exercised a certain amount of control over those who wished to enter, and on occasion he closed his gates against the populace, although sometimes without complete success, as we learn from a scene in Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII.," where the people, in their anxiety to see something of the christening of the infant Princess Elizabeth, managed to crowd in, in spite of "as much as one sound cudgel of four foot could distribute" at the hands of the porter's man. Everyone who could afford it seems to have built in the time of Elizabeth and James. The great nobles erected vast palaces like Theobalds and Holdenby, like Audley End, and Knole and Buckhurst. Men of smaller wealth built mansions like Kirby and Montacute, Wollaton and Blickling. Squires built their manor houses in the villages, merchants their homes in the towns, not infrequently, indeed, leaving the city for some neighbouring parish, and there ending their days as lords of the manor. When the condition of an existing house did not warrant its actual removal, additions in the new style were made; something had to be done to keep in the fashion. Throughout the length and breadth of the land the same activity was displayed. From Yorkshire and Westmorland in the north, to Cornwall and Kent in the south; from Shropshire in the west to Suffolk in the east, we find work of this period scattered up and down the country in mansion, manor house, cottage and church. A good deal of building was done in Henry VIII.'s time, but vastly more in Elizabeth's. The examples left to us of the former period are few compared with those of the latter; but in both cases it must be remembered that the old gave way to the new. The builders of Elizabeth's days removed the work of their grandfathers to make room for their own, only to have this in its turn replaced in the times of Anne and the Georges. Many as are the houses of the sixteenth century which remain, we know that many others, of equal interest and beauty, have been pulled down. LAY-OUT. It is not always easy in the present day to grasp the system upon which the larger houses of Elizabeth's time were laid out. Modern methods of locomotion, and modern ideas of convenience, have in many cases caused the approach to the houses to be altered. It is the same with regard to most of our ancient cities. The railway now brings us to a spot which has no relation to the old landmarks of the place, and instead of approaching our destination through the ancient arteries, which were the growth of many years, we slip in through by-ways and slums, or along a new street made expressly for the purpose. The approach to one of the larger Elizabethan houses was an affair of time. Roads were then of a very primitive description, and depended for their condition upon the nature of the soil. "There is good land where there is foul way," was a saying of the time; and conversely, where there was a hard road there was likely to be stony land. From the main road a similar rough track led, perhaps through an avenue of newly planted trees, in a straight line towards the house. There was no gate-keeper's lodge at the end of a finely gravelled road winding through a park. The lodge was part of the outbuildings of the house, and until you arrived there the road was generally left to take care of itself. After passing through the lodge, there were often two courts to traverse before the hall was reached. The lodge was on the great axial line of the house, so that as you stood waiting, if all the doors happened to be open, you could see right through the courts and the screens and get a glimpse of the garden beyond. [Illustration: 55.--HOLDENBY HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. PLAN OF LAY-OUT. FROM A SURVEY MADE IN 1587. A A. The Park. B. Base-court. C. First Court of House. D D. Gardens. E. Rosery. F F. Terraces. G G. Mounts. H. Site of Old House. K. Church. L L. Ponds. M. Stables. N. Porter's Lodge.] The accompanying plan of the lay-out of Holdenby (Fig. 55), from a survey made in 1587, gives a good idea of the surroundings of the larger Elizabethan houses. The road between two villages ran along the north side of the park, and from this road branched another one which led up to the house. While it traversed the park it was allowed to wind according to the undulations of the ground, but when it came to within a quarter of a mile of the lodge it was made perfectly straight, and so ran through the midst of "the green"--"a large, long, straight, fair way," as Lord Burghley called it. It led directly to the porter's lodge, which was a building separate from the house, and self-contained, and it passed the long range of stabling on the right. The porter's lodge opened into the first court, the "base-court," as it was called, walled round, and entered on its two sides by large gateways. At the further end of the base-court stood the house, raised a few steps above the general level, where Lord Burghley "found a great magnificence in the front or front pieces of the house, and so every part answerable to other, to allure liking." The house was built round two great courts, the first 128 feet by 104 feet, the second 140 feet by 110 feet, comparable in point of size to those at Hampton Court, and a good deal more intricate in detail. To the north of the house itself were two walled gardens, of nearly an acre each, and beyond these were spinneys, or small woods, and the little village with its inn. The ground on the south side of the house sloped pretty steeply away, and was laid out in a series of terraces. At the top of these, and flanking the whole length of the base-court, the house, and the orchard beyond, ran a broad straight path. In the midst of the terraces a great platform was run out at the level of this long path, containing a rosery laid out with paths in a simple geometrical pattern. At the extreme end of the long path was a cross-path leading each way to a prospect mount, up at least one of which wound a spiral path, ending (in all probability) in a banqueting house, such as Lord Bacon describes in his essay "Of Gardens," and such as the Parliamentary Commissioners describe as being at Nonesuch in the year 1650. At the foot of the terraces lay fishponds amid orchard-trees, and, in a small enclosure of its own, the church. Close to the church was the site of the old manor house, the home of Sir Christopher Hatton's fathers, but which he found far too insignificant a dwelling for the Lord Chancellor. Such were the surroundings of one of the most splendid palaces of Elizabeth's splendid courtiers, and an examination of the contemporary survey shows upon what a large scale the house and its appurtenances were laid out. The house covered nearly two acres; the base-court more than one acre; the green more than seventeen. In comparison with the house the village is a mere collection of outhouses, not so extensive as the range of stabling. The garden has not acquired all the architectural adjuncts in the way of stone terraces, and garden-houses, lead vases, statuary and _jets d'eau_, which became fashionable a hundred years later; but it has a fine simplicity about it and a largeness of scale which are in keeping with the house it belongs to. [Illustration: 56.--DODDINGTON HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE. BLOCK PLAN.] Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, was the model upon which Sir Christopher Hatton professed to have founded his own more magnificent house at Holdenby, and there is an interesting account, written by John Savile, of King James's visit to Theobalds on his first coming to London in 1603.[12] It is an early example of descriptive reporting which would do credit to one of our great daily papers. Theobalds was the house of Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Salisbury, and had been built and embellished by his father, the great Lord Treasurer. The writer particularly mentions the approach to the house, which stood back from the highway, unlike the "manie sumptuous buildings" in the neighbourhood, most of which belonged "to the cittie marchants." It was reached by a most stately walk raised above the general level, and beset about either side with young elm and ash trees extending from the common street way to the first court belonging to the house. In order to obtain full particulars of the proceedings, Savile stationed one of his party at the upper end of the walk, another at the upper end of the first court, while a third stood at the second court door, and he also arranged with "a gentleman of good sort" to stand in the court that led into the hall, and furnish particulars of the ceremonies invisible to the others. After the king had at length entered the house, the crowd of sightseers surged even into the uppermost court, apparently without protest from the porter, and to their view the monarch graciously displayed himself at his windows for the space of half an hour, previous to going into the "laberinth-like garden to walke." [12] _Nichols' Progresses of King James I._, Vol. I. 135. LODGES AND GATEWAYS. Sometimes the lodge formed part of the buildings enclosing the first court, in which case one or two rooms or "lodgings" of the wing on either side of the gateway would be devoted to the porter, in the same way as the entrance to most of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge is still arranged. But very frequently it was separated from the house by a court enclosed by a wall, as it was at Holdenby, and again at the much smaller house at Doddington (Fig. 56). This wall was sometimes high and solid, and sometimes coped "leaning height," as John Thorpe has it on one of his plans, or sometimes pierced with ornamental patterns. [Illustration: 57.--STOKESAY CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE. THE GATEHOUSE.] [Illustration: PLATE XXII. STANWAY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE (ABOUT 1630). THE GATEHOUSE.] [Illustration: PLATE XXIII. WESTWOOD, WORCESTERSHIRE. THE GATEHOUSE.] The lodge itself was generally large enough to accommodate the porter and his family, having two rooms downstairs and perhaps three above, but occasionally there were even three floors, as at Stanway in Gloucestershire (Plate XXII.), while at Hamstall Ridware, in Staffordshire, the lodge was merely a gateway between two flanking turrets only seven feet across inside. At Stokesay Castle, in Shropshire, is a charming lodge or gatehouse of timber and plaster, added in Elizabeth's time to the ancient castle (Fig. 57); and at Westwood in Worcestershire the lodge is formed of two separate brick buildings connected by an open timber roof and some pierced stonework, displaying the mullet or five-pointed star of the owner (Plate XXIII.). [Illustration: 58.--COLD ASHTON HALL, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. ENTRANCE GATEWAY.] [Illustration: 59.--WINWICK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GATEWAY TO MANOR HOUSE.] The smaller houses had merely a gateway of more or less pretensions, such as may be seen at Cold Ashton, near Bath (Fig. 58), a charming little entrance on the roadside leading straight up by a paved walk to the front door of the house; or at Winwick, in Northamptonshire (Fig. 59), the stately remnant of a house now much curtailed in size. This example is treated in a more important manner than usual, the masonry flanking the archway on either side being of considerable width, and elaborately ornamented with sunk patterns and carving. The well-proportioned columns are disengaged from the wall behind them, and the whole treatment of the lower part as far as the top of the cornice calls to mind some of the Roman arches to be met with in Italy. The pediments above the cornice are hardly equal to the structure upon which they stand, but they give that variety and piquancy of outline which was considered indispensable in work of the time; moreover, the circular gable over the archway affords room for a panel containing the owner's arms, although, by an irony of fate which would have annoyed him deeply, the bearings are now indistinguishable. This gateway vies in importance with those at Holdenby (Fig. 61), but the house at Warwick could never have been more than a good-sized manor house. At Cold Ashton the gateway is more in scale with the house, and although the central feature above the cornice is mutilated, the arms still remain. The effect of this roadside gateway is heightened by the circular steps and the mounting-block. At Oundle, in Northamptonshire, there is an example of a small gateway in the front wall of some almshouses (Fig. 60) which, in spite of its insignificant size, imparts considerable interest and even dignity to the group of which it is the central feature. In large houses the entrance courts not infrequently had archways in their side walls to afford access to the gardens or the orchard. The base-court at Holdenby has already been mentioned as having a gateway in each of its sides, apart altogether from the gatehouse or porter's lodge. These two gateways still remain (Fig. 61), although most of the house and its adjuncts have disappeared, leaving them stranded in a position that is hardly intelligible without the aid of a plan showing the original arrangement. They bear the date 1585, and a shield of arms containing fourteen quarterings of the owner, Sir Christopher Hatton. In general treatment they resemble the similar gateways in the forecourt at Kirby, which also belonged to Sir Christopher, and they are more remarkable for their size and stateliness than for the beauty of their detail: but it should not be forgotten that the walls which supported them on either side, and which connected them with the great house, are gone, and that, denuded of their original surroundings, they appear much more heavy and cumbrous than when they were a small part of a large scheme. Much smaller than the base-court at Holdenby was the forecourt at Kenyon Peel, in Lancashire, a half-timber house with a symmetrical E front, and approached through a two-storey stone gatehouse, joined to the house itself by stone walls. The gatehouse is rather gaunt, like many of the stone buildings in that district, but in the little gateways in the side of the court (Fig. 62) an effort has been made to produce something less severe. The mixture of the stonework and the black-and-white work of the house is effective, and the small court, with its formal paved walks leading from the gatehouse to the porch, and from one side doorway to the other, is full of interest; especially as the house lies amid the chimneys of a busy part of Lancashire, and is surrounded by the abomination of desolation which accompanies the spread of populous places. The initials G. R. occur in the topmost step of the coping, and the date 1631 on the lintel of the doorway. [Illustration: 60.--GATEWAY TO ALMSHOUSES, OUNDLE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: 61.--HOLDENBY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GATEWAYS TO BASE-COURT (1585).] [Illustration: 62.--KENYON PEEL, LANCASHIRE. GATEWAY AT SIDE OF COURT (1631).] [Illustration: 63.--DODDINGTON HALL, LINCOLNSHIRE. ENTRANCE DOORWAY (1595).] ENTRANCE DOORWAYS AND PORCHES. The lodge or the gateway, as the case might be, was generally adorned in some conspicuous place with the arms of the family, the squires of the time being as proud of their various cognizances as Justice Shallow was of his twelve luces. Five out of the eight examples already illustrated are so adorned. The same shield that appears on the gateway is also frequently to be seen over the door of the house itself, which is reached after crossing the court. The doorway generally formed part of a somewhat elaborate piece of ornament, for, however simple (and sometimes even monotonous) the general treatment of the house was, the front door was made handsome. At Doddington, in Lincolnshire, while the bulk of the house is of plain brickwork, including the parapet, the doorway is treated with a considerable amount of elaboration (Fig. 63). [Illustration: 64.--PORCH AT CHELVEY COURT, SOMERSET (CIR. 1640).] [Illustration: 65.--DOORWAY AT NAILSEA COURT, SOMERSET.] The door stood more often than not in a projecting porch, which, although sometimes only one storey in height, as at Chelvey Court, in Somerset (Fig. 64), was usually higher, and was frequently carried up the full height of the building. It is round these doors that we find pronounced classic features employed in the shape of pillars and pilasters, friezes and cornices, and pediments. But it was seldom that the English mason did not introduce into his design some departure from strict classic treatment, suggested by his native traditions. At Chelvey the doorway has a flat-pointed head resting on an impost, such as usually accompanies a semicircular arch: there is also a keystone which protrudes from the straight lintel instead of crowning the arch, which in the ordinary way would be there. The twisted columns support pilasters of a different scale, which in their turn, however, are relieved of anything to carry. The broken pediment encloses a shield of arms, which rests in the usual fashion upon a base carried by the keystone. Over all is a pierced parapet divided into square panels by shallow pilasters. The spirit of the whole composition is Jacobean, but the treatment betokens a late date, with its twisted columns and broken pediment; and the arms confirm the conjecture prompted by the character of the work, though the exact date is not recorded. It is evident, however, that even in Somerset, the home of good masons, the lesson of making appropriate use of classic features had not yet been mastered. The treatment of the doorway at the neighbouring house of Nailsea Court (Fig. 65) is more logical and pleasing. There is a quaint mixture of pointed arch and classic cornice and corbelled bay-window; and the manner in which the central projection in the cornice is made the starting-point of the corbelling to the bay is a happy illustration of the freedom with which the new features were handled. [Illustration: PLATE XXIV. DOORWAY AT CHIPCHASE CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND. PORCH TO THE MANOR HOUSE, UPPER SLAUGHTER, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 66.--DOORWAY AT GAYHURST, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.] [Illustration: 67.--DOORWAY AT COLD ASHTON, SOMERSET.] [Illustration: 68.--DOORWAY AT CHENEY COURT, SOMERSET.] [Illustration: PLATE XXV. WARDOUR CASTLE, WILTSHIRE. THE GRAND STAIRCASE. HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE. DOORWAY IN COURT (1611).] At Chipchase Castle, in Northumberland (Plate XXIV.), a square porch is combined with a canted bay above it. The doorway follows the more usual pattern; it has the circular arch resting on imposts, a projecting keystone carried up to break the lines of the cornice, and is flanked on either side by a circular column, which endeavours to justify its presence by carrying an obelisk. The obelisks serve the useful purpose of breaking the severe line of the splay which joins the octagonal bay to the square porch below it, and they, together with the shield of arms and the carving on the columns and the voussoirs of the arch, impart considerable richness to the whole composition. At Gayhurst, in Buckinghamshire, the columns, which are primarily introduced for the sake of ornament, are made to do actual duty by supporting a slight projection of the storey above them (Fig. 66); and there are two tiers of them, a fact which helps to increase the importance of the entrance. In this, as in similar cases, the cornices are continued along the sides of the projecting porch, and are stopped against the face of the main building. At Upper Slaughter, in Gloucestershire (Plate XXIV.), the porch has more of the appearance of being an excrescence, the only connecting member being the string over the upper windows of the house, which is returned along the sides of the porch. The cornices of the porch are in this instance only just returned round its outer angles, and not carried back to the main building. The pilasters are merely ornamental adjuncts: there is no pretence about them of doing any work; the head of the upper window breaks unceremoniously into the frieze of the cornice, the keystone of the arch is carried up so that the lines of the lower cornice may break round it, and the whole treatment shows that the designer was free from any morbid craving after correctness. In the doorway at Hatfield, in the side of the court (Plate XXV.), the work is handled in a more formal manner. There is the semicircular arch, with its impost, and the two flanking pilasters carried up in order to break the cornice, while a central projection follows up from the keystone. There is no crowning pediment, but in its place is a strap-work pattern terminating at the top with a point which finds itself in the centre of one of the triglyphs in the entablature which makes the circuit of the whole house at the first floor level. The archway at the foot of the grand staircase at Wardour Castle (Plate XXV.) is treated with still greater propriety; the designer has allowed himself to take no liberties with his copy, but the severity is relieved by the informal manner in which the steps wind away to the left. This is an accident arising from the fact that the staircase is of an older date; it is covered with Gothic vaulting, and at its upper end the original pointed arch has been made semicircular, and the stone round it has been recessed so as to surround it with a square moulded frame in the manner prevalent at the beginning of the seventeenth century. At Cold Ashton we have a simple pedimented doorway in a shallow projection between the two wings of the house (Fig. 67), and at Cheney Court there is another simple form of doorway; it has no pilasters, but a curved pediment, supported on corbels, forms a hood (Fig. 68)--a mode of treatment adopted towards the close of the Jacobean period, and handled here with a pleasant freedom, a panel being contrived in the middle of the frieze to contain the family arms. At Woollas Hall (Fig. 69) there is a boldly projecting porch, thrusting itself out beyond the main face of the house, and giving from its oriel on the top floor a wide view over the surrounding country. [Illustration: 69.--WOOLLAS HALL, WORCESTERSHIRE. PART OF ENTRANCE FRONT (1611).] [Illustration: 70.--PORCH AT GORHAMBURY, HERTFORDSHIRE (1568).] [Illustration: 71.--HAMBLETON HALL, RUTLAND.] The ruins at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, a house built by Sir Nicholas Bacon, the father of Lord Bacon, present another treatment, which can still be made out in spite of the modern brick buttresses, and the brick arch which has been inserted below the original one of stone (Fig. 70). There is a projecting porch of two storeys, with all its three external faces carefully treated, the front being made rather more elaborate by the introduction of niches with statues. The employment of statues and busts as decorative features was a favourite device of the time. They were almost invariably of classic origin, and attired in classic garb, the most modern personages usually admitted to this distinction being those three of the Nine Worthies who were of Christian extraction. In the spandrils of the arch are circular medallions with busts, and in the parapet are the royal arms. There was also over the arch (we are told) a grey marble panel with four Latin verses, stating that the house was finished in the tenth year of Elizabeth's reign by Nicholas Bacon, whom she made a knight, and Keeper of her Seal. Below these verses was the aphorism "Mediocria firma," that is, "Firm is the middle state." Statues, busts, and inscriptions are all characteristic of the taste of the period, and will be more particularly dealt with later on in connection with the design of chimney-pieces. The house which was thus finished in the tenth year of Elizabeth, that is in 1568, was begun (according to an account in the possession of a local antiquary) on the 1st day of March, 1563, thus taking five years to build. It was not of vast extent, but it comprised two courts, one for the house, the other for the kitchens. The porch illustrated was approached in a direct line across the larger of these courts, and led into the screens in the usual way; the windows visible to the left of the porch lighted the great hall at the daïs end. There is very little left of the old walls, but the extent of the hall can be made out, as well as the position of a clock tower; and at some little distance there remains another niche with a headless statue in it, no doubt that of Henry VIII., which we are told was put up on the occasion of the Queen's second visit to Gorhambury. Her first visit was paid in 1572, four years after the completion of the house, on which occasion the Queen told the Lord Keeper that he had made his house too little for him, whereupon he replied, "Not so, madam, but your Majesty has made me too big for my house." He was, however, resolved not to be open to such a reproach again, and on receiving an intimation that the Queen would visit him a second time (in 1577) he is said to have built a gallery of lath and plaster 120 feet long by 18 feet wide, beneath which were cloisters, and in the middle of their length the statue of King Henry in gilt armour. This enlarging of the house for the express purpose of receiving the Queen was only one of numerous instances, which will be referred to in a subsequent chapter, as also will the proportion of the long galleries so distinctive of the period. [Illustration: 72.--CHASTLETON, OXFORDSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (CIR. 1603). 1. Hall. 2. Little Parlour. 3. Great Parlour. 4. Nursery. 5. Chamber over Kitchen. 6. Pantry. 7. Parlour.] The gallery, was panelled with oak gilt, and on the panelling were Latin inscriptions, so aptly selected that it was considered worth while to collect them in a small volume, illuminated with much beauty. In the orchard was a banqueting-house, which in its turn was adorned with busts and inscriptions. These all related to specific subjects--grammar, arithmetic, logic, music, rhetoric, geometry, and astrology; and each subject was not only depicted on the walls, but was further illustrated by appropriate verses and the pictures of such learned men as had excelled in it.[13] Although most of them were selected from the ancients, yet Sir Nicholas Bacon was sufficiently catholic in his taste to admit such modern names as Lilly, the grammarian, and Copernicus, the "astrologer," the latter of whom had only been dead some thirty years. [13] _Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_, Vol. II. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI. CRANBORNE MANOR HOUSE, DORSETSHIRE. THE PORCH (ABOUT 1612).] Another kind of entrance is afforded by the arcaded porch, of which a simple example is to be seen at Hambleton, in Rutland (Fig. 71), and a more elaborate one at Cranborne, in Dorset (Plate XXVI.), where it was added, along with other "modern" features, to an old manor house dating from the thirteenth century, in order to bring the house into the prevailing fashion. [Illustration: 73.--DOORWAY AT LYDDINGTON, RUTLAND.] So far all the entrances which have been mentioned were in the main face of the building, the front doors being in the centre of the façade. As the front door almost always led into the screens at the end of the hall, it followed as a matter of course that the hall itself occupied only a little more than half the length of the façade. In some instances, however, the hall was made to occupy the centre of it, and in such cases the porch could no longer be central, but was moved to one side, and made to balance a corresponding projection which served as the bay window of the hall: the doorway was then placed, not in the front face but the side face of the porch, as may be seen at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire (Fig. 72), and Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire (Fig. 52). The main approach was therefore still on the axial line, but on mounting the final steps, instead of going straight forward into the porch, you turned either to the right or left (in the two instances illustrated it was to the left) and so through the porch to the screens. At Chastleton the old arrangement remains perfect; the screen is there, and also the daïs with the bay window at the end of it. At Fountains Hall, in Yorkshire, the same idea is carried out, but as the ground slopes very steeply, the principal floor is some feet above the ground at the entrance. The doorway is central, and immediately on entering, a straight flight of steps leads off to the right up to the main floor, which it gains just in time for a turn to the left to lead into the screens. [Illustration: 74.--DOORWAY AT BROADWAY, WORCESTERSHIRE.] In situations requiring less ornamental treatment, a very pleasing type of doorway came into use, and lingered on in remote places far into the days of regular classic architecture. Such doors abound in the stone villages of Somerset and thence northwards through the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire, up to Northamptonshire and Rutland. They are usually flat-pointed, and the jambs have two moulded orders, the inner one going round the flat-pointed head, while the outer one forms a square frame round it, as in the example from Lyddington (Fig. 73). There is not much of the classic manner about such a door, especially when, as in this instance, the label is returned down the ends of the head. But the section of the jamb-mould is an adaptation of the contours found in classic work, and the label not infrequently was treated in the manner of a cornice, instead of being returned, as it is in this example and that from Broadway in Fig. 74. There is a small doorway of this kind at Aylesford Hall, in Kent (Fig. 75), which shows a curious mixture, for the head has a fairly high-pointed Gothic arch, while the label is of classic profile, and is ornamented with dentils: the spandrils are filled with shields of late design, one of which bears the date 1590, thus showing how long the old traditional forms lingered in places. The masons of the time made use of a type of door which was chiefly of Gothic descent, but they varied its features at will. The head was either high-pointed, flat-pointed, or elliptical, as their fancy dictated; and the label was either moulded after the fashion of their youth, or in accordance with the newer forms which they saw in use around them. It is in such unimportant matters as these, where no one was particularly concerned about the result, that we see how the workmen availed themselves indifferently of the old forms or the new. [Illustration: 75.--DOORWAY AT AYLESFORD HALL, KENT (1590).] CHAPTER V. EXTERIOR FEATURES (_continued_). GENERAL ASPECT, EXTERNAL APPEARANCE, WINDOWS, &c. Before proceeding to enter one of these doorways and to examine the interior treatment of an Elizabethan house, it will be well to look at the exterior more closely. We find that the effect, although often elaborate and striking, is produced by very simple means. The picturesque appearance of Haddon and Compton Winyates is chiefly due to the irregularity of the plan, which in the case of the former was largely the result of a gradual growth, extending over some centuries. The stately effect of the Elizabethan house is the result of regularity and symmetry in the plan, and its picturesqueness springs from its windows, gables and chimneys. The English designer avoided, as a rule, very large plain surfaces and long unbroken façades, differing in the latter respect from his Italian contemporaries. He diversified his long fronts by throwing out bay-windows; he broke up the skyline with gables; he grouped his chimneys so as to add emphasis to the design; and there were always the mullioned windows, of which the relatively small divisions gave scale and life to the whole. There are many houses which have no further attempt at ornament than these features, and these are felt to be quite sufficient; but occasionally, when a great effort was demanded, the Elizabethan designer borrowed his ornament from abroad, and added a multiplicity of pilasters and niches to his walls, extravagant and fantastic curves to his gables, while, in order to avail himself of classic forms to the full, he turned his chimneys into the semblance of columns. His zeal was not always accompanied by knowledge; he sometimes misapplied his borrowed features; he too frequently regarded a pilaster as in itself an agreeable ornament, without troubling to bring it into scale with the building or with his other pilasters used elsewhere, and without providing for it even a semblance of anything to support. The more ignorant masons evolved designs which bore but a distant resemblance to the originals which inspired them. All this is true, and it is so manifest that one cannot be surprised at the opprobrious epithets bestowed upon work of this period by purists of other schools. Still, in spite of errors and ignorance in the application of ornament, there is an exuberant vitality about the buildings of the time which accords with the vitality of its literature. Moreover, their character is essentially English: an Elizabethan house could no more have been designed by Palladio or Du Cerceau or Vriese than a play like those which Shakespeare gave us could have been written by one of the novelists, essayists, or dramatists of Italy, France and Germany, from whom the Englishman, however, did not hesitate to borrow some of his material. [Illustration: 76.--KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. SOUTH SIDE OF COURT (1570-75).] EXTERNAL APPEARANCE. The courtyard of Kirby Hall is one of the finest examples that is left of the period (Fig. 76), and although pilasters of different scale are employed as ornamental features rather than as constructional, the whole effect is both dignified and picturesque. The mullioned windows have a lively simplicity, the large pilasters prevent monotony, and the small detail about the central porch contrasts happily with the plainer treatment of the main walls. The external façade on the west, though not symmetrical, is kept in subjection; the strong horizontal lines of the strings and cornices bind it together, and the great chimney stacks are so ordered at regular intervals that they alone would give dignity and rhythm to the front (Fig. 77). The work on this front is not all of one time, though the various parts cannot be separated by many years, and it is quite possible that the curved gables were added by a somewhat later hand. Sir Christopher Hatton's successor may have modified this façade towards the end of the century, when he built the stables, which have now disappeared. [Illustration: PLATE XXVII. WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.] [Illustration: 77.--KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. WEST FRONT (1570-75, PARTS POSSIBLY 1595).] [Illustration: 78.--LONGLEAT, WILTSHIRE (1567).] [Illustration: 79.--WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. PLAN OF PRINCIPAL FLOOR (1580-88). 1. Hall. 2. Saloon. 3. Library. 4. Dining-room. 5. Armoury. 6, 6. Bedrooms. 7. Boudoir. 8. Study. 9. Small Drawing-room.] Kirby is freer in its treatment than Longleat, in Wiltshire, which has to submit to a more severe symmetry (Fig. 78). The windows here are rather overpowering, but the whole effect is restful, owing to the strong horizontal lines, while the projecting bays entirely relieve it from monotony. There are no gables, and apparently never were, which is a somewhat unusual circumstance, considering the date of its erection, 1567. Wollaton, near Nottingham (Plate XXVII.) bears some resemblance to Longleat in its detail, but it is far more fantastic in its treatment, and its plan places it in a category almost by itself. It cannot be called a typical house either in its arrangement or its design, although from its striking appearance and excellent state of preservation it is frequently quoted as such. Its plan shows a central hall, surrounded by a range of rooms, with a projecting pavilion or tower at each of the four corners (Fig. 79). The general effect is undoubtedly impressive, but the ornament is overloaded, and shows a too careful study of extravagant Dutch models. The work, however, and the design are those of well-instructed masons, familiar with the features they were handling. Wollaton is another instance of combining a central hall with a central doorway. The present flight of steps inside the front door, together with the doors in the long sides of the hall immediately opposite, is comparatively modern. The original approach, after entering the front door, was up a flight of steps to the right, at the top of which, by turning to the left (as at Fountains Hall), the screens were gained, and the hall was entered in the usual way. At Burghley House we revert to a simpler treatment. The main walls are of plain masonry pierced with windows, and divided by the usual horizontal cornices (Plate XXVIII.). Diversity is obtained by projecting turrets, lofty bay windows, and the boldly-curved entrance porch on the north front. There are no gables, the skyline being broken by the turrets, the chimneys, and the ornamental parapet. It is, perhaps, an exaggeration to say there are no gables, but there are none in the later part built between 1575 and 1587. The great hall has gables, but that was built some years earlier. [Illustration: 80.--CHARLTON HOUSE, WILTSHIRE (1607).] [Illustration: PLATE XXVIII. BURGHLEY HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GENERAL VIEW.] At Charlton, in Wiltshire (Fig. 80), there is an example of the open arcade, which became rather fashionable, but which later generations have, in many houses, found unsuitable to our climate, and of which the arches have in consequence been filled up. The gables here are ornamented with a kind of filigree, which is more curious than beautiful. At Aston Hall, near Birmingham, the south front presents another instance of an open arcade (Fig. 81), and a good deal of picturesqueness is imparted by the broken outline of the gables. Corsham Court, in Wiltshire, shows a more restrained treatment (Fig. 82). The animated effect is obtained by a number of plain gables, and by square projecting windows crowned with flat pediments, the whole bound together with conspicuous horizontal strings. At Kentwell Hall, in Suffolk, the dignified effect is produced by the combination of two turrets with the front gables, by projecting windows carried up the whole height of the building, and by massive chimney-stacks (Fig. 83). The approach is still on the axial line, although the present low wall is but a poor substitute for the usual enclosure; but in many of the examples cited the general effect is decidedly impoverished by the disappearance of the outer courts. [Illustration: 81.--ASTON HALL, WARWICKSHIRE. SOUTH FRONT (1618-35).] [Illustration: 82.--CORSHAM COURT, WILTSHIRE (1582).] [Illustration: 83.--KENTWELL HALL, SUFFOLK.] [Illustration: PLATE XXIX. EXTON OLD HALL, RUTLAND. THE MANOR HOUSE, GLINTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: 84.--CHENEY COURT, SOMERSET.] [Illustration: 85.--MANOR HOUSE, COLD ASHTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 86.--MANOR HOUSE, COLD ASHTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. GROUND PLAN.] Coming now to somewhat smaller houses, we find the same simple materials relied upon, and producing equally good effects. In the ruins of the old Hall at Exton, in Rutland (Plate XXIX.), the front façade shows curved gables separated by a length of pierced parapet, and the side has three straight gables close together, with a huge stack of chimneys placed irregularly against them. The Manor House at Glinton, in Northamptonshire (Plate XXIX.), is even simpler; nevertheless, its curved gables, carefully wrought chimneys, and projecting porch give it a considerable amount of character. It is not on record when either of these houses was built, but Exton Hall was probably the work of John, Lord Harrington of Exton, the tutor of the Princess Elizabeth, only daughter of James I. There is nothing left inside the house, which was burnt down in 1810, but enough of the exterior remains to show that, like most manor houses in the district, it must have been a fine place in its palmy days. In the church at Exton are a number of exceptionally good monuments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, commemorating the Harringtons and their descendants (see Fig. 6). The manor of Glinton was granted to the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough at the dissolution of the monasteries, and so remained till long after the house was built, which may therefore have been used as a country residence for the Dean. At Cheney Court, near Bath (Fig. 84), another house without a history, the treatment is quite simple, consisting of nothing more than three evenly placed gables along the side, and two others, in combination with large chimney-stacks, along the end. The reason for the sudden jumping up of the strings in the right-hand gable of the side is not apparent; but as a matter of fact, at the present time that part of the house is occupied by one tenant, while the remainder is let to another. This type of manor house, with its extremely quiet handling of gables, chimneys, and mullioned windows, is common all over the country, and so far as its exterior is concerned, it owes little besides its symmetrical disposition to the Italian spirit. An extra touch is given to the doorway here (Fig. 68), and the internal fittings show the foreign influence, but otherwise it is entirely a native production. The same may be said of Cold Ashton (Fig. 85), another house in the neighbourhood of Bath, but here the symmetrical treatment is more marked, as will be seen by looking at the plan (Fig. 86), and the chimneys are gathered into two groups which serve the whole house. This is an interesting example of the smaller kind of manor house, and it has been subjected to very few alterations. Its history is not recorded, but it was evidently built by one of the numerous squires of the time, who put his arms over the gateway on the road side (see Fig. 58). Judging by the two doorways remaining in the screen on the left of the central passage, one of which now leads into a pantry, the hall has been shortened by the space required for the pantry, but except for this alteration the plan seems to indicate the original arrangement, including that of the front garden, with its gateway and circular steps, its paved walk, and the flight of steps leading to the terrace in front of the house. The external detail throughout is of the simplest, but there is a good ceiling in one of the parlours, and some of the woodwork is of unusual elaboration. The character of the work points to the early part of the seventeenth century as the date of erection. In these simpler examples the windows do not occupy nearly so large a proportion of the wall space as they do in the more ambitious houses. [Illustration: 87.--BOLSOVER CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE (1613).] An interesting adaptation of the symmetrical arrangement of the forecourt and lodges is to be seen at Bolsover Castle (Figs. 87, 88), where the square house has been built on the site of the ancient keep, which no doubt largely controlled its size. There are no gables, all the roofs being flat; that over the house itself is approached by a staircase in a domed turret, and was intended as a place of resort. The usual picturesqueness of outline is obtained by various turrets and chimneys. In the illustration the two chambers in the sides of the courtyard are hidden behind those which form the entrance to it. It is not easy to say to what use these chambers were to be put. They are all furnished with fireplaces, most of which are carefully wrought, as though for the delight of the owner rather than of his retainers. The house itself is full of interest; all the rooms on the basement and principal floor are vaulted, and the vaulting ribs and corbels are managed with such care as was seldom bestowed upon those features even in the days of stone vaulting. This method of construction was rapidly going out of fashion, most of the houses of the sixteenth century having floors of joists and boards, the underside being ceiled in the early part of the century with wood, and in the latter with plaster. But at Bolsover, as late as 1613, we have stone vaulting beautifully wrought. There is a large amount of good panelling also left, and the chimney-pieces are unrivalled in any house of the time for their beauty and variety. Some of these will be illustrated when that subject comes to be dealt with. This part of Bolsover Castle, although so carefully built and embellished, is but a small portion of the whole scheme. There was an immense gallery in close proximity, which, however, has fallen to ruin. It is in a style somewhat later than its smaller neighbour, with gigantic doorways and unwieldy mouldings, and forms a link between Jacobean work and the more fully developed classic treatment of the close of the seventeenth century. [Illustration: 88.--BOLSOVER CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE. GROUND PLAN (1613). 1. Porch. 2. Hall. 3. Pillar-room. 4. Main Staircase. 5. Small Staircase.] At Condover, in Shropshire (Fig. 89), an agreeable variety of treatment is introduced on the garden front by contriving to get a range of low rooms over the open arcade, the heads of the windows being at the same level as those of the principal rooms. The central gable on the same face is occupied by a bay window, which starts from corbels over the centre arch of the arcade and is carried up to the topmost storey. Variations like these serve to relieve the monotony which is sometimes to be found in the symmetrical houses of the period. [Illustration: 89.--CONDOVER HALL, SHROPSHIRE. THE GARDEN FRONT (1598).] [Illustration: 90.--CLEGG HALL, LANCASHIRE.] The amount of detail bestowed upon these houses varied according to their locality and the materials at hand. In Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, where the stone is hard, great simplicity is the rule. The entrance doorway usually received some attention, and the gables often had finials, but otherwise the work was of the plainest description. The roofs were generally of flatter pitch than in less boisterous districts, and the whole house gives the impression of rough sturdiness quite in keeping with the character of the owners. Compared with the work in Northamptonshire, as exemplified at Kirby, Rushton, or Apethorpe; in Hampshire at Bramshill; in Sussex at Cowdray; or in Somerset at Montacute, the work in the north is severe and wanting in detail. But it has its own charm, just as the rocky "edges" of Derbyshire, and its wild, boulder-strewn tors, with their memories of prehistoric tribes perched upon their bleak summits, have a grim fascination not less powerful than that which hangs over the forest districts further south, where ancient oaks, so old as to retain little beyond their huge trunks, call to mind the curious and cruel laws which once protected the animals that lived beneath their shade. Haddon Hall is a large house, and was the home of one of the first families of the county, but its stonework is comparatively plain. Hoghton Tower, in Lancashire, is another large house, but the detail is even simpler than at Haddon. Clegg Hall, near Rochdale (Fig. 90), is a good example of a Lancashire house of medium size, except that, compared with others to be found on the wolds and in the dales of that part of the country, it is unusually lofty. Mount Grace Priory, in Yorkshire (Plate XXX.), is of a more usual type, but even here there is rather greater liveliness than generally distinguishes the Yorkshire manor house; the windows are larger, and the dormers are of steeper pitch than is common. Oakwell Hall, East Ardsley and Swinsty Old Halls are good examples of their kind, with flat-pitched roofs, plain gables, and windows of many small lights. The courtyard at Ingelby Manor (Fig. 91) has an open arcade with some amount of detail about it, but the effect is grim and chilly, and serves to illustrate the mistake of transferring a child of the Italian sun to the bleak regions of Yorkshire. In some parts of Lancashire, in Cheshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, and generally in the west, timber was much employed. The "black-and-white," or "magpie," or "post-and-pan" work, as it is variously called, has much charm about it, and appeals keenly to lovers of the picturesque. The contrast between the dark framework and the light-coloured plaster, together with the variety of line consequent upon the constructional necessities of the framework itself, insure a lively result; and when the straight lines of the greater part of the framing are relieved by the introduction of curved braces or more fanciful panels in the gables, the combination is very attractive. The effect is often enhanced by dainty little bits of detail in the wood finials and pendants and verge-boards, but even without these aids the texture of the wood becomes so beautiful through age and weather as hardly to require the help of a chisel. One example, Moreton Old Hall, has already been mentioned (Plates XV., XVI.); Speke Hall, in Lancashire, near the banks of the Irwell, is another (Plate XXXI.), and it has at the entrance a certain amount of stonework which adds considerably to the interest of the house. There is a fine example at Bramall Hall, near Stockport; a plainer one at Pitchford Hall, in Shropshire; while, among others, may be mentioned the Market-house at Ledbury and the Grange at Leominster, both in Herefordshire. Some examples, although not so many, are to be found in the southern counties; but all through Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire the usual treatment of cottages and small houses was to hang them with weather-tiling. The ground floor was generally of brick, the upper one was tile-hung: there was nearly always a good chimney, sometimes rising out of the roof, but often carried on a massive base which was continued down to the ground. The rich colours which come to these bricks and tiles with age tend to spoil those who live in their midst, and to make them look with a somewhat dull eye upon the quieter tones prevalent in stone districts. Examples of half-timber or "magpie" work, however, are not wanting amid the tile and brick, and one of the most elaborate is to be seen at Mayfield, in Sussex (Fig. 92), but it is far behind similar work in Cheshire and Lancashire in richness of detail. In the eastern counties, as in the southern, brick is the chief material, but here, too, plaster played an important part in clothing the construction. In the west all the detail was put into the wood; in the east it was put into the plaster, and there are many examples still left of elaborate modelling in plaster to be found upon houses and cottages in Essex and Suffolk. Cut flint was also largely employed for walls, and was used in combination with stone to produce highly-ornamental designs; but its employment seems to have largely died out with the Gothic forms in which it was so successfully manipulated. The brickwork, which in the early part of the century was very rich and elaborate, became much plainer towards its close, and indeed the terra-cotta and the wonderful chimney-shafts of Henry VIII.'s time are hardly to be found in the work of succeeding reigns. It is not in brickwork that we must look for Elizabethan detail, but rather in the easily-worked stone which underlies the central district of England from Devon and Somerset in a north-easterly direction to Rutland and Lincoln. [Illustration: PLATE XXX. MOUNT GRACE PRIORY, YORKSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXI. SPEKE HALL, LANCASHIRE.] [Illustration: 91.--COURTYARD, INGELBY MANOR, YORKSHIRE.] [Illustration: 92.--HOUSE AT MAYFIELD, SUSSEX.] WINDOWS. [Illustration: 93.--COWDRAY HOUSE, SUSSEX. PART OF COURT.] It has already been said that an Elizabethan house depends for its picturesqueness chiefly upon its windows, gables, and chimneys. The mullioned and transomed window is indeed one of the characteristic features of the Elizabethan style, the openings being all rectangular. Already during the prevalence of Gothic forms the vertical spaces formed by the mullions of the windows had been divided horizontally by transoms, but this treatment was rather the exception than the rule. In Tudor times the windows were usually small, sometimes consisting only of one light, but often of two or even three, and occasionally being two tiers in height. The lights almost always had flat-pointed heads. The small size resulted from the old wish to have a defensible house, but as the need for such precaution lessened, the lights increased in number; the desire for well-lighted rooms led to still further extension and to doing away with the pointed heads in favour of straight ones. The gradual changes in the form of windows is well seen in the courtyard at Cowdray (Fig. 93). The window on the extreme right of the illustration, with its pointed arch and traceried lights, is Gothic; next to it comes a Tudor bay window, made up of a number of flat-pointed lights, which there was no need to restrict in this case, because the window looked into the court. To the left are two bays of Elizabeth's time, with rectangular lights three rows in height and many in width. At Barrington Court (Plate XXXII.) may be seen a more usual example of Tudor windows, as well as the twisted finials of which the early sixteenth century was so fond. Another kind of treatment is occasionally to be found, in which brackets are introduced in the upper lights, springing from the mullions and supporting the horizontal head. One version of this method is to be seen at Layer Marney in the windows over the archway (Plate XIII.), and another at Lacock Abbey (Plate XXXVI.). In the latter window should also be noticed the circle introduced at the crossing of the centre mullion and transom, which resembles the treatment adopted in the screen at King's College Chapel (Plate VIII.). The date of Layer Marney may be put at 1520, Lacock Abbey at about 1540, and the screen at 1535. The greatest development of windows was, however, to be found in the bay. The bay window is one of the most important features in the architecture of the time. English designers had always been fond of bay windows: they put them to the daïs of their halls in quite early times, and there are many examples of small bays being corbelled out on an upper floor, where the exigencies of the ground plan did not permit of their starting from the ground. But as a rule these early bays were only one storey in height: as time went on, however, they grew to two storeys, and then to as many as the main building itself had. From being an adjunct they became a dominating feature, and most of the large houses of the time derive variety of outline and rhythm of composition from their bay windows. Hoghton Tower, in Lancashire (Fig. 94), has a fine bay at the end of the hall. It is only one storey high, but that storey is the full height of the building in that part. The sill is brought down lower than those of the other windows in order to enable the occupants of the daïs to look out into the court. At Astley Hall, also in Lancashire (Plate XXXIII.), the two bays are the dominating feature of the front; indeed, the whole architectural interest of this side of the house lies in the management of the windows, for the doorway, flanked by double columns which lend their united strength to supporting a peaceable lion, is hardly worth attention. The long range of windows which reaches continuously from one end of the building to the other forms a striking feature, but must be a matter of much concern to the housewife who has to drape them on the inside, and to consider the claims of her carpet on sunny days. [Illustration: 94.--HOGHTON TOWER, LANCASHIRE. BAY OF HALL.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXII. BARRINGTON COURT, SOMERSET. (TUDOR.)] [Illustration: 95.--BURTON AGNES, YORKSHIRE (1602-10).] [Illustration: 96.--HOUSE AT BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] At Burton Agnes the grouping of a circular bay in the gable with an octagonal one just round the corner (Fig. 95) is very effective pictorially, and makes an interesting plan. The circular bays at Lilford, in Northamptonshire, set within the curved gables, produce a pleasing combination (Plate XXXIV.); but of all circular bays the palm must be assigned to the great twin bays at Kirby (Plate XXXIII.). It was not only in important houses that these striking features were introduced; they are to be found in all kinds of dwellings, and frequently impart interest to small and insignificant cottages, whether of stone, as at Bourton-on-the-Water (Fig. 96), or of wood and stucco, as at Steventon, in Berkshire (Fig. 97). In both these examples much of the pleasant effect is derived from the small size of the windows and the proportionately large space of plain wall between them; but the same effect can hardly be obtained in the present day, because the rooms have to be higher, and toleration is seldom accorded, either by private taste or public regulations, to windows which start a long way from the floor and end a long way from the ceiling. [Illustration: PLATE XXXIII. ASTLEY HALL, LANCASHIRE. KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. THE BAY WINDOWS.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIV. LILFORD HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1635). CURVED GABLES.] [Illustration: 97.--COTTAGE AT STEVENTON, BERKSHIRE.] There was no great variety in the mouldings of the stonework. Several sections of jambs and mullions are shown on Fig. 98, of which No. 1 was most frequently used in Elizabethan and Jacobean work. The jambs and principal mullions had an outer member, slightly splayed, which formed a frame within which the subsidiary mullions and the transoms were enclosed, as may be seen by referring to Figs. 71, 96, and 103. Sometimes this outer member was moulded instead of splayed, as shown in No. 2 (Fig. 98), and occasionally an extra member was introduced close to the glazing line, as shown in No. 3. These three examples are all varieties of the same type. No. 4 shows a type with a hollow moulding, which was prevalent in Tudor work, as it had been previously in Gothic; and it remained in use, along with the plain splayed mullion, up to the time of the sash-window. Although it preceded the type No. 1, and might therefore be considered to indicate an earlier date, it is not by any means a safe guide, inasmuch as both forms were in use at the same time. No. 1, however, was not used before the middle of the sixteenth century, and may be taken as a fairly safe indication of a date subsequent to that time. No. 5 shows a sunk splay, and was occasionally used, but it is not frequently met with. The label shown on No. 4 was used in late Gothic work, and survived in some instances as long as the mullioned windows themselves; but in the more ambitious designs its place was taken by the lower member of a cornice founded on classic models. No. 6 is an example of a quite different type. In all the others, the windows were of the ordinary mullioned type, with a label (or cornice) over them. In No. 6 not only does the shape of the mullion follow a new idea, but the whole of the mouldings outside of it are carried round the head and jambs of the window to form a regular architrave: the effect can be seen in the windows at Wollaton, in Fig. 106. As this architrave projected beyond the face of the wall, the window-sill was brought forward to receive it, as shown on Fig. 99. The projecting sill is supported at each end by a quaint corbel, and the space between the corbels is filled by a projecting panel fashioned like a piece of fancifully-shaped leather nailed on to the wall, and having some of its cut ends curled up. This treatment of windows involved a considerable amount of labour and expense, and accordingly was not often adopted; but the use of the architrave became general during the seventeenth century, after the mullioned window had given way to sashes. [Illustration: 98.--SECTION OF WINDOW JAMBS AND MULLIONS.] [Illustration: 99.--WINDOW-SILL AT WOLLATON HALL.] [Illustration: 99A.--HEAD OF A WINDOW AT HATFIELD HOUSE.] CHAPTER VI. EXTERIOR FEATURES (_continued_). GABLES, PARAPETS, FINIALS, CHIMNEYS, RAIN-WATER HEADS, GARDENS. GABLES. [Illustration: 100.--A NORTHAMPTONSHIRE COTTAGE.] The gable is one of the characteristic features of the period. As a rule it was of steep pitch--indeed, in many thatched barns and cottages the apex is very acute (Fig. 100). In such cases the cottages generally had attic-rooms in the roof, which were lighted by dormer windows, over which the thatch was worked in such a way that they appeared to be a growth out the main roof rather than an extraneous window applied to it. In stone and brick houses the gable wall rose above the roof, and was coped with stone to prevent the wet penetrating into it. The coping rested at the bottom on a kneeler, which projected sufficiently to accommodate itself to the projection of the eaves, and at the apex it was usually crowned by a finial. A considerable amount of variety was introduced into the design of the kneelers and finials, and many a small house and cottage is redeemed from insignificance by the possession of one or two of these features (Fig. 101). Even where there was no finial, the mere fact of the apex of the coping projecting above the line of the ridge produced a point that showed against the sky, and helped towards the general picturesqueness of effect. In some of the more important houses the finials were worked with greater elaboration, and were placed not only on the apex of the gable but on the kneelers at its foot (see Fig. 108, and the dormer on Fig. 113; also Plate XXX.). The effect of plain gables contrasted with those having simple finials is shown on Plate XXXV., while examples of larger and more important finials may be seen at Kirby and Rushton (Figs. 107, 113), the prevailing forms being some variety of the obelisk. [Illustration: 101.--STONE FINIALS AND KNEELERS.] [Illustration: 102.--MANOR HOUSE, FINSTOCK, OXFORDSHIRE.] [Illustration: 103.--COTTAGE AT ROTHWELL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. (1660.)] [Illustration: PLATE XXXV. HOLMSHURST, BURWASH, SUSSEX. TUDOR HOUSE, BROADWAY, WORCESTERSHIRE.] The use of simple gables or their combination with dormer windows and chimneys, all without elaborate detail, is quite sufficient to impart interest to a building, which otherwise would have little claim to attention. Examples of these unpretentious houses are to be met with in every county; one or two are illustrated here from Finstock, in Oxfordshire (Fig. 102), Broadway, in Worcestershire (Plate XXXV.), and Holmshurst, in Sussex (Plate XXXV.). There is very little conscious effort about the design of either of these, beyond the introduction of a certain amount of symmetry. At Finstock Manor House there is a range of three equal gables occupying most of the front, and the door is in the centre. At Tudor House, Broadway, there are three gables, but they are detached from each other, and the middle one is rather larger than its neighbours; a bay window of two storeys occupies the centre of the front, and the very plainly treated door is at one end. The house at Holmshurst is, like most of those in the Weald, built of brick: it has stone windows, but very little detail, its effect depending upon the two gables, each flanked with a large chimney-stack. The style which was prevalent at the end of the sixteenth century lingered on far into the seventeenth in buildings that were not subject to the passing fashion: indeed, the treatment was hardly adopted consciously, but was rather the obvious and natural way of building, otherwise it would not have been applied to such cottages as that at Rothwell (Fig. 103) and Treeton, near Sheffield (Fig. 104). [Illustration: 104.--COTTAGE AT TREETON, NEAR SHEFFIELD.] In houses which were constructed of timber and plaster it was impossible to carry up the gables above the roof; the method of building did not admit of it, and there would have been no adequate means of covering them from the weather. They were finished, therefore, with projecting verge-boards, which served to protect the surface of the walls, and which were often carved or cut and moulded. A simple instance applied to a cottage is to be found at Steventon (Fig. 105), but there are plenty to be seen in different parts of the country, particularly in the west. [Illustration: 105.--COTTAGE AT STEVENTON, BERKSHIRE.] In the more important houses the gables were not infrequently curved, especially in later times, that is to say, the curved gable is more frequent in Jacobean work than in Elizabethan. This idea no doubt came from the Low Countries, where it was very extensively adopted, but the extravagant and fantastic curves which the Dutchman loved were much simplified by his English imitator. Some of the more ambitious efforts, such as Wollaton, went near in their elaborate strap-work to rival the original models. A study of one of the corner pavilions (Fig. 106) will show how, not only in the gables but in the whole treatment, the foreign influence is predominant. The simplicity of the native type is entirely wanting. There are no plain surfaces of any extent; the columns are broken by a projecting band; the pedestals on which they stand are adorned with panels of double projection; not only are the corner piers of the parapet crowned with an obelisk, but the pediment at the top of each gable carries a small statue on a pedestal: everything is done to add to the picturesqueness and richness of effect. Nevertheless, through all the ornament with which the design is overloaded, its main ideas are plainly visible: the large and simple windows, the emphasizing of the angles, the gables of studiously irregular outline. In some Dutch and German work the designers seemed to lose sight of their purpose in the exuberance of their ornament, but here it is not so. It will be seen that the circular niches on the side faces are filled with busts, although the vertical niches between the pilasters are empty. The busts, so far as they are named or can be identified, are those of classic personages--Plato, Aristoteles, Vergilius--and are said to have been brought over from Italy. [Illustration: 106.--WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. ONE OF CORNER TOWERS (1588).] The west front of Kirby (Fig. 107) offers a great contrast to Wollaton. Here everything up as high as the parapet is as simple as it can well be; there are no pilasters, no niches, no strap-work panels. The windows and the cornices which make the circuit of the building are the only architectural features. The gables have the strap-work, but it is of a simpler form than that at Wollaton: the irregularity of their outline, combined with the tapering obelisks, some of which have open stone bows at the bottom, something after the fashion of a jug handle, imparts the necessary picturesqueness, without having recourse to the expensive devices employed at Wollaton. The latter house was built between the years 1580 and 1588, and the gables may therefore be taken as dating from 1588: the date of the west front of Kirby is not recorded, but from the character of the work it may very well have been subsequent to the main building operations in 1570-75, and, as already stated, these gables were not improbably added towards the close of the sixteenth century. One curious point about this front is the care which was taken to make the quoins perfectly regular in size: in some cases where the quoin stone was larger than the regulation size, the overplus was slightly sunk, and then scored with false joint-lines to match those of the adjacent rubble. [Illustration: 107.--KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. PART OF WEST FRONT (POSSIBLY 1595).] There was a simpler type of curved gable which was freely used, as in the courtyard at Rushton (Fig. 108), and it was sometimes combined with steps, as at Apethorpe (Fig. 109), the result being picturesque without being fussy. The date of the example at Apethorpe is 1623-24, and that at Rushton 1627. The curve, instead of being ogee-shaped as in these instances, was sometimes composed of two curves of similar form, with a square shoulder between them, like those at Blickling (Plate XXXVII.), or the sweep of the ogee was broken by the introduction of a vertical line, such as may be seen in the gables at Lilford (Plate XXXIV.). Further varieties occur at Montacute (Fig. 48), Stanway (Plate XXII.), and Westwood (Plate XXIII.). PARAPETS. The gables and the dormer windows in the larger houses were often connected by a parapet, broken at intervals by a shallow pilaster carried up to form the base of a finial or the seat for some heraldic animal. Sometimes the parapet was solid, as at Apethorpe (Fig. 109), Doddington (Plate XXI.), and the courtyard at Kirby (Fig. 76); sometimes it was formed of a series of arches, as at Exton (Fig. 110, and Plate XXIX.), and at Hambleton (Fig. 71); sometimes of stone panels pierced with a pattern, as at Bramshill (Fig. 111) and Audley End (Fig. 112); and sometimes of stone balusters, of which Rushton Hall offers one example (Fig. 113) and Wollaton Hall (Plate XXVII.) another. There was a considerable amount of variety, according to the ability of the mason to design and of the owner to pay. The effect of the pierced panels carried along a considerable length of parapet is very rich and lace-like. The stone balusters were occasionally of very meagre proportion, and used with too sparing a hand, but at Rushton this is not felt to be the case. The parapet to the main roofs here is more satisfactory than the rather confused ornament which serves a similar purpose for the bay. This gable also affords a good example of the manner in which the lights of the mullioned windows were stepped up so as to follow roughly the slope of the roof. In one or two houses (Castle Ashby in Northamptonshire, and Temple Newsam in Yorkshire) the parapets are formed of stone letters forming a series of legends which make, more or less, the circuit of the house. [Illustration: 108.--GABLE IN COURT, RUSHTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1627).] [Illustration: 109.--GABLE IN COURT, APETHORPE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1623-24).] [Illustration: 110.--EXTON OLD HALL, RUTLAND. STONE PARAPET.] [Illustration: 111.--BRAMSHILL, HAMPSHIRE. STONE PARAPET.] [Illustration: 112.--AUDLEY END, ESSEX. STONE PARAPET.] CHIMNEYS. The chimneys were always dealt with boldly. In many cases, as already said, they were massed into great stacks at intervals along the walls, and made the dominating features of the whole design. Wherever they occurred their presence was frankly accepted, and, as a rule, much skill and ingenuity were bestowed upon them. In later centuries chimneys appear to have become a source of considerable annoyance to architectural designers, and a great deal of misapplied ingenuity was expended in trying to conceal their existence, owing to the idea that they interfered with the purity of classic façades. But in the early days of the introduction of classic features, the problem of making chimneys harmonize with the rest of the building seems to have been a source of delight instead of annoyance. [Illustration: 113.--RUSHTON HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. GABLE ON EAST FRONT (1627).] [Illustration: 114.--CHIMNEY AT DROITWICH, WORCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 115.--BRICK CHIMNEY FROM HUDDINGTON COURT HOUSE, WORCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 116.--BRICK CHIMNEY FROM BARDWELL MANOR HOUSE, SUFFOLK.] [Illustration: 117.--CHIMNEY AT TOLLER FRATRUM, DORSET.] [Illustration: 118.--CHIMNEY AT KIRBY HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] The general use of chimneys was at this time rather a novelty. So late as the time of Henry VII., in the new palace called Richmond Court, built to replace an older structure destroyed by fire in 1498, the great hall was warmed by a fire in the middle of the floor with a lantern in the roof over it. There is a description of the Court in the return of the Commissioners of Parliament made in 1649, which is interesting not only as mentioning the fire, but as bearing out what has already been said of the hall of a large house. The higher storey, they say,[14] "contains one fayr and large room 100 feet in length and 40 in breadth, called the Great Hall. This room hath a screen at the lower end thereof, over which is a little gallery, and a fayr foot-pace in the higher end thereof [the daïs]; the pavement is square tile, and it is very well lighted and seeled [_i.e._, panelled with wood], and adorned with eleven statues in the sides thereof; in the midst a brick hearth for a charcoal fire, having a large lanthorn in the roof of the hall fitted for that purpose, turreted and covered with lead." But early in the sixteenth century chimneys came into general use, and they are one of the most characteristic features of a Tudor house. They were generally built of moulded brick, and were fashioned in elaborate and complicated ways. An illustration from Droitwich is given in Fig. 114, in which the moulded bases stand on panelled pedestals; the shafts also are moulded, each after a different manner, and the caps are crowned with a battlemented ornament. Some of the simpler forms are illustrated among the details from Layer Marney (Plate XIII.), also from Huddington Court House, in Worcestershire (Fig. 115), Bardwell, in Suffolk (Fig. 116), and a stone example from Toller Fratrum, in Dorset (Fig. 117). But far richer specimens are to be seen at Compton Winyates (Plate XI.) or at Hengrave (Fig. 43), besides many other places. With the death of Henry VIII. this elaboration disappeared, and a plainer treatment prevailed. In some of the more pretentious edifices the chimneys were cast into the form of columns, as they were at Wollaton (Plate XXVII.) and Burghley (Plate XXVIII.), and at Montacute also, where the column carries a kind of stone cowl. The columnar form had occasionally been used in earlier days; there is a well-proportioned and excellently wrought example at Lacock Abbey (Plate XXXVI.), where the shafts are fashioned into fluted columns, and the cap takes the shape of a short length of classic entablature with architrave, frieze, and cornice complete. The columns stand upon a pedestal, the face of which is occupied with a panel surrounded by strap-work; and as there seems every reason to suppose the work to be part of Sharington's prior to his death in 1553, the whole idea and its mode of execution is unusually early, strap-work being associated as a rule with a period fifteen or twenty years later. The consoles carrying the projection of the base are an additional feature, and the whole group is carefully designed. The notion, however, of making the chimney-flue into a column and taking a short length of entablature as a cap is hardly satisfactory, and a more reasonable type was employed at Kirby (Fig. 118), while throughout the stone district of the Midlands the usual form is that in Fig. 119, a form which, with modifications, has lingered on even down to the present day. A somewhat ornamental variety of the same idea is to be seen at Chipping Campden (Fig. 120), and another variation at Drayton House, in Northamptonshire (Fig. 121). The quaint triangular chimney of the Triangular Lodge at Rushton (Fig. 122) is really the same in principle, but its unusual apex and carved panels place it in a class by itself. The brick chimneys of Elizabeth's time have straight stalks and an oversailing cap of thin bricks, occasionally varied with still thinner courses of tiles. The profile is nearly always the same, but considerable variety is imparted by varying the plan, and by adding square or triangular projections to the plain faces of the flues. A simple but effective example may be seen at Bean Lodge, near Petworth (Fig. 123). More elaborate specimens are found at Knole House and Cobham Hall, in Kent; Blickling Hall, in Norfolk (Plate XXXVII.); at Moyns Park, in Essex, and indeed on almost every brick house of the time. [14] _Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_, Vol. I. (1566). [Illustration: PLATE XXXVI. LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. CHIMNEY-STACK AND WINDOW.] [Illustration: 119.--TYPICAL CHIMNEY IN THE MIDLANDS.] [Illustration: 120.--CHIMNEY AT CHIPPING CAMPDEN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 121.--CHIMNEY AT DRAYTON HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1584).] [Illustration: 122.--CHIMNEY AT TRIANGULAR LODGE, RUSHTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1595).] Blickling Hall affords examples of many of the features which have been described. It has fine stacks of chimneys, curved gables, and pierced parapets over the windows; on each gable is a dainty little statue. The front doorway is richly embellished, and over it are the owner's arms set forth with much heraldic display. Classic features are used with moderation and restraint; a cornice marks the level of the first floor; other cornices crown the bay windows; and columns flank the archway. But they are all used because they answered the designer's purpose, and not because he hoped by loading his building with classic features to give it a character which, without such help, he was powerless to impart. [Illustration: 123.--BEAN LODGE, PETWORTH, SUSSEX.] RAIN-WATER HEADS. Attention should be drawn to another feature of which nothing hitherto has been said, but which was one of the recognized means of obtaining effect--namely, the rain-water pipes. These necessary adjuncts to a building have ceased to play the important part which once they did; they are still tolerated, because they cannot be abolished, but they are only admitted grudgingly and of necessity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a large amount of care was bestowed upon their design, and being made of lead they were susceptible of interesting treatment. Their use was in the nature of a novelty, since up to this time the water from the roofs had been allowed to splash on to the ground from projecting gargoyles. They very frequently carried either the date or the family crest upon them, and were often ornamented with pierced work. The examples shown in Figs. 124-126 are from Haddon Hall; two of them bear the cognizance of the Vernon family (the boar's head), and one that of the Manners family in addition (the peacock). Haddon passed into the possession of Sir John Manners, by his marriage with Dorothy Vernon, in the year 1567, and these lead heads must be ascribed to a date subsequent to the marriage, otherwise they would not bear the peacock of the Manners family. They still retain in their ornament some trace of Gothic feeling, but the topmost moulding, with the dentils beneath it, is clearly of classic derivation. The third head with the cresting of fleur-de-lys may well be of rather earlier date, and the work of Sir George Vernon, the father of Dorothy. Allied to the last example from Haddon is the rain-water head from Sherborne, Dorset (Fig. 127), dated 1579, also with a battlemented cresting. At Knole, in Kent, is another good example (Fig. 128) with a pierced front and two triangular projections ending in a pendant; the top is ornamented with a battlemented cresting, now mutilated. Another specimen, of somewhat plainer character, comes from Bramshill (Fig. 129); it is dated 1612, and has its outlet towards one end, so as to bring the water horizontally along the wall for a short distance in order that the pipe may not interfere with some feature in the wall below. At Rushton there are some lead heads bearing the date 1627, which depend for their effect upon their shape rather than upon their decoration, which is practically limited to a very simple treatment of the cresting. These are two or three examples out of a great many that still remain, some of them being even more ornamental; the greater number, however, were more nearly allied to the plainer than the richer examples. [Illustration: PLATE XXXVII. BLICKLING HALL, NORFOLK (1619-20). PART OF ENTRANCE FRONT.] [Illustration: 124.--LEAD RAIN-WATER HEAD FROM HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: 125.--LEAD RAIN-WATER HEAD FROM HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: 126.--LEAD RAIN-WATER HEAD FROM HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: 127.--PIPE HEAD FROM SHERBORNE, DORSET.] [Illustration: 128.--LEAD PIPE HEAD FROM KNOLE, KENT.] [Illustration: 129.--LEAD PIPE HEAD FROM BRAMSHILL.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII. HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. STEPS TO TERRACE. CLAVERTON, SOMERSET. TERRACE WALL.] GARDENS. [Illustration: 130.--GAYHURST, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. STONE PILLAR IN GARDEN.] This is not the place to enter into an elaborate account of gardens, but they touch the subject under discussion so far as this--that there was a certain amount of architectural design bestowed upon them in the shape of terraces, flights of steps, balustrades and garden-houses. The view of Montacute shown in Fig. 48 gives a good idea of the manner in which the house was set off by a formal garden enclosed by stone walls and balustrades, which were emphasized at the angles by garden-houses, and along their lengths either by gateways or some kind of special object, such as the quaint kind of temple, which serves no purpose but to vary the monotony of the balustrade. The well-known terrace at Haddon is as good an example as can be found of the fine effect of a raised walk approached by a broad flight of steps, and protected by an arcaded balustrade (Plate XXXVIII.). The detail is quite simple, there is no particular effort visible, every thing seems to be there because it is wanted, but the whole effect is extremely picturesque. At Claverton, near Bath, are the remains of a fine house and garden, of which a long terrace wall is also illustrated on Plate XXXVIII. Here the straight length is broken by the large gate-piers, which rise some twelve feet high before tapering off into the universal obelisk. Claverton must have been a splendid example of Jacobean work, judging by the illustrations in Richardson's _Elizabethan Architecture_, but unhappily little of it now remains. At Gayhurst, in Buckinghamshire, there are a number of quaint stone piers flanking the main approach, set a few yards apart (Fig. 130), the space between them being filled in with cut yew hedges. Hedges do not enter into the scope of the present work, but they were much in vogue, as were also pleached alleys and the green shaded walks so much desired by the Noble Gentleman in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of that name. With arches in walls we have more concern, and have already dealt with them in dealing with the approaches to the house; but an additional example from a garden at Lingfield, in Sussex, is illustrated in Fig. 131; and another from Highlow Hall, in Derbyshire, on Plate XXXIX. [Illustration: 131.--GATEWAY IN GARDEN, LINGFIELD, SUSSEX (1617).] The lay-out of a late sixteenth century garden was tolerably simple, the whole being treated on a definite system, and with straight lines. The bowling-green was an important adjunct, and the larger houses had mounts for prospect, and also a "wilderness" of considerable extent. The description of the gardens at Nonesuch, given by the Parliamentary Commissioners in their survey of April, 1650[15] (already quoted), gives a good idea of the gardens attached to the larger sort of houses. The "frontispiece," or approach, was railed with handsome rails and balusters of stone; at a distance of eight yards from the house was the bowling-green, from which a fair and straight path led along an avenue to the park gate, which (they say) being very high, well-built, and placed in a direct line opposite to the house, was, in consequence, a good ornament to it. On three outward sides of the inner court lay the "Privy Garden," surrounded with a brick wall 14 feet high, and cut out and divided into various alleys, quarters, and rounds, set about with thorn hedges. Adjoining this garden was the kitchen garden, also enclosed by a 14 feet wall: on the west of this lay the wilderness. In the privy garden was a spiral pyramid of marble, set upon a base of similar material, "grounded upon a rise of freestone;" and near this there was a large marble wash basin, over which stood a marble pelican, fed with water through a lead pipe. There were also two other marble obelisks, and between them a fountain of white marble, set round with six lilac trees, "which trees bear no fruit, but only a very pleasant flower." In the highest part of the park stood the banqueting-house, a three-storey timber building of quadrangular form, enclosed within a brick wall. The ground floor was occupied by the hall, the upper storeys had respectively three and five rooms, and they were all panelled with oak. In each of the four corners of the whole house there was a balcony placed for prospect. This is worth remembering, for the desire to obtain a prospect is generally considered to be of modern growth; and no doubt until quite recently it was necessary to a beautiful view that it should be obtained in ease and comfort. The notion of climbing a wild mountain for the sake of the view was probably never entertained before the beginning of this century. [15] _Archæologia_, Vol. V. p. 429. There is a good example of the lay-out of a forecourt to a small house at Eyam Hall, in Derbyshire, and although tradition and the only date to be found about the building (on a spout-head) place the erection of the house in the latter part of the seventeenth century, it looks much earlier, and is characteristic of the beginning of the century rather than of the end. There is very little detail about it; but the formal disposition and the broad and simple treatment combine (with the assistance of time) to impart a fine and dignified effect. It will be seen from the plan (Fig. 133) that the court is nearly square. It is entered from the road through a pillared gateway up a short flight of semicircular steps; a broad paved walk leads to another flight which lands on to a wide paved terrace extending along the whole front of the house (Plate XXXIX.). Exactly opposite the steps is the front door, placed centrally in the main face of the house, which is recessed from the faces of the projecting wings. At either end of the terrace is a doorway, one leading to the kitchen approach, the other to the garden, which is reached down another flight of semicircular steps. The paths in the vicinity of the house are straight, and the rise of the ground necessitates still more steps, which give access eventually to a long, straight walk beneath a south-west wall. Away from the house the treatment has lapsed into less formality; but the house itself, together with the court, the terraces, and the flights of steps, the whole gay with flowers, makes a very attractive picture. [Illustration: 132.--CHIPPING CAMPDEN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. GARDEN-HOUSE.] [Illustration: PLATE XXXIX. GATEWAY AT HIGHLOW HALL, NEAR HATHERSAGE, DERBYSHIRE. EYAM HALL, DERBYSHIRE. TERRACE STEPS.] The banqueting-house at Nonesuch was, like the other part of the house itself, built of timber. So, also, in all probability, was the "goodly banqueting-house" which the Lord Admiral built for the Queen when she went to his place in the year 1559 from Hampton Court. It was richly gilded and painted (we are told), "that lord having for that end kept a great many painters for a good while there in the country." But the more usual material was brick or stone, and a fair number of examples of such buildings still survive. One of the most elaborate is to be seen at Chipping Campden (Fig. 132), in Gloucestershire, where the fall of the site enables an under-storey to be obtained without being buried in the ground. The illustration shows the ground floor only, but there is a storey below it approached by a substantial staircase. The work is elaborate, and has lasted well in spite of its rather unworkmanlike treatment, as for instance in the jointing of the stone parapets. The detail is too fanciful, and the building is illustrated not so much for the sake of its design, as to show how much trouble and expense were lavished upon a structure which could only have been used a few times during the year. It and its fellow on the opposite side were, however, important features in the general lay-out. [Illustration: 133.--EYAM HALL. PLAN OF LAY-OUT.] CHAPTER VII. INTERIOR FEATURES. The chief points in the internal arrangement of houses of the period have already been explained in the third chapter. The hall was the central feature, entered at one end; next to this end was the kitchen; next to the other, or daïs end, was the parlour. The kitchen and the parlour respectively were amplified according to the accommodation required, and in the larger houses the amplification entailed one or more courts, but the hall remained the centre of the system. The need for such great amplification as we find in the larger houses arose from the fact that large retinues accompanied great personages on their visits to each other, and that there was always the chance that the sovereign might have to be entertained upon one of the progresses which were undertaken three or four times every year. Both Elizabeth and James adopted this method of keeping in touch with their subjects, and they must have become tolerably familiar with their dominions, except, perhaps, the extreme outlying parts in the north and west; and so far as James was concerned, he made the acquaintance of a good many houses in the north, on his journey from Scotland when he came to take possession of the crown. ROYAL PROGRESSES. When Queen Elizabeth made her progresses, she was frequently entertained with elaborate shows, which, presumably, must have pleased her, since they occurred so often, but which afford tedious reading to the modern inquirer. They were usually cast in an allegorical form, and had more or less dramatic action. They took place in the daytime and in the open air: it can hardly be said that they were performed, for the thread of the plot was so thin, and the stage of operations so large, that the whole effect must have appeared rather fortuitous, and wanting in cohesion. At night time and in one of the great halls, either of a city, a college, or a great house, there were other performances, in which the interest was more concentrated, and the characters more varied; these were called plays, of which a great number were performed, written by all sorts of people, and all affording (apparently) equal pleasure to the onlookers. The majority of these pieces have faded into oblivion, but a certain number have survived, and go to form much of what we know as the Elizabethan drama. But it is with the entertainments provided in the daytime that we are more particularly concerned: they were of an ephemeral nature, and have not, like many of the plays, passed into the literature of the country: and our concern with them lies in the form in which they were cast and the spirit which animated them. When Elizabeth made her passage through the city of London to Westminster the day before her coronation--that is, on January 13th, 1558--the whole journey was interspersed with "pageants," as they were called.[16] These consisted of triumphal arches of various designs, upon which living allegorical figures were placed: one represented the Queen's immediate ancestors: another four virtues treading down four contrary vices; another the eight beatitudes; on another were Time and Truth his daughter; and so forth. Each of these personages, says the account, according to their proper names and properties, had not only their names in plain and perfect writing set upon their breasts easily to be read of all, but also each of them was aptly and properly apparelled, so that his apparel and name did agree to express the same person that in title he represented. As each pageant was reached, there stepped forth a "child" on to some prominent part of it, who recited a number of verses explanatory of the device, and a copy of these verses was affixed in a tablet upon the pageant, balanced by another bearing a Latin version of the same lines. Besides these, it says, every void place in the pageant was furnished with sentences touching the matter and ground of the said pageant. We have here, therefore, on a large scale, the same kind of treatment which was applied on a small scale to chimney-pieces--allegorical figures and various inscriptions more or less pithy. It is a matter for speculation whether either the Queen or the populace at large thoroughly grasped the full meaning of the several devices upon which so much ingenuity had been lavished; but certainly to the monarch, who stopped at every pageant, and received an explanation of it, the journey must have been extremely tiring, seeing how great were the number and ingenuity of the pageants. To preserve so much good work from oblivion, within the next ten days an account of the whole "passage" was printed, which towards its close gives much credit to the city, forasmuch as without any foreign person, of itself, it beautified itself. This casual reference to the foreign person, and to the city being able to manage without his help, shows that he was a recognized factor in the production of design. [16] _Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth._ When King James made his "memorable Passage from the Tower to Whitehall," on the 15th March, 1603-4, there were seven triumphal arches erected, of such importance that they were considered worthy of being engraved and published. They were designed by an Englishman, Stephen Harrison, "Joyner and Architect," and their architectural treatment followed the lines of the more pronounced Anglo-Italian work of the time, in which classic feeling has superseded Gothic. They are interesting as showing how completely the English craftsman had familiarized himself with the foreign methods of design. They were published by Harrison in 1604, the engravings being by William Kip.[17] They were built in a substantial manner, nearly six months being spent upon their erection. Two of them were called respectively "The Italians' Pegme" and "The Pegme of the Dutchmen," residents of these two nationalities being responsible for their erection; but it is curious to see that the Dutchmen's arch is not more Dutch in treatment than the Italians'. It evidently did not occur to Harrison to emphasize the character of his designs to suit the two nations, even if he were aware of the points in which their architecture differed. [17] The title of the book, which is well worth inspection, is "_The Archs of Triumph, erected in honor of the High and Mighty Prince James, the First of that Name King of England, and the Sixt of Scotland, at his Maiestie's Entrance and Passage through his Honorable Citty and Chamber of London, upon the 15th day of March, 1603_. Invented and published by Stephen Harrison, Joyner and Architect; and graven by William Kip." It was perhaps natural in those days that when Queen Elizabeth visited the great seats of learning she should be greeted with a shower of Latin verses and orations. Pages after pages of these have been preserved, but it seems extremely doubtful whether the recipient of them could have found time to master their contents. The orations she listened to and understood, for the expression of her face is said to have changed with the subject-matter of the speeches, and some of them she answered in the same tongue. But it was by no means to Eton or to Oxford and Cambridge that Latin verses and orations were confined: obscure parsons in small towns seized their opportunities, and were often handsomely praised by the Queen for their skill. As to verses, when she visited Sandwich in 1573, "upon every post and corner, from her first entry to her lodging, were fixed certain verses, and against the court gate all these verses put into a table [_i.e._, a frame] and there hanged up." The Queen's visit to Kenilworth Castle in July, 1575, is one of the best known episodes of her Progresses, and the "Princely Pleasures at Kenilworth Castle," recorded (and largely devised) by George Gascoigne, consisted of the same kind of entertainments as greeted her at her coronation. They are too long to quote extensively, but a few of the principal efforts will serve to show the kind of spirit that was abroad at the time. As the Queen approached the castle, Sybilla met her and prophesied prosperity in a number of verses. On entering the gate Hercules, who acted as porter, seemed inclined to dispute her entry, but being overcome by the "rare beauty and princely countenance" of her Majesty, he gave up his keys, and burst into poetry. In the base-court there came a lady, attended by two nymphs, and the lady welcomed her Majesty in another set of verses. A few steps further on came an actor clad like a poet, who pronounced a number of Latin verses, which were also fixed over the gate in a frame. After leaving the poet, she was received into the inner court with sweet music, and then escaped to her own "lodgings." A day or two after her arrival there met her in the forest, as she came from hunting, one clad like a Savage man, all in ivy, who was so much overcome with wonder at the Queen's presence that he fell to quarrelling with Jupiter, and called upon Echo to explain who the resplendent personage might be, incidentally contriving to lavish a number of compliments in the course of the inquiry. Then Triton came, and the Lady of the Lake, and Proteus sitting on a dolphin's back, who all delivered themselves of further compliments in lengthy verses. It is just conceivable that her Majesty grew a little weary of these pedantic interludes, for one long show was prepared by Master Gascoigne, in which Diana and her nymphs, Mercury, Iris, and others were to have acted; but in spite of every actor being ready in his garment for two or three days together, it never came to execution, being prevented (its author thought) by lack of opportunity and seasonable weather. At the Queen's departure, being commanded by the Earl of Leicester to devise some worthy farewell entertainment, Master Gascoigne clothed himself as Sylvanus, the god of the woods, and meeting the Queen as she went hunting, broke out into a long extempore oration, which her Majesty at length interrupted by proceeding on her way. Sylvanus, however, kept pace with her, and continued his speech running at her side, until in very pity for his breathless condition, the Queen stopped her horse. At Sylvanus's humble request, however, she continued her ride, and he continued the ceaseless stream of his oration, until coming to an arbour, a second actor in the tedious drama, by name Deep Desire, took up his part, spake some verses, and sang a song. A few more lines from Sylvanus released the Queen from this very diverting farewell show. Many other entertainments might be cited to illustrate the direction which popular taste took in these matters; but to multiply instances would be as tedious to the reader as (one cannot help thinking) the shows themselves were to the Queen and her attendants. This, at any rate, becomes clear--that the favourite themes, personages, and allusions were of classic origin; the thoughts were clothed in pedantic language; verses were freely written and hung up for passers-by to read, and the Latin tongue was employed in preference to the English, where it was not absolutely necessary that the points should be understanded of the people. The accounts that have been handed down of these interludes are, it is true, somewhat tedious reading, but under the genial satire of Shakespeare they lose their dulness and become amusing. We do not tire of Holofernes and his party in their presentation of the Nine Worthies, nor of Bottom and his company in their great classical interlude of "the tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe," nor of Orlando and his verses, which he hung on every tree. It was no small matter to entertain royalty in those days. Even in the present day, when facilities for moving about and for obtaining provisions are so vastly greater, and when the mode of life in the Court is so much simpler, it requires a large house and a well-filled purse. But in the sixteenth century the undertaking was more like providing for a small army, and it is not surprising to find that outside the wealthier owners of great mansions, there was a disposition to evade the honour. Lady Anne Askewe wrote to Sir Christopher Hatton, about the year 1581, to know if she might be excused on account of the shortness of the notice and her "unfurnished house."[18] The officials of the Court so far sympathized with this feeling that we find one of them writing to a friend who was threatened with the honour, Mr. More, of Loseley, to say what a "great trouble and hindrance" it would be, and to advise him to "come and declare unto my lord of Leicester your estate that majesty might not come unto your house."[19] It is not clear whether these representations were actually made, and if made whether they were successful or not; but, however that may be, the same gentleman (he was now knighted) received an intimation in August, 1583, from Sir Christopher Hatton that the Queen intended in about ten or twelve days to visit Loseley, and to remain there some four or five days, and that he had better see everything well ordered and the "house kept sweet and clean to receive her highness." Three weeks later Sir William More had another letter from Sir Christopher to say that on the third day thence the Queen intended to go to bed at Loseley for one night only, and that he should see that the house was "sweet and meet to receive her majesty," and should send his family away. These involuntary hosts were not always consulted beforehand, for one of them wrote to Sir William More in July, 1577, to say that he found the lists were issued for a progress into his county, and his house was one of those to be visited; accordingly he wrote to his loving friend, Sir William, to beg him, for the sake of old acquaintance and friendship, to say what order was taken by the Queen's officers in respect of provisions when her Majesty visited Loseley, as the writer was altogether unacquainted with the order of procedure. The lists of places to be visited, or "gests," as they were called, were carefully prepared beforehand, and gave the names of the houses and their owners, the number of nights the Court intended to stay, and the distance between one stopping-place and the next: this distance was on the average about ten miles, but it varied, according to circumstances, from five to fourteen, the latter being the longest journey attempted. [18] Sir Nicholas Harris's _Memorials of Sir Ch. Hatton_, p. 223. [19] _Loseley MSS._, p. 266. To entertain the Sovereign and the Court the houses were necessarily large, indeed we shall not be far wrong in attributing the enormous size of the largest--such places as Holdenby, Theobalds, and Audley End--to the express intention of providing suitable accommodation for Elizabeth and James. Sir Christopher Hatton, in a letter to Sir Thomas Heneage, in 1580, talks of Holdenby being dedicated to "that holy Saint," meaning the Queen; and Lord Burghley, in writing to Hatton about Holdenby and Theobalds, says "God send us both long to enjoy Her, for whom we both meant to exceed our purses in these."[20] In another letter (August 14th, 1585) he says, "My house at Theobalds was begun by me with a mean measure, but increased by occasions of her Majesty's often coming."[21] These mansions may be regarded almost in the light of large hotels, with certain common apartments for the guests, a large kitchen department, and a vast number of rooms arranged in groups of two or three. Although notice of the sovereign's intended visit was usually given, it was not considered necessary for less exalted people to send word. When James's queen was journeying towards London from Scotland, a certain Lady Anne Clifford hurried with her mother to meet her. The lady describes her journey, and how they went without notice to a large house in Bedfordshire.[22] She says that having killed three horses that day--it was midsummer--with extreme heat, they came to Wrest, my Lord of Kent's house, "where we found the doors shut, and none in the house but one servant, who only had the keys of the hall, so that we were enforced to lie in the hall all night, till towards morning, at which time came a man and let us into the higher rooms, where we slept three or four hours." This artless account quite casually illustrates the relation of the hall to the rest of the house. It was the room first entered from the outside, and was shut off by doors from all the rest of the house. The servant who let the travellers in probably slept either in the buttery or a "lodging" attached to it, and beyond those two apartments and the hall neither he nor they could go until the "man" came who had the keys which gave access to the stairs and the higher rooms. [20] _Memorials of Holdenby_, by Miss Hartshorne, p. 16. [21] _England as seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James I._, by W. B. Rye, p. 213. [22] _Nichols' Progresses of King James I._, Vol. I., p. 174. THE MANNER OF DECORATING ROOMS. Some idea of what the rooms were like which surrounded a courtyard of the time may be gathered from the description of the suite allotted to the Earl of Lincoln when he went to Cassell, in 1596, on an embassage to the Landgrave of Hesse; and although they were in a German castle the description would apply almost equally well to those in a large English house. The rooms were five in number, and they occupied the end of a goodly quadrangle, like the Louvre at Paris, high and stately.[23] They consisted of two dining chambers, two drawing chambers, and between the two latter a bed chamber, so placed "for his more quiet and private being." His lordship's own dining chamber was panelled with wood and marble, "with crestings, indentments, and Italian pillar work;" there were escutcheons with the blazoned arms of the Landgrave's "friends and allies of the Protestant part," and on the four sides of the room next the ceiling were carved four stories of the Creation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Judgment; the ceiling was wrought with knot-work. The next room, where the ambassador's gentlemen dined, was hung with tapestry. The next "was a fair drawing chamber, seated round about, and covered with scarlet; above the seats hung round with a rich small wrought tapestry of an ell broad, of emblem work, and verses written underneath; over this, upon a ledge of wainscot, were divers tables [pictures] of sundry devices, well painted, with their posies to garnish the chamber, and, among all, that was the best which had this motto: 'Major autem horum est caritas,' for it waxed cold. The roof was likewise flourished with painting and devices. These rooms had the through light of four fair windows." The bedroom was decorated with a painted tree that grew up at the door, the branches spreading all over the ceiling, full of fruit, and hanging down upon the walls, with other pictures to fill up empty places; the story taken out of Daniel. The last room of the suite was "a fair drawing chamber hung with arras, which parted his Honour's lodging from the other side of the house, that so he might not any way be disturbed." We get therefore in this set of rooms an example of the three principal modes of decorating the walls--by panelling, by hanging with tapestry or arras, and (more seldom) by painting. At Theobalds the hall was decorated with trees, and not only were they furnished with leaves and fruit, but, regardless of the niceties of natural history, with birds' nests too, and so lifelike was the effect that, according to the testimony of a German visitor in 1592,[24] when the steward opened the windows the birds flew in, perched upon the trees, and began to sing--perhaps to express their surprise at finding fruit and nests on the trees at the same time. This realistic treatment was, fortunately, not very common, and it is rather curious that so strong a man as Lord Burghley should have delighted in such embellishments, and others equally puerile in conception. [23] _Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_, Vol. II. [24] The Secretary of Frederick, Duke of Wirtemberg. _England as seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James I._, by W. B. Rye, p. 44. The more usual way of treating the walls was to cover them either with hangings or with panelling. There are numberless references to the former among the poets of the time. Imogen's bedchamber was "hanged with tapestry of silk and silver"; Falstaff fell asleep behind the arras when he took his ease in his inn, and had his pocket picked; Polonius, when he hid himself in order to overhear Hamlet's interview with his mother, slipped behind the arras, and it was through the arras that Hamlet subsequently made the fatal pass with his sword. The rooms in Spencer's Castle Joyous "were round about apparelled with costly cloths of Arras and of Tours," and the parlour of Alma's castle "was with royal arras richly dight." These hangings were moved from house to house when the family migrated from one abode to another, and in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Wit without Money_ there is a lively scene in which a great lady suddenly determines to leave her house in town for the country. Amid the confusion which ensues--servants shouting, my lady's sister in much anxiety about her dog, her looking-glass, and her curls--Ralph calls to Roger to help down with the hangings, but Roger declines, as he is unable to leave the packing of his trunks. The hangings at Hampton Court were of the most costly description,[25] Cardinal Wolsey being an ardent collector, and utilizing the services of his agents in various foreign countries to add to his stores. Three-quarters of a century later much of this splendour was still left, and the German visitor whom we have already seen at Theobalds says of Hampton Court, that "all the apartments and rooms in this immensely large structure are hung with rich tapestry, of pure gold and fine silk."[26] From this regal magnificence there were numberless gradations down to the "smirch'd, worm-eaten tapestry" mentioned in that conversation between Borachio and Conrade which led to their arrest by Dogberry. The subjects of these hangings were of extreme diversity--scriptural, mythological, and allegorical. There were the stories of Toby, Our Lady, and the Forlorn Son, alongside of those of Priamus, Venus and Cupid, and Hannibal. The story of Esther balanced the Romaunt of the Rose. Christian saints and heathen gods were equally welcome, and always and everywhere, either in foliated borders or forming the subject-matter itself, were the arms of the owner, with angels or amorini to support them, and a convoluted scroll to bear the motto. The allegorical subjects are the most bewildering, and they even puzzled the people of the time, to whom such trains of thought were familiar, for it is expressly said of the tapestry in Alma's parlour that in it there was nothing portrayed nor wrought but what was easy to understand. Of course much of the tapestry which was so widely used has now disappeared, or has found its way into the hands of collectors; very little is left in its original positions, even if it remains in the houses for which it was first acquired. There is a fair amount, however, to be found up and down the country, and the effect of tapestry-hung walls in conjunction with a rich plaster ceiling is shown in Fig. 134, from a bedroom in Deene Hall, Northamptonshire. [25] _Law_, Vol. I., p. 57. [26] _England as seen by Foreigners_, p. 18. [Illustration: 134.--BEDROOM IN DEENE HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. PLASTER CEILING: TAPESTRY ON WALLS.] WOOD PANELLING. Wood panelling is of a more permanent character than tapestry, or at least is not so easily removed and adapted to fresh situations; and there are many examples left of this mode of clothing and decorating the walls of houses and churches. It was in vogue tolerably early in the century, and there is a contract, printed in the _History of Hengrave_, between Sir Thomas Kytson, for whom the house was built, and Thomas Neker, for "seelyng" the house. This "seelyng" has been mistaken for plastering, but a perusal of the contract shows that it must have been panelling, since some of the rooms are to be "seelyd" their whole height, and others only to the height of the windows, or a certain number of feet high. Stools, benches, cupboards, and portals are also mentioned as part of the work, as well as "the gates at the coming in"; and Sir Thomas is to find all manner of timber, hewn and sawn. Among the rooms to be thus panelled were the hall, the two parlours, the wardrobe over the cellar, and the two great chambers above the daïs. Seven lodgings, that is bedchambers, were to have portals only; sixteen other lodgings were to be "seelyd" to the pendant's foot, and on the pastry house a wardrobe was to be made, with one close press, and open presses round about. There was to be a fret on the ceiling of the hall with hanging pendants, "vault fashion"; no doubt after the manner of the watching chamber at Hampton Court, which was being built about the same time. Towards these works Sir Thomas Kytson was to provide the contractor with "all the old seelyng, and frets of the old work that is in his keeping." [Illustration: 135.--HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. A CORNER OF THE GREAT HALL.] The development of wood panelling is of considerable interest. Previous to the sixteenth century, that is in the days of the Gothic manner, the construction was on a substantial scale, the framing being formed of wood uprights and cross-pieces, measuring, perhaps, four inches by three in section, the uprights being from eighteen inches to two feet apart, and strengthened by horizontal cross-pieces at heights of three, four, or five feet, or thereabouts, according to the height of the room. The spaces thus formed into panels were filled with one piece of board let into the surrounding framing, which was sometimes splayed, but more generally moulded, the mouldings being stopped before they encountered the cross-pieces. The screen in the hall at Haddon (Fig. 135) illustrates this early method of construction, while against it, and clothing the wall and the side of the window-opening, is the seventeenth-century panelling, the development of which will be presently explained. The panels in Gothic work were ornamented either with cusping, such as may be seen in the upper part of the screen at Haddon, behind the antlers, or with paintings, such as still remain in a number of churches, especially in the eastern and south-western counties. Gradually, however, the large size of the framework was reduced: instead of being four or five inches thick by three or four inches wide, it became only about an inch or so thick by about the same width as formerly. The panels were made narrower, because it was found easier to get boards ten or twelve inches wide than of a width twice those sizes, and gradually the very long proportion of height to width was lessened, the panels became more nearly square, and eventually they were made of varying sizes and proportions, but rhythmically arranged. The old idea of moulding or splaying the wood framework was long retained, and practical considerations in the framing of it together gave rise to a particular kind of effect, which is characteristic of the earlier kind of panelling. The framework is composed of vertical and horizontal pieces of wood tenoned together and secured by wood pins. It is obvious that if the edges of all the wood were moulded before it was framed together, it would be impossible to make a neat junction where the pieces crossed, because the continuous moulding on the edge of the one piece would interfere with the proper adjustment of the end of the other which comes against it at right angles. It will be seen by referring to Fig. 136, that on the horizontal rails, which are continuous, the moulding and the splay die out before they reach the vertical pieces, thus leaving a plain surface sufficiently wide for the latter to abut against, whereas on the vertical pieces the mouldings are continued from top to bottom of the panel and stop abruptly against the horizontal rails. The vertical pieces could therefore have been worked in one long piece and then cut into lengths, whereas on the horizontal rails the moulding was worked in lengths to suit the width of the panels--a more troublesome proceeding, and one requiring thought and care. The tendency of all change in workmanship being towards the saving of thought and care on the part of the great body of workers, the next steps in the development of panelling were in this direction. But before following these steps, a reference to Fig. 137 will show how in some cases the horizontal rails are continuous, with the edge-mouldings dying out, while the vertical are in short lengths with continuous mouldings abutting against the horizontal rails; and in others the parts played are reversed, and it is the vertical pieces which run through. It will be noticed that in addition to the edge-moulding, there are others on the face of the rails which, not being subject to interference by the abutting of the cross-pieces, are worked continuously without a break. [Illustration: 136.--PANELLING OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.] [Illustration: 137.--STANFORD CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. LINEN PANELLING.] [Illustration: 138.--A PANEL OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.] In both these examples (Figs. 136, 137), and also in Fig. 138, it will be observed that the panel itself is decorated with some kind of carving. The English form is shown in Fig. 137, where the panels are what are known as linen panels, the decoration taking a form something like folded linen. In the long gallery at the Vyne the walls are panelled with linen panelling, with the addition of coats of arms, or badges, or scrolls bearing a motto (Fig. 19). A later form is seen in Fig. 136, where the design is quite Italian in feeling. The circular panels containing heads became a favourite feature in English panelling about the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, and may generally be ascribed to a date within a few years of 1540. The diamond-shaped panels in the lower part appear to be horizontal panels standing on their ends, and are probably not in their original relation to the others. The two charming dolphins counter-hauriant, if the term may be allowed, carved at the top of a long panel, leaving the lower part plain, give a quaint and pleasing effect (Fig. 138). The presence of dolphins rather points to French influence, for, although no doubt the use of this form started in Italy, it was eagerly adopted by the French, since the dolphin was the cognizance of their dauphin. The door at Castle Rising (Fig. 139) gives another example of the use of heads in circular panels among Italian foliage; but it will be noticed that the mouldings round the panels do not conform to the type already explained, but to one which is a step forwarder in development. Instead of the mouldings of the continuous horizontal rails being stopped short of the sides of the panels, they are carried on and intersect with them. This intersection is called by joiners a mitre, and a mitred moulding is an advance on a stopped moulding or one that abuts against a cross-piece. It will be seen that in this example, although the moulding is mitred at the top of the panel, it still abuts against the bottom rail. In the panelling from Haddon Hall (Plate XL.) it will be seen that the very simple moulding mitres all round the panels. But in all these cases the mouldings are what are called "out of the solid," that is, the actual framework of the panels is moulded, the consequence being that wherever a moulding had to be stopped or mitred, thought and care were required, and a failure of either involved the injury of a fairly large piece of wood. The next step therefore was to refrain from working a moulding on the solid wood, but to keep square edges to the framework, and after framing up all the panelling with these square edges, to insert round the margin of each panel a small separate moulding planted on to the recessed panel. This saved much time and labour, and consequently expense, and is the method pursued in the present day. Its application may be seen in almost any four-panelled door in an ordinary house. [Illustration: 139.--DOOR AT CASTLE RISING, NORFOLK.] This latest form, the "applied" mitred moulding, hardly came into general use so early as the time of Elizabeth or James--indeed, the date of its earliest occurrence is a question of considerable interest. But mouldings mitred on the solid had almost entirely replaced the older form of stopped mouldings by the end of the sixteenth century. By returning to the illustration of the screen at Haddon (Fig. 135), an example may be seen alongside the heavier Gothic work; and another example, with a much deeper and broader moulding, may be seen in an upper room at the same place (Plate XLI.). It is a provoking characteristic of work of this time that its method of treatment does not give an infallible clue to its chronological sequence. In earlier times the mouldings gave this clue: when once a form was superseded by another, it did not occur again; but in the period now under consideration fashion was not so accommodating, and though on the whole the mitred moulding is later than the stopped moulding and finally superseded it, yet there are early examples of mitring, as in the panelling at the Vyne, which must have been put up before Wolsey's death in 1530, and there are late examples of stopped mouldings in such things as chests, which maybe as late as James I. The pewing and pulpit at Haddon (Plate XLI.) have them, and they are late Elizabethan, if not Jacobean, while the panelling in the dining-room, which is dated 1545, is mitred. [Illustration: 140.--DOOR AT BECKINGTON ABBEY, SOMERSET.] The panels themselves, which in early days were decorated with the linen pattern, and subsequently with Italian foliage and heads within circles, became plainer and simpler. In the dining-room at Haddon all the lower panels are plain, while a kind of frieze of ornament is carried round in those next to the cornice. The ornament consists for the most part of coats of arms from the Vernon pedigree, but there are also heads in circles, linen panels, initials with true lovers' knots, and other devices. All these are carved in relief, but in later times carving gave way to patterns formed by sinking the groundwork and leaving the design on a level with the face of the panel. There was little or no modelling in the design, and the work could be done by a less skilful hand than actual carving would require. An example is to be seen in a door at Beckington Abbey (Fig. 140): the same kind of work was often applied to the rails of panelling, the face of pilasters, and other plain surfaces. Another specimen, with a little more modelling in it, is at Nailsea Court (Fig. 141). The services of the carver were, however, by no means dispensed with, and there is a vast amount of richly ornamented panelling up and down the country, both in houses and churches. The monotony of the constantly repeated oblongs was broken by the introduction of pilasters, which were themselves fluted or decorated with patterns. [Illustration: 141.--DOOR AT NAILSEA COURT, SOMERSET.] Carbrook Hall, near Sheffield, which has now fallen from its former estate, has a very fine panelled room, in which the pilasters are richly decorated with various simple patterns (Plate XLII.). They support a carved frieze, above which is a wood cornice, and above this again is a modelled plaster frieze some two feet deep, forming part of the handsome ceiling. [Illustration: 142.--PART OF REREDOS (REMOVED) AT STOWE-NINE-CHURCHES, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] At Benthall Hall, Shropshire, is another instance where the monotony of the panels is relieved by the introduction of pilasters, and it is also lessened by the presence of the large centre panels (Plate XLIII.) with their greater freedom of treatment. The variation caused by adapting the same design to the narrower panel of the door in the middle bay is also a pleasant relief. The intention here was to rely upon the panelling itself for the decoration of the room; there was no thought of hanging pictures on it, which, indeed, would be out of place, and would spoil the effect both of themselves and the panelling. It may be doubted whether any of the panelling of the time, even the simplest and the most regularly disposed, was intended as a background for other ornament. It was itself the decoration, although, when perfectly simple, it could be used in a restricted way as a background for pictures. But the fashion of hanging up framed paintings and prints had not yet arisen; when it did arise it rendered wood panelling an inappropriate means for the general decoration of rooms. In the church at Stowe-Nine-Churches, Northamptonshire, are the remains of some good panelling which once served as a reredos, but which the reforming and restoring zeal of a late incumbent has now relegated to the vestry. There are fluted pilasters here, dividing panels which increase in richness as they ascend, the upper ones containing boldly projecting heads amid the usual strap-work curls (Fig. 142). Sometimes the panels were made with semicircular heads, which rested upon pilasters furnished with imposts and bases, all the margin being highly ornamented, while the panels themselves were plain, as in the Court pew at Chelvey, in Somerset (Fig. 143). There are many instances of the use of these arched panels: the long gallery at Haddon has them in wide and narrow widths alternately; and there is a room in the Red Lodge at Bristol where every panel is arched, the effect thus produced being very rich. At Chelvey the frieze is carved with a continuous pattern, as it was in very many instances, but sometimes it was decorated in a more mechanical way with ovals and oblongs, as at Benthall Hall (Plate XLIII.), and occasionally it was pierced in a very charming manner into a kind of filigree work, as in the remains of a screen at Stowe-Nine-Churches, which has shared the fate of the reredos (Fig. 144). The effect of the frieze in this instance is enhanced by its being slightly curved outwards. [Illustration: 143.--PART OF THE COURT PEW, CHELVEY CHURCH SOMERSET.] In later days, instead of cutting down the substance of the wood in order to get carving in relief, the projection was obtained by cutting the ornament out of another piece of wood and applying it to the surfaces that were to be decorated. Some of the ornament at Benthall Hall appears to be treated in this manner. But whatever means were adopted, the end aimed at was the same--namely, an extreme richness of effect: indeed, in some of the panelling and in many of the chimney-pieces the result is bewildering in its intricacy of line. [Illustration: 144.--PART OF SCREEN (REMOVED), STOWE-NINE-CHURCHES, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE XL. HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. A SIDE OF THE BAY-WINDOW IN THE DINING-ROOM (1545). HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. PANELLING IN THE DINING-ROOM (1545).] [Illustration: PLATE XLI. HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. BAY-WINDOW IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. WOODWORK IN THE CHAPEL.] [Illustration: PLATE XLII. CARBROOK HALL, NEAR SHEFFIELD. INTERIOR.] [Illustration: PLATE XLIII. SIDE OF ROOM AT BENTHALL HALL, SHROPSHIRE. _Scale: 5/16 inch to 1 Foot._] [Illustration: PLATE XLIV. WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD. SCREEN IN THE HALL (1610-13).] CHAPTER VIII. INTERIOR FEATURES (_continued_). TREATMENT OF THE HALL, SCREENS, OPEN ROOFS. [Illustration: 145.--THE HALL, KNOLE, KENT.] On entering the hall after leaving the courtyard, it was on such panelling as this that the eye rested. The screen which divided the hall from the passage was generally even more richly decorated than the adjacent panelling. Its two doorways were flanked with columns, which carried a complete entablature from side to side of the hall; above this came the panelled front of the gallery, which was surmounted in its turn perhaps by a series of small arches, perhaps by some of the fantastic strap-work peculiar to the time. The spaces between the columns were panelled; every panel here and above was decorated with carving--usually of shields of arms, but where these were not suitable, as in halls of colleges, then with foliage or allegorical figures. Knole House, in Kent, has a good example of a screen with heraldic decoration (Fig. 145). Wadham College, Oxford (Plate XLIV.), has one of comparatively simple character; while for sumptuous effect those at Middle Temple Hall, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge (Plate XLV.), could hardly be surpassed. Woollas Hall, in Worcestershire, has a good screen of simple character. The illustration on Plate XLVI. gives a view of it looking from the hall. The archway leads into the passage called the "screens," in which can be seen the open door of the principal entrance. The gallery has a balustraded front; it is carried out over the entrance porch, and is lighted by a small window, visible in Fig. 69, just below the oriel. The hall, having a room over it, has a flat ceiling, and not an open timber roof. The windows of the hall were usually rather high up, and the walls were panelled up to the sills, but as a rule the sill of the bay window at the daïs end was brought down low enough to afford an outlook. Above the panelling the walls were largely occupied by the windows, the spaces between which were hung with "pikes, guns, and bows, with old swords and bucklers that had borne many shrewd blows": or they were filled with pictures, of which a considerable number, chiefly portraits, began to be found in large houses. From the top of the windows sprang the roof, the feet of its principals coming down and occupying part of wall space between them. The principals were still constructed in the old hammer-beam manner, even at so late a date as 1604 for Trinity College, Cambridge, and 1612 for Wadham, but all the ornament is of a late type, and gives a very rich effect, the light glancing upwards against the many surfaces of the pendants and the strong lines of the moulded braces. The roof at Middle Temple Hall, built in 1570, is almost as elaborate and fine as that of the Great Hall at Hampton Court, built some forty years before, but the detail is later in character. The roof of the hall at Wollaton is peculiar in that it is of the hammer-beam type, although supporting the flat floor of a room over it (Fig. 146). Usually, when there was a room over the hall the ceiling was treated with ornamental rib-work, in the same manner as the other and less lofty rooms: the hall at Knole presents an example of this kind of treatment (Fig. 145). At Kirby there is an unusual form of roof, neither flat nor open timbered, but a kind of barrel-vault formed of four straight faces (Fig. 147); each face is divided into large panels by moulded and cut oak ribs of large size, and each panel has a curved diagonal rib resembling the wind-braces of a Gothic roof. The panels are filled with boarding at the back of the ribs. [Illustration: 146.--WOLLATON HALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. THE ROOF OF THE GREAT HALL (1580-88).] [Illustration: PLATE XLV. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. SCREEN IN THE HALL (ABOUT 1604-5).] [Illustration: PLATE XLVI. WOOLLAS HALL, WORCESTERSHIRE (1611). SCREEN IN THE HALL.] [Illustration: 147.--ROOF OF GREAT HALL, KIRBY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1575).] THE SMALLER ROOMS. Leaving the hall for one of the smaller rooms, we find much the same kind of treatment, but here the ornamental ceiling plays an important part in the decoration. The walls were panelled, more or less richly, from floor to ceiling, and were crowned with a carved frieze and projecting cornice, above which started the ceiling ribs. The great chamber at South Wraxall (Plate XLVII.) gives a good idea of the whole effect, but the coved ceiling is somewhat exceptional, and so also is the great projection to the left. This is a mass of masonry required to carry the roofs, but the designer, who found himself obliged to leave it (for this room was contrived in an old house), resolved to face the matter boldly and make an ornamental feature of it. It will be noticed that though the panelling here is quite simple, a good deal of character is obtained by varying the size of the panels in a systematic manner. In the old Town Hall at Leicester there is a good panelled room (Plate XLVIII.), with a handsome chimney-piece and a special seat for the mayor. The work, which bears the date 1637, is simple in design, but is quite as effective and rather more pleasing than many of the more elaborate effects of the time, in which the impression is conveyed that the designers over-exerted themselves. Another good example of rather later date is to be seen at the "Reindeer" Inn, Banbury (Plate XLIX.); the panelling itself is simple, but the doorways and chimney-piece are more elaborate, and the columns which occur at the angles of the window-recess impart considerable vigour to the whole effect. The restraint exhibited and the concentration of the ornament on one or two places is a welcome relief from the superfluity of decoration which not infrequently distinguishes the woodwork of this period. In the broken and curled pediments of the doorway and chimney-piece we get a decided indication that the seventeenth century was well advanced when this work was done. The ceiling here is very richly wrought, and the whole room comes as a surprise in its out-of-the-way situation. [Illustration: PLATE XLVII. THE GREAT CHAMBER, SOUTH WRAXALL MANOR HOUSE, WILTSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE XLVIII. THE OLD TOWN HALL, LEICESTER. INTERIOR.] [Illustration: PLATE XLIX. SIDE OF A ROOM, "REINDEER" INN, BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE L. DETAILS OF PANELLING FROM SIZERGH HALL. (NOW IN SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.)] [Illustration: PLATE LI. BROUGHTON CASTLE, OXFORDSHIRE. INTERIOR PORCH (ABOUT 1599).] [Illustration: 148.--PANELLING FROM SIZERGH HALL, WESTMORLAND (NOW IN SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).] Sizergh Hall, in Westmorland, offered a still more elaborate example, which has now been erected in South Kensington Museum (Fig. 148 and Plate L.). The panels here are not carved, but inlaid--a method of decoration much in vogue in Italy, where some exquisite drawing is bestowed upon it, but not prevalent in England. There are a number of instances in different parts of the country, but, compared with carving, inlay was seldom resorted to. The domed turret in the corner of the room should be noticed (Fig. 148); it is, in fact, an inside porch contrived so as to allow access between two other rooms without having to come through the third. This device in planning is not of frequent occurrence, but when it was considered necessary much care was taken to produce an attractive feature. There are several in the southern counties, notably at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire (Plate LI.), at the Red Lodge, in Bristol, and at Bradfield, in Devonshire. This room at Sizergh presents a fresh type of treatment in the junction of wall and ceiling. In previous examples the wood panelling was carried quite up to the ceiling; here it stops short by a foot or more, and the space thus left is occupied by a modelled plaster frieze which leads up to the ornamental ceiling. This method was adopted as frequently as the other; the depth of the plaster frieze varied a good deal, being in one of the rooms at Hardwick Hall as much as six or seven feet, and filled with figure subjects modelled in relief and painted, representing hunting and other woodland scenes: the space below the frieze is covered with tapestry instead of panelling (Plate LII.). DOORS. [Illustration: 149.--DOORWAY, ABBOTT'S HOSPITAL, GUILDFORD, SURREY (1627).] Doorways presented another opportunity for the display of design. At Sizergh the door is merely a portion of the panelling on hinges, the porch in which it is hung gives it the requisite importance; but as a rule the doorways were surrounded with a large amount of decoration. In important houses they were flanked with columns or pilasters, were surmounted with a frieze and cornice, and often with a pediment; obelisks stood over the pilasters; the frieze was fluted or carved or adorned at intervals with heads; some convenient panel was filled with the owner's arms; nothing was omitted that an extravagant fancy could suggest (Plate LIII.). At Levens Hall, in Westmorland, there is a fine panelled room with a richly ornamented doorway (Plate LIV.), in which fantastic figures support a cornice whereon is set up a panel for the owner's arms, flanked on either hand by a contorted animal. In the same district, at Conishead Priory, there is a panelled room of even greater elaboration than this at Levens. Some of the panels are ornamented with mouldings mitred into various patterns, but most of them have niches with pediments or raised panels surrounded with mouldings curved and straight and breaking back in a bewildering manner, while here, there, and everywhere are cherubs' heads and bunches of fruit--the whole effect being rather too bizarre. [Illustration: PLATE LII. HARDWICK HALL, DERBYSHIRE. THE PRESENCE-CHAMBER.] [Illustration: PLATE LIII. DOORWAY IN A HOUSE AT BRISTOL.] [Illustration: PLATE LIV. LEVENS HALL, WESTMORLAND. A DOORWAY.] [Illustration: 150.--LATCH FROM ABBOTT'S HOSPITAL, GUILDFORD.] [Illustration: 151.--LATCH FROM HADDON HALL.] [Illustration: 152.--LOCK-PLATES, LATCHES, &c.] [Illustration: 153.--CASEMENT FASTENER FROM HADDON HALL.] Sometimes the embellishment surrounding the door was in stone or even marble, which being less susceptible of minute detail was more soberly treated. In smaller houses the treatment was naturally less elaborate, but even in places like St. Peter's Hospital, Bristol, and Abbott's Hospital at Guildford, the doorways had much attention bestowed upon them (Fig. 149 and Plate LV.). At Gayton Manor House, in Northamptonshire, there is a still simpler treatment, the effect being enhanced by projecting the door some inches into the room (Plate LV.). The hinges and latches of the doors and the fastenings of the window casements were of wrought iron, and were always more or less ornamental. There were invariably skill and ingenuity bestowed upon even the smallest piece of work. The latch from Abbott's Hospital, illustrated in Fig. 150, is an example of a spring latch, that is to say, instead of depending merely upon its weight to keep it in its place, it is furnished with a spring, and the whole of the simple mechanism is displayed to view. The plate to which it is fixed is shaped in suitable places, and the latch and its accessories are also ornamented to a certain extent. On the other side of the door would be a handle, something after the fashion of that shown in Fig. 151, which, however, is at Haddon. It is treated in a similar fashion: the plate is slightly ornamented, and the handle itself is wrought into a shape at once convenient to grasp and agreeable to the eye. In the casement fasteners a little more ornament was sometimes indulged in, advantage being taken of the fact that the ironwork was outlined against the light of the window. There are two simple examples shown in Fig. 152, and a more elaborate one in Fig. 153. The same treatment was applied to the escutcheons of keyholes, of which examples are shown in Fig. 152 and Fig. 154; the former also exhibits a lock plate and a drop handle and plate. It will be noticed that the whole of this ornament, although in some instances it looks rich, is in reality obtained by the simplest means, which consist in the main of cutting a thin plate of metal into a variety of shapes; there is hardly any modelling about it. This method is characteristic of most of the ironwork of the time; it was only seldom that modelled ornament was indulged in to the extent shown in the knocker and plate illustrated in Fig. 155. [Illustration: PLATE LV. DOORWAY, GAYTON MANOR HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. DOORWAY, ST. PETER'S HOSPITAL, BRISTOL.] [Illustration: 154.--KEY-PLATE FROM ABBOTT'S HOSPITAL, GUILDFORD.] [Illustration: 155.--A KNOCKER (1618).] CHIMNEY-PIECES. Much elaboration was bestowed upon the chimney-pieces, of which, indeed, there are very few simple examples to be met with. They were made of wood, of stone, and of marble. Wood and stone were the more usual materials employed, and it is difficult to say upon which the detail was the more minute. The general idea that controlled the designs was much the same in all cases, but the treatment of it varied. The idea was to flank the fireplace opening with columns carrying an entablature consisting of architrave, frieze, and cornice, the projection of the latter forming a convenient shelf. On the top of this composition was another of the same kind, but with smaller columns and of more delicate proportion. The space enclosed between the columns, which in the lower half was the fireplace, was occupied in the upper half by some kind of carved subject. This was very often the arms of the owner, being either those of the family, or his own special achievement. At Boughton House, in Northamptonshire, there is an example of this kind (Plate LVI.). It is fairly simple in design; the centre-piece is the Montagu arms; on the margin of the panel is the motto adopted by Sir Edward Montagu, who caused the work to be done; and in the frieze below is one of the innumerable Latin aphorisms with which houses of this time abound. The fireplace opening occupies the full width between the sides of the chimney-piece, and if the grate were removed, would give a tolerable idea of the appearance of an Elizabethan fireplace, with its cast-iron fire-back delicately modelled, and the fire-dogs, or andirons, to hold the logs in place. This particular fire-back, however, is of a later date. Almost contemporary with this fireplace at Boughton is one at Lacock Abbey (Plate LVII.), equally simple in design, but executed with more refinement, and having a very unusual adjunct in the shape of a hearthstone ornamented with a pattern inlaid with lead. The two works are likely to be of much the same date, as Sir William Sharington of Lacock died in 1553, and Sir Edward Montagu of Boughton in 1556. At Barlborough, in Derbyshire, there is a fine chimney-piece still fairly simple, in which the upper part is devoted to the owner's personal history (Plate LVIII.). His name was Francis Rodes, a lawyer, and subsequently a justice of the Common Pleas. He married twice. These facts are all set forth on the chimney-piece. His own arms, and those of his two wives, are carved at large, and the names of his wives are printed against their shields. The upper cornice is supported by two caryatides instead of columns, one of whom represents Justice, in allusion to the calling of the master. At Hatfield House, in a room called after King James, there is a handsome marble chimney-piece, with a large statue of the King in his robes as the centre-piece (Plate LIX.). Here, too, there is an open hearth, with an iron fire-back and handsome andirons. In the great chamber at South Wraxall is a very elaborate stone chimney-piece (Plate LX.), in which the prevailing idea is highly developed. The lower entablature is supported by pairs of caryatides growing out of pilasters, and adorned with bands and swags of flowers. Within the main enclosure is a subordinate margin of mouldings and egg-and-tongue enrichments. The upper part of the composition, though founded on the same idea of columns supporting a crowning cornice, is much elaborated with niches and carved panels. There are no shields of arms, which is rather a curious omission, but instead there are statues of abstract conceptions--Arithmetica, Geometria, Prudentia, and Justitia. The whole effect is extremely handsome, but it is too intricate to be quite satisfactory. [Illustration: PLATE LVI. STONE CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM BOUGHTON HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (BEFORE 1556).] [Illustration: PLATE LVII. STONE CHIMNEY-PIECE FROM LACOCK ABBEY, WILTSHIRE. (BEFORE 1553).] [Illustration: PLATE LVIII. BARLBOROUGH HALL, DERBYSHIRE (1584). A CHIMNEY-PIECE.] [Illustration: PLATE LIX. HATFIELD HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE. CHIMNEY-PIECE IN KING JAMES'S ROOM (ABOUT 1612).] [Illustration: PLATE LX. STONE CHIMNEY-PIECE IN THE GREAT CHAMBER, SOUTH WRAXALL MANOR HOUSE, WILTSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXI. HARDWICK HALL, DERBYSHIRE. A CHIMNEY-PIECE.] In contrast to this is an interesting chimney-piece in a bedroom at Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire (Plate LXI.). The material is marble, and the design is unpretending. Its noticeable feature is the panel that serves as overmantel, carved with much grace and spirit. The subject seems to be Apollo and the Nine Muses, though some of the latter appear to have abandoned for the time being the callings over which they presided, in order to join in concerted music. The period of the work is put beyond a doubt by the presence of the royal arms with Elizabeth's supporters, the lion and the dragon, and of the initials E. R. Panels with figure subjects were not uncommon, although they were not often so well executed as this. Scriptural themes were frequently represented, but they did not necessarily imply any special religious character in the house, and often in some of the other rooms of the same house would be other themes of quite mundane inspiration. At East Quantockshead, in Somerset, a house of the Luttrells, one room has in the overmantel the Descent from the Cross, the next a mermaid with scrollwork and flowers, the next the Luttrell arms and the date 1614: others have Christ Blessing the Children; the Lamentation over Jerusalem, with the city in the distance, and a hen in the foreground gathering her chickens under her wings; and the Agony in the Garden. Another house in that district has the Affliction of Job, with the principal figure represented as being in exceedingly poor case. Occasionally there were no figure subjects, nor even shields, the panels being quite plain, as in the wood chimney-piece at Ford House, Newton Abbot (Plate LXII.), where the considerable amount of enrichment serves as ornament only, and does not lend lustre to the family arms. The workmanship is not of the best, and the details of the design are somewhat poor and wanting in imagination, especially in the treatment of the arched panels; but it is characteristic of a good deal of work of the time. The chimney-piece at Benthall Hall (Fig. 156) is far more beautifully conceived. It departs from the regular treatment in the disposition of the main panels. There is great freedom about the play of the strap-work and figures surrounding the cartouches, and if it be compared with the panelling in the same room (Plate XLIII.), it will be seen that while preserving the same general idea, there is a special richness about this part of the work which is quite appropriate to it as being the chief feature of the room. It will be seen that here, too, the cartouches in the upper panels bear coats of arms. At Whiston, in Sussex, there is a stone chimney-piece which has got excluded from the house, and now adorns an outside wall. It is of unusual design (Plate LXIII.), but the family arms form the centre-piece, and are flanked by figures of warriors in recesses divided by small, elegant columns. In the upper part is a circular panel containing two subjects, of which it is difficult to decipher the meaning; the figures, however, are in violent action. Bolsover Castle contains some of the most striking examples of chimney-pieces to be found in the country. They are all in stone or marble, and have a variety and originality of design which are quite remarkable. Two of them are illustrated on Plate LXIV. There are also a number of small ones fitted into corners of the rooms (Fig. 157), and it will be seen that the walls against which the chimney-piece is placed are faced with stone to receive it, and that this plain stonework is surrounded with a moulding against which the wood panelling stops. [Illustration: 156.--WOOD CHIMNEY-PIECE, BENTHALL HALL, SHROPSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXII. WOOD CHIMNEY-PIECE, FORD HOUSE, NEWTON ABBOT, DEVONSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXIII. STONE CHIMNEY-PIECE, WHISTON, SUSSEX. (NOW OUT OF DOORS.)] [Illustration: PLATE LXIV. BOLSOVER CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE. TWO CHIMNEY-PIECES.] [Illustration: 157.--STONE CHIMNEY-PIECE, BOLSOVER CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE.] There was a chimney-piece of unusually good design and workmanship in the palace of Bromley-by-Bow: it is now in the South Kensington Museum (Plate LXV.). The composition does not quite follow the usual lines, inasmuch as the upper part, or overmantel, is not a repetition in idea of the lower. Nor is it divided into panels of equal width and height; the large central panel, which contains the royal arms, is the dominating feature, and is flanked on either side by a niche of much less width and height. The upper half is wedded to the lower by the bosses on the boldly carved shelf, which carry down the main lines of the columns. The arms are those of James I., as the second and third quarters are Scotland and Ireland respectively, and one of the supporters is the Scottish unicorn. In another house near London, at Enfield, there was a well-designed chimney-piece, figured in Richardson's _Studies from Old English Mansions_, in which the royal arms and badges were the centre-pieces of the composition. The part above the fireplace was divided by columns into three panels, of which the middle one was the largest, and contained the arms of Elizabeth with her red dragon as one of the supporters. Of the side panels, one was occupied by the rose crowned and the other by the portcullis crowned. In the smaller panels below these, and between the pedestals on which the columns rested, were the royal initials E. R., and a Latin sentence expressing a pious aphorism. It is not certain whether this house belonged to the Crown, or whether this display of regal heraldry was a compliment to the Queen on the part of the grateful owner. In either case the making of arms and badges the chief objects of interest in the composition, and the introduction of the Latin aphorism on a conspicuous panel are quite characteristic of the time. At Castle Ashby, in Northamptonshire, is a chimney-piece (Plate LXVI.) treated in much the same way as that from Bromley. It was not designed for the house, and therefore the heraldry is not so apposite as usual. The central panel contains the arms of the owner set in an elaborate framework of fanciful carving. On either side is a niche containing a figure of one of the virtues. The columns which support the cornice are richly carved in low relief, as also are the mantel-shelf and the friezes below it. On the lower of the friezes the family arms are repeated, and in the centre is the crest. The opening of the fireplace is flanked on either side by a female figure, which changes in a provoking way into strap-work and the semblance of a pilaster. The whole effect is rich, and the principles dominating the composition are at once recognizable, but the details are too fantastic to be quite agreeable. [Illustration: PLATE LXV. BROMLEY-BY-BOW PALACE. A CHIMNEY-PIECE (AFTER 1603). (NOW IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.)] [Illustration: PLATE LXVI. CASTLE ASHBY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. A CHIMNEY-PIECE.] CEILINGS. Of all the architectural work of the time of Elizabeth and James, that which was peculiarly English is to be found in the ceilings. It was a development of native tradition, and although, like all other work of the time, it was influenced by Italian models, it retained its individuality with great tenacity, and in no other country can the same special development of design be found. The root-idea of an Elizabethan ceiling is to cover the space with a shallow projecting rib forming a more or less regular pattern. The ribs varied in section, and the patterns varied in form. The ribs and the panels they enclosed were sometimes perfectly plain, sometimes highly decorated with modelled work; and between these two extremes were infinite gradations--plain ribs and decorated panels, or plain panels and decorated ribs, the decoration varying from something quite simple to ornament of much elaboration. The plainest examples are sufficient to give character to a room, while the richest are bewildering in the intricacy of the pattern and the minuteness of the detail. [Illustration: 158.--CEILING OF THE PRESENCE CHAMBER, HAMPTON COURT (CIR. 1535).] The origin of the idea is to be found in the treatment adopted by the late Gothic joiners. When they had a large flat surface to deal with, they divided it into panels by moulded wood ribs, and they frequently covered the intersection of the ribs with a carved boss or with carved foliage. Their main lines, being formed of wood, were straight; their panels rectilinear and often rectangular, the whole treatment being suggested by the moulded constructional timber of earlier roofs. At Hampton Court, in the portions built by Wolsey and Henry VIII., there are several ceilings of this kind still left. The ribs are arranged in simple geometrical patterns with straight lines. In the watching chamber, at the end of the Great Hall, these ribs are of a fair size, both in width and depth, and at certain intersections they are bent downwards to form a pendant after the fashion prevalent in the stone vaulting of the time (Fig. 158). Some of the panels thus enclosed are adorned with a kind of independent circular boss formed of a wreath surrounding one of the royal badges, or even the royal arms. These bosses are not carved, but modelled in _papier mâché_, or some similar substance, and they, together with the wood ribs, are secured to the joists above. Two of these bosses are illustrated in Fig. 159, and it is in the wreaths of these comparatively unimportant adjuncts that the only touch of the new fashion is to be found. [Illustration: 159.--BOSSES FROM CEILINGS AT HAMPTON COURT.] Other rooms have ceilings of which the ribs are much smaller in depth and width: the ribs are again arranged in patterns with straight lines, and at their intersections there are four small leaves of lead nailed on, the whole junction being covered with a small plain wood boss, which forms the centre of the flower. At other intersections each of the four angles of the flat ceiling is occupied with a small modelled head in foliage, all of _papier mâché_; one of these is also shown in Fig. 159. The four insertions taken together form a circle, which is divided into four quadrants by the intersecting ribs (Fig. 160); and the whole arrangement is the first step towards the elaborate decoration which was afterwards introduced, when the facility with which plaster can be worked was recognized and acted on. [Illustration: PLATE LXVII. HAMPTON COURT PALACE. CEILING OF CARDINAL WOLSEY'S CLOSET.] [Illustration: 160.--PATERA TO A CEILING AT HAMPTON COURT.] Another, though somewhat similar, type of ceiling is to be found in a little room called Cardinal Wolsey's Closet; but here the decoration is more general, and is founded more directly on the Italian manner (Plate LXVII.). The ceiling is divided by wood ribs into rectilinear panels of small size and simple design; the intersections of the ribs are covered, in the manner already mentioned, with a plain wood boss and lead leaves bent down into the angles; each panel is filled with Italian decoration modelled in _papier mâché_; the whole is screwed up to the floor-joists above. The effect is very rich and elaborate. There is also a frieze on the wall which formed part of the design, although its precise relation to the ceiling can no longer be detected owing to modern alterations. The relation was probably something like what we see to-day (Plate LXVII.), but a close scrutiny shows that the connecting links between the ceiling and the frieze have disappeared; there must have been some kind of moulded cornice. There can be little doubt that the spacing of the panels in the frieze was made to agree with those of the ceiling, and that it had a moulding of some importance at the top to connect it with the ceiling, and corresponding to the border which it still retains at the bottom, on which is painted repeatedly Wolsey's motto "Dominus mihi adjutor." The panels in the frieze are ornamented in a manner corresponding with the ceiling panels, which all contain either a rose or a fleur-de-lys, the devices of Henry VIII. This ceiling is of great interest, because it is one of the earliest of a highly decorated kind left to us--for the Tudor joiners placed little, if any, decoration in their panels; it is more Italian in manner than any other that survives, and it is formed of wood ribs and modelled filling, which were made elsewhere and then brought to the room to be fitted and fixed in position. From the occurrence of Wolsey's motto in the frieze, it is probable that this work was done by him; it would consequently date prior to his death in 1530. Richardson, in his _Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I._, gives a large drawing of a ceiling in the Chapel Royal, St. James's, dated 1540, which is very similar in character to Wolsey's. It consists of small geometrical panels formed by wood ribs, enclosing rich designs in the Italian manner, among which the King's devices are constantly repeated, together with the date, the initials of Henry and Anne of Cleves, and such mottoes as "Vivat rex," "Stet diu felix." If the latter aspiration were fulfilled, it certainly was not in conjunction with the wife whose initials are on this ceiling that the wished-for happiness was attained, for she was divorced in July, 1540; and we therefore incidentally learn that the ceiling must have been put up in the first half of that year. In addition to the ornament already mentioned the King's arms frequently occur. The ribs in this case are broader than those at Hampton Court, and they are ornamented with a running pattern cast in lead. [Illustration: 161.--PART OF THE CEILING IN THE LONG GALLERY, HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXVIII. DEENE HALL, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. CEILING OF A BEDROOM.] [Illustration: 162.--PART OF A COVED CEILING AT BECKINGTON ABBEY, SOMERSET.] [Illustration: 163.--COVED CEILING, BECKINGTON ABBEY, SOMERSET.] These two ceilings are the most Italian in character which have survived. The type does not seem to have been generally adopted; but it was rather a simpler one, founded more directly on Tudor methods, which was developed. The wood ribs were replaced by plaster, and in the more plastic material they were no longer kept in straight lines, but were curved into an infinite variety of patterns, more or less intricate. The intersections were sometimes, but not often, covered with foliage; as a rule they were left bare, but where the pattern left a salient angle the lower members of the moulding were carried out to form the stalk of some foliage, as may be seen in the long gallery at Haddon (Fig. 161), and also at South Wraxall (Plate XLVII.). The ribs, which at first were of a section similar to that of their predecessors in wood, soon assumed other proportions: they increased in width and lessened in depth; they sometimes ceased to have any mouldings, and became more like ribbons or straps, as in the example from Beckington Abbey (Fig. 162), but more often they retained their moulded edges, and were ornamented on the flat face with a minute running pattern, such as that at Deene Hall (Plate LXVIII.), and the "Reindeer" Inn, Banbury (Plate LXIX.). The strap-work ribs did not form such regular set patterns as the others: they enclosed a panel here and there, but wandered off into spirals and scrolls, and were emphasized at intervals by little ornamental knobs, such as may be seen in the ceiling of the gallery at Charlton House, Wiltshire. It was by no means necessary for the ceilings to be flat. Indeed, this kind of decoration was exactly suited for application to coved ceilings such as that already seen at South Wraxall (Plate XLVII.), and that at Beckington Abbey (Fig. 163), where there is not only the main vault of the ceiling, but also a subsidiary cove at the side, the curved face of which is ornamented with a variation of the principal pattern. The end wall of the room is also decorated in a similar way in the upper part where its shape is controlled by the curves of the ceiling. The example at Beckington Abbey is among the more formal of those where the strap-work type was employed; there are panels of regular shape, and the scrolled ends balance one another. But in some instances the strap-work conformed in its course to no regular pattern at all; it twisted and interlaced and bent itself back upon no system whatever, except that of covering the surface evenly, and of gathering itself into a knot or of surrounding a pendant at regular intervals, the result being that the most prominent features stand out in regular array from a mazy background that requires concentrated attention to follow. There is a ceiling of this kind among the many beautiful examples at Audley End. These erratic designs were used simultaneously with others of much severer character, where the pattern is of the simplest in structure, and richness of effect is derived from its frequent repetition, and from the ornament in the panels. Such an example is to be seen at Sizergh (Fig. 164), and others, slightly more elaborate, at Aston Hall (Plates LXX., LXXI.), where the modelling is beautifully delicate and varied. But in both these examples the proportion is so carefully managed that the shape of the panels, which is the foundation of the design, is not obscured by the patterns which occupy them. The effect is equally rich in both, although the width of the rib and the manner of its decoration are varied. These ceilings are fairly late in date, as Aston Hall was being built from 1618 to 1635, and comes quite at the end of the period under discussion, but they retain all the characteristics of Elizabethan and Jacobean work. Another example of the formal kind is at Benthall Hall (Fig. 165), where the main panels are all of oblong rectangular shape, and are filled with strap-work enrichment surrounding an elliptical boss. The patterns are varied in every case, and exhibit considerable ingenuity in obtaining the same general effect with entirely different disposition of lines. It will also be seen, by comparing this ceiling with the panelling and chimney-piece in the same room (Plate XLIII. and Fig. 156), that they are all _en suite_, and not, as is often the case, designed without relation one to the other. The ceiling at the "Reindeer" Inn, Banbury (Plate LXIX.), is also thoroughly Jacobean, although, from the style of the wood panelling, the room must date from well on in the seventeenth century. Soon after this time the large unbroken space of the ceilings began to be cut up into large panels by cross-beams: the spaces thus formed were still of considerable size, and were decorated in the old manner, as may be seen in a room in the entrance tower at Haddon (Fig. 166), and at Carbrook Hall, Sheffield (Plate XLII.). But it was an easy step to omit this surface decoration, and when that was done, the ceilings became the large coffered ceilings characteristic of the style which followed the Jacobean. [Illustration: 164.--PART OF A CEILING FROM SIZERGH HALL, WESTMORLAND (NOW IN SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).] [Illustration: 165.--CEILING FROM BENTHALL HALL, SHROPSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXIX. THE REINDEER INN, BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE. CEILING.] [Illustration: 166.--CEILING IN GATEHOUSE, HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXX. CEILING OF THE GREAT CHAMBER, ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM (CIR. 1635).] [Illustration: PLATE LXXI. CEILING OF KING CHARLES' BEDROOM, ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM (CIR. 1635.)] As in the chimney-pieces, so in the ceilings, a favourite method of ornamentation was to introduce the owner's arms and badges. Of the examples given here only two, as it happens, illustrate this custom--the ceilings at Haddon (Fig. 161) and Sizergh (Fig. 164). The square panel at Haddon encloses a shield surrounded by a delicate strap-work border, and bearing the arms of Manners impaling Vernon, the work having been done by the Sir John Manners who came into possession of Haddon through his marriage with Dorothy Vernon, one of the co-heiresses of her father, Sir George, called the King of the Peak. At Sizergh one of the panels encloses a shield of arms, and others a badge. [Illustration: 167.--PENDANTS OF PLASTER CEILINGS.] There is a very splendid ceiling in the gallery at Blickling, in Norfolk, wherein various badges are introduced, and another at Apethorpe, in Northamptonshire. Others might be named, but the custom was not so widespread in the case of ceilings as of chimney-pieces, perhaps owing to the plasterers having a number of stock designs from which they worked, and which, of course, would not include the arms of any special family. There seems no doubt that the plasterers did have such stock designs, but it is curious how seldom they are found repeated; hardly anywhere, indeed, can two designs be found which are exactly alike. [Illustration: 168.--EXAMPLES OF PLASTER FRIEZES FROM MONTACUTE, AUDLEY END, AND CHARLTON HOUSE, WILTSHIRE.] Besides heraldic ornament, there was a certain amount of modelled figure subjects of the usual kind--allegorical, mythological, and scriptural; but English plasterers were not very good at modelling the human figure, and it seems to have been generally recognized that a ceiling is not the most favourable position for a close study of detail, and the effect aimed at was one of general richness which did not demand minute investigation--such as, for instance, is necessary to appreciate one of Verrio's painted ceilings--and yet which repaid such scrutiny if subjected to it. Most of the ornament was of a kind which no one would examine unless specially interested--as a draughtsman, for instance, might be; but in some cases the beautiful modelling induces even the casual visitor to put his neck to inconvenience, as he gladly would do to see the Fish ceiling at Audley End, where the panels enclose a number of excellently modelled fishes and other denizens, real and imaginary, of the ocean, and where the pendants are of unusual beauty. Pendants of more or less projection were another means of adding variety and interest to the design (Fig. 167), and they varied in size from a mere excrescence to an elaborate shaft, supported by figures half human, half foliage, which served to hang the lamp from. This shaft would only occur in the centre of the design, but the lesser pendants were introduced at regular intervals and accentuated its salient points. Another kind of ceiling had no considerable ribs at all, but was covered with a flowing pattern in low relief, so arranged as to fall into a more or less symmetrical design. This is by no means a usual form, but there is an example at Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire, and another, which stands halfway between the two ideas, in the gallery at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire. [Illustration: 169.--PLASTER FRIEZE FROM MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET.] At the junction of the ceiling and the wall was a series of mouldings forming a cornice: these were sometimes in wood and formed the crowning member of the oak panelling, and sometimes they were in plaster. Beneath them on the surface of the wall there was frequently a plaster frieze of more or less depth. Occasionally it was only a few inches deep, as in the drawing-room at Haddon (Plate XLI.), but more usually it was from two to three feet, and in one room at Hardwick it was much deeper, as already mentioned (see Plate LII.). The narrower friezes were ornamented with some kind of running pattern, the wider ones were divided into panels in various ways, and often displayed the family arms. Examples of the narrower kind in plaster may be seen on Plates LIII. and LXXVI., while others forming part of the panelling are shown on Plates XLIII., XLVII., and XLIX. Sizergh Hall (Plate L.) has a frieze on the wood panelling and another in plaster above it. Examples of different kinds of friezes are given in Fig. 168, and one of considerable depth, and adorned with shields set in large panels, is shown from Montacute (Fig. 169). A fairly deep frieze is to be seen at Carbrook (Plate XLII.), of which a small part of the detail is shown in Fig. 170. An example of the way in which a pattern was fitted into an unusually-shaped space is shown in Fig. 171. [Illustration: 170.--PART OF PLASTER FRIEZE, CARBROOK HALL, NEAR SHEFFIELD.] [Illustration: 171.--CEILING OF A TRIANGULAR BAY WINDOW AT LITTLE CHARLTON, KENT.] CHAPTER IX. INTERIOR FEATURES (_continued_). STAIRCASES, GALLERIES, GLAZING. The staircases of the early part of the sixteenth century followed the old fashion, and were of the "corkscrew" type, winding round a central newel. They were built of stone or brick, and were hardly, if at all, ornamented. Then, quite suddenly, the fashion changed, and they were constructed of wood in straight, broad flights, with frequent landings. Everyone who has been up a church tower knows how tiring it is to climb the winding, never-ending steps, unrelieved by anything in the shape of a landing. It is somewhat less fatiguing to mount one of the grand circular staircases of the châteaux on the Loire, the task being lightened by the greater width of the steps and the introduction of more frequent landings. But the management of the landings is one of the great difficulties in a spiral staircase, because they break the regular sweep of the architectural lines. Whether English craftsmen recognized this difficulty from what they saw in France, or whether the idea of improving the circular type did not occur to them, it is impossible to say; but no attempt in this direction was made, unless it may have been at Rothwell Market-house (1577), where a circular staircase of considerable width was intended, although no remains of the actual stairs exist. There seems to be no intermediate type between the stone spiral and the straight flight in wood. In France, and especially in the district of the Loire, the old narrow, difficult steps were wonderfully improved; from being merely a means of ascending, they became elaborate pieces of work, upon which much ingenuity of contrivance and ornament was bestowed. From being two or three feet wide, they became ten or twelve. Instead of curling up a narrow turret, they occupied a considerable tower, and the tower, being one of the chief features of the house, had to be treated with great care. Much fancy was expended upon the internal treatment; a handrail was worked upon the newel, and wound round it in a continuous line; another projection formed a plinth, a third served as a cornice; another cornice followed the sweep of the steps where they rested on the outside wall: everything was done to make the constructional features serve as ornaments, and the results were some of the most interesting and curious pieces of stonework that can be seen. But nothing of the kind was attempted in England. The nearest approach is the stone vaulted staircase at Burghley House (Plate LXXII.), which resembles some of those in France, where the steps are carried in straight flights instead of round a central newel. There is such an instance at the Château de Chenonceau, where the two straight flights are on either side of a dividing wall, the lower flight merging into the upper by means of winding stairs. These winding stairs were eschewed by English designers, who nearly always kept to straight runs, and at Burghley the two main flights are connected by a shorter one across the landing. The date of this staircase is not quite certain, but it probably belongs to the work which was being done about the year 1556. The idea of stone vaulted stairs, however, did not obtain any hold in England, and there are very few examples to be found. All the finest staircases are of wood, and they seem to have sprung into being without any gradual growth; the connecting links between them and the old corkscrew type, if there were any, have disappeared. [Illustration: 172.--STAIRCASE AT LYVEDEN OLD BUILDING, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXII. STAIRCASE FROM BURGHLEY HOUSE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: 173.--DETAILS OF STAIRCASE, HAMBLETON OLD HALL, RUTLAND.] [Illustration: 174.--STAIRCASE FROM EAST QUANTOCKSHEAD, SOMERSET.] [Illustration: 175.--DETAILS OF STAIRCASE, LYVEDEN OLD BUILDING, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIII. PLANS OF STAIRCASES FROM JOHN THORPE'S DRAWINGS IN THE SOANE MUSEUM.] [Illustration: 176.--PIERCED BALUSTER.] [Illustration: 177.--STAIRCASE AT OCKWELLS MANOR HOUSE, BERKSHIRE.] The principle upon which these wood staircases were constructed may be compared to that of the ladder, where the sides of the ladder are replaced by deep and comparatively narrow pieces of wood called "strings," and the rungs are replaced by the treads and risers. One side of this amplified ladder was placed hard on to the wall, the foot of the other was secured into a stout upright post, or "newel," as also was the top: into the same newel that received the top of the first string the foot of the second was secured at right angles, and so onwards and upwards as far as the staircase extended. At about two feet above the top of the string, and parallel to it, was the handrail, and between the handrail and the string were fixed the balusters. The top of the first flight leant against a flat landing, on which also the foot of the next flight rested. The construction, therefore, was extremely simple in principle, far simpler than that of the continuous winding flights of the eighteenth century; but the component parts were often highly decorated. All the woodwork was of fairly large dimensions; the newels were six, seven, or eight inches square, the handrail was generally nearly as wide as the newel, the strings were three inches thick or even more, the balusters were proportionately massive. The flights were five or six feet wide, and comprised usually about six steps, although they were longer when necessity demanded it. The plans on Plate LXXIII. show various arrangements of staircases taken from John Thorpe's collection of plans in the Soane Museum. Nos. 1 and 2 are the most usual types, and of these No. 1 is the more frequent. The space to be occupied by the stairs is divided into nine equal squares, of which those in the corners represent the landings, while the intermediate ones are occupied by the steps; the middle square is the "well-hole." The staircase at Lyveden Old Building, in Northamptonshire, is planned on this principle, and the effect can be seen in the sketch in Fig. 172. The flights in this case consist of seven steps each. This arrangement is very simple, but it necessitates the access to the upper rooms being from one of the comparatively small corner landings. Another plan, giving a larger landing at the top, is shown in No. 2, and an amplification of the same idea is given in No. 3, where, a larger number of steps being required, the sides have two flights with an intermediate landing. Sometimes the central square, instead of being occupied by an open well-hole, was either a solid block or a shell of masonry, round the four sides of which the steps ascended. Such an arrangement is shown in No. 5, where also may be seen some winding steps in one of the corners; but these winders are not of frequent occurrence, short straight flights being the rule. These four types are those most frequently adopted. Of the others, No. 4 is an instance of the employment of winders, and shows the somewhat unusual arrangement of two lower flights combining into one upper flight; No. 6, being in a turret, consists wholly of winders; and Nos. 7 and 8 are instances of a rather grander style of planning, in which it is evident that considerable effect was aimed at. The plans varied, of course, according to the disposition of the rooms to be reached; the chief characteristics were simplicity of construction and massiveness of effect. In the less important houses the work was fairly plain: the newels were unornamented, except for a shaped top; the string was moulded at the top and bottom; the balusters were merely stout turned bars. But there was much variety imparted to the turning, and while many of the outlines are rather clumsy, many of them also exhibit considerable subtlety and refinement. To increase the richness of effect the newels were ornamented either with carving, or with a pattern contrived by sinking the groundwork, thus leaving the pattern itself raised and at the same level as the general face of the newel. The tops of the newel were sometimes little more than round knobs, as at Hambleton Old Hall (Fig. 173), and a house at Warwick (Fig. 180); but more often they projected far above the handrail and were shaped in a variety of ways, of which four examples of varying degrees of elaboration are given from East Quantockshead (Fig. 174), Lyveden Old Building (Fig. 175), Ockwells Manor House (Figs. 177, 178), and the Charterhouse (Fig. 181). They were sometimes made the pedestals upon which figures were placed--such as boys playing instruments, as at Hatfield; or warriors in various guises, as at Blickling; or the animal sacred to the particular family concerned, and hallowed in their sight by being borne in their coat of arms. The newels at the Charterhouse carry a crest by way of finial (Fig. 181). Then the outer surface of the outer string would be also carved (Figs. 179 and 181), or decorated with a pattern; and the balusters would sometimes be flat pieces of wood shaped and pierced in a variety of patterns (Fig. 176). Sometimes, instead of balusters there was a series of arches springing from small columns and following the upward rake of the stairs; as at Ockwells Manor House (Figs. 177, 178), and the Charterhouse (Fig. 181). Or, again, the balustrade would consist of woodwork cut and slightly carved into a version of the favourite strap-work pattern, like that at Benthall Hall, Shropshire (Fig. 179). Not infrequently the space at command forbade the arranging of the flights at right angles to each other; the second flight then returned side by side with the first. In such cases either the newels were increased in width sufficiently to take both the handrails, or the handrail and string intersected each other in the way shown on Fig. 180. Occasionally, when a little space divided the flights, the great newels were carried up and joined to each other by wood arches, as in the instance of a staircase at Audley End (Plate LXXIV.): this kind of treatment occasionally produced a most intricate result, of which a careful study is required in order to make out what are its component parts. [Illustration: 178.--STAIRCASE AT OCKWELLS MANOR HOUSE, BERKSHIRE. PLANS AND DETAILS.] [Illustration: 179.--STAIRCASE AT BENTHALL HALL, SHROPSHIRE.] [Illustration: 180.--STAIRCASE AT WARWICK.] [Illustration: 181.--STAIRCASE AT THE CHARTERHOUSE.] There was no end to the variety which the workmen imparted to the simple constructional features which were the groundwork of the design. The points which were always aimed at were breadth of way, ease of ascent, massive appearance, and very frequently richness of effect. The series of stout newels going up and up in a long procession, each crowned with a handsome finial or heraldic animal, alone is enough to lend stateliness to the staircase; and when these are supplemented with quaint balusters, or a row of arches, or, as in later days, with a carved foliated filling, beyond which is seen the highly ornamented string of the upper flight, the whole effect is particularly striking. As a rule the flights were short, from six to eight steps being considered enough between the various landings, but the number varied according to the height to be attained and the space at command. These fine staircases were clearly made for show as well as use, because it not infrequently happens that having reached the first floor, which was their chief object, they sweep upwards with equal grandeur to the next, where there are only insignificant attics. The upper staircase, however, although it leads to no important room, would be in full view of those who came to the first floor; and it was on this floor that some rooms were placed which were the resort of all who were staying in the house--namely, the Great Chamber and the Long Gallery. The great chamber was, among princes and nobles, the presence chamber, where they received guests. It was the "Great Chamber of Estate." In smaller houses it answered much the same end as the drawing-room of the present day. Even so inconsiderable a person as Slender, who was a small squire, had a great chamber in his house, which he took care to mention casually in the course of his controversy with Falstaff as to the picking of his pocket. [Illustration: PLATE LXXIV. STAIRCASE AT AUDLEY END, ESSEX.] THE LONG GALLERY. The Long Gallery is a feature peculiarly characteristic of the times of Elizabeth and James. Mention has already been made of this apartment, and of the fact that not a few houses were specially planned so as to obtain a gallery of great length. Some of them were extravagant in this respect, the length being as much as eight and ten times the width. At Buckhurst House the gallery was 254 feet long by 16 feet wide, at Ampthill 245 feet by 22 feet, but it is not quite certain that these were not divided into two lengths each. John Thorpe shows the gallery at Slaugham Place to be 200 feet by 27 feet, Audley End probably 190 feet by 27 feet, Holdenby 140 feet by 22 feet, Aston Hall 140 feet by 18 feet, Copthall 136 feet by 22 feet, Burghley 128 feet by 18 feet, and Wollaton 100 feet by 18 feet. Others, to which there are no names, are 200 feet by 20 feet, 150 feet by 25 feet, and 150 feet by 17 feet, besides many of 80 feet in length by widths varying from 10 feet to 21 feet. The purpose of such a long apartment has never been fully explained: it may have been for exercise; it may have had its origin from reasons of display or in imitation of royal palaces, where its use as an ante-room to the royal closet is easily understood; or it may have been merely a development in planning dictated by fashion, each person vying with his neighbour to obtain a long room. But, however this may be, no Elizabethan or Jacobean house of any size was without its long gallery, which was ornamented in the same way as the great chamber, the parlours, and the hall. The walls were either hung with tapestry or panelled, the ceiling was richly moulded, the fireplaces, of which there were two or three in the length, were large and elaborate. The porch of the house was often carried up to form a bay window in the middle of the length, and advantage was taken of other opportunities to break up the extreme length by projections at the side. It was almost always on the topmost floor, where space was of less importance for other purposes; but as many of the houses were only two storeys high, it was usually easy of access, and, of course, it was approached by one, or oftener two, of the principal staircases. The room at Haddon, now called the ballroom, is in reality the long gallery (Plate LXXV.). It is 110 feet 6 inches long by 17 feet 4 inches wide, and its extreme length is broken along one side by three large projecting bays, the middle one of which, measuring 15 feet by 11 feet 6 inches, is itself large enough for a fair-sized room. The legend of the elopement of Dorothy Vernon from this "ballroom" is a modern invention which confuses the public mind in regard to the household arrangements of that period, for Dorothy's father, who greatly embellished Haddon, lived during the prevalence of the Late Tudor style, and had no such huge apartment: it was her husband who fashioned this long gallery in Elizabeth's time, and adorned it in the manner then prevalent. This may seem a small point to insist on, and to the general public no doubt it is; but to the student, whose imagination naturally clings to the picturesque legend, it is important to realize that the work in the "ballroom" was not done by Dorothy's father, who belonged to the Tudor era, but by her husband, who belonged to the Elizabethan. But leaving this point, it may be remarked that the gallery is panelled with unusual richness, and the ceiling is felt to be in harmony with the rest of the work, although the moulded rib is but small, and the pattern it makes is simple. It may also be noted that there is but one fireplace in the whole length of 110 feet, which must have been quite inadequate, according to modern ideas. The gallery at Aston Hall (Plate LXXVI.) is a fine example of its kind. The walls are panelled from the floor nearly up to the ceiling, only sufficient space being left above the woodwork for a plaster frieze. The panels have an arched enrichment in each of them, in accordance with the fashion prevalent in King James's time, and they are divided into bays by shallow pilasters, fluted above, and ornamented with imitation rustic work below. The ceiling is of great richness, and itself goes a long way towards "furnishing" the room. There is a row of windows down one side, and a large one at the end. The Hall is now used as a museum, and the rail, which occupies a conspicuous position in the illustration, serves to protect the articles exhibited. [Illustration: PLATE LXXV. HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE. THE LONG GALLERY.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXVI. ASTON HALL, WARWICKSHIRE. THE LONG GALLERY (ABOUT 1635).] Although it is tolerably certain that Sir George Vernon had no such room as the long gallery, it is not quite clear that houses in his time were all without them, for at Hampton Court, in the time of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, there was the Queen's long gallery, which was 180 feet long by 25 feet wide, lighted on both sides, and having, like Haddon, three bay windows down one side, the middle one of which was not square but circular.[27] But although the palace had such an apartment, there is no evidence that the smaller houses in general possessed them until the time of Elizabeth, when they became of universal adoption. [27] _Law_, Vol. I., p. 182. GLAZING. [Illustration: 182.--PORTION OF GLAZING FROM IGHTHAM CHURCH, KENT.] The windows in the gallery at Hampton Court were glazed with heraldic glass displaying the arms, badges, and mottoes of the King and Queen. This was in accordance with the custom of the time, the principal windows being generally more or less filled with heraldic devices relating to the family who owned the house. Much of this splendid decoration throughout the country has disappeared, but enough is left to show that the treatment of the glass followed the same lines as the carving of stone and wood. In the early part of the century it consisted of dainty foliage, vases, candelabra, scrolls, and the quaint animals with attenuated bodies, which are characteristic of Italian ornament. Toward the end of the century these were replaced with the strap-work and the great bunches of fruit and flowers which we owe to Dutch designers. A small part of an early pattern from Ightham Church is illustrated in Fig. 182; among the Italian vases and flowers is the English portcullis, the badge of the Tudor family, more particularly of Henry VII. A good example of the later treatment, when the Dutch strap-work was in vogue, is given in a panel from Moreton Old Hall on Plate LXXVII. The strap-work is merely an ornamental border to the shield bearing the family device, and is treated in the same way as that which surrounds most of the shields on the tombs of the period. There is a fair amount of sixteenth century glass to be found up and down the country, but it is mostly in small pieces, either saved from the wreck of larger windows, or consisting of detached coats of arms. The finest display of the later glass that has survived is that in the dining-room of Gilling Castle, in Yorkshire, where there are several large windows full of beautiful heraldic glazing. Much of it was the work of a Dutchman, Bernard Dininckhoff, who signs one of the panels with the date 1585 (Fig. 183). The hall of the Middle Temple also has some good heraldic glass which is dated 1570. There were good English glaziers both before and after Dininckhoff's time. At Hengrave the old glass, dated 1567, was the work of Robert Wright, who was paid £4 for the "making of all the glasse wyndows of the Manour-place, with the sodar, and for xiij. skutchens with armes."[28] In the year 1615 one Walter Gedde published a book of pattern glazing called "A Booke of Sundry Draughtes. Principally serving for Glasiers; And not Impertinent for Plasterers and Gardiners: besides sundry other Professions. Whereunto is annexed the manner how to anniel in Glas; And also the true forme of the Furnace, and the secretes thereof," in which he gives 103 pages of designs for lead glazing of varying merit, out of which four have been selected for illustration on Plate LXXVIII. Few, if any, of these designs have survived in actual execution; such patterns as are still to be found here and there are somewhat simpler in design. It is interesting to observe how Walter Gedde considered that his patterns would be useful to plasterers for the groundwork of their ceiling-designs, and to gardeners for the ornamental beds and knot-work with which they embellished their gardens. [28] _History and Antiquities of Hengrave_, by John Gage. [Illustration: 183.--GLASS PANEL FROM ONE OF THE WINDOWS AT GILLING CASTLE, YORKSHIRE (1585).] [Illustration: PLATE LXXVII. GLASS PANEL FROM MORETON OLD HALL, CHESHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXVIII. PATTERNS FROM "A BOOKE OF SUNDRY DRAUGHTES." BY WALTER GEDDE (1615).] The finest examples of painted glass of the early part of the sixteenth century are the splendid windows at King's College Chapel, which were the work of Englishmen. There are also portions of the beautiful glass from the ruined Chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke, still preserved at the church of Basingstoke, and at the Vyne; and there are three windows in the apse of the chapel of that house. In addition to these examples, there are several windows at St. Neot's Church in Cornwall, the character of which inclines more to the Perpendicular than the Renaissance; there is the east window of St. Margaret's, Westminster; and there are fragments at Balliol and Queen's Colleges, Oxford, and at St. James's, Bury St. Edmund's.[29] The ornament forming the background to the figures in these windows is all similar in character to that which adorns other work of the same period. [29] See _The History of Design in Painted Glass_, by N. H. J. Westlake, 1894, in which are numerous drawings of portions of the glass mentioned in the text. CHAPTER X. MISCELLANEOUS WORK. HOUSES IN STREETS, SCHOOLS, MARKET-HOUSES, &c. [Illustration: 184.--HOUSE FORMERLY IN NORTH STREET, EXETER.] The houses built in towns followed much the same lines as those erected elsewhere in general treatment, but the plan was of course restricted by the situation of the house, and by the fact that it could not derive light from the sides. The fronts were often constructed of wood and plaster, and the upper floors were corbelled out over those beneath in the same fashion as had been customary for many years. Owing to the nature of their materials most of these houses have disappeared through fire or decay. Others have been swept away in the improvements which inevitably accompany prosperity in a town; others have been altered to suit the changes and development of trades. There are not many examples, therefore, to be found except in out-of-the-way places, or in districts of large towns from which the main stream of business has been diverted. There are a few examples in the older parts of Bristol and York, for instance, but they have been much mutilated and altered. Some years ago there was an unusually good specimen in North Street, Exeter (Fig. 184), but it has now disappeared. Here the columns on the storey above the bays were particularly good both in proportion and in general effect, and there was an unusual amount of richness bestowed upon the carving of the corbels and the strings and cornices. Towns near the coast seem to have been richer in houses of this kind than those further inland. The Butter-market at Dartmouth is a good specimen; the first floor is carried on columns, thus forming a covered walk; the bay windows are supported by boldly-carved corbels fashioned, some like fabulous animals, some like human figures. Ipswich has some excellent examples of carved strings and beams; it was customary to enrich the faces of the large beams which carried the projecting storeys, and a considerable amount of fancy in design and dexterity of execution were expended upon them. In the eastern counties generally there is some capital work to be found, both in wood and in modelled plaster. Canterbury has a few remains, one of which, of somewhat late date, is shown in Fig. 185. The general treatment of the windows on the first floor is in accordance with Jacobean methods, but the handling of the boldly-modelled plaster-work above them points towards the latter half of the seventeenth century as the time of its execution. Two of the objects aimed at in these street fronts seem to have been to get plenty of light and to introduce bay windows. In the example from Canterbury, the whole front of the first floor is occupied with windows, and there are two bays introduced in the range which serve as large corbels to the straight front above them. Another example, from Oxford (Plate LXXIX.), also shows the whole front of two floors occupied by window space. But this front is gabled, and has one large bay window in the centre, which is covered by a broken pediment embracing a kind of dormer, all enclosed within the lines of the gable itself, which, however, has undergone some alteration since it was first erected. The difference in the treatment of the arched lights in the several floors should be noticed. Another variety is to be seen in a house in Stratford-on-Avon (Plate LXXIX.), where the general disposition is rather simple, but all the woodwork is highly ornamented. The main beams which carry the projecting storeys are carved in the manner already mentioned as being prevalent at Ipswich. Here, again, there is a bay window on the first floor helping to carry the storey above it, and another projecting window on the top floor, the upper corners of which are hidden behind the barge-boards. The same general treatment is to be seen in an old house in the High Town at Hereford (Fig. 186), where the excellent effect is produced by very simple means. The woodwork of the framing is all straight, but it is massive, and not much less in width than the plaster panels. The upper storey projects far enough to give good shadow, which is varied by the shallow bays just beneath it. The gables have heavy carved barge-boards, and in each of them is a bay window, the top of which, unlike the example from Stratford, is free from interference by the barge-board. The pendants between the bays on the first floor are of the ordinary pierced pattern. In considering these specimens from busy towns, it should be remembered that they have all been more or less restored. [Illustration: 185.--HOUSE IN THE HIGH STREET, CANTERBURY.] [Illustration: 186.--OLD HOUSE, HIGH TOWN, HEREFORD.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXIX. HOUSE IN THE HIGH STREET, OXFORD. HOUSE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON, WARWICKSHIRE.] The fashion of building with timber on the narrow streets of the time was felt to be dangerous, and in the year 1605 a proclamation was made in London that the fore-front and windows of all new houses within the city and one mile thereof should be of brick or stone. The old houses, however, were left until the great fire of 1666 swept them away: it was these charming half-timbered dwellings which afforded the chief fuel for that huge bonfire. In Thorpe's book there are several plans drawn for "London Houses." One (on page 18) is entitled "Three houses for the city, or for a country house at 8 parts to the inch." It shows a row of three houses, two of which have a frontage of 33 feet each, while the third has 24. The plans are very rough and unfinished, but they show alternative ways of providing the accommodation. One house has a hall and kitchen on the front, and a parlour, staircase and buttery at the back, while a "vault" is contrived in the centre in a most insanitary manner. The second has the hall and buttery to the front, the stairs at one side, and the parlour and kitchen to the back. The third (having only 24 feet of frontage) has merely an entrance passage and kitchen to the front, and a parlour at the back, while the staircase is opposite the front door--the plan being a forerunner of the type which later became of universal adoption. The second part of the title, indicating that the plan might be used for a country house, is rather obscure, inasmuch as no redistribution of names among the rooms shown could have converted them into a workable plan for a single house. Another plan (on pages 135, 136) is called a "London house of 3 breadths of ordinary tenements." It has a frontage of 51 feet, thus giving 17 feet as the breadth of an ordinary tenement. With such a frontage, it is of course a much better house than those already described for the city. It was entered at one end, the entry communicating with a narrow yard which gave access to the garden in the rear. The hall looked out into the street, as also did the parlour and buttery. At the back were the winter parlour, the kitchen, and the stairs, with the larder under them. The rooms were not large, the parlour being 18 feet by 13 feet, and the winter parlour 15 feet by 12 feet: as usual, much space was occupied by the large fireplaces. The first-floor plan is not given, but on a higher storey appears an open leaded terrace along the street front, behind which is a narrow and low gallery (only 5 feet to the rafters) extending the whole length of the house, and again behind that there are "sundry lodgings for servants, etc." There are no means of fixing the date of the plan, but it appears to have been prepared for Sir Thomas Lake, who was clerk to the signet in 1595, and a Secretary of State in 1616. If we are to presume that a high official complied with the proclamation as to houses being of stone or brick, the date would be prior to 1605, for although the ground floor is shown with stone walls, those of the upper floor are only of wood and plaster. [Illustration: 187.--CORBELS, "KING'S ARMS," SANDWICH, KENT.] [Illustration: 188.--CORBEL AT CANTERBURY.] [Illustration: 189.--CORBEL AND PENDANT AT CANTERBURY.] [Illustration: 190.--CORBEL, ORTON WATERVILLE, HUNTINGDONSHIRE.] There is one other plan for a town house; it is called "A London house, Lady Derby, Channell Row" (page 110). It is the plan of a much finer house than any of the foregoing, and as it is built round a courtyard, there were no special difficulties in providing light and air. It follows the usual type of large houses, having a central entrance, from which a flagged path leads across the court into the screens of the hall. The staircases, chapel, winter parlour, kitchen and other rooms are grouped round the court in the ordinary way, the only difference being that those which occupy the sides of the court have no windows on their outside walls, but only such as look inwards into the court itself. The restrictions imposed by the fact of the house being a "London house" are therefore very slight. The "Channell Row" where this house was built was probably the street of that name in Westminster. These plans of Thorpe's are of considerable interest, as they show the first steps taken towards developing a plan suitable for the confined spaces available in large towns. [Illustration: 191.--THE "SWAN" INN, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] Reverting to the smaller examples under consideration, we find that a great variety was introduced into the corbels which carried the projecting floors; many of them were grotesques after the fashion of that on the "King's Arms" at Sandwich, in Kent (Fig. 187), others were simpler, like the examples from Canterbury (Figs. 188, 189), while others, like that from Orton Waterville, Huntingdonshire (Fig. 190), combined both ideas. But the characteristic common to them all is boldness, both of size and treatment. They generally had a spiral about them in one form or another, varied by foliage or projecting bosses, or some variation of the strap-work _motif_. The great corner-posts of such houses as formed the corner of a street were often wrought with a remarkable amount of care. They were not only of sufficient size to make suitable angle-posts, but they were brought out at the top in a diagonal manner in order to support the storey above, which overhung the lower one on both faces; an instance of this treatment may be seen in the example from Sandwich (Fig. 187). In some places it was customary not only to bring out the face of each storey beyond that of the one below, but to bring the whole house out over the footwalk. The Rows at Chester are a well-known example of this practice. The Long Row on the great market-place of Nottingham is another instance, but here the arcade has been almost entirely rebuilt, one of the last specimens of a Jacobean front having recently been removed in the course of making a new street. In stone districts the local material was chiefly employed, and all through the small towns and villages of Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire charming little examples, such as the "Swan" Inn at Lechlade (Fig. 191), may be found here and there. The idea is of the simplest--a door in the middle, with a bay window on each side, crowned with a gable. But the disposition of the small windows, the treatment of the door, and the change from the canted side of the bay to the square base of the gable afforded opportunities for variety and for careful treatment sufficient to render these minor examples well worth attention. MARKET-HOUSES, SCHOOLS, ALMSHOUSES, &c. [Illustration: 192.--DESK IN ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM, WILTSHIRE.] Most of the work of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries which has come down to us is to be found in houses; but there are a certain number of other buildings left, such as town-halls, market-houses, schools, and almshouses. Of almshouses, or hospitals, as they are often called, there are some excellent examples in many parts of the country. Ford's Hospital, in Coventry, built in 1529, is an extremely good specimen of Late Gothic woodwork; St. John's Hospital, Rye, is another. The almshouses at Corsham, in Wiltshire, are not only very picturesque outside, but contain some capital woodwork inside, of which a reading-desk is illustrated in Fig. 192. Another set, equally substantial and of greater extent, is to be found at Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire (Fig. 193). The work in these places is simple and substantial; there is no display of ornament, unless perhaps over the entrance, where the donor would place his arms with a certain amount of flourish, partly in carving, partly in inscription; there are no elaborate ceilings nor chimney-pieces, but tables, desks, and chairs of careful design and workmanship have survived in places, and these simple buildings are often valuable in affording examples of plain, unpretentious work. [Illustration: 193.--ALMSHOUSES, CHIPPING CAMPDEN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] [Illustration: 194.--MARKET-HOUSE, SHREWSBURY.] [Illustration: 195.--MARKET-HOUSE, WYMONDHAM, NORFOLK (1617).] [Illustration: 196.--MARKET-HOUSE, CHIPPING CAMPDEN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.] There are not many town-halls of this period to be found. Civic life did not express itself in concrete form in nearly so pronounced a manner as, for instance, in the Low Countries during the period under consideration, and as it is doing at home at the present day. The most striking example of a town-hall of the time is the picturesque Guildhall at Exeter, which has a richly-ornamented front projecting over the pavement and carried on arches. But there were a great many market-houses built. The finest of these, so far as design and workmanship go, is the well-known Market-house at Rothwell, presented to the town about the year 1577 by a neighbouring squire, Sir Thomas Tresham, but left unfinished owing to the donor being harassed on account of his zeal as a Roman Catholic. Like most market-houses, this building was to have consisted of an open market-hall on the ground floor, with a room over it. There is a good example on a larger scale at Shrewsbury (Fig. 194), substantially built in stone, with mullioned windows and an ornamental parapet. The ground floor serves as a covered market, and the upper floor is carried on open arches. At Wymondham, in Norfolk, is a smaller specimen (dated 1617), serving the same purposes, but it is built of timber and plaster (Fig. 195). The upper floor stands on stout posts and brackets, set some two feet within the outside face, and is approached by a quaint wooden staircase. There is a one-storey market-house at Chipping Campden (Fig. 196), built of stone, with arches on each side; the five down the long side are supported on pillars, and have a gable over every alternate arch, while the two at each end are divided by a short length of wall and have a gable over each, thus securing a pleasant variation of treatment: the detail throughout is quite plain. There were also a few market and village crosses erected at this time, but there are not many examples to be found: one of the best is at Brigstock, in Northamptonshire (Plate LXXX.), where its situation in an open space, and backed by stone-built and thatched cottages, renders it a quaint and pleasant feature. The shields at the top bear alternately the royal arms and Elizabeth's initials, E. R., with the date 1586. [Illustration: PLATE LXXX. VILLAGE CROSS, BRIGSTOCK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1586).] [Illustration: 197.--SCHOOL AT BURTON LATIMER, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1622).] During the reign of Edward VI. a large number of schools were founded, and there are numerous examples left of those built during the next fifty years. There is a good specimen of the late sort at Shrewsbury; and of the smaller kind, such as were founded in villages, that at Burton Latimer, in Northamptonshire, is one of the quaintest (Fig. 197). Its features are quite simple; mullioned windows, on which are inscribed the date 1622, and the names of donors or, as we should now call them, subscribers; steep gables with finials at the foot; the ordinary excellent chimney of the district, and a rather elaborate doorway surmounted by a curved gable; such are the means employed to produce this attractive little building. Of other kinds of buildings, which come under no class because there were so few built, may be mentioned the pretty little mill at Bourne Pond, near Colchester, and the Hawking-tower in Althorp Park, Northamptonshire. The former (Fig. 198) is built chiefly of flint, but mixed with the flint are bricks, tiles, and stones. The stone embellishments are somewhat elaborate and varied, and the curious curved and broken outline of the gables points to the Low Countries as the source of its birth. The mill is dated 1591, and bears the arms of its founder, who was a citizen of the adjacent town of Colchester. The Hawking-tower at Althorp is probably unique (Fig. 199). It was built by Robert, Lord Spencer, in 1612 and 1613, and is said to have been erected by him as a token of gratitude for having been raised to the peerage; but if so, the acknowledgment followed the event at an interval of ten years. There is no suggestion of the kind in the only inscription upon it, which runs thus, "This Staninge was made by Robert Lord Spencer 1612 et 1613." It not only bears the arms of Lord Spencer, but also those of the sovereign, very cleverly modelled. The plan (Fig. 200) comprises on the ground floor an entrance, a room with a fireplace, and a staircase, which leads up to the floor above, where the walls were pierced with a number of arches, through which the spectators could watch the sport. These arches have been built up in order to render the place habitable, and one or two rooms have been added at the back with a like purpose, but a little care enables the original arrangements to be made out with tolerable certainty. [Illustration: 198.--MILL AT BOURNE POND, COLCHESTER, ESSEX (1591).] [Illustration: 199.--HAWKING-TOWER, ALTHORP PARK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1612-13).] [Illustration: 200.--HAWKING-TOWER, ALTHORP PARK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1612-13).] At Scole, in Norfolk, a very curious survival of the old classical _motifs_ was to be seen, till the end of last century, in a great sign erected in 1655 for the "White Hart" Inn (Fig. 201). The hart itself lies couchant on the middle of the main beam, beneath a pediment supported by Justice and Plenty, two qualities for which the host may be excused if he considered his house noted. On one side of the centre-piece stands Actæon, about to be torn in pieces by his dogs, to whom he is supposed to be addressing the Latin legend beneath him: "I am Actæon, know your master." On the other side stands Diana, and beyond her is Time, about to devour his child, beginning with its hand; beneath him his identity is made quite clear by the sentence "Tempus edax rerum." In the frieze below the beam are two figures representing (probably) Bacchus and Gambrinus, supported on either side by coats of arms. Angels and lions hold further coats of arms. There is Cerberus with his three heads, while numerous bunches of grapes, men blowing horns, and other devices suitable to the purpose occupy the rest of the space. The whole design might have come from the fertile brain of George Gascoigne, who was responsible for most of the entertainments at Kenilworth when Queen Elizabeth paid her celebrated visit there nearly eighty years before this sign was erected. The fundamental idea which underlay all design of the time was to combine strong classic feeling with picturesqueness of expression. [Illustration: 201.--THE SIGN OF THE "WHITE HART" INN, FORMERLY AT SCOLE, NORFOLK (1655).] WORK IN CHURCHES. [Illustration: 202.--CHICHESTER TOMB, PILTON CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE (1566).] It has already been stated that there is no ecclesiastical architecture of early Renaissance character in England. There were a number of churches built during the first thirty years of the sixteenth century, but they are all Gothic in treatment. The influence of the Renaissance on certain features to be found in churches, such as chantries and tombs, has already been dealt with. It remains to glance at the changes that occurred in church fittings as the century grew older. Although no churches, or extremely few, were built after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, still the Elizabethan and Jacobean squires were not backward in embellishing the ancient structures, and there are plenty of screens, pulpits, font-covers, and particularly tombs, to be found all over the country, although it cannot be denied that under the influence of the revival of Gothic feeling which took place about fifty years ago, a great deal of Elizabethan and Jacobean work was either destroyed, or removed to the vestry, into which confined space it was made to fit by a ruthless exercise of the axe and saw. [Illustration: 203.--FROM ONE OF THE FOLJAMBE TOMBS, CHESTERFIELD CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE (1592).] [Illustration: 204.--TOMB OF G. REED (D. 1610), BREDON CHURCH, WORCESTERSHIRE.] The progress of style in tombs has already been traced to a certain extent in dealing with the early stages of the Renaissance movement. It has been shown how the old idea of the altar tomb, with recumbent figures, lingered on till quite late in the sixteenth century. In the closing years, however, it became fashionable to place the figure, still recumbent, beneath an arched canopy, upon which was lavished an extraordinary amount of ornament. The arch itself was coffered and adorned with bosses and stiff flowers of various kinds. It was flanked with columns which carried an entablature, above which again rose a superstructure displaying the family arms, and so designed that with its supporting obelisks and detached figures it formed a more or less pyramidal finish. The back of the tomb above the figures, and enclosed by the arch, was usually occupied by a tablet setting forth the name and qualities of the defunct person, together with his alliances, if they were thought at all worthy of record; and round this tablet was a frame of strap-work of intricate design filling up the remainder of the space, and decked with all manner of delicate ribbons and garlands. In every suitable place appeared the arms of the chief person concerned, or those of his wife, or some notable family to which they were allied. The whole monument was brightly coloured, where the use of different kinds of marble did not render such embellishment unnecessary, and the effect was striking in the extreme. The nobleman and the squire of Elizabeth's days had each a very high opinion of his family, and of his own importance in the scheme of the universe, and nothing would have pleased him better than to see the monument under which he was buried. Some of these great tombs are pretentious in idea and poor in design, but some of them are full of delightful detail, consistent in scale, varied in treatment, and beautifully modelled. There is a good example in the Chichester tomb at North Pilton, in Devonshire (Fig. 202), which departs from the usual arched type, and which, if it were erected soon after the death of those whom it commemorates, in 1566, is quite an early example of the use of strap-work. The detail of this monument, shown on Plate LXXXI., is of unusual delicacy, and the elaborate frame which encloses the black marble panel is handled with a delicacy and lightness of touch too seldom met with. The Foljambe tombs in Chesterfield Church, Derbyshire, are treated with considerable originality. One of them (dated 1592) is in the form of a sarcophagus, and is adorned with beautifully modelled carving (Fig. 203). These examples are of unusual excellence. The tomb in Bredon Church (Fig. 204) to G. Reed, who died in 1610, and that in the Spencer aisle at Yarnton (Fig. 205) to Sir William Spencer, who died in 1609, are specimens of the ordinary treatment of arched monuments. As time went on this kind of tomb became much coarser in design. The detail was less refined, and the recumbent figures were placed no longer in a simple and dignified attitude, with faces turned towards the sky and with hands folded in the attitude of prayer; but they were placed awkwardly on their sides, leaning on their elbows, sometimes lodged in precarious positions on a kind of shelf, sometimes with cheek resting on the hand, as though, in the words of Bosola in the _Duchess of Malfi_, "they had died of the toothache." All dignity and romance were eliminated from the work, and the Jacobean squire appeared in death what he frequently was in life--a very commonplace creature. [Illustration: 205.--TOMB OF SIR WM. SPENCER (D. 1609), YARNTON CHURCH, OXFORDSHIRE.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXI. PILTON CHURCH, NORTH DEVON. DETAIL OF THE CHICHESTER TOMB.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXII. SCREEN AT TILNEY ALL SAINTS, NORFOLK (1618).] [Illustration: 206.--PULPIT, WORTH CHURCH, SUSSEX (1577).] There were many screens erected during the early years of the seventeenth century. The finest specimens are at St. John's Church, Leeds, and at Croscombe in Somerset, near Wells, in both of which churches most of the woodwork is of this period, including the excellent oak seats. The general effect of the richly ornamented woodwork at Croscombe, including the pews, the pulpit, and the lofty screen, is unusually striking. But in many churches in different parts of the country screens may be found of more or less importance. A good example is illustrated from Tilney All Saints, in Norfolk, near King's Lynn (Plate LXXXII.), which bears the date 1618 in a little panel over the central arch. The design, it will be seen, is somewhat unconstructional, for the main posts of the lower part are not carried up to support the crowning cornice, but terminate in obelisks, leaving the cornice to be carried by turned balusters; the effect being to render the upper part rather insecure in appearance. There is a screen at Stonegrave, in Yorkshire, of simple but rather unusual design, in which the detail is very carefully managed. Although it is dated 1637, its general character places it in the category of Jacobean work. Of pulpits there were a large number erected in Elizabeth's time, and still more in King James's, for in the canons of 1603 a pulpit was ordered to be placed in every church not previously provided with one. Many of these have disappeared, through decay or the fury of Gothic restoration, but there are still plenty left, of which several types are illustrated. There is the elaborate one at Worth Church, in Sussex, dated 1577, built up with columns at the angles. The faces are occupied by niches containing figures of the Evangelists (Fig. 206), and the frieze above bears an inscription in the Dutch language. On the panels between the pilasters of the lower stage is some of the applied carving, previously referred to in treating of panelling. [Illustration: 207.--PULPIT, BLYTHBOROUGH CHURCH, SUFFOLK.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIII. PULPIT, EDINGTON CHURCH, WILTSHIRE.] There is a simpler form from Blythborough, in Suffolk (Fig. 207), which consists of panelling framed together, all the framework and the panels themselves being covered with carving in low relief. The widely-projecting bookboard is also ornamented on the underside, and is supported by large carved brackets. The pulpit stands on four short posts let into a wood sill and supported by brackets. Another type is to be seen in Edington Church, Wiltshire (Plate LXXXIII.), of simple and elegant design. The octagonal body of the pulpit consists of plain moulded panelling without ornament; the bookboard forms a cornice, which is slightly enriched with dentils and carving. The whole stands on a single turned stout post, from the upper part of which spring brackets of simple form. There is a panelled sounding-board with a carved frieze and an acorn drop at each angle. The whole work exhibits unusual restraints and refinement both of design and detail. Of somewhat similar type, but rather more florid in detail, and probably later in date, is the pulpit at Chesterfield Church (Fig. 208). [Illustration: 208.--PULPIT, CHESTERFIELD CHURCH, DERBYSHIRE.] Font-covers of the seventeenth century are also fairly numerous, and a few of them still retain the elaborate bracket from which they were suspended in order to be raised or lowered with little trouble. There is a good specimen of such a bracket at Pilton Church, in North Devon (Fig. 209), of which, however, the upper part, above the tilted hood, is of later date and coarser design: and there is a still finer example at Astbury Church, near Congleton, in Cheshire. [Illustration: 209.--FONT-COVER AND CANOPY, PILTON CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE.] Of the very few churches which were built during the century that succeeded the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the most important was St. John's Church at Leeds. There is nothing particularly striking in the treatment if we except the beautiful wood fittings. The plan consists of a double nave, divided by an arcade, and the stonework details are plain in character and of no great interest. It might have been expected that window tracery would afford opportunities to the ingenious masons of the time; but either they clung to the old traditions, as did the masons employed by Nicholas Wadham on the chapel of his college at Oxford, where in the years 1610-13, they produced windows of excellent Perpendicular character: or else they tried in a half-hearted kind of way to give to the tracery forms in keeping with those used elsewhere. Such an attempt was made in the church of Kelmarsh, in Northamptonshire (Fig. 210), but it had not much to recommend it, nor were other efforts--in the hall at Wadham and a few other places--of such singular success as to lead further in this direction; and the call for church windows being very limited, no development worth mentioning occurred. The most noteworthy attempt to give a new character to window tracery was made in later years (subsequent to 1634) at the chapel at Burford Priory, Oxfordshire, where tracery founded on ancient precedents, but following lines of its own, was surrounded by a fully-developed classic architrave. Elizabethan and Jacobean detail lingered on in out-of-the-way places long into the seventeenth century, and at Compton Winyates, in Warwickshire, the church, which was rebuilt in 1663, has some quaint little bits of stone detail (Fig. 211), in which the old forms have not yet been replaced by the more strictly classic features which were being more and more generally employed. [Illustration: 210.--WINDOW, KELMARSH CHURCH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.] Another instance of the survival of ancient forms is to be seen in the woodwork in the chapel at Peterhouse, Cambridge (Fig. 212), where Jacobean balusters of elegant contour surmount panels treated in the Gothic manner and finished at the top with cusping and foliated spandrils. The date of this door is about 1632. [Illustration: 211.--FROM COMPTON WINYATES CHURCH, WARWICKSHIRE.] [Illustration: 212.--DOOR IN THE SCREEN OF THE CHAPEL, PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE (CIR. 1632).] There are not many specimens of ornamental plaster ceilings to be found in churches, but at Axbridge, in Somerset, there is such an instance in the nave, where the ceiling is in the form of a pointed barrel vault, with plaster ribs springing from a cornice adorned with strap-work. The ribs form a simple pattern consisting mostly of squares of different sizes, and there are large Jacobean pendants and bosses at intervals; but out of deference to ecclesiastical tradition, the square panels are ornamented with cusps, which give to the whole design a rather feeble flavour of Gothic; of its kind, however, it is an interesting ceiling, and is one among many indications of the attention bestowed upon churches during the early years of the Reformation. Another indication is the frequent presence of texts upon the walls. They are generally surrounded with an ornamental strap-work border, such as roused the admiration of the narrator of an entertainment at Antwerp in honour of the Duke of Anjou in 1581, when he commended the "compartments of Phrygian work, very artificially handled." These texts seem to have had their origin from a singular circumstance. Queen Elizabeth attended service at St. Paul's on New Year's Day, 1561, and the Dean, thinking to present her with an acceptable New Year's gift, caused a number of beautiful pictures representing the stories of the saints and martyrs to be handsomely bound in a Book of Common Prayer, which he laid upon the Queen's cushion. On opening it, however, she frowned and blushed, and calling the verger to her, caused him to bring the old prayer-book which she had been accustomed to use. At the close of the service she gave the Dean a very uncomfortable quarter of an hour, for having thus gone counter to her proclamation against "images, pictures, and Romish reliques." He excused himself, according to the account, like a lectured schoolboy, and promised that nothing of the kind should occur again. In consequence of this incident there was a general searching of all the churches in and about London, and the clergy and churchwardens "washed out of the walls all paintings that seemed to be Romish and idolatrous," and wrote up "in lieu thereof, suitable texts taken out of the Holy Scriptures." CHAPTER XI. SIXTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE-PLANNING AS ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN THORPE'S DRAWINGS. One of the most valuable sources for obtaining knowledge of the house-planning of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. is the collection of drawings in the Soane Museum, known as John Thorpe's. This collection has given rise to a certain amount of controversy, and will probably give rise to more, for there are so many objections to any theory which can be advanced as to its origin and use. This is not the place to enter upon the arguments for or against any particular view; but as it may be advisable to adopt some kind of working hypothesis, that which best fits the facts seems to be this--that the drawings were drawn in a large book (with the exception of some few which were stuck in), and that by far the greatest number, if not actually all, were drawn by John Thorpe.[30] There were two men of this name, father and son, and both may have had a hand in it. But whether this hypothesis be accepted or not, it is certain that all the drawings were made during the closing years of the sixteenth century or the opening years of the seventeenth, and that they represent either surveys of buildings then existing, or designs for new ones, or exercises in ingenuity of planning. Whatever else we may or may not have, we have here the Elizabethan and Jacobean ideas of what houses were or ought to be, what accommodation they should contain, and how it should be disposed. In this respect the collection is particularly valuable, because we get everything at first hand; we see some designs in course of development, and others as they were finished, and entirely free from the manifold alterations which houses themselves have necessarily undergone in the course of three centuries. We also get in the elevations, or "uprights" as they were then called, the designer's ideas of how the houses were to appear; but in this respect we do not fare so well as with the plans, since the number of elevations is far smaller. [30] The arguments in support of this view are given in a paper by the author, published in the _Architectural Review_ of February, 1899. [Illustration: 213.--THE CHÂTEAU OF ANSSI-LE-FRANC, COPIED FROM DU CERCEAU (PAGE 75 OF THORPE'S BOOK).] There are, further, a few drawings which may be regarded as studies--studies in perspective, in the five orders, and in the style of foreign architects. For there is no doubt that Thorpe studied books on architecture, both Italian, French, and Dutch, of which a considerable number had been published during the latter half of the sixteenth century. His exercise in the five orders is evidently drawn from an Italian publication, which, however, has not yet been identified. He has copied at least three designs from a French source, one of Androuet du Cerceau's books, "Les plus excellents bastiments de France," published in 1576-79. One of these designs is the Château of Anssi-le-Franc, of which he gives the plan on page 75, and part of the elevation on page 76. The plan is copied accurately except in one or two trifling particulars, and so also is the elevation (Figs. 213, 214); but to the latter he has added three sketches of turrets, which do not appear in the original, and which are designed in the Dutch rather than the French style. On each side of the plan he has sketched in pencil the main lines of another plan founded on the original, but which looks as though it were meant to be adapted to English uses. Another plan which he copied from Du Cerceau (on pages 77, 78) is the Château de Madrit in the Bois de Boulogne. This is, with one little exception, line for line like the original, but, curiously enough, here again he has made notes in pencil indicating how he would have adapted it for English habits. The third instance is part of the plan and elevation of the "theatre" at Saint Germain (on pages 165, 166). [Illustration: 214.--THE CHÂTEAU OF ANSSI-LE-FRANC COPIED FROM DU CERCEAU, BUT WITH THREE TURRETS ADDED (PAGE 76 OF THORPE'S BOOK).] Thorpe was also a student of Dutch publications. On page 24 he has a design entitled "½ a front or a garden syde for a noble man" (Fig. 215), of which the central portion is copied from Plate 20 of Jan Vredeman de Vries's "Architectura, ou Bastiment prins de Vitruve," published at Antwerp in 1577. He has departed from the original in one or two small particulars; for instance, he has four-light windows where Vries has two-light; he has mullions to his dormers where Vries has none; he has added the final flourishes and pinnacle on the top of the centre gable which Vries leaves plain, and his treatment of the windows over the middle arch is different from Vries's; but with these exceptions the original is followed faithfully as far as to the end of the arcade, to the left of which the design is Thorpe's own. Thorpe has written on the panel over the entrance "Structum ad impensum Dni Sara Ao Dni 1600." This is the only drawing of his which has been traced to Dutch sources, but nearly all his elevations, of which a few are illustrated in this chapter, show some hankering after Dutch forms in the gables. On page 60 of his book he has a few sketches, chiefly of strap-work gables, which look as though they had been either copied from a Dutch book or inspired by one. [Illustration: 215.--ELEVATION COPIED FROM DE VRIES. THE CENTRAL PORTION IS COPIED; ALL TO THE LEFT OF THE ARCADE IS ADDED BY THORPE (PAGE 24).] This study of foreign books by one of the designers of the period is a noteworthy fact, and it is equally worthy of note that the study of them seems to have set him thinking, and to have suggested ideas to him, which he jotted down in pencil near the copies which he made from the foreign books. These are not the only instances of this habit, for in other parts of his book are to be seen, by the side of carefully finished plans, hasty sketches of some variation of the same main ideas. Of the foreign books which he studied, some, therefore, were Italian, some were French, and others Dutch: and it is curious to see how the French books seem to have influenced his plans, and the Dutch books his elevations. The French influence on those plans which, so far as we know, were actually carried out, was not strong; but among the plans which may be classed as exercises, are some with towers at the corners, after the manner of those at Chambord, Chenonceau, and Azay-le-Rideau, and a number with square turrets such as those of the Château de Madrit. He may also have derived from the same sources his extreme love of symmetry, and his adoption of the grand manner apparent in some of his designs planned round a courtyard. These French books may, therefore, have influenced his style, but they did not dominate him so much as to cause him to copy the French type of plan in designing an English house. The same may be said of the Dutch influence on his elevations. Only in the one instance already mentioned did he embody a whole piece of Dutch design into one of his own. But in his chimneys, his strap-work gables, and his turrets or lanterns he drew from Dutch sources. And there are two points to notice in this connection--one is that the strap-work gable occurs much oftener in his drawings than in houses actually built; the other is that had these gables been adopted as freely as the elevations would indicate, the houses would have been more Dutch than the Dutchmen's own buildings, for in the latter the stepped gable is far more frequent than strap-work, and produces an entirely different effect. [Illustration: PLATE LXXXIV. "SIR JARVIS CLIFTON'S HOUSE." (PAGES 65, 66.) 1. Hall. 2. Vestibule. 3. Parlour. 4. Lodging. 5. Grand Staircase. 6. Chapel. 7. Buttery. 8. Butler's Room. 9. Back Stairs. 10. Lodging. 11. Kitchen. 12. Dry Larder. 13. Wet Larder. 14. Bakehouse. 15. Open Arcade. 16. Gatehouse.] Let us, however, turn from these speculations to the drawings which compose the great bulk of the book--namely, the plans and (in some cases) elevations which show what kind of building an English house was intended to be, and which ought to be compared with the examples already given in Chapter III. The type of plan made familiar in those examples is the type on which nine-tenths of Thorpe's plans are based. The hall is the centre of household life, the parlour and family rooms are at one end of it, the kitchen and servants' rooms are at the other. But he has a certain number of plans in which the hall shows more or less signs of becoming an entrance rather than a living-room; the following examples show how the old type gradually changed into the new. The first plan of the series (Plate LXXXIV.) is named "Sir Jarvis Clifton's House." It shows a large symmetrical house with a forecourt entered through an imposing gatehouse furnished with a turret at each corner. Directly opposite to this lodge is the porch of the house, which gives access in the usual way to the screens, and thence into the hall, with its daïs shown at the upper end. The bay window at the end of the daïs leads into a large vestibule from which the great staircase and the parlour are approached; beyond the parlour, at the corner of the building, is an isolated room marked "lodging" [_i.e._, bedroom]. The left-hand wing is occupied by the chapel, which is approached through a vestibule leading out from the foot of the great staircase. This completes the accommodation for the family so far as the ground floor is concerned. On the other side of the hall are the servants' rooms: first, two for the butler with a staircase to the cellar; then a large vestibule (with a servants' staircase), which leads to another "lodging"; to the kitchen, with a fine bay window and two fireplaces, one large and one small, each having a little oven close to it; and to the dry larder: beyond the kitchen is the wet larder, and beyond this is the rest of the servants' department, of which the bakehouse occupies a wing balancing the chapel wing. The mouths of the two ovens of the bakehouse are shown, but the paper was too small to allow their full extent to be indicated. There is no upper plan, but from notes on this one it seems that the long gallery was over the arcade at the back of the hall, and that the great chamber was over the parlour and its vestibule. There is an arcade on either side of the front porch, and another between the wings on the opposite side of the house. It is worthy of note that although the front and back façades are of different lengths, each of them is symmetrical in itself. This variation is the result of considerable ingenuity in planning. The whole plan is worth attention as a specimen of the usual type treated in a broad and dignified manner. [Illustration: 216--AN UN-NAMED PLAN (PAGES 117, 118). 1. Hall. 2. Principal Stairs. 3. Parlour. 4. Lodging. 5. Buttery. 6. Winter Parlour. 7. Back Stairs. 8. Kitchen. 9. Pastry. 10. Inner Court. 11. Open Arcade. 12. Outer Court.] The Cliftons had been seated at Clifton, near Nottingham, for some time prior to the reign of James I.; the family still resides there, but there is nothing in the existing house to connect it with this plan of Thorpe's. Sir Gervase Clifton lived from 1586 to 1666, and was created a baronet in the year 1612. This plan must therefore have been drawn subsequent to that year, as it is entitled "Sir Jarvis Clifton's." There is nothing to show whether it is an original design or a survey of an existing house: the clean way in which it is drawn points to the latter assumption; but if it is an original design it is interesting as showing at what a late date the old type of plan was still employed. The next plan (Fig. 216) has no title. It shows a house with a courtyard in front and two long wings at the back, forming a nearly square block. The arrangement follows the established lines: a porch leads into the screens and thence into the hall, which again has the daïs indicated. Owing to the exigencies of the external treatment, the bay window is not placed at the end of the daïs. A door between the latter and the fireplace leads into a vestibule with the chief staircase in it; beyond is the parlour, with a bay window looking into a small courtyard, and beyond the parlour is another room. On the servants' side is the buttery with its stairs, and then the winter parlour, of which the bay window balances that of the hall. A vestibule containing the back staircase separates these rooms from the kitchen, which has a bay window looking straight across at the bay of the parlour; beyond the kitchen are two rooms, the first of which is probably a larder, while the other is certainly, on account of the ovens, either the bakehouse or "the pastry." There is an arcade at the back of the front wing, occupying one side of the inner court. The fourth side of this court is enclosed by a wall, but the draughtsman has indicated it in two separate positions, thus making it appear as though there were a solid wing on this side. In this plan, also, the only indication of the upper floor is given in the note written on the hall, "Great chamber over this to ye Skryne" (screen). The plan shown in Plate LXXXV. has no title, but it has the advantage of having every room named; and its elevation is also drawn, which was not the case in either of the two preceding examples. The plan follows the familiar lines; it has a long narrow body, and at each end a long narrow wing at right angles to it, with a staircase turret at the internal angles. The porch and screens are in the usual relation to the hall, beyond which are the parlour and two "lodgings," each of which has a small inner room attached. The first of these lodgings is a thoroughfare room, but there is an external door in the passage connecting the two, which enables the hall to be gained by crossing the court, thus affording an alternative route of a kind. On the servants' side of the house are the buttery, the pantry, the winter parlour, the larder, kitchen, bolting-house, and pastry. The kitchen has the usual small oven; the pastry has the invariable two, one somewhat larger than the other. The two wings are treated symmetrically on the principal sides (towards the court), one incidental result being that the pastry gets vastly more light than the kitchen. It has already been suggested that the winter parlour was placed on the servants' side in order to be near the kitchen. The bolting-house was the room where the meal was bolted, that is, sifted. The "pastry" was, as its name implies, the room in which were made pies, "cates," confectionery, and the "pretty little tiny kickshaws" which Justice Shallow ordered when he was furnishing his table for the entertainment of Sir John Falstaff. The housewives of the time were accomplished in the making of such dainties. The narrator of the _Progress of James I._ in 1603 remarks upon the delicate fare provided by Sir Anthony Mildmay at Apethorpe, rendered "more delicate by the art that made it seem beauteous to the eye; the Lady of the house being one of the most excellent Confectioners in England, though I confess many honourable women very expert." When Queen Elizabeth was entertained at Elvetham by the Earl of Hertford in 1591, a banquet was served in the evening "into the lower gallery in the garden," when a thousand dishes were served by two hundred gentlemen, with the light of a hundred torches, and among the more notable dishes were some _tours de force_ in sugar-work, representing the royal arms, the arms of all the nobility, figures of men and women, castles and forts, all kinds of animals, all kinds of birds, reptiles and "all kind of worms," mermaids, whales, and "all sorts of fishes": all these, we are told, were standing dishes of sugar-work. It is not suggested that the lady of the house herself produced these masterpieces; but ladies were certainly skilful in the making of cakes, and it was a recommendation in actual life, as well as in one of the plays of the time, that the heroine could "do well in the pastry." [Illustration: PLATE LXXXV. UN-NAMED PLAN AND ELEVATION. (PAGES 89, 90.) 1. Hall. 2. Parlour. 3. Lodging. 4. Lodging. 5. Principal Stairs. 6. Buttery. 7. Pantry. 8. Winter Parlour. 9. Back Stairs. 10. Kitchen. 11. Larder. 12. Bolting house. 13. Pastry. 14. Open Arcade.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVI. "SIR Wm. HASERIDGE." (PAGES 147, 148.) 1. Hall. 2. Parlour. 3. Principal Stairs. 4. Vestibule. 5. Lodging. 6. Inner Room. 7. Buttery. 8. Lodging. 9. Winter Parlour. 10. Back Stairs. 11. Survaying Place. 12. Kitchen. 13. Dry Larder (Wet under). 14. Pastry. 15. Courtyard.] [Illustration: PLATE LXXXVII. ELEVATION OF PLAN ENTITLED "SIR Wm. HASERIDGE." (PAGES 147, 148.)] The elevation is treated, on the whole, in a quiet and dignified manner, but the handling of it from the parapets upwards shows a determination to obtain that picturesqueness of outline which was considered essential. The means to this end are curved gables, quaint pinnacles, and rather elaborate lanterns, of which there are two alternative designs provided, as there are also of the small gables or dormers on the parapet. The type of chimney shown is one of the more reasonable which were employed. The plan on Plate LXXXVI. shows a slight variation of the usual type, inasmuch as the wings, instead of being narrow and only one room thick, are two rooms thick. In other respects it follows the familiar lines. On one side is the hall with its daïs and bay window; then the grand staircase and a vestibule giving access to the parlour and a group of two lodgings, the remainder of the wing being occupied by a room which--if the ovens are anything but a repetition of those in the corresponding wing--must be the bakehouse. On the other side of the house are the buttery, a lodging, the winter parlour, the back stairs and vestibule, the kitchen, dry larder, and pastry; the wet larder, according to a note, is under the dry. There is no arcade here. This plan is entitled "Sir Wm. Haseridge," and the upright (as the elevation was called) has on it the initials D. H. and the date 1606 (Plate LXXXVII.). This is important, as it shows that at that time the old relation of the hall to the rest of the house was still retained. This house, in spite of its title, has not been identified with any existing building. A family of the name of Haselrigge has lived at Noseley, in Leicestershire, since early in the seventeenth century, but the existing house has nothing in common with this plan. The elevation is treated in a simple manner, with very few foreign flourishes. In the next example (Figs. 217, 218, 219) we have ground plan, upper plan, and elevation: a valuable example, inasmuch as it is one of the few cases in which all three drawings are given; the upper plan is interesting, as it shows the position of the two chief rooms, the gallery and great chamber. The disposition of the ground floor conforms to the usual type, but is varied so as to enclose a small central court, somewhat after the fashion of Barlborough (Fig. 49); but here all the principal rooms are on one floor, whereas at Barlborough the kitchens are in the basement. The accommodation here comprises the hall, grand staircase, and parlour on the one side, and buttery, winter parlour, back stairs, and kitchen on the other. There is a vestibule to the kitchen, which probably would have been called the "survaying place" had it been named, similar rooms being so designated in Figs. 224, 226. The use of the survaying place is not anywhere explained, but most likely it was a serving room, where the dishes were overlooked before being taken to the hall or the winter parlour. There is a staircase from the kitchen which presumably led down to the larders, pantries, and other subsidiary rooms. The manner in which the middle bay window on the kitchen side serves to light the vestibule and the back stairs (through a borrowed light) should be noticed as an instance of the subordination of the plan to the uniformity of the exterior. Here, for the first time, occurs an example of the use of sanitary conveniences: it will be seen that neither downstairs nor up are they placed in a manner that would be tolerated at the present day. Nor indeed were they arranged at this period with anything like the same attention to isolation and means of ventilation which was bestowed upon such places in mediæval times. The central court is shown with a room and staircase projecting into it, but this excrescence was very wisely crossed out, for the court was small enough without it, and could never have been either cheerful or conducive to health. The upper plan shows the long gallery, 80 feet long by 20 feet wide, and the great chamber, 45 feet long by 23 feet wide. To these two rooms nearly the whole space is sacrificed, there being in addition only two fair-sized bedrooms and two smaller apartments, besides those which may have been contrived in the roof. Both the gallery, the great chamber, and the parlour are shown with an inner porch, such as occurs at Sizergh Castle (Fig. 148), and at Broughton Castle, in Oxfordshire (Plate LI.), Bradfield, in Devonshire, and a few other houses. The elevation (Fig. 219) resembles that on Plate LXXXV. It is treated in a simple and unostentatious way, but the most is made of such features as the bay windows, chimney-stacks, and gables. The latter have the curly outline which is prevalent in the Thorpe collection, but which, as already said, does not appear in the same proportion among such of the actual buildings of the time as have survived. The front chimneys are of the same pattern as those on Plate LXXXV. [Illustration: 217.--AN UN-NAMED GROUND PLAN (PAGES 217, 218).[31] 1. Hall. 2. Principal Stairs. 3. Parlour. 4. Inner Room. 5. Buttery. 6. Winter Parlour. 7. Back Stairs. 8. Survaying Place (?) 9. Kitchen. 10. Inner Court.] [31] In order to bring this plan within the limits of the page, the terrace walls on either side have been brought nearer to the house than they are on the original drawing. [Illustration: 218.--UPPER PLAN OF FIG. 217 (PAGES 217, 218). 11. Great Chamber. 12. Principal Stairs. 13. Gallery. 14, 14. Bedrooms. 15. Back Stairs. 16. Inner Court.] [Illustration: 219.--ELEVATION OF FIGS. 217, 218.] The foregoing examples are a few out of a great number which conform to the traditional arrangement of the hall. The vast majority of the plans follow this type, but there are some, which we will now proceed to consider, in which the hall receives a different treatment, thus indicating that important change which resulted in its becoming a place of entrance instead of what it had been for four centuries--the centre of household life. [Illustration: 220.--AN UN-NAMED PLAN. 1. Hall. 2. Parlour. 3. Principal Stairs. 4. Chapel. 5. Lodging. 6. Buttery. 7. Winter Parlour. 8. Back Stairs. 9. Survaying Place. 10. Kitchen. 11. Pastry. 12. Courtyard.] On some of these plans the room which is usually called the parlour is marked "dy pler" or dining parlour. This shows that even the eating of meals, one of the functions for which the hall had always been used, was being transferred from that apartment to smaller and more comfortable rooms. The heads of the household, more particularly, sought the quiet of a smaller apartment, and with them they took their special friends, leaving persons of less importance to dine with the household in the hall. There is a letter from a Mr. Marlivale, of Chevington, written to Sir Thomas Kytson, of Hengrave, complaining of having been placed to dine in the hall with the steward instead of with the superior persons in the parlour. As Sir Thomas died in 1540, the practice of withdrawing from the great hall must have begun previous to that date. On one of Thorpe's plans he has marked a room as the "Servants' dining-room," which indicates a further desertion of the hall, and from the other end. The purposes for which the hall had been used being thus provided for elsewhere, it became no longer necessary to plan it on the old lines. The first change that took place was at the end where the screens were. The screens, indeed, disappeared, and in order to go from the front door to the kitchen department, the hall itself had to be traversed. The following examples show various instances of this change, but in the absence of particulars as to the name and date of most of the plans, it has been impossible to arrange them chronologically: what sequence there is, is a sequence of stages in the development of the new idea of using the hall as an entrance. The example in Fig. 220 has no name nor any writing upon it beyond the numbers of the stairs. The curious point about it is that the screen is in the side of the hall instead of at the end; otherwise it preserves most of the old arrangements. Although the rooms are not named, they are easy to identify. On the family side are the hall, with its daïs, the parlour, staircase, chapel and "lodgings." On the servants' side are the buttery, winter parlour, back stairs, kitchen and pastry. Owing to the altered arrangement of the screens there is no thoroughfare leading straight from the front door to the court beyond. In the next example (Figs. 221, 222) we have a further departure from the old type. Screens of a kind there are, but the front door leads only to the hall (through a vestibule), and the hall has to be traversed to gain the kitchen. The buttery is in an entirely novel position, and the tendency clearly is to preserve the front door for the family, and to relegate the servants to their own entrance. A curious point is that the only way from the kitchen to the buttery, to the upper floor, or to the outside, is through the hall. In spite of these changes the daïs still remains, as though the old custom of dining in the hall survived, notwithstanding the constant traffic which the service of the kitchen must have entailed. The upper plan shows the long gallery--apparently 62 feet long by only 10 feet wide--and the great chamber, 40 feet by 21 feet, which is over the hall. The draughtsman has apparently been led by the symmetry of his arrangements into placing the gallery on the wrong façade in his upper plan. According to a note on the ground plan it should be at the back, and the elevation confirms this disposition. Owing to the situation of the hall it can no longer obtain light from the sides, nor can there be any bay window to the daïs: the only light it receives is from a large window at one end, which must be greatly darkened by the arcade in front of it, carrying the gallery. The great chamber is subject in a less degree to similar disadvantages, receiving light only from one end. The treatment of the exterior is somewhat after the fashion of Wollaton, but of a plainer kind; there is a central block surrounded by rooms roofed at a lower level, and at each corner is a pavilion. It is quite possible that this is merely an exercise in design, and that it was never carried out, nor even thoroughly digested. [Illustration: 221.--GROUND AND UPPER PLANS, UN-NAMED (PAGE 85). 1. Hall 2. Parlour. 3. Principal Stairs. 4,4. Lodging. 5. Kitchen. 6. Buttery. 7. Back Stairs. 8,8. Open Arcade. 9. Great Chamber. 10. Gallery. 11. Stairs. Other Rooms on Upper Floor are Lodgings.] [Illustration: 222.--ELEVATION OF PLANS IN FIG. 221 (PAGE 85).] [Illustration: 223.--UN-NAMED PLAN AND ELEVATION (PAGE 34). 1. Hall. 2. Parlour. 3. Withdrawing Room. 4. Closet. 5,5. Lodging. 6. Principal Stairs. 7. Buttery. 8. Back Stairs. 9. Kitchen. 10. Larder. 11. Bolting-house. 12. Pastry.] [Illustration: 224.--"FOR MR. WILLm. POWELL" (PAGES 265, 266). 1. Hall. 2. Dining Parlour. 3. Principal Stairs. 4. Lodging. 5. Inner Lodging. 6. Winter Parlour. 7. Buttery. 8. Survaying Place. 9. Back Stairs. 10. Kitchen. 11. Larder. 12. Court.] In the next example (Fig. 223) the idea of the entrance hall is further developed. The front door opens into a passage off which the hall is approached, but without a dividing wall. There is no daïs, and the parlour is entered from the passage instead of from the upper end of the hall. The latter apartment is still central, and divides the family rooms from those of the servants. There are fresh designations bestowed upon some of them: the parlour and the lodgings we know, but in addition to these there is a "closset" and a "wth," or withdrawing room. The buttery is as near to its old position as the new arrangement allows, and beyond it is the familiar kitchen, with the larder, the pastry, and the bolting-house leading out of the latter. The elevation is again perfectly simple, and calls for no remark beyond pointing out the alternative methods shown of roofing the two central turrets. The sketch plan and elevation should be noticed, jotted down at the side of the main subject, and embodying a smaller version of a somewhat similar idea. [Illustration: 225.--MR. JOHNSON Ye DRUGGIST (PAGE 31). 1. Hall. 2. Parlour. 3. Principal Stairs. 4. Buttery. 5. Back Stairs. 6. Kitchen. 7. Courtyard. 8. Open Arcade.] The plan and elevation entitled "for Mr. Willm Powell" (Fig. 224) have not been identified with any existing building. The elevation is treated more after the English manner, particularly in regard to the gables, than any of the preceding. In the plan the hall is frankly made an entrance hall, without any attempt at making it a living-room. It still occupies a central position, but there are no screens, no daïs, and no bay window. The rooms are all named: the family side includes the dining parlour--now so named for the first time--a "lodging," and an "inner lodging." The opposite wing contains the winter parlour, the buttery, now attached to the servants' entrance, the "survay," or serving place, the kitchen, and larder. The house would seem to be built of wood and plaster, since all the walls are drawn some 6 inches thick, the fireplaces only being of the ordinary thickness. The plan for "Mr. Johnson ye Druggyst" (Fig. 225) shows a further variation of the hall, which here has a screen and passage at each end. The daïs idea has entirely disappeared, and the bay windows are placed for effect only: the central position is still retained, as also are the two wings, divided into the usual rooms. There are two front doors, one to each passage at the ends of the hall. The buttery occupies the old relation to one of these passages, while the other takes up the space which would formerly have been devoted to the daïs. The relation to each other of the several rooms in the two wings follows the old lines; it is in the hall that the essential change appears. A note on the plan says that the gallery, 80 feet long and 15 feet wide, occupies the whole length of the front façade, in the centre of which is a turret; there is also a turret in the middle of each side, over the two staircases. The small sketch at the side of the finished plan should be noticed, as it is another instance of how the draughtsman jotted down a rough variation of the same general disposition of rooms. There is also a sketch for a mullion. [Illustration: 226.--AN UN-NAMED PLAN (PAGE 72). 1. Hall. 2. Dining Parlour. 3. Buttery. 4. Grand Staircase. 5. Survaying Place. 6. Kitchen. 7. Scullery. 8. Larder. 9. Back Stairs.] In Fig. 226 is a yet further variation of the treatment of the hall. It is no longer in the centre of the building, but becomes an ordinary thoroughfare room in one corner. The front entrance leads into a corridor, and immediately opposite to it is the great staircase. This is an entirely novel treatment, and indicates a complete revolution in the planning of houses. The hall is no longer the central feature, but gives place to the staircase. For the rest, the old apartments remain; there is the buttery lying between the staircase and the hall, inconveniently mixed up with the family rooms, equally inconveniently cut off from the kitchens. The dining parlour lies beyond the hall and far away from the kitchen, and the kitchen is approached through the "survaying place," and attached to it is a new room, the "scullery." So far as the main lines go, the house is simple and dignified, but the plan is neither so striking nor so convenient as those of the old type. [Illustration: 227.--"SIR JO. DANVERS, CHELSEY." GROUND PLAN (PAGES 21, 22). 1. Waste Hall. 2. Hall. 3. Parlour 4. Chapel. 5. Kitchen below.] The last plan of the series is that of a house for "Sir Jo. Danvers, Chelsey" (Figs. 227, 228), and there are two points to be specially noticed in it--one is that the kitchen and its offices are all underground, the other is that the hall is of the type usual in many Italian houses; it extends right through the house from front to back, and has smaller rooms opening from it on each side. In Italy, the hall and the room over it occupy the whole of this space, and the staircase is among the rooms at the side, but at Sir John Danvers' house the staircase is in the hall itself, thus dividing it into two portions, the outer one of which is named "waste hall," and curtailing the effective space of the chamber over it. The device of placing the kitchen and offices in a basement was not often adopted in English houses; space was generally plentiful, and the native taste was rather in favour of the long and low treatment. But occasionally, where space was limited, or where some special notion controlled the design, as at Lyveden New Building, or where the Italian manner was closely followed, the basement was utilized for the purpose of the kitchens. The sketch-elevation of Sir John Danvers' house points towards a more complete acceptance of classic treatment; it is widely different from the extensive façades and returned wings which are associated with the idea of an Elizabethan or Jacobean house. Sir John built a house (but whether to this particular plan, or not, is not certain) at Chelsea, on the site of one which had been the residence of Sir Thomas More; and he seems to have done so in the early years of the seventeenth century. It is more than likely that he was attracted by the Italian model, since we learn from Aubrey[32] that "'twas Sir John Danvers of Chelsey who first taught us the way of Italian gardens. He had well travelled France and Italy, and made good observations.... He had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for gardens and architecture." There is another rough sketch of an elevation on page 178, accompanied by a plan, where the Italian treatment is still more marked. The centre of the façade consists of two rows of columns, superimposed, and forming an open _loggia_ on each floor; they carry a pediment of flat pitch. This sketch is of considerable interest, since it connects Thorpe, who is the representative of Elizabethan and Jacobean design, with the far more Italianized style of his successors. [32] John Aubrey's _Natural History of Wiltshire_. [Illustration: 228.--SIR JO. DANVERS, CHELSEY. UPPER PLAN AND ELEVATION (PAGES 21, 22)..] [Illustration: 229.--AN UN-NAMED ELEVATION, "MENT FOR ONE OF THE SYDES OF A HOUSE ABOUT A CORT AND MAY BE MADE A FRONT FOR A HOUSE" (PAGE 115).] Two other elevations are illustrated, in addition to those which have accompanied some of the foregoing plans, in order to show the kind of feeling which pervades most of the sketches in Thorpe's book. They are both isolated examples, not attached to any plan, and not named. Indeed, the first of them (Fig. 229) was probably merely a sketch, as it bears the note, "ment for one of the sydes of a house about a cort and may be made a front for a house." It is quite English in character, and is singularly free from the curly gables and fantastic pinnacles which appear on most of Thorpe's elevations, and were derived from Dutch sources. The sections through the wings should be noticed, as this is the only instance in the whole collection in which anything like a complete section is given. The section on the right hand is evidently taken through the hall, and shows its open-timbered roof of hammer-beam type. [Illustration: 230.--AN UN-NAMED ELEVATION, "THE GARDEN SYDE, LODGINGS BELOW AND GALLERY ABOVE. J. T." (PAGE 108).] The second example (Fig. 230) is nearly as simple in its treatment, but the gables break out into rather extravagant curls. The general treatment, with the large gables, the dormers, and the projecting chimney-stacks, is not unlike that of the west front of Kirby (Figs. 77, 107), but this elevation does not tally with the plan of Kirby, which is not subject to the same accurate symmetry. This drawing bears the note, "The garden syde, lodgings below and gallery above. J. T.," and as it is initialed by Thorpe, it helps to identify as his many of the other elevations. [Illustration: 231.--AN UN-NAMED PLAN (PAGES 145, 146). 1. Entrance. 2. Hall (Kitchen below). 3. Parlour. 4. Lodging Chamber. 5. Inner Chamber. 6. Buttery. 7. Woodyard. 8. Closet. 9. Stairs. 10. Open Space. 11. Terrace.] One other plan is given (Fig. 231) as an example of Thorpe's ingenuity in planning. It consists of three rooms arranged within a circular balustrade and surrounded by a circular terrace. The angles formed where the three rooms join are occupied by three towers, one of which contains the porch, the other two the staircases. On the ground floor one of the rooms is the hall, one the parlour, one a bedchamber. The kitchen was to be under the hall. It should be observed how the large fireplaces are arranged so as to occupy some of the triangular space enclosed by the three rooms; and how the odd corners left are devoted to the buttery, a closet, and a wood store. The bay window is different in each room, and is so planned as just to extend outwards as far as the surrounding balustrade. Having thus examined the main features of the design, observe how a number of alternative sketches have been made for filling in with cupboards the angles made by the circular walls of the turrets and the walls of the rooms: observe also that on one of the circular staircases an equilateral triangle has been drawn, evidently as an alternative way of treating the turrets, and observe further how in the parlour and bedchamber a suggestion is made to have a semicircular recess at one end, such as was not infrequent late in the seventeenth century, but which never occurs in an Elizabethan plan. All these points are interesting, because they show how the draughtsman elaborated his design; and when he had finished this, he sketched a variation of the same idea at the side, in the upper part of the sheet. He was also undecided about the position of his steps on to the terrace, for he drew them first in three sets, opposite to the three bay windows; afterwards he sketched another set in pencil (shown by dotted lines on the drawing) in a more convenient situation just opposite the porch, and wrote on the old set "Stayres heare," and on the new "or heare." On his main staircases, too, after drawing the steps, he has crossed out three or four and written "half-pace," which means "half-landing." It will not be uninteresting to add to these illustrations of Thorpe's plans a list of the names of apartments, &c., to be found in his book appended to one or other of the drawings. Hall. Parlour. Dining parlour. Dining chamber above hall. The dining chamber. Winter parlour. An ordinary winter parlour. The great parlour with the great chamber over it. Great chamber. Gallery. The long gallery. Withdrawing chamber. Lodging. A nobleman's lodging, _comprising_ His ante-camera. Bedchamber. Wood, coal, and privy. Servants' lodging. Officers' lodgings. A bed chamber. An inner chamber. Chaplin. His study. Study. Chapel. Outward chapel. Library above. Buttery. Butler's lodging. Pantry. Pantler's lodging. Breakfast room. Kitchen. The great kitchen. A privy kitchen. Dry larder. Wet larder. Pastry. Work room for the pastlers. Bakehouse. Privy bakehouse. Meal house. Bolting house. Survaying place. Scullery. Spicery. Trencher. Pewter. Milk house. Brew house. The boiling house. Porter's lodging. Hynds' hall. Lesser hall for hynds. Servants' dining-room. Waiters' chamber. Waiters' bedchamber. Steward's lodging. His clerk. Brush. Wood, coal, and stool. Cellar. Wine cellar. A wine cellar and for beer. Privy wine cellar. The Queen's wine cellar. My lord's wine cellar. A cellar for beer. Entry. An entry through all. Lobby. Ante-camera. Closet. A well light. A little court for light, &c. Common vault. Court. A tennis court. A large terrace. Terrace. A back walk. Garden. Orchard. Woodyard. Kitchen garden. Washyard. Stable. CHAPTER XII. ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. In the foregoing pages examples have been given of the architectural work of the sixteenth century--examples taken from all parts of England, and illustrating all kinds of features. From these it will have been gathered that the same general character pervaded the whole country at any one time, but that there was a great variety of treatment. This variety arose not merely from a difference in arrangement of universally accepted features, or from different methods of handling the same kind of ornament, but from actual differences between the features themselves and between the kinds of ornament, and it points to the employment of men who varied to a considerable degree in the amount of their training as well as in its direction. It will therefore not be without interest to glance briefly at what is known of the more prominent men who were employed in producing the architecture that has been under consideration, and at the methods which prevailed of supplying designs. Unfortunately, little detailed information has yet been obtained, or is obtainable, concerning these men, and what we do know about them is neither so full nor so clear as to have emerged entirely from the perplexing mists of controversy and to have attained the serene heights of incontrovertible fact. We know, for instance, that Henry VIII. employed many skilled foreign workmen, especially Italians. But very little work exists at this day which can be pointed out as theirs. We also know that early in the second half of the sixteenth century many Dutch artizans found refuge in England from the rigorous measures of Alva, that licences were given to various towns to receive them, and that a number of other towns petitioned to have strangers allotted to them: most of these towns were situated in the counties bordering on the sea in the East and South. But masons, joiners, and artificers in the other trades connected with building, do not seem to have been a large proportion of those immigrating. The most interesting piece of foreign work, inasmuch as it was the first done by Italians in England, can, luckily, be identified in all important particulars, because the contract for it still exists. It was Henry VII.'s tomb, designed, and largely executed, by Torrigiano.[33] But beyond this tomb, and probably that of Margaret, the mother of Henry VII., and possibly that of Dr. Young in the Rolls Chapel, no English work of Torrigiano's is known. After him came Benedetto da Rovezzano, who partly executed an even more splendid tomb for Cardinal Wolsey, which was to have been placed in the specially erected chapel in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, but which Henry VIII. took to himself on the Cardinal's fall. Wolsey petitioned the King for his own figure--which was to have lain upon the tomb, and could hardly be expected to answer the same purpose for its new owner--and for such other parts as it might please the King to give him. But Henry retained the materials and proceeded to adapt them for his own monument, whereon he and his queen, Jane Seymour, were to have reposed. His queen, however, was soon replaced, and the tomb was still unfinished at his death, and was never carried to completion. Its metal parts were finally melted down by the Parliament Commissioners a hundred years later, but the marble sarcophagus lingered on, and was eventually removed to St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and utilized in the monument of Lord Nelson. Another Italian who was employed by Wolsey, and subsequently by Henry VIII., was Giovanni da Majano, whose name appears in accounts of the time as being paid for certain work; but the work itself has disappeared, except the terra-cotta roundels, containing busts of Roman emperors, built into the walls of Hampton Court. Toto del Nunziata was another skilful Italian whose name appears in accounts, and he is said by Vasari to have built Henry VIII.'s principal palace. This is generally considered to have been Nonesuch, in Surrey, of which there is nothing left, but which, as already stated, must have presented examples of most admirable work in the way of sculpture and painting.[34] Nicholas of Modena, described as a carver, also worked for Henry, and remained in England for some years after his death, but the work attributed to him is only conjectural. Indeed, the share taken by the Italians of Henry VIII.'s time in the design of English work, is still a matter of controversy to be waged by the learned, and has not yet descended to the more certain level of the text-book. What we do know is, that Torrigiano executed Henry VII.'s tomb under a contract, and that a few other Italians of eminence resided for longer or shorter periods in England, together with a considerable number of their compatriots of less distinction. These men must have exercised considerable influence upon their English companions, and although their own style of ornament did not become universal, they must have prepared the way for the general adoption of the other versions of Italian detail which marked the second half of the sixteenth century. [33] See page 12. [34] See page 33. The same remarks apply to Holbein, although the designs which he executed for work in England are much more numerous than those of any of his contemporaries, and have been identified beyond doubt as his. That is to say, in addition to his pictures, a large number of his drawings remain, principally for articles of goldsmith's work; but the objects themselves have mostly disappeared. One of the largest of his drawings, however, is that of a wood chimney-piece, which, from the initials upon it, was intended for Henry VIII. Some architectural work has been attributed to Holbein, but only on conjecture. Amongst it may be mentioned two gateways at Whitehall, now removed; part of a front at Wilton, in Wiltshire, as well as a little garden-house there; and the splendid screen at King's College Chapel, Cambridge. But there is no actual evidence to connect him with these works, and we should be mistaken in regarding him in any way as an architect in the sense in which we understand the term. The architect, indeed, as a distinct individual, does not seem to have arisen in those early days: the architect, that is, who not only designed the plan and elevations of the building, but also the details of its various parts and of its ornament. Inigo Jones may be taken as the first Englishman who combined the functions of planner and designer of details; previous to his time the work entailed in the designing of a house was much subdivided, the plan and elevations being provided by the surveyor, and each trade producing its own special details as the work went on. Shakespeare only uses the word "architect" once, and then not in connection with building operations. He gives us, however, a sketch of how to set about building, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. "When we mean to build," says Lord Bardolph, "we first survey the plot, then draw the model; and when we see the figure of the house, then must we rate the cost of the erection.... Much more in this great work ... should we survey the plot of situation, and the model; consent upon a sure foundation; question surveyors." It was the surveyors, such as John Thorpe, who drew the model, which comprised the plans and an elevation, or a perspective view indicating the treatment of more than one front. These drawings were then carried out by the workmen on the spot, who provided their own details. In some of the simpler buildings no surveyor was employed, but rough plans were prepared by the builder himself, not so much to work from, as to indicate, for the purpose of a contract, the general extent and appearance of the building. In others, again, no plans were used, but the work was set out on the spot, and built to the requisite height under the supervision of the master mason. It is almost certain that in some cases only a plan was provided, without elevation; in the Thorpe collection a large proportion of the plans have no elevation to correspond; and Henry VII., in his will, orders his tomb to be placed in the midst of his new chapel at Westminster according to "the plat [_i.e._, plan] made for the same chapel and signed with our hand." At St. John's College, Cambridge, the contractors who built the second court were bound to erect it according to certain "platts and uprights" [_i.e._, elevations], thus showing that the "plat" did not include elevations as well as plan. Such contracts as have been preserved relating to work of the sixteenth century, go to show either that the various tradesmen provided their own designs, or that they were to take some already executed work as a pattern. There were separate contracts for the separate trades, but most of them were with masons, joiners, and glaziers. The masons who built the second court at St. John's were to make the windows after the fashion of those in the court already built. The joiner who fitted up the chapel was to make his work like that in Jesus College and Pembroke Hall, "or better in every point." The joiner who executed the stalls and the fretwork of the ceiling in the chapel at Trinity College, was to make the stalls like those at King's College, while the frets, battens, and pendants of the ceiling were to be made "according to the pattern showed to the master and other of the said College for the said frets, battens, and pendants." The glazier who provided the windows of the hall and chapel at St. John's, was to make them of "good and able Normandy glass of colours and pictures as be in the glass windows within the College called Christ's College." These contracts are useful because they state expressly the sources whence the design was to be taken; but where the work was not done by contract, such accounts as have been preserved point in the same direction. After the masons had finished the second court at St. John's, including the plastering of the walls and ceilings, there appears an entry in the accounts for the payment of one Cobb for "frettishing" the gallery and the great chamber--that is, for working the ornamental plaster ceiling; and another for the payment of the joiner for the wainscotting of the gallery and for the two chimney-pieces there. No mention is made of any particular design, and the presumption is that the workmen supplied their own. This presumption is stronger in the case of the panelling of the hall at Queen's College, where every item of cost appears, as well as the names of the various workmen employed. It is interesting to see how the names of the workmen gradually changed. The first entry is on the last day of September, 1531, when Matthew Blunt and Robert Cave were paid for "working on the panelling of the College hall." In November they are joined by one Dyrik Harrison, who does the same kind of work; in December, one Lambert comes, and Matthew Blunt disappears; a few days afterwards a certain Arnold joins them, and subsequently a Peter. In January, Giles Fambeler, carver, is paid for nine capitals, and in February for thirteen more, and he then disappears. But his place seems to have been taken by Dyrik Harrison, who thenceforward is paid, not for ordinary joiner's work, but for carving capitals, shields, arms, and lines of "antique crest" and "antique border," up to the middle of July, when he receives his final payment "by order of the President." In the meantime Robert Cave's name has ceased to be entered, but Arnold, Lambert, and Peter still continue. After Harrison's departure Lambert seems to have done the special work, since in August he gets paid for certain columns and for the "extreme parts of the cresting." His is the last name of the joiners which appears, and in September the work was finished. It would almost seem as though Giles Fambeler, whose name looks anything but English, had been employed for some two months, just to show how the new carving should be done, and that from him Dyrik Harrison, whose Christian name suggests a Dutch connection, picked up a knowledge of the fashionable ornament sufficient to enable him to take Giles's place; and that Lambert in his turn succeeded Harrison. Even if this supposition is larger than the facts warrant, it must have been in some such manner as this that the new forms were disseminated through the country. It is worthy of note that the joiner employed at Hengrave, in 1538, six years after this work at Queen's, was named Dyrik, and it is pleasant to imagine (Hengrave being some five-and-twenty miles from Cambridge) that it might have been the same Dyrik Harrison who had picked up his first knowledge from Giles Fambeler. In such matters as tombs it is beyond question that the workmen supplied the designs. In the year 1525 there is an entry in the accounts of St. John's of a small sum "given to the master mason of Ely for drawing a draught for my lord's tomb," meaning Bishop Fisher's. In 1533 "Mr. Lee the free mason" was paid for making and setting up the tomb. Upon the Bishop's execution, the monument was taken to pieces and thrown aside, but towards the end of last century the remains were discovered during the process of clearing away the rubbish in an "old disused chapel." A rough drawing was made of them, from which it is evident that the design was quite in the Italian style. It shows an altar tomb with a pilaster at each corner, ornamented with arabesques similar to those on Henry VII.'s tomb. The side is occupied by a large panel supported by two amorini, and surrounded with foliage and scrollwork; the end has a shield within a garland. The whole work is described by an eye-witness as being elegant, neat, and ornamented in great taste, from which we may gather that both in design and execution it was a worthy specimen of the style prevalent in Henry VIII.'s time. We have already seen that it was designed by the master mason at Ely, and executed by Mr. Lee, the free mason. If these two were not one and the same man, at any rate there is no reason to suppose that they were other than Englishmen.[35] [35] For particulars of these contracts, &c., at Cambridge, see Willis and Clark's _Architectural History of the University of Cambridge_, Vol. II. Some fifty years after Bishop Fisher's tomb was erected, there was drawn up a contract (in 1581) between the executor of Thomas Fermor, of Somerton, in Oxfordshire, and Richard and Gabriel Roiley, of Burton-upon-Trent, "tumbe makers." The latter agree "artificially, cunningly, decently, and substantially to devise, work, set up, and perfectly and fully finish" a very fair tomb of very good and durable alabaster stone and of certain specified dimensions. It is to have on it "a very fair decent and well-proportioned picture or portraiture of a gentleman representing the said Thomas Fermor," with certain specified accessories; and also "a decent and perfect picture or portraiture of a fair gentlewoman with a French hood, edge and habiliments, with all other apparel, furniture, jewels, ornaments and things in all respects usual, decent and seemly for a gentlewoman." There are also to be the "decent and usual pictures" of a son and two daughters with escutcheons in their hands--somewhat after the fashion, no doubt, of those on the Bradbourne tomb in Fig. 9. The son is to be in armour and as living; one of the daughters is to be "pictured in decent order and as living," the other "as dying in the cradle or swathes." There are to be four shields, one containing "the very true arms" of Thomas Fermor; two others his arms and those of his two wives, severally; and the fourth the arms of his second wife. They are all to be placed as most may serve for the "shew and setting forth of the said tomb." Once again, towards the end, it is stated that all the "devising, colouring, gilding, garnishing, workmanship, carriage, conveying, setting up, and full finishing of the said tomb," is to be done by the Roileys; but the executor will provide "wains, carts and cattle" to draw the parts of the tomb to Somerton. The price for the tomb is to be £40. It is here expressly stated that the workmen are to do the "devising" as well as the making of the tomb. The features which it is to comprise are stated, but the designing and arranging of them are left to the workmen. It is interesting to notice that the male figure is to be the portraiture of a gentleman representing Thomas Fermor, but it does not seem to be implied that the likeness was to be very accurate. In the case of the lady, evidently no resemblance was expected, and we are left to conjecture whether it was the first or the second wife who was the more nearly represented. All those who are familiar with Elizabethan tombs will recognize the son and daughter holding escutcheons, and the child in "swathes," as well as the four shields bearing the arms of Thomas Fermor and his two wives. If additional proof were wanted that the design was left in the hands of the workman, it is to be found in the stipulation that everything is to be placed so as best to "set forth" the tomb. This important part of the business is not to be arranged by the executor or any one acting on his behalf, but by the contracting tomb-makers. Tombs are comparatively small structures, and might possibly have been subjects of special custom; but the same custom prevailed in the building of large houses like Burghley House and Cobham Hall. When the latter building was in a suitable condition, the plasterer was sent for in order that he might submit patterns and models of the ceilings for Lord Cobham to select from. During a considerable part of the time occupied in building the earlier portions of Burghley, a number of letters passed between the foreman and Lord Burghley, in which the foreman sought instructions from his lordship about many minute particulars, which would certainly have been settled by the architect had there been one. Among Lord Burghley's papers is one showing the plan and elevation of a window, endorsed in Burghley's own hand "Henryck's platt of my bay window"; suggesting that, as occasion arose, his lordship applied to some skilful craftsman for drawings. It is certain that he made a point of studying books on architecture, for in August, 1568, he wrote to Sir Henry Norris, ambassador in France, asking him to provide for him "a book concerning architecture, entitled according to a paper here included, which I saw at Sir Thomas Smith's; or if you think there is any better of a late making of that argument." The enclosure containing the title of the book is not in existence, so we do not know what it was; but from this reference we gather that Sir Thomas Smith (who was a Secretary of State, and had been ambassador to France) was interested in architecture as well as Lord Burghley, and that Sir Henry Norris was sufficiently acquainted with the subject to be able to recommend the latest work dealing with it. Some years later Lord Burghley was again asking for a French book on architecture, but this time he gave the title, in phraseology indicating that he was something of a student of the subject. "The book I most desire," he says, "is made by the same author, and is entitled 'Novels institutions per bien bâster et à petits frais, par Philibert de Lorme,' Paris, 1576." From these instances it would appear not improbable that had Lord Burghley lived in the days of Pope, he might have shared with Lord Burlington the reputation of being one of the foremost architects of the age; but as a matter of fact he did not pretend to that distinction: all that he did, apparently, was to direct the energies of others who had received special training in architectural matters. The Henryk who provided the platt of Lord Burghley's bay window was a Dutch mason in the employ of Sir Thomas Gresham--who built the first Royal Exchange, or Bourse, as it was called--and he passed backwards and forwards between London and Antwerp as occasion demanded. Many of the materials for Gresham's Bourse came from the Low Countries, and were shipped thence under the superintendence of Gresham's agent, Richard Clough. Clough's letters from Antwerp, where he was stationed, give in quaint phraseology a good deal of information as to the progress of the work which was being prepared over there both for Sir Thomas Gresham and the more exalted "Sir William Cecil, the Queen's Majesty's principal Secretary," afterwards Lord Burghley. In July, 1566, Clough congratulates himself on Gresham's liking Henryk so well, and on the work being so well forward, that when Henryk returns to Antwerp he can get on with the rest. By the beginning of August Henryk had arrived, and "your carpenters also, whom I do mean shortly to return." In the next few letters he is greatly troubled about "Master Secretary's" paving stones. On the 29th September, he says that he calls daily upon Henryk, who is looking daily for them, and he has sent a man to the place where they are in making in order to hasten their departure. Notwithstanding this, on the 20th October Master Secretary's paving stones were not come, "but Henryk saith he knoweth well they will be here within a day or two," and then he will not fail to send them away out of hand, even if he has to "hire a small hoy of purpose." But delays in the delivery of goods vexed the souls of overlookers in as great a degree then as now, and still on the 10th November "Master's stones are not come, which maketh Master Henryk almost out of his wit, for I never fail a day but I am once a day with him, so that they cannot be long, unless they be drowned by the way." The hopeful expectation was fulfilled, for a fortnight later Clough writes, "and as touching Master Secretary's stones, I do not doubt but that you have received them long since; and that they have been so long--Henryk saith he could do no more and if his life had been upon the matter." So the paving stones were sent off at last, and at the same time Henryk sent a pattern how they should be laid; it was unnecessary to send a man, for he thought "that him that paved Master Secretary's house can so well lay those stones as any that he should send from hence." The trying episode of "those stones" being closed, Clough returns to the subject of the Bourse, and promises to send off further materials; on the 5th December he says he has shipped a certain amount "in Cornelius Janson's sprett," and trusts that before Easter everything will be despatched. Soon after this, it seems, he went away to get married, and his letters cease; but in the following April (the 27th) an apprentice of Gresham's informs him of such matters as had passed in Antwerp since Clough's departure, among which was the discharge from the "Prince's men" of two of Gresham's retainers, whom he intended to send to London "in one of the ships laden with stone for the Bourse," of which there were three ready to depart "as to-morrow." As Easter Day fell on the 30th March in the year 1567, Clough's hope that everything would be despatched by then was not absolutely fulfilled. Henryk was now apparently sufficiently at liberty to be allowed to turn his attention from Gresham's work to Cecil's, and on the 21st August, 1567, the former writes to the latter, "As for Henryk, you shall find him so reasonable as you shall have good cause to be content, and by this post I have given order for the making of your gallery, which I trust shall both like you well in price and workmanship." Four months later, on the 26th December, it was a door for Cecil which was in question, and as "Henryk my workman" intended to go over sea after the Christmas holidays, and to stay till April, Gresham desired to know whether Cecil would have his "port (door) set up before his departure, or else at his return." In the following February, Gresham again writes to Cecil reminding him that "Henryk hath lost the pattern of the pillars for your gallery in the country, so he can proceed no further in the working thereof until he have another." He urges Cecil not to fail to send the pattern at once, as Henryk would be back in London by the last day of March at the farthest. This inability of Henryk's to proceed without the "pattern" shows that in this case, at any rate, he did not supply the design. But already four years earlier (in January, 1563) there had been some correspondence between Clough and Cecil about a gallery and a pattern which the latter had sent; and if the two galleries were one and the same, it was probably the old pattern which Henryk had to work to, and there was no need for him to devise a new one. In the case in which Clough was concerned there was some discrepancy in the pattern or instructions sent by Cecil for the pillars and arches, which required correction; he therefore sent back the pattern, so that Cecil might confer with his mason at home. As to a mason going over from Flanders to England, there was no need for it, since the work would be so wrought that it could not be set amiss, besides which a pattern in paper should be sent. The Dutch mason's advice was that the pillars should be made all of one stone, and the arches accordingly, "for they must be made, to be well made, either antique or modern, and this, with the whole pillar, is antique; wherefore according as I shall hear from your honour, so I shall proceed therein." The difference intended to be conveyed between "antique" and "modern" is not very clear, inasmuch as "antique" was the term generally applied in describing work executed in the style which we call Renaissance. But this is a detail which does not affect the general conclusions to be drawn from the whole correspondence, which are, first, that there is no one concerned in these various transactions who acts in the capacity of the architect, but that when instructions are required by the workmen they are sought from the proprietor himself: second, that Dutch workmanship and design were procured by men of eminence in England: and third, that English workmen were thought to be quite as capable of dealing with the worked materials as any that could be sent from abroad. The books on Architecture which were published during the sixteenth century point somewhat in the same direction, namely, that there was no all-controlling architect, but that buildings were carried out by co-operation in design as well as execution. At the same time, they make it evident that the idea of the architect as the person who should have chief control had arisen: an idea which took more and more hold until it received its first striking embodiment, so far as England is concerned, in Inigo Jones. Hans Bluom's book on the Five Orders, published at Zürich in 1550, is declared on the title-page to be useful to painters, sculptors, workers in brass and wood, masons, statuaries, and all who require sure measure; no mention being made of architects. The same omission occurs in the English translation published in 1608, which mentions on the title-page free-masons, carpenters, goldsmiths, painters, carvers, inlayers and Anticke-cutters, who must not be taken for anything but cutters of "antique" patterns. The address to the reader professes that the book is offered for the benefit of "Masters, Builders, Carvers, Masons, Lymners, and all sorts of men that love beauty and ornament." The publisher of Vries's book of monuments of 1563 exhorts, on his title-page, all painters, statuaries, architects and masons to inspect, buy and use it; and the same author's book on Perspective of 1604 is addressed to painters, sculptors, statuaries, smiths, architects, designers, masons, clerks, woodworkers, and all lovers of the arts. We have, therefore, the appellation of "architect" introduced, but it is ranked with the statuaries, masons, and smiths; and indeed the term was probably used in its original signification of "master-workman." There was a book published in 1600, of which the title is interesting, although the contents do not enlighten us in regard to the subject under enquiry. It was called "The hospitall of incurable fooles: erected in English, as near the first Italian modell and platforme, as the unskillful hand of an ignorant architect could devise"; but beyond the use of the word "architect," and the deductions to be drawn from its connection with the "Italian modell," there is no help to be obtained in this quarter. Some further light is thrown on the term by John Shute, who published his book _The Chief Groundes of Architecture_ in 1563. Shute calls himself a "Paynter and Archytecte," and in the heading of one of his chapters he speaks of an "Architecte or Mayster of Buyldings." This is the signification of the term which became gradually accepted, but there is no evidence that in Shute's time (that is, in 1563) a master of the buildings was generally employed, or that being employed he was designated an architect. John Thorpe was called a "surveyor." Robert Smithson, who died in 1614, fifty years after Shute, is designated in his epitaph as "architector and surveyor unto the most worthy House of Wollaton." All the evidence points therefore to co-operation in design as well as execution, and while men like Thorpe provided plans and "uprights," each trade provided its own details. This view will account for much of what is otherwise very puzzling--the diversity in character between buildings supposed to have been the work of the same "architect." The difficulty largely disappears if we suppose the small scale drawings to have been supplied by the "surveyor," and then elaborated on the works by the foreman and the various craftsmen. But that there was a desire among wealthy patrons to establish an educated class of "architects" is proved by the Introduction of Shute's book, for he tells us there that he was sent to Italy by the Duke of Northumberland in the year 1550 for the express purpose of studying architecture, and that having there studied it and amassed a number of drawings and designs of sculpture, painting, and architecture, he thought good on his return to set forth some part of them for the profit of others, especially touching architecture. How far Shute himself was able to put his knowledge to the test of practical experience is not known, for no buildings are identified as his, and he died in 1563, the same year in which he published his book. He speaks of his patron having shown the results of his studies to Edward VI. after his return: Edward died in 1553, and there were ten years, therefore, during which Shute might have put in practice what he learned in Italy. The history of architectural design during the sixteenth century cannot, therefore, be written round the names of great men in England as it can in Italy, and in a less degree in France. Those who do most towards giving character to a building are those who determine its plan and general outlines; and the men who did this to our English houses were the surveyors. Of these John Thorpe is the only one about whom anything much is known; but enough is known to place him in a high rank as a designer. There must have been many others, but their names have disappeared and their fame has evaporated. A list of all those who could be considered architects has been drawn up by Mr. Wyatt Papworth,[36] but the names of those prior to Inigo Jones include patrons, masons, and carpenters as well as surveyors, and the task still remains to assign to each his proper share in the production of the architecture of his day. This architecture was not the work of a single class of men, but resulted from the joint efforts of many minds directing many different tools. High and low, rich and poor, gentle and simple, cultured and uncultured, all combined to the same end, and the authors of the architectural books of the period knew their business when they appealed on their title-pages to so many different artificers. [36] _The Renaissance and Italian Styles of Architecture in Great Britain_, 1883. A LIST OF SELECTED WORKS ON EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. I. WORKS ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE TUDOR PERIOD, &c. DOLLMAN (F. T.).--An Analysis of Ancient Domestic Architecture in Great Britain. 2 vols. 4to. 1864. HUNT (T. F.).--Exemplars of Tudor Architecture. 8vo. 1836. LAMB (E. B.).--Studies of Ancient Domestic Architecture. 4to. 1846. PUGIN (A.).--Specimens of Gothic Architecture in England. 2 vols. 4to. 1821. PUGIN (A. and A. W.).--Examples of Gothic Architecture in England. 3 vols. 4to. 1831. TURNER (T. H.) and PARKER (J. H.).--Some Account of Domestic Architecture in England during the Middle Ages. 3 vols. 8vo. 1859-1877. II. GENERAL WORKS ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PERIOD; ALSO BOOKS OF REFERENCE, &c. ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SKETCH BOOK, THE. Old Series. 12 vols. Folio. 1868-1880. New Series. 12 vols. Folio. 1881-1892. Third Series. Folio. 1893--and in progress. BLOMFIELD (R. T.).--A History of Renaissance Architecture in England. 2 vols. Imp. 8vo. 1897. CLAYTON (J.).--Ancient Timber Edifices of England. Folio. 1846. GOTCH (J. A.).--Architecture of the Renaissance in England. 2 vols. Folio. 1891-1894. HABERSHON (M.).--Ancient Half-Timbered Edifices of England. 4to. 1836. HAKEWILL (F.).--An Attempt to Determine the Exact Character of Elizabethan Architecture. 8vo. 1835. HALL (S. C.).--Baronial Halls and Ancient Edifices of England. 2 vols. 4to. 1850. NASH (J.).--Mansions of England in the Olden Time. 4 vols. Folio. 1839-1849. NASH (J.).--Mansions of England in the Olden Time. 4 vols. 4to. 1869. PAPWORTH (W.).--The Renaissance and Italian Styles of Architecture in Great Britain: A Chronological List of Examples, 1450-1700. 8vo. 1883. RICHARDSON (C. J.).--Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Folio. 1840. RICHARDSON (C. J.).--Specimens of the Architecture of the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. 4to. 1837. RICHARDSON (C. J.).--Studies from Old English Mansions. 4 vols. Folio. 1841-1848. SHAW (H.).--Details of Elizabethan Architecture. 4to. 1834. III. WORKS ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF PARTICULAR DISTRICTS, MONOGRAPHS, &c. COLE (REV. R. E. G.).--History of the Manor and Township of Doddington. 8vo. 1897. COPE (SIR W. H.).--Bramshill; its History and Architecture. 4to. DAVIE (W. GALSWORTHY) and E. GUY DAWBER.--Old Cottages and Farm Houses in Kent and Sussex. 4to. 1900. ELYARD (S. J.).--Some Old Wiltshire Homes. Folio. 1894. GAGE (J.).--History and Antiquities of Hengrave. 4to. 1822. GOTCH (J. A.).--The Buildings Erected in Northamptonshire by Sir Thomas Tresham. Folio. 1883. HARRISON (F.).--Annals of an Old Manor House. 4to. 1893. NEVILL (R.).--Old Cottage of Domestic Architecture in South-West Surrey. 4to. 1890. NIVEN (W.).--Monograph of Aston Hall, Warwickshire. 4to. 1881. Illustrations of Old Staffordshire Houses. 4to. 1882. Illustrations of Old Warwickshire Houses. 4to. 1878. Illustrations of Old Worcestershire Houses. 4to. (?) PALMER (C. J.).--Illustrations of An Old House at Great Yarmouth. 4to. 1838. ROUNDELL (MRS. CHARLES) COWDRAY.--The History of a Great English House. 4to. 1884. TAYLOR (H.).--Old Halls in Lancashire and Cheshire. 4to. 1882. WILLINS (E. P.).--Some Old Halls and Manor Houses in Norfolk. 4to. 1890. IV. HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK. ARCHÆLOGIA: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity, published by the Society of Antiquaries. ARCHÆOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. VIII. for Contract for Thos. Fermor's Tomb in Somerton Church; Vols. V. and XXXIX. for Nonesuch Palace. ARCHÆOLOGICAL JOURNAL, Vol. LI. 1894. "On the Work of Florentine Sculptors in England in the Early Part of the Sixteenth Century," &c., by Alfred Higgins, F.S.A. THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE, August, 1837, for Nonesuch Palace. JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARTS, April 24, 1891. "Decorative Plaster Work," by G. T. Robinson, F.S.A. TRANSACTIONS OF THE ESSEX ARCHÆOLOGICAL SOCIETY. TRANSACTIONS OF THE R. I. B. A., May 18, June 8, 1868. "On the Foreign Artists employed in England during the Sixteenth Century, and their Influence on British Art," by M. Digby Wyatt. WILTSHIRE ARCHÆOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE. * * * * * ANDROUT DU CERCEAU (JACQUES).--Les plus excellents bastiments de France. Folio. 1576-1579. ANDROUT DU CERCEAU (JACQUES).--De architectura opus. Folio. 1559. AUBREY (J.).--Wiltshire Topographical Collections, 1659-1670. 4to. 1862. BLOOME (H.).--The Book of Five Columnes of Architecture, &c. Translated by I. T. Folio. 1608. BLUOM (JOANNES, _same as Hans Bloome_).--Quinque Columnarum Exacta Descriptio. Folio. 1550. BOORDE (A.).--Compendyous Regyment, or a Dyetary of Helth. 12mo. 1542. BRAUN (GEORGE).--Urbium præcipuarum mundi theatrum quintum. 1582. (For Nonesuch Palace.) BRITTON (J.).--Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain. 5 vols. 4to. 1807-1826. BURGON (J. W.).--Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham. 1839. CABALA.--Sive scrinia sacra. Folio. 1691. DALLAWAY (REV. JAMES).--A Series of Discourses upon Architecture in England. 8vo. 1833. DIETTERLEIN (WENDEL).--Architectura und Austheilung der V. Seulen. Folio. 1593. DOLLMAN (F. T.).--The Priory of St. Mary Overie, Southwark. 4to. 1881. EVELYN (J.).--Memoirs and Correspondence, 1641-1706. GEDDE (W.).--A Booke of Sundry Draughtes. 8vo. 1612; reissued 1898. HARRIS (SIR N.).--Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton. 8vo. 1847. HARTSHORNE (MISS).--Memorials of Holdenby. 1868. HENTZNER (P.).--Journey into England in 1598. Edited by Horace Walpole. 1797. KIP (W.) and HARRISON (S.).--The Archs of Triumph, erected in honour of James I. Folio. 1604. LAW (E.).--History of Hampton Court Palace. 3 vols. 8vo. 1888-1891. LETHABY (W. R.).--Leadwork, Old and Ornamental. 8vo. 1893. NICHOLS (J.).--Progresses, Festivities, and Pageants of Queen Elizabeth. 3 vols. 4to. 1823. NICHOLS (J.).--Progresses, Processions, Festivities, and Pageants of King James I. 4 vols. 1828. L'ORME (PHILIBERT DE).--Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bâstir. Folio. 1561. PEPYS (S.).--Diary, 1659-1669; Memoirs and Private Correspondence. RYE (W. B.).--England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James I. 4to. 1865. SCOTT (SIR GEORGE GILBERT).--Gleanings from Westminster Abbey. 8vo. 1863. SHUTE (JOHN).--The Chief Groundes of Architecture. Folio. 1563. STATE PAPERS.--Domestic Series. Elizabeth and James. TWYCROSS (EDWARD).--The Mansions of England and Wales. Folio. 1847-1850. VRIES (JAN VREDEMAN DE).--Book of Monuments. 4to. 1563. VRIES (JAN VREDEMAN DE).--Architectura, ou bastiment prins de Vitruve, &c. Folio. 1577. VRIES (JAN VREDEMAN DE).--Perspective. Oblong 4to. 1604. WESTLAKE.--A History of Design in Painted Glass. 4 vols. 4to. 1881-1894. WILLIS (J.) and CLARK (J. W.).--The Architectural History of the University of Cambridge. 4 vols. 8vo. 1886. INDEX. NOTE.--=The ordinary figures denote references to pages of text, those in black type denote references to illustrations in the text, and the Roman numerals are for plates.= ABBOTT'S Hospital, Guildford, 166 " " doorway, =149= " " key-plate, =154= " " latch, =150= ADDITIONS to existing houses, 73 ALMSHOUSES, 210 ALTHORPE, Hawking-tower, 212, =199=, =200= ALVA, 253 AMPTHILL, long gallery, 195 ANDREW, Sir Thomas, tomb of, 16, =8= ANSSI-LE-FRANC, plan and elevation copied by John Thorpe, 227, 213, =214= APARTMENTS on John Thorpe's plans, list of, 251 APETHORPE Hall, 105 " " ceiling, 181 " " confectionery, 234 " " curved gables, 122, =109= " " parapet, 123 ARCADE, the open, 63 ARCHITECT, his position in 16th century, 255-266 ARNOLD, a joiner, 257 ARTHUR, Prince, chantry in Worcester Cathedral, 11, =1= ARUNDEL, Earl of, 34 ASHBOURNE Church, tombs, 13, 16, =2=, =9= ASKEWE, Lady Anne, 143 ASTBURY Church, font cover, 221 ASTLEY Hall, 111, XXXIII. ASTON Hall, 70-72, 98, 99 " " ceilings, 179, LXX., LXXI. " " long gallery, 195, 196, LXXVI. " " north wing, =54= " " plan, =53= " " south front, =81= AUBREY, John, 35 AUDLEY End, 73, 144 " " ceilings, 179, 182 " " frieze, 182, =168= " " long gallery, 195 " " parapet, 123, =112= " " staircase, 193, LXXIV. AXBRIDGE Church, ceiling, 223 AYLESFORD Hall, doorway, 93, =75= AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, Château de, 230 BACON, Lord, 76, 88 " Sir Nicholas, 88, 89, 90 BAKEWELL Church, tomb in, =7= BALLIOL College, Oxford, glazing, 199 BALUSTER, pierced, =176= BANBURY, "Reindeer" Inn, 162, 177, 181 " " ceiling, LXIX. " " side of room, LXIX. BANQUETING Hall at Whitehall, 9 " house, 136 " " at Gorhambury, 90 " " at Chipping Campden, =132= BARDWELL Manor House, chimney, 128, =116= BARLBOROUGH Hall, 67-68, 235 " " chimney-piece, 168, LVIII. " " entrance front, =50= " " plan, =49= BARRINGTON Court, 110, XXXII. BARSHAM, East. _See_ East Barsham. BASING Church, Paulet tombs, 26, VII. BASINGSTOKE, Chapel of Holy Ghost, 17 " glazing, 199 BAY windows, 111 BEAN Lodge, Petworth, chimney, 130, =123= BECKINGTON Abbey, ceiling, 177, 178, =162=, =163= " " door, 155, =140= BENEDETTO da Rovezzano, 254 BENTHALL Hall, 156 " " ceiling, 180, =165= " " chimney-piece, 171, =156= " " panelling, 156, 157, 158, XLIII. " " staircase, 193, =179= BINGHAM Melcombe, 17 BLACK and white houses, 106 BLICKLING, 73 " ceiling, 181 " chimney, 130 " curved gables, 122 " part of entrance front, XXXVII. " staircase, 192 BLUNT, Matthew, a joiner, 257 BLUOM, Hans, his book on the Five Orders, 264 BLYTHBOROUGH Church, pulpit, 220, =207= BOCCACCIO, 2 BOLEYN, Anne, 28 BOLSOVER Castle, 103, =87= " " chimney-pieces, 171, 157, LXIV. " " plan, 104, =88= BOOKS on Architecture published during the 16th century, 264 BOORDE, Dr. Andrew, 56, 62 " his _Dyetary of Helth_ quoted, 57 BOUGHTON House, chimney-piece, 168, LVI. BOURNE Pond, Colchester, mill, 212, =204= BOURTON-ON-THE-WATER, cottage, 112, =96= BRADBOURNE, tomb of, 16, =9= BRADFIELD, 163, 238 BRAMALL Hall, 107 BRAMSHILL, 105 " parapet, 123, =111= " rain-water head, 131, =129= BRANDON, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, 53 BREDON Church, Reed tomb, 218, =204= BRIGSTOCK, village cross, 211, LXXX. BRISTOL, door in a house at, 164, LIII. " " in St. Peter's hospital, 166, LV. " old houses at, 201 BRISTOL, Red Lodge, 157, 163 BROADWAY, doorway at, 92, =74= " Tudor House, 118, XXXV. BROMLEY-BY-BOW, chimney-piece, 172, LXV. BROUGHTON Castle, inner porch, 163, 238, LI. BRUNELLESCHI, 6 BUCKHURST House, 73 " " the long gallery, 195 BURFORD Priory, window tracery, 223 BURGHLEY House, 9, 98, 128, 260 " " general view, XXVIII. " " long gallery, 195 " " staircase, 187, LXXII. BURGHLEY, Lord, 75, 76, 144, 146 " letters to (and from), 260, 261, 262 BURLINGTON, Lord, 261 BURTON Agnes, 70, 91 " " bay windows, 112, =95= " " ceiling, 183 " " plan, =52= BURTON Latimer, school, 211, =197= BURY St. Edmund's, glazing at Church of St. James, 199 BUSTS on houses, 120 CABOT, 2 CAMBRIDGE, " King's College, fan-vaulting in chapel, 3 " " " glazing, =199= " " " screen in chapel, 28, 111, 255, VIII. " Peterhouse, woodwork in chapel, 223, =212= " Queen's College, panelling, 257 " St. John's College, contracts, 256 " Trinity College, contract for woodwork, 256 " " " the hall, 159, XLV. CANTERBURY, corbels, 206, =188=, =189= " house in High Street, 202, 185 CARBROOK Hall, Sheffield, 155 " " ceiling, 181 " " frieze, 184, =170= " " panelling, 155, XLII. CASEMENT fasteners, 166 CASSELL, 145 CASTLE Ashby, chimney-piece,172, LXVI. " " parapet, 124 CASTLEMAINE, Countess of, 34 CASTLE Rising, door at, 152, =139= CAVE, Robert, a joiner, 257 " Thomas, tomb of, 15, =5=, =6= CECIL, Sir William. _See_ Lord Burghley. CEILINGS in houses, 173-184 " in churches, 223 CELLINI, Benvenuto, 7 CHALFIELD, Great, 42 " " hall, 45 " " plan, 43, =33= CHAMBORD, Château de, 230 CHANGE of detail from Italian to Dutch, 39 CHANNEL Row, house for Lady Derby, 205 CHAPEL Royal, St. James's, ceiling, 176 CHAPMAN, a mason, 36 CHARLES I., 5 CHARLES II., 34 CHARLES VIII. (of France) tomb at St. Denis, 12 CHARLTON, Wiltshire, 98, =80= " ceiling, 178 " frieze, 182, =168= CHARTERHOUSE, The, staircase at, 192, =181= CHARWELTON Church, tomb in, 16, =8= CHASTLETON, ceiling, 183 " plan, 90, 91, 92, =72= CHELVEY Court, pew, 157, =143= " " porch, 83, 84, =64= CHENEY Court, 101, =84= " " doorway, 87, =68= CHENONCEAU, Château de, 230 CHEST at St. Mary Overie, Southwark, 39, X. CHESTER, the Rows at, 207 CHESTERFIELD Church, Foljambe tombs, 218, =203= " " pulpit, 221, =208= CHEVINGTON, 239 CHICHESTER tomb, North Pilton, 218, =202=, LXXXI. CHIMNEY-PIECES, 167-173 CHIMNEYS, 125-130 " typical chimney of the Midlands, =119= CHIPCHASE Castle, porch, 85, XXIV. CHIPPING Campden almshouses, 208, =193= " " banqueting house, 137, =132= " " chimney, 128, =120= " " market-house, 211, =196= CHRISTCHURCH, Hampshire, choir stalls, 23, 17, =18= " Draper's chantry, 22, =16= " Salisbury chantry, 17, 20-22, =14=, =15=, V., VI. CHURCHES, work in, 215 CLAVERTON, terrace, 133, XXXVIII. CLEGG Hall, 106, =90= CLIFFORD, Lady Anne, 144 CLIFTON Maubank, 64 CLIFTON, Sir Jarvis (or Gervase), John Thorpe's plan of house, 231, LXXXIV. CLOUGH, Richard, 260, 261, 262 COBB, a plasterer, 257 COBHAM Hall, Kent, 130, 260 COBHAM, Lord, 260 COKAYNE, tomb of, 11, 2 COLD Ashton, 102 " " doorway, 86, 87, =67= " " general view, =85= " " gateway, 79, 81, =58= " " plan, 102, =86= COLUMBUS, 2 COMPTON Winyates, 33, 47-49, 94, 128 " " details from church, 223, =211= " " entrance porch, XII. " " general view, XI. " " plan, =37= CONDOVER Hall, 104, 105, =89= CONFECTIONERY, remarkable, 234 CONISHEAD Priory, 165 CONSTANTINOPLE, fall of, 2 CONTRACT for glazing at St. John's College, Cambridge, 257 " " panelling at Hengrave Hall, 148 " " second court at St. John's College, Cambridge, 256 " " tomb for Thomas Fermor, 259 " " woodwork at Trinity College, Cambridge, 257 COPERNICUS, 91 COPT Hall, the long gallery, 195 CORBELS to overhanging storeys, 206 CORSHAM Court, 99, 100, =82= " almshouses, 208 " " reading-desk, =192= COVENTRY, Ford's Hospital, 207 COWDRAY House, 105 " " vaulting of porch, 19, =13=, IV. " " windows, 109, 110, =93= CRAFTSMEN provide their own designs, 256 CRANBORNE, porch, 91, XXVI. CROSCOMBE Church, woodwork, 219 CROSSES, market and village, 211 CROSS, St., Winchester, screen, 17, 24, VII. DAÏS, the, 43 DALE, Richard, 58 DANTE, 2 DANVERS, Sir John; plans and elevation of his house by John Thorpe, 246, =227=, =228= DARTMOUTH, butter-market, 201 DECORATION of rooms, 145 DEENE Hall, 148 " " ceiling, 177, =134=, LXVIII. DEFENSIVE precautions abandoned, 73 DERBY, Lady, house for, 205 DESIGNS, the providers of, 256 DININCKHOFF, Bernard, 198 DISSOLUTION of the Monasteries, 5 DODDINGTON Hall, 69 " " entrance front with gatehouse, XXI. " " lay-out, 77, 78, =56= " " parapet, 123 " " plan, =51= " " porch, 82, 83, =63= DOOR furniture, 165, 166, =150=-=155= DOORS, 164 DOORWAYS (entrance) and porches, 83-93 DRAMATIC entertainments, 138 DRAPER'S chantry, Christchurch, 22, =16= DRAWSWERD, Sheriff of York, 11 DRAYTON House, chimney, 128, =121= DROITWICH, chimney at, 126, =114= DRURY, Elizabeth, tomb of, 16, =10= DU CERCEAU, 95 " copied by John Thorpe, 227 DURDANS, The, 35 DUTCH character of detail, 39 DUTCH, imitation of the, 8 " influence on English architecture, 9, 120 " influence on John Thorpe, 230 " refugees, 253 DYRIK, a joiner, 258 EAST Ardsley Old Hall, 106 EASTAWE, John, 56 EAST Barsham, 17, 47 " " plan, =36= EAST Quantockshead, 169 " " staircase, 192, =174= EDINGTON Church, pulpit, 221, LXXXIII. ELEVATIONS by John Thorpe, LXXXVII., =214=, =215=, =219=, =222=, =223=, =224=, =228=, =229=, =230= ELIZABETHAN mansion, new style to be found in, 5 ELIZABETH, Queen, 138, 140 ELTHAM Palace, roof, 28, =25= ELVETHAM, 234 ENFIELD, chimney-piece at, 172 ENGLISH workmen, character of their work, 95 " " Italianizing of, 16 EVELYN, John, his notes on Nonesuch Palace, 34 EWEN, Nicholas, 11 EXETER, Guildhall, 210 " house formerly in North Street, 201, =184= EXTERNAL appearance of an Elizabethan house, 95 EXTON Church, tomb, =4= " Hall, 99, 123, XXIX. " " parapet, =110= EYAM Hall, garden, 135, =133= " " terrace steps, XXXIX. FAËRIE Queen, the, 5 FAMBELER, Giles, wood-carver, =257= FAN-VAULTING, 3, 10, 19, pl. I., IV. FERMOR, Thomas, =258= " " contract for his tomb, 259 FINIALS, 117, =101= FINSTOCK Manor House, 118, =102= FISHER, Bishop, his tomb, 258 FLORENCE Cathedral, 6 FOLJAMBE tombs, Chesterfield, 218, =203= FONT covers, 221 FORD House, Newton Abbot, chimney-piece, 170, LXII. FOUNTAINS Hall, 92 FOX, Bishop of Winchester, 24, 25 FRANCE, Renaissance in, 3 FRANCIS I. of France, 7, 8 FRENCH influence on English Architecture, 8, 152 " " on John Thorpe, 230 GABLES, 116 " of timber houses, 119 " curved, 120 GALLERY, at Gorhambury, 90 " minstrels', 43 " the long, 63, 195-197, LXXV., LXXVI. GARDEN at Holdenby, 76 GARDENS, 133 Gardiner's chantry, Winchester Cathedral, 25 GASCOIGNE, George, 141, 142, 214 GATEHOUSES and lodges, 78-83 GAYHURST, pillars in garden, 133, =130= " porch of house, 85, =66= GAYTON Manor House, door, 166, LV. GEDDE, Walter, glazier, 199 " " patterns from his "Booke of Sundry Draughtes", LXXVIII. GENERAL aspect of an Elizabethan house, 94 GERMANY, Renaissance in, 3 GESTS, 143 GILES Fambeler, wood-carver, 257 GILLING Castle, glass at, 198, =183= GIOVANNI da Majano, 254 GLAZING, 197-199 GLINTON Manor House, 100, XXIX. GORHAMBURY, 88-91 " porch, =70= GOTHIC and Classic detail mixed, 17-33 " Architecture contrasted with Classic, 2, 4 GREAT chamber, the, 194 GREAT Snoring, 17, 47 GREEK literature, 2 GRESHAM, Sir Thomas, 260, 261 GUILDFORD, Abbott's Hospital. _See_ Abbott's Hospital. HADDON Hall, 47, 94, 105 " " ceilings, 177, 181, =161=, =166= " " door furniture, 167, =151=, =153= " " frieze, 184 " " long gallery, 195, LXXV. " " panelling, 153, 154, =135=, XL., XLI. " " rain-water heads, 131, =124=, =125=, =126= " " screen, 149, =135= " " terrace, 133, XXXVIII. HALF-TIMBER houses, 56 HALL, the chief apartment, 41 " its treatment, 159 " its decay, 72 HAMBLETON Old Hall, =71= " " " parapet, 123 " " " porch, 89, 91 " " " staircase, 192, =173= HAMPTON Court, 29 " " ceilings, 33, 149, 174-176, =158=, =159=, =160=, LXVII. " " chapel roof, 33 " " door to great hall, =28= " " early work at, 29 " " glazing, 197 " " long gallery, 197 " " roof of great hall, 28, 30, 161, =26=, =27= " " roundels, 254 " " size of courts, 35, 76 " " tapestry, 147 HAMSTALL Ridware, lodge, 79 HARDWICK Hall, chimney-piece, 169, LXI., " " plaster frieze, 164, 184, LII. HARRINGTON, John, Lord, 100 HARRINGTON, John, tomb of, 15, =4= HARRISON, Dyrik, a joiner, 257, 258 HARRISON, Stephen, joiner and architect, 140 HASELRIGGE, 235 HASERIDGE, Sir Wm., plan and elevation for his house by John Thorpe, 235, LXXXVI., LXXXVII. HATFIELD House chimney-piece, 169, LIX. " " doorway, 86, XXV. " " staircase, 192 " " window-head, =99A= HATTON, Sir Christopher, 63, 76, 77, 81, 96, 143, 144 HAWKING-TOWER at Althorpe, 212, =199=, =200= HAWSTEAD Church, tomb in, 16, =10= HENEAGE, Sir Thomas, 144 HENGRAVE HALL, 33, 54-56, 128, 258 " " contract for panelling, 148 " " corbelling of bay, =44= " " entrance gateway, XIV. " " glazing, 198 " " plan, =42= " " west front, =43= HENRICK, or Henryck, 260 HENRY VII.'S Chapel, Westminster, 3, 10, pl. I. " " " stalls, 26, =21=, =22= " " tomb, 7, 10-15, 253, pl. II., =3= " " will, 256 HENRY VIII., his influence on architecture, 7 " " he annexes Wolsey's tomb, 254 HENTZNER, Paul, 33 HEREFORD, house in High Town, 203, =186= HERTFORD, Earl of, 234 HESSE, Landgrave of, 145 HIGHLOW Hall, gateway, 134, XXXIX. HOGHTON Tower, 105 " " bay window of hall, 111, =94= HOLBEIN, 7 " his work in England, 255 HOLDENBY House, 144 " " court, 78 " " gateways, 80, 81, =61= " " lay-out, 75, =55= " " long gallery, 195 HOLMSHURST, 118, XXXV. HOLY Ghost Chapel, Basingstoke, 17 " " " glazing, 199 HOSPITALL of Incurable Fooles, the, 264 HOUSES enlarged to receive royalty, 144 " in streets, 200 " " proclamation as to materials, 203 HUDDINGTON Court House, chimney, 127, =115= IGHTHAM Church, glazing from, 197, =182= IMBER, Lawrence, 11 INGELBY Manor, 106, =91= INNER porch to rooms, 163, LI. INTERIOR features of houses, 138 INVASION of the foreign style, 10 IPSWICH, old houses at, 201 ISLIP, Abbot of Westminster, 8 ITALIAN detail in tombs, 10-26 " workmen, 18-24, 253 ITALY, its influence on architecture, 1-9 JAMES I., King, 140 JANSON, Cornelius, 261 JENINS, Robert, 11 JOHN of Padua, 8 JOHNSON the druggist, Mr., plan of his house by John Thorpe, 245, =225= JONES, Inigo, 6, 9, 42, 63, 64, 72, 263 JOYNER, Michael, 28 KELMARSH Church, window tracery, 222, =210= KENILWORTH Castle, princely pleasures, 141 KENTWELL Hall, 99, =83= KENYON Peel, gateway, 82, =62= KING'S College, Cambridge. _See_ Cambridge. KING'S Lynn, Chapel of the Red Mount, 19, IV. KIP, William, 140 KIRBY Hall, 60-64, 73, 81, 95, 96, 105 " " bay windows, 112, XXXIII. " " chimney, 128, =118= " " courtyard, south side of, XVII., =76= " " finials, 118 " " gables, 121 " " hall, roof of, 161, =147= " " parapet, 123 " " plan, =46= " " plan by John Thorpe, XVIII. " " porch, detail of, XIX. " " west front, =77=, =107= KITCHEN, the, 41 KNEELERS, 117, =101= KNOCKERS, 167, =155= KNOLE House, 73, 130, 131 " " hall, 159, =145= " " lead rain-water head, =128= KYTSON, Sir Thomas, 148, 149, 239 LACOCK Abbey, 17, 36-38, 110 " " chimney, 128, XXXVI. " " chimney-piece, 168, LVII. " " stables, =32= " " stone tables, =30=, =31= " " tile paving, IX. " " tower at S.E. corner, =29= LAMBERT, a joiner, 257 LANDGRAVE of Hesse, 145 LANGTON Chapel, Winchester Cathedral, 27 LAVENHAM Church, the Spring pew, 27, =23=, =24= LAYER Marney, tombs at, 17, =11=, III. LAYER Marney Tower, 17, 33, 52-54, 110, 128 " " details, XIII. " " entrance tower, =41= LAY-OUT of houses, 74 LEBONS, John, 11 LECHLADE, "Swan" Inn, 207, =191= LEDBURY Market-house, 107 LEE, Mr., free mason, 258 LEEDS, St. John's Church, 222 " " " " screen, 219 LEICESTER, Earl of, 142 LEICESTER, Old Town Hall, 162, XLVIII. LEOMINSTER, The Grange, 107 LEVENS Hall, door, 164, LIV. LILFORD Hall, bay window, 112, XXXIV. " " curved gables, 123, XXXIV. LILLY the Grammarian, 91 LINCOLN, Earl of, 145 LINGFIELD, gateway, 134, =131= LITTLE Charlton, ceiling, 184, =171= LOCK-PLATES, =152= LODGE, the, 74 LODGES and gateways, 78-83 LOGGIA, the Italian, 41, 63 LONGLEAT, 97, =78= LORME, Philibert de, 261 LOSELEY, 35, 143 LOUVRE, the, 145 LUMLEY, Lord, 34 LYDDINGTON, doorway at, 92, =73= LYVEDEN Old Building, staircase, 192, =172=, =175= " New Building, 247 MADRIT, Château de, 228, 230 MAJANO, Giovanni da, 254 MANNERS, Sir John, 131, 181 MARGARET, mother of Henry VII., her tomb, 11, 253 MARKET-HOUSES, 207, 210 MARLIVALE, Mr., letter of, 239 MARNEY, Sir Henry, 53 MARNEY, Henry, Lord, his tomb, =11=, pl. III. MARY, Queen, 34 MARY, St., Overie, chest at, 39, X. MAYFIELD, house at, 108, =92= MICHAEL Joyner, 28 MIDDLE Temple Hall, 159, 161 " " " glazing, 198 MILDMAY, Sir Anthony, 234 MILL at Bourne Pond, 212, =198= MINSTRELS' Gallery, 43 MODENA, Nicholas of, 255 MONASTERIES, dissolution of, 5 MONTACUTE House, 64-67, 73, 105, 123, 128, 133, 184 " " part of entrance front, XX. " " plan, =47= " " plaster frieze, =168=, =169= " " west front, =48= MONTAGU, Sir Edward, 168 MORE, Sir Thomas, 247 MORE, Sir William, of Loseley, 143 MORETON Old Hall, 56-59, 107 " " " entrance porch, XV. " " " gable, XVI. " " " glazing, 197, LXXVII. " " " plan, =45= MOUNT Grace Priory, 106, XXX. MOYNS Park, 130 NAILSEA Court, door, 155, =141= " " porch, 85, =65= NEKER, Thomas, 148 NELSON, Lord, 254 NICHOLAS of Modena, 255 NINE Worthies, the, 66, 88, 142 NONESUCH Palace, 33-36, 76 " " banqueting house, 136 " " garden, 134 NORRIS, Sir Henry, 260, 261 NORTHAMPTONSHIRE cottage, a, =100= NORTH Pilton, Chichester tomb, 218, =202=, LXXXI. NORTHUMBERLAND, Duke of, 265 NOSELEY, 235 NOTTINGHAM, houses on the Long Row, 207 NUNZIATA, Toto del, 34 _note_, 254 OAKWELL Hall, 106 OCKWELLS Manor House, staircase, 192, =177=, =178= OFFLEY, Hugh, 39 ORATIONS, Latin, 141 ORTON Waterville, corbel, 206, =190= OUNDLE, gateway of almshouses, 81, =60= OXBURGH Hall, described, 45 " " entrance tower, =35= " " plan, 44, =34= OXFORD, Baliol College, glazing, 199 " house in the High Street, 202, LXXIX. " Queen's College, glazing, 199 " Wadham College, screen in hall, 159, 161, XLIV. " Wadham College, window tracery, 222 PAGANINO, 12 PAGEANTS, 139 PAGENY, Master (Paganino), 12 PALLADIO, 95 PANELLING of the time of Henry VIII., =136=, =138= PAPWORTH, Mr. Wyatt, 265 PARAPETS, 123, =110=, =111=, =112= PARLOUR, the, 41 PAULET tombs in Basing Church, 26, VII. PAVIA, Certosa of, 6 PEGME, or triumphal arch, 140 PENDANTS of ceilings, =167= PEPYS, notes on Nonesuch Palace, 35 PETER, a joiner, 257 PETERHOUSE, Cambridge, woodwork in chapel, 223, =212= PETRARCH, 2 PHELIPS, Sir Edward, 65 PILTON Church, font cover, 221, =209= PITCHFORD Hall, 107 PITTI Palace, 6 PLAN: development of house plan, 41-72 " Elizabethan house plan, 59 " =E= type of plan, 67 " =H= type of plan, 64 " old type still preserved at Oxford and Cambridge, 42 PLAN of Althorpe Hawking-tower, =200= " " Anssi-le-Franc, =213= " " Aston Hall, =53= " " Barlborough Hall, =49= " " Bolsover Castle, =88= " " Burton Agnes, =52= " " Chalfield, Great, =33= " " Chastleton, =72= " " Clifton, Sir Jarvis, his house, =86= " " Cold Ashton, =86= " " Compton Winyates, =37= " " Danvers, Sir John, his house, =227=, =228= " " Doddington Hall, =51= " " East Barsham, =36= " " Eyam Hall, garden, =133= " " Hengrave Hall, =42= " " Holdenby, lay-out, =55= " " Johnson the druggist, his house, =225= " " Kirby Hall, =46= " " " " by John Thorpe, XVIII. " " Montacute House, =47= " " Moreton Old Hall, =45= " " Oxburgh Hall, =34= " " Powell, Mr. Wm., his house, =224= " " Sutton Place, =38= " " Wollaton Hall, =79= PLANS from John Thorpe's book, 226-252, LXXXIV., LXXXV., LXXXVI., =213=, =216=, =217=, =218=, =220=, =221=, =223=, =224=, =225=, =226=, =227=, =228=, =231= PLATTS, or plans, 256 PORCHES, 83-93 PORTER, the, 73, 79 POWELL, Mr. Wm., plan and elevation for his house, by John Thorpe, 244, =224= PRINTING, invention of, 3, 6 PROGRESSES of the Sovereign, 138 PULPIT in Winchester Cathedral, 27 PULPITS, 220 QUANSTOCKSHEAD, East, 169 " staircase, 192, =174= QUEEN'S College, Oxford, glazing, 199 RAINHAM Hall, 72 RAIN-WATER heads, 130 RED LODGE, Bristol, panelling, 157 " inner porch, 163 RED Mount, Chapel of, King's Lynn, 19 REED tomb, Bredon Church, 218, =204= REFORMATION, the, 3 "REINDEER" Inn, Banbury, 162 " ceiling, 177, 181, LXIX. " panelled room, 162, LXIX. RENAISSANCE in letters, 2 " style, 2, 3 RICHMOND, Countess of, tomb, 11, 253 RICHMOND Court, 126 RODES, Francis, 168 ROILEY, Richard and Gabriel, tomb makers, 258, 259 ROTHWELL, cottage at, 119, =103= " market-house, 185, 210 ROVEZZANO, Benedetto da, 254 ROYAL Exchange, Gresham's, 261, 262 RULES of architecture, 6 RUSHTON Hall, 105 " " chimney of Triangular Lodge, =122= " " curved gables, 122, =108=, =113= " " finials, 118 " " parapet, 123 " " rain-water head, 131 RYDGE, Richard, 28, 29 RYE, St. John's Hospital, 208 SAINT Germain, plan copied by John Thorpe, 228 SALISBURY Chantry, the, at Christchurch. _See_ Christchurch. SANDWICH, corbels on "King's Arms", 206, =187= " Queen Elizabeth's visit to, 141 SAVILE, John, describes visit of James I. to Theobalds, 77 SCHOOLS, 211 SCOLE, sign of the "White Hart", 213, =201= SCREEN at Tilney All Saints, 219, LXXXII. " at St. Cross, 25, VII. " at Winchester Cathedral, 24, =20= " of churches, 219 " of hall in houses and colleges, 159 SCREENS, "the screens" in a house, 42, 160 SEYMOUR, Jane, arms, 33 " " tomb, 254 SHARINGTON, William, 36-38, 128, 168 " Grace (his wife), 38 SHERBORNE, rain-water head, 131, =127= SHREWSBURY, market-house, 210, =194= " school, 211 SHUTE, John, his _Chief Groundes of Architecture_, 263 SILKSTEDE, Prior, his pulpit, 27 SIZERGH Hall, ceiling, 179, 181, =164= " " door, 164 " " frieze, 184, L. " " inner porch, 163, 283 " " panelling 163, 164, L., =148= SLAUGHAM Place, the long gallery, 195 SMALLER rooms, the treatment of, 162 SMITH, Sir Thomas, 260 SMITHSON, Robert, 265 SNORING, Great, 17, 47 SOUTH Wraxall, ceiling, 177, 178 " " chimney-piece, 169, LX. " " great chamber, 162, XLVII. SPAIN, Renaissance in, 3 SPARKE, John, 56 SPEKE Hall, 107, XXXI. SPENCER, Robert, Lord, 212 " Sir William, tomb at Yarnton, 218, =205= SPRING Pew, Lavenham Church, 27, =23=, =24= STAFFORD, Sir Humphrey, 63 STAIRCASE, the grand, 47 " at Benthall Hall, 193, =179= " at Kirby, 63 STAIRCASES, 185-194 " examples from John Thorpe's drawings, 189, 190, LXXIII. " in France, 185 STANFORD Church, panelling, 151, =137= " " tomb in, 15, =5=, =6= STANNINGE, or Hawking-tower, 212 STANWAY, gatehouse, 79, XXII. " curved gables, 123 ST. CROSS, Winchester, screen, 25, VII. " James, Chapel Royal, ceiling, 176 " Margaret's Westminster, glazing, 199 " Mary Overie, Southwark, chest, 39, X. " Neot's Church, Cornwall, glazing, 199 STEVENTON, cottage at, 112, 119, =97=, =105= STOKESAY Castle, gatehouse, 79, =57= STONEGRAVE Church, screen, 220 STOWE-NINE-CHURCHES, reredos and screen, 157, =142=, =144= STRATFORD-ON-AVON, house at, 202, LXXIX. SUTTON Court, near Guildford, 33 SUTTON Place (or Court) near Guildford, 17, 49-52 " " details, =39= " " part elevation of courtyard, =40= " " plan, =38= SWINSTY Old Hall, 106 SYMMETRY in plan, 41, 49, 60 TAILOR, Thomas, 70 TAPESTRY, 146, =134= TEMPLE Newsam, 125 TERRA-COTTA detail, 18 TEXTS on walls of churches, 224 THEOBALDS, 73, 77, 144, 146 THORPE, John, 8, 78, 195, 256, 264 " " his book of drawings, 226 " " his plan of Kirby Hall, 62, XVIII. " " his plans for London houses, 203 " " his study of foreign books, 227 TILNEY All Saints, screen, 219, LXXXII. TOLLER Fratrum, chimney, 127, =117= TOMB, contract for, 259 TOMBS, development of style in, 10-26, 216 " Andrew, Sir Thomas, 16, =8= " Bradbourne, 16, =9= " Cave, Thomas, 15, =5=, =6= " Chichester, 218, =202=, LXXXI. " Cokayne, 11, =2= " Drury, Elizabeth, 16, =10= " Foljambe, 218, =203= " Harrington, John, 15, =4= " Henry VII., 7, 10-15, 253, =3=, II. " Marney, Henry, Lord, 11, III. " Paulet, 26, VII. " Reed, 218, =204= " Spencer, Sir Wm., 218, =205= " Vernon, Sir George, 16, =8= TORRIGIANO, 7, 13 " employed on Henry VII.'s tomb, 12, 254 TORRISANY, Peter (same as Torrigiano), 12 TOTO del Nunziata, 34 _note_, 254 TOWN-HALLS, 209 TREETON, cottage at, 119, =104= TRESHAM, Sir Thomas, 210 TRIANGULAR Lodge, Rushton, chimney, 128, =122= TRINITY College, Cambridge, the hall, 159, 161, XLV. UPPER Slaughter, porch, 85, XXIV. UPRIGHTS, or elevations, 226, 256 VENICE, palaces at, 7 VERNON, Dorothy, 131, 181 " her legend, 196 VERNON, Sir George, 131, 181, 196 " tomb of, 16, =8= VERRIO'S ceilings, 181 VERSES, Latin, 141 VIRTUE, Robert, 11 VITRUVIUS, 6 VRIES, or Vriese, 95 " his books on architecture, 264 " copied by John Thorpe, 228, =215= VYNE, the, Hampshire, 17 " glazing, 199 " panelling, 23, 152, =19= WADHAM College, Oxford. _See_ Oxford. WALKER, Humphrey, 11 WARDOUR Castle, archway to stairs, 87, XXV. WARWICK, house at, staircase, 192, =180= WESTMINSTER, Henry VII.'s chapel, 3, 10, pl. I. " " " tomb, 7, 10-15, 253, =3=, pl. II. " " " stalls, 26, =21=, =22= WESTON, Sir Richard, 52, 53 WESTWOOD, curved gables, 123 " gatehouse, 79, XXIII. WHISTON, chimney-piece, 171, LXIII. WHITEHALL, gateways at, 255 WILTON House, work at, 255 WINCHESTER Cathedral, 17 " " Gardiner's chantry, 25 " " Langton's chapel, 27 " " Prior Silkstede's pulpit, 27 " " screen in choir, 23, 25, =20= " " St. Cross, screen, 25, VII. WINDOWS, 100-115 " sections of jambs, etc., =98= WINDOW tracery, 222, =210= WINWICK, gateway, 79, =59= WOLLATON Hall, 73 " " chimneys, 128 " " corner tower, =106= " " curved gables, 120, 122 " " general view, XXVII. " " long gallery, 195 " " parapet, 123 " " plan, 97, =79= " " roof of hall, 161, 146 " " window-sill, 114, =99= WOLSEY, Cardinal, 7, 147, 154 " " his tomb, 254 " " his work at Hampton Court, 29 WOOD panelling, development of, 148 WOOLLAS Hall, porch, 87, =69= " " screen, 160, XLVI. WORTH Church, Sussex, pulpit, 220, =206= WREN, Sir Christopher, 6, 35 WREST, 144 WRIGHT, Robert, glazier, 198 WYMONDHAM Church, sedilia, 17, =12=, =32A= " market-house, 210, =195= YARNTON, Spencer tomb, 218, =205= YORK, old houses at, 201 YOUNG, Dr., his tomb, 254 THE END. BRADBURY, AGNEW & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. _A FEW IMPORTANT BOOKS_ ON ARCHITECTURE, DECORATION & FURNITURE, SUITABLE FOR THE LIBRARIES OF Architects, Country Gentlemen, and Amateurs. PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY B. T. BATSFORD, 94, HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON, Sent carriage free at the cash discount prices affixed. _A Beautiful Series of Illustrations of the OLD ENGLISH MANSIONS._ ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND. Illustrated by a Series of Views from Buildings erected between 1460 and 1635, with Historical and Descriptive Text. By J. ALFRED GOTCH, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. 145 large Folio plates, 118 from large Photographs taken expressly, and 180 illustrations in the Text. 2 vols., in cloth portfolios, gilt. Price £7 7s. net. Or 2 vols., half morocco, gilt. Price £8 8s. net. "The volumes are very beautiful in themselves, and a striking proof of the almost unknown wealth of Domestic Architecture of ancient date in which England stands alone."--_The Times._ _Just Completed._ LATER RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. A SERIES OF EXAMPLES OF THE DOMESTIC BUILDINGS ERECTED SUBSEQUENT TO THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD. Edited by JOHN BELCHER and MERVYN E. MACARTNEY. Containing 170 large folio Plates, 130 from large Photographs taken for the Work, and 40 from measured Drawings by various draughtsmen, also 153 Illustrations in the Text. 2 vols. in cloth portfolios, gilt. Price £7 7s. net. Or 2 vols., half morocco, gilt. Price £8 8s. net. _Less than 30 copies remain for sale, and the work will not be reissued._ LONDON CHURCHES OF THE XVIIth AND XVIIIth CENTURIES. A Selection of the principal Ecclesiastical Buildings, including St. Paul's Cathedral, erected within the ancient City walls between 1630 and 1730, from the Designs of INIGO JONES, SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN, HAWKSMOOR, and GIBBS. Illustrated in a series of 64 folio Plates, beautifully reproduced in collotype from exceptionally fine Photographs taken for the work, and 130 Illustrations in the text. With Historical and Descriptive Accounts by GEORGE H. BIRCH, F.S.A. Large folio, half morocco, gilt. Price £4 4s. net. "Mr. Birch's beautiful folio will delight all lovers of London, and instruct all students of architecture by its splendid and authentic illustrations of so many of the greatest works of the greatest of English architects."--_The Times._ _Just Published._ SOME ARCHITECTURAL WORKS OF INIGO JONES. Illustrated by a Series of Measured Drawings of the chief buildings designed by him, together with Descriptive Notes and a Biographical Sketch, and a complete list of his Authentic Works. By H. INIGO TRIGGS and HENRY TANNER, Junr., A.A.R.I.B.A. With 40 Plates, chiefly of Measured Drawings, and 40 Illustrations in the Text from Sketches and Photographs. Large folio, handsomely bound, cloth gilt. Price 30s. net. The aim of the work is to illustrate, principally by means of measured Drawings, all those buildings now remaining which can with any certainty be attributed to the hand of Inigo Jones. For this purpose the authors have visited upwards of fifty buildings, and have made a series of careful drawings and sketches, in which are included some fine examples of interior work, such as ceilings, chimney-pieces, staircases, etc. These have been supplemented by Photographs and some Reproductions of Jones' Original Sketches. _Just Published._ EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND. An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Development of English Architecture during the Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods, 1500-1625. By J. 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Thick crown 8vo, in handsome cloth binding, richly gilt. Price 12s. 6d. Net 10s. ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. By LEWIS F. DAY. Comprising the Three Books, "ANATOMY OF PATTERN," "PLANNING OF ORNAMENT," and "APPLICATION OF ORNAMENT," handsomely bound in 1 Volume, cloth gilt. Price 10s. 6d. Net 8s. 6d. B. T. BATSFORD, _ARCHITECTURAL AND ART PUBLISHER_, 94, HIGH HOLBORN, LONDON, W.C. Transcriber's Notes: 1. There is inconsistency in the book re the abbreviations for William. These have been kept as in the original. 2. Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. 3. Hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been made consistent, eg. gatehouse, handbook. 4. The different spelling for Henryk, Henryck and Henrick has been retained as per the original. 5. Printers errors have been corrected. 6. The name Evelyn has been corrected from Eelvyn. 7. The spelling of "hospitall" has been retained as it is in Old English. 8. The [sideways] E can also be described as a symmetrical M. 9. In the original there is a printing error in the index. For Plan of Althorpe "Clifton, Sir Jarvis, his house," it reads <b>86</b> this should be LXXXIV. 10. Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, _like this_. Words in bold characters are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. 
9804	----	[Illustration: John Ruskin.] STONES OF VENICE BY JOHN RUSKIN THE STONES OF VENICE: INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS AND LOCAL INDICES (PRINTED SEPARATELY) FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS WHILE STAYING IN VENICE AND VERONA. BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. PREFACE. This volume is the first of a series designed by the Author with the purpose of placing in the hands of the public, in more serviceable form, those portions of his earlier works which he thinks deserving of a permanent place in the system of his general teaching. They were at first intended to be accompanied by photographic reductions of the principal plates in the larger volumes; but this design has been modified by the Author's increasing desire to gather his past and present writings into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,--apologetic mostly,--the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in a state of forwardness. The second volume of this edition will contain the most useful matter out of the third volume of the old one, closed by its topical index, abridged and corrected. BRANTWOOD, _3rd May_, 1879. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. The Quarry II. The Throne III. Torcello IV. St. Mark's V. The Ducal Palace THE STONES OF VENICE CHAPTER I. [FIRST OF THE OLD EDITION.] THE QUARRY. SECTION I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction. The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God." Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow. I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE. SECTION II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from the current fables of her mystery or magnificence. SECTION III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during a period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in the form of her government, or altogether as assuredly in great part, to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed. The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the Rialto, [Footnote: Appendix I., "Foundations of Venice."] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six years [Footnote: Appendix II., "Power of the Doges."] were passed in a nominal subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been entrusted to tribunes, [Footnote: Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the principal islands. For six hundred years, [Footnote: Appendix III., "Serrar del Consiglio."] during which the power of Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired. SECTION IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the doge on the other. Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and noblest man whom they could find among them, [Footnote: "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti, signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino_,) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this, indeed.] called their Doge or Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the older Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into a separate body. This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements, and the circumstances which determined her character and position among European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated, we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo. SECTION V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the most eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs), Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno. I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418; [Footnote: Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.] the _visible_ commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk in the same year was established the Inquisition of State, [Footnote: Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.] and from this period her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which it is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian power; [Footnote: Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right of appointing the clergy of their territories.] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence of the diminution of her internal strength. SECTION VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their call was heard. SECTION VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king, sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her: the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress, impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to sign covenant with Death. [Footnote: The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)] SECTION VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be fixed throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double interest to every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the evidence which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion. I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame of success remains; when the motives of attempt are forgotten; and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement of her own private interests, at once broke her faith [Footnote: By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)] and betrayed her religion. SECTION IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall be struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions, and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but symbolized by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa Ducale." The patriarchal church, [Footnote: Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."] inconsiderable in size and mean in decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of remark, that the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the most wise, of all the princes of Venice, [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, Section V.] who now rests beneath the roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his tomb. SECTION X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which we have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep, and constant tone of individual religion characterizing the lives of the citizens of Venice in her greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with several characteristics of the temper of our present English legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character. SECTION XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in the portico of St. Mark's, [Footnote: "In that temple porch, (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,) Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off, And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake On his stony pillow." I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in that poem, than in all else that has been written of her.] the central expression in most men's thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it. To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success. [Footnote: At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal Power in Venice."] The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed theirs to avoid. SECTION XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the Venetian government, the singular unity of the families composing it,--unity far from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when contrasted with the fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only [Footnote: Thus literally was fulfilled the promise to St. Mark,--Pax e.] from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies. [Footnote: The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself. They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the attack of a foreign enemy.] SECTION XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connection with the history of the state. 1st. Receive the witness of Painting. It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice as far back as 1418. Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini, and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who surround her. Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion of Venice had expired. SECTION XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward observance was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted, in almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St. Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice was in her wars, not in her worship. The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or portraiture. The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century had taken away the religious heart of Venice. SECTION XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of Architecture will be our task through many a page to come; but I must here give a general idea of its heads. Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,-- "Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les gallees y passent à travers et y ay veu navire de quatre cens tonneaux ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les anciennes toutes painctes; les aul tres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de la, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais veue et qui plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus sollennellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres faultes, si croy je que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz portent au service de l'Eglise." [Footnote: Mémoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.] SECTION XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons. Observe, first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of Venice: of which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away, and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their fronts." On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces which so struck the French ambassador. [Footnote: Appendix 6, "Renaissance Ornaments."] He was right in his notice of the distinction. There had indeed come a change over Venetian architecture in the fifteenth century; and a change of some importance to us moderns: we English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe in general owes to it the utter degradation or destruction of her schools of architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may understand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea of the connection of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of Europe, from its origin forwards. SECTION XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque, massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem. SECTION XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidently observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualization of both. SECTION XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex: those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English, Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. [Footnote: Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."] SECTION XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and the Aegean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has been undisturbed. [Footnote: The reader will find the _weak_ points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,-- Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."] But rough wakening was ordained. Section XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found--Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable of advance or change. SECTION XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth; and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and borrowed art was organizing itself into strength and consistency. The reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early organization, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely nominal extent. SECTION XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle, without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others, both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and the fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden paralysis. SECTION XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war. [Footnote: Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."] The Arab banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North, and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is VENICE. The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world. SECTION XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them. SECTION XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to mark the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures were developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman; mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of sacred symbols. The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery, and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement. SECTION XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious still, for they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its decoration. The Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of that of the northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles, the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof. These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave pillars, which were themselves also of wood. [Footnote: Appendix 9, "Wooden Churches of the North."] Now, these uprights were necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed vertical square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended and civilization increased, these wooden structures were changed into stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had been made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above the nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft. In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century, and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of Pavia. SECTION XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers. Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts, added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic superstitions. SECTION XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one of the Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. The noblest buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque) Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the Arab. SECTION XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great European styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government; while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form, was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the islands. SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote: Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever other parts of the world they were employed. To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces. SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes, not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for the Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the mosque for Christian churches. I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second division of the following essay. SECTION XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in art from their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But their especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long prevented them from receiving the influence of the art which that people had introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture. It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to have been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San Giacopo dell' Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two more, furnish the only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth century, the Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent their morality and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic, curiously developed from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the influence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries. These various forms of Gothic, the _distinctive_ architecture of Venice, chiefly represented by the churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the subject of the third division of the essay. SECTION XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic) style of the Venetian work is centralized by the date 1180, and is transformed gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century; that is to say, over the precise period which I have described as the central epoch of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari became doge five years later, and in his reign the first marked signs appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe de Commynes notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St. Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has since practised. SECTION XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality in existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the main land into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and the Cathedral of Como, (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which brought about the Reformation. SECTION XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has been a consequence of this error. The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio. SECTION XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a flood of folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity, nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused intellect; the base school of landscape [Footnote: Appendix II, "Renaissance Landscape."] gradually usurps the place of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,--the Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps, and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in France, and the condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism from severer penalty) in the time of George II. SECTION XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi, and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation. Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass through them. Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the grave. SECTION XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that effectual blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else. This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may be immediately useful in fixing in the reader's mind the epoch above indicated for the commencement of decline. SECTION XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above attached to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb of that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed: all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow. This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling respecting Venetian art. "Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel) sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We will not stay to particularize the defects of each of the seven figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school, which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy." [Footnote: Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.] It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's mortality. SECTION XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs. SECTION XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative by translation. "Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore antico che senza ombra d' imitazione traspareda tutta l' opera"--&c. "Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s' alza uno stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novita di pensiero e di effetto va coronato da un fregio il piu gentile che veder si possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l' _arca dove_ sta chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," etc. There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work, and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico). "Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts attained by ministry of the chisel." To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side. SECTION XLIII. It was indeed to be seen by nearly every one; and I do not blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and, secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much the zecchin. I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs. But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from Venice for forgery_ in 1487. [Footnote: Selvatico, p. 221.] SECTION XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter; but I pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting piece of evidence, which I promised. The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of referring,--the masonry of the palace itself. SECTION XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from the sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away." [Footnote: The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different quality.] The ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however, the proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade being purely Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic: and the lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And there are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels, with which I shall not at present trouble the reader. SECTION XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember my date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade, eighteen on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left, from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series, and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth century, with some exceptional cases of restoration. Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th, from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33d, from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th; which is very nobly designed. SECTION XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of the palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal) with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples (perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima in Deo." SECTION XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect chiselling, imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have lost their hard features and living expression; they have now all got Roman noses, and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems are, however, preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone_. Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light He gave; so that in the issue, when the light opened into the Reformation on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted? SECTION XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I shall depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the Renaissance workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself is not so easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the Renaissance work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's: "Mr. Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect, "think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there _is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it: but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity of partisanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there _was_ a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle, as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without ringing it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it were conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or Mexican, or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to all possible architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself, therefore, to establish such a law, in full belief that men are intended, without excessive difficulty, and by use of their general common sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because they will not be at the pains required for the discernment, that the world is so widely encumbered with forgeries and basenesses. I found the work simpler than I had hoped; the reasonable things ranged themselves in the order I required, and the foolish things fell aside, and took themselves away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then, with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the features with which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader's patience, while I followed out the general inquiry first, and determined with him a code of right and wrong, to which we might together make retrospective appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in these first following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture before. To those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences sometimes following,--consequences altogether unexpected, and of considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right and wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be apt rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted. For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the arts, and the Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not support them when it was left to its own strength? How came it to yield to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose no barrier to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully conceived imagery of its worship to stage decoration? [Footnote: Appendix XII., "Romanist Modern Art."] Shall we not rather find that Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of Protestantism from its side? [Footnote: Perfectly true: but the whole vital value of the truth was lost by my sectarian ignorance. Protestantism (so far as it was still Christianity, and did not consist merely in maintaining one's own opinion for gospel) could not separate itself from the Catholic Church. The so-called Catholics became themselves sectarians and heretics in casting them out; and Europe was turned into a mere cockpit, of the theft and fury of unchristian men of both parties; while innocent and silent on the hills and fields, God's people in neglected peace, everywhere and for ever Catholics, lived and died.] So long as, corrupt though it might be, no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome, refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank into the deep of night; or, whether, rather, we shall not behold in the brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it." CHAPTER II. [FIRST OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.] THE THRONE. SECTION I. In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,--in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than that which, as I endeavored to describe in the close of the last chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named "St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows: but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north--a wall of jagged blue, here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of columned palaces,--each with its black boat moored at the portal,--each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side, and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, [Footnote: Appendix II, "Our Lady of Salvation."] it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless,--Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests,--had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of the sea. SECTION II. And although the last few eventful years, fraught with change to the face of the whole earth, have been more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hundred that preceded them; though the noble landscape of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on the iron line; and though many of her palaces are for ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to forget the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is discordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so surpassing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagination there must be no permission during the task which is before us. The impotent feeling of romance, so singularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, but never save the remains of those mightier ages to which they are attached like climbing flowers; and they must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if we would see them as they stood in their own strength. Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even of discerning, the objects of which they ought to have been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned entrance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's favorite scene, where the water first narrows by the steps of the Church of La Salute,--the mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs had been brought down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of _their_ Venice lie hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the delight of the nation in its dotage; hidden in many a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather them forth, and restore out of them some faint image of the lost city, more gorgeous a thousand-fold than that which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her dominion. SECTION III. When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, there is no feature by which it is more likely to be arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the junction of the Alps and the Apennines, and enclosing the great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the character of the distribution of its débris on its opposite sides. The rock fragments and sediment which the torrents on the north side of the Alps bear into the plains are distributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon permit the firm substrata to appear from underneath them; but all the torrents which descend from the southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the recess or mountain bay which the two ridges enclose; every fragment which thunder breaks out of their battlements, and every grain of dust which the summer rain washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in the blue sweep of the Lombardic plain; and that plain must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup fills with wine, but for two contrary influences which continually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accumulation of the ruins of ages. SECTION IV. I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by insisting on the singular depression of the surface of Lombardy, which appears for many centuries to have taken place steadily and continually; the main fact with which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer sediment to the sea. The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona. The finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by the rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the central river. In one of these tracts is built RAVENNA, and in the other VENICE. SECTION V. What circumstances directed the peculiar arrangement of this great belt of sediment in the earliest times, it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to know that from the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, according to the run of the currents, the land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough to be cultivated: in others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea-level; so that, at the average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a clouded cluster of islands; the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster, have at different periods been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis. SECTION VI. The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons; [Footnote: Appendix III, "Tides of Venice."]) but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages: there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a. wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building: but, in order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and, sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be remembered what strange preparation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have foretold, and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refinement of the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps: and the highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen inches more of difference between the level of the flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and the entire system of water-carriage for the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away with. The streets of the city would have been widened, its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the people destroyed. SECTION VII. The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the contrast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian Throne, and the romantic conception of it which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and _the only preparation possible_, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendor. CHAPTER III. [SECOND OF SECOND VOLUME IN OLD EDITION.] TORCELLO. SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea. One of the feeblest of these inlets, after winding for some time among buried fragments of masonry, and knots of sunburnt weeds whitened with webs of fucus, stays itself in an utterly stagnant pool beside a plot of greener grass covered with ground ivy and violets. On this mound is built a rude brick campanile, of the commonest Lombardic type, which if we ascend towards evening (and there are none to hinder us, the door of its ruinous staircase swinging idly on its hinges), we may command from it one of the most notable scenes in this wide world of ours. Far as the eye can reach, a waste of wild sea moor, of a lurid ashen gray; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land along the border of it, and above this, but farther back, a misty band of mountains, touched with snow. To the east, the paleness and roar of the Adriatic, louder at momentary intervals as the surf breaks on the bars of sand; to the south, the widening branches of the calm lagoon, alternately purple and pale green, as they reflect the evening clouds or twilight sky; and almost beneath our feet, on the same field which sustains the tower we gaze from, a group of four buildings, two of them little larger than cottages (though built of stone, and one adorned by a quaint belfry), the third an octagonal chapel, of which we can see but little more than the flat red roof with its rayed tiling, the fourth, a considerable church with nave and aisles, but of which, in like manner, we can see little but the long central ridge and lateral slopes of roof, which the sunlight separates in one glowing mass from the green field beneath and gray moor beyond. There are no living creatures near the buildings, nor any vestige of village or city round about them. They lie like a little company of ships becalmed on a far-away sea. SECTION II. Then look farther to the south. Beyond the widening branches of the lagoon, and rising out of the bright lake into which they gather, there are a multitude of towers, dark, and scattered among square-set shapes of clustered palaces, a long and irregular line fretting the southern sky. Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood,--TORCELLO and VENICE. Thirteen hundred years ago, the gray moorland looked as it does this day, and the purple mountains stood as radiantly in the deep distances of evening; but on the line of the horizon, there were strange fires mixed with the light of sunset, and the lament of many human voices mixed with the fretting of the waves on their ridges of sand. The flames rose from the ruins of Altinum; the lament from the multitude of its people, seeking, like Israel of old, a refuge from the sword in the paths of the sea. The cattle are feeding and resting upon the site of the city that they left; the mower's scythe swept this day at dawn over the chief street of the city that they built, and the swathes of soft grass are now sending up their scent into the night air, the only incense that fills the temple of their ancient worship. Let us go down into that little space of meadow land. SECTION III. The inlet which runs nearest to the base of the campanile is not that by which Torcello is commonly approached. Another, somewhat broader, and overhung by alder copse, winds out of the main channel of the lagoon up to the very edge of the little meadow which was once the Piazza of the city, and there, stayed by a few grey stones which present some semblance of a quay, forms its boundary at one extremity. Hardly larger than an ordinary English farmyard, and roughly enclosed on each side by broken palings and hedges of honeysuckle and briar, the narrow field retires from the water's edge, traversed by a scarcely traceable footpath, for some forty or fifty paces, and then expanding into the form of a small square, with buildings on three sides of it, the fourth being that which opens to the water. Two of these, that on our left and that in front of us as we approach from the canal, are so small that they might well be taken for the out-houses of the farm, though the first is a conventual building, and the other aspires to the title of the "Palazzo publico," both dating as far back as the beginning of the fourteenth century; the third, the octagonal church of Santa Fosca, is far more ancient than either, yet hardly on a larger scale. Though the pillars of the portico which surrounds it are of pure Greek marble, and their capitals are enriched with delicate sculpture, they, and the arches they sustain, together only raise the roof to the height of a cattle-shed; and the first strong impression which the spectator receives from the whole scene is, that whatever sin it may have been which has on this spot been visited with so utter a desolation, it could not at least have been ambition. Nor will this impression be diminished as we approach, or enter, the larger church to which the whole group of building is subordinate. It has evidently been built by men in flight and distress, [Footnote: Appendix IV, "Date of the Duomo of Torcello."] who sought in the hurried erection of their Island church such a shelter for their earnest and sorrowful worship as, on the one hand, could not attract the eyes of their enemies by its splendor, and yet, on the other, might not awaken too bitter feelings by its contrast with the churches which they had seen destroyed. There is visible everywhere a simple and tender effort to recover some of the form of the temples which they had loved, and to do honor to God by that which they were erecting, while distress and humiliation prevented the desire, and prudence precluded the admission, either of luxury of ornament or magnificence of plan. The exterior is absolutely devoid of decoration, with the exception only of the western entrance and the lateral door, of which the former has carved sideposts and architrave, and the latter, crosses of rich sculpture; while the massy stone shutters of the windows, turning on huge rings of stone, which answer the double purpose of stanchions and brackets, cause the whole building rather to resemble a refuge from Alpine storm than the cathedral of a populous city; and, internally, the two solemn mosaics of the eastern and western extremities,--one representing the Last Judgment, the other the Madonna, her tears falling as her hands are raised to bless,--and the noble range of pillars which enclose the space between, terminated by the high throne for the pastor and the semicircular raised seats for the superior clergy, are expressive at once of the deep sorrow and the sacred courage of men who had no home left them upon earth, but who looked for one to come, of men "persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed." SECTION IV. For observe this choice of subjects. It is indeed possible that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the building was originally, decorated, as it is now, simply by mosaics representing Christ, the Virgin, and the apostles, at one extremity, and Christ coming to judgment at the other. And if so, I repeat, observe the significance of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear. The mind of the worshipper was fixed entirely upon two great facts, to him the most precious of all facts,--the present mercy of Christ to His Church, and His future coming to judge the world. That Christ's mercy was, at this period, supposed chiefly to be attainable through the pleading of the Virgin, and that therefore beneath the figure of the Redeemer is seen that of the weeping Madonna in the act of intercession, may indeed be matter of sorrow to the Protestant beholder, but ought not to blind him to the earnestness and singleness of the faith with which these men sought their sea-solitudes; not in hope of founding new dynasties, or entering upon new epochs of prosperity, but only to humble themselves before God, and to pray that in His infinite mercy He would hasten the time when the sea should give up the dead which were in it, and Death and Hell give up the dead which were in them, and when they might enter into the better kingdom, "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." SECTION V. Nor were the strength and elasticity of their minds, even in the least matters, diminished by thus looking forward to the close of all things. On the contrary, nothing is more remarkable than the finish and beauty of all the portions of the building, which seem to have been actually executed for the place they occupy in the present structure. The rudest are those which they brought with them from the mainland; the best and most beautiful, those which appear to have been carved for their island church: of these, the new capitals already noticed, and the exquisite panel ornaments of the chancel screen, are the most conspicuous; the latter form a low wall across the church between the six small shafts whose places are seen in the plan, and serve to enclose a space raised two steps above the level of the nave, destined for the singers, and indicated also in the plan by an open line _a b c d_. The bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description, though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the church was constructed. SECTION VI. The pulpit, however, is not among the least noticeable of its features. It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked at _p_ in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in the plan), faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich, but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the mainland; and, being of size and shape not easily to be adjusted to the proportions of the stair, the architect has cut out of them pieces of the size he needed, utterly regardless of the subject or symmetry of the original design. The pulpit is not the only place where this rough procedure has been permitted: at the lateral door of the church are two crosses, cut out of slabs of marble, formerly covered with rich sculpture over their whole surfaces, of which portions are left on the surface of the crosses; the lines of the original design being, of course, just as arbitrarily cut by the incisions between the arms, as the patterns upon a piece of silk which has been shaped anew. The fact is, that in all early Romanesque work, large surfaces are covered with sculpture for the sake of enrichment only; sculpture which indeed had always meaning, because it was easier for the sculptor to work with some chain of thought to guide his chisel, than without any; but it was not always intended, or at least not always hoped, that this chain of thought might be traced by the spectator. All that was proposed appears to have been the enrichment of surface, so as to make it delightful to the eye; and this being once understood, a decorated piece of marble became to the architect just what a piece of lace or embroidery is to a dressmaker, who takes of it such portions as she may require, with little regard to the places where the patterns are divided. And though it may appear, at first sight, that the procedure is indicative of bluntness and rudeness of feeling,--we may perceive, upon reflection, that it may also indicate the redundance of power which sets little price upon its own exertion. When a barbarous nation builds its fortress-walls out of fragments of the refined architecture it has overthrown, we can read nothing but its savageness in the vestiges of art which may thus chance to have been preserved; but when the new work is equal, if not superior, in execution, to the pieces of the older art which are associated with it, we may justly conclude that the rough treatment to which the latter have been subjected is rather a sign of the hope of doing better things, than of want of feeling for those already accomplished. And, in general, this careless fitting of ornament is, in very truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so slight an effort. SECTION VII. It appears however questionable in the present instance, whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the pulpit is studiously simple, and it is in this respect that its design possesses, it seems to me, an interest to the religious spectator greater than he will take in any other portion of the building. It is supported, as I said, on a group of four slender shafts; itself of a slightly oval form, extending nearly from one pillar of the nave to the next, so as to give the preacher free room for the action of the entire person, which always gives an unaffected impressiveness to the eloquence of the southern nations. In the centre of its curved front, a small bracket and detached shaft sustain the projection of a narrow marble desk (occupying the place of a cushion in a modern pulpit), which is hollowed out into a shallow curve on the upper surface, leaving a ledge at the bottom of the slab, so that a book laid upon it, or rather into it, settles itself there, opening as if by instinct, but without the least chance of slipping to the side, or in any way moving beneath the preacher's hands. Six balls, or rather almonds, of purple marble veined with white are set round the edge of the pulpit, and form its only decoration. Perfectly graceful, but severe and almost cold in its simplicity, built for permanence and service, so that no single member, no stone of it, could be spared, and yet all are firm and uninjured as when they were first set together, it stands in venerable contrast both with the fantastic pulpits of mediaeval cathedrals and with the rich furniture of those of our modern churches. It is worth while pausing for a moment to consider how far the manner of decorating a pulpit may have influence on the efficiency of its service, and whether our modern treatment of this, to us all-important, feature of a church be the best possible. [Footnote: Appendix V., "Modern Pulpits."] SECTION VIII. When the sermon is good we need not much concern ourselves about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place appointed for the speaker,--not to the same degree, but somewhat in the same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression, irrespective of the sense of what he says. I believe, therefore, in the first place, that pulpits ought never to be highly decorated; the speaker is apt to look mean or diminutive if the pulpit is either on a very large scale or covered with splendid ornament, and if the interest of the sermon should flag the mind is instantly tempted to wander. I have observed that in almost all cathedrals, when the pulpits are peculiarly magnificent, sermons are not often preached from them; but rather, and especially if for any important purpose, from some temporary erection in other parts of the building:--and though this may often be done because the architect has consulted the effect upon the eye more than the convenience of the ear in the placing of his larger pulpit, I think it also proceeds in some measure from a natural dislike in the preacher to match himself with the magnificence of the rostrum, lest the sermon should not be thought worthy of the place. Yet this will rather hold of the colossal sculptures, and pyramids of fantastic tracery which encumber the pulpits of Flemish and German churches, than of the delicate mosaics and ivory-like carving of the Romanesque basilicas, for when the form is kept simple, much loveliness of color and costliness of work may be introduced, and yet the speaker not be thrown into the shade by them. SECTION IX. But, in the second place, whatever ornaments we admit ought clearly to be of a chaste, grave, and noble kind; and what furniture we employ, evidently more for the honoring of God's word than for the ease of the preacher. For there are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight whether of ear or intellect, we shall necessarily be led to expect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to think that all is not well if the pulpit have not a golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it, and if the sermon be not fairly written in a black book, to be smoothed upon the cushion in a majestic manner before beginning; all this we shall duly come to expect: but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen without restlessness for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds in happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be necessary. But if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the wayside by this wild bird and the other, and at last, when breathless and weary with the week's labor they give him this interval of imperfect and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try by this way and that to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands and no man regarded,--thirty minutes to raise the dead in,--let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. We shall not so easily bear with the silk and gold upon the seat of judgment, nor with ornament of oratory in the mouth of the messenger: we shall wish that his words may be simple, even when they are sweetest, and the place from which he speaks like a marble rock in the desert, about which the people have gathered in their thirst. SECTION X. But the severity which is so marked in the pulpit at Torcello is still more striking in the raised seats and episcopal throne which occupy the curve of the apse. The arrangement at first somewhat recalls to the mind that of the Roman amphitheatres; the flight of steps which lead up to the central throne divides the curve of the continuous steps or seats (it appears in the first three ranges questionable which were intended, for they seem too high for the one, and too low and close for the other), exactly as in an amphitheatre the stairs for access intersect the sweeping ranges of seats. But in the very rudeness of this arrangement, and especially in the want of all appliances of comfort (for the whole is of marble, and the arms of the central throne are not for convenience, but for distinction, and to separate it more conspicuously from the undivided seats), there is a dignity which no furniture of stalls nor carving of canopies ever could attain, and well worth the contemplation of the Protestant, both as sternly significative of an episcopal authority which in the early days of the Church was never disputed, and as dependent for all its impressiveness on the utter absence of any expression either of pride or self-indulgence. SECTION XI. But there is one more circumstance which we ought to remember as giving peculiar significance to the position which the episcopal throne occupies in this island church, namely, that in the minds of all early Christians the Church itself was most frequently symbolized under the image of a ship, of which the bishop was the pilot. Consider the force which this symbol would assume in the imaginations of men to whom the spiritual Church had become an ark of refuge in the midst of a destruction hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which they were separated for ever, they should have looked upon each other as the disciples did when the storm came down on the Tiberias Lake, and have yielded ready and loving obedience to those who ruled them in His name, who had there rebuked the winds and commanded stillness to the sea. And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was that the dominion of Venice was begun, and in what strength she went forth conquering and to conquer, let him not seek to estimate the wealth of her arsenals or number of her armies, nor look upon the pageantry of her palaces, nor enter into the secrets of her councils; but let him ascend the highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar of Torcello, and then, looking as the pilot did of old along the marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, let him repeople its veined deck with the shadows of its dead mariners, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart that was kindled within them, when first, after the pillars of it had settled in the sand, and the roof of it had been closed against the angry sky that was still reddened by the fires of their homesteads,--first, within the shelter of its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock that was strange to them,--rose that ancient hymn, in the power of their gathered voices: THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT, AND HIS HANDS PREPARED THE DRY LAND. CHAPTER IV. ST. MARK'S. SECTION I. "And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus." If as the shores of Asia lessened upon his sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into the heart of the weak disciple who had turned back when his hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by the chiefest of Christ's captains, unworthy thenceforward to go forth with him to the work, [Footnote: Acts, xiii. 13; xv. 38, 39.] how wonderful would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in future ages he was to be represented among men! how woful, that the war-cry of his name should so often reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains where he himself had failed in the courage of the Christian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and shame, he was following the Son of Consolation! SECTION II. That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body in the ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason to doubt, nor that it was principally in consequence of their having done so, that they chose him for their patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that before he went into Egypt he had founded the Church at Aquileia, and was thus, in some sort, the first bishop of the Venetian isles and people. I believe that this tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome; [Footnote: The reader who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli, "Delle Memorie Venete" (Venice, 1795), tom. ii. p. 332, and the authorities quoted by him.] but, as usual, it is enriched by various later additions and embellishments, much resembling the stories told respecting the church of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by the Santo Padre who compiled the "Vite de' Santi spettanti alle Chiese di Venezia," [Footnote: Venice, 1761, tom. i. p. 126.] that "St. Mark having seen the people of Aquileia well grounded in religion, and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at that period some houses built upon a certain high bank called Rialto, and the boat being driven by the wind was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark, snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel saying to him: 'Peace be to thee, Mark; here shall thy body rest.'" The angel goes on to foretell the building of "una stupenda, ne più veduta Città;" but the fable is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation. SECTION III. But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or not, St. Theodore was the first patron of the city; nor can he yet be considered as having entirely abdicated his early right, as his statue, standing on a crocodile, still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of St. Mark's; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy of the great square, ought not to leave it without endeavoring to imagine its aspect in that early time, when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet, [Footnote: St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or Broglio, that is to say, Garden." The canal passed through it, over which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. Galliciolli, lib. I, cap. viii.] divided by a small canal, with a line of trees on each side; and extending between the two churches of St. Theodore and St. Geminian, as the little piazza, of Torcello lies between its "palazzo" and cathedral. SECTION IV. But in the year 813, when the seat of government was finally removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on the spot where the present one stands, with a Ducal Chapel beside it, [Footnote: My authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter on the Ducal Palace.] gave a very different character to the Square of St. Mark; and fifteen years later, the acquisition of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned the investiture of that chapel with all possible splendor. St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, and his church destroyed, to make room for the aggrandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, and thenceforward known as "St. Mark's." [Footnote: In the Chronicles, "Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella."] SECTION V. This first church was however destroyed by fire, when the Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against Candiano, in 976. It was partly rebuilt by his successor, Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and with the assistance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years; the main building being completed in 1071, but its incrustation with marble not till considerably later. It was consecrated on the 8th of October, 1085, [Footnote: "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the Protector St. Mark."--_Corner_, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the reader with the various authorities for the above statements: I have consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the church itself: "Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno Desuper undecimo fuit facta primo," is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much probability, to have perished "in qualche ristauro."] according to Sansovino and the author of the "Chiesa Ducale di S. Marco," in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly between 1084 and 1096, those years being the limits of the reign of Vital Falier; I incline to the supposition that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo instead of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the close of the eleventh century the great consecration of the church took place. It was again injured by fire in 1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in some slight degree embellish or alter the fabric, so that few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of any given date. Two periods of interference are, however, notable above the rest: the first, that in which the Gothic school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close of the fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper archivolts, and window traceries were added to the exterior, and the great screen, with various chapels and tabernacle-work, to the interior; the second, when the Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the pupils of Titian and Tintoret substituted, over one half of the church, their own compositions for the Greek mosaics with which it was originally decorated; [Footnote: Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc.] happily, though with no good will, having left enough to enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say hereafter; meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind the succession of periods of alteration as firmly and simply as possible. SECTION VI. We have seen that the main body of the church may be broadly stated to be of the eleventh century, the Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and the restored mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the Byzantine; but there is considerable difficulty in ascertaining how long, during the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, additions were made to the Byzantine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from the work of the eleventh century, being purposely executed in the same manner. Two of the most important pieces of evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the south transept, and another over the northern door of the façade; the first representing the interior, the second the exterior, of the ancient church. SECTION VII. It has just been stated that the existing building was consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar solemnity was given to that of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, of the pretended miracle by which it was concealed. "After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, the place in which the body of the holy Evangelist rested had been altogether forgotten, so that the Doge Vital Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the venerable deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the pious Doge, but to all the citizens and people; so that at last, moved by confidence in the Divine mercy, they determined to implore, with prayer and fasting, the manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now depend upon any human effort. A general fast being therefore proclaimed, and a solemn procession appointed for the 25th day of June, while the people assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much amazement as joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a pillar (near the place where the altar of the Cross is now), which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in which the body of the Evangelist was laid." SECTION VIII. Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanciful traditions; as, for instance, that, when the sarcophagus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand out of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove; and a quaint and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional manner, the interior of the church, as it then was, filled by the people, first in prayer, then in thanksgiving, the pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in the midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the inscription "Dux" over his head, as uniformly is the case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to a small scale in order to form a background to the figures; one of those bold pieces of picture history which we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a column or two of the real or perspective size, and subdued it into a vague background: the old workman crushed the church together that he might get it all in, up to the cupolas; and has, therefore, left us some useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who is familiar with the method of drawing employed at the period will not push the evidence too far. The two pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encompassed the whole church, but which modern restorers have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit of their being represented with any success; but some at least of those mosaics had been executed at that period, and their absence in the representation of the entire church is especially to be observed, in order to show that we must not trust to any negative evidence in such works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that the central archivolt of St. Mark's _must_ be posterior to the year 1205, because it does not appear in the representation of the exterior of the church over the northern door; [Footnote: Guida di Venezia, p. 6. (He is right, however.)] but he justly observes that this mosaic (which is the other piece of evidence we possess respecting the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be earlier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses which were brought from Constantinople in that year. And this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with confidence respecting the date of any part of the exterior of St. Mark's; for we have above seen that it was consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one of the most important exterior decorations assuredly retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, although its style would have led us to suppose it had been an original part of the fabric. However, for all our purposes, it will be enough for the reader to remember that the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century; the Gothic portions to the fourteenth; some of the altars and embellishments to the fifteenth and sixteenth; and the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. SECTION IX. This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order that I may speak generally of the Byzantine architecture of St. Mark's, without leading him to suppose the whole church to have been built and decorated by Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single exception of the seventeenth century mosaics, have been so dexterously accommodated to the original fabric that the general effect is still that of a Byzantine building; and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary, direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. Mark's arrests the eye, or affects the feelings, is either Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine influence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of antiquarianism, or arrested by the obscurities of chronology. SECTION X. And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low gray gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass-plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny side where the canons' children are walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and gray, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. SECTION XI. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the cathedral clock; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moisè, which may be considered as there answering to the secluded street that led us to our English cathedral gateway. SECTION XII. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant salesmen,--a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of brazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over head an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, in fact, intervals between the square stone shafts, about eight feet high, which carry the first floors: intervals of which one is narrow and serves as a door; the other is, in the more respectable shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only,--and fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious shop-keeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a penny print; the more religious one has his print colored and set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green watermelons are heaped upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel leaves; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded patterns on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," where the Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be denned or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wineshop of the calle, where we are offered "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28'32," the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps; and for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier. SECTION XIII. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moisè, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza, (mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the frightful façade of San Moisè, which we will pause at another time to examine, and then by the modernizing of the shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then we forget them all; for between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been transformed into arches charged with goodly sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. SECTION XIV. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away;--a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of colored light; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory,--sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, "their bluest veins to kiss"--the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life--angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers,--a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an interval! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. SECTION XV. And what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats--not "of them that sell doves" for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,--the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,--a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,--gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look down upon it continually. That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks towards the sea, and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre, we shall find the gate of the Baptistery; let us enter there. The heavy door closes behind us instantly, and the light, and the turbulence of the Piazzetta, are together shut out by it. SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures: in the centre is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs, a small figure of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light that glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high in the wall, and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing that it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb indeed; for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might be wakened early;--only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies away upon his breast. The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a tower: the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal cap. The rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the lips sharp, perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the natural lines; but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep serenity upon the whole countenance. The roof of the canopy above has been blue, filled with stars; beneath, in the centre of the tomb on which the figure rests, is a seated figure of the Virgin, and the border of it all around is of flowers and soft leaves, growing rich and deep, as if in a field in summer. It is the Doge Andrea Dandolo, a man early great among the great of Venice; and early lost. She chose him for her king in his 36th year; he died ten years later, leaving behind him that history to which we owe half of what we know of her former fortunes. SECTION XVII. Look round at the room in which he lies. The floor of it is of rich mosaic, encompassed by a low seat of red marble, and its walls are of alabaster, but worn and shattered, and darkly stained with age, almost a ruin,--in places the slabs of marble have fallen away altogether, and the rugged brickwork is seen through the rents, but all beautiful; the ravaging fissures fretting their way among the islands and channelled zones of the alabaster, and the time-stains on its translucent masses darkened into fields of rich golden brown, like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes on it through deep sea. The light fades away into the recess of the chamber towards the altar, and the eye can hardly trace the lines of the bas-relief behind it of the baptism of Christ: but on the vaulting of the roof the figures are distinct, and there are seen upon it two great circles, one surrounded by the "Principalities and powers in heavenly places," of which Milton has expressed the ancient division in the single massy line, "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers," and around the other, the Apostles; Christ the centre of both; and upon the walls, again and again repeated, the gaunt figure of the Baptist, in every circumstance of his life and death; and the streams of the Jordan running down between their cloven rocks; the axe laid to the root of a fruitless tree that springs upon their shore. "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire." Yes, verily: to be baptized with fire, or to be cast therein; it is the choice set before all men. The march-notes still murmur through the grated window, and mingle with the sounding in our ears of the sentence of judgment, which the old Greek has written on that Baptistery wall. Venice has made her choice. SECTION XVIII. He who lies under that stony canopy would have taught her another choice, in his day, if she would have listened to him; but he and his counsels have long been forgotten by her, the dust lies upon his lips. Through the heavy door whose bronze network closes the place of his rest, let us enter the church itself. It is lost in still deeper twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burning ceaselessly in the recesses of the chapels; the roof sheeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some feeble gleaming to the flames; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stonel sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapt round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms, and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. And although in the recesses of the aisles and chapels, when the mist of the incense hangs heavily, we may see continually a figure traced in faint lines upon their marble, a woman standing with her eyes raised to heaven, and the inscription above her, "Mother of God," she is not here the presiding deity. It is the Cross that is first seen, and always, burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment. SECTION XIX. Nor is this interior without effect on the minds of the people. At every hour of the day there are groups collected before the various shrines, and solitary worshippers scattered through the dark places of the church, evidently in prayer both deep and reverent, and, for the most part, profoundly sorrowful. The devotees at the greater number of the renowned shrines of Romanism may be seen murmuring their appointed prayers with wandering eyes and unengaged gestures; but the step of the stranger does not disturb those who kneel on the pavement of St. Mark's; and hardly a moment passes, from early morning to sunset, in which we may not see some half-veiled figure enter beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself into long abasement on the floor of the temple, and then rising slowly with more confirmed step, and with a passionate kiss and clasp of the arms given to the feet of the crucifix, by which the lamps burn always in the northern aisle, leave the church, as if comforted. SECTION XX. But we must not hastily conclude from this that the nobler characters of the building have at present any influence in fostering a devotional spirit. There is distress enough in Venice to bring many to their knees, without excitement from external imagery; and whatever there may be in the temper of the worship offered in St. Mark's more than can be accounted for by reference to the unhappy circumstances of the city, is assuredly not owing either to the beauty of its architecture or to the impressiveness of the Scripture histories embodied in its mosaics. That it has a peculiar effect, however slight, on the popular mind, may perhaps be safely conjectured from the number of worshippers which it attracts, while the churches of St. Paul and the Frari, larger in size and more central in position, are left comparatively empty. [Footnote: The mere warmth of St. Mark's in winter, which is much greater than that of the other two churches above named, must, however, be taken into consideration, as one of the most efficient causes of its being then more frequented.] But this effect is altogether to be ascribed to its richer assemblage of those sources of influence which address themselves to the commonest instincts of the human mind, and which, in all ages and countries, have been more or less employed in the support of superstition. Darkness and mystery; confused recesses of building; artificial light employed in small quantity, but maintained with a constancy which seems to give it a kind of sacredness; preciousness of material easily comprehended by the vulgar eye; close air loaded with a sweet and peculiar odor associated only with religious services, solemn music, and tangible idols or images having popular legends attached to them,--these, the stage properties of superstition, which have been from the beginning of the world, and must be to the end of it, employed by all nations, whether openly savage or nominally civilized, to produce a false awe in minds incapable of apprehending the true nature of the Deity, are assembled in St. Mark's to a degree, as far as I know, unexampled in any other European church. The arts of the Magus and the Brahmin are exhausted in the animation of a paralyzed Christianity; and the popular sentiment which these arts excite is to be regarded by us with no more respect than we should have considered ourselves justified in rendering to the devotion of the worshippers at Eleusis, Ellora, or Edfou. [Footnote: I said above that the larger number of the devotees entered by the "Arabian" porch; the porch, that is to say, on the north side of the church, remarkable for its rich Arabian archivolt, and through which access is gained immediately to the northern transept. The reason is, that in that transept is the chapel of the Madonna, which has a greater attraction for the Venetians than all the rest of the church besides. The old builders kept their images of the Virgin subordinate to those of Christ; but modern Romanism has retrograded from theirs, and the most glittering portions of the whole church are the two recesses behind this lateral altar, covered with silver hearts dedicated to the Virgin.] SECTION XXI. Indeed, these inferior means of exciting religious emotion were employed in the ancient Church as they are at this day, but not employed alone. Torchlight there was, as there is now; but the torchlight illumined Scripture histories on the walls, which every eye traced and every heart comprehended, but which, during my whole residence in Venice, I never saw one Venetian regard for an instant. I never heard from any one the most languid expression of interest in any feature of the church, or perceived the slightest evidence of their understanding the meaning of its architecture; and while, therefore, the English cathedral, though no longer dedicated to the kind of services for which it was intended by its builders, and much at variance in many of its characters with the temper of the people by whom it is now surrounded, retains yet so much of its religious influence that no prominent feature of its architecture can be said to exist altogether in vain, we have in St. Mark's a building apparently still employed in the ceremonies for which it was designed, and yet of which the impressive attributes have altogether ceased to be comprehended by its votaries. The beauty which it possesses is unfelt, the language it uses is forgotten; and in the midst of the city to whose service it has so long been consecrated, and still filled by crowds of the descendants of those to whom it owes its magnificence; it stands, in reality, more desolate than the ruins through which the sheep-walk passes unbroken in our English valleys; and the writing on its marble walls is less regarded and less powerful for the teaching of men, than the letters which the shepherd follows with his finger, where the moss is lightest on the tombs in the desecrated cloister. SECTION XXII. It must therefore be altogether without reference to its present usefulness, that we pursue our inquiry into the merits and meaning of the architecture of this marvellous building; and it can only be after we have terminated that inquiry, conducting it carefully on abstract grounds, that we can pronounce with any certainty how far the present neglect of St. Mark's is significative of the decline of the Venetian character, or how far this church is to be considered as the relic of a barbarous age, incapable of attracting the admiration, or influencing the feelings of a civilized community. The inquiry before us is twofold. Throughout the first volume, I carefully kept the study of _expression_ distinct from that of abstract architectural perfection; telling the reader that in every building we should afterwards examine, he would have first to form a judgment of its construction and decorative merit, considering it merely as a work of art; and then to examine farther, in what degree it fulfilled its expressional purposes. Accordingly, we have first to judge of St. Mark's merely as a piece of architecture, not as a church; secondly, to estimate its fitness for its special duty as a place of worship, and the relation in which it stands, as such, to those northern cathedrals that still retain so much of the power over the human heart, which the Byzantine domes appear to have lost for ever. SECTION XXIII. In the two succeeding sections of this work, devoted respectively to the examination of the Gothic and Renaissance buildings in Venice, I have endeavored to analyze and state, as briefly as possible, the true nature of each school,--first in Spirit, then in Form. I wished to have given a similar analysis, in this section, of the nature of Byzantine architecture; but could not make my statements general, because I have never seen this kind of building on its native soil. Nevertheless, in the following sketch of the principles exemplified in St. Mark's, I believe that most of the leading features and motives of the style will be found clearly enough distinguished to enable the reader to judge of it with tolerable fairness, as compared with the better known systems of European architecture in the middle ages. SECTION XXIV. Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed _incrustation_. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary before we proceed to criticise any one of its arrangements, that the reader should carefully consider the principles which are likely to have influenced, or might legitimately influence, the architects of such a school, as distinguished from those whose designs are to be executed in massive materials. It is true, that among different nations, and at different times, we may find examples of every sort and degree of incrustation, from the mere setting of the larger and more compact stones by preference at the outside of the wall, to the miserable construction of that modern brick cornice, with its coating of cement, which, but the other day, in London, killed its unhappy workmen in its fall. [Footnote: Vide "Builder," for October, 1851.] But just as it is perfectly possible to have a clear idea of the opposing characteristics of two different species of plants or animals, though between the two there are varieties which it is difficult to assign either to the one or the other, so the reader may fix decisively in his mind the legitimate characteristics of the incrusted and the massive styles, though between the two there are varieties which confessedly unite the attributes of both. For instance, in many Roman remains, built of blocks of tufa and incrusted with marble, we have a style, which, though truly solid, possesses some of the attributes of incrustation; and in the Cathedral of Florence, built of brick and coated with marble, the marble facing is so firmly and exquisitely set, that the building, though in reality incrusted, assumes the attributes of solidity. But these intermediate examples need not in the least confuse our generally distinct ideas of the two families of buildings: the one in which the substance is alike throughout, and the forms and conditions of the ornament assume or prove that it is so, as in the best Greek buildings, and for the most part in our early Norman and Gothic; and the other, in which the substance is of two kinds, one internal, the other external, and the system of decoration is founded on this duplicity, as pre-eminently in St. Mark's. SECTION XXV. I have used the word duplicity in no depreciatory sense. In chapter ii. of the "Seven Lamps," Section 18, I especially guarded this incrusted school from the imputation of insincerity, and I must do so now at greater length. It appears insincere at first to a Northern builder, because, accustomed to build with solid blocks of freestone, he is in the habit of supposing the external superficies of a piece of masonry to be some criterion of its thickness. But, as soon as he gets acquainted with the incrusted style, he will find that the Southern builders had no intention to deceive him. He will see that every slab of facial marble is fastened to the next by a confessed _rivet_, and that the joints of the armor are so visibly and openly accommodated to the contours of the substance within, that he has no more right to complain of treachery than a savage would have, who, for the first time in his life seeing a man in armor, had supposed him to be made of solid steel. Acquaint him with the customs of chivalry, and with the uses of the coat of mail, and he ceases to accuse of dishonesty either the panoply or the knight. These laws and customs of the St. Mark's architectural chivalry it must be our business to develop. SECTION XXVI. First, consider the natural circumstances which give rise to such a style. Suppose a nation of builders, placed far from any quarries of available stone, and having precarious access to the mainland where they exist; compelled therefore either to build entirely with brick, or to import whatever stone they use from great distances, in ships of small tonnage, and for the most part dependent for speed on the oar rather than the sail. The labor and cost of carriage are just as great, whether they import common or precious stone, and therefore the natural tendency would always be to make each shipload as valuable as possible. But in proportion to the preciousness of the stone, is the limitation of its possible supply; limitation not determined merely by cost, but by the physical conditions of the material, for of many marbles, pieces above a certain size are not to be had for money. There would also be a tendency in such circumstances to import as much stone as possible ready sculptured, in order to save weight; and therefore, if the traffic of their merchants led them to places where there were ruins of ancient edifices, to ship the available fragments of them home. Out of this supply of marble, partly composed of pieces of so precious a quality that only a few tons of them could be on any terms obtained, and partly of shafts, capitals, and other portions of foreign buildings, the island architect has to fashion, as best he may, the anatomy of his edifice. It is at his choice either to lodge his few blocks of precious marble here and there among his masses of brick, and to cut out of the sculptured fragments such new forms as may be necessary for the observance of fixed proportions in the new building; or else to cut the colored stones into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any regular service in the support of the building. An architect who cared only to display his own skill, and had no respect for the works of others, would assuredly have chosen the former alternative, and would have sawn the old marbles into fragments in order to prevent all interference with his own designs. But an architect who cared for the preservation of noble work, whether his own or others', and more regarded the beauty of his building than his own fame, would have done what those old builders of St. Mark's did for us, and saved every relic with which he was entrusted. SECTION XXVII. But these were not the only motives which influenced the Venetians in the adoption of their method of architecture. It might, under all the circumstances above stated, have been a question with other builders, whether to import one shipload of costly jaspers, or twenty of chalk flints; and whether to build a small church faced with porphyry and paved with agate, or to raise a vast cathedral in freestone. But with the Venetians it could not be a question for an instant; they were exiles from ancient and beautiful cities, and had been accustomed to build with their ruins, not less in affection than in admiration: they had thus not only grown familiar with the practice of inserting older fragments in modern buildings, but they owed to that practice a great part of the splendor of their city, and whatever charm of association might aid its change from a Refuge into a Home. The practice which began in the affections of a fugitive nation, was prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than the organized expression of any fixed architectural law, or religious emotion. SECTION XXVIII. Thus far, however, the justification of the style of this church depends on circumstances peculiar to the time of its erection, and to the spot where it arose. The merit of its method, considered in the abstract, rests on far broader grounds. In the fifth chapter of the "Seven Lamps," Section 14, the reader will find the opinion of a modern architect of some reputation, Mr. Wood, that the chief thing remarkable in this church "is its extreme ugliness;" and he will find this opinion associated with another, namely, that the works of the Caracci are far preferable to those of the Venetian painters. This second statement of feeling reveals to us one of the principal causes of the first; namely, that Mr. Wood had not any perception of color, or delight in it. The perception of color is a gift just as definitely granted to one person, and denied to another, as an ear for music; and the very first requisite for true judgment of St. Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find out whether they possess or not. For it is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested; and a deaf man might as well pretend to pronounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to discern the beauty of St. Mark's. It possesses the charm of color in common with the greater part of the architecture, as well as of the manufactures, of the East; but the Venetians deserve especial note as the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of St. Mark's, and to group the colors of its porches; but they rapidly took up and developed, under more masculine conditions, the system of which the Greeks had shown them the example: while the burghers and barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their palaces with porphyry and gold; and at last, when her mighty painters had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose foundations were beaten by the sea; and the strong tide, as it runs beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the frescoes of Giorgione. SECTION XXIX. If, therefore, the reader does not care for color, I must protest against his endeavor to form any judgment whatever of this church of St. Mark's. But, if he both cares for and loves it, let him remember that the school of incrusted architecture is _the only one in which perfect and permanent chromatic decoration is possible_; and let him look upon every piece of jasper and alabaster given to the architect as a cake of very hard color, of which a certain portion is to be ground down or cut off, to paint the walls with. Once understand this thoroughly, and accept the condition that the body and availing strength of the edifice are to be in brick, and that this under muscular power of brickwork is to be clothed with the defence and the brightness of the marble, as the body of an animal is protected and adorned by its scales or its skin, and all the consequent fitnesses and laws of the structure will be easily discernible. These I shall state in their natural order. SECTION XXX. LAW I. _That the plinths and cornices used for binding the armor are to be light and delicate._ A certain thickness, at least two or three inches, must be required in the covering pieces (even when composed of the strongest stone, and set on the least exposed parts), in order to prevent the chance of fracture, and to allow for the wear of time. And the weight of this armor must not be trusted to cement; the pieces must not be merely glued to the rough brick surface, but connected with the mass which they protect by binding cornices and string courses; and with each other, so as to secure mutual support, aided by the rivetings, but by no means dependent upon them. And, for the full honesty and straightforwardness of the work, it is necessary that these string courses and binding plinths should not be of such proportions as would fit them for taking any important part in the hard work of the inner structure, or render them liable to be mistaken for the great cornices and plinths already explained as essential parts of the best solid building. They must be delicate, slight, and visibly incapable of severer work than that assigned to them. SECTION XXXI. LAW II. _Science of inner structure is to be abandoned._ As the body of the structure is confessedly of inferior, and comparatively incoherent materials, it would be absurd to attempt in it any expression of the higher refinements of construction. It will be enough that by its mass we are assured of its sufficiency and strength; and there is the less reason for endeavoring to diminish the extent of its surface by delicacy of adjustment, because on the breadth of that surface we are to depend for the better display of the color, which is to be the chief source of our pleasure in the building. The main body of the work, therefore, will be composed of solid walls and massive piers; and whatever expression of finer structural science we may require, will be thrown either into subordinate portions of it, or entirely directed to the support of the external mail, where in arches or vaults it might otherwise appear dangerously independent of the material within. SECTION XXXII. LAW III. _All shafts are to be solid._ Wherever, by the smallness of the parts, we may be driven to abandon the incrusted structure at all, it must be abandoned altogether. The eye must never be left in the least doubt as to what is solid and what is coated. Whatever appears _probably_ solid, must be _assuredly_ so, and therefore it becomes an inviolable law that no shaft shall ever be incrusted. Not only does the whole virtue of a shaft depend on its consolidation, but the labor of cutting and adjusting an incrusted coat to it would be greater than the saving of material is worth. Therefore the shaft, of whatever size, is always to be solid; and because the incrusted character of the rest of the building renders it more difficult for the shafts to clear themselves from suspicion, they must not, in this incrusted style, be in any place jointed. No shaft must ever be used but of one block; and this the more, because the permission given to the builder to have his walls and piers as ponderous as he likes, renders it quite unnecessary for him to use shafts of any fixed size. In our Norman and Gothic, where definite support is required at a definite point, it becomes lawful to build up a tower of small stones in the shape of a shaft. But the Byzantine is allowed to have as much support as he wants from the walls in every direction, and he has no right to ask for further license in the structure of his shafts. Let him, by generosity in the substance of his pillars, repay us for the permission we have given him to be superficial in his walls. The builder in the chalk valleys of France and England may be blameless in kneading his clumsy pier out of broken flint and calcined lime; but the Venetian, who has access to the riches of Asia and the quarries of Egypt, must frame at least his shafts out of flawless stone. SECTION XXXIII. And this for another reason yet. Although, as we have said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect. For if blocks of jasper or porphyry be inserted in the walls, the spectator cannot tell their thickness, and cannot judge of the costliness of the sacrifice. But the shaft he can measure with his eye in an instant, and estimate the quantity of treasure both in the mass of its existing substance, and in that which has been hewn away to bring it into its perfect and symmetrical form. And thus the shafts of all buildings of this kind are justly regarded as an expression of their wealth, and a form of treasure, just as much as the jewels or gold in the sacred vessels; they are, in fact, nothing else than large jewels, [Footnote: "Quivi presso si vedi una colonna di tanta bellezza e finezza che e riputato _piutosto gioia che pietra_,"--Sansovino, of the verd-antique pillar in San Jacomo dell' Orio. A remarkable piece of natural history and moral philosophy, connected with this subject, will be found in the second chapter of our third volume, quoted from the work of a Florentine architect of the fifteenth century.] the block of precious serpentine or jasper being valued according to its size and brilliancy of color, like a large emerald or ruby; only the bulk required to bestow value on the one is to be measured in feet and tons, and on the other in lines and carats. The shafts must therefore be, without exception, of one block in all buildings of this kind; for the attempt in any place to incrust or joint them would be a deception like that of introducing a false stone among jewellery (for a number of joints of any precious stone are of course not equal in value to a single piece of equal weight), and would put an end at once to the spectator's confidence in the expression of wealth in any portion of the structure, or of the spirit of sacrifice in those who raised it. SECTION XXXIV. LAW IV. _The shafts may sometimes be independent of the construction._ Exactly in proportion to the importance which the shaft assumes as a large jewel, is the diminution of its importance as a sustaining member; for the delight which we receive in its abstract bulk, and beauty of color, is altogether independent of any perception of its adaptation to mechanical necessities. Like other beautiful things in this world, its end is to _be_ beautiful; and, in proportion to its beauty, it receives permission to be otherwise useless. We do not blame emeralds and rubies because we cannot make them into heads of hammers. Nay, so far from our admiration of the jewel shaft being dependent on its doing work for us, it is very possible that a chief part of its preciousness may consist in a delicacy, fragility, and tenderness of material, which must render it utterly unfit for hard work; and therefore that we shall admire it the more, because we perceive that if we were to put much weight upon it, it would be crushed. But, at all events, it is very clear that the primal object in the placing of such shafts must be the display of their beauty to the best advantage, and that therefore all imbedding of them in walls, or crowding of them into groups, in any position in which either their real size or any portion of their surface would be concealed, is either inadmissible together, or objectionable in proportion to their value; that no symmetrical or scientific arrangements of pillars are therefore ever to be expected in buildings of this kind, and that all such are even to be looked upon as positive errors and misapplications of materials: but that, on the contrary, we must be constantly prepared to see, and to see with admiration, shafts of great size and importance set in places where their real service is little more than nominal, and where the chief end of their existence is to catch the sunshine upon their polished sides, and lead the eye into delighted wandering among the mazes of their azure veins. SECTION XXXV. LAW V. _The shafts may be of variable size._ Since the value of each shaft depends upon its bulk, and diminishes with the diminution of its mass, in a greater ratio than the size itself diminishes, as in the case of all other jewellery, it is evident that we must not in general expect perfect symmetry and equality among the series of shafts, any more than definiteness of application; but that, on the contrary, an accurately observed symmetry ought to give us a kind of pain, as proving that considerable and useless loss has been sustained by some of the shafts, in being cut down to match with the rest. It is true that symmetry is generally sought for in works of smaller jewellery; but, even there, not a perfect symmetry, and obtained under circumstances quite different from those which affect the placing of shafts in architecture. First: the symmetry is usually imperfect. The stones that seem to match each other in a ring or necklace, appear to do so only because they are so small that their differences are not easily measured by the eye; but there is almost always such difference between them as would be strikingly apparent if it existed in the same proportion between two shafts nine or ten feet in height. Secondly: the quantity of stones which pass through a jeweller's hands, and the facility of exchange of such small objects, enable the tradesman to select any number of stones of approximate size; a selection, however, often requiring so much time, that perfect symmetry in a group of very fine stones adds enormously to their value. But the architect has neither the time nor the facilities of exchange. He cannot lay aside one column in a corner of his church till, in the course of traffic, he obtain another that will match it; he has not hundreds of shafts fastened up in bundles, out of which he can match sizes at his ease; he cannot send to a brother-tradesman and exchange the useless stones for available ones, to the convenience of both. His blocks of stone, or his ready hewn shafts, have been brought to him in limited number, from immense distances; no others are to be had; and for those which he does not bring into use, there is no demand elsewhere. His only means of obtaining symmetry will therefore be, in cutting down the finer masses to equality with the inferior ones; and this we ought not to desire him often to do. And therefore, while sometimes in a Baldacchino, or an important chapel or shrine, this costly symmetry may be necessary, and admirable in proportion to its probable cost, in the general fabric we must expect to see shafts introduced of size and proportion continually varying, and such symmetry as may be obtained among them never altogether perfect, and dependent for its charm frequently on strange complexities and unexpected rising and falling of weight and accent in its marble syllables; bearing the same relation to a rigidly chiselled and proportioned architecture that the wild lyric rhythm of Aeschylus or Pindar bears to the finished measures of Pope. SECTION XXXVI. The application of the principles of jewellery to the smaller as well as the larger blocks, will suggest to us another reason for the method of incrustation adopted in the walls. It often happens that the beauty of the veining in some varieties of alabaster is so great, that it becomes desirable to exhibit it by dividing the stone, not merely to economize its substance, but to display the changes in the disposition of its fantastic lines. By reversing one of two thin plates successively taken from the stone, and placing their corresponding edges in contact, a perfectly symmetrical figure may be obtained, which will enable the eye to comprehend more thoroughly the position of the veins. And this is actually the method in which, for the most part, the alabasters of St. Mark are employed; thus accomplishing a double good,--directing the spectator, in the first place, to close observation of the nature of the stone employed, and in the second, giving him a farther proof of the honesty of intention in the builder: for wherever similar veining is discovered in two pieces, the fact is declared that they have been cut from the same stone. It would have been easy to disguise the similarity by using them in different parts of the building; but on the contrary they are set edge to edge, so that the whole system of the architecture may be discovered at a glance by any one acquainted with the nature of the stones employed. Nay, but, it is perhaps answered me, not by an ordinary observer; a person ignorant of the nature of alabaster might perhaps fancy all these symmetrical patterns to have been found in the stone itself, and thus be doubly deceived, supposing blocks to be solid and symmetrical which were in reality subdivided and irregular. I grant it; but be it remembered, that in all things, ignorance is liable to be deceived, and has no right to accuse anything but itself as the source of the deception. The style and the words are dishonest, not which are liable to be misunderstood if subjected to no inquiry, but which are deliberately calculated to lead inquiry astray. There are perhaps no great or noble truths, from those of religion downwards, which present no mistakable aspect to casual or ignorant contemplation. Both the truth and the lie agree in hiding themselves at first, but the lie continues to hide itself with effort, as we approach to examine it; and leads us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies; the truth reveals itself in proportion to our patience and knowledge, discovers itself kindly to our pleading, and leads us, as it is discovered, into deeper truths. SECTION XXXVII. LAW VI. _The decoration must be shallow in cutting._ The method of construction being thus systematized, it is evident that a certain style of decoration must arise out of it, based on the primal condition that over the greater part of the edifice there can be _no deep cutting_. The thin sheets of covering stones do not admit of it; we must not cut them through to the bricks; and whatever ornaments we engrave upon them cannot, therefore, be more than an inch deep at the utmost. Consider for an instant the enormous differences which this single condition compels between the sculptural decoration of the incrusted style, and that of the solid stones of the North, which may be hacked and hewn into whatever cavernous hollows and black recesses we choose; struck into grim darknesses and grotesque projections, and rugged ploughings up of sinuous furrows, in which any form or thought may be wrought out on any scale,--mighty statues with robes of rock and crowned foreheads burning in the sun, or venomous goblins and stealthy dragons shrunk into lurking-places of untraceable shade: think of this, and of the play and freedom given to the sculptor's hand and temper, to smite out and in, hither and thither, as he will; and then consider what must be the different spirit of the design which is to be wrought on the smooth surface of a film of marble, where every line and shadow must be drawn with the most tender pencilling and cautious reserve of resource,--where even the chisel must not strike hard, lest it break through the delicate stone, nor the mind be permitted in any impetuosity of conception inconsistent with the fine discipline of the hand. Consider that whatever animal or human form is to be suggested, must be projected on a flat surface; that all the features of the countenance, the folds of the drapery, the involutions of the limbs, must be so reduced and subdued that the whole work becomes rather a piece of fine drawing than of sculpture; and then follow out, until you begin to perceive their endlessness, the resulting differences of character which will be necessitated in every part of the ornamental designs of these incrusted churches, as compared with that of the Northern schools. I shall endeavor to trace a few of them only. SECTION XXXVIII. The first would of course be a diminution of the builder's dependence upon human form as a source of ornament: since exactly in proportion to the dignity of the form itself is the loss which it must sustain in being reduced to a shallow and linear bas-relief, as well as the difficulty of expressing it at all under such conditions. Wherever sculpture can be solid, the nobler characters of the human form at once lead the artist to aim at its representation, rather than at that of inferior organisms; but when all is to be reduced to outline, the forms of flowers and lower animals are always more intelligible, and are felt to approach much more to a satisfactory rendering of the objects intended, than the outlines of the human body. This inducement to seek for resources of ornament in the lower fields of creation was powerless in the minds of the great Pagan nations, Ninevite, Greek, or Egyptian: first, because their thoughts were so concentrated on their own capacities and fates, that they preferred the rudest suggestion of human form to the best of an inferior organism; secondly, because their constant practice in solid sculpture, often colossal, enabled them to bring a vast amount of science into the treatment of the lines, whether of the low relief, the monochrome vase, or shallow hieroglyphic. SECTION XXXIX. But when various ideas adverse to the representation of animal, and especially of human, form, originating with the Arabs and iconoclast Greeks, had begun at any rate to direct the builders' minds to seek for decorative materials in inferior types, and when diminished practice in solid sculpture had rendered it more difficult to find artists capable of satisfactorily reducing the high organisms to their elementary outlines, the choice of subject for surface sculpture would be more and more uninterruptedly directed to floral organisms, and human and animal form would become diminished in size, frequency, and general importance. So that, while in the Northern solid architecture we constantly find the effect of its noblest features dependent on ranges of statues, often colossal, and full of abstract interest, independent of their architectural service, in the Southern incrusted style we must expect to find the human form for the most part subordinate and diminutive, and involved among designs of foliage and flowers, in the manner of which endless examples had been furnished by the fantastic ornamentation of the Romans, from which the incrusted style had been directly derived. SECTION XL. Farther. In proportion to the degree in which his subject must be reduced to abstract outline will be the tendency in the sculptor to abandon naturalism of representation, and subordinate every form to architectural service. Where the flower or animal can be hewn into bold relief, there will always be a temptation to render the representation of it more complete than is necessary, or even to introduce details and intricacies inconsistent with simplicity of distant effect. Very often a worse fault than this is committed; and in the endeavor to give vitality to the stone, the original ornamental purpose of the design is sacrificed or forgotten. But when nothing of this kind can be attempted, and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we may care little that these knots of ornament, as we retire from them to contemplate the whole building, appear unconsidered or confused. On the incrusted building we must expect no such deception of the eye or thoughts. It may sometimes be difficult to determine, from the involutions of its linear sculpture, what were the natural forms which originally suggested them: but we may confidently expect that the grace of their arrangement will always be complete; that there will not be a line in them which could be taken away without injury, nor one wanting which could be added with advantage. SECTION XLI. Farther. While the sculptures of the incrusted school will thus be generally distinguished by care and purity rather than force, and will be, for the most part, utterly wanting in depth of shadow, there will be one means of obtaining darkness peculiarly simple and obvious, and often in the sculptor's power. Wherever he can, without danger, leave a hollow behind his covering slabs, or use them, like glass, to fill an aperture in the wall, he can, by piercing them with holes, obtain points or spaces of intense blackness to contrast with the light tracing of the rest of his design. And we may expect to find this artifice used the more extensively, because, while it will be an effective means of ornamentation on the exterior of the building, it will be also the safest way of admitting light to the interior, still totally excluding both rain and wind. And it will naturally follow that the architect, thus familiarized with the effect of black and sudden points of shadow, will often seek to carry the same principle into other portions of his ornamentation, and by deep drill-holes, or perhaps inlaid portions of black color, to refresh the eye where it may be wearied by the lightness of the general handling. SECTION XLII. Farther. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which the force of sculpture is subdued, will be the importance attached to color as a means of effect or constituent of beauty. I have above stated that the incrusted style was the only one in which perfect or permanent color decoration was _possible_. It is also the only one in which a true system of color decoration was ever likely to be invented. In order to understand this, the reader must permit me to review with some care the nature of the principles of coloring adopted by the Northern and Southern nations. SECTION XLIII. I believe that from the beginning of the world there has never been a true or fine school of art in which color was despised. It has often been imperfectly attained and injudiciously applied, but I believe it to be one of the essential signs of life in a school of art, that it loves color; and I know it to be one of the first signs of death in the Renaissance schools, that they despised color. Observe, it is not now the question whether our Northern cathedrals are better with color or without. Perhaps the great monotone gray of Nature and of Time is a better color than any that the human hand can give; but that is nothing to our present business. The simple fact is, that the builders of those cathedrals laid upon them the brightest colors they could obtain, and that there is not, as far as I am aware, in Europe, any monument of a truly noble school which has not been either painted all over, or vigorously touched with paint, mosaic, and gilding in its prominent parts. Thus far Egyptians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and mediaeval Christians all agree: none of them, when in their right senses, ever think of doing without paint; and, therefore, when I said above that the Venetians were the only people who had thoroughly sympathized with the Arabs in this respect, I referred, first, to their intense love of color, which led them to lavish the most expensive decorations on ordinary dwelling-houses; and, secondly, to that perfection of the color-instinct in them, which enabled them to render whatever they did, in this kind, as just in principle as it was gorgeous in appliance. It is this principle of theirs, as distinguished from that of the Northern builders, which we have finally to examine. SECTION XLIV. In the second chapter of the first volume, it was noticed that the architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorn, and that the porch of his cathedral was therefore decorated with a rich wreath of it; but another of the predilections of that architect was there unnoticed, namely, that he did not at all like _gray_ hawthorn, but preferred it green, and he painted it green accordingly, as bright as he could. The color is still left in every sheltered interstice of the foliage. He had, in fact, hardly the choice of any other color; he might have gilded the thorns, by way of allegorizing human life, but if they were to be painted at all, they could hardly be painted anything but green, and green all over. People would have been apt to object to any pursuit of abstract harmonies of color, which might have induced him to paint his hawthorn blue. SECTION XLV. In the same way, whenever the subject of the sculpture was definite, its color was of necessity definite also; and, in the hands of the Northern builders, it often became, in consequence, rather the means of explaining and animating the stories of their stone-work, than a matter of abstract decorative science. Flowers were painted red, trees green, and faces flesh-color; the result of the whole being often far more entertaining than beautiful. And also, though in the lines of the mouldings and the decorations of shafts or vaults, a richer and more abstract method of coloring was adopted (aided by the rapid development of the best principles of color in early glass-painting), the vigorous depths of shadow in the Northern sculpture confused the architect's eye, compelling him to use violent colors in the recesses, if these were to be seen as color at all, and thus injured his perception of more delicate color harmonies; so that in innumerable instances it becomes very disputable whether monuments even of the best times were improved by the color bestowed upon them, or the contrary. But, in the South, the flatness and comparatively vague forms of the sculpture, while they appeared to call for color in order to enhance their interest, presented exactly the conditions which would set it off to the greatest advantage; breadth or surface displaying even the most delicate tints in the lights, and faintness of shadow joining with the most delicate and pearly grays of color harmony; while the subject of the design being in nearly all cases reduced to mere intricacy of ornamental line, might be colored in any way the architect chose without any loss of rationality. Where oak-leaves and roses were carved into fresh relief and perfect bloom, it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other manner best harmonizing with the colors around it. And as the necessarily feeble character of the sculpture called for and was ready to display the best arrangements of color, so the precious marbles in the architect's hands give him at once the best examples and the best means of color. The best examples, for the tints of all natural stones are as exquisite in quality as endless in change; and the best means, for they are all permanent. SECTION XLVI. Every motive thus concurred in urging him to the study of chromatic decoration, and every advantage was given him in the pursuit of it; and this at the very moment when, as presently to be noticed, the _naïveté_ of barbaric Christianity could only be forcibly appealed to by the help of colored pictures: so that, both externally and internally, the architectural construction became partly merged in pictorial effect; and the whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without in letters of enamel and gold. SECTION XLVII. LAW VII. _That the impression of the architecture is not to be dependent on size._ And now there is but one final consequence to be deduced. The reader understands, I trust, by this time, that the claims of these several parts of the building upon his attention will depend upon their delicacy of design, their perfection of color, their preciousness of material, and their legendary interest. All these qualities are independent of size, and partly even inconsistent with it. Neither delicacy of surface sculpture, nor subtle gradations of color, can be appreciated by the eye at a distance; and since we have seen that our sculpture is generally to be only an inch or two in depth, and that our coloring is in great part to be produced with the soft tints and veins of natural stones, it will follow necessarily that none of the parts of the building can be removed far from the eye, and therefore that the whole mass of it cannot be large. It is not even desirable that it should be so; for the temper in which the mind addresses itself to contemplate minute and beautiful details is altogether different from that in which it submits itself to vague impressions of space and size. And therefore we must not be disappointed, but grateful, when we find all the best work of the building concentrated within a space comparatively small; and that, for the great cliff-like buttresses and mighty piers of the North, shooting up into indiscernible height, we have here low walls spread before us like the pages of a book, and shafts whose capitals we may touch with our hand. SECTION XLVIII. The due consideration of the principles above stated will enable the traveller to judge with more candor and justice of the architecture of St. Mark's than usually it would have been possible for him to do while under the influence of the prejudices necessitated by familiarity with the very different schools of Northern art. I wish it were in my power to lay also before the general reader some exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning, except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the principal reason why architectural criticism is at this day so far behind all other, is the impossibility of illustrating the best architecture faithfully. Of the various schools of painting, examples are accessible to every one, and reference to the works themselves is found sufficient for all purposes of criticism; but there is nothing like St. Mark's or the Ducal Palace to be referred to in the National Gallery, and no faithful illustration of them is possible on the scale of such a volume as this. And it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. Nothing is so rare in art, as far as my own experience goes, as a fair illustration of architecture; _perfect_ illustration of it does not exist. For all good architecture depends upon the adaptation of its chiselling to the effect at a certain distance from the eye; and to render the peculiar confusion in the midst of order, and uncertainty in the midst of decision, and mystery in the midst of trenchant lines, which are the result of distance, together with perfect expression of the peculiarities of the design, requires the skill of the most admirable artist, devoted to the work with the most severe conscientiousness, neither the skill nor the determination having as yet been given to the subject. And in the illustration of details, every building of any pretensions to high architectural rank would require a volume of plates, and those finished with extraordinary care. With respect to the two buildings which are the principal subjects of the present volume, St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace, I have found it quite impossible to do them the slightest justice by any kind of portraiture; and I abandoned the endeavor in the case of the latter with less regret, because in the new Crystal Palace (as the poetical public insist upon calling it, though it is neither a palace, nor of crystal) there will be placed, I believe, a noble cast of one of its angles. As for St. Mark's, the effort was hopeless from the beginning. For its effect depends not only upon the most delicate sculpture in every part, out, as we have just stated, eminently on its color also, and that the most subtle, variable, inexpressible color in the world,--the color of glass, of transparent alabaster, of polished marble, and lustrous gold. It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Mark's. The fragment of one of its archivolts, given at the bottom of the opposite Plate, is not to illustrate the thing itself, but to illustrate the impossibility of illustration. SECTION XLIX. It is left a fragment, in order to get it on a larger scale; and yet even on this scale it is too small to show the sharp folds and points of the marble vine-leaves with sufficient clearness. The ground of it is gold, the sculpture in the spandrils is not more than an inch and a half deep, rarely so much. It is in fact nothing more than an exquisite sketching of outlines in marble, to about the same depth as in the Elgin frieze; the draperies, however, being filled with close folds, in the manner of the Byzantine pictures, folds especially necessary here, as large masses could not be expressed in the shallow sculpture without becoming insipid; but the disposition of these folds is always most beautiful, and often opposed by broad and simple spaces, like that obtained by the scroll in the hand of the prophet seen in the Plate. The balls in the archivolt project considerably, and the interstices between their interwoven bands of marble are filled with colors like the illuminations of a manuscript; violet, crimson, blue, gold, and green alternately: but no green is ever used without an intermixture of blue pieces in the mosaic, nor any blue without a little centre of pale green; sometimes only a single piece of glass a quarter of an inch square, so subtle was the feeling for color which was thus to be satisfied. [Footnote: The fact is, that no two tesserae of the glass are exactly of the same tint, the greens being all varied with blues, the blues of different depths, the reds of different clearness, so that the effect of each mass of color is full of variety, like the stippled color of a fruit piece.] The intermediate circles have golden stars set on an azure ground, varied in the same manner; and the small crosses seen in the intervals are alternately blue and subdued scarlet, with two small circles of white set in the golden ground above and beneath them, each only about half an inch across (this work, remember, being on the outside of the building, and twenty feet above the eye), while the blue crosses have each a pale green centre. Of all this exquisitely mingled hue, no plate, however large or expensive, could give any adequate conception; but, if the reader will supply in imagination to the engraving what he supplies to a common woodcut of a group of flowers, the decision of the respective merits of modern and of Byzantine architecture may be allowed to rest on this fragment of St. Mark's alone. From the vine-leaves of that archivolt, though there is no direct imitation of nature in them, but on the contrary a studious subjection to architectural purpose more particularly to be noticed hereafter, we may yet receive the same kind of pleasure which we have in seeing true vine-leaves and wreathed branches traced upon golden light; its stars upon their azure ground ought to make us remember, as its builder remembered, the stars that ascend and fall in the great arch of the sky: and I believe that stars, and boughs, and leaves, and bright colors are everlastingly lovely, and to be by all men beloved; and, moreover, that church walls grimly seared with squared lines, are not better nor nobler things than these. I believe the man who designed and the men who delighted in that archivolt to have been wise, happy, and holy. Let the reader look back to the archivolt I have already given out of the streets of London (Plate XIII. Vol. I., Stones of Venice), and see what there is in it to make us any of the three. Let him remember that the men who design such work as that call St. Mark's a barbaric monstrosity, and let him judge between us. SECTION L. Some farther details of the St. Mark's architecture, and especially a general account of Byzantine capitals, and of the principal ones at the angles of the church, will be found in the following chapter. [Footnote: Some illustration, also, of what was said in SECTION XXXIII above, respecting the value of the shafts of St. Mark's as large jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's."] Here I must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it, as a Temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character. SECTION LI. In the first chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" I endeavored to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question: whether the church, as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to deal with briefly and candidly. The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a cathedral of the thirteenth century, be safe or desirable as a preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral. SECTION LII. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the modern building, and the strangeness with which the earlier architectural forms fall upon the eye, are at this day disadvantageous. But I do say, that their effect, whatever it may be, was entirely uncalculated upon by the old builder. He endeavored to make his work beautiful, but never expected it to be strange. And we incapacitate ourselves altogether from fair judgment of its intention, if we forget that, when it was built, it rose in the midst of other work fanciful and beautiful as itself; that every dwelling-house in the middle ages was rich with the same ornaments and quaint with the same grotesques which fretted the porches or animated the gargoyles of the cathedral; that what we now regard with doubt and wonder, as well as with delight, was then the natural continuation, into the principal edifice of the city, of a style which was familiar to every eye throughout all its lanes and streets; and that the architect had often no more idea of producing a peculiarly devotional impression by the richest color and the most elaborate carving, than the builder of a modern meetinghouse has by his white-washed walls and square-cut casements. [Footnote: See the farther notice of this subject in Vol. III., Chap. IV. Stones of Venice.] SECTION LIII. Let the reader fix this great fact well in his mind, and then follow out its important corollaries. We attach, in modern days, a kind of sacredness to the pointed arch and the groined roof, because, while we look habitually out of square windows and live under flat ceilings, we meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our cities; we have substituted one wholly devoid of beauty or meaning; and then we reason respecting the strange effect upon our minds of the fragments which, fortunately, we have left in our churches, as if those churches had always been designed to stand out in strong relief from all the buildings around them, and Gothic architecture had always been, what it is now, a religious language, like Monkish Latin. Most readers know, if they would arouse their knowledge, that this was not so; but they take no pains to reason the matter out: they abandon themselves drowsily to the impression that Gothic is a peculiarly ecclesiastical style; and sometimes, even, that richness in church ornament is a condition or furtherance of the Romish religion. Undoubtedly it has become so in modern times: for there being no beauty in our recent architecture, and much in the remains of the past, and these remains being almost exclusively ecclesiastical, the High Church and Romanist parties have not been slow in availing themselves of the natural instincts which were deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle was set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when the flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave. There is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in pinnacles, nor in buttresses; none in pillars, nor traceries. Churches were larger than in most other buildings, because they had to hold more people; they were more adorned than most other buildings, because they were safer from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional offering: but they were never built in any separate, mystical, and religious style; they were built in the manner that was common and familiar to everybody at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the façade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of every house in the market place; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match on the walls, of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. A more severe distinction cannot be drawn: for secular history was constantly introduced into church architecture; and sacred history or allusion generally formed at least one half of the ornament of the dwelling-house. SECTION LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I must be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some length, and accurately marking the limits of the assertion I have made. I do not mean that every dwelling-house of mediaeval cities was as richly adorned and as exquisite in composition as the fronts of their cathedrals, but that they presented features of the same kind, often in parts quite as beautiful; and that the churches were not separated by any change of style from the buildings round them, as they are now, but were merely more finished and full examples of a universal style, rising out of the confused streets of the city as an oak tree does out of an oak copse, not differing in leafage, but in size and symmetry. Of course the quainter and smaller forms of turret and window necessary for domestic service, the inferior materials, often wood instead of stone, and the fancy of the inhabitants, which had free play in the design, introduced oddnesses, vulgarities, and variations into house architecture, which were prevented by the traditions, the wealth, and the skill of the monks and freemasons; while, on the other hand, conditions of vaulting, buttressing, and arch and tower building, were necessitated by the mere size of the cathedral, of which it would be difficult to find examples elsewhere. But there was nothing more in these features than the adaptation of mechanical skill to vaster requirements; there was nothing intended to be, or felt to be, especially ecclesiastical in any of the forms so developed; and the inhabitants of every village and city, when they furnished funds for the decoration of their church, desired merely to adorn the house of God as they adorned their own, only a little more richly, and with a somewhat graver temper in the subjects of the carving. Even this last difference is not always clearly discernible: all manner of ribaldry occurs in the details of the ecclesiastical buildings of the North, and at the time when the best of them were built, every man's house was a kind of temple; a figure of the Madonna, or of Christ, almost always occupied a niche over the principal door, and the Old Testament histories were curiously interpolated amidst the grotesques of the brackets and the gables. SECTION LV. And the reader will now perceive that the question respecting fitness of church decoration rests in reality on totally different grounds from those commonly made foundations of argument. So long as our streets are walled with barren brick, and our eyes rest continually, in our daily life, on objects utterly ugly, or of inconsistent and meaningless design, it may be a doubtful question whether the faculties of eye and mind which are capable of perceiving beauty, having been left without food during the whole of our active life, should be suddenly feasted upon entering a place of worship; and color, and music, and sculpture should delight the senses, and stir the curiosity of men unaccustomed to such appeal, at the moment when they are required to compose themselves for acts of devotion;--this, I say, may be a doubtful question: but it cannot be a question at all, that if once familiarized with beautiful form and color, and accustomed to see in whatever human hands have executed for us, even for the lowest services, evidence of noble thought and admirable skill, we shall desire to see this evidence also in whatever is built or labored for the house of prayer; that the absence of the accustomed loveliness would disturb instead of assisting devotion; and that we should feel it as vain to ask whether, with our own house full of goodly craftsmanship, we should worship God in a house destitute of it, as to ask whether a pilgrim whose day's journey had led him through fair woods and by sweet waters, must at evening turn aside into some barren place to pray. SECTION LVI. Then the second question submitted to us, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be truly ecclesiastical and Christian, is evidently determined together with the first; for, if not only the permission of ornament at all, but the beautiful execution of it, be dependent on our being familiar with it in daily life, it will follow that no style of noble architecture can be exclusively ecclesiastical. It must be practised in the dwelling before it be perfected in the church, and it is the test of a noble style that it shall be applicable to both; for if essentially false and ignoble, it may be made to fit the dwelling-house, but never can be made to fit the church: and just as there are many principles which will bear the light of the world's opinion, yet will not bear the light of God's word, while all principles which will bear the test of Scripture will also bear that of practice, so in architecture there are many forms which expediency and convenience may apparently justify, or at least render endurable, in daily use, which will yet be found offensive the moment they are used for church service; but there are none good for church service, which cannot bear daily use. Thus the Renaissance manner of building is a convenient style for dwelling-houses, but the natural sense of all religious men causes them to turn from it with pain when it has been used in churches; and this has given rise to the popular idea that the Roman style is good for houses and the Gothic for churches. This is not so; the Roman style is essentially base, and we can bear with it only so long as it gives us convenient windows and spacious rooms; the moment the question of convenience is set aside, and the expression or beauty of the style it tried by its being used in a church, we find it fails. But because the Gothic and Byzantine styles are fit for churches they are not therefore less fit for dwellings. They are in the highest sense fit and good for both, nor were they ever brought to perfection except where they were used for both. SECTION LVII. But there is one character of Byzantine work which, according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or sculpture. In this respect Byzantine work differs essentially from pure Gothic styles, which are capable of filling every vacant space by features purely architectural, and may be rendered, if we please, altogether independent of pictorial aid. A Gothic church may be rendered impressive by mere successions of arches, accumulations of niches, and entanglements of tracery. But a Byzantine church requires expression and interesting decoration over vast plane surfaces,--decoration which becomes noble only by becoming pictorial; that is to say, by representing natural objects,--men, animals, or flowers. And, therefore, the question whether the Byzantine style be fit for church service in modern days, becomes involved in the inquiry, what effect upon religion has been or may yet be produced by pictorial art, and especially by the art of the mosaicist? SECTION LVIII. The more I have examined the subject the more dangerous I have found it to dogmatize respecting the character of the art which is likely, at a given period, to be most useful to the cause of religion. One great fact first meets me. I cannot answer for the experience of others, but I never yet met with a Christian whose heart was thoroughly set upon the world to come, and, so far as human judgment could pronounce, perfect and right before God, who cared about art at all. I have known several very noble Christian men who loved it intensely, but in them there was always traceable some entanglement of the thoughts with the matters of this world, causing them to fall into strange distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort to give their hands to God and walk with Him. But still, the general fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by religious people; much less his master, or any of the truly great religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture illustration of West's, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it of Martin's, rarely rails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the time. SECTION LIX. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been hearty Romanists, there are none of their works which do not embody, in some portions of them, definitely Romanist doctrines. The Protestant mind is instantly struck by these, and offended by them, so as to be incapable of entering, or at least rendered indisposed to enter, farther into the heart of the work, or to the discovering those deeper characters of it, which are not Romanist, but Christian, in the everlasting sense and power of Christianity. Thus most Protestants, entering for the first time a Paradise of Angelico, would be irrevocably offended by finding that the first person the painter wished them to speak to was St. Dominic; and would retire from such a heaven as speedily as possible,--not giving themselves time to discover, that whether dressed in black, or white, or gray, and by whatever name in the calendar they might be called, the figures that filled that Angelico heaven were indeed more, saintly, and pure, and full of love in every feature, than any that the human hand ever traced before or since. And thus Protestantism, having foolishly sought for the little help it requires at the hand of painting from the men who embodied no Catholic doctrine, has been reduced to receive it from those who believed neither Catholicism nor Protestantism, but who read the Bible in search of the picturesque. We thus refuse to regard the painters who passed their lives in prayer, but are perfectly ready to be taught by those who spent them in debauchery. There is perhaps no more popular Protestant picture than Salvator's "Witch of Endor," of which the subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the Sorceress, he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag. SECTION LX. The fact seems to be that strength of religious feeling is capable of supplying for itself whatever is wanting in the rudest suggestions of art, and will either, on the one hand, purify what is coarse into inoffensiveness, or, on the other, raise what is feeble into impressiveness. Probably all art, as such, is unsatisfactory to it; and the effort which it makes to supply the void will be induced rather by association and accident than by the real merit of the work submitted to it. The likeness to a beloved friend, the correspondence with a habitual conception, the freedom from any strange or offensive particularity, and, above all, an interesting choice of incident, will win admiration for a picture when the noblest efforts of religious imagination would otherwise fail of power. How much more, when to the quick capacity of emotion is joined a childish trust that the picture does indeed represent a fact! It matters little whether the fact be well or ill told; the moment we believe the picture to be true, we complain little of its being ill-painted. Let it be considered for a moment, whether the child, with its colored print, inquiring eagerly and gravely which is Joseph, and which is Benjamin, is not more capable of receiving a strong, even a sublime, impression from the rude symbol which it invests with reality by its own effort, than the connoisseur who admires the grouping of the three figures in Raphael's "Telling of the Dreams;" and whether also, when the human mind is in right religious tone, it has not always this childish power--I speak advisedly, this power--a noble one, and possessed more in youth than at any period of after life, but always, I think, restored in a measure by religion--of raising into sublimity and reality the rudest symbol which is given to it of accredited truth. SECTION LXI. Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in the _facts_ than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the representation of the facts as true. We look upon the picture as this or that painter's conception; the elder Christians looked upon it as this or that, painter's description of what had actually taken place. And in the Greek Church all painting is, to this day, strictly a branch of tradition. See M. Dideron's admirably written introduction to his Iconographie Chrétienne, p. 7:--"Un de mes compagnons s'étonnait de re trouver à la Panagia de St. Luc, le saint Jean Chrysostome qu'il avait dessiné dans le baptistère de St. Marc, à Venise. Le costume des personnages est partout et en tout temps le même, non-seulement pour la forme, mais pour la couleur, mais pour le dessin, mais jusque pour le nombre et l'épaisseur des plis."] We do not severely criticise the manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern religious mind, the capacity of emotion, which renders judgment uncertain, is joined with an incredulity which renders it severe; and this ignorant emotion, joined with ignorant observance of faults, is the worst possible temper in which any art can be regarded, but more especially sacred art. For as religious faith renders emotion facile, so also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have been cradled; it is in them that they _must_ be cradled to the end of time. It is impossible to calculate the enormous loss of power in modern days, owing to the imperative requirement that art shall be methodical and learned: for as long as the constitution of this world remains unaltered, there will be more intellect in it than there can be education; there will be many men capable of just sensation and vivid invention, who never will have time to cultivate or polish their natural powers. And all unpolished power is in the present state of society lost; in other things as well as in the arts, but in the arts especially: nay, in nine cases out of ten, people mistake the polish for the power. Until a man has passed through a course of academy studentship, and can draw in an approved manner with French chalk, and knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do not think he can possibly be an artist; what is worse, we are very apt to think that we can _make_ him an artist by teaching him anatomy, and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is utterly independent of all such accomplishments: and I believe there are many peasants on every estate, and laborers in every town of Europe, who have imaginative powers of a high order, which nevertheless cannot be used for our good, because we do not choose to look at anything but what is expressed in a legal and scientific way. I believe there is many a village mason who, set to carve a series of Scripture or any other histories, would find many a strange and noble fancy in his head, and set it down, roughly enough indeed, but in a way well worth our having. But we are too grand to let him do this, or to set up his clumsy work when it is done; and accordingly the poor stone-mason is kept hewing stones smooth at the corners, and we build our church of the smooth square stones, and consider ourselves wise. SECTION LXII. I shall pursue this subject farther in another place; but I allude to it here in order to meet the objections of those persons who suppose the mosaics of St. Mark's, and others of the period, to be utterly barbarous as representations of religious history. Let it be granted that they are so; we are not for that reason to suppose they were ineffective in religious teaching. I have above spoken of the whole church as a great Book of Common Prayer; the mosaics were its illuminations, and the common people of the time were taught their Scripture history by means of them, more impressively perhaps, though far less fully, than ours are now by Scripture reading. They had no other Bible, and--Protestants do not often enough consider this--_could_ have no other. We find it somewhat difficult to furnish our poor with printed Bibles; consider what the difficulty must have been when they could be given only in manuscript. The walls of the church necessarily became the poor man's Bible, and a picture was more easily read upon the walls than a chapter. Under this view, and considering them merely as the Bible pictures of a great nation in its youth, I shall finally invite the reader to examine the connection and subjects of these mosaics; but in the meantime I have to deprecate the idea of their execution being in any sense barbarous. I have conceded too much to modern prejudice, in permitting them to be rated as mere childish efforts at colored portraiture: they have characters in them of a very noble kind; nor are they by any means devoid of the remains of the science of the later Roman empire. The character of the features is almost always fine, the expression stern and quiet, and very solemn, the attitudes and draperies always majestic in the single figures, and in those of the groups which are not in violent action; [Footnote: All the effects of Byzantine art to represent violent action are inadequate, most of them ludicrously so, even when the sculptural art is in other respects far advanced. The early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind, which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible in the distance and darkness of the vaulting. So far am I from considering them barbarous, that I believe of all works of religious art whatsoever, these, and such as these, have been the most effective. They stand exactly midway between the debased manufacture of wooden and waxen images which is the support of Romanist idolatry all over the world, and the great art which leads the mind away from the religious subject to the art itself. Respecting neither of these branches of human skill is there, nor can there be, any question. The manufacture of puppets, however influential on the Romanist mind of Europe, is certainly not deserving of consideration as one of the fine arts. It matters literally nothing to a Romanist what the image he worships is like. Take the vilest doll that is screwed together in a cheap toy-shop, trust it to the keeping of a large family of children, let it be beaten about the house by them till it is reduced to a shapeless block, then dress it in a satin frock and declare it to have fallen from heaven, and it will satisfactorily answer all Romanist purposes. Idolatry, [Footnote: Appendix X, "Proper Sense of the word Idolatry."] it cannot be too often repeated, is no encourager of the fine arts. But, on the other hand, the highest branches of the fine arts are no encouragers either of idolatry or of religion. No picture of Leonardo's or Raphael's, no statue of Michael Angelo's, has ever been worshipped, except by accident. Carelessly regarded, and by ignorant persons, there is less to attract in them than in commoner works. Carefully regarded, and by intelligent persons, they instantly divert the mind from their subject to their art, so that admiration takes the place of devotion. I do not say that the Madonna di S. Sisto, the Madonna del Cardellino, and such others, have not had considerable religious influence on certain minds, but I say that on the mass of the people of Europe they have had none whatever, while by far the greater number of the most celebrated statues and pictures are never regarded with any other feelings than those of admiration of human beauty, or reverence for human skill. Effective religious art, therefore, has always lain, and I believe must always lie, between the two extremes--of barbarous idol-fashioning on one side, and magnificent craftsmanship on the other. It consists partly in missal-painting, and such book-illustrations as, since the invention of printing, have taken its place; partly in glass-painting; partly in rude sculpture on the outsides of buildings; partly in mosaics; and partly in the frescoes and tempera pictures which, in the fourteenth century, formed the link between this powerful, because imperfect, religious art, and the impotent perfection which succeeded it. SECTION LXIII. But of all these branches the most important are the inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions, and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes of great importance, has always a tendency to lose itself in architectural effect; and was probably seldom deciphered, in all its parts, by the common people, still less the traditions annealed in the purple burning of the painted window. Finally, tempera pictures and frescoes were often of limited size or of feeble color. But the great mosaics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries covered the walls and roofs of the churches with inevitable lustre; they could not be ignored or escaped from; their size rendered them majestic, their distance mysterious, their color attractive. They did not pass into confused or inferior decorations; neither were they adorned with any evidences of skill or science, such as might withdraw the attention from their subjects. They were before the eyes of the devotee at every interval of his worship; vast shadowings forth of scenes to whose realization he looked forward, or of spirits whose presence he invoked. And the man must be little capable of receiving a religious impression of any kind, who, to this day, does not acknowledge some feeling of awe, as he looks up at the pale countenances and ghastly forms which haunt the dark roofs of the Baptisteries of Parma and Florence, or remains altogether untouched by the majesty of the colossal images of apostles, and of Him who sent apostles, that look down from the darkening gold of the domes of Venice and Pisa. SECTION LXIV. I shall, in a future portion of this work, endeavor to discover what probabilities there are of our being able to use this kind of art in modern churches; but at present it remains for us to follow out the connection of the subjects represented in St. Mark's so as to fulfil our immediate object, and form an adequate conception of the feelings of its builders, and of its uses to those for whom it was built. Now, there is one circumstance to which I must, in the outset, direct the reader's special attention, as forming a notable distinction between ancient and modern days. Our eyes are now familiar and weaned with writing; and if an inscription is put upon a building, unless it be large and clear, it is ten to one whether we ever trouble ourselves to decipher it. But the old architect was sure of readers. He knew that every one would be glad to decipher all that he wrote; that they would rejoice in possessing the vaulted leaves of his stone manuscript; and that the more he gave them, the more grateful would the people be. We must take some pains, therefore, when we enter St. Mark's, to read all that is inscribed, or we shall not penetrate into the feeling either of the builder or of his times. SECTION LXV. A large atrium or portico is attached to two sides of the church, a space which was especially reserved for unbaptized persons and new converts. It was thought right that, before their baptism, these persons should be led to contemplate the great facts of the Old Testament history; the history of the Fall of Man, and of the lives of Patriarchs up to the period of the Covenant by Moses: the order of the subjects in this series being very nearly the same as in many Northern churches, but significantly closing with the Fall of the Manna, in order to mark to the catechumen the insufficiency of the Mosaic covenant for salvation,--"Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead,"--and to turn his thoughts to the true Bread of which the manna was the type. SECTION LXVI. Then, when after his baptism he was permitted to enter the church, over its main entrance he saw, on looking back, a mosaic of Christ enthroned, with the Virgin on one side and St. Mark on the other, in attitudes of adoration. Christ is represented as holding a book open upon his knee, on which is written: "I AM THE DOOR; BY ME IF ANY MAN ENTER IN, HE SHALL BE SAVED." On the red marble moulding which surrounds the mosaic is written: "I AM THE GATE OF LIFE; LET THOSE WHO ARE MINE, ENTER BY ME." Above, on the red marble fillet which forms the cornice of the west end of the church, is written, with reference to the figure of Christ below: "WHO HE WAS, AND FROM WHOM HE CAME, AND AT WHAT PRICE HE REDEEMED THEE, AND WHY HE MADE THEE, AND GAVE THEE ALL THINGS, DO THOU CONSIDER." Now observe, this was not to be seen and read only by the catechumen when he first entered the church; every one who at any time entered, was supposed to look back and to read this writing; their daily entrance into the church was thus made a daily memorial of their first entrance into the spiritual Church; and we shall find that the rest of the book which was opened for them upon its walls continually led them in the same manner to regard the visible temple as in every part a type of the invisible Church of God. SECTION LXVII. Therefore the mosaic of the first dome, which is over the head of the spectator as soon as he has entered by the great door (that door being the type of baptism), represents the effusion of the Holy Spirit, as the first consequence and seal of the entrance into the Church of God. In the centre of the cupola is the Dove, enthroned in the Greek manner, as the Lamb is enthroned, when the Divinity of the Second and Third Persons is to be insisted upon together with their peculiar offices. From the central symbol of the Holy Spirit twelve streams of fire descend upon the heads of the twelve apostles, who are represented standing around the dome; and below them, between the windows which are pierced in its walls, are represented, by groups of two figures for each separate people, the various nations who heard the apostles speak, at Pentecost, every man in his own tongue. Finally, on the vaults, at the four angles which support the cupola, are pictured four angels, each bearing a tablet upon the end of a rod in his hand: on each of the tablets of the three first angels is inscribed the word "Holy;" on that of the fourth is written "Lord;" and the beginning of the hymn being thus put into the mouths of the four angels, the words of it are continued around the border of the dome, uniting praise to God for the gift of the Spirit, with welcome to the redeemed soul received into His Church: "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, LORD GOD OF SABAOTH: HEAVEN AND EARTH ARE FULL OF THY GLORY. HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST: BLESSED IS HE THAT COMETH IN THE NAME OF THE LORD." And observe in this writing that the convert is required to regard the outpouring of the Holy Spirit especially as a work of _sanctification_. It is the _holiness_ of God manifested in the giving of His Spirit to sanctify those who had become His children, which the four angels celebrate in their ceaseless praise; and it is on account of this holiness that the heaven and earth are said to be full of His glory. SECTION LXVIII. After thus hearing praise rendered to God by the angels for the salvation of the newly-entered soul, it was thought fittest that the worshipper should be led to contemplate, in the most comprehensive forms possible, the past evidence and the future hopes of Christianity, as summed up in three facts without assurance of which all faith is vain; namely that Christ died, that He rose again, and that He ascended into heaven, there to prepare a place for His elect. On the vault between the first and second cupolas are represented the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, with the usual series of intermediate scenes,--the treason of Judas, the judgment of Pilate, the crowning with thorns, the descent into Hades, the visit of the women to the sepulchre, and the apparition to Mary Magdalene. The second cupola itself, which is the central and principal one of the church, is entirely occupied by the subject of the Ascension. At the highest point of it Christ is represented as rising into the blue heaven, borne up by four angels, and throned upon a rainbow, the type of reconciliation. Beneath him, the twelve apostles are seen upon the Mount of Olives, with the Madonna, and, in the midst of them, the two men in white apparel who appeared at the moment of the Ascension, above whom, as uttered by them, are inscribed the words, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This Christ, the Son of God, as He is taken from you, shall so come, the arbiter of the earth, trusted to do judgment and justice." SECTION LXIX. Beneath the circle of the apostles, between the windows of the cupola, are represented the Christian virtues, as sequent upon the crucifixion of the flesh, and the spiritual ascension together with Christ. Beneath them, on the vaults which support the angles of the cupola, are placed the four Evangelists, because on their evidence our assurance of the fact of the ascension rests; and, finally, beneath their feet, as symbols of the sweetness and fulness of the Gospel which they declared, are represented the four rivers of Paradise, Pison, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. SECTION LXX. The third cupola, that over the altar, represents the witness of the Old Testament to Christ; showing him enthroned in its centre, and surrounded by the patriarchs and prophets. But this dome was little seen by the people; [Footnote: It is also of inferior workmanship, and perhaps later than the rest. Vide Lord Lindsay, vol. i, p. 124, note.] their contemplation was intended to be chiefly drawn to that of the centre of the church, and thus the mind of the worshipper was at once fixed on the main groundwork and hope of Christianity,--"Christ is risen," and "Christ shall come." If he had time to explore the minor lateral chapels and cupolas, he could find in them the whole series of New Testament history, the events of the Life of Christ, and the Apostolic miracles in their order, and finally the scenery of the Book of Revelation; [Footnote: The old mosaics from the Revelation have perished, and have been replaced by miserable work of the seventeenth century.] but if he only entered, as often the common people do to this hour, snatching a few moments before beginning the labor of the day to offer up an ejaculatory prayer, and advanced but from the main entrance as far as the altar screen, all the splendor of the glittering nave and variegated dome, if they smote upon his heart, as they might often, in strange contrast with his reed cabin among the shallows of the lagoon, smote upon it only that they might proclaim the two great messages--"Christ is risen," and "Christ shall come." Daily, as the white cupolas rose like wreaths of sea-foam in the dawn, while the shadowy campanile and frowning palace were still withdrawn into the night, they rose with the Easter Voice of Triumph,--"Christ is risen;" and daily, as they looked down upon the tumult of the people, deepening and eddying in the wide square that opened from their feet to the sea, they uttered above them the sentence of warning,--"Christ shall come." SECTION LXXI. And this thought may surely dispose the reader to look with some change of temper upon the gorgeous building and wild blazonry of that shrine of St. Mark's. He now perceives that it was in the hearts of the old Venetian people far more than a place of worship. It was at once a type of the Redeemed Church of God, and a scroll for the written word of God. It was to be to them, both an image of the Bride, all glorious within, her clothing of wrought gold; and the actual Table of the Law and the Testimony, written within and without. And whether honored as the Church or as the Bible, was it not fitting that neither the gold nor the crystal should be spared in the adornment of it; that, as the symbol of the Bride, the building of the wall thereof should be of jasper, [Footnote: Rev. xxi. 18.] and the foundations of it garnished with all manner of precious stones; and that, as the channel of the World, that triumphant utterance of the Psalmist should be true of it,--"I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches"? And shall we not look with changed temper down the long perspective of St. Mark's Place towards the sevenfold gates and glowing domes of its temple, when we know with what solemn purpose the shafts of it were lifted above the pavement of the populous square? Men met there from all countries of the earth, for traffic or for pleasure; but, above the crowd swaying for ever to and fro in the restlessness of avarice or thirst of delight, was seen perpetually the glory of the temple, attesting to them, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, that there was one treasure which the merchantmen might buy without a price, and one delight better than all others, in the word and the statutes of God. Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message written in the dyes of them, that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults, that one day shall fill the vault of heaven,--"He shall return, to do judgment and justice." The strength of Venice was given her, so long as she remembered this: her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably, because she forgot it without excuse. Never had city a more glorious Bible. Among the nations of the North, a rude and shadowy sculpture filled their temples with confused and hardly legible imagery; but, for her, the skill and the treasures of the East had gilded every letter, and illumined every page, till the Book-Temple shone from afar off like the star of the Magi. In other cities, the meetings of the people were often in places withdrawn from religious association, subject to violence and to change; and on the grass of the dangerous rampart, and in the dust of the troubled street, there were deeds done and counsels taken, which, if we cannot justify, we may sometimes forgive. But the sins of Venice, whether in her palace or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, not unforetold; for amidst them all, through century after century of gathering vanity and festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's had uttered in the dead ear of Venice, "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." CHAPTER V. THE DUCAL PALACE. SECTION I. It was stated in the commencement of the preceding chapter that the Gothic art of Venice was separated by the building of the Ducal Palace into two distinct periods; and that in all the domestic edifices which were raised for half a century after its completion, their characteristic and chiefly effective portions were more or less directly copied from it. The fact is, that the Ducal Palace was the great work of Venice at this period, itself the principal effort of her imagination, employing her best architects in its masonry, and her best painters in its decoration, for a long series of years; and we must receive it as a remarkable testimony to the influence which it possessed over the minds of those who saw it in its progress, that, while in the other cities of Italy every palace and church was rising in some original and daily more daring form, the majesty of this single building was able to give pause to the Gothic imagination in its full career; stayed the restlessness of innovation in an instant, and forbade the powers which had created it thenceforth to exert themselves in new directions, or endeavor to summon an image more attractive. SECTION II. The reader will hardly believe that while the architectural invention of the Venetians was thus lost, Narcissus-like, in self-contemplation, the various accounts of the progress of the building thus admired and beloved are so confused as frequently to leave it doubtful to what portion of the palace they refer; and that there is actually, at the time being, a dispute between the best Venetian antiquaries, whether the main façade of the palace be of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The determination of this question is of course necessary before we proceed to draw any conclusions from the style of the work; and it cannot be determined without a careful review of the entire history of the palace, and of all the documents relating to it. I trust that this review may not be found tedious,--assuredly it will not be fruitless,--bringing many facts before us, singularly illustrative of the Venetian character. SECTION III. Before, however, the reader can enter upon any inquiry into the history of this building, it is necessary that he should be thoroughly familiar with the arrangement and names of its principal parts, as it at present stands; otherwise he cannot comprehend so much as a single sentence of any of the documents referring to it. I must do what I can, by the help of a rough plan and bird's-eye view, to give him the necessary topographical knowledge: Opposite is a rude ground plan of the buildings round St. Mark's Place; and the following references will clearly explain their relative positions: A. St. Mark's Place. B. Piazzetta. P. V. Procuratie Vecchie. P. N. (opposite) Procuratie Nuove. P. L. Libreria Vecchia. I. Piazzetta de' Leoni. T. Tower of St. Mark. F F. Great Façade of St. Mark's Church. M. St. Mark's. (It is so united with the Ducal Palace, that the separation cannot be indicated in the plan, unless all the walls had been marked, which would have confused the whole.) D D D. Ducal Palace. g s. Giant's stair. C. Court of Ducal Palace. J. Judgement angle. c. Porta della Carta. a. Fig-tree angle. p p. Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw). S. Ponte de' Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). R R. Riva de' Schiavoni. [Illustration: FIG. I. The Ducal Palace--Ground Plan.] [Illustration: FIG. II. The Ducal Palace--Bird's eye View.] The reader will observe that the Ducal Palace is arranged somewhat in the form of a hollow square, of which one side faces the Piazzetta, B, and another the quay called the Riva de' Schiavoni, R R; the third is on the dark canal called the "Rio del Palazzo," and the fourth joins the Church of St. Mark. Of this fourth side, therefore, nothing can be seen. Of the other three sides we shall have to speak constantly; and they will be respectively called, that towards the Piazzetta, the "Piazzetta Façade;" that towards the Riva de' Schiavoni, the "Sea Façade;" and that towards the Rio del Palazzo, the "Rio Façade." This Rio, or canal, is usually looked upon by the traveller with great respect, or even horror, because it passes under the Bridge of Sighs. It is, however, one of the principal thoroughfares of the city; and the bridge and its canal together occupy, in the mind of a Venetian, very much the position of Fleet Street and Temple Bar in that of a Londoner,--at least, at the time when Temple Bar was occasionally decorated with human heads. The two buildings closely resemble each other in form. SECTION IV. We must now proceed to obtain some rough idea of the appearance and distribution of the palace itself; but its arrangement will be better understood by supposing ourselves raised some hundred and fifty feet above the point in the lagoon in front of it, so as to get a general view of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade (the latter in very steep perspective), and to look down into its interior court. Fig. II. roughly represents such a view, omitting all details on the roofs, in order to avoid confusion. In this drawing we have merely to notice that, of the two bridges seen on the right, the uppermost, above the black canal, is the Bridge of Sighs; the lower one is the Ponte della Paglia, the regular thoroughfare from quay to quay, and, I believe, called the Bridge of Straw, because the boats which brought straw from the mainland used to sell it at this place. The corner of the palace, rising above this bridge, and formed by the meeting of the Sea Façade and Rio Façade, will always be called the Vine angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah. The angle opposite will be called the Fig-tree angle, because it is decorated by a sculpture of the Fall of Man. The long and narrow range of building, of which the roof is seen in perspective behind this angle, is the part of the palace fronting the Piazzetta; and the angle under the pinnacle most to the left of the two which terminate it will be called, for a reason presently to be stated, the Judgment angle. Within the square formed by the building is seen its interior court (with one of its wells), terminated by small and fantastic buildings of the Renaissance period, which face the Giant's Stair, of which the extremity is seen sloping down on the left. SECTION V. The great façade which fronts the spectator looks southward. Hence the two traceried windows lower than the rest, and to the right of the spectator, may be conveniently distinguished as the "Eastern Windows." There are two others like them, filled with tracery, and at the same level, which look upon the narrow canal between the Ponte della Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs: these we may conveniently call the "Canal Windows." The reader will observe a vertical line in this dark side of the palace, separating its nearer and plainer wall from a long four-storied range of rich architecture. This more distant range is entirely Renaissance: its extremity is not indicated, because I have no accurate sketch of the small buildings and bridges beyond it, and we shall have nothing whatever to do with this part of the palace in our present inquiry. The nearer and undecorated wall is part of the older palace, though much defaced by modern opening of common windows, refittings of the brickwork, etc. SECTION VI. It will be observed that the façade is composed of a smooth mass of wall, sustained on two tiers of pillars, one above the other. The manner in which these support the whole fabric will be understood at once by the rough section, Fig. III., which is supposed to be taken right through the palace to the interior court, from near the middle of the Sea Façade. Here _a_ and _d_ are the rows of shafts, both in the inner court and on the Façade, which carry the main walls; _b_, _c_ are solid walls variously strengthened with pilasters. A, B, C are the three stories of the interior of the palace. [Illustration: FIG. III.] The reader sees that it is impossible for any plan to be more simple, and that if the inner floors and walls of the stories A, B were removed, there would be left merely the form of a basilica,--two high walls, carried on ranges of shafts, and roofed by a low gable. The stories A, B are entirely modernized, and divided into confused ranges of small apartments, among which what vestiges remain of ancient masonry are entirely undecipherable, except by investigations such as I have had neither the time nor, as in most cases they would involve the removal of modern plastering, the opportunity, to make. With the subdivisions of this story, therefore, I shall not trouble the reader; but those of the great upper story, C, are highly important. SECTION VII. In the bird's-eye view above, Fig. II., it will be noticed that the two windows on the right are lower than the other four of the façade. In this arrangement there is one of the most remarkable instances I know of the daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience, which was noticed in Chap. VII. as one of the chief noblenesses of the Gothic schools. The part of the palace in which the two lower windows occur, we shall find, was first built, and arranged in four stories in order to obtain the necessary number of apartments. Owing to circumstances, of which we shall presently give an account, it became necessary, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, to provide another large and magnificent chamber for the meeting of the senate. That chamber was added at the side of the older building; but, as only one room was wanted, there was no need to divide the added portion into two stories. The entire height was given to the single chamber, being indeed not too great for just harmony with its enormous length and breadth. And then came the question how to place the windows, whether on a line with the two others, or above them. The ceiling of the new room was to be adorned by the paintings of the best masters in Venice, and it became of great importance to raise the light near that gorgeous roof, as well as to keep the tone of illumination in the Council Chamber serene; and therefore to introduce light rather in simple masses than in many broken streams. A modern architect, terrified at the idea of violating external symmetry, would have sacrificed both the pictures and the peace of the council. He would have placed the larger windows at the same level with the other two, and have introduced above them smaller windows, like those of the upper story in the older building, as if that upper story had been continued along the façade. But the old Venetian thought of the honor of the paintings, and the comfort of the senate, before his own reputation. He unhesitatingly raised the large windows to their proper position with reference to the interior of the chamber, and suffered the external appearance to take care of itself. And I believe the whole pile rather gains than loses in effect by the variation thus obtained in the spaces of wall above and below the windows. SECTION VIII. On the party wall, between the second and third windows, which faces the eastern extremity of the Great Council Chamber, is painted the Paradise of Tintoret; and this wall will therefore be hereafter called the "Wall of the Paradise." In nearly the centre of the Sea Façade, and between the first and second windows of the Great Council Chamber, is a large window to the ground, opening on a balcony, which is one of the chief ornaments of the palace, and will be called in future the "Sea Balcony." The façade which looks on the Piazzetta is very nearly like this to the Sea, but the greater part of it was built in the fifteenth century, when people had become studious of their symmetries. Its side windows are all on the same level. Two light the west end of the Great Council Chamber, one lights a small room anciently called the Quarantia Civil Nuova; the other three, and the central one, with a balcony like that to the Sea, light another large chamber, called Sala del Scrutinio, or "Hall of Enquiry," which extends to the extremity of the palace above the Porta della Carta. SECTION IX. The reader is now well enough acquainted with the topography of the existing building, to be able to follow the accounts of its history. We have seen above, that there were three principal styles of Venetian architecture; Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance. The Ducal Palace, which was the great work of Venice, was built successively in the three styles. There was a Byzantine Ducal Palace, a Gothic Ducal Palace, and a Renaissance Ducal Palace. The second superseded the first totally; a few stones of it (if indeed so much) are all that is left. But the third superseded the second in part only, and the existing building is formed by the union of the two. We shall review the history of each in succession. [Footnote: The reader will find it convenient to note the following editions of the printed books which have been principally consulted in the following inquiry. The numbers of the manuscripts referred to in the Marcian Library are given with the quotations. Sansovino. Venetia Descritta. 410, Venice, 1663. Sansovino. Lettera intorno al Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1829. Temanza. Antica Pianta di Venezia, with text. Venice, 1780. Cadorin. Pareri di XV. Architetti. Svo, Venice,1838. Filiasi. Memorie storiche. 8vo, Padua, 1811. Bettio. Lettera discorsiva del Palazzo Ducale, 8vo, Venice, 1837. Selvatico. Architettura di Venezia. 8vo, Venice, 1847.] 1st. The BYZANTINE PALACE. In the year of the death of Charlemagne, 813, the Venetians determined to make the island of Rialto the seat of the government and capital of their state. [Footnote: The year commonly given is 810, as in the Savina Chronicle (Cod. Marcianus), p. 13. "Del 810 fece principiar el pallazzo Ducal nel luogo ditto Brucio in confin di S. Moise, et fece riedificar la isola di Eraclia." The Sagornin Chronicle gives 804; and Filiasi, vol. vi. chap. I, corrects this date to 813.] Their Doge, Angelo or Agnello Participazio, instantly took vigorous means for the enlargement of the small group of buildings which were to be the nucleus of the future Venice. He appointed persons to superintend the raising of the banks of sand, so as to form more secure foundations, and to build wooden bridges over the canals. For the offices of religion, he built the Church of St. Mark; and on, or near, the spot where the Ducal Palace now stands, he built a palace for the administration of the government. [Footnote: "Ampliò la città, fornilla di casamenti, _e per il culto d' Iddio e l' amministrazione della giustizia_ eresse la capella di S. Marco, e il palazzo di sua residenza."--Pareri, p. 120. Observe, that piety towards God, and justice towards man, have been at least the nominal purposes of every act and institution of ancient Venice. Compare also Temanza, p. 24. "Quello che abbiamo di certo si è che il suddetto Agnello lo incomminciò da fondamenti, e cosi pure la capella ducale di S. Marco."] The history of the Ducal Palace therefore begins with the birth of Venice, and to what remains of it, at this day, is entrusted the last representation of her power. SECTION X. Of the exact position and form of this palace of Participazio little is ascertained. Sansovino says that it was "built near the Ponte della Paglia, and answeringly on the Grand Canal," towards San Giorgio; that is to say, in the place now occupied by the Sea Façade; but this was merely the popular report of his day. [Footnote: What I call the Sea, was called "the Grand Canal" by the Venetians, as well as the great water street of the city; but I prefer calling it "the Sea," in order to distinguish between that street and the broad water in front of the Ducal Palace, which, interrupted only by the island of San Giorgio, stretches for many miles to the south, and for more than two to the boundary of the Lido. It was the deeper channel, just in front of the Ducal Palace, continuing the line of the great water street itself which the Venetians spoke of as "the Grand Canal." The words of Sansovino are: "Fu cominciato dove si vede, vicino al ponte della paglia, et rispondente sul canal grande." Filiasi says simply: "The palace was built where it now is." "Il palazio fu fatto dove ora pure esiste."--Vol. iii. chap. 27. The Savina Chronicle, already quoted, says: "in the place called the Bruolo (or Broglio), that is to say on the Piazzetta."] We know, however, positively, that it was somewhere upon the site of the existing palace; and that it had an important front towards the Piazzetta, with which, as we shall see hereafter, the present palace at one period was incorporated. We know, also, that it was a pile of some magnificence, from the account given by Sagornino of the visit paid by the Emperor Otho the Great, to the Doge Pietro Orseolo II. The chronicler says that the Emperor "beheld carefully all the beauty of the palace;" [Footnote: "Omni decoritate illius perlustrata."--Sagornino, quoted by Cadorin and Temanza.] and the Venetian historians express pride in the buildings being worthy of an emperor's examination. This was after the palace had been much injured by fire in the revolt against Candiano IV., [Footnote: There is an interesting account of this revolt in Monaci, p. 68. Some historians speak of the palace as having been destroyed entirely; but, that it did not even need important restorations, appears from Sagornino's expression, quoted by Cadorin and Temanza. Speaking of the Doge Participazio, he says: "Qui Palatii hucusque manentis fuerit fabricator." The reparations of the palace are usually attributed to the successor of Candiano, Pietro Orseolo I.; but the legend, under the picture of that Doge in the Council Chamber, speaks only of his rebuilding St. Mark's, and "performing many miracles." His whole mind seems to have been occupied with ecclesiastical affairs; and his piety was finally manifested in a way somewhat startling to the state, by absconding with a French priest to St. Michael's in Gascony, and there becoming a monk. What repairs, therefore, were necessary to the Ducal Palace, were left to be undertaken by his son, Orseolo II., above named.] and just repaired, and richly adorned by Orseolo himself, who is spoken of by Sagornino as having also "adorned the chapel of the Ducal Palace" (St. Mark's) with ornaments of marble and gold. [Footnote: "Quam non modo marmoreo, verum aureo compsit ornamento."--_Temanza_] There can be no doubt whatever that the palace at this period resembled and impressed the other Byzantine edifices of the city, such as the Fondaco de Turchi, &c., whose remains have been already described; and that, like them, it was covered with sculpture, and richly adorned with gold and color. SECTION XI. In the year 1106, it was for the second time injured by fire, [Footnote: "L'anno 1106, uscito fuoco d'una casa privata, arse parte del palazzo."--_Sansovino_. Of the beneficial effect of these fires, vide Cadorin.] but repaired before 1116, when it received another emperor, Henry V. (of Germany), and was again honored by imperial praise. [Footnote: "Urbis situm, aedificiorum decorem, et regiminis sequitatem multipliciter commendavit."--_Cronaca Dandolo_, quoted by Cadorin.] Between 1173 and the close of the century, it seems to have been again repaired and much enlarged by the Doge Sebastian Ziani. Sansovino says that this Doge not only repaired it, but "enlarged it in every direction;" [Footnote: "Non solamente rinovo il palazzo, ma lo aggrandi per ogni verso."--_Sansovino_. Zanotto quotes the Altinat Chronicle for account of these repairs.] and, after this enlargement, the palace seems to have remained untouched for a hundred years, until, in the commencement of the fourteenth century, the works of the Gothic Palace were begun. As, therefore, the old Byzantine building was, at the time when those works first interfered with it, in the form given to it by Ziani, I shall hereafter always speak of it as the _Ziani_ Palace; and this the rather, because the only chronicler whose words are perfectly clear respecting the existence of part of this palace so late as the year 1422, speaks of it as built by Ziani. The old "palace of which half remains to this day, was built, as we now see it, by Sebastian Ziani." [Footnote: "El palazzo che anco di mezzo se vede vecchio, per M. Sebastian Ziani fu fatto compir, come el se vede."--_Chronicle of Pietro Dolfino_, Cod. Ven. p. 47. This Chronicle is spoken of by Sansovino as "molto particolare, e distinta."--_Sansovino, Venezia descritta_, p. 593.--It terminates in the year 1422.] So far, then, of the Byzantine Palace. SECTION XII. 2nd. The GOTHIC PALACE. The reader, doubtless, recollects that the important change in the Venetian government which gave stability to the aristocratic power took place about the year 1297, [Footnote: See Vol. I. Appendix 3, Stones of Venice.] under the Doge Pietro Gradenigo, a man thus characterized by Sansovino:--"A prompt and prudent man, of unconquerable determination and great eloquence, who laid, so to speak, the foundations of the eternity of this republic, by the admirable regulations which he introduced into the government." We may now, with some reason, doubt of their admirableness; but their importance, and the vigorous will and intellect of the Doge, are not to be disputed. Venice was in the zenith of her strength, and the heroism of her citizens was displaying itself in every quarter of the world. [Footnote: Vide Sansovino's enumeration of those who flourished in the reign of Gradenigo, p. 564.] The acquiescence in the secure establishment of the aristocratic power was an expression, by the people, of respect for the families which had been chiefly instrumental in raising the commonwealth to such a height of prosperity. The Serrar del Consiglio fixed the numbers of the Senate within certain limits, and it conferred upon them a dignity greater than they had ever before possessed. It was natural that the alteration in the character of the assembly should be attended by some change in the size, arrangement, or decoration of the chamber in which they sat. We accordingly find it recorded by Sansovino, that "in 1301 another saloon was begun on the Rio del Palazzo, _under the Doge Gradenigo_, and finished in 1309, _in which year the Grand Council first sat in it_." [Footnote: Sansovino, 324, I.] In the first year, therefore, of the fourteenth century, the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was begun; and as the Byzantine Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the state, so the Gothic Palace was, in its foundation, coeval with that of the aristocratic power. Considered as the principal representation of the Venetian school of architecture, the Ducal Palace is the Parthenon of Venice, and Gradenigo its Pericles. SECTION XIII. Sansovino, with a caution very frequent among Venetian historians, when alluding to events connected with the Serrar del Consiglio, does not specially mention the cause for the requirement of the new chamber; but the Sivos Chronicle is a little more distinct in expression. "In 1301, it was determined to build a great saloon _for the assembling_ of the Great Council, and the room was built which is _now_ called the Sala del Scrutinio." [Footnote: "1301 fu presa parte di fare una sala grande per la riduzione del gran consiglio, e fu fatta quella che ora si chiama dello Scrutinio."--_Cronaca Sivos_, quoted by Cadorin. There is another most interesting entry in the Chronicle of Magno, relating to this event; but the passage is so ill written, that I am not sure if I have deciphered it correctly:--"Del 1301 fu preso de fabrichar la sala fo ruina e fu fata (fatta) quella se adoperava a far e pregadi e fu adopera per far el Gran Consegio fin 1423, che fu anni 122." This last sentence, which is of great importance, is luckily unmistakable:--"The room was used for the meetings of the Great Council until 1423, that is to say, for 122 years."--_Cod. Ven._ tom. i. p. 126. The Chronicle extends from 1253 to 1454. Abstract 1301 to 1309; Gradenigo's room--1340-42, page 295-1419. New proposals, p. 298.] _Now_, that is to say, at the time when the Sivos Chronicle was written; the room has long ago been destroyed, and its name given to another chamber on the opposite side of the palace: but I wish the reader to remember the date 1301, as marking the commencement of a great architectural epoch, in which took place the first appliance of the energy of the aristocratic power, and of the Gothic style, to the works of the Ducal Palace. The operations then begun were continued, with hardly an interruption, during the whole period of the prosperity of Venice. We shall see the new buildings consume, and take the place of, the Ziani Palace, piece by piece: and when the Ziani Palace was destroyed, they fed upon themselves; being continued round the square, until, in the sixteenth century, they reached the point where they had been begun in the fourteenth, and pursued the track they had then followed some distance beyond the junction; destroying or hiding their own commencement, as the serpent, which is the type of eternity, conceals its tail in its jaws. SECTION XIV. We cannot, therefore, _see_ the extremity, wherein lay the sting and force of the whole creature,--the chamber, namely, built by the Doge Gradenigo; but the reader must keep that commencement and the date of it carefully in his mind. The body of the Palace Serpent will soon become visible to us. The Gradenigo Chamber was somewhere on the Rio Façade, behind the present position of the Bridge of Sighs; i.e. about the point marked on the roof by the dotted lines in the woodcut; it is not known whether low or high, but probably on a first story. The great façade of the Ziani Palace being, as above mentioned, on the Piazzetta, this chamber was as far back and out of the way as possible; secrecy and security being obviously the points first considered. SECTION XV. But the newly constituted Senate had need of other additions to the ancient palace besides the Council Chamber. A short, but most significant, sentence is added to Sansovino's account of the construction of that room. "There were, _near it_," he says, "the Cancellaria, and the _Gheba_ or _Gabbia_, afterwards called the Little Tower." [Footnote: "Vi era appresso la Cancellarla, e la Gheba o Gabbia, iniamata poi Torresella,"---P. 324. A small square tower is seen above the Vine angle in the view of Venice dated 1500, and attributed to Albert Durer. It appears about 25 feet square, and is very probably the Torresella in question.] Gabbia means a "cage;" and there can be no question that certain apartments were at this time added at the top of the palace and on the Rio Façade, which were to be used as prisons. Whether any portion of the old Torresella still remains is a doubtful question; but the apartments at the top of the palace, in its fourth story, were still used for prisons as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. [Footnote: Vide Bettio, Lettera, p. 23.] I wish the reader especially to notice that a separate tower or range of apartments was built for this purpose, in order to clear the government of the accusations so constantly made against them, by ignorant or partial historians, of wanton cruelty to prisoners. The stories commonly told respecting the "piombi" of the Ducal Palace are utterly false. Instead of being, as usually reported, small furnaces under the leads of the palace, they were comfortable rooms, with good flat roofs of larch, and carefully ventilated. [Footnote: Bettio, Lettera, p. 20. "Those who wrote without having seen them described them as covered with lead; and those who have seen them know that, between their flat timber roofs and the sloping leaden roof of the palace the interval is five metres where it is least, and nine where it is greatest."] The new chamber, then, and the prisons, being built, the Great Council first sat in their retired chamber on the Rio in the year 1309. SECTION XVI. Now, observe the significant progress of events. They had no sooner thus established themselves in power than they were disturbed by the conspiracy of the Tiepolos, in the year 1310. In consequence of that conspiracy the Council of Ten was created, still under the Doge Gradenigo; who, having finished his work and left the aristocracy of Venice armed with this terrible power, died in the year 1312, some say by poison. He was succeeded by the Doge Marino Giorgio, who reigned only one year; and then followed the prosperous government of John Soranzo. There is no mention of any additions to the Ducal Palace during his reign, but he was succeeded by that Francesco Dandolo, the sculptures on whose tomb, still existing in the cloisters of the Salute, may be compared by any traveller with those of the Ducal Palace. Of him it is recorded in the Savina Chronicle: "This Doge also had the great gate built which is at the entry of the palace, above which is his statue kneeling, with the gonfalon in hand, before the feet of the Lion of St. Mark's." [Footnote: "Questo Dose anche fese far la porta granda che se al intrar del Pallazzo, in su la qual vi e la sua statua che sta in zenocchioni con lo confalon in man, davanti li pie de lo Lion S. Marco."--_Savin Chronicle_, Cod. Ven. p. 120.] SECTION XVII. It appears, then, that after the Senate had completed their Council Chamber and the prisons, they required a nobler door than that of the old Ziani Palace for their Magnificences to enter by. This door is twice spoken of in the government accounts of expenses, which are fortunately preserved, [Footnote: These documents I have not examined myself, being satisfied of the accuracy of Cadorin, from whom I take the passages quoted.] in the following terms:-- "1335, June 1. We, Andrew Dandolo and Mark Loredano, procurators of St. Mark's, have paid to Martin the stone-cutter and his associates.... [Footnote: "Libras tres, soldeos 15 grossorum."--Cadorin, 189, I.] for a stone of which the lion is made which is put over the gate of the palace." "1344, November 4. We have paid thirty-five golden ducats for making gold leaf, to gild the lion which is over the door of the palace stairs." The position of this door is disputed, and is of no consequence to the reader, the door itself having long ago disappeared, and been replaced by the Porta della Carta. SECTION XVIII. But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion, began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio. The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven., No. CXLI. p. 365.] "1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty ducats a year." It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote: Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree: "For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal Grande."--P. 324.] _The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio. SECTION XIX. In saying that it is the same now in existence, I do not mean that it has undergone no alterations; as we shall see hereafter, it has been refitted again and again, and some portions of its walls rebuilt; but in the place and form in which it first stood, it still stands; and by a glance at the position which its windows occupy, as shown in Figure II. above, the reader will see at once that whatever can be known respecting the design of the Sea Façade, must be gleaned out of the entries which refer to the building of this Great Council Chamber. Cadorin quotes two of great importance, to which we shall return in due time, made during the progress of the work in 1342 and 1344; then one of 1349, resolving that the works at the Ducal Palace, which had been discontinued during the plague, should be resumed; and finally one in 1362, which speaks of the Great Council Chamber as having been neglected and suffered to fall into "great desolation," and resolves that it shall be forthwith completed. [Footnote: Cadorin, 185, 2. The decree of 1342 is falsely given as of 1345 by the Sivos Chronicle, and by Magno; while Sanuto gives the decree to its right year, 1342, but speaks of the Council Chamber as only begun in 1345.] The interruption had not been caused by the plague only, but by the conspiracy of Faliero, and the violent death of the master builder. [Footnote: Calendario. See Appendix I., Vol. III.] The work was resumed in 1362, and completed within the next three years, at least so far as that Guariento was enabled to paint his Paradise on the walls; [Footnote: "II primo che vi colorisse fu Guariento il quale l'anno 1365 vi fece il Paradiso in testa della sala."--_Sansovino_.] so that the building must, at any rate, have been roofed by this time. Its decorations and fittings, however, were long in completion; the paintings on the roof being only executed in 1400. [Footnote: "L'an poi 1400 vi fece il ciclo compartita a quadretti d'oro, ripieni di stelle, ch'era la insegna del Doge Steno."--_Sansovino_, lib. viii.] They represented the heavens covered with stars, [Footnote: "In questi tempi si messe in oro il ciclo della sala del Gran Consiglio et si fece il pergole del finestra grande chi guarda sul canale, adornato l'uno e l'altro di stelle, eh' erano la insegne del Doge."--_Sansovino_, lib. xiii. Compare also Pareri, p. 129.] this being, says Sansovino, the bearings of the Doge Steno. Almost all ceilings and vaults were at this time in Venice covered with stars, without any reference to armorial bearings; but Steno claims, under his noble title of Stellifer, an important share in completing the chamber, in an inscription upon two square tablets, now inlaid in the walls on each side of the great window towards the sea: "MILLE QUADRINGENTI CURREBANT QUATUOR ANNI HOC OPUS ILLUSTRIS MICHAEL DUX STELLIFER AUXIT." And in fact it is to this Doge that we owe the beautiful balcony of that window, though the work above it is partly of more recent date; and I think the tablets bearing this important inscription have been taken out and reinserted in the newer masonry. The labor of these final decorations occupied a total period of sixty years. The Grand Council sat in the finished chamber for the first time in 1423. In that year the Gothic Ducal Palace of Venice was completed. It had taken, to build it, the energies of the entire period which I have above described as the central one of her life. SECTION XX. 3rd. The RENAISSANCE PALACE. I must go back a step or two, in order to be certain that the reader understands clearly the state of the palace in 1423. The works of addition or renovation had now been proceeding, at intervals, during a space of a hundred and twenty-three years. Three generations at least had been accustomed to witness the gradual advancement of the form of the Ducal Palace into more stately symmetry, and to contrast the Works of sculpture and painting with which it was decorated,--full of the life, knowledge, and hope of the fourteenth century,--with the rude Byzantine chiselling of the palace of the Doge Ziani. The magnificent fabric just completed, of which the new Council Chamber was the nucleus, was now habitually known in Venice as the "Palazzo Nuovo;" and the old Byzantine edifice, now ruinous, and more manifest in its decay by its contrast with the goodly stones of the building which had been raised at its side, was of course known as the "Palazzo Vecchio." [Footnote: Baseggio (Pareri, p. 127) is called the Proto of the _New_ Palace. Farther notes will be found in Appendix I., Vol. III.] That fabric, however, still occupied the principal position in Venice. The new Council Chamber had been erected by the side of it towards the Sea; but there was not then the wide quay in front, the Riva dei Schiavoni, which now renders the Sea Façade as important as that to the Piazzetta. There was only a narrow walk between the pillars and the water; and the _old_ palace of Ziani still faced the Piazzetta, and interrupted, by its decrepitude, the magnificence of the square where the nobles daily met. Every increase of the beauty of the new palace rendered the discrepancy between it and the companion building more painful; and then began to arise in the minds of all men a vague idea of the necessity of destroying the old palace, and completing the front of the Piazzetta with the same splendor as the Sea Façade. But no such sweeping measure of renovation had been Contemplated by the Senate when they first formed the plan of their new Council Chamber. First a single additional room, then a gateway, then a larger room; but all considered merely as necessary additions to the palace, not as involving the entire reconstruction of the ancient edifice. The exhaustion of the treasury, and the shadows upon the political horizon, rendered it more than imprudent to incur the vast additional expense which such a project involved; and the Senate, fearful of itself, and desirous to guard against the weakness of its own enthusiasm, passed a decree, like the effort of a man fearful of some strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger. It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt, but that no one should _propose_ rebuilding it. The feeling of the desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion was to carry it. SECTION XXI. The decree, thus passed in order to guard against their own weakness, forbade any one to speak of rebuilding the old palace under the penalty of a thousand ducats. But they had rated their own enthusiasm too low: there was a man among them whom the loss of a thousand ducats could not deter from proposing what he believed to be for the good of the state. Some excuse was given him for bringing forward the motion, by a fire which occurred in 1419, and which injured both the church of St. Mark's, and part of the old palace fronting the Piazzetta. What followed, I shall relate in the words of Sanuto. [Footnote: Cronaca Sanudo, No. cxxv. in the Marcian Library, p. 568.] SECTION XXII. "Therefore they set themselves with all diligence and care to repair and adorn sumptuously, first God's house; but in the Prince's house things went on more slowly, _for it did not please the Doge_ [Footnote: Tomaso Mocenigo.] _to restore it in the form in which it was before_; and they could not rebuild it altogether in a better manner, so great was the parsimony of these old fathers; because it was forbidden by laws, which condemned in a penalty of a thousand ducats any one who should propose to throw down the _old_ palace, and to rebuild it more richly and with greater expense. But the Doge, who was magnanimous, and who desired above all things what was honorable to the city, had the thousand ducats carried into the Senate Chamber, and then proposed that the palace should be rebuilt; saying: that, 'since the late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole course of his life, through so many years, that he had never done anything for ambition, either in the city, or in foreign business; but in all his actions had kept justice first in his thoughts, and then the advantage of the state, and the honor of the Venetian name: and that, as far as regarded his private interest, if it had not been for this accident of the fire, he would never have thought of changing anything in the palace into either a more sumptuous or a more honorable form; and that during the many years in which he had lived in it, he had never endeavored to make any change, but had always been content with it, as his predecessors had left it; and that he knew well that, if they took in hand to build it as he exhorted and besought them, being now very old, and broken down with many toils, God would call him to another life before the walls were raised a pace from the ground. And that therefore they might perceive that he did not advise them to raise this building for his own convenience, but only for the honor of the city and its Dukedom; and that the good of it would never be felt by him, but by his successors.' Then he said, that 'in order, as he had always done, to observe the laws,... he had brought with him the thousand ducats which had been appointed as the penalty for proposing such a measure, so that he might prove openly to all men that it was not his own advantage that he sought, but the dignity of the state.'" There was no one (Sanuto goes on to tell us) who ventured, or desired, to oppose the wishes of the Doge; and the thousand ducats were unanimously devoted to the expenses of the work. "And they set themselves with much diligence to the work; and the palace was begun in the form and manner in which it is at present seen; but, as Mocenigo had prophesied, not long after, he ended his life, and not only did not see the work brought to a close, but hardly even begun." SECTION XXIII. There are one or two expressions in the above extracts which if they stood alone, might lead the reader to suppose that the whole palace had been thrown down and rebuilt. We must however remember, that, at this time, the new Council Chamber, which had been one hundred years in building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of Parliament, under the title of the "old palace," and rebuild _them_. SECTION XXIV. The manner in which Sanuto expresses himself will at once be seen to be perfectly natural, when it is remembered that although we now speak of the whole building as the "Ducal Palace," it consisted, in the minds of the old Venetians, of four distinct buildings. There were in it the palace, the state prisons, the senate-house, and the offices of public business; in other words, it was Buckingham Palace, the Tower of olden days, the Houses of Parliament, and Downing Street, all in one; and any of these four portions might be spoken of, without involving an allusion to any other. "Il Palazzo" was the Ducal residence, which, with most of the public offices, Mocenigo _did_ propose to pull down and rebuild, and which was actually pulled down and rebuilt. But the new Council Chamber, of which the whole façade to the Sea consisted, never entered into either his or Sanuto's mind for an instant, as necessarily connected with the Ducal residence. I said that the new Council Chamber, at the time when Mocenigo brought forward his measure, had never yet been used. It was in the year 1422 [Footnote: Vide notes in Appendix.] that the decree passed to rebuild the palace: Mocenigo died in the following year, and Francesco Foscari was elected in his room. [Footnote: On the 4th of April, 1423, according to the copy of the Zancarol Chronicle in the Marcian Library, but previously, according to the Caroldo Chronicle, which makes Foscari enter the Senate as Doge on the 3rd of April.] The Great Council Chamber was used for the first time on the day when Foscari entered the Senate as Doge,--the 3rd of April, 1423, according to the Caroldo Chronicle; [Footnote: "Nella quale (the Sala del Gran Consiglio) non si fece Gran Consiglio salvo nell' anno 1423, alli 3, April, et fu il primo giorno che il Duce Foscari venisse in Gran Consiglio dopo la sua creatione."--Copy in Marcian Library, p. 365.] the 23rd, which is probably correct, by an anonymous MS., No. 60, in the Correr Museum; [Footnote: "E a di 23 April (1423, by the context) sequente fo fatto Gran Conscio in la salla nuovo dovi avanti non esta piu fatto Gran Conscio si che el primo Gran Conscio dopo la sua (Foscari's) creation fo fatto in la sala nuova, nel qual conscio fu el Marchese di Mantoa," &c., p. 426.]--and, the following year, on the 27th of March, the first hammer was lifted up against the old palace of Ziani. [Footnote: Compare Appendix I. Vol. III.] SECTION XXV. That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,--and of Venice herself. The central epoch of her life was past; the decay had already begun: I dated its commencement above (Ch. I., Vol. I.) from the death of Mocenigo. A year had not yet elapsed since that great Doge had been called to his account: his patriotism, always sincere, had been in this instance mistaken; in his zeal for the honor of future Venice, he had forgotten what was due to the Venice of long ago. A thousand palaces might be built upon her burdened islands, but none of them could take the place, or recall the memory, of that which was first built upon her unfrequented shore. It fell; and, as if it had been the talisman of her fortunes, the city never flourished again. SECTION XXVI. I have no intention of following out, in their intricate details, the operations which were begun under Foscari and continued under succeeding Doges till the palace assumed its present form, for I am not in this work concerned, except by occasional reference, with the architecture of the fifteenth century: but the main facts are the following. The palace of Ziani was destroyed; the existing façade to the Piazzetta built, so as both to continue and to resemble, in most particulars, the work of the Great Council Chamber. It was carried back from the Sea as far as the Judgment angle; beyond which is the Porta della Carta, begun in 1439, and finished in two years, under the Doge Foscari; [Footnote: "Tutte queste fatture si compirono sotto il dogade del Foscari, nel 1441."--_Pareri_, p. 131.] the interior buildings connected with it were added by the Doge Christopher Moro, (the Othello of Shakspeare) [Footnote: This identification has been accomplished, and I think conclusively, by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, who has devoted all the leisure which, during the last twenty years his manifold office of kindness to almost every English visitant of Venice have left him, in discovering and translating the passages of the Venetian records which bear upon English history and literature. I shall have occasion to take advantage hereafter of a portion of his labors, which I trust will shortly be made public.] in 1462. SECTION XXVII. By reference to the figure the reader will see that we have now gone the round of the palace, and that the new work of 1462 was close upon the first piece of the Gothic palace, the _new_ Council Chamber of 1301. Some remnants of the Ziani Palace were perhaps still left between the two extremities of the Gothic Palace; or as is more probable, the last stones of it may have been swept away after the fire of 1419, and replaced by new apartments for the Doge. But whatever buildings, old or new, stood on this spot at the time of the completion of the Porta della Carta were destroyed by another great fire in 1479, together with so much of the palace on the Rio that, though the saloon of Gradenigo, then known as the Sala de' Pregadi, was not destroyed, it became necessary to reconstruct the entire façades of the portion of the palace behind the Bridge of Sighs, both towards the court and canal. This work was entrusted to the best Renaissance architects of the close of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth centuries; Antonio Ricci executing the Giant's staircase, and on his absconding with a large sum of the public money, Pietro Lombardo taking his place. The whole work must have been completed towards the middle of the sixteenth century. The architects of the palace, advancing round the square and led by fire, had more than reached the point from which they had set out; and the work of 1560 was joined to the work of 1301-1340, at the point marked by the conspicuous vertical line in Figure II on the Rio Façade. SECTION XVIII. But the palace was not long permitted to remain in this finished form. Another terrific fire, commonly called the great fire, burst out in 1574, and destroyed the inner fittings and all the precious pictures of the Great Council Chamber, and of all the upper rooms on the Sea Façade, and most of those on the Rio Façade, leaving the building a mere shell, shaken and blasted by the flames. It was debated in the Great Council whether the ruin should not be thrown down, and an entirely new palace built in its stead. The opinions of all the leading architects of Venice were taken, respecting the safety of the walls, or the possibility of repairing them as they stood. These opinions, given in writing, have been preserved, and published by the Abbé Cadorin, in the work already so often referred to; and they form one of the most important series of documents connected with the Ducal Palace. I cannot help feeling some childish pleasure in the accidental resemblance to my own name in that of the architect whose opinion was first given in favor of the ancient fabric, Giovanni Rusconi. Others, especially Palladio, wanted to pull down the old palace, and execute designs of their own; but the best architects in Venice, and to his immortal honor, chiefly Francesco Sansovino, energetically pleaded for the Gothic pile, and prevailed. It was successfully repaired, and Tintoret painted his noblest picture on the wall from which the Paradise of Guariento had withered before the flames. SECTION XXIX. The repairs necessarily undertaken at this time were however extensive, and interfered in many directions with the earlier work of the palace: still the only serious alteration in its form was the transposition of the prisons, formerly at the top of the palace to the other side of the Rio del Palazzo; and the building of the Bridge of Sighs, to connect them with the palace, by Antonio da Ponte. The completion of this work brought the whole edifice into its present form; with the exception of alterations indoors, partitions, and staircases among the inner apartments, not worth noticing, and such barbarisms and defacements as have been suffered within the last fifty years, by, I suppose nearly every building of importance in Italy. SECTION XXX. Now, therefore, we are at liberty to examine some of the details of the Ducal Palace, without any doubt about their dates. I shall not however, give any elaborate illustrations of them here, because I could not do them justice on the scale of the page of this volume, or by means of line engraving. I believe a new era is opening to us in the art of illustration, [Footnote: See the last chapter of the third volume, Stones of Venice.] and that I shall be able to give large figures of the details of the Ducal Palace at a price which will enable every person who is interested in the subject to possess them; so that the cost and labor of multiplying illustrations here would be altogether wasted. I shall therefore direct the reader's attention only to such points of interest as can be explained in the text. SECTION XXXI. First, then, looking back to the woodcut at the beginning of this chapter, the reader will observe that, as the building was very nearly square on the ground plan, a peculiar prominence and importance were given to its angles, which rendered it necessary that they should be enriched and softened by sculpture. I do not suppose that the fitness of this arrangement will be questioned; but if the reader will take the pains to glance over any series of engravings of church towers or other four-square buildings in which great refinement of form has been attained, he will at once observe how their effect depends on some modification of the sharpness of the angle, either by groups of buttresses, or by turrets and niches rich in sculpture. It is to be noted also that this principle of breaking the angle is peculiarly Gothic, arising partly out of the necessity of strengthening the flanks of enormous buildings, where composed of imperfect materials, by buttresses or pinnacles; partly out of the conditions of Gothic warfare, which generally required a tower at the angle; partly out of the natural dislike of the meagreness of effect in buildings which admitted large surfaces of wall, if the angle were entirely unrelieved. The Ducal Palace, in its acknowledgment of this principle, makes a more definite concession to the Gothic spirit than any of the previous architecture of Venice. No angle, up to the time of its erection, had been otherwise decorated than by a narrow fluted pilaster of red marble, and the sculpture was reserved always, as in Greek and Roman work, for the plane surfaces of the building, with, as far as I recollect, two exceptions only, both in St. Mark's; namely, the bold and grotesque gargoyle on its north-west angle, and the angels which project from the four inner angles under the main cupola; both of these arrangements being plainly made under Lombardic influence. And if any other instances occur, which I may have at present forgotten, I am very sure the Northern influence will always be distinctly traceable in them. SECTION XXXII. The Ducal Palace, however, accepts the principle in its completeness, and throws the main decoration upon its angles. The central window, which looks rich and important in the woodcut, was entirely restored in the Renaissance time, as we have seen, under the Doge Steno; so that we have no traces of its early treatment; and the principal interest of the older palace is concentrated in the angle sculpture, which is arranged in the following manner. The pillars of the two bearing arcades are much enlarged in thickness at the angles, and their capitals increased in depth, breadth, and fulness of subject; above each capital, on the angle of the wall, a sculptural subject is introduced, consisting, in the great lower arcade, of two or more figures of the size of life; in the upper arcade, of a single angel holding a scroll: above these angels rise the twisted pillars with their crowning niches, already noticed in the account of parapets in the seventh chapter; thus forming an unbroken line of decoration from the ground to the top of the angle. SECTION XXXIII. It was before noticed that one of the corners of the palace joins the irregular outer buildings connected with St. Mark's, and is not generally seen. There remain, therefore, to be decorated, only the three angles, above distinguished as the Vine angle, the Fig-tree angle, and the Judgment angle; and at these we have, according to the arrangement just explained,-- First, Three great bearing capitals (lower arcade). Secondly, Three figure subjects of sculpture above them (lower arcade). Thirdly, Three smaller bearing capitals (upper arcade). Fourthly, Three angels above them (upper arcade). Fifthly, Three spiral, shafts with niches. SECTION XXXIV. I shall describe the bearing capitals hereafter, in their order, with the others of the arcade; for the first point to which the reader's attention ought to be directed is the choice of subject in the great figure sculptures above them. These, observe, are the very corner stones of the edifice, and in them we may expect to find the most important evidences of the feeling, as well as the skill, of the builder. If he has anything to say to us of the purpose with which he built the palace, it is sure to be said here; if there was any lesson which he wished principally to teach to those for whom he built, here it is sure to be inculcated; if there was any sentiment which they themselves desired to have expressed in the principal edifice of their city, this is the place in which we may be secure of finding it legibly inscribed. SECTION XXXV. Now the first two angles, of the Vine and Fig-tree, belong to the old, or true Gothic, Palace; the third angle belongs to the Renaissance imitation of it: therefore, at the first two angles, it is the Gothic spirit which is going to speak to us; and, at the third, the Renaissance spirit. The reader remembers, I trust, that the most characteristic sentiment of all that we traced in the working of the Gothic heart, was the frank confession of its own weakness; and I must anticipate, for a moment, the results of our inquiry in subsequent chapters, so far as to state that the principal element in the Renaissance spirit, is its firm confidence in its own wisdom. Hear, then, the two spirits speak for themselves. The first main sculpture of the Gothic Palace is on what I have called the angle of the Fig-tree: Its subject is the FALL OF MAN. The second sculpture is on the angle of the Vine: Its subject is the DRUNKENNESS OF NOAH. The Renaissance sculpture is on the Judgment angle: Its subject is the JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON. It is impossible to overstate, or to regard with too much admiration, the significance of this single fact. It is as if the palace had been built at various epochs, and preserved uninjured to this day, for the sole purpose of teaching us the difference in the temper of the two schools. SECTION XXXVI. I have called the sculpture on the Fig-tree angle the principal one; because it is at the central bend of the palace, where it turns to the Piazetta (the façade upon the Piazetta being, as we saw above, the more important one in ancient times). The great capital, which sustains this Fig-tree angle, is also by far more elaborate than the head of the pilaster under the Vine angle, marking the preëminence of the former in the architect's mind. It is impossible to say which was first executed, but that of the Fig-tree angle is somewhat rougher in execution, and more stiff in the design of the figures, so that I rather suppose it to have been the earliest completed. SECTION XXXVII. In both the subjects, of the Fall and the Drunkenness, the tree, which forms the chiefly decorative portion of the sculpture,--fig in the one case, vine in the other,--was a necessary adjunct. Its trunk, in both sculptures, forms the true outer angle of the palace; boldly cut separate from the stonework behind, and branching out above the figures so as to enwrap each side of the angle, for several feet, with its deep foliage. Nothing can be more masterly or superb than the sweep of this foliage on the Fig-tree angle; the broad leaves lapping round the budding fruit, and sheltering from sight, beneath their shadows, birds of the most graceful form and delicate plumage. The branches are, however, so strong, and the masses of stone hewn into leafage so large, that, notwithstanding the depth of the undercutting, the work remains nearly uninjured; not so at the Vine angle, where the natural delicacy of the vine-leaf and tendril having tempted the sculptor to greater effort, he has passed the proper limits of his art, and cut the upper stems so delicately that half of them have been broken away by the casualties to which the situation of the sculpture necessarily exposes it. What remains is, however, so interesting in its extreme refinement, that I have chosen it for the subject of the first illustration [Footnote: See note at end of this chapter.] rather than the nobler masses of the fig-tree, which ought to be rendered on a larger scale. Although half of the beauty of the composition is destroyed by the breaking away of its central masses, there is still enough in the distribution of the variously bending leaves, and in the placing of the birds on the lighter branches, to prove to us the power of the designer. I have already referred to this Plate as a remarkable instance of the Gothic Naturalism; and, indeed, it is almost impossible for the copying of nature to be carried farther than in the fibres of the marble branches, and the careful finishing of the tendrils: note especially the peculiar expression of the knotty joints of the vine in the light branch which rises highest. Yet only half the finish of the work can be seen in the Plate: for, in several cases, the sculptor has shown the under sides of the leaves turned boldly to the light, and has literally _carved every rib and vein upon them, in relief_; not merely the main ribs which sustain the lobes of the leaf, and actually project in nature, but the irregular and sinuous veins which chequer the membranous tissues between them, and which the sculptor has represented conventionally as relieved like the others, in order to give the vine leaf its peculiar tessellated effect upon the eye. SECTION XXXVIII. As must always be the case in early sculpture, the figures are much inferior to the leafage; yet so skilful in many respects, that it was a long time before I could persuade myself that they had indeed been wrought in the first half of the fourteenth century. Fortunately, the date is inscribed upon a monument in the Church of San Simeon Grande, bearing a recumbent statue of the saint, of far finer workmanship, in every respect, than those figures of the Ducal Palace, yet so like them, that I think there can be no question that the head of Noah was wrought by the sculptor of the palace in emulation of that of the statue of St. Simeon. In this latter sculpture, the face is represented in death; the mouth partly open, the lips thin and sharp, the teeth carefully sculptured beneath; the face full of quietness and majesty, though very ghastly; the hair and beard flowing in luxuriant wreaths, disposed with the most masterly freedom, yet severity, of design, far down upon the shoulders; the hands crossed upon the body, carefully studied, and the veins and sinews perfectly and easily expressed, yet without any attempt at extreme finish or display of technical skill. This monument bears date 1317, [Footnote: "IN XRI--NOIE AMEN ANNINCARNATIONIS MCCCXVII. INESETBR." "In the name of Christ, Amen, in the year of the incarnation, 1317, in the month of September," &c.] and its sculptor was justly proud of it; thus recording his name: "CELAVIT MARCUS OPUS HOC INSIGNE ROMANIS, LAUDIBUS NON PARCUS EST SUA DIGNA MANUS." SECTION XXXIX. The head of the Noah on the Ducal Palace, evidently worked in emulation of this statue, has the same profusion of flowing hair and beard, but wrought in smaller and harder curls; and the veins on the arms and breast are more sharply drawn, the sculptor being evidently more practised in keen and fine lines of vegetation than in those of the figure; so that, which is most remarkable in a workman of this early period, he has failed in telling his story plainly, regret and wonder being so equally marked on the features of all the three brothers that it is impossible to say which is intended for Ham. Two of the heads of the brothers are seen in the Plate; the third figure is not with the rest of the group, but set at a distance of about twelve feet, on the other side of the arch which springs from the angle capital. SECTION XL. It may be observed, as a farther evidence of the date of the group, that, in the figures of all the three youths, the feet are protected simply by a bandage arranged in crossed folds round the ankle and lower part of the limb; a feature of dress which will be found in nearly every piece of figure sculpture in Venice, from the year 1300 to 1380, and of which the traveller may see an example within three hundred yards of this very group, in the bas-reliefs on the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (in St. Mark's), who died in 1354. SECTION XLI. The figures of Adam and Eve, sculptured on each side of the Fig-tree angle, are more stiff than those of Noah and his sons, but are better fitted for their architectural service; and the trunk of the tree, with the angular body of the serpent writhed around it, is more nobly treated as a terminal group of lines than that of the vine. The Renaissance sculptor of the figures of the Judgment of Solomon has very nearly copied the fig-tree from this angle, placing its trunk between the executioner and the mother, who leans forward to stay his hand. But, though the whole group is much more free in design than those of the earlier palace, and in many ways excellent in itself, so that it always strikes the eye of a careless observer more than the others, it is of immeasurably inferior spirit in the workmanship; the leaves of the tree, though far more studiously varied in flow than those of the fig-tree from which they are partially copied, have none of its truth to nature; they are ill set on the steins, bluntly defined on the edges, and their curves are not those of growing leaves, but of wrinkled drapery. SECTION XLII. Above these three sculptures are set, in the upper arcade, the statues of the archangels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel: their positions will be understood by reference to the lowest figure in Plate XVII., where that of Raphael above the Vine angle is seen on the right. A diminutive figure of Tobit follows at his feet, and he bears in his hand a scroll with this inscription: EFICE Q SOFRE TUR AFA EL REVE RENDE QUIETU i.e. Effice (quseso?) fretum, Raphael reverende, quietum. [Footnote: "Oh, venerable Raphael, make thou the gulf calm, we beseech thee." The peculiar office of the angel Raphael is, in general, according to tradition, the restraining the harmful influences of evil spirits. Sir Charles Eastlake told me, that sometimes in this office he is represented bearing the gall of the fish caught by Tobit; and reminded me of the peculiar superstitions of the Venetians respecting the raising of storms by fiends, as embodied in the well known tale of the Fisherman and St. Mark's ring.] I could not decipher the inscription on the scroll borne by the angel Michael; and the figure of Gabriel, which is by much the most beautiful feature of the Renaissance portion of the palace, has only in its hand the Annunciation lily. SECTION XLIII. Such are the subjects of the main sculptures decorating the angles of the palace; notable, observe, for their simple expression of two feelings, the consciousness of human frailty, and the dependence upon Divine guidance and protection: this being, of course, the general purpose of the introduction of the figures of the angels; and, I imagine, intended to be more particularly conveyed by the manner in which the small figure of Tobit follows the steps of Raphael, just touching the hem of his garment. We have next to examine the course of divinity and of natural history embodied by the old sculpture in the great series of capitals which support the lower arcade of the palace; and which, being at a height of little more than eight feet above the eye, might be read, like the pages of a book, by those (the noblest men in Venice) who habitually walked beneath the shadow of this great arcade at the time of their first meeting each other for morning converse. SECTION XLIV. We will now take the pillars of the Ducal Palace in their order. It has already been mentioned (Vol. I. Chap. I. Section XLVI.) that there are, in all, thirty-six great pillars supporting the lower story; and that these are to be counted from right to left, because then the more ancient of them come first: and that, thus arranged, the first, which is not a shaft, but a pilaster, will be the support of the Vine angle; the eighteenth will be the great shaft of the Fig-tree angle; and the thirty-sixth, that of the Judgment angle. SECTION XLV. All their capitals, except that of the first, are octagonal, and are decorated by sixteen leaves, differently enriched in every capital, but arranged in the same way; eight of them rising to the angles, and there forming volutes; the eight others set between them, on the sides, rising half-way up the bell of the capital; there nodding forward, and showing above them, rising out of their luxuriance, the groups or single figures which we have to examine. [Footnote: I have given one of these capitals carefully already in my folio work, and hope to give most of the others in due time. It was of no use to draw them here, as the scale would have been too small to allow me to show the expression of the figures.] In some instances, the intermediate or lower leaves are reduced to eight sprays of foliage; and the capital is left dependent for its effect on the bold position of the figures. In referring to the figures on the octagonal capitals, I shall call the outer side, fronting either the Sea or the Piazzetta, the first side; and so count round from left to right; the fourth side being thus, of course, the innermost. As, however, the first five arches were walled up after the great fire, only three sides of their capitals are left visible, which we may describe as the front and the eastern and western sides of each. SECTION XLVI. FIRST CAPITAL: i.e. of the pilaster at the Vine angle. In front, towards the Sea. A child holding a bird before him, with its wings expanded, covering his breast. On its eastern side. Children's heads among leaves. On its western side. A child carrying in one hand a comb; in the other, a pair of scissors. It appears curious, that this, the principal pilaster of the façade, should have been decorated only by these graceful grotesques, for I can hardly suppose them anything more. There may be meaning in them, but I will not venture to conjecture any, except the very plain and practical meaning conveyed by the last figure to all Venetian children, which it would be well if they would act upon. For the rest, I have seen the comb introduced in grotesque work as early as the thirteenth century, but generally for the purpose of ridiculing too great care in dressing the hair, which assuredly is not its purpose here. The children's heads are very sweet and full of life, but the eyes sharp and small. SECTION XLVII. SECOND CAPITAL. Only three sides of the original work are left unburied by the mass of added wall. Each side has a bird, one web-footed, with a fish, one clawed, with a serpent, which opens its jaws, and darts its tongue at the bird's breast; the third pluming itself, with a feather between the mandibles of its bill. It is by far the most beautiful of the three capitals decorated with birds. THIRD CAPITAL. Also has three sides only left. They have three heads, large, and very ill cut; one female, and crowned. FOURTH CAPITAL. Has three children. The eastern one is defaced: the one in front holds a small bird, whose plumage is beautifully indicated, in its right hand; and with its left holds up half a walnut, showing the nut inside: the third holds a fresh fig, cut through, showing the seeds. The hair of all the three children is differently worked: the first has luxuriant flowing hair, and a double chin; the second, light flowing hair falling in pointed locks on the forehead; the third, crisp curling hair, deep cut with drill holes. This capital has been copied on the Renaissance side of the palace, only with such changes in the ideal of the children as the workman thought expedient and natural. It is highly interesting to compare the child of the fourteenth with the child of the fifteenth century. The early heads are full of youthful life, playful, humane, affectionate, beaming with sensation and vivacity, but with much manliness and firmness, also, not a little cunning, and some cruelty perhaps, beneath all; the features small and hard, and the eyes keen. There is the making of rough and great men in them. But the children of the fifteenth century are dull smooth-faced dunces, without a single meaning line in the fatness of their stolid cheeks; and, although, in the vulgar sense, as handsome as the other children are ugly, capable of becoming nothing but perfumed coxcombs. FIFTH CAPITAL. Still three sides only left, bearing three half-length statues of kings; this is the first capital which bears any inscription. In front, a king with a sword in his right hand points to a handkerchief embroidered and fringed, with a head on it, carved on the cavetto of the abacus. His name is written above, "TITUS VESPASIAN IMPERATOR" (contracted IPAT.). On eastern side, "TRAJANUS IMPERATOR." Crowned, a sword in right hand, and sceptre in left. On western, "(OCT)AVIANUS AUGUSTUS IMPERATOR." The "OCT" is broken away. He bears a globe in his right hand, with "MUNDUS PACIS" upon it; a sceptre in his left, which I think has terminated in a human figure. He has a flowing beard, and a singularly high crown; the face is much injured, but has once been very noble in expression. SIXTH CAPITAL. Has large male and female heads, very coarsely cut, hard, and bad. SECTION XLVIII. SEVENTH CAPITAL. This is the first of the series which is complete; the first open arch of the lower arcade being between it and the sixth. It begins the representation of the Virtues. _First side_. Largitas, or Liberality: always distinguished from the higher Charity. A male figure, with his lap full of money, which he pours out of his hand. The coins are plain, circular, and smooth; there is no attempt to mark device upon them. The inscription above is, "LARGITAS ME ONORAT." In the copy of this design on the twenty-fifth capital, instead of showering out the gold from his open hand, the figure holds it in a plate or salver, introduced for the sake of disguising the direct imitation. The changes thus made in the Renaissance pillars are always injuries. This virtue is the proper opponent of Avarice; though it does not occur in the systems of Orcagna or Giotto, being included in Charity. It was a leading virtue with Aristotle and the other ancients. SECTION XLIX. _Second side_. Constancy; not very characteristic. An armed man with a sword in his hand, inscribed, "CONSTANTIA SUM, NIL TIMENS." This virtue is one of the forms of fortitude, and Giotto therefore sets as the vice opponent to Fortitude, "Inconstantia," represented as a woman in loose drapery, falling from a rolling globe. The vision seen in the interpreter's house in the Pilgrim's Progress, of the man with a very bold countenance, who says to him who has the writer's ink-horn by his side, "Set down my name," is the best personification of the Venetian "Constantia" of which I am aware in literature. It would be well for us all to consider whether we have yet given the order to the man with the ink-horn, "Set down my name." SECTION L. _Third side_. Discord; holding up her finger, but needing the inscription above to assure us of her meaning, "DISCORDIA SUM, DISCORDIANS." In the Renaissance copy she is a meek and nun-like person with a veil. She is the Atë of Spencer; "mother of debate," thus described in the fourth book: "Her face most fowle and filthy was to see, With squinted eyes contrarie wayes intended; And loathly mouth, unmeete a mouth to bee, That nought but gall and venim comprehended, And wicked wordes that God and man offended: Her lying tongue was in two parts divided, And both the parts did speake, and both contended; And as her tongue, so was her hart discided, That never thoght one thing, but doubly stil was guided." Note the fine old meaning of "discided," cut in two; it is a great pity we have lost this powerful expression. We might keep "determined" for the other sense of the word. SECTION LI. _Fourth side_. Patience. A female figure, very expressive and lovely, in a hood, with her right hand on her breast, the left extended, inscribed "PATIENTIA MANET MECUM." She is one of the principal virtues in all the Christian systems: a masculine virtue in Spenser, and beautifully placed as the _PHYSICIAN_ in the House of Holinesse. The opponent vice, Impatience, is one of the hags who attend the Captain of the Lusts of the Flesh; the other being Impotence. In like manner, in the "Pilgrim's Progress," the opposite of Patience is Passion; but Spenser's thought is farther carried. His two hags, Impatience and Impotence, as attendant upon the evil spirit of Passion, embrace all the phenomena of human conduct, down even to the smallest matters, according to the adage, "More haste, worse speed." SECTION LII. _Fifth side_. Despair. A female figure thrusting a dagger into her throat, and tearing her long hair, which flows down among the leaves of the capital below her knees. One of the finest figures of the series; inscribed "DESPERACIO MÔS (mortis?) CRUDELIS." In the Renaissance copy she is totally devoid of expression, and appears, instead of tearing her hair, to be dividing it into long curls on each side. This vice is the proper opposite of Hope. By Giotto she is represented as a woman hanging herself, a fiend coming for her soul. Spenser's vision of Despair is well known, it being indeed currently reported that this part of the Faerie Queen was the first which drew to it the attention of Sir Philip Sidney. SECTION LIII. _Sixth side_. Obedience: with her arms folded; meek, but rude and commonplace, looking at a little dog standing on its hind legs and begging, with a collar round its neck. Inscribed "OBEDIENTI * *;" the rest of the sentence is much defaced, but looks like "A'ONOEXIBEO." I suppose the note of contraction above the final A has disappeared and that the inscription was "Obedientiam domino exhibeo." This virtue is, of course, a principal one in the monkish systems; represented by Giotto at Assisi as "an angel robed in black, placing the finger of his left hand on his mouth, and passing the yoke over the head of a Franciscan monk kneeling at his feet." [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. p. 226.] Obedience holds a less principal place in Spenser. We have seen her above associated with the other peculiar virtues of womanhood. SECTION LIV. _Seventh side_. Infidelity. A man in a turban, with a small image in his hand, or the image of a child. Of the inscription nothing but "INFIDELITATE * * *" and some fragmentary letters, "ILI, CERO," remain. By Giotto Infidelity is most nobly symbolized as a woman helmeted, the helmet having a broad rim which keeps the light from her eyes. She is covered with heavy drapery, stands infirmly as if about to fall, _is bound by a cord round her neck to an image_ which she carries in her hand, and has flames bursting forth at her feet. In Spenser, Infidelity is the Saracen knight Sans Foy,-- "Full large of limbe and every joint He was, and cared not for God or man a point." For the part which he sustains in the contest with Godly Fear, or the Red-cross knight, see Appendix 2, Vol. III. SECTION LV. _Eighth side_. Modesty; bearing a pitcher. (In the Renaissance copy, a vase like a coffeepot.) Inscribed "MODESTIA ROBUOBTINEO." I do not find this virtue in any of the Italian series, except that of Venice. In Spenser she is of course one of those attendant on Womanhood, but occurs as one of the tenants of the Heart of Man, thus portrayed in the second book: "Straunge was her tyre, and all her garment blew, Close rownd about her tuckt with many a plight: Upon her fist the bird which shonneth vew. * * * * * And ever and anone with rosy red The bashfull blood her snowy cheekes did dye, That her became, as polisht yvory Which cunning craftesman hand hath overlayd With fayre vermilion or pure castory." SECTION LVI. EIGHTH CAPITAL. It has no inscriptions, and its subjects are not, by themselves, intelligible; but they appear to be typical of the degradation of human instincts. _First side_. A caricature of Arion on his dolphin; he wears a cap ending in a long proboscis-like horn, and plays a violin with a curious twitch of the bow and wag of the head, very graphically expressed, but still without anything approaching to the power of Northern grotesque. His dolphin has a goodly row of teeth, and the waves beat over his back. _Second side_. A human figure, with curly hair and the legs of a bear; the paws laid, with great sculptural skill, upon the foliage. It plays a violin, shaped like a guitar, with a bent double-stringed bow. _Third side_. A figure with a serpent's tail and a monstrous head, founded on a Negro type, hollow-cheeked, large-lipped, and wearing a cap made of a serpent's skin, holding a fir-cone in its hand. _Fourth side_. A monstrous figure, terminating below in a tortoise. It is devouring a gourd, which it grasps greedily with both hands; it wears a cap ending in a hoofed leg. _Fifth side_. A centaur wearing a crested helmet, and holding a curved sword. _Sixth side_. A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing a chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a two-edged sword. _Seventh side_. A figure like that on the fifth, wearing a round helmet, and with the legs and tail of a horse. He bears a long mace with a top like a fir-cone. _Eighth side_. A figure with curly hair, and an acorn in its hand, ending below in a fish. SECTION LVII. NINTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Faith. She has her left hand on her breast, and the cross on her right. Inscribed "FIDES OPTIMA IN DEO." The Faith of Giotto holds the cross in her right hand; in her left, a scroll with the Apostles' Creed. She treads upon cabalistic books, and has a key suspended to her waist. Spenser's Faith (Fidelia) is still more spiritual and noble: "She was araied all in lilly white, And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, With wine and water fild up to the hight, In which a serpent did himselfe enfold, That horrour made to all that did behold; But she no whitt did chaunge her constant mood: And in her other hand she fast did hold A booke, that was both signd and seald with blood; Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood." SECTION LVIII. _Second side_. Fortitude. A long-bearded man [Samson?] tearing open a lion's jaw. The inscription is illegible, and the somewhat vulgar personification appears to belong rather to Courage than Fortitude. On the Renaissance copy it is inscribed "FORTITUDO SUM VIRILIS." The Latin word has, perhaps, been received by the sculptor as merely signifying "Strength," the rest of the perfect idea of this virtue having been given in "Constantia" previously. But both these Venetian symbols together do not at all approach the idea of Fortitude as given generally by Giotto and the Pisan sculptors; clothed with a lion's skin, knotted about her neck, and falling to her feet in deep folds; drawing back her right hand, with the sword pointed towards her enemy; and slightly retired behind her immovable shield, which, with Giotto, is square, and rested on the ground like a tower, covering her up to above her shoulders; bearing on it a lion, and with broken heads of javelins deeply infixed. Among the Greeks, this is, of course, one of the principal virtues; apt, however, in their ordinary conception of it to degenerate into mere manliness or courage. SECTION LIX. _Third side_. Temperance; bearing a pitcher of water and a cup. Inscription, illegible here, and on the Renaissance copy nearly so, "TEMPERANTIA SUM" (INOM' L'S)? Only left. In this somewhat vulgar and most frequent conception of this virtue (afterwards continually repeated, as by Sir Joshua in his window at New-College) temperance is confused with mere abstinence, the opposite of Gula, or gluttony; whereas the Greek Temperance, a truly cardinal virtue, is the moderator of _all_ the passions, and so represented by Giotto, who has placed a bridle upon her lips, and a sword in her hand, the hilt of which she is binding to the scabbard. In his system, she is opposed among the vices, not by Gula or Gluttony, but by Ira, Anger. So also the Temperance of Spenser, or Sir Guyon, but with mingling of much sternness: "A goodly knight, all armd in harnesse meete, That from his head no place appeared to his feete, His carriage was full comely and upright; His countenance demure and temperate; But yett so sterne and terrible in sight, That cheard his friendes, and did his foes amate." The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term [Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles) to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance; a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the first book. She presses grapes into a cup, because of the words of St. Paul, "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;" but always delicately, "Into her cup she scruzd with daintie breach Of her fine fingers, without fowle empeach, That so faire winepresse made the wine more sweet." The reader will, I trust, pardon these frequent extracts from Spenser, for it is nearly as necessary to point out the profound divinity and philosophy of our great English poet, as the beauty of the Ducal Palace. SECTION LX. _Fourth side_. Humility; with a veil upon her head, carrying a lamp in her lap. Inscribed in the copy, "HUMILITAS HABITAT IN ME." This virtue is of course a peculiarly Christian one, hardly recognized in the Pagan systems, though carefully impressed upon the Greeks in early life in a manner which at this day it would be well if we were to imitate, and, together with an almost feminine modesty, giving an exquisite grace to the conduct and bearing of the well-educated Greek youth. It is, of course, one of the leading virtues in all the monkish systems, but I have not any notes of the manner of its representation. SECTION LXI. _Fifth side_. Charity. A woman with her lap full of loaves (?), giving one to a child, who stretches his arm out for it across a broad gap in the leafage of the capital. Again very far inferior to the Giottesque rendering of this virtue. In the Arena Chapel she is distinguished from all the other virtues by having a circular glory round her head, and a cross of fire; she is crowned with flowers, presents with her right hand a vase of corn and fruit, and with her left receives treasure from Christ, who appears above her, to provide her with the means of continual offices of beneficence, while she tramples under foot the treasures of the earth. The peculiar beauty of most of the Italian conceptions of Charity, is in the subjection of mere munificence to the glowing of her love, always represented by flames; here in the form of a cross round her head; in Orcagna's shrine at Florence, issuing from a censer in her hand; and, with Dante, inflaming her whole form, so that, in a furnace of clear fire, she could not have been discerned. Spenser represents her as a mother surrounded by happy children, an idea afterwards grievously hackneyed and vulgarized by English painters and sculptors. SECTION LXII. _Sixth side_. Justice. Crowned, and with sword. Inscribed in the copy, "REX SUM JUSTICIE." This idea was afterwards much amplified and adorned in the only good capital of the Renaissance series, under the Judgment angle. Giotto has also given his whole strength to the painting of this virtue, representing her as enthroned under a noble Gothic canopy, holding scales, not by the beam, but one in each hand; a beautiful idea, showing that the equality of the scales of Justice is not owing to natural laws, but to her own immediate weighing the opposed causes in her own hands. In one scale is an executioner beheading a criminal; in the other an angel crowning a man who seems (in Selvatico's plate) to have been working at a desk or table. Beneath her feet is a small predella, representing various persons riding securely in the woods, and others dancing to the sound of music. Spenser's Justice, Sir Artegall, is the hero of an entire book, and the betrothed knight of Britomart, or chastity. SECTION LXIII. _Seventh side_. Prudence. A man with a book and a pair of compasses, wearing the noble cap, hanging down towards the shoulder, and bound in a fillet round the brow, which occurs so frequently during the fourteenth century in Italy in the portraits of men occupied in any civil capacity. This virtue is, as we have seen, conceived under very different degrees of dignity, from mere worldly prudence up to heavenly wisdom, being opposed sometimes by Stultitia, sometimes by Ignorantia. I do not find, in any of the representations of her, that her truly distinctive character, namely, _forethought_, is enough insisted upon: Giotto expresses her vigilance and just measurement or estimate of all things by painting her as Janus-headed, and gazing into a convex mirror, with compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never enough considered or symbolized. The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom. SECTION LXIV. _Eighth side_. Hope. A figure full of devotional expression, holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which is extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy this hand does not appear. Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not; for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid: "She always smyld, and in her hand did hold An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe." SECTION LXV. TENTH CAPITAL. _First side_. Luxury (the opposite of chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA." These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His Luxury rides upon a goat: "In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire, Which underneath did hide his filthinesse, And in his hand a burning heart he bare." But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is the Cupid of the ancients; and there is not any minor circumstance more indicative of the _intense_ difference between the mediaeval and the Renaissance spirit, than the mode in which this god is represented. I have above said, that all great European art is rooted in the thirteenth century; and it seems to me that there is a kind of central year about which we may consider the energy of the middle ages to be gathered; a kind of focus of time which, by what is to my mind a most touching and impressive Divine appointment, has been marked for us by the greatest writer of the middle ages, in the first words he utters; namely, the year 1300, the "mezzo del cammin" of the life of Dante. Now, therefore, to Giotto, the contemporary of Dante, and who drew Dante's still existing portrait in this very year, 1300, we may always look for the central mediaeval idea in any subject: and observe how he represents Cupid; as one of three, a terrible trinity, his companions being Satan and Death; and he himself "a lean scarecrow, with bow, quiver, and fillet, and feet ending in claws," [Footnote: Lord Lindsay, vol. ii. letter iv.] thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude. Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediaeval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the form of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of the Graces, but full of terror: "With that the darts which his right hand did straine Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake, And clapt on hye his coloured winges twaine, That all his many it afraide did make." His many, that is to say, his company; and observe what a company it is. Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope, Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty. After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame, "Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead, Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead, Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty, Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread Of heavenly vengeaunce; faint Infirmity, Vile Poverty, and lastly Death with infamy." Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the Renaissance, as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our literature, and our minds. SECTION LXVI. _Second side_. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird, which she is gnawing. Inscribed "GULA SINE ORDINE SUM." Spenser's Gluttony is more than usually fine: "His belly was upblownt with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a crane his necke was long and fyne, Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne." He rides upon a swine, and is clad in vine-leaves, with a garland of ivy. Compare the account of Excesse, above, as opposed to Temperance. SECTION LXVII. _Third side_. Pride. A knight, with a heavy and stupid face, holding a sword with three edges: his armor covered with ornaments in the form of roses, and with two ears attached to his helmet. The inscription indecipherable, all but "SUPERBIA." Spenser has analyzed this vice with great care. He first represents it as the Pride of life; that is to say, the pride which runs in a deep under-current through all the thoughts and acts of men. As such, it is a feminine vice, directly opposed to Holiness, and mistress of a castle called the House of Pryde, and her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team of beasts, ridden by the mortal sins. In the throne chamber of her palace she is thus described: "So proud she shyned in her princely state, Looking to Heaven, for Earth she did disdayne; And sitting high, for lowly she did hate: Lo, underneath her scornefull feete was layne A dreadfull dragon with an hideous trayne; And in her hand she held a mirrhour bright, Wherein her face she often vewed fayne." The giant Orgoglio is a baser species of pride, born of the Earth and Eolus; that is to say, of sensual and vain conceits. His foster-father and the keeper of his castle is Ignorance. (Book I. canto viii.) Finally, Disdain is introduced, in other places, as the form of pride which vents itself in insult to others. SECTION LXVIII. _Fourth side_. Anger. A woman tearing her dress open at her breast. Inscription here undecipherable; but in the Renaissance Copy it IS "IRA CRUDELIS EST IN ME." Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol; but it is the weakest of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood. Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of the _restrained_ Anger, which is infinitely the most terrible; both of them make him violent. SECTION LXIX. _Fifth side_. Avarice. An old woman with a veil over her forehead, and a bag of money in each hand. A figure very marvellous for power of expression. The throat is all made up of sinews with skinny channels deep between them, strained as by anxiety, and wasted by famine; the features hunger-bitten, the eyes hollow, the look glaring and intense, yet without the slightest caricature. Inscribed in the Renaissance copy, "AVARITIA IMPLETOR." Spenser's Avarice (the vice) is much feebler than this; but the god Mammon and his kingdom have been described by him with his usual power. Note the position of the house of Richesse: "Betwixt them both was but a little stride, That did the House of Richesse from Hell-mouth divide." It is curious that most moralists confuse avarice with covetousness, although they are vices totally different in their operation on the human heart, and on the frame of society. The love of money, the sin of Judas and Ananias, is indeed the root of all evil in the hardening of the heart; but "covetousness, which is idolatry," the sin of Ahab, that is, the inordinate desire of some seen or recognized good,--thus destroying peace of mind,--is probably productive of much more misery in heart, and error in conduct, than avarice itself, only covetousness is not so inconsistent with Christianity: for covetousness may partly proceed from vividness of the affections and hopes, as in David, and be consistent with much charity; not so avarice. SECTION LXX. _Sixth side_. Idleness. Accidia. A figure much broken away, having had its arms round two branches of trees. I do not know why Idleness should be represented as among trees, unless, in the Italy of the fourteenth century, forest country was considered as desert, and therefore the domain of Idleness. Spenser fastens this vice especially upon the clergy,-- "Upon a slouthfull asse he chose to ryde, Arayd in habit blacke, and amis thin, Like to an holy monck, the service to begin. And in his hand his portesse still he bare, That much was worne, but therein little redd." And he properly makes him the leader of the train of the vices: "May seem the wayne was very evil ledd, When such an one had guiding of the way." Observe that subtle touch of truth in the "wearing" of the portesse, indicating the abuse of books by idle readers, so thoroughly characteristic of unwilling studentship from the schoolboy upwards. SECTION LXXI. _Seventh side_. Vanity. She is smiling complacently as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses, and roses form her crown. Undecipherable. There is some confusion in the expression of this vice, between pride in the personal appearance and lightness of purpose. The word Vanitas generally, I think, bears, in the mediaeval period, the sense given it in Scripture. "Let not him that is deceived trust in Vanity, for Vanity shall be his recompense." "Vanity of Vanities." "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." It is difficult to find this sin,--which, after Pride, is the most universal, perhaps the most fatal, of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a feather or to drown a fly,"--definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress." SECTION LXXII. _Eighth side_. Envy. One of the noblest pieces of expression in the series. She is pointing malignantly with her finger; a serpent is wreathed about her head like a cap, another forms the girdle of her waist, and a dragon rests in her lap. Giotto has, however, represented her, with still greater subtlety, as having her fingers terminating in claws, and raising her right hand with an expression partly of impotent regret, partly of involuntary grasping; a serpent, issuing from her mouth, is about to bite her between the eyes; she has long membranous ears, horns on her head, and flames consuming her body. The Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer, joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion in the whole mind: "Malicious Envy rode Upon a ravenous wolfe, and still did chaw Between his cankred teeth avenemous tode That all the poison ran about his jaw. _And in a kirtle of discolourd say He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies_, And in his bosome secretly there lay An hatefull snake, the which his taile uptyes In many folds, and mortali sting implyes." He has developed the idea in more detail, and still more loathsomely, in the twelfth canto of the fifth book. SECTION LXXIII. ELEVENTH CAPITAL. Its decoration is composed of eight birds, arranged as shown in Plate V. of the "Seven Lamps," which, however, was sketched from the Renaissance copy. These birds are all varied in form and action, but not so as to require special description. SECTION LXXIV. TWELFTH CAPITAL. This has been very interesting, but is grievously defaced, four of its figures being entirely broken away, and the character of two others quite undecipherable. It is fortunate that it has been copied in the thirty-third capital of the Renaissance series, from which we are able to identify the lost figures. _First side_. Misery. A man with a wan face, seemingly pleading with a child who has its hands crossed on its breast. There is a buckle at his own breast in the shape of a cloven heart. Inscribed "MISERIA." The intention of this figure is not altogether apparent, as it is by no means treated as a vice; the distress seeming real, and like that of a parent in poverty mourning over his child. Yet it seems placed here as in direct opposition to the virtue of Cheerfulness, which follows next in order; rather, however, I believe, with the intention of illustrating human life, than the character of the vice which, as we have seen, Dante placed in the circle of hell. The word in that case would, I think, have been "Tristitia," the "unholy Griefe" of Spenser-- "All in sable sorrowfully clad, Downe hanging his dull head with heavy chere: * * * * * A pair of pincers in his hand he had, With which he pinched people to the heart." He has farther amplified the idea under another figure in the fifth canto of the fourth book: "His name was Care; a blacksmith by his trade, That neither day nor night from working spared; But to small purpose yron wedges made: Those be unquiet thoughts that carefull minds invade. Rude was his garment, and to rags all rent, Ne better had he, ne for better cared; With blistered hands among the cinders brent." It is to be noticed, however, that in the Renaissance copy this figure is stated to be, not Miseria, but "Misericordia." The contraction is a very moderate one, Misericordia being in old MS. written always as "Mia." If this reading be right, the figure is placed here rather as the companion, than the opposite, of Cheerfulness; unless, indeed, it is intended to unite the idea of Mercy and Compassion with that of Sacred Sorrow. SECTION LXXV. _Second side_. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as singing. Inscribed "ALACRITAS." We have already met with this virtue among those especially set by Spenser to attend on Womanhood. It is inscribed in the Renaissance Copy, "ALACHRITAS CHANIT MECUM." Note the gutturals of the rich and fully developed Venetian dialect now affecting the Latin, which is free from them in the earlier capitals. SECTION LXXVI. _Third side_. Destroyed; but, from the copy, we find it has been Stultitia, Folly; and it is there represented simply as a man _riding_, a sculpture worth the consideration of the English residents who bring their horses to Venice. Giotto gives Stultitia a feather, cap, and club. In early manuscripts he is always eating with one hand, and striking with the other; in later ones he has a cap and bells, or cap crested with a cock's head, whence the word "coxcomb." SECTION LXXVII. _Fourth side_. Destroyed, all but a book, which identifies it with the "Celestial Chastity" of the Renaissance copy; there represented as a woman pointing to a book (connecting the convent life with the pursuit of literature?). Spenser's Chastity, Britomart, is the most exquisitely wrought of all his characters; but, as before noticed, she is not the Chastity of the convent, but of wedded life. SECTION LXXVIII. _Fifth side_. Only a scroll is left; but, from the copy, we find it has been Honesty or Truth. Inscribed "HONESTATEM DILIGO." It is very curious, that among all the Christian systems of the virtues which we have examined, we should find this one in Venice only. The Truth of Spenser, Una, is, after Chastity, the most exquisite character in the "Faerie Queen." SECTION LXXIX. _Sixth side_. Falsehood. An old woman leaning on a crutch; and inscribed in the copy, "FALSITAS IN ME SEMPER EST." The Fidessa of Spenser, the great enemy of Una, or Truth, is far more subtly conceived, probably not without special reference to the Papal deceits. In her true form she is a loathsome hag, but in her outward aspect, "A goodly lady, clad in scarlet red, Purfled with gold and pearle;... Her wanton palfrey all was overspred. With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave, Whose bridle rung with golden bels and bosses brave." Dante's Fraud, Geryon, is the finest personification of all, but the description (Inferno, canto XVII.) is too long to be quoted. SECTION LXXX. _Seventh side_. Injustice. An armed figure holding a halbert; so also in the copy. The figure used by Giotto with the particular intention of representing unjust government, is represented at the gate of an embattled castle in a forest, between rocks, while various deeds of violence are committed at his feet. Spenser's "Adicia" is a furious hag, at last transformed into a tiger. _Eighth side_. A man with a dagger looking sorrowfully at a child, who turns its back to him. I cannot understand this figure. It is inscribed in the copy, "ASTINECIA (Abstinentia?) OPITIMA?" SECTION LXXXI. THIRTEENTH CAPITAL. It has lions' heads all round, coarsely cut. FOURTEENTH CAPITAL. It has various animals, each sitting on its haunches. Three dogs, One a greyhound, one long-haired, one short-haired with bells about its neck; two monkeys, one with fan-shaped hair projecting on each side of its face; a noble boar, with its tusks, hoofs, and bristles sharply cut; and a lion and lioness. SECTION LXXXII. FIFTEENTH CAPITAL. The pillar to which it belongs is thicker than the rest, as well as the one over it in the upper arcade. The sculpture of this capital is also much coarser, and seems to me later than that of the rest; and it has no inscription, which is embarrassing, as its subjects have had much meaning; but I believe Selvatico is right in supposing it to have been intended for a general illustration of Idleness. _First side_. A woman with a distaff; her girdle richly decorated, and fastened by a buckle. _Second side_. A youth in a long mantle, with a rose in his hand. _Third side_. A woman in a turban stroking a puppy, which she holds by the haunches. _Fourth side_. A man with a parrot. _Fifth side_. A woman in very rich costume, with braided hair, and dress thrown into minute folds, holding a rosary (?) in her left hand, her right on her breast. _Sixth side_. A man with a very thoughtful face, laying his hand upon the leaves of the capital. _Seventh side_. A crowned lady, with a rose in her hand. _Eighth side_. A boy with a ball in his left hand, and his right laid on his breast. SECTION LXXXIII. SIXTEENTH CAPITAL. It is decorated with eight large heads, partly intended to be grotesque, [Footnote: Selvatico states that these are intended to be representative of eight nations, Latins, Tartars, Turks, Hungarians, Greeks, Goths, Egyptians, and Persians. Either the inscriptions are now defaced or I have carelessly omitted to note them.] and very coarse and bad, except only that in the sixth side, which is totally different from all the rest, and looks like a portrait. It is thin, thoughtful, and dignified; thoroughly fine in every way. It wears a cap surmounted by two winged lions; and, therefore, I think Selvatico must have inaccurately written the list given in the note, for this head is certainly meant to express the superiority of the Venetian character over that of other nations. Nothing is more remarkable in all early sculpture, than its appreciation of the signs of dignity of character in the features, and the way in which it can exalt the principal figure in any subject by a few touches. SECTION LXXXIV. SEVENTEENTH CAPITAL. This has been so destroyed by the sea wind, which sweeps at this point of the arcade round the angle of the palace, that its inscriptions are no longer legible, and great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are the following: _First side_. A figure with two books, in a robe richly decorated with circles of roses. Inscribed "SALOMON (SAP) IENS." _Second side_. A man with one book, poring over it: he has had a long stick or reed in his hand. Of inscription only the letters "GRAMMATIC" remain. _Third side_. "ARISTOTLE:" so inscribed. He has a peaked double beard and a flat cap, from under which his long hair falls down his back. _Fourth side_. Destroyed. _Fifth side_. Destroyed, all but a board with, three (counters?) on it. _Sixth side_. A figure with compasses. Inscribed "GEOMET * *" _Seventh side_. Nothing is left but a guitar with its handle wrought into a lion's head. _Eighth side_. Destroyed. SECTION LXXXV. We have now arrived at the EIGHTEENTH CAPITAL, the most interesting and beautiful of the palace. It represents the planets, and the sun and moon, in those divisions of the zodiac known to astrologers as their "houses;" and perhaps indicates, by the position in which they are placed, the period of the year at which this great corner-stone was laid. The inscriptions above have been in quaint Latin rhyme, but are now decipherable only in fragments, and that with the more difficulty because the rusty iron bar that binds the abacus has broken away, in its expansion, nearly all the upper portions of the stone, and with them the signs of contraction, which are of great importance. I shall give the fragments of them that I could decipher; first as the letters actually stand (putting those of which I am doubtful in brackets, with a note of interrogation), and then as I would read them. SECTION LXXXVI. It should be premised that, in modern astrology, the houses of the planets are thus arranged: The house of the Sun, is Leo. " Moon, " Cancer. " Mars, " Aries and Scorpio. " Venus, " Taurus and Libra. " Mercury, " Gemini and Virgo. " Jupiter, " Sagittarius and Pisces. " Saturn, " Capricorn. " Herschel, " Aquarius. The Herschel planet being of course unknown to the old astrologers, we have only the other six planetary powers, together with the sun; and Aquarius is assigned to Saturn as his house. I could not find Capricorn at all; but this sign may have been broken away, as the whole capital is grievously defaced. The eighth side of the capital, which the Herschel planet would now have occupied, bears a sculpture of the Creation of Man: it is the most conspicuous side, the one set diagonally across the angle; or the eighth in our usual mode of reading the capitals, from which I shall not depart. SECTION LXXXVII. _The first side_, then, or that towards the Sea, has Aquarius, as the house of Saturn, represented as a seated figure beautifully draped, pouring a stream of water out of an amphora over the leaves of the capital. His inscription is: "ET SATURNE DOMUS (ECLOCERUNT?) I'S 7BRE." SECTION LXXXVIII. _Second side_. Jupiter, in his houses Sagittarius and Pisces, represented throned, with an upper dress disposed in radiating folds about his neck, and hanging down upon his breast, ornamented by small pendent trefoiled studs or bosses. He wears the drooping bonnet and long gloves; but the folds about the neck, shot forth to express the rays of the star, are the most remarkable characteristic of the figure. He raises his sceptre in his left hand over Sagittarius, represented as the centaur Chiron; and holds two thunnies in his right. Something rough, like a third fish, has been broken away below them; the more easily because this part of the group is entirely undercut, and the two fish glitter in the light, relieved on the deep gloom below the leaves. The inscription is: "INDE JOVI' DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA." [Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked on the stone.] Or, "Inde Jovis dona Pisces simul atque Chirona." Domus is, I suppose, to be understood before Jovis: "Then the house of Jupiter gives (or governs?) the fishes and Chiron." SECTION LXXXIX. _Third side_. Mars, in his houses Aries and Scorpio. Represented as a very ugly knight in chain mail, seated sideways on the ram, whose horns are broken away, and having a large scorpion in his left hand, whose tail is broken also, to the infinite injury of the group, for it seems to have curled across to the angle leaf, and formed a bright line of light, like the fish in the hand of Jupiter. The knight carries a shield, on which fire and water are sculptured, and bears a banner upon his lance, with the word "DEFEROSUM," which puzzled me for some time. It should be read, I believe, "De ferro sum;" which would be good _Venetian_ Latin for "I am of iron." SECTION XC. _Fourth side_. The Sun, in his house Leo. Represented under the figure of Apollo, sitting on the Lion, with rays shooting from his head, and the world in his hand. The inscription: "TU ES DOMU' SOLIS (QUO?) SIGNE LEONI." I believe the first phrase is, "Tune est Domus solis;" but there is a letter gone after the "quo," and I have no idea what case of signum "signe" stands for. SECTION XCI. _Fifth side_. Venus, in her houses Taurus and Libra. The most beautiful figure of the series. She sits upon the bull, who is deep in the dewlap, and better cut than most of the animals, holding a mirror in her right hand, and the scales in her left. Her breast is very nobly and tenderly indicated under the folds of her drapery, which is exquisitely studied in its fall. What is left of the inscription, runs: "LIBRA CUM TAURO DOMUS * * * PURIOR AUR*." SECTION XCII. _Sixth side_. Mercury, represented as wearing a pendent cap, and holding a book: he is supported by three children in reclining attitudes, representing his houses Gemini and Virgo. But I cannot understand the inscription, though more than usually legible. "OCCUPAT ERIGONE STIBONS GEMINUQ' LAGONE." SECTION XCIII. _Seventh side_. The Moon, in her house Cancer. This sculpture, which is turned towards the Piazzetta, is the most picturesque of the series. The moon is represented as a woman in a boat, upon the sea, who raises the crescent in her right hand, and with her left draws a crab out of the waves, up the boat's side. The moon was, I believe, represented in Egyptian sculptures as in a boat; but I rather think the Venetian was not aware of this, and that he meant to express the peculiar sweetness of the moonlight at Venice, as seen across the lagoons. Whether this was intended by putting the planet in the boat, may be questionable, but assuredly the idea was meant to be conveyed by the dress of the figure. For all the draperies of the other figures on this capital, as well as on the rest of the façade, are disposed in severe but full folds, showing little of the forms beneath them; but the moon's drapery _ripples_ down to her feet, so as exactly to suggest the trembling of the moonlight on the waves. This beautiful idea is highly characteristic of the thoughtfulness of the early sculptors: five hundred men may be now found who could have cut the drapery, as such, far better, for one who would have disposed its folds with this intention. The inscription is: "LUNE CANCER DOMU T. PBET IORBE SIGNORU." SECTION XCIV. _Eighth side_. God creating Man. Represented as a throned figure, with a glory round the head, laying his left hand on the head of a naked youth, and sustaining him with his right hand. The inscription puzzled me for a long time; but except the lost r and m of "formavit," and a letter quite undefaced, but to me unintelligble, before the word Eva, in the shape of a figure of 7, I have safely ascertained the rest. "DELIMO DSADA DECO STAFO * * AVIT7EVA." Or "De limo Dominus Adam, de costa fo(rm) avit Evam;" From the dust the Lord made Adam, and from the rib Eve. I imagine the whole of this capital, therefore--the principal one of the old palace,--to have been intended to signify, first, the formation of the planets for the service of man upon the earth; secondly, the entire subjection of the fates and fortune of man to the will of God, as determined from the time when the earth and stars were made, and, in fact, written in the volume of the stars themselves. Thus interpreted, the doctrines of judicial astrology were not only consistent with, but an aid to, the most spiritual and humble Christianity. In the workmanship and grouping of its foliage, this capital is, on the whole, the finest I know in Europe. The Sculptor has put his whole strength into it. I trust that it will appear among the other Venetian casts lately taken for the Crystal Palace; but if not, I have myself cast all its figures, and two of its leaves, and I intend to give drawings of them on a large scale in my folio work. SECTION XCV. NINETEENTH CAPITAL. This is, of course, the second counting from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side of the palace, calling that of the Fig-tree angle the first. It is the most important capital, as a piece of evidence in point of dates, in the whole palace. Great pains have been taken with it, and in some portion of the accompanying furniture or ornaments of each of its figures a small piece of colored marble has been inlaid, with peculiar significance: for the capital represents the _arts of sculpture and architecture_; and the inlaying of the colored stones (which are far too small to be effective at a distance, and are found in this one capital only of the whole series) is merely an expression of the architect's feeling of the essential importance of this art of inlaying, and of the value of color generally in his own art. SECTION XCVI. _First side_. "ST. SIMPLICIUS": so inscribed. A figure working with a pointed chisel on a small oblong block of green serpentine, about four inches long by one wide, inlaid in the capital. The chisel is, of course, in the left hand, but the right is held up open, with the palm outwards. _Second side_. A crowned figure, carving the image of a child on a small statue, with a ground of red marble. The sculptured figure is highly finished, and is in type of head much like the Ham or Japheth at the Vine angle. Inscription effaced. _Third side_. An old man, uncrowned, but with curling hair, at work on a small column, with its capital complete, and a little shaft of dark red marble, spotted with paler red. The capital is precisely of the form of that found in the palace of the Tiepolos and the other thirteenth century work of Venice. This one figure would be quite enough, without any other evidence whatever, to determine the date of this flank of the Ducal Palace as not later, at all events, than the first half of the fourteenth century. Its inscription is broken away, all but "DISIPULO." _Fourth side_. A crowned figure; but the object on which it has been working is broken away, and all the inscription except "ST. E(N?)AS." _Fifth side_. A man with a turban, and a sharp chisel, at work on a kind of panel or niche, the back of which is of red marble. _Sixth side_. A crowned figure, with hammer and chisel, employed _on a little range of windows of the fifth order_, having roses set, instead of orbicular ornaments, between the spandrils with a rich cornice, and a band of marble inserted above. This sculpture assures us of the date of the fifth order window, which it shows to have been universal in the early fourteenth century. There are also five arches in the block on which the sculptor is working, marking the frequency of the number five in the window groups of the time. _Seventh side_. A figure at work on a pilaster, with Lombardic thirteenth century capital (for account of the series of forms in Venetian capitals, see the final Appendix of the next volume), the shaft of dark red spotted marble. _Eighth side_. A figure with a rich open crown, working on a delicate recumbent statue, the head of which is laid on a pillow covered with a rich chequer pattern; the whole supported on a block of dark red marble. Inscription broken away, all but "ST. SYM. (Symmachus?) TV * * ANVS." There appear, therefore, altogether to have been five saints, two of them popes, if Simplicius is the pope of that name (three in front, two on the fourth and sixth sides), alternating with the three uncrowned workmen in the manual labor of sculpture. I did not, therefore, insult our present architects in saying above that they "ought to work in the mason's yard with their men." It would be difficult to find a more interesting expression of the devotional spirit in which all great work was undertaken at this time. SECTION XCVII. TWENTIETH CAPITAL. It is adorned with heads of animals, and is the finest of the whole series in the broad massiveness of its effect; so simply characteristic, indeed, of the grandeur of style in the entire building, that I chose it for the first Plate in my folio work. In spite of the sternness of its plan, however, it is wrought with great care in surface detail; and the ornamental value of the minute chasing obtained by the delicate plumage of the birds, and the clustered bees on the honeycomb in the bear's mouth, opposed to the strong simplicity of its general form, cannot be too much admired. There are also more grace, life, and variety in the sprays of foliage on each side of it, and under the heads, than in any other capital of the series, though the earliness of the workmanship is marked by considerable hardness and coldness in the larger heads. A Northern Gothic workman, better acquainted with bears and wolves than it was possible to become in St. Mark's Place, would have put far more life into these heads, but he could not have composed them more skilfully. SECTION XCVIII. _First side_. A lion with a stag's haunch in his mouth. Those readers who have the folio plate, should observe the peculiar way in which the ear is cut into the shape of a ring, jagged or furrowed on the edge; an archaic mode of treatment peculiar, in the Ducal Palace, to the lion's heads of the fourteenth century. The moment we reach the Renaissance work, the lion's ears are smooth. Inscribed simply, "LEO." _Second side_. A wolf with a dead bird in his mouth, its body wonderfully true in expression of the passiveness of death. The feathers are each wrought with a central quill and radiating filaments. Inscribed "LUPUS." _Third side_. A fox, not at all like one, with a dead cock in his mouth, its comb and pendent neck admirably designed so as to fall across the great angle leaf of the capital, its tail hanging down on the other side, its long straight feathers exquisitely cut. Inscribed ("VULP?)IS." _Fourth side_. Entirely broken away. _Fifth side_. "APER." Well tusked, with a head of maize in his mouth; at least I suppose it to be maize, though shaped like a pine-cone. _Sixth side_. "CHANIS." With a bone, very ill cut; and a bald-headed species of dog, with ugly flap ears. _Seventh side_. "MUSCIPULUS." With a rat (?) in his mouth. _Eighth side_. "URSUS." With a honeycomb, covered with large bees. SECTION XCIX. TWENTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Represents the principal inferior professions. _First side_. An old man, with his brow deeply wrinkled, and very expressive features, beating in a kind of mortar with a hammer. Inscribed "LAPICIDA SUM." _Second side_. I believe, a goldsmith; he is striking a small flat bowl or patera, on a pointed anvil, with a light hammer. The inscription is gone. _Third side_. A shoemaker with a shoe in his hand, and an instrument for cutting leather suspended beside him. Inscription undecipherable. _Fourth side_. Much broken. A carpenter planing a beam resting on two horizontal logs. Inscribed "CARPENTARIUS SUM." _Fifth side_. A figure shovelling fruit into a tub; the latter very carefully carved from what appears to have been an excellent piece of cooperage. Two thin laths cross each other over the top of it. The inscription, now lost, was, according to Selvatico, "MENSURATOR"? _Sixth side_. A man, with a large hoe, breaking the ground, which lies in irregular furrows and clods before him. Now undecipherable, but according to Selvatico, "AGRICHOLA." _Seventh side_. A man, in a pendent cap, writing on a large scroll which falls over his knee. Inscribed "NOTARIUS SUM." _Eighth side_. A man forging a sword, or scythe-blade: he wears a large skull-cap; beats with a large hammer on a solid anvil; and is inscribed "FABER SUM." SECTION C. TWENTY-SECOND CAPITAL. The Ages of Man; and the influence of the planets on human life. _First side_. The moon, governing infancy for four years, according to Selvatico. I have no note of this side, having, I suppose, been prevented from raising the ladder against it by some fruit-stall or other impediment in the regular course of my examination; and then forgotten to return to it. _Second side_. A child with a tablet, and an alphabet inscribed on it. The legend above is "MECUREU' DNT. PUERICIE PAN. X." Or, "Mercurius dominatur puerilite per annos X." (Selvatico reads VII.) "Mercury governs boyhood for ten (or seven) years." _Third side_. An older youth, with another tablet, but broken. Inscribed "ADOLOSCENCIE * * * P. AN. VII." Selvatico misses this side altogether, as I did the first, so that the lost planet is irrecoverable, as the inscription is now defaced. Note the o for e in adolescentia; so also we constantly find u for o; showing, together with much other incontestable evidence of the same kind, how full and deep the old pronunciation of Latin always remained, and how ridiculous our English mincing of the vowels would have sounded to a Roman ear. _Fourth side_. A youth with a hawk on his fist. "IUVENTUTI DNT. SOL. P. AN. XIX." The sue governs youth for nineteen years. _Fifth side_. A man sitting, helmed, with a sword over his shoulder. Inscribed "SENECTUTI DNT MARS. P. AN. XV." Mars governs manhood for fifteen years. _Sixth side_. A very graceful and serene figure, in the pendent cap, reading. "SENICIE DNT JUPITER, P. ANN. XII." Jupiter governs age for twelve years. _Seventh side_. An old man in a skull-cap, praying. "DECREPITE DNT SATN UQ' ADMOTE." (Saturnus usque ad mortem.) Saturn governs decrepitude until death. _Eighth side_. The dead body lying on a mattress. "ULTIMA EST MORS PENA PECCATI." Last comes death, the penalty of sin. SECTION CI. Shakespeare's Seven Ages are of course merely the expression of this early and well-known system. He has deprived the dotage of its devotion; but I think wisely, as the Italian system would imply that devotion was, or should be, always delayed until dotage. TWENTY-THIRD CAPITAL. I agree with Selvatico in thinking this has been restored. It is decorated with large and vulgar heads. SECTION CII. TWENTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. This belongs to the large shaft which sustains the great party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. The shaft is thicker than the rest; but the capital, though ancient, is coarse and somewhat inferior in design to the others of the series. It represents the history of marriage: the lover first seeing his mistress at a window, then addressing her, bringing her presents; then the bridal, the birth and the death of a child. But I have not been able to examine these sculptures properly, because the pillar is encumbered by the railing which surrounds the two guns set before the Austrian guard-house. SECTION CIII. TWENTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. We have here the employments of the months, with which we are already tolerably acquainted. There are, however, one or two varieties worth noticing in this series. _First side_. March. Sitting triumphantly in a rich dress, as the beginning of the year. _Second side_. April and May. April with a lamb: May with a feather fan in her hand. _Third side_. June. Carrying cherries in a basket. I did not give this series with the others in the previous chapter, because this representation of June is peculiarly Venetian. It is called "the month of cherries," mese delle ceriese, in the popular rhyme on the conspiracy of Tiepolo, quoted above, Vol. I. The cherries principally grown near Venice are of a deep red color, and large, but not of high flavor, though refreshing. They are carved upon the pillar with great care, all their stalks undercut. _Fourth side_. July and August. The first reaping; the leaves of the straw being given, shooting out from the tubular stalk. August, opposite, beats (the grain?) in a basket. _Fifth side_. September. A woman standing in a wine-tub, and holding a branch of vine. Very beautiful. _Sixth side_. October and November. I could not make out their occupation; they seem to be roasting or boiling some root over a fire. _Seventh side_. December. Killing pigs, as usual. _Eighth side_. January warming his feet, and February frying fish. This last employment is again as characteristic of the Venetian winter as the cherries are of the Venetian summer. The inscriptions are undecipherable, except a few letters here and there, and the words MARCIUS, APRILIS, and FEBRUARIUS. This is the last of the capitals of the early palace; the next, or twenty-sixth capital, is the first of those executed in the fifteenth century under Foscari; and hence to the Judgment angle the traveller has nothing to do but to compare the base copies of the earlier work with their originals, or to observe the total want of invention in the Renaissance sculptor, wherever he has depended on his own resources. This, however, always with the exception of the twenty-seventh and of the last capital, which are both fine. I shall merely enumerate the subjects and point out the plagiarisms of these capitals, as they are not worth description. SECTION CIV. TWENTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. Copied from the fifteenth, merely changing the succession of the figures. TWENTY-SEVENTH CAPITAL. I think it possible that this may be part of the old work displaced in joining the new palace with the old; at all events, it is well designed, though a little coarse. It represents eight different kinds of fruit, each in a basket; the characters well given, and groups well arranged, but without much care or finish. The names are inscribed above, though somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as much disrespect to the beholder's intelligence as the sculptor's art, namely, ZEREXIS, PIRI, CHUCUMERIS, PERSICI, ZUCHE, MOLONI, FICI, HUVA. Zerexis (cherries) and Zuche (gourds) both begin with the same letter, whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like a bottle compressed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the Venetians to this day. SECTION CV. TWENTY-EIGHTH CAPITAL. Copied from the seventh. TWENTY-NINTH CAPITAL. Copied from the ninth. THIRTIETH CAPITAL. Copied from the tenth. The "Accidia" is noticeable as having the inscription complete, "ACCIDIA ME STRINGIT;" and the "Luxuria" for its utter want of expression, having a severe and calm face, a robe up to the neck, and her hand upon her breast. The inscription is also different: "LUXURIA SUM STERC'S (?) INFERI"(?). THIRTY-FIRST CAPITAL. Copied from the eighth. THIRTY-SECOND CAPITAL. Has no inscription, only fully robed figures laying their hands, without any meaning, on their own shoulders, heads, or chins, or on the leaves around them. THIRTY-THIRD CAPITAL. Copied from the twelfth. THIRTY-FOURTH CAPITAL. Copied from the eleventh. THIRTY-FIFTH CAPITAL. Has children, with birds or fruit, pretty in features, and utterly inexpressive, like the cherubs of the eighteenth century. SECTION CVI. THIRTY-SIXTH CAPITAL. This is the last of the Piazzetta façade, the elaborate one under the Judgment angle. Its foliage is copied from the eighteenth at the opposite side, with an endeavor on the part of the Renaissance sculptor to refine upon it, by which he has merely lost some of its truth and force. This capital will, however, be always thought, at first, the most beautiful of the whole series: and indeed it is very noble; its groups of figures most carefully studied, very graceful, and much more pleasing than those of the earlier work, though with less real power in them; and its foliage is only inferior to that of the magnificent Fig-tree angle. It represents, on its front or first side, Justice enthroned, seated on two lions; and on the seven other sides examples of acts of justice or good government, or figures of lawgivers, in the following order: _Second side_. Aristotle, with two pupils, giving laws. Inscribed: "ARISTOT * * CHE DIE LEGE." Aristotle who declares laws. _Third side_. I have mislaid my note of this side: Selvatico and Lazari call it "Isidore" (?). [Footnote: Can they have mistaken the ISIPIONE of the fifth side for the word Isidore?] _Fourth side_. Solon with his pupils. Inscribed: "SAL'O UNO DEI SETE SAVI DI GRECIA CHE DIE LEGE." Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, who declares laws. Note, by the by, the pure Venetian dialect used in this capital, instead of the Latin in the more ancient ones. One of the seated pupils in this sculpture is remarkably beautiful in the sweep of his flowing drapery. _Fifth side_. The chastity of Scipio. Inscribed: "ISIPIONE A CHASTITA CH * * * E LA FIA (e la figlia?) * * ARE." A soldier in a plumed bonnet presents a kneeling maiden to the seated Scipio, who turns thoughtfully away. _Sixth side_. Numa Pompilius building churches. "NUMA POMPILIO IMPERADOR EDIFICHADOR DI TEMPI E CHIESE." Numa, in a kind of hat with a crown above it, directing a soldier in Roman armor (note this, as contrasted with the mail of the earlier capitals). They point to a tower of three stories filled with tracery. _Seventh side_. Moses receiving the law. Inscribed: "QUANDO MOSE RECEVE LA LECE I SUL MONTE." Moses kneels on a rock, whence springs a beautifully fancied tree, with clusters of three berries in the centre of the three leaves, sharp and quaint, like fine Northern Gothic. The half figure of the Deity comes out of the abacus, the arm meeting that of Moses, both at full stretch, with the stone tablets between. _Eighth side_. Trajan doing justice to the Widow. "TRAJANO IMPERADOR CHE FA JUSTITIA A LA VEDOVA." He is riding spiritedly, his mantle blown out behind; the widow kneeling before his horse. SECTION CVII. The reader will observe that this capital is of peculiar interest in its relation to the much disputed question of the character of the later government of Venice. It is the assertion by that government of its belief that Justice only could be the foundation of its stability; as these stones of Justice and Judgment are the foundation of its halls of council. And this profession of their faith may be interpreted in two ways. Most modern historians would call it, in common with the continual reference to the principles of justice in the political and judicial language of the period, [Footnote: Compare the speech of the Doge Mocenigo, above,--"first justice, and _then_ the interests of the state:" and see Vol. III. Chap. II Section LIX.] nothing more than a cloak for consummate violence and guilt; and it may easily be proved to have been so in myriads of instances. But in the main, I believe the expression of feeling to be genuine. I do not believe, of the majority of the leading Venetians of this period whose portraits have come down to us, that they were deliberately and everlastingly hypocrites. I see no hypocrisy in their countenances. Much capacity of it, much subtlety, much natural and acquired reserve; but no meanness. On the contrary, infinite grandeur, repose, courage, and the peculiar unity and tranquillity of expression which come of sincerity or _wholeness_ of heart, and which it would take much demonstration to make me believe could by any possibility be seen on the countenance of an insincere man. I trust, therefore, that these Venetian nobles of the fifteenth century did, in the main, desire to do judgment and justice to all men; but, as the whole system of morality had been by this time undermined by the teaching of the Romish Church, the idea of justice had become separated from that of truth, so that dissimulation in the interest of the state assumed the aspect of duty. We had, perhaps, better consider, with some carefulness, the mode in which our own government is carried on, and the occasional difference between parliamentary and private morality, before we judge mercilessly of the Venetians in this respect. The secrecy with which their political and criminal trials were conducted, appears to modern eyes like a confession of sinister intentions; but may it not also be considered, and with more probability, as the result of an endeavor to do justice in an age of violence?--the only means by which Law could establish its footing in the midst of feudalism. Might not Irish juries at this day justifiably desire to conduct their proceedings with some greater approximation to the judicial principles of the Council of Ten? Finally, if we examine, with critical accuracy, the evidence on which our present impressions of Venetian government are founded, we shall discover, in the first place, that two-thirds of the traditions of its cruelties are romantic fables: in the second, that the crimes of which it can be proved to have been guilty, differ only from those committed by the other Italian powers in being done less wantonly, and under profounder conviction of their political expediency: and lastly, that the final degradation of the Venetian power appears owing not so much to the principles of its government, as to their being forgotten in the pursuit of pleasure. SECTION CVIII. We have now examined the portions of the palace which contain the principal evidence of the feeling of its builders. The capitals of the, upper arcade are exceedingly various in their character; their design is formed, as in the lower series, of eight leaves, thrown into volutes at the angles, and sustaining figures at the flanks; but these figures have no inscriptions, and though evidently not without meaning, cannot be interpreted without more knowledge than I possess of ancient symbolism. Many of the capitals toward the Sea appear to have been restored, and to be rude copies of the ancient ones; others, though apparently original, have been somewhat carelessly wrought; but those of them, which are both genuine and carefully treated, are even finer in composition than any, except the eighteenth, in the lower arcade. The traveller in Venice ought to ascend into the corridor, and examine with great care the series of capitals which extend on the Piazzetta side from the Fig-tree angle to the pilaster which carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. As examples of graceful composition in massy capitals meant for hard service and distant effect, these are among the finest things I know in Gothic art; and that above the fig-tree is remarkable for its sculpture of the four winds; each on the side turned towards the wind represented. Levante, the east wind; a figure with rays round its head, to show that it is always clear weather when that wind blows, raising the sun out of the sea: Hotro, the south wind; crowned, holding the sun in its right hand: Ponente, the west wind; plunging the sun into the sea: and Tramontana, the north wind; looking up at the north star. This capital should be carefully examined, if for no other reason than to attach greater distinctness of idea to the magnificent verbiage of Milton: "Thwart of these, as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise, Sirocco and Libecchio." I may also especially point out the bird feeding its three young ones on the seventh pillar on the Piazzetta side; but there is no end to the fantasy of these sculptures; and the traveller ought to observe them all carefully, until he comes to the great Pilaster or complicated pier which sustains the party wall of the Sala del Consiglio; that is to say, the forty-seventh capital of the whole series, counting from the pilaster of the Vine angle inclusive, as in the series of the lower arcade. The forty-eighth, forty-ninth, and fiftieth are bad work, but they are old; the fifty-first is the first Renaissance capital of the upper arcade: the first new lion's head with smooth ears, cut in the time of Foscari, is over the fiftieth capital; and that capital, with its shaft, stands on the apex of the eighth arch from the Sea, on the Piazzetta side, of which one spandril is masonry of the fourteenth and the other of the fifteenth century. SECTION CIX. The reader who is not able to examine the building on the spot may be surprised at the definiteness with which the point of junction is ascertainable; but a glance at the lowest range of leaves in the opposite Plate (XX.) will enable him to judge of the grounds on which the above statement is made. Fig. 12 is a cluster of leaves from the capital of the Four Winds; early work of the finest time. Fig. 13 is a leaf from the great Renaissance capital at the Judgment angle, worked in imitation of the older leafage. Fig. 14 is a leaf from one of the Renaissance capitals of the upper arcade, which are all worked in the natural manner of the period. It will be seen that it requires no great ingenuity to distinguish between such design as that of fig. 12 and that of fig. 14. SECTION CX. It is very possible that the reader may at first like fig. 14 best. I shall endeavor, in the next chapter, to show why he should not; but it must also be noted, that fig. 12 has lost, and fig. 14 gained, both largely, under the hands of the engraver. All the bluntness and coarseness of feeling in the workmanship of fig. 14 have disappeared on this small scale, and all the subtle refinements in the broad masses of fig. 12 have vanished. They could not, indeed, be rendered in line engraving, unless by the hand of Albert Durer; and I have, therefore, abandoned, for the present, all endeavor to represent any more important mass of the early sculpture of the Ducal Palace: but I trust that, in a few months, casts of many portions will be within the reach of the inhabitants of London, and that they will be able to judge for themselves of their perfect, pure, unlabored naturalism; the freshness, elasticity, and softness of their leafage, united with the most noble symmetry and severe reserve,--no running to waste, no loose or experimental lines, no extravagance, and no weakness. Their design is always sternly architectural; there is none of the wildness or redundance of natural vegetation, but there is all the strength, freedom, and tossing flow of the breathing leaves, and all the undulation of their surfaces, rippled, as they grew, by the summer winds, as the sands are by the sea. SECTION CXI. This early sculpture of the Ducal Palace, then, represents the state of Gothic work in Venice at its central and proudest period, i. e. circa 1350. After this time, all is decline,--of what nature and by what steps, we shall inquire in the ensuing chapter; for as this investigation, though still referring to Gothic architecture, introduces us to the first symptoms of the Renaissance influence, I have considered it as properly belonging to the third division of our subject. SECTION CXII. And as, under the shadow of these nodding leaves, we bid farewell to the great Gothic spirit, here also we may cease our examination of the details of the Ducal Palace; for above its upper arcade there are only the four traceried windows, and one or two of the third order on the Rio Façade, which can be depended upon as exhibiting the original workmanship of the older palace. [Footnote: Some further details respecting these portions, as well as some necessary confirmations of my statements of dates, are, however, given in Appendix I., Vol. III. I feared wearying the general reader by introducing them into the text.] I examined the capitals of the four other windows on the façade, and of those on the Piazzetta, one by one, with great care, and I found them all to be of far inferior workmanship to those which retain their traceries: I believe the stone framework of these windows must have been so cracked and injured by the flames of the great fire, as to render it necessary to replace it by new traceries; and that the present mouldings and capitals are base imitations of the original ones. The traceries were at first, however, restored in their complete form, as the holes for the bolts which fastened the bases of their shafts are still to be seen in the window-sills, as well as the marks of the inner mouldings on the soffits. How much the stone facing of the façade, the parapets, and the shafts and niches of the angles, retain of their original masonry, it is also impossible to determine; but there is nothing in the workmanship of any of them demanding especial notice; still less in the large central windows on each façade which are entirely of Renaissance execution. All that is admirable in these portions of the building is the disposition of their various parts and masses, which is without doubt the same as in the original fabric, and calculated, when seen from a distance, to produce the same impression. SECTION CXIII. Not so in the interior. All vestige of the earlier modes of decoration was here, of course, destroyed by the fires; and the severe and religious work of Guariento and Bellini has been replaced by the wildness of Tintoret and the luxury of Veronese. But in this case, though widely different in temper, the art of the renewal was at least intellectually as great as that which had perished: and though the halls of the Ducal Palace are no more representative of the character of the men by whom it was built, each of them is still a colossal casket of priceless treasure; a treasure whose safety has till now depended on its being despised, and which at this moment, and as I write, is piece by piece being destroyed for ever. SECTION CXIV. The reader will forgive my quitting our more immediate subject, in order briefly to explain the causes and the nature of this destruction; for the matter is simply the most important of all that can be brought under our present consideration respecting the state of art in Europe. The fact is, that the greater number of persons or societies throughout Europe, whom wealth, or chance, or inheritance has put in possession of valuable pictures, do not know a good picture from a bad one, and have no idea in what the value of a picture really consists. [Footnote: Many persons, capable of quickly sympathizing with any excellence, when once pointed out to them, easily deceive themselves into the supposition that they are judges of art. There is only one real test of such power of judgment. Can they, at a glance, discover a good picture obscured by the filth, and confused among the rubbish, of the pawnbroker's or dealer's garret?] The reputation of certain work is raised partly by accident, partly by the just testimony of artists, partly by the various and generally bad taste of the public (no picture, that I know of, has ever, in modern times, attained popularity, in the full sense of the term, without having some exceedingly bad qualities mingled with its good ones), and when this reputation has once been completely established, it little matters to what state the picture may be reduced: few minds are so completely devoid of imagination as to be unable to invest it with the beauties which they have heard attributed to it. SECTION CXV. This being so, the pictures that are most valued are for the most part those by masters of established renown, which are highly or neatly finished, and of a size small enough to admit of their being placed in galleries or saloons, so as to be made subjects of ostentation, and to be easily seen by a crowd. For the support of the fame and value of such pictures, little more is necessary than that they should be kept bright, partly by cleaning, which is incipient destruction, and partly by what is called "restoring," that is, painting over, which is of course total destruction. Nearly all the gallery pictures in modern Europe have been more or less destroyed by one or other of these operations, generally exactly in proportion to the estimation in which they are held; and as, originally, the smaller and more highly finished works of any great master are usually his worst, the contents of many of our most celebrated galleries are by this time, in reality, of very small value indeed. SECTION CXVI. On the other hand, the most precious works of any noble painter are usually those which have been done quickly, and in the heat of the first thought, on a large scale, for places where there was little likelihood of their being well seen, or for patrons from whom there was little prospect of rich remuneration. In general, the best things are done in this way, or else in the enthusiasm and pride of accomplishing some great purpose, such as painting a cathedral or a camposanto from one end to the other, especially when the time has been short, and circumstances disadvantageous. SECTION CXVII. Works thus executed are of course despised, on account of their quantity, as well as their frequent slightness, in the places where they exist; and they are too large to be portable, and too vast and comprehensive to be read on the spot, in the hasty temper of the present age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected, whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the walls, piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode, looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his accomplished duty. SECTION CXVIII. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the Ducal Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less reduced, by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not altogether without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention of the Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens, that public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture, will pay fifty to repaint it; [Footnote: This is easily explained. There are, of course, in every place and at all periods, bad painters who conscientiously believe that they can improve every picture they touch; and these men are generally, in their presumption, the most influential over the innocence, whether of monarchs or municipalities. The carpenter and slater have little influence in recommending the repairs of the roof; but the bad painter has great influence, as well as interest, in recommending those of the picture.] and when I was at Venice in 1846, there were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same time, in the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value in the city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world), curiously illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were set on the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch the rain which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling; while in the Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid on the floor to be repainted; and I was myself present at the re-illumination of the breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end of a stick five feet long, luxuriously dipped in a common house-painter's vessel of paint. This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in Venice (1851-2) to the "Paradise" at its extremity, which is yet in tolerable condition,--the largest work of Tintoret, and the most wonderful piece of pure, manly, and masterly oil-painting in the world. SECTION CXIX. I leave these facts to the consideration of the European patrons of art. Twenty years hence they will be acknowledged and regretted; at present, I am well aware, that it is of little use to bring them forward, except only to explain the present impossibility of stating what pictures _are_, and what _were_, in the interior of the Ducal Palace. I can only say, that in the winter of 1851, the "Paradise" of Tintoret was still comparatively uninjured, and that the Camera di Collegio, and its antechamber, and the Sala de' Pregadi were full of pictures by Veronese and Tintoret, that made their walls as precious as so many kingdoms; so precious indeed, and so full of majesty, that sometimes when walking at evening on the Lido, whence the great chain of the Alps, crested with silver clouds, might be seen rising above the front of the Ducal Palace, I used to feel as much awe in gazing on the building as on the hills, and could believe that God had done a greater work in breathing into the narrowness of dust the mighty spirits by whom its haughty walls had been raised, and its burning legends written, than in lifting the rocks of granite higher than the clouds of heaven, and veiling them with their various mantle of purple flower and shadowy pine. NOTE. I have printed the chapter on the Ducal Palace, quite one of the most important pieces of work done in my life, without alteration of its references to the plates of the first edition, because I hope both to republish some of those plates, and together with them, a few permanent photographs (both from the sculpture of the Palace itself, and from my own drawings of its detail), which may be purchased by the possessors of this smaller edition to bind with the book or not, as they please. This separate publication I can now soon set in hand; and I believe it will cause much less confusion to leave for the present the references to the old plates untouched. The wood-blocks used for the first three figures in this chapter, are the original ones: that of the Ducal Palace façade was drawn on the wood by my own hand, and cost me more trouble than it is worth, being merely given for division and proportion. The greater part of the first volume, omitted in this edition after "the Quarry," will be republished in the series of my reprinted works, with its original wood-blocks. But my mind is mainly set now on getting some worthy illustration of the St. Mark's mosaics, and of such remains of the old capitals (now for ever removed, in process of the Palace restoration, from their life in sea wind and sunlight, and their ancient duty, to a museum-grave) as I have useful record of, drawn in their native light. The series, both of these and of the earlier mosaics, of which the sequence is sketched in the preceding volume, and farther explained in the third number of "St. Mark's Rest," become to me every hour of my life more precious both for their art and their meaning; and if any of my readers care to help me, in my old age, to fulfil my life's work rightly, let them send what pence they can spare for these objects to my publisher, Mr. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent. Since writing the first part of this note, I have received a letter from Mr. Burne Jones, assuring me of his earnest sympathy in its object, and giving me hope even of his superintendence of the drawings, which I have already desired to be undertaken. But I am no longer able to continue work of this kind at my own cost; and the fulfilment of my purpose must entirely depend on the money-help given me by my readers.